Women's March in DC; January 20, 2017

I marched last weekend and it felt great. Surrounded by sisters from across the US and those from other countries (I came across a contingent from Canada) marching made me feel powerful. It made me feel like I had compatriots who felt the same way I did about what was happening in the US since the election of Donald Trump as President of the US. The very fact that such a phenomenal number of us gathered the day after Trump's inauguration while grandstands and seats remained on the Capitol steps; that we marched past the flags draping Union Station for his party (what arrogance to shut down the Capitol's train station to celebrate his election!); that we peacefully made our presence and passion felt along with sisters across the globe; gave me hope for our future instead of despair. I felt triumphant and vindicated after feeling hopeless following the night of the election. But now it's back to reality. I'm doing what I can to make my voice heard in DC by contacting legislators and sharing ideas about how to affect change on private group pages on Facebook. But it's hard to remain positive. Those who support Trump refer to those of us who despise him as 'fairies', 'whiners', 'babies', or worse. There are trolls who comment negatively on even the most innocuous postings. There's daily news about the latest edict issued by Trump - putting an end to immigrants entering the country, the ridiculous individuals he's nominated for cabinet positions - the list goes on and he's only been in office for a week! Mostly I'm concerned about my friends who are so incredibly stressed out by his actions. Those with parents or relatives who are immigrants. Members of marginalized communities like LGBTQ, Muslims, African Americans who fear for their families. Maybe that seems ridiculous to those who support Trump's actions, but the result of his policies has emboldened the very worst of the racists and white supremacists. There have been incidents of slur-slinging, defacing of property and threats against persons. My daughter-in-law is Jewish and feels threatened. This really upsets me and makes me feel helpless all over again, despite my feelings of empowerment just last weekend. And I'm worried about my own future. I'd love to kid myself into thinking that my stock portfolio will benefit long-term with Trump in the White House but I'm not going to be fooled by his 'business first' perspectives into thinking I'll benefit financially from his policies. There are way too many implications associated with his foreign policy and propensity to commit diplomatic gaffes to lead me to believe that his policies will affect my personal bottom line positively. I'm lucky - I have a good job with great benefits and a decent salary. I don't have to support anyone other than myself and my husband, but worry about retirement and whether we'll be able to make it without being a burden on our kids. So what now? I will carry that feeling of empowerment from the March with me forward and remain as positive as possible. I'm going to keep working at activism and ensuring my voice is heard in DC. In doing these things I'll try to encourage my friends and bring them along with me while leading them to successful outcomes. We may be down, but we're not out, and the law is on our side. Onward and upward!

A New Project - adding a master bathroom!

What fun! We've recently completed adding a master bathroom in our home that previously only had one full bathroom. It was high time to add a bath to this 3400 sq. ft. home or we'd never be able to sell it in the future (despite the fact that we've lived here 25 years, that time could come down the road). Here's where we put in the shower floor in what had previously been a type of closet with large drawers and a cabinet. Some of the drawers were made of cedar and I hated to lose them, but they were in the perfect spot for the new shower. This was also a pass-through to another bedroom which we closed off - that wasn't an entirely bad thing....

This gorgeous clawfoot tub was an incredible find! A friend had seen it on the front porch of a home that was being renovated (there were actually 4 of them - I considered buying all of them), and I bought it from the owner for $250. The inside porcelain had been refinished and it was in great condition, but the exterior had been painted more than once and needed some love. The original faucet was brass and we had it plated in chrome for about $100. After a couple of failed attempts to refinish the exterior on our own, I finally came up with the brilliant idea of taking it to an auto paint shop, and they painted it for me for another $250. So instead of buying a new freestanding tub for $2,000, I got a much more attractive option for a fraction of the cost. Yay for me! We had to finish the floor tile in order to proceed, and we had some help from a talented guy who was referred to us by a friend. We went with 1 inch white matte finish hexagonal tiles. It was a nod to the 1/2 inch hex tiles we had in our existing bathrooms, but more modern. In one of the photos above you'll see a great marble doorway threshold I found at Lowes. Now the timing was right to start tiling the shower. I had purchased the Grohe fixtures quite a long time before we got to this point and was anxious to get things going. We had a rain shower head, a regular shower head, and a handheld shower unit. This all was brought together by a separate 'mixing' unit that allowed us to set an exact shower temperature and turn on one shower component at a time and not have them all on every time we showered. I went with 12 x 12 Carrera Marble tiles from Lowes with some pencil trim. I liked the idea of having a feature wall, and decided a simple diamond pattern accented with the pencil tile would look great. We also set the ledge with tile set in a diamond pattern, and the remaining tile was set in a brick pattern. Dark grout accented the tile beautifully! Do you notice anything different in the photos above? It's the paint! We went with white trim on the windows and floor trim, as well as the picture molding at the ceiling. I took forever to find a paint color I liked in the room because there's so darned much light in there. This stormy blue color worked well with the white and the marble. And in one photo you'll notice a preview of lighting fixtures over the sinks and the sinks themselves. And now - ta da! - the tub is in! Also the two sinks and it finally looks like a bathroom!

Ferguson, Racism and the STL

Ferguson, Racism and the STL 3 weeks ago 18 y/o Michael Brown was killed by a Ferguson, MO policeman. Like other black men who have been victimized by the police, Brown was ordered to quit doing what he was doing (walking down the middle of the street), and didn't comply immediately. There are mixed accounts about what happened next, including those who said that Brown hit the officer in the face, and others who said the officer shot Brown once while they struggled inside the open window of the patrol car. What happened next was not disputed. The officer shot Brown a total of 6 times while he was in the street, by some eyewitness reports Brown had his hands in the air while the officer shot him. The young man's body lay in the street uncovered in the hot St. Louis sun while police conducted an investigation for 4 hours. The officer was initially at the scene, but was whisked away soon after and hasn't been seen or heard from since. The Ferguson and St. Louis community reacted immediately. Protests began that day, and residents of the area where Brown was killed called for justice for the gentle young man who had been visiting his grandmother that day. Those protests turned violent that first week, resulting in rioting, burning of a local gas station, and looting of area stores - some outside the immediate area. The incident has completely polarized the St. Louis community. Protests went from being chaotic to more reasonable after clergy and leaders in the black community came together to bring reason and calm. Journalists from all over the world came to chronicle events happening in Ferguson's streets, while local and state politicians varied greatly in their response holding fingers in the wind to determine how their actions might be judged by the local electorate. The eyes of the world turned toward the small suburb outside St. Louis amid the protests and circumstances surrounding the death of a young man who dared to walk down the middle of the street on a warm summer weekend afternoon. As a member of this community who has lived in the city of St. Louis for more than 30 years, I've observed many circumstances where police have hassled young black men. What is it that strikes fear into the heart of white people about young black men walking down the street? While I believe you need to be smart about living in an urban area, why does it have to be that persons of color make us fearful? Our segregation has created a two-tiered society. We've given white candidates better opportunities for higher paying jobs, we've kept them from purchasing homes in 'white' neighborhoods. We don't associate with black people - we're not comfortable around them. We might work with black colleagues with whom we feel comfortable from 8-5, but we don't invite them for dinner or welcome their families into our homes. When white people talk about their one black friend, they have to identify them in conversation as their black friend because the fact that they have a friend of color marks them as open-minded. The city's north side is largely black and predominantly run down. A real estate mogul has been allowed to purchase acres of north-side properties and has allowed them to fall into significant disrepair. No one wants to live next door to a condemned property that attracts vagrants, rodents and decay. While there are pockets of north city that are viable, 60-70% is not. Political legend says that a long-term mayor in the 80's plotted to encourage this decay in order to build the southside neighborhoods. The city's south side 30 years ago was predominantly white. Over those years many neighborhoods became mixed, and other predominantly black. Still others remain lily white - these are the neighborhoods where the white police officers live. Taking a basketball team with black players on it into the gyms of those areas in the '90's resulted in all the black players fouling out immediately. This is the most deep-seatedly racist area of St. Louis. Not exclusively in a way that's overt, but in a way that these are people who are really uncomfortable about living around people who don't look like them. They don't get how to act around non-white people. It makes them nervous, but they know people who are black - work with them, interact with the black members of the city who talk the way they do, and think the way they do. They're different. But the 18 year-olds who hang out at the McDonalds? They make them nervous. What are they doing in our neighborhood? What are they UP to?? Then there are the real racists. And this is pervasive in many of these far south neighborhoods. They talk in code - northside = black, southside = white. The good news is that I sincerely believe that these people are much more in the minority than they were 30 years ago. I think the young people (late 20's and early 30's) are outnumbering the racists in our community. And it couldn't happen soon enough. So what do we do now? Dialogue is good. There's lots of that going on, and it needs to continue. But to defeat institutional racism we need to do more than talk about it. We need to set goals about integrating police forces, fire departments and city offices. Police need training about how to handle people who are different than themselves. They need to be demilitarized and community-centric. We each need to take responsibility for defeating racism in our communities by being vocal and deliberate. I'm in!

October and Baseball Rivalries

As of today, the St. Louis Cardinals lead the LA Dodgers 2-0 in the NLCS. I've spent some time online today reading the trash talk coming from those in LA bemoaning the fact that their storied franchise is falling apart in such a fashion. Exorbitant salaries and aggressive recruitment of top talent has not bought the city a national championship since 1988, while the Cardinals with their young, much less handsomely compensated talent won most recently in 2011 and again in 2006. In fact, the Cardinals are second only to another extraordinarily well-paid team - the NY Yankees - in the number of World Series titles (11) in all of baseball. Those of us residing in 'flyover country' are well acquainted with the disdain heaped upon our Midwestern communities and the unjustified opinions of those on the coasts that our victories are undeserved. Reading the various commentary from LA papers about St. Louis have ranged from an attempt at humor to being just plain snarky. While admittedly much more a fan of NoCal than SoCal, I understand that those who expend so much energy in an attempt to be physically perfect can't conceive of baseball imperfection. Can't you buy that perfection? Well it appears not. Come in a little bit closer and I'll tell you what you need to get there. Hire a manager (Torre, Herzog, LaRussa, Matheny) who understands team dynamics and bring players to a community where they can afford to buy a house on a salary that allows them to live extraordinarily comfortably on a fraction of the price it requires on the coasts. Use your veterans as mentors to the young guys who you build up in a farm system located in similar mid-sized cities who have great love for their home teams. Bring those rookies to baseball heaven - Busch Stadium - and introduce them to Cards legends, Brock, Gibson, Smith, Musial many of whom settled their families in the city and have grown old here. Indoctrinate them in Cardinal history - take them out on the field in a stadium whose attendance is routinely among the league's highest, and is consistently among the top three in MLB in local television ratings, despite a 'midmarket' status. St. Louisans love their baseball, and feelings between the players and their fans are mutual. Go to bat and feel the love. Do something well and feel even more love. Do something wrong and we'll forgive you. Heck, play for another team and visit and we'll still cheer for you when you come to bat for our opponents. That's how we roll. There's no pretense here. We don't necessarily feel like we're better than anyone else, but we've been doing this for a really long time and it works. We don't just start loving baseball in October - we love it all year long. It's not the only thing we have going for us here in St. Louis, but we've been doing for a really long time. Go Cards!!

Where, exactly have you BEEN??

It's quite amazing, looking back at this blog that I started 2 YEARS AGO (and clearly quit updating soon after starting it...), and seeing where we are now. The kitchen is finished. I've finally reached the point where I enter and don't ooh and ahh over the fixtures and appointments, and it's been some time since things were kept neat in case anyone wanted to drop in and see how it turned out. In fact we've begun on a second, much more challenging project - the addition of a second floor Master Bathroom. Plumbing, wiring, drywall - we've actually already reached decision paralysis on a couple of details. I promise some photos of the finished kitchen and the in-progress bathroom soon. Life goes on in the big city!

The Granite is IN!

Well we got the granite in last week and it looks absolutely spectacular.  Honestly I was unprepared for how much I was going to love how it looked in there.  Here's a photo of the main counter area with the island in the foreground:

Now it's on to tile for the backsplash.  I'm thinking a crackle subway tile and now the biggest consideration is how high up to go with it.  I've been all around the block on this one - started thinking I wanted some detail above the range that set it off from the main tiled area, and now have evolved to wanting something more sleek and less interrupted.  My initial thought is to tile up to the bottom of the range hood, and then drop down to the side of the sink to the level of the windowsill.  Stay tuned!

Following are some photos of my claycraft tile fireplace that I'd like to use as inspiration:

And some details:

cabinet pulls

are ordered for the spice cabinet and file drawers.  We've gone with the original milk glass knobs for everything else.  Here are the pulls:

http://www.coolknobsandpulls.com/index.cfm/product/4376/53719-amerock-pull-satin-nickel