reference's blog

I didn’t know Big Tex personally, so his dangerous smoking habit was a surprise to me, but I know his funky spirit. It’s the same good-natured, locally made vibe you get from the frog mural on Guadalupe, or the pink bingo gorilla at Lamar and 183, or the Genie Car Wash sign on Burnet.  

I could go on, but I don’t have to. People have already collected photos of local Austin works, and you can get them at the Library.

We recently cancelled our cable and are entertaining ourselves with streaming video and recordings checked out from the library, and that means we watch a lot of old TV shows, and they are fun. I Spy, Columbo, pre-Picard Star Trek. I play Spot the Supporting Actors. A spy on Mission Impossible one week is frequently a Klingon on the Enterprise the next.

It's Back-to-School time! Yes, again. With the busier schedules and added tasks that come with the end of summer and beginning of autumn, a popular refrain is, "This year, I'll finally get organized." Whether it's you or a family member that is readjusting to classroom life, or if the extra traffic is giving you extra stress, the Austin Public Library has lots of helpful books to help you streamline your stuff, find what you need, and breathe a little more easily.

Thanks to the United Auto Workers, when my father-in-law retired from General Motors in the late 70s, he had enough pension, benefits, and savings to do what all Detroiters dream of doing: escape winter. He and his wife became snow birds. They'd spend summers in Michigan and winters south of Tucson near another center of union organizing (though I doubt that they knew it) Bisbee, Arizona.

The Faulk Central Library recently revamped the World music section and added a lot of music from Africa. In the process of finding the most representative African artists that were missing in the collection, Asa, a new voice from Nigeria came to our attention. Asa grew up between Nigeria and France. She had the passion for singing since she was a child. Her distinctive style and voice made it harder for her to succeed as a singer in her native Nigeria but little by little she was able to succeed.

I’m reading Believing is Seeing, by Errol Morris, wherein he revisits controversies accompanying iconic photographs of the Crimean War, Abu Ghraib, the Dust Bowl, and questions the definition of photographic documentation and the actions and intentions of the photographers (i.e., were some of these pictures posed?). Morris is a documentary film maker, so it’s a question central to his work.

I've always had a hard time keeping track of celebrity chefs. While I know some of the classic folks, such as Julia Child and the Frugal Gourmet, the sheer number of cooking shows and the accompanying cookbooks by all those "names" can be overwhelming at times. I've been socially chastised for not having a firm handle on Anthony Bourdain's ouvre, and I must confess that until recently, I thought the Barefoot Contessa and Nigella Lawson were the same person. So I won't be discussing the "celebrity chefs" that you expect.

La Biblioteca Pública de Austin acaba de recibir la película titulada Miss Bala que ha tenido gran acogida entre el público de México. Esto me alegra enormemente pues tengo meses esperando su llegada. Ésta película es una de las tantas que habla sobre el infierno que sigue comiendo a México vivo en y de cómo gente común cada vez más se incorpora a este baile mortal entre drogas y violencia.

Company of Heroes, Harry Carey, Jr.'s 1994 Hollywood memoir, finally came in! I've been itching to get my hands on this book for months. It's considered the best profile of John Ford, written by the son of one of the director's best friends and favorite actors, Harry Carey. It's out of print and hard to find, but we've got it!