Saturday Afternoon in Downtown Mesa: Mesa Takes Flight Festival at the Mesa Arts Center

It's always great to spend a warm and sunny Saturday walking around Main Street in downtown Mesa, and this afternoon we had the pleasure of going to the Mesa Takes Flight Festival at the Mesa Arts Center.

The event was the City of Mesa’s festival commemorating the Arizona Centennial and culminating a year-long celebration of aviation, aerospace and all things flight-related.

It started last evening and ends tomorrow afternoon, but we enjoyed our time at Mesa Takes Flight for a couple of hours today.

On our way over to the Mesa Arts Center from Queens Pizza, on the corner of Main and Center,

we heard some oldies from Hooked on a Feeling, a local band which performed classic rock -- stuff like The Eagles' "Take It Easy" -- with aplomb.

There were a number of exhibits. Kids were trying to follow the directions to make origami dragonflies, helicopters, and airplanes.

We tried our gnarled hand at it too, except theirs flew for a while rather than immediately nosediving like our own creation.

Both the East Valley Institute of Technology and Arizona State University's aviation-based educational programs were represented,

and there was a table from the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), the world's largest technical society dedicated to the global aerospace profession, which among other things is greatly involved in educational programs to launch the next generation of aerospace engineers.

One table had the most amazing model planes. It made us remember that, yeah, we used to like to make model planes, too, when we were 10 or 11, and not just because of the glue.

Artist Marilyn Cohn explained to kids the technical process by which she makes her one-of-a-kind works involved metal, glass and other materials. You can get some of her pieces at Practical Art on Central Avenue.

We also got to see Mesa Public Schools’ Space Integration Module and Flight Activity Center.

The Odyssey includes an orbiter, space station and mission control, all equipped with the latest technology.

Experiments and explorations were going on inside the vehicle.

The Mesa Historical Museum had material from the city's involvement in aviation,

like this front-page headline from the Mesa Journal-Tribune in 1941, when what is now Falcon Field and Phoenix/Mesa Gateway Airport (Williams Field) opened.

We especially enjoyed the hourlong Blue Bike Kids Show presenting Flight-O-Vation, "an original live performance by designed to engage young people in the innovation of flight and to learn about the history of aviation."

The show featured Phoenix-based theater and film artists Boyd Branch, Steve Wilcox and Elizabeth Peterson ("E.P.") as Nikola Tesla's time-traveling assistants who here try to inspire kids with the history of manned flight.

Using a variety of theatrical techniques, from hand and bunkuru-type puppets and old-fashioned stage signage to electronica and audience interaction, the show was not boring for an adult, and the kids seemed really into it.

It was a nicely idiosyncratic lesson, starting with the Wright Brothers (puppets: the puppeteer was great) telling Steve, E.P. and Boyd that, no, they didn't invent the airplane, they didn't make the first successful flight, and denying the simplistic version of aviation history that is taught too often.

What we liked about it was that it didn't sugarcoat all the frustrations, setbacks, failed attempts, disasters and tragedies in people trying to fly (our great-grandfather supposedly broke both his legs when he tried out his homemade mechanical wings to "fly" off the roof of his barn back in his Belarusian shtetl, and he was lucky).

From Daedalus and Icarus to the eleventh-century monk Eilmer of Malmesbury to Leonardo da Vinci, from the Montgolfier brothers (we made a construction-paper comic strip about them in our second grade class back in P.S. 203) to Otto Lilienthal to the Wright Brothers, people (and animals) lost their lives, fortunes, and sanity in the attempt to defy gravity.

The Blue Bike Kids despair of inspiring the audience until the Wright Brothers come on again and explain to Alphonse Pénaud that he wasn't a failure, that his rubber-powered model airplane served as a crucial inspiration for their attempts to finally make their success at Kitty Hawk possible.

Everyone will fail if they try, the Blue Bike Kids explained, but it's not the outcome but the process and the joy in even unheralded creative work that is necessary for all human progress. The pedagogical stuff goes down easy, but we thought it was actually quite sophisticated and profound for a performance aimed at children.

We had to get back to Apache Junction to help feed our mom dinner at the nursing home, so we missed a whole lot of events, including choral and dance performances that we would have liked to see.

But we're grateful for having had the chance to experience this weekend's Mesa Takes Flight Festival and we had a really nice time there.

Saturday Afternoon in Downtown Chandler: Chandler Multicultural Festival at the Chandler Public Library Courtyard

On this beautiful 70-degree afternoon on the Saturday of the Martin Luther King Jr. Day weekend, we were in downtown Chandler for the city's 17th annual Multicultural Festival,

part of the Celebration of Unity, to highlight the cultural diversity of the community through music, dance, art, storytelling and more.

We saw great performances by the Chandler Centennial Choir (top, on the Celebration Stage) and the magnetic Ken Koshio and his taiko drummers on the Unity Stage,

where we also got a chance to enjoy the music of Orquesta Kaliente.

A 2012 Arizona Centennial Designated Event, the festival ran today from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the public library courtyard

and featured, in addition to the work performing and visual artists, great food from different cultures, information on sponsors and organizations that promote cultural diversity, along with arts and crafts that represent various cultures.

As it moves into its second century next month, the state of Arizona is more diverse than ever, but the political culture is taking time to catch up with the demographic changes.

These pics were taking at the booth of the Center for Cultural Interchange, which organizes high school exchange, short-term group homestay, intern and trainee, work and travel in the U.S. and study, teaching, work, volunteer, and language programs in over 30 countries around the world.

In addition to the Chandler Centennial Choir (below), other groups that performed on the Celebration Stage included Ballet Folklorico Quetzalli,

the North Indian/Afghan Trio, Cool Hands and Dulcimer Times.

The Telaraña Weavers and Spinners were quite amazing to watch. Here's an account of their day from Jenn at Wind Rose Fiber Studio.

We've been signed up for the emails from PFLAG Phoenix -- originally Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, now updated for more inclusiveness but hard for us oldtimers to remember -- ever since we moved to Arizona the first time in 2000. They are a truly wonderful organization made up of the finest people around.

The LD21 Republicans were just one of the groups represented at the festival. People could also register at another booth from the Maricopa County Recorders office. Did we mention there is a Green Party presidential primary on February 28?

Molly's Tamales seemed to have the biggest lines of all the food stands when we passed by the first time.


There were also people waiting on line for gelato

and frybread, which make a great fusion mashup eating combo.

At the Unity Stage a big crowd, in seats and on the grass, was the audience for an 11 a.m. naturalization ceremony, when about 150 new U.S. citizens were sworn in, and great musical performances. Unfortunately, we weren't able to stay to see the traditional Polynesian and Scottish dances of Tia's Royal Islanders and the Maschino Highland Dancers, but we hope we can catch them another time.



The festival had, as part of the Arizona centennial, these posters with interesting information about the state's counties. During the Iowa caucuses we heard a lot about candidates going to all of that state's 99 counties? How come Arizona, with almost twice as many people, gets by with only 15 counties? (Hint: they're a lot bigger.)

There were also posters about Chandler history for its centennial, like this one about N.J. Harris, one of the city's first African-American residents and business owners.

There were a lot of families at the festival, as well as people of all ages as well as all backgrounds.

We grew up in Brooklyn so we've seen bocce ball played all our lives, but we guess this demonstration enlightened the clueless and those people not lucky enough to have lived in Italian neighborhoods.

At the information pavilion by the gazebo, there were prize-winning artworks by kids, like this one, "Panda Family," by a talented third grader, Grace Cao.

And this mural was painted for Dia de los Muertos at Dr. A.J. Park last November by artists like 3-year-old Alvaro Quintana.

Representatives from the Muslim community, the Asian community and others had tables with information and some goodies. Here is the current Miss Indian Arizona, Jaymee Li Moore, from the Colorado River Indian Tribes in Parker, who's a student at Northern Arizona University.

There was a lot to eat, read, watch and listen to at the Chandler Multicultural Festival

and we're very grateful to everyone who put this event together on the weekend of Martin Luther King Jr. Day.