One Of These Malenky Machines

Posted on by Bill Chance

“Youth is only being in a way like it might be an animal. No, it is not just like being an animal so much as being like one of these malenky toys you viddy being sold in the streets, like little chellovecks made out of tin and with a spring inside and then a winding handle on the outside and you wind it up grrr grrr grrr and off it itties, like walking, O my brothers. But it itties in a straight line and bangs straight into things bang bang and it cannot help what it is doing. Being young is like being like one of these malenky machines.”
― Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange

disc

And Of Their Shadows Deep

Posted on by Bill Chance

When you are old and gray and full of sleep, and nodding by the fire, take down this book and slowly read, and dream of the soft look your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep.
—-William Butler Yeats

myrtle_2

Forget What You Want To Remember

Posted on by Bill Chance

“Just remember that the things you put into your head are there forever, he said. You might want to think about that.
You forget some things, dont you?
Yes. You forget what you want to remember and you remember what you want to forget.”
― Cormac McCarthy, The Road

Tom Wesselmann Mouth # 11, 1967 Dallas Museum of Art

Tom Wesselmann
Mouth # 11, 1967
Dallas Museum of Art

I have always loved this piece of modern art in the DMA. I remember it from when I first moved here thirty four years ago. I worked downtown and would walk over to the museum at lunch and look at this (and other, of course) work of art to help make the day bearable.

Those were the olden days, ancient history, when you could take a lunch and get a needed break – unlike today where lunch is something you gobble at your desk while answering emails.

There was this cool little gift shop across the street from my office – in the old building that has since been converted into the Joule hotel. They had a postcard of this painting. I bought it, no reason, I simply wanted to own the image so I could look at it whenever I wanted. The young redhaired shopgirl asked me as she slid the card into a thin paper bag, “Do you know where this is?”

“Of course,” I said. “I go over at lunch and stare at it.”

I have no idea what she thought of that. She didn’t say anything.

Fade Surprisingly Quickly

Posted on by Bill Chance

“Memories, even your most precious ones, fade surprisingly quickly. But I don’t go along with that. The memories I value most, I don’t ever see them fading.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

Mural, Fair Park Dallas, Texas

Mural, Fair Park
Dallas, Texas

I have always loved the Art Deco Murals along the Esplanade in Fair Park. I think they are among the many unappreciated public artworks in the city. The ones along the southern side have been beautifully restored.

However, the murals on the North Side – exposed to the southern sun – are very faded and in need of loving care (and very hard to photograph). I hope they get some, they are just as gorgeous as the others.

Mural, Fair Park Dallas, Texas

Mural, Fair Park
Dallas, Texas

All Things Were Older Than Man

Posted on by Bill Chance

“Once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains. You could see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. They smelled of moss in your hand. Polished and muscular and torsional. On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put back. Not be made right again. In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery.”
― Cormac McCarthy, The Road

Design District Dallas, Texas

Design District
Dallas, Texas

To Be Really Greek One Should Have No Clothes

Posted on by Bill Chance

“To be really mediæval one should have no body. To be really modern one should have no soul. To be really Greek one should have no clothes.”
― Oscar Wilde, Complete Works of Oscar Wilde

Houston Museum Of Fine Arts

Houston Museum Of Fine Arts

Teach Him What He Does Not Want To Learn

Posted on by Bill Chance

“A responsible Warrior is not someone who takes the weight of the world on his shoulders, but someone who has learned to deal with the challenges of the moment.”
― Paulo Coelho, Warrior of the Light

Design District Dallas, Texas

Design District
Dallas, Texas

“The Warrior knows that no man is an island.
He cannot fight alone; whatever his plan, he depends on other people. He needs to discuss his strategy, to ask for help, and, in moments of relaxation, to have someone with whom he can sit by the fire, someone he can regale with tales of battle.”

“Then the Warrior realizes that these repeated experiences have but one aim: to teach him what he does not want to learn.”
― Paulo Coelho, Warrior of the Light

Close Only Counts

Posted on by Bill Chance

“Close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades”
—-Traditional

Across and down the street a little ways from our front door the city, a couple of years ago, took a little-used piece of land and built a whole bunch of horseshoe pits there – giving each one a number. The land is still little-used, but once or twice a year a tournament arrives and horseshoe pitchers crowd in and do their thing. Usually portable lighting trailers are brought in and they pitch well into the darkness.

The rest of the year it sits their unused, fenced off, locked up, empty and forlorn. The little sign proclaims “PIT #11” – if anyone other than me ever looks.

Pit 11 Huffhines Park Richardson, Texas

Pit 11
Huffhines Park
Richardson, Texas

What I learned this week, March 20, 2015

Posted on by Bill Chance
Decatur Street, Halloween, 2012

Decatur Street, Halloween, 2012

They’re Weird and Proud: America’s Quirkiest Cities

doreen3

100 Skills Every Man Should Know: The Instructions

Sharknado 3 Gets Premiere Date, Global Release and One Hell of a Title

I haven’t actually seen Sharknado or Sharknado 2 – but I am a big fan. For me, it’s a very good thing that the Sharknado franchise simply exists. I want to know that there are things that are out of the bounds of taste and sanity… that the world is a bigger and more wondrous place that we even imagine.

Plus, that title – Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No!

Plus Plus – Mark Cuban cast as the President and Ann Coulter as the Vice President. The only thing better would be a subplot involving an illicit passionate affair between the two. We can only wish.

This Quick Trick Can Help When You’re Feeling Overwhelmed

Dallas Skyline from the Soda Bar on the roof of the NYLO Southside hotel.

Dallas Skyline from the Soda Bar on the roof of the NYLO Southside hotel.

Getting Density Right

Density is often touted – by myself included – as key to unlocking a more sustainable, liveable, cost efficient future. Getting density right is central to creating communities where it is possible to do a variety of everyday activities within walking distance from home – like visiting a health clinic, buying groceries, or getting your haircut. Walking has implications for our health, our sense of place, our connectedness to our communities, and our need to reduce our environmental footprint.

So all density is good, right? Not so fast.

Trinity River Bottoms (click to enlarge)

Trinity River Bottoms
(click to enlarge)

Art Deco mural from Fair Park in Dallas

Art Deco mural from Fair Park in Dallas

25 Years After Art Heist, Empty Frames Still Hang In Boston’s Gardner Museum

Backyard burger and wiener roasts targeted by EPA

The Environmental Protection Agency has its eyes on pollution from backyard barbecues.

The agency announced that it is funding a University of California project to limit emissions resulting in grease drippings with a special tray to catch them and a “catalytic” filtration system.

The $15,000 project has the “potential for global application,” said the school.

The school said that the technology they will study with the EPA grant is intended to reduce air pollution and cut the health hazards to BBQ “pit masters” from propane-fueled cookers.

Charged with keeping America’s air, water and soil clean, the EPA has been increasingly looking at homeowners, especially their use of pollution emitting tools like lawn mowers.

EPA wants to monitor how long hotel guests spend in the shower.

18 Headphone Brands Ranked from Worst to First