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Copyright © 2013 Ken Fountain. All rights reserved.

I made my way through the stately King William neighborhood, past a former U.S. Armory that now serves as the headquarters of H-E-B grocery store chain, through an older industrial area-turned-burgeoning arts enclave and nearly to one of the Holy Grails of Texas, the old Lone Star Brewery. Here are a few shots I took along the way.

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Copyright © 2013 Ken Fountain. All rights reserved.

First, on March 21,  former NASA astronaut Alan Bean, the fourth man to walk on the moon during Apollo 12 mission who eventually retired to pursue his interest in painting, spoke at Rice University to end the academic year’s Space Frontiers Lecture Series. Then, on March 26, world-renowned cosmologist Stephen Hawking, known as much for his incredible life story as for his theoretical contributions, “spoke” at Jesse Jones Hall as part of the nonprofit Brilliant Lecture Series. (More on that later.)

I had originally planned to write separate posts on each event. But the vagaries of my day job (including a three-day out-of-town trip in between) actually allow me time to compare and contrast the two events.

First up, I had been very excited to hear Bean, the first time I’d seen one of the Apollo moon-walkers in person. (I don’t count the time in the late ’90s that I was at a ballgame in the Astrodome at the same time as the late Neil Armstrong.) Aside from stories I’d read about his artwork, however, I didn’t know that much about him.

Dr. Mike Massino, a current NASA astronaut and director of the Rice Space Institute, effusively praised Bean for a talk he gave when Massino was a newly named astronaut in the 1990s. In his speech, the ebullient spaceman-turned-artist did not disappoint.

Now 81, Bean got the evening off to a typically humorous and self-effacing start:  “Hello, fellow Earthlings. Hello, fellow human beings.” That combination of humor, warmth and, as it turns out, humility was the hallmark of a talk in which Bean, who acknowledged not being the best astronaut of his class, showed himself to be a true class act.

Bean’s presentation was illustrated with vintage photographs and film clips of the Apollo era, including one of him and his Apollo 12 crewmates, in full space regalia, posing with their matching gold Corvettes.

But it was when he spoke of the camaraderie he felt with his fellow crewmates that Bean most shone.

He described what might have been his greatest lesson in leadership — when he questioned the contribution of another crewmember, Richard Gordon, to his commander, Charles “Pete” Conrad.

Conrad immediately turned the tables on Bean, telling he didn’t know the first thing about being a team member. Embarassed and ashamed, Bean said, he asked his boss what that was. Conrad told Bean he had to get to know as many of the members of the NASA team he could and find something to admire about them. Bean said that lesson stuck, and he’s carried it through to this very day.

Later, he described his move into the full-time world of painting. His work, of course, is primarily concerned with space travel, especially the Apollo era (Bean also commanded a long-duration mission aboard the Skylab space station.) Among the many paintings he exhibited during the speech was one of the Apollo 12 crew, all seen in spacesuits on the Moon. However, that scene isn’t real — Gordon, whom he’d earlier doubted, was flying the command module in orbit around the moon as Conrad and Bean were walking the lunar surface. But Bean chose to put Gordon front and center, to illustrate their bond as a team.

Bean concluded by telling the audience what he said was the greatest lesson he’d ever learned:  that each of us is limited only by the limitations we place on ourselves.

If anyone exemplifies that lesson, it is Stephen Hawking, the Einstein-level physicist and cosmologist who was struck with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) (also called “Lou Gehrig’s Disease) before he’d completed his doctorate in England and who has spent almost all of adult life in a wheelchair, and for decades has been able to communicate only through electronic means.

If I was excited to see Bean, I was beyond thrilled to have the almost-unheard-of chance to see Hawking, author of the seminal popular science book “A Brief History of Time,” at the ornate Jones Hall in downtown Houston. The Brilliant Lecture Series has played host to a range of luminaries, but Hawking no doubt most deserves the honorific.

But just a week before he was to have appeared onstage, ticket holders learned that because of unspecified medical reasons, Hawking’s doctors said he should not make the transatlantic flight to Texas. Instead, he would present his talk through a special filmed version that would be shown to the audience. (Later, the host said that it took Hawking six hours to film the shots that would make up the approximately 70-minute talk.)

To be sure, I was disappointed. And truthfully, until the very afternoon of the event, I was considering asking for a refund (there was some question as to whether the organizers would actually provide a full refund or simply a credit for a future event). From the numerous empty seats, it appears many others chose to do just that.

But, in the end, I went. And I’m glad I did.

It was kind of odd, sitting in the top balcony of a symphony hall, watching what was essentially a movie of a man, all but immobile, speaking with an electronically produced voice.

But in the talk, fittingly called “My Brief History” Hawking proved himself to be just as charming and elucidating as Bean, but in a quite unique manner.

In long shots of Hawking, sometimes managing the briefest of smiles, he recounted his wartime childhood (he was away when a German bomb struck very near his home), the disappointments of his physician father who felt he’d been passed over in his career because he didn’t fit in socially, and his own contempt for working hard academically (since that was considered unseemly), and the depression he fell into when first being diagnosed in his early 20s.

So certain that he would die soon (since that was what the medical community believed), Hawking very nearly did not complete his education. But, he said, he began to improve just long enough that he did so, and began to embark on his remarkable career, in which he’s made hugely significant contributions to the study of black holes and quantum theory (including something called M Theory, of which I’d never really known before.)

He also wrote the first of his famous popular books, “A Brief History of Time,” which later was the basis of a documentary, a fully illustrated version and a later, “Briefer” version. Hawking admitted he never expected it to become the publishing phenomenon, and even joked that many of the people who purchased it may not have read it all the way through. But at least, he said, they gained a picture of just how fascinating the study of physics and the universe is.

In the end, Hawking concluded with a message very similar to Bean’s:  “Always look at the stars, and not at your feet.”

NOTE:  A video of Bean’s speech can be seen here.

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Copyright © 2013 Ken Fountain. All rights reserved.

© 2013 Ken Fountain. All rights reserved.

Riders get set to begin the parade as the sun rises over downtown Houston.

A young girl waves a flag from atop her father’s shoulders.

A float rides past Houston City Hall.

Spectators watch from a hill in Tranquility Park.

Spectators greet riders bearing flags.

More riders.

Spectators watch the parade from outside a downtown building.

Spectators watch from the garage of the soon-to-be-closed downtown Macy’s store.

A high school marching band makes its way down the parade route.

More riders and buildings.

Riders make a turn in the parade route.

Still more riders.

The Lone Star flag and the former Humble Oil Building (now ExxonMobil).

A street-sweeper makes some necessary adjustments.

An old-fashioned wagon makes its way beneath a new-fangled skywalk.

Riders make their way past the newly renovated Julia Ideson Library Building.

In the summer of 2001, I was the newly named news editor for The Daily Cougar, the student newspaper at the University of Houston. I also served on the Cougar’s five-member editorial board, which was charged with coming up with five topics a week on which to pontificate.

That July, Armstrong won this third Tour de France, and was in the full glory of the perfect media story:  the cancer victim who successfully beat the disease and go on to become a champion.

I was much younger then (although, as a returning student, older than my four colleagues) and still pretty idealistic. It was all too easy for me to become enraptured by fellow Texan Armstrong’s story.

I pitched the editorial idea to my colleagues on the board, and after we hashed it out for a bit, wrote the editorial, oh so cleverly titled “Mon Dieu! ” (While the piece was officially the product of the entire board, the words are entirely my own.)

Looking back at the editorial now, it’s almost touchingly naive. Like nearly all Americans, I knew next to nothing about competitive bicycle racing outside of the annual Tour de France frenzy. I even seemed to believe that Armstrong, as head of the U.S. Postal Service team, somehow worked as for the Post Office in his “day job.”

If there were any hints of widespread doping in those days, I don’t remember them. But in the ensuing dozen years, the rumors, media stories, investigations and denials, Armstrong’s image long ago fell from the burnished hagiography that I, in my small way, helped perpetuate.

All that culminated last night with Armstrong’s much-ballyhooed confession to Oprah Winfrey, a fittingly made-for-media event. I didn’t watch the program live since I’m still in my self-imposed break from daily television watching. But in a social media age that didn’t even exist when I wrote that editorial, I was able to follow the revelations and reactions through Twitter and Facebook, and later in mainstream media.

By most accounts I’ve heard, Armstrong’s initial confessions seemed genuine, but in the later portions of the program he appears to practice a lot of evasion and backpedaling. As a fallen hero who’s trying to salvage a reputation and career while in the midst of a mountain of litigation, that’s probably to be expected.

Armstrong has done much for cancer research, and is rightfully lauded for that. Perhaps last night’s mea culpa is a step toward his road to redemption.

For my own part, I hope that I am long past the point where I’m given to heedless hero-worship. But somehow I’d also like to still believe in heroism.

Copyright © 2013 Ken Fountain. All rights reserved.

Like an untold number of Houstonians, I took the opportunity to take in the outdoors — specifically, a walk along a stretch of Buffalo Bayou which the city, Harris County, the Buffalo Bayou Partnershaip and others are working to transform into a single, linear park. (I wrote about the project during my last stint as a newspaper reporter here.) The expanse stretches from Sabine Street, just west of downtown, to Shepherd Drive on the edge of Memorial Park.

The project’s designers say they are modeling it in part after New York’s Central Park. That’s a tall order, to be sure. But seeing the work in progress today, I can say that when it’s done, it will be very impressive indeed.

Copyright © 2013 Ken Fountain. All rights reserved.

On the one hand, I wrote 15 original posts in 2012, the fewest per calendar year since I began the blog in the fall of 2010. But since I was in the first year of a new job and learning a new kind of reporting during that time, I’m not going to knock myself too hard about that.

However, I expanded the blog into some new areas and formats during 2012, to mostly good effect, including its first foray into music criticism, coverage of the implosion of a Houston architectural icon and two photo essays on street festivals (see below).

And I continued to follow a single, multifaceted legal story through the courts, scooping many mainstream media outlets along the way. Related to that, I hit the road a couple of times this year to cover hearings in Austin and New Orleans. The latter trip afforded me the opportunity to visit that city’s Lower Ninth Ward, still stricken from 2005′s Hurricane Katrina, resulting in one of my very best posts.

So here are the blog’s top 10 posts of the year in terms of individual views, including publishing date and some commentary. You’ll notice that many of the posts were published earlier than 2012.

1. Bygone bylines, July 2012 — This post, about editorial changes at a newspaper I once worked for, quickly rose to the position of second-most-viewed post since the blog’s inception. Make of that what you will. It also accounted for the year’s busiest day for the blog (and the second-busiest in its history), on July 16.

2. Astrophysicist star Neil deGrasse Tyson calls for Mars mission, April 2011 –  This post is another of the blog’s top click-getters, which I primarily attribute to the innate coolness of both Dr. Neil and the space program. Also, going by search results, a lot of people are interested in where Tyson bought his Saturn V tie. (Last September, I marked my birthday by hearing a talk by legendary NASA flight director Gene Kranz, which I write about here.)

3. A walk in the Lower Ninth Ward, October 2012 — As I mentioned, this is one of my favorite posts since I began the blog. Seeing firsthand this still-devastated but slowly recovering community was a deeply moving experience.

4. Santorum takes on JFK, a half-century later, September 2010 – One of my earliest posts, about a speech in Houston by the former Pennsylvania senator, gained new cachet with Santorum’s unexpectedly strong showing in the Republican presidential primaries.

5. Anthony Graves and his “angel” recount fight for freedom, February 2011 — The story of Texas Death Row exoneree Graves has gained international attention since his release from prison after 18 years. This post, which was once linked to by a piece in the online Slate magazine, remains the blog’s most viewed.

6. Appeals court hears arguments in Burke case, March 2012 — One of several posts I wrote this year on the ongoing court cases stemming from a 2007 incident in Beaumont, Texas, which I first covered as a newspaper reporter there. My first coverage of a hearing at the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.

7. WikiLeaks’ Assange: Journalist, Source, Activist or Peter Pan?, January 2012 — This post covers a fascinating discussion of the mercurial Assange, as well as the intersection of such organizations, the media and law enforcement in a rapidly evolving digital age.

8. ‘Zero Tolerance’ policy questioned in Newman appeal arguments, February 2012 — Another post on the Beaumont case. I was able to cover this New Orleans hearing virtually, by listening to a recording of the arguments posted online. Later, I covered a hearing there in person (see below).

9. Viva Via Colori, November 2012 — My first attempt at a photo essay for the blog. The photos turned out well, but I need to work on the formatting a bit. A few weeks later, I tried it again with What the Dickens?

10. Attorneys for Burke, Guedry ask appeals court to dismiss Newman case, October 2012 — Another post on the Beaumont case, my first coverage of a hearing at the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans.

Here’s to more good blogging in 2013. Namaste.

Copyright © 2012 Ken Fountain. All rights reserved.

Attorneys for James Cody Guedry and David Todd Burke had asked the appeals court to overturn the summary judgment ruling of U.S. District Judge Ron Clark of Beaumont. In September 2011, Clark ruled that Derrick Newman had provided enough evidence of his claims against the officers stemming from a late-night traffic stop on August 24, 2007,  that those claims should be tried in court. (In the same ruling, Clark dismissed Newman’s claims against three other officers involved in the same incident.)

Burke and Guedry were convicted in 2010 by separate juries of the Class A misdemeanor charge of official oppression, Burke for using his custom-made police baton 13 times against Newman and Guedry for repeatedly using a Taser against him. [For more background on the case and a link to a video of the incident, click here.]

In June, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ruled that Burke — who retired from the department shortly after his conviction — should receive a new trial, based on arguments that state District Judge Layne Walker erred when he failed to grant a defense motion to strike a potential juror who had expressed doubts about his ability to be impartial.

In September, the Texas Ninth Court of Appeals in Beaumont upheld Criminal District Judge John B. Stevens Jr.’s ruling that Guedry was entitled to a new trial, based on claims of ineffective counsel. Jefferson County prosecutors have filed a petition for discretionary review of the Ninth Court ruling at the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. Guedry, who was fired after his conviction, was later reinstated to the department as a community relations officer, pending final resolution of the case.  [UPDATE:  After denying the prosecution's petition on Jan. 16, 2013, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals on Feb. 14, on its own motion, returned Guedry's case to the Ninth Court of Appeals. On Feb. 26, the Ninth Court issued a mandate in the appeal, returning to the Criminal District Court of Jefferson County.]

In his ruling, Clark, the federal district court judge, found there was enough merit to Newman’s claims against Burke and Guedry that neither were entitled to “qualified immunity” in the case and that those claims should go to trial. When the pair appealed that ruling to the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans, Clark indefinitely postponed the trial.

During oral arguments in October, the attorneys representing Burke and Guedry — Bruce Cobb, William Conley and Craig Schexnaider — argued that the officers’ actions were “objectively reasonable” given the circumstances they faced on that late 2007 night in a high-crime area of Beaumont, with one of the men in the car, Mario Cole, acting belligerently while being arrested on an outstanding traffic warrant, and a crowd gathering nearby.

The attorneys also argued that Burke didn’t begin to use his baton against Newman until he saw the man struggling with Guedry, then a rookie officer only a few months on patrol, during a pat-down search. The officers maintain that Newman grabbed Guedry’s hand during the search and pulled it toward his crotch, making a course remark. Burke has testified that he saw Newman’s hand moving toward his waistband and believed the man could have been reaching for a weapon.

But Port Arthur attorney Langston Adams, representing Newman, countered that his client had in fact been trying to assist the officers in trying to get Mario Cole to calm down during the altercation. With two separate juries having convicted Burke and Guedry of official oppression, it would be illogical for the federal court to find they had acted with objective reasonableness.

In a 21-page, published ruling (including dissent) issued Friday, the Fifth Circuit panel, noting that in the summary judgment phase they must by law accept the non-movant’s assertions in disputed facts as true, found that Guedry and Burke had failed to overcome the evidence that their actions were not objectively reasonable.

“The officers’ theory that they were trying to prevent serious bodily injury to themselves or others is severely overwrought,” Judge Jerry E. Smith, one of the two jurists in the majority, wrote. “The videos do not show Newman attempting to strike either officer, holding a weapon, or even reaching for his waistband. The officers did not try to warn each other or the other officers that Newman had a weapon, which might be expected if either officer truly thought that at the time.”

“On Newman’s own account,” Smith wrote, “he committed no crime, posed no threat to anyone’s safety, and did not resist the officers or fail to comply with a command. Therefore, taking the facts in the light most favorable to Newman at the summary-judgment stage, the officers’ conduct was objectively unreasonable in light of clearly established law at the time of the incident.”

In a dissenting opinion, Judge Rhesa H. Barksdale wrote that the other two judges on the panel — Smith and Carolyn Dineen King – “engage in ‘Monday-morning quarterbacking’ at its worst” in the cases of Guedry and Burke.

“When this summary judgment record is reviewed correctly, the Officers’ application of measured force in a tense, dangerous and hostile environment, in August 2007 to lawfully arrest a noncompliant suspect was objectively reasonable, shielding them with qualified immunity,” Barksdale wrote.

Barksdale wrote that Newman’s refusal to obey officers’ orders to get back inside the vehicle and his subsequent actions toward Guedryduring the pat-down search made the use of his force against him reasonable under the law at the time of the incident.

Guedry and Burke can seek a rehearing from the Fifth Circuit. Barring that, the case will likely be heard at trial in the Beaumont fedearal courtroom of District Judge Ron Clark.

Last March, a separate three-judge Fifth Circuit panel dismissed Newman’s appeal of  Clark’s granting summary judgment to the three other officers — Jason Torres, John Brown and Charles Duchamp. The panel said that appeal was premature.

Later that month, another panel affirmed Clark’s May 2011 ruling dismissing the city, City Manager Kyle Hayes and former police Chief Frank Coffin, who had been added to the lawsuit after it was removed from a Jefferson County civil court to federal court in January 2011. The suit was originally filed in state court in November 2008.

UPDATE:  On Jan. 4, 2013, the officers’ attorneys filed a motion for rehearing en banc of the decision by the Fifth Circuit Court. On March 13, the court denied the motion for rehearing en banc, returning to the court of U.S. District Judge Ron Clark for trial. On April 5, during a status conference with the attorneys, Clark set a trial date of June 10.

SECOND UPDATE:  On May 9, attorney Craig Schexnaider filed a notice with the district court stating Burke and Guedry’s intent to file a writ of certiorari appealing the Fifth Circuit denial of a rehearing to the U.S. Supreme Court. On May 13, Judge Clark cancelled the trial date pending the resolution of the writ to the high court.

Find links to full coverage of the Guedry and Burke cases here.

Copyright © 2012 Ken Fountain. All rights reserved.

I hadn’t been to the event in many years, and it’s grown tremendously since then. A recent development is the “steampunk” movement, with scores of attendees dressed in fanciful garb reflecting the retro-futuristic mash-up literary genre.

But, for all the visual regalia on display, the highlight of the event was watching actor Alfred Hyslop (who cheekily said he wasn’t “quite” as old as Dickens) give a one-man performance of “A Christmas Carol” at the Tremont House Hotel.

And without further ado, below are some of my best photos from the day.

Copyright © 2012 Ken Fountain. All rights reserved.

(And before somebody points out that this blog’s name is “Fountain’s Pen,” I’ll simply point out that the word “photography” means “writing with light.”)

Copyright © 2012 Ken Fountain. All rights reserved.