When I was a young girl, I used to love riding my bicycle the 2½ miles over to my paternal grandmother’s house. Nana, as we called her, lived in the oldest house in town, which she and my grandfather had bought and painstakingly restored and resurrected into a beautiful farmhouse. Its expansive acreage had been subdivided long before and it was a bit out of place in a suburban Long Island town, but it was beautiful. Nana loved all things 100-or-more years old and spent her weekends at garage and estate sales so she could furnish the house in exquisite antiques of many eras. I can still remember spending hours looking at a particular statue or painting and trying to imagine their histories.

 Nana had everything in the house, but my favorite spot was a hidden corner in the back of the long living room. In that little corner sat a very comfortable chair, a side table, good light and one of the first color TVs around.

 But the best part of that corner was what sat on the floor next to the comfy chair–piles and piles and piles of magazines. Now my grandmother probably only subscribed to 8-9 titles, but to me, they formed a treasure trove of gifts that could transport you to faraway worlds. She read mostly magazines about antiques and travel (and, of course, the TV Guide) but I loved going through them just the same because each was its own adventure for me.

 You can understand why I still love magazines. So much so that my postman once rang my doorbell, just so, he said, could meet the person that got more magazines than anybody he’d ever seen in his 35-year career. Guilty. I read a lot. I love them. Opening a new magazine still gives me that same thrill I got sitting in my Grandma’s lounger all those years ago.

 Fast forward to the present and  I read a double ton of them, half for pleasure and half for business. So for today, I’d like to give some articles I’ve clipped (electronically of course) for my recent reading in the hopes you will find them as interesting as I did:

ENR did an excellent piece on the construction worker of the future. For contract glaziers, it’s a telling portrait of what their employees of the future will look like:
http://enr.construction.com/people/interviews/2011/0223-ChuckUnderwood-1.asp

This week, TIME magazine tackled the issue of retrofitting large buildings to increase energy-efficiency. While this is a story that our industry has been discussing for quite some time, the fact that TIME is highlighting it means it’s going mainstream. See what you think:

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2063860,00.html

The May/June issue of Departures Magazine also had an interesting article about the campaign to save glass houses, literally, the campaign to save the Phillip Johnson landmark glass houses that no one seems to want anymore. (I do not subscribe to Departures Magazine. Any credit card company that sends you a magazine can’t be all bad, right? Anyway, it’s not online yet but if you get Departures please watch for it as it’s not online yet.)

Last food-for-thought item from the Seattle Intelligencer (I know, technically a newspaper, but bear with me). It talks about background and some of the results of the Skywalk above the Grand Canyon:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2014859236_skywalk24.html

 My grandmother loved sharing the thought provoking stories in her magazines and I like doing that too. And just like the articles above, I hope each issue of USGlass brings you news, information you need and didn’t know and helps you see the glass industry in full light.