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More about Austin to come in early 2012

By Michael Barnes | Friday, January 6, 2012, 10:44 AM

Readers reasonably assume that the holiday season jams my calendar with jamborees. Not true. Many Austinites leave town. Others stick close to families. Themed holiday parties are not easy to bring off gracefully, so your social columnist tiptoes carefully around them.

So from Thanksgiving through the middle of January, I find time to report and write meatier columns, such as recent neighborhood walk in the Holly Street area with community historian Danny Camacho; the double look at desegregation with Shirley Robinson Sprinkles; and the search for a solution to the city’s billboard scourge. Other recent, leisurely topics included a survey of new residences in the Bouldin district; a profile of unlikely publisher Clint Greenleaf and New Year’s wishes for the city’s growing ranks of walkers.

So what’s on the agenda for January and February, if all goes as planned?

The second installment in the Ancestral Austin series, taking a long look at the Koock-Faulk-Kuykendall clan which has included familiar figures like humorist and civil rights champion John Henry Faulk, cookbooker and restaurant founder Mary Faulk Koock, performer and diva Karen Kuykendall and land rights advocate Marshall Kuykendall.

We take the Neighborhood Walk concept into the suburbs and exurbs with a tour of Wimberley’s town square.

We take a closer look at the Texas White House at the LBJ Ranch, now that the entire ground floor is open to the public. (It’s quite a sight!)

We hang out at Viuda, an American bistro in downtown Buda with a lively connection to the Central Texas deaf community.

We look back at the supervisors and their families who lived in the now-hidden Zilker Park cottage near Barton Springs.

We walk Waller Creek with philanthropist Tom Meredith, as he explains a developing vision for the banks of the downtown creek.

We hear about the heady days at Jeffrey’s bar when the restaurant was in its prime with Forrest Preece and Linda Ball.

Well, that’s a start to 2012.

Photo of John Henry Faulk courtesy of the Briscoe Center for American History

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By David

January 6, 2012 11:37 AM | Link to this

I love this series and can't wait to see more. I've lived here my whole life and never get tired of hearing about the "old days." I can listen for hours to my dad talk about the 50s and 60s, or him talking about his dad's stories from the 20s or 40s.