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Thursday, August 19, 2010

ART REACH OPENS ON BROADWAY















Yesterday evening, August 19, members, well wishers, the board of directors, and the board of trustees attended a gala open ing of the new all-in-one home of Art Reach. Now located at 111 Broadway, the new facility houses the gift shop, Art Reach on Broadway, a new gallery space, offices, a small class room, and other amenities in side-by-side store fronts.

The top right photograph shows the board of directors and the board of trustees cutting the ribbon on this fine new space. President Barb Taylor holds the Chamber of Commerce wooden shears.

The first artist to exhibit in the new facility is Rose Wunderbaum Traines. Her new works are in the gallery. The piece of her sculpture shown in the middle photo is The Midas Touch, a whimsical piece of a heavy metal musician.

The evening’s events included a reception for the artist. To celebrate the occasion Rose donated a piece of her work to be used as a door prize. “Llammalloppe” was shown in a juried exhibition in New York City and is valued at $1200. The winner was Ann Reeb from Mt. Pleasant, a former gift shop volunteer. She is a retired Vowles elementary school teacher.

Pianist Paul Melcher from CMU provided musical entertainment for this gala evening.

In the lower photo guests admire arts and crafts done by local artists. The new shelving was salvaged from the former Cobbler Shop, now occupied by Art Reach.








Wednesday, August 18, 2010

DISABLING OUR YOUTH

According to today’s Wall Street Journal only 24% of U.S. freshmen entering colleges are equipped to do college-level work. These were students who had taken four years of English and three years each of math, science and social studies

The results are based on ACT (American College Testing) scores. In 2010, 1.6 million high school students took the exam so that colleges could evaluate their learning abilities. On a 36 point scale the average composite score was 21.0. Their English is mediocre (39% are less qualified than core requirements). Their reading skills are poor (again 39% cannot meet standards). Their math and science skills are even worse.

Michigan’s success rate was below average. Less that 39% met at least three of the four college readiness benchmarks. As a consequence CMU offers remedial classes to gigantic numbers of incoming freshmen, stretched out in some cases to three or four years.

Some blame the Democrats, teachers’ unions, and civil rights groups for watering down the high school curriculum. These arrows miss the mark entirely. It has much more to do with parents and the students themselves. Households with both parents working have little time to oversee their children’s progress in school. Often they give in to every teenage whim for new “toys” such as HDTV (which becomes a baby sitter for far too many hours each day), expensive cars and computers, and the latest cell phone for texting, tweeting, and facing books. They do not address school work other than prompting the kids to do well in sports.

On campus I see a majority of students walking from one building to the next with cell phones glued to their faces. You have seen drivers doing the same. Social connectivity is out of control. The web is the medium of choice for many as their only means of receiving the news each day, disregarding validity for speed.

The United States is falling behind: we ranked twelfth among nations in 2007 of adults ages 25-34 with an associate degree or higher. Canada, by the way, was first with 55.8%.

By enabling our children to waste their time by giving them counter-productive possessions, we have disabled them from enjoying a future as good as ours.

Sunday, August 15, 2010

U.S. GUN FETISH

The recent anonymous Sound Offs regarding how unusual the gun death at the Cabin was are misleading.

The United States has the largest percentage of gun-owning households. According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime 39% of households owned at least one gun, compared to 32% for Norway, 29.1% in Canada, and 1.9% for Netherlands in the early 1990s.

Further, death rates per 100,000 persons in 1997 was high for this country, 14.05, only outgunned by Brazil, 26.97, and Jamaica at 18.72. The breakdown for our total was homicide: 11.54, suicide: 7.23, and accidental death: 0.58. The UN report provides specifics in terms of validity of responses from 23 nations.

The Wadsworth Cengage Learning center quotes similar numbers and specifies caution in using the numbers as exact values. The National Rifle Association, for example provided numbers per 100,000 persons for 1998 as assault: 12,228, suicide: 17,605, and accident: 875 for a total of 30,708. The center quotes similar values for 1998 provided by the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence including a category for cases where intent was unknown (316 instances).

The center is very clear that taken out of context the numbers can be used to prove anything by restricting the data in a biased fashion.

Another source, the Small Arms Survey, Geneva, highlights the United States in 2004 had the worst gun death rate per 100,000 persons with 9.42. Switzerland came in second at 6.20, followed by France (4.89), Finland (4.43) and Belgium (3.68).

There are hundreds of other sources on the internet, all leading to the same basic conclusion: even if there is a ten percent error in some of the quoted statistics, the United States has more firearms in private hands and more deaths as a consequence.

None of the values stated include military deaths.

The tragic case at the Cabin is not isolated.