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Chef’s Table for Water to Thrive at the Austonian
You have just under two weeks. During that time, you can bid online for singular dinners by some of Austin’s top chefs. Proceeds go to Water to Thrive, an Austin-based charity bringing water wells to rural Africa.
Duane Mattson and Amy Taylor
From what I’ve heard, it’s an effective group, teaming up with the likes of Philip and Donna Berber’s astonishing Glimmer of Hope. I’m planning a major column on Austin’s outreach to the world, which will include these two groups along with Caroline Boudreaux’s Miracle Foundation, Niyanta Spelman’s Rainforest Partnership, Turk and Christy Pipkin’s Nobelity Project, as well as Susan and Michael Dell’s efforts in South Africa and India. If you know of others, contact me at mbarnes11@me.com.
Bill and Venus Strawn
Back to the auction: The chefs were on hand to introduce their fantasy menus on the 55th floor of the Austonian on Tuesday. Those chefs include David Bull (Congress), Elmar Prambs (Trio), Shawn Cirkiel (Parkside), Tyson Cole (Uchi), Ned Elliott (Foregin & Domestic), Alejandro Duran (Malaga), Paul Hargrove (Trace), Rob Snow (Mansion on Judge’s Hill), Kelly Casey (Hudson’s on the Bend), Andrew Wisehart (Contigo) and Wolfgang Murber (Fabi and Rosi).
Mia Thaker and Maria Brunel
Hmmm. Look at the list again. Some fantasy chefs making some of those fantasy meals. Bid now!
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Wimberley Town Square
WIMBERLEY — A fire engine blared, announcing the start of the parade. A band marched. Cheerleaders cheered. Athletic champions waved distractedly from truck beds. Their destination: Wimberley Town Square.
When the rally ended, most folks scattered. Others lingered, shuttling around the shops, eateries and other gathering spots in the irregularly shaped, compact square formed principally by Ranch Road 12, Old Kyle Road and Hinson Street on the high banks of Cypress Creek.
“To the people on the square, it is the center of the world,” says Bill Johnson, 88, whose family has ranched in Hays County since the 1830s and whose spread lies not far from the square, directly across Cypress Creek from the famed Blue Hole and its new park.
For this somewhat isolated valley town of 2,620 people, according to the 2010 U.S. Census — 40 miles and an hour drive to Austin’s southwest — the square does seem the one place where everyone meets everyone else, fulfilling an ancient function.
“It’s the symbol of what Wimberley was founded to be,” says Coach Nelms about the square following the rally. “A peaceful, special place.”
In county seats, the courthouse is often the tallest and most ornate structure in town. The grounds of these buildings are usually surrounded by four strips of businesses enclosing four streets around the courthouse. It’s that simple and logical.
Wimberley Town Square did not evolve that way. It is neither simple, nor logical. “It was either a pile of dust or a mess of mud,” Johnson said of the improvised square before it was covered with gravel in the early 1940s, then paved in 1946. “The ruts were so deep in wet years you could hardly get across it.”
A 1900 photograph of the square reveals only four structures in a bleak expanse: A residence, a blacksmith shop, a Woodmen of the World headquarters that doubled as the Town Hall and a modest store. A barber shop and a shoe shop stood outside the frame, according to Johnson. By 1939, the square hosted a gas station and more substantial stores.
(The village was known by at least four other names before settling on its current one.)
At the mill, shingles were made from the Hill Country’s towering cypresses. Later, cotton, molasses and flour were processed there. The mill didn’t close until 1929 and it was razed in 1934.
The remains of a deep mill race — the channel that connects falling water to a wheel that powers milling functions — can be detected along a narrow road to Johnson’s ranch, not far from the town square.
The visitor can learn more about this history inside a cluster of civic buildings across Cypress Creek from the square. Here one finds the rehabilitated Winters-Wimberley home, the oldest rock house in town, built by William Winters in 1857.
Zachary Wimberley was his son.
“Zachary married a 15-year-old girl,” says Johnson, my trusted and often irreverent guide for our three-hour tour of the square and its vicinity. “After living in this house, she packed her bags and told Zachary, ‘This house is not big enough for two women.’ (Referring to Zach’s mother.) So he built another cabin down the way. They had 10 children. She died and he had a couple more with another wife. Zachary populated the place of Wimberley.”
While this key milling industry stayed along the creek to the north, the town core rose on the southern banks in an agglomeration of buildings that form a more or less rectilinear town square. To reach the square from the civic complex, the visitor heads over the bridge that replaced a low-water crossing.
“We got that in the 1940s,” says Johnson, a lanky man with a dry voice who seems to have stepped out of a John Huston movie. “We also wanted a traffic light and telephone.”
Townfolk still talk about characters like Kim Tinney, a hermit, woodsman and rattlesnake seller, and tough Susie Danforth, a teacher, painter, poet and horsewoman who could handle a gun. Then there was Georgia Eggers, the switchboard operator who didn’t answer when she had to milk the cow.
“The telephone operator was the source of town news,” Johnson says. “You’d call for somebody and she’d say, ‘They’ve gone to Galveston’ or something of that sort. She was really very dedicated. She’d stay with the town from 9 a.m. to 6 or 7 at night.”
Today, at the top of the creek’s bank, the buildings of the square stretch to the left and the right. But before crossing to the square proper, one must carefully scan for traffic, which comes from five directions, at times quite rapidly.
“The whole county loved horses in those days,” Johnson says.
From the 1930s through the mid-1960s, it was a “cash grocery” and feed store with a dance floor and rooms to rent. A photograph from the 1930s shows a cattle drive of white-faced Herefords ambling past that grocery.
“It was the center of town for many years,” Johnson says of the Ranch House Cafe, Grocery Store and Feed Store. “Then it burned down in 1965.”
“We have many communities here,” Johnson says. “We have the school group. Then there are the (retired) golf and bridge players. And we have the merchants.”
A cultural divide has split those merchants who occupy the Town Square and attract thousands each month to Market Days with their arts, crafts and services, and the more conventional retailers who sell groceries, hardware, building supplies and other essentials in larger, modern stores on the northern bank.
At other times, residents have chaffed at newcomers who itched to “improve” what they came enjoy.
Cut off from the mainstream economy, Wimberley eked out an existence without capital investments, and, early on, it sometimes skipped the cash economy altogether. Johnson says that, around 1910, his grandfather paid a man $2 for a wagon full of wood. When the next year rolled around, he offered the man $2 again for the wood.
“’Mr. Johnson, the man said, ‘This is the first cash I’ve had since last year,’” the son remembers. “There was very little money back then. Everything was done on barter or volunteer basis.”
Shopkeepers in the square often lived over their stores in the square. No clear separation existed between residential and commercial activity.
He points out that other little towns nearby — Martindale, Driftwood, Mountain City — almost disappeared.
“Wimberley became a destination,” he says. “All the shops are a little different. There are no franchises. There’s no single Wimberley way of doing things.”
About 50 years ago, artists, beatniks and hippies from Austin and elsewhere flocked to the high hills, cool swimming holes and quiet retreats that had attracted tourists since the early 20th century.
Wimberley’s relative distance from major highways protected its historical character and encouraged, for better and worse, the cultivation of a type of deliberate quaintness also embraced by places like Fredericksburg and Salado.
In the 1960s, the Lion’s Club took over the event, which lands on the first Saturday of each month, March through December. Now some 500 booths are erected near the square. Traffic in such a small place is, understandably, daunting.
“We old-timers don’t go out — or we go north — to avoid it all,” Johnson says. “All the traffic and parking!”
Among the famous folks who hung out — or still hang out — in Wimberley Town Square include the land’s early owner, Jacob de Cordova (who wrote “Texas: Her Resources and Public Men”), musician Ray Wylie Hubbard, super-lawyer and Watergate Special Prosecutor Leon Jaworski, Texas regional modernist architect O’Neil Ford, forerunner muralist, sculptor and inventor Buck Winn, resort pioneer Raymond Czichos and Welsh painter and eccentric, Edward Povey.
Eventually, visiting Austinites and others — especially from Houston and Dallas — settled in Wimberley aside the longtime residents to raise families.
“They stay because of the children,” Johnson says. “The people who come here for the water, mountains and beauty make good neighbors.”
“I can tell you that the main reason my husband and I settled in Wimberley was our youngest daughter,” LeBrun says. “We were living in Los Angeles and decided we wanted to raise our child in a smaller city. … (Then) we were renting in Austin when we saw an ad in the American-Statesman about a house for sale on the golf course in a town named Wimberley. We drove to see the house, did not buy that house, but rather the one next to it. Twenty-six years later, here we are.”
Baptist music minister Dan Stephens grew up in San Antonio and had vacationed as a youth in the Hill Country.
“I prayed to find a church in San Antonio or Austin because I have family in both,” he says. “I feel like the Lord has put me right in the middle.”
Former Dallasite Mac McCullough, business owner and city council member — he beat Gary “Catfish” Pigg by two votes — owned a second home in Wimberley that became his primary residence.
“We looked all over,” McCullough says. “We could have lived anywhere we wanted to. It had to be here.”
Preserving the square and its character has become a crusade for some in Wimberley, old-timers and newcomers.
She points out the skilled masonry work on the 1930s James C. Lane “Gingerbread House” and the two-story home next door, now known as Aunt Jenny’s Attic. A team of masons had assembled the old drug store, now the Cypress Creek Cafe.
“These are all important landmarks that define this unique village square,” Billingsly says.
Johnson has his own way of memorializing his hometown by publishing short books about Wimberley. He’s written another that might tell much more about what happened in and around the Wimberley Town Square, if ever published.
“It’s about who killed who,” he smiles and winks. “And who kept a still up in the hills.
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‘Mississippi Rising’ Dinner for Project Transitions, Part 3
This is the third in a three-part posting on ‘Mississippi Rising’ Dinner for Project Transitions. Chef Bess Giannakakis provided the three recipes below.
1/2 cup wild rice
Water
4 TB butter
1 small carrot (about 1/4 cup) minced
3 stalks (about 1 cup) minced celery
1 medium onion (about one cup) minced
1/3 cup all purpose flour
1/2 cup dry white wine
2 1/2 - 3 cups chicken stock
2 cups half and half cream
1 tsp hot sauce
1/2 chicken bouillon cube or salt
1 TB parsley chopped
2 TB sweet marsala, sherry or port
Chive sprigs
Soak rice in cold water for 10 minutes
Strain water away
Add to a saucepan with 2 cups of water
Simmer for 30-40 minutes until tender but still with ‘some chew’ to it (It does not and should not cook up like rice, it is more like al dente pasta)
Strain water away, rinse and set aside
Cook the other soup ingredients:
Melt butter, over medium heat in pot large enough to accommodate all ingredients
Add carrot, celery and onion and sauté until softened
Stir flour into the butter/vegetable mixture creating a roux and let cook 2-3 minutes
Stir in the wine, let cook for 1 minute
Stir in 2 1/2 cups of chicken stock, let cook until thickened to the consistency of gravy
Stir in the cooked wild rice and cream
Bring to a very light simmer, stirring often
Add hot sauce and bouillon cube or salt, more or less to taste and simmer 20-30 minutes, stirring often
Add remaining chicken stock as needed to thin soup to desired consistency
Stir in parsley and port or sherry and heat through
Garnish with chives and serve
Makes approximately 30 light, small-ish hushpuppies
1 cup cornmeal
1/4 cup all purpose flour
1/4 cup masa flour
1 1/2 tsp salt
pinch black pepper
1 tsp yeast
1 egg
1/3 cup buttermilk
2 TB pepper jack cheese grated
1/2 TB scallions minced
1 tsp fresh cilantro minced
Enough shortening or canola oil to fill a pot to 3” deep
Mix cornmeal, flours, sale, pepper and yeast in a bowl
Mix egg, buttermilk, cheese, scallions and cilantro in another bowl
Slowly pour and fold together wet mix into dry mix until fully incorporated
Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate at 8 -12 hours
Remove from refrigerator 1 hour before cooking
Bring oil in pot to 350 degrees
Drop batter, approximately a teaspoon full, into oil
Turn and roll around until golden brown
Remove to plate with paper towels for cooling
Serve when cool enough to eat or at room temperature
4 cups buttermilk
1 TB hot sauce
1 tsp salt
1 chicken cut into 8 pieces
4 eggs
2 cups all purpose flour
1/2 TB salt
1/2 TB paprika
1 tsp black pepper
1/2 TB garlic powder
1 tsp smoked paprika
1 tsp dry mustard
1/2 TB chili powder
1/2 cup corn flakes crushed
Enough shortening or canola oil to fill skillet to 1” deep
Mix buttermilk, hot sauce and salt in a large bowl
Submerge chicken pieces
Cover in plastic wrap and refrigerate 6-12 hours
Remove chicken from refrigerator
Mix all dry ingredients and pour onto a sheet-pan
Retain 1/2 the buttermilk, remove chicken and pat dry with paper towels
Add eggs to the retained buttermilk, mixing well
Dredge chicken in dry sheet-pan mixture, shaking off excess
Dip in buttermilk/egg mixture, shaking off excess
Dredge again in dry sheet-pan mixture, shaking off excess
In a large cast iron or heavy skillet heat oil to 350 degrees
Add chicken pieces with space between and fry, turning once, 5-7 minutes per side (thighs and legs will take longer)
Remove to plate with paper towels for draining
Photos to come.
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‘Mississippi Rising’ Dinner for Project Transitions, Part 2
Part 2 of a three-part posting. Part 1 dealt with the food. Part 3 will share some recipes
Dinner service, cookware and Midwestern ingredients spread neatly over the wide kitchen with its near-commerical Wolf range and poised crew of three brunette women greeting each guest.
Behind a curtain in the tall dining room, a long, narrow table was festooned with candles, flowers and smooth river pebbles. Hand-painted napkins unfolded into maps of the Mississippi Valley.
Hosts Blaise Bahara and Bess Giannakakis certainly know how to set the scene for a benefit dinner party. Their theme for “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner” on Feb. 4 was “Mississippi Rising: A Culinary Journey Down Ol’ Man River.”
Each year, clusters of hosts around Austin give dinners on the same night to raise money for Project Transitions, the nonprofit that serves people with HIV and AIDS by providing hospice, housing and support.
The scene was not unfamiliar. For several years, our former cooking group, dubbed the Spice Boys, hosted “Guess Who” dinners. The last one was a marvelous frenzy, serving more than 30 guests at the graceful Old West Austin home of Nick Shumway and Robert Mayott.
But Shumway and Mayott moved away, as did the other Spice Boys: Dale Rice, Antonio La Pastina, Sean Massey and Loren Couch. This was the year to get back into the “Guess Who” spirit.
So why a bed and breakfast in Austin?
“I’ve got 10 years of really hard work ahead of me,” she confesses. “I don’t want to spend 14 hours a day over a hot stove. I’d rather spend it making beds and chatting with people.”
The couple rents out four rooms in two structures separated by a pool and spa deck that they added. The house is decorated with historical photographs of Austin and elsewhere, along with reviews of Giannakakis’ last restaurant, which appeared on an episode of the Food Network’s “Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives.”
Host Guy Fieri called one of her casual dishes at Colossal Cafe: “Christmas in a sandwich.”
When the pair heard about the Project Transitions series, they jumped right in, setting their table this year for 11.
“Fifty percent of the guests are people we know, fifty percent we don’t know,” Bahara says. “Last year we served food from six countries for ‘Mediterranean Madness.’ Like last time, we’ll stick to small dishes.”
The guests, who were given slips of paper printed with facts about Mississippi Valley’s gustatory bounty to read aloud before each course, attended for a range of reasons.
“This one sounded the most interesting and intimate,” said Adam Holzband of the “Guess Who” dinner selections. “It’s the best way to get to a little closer to the chef and the food!”
“I came last year,” Robin Sanders said. “So I know what a great evening we are in for.”
“We live down the street and watched the changes in the house go up,” Torbin McEwin said. “We were interested in what was inside.”
“Well, I’m on the board of Project Transitions,” Lynn McNeill said. “And I’ve not done one of these before.”
‘I sold them the house!” Angelle Hall said. “And we became fast friends. They dreamboarded really big.”
House painter Eric Frost worked on Gateways Guesthouse.
Not long after the dinner began, with Bahara and Giannakakis making announcements from the nearby kitchen, the stories, jokes and laughter rolled through the room.
Food blogger Jodi Bart, for instance, had won the Whole Foods Foodie Fantasy contest which took her to several culinary regions of Europe and led to her engagement. Such stories came out of that adventure.
Among the most amusing tropes of the evening arose from Kimberly Kohlhaas, who claimed not to have spoken in public since third grade when she mispronounced a commonly mispronounced word.
After that, almost everyone reading from the Mississippi Valley prompts stumbled in some way or another, leaving the whole table heaving with giddiness.
The final toast of many: “To doing it wrong and not caring.”
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‘Mississippi Rising’ Dinner for Project Transitions, Part 1
Conviviality and charity go hand in hand during the annual cluster of dinners designed to support Project Transitions.
These natives of Montreal and St. Louis, respectively, who lived together previously in San Francisco and Minneapolis, chose the theme “Mississippi Rising.”
All the food and drink — or at least the ideas for the dishes — came from the basins of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. Ten states — Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Mississippi and Louisiana — were represented. (The contributing Missouri River was snubbed.)
We’ll relate the physical and social settings in a later post — yes, it was that memorable! — but let’s record first the consumables.
“Wild rice is on every menu in Minnesota,” Giannakakis said with an indulgent smile. The concoction came with a bottle of Summit Winter Ale, brewed in St. Paul, Minn.
Next arrived small, pale medallions of pork loin nested on a reduction of moonshine-corn cream, almonds and roasted red peppers. (“There are 10 pigs for every human in Iowa,” we learned.)
Alongside sat a shot of the moonshine-like Prichards Lincoln County Lightning, a stinging white corn whiskey — that can’t be aged — hailing from Tennessee.
A fresh take on fried chicken — maybe the best I’ve ever tasted — was refreshed with 9-year-old Knob Creek single-barrel bourbon, along with mashed potatoes, gravy, biscuits and gravy.
Yep, another meat dish still to go. (The portions were suitably small.) Memphis-style barbecue pork ribs indulged in a spicy rub for three days, then they were smoked for three hours before finishing in an oven. Like mother’s love.
An exquisite profiterole that mixed hot and cool chocolate around a puff of bread finished the meal. This was served with a Missouri chardonnay.
As everyone was scraping the last chocolate off the plate, almost instantaneously, demitasses of espresso appeared for those who requested a cleansing of the senses.
Why the Mississippi theme, other than the couple’s life adventures up and down its stem?
“I wanted to do something to unite the whole country,” Giannakakis says. “You know, how we used to be together?”
Photos by Ashley Landis
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Austinites cheer ‘Lucia di Lammermoor’
“Drama!” “Romantic!” “Action!” “Enjoyable!” “Sing!” “Petrova!”
As if playing a word game during the first intermission, guests on the Long Center plaza shared one-word responses to Donizetti’s “Lucia di Lammermoor” as staged by Austin Lyric Opera. (This kept them engaged while I snapped their pictures for this column.) Everyone I spoke to succinctly agreed with the published critics, who uniformly praised the music and the drama.
Terry Ortiz and Marion Sanchez
Yet they singled out soprano Lyubov Petrova, who gave a performance for the ages in the title role.
Brooke Bailey and Rudy Garcia
Pleased with the glories of the singing, acting, directing, conducting and playing, few seemed to notice the admittedly dowdy — if serviceable — sets and costumes from New Orleans and Salt Lake City. Given the company’s constrained circumstances these days, we must grow accustomed to the lack of potent spectacle and any repertoire outside opera’s Top 20.
Teresa Brucker and Dasha Yegorova
So be it. The music and drama suffice. They appeared to renew Austin’s devotion to the art form, as an up-to-the-rafters house rose to gladden the company with unreserved cheers.
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Profile: Mia Washington
Serving as emcee for the evening, Austin’s most social city council member, Mike Martinez, convincingly impersonated an early rapper.
Draped in vintage fashion, youngish guests paid tribute to Pat Benatar, Madonna and Cyndi Lauper, among other 1980s pop sensations, hoping to win prizes for best costume and best dancing.
Filling the Parish nightclub on East Sixth Street, they writhed well into the evening, almost as if designer drugs were fueling this nostalgic New Wave Ball. (They were not.)
In fact, Buffalo N.Y.-born Mia Washington, 44, works for one of Austin’s most serious charities. The Austin Children’s Shelter, beneficiary of the New Wave Ball, provides protection and care for children and young adults through emergency shelter care.
“We’re the place where the healing begins,” Washington likes to say. This director of special events knows, however, that a social affair to raise money for a critical nonprofit should not hit their guests over the head with the cause.
She recommends a well-crafted video, upbeat, to tell the charity’s story. A live speech is optional. Neither should exceed three minutes.
“People don’t want to hear talking,” she says. “If they came to your event, they want to support you. They also want to have a good time.”
The oldest of five — with four younger brothers — seems born to lighten the collective mood.
“I was fun, loud and playful,” she remembers of life with father Walter Louis Sims, who owned restaurants, and mother Sharon Ann Sims, a bookkeeper, both from Buffalo but now longtime residents of Portland, Ore. “How I am now is how I was as a kid.”
Washington changed schools several times, finishing her secondary education at suburban Pomona High School in Arvada, Colo. College was hit or miss, but she’s still determined to finish her communications degree from St. Edward’s University.
She studied music, dance, art and, being the eldest, learned to be responsible for others. Perhaps because her parents were self-made business people, she learned to shine while applying for her very first job in retail.
“I wanted to be at the mall. I wanted to buy clothes and see my friends,” she says. “My father coached me for job interviews. ‘Shake their hands and say ‘“When do I start?”’ When the interview was done, I yelled it ‘WHEN DO I START?’ By the time I got home, they hired me.”
Washington later did office work — always with plenty of people around — and eventually landed a job with the Urban League in Portland, Ore. during the early 1990s.
“That’s where I fell in love with nonprofits,” she says. “I loved what I did and that what I did directly affected somebody. Somebody ate because of what I did. Somebody got better because of what I did.”
She followed leader Herman Lessard to Austin when he became the CEO of the regional chapter.
“I knew nothing of Texas,” she confesses. “New Yorkers have a poor perception of Texas.”
By now she was a single mother. Azia Washington, 20, currently studies dance at Tyler Junior College.
“She’s most phenomenal thing I’ve ever produced,” she laughs. (Washington intersperses any conversation with generous laughter.)
A corporate gig in marketing and event planning ended in an untimely lay-off, but Washington landed on her feet with the United Way, the St. Ed’s. She’s been with the children’s shelter for six years.
Among her duties are planning the big annual events. Besides the New Wave Ball (Feb. 24 at Speakeasy nightclub), there’s Fashion for Compassion (March 23); a golf tournament (September) and the grown-up gala (Nov. 3).
Meanwhile, she’s the channel for third-party fundraisers — from lemonade stands to bike races — that benefit the shelter. She ensures that the gatherings are legitimate and ethical, fitting with the children’s shelter brand.
“It’s very valuable revenue stream,” Washington says of these grassroots affairs.
She dreamed up the New Wave Ball as a way to recruit new leaders.
“I started looking at events like the White Party (for LifeWorks) and others that were geared to a young demographic,” she says. “There’s a lot of young wealth here.”
Her formula for an effective fundraiser is deceptively simple, but as your social columnist an attest, not so easy to achieve.
“You’ve got to have good food, good drink and good people,” she says. “Having the right people there makes the difference. Then a good theme. A gala is a gala. A dinner is a dinner. Everybody does that. My job is to put the ACS flavor on our events.”
She works through volunteer committees, social media and other networking tools to get those people to the event. Even when things go reasonably well, there are no social guarantees.
The first New Wave Ball, with its campy ’80s theme, could have been the last one. Set in an awkward, bifurcated hotel space, it offered an over-abundance of food and cramped dance floor.
“The first one happened quickly,” Washington says. “I had to fight a bit to have the ball happen again. But the concept was good. Nobody else was doing that. The elements were there.”
In 2011, the ball moved to the Parish, a big, friendly, upstairs room best known for its superior acoustics. Media judges returned — I was one, not in costume, mind you — and many of the problems were fixed. Even so, emcee Martinez was forced to shout out raffle numbers to a distracted crowd and the wait for the prize announcements lasted way too long.
“You always need to get feedback,” Washington says. “Whether you like it or not. And you have to weigh it. We are still tweaking it.”
Like a stage director, Washington imagines what her guests will experience in advance. “People are sensory-oriented,” she says. “I try to be a guest and walk through it as a guest. What do they see? What do they hear? What do they smell? To me, that builds it all up.”
At Speakeasy, guests will be greeted with event lights, banners and several DeLorians on Congress Avenue.
“How they are received at the door sets the tone,” says Washington, who stations seasoned greeters near the reception table and directs refreshments to the guests before they even mingle. She also includes children at shelter events — not clients — to remind people subliminally of the charity’s mission.
“You tell your story when people don’t know you are telling it,” Washington says. “And if you tell the sad part, you also must tell the good. There’s got to be an upside.”
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Angelina Eberly Luncheon at Driskill Hotel
In three short years, it has become a tradition. The Angelina Eberly Luncheon benefits the small but growing Austin History Center Association, the nonprofit group that backs the city’s historical archives. It filled the upper lobby of the Driskill Hotel with tables of dignitaries, including all but one Austin City Council Member.
Marina and Gus Garcia
There were mayors aplenty though, including current Mayor Lee Leffingwell and three past mayors — Ron Mullen (1983-1985), Lee Cooke (1988-1991) and Kirk Watson (1997-2001) — who were saluted humorously at the end of the lunch. Three others — Frank Cooksey (1985-1988), Bruce Todd (1991-1997) and Gus Garcia (2001-2003) — were present.
Suzy Lindeman Snyder and Margaret Berry
Recently deceased association president Nancy Price Bowman was honored. And after way too many public thanks and recognitions, the three saluted ex-mayors took the stage, sitting on ornate throne-like chairs with Downtown Austin Alliance director Charlie Betts, who could have been mayor at some point if he had chosen to run.
Mary Arnold and Madge Vasquez
Betts — who must be tickled by all the talk about a medical school, teaching hospital, affordable housing and the Waller Creek project in downtown’s neglected northeast sector — stuck to questions that elicited funny mayoral memories. Odd political coalitions, failed and successful public projects and, especially, angry citizens made for anecdotes that, for me, could have lasted all afternoon.
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Tracing Upper Upper Waller Creek
Reader Sarah Franklin pointed us to the source of Waller Creek. Which is not, as we assumed, just north of 45th Street. Rather it lies in the unheralded Highland neighborhood north of Highland Mall.
Sunday, Sarah and her daughter, Mary Franklin (pictured), walked its uppermost reaches with me. The bookkeeper for MF Plumbing Co., the family business shared with her husband, Michael Franklin, lives on Kenniston Drive with four large and rather intimidating dogs, multiple ducks, chickens and other livestock attached what she calls the “Franklin Funny Farm.”
An old neighbor told Franklin that their tall-ceilinged wood house was constructed by German prisoners of war at Camp Swift and moved to its current location near Guadalupe Street, when it would have been a rural enclave. Otherwise, their area was associated with the large African American orphanage and farm called St. John’s. It later hosted modest, late-century ranch homes of varied styles and quality.
Running a fairly straight course through the district is a waterway, sometimes lined with limestone, sometimes overgrown with willows and other creek-loving flora. Near the intersection of St. John’s Avenue and Northcrest, this tame stream — just puddles at this point — stops at an open drain pipe. Sarah and I suspect nearby springs because of the cottonwoods and other indicative trees in the area.
From there, Upper Upper Waller Creek meets a tiny tributary at the University Hills Optimist Club baseball field, which looks lifted from a small Texas town. It sneaks under Airport Boulevard near Huntland Drive and then zig-zags unnaturally over to a line parallel to Chesterfield Avenue, where I picked it up, running with clear water, at a pedestrian bridge attached to a tiny picnic area (pictured).
At West 55th Street, I spied a woman weeding the high banks of the creek. She recognized me. Jan Seward (pictured) is part of a volunteer group that is reclaiming little portions of the creek in her neighborhood. From there, the creek heads to state lands by Epoch Coffee and grows wilder alongside the University of Texas Intramural Fields.
By the time it reaches Rowena Street , it’s downright pretty. At 45th — where I assumed it began — it crosses the Shipe Playground and the grounds of the Elisabet Ney Museum. It becomes quite wooded as it approaches the Commodore Perry Estate and Hancock Golf Course, then eases through some graceful, upscale neighborhoods before becoming a public phenomenon on the University of Texas campus.
All this creek tracing was inspired by a short walk on Lower Waller Creek taken with philanthropists Tom and Lynn Meredith, as we discussed plans for the Waller Creek Conservancy downtown. All their work — and those of their collaborators — is deeply appreciated. But it’s also good to know the creek’s humble and authentically Austin origins.
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Very Smart Gals at Four Seasons Residences
“Very Smart Gals” is a very smart blog from SueAnn Wade-Crouse. It covers books, artists, charities and music, along with family reflections from Wade-Crouse’s intentional life. Like the best blogs, it blends its author’s personality with potentially useful information.
Lily Ta and Dean Lofton
It was an honor to be among the very few male guests at the Very Smart Gals party at the Four Seasons Residences on Sunday. Among the the dozens of women were influencers like Lulu Flores, Deborah Tucker, Sarah Bird, Susan Longley, Lynn Meredith and Dean Lofton. Others were drawn from the communities of law, charity, education, arts, media, business, movies and music.
Lynn Meredith, Christy Pipkin and SueAnn Wade-Crouse
The centerpiece of the evening was a presentation by Christy Pipkin, who, with husband Turk Pipkin, has turned out three breakthrough documentaries — “Nobelity,” “One Peace at a Time” and “Building Hope.” She explained crisply and pointedly the couple’s collaborative work in Kenya, now expanding beyond the Mahiga Hope High School to other secondary schools.
Betsy Gerdeman and Yolette Garces
Over sumptuous desserts, I made mental notes of five or six possible column subjects. Maybe smartness is catching.
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Dell Children’s Gala at Austin Convention Center
Fabulous. Just fabulous. The gala for the Children’s Medical Center Foundation of Central Texas defines force and class for large-scale Austin benefits.
Many of the winning elements in this year’s party built on last year’s successes. This time, light artist Bart Kresa created three enfolding walls of projections that dazzled the eyes and made the vast banquet hall more intimate. Magically, the three walls also served as six video screens — and in a large hall, there can’t be too many.
David and Fawn Bull
Dell Children’s produces some of the sharpest charity videos in town — bright, professional, compelling. The medical center also uses personal testimony in an efficient and effective manner. The story of Kathryn Scarborough Bechtol and Hub Bechtol’s scare over their son’s traumatic accident, for instance, won’t soon be forgotten.
Of course, florist David Kurio and event planner Victoria Hentrich’s decor and staging set the scene, suggesting luxury without going over the top. (You don’t want anything that seriously undermines a charity’s net take.) The silent auction was handled by University of Texas Cowboys and Lassoes armed with iPads.
Bobbi and Mort Topfer
The live auction — in some ways the heart of any such gala — produced many tens of thousands of dollars for Dell Children’s, but went on too long. No fault of the auctioneer, just too many packages and too vast a crowd for a quick “paddles up.”
A nice touch: One waiter was assigned to each table, which made for a fluid interaction between guests and the evening’s many amusements. Even co-chairs Eric and Kay Moreland did a superb job navigating this ship of charitable state.
Brett and Debra Hurt
Table No. 4 packed a punch: Mort and Bobbi Topfer, Tom and Lynn Meredith, Brett and Debra Hurt, as a well as a couple whose name I didn’t catch. I spent most of the evening talking parties, politics, projects and more with Lynn and Bobbi.
All hail Armando Zambrano, the mastermind behind this masterpiece.
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Indian Republic Day at Givens Recreation Center
I didn’t even know there was a Republic Day. The holiday recognizes the adoption of the Indian constitution 62 years ago. The Indian American Coalition of Texas saluted the birth of the world’s largest democracy on Saturday.
Veena Gangidi, Sumana Sen Mandala and Shahin Alvi
The Republic Day party was held at the Givens Recreation Center on far East 12th Street. Booths surrounded a seated area that faced the raised stage in this combination gym and performance area. For two hours during the five-hour affair, traditional music and dances alternated with speeches, proclamations and games.
Komal Bose and Koonal Bose
Needless to say, various elected and appointed officials spoke. I would, too, if I were running for anything. Austin’s Indian American population is growing rapidly. The community’s culture, history and variety are increasingly vital to everyone.
Sumina Bhatti, Sameer Shah and Sonia Kotecha
Sadly, I could not stay for dinner. I’m still making baby steps learning how to cook Indian cuisine. Pushpesh Pant’s massive cookbook is my current guide. Which brings to mind a pertinent question: What’s your favorite Indian restaurant in Austin? My fall-back is the Clay Pit.
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I have been to several events that were managed by Mrs. Mia Washington, she is a first class event planner because she gives 100% to everything she does. Mrs. Washington lives her life for serving others and I am blessed to know her and learn from her giving
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Jimmi, Thanks for your comment. From smaller stories come larger stories. I write plenty of larger stories, too. But one must find a point of entry and social events allow me to meet the people who populate those larger stories. Best, Michael
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