Sunday, September 27, 2009

Caddo Lake National Wildlife Refuge


























































For once, the good guys won. The 8,400 acre Caddo Lake National Wildlife Refuge in northeastern Texas was dedicated on National Public Lands Day on the last Saturday of September, its existence laying down a marker in a decades-long contentious fight that pitted the locals of Uncertain against big money, politically-connected interests in nearby Marshall, Don Henley against power plant fatcats, the natural world and science against economic development boosters and the Growth Is Good At Any Cost crowd, and vindicating the efforts of Don Henley, the local boy from Linden who made it big with the band he belonged to called the Eagles, who never forgot the place where he caught his first fish in 1955.

I'd written about Caddo Lake twice since 2001 - in Texas Monthly magazine (www.joenickp.com/water/waterfoul.html)and in the Texas Observer (www.joenickp.com/water/caddolake.html) - and showed up in Karnack to take part in the celebration.

The refuge, a dense mix of pine and hardwood bottoms - a flooded wetland forest, as it were - sits where the Longhorn Army Ammunition Plant once was located. Twenty years before the refuge's dedication, the U.S. Army destroyed its last Pershing 1-A missiles here under terms of the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty. The last remnant of that era is a 1941 vintage guardhouse, the only one of 451 buildings erected on the site still standing; its restoration was ironically aided by a $25,000 grant from the City of Marshall, which had previously sought to increase the amount of water it took from the lake and tried unsuccessfully to put a power plant and an industrial park on the site, among other schemes. But it was the proposed Daingerfield Reach barge canal that sparked a protracted fight from communities around the lake and prompted Henley to underwrite the creation of the Caddo Lake Institute in 1991 near the town of Uncertain.

That was then. Now, the odd coalition of lake defenders including the Greater Caddo Lake Association, the town of Uncertain, the Chamber of Commerce, Texas Parks & Wildlife, and the Caddo Lake Institute, among others, could revel in the fruits of their labor - a wild place next to the lake that would remain that way.

The event was crawling with Boy Scouts who assisted with parking and led the Pledge of Allegiance and the presentation of the color guard.

Booths were set up representing Friends of Caddo Lake National Wildlife Refuge, the Cypress Basin chapter of Texas Master Naturalists, Operation Game Thief and Texas Parks & Wildlife, Native Plant Growns Texas Forest Service, Texas Conservation Alliance. A silent auction for the refuge offered all sorts of goodies to bid on including Fire Ant bait.

But perhaps the most important player in the protracted conservation effort, Dwight Shellman, was absent. The Aspen, Colorado attorney who Henley enlisted and who eventually moved to Caddo to become part of the community was stricken with a degenerative disease and can no longer travel. His son came to represent him.

Robbie Speight, the burly head of the Greater Caddo Lake Association, introduced me to his new wife, who is a wildlife biologist for Texas Parks and Wildlife. Tom Walker, a librarian active with the coaltion, was positively giddy as he made introductions, including one to Richard Bowden, the force behind Music City Texas and the music guy whose band was the first Don Henley ever played in. Jack and Nancy Canson, who helped publicize the conservation efforts and work, filmed the event.

Master of ceremonies retired appellate Judge Ben Z. Grant opened the event acknowledging folks like Loucille and Fred Dahmer, who wrote extensively about Caddo Lake in the 20th Century (his 1988 short history "Caddo Was" remains a classic)and Betty and Robin Holder (she was the sassy, outspoken Mayor of Uncertain). Grant concluded by saying with confidence, "God smiles on our undertaking. This land — if you go back in history — was part of the Caddo Nation. In my mind's eye, I can see a time when this land was home of the Indians."

Members of the Caddo Culture Club, part of the Caddo Nation descended from the original human inhabitants of the refuge, blessed the event with the Drum Dance, "one of our most sacred dances tied to our creation myth in which we came from under the ground into the light," explained Phil Cross of CaddoLegacy.com. Four male drummers drummed while chanting and moving in a large circle, followed by five women and one girl dressed in 19th century floral-print gowns with C-shaped combs, shuffling their feet in small side steps to the rhythm of the drums. [CLICK ON THE HEADLINE OF THE STORY TO SEE A SHORT FILM CLIP]

Representatives of the US Fish and Wildlife Service, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the US Army spoke. Refuge manager Mark Williams welcomed the audience. A senior western swing trio fiddled and swung. The On the Caddo Lake Singers, an old-fashioned singing group, harmonized as they sang "Floating Down the Caddo." The Bobby Mercy Oliver Jam City Revue, specializing in blues, played the low down stuff after the ceremonies.

Louie Gohmert, the Congressman best known to those outside his district as one of the House Republicans acting up and clowning around during President Obama's address to Congress, was on his best behavior. He opened his remarks by telling the audience he'd asked Don Henley if he'd ordered up the warm sunny weather for the day (Henley told Gohmert he didn't have that much clout, according to the Congressman) and how Louie's daddy took him to the lake when he was a kid. Gohmert did manage to inject a little bit of politics into his address (although, wisely, not a peep on heath care, not in front of this crowd) by stating that the Giant Salvinia, the invasive aquatic plant that is choking the lake's surface, may be the biggest challenge of all that Caddo Lake is facing. It's true. The lake may be saved, but the gonzo salvinia threatens to kill it by choking out all other vegetation and aquatic life. Gohmert closed by paraphrasing the Eagles' "Hotel California" ("Welcome to Nature's Hotel Caddo Lake, what a lovely place,what a lovely space, anytime of year, you can find it here..."). I guess he meant well with the tribute.

Don Henley spoke last. Dressed casually in a black t shirt and open oxford shirt and olive slacks, and wearing shades, he recalled his boyhood connection to the lake, his realization how special and unique the ecosystem is, other outside threats such as mercury pollution from numerous lignite coal plants in East Texas (a major source of air pollution at Big Bend National Park) and his adulthood desire to do right by it. Caddo is Henley's Walden Pond, in the great tradition of Henry David Thoreau. On this day, he could see the payoff for his efforts in the thousand people who showed up to celebrate the creation of the refuge with him.






























Friday, September 11, 2009

the Space Opera odyssey, part six

Chapter Six: When the Mountain Won't Come to You....of Frank Gutch's Lost In Space: The Epic Saga of Fort Worth's Space Opera is out and posted here
http://www.rockandreprise.net/spaceopera6.html
or click on the headline.

Frank sent this note along note with the new chapter:

"Through the New York phase now, Joe Nick. Next up, the remaining years, including the reunion Caravan of Dreams gig, the second album and the reissue of the Epic album on CD. Got a great email from Don Swancey and will include it at the end of the next chapter. Also, David is working on the old tapes, including the tapes you guys played on the air, and hopes to put out something when they are as good as they can be.

Keep the faith,

Frank


Sunday, September 6, 2009

Heart of Texas Country Music Museum


















I paused from judging duties at the World Championship Barbecue Goat Contest in Brady, Texas, the geographical center of the state, over the Labor Day weekend to cruise through the Heart of Texas Country Music Museum. Every visit, I'm more and more impressed with the exhibits, particularly all the stage costumes director Tracy Pitcox has accumulated, not to mention Ferlin Husky's Cadillac limo with only 86,000 miles on it. The museum is part of the traditional country music empire Tracy has built including the Hillbilly Hits radio show that airs on KNEL in Brady and around the world online, the Oprys he stages, and the Heart of Texas record label that has become home for legends including Leona Williams, the great Darrell McCall, Ferlin Husky, Floyd Tillman, Hank Thompson, Joe Paul Nichols, and Al Dean. For more information on the museum, the label, the Oprys and the radio show, click on the headline or go to hillbillyhits.com




























Springfield, Ohio: The End of the American Road


















(click on the headline to access Terry Bryne's website: terrencebyrnes.com )

On our way to Montreal a few weeks ago, Ed Ward suggested we contact his longtime friend Terry Byrnes. Terry showed us around Oscar Peterson's old neighborhood and turned us on to the wonderful farmer's market in southwest Montreal Marche Atwater, which I've learned sounds way cooler when you say it in French.

Terry's biggest revelation was the photography project he's been working on for 43 years - that's right, photographing one place over the course of four decades - the town of Springfield, Ohio, which was the terminus of the National Road, aka the Cumberland Road, the first highway in the United States which was extended to Springfield in 1838.

Most photographers couldn't get away with Terry's slow, purposeful documentation. Perhaps it's because he shows up once a year and people remember - enough to refer to him as "the Canadian," an outsider cool enough and far away enough to be tolerated. The Springfield Museum of Art has recognized his Main Street Project, as it is known locally, with an exhibition and by showing his work on their website:
http://www.springfieldart.museum/content/view/198/282


Springfield is a rust belt town and shows it in the slow decline that Byrnes has documented. If the town appears to be beyond saving, the people living in it compensate by being a most colorful lot. There's a haunting quality to every image below the surface, perhaps because of the backdrop of industrial decline, creeping poverty, and not much reason to hope.

And yet, the images beckon, to be looked at, examined, thought about. Some project beauty; others truth. No two are alike. The camera captures a moment in life in each image. Forty three years of that tells a deep, rich story. Terry told us he thought his Springfield project. Lately he's been focusing on abandoned homes and ephemera that he's found. Like an archeologist, he's sifting through the ruins, trying to make sense of it all until there's nothing left to ask questions about.





(all images copyright, Terence Byrnes)