Is it all about the gadgets?

We’ve just returned from the enormous semi-annual World Market where manufacturers from all over the world show their newest designs in furniture, floor coverings, lighting and home décor accessories.  We attend this trade show once a year in hopes of finding new answers to the age-old question:  “We need more stuff.”

Interestingly, on a visit to a showroom packed high and deep with some very unappealing sofas and recliners of a type that once again put us in mind of Jabba the Hut, we heard an answer to a question no one’s ever asked.  As we sank in and started fiddling with the on-board cup holders, reading lights, power leg rests, vibrators and remote control storage compartments, the self-omniscient salesman announced with the authority that comes naturally to those who peddle such things, “It’s all about the gadgets.”

Can it be?  Have we completely misunderstood what drives our customers to furnish their homes as they do?  Is it really all about the gadgets?  We’d thought for many years that it was all about design, particularly good design, and about innovative use of sustainable materials and about performance for families over a long lifetime. 

Have the giants of industrial and interior design had it all wrong?  We prefer to think that disciplined design processes make a difference, that attention to ergonomics, to quality construction and to sustaining our natural environment are things that matter.

We’re a little stubborn, so we’ll go on thinking what we prefer to think and doing our best to find and bring to our customers the kind of home furnishings they can be proud of and that their children and grandchildren might one day fight over. 

In truth, thank God, there was a good representation of new things of quality at the show as well. You’ll soon see some of them at Port Madison Home.

Let justice roll down...

I've just returned from a ceremony I'd never have expected until very recently to witness firsthand and that I don't expect I'll ever witness again, the swearing in of a Washington State Supreme Court Justice, in this case my friend and fellow Bainbridge Islander Charlie Wiggins, pictured here.

Must I from now on address him as Justice Wiggins?  I doubt it.  Charlie is a humble and approachable man of the highest integrity.  The theme of his career is expressed in the book of Amos:  "Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever flowing stream."

This was a gratifying experience because what I heard were the voices of real people with real lives, real families and genuine passions -- people who have achieved some great things and who are now at the pinnacle of their careers in an important and respected profession.  I came away feeling that our courts are to a very high degree in good hands, that they're vital to the protection of our liberty and our cherished unalienable rights as Americans and members of the human race.

Is justice delivered perfectly?  Not always, and I feel certain the Judges and Justices I met today in Olympia would acknowledge that as fact.  Charlie today eloquently affirmed his desire as an attorney and now as a Supreme Court Justice to bring to his work the effort he's made throughout his career to restore balance to relationships that have gotten out of sync.  I couldn't be more proud to call him my friend.  All of Kitsap County and of the State of Washington can likewise be proud of their decision to invest him with this responsibility.

John Hays