All Things Minimal

Long after Hope had grown up, married and had her own daughters, she kept her vintage Barbie Doll collection hidden away. While Barbie’s inventor believed that little girls just wanted to be big girls, Hope knew that among the numerous women who kept their Barbies long into their adulthood, the big girls really wanted to retain a little bit of their childhood too.

Then one day Hope read about a photographer who had created a series of photographs of Nigerian wedding customs. The man and his wife had used Barbie dolls as their models. They scoured the internet for months looking for everything for the photo shoot. From doll furniture to fabrics for the clothes to items for the scenery and even the Barbie doll models, all had been carefully acquired for the photo shoot.

The resulting collection of photos depicted scenes from a Nigerian wedding, which was indeed a complicated affair. There were many detailed, elaborate scenes of the families meeting and greeting, meals being shared, and even of the groom and his family laying on the ground before the bride’s parents as part of their tradition.

Soon after reading about it on Facebook, Hope was inspired to get out her own Barbie Doll collection. She envisioned creating a similar project, except not the Nigerian wedding. Hers would be a timeline sort of project with scenes from the decades when her Barbie Dolls were manufactured. While the Nigerian wedding was a single project, hers would be on a much bigger scale covering several decades along with a variety of scenes from each.

As is usually the case with such a large project, Hope was soon trying to figure out how and where she would create, store and setup her photography projects. This is precisely the situation where a Sherman Pole Building would come in handy. A Sherman Pole Building could fill all of Hope’s requirements and soon she too could be posting her photography projects on Facebook.

The Way to Build a Boat

It was on a trip to England that Grayson became interested in something called “punting.” Back home in Minnesota, his friends had a great time laughing at the idea of a punt being something that doesn’t relate to football.  In England he had learned that a punt was a boat.  Specifically, it is a small flat-bottomed boat with neither a bow nor a stern and without a keel, an oar or a motor.  Technically it did have a back and a front but one was not distinguishable from the other.

The punt as a concept was difficult for most people.  Could you call it a boat if it didn’t have the critical components of other boats?  And how do you ever move it along if there is no motor and no oar? Grayson’s friends joked that a punt must be the type of boat that is powered by a swimmer or several swimmers pushing it along.  Others suggested that a punt must be a boat that you kick, which was a completely ridiculous idea but the boys had fun with it none the less.

In reality the punt is pushed along shallow waterways with a pole.  In England punting is a popular leisure activity that is mainly done on shallow rivers. Grayson had first learned of the concept on a visit to Shakespeare’s home at Stratford-on-Avon.  Grayson had a tendency to think outside the box anyway and as such was fascinated with the idea of these punts that had been around since the 1860s.  He was even more impressed to learn that college students at Cambridge participated in punting and that there is the Cambridge University Punting Society.

 It wasn’t long before Grayson had convinced his best friends that maybe they would all like to build a punt or two for themselves.  Grayson’s dad being a practical type suggested that they might instead wish to build a sailboat.  Why a sailboat?  Well, because it was something you could actually use. And there as they checked into the possibilities for building a sailboat was the suggestion that a good boat design for a beginner would be, “The Elegant Punt.”

As Grayson’s mother wisely pointed out, the first step to building a sailboat or a punt, elegant or shabby, was to acquire the space that would be an appropriate storage facility and also a weatherproof place to build it.  All of this meant they had to start with a call to Sherman Pole Buildings.

A Place to Party On

Everybody knows that it takes a village to accomplish just about anything. This was Lea’s thought one evening at her Book Club meeting. The Book Club had become Lea’s village, which is why she wanted to bring her latest discovery to the book club members. While visiting relatives, Lea had happened on to the latest fitness craze – Zumba. Everyone was talking about this new way to workout because it wasn’t just a workout, it was a party. Given a choice between attending a party and working out, most people would not choose to workout.

Well, there was Sylvia who could still fit in to her high school prom dress. And every so often she would wear it to a party just to prove her point. No one had the nerve to tell her that not everything that fits should be worn. Additionally, Sylvia’s gift for organization, time management and prioritization didn’t always go over very well, considering the chaos that takes over most people’s lives. Most of the members had trouble motivating themselves to drive to some place to workout on a circuit or a treadmill or some other piece of equipment. Even if they could find the time, boredom with the routine left fitness as a mostly unaccomplished chore.

But now there was Zumba, which was fitness plus partying. The Zumba organization likens it to Post-it notes that happened accidentally while someone was testing adhesive properties. Zumba came about when a fitness instructor in Columbia went to class without his prescribed music and instead improvised with his own music – on tapes in his backpack of all places. And soon enough history was in the making.

As Lea saw it, the problem with Zumba was that in order to create a party atmosphere you need a lot of people. But once you crowd too many people in your basement, there’s no room to move, and pretty soon everyone is sitting down with the chips and dips, never to move a muscle. This is how the ladies of the book club arrived at the thinking that Lea’s idea of a dedicated space for their Zumba party was absolutely brilliant. They already knew that the way to go for such a space would be a Sherman Pole Building that could be customized to suit their needs. It would have a dance floor, a high powered audio system that would pump the music from their iPod playlists and all in all, a good time would be in store for all.