Opening on Broadway

Our new space is more spacious than expected.  The accoustics are better than in the old building, it seems, so noise doesn’t bounce off the walls and low ceilings at us.  I have a window and a view of olive trees (though those of course border a parking lot, instead of a Mallorcan hillside).  There’s an inner courtyard with café tables which might be pleasant at certain times of day and year—if only I can remember how to get there!  We are continually lost.  There is a maze of individual conference rooms, named inexplicably for flowers.

Our IT specialist, accordingly, mentioned that he’s thinking of naming our various printers for ships.  I said “oh, like the Titanic?  The Argo?  The Beagle?”  Being an IT specialist, he instead was thinking of Aft, Starboard, etc.

I need more plants, and either photos or collages.  But my little laughing stone Buddha is happily in place off to the right of my computer, and the new iced tea pitcher in one of six fridges, with yume tea (strawberries and rose buds) to refresh me late afternoon.

And our director has rescued the old wooden cabinet of type and printing ornaments from the original press building, and gave it a good polish (if not with beeswax); and unearthed some prehistoric vases from the Aegean to set on it, willed to the Press some years ago by a long-time employee who had traveled much in Turkey and the Middle East with her husband, doing things archaeological.  That’s a nice touch, serving to root us.

The commute is longer by three times, but I’ve found a way to wend our way through mostly shady neighborhoods, along the Stanford golf course, through quiet Atherton, up just one pleasant block of El Camino, and thence up a half residential street to Broadway—avoiding all freeways.

So on we go.

image:  Deia olive trees, WiDi