The Shadow Of The Tandy Hills Pinhead Startling Scurrying Fort Worth Police Cockroaches

I was late in the afternoon today, making it to the Tandy Hills for my daily main dose of aerobicizing.

You can sort of tell I am late on the hills due to the lighting. And somehow that lighting made the Shadow of the Tandy Hills Thin Man into the Shadow of the Tandy Hills Pinhead.

The trails on the hills are in great shape, totally recovered from their recent bout of mud and totally ready to be trampled on by hundreds of Manly Men/Wild Women Feet this coming Saturday.

The temperature was nearing 60 when I headed for the hills this afternoon. So, once more, back in shorts and t-shirt.

Whilst moving fast today I snagged a stick and this somehow ripped a big tear in my favorite cargo shorts. These were my last remaining undamaged cargo shorts. This is nothing short of a minor tragedy.

Now, let's back up in time a bit to the point where I arrived at the Tandy Hills. Today I decided to hike from the top of Mount Tandy. When my usual parking place, underneath the Fort Worth Space Needle came in to view I saw two Fort Worth police cars.

Oh oh, this can't be good, I thought.

So, I parked far away from the cop cars, since they were blocking my access to my regular parking spot. As I began walking towards the cop cars one started towards me.

I had instant deju vu of last year's confrontations with white Express Energy pickups.

The cop car reached me. His window was down. He was talking into his microphone, but he stopped where I stood. I asked is there a problem? Is it safe to go hiking?

The cop said there's no problem. He continued on. So did I. Then the second cop car started moving. He drove right by me, driver's window closed. Passenger window open.

I reached in my pocket and got out my camera, turned it on and turned around to snap a picture. The first picture only showed the second cop car, blocking the view of the first one. I waited for the cops to turn to the left so I could get both in a picture.

Well, they drove past my vehicle and then pulled up beside each other again..

Now, why, when I showed up and started walking towards them, did the cops scurry like a pair of cockroaches when a light is turned on?

And why, after they thought I was gone, did they pull up side by side again? To continue talking through those open windows?

Were the two cops parked in this isolated location because they thought they could pass some of their duty time unnoticed? Was there no donut stand nearby?

It was all very very odd.

Looking At Chesapeake Energy Water Pipelines Today At Tarrant County College

I was heading east on Harwood today, driving past Tarrant County College. I don't know if this TCC campus is in Hurst or North Richland Hills.

Or both.

The Mid-Cities of the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex all run together.

I was stopped at a light on Harwood and looked to my left to see the pipeline construction contraption you see in the picture, with 3 pipes going over an entry to the college grounds. There was another of these construction contraptions at the entry further east.

The three pipes lead to a pond located at the southeast end of the campus, at the intersection of Harwood and Precinct Line Road, at a diagonal across from the ALDI Food Market.

From the pond the three pipes run to a Chesapeake Energy Barnett Shale Gas Drilling Pad at the southwestern end of the TCC campus. It looks to me as if this is part of the college campus land.

Which had me curious. Did TCC strike a deal with Chesapeake? Is that how permission is granted to run the three pipes across TCC land to a pond that also appears to be on TCC land?

Is that water coming out of the pond metered and paid for?

The Chesapeake Energy Drill Pad Site was a beehive of activity today, crammed full of trucks and equipment.

I assume the well is being re-fracked. Or maybe it is a virgin well and is getting fracked for the very first time.

I always find it quite interesting when I see one of these operations. Seeing one always seems to cause me to wonder how permission is granted to do things like block entry to a college in order to build a pipeline tunnel contraption.

I assume money must be exchanged somehow, somewhere to someone.

The Freedom In Dallas Of Wrongfully Convicted Cornelius Dupree

The guy with his right hand in the air is Cornelius Dupree Jr., a 51 year old man who was declared innocent on Tuesday, in Dallas, after spending 30 years in jail for a crime he did not commit.

Mr. Dupree is the latest victim of the formerly overzealous Dallas law enforcement system to be freed by the Innocence Project. DNA testing proved Dupree had not committed the rape he was convicted of committing.

Another man, Anthony Massingill, who was arrested and convicted, along with Dupree, for the same 1979 rape, is still behind bars, due to a conviction on a second, likely equally bogus rape. DNS testing is currently being done to exhonerate the second victim of this most recent revelation of a Dallas miscarriage of justice.

Dupree was only 20 when he was arrested and falsely accused. He has lost 31 free years of his life. I can't imagine what this would be like. I would be sort of mad, I think.

Due to Texas having an embarrassingly high number of these type wrongful conviction cases being overturned by modern era DNA testing, in 2009 the Texas Legislature passed America's most generous compensation law for the wrongly convicted.

Texas has freed 41 wrongly convicted victims via DNA testing since 2001, the highest number in the nation.

Under the Texas Compensation Law Dupree is owed $80,000 per year of incarceration, plus a lifetime annuity. Dupree could receive a total of $2.4 million. A  sum not subject to federal income tax.

I read of Dupree's freedom in this morning's Seattle P-I. I saw no mention of this in the online Dallas Morning News or the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Did I somehow miss it? Or did the two local newspapers of record not consider this news? While the Seattle P-I online featured this bit of news in a way that I did not miss it.

Perplexing.

Up Early On The 5th Day Of 2011 With My Allergy Attack Under Control

I was up well before the sun was on this 5th day of 2011. But, I did not look out the window until after the sun had begun to make its daily appearance.

And it appears we are, so far, having ourselves another clear, blue sky day here in North Texas.

I am currently under the medicative powers of a 24 hour anti-histamine.

Which means, for the first time in several days, I, first thing in the morning, am able to look at my computer screen without seeing it through the gauze of watery, burning eyes.

I am not an advocate of  one taking medications in order to successfully navigate oneself through the course of a regular day. But that is an objection more to those who drug themselves with psycho-tropic drugs to control their bizarre personality defects.

Is psycho-tropic the correct term? When I typed it, it seemed right. Now I am not so sure.

I think I am heading north today, past the Richland Hills, to the North Richland Hills. Then heading east to Hurst. Quite a long distance itinerary.

In the meantime the hot tub is back being hot so I'm going to be back getting hot in it this morning. After a refreshing dip in the pool. Very refreshing, I'm guessing, because it is only 38 degrees out there at the present moment.

Questioning TCEQ's Successful Project To Make It Safe To Fish Again In Fort Worth's Fosdic Lake

That beautiful green waterway you see in the picture is the north end of Fosdic Lake in Oakland Lake Park in Fort Worth, Texas a few months ago.

There are signs all around Fosdic Lake warning fishermen to be wary of fish they catch in Fosdic Lake. As in, don't eat them.

The signs are courtesy of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, more commonly known as TCEQ.

Well, imagine my surprise to find myself contacted by TCEQ, asking permission to use some of my photos for a story TCEQ is writing for an EPA publication about the successful project to make it safe to fish again in Fosdic Lake.

I read that and a big HUH? crossed my mind. What's been done to mitigate the Fosdic Lake pollution that has rendered the fish safe I wondered?

I replied to the message, giving permission to use the photos and asking, "Is it actually true? Fosdic Lake has been upgraded to being safe to eat the fish????"

Below is the first message I got from TCEQ, and below that is the perplexing reply I got to the question asking if it was actually true that the Fosdic fish are no longer deadly....

Hi, Durango,

I work for the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality in Austin, Texas. Our agency is writing a story for an EPA publication about the successful project to make it safe to fish again from Fosdic Lake. Unfortunately, all our good pictures of Fosdic Lake show "no fishing" signs!

You have several nice pictures of the lake posted on your blog site and also at durangotexas.com (a site I am happy to find!). May we use one or two of them? We would be glad to credit you for the photos if you will let us know how you want the credit to appear, and whether you want us to note them as copyrighted or not. 

If you give permission, we will let you know which specific pictures we might use. I'm currently favoring these:

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBZt4uw4ldPm6kopy-K1ETs7jg2jwow5ZYY4KLGBadeNn_XFAY46PybW909duZdlBFyDXwjwpvD5re81IhAGRHb2ViHha25PL-ebVu41B8B79aMazpwedFsgkla0TyombDdtBglLCkyXY/s1600/Fosdic+Lake.jpg

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9dvQ50Y5ozxvvSw_1Mjvg8VeP6YD5yTYCB1D6oX9iFezK9CrOfHaY9Thx2Mhe9nOuQExW-RziiZYosaaMPwQA6lc7OHv_ChBns6kHNf3UdUo7lFM9tXUa5ctX03kogRYGVcAh9fxnrLI/s1600-h/Fosdic+Ducks.jpg

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYceb3LWFxKjzVHKsJEFKa73i-FkMe_xdpchEqltDA1dtHVaorI0ce69Gi6gv68AuqpAplJMZrSjKpSDdReYuTL1qNaBRo6CD0aMymT9eOFsnHMBWzdLb1K2BNOo4IneeJDqCG4Zid9Ac/s1600/Oakland+Fosdic+Lake.jpg

http://www.durangotexas.com/eyesontexas/fortworth/oaklandlakeparkfiles/oaklandlakepark2.jpg

Please advise as by 1/7/11 or soonest convenient for you. Thanks very much for your time and for considering our request. 

BTW, it is nice to know that somebody else in Texas does not like the Cowboys ;-)

--Louanne Jones 

So, like I already said, I replied, giving permission to use the photos and asking the question about Fosdic Lake. To that I got the following reply, telling me that Ms. Jones is out of the office and wishing me a Happy New Year...

This is an automatic reply to your message.
I am out of the office from December 24, 2010 through January 2, 2011.

Please contact one of the following people if you require assistance in my absence. 

Public inquiries: 
Gail Rothe, grothe@tceq.state.tx.us, 512-239-4617

Water Web pages: 
E-mail the contact e-mail address on the Web page of interest.

Communications Coordination tasks: 
ac@tceq.state.tx.us. 

Please direct all other inquiries to my manager, 
Ronald Stein, rstein@tceq.state.tx.us, 512-239-4507.

Happy New Year!
--Louanne Jones

So, if Ms. Jones is out of the office, who is it who asked to use some of my photos to embellish something being sent to the EPA about the supposedly successful project that has returned the Fosdic Lake fish to relative safety?

And if TCEQ is writing a story for an EPA publication about the successful Fosdic Lake Restoration, but can't find any photos, but mine, without those vexing "NO FISHING" signs, why does TCEQ not take down the signs if they are no longer relevant?

It is all very perplexing.

UPDATE: Ms. Jones later got back to me, and put an end, for the most part, to what was perplexing. Below is the message........

Thank you for permission to use your photos! We will use one of the credit lines following, depending on which photos we use. 

Photograph© courtesy of durangotexas.blogspot.com or Photograph© courtesy of durangotexas.com

Sorry, my statement to you about the safety of fish consumption was a trifle imprecise. The consumption advisory has been lifted for all species except for common carp. 

The DSHS recommends adults and children 12 and older eat no more than two 8-ounce servings of carp per month. Children under 12 should eat no more than two 4-ounce servings per month. Women who are or might become pregnant and women who are nursing should not eat any carp from the lake. 

Sadly, there is often a long lag time between consumption advisories and posting of signs. The state Department of State Health Services (DSHS) issues the advisories but counties are responsible for posting signs. Though the advisories are usually up-to-date on the Web, the Internet is still not readily available to many folks. 

Thanks again, 
Louanne 

Hiking The Tandy Hills Today Wondering If Global Warming Is About To Warm Us In North Texas to Zero While Enjoying Avgolemono Soup

I decided to see if the Tandy Hills had been de-muddied by today, after staying away after last Friday's muddy stickiness.

Today, I was pleased to find nothing sticking to my hiking boots.

It is good the hills have decided to dry up.

Because they are scheduled to be trampled on this coming Saturday during the second annual Manly Men/Wild Women Hike.

I do not know if I will be able to be a Manly Man this year due to the news of this year's Manly Men/Wild Women Exhibition coming after I'd already made other plans for this coming Saturday.

However, plans can always change.

It is good the Manly Men/Wild Women Hike is this Saturday and not the Saturday following this Saturday, because, according to Fort Worth Weather Prognosticator, Bud Kennedy, reporting in his Facebook weather report, next week we are scheduled to get cold.

Real cold.

And the week following next week the projections are currently projecting the possibility that we could get down near zero here in North Texas.

I think I need to check the anti-freeze in my vehicle.

Let us change the subject from freezing to food.

I must say the Avgolemono Soup I made for lunch turned out way better than I thought it would. Lemon soup? How could that be good I thought? My mom and dad shipped me an awful lot of lemons. I needed to come up with some good way to use some of them. A classic Greek soup was a classic good solution.

I got some good stuff at Town Talk today. A lot of Roma Tomatoes. And a humongous container of Gorgonzola. Anyone need some Gorgonzola?

At times I wonder if former Fort Wortherite, current Tacoman, MLK, is right when she opines that Town Talk has made me fat. However, today I did buy 2 bags of Guiltless Gourmet Blue Corn Chips, in addition to all that cheese. Then again, those Guiltless chips will likely end up having an awful lot of cheese melted on them.

It is truly a wonder I am not fatter.

Up Early In Texas Thinking About Marcellus Shale Gas Drillers Disposing Of Fracking Fluids In Pennsylvania Rivers

It is the early morning of the 4th day of 2011 in North Texas. It is currently 10 degrees above freezing.

It was some fluke of the ISO setting on my camera that rendered the dark pre-dawn sky an un-sky-like shade of blue.

That shade of blue is sort of the unnatural shade of blue that Chesapeake Energy Hydraulic Fracturing Water Ponds are colored.

Speaking of which, the Chesapeake pond at the northeast corner of Cooks Lane and Brentwood Stair has been drawn low of late. I thought that water was the final resting place of fracking fluid that has already done its fracking, not fracking fluid waiting to do its fracking.

As long as we are on this fracking subject, I read a disturbing article in this morning's Seattle Post-Intelligencer about disturbing fracking fluid practices of the Marcellus Shale gas drillers in Pennsylvania.

Apparently the Pennsylvania gas drillers have been disposing of their fracking fluids via the simple disposal method of dumping the liquid in Pennsylvania rivers.

I have read nary a word of this in the newspapers local to me in Texas. Do the local newspapers not want to give the local frackers any ideas?

And how do we know the local frackers are not surreptitiously disposing of their contaminated water in Texas rivers like the Trinity?

If the gas drillers are getting away with polluting Pennsylvania rivers, with those rivers in what I would think must be a more environmentally enlightened part of America than Texas, well, one can't help but wonder what those gas drillers might be getting away with in Texas, what with the Texas regulating agencies all co-opted by gas industry infiltration.

And with the state of Texas at odds with the federal agencies, like the EPA, who's job it is to see that bad stuff is not done to the air and water of America.

Is any testing done of the Trinity River to see if any nasty fracking fluids are floating towards the Gulf of Mexico? If not, why not?

It is so bizarre to me that over the past 30 years, or so, billions of federal dollars have been spent cleaning up Superfund sites. Those being dangerously polluted parts of America. And then to allow some industry to inject dangerous chemicals into underground storage, underground, where aquifers live, well, it just seems sort of obvious that at least one of those areas of injection, will become a Superfund site of the future that likely will dwarf the Superfund sites of the past.

Fracking and the gas drillers and the nasty stuff they spew into the air I breathe has been on my mind the past couple days due to myself having what seems like an allergic reaction to something. I am not an allergic type person.

But. For instance.

Last night I had a bizarre bout of sneezing, followed by watery, itchy eyes. I was unable to read. This morning all is fine. I live very close to a Chesapeake Energy Barnett Shale gas pad. As in it is less than 1000 feet distant.

Today I am going to get myself some over the counter anti-histamines. I hope drugging myself helps.

2011 Tandy Hills Manly Men & Wild Women Hike

Yesterday I mentioned that it was a year ago yesterday that I went on my first Manly Men/Wild Women Hike on the Tandy Hills.

And that the Queen of Wink and Princess Annie came all the way from their West Texas realm to participate.

I was then informed by the Leader of the Manly Men, Don Young, that details of this year's Manly Men/Wild Women Hike would be forthcoming.

And so, those promised details came forth today.

This year's Forced March will occur on Saturday January 8, 2011.

At 10 AM.

The Hike will start from 3400 View Street. You know, the spot where the Prairie Fest takes place.

After the Hike, a group lunch, details to be announced, will take place.

I am a bit hazy regarding last year's group lunch. I seem to remember being some place in Arlington having lunch after the Manly Men/Wild Women Hike.

If you feel the need to RSVP your participation in one of Fort Worth's top annual events you may email Don Young.

Mr. Young is adding a bit of a teaser to this year's Manly Men/Wild Women announcement in that he is saying a side trip "might" be taken to the Witchey Tree of Tandy Hills. There have been some aspersions cast as to the legitimacy of Mr. Young's Witchey Tree Tale by some local skeptics.

I do not believe the well known Wild Woman of Woolley, Betty Jo Bouvier, will be able to make it to Fort Worth on January 8 to demonstrate her brand of Wild Womanliness.

I also do not believe Elsie Hotpepper will be able to hike the hills, even though she is pretty much the Wildest Woman I currently know.

I am fairly certain the Queen of Wink and Princess Annie will not be Wild Women this year. The Realm of Wink has been going through some regime change issues. There are some reports of a Queen Consort. And other reports that the Queen of Wink is in some sort of Eleanor of Aquitaine situation, kept under strict control, virtually under house arrest.

Anyway, the 2011 Tandy Hills Manly Man & Wild Women Hike is next Saturday.

Village Creek Natural Historic Area's Brown Bayou, Wildflowers & Canyon Animals

Freezing temperatures have turned brown the Village Creek Historic Natural Area's Bayou. Yet, even in its decayed state the bayou was a scenic spot today. A coldly scenic spot.

Deep inside the Grand Canyon of Village Creek I saw a helmeted female on a Village Creek Beach having a confrontation with some sort of wild animal that I was unable to identify.

I searched the Village Creek Natural Historic Area's designated Wildflower Area for some wildflowers, to no avail. I'll keep checking. In a few months I suspect wildflowers may appear.

The 3rd Day Of 2011 Dawns Cold In Texas With Thoughts Of Wild Women & TCU

The 3rd Day of 2011 dawns blue and one degree above freezing in my frigid zone of North Texas.

I saw no details, yet, in the Fort Worth newspaper of supposed record, the Star-Telegram, about our city-wide celebration celebrating Texas Christian University winning the Rose Bowl.

I believe TCU is the smallest school to ever win the Rose Bowl. And is also the only school with "Christian" as part of its name to win the Rose Bowl.

Or, likely, any other bowl.

I woke up this morning with an annoying twitch in my left eye. Why my left eye is twitching I have no idea. But I do know that I want it to stop.

Other than an unwanted twitching eye, I have no fresh maladies to report.

A day I wake up with no fresh aches or pains is the start of a good day.

I don't know, for sure, what I'm about to do on this first Monday of 2011. Except, maybe, finally get around to setting up the auto-deposit from Google to my new bank.

That and going walking somewhere other than the Tandy Hills. Speaking of which, I was informed last night, by someone who should know, that an announcement is soon to be forthcoming regarding the 2011 Manly Men and Wild Women Tandy Hills Hike.

I do not know if the Wild Woman of Woolley, Betty Jo Bouvier, will be in attendance. I suspect not.