Join Me On The Information Highway



I had become tired of all the half-hearted,   seemingly insincere efforts at stimulating the local job economy of my county,   Siskiyou County.     In the years since I came to Yreka in mid 1976,     I had tried,  many times,   to influence the local job economy,     in various ways,   only to come up against obstacles that get things "stuck",     and finally I realized that whoever is in most control of the overall "vision" for this county,     wants it this way.    They wanted the wages low.   They wanted the jobs scarce,   so that people will want to move back to "the city",    and not stay here.

Whoever it is,    they were completely fearful that if a lot of people move in here,   it will harm the forest.   Others were fearful that more population would mean all the evils of "the city" that we moved here to escape.

But it doesn't really do any good to try and place BLAME on anyone or any group.     Just identify the generic "evil" that we must overcome.   This is the "current reality",   that we must accept,    if we are to "rise above it".

My purpose in writing this up,    and in offering to help understand about how we can create a better future,    is to thank those who have at last adopted a common data format for their jobs databases,    and even put these online on the Internet.
http://www.snowcrest.net/soza/jobs/SisQJobs.htm

I also want to help to re-invigorate those who do work at these job-related agency tasks,    to wake them up from the stagnation,    and give them hope,   that all their hard work is not for naught,   that it can get better around here.

A clue:    a little cloves in the coffee grounds works wonders in increasing the level of physical energy,   and even in increasing the determination and will power.    Something about affecting the kidneys and adrenal glands.   I use about 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground cloves per quart of water.     Whatever the compound in it that helps,   leaving it sit out in the open air decreased the effects.    And some Gotu Kola herb is a brain food   and antioxidant,    and can help you to "rise above it",   to rise above the stagnation of the Old Story.

I am now seeing signs of change,   that this stagnation can be overcome,  and the Internet is the biggest reason why.
 

These decades-long anti-growth policies were the cause of

When we let our high school graduates leave the area,   instead of providing a healthy economy for them to become part of,   we were exporting much of our highest energy age group,   that goes out and earns their living,   and pays taxes,    and also produces the children that are the new generation.    The mood is increasingly low energy,    depressed,   no feeling of "hustle and bustle",   an abnormal kind of community.

And this takes its toll on the people who are hired to try and stimulate the local economy.    After a while,   they are affected by this energy-draining mood,    and they give up too,  power- less to overcome the inertia and stagnation of this self- defeating cycle.

No one knew how to fix it.     And I have been shy about talking about my own realizations about how we create our own future realities.


So,  the only way to overcome the effect of this "vision" that wants the population here sparse,   and the jobs almost non-existent,   is to teach everyone how to create their own future,   how to create their own job,  how to start new companies,   here.

Just learning the new technology tools to use to  do this,   is not going to be enough.  People will need emotional support and inspiration,    to give them real hope,   not "false hope",     and to learn how to constantly raise their level of consciousness,   to "rise above"  the  stuck layer of reality,   and create a new,  energetic layer of reality,  both for themselves,   and collectively.

This will be the toughest part,    just as overcoming chronic fatigue syndrome in myself had a component of using my will power,   to command my immune system to go into high gear.

After so many decades of economic stagnation and decline,   the people will need to re-assert their determination,    to rise above this malaise,   this stuck reality,  to increasingly tune into a higher layer,   where the economy is already working.

In keeping with this theme,    I want to call on all to realize that a person cannot support themselves on a job at five dollars an hour.    Even if they temporarily take one at this wage,    to put food on their table,   and a roof over their heads,
they should not be expected to commit to 40 hours of this.   Fulltime work at $5 an hour  ties up all their time,  and they are not able to have enough time and energy left to find something more fair.

Over the years since I began realizing my own particular verbalization of how we create our own future,    I have evolved a simple method of defining the next lunar cycle or the next solar cycle,  at pivotal times,   when the energies between the largest nearby objects,   the Sun and the Moon,  converge,   and then diverge.     The total cycle between these nodal points,    I call a "gestalt".

Without getting too bogged down in the deeper Chemistry and Physics or in the computer programming terms that I realized it in,    I can teach a simple "game" of structuring your wish list,  or your prayer list,    whichever way you prefer to call it,     so that you can learn how to
http://www.snowcrest.net/soza/future/solstc93.htm

PROJECT AHEAD IN TIME
INTO A PROBABLE FUTURE UNIVERSE
OF YOUR OWN CONSTRUCTION

AND NOT

INTO A PROBABLE FUTURE UNIVERSE
OF YOUR OWN WORST FEARS

The name for this "game" of Defining Your Own Future is called     "Time Matrix Translation".  http://www.snowcrest.net/soza/tmtdefn.htm
Simplified,    the "wish list" format is at
http://www.snowcrest.net/soza/future/gestalt.htm
 

I have the impression that no matter how hard the people working at the local jobs related agencies try,    they are also discouraged about there not being enough jobs here,    and  are too tired to get much farther than just securing the funding for their own jobs for another year or two,    and then they fall back under the power of the stuck,    stagnant   anti-growth  "vision".

If we could somehow just dissolve the County of Siskiyou,   and be annexed to the County of Shasta and the City of Redding,    they could teach us how to do this right!!!    If you are thinking of working in "the city" part of the week,   Redding is close enough to be possible.

With the disappearance of more and more of the traditional local industries,   and together with the necessity of getting everyone back to work,   and paying in taxes,   instead of collecting a welfare or other kind of government check,
all of these limitations are finally ripe for a solution!!!

The new theme is

We are not "out in the boonies" anymore.
We are 60 seconds away from everywhere!

Now come find out what you need to know to make your own Internet business".

At the Process Technology Training Center,   a program of the Yreka Campus of the College of the Siskiyous,    and also in the Computer Lab in Rm 8,   you can come and learn about taking courses in these subjects:
 


How to use PCs
How to use Windows 95
How to use the Internet
How to make web pages the easy way
How to publicize your web pages
How to use the online auction to advertise
How to find inexpensive PC equipment,  software and books
How to use free classifieds and ad newsgroups
Desktop Publishing to make brochures and flyers
Word processing with WordForWindows
How to communicate with customers thru email
How to figure shipping costs
How to do packaging and shipping
How to keep track of the expenses and income



If there are not enough students for a whole "class" of any of these subjects,    we invite you to pursue your own "self- directed" course,   where you learn how to pursue your own train of thought,   to learn whatever it is about technology that will help you to realize your dream.

Many of the courses fit this model,   are "project-oriented",   "self-directed",   and "experiential".

But,   before this will work for a lot of people,    the college needs more commitment from students to come and take the courses.     The college still gets paid by the number of students it has signed up for class.

Originally,    I believe,   the Process Technology Training Center,   was funded at least partially,   with money designed for retraining displaced loggers,   forestry workers thrown out of jobs due to the "Spotted Owl" orders to stop or reduce logging.    But not enough "loggers" are interested in this kind of training,    and it is time to redefine the purpose of the Process Technology Training Center.

As a facility with so many courses designed to be "self-directed",    the PTTC fills the needs of many local people to be retrained in newer,   more technical job skills,  so that they can get family-wage,  high-paying work,   or start their own Internet businesses.   It is "learner-controlled instruction",    where the student designs his or her own course,   as far as what to focus on.    http://www.snowcrest.net/soza/learnnow/whyselfd.htm

In the Computer Labs,   in both Room 8,  and in the Spring,   also in the Process Technology building,   you will be able to start any time,   and not wait until the start of next semester,  buying computer time to start learning.    For $6.50,   you can buy 36 or 48 hours of computer time.     In addition,   Mike Graves teaches courses in Windows 95, and in Netscape,  that fit into one semester.

I have been taking courses at the PTTC,   since the Fall of 1995,    after hearing the first four-hour lecture from the program director  Milan Vodicka.

I originally went there to study AutoCAD,   and learn how to do houseplans,
to better compete with the ladies in the county who were getting most of the energy efficiency analysis business,   but I was so motivated by Milan's talk about his teaching methods,   that he created "metanoia" in me,   and I ended up studying his wholistic teaching methods,    during these years,    with the intention to become a college teacher or courseware developer (technical writer assisting a teacher).   Many of my projects there have focused on the kind of wholistic teaching method that he uses.
 

In a perfect Utopian world,    a college would be the local organization that would take care of providing job-finding assistance,    as a continuum with providing skill-learning assistance.     In reality,    our local college seems so strained for funding,    that they appear to miss many opportunities for taking the leadership in this vital function.     I was pleased to discover that Mike Graves,   in the Computer Lab,   Rm 8,    is taking some initiative in this. 

To fill the needs of the students should be the first priority.   That would mean offering learning experiences and activities not limited to the fixed classroom,    not limited to the beginning and end of semesters,   not limited to earning a letter grade,   but in gaining true competency.    Again,  the Computer Lab concept fulfills this need.

An ideal local community college would not be hard to gain entrance to,   and the students would receive personalized assistance in achieving the goals that the student wants to achieve.   They would also be led to the quickest way to find family-wage,  high-paying work,   when they feel ready to be competent at that work.

In our county,   the local community college leadership seems to be thinking too much like a junior college,   focused on just the two years after high school,   and seems to be moving too slowly,    to provide real growth opportunities for all the age groups,   especially the age groups that need retraining in the latest jobskills,    that would enable them to go back to work,    and become self sufficient again.

With the "welfare to work" changes,      the social safety net needs to be strengthened,   and in a big hurry,   only now in the realm of guiding people into the kinds of learning that will be improving their current jobskills,  and giving them hope of a better life.   Instead of government always being the PAYOR on a benefit check,  it finally had to take the role of  teacher and information broker.

To fulfill the real needs of the "retraining"  paradigm,   the local college would be smarter to design more and more courses that could be started any month of the year,   and not make people wait for the start of a new "semester".

This is possible,   more and more,   because there are  more  "programmed instruction",  subjects where we can use CD-ROMs with interactive tutorials on them,   and the student can pursue them at their own pace,    not limited to a classroom speed,    and that do not require much teaching by the instructor.

We need more funding to obtain more PCs (refurbished OK),   more tables and chairs,   to initiate more people into using personal computers,   and enable more of this "self-directed" learning.     The PC is the perfect learning machine.

We should emphasize courses that teach  computer software applications that small business owners would benefit from learning,  like Quicken,   Microsoft Office,   and  QuickBooks,  etc.    [  I again discovered that Mike Graves in the Computer Lab,  is trying to do just this.  ]

Milan teaches two wonderful "new management" courses,    Systems Theory,    about  team learning  and project management,   and Quality Management,   about customer satisfaction,    continuous improvement,    and project management,   skills that make the students highly employable,  and a valuable asset to any company.    He also constantly teaches better ways to learn than the old-style memorization methods.   He teaches students how to learn easier.

Ideally,   we would find some way that business owners and self-employed entrepreneurs can take these management courses in a group situation,   starting each month,  or each quarter,  perhaps,   some way that exposes more people to these "new management talk"  ideas.

We need to develop more of these subjects into "distance learning" courses,  that can be pursued over the Internet,   and/or  from interactive CD-ROMs,  as "lessons on disks".

We need "tests that grade themselves",   with each course,  so that the student can go at their own pace,    in a linear or hypertext sequence,     and more students can learn whatever they want to learn.


The Internet as the extended "virtual university",    which it obviously is,   is the biggest improvement we could possibly hope for,   to help improve the local Siskiyou County job economy.

It is the best chance anyone has to "make their own job",   as an Internet business.



 

Shari Soza
I receive a widow's pension from the VA,   and have been trying various self- employment ideas here,   since my husband died in late 1992.     But,  most of all,   I am a computer hobbyist,    and a philosopher-futurist writer,   now down- sizing my packrat accumulation,    publishing some of the best of my memoirs on the Internet,   and preparing to move closer to my son and his family in Redding.    I am looking for a "real job",    thru the Internet.   In the meantime,   I am available for  Energy Efficiency Analysis ("heat calcs"),   for contractors,     Desktop Publishing,   Web Page Design,   and I am growing two Internet businesses,   in selling herbs and in selling plants.

My job proposal to the City of Redding
http://www.snowcrest.net/soza/custprgR.htm
A Philosopher-Futurist As A Change Manager

My real passion
http://www.snowcrest.net/soza/learnnow/HOTStheQ.htm
Can Higher-Order Thinking Skills Be Taught By Distance Learning?

DISCLAIMER
I,  Shari Soza,   am solely responsible for the opinions and for the futurism ideas in this document,   and the College of the Siskiyous,   and staff have not approved of my interjecting them in here.

If any group or organization would like to learn more about my simple method of defining the future,     or any of the deeper scientific ideas behind it,     I would be happy to come and talk about it with you.   Individuals can read about it on my website.

I will also help to teach how I am overcoming chronic fatigue syndrome,    because this may be important in the lives of many Siskiyou County citizens.     Approximately 85 to 90 percent of all adults have the antibodies to the mononucleosis virus in their blood.
I publish the herbal regimen that I follow,    at  http://www.snowcrest.net/soza/Regimen.htm.

If you have comments or suggestions, email me at soza@snowcrest.net