Hey, I watched Martha on Oprah the other day and got to wondering. Do you think anyone ever invites Martha over for lunch? I mean, people that don't have a live-in Chef? Never mind, come to think of it, she probably doesn't know anyone that doesn't have a live-in Chef.

Wildman

-- Anonymous, November 11, 2001

Answers

I cannot imagine inviting Martha Stewart over for lunch! Ye Gads! I am SO shy, I can't imagine inviting most anyone over for lunch that I don't know REALLY well. It takes me agonizingly long amounts of time to get up enough gumption to invite folks over. Mr. S. is just the opposite: he invites people he hardly knows over to visit.

I wonder, though, if Martha would like Papa Murphy's take and bake pizzas? That's what we are servin' up tonight for our guests!!! LOL

-- Anonymous, November 11, 2001

I would think that having "Martha" over for lunch would be extremely intimidating. And from what I know of her, she can be very grouchy! Here in Maine, she owns a 4 million dollar home on Mount Desert Island. Some folks accidently drove their car down her driveway (thinking that they were in someone else's driveway). These people were no where near Martha's home...she has a really long driveway! Martha drove in behind them and would not let them leave til the cops came to arrest them. All charges were dropped by Martha...as per her lawyer's advice!! Maybe she was just having a "bad craft day" :-)! John Travolta and his wife, Kelly Preston, also live here and are very pleasant to talk to when you run into them.

Anyways...I don't "do" lunch. Not enough time in the day!!

-- Anonymous, November 12, 2001

If I thought she would come I would invite her just for the entertainment value of her looking at my mess that I call home. :>) I am quite certain that she would be rendered speechless!!!!

-- Anonymous, November 12, 2001

I was listening to NPR a while back and they were interviewing an author whose name I don't remember who happens to be one of Marthas neighbors. It sounds like she's alienated the whole neighborhood cause she's such a bitch=--likes to tell others how to live.

-- Anonymous, November 12, 2001

You got that right, John! We all think she's afraid other folk's "normal-looking" yards will bring down the value of hers. She actually spends less and less time here in Maine every year...don't think too many people miss her:-)!!

-- Anonymous, November 12, 2001

I've heard that Bob Vila isn't a very good neighbor either. Maybe he and Martha should buy a private island somewhere! :)

-- Anonymous, November 12, 2001

HEY! You guys stop sayin nasty things about my Martha! She can park her homemade slippers under my four-poster any time!

I DO think celebrities, especially rich ones, especially rich, female, perfectionistic ones, are fair game for gossip, and I usually take 'stories' about them with a grain of salt. They're also more vulnerable to evil-doers. We only have a part of the story after all. I've been known to chase people out of my driveway myself, and look like a crazy person doing it, and I bet I'm not the only one around here.

Sorry to be a party-pooper, but I'd LOVE to have Martha come over; however she can leave Bob Vila at home.

-- Anonymous, November 12, 2001

It really is the truth, Aunty Em. She is a very "difficult" neighbor!! Most of the folks who live on her side of M.D.I. can't wait for her to go back to Conneticut each year! Don't know much about Bob Vila, but I'd rather have his carpentry skills anyday than Martha's crafty skills!! Sure could use them around here :-)!!

-- Anonymous, November 12, 2001

I've seen this at several other sites: FWIW

And a Very Merry Christmas to You Too, Martha!

By Steve James

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Martha Stewart -- the doyenne of domesticity, the empress of entertaining and good taste -- is having a little trouble getting her own employees to RSVP.

Many of the more than 600 people who work for Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia were unfashionably late in responding to her idea of a series of intimate dinner parties at co-workers' homes this holiday season, instead of a traditional company Christmas party at a hotel or restaurant.

Stewart, who always knows the correct way to word a thank you note, set a table or carve a radish, was a little peeved when told that less than a quarter of staff had responded to her invitation.

The arbiter of modern taste invoked the Sept. 11 attacks on New York when she told employees that a lack of enthusiasm for the dinner parties would be a sign the terrorists had won.

"A lot of the higher-ups have volunteered their places, (but) no one is into it though," one employee told Reuters on Tuesday.

Indeed, Stewart fired off a memo to staff on Monday chastising them for not signing on immediately, two employees said. The original invitation had gone out last Tuesday.

Company publicist Allyn Magrino countered by saying there had been "tremendous support." She could not say how many employees had accepted invitations, but said nearly two-thirds of the 65 needed hosts had signed up. She said last year Martha Stewart Living had a sit-down meal for 660 employees but this year, in the somber post- Sept. 11 climate, Stewart felt smaller, more intimate gatherings were de rigueur.

Stewart, whose media and retail empire includes magazines, books and TV shows and sells everything from bed linen to paint, invited staff to small dinner parties this Dec 10, rather than one large holiday party.

She said she had asked 65 employees to each volunteer their homes in New York, New Jersey or Connecticut, to host 10 employees chosen at random so they could get to know each other.

Stewart, whose company just reported a 25 percent rise in third- quarter earnings, said the soirees were meant to be in keeping with the post-attack sensibility of more private and less extravagant celebration. She even said she would host a dinner at her own new Manhattan apartment.

And, to help with the costs, the company would give volunteers $300 each for their parties which could have a theme or not and could be catered or not.

-- Anonymous, November 12, 2001

Wow! I didn't meant to get into the personality of Martha! I think she's the richest woman in America and if that's true, then I'm sure she has her own problems, no matter how successful she is. What I was getting at is, that if she comes over for breakfast, I'm sure she'd have to have fresh eggs out of the coop, would probably want to blow the eggs (and they'd come out whole), use the shells to make Christmas decorations. You'd probably have to have a pig so she could butcher it, make her own sausage. She'd probably have the hide tanned, made pigskin gloves, decorations from the feet and cleaned up the mess before 8 o'clock. The host would probably be exhausted before she got to fixing the meal. There wouldn't be anything to clean up after breakfast, because she'd use everything, including the scraps, to make something. I have to admit that the woman is a little off though. She said that she's never ate anything that came out of the microwave! Inviting her over would be as intimidating as inviting the Pope over to listen to your table blessing.

Wildman

-- Anonymous, November 12, 2001

Wildman...did you know that she has white egg layers, brown egg layers AND Araucanas! My nephew and wife, who live not far from her say she is constantly looking for the "perfect egg". Whatever floats your boat, I guess :-)!!

-- Anonymous, November 12, 2001

I couldn't ever have Martha here -- she'd go into cardiac arrest, and I'd have to call an ambulance -- wouldn't that be a scene! LOL!

I do remember seeing her on some program quite a few years ago where she was talking about her chickens. She had Auracanas or the cross, what are they, Ameraucanas (?). She was explaining about their Easter Egg coloring -- the eggs that is, not the chickens. Supposedly she would go out and gather them, too. I don't really DOUBT that, just that she did it every day. I'm sure she has hired help.

-- Anonymous, November 12, 2001

I'd be more impressed by her if she cleaned out the chicken coop herself instead of having one of her army of handymen do so...or prepared a garden bed herself. I watched her show *ONE* time, in which she was going to show all us unfortunates how to plant a bed of roses.

I settled back to see what she would advise -- bone meal? Homemade compost? Fish heads and guts? All have their proponents. Perhaps go for the vegetarian approach of sea meal and banana peels...

No. She went out to a perfectly turned and raked bed that someone else had prepared using 10-20-10 (she let that one slip) and proceeded to turn little pots upside down and ply her trowel to seat them in the earth.

DUH!!!!!!

Invite her over Joy. Invite me over too,to watch.

-- Anonymous, November 12, 2001

Me too!!

-- Anonymous, November 12, 2001

I'd love to see Martha come to our house too. We wouldn't have any trash when she left but we'd have a lot of crafts to sell.

I can't imagine her cleaning out the coop unless it's just one of those things that she likes to do. Hey, I wouldn't clean it out either if I had someone else to do it. I'm not sure what the perfect egg is because I think everyone I've picked up has been perfect. Except for that one that smelled. Don't know how long it had been out there.

No matter what you're opinion of her is I think she's amazing. She does a lot of the things that we talk about but don't seem to make money doing. Did you know she sells fire starting kits for fireplaces? A container with twigs, matches and stuff to make different colored flames. Nothing that it takes a rocket scientist to put together but with her name, marketing isn't really a big problem either. But she had to start someplace and it was probably where we are now, as far as marketing goes.

Ya'll have fun

Wildman

-- Anonymous, November 12, 2001

Check out the book about her called "Just Desserts". It will tell you where she gets her drive.

-- Anonymous, November 12, 2001

I've said this somewhere else, no doubt. But I find it absolutely fascinating how this MODERN woman is the ultimate Home Economics guru. When I was in Home Ec, eveyone thought it was idiotic (so did I, but I stayed in it long enough to get my B.A.)

Ah ain't life grand....

-- Anonymous, November 12, 2001

Ya know Sheepish...I flunked Home Ec. in high school!!! Maybe that's what caused my deep-seated resentment of Martha. Probably I should go see a therapist!

-- Anonymous, November 13, 2001

I have been known to liken MS to the antiChrist...its just that she makes being a homemaker SO..ugh.,..whats the word..what I mean is that she makes the standards of a gracious home too high for Jane Average to reach and its very..ummm..annoying? And though I have been told that this is only my perception and I am the one with the problem I don't think I'm all wrong. Society puts a lot of stock in what she portrays. Now I'm rambling.. :o) When one of our friends here is being particularly crafty or do it yourselfish we tell her "Oh you are such a Martha!!" hee hee

-- Anonymous, November 15, 2001