A unit of Lasting Forests
Sustained forests; sustained profits
evolving since March 30, 1999

Project Pivotal-Rig

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Chip off the New Block: A Practical Start Bob Giles, June, 2002

Please read and ponder The Pivotal Strategy.

The Chip is offered reluctantly. It's probably like comments by Hercules discussing a type of shovel when given the task of cleaning the Aegean stables.

Here's what I'd do, several things at once, with a little help. The following can probably be done by May 1, 2003.

1. Ms. Cirillo, you need to decide if this is something in which you want to become "invested." Throughout, I've assumed that people would be hired using the funds obtained as venture capital or loans. Who is hired will depend on the rate of acquiring funds, and the limitations on each budget.
2. We need to see an attorney to resolve 501(c)(3) topics, joint Trust and Pivotal involvement, and proper corporate status for which and from which we can legally and safely work.
3. We need to develop insights for leadership for the next 10 years (a first-principle of the systems approach, feedforward, working and investing some now to get ready for the predicted future).
4. If you decide to work with the Pivotal concept, then you need a meeting with the people in the vicinity - at least 4 miles east and west. We all have to see what is possible and believe we're on the way. The Pivotal Strategy is the way to get there. Only a few have to believe it. Everyone has to know what "those other guys" are doing.
5. We need a gross idea of the number of people unemployed or who might consider an alternative line of work within the area. Experimental and volunteer work will be needed at the beginning.
6. If the project is approved, we need to have some bandannas made for sale at cost. Conspicuous is one of the bywords.
7. We need someone (Mrs. Hatfield?) who bakes to put some special yeast (I'll bring it) in a bowl and give out these sourdough "starts" to everyone who wants it. The symbolism can be strong. We'll market this as soon as possible (locally, then Cracker Barrel stores, etc.)
8. We need 2 to 3 people to bake 50 " Eagan Eggs" (for taste-testing, cost analysis, and market analyses) a cookie for workers, school children, and hikers. It will take a little experimenting or maybe there is a better recipe for a hard cookie that can be carried afield.

   250 Acre Rose Creek Land Base. Numbers are for the order in which parcels were acquired

   
   
9. We need to talk to the local restaurant owner about commissions on meals and other product-sales that we generate.
10. We need to see Fred Fields and see how we might relate to a Jubilee Center. Maybe they can provide us a loan (as described in The Pivotal Strategy).
11. We need to see Joanne Watts of Jellico , tourism director, to discuss the Ranging concept.
12. I'll start a draft of a proposal to the Gates Foundation if you and people to whom you report agree.(See my later comments about the draft.)
13. I'll start a draft of a proposal to the Carter Foundation.
14. We need to find the largest, prettiest pond on the area or to which we can have management access for the next contracted 150 years. A map with descriptions of each pond/wet area can be a project.
15. We need to visit and see if 1-2 local funeral home owners/managers may be interested in some aspect of The Memorials Group.
16. We need to find a person with a big-bed truck who is interested in foxes and coyotes and wants a night-shift job (see Coyote of Nature Folks)..
17. We need to map and get records on as many of the mines as possible. These may be good for The Prospectors, cheese storage, safety zones, subsidence, ...
18. We need to talk to the tent manufacturer in Caryville, Camel Manufacturing Company, to see if there are potential relations and advertising assistance we might provide.; also get estimates on costs of tent camps.
19. The youth about to show up need to feel loved and want to return. We need to get them hats or a bandana or Tee-shirts and give them a special souvenir rock. They will be the future for the project. Tasks:
    • We'll do a soil experiment to find the best layers for making soil (start collecting gallon plastic milk cartons; we need 30). We'll fill these with hammered rocks from different layers and plant some legume seeds.
    • We need to borrow 5-10 fire rakes from the local state forest service DNR; we'll use them to clean trails. Return them sharp and oiled. (Have a mechanic save a quart of drained oil.)
    • Get a young person or two to walk around and visit people and make a list of all of the vegetables that have been raised successfully in local gardens.
    • If some young person is interested in insects, its time to start a collection for Nature Folks and The Butterfly Band. UT entomologists will visit and tell how to collect and mount insects. Maybe a building or office space can serve Nature Folks interests.
    • With Britt Boucher of Foresters, Inc., Blacksburg, VA., lets visit foresters of the adjacent mining-land owners (Huber?) to develop a (plans).
    • They need to "play in the creek." It needs little rock dams that they can make (rocks at least as big as a loaf of bread) so that the water ripples to begin adding oxygen.
    • They need to select a good spot for a 6-foot-tall thermometer like those seen for charity giving and fire danger in the West. (We'll get it in later to report on progress; they can help pick a spot. Mark it; leave a report on selection criteria.)
    • Have each pair of youths by willing participants build a 2 meter x 5 meter start-up for a Pivotal Garden. There will be nothing planted. Organics will be added (See the description.)
    • Many youth will have Internet skills. Have them build or add to web site, linkages, poems of residents, jokes by residents, any history available, scan in any pictures (have the students bike them back and forth to local folks for a few-minutes of copying) pictures of each person's house (with a date), scenic shots, pictures of the developed garden (part of the future plot).
20. Write to UT and get names and addresses of all students from the 2 counties. Write them and ask for help (while at UT by working on one of more term-papers or senior or graduate projects that will payoff for them as well as their home counties - a list is available and open for suggestions).
21. We need someone ( maybe a church group) with a sewing machine to hem 10-20 triangular flags. We, the conglomerate, have to be evidently present and at work.
22. We need someone who can start The Old Codgers.
23. We need to contract with Conservation Management Institute for 3 maps of the area and sell them.
24. We need to talk to Ernie Hill about starting to think about and to plan for The Fire Force and its potentials.
25. We need to start the baseline for fires and fire prevention (numbers of calls, fires, estimated losses, local annual control budget).
26. We need a meeting with Joe Schmitt (784-5304)to get small business advice. It may be that we have to develop 40 business plans but because of System Central, none will make sense to banks or reviewers. Maybe Chuck Christiansen of Knoxville can meet with us.
27. We need to talk to Robert Cox, Kenny Bartlet, or Kenny Pittman, or Tim Riddean about The 4x4 Group, planning, getting an early start, revising, etc.
28. There's a great idea in The Products Group for a hiking staff. Maybe someone who does furniture or has a lathe might advise or help get this product into markets.
29. We need to discuss marketing and other relations with staff of www.erocc.com and especially jrocc.com (The Jellico Rock Obstacle Challenge Course)
30. We need someone who has a computer and some Internet skills and who is interested in Nature. He or she might head-up Nature Folks.
31. We need to talk and plan with someone who has or now raises rabbits
32. We need someone who has raised geese or someone who is very interested in doing so. The visiting youth may have such expertise and can advise.
33. We need 2-3 really good places for a campfire the youth may help find, sketch-map, and clear for them before final selection.
34. We need to locate local youth and adult camps and get their addresses, phones, and dates of operation. Also an answer to: interested in cooperative, paid use later after the season?
35. Has anyone any experience with carving names, etc. in local rock?
36. Is there an expert wood whittler who might be interested in forming a group (see The Sculptors).
37. We need to know if anyone knows where there are fine clay deposits on the area that have been or might be processed and used in sculpting.
38. We need to know if anyone in the region works with heat pumps. Putting pipes into deep wells can harvest the Earth heat and provide summer cooling.
39. Who now has experience or is interested in dairy goat work?
40. We need to discuss with a gas well expert the potentials for local use.
41. Get a list of everyone interested in pond fishing. In stream fishing.
42. We need to talk to Darrell Hopson about his bus, interests in serving local tours, and contacts with other busses and tour groups.
43. We need to talk to the primary realtors to see if they might join in work on The Realtors
44. We need to get Betty Graham King to think of materials for an Internet news letter (maybe a version of What on Earth that would serve The Pivots.
45. We need to pick a few enterprises (3-10) for the start-up design.

The above are questions and small projects that might help generate interest and get things moving. With evidence interest (work and letters), and a selection of a small number of the enterprises, we can write to Carter and Gates Foundations.

Institute?

Get someone to build a rough wood bookcase. I'll donate about 9 feet of books and pamphlets and reprints on mined lands and their reclamation. That can be called the start. There may be people who love to do library work and they may see the potentials later of the WKB.

The problem is that we know how to do it, mined land reclamation, in general. We need the money to do the expensive reclamation. The state of Virginia knew it had 30,000 acres of abandoned surface mined lands and did little to influence them with great amounts of money. Half way through the project the coal price changed and new mining went in over the old seams and thus newly mined lands came under the new laws. The stopped reclamation work.

I've described an alternative land re-contouring and reclamation strategy but it is expensive and only suitable for mountain-top removals. In remaining pre-1977 mined areas, many of us believe that wildlife are best served with only minor changes in reshaping the land and fixing acid problems. We need to locate the acid problems and try to get OSM to work on them specifically.

Otherwise, we have to press the unpleasant premise: reclamation for "wildlife" is cheap, minimum reclamation, and almost meaningless (for pileated wood peckers or sparrows?; mice or deer?; for animals for which there is an abundance and no extra demand (thus no rational reason to spend money to produce more)?). It is a relatively inexpensive dodge by mining companies and a way to get a bond released quickly ... and with no follow-up or maintenance or management costs. Reclamation needs to be for land for its use and support of people over the long run. And it includes all of the reasons given for investing in the Pivotal Strategy - not just how to get a bond released quickly.

So if there is an Institute, what will it present to people that is not presented elsewhere? At what costs? How can we see a demand so clearly that people will spend much money and much time traveling to the site to get this special stuff with high probable payoff? How can we attract a "name" large enough who might draw people to hear or experience him (and pay the time, energy, and lost vacation time or donated work time). I got paid a lot by taxpayers, more than I ever expected, and it was less than many colleagues got. I don't think a troubled society can afford me; surely not them! I'm retired and still trying to payoff society.

Only a few people want to learn the techniques of reclamation. Big equipment, as on the farm, has reduced the need for many workers. We need to conduct field trips on busses out of major cities and help out local hotel/restaurant owners.Consider the "Institute" the arrangements and Tours Group working out of an office.

Recent and ongoing research strongly indicates that using the environment as a subject "integrator" across the curriculum can both improve student performance and contribute to the development of values such as community responsibility and persistence. In addition, environment-based education can lead to more effective methods of implementing standards-based education, can be a powerful school "turn-around" tool for severely under-performing schools, and can be a vehicle for improving teacher preparation and performance.

We can offer distance-learning courses (but the site from which it is sent is no longer relevant). I offered one on advanced wildlife resource management systems out of the Northern Virginia Graduate Center 2 years ago. It can work. We can have visitors, see the principles in action ... 2-3 days, but not year around? We may need specialized intensive youth and adult education with a strong land/ resource base for realistic examples of the principles and for motivation. That seems possible and a good effort.

I think we can have a writers camp as part of the Institute and it can concentrate on environmental and outdoor writing and photography, especially writing for the Internet.

We need to consider the potentials of youth programs with special math and science emphases to meet standards-of-learning might work. We might discuss this with Harry Chitwood of staff of the White Oak School.

It may be that the Institute can spend full-time in educating staff members of all aspects of the proposed conglomerate.

A guides program might assist in meeting local as well as other needs of the Pivotal-Rig, Inc. if it catches on. (One such program exists in the Virginia coalfield).There will be many needed and they need to be especially well trained for their specific tasks.

Activities may already be underway, but parenting classes, for men and women seem especially needed given the urban conditions, the divorce rate, and the small family sizes ...no one learns how to do it well any longer. Mentors are few. Some of this can be taught outdoors and in the facilities of an Institute.

I'll welcome comments, revisions, and advice. I'll progressively change this page as additions and changes become available. Go to the top

This Web site is maintained by R. H. Giles, Jr.
Last revision June 8, 2002.