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April 13, 2009
Soundbites

Getting a grip on financial stress
Tips from the Faculty Staff Assistance Program’s “Managing Financial Stress” seminar: FOCUS. Face your fears; Observe your reactions; Create opportunities toward solving problems; Utilize resources; and Share your plan with someone who can help keep you accountable.

“The FOCUS model is a way for you to begin to challenge one another as well as yourselves on how to approach these issues,” said FSAP Director Paula Gomes.

Manager of Education and Outreach Robin Huskey pointed out the variety of resources at Emory and in the community: meditation groups; courses to enhance professional and relationship skills; FSAP programs in time management and conflict resolution; Emory Healthcare’s hardship fund; and Emory Alliance Credit Union emergency loans. She noted FSAP offers free, confidential personal and career counseling that extends to family members. —Leslie King

Atlanta Fed sees slow recovery
“We may be seeing some light at the end of the tunnel,” said Dennis Lockhart, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. “By the second half of the year we will likely see a recession trough and the beginnings of a recovery. Our projection of the recovery is very, very flat.”

Lockhart was the featured speaker at the economic department’s Omicron Delta Epsilon dinner.
Rather than “bouncing back,” the more likely scenario is that the economy will recover extremely slowly, said Lockhart, who is also a member of the U.S. Federal Open Market Committee. “There are fundamental changes going on in consumer attitudes in this country,” he said. —Carol Clark

Farmer D: The future’s farmer
“Kale is like a health superstore,” observes Daron “Farmer D” Joffe, holding up the leafy vegetable. “I grew this in the parking lot” — Joffe recently opened Farmer D Organics, a retail organic garden center on Briarcliff Road — demonstrating that it’s easy to grow your own food (in this case in a raised bed planter, with Farmer D compost made with spoils from Whole Foods Market).

Speaking at Rollins as part of National Public Health Week, Joffe dished on everything from green business to the growth of urban gardens.

Joffe is working with Emory to help it meet its goal of 75 percent local or sustainably grown food in the hospitals and cafeterias by 2015. “It’s a lofty, awesome goal, but a big challenge,” he says. —Kim Urquhart