Fort Worth Blogs

Made it! I will not have to face another first day of school this year. 

Overall, it went well. I have 20 students. Already I have picked out a number that are unusally bright and the class as a whole were well behaved. Of course, I know on the first day of school the teacher doesn’t usually have discipline problems. As my youngest son put it, “Mom, I never get in trouble on the first day.”

Reflections? I’m glad, it looks like a better year than I expected. This evening, I was at the Kroger’s and I spotted a display of small Venus fly traps.

I knew just what to do. Buy one, and construct a science observation in the next two weeks. We are doing a unit on scientists. What does the young scientist do with a venus fly trap? Can we make up an experiment? Can we make a prediction about what will happen? What if we touch the inside of the jaws of the flytrap with a small stick? Will it shut?  Can I find a video to support the lesson? I don’t know, but the school year is off and running.

I’ve decided to resurrect, at least once, this popular feature tagging my fellow Fort Worth bloggers:

Politics and Urban Life

Probably the most important news is that there will be  a Modern Streetcar meeting on Monday, August 9^th – Kevin at FortWorthology calls out the troops to support our hopes of having Fort worth streetcars; “If you’re in favor of effective modern central city transit for Fort Worth, stop by and check out the progress … I’m a Soap Addict announced our monthly Fort Worth Market Day at the corner of Hulen and Camp Bowie …  Frugal  in Fort Worth writes what to do for free this weekend…

Arts and Letters

The Amon Carter shows off Audubon Prints  … while The Modern is showing an exhibit involving Attics, Religion, and Carl Jung in Anselm Kiefer’s “Quaternity” …

Personally and Professionally

Lauren at Brown Eye Blue Eye has decided to buy a vintage sewing machine and see if she can get it to run … Richie Escovedo writes a how-to about blogging for school districts    … and Todd Landry’s Blog gives us an Image of Trinity Railway Express at twilight.

Yesterday afternoon, Pia and I pulled down some copper wire that was used as an unusual ceiling decoration by the previous owners. We had heard that you could sell scrap copper, and since, to my estimate, I had over 20 pounds, I decided  to run it out to the scrap metal buyer — I figured we must have one in this large industrial city. Pia found a place in North Fort Worth that stated by phone they were willing to buy it, and armed with the address and some simple directions on a post-it note, I drove out to the Northside in my old trundling Suburban which has no air conditioning.

Where the slip of paper with the directions and the address got to I don’t know, but by the time I reached 28th Street, it was gone, perhaps blown out the open window (no air conditioning, remember?) “That’s okay,” I thought. “I remember it said right on North Main, left on 38th, I’ll try that and if it doesn’t work, I’ll call Pia for more instructions.”

Okay, it didn’t work. I called Pia and she gave me more instructions but of course I didn’t pay enough attention and made wrong turns aplenty, was honked at more than once, made a possibly illegal u-turn back at the freeway onramp where it all started, and figured out that Commerce Street doesn’t go all the way through from 28th to 38th. I ended up circling the address three times before I finally pulled up 45 minutes later.

I expected something like an industrial warehouse. But this place was more like a huge junkyard, an entire city block with piles of metal at least two stories high, front loaders and 18 wheelers rolling all over the place, a drive-on scale, and no obvious place to park something as insignificant as a Suburban. It was so hot I was getting dizzy. It was so hot my normally straight hair was curly.  I am supposed to be a respectable senora but my clothes were sticking to my body and I knew no nice lady was going to be expected to show up at a place like this.

The scrap metal workers wore baseball caps with bandanas hanging down as if we were on the Sahara desert. There were no other women anywhere. There was just about no one who didn’t have a beer belly.  A huge metal gate stood tall enough for any fully loaded semi to pass through. Letters of rusted pipe spelled out the name of the yard. In the middle of everything was a small building with glass windows. That would be the office. I parked on the street and looked in. Huge trucks rolled past. “I can’t do it,” I thought. “Walk in there, some lady with two neatly coiled copper bundles? I can’t. What if they won’t buy the copper? What if they only give me $3.00 and a weird look? I mean, I clearly don’t know what I’m doing here.”

I sat in the truck for a moment. No, it wouldn’t do. I’d have to go in. After all that driving around, I had to see this thing through. I walked across the asphalt, dodging trucks large and small, and pulled open the door to the building. The office was full of people speaking Spanish. I stood at the counter waiting for someone to notice me. Very quickly, a young guy did.

“Is that all you’ve got?” he asked. I nodded. “Put it up here.” He checked it with some kind of magnet that, I assume, told him if it was solid copper. I guess it passed the test, because next he said  “Put it on the scale outside.” I walked out and there was a platform scale, about 4 feet by four. I put the coils on, looked in the window, and the guy motioned me in.

“Twenty-two pounds copper, fifty dollars and 60 cents,” he told me. “I’ll need a copy of your driver’s licence and your vehicle info.” And in about ten seconds, a young woman handed me the money, I signed the receipt, they carried off the copper, and that was it. I walked back through the blistering heat of the yard. Fifty bucks! I thought. Well, I guess it was worth it. And to think I had almost not gone in.

Just goes to show, you’ve got to try to follow through on what you start, even if you’re not completely presentable, even if you’re a stranger in a strange land, even if you’re not sure it will work. Even in the dog days of August.

And it will help if you have a “crew” like Pia at home for when you loose the directions, too.

The mercury hit 110 degrees today. We went to the public pool in Denton — a nice place with slides and floating islands — but it was hot even there, beside the water under the trees. I sat in the shade and even then, I felt hot. I read the first few chapters of The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe and thought about how nice it would be if, like Lucy in the story, I could take a quick trip from summer back to a snowy land of winter to cool off, and then come back to the summer afternoon a few hours later after the sun went down. The kids stayed in the water for hours until we had to go, then ate lunch ravenously and fell asleep. 

Summer gets this sweltering and  you wish fall would come and cool it off,  even though fall means going back to work for everyone and it’s hard to wish for that.  But you know you can’t bear much more of this either. It’s too hot for tomatoes to set fruit, too hot to heat up the kitchen cooking normal foods, if you want to walk outside you’ve got to do it before 8 a.m., and you get tired of sandwiches and barbecued food. People honk at you for no apparent reason when you’re driving, and you don’t know if they’re short tempered or if the heat is making you so languid you’re forgetting how to drive properly.

I think of summer as my favorite time of year, really I do! But the fact is that it always seems to be summer when nagging fears, obsessions and various paranoias seem to come into the fore, perhaps because there’s so few regularly scheduled activities to distract me from them. If you don’t use your free time for something productive, your head may use the extra energy to begin thinking up stuff that’s downright destructive to your peace of mind.

So, yes, summertime and the living is easy, spending time sitting down by the pool, relaxing and cooling off, Yes. And yet. And yet. I read on Wikipedia that the name “dog days” comes from the Latin,  diēs caniculārēs, and refers to summer days from early July to mid August during which the Romans believed that the Dog Star, Sirius, somehow impeded things from getting done. I suppose it’s easy to claim this a ridiculous superstition, and yet the more things change, the more they stay the same. Whatever the reason, it’s hard to get things done during early August. A lof of the time, you just stay inside, crank up the air conditioner, and try not to think about the blistering rays of sun outside and that if the modern conveniences like AC were to fail we’d get fried like eggs before we knew it. I’m sure we’ll be fine. But it does make me a little nervous, thinking about it.

This evening we visited the last Wednesday nightKeller Point  Pack the Pool event– free admission to their mini-watepark off the beaten path in downtown Keller. I have to say it is probably the best entertainment deal we’ll meet this year, unless you include the trip to Lake Washington last week on Uncle Nick’s motorboat — but since he’s family, that outing desn’t really count. Besides, we had to drive up there an camp in a tent in order to enjoy the Lake Washington trip.

Anyway, the Keller Point — an indoor/outdoor waterpark with three large slides, two lazy rivers” and two splashpark wading palygrounds –decided to celebrate July’s National Park and Recreation Month by letting everyone come and swim at their pool.  We heard about this event last year through the Frugal in Fort Worth blog and this year heard about it again because we’re now on th Keller Point emailing list. I was feeling lazy, and might have skipped it, had not Dean been fired up to go. I hate to say this but he does like to get free stuff.

So the seven of us started up the oldSuburban — about to be sold, but still running at the moment — and drove out to Keller, a 50 minute drive from here. We signed it at the desk and went out to float around in circles in the rivers and slide down the slides. Pia had a particularly amusing time, since it was all new to her — last year she was lying around sick in California and couldn’t come with us.

Although the slides at the Keller Point cannot hold a candle to the ones at NRH2O, and the park was quite crowded — not surprisingly, considering the admission charge — the overall demeanor of the staff was friendly and helpful, the pool was clean, and the clientelle was courteous andnot at all uncomfortable to be around. After the swim, we got out our picnic lunch and had dinner in the park next door, then Dean wanted to go toHalf Price Books Wautauga to finish off the evening.

All in all, a first rate time was had by all, and so a big thank you to the management of the Keller Point, for considering the community and inviting us over. Your town has risen in our estimation due to your friendliness and generosity.

Watching kids on the beach

We’re beginning our third day in the OC and having a nice time. Today we’re off to Knott’s Berry Farm – I had thought of taking them to Disneyland but at $75 per ticket that idea is a non-starter – and yesterday we went to the beach. 

The kids enjoyed the beach the most so far. There’s something about the waves that’s hypnotic, forever the same and yet forever changing, that somehow both excites and comforts children.  Kids who were not getting along start to be friendly again.

On the other hand, for the mom, the beach can be stressful. We must remain ever-vigilant lest a wave carry off one of our offspring. The actual level of threat of this may be far less than some moms believe. After all, I saw plenty of 14 year old boys who had apparently arrived to swim at the beach with no mom in attendance; from this I inferred that at least some moms were willing to trust the sea. On the other hand, the fact that these were 14 year old boys makes me wonder – perhaps the attitude was, acceptable risk?

Balboa Beach on the Newport Peninsula

People who live here know some things that tourists do not think of in their rush to get to the beach. We knew to bring a towel, suit and sunscreen but our hosts helpfully kept us from forgetting the following:

1. Bring a sweatshirt. The ocean can be cold and you may want it after you get out.
2. You may need extra clothes to replace the wet or sandy.
3. There are showers on the other side of the pier.
4. Parking is not free so bring change for the meters unless you want to drive around for half an hour in a residential district and then walk 6 blocks.
5. Bring extra money for food.
6. A detour through the fun zone can keep the kids out of the water and sand for an hour or two if it gets overwhelming.
7. Two hours at the beach is plenty.  After that, lure them away with promises of food.

I’m going to California again, this time to take my 15 year old son to a boarding school interview. The younger three are coming along for the ride, seeing as there is nothing for them to do at home, and their dad is very busy polishing up his dissertation for submission next week.

With the help of a camera and my son, I’ve now, after 2 days, hundreds of digital photos of our trip.  Don’t worry, you will not be subjected to even a significant fraction of these — though I very much enjoyed Pia’s shots of Northern California last month.

We stopped overnight at the spring-fed swimming pool at Balmorhea State Park about 200 miles southeast of El Paso. This oasis in the desert was certainly worth stopping through, especially since the one-night stop over fit well with our driving plan, and the first thing in the morning swim got us refreshed and ready for a 700 mile day.

It is the only pool I’ve ever visited that was full of fish. Also, it’s 25 feet deep. Also, it was built by the civilian conservation corps during the Great Depression, which puts it in good company — that’s the same source as Fort Worth’s Botanic Garden’s rose terrace.

Driving across the west always puts thought of the pioneers in my mind, but of course I have to admit that taking a three day car trip to the coast is one thing; setting off into a wilderness with nothing but your immediate family, a wagon and a couple of draft animals is something very different.

Much of the day today involved me driving and trying to get through the time without loosing alertness, safety or my mind. The kids were good for most of the day. There was just one incident of concern, and that happened just after dark on the road from Tucson through to Phoenix when they got rather out of control, starting with some accusations about who was doing what to ruin the atmosphere inside the car.

But most of the day was more looking out the window at buttes and mountains, trucks and trains, and mediating on the fact that so few people live out here. The human population carrying capacity of the southwest seems minimal until you get to Phoenix, about 1000 miles from Fort Worth. As we rolled into Phoenix, where we stopped at a Red Roof Inn, my son reflected: “what a great city! Look at it, it’s beautiful!” Asked to elaborate why he said this, he could not, but I have to agree with him: Phoenix has the feel of a real metropolis, at least when you come out of the Great Southwestern Desert.

This is the last week of coursework for the teacher training program I’ve been in for the last 16 months or so. It’s been a demanding trip. As best as I can figure, I’ll have 24 college units accumulated by the end, four statewide tests I’ve had to pass, and about 40 separate observations of my work in the classroom. I think I can speak for everyone in this class of 2010 that we’re ready for school to let out at last!

Teachers live by a different work rhythm than most everybody else and the summers are an important time. We like to joke that it’s not the students that need a break, it’s the teachers. Summer is a time to think about how to do it better next year, to mentally and then on paper plan the improvements, to organize one’s thoughts, to do all the things that we couldn’t get to during the months of instruction. And, of course, to enjoy one’s own family, to have a barbecue, go to the pool, take a car trip — a great deal of things have been put off by the time June rolls around.

Teaching has changed who I am, a bit — I had an important meeting with my own children in the last couple of weeks, the gist of which was “if my class of second graders can pick up after themselves, why are you claiming you can’t?” We set up a new chore plan. The understanding of how important rules and procedures are to human well-being is reinforced in elementary school.

One our professors told us last week, “the job of the elementary teacher is to introduce the students to the wonder of the world, to make them see that our existence is full of mystery and excitement, and to begin to show them ways to explore it.” Yes! I thought. That is why I chose elementary — and when I think on my best moments from the past year, and my plans about next, that is what I want to focus on, opening doors to the world.

I was over at my mother’s for Easter and picked up a recent copy (okay, it was July 2009) edition of the Atlantic to find a new book review and personal essay piece by Sandra Lsing Loh called “Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off!” What was this the author wanted to abandon? Marriage, it turns out. In a reflective essay considering four recently released books on marriage, the author suggests that we are now in a post-marriage society and the best thing would be to never get married at all, raising children in tribal family groups or giving them to the new breed of homemaker dads.

It took me aback — or perhaps, I should say, it took me back — right back to the 70′s. Only this time, men are not being castigated for being insensitive over-libidinized macho men, but instead, and I quote, “male kitchen bitches” who are too concerned with boulibaise (or however you spell it) and who, unbelievably, no longer want to have sex.

Maybe just not with the particular women they are married to, I would have to suggest to the author?

Okay, let’s get one thing straight here, Ms. Loh. You can bring forth these ideas of yours and act as if you’ve just hatch them onto the scene, but all this proves is that you did not read enough Doris Lessing in college. We are not brinking on a new age of marital enlightenment. These problems with marriage you have disclosed in your essay have been around a while, perhaps as long as three to five thousand years. People used to get around some parts of the problem with poligamy, but the problem was, this created large groups of men who had no spouse and a very acrimonious household without clear heirs; reference the story of King David in the Bible. It seems pretty clear that marriage is just plain hard. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. When it doesn’t a lot of effort is put into trying to dampen the expected negative consequences, rarely with great success. A lot of people who get divorced wind up admitting ten years later it probably wasn’t the greatest idea; yet nevertheless new hordes of filing-for-divorcers show up daily.

Our own Tarrant county recently completed a huge new court building for “family court,” almost entirely to handle the legal fallout of divorces.

I guess what I’m trying to say is, although Loh’s essay is well written and well argued, I’m not buying her thesis for a second. And what’s more, I think the entire tone smacks of the kind of male-bashing I grew used to in college.

Just last night, perhaps ironically, I was teaching myself a new guitar song. I’m into folk and blues and country, and somehow, this song seemed to say a lot to me after reading that article. If this essay wasn’t good enough to elucidate the sentiments; perhaps Tammy Wynette can do a better job. And as she says, let’s please try to keep our expectations reasonable. “After all, he’s just a man.”

We went to San Francisco. First we got lost in the Twin Peaks area, then we went to Golden Gate Park, saw the Japanese Garden, the Fisherman’s Wharf, where we went on a tour of the U.S.S. Pampalino, a WWII submarine. Then we lost the car (or better to say, we forgot where we had parked it) and walked up Russian Hill twice looking for it. We stood with a map on a corner, looking perplexed, and friendly residents came up and asked if they could help, but it’s difficult to help someone remember where they parked their car. Finally, however, College Girl remembered that there was an elementary school a block up from where we parked, we told this to a boy about 15, who was doing skateboard tricks up and down a steep side street, and he pointed the way down Jones street. “I told you it wasn’t this high up,” she told me and I surrendered.

“You’re right, it’s a good thing I’ve got you along or I would have been hiring a cab to help me comb the streets to find my car.”

She smiled in triumph. She probably realized I’d been questioning her navigation skills this morning. The disagreement harks back to when we were traveling down Hayes toward Golden Gate Park, when for some reason she told me to go left on Divisadero, and that’s how we wound up first in the Castro district and then in Twin Peaks. We only skirted the Castro, so I did not see any young men with no shirts on, wearing chain harnesses, like I did last time I was in S.F. Or perhaps that style of dress is “out” now. What do I, the most casual of observers, know of any of this?

Anyway, after a tour of posh hill residents with Porsches in front, including those around Twin Peaks, the highest point in San Francisco (elevation 980) we found our way back — though I had to pull over three to four times for map conferences with College Girl. We saw the Japanese Tea Garden, the Academy of Sciences from the outside — it was $25 to get in per person so we skipped it. This was disappointing but there was so much else to see. I never did take them over the Golden Gate. We also ran out of time for the garment district. Maybe we should do that this morning.

College Girl reads this now and asserts, forcefully, “It was not my fault you got yourself lost. You got off the freeway and thought you could find it by yourself, I only started helping after you got lost.”

She reminds me of myself, somehow, of many years back, and I suddenly feel sympathetic for my husband, who probably had his navigation skills questioned in the same way . I am sorry, Dean, for being so smug. I promise to be more understanding in the future.