CityWalk Community Spotlight – YMCA

Paul Conklin talks about the benefits of joining the YMCA.

Johnice Woods presents resident Synithia Page with a blender.

Healthy Eating Basics a hit

Renay Grubaugh of Jason’s Deli

Resident Annie Brumfield

The food was so good, Miss Wanda broke out in a dance!

This Day in History

May 27, 1937:
Golden Gate Bridge opens

Source: history.com

San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge, a stunning technological and artistic achievement, opens to the public after five years of construction. On opening day–”Pedestrian Day”–some 200,000 bridge walkers marveled at the 4,200-foot-long suspension bridge, which spans the Golden Gate Strait at the entrance to San Francisco Bay and connects San Francisco and Marin County. On May 28, the Golden Gate Bridge opened to vehicular traffic.

The concept of bridging the nearly mile-wide Golden Gate Strait was proposed as early as 1872, but it was not until the early 1920s that public opinion in San Francisco began to favor such an undertaking. In 1921, Cincinnati-born bridge engineer Joseph Strauss submitted a preliminary proposal: a combination suspension-cantilever that could be built for $27 million. Although unsightly compared with the final result, his design was affordable, and Strauss became the recognized leader of the effort to bridge the Golden Gate Strait.

During the next few years, Strauss’ design evolved rapidly, thanks to the contributions of consulting engineer Leon S. Moisseiff, architect Irving F. Morrow, and others. Moisseiff’s concept of a simple suspension bridge was accepted by Strauss, and Morrow, along with his wife, Gertrude, developed the Golden Gate Bridge’s elegant Art Deco design. Morrow would later help choose the bridge’s trademark color: “international orange,” a brilliant vermilion color that resists rust and fading and suits the natural beauty of San Francisco and its picturesque sunsets. In 1929, Strauss was selected as chief engineer.

To finance the bridge, the Golden Gate Bridge and Highway District was formed in 1928, consisting of San Francisco, Marin, Sonoma, Del Norte, and parts of Mendocino and Napa counties. These counties agreed to collectively take out a large bond, which would then be paid back through bridge tolls. In November 1930, residents of the Golden Gate Bridge and Highway District voted 3-1 to put their homes, farms, and businesses up as collateral to support a $35 million bond to build Strauss’ Golden Gate Bridge.

Construction began on January 5, 1933, at the height of the Great Depression. Strauss and his workers overcame many difficulties: strong tides, frequent storms and fogs, and the problem of blasting rock 65 feet below the water to plant earthquake-proof foundations. Eleven men died during construction. On May 27, 1937, the Golden Gate Bridge was opened to great acclaim, a symbol of progress in the Bay Area during a time of economic crisis. At 4,200 feet, it was the longest bridge in the world until the completion of New York City’s Verrazano-Narrows Bridge in 1964. Today, the Golden Gate Bridge remains one of the world’s most recognizable architectural structures.

Greener Pastures

BY NICK SOWELL

If the grass is greener on the other side, then water your own.

This quote can be interpreted in many different ways according to your perspective. To me, this quote means work on yourself to better your life, which will make you happy with who you are and what you do. Once you are happy with your position in life then that will reflect onto others and in turn will make others happy and content. This may sound superficial, but you are only able to help others if you have first helped yourself.

Madame Butterfly

The Dallas Opera performed one of the most beloved operas of all, Madame Butterfly, this May. The performances (with one exception) were exemplary, the singing glorious, and the sets and costumes very well done. I was impressed and enjoyed the opera.

I hope never to see it again.

The problem with Madame Butterfly is the story. An American naval officer named Pinkerton marries Madame Butterfly while he is stationed in Japan. To him, the marriage is a meaningless sham; it means no more to him than the house he rents. To her, it is everything. She changes her religion and is estranged from her family. When his ship goes to sea, Pinkerton largely forgets her and marries an American wife.

Madame Butterfly waits loyally for him with his son (born after he leaves for sea). Pinkerton returns to claim his son and, after much beautiful singing, she kills herself.

I think the problem is not only that Pinkerton acts so horribly but also that he is the character with whom it is easiest for us to identify. He is the American. I don’t know if Italian (the opera is by Puccini) or other audiences would face the same problem, but for me I can hardly stand to watch this dashing American naval officer act in so despicable a fashion.

I don’t know how the opera could be saved for me. I don’t see the opera as melodrama, where we know who the villain is and expect no more from him than evil. Melodrama makes the moral choices easy. Perhaps a different staging, where Pinkerton is less attractive—or more so—either simpler or more complex could make the opera appealing again to me.

For now, however, like The Merchant of Venice I think Madame Butterfly is a work that is now culturally inappropriate. Until someone works out a way of treating the characters differently, I really would rather not see it again. It doesn’t matter how beautifully it is presented.

Moby Dick at the Dallas Opera

Earlier this month I saw the future of opera. It is Moby Dick at Dallas’s Winspear Opera House.

Moby Dick, which was commissioned by a group of opera houses that included Dallas, Calgary, San Francisco, and South Australia, was dramatic, compelling and, best of all, new.

If opera is to remain a living art form, then it needs to be dragged into the 21st century. Even opera buffs can’t be happy seeing the same operas like Don Giovanni (which I’ll see for the third time next year) or Madame Butterfly (which I’ll review soon). Audiences unfamiliar with opera are going to be even less excited about classic works in foreign languages. In its heyday, opera was contemporary art told in the vernacular. New operas were in great demand and the genre didn’t shy away from contemporary technology.

Moby Dick is the first 21st century opera. It is American and dares to turn one of the most heroic novels in American literature into a story for our time. The opera also embraces technology. The whaling ship is projected onto the stage as are the figures of the whaling boats and the sea.

Everything worked to stunning effect. It’s too late to see Moby Dick in Dallas now. It’s run is done. But if you happen to have a chance to see it during its tour, I couldn’t more strongly recommend it.

I’ll be looking forward to reviews from other venues to see if the technological advances used are dependent on the Winspear Opera House or work in other places as well. Maybe at some point one of you can let me know.

The Man in the Arena

BY NICK SOWELL

It has always had a deep profound meaning for me.

“It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.”

Theodore Roosevelt

A Visit Home

Next week I will be off to visit home—the Traverse City, Michigan area. I don’t get back very often. That is partly because I rarely take time off and partly because it’s a long way to drive from Dallas. It takes either three days or two very long days to drive. You can fly into Traverse City, but the airport is small and the flights are expensive.

Here’s an aerial picture of Traverse City:

The city nestles at the bottom of a long bay off of Lake Michigan. The Traverse Bay is divided into two parts (creatively called East Bay and West Bay) that are separated by a narrow band of land known as Old Mission. The views from the surrounding hills are tough to beat.

Old Mission has become a favorite location to establish vineyards over the past few decades. I don’t know if it is especially good for growing grapes, but the narrow band of land between the waters is certainly a great location to establish picturesque wineries.

This will be a pretty low key vacation. My wife and I are just going to drive there and spend time with my father and his wife and my brother and sister-in-law. We will do some sightseeing, maybe a little walking, at the most maybe we’ll find time to paddle a canoe.

I hope to decompress from an extremely busy winter and spring. There are some books that I’ve been wanting to read and I have some material for blogs that I just haven’t had time to write. I hope I’ll have time next week to do those simple things.

The 1970s Come Back Again

On the way to work, I often listen to KERA and today I heard an opinion piece that made me wonder whether I’d fallen through a time warp and back to 1970. The topic was whether it was permissible for a woman to keep her original surname after she married. You can read or listen to the commentary here:
http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/kera/news.newsmain/article/0/1/1651504/North.Texas/Commentary.Surnames

When I get home, I guess I’ll check the date on today’s newspaper to make sure I didn’t misplace forty years, because I thought the right of a woman to keep her birth name if she wanted to was decided about that long ago—and if it is 1970, then I want to know why I’m not twenty-five years old again.

There comes a time when we need to put an issue behind ourselves as decided. We can’t keep fighting the same wars over and over again—not that I’ve run into anyone in years who says it’s wrong for a woman to keep her original surname after she marries. I don’t doubt that there are some people who believe that still around. There are people who believe the moon landing was faked; that they’ve been abducted by aliens; that the world is run by a secret society of Jewish Bankers, but not all opinions are equal and we don’t need to respond to everything.

Sometimes we just need to go forward and ignore some people’s opinions. We still have a lot of racist people, but I can’t see wasting time to argue with them whether racism is wrong or not. When you act as though an outdated opinion is worth arguing against, then you give it credence.

Not every issue has two sides. Not every question is open to argument.

This Day in History

Levi Strauss and Jacob Davis receive patent for blue jeans
Source: history.com

On this day in 1873, San Francisco businessman Levi Strauss and Reno, Nevada, tailor Jacob Davis are given a patent to create work pants reinforced with metal rivets, marking the birth of one of the world’s most famous garments: blue jeans.

Born Loeb Strauss in Buttenheim, Bavaria, in 1829, the young Strauss immigrated to New York with his family in 1847 after the death of his father. By 1850, Loeb had changed his name to Levi and was working in the family dry goods business, J. Strauss Brother & Co. In early 1853, Levi Strauss went west to seek his fortune during the heady days of the Gold Rush.

In San Francisco, Strauss established a wholesale dry goods business under his own name and worked as the West Coast representative of his family’s firm. His new business imported clothing, fabric and other dry goods to sell in the small stores opening all over California and other Western states to supply the rapidly expanding communities of gold miners and other settlers. By 1866, Strauss had moved his company to expanded headquarters and was a well-known businessman and supporter of the Jewish community in San Francisco.

Jacob Davis, a tailor in Reno, Nevada, was one of Levi Strauss’ regular customers. In 1872, he wrote a letter to Strauss about his method of making work pants with metal rivets on the stress points–at the corners of the pockets and the base of the button fly–to make them stronger. As Davis didn’t have the money for the necessary paperwork, he suggested that Strauss provide the funds and that the two men get the patent together. Strauss agreed enthusiastically, and the patent for “Improvement in Fastening Pocket-Openings”–the innovation that would produce blue jeans as we know them–was granted to both men on May 20, 1873.

Strauss brought Davis to San Francisco to oversee the first manufacturing facility for “waist overalls,” as the original jeans were known. At first they employed seamstresses working out of their homes, but by the 1880s, Strauss had opened his own factory. The famous 501 brand jean–known until 1890 as “XX”–was soon a bestseller, and the company grew quickly. By the 1920s, Levi’s denim waist overalls were the top-selling men’s work pant in the United States. As decades passed, the craze only grew, and now blue jeans are worn by men and women, young and old, around the world.

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