A family of activists

Bertha and James Means went on to have five children, 13 grandchildren and 19 great-grandchildren. He died in 2008. The couple got involved in Democratic Party politics and voter registration in the 1940s.

“The lives of my mother’s generation and their forebears were laced with hard work and struggles for equal rights and justice,” daughter Joan Means Khabele says. “They persevered because they envisioned a better life — not only for their descendants, but also for all people.”

“This became a political meeting place for people,” Means says. Their neighbors and visitors were among the most influential inside and outside the black community.

Bertha Means was among the first “crossover” teachers at a traditionally white school. By the time their children were old enough to attend school, the couple pressed for an end to segregation.

“Every weekend I would organize pickets,” she says. “I put down my golf clubs and picked up the picket signs.”

Means integrated the teachers’ credit union and sued the district over promotion policies. Their daughter Patricia was the first African-American to graduate from high-powered St. Stephen’s Episcopal School.

Bertha Means also pressed UT regent Frank Erwin to allow her son James to run track for the formerly all-white team.

Along the way, Bertha Means was a prominent member of the Human Relations Commission, Austin Parks Commission, the NAACP, the Urban League, Austin chapter of Links, Alpha Kappa Alpha and the Austin chapter of Jack & Jill of America, which she helped found.

Means worked hard to bring the Ebony Fashion Fair, a key cultural event, to Austin for the first time. A member of the Town Lake Beautification Committee and Bicentennial Commission, Means was persuaded by community members to run for the City Council in 1981. She lost to Charles Urdy.

“I was not bitter,” she says. “I knew what politics were. I’m glad I’m lost. It was quite an experience.”

A high point in Means’ political life came in 2008 when she attended the Democratic National Convention in Denver as a self-professed “great-grandmama for Obama.”

“I was remembering the people who died to get where we are right now,” she tearfully told the Los Angeles Times. “People who gave their lives to be able to vote, to be able to own a home, to be able to live where they wanted to live. … All of that just came back, and it brought tears to my eyes. It’s a new day. It’s a new day.”

A daughter rises

Joan Means Khabele was born at Holy Cross Hospital on East 11th Street. “Most of East Austin was born there,” she says. Her younger siblings are Janet, 68, James Jr., 67, Patricia, 63, and Ronald, 59.

“Being the oldest, I had many responsibilities,” she says. “My parents early on were very involved in politics. There was always some kind of election. They’d disappear. Just because you are the oldest doesn’t mean you are the boss. I learned patience.”

By the time she reached Kealing Junior High School, her mother was teaching there.

She was among the third group of students to integrate Austin High School. In 1957, the nation watched tensely as the National Guard escorted the first black students who integrated Little Rock schools. The next day, Khabele arrived for her first classes at Austin High.

Khabele shrugged off her mother’s concerns. In high school, she studied and participated in activities alongside the sons of governors and other powerful Austinites. Price Daniel Jr. was a year ahead of her.

“He organized a big party at the Governor’s Mansion,” Khabele says. “The governor comes down and introduces himself to everyone. When he got to me, he withdrew his hand and walked away.”

Khabele had one social advantage: Middle-class and poor blacks stuck up for one another.

“None of us were rich,” she says. “We all played together in the dusty streets because the city wouldn’t pave our streets. No sidewalks. All classes mixed.”

After a trip to East Harlem, Khabele wrote the experience up for a school publication. “It opened my eyes to another world,” she says.

One day, the principal called her into his office. The black students would not be allowed to attend the senior picnic because Barton Springs and Zilker Park were segregated.

“Unitarians, Jews, Quakers and Hispanics — lots of students — were outraged,” she says. “We began organizing.”

The high school students made rousing speeches before the Austin City Council. Means backed her daughter all the way. University students helped out.

“Eventually, they said: ‘You can go the park, but you can’t swim,” Khabele recalls. “It was all about untouchability and sharing water.”

The teenagers mounted a series of “swim-ins” — kids of all colors storming the springs by the dozen. They would be thrown out, only to return.

About two years later, legendary parks leader Beverly Sheffield announced that all the parks and pools would henceforth be integrated.

Khabele attended the elite University of Chicago. After tutoring kids in Chicago, she joined the Peace Corps.

“They put me in Eritrea just as the war was beginning,” she says of the bloody split between Ethiopia and its former province. “I wasn’t harmed. I taught English to high school students and adults. That’s where I fell in love with Africa.”

She met her husband, Paseka Khabele, who is from South Africa, while he was earning his doctorate at Fordham University in New York City. Along the way, she earned a master’s degree in African Studies from UCLA and taught at universities in Zambia, Botswana, Lesotho and Nigeria.

The couple had three children, Dineo, 44, Inonge, 42, and Letsie “Khotso” Khabele, the founder of Austin’s Khabele School.

“My husband and I surrounded our children with books, paints and crayons, Legos, etc., and let them discover what they wanted to be,” she says. “We also made sure that they got extra help from us and from tutors when necessary. Growing up in Africa opened them up to being culturally sensitive, patient, tolerant, disciplined and adventurous.”

Joan Khabele also has taken the lead encouraging her mother to record her memories and sort out various historical documents.

“Most slaves were not allowed to read and write, and even after slavery was abolished, very few black families kept Bibles with family information in them,” she says. “As a consequence, we know very little about who our ancestors were and where they came from. I feel very strongly that we should be making every effort now to record what we can about our lives for the benefit of future generations — while we’re still ‘thinking straight.’”

The grandson with a vision

Khotso Khabele, executive director of the school that bears his family’s name, inherited his mother’s and grandmother’s quiet but firm resolve. Born in Eku, Nigeria, he benefited from his parents’ intellectual accomplishments.

Interestingly, his African grandfather also owned a cab company in Kimberley, South Africa, where his father was born.

“He was arrested for taking people other than his race in a taxi,” he says. “They offered him an opportunity to be classified as ‘colored.’ He refused.”

When Khotso was 12, the Khabeles sent him to Austin, where he attended St. Stephen’s like his aunt and older sisters. In a house full of relatives and visitors, he watched his grandmother work night and day.

“I had a lot of freedom,” he says “What I realized later was that what my grandmother was modeling to me what mattered in my life.”

He met his wife, Moya Khabele, who grew up in Louisiana, during an Afro-Brazilian martial arts class. They started the Khabele School six months later and had their first baby, Naledi, six months after that.

The idea for the school grew out of a national crisis. Moya, who now serves as marketing director at the family’s school, was teaching Spanish in a very small private school. Its leader left.

“How do I raise my child in this new world?” Khotso Kabele says. “How do I educate kids for this new, rapidly changing world? We got clear that we wanted to lean into change.”

The Khabeles started with nine students in a borrowed classroom. Now they enroll 460 students.

“We offer the best of traditional education: academic challenge and results,” Khotso Khabele says. “And the best of progressive education, community, student leadership and engagement.”

Among the school’s biggest supporters is none other than Bertha Means.

“Without Bertha Means, not only her legacy, but also her financial support, the school wouldn’t be where it is,” Khotso Khabele says. “She really has invested in her family.”

The family gift

At age 93, Bertha Means has no intention of slowing down. When she’s not running the cab company, organizing benefits and accepting the awards that line her Northwest Hills home, she’s keeping tabs on everyone via her computers and smartphone.

“I don’t care how old I am, I’m grateful and blessed to be alive,” she says. “It all depends on how you live, what you eat, what you drink and how busy you are. I’ve got too much to do. And I like what I’m doing.”

At the urging of their son, Ron Means, Bertha and James Means took over Harlem Cabs in 1984. They ran 59 taxis then. Today, there are 187. Besides the matriarch, Ron Means, James H. Means Jr., Joan Khabele, Alyssa Means, Jasmine Means and James H. “Tito” Means III work there.

The family continues to form the cornerstone of the St. James Episcopal Church, an unusually diverse congregation that recently saluted Bertha Means’ contributions on the 70th anniversary of its founding.

“There’s an intangible sense that all of us seem to have that we are exceptionally fortunate to have the parents and grandparents we’ve had,” Joan Khabele says. “The glue comes from annual holidays, visits to and from out-of-state relatives, keeping in touch by phone and email, and sharing photos and genealogical discoveries.”

The penchant for leadership has not skipped any generations.

“I am trying to raise our children to think for themselves and to lead,” Khotso Khabele says. “For me, when I look at our family, there’s this theme of bringing worlds together, bringing polar opposites together. My grandfather would tell me about white kids that thew rocks at him, and if he told, he’d be in trouble.

“But my grandparents always said: ‘We don’t put much energy into ignorance,’ ” he continues. “Thinking about what they went through, that’s a big deal. My grandmother got active, but she didn’t get bitter. There was no moral righteousness. It was just matter of fact.”

Two annual social events reward guests fascinated with Austin’s past. One luncheon benefits Preservation Austin, the other the Austin History Center.

During its recent midday gathering at the Driskill Hotel, Preservation Austin honored, among others, those who restored two historic buildings at Camp Mabry.

Soon after that, historian Chantal McKenzie gave me a tour of the Texas Military Forces base and its structures that go back to the 1890s. Expect a full report in a future story.

Backers of the Austin History Center will gather Feb. 6 for their always enlightening Angelina Eberly Luncheon, also at the Driskill. Not long ago, the center hosted a reception for the opening of the exhibit, “Austin’s Mexico: A Forgotten Downtown Neighborhood.”

The Austin native, 83, was tenderly profiled by my American-Statesman colleague Brad Buchholz in 2009. Sifuentes spoke then about the power of the American Dream. He grew up in rigidly segregated Austin among even poorer Hispanic children, yet he excelled at school. He, his children and grandchildren have achieved singular success.

His stories about his grandfather, who lived in “Mexico,” or as he calls it, “Mexican Town,” made me want to know more. Antonio Bautista Sifuentes had immigrated from Saltillo, Coahuila, in 1910, his grandson told me one cold day at Progress Coffee, a stone’s throw from his childhood home at 503 Medina St.

“He was a curmudgeon,” Sifuentes says of his grandfather, who first lived in the hard-luck Mexico near Republic Square. “He was unhappy. I think it was because of the living conditions in the First Ward — poor housing, poor sanitation, no services and rampant racism.”

Austin’s Mexico was the original site for Our Lady of Guadalupe Catholic Church in the district near Shoal Creek’s mouth. Sifuentes’ memories of his father’s former house at 503 W. Fifth St. are vague.

“I can see a porch,” he says. “In those days all houses had porches. I can see an automobile in the front yard. My Uncle Babe loved cars and was always finding a way to borrow him.”

Despite years of research — including a trip to Spain to see the castle, river and town that share is family’s name, spelled there Cifuentes — Sifuentes has never discovered what his grandfather did in the old country. He was a strict, formal man who was proud of his ancestry.

“He never accepted the fact that in this country, up until the day he died, he was a second-class citizen,” he says. “He didn’t want to behave like a second-class citizen.”

Sifuentes’ fastidious grandfather never left the house without dressing in a coat, tie and hat. He customarily tipped his hat to passers-by.

“When you meet someone, look at him in the eye,” his grandfather told him. “And continue looking at him in the eye. If you don’t, it’s a sign of disrespect.”

His grandfather wasn’t a big talker, but he asked good questions.

“He’d nod,” Sifuentes says. “People said he was a great conversationalist. My grandma would say: ‘Conversationalist? You can’t get a word out of him.’”

When, in the 1920s, the community’s church was moved to East Austin, partly at the behest of city leaders, Sifuentes’ grandfather helped move the church bell.

“My grandpa had all kinds of tools for plumbing, carpentry, block and tackle,” Sifuentes says. “I would hear stories of how they used block and tackle, brought the bell down, drove it over to Lydia Street, then hauled it up.”

Despite the circumstances, his grandfather, who died when Sifuentes was 7, relished the move from the First Ward. He landed near the corner of Congress Avenue and East Cesar Chavez Street, where Sifuentes was born, then near Red River and West Eighth streets, in a house with a basement that became Jaime’s Mexican Village and then Pelon’s.

Over the course of five generations in Austin, the Sifuentes family witnessed the gradual end to segregation and their eventual advances through education. Perhaps Sifuentes’ grandfather foresaw that future when his first grandchild, Ben, was born.

“My grandmother said he changed,” Sifuentes says. “He was so happy. He spoiled me. He gave me the Congress Avenue Bridge. He pointed at the State Capitol and said ‘That is yours.’ He was a very proud man.”

At the Austin History Center, you can see a painting of Antonio Bautista Sifuentes and a photograph of Benito Sifuentes, Ben’s father, as a boy. The exhibit runs through March 10.

The first thing I learned at the CASA Texas luncheon on Monday: The statewide group advocates for children in the foster care system while guiding the local groups of court-appointed special advocates for those kids. There are 69 local chapters serving 206 Texas counties.

Why not the other 48? The public-private partnership requires active links with local judges and, anyway, the vast majority of the cases are in the big urban counties.

Courtney Jones and Sonia Kotecha

Who shows up for such a benefit luncheon? Lots of legislators and judges. Also staff and volunteers from local CASA groups. This is a good time for such a gathering at the Sheraton Hotel near the Texas Capitol. The Senate and the House of Representatives are now in session and decisions about funding such essential services is at hand.

John Holmes and Jennifer Wuamett

One of three honorees, State Sen. Jane Nelson of Fort Worth, said: “If I were queen I’d pass a bill that every child in Texas has someone to watch out for them.”

Sen. Jane Nelson and Andrea Sparks

Another honoree, Rep. John Otto of Dayton said: “This is the best public-private partnership I know of.”

Zipping — or crawling — along MoPac, one catches glimpses of low, white buildings, open fields and old military equipment at Camp Mabry.

Yet deep inside the headquarters for the Texas Military Forces are rolling hills, woods, two ponds, a picnic area, a museum and scores of structures that date back as far as 1892.

Your read that right: 1892.

“There were two major building phases at Camp Mabry,” says Chantal McKenzie, architectural historian for the Texas Military Forces. “They surrounded World War I and World War II.”

Just uphill from the pond, for instance, is a row of buildings that once served as the heart of the base named after Brigadier Gen. Woodford H. Mabry, the Adjutant General of Texas from 1891 to 1898. It was his idea to train the state’s volunteers at the parade grounds on the camp’s original 80 acres.

Here, six large, brick barracks once stood, along with a mess hall, camp headquarters, hospital, guardhouse, five instructional workshops and two sheds. (Seen above in a 1922 photo.) The vast former mess hall now houses the Texas Military Forces Museum, which is packed with war materials and explanatory exhibits.

Two of the six barracks are gone. Last year, the others were renovated. Two were recently honored by Preservation Austin and by the Travis County Historical Commission for taking them back to a semblance of their 1918 condition.

The yellow-beige Butler Bricks were used because carpenters were in short supply, while the bricks made near where Butler Park now stands on Lady Bird Lake were plentiful.

The most striking elements around the former barracks — now offices — are the wide wooden porches and stairwells painted gray. Clearly, they were designed for utility. In fact, each barrack slept 400 inside and another 100 outside on the porches.

Now, why did they need space for that many men in 1918?

Because at that point, Mabry served as part of a grand experiment. Here, a logistically crucial school for automobile mechanics, run by the University of Texas, introduced combustible engines to a generation that knew little about cars, much less trucks, jeeps and tanks.

“There was a serious shortage in qualified personnel,” McKenzie says. “In a cooperative effort between the War Department and universities nationwide, training schools were created to fill this need.”

Camp Mabry was considered the biggest and best automotive school in the country. In all, 157 schools in at least 20 trades were established across the United States. By Nov. 1, 1918, UT, in conjuction with other Texas universities, trained more than 11,000 mechanics and technicians.

Across town on a hill above South Congress Avenue, the same experiment was applied to aeronautics at Penn Field. Additionally, a school for radio operators was based at Camp Mabry.

Builders back then understood one thing well: Climate. They put up these standardized barracks to avoid the worst western sunlight and to catch the prevailing breezes.

Many of the other structures, including the long row of white storage buildings visible from MoPac, were built by the Works Progress Administration between 1938 and 1941. The WPA also built the limestone bridges, culverts, fences, pylons and other park-like additions around the base.

Gone are the grandstands that, in early years, held Texans eager to witness the military volunteers marching on the parade grounds.

In the 1990s, base leaders evaluated all their structures that were over 50 years of age. This resulted in the listing of the Camp Mabry Historic District on the National Register of Historic Places and its designation as a State Archaeological Landmark. All these buildings are still used, however, by the Texas National Guard.

“Missions may have changed, but there is a tangible connection with their predecessors when they are walking the district or sitting at their desks,” says cultural program manager Kristen Mt.Joy. “At the same time, the community is welcome at Camp Mabry, just as they were many years ago.”

The museum is open 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Wednesdays -Sundays. There, pick up a brochure, “A Walking Tour of Historic Camp Mabry,” which republishes a handy map and some pretty evocative images of the encampment going back to its earliest days.

“I consider myself a steward of these cultural assets,” McKenzie says. “And I take this responsibility very seriously. I always strive to find the ideal balance between supporting mission needs and meeting historic preservation objectives.”

After graduation, what do you do with all the kids who actually adored school, cherished its rituals and neatly archived their lecture notes and graded essays?

Induct them into the Brain Candy Collective.

Monthly, each Austin group offers waggish lectures, debates and performances on a variety of serious and silly topics.

“People miss many things about college, but not the homework or the tests,” says L.B. Deyo, who co-founded the local edition of the Dionysium in 2004. “We gave them that.”

On Feb. 6, the three social groups of self-styled nerds will join forces for a combined Brain Candy show at the Alamo Drafthouse Village.

“I think the pace of technology — and computer technology in particular — has shown you can be a successful nerd,” says J.C. Dwyer of Nerd Night. “But we’ve also learned we can reach out to each other and share information without the horrible implications of seeing and touching other people.”

Perhaps dangerously, Brain Candy puts those people in the same room.

The Dionysium

The oldest of the collective’s members, the Dionysium, toasted its 100th show in 2012. Deyo can’t figure out the popularity of the show, which pulls in 100 or so monthly guests. They have paid the price of a movie ticket to gather at one of the Alamo Drafthouse theaters for lectures and music, and, especially, short formal debates.

“What I found is that I have absolutely no idea why one person comes to Dionysium and another does not,” says Deyo, a programmer for a video game company and wine lover who speaks with pleasantly exaggerated precision.

“We had the show up and running in a month,” Deyo says of his move back to Austin from New York in 2004. (He had previously attended the University of Texas.)

Deyo, 41, grew up a confessed poolroom punk in Westchester and the Bronx, N.Y.

“My mother had to repeatedly talk them out of throwing me out of school,” he grins. “All I cared about was pool. ‘The Hustler’ was a huge inspiration.”

Before the Dionysium, he discovered that, while people enjoyed intellectual stimulation, there were few opportunities to indulge that inclination.

“We felt that having an abstract conversation is something that isn’t welcome in most social situations,” he says. “It’s not because people are not intelligent. It’s because people are tired after a long day and want to relax and have fun. We hoped people would embrace this kind of conversation in a social setting — a safe zone.”

At the Dionysium, the leaders dress in suits and drink wine. A parliamentary style — if not Robert’s Rules of Order — is followed. Speakers ceremoniously address the officers or moderators, not the guests. It can be wickedly funny, but never cruel.

“We are just being ourselves,” says Deyo, who thunders onstage like an old-fashioned orator. “We have a sort of Rat Pack or Martin-and-Lewis rapport. We try to impress on people that it is fun. But there’s no question it’s more formal.”

How do they find their often obscure presenters? (Admission: I’ve lectured once and debated twice. My debate record: 1-1.)

“We have a crack staff of recruiters named William Gold,” Deyo jokes. “He has a real knack for getting debaters. He has arcane methods of finding them. I have no idea how he does it.”

The guests and participants usually behave civilly. Usually.

“One topic we had: ‘Was the Civil War primarily about slavery?’” Deyo recalls. “So we had a prominent historian and a member of the Sons of the Confederacy. It packed the house. Confederate flags everywhere. That same night, someone read a story that was very sexual. The history professor who lost the debate stormed out. Years later, I heard that he asked if we were still doing dirty stories.”

Nerd Nite

Chris Balakrishnan started Nerd Nite in Boston in 2003. Dwyer’s roommate when he lived in New York was that city’s Nerd Nite boss. When he moved to Austin in 2009, Dwyer, an anti-hunger advocate with Texas Food Banks, started the local version with Dan Rumney, who has since been replaced by biologist and seaweed farmer Lewis Weil.

“We attract nerds and the nerd curious,” Dweyer, 34, says. “Many of the speakers come from the audience. They come up after a show and say: ‘I happen to be obsessed with some obscure topic. And if these people can do it I can do it.’”

The organizers try to book a credentialed expert on the evening’s topic to keep things real. In front of 180 to 200 guests at the ND nightclub, three speakers talk on topics such as robots, astronomy or machine learning.

Dwyer grew up a bookish kid in the suburbs of Chicago. Back then it wasn’t cool to be nerdy.

“I feel like the broadening of the word ‘nerd’ didn’t start until the late ’90s,” he says. “With the dot.com boom, people realized you could make money being a nerd.”

There is no formal debate or regular musical features at Nerd Nite. Sex, of course, is a big draw, but so was “Space Night.”

“A guy from the planetarium brought in an inflatable star dome,” he says. “We also had lots of visual effects on ‘Horror Night,’ including fake blood.”

Like the other Brain Candy outfits, Nerd Nite appeals to the geeky kid inside us.

“The Internet has given us a platform to engage in some really deep nostalgia diving,” Dwyer says. “So people can be archivists of their own childhoods.”

Encyclopedia Show

Michael Graupmann, a writer and trainer at the Whole Foods Market headquarters, is among the most outwardly expressive of his Brain Candy colleagues. A former theater student from Arizona who did graduate work at UT, his Encyclopedia Show collaborators are Leah Moss at the McCombs School of Business and Ralph Haresty, an elementary school teacher.

The themed evenings, which cost $5, feature eight performers, five of them invited. Others come from a stable of regular speakers.

“We attract young, curious intellectuals,” Graupmann, 33, says. “Also performers and appreciators of comedy. We’ve done everything from serial killers to dinosaurs to hockey.”

Austin’s was the second of 16 Encyclopedia Shows around the country.

Growing up mostly in Phoenix, Graupmann recalls being a “very straight-laced teacher’s pet, afraid of doing anything wrong.”

When he arrived in Austin, Graupmann carefully researched the option of duplicating the Encyclopedia Show here.

“When I first moved here, I went to everything and met as many people as possible,” he says. He started with the literary readings, then stumbled on the Dionysium series and asked to meet its leaders.

“I asked a million questions,” he recalls. “Our three met and started brainstorming.”

He thinks that the Internet and news satires like “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” allow people to think critically about the world around them.

“We are reaching a critical mass of overeducation in a way,” he says. “People have a million degrees and they have jobs that have nothing to do with them.”

The most out-of-control Encyclopedia Show in Austin dealt with the the amusingly nameed suburb of Pflugerville.

“And we had Pflugervillians present and we were super nervous about their response,” he says. “But they came up and said: ‘You nailed it. You got everything correct.’

Graupmann thinks that, for all the comedy and entertainment, the Brain Candy Collective feeds a basic instructional hunger.

“We are trying to take information and apply it to our lives,” Graupmann says. “I never stopped learning. I don’t want to stop learning. But I can’t go to classes any more because I have too many student loans.”

Two days after he graduated from college, David Heisler drove 1,630 miles for 22 straight hours fueled by six Red Bulls.

As soon as he pulled into the Hollywood Hills, Heisler (pictured to right) joined Gorman for a photo shoot. The subject was actor Pierce Brosnan.

Gorman’s $5 million studio encompassed 4,000 open square feet bathed in natural light with huge cycloramas and a rooftop option.

“I’m coming from college,” Heisler says, his eyes wide with wonder nine years later. “A kid with an 8-by-12-foot room to shoot stuff in.”

Heisler, who returned to Central Texas last year, won the career lottery when Gorman — sometimes compared to Herb Ritts, Richard Avedon or Annie Leibovitz — asked him to become his retoucher, archivist and, eventually, digital assistant.

He helped Gorman capture such luminaries as Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom, Leonardo DiCaprio, Sharon Stone and Al Pacino.

Later, after starting his own outfit, he shot folks such as Paris Hilton, Catt Sadler, Janice Dickinson and Jason Mraz.

And yet Heisler’s strategy with celebrities was the same as with first-time models.

“I make people feel at ease and laugh and have fun,” he says. “I help them let their guards down. So you swallow your pride. Make a ridiculous idiot of yourself. Let yourself go to allow them let themselves go.”

Heisler, 31, still retains the tuft-topped scampiness of his early years as a skate punk and the quick-shifting agility of his later time as a competitive tennis player.

“I knew that I had a talent for it,” he says. “Friends would say: ‘Dude! Those are the most amazing pictures!’ From that experience, I grew into the artist I became.”

In college, he delved into the old analog, dark-room realm. “It all goes back to light and master craftsmanship,” he says. “It was important to know how hard it was.”

His mentor was police commander and forensic detective Carl Deal, who taught as an adjunct.

“He had an amazing historical house with a studio and rented apartments to students,” Heisler says. “I ended up living there. I pretty much had an in-house studio. … School didn’t end at the end of the day.”

During a road trip across the American West with Deal and other interns, he met Gorman and, over wine, told him about his dreams.

When he returned to San Marcos, Heisler sent Gorman fake ads and movie posters he had composed in Photoshop. Eventually, the master craftsman called him to L.A.

It sounds like a cliche, but Heisler later fell for one of his subjects.

Girlfriend Crystal Truehart worked as a high fashion model — she later became an Austin real estate agent. Three years after Heisler started his own business in L.A., he helped pick Trueheart for a reality series.

Meanwhile, Heisler was growing weary of the industry in California

“It’s all about the money,”he says. “You end up shooting for paychecks. My parents taught me to make it about other people, not about myself. When I started my business, it was about landing people as real clients because they trust you, they like you, they believe in you and they could honestly say we were there to collaborate on amazing imagery.”

He started researching Austin and discovered that their was enough fashion, advertising and head-shot business to keep him busy. He opened a studio inside a former art gallery on East Eighth Street.

“I was always rooted in Texas,” says Heisler. “But because of my years in L.A., my style and expertise is different.”

What does Heisler notice when he starts a shoot with a client?

“I see insecurity first,” he says. “You can read a lot about a person when you get them in front of a camera. So I act like a silly madman. I start taking them out of ‘we are taking pictures’ and make it about ‘we’re hanging out today.’”

He might take hundreds or even thousands of shots to get just the right image: “You have a very small window to get that great shot before they look awkward again.”

All images by David Heisler

The Scottish Rite Theater never looked so swanky. Black lounge decor transformed the 1870s German social hall into the setting for a 1960s cocktail party. Dressy folks mingled, nibbled, sipped and listened to music and speeches.

Reuel Meditz, John Hogg and David Garza

The Greater Austin Hispanic Chamber of Commerce — whose name is ripe for rebranding — staged the party on an otherwise quiet January night. Upon entering, I encountered Dr. John Hogg and construction boss David Garza. On his lapel, Garza wore a stunning diamond pin that turned out to be vintage Harry Winston, a holiday gift from his partner Hogg.

Colby Livingston and Lorena Gomez

Inside the lounge, I ran into Reael Meditz, the pianist and composer who is blazing a career path off the usual music industry map. Also ready for chat was wise and witty Perla Cavazos who filled me in on the dignitaries speaking onstage. (I wish she’d run for office again!)

Working the crowd was Andy Brown, who is running for Travis County Judge and expanding his already vast network of contacts. Onstage were two of the most revered figures in the Hispanic community, former State Sen. Gonzalo Barrientos and former Mayor Pro Tem John Treviño.

Tim Valderrama and Melissa Fornier

They recalled the early fights for civil rights in Austin, but they also gave credit to two businessmen, brothers Joe Molina and John Molina, as role models. The evening’s honorees had parlayed educational opportunities into a oil rig business that, by all accounts, is doing quite well. Son and nephew Stefan Molina runs the chamber’s foundation.

While I’d love to profile all these figures, I made my strongest case to Elizabeth Gonzales, the insurance pro who invited me to my first chamber event. My advice: Listen to her.

Some of 2012’s social delights will not be repeated.

Richard and Laetitia Garriott de Cayeux will not revisit their epic End of the World Party with its Mayan temple and hours of participatory revelry on the grounds of Britannia Manor.

A shadowy Austin-Los Angeles consortium will surely not spend another $2 million turning La Zona Rosa into three different plushy lounges populated with imported celebrities when the Formula One roars back in November.

Or maybe they will. Some Austin socializing, however, will return as predictably as the swallows to Capistrano.

To prepare for 2013, just follow the five social seasons.

Spring

In Austin, frenetic spring lasts from late January through late May. It starts with the gigantic Dell Children’s Gala (Saturday) and begins to peter out during the processional Toast of Town gatherings for St. David’s Foundation (from mid-April to mid-May).

Also big in February are — take a breath — Carnaval Brasileiro (Feb. 2), Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner for Project Transitions (Feb. 2), Rodeo Austin Gala (Feb. 9), Human Rights Campaign Dinner (Feb. 9), Citizen Generation’s Masquerade (Feb. 9), JDRF’s Deal for the Cure (Feb. 9), The Nobelity Project’s Artists and Filmmakers Dinner (Feb. 10), Philanthropy Day Luncheon (Feb. 14), Blanton Museum of Art Gala (Feb. 16), Town Lake Links Mardi Gras Gala (Feb. 16) and Capital Area Dental Foundation’s Casino Night (Feb. 16).

Come March, consider attending the New Wave Ball for Austin Children’s Shelter (March 1), Viva Las Vegas for Aids Services of Austin (March 2), CASAblanca Ball (March 2), Helping Hand Home for Children’s Crystal Ball (March 2), Texas Heritage Songwriters’ Association Awards Show (March 3), Amplify Austin Launch Party (March 4), Texas Medal of the Arts (March 4-5), Texas Film Hall of Fame (March 7), Fashion for Compassion (March 22), Ronald McDonald House Charities’ Bandana Ball (March 23), Heart to Heart Gala for Sacred Heart Community Clinic (March 23) or Explore Austin’s Quest for the Summit (March 28).

Then in April, drop by There’s No Such Thing As A Free Lunch for People’s Community Clinic (April 1), Luminaria benefiting the American Red Cross of Central Texas (April 5), Long Center Gala (April 6), Celebrando Austin (April 6), Rose Gala (April 12), Seton Board Gala (April 13), Fusebox Festival’s Night of the Tarantula (April 14), Petcasso for Animal Trustees of Austin (April 14), Lone Star Paralysis’ Lone Star Classic (April 18-19), Zach Theatre’s Red, Hot & Soul (April 20), Girl Scouts’ Women of Distinction (April 24), Live Fire for Austin Food & Wine Alliance (April 25), Umlauf Garden Party (April 25) or LifeWork’s White Party (April 26).

You’ll notice that some charity groups tend book their biggest parties of the year on the same night. It just goes to show that, while our social scene is expanding, it has a long way to go vis-à-vis working together.

Summer

Socializing is reduced to a low simmer during the summer. Which not to say that the parties go away. They just shrink. And some go underground.

Why is this? The most obvious reason: It’s hotter than Hades here. Also, many students and migrants leave town. And, apropos of galas, those guests who can buy a $50,000 table are somewhere else — anywhere else — during the summer months. If you could afford to escape, wouldn’t you?

Fall

High season returns to Austin from September through November. In recent years, the kick-off has come early with the excellent Excellence in Leadership Gala for Concordia University Texas (Aug. 23) and the Texas Tribute Gala (late August).

Come September, expect Ballet Austin’s classic Fête (Sept. 6) Authentic Mexico for MexNet Alliance (Sept. Sept. 16), The Big Give for I Live Here I Give Here (Sept. 27). In October, taste La Dolce Vita for AMOA/Arthouse (Oct. 10), Austin Film Festival’s Film & Food Party (Oct. 23) and the Texas Book Festival Gala (Oct. 25).

Dates are not yet available for the Andy Roddick Foundation Gala, Livestrong Gala, Jewel Ball, Art of Giving Gala, Black & White Ball, Lone Stars and Angels, Signature Chefs, Putting on the Ritz, Big Reds and Bubbles, Charity Bash Live Auction, Help Clifford Help Kids, Hill Country Nights, More Than a Party or many more fall revels.

Winter

Readers assume that December and January are peak socializing months. Nope. Austinites, like others, retreat inside to play with close friends and family during the winter holidays. The year’s second high social season pretty much ends on Thanksgiving.

Festivals

There’s a fifth season: All other socializing grinds to a halt during three Austin’s mega-fests. South by Southwest (March 8-17), Austin City Limits Music Festival (Oct. 4-6 and Oct 11-13) and Formula One (Nov. 16-17) deprive all other parties of any social oxygen.

Some other fiestas— Rodeo Austin (March 8-23), Texas Relays and Urban Music Festival (March 29-30), Moontower and Oddity Comedy Festival (April 24-27), Austin Food and Wine Festival (April 26-28), Austin Fashion Week (May 3-11), Pachanga Latino Music Festival (May 10-11), Republic of Texas Biker Rally (June 3-16), Austin Film Festival (Oct. 24-31), Texas Book Festival (Oct. 26-27), Fun, Fun, Fun Fest (Nov. 8-10), East Austin Studio Tour (Nov. 16-24) and Zilker Trail of Lights (dates to come) — do a pretty good job of distracting everyone from competing events, too.

On Jan. 20, the American-Statesman published a handy schedule of Austin’s numerous festivals. Consult it regularly at statesman.com.

And let’s not forget the acres of socializing that goes on before, during and after each of six University of Texas home football games (Aug. 31-Nov. 28). If Horns are doing well, that translates into a combined total of 600,000 revelers on site, not counting those who skip the stadium and watch the team from tailgates, sports bars, family dens and man caves.

As Peggy Lee might sing with a touch of weary irony: “Is that all there is?”

Remnants of Austin’s rural past pop up everywhere. Walkers know the signs: Larger than usual lots, bigger trees, structures predating all the others in the area.

The most visible vestige of that past in the Duval Springs area of North Austin is Switch Willo Stables, a wooded wonderland of equestrian culture that would look at home in Old Virginia or even Old England.

So what happened? Nowadays, Duval Road between MoPac Boulevard and U.S. 183 — just northwest of the Domain — is lined with office buildings, large apartment complexes and handsomely maintained neighborhoods. Yet here once stood a full town with school, churches and stores.

“My dad would use a stick and poke around in the dirt where a store sat,” says reader Anna Kemp Galloway, who lived on this land in the 1940s and again in the 1960s. “We’d dig up old molten glass.”

Turns out, the glass remnants came from a big fire that destroyed most of the town of Duval around 1900. The store that burned 60 years before Galloway’s childhood stood on what is now Whispering Valley Road. Nearby, Duval Road formerly cut across the railroad.

Neither Galloway nor I — nor the folks at the Austin History Center — can date the conflagration precisely. Galloway remembers a features story about the fire published in the American-Statesman during the 1960s or ’70s. We are still looking for it.

Here’s what the Handbook of Texas says about Duval — not to be confused with fabled Duval County in South Texas or Duval Street, which heads north from the University of Texas campus through the Hyde Park neighborhood.

“The site was settled in 1875 and was named for local store owner Douglas Duval,” the Handbook reports. “A post office moved there in 1877 from Mount Juliet, and James A. Wright served as postmaster. By the mid-1880s the community had a district school, three churches, three stores and 75 residents. Stone and cedar were the principal commodities shipped from the area. The population of Duval was estimated at 50 in 1890 and at 35 in 1899. The Duval post office was discontinued in 1902, and mail for the community was sent to McNeil. The area that made up the Duval community was annexed by the city of Austin in the mid-1970s.”

No mention of the fire. Yet the entry does explain the large quarry lakes nearby in the Balcones Woods neighborhood. (The Handbook cites John J. Germann and Myron Janzen’s 1986 “Texas Post Offices by County” as its source.)

Galloway’s family moved to a farm here in 1933. She kept records of the families — Duvals, Kemps, McDonalds, Pilands — who bought and sold this land. She and her brother sold it in 1973.

“I got with Marce Morrow who was a young man when the last of the town just dried up and left,” Galloway recalls. “He said his grandmother lived there after the fire in a tent and he was taken there to be with her when his youngest sister was born.”

On what occasions did her father dig for molten glass?

“We would sit near the county road waiting for either the mail carrier or the milk carrier,” Galloway says. “We would place cans of milk by the county road and get cans of whey from the Round Rock Cheese Factory truck. Can you believe that some times they would put the check paying for our milk on the top of a return can with a rock to hold it down?”

We know that Duval was completely gone by 1938, when the highway department published a map of Travis County that can be found at UT’s Perry Castañeda Library and is easily accessible as part of the library’s invaluable online collection.

The map shows Austin’s northern city limits at about 51st Street. But all the little towns above it, whose names were recycled for thoroughfares like Duval are here — Fiskville, McNeil, Dessau — as well as bergs new to me, such as Abercrombie, Fromme and Water’s Park (which should be spelled “Watter’s Park,” according to Galloway) have faded away.

But no Duval or, alternately, Duval Station, by 1938. Now folks, the last of this town and other rural remnants like it existed within living memory. In 25 years, that memory will be gone.

Which is why it so important to keep asking friends who lived here back then: What do you recall from 60, 70, 80 or 90 years ago?

Gray-suited Pete Schenkkan doesn’t look like a philosopher or a poet. Given his brushed-back hair and studied smile, he appears just right for his actual job: A lawyer who deals in the area of regulatory litigation.

Yet Schenkkan — who belongs to a well-known Austin family of writers, actors, teachers and activists — can’t help seeing his job in a noble light.

Besides the customary work he does for the Austin firm of Graves Dougherty Hearon & Moody, Schenkkan takes on big cases on issues such as worker’s compensation, electrical market restructuring, groundwater regulation and, most recently, women’s health care, representing Planned Parenthood in its tangles with the state of Texas.

“As a lawyer, you get to participate in making the law work better at serving society’s needs or current society’s understanding of those needs,” he says. “I passionately want to make the system better. It’s kind of a game with real stakes. It’s an outlet for one’s interest in understanding the way things work and then for making it better.”

Once a Schenkkan …

A quiet strain of determined idealism runs through Schenkkan’s family. His father, public media pioneer Bob Schenkkan, is credited with founding KLRU and KUT. His brother is Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Robert Schenkkan, whose latest script, “All the Way,” is about LBJ’s first term.

His wife, Frances Victory Schenkkan, is a prize-winning poet. One son, Ben McKenzie, who opted to use his middle name, sizzles on the TV cop drama “Southland” after melting hearts on “The O.C.” His other sons, both former actors, are involved in nonprofits and the law.

The lawyer was born in Durham, N.C., where his theatrical parents were associated with University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He was the oldest of four boys.

“It was very active and somewhat competitive and somewhat combative childhood,” he says. His parents pasted a cartoon on the fridge picturing two little boys chasing another boy around with a tomahawk. The caption read: “They told us to have more than one so they would have someone to play with.”

The family moved to Austin with Pete was 8. He attended Dill Elementary and Casis Elementary, then O. Henry Junior High before enrolling in Groton School, the elite Massachusetts college prep.

“It was not my idea,” he says. “My father was from Brooklyn, my mother from Georgia, both from the bottom rung of class. They encountered people who had gone to prep schools and it sounded good to them.”

Modeled after English “public schools,” Episcopalian Groton was very much oriented to public service and leadership. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke to the students about civil rights, while McGeorge Bundy, National Security Advisor to two presidents, spoke on Vietnam.

At the University of Virginia, he studied history, languages, literature and economics. There, he was part of an ad hoc group of students who demonstrated peacefully (in coats and ties) in favor of integration.

He met his wife during a summer job at the telephone company in Austin. She had just finished the first year of a master’s degree in journalism at UT.

“It was pretty close to love at first sight,” he says. “She likes to tell the story that that day I was wearing a pink shirt and when she saw the pink shirt, she thought: ‘God really does have a plan for me.’”

They married after his first year as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University where he studied politics, philosophy and economics. President Bill Clinton was in the previous class. Clinton joined his class for a send-off dinner in New York City, then boarded the ship the next day to get to know the next 32 Rhodes Scholars.

“He was clearly already running for president,” Schenkkan jokes. “Or something.”

At UT Law School, Schenkkan studied with distinguished specialists on the U.S. Constitution, federal practices and procedures and federal courts. While there, he and fellow students organized a fund for minority student scholarships, raising $1 million.

The idealism just never went away. He continues to find poetry in regulations and public policy that are, effectively, legal instruments.

How many laws are there anyway?

“You need a Borges answer,” he laughs gently. “Depends on what you call a law. It’s a lot.”

The push during this legislative session, I learned at the Merry Merry Martini Mixer for Equality Texas, will be behind anti-discrimination bills in the areas of jobs and insurance. Good places to start, says director Chuck Smith.

Jenny Young and Kimmi Selinger

Last session, the lobby did spectacularly well helping to pass anti-bullying laws. Voices in the community now demand action on marriage equality. That’s not on the near horizon for Texas, Smith says, but if some legislator wants to get out in front of history, Equality Texas might consider it.

The Mixer is undiluted fun. This year, it was staged in tent over surface parking at 400 Congress Avenue, a site often utilized during festivals. A Moroccan theme meant fire dancers, belly dancers and a Bactrian camel, which Austin Police Chief Art Acevedo dutifully saddled while shooting the Hook ‘Em Horns sign. He’s a good sport and a good friend of the community.

His wife, Tanya Acevedo, looked smashing as usual. Also mingling among the crowd — mostly in their twenties and thirties — were social connectors Kevin Smothers, Stephen Rice, Mark Erwin, Tim McCabe, Scott Ballew, Allan Baker, John Hogg, Micah King, Graydon Parrish and others.

To borrow a metaphor from sports, Dell Children’s could run a tutorial on how to stage a gala. Let’s start with the decor. The hospital’s Armando Zambrano, lighting designer Ilios and projections designer Houndstooth Studio miraculously transformed a vast ballroom at the Austin Convention Center into an intimate, 21st-century theater with four corner stages and a central arena-like performance well seamlessly plastered with projected images and words.

(My poor snapshot doesn’t do it justice.)

These are production values you’d expect from the Oscars. Co-chairs Mary Miles and Owen Temple added a musical touch by introducing four Austin country acts who played on the corner stages while their images were expertly projected everywhere. Most if not all of the musicians were parents whose children had been treated at the growing medical center.

Flowers by David Kurio made another classy, luxurious statement, as did the precise, attentive dinner service.

Armando Zambrano and Bobbi Topfer

Zambrano reports that the affair grossed $1.36 million, a jump of $250,000 over 2012. A lot of that came during the astonishing if overly long live auction. Here, vacation packages were going for $20,000 or $30,000. A glossy, black Labrador retriever puppy went for $16,000 to the chagrin of animal welfare activists and the happy shock of everyone else.

Maneesh Amancharla and Sidhya Jayakumar

Dancing, casino gaming and after partying went on long after I left, but what will never leave my memory are the testimonials, on video and live from the stage, of parents who went through catastrophic medical crises with the kids. Hearing Jennifer and Blake Sallé talk about Skylar or Katherine and Pat Jones go over the months they tended Patton was beyond moving.

What struck me about both of the dads was their demeanor. Obviously confident and accomplished in their daily lives, they were left somewhat vulnerable by the sudden onset of medical calamity. Following their usual practices, they called around the country to gain the opinions of the top experts. Who, in turn, confirmed that they were in good hands at Dell Children’s no matter the crisis.

Quite a testimonial for a hospital that’s a mere few years old.

Correction: An earlier version of this post credited the wrong company for the designs.

This mystery begins in a graveyard.

Amid a grove of junipers in an Austin park sits a family plot guarded by a high mesh fence. Four legible stones stand among the rubble. Three of the same family design — decorated with bas-relief garlands — face the trail.

“Father: John Barglsley: March 13, 1828-Oct. 13 1904.”

“Mother: Sarah Bargsley: Sept. 2, 1834-May 4, 1922.”

“Ada Lena Bargsley: July 6, 1877-May 4, 1922.”

During one of their frequent trips to Longview Park, Kevin Davis, who lives nearby, noted the death dates to his wife, historian Chantal McKenzie.

They drew no conclusions. Later, however, McKenzie was browsing through the Austin History Center website when she ran across an arresting picture: In harrowing grays, a funnel cloud swirls around the dome of the State Capitol.

The date for the tornado: May 4, 1922.

Did the Bargleys die in the double tornado that killed 13 people on that day, McKenzie wondered.

I must admit that, aside from the famous image of the Capitol, I knew almost nothing about the city’s deadliest tornado. Time for an always-welcome trip to the history center.

Preserved there is Frederic William Simonds’ 24-page “The Austin, Texas, Tornadoes of May 4, 1922,” published in the University of Texas Bulletin for Feb. 15, 1923.

Simonds was a professor of geology who witnessed the more westerly of the two twisters.

Simonds calmly, chillingly records their paths. The first touched down in four places, starting six miles north of Austin near Spicewood Springs, then a mile to the southwest. After that, it smacked the State Institute for Deaf, Dumb and Blind Colored Youths on Bull Creek Road between 38th and 45th streets. It finally belted the Deep Eddy recreational camp.

Copious photographs published in the Bulletin — and others housed at the history center — show smashed buildings. One person died in the first tornado.

The second tornado split off and raked the Texas State Cemetery in East Austin before bouncing in a “hit and miss” action over Travis Heights. It severely damaged three buildings on the St. Edward’s University campus, then destroyed businesses around Penn Field, including Woodward Manufacturing and a big water tower. It roared south to damage the school in the town of St. Elmo and the Hartkoff Dairy.

“From appearances after the storm, a veritable rain of timbers, planks, splinters and roofing must have swept over the Post Road leading from Austin to San Antonio,” Simonds writes. “As automobile traffic on this highway is, as a rule, quite heavy, it is nothing short of miraculous that no lives were lost.”

The tornado was not finished.

“Two and a half miles southeast of Oak Hill, eight or more miles from its origins in Austin, the tornado completely destroyed the Barglesy home, causing the death of six persons,” he writes. “The violence of the storm at this point is shown by the fact that, of the house, scarcely a vestige remained, barring the stones used for the chimney. … Visitors on the scene were amazed to find that even the fowls had been plucked of their feathers.”

All told, the second twister killed 12 people, half of them at the Bargsley house. Today, one can explore Longview Park and the attached preserve to find stacked stone fences and other evidence of farming or ranching. A few small private ranches survive nearby, although the surrounding neighborhoods were developed as early as the 1970s.

On May 5, 1922, headlines for the Austin Statesman read: “13 Dead, 44 Injured, Property Loss in Storm in Excess $700,000: Tornado Leaves a Trail of Ruin in its Path.”

Remembering the paper’s response in a 1960 report, William J. Weeg said he was working at the Statesman offices at Eighth and Brazos streets. Managing editor E.J. Walthall, “was just fixing to leave when he saw the twister coming. He yelled, and we both got on the phones, calling the composing room crew and the stereotypers back to work and checking for information.”

After reporting on Travis Heights damage, Weeg took other first-hand accounts by phone. On the front page back in 1922, the Statesman listed among the dead: “Miss Ada Bargsley, 46” and “Mrs. John Bargley, Sr., 89.” The others who died at their home that day were “John Thompson, 26,” “Mrs. Alta Thompson, mother of John Thompson,” “Maria Kinchion, 70,” and, in a sad sign of the times, “Harper, girl, negress, 10.”

Over the following decades, this newspaper published the living memories of survivors, including a story written by J. Frank Dobie and rendered in flinch-worthy dialect.

Historian Mike Cox gave a clean account and interviewed experts for a 1970 newspaper article.

“In 1922, Austin only had about 20,000 residents,” meteorologist David Barnes told Cox. “If you think what could have happened if that tornado had hit this year, the death rate might have easily been 10 times as great.”

Now imagine that today.

This neighborhood profile came out in REAL magazine last week.

The inveterate walker soon discovers that Old West Austin is a wonderland of nooks, crannies, alleys, backstreets, side streets, dead ends and steep, hidden arroyos.

One neighborhood alley has been transformed into a garden. Others are so well-populated with garage apartments, granny cottages and fanciful additions they could pass for full streets.

Want authentic character? Old West Austin — like its smaller, historical coeval Clarksville — delivers it emphatically between North Lamar and MoPac (Loop 1) boulevards, Enfield Road and Lady Bird Lake

“The mix of history, people and lifestyles has worked for me at every stage of my life,” says former Austin City Council Member Randi Shade. “And I am guessing it always will. I loved being here when I was single, but I also love raising my children here. I have neighbors I adore of all ages and races, and am always learning new things from them.”

Treaty Oak, once part of a sacred live oak grove where Comanche and Tonkawa met, reminds visitors that the area’s history goes back hundreds of years.

Old West Austin’s residential beginnings, however, mirror those of East Austin’s. Castle Hill, located above Shoal Creek, offered Austinites a breezy respite from the heat, damp and bugs of the River City, much as did Robertson Hill to the east of downtown.

That western hill, named after the castle-like main building of the Texas Military Institute built in 1870, overlooked rolling hills and valleys in each direction. Near its crenelated tower rose gracious late 19th-century and early 20th-century houses, from grand Victorians to elegant bungalows, some of the best samples strung along a decorated retaining wall on Baylor Street.

Above a hollow to the west of Castle Hill is Clarksville, originally a freetown founded by Charles Clark in 1871. It housed former slaves from the Pease Plantation, which was headquartered at the Greek Revival mansion known as Woodlawn or the Pease Mansion, beautifully restored and located to the north in the Old Enfield neighborhood.

Although Clarksville’s closely spaced board-and-batten houses now share the land with newer, larger houses, the area retains much of its historic character. African American residents remained loyal to the community despite the City of Austin’s 1928 attempt to remove them to East Austin by denying them municipal services here.

Clarksville’s soulful Sweet Home Baptist Church still goes strong.

Some residents vehemently resist the temptation to conflate Clarksville with Old West Austin. Yet geographically they closely coexist and they share the same neighborhood association, complemented by the Clarksville Community Development Corp.

So many hot spots line the bigger streets, it’s hard to keep track. Among the most familiar day and night stops are Wink, Z Tejas, Clark’s Oyster Bar, Amy’s Ice Cream, Corazon, Cafe Josie, 24 Diner, Counter Cafe, El Interior, Sweetish Hill, By George, El Arroyo, Cipollina, Fresh Plus Grocery, Mean-Eyed Cat, Waterloo Records, Emeralds, Wiggy’s, Third Base Sports Bar and several art galleries.

“We are grateful they are here,” resident Janice Burckhardt says. “And I do, in fact, cook some, too! But the area dining nearby is easy and wonderful, and we often run into friends and neighbors who are living the same kind of life we are. This is important to us, as working from the home can be isolating.”

Deeper inside the neighborhood, slim West Lynn Street buzzes with businesses old and new — Nau’s Enfield Drug, Caffe Medici, Galaxy Cafe, Zocalo Cafe, Sledd Nursery and the reborn Jeffrey’s restaurant, for instance.

Otherwise, the calm and center of Old West Austin is sweet little West Austin Park, which includes a fenced leash-free area, a pool and a restored Tudor Revival bathhouse.

A neighborhood as authentic as this one — and as close to downtown — has attracted plenty of would-be developers and defenders.

“We are all pretty vigilant about what tries to come into our inner neighborhood areas,” Jordan says. “Without this vigilance we could end up like the area from Lamar to downtown — all of the housing stock is now filled with offices and the like.”

Truth be told, many latter-day additions altered the neighborhood fabric in fairly sensitive ways. A brightly colored storage facility on West Sixth, however, continues to attract disapprobation. Noise, parking and traffice problems have not missed this area.

A succession of beatniks, hippies, yuppies and hipsters have already renovated most of the housing here.

What’s the biggest challenge then?

“Dealing with change — true anywhere — but especially in Austin,” Shade says. “I have neighbors whose families have lived here for multiple generations. They have seen everything under the sun — good and bad — and are typically far more friendly and open-minded when it comes to change than many of the folks who got here in the ’80s and resent Austin’s growth so much that they spend more time imposing their will on others than they do being neighborly.”

Old West Austin and Clarksville

Founded: 1870s

2010 population: 4,434

Look: Extremely eclectic mix of Victorians, bungalows, cottages, brick houses, ranch homes and multi-family complexes. Heavy retail along thoroughfares to east and south.

Sources: City of Austin, Old West Austin Neighborhood Association

Photos by Ralph Barrera

In 1999, a spiritual crisis smacked Zane Wilemon where he lived.

“I had this intense impulse to decide what I believed in,” Wilemon, now 35, says. “I went through a lot of internal wrestling.”

“I thought: ‘Before I drop a faith, I should read its text,’” he says. “It was a practical decision. Every morning, I read the Bible. It broke me in half. It didn’t lead me to peace that year, but it led me to Africa.”

In 2000, Wilemon made his first trip to Kenya.

“It was raw, alive, beautiful, real,” he recalls. “It matched my hunger. I fell in love.”

Today, the Austinite with a master’s degree in divinity runs a locally based charity, CTC International, with an annual budget of $1.7 million that partners with Africans to develop sustainable projects.

Teaming with the Whole Planet Foundation, for instance, CTC’s L.I.F.E. Line distributes garments, blankets and bags made by Kenyan villagers that Wilemon’s group taught to sew. Whole Foods Market carries the line in all its stores and sold more than 300,000 units last year.

“They were the poorest of the poor,” Wilemon says of the newly trained mothers of disabled children. His group had built a school for those outcast children. “Now they are ‘the 1 percent’ in their villages.”

A study in contrasts

Slender and taut-skinned like an extreme sportsman, Wilemon defies expectations. His scuffed work boots could mark him as a former fraternity brother — he pledged, in fact, Phi Delta Theta at the University of Kansas — but he has owned the Red Wings since he was a junior in high school. Resoled twice, they are no affections.

“When I started working in Kenya, my socks would get dirty,” he says. ” So I started wearing these again. Everybody makes fun of me in Kenya because nobody wears boots there.”

Named after Western pulp novel writer Zane Gray, Wilemon grew up among longtime North Texans. His great-grandfather founded the first bank in Arlington and his grandfather merged it with former behemoth Texas Commerce Bank. His father, Stan Wilemon, runs an import firm, while his mother, Cindy McAlister, wrote for American Way magazine.

Other than his parents’ divorce and remarriage — he is close to both step-parents — Wilemon’s was a pretty carefree childhood.

“I was a troublemaker,” he says. “Not a big rule follower. I was not making good grades, so Dad set me down and said: ‘None of this counts now, but when you go into ninth grade, it all goes on the record.’ For whatever reason, that stuck.”

He turned around his schoolwork, ran track and played basketball and baseball. He later studied biology at Kansas.

After his spiritual crisis, he bought a one-way ticket to help the Africa Inland Mission’s hospital and school in the Rift Valley town of Kijabe. Once while there, he delivered food to an orphanage in Maai Mahiu, a down-mountain village.

“The poverty in this town is so bad it makes Kijabe seem like Mecca,” he says. He befriended the pastor and director of the local orphanage.

“I felt like I was supposed to do something there,” he says. When he left Africa, he backpacked then moved to Montana to study at a small Bible college. “But I didn’t want Africa to be a check on a checklist, a story in my back pocket.”

That’s when Wilemon created the Kenya Project. In 2002, he and friends from Texas, Kansas and Montana dug wells and built a trade school in Maai Mahiu.

“None of us had built anything before,” he said. “We raised raised money from random donors, lived with 140 orphans. But we didn’t have a name — and reporters asked for one — so we called it ‘Comfort the Children.’”

Later renamed CTC, the group now employs 10 staff members and three interns aided by scores of interns. They have branched out with health and HIV-AIDS program hand-in-hand with Bristol-Myers Squibb and Dell Children’s Medical Center.

While studying at Austin’s Seminary of the Southwest, he met his wife, Natalie Faye Ralston Wilemon, a stage and screen actress, opera singer and physical trainer. He was ordained a priest in the Episcopal Church and served at Trinity Cathedral in San Jose, Cal. for two years. By 2009, CTC, his side project, had received enough money to go full time in Austin.

Like others in his generation, Wilemon and his group don’t rush in with solutions.

“The best way to help is to listen,” he says “Then empower. By empowering others, we, too, are empowered.”

Two social spaces opened officially this week.

Moya Khabele and John Mulvany at Vuka, an events venue

Vuka is a surprisingly vast events venue owned by Brian Schoenbaum and managed by Moya Khabele of the Khabele School. It doubles as an office and studio space. But primarily, it’s an informal meeting place on West Monroe Street just east of South First Street.

Formerly an architectural antiques shop — and many other things — it shares a tall metal warehouse structure with an antique car collector (owned by the son of coin dealer and active benefactor Milton Verret).

The most amazing thing about the spot is the back yard. At a third of an acre, it winds around a lazy bend in East Bouldin Creek. I’ve walked by this building thousands of times without suspecting this patch of green sprouted behind the big metal box. A host could fit a lot of people into Vuka’s lofty interior and laid-back exterior.

Now, I don’t know what the other neighbors think yet — we’re among them on West Monroe Street — but I enjoyed the open house and any time I spend with Khabele, who wisely married into the entrepreneurial Means-Khabele family.

David Heisler and Crystal Truehart at his photographic studio

Fashion photographer David Heisler held a private open house for his airy studio on East Eighth Street between Congress Avenue and Brazos Street. The former art gallery and former Cap Metro info office — and many other things — is sleek and inviting.

It quickly filled with Heisler’s admirers from his times in Austin, Houston, San Marcos and Los Angeles.

It’s easy to see why Heisler has attracted so many admirers in the fashion community so quickly as moving here last year from L.A. His work is superb. But he’s also a cool guy, easy to know, easy to like.

Loved meeting his striking and sweet girlfriend Crystal Truehart, former high fashion model and now a real estate agent, as well as her sister, Rachel Truehart, who appeared on “The Bachelor.”

Spent time with PR insider Jeff Szymanski and modeling agents, photographers and David’s charming family. I can see this studio operating as a fine party room during SXSW and other festivals as well.

The pictures got me.

There he was again: dark hair, thick brows, strong nose, full lips, bronze features.

Yet during his minutely choreographed memorial at ACL Live on Saturday, the Austin DJ and music designer was back.

Those untamed, quizzical, almond-shaped eyes alive, staring at us from a screen above the stage.

Denizens of the city’s nightlife, charity, arts, music and media scenes joined the family and his partner of 17 years, Kevin Smothers, for a final farewell.

Calla lilies poked out from a clear tower arranged by the Avila family. Selections from Michael’s favorite music provided the soundtrack for the sunny afternoon.

From the stage, Amy Holloway welcomed the crowd: “We can’t think of Michael without thinking about music,” she said. “Close your eyes and think about our friend and family member as you hear the lyrics.”

“Michael will be in our fondest memories and in the songs that seem to randomly pop up on our song lists at just the right moment,” Holloway continued. “Often when it seems almost uncannily appropriate. It’s happened to me already. The perfect song plays when I’m missing him.”

Debra Boylan strayed from her script to recall how she and Michael were “borderline obsessive fans” of Tori Amos, following her tours around the country. (I’m listening to Amos as I write to remember why.)

I was privileged to be invited to read from the I Ching.

Here’s an excerpt: “The clouds pass and the rain does its work. And all individual beings flow into their forms. Because the holy man is clear as to the end and the beginning, as to the way in which each of the six stages of life completes itself in its own time, he mounts on them toward heaven as though on six dragons.”

When done right, football, opera and carnival offer excesses of spectacle, emotion, pleasure and beauty. The three forms slammed together this weekend in Austin with uneven results.

Paul Fischer and Chanda Wilson at Carnaval

Dating to the 1970s, Carnaval Brasileiro is among Austin’s oldest parties. Years ago, it was held inside the dark, grimy City Colosseum. Now the costume, music and dance affair spreads out over the brighter, sleeker Palmer Events Center.

Mimicking its Latin American progenitors, our Carnaval attracts as much skin as clothing. As is the case with Hippie Hollow, it’s not always the skin you’d prefer to see. Some of the costumes are spectacular, however, and one can only appreciate the effort some revelers take with the beads, feathers and fringe.

The hosts wisely narrow the Palmer vastness with two angled sets of bleachers, a tall stage and numerous cash bars. Below the stage, members of the Austin Samba School shimmied and shook on Saturday night in brilliant blue and silver costumes. They looked ecstatic.

Those around them, however, looked less so. Especially the ones lounging on the bleachers. I’m sure the frenzy progressed to an apt climax, but five hours (9 p.m. to 2 a.m.) is hardly enough time to hit a true samba high. This Carnaval could be more unsavory. After all, it’s about pre-Lenten release of devilish impulses, isn’t it?

David Brewer, Emmy Kolanko and Mary Garavaglia at Carnaval

Next door at the Long Center, during the intermission for Austin Lyric Opera’s “The Marriage of Figaro,” audience members could not stop talking about how sublime the Mozart score sounded. Social connector Robert Nash remarked on the contrast between the gorgeous sounds produced under the baton of conductor Richard Buckley and the inherent silliness of the action.

Another audience member spoke of how exquisitely the romance broke through the cynicism of the subject matter: Jealous adulterers tricked into consonance. It didn’t seem to matter that the opera lasted three and a half hours.

An amusingly mocking exchange followed my one tweet on the subject.

This was from John Erier: “Best #superbowl tweet so far RT@outandabout The music in “Marriage of Figaro” is shockingly sublime. I think it’s my favorite Mozart opera.”

BA Mansfield responded: “Thank your for not posting about the Super Bowl. Refreshing to see a different tweet topic in my feed!”

And so the thread continued.

Estella Baytan and Pranjal Srivastava at the Long Center

Speaking of the Super Bowl, I had decided to take a break from the game this year. (Now if Houston had made it that far, the story would be different.) The half hour of the broadcast I did catch coincided with the 34-minute blackout delay, when we were left with the endless, repetitive prattle of sports commentators.

I left the tube to head back downtown to judge a beauty contest, only to find Haven nightclub padlocked. An email check confirmed that I had idiotically misread the invitation: The finals are March 3. Of course, owner Sky Cheung would not book a pageant against the Super Bowl.

All the bars and restaurants in the Warehouse District blared the Super Bowl coverage — the game did get interesting — but I chose instead the Crú wine bar on West Second Street. No TV.

I’m the only guy at the bar. The bartender suggests a light Arneis from the Piedmont region of Italy. (Guess I didn’t need to say that. The Piedmont region of the Appalachia doesn’t produce much in the way of wine.)

Heaven. Narrow escape from the Super Bowl.

Wine: A tasting at Austin Wine Merchant staged by the Freestyle Language Center turned talky. The group, headed by Elizabeth Mack, encourages fluency through activities like dinners, movies and museum visits.

“The social nature of the program connects people and gets them going on language,” Mack says.

Our wine expert was Joshua Marcoux, who looked and sounded like the sharp economics graduate student that he is. Our Spanish expert was Lorna Torrado, also a graduate student but in the Spanish-Portuguese program, whose loose, animated style and exact pronunciation marks her as a popular teacher.

Lorna Torrado and Joshua Marcoux at Austin Wine Merchant

More on this novel program later.

Women: Three women in particular. Angelina Eberly, cannon-weilding hero of the Archives War, is the namesake for the Austin History Center’s annual luncheon.

Ann Butler is the widow of late Mayor Roy Butler, aka “Mayor Wonderful.” I was unaware of the long list of his major accomplishments until several speakers at the luncheon saluted him. His widow and family sat at the Driskill Hotel’s table of honor.

Former Mayors Frank Cooksey and Gus Garcia at the Driskill Hotel

The third woman would be Carole Keeton Strayhorn, whom I hope to interview at length and profile in a major series on former Austin mayors and their times. Strayhorn served from 1977 to 1983. The list would include Ron Mullen (‘83-‘85), Frank Cooksey (‘85-‘88), Lee Cooke (‘88-‘91), Bruce Todd (‘91-‘97), Kirk Waston (‘97-‘01), Gus Garcia (‘01-‘03) and Will Wynn (‘03-‘09).

We lost a lot of potential oral history when three former mayors — Butler, Lester Palmer and Jeff Friedman — died in quick succession.

Song: Just a brief word or two on “33 Variations” at Zach.

Someone must have mistaken me for director Dave Steakley. They shouted “Good show!” to me at intermission of the show about Beethoven.

Also, one audience member said after the thundering curtain call: “Austin finally earned a regional theater. This has the polish of anything in Dallas or Houston.”

Theatrical Mozart and Beethoven in one week. Zion!