Near Lee Harvey’s, Cedars, Dallas, Texas
“Information is the oxygen of the modern age. It seeps through the walls topped by barbed wire, it wafts across the electrified borders.”
—-Ronald Reagan
“All anyone really needs to know about barbed wire is that it can tear the arse out of your trousers, give a cow a good fright, entangle a Yorkshire terrier for life, and is nasty stuff made by greedy men.”
― Billy Connolly
“Did I ever tell you my pet peeve?’
No,’ I said.
People who dress up their pets to look like Little Lord Fauntleroys or cowboys, clowns, ballerinas. As if it’s not enough just to be a dog or cat or turtle.”
― Jerry Spinelli, Love, Stargirl
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“i made myself a snowball
As perfect as can be.
I thought I’d keep it as a pet,
And let it sleep with me.
I made it some pajamas
And a pillow for it’s head.
Then last night it ran away,
But first – It wet the bed.”
― Shel Silverstein
Deep Ellum Arts Festival Pet Parade, Dallas, Texas
Deep Ellum, Dallas, Texas
“If you are a dog and your owner suggests that you wear a sweater, suggest that he wear a tail.”
― Fran Lebowitz
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“Dogs are the leaders of the planet. If you see two life forms, one of them’s making a poop, the other one’s carrying it for him, who would you assume is in charge.”
― Jerry Seinfeld
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“The strangest thing has happened. I really missed my dog. That’s never happened to me before. You know, on a long tour you do hear people saying they miss their pets. I never have. But last night I started really missing my dog.
It’s very odd, ’cause I don’t have a dog.”
― Bono
“I mean, they say you die twice. One time when you stop breathing and a second time, a bit later on, when somebody says your name for the last time.”
― Banksy
Graffiti, Deep Ellum, Dallas, Texas
“Imagine a city where graffiti wasn’t illegal, a city where everybody could draw whatever they liked. Where every street was awash with a million colours and little phrases. Where standing at a bus stop was never boring. A city that felt like a party where everyone was invited, not just the estate agents and barons of big business. Imagine a city like that and stop leaning against the wall – it’s wet.”
― Banksy
“Graffiti is one of the few tools you have if you have almost nothing. And even if you don’t come up with a picture to cure world poverty you can make someone smile while they’re having a piss.”
― Banksy
He stands erect by bending over the fallen. He rises by lifting others.
—-Douglas Horton
I rode the DART train into Downtown Dallas for the last Dallas Writing Marathon and as the short line of yellow electric cars climbed out of the tunnel under Central Expressway I could hear a distinct WUP-WUP-WUP sound. Looking out the window, I saw a gigantic lifting helicopter delivering a load to the top of the Chase Tower (the skyscraper with a big hole in it). By the time the train pulled into the station, it had already settled into a parking lot behind the Plaza of the Americas.
A few hours later, after we had finished writing, I returned to the station and discovered the skycrane was taking off again. I ran around, up to the police lines, and watched it carry a load (it looked like electrical equipment) up to the notch in the top of the vaulted cap of the skyscraper.
The helicopter was a Sikorsky S-64, modified by Erickson Air-Crane. It had a plastic bubble facing backward into the cargo area where a crewman could sit and direct a precision lift. The whole operation was extensive – from police security to a line of trucks delivering cargo to be lifted to a tanker truck of jetfuel to keep the copter going.
It was all pretty cool. I took some pictures.
Sikorsky S-64 delivering a load to the top of the Chase Tower, Dallas, Texas
Music has generally involved a lot of awkward contraptions, a certain amount of heavy lifting.
—-Tom Waits
Erickson Air-Crane and the Dallas Skyline
As I get older, the present and the past shift and become the past and the future… A lot of it is a new awareness of time and life and the wheel of fortune crushing you and lifting you and crushing you and lifting you.
—-Feist
Erickson Air-Crane
Another mode of accumulating power arises from lifting a weight and then allowing it to fall.
—-Charles Babbage
New Orleans
Mississippi River, from the Algiers Ferry, New Orleans
November Devil, David Iles, on The Square, Denton Texas
November Devil, David Iles, Denton, Texas
November Devil, David Iles, Denton, Texas
“A dust devil flew up on the porch between us, fill my mouth with dirt. The dirt say, Anything you do to me already done to you.”
—-Alice Walker, The Color Purple
“Time goes faster the more hollow it is. Lives with no meaning go straight past you, like trains that don’t stop at your station.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind
“The train bore me away, through the monstrous scenery of slag-heaps, chimneys, piled scrap-iron, foul canals, paths of cindery mud criss-crossed by the prints of clogs. This was March, but the weather had been horribly cold and everywhere there were mounds of blackened snow. As we moved slowly through the outskirts of the town we passed row after row of little grey slum houses running at right angles to the embankment. At the back of one of the houses a young woman was kneeling on the stones, poking a stick up the leaden waste-pipe which ran from the sink inside and which I suppose was blocked. I had time to see everything about her—her sacking apron, her clumsy clogs, her arms reddened by the cold. She looked up as the train passed, and I was almost near enough to catch her eye. She had a round pale face, the usual exhausted face of the slum girl who is twenty-five and looks forty, thanks to miscarriages and drudgery; and it wore, for the second in which I saw it, the most desolate, hopeless expression I have ever-seen. It struck me then that we are mistaken when we say that ‘It isn’t the same for them as it would be for us,’ and that people bred in the slums can imagine nothing but the slums. For what I saw in her face was not the ignorant suffering of an animal. She knew well enough what was happening to her—understood as well as I did how dreadful a destiny it was to be kneeling there in the bitter cold, on the slimy stones of a slum backyard, poking a stick up a foul drain-pipe.”
― George Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier
I was digging around some directories of old and not-so-old photos and came across some I liked.
These were taken of my newest favorite band, Home by Hovercraft. I had taken some pictures of them at the Setlist on the Green, but between my poor camera and poorer skills, it was tough to get decent shots at night. This set was in the daylight at the Deep Ellum Arts Festival – they played before Brave Combo.
I really like their theatrical and playful, yet musical style. Any band using an Irish Dancer on a piece of gym floor for rhythm has to be good.
Their album, Are We Chameleons? is firmly entrenched in my current listening selections – Amazon Link.
Home by Hovercraft in Deep Ellum
Irish dancer with Home by Hovercraft
Home by Hovercraft in Deep Ellum
Home by Hovercraft
Home by Hovercraft, Dallas
“An Airstream is a lot like a first love: you are lured by her charm, seduced by her beauty, and once bitten, you are forever chasing after her mystique.”
― Bruce Littlefield, Airstream Living
One of the best things to do for free in New Orleans… or anywhere else, is to ride the Algiers Ferry across the Mississippi.
In the middle of the river on the Algiers Ferry.
The ride is free for pedestrians and pooches.
Bill Chance 