Archive for April, 2009

FORT WORTH, Texas - In response to the recommendation by the Tarrant County Public Health Department, the City of Fort Worth has canceled or postponed city programs and some large public outdoor events to reduce the opportunities for spread of North American (Swine) flu.

All City of Fort Worth public facilities remain open at this time; however, all scheduled programming at Fort Worth community centers will be canceled until further notice. Voting locations also remain open.

Canceled

• Mayfest
• City’s Low-Cost Vaccination Clinic at Trail Drivers Park
• City of Fort Worth ASA 16 and under softball tournament, Gateway Park
• City of Fort Worth Youth soccer league games
• City of Fort Worth adult flag football league games at Gateway Park
• City of Fort Worth adult soccer league games at Gateway Park
• City of Fort Worth adult soccer league games at FWISD fields
• City of Fort Worth adult softball at Gateway Park
• City of Fort Worth youth baseball/softball league games
• City of Fort Worth youth volleyball league games at Fire Station Community Center
• All scheduled programming at Fort Worth community centers canceled until further notice
• Student Attendance Court dockets canceled through May 11. All canceled cases will be rescheduled for future dates.

Closure

• Sycamore Spray Park through May 10

Postponed

• Cinco de Mayo Celebration: Visit CowtownCincodeMayo.com for updates
• Avenue of Light Party: Visit www.FWPublicArt.org for updates

Finish line rerouted

• 2009 Bike MS: Sam’s Club Frisco to Fort Worth Ride: Visit BikeMSTexas.org for the new finish line

Download Mayor Mike Moncrief’s comments regarding North American (Swine) Flu from a press conference conducted at 2:30 p.m. April 30 at City Hall.

 This afternoon I stood in the dressing room at Ross, trying on a dress that had looked perfect on the rack. Ankle length – which is saying something since I am nearly 6 feet tall – black and white, slightly frilly chest that might flatter even my bosies (which have been, in fact, shrinking – I swear! Anyone who gets the slight movie reference here gets serious props.) – perfect to wear to my sister’s graduation. Spaghetti straps looked springy, and it was a look that I could pull off. But it just wasn’t right. It wasn’t that it didn’t fit, but no matter how much I smoothed and straightened, shrugged and wiggled, it just looked off. Maybe it was the fact that the stall was tiny, and the mirror smudged – or maybe my disheveled look, with semi-dirty hair thrown into a messy updo, (which matched perfectly the jeans with an ever-largening hole on the thigh and tshirt I threw on this morning) wasn’t the best. Maybe I could have bought it – it was a steal – and it would have looked great. But no…Maybe it was that little piece of frill that kept turning the wrong way to show a tiny line of inside-of-fabric.

In that moment, I came to grips with how much of a perfectionist I am. After all, to my right, on the “there’s just no way” hook, hung a cute brown and white  blouse that was perfect, but just a tiny bit see through, a very different and flowy grey piece which just reminded me a bit too much of a trash bag, the  shirt I had deemed “hideous” the moment it had hit my skin, the purple top that, after staring for minutes, I had discarded.

I also had another revelation. As I stood there, struggling to take off a pair of capris that made me look like a somewhat well dressed old lady, I thought of the book I could write about me. It would be just like all those chick lit books I love so much – the heroine, who is slightly imperfect in looks and temperament, but with such an endearing personality as to, by the end, win not only your heart but the heart of a similarly imperfect but great man who, though he is thirty and still single (which just cannot be right, as pointed out in the movie “Fever Pitch”) is actually perfectly viable and dependable – not to mention great in bed. However, I realized that if I wrote a book about me, I would not be endearing. Other girls, who were wont to read such fiction, would probably hate me – I’d hate me if I met me, I sometimes think. I lack the hips, fought against for years – in fact, I have a much bigger problem with pants falling off than not going on. I am not thirty without a husband, and do not lack admirers (just ones who are serious and will do more than pop in every month, on the month, to be sweet but very short). I am smart enough to intimidate, and, the icing on the cake is that I have a hard time finding and keeping female friends – cementing my troubles with being “endearing” to the gentler sex. In fact, if I step back more than three millimeters, I find I am doing very well.

Well, I thought as I sat there, if I would hate me if I met me out of jealousy, why do I spend so much time – here I won’t mince words – wallowing in self pity? It’s tough to realize that all those problems you thought were worth wallowing really aren’t. That you should be upbeat and happy and conquering the world. That wallowing should be the last thing on your mind, as you are so busy engaging in things that people in say, cell phone and asthma medication commercials do. Not to say that just because I look good in a mirror means I am happy, or should be happy, or that looks brings happiness, or that I even think my looks are so so great.

Well, I need more time to ponder this. The real reason I decided to come home and write this post was to talk on the funny story of my going to TJ Maxx and Ross, spend more than an hour perusing and trying on, only to leave empty handed.

So, I had spent nearly an hour in Ross. My cart had a suitcase I decided I could just as well get online, and the shirt that was a bit see through, and – here was the triumph – the green polo. I was pleased about that polo. It was the ultimate in prep casual, complete with little animal on the top left. However, as my stomach started to grumble – boding the end to my trip – I decided to finish up and go. I looked down to get the polo, and saw it was gone. It had been pulled out in the midst of my perusing and turn-arounds, and was doubtlessly lying on the floor somewhere. Feeling a bit of shame at this, I doubled it by placing my cart – surreptitiously – behind a rack and meandering out of the store, hoping no one noticed.

So I went home, with my two gallon jug of Nature’s Miracle odor remover and some flea ointment I picked up at the pet store. My attempt to dig myself out of the “letting yourself go” position had fallen on its face. But my life is a bit glamorous. After all, when I get home, I can write an (attemptedly witty) blog post. And we all know, everyone who’s anyone is cool enough to post blogs.

I was very bothered when I read in The Skiff last week that the university is planning on setting aside parking spots in front of a building for those driving hybrid or electric cars. When I read on and saw that soon the same policy might be applied to student lots, I became highly unsettled. Surely the University must be aware that not all students are in the position to afford hybrid or electric vehicles, which run at a much higher cost than similar all-gas models. To put aside spots for those people close to the buildings would be a slap in the face of those who cannot afford these quasi-luxury vehicles.

In California, drivers of cleaner cars can get a pass which allows them to ride in the carpool lane, even if their car has only one passenger. While this seems a worthy goal, with the planet in mind, what one sees in downtown LA at rush hour is fancier cars racing along in one lane while the unwashed masses are at a standstill not meters away. For most of those in traffic, it is not a choice to opt out of a cleaner vehicle, it is simply reality.

I hope the university will take this into account; certainly there must be ways to get LEED certification and lessen the university’s environmental impact which do not entail discriminating against a part of the campus population.

Editor’s note: TCU College Girl asked me: do the readers really want to hear about the women’s retreat for six days? That’s how many posts I wrote while I was there. My response: well, maybe some people do. For those who are tired of this, I posted her rant about the TCU Hybrid Parking situation.

Disclaimer: With regard to other women on retreat, any personal descriptions and other details are changed.

This brings us to lunch and then onward to the afternoon of workshops. I know that I’m going to have to go to the afternoon group, because I can’t just hide the entire weekend long. The friend I came with might raise her eyebrows at me. And other women are, quite honestly, something that scares me at times. I’ve never been sure I’m completely lovable.

The first workshop, on grief, is quite inspiring; it turns out that others have endured hardships that are, on the surface, even worse than the stuff I complain about at my darkest moments, and on the other hand, others are still pretty disappointed about everyday stuff. I feel a relieved to learn this. And it turns out I don’t have to share anything. There were plenty of others who did so.

The last workshop of the afternoon is the wheel of kindness. “You have to do this one,” the friend I came with says. I’m not sure why I have to do it. Especially since she says she’s not going to.

Nevertheless, I’ve always hated to be seen as a coward, and so I walk into the room. The leaders begin giving instructions. It turns out that we will move in two big rings and compliment each other. We don’t have to worry about what to say, the leaders tell us, God will give us the words. And the complimentees will have their eyes shut. Okay, I think, if I don’t give a satisfying compliment, at least they won’t know it was me.

I start on the outside of the ring, giving the compliments. I lay my hands on each woman’s shoulders. Many of the women are friends with each other, so they know something nice to say, they don’t have to reach into the sub-ether, or some kind of shared, unconscious realm of knowledge, but I don’t know anyone. I can either give a compliment on physical appearance, or I can pray and wait for something to come into my head, say it, and hope it makes sense. I tell one woman wearing a red tank top … “you have a profound faith … and it that thing you are worried about, it will be all right.” I have no idea what she thinks of this.

When it’s my turn to be praised, I hear things these people could not know about me … again and again I am called patient. I am told that people at home love me but don’t remember to say so. I am told I am a good teacher. Several woman apparently likes my hair. At the end, I get the best gift. We have a comments time and some of the women stand and say what they thought of the wheel. The woman with the red tank top stands. “Thank you so much to whoever said I have a profound faith and it will be all right.” She sits down.

Wow, I guess that was the right thing to say. In that moment I feel, in this room of women I don’t know, that I am not alone at all.

Disclaimer: With regard to other women on retreat,  any personal descriptions and other details are changed.

By lunch on Saturday, I have been to a meditation workshop in which we sit on chairs or lie on the floor and breathe deeply and visualize ourselves having a nice chat with God. This sounds rather new-agey but in fact the mediation works just as it was designed, and upon exiting I feel like I have learned something about the reason the master of the universe did some stuff I didn’t like. The reasons are not ones I would have expected, but then they do say the Lord moves in mysterious ways.

Now we are welcomed into the opportunity to go into small groups and share about women issues. I don’t know if I want to do this, so I lag behind, check my cell phone for messages, and see that I have missed a call from my mother. This seems like a good time to talk to her, she’s a woman too after all. I call her up. We have a nice chat. By the time I hang up, it is time to go to the second sharing workshop of the morning. On the way there I see some women making bracelets with spiritual words on them.

I ask if I can sit down and join them. I make a bracelet that says “compassion” and a pair that say “hope” and another one that says “forgiveness.” Of course by the time I am done it is too late to go to a sharing workshop. I am unconcerned, however. Part of me didn’t want to do anything at this retreat except sleep. But when I got here I found that sleeping for 24 hours isn’t really possible, even if you want to.

At any rate, I get to talk to the other women while making bracelets and get their opinions about letting kids play at houses where there are guns, in particular when there’s no gun safe involved. The leader of the group responds with a couple of good stories that seem to argue against sending your kids to such places.

“Guns, generally, seem to be used to shoot someone in the family,” one woman says. “Or yourself.”

“Whether that’s a good thing or not depends on who it was got shot,” another women adds in. They laugh uproariously. There’s humor coming out of pain, I suppose. I feel like this interlude was at least as helpful as going to a workshop.

Disclaimer: With regard to other women on retreat, personal descriptions and other details have been changed.

It does seem to be traditional in the state of Texas and other Midwestern places for some women, in the spring and summer, to go on retreat as a group, and relax, eat with abandon, and do spiritual exercises. I feel it is a sign of my assimilation into the local culture that after four years of living in the region I also was invited on an annual woman’s retreat by a friend, and we have gone together to lakeside state park lodges each of the last three springs, to share, sing songs, meditate, and take walks by the side of the water.

I always claim, and never more vehemently than this weekend, that there is no way I have time to do this. Somehow I always find the time, move things back and around in my schedule, put a few clothes in an over night bag and set off with my friend for the hinterland.

As I do leave town for the weekend, I am always unwilling, grousing, thinking that I don’t know if I will ever do this again. I go anyway, because I am convinced, from empirical observations of myself, that it is beneficial. Getting away from it all is never possible, as a wife and mother, unless you start by excluding all the men and all the minors, because they are, quite simply, the Source of All Deeply Felt Commitments.

The fact that we women will spend the weekend talking about our relationships with men and children, as well as parents, and trying to get a better perspective on them, is irrelevant. Women’s retreats are, categorically, about being with women. And retreat may not be a bad word to use to describe our withdrawal from the center of family life. There seems to be, from some mystic psychic center of the world, some argument for the benefit of getting together, just us girls, to share our perspectives, our joys, or sorrows, and even sometimes our secrets.

I was coming into the bedroom one morning to get the little kids up and I heard this song on my daughter’s Ipod  — I do speak Spanish but I couldn’t quite make out the words. Yet the song was so beautiful, and expressed such a deep kind of feeling, I decided to listen more carefully, study it, and make my own translation.

The group which performed it hailed from Basque Spain in the late 60′s and took the name Mocedades, “Youth.”  Citing the Beatles as well as folk and spiritual music as their influences, Eres Tu was the group’s biggest hit although they performed and recorded for over a decade, with music releases mostly in Europe.

The group got its big break when it performed Eres Tu in the Eurovision Song Contest, and won second place.  Much later it was used in Chris Farley’s movie “Tommy Boy” and interest in the song was rekindled.  Thus it showed up on my daughter’s playlist.

So, I sat down and translated. What is the theme? If I had to say, I would reply, it’s that true love exists. If you’ve experienced it, you know I am right, and if not, you can listen to the song and from the emotion expressed in the music, approximate what it is like.

Eres Tu words, with my translation

Como una promesa, eres tu, eres tu (you are like a promise, you are, yes you are
Como una manana de verano (like a summer morning)
Como una sonrisa, eres tu, eres tu (like a smile, you are, yes you are )

Toda mi esperanza, eres tu, eres tu (All my hope is in you, tied up in you,
Como lluvia fresca en mis manos (Like fresh rain falling into my hands
Como fuerte brisa, eres tu, eres tu (Like a strong breeze, you are to me
Asi, asi, eres tu (This, exactly this, is the way you are)

Chorus: Eres tu como el agua de mi fuente (You are like the water in my fountain)
Algo asi eres tu (Or something just like that
Eres tu el fuego de mi hogar (you are the fire in my home)
Eres tu como el fuego de mi hoguera* (the fire of my brazier)
Eres tu el trigo de mi pan (you are the grain in my bread)

Como mi poema, eres tu, eres tu (You are like a poem, yes you are, you are)
Como una guitarra en la noche (Like a guitar playing in the night)
Todo mi horizonte eres tu, eres tu (All my horizons are you, they are you)
Asi, asi, eres tu (This is the way you are)

Chorus
Eres tu…

*” hoguera” has the sense of celebratory bonfire or the fire with which you are burned at the stake … very difficult to render in English in one word, and even in the Spanish, it doesn’t seem clear to me what is actually meant. Even in English, songs are somewhat enigmatic at times, and I can’t tell whether the translation, or the primary sense, of the lyrics is problematic here. Anyone who wants to comment is welcome.

My husband is a college instructor. “I was talking to one of the other professors,” he told me the other day, “and she said in 15 years, the students just keep getting more and more selfish and more and more discourteous. You go to observe a lecture, and they’re texting under their desks. They talk to eachother while the professor is speaking. It’s like teaching Jr. High.” Although he hasn’t been teaching 15 years, he says he has observed some of the same things.

Most recently, at the end of a test, while some students were still working, a couple of other students were talking before leaving, and when one of the still-working students asked them to be quiet, one girl said “Sure, B—-” and left the room. 

I was outraged at hearing this. I said, “I haven’t heard that kind of language yet in our elementary school classrooms, I’m sure they say it to each other but they wouldn’t dare say it in front of the teacher.” I imagined myself a college instructor. I imaged taking the bad-mouthed girl outside the class next time she showed up, and telling her, “You may not have thought of this before, but this is a four year institution of higher learning and when you leave here you will have a bachelor’s degree, which actually does mean something — part of what it means is that you have some basic professional courtesy and ability to speak politely in front of a group. People who can’t be civil in a group belong on the assembly line, where they don’t care if you want to shoot your mouth. If you want to be a professional, on the other hand, and work in an office, you have to learn to speak with grace and courtesy. Especially if you want to pass this class.”

I told this to my husband and he listened with interest. “After all,” I concluded,  ”these kids are basically suffering from, among other thing, the fact that few have ever told them off or expected much of them. I think that’s too bad, but as teachers it’s part of our job to get after the hindermost.  Just because someone else, apparently didn’t go after this girl when they should have, or she would have known how to act, doesn’t mean you should continue making that mistake.”

What do you think? Should she be chewed out? Should her participation grade be lowered for inappropriate language?

 Our previous pieces on Heritage Park:

Heritage Park — background on the situation

City announces workshop on Heritage Park

The following was clipped from an email from the city, and answers the question of when and where the workshop on the future of Heritage Park is coming to town.
Who/What:
Heritage Park Study Workshop and Open House

When:

8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. May 8

9 to 10:30 a.m. May 9

Where:

Norris Conference Centers – Fort Worth
304 Houston St.
Fort Worth, Texas 76102

Activities:

This two-day event is an opportunity for the community to discuss and formulate a vision for the future of Heritage Park, including ideas for restoration of the plaza. The first day includes an overview of the site, its opportunities and constraints. This will be followed by a community-driven session where participants will work together in small groups to design solutions and present their ideas.

On the second day, ideas from the previous day will be presented and next steps will be discussed. Officials from the city’s Planning and Development and Parks and Community Services departments will be on hand to answer questions. The workshop will be facilitated by Philadelphia-based landscape architecture design studio, OLIN.

Seating is limited. To make a reservation, call 817-392-8008.

Validated parking is available at any Sundance Square lot or garage.

Briseis and Kalypso, the twin girls

Some might be wondering how the twin dogs we got are working out. They are as cute as can be, a perfectly matched team of canines, truly, while walking them down the street, I feel a sense of real pride at their beauty and their elegance.

That’s not to say that they are perfect saints, like my dog. We had a dinner guest over last night when a sudden snarling broke out in my bedroom.

My daughter sprang up from her chair. “What are they into now!” she cried out. “They must have found some chocolate.”

“Do your dogs eat chocolate?” I asked. But she was gone to break up the fight. Quickly thereafter, the two baby dogs burst out of the hallway, snarling and snapping. “Get out,” she told them, driving them toward the back door. “Worthless animals!” A slam sounded as she urged them out into the back yard.

Now she came back to the dinner table. “Do you know what it was?” She exclaimed. “It wasn’t chocolate after all. I was thinking if it was chocolate, it might be understandable, but all that was over marshmallow Peeps!”

“They eat Peeps?” I was shocked.

“Apparently they consider them a delicacy,” she said, grumbling as she sat back down.

The pups eat marshmallows. In fact, apparently they will fight for marshamallows. Not to the death, but to the boot out the back door at least.