The Shearing

Hair brings one's self-image into focus; it is vanity's proving ground. Hair is terribly personal, a tangle of mysterious prejudices. ~Shana Alexander

Funding Missions

The United Methodist Church is in mission in 125 countries. On Sunday, the United Methodist Women hosted a bake sale and the proceeds will help to fund missions.

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Mission News:

A study of United Methodist ministry needs and possibilities with Pacific Islanders in the United States is being organized by the denomination's mission agency.

The study will look at demographics and ministry priorities relating to people whose ethnic roots are in the Pacific Islands, such as Hawaii, Fiji, Guam, Samoa, and Tonga.

"This is a project whose time has come," said Bishop Mary Ann Swenson of the California-Pacific Annual (regional) Conference in welcoming the study plans. "Many Pacific Islanders come to this country with strong Methodist DNA." Swenson's area covers large parts of the Pacific, including Hawaii and Guam.

Teaser Tuesdays

Will in the World How Shakespeare Become Shakespeare
by Stephen Greenblatt

page 26

Everyone understood that Latin learning was inseparable from whipping.

One educational theorist of the time speculated that the buttocks were created in order to facilitate the learning of Latin.

page 27

Virtually all schoolmasters agreed that one of the best ways to instill good Latin in their students was to have them read and perform ancient plays, especially the comedies of Terence and Plautus.

The hummingbirds are back!

The hummingbirds may have been visiting Seguin before today -

but this is the first day I noticed them sipping the nectar
from the blossoms in the garden.
Such a happy sight!!
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Hummingbird Pauses at the Trumpet Vine
by Mary Oliver

Who doesn’t love
roses, and who
doesn’t love the lilies
of the black ponds
floating like flocks
of tiny swans,

and of course, the flaming
trumpet vine
where the hummingbird comes
like a small green angel, to soak
his dark tongue
in happiness -

and who doesn’t want to
live with the brisk motor of his heart
singing like a Schubert
and his eyes working and working
like those days of rapture,
by Van Gogh in Arles?

Look! for most of the world
is remembering -
most of the world is time
when we’re not here, not born yet, or died -
slow fire under the earth with all
our dumb wild blind cousins

who also can't even remember anymore
their own happiness -
Look! and then we will be
like the pale cool
stones, that last almost forever.

A Ride with Bob

Extract from The Austin Chronicle article by Robert Faires entitled "A Place to Gather Again", dated March 21, 2008.

A Place to Gather Again
The Long Center recycles not only Palmer Auditorium's materials but also its civic purpose

They came by the thousands.

When the Long Center for the Performing Arts threw wide its doors for a four-day open house earlier this month, a multitude of Austinites turned out to check it out. They walked up the Grand Stair to the 30,000-square-foot City Terrace and listened as the MASS Ensemble made music from the building itself, playing long strings attached to the old support structure ringing the plaza. They went inside and explored every nook and cranny of the facility, from the glassed-in Kodosky Donor Lounge with its expansive view of the erupting Downtown skyline to the dressing rooms for visiting stars to the restrooms, with their 2-1 ratio of women's facilities to men's. They stepped up to the walls and ran their fingers along the literally weather-beaten green and brown aluminum tiles rescued from the dome of Palmer Auditorium, the municipal center that had previously occupied the site for almost 50 years. They filed into the 2,400-seat Michael & Susan Dell Hall and the 230-seat Debra and Kevin Rollins Studio Theatre to hear chamber music and opera and watch theatre and dance. And when Grupo Fantasma got Dell Hall rockin', they danced themselves, right in the aisles.

Before there was Elvis, before there was Hank, there was a fiddler from West Texas by the name of Bob Wills – and he was The King. A musical biography about Bob Wills was written by Ray Benson and Anne Rapp. “Part memory play, part loving homage, part country concert, this Ride is so peppy and irresistible: Waylon Jennings was right: Bob Wills is still the king,” says The Dallas Morning News.

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In November 1998, the citizens of Austin voted to approve the City’s lease of the Lester E. Palmer Auditorium to the nonprofit group Arts Center Stage for renovation into a community performing arts venue. In April 1999, Arts Center Stage received its lead gift of $20 million from Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long, and the Arts Center Stage project was renamed the Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long Center for the Performing Arts.

In November 1999, the Long Center hired renowned Chicago architects Skidmore, Owings & Merrill as project architect for the Long Center project. The schematic design was completed in July 2000, and the design development phase was completed in February 2001. By early 2001, the Long Center had raised over $40 million of its fundraising goal.

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http://www.aridewithbob.com/sub_bios.htm

Always talking about . . . thinking about . . . FOOD!

Latin Cafe Austin

101 San Jacinto Blvd at Cesar Chavez

Austin, Texas

Great place!



Jumbo Shrimp
With a spinach-crab stuffing &
saffron cream sauce, red bell pepper
rice & vegetables

Crab Cake Salad
Pan-seared fresh blue lump crab cake
served over mixed greens & tomatoes

Coffee-Crusted Beef
Dusted with seasoned coffee
grilled & pan-seared, with a sherry
reduction sauce


Lovely hand-painted sink - colorful -
This used to be Dona Emilia's - re-named Latin Cafe Austin
Great food!
http://www.latincafeaustin.com/