People who live in glass houses

My mom sent me an article in August from The Wall Street Journal. Attached to the article was a note she wrote on the back of a raffle ticket, "I thought you'd like this article about the poor people with glass walls + great views + their problems with too much sun! xxoo"

I love it when my mom is sarcastic. And I smiled because if there is one thing my mom likes to do, it's cut out an article and send it to me. She always cuts out the name and date of the newspaper and staples that little rectangle of information to the top of the page. I tried to read this article with an open mind. I wanted to read without scorn or derision but a few minutes in, I didn't care anymore and arched my eyebrows.

People Who Live in Glass Houses: It's Not All Sunshine; Faded Furniture, Nosy Neighbors and Baking Heat Among Gripes proclaimed the headline. A photo of a young woman sitting on a sectional sofa. A wall of windows through which the Hudson River twinkles. She stares, unsmiling, at her laptop screen. It's a sob story!

The sun faded Sara Antani's sofas and made it tough to read her laptop until she installed shades in her Manhattan high-rise.

Poor Sara Antani paid 1.5 million dollars for a glass-walled condo and $20,000 for a sofa and then suffered the indignity of having to wear sunglasses INSIDE. Psst, Sara Antani? That is, like, the epitome of cool.

So she's pissed at having to wear sunglasses in her home, the same home that she might have noticed was lined with glass when she first looked at it. That much glass calls for blinds or roman shades or curtains. Unless you're not into that in which case I'd think you'd understand both the properties of glass and the consequences of such properties. (Flashing your neighbors, fading your furniture, shading your eyes)

Listen, newspaper editor who I'm mad at right now, I know The Wall Street Journal isn't exactly Streetvibes but a millionaire realizing she needs curtains isn't exactly oppressive or newsworthy either. By paragraph three, Sara Antani, who is a 23-year-old grad student, gives in and buys $12,000 motorized shades. Aren't grad students supposed to be donating plasma or taking out crippling loans to get by? Damn!

The article left Sara Antani operating her shades over on the west side and made some more general points about heat transfer and energy costs and how people don't consider these things when going for glass. I hoped, when I read the words "energy costs" that the article would go green and become somehow environmentally aware and not just a really lame human interest story for rich people. I wondered if I would understand such things one day when I eventually bought a piece of new furniture.

Now I do own some new furniture AND I've been too lazy to put up blinds in my living room. And every day the morning and early afternoon sun blasts my red ottoman through two windows. I sit on the couch and type and read and I watch the triangles of light shift across the ottoman and I think about Sara Antani. I still don't feel sorry for her.