Janice Williams Loves Austin

I guess there comes a time in every house when it has its “issues.” I don’t know why ours are suddenly all coming at once. Could it be that it senses that it has been six months since I had a job and the unemployment insurance runs out now? It wants that last bit of savings (and/or last bit of credit on the card)?

This weekend Mark ran some things down the sink and turned on the disposal. Buzz, but no grinding, nothing working. It appears to be a goner. Just as well, I thought, there has been a huge leak under that sink for a year now. We can fix both at once.

Then I went out to put some chicken on the gas grill. I lit the fire and it was whipping around because it was very windy Sunday. When I went back after 10 minutes there was still fire, but it just didn’t seem very warm. I put the chicken on it anyway (no sizzle, I noticed) and came back in 15 minutes to raw chicken but still some fire. So am I out of gas? Is it broken? What’s up?

Meanwhile, Mark has heated up some cold lasagna since the chicken is slow in coming. He nukes it in the microwave for a couple of minutes and then notes that it didn’t get hot like it should have.

I bring the chicken in and put it under the broiler in the gas oven. Ten minutes later it is cooking well. I flip them and in another 10 minutes or so that side is nice and browned and “cooked.” I decide Side One needs a do-over so I flip them and stick them under the flame again. But when I come back this time, nothing has changed and there is no sizzling or popping like there had been the last time I opened the oven. I lay down on the kitchen floor and look up at the burner and see the pilot light at the other end, but no row of flames at all. So did they give up the ghost in the recent 10 minutes?

When my family and I moved from Colorado back to Canyon, we bought a new stove for the house. I don’t know how long we lived in the house before the new stove arrived, but I know there was a period of time where we didn’t have a stove at all. Meals were very interesting. We had an electric frying pan that got a lot of use, and we had a little coffee pot that was good for boiling water and eggs in. And we had a toaster oven. Maybe we ate a lot of sandwiches, too, but I do remember my Mom making our few cooking appliances do it all.

I expect we’ll be replacing the disposal first and the stove if we have to. The grill probably just needs gas, I’m hoping. The microwave will the the hard one to replace. Not for me. I’d be at Target tomorrow if it were up to me! But this is a sentimental microwave. I have a husband that will buy a new computer printer or camera because he doesn’t like the way the paper loads or there’s a better model coming out, but he won’t part with his sentimental microwave. This is maybe the original Amana Radar-range. It is truly an antique. Maybe the first microwave invented. Mark got it from his best friend Les, probably when Les moved up to a newer nicer model in the 1980s. I don’t really know how old it is, but I know Mark had it when we met 16 years ago. And, as good as it is, it isn’t like it is perfect. Every few months it has a little fit and you can’t make it shut off except by opening the door (and leaving it open). Even if the time has run out, it continues to run. Probably not a good thing. But we leave the door open for a while and then it miraculously fixes itself. I will give it that, it has a healing power that most appliances don’t have. I can happily live without a microwave, I don’t use it much anyway. So if it isn’t functioning anymore, I will happily let it remain in the kitchen as a sentimental bit of our history. It will make a lovely breadbox, I’m thinking.

Yes, that’s me. I am a slacker. I hadn’t really thought of myself that way until I had two reminders on the same day.

Sunday, I heard from my high school classmate Bryan. We’ve been good friends since 8th grade in Mr. Stocker’s science class when we were seated alphabetically for the entire year and got to know one another well. We went on to work together on the school newspaper in high school and were lunch companions at the “table” (that’s what we referred to our group as). Twenty years after high school we found ourselves both in Austin, oddly, and we continue to stay in touch, mostly by email, since he lives way up THERE and I live way down HERE.

Bryan sent an article about our classmate Alexis Hefley. The article, in the Dallas Morning News, tells the amazing and uplifting story of a group Alexis founded that helps children in Uganda called Empower African Children. Alexis has dedicated her life to educating these children and freeing them from the poverty and misery that overwhelms them in Uganda. What an awe-inspiring woman! I’m proud to have known her 30 years ago, although when I think of Alexis I mainly remember her playing on the basketball team. Go read the article and check her charity’s website and find a way to contribute to this wonderful cause.

So I had already been reflecting on my life and wondering about my long-lasting impact after reading about the thousands of lives she has touched. Then tonight I turn on 60 Minutes. They did a nice long profile and interview with Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. Did you see it? A very interesting man and one that you might enjoy having a conversation with. I am watching it just because it is on and it is interesting and I have always had a fascination with the Supreme Court. Then they began talking about Scalia’s new book Making Your Case. They show the cover and I see the name of another high school classmate, Bryan Garner. I already knew Bryan had gone on to great things. He has taught at Oxford and while he was in law school he wrote a dictionary of legal terms that immediately became the ultimate on all things legal. Go see what he has written through the years. Bryan was the drum major while we were in high school and very active in band and such. Like Alexis, he wasn’t in my immediate circle of friends, but in a high school with just 225 seniors, we all knew one another pretty well. A very nice guy, there was no doubt he would go on to succeed in life, but who knew he’d be hobnobbing, writing, and arguing with Supreme Court Justices in just 30 years? Amazing.

I’ve spent five years at a job that I really did feel was a calling for me. Even if it was fleeting, I felt that I touched lives and if I made somebody enjoy their day a little bit more, then I was doing a service. More than losing the “celebrity” I have had, I miss that little bit of contact. My high school had a great bunch of kids that have grown up to do interesting and amazing things, though some with more spotlight than others. Some have had the spotlight you don’t want. At least one was a murderer, I know. I think it is interesting to hear about two of these classmates on the same day. I admire them both for their accomplishments and I was just teasing about me being a slacker. Slackers don’t have mortgages, car payments, and insurance premiums. I can only HOPE to be a slacker one day!

I had an interesting Saturday night out seeing some different music. I love seeing new artists and especially love it when I like them! And I really like Nelo. But let’s start at the beginning.

Mark was asked to be the drummer for the young fiddle player Ruby Jane. I had met her last year at Hill’s Cafe and have been kept abreast of her incredible musical talents by her biggest fan (and my blog reader) Richard Long. I saw her on stage a while back with Asleep at the Wheel, too, and she has been appearing with them in the musical “Ride With Bob.” I thought this would be a good opportunity to get out and see her with a full band and see Mark, too. So I rode downtown with him last night for the show.

Backstage Mark and I had the opportunity to meet the songwriter Bill Carter. He’s one of those silent, yet incredible, people of Austin that, along with his wife Ruth Ellsworth, have done so much to make Austin what it is. They wrote or co-wrote Stevie Ray Vaughn’s “Crossfire,” the Fabulous Thunderbird’s “Tuff Enough,” and John Mayall’s “Jacksboro Highway.” And they hang out with Johnny Depp, how cool is that? We got to meet him backstage and he raved about Ruby Jane and what a natural songwriter she is. Very high praise from a writer of his caliber. He was mainly there to see his nephew Ryan Carter play in the band Francis.

Francis was first up on the stage.  I’ll be the first to admit I didn’t get Francis and won’t be rushing out to get their CD. I’m not knocking them, it just wasn’t my thing. They have had success in Seattle and New York and are making Austin their home now, I guess, and I’m sure they will find a following. Not melodic enough for me.

Little 13-year-old Ruby Jane was up next with Erik Hokkanen on electric guitar, Willie Pipkin on acoustic, Glenn Fukunaga on bass, Mark Hays on drums, and Ruby playing guitar and fiddle.  I love Austin. I have seen every one of these musicians perform before, but this was the first time I had seen them together. I’ve seen Ruby with Asleep at the Wheel, Willie with the South Austin Jug Band, Greg Izore, Little Elmore Reed, and probably more, Glenn with Ruthie Foster last week (but he also plays with Teri Hendrix and the Dixie Chicks), Erik with his own band, Heybale, and Elana James, and Mark with every band he’s been with for the last 16 years.

Ruby Jane is an amazing talent and has a great future ahead of her. She knows how to lead a band and her musicianship was stellar. I’m looking forward to seeing how good she becomes when she calms down just a little bit on stage and is a little less frantic and a little more relaxed. Her singing is not her strong suit and I wonder if she should become the female Bob Wills and be the dynamic band leader and fiddle player, but let someone else interpret her songs? She pointed out a few of the songs she had written in the set and she really does have a way with a tune and chords and lyrics. Anyone that thinks to rhyme “bathtub” with “math club” is all right by me. I didn’t get the full gist of what that song was about, but I liked that couplet.  I worry about teenage prodigies. I hope she doesn’t burn herself out before she gets to 15.

The headliner of the night was Nelo with their CD release. I had read that their name rhymes with “hello,” but that is kind of ambiguous. Think about how you say hello when you answer the phone when you are in a great, amiable mood, “Heeeel-lo” and then how you answer when you are surprised to be getting a call, “Hello-o?” Or even when it is used in a sentence, “So I said, ‘Hello’ and shook his hand.” Hello doesn’t have standard pronunciation. I believe that they should say their name rhymes with “Jell-O” which seems more standardized, though copyrighted.

Anyway, I LOVED Nelo and want to be a fan now.  I wish I were a great music reviewer and could draw some parallels between their music and others so you’d have an idea of what they sound like. But the only thing I can think of is Hootie and the Blowfish and I doubt that a 20-year-old reference is the most relevant. They are very “pop” and I can understand the words and sing along. Their music makes me happy. I like the music, but I really liked the band live even more. The lead singer, Reid Umstaddt, is very handsome and charming and easy-going.  Matt Ragland appeared to be the band leader and spokesperson on the stage and is probably the songwriter, for the most part. I liked him and his style, too. They performed the music straight ahead without a lot of pyrotechnics or stage antics (of course, it was a small stage!). They have a horn in the band, too, and that made them sound different and interesting. So, Nelo! Go check them out.

I have been a proponent of taking your own sacks to the grocery store and reusing them for years. But it hasn’t been easy. When they first started selling the cloth sacks for grocery store use, I got one in Dallas (like 20 years ago) and before you could even give it to the sacker they would already have your 15 little grocery items sacked up into a minimum of 8 plastic sacks.

Eventually, I gave up, but continued to at least recycle the plastic sacks or use them to sack up kitty litter.

Now there seems to be a whole new push on bringing your own sacks to the store. With Earth Day this week, Whole Foods is going to quit having plastic sacks completely and they are urging you to bring your own sack.

Today I remembered, again, to take my sack to the grocery. But it is