Enjoy a helping of column updates
Tours of the American-Statesman building have resumed.
While you’re dealing with your Thanksgiving leftovers, please allow me to serve up some I’ve been meaning to tell you about. All are loose ends and updates from previous columns.
Back during the summer we ( I) all had a little fun with the fact that Texas Highways magazine rated Austin the state’s 26th best place to visit while placing Abilene 18th. We now have additional data that can be used to question the rankings. San Antonio wound up as No. 1. Nothing wrong there. Denton came in second. OK, I guess.
The problem is the thirdplace finisher: Waco. I rest my case.
Also update-able is the status of the Texas Lottery’s Fun 5’s game (which, if my calculations are right, is 66.7 percent more fun than Fun Fun Fun Fest). I reported in September that the game aroused ire from players who were confused into thinking they were winners. The tickets, they claimed, are misleading. Are not, said Texas Lottery officials.
Nevertheless, those officials have shut down Fun 5’s due to “feedback from some players expressing confusion
regarding certain aspects of this popular game.”
“Additionally,” lottery officials said in announcing the decision, “a few opportunistic individuals appear to be exploiting the situation.”
They were not named, but I’m guessing it includes the players who thought they won and the Houston lawyer representing some of them.
This next one will be understandable to everyone who’s ever moved a house of worship from one city to another.
After some delays, the kind that can be anticipated in ambitious projects, updated plans call for Brenham’s historic B’nai Abraham Synagogue to be moved to Austin’s Dell Jewish Community Campus in December, perhaps around Hanukkah.
Next next. I recently told you the city of Austin ruled that a small Buddha statue placed in Big Stacy Park by private citizens had to be removed. I also told you I was seeking the paperwork in which city lawyers recommended that action. City officials, citing attorney-client privilege, don’t want me or you to see that. They sought a state attorney general’s decision on whether they have to. They won. We can’t see it. Seems like we should be able to see what city attorneys tell city officials in situations like this.
FYI, undaunted by Buddha’s eviction and eager to replace it with something equal- ly spiritual, some Travis Heightsians, by way of an online neighborhood bulletin board, are urging folks to contribute a “special rock, from somewhere afar or anear, that has special meaning to the individual.” The rocks will form a cairn. Look it up. And we can all look forward to whether the city has a problem with cairns in public parks.
One person promised to provide “a beach rock that is worn smooth, all cares gone.” Another offered to “bring one from Saudi Arabia in December.” Yet another raised this simultaneously practical and philosophical question: “Will someone else supervise the cairn building or is that too organized?”
Rock on, Travis Heights.
Onward. I’ve written a couple of recent columns about orphan signs, defined as familiar signs left over from long-gone businesses. That inspired input from Nanette Nau Overbeck, whose dad, Ladner Nau, was a co-founder of Nau’s Pharmacy back in 1928.
Restored to its original glory, a Nau’s sign that had hung at two locations (San Gabriel and West 24th streets and San Jacinto Boulevard and what’s now MLK Jr. Boulevard) now looks great on the patio of the house at the Overbecks’ ranch east of town.
Last update: I’m pleased to announce that tours of the American-Statesman building, suspended during some remodeling around here, have resumed. (Book a tour at community.statesman.com.) I’m on our team of official tour guides, though I’m not exactly sure what goes on in some parts of our remodeled facilities.
Y’all come see us and we’ll roam around and try to figure it out.