• Jehovah’s Witnesses Meet in Fort Worth This Weekend - Let's make sure they know where the Libertarians are meeting!
• Q Cinema Announces Winners - Fort Worth, TX - Associated Content - We are HORRIBLE supporters of the arts… I can't even begin to state how sorry I am that I missed all of this and provided no coverage whatsoever.
• Plano mom that severed baby’s arm seeks freedom - No, really! God says I'm fine now!
• Shari.com: Joe T. Garcia and The Fort Worth Botanical Gardens - And now I know what it is about Joe T.'s that I don't like. It's not really like "real" Tex-Mex, it's like a California/Nevada misinterpretation of Tex-Mex, and NOTHING like real Mexican food. I wonder if she's actually TRIED any of the other restaurants
• SUV donations at a high as demand evaporates - Let's just hope that all those altruistic people are deducting the ACTUAL value of the vehicle, not what they paid for it.
• Concerns create locally-grown produce demand - I love it when the things I advocate for start happening!
• Fort Worth Cats Not Viable - Fort Worth Cats - American Association - nlfan / aabfan Discussion Forums & Chat Rooms - Message Board - Yuku - There should be a question mark in the headline, but nonetheless, this is an interesting thread. Gives you an idea of what things are going to be like on the Northside REALLY SOON.
• The Conde Nast Traveler “Hot List 2008″ - Tim Love does it again, this time for Love Shack.
• Child abandonment suspect: ‘I was there spiritually’ - What "work," exactly, did God call you to do?
• Longtime Terrell High teacher Hazel Harvey Peace dies | Fort Worth | Star-Telegram.com - Thanks for your service, Ms. Peace

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• The Fort Worthian: Fort Worth BBQ: Let the sauce wars commence! - Texas Monthly declares the best BBQ in Texas, but only lists Cousins in Fort Worth. Are you gonna stand for that?
• FL9 » High Sun - Chceck out the photos of a very rare BNSF passenger train over at FL9. Dang, we may end riding a few of these if the airlines can't get it together.
• Fort Worth - ForgeHub Forums - No idea what this has to do with Fort Worth, except that maybe there are a lot of 'barrecks' around here. (What is wrong with our children?)
• FL9 » “Green” in Fort Worth - I don't know why I like looking at pictures of trains… but I do!
• High gas prices changing the way Texans drive - Dallas Business Journal: - Well, I'll be damned! The free market is working! High gas prices cause people to drive less, which will eventually cause the price of gas to come down. It's too bad that once it does these idiots will be right back in their duallies.

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Pete Wann also contributed to this fine piece of internet bloggery.

• Can Wendy Davis Turn Fort Worth Blue? | The Texas Blue - “You can tell that [Brimer] is running scared,” Nieto said. “You can tell he’s seen the writing on the wall and he’s basically running for his political life.”
• Food and Fort Worth, Texas: More Restaurants: the Mid-Price Range “Indies” - A quick round up of the affordable independent restaurants in Fort Worth. “[T]he family owned and operated restaurants have moved aside to big business establishments[...]It is a market-driven reality, but, we have lost something”
• Two Fat Ladies: Way to Go Arlington! Fort Worth, What’s the Hold Up? - Eddie moved from Fort Worth to South Korean and he’s keeping a blog to document his adventures. Here he talks about life without plastic grocery bags, encouraging Fort Worth to follow Arlington’s lead.
• A Southern Missive–Fort Worth Reenactors - See what happens to Civil War re-enactors that try to get too friendly with the local saloon girls

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It’s been another busy week at West & Clear’s sister site Fort Worthology, so here’s some of what’s been going on since last Thursday:

• SoSeven’s rolling along on the Shops & Lofts.
• I took my usual architecture nerd’s perspective in examining a new-construction home of traditional architecture in Fairmount.
• Rumors are afoot - Is the United Way Building coming down? And what might replace it?
• I took another perspective on the Susan Alanis hiring.
• I rolled out a bunch of HDR photos of downtown.
• Finally, I wrote up a huge post today going into detail on the neighborhoods of the Trinity Uptown plan.

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Ever imagine what it looks like from the cockpit of a passenger jet landing and taking off from DFW? The Airliner blog has the videos, Captain.

No guarantees this is exactly legal or even moral, but this here blog has links to bootleg recordings of Jimi Hendrix at the Memorial Auditorium in Dallas on Feb 16, 1968 and the Will Rogers Auditorium here in Fort Worth on Feb 17, 1968. Tom Huckabee talked at length about Hendrix at Will Rogers in our comments a few months back. I wonder if there was ‘l’amore’ in the bushes that night?

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Texas photographer Robb Kendrick, a regular contributor to National Geographic, was written up in the New York Times. Kendrick eschews modern photographic techniques when making his portraits of cowboys. Instead of digital, he uses an archaic, expensive, toxic and time consuming tin-plate process to make his beautiful portraits that explore the lives of modern cowboys.

“Many cultures threatened by so-called progress can lose much in a matter of one or two generations,” Kendrick wrote in his new book Still: Cowboys at the Start of the Twenty-First Century. “But cowboys — actual working cowboys, in all their manifestations — proudly and determinedly endure.”

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Photo by Joseph Robertson

It’s been a crazy week here at West and Clear HQ. So crazy, in fact, that we’ve decided to open up the weekly “go do this” post to you, our brilliant, attractive, congenial readers.

Here are a couple of things to get you started:

The Fort Worth Astronomical Society is hosting a free stargazing party and telescope observation starting at dusk on Saturday. They’re meeting on the north lawn at the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History, 1501 Montgomery St. Call 817-255-9409 for the deets.

Saturday is also the day of competing green events.

The Westside Unitarian Universalist Church is hosting its Green Fest Saturday from 11-5 at its new location, 901 Page St. It’s free, of course.

I’ll be at the Live Green expo in Plano (yeah, I know, “Live Green in Plano” sounds like an oxymoron). It runs from 9-5, and since I don’t see a cost of entry listed on its web page, I assume it’s free. I’m debating riding a combination of my bike, TRE, and DART to get there, but I also have other business that I need to do in the Plano/Frisco/Dallas area, so I may have to resort to the car.

That’s it for me for the weekend! Sunday I’ll be cleaning up from the storm and trying to get ahead on some work.

What are your plans for the weekend? Post them in this thread! If you’d like to have something listed in a future event roundup, send us an e-mail with the word “event” in the subject line so we can pick it out easily.

Since I know you’re starting to make plans for the weekend, now is the time to clue you in to a couple of cool events around the city.

On Saturday, there’ll be a fundraiser for some folks participating in the BP Houston to Austin MS150 Bike Ride (I don’t know which one, exactly) at the Rahr Brewery from 7-10 PM.

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They’ve got a ton of raffle giveaways, and you get free beer! All you have to pony up is $10 at the door, all of which goes to the Lone Star Chapter of the Multiple Sclerosis Society. Update: (Ryan does a better job selling it than I have in the comments…)

The Fort Worth Community Arts Center will be hosting a reception for their current and incoming batch of local artists on Friday from 6-9PM.

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Update (2): Herb e-mailed to let us know that Wayne Horvitz’ Gravitas Quartet will be playing this Friday and Saturday at the Van Cliburn Recital Hall. For tickets and showtimes, hop on over Bass Hall’s website. Looking for more info on Wayne Horvitz’ Gravitas Quartet? Check them out on iTunes.

Update (3):The Texas Chapter of the International Society of Arboriculture (the ORIGINAL professional treehuggers) is hosting its Tree Climbing Championship in Trinity Park Friday and Saturday. This looks like a really fun and interesting event! (Fair warning — these guys and gals get up EARLY! All events are scheduled to be finished and the get-together adjourned by 4PM, so don’t be late!)

I’m sure there are a TON more things going on. Is there something I missed? Something you’d like to add? Are you planning an event and want us to mention it here? Send me an e-mail!

Most people have a love-hate relationship with their local paper — they love to hate it.

Consider this — the latest flashpoint in the culture wars between Dallas and Fort Worth has become, unbelievably, DaFoWoShow, the three minutes of snarkiness brought to you each Thursday by the Startlegram.

OK, that’s massive overstatement. However, there is a difference of opinion between the left and right sides of the Metromess on this’n. I am previously on record as saying I like it, which prompted one S-T editor who shall remain unnamed to say, “I’ve lost all respect for you. How could you think that was funny?”

Well, to paraphrase John Belushi, that’s your bad. You fucked up. You trusted me.

But this person wasn’t the only soul in the Fort with a low opinion. Anthony Mariani at FWWeekly also weighed in with his instant disapproval of the show’s “really lame jokes, or jokes for the blissfully suburban fortysomething-plus set, or for people who’ve only recently become acquainted with the concept of sarcasm.”

But a funny thing happens when you go east of Arlington and HEB where the S-T ain’t so local and there ain’t so much hate for Tarrant’s daily — the show got funnier as it went through the tubes of teh Internets. Maybe that’s why the Frontburner review is far more kind.

Former Startlegramer and current D Magaziner Eric Celeste called DaFoWo “more proof that the S-T gets it. … It’s not riotous, but it’s a clever and amusing webcast, and the use of random video clips is perfect, especially the [David Hasselhoff] vid in the second one we watched. Well done, folks. Should just get better with age.”

Take that D(a)MN! So, is DaFoWo too Dallas? Is it too not funny? Are some people in the Fort just wearing their underwear too tight? Whatcha think? [Read more]