Editor’s note: Joe Becker continues his progress on stone-restoration work at the St. Joseph Cathedral in Sioux Falls, S.D.
While presenting stone slabs to the owner and architect during the January 2009 trip, Agostino Pocai, owner of Italmarble Pocai Srl,, talked quite extensively with me about the marble floor – in particular about the many marble “circles” that occurred in the architect Duncan Stroik’s plans for the St. Joseph Cathedral renovation.
With any large stone project, there should be visits to the quarry and/or fabrication facilities.
Besides the many obvious reasons for reviewing stone colors, it also gets the project team together without many of the distractions that would occur at the office. Relationships between general contractor and stone contractor are further solidified to work together as a team to “sell their plan” to the owner and architect.
All good things have a start somewhere or someplace, and I’d venture that they often start by accident or coincidence.
I ‘m a big Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup® guy. Maybe their first peanut butter cup was carefully designed in a laboratory, but I back the theory (for us old timers who watched television 20 years ago) that two people collided– one eating a chocolate bar and one carrying a jar of peanut butter.
The History
Minnesota is often called a “fly-over” state, but the Minneapolis/St. Paul area comprises the country’s 16th largest urban area, even though the two cities are separate and completely different. I suppose the fly-over thing also comes from the stigma that it’s a nice place to visit, with many friendly people of German and Norwegian decent, but too cold to live there (and the Vikings can never win the big game).
The word “blogging” still has a foreign meaning to me. I really don’t read peoples blogs, as I don’t spend a lot of time behind a computer screen – and blogging to me is reading updated facts on a subject peppered with a lot of opinions.