If you’re curious what’s been going on with the Fran O’Briens/Hilton debacle, you should have bookmarked FbL’s site weeks ago (Greyhawk is also all over the tale). She has a new and comprehensive round up posted that makes the luxury hotel chain’s local manager look more like a pinchpenny, housecoated, hair-in-curlers tenement landlady than an up-and-coming corporate executive. For a company that has so much invested in their branding, you’d think that headquarters could do better than this crew – not only does each public act and every consequent statement the hotel has made reek of bad faith, the public affairs handling of the whole affair has been filthily handled.
It doesn’t look good for Fran’s owners Hal Koster and Marty O’Brien, as they try to find a place to relocate their business. The good news is that they are committed, along with many others in the area, to continuing the Friday night dinners in support of the wounded troops somewhere – including the Italian embassy, of all places, at least for a little while.
If, unlike some, you’re interested in doing what you can to help these wounded soldiers transition back into “the world,” while also giving them a brief respite from military hospital food – pause, see those preceding three words together, and shudder – please contact the Aleethia Foundation. If you ever wanted to a buy dinner for one of these heroes, now’s your chance – they’ve been taking donations to keep the troop dinners going.
Lex, Thanks for the recommendation and the link.
Actually, the offer of the Italian Embassy makes a lot of sense, considering the connections they already have to the dinners.
You’re very welcome – and by the way, based on the fact that your penultimate post was at midnight last night, and the most recent at 05-sumpin, you should be getting more sleep…
Actually, I bumped the midnight one up by more than half an hour. And I think I’m still stuck on DC time–last weekend at the conference I was going to bed about 4 a.m. and getting up about 7 a.m. I’m slowly adjusting back to pacific time, which means I’m now going to sleep between 11 and midnight, and waking up between 4 and 5. And my blogging software shows the time a post is started, not the time it’s posted, so it’s not too bad…
It was kind of you to notice, though.
Lex, please accept my apologies for earlier this morning pulling the post you linked to here. But after careful consideration and consulting with others, I’ve put the original post back up, minus the indentifying info about the volunteer who emailed me.