The Economy and Me, Part 1

Out on the Hawksbill Cabin’s brick terrace, on some days I can find the quiet I need to keep up with the magazines and miscellany that piles up around the house. It’s not so bad with the current job and company, but when I was with my immediately previous employer, with 100+ emails a day and 60+ over the weekend, I might go six months without opening a Wired, and at least that long without reading anything in Engineering News and Record (it’s a trade rag, we call it ENR for short). They would pile up in the reading basket we keep in the living room until they spilled out onto the floor – then we’d just throw ‘em out.

That’s not the ususal case anymore, I’m happy to say. I have space and time to think about things, and for that I’m thankful. So I was amused by the title of a Po Bronson article in this month’s Fast Company – “What Should I Do With My Life Now?” – and its sub-title,” That could be an existential wail, self-indulgent musing – or the beginning of real transformation.” In fact, this (Sunday) morning I have put together a short essay on the topic, which I’ll publish over the next three days.

Before I get into the part of the Bronson article that was insightful to me, as a person who sometimes finds himself an uninspired drone, I also found myself thinking about Page County, here where our cabin is. When you come here, it’s easy to see that the two pillars of the local economy are agriculture and tourism, though not in that order, as they tell me Luray Caverns draws more than 800K visitors from all over the world every year, and I can count at least seven hundred hotel rooms in Luray to support that trade.

There are signs of other things that used to be here, an industrial sector, that has gone from here and to a large extent from the country – the sprawling old tannery, and a textile plant that that has been repurposed into a jeans distribution center (the textile industry is still here but employs significantly fewer people). Industry could be – should be – the third leg of the local economy’s stool here. There are a few good ideas around on this matter, but I’m just wondering if we’re doing everything we can about a current 17.7 percent unemployment rate, as reported in the Page News and Courier this week.

Bronson’s current Fast Company article summarizes an economic landscape where every bubble has burst, bringing the frothy economy of the mid-2000’s to a screeching halt. This article follows up on one written six years ago, in the wake of the dot com bust and 9/11 where there was a brief pause in economic growth, although it was never officially categorized as a recession.

Writing this, I am not just thinking about the question Bronson raises in the title “What Should I Do With My Life Now?” but also what should – or what can - Page County do now, and what can I do to help. I’ll continue with some rambling, random thoughts, next post.