My shoveling through the Fermata archives is getting even more revealing. I came across a copy of AVITOURISM IN TEXAS – Two Studies of Birders in Texas and their Potential Support for the Proposed World Birding Center. Authored by Dr. Jon Stoll (University of Wisconsin at Green Bay) and I, this research, among other studies by us and others, set the stage for the development of the World Birding Centers.
What it also revealed? I am getting old! The date of this document is October 12, 1999!
And, as long as I am feeling ancient, I am reminded that we began the Great Texas Coastal Birding Trail, the first to be developed in the world, in 1993. Someone remind my dear friend and partner Madge Lindsay the next time you see her!
I wrote Our Austin Story, an interpretive plan for downtown Austin, a few years ago. Over the past two years the Austin History Center Association (AHCA) has produced an annual play based on Our Austin Story. These plays are written by Paullette MacDougal based on a selection of stories from the interpretive plan.Here is a recording of the play from last year, the last time we could all meet in person. And, yes, I am in the play. I will post a link to the 2021 play once it becomes available. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9B0X_K8GUFE&feature=emb_logo
Certain foods (especially wine) are renowned for their “goût de terroir,” or taste of the soil. Terroir encompasses all of the natural elements (water, air, climate, soil, geography) that influence the taste of a crop, such as grapes. I will argue that the best peaches in the world are from the Texas Hill Country, and that the best grapefruit are from the Rio Grande Valley (and the best oysters are from Hiroshima, the best yams are from the Cockpit Country in Jamaica, and the best Pu’er tea is from Yunnan Province in China).
Cities have a ”terroir” as well, except this feature, this element, is better expressed as “soul.” There are soulful cities such as New Orleans, Santa Fe, Coyoacán, and Paris, places so distinctive, so singular, that you would never mistake them for another place on the planet.
Pu’er tea
I have lived in three cities with varying degrees of soul – Galveston, Austin, and Houston. One of the three has become soulless in my lifetime, scrubbed clean by new urbanists and gentrifiers of that which made it attractive and distinctive in the first place. The other two are rushing toward what seems now to be a similar antiseptic destination.
My wife, Virginia, and I recently stayed about 24 hours in Houston, and before returning to Austin we wandered by the remains of the Houston Farmers Market on Airline (Market). All that is left of the Market is one tiny sliver of the precious use-to-be, hemmed in by sterile, colorless warehouses touted by Houston’s new urbanists and James Beardian chefs as Houston’s deserved future. As one of the partners gushed at the groundbreaking; “Houston is long overdue for a world-class market.”
Houston, you had one.
Coyoacán
My connection to the Market goes back almost 50 years, to a time when I first shopped Caninos’s Market with my parents. The Market was one of the great cultural spaces in Texas. For example, I cannot think of a place that I would rather visit at Christmas, with all of the traditional Mexican foods and spices displayed by hundreds of small vendors in row-after-row sensual bliss. The go-to place for Christmas tamales? The Market. Need a place to have your pecans cracked? The Market. Need pomegranates? The Market. Need a crate of Rio Red grapefruit just trucked up from the Valley (South Texas)? The Market.
Now, the soul of this space has been expunged. Houston is quickly becoming just another ugly, soulless city, and this may be the iconic moment, the iconic sacrifice, in its transformation.
And what is planned for the Market? Here is an article that details this murder of a cultural space. Does race play a part in this? How could it be more obvious then when you destroy an organic expression of the Mexican soul as expressed in Houston’s el mercado without a peep from the preservation community since they are singularly focused on buildings and not on people?
Houston Farmer’s Market
Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell…Edward Abbey
Austin, this is you. The City of Austin is solely focused on facilitating growth, of aligning all of its resources to help feed the insatiable appetite of soulless, spiritless, insipid growth. This is Waller Creek. This is Lady Bird Lake. This is Pease Park. Austin is rushing headlong into become just another soulless, nondescript city with a single claim to fame – growth.
Soulful cities have musicians, not just music. Soulful cities have actors, not just theatre. Soulful cities have artists, not just art. Soulful cities have nature, not just parks. Soulful cities have congregations, not just churches. Soulful cities have neighborhoods, not just residences. Soulful cities are interlaced with roads and trails that tell stories rather than mind numbing “transportation corridors.” Soulful cities live their histories rather than just protect old buildings.
Although I cannot prove it with my life experiences, I do not believe that growth and change are inevitable. However, if they are inevitable, then they must be shaped, managed. For example, why isn’t there a strategy to protect the soul of the city? Cities have plans for parks, roads, buildings, flooding, sewage, and the like, but what about a plan for soul (here is a plan for Edmonton along these lines)? In truth, I wonder if the mayor, council, and city manager can even describe (or sense) the soul of Austin.
Saint Mary Cathedral, Austin
Urban growth (sprawl) is a linear, left-brained affair, obsessed with facts rather than feelings. Growth, in the urbanist scheme, is to be engineered.
Yet, the way in which we judge the quality of our lives, our happiness, isn’t factual at all. This is where Austin is failing (and Houston has already failed). Happiness isn’t engineered; it is nurtured and nourished. The soulful city grows organically of its own accord, spreading in directions that cannot be anticipated, only allowed.
There is a quality even meaner than outright ugliness or disorder, and this meaner quality is the dishonest mask of pretended order, achieved by ignoring or suppressing the real order that is struggling to exist and to be served…Jane Jacobs
Pope Benedict (at the time, Cardinal Ratzinger) wrote;
I have often affirmed my conviction that the true apology of Christian faith, the most convincing demonstration of its truth…are the saints and the beauty that the faith has generated.
If the Pope emeritus will allow me, I will slightly alter this statement. I believe that beauty of one of the most effective apologia for conservation.
Here is an example. One of the greatest risks from climate change is the loss of biodiversity. On this we all agree, I suspect. But, to the general public, biodiversity is a bone dry, antiseptic word stripped of emotion. The soul of biodiversity, such as its beauty, is what we reveal in our interpretation.
For the past seven years, I have been photographing the wildflowers of Central Texas (the Texas Hill Country). As of yesterday, there are now over 2000 portraits in the gallery, Texas Botanicals.
One of my goals has been to use these portraits to show the beauty of this wildflower diversity that surrounds us, as well as its magnitude. I could write a narrative that explains the science behind this diversity (the geology, the geographical location, the evolution of this diversity, etc.), but my belief is that I should first capture the public’s imagination with the dramatic beauty of this aspect of biodiversity. To be blunt, an interpreter first needs an audience.
My plan is to develop a series of murals of these portraits that will frame the narrative. If the theme is about the wildflower diversity in the Texas Hill Country as a metaphor for biodiversity in general, I believe that we will best be served by framing that narrative within the breathtaking beauty of the flowers themselves.
Interpretation is an art as well as a science, and the beauty we interpret often opens doors that are otherwise shut to the science alone. Conservation needs those doors (those minds) to be open.
Flowers…are a proud assertion that a ray of beauty out values all the utilities of the world.”
Fermata often uses media to interpret what we know and see. However, there are times when a particular medium allows us to reveal aspects of a subject that were previously hidden, i.e., what we did not know and could not see.
Here is an example. We have been completing an interpretive brochure for Saint Louis KOF Catholic Church in Austin. The stained glass windows there were acquired from the Church of the Transfiguration in Philadelphia, now demolished. For the past decade, the windows have served Saint Louis as little more than architectural embellishments.
A few weeks ago, I spent two days atop an eight-foot ladder, photographing each window with an architectural lens. Now that we can study each window and pane in detail, we have realized the extraordinary detail contained within each illustration. This detail cannot be seen from the ground level.
Pentecost
Here is an example. This is one pane that shows the Pentecost. Notice the “tongues of fire” descending on Mary and the Apostles. That is the sort of detail that we can now interpret that before was virtually invisible to those visiting the chapel. Here is a link to a gallery of images of these stunningly beautiful windows:
This is an example of how a medium can expand our interpretive vision and opportunities. Now that the photography is complete, the priests are eager to study each pane and to help interpret their meanings and context (how they relate to each other). None of this would have been possible without the detailed views afforded by this medium.
Fermata has been interpreting churches and sacred spaces for several years, and recently we have focused on the Catholic Church in Texas. In addition to developing a presentation on the history of the Catholic Church in Texas, we have written a history of Saint Mary Cathedral, photographed the Painted Churches in central Texas, and we are now working on a brochure that will interpret these amazing Zettler windows at Saint Louis KOF. For more information about our interpretive work with churches and sacred spaces, contact us and let us see if we can help.
