Last night I passed the Virgin Megastore in Times Square. Signs outside said – “last 3 days – fixtures for sale.” And did what I often do – watch and observe. I can’t say much about what was happening with the regular stock – but started watching worker traffic and the flow of fixtures.
From what I could see, the regular workers were working very hard, answering every question they could, leaving no customers hanging for long, and making it clear they were coming back. For workers who have been limited to part-time and rarely make overtime rates, and aren’t getting placement help, this isn’t necessarily the behavior one might predict.

Jesse Bien, (pronounced “bean” like the legume, not “bi-en” like the Frecnh word for “good”) The person in charge of the fixtures liquidation – apparently with the help of no more than a handful of his own help (although they may have been selected Virgin employees). In the midst of a chaotic environment, he’s working hard, funny, calm, and very quietly and clearly in charge. Knowing enough about the value of everything that he was no pushover in negotiations – but pricing things low enough that my guess is that he’ll empty the place before whatever his deadline is. (There are a lot of wall units in a very nicely finished grade of what I think is 3/4 plywood Baltic Birch, ideal for retail display, and beautiful in other uses).

There’s always pain (human) and loss (economic) in a business failure – but if people like Jesse Bien are available – and used – to reallocate goods –

1. the environmental impact of the business closing is limited, perhaps approaching zero;
2. other businesses – existing and startup – who are lucky enough to know about it and make wise choices – reduce their startup costs and thus be more competitive.

The Greeks didn’t define “chaos” as the absence of order – they defined chaos as a state which contained the potential for order to emerge.

Our recovery from this economic crisis – indeed, from any disaster – depends on versatile, resilient people like this Jesse Bien. If he’d been in World War II, he would have been running logistics for General Omar Bradley; in a non-military disaster – what those of us who study them call  “hastily formed networks” – he’d be the guy who could see the biggest available picture, and who other people would naturally think ought to be in charge.

And yes, I bought some things; no he had (and at this writing still has) no idea about this blog. I’m used to negotiating prison sentences – among other things. I anticipated that the volume and noise would work for me, but I’m not in his league. Maybe not even playing the same game. But I think I got a deal that was fair to me and good for his client.

Maybe when he’s done with Virgin we need to hire him to straighten out the mortgage situation. My money says says he can get the best outcome possible.

It’s people like Jesse Bien that make the American economy dynamic and vital in good times, and pull us out of the mud in bad times.

Today marks the second anniversary of Bob Levinson’s disappearance. Tomorrow will be his 61st birthday.

From his wife Christine’s statement to the Sun-Sentinel Newspapers:

Today marks two years that my husband, Robert “Bob” Levinson, has been missing in Iran. Two years since our seven children and I last heard his voice, saw his warm, loving smile, and since we last hugged him hello or kissed him goodbye. After two years of constantly praying for his return, we continue to anxiously await word of his whereabouts. Bob disappeared on March 9, 2007, while on a business trip to Kish Island, Iran.Since that day, our family has been living a nightmare.

This has brought much darkness to our lives.

Our children and I have done everything possible to find out what happened to Bob and bring him home, but we still have no information.

The people and government of Iran have the power to help us find Bob and bring him home, and once again I ask, in the name of our seven children, son-in-law and two grandchildren, for their help.

Despite the lack of any information, we still believe Bob is alive and will someday be home with us. We will never stop looking for him, and we will continue to reach out to anyone who may be able to help us.

Tomorrow, March 10th, is Bob’s 61st birthday.

Today we are releasing a computer enhanced photograph showing what we think Bob may look like now, two years after he disappeared.

We hope that the media will publish this image of Bob, so people who have come into contact with Bob or seen him will recognize him and contact us.

We ask anyone who recognizes Bob or has any information to e-mail our website, info@helpboblevinson.com, or contact any U.S. Embassy or Swiss Embassy anywhere in the world.

In the past two years, our family’s grief has grown to despair. Bob has diabetes and a number of other ailments, including high blood pressure, hypertension, and gout, all of which require daily medication.

We greatly worry for his health and hope he is getting the proper care for his medical conditions, wherever he is.

Please remember Bob Levinson.

For more information – and what you can do to help, go to HelpBobLevinson.com

Agence France Press reports that NPR Reporter Roxana Saberi – an American Citizen (and former Miss North Dakota) has been arrested on flimsy charges (purchasing alcohol) in Iran.

NPR, as of this writing (1040 Monday morning), doesn’t feature her arrest on its front page. Here’s a link to their Saturday coverage, including Scott Simon’s interview with her father.

From the Agence-France Press piece:

The journalist, a former Miss North Dakota, is a US national who also holds an Iranian passport because her father was born in Iran.

Saberi, who has reported for NPR, BBC and Fox News, has been living in Iran for six years, both working as a journalist and pursuing a master’s degree in Iranian studies and international relations.

She was also writing a book about Iran, NPR reported, adding that her father said she was planning to move back to the United States later this year.

Iran, which does not recognise dual nationality, has detained several US-Iranians in recent years.

In May 2007, US-Iranian academicians Haleh Esfandiari and Kian Tajbakhsh along with California-based peace activist Ali Shakeri were arrested and held for more than 100 days, on suspicion of causing harm to national security.

US-Iranian journalist Parnaz Azima had her passport confiscated in January 2007 for eight months after she arrived in Iran on a private visit. She avoided jail by paying bail of around 550,000 dollars after which she left the country.

Azima worked for the Persian-language service of Radio-Free Europe/Radio Liberty, which is considered a “counter-revolutionary radio” by the Iranian authorities.

She was later sentenced in absentia to one year in prison for “propaganda against the regime.”

American former FBI agent Robert Levinson has been missing for nearly two years since vanishing on the Iranian island of Kish in the Gulf.

The judiciary has denied holding Levinson, whose disappearance is a further strain in relations between arch-foes the United States and Iran.

Further:

New York Times coverage here.

Kelly Smith –  coverage at InForum (North Dakota)

Jennifer Bogo, Science Editor at Popular Mechanics, published Poop Power: U.S. Farms Save Big Turning Manure to Kilowatts (October 8, 2008; web only):

If I’d driven up Kingwood Road here two years ago, there’s a very good chance that I would have smelled Hillcrest Saylor Dairy Farm long before I reached its gravel driveway. But as I open my car door on Monday not 100 yards from the would-be offenders—approximately 600 Holsteins—the only odor that drifted my way was that of the freshly compacted corn silage that feeds the cows. Harnessing bacteria to generate energy from waste is not a new concept: According to the National Renewable Energy Lab, the first digestion plant was built at a leper colony in Bombay, India, in 1859. But for all practical purposes, the first farm-based digesters in the United States were introduced during the 1970s. Since then, farmers have relied on three basic designs. After visiting several and seeing them in action, Saylor decided to combine the most desirable features of each design into his own, based on the needs of his farm.

{NB: , the capture of methane from sewage systems seems to date to the work of the Scottish engineer John Duncan Watson in the 1920’s.]

To introduce me to the biodigestion process, Saylor suggests that I start at the beginning-with the ladies of the hour. As we walk through the milking parlor, 40 cows released from their paddocks amble to the barn. A sudden gush of murky water flows past their hooves, flushing waste toward metal grates where it enters a gravity system that leads to the digester.

I was standing on the digester before I realized what it was: a 70-ft.-dia. concrete tank, 16 ft. deep, capped by a lid and covered with sawdust so that it appears to be solid ground. The digester’s influent tank, on the other hand, is inside an adjacent building and hard to mistake: The stench of concentrated cow poo makes it tough to breathe, let alone formulate astute journalistic questions. Even so, I ask Saylor what the old system was like. “It ran straight to the pond,” he said, referring to a body of water just past his shoulder. “You’d see a two-ft crust floating down there that you could pretty much walk across. The odor was unbelievable!”

That made me newly grateful for the present tank, where the manure-and the occasional truckload of peels from the local potato chip factory-is mixed in a thick slurry of water then disappears on a 16-day journey inside the digester. Anaerobic bacteria break down organic matter as the slurry makes its way around a dividing wall and produces a biogas that is about 65 percent methane. The gas fills the foot of airspace underneath the lid, and then is piped to a 40-ft.-dia. rubberized bubble for temporary storage. Gas from the bubble drives a natural gas CAT engine, which in turn runs a 130-kw generator.

“I’ve been to some digesters where they had a solid top, but no storage for gas, so with any fluctuation in the digester you either have to back off the generator, and you’re not making electricity, or you’re making too much gas and wasting it,” Saylor says. “The bubble buffers me for a couple days. I can just run the generator at 100 percent all the time.”

Last year the system produced 1.2 million kilowatt-hours of electricity, enough to power the farm and several nearby homes, and to provide their heat and hot water-a savings of about $60,000. “It’s covering everything and there’s still some left over,” Saylor says. “We had 100,000 kilowatt-hours last year that we didn’t use.” There was also leftover biogas. Saylor built his system to be modular, so with another grant from the state of Pennsylvania he plans to install a second 130-kw generator this winter-all of the electricity from that generator will go into the grid.

The project is paying dividends in other ways, too. Waste heat from the engine heats both milking parlors and water for the farm, as well as water that runs through pipes inside the biodigester to maintain the temperature. Other byproducts include a liquid fertilizer that’s less acidic than straight manure and a soft bedding material that harbors less toxic bacteria than the previous bedding, sawdust.

For an example of the risks associated with handling, See 38 Die in Methane Blast at a Coal Mine in Siberia, The New York Times, May 25 2007; David Barstow and Robin Stern, California Leads Prosecution Of Employers in Job Deaths,December 23, 2003.