Fat Tuesday will soon be here. Are you a Mardi Gras fan? Texquiem is.
I think it started when I was a child, and my mother once brought me souvenirs from New Orleans. Never an "all-I-got-was-a-lousy-T-shirt" traveler, Mom instead brought home an iconic jazz poster and a beaded, beribboned mask for Mardi Gras.
Texquiem is not a fan of the crowds, mind you. I'm more a fan of the legacy. The tradition. I admit, too, it's appealing to shed the staid and reserve of your usual you. One last hurrah before Ash Wednesday, its reverence, its fasting, and the Lenten season to follow. (But no, I'm not flashing you the goods for a strand of cheap beads.)
For my finicky children, Mardi Gras is all about two things: the cake and the baby.
Well, a few more, actually. Because I keep watching it over and over.
Stellar job!
Each year, NASA Pathways interns create an outreach video to commemorate their NASA experience. This year, they took it past the stratosphere, huh?
"Psy" is played by Eric Sim, a North Carolina State grad and now a propulsion systems engineer on the Morpheus project. Astronaut Tracy Caldwell Dyson, who had missions on the Space Shuttle Endeavor and the International Space Station appears. Astronaut Clayton Anderson has the best dance-off ever. His NASA work included a stint on the International Space Station. Telling Psy to take a hike is astronaut Michael Massimino (Space Shuttles Columbia and Atlantis). Appearing in other astronaut cameos are Mike Coats (former director, three flights on Space Shuttle Discovery) and Ellen Ochoa (current director, four flights on Discovery and Atlantis). Other participants included Brian Schwing (Ohio State), Ronak Dave (Purdue), Gary Jordan (Penn State), and Adam Naids (graduate of Embry-Riddle, now full time at NASA as a hardware development engineer). The finale includes 50+ other scientists, engineers, and JSC "extras." Keep calm and NASA on, indeed.
Four mil hits later. . . is anyone in Washington watching? If so . . . take note, Beltway types, of attention on a grand scale. Our part of the International Space Station is managed here. Johnson Space Center is here. Mission Control is here. As in "Houston, Tranquility Base here, the Eagle has landed." Our museum at NASA houses a live craft from every major American manned spaceflight program. (OK, so maybe future programs may share a private angle. . . and Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin is in BFE Texas, but hey, it's still in Texas and he went to elementary school here in Houston anyway).
Now give us back our shuttle, dammit.
Enterprise, GalaxyWire
One of the few times Texquiem has gone truly apoplectic? See here. I can't gather even a veneer of "let's civilly discuss it." Fact: no one is visiting NYC to see the shuttle. It's, like, number seventy-two hundred on the tourists' list of things to do there. They aren't able to do right by it, either, it seems, so just go ahead and send it home. As in Johnson Space Center, Houston. Come home to mama, baby. We love you here. NASA Johnson Style.
Banner year, fellow Houstonians. And that includes the 50,000 of you who joined us in 2012. Not only did Forbes give Houston kudos for being the little-economic-engine-that-could, see here, and for being a great place for female business founders, we also topped its list of Coolest American Cities. Wow, Texas in general did well on this list, with five spots in the top 20.
To reach this zenith, we scored well in all categories: entertainment options, recreational options (including green space), restaurants and bars per capita (emphasizing local eateries), diversity, median age, employment rate, cost of living, and net migration.
It took all of a nano-second for the doubters and haters to chime in. "Yeah. that's right. Houston is number one. Surprise is always refreshing. . . . Jobs are definitely cool. But Houston, Washington, and Los Angeles? Something in [Forbes's] rubric must be missing." (Rachel James at smartplanet) "Houston is not cool." (Will Doig at Salon). "Houston is America's coolest city, according to a bunch of nerds." (some dude in Brooklyn). No surprise with Dallas's take: "Forbes rates Dallas fourth coolest city; loses all credibility by putting Houston first. . . . They apparently didn't see our even more scientific assessment ranked Houston asshole of the universe." (Dallas Observer blogger who probably really lives in Grand Prairie). Fort Worth just called us fat.
The Galleria was open on New Year's Day. I (guiltily) admit to being there. I don't even have the excuse of returning ill-fitting Christmas presents. Simply, I was in town and the lure of 60%-off sales was too great.
Maybe the Galleria is always open on New Year's. I mean, if it's not open, where do all of the visiting tourists spend their time and money? Usually, though, I am out-of-town at New Year's (preferably somewhere snowy), generally where the locals cuss under their breath about all those damn Texans in town. So, I'm not griping about the out-of-town shoppers. Merely observing that I had to wait to snap this quick shot of the Galleria's Christmas tree on the ice rink, then try to explain to those waiting that I intended to take a picture without them or anyone else in it. Plus, I wasn't nearly as dressed up as they were, so maybe they thought I was just a peasant, or something.
The Galleria Ice Rink has always fascinated me. As a child, newly moved to Houston, I thought the rink and Marvin Zindler were surely among the Eight Wonders of the World. Having moved here from po-dunk, I had big eyes trying to take in the three-story gallery and an ice rink beneath. Ice, when it's hotter than Hades outside? And a three-story mall? In my then-limited experience, we'd had to drive over an hour to reach the nearest mall of any size--itself one-story except for the few anchor stores topping out at two.
Six pairs of massive arches, mirror finish. Each set 700 feet apart, like a promenade down Post Oak. In 1995, this became more than just the Galleria--as if that wasn't enough. It became "Uptown Houston." New, matching street lights and traffic signals. Giant, circular "gateway rings" hovering at the bigger intersections, suspended 55 feet in the air.
Modern. Brash. And adorned for Christmas. Stainless steel, frankincense and myrrh.
Looking down Post Oak, with Neiman Marcus and Transco in the background.
Neighborhoods with Christmas decorations have long attracted traffic jams, whether suburb, small town, or big city. As a child, we'd jump in the car with my grandmother and drive all around town to look at the Christmas lights. We'd even cruise the country roads, just to see who decked the halls. Some neighborhoods revel in Christmas decor--with themes and all. When I was off at university, my parents' neighborhood passed out a giant wooden sign for each home owner to decorate as a Christmas card. And no, my mom wouldn't let my dad spray paint "Bah humbug" across it, graffitti-style (though the snarky amongst us begged her please). Heck, I seem to recall the Chronicle publishing articles suggesting good light-viewing neighborhoods. (And here's this year's Houston Press Top Five.) I'm just not surprised to see the stream of SUVs and cars, bumper-to-bumper, ooo-ing and aahhh-ing over the Christmas lights in River Oaks. I do love the lights, especially those wrapped roots-to-tips up impossibly tall and gnarled oaks. Here's my favorite:
Yes, I know it's not an artful picture, but I felt successful just snapping one, not-very-blurry picture that excludes on-coming traffic. But still. You have to draw the line somewhere. Families on bikes. Tour buses. Horse-drawn carriages. I think I'm okay with those . . . creative, gets cars off the road. But where I draw the line?
Tucked away in a quiet pocket, this Mission/Prairie-style, 129-bed hospital was built in 1910 for the employees of the Southern Pacific Railroad in Texas and Louisiana. Its name, shockingly, was the Southern Pacific Hospital. The 23,000 employees in these two states got managed care, didn't they? A stipend for the Southern Pacific Hospitals was deducted from their paychecks. So long as you didn't have a contagious or venereal disease and were in good standing at work, you could come for care.
My dear, dear Donne Di Domani sauce. . . I know and I'm ever so humbly sorry. But it's all okay now. You're safe.
I thought you were protected. After all, had I not crowed here, on the pages of Texqueim, of my triumph in finally meeting you, in person? Of my plans to savor you with only the S-worthy? I swear, I proclaimed my love of you near and far, even calling long distance to my mother, herself a veteran of so many years of the Nutcracker Market with nary a single sighting of you.
