Gayle Brennan Spencer – sending random thoughts to and from South Austin
‘Curiouser and curiouser!’ cried Alice (she was so much surprised, that for the moment she quite forgot how to speak good English).
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
Funky bud vases. I was supposed to be on a mission, but everything else was so distracting – the collective labels it “transcendent junk” – that I’m not sure I would have noticed a bud vase unless I knocked it over accidentally and it shattered it on the floor.
Continue reading ““Uncommon Greetings” postcard perfect”
Let us endeavor to live our lives that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.
Words of Mark Twain engraved on the memorial for Bertie Lee Hall (1926-1999), member of the Texas House of Representatives, storyteller and writer
Getting to the cemetery first is not a race you normally want to win, but, when General Edward Burleson (1798-1851) died, leaders of the Republic of Texas realized they were caught flat-footed as to where to honor their heroes. Burleson had served with Ben Milam in San Antonio; fought at San Jacinto; and served as Vice President of the young republic. House member Andrew Jackson Hamilton (1815-1875) offered his own property in East Austin, with the state assuming responsibility for the burial ground in 1854.
Other prominent figures from the early days of the Republic of Texas gradually were reinterred in places of honor in the Texas State Cemetery. The remains of Stephen F. Austin (1793-1836) were moved from Peach Point to a commanding spot by Governor Oscar Colquitt in 1910. The statue of him was made by San Antonio sculptor Pompeo Coppini (1870-1957), creator of the currently controversial Cenotaph in Alamo Plaza.
Continue reading “Walking among the dead seeking hints about our past”
The work of the artist dubbed “Daddy-O” is so steeped in Texas culture and iconography – the old and the new, rural and urban, classy and cheesy – that “40 Years of Blood, Sweat and Beers” seems to encompass everything in the whole damn state…. (it) exudes Texas-osity, the way one oozes beery sweat after a three-night bender in Terlingua.
Robert Faires’ description of a 2009 “retrospectacle” of the work of Bob “Daddy-O” Wade at the former South Austin Museum of Popular Culture on South Lamar, Austin Chronicle
It’s hard to miss the parking lot when driving down South Lamar, and the museum sign beckoned us to explore. But, alas, the South Austin Museum of Popular Culture, founded in 2004, no longer calls 1516 South Lamar home. Hemmed in from expansion by its neighbor Planet K, in 2019 SouthPop packed up, moved the contents of its interior collection and reopened behind Threadgill’s Old No. 1 on North Lamar as the Austin Museum of Popular Culture.
But, an even bigger alas. The pandemic raised its ugly head and tolled the bell on Threadgill’s, an iconic Austin institution for almost 40 years. So the Austin Museum of Popular Culture is now homeless.
Continue reading “Colorful remnants of SouthPop linger on South Lamar”
Postcards from Barton Springs 