Made Right Here

As my profile indicates, I come from West Virginia. lately, I've been wandering the web investigating just how practical the idea of everyone having jobs in little cottage industries might be. I;ve been using key word like "cottage industry" (of course), small-scale, micro-manufacturing (which turns out to have two distinct meanings, one having to do with tiny machines).

Imagine my surprise when I came upon a West Virginia program called "Made Right Here". It was like some kind of circle joining. Here I am, a West Virginian, having come all the way to the UK and joined an organization called "Produced in Norfolk", which might as well be translated "Made Right Here".

Then just the other day, I was watching a how is it made program and realized that filling prescriptions for glasses is a possibility for such a small-scale local manufacturing business.

Now I'm wondering to myself, just what do we really need in our daily lives that is better supplied by a huge enterprise? I'm making myself a medieval-style dress, and finding out how personalized the fitting is. I have one pair of boots handmade to fit me, and they feel SO much better than the best fitting mass market shoes. We're going out of our way to buy from local food producers because fresh tastes better (Yes, I know it saves energy and fuels the local economy as well.) There are just tons of things around this place that I would be perfectly happy to have local sources for. And there are just a few, mostly the eletronic ones, that I want a big company backing up the quality of.

I'm not sure exactly where I'm headed with this aside from the further elaboration of my self-designed life idea to include a more locally centered sourcing of all I can, and how that makes it more possible for others to self-design their lives as well.