If you're tired of reading about the big financial-system bailout, DISD screwups and how great the Dallas Cowboys look this year, check out these diversions in today's Dallas Morning News:
• Remember the big city council vote in May 2007 to criminalize "displaying or brandishing a replica firearm in public? I don't remember it either, and apparently it's a law that even the police have forgotten about. Dave Levinthal reports that since the ordinance was passed, not a single ticket has been written for a violation — talk about your effective ordinance or your irrelevant one; take your pick. In the story, Levinthal asks councilman Angela Hunt: Was it all a big waste of time and resources? "Probably so," she says.
• Federal Judge Barefoot Sanders — a past freckle champion of the State Fair of Texas — died Sunday, and no other local figure was involved with DISD for longer and with more impact. His court oversight of the school district changed the face of public schools in Dallas, some argue for the better and others argue for the worse. Jacquielynn Floyd talks about Sanders, his career and whether he felt responsible for the "white flight" that eventually changed the face of DISD more than anything: "Desegration may have entered into it, but desegregation didn't cause it."
• Big Tex standing next to Anubis, the jackal-headed guardian of the dead — talk about your odd couple. But that's what happened yesterday at Fair Park, as Big Tex took his usual position as visible head of the State Fair of Texas, which begins Friday. Anubis was there shamelessly promoting King Tut's exhibit at the Dallas Museum of Art. Just so you know, we publish the onsite and now online Visitors Guide for the State Fair, which you can check out online anytime, along with finding a complete calendar of daily Fair events to help plan your visit.
• Finally, this was before my time, but former WFAA and KRLD television weatherman Warren Culbertson will be buried today after what was described as a trailblazing career in his obituary. When he joined WFAA in 1950, he was the station's first meteorologist, and in 1956, he was voted top television personality in Dallas-Fort Worth.
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