OLLI and On to Georgetown

This morning we got up early and prepared to move. But at that point, we did not hitch up as usual. Instead, we drove to the UT Austin Thompson Conference Center. Our friends Arnie and Sue who live in Austin had invited us to join them at LAMP, a program that is presented by the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute or OLLI at UT Austin. On Thursday mornings, there are two lectures, one at 9:30 a.m. and one at 11:00 a.m.

This morning the first lecture was presented by a UT Austin Music faculty member, Dan Welcher. He talked about how composers compose, giving examples from his own experience as a composer. He is an entertaining speaker and despite being musically illiterate, I found his talk quite interesting. One of the examples he gave was of basing a composition on six Shaker songs. Another was about a string quartet he composed for the Mary Cassatt String Quartet. Aptly, it is based on one of Cassat's paintings.

The second speaker was a faculty member on the English faculty who is also affiliated with the Department of Mexican American and Latina/o Studies and the Department of American Studies. His talk was titled "Life and Death on the Border: 1910 - 1920." This era was a time of violence in the Nueces Strip, a disputed area between the Nueces River and the Rio Grande. The Texas Rangers and even the US Army were involved in brutal suppression of the Texas Mexicans who were land grant holders in this area. The killing of innocents was the norm of life on the border, and this shameful period has not been officially acknowledged. Gonzalez and collaborators from universities around the country mounted an exhibit at the Bullock Museum of Texas History this spring (also called "Life and Death on the Border: 1910 - 1920") which was attended by over 50,000 people.

After the program we thanked our friends and headed back to McKinney Falls to check out. Wee moved to Georgetown, which is north of Austin by about 25 miles. We are in a lovely lakefront site at Jim Hogg Park on Lake Georgetown.

We were here for six nights in 2011, but then we were in the lower loop because the upper loop was closed for electrical upgrades. We are glad they upgraded to 50 amp service in the upper loop, where we are now.