Making Ripples: post-corporate adventures in Floyd County Virginia

First Friday event at The Station in Floyd

The Station on South Locust in Floyd, VA, a new business/residential development at the former site of Mama Lazardo's Pizza & Subs, is opening this weekend after many months of construction activity. Visitors and well-wishers have been dropping by to greet the new tenants even before the doors are officially open.

The design and finishing touches of this completely transformed building show the great attention to detail that Woody Crenshaw brings to all of his projects. It should be a popular stop for visitors even before the new restaurant opens with its high profile patio dining area.

Local artists, artisans, and business people have been setting up shop while contractors were still applying the finishing touches needed to make the Station ready for tonight's First Friday Open House event.

Not all suites are occupied, but there are already enough filled to make a significant difference in the number of businesses and artists celebrating First Friday this month.

The Blue Ridge Art Connection had a successful soft opening during the Floyd Town Jubilee two weeks ago. The members of the Blue Ridge Art Connection are shown here during a recent promo shoot.

They are ready to welcome visitors this weekend with new work and more artists than ever before. They are also featuring the work of their student artists as well.

They are very supportive of new artists and provide classes and mentoring on an individualized basis.

They welcome new members and students at all skill levels. Some of the students have gone on to become professional artists.

This is the group that launched me into custom picture framing several years ago.

I will have a continuing display in this new gallery to show what can be achieved with custom framing.

This week's display is a shadow box for displaying an antique mask.

Next door to the Blue Ridge Art Connection, Starroot (AKA Ruth Neumann) has an exhibit of her colorful and whimsical work. Starroot, like many Floyd artists is also a musician. I took this shot of her taking a musical break a few days ago while she was setting up shop.

Across the hall from the Blue Ridge Art Connection you will find The Troika, three long-time Floyd artists  (Gibby Waitzkin, Silvie Granatelli, and Susan Icove) whose works are more in the three dimensional realm. This studio is a real find for those who want to create unique interiors for home or office.

There are other tenants well worth visiting. My neighbor Ann Bower has an Avon office in the rear of the building, there is a woodworking business opening soon, and Kate Anderson is opening a studio in the back hall.

Did I mention the wine tasting room? The local vineyards, cider producers, meaderies and micro brewers are setting up a tasting room which will feature beverages from local producers. This will be a popular stop for visitors, I am sure.

Stop in tonight for the First Friday celebration if you can (5-8 PM). It should be a good time for all concerned. This kicks off the season at the Station and the shops and studios will be open for business from now on.

Floyd Town Jubilee - a celebration of community spirit

Saturday's celebration in downtown Floyd Virginia was billed as a one of a kind celebration of music, art, food, and community spirit.

Visitors enjoyed live music in the new Warren G. Lineberry Memorial Park and sampled tasty food and cold beverages under a mostly sunny sky. 

They brought their children, their dogs, even a falcon. Everyone seemed to be having a good time.

High winds blew over a few of the tents and others turned into spinnakers and threatened to sail away, but bystanders helped furl them and the celebration continued with topless booths in some areas.

The Station on Locust Street was open to the public for the first time. This new commercial and living space featured apartments upstairs and artist studios and wine tasting on the main floor.

Not all studios are finished yet, but a few resourceful tenants like the Blue Ridge Art Connection  and the Troika managed to set up their shops during the few hours between the departure of the last contractor on Friday and the opening on Saturday morning.

 




Visitor traffic was brisk almost all day and most Floyd merchants and artist groups reported good sales. It was more like a homecoming party than a business event as people met up with other folks that they had not seen for months.



In addition to local craftsmen like Tom Phelps, there were local writer/publishers like Ron Campbell and Fred First with new products to display.

An ongoing musical performance by Tina Liza Jones and Eric Root in the Floyd Artist Association's booth attracted visiting performers and a clogger. This constantly changing presentation was a big hit with visitors and their children.

During the afternoon, visitors were also treated to a short childrens parade led by a girl on a unicycle followed by two bellydancers and a troupe of young children in facepaint and some teenagers in goth regalia and tattoos. This procession wound it way through the booths and down the street before I could get a picture of them.

Floyd's nine foot tall fairy (Alina Ever) was granting wishes to Jubilee visitors. I had to admire how she dealt with the heavy wind gusts that buffeted the town center when she was out and about. When the tents were blowing over, she simply tacked against the wind instead of disappearing over the adjacent rooftops in a whirl of blue fabric.

There was a continually changing audience enjoying the performers on the Turman Log Homes bandstand in the Lineberry Memorial Park. Jane Cundiff sent us an image of spectators and dancers that perfectly captured the mood of this jubilee.

Congratulations to all who planned this event and to the many volunteers who worked so hard to make it a success! It was an historic moment and should become an annual celebration.

Camera repair - is it a vanishing industry?

I have been getting daily use out of a Sony DSC F828 Cybershot for many years now and it is beginning to fail. I feel a real loss because this 8 megapixel dinosaur has performed faithfully for tens of thousands of shots and has a rotating back assembly which gives it great flexibility in composing shots on the fly.

Picture credit: www.dpreview.com

The prospects for getting this camera repaired are dismal. If anyone has a suggestion, I am open to considering it.

I have Googled Sony Camera Repair repeatedly and it appears that Precision Camera Repair in Enfield Ct is the official repair center for most camera manufacturers including Sony. This is really depressing news because Precision Camera   has more service complaints than the Brooklyn Camera Shops I have written about previously.

They have a great looking web site, impressive service guarantees, and a whole lot of blather about how customers can get fixed-price quotes and can track the progress of the repairs being made on their cameras.

Then, if you Google "Precision Camera repair complaints" you get about 10,100 results which is not encouraging.

I spent about an hour reading complaints and praise for Precision's repair service and it seems that complaints slightly outnumber positive reactions.

To qualify this further, the complainants generally provide names and email addresses while those who praise Precision are mostly anonymous while seeming to have incredibly wonderful service. That doesn't add up.

There were a few people who actually had good experiences with Precision and gave real names, but the majority seemed to be "corporate spin artists" who counter complaints with fantastically favorable reports. These "favorable" reports are similar to the bogus reports used by Royal Camera and the other Brooklyn camera shops that prey on online shoppers.

I have been writing for more a year about the amazing scams perpetrated by the Brooklyn camera shop known as Royal Camera, City Camera, Tcscamera.com, and bananaboatcamera.com, and Prestige Camera (aka: A&M Photo World, Regal Camera, Broadway Photo, Preferred Photo)

If you see any of those names in an online ad, look elsewhere for your purchase.

It is really discouraging to see the camera repair business descend to that same level.

Container gardening again

A few weeks ago,we caught the tail end of a special on Square Foot Gardening and it inspired me to start container gardening again, but in a new and more productive way.

I have been gardening in containers for many years, and even designed and built cedar planters to allow stand-up gardening. These planters allowed us to grow vegetables on our deck where the deer herds at Lake Monticello could not get at them.

When we moved to Floyd, VA, in 2005 I tried conventional gardening but the local deer and other varmints ate most of what we planted.

I considered container gardening again but could not get enthused because of the expense and the effort involved.

Mel Bartholomew and his Square Foot Gardening showed me how to create better container gardens for less money.

 After reading his website and viewing his videos, I realized that I had never really understood how to create potting soil. My previous container gardens were basically amended topsoil which worked after a fashion, but was very dense and hard to work with in a container.

Using some of the Square Foot Gardening ideas and incorporating my own, I created an expandable container garden out of old file storage baskets, some plastic trash bags and some landscaping cloth.

The potting soil is one third vermiculite, one third topsoil, and one third compost for which I am substituting spagnum moss, humus, and composted manure until I am making compost in enough volume. This combination is easy to work with, the plants love it and it drains well but stays moist.

Currently, I have onions, beans, peas, potatoes, parsley, tomatoes and squash coming up. Parsnips should be showing up any week now and I will be adding more containers as time and money permits. I have also used heritage vegetables wherever possible.

With the container garden sitting on our back deck, our first action of the day is to pour a cup of coffee and saunter out to see how the vegetable are progressing. It is truly satisfying as every day brings new surprises.

TV without Letterman?

David Letterman has lost all value as an entertainer.

He has made the long descent from his early wise-cracking humor to making lewd remarks about 14-year Willow Palin.

This was not an off-the-cuff remark. It was a carefully scripted and rehearsed part of the Letterman show on CBS.

His degraded attempts to throw up a smokescreen afterward show his lack of human decency.

Firms like Olive Garden, Mars Candy, and Kelloggs have no place supporting the leering comments from this long past sell-date TV figure. Great positioning guys!  Corporate America has enough on its hands without supporting sexual assault on minors.

CBS must be looking at new ways to boost ratings. What will they think of next?

Sebastian Gray suggests how to communicate viewer displeasure to Letterman's advertisers.