Music Under the Stars - Toledo Zoo

A Toledo Treasure

For years, on summer Sunday evenings, Toledoans have been gathering at the Toledo Zoo Ampitheater to listen to Sam Szor conduct the Toledo Concert Band in a series of free concerts. The concert series, known as "Music Under The Stars," draws large crowds, frequently whole families, who fill the bowl-shaped arena as they listen to the musicians on the stage of the stately band shell.

Toledoans are fortunate to have these concerts sponsored by The Toledo Symphony Orchestra along with a handful of businesses and the United Auto Workers.

The most recent performance was entitled "Clearly:U.S.A." and consisted of two hours of rousingly patriotic pieces ranging from Sousa to Andrew Lloyd Webber with commentary by Gordan Ward.

Next Sunday, July 26, will feature a program entitled "Dominant Force: Disney."

It's About Time

According to an article in today's New York Times, the Obama administration is considering the possibility of imposing regulations on those who speculate in oil and other energy commodities.

Thank God! It's about time! Everyone who has studied the wild gyrations in the cost of gasoline in the last three years has determined that the fluctuations were a result of speculator activity. The strict capitalists would like us to believe that the fluctuations were a result of supply and demand pressures, but prices were rising as supplies were increasing and demand was decreasing. So much for the forces of unfettered capitalism.

During the Bush administration, restrictions on speculators were severely mitigated and the speculators were given a free hand. Now it is time they are reined in.

Shrieking Women at Wimbledon

Why is it that professional women tennis players cannot play the game without screaming and shrieking?

Those who defend this annoyance maintain that players are taught to exhale as they hit the ball and that vocalizing reinforces that practice. On the other hand, some of the best men players, Roger Federer for example, do not have to shriek while exhaling. And the irony is that the fans are expected to be quiet during play while one or both women are screaming.

The rules of tennis prohibit this screaming by declaring that a player creating a distraction during a point is guilty of a hindrance resulting in the loss of the point. So, why don't the umpires impose penalties? Apparently, the officials fear that the penalties would seem arbitrary in the sense that who is to decide at what point a noise becomes a hindrance.

A solution would be to have a sound meter that would notify the umpire that the noise created by a player has exceeded a predetermined decibel level. The umpire then would impose a point-penalty after the player has received one warning. I suspect that players would be able to play within those limits as well as they do now.