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Friday, January 16, 2009
Michael Huff Celebrity Weekend set for April 2-4
Then there’s that other category: The celebrity visitor. Former Longhorn and current Oakland Raider Michael Huff fits that bill. He’s planning a second annual charity event, April 2-4, timed to the socially rambunctious Texas Relays. Playful Huff’s efforts will benefit Dell Children’s Medical Center of Central Texas and the Women Called Moses Coalition and Outreach Center in Dallas.
The highlight of the weekend is a basketball game pitting NFL players against one another. Some, like Roy Williams, are actually built something like basketball players.
Invited celebrities include: Tim Crowder, Denver Broncos; Cedric Griffin, Minnesota Vikings; Derrick Johnson, Kansas City Chiefs; Dominic Rhodes, Indianapolis Colts; Shaun Rogers, Cleveland Browns; Stanford Routt, Oakland Raiders; Bo Scaife, Tennessee Titans; and Kasey Studdard, Houston Texans.
We tried to slip in an interview or two last year, but the sports reporters were far better at nailing down their
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Ear Candy: The Soldier Thread
Regular readers will recall my previous scribblings on modern Austin bands. And music critics tell me, sometimes helpfully, sometimes dismissively, that my favorite Austin acts of late descend from strands of Beatles, REM, U2, Mogwai and Coldplay DNA. And this is a Stones town, not a Beatles redoubt.
Recently, I added the Soldier Thread to my addiction list that has recently included Ghostland Observatory, Ghost of the Russian Empire, Pompeii, Alpha Rev, Jets Under Fire, Meridianwest, Explosions in the Sky, Baker Hotel and, in a more historical or soundtrack-like vein, Noise Revival Orchestra, Grupo Fantasma, White Ghost Shivers and Asylum Street Spankers. (Some of these acts are already defunct or on the way to extinction, I fear.)
The Soldier Thread has now released “Shapes,” which thickens their fine live work with textural agents from Tosca String Quartet, Kullen Fuchs and Lars Goransson, who also produced the album for the core group: Todd Abels, Patricia Lynn, Justin McHugh and Drew Vandiver.
It’s splendid from beginning to end. The basic rhythm seems to derive from New Wave antecedents, guitar from the so-called Epic line, harmonizing vocals from various tensile traditions. Yet the strings, and, to a lesser extent, horns and keyboards, give the band a distinctive edge. Or, perhaps, they soften that edge. More thoughts on another day.
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Coffee with Dick Rathgeber 3
For Parts 1 & 2, see posts below
Early on, Dick Rathgeber mastered the art of working with journalists, too. He’d give key reporters the whole story, off the record, before a big announcement or vote. That way, the print and broadcast reports reflected checked facts and more than just the sound bites dropped at press conferences.
“Most people don’t trust journalists,” he says. “But they don’t know the rules of engagement. They don’t know that you guys have a pretty strong moral ethic. You’re not going to burn a source. Not if you pick up the phone and ask one person ‘What’s the real story here?’ Not in a million years.”
“The other night you saw me at that Austin Community Foundation event with a drink in my hand,” he says. “If you had gone and smelled that drink, you would have smelled it was a 7-Up or a Sprite with a twist of lime. People are very uncomfortable if they are drinking and you are not. So you have to have a drink in your hand.
“You can go to a party, then, and a guy’ll have two or three drinks, and you’ll hear he’s sold a piece of dirt and you ask a very innocuous question: ‘What’s land out there bring?’ ‘Well, I got $10,000 an acre.’ If you’d called and asked him, he wouldn’t give you the answer. But in a social setting, he’ll tell you anything.”
Rathegeber shared situation after situation when he’d recall one factoid that turned around a project. To him it’s all a big jigsaw puzzle, which he describes as resembling wartime intelligence.
“If you wanted to describe me in a word, it’s probably, ‘relentless,’” he says. “You keep knocking. You just keep knocking.”
Everything in “Dealmaking” relates money to faith.
“If you accept the idea that it’s really not yours, you’re just here managing it for a while, you can give a lot of it away,” he says.
Why a book?
“I really wanted to replicate myself,” he says. “There are so many things I learned the hard way. I had to pay tuition for what I learned. I’m hoping there’ll be those who’ll read this and say, ‘Hey, I can do that.’”
Rathgeber emphasizes that his method could work for anybody with a charitable mindset, not just the wealthy.
“A lot of these stories involved very little money or no money” he says. “It’s something that just about anybody can do.”
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Coffee with Dick Rathgeber 2
For Part 1, see post below…
Dick Rathgeber is best known for his charitable work. Years ago, he cut a crucial land-swap deal that made possible the Salvation Army headquarters downtown. He set up a model for building hospital hospitality houses and helped provide the planning framework for the Dell Children’s Medical Center of Central Texas project at the former Mueller Airport.
Along the way, Rathgeber (pictured with Pauline Lewis, board member with the Austin Childrens Shelter) pioneered the practice — at least in Austin — of insisting that business partners and philanthropists pool their interests to achieve multiple goals.
In one example, he talked about a prisoner-reform program that turned around only 2 or 3 per hundred clients, when perhaps it would be better to invest in childhood development programs that nipped criminality in the bud.
“You have to ask, ‘Is there a sustainability factor?’” Rathgeber takes care of that, in part, by teaming with groups such as the Junior League. He always offers matching funds — and strictly insists they are matched — and finds “meaningful placements,” or opportunities for continued volunteering.
If Rathgeber intended “Deal-Making” as a handbook for aspiring philanthropists, he also wrote a valuable, if non-chronological history of post-war Austin. One can follow the behind-the-scenes negotiations that led to certain subdivisions, charitable facilities and, especially, the web of relationships among Rathgeber’s generation of leaders. (Not much hint, however, about the projects that Rathgeber famously opposed. He’s not out to settle scores here.)
“People say when they read the book, ‘I had no idea how that happened.’ he says.
More to come …
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Coffee with Dick Rathgeber 1
“Whatcha doing, Dick, holding court?”
Granted, Austin businessman and philanthropist Dick Rathgeber held his audience of one in thrall, but no, he was not speaking in monarchical mode at the Exposition Road Starbucks, as a passerby suggested.
Instead, the round-faced man with the perpetually round eyes was putting finer points on observations from his semi-autobiographical, semi-inspirational book, “Deal-Making for Good: Smart Giving = Significant Living.”
“Your deal is always made from the other side of the table,” Rathgeber says. “You ask: ‘What do they want from this deal?’ Then you find out, ‘How can I let them have my way?’” Rathgeber has been doing that for decades.
As many who follow the Austin business community know, Rathgeber built up a demolition company, because, according to his practiced line, “I met a guy in the wrecking business who couldn’t read or write, and he was making money hand over fist. I thought: How hard could it be?”
Later, college-educated Rathgeber moved from destruction to construction, developing neighborhoods all over Austin, including parts of Lost Creek and Avery Ranch. He did so by scrutinizing development ordinances, tax laws and regional plans. Also, a good deal about human psychology.
For instance, he helped the Avery family part with their land by ensuring their name would be enshrined on road signs and neighborhoods, securing its place in popular history.
More to come…
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Shopping Parties at Estilo and Beyond Tradition
Don’t know why more retailers don’t get this: People buy when they are in the party mode. Money was definitely changing hands at Estilo and Beyond Tradition on Thursday as the shops straddling West Second Street helped define shopping as socializing.
Nathan Smith, Juan A. Martinez, Lisa Matulis
Michael Perez, Katrina Le
Toohey Thepsoumane, Marianna Mooring
Meredith Davis, John Hubble, Rebeca Ortiz
Bridget Ramey, Ester Gamezo
Mickey Johnson, Teresa Nguyn
Grant Shaw, Todd O’Neill, Bruce Lowder
Kappie Bliss, H.C. Arnold (whose fractured, figurative art was selling off the walls of Beyond Tradition), Charles Erwin
Claire Wiley, Geoffrey Journeay-Maker, John Heard
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