Feeling Sick With Coffins, Baseball & Waterfalls At Arlington's Veterans Park

My Veterans Park Baseball

I do not remember being sick, yet, this century. If I have, I have lost all memory of it. No cold, no flu, no nothing.

And then yesterday I started randomly sneezing. I attributed this to being out in the rain. And maybe chemicals enhancing my local air, courtesy of the recent Chesapeake Energy well hydraulic fracturing, aka fracking.

Prior to the bouts of sneezing I had been having a couple days of itchy burning watery eyes.

And then this morning I woke up with a headache. My head has been aching, my eyes watering and my nose sneezing all day long.

Veterans Park Memorial With Coffins

Around noon I decided to treat my symptoms by going to Veterans Park, in Arlington and then ALDI in Pantego.

You can almost tell by the shadow of the waving flag that stands above the soldier who stands guard over the Veterans Park Memorial that is was windy today.

Does anyone, but me, think it a bit odd to have two coffins laying on the ground in front of bricks memorializing fallen Soldiers and Veterans, as part of the memorial?

I have never seen such a thing before, anywhere. Not that I've seen all that many of these type memorials.

I forgot to mention, soon upon arrival at Veterans Park I found a white ball laying on the ground. I picked it up and took it with me, throwing it in the air and catching it as I walked. I was feeling quite coordinated.

Veterans Park Falls

Veterans Park was a bit on the wet side, today, recovering from the first big rainstorm of 2012. Rain ended very early today, with blue sky returning to North Texas by noon.

Part of the trail through the Veterans Park Xeriscape was covered by a rampaging Veterans Park Creek, roaring over Veterans Park Falls.

I like feeling the earth tremble from a big waterfall, and getting soaked from the mist.

Changing the subject from Veterans Park, and catching a ball, back to being sick.

The only place I have been in the past week, where I was in close quarters with a lot of potential virus carriers, has been Town Talk. And Wal-Mart. I could not find Paradise Center Camp Bowie Bingo on Friday, or I would have had to add bingo to the suspect list.

I am medicating myself, currently, with medicinal tea laced with lemon juice. I'm sure it will cure me by morning.

In Arlington Visiting The Veterans Park Soldier & Ducks While Thinking About Having Pho Soup With Fort Worth's Lone Ranger

The Soldier Overlooking
The Veterans Park Memorial Today

Earlier today I blogged that I was likely going to the Village Creek Natural Historic Area in Arlington on my way to Pantego.

On the way to Pantego I changed my mind and went to Veterans Park, also in Arlington.

On the way to Arlington I needed gas. As my one longtime reader knows, when I get gas I call my mom.

I had had my phone off this morning due being in the middle of the most complicated website project I've worked on in years and not liking getting distracted, due to my Adult Attention Deficit Disorder.

So, I turned on my phone and saw I had a voice mail or two. I listened to the voice mails before calling my mom. After listening to the voice mails the phone started beeping to let me know the battery was about to go dead.

So, I did not call my mom to tell her I got gas.

Veteran Ducks & Their Babies

One of the voice mails was from Fort Worth's Lone Ranger. The Lone Ranger said he was going to be in the East Fort Worth zone and thought it'd be fun to meet up with me at Village Creek to visit the Indian Ghosts. I think something was also said about having made a big pot of Vietnamese Pho Soup to consume whilst sitting at one of the Village Creek picnic tables.

I was in mercenary high speed mode today, wanting to get back to my abode and computer with a minimum amount of time spent in Pantego and Arlington.

And that is what I did. I just realized I did not plug the phone into the recharger upon my return. And right at this point in time I don't exactly know where it is.

I tell you, AADD is not an easy thing to live with.....

A Veterans Park Soldier Overlooks Flags At Half Mast For Fort Hood Massacre

I had to be in Arlington today. I went for a short walk at Veterans Park. This was the first place I noticed flags flying at half mast. In Veterans Park a soldier overlooks the flags and the memorial 24/7. None of the soldiers who were murdered in the Fort Hood Massacre have yet had their names memorialized in brick, yet, at this location.

If you have not been to Veterans Park to see the new memorial, and are in the area, it is well worth a look. I was fascinated reading the memorial bricks. It was from those bricks that I learned there were Texas Choctaw code talkers who also helped fool the Nazis during World War II, along with the Navajo code talkers. There are a couple bricks for rebel soldiers who fought for the Confederacy during the Civil War. There are some bricks for soldiers who fought in the very short Spanish-American War. And of course, bricks for soldiers who were in World War I & II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, the Afghanistan War & the Iraq War.

America seems to have way too many wars.

Jungle Walking With Cicadas At Veterans Park & Getting Followed By Bethenny Frankel

The Cicadas are being real plentiful this year. Everywhere I go it seems I am hearing them. They are busy chirping, or whatever you call the noise, outside my window right now.

This morning in the pool the Cicadas were busy making their racket. Then when the sun came up and the birds added their chirping, well, it sounds like a jungle out there.

I believe the Cicada noise is some sort of mating mechanism. If so I fear there is way too much Cicada mating going on. The Cicadas have been being real loud on the Tandy Hills.

And then today on my way to Chinatown to go to the Hong Kong Market I stopped to walk at Veterans Park in Arlington with the cicadas being their loudest yet. So, as I walked through the Veterans Park Jungle I turned the video recorder on to see if I could capture the noise for you who live in Cicada-free lands. That video is being processed, by YouTube, even as I type.

In other exciting news, my Twitter befuddlement continues, but in the midst of the befuddlement I got an email telling me that Bethenny Frankel is now one of my Twitter Followers. Why, I do not know. All I Twitter about is not understanding why anyone Twitters and that it would seem to be to be rather telling that the #1 Twitterer is the well-known Twit who calls himself Ashton Kutcher.

Bethenny Frankel is my favorite New York City Housewife. She is very funny. And she makes Skinny Girl Martinis. I believe Bethenny Frankel is on Facebook. Maybe she'll Facebook Friend me now that she is one of my Twitter Followers.

Due to last night's rain it was a bit on the humid side, while out and about today, adding a bit of a Heat Index factor to the base temperature which is in the pleasant mid 80s.

That's the lone soldier who stands guard, 24/7, over the memorial at Veterans Park in the picture.

After I was done in Chinatown I choose the route home that goes by the new Dallas Cowboy Stadium, intending to get on I-30 via Collins Street.

This will mean nothing to non-locals, but those new bridge projects across I-30 have gone into on steroids mode. Part of the new Center Street Bridge is open. The west bound entry off Collins Street is no more. A huge, deep canyon has been dug east of the Collins Street Bridge. The temporary westbound entry has you getting on the freeway west of the new Center Street Bridge. It was quite a confusing maze. I would not want to drive it after the sun goes down. That huge looping old Collins Street cloverleaf is totally gone.

Methinks this is going to be quite the improvement when it all gets done. Let's hope that is sooner than later.

Okay, YouTube is done processing, I'm going to go Twitter something for Bethenny now...

Veterans Park Veterans Memorial

I'd not taken the time to closely look at the new Veterans Memorial in Veterans Park til today. There are paver stones on which the names of local veterans are engraved. Or notes from loved ones.

I don't quite know for sure what I think of the part of the memorial where the engraved paver stones end up at a pair of what I assume are intended to represent caskets.

The casket on the left, at the point where the pavers meet the casket, the engravings were for several Choctaw Code Talkers from World War I. I knew about the Navajo Code Talkers of World War II, but I'd never heard of Choctaw Code Talkers.

In a Burger King in Kayenta, Arizona, on or near the Navajo Nation, there is a museum, as part of the Burger King, that tells the story of the Navajo Code Talkers. That was the first I'd ever heard of them. That was in the early 1990s. Since then their story has become well known, via movies and I think a memorial other than the one in a Burger King.

There were pavers for soldiers from the current Iraq war, the previous Iraq War, Vietnam, Korea, both World Wars. And the Civil War. Two from the Civil War. I thought that was interesting. Jack Tankersley and James I Brewton, Civil War Confederate.

When I first came to Texas, we went out to Weatherford, we were walking around the county courthouse, which looked cool to our northwest eyes. And then there was a statue, a statue memorializing the War Between the State and the Confederacy. It was at that point that for the first time I realized, yikes, I'm living in a Confederate state. At the time this seemed significant. Now, not so much.

Cemeteries in Texas are very interesting to a person who grew up in the northwest. Washington only became a state in 1889. Prior to the 1850s there weren't a lot of people other than Indians living in Washington. So, if you walk around even the oldest cemeteries in Washington, like the one in the small town of Rosyln, you see some very intriguing gravestones, it's got something like 20 sections, divided by everything from religion to nation to race.

But, in a Washington cemetery you don't see anyone buried that was born in something like 1799. I never saw such a thing til I was in Texas. Texas cemeteries are like walking through a museum. If' you've not walked around the cemetery by the Dallas Convention Center and Pioneer Plaza, well, it's worth a walk. It also has the biggest Civil War monument I've seen. I think Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, Stonewall Jackson and I forget who else are on it.

I've got to remember to blog about an interesting, pretty much hidden, war memorial that I came across in the Fort Worth Botanic Gardens. I took pictures and then forgot about it.