Yesterday's predicted heavy rain, with flash flooding, thunderstorms and tornadoes possible, did not materialize. By late afternoon all clouds had vacated, with the welcome return of a clear blue sky.
Not even some heavy rain managed to drip. Just a drizzle for a couple hours.
Yesterday's eventual totally clear blue sky has continued on this, the final day, of the first month of 2025.
Tomorrow, February of 2025 arrives, with the current weather prediction being day after day of temperatures over 80 degrees. With no precipitation. That should be enjoyable.
On this final day of January, it was to Sikes Lake I ventured for some fast-paced nature communing.
The photo documentation, above, is looking west from the bridge across the currently Green Lagoon of Sikes Lake.
For the next couple months, I intend to amp up my physical activity level, hoping the increased endorphins give me some relief, mood-wise, from the current madness America is going through...
The Skagit Valley entity known as Linda Lou called this morning. During the conversation's course I made mention of the fact that today is my mom's birthday.
How old would Shirley be today, asked Linda Lou?
I replied I don't know for sure, but I shall consult the family history book once I am off the phone.
And so, I did.
To learn my mom's precise birthdate of January 30, 1933.
I used my phone's calculator to subtract 1933 from 2025 to get a calculation of 92.
Difficult math problems are not one of my many fortes, but, I think 92 is the correct answer to my mom's age question.
In the photo documentation above we are at my mom and dad's 50th Wedding Anniversary Party. With mom and dad opening presents.
I was a surprise appearance at this party.
This was on August 11 of 2001. My birthday, five days after mom and dad's actual anniversary date of August 6.
This roadtrip back to Washington was the last time I drove from Texas back to Washington.
Solo.
It was a great roadtrip. One month before the infamous events of 9/11 changed our world.
On that 2001 roadtrip back to Washington I'd been in Texas long enough to have my senses altered. As in, I so clearly remember how weird it was crossing Snoqualmie Pass over the Cascade Mountains, on Interstate 90, with the air smelling so strongly of Evergreen fir trees. I never made note of this, to that noticeable a level, whilst living in the Evergreen State.
And then heading west across the I-90 floating bridge over Lake Washington. I had never so greatly enjoyed being slowed by heavy traffic. The air seemed so crystal clear, everything looked so shiny and bright, as if it had just been washed and polished.
Talking to Linda Lou this morning made me feel a bit homesick. Linda Lou made mention of the Skagit Valley Food Co-Op, in Mount Vernon. No such thing exists at my current location. I've seen no such thing anywhere I have been in Texas.
Linda Lou also made mention of a new thing in Mount Vernon. A Mexican market, located on Riverside Drive, selling crafts and other Mexican type goods. I would hope maybe tamales. There used to be a Mexican market, of sorts, in the Texas town I am currently in, Wichita Falls, but it got itself turned into one of those ubiquitous Dollar General type joints.
One would think there would be many Mexican markets in Texas, what with the source nation being so close, that and there are many of Mexican descent in Texas.
Anyway.
Happy Birthday, mom. I hope you and dad are having yourselves a mighty fine time today!
The New Zealand family had been on an RV trip up America's West Coast. I assume they began in Los Angeles, or San Diego. I only joined their visit once they were north of San Francisco, touring the Oregon Coast en route to Seattle.
Last night I watched a follow up video of the New Zealand Family's Seattle visit, titled We Had To Leave Seattle. That is a screen shot, above, from the video. The view of Mount Rainier seen whilst crossing Lake Washington on the I-90 floating bridge.
The New Zealand Family was quite taken with Seattle. The scenery, seeing mountains in any direction. All the bodies of water. Pike Place. The buildings. The stadiums. And more.
A Seattleite named Rebecca, a fan of their videos, was the New Zealand Family's tour guide.
I don't think Rebecca took the New Zealanders through any of the tunnels under Seattle, either via vehicle or light rail. Or to West Seattle. Or to REI corporate headquarters. Or many other of Seattle's unique features.
The New Zealand Family reacted to Seattle the way I always have. And yet they only hit some of the highlights.
Before moving to Texas I'd only been to a few of America's big cities. Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, Denver, Phoenix, Vancouver and Victoria.
Well, those last two are in North America, but the Canada part of North America, not the United States part of North America.
So, when I moved to Texas, with the first home location being in the little hamlet of Haslet, located in the north end of Fort Worth, Fort Worth was my introduction to a new type of big city.
The big city downtowns I had previously seen, were big. Fort Worth's downtown was not big. The New Zealanders remarked repeatedly regarding Seattle's buildings and design looking so new and modern. I had the opposite reaction to seeing Fort Worth for the first time.
I'd never before seen a city with large areas being basically run-down slums. It was sort of shocking.
I early on was not shy about verbalizing my reaction. Eventually I made a website documenting much of my reaction. I particularly reacted with confused amazement when I repeatedly saw Fort Worth's newspaper of record, the Star-Telegram, have articles about some ordinary thing, making the claim that this ordinary thing was making cities far and wide green with envy about this ordinary thing in Fort Worth.
Soon upon my arrival I discovered the charms of Dallas, thus learning not all Texas big cities are of the Fort Worth quality level.
In the video where the New Zealand Family is leaving Seattle, the New Zealand mother is lamenting regarding what will they have to show Rebecca when she makes her promised visit to New Zealand, saying New Zealand has nothing of the level they'd experienced in America and Seattle.
I had the same concern when first in Texas, knowing I was expecting some visitors from Seattle to arrive about four months after the Texas arrival. By the time they arrived I'd discovered the charms of Dallas, like Fair Park, the Farmers Market, the Galleria Mall, the West End, Deep Ellum, the DART train, and more.
I remember when those Seattle visitors arrived taking them to downtown Fort Worth, telling them I was gonna show them something incredible. Way back then there were huge parking lots along the Trinity River. From those parking lots one could hop on the world's shortest subway. This rickety old thing which took you into a tunnel that opened up in downtown Fort Worth, with access to a now long gone vertical mall, and the downtown Fort Worth Public Library.
The world's shortest subway is long gone. Fort Worth allowed Radio Shack to build a corporate headquarters Radio Shack could not afford, built above the subway and on part of those parking lots.
Eventually the Radio Shack headquarters was turned in a college. I forget the name. Tarrant County College, maybe.
It was things like the Radio Shack debacle that helped me develop such a low opinion of Fort Worth. This was well before the debacle known initially as the Trinity River Vision, which began near the start of this century, with decades later little to show for the supposedly vitally needed flood control and economic development scheme.
Another thing which quickly bugged me about Fort Worth was upon first arrival I'd see signs pointing one in the direction of Sundance Square. I'd asked where the square was, to no avail. Eventually I learned this was the name given to a multi-block downtown Fort Worth renewal scheme.
After decades of confusing the town's few tourists with those Sundance Square direction signs, a couple parking lots were turned into a town square type thing, named Sundance Square Plaza.
This stuff is so goofy I've had people tell me they think I must be making it up.
Nope, it's all true, and I've only mentioned a couple items of the Fort Worth goofiness in this blog post.
I recently learned that Heritage Park, a park at downtown Fort Worth's north end, across the street from the county courthouse, a park built to celebrate Fort Worth's storied heritage, a park with a unique, impressive design, is still a boarded-up eyesore. A sad state for at least a decade.
Fort Worth's Heritage Park got itself closed after multiple drownings in the Fort Worth Water Gardens, at the south end of downtown. The design flaw in the Water Gardens was obvious, a clear danger, which should never have happened. Heritage Park also had water features, shallow water features in which one could not accidentally drown.
And yet it was deemed necessary that Fort Worth's Heritage Park be closed, surrounded with a cyclone fence, with the park allowed to deteriorate into an eyesore.
Years ago, after I blogged about the Heritage Park scandal, a descendant of the well-regarded designer who designed Heritage Park, I think he was Japanese, contacted me, appalled, asking if it was really true, that this park had been allowed to be destroyed in this manner.
And all these later I recently learned from Elsie Hotpepper that Heritage Park remains a fittingly ironic homage to Fort Worth's actual heritage.
It was to Lake Wichita Park I ventured on this final Tuesday of the first month of 2025, for some salubrious nature communing.
As you can see, looking beyond the statue and above Mount Wichita, the usual blue sky is totally covered in gray today.
The temperature was in the 50s when I was in the outer world.
What with the fact that little rain has fallen of late, I don't understand why Lake Wichita appears to be at full pool. Did heavy rain fall west of Wichita Falls recently?
I have yet to see anyone launch a kayak from the kayak launching dock, now that it is floating. The dock sat on dry ground for a year, or so, waiting for the lake to rise and float it.
Rain and thunderstorms are on our weather menu for the next couple days.
It was to the Wichita Bluff Nature Area I ventured on this final Saturday of the first month of 2025, to commune with nature whilst enjoying some peaceful solitude.
As I was walking my phone made its incoming text message sound. I sat on the bench you see photo documented, located on a side spur off the main Wichita Bluff Nature Area section of the Circle Trail which circles Wichita Falls.
The text message was from one of my favorite Washingtonians, Miss Linda Lou. The text asked if I had seen this, which is what you see copied below. I texted back that I had not seen this, and that upon reading it, that it mirrored my foul mood....
"In my life, I have watched John Kennedy talk on television about missiles in Cuba. I saw Lyndon Johnson look Richard Russell squarely in the eye and say, "And we shall overcome." I saw Richard Nixon resign and Gerald Ford tell the Congress that our long national nightmare was over. I saw Jimmy Carter talk about malaise and Ronald Reagan talk about a shining city on a hill. I saw George H.W. Bush deliver the eulogy for the Soviet bloc, and Bill Clinton comfort the survivors of Timothy McVeigh's madness in Oklahoma City. I saw George W. Bush struggle to make sense of it all on September 11, 2001, and I saw Barack Obama sing 'Amazing Grace' in the wounded sanctuary of Mother Emanuel Church in Charleston, South Carolina.
"These were the presidents of my lifetime. These were not perfect men. They were not perfect presidents, God knows. Not one of them was that. But they approached the job, and they took to the podium, with all the gravitas they could muster as appropriate to the job. They tried, at least, to reach for something in the presidency that was beyond their grasp as ordinary human beings. They were not all ennobled by the attempt, but they tried nonetheless.
"And comes now this hopeless, vicious buffoon, and the audience of equally hopeless and vicious buffoons who laughed and cheered when he made sport of a woman whose lasting memory of the trauma she suffered is the laughter of the perpetrators. Now he comes, a man swathed in scandal, with no interest beyond what he can put in his pocket and what he can put over on a universe of suckers, and he does something like this while occupying an office that we gave him, and while endowed with a public trust that he dishonors every day he wakes up in the White House.
"The scion of a multigenerational criminal enterprise, the parameters of which we are only now beginning to comprehend. A vessel for all the worst elements of the American condition. And a cheap, soulless bully besides. We never have had such a cheap counterfeit of a president* as currently occupies the office. We never have had a president* so completely deserving of scorn and yet so small in the office that it almost seems a waste of time and energy to summon up the requisite contempt.
"Watch how a republic dies in the empty eyes of an empty man who feels nothing but his own imaginary greatness, and who cannot find in himself the decency simply to shut up even when it is in his best interest to do so. Presidents don't have to be heroes to be good presidents. They just have to realize that their humanity is our common humanity, and that their political commonwealth is our political commonwealth, too.
Watch him behind the seal of the President of the United States. Isn't he a funny man? Isn't what happened to that lady hilarious? Watch the assembled morons cheer. This is the only story now."
With one week left in this first month of 2025, it was to Lucy Park I again ventured for some Friday nature communing with the temperature a relatively balmy 23 degrees above freezing.
I hiked the leaf-free Lucy Park backwoods jungle today. A few strong wind gusts had a brief chilling effect, but, other than that, the outdoors was perfectly pleasant.
Looking at the current long range forecast, if the forecast is forecasting accurately, it looks like we may escape Winter without a deep freeze, or an Ice Storm. There are a few days with rain and thunderstorms predicted. But, nothing slippery.
A zoomed view from my kitchen window, about an hour after the sun arrived to do its daily illumination and heating duty, on the third Tuesday of the new year of 2025.
So far the sun isn't doing well with its heating duty today. Currently we are freezing way under 32 degrees this morning, at 15 degrees.
The temperature did not get above freezing yesterday. The same is predicted for today.
The heat pump seems to be working hard to warm up my interior space.
I do not recollect being tired of Winter in years previous, so soon after the arrival of Winter, as I am currently.
As you can see via the zoomed view, a little snow dropped to Earth overnight.
I do not think the outer world at my location has been rendered slippery due to that slight amount of snow. I think it will be the temperature which will keep me from any lengthy outdoor walking today...
The predicted cold front blew in last night, with gusts wreaking havoc, once again, with my patio furniture.
Yesterday's balmy 70 degree plus day had me in t-shirt and shorts. Today's Saturday venture to Lucy Park, with a strong wind blowing and the temperature a few degrees above freezing, had me in fully insulated winter attire.
Today I fast walked on the Circle Trail, from Lucy Park to the currently dry falls of Wichita Falls. That is what you are seeing in the photo documentation, from a vantage point halfway to the top of the dry falls, looking across the Wichita River at the demolished remains of a long-abandoned hotel, of which only that pile of gray rubble remains.
Apparently for some reason Wichita Falls allowed a large hotel to be built on a known flood plain, as in, an area known to be prone to flooding. This hotel was built late in the previous century. At some point in time, in the current century, a disastrous flood damaged the hotel beyond being able to be repaired.
After a few years of haggling over ownership and who is responsible for the hotel, the City of Wichita Falls hired a demolition company to take down and remove the derelict hotel. The area will now be turned into parkland. Of what sort? I have not heard.
As for the dry falls of Wichita Falls. That I find perplexing. Wichita Falls is so named after a waterfall which was located slightly north of downtown Wichita Falls. This was not much of a waterfall, only falling a couple feet. A flood, way back in the late 1800s, turned the falls into what looks now like minor river rapids.
At some point in time, in the previous century, the Wichita Falls townsfolk tired of tourists asking where the Wichita Falls waterfall was located.
And so, an artificial Wichita Falls waterfall was created. This artificial waterfall flows from a cemetery, which one sees when hiking the trail to the top of the falls. Periodically the artificial Wichita Falls waterfall is turned off, turning it into the Wichita Falls Dry Falls.
One would think the design of this solution to the longstanding problem of not having a waterfall in Wichita Falls would have been such that the waterfall was always in waterfall mode, never in Dry Falls mode.
I came upon multiple fellow trail walkers today on the way, to and from Wichita Falls Dry Falls. I do not know if any of them were visiting tourists following the signage pointing them to the Wichita Falls waterfall, currently in Dry Falls mode...
Today's temperature in Wichita Falls, Texas, is currently forecast to reach a high of 73 degrees. Living in my old home zone of Western Washington, 73 degrees was considered to be a warm Summer day, borderline HOT.
I never experienced extreme temperature changes, happening fast, til I moved to Texas.
I arrived in the Lone Star State late in the previous century, in the month of December. I arrived at my new abode in a drenching downpour, with the temperature seeming balmy, in the upper 70s.
About a week after my Texas arrival I ventured to the Fort Worth Stockyards, around noon, for lunch at the now long gone Riscky Rita's. My first experience with an all you can eat Mexican buffet. I was wearing shorts and a t-shirt on that visit to the Stockyards, because the temperature seemed HOT to me.
At that point in time I was not yet paying attention to the Texas weather forecast, so, I did not know that a cold front was predicted to blow in, that day. The big blow began whilst I was pigging out at Riscky Rita's.
Upon exiting Riscky Rita's I was shocked to be struck by a strong wind, with the air chilled to what felt below freezing.
I made a run for my vehicle and high tailed it back to my abode in Haslet, a little burg at the far north end of Fort Worth.
That night an Ice Storm struck. My first time experiencing this type weather phenomenon. By morning the outer world was coated with a thick covering of ice, making any form of mobility, walking, biking, driving, difficult.
We did not know what to do, water system-wise, with the temperature nearing zero. We did not know how to shut off the water to the barn, or the pool, figuring such should be done to prevent freezing pipes. Eventually, with the help of the next door neighbor, we figured it out.
No ice is predicted to arrive with the incoming cold front. The rain predicted for this morning has not materialized.
Winter is only a couple weeks old and I am already ready for it to end and segue into Spring...
Yesterday a Facebook notification showed up notifying me that something had changed...
A Page you follow, Elect Mary Kelleher, changed its name to Mary Kelleher for FW City Council 5
This was new news to me. I am assuming Mary Kelleher's current term on the Tarrant Regional Water District Board is coming to an end, and thus, now, Mary Kelleher is running to become a Fort Worth city councilwoman.
Ironically, well, maybe it is not ironic, more coincidental, but the same day I learned Mary is likely going to become a councilwoman, a Microsoft OneDrive Memory showed up which also reminded me of Mary Kelleher.
That is me you see above, on my way to D/FW International Airport, picking up an ostrich egg from Mary Kelleher's mailbox, on the way.
Switching from ostrich eggs back to the previous subject.
If my memory is serving me correctly, I first learned of Mary Kelleher, decades ago, via an article in Fort Worth Weekly, about Mary's issues regarding the Trinity River regularly flooding in her area of Fort Worth.
Prior to that, the entity who goes by the name Layla Caraway, who some know as Elsie Hotpepper, had been in the news---local, state and national, due to her home in Haltom City teetering precariously above a flooding creek.
Fort Worth's Congresswoman, Kay Granger, visited the site of Elsie Hotpepper's teetering home, causing Elsie to have some hope that maybe that local politician might be of some help. A hope history would prove to be erroneous.
This was all happening early on during the first decade of what has become an embarrassing Boondoggle, which has been Boondoggling along now for three decades, with little to show for what was purported to be a vitally needed flood control and economic development scheme.
The fact that no attention was being paid to actual vitally needed flood control, both in the flooding creeks in Haltom City, and the Trinity River in East Fort Worth, motivated both Elsie Hotpepper and Mary Kelleher to become what are known as political activists.
After reading about Mary's flood woes in that FW Weekly article, Elsie Hotpepper met with Mary, and convinced her to run for the TRWD Board.
I remember I was on a bike ride on the Trinity Trail when I got a call from Elsie Hotpepper, telling me about the meeting with Mary, and the hope Mary would run and win.
Mary did so, she ran and won. By a landslide.
I recollect my first time meeting Mary was when I went to vote at the Handley/Ederville polling location, where Mary was outside the polling location, greeting voters. I introduced myself.
It is sort of hard to believe this was such a long time ago, and, all these years later, the Trinity River Central City Uptown Panther Island District Vision has yet to come to any sort of useful visible fruition. That and nothing much has been done to mitigate flooding in Tarrant County areas actually prone to deadly, serious flooding.
If I remember correctly, and sometimes I do, the last time I saw Mary and Elsie, in person*, was back in early 2016. Mary took Elsie and me out to lunch at an Outback Steakhouse, I think that was the location.
And then after lunch we drove to Mary's farm where I met a large collection of animals, including an ostrich, one of whose eggs ended up getting picked up by me out of Mary's mailbox, a few days later.
Methinks it will greatly benefit Fort Worth having Mary Kelleher on the city council. And then, eventually, Fort Worth Mayor. Or Kay Granger's position. As a congresswoman...
*I was erroneous regarding Outback Steakhouse being the last time I have seen Elsie Hotpepper. I forgot about a year before COVID struck, I pedaled my bike to Sikes Lake to meet up with Elsie at a Sikes Lake gazebo.
