City of Houston’s Official Fourth of July Celebrations to Light-up Downtown Skyline

WHAT:                          Mayor Annise D. Parker’s official Fourth of July celebration, Freedom Over Texas, will set the stage for an extraordinary patriotic celebration filled with family fun and a spectacular fireworks show. The 26-year-old tradition and lively outdoor festival will feature star-spangled performances by featured country music artists Billy Currington and Sara Evans courtesy of Reliant. The crowning highlight of Freedom Over Texas, a spectacular fireworks, show will light up Houston’s downtown skyline while combining specially choreographed music with pyrotechnic artistry.

During Freedom Over Texas festivities, KBR Liberty Park will showcase military artifacts and vehicles including representation from all five military branches, and on-site recruiting. Also, patrons can make a donation to H.O.T. (Honoring Our Troops) and send a care packet overseas. The Bud Light Zone will showcase its Budweiser Beer Garden, the Bud Light MXT Vehicle and offer a prime view of the eighth annual Bud Light Texas Volleyball Championship Series Finals. More than 30,000 square feet of free educational entertainment and programming and will appeal to children of all ages in the Walmart All-American Kids Zone and will feature a Radio Disney, Jr. Area. Southwest Airlines will host the Southwest Airlines VIP Hanger and the Sky Stage featuring vintage aircraft from the Lonestar Flight Museum including a B-17 Bomber, B-25 Bomber, a B-25 and two A-26 Invaders making fly-overs throughout the festival.

In the Family Fitness Challenge Area activities will be provided by all five of Houston’s hometown professional sports teams including the Houston Dynamo, Houston Rockets, Houston Astros, Houston Aeros and Houston Texans.

WHEN:                         Wednesday, July 4, 2012, 4:00 – 10:00 p.m.
                              

Detailed schedule
                                   4:00 p.m.                                  Gates open and festival activities begin

                                   4:00 p.m. – 9:15 p.m.                Continuous Entertainment on Stages

8:00 p.m. – 9:30 p.m.                Featured Artists: Billy Currington, and Sara Evans

                                   9:35 p.m.                                  Fireworks extravaganza

                                   10:00 p.m.                                Event closes


WHERE:                       Eleanor Tinsley Park @ Buffalo Bayou (along Allen Parkway)

ADMISSION:                 $8 per person, (children 5 and under, free)
      Special discount ticket offers courtesy of Reliant at www.freedomovertexas.org

EXPECTED                  Gated attendance: 100,000
ATTENDANCE:             Total viewing audience: 2,000,000 (perimeter viewing + television audience)

SPONSORS:                 Freedom Over Texas sponsors include: The Featured Artists Sponsor: Reliant;  Anchor Sponsors: Bud Light, KBR, Southwest Airlines, Walmart; Additional sponsors include; Sprint,  Silver Leaf Resorts, McDonald’s, Camping World of Houston, In-Kind Sponsors: Houston Chronicle; 100.3 KILT; HOT 95-7; Mix 96-5; SportsRadio 610 and Mega 101 FM, , Doubletree Hotel Houston Downtown, Radio Disney, Greenstar Recycling, Metro, Houston Aeros, Houston Astros, Houston Dynamo, Houston Rockets, and Houston Texans. Co-producers: City of Houston/Mayor’s Office of Special Events and KTRK-TV ABC-13. Our Community Partner is the Houston Food Bank.  The event benefits Central Houston Civic Improvement, Inc., a non-profit 501 (c)

MORE
INFO:                           Visit www.freedomovertexas.org

January 28, 2012

Before You Shop – Try THE Swap! The BCO Outdoor Equipment Swap & Yardsale on January 28, 2012. Got a bunch of new gear for the Holidays? Trade your old stuff in! ALL types of outdoor (and indoor) equipment will be available – camping, kayaking, diving, hiking, backpacking, biking, indoor exercise equipment, clothes, dirty tennis shoes, you name it – we’ll have it or you can bring it!
If you have equipment you would like to swap or sell, come early (8:00 – 8:30am) to pick a good table. If you are with another outdoor/fitness group and would like your own table please call 713 524 3567.
There is no fee for a table or entry to the event. However, we are taking donations for Workshop Houston which provides resources and support for young people such as the Third Ward Bike Shop – a do-it-yourself bike repair. They are in need of all kinds of bike equipment except helmets, footwear and clothing.

New Year, new friends, new adventures! Come join BCO at the new Christian’s Tailgate location in the Heights. We’ll have our own area and Tailgate has some yummy food and drink specials. Here’s your chance to connect with new people with similar interests. BCO makes it easy to make new friends in a laid back atmosphere or just say hello to your old buddies.

Come out and stretch your legs after the holidays by biking to the Farmer’s Markets of Houston. Is this the year you start stocking your cabinets with organic groceries? This is the way to go! Hop on your bike and let’s take a ride through the side streets, trails, and residential areas in the heart of Houston. This is a very social ride and all levels of riders are welcome. We will start the morning off with coffee at Onion Creek and then cruise through 2-3 markets to shop for fresh produce, sauces, jams, and bread. This is a 12-15 mile ride that lasts about three hours so bring plenty of water and a backpack to carry your goodies! If you’d like to join us but don’t own a bike, West End Bicycles rents bikes for $25 per day at 713/861-2271 or www.westendbikes.com.

If you are a member of Bayou City Outdoors and do not have a bike, we can loan you a bike for the ride. But you MUST call the office one week in advance to arrange for the loaner bike. Meet at Onion Creek, 3106 White Oak Dr, Houston, TX 77007. Please DO NOT park in the Onion Creek lot – there is parking on the surrounding streets but look out for ‘no parking’ signs. Meet at 8:00AM – leave at 8:30AM – Noon. Free for Members and Non-Members alike. RSVP 713-524-3567 or www.BayouCityOutdoors.com

            You were approved for membership by making a billion on Bernie Madoff bobble-head dolls – the kind of heads you can rip off. I made my fortune selling picket signs and bullhorns to those Occupy Wall Street folks. My branch offices in Atlanta, Denver, Houston, Oakland — they all did well, especially Oakland, where fire bombs and gas masks were selling like crack pipes. Unfortunately, my efforts to peddle deodorants and razors didn’t work. 

            Good, the waiter has brought your drink. Thank you, Newt. No doubt you’ve heard about the recession. But not here. The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office says we top 1 percent of earners more than doubled our share of the nation’s income over the last three decades. Actually, the after-tax income of the top 20 percent now exceeds the income of the bottom 80 percent of Americans, which seems only proper. Incidentally, our “after tax income” is about the same as our “before tax income,” if you get my drift.

Our members are the usual suspects: movie stars, top athletes, drug lords. They made it on their own. Then there are the Wall Street money handlers who don’t actually contribute anything to society, like making shoe-strings or growing corn, but they make a fortune. Oh, there’s Eugene Isenberg, outgoing CEO of Houston’s Nabors Industries. He just received a $100 million golden parachute. This was on top of his $176 million in compensation between 2006 and 2010 during which the company’s stock fell 38 percent. It’s dropped another 20 percent this year. Don’t you just love it?

            Even though we own most members of Congress, many already qualify for our club. There are currently 245 millionaires — 66 in the Senate and 179 in the House. The richest of all is a Texan: Rep. Michael McCaul, Republican of Austin, worth over $294 million. He married it. Most candidates for president, including Obama, are in the top 1 percent. We don’t have exact figures, but experts say Michele Bachmann and Ron Paul probably don’t make the cut. Rick Perry’s net worth is estimated at just over $1 million, which is not bad for someone who has been a Texas state employee most of his adult life.

Yes, Warren Buffet and Bill Gates qualify for our club, technically, but they were drummed out as heretics. You know their screed: keep the death tax, spread the wealth, philanthropy. Traitors to their class. How does one qualify for Club One? Your worthiness can be measured in two ways: wealth or income. By household wealth, the cutoff point was $9 million in 2010, according to the Federal Reserve. The cutoff for annual household income is about $700,000. However, the Congressional Budget Office put the 1 percent earnings cutoff at $350,000 in 2007.  

            The bottom 99 percent deserve to be at the bottom. As Herman Cain said, “I don’t have facts to back this up, but I happen to believe that these demonstrations are planned and orchestrated, to distract from the failed policies of the Obama administration. Don’t blame Wall Street, don’t blame the big banks — if you don’t have a job and you are not rich, blame yourself!” He’s absolutely right, although I don’t have the facts to back it up.

I see through the window the great unwashed are stoning our club. Looks like an Athens come-as- you-are party. We here at the club believe in the Trickle Down Theory, or as the 99 percent call it, the Trickle On Theory. So? What’s their point? We believe in the redistribution of wealth – upwards, because we are job creators, although lately we haven’t been creating many jobs. So the gap between America’s rich and poor is widening. In the 30-nation Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, only Turkey and Mexico have more economically unequal societies than the United States.

            Look at that mob. If it’s class warfare, then we’ve got the class, and we’ll give them the warfare. We should call out the Army, speaking of which, apparently not a single son or daughter of Club One members is serving in Iraq or Afghanistan. However, two generals of my acquaintance feel they are doing their part for the war effort – Generals Dynamics and Electric.  

If you paid one dollar in federal income tax from 2008 till last year, you paid more than General Electric, DuPont, Verizon, Boeing, Wells Fargo and Honeywell. A new report from Citizens for Tax Justice – a commie front obviously — looked at 280 of the Fortune 500 companies and found, while the federal corporate tax code ostensibly requires big corporations to pay at a 35 percent corporate income tax rate, on average the 280 corporations paid only about half that amount. Or as Leona Helmsley told her housekeeper, “We don’t pay taxes. Only the little people pay taxes.” Helmsley later went to prison for federal tax evasion.

This 35 percent corporate tax rate is often cited as being second only to Japan’s rate, and should be lowered. As we can see, it already has been. This is like the oft-heard canard: “Half of Americans don’t pay income taxes.” Keep saying it long enough and people will believe it. Actually, the figure is not 50 percent but 43 percent, and they pay lots of taxes directly or indirectly: fees and fines, property taxes, school taxes, sales taxes, taxes on gasoline, pitchforks and torches. Individual income taxes only contribute 45 percent to the fed’s budget. Everybody pays the remaining 55 percent. Just remember, Texas doesn’t have an income tax, but Austin still wrings billions out of us.

Here’s to bailouts and TARP. Cheers. We’ll have another round, Mitt. 

                        Ashby is taxed at ashby2@comcast.net

Zest in the West, presented by Kroger, is a food, wine, and craft beer “Zestival” hosted by the Houston West Chamber of Commerce.  Held on Thursday through Sunday, October 20-23, Zest in the West anticipates more than 5,000 west Houston business professionals and residents to attend.

Zest in the West kicks off with a “Grand Zesting” event on Thursday, October 20 from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. at the Hilton Houston Westchase located at 9999 Westheimer Rd., Houston, 77042.  The “Grand Zesting” will showcase 150 wines and culinary fare from West Houston’s finest culinary talent.  A live and silent auction with extraordinary offerings will generate scholarship funds for the West Houston Leadership Institute.  Tickets are $45 for general admission and $75 for a VIP ticket.

Joining the line up for the weekend festivities Saturday and Sunday, October 22-23, the outdoor “Zestival” comes alive in front of The Great Indoors, 10496 Katy Freeway at Beltway 8, Houston, 77024, with artists, food trucks, wine and beer sampling tents and live music. Open Saturday from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Sunday from noon to 6 p.m., guests will enjoy interactive art displays with a glass of wine at “Connoisseurs and Canvas Art & Wine Cove” where over 150 wine selections will be available for tasting as guests can buy great eats from participating west Houston restaurants and Houston’s hottest food trucks.

Also on tap, “GreatBrewers Foam on the Range,” a craft beer tasting zone and educational experience held for beer-lovers.  Patrons can partake in exotic craft and specialty beers from around the world available for the tasting. Musical entertainment provided by the Robert Hartye Band and host of live musical talent on stage for two full days.
For the adventurous foodie, Haute Wheels West will roll in with food trucks galore providing some of the most cutting edge cuisine in Houston.

For the kids, a special “Kidz-Chen” area sponsored by Denis’ Seafood will be open for the younger set to experience a hands-on cooking lesson with Executive Chef Vernell Powe.  In addition, an entire kids fun zone with Bubble Runner, bounce houses, face painting, games and more.  Kids get into the action with the Kroger cookie station with Halloween cookie decorating for the kids.

Proceeds benefit the West Houston Leadership Institute, providing scholarship funds for participants of a ten month program that is coordinated by the Houston West Chamber of Commerce. The West Houston leadership Institute’s purpose is to train and develop leaders in the West Houston community to care for the future of West Houston.

Sponsors of this zesty event also include presenting partner Kroger, Absolutely! Magazine, Westchase District, Spring Branch Management District, Republic National Distributing Company, GreatBrewers, Kwik Copy, Yellow Cab, Denis’ Seafood House, Sarah’s Florist, Carmelo’s, Ristorante Italiano, Josephine’s Day Spa and Salon, Lawn Management Company, Inc, PJS Services, Office Depot and WHERE Magazine.

Tickets to the weekend “Zestival” are $15 for general admission and $35 for VIP entry with kids 12 and under entering free.   Parking is free in the surrounding Great Indoors parking lot.

Zest in the West, presented by Kroger, is a “Zestival” designed and dedicated to the residents and employees in the prestigious West Houston Area and is produced by Food & Vine Time Productions, producers of Wine & Food Week, Haute Wheels Houston Food Truck Festival, Red Hot Block Parties, BrewMasters Craft Beer Festival, and the Katy Sip n Stroll.  Food & Vine Time Productions has raised over $400,000 for benefiting charity partners since its inception.  For more information on the Zest in the West, visit www.zestinthewest.com or call 713-557-5732.

Houston West Chamber of Commerce is a business advocacy organization dedicated to enhancing the economic growth and vitality of the West Houston business community through leadership and business  development. The Chamber currently has more than 600 business members representing 45,000 employees. For more information, visit www.hwcoc.org  or call 713-785-4922.

What: The gorgeous Diana Garden is the magical backdrop for Bayou Bend¹s annual fall tradition of Opera Under the Stars. Bring your
folding chair or blanket and enjoy another fabulous Opera Vista production, the fifth such collaboration between the two organizations
in as many years. This year, American literary genius Edgar Allan Poe, best known for his spooky tales of mystery and the macabre, is the
inspiration for a captivating evening of music and song. Join us as the company presents The Fall of the House of Usher composed by Philip
Glass (1988) and first commissioned by the American Repertory Theater, Cambridge, MA and the Kentucky Opera. You might not want to come alone ‹ the gothic plotlines suggest frightening moments and dastardly deeds aplenty!

When: Saturday, September 24, 2011 (rain date September 25)

Gates open at 7:15 p.m.

Central hall of the house will be open until 7:45p.m.

Performance begins at 8:00 p.m.

Please note the Lora Jean Kilroy Visitor and Education Center will be
closed.

Where: 6003 Memorial Drive at Westcott Street

Details: Tickets purchased before September 19 are $25 for regular admission and $20 for MFAH members. Tickets purchased on or after
September 19 are $35 for regular admission and $30 for MFAH members. Tickets available at www.mfah.org/bayoubend or at door the night of the event, space permitting. No refunds.

No outside food or drink (except water) permitted; wine, beer, sodas, and bottled water will be available for purchase. Please refrain from
bringing guests under the age of 13.

Parking is FREE. Call in advance to make special arrangements for wheelchair access: 713-639-7759.

Background: Bayou Bend Collection and Gardens, Houston¹s home for America¹s treasures, features one of the world¹s great collections
of American decorative arts and paintings. The objects are displayed in the home of legendary Houston philanthropist and collector Ima Hogg (1882-1975), who gave her estate to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, in 1957. More than 20 room settings reveal the evolution of American style and taste from 1620 to 1876. The mansion is situated on 14 acres of formal gardens and lush woodlands. Bayou Bend is open year-round to visitors, and offers many programs for children, families, and adults. Visitors are also invited to enjoy the new Lora Jean Kilroy Visitor and Education Center that showcases the cultural, civic and philanthropic legacy of the Hogg family; a public research library
that houses 6,000 volumes dedicated to American art, culture, history and gardening, and two meeting rooms, an education garden and a retail shop.

Information: For more information, call Bayou Bend 713-639-7759 or visit www.mfah.org/bayoubend or www.operavista.org.

Contacts: Kim Stinebaker, DPW PR; kim@dpwpr.com or 713-224-9115

2,500 people will come together at Discovery Green Park to beat the Guinness World Record for simultaneous hula hooping, as a pre-cursor to the Care2Spin™ event in September, both benefiting Easter Seals Greater Houston, presented by John Eagle Honda of Houston.

We have slashed the required $100 donation to participate, and are now opening this up to any Houstonian that loves to hoop and wants to be a part of something BIG. Donations to Easter Seals Greater Houston will be appreciated, but not required.

We encourage you to join us for hooping, and would also love help getting the word out about the challenge as well. 1 in 6 Houstonians is living with a disability, and is going without necessary services due to recent state budget cuts.

Register here at http://www.give2gether.com/projects/easter-seals-of-greater-houston-1/ to prevent waiting in line, and get ready to join Easter Seals Greater Houston for the largest hula-hoop event Houston has ever seen.

The St. Jude is a first-rate, non-profit pediatric treatment and research facility that treats children with cancer and other catastrophic diseases. St. Jude freely shares its discoveries with scientific and medical communities around the country and the world. It is the only pediatric cancer research center where families never pay for treatment not covered by insurance.  No child is ever denied treatment because of a family’s inability to pay.

Your contribution in highlighting the image and activities that the St. Jude does, is in advance greatly appreciated.

TO CATCH A DOLLAR
The story of Muhammud Yanus’s microloan program…

Where commercial banks see insolvency, economist Muhammad sees opportunity. His Grameen Bank was built on the radical notion that if you loan poor women money within the context of peer support, not only will they repay bank, but they’ll elevate their communities in the process.

DATE: March 31 at 7:30pm
BUY TICKETS FOR CITYCENTRE, COPPERFIELD

KIDTOONS: THE LITTLE ENGINE THAT COULD

Climb aboard as toys and trains come to life in the enchanting, fully-animated film of this heart warming children’s classic! On her way to deliver a cargo of magical toys to eagerly waiting children, Georgia, the engine, suddenly breaks down. But a little switch engine named Tillie thinks she can do it!
$2 FOR EVERYONE

DATE: On Weekends & School Holidays at 11:00am
BUY TICKETS FOR CITYCENTRE, COPPERFIELD