Ilene,

I'm not sure about courses in the Midwest but will look into it. I will 
also look into the harnesses and give you a reference.
Mostly I complain from w/in the microcosm of the NY scene where there 
are a whole lot of contractors that you might not feel so comfortable 
trusting your life to.

In NY the contractors range from the very low end using non-union 
immigrant labor in a roughshod manner as fodder for the cash machine. 
Jimmy Breslin describes this world of NY pretty well. And there is the 
high end and highly respected union shops. The difference in their cost, 
their product, and their markets where they operate is considerable. In 
between there is a whole mess of qualities. There are fairly decent 
immigrant shops, fairly decent non-union shops, and there are some 
pretty nasty things in some union situations. I read in a recent NY 
Times article that there is anticipated $84 billion in construction in 
NY over the next 10 years... I'm not sure if that includes the exterior 
envelope maintenance business which is akin to the historic preservation 
business as providing the training ground and the cash crop to support 
more refined projects. I worked on a large project w/ the NY Transit 
Authority when they had to burn up $5 billion and I have a sense of how 
crazy that can get. They get to a point where they begin to act as if 
they cannot spend the money fast enough and they do not really care all 
that much on what it is spent on as long as they don't lose their 
jobs... and a whole lot of jobs are created to move the money.

I will admit that once out of the NY area that the metabolic rate is 
different and the chances of running across decent folks more often is 
often higher.

I highly recommend VA. I worked w/ Kent early on w/ helping him get into 
the NY market. We provide quite different and on occasion complimentary 
services.

][<

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