Departures (2008)

IMDB

Departures (2008): Japanese cellist gives up music to prepare dead for burial. A homecoming. A love story. Simple tale, beautifully told. A+

Lightning Strikes at School Board Candidates Forum

The League of Women Voters of Richardson and the Richardson ISD Council of PTAs jointly hosted a forum for school board candidates Thursday night at the RISD Administration Building.

The candidates for school board trustee are:
Place 6 - Justin Bono, Rachel Chumney.
Place 7 - Kristin Kuhne, Judy A. Yarbrough, Bonnie Abadie.

The election is May 10. Early voting begins April 28.

The full video of the forum is available on the LWV's website. Watch it. Or just read my take on what was most important, or entertaining, or both. It's your choice. It's a free country.

Separated by 6,060 Miles

Award yourself 100 points if you can correctly identify the countries in which these two photos were taken.

Review: Oh Myyy!

Amazon

From Oh Myyy!, by George Takei

Fans (and the press) often wonder how a 75-year old actor who had his heyday in a science fiction series from the 1960s came to have some three million fans on Facebook. I honestly often wonder the same thing."

After the jump, my review.

12 Years a Slave (2013)

IMDB

12 Years a Slave (2013): Important history. Soul-deadening drama. Nothing redeeming about slavery, America's original sin, still with us. B+

Review: Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore

Amazon

From Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore, by Robin Sloan

I pushed the bookstore's glass door. It made a bell tinkle brightly up above, and I stepped slowly through. I did not realize at the time what an important threshold I had just crossed. Inside: imagine the shape and volume of a normal bookstore turned up on its side. This place was absurdly narrow and dizzyingly tall, and the shelves went all the way up -- three stories of books, maybe more."

This novel is the 2014 selection for "Richardson Reads One Book".

After the jump, my review.

Easter in the Steger Garden (2014)

From Flowers

A Touch of Sin (2013)

IMDB

A Touch of Sin (2013): Tales of alienation. Characters are at once victims & sinners. China itself is a character: huge, drab, menacing. B-

Who's Running the Show?

Something amazing happened at the Richardson Civic Center Tuesday evening. The City Plan Commission (CPC) denied, by unanimous vote, a rezoning request to build a chain of pad restaurants along the US 75 frontage road just north of West Spring Valley Road.

The request was non-conforming to the zoning painstakingly worked out several years ago with all stakeholders as part of a revitalization plan for the West Spring Valley Corridor. Instead, the request wanted to ditch that form-based, mixed-use zoning and put in a same-old, same-old row of pad restaurants just like you see all up and down US 75 as far as the Oklahoma line. Obviously this doesn't fit the vision for revitalization of southwest Richardson, and critically, doesn't fit the spirit or the letter of the law as far as current zoning goes. So it ought to have been, and was, denied. Nothing to see here. Move along, right?

Still I was agape at the vote. I'll tell you why, after the jump.

Richardson is Going to the Dogs

The City of Richardson continues to move towards the construction of a dog park, an amenity that residents have long advocated for (along with a skate park, which isn't going anywhere, but let's focus on the positive here). The park is slated to go under the overpass of the President George Bush Turnpike just west of US 75.

The last time I wrote about this, I said whoever came up with the location for this park was a genius. A dog park is an amenity everybody agrees would be a good idea, just not in my backyard. And unused land under a freeway overpass is a waste that isn't good for anything.

The thing is, dogs are hard wired to chase cars, remember? Dogs don't care about traffic. For them, millions of cars whizzing by just out of reach is a feature of this location, not a liability.

After the jump, what's the point of this post today?