Watts Consulting

More than you ever wanted to know about Alabama native Joe Watts

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Families Sticking Together

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I love old photos. I love old family photos, particularly. This is a photo from World War II of my Uncle Bud (my mother’s brother who died of lung cancer when I was very young). When I was younger, I didn’t really understand the importance of family. It seemed that friends were much more valuable. You could choose your friends, so, for the most part, they were most like you.

 

What I failed to understand was that friends come and go, but family is forever–or at least it should be. I put this photo of Uncle Bud here for a reason. His son, Nollie, has really proven that family is forever. When I was growing up, I hardly knew Nollie. Then, I went off to college and really lost touch with everyone in Marengo County other than my parents. In recent years, I’ve made some inroads back into the community. I probably know more people now than I did growing up.

I’m involved with www.alabamasfrontporches.com, the Ala-Tom RC&D, Clarke County Development Foundation and several other projects. I’m in the Black Belt at least once every couple of months working on something. And I always run into people who knew me when I was young–if they don’t know me, they certainly know some of my family. Mama would be pleased that I was getting back, at least a little, to my rural roots.

But business relationships aside, I have a stronger bond to family than I ever have before. I just can’t imagine going through life without a strong connection to my siblings. Having a place to go, to visit, to have Christmas and birthdays and just good times is key to this. Going home to Octagon has allowed me to connect to Nollie, It has given me a place to connect to my nieces and nephews and brother-in-laws. This tight bond would never exist without Octagon, the place that lets us all get together and be, well, a family.

Fridays Come Slowly

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This Friday has moved along at a pretty glacial pace. On the plus side, I finished up several projects today:

  1. The Clarke County Development Foundation website. This is a pretty simple website using Movable Type. The basic idea is just to get information out there along with providing an extremely easy system for the client to perform their own changes as needed. While not my personal favorite website, I think that it provides the foundation with just what they were looking for.
  2. A mild redesign of American Mining Insurance Company’s print brochure. I didn’t really do a lot to this–basically refreshed the copy and updated a few photos along with adding information about the new parent company W. R. Berkley.
  3. A reprinting of Your Town Alabama’s brochure. No real changes to this–caught a couple of things that I missed in the last printing and added a great quote from someone who attended the last workshop.

All in all, a productive day, but I still don’t feel really productive. Tomorrow I guess I’ll try and finish up the Birmingham chapter of the AIA‘s February newsletter and get started on CGH Insurance Group’s monthly newsletter.

Back from the Beach

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dauphinisland-1.jpgTuesday and Wednesday were speedy days, for sure. Busy working on the Alabama Byways Program for the AARC and ALDOT. Left early Tuesday morning for Orange Beach. Upon arrival, quickly jumped into another car and shot over to Marys Place Restaurant in Coden, Alabama–just outside of Bayou La Batre and Dauphin Island for a 3 p.m. meeting. The owner of Marys Place would make a great inspirational speaker for any Byways program in the country. He was extremely excited about the prospect of showcasing his area to the greater world. And he gets it–he really seemed to understand that what some folks see as the same boring views day after day other people find quite unique and exciting. Oyster and shrimp fisherman might not think what they are doing is particularly interesting. The people who live there see them out fishing all the time. But, for someone coming from the midwest, they may never see something like that again in their life.

Yesterday, we met at Weeks Bay near Fairhope. In so many ways, these people already understand tourism, and they asked good questions and had great ideas. But in some ways, the folks in Coden were a real joy to talk with. Genuine, down-to-earth folks with a passion for the community.

Anyway, glad to be home!

Getting Ready For a Busy Week

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beach-1.jpgThis, the last week of January, looks like it will be a busy one. I’ve got a meeting to finalize my upcoming work on the West Alabama Regional Tourism website, www.alabamasfrontporches.com on Monday.

Then, Tuesday and Wednesday I’ll be heading to the Gulf to be part of our final presentations relating to the development of a Corridor Management Plan for the Coastal Connection Scenic Byway (one meeting on Tuesday in Bayou La Batre and the next meeting on Wednesday morning in Fairhope). This is part of the Alabama Scenic Byways project I’m working on with the Alabama Association of Regional Councils and we’ve been actively working on this for almost a year. (The kick-off meeting was held in February 2007. That’s when this photo was taken.) It will be good to be finished.

This really is the time of the year to go to the gulf, although I won’t have time to enjoy it.

Small World

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Someone I do a good bit of work for, CAWACO RC&D Council, recently had a part in a video that Alabama Power was doing. The project is called Renew Our Rivers. Basically, they get volunteers to go out and clean up the trash and other debris that people toss into Alabama’s waterways.

Anyway, I was downtown yesterday and picked up a copy of the video to put on You Tube for CAWACO. I popped the DVD into my computer to rip it and put it on the web. Decided I’d watch the video, too. Imagine my surprise when I heard my friend Ben Burford (of Chevy 6 fame) doing the narration. Pretty interesting video, particularly when it joins two groups together that you hadn’t imagined crossing paths before. Here’s the video: click here.

Music From Today’s Playlist

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Busy day today. Wrapping up several projects on a tight schedule. Being out of town always slows me down, but should be able to really rocket through some of the work today. This has been a pretty stressful week–I’m hopeful that some of the stress can go away sooner instead of later. Maybe a little music will help.

Music on today’s random playlist in ITunes:

Grateful Dead
The Elected
Dixie Chicks
Swizzle Tree
Cornershop
Drive-By Truckers
The Flaming Lips
Franz Ferdinand
The Rolling Stones
They Might Be Giants
U2
Patsy Cline
Jimmie Thompson (Singing in the Rain)
Mary Chapin Carpenter
Bill Frisell
Bob Dylan
Ben Folds
Rilo Kiley
Modest Mouse
Jellyfish