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What Is This Site? And Who Are You People?
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 At Our Kitchen
Table is a labor of love for Hildy Gottlieb and Dimitri Petropolis.
We are, by day, the owners of ReSolve, Inc, a company whose sole purpose is to
commit the talents and skills of its employees to making the world a better
place. (To learn more about ReSolve
 )
And
so, in addition to creating and maintaining At Our Kitchen Table,
• We
operate Help 4
NonProfits and Tribes, a capacity building consulting firm that
helps increase the effectiveness of NonProfit organizations and Native American
tribal economies,
• We
founded and operate the Southern Arizona Community Diaper Bank, the
first and only place in the whole country where folks in need can get this
critical necessity. Home for us is Tucson, Arizona USA. Hildy has been here for a
little over 20 years; Dimitri is a native.
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The Site Itself
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Our work
requires that we travel, and when we get to a place, that we stay there for a
long period of time. So we get to know the communities we work in through the
eyes of those who live there.
At Our Kitchen
Table is a way of sharing the adventures, the stories, the photos
from those travels.
We've created everything about
At Our Kitchen
Table. Hildy does all the writing and most of the photography.
Dimitri does all the web design, not just the coding, but the art. The
graphics, the layout, the neat clean lines and the photo icons are all
Dimitri's work.
Together we argue about making the site
easy to navigate, about what makes sense to put where. It is a lousy way to
spend weekends. It is also a great way to spend weekends.
There is a new adventure on the site every month. We try to do
more, but usually life intervenes.
We try to add a recipe every month
as well, simply because we like to cook. Some of the recipes are from the year
we spent working in Mexico, where we got to use lots of fresh local
ingredients. Other recipes relate to the people in our lives or a particular
story on the site.
 As for the Gift Shop, that grew
out of life as well. For years, we've created the Photo Art Card Packs, giving
them as holiday gifts to clients and friends. Year after year, they've begged
us to make more, so they could buy them for their own friends. So now those
Photo Art Card Packs are on the site.
The books and videos have a similar
story. We are so often extolling the virtues of the latest book we've read or
movie we've seen, and by the time the conversation is done, we are usually
scribbling a list of similar books or movies on a cocktail napkin. Those lists
have made their way onto the site as well.
The Gift Shop helps support the
site, just like a museum gift shop helps support the museum, and we get really
and truly excited every time someone purchases something.
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Why We Created This Site
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Ok, now the
hard question. Why do we do this?
At Our Kitchen Table started out
as a creative outlet. But from the reaction of folks who visit regularly, it
has become something deeper than that. People tell us that the site makes them
stop and smile and rest and, even more, appreciate the little things.
When we tell folks
about our lives, they love to hear the stories. A year in a Mexican fishing
village with the Center for the Study of Deserts and Oceans. Two years on the
edge of the Grand Canyon with the Hualapai Indians. Someone once called us the
"Indiana Jones of Problem Solving."
And that is really why we spend so
much time working on this site - to share our stories and encourage you to find
your own - the possibilities life hands you every day. We hope reading our
stories lets you see that there's amazing stuff right there beside
you.
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And One More Thing
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 Ok, the final question. Dimitri and Hildy are
not married, at least not to each other. Hildy is the single mom of a 15 year
old daughter, Lizzie. Dimitri and Dyan have two boys, Mito (17) and Derek (14).
We work closely together, and our families travel with us as much as possible.
The Mother's Day 2001 story is called "Too Many Mothers," and that pretty much
wraps it up for our kids. It's an odd extended family, but it
works.
We hope you
will enjoy traveling with us and staying home with us. We want
At Our Kitchen
Table to be a place you like to visit, to sit around the table,
share a story and a glass of wine (or a cup of coffee), and to just enjoy
life.
We hope to see you back here soon.
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