Bayou Preservation Association Will Attempt to Explain Position in Favor of Destroying Bayou

Jan. 20, 2015

Steve Hupp of the Bayou Preservation Association will attempt to explain tonight (Tuesday, Jan. 20, 2015) why the BPA supports a project that violates its founding purpose of preserving Buffalo Bayou. Hupp will defend the Memorial Park Demonstration Project we oppose at a regular meeting of the Briar Forest Super Neighborhood at 6:30 p.m.

Briar Forest has been fighting Harris County plans to destroy riparian forest for detention basins along the south side of Buffalo Bayou in Terry Hershey Park between Dairy Ashford and Memorial. Terry Hershey Park is a named after one of the founders of the BPA.

The meeting is at the Briarwood School, 12207 Whittington.

Pettibone surveys the "restoration" of the wild banks of Buffalo Bayou.

Pettibone surveys the “restoration” of the wild banks of Buffalo Bayou.

A Poem for Buffalo Bayou from Larry D. Thomas, 2008 Texas Poet Laureate

Jan. 6, 2015

Buffalo Bayou

Great blue heron tracks in the mud on Buffalo Bayou. Photo by Jim Olive

Great blue heron tracks in the mud on Buffalo Bayou. Photo by Jim Olive

(Houston, Texas)

Great trees grow
along its banks,
meshing their branches

high above it,
sparing it
the bright intrusion

of sun, moon, and star.
Great blue herons
ripple its shallows,

spearing frogs and minnows.
Within its murky
depths, the big gars flourish,

unscathed by toxins
and the bloated corpses
of poisoned fish,

working their gills,
fins, and tails,
snaking their passage,

oblivious of time
and its irksome,
futile ravages.

Larry D. Thomas lived in Houston from 1967 until 2011, when he and his wife moved to Alpine, Texas.  An award-winning poet and a member of the Texas Institute of Letters, he has published twenty-five collections of poetry. A major new collection, As If Light Actually Matters: New & Selected Poems, will be published in Spring 2015 by Texas Review Press, a member of the Texas A&M University Press Consortium. It is available for pre-order at Amazon.com.

“Buffalo Bayou” was first published in Literary Houston in 2010, a collection of historical and contemporary writing about Houston edited by David Theis and published by Texas Christian University Press, Fort Worth, Texas.

Save Buffalo Bayou Is One of the Top Ten Most Intriguing Ideas of 2014

Jan. 2, 2015

Naturally!

Lisa Gray, esteemed editor of Gray Matters, the Great Ideas section of the Houston Chronicle, has selected Save Buffalo Bayou as one of the Top Ten Most Intriguing Ideas of 2014.

She writes:

In May, when I pitched Gray Matters to the Chronicle, I wrote that it would be “about ideas” — a description that, I realized later, was fabulously broad. Everything worth talking about has an idea in it. I love you is an idea. I want a cookie is an idea. I want to do tequila shots at 9 a.m. is a bad idea. But it is an idea.

Obviously, some ideas are better than others. They’re more original. Or more powerful. More able to transform our lives — or, just as important, the way that we see our lives.

Anyway: In the six months since Gray Matters launched, these are the ideas, big and small, that have rocked my world. Or at least made it wobble on its axis.

Read the rest.