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Art/School
To the editor: Thank you for your article on the McLean Middle School Art Collection (“Classy Stuff,” Oct. 11, 2006). My daughter is an eighth-grader at McLean, and I had no idea that the school had such an impressive art collection. How exciting! I was a docent at the Amon Carter Museum and an art major in college, so to find out that our neighborhood public school possessed such a treasure was a thrill. Thank you for pointing out something good about our Fort Worth public schools for a change. A very good thing for McLean is having Nancy Weisskopf for our principal. She has done an outstanding job in the short time she has been there.
Debra Million
Fort Worth
To the editor: As a McLean Cardinal alumnus, I especially appreciated your article about their post-World War II art collection. I was, however, dismayed to learn that the artists in the group mentioned were deceased, since one of them is my father, Don Deardorff. He is in fact alive and painting! Can you forward Nancy Weisskopf’s e-mail address? My dad would like to view the collection.
Daralynn Deardorff
Fort Worth
Editor’s note: To contact Weisskopf about donating money to restore the McLean Middle School’s art collection, please call 817-922-6830.
Smell the Greed
To the editor: Dan McGraw’s essay, (“Don’t Waste the Boom,” Oct. 18, 2006) hit me like a kick in the stomach. It’s harder to wake people up to greed and corruption when all they read about is money, money, money. Give me a break here.
I understand that Dan is a realist, but realists are not always right. In this case, all that free, dirty gas-drilling money comes with a hidden price tag. Hidden does not mean it’s not there. Manna from heaven doesn’t smell like rotten eggs, either.
Wake up and smell the methane, Dan, and the benzene, hexane, toluene, and xylene — all known carcinogens and all emitted from gas wells. One or two wells may be no big deal, but we have hundreds in Fort Worth already, hundreds more planned, and hundreds more circling the county. Environmental degradation eventually comes back to bite, and when it does, the clean-up is not free. And did I mention all those millions of gallons of clean water going down the toilet? I could go on.
I’m a realist, too, Dan. I realize that money is running this experiment, and it will take a miracle to slow it down. But I also believe that, if and when the boom hits a neighborhood for real and people are dead on the ground, we will at least have a chance to take back our neighborhoods from the greed heads and keep them at the airport where they belong.
Sure, we need tax breaks and new parks, mass transit, etc., Dan, but please put your considerable writing skills to better use shedding light on the dark side of gas drilling that is grossly under-reported by the media. Besides, Mayor Mike and the Fort Worth Star-Telegram are already doing a great job telling us about all that free money.
Don Young
Fort Worth Citizens Against Neighborhood Drilling Ordinance
River Pork
To the editor: According to press reports, a 100-member steering committee will be appointed to increase public participation in the $435 million Trinity Uptown project (“Rollin’ on the River,” Aug. 23, 2006). “This is not a downtown project; it is a community project,” said J.D. Granger, the Tarrant Regional Water District’s project manager.
They’ve market-tested names for this project: Vision Town. Uptown. Downtown. None has caught on. How about Pork Town? They took a $10 million taxpayer-funded flood control project and turned it into a $435 million taxpayer-funded economic development project.
Can no one in the several neighborhood associations, Chamber of Commerce, or city hall (except Chuck Silcox) foresee the ballooning costs, dangers, and low prospects of success for this goofy idea? Remember how the feds walked away from the Waxahachie Super Conducting Super Collider after taking land and homes by eminent domain and digging tunnels all over the place like gleeful, ebullient gophers on drugs?
After the Trinity property owners are dispossessed, the ditch-digging begun, and Kay Granger gone, what if a future Congress decides to pull the plug on this project? Can all the king’s horses and all the king’s men put Humpty together again?
Don Woodward
Fort Worth
The Voice
To the editor: I commend Fort Worth Weekly for Betty Brink’s excellent in-depth article on the Tarrant County DA’s race (“Curry vs. Moore,” Oct. 25, 2006). It typifies the Weekly’s unique contribution to local journalism. I have seen nothing in the Star-Telegram that compares with the thoroughness of this piece.
It would be a sad day if we ever lost the Weekly’s voice.
Phil Vinson
Fort Worth
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