Confirmation from an unexpected source.

Did you all see the graph on the front page of the Sunday Bulletin's business section?

If you've been reading this blog, you know that I've been chronicling the ups and downs of the sales for Pegasus Books -- and thus, I was assuming, the local economy.

At least, I was hoping I wasn't the only one going through what I was going through.

You know that I talked about a two year decline, from September, 2007 through September, 2009, with the sharpest decline from Sept., 2008 (Lehman Brothers) to Sept., 2009.

The Bulletin's graph shows the overall Bend economy beginning to drop in the second quarter of 2006, which was when I started my blog and when I thought there was the least awareness of the dangers we were in. It had already started, apparently.

Again, pretty much parallelling the graph, I started to see an uptick in the late 2009, which continued for 7 months. Then, starting around April of 2010, we started to see another drop, which has continued to this day.

However, unlike the earlier changes, which were pretty much documented through both the national and local media, I think this second dip -- the double dip you see on the chart -- was not only not acknowledged, but we were pretty much told it wasn't happening.

I knew it was happening, at least in my store, made my own adjustments, trusting in what I was seeing, and tried to stay ahead of the curve.

A curve that was apparently happening for the entire Central Oregon economy. Up down, up down.

There it is, clear as day.

So it's nice, in a terrible way, to see that my store's graphs pretty much mirror the graph you see in the Bulletin.

Doesn't really matter what the rest of the country does, does it?