Salvage

The breakfast meeting was a success. The woman who ran the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility for more than a decade in the U.S. was there--she’s well connected with shareholder activists in the states, so that’s good. There were some energy analysts who work at asset managers--we need them to vet the resolutions we are writing. And there was a member of the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosure (known as the Bloomberg task force)--he’s a big fish, so it was exciting to get an update from him. All in all, we attracted a useful mix of people--Raj’s greatest skill is networking, and he did a good job today.

I had a few one-on-one meetings then crawled back to Carolyn’s and went to bed (around 4 pm). I had time to kill before meeting Raj at 1 pm and wandered around a church I had passed many times. It is now home to an architectural salvage business.

If I ever need a fireplace or chandelier, this is the place. Two things stood out about my visit. One was the ornate parquet floor. I have seen many of these, here’s an internet photo of one:

The one at the church was extremely ornate, patterns within patterns, like fractals. This was a Church of England church built in Victorian England. It would have been surrounded by tenements. Just like the Catholic cathedrals of Europe--no expense was spared in decorating every square inch of the church, while ignoring the poverty in every square mile of London.

Where was I? This is one of the things that caught my eye--it greets you at the front door. Titled Agent Provocateur, it was commissioned by the Czechoslovakian Communist Party in the 1950s as one of six massive statues at the top of the Lenin Museum in Prague.

At this website you can see a better photo.
The Czech sculptor escaped to England in the 1960s, where she enjoyed a successful career. One of her most famous works is the sculpture below of Freddie Mercury in Montreux Switzerland. Imagine in one lifetime sculpting one figure celebrating a communist hero and another honouring a gay icon and libertine.

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