GSTV

Posted on August 23, 2012 by Bill Chance

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.

Men Between the Ponds

Posted on August 21, 2012 by Bill Chance

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.

Routh Cemetery

Posted on August 17, 2012 by Bill Chance

North of where I live is a patch of thick creek-bottom woods known as the Spring Creek Nature Area. I’ve been going there for years – to walk around or ride my bike on the complex of paved trails that loop through the forest. It’s a nice spot… a place to forget that you are in the middle of a giant city.

The looping trails through the Spring Creek Natural Area converge on a little footbridge over the creek. There is a nice bench there – a good place to rest and get away from the city for a few minutes.

I had read rumors that there were a couple of old cemeteries within this woodland stretch. A little bit of web searching and careful observation of the Googlemap aerial view of the area and I was pretty sure I had spotted the locations. I am not obsessed – but I find old cemeteries to be interesting. They are the only remaining mark that a lot of the early settlers left on the land here.

I had stopped off at one in the middle of a Plano neighborhood a month or so ago and now I thought I’d take a look at the one in Spring Creek.

So the other day, once my bike ride had been cut short by an unexpected flat, I left my car at Renner and 75 and walked down to where I figured the graveyards might be. It was a hot day and walking was not easy, even though I had brought a bottle of cold water. The cemeteries are not in the Nature Area exactly, but on private property, but judging by the trails and dirt roads penetrating the scrub and trees, I was not the first to venture back there.

After a short hike I came across a small family plot, with a rusting iron inner fence and a new black wrought iron palisade around that. This was the burial place for the scion of the Routh family, Jacob Routh, his wife, Lodemia, and two unmarried daughters. The plot is overgrown with vegetation and I didn’t feel like climbing the fence, so I never was able to see the daughter’s tombstone. The Routh name is still heard all over the Metroplex, especially now that Routh street pierces right through the heart of the uptown entertainment district.

It’s a very peaceful spot, perched right above a steep, deep, dropoff of native limestone down to the creek below. I can picture it over a hundred years ago, part of a ranch made of rolling hills rising up from the creek bed. It’s where a pioneer would choose to spend the rest of eternity. Somehow, I don’t think they would mind the fact that the plot is being overgrown, slowly returning to the way it used to be.

Around to the side of the tombstones of the four family members are two small markers. I could barely see these through the underbrush – couldn’t make out the dates. One had three names, Sharon, Rinnet, and Theda. The other simply said “Fluffie.” These are obviously pet graves… horses and a dog, probably. In those times, a family’s animals would have been very important, worthy of a carved stone in the main cemetery plot.

Jacob Routh’s tombstone in the family plot deep in the woods at the Spring Creek Nature Area in Richardson, Texas.

Pet grave marker.

I couldn’t get a good shot without climbing the fence… but it says “Fluffie.”

I left the small cemetery and followed an old road down through a little creek and up a hill, almost emerging onto a new road that winds through the glass and granite high-rise office buildings of the Richardson Telecom Corridor. Shielded from civilization by a thick grove of trees is a larger cemetery, containing about a hundred or so graves. It was fenced – I did not enter even though there were some gaping holes in the wire. Near the locked gate was a couple of crumbling benches and an official historical marker.

It reads:

Marker Number: 14532

Marker Text:

Brothers Jacob, George Washington, Joseph and Thomas Jefferson Routh, and their sister Elizabeth Routh Thomas, were cousins of the Vance Family which held the original land grant that encompassed this site. Jacob Routh (1818-1879), a Baptist minister, acquired the 440-acre J. V. Vance survey in 1851, and brought his mother and other relatives from Tennessee to Texas. The Routh family were instrumental in the establishment of the community surrounding their land. Routh family members helped to organize a school, church, and store in addition to the family cemetery.

Early Collin County settlers Nancy De Lozier Beverly (1806-1851)and seven year old William Klepper, along with an unknown child whose parents were camping nearby at the time of his death, were already buried on this site when Jacob Routh set aside one acre as a family burial ground. Jacob’s mother, Elizabeth Mashman Routh (1788-1852), died soon after her arrival in Texas and was the first family member to be interred here.

Jacob Routh, his wife Lodemia Ann Campbell, and two unmarried daughters, Rose and Clara Routh, are buried several hundred yards north of the cemetery in a private plot. Of the approximately two hundred graves here, fewer than one hundred are marked. The last burial to occur here was that of Serefta Ellen Campbell Miller, who was born in 1836 and dies in 1922. The Routh cemetery continues to serve as a record of the pioneers of north Texas. (1998)

I walked around the fence and snapped a couple shots through the wire. Like the smaller plot this one was overgrown, with large mature trees grown up between the crumbling markers.

The sun was burning down and I had seen what I wanted and returned the way I came, taking time to explore a couple side trails that meandered through the woods down to the creek in a couple different spots. I hope that land doesn’t get developed any time soon, I’d like to see the the Spring Creek Nature Area expand… I’d like to see those cemeteries both protected and also, paradoxically, continue to return to the wild state they started from.

Dallas Blonde

Posted on August 13, 2012 by Bill Chance

As I work on what my future is going to be like, I had, for all practical purposes, quit drinking. I simply don’t have the time or the calories to spare. The one exception is that if there is an interesting something… I’d give it a go.

Lately, around town, I had been stumbling into events that served beer from the Deep Ellum Brewing Company. If you live in Dallas, you know what Deep Ellum is. If you don’t – it’s a historic district, just east of downtown, that has seen a roller coaster of ups and downs over the last hundred years or so and is, arguably, the heart of the city – from the days of Leadbelly and Blind Lemon Jefferson, to the heyday of the 80’s, and beyond.

Deep Ellum has been struggling for a few years now, but it still has industrial space and is a magnet for the young, hip… and the notso young and hip – anyone looking for something different.

So it is where you would expect a quality craft brewery to sprout up.

Their manifesto:

Beerfesto

To you, the beer drinker, Deep Ellum Brewing Company pleges:
To never waste your time with gimmicks
To let our beer do the talking
To never live or work in a dry county
To remember our roots
To never serve a single glass of bad beer

And, from their website – more of their philosophy:

The Founders of Deep Ellum Brewing Company Have Had Enough
Enough of watching beer’s good name being tarnished.
Enough of watching big, corporate breweries pumping out the same old dull, watered-down stuff, Slapping a different label on it and telling you that you have choices.
ENOUGH OF BAD BEER
To show their dissatisfaction with the status quo, the four founders of Deep Ellum Brewing Company have set up shop in Dallas’ most nefarious neighborhood, and between their big personalities and bigger beers, they plan to show Big D what it’s been missing.

I had some of their Farmhouse Wit at The Foundry and some Stout at the Cedars Food Truck Park (served up by the folks from Lee Harvey’s). It was very, very good. I’m not an expert on the brewing world or a properly educated beer snob, but I know good things when I swallow them… and this was good.

Trying to find something to do on the weekend, and looking at the Brewery’s Web Site, I found that they offered tours. At noon Saturday (and Thursday’s at six) you can pay ten dollars, get a glass, samples, and a tour. That sounded like a plan.

I had to go to work really early on Saturday, but that meant I finished early and had time to get in a bike ride (and a flat tire) and still make it down to Deep Ellum by noon. I changed clothes in my car and was hot, hungry, and thirsty – but hot and thirsty is the best and only way to tour a brewery.

It was a blast. They have a little beer garden down there with live music (the guy was good and I have no idea who he was) [PS – I think the guy was Jes Spires) and a great crowd. A food truck showed up (I needed to get some food in me) and the taps were going strong. I am definitely planning on going back. Thursday evening sounds like a plan.

And the beer was so, so good. I tried their newest brew – Dallas Blonde, then moved on to the Deep Ellum IPA and finished with the Double Brown Stout. I can honestly say every Deep Ellum Brewery beer I’ve tried I’ve liked better than the one before. For example, I’m not that big of an IPA fan – but that stuff blew me away. It’s pretty rare that I think “Wow” to myself when I first sip a new brew – but I did with each of those.

So now I have to modify what I say. Instead of “I don’t drink anymore” I have to say, “I don’t always drink beer – but when I do, it has to be from the Deep Ellum Brewing Company.”

Music in the Deep Ellum Brewing Company Beer Garden

There was a big crowd for the brewery tour.

Zach talks about hops.

A hearty cheer – for good beer.

The taps were going.

Where the magic happens.

Some of the limited production beer is aged in wine casks.

Finished Product

What I learned this week, August 10, 2012

Posted on August 10, 2012 by Bill Chance

The extended trailer for Cloud Atlas is out:

I am so excited and stoked for this film… I started to write a blog entry about it, but when I did a search, I realized I Already Did – almost a year ago. Go read my old entry. Then go find a copy of the book, Cloud Atlas and read it. Before October, when the film of this unfilmable book comes out.

134 Terrifying Closeups of Bugs

I wish I had a decent Macro lens.

Beutiful bikes and a cool video.

Hey, an album of bicycle music – Bicycle

Nora and One Left

Beautiful Bikes and a cool video – The Porteur bicycle

Reform Is Not Enough: The Federal Government Needs a Complete Makeover

American government is a deviant subculture

This behavior by high-ranking public servants should be considered scandalous. People in Washington consider it business as usual, and don’t even raise an eyebrow.

Right and wrong no longer matter in this deviant subculture. Sealed off from personal responsibility by accumulated bureaucracy and thick walls of special interest money, our government is covered by a putrid mold of cynical gamesmanship and everyday hypocrisy. People scurry around its baseboards seeking short-term advantage, but big change is so inconceivable as to be laughable.

Even reformers have given up. What is politically feasible, they ask? The answer is clear: nothing.

Change will nonetheless happen, political scientists tell us. How? Through a crisis….The main challenge then will be not merely to reform Medicare and other unsustainable programs. The challenge will be to change the culture of government.

Literature’s greatest serial killers
I have read all but one book on this list. My favorite – Anton Chigurh, of course.

I’m sort of suprised Dexter (or Voldemort) isn’t on here – but I’m not sure that a popular series is considered “Literature.” I dunno, it’s not Crime and Punishment (or Macbeth, or even Lolita), but that still feels a little snobbish to me.

Macbeth
Raskolnikov
Humbert Humbert
Tom Ripley
Patrick Bateman
Anton Chigurh
Bruce Robertson
Annie Wilkes
Frank Cauldhame
Hannibal Lecter

On the way to Toad Corners

Posted on August 8, 2012 by Bill Chance

On the way to Toad Corners

I found a picnic table in the large open Pecan Grove area of the Arboretum to sit and read for a bit. A family went by, on the way through the Crape Myrtle Allee to the popular water feature called Toad Corners.

Kids love to play in the water at Toad Corners

Kids love to play in the fountain. Some folks like to make it a destination on hot summer days – sort of an artistic water park.

This means you!

The signage next to Toad Corners sure doesn’t make it look appetising, though.

The family came back from the fountain after about an hour and ate a picnic lunch at a table near mine. They all looked healthy enough.

Old School

Posted on August 7, 2012 by Bill Chance

Renner School House, Dallas Heritage Village

I was wandering around, looking into the historic buildings that have been moved from all over North Texas into Old City Park, now Dallas Heritage Village. Some kid walked into the Renner School House at the same time I did.

“Can you imagine going to school in a room like this?” I asked.

“I’ve been here before, I think. I think it was a field trip,” he answered.

“Look at how each chair holds the desk for the person behind them. Oh, do you know what the little holes are for?”

“For the inks!” he said.

“It’s a shame we can’t go upstairs or play in the playground,” the kid said. “Do you know what all these cans hanging on the wall are for?”

I said, “Those are what the kids brought their lunch to school in. See, they are little metal buckets. They called them lunch pails.”

I kept running into the kid as I walked around the place and he would leave his family, walk up to me and point out something. In the historic barnyard he was looking around, trying to find the rooster that was crowing.

“I think it’s a recording,” I said. “They are playing that sound over and over.”

“It sure sounds real,” he said.

The historic Renner School House, in Dallas Heritage Village, with the skyscrapers of downtown rearing up in the background.

Lunch pails hung on the wall pegs at the Renner School House.

Daily Reader.

Renner School House desks.

What I learned this week, August 3, 2012

Posted on August 3, 2012 by Bill Chance

I have been looking for this for a long time… and now, here it is, on Youtube. Alfred Hitchcock’s version of the Roald Dahl short story Man From the South with Steve McQueen and Peter Lorre.

It’s almost a half-hour long… but find a time when you can sit down and watch the thing.

I think this story is the best example of how to manipulate tension, excitement, and dread in a tight little story I have ever seen. This version is a bit droll for my taste – the original text is more horrific. It’s been done and riffed on many times (check out Quentin Tarantino’s version as the fourth and last story in the otherwise-horrible film, Four Rooms).

I try and study it.

This is what I want to write.

“The main rule of writing is that if you do it with enough assurance and confidence, you’re allowed to do whatever you like. (That may be a rule for life as well as for writing. But it’s definitely true for writing.) So write your story as it needs to be written. Write it honestly, and tell it as best you can. I’m not sure that there are any other rules. Not ones that matter.”

— Neil Gaiman

The 12 Best Spies in Film

An interesting list.

Of course….

Shaken, not stirred.

There is no controversy about who is number 1.

From Casino Royale (1953) Chapter 7

“A dry martini,” he said. “One. In a deep champagne goblet.”

“Oui, monsieur.”

“Just a moment. Three measures of Gordon’s, one of vodka, half a measure of Kina Lillet. Shake it very well until it’s ice-cold, then add a large thin slice of lemon-peel. Got it?”

The Vesper

Why flavorful Southern hot sauces don’t pack much heat

I’m sorry, but this is about the coolest thing I’ve ever seen. As a child, I lived in a few locations that had… well, let’s say they had a lot of flies – a lot. Swatting flies became a cheap amusement for when there was precious else to do. I would have given anything for this thing.

Now, I can’t believe I didn’t think of it myself.

Salt blasting shotgun eradicates insects with extreme prejudice

The Bug-A-Salt

I had to watch this… I didn’t think it could be done. Apparently, it can. It has to be real… it’s from the Internet.

MATCHBOOK. bikinis meet their match

Clever matches between bathing suits and books. Each match discovered by hand. We should have been doing this all along, am I right?

http://vimeo.com/45815314

Hidden Places

Posted on July 30, 2012 by Bill Chance

Last Thursday I took a PTO day off of work, a mental health day. I decided to go to the Dallas Arboretum in the morning and hang out for a while. We have a membership there, so I don’t have to pay for parking or admission, which is nice. Especially nice because I can go at my leisure and simply relax and walk around, not feel any pressure to get my money’s worth. For that, I can always come back another time.

The Chihuly Exhibit is still up, and will be until November. It is a beautiful as always – and now, since I have a familiarity with it, I am able to see some details and subtle facets that I missed the first time or two through. More than the Chihuly stuff, gorgeous as it is, I am appreciating the beauty of the Arboretum itself – its design and vegetation.

This trip, as always, I took a lot of photographs, which I will continue to force upon my helpless readers whenever I feel like it – or I can’t think of anything else to whine on about. So far, from this trip, here, here, and here, for example… with many more to come.

But other than snapping photographs I wanted to find some spot to sit down with my Kindle and read for a bit, simply soak up the peaceful beauty.

When I first arrived at opening, there weren’t too many folks there, but the crowd quickly grew. Now, there weren’t as many folks as there are on the weekends, not by a long shot, but they tended to cluster along the main paths, surround the more spectacular Chihuly stuff, and blabber on about this and that – generally messing with my chill.

No problema, I expected this. It is a public spot – a tourist attraction – with a very popular special exhibit going on until November… I did not expect to have the whole place to myself. I had already decided to seek out a couple of hidden places, somewhere that I could sit, undisturbed, read a little, and generally chill out.

A couple of parameters had to be established:

Obviously, out of the main traffic areas.
A nice bench to sit on.
Shade (I am using the phrase “Chill Out” in the metaphoric sense – the heat is amazing and deadly)
A nice view

The first hidden spot is one I already knew about – I had spotted it the first time I came to the Arboretum. The first stage of A Woman’s Garden is a fiendishly designed series of formal gardens and water features that have a lot of Chihuly’s most spectacular glass works. It draws a big crown, oohing and ahhing and holding their iPhones up to send images back home to Aunt Emma who didn’t want to visit Dallas in the summer.

What they miss are some clever, smaller bits of garden that jut off to the side, little isolated areas that really make the place special. One of these, sandwiched between the first fountain by the entrance to A Woman’s Garden and the Degolyer Mansion is called The Sunset Garden. It is a tiny path that goes up a bit of hill to a stone bench beneath a huge tree. As the name implies, the bench faces west and would be a great place to watch the solar orb sink beneath White Rock Lake. There is a little sign that directs you to the side garden – a sign that everybody, entranced with the colorful glass beyond, seems to miss.

When you clamber up to the stone bench you look down through a gap to a fountain and then past into another small garden – The Pecan Parterre Garden, with a beautiful little sculpture – Harriet Frishmuth’s “Playdays” (more on that bronze piece in a few days, I promise). It is a truly idyllic spot.

The path up to the stone bench in the Sunset Garden from the main entrance to A Woman’s Garden.

A view of the Sunset Garden from the veranda of the DeGolyer mansion. You can see the sun-drenched entrance to A Woman’s Garden and its fountain, and the Pecan Parterre Garden, with the little statue, beyond. White Rock lake is through the trees in the background – this would be a wonderful spot to watch the sun set.

The only problem – as I discovered once I climbed up there and settled in – is that the stone bench is tilted out, ever so slightly, so it is not very comfortable. It’s like sitting in a church pew. I’m afraid that little detail makes the sunset garden a bit more useful to look at than to sit in for more than a few minutes.

Later on, though, I found another little hidden spot that didn’t have any disadvantages at all. I was strolling through the Jonsson Color Garden (the big open ovals where some large Chihuly glass rears up) and looking into the strip of woods that separates that area from the Texas Town (a children’s area with small historical displays) and noticed a wooden bench set deep within the trees. I walked around a bit and found the path back there.

It was perfect. It sits in deep shade from tall overhead trees and is screened from the main walking path by a clump of Crape Myrtles. Cool and quiet – most importantly, the wooden bench is very comfortable. A perfect spot to sit and read (I cranked through an entire novel) and contemplate the universe.

The view ahead and to the left from the little bench. These are some Chihuly red glass sculptures sitting along the edge of the Jonsson Color Garden.

To the right from the bench is a bit of a view of Chihuly’s gigantic Yellow Icicle Tower.

Here’s the bench, with my Kindle, camera case, and woefully inadequate water bottle.

I had a little visitor while I was sitting there – somebody else trying to get out of the killer afternoon heat.

It was too comfortable – I stayed too long into the stifling heat of the afternoon. The rest of the day I was dizzy and confused… even more so than normal. Still, I think I’ll go back. It’s a nice place… and there has to be some more hidden spots that I haven’t found yet. Maybe one with some burbling water nearby.

What I learned this week July 27, 2012

Posted on July 27, 2012 by Bill Chance

I remember – 1979 or so, I was right out of school, living in Kansas, when I heard Sultans of Swing on the radio. It was a revelation. Years later, I think that Making Movies is one of the greatest albums of all time… a little disappointed with a lot of Dire Straights and Mark Knopfler’s later career… but still, Sultans brings it all back.

This video is all amazingness – time goes by… everything changes and nothing changes.