Tag Archives: frisco

Ego Comes In For Rough Treatment

Posted on by Bill Chance

“On any mechanical repair job ego comes in for rough treatment. You’re always being fooled, you’re always making mistakes, and a mechanic who has a big ego to defend is at a terrific disadvantage. If you know enough mechanics to think of them as a group, and your observations coincide with mine, I think you’ll agree that mechanics tend to be rather modest and quiet. There are exceptions, but generally if they’re not quiet and modest at first, the works seems to make them that way. And skeptical. Attentive, but skeptical. But not egotistic. There’s no way to bullshit your way into looking good on a mechanical repair job, except with someone who doesn’t know what you’re doing.”
― Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values

Edward Hendricks, Houston 2004-IX and 2004-X (detail) 2004 aluminum, stainless steel, gold leaf Frisco, Texas

Edward Hendricks, Houston
2004-IX and 2004-X (detail)
2004 aluminum, stainless steel, gold leaf
Frisco, Texas

You Breathe In Nihilism

Posted on by Bill Chance

“If you live today, you breathe in nihilism … it’s the gas you breathe. If I hadn’t had the Church to fight it with or to tell me the necessity of fighting it, I would be the stinkingest logical positivist you ever saw right now.”
― Flannery O’Connor

Tin Ceiling Frisco, Texas

Tin Ceiling
Frisco, Texas

I have always had a love for embossed tin ceilings and look out for them in old buildings across the heartland. This beautiful example is in the Lebanon Baptist Church in the Frisco Heritage Village. I took this shot while listening to a talented woman play the fiddle.

The only thing better than a tin ceiling is a tin roof.

The Mark Of Steel Upon It

Posted on by Bill Chance

“The immappable world of our journey. A pass in the mountains. A bloodstained stone. The marks of steel upon it. Names carved in the corrosible lime among stone fishes and ancient shells. Things dimmed and dimming. The dry sea floor. The tools of migrant hunters. The dreams encased upon the blades of them. The peregrine bones of a prophet. The silence. The gradual extinction of rain. The coming of night.”

― Cormac McCarthy, Cities of the Plain

Steel in the forge, Frisco, Texas

Steel in the forge,
Frisco, Texas

Spark By Irreplaceable Spark

Posted on by Bill Chance

“Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark in the hopeless swamps of the not-quite, the not-yet, and the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish in lonely frustration for the life you deserved and have never been able to reach. The world you desire can be won. It exists.. it is real.. it is possible.. it’s yours.”

― Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

Forge Fire Frisco, Texas

Forge Fire
Frisco, Texas

People Stopped Being People

Posted on by Bill Chance

“Historical fact: People stopped being people in 1913. That was the year Henry Ford put his cars on rollers and made his workers adopt the speed of the assembly line. At first, workers rebelled. They quit in droves, unable to accustom their bodies to the new pace of the age. Since then, however, the adaptation has been passed down: we’ve all inherited it to some degree, so that we plug right into joy-sticks and remotes, to repetitive motions of a hundred kinds.”
― Jeffrey Eugenides, Middlesex

Frisco, Texas

Frisco, Texas

Sweat Up the Hills And Coast Down Them

Posted on by Bill Chance

“It is by riding a bicycle that you learn the contours of a country best, since you have to sweat up the hills and coast down them. Thus you remember them as they actually are, while in a motor car only a high hill impresses you, and you have no such accurate remembrance of country you have driven through as you gain by riding a bicycle.”
―Ernest Hemmingway

Skiptooth Front Cog Frisco Heritage Center Frisco, Texas

Skiptooth Front Cog
Frisco Heritage Center
Frisco, Texas

All Is Sweetness And Delicacy And Harmony

Posted on by Bill Chance

“A sandwich and a cup of coffee, and then off to violin-land, where all is sweetness and delicacy and harmony.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

fiddle

I visited the Frisco Heritage Center during one of their open house events and stumbled across a fiddle player in the Lebanon Baptist Church. She explained that she played three styles of fiddle: Texas Style, Bluegrass, and Old-Timey. Then she would world her way through examples of each. She was very good and the atmosphere in the beautifully-restored old church was special – I really enjoyed listening to her play.

The Nights Will Flame With Fire

Posted on by Bill Chance

“If you’re going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, don’t even start. This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives and maybe even your mind. It could mean not eating for three or four days. It could mean freezing on a park bench. It could mean jail. It could mean derision. It could mean mockery–isolation. Isolation is the gift. All the others are a test of your endurance, of how much you really want to do it. And, you’ll do it, despite rejection and the worst odds. And it will be better than anything else you can imagine. If you’re going to try, go all the way. There is no other feeling like that. You will be alone with the gods, and the nights will flame with fire. You will ride life straight to perfect laughter. It’s the only good fight there is.”
― Charles Bukowski, Factotum

Frisco Heritage Center, Frisco, Texas

Frisco Heritage Center, Frisco, Texas

Cast Its Long Shadow

Posted on by Bill Chance

“This tower, patched unevenly with black ivy, arose like a mutilated finger from among the fists of knuckled masonry and pointed blasphemously at heaven. At night the owls made of it an echoing throat; by day it stood voiceless and cast its long shadow.”
― Mervyn Peake, Titus Groan

Frisco, Texas

Frisco, Texas