Green Slime & No Boats On Fosdic Lake In Fort Worth

I wish I had the napping ability. Somehow that gene didn't make it into my DNA. I've been up since 5, straining my brain, swimming in frigid water at 7, then more brain straining.

Then around noon I needed some upright activity out of a computer chair and away from monitors.

So, I went to Oakland Lake Park to walk around Fosdic Lake. I'd not been to this location in awhile. The tree leaves were being a bit colorful today, as you can see.

But, the leaves were not the only thing that was being colorful at Fosdic Lake today.

As you walk around Fosdic Lake you see several signs advising against eating fish you catch in the lake. And forbidding boating and swimming.

Now, swimming I can understand. First off Fosdic Lake is home to a lot of turtles. I had a turtle attempt to kill me once while swimming in Lake Grapevine. It was the last time I swam with turtles. They are very territorial. And they travel in packs.

But why ban boats on Fosdic Lake?

I have a kayak that would be fun to take out on Fosdic Lake, it being the body of water closest to where I live, other than the Trinity River, which I would be not want to kayak in.

Today as I was crossing the bridge that goes over Fosdic Lake's dam spillway, I saw what may be the reason one might not want to put ones boat in Fosdic Lake.

On both sides of the spillway there is what can only be described as neon green slime. It looks the color of anti-freeze, but intensified.

You can see where the green has stained a rock or two. What chemical is this green stuff? One can't help but wonder.

Is it corrosive? Would it eat at your skin and the structure of your boat? How do the fish, birds and turtles survive and seem to thrive in this chemical stew? Do they build up an immunity?

With Fort Worth closing the city pools, wouldn't it be a nice thing to de-pollute Fosdic Lake and make a swimming beach? Fort Worth could really use a clean lake with a nice beach. Fosdic Lake is one block off the bus line on Oakland Boulevard.

When Fort Worth's Parks & Recreation Director, Richard Zavala, finally got his way and all Fort Worth pools but one where shut down, he told the city council that Fort Worth kids had "other options." When asked what those options were this nincompoop said "Hurricane Harbor."

Hurricane Harbor is in Arlington. It costs about $30 to get in. And there is no mass transit available to take Fort Worth kids to Arlington if they did have $30.

Is Zavala one of the geniuses behind the attempt to dye the Trinity River Purple? Maybe he should check out Fosdic Lake and see what a good job is being done there of dying Fosdic Lake neon green.

A Major Planetary Event Is Now Unfolding In Dallas

For several weeks I've been noticing an ad on the back cover of Fort Worth Weekly.

The ad says...

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A MAJOR PLANETARY EVENT IS NOW UNFOLDING!

A mysterious star is being seen worldwide, captured on hundreds of YouTube videos, photographs and some local news reports.

wakeupdallas.org

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That is the mysterious star over Tokyo in the picture.

I was curious what this fresh nonsense was all about. So I went to the wakeupdallas.org website to see if I could see what Dallas needed to wake up about.

Well. Apparently this Buddhist guy named Maitreya, who is the second coming of the original Buddha, has arrived on the planet. Maitreya has been showing up for awhile now. Supposedly in 1988 CNN and others reported that Maitreya had appeared before 6,000 people in Nairobi, Kenya.

Then on December 12, 2008 something called Share International announced that in the very near future a large, bright star will appear in the sky throughout the world, night and day. That star has now been seen by people in Norway, South Africa, America, Dubai and Qatar.

That star seems to be quite selective about who it appears to. It must be a stealth star, it's done such a good job of not being well-known.

The star's appearance signals the beginning of Maitreya's mission.

The wakeupdallas.org website says in one spot that the star has appeared in the U.S., but the last paragraph says that soon after the star appears in our skies that Maitreya will show up and give his first media interview on American TV. I've not seen any TV interviews with Buddha's second coming. I would think this would be big news.

I wonder if the same people who are seeing this star saw Purple in the Trinity River on Friday?

Carter Avenue American Flags Mysteriously Removed

I am getting reports from Carter Avenue observers telling me that the American Flags that had been placed along Carter Avenue to celebrate the victory over Chesapeake Energy's nefarious plan to run a non-odorized natural gas pipeline under the homes on Carter Avenue, have been removed.

Removed by whom remains a mystery. The bulk of the flags were on the strip of grass between the sidewalk and the street. Is that not city property?

Did the city send in a crew to clean out the flags? It would not be the first time this week that the city of Fort Worth wasted city money on something funny.

Well, whoever took down the flags didn't change anything. All those flags were was a symbol for a group of Americans banding together and sticking up for themselves, defending and protecting their homes and property and children. And winning.

That famous, iconic American flag no longer waves on top of Mount Suribachi on Iwo Jima. That victory was won and remains won, just like the victory on Carter Avenue.

Japanese Imperialism is a very apt metaphor for Chesapeake Energy and their ilk. Running roughshod over people's rights, but in the end, defeated by the stronger, more righteous American spirit. You can't take that away as easily as you can take away flags.

I Left Texas & Went Back To Washington For A Few Minutes Today Courtesy Of Krogers

In Texas the smell that will forever say Texas to me is the smoke from a BBQ. In Washington the smell that forever says Washington to me is the scent that fills the air from Evergreen trees.

Today I went to my neighborhood Kroger. That is a grocery store for you who don't know Kroger. For you in the Northwest, Kroger is what bought Fred Meyer, to noticeable bad results, near as I can tell during my Fred Meyer visits whilst up north.

As I walked into Kroger today I was instantly transported back to Washington. I was slapped with an extreme Evergreen tree assault. I just stood there taking it in. Best thing I've smelled in Texas since I don't know when.

I figured the Christmas trees must be from Texas. I believe Christmas trees are grown out in the Piney Woods Region of Texas.

So, I was a bit surprised when I looked at the yellow tags on the trees to see that they were "ANOTHER "GEM" FROM THE EMERALD FOREST" from a Christmas Tree Company called EMERALD, based in Bellevue, Washington.

So, I really was transported back to Washington. Those were Washington Evergreens making Krogers smell real good today.

When I lived in Washington I did not notice the Evergreen smell as being so prevalent. I'd notice it if I was up in the mountains hiking, or sometimes when outside in my yard or slacking on the hammock on my roof deck.

But, in 2001 I drove back to Washington, solo, for my mom and dad's 50th Anniversary. As I crossed over the summit of Snoqualmie Pass I started noticing that the air was somehow seeming heavy and I started to be almost startled by how strongly the air smelled of Christmas trees.

Smelling Christmas trees constantly kept happening til I got re-acclimated by about week 3 and no longer noticed the smell. When I fly to Seattle I've never had the Christmas tree thing hit me in the same way it did driving over the mountain pass. I can be sitting in my sister's back yard or hiking some place, like Point Defiance Park, and it will smell like Christmas. But never again in that overwhelming way it did in 2001.

I think maybe the fact that that return in 2001 was the longest I'd been away, sort of made everything seem more vivid. I remember in addition to smelling Christmas trees I was struck by how shiny, clean and new everything looked as I drove west through Issaquah and Bellevue. I remember getting stuck in a traffic jam on the I-90 floating bridge and loving it. Mount Rainier was hovering big to the south, Lake Washington was sparkling, dozens of sailboats, everything looked, I don't know, as if Mother Nature had given it a good scrubbing til it sparkled.

Anyway, it was nice to have a brief visit back to Washington today, if only for a couple minutes.

We Are Fixin' To Rain Hard In Fort Worth & Make Macaroni & Cheese

You are looking out my rain covered windshield, heading west on John T. White Road, in far east Fort Worth, coming up on 1 in the afternoon.

I aborted any planned walk soon after leaving here around noon, due to drips starting to fall. I headed to Krogers to find cheese for whole wheat macaroni and cheese that I had a hankerin' to make.

To you Yankees reading this, hankerin' is Texan for "wanting" or "craving" something.

I knew we were in for some predicted rain, but I thought its arrival was not til later in the day, along with a drop in temperatures. Yesterday it got in the 70s, was 65 at midnight and 64 when I managed to have a semi-pleasant swim this morning. It is 53 out there right now, so our predicted temperature drop has arrived.

It is downpouring out there now. I grow concerned for my favorite Haltom City corespondent and the killer creeks she monitors whenever they go into potential flash flood mode.

Krogers was my first stop on my cheese hunt, that ended at Wal-Mart. I saw, well, actually smelled, and saw, something at Krogers which made me sort of homesick. I'll tell you about that later. Right now I'm fixin' to satisfy my hankerin' for macaroni and cheese.

To be clear, fixin' is Texas speak meaning you are about to do something. If you damn Yankees would make more of an effort to learn the language us Texans wouldn't find you so annoying.

A Confederacy Of Fort Worth Dunces Keeps Seeing Imaginary Purple Rivers

This morning a couple things brought the phrase "Confederacy of Dunces" to mind. Great book, by the way.

The infallible sign of genius quote is one of Jonathon Swift's better known epigraphs.

The first thing this morning that brought a Confederacy of Dunces to mind was a comment made to yesterday's blogging about the Star-Telegram's confused description of the attempt to dye the Trinity River purple.

The commenter, the ubiquitous Anonymous, apparently drank the purple Kool-Aid and saw the magic water 19 hours after the Star-Telegram report said the water (that had been turned ever so slightly purple, through their reporter's, apparently, lavender-colored glasses) had returned to its usual muddy brown.

Below is what Anonymous had to say....

I was there on Saturday early around 7 am when they were pumping and it was purple I commend their effort and spirit!

The attempt to turn the Trinity River purple occurred at 10am Friday morning. Not Saturday. And there was no purple and no pumping.

Anonymous commends their imaginary effort and spirit???? I've seen some effort and spirit displays in my time on the planet. What I saw Friday morning was a pretty lame effort that resulted in rather subdued spirits.

Moving on to the other thing that brought a Confederacy of Dunces to mind this morning.

It is a YouTube video of Americans being interviewed while waiting to see Sarah Palin at one of her book signing events for her Going Rogue best seller, that apparently goes quite wildly rogue with a lot of erroneous bits of information.

We've all run in to people like you'll see in the video. People who say some ridiculous thing where you instantly realize they have not the slightest clue about what they are talking about. So, you ask a follow up question and they either get upset because once more they've been caught in the "stupid" trap. Or they get that deer in the headlights look and admit they don't know anything about what they'd just made a strident comment about.

I really think a test similar to the citizenship test given to new Americans should be passed before an American is given their license to vote. When you have a Confederacy of Dunces voting you end up with results like Fort Worth's Mayor Mike Moncrief, re-elected in a 70% landslide of 6% of Fort Worth's eligible voters.....

Getting Sane From Crazy Water From A Famous Mineral Water Company In Mineral Wells Texas

During the decade since I quit being a Yankee and started being a Texan I've seen some crazy things. One of the craziest I found my first year here while roaming around the countryside that surrounds the Dallas Fort Worth Metroplex.

I headed towards a town called Mineral Wells, because I wanted to check out Mineral Wells State Park. I had heard good things. I was not disappointed. Penitentiary Hollow, in the state park, was particularly a good thing.

After climbing around Penitentiary Hollow I headed into the town of Mineral Wells. A few minutes later I was to see a giant structure come in to view. It was huge. Seemed totally out of place for a little town.

Soon I found myself walking all around what I learned was the long abandoned, rumored to be haunted, Baker Hotel.

On a subsequent visit, after having learned the Baker Hotel's impressive history, I was let inside the ground floor. Much had been removed, but signs of opulence remained.

The Baker Hotel came into existence due to the item that gives the town its name. Mineral Wells. People came from all over for the mineral waters of Mineral Wells. So many people claimed to have so many ailments cured by the waters, at times there would be thousands of people in town, taking the cure.

Some took to calling the mineral water "Crazy Water" due to the consumption of said water being thought to have cured a crazy lady of her craziness.

By the late 1950s, or maybe early 1960s, the FDA came down hard on the selling of Crazy Water and its cure claims. And then it was found that the water had lithium in it. Lithium is used by the medical profession as one of the drugs to help control the behavior of, well, crazy people.

I believe for a time, due to the lithium content, the FDA would not allow the sale of Crazy Water.

But, I found out yesterday you can still get Crazy Water (with lithium) from Mineral Wells. Thanks to my new information source, Twitter, I learned from "lovecrazywater" that Famous Mineral Water Company is bottling and selling Crazy Water.

You can haul your own container to Mineral Wells and get it filled with Crazy Water. Or order a 12 pack from the Famous Mineral Water Company online store. Or, I think, they deliver. I assume within a limited area. Just looked, the website says "Water Delivery to Home or Office."

I've no idea how that works. Delivering to home and office, I mean. Maybe it's home and offices in the D/FW zone. Or maybe just Mineral Wells.

I'm thinking there are plenty of crazy offices that might benefit from having Crazy Water calming the more difficult cubicle dwellers.

I'd head to Mineral Wells tomorrow to get me some Crazy Water. Lord knows I need it. But I don't know if they are open on Sunday.

The Tandy Hills Are Alive With The Stomping Of Hikers

Lately, I have been having more human sightings whilst hiking the Tandy Hills Natural Area. Pleasant temperatures may be the reason. Way too many weather babies don't venture out hiking when it's 105 in the shade.

Today, this 3rd Saturday of November, it is almost 70 out there. Maybe this will warm up my swimming by tomorrow morning. I aborted this morning's swim attempt after about 5 minutes.

I kind of get lost in my thoughts while communing with nature on the Tandy Hills. Today I hike down a hill, cross a creek lined with trees, come out of the trees to start up a steep hill when I am startled by an over-sized guy ahead of me on the hill.

It was a HOT enough to hike shirtless day. It is important to expose as much skin to the sun as possible, periodically, in order to get Vitamin D into the system. It does not take much sun exposure to do the job. But way too many people get way too little sun, and develop a Vitamin D deficiency.

It is not good to be deficient in Vitamin D.

The Fort Worth Star-Telegram Sort Of Sees Purple

My one reader may remember how a time or two I took issue with some erroneous Fort Worth Star-Telegram reporting.

It's been so long now I forget what the final straw was that caused me to cancel my subscription.

But, this morning reminded me of the type of thing that caused me to doubt pretty much anything I read in that paper, because over and over again when a Star-Telegram article was about something I had eye-witness knowledge of, I would spot bizarre errors.

Like over and over again touting a little lame collection of shops called the Sante Fe Rail Market as being modeled after Seattle's Pike Place Market and being the first public market in Texas. Soon I was to discover not only was it not the first public market in Texas, it was not even the first public market in Fort Worth!

Anyway, back to this morning's Star-Telegram.

In an article about yesterday's predictable dyeing the Trinity River Purple Boondoggle, titled "TCU fans are purple, even if the Trinity isn't" were a few odd pieces of information.

First off, please note the the title of the article accurately reported that the Trinity did not turn purple yesterday.

Yet in the article you read the following...

"We started this morning at 2 a.m., and we will go until it runs out," said Jim Oliver, water district general manager.

He said he didn’t know how long the river would remain purple, as the water district had never tried to dye it before.

"At least a day or two," he said.

They started what at 2am??? Nothing was sprayed into the Horned Frog River until Moncrief poured his glass of purple dye sometime after 10am. The Star-Telegram has this water district manager, Jim Oliver, saying he did not know how long the river would remain purple. And then in the next sentence he is saying it'll stay purple "At least a day or two."

The article has Moncrief saying he'd been a tad worried the past couple days about whether the Trinity River would really turn purple. I'll copy directly from the article...

Mayor Mike Moncrief admitted that he’s been a tad bit worried the past couple of days.

Would the Trinity River really turn purple?

"I did sleep with one eye open," Moncrief joked Friday morning while standing on the riverbank, where trucks were shooting purple dye into the water.

"But it is purple now, and it will be purple tomorrow."

Uh, it was not purple then and it certainly is not purple today. And trucks were not shooting purple dye into the water. It was one truck and it was spraying something into the air, not pumping anything into the river, as you can clearly see in the picture above.

I'd not heard Mayor Mike Moncrief speak before yesterday. I have had others tell me how embarrassing he can be. I totally get that now. He slept with one eye open? Due to worrying about dyeing a river? How does he sleep without worrying about getting indicted for corruption? How does he sleep without worrying about cutting back on library hours? How does he sleep without worrying about closing all the city pools?

Here's another Moncrief quote from the purple river article...

"To see people out here, in large numbers, young and old, with helicopters flying overhead, you can feel the energy in the air," he said. "There is nothing Fort Worth can’t do."

To which the article retorts, accurately, "Well, maybe one thing."

As in Fort Worth can't successfully dye a river purple. As for helicopters, in the plural, flying overhead, I saw one helicopter. It made one pass sometime after 10, but before the pseudo dye job began. The helicoptor was well gone before Moncrief finished with his mayoral decree and ceremonial dumping of his purple kool-aid into the former Trinity River.

To Moncrief's statement that the river will be purple tomorrow, the Star-Telegram said...

Well, maybe not. At 2 p.m. Friday, several hours after the dye briefly turned the river purple, the river looked the way it usually does — muddy brown.

Once more reporting that the river was turned "briefly" purple. It was not remotely purple, even briefly. I do not know how the river looked at 2pm, but at 10am it did not look brown or muddy. As I said yesterday, the river was looking a shade of purple. But not from any dye job.

I don't know if it is true or not (because I read it in the Star-Telegram) but the article about the failed dye attempt said the dye was donated by Streams & Valleys, with the Tarrant Regional Water District handling the details, "such as pumping dye into the river."

Again, I saw no pumping yesterday. I saw some material being sprayed from a truck, material that only altered the look of the river by causing a sort of white foam, which quickly dissipated. You can see that in the picture.

As another example of how brain dead dumb this operation was, make note of where the "dye" is being sprayed. On the blocked side of a dam-like structure, which has an opening in the middle that the river rushes through. Thus, whatever was being sprayed, yesterday, was quickly whooshed through that narrow funnel and sent merrily downstream, with no detectable purple left in its wake.

Except for the purple provided by Mother Nature.

One more thing. The dye was donated, but how much did the rest of this latest Fort Worth Boondoggle cost the city?

Fort Worth Mayor Moncrief Fails To Turn Trinity River Purple

I have watched a strange thing or two over the years in Texas and Fort Worth. I don't know, for sure, if this morning's attempt to dye the Trinity River purple was the strangest, but I am sure it is in the Top 10 Strangest Things I've Seen in Texas.

There was quite a large crowd assembled in Trinity Park to witness the spectacle of turning the Trinity River purple.

Fort Worth Mayor Mike Moncrief read an extremely long proclamation that ended with him decreeing that the purple section of the Trinity River was re-named Horned Frog River.

Before Moncrief's proclamation another politician spoke. A female. I've no idea who she was.

In the picture you are looking at Moncrief pouring a glass of purple dye that looked like grape Kool-Aid into the newly christened Horned Frog River.

Now, this was a bit of a pep assembly, so Moncrief's hyperbole could be forgiven. I guess. This was the first time I've seen Mike Moncrief up close and heard him speak, at length. I wish I'd thought to whip out my video camera and record the entire speech. Some of Moncrief's verbiage was shockingly ironic. I can't quote it exactly from memory, but he said something very Jesus-like, about Fort Worth looking out for the least among us. And being the #1 city in America. Or was it the world? Darn, I wish I'd turned on the camcorder.

As you can see, Moncrief is bookended by two TCU Cheerleaders. You can also see the Trinity River behind Moncrief. At this point in the proclamation he had not yet re-named the river. You can also see that it already looks sort of purple. When I first saw the river I thought it had already been dyed, plus there was a white froth on the banks that I thought might be dye related. When the actual dyeing did begin there was pretty much a collective rolling of the eyes watching. It was that bizarre.

Soon after Moncrief emptied his glass of purple dye into Horned Frog River a tanker truck on the other bank started spraying what looked like water. This was the dye. People started muttering. The tanker sprayed for maybe 5 minutes before there was no more dye to spray. The only change to the river was the effect of the spray as it landed. When the spraying stopped I could detect no color.

I asked a couple people if they saw any purple. They didn't. One lady told me her husband told her there was no way they could turn the river purple.

The crowd of hopeful purple river watchers quickly melted away after the tanker spraying stopped. The only purple I saw, besides on TCU people's clothes and the cheerleader's sign, was "GO FROGS" painted on the Trinity, I mean, Horned Frog River Levee.

Okay, now I've got to tell you the really weird thing that happened. Someone came up and asked me if I was Durango Texas. That has never happened to me before. Not in Texas. I've had it happen in Washington. I've sort of slightly had it cross my mind that this might happen and that the person might be cranky about something I'd said about their, I mean, my, beloved Fort Worth.

I asked the questioner why she thought I was Durango Texas. She said she read my blog, read what I wrote about the plan to dye the river purple and that I looked like the pictures on the blog. So, I confessed that I was the culprit. We exchanged a few pleasantries and then I wandered off taking more pictures.

A couple minutes later I sat on the river bank to listen to Moncrief. I was slightly paranoid, noticing a few people looking at me and not at the mayor. Maybe it was something behind me they were looking at. Like I said, I was slightly paranoid.

Anyway, I'm glad I watched the purple river spectacle this morning. I found it entertaining. And more so than before I'm appalled that 70% of 6% of Fort Worth's eligible voters voted that man to be their mayor. Like I said. Bizarre.