Joe Garagiola, RIP

The news came yesterday that baseball great Joe Garagiolo had died at age 90. He had a middling career as a catcher for the St. Louis Cardinals in the 1940s and 1950s and a long career as a baseball broadcaster. My personal memory of Joe Garagiola was his broadcast of Game One of the 1988 World Series between the Oakland A's and the Los Angeles Dodgers. That photo of Kirk Gibson above is the reason I'll always remember that game and Joe Garagiola.

POTD: My Delhi Peeps

From 2016 02 04 New Delhi

Today's photo-of-the-day is from Delhi's Qutub Minar, the tallest brick minaret in the world. I was sightseeing when a man asked if he could take a picture of his son with me. I readily agreed. After the photo, other kids crowded in, wanting their photos taken, too. Before I knew it, I was the centerpiece of what looked like a class photo. (I'm the one in the middle on one knee...heck, no one needs help picking me out of that good-looking lineup.) Good times.

Who Cares About Urban Trees?

That's the question asked by The Atlantic Cities. The story focuses on a small effort, tree identification classes in Brooklyn, that tries to foster urban tree stewardship. The story lists all the reasons why we should care about urban trees. Everything from cleaner air, cooler temperatures, even decreases in stress and depression in people surrounded by trees. I used to think that we in Richardson knew all that.

"A tremendously exciting painting"

Number 12, 1952

"A tremendously exciting painting." That's what one critic called Jackson Pollock's "Number 12, 1952" when it was first exhibited more than a half century ago. We just had to see it and everything else in the Dallas Museum of Art's exhibit "Blind Spots" before it closed on March 20. The exhibit is claimed to be "the largest survey of Jackson Pollock's black paintings ever assembled." I learned that I prefer his color works. And, if the signs accompanying the exhibit are to be believed, so did the public and the critics. Luckily for us, the exhibit contained plenty of both Pollock's black and color paintings.

Amy (2015)

IMDB

Amy (2015): Documentary of Amy Winehouse. I knew the druggie tabloid fodder, not the genius jazz artist. My loss. Time to rectify that. A-