Hi,
Lots of anniversaries tomorrow. It is the anniversary of the first public broadcast of a movie at Koster & Bials Music Hall in NYC (1896), the opening of the first public school in America (Boston’s Latin School 1635), the anniversary of England’s patron saint, St George the dragon slayer (303) and the bird and death anniversary of William Shakespeare (1564 and 1616 respectively).
I’ve been reading Onward, the book by Howard Schultz about his company Starbucks. I should be a loyal fan of Starbucks, they do a lot of very good things. We both buy fair trade, organic coffees; we both believe in being responsible in dealing with the environment; be both believe in treating our employees well. We do have so much in common and there’s a lot in the book that really has impressed me. Like in 2008, three years after Katrina, Starbucks decided to hold their convention in New Orleans to help the city. One amazing thing was in the program for all 10,000 attendees was they had to donate five hours community service. When Starbucks approached the city leaders ahead of the conference, the city said they didn’t have the ability or equipment to hand all that help. So Starbucks got with them and arranged projects and matched groups to do the projects and brought two trucks of equipment to supplement the tools the city had on hand. 50,000 hours community service is a lot more than impressive. But reading this book, it seems a bit too “Ooh Soo” for me. Maybe I’m just cold, but Howard would agonize for days/weeks over issues. To me, I make a decision and move on. I think where my problem is is why I left the corporate world. When I would go to those sessions for “team building”, creating “mission statements”, etc I never felt the people were real about it. Particularly the bosses pushing it. They displayed the enthusiasm appropriate for the task, but I always had a sneaking feeling that they were playing the corporate game to appease human resources. I do respect Starbucks, but I guess them and me are different animals. 🙂
I keep loosing my news sources. Last year, BBC quit broadcasting their news at 10 p.m. Particularly on the longer days, I’m seldom around a TV when they broadcast at 7 p.m. I went to their web site and complained, and a few weeks later they started rebroadcasting at 10. (I don’t take credit for that, I’m assuming a lot of people complained). Then BBC dropped the 10 p.m. broadcast again and it’s never been back on. So when I could, I’d watch their 7 p.m. broadcast. In my truck, I listen to the NPR station WYEP. They used to broadcast NPR news on the hours. They stopped about six months ago and I have to remember to watch the clock to switch stations to WDUQ to hear the news on the hour. Now BBC has stopped broadcasting news all together. They said it was going on local PBS stations. WQED doesn’t broadcast it. I’m so disappointed.
Continuing with my tour of The Parador’s before and afters, this guest room is Chenille. The ceiling is one of the four ‘cut and paste’ Bradbury and Bradbury wallpaper ceilings Joedda, the previous owner installed. I hate wall to wall carpeting, it never seems clean to me. So I ripped that blue stuff out and installed bamboo flooring. Those heavy drapes that could be used to close off that window seat are very old tapestry drapes with birds on them. I moved them to the Bird of Paradise guest room. They are very heavy and very old. They are moving their way up the priority ladder to have them rebuilt (new backings and a more appropriate way to hang them).
The opening for the fireplace is very narrow, it was originally a gas fireplace. All my fireplaces were re-piped for safety and the only new gas insert that would fit in the narrow opening was a self contained unit. It does have “logs” in it, but it’s not as realistic looking as the other Monesson fireplace inserts. I do watch television, but hate it. Generally, I have tried to hide the TV’s in cabinetry. There was no place to put an armoire in this room, so I thought why not make it so obvious that it goes away. So I took the mirror out of the mantle piece and got a large flat screen television that was the same size to replace the mirror. It actually works, you don’t really notice it. I sell Chenille more than any other guest room and it only has a full sized bed in it. I thought it would be a popular room, but was surprised how often it’s the first one sold.
It really has an incredible bathroom. I believe that sink and claw foot tub are original to the house. Note the Dresden blue sink bowl. Also, note the brass water controls for the tub. What you can’t see is the tub has a “gravity stopper”. Between the hot and cold water faucets, there is a brass knob that you twist and it drops down to plug the tub up so you can take a bath. The shower is one of those circular curtain rods in the center of the tub. Cute, but not the most effective way to shower.
The stained glass windows are not original (the leaded glass windows in the bathroom are), the stained glass was installed by Joedda in the 90’s, they are her design.
Have a great holiday weekend,
ed
