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Yearly Archives: 2012
Swans
Dallas Skyline at Dusk
The Dallas Skyline from the Soda Bar on the roof of the NYLO Hotel in Southside. It is a very cool place.
Click to a view higher resolution version on Flickr
Click to view a higher resolution version on Flickr
Click to view a higher resolution version on Flickr
Tower Building
Tower Building at Fair Park, Dallas, Texas
Artist who restored Fair Park’s Tower Building in ’98 is quite unhappy State Fair of Texas installed security cameras on historic landmark
I looked at my photos – the cameras are now gone.
What I learned this week, August 24, 2011
The 21 Absolute Worst Things in the World
— read this story… it’s amazing – and here’s a sequel, sort of –
7 Things I Learned From My Encounter With Russell Kirsch
A Big Week for Bicycling in Fort Worth
This Texas city is leaving its big brother Dallas in the dust when it comes to bike-friendliness. Just this week, the feds awarded Fort Worth with $1 million for a 30-station bike-share system, which is slated to be up and running next April.
And just yesterday, Fort Worth installed the Dallas region’s first green bike lane
The most amazing quotes and graphics. I would buy all of these if I had the cash – they are so… perfect.
Blog – You Are What You Underline
Nobody writes short stories like Alice Munro.
A new one… Amundsen, from The New Yorker.
Then there was silence, the air like ice. Brittle-looking birch trees with black marks on their white bark, and some small, untidy evergreens, rolled up like sleepy bears. The frozen lake not level but mounded along the shore, as if the waves had turned to ice in the act of falling. And the building, with its deliberate rows of windows and its glassed-in porches at either end. Everything austere and northerly, black-and-white under the high dome of clouds. So still, so immense an enchantment.
E-Mails to My Past Self: 5 Facts I Wish I Could Send Back In Time
The 3 Most Poisonous Movie Clichés of the 60s and 70s
Nurse Ratched, My Hero: 4 Female Movie Villains I Love
Dad Plays on a Soccer Team
GSTV
The other day I had to go out to work at seven in the morning on Saturday. I didn’t have to stay long and as I was leaving I stopped by the Gas Station in front of the Wal-Mart across the highway from where I work. As I stood there, holding the nozzle, I watched some quick news bits and commercials (Soft Drinks and Candy – stuff for sale in the Gas Station Convenience Store) on the flat screen television attached to the top of the gas pump.
I looked closer and found that there is a network and web site for the programming that services the screens over the pumps – Gas Station TV – GSTV.
I have lived long enough to see society “progress” from when we were lucky to pull in three black and white channels on rabbit ears wrapped with aluminum foil to boost the signal to now when there is a special network dedicated to delivering programming to people while they gas up their cars.
This is truly the best of all possible worlds.
A Snickers ad on GSTV. My little car doesn’t look very cool, but it gets good gas mileage.
I had no idea what an EBT Cash Benefit Card was. I had to google it. I guess that’s a good thing. I guess people that go in to work at seven AM on their days off don’t get EBT Cash Benefit Cards.
Blacksmith Lessons
When I went down to the Dallas Heritage Village and the Cedars Food Truck Park I took a little walk around the village. Back in the corner is a blacksmith’s shop. The master blacksmith was giving lessons to two students.
I stood and watched for a while. They had a coal fire going and would reach overhead and pump a huge pair of bellows to feed the fire and get the heat they needed. The students would pull their iron out of the fire and hammer it red-hot against an anvil.
This was really interesting. Maybe I’ll save some money up and buy myself a blacksmith lesson some time. It wouldn’t be very useful, but might be an interesting experience.
A blacksmith student hammering his work.
The teacher and the student.
Working at the forge.
Near the blacksmith’s shop -a woman running a spinning wheel.
I was reminded of the blacksmith shop when, a couple weeks later, I was riding my bike around Fair Park. I was looking at and trying to photograph the series of amazing art deco murals on the six porticos along the Esplanade (I’m working on a blog entry… patience).
One of the murals shows a bare-chested smith hammering a piece of iron against a huge anvil. He is holding his hammer over his head, while next to him a helmeted welder is working away. A little more dramatic and artistic than the little blacksmith’s shop – but it’s the same general idea.
Art Deco mural from Fair Park in Dallas
Men Between the Ponds
One of the comfortable, reliable, everyday things in my neighborhood is the man between the ponds in the park down at the end of my block. Most mornings (not all) there is a man standing on the concrete apron between the flood control ponds doing exercise – somewhat like Tai Chi Chuan, but a little more violent and martial-arts like. I see him when I drive down my alley to go to work. My son, Lee, has said he saw him years ago when he was running cross country before school.
I have paused on my commute and snapped a photo of him, written a quick blog entry, here and here. But I’ve never been able to get a good look because I’m always late for work and don’t have the time. The other day, however, I saw him for the first time on a weekend morning while I was leaving for a bicycle ride and had time to circle around into the parking lot and get a shot from the other side. By that time… another man had joined him.
I’d like to talk to him and find out exactly what he is doing – but I respect what he’s up to and don’t want to disturb his concentration.
Usually, I see the man standing still, but sometimes he’s moving quite a bit.
I drive across the little bridge beyond the man on the right every day on my commute to work.
Playdays
Any one that goes down to the Dallas Arboretum this summer will, understandably be wowed by the glass sculptures that Dale Chihuly has placed among the gardens. However, there are some other sculptures down there that are also worthy of looking at and blogging about.
One of my favorite little hidden spots is the Sunset Garden – with its particularly uncomfortable bench which looks down into the Pecan Parterre Garden and its century old pecan tree.
….
The view from the bench in the Sunset Garden, down past the fountain into the Pecan Parterre Garden, its Pecan Tree and the bronze Playdays.
Next to the tree is a wonderful bronze statue of a girl delighted to be stepping among a bunch of frogs. The sculpture is Playdays, by Harriet Whitney Frishmuth.
Playdays, by Harriet Whitney Frishmuth
The sculpture must be intended as a fountain… although it is dry now.
I really like this sculpture, for its grace and for its joy.
I did a little online research and found that the sculpture is modeled after the dancer Desha Delteil. The sculptor used Delteil for a number of her works – her favorite model.
There is a series of photographs of Desha Delteil as a model in the George Eastman collection of photographs – you can see why she would be popular for a sculptural model.
Desha Delteil, from the George Eastman Collection
Information from http://dic.academic.ru:
In 1916, Desha was hired to pose for sculptor Harriet Whitney Frishmuth and modeled for several of Frishmth’s female bronzes, which Frishmuth entitled Desha. She became Frishmuth’s favorite model, posing not only for a number of her best pieces but also for her studio art classes. She is known to have posed for The Vine and Roses of Yesterday, and is presumed to have posed for The Hunt based on similarities of form and figure. [1] Delteil modeled for other artists as well, being highly valued for her ability to hold difficult poses for extended periods.
The dancer seems to be best known for doing the “Bubble Dance” in a 1929 musical comedy/revue, “Glorifying the American Girl” featuring the Ziegfeld Follies. I was able to find a copy of the film online – here.
However, Desha Delteil’s “Bubble Dance” is nowhere to be found. There are little bits of a very graceful dancer carrying a large transparent sphere moving in and out of scene, but no extended “dance.” And yes, if you were wondering, I did sit down and watch the whole thing. I like old movies.
The thing is, “Glorifying the American Girl” is a pre-code production from 1929 and in the decades since it has been cut down to remove any nudity or other morally unacceptable scenes. It could be that the Bubble Dance was simply too racy for the future.
This appears to be a theatre advertisement for Desha Delteil doing her famous bubble dance
Again, research online seems to indicate that UCLA has restored a complete, uncensored version of the film but hasn’t released it to the public. Maybe the famous “Bubble Dance” is in there somewhere.
I know this is way too much information about a simple little bronze sculpture in an obscure corner of the Dallas Arboretum – but you know how easy it is to fall down that rabbit hole once you start clicking away on the Google Searches.
Bill Chance 