Three Carp

Gulf Fritillary memory, originally uploaded by gurdonark.

Friday we ate Turkish food before seeing "My One and Only", the quirky period piece about the early 1950s boyhood of the family of actor George Hamilton. We liked both meal and movie, though I ate too much of the bread and thought that the movie spent a lot of time on the wind-up before beginning the pitch.

Saturday we took the train to Dallas' Mockingbird Station to meet an old friend at Rockfish Grill for lunch. This friend from my boyhood lived down the street from us when I was six years old. Now he is a professor teaching accounting at a nearby university. We enjoyed talking about old and new. I dined on grilled catfish, skillet potatoes and steamed vegetables.

Saturday afternoon I went with a fellow to go fishing at Park Hill Prairie. The fishing went reasonably well--I caught 8 fish and he caught 4. We practiced catch and release fishing, but few of the sun fish would have been "keepers" had we been keeping our catch.

Sunday afternoon I recorded a sample of one of my kalimbas for use in my synthesizer. I got a pleasant surprise--a twitter tweet from my friend vuzh with additional sound samples for me to use.

At 3 p.m. I arrived at the Allen Public Library to see the performance by Grupo Pakal, the local Mayan dance trio. The program was just right--explanatory but not over-burdened, well-danced, including a deer dance, and best of all--free and 35 minutes in length. I now believe that the best concert experiences are matinee in nature and
last an hour or less.

I wished I had had my little digital recorder, as I would like to have a sample of the conch shell the dancers played, which made a great woodwind sound. The library foyer featured a local butterfly artist named Kelly Hamilton whose works were really inspiring--dreamy yet not sentimental.

I went to Allen Station Park to walk around. The creek bridge toward the skateboard park spanned a creek still full of water but quite slow-moving. I used my binoculars to watch the fish. Most of them were bluegill sunfish, but I saw three small carp shoaling and
one adorably bull-dog-like bullhead catfish sitting on the bottom.
A damselfly hovered near me.

I saw a western kingbird nested away in a grove of trees, and got a fun snapshot with my digicam. I saw butterflies everywhere-giant swallowtails, hairstreak, and gulf fritallaries in particular. Mockingbirds, one of our year-round birds, are more prominent now that the wandering birds are beginning to fly south. I snapped one butterfly in a burst of vivid flowers, but muted the flowers for display purposes above.

I'm reading a fascinating book about McCarthy-ism, a phenomenon which has many lessons from which we all may learn even today.