copyright Bettina Network, inc. 2011
Having been in business over 20 years in bed & breakfast, we have learned much about this industry.
Our policies are in place because of the experiences we have had over the years and they have served us well.
We are not the fastest on the block, but we are concerned, considerate, safe and constantly changing to help create a better world – to be super concerned about preserving what we have as a world community and making sure our homes are all working towards being more efficient, more considerate of others, more considerate of the environment and knowledgeable about the health and happiness of our guests.
Every home in the Bettina Network is one we know well and whose family/owners we know well because someone from the Bettina Network spends the night in each home before we accept that home into the Bettina Network and before we take reservations for guests to stay in that home. From the office, we are in constant communication with our host families, making sure we get even better acquainted with them to know their strong and weak points and to be able to help them move to ever higher levels in this corporation.
We also are concerned about who the guests are who stay in a Bettina home. We want to make sure both the guest and the Bettina Host Families are well cared for and cared about. We are a community of people with a common interest in bed & breakfast as a way to travel – we all work together to make this a great experience for everyone. We have huge historic mansions, regular suburban houses, apartments, etc. to give you as large a choice as possible, but all thoroughly checked out.
We do everything we can do to minimize any possible problems. We are not an unknown and unknowing entity, in place to make reservations for whoever comes or to take into the Bettina Network whichever property presents itself for inclusion in the Bettina Network. Yes, we are a business and yes, we are in business to make a profit, but yes also we are concerned about how we make that profit. We do not want it to be at the expense of others or to anyone’s detriment. Our community grows larger each day and grows in depth, wisdom and knowledge – but especially in inclusiveness, caring, eco-consciousness and more.
That may be a slower, more expensive way to work, but it has been our choice and it has served us and our guests very well over the years.
You can arrive at a Bettina Home and know the guests who will be sharing that home with you are wonderful, interesting and concerned/considerate people. If there is no host family present, you can be assured the Bettina Home is still well looked after and in great shape when you arrive.
You can arrive at a Bettina Home and know it has been checked and constantly re-checked so that you arrive to no surprises and it is the place described to you over the telephone or through the mail or through email. We are very accurate in our descriptions and quality control is at the top of our agenda as we think through who would be great to stay in our homes and – unfortunately, we do have to make the call that some would not be great guests. And yes, we also have to make the call that not everyone who calls us would make a great Bettina Host family and so we sometimes have to decline a family that wants to join the Bettina Network.
Bettina guests help us keep Bettina Homes at the top of the industry because they also are asked to keep us apprised of what their stay was like and we share with Bettina Host Families both the positive and negative feed back we get. If, and that is very seldom, we get negative feed back it is responded to immediately and changes are made promptly. Guests have sent us letters telling us how fantastic are the homes in which they stayed. That is the result of our constant vigilence over the Bettina Network.
That is what we work for – that is what keeps us going – and that will continue to be our method of operating. We hope you approve and support us as we move forward in this business.
We must apologize for the problems we have had with our technology – our Bettina’s Blog was lost for some reason – floating around in the ether until we could figure out how to bring it back. Our listing on Google has been lost for reasons we don’t understand. And we have experienced other upheavals which are totally unnecessary in this business world. It is about competition and being raised up or lowered down because of your business policies and practices and how they affect this world. It is not about one business trying to move out another because they don’t want competition and want the industry to themselves. We are tenacious, persistent and very fair and good at what we do and we will continue to hold that space and that place at the top of this industry.
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Is Deodorant/Anti-Perspirant Necessary?
May 23rd, 2011copyright Bettina Network, inc. 2011
We have had quite a time of it with this topic. It all started when we received a request from a guest to please follow up on how to live an organic life without smelling when you give up, especially anti-perspirants.
Several of us took up the challenge. We will never be the same and we will never have the same friends again. People looked at us funny! They moved away from us when we were in meetings during our trial time! We had great and as you can guess, hilarious discussions about this. One bottom line result for all of us – we now know who our true friends are. The others dropped away because they wouldn’t come close to us until this was over – and from them, they said “we love you, but don’t come near me until you have regained your senses and started wearing deodorant or anti-perspirant again – nothing personal, they just couldn’t stand how we began to smell!!!”
Here is what we found – and you have to remember this ‘scientific’ experiement was done by just a hand full of people – women and men:
1) Much to our chagrin, the men didn’t smell as ‘ripe’ as the women throughout this experiement. We don’t know why, that is just what we found. Maybe they cheated and didn’t go to tennis and other heavy activity occasions so they wouldn’t smell and alienate their friends and co-workers.
2) Our bottom line discovery is that it is possible to go without deodorant and anti-perspirants, but it does not happen overnight. You have to work up to it or go around smelling until you have your bodily reactions under control.
Diet has a lot to do with how we smell. And I mean – smell bad.
Lots of fast foods, grease, beef or other animal proteins raise your smell level to almost intolerable by someone sitting or standing next to you if you went two days without a bath or shower. You can do that if you use deodorant. In fact, we found that is probably why people use the stuff because they can go a week without bathing or showering, use anti-perspirants and get by tolerably well.
We tried the suggestion of one persons friend – to use Tom’s deodorant, but we found while it didn’t have the bad stuff in it, it also didn’t work. It worked well for only one person. It left the rest of us smelling bad within an hour or so.
Without using deodorants or anti-perspirants it is imperative that you bathe daily – or shower daily.
The adjustments you have to make to your diet to go without deodorants and anti-perspirants are also good for your weight. I didn’t weigh myself during this time and only stepped on a scale this morning and found I had lost a very appreciable amount of weight. Probably, thinking about something else and concentrating as hard as we had to with this experiment, kept my mind off food and my hands out of the chocolate.
We realized the answer to this question had to be that deodorant and anti-perspirant were not necessary because our ancestors didn’t have the drug companies churning out these products, nor did they have all the tv ads making you feel like a really dirty swamp if you didn’t use them – so – something kept our ancestors from smelling and kept them close to one another without a negative reaction to their mutual body odors.
We found many helps:
1) If you must eat animal protein, use beef, chicken, etc. as though it is a condiment rather than the entire meal. A little bit goes a long way and your body stays ‘fresh’ smelling longer. We don’t know why, we just know that was our experience. We also conjectured if this was the reason anti-perspirants came along and why as humans we are needing stronger and stronger products to keep us from smelling loud and wrong as our diets go further off kilter.
2) Bathe or shower daily – preferably in the morning – so you can get the perspiration or dead skin cells or whatever accumulates overnight, off your skin giving you the best chance at not smelling all day. Of course, there are the overachievers in every group and a couple of us bathed before bed and in the morning while another person bathed in the late afternoon before going out for the evening, at night when she returned and again in the morning. You will recognize her – she is the one whose skin has turned colors from the chlorine in the water.
3)There are ‘helpers’ we found, which we believe, increases your health level and reduces the likelihood of your smelling bad as you participate in life. The biggy is organic, virgin, cold pressed or expeller pressed coconut oil. To give yourself a massage with coconut oil – or if you don’t have the time for an all-over massage to rub coconut oil under your arm pits after bathing, helped a lot. If you also used a couple drops of essential oil after you massaged the coconut oil under your arms you are almost guaranteed not to smell bad, but to smell like whichever essential oil you chose. I liked rose oil. Someone else used lavender oil, and there is the renegade who used rosemary oil. Her smell was a little different, but you got used to knowing when you smelled rosemary oil it was your friend and not stewed chicken on the stove. One used cinnamon oil and one used nutmeg oil, but all of the results were the same; bad body odor was banished.
A second good result came from the person who used organic aloe vera gel either as a massage all over, or when she didn’t have time for a massage, only under her arms. She also used essential oils – only a drop or two under each arm – over her basic massage medium.
We all found that it takes time – from a couple weeks to a month to get good results living without deodorant and/or anti-perspirant. Probably, we guessed, because you have to detox your body of the things which cause you to get that ‘ripe’ odor.
So our conclusion is that you can live very comfortably without either deodorant or anti-perspirant. It takes thought and care and paying attention to your diet and your body and bathing daily, but it is worth it to get ride of those toxins. You know that whatever you put on your skin is in your blood stream in seconds. So if you can’t eat it, don’t use it in your body. AND – there is not a deodorant nor anti-perspirant on the market that I would eat or drink.
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Ed. Note: Members of the Bettina Network Lifestyle Community can contribute to the Bettina Network Blog whenever they have anything they want to say and be heard by this fantastic group of people. Send your blog to bettinanetwork@comcast.net or mail it to us at P. O. Box 380585 Cambridge, MA. 02238 or call us on the telephone at 617-497-9166 to tell us what you want to say and we will write it for you.
Volunteer with Bettina Network Foundation, inc. to work estate sales; to help move items from one home to another; to contribute your ideas on how we can better use our resources in this effort to relieve and eliminate homelessness and poverty. We also need photographers; designers; and more. However much or little time you have, we are grateful.
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