Home Improvement Horrors - Part One

Mention home-improvement contractors, and most homeowners roll their eyes and groan. Not everyone who’s lived through a home remodeling project reacts that way, of course. Some just chuckle sadly, shaking their heads with weary resign. Others run screaming from the room, ripping at their hair.

Maybe they’ve had an experience like the White Plains, NY, homeowner whose upstairs bathroom remodeler flooded the living room. Oops! Or the Scarsdale, NY, couple whose painters polished off pretty much everything in their liquor cabinets—-including a bottle of Perrier-Jouet—-and very kindly hid the empties in the heating ducts around the house. Heh, heh, heh. Or the Hartsdale, NY, woman who had to eat $1,000 worth of one-of-a-kind designer tiles because her contractor mismeasured a bathtub frame. “You should have measured yourself before you ordered the tiles,” was his response. Huh?

Even homeowners who don’t have horror stories readily admit that these projects are invariably an adventure. The White Plains homeowner with the swimming pool in her living room, took it all in stride. “That wasn’t fun,” she says. “On the other hand, it wasn’t the contractor’s fault. The house was built in 1923; and when you start messing with pipes that old, things happen.”

She and her husband are serial home improvers, having remodeled four bathrooms, the kitchen, the family room, and the entire third floor of their home in the 14 years they’ve lived there. “Nothing has gone perfectly,” she observes with Zen-like equanimity. “You just have to assume that the unexpected happens and that you will go over budget.”

Another woman, who spent three months renovating her family’s home in Katonah, NY, tells about the carpenter who sent them a bill a year after the job was completed. “He just forgot, but it was a punch in the gut,” she says.

Still, it’s hard to be calm when you turn over the house keys to a gang of muscular strangers with implements of destruction hanging from their belts. Beefy guys who are going to occupy your family’s private space for months, do violent things that you don’t understand to the most valuable asset you own, and then collect a huge check when the job is done—if it ever is. Home improvement is a trip when you’re watching it on HGTV, but can be a terrifying journey when the makeover is happening under your own roof.

Muppets Changing the World - Part 3

Sesame Street is on a global mission led by CEO Gary Knell. The program has always had some international distribution (a Mexican version, Plaza Sésamo premiered in 1972), but Knell has spread those shaggy puppet teachers into more than 120 countries and sees more on the horizon. “There are 150 million pre-school kids in India. It would be the fourth largest country in the world—made up entirely of five year olds,” he says, savoring the prospects. The opportunity is huge, but the mission is serious, according to Knell. “We take our model using research, content, and plot lines that deal with literacy, girls education, tolerance and respect, HIV/AIDS, global health and other issues.”

Knell is an inveterate globe-trotter himself, constantly on the move setting up partnerships with educators and production companies around the world. He got a good grounding for that early in his career, when he served as Managing Director of Manager Media International, a print and multimedia business based in Bangkok, Hong Kong, and Singapore.

Of course, his conversations today are with a different group of movers and shakers than the advertisers in Asia Times. When I visited his office recently, I noticed a framed handwritten note from Gerry Adams, President of Sinn Fein and spokesman for the Provisional Irish Republican Army. It says “PS: Thanks for the Cookie Monster!” The Workshop is working right now in another hotspot, Kosovo.

Sesame Street reaches about 8 million kids a week on TV in the U.S. and 70 million kids around the globe, according to Knell. “But there are 700,000,000 kids under 9 around the world with access to TV, so we’ve still got plenty of room to grow.”

It all melds together to make Sesame Street a significant influence on children everywhere. As founder Joan Ganz Cooney points out, “The domestic show is affected by work we’re doing abroad, just as the American versions affect the international versions. Sesame Street wants to make children aware of the world they live in, that it is bigger than where they live in the U.S.” Watch Sesame Street these days and you’re as likely to see Elmo wearing an Egyptian galabya and drinking mint tea as chomping on chocolate chip wafers with his blue googley-eyed friend, Cookie Monster.

Knell isn’t afraid to encourage his staff to take on unpleasant current issues, either, especially when they affect the lives of children. He’s very proud of the 400,000 Sesame Street DVD’s he got Wal-Mart to pay for to help families of U.S. soldiers serving overseas. The program helps them deal with issues of deployment, re-deployment, and homecoming, sometimes by fathers in wheelchairs.

Dave Donelson, author of Heart of Diamonds

Fun at Purchase Free Library 80th Anniversary Party

I had great fun at the 80th Anniversary Celebration of the Purchase Free Library, one of the wonderful public libraries I represent on the Board of Trustees of the Westchester (NY) Library System. I'm pictured here enjoying a story told by Jean Read, the first Purchase Board President, elected when the library became an independent entity from the Purchase Community House in 1967.

After Harrison Mayor Joan Walsh and Purchase Board President Martha Greenburg spoke, I said a few words on behalf of WLS.

When Head Librarian Anne Collins told the group I am a writer as well as a library system trustee, there was great interest in Heart of Diamonds.

Muppets Changing the World - Part 2

Gary Knell took over as CEO of Sesame Workshop not long after the organization’s founder, Joan Ganz Cooney, recruited him from WNET/Channel 13, where he was General Counsel. She attributes much of Sesame Workshop’s ability to compete to Knell’s idealism and enthusiasm. “He is high, high energy,” she told me, adding, “He is the best leader we’ve ever had, and that includes me.”

“One of the things he did that was astonishingly wonderful was putting together the partners for Sprout, the cable channel that is all pre-school all the time,” Cooney says. “He put together the partners, which include HiT Entertainment in London, PBS, and Comcast, who put up most of the money. We didn’t put up money, but, thanks to Gary’s skill, we ended up as part owners of the channel.” Knell also sold Noggin, which was a cable channel the Workshop started in partnership with Nickelodeon, to raise the money to buy the Muppets when they came on the market.

While Knell has been pushing the Workshop into new media, he hasn’t ignored the original mission of Sesame Street, which was to reach and teach preschoolers, particularly in disadvantaged homes. “We take this really seriously,” he says. “We’re the only show that has consistently looked at child development issues and applied those to media in a regularized way.” According to their annual report, the organization spent almost $9.5 million on research in 2007. Most of it, he explains, “is scientific educational research where we test segments with kids to make sure they’re pulling the lessons that are intended from the content.”

“For example, we did a segment a few years ago where Snuffie’s parents got divorced. Kids in tests thought their parents were going to get divorced every time they had an argument, so we never aired the segment.”

Dr. Mary Ann Reilly, an Associate Professor who teaches courses in K-12 literacy at Manhattanville College in Purchase, NY, points out that this is vastly different from the type of research done for commercial programs: “If you want to know what kind of sugared cereal you should eat, you can watch the Disney Channel. If you want to be a little bit more enlightened, you look at Sesame Street.”

Over 4,000 hours of Sesame Street have been created. The Workshop still produces 26 new shows every year so it stays perpetually current with issues of the day like childhood obesity and environmental concerns. But the program has been on the air nearly 40 years (the first episode aired November 10, 1969) and it’s still peopled by a singing green frog, brought to you by the Letter G and the Number 3, and takes place on a city street where graffiti apparently magically disappears. Is it relevant to kids today?

“Of course it’s relevant,” says Dr. Reilly. “Without question, there are far more choices for parents in terms of television watching. When I see some of the things on the channels dedicated to children, though, it’s truly alarming. From the Navy Seal ads to really questionable violence and things of that sort. A show that has movement, fantasy, fun, lots of language going on, notions of a neighborhood that’s integrated, that’s extremely relevant.”

Remember, too, while you may have seen all 4,000 episodes, your three-year-old hasn’t. Bert and Ernie are new neighbors to them.

Dave Donelson, author of Heart of Diamonds

Kunati Books Named Publisher of the Year

Some of the most exciting news I've heard since Kunati Books picked up the rights to Heart of Diamonds was that my publisher was named Independent Publisher of the Year.

The announcement was made at Book Expo America by ForeWord Magazine, which made it to celebrate the magazine's tenth anniversary. Here's what they said:

“ForeWord has always championed independent presses,” Publisher Victoria Sutherland said, “and this new honor is another way for us to shine the spotlight on publishers that are doing revolutionary things and producing quality books.”

Kunati is one today’s most innovative independent publishers. It produces book trailers for every new release, maintains a blog, and encourages its authors to blog and actively participate in marketing their books. Kunati currently has several movie deals in the works, and its roster of authors includes Pulitzer Prize winner John E. Mack.

ForeWord described Kunati’s Women of Magdelene by Rosemary Poole-Carter (978-1-60164-014-7), as “a brilliant example of the best that historical fiction can do.” ForeWord has also published reviews of Hunting the King by Peter Clenott (978-1-60164-148-9) and The Secret Ever Keeps by Art Tirrell (978-1-60164-004-8).

It has been called “a publisher to watch” by Booklist and “impressive” by Publishers Weekly; now Kunati Books is ForeWord’s 2007 Independent Publisher of the Year.

Dave Donelson, author of Heart of Diamonds

Muppets Changing the World - Part 1

Gary Knell has a permanent twinkle in his eye. And why not? He’s a 54-year-old guy who goes to the office every morning to teach 70 million kids to read with the help of an eight-foot yellow bird. Sure sounds to me like a lot more fun than selling municipal bonds.

Knell is Big Bird’s boss, not to mention Kermit, Cookie Monster, and the goofy, glorious Elmo. He’s the CEO of Sesame Workshop, the non-profit educational organization that brings your pre-schooler Sesame Street each morning. I dare say every single kid in America—and their parents—know where Oscar the Grouch lives and can sing Ernie's “Rubber Ducky” song.

But all is not just sunshine and happy songs on Sesame Street these days. Sometimes, it’s more like trench warfare. “In 1988, there were two pre-school shows in the United States, Mr. Rogers and us,” Knell says. “Today there are literally fifty pre-school programs on TV, plus six competing networks.”

Sesame Street is still the number one show for kids 2-11 in the New York DMA (where I live), according to the A.C. Nielsen ratings for February, but it’s closely followed by Mickey Mouse Clubhouse on the Disney Channel, and Ni Hao, Kai-lan and Dora the Explorer on Nickelodeon. Nickelodeon, Disney, Noggin, Discovery Channel, TLC, and the Cartoon Network basically ran the commercial broadcasting stations out of the kids television business several years ago. Is Sesame Street next?

Not if Knell and his little staff of 350 have anything to say about it. With their measly annual budget of $125 million, they go toe-to-toe with the mega-media likes of Disney (annual revenues $36 billion), Viacom ($13 billion), and Time Warner ($46 billion) every day, vying for the attention of all those three-year-old consumers in an electronic universe with hundreds of TV channels as well as DVD’s, web sites, cell phones, and video games. To win, Knell has led the organization into new media with a vengeance since he took over as CEO in 1999.

You’ll find Sesame Street everywhere on the web, starting with SesameStreet.org. “You have access to 2,000 video clips in perfect digital quality that are catalogued by curriculum and by character,” Knell says with a trace of wonder in his voice. “If you want to teach your kid to count backwards, for example, you can call up a video with Count von Count. We view that as our channel of the future.” The brand is also a big draw on YouTube—a segment with Chris Brown and Elmo last year drew over five million views.

According to Knell, Sesame Workshop had the #1 podcast on the web last year, too. “Word on the Street” on iTunes uses Conan O’Brien, Brian Williams, John Stewart, and other well-known media personalities to help kids build vocabulary by playing with a word of the day along with a Muppet. Don’t be surprised if you see a mom holding her cell phone in front of a kid in the supermarket checkout line—she’s probably showing them a Sesame Street clip.

Then there is video on demand: “You can pull down Sesame Street and play it back for your kids while you’re cooking dinner,” Knell points out enthusiastically. He says a million moms and kids download Sesame Street through Comcast alone each month.

Dave Donelson, author of Heart of Diamonds

Soak Them Bones

While golfers like me often think of outdoor hot tubs as the place to soak our bogey-beaten bones, a remarkable array of indoor spa facilities are available, too

Indoors or out, spas offer real health benefits for golfers and civilians alike. “Body-healing temperature is 102 degrees,” says Association of Pool and Spa Professionals Chairperson Penny Johnson. “Just ten minutes in water at that temperature can make you feel like a whole new human being.” The Arthritis Foundation says hot tubs relieve stiff joints, tight muscles, and poor circulation. Sleep researchers have long prescribed a hot soak before bedtime as a great way to encourage a good night’s sleep. There’s some evidence that spas help with weight loss and reduction of cellulite and many people also believe hydro-massage encourages production of endorphins, which enhance your feeling of well-being.

You don’t need a huge outdoor hot tub to enjoy those benefits, either. Manufacturers like Jacuzzi and Kohler offer whirlpools and air baths in numerous styles and configurations that fit any décor and lifestyle. Kohler BubbleMassage baths offer full-body hydro massage from more than 100 adjustable air jets that inject warm air into the bath and allow use of bath oils and salts. Other options include chromatherapy, which illuminates the bath with color to enhance your mood. The Kohler Purist model starts at $5,300.

The Jacuzzi Fuzion Salon Spa bath (starting at $4,900) provides seating for two with sculpted arm supports and contoured backrests with pillows. There are also fifteen jets (with eleven dedicated to the back and feet) that are fully adjustable to provide twelve different hydro-massage experiences in addition to the thousands of warm air bubbles generated by the bottom channels. You and your partner will also enjoy the infinity edge drain system so you can fill the tub to the very brim and a chromatherapy lighting system with 256 mood-enhancing colors.

Dave Donelson, author of Heart of Diamonds

Home Sweat Home

The human body hasn’t changed for millennia, but the place where we strengthen, shape, maintain, and tone our bodies certainly has. And how.

Today, more and more of us do our crunches, push-ups and bicep curls at home—and not in the corner of the bedroom, either, or in our dark musty basement. Today’s home gym is light and airy, well equipped and welcoming, and above all, a place where you want to go to get the healthy body you desire.

But do you really need to design a space to sweat? Of course not, but you don’t really need to design a place to cook, either, as long as you’re content with a pile of burning wood and a hunk of meat on a stick. A little help with investing thousands of dollars in the right exercise equipment and some thought on the ambience of the place where you’ll be using it will improve your results.

Plan Around Your Workout

So how do you get started? The first step, says Ruth Tara, owner of Home Gym Designs in White Plains, NY, is to plan the space around your workouts. As a former personal trainer, she asks her clients to fill out two questionnaires: one on their workout history, preferences, and intentions; the other about any medical conditions. Then she sends them to a health club to try out the various machines.

When it comes to choosing the room itself, Gym Source CEO Richard Miller says, “A lot of people take a basement space and stick a gym down there. Unless the space has a high ceiling, nicely finished, and has a television and some mirrors to make the room look bigger and brighter, they’re never going to want to go down there.”

“It’s more important to have a high ceiling than to have a wider space to work out in,” Miller adds. He also recommends, “Have a lot of space in the gym. You might bring a trainer into your house to work with you and you have to have room to move around. So don’t overcrowd it.”

And don’t forget that home gyms are family places. “I’ve done rooms for kids adjacent to the parents’ gym,” Tara says. “They make great brightly-colored play mats and equipment for the kids to bounce on. I like to put a gate across it, though, to separate the two areas.” It’s a good idea to keep little kids away from the adult treadmills and other equipment with moving, finger-mangling parts.

Most trainers recommend flooring that absorbs impact in some way. “It safeguards knees and ankles. The other advantage is noise control,” Tara points out. “With a rubber floor, you can also sweat all you want and spill all you want. It cleans up with soap and water.” Rubber flooring runs around $15 per square foot and comes in a full range of colors and patterns. It doesn’t have to be glued down anymore, either, since it often comes in pieces that fit together like jigsaw puzzles and can be removed if the homeowner moves or decides to make a change.

You’ll need at least one full-length mirror to check your form while you exercise, but a completely mirrored room isn’t necessary. Other wall treatments can include bright, cheerful colors, scenic murals, inspiring posters, even sunny windows; whatever makes you want to be in the room. And don’t forget the entertainment center! Music and video sure makes running on the treadmill less like, well, running on a treadmill.

Equipment for Every Body

As far as your workout equipment goes, Miller explains that good fitness has three basic components: cardio-vascular training, strength training, and flexibility. For cardio, you can choose among treadmills, elliptical trainers, stationary bicycles, and others. “People sometimes have two or three pieces of cardio-vascular equipment because they get bored, not because one is better than another,” he says.

For strength training, “The most important is an adjustable bench and some dumbbells,” according to Miller. “The next step is a pulley machine, where you can do high pulleys and low pulleys. From there, you go to a multi-gym, where you have a weight stack and you can do a hundred different exercises with the unit.” After that, you start adding single-purpose strength machines to work on specific muscles.

For flexibility, all you need is a mat and some room to stretch out. “A lot of people also do functional exercises using balls, bands, steps, and balance bars,” he adds.

“I always recommend starting out small because you want to leave room in the gym not only to add something else, but for replacement,” Miller says. “And who knows what’s going to be invented tomorrow?”

The single most important component in a home gym, Tara concludes, is the fun factor—and that’s something that needs to be designed in. “There are people who hate exercise. Nobody likes doing laundry, either, but if you make the laundry room look nice and it’s accessible, and you don’t stumble over junk when you go in it, you’ll be more apt to go in there with a positive attitude.”

Dave Donelson, author of Heart of Diamonds

Two Kids at Carnegie Hall: Bobby McFerrin and Yo-Yo Ma

I enjoyed a completely different kind of musical experience when Bobby McFerrin and Yo-Yo Ma appeared together at Carnegie Hall. I’ve seen hundreds of performances there, but never one where both the audience and the artists had quite so much fun.

McFerrin is a unique musician, to say the least. Genres don’t matter, nor does solemnity apply when he turns his four-octave voice and circular breathing technique to the task of making music. It is also not often that you’ll see a conductor literally jump from the stage to the Parquet with a hand-held mic to chat with a few audience members and to ask one of them if he could see her program so he could find out what he was supposed to play! Great fun.

Also great music. The first piece on the program was Bach’s Concerto for Violin and Orchestra in A minor. McFerrin sang the violin line, which lent a light, almost festive tone to the piece. Next was Faure’s Pavane in F-sharp Minor, followed by Vivaldi’s Concerto in G Minor for Two Cellos, where he performed one part and was joined by Yo-Yo Ma as the second. Ma has never been accused of taking himself too seriously on stage, either, so it was a delightful combination.

Then the fun really started, though, as McFerrin’s improvisational genius was engaged. When he and Ma did Bach’s Air on the G String, I noticed the concertmistress of the Orchestra of St. Luke’s listening with her eyes closed, enjoying the absolute purity of McFerrin’s tone. Rimsky Korsakov’s “Flight of the Bumblebee” performed by the fun-loving duo was an absolute hoot, as was McFerrin’s parody of an opera in which he led the orchestra in nonsense sounds while singing alternatively as a baritone and a soprano.

The height of the evening, however, was McFerrin’s finale, a compressed a capella version of “The Wizard of Oz” in which he sang nearly every role—Dororthy, the Scarecrow, munchkins, the wizard, and a wonderful witch. By the end of the night, my face hurt from grinning.

Dave Donelson, author of Heart of Diamonds

The Winer Things In Life

What equates more with the good life than fine wine? And what signifies a true oenophile better than a carefully-stocked walk-in (or live-in) wine cellar? Even if your home isn’t built atop a limestone cavern, you can enjoy the benefits of a custom wine cellar that will truly add value to your home—and your lifestyle.

Beverly Hills wine consultant Jeff Smith, author of The Best Cellar, offers some advice: “By the time you consider building a wine cellar, chances are you're at or over the tipping point where you can comfortably house your collection in a wine refrigerator in the garage. Plan for more than you think you need. Nature abhors a vacuum and so does a wine cellar.”

A seldom-used bedroom or even a large closet can be converted to a fine home cellar, or you can buy one of several ready-made wine rooms (really just very large cabinets) from companies like Bacchus Wine Cellars or Vinotheque for around $5,000. If you’re building a new home or even doing an extensive remodel, your builder may offer a cellar as an option, of course, which is probably the best value you’ll find since original construction is almost always less expensive than retro-fitting. Expect to invest $25,000 or more in a fully-dedicated space.

Dave Donelson, author of Heart of Diamonds