Art Appreciation in San Antonio's La Villita

For Christmas, I would like for someone to give me a t-shirt that says “As a matter of fact I am not a $#@!ing tourist, I live here!” - but my daughter Blondie says that would be rather too hostile. And what brought that on? Oh, just the experience of going downtown at midweek, and having completed the necessary errand early, deciding to prowl the little art galleries and shops in La Villita, instead. La Villita is a collection of very old houses, very nearly the oldest in San Antonio, most of which were restored over the last thirty or forty years or so; electricity and plumbing being added to them with considerable difficulty. A good few have very low doorways, and very thick walls, and once were heated (if at all) with tiny fireplaces. The neighborhood is adjacent to the River Walk, and the Alamo - even if the shops and galleries offer merchandise a couple of cuts above the usual tourist tat, it remains that nearly everyone wandering through is in fact most usually…from out of town!

And since there weren’t many people wandering around, most of the vendors were a little bored and very friendly, well disposed to be helpful; really this part of the world is a very friendly place. If you are antisocial, you’d have to beat them off with a stick, but about the first thing anyone asked was So, where are you folks from? I just got tired of growling From here! Hence, the wish for the tee-shirt.

Blondie bought a silver and garnet ring from a small jewelry and art gallery, and admired a bronze cat statuette, one of an issue of fifty, by an artist who lives in Kerrville; she might very well go back and buy it next month. I fell in love with some paintings by another local artist, who does lovely impressionist Texas landscapes: great sweeps of meadow, or gently rolling hills - but above them the even bigger clouds, piling up in a clear blue sky. It looked like what I have seen out of the car windows on various road-trips towards the coast, so there was no surprise when the gallery manager said the artist lives in Victoria and paints the countryside thereabouts. Oh, yeah - when I’m a rich and famous writer, I want a couple of those!

Since I couldn’t afford anything, I derived amusement out of describing my ideal piece of Texas kitsch art: a huge painting of a field of bluebonnets, with some longhorn cows, standing knee-deep in them. In the background sits a windmill, and a tumbledown old barn with the Texas lone-star flag painted on the roof, and the clouds in the sky form the silhouette of the Alamo! Maybe even on black velvet, too! I’d have it somewhere where I could see people’s faces when they looked at it, and know that if they looked absolutely horrified, then they did know something about art. Alas, irony was taking a vacation somewhere away from La Villita; most of the people I described this vision to said that it sounded rather nice - Did I want to commission an artist, since all they had in stock along that line were painting of bluebonnets only.

Fall is here, it’s deliciously cool and the clouds are piling up – and some day, with luck, I’ll walk into that one gallery and buy one of the landscape cloud paintings.

The Best of Times, the Wurst of Times

So, once the Halloween decorations were sorted out and put away, we could think of nothing better to do than to drive up to New Braunfels on Sunday morning to join in the Wurstfest 2009 celebration. What better place, and what better day is there to celebrate suds, sausage and song than in a small town, in a park by a cool green river, and on one of those gloriously cool autumn days? Music and revelry, carnival rides for the kids, and plentiful seating, under the pecan trees, or in the big and little tents, or the main hall.

Wurstfest is one of those gloriously scrambled ethnic holidays that can only happen in the US – and possibly only in Texas. For sure, it might be the only place on earth where you can see a woman wearing a dirndl and cowboy boots, or have a serving of nachos and cheese with sauerkraut, while listening to an oompah band play the National Anthem, followed closely by the chicken dance. A huge beer stein in the main hall features – you guessed it, a painting chickens dancing.

Besides the official leitmotif of sausages in every form – and there practically is every other variety of meat-onna-stick known to man available, the food vendors also have a wide range of fried stuff; regular fairground things like funnel cakes, but also deep-fried pickles and a delight which about made my arteries close up just to consider it; chicken-fried bacon. One of the vendors, the New Braunfels Smokehouse is well-established, but most of the other food vendors were run by local booster clubs and associations, like the Little League, the Canyon Lake Masonic Lodge, and the various Lions Clubs.

Of course – beer is the second official leitmotif, by the glass or the pitcher. New Braunfels was the second town established in the mid-19^th century by a massive influx of German settlers brought over by a well-meaning, but ultimately disorganized group of nobly-born philanthropists. The Germans – those who survived the journey and the vicissitudes of the frontier – brought along an appreciation for arts, culture, and technology – and straightaway set to producing beer.

It is only fitting that one of the largest, if not the largest collections of beer bottles in the world is permanently housed on the Wurstfest grounds in the Spass Haus, which is either a museum cunningly disguised as a bar, or a bar cunningly disguised as a museum. In either case, no one dares begin to sing “9 hundred, 99 bottles of beer on the wall,” because they’d be there for at least the whole run of Wurstfest. The bottles are from all over the world; the oldest American beer bottles are from the 1840s.

And finally – it’s hats, some of them very strange; hats shaped like chickens seemed to be awfully popular, I spotted one shaped like a beer keg with a spigot on the side, another shaped like an over-flowing stein, (which really came from Germany, the wearer of it informed me) and the hat with a number of green tentacles on it also seemed pretty popular.

Wurstfest runs until Sunday, November 8^th, not only at Landa Park, but throughout New Braunfels.

A River Runs Through It

A San Antonio Riverwalk History

The river was always there, one of those which fan through Texas, draining the high plains, running down through the limestone hills, and the coastal plain before draining out into the Gulf. None of the rivers - the Nueces, the Brazos, the Colorado, the Guadalupe, even the River Grand, which now forms the border between Mexico and it's one-time territorial possession - are deep enough to have been navigatable for more than a little distance. Their valuable service to settlers was in providing a reliable water source, rather than a river-highway into the interior.

And the presence of the river, and the San Pedro Spring (which once burst up out of the ground, gushing like a fountain with considerable force) was one of the reasons that the Spanish established a mission and a sketchily manned presidio, early in the 18th century, which establishments shifted positions very slightly over ten or twenty years, until everyone was more or less content with the arrangement of the string of missions along the river, the presidio, and the acequia - the water-distribution system, which fed the cultivated fields.

Over the next century, as San Antonio grew and morphed from an outpost of Colonial Spain, the river continued to be important to the people who lived along it's banks. In the mid-19th century, Frederick Law Olmstead (who would eventually contribute a bit of key city-scaping - that of Central Park - to New York City) observed that all the nicest houses in San Antonio had gardens that backed on the river, and swimming and bathing in it was a very popular diversion.

San Antonio's Majik Theatre at Hemisfair Park

The Magik Children's Theatre's curtain opens to Room 207 at an elementary school, where the rowdiest, loudest, rudest and most misbehaved students are paying no attention to their teacher, Miss Nelson. She is a sweet, kind, soft-spoken educator. She asks her students to "please calm down" so she can read them a story. When her pupils stand on their desks, run around the classroom and throw rulers, Miss Nelson's blood pressure reaches its limit, and she runs into the principal's office for shelter from her educational nightmare..

Meanwhile, my three companions, Olivia, 8, her sister, Noelle, 6, and their mother Brandy wait to see what happens next. Olivia and Noelle sit on their knees, resting their chins and arms on the seats in front of them, trying to get closer to the stage. Their eyes are stuck on the classroom mayhem.

With Miss Nelson gone, the classroom door opens for the substitute teacher, Viola Swamp. She is a piece of work. Her crooked nose and protruding chin are covered with a smatter of warts. She's tough and strict. She yells, calling the class to order by loudly rapping her black baton on the desks. The students and audience jump to attention. Who is this ugly creature? Her pupils sit quietly, knowing she won't put up with bad behavior.

Swamp drills the class on their schoolwork, roundly bawls out the know-nothings, slams her baton on their desks again and again and assigns heavy overnight homework that would buckle the best of students. The audience breathes more easily when intermission begins.

A stagehand and one of the naughty students wearing a glow-in-the-dark, bright orange wig push the stage set 180 degrees on its circular track. Now instead of a classroom, we see the front of Miss Nelson's prim cottage. In the theater lobby, children juggle ice cream sundaes, popcorn and wrapped birthday presents for two honorees.

Back on stage at Miss Nelson's home, the once-misbehaved students try to find her before it's too late. They ask each other whether they will ever see their sweet teacher again. My friends, Olivia and Noelle, whisper between themselves as they wonder what happened to Miss Nelson. Her students dance and sing in front of her cottage, but "Miss Nelson Is Missing" (the play's title).

The story ends happily. The audience is taught an important lesson in classroom behavior. The show is over in about 50 minutes -- just long enough for youthful attention spans. Olivia and Noelle say they had a great time.

"Miss Nelson Is Missing" continues through Nov. 7, 2009. The theater is located at 420 S. Alamo St. in Hemisfair Park. Showtimes are Tuesday through Friday, 9:45 a.m. and 11:30 a.m., Friday at 7 p.m., Saturday and Sunday at 2 p.m. Tickets are $10 for adults and children. Phone: (210) 227-2751. No one is turned away because of an inability to buy tickets. The actors are paid employees.

The play is based on a book by Harry Allard and adapted for stage by Joan Cushing. Becky King is the local director and choreographer. The Magik Children's Theatre encourages literacy by producing only plays based on books children are reading in school. The theater, which opened in 1994, seats 600 people.

**Magik Theatre Miss Nelson Photos © 2009 David Frank_ArtGives

The Majik Theatre is located just across from The Fairmount Hotel at Hemisfair Park.

A benefit for the Heart of Texas Labrador Dog Rescue (HOTLR)will be held at The Faimount Hotel. (An Evening of Giving, Texas Style. November 7, 2009 from 5-9pm.)

Texas Geocache Challenge

Join us in a modern day treasure hunt in Texas State Parks

WHAT IS GEOCACHING?
Geocaching is a type of treasure hunt using a GPS unit to help you find hidden "caches" placed by people all over the world. Geocaches are everywhere - from just down the street from your house to the most remote wilderness areas. They range from extremely small containers (35-mm film canister or smaller) to large ammo-style boxes.

TEXAS STATE PARKS GEOCACHE CHALLENGE
We invite you and your family to join us in discovering hidden items while revealing exciting facts and stories about Texas State Parks. All you'll need is a GPS (Global Positioning Satellite) unit, the coordinates for the hidden treasure (or caches), and a Texas State Park Geocache Challenge Passport Book available at participating state parks or by downloading it here.

We have hidden a special geocache in each of 12 state parks for you to find. In each cache, you will find a logbook that describes a special feature of the park that you can use to answer a question in your Geocache Challenge Passport Book. Also, there will be a special orienteering punch that you will use to mark your Passport Book to claim the cache, and a logbook to sign. You may also want to log your find on www.geocaching.com