A pair of kettle bells. Each weighs over 5kg.

During a recession you can’t always protect your wallet, so some people choose to at least make guard their health.

Several fitness centers have opened in the Windsor area have been successful, despite floundering economics.  Rob Santarossa is the owner of PUNCHgym, which opened during the earliest decline, and has seen his own gym thrive.

Santarossa was a partner at a Windsor Tool and Die shop, but didn’t wait for business to pick back up. In 2007, when they lost their largest contractor and realized there wasn’t any work coming in, they decided to shut down and liquidate the company.

“We were fortunate to get out when we did because we still got some value for our equipment. A lot of people aren’t getting any value for theirs now.”  He had some money, was out of a job and looking for a new business to open.

Santarossa recognized the increase in support for small local businesses, and saw potential in opening a gym offering his kettle bell training to southwestern Ontario.  “I knew what this training did for me. I knew that I could stick with it because I did stick with this training program for the first time in my life.  I figured if its effected me like this, it can affect other people like this.”

Santarossa trained for a few years with kettle bells before deciding to open his gym. His training began in late 2006, and by the summer of 2007 he had lost 55lbs. “Friends who hadn’t seen me in that time barely recognized me.”

He owned an empty building next to his Tecumseh home and saw the size as being perfect for this type of small gym. Nearly all of the renovations were completed by Santarossa and a friend.

Santarossa spent a week in Rhode Island learning to run a gym as a trainer and business owner, and bought the license for the PUNCH franchise. The gym opened in late March with small group training, with his focus on building clientele. “I opened up right when the recession started, but I’ve been building my business every month.”

He struggled at first to build enough clientele to make a living. The difficulty stemmed from his general marketing plan, “What they called it was put it in the paper and pray that someone would come.” Few people came, the ads were seen but they didn’t catch enough attention to bring in the customers.

“The old economy is gone,” he warns, “If you want people to come in the door you need to think outside of the box in how you market and present yourself. Even if you offer a great service and have been around for 50 years.”

Santarossa had to change the way he marketed himself.  Instead of general marketing he went into direct marketing. “Before an ad would have just been seen,” he explains. “The biggest thing I did was I got a flyer and distributed it to my local area. I got a much greater response.”

In July of 2009, PUNCHgym started offering a weekend Boot Camp and saw his business boom. “People come in expecting it to be hard, and it is.” The value of the training lies in the small groups and personal attention. “The Boot Camp gives people a chance to learn that very few people have the ability to really challenge themselves on their own.  Each time you come here there’s a trainer and a small group.”

To begin, he offered two payment choices: Paying per class or a year-long contract. Paying over $100 a month for a gym membership may seem excessive during a recession, but the clientele continues to grow. “I could increase my class size, but I refuse to compromise on my service.”

His early membership plan wasn’t popular among regulars. “Most people don’t want to get locked into a long term contract,” he explains. He has since introduced a monthly plan that has become popular with the economic discontent among his members. They weren’t sure that they would have a job six months from signing a contract, and that made people more willing to pay a higher premium for the short-term contracts to account for instability.

Personal health is important among the population during periods of economic instability. Job security worries everyone and increases the stress regarding money and health. “People may be working more hours and having more stress. Employers have to do more with less and that falls onto someone,” Santarossa hypothesizes.

Health awareness has increased across the nation.  “More and more people are looking for the natural remedy, rather than taking pills for 30 years.”  The public is being made aware by the media that the cure for heart disease, diabetes and high blood pressure isn’t in a daily dose of medicine.  Rather, simple exercise and diet can prevent many health problems.

Santarossa maintains that the 30 minutes spent each class allows someone to spend their evenings more active, instead of being a couch potato.  The difference in amount of energy is life changing for many of his members.

“It’s great that I’m making money at this, but the fact that we change people’s lives is so great to see.”  He gushes about some of his member testimonials, “I don’t know how to explain it exactly.  It’s like delivering a baby. It’s a great feeling to help people like that.”

Losing his job in Tool and Die started as a depressing reality, but morphed into a fulfilling career. He looks back on his old job and chuckles, “Neither job did people like to see me coming.  I was the accountant at the other job, and I’m the trainer here.”

Inside PUNCHgym.

Joshua, Quan Long’s son, plays “Mega Man Zero” at his kitchen table while taking a break from schoolwork.

“Money.” One of the reasons why Quan Long came to Canada. The other? “Didn’t like communism.”

“Hush!” says his wife, Dehn. “Don’t say that.”

“It’s true! Why should we care? What can they do? In this country, we can say whatever we want.”

Sitting in his kitchen/dining room/living room, Quan, age 51, prefers his life in Windsor over Hong Kong. However, there is still an issue that causes headaches: Quan, like many other former tool and mould workers, is trapped in the unemployment limbo, being either on-call or jobless.

“I’ve been working on-off at Three Stars Mold Finishing since 2008,” Quan speaks in Cantonese and points at the factory’s business card’s list of specialties. “I don’t know what you call it in English but I do all of it.”

Immigrating directly to Windsor in 1996 to escape the Handover of Hong Kong to China, Quan started as an assistant at a bakery. “It was a place that used to be next to Fortune Oriental Market. Lots of heavy lifting. Did that for two days.”

His next job at Candid Mold Finishing was more fruitful, as he worked there for nine years before being laid off in 2006. Immediately, Quan bounced from occupation to occupation: two months of mushroom picking, two and a half months at Avalanche Plastics, a week at Klinec Electric Services, and finally finding slightly steadier ground to rest at Three Stars.

“Back in ’96, it was easy to find a job,” says Quan. “You could pick them. Now they pick you.”

Meanwhile, David Ly, age 56, is unshaken at Gilder Guard.

“I’m a leader of a work shift over there,” he says. “Been around since 1982…younger people got laid off but I’m still here.”

Unlike Quan, David, working in tool and die, arrived in 1979 as part of the automotive boom.

“When I was young, I learned automotive work from my father, in Vietnam,” David explains, lounging on a leather sofa in his basement with a 62” high-definition television as a centerpiece.

“I had skills, so the government brought me here. Stayed a little while in Toronto and Markham as a welder…it was very tough, so I quit,” he chuckles. “Then I did Metro Tool and Die. Didn’t like it there; pay wasn’t much. I needed more money to sponsor my parents over.”

But Gilder Guard is not immune to the economic downturn.

“Things are starting to get better but nobody really knows. Even my boss, he can’t promise anything,” says David in accented English. “Last year, there was competition from China. Lost people; they left to work there because China looks to be the strongest country around. See, companies, they spend millions on R&D. China doesn’t have to. They just copy. Once you have a product, China will take it, make it cheaper.”

“Course companies will go to China,” agrees Quan. “Here companies have to pay benefits and take care of their workers. China has nothing like that.”

“The quality may be lower but they work for a quarter of what they pay us,” David shrugs. “It’s the choice companies will have to make.”

“Even in Windsor, workplaces are being more crooked,” says Quan. “I’ve heard places cutting off health benefits…and at Avalanche, the reason why they hire you for only two and a half months is because if you work for three, you get full-time and benefits.”

Quan would know all about benefits; in 2005, he was injured at Candid Mold.

“They threw a hook, one for trucks, across the floor. They didn’t see me…and they weren’t supposed to do that…I was hit in the head.”

Although getting worker’s compensation wasn’t a problem, it was Quan’s initial experience with Ontario bureaucracy.

“2006 was when I declared unemployment, first time ever,” Quan recalls. “Had to fill out forms all the time. Getting it was easy but I needed help from neighbours as interpreters.”

Without access to the Internet or proficiency in English, Quan relied on family and friends to update his Employment Insurance claims.

“Government aid helped,” Quan says wistfully, “But we could have gotten more if we knew more English.”

That language barrier is a high hurdle to clear, Quan gripes.

“Us workers, we’ll know what to do, but the factories still have an interpreter to make it so if anything goes wrong, it’s our fault,” he sighs. “If you’re Chinese, you’ll need to speak English to get work. Otherwise you need a lot of good references.”

“New immigrants have it rough,” says David. “Don’t matter if you worked for years; new trade workers and graduates just keep coming. You need certificates now. And even for graduates, once you get out there, you think you can make $20 an hour? No way. Windsor? It’s a bad idea.”

Eric, one of David’s sons, comes down and turns on his Playstation 3.

“At Gilder Guard, we used to have overtime; $30 an hour,” David continues. “But this year, from January to July, we only worked four days a week.”

“I know people smarter than me,” Quan says. “They know English but they can’t get work. Their old salaries were $30 an hour…so no one will hire them. At Candid Mold? If your salary was $19 or above, they wouldn’t hire you.”

Joshua, Quan’s nine-year-old son, an only child, interjects and his parents wave him away for mishearing the conversation.

“Right now, I make $16 an hour,” resumes Quan. “Three Stars only has a few people working. There’s this one factory, behind Avalanche, that’s open seven days a week. But if they’re busy, on weekends they’ll send out work to get out of paying overtime. That’s how it goes: when the white people are busy, we get subcontracted. And no one there will ever recommend us to work there because they’re afraid we’ll steal their jobs since we work so fast.”

Eric, David Ly’s son and graduate from the University of Windsor, plays “Uncharted 2: Among Thieves” in their recreation room.

But regardless of each other’s financial standings, both David and Quan share a common goal: their children.

“I have no control over their futures,” David laughs, referring to his three sons, one currently enrolled at the University of Windsor, and two of which have already graduated from there as well and are taking further studies. “I can’t tell them, ‘Oh, go into pharmacy’. Doesn’t matter to me what they do as long as they want to do it. I’ll keep paying.”

“Spending is tight but we’re saving up. Better to use a pen instead of hands to make a living, right?” says Quan, glancing at his only child. “He says he wants to be a teacher. Says he won’t be a doctor because he’ll have to cut people up. Won’t be a cop because he’d have to chase down crooks. So he thinks a teacher’s a safe choice.”

If future contains anything troubling, both Quan and David remain unperturbed.

“Would I move from Windsor? No point; it’s like this all over Canada,” Quan shakes his head. “If Three Stars doesn’t work out, I’ll find another. Anything, any job. Besides, Joshua grew up here.”

“There are the holidays and all that spending,” smiles David. “But on Boxing Day, the wife’s the boss, not me.”

So this is the first entry on this blog and as i write it i am full of anticpation and excitement.

This weekend we are making the journey to Heathcote Victoria for the Nostalgia Drag series.

The crew is all ready for the eight hour journey and we are ready to get some passes under our belt.

Our last meeting at the track was a success and we ran our first quarter mile with a time of 10.76 @124mph. The car hadnt been tuned and there were a couple of minor variables which have now been adjusted. We are hoping to get our times into the low 10’s and mile an hour up around the high 120’s.

craft shows would be better if people bought things. i don’t think anyone at the craft show did very well. if i didn’t bring my cat toys from a few years ago, i wouldn’t have made very much money. i reached my minimum goal, so i’m happy about that. i’m disappointed that no christmas tree ornaments sold. maybe people aren’t in a christmasy mood yet. i did sell the two christmas tree pins, both to little girls under 5. i hope they don’t lose them or stab themselves, lol. i’ve been planning to open an etsy shop in february, but i’m going to try to push it up a few months. maybe december 1st. i have all of these ornaments made, and i have some internet friends interested in them, so if i can pull it off, that would be great : ) if anyone here is interested in purchasing anything pictured in the first photo (minus a few items), let me know and i can get them to you : )

“It’s been around as long as I can remember”.

“How long can you remember though?”

Windsor Castle, Windsor, SL4

“Oh, not long”.

today is the craft show! It’s at the legion on Wyandotte & St Louis, from 10am until 3pm. so if you’re around, come check us out : )

warning: do not bake mini muffins in circular cake pans.

they look good when they’re baking:

but once they cool and are removed from the pan, they are WAY TOO WONKY:

i hope they still sell at the bake sale!

so the sun is coming up and i’m still awake. everything is done except a few minor things i can do later. it’s 7am and we have to be awake at 8:30 and leave at 9. should i go to sleep. hmm. sleeping that little will probably just make me not want to get up. i miss my boyfriend. he is sleeping all alone and i am sitting at my kitchen table feeling mildly accomplished. i can’t wait to get an etsy and to be able to pack up sweet little packages full of surprises and thank you’s. one of my favourite things about buying from etsy is getting sweet unexpected things along side the sweet thing you ordered. one item i bought (i can’t even remember what it was) was wrapped in a page from an atlas. i thought that was really cool. another package of i think 10 surprise/random pins came with two little plastic charms – a poodle and a pig. i’m pretty sure that was the pig we used as a replacement One Ring in lotr monopoly. surprises in mail is such a simple pleasure. i’m excited to be on the sending end of it soon.

these took WAY TOO LONG. i spent more time cutting, drawing and painting these than it did to sew some of my ornaments probably. don’t even get me started on my business cards. but the tags look pretty good all packaged up with everything. check it out.

all my tree babies, packed up, priced and branded with my future etsy store name – quiet wire art + craft

i wrote this on the back of each card and then painted them with a wash of green.

this is what my new business cards look like. i made a bunch in june, but i’ve since made a new email address, and they were kind of hard to read probably.

some are squares and some are rectangles, but they’re all around this size.

workspace aka kitchen table. basically everything at the back of the table was already there taking up space.

sewing space. both are bad for my back, probably.

i cut my hair today and it sucks. i also put “surf hair” goo into it before it dried, so i’m hoping it is making it worse. if i make a good amount of money today (ie more than $10. actually, more than $30), i will get a real haircut. i really should have decided on this before i cut my hair. because then i wouldn’t have cut it and then they would have been able to fix it better. OH WELL. i’m pretty sure my hair is never going to be able to get long (or even medium) ever again

despite the hair thing, i hope i can feel this inspired and this into things for a very long time. i’m really looking forward to finally DOING SOMETHING. i hope it happens. no, I WILL MAKE IT HAPPEN.

Windsor’s downtown district is designed to look like a turn of the century city with mixed-use development that reflects Windsor’s commitment to a quality life. There are two- and three-story town homes with first-floor commercial space that contains wonderful shops and restaurants. It is home of the annual Sonoma County Hot Air Balloon Classics, and the Annual Wings over Wine Country Air Show at the Charles Schultz Sonoma County Airport.

Windsor provides award winning schools. Three Elementary Schools are organized in the grade level clusters. Cali Calmecac Charter School is a nationally recognized two-way language immersion school. Windsor Middle School has one of the finest facilities in the North Bay. Windsor High School has developed a unique academic curriculum featuring small core classes and shared teachers.

The Town of Windsor has the Community Huerta Gymnasium, Windsor Community Center activities with seasonal recreational classes and programs. Windsor Senior Community Center provides classes, trips, clubs and a swimming pool. During the summer, Windsor Town Green provides free outdoor concerts, outdoor movies, and farmers market on Thursday and Sunday nights. Each holiday is celebrated at the Town Green, with activities, concerts, kid’s fun, food and more. Windsor has an annual parade and festival, along with the various other parades through the year. During events, transportation is provided to and from the parking areas. Trolley and public transit is available.

Activities include Windsor Golf Course, skate board park, recreational parks, soccer fields, tennis courts, basketball courts, hard and soft ball fields, hiking, mountain biking, water sports and fishing. Windsor provides various accesses to the Russian River including the Windsor Regional River Park, and miles from Lake Sonoma and the Pacific Ocean. Windsor has several wineries, fine dining, casual dining, cafes, boutiques and shops, galleries, antique shops, hotels, spas, top class Airport Health Club. The local airport is located minutes away.

For more information on the Town of Windsor including homes for sale, market trends, etc: http://kammie.bestsonomahomesearch.com/landing.aspx?guide=Windsor

As of today, 11/21/09 Santa Rosa has 1025 properties for sale,  The following are the properties catagorized:

For more info:  http://kammie.bestsonomahomesearch.com/landing.aspx?guide=Santa_Rosa

i made this piece tonight because i needed to push myself and work closer to my skill level. i’ve been making extremely simple trees, and they’ve been killing my imagination and drive to create. i like my little trees, but they’re not the most inspiring thing to sew, lol. i decided to stick with the tree theme, and push it a little further. i’ve been focusing on “what the craft show people might like” and not what i like. making things that inspire you is extremely important. this is probably the first thing i’ve created with felt that incorporates things that i enjoy. it was also nice to challenge myself with shaping the cardinal. i sometimes work below my skill level because it’s easy. i know i’ll end up making something nice no matter what. it’s not a great way to work.

i’ve been playing on tetrisfriends.com a lot today, probably the most since signing up in july, and i started out at a fairly low level since i never play on that site. I played like twenty two-player matches against noobs and completely destroyed them each time. it wasn’t fun because it wasn’t a challenge. it was just an easy way to get closer to where my true rank should be. i feel like the same thing has been happening with the simple felt trees. i can make them with very little thought and just slightly more effort, and because of this, it hasn’t been as fun sewing them as it was when i first started to make them.

it was nice to step away from the simple felt trees and make this piece for myself instead. tomorrow is the last day before the craft show, so i hope i can hop back on the wagon feeling more inspired so i can make some really sweet, slightly complicated, last minute items.

The LGA (supposedly in favour of “Local” Government) today threw out our application under the Sustainable Communities Act to run the local fire service, for the nonsensical reason of viability – there are fire authorities that are FAR smaller that do everything that fire authorities have to do, there are fire authorities of similar sizes that do everything that fire authorities have to do – but the LGA appear to believe in BIG Government, which is the antithesis of the Sustainable Communities Act, rather than smaller more local government. One of the comments was that Fire Services were moving towards a “bigger than county” arrangement becuase of the “difficulty of recruiting retained firefighters”. I couldn’t follow that non-sequiteur, nor why that was a barrier to a viable and clear proposal to achieve the opposite.

I believe the LGA have really done themselves a disservice as an organisation.

They didn’t appear to me to have a clear understanding as to why they should be selecting proposals, or on what basis.

Meanwhile, back at the (big) ranch, the public are having their say on the election of police commissioners.

Unsurprisingly, ordinary people think it’s a good idea, and the incumbents (police) think it’s a bad idea.

Just like our proposals for the Royal Borough’s fire service ……

Here are the two most popular comments on the BBC Have Your Say

>>

A strike at Johnson Controls has many companies around Ontario and Michigan (namely Chrysler) worried that their production could halt as a result of the Johnson strike:

Auto parts strike would affect thousands

A potential strike at an automotive parts plant in Lakeshore, Ont., has put the region’s auto community on edge.

Officials and workers at Johnson Controls have been in talks over a new contract since Monday, but workers say they’ll walk off the job if they don’t reach a collective agreement by midnight Friday.

If Johnson’s 120 workers strike, thousands of workers at Chrysler’s Windsor assembly plant and other parts suppliers could be affected.

Johnson Controls builds overhead components, or headliners, for the Dodge Grand Caravan and Chrysler Town and Country minivans. Headliners involve wiring in the roof of vehicles and are installed in the earliest stages of assembly.

Without them, the Chrysler assembly plant would have to shut down in about three hours, forcing more than 4,500 plant workers off the job, according to Dino Chiodo, the first vice-president of Canadian Auto Workers Local 444, which represents the Johnson workers.

That, in turn, would mean no business for the hundreds of workers at other parts suppliers.

Even car dealers worry about what a strike at Johnson Controls would do for business.

“Hopefully, we have the vehicle in stock for you today,” said Rick McKinney, a salesman at Pinnacle Chrysler, which sells new and used vehicles on Windsor’s east side.

“Unfortunately, if we have to order it, I can’t tell you when you’re going to get it,” he said. “It has an effect on not just us, but the whole Windsor in its entirety.”

While Chiodo is sympathetic to the concerns of people like McKinney, his priority is looking out “for the best interest of our members.”

“If I can get an agreement now, I would love to,” Chiodo said. “It would make it a little easier for everybody and take the tension out of the air.” Workers “remain cautiously optimistic” that a strike will be averted, he added.

The two sides bargained until 9 p.m. Thursday night and were back to the table at by 7 a.m. on Friday, Chiodo told CBC News. At issue is job security. Johnson Controls’ 2009 fourth-quarter sales dropped 15 per cent, from $9.3 billion US in 2008 to $7.9 billion in 2009, forcing the company to find new ways to cut costs.

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I’m really into making these felt Christmas trees. I made a ton more since the last time i posted. Here are eleven of them.

Whenever I travel I almost always just take my point-n-shoot camera (currently a Canon G9). I take my little P+S everywhere and it allows me to make photos of things I would never attempt with my big dSLR (bathrooms, inside museums, inside stores etc). The camera also keeps me practiced in photography; the more I practice the more honed my skills become. Here are a few ’snaps’ I made from the weekend trip to Windsor, Ontario. I recommend every serious photographer always have a camera on hand, a P+S makes this easy and fun!

©Darwin Wiggett - Detroit Skyline

©Darwin Wiggett - My beer in the bar (abstract)

©Darwin Wiggett - The beer recycling depot

©Darwin Wiggett - the tap in the bathroom

©Darwin Wiggett - Sculpture by Ted Bieler

©Darwin Wiggett - the Windsor Art Gallery

©Darwin Wiggett - Trees in the Park