I was standing at the source of some of the world's problems as well as the solutions. Titusville, Pennsylvania, where the first oil well was erected more than 150 years ago. Steve Kosak of the Venango Community Foundation was taking me on a tour of the region where he worked and which was home to several MIRA teams in northwest Pennsylvania. The parallels with the boom and bust of the Internet economy were too close to ignore. A friend had just written that Cisco, with the CEO-who-can-do-no-wrong, was terminating his employment along with 8000 others in Silicon Valley. The Internet rush was over. The hangover was beginning. Steve described the oil rush that took place starting in 1859, and some of the drillers had already failed once in the gold fields of California. One local man, upon hearing of Mr. Drake's well, immediately began buying farms in the lowlands and then sold much smaller plots to the explorers. Just as someone who snapped up the hot domain names (flowers.com, computer.com, books.com) for resale, this early investor made a bundle. In nearby Oil City stands a beautiful, ornate turn- of-the-century building that once housed Standard Oil. It was here that Rockefeller began the consortium that came to dominate the oil industry in much the same way that Microsoft dominates the PC industry. Besides oil they also had steel, a couple of glass factories, and the union employees had high paying jobs, even with a high school education. Unemployment was below the national average. Not your typical Appalachian town.

First the steel companies left, and between 1980 and 1990, 4000 people lost their jobs as Quaker State and Pennzoil left. The outmigration of citizens continued. In fact, the population peaked around 1900, and in the 2000 census Oil City lost another 3%. Steve said that the social needs were going up as available resources went down. I asked who was contributing to the Venango Community Foundation if things were so grim. Steve replied that retired people as well as those who made their fortunes elsewhere continued to support it. The United Way reached its fundraising goal this year, so the willingness of the local community is continually demonstrated. We drove around Oil City, which is on both banks of the Allegheny River and the confluence of Oil Creek. Large mansions built early in the 20th century sell for the equivalent of a down payment on a modest home in Silicon Valley. Kosak and I compared our experience in the Peace Corps followed by military service during the Viet Nam war. He seemed to love and respect Oil City. He commented on the fact that he had always lived in small towns, "I don't know what I'd do in a town bigger than this. I think I'd feel a bit lost."

We met Dale Massie who was with the Northwest Pennsylvania Eminent Community Institute in Oil City. Presently, he is working in economic development for the area. He had heard about the Kellogg program from Vince Cobb, a reviewer of MIRA grant requests. Dale originally put in a grant request that was rejected the first year, as was the application from Terry Smith at Edinboro University of Pennsylvania, more than an hour to the north, and the nearby Forest County Industrial Development Council. The second year they submitted a request together which was funded through the cooperation of Kellogg and the Appalachian Regional Commission.