Anne Kilkenny Letter About Sarah Palin

A pair of my favorite corespondents are heading to Texas to maybe see me. They call themselves Chippys. The also call themselves LuluRedstar and Lauri Evans. They are an amusing pair. Very smart and witty. And they have a blog. From them I learned I want to try a Jalapeno Margarita.

This afternoon Lauri sent me a link to a very interesting letter written by a Wasilla, Alaska resident named Anne Kilkenny. Each time I type Kilkenny I think South Park.

Below is an excerpt from the end of the letter. Go here to read the whole thing.

WHY AM I WRITING THIS?

First, I have long believed in the importance of being an informed voter. I am a voter registrar. For 10 years I put on student voting programs in the schools. If you google my name (Anne Kilkenny + Alaska), you will find references to my participation in local government, education, and PTA/parent organizations.

Secondly, I've always operated in the belief that "Bad things happen when good people stay silent". Few people know as much as I do because few have gone to as many City Council meetings.

Third, I am just a housewife. I don't have a job she can bump me out of. I don't belong to any organization that she can hurt. But, I am no fool; she is immensely popular here, and it is likely that this will cost me somehow in the future: that’s life.

Fourth, she has hated me since back in 1996, when I was one of the 100 or so people who rallied to support the City Librarian against Sarah's attempt at censorship.

Fifth, I looked around and realized that everybody else was afraid to say anything because they were somehow vulnerable.

Anne Kilkenny August 31, 2008

9/11 2008

I know I'm not the first person today to think it's amazing it's been 7 years since that shocking morning in 2001. Who would have thought on that day that 7 years later we'd be bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan? The Bush presidency had barely begun on that day. And now it is almost over.

That shocking day began for me with a phone call, telling me a plane had hit the World Trade Center. Since the caller was in Dallas at the time, I thought he was referencing the Dallas World Trade Center, which is not all that far from Love Field.

When I turned on the TV I was shocked to see it was the New York City World Trade Towers, just as the second plane struck the second tower.

As soon as I realized how bad this was I began waking people up on the west coast. I didn't tell them what had happened, just that they needed to turn on their TVs. I remember calling my little sister back and saying I didn't think she should go into work that morning. She worked, at the time, in one of Seattle's tallest towers.

About a month after 9/11 a friend from up north, Nancy, came down here. When I picked her up at D/FW I asked if she was hungry. She was. So we went to the Fort Worth Stockyards to find Mexican food. It was deserted. It took awhile, post 9/11, for places like the Stockyards to get back to normal.

A couple weeks after Nancy was here my mom and dad showed up for a week long visit. The Stockyards had picked up by then. Go here and the first photo is my mom watching my dad take a picture of the Fort Worth Herd. I thought I had a picture there of my dad with barbecue sauce all over while eating ribs at Riscky's BBQ. That must be somewhere else. I have too many webpages to keep track of.

While mom and dad were here my mom called my sister who now lives in Phoenix, but then lived in Washington. My nephew, Jeremy answered. He was home alone and scared. The war in Afghanistan had begun. It was his first exposure to such a thing where he was old enough to know it's serious. Jeremy must have been 13 or 14 at the time.

I got back here in Fort Worth a few days before 9/11. I'd driven myself up to Seattle the month before. Best roadtrip ever. Thousands of miles alone with no one to bug me about being hungry or needing a restroom. On the way north gas was $1.17 in Amarillo. When I returned a month later it was $1.39. When I moved to Texas in 1998, OH GOOD GAWD, it's been 10 years, gas was $.77 a gallon in Amarillo. 77 cents!

Houston. We've Got A Problem. Hurricane Ike Heading Your Way.

Watching the news at lunch it would appear that Alma's Port Aransas will be spared the worst of Hurricane Ike. I've not heard from Alma today, but I'm sure she evacuated last night, via ferry, as she'd planned.

The latest guess has Ike heading towards the Galveston/Houston zone. Once Ike makes landfall they are predicting he's going to take a turn east. I guess this will spare the Dallas/Fort Worth zone from much Ike action. I don't know about that for sure.

It should be an interesting weekend.

Meanwhile the freeways heading out of Houston are packed with cars moving slowly. You'd think they were already here. The freeway that runs by my abode, I-820, has been jammed all day heading north. Why? I don't know. I'm almost 100% certain though that it is not Ike-related.

Chesapeake Energy Sued Over Noise in Fort Worth

That wall you see by the Chesapeake Energy drilling rig is near where I live. I think its purpose is to block noise.

A short distance from this wall there is a gated community called Riverbend Estates.

Jim Ashford is suing Chesapeake Energy due to the noise Chesapeake compressors make. The compressors are at another site, on the north side of the Trinity River from Riverbend Estates.

Ashford complained to the city for 2 years to no avail. And then sued. His suit contends the compressors are a nuisance under Texas common law. He seeks restitution for damages for mental anguish and the loss of enjoyment of his home.

Ashford filed 5 police reports between February and May of 2007. Officers responding to the complaints reported they could hear the compressors from Ashford's house. Two of the cops wanted Chesapeake cited for violating the city's general noise ordinance. But a further investigation, or more likely, interference from above, determined the sound did not amount to a criminal offense.

Arlington Sued Over Dallas Cowboy Stadium Land Steal

Four Arlington landowners got their day in the 2nd Court of Appeals in Fort Worth on Wednesday, arguing that Arlington acted unconstitutionally when it obtained their land through eminent domain for the new Cowboy stadium.

One of the attorneys also argued that the city's lease with the Dallas Cowboys was illegal.

One of the Cowboy's victims, Walter Herrington, said "You can't take my land for a private individual like Jerry Jones."

The landowners want the previous rulings overturned, hopefully forcing the city to re-negotiate the lease with the Cowboys and the land deals.

17 lawsuits were heard on Wednesday. 20 more cases are waiting to be heard.

Charlie Scott had 11 parcels of land taken from him. He said, "I want to see the little man treated fairly."

I don't think that is going to happen until somehow these lawsuits reach a jurisdiction outside of Texas, if that is possible.

Peeling the Barnett Shale Onion via FW Weekly, Plus Don Young Alert

Incoming alert from Don Young for those of us in the D/FW zone.

"Thursday night on WFAA-TV, Channel 8, reporter Brett Shipp delivers another hard hitting investigative report. This time covering the scandalous subject of injection wells and their polluting dangerous effects on the Texas environment."

Meanwhile this week's FW Weekly has an excellent article about the dangers of all this drilling going on for the first time in history in an urban zone, that being Fort Worth and surrounding areas.

The FW Weekly article is titled "Peeling the Barnett Shale Onion". The reporter is Peter Gorman.

Here's an excerpt....

When a natural gas pipeline blew outside the little Central Texas town of Stairtown on Aug. 28, fire officials more than 10 miles from the blast site said they could feel the explosion. And hair went up on thousands of necks in Fort Worth, more than 200 miles away.

“That was a 36-inch gas pipe that blew,” said Gary Hogan, a member of the Fort Worth Gas Drilling Task Force, which is trying to find ways to make Barnett Shale activity in Fort Worth safer for people and the environment. “We’ve got 36-inch gas pipes running all over the place under the city, and we’re going to have a lot more soon. I don’t want to think about what that would have meant if it had happened here.”

As it was, the explosion, in a rural area, hurt no one. But the same explosion, occurring in downtown Fort Worth, would have been devastating. So would any of the dozens of other gas well and pipeline explosions that have rocked Texas in the last year. It was just one more grim piece of the education that North Texans have been getting, lesson after troubling lesson, since those first drilling company reps showed up on local doorsteps a few years ago, waving money and contracts.

Go here to read the entire article...

Hurricane Ike Update From Alma and Port Aransas

Hey Durango....

I'm at work closing the store at noon. I'll be leaving here sometime during the night, tonight. A friend is looking at my car to see if we can start it, if we can't I will have to borrow my bro-in-law's car, but I will get off the Island no matter what. I'm hoping for a Northern landfall so we are spared the floods and winds. I'm hoping we have somewhere to return to. I don't want to wish it on anyone, but I just don't want it here. I'd write more but things here are quietly insane. Everyone's trying to be cool, but inside we are all freaking out. The lines to the Ferry are going to be terrible. There will be a mandatory evacuation for 8am tomorrow morning. Please pray for me....I plan to return here to live if it still exists. This is just a giant sandbar after all.

Love ya...thanks for being my friend.
alma

John McCain's First Wife Carol

That's Carol McCain in the photo. The survivor of a horrible car wreck. And a husband who dumped her almost immediately upon getting home from the Viet Nam War. To start womanizing, eventually ending up with a former rodeo queen, wealthy heiress named Cindy.

The ever memorable Ross Perot said this about John McCain...

“McCain is the classic opportunist. He’s always reaching for attention and glory. After he came home, Carol walked with a limp. So he threw her over for a poster girl with big money from Arizona. And the rest is history.”

In 1979 - while still married to Carol - he met Cindy at a cocktail party in Hawaii. Over the next six months he pursued Cindy, flying around the country to see her. Then he began to push to end his marriage. Some of McCain's acquaintances are less forgiving, however. They portray the politician as a self-centered womanizer who effectively abandoned his crippled wife to 'play the field'. They accuse him of finally settling on Cindy, a former rodeo beauty queen, for financial reasons.

When John McCain returned to America in 1973 to a fanfare of publicity and a handshake from Richard Nixon, he discovered his wife had been disfigured in a terrible car crash three years earlier. Her car had skidded on icy roads into a telegraph pole on Christmas Eve, 1969. Her pelvis and one arm were shattered by the impact and she suffered massive internal injuries.

When Carol was discharged from hospital after six months of life-saving surgery, the prognosis was bleak. In order to save her legs, surgeons had been forced to cut away huge sections of shattered bone, taking with it her tall, willowy figure. She was confined to a wheelchair and was forced to use a catheter. Today, she stands at just 5' 4" in and still walks awkwardly, with a pronounced limp. Her body is held together by screws and metal plates and , at 70, her face is worn by wrinkles that speak of decades of silent suffering.

Ross Perot paid for Carol McCain's medical bills all those years ago.

Ted Sampley, who fought with US Special Forces in Vietnam and is now a leading campaigner for veterans' rights, said: "I have been following John McCain's career for nearly 20 years. I know him personally. There is something wrong with this guy and let me tell you what it is -deceit. Then he came home and saw that Carol was not the beauty he left behind, he started running around on her almost right away. Everybody around him knew it. Eventually he met Cindy and she was young and beautiful and very wealthy. At that point McCain just dumped Carol for something he thought was better."

I guess I'm back voting for Obama. Even though I really really don't like Joe Biden.

State Fair of Texas & Red River Shootout

I'm constantly getting questions to my feedback@durangotexas.com email address that is all over my Eyes on Texas website. Some of them are amusing. Some of them I have no idea what they are talking about. And then some I do know the answer.

Like this one from yesterday regarding the upcoming State Fair of Texas and the football game that takes place in the Cotton Bowl during the fair, between Oklahoma and Texas called the Red River Shootout. Or sometimes the Red River Rivalry. The Red River is what your cross to get from Texas to Oklahoma, and vice versa.

"We are planning on attending the OU/Texas game, we are bringing our daughter who is 6 months old. I was wondering if I would be allowed to bring a backpack or diaper bag into the fair/game or if that would not be allowed? Also if we were to bring in a stroller, once we went into the game, would we have a place to put the stroller, or does the fair have a place to check the stroller for the game?"

I didn't know the answer, for certain, to the stroller part of the question, but I did know the answer to the security question, as in it's like a minor version of going through airport security to get into the fair. You don't have to take your shoes off. Your backpack will be inspected. You may be wanded.

The State Fair of Texas runs from September 26 to October 19. I hear Gar the Texan will be bringing his latest wife to the fair this year. And once more below is my YouTube video of the State Fair of Texas

Unstoppable Woman

I'll be talking to an Unstoppable Woman named Dina Moor today. She's organizing an Unstoppable Women Conference to be held in Plano in November. Plano is a northern suburb of Dallas. Near where Southfork Ranch is where J.R. Ewing used to pretend to live, along with his Unstoppable Woman wife, Sue Ellen.

Laura Bush will be at the Unstoppable Women Conference, either in person or via video.

So, why am I talking to this Unstoppable Woman? Well, last year I made a website for her, so she could promote her books and other Unstoppable Women. Apparently I'm going to be adding new stuff to the website to promote the upcoming Unstoppable Women Conference. The details have been confusing via email, hence the in person Unstoppable Woman contact today.

I've known a few Unstoppable Women. I've also known a few I wish I could stop.