Community Matters

(Community Matters) Happy to hear Austin Gunter is enjoying his move to SF. In a recent blog post: What the Difference Between Austin & San Francisco.

(Community Matters) Ultimate site specific theatre. Most of us know the Punchdrunk theatre company for their NYC production Sleep No More. Steven and I  stumbled onto them  ten+ years ago. They’ve just announced their next production, this one in collaboration with the National Theatre. Highly, highly, highly recommend it – and I’ve not even read it or spoken with them about it, nevertheless . . .

Shrouded in mystery in the Gaurdian

at Royal National Threatre

Step into the world of Temple Pictures where the Hollywood studio system meets a forgotten hinterland filled with dreamers who exist at the fringes of the movie industry. Here, celluloid fantasy clings to desperate realism and certainty dissolves into a hallucinatory world.

Inspired by Büchner’s fractured masterpiece Woyzeck, this theatrical journey follows its protagonists along the precipice between illusion and reality.

(Community Matters) I love this

Politico Playbook: BREAKING – “Pope to hold major Holy Week service in youth jail” – Reuters/Vatican City : “Pope Francis will hold a major ceremony next week in the chapel of a youth prison instead of in the Vatican or a Rome basilica where it has been held before, the Vatican said on Thursday. Francis will conduct the Holy Thursday afternoon service at the Casal del Marmo jail for minors on Rome’s outskirts. During the service, the pope washes and kisses the feet of 12 people to commemorate Jesus’s gesture of humility towards his apostles on the night before he died. All previous popes in living memory held the service either in St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican or in the Basilica of St. John in Lateran … When he was archbishop of Buenos Aires, the former Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio often celebrated the Holy Thursday service in a jail, a hospital, a home for the elderly or with poor people.”

[poor] naked and you clothed me; sick and in prison, and you visited me

(Community Matters) well . . . . not making this stuff up:  Jon Hamm’s evidently got an anatomy issue and the Mad Man costume crew is having to insist he not go cammando while editors are having to photoshop.  1st world problems.

(Community Matters) Allison Orr, Graham Reynolds, Peter Bay . . . . these three artists are collaborating and will present their work on Sept 21 and 22nd, a Forklift Danceworks presentation – Austin’s public power workers—50+ linemen, bucket trucks, 20+ utility poles, and a live orchestra

Steven and I attended the preview kickoff last night and enthusiastically agreed to help. We adore all three artists and Allison’s last work, the Trash Project, was avant-garde dance at its best; we witnessed community in motion.

We’re gonna have to delay joining friends in Israel for Ballet Austin’s The Light by a couple of days, but we’ve gotta be here on Sept 21st.

If any interest in participating, you can also support through a kickstarter campaign.

(Community Matters) My friend Jeannette Montgomery Barron’s latest book, Scene, is being released in the US on April 9. Sure would like to attend the exhibit of the paintings on April 3 at Collette’s in Paris or the April 6 book signing in Milan.

It’s a book of artist portraits with tidbits from Jeanette who spent her young adult years in New York’s 1980s art scene. Familiar portraits of Andy Warhol, Francesco Clemente, Andrew Lord, Rainer Fetting (even a bit about how Rainer fell in love with model Desmond Codogan who she brought along to a shoot).

Jeannette and her husband, international art dealer, James Barron were in Austin just a few weeks ago – we walked town lake trail and breakfasted at Bouldin Street Cafe. Their apartment in the Piazza dei Caprettair is immediately around the corner from my favorite coffee shop, Sant’ Eustachio, and just blocks from Campo De’ Fiori.

(Community Matters) As a pragmatist. 

Marcelo Márquez, a gay rights leader and theologian who wrote to, then, Cardinal Bergoglio – the Cardinal had argued for a compromise of civil unions but lost the vote in Argentina’s bishops’ conference:

“He told me that homosexuals need to have recognized rights and that he supported civil unions, but not same sex marriage”

I haven’t otherwise written about Pope Francis but I do congratulate Catholics on their new Pope, who by virtue of his billion+ followers is always an important world leader. I am impressed by what I’ve read about Pope Francis’ humility and scholarship.

(Community Matters) Joshua Baer’s SXSW recep on Austinpreneur

(Community Matters) in Clarity

(Community Matters) What a treat yesterday, brunch homemade with lots of love. Monica Peraza and Eric Copper invited me, Steven, Michael Barnes & Kip Keller for an intimate Sunday brunch. Perfectly cooked carnitas, the best black beans I’ve ever eaten, spicy guacamole, hand churned salsas . . . and of course champagne or margaritas. Fun, fun, fun . . . didn’t even know those two were such dear friends. . . and of course that makes perfect sense.

Monica’s new venture in Mexico has attracted FedEx, Microsoft and other multinational partners. Eric’s just been named #4 Austin residential realtor – not to mention Monica’s Hispanic Business Alliance and their progress launching national programs encouraging entrepreneurship.

(Community Matters) Super memorial service for Mary Margaret Farabee at the Wildflower Center this morning. Way beyond standing room only – guests overfilled a second auditorium room and sat on benches and chairs in the courtyard. Bishop John McCarthy, Nona Niland, Mary Yancy & H. W. Brands spoke eloquently & lovingly. Beautiful weather, perfect setting and marvelous guests. MM, her son David, Lowell, Molly, Ann . . .I’m sure they were all happily amused watching too.

(Community Matters) It’s starting to feel as if: you can Hit & run, even kill a poor person and stay out of prison, but f#&k with a corporation and your ass is going to jail. The guy didn’t even misuse the hacked email addresses, he simply demonstrated AT&T’s poor security to journalists.

meanwhile, a young woman gets off with probation for driving drunk, hitting and killing an innocent pedestrian and then fleeing the scene