Austin360 blogs > Out & About > Archives > 2011 > October
October 2011
Final Lap around Northern California
Some vacations are meant for exploring new realms, others for savoring the comforts of familiar territory.
For the past decade and a half, we have returned to Northern California with a regularity that is almost rhythmic.
This unusual positioning has allowed us quick access during multiple trips to nearby cities, mountains, coasts, valleys and wine countries.
Our friend, however, is moving back to Texas for romantic reasons. We can hardly disapprove, but we’ll miss that suburban home he turned into a sort of resort spa, as well as a base for venturing out into one of the world’s most multifarious regions.
So in October, we returned to the San Ramon Valley for one last Indian summer, the time when Northern California ripens to its finest glory under sunny, mild skies. Instead of branching out to new frontiers, we made a valedictory lap from San Francisco to the fertile valleys east, and then north through wine regions to the upper coast and back again.
That was Day 1.
Planning for the next step, we had faced a choice: From the San Ramon Valley, we could have headed south, east, west or north in order to revisit cherished Northern California destinations.
The southern route would have reproduced the pleasures of the Monterrey Bay Aquarium; the campy-fun Madonna Motel in San Luis Obispo; the campy-scary Hearst Castle; the Central Coast wine region (popularized by the movie “Sideways”); and perhaps even Santa Barbara, Cal., which lies, properly, in Southern California.
West (roughly) would mean more time in the Bay Area cities: Oakland and Berkeley for sure, besides San Francisco, maybe San Jose and environs, also the Beach Chalet, Cliff House and the Pacific beaches, or a jump over the bay to Saulsalito, Muir Woods and Muir Beach.
We chose north instead.
From Dublin, Calif., the Napa Valley is a straight shot up Interstate 680 and across the wide Sacramento River lowlands. Napa has changed a lot since our first visits, but we stopped at an old friend, Mumm Napa, for not one, but three toasts of their bubblies ($18 for a flight of three). Then we crossed over the valley for silly treat, a visit to the 107-room Castel del Amaroso, a convincing replica of a Tuscan castle that could — and has — served as the location for a Disney movie. In the cellars, we tasted some decent reds ($17), then we picnicked in a hidden grove by a dainty pond borrowed from an English novel.
That night, we ate at Bouchon, chef Thomas Keller’s down-market restaurant that’s every bit as inventive as his pricier French Laundry down the street in tony Yountsville, Calif. The meal was magnificent and the 2008 Etude pinot noir from the Carneros region of southern Napa Valley proved superior to anything we tasted during the day (the meal ran $100 a person with wine and tip).
We overnighted at a Motel 6 in nondescript Rohnert Park, then headed up the gorgeous Dry Creek Valley, aiming for the even more ravishing Anderson Valley. In the first vale, we stopped at an extravagant chateau surrounded by landscaping that would make any drought-stricken Austinite weep. Here we tried the sturdy selections from Ferrari Carano, a winery built on hotel and casino money that earnestly shoots for the high end, without always hitting the target ($15, comped back if one buys from the shop above).
That night we splurged on the Little River Inn, a 1939 resort with big rooms and spectacular views of the Pacific Ocean from shared terraces ($175). We bundled in blankets to watch the sun and the moon set, then the next morning we read quietly as the sea turned a hundred shades of sapphire.
Time to head down the Pacific Coast Highway. This was my fifth or sixth time on this iconic, winding, cliff-side road and I was no less terrified than during the previous ventures. A break at the lovely Timber Cove Inn calmed my nerves, but I had best call this the last time I’ll blink through tensed fingers at the stupendous natural beauty.
The next morning, it was time head back to San Ramon. We brunched on fat omelettes at Buck’s ($15 per person), tarried at several wineries and wine shops, including a cave of spiky pinot noirs at Thomas George Estates, surprising upper-end cabernet sauvignons at populist Rodney Strong and the theatrical merriment of Williamson Wines, run by outgoing Australians Dawn and Bill Williamson, in downtown Healdsburg, Calif. another town quaintified almost to distraction.
California is not cheap. We saved some money on our four-day road trip up the valleys by eating at restaurants only twice. We ended our bucolic sojourn at the suburban lair we’ve called “Resort Chez Paul,” after our chef-host, Paul Talley.
Note to Paul.: Part of us is delighted you are returning to our state. Now we can show you around. Things have changed here, too, often but not always for the better. Another part of us will miss all those vivid jaunts north, south, east and west of your sweet retreat in peerless Northern California.
Photos by Paul Tally
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One Day in San Francisco
San Francisco is Austin, only taller, denser and more diverse. No wonder we always feel at home here.
Great cities come with singular attractions that never bore, no matter how often you visit. We spent only one day in Baghdad by the Bay before heading east and north along Northern California’s blissful valleys, hitting the just the urban high notes.
(Read more about our blessed trip to California in a coming post.)
The quiet place: The builders of the San Francisco Botanical Garden in Golden Gate Park took forlorn sand dunes and turned them into a magical land where you escape the city while knowing the city is nearby. I feel this way hiking along Austin’s Barton Creek trail or in Wild Basin Preserve, but here the gardeners have planted samples from Mediterranean climates from around the world, making it seem even more exotic. We never skip the gardens, and we’ve added the nearby free observation tower at the De Young Fine Art Museum, which opens up views of San Francisco’s heart like no other high point.
The secret restaurant: Even though San Francisco supports hundreds of mouthwatering eateries, we always devote one meal to Le Charm, an unpretentious bistro in the SoMa district. This could be Chez Nous, Artisan or Justine’s in Austin, but the twists on standard bistro fare here are so vigorous and the service is so civilized, Le Charm puts us supremely at ease after the jangle of travel.
The cultural spot: The San Francisco Opera is the country’s second largest, after New York’s Metropolitan, and it compares favorably with companies in Chicago, Houston and Santa Fe. The War Memorial Opera House is grand in the most traditional style, although the seats are too narrow for the duration of something like Mozart’s “Don Giovanni,” splendidly sung on our only night here. (Our alternative would have been a jazz club like Yoshi’s, but one apportions these experiences with care.) The quality of Austin Lyric Opera has risen over the years, but it has hit so many disappointing financial bumps along the way. So has SFO, but the citizenry is so justifiably proud of its cultural jewels, they won’t let them tarnish just because the economic model of opera production is strained.
The neighborhood walks: Like Austin, San Francisco is a city of scenes, of districts and neighborhoods, of distinct choices amid the chaotic wonder of street life. We visited a dear friend in what is known as Hayes Valley, chock full of candy-colored Victorians, newly gentrified to the point of hosting art galleries, odd restaurants and boutiques showing nothing but winter clothes (we almost always visit during the Indian summer of October, but the rest of the year, the city’s weather leaves much to be desired).
After the opera, we searched high and low for a spot to just unwind, and eventually found it on a slowly upgraded stretch of Market Street, which, in columnist Herb Caen’s day, was among the city’s meanest streets. We discovered a tiny little wine bar there called Pause where the pourer, a sometime ballet dancer with a wisp of a moustache, treated us like visiting royalty.
In a real city, one can always find outposts of civilization on shifting urban frontiers. Head out of downtown Austin on foot — south, east, north or west — and you’ll discover something like Pause, a place where you count among the explorers, and where you, too, will be appreciated as an escapee from the din of the city’s trend spots.
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Voices from beyond the Oakwood Cemetery grave: Susanna Dickinson
While I’m in California on vacation, I’d like to share something special.
Community historian Danny Camacho has written a series of beautiful monologues to go with the Save Austin’s Cemeteries’ annual “Murder, Mayhem and Misadventure Tour” at Oakwood Cemetery, which takes place Saturday. From 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., actors will play various characters from Austin’s past who are buried in this egalitarian graveyard.
“Well come on. Don’t be shy. I know why your here. Gather round. You’ve read the books or heard others talk about the Alamo, but I’m the only one who was there now left to tell the story.
I was born Susanna Wilkerson in Tennessee, 1814. At age 15, I married Almaron Dickinson in May of ‘29. In no time at all we had ‘Gone to Texas.’
We traveled down the Mississippi to New Orleans. It was the biggest town I was ever to see, but we were just passing through We boarded a schooner on the Gulf and on to Texas. We reached Galveston in ‘31 and then in was by wagon to our land grant on the San Marcus River.
My husband started a business in Gonzales. Our daughter, Angelina Elizabeth Dickinson, was born Dec. 14, 1834. It wasn’t long after, that all the troubles began.
In October of ‘35, Mexican troops came and my Almaron joined the other menfolk at the Battle of Gonzales. The Mexicans left and Almaron joins with other settlers and goes to San Antonio. It’s hard being a woman alone with a babe, so I join him in December. I open a table, I could always cook and did laundry.
We knew the Mexicans were coming, but not when. In late February of ‘36 they came. A lookout in the church belltower raises the alarm. We all go into the Alamo compound with what provisions and stores we can carry.
In no time at all we are surrounded by about 1,500 Mexican soldiers. That first week, Mexican cannons fire night and day. It’s a terrible noise, no one can sleep and the baby is fretful and cries.
Not many days later, I’m outside a looking up into the sky, A way up high, in the distance, I see what looks like the water of the Gulf I saw when we were on that boat coming to Texas. It’s a Blue Norther. When it is just overhead, I can hear the wind a coming and then the cold, bitter cold. We have no fire wood and no way to get any. Even in the church it’s so cold.
Very early on the morning of March 6 the attack begins. With clouds hiding the moon, Mexican soldiers are almost upon us. We are awakened by bugle calls and shouts of ‘Viva, Santa Anna!’ My husband comes into the small room of the church we are in for safety. He says the Mexicans have come up over the walls.
He kisses Angelina and me goodbye and that is the last I ever see of him. We can hear the noise of the fighting; cannon and rifle fire, the shouts of the men. It sounds like the end of the world.
The double wooden main-doors of the church creaks as they are torn apart and Mexican soldiers pour in. I fear I have breathed my last, what will become of my child? They come into the room. Seeing that we are all women and children they don’t kill us.
All the men are killed. I’m taken with my babe before Santa Anna. He is in his general’s uniform — all gold-braids and buttons, and a chest full of shinny medals. He questions me and then gives orders that I’m to be given a blanket and two dollars in silver.
Truth be told, he treats me better then some of the men I was to latter marry. He gives me a pony to ride and a slave that wasn’t killed to watch over Angelina and I. He tells me to go back to Gonzales and tell Sam Houston what I’ve seen. On our way a scouting party from Gonzales finds us and I carry the message to Sam Houston himself.
Well you know all that happened after that. I was just glad to be out of it. Life was hard for a woman alone with a babe. In ‘37 I married John Williams. If I had known what a bad man he was I wouldn’t have bothered. He beat me and Angelia. I divorced and was well rid of him.
The next year I married Francis Herring in Houston. He was a drunkard and dies from liquor in ‘43.
Still looking for a good man, I marry Peter Bellow in ‘47. He turns out to be as bad as the last two. We separated and he files for divorce. The lying so-and-so calls me a harlot.
So here I was, widowed twice and divorced the same. I move to Lockhart and open a boarding house; I always set a good a table.
It’s there in ‘57 that I meet Joseph William Hanning from Germany. He’s a carpenter and we marry, though there is some talk about he being 20 years my junior. We move to Austin. My Joe opens up a shop, then a furniture store and has a side business of undertaking.
This is the happiest time of my life.
I have at last a good loving husband and am taking care of my grandchildren. I become ill and in October of ‘83 move out here to Oakwood. My Joe puts up this fine marble marker for me. He later moves to San Antonio. He remarries, but in 1890 comes back to me. As you can see we lie side by side, the closest of any couple here.
This has been my Joe’s and my home now for all these many years. Here, with my grandchildren and all our Austin friends and neighbors around is where we’ll stay.”
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Marcia Levy and Susan Lubin: Seton Breast Cancer Center
They shared the good life. Then they faced possibly of catastrophic illness together.
Now the two dear friends hope to raise $6.5 million for the planned Seton Breast Cancer Center, which aims to provide comprehensive treatment services for patients and their families.
“Marcia was here so much when I was recovering,” Lubin says. “I was blessed with such outreach from friends.”
“There was this indescribable connection,” Levy says. “My family has been riddled with cancer. I remember as a youngster an aunt dying of breast cancer. It was an agonizing time.”
Confronting cancer three years ago, Lubin, wife of Dr. Craig Lubin of Austin Gastroenterology, was not without resources. But that didn’t eliminate the stress of diagnosis and prognosis, plus later reconstructive surgery, stresses amplified by the scattered medical resources around Central Texas.
“Being a physician’s wife, when I noticed this little tiny lump that we had been watching for seven or eight months, I had the luxury of getting in to see a doctor the next day,” Lubin says, who had undergone two previous scares with breast cancer. “When I went in, I didn’t eat or drink anything. Later that day he performed the biopsy, which actually turned into a lumpectomy. Two days of waiting for results, then I got the call.”
It helped that Lubin knew her doctors, including her oncologist and her surgeon, socially before they came to the rescue.
“(My doctor) was very certain from the size and looks of the tumor that it was noninvasive,” Lubin recalls. “He said: ‘I want you and Craig to come in the next afternoon.’ I knew what I was going to do. I had decided years ago. For some reason, I always thought I’d get breast cancer. I decided that the best thing for me was a double mastectomy. Then I’d never have to worry about it again.”
With the physical outline of a stage dancer and the melodic speech of a singer, Lubin, 60, recounts the context for her survival story over a gluten-free lunch at her Pemberton-area home. For Lubin and stolid friend Levy, also 60, it has been a story of family, adversity, rejoicing and, ultimately, service to the community.
Born in Cleveland and raised in nearby upscale Shaker Heights, Lubin didn’t struggle quite as palpably her parents had. Her father came from a large family of poor German and Russian Jews. Yet he eventually rose to the presidencey of Ohio metal companies. Originally from Detroit, her mother had moved to Miami Beach at a time when few lived Jews there.
“It was very antisemitic,” Lubin says. “I’ve never experienced antisemitism directly.”
Her father’s side of the family was quite musical, and, years later, Lubin studied voice with Gina Ducloux, sang in the Austin Lyric Opera chorus and served on the company’s board of directors. Academically, she studied American civilization at the University of Pennsylvania, then wrote textbooks for a while.
After stints with her husband in Oklahoma City and San Francisco, she learned interior decorating on the job, a skill underscored by the attention to detail in and around her French country house above Shoal Creek.
Levy also descended from German and Russian Jews. Her father’s parents owned a furniture store in Germany.
“They left every single thing behind,” Levy says of their immigration to America. “And they didn’t know a word of English. Thank God my grandmother was a strong woman. My grandfather fought her all the way to the boat.”
Although she was born in the Bronx, Levy moved as a small child to Bremerton, Wash., where her father operated a military surplus store. Her mother had graduated from a New York City high school at age 14 and eventually became an executive administrator for an Israel Bonds office.
Levy studied clinical psychiatric social work at the University of Washington, then worked in the psychiatric arm of a Seattle emergency room. Like Lubin, she followed her husband, Dr. Bruce Levy, also an attorney, around the country, to Arizona, then to Houston and Austin, where he’s the CEO of Austin Gastroenterology, alongside Lubin’s husband. The Levys have lived in Austin almost 20 years.
Levy and Lubin met at the Junior League’s A Christmas Affair back when the former was a partner in an import company dealing in fine crystal and china. “Our friendship just blossomed from there,” Lubin says. “We have so much in common, the least of which is that our birthdays are exactly two weeks apart.”
Moving to Austin 10 years earlier than Levy, Lubin had called upon her Junior League background to meet new people and to volunteer in the community. She joined the Seton Development Board, a service that would come in handy when she and Levy networked for the breast cancer center. Lubin also got deeply involved in arts organizations. Meanwhile, Levy’s philanthropy headed in an alternative direction.
“We are bookends in a way,” Levy says. “Susan’s focus, because of her talents and expertise, was drawn into the arts community. I am not artistic. I don’t have a good voice. Our philanthropic efforts have been focused on the medical community, the Anti-Defamation League and the Jewish Community Center.”
An article in More, a magazine for women over 40, gave them the initial idea for their current project. The story described a comprehensive breast cancer treatment center in Philadelphia.
“We had coincidentally both read the article, then lunched together the following day,” Levy says. “And the dream began.”
“We needed this in Austin,” Lubin says. “It never crossed my mind that Seton would say ‘no.’ Diana Resnik, the first woman president of a Seton hospital (Shoal Creek), is also a breast cancer survivor. “
Lubin brought along the article to the first idea meeting in May 2009.
“They loved it,” Lubin says. “The timing was right because they were already reassessing their oncology program.”
In February 2010, as Lubin’s mother was dying in Cleveland of ovarian cancer, Seton officials called to say that the center was a “go.” Two surgeons, Declan Fleming and Rob Fuller, came on as co-directors. Linda Lotz was drafted as development director.
It was Fleming who coined the phrase that the fundraisers use repeatedly as their ultimate mission: “To alleviate the chaos of care.”
“Honestly, getting breast cancer turned into a blessing,” Lubin says. “The tumor was so tiny and not invasive. I underwent no chemo or radiation. I came through in an amazingly short time. Being involved in this project has been the most gratifying and inspirational thing I have ever done. I’ve met and worked with most wonderful caring and courageous people. I feel the same enthusiasm in creating this center as an evangelist feels when he or she preaches.”
Recently, Lubin was shocked to discover, in front of family and admirers at the Ralph Lauren shop in the Domain, that the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation was giving $1 million to the center, bringing their total fundraising to $3.2 million.
Levy is equally grateful for the opportunity to do good.
“We have been fortunate to do wonderful things in our lives, but this will make a difference for thousands of breast cancer patients and their families,” Levy says. “It will change the course of medical care in the community.” Will breast cancer patients at other Texas hospitals be able to access the center’s centralized services?
“We want to collaborate with anyone and everyone to create state-of-the-art-care and state-of-the-art caring,” Lubin says. “We’ll be there, not just for the medical needs of the patients but also for emotional needs of the patients and their families.”
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Green Gala for Austin Animal Shelter
First chance you get, visit the new Austin Animal Shelter in East Austin. Any lover of pets will appreciate the astounding difference between the old Town Lake Shelter and this gleaming facility that looks like the Shangri-La of municipal animal retreats.
Lori Galloway and Mindy Vescovo
Yes, even as the City of Austin facility heads to true no-kill status (90 percent non-euthenization), there will be sad cases of animals too dangerous or sick to save. But walk through these corridors and runs, as I did during the Green Gala this week, and you will be heartened by the bright and humane design and completion of this shelter that’s really a shelter.
Carri and Jason Crowe
Air is separated. Stimulation is reduced. Hygiene is improved. Medical equipment is shiny, new. Austin taxpayers pick up most of the bill, as we should. But the Friends of the Austin Animal Shelter, who staged the first-ever gala, try to help with emergency needs.
Lida Rhodes and Carla Penmy
Finally, this facility matches the city that has produced sterling nonprofits such as Animal Trustees of Austin, Austin Humane Society, Emanicpet and Austin Pets Alive.
Linda Czisny and Patrica Fraga
Get thee to the shelter. Learn to love its odd rural/industrial setting on Levander Loop.
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Why does it happen all at once in Austin?
All weekend, they asked: “Why now?” Why so many festivals, parties, galas and other social events on one dry, dreamy weekend in October? Because so many Austin social hosts and promoters operate under three age-old rules:
Wait until things cool off.
Wait until the summer evacuees — including a big chunk of the college students — return to town.
Avoid, at all costs, butting heads with a Longhorns football home game.
These perhaps dated guidelines have been in place for a century or so. Happily, every event your columnist attended last week was full and flush with good will.
Some highlights (happy snaps from Season of Dance for Austin Children’s Shelter at Hilton Austin):
Learning more about charitable major leaguers Ann Showers Butler, Sandra Martin, Edith Royal and John C. Blazier at the Celebration of Giving for the Austin Community Foundation at Four Seasons Hotel.
Julia Spann and Kelly White
Cherishing the smaller, intense Film & Food for Austin Film Festival with Forrest Preece and Linda Ball at the Driskill Hotel.
Absorbing more of Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts Susan Combs’ animated personality at Heroes for Health for Marathon Kids at the Four Seasons.
Lance and Jessica Haley
Hearing poet and essayist Celeste Guzman Mendoz’s wrenching personal testimony during the SafePlace Celebration at the Austin Convention Center.
Laughing with Molly Shannon, Jon Scieszka and Jim Lehrer at the First Edition Literary Gala for Texas Book Festival at the Four Seasons. Also, sitting next to trenchant historical novelist Philippa Gregory.
Delyn and Chris Tyson
Learning that there will be a Seabrook Jones video of the Dave Steakley tribute show for Zach Theatre at the W Austin Hotel and Residences.
Seeing complementary executive directors Julia Spann and Kelly White support each other at the giant Season of Dance for Austin Children’s Shelter at Hilton Austin.
Max Ferguson and Nicole Contero
Touring the resort-like new East Austin facilities for stray pets with vivacious Lori Galloway during the Green Gala for the Austin Animal Shelter.
Spending quiet time on a Hyde Park porch with friends at a 54th birthday party for the ailing Stephen Moser.
Sitting with the socially adventurous Marcia Levy and Susan Lubin and gang at the Pink Ball for Seton Fund at Four Seasons.
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Dave Steakley Tribute at W Austin Hotel & Residences
Twenty years is a long time. Especially for any leader of an Austin arts group. Dave Steakley has served in one or another of Zach Theatre’s top positions for two decades. I can think of only a couple local leaders who have wracked up more milage with a single major company.
Dave Steakley and Brant Pope
Steakley didn’t found Zach. But, in a sense, he molded the modern sensibility that has become Zach. He popularized it. He politicized it. He tapped into Austin culture as few other artistic leaders have done. He and the theater have been rewarded with growing and diverse audiences, secure bottom lines and a new, third theater (under construction) that is expected to give the city’s largest resident company a worthy home.
Mitch Jacobson and Deanna Serra
These and other topics were discussed during a lively tribute to Steakley at the W Austin Hotel and Residences, a spot that matches the director’s mod yet classy style. Admirers poured all over the W’s second floor and out onto the divine terrace overlooking West Second Street. The mood flew higher and higher.
Meredith Oltmann and Clay McLaughlin
Unfortunately, because there were many, many conflicting social events that night, I didn’t get to see the tribute performance by more than 80 actors. Savior Seabrook Jones was there to document the hullbaloo with video. Let’s hope a link to an edited version will hit our email boxes before too long.
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First Edition Literary Gala at Four Seasons Hotel
So much good-natured intelligence packed into one room must ignite at some point. And it did frequently during the First Edition Literary Gala at the Four Seasons Hotel this week. The rousing dinner, benefiting the Texas Book Festival, and, ultimately, Texas libraries, is always a priceless opportunity to mingle with the brains who sustain our brains.
Patrick Sullivan and Libby Morris
Sitting next to me at Dallas businessman John Amend’s table was British novelist Philippa Gregory, who regaled me with stories of racing from her BBC job in Edinburgh to her doctoral stories in English literature, as well as her first journalistic assignment: Covering a dressage competition opposite an imposing and aged social columnist in a hat.
To my left were the always delightful landscape designer Jeff Neal and new bride and nonprofit consultant Victoria Neal. I’m hoping to lure them into a repeat of our famous New Year’s Eve gambol in Marfa.
Teresa and John Amend
Earlier on the Four Seasons terrace, I got to know Wonkette’s Ana Marie Cox, who has been living in Austin quietly for a couple of months (she’s moving to St. Paul, Minn. soon), and rip-roaring children’s author Jon Scieszka (later in the evening, the ceremonial emcee) and his companion Jeri Hansen, brilliantly dressed in turquoise and red. We shared Michigan stories and I introduced them to Brant Pope, the still-new chairman of the University of Texas theater and dance department.
Ana Marie Cox and Julia Null Smith
On the dais, Scieszka read a portion of his latest book written in Hamster language. Or it may have been taken from an alien disguised as a hamster. From the dais, The New Yorker’s Susan Orlean talked about the incredible history of American icon Rin Tin Tin and rounded out her treatise with the touching story of carrying a tiny descendant of the famous German shepherd with her from Houston to Boston — for someone else to adopt.
Self-deprecating PBS news anchor Jim Lehrer told immensely amusing anecdotes about the the presidential debates he has moderated, and the origin of his recent book’s title, “Tension City,” taken from an interview with former President George H.W. Bush, who despised debates.
Jon Scieszka and Jeri Hansen
Finally, “Saturday Night Live” alum Molly Shannon cracked up the semi-formal crowd with stories of her trickster youth spent with a widower dad who encouraged every kind of adventure. When she was 12, she and a friend dressed in ballerina costumes and calmly talked their way onto a flight from Cleveland to New York City, then wandered the city until her father — who had kiddingly endorsed the prank — paid for their return flight. (A lot more of that kind of thing in her author presentation.)
Just from the early evidence of the film and book festival galas, I can tell it’s going to be a wild weekend for authors, filmmakers, food trailer gypsies and all the others heading downtown, or taking advantaged of our short, mild autumn.
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SafePlace Celebration at Austin Convention Center
It happened again. The personal testimony upstaged the motivational speech. This time, poet and essayist Celeste Guzman Mendoza made more impact, I’m willing to bet, at the SafePlace Celebration than did famed social activist Erin Brockovich.
Angelina Loredo, Rachel Lawrence and Sandra Rangel
The nonprofit that fights domestic violence and abuse draws a crowd — almost 600 to the Austin Convention Center for its luncheon this week. Executive director Julia Spann and former TV anchor Olga Campos made everyone feel welcome, even those of us in an extreme minority (men, for instance). Campos joked about her fresh, slightly rumpled post-TV look. Her new work in charity with Milton Verret suits Campos well.
Leila Kalmbach, Rebekkah Adams and Amanda Ivarra
Brockovich, inspiration for the Julia Roberts movie that bears her name, comes with a compelling life story. And she’s a highly practiced, engaging speaker. Yet her life tips appeared too structured, almost like bullet points. Maybe I’m immune to such motivational efforts, but I would have settled for her amusing and amazing tales about youth in Lawrence, Kansas.
Sarah Simmons, Julie moody and Morgan Taylor
Guzman Mendoza, who works at the University of Texas Press, simply recounted her harrowing story of sexual abuse. She needed nothing more than her memories and natural dramaturgical gifts to convey the the sequence of personal devastation and recovery. A similar contrast grew out of last year’s celebration, when Olympia Dukakis proved an eloquent but unfocused headliner, followed by a speaker with similarly crushing personal testimony.
Hey, there’s nothing wrong with such pairings. Just an observation. It all goes to help the absolutely essential SafePlace.
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Cabaret coming to the Galveston Grand. Road trip?
Daydream about a singer rattling off Broadway tunes at a New York-style cabaret and you’ll envision, first, a very dark room. A narrow, deep, low room with tiny, round tables and a piano with microphones crammed against a back wall or a black curtain. Or, no, maybe a mirror for a backdrop, to make the cramped room seem a bit bigger.
The same daydreamer might have stumbled onto the cabaret’s entrance down a short set of stairs, since many are located in humble basement spaces near one of the city’s theatrical districts.
The visitor to Galveston’s historical district approaches the four-story red brick Grand, once part of a hotel complext built in 1894, through a wide, elegant stone arch. Then the patron passes by a narrow lobby before emerging at a right turn into an enchanting space of curved tiers, hooded boxes and a tall proscenium arch. In other words, a distinctly “grand” performance experience.
Maye, 83, has enjoyed an extraordinary run on the theatrical stage and inside those darkened New York cabarets. Her supper-club slant on show tunes is distinctly jazzy. Ella Fitzgerald once referred to her as “the greatest white female singer in the world.”
Edelman, 53, made his Broadway debut in the 1979 production of “Evita” and has earned Tony Award nominations for his appearances in “City of Angels” and “Anna Karenina,” as well as the revivals of “1776” and “Into the Woods.” He often plays handsome leading men, not always as upright as they might as first appear. Together, they plan to give Broadway their own distinctive turns of phrase in one of Texas’ grandest theatrical venues.
Tickets ($32-$48) for “Broadway Their Way” are available at www.thegrand.com or by calling (409) 765-1894. Visitors to can extend their Thanksgiving weekend experience with a special hotel rate of $89 at the San Luis Resort Spa & Conference Center, 5222 Seawall Blvd. Contact the hotel directly for the “Grand” rate at (800) 392-5937 or (409) 744-1500 Ext. 33. For more information on a charter bus from Austin hired for the Galveston event, contact info@kmpartists.com.
Photo: Mark Britain 2010
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Heroes for Health for Marathon Kids at Four Seasons Hotel
Away from cameras and the chance to posture for niche voters, statewide office-holders act differently.
On repeated occasions, I’ve found State Attorney General Greg Abbott, for instance, more informal, less forced. Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst is transparently compassionate, reflective. U.S. Senator John Cornyn comes across as balanced, equitable.
Gov. Rick Perry is as energetic is he appears on TV, but, in my experience, less gracious. (He’s the only politician to turn his back on me deliberately during a casual, social conversation.)
Susan Combs and Dianne Delisi
These are but fleeting impressions. I don’t claim they offer insight. Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts Susan Combs, however, is infinitely more interesting in person than when making an official announcement on camera. She has a nimble wit and a conversational style that’s as animated as it is engaging. She’s comfortable in her skin, which is so rare among politicians.
Andrea McWilliams and U.S. Congressman Lamar Smith
Marathon Kids honored Combs this week at the Four Seasons Hotel for her work on behalf of Texans’ health and fitness. The more I read, the more I discover what a pioneer she was fighting the junk food and soft drink dealers that held the state’s schools in a stranglehold through preferential contracts that often cost the schools more, while providing less nutrition for students.
Joe Ross and Christina Pesek
Combs was not the only wielder of power at the dinner. Dianne Delisi, former state representative and now senior policy advisor at Delisi Communications — also a top Perry advisor — helped introduce Combs, while Dr. Eduardo Sanchez, vice president and chief medical officer for Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas and previous Texas Commissioner of Health, recounted how he and Combs teamed up during those figurative food fights.
The ongoing hero of these events, however, is Kay Morris, the former dancer who figured out she could motivate students to move by spreading out the equivalent of a marathon race over months, and by creating a simple, color-coded process for recording and rewarding the addition of fruits and vegetables to their diets. Hundreds of thousands of kids have benefited from the Morris’ Austin-based program.
At our table, we tried to eat healthy.
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Profile: Scotty Sayers of the Texas State Cemetery
Halloween week, Scotty Sayers will haunt the Texas State Cemetery.
Actually, the (living) sports agent and chairman of the State Cemetery Committee does so often. He has wandered among the ancient oaks, gray cenotaphs and uniform markers for the war dead since the 1970s, when, as a lowly tour guide at the Texas State Capitol, he took out-of-town visitors to the then-untended graveyard.
A major renovation in the 1990s under the watchful eye of late Lt. Governor Bob Bullock — who insisted that the cemetery’s big state flag fly high enough for Bullock to see it from the Capitol — changed all that.
Now, a (pretty convincing) stream runs through it. And a state highway. Not a myth: Wily Bullock designated the cemetery’s central lane as a highway to leverage federal funds for the major renovation.
On Oct. 30, country singer Larry Gatlin will sing during a revival of the cemetery’s annual picnic tradition. Just in time, University of Texas Press has released “Texas State Cemetery” by Jason Walker and Will Erwin, with help from super-editor Helen Thompson. It was published by the Friends of the Texas State Cemetery who, in Sayers’ words: “takes care of special projects that our modest state budget won’t pay for.”
Sayers’ day job is serving as business manager for Austin golfing legend Ben Crenshaw. Yet many of his enthusiasms — Austin High School Loyal Forever alumni club, West Austin Youth Association and Save MUNY, besides the cemetery — grew out of his historical ties to the city and the state.
Sayers, 59, is the son of late State Rep. Scott Sayers of Fort Worth and Nancy DeGraffenreid Sayers, who later married Lt. Gov. Ben Barnes (Scotty Sayers briefly lived in the official quarters inside the Capitol) and former State Rep. Bill Abington.
His father and mother were close to late Gov. John Connally and his wife, Nellie Connally. Among Sayers’ best friends growing up was the governor’s son, Mark Connally.
Although born in Fort Worth, his family’s political life escorted Sayers to Austin as a toddler, exploring the halls of the Stephen F. Austin Hotel, where his father stayed during sessions. “It was a kind of adventure,” he says.
The family moved here full-time in 1962 and, when his father died in 1968, his mother was named by Gov. Connally to lead what is now the Texas Workforce Commission, making her one of the first female heads of a major state agency.
Sayers attended a trifecta of old Austin schools: Casis Elementary, O. Henry Junior High and Austin High. He met his wife, Julie Ferguson Sayers, a fourth-generation Austinite, at O. Henry and they started dating at Austin High. Their daughters, Samantha and Charisse, who still live in Austin, attended the historical trifecta as well.
Adding to the maroon spirit, Julie and Scotty are co-directors of Loyal Forever.
Even when we attended Austin High, the school was so steeped in tradition,” he says. “It felt like a kinship. The alumni bonds were strong throughout the city. Austin High was rich sports and educational traditions. Some teachers had spent all their whole careers there. And there was the magnificent old architecture (at the midtown campus now occupied by Austin Community College). Maybe I remember it better than it was, but it has carried me throughout my life.”
Sayers rattles off alumni date: 44,000 graduates during the 130-year history of Austin High. Of those, 14,000 are still living. Among those inducted into the school’s Hall of Honor are Jake Pickle, Cactus Pryor, Liz Carpenter, Zachary Scott, Harvey Penick and Don Baylor.
Sayers met Crenshaw at Casis and they blazed a playful trail between their Tarrytown homes on Townes Lane and Bridle Path. Their dads were attorneys and friends, and Crenshaw’s father coached their baseball team.
“I can remember during one of my first Little League practices, Ben and his dad in the corner of the stands after a nine-hole Casis Open tourney at MUNY,” Sayers says. “‘Oh, how did you do in the tournament?’ ‘I won.’ I think he won by 20 shots. He had been playing for a while at age 11.”
Although they attended UT together, the friends’ paths didn’t cross often, since Crenshaw was playing golf and Sayers was working at the Capitol. After studying government and business, and working with Banks Miller and George Christian at their public relations firm, he switched majors to PR in the journalism school.
After graduation, he strayed into Dallas real estate, then he and Julie purchased the Texas State Directory Press, the almanac of Texas government, which brought them back to Austin permanently in 1982.
In 1984, Crenshaw won his first Masters tournament and his life got even busier with corporate endorsements and other things athletes do. The golfer been with International Management Group (IMG), but grew tired of being one of many players in their portfolio. Sayers took him on in 1985.
“We keep the business aspect and the friendship aspect apart,” Sayers says. “We follow some basic ground rules: Respect for family time, for instance. I think we changed things in the golf business. Most of those players with significant status now have their own agents.”
He shares offices at 18th and Nueces streets with his wife Julie and helps out Crenshaw and Bill Coore with the Coore & Crenshaw golf course architecture business. He stays out, however, of the design process. “You can’t design a golf course by committee,” he jokes.
Sayers returned to the cemetery when Gov. Rick Perry offered him a space on a state board. Sayers chose his old stomping grounds.
Now with a budget of $500,000 and eight employees, the cemetery is a genuine tourist attraction, a magnet for 20,000 students surveying Texas history each year and a cool place for contemplation.
Along the way, Sayers has comforted many a loved one of a Texas leader or cultural figure. One mourner for whom he nurtured a particular fondness was Nellie Connally.
“She was like a second mom to me,” he says. “We’d sit here next to the governor’s monument. She’d smile and say ‘Now after I’m gone, you take care of my plot.’”
Loyally, he does.
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Film & Food for Austin Film Festival at Driskill Hotel
It was a smaller affair this year. But, if anything, the cuisine and conversations were more forceful. Which made for an entirely pleasant and not so chaotic Film & Food bash for the Austin Film Festival this week.
Jon Paul Phillips, Alexis Bledel and Ryan Piers Williams
On my way up the grand staircase of the Driskill Hotel — sometimes we take this palace for granted — I met up with festival founder Barbara Morgan, who re-introduced me to Ryan Piers Williams, a filmmaker and University of Texas product who happens to be married to America Ferrara. He was accompanied by lovely, shy Houston native Alexis Bledel (“Gilmore Girls”) and dashing Jon Paul Phillips.
Jessica Wood and Lisa Crawford
On the banquet floor, I concentrated on food. My favorites included a sweetbreads combo from Josh Watkins’ Carillon, a zingy treat from chef David Garrido and bacon-flush dishes from Haddington’s and Mulberry. Parkside’s Shawn Cirkiel presented the evening’s most refreshing dollop: Some very fresh mozzerella adorned with with drops of French olive oil. (Cirkiel confessed that he prefers the nut and olive oils from Jean LeBlanc.)
Alex Tran and Jennifer Brown
Hosts Forrest Preece and Linda Ball chatted for a while about the cream of the new restaurant crop in town. I contend that Barley Swine, Foreign and Domestic and Haddington’s share a lot in common, as far as creativity with ingredients is concerned. Preece and Ball are sort of role models for me. I’d like my retirement to be as full of Austin as theirs is.
Permalink | | Categories: Food, Movies
Celebration of Giving for Austin Community Foundation at Four Seasons Hotel
The Austin Community Foundation’s Celebration of Giving is like a graduate seminar in Austin philanthropy. It should be a required course for anyone interested in the social, cultural and historical implications of giving in this city.
Abraham Kazen and Judith Zaffirini
For instance, did you know that the citywide foundation started with a $30,000 check and since then has given away more than $200 million. Its work touches almost every nonprofit group and community project in the city, which is why new president and CEO Jeff Garvey, formerly of Livestrong and Austin Ventures, instantly becomes the go-to guy for any big push in the city.
Jackie and Eric Price
But on to the awards, which, alone among any such prizes in the city, include in-depth biographies of the recipients and slide shows that tell as much as any speeches or printed programs could about their lives. For instance, the most I knew about Sandra Martin, executive director of the Center for Child Protection and winner of the Sheffield Award, was her serious speeches at the center’s many fundraisers. I learned so much about her Southern background and family, her longtime dedication to helping abused children, and now all those speeches make sense.
Meria Carstarphen and Rosemary Lehmberg
Edith Royal needs no local introduction. Yet the winner of the Jordan Award for outstanding volunteer was involved in vastly more enterprises than I had ever guessed, not to mention her steady work for Austin Recovery, the rehab group for which she was being honored. “I’d like to thank my husband for giving me name recognition so I could do these things,” she said of legendary coach Darrell Royal. “I didn’t know I had so many friends until tonight.”
Donna Stockton-Hicks and Gigi Bryant
John C. Blazier has been a quiet giant behind the scenes, especially helping public schools, for which he won the Donoghue Award for encouraging philanthropy as a professional advisor. One thing he said during his acceptance speech stuck with me: “We live in one of the only big cities with a viable, independent school system.” Never thought of it that way.
Ann Butler and Eddie Butler
Three allied pet groups — Animal Trustees of Austin, Austin Humane Society and Emancipet — took the Meriwether Award for outstanding grantee from the foundation. They were patted on the head for their collaborative work helping to bring down pet kills in Austin by 52 percent through their collaborative work. (I’d love to see other major pet advocates in town work even more closely with this trio.)
The top award went to Ann Showers Butler. Now, I’ve been trying to profile this great lady, to whom we owe so many things, like the trail around Lady Bird Lake, but she’s stubborn. Very much the graceful lady from East Texas. Not into newspaper profiles. Yet the widow of Austin mayor Roy Butler is one of the toughest, most focused philanthropists in town and her $5 million to Seton for the Ann Showers Butler Patient Pavilion is still the largest single gift from an Austin woman for any project to date.
Why like a seminar? Because we discussed these and many other things around Table 45, where I got to know folks from the profit and nonprofit sectors over a leisurely dinner. Come to think of it, most of my seminars in grad school didn’t come with such good Four Seasons Hotel cooking.
Side note: Current ACF chairwoman JoLynn Free announced that the foundation had set up relief efforts on the first day of recent wildfires, and that the relief concert at the Erwin Center on Monday raised more than $500,000, which the foundation manages.
Permalink | | Categories: Charity
Luminalia for Austin Shakespeare at Umlauf Sculpture Garden
Austin Shakespeare’s Luminalia floats on a charm all its own. It starts with the grounds of the Umlauf Sculpture Garden and Museum, which, at dusk in October, looks like an Edwardian’s vision of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” Designer Robert Whyburn subtly brushed the trees, rocks, shrubs, sculptures and convincing stream with silvery light.
Rob and Michelle Busby
Guests for the Austin Shakespeare benefit strolled through the pathways, where musicians, dancers and actors appeared like Elizabethan fairies with wings and twinkling lights woven into their costumes (where was this technology when I was directing children’s theater?).
Bob and Connie Webb
The actors spoke snatches from one piece of Shakespearean verse, recombined during a masque staged around the garden’s little wedding canopy. This performance matched the structure of 16th and 17th-century masques with its metaphorical declamations, breezy dances and, finally, structured social dancing. Enchanting.
Adam Bedell and Rebecca McGuireh
Then we ate. I joined Tammy Hale’s table and heard her always illuminating tales of Austin’s creative leaders. Philanthropist Susan Lubin sat next to me and filled out more of her life history (look for a profile of Lubin and pal Marcia Levy soon). Dressed in period costume were Long Center development director Jennifer Houlihan and her companion, Mike Reed, who bantered all evening like something out of “Much Ado About Nothing.”
I had promised myself all year I would stay for the whole Luminalia, after a mere glimpse of the 2010 edition. I’m glad I made that choice this week, though everyone seemed surprised that I didn’t scamper off to some other event. Why in the world would I abandon such enthrallment?
Correction: Jennifer Houlihan and Mike Reed are not married.
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Black & White Gala for Texas Advocacy Project at Four Seasons Hotel
Everybody looks so striking at the Black & White Gala.
Susie Reiter and Stephanie McKenzie
The benefit for the Texas Advocacy Project employs a simple color scheme. That gives direction to the decor and the couture, but it also liberates guests to elaborate on classic black and white with more subtle accents, hints at prints, etc.
Eric Chen and Estella Baytan
Because the Project provides free legal services to Texas victims of domestic violence and sexual assaults, the annual event at the Four Seasons attracts lawyers, judges, government workers and visitors from San Antonio, Houston and Dallas/Fort Worth. And every year, they appear to genuinely enjoy dressing up for the occasion. None of that “Oh, I’ve got to drag out the monkey suit” stuff.
Adriana and Damon Moore
This week’s gala attracted at least 400 guests to the Four Seasons and organizers raised $207,000 for the Project, partly because an African safari went for $11,000. The party also featured friends of the organization: Supreme Court of Texas Chief Justice Wallace Jefferson and Roger Wade, Public Information Officer for the Travis County Sheriff’s office.
You know, next year, if I’m still working the social circuit, I should stick around for the full program and just forget all the other parties that conflicted with it.
Harry Middleton’s Birthday Celebrations
The birthday bashes have already begun for Harry Middleton, the former journalist, assistant to President Lyndon Baines Johnson and longtime director of the LBJ Library and Museum.
He turns 90 on Oct. 24.
A public salute took place this week at the Tarrytown home of distinguished scholar Roger Louis, director of British Studies at the University of Texas, and his strong-minded wife Dagmar Louis. Senior professors, junior professors and fellowship students — along with archivists and family members — made this a lively gathering.
Dagmar and Roger Louis
From the guests, I learned more about the Ransom Center, Travis Heights, Santa Fe and other evergreen Austin subjects.
Middleton, a member of the select British Studies Seminar, left before the close-knit party broke up. Yet other celebrations ensue. On Oct. 24, the LBJ Library and Museum will serve free birthday cake to all visitors from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
The center has also created a birthday tribute page. Can’t think of a better candidate for such honors.
Permalink | | Categories: Education, Law
Schatzelein and the evolution of South First Street
Schatzelein is a new shop on South First Street, just up from West Annie Street. There, owner Christine Fail sells graceful, handmade jewelry and accessories, almost all from contemporary designers. A few pieces of vintage pop up in the tiny, impeccable boutique for women and men.
Christine Fail and Matt Pierce
Fail’s timing is ideal. South First is changing fast. For years, it faltered as a full-service retail district, compared to its neighbors, South Congress Avenue and South Lamar Boulevard. Partly, that’s due to narrow sidewalks, but also because City of Austin officials talked periodically about widening the street, which promised interrupted access and crimped parking. That proposal appears to be hold.
Not that commerce opted out. South First has been known as the Mexican Food Mile for a string of restaurants extending from El Mercado south to beyond Oltorf Street. A few food and clothing outlets huddled alongside head shops, unpretentious services and convenience stores. Two popular coffee shops have survived the normal churn in the strip centers and converted bungalows.
The retail evolution has speeded up in the past few weeks. I count at least three new wellness centers, a third bakery, a new florist shop, several new boutiques and food trailers, along with the promise of innovative eateries from chefs Larry McGuire (Perla’s, Lamberts) and Todd Duplechan (Trio).
Has South First’s time come?
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: City, Style
Suzanne and Eugene Go to Washington
Austin philanthropist Suzanne Deal Booth and social connector Eugene Sepulveda were among the guests at a rain-soaked state dinner at the White House on Thursday.
The dinner was thrown for Korean President Lee Myung-Bak and his wife, Kim Yoon-ok. Cocktails and hors d’oeuvres were served on the first floor of the White House, which was decorated in an autumnal theme. The American-accented menu included butternut squash bisque, green salad, Texas wagyu beef and chocolate cake.
After dinner, guests crossed the grand foyer into the State Dining Room for the evening’s entertainment that began with the Ahn Trio performing classical music, followed by Kansas City-based performer Janelle Moane.
CORRECTION: David Booth did not attend the White House state dinner.
La Dolce Vita at Laguna Gloria
For the past four or five years, Austin Museum of Art has been blessed by unequivocally blissful weather for its signature outdoor benefit, which combines food, wine, music and mingling. And yet the 22nd La Dolce Vita, staged on the verdant grounds of Laguna Gloria, has never felt so glorious as it did this week.
Laura and Chris Aidan
If one arrived early enough, the crowds never grew too large. Neither were they so small that the Figure-8 loop of paths on the east lawn ever felt lonely. One astonishing restaurant after another offered concentrated bites in white mini-tents, while wineries sampled a wide variety of red, white and bubbly potables.
Ashley Hall and Todd Grossman
(At one point, I was distracted by me. Or rather, a televised talking head that was me as interviewed on a KLRU special years ago about Laguna Gloria, rebroadcast on three large screens. Unsettling. And a bit embarrassing.)
Paula Biehler and Stephanie Keller
Every few steps, Austinites stopped to tout their favorite dishes and to soak up the delectable coolness of early autumn. By the time my companion and I had made the full Figure 8, we had already missed several other parties I had hoped to make that early evening. Why would anyone compete with La Dolce Vita?
David Alan and Garrett Weber-Gale
Later, floodlights saturated the landscape with color. The paths around the ideally spaced tents began to fill to the brim. Dance music kept the mood merry and — bonus! — we met Olympic swimming champion Garrett Weber-Gale, now an Austin expert on healthy cooking and eating. Quite the gentleman, too.
Permalink | | Categories: Food, Nightlife
Greenlights 10th Anniversary Dinner at UT Alumni Center
Greenlights — otherwise known as Greenlights for Nonprofit Success — commemorated its founders this week. During a warm and funny ceremony at the University of Texas Alumni Center, the nonprofit that helps other nonprofits thrive recalled its origins 10 years ago.
Anna Sanchez and Toya Haley
Back then, it was even more difficult for the hundreds of Central Texas charities to learn and apply the best practices from the field. During the past decade, Greenlights has trained directors and staff members, turned around troubled groups and set the standards for nonprofit citizenship. One of their innovative programs secures interim executive directors for charities in transition.
Neal and Lynn Nolan
Current Greenlights executive director Matt Kouri, usually a no-nonsense, nuts-and-bolts nonprofit guy, turns out to have hidden his comic gift under a bushel. He and his staff starred in a explanatory video inspired by “The Office” TV series that was dry and wry enough to saturate the banquet hall with laughter.
Bruce Muckerson and Matt Murphy
Leaders then introduced the honorees: Libby Malone, Greenlights’ founding board chairwoman; Greg and Cindy Kozmetsky, major Greenlights donors; Deborah Edward, the group’s first executive director; and Lynn Meredith, a powerhouse proponent of Greenlights.
What a group! I was pleased to learn more about them and to hear their gracious acceptance speeches. I was just as pleased with MariBen Ramsey’s merry introduction of Meredith, all about meeting in the women’s room at a camp retreat. How did I go all those years without realizing the robust comic sensibility of this Austin Community Foundation stalwart?
Permalink | | Categories: Charity, Education
Interview: Movie actor Brett Cullen
I last spoke with Brett Cullen 32 years ago. Then Facebook intervened.
The movie actor and I chatted digitally about his upcoming visit to town for the Austin Film Festival, where “Beneath the Darkness” premieres Saturday. Co-producer and performer Cullen made the teen thriller in Smithville with his best buddy and newly minted Austinite Dennis Quaid.
It was a golden age of sorts for that drama program, preparing future stage and screen performers such as Brent Spiner (“Star Trek: The Next Generation”), Cindy Pickett (“Ferris Bueller’s Day Off”), Randy Quaid (“The Last Detail”), Annalee Jeffries (“Tantalus”), Robert Wuhl (“Batman”) and Mary Layne (“The Royal Family”).
For his part, Cullen has played a steady stream of film and TV roles during a career rich with Texan parts, including his most recent in “My Mother’s Curse,” opposite Barbra Streisand, slated for release in 2012.
The following is a trimmed and scrubbed version of our Facbook exchange.
Out & About: Let’s start with Facebook. How do you usually use it? Mostly for close friends and family, or also for your movie career?
Brett Cullen: Actually, I joined so I could keep up with what my daughter was doing on here! But I do announce occasionally what (shows) I am appearing on for my friends, etc. … But it’s mostly a social network for me.
And you’ve used it to reconnect with classmates from Houston, too?
Yes, I have. And with friends in other countries. I have realized that some of my classmates from junior high and high school have changed a great deal since we were gonna change the world back in the ‘60s and ‘70s.
You went to (theater-savvy) Bellaire High School (in Houston), right? Which junior high?
No, I was suppose to go to Westbury High but got zoned to Madison. I went to Johnston Junior High.
Wow! I always assumed Bellaire. How did you know that Bellaire gang at the University of Houston?
Through Cecil Pickett. And Dennis was one of the first people I met at the University of Houston. I walked into the Attic Theater hallway and, as Dennis described it, my hair was down to my ass, I had on a surf shirt, surf trunks and flip flops, and sand all over my ankles and feet because I just came back from Surfside surfing.
That’s exactly how I remember you, too. And you still surf! I imagine the scene in Venice is a bit more real than it was in Surfside or Galveston.
The waves are better that’s for sure. And Hollywood has paid for me to fly all over the world. I’ve been able to surf in places like Hawaii, Mexico, South Africa, New Zealand and Australia because I was working there on some project. Yes, surfing is still a large part of my life and Venice is, in my mind, the coolest place to live in L.A. But surfers are the same wherever you go. We are all in pursuit of the same things — good waves, good times and freedom.
Last time we met, I’m pretty sure it was at a party in Houston, west of downtown, a low-lying ranch house. You were preparing to team up with Dennis in L.A. What year would that have been?
Well, I moved here in the summer of ‘79. Got my first in Hollywood apartment on Beachwood Drive for $172 a month!
I was going to guess 1979, too. And you’ve worked nonstop in movies and TV since then. It’s easier to follow your prolific career now that we have IMBD.
I tell actors I talk to save their money, because I’ve been rich five times and poor six.
I’m glad you’ve remained close with Dennis and his family.
We are as close as brothers. Since he moved to Austin, I call him and tell him: ‘This sucks.’ I miss him. We were always in different places on location, but I knew when we were in town we’d play golf or go get dinner, etc. But now he’s in Texas and I’m here … bummer! We do talk on the phone a lot. I’m hoping to see him in a few weeks.
Well, you’ll just have to visit Austin more often. Dennis doesn’t really remember me from school, by the way. I can tell. Well, I didn’t run with his group. And I’ve changed since then. Dennis is still quintessentially Dennis. Had a wonderful interview with him here a few years ago, when he was staging those ‘Dennis Charity Weekends,’ which you helped make happen, if I remember correctly.
Yes I did. A friend of mine asked me if Dennis would be interested in doing a charity golf tourney, and Dennis said yes, so we met and decided on Austin because we all love Austin. It was a way to give something back to Texas, because no matter where you go or what you do, it’s still in your blood —Texas that is.
So tell me about the genesis of “Beneath the Darkness.”
My producing partner met some people through me, and he called me and asked if Dennis would be interested in acting in this film in Texas in the Austin area. I asked him and he said ‘Yeah, let me read the script.’ So after a lot of negotiations we got him locked onto the picture and then it just took off.
So is this a completely different role for Dennis, that of a unsavory killer?
Dennis took on this part with such gusto and, yes, it is a real departure for him. He’s crazy scary and also I think extremely funny at times. My daughter, who knows Dennis very well said: ‘Eww, Dad, Dennis is being so creepy!’
How old is your daughter now?
She is the dreaded 16. At the moment, she is rehearsing ‘A Chorus Line’ at her performing arts high school, following in her mom and dad’s footsteps I fear.
What will you do when you are in Austin for the movie premiere?
I hope to drive up from Houston on the Oct. 22 and be there for two days. And I must go to my favorite Tex-Mex joints in Austin — Matt’s El Rancho and Güero’s Taco Bar, although Güero’s isn’t really Tex Mex so much, but I like the margaritas.
As luck would have it, we live in the neighborhood right behind Güero’s. We’ll meet for margaritas then. And let’s not allow 32 years pass before we see each other again.
Permalink | | Categories: Movies
GirlStart Game Changers Luncheon at Hilton Austin
I relearned GirlStart. That’s one of the benefits of charity events like the group’s Game Changers luncheon on Wednesday at the Hilton Austin. You learn what you forgot.
Rachel Muir and Kristen Wicke
The Austin-based group, founded by Rachel Muir, aims to give girls a head start in the male-dominated fields of science, technology, engineering and math. The program has been showered with national honors and it provides after-school and other activities that look like a lot of fun.
Laurie Loew and Christine Moline
I was lucky — or smart — enough to include Christine Moline as my escort to the luncheon. This eminently social lady knew two or three times as many guests at the luncheon as I did. And she’s among the most graceful introducers in town.
Jessica Galfas and Savita Raj
Katie Salen, professor of games and digital media at DePaul University, served as keynote speaker. A lively intellect, Salen presented a provocative video about games design that made a winning comparison between coding and getting around an urban metropolis. You could hardly ask for a better role model for girls thinking about a life of the scientific or mathematic mind.
Small potatoes: Luncheons operate on tighter schedules than dinner galas. Guests must return to the workplace. This one fell behind by about 20 minutes, which prevented me from hearing all of Salen’s address. Just a tiny thought for the future.
Permalink | | Categories: Charity, Education
Greg Louganis on AIDS Walk Austin and more
Greg Louganis instantly bcame one of the most prominent faces of HIV/AIDS in 1995, when the Olympic diver revealed that he had been diagnosed with HIV in 1988.
Out & About: Where do we stand regarding AIDS crisis?
Greg Louganis: I guess I’ve lived it, huh? To a degree. I think AIDS education seems a bit lax these days. A lot of youth think there’s a medication that magically keeps you alive. Listen, I wouldn’t wish my drug regimen on anyone. There are still consquences. I try to share this with young people everywhere. It’s challenging.
I understand you are coaching divers again.
I’m no longer coaching teams. But I’m giving performance retreats. Basically, they help any type performance. You see, I started dancing and doing acrobatics when I was very young. I’ve been on the stage since I was three, always performing theater. So I give an introduction to dance yoga relaxation as an approach to competition and performance. It’s about addressing fears — life skills stuff. We talk about bullying, sexuality, HIV. We talk about drugs and alochol. It’s about making good choices. Everything you do is a choice.
Are you still training dogs?
I tried to make the dog-training thing work financially, but that didn’t work out. It was a great avenue to learn about learning, as well as about teaching. It was off the beaten track, but it all relates. (He still has four dogs.)
Austin is a swimming and diving center. Have you visited often?
Oh yes, I’ve competed there. The 1980 Olympic trials were there. Nationals were there. And I was just there over summer. I’m working with U.S. diving team as an athlete mentor, helping the Olympic hopefuls. At the same time, I work with kids in a camp. It makes the best use of my time when I work with both club kids and elite atheletes.
Permalink | | Categories: Charity, Sports
Writers League of Texas Benefit at Scholz Garten
The venerable Writers League of Texas has endured hard times recently. They’ve cut back on some of their Austin-based activities that variously help writers of all stripes. Yet they were able to put together a small fundraiser at Scholz Garten this week.
Laura Castro and Diane Hernandez
Big literary names like Stephen Harrigan (“The Gates of the Alamo”) and Lawrence Wright (“The Looming Tower”) were on hand to lend support. So was advocacy marketer and fresh author Sherry Matthews (“We Were Not Orphans”), as well as St. Edwards University humanities dean Lou Brusatti and tireless promoter of good causes, Laura Castro.
Brenda Wendler and David Hernandez
I’m not sure where the League took a wrong financial turn — and the fundraiser didn’t seem to be a good time to quiz the board of directors, of which Brusatti is president. (He’s also my boss at St. Ed’s, where I teach one class in entertainment journalism.) But I’m eager to find out, and then spread the word on efforts to rebuild. Groups like the League help keep Austin the creative haven it has become.
Permalink | | Categories: Charity, Media
‘Dreaming in Color’ at ND at 501 Studios
Judging by buzz, Coco Coquette (Allyson Garro) is just about the hottest thing on the Austin fashion scene these days. The purveyor of wigs, makeup, perfume, accessories and sparkle does much more than sell outrageous stuff. Her sassy brand translates into “over the top show style, any night of the week.”
Danielle Thomas and Sarah K. Wolf
Garro’s fantastical “Dreaming in Color” was a benefit for AIDS Services of Austin. Loads of creative types contributed to this design contest, underwritten by VitaminWater. The company did more than provide the $1,000 to the designer who won the contest. Each of eight looks onstage were matched to the color palette and vitamic role of one water variety (Focus, Zero, Energy, etc.). Three judges — I served as one, along with Tito’s Handmade Vodka’s Happy Mercado and CulptureMap Austin’s Caitlin Ryan — employed a complicated rating system to select the winner.
Frank Rivera and Gabriel Lewis
Meanwhile, inspired by the club kids of the ’80s and ’90s, the club kids of the 2010s dressed up as extravagantly as the burlesque models onstage. The dancers went all out exhibiting the complicated creations — flights of fantasy all — but Sarah Marsh, manager at Brass Ovaries Pole Dancing, worked the portable upright so athletically and artfully, she really sold Angeliska Polacheck’s unicorn costume of crimped ribbon and fringe.
Ashley Newton and Joanna Wilkinson
Meanwhile, inspired by the club kids of the ’80s and ’90s, the club kids of the teens dressed up as outrageously as the burlesque models onstage. The dancers went all out exhibiting the complicated creations — flights of fantasy all — but Miss Sarah Marsh worked the pole so athletically and artfully, she really sold Angeliska Polacheck’s unicorn costumed of crimped ribbon and fringe.
So Polacheck received the thousand bucks. All eight looks, however, deserve some sort of prize for keeping Austin visually wired.
Permalink | | Categories: Charity, Style
OctoTea at the Barrientos Center
Humidity proved the only enemy. Otherwise, the OctoTea at the Emma Barrientos Mexican American Cultural Center — when can we shorten that to the Barrientos Center? — was a blast. A club without a club.
Wesley King and Jen Burke
The annual dance funds the Octopus Club, a fundraising arm of AIDS Services of Austin. Few benefits are so simple yet so popular: Food, drink, music, dance. That’s all it takes.
Paul Holman and Richard Yuen
And the people. Don’t forget the people. Most of the crowd was male and gay. At first, they congregated in the air-conditioned auditorium. Then they moved out onto the center’s dramatic and spacious plaza. Conversation thrived wherever music didn’t defeat it.
JR Ryan, Marcus Foreman and Chauency Reese
I imagine the guests danced into the night on Saturday, but I had one more commitment to go — the “Dreaming in Color” design contest from Club Kid and Coco Coquette, another fundraiser for AIDS Services, this one attracting a slightly younger and artier set. Nicely matched benefits.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Charity, Nightlife
Mediterranean Festival at St. Elias Orthodox Church
Now that’s a festival! Mountains of succulent food. Reasonably priced beverages. Upbeat music. Dancing. Lots of impromptu dancing, laughter and chatter. Crowds of all ages in countless variations.
Monica Coury and Mohamed Fakhreddine
In fact, some of the ethnic variety at the annual St. Elias Orthodox Church Mediterranean Festival can be documented. Of the approximately 3,000 who attended Friday and Saturday at the gilt downtown church, many, according to church leaders, were Iraqi, Jordanian, Palestinian, Greek, Lebanese, Syrian, Russian, Bulgarian, Romanian, Ethiopian, Georgian or Eritrean.
Kathryn Dagar-Albarado and David Jabour
Such a significant subset of the parishioners are Romanian, some of the church’s business is conducted in that language. (The liturgical language remains mainly Greek.) The urban parish is not only thriving, it is expanding, with new priests and services.
Mohammad Firoozi and John Moon
Much of the food followed the Greek American tradition of gyros, souvlaki and such, although some was informed by regional digressions. The same went for the music and dance, which was pumped up by costumed groups like the University of Texas dubke troupe.
Some of the parish’s oldest families — Attals, Jabours, Mansours, Dagars — are intricately intertwined: A topic for the Ancestral Austin series.
Permalink | | Categories: Charity
CultureMap Austin Official Launch Party at Pine Street Station
It was a hit with the hipsters. At least 1,000 urban bohemians streamed into Pine Street Station on East Fifth Street on Thursday to attend the official launch party for CultureMap Austin. Some may have been attracted to the publication’s second launch party by the free-flowing refreshments, others by the games and activities, which including a small petting zoo.
Rikki Hardy and Jake Rabin
Still others go wherever the hipster vibe leads them. I reckon the event emptied all the newish hipster hangouts along nearby (East) East Sixth Street that evening. The activity pushed the warehouse’s power supply, dimming the lights, if not the social energy, in the long, articulated yard by the railroad tracks.
Arianna McKinney and Heather Salter
Pine Street Station, by the way, was used for a similar but extended parties during South by Southwest. It’s been fascinating to watch, over the decades, the symbiotic expansion of SXSW and the districts that, at first, attracted only its peripheral attention, from Red River Street to South Congress Avenue and East Austin. No telling what will eventually land at this prime location on East Fifth — residences? retail? mixed use? — but Austin loves an improvised venue, so the big party will keep moving on to the next empty warehouse.
Like its Houston sibling, CultureMap Austin shows a lot of dash and reach. It has not settled on a particular character or tone, but its employees are certainly deployed around the social scene with admirable thoroughness. Congratulations to the publication’s Veronica Castelo for staging a spectacle that was as welcoming as it was mellow.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Media, Nightlife
Signature Chefs of Austin for March of Dimes at Driskill Hotel
Signature Chefs of Austin is alone among the the food-driven galas in town. Not only do local celebrity chefs serve the nibbles for the dressy party at the Driskill Hotel, they provide virtually all the auction items. And as Texas Venture Labs’ Rob Adams, the event’s chairman, points out: The Austin edition of the national series of benefits is among the most successful, raising more than $3 million in the past five years.
Mary Garza, Cindy Jett and Lynn Turner
The money goes to March of Dimes, which nowadays works to ensure healthy babies. This year’s theme was Classic Hollywood and included a special video message from U.S. Congressman Michael McCaul, who seems more engaged in the charity social circuit these days.
Emily Visher and Alexandria Coe
So how does the gala raise so much money? You’ll get a clue from the auction items. “Gentlemen Prefer Crabs” was Trueluck’s executive chef Brian Wubbena’s contribution: A five-course meal for your party of 20 with fresh stone crab claws, wines and guest-requested theme in the restaurant’s Naples Room.
Whitney Marion and Sylvia Griego
Other chefs donating their skills and goods: Vivo Lake Creek’s Paul Petersen, The Carillon’s Josh Watkins, Jasper’s Dustin Putska and Kent Rathbun, Driskill Grill’s Jonathan Gelman and 1886 Cafe and Bakery’s Tony Sansalone, Hudson’s on the Bend’s Jeff Blank and Kelly Casey, Congress’ David Bull, Eddie V’s Christopher Bauer, Fleming’s Boyer Derise, La Sombra’s Julio-Cesar Florez, Parkside’s Shawn Cirkiel and Perla’s Larry McGuire.
Just to be in the same room as all that culinary talent arouses the senses.
Permalink | | Categories: Charity, Food
Community Leadership Awards Ceremony at Mexican American Cultural Center
What doesn’t Gregory Vincent do? The Vice President for Diversity and Community Engagement at the University of Texas seems to attend as many functions as your social columnist. That’s one reason he was promoted to “Star” of the “Education” category on this year’s Out & About 500.
Becky Herrera and Clara Herrera
He’s also the man behind several UT honors, including the Community Leadership Awards, which were handed out Thursday at the Emma Barrientos Mexican American Community Center. Among the speakers, UT President William Powers Jr. obviously outranked Vincent. But this was Vincent’s show anyway.
Chike Okpara and Robiaun Charles
A special recognition was given to the late Janis Guerrero-Thompson, a top administrator for Austin schools and a popular community volunteer. Three groups received the Community Partnership Awards: The Hispanic Scholarship Consortium, Las Comadres Para Las Americas and St. David’s Foundation.
Monica Peraza and Perla Cavasos
The Community Leadership Circle Award went businesswoman Sylvia Acevedo; artist Sam Coronado; and businesswoman PIlar Sanchez.
The Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long Legacy Award — the namesakes were present and onstage — was granted to Gonzalo Garza, the retired Austin school superintendent whose life story, coming from a family of nine migrant children and receiving the Purple Heart and Bronze Star in Korea, deserves a retelling some day. Maybe from a certain social columnist?
Permalink | | Categories: City, Education
People Community Clinic Reception at West Lake Hills home
Where were the hosts? At a White House forum. I guess we can excuse John Hogg and David Garza for skipping the reception for People’s Community Clinic at their bevelled — and beloved — West Lake Hills home.
Linda Haines and Regina Rogoff
Like many other Texas social-service nonprofits, the clinic has suffered huge cuts in government funding this year. So giving groups like this one, made up of those backers who donate at least $1,000 a year to the clinic, are more valuable than ever. The mood was not grim, but what would normally have been an upbeat, if low-key reception turned dark when emcee Carl Stuart rolled out the numbers.
Lisa and Brian O’Neill
Luckily, sufficient numbers of social leaders were present to hear the message, including Grant and Margo Thomas; Forrest Preece and Linda Ball; Fred and Jodi Zipp; Cliff Redd; Lynn Yeldell and Alisa Weldon; Nona Niland, James Armstrong and Larry Connelly.
Fred and Jodi Zipp
Spoke with the empty-nester Zipps about plans to build a new, smaller house and with Brian O’Neill about turning Mirabelle into French restaurant with a new bar.
Permalink | | Categories: Charity
Comptroller Susan Combs on Marathon Kids, fitness, philanthropy & socializing
“Energy in. Energy out.”
Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts Susan Combs applies this simple formula, not only to her daily fitness regimen, but also to her long, public campaign against childhood obesity.
The formula also infiltrates her nimble thoughts about philanthropy, socializing and even the Circuit of the Americas, the planned Formula 1 racetrack which she champions.
“I am concerned that the population continues to be ill,” says Combs, neatly folded into a chair at her pristine office in the Lyndon Baines Johnson State Office Building.
At first, her efforts followed traditional fitness tracks. In 2003, she worked with Paul Carroza, RunTex director and member of the President’s Council on Fitness, Sports and Nutrition to produce the Marathon to Marathon, which runs from Alpine to the town of Marathon, which her ancestors helped found 130 years ago.
Then Carrozza introduced Combs to Kay Morris’ Marathon Kids, which provides a breakthrough framework for students to exercise and eat healthy.
“I thought it was wonderful that this was a community effort that just spread and spread and spread,” she says. In the program, children run the equivalent of a marathon over the course of days, weeks or months — often around the track or the schoolyard. The Austin program has gone national, reaching many tens of thousands of youngsters. “It’s got to be fun for kids, not painful,” Combs says.
Long-limbed, imposing and laser-focused, Combs climbed from assistant district attorney in Dallas to state representative from suburban Austin to the statewide offices of agriculture commissioner and comptroller in part by making complex governmental concepts simple, transparent.
Her keen intellect — she was educated at St. Mary’s Hall in San Antonio before graduating from Vassar College — tends to intimidate. While she’s no finger-thrusting bully, like the namesake for her office building, Combs gives new meaning to the old saying: “she makes coffee nervous.”
“I like her candor, her willingness to say things as they are,” says Marathon Kids founder Morris. “(She) knocked it out of the park with her articulation of a real nutritional challenge in our schools. A national conversation caught fire. She gave us the ‘words to say it’ about the state of vending and cafeteria offerings in the schools.”
Morris refers to Combs work as Ag Commissioner, publishing studies on the origins and costs of obesity to the private sector and finding ways to incentivize PE in public middle schools with high rates of poverty.
She’s a great believer in partnering with businesses to solve problems without direct government intervention. She praises the Texas Restaurant Association, for instance, for hiring a lab to provide third-party numbers on the content of the dishes their members serve.
“They really are working hard to get calorie counts for every single recipe,” Combs says. “I thought that was pretty terrific. If I am going to engage in free choice about my food, let me at least know how many calories it costs.”
Combs, who runs a cow-calf operation on her Brewster County ranch, was forced to quit running herself when diagnosed with spondylolisthesis.
“That means my vertebrae are not connected,” she says. “They float. Which is not good. You get nerve damage if you run. So I have a treadmill. A wonderful treadmill. And I’ve got these fabulous earphones. I note the ‘energy in’ part, too. I watch my food.”
One of her concerns is being fit enough to walk back to her ranch house if her vehicle breaks down, which it has, twice, when barbed wire wrapped around her axle.
This is the competitive woman who, years ago, walked a 5K charity in stocking, heels and skirt — and won. She played basketball for St. Mary’s Hall. At Vassar, she took fencing lessons for six weeks.
“I was thinking how wonderful I was because the instructor said: ‘Why Susan, you could be a champion.’ ‘You noticed how good I’ve become?’ ‘No, no, no no. It’s your reach.’ I had no talent. Just arm length,” she recounts with a hearty laugh and a her always-ready cast of accented voices.
Nonprofit groups like Marathon Kids also appeal to Combs because they are close to the ground.
“It’s bottom up rather than top down,” she says. “Government is top down: Thou shalt do this. Philanthropy is bottom up. You get everybody there who says we, as a community of interested persons, whether you are in San Antonio, Dallas or Austin, we think this is wonderful, we’ll give you this money.”
The noncoercive aspect of charitable work also fits into Combs’ world view. “It’s very personal: We earned this money,” she says.
“You didn’t extract it from me by coercion or the IRS code. What you get when people invest themselves and of their assets, they really have a strong connection to it.”
The launcher of the Where the Money Goes online tool for tracking state spending thinks that, despite some bad apples in the charity world, nonprofits tend to be more efficient and transparent than governments when delivering social services.
“If you are a taxpayer, you really don’t know where the money is going,” she says. “When we get the kind of donations that we are seeing come in (to nonprofits), those are from people who are saying: It’s important, maybe to my business longterm, because I care about Texans, or it’s something that I think is important for our citizens. Also because they are right there, if you are the charitable entity, they are watching you. That’s good.”
Combs personally donates to churches, schools and kids’ causes. She’s also an outspoken supporter of Marfa Public Radio — her husband, computer scientist Joe Duran, has served on its board.
“They were able to warn people about the wildfires (in West Texas),” she says. “That was a very scary deal.”
For a politician, socializing at charity events is often practical. Yet Combs also sees the wider importance of social giving, when patrons of a cause gather in common understanding rather than just writing checks in private.
“People come together and feed off each other,” she observes. “There’s a nice symbiotic thing: ‘Oh, you like this, too? That’s fanstastic!’”
Though she texts from her smart phone now as often as she calls anybody, Combs mourns the loss of face-to-face socializing.
“I do think some of the technology gives people an artificial sense of closeness,” she says. “But the old deal of sitting out on the porch and chewing the fat is gone. TV and air-conditioning are two of the worst things to happen to old-fashioned socializing.”
Despite the pummeling the Circuit of Americas has received for its promised $250 million in tax breaks, Combs is a unrepentant cheerleader for the attraction.
“I think there’s going to be the biggest influx of delightful strangers you’ve ever seen,” she says. “Delightful strangers who bring cash. I think it’s going to give a whole luster to Austin and what we do. It should take us slightly out of ourselves. It’s good not to be insular.”
She’s also excited about the way that F1 might energize engineering and science programs at the University of Texas, Texas A&M University, Texas State University and Austin Community College. Ever aware of the fitness angles, she predicts a lot of biking, running and walking at the Circuit of the Americas, too. Marathon Kids has already looked into the racetrack as a possible event site.
One last word on the fitness charity: “If we care about children — and we say we do — this is a very concrete, real efficient mechanism.”
CLARIFICATIONS: Comptroller Combs clarified some of her statements on obesity, running and wildfires from her July interview.
Permalink | | Categories: Charity, Law, Sports
Radio, social media and Apple
The Facebook subscription option seems to be working for readers.
As you may remember, I reached the 5,000-friend Facebook limit about a year ago.
Meanwhile, I’ve urged still others to “like” my “pro” or “fan” page:. Nevertheless, several hundred names languish on my friend-request list.
Well, now they can follow what goes on my personal page, too, through the Facebook subscriber function. And we can stay in touch. Everybody wins! …
My thanks to “Outcast” host Stephen Rice for a lively interview about the Out & About 500 on his KOOP Radio show. …
A final nod to Steve Jobs, who, before dying yesterday, changed my life, as he did so many others’. Without Apple, I never would have become a writer. Since purchasing my first Mac in 1985, I’ve remained true to the company’s logical, intuitive, creative and beautiful products.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Business, Interactive
Where does UT belong, socially and culturally?
Socially, culturally and geographically, it’s easy to understand the periodic stress and confusion over the University of Texas’ conference affiliation. UT is an atypical university in an atypical city and state.
Currently, the Longhorns compete in the Big 12 Conference, which could be safely redubbed the “Great Plains Athletic Conference,” if that name were not already taken. (The real GPAC includes powers like Dordt College of Sioux Center, Iowa and Doane College of Crete, Neb.) All of the original Big 12 teams, including the University of Colorado, nestled in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, are technically located in the Great Plains, if one accounts for geographers’ most expansive boundaries.
Should UT then follow Texas A&M University to the warmer, socially outgoing SEC? Really? Need we unpack that cultural baggage? It’s hard to imagine our social center of gravity becoming Birmingham, Ala., which, according to a recent and fascinating New York Times story is the red, hot center of collegiate sports fandom, making it the unofficial capital of the SEC. Say what one will about cultural evolution of the Deep South, but Austin doesn’t feel like the land where cotton was once king.
How about the ACC? For one brief moment, it seemed UT was looking in the direction of that basketball-focused conference. Yet we share even less with the dense, vertical cities and sylvan suburban campuses of the East than we do with the fruited plains of the Midwest or the moonlight and magnolias of the South. Yes, Austin is getting denser, more urban and cosmopolitan, but it’s a Sunbelt city by any definition, and its cultural horizons are primarily, well, horizontal.
Most pundits agree that, academically and athletically, UT seems a better fit with the PAC and such well-rounded schools as Stanford University and the gems of the University of California system. Austin, too, appears more Western than Southern, Eastern or Midwestern. Our city’s open, smart, kind, fit, fun citizens tend to lean to the West Coast, perhaps because of our enduring connections through high tech, movies, music and other creative fields.
Even if UT joined Oklahoma, Oklahoma State and Texas Tech heading west, however, half the teams in the new super-conference would remain two times zones away, and the majority would be sit on the other side of the Continental Divide. The physical connections alone seem at best tenuous.
Makes one a bit nostalgic for the old Southwest Conference, doesn’t it?
That was a Texas-centered agglomeration. Austin, for all its political and cultural differences with the rest of the state, is a quintessentially Texan city. Everywhere around you rise monuments to Texas and its distinct land and people.
Geographic, social and cultural affinities might not define future collegiate competitions, but they certainly help explain why ongoing conference realignment is so thorny for our flagship university.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: City, Education, Sports
Tribeza Fashion Week Show at the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum
The big fashion show that closes Tribeza Style Week ranks among the top two or three such events each year.
Kelly Sellers and Eloise DeJoria
The glitterati gathered Sept. 29 on the upper levels of the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum before descending to the rotunda and the long, wide runway behind it.
Christian Ramirez and Ricky Hodge
Since this is a showcase for various stores, there’s no single vision. Yet the looks follow one another in a logical, almost thematic fashion.
Carla and Jack McDonald
The models were imported from Dallas this year. (Welcome kids. Please eat.)
Olive Plhak and Naila Ismail
My favorite samples were layered, retro creations from Patty Hoffpauir’s Garden Room.
Garrett Hill and Royale Price
Don’t have much more to say. Long weekend. And the Out & About 500.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Nightlife, Style
East Night for People Fund at the Mexican American Cultural Center
At the urging of Eugene Sepulveda, I attended my first East Night several years ago. I’ve tried to return every year. The party celebrates some of the participants in the PeopleFund programs that help folks start small businesses, purchase affordable homes or achieve financial security through loans, advice and such.
Constance Dykhuizen and Luis Sanchez
The cross-section of Austinites at East Night always fascinates me. This time I spent a big chunk of the visit to the Emma Barrientos Mexican American Cultural Center with Michael Willard, formerly of Habitat for Humanity and now with Goodwill Industries.
Lauren and Will Kelly
No, not the motocross racer with the same name. Michael and I have tangled a bit about the efficacy of Texas A&M University joining the SEC. A Tennessee Volunteer like Michael can usually agree with a Longhorn like me on most things — how often do we butt heads? — but perhaps not this. (More on the conference realignments soon.)
John and Suzanna Caballero
The awards rolled out in crisp order inside the MACC’s tall auditorium. Meanwhile, it was great to see a lot of folks who have dedicated themselves to lifting others from poverty through such dignified and credible means.
The winners: PeopleFund Award Winners
Community Impact Client: Workers Defense Project. Community Leader: Amanda Longtain. Community Advocate: Karin and Gary Gerstenhaber. Community Volunteer: Katie Falgoust.
Permalink | | Categories: Business, Charity
Profile: Vicki Woodcock, golf pro at First Tee of Greater Austin
On the map, it looks like a green smudge.
Even longtime Austinites breeze past the nine-hole golf course at East 51st Street and Ed Bluestein Boulevard without noticing anything more than open space. Still, the Harvey Penick Golf Campus — and its mission — sneak up on the unsuspecting visitor.
Insiders know that the campus is home to First Tee of Greater Austin, which teaches life skills through golf. Readers of this newspaper also might recognize youngsters who have scrambled out of desolate backgrounds to win scholarships on college teams or other honors through this nonprofit that built and maintains the campus. Each day, smaller victories can be witnessed, transformations that take mere days, not years.
“A couple of weeks later, I saw that same child, he came running up to me, took his cap off, shook my hand, introduced himself again,” she continues. “That’s what you see change with those kids.”
Personal transformations have periodically fused with Woodcock’s golf life. She went pro after her late father Lennues Woodcock manifested Alzheimer’s disease in his 50s.
“His passion was to retire and play golf,” says Canadian-born Woodcock, 63. “And he never got there. I shared his passion. He got my brothers and me involved. So I turned pro in 1994 to live my passion.”
Short, fit and focused, Woodcock spent her first 35 years in picturesque Vancouver, B.C., never far from her businessman father, artist mother, Bonnie Paxton Woodcock, and two younger brothers.
“I was more of an athlete than a student until grade 12,” she reports, as a wicked crook alters her ever-present smile. “Then I excelled at subjects I liked.”
One of those subjects was accounting, which she later studied at the University of British Columbia.
“I really wanted to be a computer programmer,” she says. “But at that time they didn’t hire women as programmers.”
Woodcock subsequently owned accounting, computer-training and health food businesses in Vancouver and Houston before taking up the life of golf pro — a PGA and LPGA member — in Palm Springs, Calif. in 1996. She had competed on the amateur level previously. Her comparatively diminuative 5-foot, 2-inch-high frame didn’t hinder her game.
“Because of changes in the equipment, it used to be better to be shorter,” she says. “Now it’s better to be taller. Tall people get more leverage. Used to be that Ben Crenshaw had the ideal build for a golfer, now Tiger Woods does.”
She taught seasonally, until 9/11, which altered the travel plans of her clients.
“Everyone went home after one month instead of six months,” she says. So she moved to Central Texas in 2003. Here, she met Jennifer MacCurrach, then the executive director of Austin’s chapter of First Tee, founded by Jay Watson, Tom Martin and John Ellett, who remain on the nonprofit’s board of directors.
Woodcock mentored students and taught in the LPGA golf progrm while serving as substitute instructor for First Tee’s Young Guns program for ages 5-7.
“That’s when my interest changed from golf to wanting to give as many kids as possible the opportunity to build character through teaching them life skills, core values and healthy choices, using golf as the vehicle,” she says.
“Values that will last a lifetime. I saw such immediate results in the kids’ attitudes.”
She joined First Tee as it began to expand beyond the green course it built in partnership with the nearby YMCA, which had taken over the steep hill above Walnut Creek from IBM. Last year, First Tee imported 12 students at a time for six weeks. This year, Woodcock has helped set up classes at the schools, mostly in East Austin.
The Manor school district under forward-thinking superintindent Andrew Kim has incorporated First Tee’s developmental program into all elementary classes. Recently, the group hired a University of Texas golf star, Jeff Bell, as resident coach.
While away from the campus, Woodcock, single, still plays as much golf as she can, in between traveling to spots like Brazil, Chile and Venezuela.
Even while driving a complete columnist and golf dunce around the manicured course, Woodcock stays on her recruiting message: “We are always in need of more mentors and they don’t have be golfers, just wanting to make a difference in a childs life.”
Permalink | | Categories: Charity, Sports
Generous Art Launch at Gensler
I was curious about the art. I was distracted, however, by the architecture. Thursday, I attended the Generous Art launch party at the offices of Gensler. The local offices of his global architectural firm are located on the third floor of the W Austin Hotel & Residences, stripped along the sleek, gray building’s northern flank.
Renee Nunez and Paula Fontaine-Haake
A word first about Generous Art. The brainchild of Jennifer Chenoweth, this new group sells local art, giving 40 percent of the sale to the artists and 40 percent to a charity; the nonprofit keeps 20 percent. Whether that’s an effective long-term strategy for all three parties is something to watch. Yet the novelty alone already has created several social opportunities for artists and their admirers.
Laura Britt and Wells Mason
While I talked to several guests, I kept staring at the tall, handsome renderings of various projects produced by Gensler. Especially the cool, curving, sculptural beauty of its proposed multi-use project aimed for the former location of the Green Water Treatment Plant.
Jennifer Martin, Patricia Buchholtz and Tricia Forbes
These enormous renderings suggest an extension of the Second Street District that’s also directly related to the green and blue of Lady Bird Lake and its attendant trail (although that’s now on the golden brown side, thanks to the drought). Having just seen the preliminary designs for the public library that will rise to this development’s west, I’m pretty optimistic about the whole area of downtown.
