Great Cartoon!

Found it at Matthew's Blog:

A Wedding at the "Shack"

On July 20, the day after our Fort Davis and McDonald Observatory adventures, we attended a wedding at The Shack in the Back

between Odessa and Midland.

The "in the back" refers to its location behind a now-abandoned Sears warehouse.

This was the wedding of Robert's teacher from first grade. (He's about to start fifth grade!)

The eclectically decorated shack is, like almost everything else around here, next door to an oilfield equipment yard.

Here's a chainsaw bear for Granny J.

A much larger bear!

A jukebox that plays 45's!An old guy like me can remember the Hemisfair license plates.

Robert teaches the ring bearer a few things about pool, much to the eventual astonishment of the ring bearer's mom...

Robert really liked this old phone booth.

The mother of the bride is ,of course, our Avon distributor.

Robert wishes it be noted that the NewsWest 9 tower (center of picture) is nearby.

The happy couple are pronounced husband and wife.

"Wil-SON-N-N-N!"

The "island", really the peninsula, could only be reached by walking through this Indiana Jones-type jungle.

Here's the lovely and gracious bride! Best wishes!

Our McDonald Observatory Adventure

Robert contends that he is too "busy" to do this post, so Dad will step in and do it.July 19, right after our Fort Davis adventure, we had a lunch that couldn't be beat, and then we headed about twenty miles down the road to McDonald Observatory !
This is a sundial, a clock which is hard to wind.

Mick Jagger and Jerry Hall once visited this place.

This is holy ground.

This is the shuttle bus which took us the rest of the way up the mountain to the big telescopes.

It is very dark here at night and the air is thin, which is why it's a great place for stargazing.

The history of this place is fascinating. It was endowed by an amateur astronomer and banker named William McDonald. His family was surprised and dismayed by this bequest, and a long legal battle was waged.
This is the 107-inch Harlan J. Smith telescope. The last time I was here, in 1973, it had an eyepiece you could look through. Now it's all hooked up to computers. They normally have a big screen on which you can see live images of the sun, but on this day a huge thunderstorm blew in and made that idea impossible. The dome is normally open as well.

This telescope was once the victim of a handgun assault! Sheesh!

This is Robert moving 160 tons of telescope by remote. The guided tour shows you a spot on the floor where an absent-minded astronomer once moved the thing too far and left a huge dent in the floor. The astronomer is now delivering pizzas somewhere.

(No, not really.)

The above building houses the Harlan J. Smith telescope.

The uniquely-designed 360-inch Hobby-Eberly telescope is also impressive, the fifth largest telescope in the world, but it's protected (from handgun assault?) by plexiglass, so when you photograph it you get ghostly images like the two above.

This dome houses the Hobby-Eberly telescope. The 360-inch mirror, if I understand correctly, is actually made up of 91 identical hexagonal mirrors. The little ball on a stick near the roof is a focus object which helps align the 91 individual mirrors.

Way cool!

Ode to Joy

A reader named Rawhide says:

"At the risk of being labeled an elitist, may I suggest some culture for the blog."

Thank you, sir, and here you go:

The Houston Chronicle Discovers Kermit!

Many thanks to Chuck, who sent me a link to this article from the Houston Chronicle: (I added some web pictures to it!)


West Texans jaded instead of giddy during this oil boom
By MIKE SNYDER Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle
Aug. 4, 2008, 2:20AM

KERMIT — The lights on the rigs pierce the black West Texas night, illuminating mesquite shrubs and jack rabbits scampering across the flat landscape. The glow sends a reassuring message: Good times have returned to the oil patch.
Pump jacks nod vigorously alongside the highway. Fat royalty checks arrive monthly in the mailboxes of ranchers and other landowners. Teachers and retail clerks abandon their jobs for better-paying work in the oil fields as long-idle wells surge to life.

Yet, the people of Kermit and other Permian Basin towns have learned that petroleum-based prosperity is too fragile to squander in wild exuberance. They're paying off debts and investing in public institutions that will endure beyond the boom-and-bust cycles of the oil business.

"I've [wasted] three booms in my lifetime, but this time, no," said Gary Blue, 43, who says his business preparing sites for drilling is turning down about as much work as it accepts these days.

Rodney Hayes, 49, who owns Kermit's only floral shop,

said he and his neighbors haven't forgotten what happened when oil prices plummeted in the 1980s and the town's population dropped from 10,000 to its current 6,000 in a matter of months.

"It was like a suitcase parade" as companies and their workers left town, Hayes said.

Although prices have retreated a bit in recent weeks, their record-breaking levels this year have prompted exploration companies to make big plays in West Texas.

Los Angeles-based Occidental Petroleum Corp., for example, plans to invest more than $1.5 billion in the area. It will drill about 250 wells and build a plant and pipelines to distribute carbon dioxide that will increase the company's Permian Basin oil production by at least 50,000 barrels a day, spokeswoman Stacey Crews said.

These investments, of course, produce higher tax revenue for local governments. In Kermit, the Winkler County seat about 40 miles west of Odessa, community leaders are trying to spend the money wisely by paying off bonds issued to finance public improvements as quickly as possible.

Buildings going up

The effects of recent prosperity are evident in a quick drive around the town, whose businesses, houses, parks and schools are scattered over a couple of square miles surrounding the intersection of two state highways.

Construction crews are finishing work on a new county hospital

and a new elementary school.

The emergency medical service now has its own building where paramedics can sleep and prepare meals. Until the building opened recently, they had to bunk in vacant hospital rooms.

"It's a lot more relaxing atmosphere," said Tiffany Fambro, a 24-year-old emergency medical technician, showing visitors the big-screen TV and workout equipment in the new facility.

At Winkler County Memorial Hospital, administrator Stan Wiley pointed to a new, $1 million CT scan machine. He beamed like a teenager showing off his first car. Up-to-date equipment and a modern replacement for a 60-year-old building have helped attract a third full-time physician and expand services at the rural health clinic, Wiley said.
"It keeps your town alive," he said. "With the price of oil like it is, we should be able to get this paid off while the price is still up."

The sudden infusion of money also causes some problems. "Help wanted" signs at convenience stores and fast-food restaurants show how hard it is for small businesses to hold onto workers tempted by $30-an-hour jobs in the oil fields.

Perhaps the biggest challenge, local leaders say, is finding housing for all the new oil field workers. The nearest home-building firms are an hour away in Odessa and Midland, so at least one energy company is building its own houses for employees in Kermit.

Sitting on a fortune

Stefanie Haley, 70, has learned to take the swings in the oil business in stride during the decades she has lived in West Texas. Her family owns a ranch west of Kermit where companies are producing natural gas, and she works in a related family business that supplies saltwater that helps maintain pressure in wells.

Haley's daughter has planned a party to celebrate the dream home that contractors are building on a section of the ranch that she and her brother own. Haley calls it "the house that gas built."

The gas beneath the ranch, Haley said, is buried deep in the earth — too deep to justify the expense of extracting it until recently. Now, the pastures are dotted with oil rigs, pump jacks and natural gas wells with solar panels to help transmit data read by company executives in Houston.

A burst of activity in the oil fields also provides unusual business opportunities. Haley was reminded of this when a catering truck from Odessa pulled up bearing lunch for a rig crew on the ranch.
Haley knows of a fast-food place in one nearby town that charged $9 for a hamburger, knowing that a hungry roughneck with a pocket full of money and nowhere else to go might be willing to pay that much.
"It's a big burger, but still," said Haley, shaking her head.

Planning ahead

While the people of Kermit enjoy their newfound prosperity, they're keeping an eye on a future that might not be built quite so thoroughly on petroleum. New technology is enabling companies to wring more oil and gas from West Texas fields, but no one is certain when the reserves will play out.

Some local leaders hope a new wind energy project in Winkler County will help sustain the economy after the oil and gas stop flowing.

"Boom times are back for now, but resource-driven regions like the Permian Basin face a recurring dilemma," the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas said in a report last spring.

"At the bottom of every cycle, when the oil industry is shrinking and times are tough, nothing is pursued with more fervor than industrial diversification," it said. "Yet, on the way up, the oil industry can be so profitable it pushes other businesses to the side."

Winkler County Judge Bonnie Leck said this is the sobering counterpoint to the good times the community is enjoying now. Diversification isn't easy in a region that's far from urban centers and too arid to sustain much agriculture, she said.

"It's a real challenge," Leck said, "and it's something that people are thinking about all the time."
mike.snyder@chron.com

My Fort Davis Adventure by Robert Kirk

Have YOU Ever Wondered What It Would Have Been Like To Travel From San Antonio To El Paso During The 1880's?

Well, I wanted to know what it would have been like. So....I signed up for a Junior Ranger Walk in Fort Davis, Texas last month. If you were unable to go, I'll give you a report on what I saw.

When I arrived at the site, I saw two teachers near the fence. There were about 50 kids who accompanied me on the walk. Each of us had water bottles and/or canteens, and wore hats to shade us from the sun. Note my Indiana Jones hat.

We began our walk toward the historic fort, along the road that travelers took from El Paso to San Antonio, Texas. Along the walk, we met actors dressed in period costume. Each traveler played a particular role: soldier, families, settlers, etc. Each person told us a story of why they were traveling on the road that particular day. There were also demonstrations of activities they liked to do, how they managed to eat and get supplies, etc.

One of the most interesting things I saw on the Junior Ranger Walk was an actor demonstrating how to rope cattle. He could do some really neat rope tricks with his lasso. He let the kids on the walk try to lasso a fake cow with his lasso. It's definitely NOT easy to do! It would take a lot of practice to be as good with the lasso as this man was.

Before the lasso demonstration there was free games for amusement. They were: jump rope, ring toss, and dancing. There was also a tug of war game.

We also got to see a real chuckwagon, where we got free food: jerky, crackers, and water. Since I already had water in my canteen, I ate crackers.

The Junior Ranger walk took about 2 hours. At the end of the trail, I got to climb into a covered wagon marked "U.S.". I got to get a Junior Ranger badge and a certificate for completing the walk. It was a lot of fun! I plan to do it again next year. In fact, one of the people who volunteered at the fort told my parents that I could participate as a "traveler" in next year's Junior Ranger Walk. What a deal!

While I was on the walk, Mom and Dad took off to explore the town...

...and the fort. The flag has 38 stars, like an 1880's flag.

Gatling guns. This fort was not made a historic site until 1960. It was open and unfenced before then because people didn't realize its value, so it's amazing that so many of the buildings are still standing.

Now several buildings are completely restored, and more are being restored as money becomes available.

Delicately balanced rocks.

Next we went to the McDonald Observatory, but that's another story for another day...