On Monday, the Financial Times ran a story about the skills gap, provocatively titled "German Giant Says US Workers Lack Skills." Eric Spiegel, chief executive in the US for Siemens, the German engineering group, said the problem exposed weaknesses in education and...
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Energy and skill we can “ill afford to lose”
At nine o'clock on Sunday morning, I was dashing down a hallway at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Home in Hyde Park, NY on my way to deliver a lecture for SUNY's Empire State College when a painting on the wall stopped me in my tracks. "Art of the New Deal" celebrates the...
Looks like we caught another one
What a pleasure to stumble across this post, "If It Were Easy, Everyone Would Do It," by Ry M. Sal on her For the Birds blog. Sal writes: "I haven’t had the pleasure of riding on a tugboat yet… but after reading My River Chronicles, by Jessica DuLong — I have a...
Scrappers Licking Lips for Chance to Cut Up SS United States
I wrote about the SS United States in a post a few months back. Today the stakes are higher than ever before. At this moment, scrappers are bidding for a chance to cut up the 1952 ocean liner. A decision may be handed down before the end of the month. ...
Fireboat heading into port one last time
For an engineer on an old fireboat that came back to life after being sold for scrap, this Boston Globe story by David Filipov, about an aging fireboat that "has responded to thousands of distress calls in its half-century of service" and is now poised...
On being subject to matter
"He who is aching in every limb, worn out by the effort of a day of work, that is to say a day when he has been subject to matter, bears the reality of the universe in his flesh like a thorn. The difficulty for him is to look and to love. If he succeeds, he...
Blue-Collar Jobs in Demand in 2010
Check out this Yahoo! story about highly-paid blue-collar positions with openings in 2010: "Ready for a career change but dread getting another desk job? Then how about trying your hand at, well, working with your hands? 'There is a blue-collar...
Joel Kotkin’s The Next Hundred Million
Here's Joel Kotkin talking about his new book The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050 on WNYC: "We send too many people to four-year colleges and we don't teach people skills that are useful in the economy ... The system is tilted toward the financial...
US manufacturing is recovering, reaches a 2004 high
Looks like manufacturing is off to a good start in 2010, especially in apparel, textile machinery and transportation equipment industries. A report based on a private survey indicates strong current and future performance in manufacturing. "The US...
Reader Reviews of My River Chronicles
I'm so grateful for all the warm messages I continue to receive from readers all over the country (and even overseas!) who are moved by the unforgettable people and captivating places whose stories I've had the privilege to tell in My River Chronicles, and who...