I only caught part of this, but on the second hour of today’s Think on KERA 90.1 FM, they had a really interesting interview with Katie Sherrod, editor of Grace & Gumption: Stories of Fort Worth Women. Herrod discussed the book and the colorful women characters throughout Fort Worth’s history.

While KERA doesn’t have a mechanism to listen to this segment directly, you can subscribe to the excellent show’s podcast here (I do!) and download back segments that way.

Or check out the book which sounds fascinating. You can buy Grace & Gumption: Stories of Fort Worth Women and meet the author all at once on Saturday, November 10 at 2pm. Herrod will be signing her book at the Barnes and Noble at 1612 University.

Below is from theTCU Press description:

Women’s stories often get lost because so much of women’s history resides in private places such as diaries, family scrapbooks, family letters, or papers stored in boxes in family attics. Women often are hard to find, and once found, can be hard to track over time as they change their names when they get married. And sometimes they marry more than once, which increases the challenge. This was what fourteen Fort Worth women took on when they agreed to write a chapter each on the history of women in their city. From pioneer women to the movers and shakers of the mid-twentieth century, Grace and Gumption explores the lives and careers of the prominent and not-so prominent alike, uncovering a fascinating web of connection for readers to see just how bustling Fort Worth was shaped by the distaff side.

UPDATE–Right/Apple Click to Download an mp3 of the segment. I still recommend subscribing to the podcast.

Somewhere, in a room in central Fort Worth, a group of people are in chairs arrayed in a circle. A friendly-looking Mr. Rogers sort sits amongst them with a clipboard, and invites a man sitting across from him to speak. The man stands, takes his sandy-colored fedora in his hand, and speaks.

“Hi everybody. My name is Kevin, and…and…I’m a traditional architecture nerd.”

The response from the group is calm and welcoming. “Hi, Kevin!”

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A West and Clear reader used the email link above (Whisper in a Panther’s Ear) to pose a couple of questions to the West and Clear crew. One of the questions was about Fort Worth’s first freeway-

“…what’s the deal with I35W, are they ever going to fix it? It’s the biggest clusterf*&k going though our city.”

First, I’ll give you the news reporter answer (probably the part you want to hear): Yes, they are going to try to fix it. TXDOT has completed a study of IH-35W between IH30 and North Loop 820, and they have proposed some upgrades. Basically, what they’d like to build is a 12-lane road: 4 regular lanes and 2 barrier-separated “managed” (read: pay a toll, suckers) lanes in each direction.

Of course, none of this means that you should look forward to the end of traffic backups on IH-35W any time soon. They’re basing the design of the road on projected 2030 traffic levels, if that tells you anything about when they think they’ll finish the road…For a pdf presentation from TXDOT about the 35W proposal, click here.

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