The Quanah Parker Park Ghosts Will Now Be Lit Up At Night By Solar Powered Lights Thanks To Fort Worth City Gas Lease Revenue In Action

Ghosts Flying In The Quanah Parker Park Trees

We are way past Halloween, so I don't know why there appeared to be ghosts in the trees of Quanah Parker Park today.

It was 50 and slightly windy when I went on a walk today. And somehow I managed to overheat.

Today a City of Fort Worth work crew was picking up the tires I mentioned in a blogging earlier this month and then again when the tire pile grew bigger.

Where did all those tires come from I continue to wonder?

Last Wednesday I blogged about Fort Worth city gas lease revenue in action in Quanah Parker Park. Action like adding a new section of paved trail that seems a bit redundant.

Solar Light To Illuminate Trail At Night

The paved trail of Quanah Parker Park does not see a lot of people. But that Fort Worth city gas lease revenue in action has been adding new benches that someone someday may sit on.

I had noticed poles stuck in the ground beside the paved trail and wondered what they were for.

Today I found out.

A crew was installing solar powered lights on the poles to illuminate the trail at night that few walk on during the day.

Clearly Fort Worth is flush with cash with all that city gas lease revenue in action.

I'm assuming now that Fort Worth is flush with cash with all that city gas lease revenue in action that the Fort Worth public swimming pools will be reopened and the public library operating hour cutbacks will be reversed.

The Next To Last Morning Of November Thinking About Bankrupt American Airlines & Other Fort Worth Corporate Boondoggles

The steamy view through my primary viewing portal on the world is not due to a freezing frost on this next to last morning of the next to last month of 2011.

It is yet one more clear blue sky dawn of a new day semi-deep nowhere near the heart of Texas.

Currently heated to a chilly 37 degrees.

If the temperature predictors are correct it looks like Thursday may be the first day in several that the 24 hour average is 50 degrees or above, thus warming the water I swim in sufficiently to make going swimming doable.

Elsie Hotpepper has gone missing. Again. Even though she sent me an email telling me she has not gone missing. Again.

The most troubling news this morning was that American Airlines has filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy. American Airlines is one of the few big corporations based in Fort Worth. Along with Radio Shack and Pier One Imports. There may be others I am not aware of.

I'm not sure if Pier One Imports is still in business. They built themselves a very nice corporate headquarters near the Trinity River and then soon had to abandon their nice new corporate headquarters to Chesapeake Energy so Chesapeake Energy could have a nice new building from which to run its shadow government of Fort Worth.

I am almost certain that Radio Shack is still in business, even though Radio Shack also abandoned its very nice new corporate headquarters in downtown Fort Worth. I think Radio Shack may still lease a room or two in its former corporate headquarters, but it has mostly been taken over by Tarrant County College.

It is interesting how Fort Worth's scandals and boondoggles intersect.

Fort Worth abused eminent domain to take away a public housing project so the land could be given to Radio Shack. Radio Shack then took away Fort Worth's free parking lots and subway which used to make visiting downtown Fort Worth pleasantly easy.

Meanwhile Tarrant County College began building a very expensive new downtown campus that eventually turned into a boondoogle that was costing too much. So, that construction was scaled back with the majority of the new downtown campus moved over to the then mostly abandoned Radio Shack corporate headquarters.

And now American Airlines is bankrupt. If AA goes out of business that is going to leave an awful lot of open slots at D/FW International Airport.

I wonder what causes corporations headquartered in Fort Worth to have such woeful woes?

Trying To Find The Phantom Fosdic Ducks While Thinking About Riding A Ferry In Texas

Fosdic Blue Lake In Oakland Lake Park

I snapped 4 pictures of this view of Fosdic Lake. My eyes saw dozens of ducks floating on the lake. My camera somehow saw none of them.

The only evidence of the flock of ducks is the waves on the lake. Bigger waves than when I saw Fosdic Lake on Saturday when it was very windy.

Today is being pretty much dead calm in the outer world.

Dead calm and slightly cold. We are no longer freezing. It is currently 48 degrees at my location.

Yesterday I blogged about the Tacoma Adventure Poodles, Blue & Max's Thanksgiving blogging, mentioning that they were the Primary Caretakers of my nephews David and Theo and niece, Ruby. And that the Secondary Caretakers had taken the kids to play in snow. I was not certain where that snow was located. I have now heard, via a blog comment from one of the Secondary Caretakers, that my guess as to the snow location was correct.....

Secondary Caretaker has left a new comment on your post "A Happy Thanksgiving From A Pair Of Poodles Has Me Homesick For Washington": 

As we were driving up - yes to the Summit - I was thinking how thankful I am to live somewhere with such geographic diversity. We could have chosen a ferry ride, a trip to the snow, or even the ocean. We are very lucky here.

In one long day's drive I could go from my current location to Galveston where I also could ride a ferry and be on an ocean beach. Well, a gulf beach. That looks just like an ocean. It would be a longer drive to find some deep snow.

The Locals Are Taking J.D. Granger To The Woodshed For A Well Deserved Spanking

J.D. Granger Covering His Rear On The Way
To A Spanking In The Woodshed

The picture is a figurative representation of the Fort Worth public taking J.D. Granger to the Woodshed.

A big brouhaha is brewing over the sweetheart deal J.D. Granger gave Tim Love.

That sweetheart deal being a new restaurant called The Woodshed that has area restaurateurs crying foul. Complaining that the Trinity River Vision went through no competitive bidding process for the sweet lease deal that Tim Love was gifted with.

The article in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram about this latest Trinity River Vision nefariousness sort of manages to raise more questions than it answers.

Apparently the Freedom of Information Act does not apply to a governmental body like the Trinity River Vision. So, there is no transparency. J.D. Granger claims he approached other restaurateurs about the sweetheart deal, but was turned down.

But, J.D. refuses to say who these other mystery restaurateurs were.

And, apparently neither J.D. Granger or Tim Love remembers who approached whom first about this sweetheart deal. Does it not seem like one would remember such a thing? Apparently the Star-Telegram reporter, Barry Shlachter, was not curious enough to push harder for answers.

The Star-Telegram's best reporter, Bud Kennedy, mentioned The Woodshed Scandal on his Facebook page a couple days ago, which resulted in oodles of comments indicating there are a lot of people not happy with what they are seeing with the Trinity River Vision.

The Star-Telegram article titled "Restaurant owners irked by no-bid deal with celebrity chef Tim Love" has also generated a lot of comments, 70 in total, as of right now. Likely to increase.

I particularly liked the most recent comment, it being #70, from someone calling him or herself FoodCourtJester...

Seems everything Mr. Love touches turns to gold except his sorry food. Did I see he baked a roasted jalapeño granny smith apple pie for the Cowboys game? He thinks he's inventing new food if you read the recent paid advertisement, I mean article, in Ft Worth magazine. A bunch of clueless locals so eager to latch onto anything a celebrity chef does because Ft Worth has a major inferiority complex is to blame. That same inferiority complex brought us the TRV. Austin has town lake and SA the riverwalk. Oh, and the comment in this article that Love mentioned Woodshed on national TV. Yippee. Sounds like Baby Granger, Lane, et al should be taken to the woodshed.

Another comment suggested that the FBI would soon be raiding the offices of the TRV. Apparently that comment maker was not aware that Fort Worth is under a protective bubble where its corruption is immune from federal scrutiny.

But, if there was an FBI investigation, or even if someone was able to invoke the Freedom of Information Act, I think the public would be fascinated to learn how much of their money is spent on the liquor supply at TRV headquarters. How much has been spent on junkets to other towns? How much has been spent at expensive restaurants? How much has been put on a TRV credit cards for a room or two in an expensive Dallas hotel?

Why doe the Star-Telegram not politely ask J.D. Granger for a look at the Trinity River Vision's books? If it is all on the up and up and totally justifiable, J.D. Granger should have no objection to total transparency.

Regarding FoodCourtJester saying that Tim Love makes sorry food. All Tim Love has ever cooked for me is a Dirty Love Burger at the Love Shack in the Fort Worth Stockyards. After reading all the hype about the Love Shack burgers I was a bit disappointed to find I found nothing all that great about it. And the fries were cold.

The Last Monday Of November Freezing & Earthquake Free In Texas

On this last Monday of the next to last month of 2011 I am looking through the bars of my patio prison cell at a swimming pool that could have ice floating in it, if the circulating pump did not stop that from happening.

Because it is below freezing this morning in the outer world at my location on this parched part of the planet.

I have turned on my interior heating device for the first time since last winter. I do not like having to run my interior heating device.

I did not feel any of the 6 earthquakes that have rattled Oklahoma in the past 4 days.

Hyper sensitive to having the earth move, Elsie Hotpepper, usually feels any ground movement within a 200 mile radius.. But I've not heard if Elsie felt any shaking the past 4 days.

I will not be going swimming again this morning. My health is rapidly deteriorating due to this decrease in activity.

My Regular Sunday Walk With The Village Creek Indian Ghosts Was Blowing Below Freezing Today

The Sunny Sunday View Of The Village Creek Blue Bayou

With it being Sunday and creature of habit that I be, today in the noon time frame I drove to Arlington to the Village Creek Natural Historical Area to walk with the chilled Ghosts of the Indians who used to live here in one of the biggest Indian Villages in North America, til the Natives were run out of their town by incoming Texans and their primitive use of an early version of eminent domain.

We are having another gusty day in North Texas. So gusty that the wind chill factor had the 41 degrees feeling like 4 degrees below freezing when I entered the outer world.

As seems to be the pattern there were a number of other people enjoying the brisk wind blowing over Village Creek today.

Due to the big trees that line the walkway that you pass under as you commune with nature in this location, when it is windy, you must keep an eye out for flying branches and other airborne debris.

I had no flying branch incidents today.

As you can see via the screencap I made of the weather conditions prior to taking off to visit the Indians it is going to be cold for the next 5 days.

It appears that there will be no 24 hour periods where the temperature averages 50 degrees or above. This means I will not be swimming into the foreseeable future.

Without my salubrious morning swim my health is likely to quickly deteriorate. And I will get very very cranky. A substitute must be found.

A Happy Thanksgiving From A Pair Of Poodles Has Me Homesick For Washington

Ruby, Theo & David With Kristin
Getting Ready To Ski

This morning I saw that Tacoma's best known Adventure Poodles, Blue & Max, had written their annual Happy Thanksgiving blogging.

Apparently, on or about Thanksgiving, Blue & Max sent my nephews, David and Theo and niece, Ruby, up somewhere in the Cascade Mountains with their secondary caretakers, Michele & Kristin, for some fun in the snow.

It looks like the snow location may be the Snoqualmie Pass summit zone. There are several ski areas in this location. The Snoqualmie Pass summit zone is a fairly short distance east of Seattle and Tacoma, on Interstate 90.

Among the things I miss about Washington, that I don't have in Texas, is the extremely varied topography within very short distances.

In my current location the topography is pretty much the same in any direction for 100s of miles. There are no snow covered mountains in this parched part of the planet.

Where I lived in Washington, in the Skagit Valley town of Mount Vernon, I could drive about 10 miles to the east and be up in the mountains. Or go 10 miles to the west and be on a Puget Sound beach. Or in the tourist town of La Conner.

In Washington I could get up on a Saturday morning in November and choose to go cross country skiing, or go have a weenie roast picnic on a beach, or hop a ferry 20 miles from my abode, in Anacortes, and head out to the San Juan Islands, which is in the rain shadow of the Olympic Mountains, and thus is a reliable escape from rain, if you feel in need of escaping the gray dripping.

View From My Bedroom Window Of My
Van & Car Covered By Snow

The Puget Sound lowlands do not get a lot of snow. Some winters pass with no snow. There was one snow storm in the 1990s that was the deepest snow I ever saw in the Puget Sound lowland zone. I was pretty much trapped in my house for a week. I could not drive anywhere, but I could cross country ski to the grocery store.

When the thaw finally came I had all sorts of problems. Water was backing up on the flat roofs. Two drain pipes broke off. It was a mess.

Go here to visit me in Washington. Scroll down and you will come to more photos of the most snow I ever saw piled up in my location in Mount Vernon.

In Western Washington when you want a really major change of scenery you can drive one of the passes over the Cascade Mountains to a starkly different type of topography than the evergreen western side of the mountains. East of the mountains the hills have no trees growing on them, except for the 1000s of acres of fruit orchards.

In Eastern Washington you have a climate much more like Texas. Very HOT in the summer.

There is a big river than runs through Eastern Washington, called the Columbia, with several big dams, like Grand Coulee. Because of the big river and the reservoirs behind the dams, much of the desert of Eastern Washington has been turned into land upon which all sorts of things grow. One of the side benefits of Grand Coulee Dam was the appearance of lakes in various coulees (Washington Indian-speak for canyons), like Sun Lake. Sun Lake State Park was one of my favorite places to go in summer in my younger years.

Dry Falls, by Sun Lake, is the location of what at one point in time was the biggest waterfall the world has ever known. The melting of the last Ice Age and its massive flooding is what made the coulees of Eastern Washington.

Can you tell I'm feeling a bit homesick for Washington? It has been over 3 years since I've been back. That is the longest I've been away from Washington in my long life. I'm thinking I will likely be going to Arizona and Washington soon.

The Last Sunday Of November Of 2011 Has Dawned Wind Free & Cold In Texas

Looking out my primary viewing portal on the outer world this last Sunday of the next to last month of 2011 we can intuit that the temperature differential between my inner world and the outer world is significant enough to cause window condensation.

It is currently 37 degrees on the other side of the wet window.

It was windy pretty much all day yesterday and into the night. I assumed some massive weather system was blowing in.

However, this morning, near as I can see, there is nary a cloud in the sky.

I will not be going swimming this morning.

According To The Trinity River Vision Boondoggle Update No Other Town In North America Has As Much Downtown Waterfront As Fort Worth Texas

Roundabout With The Trinity River Vision

On Tuesday I blogged about the TRINITY RIVER VISION UPDATE VOLUME VI - ISSUE 3 - WINTER 2011 that DP had emailed me in PDF format, in a blogging titled "The Trinity River Vision Boondoggle's Bridges To Nowhere Built In Slow Motion."

Today the hard copy TRV Update showed up in my mailbox. The hard copy was identical to the PDF version.

Except.

An extra page had been inserted. That extra page has a few jaw dropping gems on it.

In a section of that extra page titled "Fort Worth Finally Embraces Trinity River" we are told....

Periodic devastating floods, including one in 1949 that flooded downtown, led the Corps to build high levees to protect the city. As leaders today acknowledge, it also protected the city's residents from using and enjoying the river. J.D. Granger, executive director of the Trinity River Vision Authority, joked that the only people making use of the river were skinny sweaty people, i.e. joggers who ran along the green spaces protected by the levees.

Despite the levees, the Trinity River still posed a flood danger during extreme rain events. The solution that eventually emerged was to dig a new channel to connect two sides of an oxbow that wound through the city. The channel, which would mostly cut through abandoned industrial properties, would turn part of downtown into two islands with a small bay between them, and provide miles of river-walks similar to the famous one in San Antonio that has become a mainstay of that city's tourism industry.

First off, a lot of people, besides the skinny sweaty people Mr. Granger mentions, use the Trinity Trails. Bikers, walkers, moms pushing strollers. Has Mr. Granger never been to Trinity Park? There are usually a lot of people in Trinity Park. Some of them are fishing.

Second off, despite the fact that there has been no repeat of the 1949 flood since the levees were built, the Trinity River still posed a danger if it rains real hard? I've seen some rather extreme flooding since I've been here. I have never seen the river get near going over the levees. I have seen other areas of Tarrant County that have turned deadly during extreme rain events. Haltom City, for example. But the Army Corps of Engineers does not care about Haltom City's flood woes.

Third off, the Town Lake has now been reduced to a small bay between two islands? How does that work?

Fourth off, this is the first I've heard that the Trinity River Vision Boondoggle now includes miles of river-walk like the one in San Antonio. That's an impressive plan, copying the famous tourist attraction of another town in your state. That is just kind of sad.

In another section of the propaganda, titled "Trinity River Vision remains focused, on schedule," we are told...

For what developers call the Trinity Uptown component of the Trinity River Vision project, residents can expect an 800-acre mixed use development connecting downtown, the Cultural District and the near North Side. Remaining project components are the Gateway Park master plan and what's dubbed the Trinity River Vision Experience, providing greater river access over 88 miles of river and tributaries.

And then this gem from Fort Worth's director of Planning and Development Department, Randle Harwood.

"We are in a unique position that no other city in North America can claim," Harwood said, citing the amount of waterfront access near downtown as unique to Fort Worth. "I just think that it gives us an economically competitive advantage. You can't create that, although we are creating additional riverfront by using the bypass channel."

No other city in North America has the amount of waterfront access near downtown as Fort Worth does? Who is writing this stuff? Someone borrowed from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram? I've not read such ridiculous propaganda in a long time. The Star-Telegram's bizarre claims about the long defunct Santa Fe Rail Market being the first public market in Texas, that it was modeled after Seattle's Pike Place and European public markets, comes to mind.

The Star-Telegram apparently did not know about the Dallas Farmers Market when it propagandized about the Santa Fe Rail Market. And the Trinity River Vision must not realize that the Trinity River also flows by the downtown of Dallas. And that the Dallas Trinity River Vision will see an actual big lake with a lot of waterfront.

Fort Worth's waterfront puts this town in a unique position no other city in North America can claim?

Apparently New York City, Miami, Chicago, Portland, Seattle, San Francisco, Vancouver and other towns I'm likely forgetting are not in the same North America that Fort Worth is in.

Besides Dallas I can think of other towns within a day's drive of Fort Worth with a lot of waterfront.

Like Tulsa, Oklahoma.

The Tulsa Port of Catoosa, at the head of the McClellan-Kerr Arkansas River Navigation System, is the most inland river port in the U.S. with access to international waterways. Yes, the Arkansas River is a real river, a real wide river as it passes through Tulsa.

The Trinity River as it passes through Fort Worth is more of a glorified ditch than a river.

Shreveport, Louisiana, with the Red River, also navigable, providing a lot of waterfront, is also a short drive from Fort Worth.

Waco has some nice waterfront on the north side of its downtown, provided by the very scenic Brazos River, which also is a real river, not a glorified ditch, as it passes through Waco.

If the goofball assertions made in the Trinity River Vision Update are indicative of the thought processing going into this project, I fear we will be seeing a way bigger boondoggle than any of us dreamed possible.

The Wind Doth Blow Across The Texas Prairie Today With Fosdic Ducks & Solar Panels

Birds Of Various Feathers
 Flocking Together On Lake Fosdic

The weather predictors were predicting accurately this morning when they predicted it would be windy today.

At ground level the gusts seem to be coming from the west. At sky level the clouds seem to be coming from the south. The temperature has dropped to 52 in the early afternoon, after starting the day in the 60s.

On my way to Town Talk today I stopped for a very brisk walk in the very brisk wind that is blowing around Fosdic Lake in Oakland Lake Park.

It was so windy I thought there should be waves making whitecaps. But there weren't.

Birds of various feathers were sticking together in the wind, with a bunch of ducks seeming to be being guarded by some big white birds. The quacking was a cacophony.

What Is This Mysterious Device?

A month or so ago there appeared something perplexing by the spillway of Lake Fosdic Dam.

A post cemented into the ground with an antenna at the top and what looks to be some sort of solar panel. A cable runs underground to a pipe that runs to the spillway.

Is this to measure the water flow over the dam? Something that does not happen too often lately on this parched part of the planet.

A little dribble was dripping over the spillway today, thanks to last night's little amount of rain.

There must be some really good explanation why the City of Fort Worth, with its budget woes, spent money on this particular waiting to be vandalized device.

Yet one more thing to be perplexed about. Like the latest mailing from the Trinity River Vision, which arrived in my mailbox today. More on that later.