“I’ll Build a Stairway to Paradise is like an exquisite string of pearls: the perfect balance of elegance, style, design, and beauty. This book is inspiring, spirited, and totally absorbing.” —Diane von Furstenberg The story of Bunny Mellon, the great landscape and interior designer, becomes a revelatory exploration of extreme wealth in the American century. Bunny Mellon, whose life was marked by astonishing good fortune as well as tragedy and scandal, remains a singular figure in the annals of American design. She had her finger on the pulse of American culture and possessed a rare, once-in-a-generation sense of style and grace. Her most celebrated work—the White House Rose Garden, designed during the presidency of John F. Kennedy—demonstrated how formal restraint and the sparing use of color could be deployed to maximal effect. Later, her understated landscape design for the Kennedy grave site at Arlington National Cemetery changed the face of American public memorials. Mellon was a famously private person, and many of her greatest achievements remained concealed from public view. Her rarely seen gardens and domestic interiors at eight different properties on three continents became legends and models. At Oak Spring Farm in Virginia, the bibliographic riches of her Garden Library were twinned with the expansive flowering gardens lying below the Edward Larrabee Barnes–designed building. At her home on Nantucket, she pruned back the landscape to reveal the elemental forms of nature. Mellon also ranked as one of the great art collectors of her era, encouraging her husband Paul to use his family’s vast wealth to acquire hundreds of nineteenth-century French paintings, many of which were donated to the National Gallery of Art. Her own tastes ranged from Mark Rothko to Richard Diebenkorn—in quantity. In I’ll Build a Stairway to Paradise, Mac Griswold—who knew Mellon personally—delves into her subject’s closely guarded personal archives to construct an unrivaled portrait of a woman as complex and multifaceted as the gardens and homes on which she left her mark. Mellon tested the anodyne 1950s model of woman-as-wife-as-mother by getting a divorce, admitting candidly to her first husband that she wanted a richer one. She imperiously traded old friends for new and ultimately used her reputation, her connections, and above all her money to help fund John Edwards’s short-lived presidential campaign. She led an American version of a royal court that, over the years, included Jackie Kennedy, Hubert de Givenchy, and I. M. Pei. How Mellon’s character, style, and taste developed together to produce her greatest accomplishments—private and public—is the real subject of this biography.

Start out by having a look at our video showing operation of The Stairway Valet: http: //www.testrong.com/StairwayValet/assets/video1.html The Stairway Valet is basically a dumbwaiter that carries things up-and-down the stairs for you. The Valet carriage is made of plywood and its tray folds up when not in use. It features a "clothes pole" with a hook at the top on which clothes can be hung and carried up the stairs. The Valet travels up and down the stairway wall guided and supported by an aluminum track secured to the wall. A cable connected to a winch/motor and guided by pulleys raises and lowers the carriage. Switches mounted on the park wall at both the top and bottom of the stairs operate the Valet. It is powered by a "Power Pack" which contains a 12 V battery and a charger to keep it fully charged.The Stairway Valet is primarily intended for use in a basement stairway where most of your "hauling" is done. Think about all the trips you make up and down those stairs carrying laundry baskets, ironed clothes on hangers, food and beverages for the basement refrigerator or freezer, cleaning supplies, tools and many other things. The Valet can be built in a very short time using "off the shelf" parts. Anyone would find the Stairway Valet useful but it's especially helpful for older folks who can still climb stairs okay, but who find it difficult to carry things up and down stairs. The Valet is not difficult to build and this ebook, along with the linked videos, makes it quite simple. In the following pages you will find complete step-by-step instructions, a parts list with pictures of all parts, suggestions on where to purchase them, cost estimates, and a wiring diagram. Total cost is under $400.A special web page is provided so that all URL links in the book can be easily located and clicked.

In its third edition, this massive reference work lists the final resting places of more than 14,000 people from a wide range of fields, including politics, the military, the arts, crime, sports and popular culture. Many entries are new to this edition. Each listing provides birth and death dates, a brief summary of the subject's claim to fame and their burial site location or as much as is known. Grave location within a cemetery is provided in many cases, as well as places of cremation and sites where ashes were scattered. Source information is provided.

The long-anticipated memoir of one of the greatest and most celebrated American singers of the twentieth century

Alice Peavley was a sales clerk in a book shop, until her rich uncle left her his estate in his will. She moves to the manor, meets her new tenants and neighbors, and adjusts to life in the eccentric town of Darbyfield with the help of her valet, a sardonic gnome named Macalley. Alice gets mixed up in misadventures involving a concert gone askew, a chaotic baking competition, and a mischievous squatter, but there is a more sinister plot afoot to steal her land and her fortune. Can Alice get to the bottom of the conspiracy and save Peavley Manor? Find out in this comedy of manners, mayhem and magic!

Everything the traveler needs to know to explore New York City, including pre-trip planning, suggested itineraries, transportation options, hotel and restaurant choices in all price ranges, and sightseeing, shopping, and entertainments suggestions. Maps.