brassrat-bay-area and harvard-bay-area groups on Facebook

Massachusetts Institute of Technology group for the Bay Area on Facebook:

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=22166346537

harvard-bay-area on Facebook:

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=21661091938

Best,
Perry
perry.gregg@post.harvard.edu

California Contractor Specializes in Artificial Lawns by grassestimate.com California artificial installation company

California Contractor Specializes in Artificial Lawns by
grassestimate.com California artificial installation company

Most people still cringe when someone mentions Astroturf, the plastic
grass from the 1970s.

Wade Petrini, however, winces when he sees vast housing developments
with big lawns of real grass.

Ask him about Astroturf, and he smiles.

"Astroturf was the mother concept," he said. "There were water
restrictions then, and they saw the need for a lawn substitute that
didn't need water."

Astroturf had largely commercial applications, such as in sports
stadiums. At the time, homeowners turned up their noses at the idea of
a fake-looking "lawn."

But artificial lawns have changed, said Petrini, a landscape
contractor and owner of Artificial Lawns Direct of Scotts Valley
(Calif.), which installs Pregra artificial grass.

Because of technological advances, an artificial lawn can be so
real-looking that it fools the casual observer, Petrini said.

Now made of mostly recycled polyethylene — tested and found "safe" by
the Synthetic Turf Council — it has other advantages, too, he said.

An artificial lawn saves on water, lawn-mower gas, insecticides and
weed killers, as well as discouraging gophers and being kid friendly
and durable enough to be used in dog runs, he said.

Grass stains become a thing of the past, as well, he said.

Petrini said increased demand has knocked down the cost.

"Five years ago, we charged about $13 a square foot," he said. "I've
become a factory-direct dealer, and now I charge $7 to $7.50 a square
foot."

He said business has quadrupled in the past two years, a jump he
attributes to the cut in water use and the product's low maintenance
level.

Typically, he said, his crew will replace a damaged lawn with
artificial grass and install a drip watering system for remaining
plantings in a yard. In a recent project, a garden's water demand
dropped from 2,000 gallons a month to 85, he said.

by grassestimate.com California artificial installation company

harvard-bay-area on Facebook

http://www.facebook.com/groups/edit.php?customize&gid=21661091938

Perry

Re[ubiety of black as the new white]: Could you use a Perry?

Bay Area corporate America is a wilderness to conquer for African
Americans. Several months ago I attended a Bay Area Harvard Black
Alumni holiday party. 100s strong, I found myself in pain at the
event. Individually many attendees had shared in confidence their
stories. More than one Harvard Business School black had prior to
that evening asked me how to get hired at Google. Many other creeds
and ethnicities ask me the same question. Anecdotally in my mind I've
tabulated the results.

If you are a white woman you said "their process sucks." "I don't
understand it." 13 months later you get a call back and an offer.
Maybe you accept. Maybe you do not. The blacks don't get call backs.
By all accounts Google's hiring process is obnoxious. Undoubtedly one
day they will end up with the image of Microsoft where no one cool
ever wants to work there as a first choice. That said, the Harvard
Business School blacks don't seem to have the same chances on the
non-engineering side of Google as their white and Asian brethren.

So here I am many years later off campus at this party. The talent
level in the room is humbling. You think Obama is unique. Think
again. I can stand in a room full of Obamas. It hurts me to see them
not get their fair chance at private firms. Even when they do get
jobs in Bay Area companies it is frequently one rung down and less
than their European counterparts. Promotions are impossible to come
by.

My secret to share with the Bay Area is 'hey you struggling
corporations, wake up!" Black is the new white. There is a sea of
rock star talented black applicants, hungry. If you mentor them to
rise in your ranks they will make you stronger and more profitable
than you've ever been before. When you go to negotiate deals, for
various reasons it just might become fashionable to endue black at all
tiers of your enterprise.

Perry
perry.gregg@post.harvard.edu

P.S. Not to be a Google kvetch, I picked them for this example because
they are hip and bright enough with open minded leaders that get it.
One founder is famous for a question he used to ask in interviews,
'leave the room, take five minutes, come back and tell me something
you think I have never thought of.' There are some companies in the
Bay Area where blacks would be punished if the flag was raised that
there was a problem.

* * *

Re: Could you use a Perry?

My talents are on the senior tech management side, internet
development, commercial software all forms, portals, hardware, IT, et
al. I've managed engineers, engagements and project teams in China,
Canada, Israel, Australia, Europe, India, Pakistan, South America, the
US and former Soviet block countries. It needs to be OK with the
hiring company that I pursue ushow2, Inc. as a side hobby.

Have a current full-time gig, looking to make a change for the right
opportunity. If you act now, you get a Perry bonus of a few contacts
around the world, sales, Board and public speaking chops. Would it be
useful to you to have me join your team? I've spent the past 5 years
in a downsizing environment. I'd like to join a story with an upside.
Travel is fine. Would you care to see how far I can carry the ball
with a chance with the right team? Best,

Perry Gregg
cell: (510) 684-4152
email: perry.gregg@post.harvard.edu

P.S. Bio at http://ushow2.com 'more about us', and
http://perrygregg.com for non-profit activities.

Green market geography report

http://www.zimancenter.com/WorkingPapers/2008-19.pdf

Perry

Thank you h-b-a for this WOMAN, Inc. Board member addition!

It was finalized last night. A fantastic (cum laude Harvard grad)
executive is taking over as President of the WOMAN, Inc. Board of
Directors next month. She came recommended with 15 years non-profit
Board experience from our network when we made our second plea in May
for potential Board members. We already have an amazing ED and an off
the charts talented set of women Board members. This is an exciting
addition. Stay tuned.

Keep sharing on the h-b-a private network of students, grads &
faculty. If you have a success story, let our members know.

Perry Gregg
Board of Directors
WOMAN, Inc.

http://womaninc.org

Be an Obama election honor besserwisser (208 cited issues from 2004)

Areas of the country where shenanigans happened in the past will be
hot spots of pusillanimous injustice in November 2008. Get the word
out. Let the invading meme of one person one vote descend from heaven
to every tellurian orifice. Pray every night that our Republican
sisters and brothers will join us.

http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/10432334/was_the_2004_election_stolen

Perry
perry.gregg@post.harvard.edu

My Dad's U.S. Naval Academy first black midshipmen story

Wesley Brown in 1949 became the first black person to earn a degree
from the U.S. Naval Academy. The first black to try was James Conyers
entering the Academy in 1872. My Dad who was the fourth black
graduate from the Naval Academy knew Wesley. Dad told our family
utile stories of what happened, of how Wesley made it. What was
different Wesley's year was Jimmy Carter (our ex-President) was
enrolled.

Jimmy's fellow white midshipmen shared in this book what happened.

http://www.amazon.com/Breaking-Color-Barrier-Academys-Midshipmen/dp/0814740138

There was a conspiracy of a few midshipmen at the time to trump up
minor rules infractions against Wesley. They had agreed they would
continue to do so until he was kicked out. Jimmy Carter on his own
told this group he would turn them in if they continued to do this.
His fellow midshipmen as they got older, way after Carter was
President, shared that this was the event that made Wesley's case
different. One person.

Perry
perry.gregg@post.harvard.edu

P.S. Dad's bio http://www.thehistorymakers.com/biography/biography.asp?bioindex=1549&category=ScienceMakers
. He graduated with distinction at the top of his Naval Academy
class.

MIT freshman Ben Gulak invents the electric unicycle while wait listed

Class of 2012. Featured in Hearst Corporation's Popular Mechanics
magazine. Here is the young man's web site.

http://www.the-uno-tomorrows-transportation.com/electric-bike-design/design.php

PG

Fwd: Book About the "Elaine Riot"

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: David Evans <...evans@fas.harvard.edu>
Date: Tue, Jul 1, 2008 at 8:13 PM
Subject: Book About the "Elaine Riot"
To: perry.gregg@post.harvard.edu

Perry,

I've just finished On the Laps of Gods by Robert Whitaker (Crown
Publishers), the most detailed account of the "Elaine Riot" in 1919.
There are photographs and many of the last names will be familiar to
all persons knowledgeable of Phillips County, Arkansas. All black
Phillips Countians (such as I) with a modicum of religious upbringing,
will want to pray after reading what our ancestors endured in the face
of a brutal massacre.

My mother was a little girl and lived within three miles of the
epicenter of the massacre which began at Hoop Spur, AR (between Wabash
and Elaine). Even so, neither she, her siblings nor our grandmother
ever wanted to discuss it in any detail. I now understand better why
they were reluctant--after reading the book. Some of the perpetrators
and/or their kinfolk were still alive and powerful in Phillips County
during my childhood. In fact, I used to caddy for one of the men
whose testimony helped convict the twelve men, but I had no way of
knowing his evil history. Moreover, one of the powerful men who
supported the brutality was Gerard B. Lambert (a 1908 Princeton
graduate) from St. Louis who founded Lambrook, Arkansas west of
Elaine. His father founded Lambert Pharmaceuticals and invented
Listerine in St. Louis.

The book also offers detail biographic coverage of Scipio Africanus
Jones, one of he most remarkable attorneys ever to enter a courtroom.
And to think, he rose from birth into slavery in Arkansas to become a
civil rights lawyer that ranks along side Thurgood Marshall, et al.
He shepherded the twelve black men who were sentenced to death in the
kangaroo trials in Helena all the way to the U. S. Supreme Court where
Mr. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. wrote the majority opinion
(Moore vs. Dempsey, 1923) invoking the 14th Amendment to the U. S.
Constitution affirming that they were convicted in kangaroo trials and
denied due process of law. This decision eventually saved their lives
and gained their freedom.

Here are links to some of the book reviews:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/22/books/review/Jennings-t.html?_r=1&ref=books&oref=slogin

http://www.randomhouse.ca/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780307339829

http://www.amazon.com/Laps-Gods-Summer-Struggle-Justice/dp/0307339823
(scroll down page for review)

http://booksofsoul.com/2008/06/on-the-laps-of-gods/

"Through many dangers, toils and snares, we have already come..."

Best regards,

David