Dallas Blues

Poor Dallas. The city can't seem to get a break. Most of my limited interaction with urban life happens here, as I live about 100 miles southeast of the city. It is certainly no Austin. Or San Antonio. Ft. Worth runs rings around Dallas when it comes to charm, culture and livability. But at least it's not Houston.

But Dallas has always been the city of big plans. There's lots of glitzy new construction transforming the skyline from the new American Airlines Center through Uptown. If ever (never, it seems) the Trinity River Project takes off, with its Calatrava bridges, then the city will blossom into a new Seattle or Portland, I suppose. The plans to build a Central Park-like park over Woodall Rogers Expressway is one of the more intriguing concepts.

But that is all off in the future, somewhere, maybe. What the city will have before long...ready or not...is the George W. Bush Presidential Library. So, for the foreseeable future, Dallas will be known for the J.F.K. Assassination, J.R. Ewing and the Bush Library. As Barack Obama joked in his recent Texas appearances--"He's coming back. He's coming back. What are y'all going to do with him?" Oh well, a state that foisted LBJ on an unsuspecting nation shouldn't be squeamish about GWB.

Anyway, The Chronicle Review, here, conducted a "back-of-the-envelope" design contest in which readers could submit their own plans for the Bush Library. One of my favorites is this one, with its Language Lab wing ("What I Meant to Say"):














Another good one:

Check out the site for other submissions. Enjoy.