Ms. Elixabeth Grassers attends Shen Yun Performing Arts in Zurich. (The Epoch Times)

ZURICHMs. Elisabeth Grassers, an interior designer, attended the New York based Shen Yun Performing Arts International Companys third performance at the Kongresshaus in Zurich on March 23.

Im truly impressed with the show. I have seen today very beautiful artists. I was fascinated very much by the dancers. The women and men looked just like small dolls.

The musiceverything harmonized. It was a unique show. I will remember this show for a long time to come. This was a wonderful show.

Shen Yun features classical Chinese dance, folk and ethnic dance forms. Ms. Grassers was impressed with the ability of the dancers. It is difficult to understand that such dainty dancers can bear up for such long time. It is clear that they are very talented dancers. Im deeply impressed.

Everything was fascinating to Ms. Grassers.

I loved the beautiful costumes and I was fascinated by the colors and the pictures on the backdrop given my profession. I love colors and they came across perfectly.

And, the backdrop was perfect. When I saw the artists flying down and then stepping out of the backdropvery impressive.

Ms. Grassers also felt she had had a cultural experience. I have little experience with culture. Therefore I was very much taken by the cultural aspect of the show. The artists presented many stories from Chinas different dynasties.

New York-based Shen Yun Performing Arts has three touring companies that perform simultaneously around the world.

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Interior Decorator ‘I will remember Shen Yun for a long time to come’

23-03-2012 16:32 Alykhan Velji is a popular interior decorator, TV personality, and home-magazine columnist and he stopped by the CTV studio to show us the top design trends.

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Alykhan Velji with the top interior design trends - CTV Edmonton (March 23, 2012) - Video

22-03-2012 04:56 West Wind Interior Design 8 Nathan Ct Brunswick, ME 04011 (207) 725-7506 westwindinteriordesign.com West Wind Interiors has been established for 30 years. Our achievement is based upon serving the needs of the community, whether the job is little or big,residential or commercial. Furniture Brunswick ME, Interior Designer Brunswick ME, Interior Decoration Brunswick ME, Window Treatments Brunswick ME, Interior Decorator Brunswick ME

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West Wind Interior Design (207) 725-7506 - Video

Jean English sometimes used plants as drapes and built outdoor shower stalls open to the ocean.

The bold interior decorator had a brain aneurysm on Nov. 18. She died March 15 at the Hospice of Palm Beach County at age 88.

She was born Jean Easterday in Mansfield and graduated from Cleveland Heights-University Heights High School. She went to Rockford College and Ohio Wesleyan University.

In the early 1960s, she started what became known as the Jean English Studio at her house in Bainbridge. She decorated homes and businesses in Greater Cleveland and the Bahamas, including the clubhouse at Tanglewood Country Club and a restaurant at La Place.

She decorated model homes at Tanglewood Lake, Lake in the Woods, Landerwood Glen and elsewhere, scattering eyeglasses, fruit and open books for that lived-in look. She sometimes hung stenciled wallpaper and local artwork.

English eventually moved to Treasure Cay in the Bahamas and spent summers in Moreland Hills. She co-founded Valley Presbyterian Church and Fellowship Bible Church, both in Bainbridge. Fellowship will host a memorial service at 2 p.m. on Saturday, March 31.

She outlived her husband, Phil English. Survivors include eight children, 23 grandchildren and 11 great-grandchildren.

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Jean English decorated interiors from Cleveland to the Bahamas: news obituary

20-03-2012 14:48 interiorsrevisited.com Interior design Wilmington DE. Whether you want to reuse, restore, or redesign your living room, bathrooms, kitchen, or bedrooms we can help. Call us today at, 302-319-4603. Interiors Revisited 1201 North Orange Street, Suite 700 #757B Wilmington, DE 19801 302-319-4603

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Interior Design Wilmington DE 302-319-4603 - Video

20-03-2012 14:37 interiorsrevisited.com Interior decorator in Wilmington DE helping people use what they have to make their home look and feel better inside. Interiors Revisited 1201 North Orange Street, Suite 700 #757B Wilmington, DE 19801 302-319-4603

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Interior Decorator Wilmington Delaware 302-319-4603 - Video

20-03-2012 12:34 http://www.skdstudios.com Welcome to our Interior Design channel. SKD Studios is an award winning kitchen and bath interior design firm in Southern Maryland. We will be here each week to show you some great kitchen and bath design tips as well as some budget friendly interior design tips. We will feature REAL people, REAL projects and REAL budgets. We will also have some fun DIY projects and David's pick of the week (a fabulous find for under $100) We hope you join us each week and remember to subscribe to our channel so you won't ever miss an episode. We welcome you feedback and constructive criticism as we want you to feel like this is your channel. you won't find $300K remodels on this channel, just great design on sometimes steep budgets, but along the way we will have lots of fun! Thank you for watching Southern Maryland Kitchen, Bath and Interior Design on SKD TV. FRIEND US ON FACEBOOK - http://WWW.FACEBOOK.COM VISIT OUR WEBPAGE - http://WWW.SKDSTUDIOS.COM SUBSCRIBE TO OUR YOUTUBE CHANNEL - http://WWW.YOUTUBE/SDKSTUDIOS

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Interior Design: Kitchen, Bathroom Interior Design Video EPISODE 3 - Video

20-03-2012 14:42 interiorsrevisited.com Interior designer in Wilmington DE helping people reuse, restore, or redesign what they have to make their home look and feel better inside. Interiors Revisited 1201 North Orange Street, Suite 700 #757B Wilmington, DE 19801 302-319-4603

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Mandy Summers, owner of M. Gallery Interiors in Lexington, has been named the Greater Lexington Chamber of Commerces 2012 Small Business Person of the Year this month.

Summers operates an art gallery and interiors store in the Old Mill property in Lexington. A single mother of two, she also volunteers in the community and is helping design a downtown memorial.

Summers recently spoke to The State about the business award and her life:

Tell us about yourself and your work.

I am a certified interior decorator and I do consulting in peoples homes and businesses, as well as run a retail gallery where I sell decorative items for your home. I represent 20 different artists and exhibitors and carry everything from rugs and original artwork to architectural salvage pieces and jewelry. My goal as a decorator is to help my clients identify their individual style, and then assist them in selecting furnishings and accessories that will help them achieve the look and feel they desire. I have lived all over our beautiful country, as my father was a linguist in the Air Force, and have been blessed to have travelled extensively all over the world. I feel that my exposure to so many different cultures has broadened my horizons and given me a unique perspective on life. I am the proud mother of two wonderful children, and a precious rescue dog, so I am also very realistic about selecting both beautiful and practical items for your space.

Have you been surprised by the recognition youve received by winning the award?

I have been thrilled by all the positive feedback about the gallery, and incredibly flattered by the wonderful reactions to my designs and community projects. I cant tell you what it means to me when people come into the gallery and say, I just loved what you did at the American Cancer Society Dream Home or I just came from my neighbors house you worked on, when can you come to mine? There is no greater compliment than to have a client tell me they cant wait to tell their friends about the way I have transformed their home or office. The publicity from receiving (the award) has afforded me some wonderful opportunities not only have I been able to get the word out about my business; but, I have been able to share my personal story and hopefully encourage others to be passionate about giving back to the community.

You started your business in the midst of the Great Recession. What important things have you learned about yourself?

I am stubborn, determined and blessed! I believed in the concept of my gallery and fought very hard to get banks to believe in it too. I was turned down initially, but persevered and convinced First Community Bank to take a chance on me as a new business startup. The next hurdle was gutting and reworking my space. I refinished floors, painted walls, gutted countertops and replaced every light. My children, my family and my friends all worked tirelessly by my side to get the job done. It took us nearly a month and a half to do it all. It was then up to me to fill this wonderful new urban industrial gallery we had created. I began begging artists and exhibitors to let me represent them and believe in my concept of housing everyone under one roof. (I now have a waiting list.) I opened up shop and two weeks later the stock market plummeted. I kept praying, handing out business cards, attending every event I could get invited to and donated to every charity that came through my door. I volunteered to speak at schools, civic events and even retirement homes I told anyone and everyone about my gallery. I have never worked so hard or enjoyed what I do so much. All I can say is no guts, no glory! Believe in your dream, believe in yourself, work hard, give back and have faith in Gods plan for you. Im so glad I did!

Roddie Burris

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Decorator, art gallery owner honored

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- You know pop culture's come a long way when Ellen's coming-out party can be, primarily, a marketing event. But Wall Street still looks like it is far from seeing the earnings potential of gay people. Because on much of the Street, still, people can be openly gay only at risk to their careers.

This is not a pretty story.

In 1994, Mark Anderson, then 32, was hired as a trading assistant for Cantor Fitzgerald, though his background wasn't that of a typical trader. He'd played on the championship UCLA Volleyball Team for four years and majored in history, but never graduated. Since college, he'd been working as an interior decorator. Anderson was looking for a change when he got a call in his West Hollywood apartment from a childhood friend, now a Cantor trader. Anderson was urged to apply for a trading assistant job and after two interviews got the gig. The payoff was potentially huge; million-dollar-a-year traders are not uncommon at Cantor. "If you're not making $500,000 a year, you're fired," says Anderson. "I thought that if I could just make it through the training, I was in." But Anderson didn't take into account the hazing that he'd have to endure. On his second day of work, a lewd picture was posted on the office bulletin board. According to a lawsuit filed with the California Superior Court on March 4, 1996, the photo depicted "a man performing oral sex on another man in front of him while simultaneously being the subject of anal intercourse from another man behind him. [Anderson]'s photograph was superimposed on the man in the middle." Underneath the picture was scrawled a note explaining that Anderson would provide "good service to our bisexual clients." His picture, he says, had been purloined from his new Cantor Fitzgerald ID card. "I tried to rip it down and I was told that if I ripped it down, I was fired," says Anderson. "Those rules were understood there." About three weeks later, while chowing down on a BLT, Anderson sensed a foreign object in his sandwich. He peeled apart the slices of sourdough bread to discover "a pink rubber vagina with hairs on it," he says.

"I don't know if they were pubic hairs or armpit hairs on it, but I threw the whole thing on the ground."

Anderson says that the crowd around him -- including the partners, traders, senior sales staff and Senior Vice President William Rice, head of sales trainees -- all broke out into laughter, and one muttered, "This might be the only time this guy eats pussy." But Anderson stuck through it all. He says he suffered through a phony resume posted in the lunchroom citing his earlier work as "a fluff guy" for the porn producer of Diesel Dicks; the recommended tonsillectomy to make room for more "leading men"; his job as a "boy Friday" for a surfboard tycoon "polishing sticks."

Anderson says he even suffered through the job after a senior partner urinated on him through the cracks of a closed toilet stall.

"Actually, the worst of it was all the spitballs and snot balls they'd shoot at me all day," he says. "It got to a point where my shirt was soaking wet, but if I got up and complained, I'd be fired." Anderson thought his only hope for deliverance was passing his Series 7 brokerage test in the fall of 1994, so he could become a full-fledged member of the trading tribe. "I thought, 'I'll get through this B.S. from these assholes, and then I'll be making the money,'" he says. "I'll suffer for a year and then move on." But as he was preparing for his test, Anderson says that on slow trading days, Rice and other partners would stand in front of him and bet thousands that Anderson would fail. Nonetheless, in December 1994, he passed. But he says the hazing continued unabated. In May of the following year he got a reprieve when he was sent to New York for some training in over-the-counter trading (the Los Angeles office only dealt with listed trades). "The New York office had a different culture," says Anderson. "It was still sick, but not quite so depraved." Anderson was put up in a spacious suite in the Hotel Pennsylvania across from Madison Square Garden. But he found that partners at Cantor's One World Trade Center office on the 104th floor had plans for his hotel room. "In the office one day, a partner introduced me to three girls from Pitt," says Anderson. "He said they were bisexual and they would be staying with me." Anderson says that various partners wined and dined the girls for the next week, taking them to New York hot spots like Tavern on the Green and having sex with them in his hotel room. During this stay, Anderson says he got a call from Rice's assistant. "She said she needed my car keys because they were repainting the garage in our office building," says Anderson. Further, he says, he was asked to stay in New York for an extra week and to meet the office at the big, biennial sales meeting of Cantor Fitzgerald in Dallas.

What followed was truly amazing, even by Cantor standards, and it was all captured on videotape.

As graphically described in an article in Los Angeles magazine, the homemade video shows Rice and senior partner Shawn Blakeslee wearing paper bags over their heads with crudely drawn cartoon faces of a black man with curly hair. "We be doin' dis and shit!" Rice says, mugging for the camera in the Cantor Fitzgerald garage. In the next shot, Rice and Blakeslee are seen driving out of garage in Anderson's silver 1978 Alfa Romeo. The next scene also takes place in the Cantor garage, where senior partner Bill Malcolm is wearing the paper "blackface" and trader Jonathan Blum is in a paper bag styled as the caricature of an Asian face. Then they pan to Anderson's car, which has received a factory paint job -- except that the car is now black and white, like a police cruiser. On the body of the car are bold antigay statements like "Poo Stabber," "Rump Ranger," "Fudge Packed Here" and "1-800 Butt Boy." As the video fades to black, Rice is seen mocking the Hispanic garage attendant who was charged with guarding Anderson's car. At the Dallas sales meeting, with virtually the entire worldwide sales staff and senior management in attendance, Los Angeles says "the tape was introduced as a new training video for desperate young brokers who could obtain business by soliciting the homosexual community of Los Angeles." As the entire room broke out in laughter, Anderson in his assigned seat was blown away.

"They made hundreds of copies of that tape," he says. "And passed them out to everyone, other traders, clients. You know how Wall Street is, everyone's seen this thing."

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'Coming Out' on Wall Street