World Celebrates America & President Obama

It appears the People of the World woke up this morning to find themselves in a happy place. Those are Kenyans celebrating America's Election in the photo. Similar scenes have been happening all over the world.

Suddenly there seems to be optimism in the air. I read one quote, from I think it was a person in Iran, that overnight America had become, again, the America the world has long looked up to. Or something like that.

I was surprised by my reaction last night. I stayed up way past my regular bedtime. At 10pm when the polls closed on the West Coast and California was projected for Obama, thus making him our new President, the scene at Grant's Park in Chicago was one of the more amazing things I've watched on TV.

You had Jesse Jackson with tears running down his cheeks. You had Oprah with a look of utter peace and contentment.

As I channel chased after Obama had won I saw many moving moments. Civil Rights hero, now Representative John Lewis, a man who in the 1960s was left beaten and bloody on an Alabama bridge, beaten because he was marching for the right to vote, 40 years later voted for Barack Obama. Rep. Lewis said he really never believed he would live to see what he saw happen last night.

What surprised me about me last night was several times I got, well, sort of choked up. I'd been a tad reluctant about Obama, particularly after his choice of Joe Biden. I would have much preferred someone like Bill Richardson. But last night as that scene unfolded, as I saw how people were affected, and then I sat there feeling affected, realizing this was one of those moments that does not happen all that often, as in being eye witness, via TV, to a historic world-changing moment.

I have long thought that America was better than its reputation regarding race relations. I've long thought the majority of Americans had long ago decided that being racist was pure evil ignorance and that it was just plain wrong. I think the majority of people of all races, religions and ethnic groups are not racist, are embarrassed by those who are and want us all to just get along.

Some are saying that Obama's election proves America has now moved beyond its racist past. I think we moved beyond it long before Obama's election. For a long time now we've seen people like Colin Powell, Condalezza Rice in positions of power. Colin Powell might easily have won this election had he decided to run.

Decades ago there were few people but white people on TV. Now we have diversity on news shows, entertainment shows, all over all media. At one time it was a big deal that Sidney Poitier won an Oscar. At one point it was a big deal that Diahann Carrol played the title role on a sit-com named Julia. A couple decades after that Bill Cosby had the top-rated sit-com showing a very successful, very functional, very funny Black family.

Barack Obama is not the first person with African roots to be embraced by America. Remember the profound affect Alex Haley's Roots had on America when that mini-series aired night after night with the country riveted? We took a great leap forward as a nation after Roots raised America's consciousness of the real history of the Black experience in America.

Remember when America first met the late Barbara Jordan of Texas? Back in the 70s, during the Nixon Impeachment Hearings, she, with a voice of authority that demanded attention said the memorable words, "Earlier today, we heard the beginning of the Preamble to the Constitution of the United States: "We, the people." It's a very eloquent beginning. But when that document was completed on the seventeenth of September in 1787, I was not included in that "We, the people." I felt somehow for many years that George Washington and Alexander Hamilton just left me out by mistake. But through the process of amendment, interpretation, and court decision, I have finally been included in "We, the people.""

And now, it is totally undeniable, we are all included in "We the People." That's a good thing. For everyone, everywhere.

Washington State Celebrates Our New President Obama

I stayed up way later than my norm last night, glued to the TV. Best night of election viewing ever. More on that later. Most of Texas went for McCain. But my zone of Texas, that being the D/FW zone did not. Nor did the Austin zone, and a few other isolated pockets of Texas.

Meanwhile the zone I lived in in Washington, that being west of the mountains, the Puget Sound region, one of the bluest, most liberal, most progressive parts of America went solidly for Obama.

That first photo is people in my old home town of Mount Vernon celebrating Obama's win. The other photo was taken by my little sister in Tacoma. That's a line of Washingtonians waiting to vote. They look so cold.

I did not hear any horn honking or celebratory noises here last night. Maybe downtown Fort Worth and Dallas had a lot of people on the streets. I don't know. The Star-Telegram made no mention of such a thing this morning.

Check out the video below to see what happened in downtown Seattle last night after we got a new President. From the video it appears people flooded downtown from Pike Place to Westlake Center and beyond. You never see this many people being happy on the streets of downtown Fort Worth.

I Feel Good About America Tonight

That's all I've got....

My Right To Life, Sax & Roller Blading In Texas

More on the sax later.

First, my daily swimming report. I got in the water about 7am. It was a bit cooler than yesterday, but it was very pleasant. After I became numbed.

Rush Limbaugh didn't wear on my nerves today. Because I turned him off after about 10 minutes.

I had to go to Washington Mutual again today. Before that I went to the Post Office and got gas. Not at the Post Office, but at the gas station near the Post Office. $2.08 a gallon. I didn't call mom to tell her I got gas. I'd just done that on Sunday. It'd just worry her if she knew I got gas again so soon.

After Washington Mutual I went to Quanah Parker Park to go roller blading. As I put on my blades I started to hear music. A mournful sort of sound. In the distance I saw a guy standing, playing a saxophone. He seemed to be quite good. But I'm tone deaf, so who knows.

That's the sax player in the first photo. That's me roller blading in the second photo.

I had me quite a fine time roller blading. Today it was windy which makes rolling on wheels a bit more challenging.

After I was done with Quanah Parker Park I went to my polling place to check out some books. There seemed to be a lot of voters. There was one annoying woman holding a big "Vote Right to Life" sign. I don't care if that's her point of view. I just don't want her waving a sign at me when I'm going to get a book.

So, that's my Election Day excitement for now. My Election Night Party starts at 7. You are welcome to come. Just don't bring any signs. Or say anything stupid. I maintain a Stupid-Free Zone nowadays. If I can help it. Which I can.

Dixville Notch & Hart's Location Pick Obama in a Landslide

Dixville Notch and Hart's Location, in New Hampshire, have voted. And their votes have been counted. Obama won by a landslide.

Is this a predictor of how the rest of the day goes?

Who knows?

Historically the two town's have gone for both the winners and the losers in the elections since 1948 when they began their on and off tradition of being first in the nation to be counted.

The voters in the 2 New Hampshire villages started voting at midnight. Each voter gets their own voting booth, so that there is no line, so as to speed up the vote counting.

Dixville Notch gets a 100% voter turnout. I don't know about Hart's Location. I do know Hart's Location is an odd name for a village. It must be the location of Hart.

Barack Obama the Terrorist

In a this could only happen in Texas type thing a member of the Texas State Board of Education, Cynthia Dunbar, in a column published in something called the Christian Worldview Network, said that Barack Obama, likely to be our next President by the end of today, is plotting with terrorists to attack the United States.

Ms. Dunbar has been asked to retract her bizarre assertions. She says "I don't have anything in there that would be retractable. Those are my personal opinions and I don't think the language is questionable."

In her column Dunbar said that there will be a terrorist attack on America during the first 6 months of Obama's administration. And that this attack "will be a planned effort by those with whom Obama truly sympathizes to take down the America that is a threat to tyranny."

Dunbar also asserts that Obama will use the terrorist attack as an excuse to declare martial law.

In response to those who are appalled and disgusted by this woman's idiocy Dunbar said, "Right now, we're still in America and we still have freedom of speech. And unless that's changed I'm not aware of it."

That freedom of speech thing includes the freedom to suggest that whoever has firing power over people on the State of Texas Board of Education should immediately remove this idiotic woman from a position where she has any say regarding the education of Texas children. Then maybe there needs to be an investigation as to how such an idiot could have been placed in such a position.

Obama's Obscene Gesture Towards John McCain

I heard it first this morning while I was doing Yoga while listening to Rush Limbaugh. Rush Limbaugh has really been wearing on my nerves the last few weeks. Gone is most of the humor, replaced by a ranting blowhard. He's taken a huge credibility hit with me.

And then today, between ranting about Obama not helping his Aunt Zeituni, who is in the country illegally, lives in a slum and who managed to send Obama a $260 contribution, which Obama sent back, without adding a penny to help his poor aunt and Obama's brother living in a hut in Africa, Rush managed to mention that Barack had given John the finger today.

I found this hard to believe. But then I remembered the reports of him doing the same thing to Hillary. I figured it was just an accident in the Hillary case. So, it turns out that Obama did appear to do what Limbaugh said he did. It looked quite calculated to me.

To late for me to change my vote.

You can watch the YouTube video of Barack's obscene gesture below. But hurry, YouTube seems to be pulling these videos soon after they appear....

Veterans Park & Veterans Day

Yes, I realize you want my daily swimming report. Yes, I went swimming this morning about 7am, swam for about an hour. The water was warmer than yesterday.

I had to go visit Washington Mutual today. I decided to go to the one by Veterans Park in Arlington, due to thinking I'd like to take a nice hike there. And so I did.

The Veterans Memorial at Veterans Park isn't finished yet. As you can see in the first photo it was being feverishly worked on today by a large group. I suspect they may be getting it ready for some sort of dedication ceremony next Tuesday, that being Veterans Day.

Fall has fallen hard at Veterans Park, just like it has everywhere. But, flowers are still blooming. One of the cool parts of Veterans Park is a Wildscape garden called a Xeriscape. Or a Xeriscape garden called a Wildscape, I forget which way it goes. It's all plants native to Texas, hardy plants that don't need much water. It's a show garden to give people an example of what they could do in their own gardens. The Xeriscape/Wildscape is designed to survive on only 2 waterings a year during a drought.

This put me in mind of last summer in drippy, cold Tacoma where I was chastised several times for not watering enough. I knew from my own successful plant growing that my sister's plants were being drowned. Poor, sickly tomato. Made my heart ache to see the drowning torture those plants were put through.
So, all these photos except for the first one and the last three are of the Texas Xeriscape. I pray my little sister reads this and stops with the watering madness. It's profoundly disturbing. Particularly where it rains a lot.

In the distance, in the photo above with a lot of trees, you can see the flags you saw in the first photo.

The next photo is of the wildside of Veterans Park. Very steep hills. It can be treacherous due to the need to watch out for flying frisbees tossed by the disc golfers. Bizarre sport. Looks funner than normal golf though.

The last photo was part of an area of chalk art scrawled on the paved trail. The one in the photo appears to be the Empire State Building with the message saying "I Love NY."

That's it for today's look at Mother Nature in Texas.

Crying Wolf For Chesapeake Energy

I've mentioned previously that I get a lot of comments from what I suspected, though the suspect denied it, was a Chesapeake Shill, using a slightly less obvious propaganda technique than their previous more ham-handed approach which used embarrassingly stupid boilerplate comments that us who received them exposed them for what they were.

The suspected Chesapeake Energy Shill in question calls himself wolfcry44.

So, my crack team of Internet Fraud Investigators has uncovered evidence that wolfcry44 is, in fact, associated in some way with Chesapeake Energy. Whether this makes him a shill or not, I'll let you decide.

And now that that is out of the way, it is time for lunch. Homemade Pea Soup with Grilled Cheese on Whole Wheat. No natural gas was used in the grilling of that cheese.

Durango Texas: The Documentary

Last week a Director / Producer / Film Maker / Documentarian / Reality TV Maker contacted me to see if I'd be willing to be interviewed for a documentary about the Barnett Shale drilling.

Apparently it is what I've written about Chesapeake Energy and Aubrey McClendon that I would be interviewed about.

Trouble is, I don't know that I'm interview-worthy. It's one thing to be a blowhard spewing words in this venue. It's an entirely different thing to answer questions about a subject that I'm really not all that deep about, except for having my simple opinions.

There are people way more involved than I in objecting to all the urban drilling that is going on in the D/FW zone.

I think I'm afraid I'd be tongue-tied and stuttering, my mind gone blank like when I couldn't remember the code to turn off a security alarm a couple weeks ago.

And on an entirely different yet somehow related note. About once a week I get a comment from someone who sounds like a Chesapeake Energy shill, but claims he's not. This person calls himself 'wolfcry44'. I usually don't publish his comments because, well, they don't make a lot of sense.

Like this morning's. Mr. Wolfcry commented on my blogging yesterday about hiking in the Tandy Hills, getting gas and calling my mom. The comment was this, "why dont you post views different than yours."

I'll ignore the grammatically challenged parts of the comment and simply comment that it seems this person only reads the stuff that in some way references Chesapeake, totally unaware that the majority of my blog is not about that. Secondly, why would I post views other than my own on my blog? Why would I do that? And why is this person reading my blog in search of opinions other than mine?