Great Fountain Plaza Festival - Rain or Shine

From 200909 Fountain Plaza Festival

The heavy rains didn't stop the fun at Richardson's Great Fountain Plaza Festival. Events simply moved indoors, including games, activities, animals, live entertainment and the dozens of booths and tables for everything from A (Altrusa) to Z (ZumbaDallas). Ellen was there with the League of Women Voters of Richardson facilitating voter registration and informing voters about the November 3rd election and the Texas constitutional amendments on the ballot. The League can always use new volunteers. Consider joining.

See more photos from the festival here.

Faded Photographs, Indelible Memories

From Genealogy

"Time it was, and what a time it was, it was
A time of innocence, a time of confidences
Long ago, it must be, I have a photograph
Preserve your memories; They're all that's left you"

-- Paul Simon, 1968

Support Proposition 4, Support UT-Dallas

Proposition 4 (HJR 14-2)

"The constitutional amendment establishing the national research university fund to enable emerging research universities in this state to achieve national prominence as major research universities and transferring the balance of the higher education fund to the national research university fund."

In case you hadn't noticed, the University of Texas at Dallas (UT-D) is competing with six other state universities to attain the coveted rank of Tier One research university. They are UT-Arlington, the University of North Texas, Texas Tech University, the University of Houston, UT-San Antonio, and UT-El Paso.

Protected/Permitted Left-Turn Signals Changing

There's an endless list of problems we face: economic recession, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, health care, global warming, immigration, federal debt. So, let's talk about traffic lights.

First Trip to Jerry Jones' Death Star

Cowboys Stadium

More 2009 Football

Ellen and I joined John and Anne for our first trip to the Dallas Cowboys' new gazillion dollar stadium in Arlington, Texas. The event was a quadruple header of high school football. We stayed only for the first game between Euless Trinity and South Jordan (Utah) Bingham High School. Trinity is a Texas football powerhouse, having won the state championship in 2005 and 2007. Bingham finished second in last year's Utah state playoffs. Bingham's head coach Dave Peck called today's game the "biggest high school football game anyone from Utah has ever participated in."

Late Summer In The Steger Garden (2009)

From Flowers

RISD shields students from the President

Next week, the President plans to broadcast a short speech aimed at students nationwide, challenging them "to work hard, set goals and take responsibility for their learning." Ho-hum, right? Wrong.

According to the The Dallas Morning News, the Richardson Independent School District (RISD) received about a hundred calls from parents objecting to their children listening to the President. Perhaps as a result, the RISD plans to require written parental permission before students are allowed to listen to the President of the United States extol the value of an education.

Normally, the RISD can be counted on to make level-headed decisions in the best interest of education. This decision might have involved the former superintendent and now, once again, acting superintendent Dr. Carolyn Bukhair. If so, and this was her call, I'll be charitable and assume she's just rusty after coming out of retirement. Because I hate to think that the RISD is a victim of an illness making a comeback in this country, an epidemic that's not swine flu.