"The real answer, they say, lies entangled in a complicated web that implicates everyone involved, from businesses to local elected officials to your next door neighbor. "
"It’s city officials who permit and approve, or reject and delay, new housing projects — and new housing is what the Bay Area needs to pull itself out of this crisis, most observers agree. Santa Clara and San Mateo counties together added about 47,000 jobs in 2017, while permitting just 12,000 new residential units," “Before ‘Silicon Valley’ got here, it was more affordable,”
"But while tech leaders might disagree, it’s hard to argue that their industry...hasn’t also played a major role in the housing crisis."
“There was no relationship between the tech companies’ hiring practices and hiring goals and funding lower-income housing opportunities.”
"But tech companies can’t conjure up more housing without city officials, who experts say can be reluctant to approve large-scale residential development projects, or can otherwise limit construction with rules that govern where projects can be built, how tall they can be and how much parking they must provide."
“They’ve been green-lighting office projects like crazy,” Elkind said of Bay Area cities, “but they don’t care about where those workers are supposed to live.”
"Once the city approves housing, it’s up to a developer to build it, Sinks said. And it can be challenging to find developers willing or able to step up. Housing projects are getting more expensive to build as construction costs rise, Sinks said, and it’s more lucrative for developers to build office space or market-rate housing instead of affordable housing."
“Current residents are probably the source of a lot (of) blame,” Painter said. “They don’t want newcomers to come in and change their quality of life, because they’ve already been here and established that.”
"Many developers also blame the California Environmental Quality Act, a statute that imposes strict requirements on real estate projects to limit their environmental impact. Developers say residents also use CEQA to file lawsuits purely to delay projects and jack up construction costs. In the poll, 19 percent of people said environmental groups play a major role in the Bay Area’s housing issues."
Seems that there is not yet a way to donate outside of a driver's license renewal.
A state law that crowdfunds money for rape kit testing has collected almost a quarter-million dollars in its first five months, according to the bill's author, state Rep. Victoria Neave.
The state has long been faced with a backlog of untested rape kits, which are gathered by police through invasive, hours-long exams of sexual assault victims and cost anywhere between $500 and $2,000 to test. The most recent data made available by the Texas Department of Public Safety shows a backlog of more than 3,500 untested rape kits statewide — meaning there may be even more untested kits in Texas today.
To address this problem, a program spearheaded by Neave allows Texans applying for or renewing their driver’s license the option to donate $1 or more toward rape kit testing. The program has collected more than $234,956 as of June 2018, Neave said.
“Cost was the most-cited reason for not getting these rape kits tested,” Neave, a Democrat from Dallas, told The Texas Tribune earlier this week. “Sexual assault happens every single day, and the numbers continue to increase. There still isn’t enough funding right now to get all of the kits tested.”
Since the grant program formally launched in January, more than 85,000 Texans have donated, with several thousand contributing $10 or more to the cause, Neave said.
The money collected will go to a “dedicated testing evidence account” controlled by the state comptroller. The Governor's Criminal Justice Division will then distribute the funds to qualifying crime labs and agencies on an application basis.
“It’s really special to see how small $1 contributions can add up and make a meaningful impact on the lives of women here in Texas,” Neave said. “And not just women, but all survivors who will benefit from getting their kits tested.”
A spokesman for Gov. Greg Abbott’s office told the Tribune that none of the money has been released yet but that application requests are set to go out July 1.
"Sexual assault evidence collection kits provide our law enforcement and prosecutors with a critical tool for identifying and prosecuting offenders,” Abbott said in January. “Supporting our survivors and providing law enforcement the resources they need is and always will be a cornerstone of my administration.”
Under Neave’s grant program, money is collected by both the Texas Department of Public Safety and the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles. And on Friday, Neave announced a partnership with Deeds Not Words, a nonprofit founded by former state Sen. Wendy Davis, to create a GoFundMe account for Texans hoping to donate to rape kit testing outside of DMV operations.
“This is an issue I worked on quite a lot when I was in the Texas Senate, and I wish I could say we made the progress I would’ve liked to have seen, but unfortunately, we still have not,” Davis said. “Should it be an individual's responsibility to voluntarily donate to this? I wish it weren’t, but until the state steps up, I think it’s important for those of us who care about this issue to put some resources forward.”
Davis told the Tribune earlier this week that the money collected through the “Clear the Kits” campaign will go to a separate account under Deeds Not Words’ name. The money will be distributed monthly to law enforcement agencies identified by the governor’s office, she said.
“We’ve made a commitment to people as we’re reaching out and asking for their precious dollars that every dollar they send will go directly to the testing of the kits,” Davis said.
I know we need more housing, but I was here first and I’m not giving up even one blade of grass on my water-guzzling, pesticide-leaching lawn or a single burner on my twelve-burner Viking range that I never actually use to house another human soul.
The best way to deal with a rattlesnake is to get away from it. Rattlers only bite when threatened, so if you see one nearby but don’t threaten it, you’re likely to be safe—it should mosey along and you can safely go about your day. Of course, sometimes that’s not an option. Maybe you’ve got animals to take care of, or maybe you’re in an enclosed space. If you have to kill a rattlesnake, you can shoot it, if you’re a good shot—but snakes are small targets, so if you miss, you’re likely to spook it, which can make things dangerous. Perhaps the safest way to kill a snake is to sever the head—with an axe, a shovel, a garden hoe, or whatever else is…View Original Post
I hate to admit it but the title is borderline clickbait. The article is more about the study and less about caffeinating strategies. Here's the one helpful takeaway. "because the participants were sleep-deprived — getting just 5 hours of sleep a night — they gradually accumulated a "sleep debt" that hurt their performance, particularly later in the day. So the optimization algorithm determined that participants needed more caffeine later in the week (particularly later in the day) — and less caffeine at the beginning of the week — to optimize their performance."
Caffeine can perk you up, but exactly how much caffeine should you consume – and when should you take it – to achieve "peak" alertness?
by Hamilton Nolan on Splinter, shared by Hudson Hongo to Gizmodo
You like Airnb? Sure, sure, great. Would you like Airbnb as much if you knew that its mere existence was costing you, personally, an extra thousand bucks a year in rent?
Those who tuned into the Eastern Conference finals Tuesday hoping to see the same top-tier basketball that defined game 1 were likely feeling a bit frustrated last night when, without warning, the contest was suddenly brought to a screeching halt. The highly anticipated game 2 matchup between the Boston Celtics and…
FAIRFAX, VA—Saying that he had just the qualifications needed to help guide their organization, the NRA announced Monday that Oliver North would be its new president, touting the retired Lt. Colonel’s expertise at avoiding jail time for colluding with hostile foreign powers. “Oliver North brings a wealth of experience…
We’re a month or so away from the regular orange and red zone air pollution alerts that we accept as just a fact of life of living in Dallas-Fort Worth. Texas is hot. Cities like Dallas churn out a lot of junk into the air. Sometimes, like last October, the weather and mysterious events can […]
A former director of the CIA and NSA said Wednesday that hysteria in Texas over a 2015 U.S. military training exercise called Jade Helm was fueled by Russians wanting to dominate “the information space,” and that Texas Gov. Greg Abbott's decision to send the Texas State Guard to monitor the operation gave them proof of the power of such misinformation campaigns.
Michael Hayden, speaking on MSNBC’s Morning Joe podcast, chalked up peoples’ fear over Jade Helm 15 to “Russian bots and the American alt-right media [that] convinced many Texans [Jade Helm] was an Obama plan to round up political dissidents.”
Abbott ordered the State Guard to monitor the federal exercise soon after news broke of the operation. Hayden said that move gave Russians the go-ahead to continue — and possibly expand — their efforts to spread fear.
“At that point, I’m figuring the Russians are saying, ‘We can go big time,’” Hayden said of Abbott's response. “At that point, I think they made the decision, ‘We’re going to play in the electoral process.’”
Jade Helm 15 was a planned military training exercise that became a fascination of conspiracy theorists before it even began. The exercise, which spanned several states, began in Texas in Bastrop County in 2015 and was described by federal officials as routine. But some conspiracy theorists speculated that the exercise was a covert effort to institute martial law. Hayden was not CIA director at this time.
Weeks before the exercise began, Abbott wrote a letter to the State Guard asking them to keep an eye on the operation so “Texans know their safety, constitutional rights, private property rights and civil liberties will not be infringed.” In the letter, Abbott added that he had "the utmost respect for the deep patriotism of the brave men and women who put their lives on the line to fight for and defend our freedom."
Yet the move prompted significant criticism. Democrats questioned whether Abbott really trusted the military. Even some Republicans — including former Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst — spoke out in support of the exercise. Former state Rep. Todd Smith accused Abbott of "pandering to idiots."
“I think it’s okay to question your government — I do it on a pretty regular basis," former Gov. Rick Perry, who is now U.S. Energy Secretary, told reporters at the time. "The military's something else."
A spokesperson for Abbott did not immediately return The Texas Tribune’s request for comment Thursday, but Democrats are already seizing on Hayden's remarks to further criticize the governor for calling the State Guard to monitor the operation.
“It doesn’t take an intelligence expert to see that Trump Republican Greg Abbott calling the Texas National Guard on the U.S. Military was downright idiocy,” Manny Garcia, the deputy executive director of the Texas Democratic Party, said in a news release, misidentifying the Texas State Guard. “Abbott still owes the men and women of our armed forces, and every single Texan, an apology.”
Hayden was CIA director from 2006 to 2009. His allegation isn't the first one connecting Russian misinformation campaigns and Texas. Last year, federal lawmakers revealed a trove of information from ads purchased on Facebook, including ones showing that two Russian Facebook pages managed to organize dueling rallies in front of a Houston mosque in 2016.
We've need to raise about $10,000 more to cover the costs of running the Torch this year so we're putting on some fun events to help raise that money and give fans and friends a chance to get to know the Torch.
Trivia night is hosted at Bonesaw (co-owner) and Colleen (GM) house in South Austin, is sponsored by Get it Gals and Dulce Vida Tequila. 100% of your ticket to the Torch Trivia Night goes to the team!
Some were understandably sceptical of the image, given the difference in darkness of the black ink. However a reputable source was produced, and it turns out the comic originates from the 1921 July edition of Judge magazine. Read more...
"I’d like somebody to mention that day that Martin Luther King Jr. tried to give his life serving others. (Yes) I’d like for somebody to say that day that Martin Luther King Jr. tried to love somebody. I want you to say that day that I tried to be right on the war question. (Amen) I want you to be able to say that day that I did try to feed the hungry. (Yes) And I want you to be able to say that day that I did try in my life to clothe those who were naked. (Yes) I want you to say on that day that I did try in my life to visit those who were in prison. (Lord) I want you to say that I tried to love and serve humanity. (Yes)" .. "Yes, if you want to say that I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice. (Amen) Say that I was a drum major for peace. (Yes) I was a drum major for righteousness … Yes, Jesus, I want to be on your right or your left side, (Yes) not for any selfish reason. I want to be on your right or your left side, not in terms of some political kingdom or ambition. But I just want to be there in love and in justice and in truth and in commitment to others, so that we can make of this old world a new world."
“The Drum Major Instinct” is one of Martin Luther King Jr.’s finest sermons and perhaps his most haunting. He delivered it exactly two months before his assassination, on February 4, 1968, at Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, where he served as co-pastor with his father. In both substance and style, the sermon is vintage late King: He fiercely articulates the imperatives of faith and citizenship with the voice of a preacher who had mastered his art.
Still, what distinguishes “The Drum Major Instinct” is that King concludes this homily by rehearsing his death, effectively spelling out the kind of eulogy he wanted delivered at his funeral. It’s spellbinding to listen to, especially when King reaches the climax and begins to reckon with his imminent mortality, his voice heightened with the kind of emotion rarely heard in his other recorded speeches.
The sermon wasn’t one of King’s iconic addresses, nor was it delivered on a grand stage; rather, it was part of a Sabbath service given in his home church. In the sermon, King is a minister teaching and communing with his flock. Listening to the recording of “The Drum Major Instinct,” in fact, we can hear a key feature of the black church: the call and response between preacher and congregation, with the latter’s cries of “Amen,” “Yes,” “Preach it,” and “Make it plain”adding resonance to King’s words.
That Sunday, King preached on the virtues of service and the false ideals of greatness, adapting his sermon from a 1949 homily, “Drum Major Instincts,” by James Wallace Hamilton, a prominent white liberal Methodist minister. Like Hamilton, King draws his text from a passage in the Gospel of Mark detailing an exchange between Jesus and the apostles John and James. The two brothers ask to sit next to Jesus in heaven; Jesus tells them the favor isn’t his to grant, but theirs to earn by committing their lives to serving others. The apostles’ request is motivated by a need to stand out, to be the exception. It’s this basic human impulse for recognition that Hamilton and King refer to as a drum-major instinct. Both caution that this drive can be abused for self-serving purposes and pernicious ends. But, if nurtured, it can be a powerful resource for good and for achieving greatness.
While the central idea is borrowed, King’s sermon is ultimately his own. “The Drum Major Instinct” is a work that must be heard, and not simply read, for clearly audible is King’s power to align the sound and substance of his words. At the outset, when King is introducing the lesson, his voice is measured, his cadence controlled. But soon come the flashes of exclamation, as King stresses a word or a phrase with a quiver, a shout, or a roar. His cries come in shorter intervals as he goes on, becoming more pronounced with each social peril he warns against. And for much of the sermon, King shifts between a composed voice (laced with a tart irony) and a variation of whooping (brimming with righteous discontent). This seesaw of tones and emotions continues until the minister, eventually, reaches his self-eulogy.
Thematically, “The Drum Major Instinct” features King’s signature blend of radical faith and politics. For the first two-thirds of the 40-minute homily, King illustrates his religious lesson with social messages that are as urgent today as they were in 1968. He counsels his congregation not to be “taken by advertisers” who insist material goods can lead to self-worth. He warns against the “snobbish exclusivism” that can lead churches to care more about their social standing than their mission to be a sanctuary for all.
America’s “tragic race prejudice,” King adds, is another example of the “perverted use of the drum-major instinct,” leading white people to falsely believe in their own supremacy, and blinding the white poor from seeing that their fate is directly linked to that of black Americans. King is even more scathing when he describes the American quest for global supremacy as another perversion of greatness. “God didn’t call America to engage in a senseless, unjust war as the war in Vietnam,” he says. “We’ve committed more war crimes almost than any nation in the world, and I’m going to continue to say it.”
In short, greatness cannot be won by might, nor by virtue of belonging to a privileged group. But, King preaches, if his audience can harness the drum-major instinct and put it to use in the service of justice, they can strive toward the kind of greatness Jesus embodied. And to serve, King exhorts, requires no entitlements or credentials but “a heart full of grace” and “a soul generated by love.” This path to distinction and recognition, he suggests, is available to all.
* * *
The conclusion of “The Drum Major Instinct” is masterfully wrought, as King captures the urgency of his moral-political message by anticipating his own end. “Every now and then I think about my own death and I think about my own funeral,” he says. “And I don’t think of it in a morbid sense. And every now and then I ask myself, ‘What is it that I would want said?’” Speaking in a posthumous voice, as if calling out from the dominion of the dead, he instructs his congregation to keep the funeral short. He asks that whoever eulogizes him be brief, skipping over his resume of countless awards and degrees and instead focusing on how he died pursuing justice. With unfettered emotion, King says:
I’d like somebody to mention that day that Martin Luther King Jr. tried to give his life serving others. (Yes) I’d like for somebody to say that day that Martin Luther King Jr. tried to love somebody. I want you to say that day that I tried to be right on the war question. (Amen) I want you to be able to say that day that I did try to feed the hungry. (Yes) And I want you to be able to say that day that I did try in my life to clothe those who were naked. (Yes) I want you to say on that day that I did try in my life to visit those who were in prison. (Lord) I want you to say that I tried to love and serve humanity. (Yes)
Charged with passion and pathos, these lines are perhaps the sermon’s most stirring. A first-rate orator, King uses repetition not only to itemize the things he had done to earn his death (and to embody the very lesson he’d preached), but also to stress key phrases like “I did try” and “say that day.” King takes the sermon to its emotional peak and ultimately concludes with a grief-driven recapitulation of the homily’s ideas:
Yes, if you want to say that I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice. (Amen) Say that I was a drum major for peace. (Yes) I was a drum major for righteousness … Yes, Jesus, I want to be on your right or your left side, (Yes) not for any selfish reason. I want to be on your right or your left side, not in terms of some political kingdom or ambition. But I just want to be there in love and in justice and in truth and in commitment to others, so that we can make of this old world a new world.
On April 9, 1968, the day of King’s funeral, Coretta Scott King, his widow and comrade, requested that the elegiac ending of “The Drum Major Instinct” be played as part of the memorial service. This, too, is spellbinding to watch. How uncanny that only two months after King stood to deliver this sermon on the same dais he would be lying in a coffin; and that the same words would be spoken again in the same church to eulogize him. Yet, King’s murder wasn’t unexpected, as “The Drum Major Instinct” attests. During the short interval of his public life, from 1954 to 1968, death had become King’s close companion—his house had been bombed, he had been stabbed, and he had faced a legion of white vigilantes and sheriffs.
In the last year of his life, King had turned to his ministry to voice what it felt like to live under the pall of death. In a sermon he gave in Chicago in August 1967, for instance, King confided, “Living every day under the threat of death, I feel discouraged sometimes.” And, as it’s well-known, the night before his assassination in Memphis he ended his last sermon, “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop,” with a fairly elaborate discussion of mortality.
King’s late sermons also express the feelings of a larger black collective contending with similar forces of loss, and connect with a long tradition of African American elegizing. Given the systematic killing of black people across U.S. history,mourners have had to invent ways of grieving not only the dead but also the living, for whom the possibility of sudden and arbitrary death is all too real. The prospect of dying is such a persistent theme in African American culture—from spirituals to hip-hop music, slave narratives to contemporary literature—that it reveals how much loss animates both black life and art.
If we take black music alone, songs like “Feel Like My Time Ain’t Long,” “I’m Traveling to the Grave,” and “When I’m Dead” are among a cluster of spirituals that conjure up imminent death and what Frederick Douglass called “the death-dealing character of slavery.” Robert Johnson’s blues classic “Hellhound on My Trail” is a song also about the threat of lynching. Songs that foresee death abound in hip hop—“Only Fear of Death” and “Death Around the Corner” being two powerful examples just from Tupac Shakur’s repertoire. Indeed, it’s easy to glean from the canon of black culture, to borrow from the poet Claudia Rankine’s essay, “the condition of black life is one of mourning”—mourning born out of both a death-riddled past and a precarious future.
Though King’s influence is readily visible throughout American culture 50 years after his assassination, it’s still all too common to see his words divorced from his life and what he stood for. Those who watched the Super Bowl this year may recall a Ram Trucks TV spot, which featured an excerpt of “The Drum Major Instinct,” and which ran exactly five decades after he gave the homily. There was an immediate backlash, and rightly so: No King sermon is fit for a commercial, but especially not this homily, which explicitly confronts the dangers of capitalism and calls out advertisers by name. The spot was little more than a crass ploy to use a work of mourning, and a militant call for radically transforming America, to sell automobiles.
The 50th anniversary of King’s death offers an occasion for a deeper consideration of his words, indeed as one way to stymie such vacuous appropriations of his ideas. If anything, “The Drum Major Instinct” reminds Americans of, and emboldens them to change, the fact that they live in a country and a world still rife with the “three evils” of classism, racism, and militarism. Today, King’s sermon is a pitch-perfect counterpoint to the ugly cacophony of the present political culture. Exquisite and fierce, “The Drum Major Instinct” should move all of us who encounter it—and move not only our senses, but also our resolve to achieve a more just world.
Thanks to Boom for giving me the heads up on the Torch.
Interested in trying out to be one of the first professional ultimate players in Texas? Just want to get out there and play some high level ultimate with some other fierce women? Feel like supporting the team by showing up and being a part of the process? Well all are welcome!
Tryouts are being held at Zilker Park in Austin, TX on Saturday April 14th from 2pm - 5pm. There is a $25 fee which gets you an Austin Torch reversible and also helps support the team financially.
Fill out the survey HERE and get ready to cleat up and be part of history! Can't attend tryouts? Don't worry - we're still interested in you! Fill out this application here.
Adeila Owens’s father woke her up early in the morning of March 12. He told her he had seen something about her friend Draylen Mason on the news. “You need to check on Dray,” he said. “I think something’s wrong.” She was 18 and Dray 17, and they had become close friends playing bass in the Austin Youth Orchestra’s symphony. So Adeila did what teenagers do: she sent Dray a text message asking if he was okay, then went back to sleep. A few minutes later, her orchestra director texted her and woke her up again. It was bad. In fact, Dray was the victim of a bombing. Now wide awake, Adeila checked his Facebook page. “I just kept seeing like ‘RIP, RIP,’” she remembers.…View Original Post
"the first time in NCAA history that the majority of the starting 10 players in a title game were black" "At the time, the state of Mississippi had outlawed integrated athletic events. " "Senator Billy Mitts got a judge to draw up a temporary injunction to prevent the team from traveling to that year’s tournament" "Colvard instructed McCarthy to go to Memphis; that way the injunction would not be served to either administrator. From there, an assistant coach took some freshman and reserve players to a private plane, using them as bait just in case anyone from the state government was following them.The coach then brought along the starters and the team flew to Nashville, where McCarthy and athletic director Wade Walker met them for their ensuing flight to East Lansing, Mich. And so it was that, despite the state’s official position on the matter, Mississippi State played Loyola in the second round."
Loyola-Chicago punched its ticket to the Final Four on Saturday by handing out its first decisive ass-kicking of the tournament after all those heart-stopping wins. If you saw them thrash Kansas State, 78-62—or if you’d seen them eke out one win after another en route to the Elite Eight—you know the Ramblers are for…
On a recent Friday afternoon, the Blue Cat Café, in East Austin, hummed pleasantly with activity. Patrons lounged on couches or sat pecking away at their MacBooks as half a dozen cats roamed freely over and around them. A server went from table to table with an iPad, taking orders for whimsically named vegan dishes like Alley Cat Tacos and BBQ Briscat. Apart from the cats and the feline-themed decor, the cafe seemed like just another shabby-chic hipster hangout. Anyone willing to pay a $5 “kitty cover” could come inside, order a coffee, and play with the adoptable cats. The cozy atmosphere made it easy to forget that the cafe is ground zero for an intense public debate over gentrification, a flash point for long-standing tensions…View Original Post
The Coastal Hike Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge Route: West Lake Trail to Luttes Camp Trail to Gator Pond Trail Distance: 12 miles Difficulty: Moderate. The terrain makes for a fairly mild hike, but be prepared to trek some miles in the heat. Thirty miles north of the Mexican border, a stretch of land, protected from the gulf by South Padre Island, contains the last of the wild coastal prairie in the Lower Rio Grande Valley. The Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge spreads across salt flats that give way to mesquite-granjeno woodlands and South Texas scrubland. Given that 95 percent of the valley’s native habitat has been plowed under or paved, it’s a small miracle that the endangered ocelot, a wild cat that looks like a…View Original Post
WHO: Richard Overton, the oldest man in America. WHAT: A photo of Overton recreating the smile shown on a mural in which he’s featured in East Austin. WHY IT’S SO GREAT: Six months after Richard Overton was born, President Teddy Roosevelt traveled to Panama to inspect the progress of the Panama Canal. Overton, who signed up to fight in World War II when he was 34, is the oldest man in America, and the third-oldest man in the world. In May, he’ll celebrate his 112th birthday the same way he celebrates most things in life—with whiskey and cigars, which he’s declared are the secret to his longevity. Austin, where Overton has lived since 1945, likes to celebrate its oldest resident. Last year, the city named a stretch…View Original Post
On Monday, 17-year-old Draylen Mason was killed by a package explosion at his home on Oldfort Hill Road. It was the second in a string of three attacks in the past two weeks that the Austin Police Department says are related. By all accounts, Draylen was a remarkable kid, and there have been hundreds of remembrances in the past couple days that testify to that.
The best way to deal with a rattlesnake is to get away from it. Rattlers only bite when threatened, so if you see one nearby but don’t threaten it, you’re likely to be safe—it should mosey along and you can safely go about your day. Of course, sometimes that’s not an option. Maybe you’ve got animals to take care of, or maybe you’re in an enclosed space. If you have to kill a rattlesnake, you can shoot it, if you’re a good shot—but snakes are small targets, so if you miss, you’re likely to spook it, which can make things dangerous. Perhaps the safest way to kill a snake is to sever the head—with an axe, a shovel, a garden hoe, or whatever else is…View Original Post
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Adeila Owens’s father woke her up early in the morning of March 12. He told her he had seen something about her friend Draylen Mason on the news. “You need to check on Dray,” he said. “I think something’s wrong.” She was 18 and Dray 17, and they had become close friends playing bass in the Austin Youth Orchestra’s symphony. So Adeila did what teenagers do: she sent Dray a text message asking if he was okay, then went back to sleep. A few minutes later, her orchestra director texted her and woke her up again. It was bad. In fact, Dray was the victim of a bombing. Now wide awake, Adeila checked his Facebook page. “I just kept seeing like ‘RIP, RIP,’” she remembers.…View Original Post
On a recent Friday afternoon, the Blue Cat Café, in East Austin, hummed pleasantly with activity. Patrons lounged on couches or sat pecking away at their MacBooks as half a dozen cats roamed freely over and around them. A server went from table to table with an iPad, taking orders for whimsically named vegan dishes like Alley Cat Tacos and BBQ Briscat. Apart from the cats and the feline-themed decor, the cafe seemed like just another shabby-chic hipster hangout. Anyone willing to pay a $5 “kitty cover” could come inside, order a coffee, and play with the adoptable cats. The cozy atmosphere made it easy to forget that the cafe is ground zero for an intense public debate over gentrification, a flash point for long-standing tensions…View Original Post
The Coastal Hike Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge Route: West Lake Trail to Luttes Camp Trail to Gator Pond Trail Distance: 12 miles Difficulty: Moderate. The terrain makes for a fairly mild hike, but be prepared to trek some miles in the heat. Thirty miles north of the Mexican border, a stretch of land, protected from the gulf by South Padre Island, contains the last of the wild coastal prairie in the Lower Rio Grande Valley. The Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge spreads across salt flats that give way to mesquite-granjeno woodlands and South Texas scrubland. Given that 95 percent of the valley’s native habitat has been plowed under or paved, it’s a small miracle that the endangered ocelot, a wild cat that looks like a…View Original Post
WHO: Richard Overton, the oldest man in America. WHAT: A photo of Overton recreating the smile shown on a mural in which he’s featured in East Austin. WHY IT’S SO GREAT: Six months after Richard Overton was born, President Teddy Roosevelt traveled to Panama to inspect the progress of the Panama Canal. Overton, who signed up to fight in World War II when he was 34, is the oldest man in America, and the third-oldest man in the world. In May, he’ll celebrate his 112th birthday the same way he celebrates most things in life—with whiskey and cigars, which he’s declared are the secret to his longevity. Austin, where Overton has lived since 1945, likes to celebrate its oldest resident. Last year, the city named a stretch…View Original Post
