Taking A Hike On A Texas Desert In Arlington

Looking at the picture you might think you are looking at an isolated Texas desert landscape with civilization hundreds of mile distant.

You would be thinking wrong.

In the picture you are in Arlington, looking west, in Veterans Park, in the rugged, hilly area of the park.

The air chilled to just a few degrees above freezing by this morning. It has warmed to 51 now.

Because we got into the 80s yesterday, even though it got near freezing, the water in my swimming pool was at a temperature well above the air temperature this morning. In other words I had a nice long swim.

Being able to be back swimming again has quickly melted away that layer of insulative blubber that I'd grown due to way too much weather caused sloth.

I've gotten multiple reports of snow woes from Washington yesterday and today. People living in the lowlands of Western Washington handle snow about as well as North Texans do. As in not too well.

Ironically, I've gotten way more practice dealing with severe Winter Weather in Texas than I did living way up north near the Canadian border.

As you can see by looking at the flags not waving in front of the soldier who stands guard over the Veterans Park Memorial, it is being dead calm out there today. Absolutely no Wind Chill Factor.

Swimming In The Center Of Paradise As The Last Friday Of February Dawns Cold In Texas

Stepping outside this last Friday morning of the second month of 2011 I looked up to see the recently full moon is now but a sliver of its former full self. That sliver is that little white spot in the photo.

It is only 4 degrees above freezing out there this morning in my zone of Texas. It got above 80 yesterday. I don't know if the water in the pool retained enough of that heat to make swimming pleasant this morning.

But, I aim to find out.

Up north, in my old hometown, in what is known as a banana belt due to its usual imperviousness to winter type weather, the ground is currently covered by a foot or more of snow, chilled to 19 degrees.

Total change of subject. The blog I wrote a couple days ago about my disgust regarding the Paradise Center Scandal has generated some interesting comments. Some pro Teresa Davis, some pro MHMR.

With the pro Teresa Davis comments seeming, well, intelligent and reasonable, while the pro MHMR comments seems, well, I don't want to use the word "retarded," even though I guess that is an acceptable term to use. Let's use the word "stupid" instead.

One of the stupid pro MHMR commenters was too stupid to note that comments are moderated. So, the commenter repeated the comment a couple times when it did not instantly get published.

It is time to go swimming now.

80 Degrees With No Snow In Fort Worth Or Anywhere Else In Texas

The rain rained down as predicted on my zone of Texas this morning.

The predicted Thunderstorms, however, did not arrive in my zone of Texas. At least not so far.

A couple counties to the east went into Tornado Alert mode earlier today.

Because the skies were a bit unsettled, with periodic dripping, I decided to take my daily walking constitutional at the park closest to my abode, that being Quanah Parker Park.

Quanah Parker Park has some really big, old trees standing. I assume these are old growth trees that have been there since the beginning of time. Or soon thereafter.

I thought these were giant oak trees, but a certified know-it-all informed me these were giant, old pecan trees. I don't like questioning a certified know-it-all's knowledge, but wouldn't you think if these are pecan trees that you'd see some pecans laying on the ground?

I'd been wondering where the Scrabble Queen of Washington was. I'd not heard from her for over a week. She'd been iPading from Hawaii, still being a Scrabble Queen. Well, this morning I learned that the Scrabble Queen is back on the mainland and the reason I'd not heard from her was she was deathly sick. As in stay in bed with anti-biotics level of deathly sick. Was sick on the islands and flew back sick.

I do not like being stuck on a plane. I can't imagine being stuck on a plane while deathly sick.

Currently the Scrabble Queen of Washington is no longer sickbound, but, she, like most of Western Washington, is snowbound.

The Scrabble Queen of Washington lives about 15 miles west of the Wild Woman of Woolley, Betty Jo Bouvier. The snowy photo shows the current condition of Betty Jo's vehicular conveyance.

That is a lot of snow. That is more snow than I remember ever seeing on the ground in the not prone to a lot of snow Skagit Valley of Washington zone.

As you can see below, the conditions are not favorable right now for snow in Fort Worth.

I've got my windows open, with a nice tropical-like breeze blowing. I immensely enjoyed swimming in the rain this morning.

Thursday Morning Texas Drizzle While Washington Gets A Foot Of Snow

Looking through the bars of my patio prison cell I experienced some minor drippage drizzling from above. The drizzle is scheduled to possibly turn into Thunderstorms today on the last Thursday of the second month of 2011.

It is currently a semi-warm 64 in my zone of Texas.

Meanwhile up in Washington, this morning in the flatlands of the Skagit Valley, it is 27 and snowing.

Betty Jo Bouvier, she being the Wild Woman of Woolley, as in Sedro-Woolley, reports this morning that she is being a wild woman with a snow shovel, trying to remove a foot of snow.

I do not know why Betty Jo is shoveling snow. With a foot of it on the ground it's not like she's going to be driving anywhere.

I can say for certain that I will not be shoveling any snow today. I can also say for certain I will not be hiking any hills today. I can say for certain I will be going swimming in the drizzle today.

As in, right now.

The Paradise Center Scandal Has Me Mad As Hell At Fort Worth

The Paradise Center Scandal now has a blog covering the ongoing scandal.

The troubled sky over the stunning skyline of beautiful downtown Fort Worth is a good metaphor for my foul mood.

I thought a late afternoon hike at the Tandy Hills Natural Sanatorium might break me out of this I'm mad as hell and I don't wanna take it anymore Howard Beale mood I've been in.

I think it may be the bizarre Fort Worth Paradise Center Scandal that has pushed me near the edge.

I've have had it happen to me, having something taken away with no warning. Unfairly and wrongly.

I've often been troubled, during my Texas Exile, as to what in the world is wrong with Fort Worth. Is there an Empathy Deficit in this town?

I'm not much of a religious person. Well, actually, I'm not a religious person. But I sure get some of what Jesus tried to teach people. As in, what you do to the least among you, you do unto me.

In the Paradise Center you had a place that helped the least among us. And you had a lady running the place of whom I think Jesus would have approved.

Running the Paradise Center in the Buckle of the Bible Belt.

Where are the Christians coming to the defense of these wronged people?

It is incidents like this that make me have very little respect for way too many who go about claiming to be Christian.

Why was Teresa Davis fired? What is the justification for disrupting her life and the lives of those she helped?

This is a woman who went way beyond the call of duty. Over the years she took adult disabled children on adventures they otherwise would never have experienced. Overnight trips to Sea World in San Antonio, the Space Center in Houston, Diamond Digging in Arkansas.

Why is there not a LOUD outcry from all the people who had family who were helped by the Paradise Center and Teresa Davis?

Why is the Fort Worth Star-Telegram not interested in this scandal?

Am I the only person who sees that something is very wrong here? I've already opined that the reason Teresa Davis was fired needs to be made public. An investigation needs to take place into who made the decision to fire Teresa Davis. And why. This may end up needing to be a criminal investigation. There may be some serious wrongdoing in play here.

And another note as to what bothers me about this. Teresa Davis is married to Steve Doeung. Teresa and Steve were put through a living hell by the City of Fort Worth and Chesapeake Energy in their fight to protect their home from having a non-odorized natural gas pipeline placed underneath it.

I watched Steve defend himself in court. I saw Chesapeake lawyers tell the judge that the judge was incorrect on some point of law. That Steve was correct.

I am embarrassed, as an American, at what the City of Fort Worth and Chesapeake Energy put this proud Cambodian-American through, after he went through so much to get to America.

America.

Where Steve was under the delusion he would finally be free of Communist type oppression.

Yet now, once again, Steve and his wife are subject to oppression, in America, oppression that is of the sort of bureaucratic bullying practiced by the Communists and the Nazis.

And yet nary a voice speaks out, demanding that this wrong be righted.

I really do not think Jesus would be all that proud that this sad part of the earth is known as the Buckle of the Bible Belt.

It's more the Center of Divine Hypocrisy.

I've told Steve Doeung, previously, that he and his family might be a lot happier if they moved to the part of America that is the America he thought he was moving to, when he left Cambodia.

Move to Seattle. Anyone in Washington reading this. Can you provide asylum to a Cambodian-American and his family and help them finally live in the America of Steve's dreams?

If Steve does move out of Texas and into America, I must warn you, if you meet him, he has a good Texas accent. And speaks way better English than a lot of Texans I've met over the years.

Riding The Trinity Railway Express From Fort Worth To Dallas With Gail Galtex

I have not taken the ride on the rails to Dallas on the Trinity Railway Express, also known as TRE.

I have ridden a TRE train in Dallas though. From a parking lot east of the State Fair of Texas to an entry gate to the State Fair.

I live very close to the Richland Hills Station of the TRE. I don't know why I've never hopped on board.

And then this morning I got email from a young lady I will call Gail Galtex which leads me to think I might not enjoy riding the TRE to Dallas.

Below is what Gail Galtex had to say about the TRE....

Your question got me thinking about Dallas and the TRE.

We used to go there a lot on the TRE train. We were members of the Dallas Museum or Art, and would go there for the day, visit the Nasher, take the DART to Uptown to a pizza place we like, go to the State Fair, sometimes meet friends @ Union Station, and come home before the last train.

That was when a 2-zone day pass on the TRE was $5 a person. Now it is $10 bucks a person, or $20 for us to ride the train to Dallas for the day. Now we'd be better off driving, especially if we can park for free.

We take the TRE to the airport (Centerpoint stop) at least once a month when we travel. It now costs $14 round trip for both Mike and I to ride to the airport. We leave our apartment and roll our bags nine blocks to the ITC train station on Jones (there is no bus from where we live) and there is no park and ride there either. Even the park and rides along the train route won't let you park overnight. The price of the train has doubled since 2007, and sometimes on short trips we now drive and park in the DFW remote south lot ($8 a day) for up to 4 days because it is more convenient and doesn't cost that much more. The train is a no-brainer if we are gone for a week or a month because we don't want to pay to park the car that long.

Don't get me wrong. I love the TRE -- it is one of the coolest things around here because it is a real train. But there are some major problems.

The price has gotten too high for occasional users like us, probably for commuters too. And to make matters worse, they rarely check tickets. Even if they do, they don't enforce the fines. As a result, the trains are often loaded with homeless and questionable characters who don't smell too good.

The train doesn't run on Sundays, which means we can't travel in or out of DFW on this day. The last train from downtown Dallas back to FW is now @ 9:20pm. So people who go to games/concerts probably can't take the train now. The last train from Centerport to FW is at 9.48pm, so we can't fly back into DFW much past 7:30ish and expect to catch a train back home if there are flight delays. And if we miss the 8:48 train back home, we have to wait on the platform with our bags for another hour until 9:48. ONE train per hour in the evenings.

Since we've moved here, the TRE has added an extra rail line and doubled prices, but the service schedule and hours have not improved. And they still don't run on Sundays. I don't mind paying double, or even more -- if they give us something back in return. I would even go to Dallas more.

Even with all the problems, Dallas and FW are light years ahead of Austin in public transit. Austin is a complete joke and traffic is horrible. You'd think a city as progressive as Austin could get something like this right, but they are way behind.

Thanks for listening to my rant of the day. :-)

Gail Galtex

The Last Wednesday Of February Pondering Planetary Insanity

You are looking out one of my viewing portals on the world on the last Wednesday of the second month of 2011.

Today has dawned a lot warmer than yesterday's dawn, already heated up to 57 degrees. Meanwhile my old hometown in Washington is chilled to one degree above freezing. With snow incoming.

My computer is acting up again. Which just adds to the anxiety I'm already feeling.

What's got me anxious?

Well.

You've got the Middle East seemingly spinning out of control, into chaos. Which is causing the cost of oil to soar. North Korea is getting ready to test another nuclear bomb. Budget woes in several states, as in American states, have paralyzed those state's governments. This paralysis will likely be spreading. America's daily federal budget deficit is somewhere in the $5 billion range.

Then you mix in the local nonsense like the Trinity River Vision Boondoggle and Fort Worth's Paradise Center scandal and I just get real tired of thinking that way too much of the world is way too insane.

Which right now is making me think I'll escape for awhile into a pool of semi-warm water.

The First Wildflowers Of 2011 Are Showing Their Colors In Fort Worth

Just this morning I mentioned that in less than a month it will be Spring. I did not say in less than a month it will be Spring and Texas will be putting on its annual wildflower show.

Today for my mid-day constitutional I went to Oakland Lake Park to walk around Fosdic Lake.

Upon arrival I was a bit surprised to see color carpeting the ground in blue and purple wildflowers. And some of those beautiful yellow wildflowers that someone at some point in time told me are called Dandelions.

The pleasantly high temperatures that followed our unpleasantly cold temperatures must have confused some confusable plants into thinking Spring had arrived. And so they woke up and turned on the color.

It is 63 right now, a little before 3. I don't know if it is being warm enough to wake up the cold-blooded reptiles. Like snakes. Where does a big reptile, like an alligator, go when it gets way below freezing?

Elsie Hotpepper called me soon upon my arrival at Oakland Lake Park. I'd gotten out my camera and had it turned on to take a picture of a deflated boat that had joined the collection of litter that trashes up Fosdic Lake.

I turned off the camera and turned my attention to Elsie Hotpepper. Elsie was driving down the freeway at a high rate of speed when she called. It sounded like she was on a motorcycle.

I just saw incoming email on the other screen. Stenotrophomonas says it was not he who demolished the Tandy Bamboo Teepee. I fear the mystery of the Tandy Bamboo Teepee is going to remain an unsolved mystery.

Protesting Because Paradise Seems To Be Lost In Fort Worth For Now

Yesterday I blogged the Press Release about a protest planned in front of the Tarrant County Mental Health and Mental Retardation Headquarters protesting the ham-handed, possibly illegal, actions of the officials running TCMHMR.

It was only this morning I learned that the the MR part of TCMHMR stands for Mental Retardation.

For some reason I thought the term "Mental Retardation" had fallen upon disfavor.

But, now having learned that mental retardation is perfectly okay terminology, I guess it is politically correct to say it seems to me that maybe someone in a position of power within TCMHMR may be a bit retarded.

Drivers driving by yesterday's picketing protesters obliged the picket sign asking them to "Honk for Justice!"

Someone drove by the protest, honked their horn in support, then left a blog comment, saying...

This must be pretty serious because we drove by on Hulen this morning and honked in support of several people in yellow shirts holding signs saying "honk 4 justice for Paradise". An important looking man and woman were trying break them up or something. On our way back the group was still there but with a news cameraman obviously interviewing some of them. Keep us updated because this is both interesting and disturbing.

The news cameraman referred above was a WFAA, Channel 8, operation. As far as I know, Fort Worth's pathetic excuse for a newspaper of record, you know, a newspaper that actually reports the local news, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, has not told its readers about the Paradise Center Scandal.

However, Fort Worth's actual only real newspaper of record, it just isn't daily, Fort Worth Weekly, sent Jeff Prince to take a look into the Paradise Center Scandal and yesterday's protest. The resulting FW Weekly article is titled "Paradise Center Visitors Protest MHMR."

FW Weekly did not uncover what is behind the firing of the Paradise Center's only full-time employee, Teresa Davis.

However, comments made in response to the FW Weekly article seem to shine some possible light on the Paradise Center Scandal...

FWISD Product says:
Nice story. But whispers around MHMR is that there is a scheme to use the established reputation and leadership and skills of those people running the place as volunteers to keep attracting mental health consumers so MHMR and a private company can bill Medicaid for providing an essential component of mental health treatment/recovery.

There’s also talk of emergency meetings by the Board of Trustees and the executives to prepare for legal actions and possible investigations related to the whole affair, which those in the know say could cost a bunch of money and even executives’ jobs.

Please stay on this story because something doesn’t smell right about what MHMR is trying to present.

Carol says:
MHMR may not have plans of closing Paradise Center or reducing services, but will it truly be a “client run” organization as it has been in the past? It seems that MHMR has other plans for the building which may include serving individuals with mental illness, however, Teresa Davis and the consumers have kept Paradise Center “alive” for the past 10 years. As a consumer run organization, Paradise Center has given many individuals suffering with mental illness a reason to continue in life. It has given them hope, encouragement, and a place where they truly felt needed….because the organization did not “run” without the consumers or Mrs. Davis! So, will MHMR keep it a consumer run organization or just allow the clients to participate in what they tell them to do? Paradise Center has opened their doors on weekends and every holiday such as Christmas and Thanksgiving. Teresa Davis, her family, friends and volunteers were the ones there to help, not MHMR faculty and staff. And, why would MHMR need a “change in management”, as Massey said, when Teresa Davis has not had an evaluation in 8 years (because she was the director of a non-profit, not an MHMR employee) and has been a dedicated worker. Why the sudden change???? Something’s not right! What is MHMR trying to hide?

Linda says:
The clients of Paradise Center are family. They care about each other and help each other stay well. I have heard so many from other areas comment that they would love to have a safe place like Paradise and someone like Teresa. I know of no other that understands and helps clients like she does. Football season found her preparing weekly for the football games. Cooking and providing rides so that the group could get together to cheer for the Cowboys. They were able to have get togethers like friends do. Her phone turned on 24/7. She takes them to grocery shop, doctor appointments, out to eat and on and on. You do not find someone like Teresa that has dedicated her life to helping those that suffer from an illness that so few understand. She keeps these folks well and out of the hospital. She has respect for them and they love and respect her. This situation with the loss of their “home” is pitiful. No,it is shameful. Teresa deserves respect.

Bob C. says:
Teresa Davis deserves better than this, as do the people who are served by Paradise Center.

emey says:
They threw away her papers and stuff from her office!

Glenda says:
Not only did Teresa keep many patients out of the hospital
she gave up all her holidays for the patients. So the patients would not be home alone and could be with “family”. She does deserve better. I think someone should look into “the reasons” she was terminated.

________________________________________

I agree with Glenda. Someone should look into the reasons why Teresa Davis was fired. I think the first comment above, the one from Fort Worth Independent School District Product, aka FWISD Product, may contain a big clue as to the reason for these retarded actions.

Since this is a government action, as in isn't this being done by a Tarrant County agency? Isn't there supposed to be transparency regarding actions by a public agency?

At this stage in the Paradise Center Scandal I've pretty much come to the conclusion that Teresa Davis needs to be re-instated.

An investigation needs to take place as to why she was fired.

And then whoever instigated that firing needs to be fired.

Five Degrees Above Freezing In North Texas With Less Than A Month Til Spring

The last Thursday of the second month of 2011 has dawned with a blue sky heated up to only 5 degrees above freezing.

I think I will skip swimming this morning.

Looking out my viewing portal on the world it looks cold out there.

We had a run of a week or so of being 30 or 40 degrees warmer than my old hometown in Washington. This morning my zone of Texas is only 3 degrees warmer than Mount Vernon.

And snow is in the forecast for Western Washington. I hope we are done with snow being in our forecast for North Texas for the remainder of the particularly cold, snowy, icy Winter in Texas.

We have less than a month to go before this miserable Winter is history. Spring is currently scheduled to arrive on March 20.