Castle Ruins

The City of Dallas has a problem with rental homes.

"Several of the occupied properties do not have running water, at times there has been open sewage, much of the wood subflooring in the properties is rotten, and makeshift supports seem to be all that are preventing two houses from collapsing into each other," [Dallas's first assistant city attorney Chris] Bowers said via email.

Source: The Dallas Morning News.

There's so much about this Robert Wilonsky story that could and should be talked about. How individuals find themselves living like this. How a society as rich as ours ends up letting the poor live like this. Where, if we condemn and demolish these homes, the tenants are supposed to go. As one tenant who has been homeless before says, his house "is better than nothing." But, this being a Richardson blog and all, I'm drawn to talk about an issue that's been papered over here at home.

The "I" in Richardson ISD

The Richardson ISD is in a tough spot. Enrollment is growing in Lake Highlands. Schools are overcrowded. Expansion could make them unmanageably large. Land for new schools is expensive. Making the issue pressing is an upcoming bond election in less than two months. Money is set aside in the bond for dealing with this, but exactly how to spend it is not yet determined.

What to do? The RISD has established a "Lake Highlands Reflector Committee" made up of parents, staff members, community members and students to research, discuss and recommend options to the board of trustees. Others are freely offering their own advice as well. There's a Facebook group, "Lake Highlands Schools Plan 2030", that has offered a comprehensive long-range plan. And there's even a Dallas city council member, Adam McGough, who has offered his own plan.

OTBR: Perpendicular Point in New South Wales

Latitude: S 31° 38.508
Longitude: E 152° 50.700

A child on a road trip with his family asks, "Where are we?" and the father answers, "Let's check the map. We're off the blue roads [the Interstate Highways marked in blue on the road atlas]. We're off the red roads [the US and state highways]. We're off the black roads [the county highways]. I think we're off the map altogether." It was always my dream to be off the map altogether.

After the jump, a few of the random places (and I mean random literally) that I visited vicariously last month that are "off the blue roads".

Will the RISD Bond Pass?

Someone asked me if the Richardson ISD bond will pass in the May 7 election. Well, that's not a question of fact. It's a matter of speculation. We're all entitled to offer an answer that can't be proven wrong, at least for another month. What follows was my off-the-cuff answer.

Repeat Tweets: Ride the Atomic Bomb Down

Repeat tweets from March, 2016:

• Mar 1 2016: Trump supporter: "I might as well be like Slim Pickens and just ride the atomic bomb down and see what happens." washingtonpost.com
  
• Mar 2 2016: If Clinton picks Julian Castro for veep, this Dallas segregation story will get the public attention it deserves. dallasobserver.com
  
• Mar 2 2016: "Obama has a soft spot for homosexuals because of the years he spent as a male prostitute." -- likely SBOE member Mary Lou Bruner. texastribune.org
  

After the jump, more repeat tweets.

POTD: Tempting Symbol Squarely in My Path

From 2016 02 05 Agra

Today's photo-of-the-day is from the tomb of I'timad-ud-Daulah in Agra, India. On the lawn just outside of the tomb was the scene in this photo. I smiled, walked on, and said nothing.

RISD Bond Community Information Meeting #1

Oslo Davis

Monday evening, the Richardson ISD held the first of four community information meetings about the upcoming bond election. This meeting was at Prestonwood Elementary School. If you missed it, no matter. Three more meetings, at other high school feeder schools, will be held in April. And you can learn everything you need to know about the bond on the district's website.

Here, I don't want to focus on the information about the bond that was shared Monday evening. The district administrators did that and you can find it all on the website. Some misinformation did appear in some of the questions, which does interest me. Much of this seems impervious to education, which probably holds a lesson about the challenges to public schooling in general, but that's a much broader topic than I wish to cover here.

POTD: Woman's Work

From 2016 02 05 Agra

Today's photo-of-the-day is from the tomb of I'timad-ud-Daulah in Agra, India. The wall surrounding the tomb grounds is being remodeled. By women. A brick surface is being laboriously chipped off. By hand. And carried away. In baskets. On their heads. I was impressed by their diligence.

Review: Purity

Amazon

From Purity, by Jonathan Franzen

When Pip was very young, vague stories had satisfied her, but by the time she was eleven her questions had grown so insistent that her mother agreed to tell her the 'full' story. Once upon a time, she said, she'd had a different name and a different life, in a state that wasn't California, and she'd married a man who — as she discovered only after Pip was born — had a propensity to violence."

This is the story of Pip (Purity) Tyler, a young adult with huge student loan debt and unpromising career prospects, and her search for who she is. It's also the story of her mother, a reclusive, fragile free spirit. It's the story of Andreas Wolf, an East German who finds his life-calling as a trafficker of state secrets after the fall of the Berlin Wall leaves him adrift in the world. It's the story of Tom Aberant, a middle-aged American who married young and became a journalist instead of a writer. It takes a long time to give each character his full due. In other words, it's a long novel. Is it a good novel?

After the jump, my review.

POTD: Agra Food Cart

From 2016 02 05 Agra

Today's photo-of-the-day is from Agra, India. Food carts are ubiquitous in India. This one didn't have any food, but I still found it photogenic.