2010 Year End Blog
24 December 2010
“A Christmas Letter”
Year end blogs tend to be summations of what has gone before, and this one will be no different. Last year at this time I pointed out that my partner Joe Dusel and I had been at it for a while and that it had finally begun to bear fruit. At the end of 2009 we had almost a hundred thousand hits. This year we doubled that total and expect to double it again next year. We have also begun to receive some recognition in the many industries that are a part of the kitchen remodeling industry. In August the two of us were invited to Indianapolis, Indiana on an all-expenses paid trip sponsored by Delta. Later, I was named to the Blanco Design Council.
Near the end of next month I will be in Toronto, Canada at the invitation of Blanco. I have been invited there along with a short list of elite kitchen design bloggers and editors to attend Interior Design Show 2011 with the people at Blanco and to tour their SILGRANIT II operations in Toronto, Ontario, which explains the winter scenes posted by this San Diego boy! It sounds like a fascinating trip, and I am very much looking forward to what they have dubbed the “Eat, Learn, Love,” event. I will have more details on the trip as we get closer to it, and naturally, much to say afterwards.
In the coming year I can promise our readers a re-doubled effort in what I consider our “core values.” As cabinetmakers, we can and do work in every room of the house, but the bulk of our focus will be, as it has been, on cutting edge designs for kitchens and baths. Traditional kitchens and bathrooms will always be an important part of this blog site, but I have to say that I am much more interested in where these designs are going then in where they have been.
It is very much a journey’s end type of moment, a time to simply set one’s tools down and reflect, for a time, on what has been, and what is yet to come, knowing, as always, that it will require a great deal of work. Our next blog will appear on January 3, 2011, giving us a little time to spend with our families. In the meantime, because it is Christmas, and because it’s perennial favorite of mine, I would like to leave you with the same item I posted last year, a letter written by a Franciscan Friar on Christmas Eve, 1513:
I salute you.
I am your friend, and my love for you goes deep. There is nothing I can give you which you have not got. But there is much, very much, that, while I cannot give it, you can take.
No heaven can come to us unless our hearts find rest in it today. Take heaven! No peace lies in the future which is not hidden in this present little instant. Take peace! The gloom of the world is but a shadow. Behind it, yet within our reach, is joy. There is radiance and glory in darkness, could we but see. And to see, we have only to look. I beseech you to look!
Life is so generous a giver. But we, judging its gifts by their covering, cast them away as ugly or heavy or hard. Remove the covering, and you will find beneath it a living splendor, woven of love by wisdom, with power. Welcome it, grasp it, and you touch the angel’s hand that brings it to you. Everything we call a trial, a sorrow or a duty, believe me, that angel’s hand is there.
The gift is there and the wonder of an overshadowing presence. Your joys, too, be not content with them as joys. They, too, conceal diviner gifts. Life is so full of meaning and purpose, so full of beauty beneath its covering, that you will find earth but cloaks your heaven. Courage then to claim it; that is all! But courage you have, and the knowledge that we are pilgrims together, wending through unknown country home.
And so, at this time, I greet you, not quite as the world sends greetings, but with profound esteem and with the prayer that for you, now and forever, the day breaks and the shadows flee away.
Fra Giovanni
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2 Responses to “2010 Year End Blog”
December 24th, 2010 at 9:57 AM
Very nice Joseph! And a Merry Christmas to you and Christine!
December 29th, 2010 at 11:36 PM
Happiest of Holidays Joseph! I am grateful we have “met” and hope to see you at a future blogo event!! Cheryl