Andersen Design Economic Evolution Discourse

QUOTE FROM PEN AMERICA WEBSITE The combination of our New York and Los Angeles offices and membership strongholds will provide tent poles on each coast, enabling us to accelerate efforts to build a truly national organization.  Our goal is to build a national constituency of writers and readers who are energized to defend open discourse; foster the exchange of ideas across political, geographic and ideological bounds; amplify unheard voices; and stand with writers and creators who face persecution. Over the last year, PEN America has taken new steps to engage and mobilize members across the country through events, activities and leadership development in more than a dozen cities including Tulsa, Tucson, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Detroit, and New Orleans. The timing of this union is no coincidence as we face potent challenges to free speech, press freedom, the right to dissent, and the open flow of information here in the United States.  Never have the voices of writers and...

Click to Go to our KickStarter Campaign Preview I saw this Posted on FaceBook by Wendy Rosen, a mover and shaker in the American crafts market: REBUILDING MANUFACTURING & MAKING IN AMERICA by Wendy Rosen Wendy Rosen has been advocating for indelible labeling of imports for years. During  the beginning of the Baldacci administration, Wendy Rosen sent me an initiative on this and I submitted it to "the creative economy list serve" a list serve sponsored by Maine's public-private government, jurored by its friends. My message asked Mainers to contact Olympia Snowe but the overlords of the listserve rejected my submission. I then took the message to a local craft fair. I could not even finish my first sentence before people were grabbing it out of my hand. I told them that it had been rejected from the list serve. Someone suggested I contact Mrs Baldacci. I did so but did not get a personal response from the Governor's wife. Ho...

PART TWO in a series in which I  place Andersen Design's vision of economic development in the economic development environment in Maine Go to Part One Patron and Collaborator, Bob Rose standing among some of Maine;s "underutilized resources"   A special request It is the legacy of the second generation of Andersen Design, including yours truly, to preserve the Andersen Design tradition and meld it into the 21st century. Today more than ever, it teeters on the brink of extinction. To secure it's physical headquarters, and work space, which is also where we live on a rental basis, we need to raise $2000.00 in funds available by Friday. You can make a donation to our ready cash fund to cure the most immediate need here:   This is a donation to this research and opinion blog, which I have been individually maintaining since 2007. If Andersen Design makes it through this existential crisis, we will be willing to make good on your donation, on an ind...

Rare Standing Robin, circa 1980's. PART ONE in a series in which I  place Andersen Design's vision of economic development in the economic development environment in Maine Introduction I was raised in a home business, similar to a farm, but instead of producing crops, we produced ceramics. From the beginning,  Andersen Design , was  conceived of as part of an economic development philosophy. My father Weston Neil Andersen, often expressed the value of creating jobs.  In this 1964 letter, by my father  as he sought capital for the next phase of development, He talks about increasing the number of employees of our small company and about the benefit that the ceramic industry can have for  Maine's feldspar industry . Our company was small but this is the stuff that real economic development is composed of, creating new avenues of wealth and connecting resources, not merely redistributing existing supplies of wealth. We created a product line of clas...