Thinking Outside the Box

Last Sunday, December 16, 2018, the Sunday New York Times published an inspiring story, which touches on many themes; you can read it at:  Retraining Workers for New Jobs and New Lives After Prison and Addiction What struck me about the article was: how the twin problems of drug addiction and doing prison time are a common, downward spiral in much of rural America how few public resources there are to deal with it the success of the hero of the story, Tony Simpson, exemplifies a winning strategy to deal with these twin problems that could be replicated elsewhere Basically, Mr Simpson, a local entrepreneur, already successful in another line of business, developed his own plan to help turn around his community: create a company that can export a product (trailers), train local people coming out of prison and/or drug rehab to work in it, and spend money and time -- a lot of money and time -- providing programs of assistance in doing just that. The goal of the program, which