Celebration at CityWalk

BY LORI BETH LEMMON

Can you say, “GRAND opening?” That is what last Thursday was for all of us at citywalk@akard, Central Dallas CDC, Central Dallas Ministries, our tenants, our partners, and our friends!

Thanks so much to all of our donors, supporters, community partners, and volunteers who made the night so incredibly special. Also, a big, “Thank you,” to Mayor Leppert and his continued leadership for The City of Dallas.

Women’s History Month – Adventurers

Gertrude Ederle Conquers The English Channel

In 1926, on her second try, the 18 year old daughter of a delicatessen owner became the first woman to swim The English Channel, considered the world’s most dangerous swim. In spite of rough weather, Ederle beat the record time of the five previous male swimmers by almost two hours. New York City came out in full force with a tumultuous ticker tape parade in celebration of an event hailed as “a vindication of women athletes.” Ederle’s record stood until Florence Chadwick broke it in 1950.

Louise Arner Boyd Pioneers The Antarctic

When she was only 13 years old Boyd inherited her family’s fortune and began to travel. In 1924, she visited the Arctic on a cruise liner and was hooked. Thereafter, she financed, outfitted and led her own expeditions, beginning with a futile 1928 search for a missing Norwegian explorer that took her across 10,000 frozen miles. Her scientific explorations in Greenland brought revelations about glacial formations, plant life, and animal life and she helped prove the presence of a previously unknown underwater mountain range. In World War II she served as a technical expert in the War Department and in 1955, became the first woman to successfully fly over the North Pole.

Susan Butcher Faces Down Wolves and Moose

Boston-born Butcher came to detest city life and yearn for the outdoors. Her love of animals led her to study veterinary medicine, but dyslexia persuaded her to give up studying and take to “mushing.” She won the Iditarod, the dog-sled race across Alaska’s wilderness, three years in a row, starting in 1986, enduring snow blindness, blizzards, avalanches and the perils of the northern wilds each time.

Urban Ministries Prayer Breakfast

Central Dallas Ministries is proud to announce our 15th Annual Urban Ministries Prayer Breakfast on Tuesday, April 6, 2010 at The Fairmont Dallas.

With the opening of citywalk@akard, a vertical neighborhood in the heart of Downtown Dallas, we have made our mark as a leader in the Permanent Supportive Housing (PSH) movement. A first of its kind in Dallas, the 15-story building at 511 N. Akard is providing office and retail space, as well as a home to over 200 new residents, 50 of whom are formerly homeless.

In order to capitalize on the opening of this new project and give further life to the discussion of the need for more PSH options in the city, we have invited Rosanne Haggerty, Founder and President of Common Ground in New York City to be our guest speaker. Haggerty comes to the table with over 20 years of experience as an international leader in developing community strategies to end homelessness.

Central Dallas Ministries has been on the forefront of the issues and concerns of the community in which we live and work. We want you to be a part of this crucial and timely conversation which includes city officials, community leaders, homeless advocates, supportive citizens, financial backers and business leaders – all play a pivotal role in addressing the needs of the most vulnerable among us.

When
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
7:00 AM – 9:00 AM

Where
The Fairmont Dallas
Regency Ballroom
1717 N. Akard
Dallas, TX 75201

For more information, go to www.dallasprayerbreakfast.org.

In case you missed it…

We had a very successful grand opening event for CityWalk at Akard on March 25. Click on the following links for news coverage and photos.

http://www.dallasobserver.com/slideshow/citywalk-akard-grand-opening-29537000/

http://blogs.dallasobserver.com/unfairpark/2010/03/a_grand_opening_for_citywalk_a.php

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/localnews/stories/DN-grandopening_26met.ART.State.Edition1.4c77bc2.html

Biscuits

I made biscuits twice last weekend. But the one I made Saturday was almost inedible while Sunday’s batch tasted great.

The difference was on Saturday I used four tablespoons of baking powder, instead of four teaspoons. The excessive amount of baking powder resulted in biscuits that looked great, tasted good when you first bit into them, but had a terrible metallic aftertaste. Sunday I used the correct measurement and the biscuits came out fine.

There is an interesting lesson to be learned from my mistake—and it’s not just that even experienced cooks can make silly mistakes (mistaking teaspoons for tablespoons is a classic mistake of inexperienced cooks, probably only exceeded by using salt when you should have used sugar). The recipe I was using was one by Alton Brown on the Food Network website. There were dozens of comments about the recipe and most of them were extremely positive.

About the second or third comment down, however, was very negative. It gave the biscuits a terrible rating because they had an extremely unpleasant aftertaste. I don’t think it’s hard to understand what happened. The commenter made the same mistake that I did, but blamed the recipe rather than themselves.

This is a tendency we all have, to blame others rather than ourselves, and one we all need to resist if we want to make good biscuits.

The Lights Come Back On

It’s been 20 years since the big 511s at CityWalk lit up. On March 24, 2010, the day before our open house, the lights came back on, as you can see from the pictures:

So far we only got the lights working on the south side of the building. Almost the entire crew of us who have been working to restore the building for the last two years went out to see the lights.

Soon the enormous 511s should be visible every night, bringing back one of the first of Dallas’s trademark building lights to its rightful place in the night skyline.

Today’s the Day!

Spring Day 2

BY CONNIE TOLLE

I wrote last week about our $40 tomato and how we planted our garden plot for spring. Well, Dallas woke up Sunday morning to another 3 or 4 inches of snow. We staked and covered our little tomatoes hoping that it would not get cold enough for a frost. Imagine my surprise waking up to a bit more than a skiff of snow that the weatherman promised the night before.

They say in Texas if you don’t like the weather just wait. Or, as Mark Twain once said, “In the spring I have counted one hundred and thirty-six different kinds of weather inside of four and twenty hours.”

Here is a picture of our little garden plot. Yes, somewhere under the snow are hopefully some very hardy tomatoes, broccoli, and strawberry transplants and some carrots, lettuce, and pea seeds waiting for better weather to sprout.

Women’s History Month – Jackie Joyner-Kersee

Track and field athlete. Born Jacqueline Joyner on March 3, 1962, in East St. Louis, Illinois.

Joyner-Kersee attended UCLA, where she starred in both track and basketball. One of the greatest female athletes in history, she won a silver medal in the heptathlon in the 1984 Olympics and gold medals in the 1988 and 1992 Games. She also won a gold medal in the long jump in 1988 and a bronze at the 1992 Olympics. Joyner-Kersee is the heptathlon world record-holder and American record-holder in the long jump.

Jackie married her controversial coach, Bob Kersee, in 1986. Joyner-Kersee’s brother, Al Joyner, is also an Olympic gold medalist, having won the Olympic triple jump in 1984. Her sister-in-law is the late track star Florence Griffith Joyner.

A sufferer of exercise-induced asthma, Joyner-Kersee officially retired from track and field in 2001 at age 38. After her retirement, she started the Jackie Joyner-Kersee Youth Center Foundation to encourage kids in her underprivileged hometown to play sports.

Women’s History Month – Inspiring Quotes

Source: www.biography.com

I am prepared to sacrifice every so-called privilege I possess in order to have a few rights.
Inez Milholland, Suffragist 1909

Modern dance isn’t anything except one thing in my mind: the freedom of women in America.
Martha Graham, choreographer, 1946

We are coming down from our pedestal and up from the laundry room.
Bella Abzug, lawyer

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