Let's Talk About Libraries Fort Worth

Last week I mentioned that the Ruling Junta of Fort Worth was holding their final "Let's Talk Fort Worth" meeting. This had been a series of town hall type deals where the citizens of Fort Worth could let the Junta know what they're thinking. This current "Let's Talk Fort Worth" was the 3rd time in about 50 years the Ruling Junta has solicited such citizen opinions.

Today is the day the Ruling Junta puts its full page ad in the Star-Telegram, called "City Page." Under the headline, "Residents Share Their Dreams at Let's Talk Fort Worth," there is an embarrassing propagandish version of what the citizens of Fort Worth had to tell the Ruling Junta. There is no mention of the large protest that preceded the meeting during which Fort Worth citizen's let the Junta know what they think of all the gas drilling going on all over town.

The article also made no mention of the many people who verbalized their gas drilling concerns to the Ruling Junta during the Let's Talk meeting.

The following paragraph really rubbed me the wrong way. After you read it I'll tell you why it annoyed me....

"Several speakers praised Fort Worth's quality of life, it's neighborliness and cultural attractions, and its peaceful ambiance and low crime rates. Also mentioned as favorite things about Fort Worth were its thriving downtown and associated entertainment, dining and shopping and the urban villages burgeoning in various parts of the city...."

Before I get to the part about the above that really bugged me I've got to say, first off. Shopping? In downtown Fort Worth? Fort Worth is the only city in America with a population over 400,000 with absolutely no department store downtown. Not a one. Very meager shopping opportunities. Contrast Fort Worth's downtown with smaller in population Seattle. Seattle has at least 3 vertical malls downtown. More than one grocery store. Several department stores, like Nordstroms and dozens of other stores, in addition to Pike Place Market. Seattle has a thriving downtown. Fort Worth has the deadest downtown of any downtown I've ever seen. Just look at photos I took of downtown Fort Worth on the busiest shopping day of the year, the day after Thanksgiving.

Okay, now the thing that really bugs me. Beneath the article on the "City Page," singing the praises of Fort Worth's alleged livability, is another article. This one making note of the city's library's new operating hours. Due to budget shortfalls the city of Fort Worth decided to save money by laying off library employees and cutting back operating hours. Every time I have been in my nearby Fort Worth library it is real busy. Everyone of the computer terminals being used by people I assume don't have a computer. People wait outside the library's entry waiting for it to open.

What sort of city that has any sort of pretension regarding caring about its quality of life would cut back on the access of its citizens to its libraries?

Tonight's Debate Among Other Annoyances

I'm not in the mood to blog about anything. Usually I've got too much I'm in the mood to blog about. But not this morning. Maybe my blah mood is due to a bad dream last night. Maybe it's due to being nervous because the financial meltdown seems to be getting worse. I'm still cranky at Washington Mutual and their bad banking practices.

I only made it through half an hour of Dancing With The Stars last night. I got bored and then I got sleepy. I'm sure I'll try and watch tonight's debate. It's likely McCain, in desperation, is going to be all Mr. Fiesty Pants, accusing Obama of cohorting with terrorists who did bad deeds when Obama was only 7 and living in Hawaii. If the debate turns ugly at least it will likely hold my interest and keep me wake. Appalled, disgusted and awake.

My bad nightmare last night was very very unsettling. I'd blogged yesterday about my aversion to Christmas and family holiday get-togethers. So, last night my nightmare had me up in Lynden at the annual combo Christmas/Birthday party for my long gone Grandma. Well, in the nightmare there was Grandma. It was like I was living it in 3-D. I was glad to see Grandma. I actually sort of enjoyed those times at times. The gift exchange was usually amusing.

And then after I visited Grandma my nightmare turned macabre. My long gone Uncle Ivan, who I really did not know all that well, was there, not looking good. And then I turned to my left and there was Uncle Mel. Uncle Mel has been fighting a battle against prostate cancer for years now. It's a battle he's been gradually losing.

I last saw Uncle Mel at my nephew Jason's wedding in April of 2006. When I turned to look at him Uncle Mel had tears in his eyes and said "I'm so glad I got to see you again." And then he faded away. I woke up instantly, very unsettled and I've been unsettled all morning.

To take my mind off of all my annoyances I have been making webpages like a maniac this morning. Adding all sortsa content to my Eyes on Texas website. That thing is getting way too big. If only I'd designed the original layout with the eventual size in mind, things would be so much easier. But it's like a bad house that someone keeps putting add-ons on til it's like a patchwork of cobbled together messiness, that's perfectly livable, but really could have been done way better. I guess it's not so bad, only I can see the mess, the viewer, not so much.

We are under a high wind alert all day here in North Texas. It's only 66 out there with an hour or so to go til noon. Brrrr. No swimming this morning. It was time to shock the pool. That's pool maintenance talk meaning chemicals had to be mixed in to keep the water all nice and clean.

Christmas in Texas

Today, for the first time this year, I heard a phrase I hate hearing, as in "the Holiday Season is almost here." Said as if this is a good thing.

I've been seeing Halloween stuff in stores for a couple months now. I'm sure if I looked closely I'd see some Thanksgiving stuff. It's probably only a few weeks before Christmas starts its yearly appearance.

I've never enjoyed much about the Holiday Season. Okay, I do like turkey dinner. Last year I got a turkey from Sprouts and made a real good turkey dinner. That's way too much bother. I doubt I'll go through that again this year. Maybe I'll have turkey hot dogs.

People who talk about how busy they are during the Holiday Season, acting sort of like it overwhelms them, with so much to do, annoy me. Why not just opt out if it's too much for you? I pretty much opted out decades ago and I've not suffered too much.

I think, maybe, part of the reason I have an aversion to the Holidays is it always involved way too much family interaction. Going to a combo Christmas/Grandma's Birthday deal a week or so before Christmas. That seeming to come up before I'd recovered from whatever the family Thanksgiving thing for the year happened to be. Followed way too closely by Christmas.

One year for Christmas Eve I had my mom and dad and baby sister over and made Chinese food. That was fun. My baby sister does not remember this, but at the time she was all pleased at the unusual Christmas Eve dinner.

For years my strategy for avoiding Christmas and all it entailed was to simply leave. I spent more than one Christmas in Reno. I enjoyed those Christmases. From Reno I'd go on to LA and have a fine time at Disneyland and playing in the LA zone. I remember the last time I did this was Christmas of 1994. Spent that Christmas at Disneyland. Best Christmas ever.

I did have a good Christmas experience in the year 1999. Right before that millennium thing happened. I'd been up in Washington. It'd been a scary drive north. Way too much ice and snow. So, I decided to return to Texas by heading south down I-5 and then east across the Southwest.

This plan put me on the path to Yuma. Where my mom and dad lived at the time. So, heading south there was much debate along the lines of Disneyland for Christmas. Or Yuma. Yuma won the debate. It turned out to be the right decision. Christmas Eve my dad drove us around Yuma looking at the lights. It was a totally different Christmas. Due to being warm, people were outside, like having a party. These luminaria candle things were everywhere. So many people outside sitting in their yards watching the people drive by.

Christmas morning mom and dad took me to their favorite casino so we could have the 99 cent Senior Citizen Special for breakfast. Me, not being a Senior, but hungry, had 3 of the specials. After the casino we took off for Algadones, Mexico to do some Christmas shopping. That was fun. The best part was watching my mom chasing parking tickets, blowing in the wind, because each one was redeemable at the casino. Which is where we went Christmas night.

Christmas of 1999, in Yuma, may end up being the last time I get to spend Christmas with mom and dad unless I make an effort to get to Phoenix. Phoenix would probably be fun for Christmas. It is very similar to Yuma. Plus they have an In & Out Burger joint. Best burgers ever.

Wal-Mart's Bad Flag Etiquette

I was at the Eastchase Super Wal-Mart today in East Fort Worth to witness another badly abused American flag on display here in Texas. The previous incident was at my nearby U.S. Post Office.

I took several photos of the Wal-Mart flag. When I got back to my vehicle a strange thing happened. A large woman in a large car drove up to me, rolled down her window and started yelling at me, asking why I was taking pictures of her. It was oddly reminiscent of a YouTube video I posted some time back. The large woman in the large car ended her diatribe by taking a photo of me. It was all very unsettling.

Back to the bad Wal-Mart flag. This is what I found when Googling about Flag Etiquette...

"If the edges become tattered through wear, the flag should be repaired or replaced. When a flag is so tattered that can no longer serve as a symbol of the United States, it should be destroyed in a dignified manner, preferably by burning. The American Legion and other organizations regularly conduct dignified flag-burning ceremonies, often on Flag Day, June 14."

Now, I'm not some sort of fanatic about flags. I don't care one way or the other is someone wears a flag pin. But if you're gonna fly the flag it seems really tacky to me to fly one that is all torn up, blowing tattered in the wind, as if it'd been pummelled in a war zone. Wal-Mart should be ashamed. About this bad flag thing too.

Chased By An Armadillo Under Stormy Texas Weather

We had our first thunderstorm in a long time, this morning, followed by the first rain in a long time. I went swimming in the rain, again. I like swimming in the rain.

Around noon I went to Village Creek Natural Historical Area to walk under the dripping oak trees. They weren't dripping too much. But the ground had turned sort of muddy. Which made it good armadillo foraging ground. I've seen a lot of armadilloes at Village Creek this year. Today was no exception.

I came across the armadillo you see in the photo with his snout buried in the mud sucking for goodies. I got real close to him to take a pic, which was easy because he was eating. If their faces are above ground the armadilloes can be a bit skittish and run away. But, if you stand still you pose no threat. Armadilloes do not see very well. If you stand still, I've had them move towards me, like they're trying to see if you might provide some good bugs to eat.

This guy came right at me. He got a bit disoriented when he got on the sidewalk, but he kept coming towards me and I started stepping back, taking pics as I did. Armadilloes are cute, and harmless, but they are also sort of creepy little throwbacks that somehow survived the extinctions of the dinosaur era. Or so it seems.

Continuing on from my Armadillo encounter I came to Village Creek. It was running a lot of water due to today's rain. I've seen it running a lot more water, often to the point where it floods over the bridges and the park has to close. Today did not get near that, but it still made for some good wild rapids.

Google Feedburner Burning Me

Some of this blog stuff I really don't get. Like why does one want to burn a feed? And then subscribe to a blog feed? Why not just read the blog like you would any ol' website?

Even though I don't quite get the point, long ago I used Feedburner to burn a feed of this very blog you are looking at right now. I soon found I had subscribers. The number of subscribers goes up and down.

When I log into my Feedburner account there is a tab you can click on called 'Monetize.' I tried to monetize my Feedburner feed a long time ago, because I'd noticed that the Feedburner feed of my blog did not have the Google ads.

So, the Feedburner account supposedly ties in with the Google AdSense account. When you monetize and choose your ad style, Feedburner then generates some code that you have to insert into your blog's layout code.

I did so. And what did I find happened? No ads appeared in the Feedburner feed of my blog. But new ads were placed under each of my blogging posts in my regular ol' non-feed blog, thus screwing up the rule that you can place no more than 3 add units per page.

So, I de-monitized my Feedburner feed.

And then, about a month or so ago, when I'd log into my AdSense account, there was an option to add AdSense ads to my blog feed. So, yesterday I did so, thinking, once more, that ads would show up in the feed thing. Google had me burn a new feed, even though my Feedburner feed was part of my Google Account, since Feedburner is part of Google.

The Google AdSense thing burned a feed of my blog and gave me it's URL and told me it'd be active in about 10 minutes. Now a day later this is what you see if you go to my new Google AdSense feed where ads are supposed to appear. That's right. It's a blank page.

I thought maybe the ads show up if you subscribe to my feed, which is something I'd not done before. So, for the first time I clicked on 'subscribe to this feed.' I then chose Google Reader as my feed reader. My blog then opened up in Google Reader. With no ads.

I've no clue what to do. Google is not the best at getting back to you with answers to questions. As in they never do.

Maybe I should delete these feed things. Why would I want people reading my blog ad-free? I want them to click on ads. It's as if they are subscribing to a TV Feed and then getting to watch TV shows with no commercials.

Very vexing.

King Tut in Dallas

A week or two ago I get a distraught email from a lady upset because she thought King Tut was going to usurp Big Tex's position at the State Fair of Texas. I reassured her that Big Tex would stand alone. And he is.

Meanwhile the King Tut exhibit has opened in another part of Dallas. It's not in Fair Park, but at the Dallas Museum of Art at 1717 N. Harwood Street, in the part of downtown Dallas known as the Arts District.

King Tut has been to America before, back in the 1970s. At that time he visited 7 U.S. cities, including Seattle. I think I went to see Tut in Seattle, but I may be confusing it with going to the Egyptian Pavilion at Vancouver's Expo 86 World's Fair.

For 30 years, give or take a few, Egypt has refused to let King Tut tour the world, due to the Egyptians being righteously annoyed because one of the Tut artifacts had been badly damaged while in America. But, the Egyptians wanted to raise some money to fund an ambitious Egyptian museum building plan. So, if a town would come up with $10 million they could have King Tut come to town. Dallas put up the money. And so now King Tut is here.

This King Tut exhibit is missing some of the items that made his first tour so popular, like Tut's funeral mask. Egypt decided not to let the most valuable items out of their control again.

But, it looks like there is still plenty to see.

The exhibit is called "Tutankhamen and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs." It runs now through May 17, 2009. Tickets range from $16.50 to $32.50. Weekdays are cheaper than weekends. Seniors, College Students $24.50 - $29.50. Kids 6-17 $16.50. Adults $32.50.

You can see King Tut 8am-8pm, Monday-Wednesday. 8am-9pm, Thursday. 8am-8pm Friday-Sunday. Last entry at 2:30pm Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve. Closed Christmas.

Twilight in Forks, Washington

My old home state of Washington has an odd history of TV shows being set in a Washington town and that town then becoming a tourist attraction.

Like when Twin Peaks was a hit. I forget what they called the town on the TV show, but it was set in North Bend, in the shadow of Mount Si and near Snoqualmie Falls and the Snoqualmie Falls Lodge which played major roles as backdrops for the series.

In North Bend there was a coffee shop, I think it used the same name on the TV show as in reality, that being the Mar-T Cafe. On Twin Peaks FBI agent Dale Cooper would go there for the damn fine coffee and cherry pie. Soon, people from all over the world, particularly Japan, were coming to North Bend to go to the Mar-T Cafe for some damn fine coffee and cherry pie.

Even I had to try the cherry pie and the damn fine coffee. After a strenuous hike to the top of Mount Si, we dropped in on the Mar-T Cafe. The coffee was ordinary and my mom's cherry pie is more memorable.

On CBS there was a TV show called Northern Exposure. This show used the eastern Washington town of Roslyn to play the role of Cicely, Alaska. Rosyln was already a tourist town. It being an old mining town with all sorts of things going on. But after Northern Exposure became a hit, Rosyln became super popular with tourists. Rosyln remains a fun place to visit. My last time there was summer of 2001, in July. Lots of tourists. Had good pizza and beer from Rosyln's beer pub.

And now I've learned that some towns on Washington's Olympic Peninsula have become a mecca for tourists due a book and soon to be movie called Twilight. Written by Stephenie Meyer, the series of Twilight books has become the hottest thing since Harry Potter.

Twilight is mainly set in Forks. Forks was a town that had seen better days due to the hit it took from the declining timber industry. Forks has embraced the Twilight thing, with stores all over town selling Twilight memorabilia, like T-shirts. Restaurants have added Twilight themed items like a Bella Burger. Bella is one of Twilight's main characters. Locations have been designated as to where a character works or lives. Totally fabricated.

The fishing village of La Push also figures in Twilight. La Push is the location of some of the stereotypical iconic images of the Washington coast. I don't know how much La Push has embraced the Twilight thing. The bigger town of Port Angeles also figures in Twilight.

Ironically, the author of Twilight had never visited Forks before she wrote her first Twilight book. She has since been to Forks and has said she is amazed at how much it much it matches her imagination. She chose Forks solely due to its reputation as one of the rainiest places on the planet, averaging over 70 inches of the wet stuff a year.

My last time in Forks it was a clear, blue sky, summer day. The time previous was a rainy, gray, misty, foggy winter day. I preferred the latter.

Joe Biden Sarah Palin Saturday Night Live Debate

Last night on Saturday Night Live, Tina Fey once more became Sarah Palin in order to debate Joe Biden in front of Queen Latifah. Last night's "debate" is already on YouTube for your viewing pleasure below.... ooooops! YouTube has pulled the video. Sorry. It was original NBC content and thus a big NO NO. But, Mr. or Ms. Anonymous kindly provided a direct link to NBC's video of the Biden Palin Saturday Night Live Debate....

Go here to go to NBC....
It's worth the bother. It's funny.......

Mother Nature Still Crying in Fort Worth

On the first day of October I got email from Don Young telling me about a new resident on Scott Avenue in east Fort Worth, near Tandy Hills Park. This being the latest Chesapeake Energy gas drilling operation to cause an uproar.

A piece of art had appeared on Scott Avenue, source unknown.

This morning I joined my Eastside Hikers group for a vigorous march all over the hills of Tandy Hills Natural Area. Sadly it's being a bit less natural these days due to the onslaught of Chesapeake bulldozers scraping the skin off a part of the Tandy Hills.

After what seemed hours of hiking we decided to go to Scott Avenue to see if the piece of art was still there. I figured it would be gone, thrown into a Chesapeake dump truck. But, no, this classic piece of Guerrilla Art, now known as "Mother Nature," is still there. Moved slightly, but still there.

In the photos Don Young sent, "Mother Nature" was to the right of one of the ubiquitous Chesapeake Energy signs. She was now on the left side of the sign and further from the road. Likely moved for her own protection.

"Mother Nature" has had some visitors who have added a few things since Don Young took his pictures. She now sports a Drilling Moratorium button. Someone has written "Mother Nature" on the right side of the red garment she is wearing. And tears have been added, rolling down "Mother Nature's" left cheek.

After I left "Mother Nature" I got on the I-30 freeway, heading east. I was surprised to learn you can clearly see this latest Chesapeake Energy bulldozing bad behavior as you drive by. The area that has been bulldozed is way bigger than I thought it would be. The next time I go hiking at Tandy Hills I think I'll head to the west side, where I rarely venture, and see if I can get some good damning photos of what Chesapeake Energy is up to in my neighborhood.