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By JAMIE STENGLE

The Associated Press

DALLAS — Twenty paintings that capture Dallas in the early 1950s, as the city was just beginning to become a sprawling, skyscraper-filled metropolis, are going on exhibit together for the first time in more than a half-century.

“Flower of the Prairie: George Grosz in Dallas,” a series of works by the German Dadaist George Grosz, opens Sunday at the Dallas Museum of Art. The series captures everything from the downtown skyline rising from the prairie to the colorful bright lights of a street once filled with theaters to a man with a cowboy hat striding down the street.

Curator Heather MacDonald said that the series captures a moment in the city’s history that within a decade would be gone as more skyscrapers went up and the city began rapidly expanding away from downtown. The exhibit says the city expanded from 50 square miles at the end of World War II to 198 square miles by 1955.

“It feels like an unintentional commemoration of the city built in the first half of the 20th century and that almost is swallowed up and disappeared by the city that was built after, by the so-called metroplex,” she said. “That sense of this dense commercial downtown, it’s gone fast,” she said.

Grosz, an expatriate German best known for satirical works depicting the rise of fascism in his home country, was commissioned by department store executive Leon Harris Jr., whose family founded A. Harris & Company in Dallas in 1887, to commemorate the store’s 65th anniversary.

MacDonald said Grosz was an unusual choice for a corporate commission. She said that while Grosz — who left Berlin in 1933, just before Adolf Hitler was appointed chancellor, and eventually settled in New York — needed the money from the commission, he may have also been motivated a lifelong love of the American West.

“He was struck of course by skyscrapers and all the muscularity and growth of our infrastructure downtown and he was also fascinated by the cowboy legend,” said Maxwell L. Anderson, director of the museum.

A work titled “In Front of the Hotel,” shows the street scene in front of The Adolphus, a historic hotel downtown where Grosz stayed while he was in the city. Those featured in the watercolor include a smartly-dressed woman, a man in a cowboy hat and a man in overalls. A couple of the works depict residents in black neighborhoods of the city, including one called “A Glimpse into the Negro Section of Dallas,” showing a grouping of well-dressed African-Americans.

Three works show the city’s historic sources of wealth — one of cattle, another depicting an oil refinery and another showing people picking cotton — though the exhibit notes that by the 1950s, the city’s economy was already dominated by banking.

“Refreshments on the Way,” shows a man in a cowboy hat standing outside of a restaurant called the Pig Stand, famous for a pork sandwich. A sign shaped like a pig with the words “pig sandwich” on it.

Grosz’s watercolor “Dallas Broadway” depicts a colorful scene of a street filled with dozens of theaters and people. The exhibit said that with growing competition from the entertainment venues in the suburbs, most of those theaters were closed by the 1970s. All but one, the Majestic Theater, was razed.

The series was first exhibited at the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, the predecessor to the Dallas Museum of Art, in October 1952. The series was again displayed in 1954 in New York before being largely forgotten.

One work from the series, “Romantic Moon Over Texas,” is missing, its whereabouts unknown, MacDonald said. Most of the works ended up in the collections at the Dallas Museum of Art or Southern Methodist University by the early 1960s. One piece featured in the exhibit came from a private collection.

MacDonald said a few of the images are reproduced frequently in books about Grosz, but most she’s never seen reproduced.

In addition to photographs of the city from the 1950s, the exhibit also features 12 works Grosz made earlier in his career. A watercolor over ink called “Nazi Interrogation” from 1935 depicts a particularly brutal scene.

Leon Harris died in 2000 at age 74. A. Harris & Company merged with rival Sanger Brothers in 1961 to form Sanger-Harris, which was absorbed by Foley’s in the mid-1980s. That chain was later taken over by Macy’s.

Grosz died in 1959 at the age of 65.

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If You Go…

FLOWER OF THE PRAIRIE: GEORGE GROSZ IN DALLAS: Exhibit runs May 20 through Aug. 19 at the Dallas Museum of Art, 1717 North Harwood, http://www.dm-art.org/. The exhibit is included in the general admission price of the museum. Adults, $ 10; students, $ 5; children under 12, free; seniors 65 and older and military, $ 7. Open Tuesday and Wednesday, 11 a.m.-5 p.m.; Thursday, 11 a.m. to 9 p.m.; Friday, Saturday and Sunday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Closed Mondays.

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May 18, 2012 04:31 PM EDT

Copyright 2012, The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Smoke detectors are those gadgets which never get any attention unless … well, we’re all aware of the exact moments when they make their otherwise oblivious presence felt with their characteristic beeps. Funnily enough, when asked about our favorite inventions, we never think twice about naming our cell phones, tabs or computers, and remain blissfully unmindful of the one little thing that is undoubtedly the most useful.

Reportedly, around two-thirds of the deaths resulting from household fires have occurred in homes without a working smoke alarm; so, one can never underestimate the importance of a functional smoke detector. Smoke detectors may be doing the priceless job of alerting us when there’s a fire at home; but, seriously, how many of us pay attention to maintaining it or even checking it? Besides the annual or biannual battery change ritual, not many are aware that we need to replace our smoke detectors every eight to ten years. And, when it is time to replace them, we can’t just throw the old ones into the trash as they contain hazardous material.

Smoke alarms usually come in two variations, ionization and photoelectric, each being differently capable of detecting smoke. These days, we have alarms with dual sensors that incorporate both technologies to maximize the effectiveness. Smoke detectors mostly contain alkaline or lithium batteries and electronic circuit boards, which need to be recycled appropriately, whereas ionization alarms contain traces of the radioactive element, Americium-241. What it does is that it releases particles that are instrumental in detecting smoke in the area. It is present in a compartment within the plastic casing, so it can cause no harm when it is installed in homes; however, safety measures must be followed while disposing it. Disposal of smoke detectors should be done carefully to prevent radioactive material from polluting our landfills.

Household Smoke Detectors: Points to Remember

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According to the Fire Protection Agency rules, smoke detectors are potential health hazards if they are not disposed off carefully.

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By law, manufacturing companies are supposed to label their products with warnings regarding their hazardous nature due to the presence of radioactive material. This is to make users aware that they should be disposed only at a nuclear waste disposal center.

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Another option is to return the device to the manufacturer, who would then responsibly recycle or dispose it. Extreme caution should be taken while returning a smoke alarm to the manufacturer.

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While returning it, do not open the device or fidget with its components. Wrap it in paper or bubble wrap, place it in a box and seal it before dispatching.

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In case the unit cannot be returned to the manufacturer, you can give it to a Household Waste Facility in your town.

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State laws regarding disposal of smoke alarms vary, so update yourself about the rules in yours.

Disposing Smoke Detectors With Radioactive Material

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The first step is to take the smoke detector apart as different components need to be disposed separately. Ensure that you are wearing protective rubber gloves before you begin.

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You must remove the batteries from the device and recycle them as per your regional laws.

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The plastic casing needs to be removed now. You can recycle this as regular plastic.

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The remaining contents should be wrapped and then sealed into a box. Never try to compress the unit or crush it.

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Make sure to return it by UPS ground mail only. You are strictly recommended against sending it by airmail.

For some, this entire exercise may seem like a troublesome chore, but you must remember that it needs to be done after long intervals. The humble old smoke detector is the appliance that works nonstop to ensure that our homes remain protected from being ravaged in fires. Maintaining a device that does so much for our well-being shouldn’t require a lot of encouragement, should it?

By TRACIE CONE

The Associated Press

FRESNO, Calif. — Just in time for spring snowmelt: a webcam pointed at one of Yosemite National Park’s main attractions, the soaring 2,425-foot Yosemite Falls.

The HD camera went live on North America’s tallest fall Monday, allowing anyone with computer access to watch in stunning detail as shadows race across the towering granite monolith over which Yosemite Creek crashes in a series of plunges and cascades. It’s updated every 30 seconds through a high-speed DSL connection.

To those for whom the park’s breathtaking scenery revives the soul, getting a fix of spiritual uplift just got a little easier. For people who’ve never been to Yosemite, perhaps seeing one of the park’s main attractions in real time will prove too enticing to resist.

“In a lot of ways I equate it to all of the beautiful picture books that we’ve had on our coffee tables, or the art from the 1870s that made Yosemite exciting to people around the world when they saw it for the first time,” said Michael Tollefson, president of the nonprofit Yosemite Conservancy, which placed the camera there. “This is a great way to communicate in today’s media what the park is and to get people excited immediately, for better or worse.”

It’s the fourth webcam the nonprofit has set up — the other three are pointed toward the park icons Half Dome and El Capitan. It joins a smattering of others across the nation, including one at Yellowstone’s renown geyser Old Faithful, as technology, in varying degrees of clarity, increasingly connects America’s natural wonders with fans around the world.

Unlike the new 24/7 camera at Yosemite Falls, most of the webcams that exist in national parks are there for purposes other than entertaining and enticing. Some pull double duty monitoring air quality, others are there for weather updates or road conditions. Most are low resolution and so remotely located that they are updated infrequently through dial-up connections.

Often they are attached to research projects. When they break down, it can take days or weeks to get them fixed.

At Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, a webcam shows traffic on the boat launch ramp at Bullfrog, Utah (http://1.usa.gov/J4P8L5). One webcam at Sequoia Kings Canyon national park provides a view of a single oak tree so students can monitor its life cycle (http://1.usa.gov/KmOPLH). At Little Big Horn National Monument, a camera offers a distant, grainy view of the military cemetery (http://1.usa.gov/JBGXnd).

One of the most popular webcams in a national park, said NPS spokeswoman Kathy Kupper, has been one showing sled dog puppies at Denali National Park and Preserve in Alaska (http://1.usa.gov/nVhmKQ). While the NPS doesn’t have an exhaustive list of cameras in parks, the ones it knows about are on the park website at nps.gov (http://1.usa.gov/KmVFQb).

The Conservancy’s cameras in Yosemite National Park are positioned for dramatic impact: the movement of the sun on the falls and formation of ice in the winter, the gathering of summer rain clouds atop Half Dome, rock climbers scaling El Capitan. (http://www.yosemiteconservancy.org/webcams)

The new camera and one in the Ahwahnee Meadow pointed at Half Dome are HD optimized for computer viewing at 1280×720 pixels resolution, or 720p. The falls camera is capable of 1280×1024 pixels. Eventually the conservancy would like to place webcams in the old growth redwood forest at Mariposa Grove, and in the sub-alpine Tuloumne Meadows at 8,600 feet.

The Yosemite Falls camera will show its ebb and flow as snowmelt slows to a trickle by late summer. The Conservancy, which funds many projects in the parks, has someone to keep the cameras up and running, even in the dead of winter.

“Part of our mission is to excite people about the park and educate them so they can become committed to protecting and preserving it,” Tollefson said. “One way is to offer the opportunity to keep the parks live for them on their computers.”

While the parks service and the conservancy make every effort to conceal the cameras and place them on structures that already exist, it’s a game for some visitors to find them. One Sacramento TV weather forecaster broadcast from the sightline of a Yosemite webcam and waved at viewers watching simultaneously by computer. At another camera, someone built a snowman in the foreground.

“People figure it out and have fun with it,” Tollefson said.

Recent upgrades in DSL Internet connectivity at the Yosemite Lodge, where the new camera is affixed, made the quick streaming of a high definition camera possible.

The eventual goal, said Tollefson, is to upgrade to live video streaming at all of the Yosemite cameras that already attract 400,000 viewers a year.

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Online:

http://www.nps.gov/yose/photosmultimedia/webcams.htm

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May 14, 2012 04:51 PM EDT

Copyright 2012, The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

If you are one of those people who grew up not sure if you’d ever want kids, and now you find yourself married to the perfect spouse and thinking children might be in your not-so-distant future, you are not alone. If you are worried that having these kids will ruin your marriage, you are not alone, either. While it will take some work, and while it will certainly change your life, having a baby doesn’t have to ruin your marriage. You just have to get a little creative about how you think of spending time together, and you have to make the most of the time you have.

After Bedtime

Remember when you were a little kid and you used to complain about having to go to bed earlier than all of the adults? There was a reason your mom and dad made you go to sleep earlier than they did. They use the after-bedtime hours as adult time. This is the time for moms and dads to watch what they want on television, or to watch a movie not suitable for children. You might be exhausted when you put your kids to sleep, but enforcing a strict bedtime is good for the child and the parents. It gives the child a sense of routine, and a good night’s sleep, while it gives the parents some quality time together in the comfort of their own home.

Hire a Babysitter

Some parents may be wary of hiring a babysitter who is not a family member, but sometimes it is necessary if you ever want to get out of the house with just the two of you. Find someone you trust by asking a trusted neighbor or by consulting online babysitting and nanny searches. These internet babysitting profiles often run background checks and allow you to interview people before hiring them, which can put your mind at ease. Hiring a babysitter can really add up, though, from a cost standpoint. If hiring a babysitter is too expensive, see if you can trade off nights with the parents of your child’s friends. You take all the kids for a night one week, and then the next week, the other parents take their turn. This can be beneficial for everyone involved, because it allows you to spend less money while still being able to have someone you trust watch your kids, and your kids get to play with their friends every week.

Schedule Date Night

Those mommy calendars are no joke. When you have little kids running around, you need to schedule every minute of every day. Before kids, you probably had spontaneous date nights all of the time, but after kids, this can be much harder than it used to be. There is no shame in scheduling a date night. Put it on the calendar, and make sure everyone knows that you and your spouse are going out of town for a night, or maybe just dinner. It doesn’t matter what you do; what matters is that you do it alone.

Family Cuddle Time

While it’s definitely not the same as spending time alone, having quality family time every night is important for everyone. When you spend time with your kids, talking to them and sharing stories about your days and being excited about each others projects, this can foster a sense of companionship among the family. Even if you don’t feel like talking one day, pick a favorite movie or television show and cuddle up each other with a great blanket. You’ll feel great having spent quality time together with your family.

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By KATHY MATHESON

The Associated Press

PHILADELPHIA — If the world ends on Dec. 21, 2012 — as some believe the Maya predicted — that leaves plenty of opportunity to see a new exhibit that examines the civilization’s ancient kingdoms, intricate calendar systems and current culture.

Experts at the Penn Museum in Philadelphia apparently give little credence to the apocalypse myth, considering the show runs through early 2013. But they say the legend, which has been perpetuated in pop culture through disaster movies and sensational tabloid headlines, offers a chance to engage people about ancient and modern Maya society.

“Maya 2012: Lords of Time” features artifacts excavated from the historic Maya ruins of Copan in Honduras, including burial jewelry, food vessels and ceramic figures. Honduras President Porfirio Lobo Sosa is scheduled to cut the ribbon when the exhibit opens on Saturday.

The show also uses interactive displays to explain the culture’s glyph writing and sophisticated timetables. The upshot is that while it’s human nature to seek ancient insight into the current world, people should not interpret the Maya calendar as predicting a cataclysmic event.

“It’s just a turn of a cycle,” said curator Loa Traxler.

Regarded as one of the world’s greatest early societies, the Maya lived for centuries in parts of Mexico and Central America. Many of their iconic pyramids and other city remnants still stand in places like Copan, where 16 Maya kings ruled for about 400 years.

As early astronomers, the Maya devised various types of calendars by observing celestial movements. Their “Long Count” calendar begins in 3114 B.C. and marks time in roughly 394-year periods known as baktuns. Thirteen was a sacred number for the Maya, and some scholars believe the 13th baktun ends on Dec. 21, 2012.

Penn Museum experts say it ends Dec. 23, but that then another calendar cycle will begin — not Armageddon.

Traxler said while it’s hard to trace the origin of the apocalypse prophecy, she described it as “a conflation of a lot of different ideas,” including Aztec lore, Judeo-Christian end-of-days rhetoric and millennial hype. (Remember Y2K?)

Honduran officials don’t seem concerned. Norma Cerrato, minister counselor of legal affairs for the country’s U.S. embassy, said during a recent exhibit preview that she hopes it encourages people to visit the actual ruins. The show includes replicas of large stone carvings too delicate or unwieldy to leave Copan, designated a world heritage site by the United Nations’ cultural agency.

“Regardless of what some may say about the December 2012 phenomenon, the people of Honduras are certain that this year provides us a unique opportunity to share a part of our history and culture with the world,” Cerrato said.

Mexico, too, has designed a tourism campaign around the 2012 date. It’s expected to bring an extra 12 million visitors to the country, possibly boosting tourism revenue by $ 14.6 billion, according to officials there.

Though the last independent Maya city was conquered by the Spanish in 1697, Traxler said about 7 million people currently identify as Maya. The exhibit ends with translated video interviews with a half-dozen Maya, some of whom are bemused by the hype.

Jose Huchim Herrera, a Yucatec Maya and archaeologist, said in a video that anyone talking about a 2012 catastrophe is clearly an outsider.

“The Maya say nothing,” he said. “The Maya are very peaceful. They are not worried.”

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If You Go…

MAYA 2012 EXHIBIT: Through Jan. 13, 2013 at Penn Museum, 3260 South St., Philadelphia, http://www.penn.museum/sites/2012/. Tuesday-Sunday, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. and until 8 p.m. on Wednesdays. Adults, $ 22.50, children 6-12, $ 16.50.

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Follow Kathy Matheson at www.twitter.com/kmatheson

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May 04, 2012 01:01 PM EDT

Copyright 2012, The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Technology and education can definitely go hand in hand. Using the advances technology has made to enhance your child’s education is one of the best things you can do for him or her, if you decide to homeschool.

Internet

The Internet is an amazing tool when it comes to homeschooling. It is a resource for your children to learn, but it is also a resource for you. You can find a multitude of websites that will provide you not only with the information you need to teach, but with printables, guides and links to other resources.

You can teach your child so much: how to use the Internet to research, how to filter out the unreliable results and narrow down the authentic, reliable sites, and individual skills. There are countless websites that offer games that will help reinforce just about any skill your child may learn, from math to language arts. There are sites that will help them with art history, music lessons, and help them learn to type.

Ebook reader

Personally, we have Kindles in our home. Kindles can be rather pricey, even for the cheapest option, at $ 79. However, the initial monetary investment is well worth it and pays for itself quickly.

First, with a Kindle, you can find hundreds of free books on Amazon.com that you can download and read. I have found books about just about everything – all for free. If you prefer the more popular authors, that’s okay; they’re on there, too. Often, the Kindle version is cheaper than the physical copy of the book.

Second, let’s assume you find a book you’d like to use for school. With a Kindle, you can purchase one copy of the book and load it onto all the Kindles on your account. So, if you find a book that is $ 9.99, you can pay $ 9.99 and load it onto your own Kindle, as well as your three children’s Kindles – all for that one $ 9.99 payment. If you wanted to purchase the physical copy, you might need to purchase one for everyone in order to effectively use it, leading you to spend $ 40.

Last, it’s a huge space saver. You can load so many books on your Kindle, and it’ll never take up more space than the Kindle’s dimensions. Currently, I have 302 books on my own Kindle, ensuring that I will never lack reading material no matter where I go. And all 302 books fit easily in my purse, without weighing me down. We can go to the park or on vacation with our Kindles and have plenty to read, with no extra baggage.

If you have a reluctant reader, but he loves anything electronic, a Kindle might be the key to getting him to love reading. Sometimes it’s all about presentation. Load a good book about something you know your child loves, and hand over the Kindle. You just might not see your kid again until he’s back to beg for another book.

Phone apps

The apps available to you, and their cost, will vary depending on the type of phone you have and your service provider. But there are hundreds, if not thousands, of apps available for free or very little cost, that can provide huge benefits to your child’s education.
An example of one such app is Scramble with Friends. With a user name and no identifying information provided (not even your phone number), your child can choose to play a game against a random opponent. Similar to boggle, you pick letters that touch each other to form words. This game is an excellent way to help your child not only expand his vocabulary but also improve his spelling.

Even a game like Angry Birds can be beneficial. While Angry Birds might seem like nothing more than a fun game, it actually can teach your child a little about physics. You must put the birds on just the right trajectory in order to eliminate the pigs, and also know when to touch the screen to make some of the birds perform specific tasks (such as speeding up or breaking from one bird into three). In addition, this game can also help improve your child’s hand-eye coordination, which will help improve handwriting, among other things.

It’s all about balance

Of course, no one can rely entirely on technology to educate their children; no one should. However, in moderation, technology can provide some excellent benefits. The key is to find that perfect balance for your family. Once you do, you’ll begin to see the amazing advantages technology can give your child’s education.