Exeunt omnes

Two years ago I aligned myself with a General Contractor named David Hyde. Over the course of two years, David and I did some great work together. We made a fantastic team and our clients loved us. I drew fantastical pictures and he turned them into real places. I can dream up great designs all day long, but they only count if someone buys them and someone else builds them. For the last two years the someone else who built them was David Hyde. David was a professional, conscientious contractor and he was also my friend.

In a phone call that seems never to have really happened, I found out on Wednesday morning that my friend David Hyde had died a couple of hours earlier. That news is still pounding with a dull throb inside of my skull, almost as if I'd been punched in the head.

David was a year older than I am. Who thinks that a 44-year-old man is going to die suddenly and without a warning? I spoke with him hours before he died and we talked about the work we had planned for the next couple of months. We laid plans in blissful ignorance that Damocles' sword was hanging over his head. I loved that man like a brother and now he's gone. My deepest sympathies go out to his wife and their daughter. Their loss towers over mine and I cannot imagine what it must be like to lose a husband and father. It's a strange and overwhelming thing to run headlong into that Ultimate Reality like this.

Suddenly, making sure Mrs. Parker stays happy and that we get the Nicklaus lighting done by next week doesn't quite seem so important as it did a couple of days ago. Shocking though it is, having the Grim Reaper brush past me has had me putting things into perspective with a renewed rigor. In a lot of ways though, I'd have preferred to keep David around and my priorities skewed. But I guess that option's not on the table.

David was everything I'm not. By that I mean he was a suburban, mega-church attending, evangelical with a Jesus fish on his business card. I read the New York Times every day and give money to the ACLU. Forging a working relationship required that each of us put aside the rhetoric we heard from the talking heads on our respective sides of the supposed culture war that's going on in our country. With our ideological differences acknowledged and set aside, we could concentrate on what we had in common. What a concept! That we set aside that crap and saw one another as individuals rather than as our demographic profiles was an opportunity for me, and for him, to let go of the identity politics that is such an easy trap to fall into. Blue states and red states don't really exist you know, and political polarization is an all too effective tool used to win elections. However, it's a lousy way to live your life and shameful way to choose whom to trust. You can only believe that a dreaded Other is your enemy when you can't see his face. I believe that and I know it from first hand experience. I didn't think like that two years ago but I sure do now. So I got to become a better man while at the same time working on a better portfolio. Amazing.

I'm going to move forward, albeit slowly. Everybody will, it's what happens after somebody dies. But a part of me is going to stay right here for a while. So goodbye David my friend, and thanks. I'll take it from here.

Trends to avoid

I got a copy of the new Pottery Barn catalog in the mail today. It's the fall preview issue they've dubbed "Best Customer Edition," which is either a marketing ploy to flatter people like me who've never bought anything there or it's an attempt to win my favor. In either case, and I hope it's the latter, it ain't gonna work. That catalog should have been called the "How NOT to Buy Furniture and Accessories Edition." This $900 nightmare is on their cover.

As my old friend Patsy would say, "It looks like a trail of cat sick." And so it does Patsy, so it does. Nobody appreciates a blast of color and loud pattern as much as I do, BUT if you're going to draw undue attention to yourself, make sure you have your act together first. This thing isn't even made well, just look how the fabric pattern doesn't come close to lining up on the different sections of upholstery. There's no attempt to get the skirt to line up with the seat. The bad alignment alone should dissuade anyone from thinking about this chair. In their defense, big patterns like this are hard to pull off on a small chair. That's why they shouldn't have tried.

They get a little closer from a fabric perspective on this one:



This is their Madison chair in a pattern they call Green Ogee. It's an interesting pattern, but it suffers from the same alignment problems the rest of their offerings do. And this thing has a retail price of $1200. $1200 dollars should get a much better-made piece of furniture than this mid-market stuff. Ikea does a better job on their patterned upholstery and the average price of an armchair is $300. For $600 dollars, you can find better stuff at Crate and Barrel. But your best bet without a doubt is Room and Board. Room and Board sells well-made, middle-market furniture that's priced where it should be, in the middle of the market.

For whatever reason, Pottery Barn is insanely popular and is often mistaken for a purveyor of "good" furniture. I'll tell you right now that it isn't. Pottery Barn is a purveyor of popular "looks" and their brand exists to make you hate your life and aspire to the images conjured by their marketing materials. Lies! Cursed lies! You don't need a mass merchandiser to show you what your life should look like. That's what people like me are for.

There is a place for decent furniture and it's not found in chain stores at the mall. Decent furniture is expensive, but it's made well. Well enough to last a lifetime. One of the ways you can spot good furniture on sight is when an upholstery fabric does this:
Hey! Look how the stripes line up!

So if you want good stuff, go to a locally-owned furniture store. You'll get better service from people who make a living wage and who know what they're talking about. If you're looking for moderately-priced reproduction furniture, get thee to Room and Board.

What do I do with my old stuff?

I have an appointment this afternoon with a new client. We're getting together to put the final touches on a plan that will take her condominium at the beach from its existing state of mid-'90s builder chic to something more contemporary and a lot more her. However, she has an entire kitchen full of perfectly usable cabinets and appliances. She has furniture, window treatments, plumbing fixtures, etc.: all of which will being removed and never heard from again. The stuff's usable and clean, just old and outdated. My client's not alone in this. I mean, what do you do with your old stuff when it's major renovation time?

Throwing it away isn't the answer I'm looking for. Why not give that stuff to someone who can use it. The range still cooks, the fridge still refrigerates and that laminate cabinetry could last another 20 years in the right setting.


There are two ways of getting rid of old stuff that I recommend to people. The first is Habitat for Humanity's ReStore on 118th Avenue in Saint Pete. Habitat for Humanity operates a retail store as a way of raising money to build houses for people who need them. If you have appliances that are less than 10-years-old, furniture in good condition, building supplies, etc. They will take your donated stuff, sell it and then put that money to good use. What a great idea. Your old stuff ends up in the hands of someone who will continue to use it and the money raised will go to an important cause.

The ReStore on 118th is essentially a house-related thrift store, for lack of a better term. If you're considering undertaking a renovation project of your own some time soon and if you love a bargain, head over there. The directions are on their website. Also on that website is a call for volunteers to help run that store. If you have some hours you'd like to give to a good cause, consider them. Time spent outside of your life can be greatly rewarding. But in the meantime, give them your old stuff.

My second pick is something called Freecycle. Freecycle is a worldwide network of local chapters whose goal is to bring together people who have stuff with people who want stuff. Freecycle's local group is in Saint Pete and you can go to their website here. There are in excess of 6,000 members of the Freecycle network in Saint Pete alone, and someone among them wants your old range and cabinetry, trust me. Freecycle isn't intended to be a one-way street. It's members give and take in equal measure. So in getting connected with someone who wants your range, you may get connected with someone else who has coconut palms they want to get rid of. Who knows what you'll fins, the important thing is you'll find something. Even if it's nothing more than a new home for your old stuff.

Between Habitat for Humanity's ReStore and Freecycle, you are bound to find a place to put your old stuff that's not the landfill along 275 and that my friends is a great thing.

Radiation schmadiation

Predictably, the reactionaries over at Treehugger went to town over this granite counter radiation thing. So much so that I dropped them from my blogroll. It's a pity too. Treehugger started as a forum for rational discussion about sustainability got hijacked by the eco-madmen on the fringes. Anyhow, the guy from Treehugger who picked up the supposed story and ran with it to all kinds of illogical and irrational ends got taken to task in the reader comments that followed his posting. It very nearly renewed my faith in humanity. So humanity's off the hook but alas, Treehugger's going to have to work a little harder to win back my favor. I know, that has them shaking in their boots I'm sure.

Anyhow, here's what my new hero Anthony posted on the granite story on Treehugger:

Most elements have naturally occurring radioactive isotopes. Most objects you encounter are mildly radioactive. For example, living next door to a nuclear power plant generally provides a radiation dose equivalent to eating one banana a day, or sleeping with someone else instead of by yourself.

This article speaks of picocuries but gives no information about what kind of dose people living in a home with such a counter top could be expected to actually receive. How many millirem/year would be much more relevant, since rem is the most widely accepted unit of biologically equivalent dose.

Natural background radiation in most parts of the human-inhabited world ranges from 300-600 millirem/year or so. In some it is as low as 200, in others as high as 10,000. And every study done comparing individuals experiencing different levels of background radiation thus far has shown no indication that low-level doses affect the rate of cancer in any statistically observable way.

And the comparison with smoking is not only unlikely, but misleading as well. Yes, smoking allows more radiation to get to the lungs- several thousand millirem per year, by some estimates I've seen. But that isn't why smoking causes cancer. Lung cancer caused by smoking comes from the chemical toxins in the cigarettes, not radiation. Radiation is actually a remarkably weak carcinogen. For example, the >100,000 atomic bomb survivors who have been studied extensively since 1945 have shown only a 6% higher rate of cancer than the general population.

Please, put the risks in perspective. Even taking for granted the hypothesis that low-dose radiation works just like high-dose radiation (the linear non-threshold hypothesis, that risk of cancer varies linearly with dose all the way down to 0 dose), very few deaths are caused by radiation. We knowingly live with many, many toxins and carcinogens in our home far more dangerous than granite counter tops. We willingly get into our cars and ride our bikes with nary a thought. This is as bad as the fear-mongering over the mercury in CFL's.

Anthony, I have no idea who you are but you deserve an award.

And away we go

My beloved New York Times ran an article in their Home and Garden section last week that has me bracing for a fallout. The piece was titled What's Lurking in Your Countertops and it talks about the radioactivity of granite counters.

OK, disclosure time. I have always known that granite counters were radioactive, but I have never mentioned it to a client. I've never mentioned it specifically to avoid the paranoid ramblings embodied by that Times article.

Here's what I know to be true. All igneous rocks (many sedimentary and metamorphic ones too) are radioactive. Granite is an igneous rock. Therefore, granite is radioactive. There, I said it. But so too is brick, drywall, concrete, bananas and the potassium in multi-vitamins. So for that matter are other people. People who sleep with someone are exposed to more radiation than people who sleep alone! Go ahead, make a headline out of that.

I have never heard another kitchen designer or granite supplier mention it. I can't imagine very many of them are aware that it is. Until last Thursday, I thought it was my cross to bear alone. But wait, it's not a cross at all. Granite is radioactive. So what? Radiation isn't any more inherently bad than rain is. People flip out when they hear that word. Radiation. There I said it again. Radiation isn't the boogey man under the bed. It's a natural process that you and I are surrounded by at all times. Natural, background radiation is to a nuclear bomb what a raindrop is to a flood. You can no sooner control or eliminate background radiation than you can the rain.

If you read the article closely enough, there are some calm and rational voices that are all but drowned out by the hypochondriacal author. To Wit:

Indeed, health physicists and radiation experts agree that most granite countertops emit radiation and radon at extremely low levels. They say these emissions are insignificant compared with so-called background radiation that is constantly raining down from outer space or seeping up from the earth’s crust,not to mention emanating from man made sources like X-rays, luminous watches and smoke detectors.

And this:

David J. Brenner, director of the Center for Radiological Research at Columbia University in New York, said the cancer risk from granite countertops, even those emitting radiation above background levels, is “on the order of one in a million.” Being struck by lightning is more likely.

But most telling of all was this little tidbit:

Allegations that granite countertops may emit dangerous levels of radon and radiation have been raised periodically over the past decade, mostly by makers and distributors of competing countertop materials. The Marble Institute of America has said such claims are “ludicrous” because although granite is known to contain uranium and other radioactive materials like thorium and potassium,the amounts in countertops are not enough to pose a health threat.

I can see all of the quartz manufacturers getting their press releases together already. But newsflash; quartz is another radioactive, igneous rock. And since quartz countertop materials like Silestone and Zodiaq are made from quartz and other stone aggregates they're going to be radioactive too.

None of this is any kind of breaking news nor is it in any way a health threat. The final point from that article I needed to see in order to judge the whole flap ludicrous was this:

Personal injury lawyers are already advertising on the Web for clients who think they may have been injured by countertops.

Sadly, when it comes to science versus the cult of personal injury in the courtroom, science seems to lose every time. Don't believe the hype!