Archive for September, 2009

ArtsGoggle, the twice-yearly, FREE celebration of art and artists in Fort Worth, Texas’ Near Southside, is expecting another tremendous turnout on Saturday, Oct. 3 from 3 to 10 p.m.

This free to the public, family-friendly event attracts a crowd as diverse as the neighborhood itself with live music, artistic displays of every kind, food, drink, and fun for everyone. Public support has increased rapidly, as evidenced by ArtsGoggle’s selection as the Best Gallery Art Show of the Last 12 Months by Fort Worth Weekly readers in 2007 and 2008.

This year 65 businesses in the Near Southside will become art venues and open their doors to show off the work of a variety of local artists. The public is invited to park their cars and rediscover this revitalized urban neighborhood by foot, trolley, bicycle or pedi-cabs.

Everzalez Ink will be showcasing their latest group of work, Ascension in the Recession, at the newly-renovated Miller Lofts. The work will encompass an entire loft space. Just look for the red doors.

Since its inception in 2003, ArtsGoggle has evolved into a festival of the arts in this eclectic neighborhood of historic elegance and urbanism immediately south of the central business district of Fort Worth.

For the first time, the event will take place on Saturday afternoon instead of Friday evening, with extended hours to allow visitors time to enjoy all the art and music, and the trolleys will feature tours narrated by individuals that have been heavily involved in the district’s revitalization. Abundant parking will be available in the various parking areas off of Magnolia and Park Place Avenues.

ArtsGoggle is presented by Fort Worth South, Inc., the non-profit redevelopment organization working to revitalize this important urban neighborhood. Each year record ArtsGoggle attendance attests to the success of Fort Worth South, Inc. and the Near Southside community.

A recent story in the New York Times divulges that a number of drug companies have been paying freelance writers to write promotional articles about their products. Medical journals, called on the carpet by U.S. Senator Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) have begun to reluctantly comply with demands that they check for conflict of interest among their writers.

I have to say I was quietly both disguested at the behavior and aware that I had perhaps left workaday magazine journalism just in time. Before I gave up freelancing, I saw ads from drug companies seeking writers to write about their products, and wondered if that wasn’t a conflict of interest. Even in my own areas of writing, including horsemanship and lifestyle,it had because increasingly clear that magazines were creating content designed to promote advertiser’s products and not to serve the readers.

Some writers were surviviing last year only by being willing to write anything for anybody, including promotional materials cloaked as journalism and press releases and other PR projects,  to keep in the “journalism” career track. At the time I felt the magazine publishers’ clouding of ethics was part of the reason I was finding it harder and harder to get the kind of writing jobs I wanted, and it did influence my decision concentrate most of my energy on becoming a school teacher instead.

I wonder where we will find our true “free press” in the future. The New York Times is gamely hanging on, and I wish them well. This article is the kind of project they need to be doing, and I thank them for bringing these matters to light.

From a press release by the city:

The Fort Worth City Council has adopted a budget for fiscal year 2010 that will allow all Fort Worth libraries to remain open and maintain their current hours of operation. Two branches – Wedgwood and Meadowbrook – had been proposed for closure in the City Manager’s initial proposed budget as a way to help close the $59 million shortfall for the 2010 fiscal year. It also proposed delaying the opening of the Northwest Branch Library currently under construction. However, at the City Council’s direction, the two branches will remain open and all libraries will maintain current service hours until a comprehensive library system plan can be completed and approved in early 2010. The Northwest library also will open as scheduled next summer. The Council’s approved budget also calls for city employees to take eight furlough days in the coming fiscal year, which will reduce the overall number of days the libraries is scheduled to be open. Visit the Budget 2010 page for more information about the approved budget. Library locations and hours can be found on the Library Web site or by calling 817-871-7323.

Some days things just don’t go right. Have you ever had a day when, from the word “go,” it just wasn’t happening for you?

Well, that didn’t happen to me this particular day. But I did have a period of about thirty minutes in which things went spectacularly and gloriously wrong.

It started with a calm and calculated decision to drive home between classes because I forgot the notes for my next class. I had fifty minutes, and figured while home I could get the books I need to study this afternoon. So, I walked into the neighborhood where I had parked the Miata at 7am this morning.

Someone had managed to park behind me so close, there was room roughly for a pocket mouse to squeeze between fenders. The Miata is a stick shift. It rolls. I just started driving it. Unless you have very careful control of things, rolling into the car parked about 18mm behind you isn’t an impossibility. Well, that wasn’t too bad – I just “toe-heeled” it (thanks, Dad – you’d have been proud…ish) with an amazingly efficient lack of finesse, and slowly stalled and jerked my way of of the spot. I was out on the road. Success.

I went home, along the way patting myself on the back for shifting the gears more smoothly than before.

Now, for some absurd reason, I don’t have the key to the front door – my key only unlocks the back door; specifically the deadbolt. So, as usual, I walked to the back – fending off the jackals who jumped up and attempted to jump out the gate. And I unlocked the door – it moved about a centimeter, and the burgular alarm started screaming.

Someone had locked the chain lock, and I was locked out, and in about a minute the alarm company is going to call the house and then send the police and my mom’s cell phone isn’t on…so I sprinted to the front, started trying to wedge open the dining room window (which is adjacent to our front porch and thereby very visible to the street). The dogs followed. A wrench in my backpack for biking purposes came in handy,  and in about 30 seconds I had the window ajar.

So, this woman drives by and see a mud-covered girl shoving dogs in through a window of a house while a loud alaram goes off…a girl who then, upon saying all is well, climbs in the window with grace. Turns off the alarm. Throws the dogs in the crate. Grabs her books. Races back out.

Well, disaster averted, right? Take a deep breath – if the neighbors happen to call the cops, oh well. That this is the third time I’ve climbed through that window this month is another issue.

So, I got puttering off. My hearbeat is slowing, all is well…

And get pulled over. “You’re car’s registration is expired and you have no front license plate.” “Ummm…I don’t know where they are? We registered it…” (where do license plates go anyways? It never seemed they are the kind of thing to develop legs and run off…) The car has no registration, that apparently is somewhere back in the house. “Insurance?” “Umm…here’s one from March 09…2008…September 02 (What on earth is that still in here for?)…”

Well, miraculously, despite my short and flurried manner, he gives me a ticket and doesn’t take his sweet time (my first ticket!). Meanwhile, class is about to start and I have a test.

I stall the car about five times as I try to drive away.

But, I make it. All the way to about a mile from campus, the closest parking spot at five minutes after class. I run and walk and run a bit more, realize I’ve got mud all up and down my front from the dogs. Race up the stairs.

And made it within ten minutes of class starting. I might have looked absurd, muddy and hair all over and clearly running on adrenaline. But I was there, and I had my scantron (and notes for class!), and, all in all, it wasn’t bad.

I got to regale my friend with the story later, write this post and thereby find something to put up for tomorrow, and I’ve got all afternoon to study for my next test.

Oh, and the best part? That test I took? Aced it.

Addendum:

So, turns out in my rush to get to class I left the lights on and my mom had to drive out at 8:45pm to give me a jump, whereupon we got into an argument about how to hook up the jumper cables, called half a dozen people who didn’t know or weren’t picking up, and finally got rescued by a guy who was driving by who settled the disagreement and got the car going (turns out I was wrong).

Oh, and the car died again in the driveway. Turns out that was a smaller problem that my stepfather knew how to fix, but by then, 9:30, my mother and I were ready to wash our hands of the whole thing and just go to bed.

So we did.

Yesterday, as happens relatively often in a house containing three regular cooks, the sound of the oven door being opened was followed by a brief pause and a howl of pain and rage, characteristic of whoever had just been burned – literally. If it’s the Editor, it will be something like “AH son of a GUN!” If it’s myself, well, it was just a loud yell. If it is Papa, the author of the reviews on his site, well, it’s an epithet I won’t post here (and it’s not going to be Homeric).

As it happened, the hole growing in the thumb of our main oven mitt had reached critical mass, and there I was, running my hand underneath water, as a lima-bean sized welt started to appear, and trying to simultaneously remove 24 chocolate muffins from the oven as ravenous family members descended upon the kitchen, promised something good if they got up for church.

I followed standard procedure: rinse in cool water, dig something cold out of the freezer (a piece of ice, but those were wanting since some people haven’t been refilling the ice racks and our automatic ice maker died about an eon ago), wrap it in a napkin, apply to the source of misery. I carried this with me to church, and back, and at some point happened to pull my hand off for more than about two seconds. This was a mistake. To paraphrase a cousin of mine, a heat “with the rage of a million suns” errupted on my poor little hand.

T’was going to be a long day.

A long procession of cold things were applied to keep me in a state of sanity throughout the day, and finally right before bedtime the anger subsided enough to go to sleep without much of a hitch.

This morning it was no longer white, and I can carry it around with me as long as I don’t do anything with it. Anything like, say

button my shirt

tie my shoes

hold the dog leash with any precision

strain the basmati rice

butter toast that is skidding across the counter

or, of course,

type.

However, thankfully I’ve never learned to type right anyways so I just adjusted to nine fingers. Not bad.

The small country that has arisen on my thumb probably won’t last the week.

Meanwhile, I sit and wait to for the cleaning lady to come before I can leave for school. I walked BT, as the rain makes him spiteful and he takes it out on us if we don’t walk him. Now, three wet, muddy, and bitter dogs are sitting outside in the rain (well, not in the rain; we have a roofed patio the size of a large living room that stays mostly dry), willing to give their firstborn puppy to come in the house.

V, fifteen year old brother, plays the intro to “Kiss Me” on his guitar as he waits for the caravan to TVS to move out.

I think about reading Philosophy for class somehow in the next hour.

And then he starts to play the intro to ”In The Flesh.”

It might turn out to be a long day.

‘The friends zone is for losers only”

-Are We There Yet, 2005

Well, maybe, maybe not…

One of the great things about WordPress, the software we at FWR use to run our site, is that you can see what (mostly Google) searches are bringing people to your site. Recent attractants include such queries as “nude opera” and “meet the teacher night ideas.” But also, every time I check, there is at least one search about male friends or the friends zone: “why do girls put guys in the friends zone;” “girls with male friends;” “guy talking about dating other women” - and my favorite, which, though not necessarily true, I will explain: ”why you shouldn’t date girls with lots of male friends”

So, I shall answer the first question, and lay it all out. Sorry, girls, if I’m letting too much go here. My site stats are far more important than keeping gender-related secrets.

So, let us phrase the question more specifically: Why does a girl treat a guy, who is actively courting her, as a friend, refusing to act romantically yet keeping him around as a “buddy?”

1) She doesn’t realize you are romantically interested

Sounds far-fetched, I know. But depending on her personality, amount of attention she is giving the situation, and your advances, she might just think you want to be friends. If you don’t “make a move” or make it clear that you like her in some way she will understand, she might get a little confused – she probably assumed you liked her at first – but figures you just want to be friends, and hey, if she likes you enough, why not?

2) She likes having male friends

I have met many girls who have told me that “they just like hanging out with guys more.” If you have somehow been a fly on the wall to see what girls can be like, you might understand. The cattiness, never-ending drama, competition over the menfolk, and general high levels of estradiol-related hormones get some girls seeking more mellow, “cool” guys, guys who are more likely to just hang out without things turning into a three ring circus involving their best friend, their new best friend, and that person they were dating two years ago. Whether or not she recongizes your attraction, she might place you in her large group of male buddies – who she may or may not be intersted in.

3) She’s not interested in a relationship right now

The truth is, sometimes people don’t want a relationship. They might be coming off of a bad breakup, and desire the emotional support, but don’t want to jump in the deep end again. They might be distracted by other things (some people aren’t focused 100% on getting dates) and, again, just not be paying a lot of attention. If school, home, work, etc. are taking up their emotional energy, girls might shy away from a relationship.

And here we go – it’s gonna hurt.

4) She’s just not that into you

That horrible, demoralizing movie last summer – “He’s Just Not That Into You” –  focused on guys not being into girls, but folks, it’s a two-way street. She just isn’t into you - but, being the blood-sucking emotional leach she is, she keeps you around. A friend once told me someone “didn’t like you – he liked that you liked him. So he’s like, ‘Hey, you like me, I like me too! this works.” The girl very shrewdly recognizes your attraction, and hence your willingness to do things for her – this could range anywhere from emotional support to giving her rides home from school. Or just cementing in her idea that she is awesome, and deserving of attention. Some girls turn this into a serial activity, keeping piles of “dangling men,” like Scarlett O’Hara, at their beck and call because, well, they can. It’s fun to hold the strings – “Dance, puppet, dance!” Alright, maybe not that maniacal, but you get the idea.

She knows she can get things out of you, and is going to exploit it. Human nature, out to screw our hearts over.

However, and here I will put a BIG however: this does not necessarily mean give up. Well, if you notice she has a dozen other guys dangling, you might pass her up. However, she might just not have gotten into you yet. A girl appreciates perseverance. We are the gender that has to put up with fox whistles and two-second arse-grabbing eyeings from the opposite sex, so when a guy puts more time into us than it takes to take in the region down beneath the collarbone, we are impressed. She might get over whatever turned her off (for all you know it could have been a bad first impression related to your footwear and choice of jokes with your buddies) and realize, hey, he’s not that bad of a guy. In Psychology we talked about how, evolutionarily, based on the time it takes for a woman to have/raise a baby, a woman is looking for a guy who sticks around. Tales of male persistence winning out – Jim and Pam, anyone? – abound. So, if you’re convinced she’s not Satan’s mistress, out to shred and lick clean the heart of every man in sight, stick around. You never know what you’ll get.

A short list of everyone else’s work is all I can handle these days, with teaching and all, so look for more of these mini-roundups. I will be going down my roll sequentially, so if I haven’t noted your updates yet, and you’re in the bottom half of the blogroll at the bottom of this page, that is why.

ARTS AND LEISURE

Lauren W. Smith has taken a trip to Portland and reports on their municipal gardens. What concerns me most: they have a Chinese garden and we do not. This could be corrected, City of Fort Worth … Eleiva at Chronotopia has opened up the discussion of the most-effective topic for a university literature survey course – are the new, modern cross-cultural and non-canonical courses as good as traditional, one-author or region/time courses, such as “U.S. Literature after the Civil War,” my own introduction to the adult study of English? She notes that the nefarious Stanley Fish weighed in in an essay for the New York Times a couple weeks back …

NEWS

In case you missed it, Eve-Marie has this story with links at the Extra Credit blog: Arlington schools refused to show the president’s address to school children, instead bussing them to an event to see former president Bush …

FOOD

Francis visited Sukhothai in Arlington and enjoyed the food and the BYOB aspect, among other things …  and Fort Worth Hole in the Wall visited Chef Love at the Love Shack hamburger stand. This is the third blogged review I’ve noted for the Love Shack this summer (actually, fourth because Francis went there too) so this place must really be good. Guess I should check it out.

This morning, as usual, I walked to the garage, pulled out my bike, and started out on what might be my favorite part of the day: my bike ride to school. It was nice and cool, the sun was hidden, it was good.

And then it started to rain.

I was walking my bike up Ranch View, out of Tanglewood, and I felt the mist, drizzling down. “Ah, this isn’t bad! Nice and cool.” By the time I got to the top of the hill, it had started to rain in earnest. I peddled along, smiling to myself. Figures. “Should have checked the weather,” I mused as I got progressively more and more wet.

I passed a guy about my age jogging in the opposite direction. I smiled, he nodded – and in that moment we had a short conversation that went something like this:

“Ha! How about us, huh? Whether because we are so macho we don’t care, or just not paying enough attention, caught in the rain.” And then we laughed at ourselves.

Water droplets dripped off the bill of my cap, like tears falling off someone’s nose. But underneath, I was smiling. And grateful class wasn’t for an hour and a half.

As I rounded the athletic fields and came on to campus, it started to pour – serious rain, causing people to run and duck and there I was, peddling through campus, soaked to the skin, water flowing off of me like streams off a snowpacked mountain, and all I could think was 1) thank goodness I didn’t put on eyeliner this morning, and 2) I have a serious date with the hand dryers when I get to a building.

You will be happy to know that within about four and a half hours I was dry again.

In the past few weeks, a very exciting thing happened nearby: new playground equipment was installed at Kellis Park, near the junction of Trail Lake and Granbury, which is just down the street from Foster Park, known around here as “The Duck Pond” since, well, it has a pond with ducks in it. Here is a map:

I have noticed an increase in the number of kids playing there since the new eqiupment was installed - and we have been there quite a few times ourselves. I am very happy the city is working to improve our parks in this way (down the street at Foster Park they are planting new trees and redoing the sidewalks and bridges over the creek)

Ang trys out the new structure

New swings were part of the improvements

 

After a long day of teaching, when I feel like, as we say in this house, “Anywhere but here” a good Indian movie is just the thing. We have recently gone through not just “Jodhaa Akbar” and “Eklahva” which I reviewed, but “Jai Santoshi Ma” and “Ashoka” and finally, most recently, “Om Shanti Om.” The last two star Shahrukh Khan — an Indian actor and producer whose top-dog status in Bollywood led to him being named one of Newsweek’s 50 most powerful people in the world in the world in 2009.

Why our current fixation on Bollywood? There are a number of reasons. First of all, we enjoy the multicultural experience. Anything procuded in Bollywood is bound to involve something new and different. Then, there’s the length of these movies. At three hours long, average, a Bollywood movie can last us, who watch for a half hour or hour before bed, for days, prolonging the reflection and discussions you can get from viewing with your spouse. Then, there’s the interesting family and spiritual storylines of Indian film — in this cosmology, mothers and mother in laws really are conniving and try to control children and wreck marriages, and religion and God or gods are part of the action — there is reincarnation, goddesses coming down from heaven, karma, dharma, all kinds of interesting things. Perhaps most unexpectedly, we have begun to enjoy the trademark musical numbers, long, drawn out song and dance routines reminicient of 50′s era Hollywood musicals. Over all, it adds up to a very amusing package.