Ladybird Johnson Wildflower Center Never DIsappoints

Today was an open to the public day at the Wildflower Center. One of the nicest parts (other than the wildflowers) is that the Center supports sculptors. Today we had not even entered when we saw our first piece. It echoed what we saw later on in the visit, a dragon-fly.

The Center focuses on the grace and beauty of native Texan plants. Both in dry climates,

and in wet. Wet micro-climates abound among the limestone hills.

The natural scenes are interspersed nicely with sculptures here.

Here some 6 foot long ants "converse."

Here a local sculptor continues a year-long work in progress on Ladybird, herself. He has had input from members of the Center who were personal friend of Ladybird, as well as from one of her daughters. He spent quite a few minutes with us talking about the process of developing the model, and how it would turn into a bronze casting later on.

Outside was one of his pieces, of a native Indian girl.

Further on we found this longhorn in UT orange.

Then this gorgeous piece, of a stylized horse.

Not to downplay the flowers (there are always blooms in evidence), but for me, this visit was about other aspects of the Center.

Of course, with all the blooms, there are lots of butterflies around. The center breeds and releases butterflies, it seems.

This guy stood still for lots of shots, though his head swiveled around continuously, watching me as I watched him.

A few more minutes, and we were off. This was the last sculpture we saw. I liked it a lot.

Whip It, on a Saturday night

In 2001 a group of women started TXRD--Lonestar Rollergirls, a roller derby company owned by the skaters, themselves. It has been such a success that the movie Whip It was filmed by director Drew Barrymore to tell the story. Whip It was released in 2009.


On Saturday night we went to see two of the local teams at the Palmer Events Center in South Austin. This is a beautiful Texas limestone building, adorned by some unusual sculptures. They consist of various sea creatures, sculpted and attached to the building.

I really enjoyed these two.

Things to do were kind of few and far between out in the countryside where I grew up, so I used to watch the derby when I was younger. It was kind of natural to go see the action.


We were greeted outside by an interesting young woman. She was dressed very nicely, and was helping people into the right lines for tickets. She was our initial insight into the policy of the roller derby organization. Apparently they want the public to get to know their people and their skaters. All evening they made a point of introducing people and announcing free pictures with skaters who had the night off from skating.



During the intermission the skaters joined the crowd, skating through on their way to a break and conversing with the audience.


The skaters were generally quite young, though a few older women were on the teams. They seem to want to appeal to a variety of people. Their names were kind of risque (Dil Dozer, Rosy B. Hind, etc.) But they also seemed a bit like the girl next door gone off to a strange place. It made me wonder what trajectory they were following when they intersected with this group.


The crowd was really mixed. There were families. There were young people. There were street people. There were bikers. There were a TON of tattoos. There were flannel shirt women, a LOT of flannel shirt women.  It seemed like a huge amount of support (maybe oriented toward support of an entirely woman-owned and successful business, or maybe just toward hotties among the skaters?)


Some people were dressed to the nines. Others were pretty casual. On one subject they seemed to come together, though. They all really enjoyed themselves. There was yelling, whistling, applause, picture taking, and a good deal of fun.


Here the "away" team got ready for the first skate. They were clearly the underdogs, yet had a ton of support from the crowd.





Here the home team jammer cuts off the jam after scoring a few points.

This was a pretty strange night. It was pretty difficult to understand for someone from such a vanilla background as mine. It wasn't hard to enjoy. It just made me think about paths taken, and how success is defined. I also appreciated what a group of people with a common vision accomplished.

Neck playing and beatbox at the Bullock

Music Under the Stars was a bit of a misnomer this week, as the show started around 5:30PM at the Bob Bullock Museum. As usual, the hat lady was around, sticking stickers on everybody she could reach. Apparently the museum requires that people have stickers to be allowed in the museum, despite the fact that it is free during these events. So, everyone gets a useless sticker. At least the hat lady is cheerful about it, very cheerful. She usually dances up a storm.

There were a couple of acts on Friday night. John Pointer was the first, and quite original. He played a lot of neck guitar, accompanying himself by beat-boxing and stomping on the stage. He was very entertaining, and a crowd of kids gathered in front of the stage to wiggle and dance.

At the end of his act he spent a few minutes teaching kids and audience members how to beat-box. Apparently the trick is "Mississippi." You start out by saying Mississippi Mississippi. Then you progress to changing the ss's to tt's: Mittittippi Mittittippi. Then the second "M" becomes a "K": Mittittippi Kittittippi. Then you swallow the K: very difficult to put into print! And so on... You can understand the concept quite easily, but it doesn't prevent you from being tongue-tied. The rest is just making noises like drums, etc. And stomping. Like I said, original.

I must be getting spoiled. The next group up, Charanga Cakewalk, was also very good. There are just a ton of really excellent musicians down here. Cakewalk, for short, was a Latin band. It had an accordion, and a zizzer (that round thing with ridges that they zizz a stick up and down on for rhythym). The music was dance-able, leading us back to jealousy of people that actually can dance.

Fat rap

Walking up a storm
Trying to get my form
Back to the norm
Eliminate some scorn
Thirty years of biz play
Took all my youth away
Now when I got some say
I hobble when I walk today
Sit in my chair all day
Trying to blog my say
Tempted to do a rant
Really it's just I can't
Breath when I walk is scant
I'm old and I'm fat, I grant
I've got the fat gene
Can't fit a lean jean
Makes me want to vent some spleen
Just coming clean, zeen?
Pounds went on slow, so
Saying whoa don't go, bro
Not a lot to show, I know
Just reaping what I sow, Joe
Let you know when I'm fit
Gonna take a little bit
Probly you don't give a shit
But I jus' don' wanna quit
So, knit one, purl two with wit
I'm just trying to commit
To get me out the tar pit
This wasn't what I planned
I was dealt the gland hand
Nature has the whip hand
So I walk the strand, or
Pound the streets and sidewalks for
Getting back to the pants I wore

Somewhere between a late dinner and sundown

We caught the little silk-draper at his/her work. (Gender doesn't seem to have much significance when we are talking about a spider - except to the spider, of course.) This one was racing around the spirals, laying down ropes at a heck of a clip.

Note the difference in reflectivity of the new vs. the older silk. In the next 15 minutes after this one started, another one started a second web. Unfortunately, if we had opened the door, we would have broken its web.

Hard at work every night

For the last few days we have seen a spider web between the top of the grill and the deck rafters. Every morning it is gone. Then again, it appears sometime in the evening. It is nicely formed - maybe 2 - 2 1/2 feet across at the widest.

Unfortunately, the flash bleaches out the actual spider. It seems to have a bungee cord ready to enable jumping down to the lower part of the web.

The weaving seems particularly good, especially as it is done in darkness (at least until we turn on the porch light and invade).

We need to do more night forays. FW (favorite wife) has been reading a story about people finding many (>20) scorpions in their new house. They think the houses are invading scorpion territory. That's not the way I see it, but I would be happy to see more of them and watch them at work.

Both FYD (favorite youngest daughter) and I continue to see more thread snakes. She finds them wiggling as she does yard work. I tend to find them desiccated on a desert sidewalk, after trying to emigrate to more salubrious territory. The heat is pretty tough down here!

Music under the stars

Music Under the Stars is a free concert series offered in Austin at the Bob Bullock Museum. The museum itself is a beautiful building to visit. There is a giant Texas star out front, and a view of the Capitol from the street.

Inside, a gorgeous atrium with a floor mural greets you. Off the sides and up the stairs are a wide variety of Texas history exhibits. On Music Under the Stars nights the museum is free to the public.

A hint of rain kept the celebration inside yesterday evening. Usually it is outdoors. There are always alternatives for food and drink available. Last night Rudy's Barbecue provided the snacks. Rudy's is a chain which has acceptable, if not great, barbecue.

Their serving line inside the building was providing free food to a huge number of people. It was followed by free Blue Bell ice cream.

The evening's music was provided by the Cornell Hurd Band, a country/western group. They played a fairly wide variety of music, though. It included a bit of old time rock and roll and some waltzes, as well. The musicianship was amazing. This was a band that made everything they played seem effortless and fun. Love the walking bass!

My absolute favorite was Scott Walls, the steel guitarist. The guy could make his instrument sing.

This being Texas, there was a fair amount of two-stepping going on. This young couple started it off, then were joined by many. Lots of smiles were in evidence.

Then we went off to Wahoo's, a local watering hole and taco joint. We were once again on assignment, taking pictures for local magazine stories.

Once again the story will be about drinks. Thus the pint-sized margarita. This is Texas - everything is big. I really mean pint-sized! We'll see how the pic turns out after our designer deals with it.

On the way out of town we passed Lance Armstrong's bike shop, home of multi-thousand dollar bicycles.

Tony Bourdain last night

All of us have been Tony Bourdain converts for a long time. We all enjoy his honesty and intelligence, his story-telling ability, and his subject manner - food. Last night he showed up in Austin at the Paramount Theater for a reading, Q&A, and book-signing event.

After a sweltering wait (an hour in late afternoon heat) we entered the theater to wait for another hour listening to Tony's favorite music. It was downright chilly in there, and felt wonderful after the 97 degree heat. The policy was open seating, so we felt lucky to get 5 rows back, on the side, with a perfect view (we thought).

After collecting lots of drinks revenue, the theater brought out Mr. Bourdain right on time. He started off with a few comments, telling us he had thought the new book would show a kinder, gentler Tony Bourdain. He then read a chapter from his new book, Medium Raw, proving that he retains a boatload of anger. He was an excellent reader, looking up now and then to connect with his readers, explaining the chapter's premises with asides, and being very entertaining.

Then he opened up for Q&A. Wow, the questions were as revealing as the answers. People really study the guy! They had penetrating questions about everything, old shows, relationships with other food people, how he treats his 3 year old, things he remembers, how much pot he smokes, what his favorite drug is, etc. He was brilliant! He has such a depth of experience and is so articulate that he kept the audience rapt. His speaking was laced with profanity, which most of the audience enjoyed.

At one point he described his clueless TV producers using focus groups to figure out how the show was going. He and his team were trying very hard to be unobtrusively obscene. In one particular episode he was in the far North, putting on a long fur glove. He described it as like "fisting a Samoyed." The producers had no idea what that meant, but the focus group was laughing hard.

There seemed to be a lot of New Jersey people in the crowd. The only sad note of the evening came when someone asked if Tony (being raised in NJ) enjoyed a pork roll, egg, and cheese sandwich. The answer was a succinct, "No!" Also, unfortunate for us, the microphone on our side of the theater blocked our view of the stage for quite a while.

After an hour and a half of real enjoyment (ours, and apparently, his) he left the stage to start signing books. The line wrapped around the theater, upstairs, across the balcony hall, then down again, so we just took a couple pics and left.

Afterward we had  drinks and a bit of nosh at Little Woodrow's on 6th Street. Nice place with tons of different beers, but empty on a Monday evening. We just sat and talked about how much we enjoyed the show.

Dim sum, warriors, and critter

Sunday dim sum in North Austin today. It was a treat we hadn't had for quite a while. The restaurant was huge, but thinly populated when we arrived. The staff jumped right on things, though, as carts quickly appeared. We concentrated mostly on steamed dishes, with a few fried dumpling sort of things thrown in for good measure. This place had the fastest service we had ever seen. It was all over pretty quickly, about 20 or 30 small dishes demolished by the 4 person crew.

After a short trip to Round Rock, we were back in the same shopping center to visit the giant-size Asian grocery for staples. The young people wanted rice paper wrappers for various dishes, and 20 lbs of jasmine rice. Better half (BH) wanted baby bok choy and ground pork. I found Lee Kum Kee Oyster Sauce (boy in the boat picture on the front), then I wanted freedom. Off I went to bake in the car, hearing drumming and clanging from the distant part of the parking lot.

After collecting FYD (favorite younger daughter), FSIL (favorite son-in-law) and BH (better half), we drove over to where the noise was coming from.

Amidst flags, drums and cymbals,

and dragon heads,

a bunch of young warriors were showing their stuff. One by one and in groups they did set pieces and mock battles. Most had weapons appropriate for battle.

They were spinning, jumping, slicing, dicing, and making pretend enemies miserable.

This guy was going so fast that his staff blurred at 1/250th second.

There was a lot of athleticism; this guy got caught in mid-kip-up.

This guy could have been break dancing, but he wasn't.

Then we were off for home and some rest. The 100 degree heat was a bit exhausting. Later on in the evening FYD and FSIL got going on some yard work. FYD poked her nose in the door to announce another critter. She told me it was the same kind as she found up her pant leg the other night, so I grabbed my camera and ran (slight exaggeration) out the back door.

Their yard work had unearthed a wolf spider with its egg sack.

It was wiggly, evening was approaching, and I was using a macro setting. I took a lot of pictures, but only a couple came out.

Critters, Slobber Dog, and walks

FYD (favorite younger daughter and FSIL (favorite son-in-law) have been doing lots of yard work at their new house. Inevitably they have discovered some critters. It continues...

This little guy appeared to be a Texas Thread Snake (also called a Texas Blind Snake). They make their homes in loose soil and litter, attempting to hide and keep hydrated. A few days before we had come across one completely dried out on a sidewalk. Apparently it is quite easy for them to dehydrate.

So far we haven't seen any coral snakes, rattlers, copperheads, or water moccasins.

For now, the snakes and such are being relocated across a porous fence. Apparently you can't stop them anyway.

Weekends don't feel very different from other days for old, retired farts. Today, though, FYD thought it was time for some wiggling. Off we went to Emma Long Metropolitan Park, near Lake Austin. Even though it was at least 98 degrees we set out on a dog and people trail running along a stream.

It was all dry limestone rocks, cedar trees, and little pools.

The path crossed the creek again and again, sometimes on nice man-made pillars, sometimes via slippery limestone rocks.

There were lots of little rills, connecting the pools along the way.

At one stop we found a bunch of little toads hiding in the rocks.

Slobber Dog had a really good outing, racing back and forth in the water, sniffing the underbrush, racing around with other dogs,

and swimming. She may even have been more pooped than we were by the time we were done.

We saw tons of dogs, all sizes and shapes. We also saw all sizes and shapes of owners, as well. And finally, we saw this scuttling skink. It's not really a skink, but I like alliteration a lot. It is probably a Texas Spotted Whiptail Lizard. Whatever it was, we saw a lot of them, and they all disappeared fast.