Out & About

Note: Be sure to read the rave review of the Blanton Museum of Art in the Feb. 18 issue of The New Republic. Jed Perl brackets it with the Kimbell and the Menil. That’s the highest praise I could ever summon.

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February 16, 2010

Winter Reading Week 2010, Post No. 2

As often happens in social groups, the first night of the 2010 Winter Reading Week was spent talking about the invited who did not come — and why — as much as embracing friends old and new. Yet by the next morning, that topic had dissipated with night’s storms.

The guest most familiar to Statesman readers is Dale Rice. The former restaurant critic is teaching journalism at Texas A&M University and doing good works in the College Station community, such as serving as the symphony’s board president. His partner, Antonio La Pastina teaches international communications at A&M and is preparing for long instructional gigs in China and Brazil, plus a short lecture in Logan, Utah, which he finds even more exotic. They included humorously named Butch, a loving long-haired chihuahua, in their party.

Carol Cosenza was in from Boston. The social scientist’s boyfriend, Sal Di Cecca, did not join us this year, but we talked about some of their travels and cruises. Sean Massey, social psychology professor at SUNY-Binghamton and a city councilman there, was stuck with school work. His partner, Loren Couch, took time off from their successful bistro, Tranquil, to visit with our godson, Alfie, in tow.

Alfie loves playing with Isabella, the only other child with a regular Reading Week pass (they are pictured below, splashing in our little lagoon). She calls Alfie her “best friend who she hardly ever sees.” Isabella’s Houston parents are John Haba, an architect with a cycling passion (he did 85 miles from the Galveston ship channel to the Freeport channel while here) and Maureen McNamara, an art therapist and former housemate of mine, and perhaps the more tranquil soul in the tribe. Charles Dove, who teaches film at Rice University, brought along Floyd the Wonder Aussie.

Paul Talley, fresh from his extensive world travels, journeyed from outside San Francisco, and this year was joined by his paramour, Doug Sparke, an airline steward who is now a valued part of our social family. Robert Mayott and Nick Shumway, both employed by the University of Texas, slipped into their usual comfortable niches in our group. As did Lawrence Morgan, a frequent companion of mine in Austin, who teaches at the Griffin School, and Shannon, one of our more quiet but most valued regular guests.

Joan and Rick Penders flew in late from Cincinnati by way of Denver. Joan consults on civic projects in that Ohio city and Rick writes reviews when he is not raising money for the opera company. One of our dearest friends, Joe Starr, missed Friday, but brightened the rest of the weekend. He was joined by Rose Mary Schouten, who also teaches English as a second language, still bearing a totally charming Dutch accent.

New this year were Michael Pungello and Kevin Smothers from Austin, also Jeff Kirk. The sound designer, the public relations expert and the art dealer are well known to readers of our city’s social columns. Today, Eugene Sepulveda and Tana Christie join the remaining six of us. The weekdays, as opposed to the weekend, is blessedly calm. Still, it was gratifying that more than 20 guests stayed over Sunday night, making for many three-day weekends.

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February 15, 2010

Winter Reading Week 2010, Post No. 1

The sun skitters across the little post-Hurricane Ike lagoon in front of our house. Following the light’s fractured patterns is the most effort I’ve made in the past three days.

For readers coming late to this tradition, in the winter, Kip and I take a big beach house at Surfside, the island just down from Galveston.

We invite 25 or so friends. They bring books, magazines, CDs, MP3s, games, cards and plenty of conversational ammunition.

They also cook and clean, bless them. Four teams compete for the most imaginative meals. Saturday brunch this week consisted of tangy breakfast pizzas. Saturday’s dinner, five ways to prepare beef tenderloin, plus a mousse molded to look like tenderloin (this fabulous feast took all evening to consume). Sunday’s brunch turned Mexican (with wicked bloody Marys) and Sunday’s dinner served up Southern comfort food (incredible deviled eggs with pickled okra, mac and cheese with a hint of nutmeg, collard greens, ham, carrots and Parker rolls).

Drinks to match, of course. Killer croquet in the afternoon. So far, three sunny days and two windy, rainy nights, one middling night. All nights made for blazes on the hearth.

For me, one book, a dozen or so magazines, three walks with the Labs, Nick and Nora, and catching up with friends from New York, Boston, Cincinnati, Houston, California and Austin.

More reports to come.

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February 1, 2010

Long Weekend in Minnesota

Yes, I know. Traveling to Minnesota in deepest winter makes little sense. Yet my dear friend Rob Kendrick transferred here to teach at Gustavus Adolphus University in St. Peter, about an hour south of Minneapolis. It was time for a visit.

My first concern was the subzero temps. Friends and colleagues had warned me about pained lungs, stinging ears and 15-minute frostbite. Well, I suppose if you are snowmobiling or cross-country skiing, these might be legitimate concerns, but most people here are just passing to and from their cars to get somewhere.

Everything is white, as advertised, but this is December snow. It just doesn’t go away. And out here in the country, it stays white. Most roads are pretty darn safe, too, as long as there is no new precipitation.

We toured some of the towns here in southern MN, eating hearty German fare in New Ulm and shopping for organic groceries in St. Peter. Rob lives in Le Center, which locals pronounces LEE Center. Nearby is Le Sueur, home to Green Giant Le Sueur peas. The giant himself pokes out from various hillsides.

The land is rolling prairie plains, leading down to deep rivers, like the frozen Minnesota River nearby. German and Swedish settlers survived the winters. Their descendants grow mostly corn and soy beans — or whatever else is subsidized and turned into corporate food — on land that looks a lot like nearby Iowa. The farms — even the trailer parks — are neat and tidy.

We spent one day in the big city. The Minneapolis Institute of Art is a traditional big-city museum in a palatial structure opposite an urban park. On a previous visit, I had lunched and seen a play at the attached children’s theater, one of the country’s best. We spent our afternoon in the vast Asian galleries, clearly a local emphasis, including several full rooms transported from China and Japan.

A mile or so away is Hennepin Avenue, an exploded version of our South Congress, with low-lying local businesses packed with character. (Minneapolis-St. Paul is home to 3.5 million people, or almost twice Austin’s total.) We ate hot Vietnamese food and headed downtown for a cool cocktail joint called Jet Set, but it was closed.

That trip allowed us to see the city’s preserved theater district, however, virtually the only one of its kind in the country. We headed back to the Loring Park area, where we located the first of two neighborhood gay bars. Nineteen is the definition of laid back, with an older crowd fondly stoking friendships. Not much here for strangers.

Gladius, however, was more open. Developed on a modernized Roman theme, this narrow, deep bar is centered on an elegant well. We met not only the owner and bartender, but all the lively patrons. I have a feeling it would be my base club in MN.

Other than that, I’ve been sacked out on the couch, dealing with a cold or allergies (pine? spruce?) and eating Rob’s fine cooking. Finishing up Robert Rivard’s “Trail of Feathers,” a suspenseful tale of a San Antonio newspaper editor searching for his reporter, Philip True, lost and murdered in Mexico. Also re-watched the latest “Star Trek” movie (holds up); “Invictus” (formulaic to its teeth, but beautifully done); and a Bruce La Bruce flick (John Waters meets Fassbinder, Pasolini and Warhol. Not for the faint of heart.).

Now, back to Austin, where it’s just cold.

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December 23, 2009

Your A-List: Best Place to Take Tourists

I’m an inveterate tour guide. As a youth, I’d show visitors the hidden gems of Houston (most of them are well hidden).

Yet little did I know, when Kip and I moved to the Bouldin neighborhood 12 year ago, that a mostly decrepit strip of shops along nearby South Congress Avenue would become a top tourist attraction. As a pedestrian, I appreciated the incomplete commercial density, gentle grade and wide sidewalks. But tourist magnet? Twenty-four percent of A List voters think so.

SoCo beat out such powerhouses as the Oasis (19 percent); Barton Springs Pool (16 percent); Mount Bonnell (10 percent); and the Texas Capitol (10 percent).

Falling even further behind were the Lady Bird Lake Hike and Bike Trail (7 percent); Bullock Texas History Museum (5 percent); Zilker Park (3 percent); Whole Foods Market (2 percent) and UT Tower (1 percent).

Funny, you can reach all but two of these on foot from our house. Accidental tourists, we.

Picture: Bethany Andree of Snack Bar, the new SoCo social hub

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December 21, 2009

River Tracing: Brazos & Colorado: Stray Notes

Readers sometimes wonder what in the heck neighborhood walks, river tracings, club crawls and other such perambulations have to do with a social column like Out & About.

Radio observation: Old country = narrative; New country = lists.

Proposition: Texas could triple its agricultural output, significantly raise its groundwater levels and improve the look of its countryside through further, sustained mitigation of mesquite and juniper. Go for it!

Derogatory phrases we used in our blog reports: Trash-ification: Ruination through junk and junked or junky structures; Ugli-fication: Ruination through billboards, strip centers and unlandscaped businesses; Quaint-ifcation: Ruination through saccharine historical restorations; Sprawl-fication: Ruination through ineffective low density.

Worst examples of ruination on this trip: All of Granbury, much of Kingsland, downtown Lubbock, US 183 into Austin, parts of Texas 36 from Freeport to West Columbia, Texas 6 through west Houston, Texas 71 from Bastrop to Austin.

Best examples of visual salvation on this trip: The towns of San Saba and Wharton; most of Stephen F. Austin’s former upper colony between the Brazos and Colorado; EV Spence Reservoir near Robert Lee; Cameron Park in Waco; Falls-on-the-Brazos near Marlin; the Paluxy River near Glen Rose; Matagorda Nature Park.

Photos on this particular post by Joe Starr.

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December 20, 2009

River Tracing: Colorado, Part 3: Back to the Sea

For previous posts, scroll down, or go to these links about the Brazos Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5 and Part 6.

God bless the Lower Colorado River Authority. OK, they allocate too many resources to the downstream rice farmers, who could be growing less water-intensive crops, but let’s not get into riparian rivalries.

We used this information advisedly, because we knew that, once it leaves the Highland Lakes, the Colorado grows gradually broader, deeper and siltier. Not much alteration in the bankside flora either — pecans, willows, cottonwoods, to start — from Bastrop to Smithville to La Grange to Columbus.

Instead, we simply drank in the glory of the land. Stephen F. Austin knew what he was doing when he colonized the region between the Brazos and the Colorado. Sure, there are inpenetrable marshes, jungle and cane near the coast, and the ports were subject to flooding, silting and hurricanes.

After Columbus, the horizon flattens out along the Colorado, dropping in elevation only slightly from there to Matagorda. Obviously, this and the soft banks of the river invite periodic flooding, as they did in 1991 when levels reached 43 feet, according to a LCRA marker near Bay City.

Wharton is the small-town gem along this stretch. An Old South settlement devoted to cotton — and home to late playwright Horton Foote — it has avoided twee and trash, at least in downtown. The crisply clipped courthouse is the apotheosis of historical restoration. Only the surface parking lots on the square’s southeastern edge ruin the impression of an intact townlife.

Downstream, Bay City bustles with all the income it receives from its nuclear plants and other industry. New schools, bright signs, broad roads, all purchased with a little of our Austin Energy ratepayer money (I swear, that’s the last rivalry reference).

Not that I begrudge Bay City. I’m gratified the bucks are going for mostly worthy things. And they are doing the hard labor of generating our electricity. Even sweeter: The efforts and dollars that went into the Matagorda Nature Park — and its well-staffed interpretive center — at the working mouth of the river.

One story we heard, second-hand, from a longtime resident: Abn elderly woman lived as a child in the plain below the logjam and whenever they heard a distant rumble, they’d load kids, dogs, etc. onto the roof as a tsunami of logs, water and debris headed their way.

The 19th-century town of Matagorda is located on the inland side of the Intracoastal Waterway. Matagorda Beach, however, is a wide stretch of sand that curves around to the open mouth of the river. It looked untouched by Hurricane Ike.

We lingered here, watching currents run and the seabirds frolic. The sun beamed happiness as we ended out long, two-river tracing.

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River Tracing: Colorado, Part 2 Stepping Down the Highland Lakes

For previous posts, scroll down, or go to these links about the Brazos Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5 and Part 6.

This was a day of closed doors that left unexpected ones open. Colorado Bend State Park, for instance, was gated against visitors. Yet that allowed us to poke around nearby Bend and the rock-strewn shores of that hamlet.

The Vanishing River Cruise was not available on Lake Buchanan, the highest of the Highland Lakes. So no nesting bald eagles. But that left us time to wander out toward the meadows that choke the lakebed of the mostly dry upper Buchanan near Tow.

Approaches to Lake LBJ were mostly blocked by rampant private development. So, instead, we perched on ledges or detoured down back roads. (The Lower Colorado River Authority usually provides better river access than any other riparian overseer in the state.)

Yet the most enlightening choice of the day was taking FM 1431 from Marble Falls to Lago Vista, trailing drought decimated Lake Travis. What a gorgeous path! Steep green hills cascade down to a simple, two-lane road devoid of the ugli-fication that envelops the byway from Lago Vista to Cedar Park.

Here lies the headquarters for the Balcones Canyonlands National Preserve. Come to think of it, we do not thank the Nature Conservancy, Travis County, City of Austin and private donors enough for their work keeping this spectacular region reasonably wild. And it looks like more of it is open to hikers, although we didn’t partake.

We raced down the last of FM 1431, onto US 183 and over to Loop 360 to climb the lookout above the graceful Pennybacker Bridge over Lake Austin. I’d noticed people trekking to this spot hundreds of times, but never assayed it myself. Vertigo set in near the cliff edges, but we obtained dramatic shots of the bridge and lake.

Our final stop on this leg of the Colorado River tracing was within walking distance of our Bouldin house. We parked in Butler Park, crossed Riverside Drive, tripped past the joggers and dog-walkers to stare up at downtown Austin.

When I praise the open spaces of Texas, some readers wonder aloud why I also support dense development in Central Austin.

Two more posts to come on our joint tracings of the Brazos and Colorado.

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River Tracing: Colorado, Part 1: From Cap Rock to Highland Lakes

For previous posts, scroll down, or go to these links about the Brazos Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5 and Part 6.

Spoiler alert: The Colorado is the first Texas river we have traced from wet source to oceanic mouth during our two years of expeditions. It took only three days, in part because we know the Colorado intimately. Or at least we thought we did.

Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, however. Like the Brazos, the Colorado river basin includes draws that extend into New Mexico.

We searched for evidence of the upper Colorado around Lamesa, which lies 90 minutes or so south of Lubbock, reached through extensively farmed flatlands.

(Cotton appears to have been the crop selection of this late season, some of it still on the stalks.)

No such luck. So we descended the Cap Rock canyons to ranch roads until we discovered a dry gully that looked suspiciously moist. It lay amid mesquite scrubland dotted with oil pumps. Unwittingly, we had entered the Permian Basin.

Here be the Colorado.

Deserted like most parks on this trip, the recreational areas on water-supply Lake JB Thomas — which we insisted on calling BJ Thomas — left us to birdwatching.

Since at this point we were technically in the desert, one can imagine the number of avians gathered on or near the shores, even as late as mid-morning.

Below JB Thomas’ earthen dam, we swiveled down to Colorado City, a railroad town of past prosperity now split between grand old homes and newer junkiness by the tracks, highways and the sad-looking river.

We skipped Big Spring, also a source for the Colorado, and headed south to the EV Spence Reservoir. The land here is rugged and wild.

The lake itself was a revelation: Two shades of sapphire on this clear day and mobbed with white pelicans, grebes, coots, cormorants and other contented birds framed by limestone ledges and distant buttes.

Let’s pause to consider that this was the fourth lake we encountered before the highlands above Austin. Most of these comparatively tame lakes are unknown to Central Texas.

Each comes with charms, when not succumbing to old-school junk-ification. (In other words, trash the land. Who cares?)

The Ivie is still pretty new and development around its fringes has been comparatively careful. The light faded as we skipped down to San Saba, our destination for the night.

We ate with the locals at Diggs steakhouse just outside town (thereby allowing the sale of adult beverages, though we abstained). I doubt all but the hardiest of tourists have discovered this poorly signed place, although hunters dig right in. Fantastic food.

The next morning, after a snug night at the Hill Country Inn, we broke our fast at a doughnut shop, where a good ol’ boy bade farewell to the clerk in Vietnamese.

Two more posts on the Colorado River tracing to come. Also, stray notes on the trips upstream and down.

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December 19, 2009

River Tracing: Brazos, Part 6: Streams, Forks, Canyons, Draws

Here the West really begins. No longer does the Brazos belong to marsh, jungle, low prairie, city or hill country. West of Graham, the land opens up to the sky. And the river is divided among streams, forks, canyons and draws.

Heading out of Graham (where Colt McCoy’s brother plays), we dropped by the immaculately preserved Indian-era Fort Belknap, where we scratched our heads over the presence of an Eurasian collared dove.

Past Throckmorton, Seymour Goree, Munday and Knox City, the Brazos cuts through rolling pasturelands and scrubby brushlands, the two characters alternating regularly, and not always accompanied by an easy explanation to the outsider.

Whenever we descend its banks, we leave tracks in the sand. The water is bracing, the wind constant. We spot a dozen different kind of raptors in the fields beyond its borders.

We are reminded of the far reaches of the Missouri River, which we traced from its vast mouth, joining the Mississippi at St. Louis, to Lemhi Pass on the Montana/Idaho border, where the continental anaconda starts as a spring the size of two cupped hands.

Refreshed, we take farm-to-market and county roads following the Double Mountain and its own tributary, the lengthily named North Fork of the Double Mountain Fork of the Brazos River. We encounter the Salt Fork once, too, on our journey between Aspermont and Post, located just below the Cap Rock, the outcropping that definitively divides the lower plains from the high “staked plains.”

Working our way up through the canyons of the Cap Rock to the gridiron-flat, intensely cultivated Llano Estacado, we lose track of our main fork. Are we done?

No. Humans have intervened.

At one point, near tiny Buffalo Springs Lake, we run into a giddy water park. At another micro-lake, an upscale residential community. On the edges of Lubbock, a series of manicured city parks string along what remains that North Fork, teased and tortured into service.

Beyond Lubbock, the Brazos watershed extends into New Mexico through a series of draws, which stay bone dry except during a flash flood. So we can finally say the western reaches of the Brazos really rise from the springs on and below the Llano Estacado.

Settled into the dreary, unlandscaped core of Lubbock’s downtown, we cross over the university zone to eat satisfying Tex-Mex at Durango’s. Once again, the service was warmer than a summer day in West Texas and the portions were too large for an ordinary Austin appetite.

The next day, we discover behind our motel — which smells like a stable — a zone of student housing with the rudiments of trees planned into the huge blocks of buildings. It’s a start at urban planning long overdue.

Don’t get me wrong. Our stay is pleasant enough. And Lubbock lies at the end of our Brazos tracing.

(To come: Three posts on the Colorado River’s surge to the sea and random notes from the weeklong trip.)

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December 17, 2009

River Tracing: Brazos, Part 5: The Trail of Three Lakes

Whoa. Salty? The Brazos? Not just the Salt Fork?

So, next chance, we tasted it. “Like ocean water!” Joe spat out. Five hundred miles at least from the Gulf of Mexico.

That explains so much. Like, why the tap water tastes strange along its route. Why its reservoirs are not as celebrated as the Colorado River’s Highland Lakes. Good old sodium chloride.

The Brazos forms three major lakes above Waco — Whitney, Granbury and Possum Kingdom. (Lake Waco, perhaps for obvious reasons, arises from a tributary creek, not the Brazos. And the City of Waco water tastes fine.) One full day of our river tracing was spent on this Trail of Three Lakes.

We walked out onto its high lip, poked around the stream under its floodgates and powerhouse. Like so many similar spots, it chokes with bird life.

Then we headed northwest toward our second destination, Lake Granbury, smaller, with no pretensions to flood control or power generation.

In between, the Brazos turns into one of those crisp, clear Hill Country rivers one would never expect from the Mississippian flood beneath Waco. We dipped down to the water at various bridges, booting up and down embankments, focusing on vegetation, insects and geological stratafication.

Sure the Glen Rose crowd is proud of its tracks. But it’s also a beehive of fundamentalism. Which explains the Museum of Creation Evidence and the so-called Paluxy Mantracks. (Apparently, a gentleman helpfully added human tracks to that of a dinosaur to prove they co-existed.)

The Paluxy of the hoax’s name refers to the stunning, clear stream that runs through Glen Rose and the nearby state park. We must return to trace this river, and visit the creation museum when it is open. Also, the campy dinosaur roadside attractions.

Done with that, we crossed the Brazos again at Brazos Point, where the 1915 bridge was replace by a 2000 version, while preserving the old one for our pleasure.

Best to move on without rubbing Brazos River salt into Granbury’s wounds.

The unfettered Brazos here just gets more and more beautiful as we head upstream. This is John Graves territory. And I can see why he eulogized this stretch of Texas greatness. Oaks and pecans march down to glittering rapids and stretches of brightly flecked stone.

The third big Brazos lake, Possum Kingdom, has escaped much of Granbury’s troubles, in part because of its distance from DFW. The lake culture here is mostly old school — fishermen and other slow-recreation lovers. We tarried at a spot between RV parks and trading posts.

One last glimpse of the Brazos before we reached Graham: It looks like a silty agricultural canal, probably stopped up by a weir. The prairies above the banks burst with evening song.

In this land of grand high-school football stadiums and proud old railroad posts, we stayed at another faux-tel, a Best Western this time, and feasted on barbecue at Sanderson’s, where the waitress was as warm as the night was frosty.

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December 16, 2009

River Tracing: Brazos, Part 4: Above the Falls

No matter how often one crosses the Brazos River east of Interstate 35, one tends to miss the falls. Yes, the lower Brazos, generally brown and sluggish, turns white-ish and rapid just below Marlin. Few bridges cross the river here. Kayaks and canoes negotiate it regularly, stopping only to portage at Falls County park called Falls-on-the-Brazos.

We made the falls our midway stop between College Station and Waco, the two biggest cities directly on the Brazos (unless you count Lubbock, which straddles the North Fork of the Double Mountain Fork of the Brazos). We left CS on a cloudy, cool morning, wriggling our way through reddish brown fields and scraggly, temporary farm communities.

We spoke briefly to the chef and promised to return for a full dinner someday. The we tooled around Marlin, the former mineral-water spa that feels so abandoned and scruffy now.

The falls are home to nesting bald eagles. Not that we saw them. Ordinary bird-watching here. So we moved into Waco, where we climbed around the Baylor University campus that has sprawlled onto the riverside parks east of the freeway.

The Brazos here is dammed into a pass-through lake, not unlike Lady Bird Lake, and is crossed by an historic suspension bridge, where we watched college-age kids play tortilla frisbee golf — meaning they threw the white, edible disks onto a bulkhead where ducks and other birds fight over them.

The joyous surprise: Cameron Park. Who knew Waco could be so gorgeous? This park climbs up cliffs to a ledge not unlike the Balcones Escarpment. Its landscaped sensitively with small recreational areas, lookouts and a zoo.

We ate an old favorite, the Elite Cafe, and, not for the last time on this trip, the portions were extravagant, not easy to conquer. The place has been renovated since the last time I visited, now less diner-like and a little woody.

We stayed at a new faux-tel across the circle, the Comfort Suites. I’m not in the habit of recommending chain motels, but this one approximated a luxury hotel with excellent service and at a fraction of the cost.

Coming soon in the Brazos/Colorado series: “Trail of Three Lakes,” “Streams, Forks, Canyons and Falls,” “From Cap Rock to Highland Lakes,” “Down the Highlands,” “Back to the Sea.” Also: Stray notes.

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December 15, 2009

River Tracing: Brazos, Part 3: Historical Overflow

The Austin Colony bloomed between Velasco and Washington, the most navigable part of the Brazos River. Stephen F. Austin’s headquarters, San Felipe de Austin, located at a shallow bend, became the colony’s capital. Today, San Felipe State Park blends history (including a dog-trot cabin), recreation (a golf course) and hiking along the sandy banks of the river.

(If you travel Interstate 10 between Austin and Houston, the park lies between Sealy and Brookshire.)

Our main destination this morning, however, was Washington-on-the-Brazos. Quite a mouthful as a name, I know, especially for a veritable ghost village. Located at a former ferry spot just below the junction between the Brazos and Navasota rivers, Washington was where the Texas Declaration of Independence was signed. (Independence Hall pictured.)

The Star of the Rupublic Museum houses a full complement of artifacts from the republican period. There’s a working farm and conference center nearby as well.

In other words, this place is chock full of potential.

We explored almost all of it, watching the olive green Navasota swirl into the cafe au lait Brazos. On the wide recreational lawns behind the first bluff, I stumbled on a group of Blinn College students excavating a site for their teacher, a PhD student at Texas A&M. (The previous night we had supped with our Aggie professor friends Dale Rice and Antonio La Pastina.)

Here’s a historical conundrum for you: Did the European Americans settle in Washington County, with its rolling pasturelands and pretty woodland fringes, because it looked like Europe, or did they change the land to make it look like Europe? Or both?

Note: Those of you who have been following us on Twitter and Facebook know we have actually finished the Brazos in West Texas and are gearing up to start the Colorado. We just haven’t had time to blog. Promise to catch up.

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December 14, 2009

River Tracing: Brazos, Part 2: The Jungle of the Columbia Bottomlands

Time to cut through the jungle.

After lunch at the On the River, an undistinguished but hearty seafood joint located, not on the river, but nearby, in Freeport, near the aging shrimp boats, we set out to criss-cross the Columbia Bottomlands. These are the lush lowlands dotted with oxbow lakes that reach from just above Freeport on the Brazos River almost to Richmond near Houston.

We checked in with the bottomlands at Brazoria, East Columbia and the Brazos Bend State Park. Here, the Brazos is broad, red-brown and swollen with rain, therefore dangerous. Vine-covered bluffs impound the muscular river. Above the bluffs spread the tangled forests, and higher, the Gulf Coastal plains, meadows studded mostly with low-spreading live oaks.

This is the Texas the Anglo-Americans chose to settle in the 1820s. Perhaps it resembled the overgrowth of the coastal Deep South, but Stephen F. Austin and company planted their first colonies along this stretch of the Brazos. The river then was reliable enough to support some steamboat traffic and thereby the shipping of cotton, which still shares the upper prairies with sorghum and other cash crops.

Some buildings remain. We love visiting this valentine to early colonial and republican Texas. East Columbia is now home to a dozen or so exquisitely restored 19th-century structures, but I’m afraid most Texans don’t even know it exists.

Brazos Bend is, by comparison, a popular gathering point. The state park’s primary attractions are its American alligators, more easy to view in the summer, when they sun on the banks of several bottomland lakes and ponds. We were there for the river, however, and, instead, hiked down to the closest point of contact.

We ran into the park’s casual visitors, campers and rangers - as well as a sweet bulldog — before jamming into suburban Houston traffic by accident on our way to College Station to meet dear friends who put us up for the first night.

Coming soon: “Historical Overflow,” “Above the Falls,” “Trail of Lakes,” and more.

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River Tracing: Brazos, Part 1: Search for the True Mouth

This week, Joe Starr and I are tracing the Brazos River from its mouth to its source, then the Colorado River from its source to its mouth.

There’s an old mouth and a new mouth. And neither was particularly visible on this day. We started with the old, flanked by the villages of Quintana and Velasco (now called Surfside Beach). Occupied at least since Spanish colonial times, these outposts on slender barrier islands have been washed away by periodic hurricanes. Yet brave souls return after each storm to take advantage of river, sea and shore, as well as proximity to the giant shipping centers of Freeport and Brazosport just inland.

Since we are familiar with Sursfide, home to our annual Reading Weeks, we chose unexplored Quintana. Local historical markers inexplicably place the village’s founding in 1532, but I can find no reference supporting this claim, unless it refers to a Karankawa campsite encountered by the shipwrecked Cabeza de Vaca.

Its few lonely, stilted homes are now overshadowed by a Martian-outpost-looking liquid natural gas storage facility. We drove past the nearly deserted beach park to the south jetty that forms a shipping channel into Freeport and Brazosport and countless petrochemical plants.

We headed out the pink-granite-banked jetty, past unsmiling Vietnamese fisherman into mist. Cold waves crashed over the aggregate walkway, soaking our jeans and sneakers, but we persisted to the unlighted channel marker at the end. I clung to its rigging for security as the waves continued to boom around us.

The presence of the birds — and nutrients washed downstream with the trash and enormous logs — suggests that the old Brazos mouth is still somehow active, even though, in the 1920s, the main stream was diverted three miles to the south. This diversion saved Freeport from predictable river flooding — an enormous gate protects the town and its fishing boats from storm-driven surge — and enabled a steady channel for the clustered, deep-water ports. An enormous bankhead in Freeport — topped by a high-school football stadium — marks the spot where the Brazos formerly entered Freeport upstream. Perhaps there’s a controlled flow from pipes there.

We left the mystery of the jetty for an even more intriguing one at the newer mouth. We discovered this passage a few years ago during a Reading Week and it helped inspire this series of Texas river tracings. After all, it was the first time I had ever seen a major river directly meet the sea, with all the visible drama of currents, silt and wildlife that entails.

Why? We discovered when we passed the new mouth on foot. Yes, you read right. Passed it. It’s gone. Silted up. Or perhaps, Ike drove sand up its channel, forcing the fresh water into the estuary and the Intracoastal Canal. There we stood on the dry bed of a might river, with only a low bluff to indicate its former southwest banks.

Wow. Wow. As we already knew, autumnal rains had raised the Brazos almost to flood stages upstream. Yet here, at its new mouth, it disappeared. “Goodbye to a River,” indeed, Mr. Graves.

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November 10, 2009

Remembering Everett Bohls, a man of the land

“Land was in his blood.”

That’s how Mary Bohls, 82, summed up her late husband, Everett Bohls, consummate Austin businessman, developer and outdoorsman, who died Aug. 12 at age 91.

So it follows naturally that his son, Rex Bohls, his wife, Laura, and their children, Catherine and Will, donated $2,400 to seed the Tarrytown flank of Mopac in memory of this man of nature.

Their gift benefited the American-Statesman’s ongoing Lady Bird’s Legacy project, which has raised more than $100,000 for such Texas Department of Transportation wildflower plantings, along with signature packets of seeds from Wildseed Farms for schoolchildren. Recent rains bolster hopes for a bountiful wildflower spring at various Central Texas locations.

That the Bohls family would care about the enduring beauty of Central Texas is hardly news.

“We’re the Bee Cave Bohls, not the Pflugerville Bohls,” explains Rex Bohls, a distant relative of American-Statesman sports columnist Kirk Bohls and proud of both branches.

Theirs were among the area’s ancestral families, the Bee Cave branch having moved to there in 1851 “because Govalle got too crowded,” Mary Bohls says. A developer restored the Bohls pioneers’ rough cabins and perched them on upper Barton Creek near Texas 71.

“My father got up at 5 a.m. every morning to run the trot line down on the river in the dark,” Rex Bohls says. “He’d gather eggs and complete the other chores before walking two miles to school. Later, he boarded in Austin to attend Austin High School.”

Everett Bohls hunted and fished his entire life, making a supreme ritual of deer season, according to his family.

Mary Bohls’ family goes pretty far back, too. She once lived in the Neill-Cochran House on San Gabriel Street, now a museum house owned by the National Society of the Colonial Dames of Texas.

Everett Bohls graduated from the University of Texas in 1941 with a degree in business administration. He served in the U.S. Army during World War II, then earned a license as a certified public accountant. His entrepreneurial imagination and diplomatic negotiating skills led to the building of a life insurance company, concrete block manufacturing company, cafeteria, grocery stores, restaurants (including the iconic Tavern), public record search company, title company, lawn service, waste disposal company and retail boat company. He also developed homes, apartments and commercial property.

With such a busy life in business and the out of doors, along with raising a family, Everett Bohls still found time to paint and garden.

“My father began painting in the 1970s,” Rex Bohls says. “On a trip to London with my mother, Dad was inspired by the paintings he saw by Winston Churchill and said ‘I can do that.’ For Father’s Day of that year, my mother gave Dad an easel and painter’s beret and he began to paint. He had no training or background in art but for the next 40-plus years he became a prolific amateur artist.”

The tricky soils and terrains of the Hill Country didn’t daunt the gardener in him.

“He always had a small garden in the backyard of his home, growing tomatoes and okra every summer,” Laura Bohls says. “A few years ago my husband bought a ranch near Marble Falls. Rex took his father to see the ranch and Mr. Bohls — we called him “Pappy” — saw a large overgrown garden. This garden became “Pappy’s Garden” and Mr. Bohls took great interest and pride in reclaiming it, planting and caring for a variety of vegetables. When he harvested, he’d bring the vegetables back to Austin, sack them up and leave them on the doorsteps of his neighbors to their delight.”

The Bohls have expressed interest in enhanced plantings along Mopac. They’ll have a chance, since the Lady Bird’s Legacy project continues through 2012.

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October 11, 2009

Birthday in Houston (food, family, fun)

Family, food and fun kept me in Houston all weekend. Anyone who attended the OctoTea Dance, please send me your best anecdotes for print. Please!

We ate in the traditional Italian sequence: My antipasto: A lively celery and beet salad with pecorino; my primo: gamy boar sausage gnocchi; my secondo: lamb chops with tangy yogurt sauce (very North African to me). For dessert, I ordered the panna cotta with balsamic vinegar; and, with help, we selected a divine red and a white, very reasonable, from the Alto Adige region.

Saturday, we explored Discovery Green, the transformed space in front of the Houston Convention Center. Its scale is truly urban, with a tiny lake, sensitive landscaping and a couple of restaurant/bars. The park was dotted with painted globes that demonstrated (a bit lamely) observations about climate change. Best part: metal-box installations by Austin artist Margo Sawyer.

Staying with Joe, then visiting my family in West Houston, we watched football, planned river tracings, caught up on personal news and tested my sister Valerie’s new Calphalon cookware. Hated missing OtcoTea and Conspirare, by my birthday comes but once a year, and family + friends always come first..

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October 9, 2009

Andrew Harper Reception at Pemberton Home

Andrew Harper: Man of mystery.

Eddie Safady and Donna Stockton-Hicks

The pseudonymous Austin-based writer and adviser oversees a travel club and publishes a highly touted newsletter about luxury travel, and, as such, remains scrupulously incognito.

Joanne and Jack Crosby with Mari Marchbanks

Even at his own parties, such as the reception at the home of philanthropist Donna Stockton-Hicks and Steve Hicks (Capstar Partners co-founder and chairman of the Andrew Harper board).

Wendy and Shannon Kratzer

Attending the first-ever such social event for Andrew Harper members at the Hicks’ Italianate spread were theater activist and film-maker Mari Marchbanks and husband Greg, the former cable TV executive who’s not only an investor in Hotel San Jose and Hotel St. Cecilia, but — you guessed it — president of Andrew Harper.

Bill Sharman and Greg Marchbanks

Among those present were banker Eddie Safady, as well as Joanne and Jack Crosby, founder and chairman of the Rust Group, also recently named a distinguished University of Texas alumnus.

Lorelei Calvert and Kim Roy

I met several of the Austin staff members for the Andrew Harper newsletter and Web site. And I might have met Andrew Harper. Who knows? The mask remains intact.

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September 30, 2009

Your A-List: Best Hotel

It’s restful just thinking about the nominees for Your A-List Best Hotel. Clearly, they are cherished just as much for their local services — settings for food, drink, socializing — as for their attractions to tourists.

Coming in second was the Four Seasons, the classy localization of the high-quality chain. Perched above Lady Bird Lake, it adds a happy-hour-hit restaurant (Trio) to constant gala action and superb service. It counted 21 percent of the tally.

The Driskill Hotel, downtown’s ornate grande dame, also hosts countless galas and weddings. The Driskill Grill always rates high in restaurant guides, and the decor reminds one of the hotel’s grand place in Texas history. It earned 17 percent.

The fourth choice is not downtown, but rather on bustling SoCo. In fact, it can be credited with helping to shape South Congress Avenue’s commercial renaissance. Meticulously landscaped and effortlessly cool, the Hotel San Jose snagged 12 percent.

Hyatt Lost Pines is only one on the list located in a pine forest. Looking like a national-park resort, it’s a natural place to get away from it all. It won 7 percent.

Taking 5 percent or less — and restful all — Omni, South Austin Motel, Lakeway Resort & Spa, Hilton Austin and Renaissance Austin.

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September 23, 2009

Your A-List: Best Campgrounds

Where’s the area’s best place to camp? Well, it depends on your fancy.

Prefer a vest-pocket lake with superior fishing and nearby tourist caverns? Inks Lake State Park (16 percent).

Like hiking a narrow canyon with a brief shock of fall foliage? Lost Maples State Natural Area (12 percent).

Swimming? Pace Bend Park (10 percent) or Krause Springs (10 percent).

Pine forests on gentle hills? Bastrop State Park (6 percent) or Buescher State Park (3 percent).

Water-side camping right in the city? McKinney Falls State Park (6 percent) or Emma Long Metropolitan park (3 percent).

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September 9, 2009

Your A-List: Best Landmark

Daniel Johnston’s froggy “Hi, how are you” mural proved Austin’s still as weird as it wants to be by winning 8 percent of the tally. (Kind of like voting for Leslie for mayor.) The ice-sculpture-like Frost Bank Tower rose to 6 percent, while all-encompassing Mount Bonnell was not far behind.

The Pennybacker Bridge — graceful, but an icon? — and the chummy Stevie Ray Vaughan statue virtually tied at 4 percent. Bringing up the rear were Enchanted Rock, Ann W. Richards Congress Avenue Bridge, 360 Tower and Austin City Hall with less than 3 percent.

Pretty good list, voters.

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August 16, 2009

River Tracing: Rio Frio 3

To read more “River Tracing: Rio Frio,” scroll down to the posts below, or follow the links to Part 1 and Part 2.

Tracing the 200-mile-long Frio meant driving more than 400 miles, and not too much hiking around the riverbeds in the heat. Getting back, however, would be a straight shot up Texas 123 from Live Oak County to Interstate 35 in San Marcos the next morning.

Our stay in George West, another former ranching center, proved uneventful. But just outside Karnes City, we spotted the famous hamlet of Panna Maria. The first Polish colony in America, it was founded in 1854.

The cluster of homes, stores and schools around the Catholic church are in remarkably good condition. You may recall that Pope John Pall II accepted tributes from Panna Marians during his 1984 trip to San Antonio. Somehow, I had imagined the pope actually visited here, but that does not seem to be the case. Other Polish towns with other Polish churches — not to be confused with the painted Czech churches of Schulenburg, Shiner, etc. — line Texas 123. But we had one last small-town attraction to visit before we skittered back to Austin.

That would be the Sebastopol House in Seguin. Made from formed, unreinforced “lime-crete” in 1854, it is lovingly preserved and explained by the Texas parks folks. It appears it was the unfinished city home for plantation owner by the name of Young, whose descendant sold it to the Zorn family. (The name apparently came from the Crimean War battle that intrigued the original owner’s children.)

One Zorn became mayor of Seguin and his daughter left the to a conservation society, who later let the State of Texas look after its not inconsequential upkeep. Park ranger Georgia Davis (above) proved a fount of well-calculated information, among the only tour-guides I’ve ever encountered who didn’t simplify the history for the purposes of mere entertainment. Some recent research, for instance, suggests that the style is not neo-Classical at all, but perhaps Caribbean.

I can see it.

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River Tracing: Rio Frio 2

For more “River Tracing: Rio Frio,” scroll down to the post below or follow this link.

We are tempted to call this tracing “The Mystery of the Disappearing River.”

Somewhere northeast of Uvalde, the Rio Frio simply dries up. At least during the summer. And during a drought. I’m not just referring to its tributary known as the Dry Frio. The above image of the waterless main course was taken under the old railroad bridge outside of Knippa.

The Frio even disappears from two of our three most trusted maps. I’m no hydrologist, but the culprit may be the heavily irrigated plains around Uvalde. My guess is that the Frio contributes to the aquifer, which is then depleted by agriculture. And there’s lots of it for miles around this bustling town of 14,000.

After shopping for Texana at Uvalde’s Opera House Antique Store, then eating enormous spicy Juan burgers at Towne House cafe, we head into the vast mesquite brush of the South Texas triangle. Here, the Frio reappears in little rivulets and pools under thirsty tree motts as we move through Pearsall, Dilley, Cotulla, Fowlertown and Tilden.

Then, almost without warning, the Frio spreads into the Choke Canyon Reservoir. This wide, shallow lake provides water for the city of Corpus Christi. The lake is low these days, although not as dramatically depleted as Lake Travis. Fishermen hug its shores. Bird life swarms. Last winter, a stray pine flycatcher attracted thousands of birders to Choke Canyon State Park.

Our most exotic sightings on this trip are masses of crested caracaras, raptors that look positively tropical to us, but are common in this thorny brush country. We spot a four-foot-long alligator just beyond the grassy shore (above). Later, we read that the state park is the westernmost home of the American alligator.

In the short distance between Choke Canyon and the town of Three Rivers, where the Frio feeds merges with the Nueces, early 20th-century ranches are interrupted by an enormous federal penitentiary and an old refinery now owned by Valero. In the shadow of that refinery, we visit Tips Park, part municipal recreation, part campground for winter Texans. At an artificial falls (above), a sign reads “Alligators exist in the park.”

We believe the sign maker.

More to come …

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River Tracing: Rio Frio 1

The Rio Frio rises among steep, rugged canyons on the ragged southern fringe of the Edwards Plateau southwest of Kerrville.

When we first encountered its tines (forked tributaries) alongside FM 336 in Real County, its river rocks lay liked bleached bones among the bushy ashe juniper. Nothing but fritillary butterflies and buzzards moved in the open-oven heat.

After an exceedingly tortuous descent into the valley (above the settlement of Vance), multiple springs feed the main course of the Frio (actually kind of lukewarm here). Brave bigtooth maples appear. Also a few pecans. Cabins poke out from limestone ledges. Birdsong rises all around us.

Vacation culture ramps up near Leakey, just north of Depression-era Garner State Park, so popular that vehicles queue up for access to the cooling rapids and welcoming weir. Outside the park, every little low-water crossing turns into a swimming, wading or tubing opportunity for those not willing to wait out the crowds at Garner.

Noble cypresses begin to parade up and down the banks. Dark catfish and light, spotted perch dart among the water plants. Even water lilies float atop the quieter eddies. Here, the Frio is the equal of the Guadalupe River at its most alluring.

Yet as soon as we arrive at the village of Concan, not too far below Garner, the Frio begins to fade. Algae collects in shallows. Fish, birds and insects disappear. From the looks of things, the Frio is being loved to death.

More to come …

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August 10, 2009

Austin's Clarke Straughan romances the world, Part 2

For Part 1 of “Austin’s Clarke Straughan romances the world,” scroll down to previous post, or link here.

Adventure movies fed his imagination. Military school and U.S. Marines officer training added discipline. He launched into the hospitality industry while attending Texas A&M University by managing the run-down Western Motel on Highway 6 in College Station. He did everything: Clean the rooms, check in the guests, run what he calls the “Lily Tomlin-style” switchboard. That experience, and a spell at a Dallas hotel, earned Straughan a sense of self-sufficiency must have helped when he decided against taking a standard job in Texas, instead borrowing money for a one-way ticket to Hawaii.

As Straughan island-hopped through the Pacific Ocean ­ then later continent-hopped around the globe — he made up for a lack of means with unwavering optimism (he studied Dale Carnegie self-improvement books); priceless contacts (a tycoon chatted up on a ship’s deck added to his growing list of character references); dogged persistence (he’d press hotel managers until they gave him a job, any job); and his almost cosmic good luck.

No sooner than Straughan arrived in Australia or Japan or Afghanistan, and he’d land a choice job, meet up with the local fast set, and go dancing all night with the most eligible women in town, or study martial arts with a wise trainer. (Healthy skepticism creeps into the mind of the reader of his memoir, “Romancing the Impossible.” Yet photographs don’t normally lie, and there’s Straughan, tanned and trim, looking respectful in the robes of a Buddhist monk in Zamboanga, glad-handing villagers on the Thai-Burma border, or horsing around with international models in Rome. OK, the cover shot is photo-shopped, but that’s all.)

One Japanese newspaper called him “Marco Polo from Texas.”

Here’s a typical Straughan story: He arrives by ship in Bangkok, Thailand, with only $7 in his pockets. No hint of job, friends or a place to stay. Checks into the YMCA, then hits all the luxury hotel offices. No jobs are available. But a contact, Major Stanley, had given him the name and phone number of a “Mrs. Swan.” “Why don’t you come out to the house this morning,” Mrs. Swan tells Straughan when he contacts her. “I’d love to meet and visit with you.”

When Straughan steps off the bus, he realizes her address is a house located on the manicured grounds of the Thai royal palace. “Does Mrs. Swan live here?” he asks. She does, in a home of “subdued splendor” that had once served as a royal study. “I have a lot of extra room in this grand house and you are welcome to stay here until you find a job, Clarke,” says Mrs. Swan.

When he applies at the new hotel across the street, Straughan wins the open job as manager, partly because of his hotel experience, partly because he lived at the palace.

“Romancing the Impossible” is stuffed like a steamer trunk with such good-luck stories, so they quickly become commonplace. And Straughan’s inveterate cheerfulness might daunt the less sunny readers.

But when I first met him during an international dinner at the Bullock Texas History Museum, I knew, one way or another, Straughan was journalist’s get: A story that tells itself.

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Austin's Clarke Straughan romances the world, Part 1

In 2001, for his first task as the state’s director of international protocol, Clarke Straughan welcomed the king and queen of Spain to Texas.

“No problem,” Straughan, now retired, thought. He had already served King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia, discreetly, at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel, where the then-crown prince and princess sojourned on their honeymoon. Almost four decades later, the couple recognized him — and thanked him for his past hospitality — during a reception for the opening of Southern Methodist University’s Meadows Museum of Art.

“Clarke, after all these years!” He remembers Queen Sofia exclaiming. “Thirty-nine years!” King Juan Carlos interjected.

No denying, socially, Straughan possesses the golden touch. The San Antonio native has led a beguiling life, one that began in utmost working-class normalcy.

He babysat the Beatles in Hong Kong; dodged guerillas in Cambodia; and danced into a string of romances from Tahiti to Italy. His youthful adventures are recounted in “Romancing the Impossible,” a memoir distributed through Travel Treasure Publishing.

Tall, handsome and courtly, Straughan, now married, looks and sounds like central casting’s idea of a U.S. senator. In fact, a hint of late Senator Lloyd Bentsen can be detected in his manner and diction. From the evidence of his book’s many photographs, the younger edition of Straughan resembled suave Austin-raised actor Zachary Scott, his one suit fitting lightly over a gangly frame.

More to come …

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August 8, 2009

Austinites in Upstate New York, Part 5

For more “Austintes in Upstate New York,” scroll down to posts below, or link to Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4.

The glorious summer weather here — highs in the 70s, mostly sunny, a light, steady wind in the Susquehanna River Valley — encourages walking.

Over the course of four full days here, I will have walked about 25 miles.

I’ve covered the main East-West trajectory across Main and Court streets, a 6-mile axis from the Square Deal arch to the far side of the new medical school (formerly the Inebriate Asylum). And each day, I’ve made multiple trips North-South from my hosts’ home on the Southside, across the well-traveled Washington Street pedestrian and bike bridge, to the city’s increasingly lively downtown core.

Last night, we savored the nightlife on State Street during the city’s First Friday gallery ramble. We ended up at Tranquil, where one could run into a state senator, a state assemblywoman, numerous city hall officials, artists, Web designers, retirees, plus folks leaving the B-Mets game a block away.

Later today, a small group of us will trace the creek that flows through the Southside from source to mouth. So a little nature hiking to go with the urban trekking. Then I’m hoping for a B-Mets game with my godson, Alfie.

One thing strikes me, beyond the city’s glorious density, is the age of the building stock. I know there must be some late 20th-century residences, but I haven’t seen them. Instead, I’ve walked past hundreds of blocks of enormous Victorian or Edwardian beauties.

And here’s the other deal: One can buy a four-bedroom in good condition for under $100,000. A fixer-upper for $25,000. And that’s in part because they built strong-boned houses and apartments in the central city rather than flinging them out over surrounding hills.

I’m not trying to tempt anyone to move. The winters here can be as brutal as the summers in Texas. Also, the economic, cultural and social wounds here are still healing.

But it’s heartening to know that Austin could learn a few things from Binghamton.

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August 7, 2009

Austinites in Upstate New York, Part 4

For more on “Austinites in Upstate New York,” scroll down to the previous posts, or follow the links to Part 1, Part 2 & Part 3.

Binghamton, N.Y.’s core problem is the opposite of Austin’s.

Binghamtonians just don’t believe change can happen in their slowly reviving city. Austinites know change will happen in our rapidly expanding metropolis, but many of them fear it.

They picked a building and a cuisine. Hired a culinary-school-trained chef. Transformed a dank Irish sports bar into a bright, lively space.

Everybody said they were nuts. The location — on the eastern edge of downtown — was the province of crackheads and their allies. The French and Asian-inflected American food would never fly in this bastion of Southern Italian cooking.

Yet it worked. Massey and Couch opened Tranquil Bistro almost two years ago. It’s now a downtown mainstay and the informal “club house” for the political set. They are particularly known for their martinis and seafood. Everything I’ve eaten there was excellent.

These Austinites believed in change. And they trusted that Binghamtonians would eventually embrace the addition to their culture. (Now, of course, my dear friends must spend much of their days worrying about the moods of their employees and whether enough hot water is running.)

In Austin, someone would accuse Tranquil of gentrifying an impoverished corner of the city, thereby altering its essential character. Blame the fear of inevitable change that comes with Austin’s otherwise reflexive openness. In the Big Bing, they are instead grateful that somebody, even outsiders, believed that change could actually happen.

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Austinites in Upstate New York, Part 3

For more “Austinites in Upstate New York,” scroll down to previous posts, or link to Part 1 or Part 2.

A timely Binghamton T-shirt: “Whatever. Our economy collapsed decades ago.”

Hope has arrived. On two tracks.

One is the get-rich-quick bet on natural gas in the green hills that surround the Triple Cities (Binghamton, Endicott and Johnson City). It could be a devil’s deal in the long run, given the environmental trade-offs and the renewed dependence on a single, easy-to-deplete income source. Binghamton succumbed to this historically through its giant shoe factories, then later IBM and aerospace industries that, for the most part, went bye-bye.

While no one enduring a long-collapsed economy would turn down the gas bonanza, the more promising track should sound familiar to Austinites. It’s about promoting economic diversity, small businesses and a creative culture that can feed longterm regional health.

Binghamton Mayor Matt Ryan appears to embody this approach. He has emphasized human-scaled amenities — streets are well paved and landscaped; hike and bike trails proliferate; sidewalks are gentle, graced with modern pedestrian signals. (I’ve walked the 6-mile length of Main and Court streets in the city limits, for instance, without hitting a really nasty stretch.)

High-tech promises another expanding frontier here. Binghamton University’s research helps. Also small things like a functioning downtown WiFi District, which I’ve used for the past three mornings.

Community gardens are replacing crack houses. Restaurants are going in where abandoned buildings stood. (Binghamton has the same problem Austin had — and, to some extent, still has — too many surface parking lots where mixed-use development could go.)

Just as importantly, Binghamton is trending increasingly cool and socially active. It starts with an openness to difference (the city recognizes gay marriages, for instance). It is manifested in a vibe-y cafe society, a steady flow of activities (nothing like Austin, but …), and on-again-off-again celebrations of local popular culture like BingPop.com, an analog to Austin services like Rare, Tribeza, Austinist, Do512, Launch787, Austin Is Burning, Downtown Austin and, of course, austin360.com. Attracting BU’s kids to downtown Binghamton is essential.

I’ve hit some of the hot spots with BingPop’s Joshua B, a morning radio jock, and my hosts. Of course, they bemoan the lack of activity one can always find in a larger market, but they also easily mine a lot of creative fun in this reviving city.

More to come …

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August 6, 2009

Austinites in Upstate New York, Part 2

For Part 1 of “Austinites in Upstate New York,” see post below …

All in Binghamton, N.Y. is not bleak.

In fact, on a cool, green, sunny day like today, it’s hard to take seriously the mountain of problems facing the city and the region.

This could mean boom times again for Binghamton, just as it has for places like Shreveport, La., where recent discoveries hearten those who see natural gas as a cleaner, transitional alternative to coal and oil. And, normally, the energy-hungry East Coast could use this kind of news.

But, as those of us in Texas will attest, drilling, transporting and transforming natural gas are not without their longterm environmental menaces. Just today, the city’s Press & Sun-Bulletin newspaper ran a front-page story — sandwiched between coverage of sensational murder trials — on the clash over the disposal of water used in the process of releasing the gas from the shale.

A natural gas rush would lift the limping Southern Tier economy, for sure. But, along with environmental concerns, a boom could distract the city from its good work on building a foundation for sustained prosperity — education, openness, infrastructure improvements, high-tech training and lifestyle amenities.

And from what I can see, much progress has been made in these areas — some with positive social consequences — since I first visited this area a few years ago.

More to come …

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August 5, 2009

Austinites in Upstate New York

It would be easy to forsake Binghamton, N.Y.

Parts of downtown remain a wasteland after urban renewal. Monolithic government buildings impede what little pedestrian traffic is nurtured by the remaining, attractive commercial strips. Blight nudges into even prosperous neighborhoods.

Yet Binghamton maintains great promise in its abundant greenery, wealth of densely packed building stock and, especially, the presence of Tier-1 Binghamton University. That institution has planted its flag downtown and a developer proposes some fairly sensitive student housing nearby.

How to leverage those assets? Longtime locals are fighting the good fight. They are getting some help from Austinites and their ideas.

More to come …

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July 2, 2009

Clarke Straughan at Fair Bean

The minute we exchanged pleasantries, I knew Clarke Straughan was a story. We met at an international dinner last year at the Bullock Texas History Museum. Then we followed up with coffee at Fair Bean on South First Street this week.

Later, he ignored warnings from British officials — and his empty wallet — finding his way to Hong Kong to work for what was to become the colony’s biggest, best hotel. Among his first diplomatic assignments: Take care of the Beatles during their Hong Kong stay.

Straughan spent his youth wandering the world, when he wasn’t taking care of dignitaries in Japan, Hawaii and elsewhere. He just self-published his memoirs: “Romancing the Impossible: Traveling the World without Money” (Travel Treasure Publishing).

Among his final jobs before retiring: Director of International Protocol for the Texas governor’s office and — a nice fit for a former colonel — head of a veteran’s affairs office. He attended kings and queens, plutocrats and vagabonds.

Today he’s Texas friendly, unpretentious, yet dignified, with looks like a U.S. senator and a conversational style that’s respectful yet animated. He’s quite a guy.

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June 16, 2009

Colorado Road Trip 11: The Road Home

Home again, home again, jiggity jig.

We returned from Durango, Colo. on a different, faster route: Aztec, Albuquerque, Amarillo, Lubbock, Abilene, Austin.

No river tracing. No visiting with Austin ex-pats.

A. Very green mountains, valleys and mesas, mostly Indian reservations.

B. Sand-blasted desert canyons, also mostly reservations.

C. Cottonwood-and-development-choked Rio Grande valley. (At least Albuquerque attempts to build green, apt design.)

D. Sage-tinged high desert of eastern New Mexico, past the Sandia Range.

E. Flat, fertile high plains of the Panhandle.

F. Mesquite-ridden rolling plains through Abilene.

G. Oak-and-pecan-studded Hill Country south of Cisco.

If you’ve not driven the route between Lubbock and Abilene recently, you will be astonished by the proliferation of wind farms on that stretch. Until you see them in that quantity, it’s easy to dismiss the state’s investment in wind power.

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June 12, 2009

Colorado Road Trip 9: Mountains and Sea

A mountain can serve as a beach — without the waves.

Plus tougher walks.

This year’s contribution came from Rob, who teaches at Colorado College. He engaged a cabin northeast of Durango, Colo., and our heavenly week turned into nine uninterrupted days of reading, talking, cooking, drinking, playing, screening and walking. Oh, and a few sidetrips to cliff dwellings, spas and twee downtown Durango.

One remarkable parallel: The weather. Winter on the Gulf alternates arid sunshine with shivery rain, both welcome. Summer on the Western Front of the Rockies at the lower end of the San Juan Mountains shifts between brilliant mornings and showery afternoons.

At the beach, one naps to the sound of crashing surf. In the mountains, it’s the wind combing through the tall pines.

Three of our companions I’ve known for more than 30 years each. Another four I’ve known for almost 20 years each. One, Doug, made his debut before this daunting company trapped with us in a remote cabin.

Paul and Doug’s story is like a song. Specifically, Kander and Ebb’s “Ring Them Bells.” The new couple lived across the quad from each other 25 years ago at Rice University. They both worked for major Texas-based airlines. They had had hundreds of chances to meet each other, but didn’t until they met earlier this year on a cruise to Antarctica.

Hearing of this, I immediately sent Paul a link to the lyrics of “Ring Them Bells,” which chronicles a New York gal who meets the boy next door, not at home, but in Dubrovnik on the Dalmatian Coast.

“‘Five? Five Riverside Drive in New York, that’s where you live?’” Shirley asks her new boyfriend, Norm Saperstein. “‘That’s that’s where I live, Five? Are you sure?’ As if that wasn’t enough, poor Shirley thought she’d gone deaf, When he told her his apartment there was 29 F. Yes, she was ‘E’, he was ‘F’, and they had not even met, Until she traveled the world to Yugoslavia yet.”

Paul, on five-month tour of seven continents after a lay-off from a high-tech firm, invited Doug to Dubrovnik. Kander and Ebb got it right: Single? “Open up the door, and hurry out in the hall!”

“Ring them bells, come on, come on, ring them bells. Make ‘em sing, you’d better ring them bells. It’s such a happy thing to hear ‘em ting-a-ling. You gotta swing them, ring them, swing them, ring them be-ells.”

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June 10, 2009

Colorado Road Trip 8: A Day in Durango

Shivery rain on the mountain today. Maria Callas, Philip Glass, Thelonious Monk on the stereo. On the stove, Anasazi beans are rolling in broth — meant for the elk stew later today. Pastas and salads under preparation for lunch.

Yesterday, we dallied in the twee town of Durango. Six of us indulged in manicure/pedicure/message/etc. treatments. We shopped in the town’s gourmet food shops looking for bargains on organic ingredients, and perused the preserved-for-fun downtown. Our prime destination: Himalayan Kitchen, a Tibetan joint that satisfied on every level. I went for the thick, chunky yak stew after testing the appetizers, nan and other spicy options. The sweet masala chai was all I needed for dessert.

Then it was back to the mountain for reading and episodes of the British spoof documentary news series “Brass Eye.” Why can’t Americans achieve the Brits’ outrageous levels of satire?

Earlier in the week, we continued Paul’s Big Bad Gay Film Festival, an ongoing and ultimately unsuccessful attempt to see all gay-themed (non-porn) movies. We’ve screened hundreds, almost all of them bad unto painful over the years. Kip and Paul plan an encyclopedic book on the subject.

Two horrors from the same director, David De Coteau, “Leeches!” and “Voodoo Academy,” were coy about their homo content. Another, “Cthulhu,” was ravishingly beautiful and chillingly edited, but confusing in the extreme. “Windy City” was pure, no-budget trash. “A Four Letter Word” showed good intentions — reforming a thoughtless gay sex kitten — but remained annoyingly acted. Those are the only ones I’ve seen during this edition of the late-night festival.

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June 9, 2009

Colorado Road Trip 8: Mesa Verde

Is there a tour guide in the world who can get the history right?

Monday, we satisfied a lifelong dream of visiting Mesa Verde, which lies less than 100 miles west of here in the Four Corners region. A very high plateau reached by Knife’s Edge Road, the mesa’s long-abandoned and ancient ruins were rediscovered in the late 19th Century.

The inhabitants of the cliff dwellings were the Anasazi, or, as they are called now, “ancestral pueblo people,” recognizing their multiple relations to Hopi, Navaho and other contemporary tribes in northern New Mexico and Arizona.

Theirs was a well-developed agricultural society, more advanced technologically than any of the Texas Indians, less so than the Aztecs of Mexico. Tens of thousands probably lived on the Mesa before, for various reasons — drought, over-cultivation, pressure from mountain tribes — they migrated southward in the 14th Century.

Our guide at the Cliff Palace, originally from Boston, was a sweet, older man with an easy way. He answered questions and prompted historical suggestions from our group of two dozen or so.

Yet our contingent of seven walked away with no end of niggles about the guide’s version of the Mesa Verde story. It didn’t help that I’d just read Carl Abbott’s one-volume history of Colorado, and, although published 30 years ago, made a more convincing case for issues, such as contact with the Aztecs.

No matter. It’s reassuring that the Anasazi — as I’ll continue to call them in the Navajo tongue — were not a “lost people” as they were once considered. And this trip is filling in a lot of blanks about the lives of our Southwestern precursors.

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June 8, 2009

Colorado Road Trip 7: Joe's Birthday Feast

After hikes and horses, we devoured a themed birthday feast for Joe. Chef: Paul. Sous chef: Doug. Steak griller: Michael.

Menu included two patés, pinot grigio sausage, prociutto-wrapped melons, tempura-fried mushrooms with peanut sauce, truffled potatoes, grilled artichokes, giant steaks and almond-chocolate cake (particularly tough to cook at 8,000 feet).

From left to right:

Rob Kendrick. Teaches comparative literature at Colorado College. Moving to Gustavus Adolphus College in Minnesota come fall. I met Rob in 1979.

Kip Keller. Writer and editor. Freelances mostly for UT Press. My partner of 18 years. Officially married in Toronto. Met in 1991.

Edith Sorenson. Executive something-or-other and writer. Day job with Deloitte. Met in 1978.

Charles Dove. Teaches film at Rice University. Edith’s partner. Met in 1996.

Paul Talley. High-tech guru. Chef extraordinaire. Kip’s childhood friend. Met in 1991.

Doug Sparke. Flight attendant for a major Texas airline. Paul’s paramour. (Great romance: They lived across the hall from each other 25 years ago at Rice University, but didn’t meet until this year on an Antarctica cruise.) Met in 2009.

Joe Starr. Teaches ESL at Houston Community College. My undergraduate school dorm-mate. Birthday boy (52). Met in 1975.

Damian Barr. Writer and columnist for the Times of London. First published story was for the Statesman, when he was a foreign student at UT. Met in 1995.

That makes 158 cumulative years of friendship, just from my perspective.

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June 7, 2009

Colorado Road Trip 6: To the Mountains

Alert readers may have noticed that my Out & About travel posts are at least a day behind my Facebook and Twitter updates. Two reasons: Must find WiFi for my laptop on the road; and why interrupt core vacation time with blogging?

It was way back on Friday when we left Santa Fe for the Durango area, passing first through the twee suburban outliers to the depressed and depressing zone around Española. The whole upper Rio Grande Valley here is a mass of mobile homes, junk yards and new casinos. Long home to various Indian tribes, it’s among the most economically challenged regions of the country.

Further along U.S 84, we encountered rainbow-colored outcroppings above lakebeds and then high valleys (or “parks”), vibrantly green and speckled with cattle. Why are pastoral scenes so compelling to the human eye at this stage in our cultural development? Did art and literature influence our perceptions?

We followed the Chama River — scene of Pueblo revolts in the 17th Century and land-rights activism in the 1960s — through lightly populated, pine-mantled passes until we reached Colorado and its snow-crested peaks.

Our cabin, located north of Bayfield about 25 miles from Durango, is secluded enough for our purposes. A community of chalets nestles in the valley, but we are perched on one of the highest mountain switchbacks, safe from neighbors, noise and traffic.

The two-story cabin is spacious enough for 9 adults and 4 dogs. We’ve broken the mountain silence with our torrential conversations, but even those are beginning settle down, as we split up for hikes, horses, cooking and games-playing pods.

Photos by Joe Starr

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June 6, 2009

Colorado Road Trip 5: Santa Fe Sojourn

Santa Fe has returned to my good graces. As a teen, I feel head-over-heels for the stuccoed, curvaceous buildings, the residual Indian and Spanish cultures, the rag-tag hippie contingent in the Plaza and the feeling of utter otherness to a kid from Texas.

Later, I enjoyed short visits, especially for the city’s emergent cuisine — eventually a worthy complement to that of similarly distant New Orleans — the clement, high-desert summers and high-quality music, especially the Santa Fe Opera, one of the country’s finest, season after season.

Several things bugged me, however, like the rigidly controlled blending of traditional and contemporary architecture, the ridiculous real estate inflation and the tendency to kitsch in the city’s many, over-priced art galleries. (Certainly not all the galleries deserve such criticism.)

Age mellows. I’m no longer a paid critic, so I can let things slide. The ubiquitous Santa Fe style is, indeed, a 20th-century phenomenon, despite its Pueblo and Colonial pretensions, but its also an influential one, and, done right, a thing of carefully composed beauty. And how can I truly dislike a city where pleasure, artistry and hospitality are so acutely revered? And at such a deliciously slow pace?

Of course, it helps stay at the home of Austinites David Garza and John Hogg. Sitting high up in a canyon overlooking the town and the Jemez Mountains in the distance, it’s the epitome of grace in the Santa Fe style. And what a place to watch a sunset!

It’s also a brisk two-mile walk to the Parochia and Plaza — where we broke our fast and shopped — then a less-than-brisk hike back up the canyon. One of the great things about these colonies of Austinites — in San Miguel, Marfa, Galveston or Santa Fe — the good feelings cultivated by our town are refined by these colonists to an art.

Photos by Joe Starr.

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June 5, 2009

Colorado Road Trip 4: Prairie Dog Town Fork of the Red River

Our river tracings have produced a few minor misadventures: Wrong turns, muddy hikes, missed sightings. The latest, on the Prairie Dog Town Fork of the Red River, actually could have turned disastrous.

But first: The PDTF of the Red River accumulates in an astonishingly green bowl of creeks and vegetation just outside Canyon, the university town just south of Amarillo. The water quickly pools up along tree-shrouded banks (above!), before spilling — I don’t know just how — into broad, steep, storied Palo Duro Canyon (below!).

The upstream pooling may explain some of the flash flooding and ancient erosion that created the mammoth canyon. Camping and picnicking at Palo Duro Canyon State Park is clearly in season, despite warnings about the frequent flooding.

Our potentially threatening wrong turn happened on what was supposed to be a short hike with the Labs down the lush central riverbottom, with its cottonwoods, rushes and wildflowers, leading upland to junipers, prickly pears and desert grasses.

Insanely, we brought along no water, which we never forget on hikes. At a suitable resting point, Joe and I left Kip and dogs to retrieve the car, but took a long loop back, the backtracked over two trails, harassed all the way by sand flies and the midday sun. All was well by mid-afternoon, but we learned our lesson and left behind the upper canyon.

Lower down the canyon, past the brilliant red folds of sandstone and sparkling gypsum, we viewed the ranchlands made famous by cattlemen and investors Charles Goodnight and John Adair, then later by painter Georgia O’Keefe.

Also the redoubts of the Indians routed in the one-sided Battle of Palo Duro Canyon (1874).

Downstream of the canyon, the PDTF of the Red River spreads out over low, broad riverbeds into dozens of shallow, meandering rivulets.

As is the case all over West Texas, the river crossings are few and the one-lane backroads through widely spaced ranches are exceptionally lonely.

I find much of this land piercingly beautiful, but I recognize how bleak it must seem to others, with long stretches between water, so little shelter and virtually no forgiving trees.

Photos by Joe Starr

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June 4, 2009

Colorado Road Trip 3: Wichita River

We figured since our Colorado road trip sliced through parts of Texas we rarely visit, we’d trace the Wichita and the Prairie Dog Town Fork of the Red rivers on the way out, and the Pecos River on the way back.

Some readers may think this is dumb. There are so many more direct routes to Durango. Well, we’ve taken them. Many times. So alternate routes rule.

The Wichita rises among gentle prairie mounds about 30 miles southwest of Wichita Falls. Two tiny forks converge in Knox County for the river’s relatively short, 90-mile journey to the Red River.

The Wichita passes through two small lakes, Kemp and Diversion, the second reached only by a private road protected by a $15 toll gate. Much as we are devoted to river tracing, the price proved insuperable for our casual purposes.

A State of Texas fishery offers a feast for herons and egrets on a Farm to Market Road allowing one of the first looks at the released river.

The Wichita’s terra cotta color follows it from source to mouth, matching its sandy and sandstone banks.

Trees bunch along the Wichita’s contours, but the prairie slides right down into the water, filtered by grasses and wildflowers. Cliff swallows and barn swallows congregate around the bridges in even greater numbers than elsewhere in Texas. And despite some overgrazed, mesquite-poisoned stretches — and sandy oil patches — wildlife teems.

Agricultural hamlets — which double as suburbs for Wichita Falls — lie along its upper banks. Once a sustaining reason for the city of 100,000, the river now plows through neighborhoods, forming an informal greenbelt until it reaches Lucy Park near downtown.

This meticulously manicured park sat virtually empty during our loop around its trails. Here, the Texas Santa Fe expedition paused in 1841, where the Wichita Indians camped.

A flood had long ago demolished the shallow falls that lent their name to the city, but leaders decided in the 1980s to build a decorative replacement. (A plaque of congratulations from the city of Niagra Falls, N.Y. sits opposite a larger one commemorating the concrete firm that helped build the tourist attraction.)

East of the city, the Wichita flows through fertile farmlands, which, in the spring, look garden-like. One can reach the river here from gravel county roads, although, as usual, the actual mouth of the river lie out of our reach on private land.

This was our first true prairie river of the 14 we have traced in Texas, although the Leon qualifies for long stretches.

The high, muddy banks convinced us to keep the dogs away from the water, especially since getting in and out of the rented SUV meant a clean-up each time.

Photos by Joe Starr

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Colorado Road Trip 2: Archer City

We had planned to visit this antiquarian mecca decades ago, but the five-hour drive always put us off. Also, what else would one do in Archer City? Read, I guess.

So we included a 90-degree turn in our Colorado road trip so that we could explore the 300,000 volumes divided into four courthouse-square shops, two of those expanded through room additions.

(We capped our personal collection at 3,500 and slowed down acquisition to a crawl. One volume in, one volume out.)

The books are immaculately tended, if uneven in collection and cataloging. Only one clerk tends the four shops — everything is done on the honor system (which is a little scary when one considers the recorded incidence of bibliomania).

Because our trip will take us toward the setting sun, I concentrated on the American West in fiction and nonfiction, choosing Carl Abbott’s sturdy, one-volume “Colorado: A History of the Centennial State” and the magisterial “Oxford History of the American West.”

For fun, I threw in Zane Grey’s Western pulp novel “Riders of the Purple Sage.” Cabin reading for sure. It now occurs to me that I read McMurtry’s “Lonesome Dove” in a Montana cabin last summer!

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June 3, 2009

Colorado Road Trip 1: To Wichita Falls

We chose the Falls for our first sojourn along the Colorado Trail in order to shop for books at Larry McMurtry’s complex in the Archer City courthouse square. Also to trace the relatively short, relatively remote-from-Austin Wichita River.

This is Nick and Nora’s first multi-state road trip. Our full-sized Labs love a good ride or any hint of adventure, but making them a part of travel party with three adult men and Costco-purchased supplies is something of a challenge. That’s why we rented the largest SUV available.

Didn’t know this: Cisco birthed the Hilton hotel empire and now hosts the Conrad Hilton Center, as well as the surprisingly large, hilltop Cisco Junior College.

One can road-trip in Texas for decades without visiting every region, and that around Wichita Falls is new to me. The city of 100,000 is bolstered by its university, hospitals and military installations. Oil and agriculture still support a fraction of the economy. Its freeway system — a lot of it brand new — seems overbuilt.

The Wichita Fallas theater pictured here is a 1920s auditorium built in the mission/baroque revival style of the San Antonio, Marlin and Dallas venues of the same era.

Photos by Joe Starr

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May 25, 2009

Galveston as the next Marfa?

Austinites flock to Galveston like weekend gulls.

They meet at the Sunflower Bakery for crabcakes and pastries, or Star Drug Store for cheeseburgers and tomato soup.

They socialize with Islanders on porches and patios in the easy, unhurried manner of the ancient coastal cultures of New Orleans, Key West or Charleston, S.C., rocked by Gulf breezes and lubricated with tropical concoctions.

They attempt to spur the creative economy by ignoring those shiny objects — Moody Gardens, beachfront condos — that attract other tourists, and instead shop for hours on the Strand, organize home tours and festivals, attend the Island’s theaters and concert halls.

They volunteer to help solve Galveston’s gargantuan civic ills — collapsed infrastructure, depopulated neighborhoods, emigrated service industries.

They can’t get enough of it.

Could Galveston become the next Marfa, the next Santa Fe, the next San Miguel de Allende? The place where indigent artists mix with solitude-seeking socialites in a way that invents a whole new lifestyle while replicating Austin’s openness and sentience?

The main obstacle, other than the devastation wreaked by Hurricane Ike, is the uneven physical connections. Galveston was conceived as a dense city, but its natural disasters and economic sclerosis have left an urban patchwork on the East End, the West End, all around the town.

It’s tempting, as an Inlander, to shrug and say “Let the next storm take it.” After all, there will be another storm. We know that. And if the surge doesn’t top the 17-foot seawall, it will whip around the bay to send a 14-foot wave of salty muck through the city’s unprotected north side, as Ike did.

Spend some time, even just a long holiday weekend, however, away from the beaches and the “family attractions,” and it’s hard to resist the Island’s allure. And, as always, if there’s a place worth the investment of time and passion, Austinites will congregate there.

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May 24, 2009

Losing track of time on the Island

Pardon the paucity of postings. I’ve lost all track of time on Galveston Island. And good thing. I need to do this more often.

The saddest thing on the Island are the trees. Bare or buzz-sawed, they are omnipresent witnesses to the flooding that reached 14 feet high on the Strand. Ike is the only subject here, where people drift on Gulf breezes as if in New Orleans or Key West.

Social options are narrow, Islanders will remind you regularly, but that’s why we are here. To keep socializing on the personal level, rather than on the professional.

There are plenty of “projects” to keep active people busy — rescuing the thousands of gorgeous historical homes that are at risk for permanent loss. To give you a comparison: The 15,000 square-foot Dealy Mansion, which looks like an upland British country home, is quoted at the same price as the average Travis Heights bungalow.

Somebody need a project?

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April 14, 2009

River Tracing: San Marcos River 3

I had always wanted to visit Palmetto State Park, located on a lazy stretch of the lower San Marcos River. Since childhood, I had read about its semi-tropical vegetation, overflowing mudpots and warm springs. Quite the contrast to the prairies and post-oak breaks on the rolling hills above the hidden valley. (Sorry, that’s still Luling directly below.)

What I didn’t know was that the park encompassed the town of Ottine, an open spot that looked not much different from a mid-19th-century, pre-commercial settlement. It had been requisitioned by the Civilian Conservation Corps during the Depression — fascinating panoramic photos can be found n a hallway at the park headquarters — and a large, white, tiled sanitarium building remains, practically the size of the rest of the hamlet.

“It was a big place during the polio days,” my father told me the next day. Who knew? We hiked the trim trails to find sensibly laid-out campgrounds and family activities abounding on an Easter weekend. I didn’t see much in the way of tropical overgrowth until we headed around the oxbow lake, which led us to view reminiscent of the Old South.

Earlier, I had spied this snake, which at first looked to me like a copperhead. Later I identified as a broad-banded water snake. Not so scary.

Our last glimpse of the San Marcos was from a high bridge reached from a lonely Gonzales County road. The wood slats were breaking up and the steel spikes rattled in their holes. The whole experience rattled me too, as I stared down at the river, which had turned gray-green from its upstream blue-green.

As usual on a river tracing, we couldn’t access the actual mouth of the river, which converges with the Guadalupe just above the large town of Gonzalez. Bothersome, it sits behind private-property fences guarded by herds of curious cattle. Still, the San Marcos is pretty dramatic for such a short river. I can see why it remains so popular, recreationally, although far less developed than the upper Guadalupe. And for good reason. The floods, ladies and gentlemen, the floods.

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River Tracing: San Marcos River 2

We chanced a turn on the Old Bastrop Highway just outside San Marcos, which led to a one-lane bridge over the river. Here we found two historical markers announcing that the high banks above the San Marcos River served as the first location of the city by that name. A group of 50 Spanish or so colonists had settled the spot in 1807, but they were promptly flooded out — a persistent theme along these Hill Country streams — and so they moved upriver.

We continued, then, along the north bank to authentically quaint Martindale, whose one-block commercial district has served more than once as a movie backdrop. We explored the strangely located Martindale cemetery — right above the river — finding tombstones that reached back to earliest days of Anglo colonization. A faint whiff of New England settled on the grounds. They knew how to soften death for the living back then.

By chance, we hooked down a narrow, gravel road down to a low water crossing, only to stare up at a large dam attached to a massive, brick cotton gin. Fishermen dotted the shore, despite the trespassing signs. The survival of these dams through flood season after flood season amazes me.

We crisscrossed the river through several other minute burgs, including Prairie Lea — a “lea” is a meadow, something that comes up in art history — until we reached Luling, approximately half way down the river. Here we stopped for barbecue, first at the famous Luling City Market, with its butcher paper, simple menu and, to a stranger without a guide, complicated ordering pattern. Wished I were back on the uncomplicated, fast-flowing river.

The place was packed so we repaired to Luling Bar-B-Q across the highway and its more helpful signs and staff (“You’ll want a drink with that,” said the counter goddess after I ordered jalepeÑo sausages on a bun). A brief downpour chased us across the railroad access to our car.

Luling maintaines one of those lovely, old-fashioned river parks — like Seguin, Gonzalez and Victoria — also home to spectacular dam and mill complex. A flood-watch tower sits by the river with a frightening 38-foot marker. I would be so, so far away from any river at 38-foot flood tide.

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April 4, 2009

To escape the coming heat, escape Austin 4

For Parts 1, 2 & 3, see posts below …

Still others will aim out to sea during summertime.

Composer Dan Welcher will sail Penobscot Bay in Maine. Dr. Russell D. Briggs and Julie Ermis Briggs will cool off near the glaciers — while they last — on an Alaskan cruise. Architect Juan Miró and his business manager/wife Rosa Rivera will take in Japan first, then cruise the Mediterranean (Monaco, Florence, Rome, Naples and Tunis) to celebrate Miró’s parent’s 50th anniversary.

Europe remains a traditional lure. Business strategic planner Debbie Johnson will wander around Germany, Switzerland, Italy and France in June. “We’re picking up a new car, visiting some friends, hiking in the Cinque Terra, etc,” Johnson says. “Should be a lot nicer weather over there about then!”

Southwestern University professor Rick Roemer will spend the summer in Bulgaria, Austria, Greece and Turkey, grappling with theater and playing tournament tennis. Ballet Austin’s Stephen Mills and partner Brent Hasty will dip into Venice for the Biennale art festival in June, and then on to the Montepellier Dance Festival in France. (Believe me, Venice can turn downright arctic in the summer. Depends on the direction of the wind.)

Actress Sandy Walper and her husband John will tour Ireland and Scotland. She concludes: “I, for one, will probably come home with some absolutely incoherent attempt at a Celtic/Texas/Gaelic accent.”

Will all these places stay cool? Well, one can pretty much lay money on it: Not as hot as Texas.

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April 3, 2009

To escape the coming heat, escape Austin 3

For Parts 1 & 2, see posts below …

Some locals will head to other highlands during the summer. Music backer Nancy Coplin and marketer/arts patron Wendi Kushner are going — separately — to Colorado. Musician Meagan Tubb returns to her parents’ house in Crested Butte, Col. where she fishes for rainbow trout. AustinWoman Magazine’s Mary Anne Connolly will test the dry nights in Marfa and Marathon before heading to an annual Labor Day getaway with friends in Jackson Hole, Wy.

Others prefer the shore. Financial advisor Lynn Slayton Yeldell is headed to Provincetown, Mass. — part of the annual migration from Texas to a region that includes Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard and the coast of Maine.

Ashley Leitsch from J. Black’s Lounge is joining nine friends for a “girls trip” to always temperate San Diego. They travel together annually, always to a beach location.

Spazio owner Lytle Pressley prefers quiet, cool Pepe’s Hideaway near Manzanillo, on the Pacific side of Mexico. It consists of six thatched roof casitas on stilts embedded in the side of a cliff.

“The owner is a wonderful American who’s lived in many places,” Pressley says. “I’ve been five times. It’s a true vacation, meaning no noise, no pressure to do things unless you want to, and so beautiful.”

Downtown Austin Alliance’s Lacy A. LaBorde will attend a friend’s wedding in Woolacombe, a seaside resort on the coast of North Devon, U.K. It might even turn sweater-chilly there on the Irish Sea.

More to come …

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To escape the coming heat, escape Austin 2

For Part 1, see post below …

Other select summer destinations attract hordes of Austinites.

“The first year I went Al Gore came as the main speaker to talk on global warming,” says Austin chef Quincy Adams Erickson, another Chautaugua regular. “Last summer I was out jogging and I looked up on a porch, and Sandra Day O’Connor waived and said ‘hi’ to me.”

Santa Fe is a traditional alternative location for smothered-by-heat Austinites, who maintain second homes there. Dr. John Hogg and his partner David Garza sweep their minds free of stress on the high plateaus.

“Something about the clarity of the colors and magic of the area works wonders,” Hogg says. “With a mile and 1/2 less of atmosphere filtering the sun, the colors are brilliant. Even the dirt is more brown. And, at 7,200 feet of elevation, the cool evenings and dry days are a welcome respite in the summer months.”

Hogg hangs with actress Ali McGraw while out there — they share a love of jewelry and dogs. Representing distinguished Central Texas lineage, Matthew Mielcarek and Sarita Kuykendall will join his mother and stepfather, Betty and Marshall Kuykendall, in Santa Fe, too.

More to come …

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To escape the coming heat, escape Austin 1

If the past is any indication, by May, Austin will be hotter than a concealed pistol. Or, for that matter, a pistol exposed to the sun for 12 hours, then baked in an oven.

A few travelers will push global limits.

Rebecca Rooney-King and husband, charter airline owner Richard King, are taking their two sons to Kenya and Rwanda, including a journey up the misty Virunga Mountains to see the rare, reclusive mountain gorillas.

Designer Joy Kling and her husband are joining three other Austin couples for the Celebration of the Sun Festival in Peru, where they’ll also hike Machu Picchu for five days.

Social columnist Holly Jackson is going to Mongolia in July for the annual countrywide celebration, the Naadam Festival.

More to come …

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April 1, 2009

Your A-List, Best Day Trip

In addition to being a swell city, Austin is close driving distance from isolated, crystal springs, rare geological formations, light-flecked lakes, quaint, history-sated towns and authentic cultural meccas. (Getting to the edge of town may be tougher these days, with the increased traffic, but once into the country, travel goes smooth.) Maybe that’s why the A-List vote for the area’s top spot for a day trip was so amiably split.

Nearby Fredericksburg — a bit of German tidiness and charm nestled in the Hill Country — is, in contrast, a townie experience. One strolls up and down the main avenue, dipping into shops, nipping at snacks, watching people who are watching people. It comes by its 19th-century German/frontier look honestly and earned 17 percent of the tally.

Gruene is just as authentic, even though is core cluster of buildings, retroactively, feels a bit like an amusement park. Nobody cares, not when one of the world’s great old dance halls is the town fulcrum. It seduced 11 percent.

A bit closer in, Hamilton Pool, an exquisite sinkhole when in silt-free condition, sucked in 11 percent, while German-founded, spring-fed New Braunfels, home to the region’s biggest fall fest and plenty of tubing, took 8 percent. Pedernales Falls, which matches splendid rock sluices with hike-happy canyons, drew 6 percent.

Another swimming hole, Krause Springs, trapped 4 percent, just ahead of slender, boat-friendly Lake LBJ with 3 percent. Taking 2 percent or less were small towns from the Hill Country to blackland plains and the cross-timbers — Wimberley, Lockhart, Shiner, Dripping Springs, Brenham, Blanco and Elgin — each with their own allurements.

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March 31, 2009

Alaska and all that

My particular responses to the history are now available, privately, to Mellen Press. Yet the book revived my keen interest in visiting Alaska — the map looks like somebody smoking a pipe, right? — which is a broader subject worth considering in this blog.

The place is almost a blank, despite all the nature documentaries and books I’ve consumed on the subject. I’m thinking about a road trip for the summer of 2010 — starting in Anchorage, following the coast a while, then heading up to Denali National Park, Fairbanks and the Arctic Circle.

Gotta do it. Looking for Alaska advice. And not a cruise.

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February 13, 2009

2009 Reading Week 12

Surfside: A Terrible Beauty (Post-Ike), Part 4.

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February 12, 2009

2009 Reading Week 11

Surfside: A Terrible Beauty (Post-Ike), Part 3.

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2009 Reading Week 10

Surfside: A Terrible Beauty (Post-Ike), Part 2.

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February 11, 2009

2009 Reading Week 9

Surfside: A Terrible Beauty (Post-Ike), Part 1.

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2009 Reading Week 8

The weekend passed even more quickly than it usually does during the 2009 Reading Week. That’s because my pulmonary troubles continue. It ain’t cedar fever, that I can say, since the nearest mountain juniper is 120 miles upwind.

My doctor suggested viral infection that had already passed its peak and its contagious stage. That may be, but the supposedly salutary effects of salt air and all the remedies suggested by readers have not abated this curse entirely.

The Kingdom of the Ill is rather like Dreamland. Activity happens in the periphery. Personal connections are scant and strictly prescribed.

I must admit that illness always makes me resent the well, just a little. Laughing in groups. Skipping around to the latest enthusiasm.

The lapse in exercise is often the worst part. I try to keep up the cardio and brought down some of Alex’s workout tools, but, for the most part, I sleep, nap or hover between the two.

I have read more this year, so far. No restlessness about exploring the marshes or fishing communities down the coast. No party games organized at 1 a.m.

As I write this, I feel better, but where did the past three days go?

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February 10, 2009

2009 Reading Week 7

Talk about “The Lost Art of Walking.”

Strolling on the beach ranks in the Top 5 activities for the Reading Week. Not much planning required: You either turn left or right as you hit the tide line.

Furthermore, there’s not much variation on the Texas coast. The sand turns ash to dark grey when wet, approximating light brownish otherwise. Never white, although buff among the finer sands of Padre Island. The beach stretches for miles on any of the barrier islands or peninsulas, and thanks to the tropical storms, very little of it is developed by humankind.

Walking the Labs, Nick and Nora, my eye usually strays to the surf and the horizon, where thoughts turn, naturally, “oceanic” in the manner of William James. The wet sands produce a roll-tape sequence of seaweed and shells - neither fixate me - but also a noisy procession of shore birds.

Puffy little dunlins, plovers and sanderlings compete with stitled willets and sandpipers. They share temporary territory with gulls - jostly laughing gulls, dainty Bonaparte’s gulls, scurrilous ringed-billed gulls, giant herring gulls - and is that a greater black-backed? Of course not, sorry for the false alarm, dear Adouboners. Don’t want you hauling down to Surfiside to check off that “accidental.”

The mid-beach presents obstacles - deeper sand, tire ruts, people, cars, dogs — although few of those mid-winter and even fewer mid-week, mid-winter. That leaves the old line where the dunes enclosed the walking track. A few tufts survived Ike. Newly dumped sand suffices in other places. The wrecks of some homes provide the wind and surge cover for others.

One small gift: The absence of dunes makes me less anxious about Nora, our leggy field Lab who likes a little upland stray. Last year, she was bitten by a rattler and then scraped with death. This time, I can let her wander a bit. There’s no cover for snakes or other varmints.

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2009 Reading Week 6

The Reading Week means reading.

For me, that’s three or four full magazines a day. And books. Lots of books.

My main novel this winter is Peter Matthiessen’s 900-page “Shadow Country,” a refiguring of the Watson trilogy, set in the degraded wilds of southwest Florida. Like Cormac McCarthy, Matthiessen owes a good deal to William Faulkner for his combinations of backwoods dialect, poetic description and abrupt violence.

I finished up Joseph O’Neill’s “Netherland,” which deserves most of the praise it has received for its Gatsbyesque treatment of contemporary immigrant New York City. I preferred, however, his descriptions of mental drifting over the landscapes of Holland and London.

I skipped through Arthur Laurents’ “Mainly on Directing,” a slight, gossipy theatrical memoir, but savored every word and image in Terry Thompson-Anderson’s “The Texas Hill Country,” which quickly earned a permanent place on our travel and cookbook shelves.

Geoff Nicholson’s extended essay, “The Lost Art of Walking,” is the kind of personal journalism I like - and sometimes practice — and his subject is close to my pedestrian heart.

Roy Bedichek’s “Adventures with a Texas Naturalist” is growing on me, though I haven’t spent sustained time with his wonderfully old-fashioned natural history. I suspect he will end up my favorite Philosopher from the Rock.

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2009 Reading Week 5

Here’s the deal, the social contract, as it were: Kip and I make the Reading Week arrangements pay for the house. Everybody else cooks and cleans.

This has worked out beautifully over the years. Certain alpha types take charge of the evening meals, which have ballooned into epicurean feasts at times. Even brunches span the globe for themes and ingredients.

Saturday’s morning team proposed what sounded like a modest spread, mostly quiches and fruit. Surprise! What we found on the table at 11 a.m. was an array of eggy pies, some vegetarian, some non-gluten, some crustless. The promised fruit came with all sorts of sauces and toppings. All delish.

Saturday evening — traditionally Paul’s spot, but he’s off gallivanting around the world, presently on Easter Island — was taken over by Dale and his team. They created a cornucopia of artisan breads and spreads, tapenades, red-pepper pate, butternut-squash apple soup, watermelon-infused pork, mango salsa, mashed potatoes, corn pudding and pumpkin flan — adaptations from the Hudson’s on the Bend menu.

Sunday morning it was off to Mexico, thanks to Suzie, Randy and crew — quesadillas, tacos, chorizo, hot sauces, pineapple, Mexican coffee cakes, strawberries, plus a Mexican hot chocolate drink. Sunday evening started with French onion soup, then continued with beef Burgundy stew, mashed potatoes, salad and chocolate pot de crème.

For the rest of the week, we’ll simply reconstitute the leftovers with the addition of pastas, cheeses and other hearty ingredients for the remaining 10 of us. Probably some fresh seafood midweek.

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February 9, 2009

2009 Reading Week 4

Only one true newcomer to the Reading Week this year: Marques. Naturally social, he fits in quickly with the writers, teachers, editors, researchers, students, retirees and others who make up our motley crew.

Kip corrects me: This is our 16th Reading Week, which started in 1994 as a mere Reading Weekend, inspired by Iris Murdoch’s “The Book and the Brotherhood.” Only one guest, Joe, has made every edition, which combines weekend dining and socializing with weekday reading and shared solitude.

Carol came from Boston, Rob from Colorado, Joan and Rick from Cincinnati. Loren and Alfie flew down from upstate New York (Sean, Alfie’s other poppa, remained behind to deal with tenure review and City of Binghamton business - he’s a city council member).

Joe was joined by other Houstonians - Rose Mary (Dutch by way of Southern France), as well as old-new friends Gary and Tim (Gary attended junior high with Carol and Kip). John, Maureen and their daughter Isabella also took the short drive down from Houston. Clay, Nick, Lawrence, Shannon and Robert journeyed the four hours down from Austin, as did Suzie and Randy. Dale and Antonio chugged in from College Station.

We’re older than we were 15 years ago. But that hasn’t slowed down the raucous games of Mexican train, the endless walks, jogs and cycling up and down the beach, nor the meals that mean the kitchen is always in use.

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2009 Reading Week 3

Only nine of the 70 beach houses leased by Brannan are rentable.

Some stand cracked like eggs. Others hobbled at the knees. Still others lean like old men on park benches. Boardwalks smash up like like shipwrecks.

Surfside, one barrier island down the coast from Galveston, didn’t suffer as badly as did its large, better-known neighbor, much less devastated Bolivar farther up the coast. Still, the evidence of Hurricane Ike and its storm surge is everywhere.

The dunes have been shaved flat. A comforter of sand stretches from the water to the highway. New lagoons pool in all directions.

Despite the mere trickle of insurance money, reconstruction is everywhere. Strangest of all: The completely new construction of more lavish homes. Perhaps the owners believe Ike was the Big One, so they have another 40 to 50 years to recover the capitalization on new houses before the next Big One.

They will all evaporate like the rest. Always have (where are Velasco, Indianola?). Always will.

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2009 Reading Week 2

No. You’re not going to find a WiFi hotspot at Surfside Beach. So said the rental mistress at Brannan Realty - and a good scour of the Internet proves her right.

“But you can get WiFi in the food court at Brazosport Mall,” she confided.

If you are reading this now, then I have discovered the signal at the retail center of Lake Jackson, 20 miles or more inland from our beachside retreat.

“Why on earth would you want to blog on vacation,” asks a rational guest among our 24 visitors from around the country at Trade Winds beach house.

Blogging is breathing. Or rather, it follows the pattern of breathing, or walking, or thinking — all things knitted tightly into my daily life.

And a social columnist — even one surrounded, as I am, by two dozen friends in person — feels limbless without digital connection to others.

Which reminds me, if I have not answered an urgent e-mail, responded to a shattering Facebook update or to an astonishing tweet, forgive me.

I’m a digital castaway.

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February 6, 2009

2009 Reading Week 1

It’s finally here: That stretch of time when newsroom stress obtains no purchase.

Nothing to do but read, talk, eat, drink, relax, walk the beach with assembled canines.

I’ll submit short blog entries, complemented by Facebook and Twitter micro-reports, just to keep readers abreast.

Mostly about what I’m reading. Also personality sketches and weather reports. A few photos.

Nothing too analytical.

We’ll certainly explore the damage from Hurricane Ike from Galveston down to Sargent Beach.

As for the Austin social scene, dive in without me.

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January 13, 2009

River Tracing: Llano River 7

All our good spirits about the Llano River remaining relatively virginal vanished as we entered Kingsland. I won’t show images of the highway here, but you could hardly plan an uglier stretch of commercial excess.

Meanwhile, closer to Lake LBJ, one finds the town’s famously graceful inns and restaurants, as well as old-fashioned fishing camps and Leviathan houses. These deep Highland Lakes, buffered by high bluffs, are effortlessly gorgeous. Why would you mess with all that beauty?

After leaving our river, we steered toward ever-growing Marble Falls, then Texas 71. Messy, awful billboards pock the roadside. Never thought I’d be grateful for the Southwest Parkway, but it’s an effective ambassador of good will for our city. I’ll just leave you with some last shots of the river as it yields its watery treasures to the lakes.

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River Tracing: Llano River 6

Among the books I’m reading: Roy Bedichek’s “Adventures of Texas Naturalist.” I’m no scientist. Bedichek, a rhapsodist wrapped inside a scientist, measured and calculated. On our 13 river traces, I’ve not surveyed anything with precision.

Still, I’ve observed. One of our sayings: “It’s not a river if you can’t hear it.” One we should institute: “If it’s a pecan tree, you’re on a floodplain.”

I had no idea until we traced four or five Hill Country and Plains rivers that pecans follow them from source to mouth, unless the stream dumps directly into the Gulf of Mexico or one of its bays. The Llano River wears a mantle of pecans and each town salutes the mighty nut in its own way with shops, supplies and honors in its name.

If Junction can claim suzerainity over the the river’s upper reaches and Kingsland its outlet on the Highland Lakes, Mason and Llano are the twin outposts in between. Llano has been touched more closely by urbanity (see its little lake above; its Inks Bridge below). Yet it remains a small town at heart. Our only disappointment this trip: The Hill Country Wildlife Museum has closed.

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River Tracing: Llano River 5

Historical question answered: Floods.

Scroll down to “Llano River 4” for my query about why the valley never developed sustained civilization, given its constant-flow springs, fertile bottom lands and protective canyon walls. Well, I forgot about the periodic and catastrophic floods.

The evidence is everywhere, from the strewn-by-giants boulders to the plaque on the Inks Bridge in the town of Llano that records a 42-foot-high wall of water that roared down the canyon in 1935. Don’t build on land if water will take it away.

The stretch of Llano proper begins with a dam and small, inviting lake surrounded by a city park in Junction. We followed the river north and east through a broad, mild valley, till we came face-to-face with a dramatic bluff — surely granite — near the low-water crossing on FM 1871. If I were to rent a vacation home…

The town of Mason — not on the river proper — has been discovered by hunters and history buffs, but not so much by weekend ranchers. No gourmet grocery shops in the otherwise full-up courthouse square, dominated by a columned anomaly of a county seat (minutely restored). We marched up Post Hill to Fort Mason, which provides hawk-eye’s views of the valley below.

Robert E. Lee and Albert Sidney Johnson were among the Civil War generals stationed here at this Indian outpost during the 1850s. The remaining officer’s quarters could use a major overhaul by some historical society. Otherwise, a superior place to understand the town, the frontier and the military’s function out here.

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January 12, 2009

River Tracing: Llano River 4

Checking into our Junction motel, we asked the desk clerk about fun things to do in Junction. She quipped, “When you find out, let me know.”

Historical Junction has not been transformed into a tourist attraction. The area around the wide-open courthouse square is wind-blown, quiet, missing pedestrian life. Instead, the action picks up along a stretch of highway where Interstate 10 traffic spills onto U.S. 84 and U.S. 377. Here one finds an array of national chains, but also at least three indigenous barbecue joints, two Tex-Mex haven, one called “La Familia,” and a diner-like variously spelled Isaack, Isaacks and Isaack’s — “a tradition since 1950.” (Endorsing a revew by one hunter who sat next to us there “that hit the spot!”)

Ranching, grass farming and services employ the Latinos and Anglos (primarily) who make up the 2,000+ inhabitants of the upper Llano valleys. Students at Texas Tech University-Junction threw a curve into the local culture.

Kimble County’s most famous son? Texas Gov. Coke Stevenson, who famously lost a close and contested U.S. Senate race to Lyndon Baines Johnson. The Telegraph Post Office and Store, pictured above, served as the postal address for Stevenson’s ranch. The spot was named for nearby Telegraph Canyon, where poles were cut for the first lines of electronic communication.

On to the 100 miles of the Llano River proper…

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River Tracing: Llano River 3

Perhaps some historian or anthropologist can solve this mystery for us: Given the steady water supply, fairly fertile floodplains and protective canyon walls, why didn’t civilization develop more readily along the banks of the North and South Llano rivers?

Of course, people lived here. According to John Graves’ “Texas Rivers,” the waterways were named for the local Indians. Then that word was corrupted into the Spanish word for “plains,” of which there are none along the rivers’ course. Were the residents harassed by the Plains tribes, preventing the kind of elaborate permanent settlements found among the Mississippian cultures of East Texas?

The Apaches and Comanches certainly kept the Spanish out. Their nearest attempt was the San Saba Mission near present-day Menard (visited on a previous river tracing), quickly wiped out in the 18th century. Although Marques de Rubi, Spanish inspector of presidios and missions, camped on the North Llano in the 1760s, little came of it.

Anglo-Americans and Germans filtered down from the north during the 19th Century. Texas Rangers set up a fort on the north branch during the final decades of the Comancheria. Transatlantic railroads and U.S. 90 passed far to the south. This valley finally opened up when Interstate 10 struck through after World War II. Still, the upper reaches of the Llano remained — and remains — comparatively untouched.

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River Tracing: Llano River 2

The North Llano River is shorter, straighter and accumulates more quickly than its southern sibling. It rises in broad canyons near the border of Sutton and Kimble counties in the vicinity of Roosevelt, a settlement we did not find (not unlike Rocksprings on the South Llano).

Its head-springs must be pretty powerful, because almost immediately, the North Llano is a muscular stream, spreading occasionally into reedy valleys. Pecans and hay farms dominate its banks. (Not cypress groves, as is the case with some other Hill Country rivers.)

If the south branch is relatively undiscovered by city types, the north is virtually unknown. We recorded no recreational outlets or second homes. The meager Kimble County roads — which I’m sure must be mended regularly due to intense flooding — lead to modest ranches and trailer encampments. The proximity of Interstate 10 may contribute to its unpopularity with tourist types, which didn’t bother us at all.

We headed back to Junction, where these two Llanos join, at sunset.

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January 11, 2009

River Tracing: Llano River 1

Up until now, my only acquaintance with the Llano River consisted of its swift run through the Hill Country town by the same name. Yet the headwaters of this Colorado River tributary rise high in the Edwards Plateau not that far from Mexico, more than 100 miles to the southwest. Its rugged country is broken by a fertile, pecan-dotted valley rarely interrupted by man-made lakes or civilization (and, in some places, even water.)

Joe Starr and I are tracing the Llano. Today was devoted to the north and south forks joined, aptly, in Junction. The upper reaches of the Llano creep through Edwards County near Rocksprings (above), itself an almost invisible from FM 377. That winding byway hugs the South Llano closely, crossing the clear stream in a couple of low spots. (From a distance, see the Llano Springs Ranch below.)

The chief public access is at South Llano State Park, just outside Junction. Attached to a 23,000-acre wildlife management area, the park’s got fishing, camping, picnicking, but also trails that lead to extraordinary birding blinds, where we viewed the startling black-throated sparrow, the western subspecies of the tufted titmouse (black-crested) and more cardinals and kingbirds than you can shake a stick at.

The park also contains a vast wild turkey roosting area where a flock of 800 spend the winter. Because they require isolation during this phase, the public is not allowed into the bottom-land groves where they assemble. Just below the park, the South Llano pools with the North Llano into a narrow lake in Junction.

More on the North later.

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January 2, 2009

Marfa NYE 6

Want luck on New Year’s Day? Forget the black-eyed peas. Depend instead on Hazel Barbour, Karen Aboussie, Christina Gutierrez and Susan Ghertner.

This foursome from San Antonio and Austin healed two dozen or so post-partiers with a brunch at the Marfa Hill House. The phenomenal terraced home overlooks all Marfa from the east, modest in size but a comfortable, stylish haven inside. The Dallas couple who renovated the former shack live there, but rent it out, then stay in the Airstream trailers on the property to give room to the guests. Now that’s a gracious host!

Susan Ghertner, Christina Gutierrez

We gobbled up a copious egg casserole along with mountains of other invigorating grub. Much talk on the balconies about the West Texas light, the real estate and comparisons between Marfa and other traditional Austinite retreats such as San Miguel de Allende and Santa Fe, N.M.

Amy Bryant, Palo Chalupka

Everyone shared their stories, their likes and dislikes, but I am always surprised by how much I enjoy all three places. They haven’t been ruined for me by outsiders. SMA’s core culture is so strong, so singular, that a few gringos with oversized homes can’t ruin it. (And, in fact, most keep their Mexican abodes quite in sync with the locals.) I abhor Santa Fe’s historical kitsch — mixed in with the traces of actual history — and much of its art, but can’t get enough of the climate, food and music.

Margaret Keys, Linda Shafer

So it goes with Marfa. Yes, there’s the setting, golden-yellow-brown this winter morning, a human island anchored by the distant mountains. Yes, there’s the art and cuisine, still startling in such an isolated location. But it all comes back to the people and their social good will. That includes almost everybody I’ve met there — before or after my introduction to the vibrant life behind faded wooden doors.

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Marfa NYE 5

Our Marfa NYE after-party consisted of Michael Mitchell, Victoria Corcoran, Jeff Neal, Lawrence Morgan and myself. We huddled around Quality Quinn’s capacious fireplace and talked the night away. Lawrence was the first to retire, then Michael. Victoria, full of her own fire, kindled serious discussion until about 2:30 a.m., when she and Jeff threaded their way back to the Hotel Paisano.

This sort of structural masquerade is not uncommon in Mexico and the Mediterranean, where climate, security and family culture insist on a discreet exterior leading to a felicitous interior, usually with courtyard or patio. Yet in West Texas, this practice appears to honor the authentic — many visitors have no idea that the tidy ranch-to-market buildings contain such splendors — while inviting one to peel back the skins in order to discover the many real Marfas, some imported and cosmopolitan, others indigenous and conflicted about the changes in town.

One more Marfa NYE post to come today…

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Marfa NYE 4

As we bathed in the last of the winter sun, a man approached. Half way from the ranch-ready pick-up truck to the west porch, I recognized Houston criminal defense lawyer Dick DeGuerin. Turns out DeGuerin was our near neighbor, his stuccoed house curtained by a cedar post fence.

Claire Cusack, Dick DeGuerin

Dick invited us to another neighborhood party later that night. I went to see the house, really, one of dozens in Marfa that look so modest from the outside, but are the products of profound reflection and creativity. Former Houston gallery owner Barbara Hill lives in a 100-year-old dance hall/grocery store, stripped to its bones and transformed into a minimalist masterpiece. The square windows puncturing the south wall are reflected in the rows of garden barriers. Yet inside, the pitched ceiling floats over only the suggestions of furniture or clutter.

Tigger Schexnayder, Garrick Stephens

It’s all one room, really, with a magnificent tub right in the middle of the sleeping area and a vast food preparation island/table separating the kitchen from the living area. It was the subject of a New York Times profile in 2006, but I’m convinced she’s knocked out some interior walls since then.

Stacy Wilhelm, Leigh Wilbourn

The crowd at Hill’s party matched the surroundings — calm, chic, sharp. When we returned to the Tomlinson/Sepulveda party, we heard that Hill had been crowned Miss Texas. When? Googling granted the answer: 1956.

Gill Staley, Stuart Staley

I was shocked. Barbara looks my age at most, a cross between Kathy Griffin and Joanna Gleason. I had to know: Was she really Miss Texas 1956? So one of my fellow revelers and I headed back east to ask the question squarely. Yes, she beamed, and showed us the most remarkable, silvery photograph of her with the rest of the Miss America contestants that year.

Barbara Hill, Jason Willaford

What a remarkable right-before-midnight moment. (More NYE posts to come.)

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January 1, 2009

Marfa NYE 3

After a long, blissful day of walking, reading and napping, as well as shopping for books and organic groceries, Lawrence and I settled down with pricey drinks next to a chiminea in the courtyard of the super-civilized Hotel Paisano. The cafe was packed and the outdoor scene grew livelier before we toddled down to the first and foremost party of the evening at the temporary residence of Steven Tomlinson and Eugene Sepulveda.

Kala Philo, Zac Collier, Kim Hughes

A parade of Marfans, Austinites and others relaxed into richly textured conversations. We were particularly keen to catch up with the effervescent Gail Papermaster and Fletcher Locklear, whom we inadvertently decamped from 208 Washington St.

Gail Papermaster, Fletcher Locklear, Caitlin Murray

Anticipation for 2009 tinged the air, despite anxiety about the economy and the sustainability of places like Marfa and Austin. If this kind of overriding optimism translates into action, this should be an extraordinary year for Texans, Americans and the world.

Jeff Neal, Victoria Corcoran

Among the surprise visitors were nonprofit consultant Victoria Corcoran and boyfriend/landscape designer Jeff Neal, both Marfa virgins, and the young road-tripping duo Simon Haas and Nick Blaine, the first part of the astonishingly talented Austin family that includes movie actor Lukas, the second I believe related to accountant Barbara Wohlgemuth, angel behind the former Texas Triangle.

Simon Haas, Nick Blaine, Eugene Sepulveda

Nobody seemed to mind when temperatures dipped quickly into the 20s. The clean desert air sharpened every wit and kept us ready for the other NYE assemblies.

Jessika Mann, David Roth

Three more parties to report …

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December 31, 2008

Marfa NYE 2

The first in a series of Marfa New Year’s Eve parties landed at Cochineal. This chic little eatery, long in the making, lies discreetly behind an astringent rock garden, just next to the former den of the lamented Brown Recluse on U.S. 90.

Graydon Parrish, Heath Riddle

Tom Rapp watches the front end, while partner Toshi Sakihara, ostensibly the shy one, keeps an eye on the kitchen. Their teamwork produced prodigious results at Etas-Unis on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. The stuccoed adobe Cochineal shares a long wall with their equally spare Marfa home.

Catherine Walsh, Shawn Smith

Every detail shimmers, from the copper-mesh barrel vault to the web-like, light-brushed wall finishes. And the dishes range from France to Asia and back to Texas with assured ease. Our party tried the dusky steak, sprightly lamb and tangy shrimp pasta. We shared a variety of desserts — my favorite being a moist date pudding. If Rapp and Sakihara earned a Michelin star in New York, think how this gem will play in the Texas food press.

Richard Hartgrove, Gary Cooper

Our group consisted of considerate NYE hosts Steven Tomlinson and Eugene Sepulveda, Sen. Joe Christie and his glowing wife Tana, playwright Michael Mitchell, teacher Lawrence Morgan, Judge Stephen Yelenosky and his greathearted wife Jill McCrea (Bouldin neighbors) and familiar-yet-still-unfamiliar Margaret Keys. Nearby sat Austin foursome Richard Hartgrove, Gary Cooper, Heath Riddle and Graydon Parrish, with whom we played highway tag on the way out.

Lawrence Morgan, Michael Mitchell

Other Austinites, New Yorkers and Marfans filtered in an out the humming restaurant during our meal. In front of a fire at Quality Quinn’s deceptively rustic house, a rump caucus sipped Azul tequila reposado into the star-dizzy night.

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Marfa NYE 1

Living things disappear from the desert quickly. Traces remain for ages.

In the 1880s, when the Comancheria collapsed and the transcontinental railroads punched through West Texas, conventional settlers followed. Farmers, ranchers and townfolk arrived, fatefully, during a wet spell.

Then the rains dried up. After that, the towns. That’s the way of deserts.

Marfa persisted. It kept the railroad. Later the national highway. And sufficient groundwater to turn the land between the mountains into reasonably sustainable prairie.

The trim, neatly platted and rigorously “settled” town could have withered away when Interstate 10 passed north of the Davis Mountains instead of south. Yet some zephyr continues to blow cultural wet spells its way. “Giant” in the 1950s. Donald Judd and friends in the 1970s. The Crowleys, Lamberts and Ballroom set during later decades.

Yet from a business point of view, this ranching-and-contemporary-art town is still vulnerable to economic droughts. Just six months ago, when last we visited, property values were still mesa-high, at least compared to other small West Texas towns. A recent restaurant boom included the Blue Javelina, Austin Street Cafe and the Brown Recluse.

All were shuttered when we arrived Tuesday. Maiya’s and Adobe Moon survive. So does the vibrant restaurant inside the Paisano. And the new French/Asian/Manhattan creation, Cochineal, a gift from veterans Tom Rapp and Toshi Sakihara, was packed last night (more about that joint in a later post).

Meanwhile, young Tim Johnson has taken over the Marfa Book Company, and while one coffee shop closes, another opens. Marfa Public Radio, Marfa Film Festival and Chinati Open House are, to a greater or lesser extent, the town’s foundations remain beacons.

Were the others just tender pioneers bamboozled by a false desert spring? Or had they planned on the global economy — and, thus, international tourism to boutique destinations like Marfa — thriving forever? Some went the way of conceptually hoodwinked settlers from the 1880s.

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November 29, 2008

Reborn as Texans at the Waits Farm

What kind of people invite strangers into their homes?

I’m not talking about the lady who asks the wilted salesman into her sitting room for a cool glass of water (in itself, an act of social bravery). Or, on the other end of the investment spectrum, the couple who adopts an errant child for life (soon, they are no longer strangers).

Rather, I’m interested in those who set aside parts of their homes for travelers. The most familiar of these social innkeepers tend those odd, in-between phenomena known as beds and breakfasts. Marsha and Clayton Waits operate, instead, a farm and festival.

The Waits call their rustic spread a land of “never-ending projects and possibilities.” By the dint of their creative energy, they have transformed a pack of utilitarian farm structures into cottages, bunk houses, an art barn and a party barn. These are decorated with Marsha’s idiosyncratic, recycled art projects and surrounded by Clayton’s imaginative, fecund landscaping, which includes an herb garden, koi pond, wedding chapel/shed, two-story performance stage, drum room in an empty metal container, campfires, game lawns and a stone labyrinth. The party barn includes a capacious, if dimly lighted kitchen, cafe seating and tables for poker, pool and shuffleboard. Games and music abound.

It’s the really the Waits, not the party facilities, that make the place. Quiet, perpetually smiling, Clayton vaguely resembles former Texas A&M couch Dennis Franchione in overalls. Intrepid, constantly laughing Marsha stokes social possibilities with a husky voice that could compete with Lauren Becall’s. They never intruded on my family’s privacy — if 25 gregarious people can claim privacy — but they dropped by to build fires, talk Texas and even invite their friends from Sam Houston State University days, Dewitte Lindsey and Johnny Rowling, to perform cover songs in the party barn, a gig that my family at first watched passively, then joined enthusiastically. (Lindsey, whose timbre and note-straddling resembles Johnny Cash’s, really blossomed late in the evening singing show tunes by the campfire.)

One minor, but telling observation: As the holiday progressed, my family’s urban and suburban accents deepened into primal country twangs. This was no dude-ranch transformation, but an honest reaction to the human ecology. I would never advise scratching a Texan, but socially soothe one on the Waits Farm, and native soil blossoms.

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November 23, 2008

Notes on East Texas road trip

Five hours to Nacogdoches. Five hours back.

Toll Road 130 is handy for reaching U.S. 79, my preferred route to deep East Texas. You skip the whole Round Rock mess.

Construction has slowed drastically in Hutto. Suburban boom looks half-undone due to the financial meltdown.

The only pockmarks seem to be made of metal: Mobile homes, abandoned industrial sheds and billboards, although thankfully few of those. Of course, much of the mining damage near Rockdale and Jewett is hidden from road.

Loops around larger towns, such as Palestine, are there for a reason. Take them if it’s possible.

Highways 84 and 69, then Texas 21 arc around to Nacogdoches. I’m not sure it’s the quickest way, but looked lovely going and coming.

Nacogdoches, historic toehold for the Spanish, then restless Americans in East Texas, has grown enormously since I last lingered there. The courthouse, including a savvy contemporary art center, is thriving. The drag along Stephen F. Austin University has grown up, and the campus itself has expanded, grown more dense — I was befuddled by the grand new student center. Suburbs stretch north. It was easy to get lost.

With its wide, clear shoulders, U.S. 79 is good for cooling tempers. When a faster car approaches a slower one, the latter simply pulls over, as if it were a 4-lane highway. Almost every driver who passed me waved his or her thanks.

What’s the best way to access Central Austin from Toll Road 130? I swept up U.S. 71, but until they extend the freeway from Riverside Drive to the toll road, that will always remain a stiflingly clogged rout

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November 11, 2008

Guest blogger Mandy Odgers: Heartbreak at the Texas Renaissance Festival

Guest blogger (and St. Ed’s student) Mandy Odgers contributes this entry about a Texas autumnal tradition in The Wonderful, Wondering, Wandering Mind of Mandy. (And, yes, that’s Mandy in glorious costume.)

The Festival, held for eight weeks every fall in Plantersville takes you back to the 16th Century for mirth and merriment. The familiar set-up is this: King Henry VIII is visiting New Market England, and the town scurries to open their finest shops, cook their most decadent foods and provide the most exciting entertainment. It just so happens that people from the modern world can walk into their world to be a part of the excitement.

For three years I was a part of this celebration — portraying a French princess. I laugh about it today, but admit that though the festival is pure illusion, there is a sort of magic that looms over it. It was by far the best job I ever had.

Keeping up with the created tradition of “RenFest,” I made the yearly visit over the recent Halloween weekend with my family. The shows were all there, the food was accounted for, the shops were full, but there was a difference this year: no magic. I was disappointed.

The performances by both sidewalk and stage performers, which I hold dearest to heart, were far below the standard I uphold. There was no mirth. No merriment. What was once a place for escape — leaving your century for another one that held so much fantasy — was replaced with something out of a brochure. The performers were mannequins for well-sewn costumes; their job seemed to be leading you to the nearest shop to buy memories, instead of having them.

Or had I changed? Were my eyes no longer misty with the time-traveling magic? Either way, honestly, I was heartbroken.

At its best, the Renaissance Festival emits a sort of joyous feeling: You are in a different place, allowed to be a different person, and immerse yourself into another century. But when the performers aren’t helping you along, it makes it harder to differentiate a moment from just an hour at a theme park. It just wasn’t the same.

Photo of Mandy Odgers performing at the festival: All rights reserved, 2005, Gregory L. Jones.

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October 12, 2008

California Beatitudes, No. 20: Sunset on Highway 1

Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted?

Almost every moment of this annual Indian Summer has been savored like the most precious wines. As I write, an amiable breeze brushes away all cares in our friend’s modest valley backyard. Fresh tortilla soup is on its way. UT beat OU. We can forget the economy and the poisoning of the election for a few hours more.

A good way to end the Beatitudes and Salt of the Earth entries: Sunset on California Highway 1. Why does this highway exist at all? It must cost millions to rebuild every year, what with the rock slides and fissures. And, except for a handful of cliff-hugging buildings, it serves no clear customer. Other than global consumers of its terrifyingly sublime beauty.

I’m not for heights, speed or bridges. So why drive 1? It’s a little thrilling. And a picnic where a rocky creek enters the rockier ocean clarifies why we endure so much mundane bull in our lives. For these moments.

We saw elephant seals, harbor seals and California sea lions. We heard of earthquakes, but felt none. We tasted far too much of the Golden State’s agricultural bounty. But we’ll return again. For another Indian Summer.

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California Beatitudes, No. 19: San Simeon

Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it giveth light unto all that are in the house.

(Note that I have switched from the Beatitudes to the Salt of the Earth.)

No mention of the movie is made here, not by tour guides, not during the propagandizing IMAX movie, not in the museum exhibits or gifts shops. The William Randolph Hearst story has been sanitized for your amazement. Only the “castle,” built in a trillion styles from “puzzle pieces” of art and architecture purchased for a bargain from the Old World, is left pretty much as it was.

On the surface, architect Julia Morgan’s pile a monument to sensuality. (Who was Julia Morgan?) Yet the more one hears of its obsessive evolution — revised on constant whims — and the enforced gaiety for Hollywood and America’s elite, but not too much, WRH didn’t like too much party — the more terrifying the castle felt.

Wouldn’t have missed it for the world, either in the 1930s or today. It’s a hugely important piece of American history. But by Rosebud, Orson Welles got it right.

Note to editor: If the Hearst Corporation purchases the Austin American-Statesman, please delete this entry.

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October 11, 2008

California Beatitudes, No. 18: Madonna Inn Meets Fellini

Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good looks.

At first, the Madonna Inn dazzled. The Jungle Rock Room (see posting below) appealed to some deep 1950s nostalgia. How easily I could have role-played “Sheena, Queen of Jungle” here, had I only some sharpened bamboo for spears and a bouncing blonde wig.

The dining room style was impossible to pin down — like an explosion in a Viennese pastry factory — Rococco a Go-Go. The big band played to a couple dozen misshapen dancers who looked like they escaped the B cast for “8 1/2.”

As my friend said: “The only thing missing are the midgets.” Family appreciated the scene. By that I mean: Gay men flocked to the stylistic train wreck.

To my horror, a candid birthday photo showed me to be a candidate for the Fellini cast. Oh, I know we carry in our heads a little image of what we think we look like, but this was hideously off my idealized mark. I looked 108, not 54. I wanted to run from the dinner, like Geraldine Page in “Sweet Bird of Youth.”

But then I would have missed the Men’s Room urinals, also made to look like a rocky waterfall.

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California Beatitudes, No. 17: Madonna Inn

A city on a hill cannot be hid.

Each room is styled in a different manner. Ours is the Jungle Rock room. Its twice the size of an ordinary luxury hotel room, completely enclosed by shiny, black boulders. A few huge beams criss-cross the ceiling of the bedroom, but the bathroom is entirely stone and the shower — you guessed it — is a Tarzan-worthy waterfall.

Maybe in parts of contemporaneous Las Vegas, Miami Beach or Hawaii could you have obtained such exuberant kitsch. The bedspreads are of zebra-print fake fur. What little foliage is plastic and metal. Every kid in America has wanted to stay in the Jungle Rock Room, whether or not they knew it existed.

Pictured is the next-door Caveman Room. Online images of the Jungle Rock Room fail to show the most recent renovations.

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October 9, 2008

California Beatitudes, No. 15: Central Coast Wineries

Blessed are the patient oenophilic seekers, for they shall discover the wines of Santa Barbara County.

Amid the odd pseudo-Danish architecture of the Santa Ynez Valley are wineries that remind one of Napa or Sonoma 10 or 20 years ago. Their products are robustly competitive and apt for their various dry, hilly micro-climates. Just as importantly, there’s plenty of elbow room to enjoy a quiet tasting, far away from the madding crowds of Northern California wine regions. We visited six from the 98 listed in “Wineries of Santa Barbara County.”

Koehler Winery: We were impressed by the Grenache (ask for it) and the kind service provided by Dino, a former Southwest Airlines pilot.

Roblar Winery: Among the younger outfits, this one earned the most buzz from local experts. Its handsome, spacious tasting and banquet rooms made a suitable setting for handsome, coltish wines.

Arthur Earl: Minute production quantities mean intense Rhone Valley varietals, including Viognier and Nebbiolo.

Alexander & Wayne: Another boutique spot in Los Olivos, this winery’s winner was a ripe Cabernet Franc.

Everything in this valley closes up pretty early, but the sweet folks at the rustic AJ Spike in Buellton let us slip in for late burgers, ribs and steak among their unblinking hunting trophies.

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October 8, 2008

California Beatitudes, No. 14: Voluptuous Overkill

Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy in kind.

We stopped there for my climactic birthday meal at the Slanted Door. This fusion restaurant attracts the young professionals in droves. They cling to martinis as they scoop up selections of oysters. We dallied over stuffed squid, ribeye and a shredded lamb sirloin with brown rice, as well as a clean Austrian Nigl.

Sated, we tooled down the fruitful Salinas and Santa Ynez river valleys this morning to Beullton, where we are staying at the “Sideways” motel — the kitschy but comfortable Windmill Inn. We’ll try some wineries around Santa Barbara before heading up to San Luis Opispo and the even kitschier Madonna Inn tomorrow.

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California Beatitudes, No. 13: Castro Politics

Blessed are the outcasts, for they shall be comforted.

Blue-haloed presidential candidates blinked from every window in the Castro. San Francisco’s historic gay neighborhood, increasingly straight, despite the retro amendments made by Sean Penn’s Harvey Milk biopic, was tuned to the debates. Homey bars and eateries of all variety splashed the war of words on HD screens; people put down their forks or highball glasses, watched and listened.

Proposition 8 — the statewide marriage anti-equality initiative — fixates the Castro. The generational tide may have finally turned. In most polls, the “no” voters look likely to triumph. Here, there’s more disagreement about whether the Folsom Street Festival — an annual leather jamboree — will hurt the cause, coming as it does days before the vote. Yet even this unabashed remnant of 1970s gay culture is turning slowly straight, or rather “shared,” local sources say.

At the Midnight Sun, just off Castro Street, one lone John McCain supporter nodded and grunted vigorously during the Republican’s torts and retorts. Nobody threatened him with harm. Good to know that even in Nancy Pelosi country, a civil clash of opinions is possible.

Our thoughts go to Long Center director Cliff Redd, whom we hear has suffered a heart attack. He is recovering at Seton.

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October 7, 2008

California Beatitudes, No. 12: Spork

Blessed are the hip, for they shall inherit Spork.

For the unhip — like myself — a “spork” is a spoon/fork, often stamped from plastic, distributed by fast food restaurants. It was the only utensil available in the Bundy household on “Married with Children” (I had forgotten that). Now they are tooled in handsome, mod metal for the San Francisco eatery.

The food, predictably, was not so KFC, although sly references abounded — slow-cooked pork and mussels with chipotle aioli and green beans, spicy tomato pasta with sausages, giant buttery rolls, etc. Not a tourist in sight. (Unless you count us.) And yes, Austin is waiting for Spork.

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California Beatitudes, No. 11: Amoeba Music

Rejoice, and be exceeding glad, collectors: For great is your reward at Amoeba Music.

My recent goal has been replenishing my banished vinyl collection of soundtracks and cast albums with now endangered CDs. So I purchased: “The Essential Michel Legrand,” “Sherry!” “The Wiz,” “Victor Victoria,” “Sondheim: A Musical Tribute,” “70, Girls, 70,” “Stop the World I Want to Get Off,” “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum” (1996 with Nathan Lane), “South Pacific” (2008), “The Merry Widow” (1943 with Kitty Carlisle), “Say, Darling,” “Star!” “This Is the Army,” “Of Thee I Sing” (1952 with Jack Carson), “Film Music of Bernard Herrmann,” “Busker Alley” (2007 with Jim Dale), “Lady in the Dark” (1998 London cast), “Lost Horizons” (1973 — it almost killed the movie musical genre), “Happy Hunting,” “Merrily We Roll Along” (1982 OC), “Thoroughly Modern Millie” (2002), “Applause,” “Curtains,” “Gypsy” (2003 with Bernadette Peters) and “Gypsy” (2008 with Patti LuPone).

Kip’s more sober selections: “Great Pianists of the 20th Century: Maurizio Pollini,” “Sviatoslav Richter: The Beginning of the Legend,” “Richter: The Master,” “Richter: Portrait of a Legend,” “Sviatoslav Richter: In Memorium,” “The Tallis Scholars Sing Thomas Tallis,” “Edward Elgar: The Collector’s Edition,” “Haydn Trio Eisenstadt: Beethoven Trios”

Yeh. We went a bit crazy.

Photo of LuPone by Joan Marcus.

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California Beatitudes, No. 9: Indian Summer

Since most of Texas alternates between just two seasons — Hot and Not As Hot — I grew up without Indian Summers. In San Francisco, this clarifying time provides a respite between foggy Summer and rainy Winter. Lucky that my birth week falls smack in the middle of it.

From Monterey and Land’s End to Sonoma and Yosemite, we’ve encountered nothing but apple-crisp nights and wine-soft days during our annual October stays. The climax so far this year was a picnic in the Marin Headlands overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge and the bay from the Point Benita Lighthouse — with its fragile wooden suspension bridge — to the definitional Oakland Hills.

During a calm, clear Indian Summer day, with Guardi light lifting the breatheless cerulean dome above, the view recalls the Mediterranean without bowing to any Old World superiority.

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California Beatitudes, No. 8: Birders at Hawk Hill

Many of them. On Hawk Hill in the Marin Headlands, birders gather to watch and count the raptors that circle the coastal uplifts as they migrate north or south. Fourteen species are commonly sighted there. Scores and scores every day in October.

“Juvi accip above the East Bay hills!” “Two adult sharp-shins at the tree line!” “Osprey dipping below those clouds. I called it.”

As in any closed social group, jargon and fluid hiearchy rule. The 15 or so volunteers are all business as they raise their “binocs” or foot-long cameras to the azure skies. That is, until a blazing red-shouldered hawk dives and skitters repeatedly like an acrobat right at eye level. As one, they let out gasps of pleasure.

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October 6, 2008

California Beatitudes, No. 7: Eupicurean Hosts

Before we rose for our first California breakfast, dear friend and house host Paul Talley had already prepared quail eggs stuffed with wild mushrooms resting in tiny prosciutto nests, complemented by cubes of fresh Mexican papaya, triangles of multigrain toast and coolers of tangy guayabera juice.

Our Marin Headlands picnic lunch later that day consisted of feta-infused chicken with sun-dried tomatoes and couscous, Caprese salad with garden-grown tomatoes, homemade pita chips, dolmas, thin slices of soujuk (a dried beef sausage), Greek olives, finished off with rounds of Turkish Delight, baklava and figs dipped in Scharffen Berger chocolate, all flooded with West Coast Viognier.

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California Beatitudes, No. 6: Suburbia

When a developer lays out a suburb in Texas, planning often goes Wild West. Does the urban center encourage density, diversity, sustainability and aesthetic neighborliness? Almost like adolescents, the city’s suburbs tend to reject those regional restrictions. Bring on the billboards!

In Northern California, they think ahead. Even unpretentious, working-class Dublin, where we plant our Tri-Valley camp each year, protects its surrounding hills, xeriscapes its avenues, builds exemplary (but not ultra-exemplary) schools, clusters smart new developments and inserts parks and community zones into each mixed-use district. In this decidedly traditional ‘burb, we can walk to two Asian supermarkets and a nifty Mediterranean food market.

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California Beatitudes, No. 5: Santa Cruz Boardwalk

The Santa Cruz Boardwalk is a bit seedy but it’s joyfully reminiscent of 100 years of inexpensive seaside fun. I guess the only thing like it in Texas probably was Galveston at some distant point in the past.

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October 5, 2008

California Beatitudes, No. 4: Pigeon Point Lighthouse

Or at least they did during the past century on the rough, rocky coast between Half Moon Bay and Santa Cruz. The white tower, whose residences now serve as a youth hostel, is crumbling slightly and needs the sweet attention of lighthouse lovers.

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California Beatitudes, No. 3: Half Moon Bay

The Half Moon Bay Art & Pumpkin Festival ensured fields of glowing photo ops, including corn and straw mazes, while the roadside markets abounded with charming products like deep fried artichokes.

Photo Sarah Ward to BBC News

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California Beatitudes, No. 2: In-N-Out

The small, palm-strewn California burger chain with its famously fresh ingredients and menu unchanged since 1948 is so popular with all ages, highway exits have been redesigned to bear the traffic.

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October 4, 2008

California Beatitudes, No. 1: Micro-Climates

Overheard while deplaning at San Francisco International Airport: “You can walk 10 blocks and be boilin’, 10 blocks and be freezing down by the bay.”

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September 22, 2008

Post-Ike Birthday Party in Houston

A sickly sweet pall hung over Houston. Decaying vegetation rose like Constable haystacks. Water lingered in low spots.

It was my first visit to Houston since Hurricane Ike. The immediate emergencies had passed. Three siblings and their families were still without electricity on Sunday, but grocery stores had power. So pantries were stocked. And the weather remained mild.

Odd for Houston, drivers behaved well. They slowed to stops at intersections and allowed others to pass. Similarly, neighbors helped neighbors. Need power out the back of a store? No problem. A tree crushed your garage and truck? We’ll help.

We gathered for my mother’s 80th birthday. Only three grandchildren could make it, yet all six children and most spouses settled into stories and family gossip. At her insistence, it was a small, improvised affair.

I heard family stories I hadn’t before — a benefit of aging. For instance, Elizabeth Keating Barnes was dazzled by math. Yet, in her junior year at the University of Texas, she hit an intellectual wall. She encountered a similar conceptual barrier later in chemistry, so she visited the career center, which recommended teaching young kids, which is exactly what she did for a while.

I suppose in the late 1940s, there were no programs promoting women engineers or researchers. The teacher route was the only acceptable option.

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September 15, 2008

Sexy City

I keep repeating it and nobody seems to believe me: Austinites are gorgeous!

The readers of Travel & Leisure magazine are backing me up.

Austin also did well in other categories: Friendly (No. 2); Intelligent (No. 3) and Active (No. 2). We slip a little on the Style and Diversity factors (No. 8 in both contests). Overall, it’s a great place to meet people. And I can attest to the social ease with which locals interact with strangers.

I have a great job.

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September 14, 2008

Old Man (and Woman) of the Sea, Part 3

Continued from posting below…

Then came Rita. Just days after the shocking images of a Katrina-devastated New Orleans, Hurricane Rita bore down with Category 5 winds on Galveston and Houston. Weathercasters predicted a catastrophe that would erase the 1900 storm from the record books. My siblings freaked.

What my parents appeared to ignore was the prospect of weeks without water or power — especially air-conditioning — in Houston’s evil humidity. An ugly way to go.

I was wrong again. Rita veered and those who chose Interstate 10 spent an awful couple of days stuck on the roadside.

Along comes Ike. Like any good child, I resorted to subterfuge. When I hear they might be without power or water, I plan to deliver ice and other supplies to them and my siblings, hoping to lure my parents to Central Texas during my mission of mercy. (Meanwhile, the rest of our family is accounted safe by cell phone.)

It almost worked. Then, as I’m ready to purchase giant ice chests for the journey, the call comes.

“We have water and electricity!” my mother says. “No need to come!”

And weather, at least in Austin, simultaneously turns glorious.

“It’s like the story of Corpus Christi,” my father says. “The Spanish were driven by a storm into the bay. The next day, like it is after a hurricane, was beautiful. ‘What feast day is it?’ asked the thankful ship captain. ‘Corpus Christi,’ said the padre. So we got a Latin name for an Hispanic city.”

Associated Press photo of Surfside as Ike approached

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Old Man (and Woman) of the Sea, Part 2

Continued from posting below…

This resistance to basic safety from my mother and father first escalated into conflict during a family trip to Pensacola, Fla. during the 1990s. A tropical storm, predicted to reach hurricane strength by landfall, took dead aim at the Redneck Riviera. Veterans of the Texas coast, we kept an eye cocked on the television news, then found ourselves the subjects of one newscast as “that crazy Texas family who hadn’t yet evacuated.”

“You are setting a terrible example for the children,” I fumed. “And they are going to spend the night worried sick about their grandparents.”

I was wrong. As soon as the kids discovered the motel pool, they forgot about my parents and their windy romance on the balcony. And it all turned out OK. The storm veered, then petered out.

More to come…

Associated Press photo of Ray Wilkinson as he sits on the porch at his home after riding out Hurricane Ike in Surfside . Wilkinson was the only person to remain in Surfside Beach during the storm.

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Old Man (and Woman) of the Sea, Part 1

“In Surfside Beach, a town of 800, the police chief asked one stubborn couple, David and Dondi Fields, to write their names and Social Security numbers on their forearms with a black marker in case something bad happened to them.” — Associated Press

“If your parents could get there, they would. Really.” — Valerie Koehler, my sister, prior to Hurricane Ike

And tropical storms played a big role in that history. Carla virtually wiped out Surfside Beach, our working-class summer retreat, in 1961. Brown waters from Claudette in 1980 and Allison in 2001 topped the usual marks for the Houston area’s everyday storm floods. Alicia rocked Houston in 1983, much the same way as Ike, popping skyscraper windows, trashing enormous trees, but mostly sparing human life. Batteries, beer, water, flashlights, snacks, ice, candles … how many times have we prepped for a storm by stocking up on these camp-out essentials?

You know where I’m going with this: My parents, the evacuation refuseniks.

More to come…

Associated Press photo of Surfside after Ike

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September 13, 2008

Preliminary update: Surfside safe

Readers sent supportive messages about Surfside, the beach community hard hit by Hurricane Ike long before the eye swept ashore just up the coast at Galveston. Located on the slender sands of Follett’s Island, Surfside has been one of our hometowns since the early 1960s and headquarters for the annual Reading Week.

Like everyone else, we watched the coverage from the coast until early in the morning, then switched it back on as soon as we woke. The news could be much worse, considering the direct hit from a Category 2 or 3 storm. CNN confirms 3 deaths. Damage is bad from Galveston to Houston, and the entire area is without power.

Yet, astonishingly, the first news from the Weather Channel informs us that Surfside’s houses still stand on their stilts. CNN interviewed the mayor, who said only 20 structures were completely lost. Who knows how much damage the structures suffered when the water reached above the stilts, but given the video and other images from yesterday, Surfside may have dodged a bullet.

Among other posts to expect from Out & About this weekend expect reports from hurricane-fueled partying here — last night and tonight — from evacuees and locals.

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September 12, 2008

Ike Doesn't Like Surfside

Yet where I feel most connected to personal history is a strand of sand on the Gulf Coast where my families have spent part of every year since Hurricane Carla in 1961. Surfside, a village of mostly stilted homes on Follett’s Island, is still a secret to most Austinites, who know Galveston to the north or Port A to the south. Yet between family vacations and our annual Reading Week in February, Surfside’s blissful peace has been my most welcome recreation.

The first year we summered there, the beach near the Freeport jetty was littered with the bones of houses destroyed during Carla. Even during a mild storm, the island is submerged. I can’t imagine the havoc Hurricane Ike will wreak tonight, and I hope every soul has been evacuated. We may spend Reading Week 2009 elsewhere, but I will not forsake my other hometown.

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August 7, 2008

Dallas in Austin: A curious conversation

Dallas marketer: I was wondering if you could assist me with a few questions about some hot spots in Austin where the “crowds” will be. I am putting together a live marketing campaign set up by the Dallas Visitors Bureau that will take place Aug. 9 and 10th - a Sat. and Sun. over that weekend … we are looking for some high foot traffic areas to market through our D TOWN acapella Motown quartet. Basically, the group sings 3 Motown songs about what Dallas has to offer as a vacation or tourist spot.

Dallas marketer: Thanks for your suggestions. However, our demographic is not college students or the late night partiers of that age … we would want to hit the areas with tourists, business professionals and families (people that would travel down to Dallas or would consider it). Out of the areas you mentioned, which ones would be best and where are the largest amounts of people walking by?

Austin columnist: You got me. Tourists visit exactly those locations I mentioned. They like what’s Austin about Austin. Maybe you could go to the Domain, an upscale outdoor shopping mall in North Austin, which is a lot like Dallas.

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August 4, 2008

Mountain West No. 14: Politics West

The Mountain West is a key battleground in this year’s presidential election. Alert to their unexpected roles as kingmakers, Westerners are engaging in lively debate. Most observers tend to think that Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada are genuinely up for grabs, while Montana or Idaho are long shots for Democrat Barak Obama. Utah, Wyoming and Arizona belong to John McCain, the conventional wisdom goes.

The rivalry among ruling Republicans out West seems starkest in Idaho, where Republican Rep. Bill Sali faces conservative-to-moderate Democrat challenger Walt Minnick. Sali is such an outspoken cultural warrior, repeatedly linking abortion to breast cancer, for instance, that Idaho House Speaker Bruce Newcomb, a Republican, said of Sali: “That idiot is just an absolute idiot.” An opening for Dems?

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Mountain West No. 13: 'Lonesome Dove'

The Bill Wittliff-penned TV miniseries — which turns 20 next year — matches the book character for character, scene for scene, almost line for line. At least it does in my memory. Only one character, a thin prostitute, seemed unfamiliar to me.

It helped reading this grand epic to hear the voices of Tommy Lee Jones, Robert Duvall, Danny Glover, Anjelica Houston and other indelible performances as I read the dialogue. Soon enough, my traveling companions were complaining that my own conversation too closely resembled that of the Hat Creek outfit. Mark my word: People will be reading “Lonesome Dove” for as long as they recall the American West.

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Mountain West No. 12: Four Wisenhiemers, Part 2

(Page down for Part 1.)

“You are right.”

“That’s because you know more than anyone alive on the subject.”

“If I were lost in the middle of the Sahara, I’d trust you to lead me back to Bengal.”

These are the tools of the socially adept know-it-all traveling among know-it-alls.

I can think of no three more welcome words to the average smart aleck than: “You are right.” It ends more arguments, lowers more temperatures than almost any other retort. And my companions for the Mountain West tour — Joe, Edith and Rob — have perfected many permutations on this simple ameliorant.

Edith is a whiz at animal behavior, which helped not only on the horseback riding trail, but also whenever guessing how close one can get to grizzly bears without inciting a fatal attack. She also can — in sentences no grammarian could diagram — describe more weird novelties than Dickens could pack into “The Old Curiosity Shop.”

Rob’s strengths tend toward the verbal as well. He has mastered, oh, a half dozen modern languages, plus Greek and Latin, which means he can tell us to “shove it” in more ways than the average United Nations translator can.

Yet he doesn’t shout “stai zitto,” because he has learned that we can all be masters in our own minds, and who wants to ground down especially sensitive digits?

Which is not to say that bears were the only grouches on this trip. Compassion for strangers can be interpreted as criticism of dear friends, for instance, and misreading Google Maps on an iPhone can cause just as much social friction as foulest insult spoken in any tongue, ancient or modern.

Still, at the end of the two weeks, which afforded us slices of Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho and Utah, and included seven days at glorious (melting) Glacier National Park, we chattered excitedly about a road trip to Mexico or Central America, then perhaps Alaska. Or, if the dollar mended, back to the Greek islands, or meeting up with friends in Australia.

One must cherish old friends. Like family, you can’t choose them. And you don’t want to lose them.

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Mountain West No. 11: Four Wisenheimers, Part 1

“These deck chairs aren’t very comfortable.”

“Yes, they are.”

“Well, they are and they aren’t.”

This conversation, engaged on the porch of a log cabin overlooking the Rockies, pretty much summed up the Hegelian social pattern — statement, counterstatement, resolution — of a two-week trip to the Mountain West just completed with longtime friends — all confirmed know-it-alls.

How do four wisenheimers stay friends for 30 years and still travel at close quarters without driving one another loco weed?

And, after all, we share so much. Including the urge to chasten.

Joe Starr, for instance, teaches English as a Second Language to recent immigrants at Houston Community College, where he is afforded endless opportunities for tender amendment. Rob Kendrick guides undergraduates at Colorado College through the dark wood of comparative literature, and while his students may demonstrate greater literacy than Joe’s, they nevertheless need constant correction. Edith Sorenson assists executives at the global accounting firm of Deloitte & Touche, and what these starched collars don’t know about the real world could fill more encyclopedias than Diderot ever imagined.

Your correspondent, of course, has served this newspaper as critic, editor and now social columnist for almost 20 years, and let’s just say the art of gentle rectification has been my constant companion. (Ask John Kelso, he of the canned weenies at dinner parties, if you doubt my word.)

We all met during the late 1970s. And we’ve tracked across more than one continent together, including a three-week retracing of the Lewis and Clark expedition during that historic road trip’s bicentennial year. (It proved the subject of my first serial blogging experience, too, in 2003.)

So how exactly do we get along? More to come …

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August 3, 2008

Mountain West No. 10: Colorado

The severe beauty of the intermontane deserts stretched seemingly without limit until we reached unlikely oases such as Green River, Utah, and, later, Grand Junction, Colorado. These small cities and similar towns along the way embody riverine cultures, everything clinging to thin silvery streams, while unforgiving cliffs loom like Judgment Day on either side.

Familiarity also loosened up a our little travel troop, and while Edith finally escaped to see “Dark Knight” — I’d already caught the movie during Austin previews — the rest of us watched “Latter Days” again on DVD. Sure, it’s flawed, but I wept like a sentimental fool during this sweet gay romantic comedy. Made me all the more homesick for Kip after two weeks out west.

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Mountain West No. 9: Utah

I had traveled across the mountains and basins of south central Utah in the 1980s, then returned to Salt Lake City, Provo, Sundance and Cedar City in the 1990s. This was my first drive down from Idaho, so my eyes widened at the low, broad hills and, especially, the signs that warned “blinding dust storms” and game migration routes (you mean, like caribou?).

I had remembered the wide streets and gorgeous central neighborhoods of SLC, but forgot how disorienting the numbered, directional streets are, despite the basic grid. We ate decent pub food and lapped up local brews at Squatter’s Brewery and toddled around the downtown entertainment districts, but didn’t seek out further nightlife after a disastrous attempt to navigate back to our motel on North Temple West.

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Mountain West No. 8: Idaho

Weaving in and out of the ranges of the Mountain West reinforces a truism: If man can destroy beauty, he will. Down from the Montana Rockies, through the Bitteroot Range — so familiar from our Lewis & Clark road trip — and across the Sawtooth Range in Idaho, we’d drive through highlands of intense greenery or arid majesty (depending on the side of the mountain). Then, inevitably, nearing valley towns, we’d encounter cheesy billboards, flimsy structures and rusting junkyards.

We arrived in Boise bushed — Rob did almost all the mountain driving — and downtown was almost deserted on a Monday night. The only people soaking up Boise’s extensive and effective urban rehabilitation were exceedingly friendly skate punks. We ate uninspiring Mexican food served by a classy, lightly mustached guy from Guadalajara.

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July 28, 2008

Mountain West No. 7: Horseback Socializing

Socializing on a horse trail through the Rocky Mountain woodlands assumes a linear form. The lead wrangler riding point or drag calls out advice, using an individual horse’s name, which then is transmitted to the equine companions by way of the rider’s tack and softer verbal cues. The junior wrangler, if there is one, tends to watch for potential problems, such as that inexperienced rider whose saddle is slipping precariously along the Lake McDonald Trail in Glacier National Park.

Early on our ride, lead wrangler, Della, from Lubbock, Tex., boomed out explanations of the geology, botany and zoology of the highlands above the lake. My mount, Comanche, a tall pinto, had earned a reputation for stubbornness and balking, but responded alertly to physical and verbal cues within a few minutes. Other horses were not so companionable, testing their riders as they wandered off for bark rubs or lowered their heads of quick snacks.

For much of the ride, Keenan rode drag behind me. Recently of Portland, Ore., twentysomething Keenan (pictured) had engaged as a first-year wrangler for a summer job and a break from welding. He operates by the philosophy: “Let riders talk about what they want to talk about.” Naturally, being a reporter, that meant I discovered more about him and the social world of the trail ride than he did about newspapering.

Keenan, who hopes to land a work visa as welder in Australia soon, recalled in a calm, reedy voice the girl from Kentucky who warbled during the entire ride and tried to whisk him back home, a trophy cowboy. Then there were the fancy folks who tried to bribe him with dinner or extra tips if he would lead them on private, less restrained rides along the trails. (Nothing doing on these steep trails through heavy woods.) A couple from Beverly Hills complained the entire time about the odor (who doesn’t like the smell of horses?), the discomfort and possible hygiene infractions

Keenan had learned a lot more about human nature than he realized during this summer job, which kept him out of doors, exactly where he wanted to be. And he worked Glacier before the namesake ice rivers melted (predicted for 2020). He reminded me of Newt from “Lonesome Dove,” still a tender sprout in his own mind, but already wiser than many of his Portland mates who chose college first over a life of unpredictable adventures.

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July 27, 2008

Mountain West No. 6: Canada

If it’s Saturday, it must be Canada. We hopped over the border to Alberta yesterday to sample the Canadian side of the International Peace Park, there known a Waterton Lakes.

The name, and that of its center, Waterton Township, should give you a clue about the comparative tidiness, geniality, quaintness and, well, Canadian-ness of this national park. Impressive lodges, manifold ice cream parlors, three-wheel bicycles and immaculately kept lawns, as well as the usual spectacular scenery we’ve come to know over at Glacier National Park.

The big excitement came as we left, when two yearling grizzlies, long-legged, black-bottomed and probably adolescent males, first nosed around brush, then dived into a nearby pond right next to the road, attracting quite a crowd. Edith also thinks she saw a wolf not long after that in the high grass pointed to the American border. Earlier in the day, it was more mountain goats and bighorn sheep, once exotic, now commonplace in our new found nature experience.

The border guards on each side of the international ine could have been — and may be — brothers cheerful, bright-eyed, despite having to ask the same two dozen questions of everyone. We laughed helplessly when the Canadian guard queried if we were carrying currency in excess of $10,000. Tired, I guess, of dodging Angus in the Blackfeet Reservation that one crosses to reach the high-mountain border.

The older American guard, coming back, poked fun at our short stay in Canada. “Yeah, they went over to purchase some dirt,” he deadpanned, looking at the mud caking our transport. The younger guard made a mild druggie joke when Rob said the only tobacco we carried was a pack of “smokes.” Homeland Security is not so tense high in the Rockies.

Then it was back to the log cabin for more up-close nature, like the hummingbirds who were our constant companions.

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July 25, 2008

Mountain West No. 5: Hiking Glacier

Two days. Two long hikes. Lots of national parks adventure.

Wednesday we scuttled up gravel roads on Glacier National Park’s northwest boundaries to the Logging Lake trail. Nine miles round trip through dense, moist forest undergrowth. Heard elk. Saw reddish deer. Warnings, as always, of bear country, but also recent posts on mountain lions. I was concerned about the lack of visual warning among the chest-high undergrowth that clogged the trail, but nothing came of it. Rob swam in narrow, almond-shaped Logging Lake.

No humans until the end of the hike, more than five hours later, when we heard a “hallooo” over the coming rise. There appeared a roundish couple, older than I, who looked like characters out of Trollope, perhaps a Methodist deacon and his wife, who said: “Just out on a short walk.” Short walk? They have more stamina than I do. “Any bears?” they asked. “Not yet.” we replied.

Bears came the next day in the form of a grizzly family — a cinnamon sow and two darker cubs, watched from across a road, a swampy area and a rise. They frolicked not 150 yards away, but we felt no danger. That makes two big “gets” for wildlife on this trip — grizzlies and mountain goats. (Joe saw another mountain goat that day, scampering from precipice to precipice.)

Later Thursday, we hiked eight miles along Two Medicine Lake not far from East Glacier. Higher, drier and infinitely more scenic than the day before, with glaciers mantling the crown of peaks around us. I’m still having problems with ascents. My heart pounds in my throat. I’m convincing it’s my medication, or a nonpathalogical arrythmia. I have no problems with distances, just ascents. Lots of ground squirrels and marmots at higher elevations.

Charismatic birds identified so far: Bald eagle, osprey, violet and green swallow, rufous hummingbird, dark-eyed junko, sharp-tailed grouse (and chick), red-naped sapsucker, loons (heard, not seen), pine siskin, lots of ravens and a grey falcon that soars over the wetlands adjacent to our cabin. These wetlands out of a jungle movie extend down to the Middle Fork of the Flathead River, which we explored today, Friday.

Later, a helpful wrangler identified a bird’s song we could not: Two or three long whistle-like pitches, held out until they diminished. It’s a varied thrush. Sounds like a soft referee’s whistle.

We ate huckeberry pie last night!

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July 22, 2008

Mountain West No. 4: Glacier National Park

Best national park day ever: Glaciers slipping like shrouds off spiny mountains, cerulean lakes cleft into shale cliffs, silent hikes to hidden waterfalls, ponds and lookouts.

A bighorn sheep came right up to the car on the Going to the Sun Road, the most spectacularly scenic stretch of roadway I’ve ever encountered. Then, the greatest get of all for a former card-carrying junior member of the National Wildlife Federation: Two families of mountain goats gathered at a salt lick. Thought I’d never see mountain goats in the wild — they stay at the highest elevations usually — so we lingered over the experience.

Rob and Joe organized most of our Glacier National Park outing. Upcoming: A longer hike to the north, rafting on the Flathead River, horseback riding with Edith (when she returns from Chicago), a sidetrip up into the Canadian part of the international park, Alberta way.

Now here’s the deal. Don’t imagine we’re backpacking into the back country, braving alpine ascents on spiked boots. Remember, I’ve undergone two heart procedures and am still calibrating three cardiovascular medications, so it’s the easy to moderate difficulty trails for me. Still, we hiked for almost four hours today and plan on eight hours tomorrow.

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Mountain West No. 3: Missoula & West Glacier

We’re in a log cabin deep in the northern Montana woods outside Glacier National Park, and yet we still get WiFi because a tech savvy person in a nearby lodge set it up. Will wonders never cease?

This morning, dallied at the Fort Missoula historical site, along with its museums and preserved buildings, including a forest fire lookout post. Better than average, old-fashioned history center is the centerpiece. Didn’t know the fort served as a detainment camp for Italian merchant marines and workers at the World’s Fair, even before the U.S. entered the World War II. Also used to detain Japanese Americans and earlier as the headquarters for an experimental all-black bicycle brigade.

The afternoon was spent at the National Bison Wildlife Reserve, a grassy, multi-pronged mountain with dramatic views of the Missoula valley and a herd of almost 500 free-ranging bison, also elk, pronghorns, etc. Didn’t know that wild bisons had dwindled to a mere hundred from more than 30 million before Theodore Roosevelt and others stepped in to save the iconic species.

Lake Flathead, one of those vast, crystalline mountain lakes, extends almost to the Glacier area. Some parts of the western shore are pristine, but most of it has been despoiled by unfettered commercialism. We ate at The Backroom in Columbia Falls, another excellent purveyor of meat, but also not-too-sweet fry bread.

Our hosts here outside West Glacier are from North Dakota and Colorado (“got to be too many people there”). Despite their stated longing for isolation, they seem to know the neighbors for miles around and regularly house guests in their home as well. Their star is a 140-pound, coal-black Newfie named Smoky, just as we imagined Seaman from the Lewis and Clark expedition looked.

The only other strangers we’ve met during the long journey up here were working in motels and eateries. Lots of Upper Midwest accents. A few cowboys and Mormons. All friendly, open-faced, if slightly wary.

More on the wildlife and the books we are reading later, but first, page down to the Fortunate 500, which we are unspooling one category at a time. Sorry to flog the blog in the blog, but someone’s got to do it.

Travel photos later.

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July 21, 2008

Mountain West No. 2: Wyoming & Montana

Began the day with a short walk in the cottontail-flecked hills above Casper. Joe flushed a pronghorn just steps from our motel.

Stopped by the National Trails Interpretive Center in a over-designed building overlooking the city. Learned a lot about the Oregon, California and Mormon trails, all of which threaded through this ford on the North Platte River. The traffic over the trails in the mid-19th Century reached almost 500,000 migrants, called by the center the biggest unforced migration in history, but that’s hard to justify when you consider transatlantic immigration or even recent Mexican migration north.

Just on the Montana side of the border, we fanned out over the Little Big Horn Battlefield (pictured). Located on the Crow Reservation, the monument includes dignified, well-designed tributes to the native fallen. One can see why this spot on elevated mounds attracted such reverence, despite the rather inglorious details of the battle.

Bozeman feels like a typical college town. Butte, on the other hand, is an industrial ghost town, one third the size of its 1917 population at the peak of the copper boom. It reminds me of small cities in the Rust Belt, where the pawn shops and taverns dominate the midtown streets. Despite the tales of spectacular environmental damage in the vicinity, the valley, like so many in Montana, is a cool, dry respite, complemented by the homey fare at Fred’s Diner in the Uptown district.

We’re in Missoula now, staying at a motel, new to me, called C’mon In. Fashioned as a upland lodge with a huge atrium of stripped timber, larger than usual indoor pool, giant stone fireplace, mutliple hot tubs and patio furniture outside each room, it offers an ersatz luxury — everything looks apres ski, but don’t scratch the surface. Not that we don’t appreciate the comfort after yesterday’s safari.

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July 19, 2008

Mountain West No. 1: Colorado Springs and Casper

We’re in Casper Wy. A real Jack Twist is just down the way at the Motel 6. No kidding. Hanging out on the balcony, tipping back a longneck, curling a smile every time one of our party passes.

Yesterday, we ate at Saigon Springs again in Colorado Springs. Located next to a mini-golf course in the north ‘burbs, it’s a place for robust flavors and an unexpectedly vibrant crowd. Glad to return on this trip after provisioning our journey west at nearby Costco, etc.

Early this morning, joined by Joe Starr, Rob Kendrick and Edith Sorenson, we headed north in our rented black Chevy Trailblazer. Once we evaded the Empire of Denver, we lunched in Fort Collins at the Charco Broil, clearly the best restaurant in town back in the 1970s and still happening. Hints of hippie, pioneer, road house, all kinds of decorative themes executed in heavy materials. The steak sandwiches are fantabulous, as is the sasparilla.

Most of the day, we sailed through Colorado and Wyoming grasslands — which Georgia O’Keefe could have painted — via two-lane highways, stopping in Virginia Dale, Medicine Bow and other dry specks on the map. Wanted to explore the the Fossil Cabin Museum on 487, but it was not only closed, it was for sale.

Pronghorns abound. Waterfowl in the rain-filled hollers. Hawks patrol the endless hills. We continue north in the morning.

Casper itself is a green cleft folded inside soft, brown bluffs along the North Platte River. Only 50,000 souls make their homes here, but it’s the closest thing to a city for hundreds of miles and thus serves as a giant social magnet. Downtown, mostly one drag, has maintained four cinemas, which I can’t recall seeing in any other place this size, all of them flocked with activity-starved kids.

We dined at an acceptable Italian spot called Botticelli, then explored the central city a bit. This morning, Joe and I took a short walk and spied cottontail after cottontail.

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July 16, 2008

Thoughtful advice for house hosts

Last week, we shared readers’ advice for house guests. Now it’s the hosts’ turn.

Create a restful haven for your guests.

Make your guest room feel like a hotel/spa. Lots of white towels, travel size toiletries, books and magazines about local attractions and activities.

Have a plunger in the bathroom!

Explicitly invite your guests to have free rein with the kitchen, bathrooms and remote control. Don’t assume they know they’re welcome to autonomy in your home.

Give a tour when your guests arrive, so they know which room is theirs, which is yours, and which rooms they’re not supposed to enter.

Open bar is an open invitation for overnight guests. If you don’t find some creative way to limit the libations, be prepared to wake up to people sacked out on your couch, floor, bathroom tile, etc.

Always be prepared for the unexpected. Back up for everything including bar, bathroom, and medical emergencies.

Sleep in your guest room and use the guest bath.

Watching TV doesn’t count as a way of entertaining out-of-towners. Hide the remote from yourself.

Give yourself a few non-negotiable minutes each day to go outside and take deep breaths.

Don’t run your guests ragged. They should catch their plane with a sigh of nostalgic pleasure, not relief.

Let your guests discover Austin on their own and make their own memories about our fair city.

Never invite anyone to stay for longer than you can resist resurrecting unresolved issues or smoldering resentments.

Be clear with your invitation’s start and end dates, and how it will impact your schedule. My friends in Charleston have this disclaimer framed in their beach house: “If we get drunk on Sunday and invite you to stay until Tuesday, we don’t mean it.”

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July 11, 2008

Sweet 16 Rules for House Guests

“Call before you arrive — don’t just show up.”

“Arrive with a gift. Wine is a good bet.”

“Offer to help, but don’t insist if the host and hostess would rather do it themselves.”

“Make as small a footprint as possible. For example, if you are sleeping on the couch, restore the couch every day before you leave.”

“Always be mindful of your host’s schedule. You shouldn’t make his/her life revolve around what you want to do.”

“Adapt.”

“Don’t ‘make ranch!’ Meaning, don’t make yourself so comfortable like it’s your own house. Be respectful.”

“Please do not snoop in bathroom drawers.”

“We expect self sufficiency (ask for what you need), energy efficiency (turn off the lights and air when you leave) and smoking only on the porch.”

“Don’t lose my spare house keys and don’t bring any strangers home with you for an impromptu party at 1 a.m. on a Sunday night”

“Guests, you are welcome here, be at your ease / Get up when you’re ready, go to bed when you please / You don’t have to thank us or laugh at our jokes / Sit deep and come often, you’re one of the folks” — taken from a sampler embroidered by the reader’s mother.

“The only reason for going into my bedroom is if you are planning on spending the night in it.”

“Fish and visitors smell after three days.”

“Always take a present to leave for your host to find after your departure. It can be a small book, some scented soaps or their favorite tea.”

“There’s a lot of behind-the-scenes effort that goes into hosting someone in your home overnight (clean linens and guestroom, meal planning and preparation, entertainment, being a gracious host — even when you’re not a morning person). Send a handwritten note after your stay thanking your host for their hospitality (sending flowers is divine).”

If you haven’t seen already, Eric Shanteau, the Austin-trained Olympic swimmer who has appeared in this column a few times, has been diagnosed with testicular cancer. He plans to compete in Beijing anyway. It’s ironic that the mainstream media has paid little attention to Shanteau up to this point. Now his name will not be mentioned on air without reference to his medical condition.

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July 7, 2008

Scratching the vast surface of Houston

Houston, like Asia, is incomprehensible.

The thing about Houston, however, is that hidden behind the zillion miles of strip centers are little slices of Nirvana. Took my parents to Bistro Provence on Memorial Boulevard, an unassuming place that served, during a monsoon-drenched lunch, exquisite poached fish, beef stew and salad Nicoise topped by ruby-rare tuna medallions.

Part of the human scenery at this bistro was a couple in their late 50s, I’d guess, dressed in suburban Texan golf gear, but speaking with clipped English accents (BP or Shell transplants?). They certainly knew how to experience a Southern European meal, taking their time over several courses, each diner savoring a separate bottle of wine. If you can’t summer in Provence, this seems a more than acceptable way to substitute for a few hours.

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June 3, 2008

River Tracing: Pedernales River Photo Blog

Readers sometimes wonder why a blog devoted mostly to socializing in Austin, along with some dollops of celebrity gossip and entertainment news, would also feature photos and reports from the blogger’s travels. Think of it kind of like “The View from Your Window” feature on Andrew Sullivan’s “The Daily Dish.” Just a visual break from all the party madness.

Saturday, Joe Starr and I traced the relatively short Pedernales River, only 100 miles or so long. It rises in spring-fed pools and dry hollows in southeast Kimble County.

Between Harper and Fredericksburg, it begins to take regular shape. (“It’s not a river until you can hear it,” Joe says.) The country here is hilly, but not spectacularly so. Pastures sometimes drop right down to the riverbed. Eventually one can find green scoops deep enough for a cooling dip.

Man has tamed the Pedernales — at least somewhat — at Stonewall and Johnson City. Below, a couple enjoys the peace of a weir at the foot of the LBJ Ranch.

The river turns more rugged at Pedernales Falls State Park, downstream from Johnson City. Here, flash floods put vacationers in constant danger, and playing on the huge boulders by the falls, even when almost dry like this week, is carefully policed.

Perhaps the loveliest section of the Pedernales, or at least the easily accessible part, can be found near Hamilton Pool Road, where people hike, kayak or fish in summer splendor.

The Pedernales empties into the Colorado River. During the recent drought, one could see the rivers connect, but now the Pedernales branch of Lake Travis is full — and full of lake enthusiasts, including a little knot of boaters, bathers and jetskiiers at Camp Pedernales, an old tourist camp that must date back to the earliest days of the Highland Lakes.

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May 26, 2008

Boston reverie

Last Boston recollections:

Pop’s: Upscale diner food on Tremont Street, fried egg BLT for brunch, soothed with divine fresh blackberry bellinis, elegant, almost Parisian surroundings, dry-eyed service, plus we met Tommy’s once and perhaps future beau — model-handsome John.

A wedding: More walks around South End and Back Bay, over to the Catholic cathedral, where a wedding was in progress, bridesmaids in chic scarlet, exterior drab, heavy, unrenovated Gothic, interior, light, spindly, white-and-gold Gothic. (Photo of ever-changing South End.)

The Improper Bostonian: Like countless other city-themed slick magazines, but with an unusually thoughtful cover story about mixologists (bartenders) headed to star status like chefs. Austin parallels? Idea of XL or Glossy?

Barbara Walters: “Audition” is even better than I expected. Raced through half of it during our blissful picnics. Walters names names, notches wins, frets over family guilt.

Harvard Square and Newbury Street: Boston is emptied out of residents this gorgeous holiday weekend, but skinny, international tourists flocked to the intense shops of Harvard Square and more regional varieties spilled out of the dozens of sidewalk cafes along Newbury. Locals eschew Newbury, I gather, but few cities can brag about such sustained sidewalk commercial culture. (More on my modest shopping later.)

East Cambridge: Learned from Sal, Carol’s longtime guy, that the Portuguese and Italians fight like, well, just about any other tribes of humans. Humorous to outsiders, but Sal says his high school was pretty tough. He does research at MIT now.

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May 24, 2008

No. 48: Vermont!

My lifelong goal of visiting all 50 states reached a significant milestone yesterday: the final of the Lower 48. (Although one could certainly quibble about the amount of time I’ve spent in Rhode Island, Delaware and South Carolina, I’ve spent time on soil in each state and not in airports, which, like embassies, don’t count as local territory.)

But before Vermont, we stopped by the family friendly Maine beach town of York for a taste of its early 20th-century attractions, then buzzed across New Hampshire, breathing in the green hills and the absence of ugly freeway culture along the highways. (Carol assured us that the old mill towns, however, could be plenty depressing.) The lack of commercial access roads, a strategy that TxDot proposed, then abandoned for new highways, clearly had a beneficial effect here.

We lunched in New London — the definition of quaint — in a dark, 19th-century tavern called Peter Christian’s, part of a small family series (Carol haunted the Hanover version while she attended Dartmouth.) Here we ate creamy, cheesy chili, meaty, crumbly crab cakes and drank pale, unfiltered regional ale.

At this point, we needed to coin another word for “quaint” or “cute,” so we went with “cher,” which is French for “dear” and “costly,” which both fit New England village life well. The fact that we were also are listening to Cher’s greatest hits in the car, meant that New Hampshire received a new slogan: The Cher State. (Traveling with Tommy O. is a cher pleasure. For his version of events, turn to his sometimes salty blog.)

Then across a bridge to the 48th state on my childhood itinerary (at age 14, only Texas, New Mexico, Louisiana and Michigan were checked off the life list.) We had time to linger in just one town, so we chose Woodstock, tres cher and vibrant with flowering trees, including white lilacs, as well as covered bridges, 18th-century headstones, and a tidy commercial center. (I purchased Barbara Walters’ well-reviewed, weirdly revealing memoir, “Audition.”)

And sooner than you can say “$5 parking ticket,” we were back on the road to Mass. That night, after serious cheeses from the Fromaggio, we attended the Huntington Theatre’s production of “She Loves Me,” my favorite musical. (Robin Lewis of TexArts, who’s up her doing a show at North Shore, recommended the production.) I see the 1963 romance, based on “Little Shop Around the Corner,” once every 10 years or so, and weep profusely.

We desserted at Jo’s Brasserie in Back Bay, then steered to Carol’s apartment in the South End, which I’m told was once very dicey, but now feels like Paris or Greenwhich Village, with its tenderly preserved brownstones and generous landscaping.

As is my distressing custom on vacation, I spent considerable time in the car planning a road trip to State No. 49: Alaska. (And no, Lizzy, never been to Hawaii. You have that on me.)

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May 23, 2008

Portsmouth, Ogunquit

After swinging by Southie to pick up Tommy O. — looking very much at home in the spiffy hood — we hit the forest-fringed highway.

Lunch in Portsmouth, N.H., which with its jagged brick buildings (above) slipping down to the former whaling harbor looks like the coastal Kent towns of my immediate ancestors.

We wolfed down thick unto solid clam chowder, haddock sandwiches, etc. with local IPAs at The Stockpot (above) overlooking the harbor bridge. Then across the bridge to Maine.

On to Ogunquit on the Maine coast. This resort village, so quaint it makes your teeth ache, earns its charm with rocky cliffs, tide-widened beaches and what seemed like hundreds of jaunty inns.

We’re staying at the Admiral’s Inn on Hwy. 1, a recently renovated spot of yellow-tinted luxury (above) once owned by comedian Totie Fields, now by an enterprisng gay couple anxiously bracing for the tourist season, which starts this morning.

Turns out Kip, Carol and Tommy mix well on the road. (Kip and Carol have traveled widely together; Tommy is the newer edition to group tourism.)

Last night, we wandered into The Front Porch, an ancient, yellow-daubed gay bar and restaurant that attracts a mixed crowd. (There are as many gay bars in Ogunquit as in Austin.) An older male chorus sang Rodgers and Hammerstein around the piano while our troupe bonded with bartender Rob, a teacher just starting his summer job. Then a foul, lame, hack insult comic hit the stage, so we spun back to our end of this heart-stoppingly lovely village.

My favorite shot of the day.

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May 22, 2008

Boston: 28 Degrees + Shrinking Globe

Mini-post from Boston — Sea-tanged $1 oysters on the half shell as well as crab tacos, pineapple/strawberry salsa salmon, and pomegranate cosmos at 28 Degrees, a mod spot in the South End.

Also: The Boston Globe smaller than the American-Statesman on Thursday. Bet those who wail about the shrinking American-Statesman don’t know that even a market four times our size can’t sustain an old-school paper.

Topic 1 everywhere: Kennedy.

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April 21, 2008

Colorado Rockies, Part 2

Given my Freudian fear of bridges and my abject, sweaty terror of heights, the fact that I crossed the wind-lashed, shuttering wooden slats of the Royal Gorge Bridge — highest in the world — on foot, twice, is, in retrospect, miraculous.

Built in the 1920s, the bridge is wide enough for vehicular traffic — nowadays, it’s mostly transversed by pedestrians — and juts over a rocky canyon of the Arkansas River west of Pueblo, Colo.

Owned by Canon City, the road loop that leads to the bridge is badgered with cheesy attractions — Wild West village, rides, rock shops, curio catch-alls — and the entry to the bridge itself resembles the gate of an amusement park. All very alluring for families with kids, I’m sure, but hardly matching the bridge’s elegance and the gorge’s terrible beauty.

My walk over and back was uneventful. Though it looks like it from this image, I didn’t lean over the mesh siding, but I also didn’t panic. Why, I’ll never know.

The previous day, Rob and I returned to Mueller State Park and hiked the rugged western sector of the park. Outlooks perched on rocky promontories. My new hiking boots helped me over the remaining patches of snow, as the sun worked its wonders at 9,000 feet elevation.

Still, it was punishing, and I was knocked out for hours after a mere 90-minute hike. Because of the weekend and softer weather, the park had attracted more visitors, but on our outing, we ran into one sinfully healthy family of human mountain goats, who skipped over the boulders like they were garden flagstones.

That night, I contributed Diana Kennedy ceviche to a faculty gathering of 20 or so from Colorado College and University of Colorado-Colorado Springs. As usual in such situations, the chat was lively, when it left the shop, and included memories of Colorado’s early hippie days, an Edenic sabbatical in Surfside, new tests for altitude sickness, the crazy blossoming trees of city (which punished my sinuses) and — what else — real estate, which in central CS has maintained its value, while local publications freak out about the decline in new home construction.

Enough of my stay in the Springs. Back to Austin’s social scene.

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April 19, 2008

Colorado Rockies, Part 1

Since this trip to the Colorado Rockies was mapped around hiking, the trail-obliterating snow storms that greeted us upon arrival in Colorado Springs were ominous.

Yet Thursday morning, the sun began brushing away the white stuff, at least at elevations below 6,000 feet, so we aimed south, a direction longtime friend Rob and I had not headed in my previous four visits to the Springs. (The garden outside his carriage house below Thursday morning.)

Our first destination was Pueblo, about an hour away, sunny that day and a universe apart in terms of urban confidence. Once Colorado’s second city, it now emits a whiff of desperation, as it clings to its giant, outdated steel mills and more recent job generators, such as the federal penitentiary in nearby Florence.

Pueblo reminds me of Waco. It’s about the same size (100,000) and lost its edge in part because of devastating natural disasters (tornados in Waco, floods in Pueblo) during the 20th Century. Like Waco, Pueblo maintains fantastic neighborhoods, free from insensitive urban renewal, but is driven to build and market artificial tourist destinations.

One such spot is its new riverwalk. Oh yes, another one. It wraps modern yet organic forms around a small tributary to the Arkansas River, all very sharply executed, but empty, except for curiously freckled poodle poop, this Thursday. I hear it hums during special events, though, such as the bluegrass festival in June.

More inviting for daily traffic was Union, a broad boulevard, once a commercial center, then clearly a bohemian retreat, now a promising entertainment district with restaurants, bars, coffee shops and (bad sign for property expectations) lots of antique shops. When asked the most popular activity in Pueblo, a bakery clerk chirped: “Make your own fun,” then thinking of her training: “Oh, and have you seen the riverwalk?”

Perhaps the most astonishing sight in Pueblo can be spied from bridges over the Arkansas, or from the heights of South Pueblo — huge flag-like murals on the concrete levees that now protect downtown from floods. Now that’s local culture that can’t be duplicated.

We explored Lake Pueblo State Park in the low, bruised hills above the city, but our hikes were cut short by threatening snow.

So we headed to Ludlow, a speck on the map another hour south of Pueblo where labor strife in the southern Colorado coal fields led to a protracted battle with state militia in 1914. The United Mine Workers has erected some interpretive panels out on the windy plains, telling the story from a distinctly union point of view. We had journeyed here because a Colorado College professor has published a long poem about the skirmishes which, according to one source, left more than 60 dead before the strike ended.

Next we headed up into a branch of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in San Isabel National Forest, a winter/spring wonderland mantled in fresh snow well up to 12,000 feet, which blocked us from any realistic hiking.

We did stumble on an eccentric construction, Bishop Castle, which rather like Casa Neverlandia in my Bouldin neighborhood, is a hand-made folly worth a sidetrip in itself. As we emerged from the mountains, we spotted our first big horn sheep, scrambling up an embankment after a late afternoon cocktail in the valley below.

We ended the first full day without much cardio, but plenty to discuss at an excellent Thai restaurant on the fringes of Fort Carson, which sprawls under Cheyenne Mountain and helps to explain CS’s dominantly conservative culture. (In previous trips, we’ve attempted to dissect the effects of various forces on this city’s doppleganger to Austin life.)

Friday broke clear and sunny, so we headed to Mueller State Park on the backside of Pike’s Peak. Blessedly deserted, this large park is intelligently designed, minutely maintained and earnestly interpreted. It’s easy to imagine it packed with families during the summer months, but, during a 3-hour hike around the park’s northeast sector, we didn’t even see human tracks in the snow — plenty of mule deer, squirrel, coyote, jackrabbit, cottontail and, inconclusively, bear and elk evidence, though.

Our track took us through pine forests down to golden meadows. As the trail dipped farther into Elk Valley, I realized that our ascent would be pretty tricky, and, indeed, the last third of our 7 miles — all at around 9,000 feet elevation — knocked the life out me. I’m good for distances, but not on steep inclines. My strategy: make it from snow drift to snow drift, then rest.

That night, we dined on venison, elk, antelope, beef, bison and boar at the Craftwood Inn, one of CS’s many splendid eateries (technically in Manitou Springs, which has not lost a bit of its toursist camp charms). We may change our minds, but the plan now is to conquer the other sectors of Mueller Park on Saturday and Sunday.

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April 18, 2008

Airport 2008

As you read this, I’m probably hiking Colorado’s Front Range somewhere between Denver and Pueblo. Don’t get too excited: Easy to intermediate ratings, nothing remotely advanced. I’m no Pam LeBlanc. I roam the world with a bum ticker, remember, and despite Austin’s soaring 500-foot elevations, I’m a flatlander by comparison.

Visiting friend Rob Kendrick (the Renaissance comparative literature professor, not the Renaissance musicologist by the same name, though both are associated with the University of Chicago) regularly in Colorado Springs as meant repeated flights routed through Bush Intercontinental via ABIA. Flying is, to some extent, a social experience. So, in advance, some Out & About readers kindly shared their short travel socializing stories, which we offer, lightly edited.

Mical Trejo: “On a flight I sat next to a very large man who told me he worked for Slim-Fast. I laughed hard and remarked at how cool it was that he found humor in his size. He wasn’t joking. He’s a plant engineer with the company.”

Audry Coulthurst: “I went to high school in Oregon with a guy named Peter, and the last time I saw him was in the airport going the opposite way on an escalator. We smiled and waved in recognition, exchanging only the words we were allowed in the 30 seconds it took to pass one another. I’ll always remember him, not because we knew each other well, but because we had the same birthday and happened to have that random meeting in San Francisco.”

Sunny Sweeney: “I met Tanya Tucker in the Nashville airport bathroom. We were also wearing the same hat. She offered to watch my cart with my luggage, but like a bull in a china cabinet, I tried to take stuff with me into stall. I eventually took her up on the offer.”

Douglas Plummer: “I was in Orlando Airport waiting for a connection back to Austin and thought that I would call a friend who lived in Orlando, since I was thinking about him. I called him on his cell phone and mentioned I was in the airport wanting to catch up. Turns out he was two gates away. We had a fun lunch together at the McDonalds at the airport before we each headed out.”

Robyn Ross: “While changing planes in DFW one night, I met 78-year-old Jesuit priest Tom Williams and helped him make a connection between Seattle and his new assignment in Belize. As we moved slowly toward his gate, we discovered a mutual interest in writing, and he mentioned that he’d once written a book that he could share with me ‘some day.’ Five months later, when the memory of that meeting had faded, the postman brought a package from Punta Gorda containing what has become one of my favorite short story collections.”

Matthew Carroll: “After a long night out I missed my flight to Madrid from Krakow, I had time to kill so I fell asleep in the cold warehouse for domestic-only trips because I’d have to make a stop to get on the next plane. A Ukrainian girl woke me to ask if I could help her get a chocolate bar from the vending machine. I did. When we landed in Warsaw, her flight going to Kiev, and mine on to Spain we realized that we both had hours to kill. I bought the coffee and it ended with a kiss.”

Vada Dillawn: “Most memorable? When Quentin Tarantino was on my flight. A stewardess gushed that she was a huge fan and he should make a film about air stewards. He politely said, ‘I did — it was called “Jackie Brown”’ … Oh everybody felt for her the whole flight.”

Carl McQuery: I was flying out to see my parents and ahead of me in line, I spotted a familiar, towering pillar of gorgeous white hair looking, in the airport lights, like a spun-sugar confection. I snuck up behind, dodging the cadre of assistants and tapped her on the shoulder. Ann Richards wheeled around flashing that gajillion dollar smile at me and said, ‘Carl, honey, are you going up to see your momma?’

Phillip Ramati: I was in the Philly airport visiting my folks, standing on line at the ticket counter. I see a guy also in line who looks exactly like our high school valedictorian. ‘Doesn’t that look like Hartford?’ I say to my mom. ‘Not really,’ she said. Two seconds later, the guy catches me looking at him. ‘Phil?’ he said. Small world.”

Vicki Rowe: “Thirteen years later and 1,400 miles from our first date in Minnesota, I bumped into my first love in the Austin airport. We embraced and he said, “I’m not married”, to which I replied, “I’m not either.” He handed me his business card; I gave (Jeff Rowe) my checking deposit slip, and love moved us to Austin.”

Gary Powell: “I watched three generations from what seemed like two families waiting anxiously for someone very important. A tall, intact, American soldier in battle fatigues exited the jetway into the terminal to screams of exultation, now voiced from the relief of finally seeing and holding each other. I found myself also full of tears watching strangers; feeling and knowing from my own history, their long-awaited release from the worst of fears.”

Photo of Austin-Bergstrom Airport by Ricardo B. Brazziell.

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March 24, 2008

Up the ravaged San Jacinto River

For our 10th Texas river tracing, we chose the relatively short San Jacinto, which played significant roles in the early colonization of the state, the war for independence and the development of the Houston Ship Channel in the 20th century. My childhood associations with the San Jac were split between a fondness for its sandy banks at Camp Strake, our Boy Scout redoubt, dotted with shortleaf and loblolly pines, sweet gum, yaupon, bay, magnolia and dogwood, and the horror of the lower river’s pollution, flooding and general industrialization.

The West Fork of the San Jacinto (above), a little over 90 miles long, rises among pastures and hardwoods near Loma, 30 miles west of Huntsville. In a bad sign for the river’s ultimate health, the stream’s first appearance is clogged with manmade debris.

Luckily, it snakes through the Sam Houston National Forest, immaculately tended by the U.S. government, with nature preserves and recreation-friendly Lake Conroe. The upper parts of the lake are gorgeous and include homes for the red-cockaded woodpecker and the pileated woodpecker (which we spotted).

Below the national forest is a small state forest and the relatively sensitive development of The Woodlands. We stopped at this little spot southeast of Conroe.

The Jesse Jones Nature Center and Museum along Spring Creek, a major San Jac tributary — and there are many — is minutely interpreted and so calming, with its cypress stands, oaks, hawthorns, sandy beaches and picnic areas, it just makes you resent the ugly developments along nearby FM 1960 even more.

But soon, the West Fork is ravaged by short-sighted subdivisions, strip malls, disturbed land and vain attempts to stop the dangerous dissolution of its banks as it nears Lake Houston, the city’s major water reservoir and a recreation-heavy locale most Austinites see from the air when landing at Bush Intercontinental.

The East Fork, only 60 miles long, trickles through the Sam Houston National Forest, but to the east of Huntsville. Without a major lake, this stretch feels more backwoods as one winds down old logging trails. It empties into Lake Houston at a large recreational park in a heavily populated suburb.

The navigable San Jac proper, just below the dam at Lake Houston, spills almost immediately into the Galveston Bay system and the vast complex of wharves, refineries, warehouses and factories that fuel the Houston economy. We skipped around to the San Jacinto Battleground and Monument, hoping to make the tower before the 6 p.m. closing, but, predictably for a state attraction, the tower elevators actually close at 5:30 p.m. (Find that anywhere on its site.)

So we headed north and east to the Anahuac National Wildlife Preserve, which sits at the head of East Bay and is home to dozens of migrating and resident birds, alligators and lovingly preserved marshes, prairie and bayside. A cleansing way to end a day on a much-maligned river system.

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March 2, 2008

Lighting up Marfa

Marfa is to Austin what Austin is to Texas. The beauty, pleasure and companionship of the larger city is refined and concentrated in this arid Davis Mountains town, compounding Central Texas informality and acceptance with West Texas “live and let live” philosophy.

Bob McKnight, Lou Lambert

Still a ranching center, Marfa’s two biggest claims to fame, after the mystery lights, are the arts (Chinati, Judd, galleries, etc.) and movies (“Giant,” “No Country for Old Men” and “There Will Be Blood”). Beyond that, its restaurants, theaters, book stores, shops and hotels rival the best in Austin, enjoyed by an isolated population of just more than 2,000.

Tim Crowley, Eugene Sepulveda

The genius of the Marfa renaissance, partly engineered by Houston lawyer Tim Crowley — by coincidence a high-school friend of mine — is the careful preservation of the past while insisting on the highest standards for the future. As opposed to the kitsch art and faux historical atmosphere of Santa Fe, Marfa’s appeal comes from the big sky, resplendent light, muted colors, open spaces and some of the most sensitive renovation projects anywhere on the globe.

Tana Christie, Craig Rember

According to locals, a good third of Marfa’s migratory flocks make the six-hour drive from Austin. Our gang of five stayed at the Paisano Hotel and our room opened onto a sun-blanched terrace over the courtyard’s traditional fountain, perfect for long reads. Steven Tomlinson and Eugene Sepulveda occupied the hotel’s Rock Hudson suite — a nod to “Giant” — which expands to the size of our Austin house with an attached terrace big enough for a wedding reception, or a New Year’s Eve party, which the Austin pair threw here two months ago.

Julie Speed, Liz Lambert

Walking the wide Western streets of Marfa or dining at the many eateries, we ran into all sorts of Austinites and ex-Austinites: Quality Quinn on her beloved front porch, siblings Lou and Liz Lambert (she’s now deeply involved in Maiya’s restaurant there), siblings Larry and Peter McQuire (the former Lou’s partner in the downtown Austin barbecue business, the latter with the attorney general’s office).

Andy Friedman, Quality Quinn, Vilis Inde

Prices have escalated for Marfa homes, but haven’t quite hit Austin levels. No McMansions. Immigrants and tourists studiously ensure that, from the exterior at least, everything looks much like the railroad stop when Interstate 10 thankfully took the alternate route around the Davis Mountains. (Otherwise, it would have ended up in Dutch Kettle Hades like Fort Stockton.)

Mary Farley, Jacqueline Northcut

Do-good foundations — Lannan, Judd, Chinati, Ayn, Dia — have influenced this delicate physical transformation, but so have individuals like Crowley, who built an ideal warehouse theater and opens it to artists for free. National theatrical figures such as Wallace Shawn, Andre Gregory, John Waters and Suzan-Lori Parks have fallen in love with this gem, as have Austin groups Rubber Repertory, Refraction Arts and the Rude Mechanicals.

Sterry Butcher (of the excellent Big Bend Sentinel), Michael Roch, Rachel Rember

Collections Manager Craig Rember gave our group a thorough tour of the Judd Block, including Donald Judd’s studio stripped from a old Safeway and the bank building that served as the artist’s architectural offices. In gallerylike work rooms, museum quality furniture rests in clear, still light.

Rhett Damon, Tigie Lancaster, Mark Smith

The big event off the weekend was the Marfa Public Radio fundraiser at the hacienda of Charles Mary Kubricht and her husband Ron Sommers. Before that, we shared drinks at the renovated bungalow of Andy Friedman and David Egeland. There we met Tigie Lancaster, the descendant of railroad barons who in her 70s still breaks horses, and Chicago visitors Rhett Damon and Mark Smith (former Dallasites still drawn to Texas).

Larry McGuire, Peter McGuire

Other Austin immigrants at the later fundraiser: Tobin Levy (daughter of Mark and Rebecca and a Marfa resident for a year already), Dallas Baxter (a college mate of mine at University of Houston) and Julie Speed (the skittish artistic giant). We also chatted with trial lawyer Dick DeGuerin about Joanne Herring’s adventures with “Charlie Wilson’s War,” giving yet another perspective on this Texas to Hollywood tale.

Jennifer Bell, Dick Deguerin

What we tasted: Delicacies at the Blue Javelina, Brown Recluse, Adobe Moon and Austin Street Cafe. What we saw: Pronghorns, javelinas, Spanish daggers and Eurasian collared doves, which arrived in Florida in 1974 and have already migrated to the Davis Mountains. What we read: Mostly Keith Bowden’s “The Tecate Journals,” about his 70-day trip down the Rio Grande, purchased in one of the world’s finest bookstores, Marfa Book Company. A self-alienated author, misanthropic like many adventurers, Bowden would immediately flee the intimately social and humane world of Marfa.

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February 15, 2008

Reading Week No. 6

It’s not that difficult, really, with a little organization and a lot of cooperation from friends. Ours was inspired by a made-up holiday in Iris Murdoch’s “The Book and the Brotherhood.” (Spoonbills from this year pictured.)

Truth is, the first one, 14 years ago, proved to be a disaster, with guests fighting to set the tone of what was then a Reading Weekend. Was there to be loud music and dancing or quiet chatting and paging through books? Who was to cook what and when? What if the dogs didn’t get along? And where would everyone sleep — or not?

As you read this, we should be wrapping up our week of literary bliss. If you follow these few directions, you could be doing the same this time next year.

1. Pick a date. Early. Like months in advance. Or a year. Advertise the date to your friends, and remind them about it every chance possible. Start with a weekend, using Friday and late Sunday as travel time. Avoid the bigger beach holidays (Labor Day, Thanksgiving), and stick to the minor weekends with few conflicts (Presidents Day is perfect).

2. Book the house. Snowbirds aside, Texas beaches are pretty empty midwinter. Book a large cottage (ours sleeps 32) through one of the reliable rental agencies specializing in Surfside, Galveston or Port Aransas, all within 4 hours drive of Austin.

3. Assign tasks. Using your handy e-mail list, split up the cooks into teams. Give non-cooks supporting roles. That way, there’s no scramble in the kitchen. Assign bedrooms. Keep the nocturnal peace, at least initially. How do we gain this right? We pay for the entire week’s rent. Everybody else cooks and cleans (but, of course, we do too, but not on the weekend teams).

(And friends, such as Colorado’s Rob Kendrick and California’s Paul Talley, who lasted the entire week this year, pictured.)

5. Additional info for online only: Although rental houses often provide cooking and serving equipment, it’s best, once you decide to duplicate the experience, to store your own Reading Week extras off site: sharp knives, games, toys, kites, special utensils, paper products, dish towels, cleaning gear, anything that you ran out of the first time around and can predict will be needed again.

Have fun. Any questions?

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February 14, 2008

Reading Week No. 5

Otherwise, we are at that point in the RW when air dissolves into liquid pleasure. Four of us remain. I’m back in the comforting embrace of Proust. Pasta is prepared with leftover chicken or fresh, plump shrimp. In years past, guests left behind loads of pita, butter, capers and balsamic vinegar, among other surpluses. This year, it’s onions, French bread and wine.

Try making up meals that encompass those ingredients.

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February 13, 2008

Reading Week No. 4

Nora, our snakebit Lab, is back with us. A bit groggy from the painkillers and antibiotics, she avoids the bracken dunes. Yet the puppy is up to normal puppy behavior, even frolicking with Nick, our 10-year-old blond Lab.

We generally steer clear of partisan politics in this space, but it’s the big story for the next couple of weeks, given the sudden importance of the Texas primary. We’d be interested to know whom Austin’s social leaders — and not just the full-time politicos — are backing and why. Just another part of the fascinating social life of Austin.

The beach continues idyllic. (That’s Loren Couch, Clay Smith and Rob Kendrick in the kitchen.) After another swift storm, a clear, crisp morning beckons. Last night, we bundled around a breathy fire, played dominoes, and watched just one bad gay movie: “Postcards from America,” a flashback-riddled meditation on paternal monstrosity and ’70s street life. It put us all to sleep.

The piles of magazines are dwindling. Most popular, by informal survey: New York Review of Books, The Times Literary Supplement, Harper’s, The Atlantic Monthly, The New Republic, Texas Monthly, People, The New Yorker and The Economist.

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February 12, 2008

Reading Week No. 3

A storm whipped up Monday evening, whistling through the rafters and driving the remaining seven Weekers inside for more reading and the latest edtion of Paul Talley’s Big Bad Gay Film Festival. (The worst entry of the evening: “Colma,” a musical set in the dreary San Francisco suburb of that name.)

Among the books currently plowed by the Weekers: “The Sea, the Sea” by Iris Murdoch, “Dingley Falls” by Michael Malone, “Bridge of Sighs” by Richard Russo, “The Decameron” by Boccacio, “Letting Go” by Philip Roth and “Michael Tolliver Lives” by Armistead Maupin.

The wind has scrubbed away the clouds, leaving us with a Venetian sky by Gaudi or Turner — and a tense silence as we await an update on Nora.

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February 11, 2008

Reading Week No. 2

More heartbreakingly perfect weather at the beach. Which means, of course, round after round of cut-throat croquet.

My second book of the week: “Nureyev: The Life” by Julie Kavanagh. This meticulously researched biography by the London-based Kavanagh was ripped in the New Republic for dallying over the naughty bits in Rudolf Nureyev’s celebrated life, but that’s one reason we read biographies, right? He was a comet on the stage, but he also was a star in the nighclubs and resorts frequented by the rich and famous.

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February 10, 2008

Reading Week No. 1

Three enormous meals so far, one feast titled “My Bloody Valentine,” and every dish contained blood oranges. (See intentionally spattered beginning of the meal below.) Like so many Paul Talley-inspired meals, it took hours and hours to prepare. Appetizers at dusk. Dessert after midnight. Divine.

Twenty guests, two children, two dogs, hundreds of books and magazines. Some guests arrived as late as Saturday afternoon, others left as early as Sunday morning. A lucky few will stay all week, after the masses have departed. Only one completely new guest this year: Clay Smith of the Texas Book Festival.

Sound familiar? This territory is not far from the Out & About beat, only set in downtown Manhattan, not Austin. (Austin plays the briefest of cameo roles.) Currid knows her strengths, saying little about the theater and other performing arts, concentrating on art, fashion and music. She also makes a plea for saving the nightlife infrastructure from the city’s ongoing development, a problemmatic policy strategy. Quick read, though; interesting stuff. (Thanks to Mark Holzbach for the lend.)

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January 7, 2008

River Tracing: Guadalupe River Photo Blog

College buddy Joe Starr and I spent the weekend tracing our seventh Texas river, the prettiest yet. The Guadalupe River, best known to Austinites for tubes and floods, rises in Kerr County near Sisterdale, flows swiftly through Guadalupe River State Park and rugged Hill Country before folding into Canyon Lake. It picks up speed again below the dam, caressing Gruene, New Braunfels, Seguin, Gonzales, outer Cuero and Victoria before joining the San Antonio River near Tivoli, just above San Antonio Bay.

We did the 250-mile course by car and on foot, overnighting in New Braunfels and Victoria. We ate smoked meat on the road to Seguin, German pastries in New Braunels, seafood in Victoria and Mexican breakfast in Cuero. We also lingered at the small, tidy Texas Zoo in Victoria, where a good portion of the species are indigenous to the state. We wandered through historical districts and parks, noting the effects of the 1998 and 2002 floods and soaking up two days of resort-like calm. And no speeding tickets this time.

The Guadalupe rises among rolling pastures in Kerr County.

This trickling spring feeds into the Guadalupe near its source.

Yet almost immediately, the Guadalupe becomes a strong, swift river of exceptional clarity.

Campsites cling to ledges above the river as it heads through rugged country.

Entering Guadalupe River State Park, the stream slows sweetly.

Then ribbons into swift rapids.

Several parks around Canyon Lake are closed for repair after the latest floods, endemic on the river.

From the dam, the Canyon Lake looks like the lower pouch of Lake Travis, though only one boat skimmed its surface on a brilliant Saturday.

The last big flood, in 2002, cut a gouge around the dam, then tore through valley below, a truly terrifying sight, even now and seen from a distance.

At quaint Gruene, the river is playful, inviting.

Work continues apace on raising the low-water crossing that regularly snagged tubers at Gruene.

Graceful Cypress Bend Park in New Braunfels fools one into thinking the Guadalupe has been civilized, but two big floods have wiped out homes along its banks in the past decade.

Max Starke Park in Seguin is a gorgeous remnant of Depression-era public works. This mill dam predates that period and was first impounded in the 19th century.

At Independence Park in Gonzales, the Guadalupe betrays its cuts through prairie and oak forest, turning a bottle green, broadened by the addition of the San Marcos River’s flow.

Victoria’s Riverside Park is enormous, perhaps larger than Zilker, and borders the now sandbar-clogged Guadalupe. One can see the devastation from previous floods among the huge trees smashed ashore.

The Guadalupe’s end looks a lot like its beginning. Just beyond this exact tree line — we were stopped in our tracks by a big bull fence, and bulls to go with — it joins the San Antonio River, outside the farming community of Tivoli.

Another river traced.

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December 26, 2007

Their last Christmas as kids

HOUSTON — They’ve all grown up. The 12 nieces and nephews of the Barnes brood have passed the prime age for Christmas commotion.

One has graduated from college (Jason, UT). Four currently are enrolled college (William, Lauren, Jenna, Mary; two of them at UT). the remaining seven attend middle or high schools in the Houston area (Steven, Brandon, Christopher, Jenny, Tom, Collin and Kate).

That made this Christmas Day a bit melancholy, since seeing the holiday “through a child’s eyes” remained one of its prime attractions. Instead of the usual book or useful item, we gave the Daring Dozen grab-bags of novelties from Monkey See, Monkey Do and rare candies from Big Top (pictured), both South Congress Avenue shops. The geek glasses were the biggest hit. They’ll probably figure out that the candies are unusual sometime this week.

Kip’s nine nieces and nephews are, for the most part, still toy-and-gift happy. They celebrate in Fort Worth. How lucky are we that our siblings settled in Texas, close but not too close to our Austin roost.

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December 15, 2007

Colorado Springs-Austin axis

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — This city is a smaller doppleganger of Austin. It’s young, growing, smart and tech-savvy, like our town. A spectacular physical setting is complemented by an outdoorsy, fit, environmentally sensitive population that is also obsessed with collegiate and minor league sports. Besides the U.S. Olympic Training Center, figure skating museum and rodeo headquarters; the Air Force Academy, the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs and Colorado College teams are closely followed by the city as a whole, not just by enthusiasts. CC leads its division currently in hockey — and they play a tough game.

There the similarities trail way. While Austin tinctures blue in a sea of political red, the Springs beams bright scarlet in an increasingly azure state. Austin’s economy has not slowed significantly; here the home building sector teeters on panic, while a statewide taxpayers bill of rights, approved by initiative, ties the hands of local governments trying to fix the problems on the ground.

Famously, the Springs is fervently, forthrightly religious. Focus on the Family is a cultural force, and the news recently has been dominated by two dark passages at the New Life megachurch, the sex scandal involving former pastor Ted Haggard and last week’s fatal shootings. Observers across the cultural spectrum agree that Haggard’s replacement, low-key Brady Boyd, performed admirably in the hours following the incident, canceling the church’s lucrative Christmas celebrations and handling the media deftly. (The shooting encouraged discussion of new gun laws, but not what you might expect: Backers are now pushing semiautomatic weapons into the hands of private security guards at churches.)

Social life at the base of snow-mantled Pike’s Peak is not easy to penetrate. Cultural spectator sports are few and mostly confined to all-ages events. Despite the presence of several universities, a resort economy and remnants of a Rocky Mountain High hippie contingent, the city pretty much closes down after 9 p.m. A few clubs rattle late into night, but one must search hard for the action. (Inevitably, a Springs booster will write in to say I was just too dumb to find the nightlife, but this is my fourth visit in as many years. It’s not for lack of trying.)

The Springs can offer superb dining — Craftwood Inn, Blue Vervain, Blue Star, Briarhurst, Margarita at Pine Creek — as well as a surprising array of excellent ethnic food and a bustling Whole Foods Market. But the city lacks sustained culinary ambition, and the strings of chain eateries are thrown into focus by the few oases of fine dining.

When asked to identify local celebrities, few come to the minds of Springs residents, with the exception of preachers and politicians. Lon Chaney is probably the most famous export to Hollywood, but that was back in the silent era. An Internet search for Colorado Springs celebrities produces mostly services for celebrity impersonators.

The Olympic athletes do not stray far from their extensive training facilities, which are fascinating, but only partially open to the public. The Air Force Academy has only recently reopened its visitors center, and other potential social gathering sites are shuttered during the dazzling wonderland of a winter. (Low of 2 last night and downy white everywhere. Satisfying but difficult hiking.)

Ever your faithful columnist, I tried to track down some social leaders while on my annual visit to Rob Kendrick, a Colorado College professor of comparative literature and former Austinite. Not much luck so far. Maybe next time.

Finally figured out why I like the holidays, though. It’s winter. The season is so short in our part of the country. Yet so satisfying. And it helps to take a short trip to Colorado to put you in the cold weather mood.

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December 10, 2007

San Saba River Tracing photo blog

Just a few more photos from the weekend’s San Saba River Tracing with Joe Starr. For the story, see previous blog.

A spring on the grounds of Fort McKavett, one of the sources for the San Saba

The San Saba at the first low-water crossing, already a rushing stream

Below Menard, as the San Saba Valley broadens

Just outside the town of San Saba, a rickety bridge

Very near the mouth of the San Saba, where it enters the Colorado River below the town by the same name

Not on the river itself, but a dammed spring that makes up the Mill Pond in the town

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December 9, 2007

In Tommy Lee Jones country

SAN SABA — This is Tommy Lee Jones country. It’s also, in a sense, “No Country for Old Men” country.

Not that the desolation of Cormac McCarthy’s West Texas border novel echoes the soft, well-watered hills and vales of San Saba County. But Llewellyn Moss, played with unnerving reserve by Josh Brolin in the award-winning movie by the Coen Brothers, is from San Saba. And Jones, who grew up in this comparatively isolated country 90 miles northwest of Austin, constantly reminded Brolin that he is from San Saba, almost as a challenge to the younger actor’s authenticity.

Jones’ ranch is just five miles east of town. Strangers are not welcome, and he’s one actor I’d not want to irritate. A sign on the ranch gate barks “Go Away,” but one can spot Jones’ famed polo grounds across a gentle, red-grassy rise. Funny thing, all his biographies say the ranch is “outside San Antonio.” In fact, it’s two hours from Austin; three from San Antonio.

People in San Saba respect Jones’ fierce sense of privacy, and say so. The whole town — plus folks from Lameta, Brady, Goldthwaite and other nearby spots — turned out for Christmas in the Square on Saturday. In fact, the bleachers were full two hours before the 15-minute parade through the courthouse square commenced.

While Santa and Mrs. Claus greeted hordes of children, performers in a living nativity scene sang carols. (There appeared to be no creche crisis on this county property.) Across the street, solo singers braved karaoke carols, including a Spanish-language version of “Jingle Bell Rock” (21 percent of the county’s 6,000 residents are Hispanic.)

San Saba is the “Pecan Capital of the World,” as almost everyone, including Harold Yates from the Chamber of Commerce, reminded me. “Not because we grow the most pecans, but because the mother tree for commercial orchards is here.” Nolan Ryan owns an orchard in the county.

“Sure it’s the pecan capital,” said a visitor from Lometa who declined to be identified. “It’s also the meth capital of the world.”

Yates, who is thinking of running for sheriff, agreed there was a meth problem, but that most of it was imported, not labbed in the county, the last in Texas to pave its roads (a situation that led to the the rise of the San Saba Mob, which ran the county until Texas Rangers were able to oust them). Yates took my request to fix a speeding ticket with good cheer.

We resisted the temptation to buy Jacalyn Morley-Webb’s tassled purses from her business, “Itz a Girlz ThAng,” but couldn’t turn down Mary Huron’s Hot Sauce, which sat alongside jars of Huron’s Mild Sauce. (Sad mild world.)

We also scored some samples of Bill’s Season All, a marinade that Edward Ragsdale said would “make your steak so tender you can cut it with a fork.” The late Bill Eden used to cook up in a small pan the seasoning in the back of the G&R Grocery store on the courthouse square “until he needed a really big pan,” the stuff got so popular. Ragsdale smiled devilishly when he said: “Bill’d be turning over in his grave if he knew how much we sold these days.”

Every other business in San Saba has to do with pecans. Tourism has not risen to the Fredericksburg level, but there’s a capacious, terraced Mill Pond Park, a preserved swivel bridge and “the oldest working jail in Texas.” Down the way is Colorado Bend State Park and, up the San Saba River, Fort McKavett State Park, a miraculously preserved compound from the late 19th-century Indian Wars, and the purported ruins of the San Saba Presidio, which look to be mostly 20th-century rather than 18th-century construction (including — ick — Portland cement, see photo).

The San Saba valley is pretty, clement and blessed with fluent springs. The river, which rises at Fort McKavett, quickly takes on a good surge, and one can see why the Spanish missionaries chose it for a mission, since the land quickly turns less hospitable to the west and south. (Did you ever wonder why San Antonio is where it is?) Unfortunately for the Franciscans and the Spanish soldiers, it was too deep into Lipan Apache and Comanche country, and the place was abandoned well before 1800.

A note about the trip up: We tarried at the Hill Country Wildlife Museum in Llano, a display of more than 700 trophies from Houston hunter Charles K. Campbell. It’s a shocking place, full of walrus, bear, Cape buffalo, etc.

The kind but weary docent said the nonprofit that runs the place, so situated on Llano’s square to attract the annual migration of deer hunters, is hanging on by thread. If you are at all interested in novelty tourist destinations, plunk down the $3.

For more photos from the San Saba River Tracing, shared with college bud Joe Starr, look for the Monday morning blog.

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October 7, 2007

Northern California is a place where...

The Castro, one of the last surviving gay neighborhoods in the country, is graying and growing thick around the middle, while entering that second phase of gentrification when guppies give way to yuppies. Children trail pods of lesbian parents and shopkeepers prep for the area’s themed-like-clockwork street fairs.

The Haight still reeks with would-be hippies, a few of whom could pass for the real thing from their parents’ era — including one extravagantly bearded man in a kilt and bare midriff striding down the sidewalk like a Pict warrior.

Amoeba is still the best used-CD store in the country, bigger than the combined Cheapo, Half-Priced Books and all of Austin’s other music resale shops put together. I found 14 rare musicals.

Waterfront bars like the Hi Dive go from seedy to hip in the course of just a few hours, as the population on the Embarcadero follows the moon and the tides.

Even using recycled water, it seems lavish to sprinkle the medians several times a day. The locals landscape the heck out of everything, including a low-end shopping center anchored by a discount liquor store, which displays half its stock in locked cases “because we still have a shoplifting problem.”

Even Livermore, the Plano of Northern California, is home to a gorgeous hillside winery. OK, the wine at Wente Vineyards is mediocre, but a birthday brunch under the sycamores, with the professionally spackled lawns yawning before mission-style resort buildings (above), satiated the senses with braised lamb hash, tomatoes with mozzarella, cabernet onions, cured olives and basil, topped off by a candle-mounted chocolate cream pie.

Here, they slip a hike-and-bike trail into any open space three jogging bodies wide. And thank goodness, or else we’d return to Texas popping our buttons.

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He inked my heart ...

With his scruffy mutton chops and neatly cuffed jeans, Kevin Dillon could easily slip into an ink shop — or onto a barstool — somewhere on South Congress Avenue. His quarters at Cold Steel Piercing and Tattoos on Market Street, crammed with memorabilia from horror movies, kitsch art and pictures from freak shows, feels like an old-fashioned parlor, and his gentle, joking way lures repeat customers from across the country.

Austin? “I’ve been to that big ol’ swimming hole and that street they close at night,” Dillion says. Turns out, he scored a 3-day South by Southwest badge (the only way to fly) one year. He also recalls fondly: “That street where they have all those floatly papier mache things on top of the buildings.”

Ironically, while Colt McCoy and Jamaal Charles were bumbling toward defeat in Dallas, Dillon was inking a burnt orange heart, decorated with my husband’s name, onto my right shoulder. (It looks more blood red than burnt orange here during first minutes of healing. Later, it turned organger.) Because he already wears a corresponding heart on his left shoulder, Kip asked for the first line from Homer’s “Odyssey” — “Tell me, Muse, of the man of twists and turns, who was driven far off course” — curved across his back in ancient Greek. Dillon doesn’t receive that request every day.

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October 6, 2007

'Miles notwithstanding' in Sonoma

Sonoma oozes quaintness. Yet the plainer sister of Napa comes by its tourist attractions honestly. Rugged, gold-tinged hills rise above the spacious, rough-cut city plaza. The adobe barracks and mission — the northernmost and last of the Fransiscan outposts — are actually made of adobe, not just dressed up with stucco.

Locally curdled Sonoma Jack pops up on dishes, and even mechanics offer wine tastings. (You can tell things have turned too precious when the Bakery for Dogs sits next to the Segway store and the umpteenth sushi bar.) The wide streets open up to classic California bungalows with porches so deep and shady, you almost wished it got hot here.

For Sonoma is near the southern aperture of its valley, nearest the bay, and therefore cold, or cold enough for Pinot Noir. We learned that at Buena Vista, the “oldest premium winery in California,” dating back to the 1850s. The stone storage and tasting rooms are rustic enough, tucked in a wooded ravine. We tasted some of the Pinots, the favorite varietal of Miles from “Sideways,” but we prefered the Syrahs and Merlots, “Miles notwithstanding,” a phrase we picked up from our wine presenter, and repeated boorishly.

Gundlach Bundschu, a mouth full of Braunschweiger if I’ve ever heard one, claims to be the “oldest family winery,” perhaps in the country. It stretches over hundreds of acres and a dozen microclimates, producing a dizzying array of selections. We like surprises and we tripped on two in a dry Gewurtztraminer and a complex Zinfandel.

After some contention, we chose Ravenswood as our third and final stop of the day. Nonvintage and mid-range Ravenswoods — whose labels look like something out of Tolkien — can be found at any H-E-B, but the ones we swished around our etched glasses are available only at the winery or through its shipping club. A black-red Pickberry and a gem-like Todd Zinfandel were among our faves.

Over the years, California wineries have become almost punitive about their tasting prices and their club requirements. Used to be, establishments would strip the cost of the tasting from the total wine purchase, and club members could earn discounts without being stung with excessive case order rules. It’s all probably for the best for business, but it doesn’t cull out the busloads of tourists who trust only their well-traveled Chardonnay or Cab.

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October 5, 2007

Herb Caen's San Francisco

I left my heart … well, you know where.

Every journalist who attempts a column like this one invokes the name of Herb Caen, who posted acute observations about San Francisco six days a week from 1938 to 1997. (Compare that to my measly 18 years hacking away in the American-Statesman newsroom, three years blogging and two months producing Out & About in its present form.)

Despite his renown, Caen’s books are mostly out of print. In order to frame our annual October visit to the City by the Bay, we purchased a few and found, to our surprise, that … Caen’s a lot better than he had any right to be, especially for a columnist who produced some 1,000 words a day, week in and week out, all about the same subject.

What a subject. San Francisco — like Austin — never stops changing and evolving, not always for the better. And Caen reported on every steel ball banging up against every gaily colored Victorian folly, then lamented the soulless concrete towers that inevitably rose in their place. He wasn’t a mere nostalgist. He knew when something beautiful and humane was replaced by something designed to make a naked buck.

Sure, his list-logging, pun-happy prose tinged purple when describing the fog on the bay, the city’s priceless views or its restless culture, insular and yet cosmopolitan at the same time. And, yes, his attitudes about gender, race and sexuality made him a prisoner of his times, but even those anachronisms enriched his descriptions of life on the seething streets.

What I like best about Caen is not his passion for San Francisco — I can match him enthusiasm for enthusiasm in an embrace of Austin — but his global curiosity. He’d spend one night at the opera, the next at Candlestick Park, the next at the city’s classiest restaurant, the next inside North Beach dives. There wasn’t a character, high or low, who didn’t interest him.

Take the following sample of Caen’s open-eyed reporting, dated March 12, 1961. (It could be about an equally egalitarian Austinite, Oct. 9, 2007).

“The other midnight, in a Chinatown bar, I met a real San Franciscan. He was a middle-aged longshoreman from the Mission, and he wore a zipper jacket and open shirt. While he quietly sipped a Scotch, he talked of Harry Bridges, Bill Saroyan and Shanty Malone. He was curious about Leontyne Price and Herbert Gold. He wondered if the Duke of Bedford’s paintings were any good, he missed Brubeck, and he discussed Willie Mays down to his last spike. He seemed to know everybody in town, by first names — and it was only after he’d left that we discovered he’d bought a round of drinks for the house. For a want of a better phrase, he had that touch of class — the touch of a San Franciscan.”

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September 3, 2007

Big, bigger, biggest in Houston

The bigger the city, the bigger the …

In Houston to visit friends and family over the Labor Day weekend, I had occasion to experience the shift in scale that comes with a market four times the size of Austin’s.

First, the Galleria, which I had not visited in more than 20 years. It goes on forever, at least four times the size it was when I was growing up in Houston, zipping over a major street, adding more anchors, roping in all sorts of fashion houses, including two Armani stores and Yves St. Laurent, totaling more than 600 shops. I continued the search for a basic black jacket and, after looking at some cashmere and wool numbers, chose an amazingly lightweight micro-fiber, not too tailored, at Bacharach for only — $178! So I purchased two, the second in a sort of mushroom color. Then shoes at Clark’s, which has branched out from comfy fits into trim styles, and more black clothing at Macy’s.

So, time for a movie. We parked on one of nine floors for the Edwards Greenway cineplex, entering a circus of lobbies leading to 24 theaters, where we saw “Hairspray.” Of course, compared to the outrageousness of the John Waters original, the adapted musical pales, but it’s just so much dance-happy fun, even the tiny girls in front of us were up from their seats twisting and shouting. The only weak link — friend Joe verbalized it that way — John Travolta, whose fat costume seemed to squeeze his features and his acting.

More Houston elephantitus: We worked out at an enormous Bally’s gym near the Village, tooled our way through densely packed urban neighborhoods and stretched our legs in Memorial Park, which puts Zilker Park to shame.

Is size everything? Of course not. It’s not even to be prized in most things. In fact, our best meal was at a 6-table, old-fashioned rustic trattoria on Westheimer called Faubio’s. Simple menu, slow pacing, family feeling — this is something to really remember and recommend about the state’s biggest city.

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August 4, 2007

Final thoughts on Paris

Travel: I’ve bored you enough about our vacation, but I promised some reflections on Paris.

While driving in the country was a pleasure, Paris, like most big cities, defeats the newcomer with its complexity and unforgiving speed. Two and a half hours just to return the car! At least there are almost no SUVs or pickups in France, so one can see around the next curved street. And while gas is $10 a gallon, our smart Citroen got amazing mileage.

We stayed in the 11th arrondissement near the Place de la Bastille, not easy walking distance to the monuments, but not far from the Marais gay and shopping district. And our hotel, a no-frills 3-star “Classics,” was just a few yards from a Metro stop. Although I did little of the navigating, I can concur that Paris’ subway system is easily navigable.

While we cooked almost all our meals in the country, that was not an option in Paris, so we steered toward mid-priced bistros while dabbling in Moroccan, Italian, Bangladeshi and other cuisines. The only tourist trap was Cafe Montebello in the Quatier Latin, which we stumbled into because we were foot-sore and the restaurant we sought, Le Reminet, was closed. Next day, we returned to Le Reminet for the best meal of the trip.

Kip had never been to Paris, so we did the major museums and monuments. Paris is mobbed with tourists in July, but even in the stellar attractions — the Louvre, Musee d’Orsay, Notre Dame, Versailles — one could break away from the masses and their cell-phone cameras to contemplate the less charismatic art.

And then there were the splendid smaller museums. The Rodin, Orangerie and Petit Palais, just three among the 60 museums Paris has to offer, are relatively intimate, accessible, instructive and well presented. And no crowds to gum up the works.

Just visit the Louvre, Versailles and Fontenbleau, and you will know exactly why there was a revolution. These palaces, only a few among the royal residences in the Paris area, are incomprehensibly large and gaudy. Yes, they perform the formal functions of public buildings, including intimidating the visitor, but they must have required ruinous taxation to keep up.

We experienced no hint of anti-Americanism. I think if one has a basic handle on the language, is polite and curious and patient, one will rarely experience the famous rudeness of Parisians. Read Julia Child’s fabulous memoirs of living in France; she’s a reliable guide to dealing with the peculiarities of the French on their own terms.

The one really empty tourist site was the zoo at Vincennes, which is partially under construction. Our little Alfie had the run of the place. I wouldn’t recommend taking a rambunctious five-year-old to Paris, normally, but his parents, Sean and Loren, wisely chose age-appropriate activities, and the city is sprinkled with playgrounds. (Small note: Nothing in Paris is child-proofed as in litigious America.)

Despite all the walking, I gained weight in Paris, which is not a good look, since the Parisians, among the most beautiful citizens of the world, are mostly thin unto delicate. I’m not complaining. It makes for great people-gazing, but I felt out of place with my more American dimensions.

The deeper I delved into Proust in the hotel room or sipping espresso in cafes, the more I savored each page, each sentence, which doesn’t bode well for finishing the cycle any time soon. No matter. It’s meant to be absorbed slowly into one’s consciousness.

Flew into Houston and then drove to Austin at 1 a.m. Glad to be back? Always. But I will miss that farmhouse in Fleurigny and the carefree days we spent there. One doesn’t need to travel so far to have such a rewarding rural experience, but the distance ensured that we would not be tempted to peek at our laptops or PDAs (Sean excepted since he’s running for office).

But, yes, delighted to be in Our Town and finally caught up on my sleep, newspapers, news feeds and e-mails.

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August 2, 2007

A few more photos from the French countryside

Travel: These will give you a better idea of the Group of 8 during our 10 days in and around Fleurigny. You can see the countryside below. Remarks and images from Paris to come.

Bastille Eve lanterns made our first night with the villagers luminous.

Planning our ill-fated Muntigny trip under the apple tree. (I misjudged the distance badly.)

Other day trips to cathedrals, graveyards, wineries, Roman roads, river beaches and ancient auberges went more smoothly. Here’s our troop, minus Paul behind the camera.

Paul, the acknowledged master chef, who suffered a rare miss with his smoked meats.

Most hiking, however, veered close to home. Here’s Joe behind the local chateau.

Alfie’s Pappa-Sean, looking like the candidate that he is for the Binghamton, N.Y. city council. Other friends flew in from Houston (Joe), San Francisco (Paul) and London (Damian).

Gazing at a rare double rainbow, Pappa-Loren holding our godson Alfie, alongside Kip and I.

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August 1, 2007

More on France and the French

Travel: Stray observations from our stay in the French countryside. More photos — as well as remarks on Paris — later.

“Poor Cyril” is what we said every time it rained. Cyril was the master winemaker at Veuve Clicquot who spent more than an hour carefully explaining the process for making his champagnes. (A full report will follow in our Travel or Food sections.) His part of France, where the 7,000 local wineries claim every inch of arable land, has endured too much moisture and not enough sun for a really good vintage this year. Among the samples we tasted was his first proud accomplishment: the lively 2000 rosé, the only line VC released that year. Try it.

The French roads, at least in Burgundy, Champagne and adjoining regions, proved in ideal condition, even when we underestimated distances. The backroads were often narrow, but well paved. The toll roads are far superior, experientially, to U.S. interstates, since the smaller freight trucks follow a steady, slower speed in the right lane, and even those drivers in sports cars don’t give in to competitive road ego. Plus, there are fewer onramps introducing new traffic.

Slow to adapt modern agricultural techniques, French farmers appear to have caught up thoroughly. Our little lane outside Fleurigny felt like a superhighway for technically sophisticated machinery, including a vineyard tender that looked like something out of “War of the Worlds.”

Though the French still line up outside boutique shops for their favorites breads, wines and meats, hypermarkets dominate the volume business. Our group shopped at Leclerc and Carrefour, which are WalMart-sized, but with aisles devoted, according to French tastes, to yogurt or inexpensive local wines, and with highly knowledgeable butchers and cheese clerks.

Much has been written about the diversification of French society since WW II. I hadn’t realized that the trend extended even to interior towns such as Sens, our main marketing destination. A medieval archbishopric with only 30,000 or so residents today, it includes Algerian, African, Turkish and Portuguese neighborhoods.

The fertility of the land in Central France has always been a draw, as the historical museum in Sens expertly demonstrated. Evidence of the Romans — baths, roads, walls — are everywhere. Later cultural incarnations rest on the land like so many jeweled draperies. Still, it took several centuries of incessant fighting and social inequality to create so much pastoral peace today.

Only 90 minutes from Paris, the area around Fleurigny tempts urbanites with its weekend pleasures: gardening, open sky, exercise. No wonder even two-bedroom farmhouses go for half a million euros. (The current exchange rate is piratical at $1.40 per.)

While in France, I slowly submerged my mind into Proust’s “In Search of Lost Time.” Some of the villages around our farmhouse could stand in for Combray, based on his childhood experiences in Illiers near Chartres. Speaking of Chartres, we didn’t visit this trip but absorbed several Gothic masterpieces, including Sens, Reims and Notre Dame, the last thoroughly renovated and cleaned since my last visit.

We swam the Seine. Yes. At Bray-Sur-Seine. Cold but invigorating on our sunniest day there. We hiked as often as possible in the hills and forests. Thank goodness, since we also feasted three times a day under the apple tree.

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July 31, 2007

French photo blog No. 1

Travel: Choosing a few keepers from more than 600 vacation images appeals to the editor in me. These scene-setters suggest the French farmhouse life we savored during the first 10 days of our journey. Fleurigny is an ancient village of maybe 100 souls located on the River Oreuse, more of a creek, really, even on rainy days, sandwiched in northern Burgundy between the Yonne and the Seine. More observations and photos to come.

The farm house on the edge of Fleurigny that served as our home for 10 days.

Our garden, which provided herbs and fruit for our feasts, as well as a croquet lawn and generous shade for reading, debating and dining.

Burgundy, like Central Texas, quivers with rain-infused flowers this summer.

Farmers raced to harvest the wheat that surrounded our village. Other neighborhood crops: Rape seed, chard and sunflowers.

The French have preserved thickets all through the countryside.They make for endlessly varied hikes.

Boeuf on the hoof.

To the south of Fleurigny lie the vineyards of Burgundy, to the north and east, the three varietals that compose Champagnes.

Our stash. (I wish.) No, these stems are part of the Veuve Clicquot caves, which we toured. We uncorked a few fine vintages of Champagne (VC 1988 for instance), but leaned more heavily on the myriad of inexpensive white Burgundies.

The table under the apple tree, where we devoured grilled sardines, demure lamb chops, boeuf Bourgogne, omelets, fruit tarts, hunter’s pie, lamb sausages, smoked meats, roasted chicken and rabbit, toothsome salads and countless varieties of cheese and pates smeared on crisp breads.

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Back in blogging business

Travel: France is still France. Fantastique. Ten days in Burgundy, cooking, reading, hiking, playing with seven friends in a farm house. Then seven days in Paris, absorbing the more traditional museums and monuments, cafes and shops. Promise to report some observations and post a tiny portion of the 600 or so photographs taken by Sean, Paul and Joe. One of the best parts of the trip: Not a mention of Paris Hilton, or Perez, or any other faux celebrities for that matter, during more than two weeks.

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