Word: ficus
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Waiters hovering. Sun through tall windows. Ficus trees in corners of room. Jody Powell in vest. Reporters off the street could get used to this, jokes Sperling, Questions come. Carter answers all. Does not reveal much new. What's new is the feeling, the hope. So much nicer to meet in respect. Reporters reflect concerns, prejudices of publications. Oklahoma asks about Sunbelt. Washington Post asks about secret documents. Detroit asks about Humphrey-Hawkins full employment bill. New York asks if Carter might help out in newspaper strike...
Outwardly, Rodeo Drive (pronounced Road-eh-oh) looks like any other shopping street in the fertile crescent of Beverly Hills. The buildings tend to be one-and two-story structures, pastel, neo-Spanish, neo-20th Century-Fox. Even the ficus trees lining the street seem to be part of a grand design by Potemkin. Still, the veteran spendthrift arriving on Rodeo Drive has a sense of déjà vu. No, the street does not possess the discreet elegance of Paris' Rue du Faubourg-St.-Honoré, the stylishness of Rome's Via Condotti or the hustling excitement of Manhattan's Fifth...
...looks like something out of Buck Rogers-a 70-story silo of glass that is at once Atlanta's tallest building and the world's tallest hotel. Inside, guests enter a seven-story-high lobby big enough to hold a triple-level lounge, a forest of Ficus trees and a half-acre lagoon fed by fountains and a 100-ft.-wide waterfall. All the while, glass-enclosed elevators whiz like space capsules past the 1,100 guest rooms to a revolving rooftop restaurant...
Plant Parenthood. Who cares? Scores of thousands of plant owners, from corporation chieftains with status-symbol Ficus executivus (vicepresidential fig) trees in their offices to the apartment dweller with a $30 Dracaena massangeana (dracaena). As a result, plant doctors (many with degrees in horticulture or agriculture) are as much in demand as pet vets. Drs. Greenthumbs charge an average $15 a housecall, $10 or so a day for plant sitting and as much as $50 to potty train a specimen needing more root space. Boston's Plant Parenthood even offers a vegetative version of Blue Cross-Blue Shield...