ARTICLES Archives - Page 149 of 312

Ripples #49

Compiled and Written by Lenny Giteck Swimming with the Sharks:Good Fun for a 5-Year-Old?

As I’ve mentioned previously in this space, I spend a fair amount of time every day searching the Web for items to include in the Around the Internet and Aquatic Health, Fitness & Safety sections of watershapes.com. I only began this exercise last fall – well out of the swimming season, so it’s just in recent weeks that I’ve started completing the cycle and getting a sense of the annual rhythm of these stories. One distressing observation: As the summer wears on, the number of news reports about drownings and near-drownings is simply

Test Your Knowledge #37

Swimming Australia Cancels Pre-Olympics Swim Meet Due to Outbreak of Illness

Inspiring — and That’s No Joke

When our kids were young, Judy and I took them on car trips all over California and visited as many parks and missions and monuments as we could. My favorite spots always seemed to include water – a variety of beaches, lakes and rivers mostly in the stretch between San Diego and San Francisco. And among those favorites, there was (and still is) a special place in my heart for

Ripples #48

Compiled and Written by Lenny Giteck Topless in Seattle: Female CancerSurvivor Fights City Pool's Dress Code

Spirit of the Season

Just a month ago, I wrote in this space about the generosity of a group of watershapers and landscape designers who planted a park in a Rochester, N.Y., neighborhood that definitely needed a boost. Ever since, it seems, I have kept running into reports of genuine, aquatically related community spirit. In many cases, for example, threatened closures of public swimming pools have been

Finishing Touches

The satisfaction that comes with completing beautiful, fully functional ponds is truly special – and when the water is intended for occupation by amazing fish, it gets even better. As was showcased in the first of the two parts of this video, we at Full Service Aquatics (Summit, N.J.) had been called in to convert a derelict swimming pool on the grounds of a major garden center into a pond the management could use to

Designs with Infinity in Mind

We describe them using many terms – as vanishing-edge, infinity-edge, negative-edge, knife-edge, slot-overflow, flooded-deck, gutter or perimeter-overflow pools, among others – but no matter what we call them, all of these watershapes operate on the same basic premise: By moving a sufficient quantity of water from a collection basin or tank to a visible main vessel at a sufficient rate, we can create systems in which

Serious Whimsy

This project was all about fun and finding ways to infuse watershapes and the overall landscape with childlike senses of playfulness and wonder. At a glance, of course, it’s obvious that this particular approach wouldn’t work for too many clients, but in this case, we were working with a woman who wanted her yard to express her love of color, her sense of humor and her unparalleled inclination

In the Spirit of the Season

Just a month ago, I wrote in this space about the generosity of a group of watershapers and landscape designers who planted a park in a Rochester, N.Y., neighborhood that definitely needed a boost. Ever since, it seems, I have kept running into reports of genuine, aquatically related community spirit. In many cases, for example, threatened closures of public swimming pools have been averted through donations by individuals and businesses in their communities. Local governments, strapped for the cash to pay for anything other than essential services, have seemed all too willing to save money by closing down pools (or shutting off fountains or idling interactive waterfeatures), thereby making