Well, it isn’t often that I curl up for a night of TV watching, but I did so this past weekend because two different shows on two different channels featured people I know. The glass industry took center stage Friday night; it’s just a pity that both stories were stories about murder.

The first was a Dateline NBC report about Amber and Josh Hiberling of Tulsa, Okla. Seems newlywed Ms. Himberling was seven months pregnant with her first child when she and her husband had an argument that somehow lead to her husband’s fall from the 25th floor of an apartment building there. She contends her innocence. The jury did not believe her and she is now serving 25 years in prison.

A fair amount of the case centered around whether the windows in the University of Tulsa high-rise were defective. Enter Chicago window expert Mark Meshalum, who gave an interview to Dateline.

This clip is one of six segments that make up the full story. You can see the whole thing here. Please see what you think because, even after watching it, I don’t have a clear handle on what I think happened. Evidently, the jury was not nearly as conflicted as I was.

Also airing on Friday evening was a report on ABC’s 20/20 about the worse bosses in the country. And who won that distinction? According to 20/20, it was Fred “Spike” Knadler of Phoenix, who is in jail for the attempted murder of his wife Libby. It is an amazing story to watch the transformation of the former head of Arizona Shower Door (ASD) before your eyes. Anyone who ever knew or met Spike at trade shows, as I had, could not help but notice the dapper and meticulously dressed individual in the ASD booth. The person in the TV report bears little resemblance, in lots of ways, to the individual I had met.

What I really detested about the report, though, were the comments about Knadler’s sons and the snarky inference that somehow they were doing their father’s bidding. Hey, ABC, just because someone does not cooperate with you, it doesn’t give you the right to subtly try and malign them. The Knadler family and American Shower Door employees have really been through quite a lot of pain because of all this. Enough.

Sometimes glass is on TV just because. For example this past week, PBS premiered a special about the top “Ten Buildings that Changed America.” And which buildings are on there? Well, number-eight is that glass bird of flight, Dulles Airport. And if you read this blog occasionally, you know how I feel about Dulles.  Shows you what I know.

And as I write this on Sunday morning, Charles Osgood of CBS Sunday Morning  is on in the background talking with members of the architectural firm Roman and Williams about designing with glass without creating glass boxes.

Just a Few More Things

Thanks to everyone who called or wrote concerning ASHRAE’s ominous proposed addendum  to its Standard that would reduce the amount of glazing in building by 25 percent in response to my blog last week. Our industry has just under one month left to submit comments and we all need to do so. Please send them in with a copy to Tom Culp, who is spearheading the effort. I will have more on this very important topic next week as well.

I flew up to NYC last Sunday to visit my Mom on Mother’s Day. If you have ever taken the shuttle between DCA and LGA, you know it comes right in over Manhattan, then turns left and parks in Queens. I was fortunate to be on the side of the plane with the great view of the newly-constructed Freedom Tower and it gave me a lump in my throat to look at it. Try building that with brick or concrete.

Nothing, but nothing, outclasses glass.

Have a good week.