Owner celebrates 100th birthday

Irene Bennett has been running The Bennett's Guest House in York Beach since 1960, and sees no reason to retire now that she's 100.

"It hasn't come to me," she said during an interview last week at her home. "When retirement comes, I know what I want to do."

That is to stay in a place much like the one she's been running for 49 years, in which she has a room and can get meals.

Until then, she continues to climb two flights of stairs to collect sheets, give orders to her longtime maintenance man, and attend a weekly exercise class in which she was recently allowed to get on the treadmill.

Bennett celebrated her 100th birthday on Tuesday, with family and friends at her home and business, The Bennett's Guest House, 3 Broadway.

She's lived so long, she said, "I guess probably because I never thought of it. As years came, it was just a time. I've been fairly healthy."

She did lose her driver's license, she said, after getting into an accident three years ago. She spent time in the hospital and in rehabilitation. Luckily, a young woman who was staying in the house through the summer took over operations.

"That was a godsend," she said. "It's things like that that have been useful to me. These are things I'm humbly grateful for."

Bennett, born July 28, 1909, grew up on a farm in St. John, New Brunswick, Canada. Her older brother died at the age of 12, when she was 8. She was strong, she said, and could handle the hay and the horses as well as he did. But she told her father she wanted to go to the United States.

At 19, she moved to Massachusetts with friends of the family and ended up living with a cousin in Everett. She got a job serving meals at Harvard College and eventually got her own room nearby.

Of the two long tables of Harvard men she served each day, she has nothing to say. Her eye fell upon another worker.

"I saw this fellow, I don't know what it was, I don't know how to explain it," she said. "I don't remember when we got talking, when we got walking. He was two years older than me, a high school graduate from Saco, Maine. And he was great in every way."

Irene and Robert Bennett, married February 16, 1930, were together more than 50 years.

While Irene Bennett shared her story, maintenance man Ray Sutton took a decorative plate from the living room wall. The plate marks the Bennett's 50 anniversary, celebrated in 1980. Sutton reminded Bennett of a comment made by a friend at that party.

"She said you're going to live to be 100," Sutton told Bennett. "And what did you say?"

Bennett smiled.

"Don't limit me," she said.

The Bennetts moved to Concord, N.H., in 1939 and bought the York house in 1960 because of Robert Bennett's love of the ocean. They didn't intend to operate a guest house. One day, a neighbor asked if they could take in a guest, and they were in business.

Many of her guests — in fact all of them now, Bennett said — are returning customers.

"The new people, they like a private bath and a bed and breakfast," she said. "I'm neither one. People come back and back, otherwise I would close."

The house has seven guest rooms: one on the ground floor and three each on the second and third floors. Bennett does not serve meals, but there's a kitchen on the top floor where guests may keep food and cook. Each floor has a bathroom. Bennett gets cleaning help from a 17-year-old girl who makes the beds and vacuums.

Borrowing a page from Arizona’s state-budget playbook, the Obama administration has announced it will rent out rooms in the White House to raise money to offset the rising federal deficit.

Recently, Arizona announced plans to sell up to 50 state-owned government building and then lease them back over a period of decades before eventually repurchasing them. In essence, the plan calls for Arizona to mortgage the buildings that house its state government.

Since many find the idea of paying rent on buildings previously owned free and clear by taxpayers distasteful, the Obama administration is being careful to differentiate its own plan from Arizona’s.

“We’re not changing ownership of the White House,” explains White House spokesman Robert Gibbs. “If we did, for one thing, that might affect my employment, so that was a non-starter.”

Instead, several rooms in the White House will be opened up to the public, in Bed and Breakfast fashion. However, customers shouldn’t expect backcountry prices. According to a promotional pamphlet released by the White House, lodgings in the esteemed Lincoln Bedroom can be fetched for $95,000 per night.

Used for Clinton-era favor gaining, the Lincoln bedroom is now literally for sale

“This is an appropriate price point commensurate with our need to address the deficit and the costs incurred in securing temporary security clearance and agent staffing for our valued guests,” said Gibbs.

He added, however, that the White House was working on discounted packages in which “for a modest fee, inner city and rural poor folks can be our guests as well.” These guests, Gibbs confirmed, would be housed in battered FEMA trailers that are veterans of the New Orleans campaign. The trailers will be  “strategically hidden from view” on the White House grounds.

Despite discounted pricing, Gibbs stressed the guests housed in trailers will “still be able to tell their friends, families and what-not that they spent the night at the White House.”

While patrons of the trailer package will be limited to the confines of their accommodations plus a 150-second tour of a rosebush dating to the Reagan administration, clients of the Lincoln Bedroom package will enjoy a much more lavish experience, including meals prepared by the White House culinary staff and an invitation to observe “no less than one” staff meeting. (Guests wishing to take advantage of the latter will have to sign non-disclosure agreements).

Lincoln guests will also be guaranteed to have their photos taken with at least one cabinet-level administrator, and possibly the president if he’s available. In a lighter touch, they will also be given blacklights and invited to participate in a “spot the stain” competition in which contestants vie to see who can find the most Clinton-era blemishes that still adorn certain furnishings, carpets and draperies.

In reply to critics who say the ploy threatens to cheapen the White House, Gibbs said, “This may be a cheap gimmick, but we’ve got a very expensive problem, which is the out of control deficit my boss has created – I mean that he inherited from Bush.

“We’re already booked solid into the first half of Obama’s second administration, and calculations show this could generate nearly $1 billion over two full terms. That money is going straight back to the taxpayers.”

http://makingbandb.blogspot.com/

A nice little blog about the making of a B and B

Follow along as we turn our new/old house into a home for our family and a bed and breakfast!
I'll post Before, During and After pictures. I'll tell you, as soon as we find out, the history of the house. I'll let you in on what our process will be when we will figure out what to name the B&B and the first three suites that will be offered to our guests.

This will NOT be a reality show where you can watch everybody fight, see the kitchen catch on fire or watch somebody break down in tears yelling "I can't go on". This will just be a regular account of what we will be doing to get the house renovated, remodeled and ready for living.

I am embarking on actually fulfilling one of my dreams. Wish us luck!

In today's economy, people are looking for easy ways to make some money. Many homeowners are even thinking about opening a bed and breakfast.

But is that a smart move? Maybe.  But before re-working your home, you need to do your homework.

Ten years ago, Margaret Moore and her husband converted their home into a bed and breakfast.

"There are times when nobody's here and times when a lot of people are here," said Moore.

It's one of 40 homes near Notre Dame operated by the Bed 'N Breakfast Registry. The company helps guests find bed and breakfasts in Michiana.

"We're already getting phone calls, in fact we started getting them in March," said Wanda Shock, treasurer of the Bed 'N Breakfast Registry.

Calls come from people looking for a place to stay and from people hoping to add their home to the list.

Broker Associate Jim Carrico says the bed and breakfast market is growing because of the economy.

"People are looking for somewhere to get away from it more than ever," said Carrico.

And he says that trend has some people seeing dollar signs.

"Everybody loves to be their own boss. Everybody likes the idea of having that inn-type atmosphere," added Carrico.

But Shock says it isn't an easy process, "Is their house safe? Do they have fire extinguishers? What about children if they came?"

And those aren't the only questions you need to be asking.

"What are my risks, what's the security issues, more importantly, they should be asking what are my liability issues," said Carrico.

Shock says starting a bed and breakfast is not a quick fix

"This is not a fast, easy way to make money," said Shock.

Moore agrees. She says running a bed and breakfast is all about the long run.

"Over the years we had a lot of different experiences, all of them good," said Moore.

If you're interested in buying or converting your home into a bed and breakfast, Carrico says you should contact a real estate agent to look at your options.

You can't make this stuff up: So you arrive at the bed & breakfast you booked in Bedford, New York, and something's a little strange: "Honey," you say to your spouse, "doesn't the guy who just signed us in look a lot like Richard Gere?" No mistake: Gere and his wife Carey Lowell have no-kidding opened a B&B in a converted old farmhouse and barn. Bedford is maybe 75 km north of New York City. W mag had pictures and an interview. "We're total neophytes,"Gere said. Martha Stewart and Ralph Lauren live nearby. Actually the story half hints that Dull Normals won't be all that welcome. Gere talks about creativity seminars, celebrity lectures, stuff like that.

Fred Durst, frontman for the band Limp Bizkit, has married his main squeeze Ester Nazarov.

"Cheers to the universe from me and my lovely wife Esther Durst!!" Durst told his Twitter followers. Perhaps he was drunk, or in love, or both.