Website re-set with new images and text.

 We have reset the images and text on the website and also re-set the main image on the blog. 

With the upsurge in the Omicron variant, we will be watching football and listening to music while I get things organized for the new year. 

Everyone have a Happy and Safe New Year and hopefully 2022 will be much better than the past two or three years. 

Stay warm, too!  We will have gone 80s to 20°F in just a few days. That's hard on the body for sure. Sunday night it will be 20°F with North winds up to 30 MPH. The wind chill will be awful.

My 36th Year to an Annual Event

 Yesterday, Christmas Eve, I tuned in to my 36th year listening to the 103rd year of broadcast on the BBC and now broadcast are carried by Minnesota Public Radio affiliate. The broadcast is of the Nine Lessons and Carols, live from the 500 year old chapel (really a full scale cathedral) from Kings College, Cambridge in the UK.  The programs run right at one and one-half hours long. They are rebroadcast on Christmas Day afternoons or evening according to info from the voice credits. The chapel is an acoustically and architecturally renowned venue at the college. The choir of boys and college men participate in the service and they also make audio albums that are sold to help offset the cost of the programs and broadcast. 

The services began after WWI in 1918 and have continued since with this years 103rd annual edition. It is not only a program of choral and order of service that I enjoy but is also one that I look forward to each year with great anticipation. New choral pieces along with many of the traditional choral works also being worked into the program. The organ's reverb after releasing a key is about 7 full seconds of echo. Stunning for a 500 year old chapel.

 I have long enjoyed the music of composer John Rudder and the choral works that are premiered annually follow that tradition with the new works and  arrangements of Sir Stephen (1948-2019) Cleobury’s major contribution to progress  of contemporary music into the choir’s repertoire, his commissioning of a new carol each year for the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols was outstanding.Two years one month and 3-days after his death, I miss my old radio, choir and organist friend. He, Sir Stephen, once gave a recital in Houston and in Dallas. He was fully Anglican but believed that other religions deserved to appreciate choral works as a whole.

After listening to the service, I bid some of my Twitter buds a Happy and Merry Christmas and New Years. One of those buds, God@The Tweet of God, had posted the tweet below. After reading the tweet, I must admit that I liked this person almost instantly solely from his tweet that I will reference here:

Will the owners of the blue planet

between Venus and Mars

please attend to your vehicle.

It is over heating.

So cleaver and on point. My hats off to you. And thank you Owen Coffin, for sending that tweet to me as one of your retweets. 

Next came me baking off my Christmas pumpkin pie. And yes, I had a very warm piece one half hour out of the oven to see if it was really done inside. It passed inspection and most definitely a piece will appear on my Christmas Dinner desert plate. 

I've got to get outside today with the temps setting records for highs and for overnight lows. It will be by forecast an odd Christmas with 83° F high. Yesterday was 74°F in an afternoon official reported period. I might be holding off cooking the bird until later just so I can get out in this weather. But, cleaver me, I have a web cam that I view in the Sierra Mountains and it is snowing up a storm there with several feet on the ground and beautiful mountain peaks covered white with snow that also is clinging to the fir trees branches. So, virtually, I did have a white Christmas this year as  I watched the Amtrak Zephyr make its run through the mountains on its Chicago to Emeryville,California route. I have ridden the Zephyr from Chicago to Denver but have on my bucket list to ride it from Denver to Emeryville (Oakland). But with Covid and various strains, I might not be able to accomplish that. The clock is ticking. 

The evening was filled with watching the local broadcast of the Parade of Lights in downtown Ft. Worth. It was two hours of beautiful lighted cars,buses,firetrucks,marching bands all illuminated with Christmas lights. and  Shriner's yellow Corvets. A nighttime parade of that magnitude was pulled off by Cowtown with class. 

 

                The pictures below are not part of the nighttime Christmas Eve parade in Ft.Worth

            

Note the 1959 Chevrolet taillights in the display.

Getting In The Groove Now

Today, the temperatures soared to 76°F. Tomorrow and for several days after we will be in the setting or breaking record temperatures for the warmest December on record here in Dallas. After being in the house for three days, it was time to get out and see if I could do some bus riding and shopping along the way as if I had my car again. It worked out swell. Last week I tried a test run to see if I could make the connections and that went well, also. But, today, it was on the go while doing some shooting, catch another bus and shop a store I don't get to like I did when I had the car. Then, catch a third bus and ride it toward home, but instead made a route change and transferred to a bus that will bring me back home without having the go into a nearby community and then home. As it was, I had been at the stop for only a few minutes as the bus appeared on the horizon. I was home at my regular time the same as if I had only been out shooting the afternoon away and made my regular route home. It was a well deserved pat on the back and that means---after dinner, eating one of those delicious apple fritters I bought a couple of buses and a transfer back. And, I didn't even have to go to the train station I normally go to as a stop on the way outbound for the afternoon. While two of the buses did hit two train stations, I stayed onboard and stuck with the plan.  Bottom line was I didn't even ride a train today. 

Tomorrow I will be  in house until after the annual Nine Lessons and Carols from Kings College Cambridge broadcast from  the UK. I have listened to the fabulous service for more than 25 years now. It kind of starts my Christmas off on the right foot so-to-speak. While it will be a record breaking next three days in the 80s and I would rather have snow, the future of snowy Christmases is greatly growing less frequently according to a scientific report that had looked at that very thing in terms of global warming. Sad. Just like people won't go get vaccinate or boosted, neither will they do anything to reduce their carbon footprint until it is beyond the point of no return, which will be to late then, actually. 

University of North Texas in Denton, played Miami University of Ohio, a Mac Conference team made up of members with U of Toledo, Bowling Green of Ohio, Ohio University, Athens, Kent State, and of course the Michigan Mac teams of Eastern Michigan, Western Michigan. I might have omitted one, but I'm getting old now. Miami won the game and while I do like what U of North Texas has accomplished, I had football emotions toward these two teams. Didn't thing I would, but I did. 

I have been playing thermostat roulette with TXU since the "no power" winter this past February. My utility bill with TXU has been some of the lowest totals with one of the highest rates for electricity so go figure (actually,I have,but TXU gave us our energy dashboard to watch our usage and I spreadsheet daily activity where I use an amazing but only $0.84 when I am out of the house with my camera shoots.It's kind of a fun game especially when it comes time to pay the piper!!! 

The bird is ready to go Christmas Day. I'll cook off the pie tomorrow. Might even have a piece of it tomorrow, too. The rest of the meal for me is an easy do. I was thinking about ordering my New Years Day meat in but I saw an article about how Kroger has an over 300% markup on cut meats and I'm not buying  a whole rib loin--especially from Kroger, now. I've known for some time that their campaign about prices being lower than lower or  fresh for everyone was a rouse. After 60 years of being loyal to Kroger, their so-called lower prices has been on my radar for sometime. I used to by Lipton Tea jars for $3 and change. But suddenly last year they jumped their price to over $5 a jar while Walmart still has the same product at the $3 and change to this day. I go to Aldi to buy their coffee and buy three jars at a time and then I go to Walmart and buy 3 jars of tea each time I need to restock, which reminds me, I am getting a bit low on both now. 

So, I'm pretty much accepting the fact that loyalty to a store means nothing anymore. Fifty years at AT&T down the tube, 60 years at Kroger down the tube, I had to fight with Medicare to stay at Walgreens for my prescriptions. My grandmother would take me to the fountain at Walgreens as a kid and we would have lunch. A tuna melt sandwich, a limeade and a piece of banana cream pie! That was a regular routine and it was reinforced last month when I was at the Festival at the Rail Yard in Carrollton . I went into the Rainbow Fountain  & Grill,downtown and the first thing I saw was the row of old fashion colored swivel stools. Then I had an old fashioned milk shake and a piece of Texas Sheet Cake.

No one knows what 2022 will bring but my bucket list is doing the things that I have been doing that remind me of my grandmother, my mom and my son, who's cremains rest in a niché in a massive and beautiful mausoleum in the Great Lakes. My Dad is buried in a National Cemetery and I have paid my respect to him where he now rest. Funny how the end of a year marks a flood of memories. But that is not all bad. It keeps me sane. I took my mom home to be buried next to her father and my grandfather. The grave next to my mom is reserved for me. There will lie three generations on my maternal side. My Walgreen grandmother rest half way between my mom and me here in Texas. So, as we near that countdown to the new year, I wish each of you a happy and prosperous new year where ever y'all are. 

 

Be Kind To Your Weatherman Because

 He is just a baby learning. Weather records have only been kept since late 1869 when the weather service began with a telegraph in Cincinnati collecting reports for the formation of weather charts and the tabulations. That's the human side of the equation. 

The big equation is that the earth is estimated by geological records from across the globe to be 4.6 Billion years old. Now. That is about 4,599,999,548 years without records. Go Figure!! What do we really know about the earth's weather? Give the weather people a break. And as a more somber thought, we have used up already, half of the earth's life. You do not want to be on the earth when the oxygen is fully gone. 

Now, if you really want to think about that at this beautiful time of the year, I suggest that you go to YouTube with the link that I am going to provide here. It's six hours of beautiful piano holiday music and nothing but snow on pine trees scenes.Basically from what I can see so far, it's in the Sierra Mountains. But that is not confirmed.However, I do see some scenes that I recognize, I think.

Link:  A must hear to keep from stripping your gears as you prepare for Christmas and the Holiday season.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBSm9OH-pcw

Enjoy and Everyone have a safe and wonderful Christmas.

From SMU/Mockingbird Station to City Line Plano

                                            SMU/Mockingbird

                                            I'm liking City Line More Each Time I Visit.
 

 Upon arriving at City Line/ Bush Station the construction of all the new apartments has more than doubled since my last trip up there. Where I get off the train and walk the area  includes the several buildings of State Farm Insurance Regional Office Towers 1,2 and 3. The restaurants, hotels and offices are built on what I remember was a hay field at Renner Road and Plano Road just north of what is known as Lookout.  It's a different type of interesting place. By that, I mean, it is unusual. It is  quaint. It is sprawling. It is a mix of residential and commercial. It is medical. Nestles in between the George Bush Turnpike and  North Central Expressway which I call the NCX aka US 75. It's pretty bad in Dallas now with the President George Bush Turnpike (that's 41) and the George Bush (with a section re-named for 43  around Mockingbird and NCX.  A street in University Park on the campus of SMU is also named after 43 next to his Library.  Then there is the Sam Rayburn for highway 121 and let us not forget the LBJ which was smart. For example, the LBJ and NCX is so much easier and for those that are now lost, that's the High 5. Interstate 635 and US 75. 

That's the driving part. I like it because it is just one name for train riders. But, still, it has the word Bush connected to it. City Line/Bush Station. That will soon be tempered with the addition of the Silver Line at City Line/Bush station, which was the purpose of the trip to see the station progress. Much to my surprise, the station, is just west of the Dart light rail's City Line/ Bush platform. There, you can see the steel girders coming up out of the cement platforms with the pilings going up to raise the grade over the NCX northbound. as it turns more southerly toward the UT Dallas campus in the Frankfort and Campbell area east of Coit road and just south of the Bush Turnpike. Are you totally confused, yet?

The progress is taking shape more rapidly I suppose because of the good non-winter weather where workmen can make "hay" (pardon the pun) while the sun shines with record temps for December. And so did I while shooting more images thus far this December than any single month from my first surgery in 2019. Also, yesterday's trip was the best and longest walk that I have had this year. Still, a bit short of my 9-mile record for one outing but progress is being made. I even felt good walking and didn't have the muscle pain in my legs afterwards.

I will say this. Dallas does have a hodgepodge way of naming streets that must be anchored in some historic cattle drive notebook or something. I have been in a lot of major cities and have a good sense of direction, but here in Dallas, it is the only place where you start out on one street and never get off of it and it has a different name at the end than where it started. Miller Road/Royal Lane. And, there are many examples of that.  If things like that bother you, looky here. A street can start our north and south and end up east and west. How 'bout them cowboys and I don't mean the The Tuna's version of a football team or Jimmy Johnson's version, either. Don't get me wrong. I love Dallas. Always have. Always will.

People Movers to Connect Old Valley View Mall with Galeria and Knoll Trail Station of the new Silver Line

 Over the years, from the art collections studios that took over Valley View Mall prior to groundbreaking ceremony that started its demolition,

                                                    It's been a long time after this event

                                                But, never giving up hope for the future

piles of steel from duck work, structural beams and bar joist to the Mural of tiles on the old Macy store that was once was the older Sanger Harris, haunt  in-style fashion rags with an equally stylish price tag, is now ready to rise again from the Firebird dust anew. 

Now, the developer is ready to start the construction where a central park will be surrounded by hike and bike trails, housing, offices, and once again become something stylish for North Dallas, especially when the people movers (like the Las Colinas and DFW International ones) are working and the Silver Line diesel electric European-style smooth and quiet rail (much like the new Trinity TEXrail  that will share its terminal B with the Silver Line) will become even more than just a commuter line. In fact, it most certain will bring back the great escape of the northern (suburban) masses back into the city as it should be.

  

It has been a long time in coming, but it now includes the Galleria  Dallas to the eastern edge of the Dallas North Tollway back to Preston Road. Basically, metaphorically the main  street of Highland Park.

Silver line Construction Activity Hotline Number 972-833-2856

Silver Line will look much like this

People movers are reported to be much like this

esclaters at Macy's (former Sanger Harris)

                                                                One of the anchor stores

The Weather is doing Pushups Again. BTY, Palms are NOT a Texas Christmas Tree

 The last two days the high temperatures here in North Texas broke records for each day. The Thursday high broke a past 79°F high that was broken from last year. This year for today, we hit 84° F. Another new high. Cold front comes through tonight with jackets tomorrow. 

 Spending the day inside was not in my plans, but my list of things that had to get done took up most of my day. For a bit, I was able to get out to get the mail and walk a couple of blocks. Then, I got a text from the USPS that I had a package to be delivered. Since I had just checked my mail with nothing looking like a package, it was back inside to restart the computer, check the email again where the time of delivery had been changed to later in the day. Long story shorter. The package came just before the extended time of delivery and pretty much shut down any trips of short durations. The longer trips take a much earlier start. 

 The good part is that the mid 70's return mid week.So, there are still plans to get some good late fall shots before winter really sets its anchor as being here. In the meanwhile, I'll keep looking for some good shots. Plans were to try to upgrade two of my lenses. But prices are so high right now, even the Scotch blood in me won't pay those prices. If the economy takes a turn back to more normal economic levels and the supply chain (which won't ever return to normal) does fall back closer to where it was before, I'll start looking at lenses again. Until then, it's make do with what I have.

 

 

                                           In some places, this is considered  a Christmas Tree.

                     

Convention Center Fate Put on Temporary Hold

 City Council has put the fate of the convention center on a temporary hold. It's time to go watch the red needles and palms point-counter-point the leaves changing while the oak trees do their thing on the opposite side of the rail tracks. And, while we wait for City Council again. Now, that doesn't seem to make a lot of sense to some people that I know, but God love them, they never did know how to stop and smell the roses anyway. Had they done so, their visionary look on life would have been at a whole different level. Having said that, I've made some new discoveries that have me planning into the first half of 2022 already. 

On Sunday, I was on one of my discovery missions. In the past, I would do one of those trips about every four months. Now, I do one about every three weeks. Riding the buses and trains has expanded the little pockets that I had missed or overlooked in the past using my wagon wheel system of covering the metroplex. While it did generate a lot of stock work, it missed some of the more detailed things that I love in architecture and nature. It also opened up new windows of opportunity to see more things that are beneficial to my expanding interest in textures that make for fantastic abstract creations. 

In things to come, the use of the new versions of Photoshop are being cemented into the plans for a new line of cards that are  mainly greeting and note types, but the postcards have abstracts on the photo side. I have experimented in the Zazzle area for this. It peaked a level of interest where I went looking for some of my old friends in the printing business that I had used for years in the Great Lakes. My stationary company competed with landmark department stores in the wedding announcements, and funeral thank you cards became a mainstay to my, then, photography hobby since childhood. 

In my junior high years, I had learned how to set type in a small town newspaper and had also learned how to run an old Mergenthaler hot type linotype  machine. To this day, I have had opportunities to sit down and take old slugs and block new slugs of type into place to run on a letterpress printing press just  to see if I could still do it. This time, however, just for fun to help refresh and past techniques and bring them into the upgrade to the most modern Photo Shop experience. However, I continue to uphold the non-use of photo shop to change my images where they involve people or editorial images. The only place any use of photo shop will be on textures used to make abstract designs. 

In the meanwhile, I continue to search for the most common of things to photograph from a totally different outlook on what is now part of new technology. I have been looking into the new 50 megapixal cameras but they have been shifted in the budget because of the Covid-19 experiences world wide. Sales and use of stocks are rebounding back to near pre-Covid-19 levels, however, the market has changed (and not for the better) from the likes of Social Media that created thousands upon thousands of self-appointed experts in what the stock business is all about. It's a two-blade sword in my opinion and others that  I communicate with, in what's happening with the stock business. In the long-run, we, as a society, will pay the price for that somewhere beginning in the near future.

                                                        Two stories up to get this shot.

Back on the ground again. 

And I used to tell my old AP friend that he was nuts to climb out on an steel beam 50 stories up to get a shot of steel workers having their lunch on a beam.

It's Just A Thought, but Texas Central Railroad's Bullet Train is

passing very, very,very close to Mustang, Texas.The smallest town in Texas with a population of 21. It's the same little 77 acres that Dallas Maverick owner, Mark Cuban just purchased and said in media reports that he did a friend a favor and he didn't know what he would do with the town, if anything. 

Remembering, of course, Cuban IS  of  an entrepreneurial spirit to begin with. The environmental studies passed and have been certified. The law suits that challenged the Constitutional base that Texas Central Railroad is not a railroad is coming up on the court docket in early 2022. That case and others cited Amtrak as being a very much defined railroad has helped to overturn and reverse previous cases filed by property owners and higher courts reversing the lower courts decisions. 

This is a very important legal issue that Texas needs with it's growing hub for transportation in the area of an inland port to handle intermodal containers on the rails. But, my gut feeling is that Mustang, Texas is going to end up being a very important part of that Texas Central Alignment Route along the Union Pacific tracks.It also has the great potential of putting an amazing piece of passenger comfort in Dallas, Arlington and Ft.Worth.

Just think how much fun, as well as a time saving and parking fees eliminator if you could ride Dart or TRE or TEXrail or Silver Line or A-Train to a Cowboys game; Rangers game; or a Mavericks game or a Star's Hockey  game at the AAC. And let's not forget the recent talk that the Dallas Convention Center may be closer to a wrecking ball than any of us know, plus the new convention center would  just so happens to be re-aligned very near the new Bullet Trail Station on the west side of Lamar south of I-30. Or even on top of it.  The bigger picture is being painted piece by piece and as of yet I have heard no one even thinking about how it all fits together. Let Mark and the others make their money and just give us civilians that train.  Dallas Metroplex needs this if we are to be the Chicago of the South. We are so close.The private landowners need to also realize in Texas Spirit  that this project is bigger than any of them, or anyone person  individually. It is for the greater good of all Texans overall in the end chapter.

Walked 4-miles following things connected to wires.

On every outing of a bus or train, the look for interesting things to photograph is always top priority. In fact, so much, that I have been known to see something and get off the bus or train at the next stop and walk back to were I had seen the items that had caught my eye. When I was using my car to do these discovery missions, many times have I turned around and gone back to find what I had seen was less photographic than I had seen from the bus or train because of light and angles of where the items were actually located. While other times, it has been a gold mind of sorts. So, as in life, you take the lumps and bumps as they appear.

Over the past couple of weeks or so, I have noticed a staging of sorts, for things to come and that peaked my curiosity. So, as I went that way over the several days, things begin to take shape so with this amazing late November and December weather, yesterday was the day that I pushed the button on the bus requesting a stop. I saw the first pieces that were being staged. Getting off the bus, I walked four miles effortlessly (the most since my last surgery) finding the shots getting more interesting as I went along. Plus, there was new learning as I moved along the path laid out by the contractor. At the end of the path was a CVS drug store. I went in, bought a bottle of cold water and kit kat and had an interesting chat with the front end manager. From there it was about a quarter of a mile to the next bus stop and waiting for it watching the mad rush of cars sailing by passed the time outside the new VA hospital in Garland. At the transit center, it was dodging the construction there, as DART is raising all the platforms to one level. Got off a stop to soon and took a lemon and made lemonade out of that flub and then got off the bus one stop short of where I needed to be. I still haven't had my mind catch up to were I was in real time when two short stops came about, but I lived to tell the story.  As they say in mid-town Manhattan: "you'll have that from time-to-time, yes you will!" And so it was, I found myself cooking a great dinner and sat down to watch to lighting of the Christmas Tree at 30 Rock.

Today was spent inside, when it reached 81°F. editing and submitting images from yesterdays shoot. I had a fun time texting my youngest son and I think that I will order in groceries on Saturday rather than tomorrow, so I can have one last day before the rain moves in. Then the roller coaster begins from 80's to mid 50's°F. The early sunsets we are currently in will last a few more days before the morning sun rises start to come up a bit later in the morning and the early sunsets will make the day grow even shorter as winter sneaks up on North Texas.