Community Matters

(Community Matters) After dinner at Justine’s we’ll be back over for profiteroles and champage. I think the former is Jill McRae’s (birthday girl) favorite dessert, the latter mine.

hmm, dripping with warm walnut chocolate ganash

(Community Matters) Our friend, professor, author & UT Michener-alum Carrie Fountain is reading from her new book of poetry, Burn Lake, on Thur, Sept 24, at 7:30 pm in the Maloney Room in the Main Building at St. Edward’s University.

Carrie recently won the National Poetry Award for this compilation, being released by Penguin in early 2010.

(Community Matters) hmm, I’m wishing I had woken up on the coast, in Port Aransas, to the sunrise and was now at Bundy’s drinking coffee, eating a homemade cinnamon roll.

(Community Matters)

I woke up hungry so am already planning what to order tonight as we celebrate Jill McRae’s birthday (1 week ago) at Justine’s.

hmm, Escargots a la Bourguignonne, Soupe de Ardennes, Fillet de Poisson, Asperges Blanches with Sabayon Sauce and definitely the Tarte dEva. hey – I’m not being pretentious, their menu is in French. Wonder if we can bring in wine for an uncorking fee. ooops, just noticed on yelp, they have a full bar and I don’t think the bill passed this session which would allow patrons bringing wine in if there’s a full bar license, rats.

(Community Matters) This new East Austin restaurant, East Austin Showroom is beyond fabulous and is already a hipster favorite. Hearing about it for weeks (just opened last month), at 1100 E Sixth St. it’s literally around the corner from my East 7th St Thinkwell office.


I’m not sure why this thought occurred to Steven, but I concur, felt like we’d joined the cool young crowd in Marfa on an especially good weekend. Our waitress, Lindsey couldn’t have been more welcoming or patient in giving us the total run down and walking us through not only the food menu but also the cocktail menu – helped that she’s a foodie.

I should have known something was up when the amuse bouche arrived – I though, what a treat but how can they afford this.

I didn’t realize the chef had spotted us, nor that it was our friend Sonya Cote who’s cooked at the house several times. What an unexpected treat – especially the delicacies including beef carpaccio, feta with a basil pesto, chevre with a pear compote, fried duck liver on marinated cucumber and mozzarella & fresh tomato. Not to mention my starter cocktail – a pisco fuego.

Chef Sonya Cote (right)

Sonya formerly cooked for Spirited Foods and Dai Due. I remember her telling me there was a restaurant in the works. Together with Mickey & Mindy Spencer (twin sister & owners), they scrapped the walls, repaired the site and opened just a month ago. Mickey is an artist/welder and repaired/created a lot of what’s in the beautiful building restoration.

Dessert was a peach tarte with basil ice cream. Of course, normally served together but ST was skipping dairy. the peach tarte – out of site. I don’t think the crust was especially nutritious, way too good & perfect to not have lots and lots and lots of butter.

What an unexpected treat on Friday date night. We can’t wait to return. And, tonight we’ll be trying another East Austin newbie also generating lots of buzz

(Community Matters)

La Shana Tova

(Community Matters) Kip Keller forwarded this link to a Think Progress story from an insurance company insider about their long planned campaign to kill reform while charming the public and pretending to be for reform.

It’s really a duplicitous PR campaign. They will talk about, in broad terms, how supportive they are of health care reform, but they will be working behind the scenes to kill very, very crucial parts of reform legislation like the public option.

What kills me is how effectively the insurance companies are convincing families to work against their own self interest. The rest of us are doing something wrong if the same people who cancel policies on families of sick children and mothers with breast cancer and who routinely deny coverage for drugs and procedures already on approved formularies can convince these folks to protect the existing system and we’re not able to explain the value of reform.

(Community Matters) If you haven’t become a founding member of the Texas Tribune, may I suggest you do? 🙂

A wee bit late; nevertheless, Steven and I joined the Texas Tribune staff & spouses for dinner at Julie & John Thornton’s. This new venture, a collaboration between the Thorntons and the Evan Smiths, really does have the opportunity to change the world, at least the state we live in. During the summer, I helped out by organizing administrative matters. What a terrific chance to get to know and support such an outstanding initiative.

What is the Texas Tribune?

A non-profit, nonpartisan public media organization. The mission is to promote civic engagement and discourse on public policy, politics, government, and other matters of statewide concern, and we’ll do this in two principal ways.

First, through the original journalism that we’ll report, write, compile, record, shoot, etc., and post online at our destination site, texastribune.org, and in the pages and on the sites of our distribution partners. (Ubiquity is a goal; we want to put robust public interest journalism in the hands of and before the eyes of as many Texans as possible.)

Second, through on-the-record, open-to-the-public events: conversation series featuring elected officials and other newsmakers, conferences on major topics of interest to every Texan, an annual ideas festival, and the like. The point here is that the in-person experience is itself a distribution platform, and once the event is over, the audio and video of what took place becomes content of its own, likewise available on our site and other sites.

(Community Matters) Last night launched Jack McDonald’s official fundraisers @ the cool, Westlake abode of John Hogg & David Garza.

Jack McDonald & John Hogg

I’ve heard and read about John & David’s house – the descriptions haven’t done it justice – simply stunning. One of the best views in the city

Charles Duggan, Kirk Rudy, Phil Spertus & Rick Fromberg (Jack’s campaign manager)

Rick’s a veteran of several tight-district races – experienced and battle tested beyond his years. I’ve enjoyed getting to know him.

Rep. Elliot Naishtat, Lulu Flores, Alexa Wesner

Lindsay & Kevin Burns

Nancy Scanlan & Jodie Scheske

Have enjoyed seeing Nancy a couple of times during the last week. She’s away so often it’s a treat she’s been in Austin this last month. Jodie just back from his annual jaunt to Cape Cod. For three years we’ve been promising each other to book a quiet dinner – shame on us for not. Jodie’s an early and important Jack supporter.

I obviously got so caught up chatting about Jack, I failed to take enough pictures. Tons of other friends in attendance including of course, Carla McDonald and Diane Land & Steve Adler, Alisha Welden, Blaine Wesner, Andy Brown, Linda Ball & Forrest Preece, Frank & Margaret Krasovec, Tim McCabe, Robbie & Tom Ausley, Erin & Jon Driscoll, Rep. Mark Strama, Rep. Donna Howard, Nona Niland & David Braun, Amy Rudy and lots other. A very successful event on all fronts.

(Community Matters) I’m sure not unlike in most families, there’s diversity of political opinion and philosophy in mine. This morning, I sent the below email to a group of relatives sharing and forwarding opinion pieces from far right bloggers.

I recommend we all read Leonard Pitts’ editorial. The most important point being the real threat of physical danger if we keep fanning the flames of anger on the right.

To those of us who think we support Rush Limbaugh, did we hear Rush correctly yesterday? Does he really think we should segregate busing for black and white kids. Do we not imagine the next step is segregating brown kids, mixed race kids, “real Christians” from papists and jews & muslims . . . .

Limbaugh’s cited event: If you watched the video of the fight on the bus, it’s not at all obvious that the fight was about race. The police reviewed the situation & the video and they determined it was not. Not that it even matters – white kids, black kids, brown kids . . . all kids . . . have been fighting for ages. They’ll continue to do so, even more so with the today’s role models.

Most of you know, I am involved with the administration. Last week, I sat through hours of briefings from senior White House and DNC staff. I’ve met and spoken directly with the president and the first lady, and I’ve sat in meetings and conference calls with them several times. I promise you, they aren’t socialists, they aren’t even raging liberals.

The president is by far a pragmatist who wants to further the safety net of healthcare, improve our system of education and correct the unfairness of regulations and tax structures which were especially thrown out of balance during the last eight years. Frankly, the policies will cost me and Steven more than help us. That’s okay. It’s in our long term economic & societal interests that we refocus resources on strengthening the middle class and expanding opportunities for others to join the middle class – not to mention that these goals simply reflect our moral interests and we’d support them regardless of self interests.

I’m increasingly fearful that our lack of civility is going to get people killed. By all means, let’s continue to express our opinions, debate the merits of proposed legislation and protest when we must. BUT, let’s call down the pundits and leaders – whether from the right or left – who incite violence, call for segregation or otherwise model behavior we were taught long time ago wasn’t right.

Please never doubt, I love all my family – immediate, extended and adopted.

Much love,

Eugene

Leonard Pitts: The Culture War is Real & Scary

(Community Matters) I don’t remember who with, but just this week I was having a conversation about his commitment to changing how Washington works. Unlike 43’s which evidently was simply a line in a speech, I believe our president not only means it, one of his success metrics no doubt measures this.

While I don’t have access to the dashboard the president uses to monitor daily progress, I have been in many rooms with his top advisors and every single one of them have stressed the importance of changing how business is done in Washington. I also liked hearing President Obama in his speech last week clarify how he’s not going to be distracted by those simply intent on derailing or stalling legislation.

(Community Matters) I read this in the AAS but can’t find a link there – nevertheless, here the Miami Herald.

People who want this country to remain a white-dominated country have lost. They have completely and utterly lost the battle, and they can never win it. If they were to seal the borders tomorrow, whites would still lose their majority in a matter of years, simply as a result of the difference in fertility rate.

“Terror From The Right” is a listing of bombers, killers, would-be assassins and insurrectionists motivated by anger over abortion, gays, taxes, blacks, Muslims and illegal immigrants.

Which raises an obvious fair and balanced question: What about terror from the left? The SPLC’s Mark Potok says left-wing terror essentially means eco-terrorists, e.g., animal rights extremists. The death toll from their work, he says, is zero.

By contrast, Timothy McVeigh killed 168 people because he was angry at the government, brothers Matthew and Tyler Williams shot two men to death for being gay, James Kopp killed Dr. Barnett Slepian for being an abortion provider, and dozens of other men have been indicted for dozens of other plots to kill thousands of other people with whom they had political disagreements.

That’s not dissent. It is the howl of the unhinged and the entitled. The same folks who were complacent as President Bush spent surplus into deficit, wasted $600 billion and 4,000 American lives on the wrong war and watched a major American city drown are morally outraged because the new guy wants to reform healthcare.