Blog Assignment #3: A First Experience With Rowing Competition

For this assignment I attended a friend from Dayton’s rowing tournament. This was the first rowing tournament that I had ever been to and it was quite interesting! The first thing I noticed was, even though the tournament was for rowing, the tournament was indoors. Contestants had little bike-like machines and looked like they were just exercising at first glance. But every rowing-machine was hooked up to this screen that had little boats on it to see how fast you were rowing relative to all the other contestants (as shown in a picture above). It was great because my friend ended up having her personal best performance and came in second!

What was even more interesting was watching the contestants competing in the boating tournament. I have heard my friend talk about how physically strenuous and difficult it is, but this can be difficult to see at first when you are watching someone on a machine. It was often hard to tell who was in first (even when it was listed on the board), because they all look like they are moving similarly on the machines. However, the difficulty of the sport was apparent as soon as the race ended. Racers would often fall off the machines as they finished and their coaches would have to help support them as they walked back to their team’s bench. Every single race there would be someone who broke down crying at the end (even when they won). It was interesting to witness the intense culture surrounding this sport and just how seriously every teammate takes the sport. This event left me eager to see another race!

My Journey to the Ohio Theatre

My first blog entry explored the ways in which art and media were represented in cities; I explored how art is often greatly represented in cities and helps embody city-culture. My first visit to the Ohio Theatre happened this weekend, as well as my first time seeing a live professional musical, and I can easily classify this as another example of the arts being greatly represented in cities (especially since the Ohio Theatre is in the heart of downtown Columbus right by the State House).

The Ohio Theater is symbol of art’s importance to Ohio Culture. In fact, it is known as the “Official Theatre of the State of Ohio.” This “historic 1928 movie palace was saved from demolition in 1969 and completely restored. It was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1977” (Wikipedia). Ohio’s dedication to preserving this cultural art center shows the importance it has in the history of city culture. Inside everything from the walls, to the cielings, to the chairs, were extremely ornate and showed just how much money people spent on movies and theater performances.

I chose to look at this experience from the angle of diversity of culture; the Ohio Theatre showed me how theaters can be used to expose people to varying cultures. Perhaps the reason people love theaters, movies, musicals, and plays so much is because they help us to better understand varying people and varying cultures. The Sound of Music was a perfect example of this (this being the musical I went to see). By seeing this musical I was shown the cultural struggles many Austrians were dealing with as WWII began to unfold. I began wondering if I would have understood the identity crisis Austrians were dealing with, had I not seen this musical which showed it to me. Therefore, as this experience has shown me, arts should not be underestimated in their ability to be useful cultural centers in cities, and arts can also be powerfully effective tools in educating people on the struggles of diverse cultures.

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