“A gentleman is someone who can play the accordion, but doesn’t.”
― Tom Waits
Ginny Mac, with Brave Combo, Deep Ellum Arts Festival, Dallas, Texas, in the middle of The Beer Barrel Polka
Brave Combo
Don’t Shoot Me, I’m Only the Accordion Player
Yearly Archives: 2013
Fracture Zone
This weekend is the Deep Ellum Arts Festival – which I refer to as the Deep Ellum Festival of Arts, Music, Food, and Bad Tattoos. Our plans are to go on Sunday afternoon, when there will be an impressive lineup of music that includes two of my favorite local bands: Home by Hovercraft, and Brave Combo.
Every year though, I like to buy a little monster head in a box, a sculpture by David Pound. He makes little heads out of Polymer Clay and found objects, and mounts them in wooden boxes. I love his work. By Sunday, I was afraid his selection would be thinned out too much, so I decided to ride down on the DART train after work and pick one up Friday evening, when the festival first opened.
I made it down there and walked back and forth along the long line of booths about three times before I saw his booth. For some reason, every year I have trouble finding it, although it’s pretty much in the same place.
David Pound’s booth of little monster heads in wooden boxes at the Deep Ellum Arts Festival always draws a crowd.
At any rate, his work was as great as ever. As I looked over the selection, people kept coming in and exclaiming how cool the little monsters were and how imaginative everything was. It was very hard for me to make up my mind -there was the guy with the mouse in his mouth, the alien with cat shoulder blades for ears, or the guy with mole hands sticking out the top of his head.
While I was looking a young girl with bright purple hair that was walking around with her parents bought a yellow head. I told her, “That’s the one I was going to get.”
“Really?”
“No, I’m just teasing.”
Actually, hers was the last one I would have bought. It looked cool, but didn’t have a real face. I decided to buy one that had a wry expression, and picked out one called Fracture Zone.
I hope you like him.
Fracture Zone
The heads I bought in previous years:
Persuation
Burrow
Earrings I had David Pound make for Candy for Mother’s Day last year.
Skull
Deep Ellum, Dallas, Texas
What I learned this week, April 5, 2013
I strongly support Amir Omar for the upcoming Mayoral election in Richardson.
Here is a link to a debate between the two candidates.
The part that perked my ears up occurs at the 21:00 mark.
Amir Omar: “What I will tell you though, and a place where I think (…) we ought to, do things not only to differentiate our city and make it more marketable to others, but also in its own little way to send a message that there are multiple means of transportation and that is to absolutely find ways to make our city more walkable and, although we’ve made some strides on things like bike lanes there are opportunities sitting there, right now, that are incredibly low-cost opportunites, yet there are ways for us to increase the number of bike lanes we have around Richardson substantially. And so those are the kinds of things, the low hanging fruit if you were, that I think we could do that would be able to begin to be making an impact and at least send a message.
Moderator: Some people on the blog say that those bike lanes were put in on Canyon Creek so that people have a lower, slower traffic route through the neighborheed.
Laura Maczka: That’s a fact. That’s the truth.
Amir Omar: It’s a dual purpose and probably the primary purpose was to slow traffic down, but the fact of the matter is…
Moderator (interrupting): Do people use those bike lanes?
Ami Omar: Absolutely. I hear from them all the time.
Moderator: Why have I never seen anybody, not one, never, in a bike lane?
Amir Omar: (after rebutting the statement by the moderator and talking about his Fitness Challenge) …and would come to me and say, “Thank Goodness for the bike lanes you are putting in.” So I know that, (…) whatever you may say when you have a whole lot of cycling lanes, you will see is a lot more people cycling because the infrastructure has to be there.
The part that raises my hackles is the moderator and his, “I never see anyone in the bikes lanes,” rant. First, he mentions Canyon Creek, which is the nice, old money part of Richardson, where everybody drives big, expensive SUVs (and the center of Laura Mackza’s support). Maybe nobody rides bicycles there, but in my neighborhood, the bike lanes get used. A lot. And not only by me.
And I even cross over and ride the bike lanes in Canyon Creek every now and then.
This week is the Deep Ellum Arts Festival. It’s my favorite one – it has become very popular but still maintains a bit of an edge to it.
I can’t really afford it, but I’m going to pick out one of David Pound’s little monster-head-in-a-box sculptures. I bought one last year and the year before.
Go down there and check him out.
Persuation
Burrow
Customers at the Deep Ellum Art Festival looking over David Pound’s inventory of little monster heads in boxes.
Too much going on this weekend – I’m spending too much money. Deep Ellum Arts Festival (see above) and The Big Texas Beerfest in Fair Park.
13 Horribly Depressing Real Estate Ads
The Wheelmate Laptop Steering Wheel Desk
I actually could use this – but the reason I linked to it is the comments and product reviews…. Pretty funny.
For Literary Penguins: 4 Great Writing Tools [Linux]
Soak in the sun at the 10 best patios in Dallas
I hope this interweb thing catches on. There is a lot of information.
Dallas Skyline at Night
You can’t take a photograph of a city at night. The eyes see things the lens never dreams about.
Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things that escape those who dream only at night.
—-Edgar Allan Poe, Eleonora
(click for a larger version on Flickr)
“I love the silent hour of night, for blissful dreams may then arise, revealing to my charmed sight what may not bless my waking eyes.”
― Anne Brontë, Best Poems of the Brontë Sisters
I woke last night to the sound of thunder
How far off I sat and wondered
Started humming a song from 1962
Ain’t it funny how the night moves
When you just don’t seem to have as much to lose
Strange how the night moves
With autumn closing in
—-Bob Seger, Night Moves
Deep Ellum Graffiti
Deep Ellum, Dallas, Texas
Well, there’s a lion… and a tree, and desert plants, and a stylized rose and a burning dove with a key on a rope and an arm and an eye and…. plenty to go around.
Yeah, right.
The Sky
The sky above Klyde Warren Park, Dallas, Texas
(click for a larger version on Flickr)
When I was a little kid, I had a paint-by-number kit… you know, one of those bilious hunks of cheap canvas board with numbered areas printed in blue ink that corresponded with little plastic tubs of oil paint. Now, I imagine they come with some sort of water-based acrylic – safer and easier for children – but this one had real slow-drying artists’ oil paint.
I might have been six years old… maybe seven. Fifty years ago.
I sat at the kitchen table, wielding the cheap brush that came with the kit, carefully cleaning it after each color and moving across the canvas matching the numbers with the proper paint. It amazed me… that I could create an actual work of art (unfortunately, my skills have advanced little since).
It didn’t seem too hard to me to make the leap beyond the preprinted canvas – surely it wouldn’t be that hard to do yourself. I was a little kid, what did I know? Nothing about composition, blending… and nothing about mixing colors.
What I especially remember is the sky above the sailboat. The scene had the boat fighting against a headwind on a dramatic tumbling, mostly overcast day – with the heavens filled with irregular patches of brown, beige, gray, and a little blue peeking through here and there. It was beautiful to me.
Now, whenever I have a sky like that… like this, my subconscious conjures up the by-the-mumbers painting of the sailboat from the distant cobwebby recesses of the past. Before I realize what I am thinking about, weather like this, fills my nose with the unmistakable odor of linseed oil and turpentine. Only then do I pause, look up, and remember the sailboat.
Still More Blooms
“A garden to walk in and immensity to dream in–what more could he ask? A few flowers at his feet and above him the stars.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
Dallas Blooms, Dallas Arboretum
“A flower blossoms for its own joy.”
― Oscar Wilde
“There has fallen a splendid tear
From the passion-flower at the gate.
She is coming, my dove, my dear;
She is coming, my life, my fate.
The red rose cries, “She is near, she is near;”
And the white rose weeps, “She is late;”
The larkspur listens, “I hear, I hear;”
And the lily whispers, “I wait.”She is coming, my own, my sweet;
Were it ever so airy a tread,
My heart would hear her and beat,
Were it earth in an earthy bed;
My dust would hear her and beat,
Had I lain for a century dead,
Would start and tremble under her feet,
And blossom in purple and red.”
― Alfred Tennyson
Blooms
“You’re frustrated because you keep waiting for the blooming of flowers of which you have yet to sow the seeds.”
― Steve Maraboli
Dallas Blooms, Dallas Arboretum
It was odd walking around the Arboretum – I kept expecting to see the Chihuly Glass and it isn’t there any more. The gorgeous colors of Dallas Blooms made up for the absence of the sculptures.
My poor picture taking talents don’t do justice. Peggy does a better job than I do.
“I stopped in front of a florist’s window. Behind me, the screeching and throbbing boulevard vanished. Gone, too, were the voices of newspaper vendors selling their daily poisoned flowers. Facing me, behind the glass curtain, a fairyland. Shining, plump carnations, with the pink voluptuousness of women about to reach maturity, poised for the first step of a sprightly dance; shamelessly lascivious gladioli; virginal branches of white lilac; roses lost in pure meditation, undecided between the metaphysical white and the unreal yellow of a sky after the rain.”
― Emil Dorian, Quality of Witness: A Romanian Diary, 1937-1944
Racing the Wind
White Rock Lake, Dallas, Texas
“hark, now hear the sailors cry,
smell the sea, and feel the sky
let your soul & spirit fly, into the mystic…”
― Van Morrison
“Where lies the final harbor, whence we unmoor no more? In what rapt ether sails the world, of which the weariest will never weary? Where is the foundling’s father hidden? Our souls are like those orphans whose unwedded mothers die in bearing them: the secret of our paternity lies in their grave, and we must there to learn it.”
― Herman Melville, Moby Dick
Bill Chance 