Monday, April 21, 2008

Yee-haw!

Glass TEXpo ’08 was a mighty fine event. Nearly 500 industry professionals from Texas, Oklahoma and Louisiana—along with a smattering of attendees from as far away as Calgary and Pittsburgh—came together for a great two days of education and exhibition. There were three things that made me feel especially good about TEXpo.

First was the number of first-time attendees at the show. I stopped counting at ten, but had at least ten shop owners tell me that this year’s TEXpo was the first industry event they’d ever attended. Most mentioned how hard it is to get time away from their shops and how having something relatively close by made it so they could attend. That gives me a really good feeling because it was one of our goals when we started providing regional education in 1994.
I also was heartened to see a number of new products introduced at the show. One exhibitor from Germany showed a great new glass handler that was no bigger than the palm of a large hand. (CLICK HERE for more information.)

Another exhibitor from Japan showed examples of 3D glass that mimics a beveled appearance at a fraction of the cost. (CLICK HERE for more information. ). And first-time exhibitor Techniform had this to say about TEXpo:



But most memorable moment came toward the end of the first day of the show, when Lou Green of A1 Glass Co. in Beaumont, Donald Day of the Texas Glass Association in Victoria, Texas, and Bob Lawrence of Craftsman Fabricated Glass in Houston got together and reminisced about the formation of the Texas Glass Association (which co-sponsors the event) and the various and assorted characters they’ve come to know in the industry and the association over the years. Boy, do they have some stories. I could have listened to their colorful tales all night, but had some business to attend to just as they were talking about a former employee who had been married 11 times.

As the saying goes, everything is bigger in Texas.

Glass TEXpo will return to San Antonio in Spring 2010. I am already looking forward to it.

P.S. After TEXpo was over on Saturday afternoon, Tina Czar and I headed back to Dallas (see previous blog). Let me just say that even though Hertz advertises its GPS as “Never Lost,” it shouldn’t, that downtown Dallas is lovely at midnight and that when the shuttle bus driver looks at you with nine bags, laptops, cameras, LCDs and boxes between you and says “take the elevator to the skywalk,” you shouldn’t listen. The skywalk is actually three long flights up and three long flights down. The bus driver is probably still laughing at us now.

Thursday, April 10, 2008

San Antonio Bound … and Princesses for a Night

“You know, we have three or four things we have to do in Dallas,” said our ace event planner Tina Czar to me one afternoon nearly six months ago. “Why don’t we go to Glass TEXpo a day earlier than usual, do our stuff and drive down to San Antonio?” Now the fact that Tina was planning this nearly half a year ago would surprise anyone until they met Tina. She is planner extraordinaire and that means she plans well, often—and early. She was to handle everything, except our leg from Dallas to San Antonio. That was my job.

So I decided to show Tina that I could plan a few things of my own. And, while not six months ahead of time, I did decide SIX WHOLE DAYS ahead of time that I wanted us to spend the night in Waxahachie. I’d been there a number of times before. (USGlass has a great advertiser there, U.S. Aluminum) and been enchanted by the old downtown feeling, the magnificent Courthouse (at right) and the beautiful homes along Main Street. It would be a straight shot from there down to San Antonio.

There are no chain motels in the old downtown area of Waxahachie. So I started looking at bed and breakfasts (B&B) and found one right on Main Street. Now, I’ve never stayed in a B&B before, but knowing Tina would be with me gave me the courage to try something new. And we both have spent more than our fair share of time in Hampton Inns and other assorted motels so I thought such a visit would be something different for a change. So I booked two rooms at the Chaska House on Main Street in Waxahachie. If nothing else, Tina would know I’d done my homework.

You know the drill. We’d both gotten up around 4 a.m., driven to the airport, taken our respective flights, got the car, had the meetings and driven almost 90 minutes in rush hour when we arrived there around 7 p.m. We were greeted by the notes of some very peaceful music escaping out of the home’s beautiful wrap-around porch. Our hosts, Linda and Louis Brown, had raised their family in the house, then moved out for a year, gutted and had converted to a B&B nearly 20 years ago. It’s an exquisite home.

Louis is a retired engineer and Linda, who hails from Atlanta, was kind enough to show me some of the unique glass features in the home. Each guest room had a unique glass door leading inside to a distinct theme. (One room, the Mark Twain, looked like the inside of a treehouse). I slept in the Teddy Roosevelt room, with a skylight directly over the bed (at left). “That’s got to leak,” I said to myself as I eyed the room with trepidation. It didn’t. The heavy rain and hail storm that woke me in the middle of the night proved that.

In the morning, Linda showed me the front door of the house. It was an almost full glass door (at right) with exquisitely beveled edges on all four side—and a big bullet hole right at eye level. “Some boys got real mischievous one night and shot it will a B-B gun,” said Linda. “We were going to replace it, then we found out it wasn’t just glass, it was crystal, real crystal. We decided to keep it as is.”

If you have never stayed in a B&B before it does feel a bit strange in the beginning—like you are intruding in a stranger’s home. But the graciousness and hospitality of the innkeepers quickly overtake any such feelings and their desire to see you have a good time is so genuine it’s easy to feel like family quickly.

“No, you sit,” said Linda to Tina (who had emerged from the Great Gatsby room as refreshed as Daisy Buchanan herself) as she tried to help clear the breakfast dishes, “you both are princesses while you are here.”

But, alas, it was time to go.

Louis and Linda were great hosts. Linda even tracked me down after I left an important folder behind and was kind enough to take it to Fedex it to me. I know, I know—poor planning on my part. Please don’t tell Tina when you see her.

-Deb

P.S.: We have made it to San Antonio now and are staying at the historic Menger Hotel, where TR himself recruited his Rough Riders (and check out that unique skylight!). I hope you get a chance to join us here at Glass TEXpo Friday and Saturday. It’s going to be a great event. See you there.

Friday, April 4, 2008

What’s the Story, Deb?

Like a lot of people, I usually end up working over the weekend when it’s quiet and I can catch up (and write things like this). It’s just a usual part of a routine. So taking a whole day to play hookey is an unusual occurrence and, to my mind, sure better be worth it.

Well this past Saturday, it was. The main purpose of my trip was to visit the Nationals' new stadium and see the first (though exhibition) game played there. (It’s a nice stadium, but more on this another time.) So I made an outing of it and spent the whole day tooling around Washington D.C. like a tourist. I had a great time in the process.

First, I got to see the cherry blossoms in full bloom. I'd never seen them before. Now you may laugh at this, but it’s been my experience that most people never play tourist in their native land. I grew up in New York (but don’t hold that against me) and have never been to the Statue of Liberty. I didn’t see the Empire State Building until just a few years ago when visiting friends from Spain dragged me there with them. I never went to the top of the World Trade Center. It’s just that, when you live somewhere, you think you’ll get there someday, but without a sense of urgency (or a guest from out-of-town) someday never comes.

I’ve lived in the D.C. area for 28 years and that’s how long it took to get me to see the area’s famous cherry blossoms. I should have gone sooner. They are well worth the visit.

From there, I headed over the 42nd annual Smithsonian Kite Festival on the mall. The mall is not your typical mall. Instead, it’s a rectangular area with the Capitol at one end and the Lincoln Memorial at the other. The buildings of the Smithsonian make up the other two sides, and the White House sits among them as well. The Washington Memorial is sort of in the middle of the rectangle. It was great windy day when I visited, and there were thousands of kites of assorted shapes, sizes and heights billowed through the sky. I had to laugh at the image of the kites flying about the IRS Building, the Justice Department and the other bureaus. It is the one day a year you can tell the government to go fly a kite and mean it.

After that high-faluting fun, my day turned serious. I was lucky to be one of a select group of journalists who was invited to tour the new “Newseum” scheduled to open on April 11. The Newseum is a 250,000 square foot museum dedicated to news reporting that moved its headquarters from cramped quarters in Virginia to a brand new location on Pennsylvania Blvd. (Here’s some info.) The most moving item in the Newseum is the actual broadcast tower that once stood atop the World Trade Center and rode down 107 floors to the ground as the building collapsed. It is such a mass of twisted broken pieces and wires fused with molten metal that it takes your breath away when you come upon it. A somber reminder, as the Newseum wanted, of how important news is every day.

Yet what was the first thing I saw when a entered the cavernous building? A lite of broken glass in a railing. “Oh,” I thought I’d murmured to myself, “that’s a story.” Now I say “thought” I’d whispered the comment, but even whispering “that’s a story” in group of journalists is enough to get 15 of them to stop talking and quickly look at you then decide to follow you to the glass. It was a pretty humorous sight.

In fact, a lot of the glass looked like it had just been put in and, despite the preview, a lot more had to be put in. One person who’d joined the parade commented that the glass guys didn’t seem to have their act together. No, I explained, it’s probably that the glass guys are always among the last in the construction process and have to make up for everyone else being behind. You can’t assume it’s their fault, although the unique design of the railings make me think the glass guys have a lot to do in the next few days.

And so you can see how, for me, even on a crisp day in D.C. spent playing tourist, the story is that the glass is always the story.