Posts Tagged ‘fort worth tourism’

The rockwork chimneys on either side of the cottage speak of the building's pioneer origins.

In Trinity Park northeast of the Botanic Garden is a small rectantangular house which packs more historic punch than you would expect from driving by.  A large City Parks sign identifies the site as the Van Zandt Cottage, but two stone markers, erected in 1964, do not give much background on the site proper, instead containing information that focuses mostly on the Civil War record of General H. P. Mabry, who apparently owned the site before the man for who it’s now named, and of Major K.M. Van Zandt, whom the stone notes went on to various commercial enterprises in the city and became known, before he died at age 95, as “Mr Fort Worth.”

The visitor might wonder. If he came to be one of the most respected and known men in the city, was this Van Zandt’s childhood home? The cottage, almost certainly less than 1000 square feet, looks far too modest for someone who became so prominent, and who had an entire county named after the family (Van Zandt, east of here.) The homestead, with an oak and pecan tree stretching their branches over, is silent, as historic places tend to be.  It is left for the researcher to go home and surf the web for more information.

K.M. (Khleber Miller) Van Zandt was the great great grandfather of singer-songwriter Townes Van Zandt, profiled in this blog a couple of weeks ago. The elderVan Zandt (1836-1930) was born in Tennessee and came to Texas three years later.  He served with Company D of the 7th Texas Infantry, was captured in the second year of the war, was exchanged at Vicksburg, and served through the war’s end before coming to Fort Worth around 1865 at age 29. He bought the cottage and the land around it  for himself and his young family (wife and three children.) Van Zandt was accustomed to go to work in the “city,” which when he arrived numbered less than 250 people, located where downtown is now, riding his horse, fording the river as there was no bridge.  He served in the Texas Legislature in 1873, founded Fort Worth National Bank and the First Christian Church, and arranged for private railroad construction to bring the railroad into town to spur growth. He is also credited with starting a newspaper that became the Star-Telegram.

Eventually widowed twice, married a total of three times with 14 children, Van Zandt was nothing if not a busy man. A photo taken as a young man shows a handsome face, longist hair, as was the style, a cravat tie, and, overall, the combative features of those raised on the frontier.  In his autobiography, excerpted elsewhere on the web, he claimed to be more interested in the future of his city and fellow citizens than in enriching himself, which I assume was true, although he and his family certainly did well. There is more about Van Zandt, including a photo, and about the house on the website of MBR Guarenteed Foundation, which did a restructuring of the property just last year. Additional information and mapping details can be had from Waymark.

It is the image of Van Zandt riding his horse to go downtown, I suppose, that strikes me the most. The cottage is close by the 7th Street Bridge over the Trinity, and I wonder where the ford was. I imagine the horse picking its was through the rocks in the water, the man in a 19th century suitcoat, looking down. He is the frontier, yet he, in bringing civilization, is also its end. He is foreign born (well, Tennessee) but he is a true Texan, a soldier and a businessman. It’s a conundrum. I can hear the water splash, and then the splash dies away and the image with it.

Photo credit: mbdezines on fickr.

So the warm weather is here and that means it’s time to get back on bicycles and head for the Trinity Trails, as we did yesterday afternoon. It was a leisurely ride from South Hills up to enter the Trinity Trails at Overton Ridge Park and head down a creek to where the creek joins the Trinity just beyond Hulen Blvd, then up to University Blvd. on the Trails and back.

We rode through the park passing joggers, families with children, and dogs, so many dogs. shih tzus, poodles, a bull mastiff, a chocolate lab, a set of three boxers, an ancient-looking chihuahua of mottled grey fur tones, two pale golden labs which were playing in the water, it seemed a regular Cruft’s Dog Show on the leashes in the sunlit afternoon.

The animals we saw were not just canine, however; we saw many, many ducks. On a bridge riding across Overton Park Creek, Dean pointed out a lone duck with a funny “cap” of feathers on his head. “Look at that!” he said. “It looks like an old lady going to church!”

“Merganser,” I told him, though later through a web search I found out I was wrong: it was a Wood Duck. We also saw plenty of Mallards.

But my favorite animal to see on the Trinity Trails is an animal you see in the river itself. At first, you might think it’s just a stick, floating on the water and protruding a bit above the surface, but it you look again you’ll see the round shell of a turtle. I’ve seen snapping turtles and red eared sliders, and as we rode along the river, there were dozens, too many to count, so I began looking for the biggest one, a turtle a foot across or more. I saw one, maybe two such. “Dean!” I said. “Look at that one!” But of course we had already passed it.

Out on the main stretch of the Trails, between University and Hulen, bike traffic was heavy, with lots of those “biker guy” types with the tight shirts and shorts of bright red and yellow or blue and white cranking along and passing us with ease.  We seemed created to be passed, playing the Local train to thier Express.

Nevertheless, their example seemed an inspiration. What if I borrowed a bike from my mother, who does long distance riding, maybe I could be on one of those touring rides they hold in spring. After all, I need to come up with something to give me a goal to get in shape, since taking the advice of “you don’t have to join a gym to lose weight” I’ve stopped going. “How would you like to go on one of those bike tours they have?” I asked. “Do you think we could try?” Optomism was the order of the day.

If you’re interested too, you could check out  Bicycle Tours listed by month on Bicycle Texas.

The peach trees, whether ornamental or fruit-bearing, are in bloom now in Fort Worth, and so are the bluebonnets I mentioned last Friday. The peach trees are easy to see, they’re bright purple. The bluebonnets you actually could miss, they’re the small blue flowers you’ll see by the edge of the freeway.

Picking the bluebonnets, by the way, is not actually against the law, acording to Texas Department of Public Safety. However, I would discourage picking them from high-visiblility places like freeway verges, where it’s also moderately dangerous to get out of the car. The wildflowers, after all, are there for everyone to enjoy. Alongside the bluebonnets you will also see red and yellow flowers called Indian Blankets. These are the state flower of Oklahoma and are not so short of season as the bluebonnets.

I love the botanic garden, at any time of year when the weather is fair enough to be outside, and if it’s too cold or too hot you can always go to the conservatory. When we finished eating our sandwiches, my husband and sons were going to try to play catch with a baseball, and I went to go turtle watching. I wrote the following in my journal:

Turtles on a small island in the Fort Worth Botanic Garden

“I am sitting out in the botanic garden, enjoying the spring weather with a lot of other Fort Worthians. The focus we have is the turles of the pond at the bottom of the rose garden. Red Eared Sliders. they hiberate underwater in the winter but now, in spring, they rise to the surface to bask and fraternize. Everyone, turtles and garden visitors, seems is a good mood. Voices exclaim with delight at seeing a turtle dive into the water or at counting the 16 turtles sitting on a small island in the center of the pond, with three turtles swimming around, looking for an opening so they can climb up to sun themselves.

Now husband and sons come up. They’ve been busted, they say, by park security for throwing a baseball, which is not allowed. They watch the turtles for a while too, then we all go up to the fountain at the bottom of the rose garden terrace. I give the kids — and us adults — two pennies each to throw in for two wishes. I sigh. The year ahead looks promising, at this juncture, but that could be just a trick of the light, which today seems white and gold like the light of Italy, which sits well on the Italianate rose terrace, as we throw in the pennies and hope.” Thank you City of Fort Worth, for maintaining this beautiful garden, which I love.

Today dawned clear and warm, a perfect Sunday in spring. It was now daylight savings time, and somehow no one could get out of bed for church. Around noon we decided we’d better use this beautiful day for something and so we decided to go with the children to the botanic garden. A stop at Central Market to pick up a picnic lunch seemed indicated. Such a luxury, I thought to myself, but somehow I knew that now was not the time to be close-fisted with money.

Walking into Central Market, you look around and view a store where no expense has been spared on the part of management, and no expense will be spared to the customers either. People who shop here as a rule for groceries are hereby categorized as “rich” by this blog. However, many of us who shop at simpler markets for the week’s food stop by Central Market when we feel like cutting loose. And this was the day.

I walked past huge potted plants into the main store. Shelves were piled with a cornucopia of aromatic and imported and glass-packed products. As always in this store, I was struck by a sense of wonder at the perfect cut flowers, ornately packaged soaps, balloons and ribbons and kleenex purse packs decorated with scans of famous paintings by the Impressionists, and general-gift-shop-front-of-the-store collection of Stuff Rich People Like.  To the left was the imported dry goods section, where you could get flour imported from Italy and organic barley. Straight ahead was the bulk food which includes the coffee section, about 90 different varieties to chose from from every coffee growing region of the globe. The bakery, in the back, we didn’t even look at; it was too painful to see the gorgeous bread and the perfect white cakes and not eat them all.

We went straight to the deli. Here you can get chicken a diabola and albacore tuna by the pound and garlic shrimp for only $25 a lb. displayed right next to a carved watermelon. My husband chose a simple mozzarella, tomato and basil sandwich, a kind of simplified and expanded bruchetta; my son got a clever little clear lunch box with a ham and cheese sandwich, alongside an apple and small package of raisings (2.99, the bargain of the day). I wanted a muffuletta sandwich, so I had to stand in line at the sandwich counter. When it came my turn, the guy grabbed a whole bollino and cut it in half, put some olive tapenade on then added ham, sopressatta, mortadella, provolone and I think some other cold cuts too. The sandwich was big enough to choke a cow. It looked to be about a pound of meat all together, only 6.99.

We were headed for the checkout. But we were stopped at the door by the gleaming sight of a huge counter with the gelatos inside.

Oh no, we said to eachother, holding our gourmet sandwiches and kettle chips and olives tightly, how could we have dessert, a gelato, before lunch? But as the song says, “we’re only here for a little while” and days like this perfect spring afternoon are rare. We had to spring for a gelato each, on the supposition, later confirmed, that we’d be able to eat lunch even after eating all that ice cream. I had dulce di leche, a real Italian flavor, and my husband had limone and some blood orange sherbert, also authentic. My son had blueberry. We gave the evil eye to the Bubble Gum flavor, which Dean says is never seen in Italy, and I picked up a cup of coffee on the way to the checkout.

As we walked out the door of central market, to the picnic garden with the fountain in the center, I thought: this is the life. This is the moment that I’m trying to remember when everything is so bad I can’t stand it. This is the day I’ve been waiting for.

Muffuletta from Central Market

Texas bluebonnets

It’s warmer now and there are real, current signs of spring’s arrival:

1. People have stopped carrying coats with them “just in case” this week.

2. Our chickens laid their first egg of the new year.

3. The ornamental peach is in bloom.

All this means it’s time to watch for Texas bluebonnets. Don’t blink, or they will have bloomed and gone until next spring.

Bluebonnets were born in Texas before statehood and before settlement. It is said Texas is the only place these unique, small blue flower of the lupine variety grow.  There is a lovely Commanche Indian myth about the creation of the bluebonnet. Spanish missionaries planted them around the missions in colonial days.

In 1901 the bluebonnet won over the cactus flower and the cotton boll to be the Texas State flower, and subsequently there was some hot politicing about whether it was the Lupinus subcarnosus, which grows on coastal plains, or the larger, showier Lupinus texensis which was the  True Blue Texas Bluebonnet. In 1971 the Legislature solved the problem by effectively saying any bluebonnet is a representation of the Texas State flower.

The Texas Bluebonnet actually has five separate known varieties, and among these are wild and commercially planted sub-types. In Fort Worth, the plant appears every spring in meadows and beside freeway on-ramps, in the planters of fancy hotels and in everyday people’s yards.

Is it too late to plant? It’s best to plant bluebonnets in the fall, but new, improved seeds now germinate in as little as ten days. Because bluebonnets are actually legumes, like clover, alfalfa, and beans, growing them actually improves instead of depletes soil. Read more about growing bluebonnets, in addition to a careful account of the politial events that led to their becoming the state flower, in information on Texas bluebonnets and guidelines for growing them from Texas A&M University.

Photo credit: Charles and Clint

The Amon Carter, February 14–May 10, 2009

A study of found objects and found life

I have an idea that a good are review allows readers to decide whether they should go  to the exhibit, and even if they do not, to discuss the larger ideas presented by the work intelligently if it comes up in conversation.

What ever the theme of the exhibit, it apparently didn’t jump right out at you. The Crane exhibit has so far been described as “indulging in curiosity instead of a linear consistency,” and ”voyeuristic” but this didn’t quite explain it for me. It’s photography, yes, it’s eclectic, sure, but there is a theme, isn’t there?

The first room you enter holds polaroids, some arranged side by side under glass, others printed in red and black and an array created of heir orignal packages, which makes one think of the Andy Warhol polaroids still being exhibited at TCU. This is not, actually, typical of the body of work in the exhibit, so don’t just veer off from this exhibit and hit the Remington bronzes one more time. There is more to Barbara Crane than geometry.

Crane revels in the photographing of strangers. Her polaroids from the set entitled “Maricopa County Fair” are shot from behind people walking arm in arm, and quite evocative of the emotion of camraderie. Surely, one might think as the photos are studied, we have seen these people somewhere ourselves. One particular polaroid in that set, featuring a woman wearing a buttery-soft brown leather coat, hugging her daughter, is sumptuous and poignant, catching a parent child embrace and a moment between childhood and adolescence as fleeting and lovely as the purple hour of twilight.

Still, much of the art just left me confused. “Wipe Outs,” a set of images that were overexposed by flash photography and looked like nothing so muchy as the stuff that normal household photographers throw in the garbage, left me more unsure of my reaction, even as the face of a baby bright white on the print both made me feel unsettled and sympathetic to the subject.

And almost everything is black and white. I asked my husband, who was attending with me, about this. “Until recently, when digital came along,” he said. “Art photographers really stuck to black and white. It’s difficult to manipulate color film in a darkroom.”

That explained the black and white preponderance . Still I wasn’t sure I completely understood what was driving the Crane photographic engine, which has been running now for over 60 years.  On the far wall, a black and white image of a huge wasp nest confonted me. I didn’t think it was ugly or dangerous, I just didn’t know what it meant. And when I don’t understand things, I feel anxious.

I was wandering around in the main exhibit room wondering about all this when I saw a woman I know. She called out ’hello’ and began to enthuse: ‘Barbara Crane, I just love her stuff!”

“Really?” I asked her. “Why?”

“She’s just so into the little things, she studies it all and she accepts it all. You know a lot of the stuff she found on the grounds. She’s just a little 80 year old woman, she never gives up, she just keeps going.”

We looked at a black and white print of a cat’s hairball. “That’s what I’m talking about,” my friend said. “Like, to her it’s not just something to thow away, she looks at it and she makes something out of it.”

An idea began to come into focus.  What I had seen initially as a fixationon the blurred and indistinct, the unclear, the puzzle could be reinterpreted as Crane’s window, her “take” on  the world. Puzzling, but intriguing. Perhaps she turned her lens to whatever she saw as an attempt to preserve and instruct.  In that case, the portraits of everyday people become not voyeuristic but sympathetic, the images of unusual objects are an attempt to preserve the forgotten in life … and the laying of negatives to produce effects I initially found confusing could be clarified into a commentary on the confusing nature of the modern life.

Crane’s first photographs are from the late 50’s and she is still working today. She is every inch a modern. But she is modern not only in her technique, but in her philosophy. She seems to want to stop the lens on the everyday, the commonplace, and say “look! This will never happen again in quite the same way!”

It reminds me, in a strange way, of Garrison Keillor’s Lake Wobegone Days published in the 80’s, when the recording of the very commonplace became popular. But Crane’s lens on the common was much wider than Keillor’s radio show and books.

In this Facebook generation, where everyone promotes themselves like they were a movie star, the commonness of the people in the portraits can seem antique, old fashioned, taking shots like these is somehow hopelessly dated and thus the pictures become more valuable. Today, when digital photography makes you shoot until you get one that looks good, the unflattering photograph is truly an anomaly.

I couldn’t help, I told my friend, but feel that there was some disrespect in displaying peole this way.

“She wouldn’t see it like that,” my friend told me. “She’s upbeat, funny and fun. Someone asked her why she took so many photos of things that were found, she was like, ‘because I’m close to the ground.’ ‘Cause she’s short.”

The signature photo, the one that’s on the posters, is a little bit different than most of the photos we have in the exhibit, I pointed out to her. For one thing, it’s in color. For another, it’s printed with a laserjet printer, not in a darkroom.

“She’s always wanting to try something new,” my friend told me. “Someone asked her if she was intimidated by digital, and she said it’s just a new medium to learn.”  The bright green of 20 individual leaves, shot through a fisheye lense and arranged on a black ground, are almost grahic design more that photography. They would make a good web site background. Each leaf could be hyperlinked somehow.

I looked at the individual leaves. “Maybe your’e right,” I said. “Maybe what she’s inviting us to do it look closer, and with more affection, at whatever is in front of us.” If that’s the case, I give the exhibit my wholesale stamp of approval.