One of the exceptionally cool things to do in Beaumont is go to a place called Painting With a Twist. There is one location in Beaumont which is conveniently located a less than half a mile from my house.
According to the website:
We have the answer! Come alone or grab a friend or two, your favorite bottle of wine or beverage*, and paint a picture along with a local artist.
Join us for an evening of creativity and camaraderie. We’ll provide your paint, canvas and brushes and you’ll have a fun evening with friends. Plus, at the end of the evening, you’ll have a one-of-a-kind creation and, hopefully, a new-found talent you’ll want to explore! This is not your average art class, this is art entertainment.
Think it’s beyond you? Our instructor will guide you through each step of recreating the featured picture, and you’ll have painlessly created a piece of art before you know it. Have a sip and paint a stroke and you will find your inner Rembrandt.
Simply put it is a painting class. You choose a class based on what painting you want to paint (check the schedule on the Beaumont store’s website). During the class, the instructor will coach you through various techniques for reproducing the painting for that class. You by no means have to follow along 100%. I actually got a lot of grief from my friends for painting a Tiffany’s box red/pink:
(I thought it turned out fine).
The people that run the place encourage you to bring wine and food and to generally have a good time. Because of the close quarters in which you sit, socializing with your neighbors and exchanging ideas is inevitable, especially as the class progresses and people drink more.
At the end of the class you have you get to take your painting home and hang it on your wall. For 35$ you get 2-3 hours of fun and a painting to take home, or you can choose a longer class for 45$. It is a fantastic activity to do with a group of friends.
Here are some other pictures of my paintings and I: Van Gogh’s starry night.
My coworker Gita and I. This was during our mustache growing fundraiser.
Me with my soccer teammates Robin and Sarah and Robin’s wife Kristen.
October 19th, 2009 I posted a blog entry about wrestling alligators in a competition. This was one of the crazier things I have done as I had never seen an alligator before (well maybe once when my family went to Florida when I was a child). If you follow the link you will also find the following YouTube video:
This is by far my most viewed YouTube video and I have received lots of personal comments from people that no me. Well some random person having watched the video recently posted a comment that I found amusing and worth sharing
im from texas, and i still wouldn’t do that. thumbs up to your balls….lol.
I took a trip through east Texas over Easter Weekend. After going to Joe Patoski’s lecture on “Why Texans are Texans: An Introduction to Texan Identity” (related blog entry), I decided I wanted to get out and see something else of Texas. So I hit the road and headed north on 69 out of the swamps of Southeast Texas and into the wooded hills of East Texas. The scenery was amazing so i am going to let my pictures tell the story for me:
Most people don’t know this, but I love trains. If I ever become rich, before buying an expensive car I will be a ranch somewhere, a train and have some track built. The train running from Rusk, Texas to Palestine, Texas is run by the Texas State Railroad and is part of the American Heritage Railways. It’s a short 90 minute trip each way through the forest and a few small (very small) towns. This has long been on my list of things to do since I came here and I am glad I finally did it.
Another shot from the train.
The steam engine itself. I milled around behind the train out of site of everyone else and jumped on to have a look.
Apparently not everything is bigger in Texas. I went to Jefferson Texas, which seems to have nothing but antique shops in it’s few blocks. Although only 2000 people live in Jefferson today, it was once an extremely important city with a huge shipping industry. It is definitely worth reading about Jefferson’s interesting history (note: the town currently does not have any waterways coming to it).
In one of the antique shops I found a bottle of Coke for $500. I asked if this was a mistake and they shop owner assured me it was not. He went into some monologue about how significant this case of unopened coke bottles was but I stopped paying attention.
Another picture from Jefferson. Another note about the town is that the personal railroad car of Jay Gould, a famous railroad tychoon, is on display there. This was another treat for my interest in trains.
I thought this was funny so I took a picture. The whole town felt like it had stopped aging 50 years ago. Even the regular shops were full of homemade food and handmade products. If you like cute little towns, Jefferson is a must.
They even have places to tie your horse up on the side of the road so you can pop into shops to get your groceries.
The real reason for choosing East Texas was to see Caddo Lake, Texas’ only naturally occurring lake. The history of Caddo Lake is tied quite closely to Jefferson’s history and is in my opinion significantly more interesting. The wikipedia article doesn’t do the place justice. Lady Bird Johnson is from this area. Drilling for water over oil was first done here. Howard Hughes senior made a name for himself at Caddo Lake with his new drill bit design. The area spent a good bit of time ungoverned and became a bastion of sin. The lake is natural, but was greatly expanded when the river it feeds was jammed up by the logging industry. It was then drained and the forest cleared for farm land (after extensive lobbying from Jay Gould). Shortly there after they dammed up the river and re-flooded it to allow drilling (all the drilling rigs were sinking into the soft earth).
Currently the allure of the place is the multitude of cyprus trees growing up out of the swamp and the Spanish moss that hangs down from their branches. It is an erie place to visit.
Cyprus tree seeds need to be wet for several months then dry for several months before they can sprout (ie a flood cycle). Since the lake’s level is controlled by a dam now, no new cyprus trees can grow here.
There is a duck blind hidden in this picture, can you find it?
One of the main water ways through the lake.
A very shallow nearly inaccessible cover.
Flowers growing up out of the water. I intend to return in August when the largest percentage of flowers are in bloom.
If you go to Caddo Lake you need to take a tour with John Winn. I hired him and I got a fantastic 4 hour tour through some very isolated and rarely travelled places. He grew up on the lake and knows it very well. He owns Caddo Lake Backwater Tours
His lecture (see the title of this blog post) was part of a series of five lectures put on by the Mcfaddin-Ward House, on the future of Texas. This particular one I was chomping at the bit for. Texans are an interesting group of people. Very diverse and very different. I am not very fond of southeast Texans (the only group I know intimately), so I was eager to see what this guy would have to say. I wanted to see if he could truely explain to me why Texans are the way they are. Before coming to Texas, I had an image of Texans pretty much in line with the following Bud Light ad:
After having been here for two and a half years, that image hasn’t changed much other than to grow stronger. I wanted Mr Patoski to show me something I hadn’t seen before.
Mr Patoski is the epitome of “Mr-way-too-proud-of-Texas guy.” In a 90 minute talk, he 51 comparisons between Texas and other states, or the whole world, in which Texas either did it first, bigger, the best, or had the most of what the thing in comparison was. Texas has the most border of any state, the best football, best crawfish, best blues music, best country music, best bbq, best marching bands, first dance team (cheerleaders at football games), only state that entered the USA as it’s own sovereign nation, has the biggest ranch in the US, at one point had more sheep than any country in the world (yes they even track the things they were first in 100 years ago), largest heard of white tail deer, invented Dr Pepper, largest helium well in the world, largest rose garden in the world, etc. Hell, Texans are even proud of the fact that first word spoken from the moon on July 20, 1969 was Houston, and that the only place in the US whooping cranes will hang out is in Texas.
Needless to say this guy got tiring fast. I actually stopped counting how many things Texas was first, biggest or best at in the 60th minute and extrapolated the 51 times in 90 minutes statistic above. Who cares that whooping cranes like hanging out in Texas outside the world of ornithology? Listening to this guy was like listening to baseball statistics which, for those of you who are not American, are plentiful, and often meaningless because of the multitude of seemingly random constraints placed on them (example: “John Smith bats a .288 against left-handed pitchers normally, but historically, on a Tuesday night, during an away night game in july, like tonight, he bats a .074. The manager may want to consider that when choosing his line up tonight”).
My immediate reaction to this guy was he’s bragging. He is way too proud of Texas and he’s bragging about it. Mr Patoski very early on addressed that concern almost as if he was reading my mind. “It ain’t bragging if it’s true,” he said. He then said it again and again and again. 13 times he assured me that he wasn’t just bragging about Texas, which is good, because had he not said that, the presentation would have been a 90 minute monologue about how great Texas is, and how much greater it is than every other state. I expected an interesting, intellectual and well supported talk about the Texas mentality, social behaviors, politics, contemporary history, and economics. Instead I got tricked into listening to “Mr way to proud of Texas” for 90 minutes without an escape route.
Then a funny thing happened. About the 60th minute I stopped counting how many times Texas was number one, and I generally stopped listening to the ‘text’ of the lecture. Instead, I started paying attention to Patoski himself, and I found something very familiar about him. His body language was full of energy and excitement. His eyes were brightly light and his words zipped happily about the room, taking over the small room. I suddenly felt like i was looking at myself. His talk reminded me of when I talk about my time in Turkey. I love Turkey. All the people that were part of my life when I was in Turkey had a huge impact on me. The things I did, the events that transpired and the people I met, made for an incredible experience. When someone asks me about my time in Turkey, I talk their ear off. I go on long monolgues, carefully seeding landmines that I know my listener will ask about, causing them to explode into a torrent of semi-related stories. By the end of it all, my victim doesn’t need me to state the obvious – that I love Turkey.
I saw Mr Patoski for what he was – a man in love. He is in love with Texas and everything that it is. The energy coming from him was his passion and love rushing out of him as fast as it could so as to not consume him from the inside. Had the lecture been canceled at the last minute, his built up anticipation might have blown him up on the car ride home (perhaps that’s where myths of spontaneous combustion come from?).
Realizing this, I walked away from that presentation with a different view of Texans. Just as Turkish people are fiercely proud of the republic formed by Ataturk, Texans are proud of Texas. Just as Turkey was a mixing pot of different people and cultures under the Ottomans, Texas has been a mixing pot of different peoples since settlers first moved in. I realized that anything I had against Texans was at best completely ridiculous, and at worst jealousy. Texas is a gigantic state with a wide variety of cultures, climates and landscapes, yet they are all bound by a great pride in their history. This is something that should be admired and respected. A lot of them are obnoxious about it, and I will probably always feel the same way about them, but I admire Texans like Mr Patoski who are truly in love, and want nothing more than to share that love.
I sincerely hope that when I get off on my long monologues about living in Turkey, playing Diplomacy, or anything else, that my spectators/victims draw this same conclusion; he’s in love.
I finally got around to taking my sail boat out into the gulf of Mexico. It turns out it’s quite a long journey. Robin and I planned a two day trip and sailed down to the entrance to the gulf and anchored in a safe place for the night. In the morning we headed through the shipping channel and spent a few hours in the gulf. It was a north wind which makes for calm sailing in the gulf. It was sunny and warm, and the evening was cool. It was a great trip and I look forward to doing it again soon. Here are some pictures with commentary. I am not sure why more people don’t do things like this. At the marina where my boat is, no one ever seems to actually use their boats.
Robin cooking dinner on the boat. We bought cans of soup and a camping stove. It was a great idea except that when the soup starts getting hot, it becomes very difficult to hold the can over the stove, but we managed. It was a good idea on Robin’s part nonetheless.
My dinner. On a sail boat there is a lot of down time. So we brought plenty to drink.
Because of all the industrial facilities surrounding Sabine Lake, the shores are extremely well lit. As the night went on, the north wind picked up to about 40 mph. I got scared we were going to break loose so I threw out a second anchor. Fortunately the heavy silt on the bottom of the lake holds an anchor incredibly well.
This is the box for the camping stove we brought. I thought it was quite funny. It lists all kinds of uses including a variety of emergency situations and wilderness situations. Dropped in the middle of the list is fondue. Seemed a little out of place to me.
We were able to get out of the pass and into the gulf just in time to get out of the way of this massive LNG ship. You cannot tell from the picture but this ship is gigantic! I felt so small alongside this monstrous boat. The LNG facilities there were recently built to import LNG, however, because of all the LNG finds in the US, they are being reworked into export facilities. The regasification plants are somewhat useless now.
This is the aftermath of the BP oil spill. There are a ton of drilling rigs sitting idle in Sabine Pass doing nothing at the moment. Some looked more decrepit and beat up than others. I don’t actually know if these are left idle since the moratorium on drilling last year, or if they were idle before that. I do know Schlumberger was running the drilling operations on a lot of the rigs operating out of Sabine. Since the spill their Houston office has had almost no work.
That’s all I have. The trip was great fun. I made it back just in time to shower and drive to Houston for back to back indoor soccer games. Drove back afterwards, slept, and then got up and went to my Beaumont outdoor soccer game. We won 10-2. The weekend was exhausting but rewarding.
I took a road trip this past weekend and – having broken my iPhone – had the opportunity to listen to the radio for six hours. It was an educational experience to say the least. There was a lot of religious programming, country music, gun advertisements, fishing supply advertisements etc – the kinds of things you would expect to hear on East Texas radio. One advertisement in particular caught my attention and left me wondering – what the hell?
The advertisement started with the a question along the lines of: are you tired of calling your plumber several times a week, spending hundreds of dollars a month? Are you tired of low flush toilets that just can’t get the job done. It then went into talking about some special toilet that could handle the biggest loads etc.
I have never heard an advertisement for high powered toilets anywhere in the world. Typically, companies do not advertise in an area unless there is a market for their product. I have concluded that since I have never heard an advertisement like this anywhere else in the country, East Texans must have some serious trouble in the bathroom.
What the hell are people eating around here? There is a big problem with obesity around here, but is the impact on people’s plumbing that significant that there is a large enough niche market to support this kind of specialty product? Couldn’t millions of dollars be saved if people would take the preventative step of eating more fiber?
Yuck. I cannot contemplate Texan bowel movements anymore. This advertisement reminded me of a South Park episode in which there is a satirical Billy Mays advertisement (sorry for the low quality – I couldn’t find anything better):
I currently work in an oil refinery. It is an ocean of concrete, steel, pipe and wires spreading out like a cancer in every direction. Through years of add-ons and expansions, the refinery has transformed the typically verdant southeast Texas landscape into a monochromatic monstrosity. Calling it an eyesore doesn’t even begin to express the reality of this place.
Typically Oil Refinery
This picture doesn’t do justice to the massive industrial complex I work in, but for security reasons I cannot use a picture of where I actually work.
Last week I was surprised to find a small, quiet (rare to find any place quiet) section of our laydown yard that was quite beautiful. Most of the materials had left the area, and where there was once gravel and dirt, hearty grass dotted with Texas wild flowers had taken hold. It was actually quite beautiful. Here, taken with a special photo filter, is a picture of that scene. What the picture doesn’t show is a cool, dry, north wind blowing through (a north wind always freshens things up).
Depending on how you know me, or in what capacity we interact, you have heard one of a few different versions of my current life. One is full of funny stories, exciting adventures, glorious victories and a colorful cast of people. It is dynamic, interesting and always surprising. The other version is of what a horrible place I have ended up in. I go into great detail about ugly cultural trends, a spiritless population and sad truths, all supported by a hodgepodge of anecdotes I have collected in my two and half years here. Regardless of whether or not you have heard one of these extremes from me, or if the picture I have painted for you falls somewhere realistically in the middle, I tell a decent story.
I recently had two good – or rather bad – links shared with me by a coworker. The first is a link to the 10 happiest and saddest cities in the USA as ranked by a Gallup survey released last month. Boulder, Colorado took the top spot (the city one of my current room mates is from). The Beaumont-Port Arthur area finished a pitiful 186 out of 188 cities. If you are interested, you can read more for yourself:
The other interesting piece I have read recently, was in our very own Beaumont Enterprise. The article claimed that Jefferson County (home of Beaumont), is the only county in all of Texas to exceed the federally mandated sulfer dioxide caps:
Sulfer dioxide is bad stuff, and can cause a whole bunch of health problems. The reason for the excess sulfer dioxide in the air is more than likely the refineries and chemical plants in the area. Houston notoriously has some of the worst air in the country. Beaumont is clearly in step with Houston. A quick look at the largest refineries in the US and one can see that between the Houston and Lake Charles, LA (a city on the border), 8 of the 20 largest refineries in the US process 3 million barrels of oil per day! And that’s just the oil refineries.
Van Gogh’s starry night.
My coworker Gita and I. This was during our mustache growing fundraiser.
Me with my soccer teammates Robin and Sarah and Robin’s wife Kristen.
Happy
Surprised
