That's us!

We love sponsoring a summer film every year for the Paramount. And hey, it doesn't hurt our feelings to have our name in lights!

Giant Octopus

There is a group of folks who raise money for Aids Services Austin. They call themselves the Octopus Club. They throw parties where everything is donated or underwritten and give all the money to a fund called the Paul Kirby Fund. They help people fighting HIV/AIDS to overcome temporary financial obstacles like buying drugs or food or paying rent or getting transportation to appointments. This fab balloon octopus decorated Brazos Hall for a big annual OctoTea event. At this party the group topped two million dollars of donation since its inception. Doing good while having fun!

The Art of the Bra

On Saturday night we attended the Breast Cancer Resource Centers annual Art Bra runway show and gala. The bras are made by local artists and modeled by breast cancer survivors. FFP shot this picture of some of the gals who were roaming the floor in their art bras plus themed outfits. This is a wonderful organization providing much-needed patient support to navigate treatments and choices.

Jazz Al Fresco

We attended a fundraiser for the Pease Park Conservancy a couple of weeks ago and heard music from the Ephraim Owens Quartet, which provided a sweet background for the festivities. The guys were playing outdoors on the grounds of the hosts' house, which overlooks the park. The night was chilly, so they had to bundle up.

A Great Book for Charity

We're involved with a fund-raising event for Badgerdog Literary Publishing, which offers creative writing programs for schoolchildren around Austin. For the silent auction, we asked a number of local celebrities to create covers for books. This one was done by the fashion editor of The Austin Chronicle. You see my hands and my camera in the mirror he put on the front.

The books will be auctioned and the funds will go to the organization. The event happens next Tuesday.

Going Nowhere to Raise Money

These guys are part of a group on Second Street riding in place to raise money for fighting cancer. In this case, they get a pass for riding on the sidewalk.

Flamenco Inspiration

Sarah Bird wrote a novel inspired by the culture of Flamenco dancing ("The Flamenco Academy") and last night, courtesy of the Badgerdog Publishing annual event, Sarah read some of the novel while the singing, guitar and dance would come alive behind her. Here she pauses to watch Olivia Chacón dance. Great evening of raising money for a great cause. FFP has worked tirelessly with this group to raise money for their work to bring writing to the community and to the country.

Attention Please

Lyle Lovett, Robert Earl Keen and Joe Ely are paying close attention to Ray Benson singing a song at Turk and Christy Pipkin's tribute to Willie Nelson to raise money for their work in Kenya. The young lady in the foreground, though, is paying close attention to someone else which makes this picture FFP took show how distracting the evening was. FFP and I enjoyed visiting with the author Sarah Bird at our table and with many other friends (celebrities in their own right) in attendance. Star-studded night. Some kids in Kenya will get to go to school beyond the eighth grade thanks to the Pipkins efforts (and their friends in high places).

Beach Fashion

Part of a benefit for AIDS Services Austin last night was a Monte Carlo themed fashion show with lots of beachwear as well as formal wear. I was on the second row about thirty feet from the end of the runway and I was testing my new point and shoot Nikon Coolpix S630. It has a 7X zoom and I was assisted by the show lighting so I could use normal auto settings. I was suprised at the clarity and composition of this one. No cropping was done. I really like fashion shows which surprises everyone because I'm not that interested in wearing fashion. Hopefully lots of money was raised with ticket sales, silent auction items, a raffle, etc. for the people living with HIV/AIDS in Austin.

Thrifty Pink

A couple of weeks ago the shop window at the St. Vincent De Paul thrift store was all decked out to support Breast Cancer Awareness with pink thrift store buys.

Well, not really THAT bike.

The Tenth Annual Hill Country Ride for AIDS is taking place in April. This challenging ride would be tough on these old wrecks but they've been painted red to promote the ride. We are supporting a couple of individual riders with small donations. They have cool donation pages. Charity in the modern age.

Dancing for the Kids

We went to a fun benefit last night at the Hilton. Austin has an organization called The Center for Child Protection and they have a building where all interviews and exams and immediate follow-up needs (clothing, new supplies for school, therapy, etc.) are handled for children who have been neglected or physically or sexually abused. Police, prosecutors and social workers come together at the center to make the child's experience less threatening and to avoid repeated interviews for the same incident.

With such a solemn mission they sure throw a wonderfully fun event to raise the money to support it. They get outstanding community leaders to volunteer to participate in a dance contest. Above you see our friend, Larry Connelly, philanthropist, PhD Educator and former elementary school principal, and his professional dance partner cutting a rug to the Pink Panther theme. It was great. All the participants were fun. Including Art Acevedo, Chief of Police. He was such a good sport! As was everyone involved. After the cocktails, auction, dance contest and dinner the audience was ready to rock out, too, and the dance floor filled with people showing their own moves. (A highlight of this was seeing former Ballet Austin dance Jim Stein doing a quick step.)

The event was at the Hilton. And, yes, we walked back and forth and I think people who used the valet were jealous.

Thousands of Blocks

Wednesday night FFP and I bounced between two events celebrating milestones for themselves while making the case for your donation dollars. After a birthday party for The Ann Richards School for Young Women leaders at Lowell Lebermann's new home we dashed across town to the Center for Child Protection in their new location east of Austin. Both worthy endeavors benefiting kids. At the Kozmetsky Center for Child Protection someone had come up with an awareness campaign based on children's toys and games. Outside the center there were thousands of blocks representing the number of abused children in the county.

Downtown Neighbors

As we have mentioned in this space, there is a new downtown apartment building that is close to the spot where we will one day be living. AMLI on 2nd hosted a fundraiser last night on their pool deck for Planet Cancer, an organization to provide services for young adults with cancer. This shot across the pool deck shows our future home in the background. We duly noted that we will be able to see this deck from our balcony since we could see the balcony from here. The pink theme was well-executed by the party goers.

What to Wear to a Garden Party

Colorful? Roaring Twenties? Cool brown shoes with blue socks? I didn't get a more current picture so I made a collage from the garden party Friday night. If you enlarge the picture you can check out some details of the sartorial splendor against a background of the Umlauf Garden party. The girl who was carrying the pink purse was missing so our friend Larry displayed it.

Shooting the Sculpture

We went to the Umlauf Sculpture Garden fund raiser last night. It was a garden party in the garden. It was a very well-run event and the weather was quite pleasant. There were wine tasting stations with a number of wines to try and everyone was given a Twin Liquors tasting glass to use for that. A lot of great restaurants provided little bites: Eddie V's, Starlite, Ranch 616, Sullivan's, Truluck's and Roy's were ones we tried. Roy's was handing out spoons of tuna tartar and Eddie V's had their stellar Crab Cake. They had a great band and the honorary chair (Marcia Ball) and featured artist (Gordon Fowler) were there and we hadn't caught up with them in a long time. In the picture you see Larry, a decorator for some friends of ours who are also moving to the 360, shooting a photo while FFP takes a photo of him. This sculpture seems more classical than most Umlaufs which tend to the frolicking children, prosaic animals and reclining nudes. But I wasn't really studying the art so much as visiting with friends.

A Special Couple

Joe and Tana Christie were at our table at the dinner before "Carmen" Friday night. I wish I could say I'd arranged it because I wanted to catch up with them, but it was just good luck. Aren't they beautiful? Joe is a former State Senator and businessman and Tana is a tireless community leader. She was using a cane, still recovering from being hit by a car while walking in front of the opera center. They are very kind and generous and I've never met people who had as many friends from as many walks of life. Tana said she was retiring from the opera board and they will definitely miss her.

Book Worm

Yesterday we went to a lunch fund raiser given by the Literacy Coalition of Central Texas where there was much frivolity and an adult spelling bee. This is the Half Price Books book worm cheering on his team. The words spelled ranged from easy (gadfly) to harder (philippic and hibernaculum) to hardest (cnidarian). That last word was funny on many levels. Including the fact that Ron Oliveira of KEYE-TV who was the pronouncer gave the definition a couple of times and, each time, said it was a 'radically' symmetrical animal. This gave us all pause wondering was a radically symmetrical animal could be (a bookworn perhaps?) until a bright friend of mine said 'it is radially symmetrical!' Oh, yes. Like a squid. Ron otherwise did a great job in the acoustically difficult Austin Music Hall. So, yeah, good intellectual fun plus silliness. The Alamo Drafthouse team had pirate costumes and if their word had an 'R' they pronounced it 'errrrr.' I was cheering for their words to have an R!

Shiver me timbres

Here's a shot from a few weeks back -- it's from the "Perfect 10" party we went to at Saks Fifth Avenue to honor some (ten to be exact) of Austin's top philanthropists.

This band, called "White Ghost Shivers" was playing that night. You have to love their spirit and off-the-chart looks. They play twenties songs, as you might have suspected from the getups, especially on the "flapper" singer. I am remembering that they were playing "Don't Tell Mama" when I snapped this picture. It was a very nice affair -- with ample supplies of food and libations being doled out all night long.

Milestones

This is the 100th post for LB and FFP's Austin Daily Photo. We aren't having a celebration, but I thought it would be good to show you the cake from our event on Wednesday night.

We were sponsors for a 'million dollar' party. In 1989 a friend of ours, Lew Aldridge, saw that in the fight against HIV and AIDS there was always an unmet need for emergency assistance. As the disease devastated individuals and families, many crises couldn't be assuaged with tightly-restricted dollars that came from governmental agencies. Lew thought that if he and his friends could raise some unrestricted funds, with no government rules, that the agency counseling victims in our community (AIDS Services Austin) would have a place to turn when people couldn't pay their rent or utilities or needed help with transportation or buying the increasingly expensive drugs needed in their fight. The funds could be set aside and a counselor could immediately draw the funds to make these peripheral problems go away. Lew's idea was that all his friends (and soon-to-be friends) would entertain their friends with dinners and theme parties, funding them out of their own pocket or getting sponsors, and then charge admission. The admission paid would go 100 percent to the fund (called the Paul Kirby fund after one of the first AIDS activists in our city). Basically Lew got a kitty going at many parties and dinners that would have been happening anyway. He organized a few annual special events and put in place a fun committee that people enjoyed being a part of. He called his brain child the Octopus Club because, I like to think, he knew it would send tentacles deep into the community. Amazingly the group survives and thrives and they threw a party to celebrate the millionth dollar flowing into the coffers. Since like all Octopus events, sponsors (corporate and individual) fully underwrote the food and drink (and the cake!) the gate from this event represented dollars that took the group to the one with six zeros. That's a real milestone. Amid tears for the losses in our community, there were tears of joy at all the friendships forged and the good done to help people in the community with the simplest crises with no strings attached.

Lew Aldridge is an iconic Austinite if there ever was one. He was a partner in a downtown restaurant, City Grill, for years and then helped developed a firm that primarily redevelops apartment complexes that have simple accommodations at affordable prices. (Alori Properties.) His firm systematically donates profits from the venture to organizations that serve the homeless, too.

It has to make us think, here at Austin Daily Photo, how we might be a force for good in our community. Try as we might, we'll never match Lew. But we can go along with some of his crazy good ideas.