Karen Pike Photography

Last Tuesday, I covered for Vermont Business Magazine the 2010 award ceremony for The Best Places To Work in Vermont. The competition was open to all for-profit and non-profit organizations with at least 15 employees working in Vermont. Best Companies Group (BCG) administered a 2-part survey to gather information about the companies who applied. Employers completed a questionnaire about HR practices, policies and benefits and then employees answered a 76-question survey on satisfaction and the quality of their working environment . The employee answers made up 75  percent of the organization’s score.  In the end, 10 small to medium sized companies and 5 large sized companies received the honors.

From 1-10, the best small companies to work for in Vermont are:

1. Wells River Savings Bank

2. Edward Jones

3. The Bank of Bennington

4. Mascoma Savings Bank

5. Seventh Generation

6. King Arthur Flour

7. NRG Systems, Inc.

8. Resource Systems Group

9. MBF Bioscience

10. TPW Management LLC

In the large company category, here are the 5 best places to work in the state:

1. Merchants Bank (my bank!)

2. Dealer.com

3. Green Mountain Power

4. Entergy Nuclear Vermont Yankee

5. Vt Electric Power Company

After an hour of schmoozing, eating yummy foods by Bon Temps Gourmet and enjoying the party atmosphere at Main Street Landing , Governor Jim Douglas joined VBM publisher John Boutin and Vermont Chamber of Commerce president Betsy Bishop to hand out the trophies. While everyone present knew their companies had won an honor, it wasn’t until the actual program that night that the attendees learned in what order the companies were ranked. So, really, it was kind 0f a nail biter, especially when it came down to Dealer.com and Merchants Bank.

Merchants Bank’s Kelley Jordick, branch president, Hinesburg branch:

Tom Leavitt, executive VP of Merchants Bank:

Vermont Business Magazine Publisher John Boutin:

Dealer.com video crew:

Beautiful and delicious food by chefs Gretchen Saries and Greg Labarthe of Bon Temps Gourmet:

Employees of Edward Jones:

Here’s a video slideshow recapping the evening:

If you’d like to see all the photos from this event, please click here
The passcode for this gallery is: open

The Munsters theme song

This is probably my strangest Blog posting ever, but it is a necessity. For those of you who may have come across my Facebook page and seen my Herman Munster profile photo, I wanted to explain why Herman is so important to me. The first question (for those of you under 30 or having lived in a Third World country all of you life) is who is Herman Munster? Wikipedia says, Herman “Malkin” Munster, 5th Earl of Shroudshire (born “Herman Malkin” alone), is a fictional character in the sitcom The Munsters, played by Fred Gwynne.

The second, deeper question is WHY do I care so much about this character? As a child, I had a Herman Munster puppet, complete with a pull-cord voice box, that I carried everywhere. While most children had soft and cuddly Winnie The Pooh stuffed animals or Mrs. Beasley dolls, I ate, slept and bathed with my plastic, scary-looking Herman puppet. I chewed on his fingers, I fed him crackers, and of course, I watched the Munsters with him every afternoon at 4 o’clock on channel 56. My mother performed countless surgeries over the years, eventually having to do a laryngectomy because all He said when you pulled the cord was ,”MMMMMMMMWWWWW.” I remember taking the Herman puppet to religious School and raising my hand with Herman attached to it. My teacher was very angry: “If he doesnt speak Hebrew, Yocheved (my hebrew name), then get rid of the puppet!”  Herman was relinquished to the bookbag from that point on during academic hours….

FLASH forward to my college years: My parents divorced and sold our family home. In the process of moving, a few boxes of my childhood belongings were inadvertently (ugh!) discarded. Though I did become a stable, productive adult, and without too many scars from losing my dearly beloved childhood toy, I admit that I have brought up the subject of Herman to my siblings many times over the years .

So, FLASH FORWARD once again to last Tuesday, when I turned 48 (ugh again!). My brother visited from Boston and brought with him a birthday gift from him and my sister. While sitting at Church Street Tavern drinking pints of Switchback, he handed me the gift bag full of tissue paper. I put my hand in and started to feel the object.

What? Could it be? No! Impossible! BUT IT WAS!!!

In the bag was none other than a Herman Munster puppet, exactly like mine, complete with the non-working voice box that said, “MMMMWWWWW” when I pulled the cord! They had actually gone on Ebay and found me a Herman of my very own!!!!

I can’t begin to explain the enormous feelings of nostalgia I had that night as we took photos of Herman with our I phones and reminisced about growing up in our Boston suburb during the 60’s and 70’s. It is truly one of the most thoughtful gifts I have ever received.  Thank you, Judy and Larry. I love you bolth!

Which brings me back to why I loved the bumbling, sweet Herman Munster (and the rest of his hysterical TV family). Herman made me smile, he made me laugh, he made me feel like I wasn’t the only one who messed up on occassion and he made me feel, well, prettier than him! Simply put, he made me feel normal.

How Herman became Herman

So, now if you stumble across my FB page and see my Herman profile photo, you’ll understand… Herman makes me feel normal.

Yesterday, I blogged about working with Vermont author Tanya Stone on her upcoming book about BARBIE, “The Good, the Bad and the Barbie.“  Tanya is an enormous talent, a prolific chldren’s author, and this will be a non-fiction book for middle schoolers on how Barbie has affected our culture. It’s being published by Viking Children’s Books , a division of Penguin Publishing and I was hired to shoot the cover and all of the inside illustrations. How cool, right?

Anyway, I posted a bunch of great photos and then was told I had kinda jumped the gun on running any images from the book before it publishes, so I removed the blog post and I’ll run it in October, when the book comes out.

However, I wanted to include at least a few outtakes here, and at least tell the story of our big Barbie Play Date. To see all the amazing Barbie images (and they ARE so fun!), you’ll have to wait until next Fall and buy Tanya Stone’s book. Trust me, it’s a great read and VERY eye opening !!!!

Anyway, those who knows me can certainly believe that I NEVER played with Barbies as a kid and this is an unlikely subject for me to be excited about. BUT, that was before I was introduced to the Barbie collection owned by Shelburne resident Peter Harrigan. By day, Peter is a professor of Fine Arts at St. Mike’s College, but by night, Peter is a HUGE Barbie collector, who travels across the country to conventions to add to his Barbie bonanza. He and his partner even have a room in their home to display all the dolls (which I have yet to go there and see in all it’s glory!)

 On a cold winter day, Tanya, Peter and I got down to the business of playing Barbie at my Burlington studio. Peter supplied all of the dolls, props and accessories– it’s all in the accessories, ya know! We had Barbies from virtually every culture and country in the world; boxes and boxes of dolls from domestic Barbies to Working girl Barbies, to Celebrity Barbies (Rosie O’Donnell was my favorite!), and of course, KEN and all of the other boys for Barbie to flirt with!! Really, it was quite a site!

Eight hours later, we wrapped up the session and called it a day. I still had the cover and a few other shots to make elsewhere, but the bulk of the work was done, and my inaugural Barbie Play Date was over. 

I had to include this. It’s a photo of my daughter, now 16 yrs old, wearing the ballet outfit that actually arrived on a LIFE SIZE Barbie, sent to her from her grandfather! It’s one thing to have a few of your child’s naked Barbies in your shower; it’s another to have a life size naked Barbie sit at the dinner table at night!

And, finally, below, is my “Bad Girl” Barbie, a gift from Peter Harrigan, posing with MY two favorite dolls. My What The Duck represents my present (notice the camera) and the Herman Munster represents my past (Yes, my favorite doll as a child was a Herman Munster puppet!). I’m not sure if thre “bad girl” represents my future, but you never know!