Mango will cook inside one of those enclosures. Pears are grown in a cooler climate. Northern China in this case. "Gao has been working on his pear-growing technique for six years and this season he managed to grow 10,000 Buddha-shaped baby pears. Each fruit is grown in an intricate Buddha mould and ends up looking like a juicy figurine. The ingenious farmer says the locals in his home village of Hexia, northern China, have been buying his Buddha pears as soon as he picks them from the trees. Most of them think they are cute and that they bring good luck."

At 64 yrs old I can fondly remember pounding the keys on an old Remington Manual Typewriter in the hopes of passing the required 60wpm speed test to complete the course. The base of that desk, minus the hutch top is identical to the typing desks that we used in school. The small fold up table leaf on the right side of the desk is to provide a place to stand a top bound "stenographers pad" or in some cases a vertical metal document holder so you could easily see the original document that you were typing. I do not believe that to be a stenographers desk because it lacks the amenities required by a stenographer, by example, where is the drawer to hold pencils and spare steno pads for taking dictation? I suspect what you have is a much more specialized desk, a "typing pool desk." One clue would be to check the back of the hutch top to see if its plain wood or is it finished? If its plain wood it was most likely intended to be placed against a wall in the manner that you have it now, but if the back is finished it was designed to be a free standing piece where both the front and back would be visible while in use. Typewriters were relatively noisy so in larger offices where the noise of a number of typewriters might interfere with normal business they generally had a separate room called the "Typing Pool". A secretary or stenographer would go into the office and take dictation, then the notes were taken to the typing pool to be transcribed onto final hard copy. In the typing pool the typing desks were aligned in rows like seats in a class room. Note that your desk has small compartments on each side of the typewriter platform that are sized for envelopes while the hutch top would allow ample space for different varieties, sizes and grades of bond paper, and/or the necessary company forms and letterheads. In some cases they had a person who was known as the office devil, who was responsible for stocking each desk with the appropriate envelopes, paper and forms. In those days "Time was money". By automating the desk in the manner you describe a typist could come in, lift the lid and voila, the typewriter slid out, the paper compartments opened and she was ready to sit down and get to business in seconds. The top hutch also serves another function in an office of that period. When seated at the desk you could not see the person ahead of you, and if you turned around you could not see the person behind you, therefore it helped reduce time lost to trivial gossip between desks, and of course there was a supervisor constantly walking up and down the aisles to insure you weren't leaning across the aisle to disturb your neighbor. Also note that there was no place to put your favorite potted plant, the pictures of your kids and your coffee cup, sorry folks, your hear to type, not set up housekeeping....LOL.

There are many different ways to do a wooden BS. I have seen something similar in my KD's showroom. It's a nice look and takes the guess work out of an entire BS, but you still have to figure something out behind the range.

Well, I say "sort of" meaning it was about 17 years ago and that was the "mental note" I made of the experience, like "Oh that was not a very pleasant response to my telling you how much I admired your work . . . " but I did not make note of the exact expression he had on his face, for posterity. Perhaps because it sort of surprised me. But who knows why he treated me that way. Like I said, I was surprised that such a well known poet was wandering around a building looking on his own for the lecture hall where he would be presenting . . . so something might have been up even before I ran into him. I have no context for what a person like him has to put up with from fans on a daily basis or how uncomfortable he might have been given modern American culture is vastly different than Native American culture. In fact, Trudell writes extensively on that, which is why I was surprised when he didn't much touch on that in his talk . . . . also again, who knows maybe he just had indigestion or a headache . . . Funkyart, I have watched several movies and/or tv shows and really broke out laughing when someone leaves the rat race to take a job teaching at a college, or says they are going into teaching as a respite from the personal stress and greed of the business or professional world of some other field . . . One of the most egregious examples is the movie "The Last Time" about the machinations of salesmen trying to get ahead, starring Michael Keaton and Brendan Fraser. Good movie, but laughable ending . . . people need to rewatch "Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolfe?" as a cautionary tale . . . Speaking of reading people, somewhat OT, but years ago I was at a BAD training for adventure based counseling, and we were being constantly "debriefed" by a woman who thought she knew it all, but often grossly misread the personal and group dynamics. She was so judgemental and NOT insightful that the group of professionals started making fun of her when she was not around. Not just because of that, because of the way the people running the sessions were treating everyone, won't go into all the details, but it was one of the worst and most unprofessional experiences I have had in my field and it amazed me that these folks could even be in business after I finished the weekend course. But anyway, we were having a required debriefing session around a campfire in the evening, people were talking about things that bugged them, and one guy turned to me and said, "You look like you have a headache. Can I get you something for it?" That was the most spot-on diagnosis and counseling I got over the whole weekend!! I had a terrible headache and had run out of painkillers! At the end of the training we were gathered into a circle and we had to go around and tell about the most helpful experience we had over the training. And despite hours of sessions, I chose that as the most helpful by far. It also both bugged and mildly amused me that some of the people (and these were all counseling professionals) made up stories just to play along with the facilitator, telling her what she wanted to hear, so to speak. I knew that because they talked about doing it ahead of time, they so despised her behavior. Of course this bugged other folks too, because that was also unprofessional. But it was a great learning experience for me. As a teacher, I have to remember that sometimes, the student is just constipated or has menstrual cramps, not regressing back to some abusive event . . . and also, if you are running a training for a group of professionals who work with adjudicated youth, where you can't mess around and you have to stare down some very stressful situations to be successful, and you don't treat them like professionals and with respect, well they are going to start acting out, and they learned from the best . . . it was also bad that some of these folks were forced to go by their supervisor who was there, and they believed that their job security would depend on the outcomes of the trainings. Such a very bad set up to begin with. Really taught me how important context and prior information and real relationship is to educational and counseling outcomes . . .