Fort Worth Star-Telegram Editorial Board Did Not Recommend Kasich & Sanders

I guess this falls into the category of something I see in a west coast online news source that I would not expect to be seeing in one of my local Texas online new sources, such as the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

In this instance it is the Seattle Times recommending voters vote for John Kasich and Bernie Sanders.

I don't remember if I saw who the Star-Telegram endorsed for the recent primary. I'll go see if I can find that information.

Well, near as I can tell the Star-Telegram endorsed Marco Rubio.

I could not find who was endorsed by the Star-Telegram on the Democrat side. I would hazard to guess it was likely Mrs. Clinton.

On the Republican side John Kasich is the only one remaining who seems like a normal person to me, who does not seem to suffer from some mental health issues.

Did Ted Cruz Model For Big Tex Along With Auditioning For The Simpsons?

Earlier this morning I was reading the hard copy version of this week's Dallas Observer, when looking at the cover article about Fair Park in Dallas I looked at the photo you see here of Big Tex and thought he looked uncannily like Ted Cruz.

Big Tex got a makeover a couple years ago after an unfortunate fire incident. Did Ted Cruz model for the makeover?

Speaking of Ted Cruz, and who isn't? That is Ted Cruz at the lower left part of the screen cap from the Dallas Observer.

Ted Cruz at the lower left is a link to an article titled LETTER FROM TEXAS: LISTEN AMERICA, TRUMP IS JUST EMBARRASSING. CRUZ IS SCARY.

There has been so much embarrassing, scary video material with Cruz showing his reptilian-ness. I would have thought those videos would have laughing stocked him long ago. I thought the Cruz audition tape for The Simpsons would have been the end of him, but it was not.

I blogged about the embarrassing Cruz audition for The Simpsons on another of my blogs, with that blogging titled Ted Cruz Unfortunate Embarrassing Audition for The Simpsons.

The embarrassing audition video is watchable on the blog for your viewing enjoyment.

Finding A Long Lost Trinity Uptown Protest T-Shirt

I think I already mentioned that during the course of rummaging through locations I've not rummaged in for years I am finding stuff I did not remember having

A Trinity Uptown t-shirt?

It seems like a decade or longer ago that what is now known as America's Biggest Boondoggle was known as Trinity Uptown.

I think the current full name of the Boondoggle is the Trinity River Central City Uptown Panther Island Vision Boondoggle.

Did I get this t-shirt whilst manning a booth at the Prairie Fest with Granny Grassroots the time someone thought I was Elsie Hotpepper's papa?

Or did I get this t-shirt at the massive anti-Boondoggle protest at the opening of Tim Love's Woodshed Smokehouse that The Boondoggle gave him in a sweetheart deal?

I sure have a lot of memory issues....

Finding My 10 Year High School Class Reunion In Anacortes Washington

As I look in locations I've not looked at in years I keep finding things I did not remember I had. Such as the group photo above. It took me a second or two to figure out this was taken at my 10 year high school class reunion.

I recollect this reunion took place in a clubhouse at the Skyline Marina in Anacortes. I have no memory of the group photo being taken.

It took me awhile to find me in this photo. I'm the boy in blue.

Finding Lost Tabletop Mountain In Texas

Today I found photos I thought were long lost, which I have previously searched for among my big collection of old hard copy photos.

But, today the mystery of the missing photos was solved soon after I began perusing through a file cabinet I'd not looked in in years.

The first photo you see here is one of my favorites I have ever taken. That would be my Favorite Nephew Jeremy on the left, sitting next to my Favorite Nephew Christopher, at some point in time back in the 1990s, before I moved to Texas and the nephews moved to Arizona.

Chris and Jeremy are sitting atop Tabletop Mountain. Behind them is Mount Shuksan. To their left, in the direction Chris is looking, sits the Mount Baker volcano.

Notice the piles of rocks behind the nephews, resembling what I've come to call Hoodoos when I see these type rock formations on the forlorn Tandy Hills.

Til today, all I had remaining of these photos were scanned images compressed to a low byte size suitable for using them on a webpage back in the pre-broadband days when one worried about such things. Today's newly scanned versions look almost 3-D. At least on my screen.

Tabletop Mountain is on the north side of Mount Baker. The parking lot and trailhead opens up in late summer, unless the snowpack has been light, allowing it to open earlier. The parking lot is at the end of the road that one can use to drive past the ski area when enough snow melts.

As you can see, a lot of people show up for the multiple hiking opportunities accessed from this location, including a trail on the north face of Mount Baker.

Above we are starting the trek up Tabletop Mountain, via a series of switchbacks.

I first saw this as a little kid, retaining the memory of a string of people switchbacking up a mountain. As years passed I started to think this was a false memory, too young to remember the location of the memory, til one day, years later, I found myself back at the same location, again seeing a string of people switchbacking up a mountain.

Above we are on one of the aforementioned switchbacks, making our way to the top of Tabletop.

I think this may have qualified as one of my infamous Nephews in Danger incidents, where Jeremy 'skied' down a sheet of snowy ice towards Mount Baker.

Below Jeremy watches as Christoper is the Nephew in Danger. As I remember it Christopher reached a high rate of speed and had trouble hitting the brakes when the snowy ice came to an end.

I have shown photos of Washington mountain hiking to Texans previously. Summer photos of being up in the mountains. The Texans are always perplexed as to how can one be in shorts, like it is hot, when you are on a cold snowy mountain. Well, it takes a lot of thermal units to melt massive snow packs, so ice remains even when the air is heated into the 70s, or 80s, making it quite pleasant to be in the high country minimally attired.

I don't remember why Jeremy was threatening his Favorite Uncle with a snowball. That would be the aforementioned Mount Baker volcano behind Jeremy.

Looking at these photos is it any wonder I am homesick for real mountains with real scenery and real trails trekking to see real scenery on real mountains?

I miss cross county skiing on these mountains too. Ironically, yesterday I tossed my cross country skis into the garbage. The Texas heat had de-laminated them....

Evacuation Preparations Leads To Discovery Of Lost Treasures

In preparation for Bugging out of Texas I have been looking in cabinets and locations I have not looked in or at in years.

Doing so I found the originals of photos of my Favorite Nephews Christopher and Jeremy on a hike up Tabletop Mountain, by Mount Baker, in my hopefully to soon again be my home state of Washington.

A year or so ago I looked in what I thought was every possible location for those Tabletop Mountain photos, to no avail. I have now scanned those photos for a blogging to follow this one.

Right when I found the photo you are looking at here, the nephew on the right in the picture, my Favorite Nephew Jason, called.

What a coincidence.

With that being Jason on the right, that would make that my Favorite Nephew Joey on the left.

On the back of the photo it says "Jason 6 1/2, Joey 4, 1986".

I last saw Joey in October of last year, in Grapevine. I last saw Jason in March of 2012, in Chandler, Arizona. I suspect some day soon I will be seeing Joey and Jason more frequently than I have in the first sixteen years of this century....

At The Sweetwater Rattlesnake Roundup Watch Out For Mama's Nursing Baby Rattlers

I saw this disturbing photo on Facebook yesterday.

A mama rattlesnake nursing her brood of ten baby rattlers.

The disturbing photo came with a warning....

Spring time is around the corner. Mama rattlers will be emerging with newly hatched young. They seek warm sunshine to lay in and nurse their young. Watch your dogs and children. They become aggressive and will chase you.

I am guessing it comes as a surprise to most, the idea that a rattlesnake comes equipped with ten nipples, from whence baby rattlers get fed.

I suspect the idea that a rattlesnake would have nipples would be disputed by a highly trained biologist. Or a well informed layman.

I have witnessed a rattlesnake getting milked, but not in the manner shown above. It was at the Sweetwater Rattlesnake Roundup where I saw rattlesnakes being milked for the venom which comes out of their fangs.

The very first video I ever made with my very first video camera captured, if I remember right, the spectacle of a rattlesnake being milked. You can view that video by going here.

The Sweetwater Rattlesnake Roundup starts rounding up the rattlesnakes next Thursday, March 10, with the rounding up and milking ending four days later on Sunday, March 13.

I have been to the Sweetwater Rattlesnake Roundup once. Once was more than enough.

If you are heading to West Texas, to Sweetwater, next weekend, you can find some Sweetwater info here.

Republicans Make Me Grumpy So I Went Wildflower Hunting

The temperature when the sun arrived at my location this morning was only 46. So I opted out of making it four days in a row in the pool.

As you can clearly see, due to that fountain burbling beside my left eye, today I took my grumpy self to Oakland Lake Park to walk around Fosdick Lake, along with a lot of other people enjoying the pleasantly warmed 4th day of March.

I only made it through the first hour of last night's Republican Embarrassment.

A couple days ago one of my progressive liberal democratic socialist type friends up in Washington asked me if the Republicans are seeming stupid to us now, because we are older, or have they always been this stupid?

The day before that I had asked my mom the same question, to which my mom said she'd just asked my dad the same thing.

Imagine Eisenhower, Nixon, Reagan or the first Bush up on that stage last night. Any of those four would have made Trump, Rubio and Cruz look so far out of the presidential league. Kasich at least acts grown-up.

Apparently a lot of people are like me and have an instinctual visceral bad reaction to Ted Cruz, sort of like how those of us who are snakeaphobes react to a snake. Which makes sense, what with Ted Cruz seeming so reptilian.

Anyway, the walk around Fosdick Lake put me in a better mood, particularly when I came upon what you see below, a patch of purple wildflowers in the early stage of blooming.

The hills in these parts should soon be alive with color. Last year the wildflowers were a bit of a dud, due to the drought. I suspect this year's wildflowers are going to be spectacular, due to that drought thing no longer being a vexation.

Progressive Portland Shocked By Toxic Moss With Fort Worth Not Shocked

This blogging falls in the category of something I read in a west coast online news source that I would likely not be reading in any of my local Dallas/Fort Worth online news sources about some issue in North Texas.

This particular screen cap is from this morning's Seattle Times.

Can you picture an article in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram with a headline of "Proud of its progressive image, Fort Worth shocked by toxic moss."

Til typing the headline I thought Portland was shocked by a toxic mess, not moss. After realizing it was moss, not mess, I went back and read the article.

Well, a sample paragraph from the article is also something I would not expect to read in the Star-Telegram about a Fort Worth issue....

In a city that prides itself on being an environmental example to the world — from its throngs of bike commuters to its anti-sprawl development rules — the moss study results roared, producing an upheaval of surprise, anger and fear. Residents shouted or wept in public meetings last month, raging at state officials, who released the results and then found themselves blamed for not knowing what the factories were putting up their smokestacks.

Toxic cancer causing heavy metals were found in moss samples, is what has Portlandians upset.

So, there are two items in that headline that are not something you'd likely see in the Star-Telegram. Even the hyperbolic Star-Telegram would not exaggerate to the extent of claiming Fort Worth is proud of its progressive image, or that the locals were shocked by a toxic mess or moss.

For instance, so far I have been shocked that there have been no reports of America's Biggest Boondoggle uncovering a toxic mess as it digs around in an old industrial area that The Boondoggle calls Panther Island. It  would not shock me if The Boondoggle's digging turned up a toxic mess.

I did not know Portland was proud of being an environmental example to the world. I don't know how a town provides an environmental example to the world. But I can see how it would be a real good thing if a town like Fort Worth became an environmental example to the world, with throngs of bike commuters and anti-sprawl development rules.

Tandy Hills Mascot Olive The Prairie Dog Is Still Missing

Someone named Anonymous made a comment on a blogging from earlier today, asking about Olive the Missing Prairie Dog....

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "March Swimming Plotting Moving North Before Texas HOT Summer arrives": 

Any updates on Olive The Prairie Dog? 

I told Anonymous that I would post the latest info I had regarding the Mascot of the Tandy Hills, Olive the Prairie Dog, being missing. Which is what I posted above. This was from the Friends of the Tandy Hills Natural Area March Prairie Notes.

The text above the photo of Olive says....

Olive the Prairie Dog, beloved mascot of Friends of Tandy Hills and all-around incredible being, has been missing since February 15. She has a chip and tags with phone numbers. If you see her please let us know. 

The text below the photo of Olive says....

Olive the Prairie Dog knows Tandy Hills better than anyone.