msl.......

ok, so yesterday at work, someone had the newest martha stewart living......which included a piece on the restored shaker village down the road......the shakers were a sect that believed that the world would end any day.....so they kept men and women apart and forbade actual birth in favor of the collective group adopting stray children...their style was one of simplicity with no concern for comfort.......curiously, this was the same theme of the cover-featured apartment....elegant without any concern for comfort......there didn't seem to be a place to sit down and relax in the 900 square foot high-rent apartment despite the obviously obsene money spent on the interiors....the settee was of the wooden frame/minimal padding sort......the kind of piece that one might have in a hall to use while taking off boots.....not the sort of sitable furniture that one would want to curl up on before a sweet fireplace....the chairs across looked to be the kind more suited to a dining table rather than an inviting entertaining/living area.....remember...thsi was a 900 square foot apartment.....so there was a living/dining room, a kitchen, a bathroom, and bedroom with a tiny study off of it......even the bedroom looked less than inviting....with yet another wooden chair rather than a well-upolstered club chair with a hassock.......and though the decor was such that thomas jefferson could have just left the building......i am certain that the only cushy, comfortable place to be the in the whole set-up was the actual bed........and since the headboard was.......wooden rather than padded.......the guy doesn't have enough pillows to really prop up nicely, assuming there is a hidden tlevision to watch whilst in bed.....and certainly no bedside table to hold even the occassional glass of wine or bottle of beer........oy.......and so this home may be best suited to someone who is never home.....not much of a place to come home to...at the end of a rough day......granted, martha's crew only wrote about it, and photographed it......they didn't design it.....the owner did that himself........a new form of masochism?.......perhaps martha was drawn to the austerity......fresh from prison......and undeserving of creature comforts just yet......