Soul Growing

When I am running around in my brain and I hit a stump, it's time to turn to my little book that will be 24-years old this 3rd of May. The pages are underlined, stared and  marginal notes abound. The white space about the chapter titles are filled with comments. Many pages have dog-ears. In short, it is well-worn!

From the Trees with Character Series

It's inspirational. It's common sense. It's wisdom seed already planted that grows in the strangest of places with the strangest of fruit pods, but fruit that feeds the soul from time to time with a dose of seasoned vitamins that have never left me feeling empty or hungry.

Some of you have read of, A Touch of Wonder. You have read about my love for this book, but more of how I am inspired by its author, Arthur Gordon. Gordon, not just doing it, but doing it on purpose. That always reminded me of the guy who just could not wait to get around you in traffic, but later, his rush had stopped him ahead. It might have been a radar cop. It might have been a funeral procession crossing in front, or even worse, a horrible accident itself.  But, for all those years, I had not thought about the other meaning found in the same chapter. That was until today. It is even amazing how Author Gordon viewed both to put into the chapter. Picking up on the one theme was right there. Yet, picking up on the second theme did not reveal itself to me for all those years until today. Perhaps I was not ready to discover it before today, or perhaps, it was purposeful pausing after all.


Originally, Gordon was on one of the classic liners that we all know so well today because of the Titanic movie. The cruise ships today are entirely a different class of service, for sure. But, he came across a portion of Robert Louis Stevenson's writings in the ship's library. Stevenson had written: "Extreme busyness, whether at school, kirk (church) or market, is a symptom of deficient vitality." Robert Stevenson continued to say: "It is no good speaking to such folk: they can not be idle, their nature is not generous enough."

Never, has a man been so correct in his observations and I wonder today, what more he would have written of those people today? One thing is most likely. Robert Louis Stevenson and Arthur Gordon would have stopped their deficient vitality and fed their Soul. They both, knew the value of the Soul growing.

Ref:
Gordon, Arthur, A Touch of Wonder, 1974 Fleming H Revell Company, pp 210-18

31st Jan 2015 to update text

Encyclopedias, Compendiums, Complete Compendiums and Manuals on Fat Tuesday

Even though it will vary from year-to-year, it still has a way of sneaking up on you. But I have discovered a way to "not be so surprised". It's a lunar thing, basically. Or, at the least, follows a lunar calendar. It's still got that little Pagenistic twang to it, left over from the Romans invading the Celts and tearing down their alters and having the Celts build Roman alters. Of course, the Celts were really smart and built the Roman alters over their old torn down alters and went on like nothing ever happened.The Romans being non-the-wiser. There has been encyclopedias, compendiums, complete compendiums and manuals written about Mardi Gras.

It seems that the church calendar year is really tied to lunar cycles more than we think, but the one that resonates with many throughout the Christian world seems to be the one I can never remember.
That would be, of course, Fat Tuesday, Shove Tuesday or as the French still say today, Mardi Gras, which literally means, "Fat Tuesday".  It is, in fact, a 47 day stretch before Easter Sunday and since Easter is determined by--you got it-- lunar cycles, that is why the date moves forward or backwards from year-to-year.  As another indication of lunar cycles, Epiphany is the earliest that Carnival, Mardi Gras can occur and it must end by midnight on Fat Tuesday as Ash Wednesday begins Lent, the period of fasting before Easter.

Of course, it is highly ordained as a cultural event because Mardi Gras is the period when all the fat things and crazy things are done before confession or Shovetide or Shove Tuesday. Therefore, in various regions, celebrations will vary and the traditional celebrations will most always include a "King's Cake".

A couple of days ago I was in my friendly K-roger store and as I walked past the bakery tables, there were stacks and stacks of big colorful boxes of iced and sparkled King Cakes. The cakes only come out this time of year. The little plastic baby Jesus if usually hidden in the cake, but in today's age of  what ever it is--- the little baby Jesus is on top in plain sight so as not to offend or to cause a chocking hazard. Frankly, it was better when you grew up and you parents talked to you from early on about finding the baby Jesus in the cake and to be careful. Of course, that common sense thing does not exist today in parenting, Which I find to be so sad.

Mardi Gras Beads thrown on February 17th in 2015. 2016 will be on February 9th and 2017 will be on February 28th

Birth of Maggie 2 Has Occured

This is the third day in a row that I have gotten  multi-mile walks done. My strength seems to be coming back as well and I am happy about that. It's been a long journey getting back to as normal as I can remember. My primary care physician and my cardiologist are to thank for most of my good health return.

So, with spring-like temperatures back in north Texas, and two previous days of successful walks, I set out on the longest of the walks.  I drove out Mockingbird to Singleton Blvd. to the base of the Maggie 1 (Margaret Hunt Hill) Bridge to the plaza parking lot. I dreaded going down the steep ramps because the last time I tried to walk it, the grade was a bit of a strain on my cardio system. But, deciding that I would worry about that on the return trip, down the ramp I went. It took me about one-half hour to walk under the Maggie 1, the Union Pacific railroad bridge, the Commerce Street bridge and finally arriving at the I-30 bridge construction site. I felt pretty good too. One of the project engineers was on site with his family and we talked about the project for a bit before they headed out and I started to shoot the site. It was a perfect day with great sun angles and blue sky and most of all--a very light breeze.The flags flapped in the breeze in slow motion. Perfect!

It is amazing how what you learned from shooting Maggie 1 and can now be seen talking shape on nearly the same time table as before. I had estimated that the first arch piece was due to be fitted somewhere around this weekend and sure enough, as I got closer and could see the abutment transition base, it was obvious that the first piece was in place. The engineer said that the next four pieces were on site. This bridge, while totally different than Maggie 1, is still a massive construction project and the arches are as massive as the arches on the Maggie 1. The excitement could be felt building the longer that I was on site because I have always enjoyed big construction projects like these from a very early age. There is just something about how things come together and in a prescribed amount of time, bingo! you have a finished project and move on to the next one.

There were several photographers at the site on and off, This bridge will get more attention more quickly because it was easier seen from present day I-30 whereas on Maggie 1, the extension of the Woodall Rodgers had to be built and tied into Singleton Blvd that wasn't near as built up as it is today. And, people have had time to learn about the projects and build their own kind of curiousness. The opening of the Trinity Skyline Trail and the Santa Fe Trestle Trail have added much awareness to the project.

Therefore, Maggie 2 is born and can only grow out of the Terra firma  taking its bends from the abutment transition base skyward as it eventually will draw to completion in another  landmark architecture in the form of another bridge. Dallas is a bridge building city without question. By TxDot counts there are some 5000 plus bridges in the Dallas area. It is no wonder that Dallas now will have two remarkable landmarks as bridges. From the early days of the first Dallas TV series when the aerial shot came over downtown and headed out over all the bridges going away from downtown into historic archives, It's going to be interesting to see where the Maggie 1 and the Maggie 2 turn up in future television episodes of any kind.

The birth of the bridge as the first arch piece rises from the abutment transition base.

This is the third abutment transition base, Number 2 is curing at present having been poured already.

And the Cordilleran is Connected to the Ouachita and......

Remember the old egg timers that were hand-wound and sat on the top ledge of the stove? I don't have one now--I use the microwave timer-- but that little white plastic cover with red numbers taught a life lesson.  Also remembering that the longer you used the darn thing, the spring got weak and pretty soon it just didn't time like it should. One day, you had enough and you picked it up for the last time and tossed it in the garbage! 

It was sometime around my fiftieth birthday that my patience that carried over from decade to decade started getting shorter (kind of like that little egg timer's spring). Then one day, when I was trying to be patient, I decided that I'd had enough and my patience departed both now and forever more. Oh, I still make an effort to be patient, but it is totally on a two-way street now. A very narrow and short two-way street. So how does this fit with the post? I'm getting there. My patience keeps running out.

There has been a swarm of earthquakes very near to the old Texas Stadium site in Irving. Many locals think it is a result of the drilling in the Barnett Shale Field. When everyone was signing their mineral rights away for that oil-mighty buck which is a misnomer, because in this case it's natural gas that is being extracted by the billions and billions of cubit feet, the only concern was why some had already gotten their first royalty check and others were having to wait. Or, worse yet, the amount was not close to what had been promised when the checks did come.

Now, however, the natives are restless because the "big one" might come any day. So, SMU professor Dr. Brian Stump was called in to have his team plant seismology recorders and last night, the Irving City Council got their report. The funny side to this story is that the Texas Railroad Commission, which oversees drilling's had their seismologist say that he was pretty sure that discharge water from the fracking was not causing the earthquakes. The fact of the matter is that it may not be causing the quakes but it sure isn't helping, either. Never-the-less, the [1]Edwards aquifer IS highly permeable.

The most solid evidence, however, occurred on December 16,1811, followed by January 23,1812 and then again on February 7,1812 when a Magnitude 7.5,7.3 and 7.5 respectively quake rang church bells in Boston Massachusetts. Aftershocks on December 16,1811, registered 7.0 followed by 6  in the range of M5.5 to 6.3 in the first two days following. There were hundreds recorded in 1813.

The last 4500 years in geological records in core samples and scarpands indicate a repeatedly produced sequence of quakes in the above mentioned magnitudes. The concern of most recent studies  has seemed to cause increased warning concerns that the New Madrid Zone was ripe for activity equal to or greater than the 1811-1812 quakes.

The Ouachita Fault that runs from the Red River southwest to the Rio Grande passing directly between Dallas and Ft. Worth, is the Ouachita Tectonic Front of The Ouachita Orogenic Belt. That is connected to the Cordillera on the west and the Appalachian on the east. Part of the original Ouachita Mountains, of course, are buried. Originally, the mountain range topped out higher than 2800 foot Mt. Magazine in Central Arkansas, being eroded over time. The Ouachita Fold Belt, which is 300 million years old, runs from western Dallas County line to just west of Athens. Further, we are as the crow-flies under 500 miles southwest of the New Madrid and this area is criss-crossed with faults from much earlier geological time.

So, my patience is shortest with those that can stir-up all sorts of garbage on social media but can't follow the updates from the US Geological Survey Earthquake Hazard Program. I'm no seismologist for sure, but I can recognize a mountain range that is most likely still growing on tectonic fronts.

Since this area was under water a few million years ago before the Ouachita folded and re-folded a few times in history, my question  is this: is mountain property more valuable that re-claimed  ocean front? Will the new mountains still be called Ouachita? And, will the bells in the bell tower at the University of Dallas ( I think they are rung electronically when a hammer strikes the cast bell rather than the clapper) ring like the church bells did in Boston in 1811? I'll be listening for the bells to ring.

Looking from the former Cowboy's Texas Stadium home toward the bell tower on the campus of the University of Dallas.

Reference:
[1] Baker,R.A.,Bush,R.W., and Baker,E.T. Jr.,1994,Geological history and hydrogeologic settling of the Edwards-Trinity aquifer system west-central Texas: U.S. Geological Survey water-resources Investigation Report 94-4039,50p.

The First Shopping Trip of 2015--I Should Have Stayed in Bed

Thinking that the "worse" of the Christmas returns was over and that it was safe to venture out to shop now, I packed by hand-written, back-of-an-envelope list of errands into my front shirt pocket and headed out. First stop. Walgreen's. Now, this could be a story within itself and maybe down the line somewhere this year, I might get around to posting in.

My after shave isn't anything special. My grandfather used it. My father used it. It was always found on the back shelf behind each barber's chair in any barbershop, even if the chair in the shop didn't have a barber assigned to it at any given time. The company that makes the stuff  celebrated it's 200th anniversary in 2010. It's got those turn-of-the century phrases on the label that reads with sounds of the old-world like "Essence Imported from France" and "Blended in the USA".

My dad got the stuff for me for years until his supplier finally passed on. I searched the cosmetic supply places and Barber Supply places until I was blue in the face. Then one day, I decided that I would try one last time on line. Bingo! There it was. And, it also listed another old smell that I grew up with known to my age group simply as "body splash".  If you were taking a girl to a show or a dance, you splashed a little here and a little there and slicked the combed hair above the ears back on each side and were out the door.

As luck would have it. Walgreen's were out. The guy said that he would call the neighboring Walgreen's to see if they had stock. They did and were holding it at the front counter for me. I could order it from Drugstore.com but the shipping is not cheap--costing as much as a 6-ounce bottle of the stuff. On line the bottles are 12-ounces but you loose half in shipping so buying a 6-ounce locally generally is the better deal. Once or twice a year the 12-ounce bottles are much cheaper and I order the splash and the after shave. It usually last me most of the year after I receive it at the door. I checked out what I did find on my list, bought a couple of Russell Stover's chocolate-covered cream filled hearts. Yeah, mover over Christmas left overs--Valentine's here! Don't you just love the calendar for retail?

My route had to be re-worked as I try to plan out my stops so that the grocery stop is the last stop before home. In this case the drugstore and the grocery store are a half-block from each other and I'm going much farther to get the after shave. I can stop at my other Kroger's. Didn't think about one thing, however.

The next stop was to have a hot bowl of home-made chili at a local greasy spoon. From there, I had to make a return trip because there was no spoon i n the bag of chili. I got a lecture from Gus.  Gus is like that. You get a lecture if you are not ready to order when he arrives at your table to take your order. "No ready? You wait. I take more orders."  I can  remember years ago a greasy spoon with a name like "Rusty Lantern".  They had their Gus, too! He was Sicilian and more gruff! The food came on a sheet of wax paper--no plates. At lunch time, you could stand in line down the sidewalk for half your lunch hour but the food was out of this world.

The bowl of chili got eaten in my car in the parking lot of an alternate and friendly Kroger's. It was now getting close to peak travel time , I wanted to get the shopping done quickly and get home. That was not to be. Not this day. NOT this Kroger's.  

I know that some of you think I pick on Kroger's lately. From both angles, It has only been about the deli and the size of the fried chicken pieces--which now are pretty much uniform--all much smaller! At least it is uniform. And, in Kroger's defense today, it is a jurisdictional issue of Dallas passing a new law that  other suburban cities have not. Plastic Bags. Dallas has banned. My Kroger is in Richardson and it does not effect me. But, today, because of my 200 plus year old  after shave not being in stock at my Walgreen's, I'm at a Kroger in Dallas. Funny thing, I carry bags in my trunk. So, into the truck I went for the bags and headed for the front sliding doors.


Shopping went swiftly with only one isle traffic jam. Then I headed straight for the self-check outs.
Here's the thing. The self-check-outs now have a software add-on if you want to purchase a plastic bag or use you own and you are in the city of Dallas. If you use your own, then you have to clear the space on the counter where you can sit your items purchased because you can't put your items in your own bags until after you

Dallas Stores has the plastic bag ordinance...not the suburban stores like Richardson, Carrollton, Addison,Garland, Cedar Hill, Duncanville, etc.,etc.

check out. It's a weight issue.. No, it's a plastic bag ordinance issue that has unplanned consequences to the ordinance. Won't be using the self-check outs in Dallas Kroger's from now on. The lines now take three times as long to check out.In short--the new law has slowed down the self-checkout lines.

Which One Is Hanna Storm?

 

 Local IA706 in Burbank represents the Make-Up Artists & Hair Stylist Guild.

Wow. When I saw that look on Hanna Storm's face in the much-viewed video of the incident on live television today, I could not help but think of all the little bloops in the past where the newcaster or sportscaster made fun of their situation and keep the stride. Hanna Storm's look and pause, told the true story of her disrespect for someone who gets her to the "stage" as a support person. And that, is why there are unions. Thank goodness the make-up artist has someone to represent her against such an angry person as Hanna Storm from the industry.

Today Was A Productive Day.

The weatherman said that the best day of the next week was going to be today and "you should go out today and enjoy it before the cold really sets in." I checked the National Weather Service website and after reading the discussion section, I was out the door with camera case in under 10-minutes. After checking the gas prices and finding a $1.79 station in the area, I drove to the station and filled up. It's been a long time since I filled my car for $20.69. Then, I pointed  Hildegaard (that's my car's name) toward White Rock and beyond--Great Trinity Forest Way-- beyond. Why? I have pictures!!

If you haven't been out Buckner Boulevard (Loop 12 South) for a while, you will discover that around the Audubon Society's amazing hide-a-way, Buckner, (aka Loop 12) is now renamed Great Trinity Forest Way. Fitting, because it is  the northern top of the heart of the Great Trinity Forest , a 6,000 acre urban forest.

There are a couple of areas down the driveway to park before you must pay for the Audubon and I wanted to see if anything had changed.  It had changed a lot! On the way back out the long drive,  I found two cars of Dallas Police Officers, parked in the free area. Two doing their routine checks and two that were on bicycle duty already out riding. The first two officers were able to answer my questions that I had and my main reason to come out there today. Alongside the roadway inbound, there were piles and piles of dirt being moved around and pipe and tubes and stake flags and bulldozers. I ask the first set of officers if the construction that was visible was the new golf course? I got a big smile from both of them and a strong, YES! So, half my search had ended before it had officially begun. My hunches had paid off. But there was a serendipity to be had as well. AT & T had paid out $2.5 million dollars to add to and expand the hiking and biking trails from the Audubon Society to Elam Road. In fact, between the roadway going into the Audubon and the new golf course construction, the new concrete trail was off through the Great Trinity already.

I shot what is reported to be the 5th green and fairway, of the 400 plus acre complex known as Trinity Forest Golf Course.  The other two offices that was  on their bikes were returning to the parking lot  and yelled out, "hey, how ya doing ?" as they arrived at their patrol car to load up their bikes. I walked over to the car and explained that I had been given direction  from the two earlier officers but I was uncertain about what was meant my a turn location they had given me. The officers on their bikes cleared that up for me.

Reported to be the 5th Green and Fairway at the Trinity Forest Golf Course.

Ribbon Cutting in March,2015

Designed by Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw with Jonas Woods, the birds will already be learning to worm the course by the time it opens in 2016.

The second location? The new and nearly complete Texas Horse Park. I had taken some pictures of riders at the Columbus Day Parade on the Continental Bridge Pedestrian Park and one of the guy said that I should go check it out, that it was going to be amazing. So, I put it on my list of projects to photograph. Later adding the Trinity Forest Golf Course, it fit right in  with the Texas Horse Park as the two locations are within a mile of each other.

On leaving, I drove up 175 to I-45 to Central Expressway (US 75). Somewhere about Walnut Hill Lane there was a plumb of black smoke rising straight up miles ahead. As I am driving north, I'm thinking, that should be about Coit and Beltline. As it turned out, I was two blocks off! I shot the house fire with the help of the Richardson Fire Department and the Richardson Police. Long story short, no one was hurt. The fire came under control and the live feed picked up 20 images on the 48-hour rotation  cycle. Since those images are running on the live feed, I didn't include any of those here.

Edited to change Avenue to Boulevard 07/01/2015

2015 Is Underway--Roll it!

In the course of traveling a little circuit looking for editorial-type images, I come across a lots. Some are downloaded to my Lexar where they stay for 90-days. If I have not re-uploaded for use in this blog by then, they become deleted files. Some good shots have gone away like that because there just wasn't any good use for them. That includes not even selling them as basic stock images. Well, such is life in the big city. Otherwise, I would be paying mega bucks for terabyte storage.

A little sidetrack (pardon this pun as you will see later) here. When I was in college the thing called "new math" was just being taught in schools at most levels through college. No one really got it except people like my brothers and my sister-in-law. She is a cum lade math major. but terabytes--well, the whole Mega, Giga,Tera thing-- is all based on that early "new math". Had some one said to me then, take a 1000 bucks and grow it by another 1000 and you have a million, math would have been so much easier for me instead of talking in terms of powers (i.e. terabyte 4 10 a large allocation of data storage capacity or 2 40 is really 1,099,511,627,776 bytes) gees, a professional star gazer uses those things daily. Any who, ever six months I check to see how many of those things I can get rid of on my computer. 

Back to the travel circuit. In the course of those travels, I have noticed on the BNSF (Burlington Northern Santa Fe) tracks over the Carpenter Freeway just south of Las Colinas, there are always tons of rail road tank cars sitting on the rail road across the Carpenter (we call it the 114). I also know that those tracks go into Carrollton to the rail yard just north of Beltline and Main.  That is also the home of the local short line railroad that is the workhorse of the rail traffic in, through and around Dallas. That would be the DGNO, or Dallas Garland and Northeastern Rail Road, a property of Genesee & Wyoming, the G&W.Those tracks spur off and come back south along Denton Road to Lombardi where a 5 or 6 siding track is always filled with tank cars bearing the ADM logo (Archer Daniels Midland). In the photo, the DGNO is switching out rail cars north of the Denton Road Siding several blocks. In trying to get a better light shot on a gloomy day, I made a turn to the right so that I could make the block and come back around to where I had seen the DGNO engine. In doing so, I came across the ADM building on the corner of the second right turn. There was a truck tanker backed up into the building. Beyond that was a double row of tracks with rows of tank cars and a hopper car. All along side the back walls of two neighboring buildings but most were  bulk tankers.  Know, that solved the mystery of where all those tank cars were going. The rail cars were bulk storage and the truck tankers were either loading a blended mixture or taking their cargo direct from the rail cars. Either way, the operation was all connected to the string of tankers both on the BNSF tracks over the Carpenter and the siding tracks along Denton drive.

The truck tanker was later spotted at a Raceway gas station. Ethanol? Was that a corn cob incorporated into their logo on some of those rail cars? 

Here's the thing: ADM is looking to move its headquarters out of Chicago. The company is listed on the NYSE (New York Stock Exchange). They operate on 6 of the 7 continents. They progressively grow in the right direction and work for a good environment, not a bad one.

In a past reported 10-K filing, they list as either owned or leased:

2,500 Barges

27,400 Rail cars

600 Trucks

52 Oceangoing vessels

So, when George A. Archer, John W. Daniels acquired the Midland Linseed Products Company and founded the company in 1902, later incorporating in 1923, moving to Texas was not in their immediate plans. I hope the board members are beginning to have dreams of moving to Texas!

Tank cars with the ADM logo are a beautiful sight.

Happy New Year from Dallas

Happy New Year 2015

Hope, Peace and Joy