Every summer, we go on a family camping trip. After many years (the first such trip was in Algonquin Park, in Canada, back in 1998) we have developed a routine which I think might be of help to others who are just starting out.
First of all, based your decision about where to go squarely on how much time and money you have. The more time and money, the farther away you can go, and the more interesting activities you can do. but don’t go crazy in the planning phase, and overestimate how far you can drive, for example. It’s our experience that it is best if we do not try to drive more than 700 miles a day, 500 if we’re camping, because of the extra time spent setting up and breaking down tents.
Next, reserve your campsite unless the park tells you, when you call them, that there will be no need for a reservation. But call the park. By no means drive out there without communicating first. If you’re a less experienced camper, you might ask about weather and equipment needed. It would be best if you reserve your campsite 2 to 3 weeks in advance, especially if it’s a weekend, and even more if it’s a popular park or a holiday such as Memorial day, Labor Day, or the 4th of July.
Next, pack your gear. Set up the tents before you pack them; inspect the sleeping bags for serviceability. Go through your camp cooking equipment. Make sure it is operational. Pay special attention to fire-building and stove-fueling equipment.
Make a meal plan including three meals a day and snacks. Think through each meal. Consider whether you’re really going to want to
1) cook this stuff and
2) eat the meal once you’re out in the woods.
Then go to the store and buy the groceries and pack it up.
Next, pack the suitcases. If you have children, give them a packing list and let them pack for themselves. Then, if they’re younger kids, you can go over what they’ve done. If they’re older, and you’re vindictive, let them tell you they know what they need with no help from you and prepare to be amused when they forget something.
Pack the goods into the vehicle the night before departure. At least some of it. At the very least, understand that packing the vehicle will take more time than you expect. Do not frustrate yourself by getting up at 7 and expecting to be on the road at 8, if you haven’t packed the vehicle yet.
Before you leave, take the garbage out of the house. Make coffee and put it in a thermos and travel mugs. Remember to bring an i-pod or other music listening device to while away the miles. As you pull out on the open road, play “Born to be wild” and laugh.
From a press release by Entertainment and Sports International:
A midway will be set up outside the Fort Worth Cats stadium on July 3rd 2009
Fort Worth, TX — Fort Worth Cats baseball fans may want to come early to stop by the Principal Financial Group Family Fun Fest at LaGrave Field on July 3, 2009 when the Fort Worth Cats take on the Pensacola Pelicans. The Principal Financial Group Family Fun Fest is an unparalleled, and completely free, celebration of baseball visiting nearly 50 minorleague baseball ballparks all across the country during its sixth season.Created and produced by Entertainment & Sports International (ESI), the 4000square foot Principal Financial Group Family Fun Fest will be set-up just outside the main gates and will be open for fans at 4:05PM. For the sixth consecutive year, the Principal Financial Group will serve as exclusive title sponsor of this unique entertainment experience.
Baseball legend and Hall of Famer Nolan Ryan returns as national spokesperson. The minor leagues offer fans a great baseball experience, said Ryan. From exceptional value to a safe, family environment, fans get to see competitive professional baseball with non-stop entertainment. The Principal Financial Group FamilyFun Fest extends that excitement before the game with an event truly unique to minor league ballparks.
Started in 2004, the tour has already been visited by more than 1.5 million fans at over 250 appearances. Open three hours before the game and set up right outside the main stadium gates, the event is free to all fans and features more than 20 baseball themed attractions,including:
- A minor league baseball museum.
- A state of the art Great Clips Best Buy Mobile Video Game Arcade with the latest baseball and family games.
- Free souvenir personalized baseball cards sponsored by Days Inn.
- Free Sports Illustrated Kids personalized magazine covers.
- A midway with batting and pitching cages, giant slides, bounce houses, bungee runs.
- A special Rookie Zone for younger fans.
There has never been more pressure on families to stretch their entertainment dollar, said ESI co-founder Joe Owens. With historically low ticket and concession prices, a family of four can go to a minor league baseball game with great food and merchandise for under 50 bucks. Add to that the completely free Family Fun Fest and you have unmatched and unprecedented entertainment value. We believe minor league baseball will continue to deliver record-breaking attendance figures in 2009.
The game isscheduled to begin at 7:05PM and game tickets are available by visiting fwcats.com.
The other day, a friend on Twitter, @theDailyBlond, wrote a response to a document she had scoured up from 1955 — “The Good Wife Guide.” It was one of those “ways to please your husband” things you used to find in books and magazines back then — and which still come up now and again. What I want to know is, why hasn’t anyone come up with a “Good Husband Guide?” I think that’s something I can do, actually. So I got down to work:
The Good Husband Guide — circa 2009
Who is the Good Husband?
He’s a a guy you can really trust. Women value security, so the good husband is the guy who’s going to “be there.” This is the sine qua non of husbandness, of course. If he is not going to be there for her, he can at best be a boyfriend, and not a very good one at that.
The good husband is a guy you can build a family with. He must be worthy of reproducton. Any flaws he may have are hopefully correctible in the children, if they recur, with proper training and instruction. This is why basic physical attractiveness is so critical to the young bride. Even if she can put up with flawed countenance in her mate, can she stand it when it recurs in the children? You can train your children to have better manners than their father, but, as they say, ugly is forever.
The good husband knows that we chose him for the way he was when we met him, and that he must try to maintain all those great attributes he had at the start. Any characteristics, such as education, athletics, musical skill, or professional knowledge that husbands came into the marriage with should be honed and maintained over the years, not dropped like a hot potato once the bride is carried over the threshhold.
Also, that Jr. High humor that you kept in the closet before we were married — try to keep it to yourself and your friends as much as you can. We’re still shocked that you fooled us into believing you had completely grown out of that stuff.
Speaking of your friends — the good husband prefers the company of his family to his buddies. He probably still has lots of friends, and spends time with them. But his wife knows that if she really needs him, he’ll be there for her.
Habits of the Good Husband
To be a good husband, you’ll want to develop some tendencies that may be weakly formed in the male race. One of these is putting your things away. Your stuff, and even other people’s stuff.
The good husband does some chores around the house, even the token taking out of the garbage. He does not say things like “why should I clean up? It doesn’t matter to me if the house is a mess.” This is an invitation to his wife to make it matter to him.
The good husband has a job and works at it. He may feed a deep attachment to getting on American Idol or his acting career, but nevertheless he keeps at least one foot in employment well paid enough to significantly contribute to the household. Not being employed is a characteristic of the houseboy, and is not appropriate for a good husband.
The good husband pays attention to money. He both saves and splurges, and knows how to balance the two.
Romance with the Good Husband
The good husband is a real romantic! He always makes sure that his wife knows she’s not missing anything by being married to him. He wears stylish clothes and pays attention to grooming; he speaks well and kindly; he is considerate about attending activities his wife wants to go, whether they be seeing a chick flick or attending a benefit dinner with her friends. He is not a doormat of course. He also expects her to attend to things important to him as well.
He tells his wife a reasonable amount of information about his needs for physical intimacy. This may be difficult, we know, but it is not fair to sit around sulking because things do not happen when a reasonable effort to communicate has not been made. Try it, the results may well exceed your expectations.
Nevertheless, the good husband refrains from creating scripts or expectations.
The good husband does not just talk about how much he loves his wife. He puts his feelings into action. He tries to observe his wife and see what she might enjoy. He doesn’t have to do this all the time, a little bit goes a long way. He brings gifts, he makes compliments, but sincerely. He finds something nice to say and something nice to do. He keeps the negatives to himself. He shares the positive with his wife and the world.
A better way to explain all this might be just to listen to the song, “Find 100 Ways” by Quincy Jones. So, to wrap up:
Here’s another one with James Ingram, it has better sound quality but omits the critical first line:
From a press release by the City:
Who/What: Dedication of 38 “pocket” gardens featuring native Texas plants.
When: 9:30 a.m., Tuesday, June 30.
Where: Fort Worth Garden Club Headquarters Building at the Fort Worth Botanic Garden, 3220 Botanic Garden Blvd., Fort Worth 76107
Why: More than two dozen garden clubs from around the state donated money to remove invasive plants at the Fort Worth Botanic Garden and establish a one-acre Texas wildscape for visitors to enjoy and learn about native plants from across the state.
Suellen, the young artist (and I mean real artist) at work.
A few may remember the computer theft of February 27, 2009, and how I lost not only my computer (rather old and ready for replacement) but a new scanner fax printer and most important, a slew of digital photos. Imagine my happiness when I found, on a disk in a pile on the bookshelf, an archive taken in 2005 with over 1000 pictures, almost entirely of the children between 2002 and 2005.
I downloaded them and there they were: the photos of my youngest as a baby. He was so cute! The camping trip memories I’d assumed we’d never see again, my oldest daughter’s high school graduation, my first flock of chickens and my daughter holding them. I could spend the whole morning taking a walk down memory lane.
What do I think as I see the pictures? I think that things were better back in the day than i gave them credit for. One of my mottoes is “I can’t complain but sometimes I still do” and through the years that those photos were taken, I probably worried and complained a lot. But what comes through of these photos is that things were really okay, and actually, they still are. We are living our lives, perhaps not particularly famously, but we’re here and we’re together. As a family, that’s the main thing, I think, that I often forget.
So here, for old (or not so old) times sake, are a couple of the recovered photos:
Angelo poses in a baseball jumper with a baseball
Tonia with two friends from school and her little sister
Angelo with his grandfather on a camping trip in Missouri
Joanna and a friend
Cherry tomatoes from Cowtown Farmer's Market are locally grown
I’ve followed a little bit with Kevin at Fortworthology as he works to build support for local culture for the city. Fortworthology has focussed on local architecture and music, as well as restaurants, and I hope to see more business coming to these endeavors, but around here, in my house, the biggest monthly spending item is food and so we’ve been trying to support local culture by buying food locally.
Four months or so now after I wrote “we don’t shop at Walmart anymore” we haven’t gone back there to do the weekly shopping. Instead, we have been going to City Market and Costco, spliting the weekly budget between the two. Though Costco is no local venue, it does allow us to buy a few items at really good prices (such as milk and cheese) and this frees up more funds to shop the local market. Today I stopped by City Market for peppers, pepperoni (it’s pizza night) and a bottle of Cherry 7-up, along with their trademark free soft serve ice cream.
City Market carries many Fort Worth brands, such as Renfro’s bottled relishes and sauces and OB Macaroni, and this afternoon 
I noticed that there were more cars in the parking lot. I asked the checker (and one of the good things about City Market is you have time to talk to the checker, the mad rush is not part of the experience) if business had improved and she said yes, more people are coming every week. City Market is owned by a local family and has put out a great deal of effort to revitalize the store. I hope more people will give them a try. Especially those who felt like they couldn’t take another trip to Big Box for weekend groceries, as I did.
Another way to shop locally is the Cowtown Farmer’s Market, now open Saturday morning from 8 to 12, as it is all year, and Wednesdays, 8 to 12. The produce, tamales, bread, personal care products, and locally-grown camraderie (everything at the market is produced within 150 miles of Fort Worth, so it’s local-local) is at a peak during the summer. Take a trip out the 183 traffic circle and see for yourself. Cowtown Farmer’s Market also deserves your support if you can give it.
From the Cowtown Farmer’s Market website:
* ensuring farmers earn fair prices for the fruits of their labor
* protecting your community’s access to healthy, fresh, local produce
* helping Fort Worth’s economy
If you spend $100 at a grocery store, only $25 stays here.
If you spend $100 at a farmers market, $62 goes back into the local economy — and $99 out of $100 stays in the state.
So, where do you want your money to go?
I have been out of town for about a month now. I left a few days after finals completed, flew over to South Carolina to see my sister graduate from college, then back across the country to southern California for a week at my Dad’s, then up to Davis in Northern California where I have been working for my aunt.
Shortly after getting here, I felt something I had, literally, never felt before. I was homesick.
The truth was, I rather enjoyed the melancholy feeling, because never in my life have I had a place I called home enough to feel that irrational longing for. The longing for the familiar, the comfortable, the place where “everybody knows your name” - or at least more so than anywhere else.
I missed my house, to be sure. My bed - a long army remnant with bright pink sheets. I missed the fried egg pan in the kitchen, waiting for a new user. I missed constantly having music on - Papa’s Negramaro or Vince’s The Killers or Brand’s Led Zeppelin or Mom’s folk or even Jo’s “I Kissed a Girl and I Liked It.” I missed messing around with my little brothers, sitting around watching Star Trek or playing board games or all piling in to the kitchen to make snacks at 4 pm. I missed my dog, and her loosely curled tail bobbing around as she searches for “tidbits”.
I am used to missing home; I have routinely left in the summer nearly my whole life. But this time, it was different - it was more.I found myself missing Hulen Blvd. and going to Half Price Books; walking around TCU’s shady campus. Missing the bike path by the duck pond, and my church, which, in my opinion, is just right - not to cakey, not too hardcore. Even missing sitting around griping about wilting heat, and watching dry lightning appear in a dusky sky.
There’s nothing too special about Fort Worth. Out here in Cali, we have lots of neat things - fresh fruit of every variety, reasonable weather, the beach, lots of Asian food. Rolling fields and that lovely light green brush. Davis has piles of bikes and my Dad is right behind a mountain. But you know what - they’re not home. Nowhere is but Fort Worth - I say this after seven years of it growing on me. To think, seven years and a few months ago I was crying in the Sacramento airport to hear I was moving there, and now, a few miles away from that very spot, I am dreaming of returning. Returning home - to see the skyline appear as you move over the crest of the hill from DFW, or Oklahoma, or Burleson, or the exhasuting trip in from the West.
PR Guys vs. Print Journalismos
Richie Escovedo blogs about a recent PRSA (the PR folk’s professional organization) lunch at which the Fort Worth Weekly and other local journals claimed that they want the real story, not the varnished variety, and that PR people just get in the way. Escovedo was offended, and you can understand why, although the problem is intractable … the real truth is harder to get at than it has ever been, though whether that’s because of corporate obfuscation, or because journalism no longer wants to do its homework, is open to speculation.
In another blog-jab at journalism, Austin at Fort Worth Real Estate takes the Dallas Morning News to task for conflicting stories on whether DFW real estate prices are lousy or not … and in the end, he asks “why don’t we just hire out the job of journalist to a bunch of middle schoolers? Shocking words, indeed.
Arts and Culture
Did Fort Forth blow it, asks the Fort Worth Weekly, when they lost the Wall of Sound festival? Or are other music genres, such as Texas Sound and New-Timey, the actual place where the action is happening in terms of Fort Worth bands?
Log Cabin Village Blog offers a short post and link to information about Juneteenth, the traditional African American celebration of emancipation day that originated in Texas.
Technology
Emily, who on the Balcom Ad Agency blog wrote a love letter to her blackberry before she gave it up, isn’t overwhelmingly thrilled with the i-phone ...Food and Fort Worth contemplates the mental processes, such as making change and anticipating a customer’s order, which no machine could handle, and admits to getting coffee from Dunkin Donuts every day … Matthew J Stevens blogs about not blogging … something a great number have faced, and also about getting FIOS cable hooked up…. and Kevin at Fortworthology links to news about how North Texas politicians may have damaged our chances to have high speed rail anytime soon.
Fort Worth Blogosphere
Fort Worth Hole in the Wall announces they have progressed to 100,000 hits. … Pete Wann rides again – just what I’d given up hope. He writes “On Making Art. … Eleiva considers the loss of Air France 447 and the search for meaning in life and literature … Dave of Dallas Photoworks does some family portraits in the Grapevine Botanic Garden …. We’ve added a link to our blogroll for local culinary student Callie and her blog, Linguine and Dirty Martinis; her latest post is on tortas and baklava.
Yesterday, I went down to our public pool at Kellis Park. A small place with a little cement brick guard house, two or three guards on duty, three drink machines, and a couple trees, our local pool could perhaps accommodate 50 swimmers. Not as fancy as Forest Park, but not as crowded, either.
I was surprised to meet, while I was there, with a girl I had been teaching in music last spring. I asked her where she lived. “Over in the South Side, over by the school,” she said. “My dad had the day off today, he drove us out here.”
“Isn’t there a pool closer to the school than this?” It’s about eight miles, after all. No, there is not. This is the closest for her family.
Of course, and perhaps sadly, many of the type who make spending decisions in this city have never considered going to the public pool, since they have their home or a club or an association to patronize, so they have no concept of the fact that most of the 78,000 students in the FWISD will not be going to the pool this summer, because they would have to be driven there by their parents, who are busy, or don’t have a car, or are at work, and because the pools are too few and too small for the need, which means they are overcrowded and this impairs lifeguard’s ability to enforce rules and keep the peace.
I’ve heard that the City is about to cut its budget, so I suppose this is a crazy time to suggest that investment in parks infrastructure, pools to be specific, is indicated. But honestly, how much of the $1.2 billion budget of this city would be needed to beef up the pools? We’ve just had a huge repair job done on the drainage to West Creek Road two blocks from me, when in fact, no appreciable problem existed with the drainage or the paving, whereas the vast majority of Fort Worth’s children have no effective access to public swimming or swimming lessons this summer or any of the 7 summers we have been here.
The City has spent plenty of money on police (recently having announced that no money will be cult from the police budget, naturally). Is law enforcement perhaps considered more important to our City fathers because there is no private way of hiring a police force, and there is a private way of getting your kids to the pool?
This is a reminder to those city councilpersons who are working on the budget that for most of Fort Worth’s schoolchildren, private pools are not available. And when you create a city where there is no safe place for children to recreate and play, you are creating a city which will have a much greater need for a police force.
A stitch in time saves nine. Please consider taking a look at Kellis Park Pool, or at the crowded conditions at Forest Park Pool, and consider whether this is an adequate level of public pool service for a first-rate community.
In the town where I grew up, we had three public pools for 50,000 people, or one pool for every 16,ooo people or so. Here in Fort Worth, we have 7 for 750,000, or about 1 pool for 100,000.Does this seem like not enough swimming? I think we can do better.
FORT WORTH - Colored lights will illuminate the night sky during a festive block party June 25 when the Avenue of Light on Lancaster Avenue is turned on for the first time.
Avenue of Light, a public art project, consists of six stainless steel sculptures that incorporate energy-efficient LED lights and tower 36 feet high. They’ve been installed along the median from Lamar Street to Main/Commerce Street.
The public is invited to this free party. Speakers will include Mayor Mike Moncrief, Mayor Pro Tem Kathleen Hicks, Council Member Joel Burns and the artist, Cliff Garten.
The event begins at 8:30 p.m. at the northeast corner of Lancaster Avenue and Throckmorton Street, where light refreshments will be served. The program starts at 9:00 p.m. with remarks. The sculptures will then become a “canvas” for a color light program lasting about 30 minutes and created especially for the occasion.
Lancaster Avenue will be closed to traffic 8-10 p.m. from Throckmorton to Houston streets. Parking is available two blocks north at the new Fort Worth Convention Center Parking Garage.
The City of Fort Worth’s public art program commissioned Avenue of Light as part of Lancaster Avenue’s reconstruction. The sculptures’ contemporary design was inspired by the nearby Texas & Pacific Terminal’s Art Deco architectural details.
Lancaster Avenue’s reconstruction is a catalyst for future economic development along the corridor. Median landscaping will be part of a future phase of the project.
Avenue of Light will be illuminated nightly from dusk to dawn beginning June 26.
The Arts Council of Fort Worth and Tarrant County administers the city’s public art program. Fort Worth Public Art creates an enhanced visual environment for Fort Worth residents, commemorates the city’s rich cultural and ethnic diversity, integrates the design work of artists into the development of the City’s capital infrastructure improvements, and promotes tourism and economic vitality in the city through the artistic design of public spaces. For more information visit www.fwpublicart.org.
Masthead image by Dallas Photoworks
ABOUT
Fort Worth Blog and E-Zine
