“Menards plans opening - Jefferson City News Tribune Online” plus 2 more

Menards plans opening - Jefferson City News Tribune Online
History repeats for former re-enactor turned part-time ... - Dallas Morning News
Japanese Mothers Are New Workforce for Temporary ... - BusinessWeek

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Menards plans opening - Jefferson City News Tribune Online

Posted: 17 Apr 2010 08:19 PM PDT

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History repeats for former re-enactor turned part-time ... - Dallas Morning News

Posted: 14 Apr 2010 02:03 PM PDT

On his short list of favorite jobs, David Day aced it right out of college. At Dallas Heritage Village (then known as Old City Park), he demonstrated the skills of a pioneer potter – shaping clay at a kick wheel and firing pots in an underground kiln he had to climb down into to load.

That '90s interlude, awash in simplicity, gave way to a patchwork of more adult roles: husband, father, studio artist for hire, salesman of real estate.

But the mystique of 19th-century folk art never dimmed for Day, 38, who last summer reintroduced a collection of hand-thrown pottery, sold through Redenta's Garden in Dallas and Arlington.

"There's a certain humility in making everyday objects, then seeing people use them and integrate them into their lives," says the Carrollton-raised artist. He had been unaware of his calling until he took a ceramics course at the University of Dallas and found "I could get lost in it for hours."

Unlike his days of pioneer re-enactment, Day whirls these pots on an electrically powered wheel. Yet he pays ample tribute to early Americana with other old-time details. Each pot is stamped by weight and city of origin. More subtly, his dense, hotly fired pieces emit the sound of quality: They ring at the flick of a finger, never thud.

At his studio in The Cedars, south of Dallas City Hall – once his combined workspace and home – Day stores pottery in various stages of completion. He buys custom dirt from an Austin supplier – a red terra cotta quieted in a whitewash of another, liquid clay – for pieces ranging from 1 ½ to 12 pounds. Lately, he's tinkering with a prototype that combines white clay and a moss-green wash for a weathered-concrete effect.

"I want to dirty it up a bit," he says, unsatisfied so far. "I don't want these things to look like new tennis shoes."

Ironically, he stirs up most of his mud miles away from his studio, inside the Richardson house he shares with his artist wife, Rebecca, and their 5-year-old son, Jasper.

From his sunroom in the Canyon Creek neighborhood, Day hand-throws up to 20 pots at a sitting, all variations on two historical shapes: the first, a lean-profiled long tom; the second a stout, shallow planter. The funnel-shaped long tom was devised for plants whose roots plunge straight down, while the more squatty form accommodates plants whose roots develop horizontally.

Day calls himself a weekend potter – without regret. "I definitely know I'll keep my hands in clay the rest of my life. But I do this just for fun," he says. "If it's your living, it gets a bit trickier."

He used to feel otherwise. For years, he and his wife produced ceramic bowls, hand-painted mugs and decorative tiles for La Madeleine restaurants and other companies. Despite the Bohemian splendor of that time – sleeping in the front of the studio, working in back – he says it was no recipe for stability.

These days, the family man prefers to concentrate on real estate sales, while Rebecca, a University of Texas-trained artist, works as a graphic designer for an architectural firm.

Come the weekend, Day returns to the soothing spin of wet clay, to invoke, if only on a modest scale, the time-honored merger of utility and art.

"This is a good fit for me," he says.

Diane Reischel is a Dallas freelance writer.

garden@dallasnews.com

Where to buy

A small selection of David Day's hand-thrown, terra-cotta flowerpots is for sale at Redenta's Garden locations in Old East Dallas and Arlington.

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Japanese Mothers Are New Workforce for Temporary ... - BusinessWeek

Posted: 16 Apr 2010 03:53 AM PDT

April 16, 2010, 6:54 AM EDT

By Chana Schoenberger

April 16 (Bloomberg) -- Japanese women returning to work after having children are increasingly seeking jobs through Temp Holdings Co., which is training them for posts at call centers, offices and retirement homes, President Yoshiko Shinohara said.

Japan's second-largest staffing company by sales is counting on women seeking part-time jobs to help it rebound from an expected 39 percent decline in profit for the year to March 31, from a year earlier. Temp expects to make a 2.5 billion-yen ($26.8 million) profit on sales of 224.5 billion yen.

Analysts forecast the same profit on sales of 223.3 billion yen, according to the median estimate from a Bloomberg survey of five analysts. Last fiscal year, Temp reported 4.1 billion yen of profit on 245.1 billion yen in revenue. The company reports earnings May 11.

"We want to encourage more women to have babies and then work," Shinohara, 75, said in an April 14 interview at her Tokyo office. "Japan had a system that encouraged Japanese women to stay home. This is gradually changing."

The company is targeting returning workers by staffing day- care centers and training jobseekers to be office clerks, sales representatives and health-care workers, Shinohara said.

Temp also plans to sign more contracts to manage companies' call and data centers, she said.

Temp's shares rose 1.8 percent to close at 812 yen on the Tokyo Stock Exchange yesterday. The Topix index finished 0.8 percent higher.

Shrinking Population

Demand for home health-care aides and nursing-home workers is growing as Japan's population ages. Almost 23 percent of the nation's 127 million people are older than 65, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

"We are also focusing on businesses for the elderly, taking care of them," Shinohara said. "We introduced jobs with flexible hours, such as from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., for mothers."

The industry leader is privately held Staff Service Holdings Co. of Tokyo. Its revenue last year was 334 billion yen.

Japan's economy shrank 5.2 percent in 2009, the steepest contraction in the postwar era. The country's struggle with deflation has constrained growth during the past two decades.

The economy contracted to 474.2 trillion yen in 2009, the lowest level since 1991, without accounting for price changes, and China is set to overtake Japan as the world's second-largest economy this year. The International Monetary Fund in January forecast growth of 1.7 percent this year.

Declining Population

The country's population is also declining and the government is encouraging women to have more children.

The ruling Democratic Party of Japan last month passed a budget that includes a monthly allowance of 13,000 yen per child, starting in June. The government also plans to make public high schools tuition-free.

Japanese women often want to bring home their own paycheck, said Hiromi Hakama, who is 46 and married with a 14-year-old son. Hakama works 22 hours a week as a concierge in a Tokyo apartment building, the third job she's held since her son was 10 months old.

Having a job makes Hakama feel more independent. "It's my own money," she said.

Temp's model takes advantage of the growing move toward temporary employment in Japan during the last decade.

The government relaxed labor rules in place since strikes convulsed Japanese industry in the 1940s and 1950s, so companies are converting full-time positions to part-time jobs that are easier to terminate, said Toru Shinoda, a professor of social sciences at Waseda University in Tokyo.

Temporary jobs often are criticized for lacking job security.

"We are very concerned about temporary worker numbers increasing," said Shinoda, who studied a tent village that sprung up briefly in 2008 when people who lost their contract jobs and homes camped out in Hibiya Park in central Tokyo.

Part-Time Workers

One-third of Japan's workers have part-time, contract or freelance jobs, said Takuji Aida, senior Japan economist at UBS Securities Japan Ltd. They include mothers working part-time while raising children, young people who can't find better jobs and retirees needing money. Temp hires all of these.

"Many people want to get full-time jobs but, of course, economic growth is small, so companies still want part-time workers more," he said.

The global recession prompted Temp to move branches into smaller offices, cut its hiring of new graduates by 80 percent and reduce its advertising budget, Shinohara said.

Shinohara, a high-school graduate with no college degree, founded the company 35 years ago, after a secretarial stint in Sydney introduced her to the concept of temporary workers. She returned to Japan and started the country's first temporary- staffing agency, Tempstaff.

Temp was formed from the 2008 merger of Tempstaff and People Staff, based in Aichi prefecture west of Tokyo. The combined company has offices in China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, Indonesia and the U.S.

Shinohara is the largest shareholder of the company, with her 36 percent stake valued at about $204 million at yesterday's closing price.

--With assistance from Takako Iwatani in Tokyo. Editors: Michael Tighe, Aaron Sheldrick

To contact the reporter on this story: Chana Schoenberger in Tokyo at cschoenberg@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Michael Tighe at mtighe4@bloomberg.net.

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