first order goods

Brownie Wise

Sarah Couto — Tue, 10 May 2011 22:07:17 +0000

She was the first woman on the cover of Business Week. Perfectly irrelevant.

Brownie Wise was the brain behind the tupperware party. There was a lot of tupperware in those events, but fun exercises like “write an honest advert to sell your husband”.

She became the public face of the company. Behind the curtains she was a huge force in shaping the tupperware’s culture. So it was fun to learn that when a power struggle with Tupper no less, forced her out, a concerted effort was made to erase her out of history. But this too is irrelevant.

Where advertising fails, much can be taken from her model – contact, warmth, joy and opportunity.

Party Pieces

Sarah Couto — Wed, 04 May 2011 15:58:56 +0000

The world was transfixed by the luminous bride and her coquettish bridesmaid, but Mr. Middleton must have had someone else in mind during the celebrations, his wife, Carole.

British snobbery has kept her firmly in place. It is worth taking a moment though, to see her from the eyes of her loving husband. Not only did Carole Middleton start a multi-million business, Party Pieces, her beauty is such that her daughter actually married a prince.

The Middletons, not the newly minted Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, are the strongest advertisement for marriage and enterprising projects of the sort. They achieved the British Dream.

Wit and Wisdom

Sarah Couto — Wed, 04 May 2011 15:51:03 +0000

“I’ve often thought that Europe is an allegory for the ages of man. You’re born Italian: they’re relentlessly infantile and mother-obsessed. In childhood you’re English: chronically shy, tongue-tied, cliquey and only happy kicking balls, pulling the legs off things, or sending someone to Coventry. Teenagers are French: pretentiously philosophical, embarrassingly vain, ridiculously romantic and insincere. During middle age, we become either Swiss or Irish. Old age is German: ponderous, pompous and pedantic. And finally we regress into being Belgian, with no idea who we are at all.”

A.A. Gill for The Spectator

Tartans of the Scottish Clans, 1906

Sarah Couto — Sun, 24 Apr 2011 22:39:44 +0000

Sarah Couto — Sun, 24 Apr 2011 14:10:48 +0000

“Form follows failure”

Henry Petroski

Thanks Pedro

Sarah Couto — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 10:46:31 +0000

Colors of Nuremberg

Sarah Couto — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 09:24:01 +0000

Faber-Castell

Stabilo

Staedtler

‘Tis enough that you, our child, should live

Sarah Couto — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 14:00:50 +0000

Pride

Sarah Couto — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 12:48:41 +0000

The Harvard Business Review finally invited an expert to give a lesson on management, Ricky Gervais. The creator of The Office, talks about character v. reputation, popularity v. respect, work v. awards.

Zany

Sarah Couto — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 15:01:07 +0000

Zadie Smith is a vision. Hers is a beauty above race, she is like an artist’s rendition of our ancestral mother. I look for her in men and women. She also has a deeply sexy voice. But how troubling to hear her speak such cowardly nonsense.

BBC Radio 4 gave the writer a full 5 minutes and 48 seconds to vent about cuts in the public funding of libraries. ”If education matters to you, they ask and if libraries matter to you, why wouldn’t you be willing to pay for them if you value them”. Members of cabinet, educated at Eton don’t understand what it’s like not to have money.

Given the UK’s amount of debt, they must be learning fast what it’s like not to have money.

“Community is partnership between government and the people” she explains matter-of-factly, as if there were no alternatives. Most people don’t have the time or money to build public libraries. Zadie Smith is not most people.

Her beauty, reputation and scholarly authority, should be quite enough to find a way to give back to “the community”. Perhaps she could name her venture after her Jamaican mother, whom she credits for her bookishness, The Yvonne Bailey Public Library.