“Never underestimate how much assistance, how much satisfaction, how much comfort, how much soul and transcendence there might be in a well-made taco and a cold bottle of beer.”
― Tom Robbins, Jitterbug Perfume
Tag Archives: Dallas
Only In Art Will the Lion Lie Down With the Lamb
It Always Balances Them
Not Meant To Be Caged
“Some birds are not meant to be caged, that’s all. Their feathers are too bright, their songs too sweet and wild. So you let them go, or when you open the cage to feed them they somehow fly out past you. And the part of you that knows it was wrong to imprison them in the first place rejoices, but still, the place where you live is that much more drab and empty for their departure.”
― Stephen King, Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption: A Story from Different Seasons
The Rhythm Of the Dance
The Most Dramatic Event In Our Lives
“The ambiguous role of the car crash needs no elaboration—apart from our own deaths, the car crash is probably the most dramatic event in our lives, and in many cases the two will coincide. Aside from the fact that we generally own or are at the controls of the crashing vehicle, the car crash differs from other disasters in that it involves the most powerfully advertised commercial product of this century, an iconic entity that combines the elements of speed, power, dream and freedom within a highly stylized format that defuses any fears we may have of the inherent dangers of these violent and unstable machines.”
― J.G. Ballard, The Atrocity Exhibition
A Dragon Of Night Dark Sea
“My nightly craft is winged in white, a dragon of night dark sea.
Swift born, dream bound and rudderless, her captain and crew are me.
We’ve sailed a hundred sleeping tides where no seaman’s ever been
And only my white-winged craft and I know the wonders we have seen.”
― Anne McCaffrey, Dragonsong
What I learned this week, February 6, 2015
BikeableDallas.com
Updates, news, and musings from the City of Dallas Bicycle Program

My Xootr Swift folding bike in the cool bike rack in front of the Cold Beer Company
Deep Ellum, Dallas, Texas
Proposal To Turn Abandoned London Tube Lines Into Cycle Paths
Ummm… could anything be cooler that this?
Downtown Dallas Community Roundtable Aims to Meet Demand for Walkable Urban Neighborhoods in Dallas
Work in the City? Use a Commuter Folding Bike!

My Xootr Swift folding bike on the bike route over Interstate 10 in New Orleans. Downtown and the Superdome are in the background.
Chuck Marohn cofounded the non-profit Strong Towns in 2009. Since then he has steadily built an audience for his message about the financial folly of car-centric planning and growth. The suburban development pattern that has prevailed since the end of World War II has resulted in what Marohn calls “the growth Ponzi scheme” — a system that isn’t viable in the long run because it cannot bring in enough revenue to cover its costs.
Dallas is the most affordable destination for 2015
This is the downtown architecture tour that the author wasn’t able to go on. Shame.
Raymond Carver, The Art of Fiction No. 76
I have completely fallen in love with Raymond Carver’s short stories. If I could write like anyone, I’d write like him. This is a very interesting interview – for writers, fans, and anybody else with funcioning brain cells.
Beginner’s Guide to Porters & Stouts
Be Suspicious of the New Harper Lee Novel
Suspicious? Maybe. But I’m still going to read it. I mean… a long lost “sequel” to To Kill A Mockingbird… written before TKAM… How is anybody not going to read that?
Why Harper Lee remained silent for so many years.

A terrible Blackberry photo of my folding Xootr Swift parked next to a Yuba cargo bike (set up to carry a whole family) outside the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema. Two different philosophies on urban bicycling.
8 Bicycle Movies on Netflix Right Now
Brood On Over the Solemn Dumping Ground
But above the gray land and the spasms of bleak dust which drift endlessly over it, you perceive, after a moment, the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg. The eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg are blue and gigantic — their irises are one yard high. They look out of no face, but, instead, from a pair of enormous yellow spectacles which pass over a nonexistent nose. Evidently some wild wag of an oculist set them there to fatten his practice in the borough of Queens, and then sank down himself into eternal blindness, or forgot them and moved away. But his eyes, dimmed a little by many paintless days, under sun and rain, brood on over the solemn dumping ground.
—-F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
The Muse Takes Note Of Our Dedication
“This is the other secret that real artists know and wannabe writers don’t. When we sit down each day and do our work, power concentrates around us. The Muse takes note of our dedication. She approves. We have earned favor in her sight. When we sit down and work, we become like a magnetized rod that attracts iron filings. Ideas come. Insights accrete.”
― Steven Pressfield, The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks & Win Your Inner Creative Battles















