September, 24, 1976
THE HIGH LIFE
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Crossword Puzzle
New Pool Opens
1
X
5
i-
s
n
7
10
a
fj
Down
1 to affirm
2 dogma
3 portent
^ International
Phonetic
Alphabet
5 azure, blue
6 to gaze, gawk
8 clever, sensitive
12 forte
13 servile
l8 hurrying
2o persistent talk
22 a record
23 like
Across
I free from emotions
6 in the v/ay shown
7 deluge
9 near, close
10 base number for
scientific notation
II ethyl
12 although
14 mar
15 neon
16 to move
17 window frame
19 under
21 expel
22 succeeding
24 the orbit of a
planet Is-
by Hank Howard
Contrary to popular opinion,
the large newly constructed brick
structure to the rear of the boys’
gym is not a dragster; neither is it
a TR-7 (the shape of things to
come). The new dramatic addition
to the Grimsley campus skyline,
with its sharply slanting roof,
houses the school’s brand new
$400,000 swimming pool.
The pool, dedicated only a
month ago on August 23, was
named in memory of John Gordon
Dewey, an outstanding Grimsley
state swimming champion, who
died during his senior year at our
school. There is also an athletic
award, named in honor of this
great athlete, which is presented
annually to some lucky Grimsley
sportsman.
Designed by the architectural
firm of Atkinson, Wilson, and
Lysiak; and contracted by Abrams
Construction Company, the large
facility rose in only 10 months.
Coach Robert Sawyer describes
the new facility as “one of the
nicer indoor pools in the state.”
The large eight-lane pool boasts
a diving well with one
three-meter diving board, and
two one-meter diving boards.
The Grimsley swimming pool
and an identical pool at Smith
High School, are jointly run by
the two schools and by the City of
Greensboro. TTie school uses the
pool during most of the day, each
weekday for swimming classes
and extra-curricular school activi
ties such as swim meets, and
swim team practice. The City
Recreation Department has its
own schedule after school hours,
swim practice and on weekends.
The department will conduct
recreational swimming for all
citizens of Greensboro during
their allotted schedule for the
small admission price of 50d.
When asked about the various
courses to be offered in the
facility, Mr. Sawyer stressed that
during the first semester the chief
objective of the pool’s staff would
be to teach those Grimsley
students, who don’t know how, to
swim. He added that second
semester would bring about the
offering of such advanced
swimming courses as senior
lifesaving. Beginner swimming
will be taught in the gym classes.
In addition to curricular
activities, an intramural program,
headed by Coach Phil Weaver
may include the utilization of the
pool in such sports as water polo,
and perhaps, even an intramural
swim meet.
Perhaps, one of the most
important events to take place in
the new Grimsley pool will be the
North Carolina State High School
Swimming and Diving Champion
ship to be held this spring. Other
various meets' involving the
Grimsley swim team will also be
held in the facility.
According to Coach Sawyer,
the school and staff have worked
out some very comprehensive
programs for this year. All in all,
it seems that Grimsley’s first year
with its own swimming pool will
not only end the sale of
"swimming pool passes” by rich,
experienced seniors to eager,
unknowing sophomores, but will
be a great year for the aquatics
program at Grimsley.
’The Ascent of Man. By Dr.
Jacob Bronowski (1908-1974).
Little, Brown and Company. 448
pages.
The Ascent of Man is a book
dealing with the thesis that man
has evolved culturally as well as
biologically. The book is a
beautifully orchestrated with well
written essays and large color
photographs. The Ascent of Man
is a documentation of the
worthwhile struggle known as
human life.
The genius of Dr. Jacob
Bronowski is achieved in this
book. Dr. Bronowski was bom in
Poland in 1908, and he died in
New York, August, 1974.
Bronowski, historian, poet,
mathematician, statistician, in
ventor, biologist, was a pro
nounced leader in Humanism,
historically and scientifically.
Bronowski was also a Fellow of
Jesus College, Cambridge. He
lived in work most of his life in
England, and in 1964 he came to
the United States; he became a
member of the Salk Institute for
Biological Studies, La Jolla,
California.
powerful and immediate to the
eye, able to take the spectator
bodily into the places and
processes described, and conver
sational enough to make him
conscious that what he witnesses
are not events but the actions of
people. The last of these merits is
to my mind the most cogent, and
it weighed most with me in
agreeing to cast a personal
biography of ideas in the form of
television essays. The point is
that knowledge in general and
science in particular does not
consist of abstract but of
manmade ideas, all the way from
its beginnings to its modem and
idiosyncratic models. Therefore
the underlying concepts that
unlock nature must be shown to
arise early and in the simplest
cultures of man from his basic
and specific faculties. And the
development of science which
joins them in more and more
complex conjunctions must be
seen to be equally human:
discoveries are made by men, not
merely by minds, so that they are
alive and charged with individu
ality. If a television is not used to
make these thoughts concrete, it
is wasted.
Originally, Hie Ascent of Man
was a 13 part series produced by
the BBC in 1972. The
programmes were a success in
Great Britain, and were imported
on PBS last year. The book and
television pr^uction follow the
same fabrication. Dr. Bronowski
writes in his Foreward to Hie
Ascent of Man, “... Television is
an admirable medium for
exposition in several ways:
“The unravelling of ideas is, in
any case, an intimate and
oersonal endeavour, and here we
come to the common ground
between television and printed
book. Unlike a lecture or a cinema
show, television is not directed to
crowds. It is addressed to two of
three people in a room as a
conversation face to face - a
one-sided conversation for the
most part, as the book is, but
homely and Socratic neverthe
less. To me, absorbed in the
philosophic undercurrents of
knowledge, this is the most
attractive gifts of television by
which it may yet become as
persuasive an intellectual force as
the book.
'”1110 printed book has one
added fi-eedom beyond this: it is
not remorselessly bound to the
forward direction of time, as any
spoken discourse is. The reader
can do what the viewer and
listener cannot, which is to pause
and reflect, turn the pages back
and the argument over, compare
one fact with another, and in
general, appreciate the detail of
evidence without being distracted
bv it ...”
The book is bound into 13
chapters, likewise. It tracts the
biological difference in man as
a race first. From the Fossil lemur
to Homo sapiens the descent of
man is pursued. As man grows
biologically, he grows intellect
ually. The coming of cultural man
is the motif. In the first several
essays we discover this ascent of
man; man is no longer a nomad,
he becomes a man of the city.
Why? Because of an aberration of
nature, emmer forms bread
wheat. Then man settles ; he
invents; he makes war, and the
beginnings of organization ap
pear in Homo sapiens.
In the third chapter we see the
coming of civilization. The great
empire of the Incas, in Peru, was
one great civilization. The
remains of Machu Picchu show
that. One of the greatest parts of
man’s ascent is he knowledge for
the hidden structure. Geometry
was the great learning of men
since Pythagoras, and a -bb
equals c will always exist. It s
the invisible one must see before
the eminence of the visible
becomes evident. “ ... ask an
impertinent question, and you are
on the way to the pertinent
answer,” says Dr. Bronowski.
There are two great minds who
get full attention in this book;
they are Isaac Newton and Galileo
Galilei. When Copernicus put us
in our proper place and the sun in
the center of the solar system,
then the way was made for these
two men. Galileo was the first
man to deal with a new problem,
physics. But an equal contribu
tion comes from astronomy,
where he is able to view the
planets and moon and map them.
Isaac Newton was the man
responsible for deveoping what
Galileo had started with his book
Two New Sciences. His greatest
single contribution must be that
of his theory about light. Jt would
be two centuries before so great a
figure would light the stage for
the new science. But one man
David Bulla
changed the idea of life, and his
General Theory of Relativity
answered enigmas that had been
pondered for centuries.
Dr. Bronowski also covers the
ascent through the life sciences.
He shows us the region where
Darwin studied before writing the
manuscript for the Otighi of
Species. And he describes the
great achievement of Watson and
Crick in this century.
But the wit of a man is always
tested when there is great
emotion. In the last paragraph in
chapter eleven we see that wit;
“I owe it as a scientist to my
friend Leo Szilard, 1 owe it as a
human to the many members who
died at Aushwitz, to stand here
(at Aushwitz) by the pond as a
survivor and witness. We haVe to
cure ourselves of the itch for the
absolute knowledge and power.
We have to close the distance
between the pushbutton order
and the human act. We have to
touch people.”
Dr. J. Bronowski, author of The Ascent of Man