Protect Your Property: Egret Workshop on 1/22

ONA President Libby Willis writes:

"Did you ever think we would be talking about how to prevent egrets from nesting in Oakhurst? 

Remember what happened in the Tanglewood Neighborhood when egrets took up residence there a couple of years ago?  They were scared away from that area to our part of town, Sylvania Park...

Please see the attached maps showing the 4 mile radius around Sylvania Park (where egrets nested last year) where they might try to nest this year.  See also the checklist attached to know what to look for and what to do."

Egret Education (Sylvania Park area)
Egret Tree Coverage (Sylvania Park area)
Egret Homeowner Checklist

"Oakhurst is one of the potential nesting places.  WE NEED TO BE PREPARED STARTING THIS MONTH TO RECOGNIZE SENTRY BIRDS which are the initial scouts which could show up in Oakhurst and beckon others to come...working together, we should be able to fend off this threat to our trees and quality of life.  Egrets are great birds, but they belong somewhere other than Oakhurst and Riverside..."
 
Also see the announcement below regarding an upcoming informational workshop:

ONA,
 
The City of Fort Worth will host an educational workshop to help residents learn how to prevent nesting of federally protected birds.  As you might recall these migratory birds settled in Sylvania Park last year and have the potential of returning and settling within a four mile radius from last year’s nesting site.
 
This free workshop is open to all Fort Worth residents, but especially recommended for residents with mature trees and dense tree canopy on their property.
 
Egret Workshop

Wednesday, January 22, 7pm

Riverside Community Center

3700 E. Belknap St.

 
Why attend?

• Learn to identify nuisance birds.
• Get practical tips to discourage nesting in your trees.
• Protect your property from noise, odor and damage egret and heron  nesting can cause.

For more information, please call the Neighborhood Education Office at 817-392-6201 or visit: http://fortworthtexas.gov/migratorybirds/ 
 
Thanks You,

Ruben Olmos

Neighborhood Office

Planning & Development Department, City of Fort Worth

Phone: 817-392-2043   Fax: 817-392-2107

www.fortworthgov.org/neighborhoods

ONA Meeting this Thursday!

Join us this Thursday and meet Rosalinda Mendoza, new Crime Prevention Specialist for Oakhurst and the North Division of the Fort Worth Police Department.  Rosalinda writes:

Hello, My name is Rosalinda Mendoza, the new Crime Prevention Specialist for FWPD North Division.

Fort Worth , a beautiful city where cowboys and culture go hand in hand, with it wealth of history in the cattle industry, the art museums, Japanese gardens, the Botanical gardens, Sundance Square, the Stockyard’s area, the air show at Meacham field, Casa Mañana, along with many other interesting places has drawn visitors from near and far for many years.  I loved Fort Worth then and even more so today.  North Fort Worth has been a part of my family since my youth.  I well remember visiting my aunt, uncle and spending time with my cousins in a portion of Fort Worth lovingly called “La Loma” (the hill).

In my spare time I volunteer for CASA, (Court Appointed Special Advocate) assisting children of all ages who through no fault of their own find themselves placed in homes of strangers, who have to be away from their parents, who have to attend new schools, who are hurt, afraid and alone.  As a CASA advocate I walk with them through the legal maze, attend court hearings and speak to the judge on their behalf.  I remain by their side until they are either returned to their families or are adopted.  I also serve as a rape crisis counselor for our local Women’s Center located on Hemphill Street.  I believe it accurate to say that assisting members of our community is in my blood and definitely in my heart.

My responsibilities as the Crime Prevention specialist include meeting with you and your neighbors to discuss topics on how to better secure homes, autos from being targeted by criminals intent on removing your personal property and how to exercise caution when out alone in the neighborhood.  This is just a small example of what I would like to share with you and your neighbors.  But we can discuss that topic in more detail when we meet.

I look forward to meeting each of you soon.

Respectfully,
Rosalinda Mendoza
(O) 817-392-3537
(C) 817-992-0174

ONA Monthly Meeting
Thursday, January 9, 2014, 7:00pm
Calvary Christian Academy Library

Oakhurst Developer’s Family had Links to Literary History

The history of Oakhurst and the background of its developer, John P. King, are interesting enough in and of themselves.  King was a well-known civic leader in Fort Worth in the early twentieth century.  He was a “go to” leader before even Amon Carter arrived on the Fort Worth scene.

Less well-known is the story of John P. King’s third son, artist Clinton King, and his first wife, British born Lady Duff Twysden.  It’s a story which gives us a snapshot of what was happening in Europe in the 1920s at exactly the same time John. P. King was developing Oakhurst.

Clinton Blair King, born in 1901 to Lorena and John P. King in Fort Worth, was an artist usually associated with the regional art of Texas and New Mexico from 1924 to 1940.  After 1940 and into the 1960s, he often exhibited his work in Chicago, New York City and Paris.

Mary Duff Stirling, Lady Twysden, was born a British socialite in 1892 to Charlotte and Baynes Wright Smurthwaite.  Twice married by the time she was 25, Lady Duff “spent the winter and spring of 1925 gallivanting around Paris...attracting attention....  She became known for her style of loose sweaters and short hair.”  During this time she met a lot of members of the “Lost Generation” including Ernest Hemingway and his first wife, Hadley.


Ernest Hemingway with Duff Twysden,
Clinton King's first wife, in Spain ca. 1925

In the summer of 1925, Hemingway invited a group of friends, including Lady Duff, to join him and his wife on their annual trip to Pamplona, Spain for the Fiesta of San Fermin to see the bull fights.  After the festival, Lady Duff and friends went back to Paris; Hemingway stayed in Spain and started work on his first novel, The Sun Also Rises.  He modeled the novel’s heroine, Brett Ashley, on Lady Duff Twysden.

Maggie Van Ostrand wrote, “The qualities of Lady Brett that are the most admirable—her easy camaraderie with men, her willingness to take risks, her devil-may-care attitude (all of which were traits of Lady Duff), and that she doesn’t flinch at the carnage in the bullring, symbolize the new woman of the Twenties: the Flapper.”  Hemingway finished the book in 8 weeks and it became his first success.

It was in Paris that Lady Duff met Clinton King, nine years younger than she and already a promising artist.  He, too, had befriended Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Picasso.  They were secretly married in Bloomsbury, England in August 1928, a story reported in The New York Times.  Clinton and Duff lived in New York and New Mexico and had a home on the shores of Lake Chapala in Mexico.  Clinton King once recalled, “We lived a different life from the rather senseless Montparnasse days.  I worked all day at painting while she drew her amusing sketches in watercolor, or posed for me, or read a great deal.”

Self-portrait, Clinton King and Narcissa Swift King

“. . . Clinton’s allowance from his family had been cut off when he married her and his resources were nearly exhausted,” Van Ostrand wrote.  “They were reduced to living on small checks that occasionally arrived from Duff’s relatives in England and the rare sale of one of King’s paintings.”  Lady Duff died in 1938 of tuberculosis in Santa Fe, New Mexico.  Clinton later married Narcissa Swift, heiress of the Swift packing fortune.  They were introduced by their mutual friend, the great American artist, Georgia O’Keefe.

While John P. King was developing the Oakhurst neighborhood in the early 1920s in Fort Worth, his son and his wife were part of one of the most famous chapters in literary history, that of the “Lost Generation” writers in Europe.  It’s not even six degrees of separation in this fascinating tale.

This story, authored by Libby Willis, originally appeared in the January 2014 edition of the Oak Leaflet.