Consequences Not Intended Lead to Double Problems

Arthur Gordon, wrote in one of his inspirational books that tells about how everything of consequence begins. When I first read his chapter it was an eye-opener nearly 40-years ago. Now, it has been "nailed up in my mind" to paraphrase Gordon, and I see examples of it every day. Law students know that laws are crafted with an intent behind them. A consequence before hand  if you will.

It got me to thinking. Cigarettes had  a bad down side long after the health problems were made for debate. The down side I'm talking about are the discarded cigarette butts. Long after the paper wrap around the filter is returned to nature, it is the fiber of the filter that hangs on a years afterwords. Many still stuck in cement cracks and  the like long after the smoker has died and was buried. It is a double consequence to smoking cigarettes. As Gordon wrote, "Perhaps, this is the way every thing of consequence begins".

So, Sunday, I drove a few large parking lots looking for the second consequence to the smoking situation. It didn't take long to find examples. It was an unintended consequence to driving people away from,cigarettes. Turns out it is now  spent vape canisters--the modern version of a cigarette filter. So in trying to help or cause people to make life decisions legally by banning smoking in specific areas, the unintended consequence is now two-fold. We still have smokers of cigarettes. Even at $5.00 plus a pack. They are still discarded over bridge railings, from balconies of apartments, out car windows along roadsides , riverbanks, parks, and businesses. We all have seen that consequence of smoking (health is a totally different topic here). Now, instead of just filters, we have filters and canisters. A double whammy. These were discarded after a Friday Night Lights evening in Texas---a football game under the lights.

Click on any image to enlarge all three images.

The most popular type found. In reality, cigarette butts were a better consequence as for the environment.

Another type of vape dispenser

The Watch refill

The Steamboat Was Back On The Lake Yesterday

Several years ago when I heard (before I saw) the sound of a steamboat whistle, it just didn't fit. At first, I tried to write it off. It is just not possible to have a steamboat on this lake.Well, I was proven wrong when I saw  coming across the water,  a guy standing at the helm with long leather gloves, one hand stretched forward and resting on a piece of equipment.

The Dallas Morning News had published an article about the guy who built the steamboat from an old sailboat. It was amazing. Hearing a true steam whistle was a sound that is so distinct you always know that sound from any other.

About a month ago I saw the guy and his boat back on the lake. Then Sunday, I saw him on the lake  going up White Rock Creek under the Mockingbird Bridge. Later in the day, the guy from Hooters drove his little boat car drove down the boat ramp and was going across the water with people running with their cameras to snap a shot of something that they had never before seen. In fact, it is this last statement that has brought me back to the lake time and time again over the past 20 years. Its the unusual. The different. Always something different. And it is these very things that will bring back all the people who were running for the boat ramp with their cameras trying to get a picture of the little car puttering across the water for years to come. I could not bring myself to ask those people if any of them saw the steam boat?

 Click on any of the images to enlarge all three for better viewing.

See the two steam whistles in from of the pipe stack?

If you are interested in the boat car....there is a post in the archive with pictures.

Flag Pole Hill With Drone Here Is The Lady Ghost Images

Click on any image to enlarge.

 Special Post For Those Learning About The History of Flag Pole Hill and White Rock Lake flying drone.


post was of 10-3-2018. 

Colors Have Arrived In North Texas In The Middle Of Tornado Damage

In reverse order of Spring moving north, colors move south at about the same rate of speed---20 miles per day. Just as learned in 5th grade biology, nature is based on math and formulation of equations, but in science, that is what you want. You want that reassurance that nature is still running a tight ship, which she does. Never-the-less the colors for another season has arrive and they are spectacular already.

The city crews are out picking up the miles and miles of tree branches and trunks between the streets and sidewalks for the second storm of the season. I have seen hugh tracks of vacant land filling up with semi-high stacks of branches with brown leaves now as they have died on the limbs that were fallen. I wonder sometimes how colorful those branches would have been had they not been dropped by the tornadoes that stuck a path of destruction across north Texas---especially the Metroplex area with 10 confirmed tornadoes that dreadful night of the outbreak.

One tree that I miss so much is the sugar maple. While our Oaks pretty much match the vivid colors of the maples, its those wide and broad leaves that shine and glimmer with color this time of year. Halloween  in the Great Lakes have that smell of burning leaves. Yeah! it's illegal to burn them, but somehow those curbs of leaves seem to just break out in flames. It must be the ghost of Halloween past. Free trees are being made available for planting to help rebuild the massive loss of trees this year. It will be a few years before they start to show color to full scale but planting trees has always been my thing. There are three six-footers on my porch now Hopefully, they will be ready to plant next year. The Maple that I planted when my son was born is a towering majestic piece of timber today at 49.

Migration This Year Had Highs and Lows

The major concern was for the pelicans arrival this season with the massive storm kill-off of waterfowl in Mold, Montana. As it turned out, eventually, we got our regular number of birds to take up residency until late March.

The other major migration was that of the Monarch Butterflies. California got a large number to pass trough this year, but in North Texas, we only had a fractional number of flies. I did some in my neighborhood and always saw a hand full at the lake, but the butterfly garden had a hand full of the royal flies.




 Weather played a part, most likely with the jet stream not shifting south like it normally does. Also, while this is the central flyway for birds and Monarchs, again, weather to the west was more favorable than what we were having here. The most worrisome of all is, of course, the declining number of Monarchs.

For those that like to track Monarch Migration, Monarch Watch. The info source is from the Entomology Program at the University of Kansas, 1200 Sunnyside Ave.,Lawrence, KS 66045-7534.

In Memorial

                         Happy Birthday, KP

 The 21st year of your passing.

Helicopters Continue To Survey My Neighborhood

A lots of things in life are elusive. Some, more than others. As the helicopters continue to hover and circle, fly low, fly higher, and all the maneuvers that make the egg beaters an excellent machine for many things in today's world the surveying goes on.

 It has been a rough week. It all started Sunday night when the strong cold front moved in ---kind of like where refrig meets oven and cold air meets hot air. Well, hot air with a lot of humidity from the  Gulf of Mexico streaming into the stew pot mixer of North Texas. Where I live is kind of like the Hamilton Beach of mixers where the cold and the hot and rain and wind and the humidity and all the other things needed to cook up a good Tornado or two---or three come together. Well, even a few more than that. The helicopters have sorted it out and the National Weather Service had confirmed 9 separate tornadoes that came out of that mixing bowl. Even that was updated again today to include one more tornado, though small and short lived did develop out of our storm, as it moved Northeast. In southern Collin county, number 10 sprang to life. Collin, Denton, Tarrant and Dallas make up our Metroplex district we know as Dallas/Ft.Worth.

The damage in my old neighborhood was extensive and that was bad enough, but that damage extended over the six miles to include blocks immediately to my west and blocks immediately to my north. One gated community with private lakes was laid to waste and forever changing the look of how I  have seen it the past 15-years. It will take years to put it back landscape-wise.

Tonight, heavy rains have moved in just as the last of the power was restored, but not everyone was able to cover their roofs with blue tarps and even more damage will make losses even more. This storm is dropping snow in the panhandle a month early.

This is where gears are changed, but the theme remains on target with the opening sentence of this post. Because the rain would likely keep me home bound for two days, I got the heck out of the house early this morning while the sunshine and windy conditions made sweater weather in the car the most encouragement I have had in months.

At the lake, first check was on the Monarch butterflies, which have been in a thin migration this year. Normally, I would see 15-25 in a quarter hour.

There are three parakeets  near the green wire.

The Cooper wants that grasshopper bad.

As my Dad would say:" There's always one to spoil the fun" speaking of cars that come up and tailgate just as you are trying to find something. The car zipped around me but the bobcat could have cared less. Then, I was able to move at his pace and watch where he was going. It will be a place to start watching now for more than just birds.

While the pelican numbers have come up a bit, weather has been a major factor for them as well as the butterflies. Normally the Great White Egrets are elusive to shoot unless you shoot with a mini Hubble Telescope, they have been all over Sunset Bay where again, the weather has played a factor in moving sandbars close in off the Dixon Branch leaving the water shallow and not so pretty of a setting as it has been in times past.

The monk parakeets have rebuilt their nest in the cell towers and  Oncor substation.

On the second trip around the lake, the final stop at the Cultural Center Bath House was a bonus  sweep of elusive critters. Starting up the hill the Cooper Hawk was in an aerial display as he was  chasing a large grass hopper. Getting a shot of that was like an extra piece of chocolate cake with no calories. Then, the shock of all shocks. One of the most elusive creatures at White Rock---the bob cat--came out of the thicket with a rabbit and leisurely walked the hedgerow. After seven backyards, he went into a wood pile. I did not see him come out.But, the last of the White Rock wonders has now been documented. American Eagles; Osprey; coyote, great horned owl, barred owl, and the  bob cat.