Where Did The Water Go?

The local media has been all over the depressing levels of area lakes from a weather angle. They aren't even excited about the Zebra muscle threat by running stories a couple of times and then not being well educated in the problem at hand. Zebra muscles arrived in the ballast tanks of international ships that bring goods to this country, particularly in the Great Lakes. While ships are tied to the docks and  cargo is being unloaded, the ballast tanks are blown out into the fresh water of any of the five Great Lakes where they are docked. Zebra muscles are non-native species and thrive in  the conditions  of the lakes.

Spreading quickly, zebras soon were clogging Great Lakes water-intakes  and spread by boaters that do not wash off their boats completely before putting their boats back into another lake. Well, zebras have made their way to North Texas and just in a few years have spread from Lake Texoma  to neighboring lakes. While Zebras are no laughing matter, combined with the drought and dropping levels in the water supply, The concern should be more of a concern for the media than it has been the past couple of years.

 I've lived through the infestation of Zebras in a metropolis that got their drinking water from the Great Lakes. It isn't a pretty sight. Yesterday, I went in search of visible low lake levels and I found them. I didn't see a single boater washing down their boats after pulling them from the lake. Check out these pictures.


The Marinas have actually trapped boats  in their slips where the boats cannot get out.

The boat ramp is so low, the boats are being loaded and discharged a full truck-length farther down the ramp.

On the Rockwall side of Lake Ray Hubbard, the water marks on the wall measures a full 7-feet down to the current water levels.

I'm 35 cents East and 50 cents West

Humor is one of life's equalizers. It equalizes good. It equalizes bad. It smooths out the bumps in life. It comes from many places as the late night shows hosts will be the first to tell you. Look what Toronto Mayor, Rob Ford has done for Jimmy Kimmel. Listen to the guys that play the Comedy Central Circuit. They get their material from every day life.

It seems to me that when one laughs at yourself there is more good that comes from that than we know at the time. When the morning routine of checking email, balancing the checkbook and checking  on the website over morning coffee usually, I take the dawg out for a walk. For those of you that don't know, The Dawg is my cat.  Today, it was overcast and growing darker as a dry line and cold front lingered north and west of here. Knowing full well that I had better get to the grocery store and run my errands before the afternoon, I headed out into a pouring down rain.

New Express and Toll Lane Signs that change in amount as the traffic becomes heavier.

After getting an error corrected at one of the stores that I had shopped earlier in the week, I was coming down LBJ at Preston when I realized that I had a coupon for a free donut when you purchased a medium coffee at Dunkin Donuts. So, I drove the extra three blocks, got a donut and coffee and returned back to LBJ.  It came to me as I passed the new EXPRESS Lane sign with the toll rates for East bound and West bound traffic. The next time someone ask me how I'm doing, I'm gonna say " I'm 35-cents East and 50-cents West. Thanks so much for asking!".

 

The Santa Fe Trail -- Bike Trail

A three-mile walk on a beautiful Spring day did my soul good as much as it aided my heart.  Although, by the end of the walk, I was sweating like a leaky garden hose and my hat rim was soaked. The liter bottle of water was all that kept me going. It was an increasing humidity as the afternoon warmed. The sky stayed that deep blue and the pictures popped!

New signs were up for the Santa Fe Bike Trail. I picked it up at the White Rock Lake Trail at the spillway parking lot. Last fall, I did it on my bike when it was still fairly new. Walking it was a new experience as a new opening in the trail opened up to a dog park and a restaurant and bar named, The Dog. I found that interesting that there was an opening to a private business, but it did give access to residents in the area. From the old fish hatchery it was pretty much chain linked along the walk way over two foot bridges that cross streets before it opens up again.

The old Katy Rail Road line that continues from the Katy Trail Extension and the White Rock Lake Trail north of the boat house winds its way around to the Santa Fe Trail south of Gaston where the trail tied into the Kansas City Southern tracks, which is actually, the continuation of the Atchison Topeka and Santa Fe's original tracks in Dallas. Those tracks can be traced from Denton down through Plano crossing Greenville Avenue at  Arapaho near the Dart Red Line's Arapaho Center Station. It continues to  wind south west of Plano Road down to Northwest Highway and crosses Loop 12 (Buckner Blvd) going toward the trestle seen here at the north end of Tennyson Golf Courses.

The Santa Fe Trail from where I stopped to shoot the trestle and the old switch line, the trail bends south by southwest going into Fair Park and Deep Ellum. Total miles from White Rock Lake Trail Head to Deep Ellum is 4.5 miles. It has come a long way since last fall. There is a previous post about the new Trinity Sky View Trail that is just opened.  It can be an all day bike ride now, using 7-Eleven and other like stores to pick up lunch and snacks along the way.  No need to pack a picnic. I learned years ago to take long bike rides and eat as you go. Pick up something and the find a spot on the trail or near the trail to stop for meals and snacks. It works great. And, you have no gear to carry other than water.



New Santa Fe Tail Sign



American History and Beauty






This is hard to believe that something so beautiful can be found in the heart of a Urban center of 5 million people.

Deep Ellum: From Painting the Tunnel Walls to This!

The 20th Annual Deep Ellum Arts Festival kicked off on Friday for it's three-day run. With so much going on in Dallas this weekend, it wasn't that hard to decide which event would be more fun. Before arriving at the Deep Ellum Arts Festival, I went by the "Party in the Park at Reunion Park". Sure, there was some big name entertainment names (Springsteen will close the event on Sunday).

The Anatole was loaded with tour buses for the final four teams. People were forming long lines to park and go inside just to slap the hands of the four teams players as they came out to board the buses to take them to Jerry's World aka AT & T Stadium in Arlington.  There was just to much basketball for me. I remember my college days and the NCAA hype. I guess that been there, done that, while exciting at the time,  moves a rung up or a  rung down the ladder depending which way you stack the events over time.

I have always liked Deep Ellum. It has undergone change, both good and bad, over the years. The days of the old school bus painting of  "California or Bust" as the film festival grew, are just memories now. So are the annual painting of the tunnels on Good Latimer. The tunnels are filled in  now, covered in Dart tracks for the Green Line and two Deep Ellum stations on it's way toward Fair Park and Mt. Pleasant. Some of the businesses that were there when Bonnie and Clyde hung out in Deep Ellum are still there today.  Rudolph's Meats and Sons of Herman come to mind for an example. Bars have come and gone and made comebacks even. So have some restaurants. But, artist, musicians, and film companies have been the glue that have held the canvas of Deep Ellum together.

So, I guess before I knew it, I already did know it that I would end up at the Deep Ellum Arts Festival. And that I did, going directly to my favorite little parking spot where it cost me fifty cents to park for 5-hours. The one thing about parking in Deep Ellum is that you most likely will end up with a parking ticket if you don't park in "controlled" parking  lots. And with the major capital improvements going on with street and water projects not due to be done until fall of 2014, meter parking is all but out on Elm or  Commerce Street or Canton. Main being out by default as the festival was on Main Street from Hall Street west to Good Latimer. One of the things that I like about the Deep Ellum Festival is that largely, it is an adult event except for being totally pet friendly. Sunday was on my agenda to attend but the 90% coverage of rain forecast will cut that out this year. As I was leaving on Saturday, vendors were already putting out their Rain Sale signs. Still, it was enjoyable to be absorbed in eclectic people, talent from the four live stages, street performers, chalk art and the like. Not to mention running into old friends that one sees but once a year at the Deep Ellum Arts Festival. Here are some images from Saturday.

My favorite Hat Vendor! I love the color. Some lady needs one of these for the up-coming Kentucky Derby! Really.

My thanks to these wonderful people (both here and below) who were all about what Deep Ellum really is--good people!

This is my favorite. When I ask if I could have a picture of her or the corn dogs, her laugh was like hearing my mom's laugh when she was truly happy.  

Omega Co-Axial Chronometer Commercial

Well,  a while back, I posted on the sidebar (under the heading: Have You Noticed?) my discovery of a very enjoyable commercial with tons of class, I might add. Very seldom do I go to YouTube because I don't watch videos that remind me of the worse television show in history where people either do dumb things without thought or they plan them, get hurt and wonder why they got hurt. At any rate, the Omega commercial has now hit over 1.2 million views with 6-thousand plus likes to the 2 or 3 hundred who didn't like it. (They were probably filming their next video that I will never watch.)

Here are a few things about that commercial:

The song was composed by Harry Gregson-Williams. The title is called, "Smiling" from the Motion Picture, " Man on FIre " starring Denzel Washington.

In the commercial, the movements are:

1. The Sail Boat --because it was used in the America's Cup. Omega is the official clock of the race.

2. The Aston Martin--  because James Bond used it.

3. The Bike Race-- because it was run in the Olympics.

4. The Moon Walk-- because it was the first watch on the moon.

The deep baritone voice (thought not confirmed, is most likely that of Voice Over Voice Actor, Paul Dobson.

If you would like to view this amazing commercial, you can go to YouTube.com and search for the Omega Co-Axial Chronometer. It's well worth the time.

edited to add the name of the song and composer.

Hum! The related post will follow

Since last check on my hive, the bees not only survived the winter but have begun to wax in the opening for more control of the hive's temperature.



A feel of Transylvania in Dallas.

It takes courage and strength, even today, as these words were spoken after the death of Moses as the sign suggest with the Old Testament Book of Joshua 1.

Business Eats Business Eats Business, Then..........

Marketing has always been my thing since my grandfather showed me how to move a box on the counter of his grocery store with a candy bar in it and then watch how customers responded. I was 5. Since then, I have watched marketing  "experts" with amusement. I have seen trends become fads become must-haves and then tank (e.g. the hula hoop and others). I laugh today to hear people talking about a new trend as if it was only "their generation" word.

The key is to learn about cycles. Every thing is in a cycle.  Cycles run day to day, week to week, month to month and year to year. There are some that run bigger cycles like  11 and 13 and 18 year cycles. While the moon cycles every 30 days, the big picture is that the moon actually cycles on 18 years made of many months of 30 day cycles. Marketing is no different. Fashion cycles over time which triggers marketing cycles. So are the cycles of business as they grow, or as they fail.  I happen to like the business of heavy industry from the standpoint of  how it cycles in mergers and mega-mergers that sometimes at first glance do not make a whole lot of sense. It does, however,  takes on the character of art. I'm always looking for examples of heavy industry. That is why you get so many pictures of planes and trains! But those are refined examples.

Several days ago, a couple of pictures came together that could be viewed as chapters in a book  if I had an interest in writing one. The thought has crossed my mind several times, but my driving interest is in the discovery of threads that make up the woven fabric of the story. Like the one that is about to unfold.

This post will be an example of that. It will be a bit more lengthy than most post.

 Not so many years ago,(early 1966) the space program was under way. Later, the shuttle program used ceramic tiles that were made by a company in Waterville, Ohio named Johns Manville. They are an insulation company with a building material division. Martin Marietta is a defense contractor with a building materials division.  It was the first time that such materials were used on a space craft used for re-entry into the earths atmosphere.

At about the same time, (1946) there was a company in Dallas, Texas that made cement and aggregates for construction. They expanded into the two biggest grow states, Texas and California. Building airports and expressways that just fit as a logical source of revenue.

Florida Steel began operations in 1956. Florida Steel not only supplied the state with construction materials such as reinforcing bars and channels and angle bar, as well as ornamental squares and rounds, it exported a great deal to the islands like the Bahamas and others in the greater and lesser Antilles in the Caribbean Islands.

The Rogers family in Texas is well entrenched. Ralph, a long-time friend of St. Mark's School, his son, Robert, a member of the Federal Reserve Board and Jamie, the COO of Texas Industries (TXI).

Somewhere in there the Rogers co-founded Chaparral Steel in Midlothian, Texas. They also built a large cement plant in Midlothian that most in North Texas are familiar with, but may not realize that it is only one of three plants that TXI now owns

In the mid 1970's integrated steel mills in America were beginning to dismantle themselves. The new fad, the trend was heading toward mini mills.. The easiest way to describe a mini mill is instead of an integrated steel mill rolling all products that made up their complete rolling schedules,  a mini mill will take one or two, sometimes three, like products and roll nothing but those products, An integrated mill might schedule bar products for two weeks during the year, one in the spring and one in the fall. That would include round bars, round wire rod by coil  and reinforcing bar. A mini mill would roll only those three items every week throughout the year. The next major change between an integrated mill and a mini mill is its size. It's a much smaller operation under one roof, where an integrated mill would still be under one roof, that roof may stretch for miles. And the final difference is the number of people working in the mill. An integrated mill would have 50,000 employees. A mini mill might have 400 including office staff.

So what does all this mean? It means that marketing people and others, should be paying more attention to how companies morph into monster industries.  In short, a defense contractor buys an aggregates company that  co-founded a steel company that became part of the melt down of American steel companies as we once knew  as the backbone of this country that has consumed nearly every  established mill  in this country from east coast to west coast, Minnesota to Florida. with headquarters in Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil.

The net results is a company that will own over 400 stone quarries, several distribution yards, mines and plants that includes all but 14 states in the US from the Caribbean Islands to the Arctic Circle. One that makes ballistic missiles, fighter air craft, satellites, Atlas launch vehicles and munitions to name only a few.

While Gerdau, the Brazilian steel maker since 1901, has no connection now with the new Martin Marietta Material, since Chaparral Steel was connected to the Rogers family, it does resemble a propagation of  a business in general that is a world leader. In short, three separate companies cycled into two hugh and separate businesses and the genealogy is all connected.  Who would have thunk!

Rail Cars Being Loaded. Hard to imagine that the new Parent of the parent builds Atlas Launch Vehicles, Radars, Munitions to name a few.

Rail Cars Waiting to be Switched Out of the TXI Aggregates

An engine sits ready to move cars onto a siding that will make up a train. Above, a Southwest flight with landing gear already down, is on a final to Love Field.

edited for correction of omitted text.
edited to clarify  the association of Johns Manville and Martin Marietta. I have visited the JM plant over the years and have seen some of the changes they have been forced to endure. I hold no interest to burden them in any way in this article. JM is now owned by Berkshire Hathaway,