Balloon Festival Disasters & Durango In Texas

In June, here in the Dallas/Fort Worth zone, there is going to be a balloon festival.

A couple days ago I got an email with information about this festival asking me to please list it on my website.

I don't think I'm going to do that.

Why?

Well. Way back in the year 2000 I was involved with something called, if I remember right, the Mansfield Balloon Fest. The 2000 Balloon Fest opened with a huge crowd. Then, that night, 12 inches of rain wreaked havoc, turning the Balloon Fest grounds into a muddy mess.

The next year the Balloons were launched once more in Mansfield. That year's event did not get destroyed by rain.

The year following that, 2002, the Balloon Fest was moved from Mansfield to the Midway Regional Airport, near Midlothian, expanded to include Mansfield, Midlothian and Waxahachie, and renamed the North Texas Balloon Classic.

The first 2 days of the 2002 North Texas Balloon Classic went off without a problem. And then early Sunday morning, Father's Day of 2002, the Midway Regional Airport was hit with hurricane force winds, blowing apart the huge tent under which many of the vendors were located and ripping apart the booths outside the tent. It was a huge mess.

One would think with 2 out of 3 of the Balloon Festivals having such serious problems that this would put an end to it. Nope. That did not happen.

The 2003 North Texas Balloon Classic ballooned bigger than the 2002 version. More sponsors were onboard. More music. More food. More vendors. An entry fee of $10 per car was charged. During the 3 days a lot of cars showed up. So many that there were traffic jams.

And yet, somehow, the 2003 North Texas Balloon Classic ended not with a weather disaster, but with a financial disaster that was the final death blow.

For the 2003 North Texas Balloon Classic I agreed to re-do their existing really bad website. Part of that agreement was that I would be paid after the festival had generated its revenue. I, along with many others, were not paid.

I do not know how it came to be that 3 years ago the Balloon Festival rose from the dead at Midway Regional Airport, but it did. Ironically, the current iteration has an even worse website than the one I re-did 7 years ago.

Anyway, now you know why I won't be listing the 3rd Annual DFW Balloon Classic & AirFest.

An Easter Egg Does Not Get Found In Texas Hunt But Is Found By Me

There are few things sadder than an orphaned, un-found Easter Egg. Right at this particular point in time I actually can not think of anything sadder. This must indicate I am in a good mood.

I've had me a day. It started off nice with a long swim in a now reliably pleasantly temperatured pool.

Around noon I found myself in Hurst, lightning striking, thunder booming and me outside getting hit by pea-sized hail.

By the time I got back here, around 2, I found myself with a lot of computer monitor face time facing me. Around 5, I could take being sedentary no longer and took off to walk around Fosdic Lake at Oakland Lake Park.

It was there, by the home run fence of the Oakland Lake Park baseball field, that I came across 2 un-found Easter Eggs.

When I was a kid I enjoyed Easter Egg Hunts. We lived across the street from the city park of this town in Washington called Burlington, which is where the annual Easter Egg Hunt took place. It was a big deal. A lot of eggs, a lot of kids, sectioned off by age groups.

Our house had a big picture window facing the park. After all these years I am thinking the statute of limitations has exhausted and I can now reveal that our parental units would arm me and my siblings with binoculars. To watch the placing of the eggs. To see where the GOLD eggs were.

The GOLD eggs were worth money. I think something like 5 bucks. Which is the equivalent of something like 500 bucks in 2010 dollars. We could just about pay for a trip to Disneyland if us kids found 2 GOLD eggs. Hence being staked out by our parental units with spyglasses.

After a few years of me and my siblings always finding the GOLD eggs, measures were taken to put an end to this. I don't remember what those measures were. I do remember 2 really, really fun family trips to Disneyland.

Oakland Lake Park had totally greened up since I last laid my eyes on it. Leaves sprouted out. Grass totally green.

Some people who have never been to Texas think it is all desert and brown. I remember before I made the move, going to see the X-Files movie in a Seattle theater, with a Seattle friend, I'll call Wanda.

The X-Files movie opens in Dallas, in an outlying residential area. You see the Dallas skyline. But the residential area is all wrong. It's brown, totally flat, not remotely looking like this area.

I lean over to Wanda and whisper it's not really like that, it's hilly with a lot of trees. Sure, Wanda said, not believing me. Four months after I made the move to Texas, Wanda made her one and only visit. I do not recollect if I pointed out the X-Files discrepancy at that point in time, or if I just left it to Wanda's powers of observation.

Tootsie Tonasket Perplexed By Ethnic/Race Inquisition From The Government

Yesterday I heard from Tootsie Tonasket, aka Princess Thunder Rump of the Tonasket Tribe in Washington.

Tootsie was all perplexed due to a form sent home from her boy's grade school, wanting Tootsie to divulge the racial/ethnic identity of her boy.

A couple days ago I blogged about being perplexed about this very same subject, after I saw the questions being asked on the Federal 2010 Census.

Apparently the federal government is forcing these same type questions to be asked on the state level, via schools, regarding enrolled students.

At the top of the Inquisition form it says, "New federal requirements state that "Unknown" "Multiracial" and "Not Provided" are no longer valid responses to ethnicity or race identification questions. If parents, guardians, or students do not provide ethnicity and race information, districts are responsible for assigning categories based on observation or prior ethnicity and race data."

Next, the form says, "Please identify the ethnicity and race of the student by answering BOTH questions."

Question 1 asks, "Is your child of Hispanic or Latino origin?"

Question 2 asks, "What race(s) do you consider your child? (check all that apply)."

Why is this data being collected? And am I the only one who thinks it not only bizarre, but is sort of, well, I don't know, un-American? Not to mention seemingly racist?

I could see this sort of form being sent out had the Nazis won WWII, collecting this type information so they knew who to send to what Concentration Camp.

But this is America. The great melting pot. What possible valid reason does the government have to be asking such questions?

As for what perplexed Tootsie Tonasket. The form Tootsie received had a long list of Washington American Indian or Alaskan Native tribes to choose from to identify race, under the #2 Race Question. The Tonasket Tribe is not on the list. But the Jamestown Tribe is on the list. I've never heard of the Jamestown Tribe of Washington.

So, what is Tootsie to do? I guess check "Other Washington Indian."

But, how could the state disrespect the famous Tonasket Tribe like this? And since Tootsie's boy is not a full-blooded Tonasket Indian, how is she to properly identify him? It's all very perplexing to poor ol' long suffering Tootsie. She's always afraid she's going to get in trouble for something. And so now she's afraid the feds will be after her for not properly revealing the ethnic/race identity of her boy.

I can't help but wonder, did Hitler and the Nazi thugs send out forms like this to help them identify the Jews, Gypsies and others they wanted to do harm? The Nazis made the Jews and others wear Identity Patches. Is that is what is next?

I'm just as perplexed as Tootsie.

Fort Worth's Air Is Kept Clean Because No Mountains Allows The Bad Air To Blow To Oklahoma

That is a smoggy look at the stunning skyline of beautiful downtown Fort Worth, looking west from the equally stunning Tandy Hills. Don Young took this photo on Monday.

I'll copy Don Young's commentary, which accompanied this photo, below. And below that I'll copy a letter to the editor of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, with an idiotic point of view on the same subject, and then below that I'll opine on this subject...

Today, I received from State Representative Lon Burnam's office, a list of 79 new gas drilling permits filed with the Texas Railroad Commission for Tarrant County, Texas. That is, 79, for the month of March, alone.

Today was also a fairly warm day with temps reaching 82 degrees. Higher temps and gas well emissions are not a good combo as you can see by these photos taken near downtown Fort Worth today at 6:30 PM CST. Just wait until July rolls around.

Meanwhile, the mayor of Fort Worth, whose income depends on gas drilling, recently announced the creation of a task force to try and figure out if gas drilling is a contributing factor to our compromised air. Gas drillers say that the air is actually CLEANER since drilling began in Fort Worth. They are also well-represented on the task force.

Feel better?

DY

The letter to the editor...

Fort Worth's air quality

It appears that a limited number of people are deeply concerned about the quality of air over Fort Worth because of gas drilling operations.

Fort Worth is fortunate that it is not boxed in by surrounding mountains and the air is free to move as nature directs. In fact, when there is a comfortable south wind blowing, the air that is over Fort Worth at sunrise is swirling in the Wichita Mountains near Lawton, Okla., at sunset.

Seems like a small number of people are doing a lot of worrying over a whole lot of nothing.

-- Warren C. Arthur, Fort Worth

Okay, Warren thinks Fort Worth's air is kept clean because Mother Nature blows the pollution elsewhere, like to Oklahoma?

Well, I'm thinking, since Texas and the Tarrant Regional Water Board are wanting to sue Oklahoma to get some of Oklahoma's water, that Oklahoma might want to consider suing Texas over that bad air Texas is sending to Oklahoma.

Fort Worth's air is kept clean because Fort Worth has the misfortune, I mean the fortune, of not being surrounded by mountains? Let's see, let me think if I can think of a place I've lived in with cleaner air than Fort Worth? Seattle, yeah, that's one. And Seattle is surrounded by mountains. Mountains on all sides, north, south, east and west. Same with Vancouver. Denver has a big wall of mountains to the west. All way less polluted, air-wise, that the Barnett Shale zone of Texas.

The air pollution blows away? And yet for some reason 25% of Barnett Shale air breathing kids suffer from asthma, while outside the Barnett Shale zone of Texas that percentage drops to 7.

Warren says, "Seems like a small number of people are doing a lot of worrying over a whole lot of nothing."

Instead, it seems to me, a sadly small number of people are doing a lot of worrying over something big, when that number of people worrying should be large.

I'm No Longer LOST At Finding Miss Beth On My TV

After viewing I don't know how many episodes without success, last night I finally, successfully, spotted my favorite TV Star, Miss Beth, aka Princess Oahu, on LOST.

LOST is like 24 to me. I get too caught up in the story, in suspending disbelief, in enjoying what I'm watching, to put my consciousness in a different location and recognize someone.

It helped that last night Miss Beth was not being a messed up survivor of a plane crash. Instead she was looking like herself, so when Miss Beth walked past Desmond, I instantly recognized her. I would have recognized her even if I didn't know I should be looking for her. I think. Even though she was in soft focus, with the camera sharp on Desmond.

Only a few more episodes of LOST. Not a lot of time left to make sense out of this wonderfully convoluted story.

Wandering Through A Forest Of Tandy Hills Prickly Pear Cactus With Other Conundrums

That's a forest of Prickly Pear Cactus I'm wandering through, under a semi-cloudy, 80 degree warm, sky, on the Tandy Hills, this afternoon.

For reasons we need not discuss, I was stuck on the Tandy Hills longer than I'd anticipated. It is likely that even with the partial cloud cover I have managed to acquire a slight sunburn.

I got back here later than I'd planned. Had lunch. Checked email to see Washington's Scrabble Queen had Scrabbled. I answered email then went to Facebook to Scrabble. Facebook was having "Communications Errors" that Facebook said they were working on.

In other words, Scrabble was not working. So, no Scrabbling.

In the same email that told me there was some possible Scrabbling to do, I got email from Betty Jo Bouvier, the Wild Woman of Woolley, sending me a file she thought I might find of interest. But my computer can't figure out what program opens this file. I tried one that should work for a text type file, to no avail.

Also in that same batch of email was one that related to what Betty Jo was sending me, that being a comment from Sarah R. about a blogging from a few days ago titled, "I Have Had My Last Chance With the 2010 Census Bureau."

Sarah commented,"I had to fill this out for my foster son who is Hispanic. I was left stupefied as to what to fill in for race. He's definitely not white. I searched the web. The Census website was useless. I finally filled in Other and listed him as Central American Indian. Asian cultures got all sorts of choices and are approximately 13.5 million of them in the US, but 46.9 million Hispanics. Maybe Asians have better lobbyists?"

Sarah, I'm thinking a better explanation is that, along with a lot of America, the government, for the most part, has gone insane.

In Texas Eating Whole Wheat Israeli Matzah & Hummus While Getting A History Lesson About Moses

I think I've mentioned, before, my unexplained weight gain and my quest for an explanation. Not enough exercise? Cut back in swimming due to cold water? Too much cheese? Too much Hummus? It's been a mystery.

And the mystery continues as I continue to puff up, rapidly approaching my all-time record, at the same time I think I've amped up the exercise and cut back on the eating.

Well, there was that fried chicken and pizza on Easter.

My new theory that explains the unexplained weight gain, thus making it explainable, is that it is Don Young's fault. Fort Worth's #1 Watchdog pointed me to a store I'd not heard of before.

Town Talk.

At Town Talk I find all sorts of exotic food items I don't find elsewhere, at ridiculously cheap prices. So, I've found myself buying big portions of Tennessee BBQ Pulled Pork. All sorts of imported cheeses. Sausage Kolaches. Coconut Shrimp. And Hummus.

For awhile I've thought my Hummus addiction might be the source of the unexplained weight gain. But today I read an article, on the Fox News website, that pretty much makes the case that Hummus is an ultra-health food.

Israel is Hummus Central. In Israel Hummus is like peanut butter is in America, like Nutella is in Europe or Vegemite in Australia.

I have no idea what Nutella or Vegemite is.

Hummus is in 95% of Israeli homes, with almost every restaurant serving the stuff up as an appetizer, I suppose much like Mexican restaurants in America, with the bowl of chips and salsa.

Hummus' zinc, folate and protein make it a great after workout snack. Chickpeas are high in fiber, garlic has a cholesterol lowering effect. The Hummus I get at Town Talk is the version with roasted red peppers part of the mix, hence even more nutritious.

Hummus consumption in America has gone up 35% in the past 21 months, with people discovering it makes a good mayo substitute, that it is good over chicken or fish and is a tasty replacement for sour cream on a baked potato.

I like it over brown basmati rice.

About a week ago I discovered Whole Wheat Israeli Matzah at Town Talk. Three boxes for a dollar. Made in Israel. The only ingredient is Whole Wheat Flour. I thought this is going to taste like cardboard. I was wrong. The Israeli Matzah is very tasty dipped in Hummus.

The packaging on the Israeli Matzah is interesting. Click on the thumbnail and you'll see what I mean.

The back of the package tells the story of something called The Exodus, where this guy names Moses was the leader of a bunch of Israelites enslaved by an Egyptian Pharaoh. Moses asked the mean Pharaoh to set his people free. The Pharaoh said no. This caused God to unleash a bunch of plagues, which eventually caused the Pharaoh to give in, but then change his mind and chase after the escaping Israelis, who wandered around the desert for 40 years til God gave Moses Ten Commandments and some other instructions as to how to start up the new nation of Israel.

Fascinating reading on a cracker box.

Tarrant Regional Water District Throwing An Eagle Mountain Lake Party On Election Day

I believe Saturday, May 8 is election day for the Tarrant Regional Water District. On that day the TRWD is holding something called the 18th Annual Eagle Mountain Lake Cleanup. Volunteers will get a special Eagle Mountain Cleanup t-shirt and a Cleanup kit. After the Cleanup the Cleanuppers are invited to a big party thrown in their honor. With prizes, free food and entertainment.

Who is paying for this I can't help but wonder? And is this some clever Machiavellian scheme to lure potential voters away from a ballot box that day, to keep the vote to its usual suppress Fort Worth level of about 6% of the eligible voters? I'm sure the lure of free food and prize will lure 1000s of voters to pick up litter. I wonder why the TRWD did not think of adding free beer to the lure?

Is this possibly nefarious Machiavellian scheme part of a plot to help guarantee the re-election of the status quo and thwart the election of the Honorable Right Knights, John Basham and Adrian Murray, in their quest bring a halt to the TRWD's other schemes.

Schemes like suing the state of Oklahoma to take Oklahoma's water.

Schemes like abusing eminent domain to take private property so other private business owners can benefit from the ridiculous scheme called the Trinity River Vision, a vision never voted on by the people of Fort Worth, which spends around $ 1 billion to build a little like, maybe some canals, 3 bridges and an un-needed flood diversion channel.

You can read a good Fort Worth Business Press article about the different views of those running for TRWD Board of Directors seats here...

Steve Doeung's Gone Missing While I Spy Fort Worth Code Violators & Green Tandy Hills With Wildflowers

As you can see in the picture the Tandy Hills are starting to get green. You can also see it is a cloudy day here in the Fort Worth zone of Texas.

What you can not see is it is a semi-balmy 76, right now, at 3 in the afternoon. And it is humid.

It is less than 20 days til the April 24 2010 Tandy Hills Prairie Fest.

A few more wildflowers have made their presence known, including the purple wildflower below, but the hills are no where near their usual bright state of color, as has been seen in previous years.

The wildflowers have less than 3 weeks to paint the prairie before the Prairie Fest.

Speaking of diminished color and the Prairie Fest. I learned on Easter that, due to a variety of reasons, the Queen of Wink and Princess Annie, mostly likely, will not be making a royal appearance at the Prairie Fest.

In a slightly related subject, Carter Avenue's Steve Doeung seems to have gone missing.

Today I was finally able to see something he told me about the last time I saw Steve. That being something that precisely pointed out the bogusness of the multiple Fort Worth Gestapo Stormtrooper raids on Steve's house, due to imaginary code violations.

Behind Steve's house, on Bomar Avenue, sets a large semi-vacant lot, next to the home of the large semi-vacant lot's owner. That vacant lot owner has connections to those who order Fort Worth's Gestapo Stormtrooper raids. On that vacant lot is an eyesore level of likely code violations, if this were a city where such things were actually a concern.

If Steve's rather tidy yard, with its imaginary code violating piece of protest art, was worthy of a Gestapo raid, then his neighbor is worthy of an Army Brigade size Fort Worth Gestapo Stormtrooper raid.

Incoming Woolley Ham To Cure Texas Easter Hangover

I've been having myself a really bad day after Easter Hangover.

My feeding yesterday was your basic All-American Easter Dinner of Fried Chicken and Ham Pizza.

My delicate system is not used to a lot of fried food, particularly in combo with a lot of pizza.

I have not been so stuffed since my last bout of buffet bloat in Las Vegas. And that was years ago.

I am totally out of practice for over-eating.

So, I suffered all night long. Did not sleep well. When I did sleep I had horrible nightmares, mostly about pizza.

By the time I got done with a long time in the pool, this morning, I felt on the way to recovery, with my overeating hangover slowly receding.

Yesterday Betty Jo told me I'd be out of luck finding a good ham on short notice. Betty Jo was right. By Easter evening Betty Jo was bragging about how good her ham was, that everyone loved it and that she'd send me some if I wanted her to. So, I gave Betty Jo my ham mailing address.

This morning I got email from Betty Jo telling me, "the ham is in the mail...."

My mom and dad have mailed beef jerky to me from Phoenix, so ham being mailed by the Wild Woman of Woolley, in Washington, doesn't really seem all that odd to me.