Strictly Vegetarian, Trader Brings Home the Bacon

--Susan Sjo (pronounced “show”) is a Chicago commodities trader with principles, a vegetarian who refuses to trade cattle and pork futures. The computers in her trading firm, Sjo Inc., are even programmed not to display quotes on livestock and meat. “I would not ever like to add to the wholesale slaughter of anything that is living,” she said. “It’s sort of a statement for peace, in my mind.” But when the dramatic upswing in grain and soybean futures began earlier this summer, her clients in the Sjo Fund Limited Partnership made a killing. The fund was up nearly 213% at the end of July. Gary Sherman, Sjo Inc.’s managing partner, said everyone in the company abides by the no-meat rule in their trading practices, if not in their diets. “Susan is very socially conscious about animal rights, and we are as well, just not to the same degree,” he said.

--The modest white house with the pointed-arch window that inspired Grant Wood’s “American Gothic” has been promised to the state of Iowa to ensure its preservation. Wood is said to have gotten the idea for the painting after seeing it in Eldon, a small town in southeastern Iowa. The painting, which received national acclaim in 1930, shows a dour farmer, holding a pitchfork, next to his spinster daughter, with the six-room frame house behind them. Carl Smith, 81, of Breckville, Ohio, inherited the house after his parents died. He said his father bought it at a tax sale in 1942, the year Wood died. “I don’t remember what he paid for it, but it wasn’t very much,” Smith said. He now rents it to a couple with three children for $50 a month. “It’s my vision that this agreement with the state of Iowa will continue to preserve the American Gothic (home) and make it an attraction,” Smith said during a ceremony on the front porch of the house last week. The Legislature has approved $50,000 to develop the site as a tourist attraction.

--Saudi Prince Abdul Rahman Al-Faisal, son of the late King Faisal, has put his 30,000-square-foot home in the exclusive River Oaks neighborhood in Houston on the market for $35 million. The 10-bedroom house, built in 1985, features gold-plated fixtures in 15 bathrooms, a glass front door that cost $100,000, French limestone exterior walls and a spa and gym. “It’s more like a palace than a home,” said real estate agent Marilyn Hoffman.