Around the 'Hood

My neighborhood, called Upper Kirby, just a few miles west of the Museum District, has become a bit of a ghost town as several of the older homes and apartment buildings now stand empty.  But truth is this is one of the fastest growing areas in the city.  Many of the bungalow style homes built in the 60's have been torn down and high rise condo's, retail space, upscale apartment buildings and modern townhomes have replaced them.  My new neighbor is a 5 story office complex.  Big oil is bringing back some of the boom of the 1980's, but this time due to something called fracking, which is a new way to get at the stuff.  This has created a demand for increased living space, particularly "inside the loop".  I tease my neighbors and say we live on Porta Potty Row since there's literally been one somewhere  on our street for 10 years.  A couple of weekends ago some long time neighbors had their final Garage and Moving sales and vacated their soon to be torn down buildings.  The moving vans were competing with the cement mixers and other construction vehicles for the narrow two lanes of our street.  Luckily some of Gem's BFF's (two unrelated Jack Russell's - Daisy & Pinto) are still here.  She has seen both of these pooches almost every day of her life for the past 11 1/2  years yet each time out the door it's the same happy dance. 

Also in the neighborhood is Rice University just 2.7 miles south, which I had the opportunity to tour recently.  It's a gorgeous campus with Byzantine architecture  and many interesting design elements.  One artist, James Turrell created Skyspace a couple of years ago right on the campus.  It's a "twilight epiphany of light" that can be seen dawn and dusk each day. I saw it very early one morning and thought it was great; click here to experience it yourself:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GrD5ylEn1wQ

One of Houston's great qualities is their overall dedication to the arts in general and there is much evidence of it.  One organization I like is called InPrint.  It's a group dedicated to inspiring readers & writers, now in their 34th season.  I heard about it several years ago and have wanted to check it out, so this year I bought a ticket to the series opener with David Mitchell.  He's described as "clearly a genius", and has written a number of books and won several awards.  It's nice to hear from this caliber of author in person read their own work which he did from his newest book, The Bone Clocks.  

Most enjoyable event.

And I expect to get to the Museum of Fine Arts soon.  Talk about "in the hood", this place is literally 3 miles door to door.   

Can't wait to get back to Houston to see more of what's right around the corner.