Visalia
has a brand new park known as "Miki Park." This half-acre park, at the corner of Mineral
King and Stevenson, near City Hall, has been in the works for many years. The park is designed to reflect Japanese
landscaping, including stone lanterns.
These lanterns light up and make the park particularly attractive for
viewing in the evening. The entrance to
the park is an Americanized version of a Japanese torii, which is a traditional
Shinto gate.
We
dedicated our new park on Saturday, April 22, with the assistance of a
14-person delegation from our sister city of Miki Japan. There were speeches, a ribbon cutting, the
unveiling of the monument at the center of the park, then the planting of a
"sakura" or cherry tree to symbolize the friendship between our sister
cities.
Included
in the Japanese delegation was the vice-mayor of Miki Japan, Shigetoshi Inoue
and the chairperson of the Miki city council, Minoru Hatsuda. Our sister city relationship began in 1966,
and in November 2016, Visalia sent an 11-person delegation to Japan to
celebrate our 50th anniversary.
The dedication of this park celebrates the beginning of our next 50 years
as sister cities.
We
thank the various local host families who housed our Japanese visitors for several
days. We took our guests to a Rawhide
baseball game, Sequoia National Park, to see the Riata Ranch cowgirls, and to
tour various businesses and COS to get a taste of American lifestyle. Their trip concluded with an all-American
barbeque in the Gubler backyard. A
highlight of the program that evening was vice-mayor Bob Link and I singing and
dancing to the hit Japanese music video "The Apple Pen Song." If you're curious, look it up at youtu.be/0E00Zuayv9Q.
We
thank all of those who helped make this a memorable trip for our Japanese
guests and we look forward to our next visit to our sister city, maybe in 2018? Be sure to drop by and check out our new Miki
Park. P.S. I might add that the word Miki translates to
"three trees." Our new park
even has three stately old growth sycamore trees, which someone pointed out is
symbolic of the "three trees."
The Patio Place
I
recently received an email from a local businessman, Ron Bock. He wrote to mention that while in a prior
article I had made mention of his business neighbors on either side, DSW and
Home Goods on South Mooney Blvd., I had failed to mention his new store. So my wife and I dropped by to check it
out. Ron's store is known as "The
Patio Place." Ron was raised in
Visalia, moved away and opened stores elsewhere, then came back to Visalia to
open this store. He knew from experience
how nice people from Visalia are and had been wanting to go into business here. If you're looking for high-quality outdoor
furniture of all types, drop by The Patio Place. There you go Ron, I hope I made up for
failing to mention you and your store previously, and good luck. We appreciate all of our local businesses,
and I enjoy attending as many ribbon cuttings as I can as a representative of
the city of Visalia.
Visalia's
F-15 Fighter Jet
On
March 9, 2017, Vice-Mayor Bob Link, City Manager Mike Olmos, myself as Mayor
and others from Visalia were honored to attend the dedication of a F-15 Fighter
jet at the Air National Guard base in Fresno.
After some speeches by myself and Colonel Reed Drake, Commander of the
144th Fighter Wing, we unveiled the city's crest/logo which will now
be on the jet flown by Lt. Colonel Chris Corliss. Visalia is working with the Air National Guard
to arrange to have Ranger Corliss and our jet fly over Groppetti Stadium on
July 4th as part of our city fireworks display this year. I should mention that we also had the
opportunity to meet a number of Visalians who are members of the Fresno Air National
Guard and we appreciate their service to our community, state and country. And by the way, CASA of Tulare County was
awarded the opportunity to put on this year's community fireworks celebration. They have big plans for a day-long
celebration. Mark your calendars and
plan on attending. Together we can make
this the best 4th of July celebration ever!
If
you have questions or topics regarding the city which you would like to have
addressed in future articles, please email Warren at warren.gubler@visalia.city. For past articles, visit
directfromwarren.blogspot.com.
