We are in trouble. Folks are dying. Washington State, thankfully, has a bit better control of COVID-19 than most states, but the death toll is bad. As I write this, 870 are dead in Washington State, nearly 75,000 nationally. In the U.S., unemployment is the highest its been since the Great Depression in my grandparents’ day.
On top of the pandemic, Intalco appears to be closing
I remember when Intalco was built. Neighbors who struggled on twenty-acre dairy farms shipping a few cans of Grade B milk, took a leap and got good jobs when Intalco opened. But I’m afraid that’s over. They used to say Intalco came for the cheap hydroelectricity, but Amazon, Microsoft, and Google data centers are the high profit hydro users now.
Businesses that were sound in January are up on the jacks today. Whole industries, like restaurants, airlines, and retail department stores, are severely curtailed and on the verge of failure. Even if a treatment or vaccine for the novel coronavirus appears tomorrow, a share of these enterprises will never return.
On the other hand, many online businesses, from Amazon on down, are thriving. I’ve seen numbers from the grocery and big box stores that look good. I notice that yards here in Ferndale look better tended today than they did this time last year.
Not everything is bleak
There are opportunities out there. Not the same ones as last year or the year before, but the breaks are waiting, and some people will find them and come out of this meat grinder better off than they were before they ever heard of a coronavirus. Like those struggling Grade B dairymen.
I know something you can do today
Level up. Improve your skills. Whatcom County Public Library System offers some very high-quality help. With a WCLS library card you can access Lynda.com courses.
These are the real thing. Premium LinkedIn subscribers pay close to thirty dollars a month for access to these courses and businesses pay even more to make them available to their employees. The library offers them to you for free. I was glad to pay for several of these courses myself before I realized I could get them on my library card. All you have to do is go to WCLS.org, click on the Digital Resources tab, then click on Lynda.com. Enter your library card number and pin, then choose which course to take first.
Some of the courses are just fun: Ukulele, for example. But some are very serious.
Construction trades
I happen to be an over-educated and snobbish intellectual, but it annoys me that American culture is obsessed with college degrees. At one point in my rambling life, I became a carpenter, going through a four-year formal apprenticeship with both on-the-job and classroom training. Having experienced both higher and trade education, I know that a trade is nothing to sniff at. I learned at least as much in my apprenticeship as I did in four years of college. I display my journeyman’s certificate right beside my college diplomas.
If a construction trade in the post-COVID-19 building boom sounds interesting, Lynda.com has a course for you: Skilled Trades: Construction Apprenticeship Foundations. It offers up-to-date and realistic lessons on choosing a trade and finding an apprenticeship.
Online business
Do you have, or work in, a business that is struggling under lockdowns? Consider putting the business online.
The opportunities for local online businesses have never been better. The pandemic has forced people to shop more online, but you don’t have to hand your local customers to the biggies.
Here’s a software industry insider tip: Google recently changed its shopping search algorithm to favor local online businesses over Amazon and Walmart. And I’ll bet your customer neighbors want to buy from you.
Setting up a Shopify online storefront is not hard or expensive. The no frills route is almost entirely financed by a 2% cut taken on each sale with little upfront investment. Lynda.com has a course for you: Learning Shopify. You could get your online business running in less than a week.
Want to learn how to set up and hold a Zoom meeting? Check out Learning Zoom.
Thinking about jumping to the front of the curve? UC-Berkeley instructor, Dr. Jonathan Reichental’s course, Introduction to Quantum Computing, will put you waaaay out there.
Yes. May 2020 is bleak. But the library is ready to help you make it better.