Tom muds. (At this time of year, the word 'mud' is sometimes used as a verb.)
First Roll. (4-15-13. Last year the First Roll was on 4-2-12.)
"APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain."
-T.S. Eliot
April 8 was the first day that the courts were dry enough to be worked on. The work was removing debris and mud, lots and lots of mud. The courts were raked and the mud was scraped and shoveled off the courts and into wheelbarrows and the wheelbarrows were pushed up the hill behind court 3 and joyfully dumped.
The courts need to be rolled and brushed and pecked at a bit, but they are almost ready for Westboro Tennis to come and work their magic. Our crew will spend the week putting up the curtains. Poles have to be inserted into their sleeves, cables strung from pole to pole, guy wires have to be run, curtains hung, sealed together and staked in. All of this takes some time and dare-we-say-it effort.
When will we open? Westboro spreads clay and nails in our lines and puts up the nets. They do all their work in one day. We usually open the next day or couple of days after their visit. So, depending on the weather and the availability of Westboro, we hope to open sometime next week, that is sometime shortly after 4-22. When we have some notion of when the courts will open, an email will go out announcing the wonderful event. As we approach Opening Day we will update the newspage frequently.
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We also welcome your help in expanding CTC membership. If you know Cambridge residents who may be interested in joining the CTC, please invite them to the upcoming Meet & Greet on Sunday, April 28th from 4-6pm. The New Members Party will take place here at the club on May 28 from 6-8:00. We encourage members and new members to attend and get acquainted. |
The club has a new member named Pierce Harman who is a professional photographer. Pierce seems to be mighty good at action shots. You can take a look at a slide show of Pierce's action shots of club members: slideshow. You might also follow the link to the section of Pierce's website to see a whole gallery of CTC pictures.
Some links of interest:
ATP World Tour
The club book is in the works. Membership is not yet settled. The website has last year's info on activities, dates and times of events, officers and committees, etc.
And, oh yes, the club is featuring on-line reservations through a program some of you might know from the Mt. Auburn Club, Bookings Plus. What fun, what excruciating fun! Yup, no more painful dialing and re-dialing and hoping against hope that you can get that prime-time court. You will still be able to call the clubhouse between 8:00 and 10:00 a.m. and talk to a friendly, playful staff-person who can enter your on-line reservation for you, but doing it yourself will be so much more gratifying and easier. And did we say fun? The on-line reservation system, as well as our regular phone reservations, will go live when the courts are open. Please note the link to our reservation system over there on the left in the table of contents. The link will also give you a brief tutorial on how to use on-line reservations and thereby increase your fun.
Much to our surprise and de-light, folks seem to be availing themselves of on-line reservations. As we get busier, you might try to click on at 8:00 a.m. exactly.
Craig Lambert wrote a must-read article for Harvard Magazine about Bruce Wright's take on the 'high set' stance and movement in tennis. Take a look: High Set The article is accompanied by a separate video demonstrating the technique. High Set Video Thanks, Craig, for sending this nifty technical riff along to us.
The book? Membership for the coming year hasn't been settled, so the book will be a while in the making. In the meantime, the website will be updated as data dribbles in.
We are going to try out a new feature on the newspage. Let's call it The Book Blurb. The Blurb will note books not necessarily about tennis, but authored by CTC members. So, if you members have recently, or maybe not so recently, written a book that you'd like blurbed, please let us know.
Let's start with:
"The fundamental question of information philosophy is cosmological and ultimately metaphysical. What is the process that creates information structures in the universe?" Heady stuff, no?Well, the club's own Bob Doyle who works much magic here behind the scenes tackled this little issue in his book, Free Will: The Scandal in Philosophy. And the club's own Craig Lambert wrote a nifty, readable article for Harvard Magazine on Bob and his place in the free will issue. Take a look at Craig's article,
Two Steps to Free Will. In the midst of renovating garages and ruling vast sectors of cyberspace, Bob Doyle wrote a bit of a magnum opus: Free Will: The Scandal in Philosophy by Bob Doyle. "The fundamental question of information philosophy is cosmological and ultimately metaphysical. What is the process that creates information structures in the universe?"
We have a new book by a club member, Game, Set, Match: Billie Jean King and the Revolution in Women's Sports, by club member, Susan Ware. The book is: A Publishers Weekly Top 10 Sports Book.
We have some new books from club member, Julie Baer:
Love Me Later
Julie Baer presents us with a unique book. Her fantastic artwork depicts nature and people in a special way. -- Bookreviewcafe.com
I Only Like What I Like
"CHILDREN BEWARE –will have you trying the untried, 'cause it's FUN! The collages fill you up to the eyeballs."
Take a look at: William P. Homans, Jr., A Life in Court, by Mark S. Brodin. Bill Homans was a long time member of the club with "a storied legal career." A lot of folks at the club knew and liked Bill. He could tell a story or two, couldn't he?
We want to mention New Classic American Houses, a book by Dan Cooper about the architecture of Albert, Righter, and our own John Tittmann. "New Classic American Houses is an architectural page-turner brimming with creative interpretations of traditional forms."
Hot off the presses, a new book by Faith Moore, Celebrating a Life, Planning Memorial Services and Other Creative Remembrances. "Celebrating a Life" provides the ideas, inspiration, and how-to advice needed for creating a meaningful memorial service. Light-hearted but sensitive, this thoughtful guide covers it all."
While We Were Sleeping by David Hemenway.
"This book powerfully illuminates how public health works with more than sixty success stories drawn from the area of injury and violence prevention."
The Parents We Mean To Be: How Well-Intentioned Adults Undermine Children's Moral and Emotional Development by Rick Weissbourd.
The New Yorker review said, "In this ardent and persuasive inquiry, Weissbourd, a Harvard psychologist, warns that 'happiness-besotted' parents do children a disservice by emphasizing personal fulfillment over empathy."
The club directory is in the works and should be available soon. We usually get the information up a little bit ahead of the printed edition. Stay tuned.
Some useful links:
Here's a link to the espn site, with pro ranking.
And a club member (let's call him Sol) suggested a link to the International Tennis Hall of Fame in Newport, R.I. The site is rich.
"On the court, tennis players exchange not only ground strokes but lots of information. It's a richly interactive sport, both verbally and non-verbally. If players communicate clearly, simply, and consistently, the game will proceed more quickly, and with less fuss and misunderstanding. Here are a few guidelines that can make the game more fun, friendly, and fair for all...."
We've had some requests to run Craig Lambert's piece, sampled above, on Tennis Communication. (We'd better leave this link up on the newspage permanently.)
The Yearbook link will take you to the last newspage from 2012. From there you can see the whole of the Persistent Archive of last year's news.
Website Note: The time and temperature icon below is a link to a Boston weather site.
Joe DeBassio, Webmaster.
Website Note II: The honey-comb icon is also a link. It takes the clicker to an archive of all the past news pages so that said clicker can read the news pages for the whole year (2013). The less-than link (<) next to the honeycomb icon will take clickers to the previous issue of this year's newspage.
This version is archived at: https://www.cambridgetennisclub.com/News/News2013.5.en.html
