Welcome to my Blog

This is my first post. I am planning to use this vehicle to post my Scraps column as well as the TRS print version--at least for the time being. In this blog you will find info about the RSS and what is happening to YOUR professional association. Perhaps it wll be of some interest to you. One of the nice things about this form of electronic communication is that you can post your own responses or comments about things that are of interest or concern to you and we can all read those as well. The other nice thing is that you can access this at YOUR convenience rather than having me PUSH the information to you. I realize that some people will never take the time to access this info; that's just life as we know it.

I'll also use this vehicle to share with you random snippets of information I gather up from diverse sources about "things rural" that may suggest a thread of conversation or reactions. If you don't find them useful, you can post your own ideas or those of others--as usual, let's give credit if they are not our own words.

So, here goes---

The Missouri Economic Research and Information Center (MERIC) prepared and recently delivered maps to the U.S. Department of Labor looking at how Hurricane Katrina will affect workers, businesses and transportation systems in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. The mapping project is part of MERIC's involvement in a pilot program funded by the U.S. DOL, now in its second year.

One of the maps shows that, in Louisiana and Mississippi combined, 45 percent of all employers and 46 percent of all employees fell within a 100-mile radius of Katrina as it made landfall near New Orleans. Based on MERIC's calculations, over 70,700 employers and 1.2 million employees were within this 100-mile radius. Read more...