World’s Littlest Skyscraper

Posted on by Bill Chance

“Truth is like poetry. And most people fucking hate poetry.”

—-The Big Short

World’s littlest skyscraper, Wichita Falls, Texas

I don’t know how, but I stumbled across the story of the world’s littlest skyscraper in Wichita Falls, Texas.

I’ve been to Wichita Falls many times… mostly on the way to somewhere else. Not always, when I was younger I used to ride my bike in the Hotter’N Hell 100 mile race. It is famous around these parts – and accurately named.

Once I was in the airport in Wichita Kansas, and in front of me in line at the counter was a panicked young man in an Air Force uniform. “But I’m supposed to be in Wichita Falls!” he said to the agent. As Falls Wichita, So Falls Wichita Falls.

But back to the littlest skyscraper. Apparently, right after oil was discovered in the Burkburnett field, Wichita Falls became another one of Texas’ many boom towns. They needed office space.

So a con man pitched the idea of a skyscraper. It was going to be 408″ tall. Unfortunately the rubes were so excited they didn’t understand the difference – ‘=feet and “=inches. So the 408 foot skyscraper turned out to be only 408 inches tall – about four stories – and the developer fled town with the excess cash.

I don’t know if I’m going to be back in Wichita Falls anytime soon – but I hope I am. I’ll definitely stop at the skyscraper… even if it’s the worlds littlest.

What I learned this week, April 8, 2022

Posted on by Bill Chance
(click to enlarge)

A Creative Solution to ‘the Friendship Desert of Modern Adulthood’

“I knew many old couples who had happy and loving arranged marriages. I thought, If it worked for them, why couldn’t it work for friendships?”

Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, Texas

U.S. life expectancy falls for 2nd year in a row

Despite the availability of life-saving COVID-19 vaccines, so many people died in the second year of the pandemic in the U.S. that the nation’s life expectancy dropped for a second year in a row last year, according to a new analysis.

My bicycle locked up to the TRex in Exposition Park, Dallas, Texas

A doctoral student may have discovered fossils from the day the dinosaurs died

This story isn’t exactly breaking news since it’s about something that happened 66 million years ago, but there is a reason it’s getting fresh attention now. Next week the BBC is releasing a special narrated by David Attenborough titled “The Day the Dinosaurs Died.” The special focuses on a unique dig site in North Dakota called Tanis where evidence suggests a jumble of fossils were formed on the day a large asteroid struck the earth about 66 million years ago.xxx

Running up that hill at the end.

How to Start Running: A Beginner’s Guide

Want to start a running habit but have no idea where to start? Here is everything you need to know to start running and actually enjoy it.

Running of the Bulls, New Orleans

Klain Says Biden Doesn’t Believe Hunter Broke Any Laws

On Sunday, Joe Biden’s White House Chief of Staff told George Stephanopoulos that Biden doesn’t believe his son Hunter broke any laws, despite his past dealings that are currently under investigation by the Department of Justice, which a CNN analyst said earlier this week could result in his being indicted.

Know Who’s Bummed About Russia’s Military Failure In Ukraine? China

A goodly part of the world is pleased about the manifest failure of Vlad’s Big Ukraine Adventure, some are indifferent to it, but only Russia, client-state Syria, and puppet-state Belarus really seem upset about it.

Know who else is bummed? China.

The drone coming in for a landing. She would catch it as it landed.

Ex-Zelensky Aide Says Ukrainian Army Uses ‘Terminator’ Drones That Make Russians Think Skynet is Chasing Them

The Ukrainian army has come up with a clever way to save ammunition, a former advisor to President Volodymyr Zelensky said, by modifying commercial drones to resemble something out of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Terminator films, scaring Russian soldiers into thinking “something that belongs to Skynet” is chasing them so they lead the drone back to their base and the Ukrainians can then blast them into the afterlife.

My Octopus Teacher

Posted on by Bill Chance

The problem when you’re a crab, you’re now being hunted by a liquid animal. She can pour herself through a tiny little crack.

—- Craig Foster, My Octopus Teacher

Untitled (Sprawling Octopus Man), by Thomas Houseago Nasher Sculpture Center Dallas, Texas

This morning I had to go into work before dawn to supervise a job. When I arrived on site I discovered everything had been delayed an hour and a half (a phone call came in while I was driving and I don’t answer calls in my car). So I had some time to kill.

I have Netflix on my relatively new personal phone and had downloaded a handful of films to watch offline. So I sat there waiting as the sun rose and watched the rest of the Oscar-Winning documentary My Octopus Teacher.

It was really, really good. The photography of the kelp forest was breathtaking. It’s hard to believe that a mollusk could be so captivating. The end of the film is bittersweet – I did not know anything about how an octopus reproduces….

It reminded me of a short, wonderful time in my youth – a middle school teenager living in Panama – on the Atlantic side of what was then the Canal Zone. A friend and I would take the bus out to Fort Sherman, hitchhike to Playa Diablillo and walk down the coast snorkeling and exploring the mangrove forests and coral reef – just like the guy in the movie.

One day we were walking along the exposed coral heads at low tide when something wet hit me in the side of the head. I turned and there was a large octopus mostly out of the water on the coral. He did not like us walking through his ‘hood and was squirting us with jets of water and ink out of his siphon. As we watched him he went through an amazing series of shape and color changes, trying to convince us to leave him alone (although we would never have noticed him – his first color and texture blended in with the coral – if he had not squirted us). We looked at him for a while, then granted his wish and left him alone.

If you are curious, it was right here. There is actually a streetview – this is exactly where I saw the octopus.

The film conveys spectacularly the freedom and the zen-like concentration of swimming with a snorkel in the cornucopia of life that is a coral reef or kelp forest. The ecosystem interacts like a single, enormous creature and when surrounded by that water, you become part of it.

I am so glad that I experienced that and am afraid I will never do so again.

That Is No Country For Old Men

Posted on by Bill Chance

“You think when you wake up in the mornin yesterday don’t count. But yesterday is all that does count. What else is there? Your life is made out of the days it’s made out of. Nothin else.”
― Cormac McCarthy, No Country for Old Men

Cadillac Ranch - Old Guys Rule
Old Guys Rule, Cadillac Ranch, Amarillo, Texas

At lunch today (it’s amazing how not-enjoyable no-carbohydrate food gets after a few months) I took a break and hit the ‘web. I stumbled across a well-known Yeats poem – Sailing to Byzantium – which gave the title to a Cormac McCarthy novel and eponymous film. I read the poem a few times and copied key lines into my commonplace book – it spoke to me.

There is plenty of commentary on this famous poem… you can do a google search if you like. But it’s pretty simple and terribly easy to understand – especially for someone past a certain age.

So here it is, without any further ado from me.

Sailing to Byzantium

BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

I

That is no country for old men. The young
In one another’s arms, birds in the trees,
—Those dying generations—at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.

II

An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.

III

O sages standing in God’s holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.

IV

Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

Shindig!

Posted on by Bill Chance

“Even so, there were times I saw freshness and beauty. I could smell the air, and I really loved rock ‘n’ roll. Tears were warm, and girls were beautiful, like dreams. I liked movie theaters, the darkness and intimacy, and I liked the deep, sad summer nights.”
― Haruki Murakami, Dance Dance Dance

There was live music at the start.

Today, when I came home from work, instead of doing something useful and trying to make this world a better place I sat down and watched (for no reason) a bunch of old episodes of Shindig! on Youtube.

I’m old enough to actually remember the show, I think. Let’s see… the show aired from September, 1964 to January, 1966 so I was seven, eight and almost nine. I guess that’s old enough to remember, but not enough to understand. I remember Shindig!‘s folk-oriented predecessor Hootenanny too – though barely.

What I really remember, and really didn’t understand, were the Shindig! dancers.

The television is grainy and not very well preserved. But the music! I hate to sound like the old man shouting to get off of his lawn – but that stuff was so much better than what we have to listen to today.

So much better.

Short Story of the Day, Flash Fiction, What I Owned by Michelle Ross

Posted on by Bill Chance

“No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.”

― Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House

The Headlines Screamed, Baithouse Disappears

From my blog (I called it an “Online Journal” then), The Daily Epiphany, Wednesday, January 16, 2002

Spreading north

I’m continuously amazed at how the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex is vomiting itself northward, spreading across the cotton fields and mesquite scrublands like a virulent plywood fungus.

The houses are enormous, stuck right up next to each other, and virtually identical. Cheap brick veneer, wooden shake shingles, monstrously large bathrooms, two-story entryways, full of odd corners of wasted space.

The streets are full of smells of cut pinewood, wet concrete, and hot asphalt. Even in the winter, the Texas sun beats down unhindered by any trees to bake the brick and kill the fresh-laid sod. You never see any residents out on the streets or sidewalks – I have to imagine there are sometimes children behind the eight foot wooden privacy fences enclosing a tiny polygon of ex-prairie – sometimes I can see a piece of custom-made play equipment sticking up over the fence. The only humans ever visible in the new suburbs are crews of Mexican workers cutting grass or building walls. Sometimes they have leaf blowers – though I have no idea where any leaves would come from.

The eternal question is, of course, who lives in these things. Did a crack dealer and his stripper girlfriend save their money, get married, clean up and move to the suburbs? Did some guy invent the battery-powered inside-the-egg egg-scrambler and spend his millions gleaned from late night television advertisements on that brand spankin’ new house and shiny black SUV?

And now, a piece of flash fiction for today:

What I Owned by Michelle Ross

from Monkeybicycle

Michelle Ross Webpage

Sunday Snippet, Two Old Poems by Bill Chance

Posted on by Bill Chance

As long as I have a want, I have a reason for living. Satisfaction is death.

—-George Bernard Shaw

Display at main Half-Price Books, Dallas, Texas

Fingertips

Why is it
that I can never remember to file
the goldenrod
copy to the archive folder
and send the yellow
to accounting?

My fingertips
have an aversion
to Manila
folder thin cardboard,
little tabs,
alphabetical order.

There was a time
when I looked forwards to phone calls
something good exciting and sexy
usually
now it’s only someone wanting something
plain and difficult.

I feel the beesting
at my belt
the rattling shock of the
vibrating pager, interrupting lunch
or thought, or peace, even when
I’m not wearing it.

Piles of paper, drawers of folders
carefully ordered, fall inward, collapsing,
smothering, horrible weight.
Chaos, where is your freedom?
feeling, surprise,
standing naked in the rain.

I see the mind of the 5-year-old as a volcano with two vents: destructiveness and creativeness.

—-Sylvia Ashton-Warner

Lee on the monkey bars.
Lee at the playground

Energy

Kidsquest Playground

What energy source drives
them? Spinning tops
arms and legs akimbo,
rushing up down and around.
bark chips, pea gravel, stained wood

High pitched cries
the wet smell of recent rain
orange-topped billow iron-headed
clouds flee lightning-cored to the east and north.

Climbing ropes and old tires
wooden construction – simple pine
becomes what fairy castle,
little brothers
what fearsome enemy
to flee and chase, caught
and escape again.

Areas of damp sand
paper cup molds
careful tunnels
volcano hills
populated by plastic soldiers and Lilliputian dreams
shaped by tiny Giant Hands.

Slides straight
and slides twisting
swings and chains
pumping pumping jumping
moment of childhood weightlessness
come down to earth
too soon.

Parents in shorts
with that bent over head stare
watch down at toddlers grubbing
on the ground
making sure the stuff stays
out ‘o their mouth.

One Mississippi, Two Mississippi,
Keep your eyes closed! Three Mississippi, Four Mississippi,
Five, Six, Seven,
EightNineTen,
Ready or Not! Here I Come!

Dad! Can you spin me?
In that spin around thing?

Time to put up my pen and get to work.

Cylinders

Posted on by Bill Chance

“When we think about the present, we veer wildly between the belief in chance and the evidence in favour of determinism. When we think about the past, however, it seems obvious that everything happened in the way that it was intended.”
― Michel Houellebecq, The Elementary Particles

The Block (apartments), Richardson, Texas

What I learned this week, April 1, 2022

Posted on by Bill Chance
Braindead Brewing, Deep Ellum, Dallas, Texas

10 Simple Things to Make You Happier At Home

Our homes are an extension of who we are: what we do within the walls of our abodes shapes our mood, affects our productivity, and influences our outlook on life. Scientific studies have shown that we can have an impact on our happiness by adjusting the tiny little habits and routines that constitute our daily lives—we are, in fact, in control of our outlook on life.

Karma, Do-Ho Suh, 2011. Korea, Brushed Steel with Stone Base, The Sydney and Walda Besthoff Sculpture Garden

The Day Dostoyevsky Discovered the Meaning of Life in a Dream

“And it is so simple… You will instantly find how to live.”

Mental time travel is a great decision-making tool — this is how to use it

When the future seems largely unpredictable, is there anything you can do to prepare for it?

“Yes!” says futurist and game designer Jane McGonigal. All you need to do is to tap into your imagination and envision all your potential futures — using what she calls “futures thinking.” 

Artwork in window, Waxahachie, Texas

Losing My Ambition

I have abandoned the notion of ambition to chase the absolute middle of the road: mediocrity.

Lee walking in the surf at Crystal Beach. I checked my old blog entries – this was December 29, 2002. Almost twenty years ago.

25 Tips to Follow for When You’re Walking for Weight Loss

Our experts share ways that you can burn fat and improve your overall health by walking.

Rest Area
The trail runs through some thick woods between the train line and the creek south of Forest Lane. There is a nice rest area built there. This homeless guy was sitting in the rest area, reading and writing in his notebook. We talked about the weather and I helped him find a lost sock.

Susceptibility to Mental Illness May Have Helped Humans Adapt over the Millennia

Psychiatrist Randolph Nesse, one of the founders of evolutionary medicine, explains why natural selection did not rid our species of onerous psychiatric disorders

A ruined and despairing Gervaise at the end of the film.

The Oscars always get it wrong. Here are the real best pictures of the past 46 years.

With the perspective of time, we can now discern what movie was actually the best

A Morning Row

Posted on by Bill Chance

“How often have I watched, and longed to imitate when I should be free to live as I chose, a rower who had slipped his oars and lay flat on his back in the bottom of the boat, letting it drift with the current, seeing nothing but the sky gliding slowly by above him, his face aglow with a foretaste of happiness and peace!”

― Marcel Proust, Swann’s Way

Bachman Lake, Dallas, Texas