Only one in several dozen benefits actually inspires your social columnist. That’s because we hear so many similar stories about helping those in need.

Nevertheless, the Westcave Preserve gala — part of its Children in Nature collaborative effort — gives me chills.

Andrew Spurlin and Lindsay Carter

Let’s start with the cave. If you haven’t been, take some time off for a guided tour. (That’s the only kind. Unlike nearby Hamilton Pool, you can’t do it without help.) The collapsed grotto has been restored to its pre-1972 glory and the nonprofit that protects it has added more acreage for its outdoor learning programs.

Nancy Scanlan and Grayson Cecil

Back to the gala. Cleverly, it is staged indoors and outdoors at the Four Seasons. The dry cooling weather made the transition ideal on Thursday. The company was equally stimulating, since the love of nature crosses so many social, political and economic boundaries.

Punit and Anu Chadha

Yet what really grabs me are the (longish) speeches and (expertly made) videos about the area groups receiving recognition for getting kids outdoors. “Leave no child inside,” said the charming daughter of a school principal, quoting her father. Word smith!

The four honorees: Candlelight Ranch, which provides outdoor fun for kids of all abilities; Explore Austin, which offers local and backcountry adventures for youth in need of direction; LCPL Nicholas S. Perez Elementary School, which includes a nature trail and outdoor classes in Southeast Austin; and Camp Fire USA Balcones Council, which welcomes children outdoors regardless of gender or background.

Amazing.

Sometimes, the best fashion shows are simplest, cleanest and most straightforward. The luncheon runway expo for the Women’s Symphony League was all that and more — smart, musically evocative and I dare say practical. Like good theater, it made you wonder how all that magic was accomplished.

Kimberly Chassey and Peggy Manley

Well, you can thank Patti Hauffpauir and Sue Webber for that. The team led by the owner of the Garden Room Boutique and the owner of Sue Webber Productions, respectively, selected just the right models, outfits and atmosphere for different occasions. I thought the travel apparel was sharp, chic and kicky.

Juliana Hoffpauir and Julie Sayers

Earlier during the luncheon in the vast Palmer Events Center space, some key past presidents of the League were presented in front of a theatrical version of the White House facade. These were some might accomplished women. One (Sonya Wilson) had been a member of the League for more than 50 years. Another (Pat Harris) was the first woman to earn a PhD in finance at the University of Texas.

Paula Lundgren and Patti Hoffpauir

But none was more impressive than Jane Sibley. Though encumbered with age, Sibley is still strikingly beautiful. And — get this — for the past 40 years, she has either been president, chairwoman or chairwoman emeritus of the Austin Symphony board.

Such longevity in power comes with inevitable pros and cons. But nobody else in town can claim that kind of record.

I don’t know why it happens. The most curious conversations bloom at the Ballet Austin’s Fête. They last for hours. And they linger in one’s memory for years.

Paul and Natalie Bardagjy

Years ago, we cemented our friendships with Steven Tomlinson, Eugene Sepulveda, Rosa Rivera, Juan Miró, Joe and Tana Christie during lavish Fêtes at the Driskill Hotel. I also met the inimitable Stephen Moser at an early Fête.

Andrea and Dean McWilliams

Later, it was Jack and Carla McDonald, John Thornton, Julie Blakeslee, Amy and Kirk Rudy, Andrea and Dean McWilliams, Melanie and Ben Barnes all at the Butler Dance Education Center, the unfinished Austonian and unresolved Seaholm Power Plant.

Ah, what delicious memories of long, funny, literate and scampy chats between varied courses and salutes to Austin’s top dance troupe.

Kirk and Amy Rudy

This year, the Fête and its younger, later-in-the-evening sibling Fêt*ish circled back to the Driskill for a Nutcracker-themed party spread. And I was placed at a table between Amy Rudy and Julie Blakelee. It was like winning the gala lottery.

The smart, playful back-and-forth never paused for a breath. Both gorgeous women are troublemakers of a sort. I like that. I was physically too far away from their dashing husbands to enjoy much of their company, but who’s complaining?

This is why parties were invented.

Some parties come in colors. The Black and White Ball. The White Party. The Red Gala.

Christina and Michael Jaouni

Color the Art of Giving for the American Diabetes Association beige. This is not meant as to damn with faint praise, but I just couldn’t find a single fresh angle during my short stay at this Hilton Austin benefit.

Some parties are over-themed. This was under-themed, despite the attendance of some charismatic guests.

Rudy and Estrella Barrera

And what an opening for a party planner! Diabetes is a looming threat to our social health. Paired with the obesity epidemic, it could weigh down a whole generation of Americans.

Erika Dresser and Diego Flores

Perhaps I attend too many galas, but this admirable group needs some discreet advice on how to plump up a party.

Few great gardens are the product of one gardener.

The park — reflecting Romantic and Neo-classical influences — surrounds the summer cottage of prominent politician Allison Mayfield. Arredondo began his work on the two-acre formal garden by the house in 1922. The other 20-plus acres were preserved in a more or less natural state on hilly land above the Colorado River.

Some of the plants — not unlike the peacocks that haunt the park — are exotics. Beginning in 1988, friends of the park organized to restore the house and gardens. They have gone to great trouble recently to remove invasive species like ligustrum.

Yet Gutsch and Arredondo also scoured the Hill Country for natives like mountain laurel, redbud, yucca and Mexican plum for the garden.

Thus, the park melds two major gardening traditions and its upkeep is an ongoing project for natural, historical and horticultural enthusiasts in Austin.

Arredondo served not just as gardener, but also butler and chauffeur, while his wife, Magdalena, tended housekeeping. For a while, they and their children lived on the estate. They worked there until 1968, three years before it was given to the city.

Mayfield Park and Preserve

Where: 3505 W. 35th St.

Dedicated: 1971

Acres: 22

Named for: Allison Mayfield

At a recent party, innovative Austin educator Steve Amos overheard guests talking about books they had written. Amused, he asked Karen Ostlund aloud how many she had dashed off.

Ostlund: “More than 300.”

Still, more than 300 is a pretty impressive number.

A white-blonde Upper Midwesterner, Ostlund, 69, appears to smile perpetually. A marathoner since 1983, she met me for coffee right after a Sunday morning triathlon. I was shocked that she looked so rested.

“I volunteered to work in the medical tent,” she later explained. “I’m a runner.”

Descended from Swedes, Slavs and Germans, Ostlund was born in Kenosha, Wis. Her mother and father worked as mechanical engineers for American Motors. Clean-cut and good in school, she engaged in lots of extra activities.

“I liked people,” she says. “I had lots friends. Our house was always open. We’d go ice skating. My mother would make sloppy joes and hot chocolate. I guess she figured she could watch over us.”

She studied engineering at Purdue University, started a family, then moved to Minnesota. There, she taught science and Spanish and eventually earned her Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota.

Her second marriage was to Frederick W. Taylor, now a senior research scientist at the Institute for Geophysics at the University of Texas Jackson School of Geosciences.

Her son, Alden Balmer, is physics teacher at McNeil High School and serves as CEO of Doc Fizzix, a mousetrap car kit company. (You read that right.)

Wouldn’t want to argue against evolution or climate change at that family dinner table.

While she was teaching, Ostlund’s specialty was that hard-to-sell age group between elementary and high schools.

“Middle school students are totally out of sync, physiologically, psychologically and emotionally,” she says. “Yet they really gravitate toward science. We always did science, we didn’t just read science.”

Every day, Ostlund led activities in physical, life and earth sciences. Under the guidance of two professors while in graduate school, she used her science classroom as a lab for studying effective cooperative strategies with individual accountability and group goals.

“We’d structure it so everyone in the group has a task,” she says. “Unless they all do their task, the group doesn’t reach the group goal. And we’d rotate the jobs so they all have a chance to be in leadership and subordinate roles.”

She moved to Austin in 1984, teaching future science teachers at what is now Texas State University-San Marcos. In 1991, she was given an academic appointment at University of California-Berkeley, which she still holds, to develop science curricula.

Since 1995, she has worked on and off at UT’s Science Education Center. She was instrumental in developing the breakthrough UTeach program which nurtures potential science teachers early in their college careers.

She started writing textbooks on science activities and the process skills of inquiry in the 1980s. Her favorite is “Destinations in Science,” which encourages teachers to turn their classrooms into an ocean or a pizza parlor in order to investigate the science of that place.

The most popular book, however, is the more traditional “Scott Foresman Science” which has sold hundreds of thousands of copies.

“I’m not rich,” she says. “The companies get the money.”

If that were not enough, Ostlund heads the 60,000-member science teachers group, making sure the executive director and staff of more than 100 promote excellence and innovation in science teaching. Currently, they are working on the next generation of national science standards.

“States like Texas won’t adopt them,” she says. “But we have to get the standards up to speed so people can use them in their classrooms.”

Decades ago, science skeptics were often dreamy-eyed romantics who doubted the primacy of reason. Now they are just as likely to be religious fundamentalists, who claim biblical primacy over science.

“It makes me wonder about their science background,” she says. “It tells me we need a citizenry that is scientifically literate. It starts with having good science teachers in the classroom.”

One of her hardest tasks is to persuade people that science isn’t just for scientists.

“Science is all around us,” she says. “We all need it. If you cook, if you just run a household or run a car, it’s science.”

Wow. Wow. Wow.

Christina and Louis Messina

Austin social and theater history was made on Thursday night. The Topfer Theatre opened grandly with an intimate concert from stage star Bernadette Peters and a Broadway-sized onstage orchestra.

So Austin’s oldest theater company launched its newest theater building with its most significant show to date. (Set aside previews.)

David Kurio and Willa Kaye Warren

And what a space to hear a diva belt, croon and trill Broadway tunes, especially those of her idol, composer Stephen Sondheim. (She has starred in “Sunday in the Park with George,” “Into the Woods” and “Follies,” along with Sondheim tributes.)

Looking fabulous beyond her years in a sparkling, form-fitting gown, Peters hit a few slightly rough vocal patches, revived old patter and mispronounced the name of the theater, but otherwise blew the lid off the acoustically sensitive room. It felt like she was singing just for you.

Brett and Debra Hurt

Much earlier, evening began grandly with a black-tie procession past costumed performers, up a purple carpet to the classy, modern lobby, which could just barely fit in the formally attired guests (tickets: $1,000 apiece).

They then descended to the especially acquired sailcloth tent that swoops up into a dramatic interior. (Zach plans to rent the plaza tent when not otherwise in use. Marquee Events will take it up and down when need be and maintain it.)

Inside the translucent expanses we beheld the purple-tinged visions of party dreamer Bobbi Topfer and her eager team, which included veteran planner Victoria Hentrich and florist David Kurio, who attached dainty orchids to long, transparent rods. (The tent was christened that night in Bobbi’s honor.)

The tables buzzed with top Austin socials. Few big names were missing. (I stopped counting cumulative net worth at several billion dollars.) Most dressed in restrained but stylish Austin fashion, although a few Dallas or Houston types flashed big jewels, bigger hair and even bigger gowns. One even trimmed in fur. (Very bizarre.)

After a splendid dinner, the guests trotted back to the Topfer for the concert, then later trickled to the tent again for dessert and another sparkly toast.

Can’t tell you if the valet parking worked out, because I didn’t drive. Oh so sweet to live within walking distance of the Topfer, ACL Live, Long Center and the Paramount, along with the rest of downtown. Living for it.

Few parents dream that their son will grow up to be a forager. What would that mean anway — outside of a Stone Age culture?

For Austin forager Tink Pinkard it translates into hunting, fishing, farming, gathering and preparing food in its raw state so that cooks can turn the fruits of his labors into fresh, unforeseen feasts.

Unruffled and open-grinned in a camo cap and beard on a rain-splattered day, Pinkard explained his journey from the backwoods of southern Louisiana, the son of an oil drilling consultant and grandson of small-town grocers, to the gleaming kitchens of Austin’s food revolution.

“I grew up with the ebbs and flows of farming life,” he says. “When Dad was offshore, I was in the butcher shop with my grandfather. When Dad came home, I was in the woods, hunting or fishing.”

He inherited his first name from his grandfather, who earned the nickname “Tink” as an electrical engineer on a World War II naval vessel.

“He was constantly tinkering,” Pinkard says. “When I was born, mother wanted Christopher. My dad wanted Tink. Been Tink all my life.”

His family followed an oil boom to Houston in the early 1990s. Somewhere along the way, he shed his thick Cajun accent. But he never lost his love of the outdoors.

“I was outdoors all the time,” he says. “My mother says it was heck to keep me indoors. In the summer, I wore shorts, rubber boots and a T shirt.”

After graduating from Stephen F. Austin University in Nacogdoches with a split geography and sociology degree, Pinkard packed up and headed to Montana for a few years. In May, he’d be fly fishing at Firehole Ranch. In October, he’d winterize the ranch and head to the Flying D, media mogul Ted Turner’s ranch. During winters, he served as a tour guide in Yellowstone National Park.

He learned about the mountains and about outfitting hunting and fishing tours. But he also grew close to chef Bruno Georgeton at Firehole Ranch.

“He molded me to treat hunting and fishing as a way to procure protein,” he says. “That’s what led me to being a guide that’s more oriented to the consumption of the food than to the sport.”

His girlfriend — now wife, legal secretary Leah Deason Pinkard — had put off law school to bunk with this evolving forager and to work as a ranch housekeeper. Eventually it was time for her career. The couple first returned to Nacogdoches, where they started an organic poultry farm. The market in East Texas, however, was not that evolved yet.

So they headed to Austin in 2008.

“Austin was the food place to be,” he says. “I could find chefs who really wanted to work with me. I also wanted to be part of the local agriculture scene.”

For three and a half years, he worked for Farmhouse Delivery, first taking locally sourced food to residents, then acting as a buyer.

“I got to know a lot of local farmers,” he says. “That’s when I found out how bad the feral pig problem was. My aim now was to get rid of the noxious creatures and yet deliver the protein to chefs and clients. And with my background as a butcher, I could also break them down.”

Among those to encourage him in the early years here was Jesse Griffiths of Dai Due Supper Club. He set up his first hunt school on the Madroño Ranch near Medina.

“I was the woods,” he says. “Jesse was the kitchen.”

Other chefs called. They wanted to hunt, too. So he evolved into something of a wildlife manager as well as a hunting and fishing guide.

“You have to harvest and clean your kill at the end of the hunt,” he says. “Novice hunters to seasoned hunters came to learn how to process the carcasses and make their own sausages. You end up with a better connection to the land and the animals when you do everything from the gate to the plate. It also tastes better that way.”

So why a “forager” rather than a “hunter,” “farmer” or “fisherman”?

“I always though of foraging as picking mushrooms or huckleberries in the mountains,” he says. “Here, foraging is everything. Now even hunting is foraging.”

The part he loves the most is fly fishing. He holds casting clinics where clients learn to tie flies, identify insects and fish, then clean the fish as well.

“People think it’s only for the mountains,” he says. “You can do it all over Texas.”

It wasn’t as scary as I had feared.

No really, I was frightened of the Jewel Ball, a debutante affair staged by the Women’s Symphony League for decades. All the talk of queens and princesses, knights and chancellors kind of unnerved me. Plus, I’d never been invited. Which made me think it was something secret, insular, almost Masonic.

E.B. “Sonny Richards and Courtney Cord Robb Richards (Queen)

Well, it was quite nice and not at all unsettling. The debutantes wore mostly white attire styled somewhere between ball gowns and wedding dresses. Their escorts — grandads, dads then generational peers — stood upright in tuxes and ties.

John Drisdale and Mary Drisdale

Tables gathered around a long runway — the same used for the League’s luncheon and fashion show — in the Palmer Events Center. Behind the stage stood an enormous scenic treatment of the White House, fitting this year’s state dinner theme.

Ben Bentzin and Megan Bentzin

An announcer with more stamina than I read aloud each participant’s ancestral lineage, revealing multigenerational support of the symphony. (It’s a wonder the Austin Symphony ever wants for cash with such a huge network of backers.)

The one and only thing that rubbed me the wrong way was the deep debutante bow. Each royal lowers herself slowly, then bends her crowned head almost to the floor. I know this reflects some ancient social history involving gratitude and modesty, but it looks curiously like undignified and ungainly submission for any young woman in the 21st Century.

Some things don’t change. The longest line at the Texas Monthly BBQ Festival? Austin’s own Franklin Barbecue, which generates epic waits every day it opens. Can’t get enough of that brisket!

Lynn Behrens and Bobby Parsons

Fest planners plant food tents around the arc of the Long Center Terrace. Watering holes go dead center and to the sides. The tents part at the apex for a nested series of lounging spots leading to a small stage on the lawn. For water, restroom and air conditioning breaks, the Long Center lobby serves more than adequately.

Jake Schiffer and Corina Frankie

Good thing, too, because the plaza was mobbed. Franklin’s wasn’t the only tent generating heat. I had some black-peppery ribs, brisket and sausages from my birthplace, Kilgore. And savvy servers gave out substantial baskets of slow-cooked meat, which encouraged more focus on each BBQ provider, rather than promiscuous sampling. Clever that.

Lauren Kelleher and Mansa Angel

I’m not sure what function the fest plays for TM these days. It continues to complement an already platinum regional brand. It pleases those who visit Austin in early fall. And it delights those of us who can’t get enough of the beef, pork, chicken and sides.

Perhaps TM should branch out. Seafood fest in Galveston or Corpus? Soul food fest in Houston or Tyler? Cajun fest in Beaumont or across the border? TexMex Fest in San Antonio or the Valley? Steak fest in Fort Worth or Amarillo?

Attitude fest in Dallas?

Kidding, friends. But worth a thought.

A little taste of the Crestview profile I wrote for Real magazine — and a link.

From a distance, this low barrier along Woodrow Avenue at Crestview Center looks like an ambitious work of folk art.

Look closer. The bright tiles by artist Jean Graham, made with the help of area residents and completed in 2008, picture people and places with distinctive flair. A series of medallions shares a precise, thorough and graceful history of the Crestview and nearby Brentwood subdivisions.

Every neighborhood should be so lucky. …

Photo by Ralph Barrera

The news that, in one year, Austin zoomed from 48th to 33rd in per capita giving among big American cities — that according to the Chronicle of Philanthropy — didn’t get much play here. Perhaps we savored our lower status more than our newer, more exalted one.

Linda Thompson and Julie Mayne Barschow

I Live Here I Give Here was founded, in part, to bring up those dismal numbers and to educate Austinites about what they can do. There’s nothing to be done about the dearth of multigenerational fortunes, long-established foundations and big corporate headquarters. That’s the hand history dealt us. But all of us can introduce potential givers with Central Texans’ needs.

Emily Rozalija Wheeler and Ranjiv Gupta

The group’s Big Give at the Driskill Hotel helps lift spirits each year. Sponsored by responsible companies and individuals, it hands out one big and one smaller check to competing nonprofits while recognizing a single big giver.

Bryan Perrault and Natalie Kraus

In the crowded ballroom of the Driskill Hotel, we applauded for modest Rusty Morrison, an accountant who quietly volunteers for Boys and Girls Clubs of the Austin Area, as well as the two winning nonprofits, People’s Community Clinic and Little Helping Hands.

Go ahead. Follow the links. That’s what they are there for.

Here’s a snippet — and a link — from my story today on Austin’s new charitable focus on the rest of the world.

Yet while donating privately — or at a growing number of public giving events — they have not forgotten the rest of the world.

Increasingly, Austin-based charities are targeting the needy far beyond our country’s shores.

Altogether, the 12 local and relatively young nonprofits surveyed for this column have spent more than $330 million on overseas projects.

The culture associated with these big donations is changing as much as the giving.

“Austin has the potential to be the center for social innovation in the world,” says Steven Wanta, executive program director for the Whole Planet Foundation, which has provided $52 million in microloans to Whole Foods Market suppliers around the globe. “We have all the the pieces necessary: marquee events, world-changing companies and passionate people.”

If Bernadette Peters broke in Zach’s new Topfer Theatre, Brian Stokes Mitchell consecrated it. The second Broadway star to sing during the grand opening weekend talked about the sacred nature of theaters and tailored his concert more closely to the occasion than did Peters.

Erin Wendel and Aaron Bell

While top backers returned for a second night of revelry — many of them packing the first of two concerts on Saturday — this crowd as a whole proved younger, noisier and more casual. The “Bobbi” tent was cleared of most low dinner tables and turned into a glowing dance hall. Additional music was performed by local bands on the Kleberg Stage next door.

Pei-San and Daniel Brown

Frito pies helped the festive spirit — as a healing City Council Member Bill Spelman agreed. Early in the evening, people had already begun to dance. I’m sure by the witching hour the place was writhing with grand opening frenzy.

Corri and Gus Park

A baritone with an astonishing range, Mitchell, like Peters, sang show tunes, several of them keyed to the Zach “Dream” theme. Of course, there was “The Impossible Dream,” but also “Wheels of a Dream,” performed with the Zach cast of “Ragtime.” That show catapulted Mitchell to stardom and it will serve as the first full musical on the Topfer stage.

It was all smiles, cheers and tears for the second grand opening. A dream come true.

This appeared in the Friday edition of Real magazine.

October, socially speaking, is festival month in Austin.

Beyond the exalted thrills of the Austin City Limits Music Festival (Oct. 12-14, Zilker Park), Austin Film Festival (Oct. 18-25, various locations) and Texas Book Festival (Oct. 27-28, Capitol), one can partake in the more localized tingles of the Texas Craft Brewers Festival (Oct. 6, Festival Gardens), Austin Beer Week (Oct. 20-28, various locations), Austin Gay and Lesbian International Film Festival (Oct. 3-7, various locations) and Austin Yoga Festival (Oct. 27-28, Palmer Events Center).

The festlike La Dolce Vita lays out a banquet of food and drink on the glorious grounds of Laguna Gloria (Oct. 11) to benefit AMOA-Arthouse.

The galas, too, come thick and fast in October.

None is bigger than the Livestrong Gala (Oct. 19, Austin Convention Center) featuring over-the-moon celebrities like Robin Williams, Norah Jones, Sean Penn, Maria Shriver, Ben Stiller, Stephen Marley and the embattled foundation founder Lance Armstrong.

The dressy First Edition Literary Gala (Oct. 26, AT&T Executive Education and Conference Center) kicks off the Texas Book Festival with probably the wittiest and wisest formal party of the year.

When dressing up, give serious consideration to the Seton Development Board Gala (Oct. 21, Four Seasons Hotel) and the Black and White Ball (Oct. 26, Four Seasons Hotel) for Texas Advocacy Project.

Two worthy events stretch out the fun over many hours: HAAM Benefit Day (Oct. 2, various locations), keyed to musicians’ healthcare, and AIA Homes Tour (Oct. 6-7, various locations), designed to help the architectural group.

Two distinguished ceremonies this month honor local worthies: Rostow Awards Dinner (Oct. 16, AT&T Center) and the Harvey Penick Awards Dinner (Oct. 23, Four Seasons Hotel).

During the social season, the young and defenseless have not been forgotten. Consider the Champions for Children Luncheon (Oct. 17, Hilton Austin) for the Helping Hand Home for Children, SafePlace Celebration Luncheon (Oct. 19, Hilton Austin), and GirlStart Game Changers Luncheon (Oct. 23, AT&T Center).

This month, one can also balance two lively events: Beauty of Life (Oct. 11, Hilton Austin) for Hospice Austin and Literacy for Life (Oct. 7, Phillips Event Center) for Scottish Rite Dyslexia Center.

Then there are those singular social events like LEAP Casino Royale (Oct. 19. W Hotel) for LifeWorks, Epic Evening (Oct. 21, Hyatt Regency) for Texas Freedom Network and Communities in Bloom (Oct. 11, Commodore Perry Estate) for Rainforest Partnership.

Finally what would October be without OctoTea (Oct. 28, Emma Barrientos Mexican American Cultural Center), a giant dance party staged by the many-armed Octopus Club for AIDS Services of Austin.

Small businesses earn a lot of attention from politicians. At least in theory. And some of the more charismatic small businesses are regularly lionized in the press.

Rudy Colmenero and Estella Galan

Yet to be recognized by one’s own is always a special treat. That’s why I attend the Capital of Texas Small Business Awards luncheon whenever the opportunity arises. The Greater Austin Hispanic Chamber of Commerce knows how to honor its own.

Monica Peña and Nancy Jaimes

As often happens at such events, the inevitability of demographic change received lots of play from speakers such as George A. Gutiérrez, Andy Martinez and Marc A. Rodriguez. This is a smart and forward-thinking strategy. Rodriguez, by the way, has risen from the local chapter to chair the United States Hispanic Chamber of Commerce.

Marilyn Montano and Chris Mugica

The winners? Running Bull Media, Maria’s Taco Xpress, KUT, Lone Star Circle of Care, Stella Says Go, Mud Puppies and Hispanic Scholarship Consortium. (If memory serves.)

I was particularly pleased to see Edward Flores and Octavio A. Hinojosa Mier take the stage. Their social grasp reaches far beyond the banquet room at the Crown Plaza.

Nowadays, few people would consider demolishing a truly significant old Austin building. While preservationists remain rightly vigilant, the era of wholesale “urban renewal” is but a memory.

The movement gained steam and wider popularity in the 1970s, partly due to the American bicentennial, the national Main Street program and the countercultural rejection of what was perceived as widespread corporate modernism.

One turning point for downtown Austin was the salvation of the Lundberg building, which became the Old Bakery and Emporium.

Swedish immigrant Charles Lundberg had purchased the building — half a block from the State Capitol grounds on Congress Avenue — in 1876, one year after it was built. It housed a bakery until 1937.

By the 1970s, it was slated by the state for replacement with a garage. Volunteers organized in typical Austin fashion and then-State Sen. Lloyd Doggett helped transfer the building to the City of Austin.

Since 1976, the Austin Parks and Recreation Department has run it under its seniors program, allowing folks to sell handmade crafts there.

In the 1980s, the Meadows Foundation helped out with a grant to restore a balcony as part of a larger restoration project.

Today, the Old Bakery and Emporium doesn’t see much traffic and many Austinites walk right past it without giving it a second glance.

Time to look inside.

Rarely does a party surprise me. The Public School Pop Up Shop at Revival Cycles, part of Tribeza Style Week, did. Big time.

Koli and KC Hurst

It took place at a familiar artist studio complex in a former industrial structure on Bolm Road. Not a surprise. These spaces honeycomb East Austin.

John Bump and Megan Wright

The theme was motorcycles. The works of automotive art, old and new, provided the basic decor. Hipster apparel, accessories and whatnots draped the rest of the space. Food and drink flowed freely, though lines grew longer and longer.

Sean and Lauren Greenberg

The surprise was the people. This was not your usual Tribeza gathering. Regulars from the design, food, fashion, arts and nightlife scenes attended. Yet other elements spiced the scene.

Some were genuine motorcycle enthusiasts. Others gravitate to the margins of hipster life — bartenders, barbers, shop owners, workers in the idea economy. It was a heady brew.

And a triumph for Style Week, which now competes with dozens of other social attractions in late September.

Here’s somebody to interview at length: Martha Kirby.

“Michael Barnes has written more than 9,000 articles,” intoned Kirby, 90, as she nodded in my direction from the dais during the Retired Officers’ Wives Club of Austin luncheon at Green Pastures last week. “None of them about the officers’ club.”

Donna Di Loreto and Sue Kidwell

Funny, formal, yet a bit scampy, Kirby launched the luncheon on a bright note. The group meets regularly, in part to socialize and share memories, but also to raise money for veterans’ causes.

I spent the most time with Donna Di Loreto, who told me about her fruitful gardening efforts, and Grizelda Black, who ran the meeting in a pleasantly businesslike manner and alerted me to some 1940s-style big-band dances in the area.

Nancy Hargarten and Mrs. Kunze

The main amusement that midday was a fashion show courtesy of the Coldwater Creek shop in Barton Creek Mall. Worn by members, these layered outfits were simultaneously stylish and age appropriate.

You know, I attend a lot of luncheons, but this one painted a big smile on my face from beginning to end.

Nancy Kojazarek and Grizelda Black

“We’ve been trying to get publicity for decades,” Kirby said. “But the Statesman always told us: ‘There are too many social clubs.’”

Well, in my defense, I didn’t know anything about the club until a week or so before the meal. I’d gladly hang out with this merry troop any time. I’m sure what they really want, however, is to recruit is more spouses of retired military officers.

Carry on!

I’m just getting to know the Austin Area Urban League. Of course, I was aware of the group’s leadership during the fight for civil rights. But I didn’t know its origins in finding work for African Americans or its current labors on education, health and housing for all who are underserved.

Larry A. Thomas and Jessica Faith Carter

Over the past few years, I’ve come to admire — and find myself amazed by — its current board leader, Gregory Vincent, also a vice president at the University of Texas, where the Urban League gala took place. I’m impressed by the group’s president, William “Teddy” McDaniel III, and its head of young leaders, Virginia Cumberbatch. More on them at a later date.

Angela Dusk and Virginia Cumberbatch

Last week’s dinner — and yes, I’m way behind on my social reporting this time of year — at the AT&T Center was formal without being stiff. I was able to scuttle around and meet various folks, even during the dinner. Yet the speeches weren’t bad either.

Norman and LaVonne Mason

The League gave out two awards, one to Seton, the other to UT President William “Bill” Powers Jr.. He spoke with precision and passion about diversity, so much so one could hear his personal arguments were he to address the U.S. Supreme Court during its hearings on the university’s affirmative action case.

Talk about guys I’ve learned to admire. President Larry Faulkner was a hard act to follow, especially given his attention to the arts. But every passing month, Powers does something that makes me proud to wear burnt orange and to dust off that ol’ doctoral diploma stamped “Texas.”