Very Smart Gals – San Antonio Salon

Last Thursday, February 26 the Very Smart Gals Salon branched out to San Antonio, where (pictured l-r top) Michele Glaze, Melanie Ridings Cazier, Vanessa Lacoss Hurd, Jolene Noelke Moore (l-r seated) Annie Montgomery Labatt, Katherine Moore McAllen, and our youngest member Georgiana McAllen, rendezvoused at Silo 1604.

Silo 1604 was selected after a rigorous pre-event bar-hopping recon trip the hubby and I made, and which included the Hotel Havana Ocho Bar (Liz Lambert’s cool San Antonio subsidiary) and a too brief swing by Bliss (gotta go back there). I settled on Silo 1604 because it included the salon sine qua non - semi-private room (loud enough to be exciting, quiet enough to talk), round table (essential for communal conversation), and a classy setting with fab food.

First to arrive was Michele Glaze, Director of Community Advancement for USAA. If Michele’s name sounds familiar its probably because before moving to San Antonio a year ago, Michele was the Dell Strategic Giving and Employee Engagement Manager (formerly Executive Director, Dell Foundation), and had been with Dell for 17 years, and Motorola before that. I enjoyed the story of her roots in Rockne, a small community outside of Bastrop (her great, great, great grandfather founded the community), and I couldn’t help but notice how her face lit up and her eyes sparkled when she talked about her faith, her two sons, and her husband, who interestingly, is a college-level baseball umpire! Michele also shared a little know fact (at least to me anyway) about San Antonio’s philanthropic climate, which she described as very faith-center and particularly sincere, community-wide. Did you know that San Antonio has virtually no homeless population? Because they are kept out of sight? I asked Michele. "No," she responded. "Because they are cared for."

Next to arrive was my beautiful and Very Smart daughter Jolene Noelke Moore, who, in her exquisitely soft cashmere coat, felt like the embodiment of love when I hugged her. Jolene glows from an exceptional sense of inner serenity that everyone seems to notice, and which I have seen in her since she was just a child. Now that Jolene’s three adorable children (our grandchildren) are all in school, she has been playing competitive tennis, 3-4 days a week with the San Antonio Country Club women’s tennis team. When not playing tennis, Jolene volunteers at her children’s schools, St. Mary’s Hall and The Winston School. After years of research into helping her daughter diagnosed with ADHD and dyslexia, Jolene has also become a knowledgeable and impassioned advocate for education for children who learn differently. It is difficult for me to be impartial about my daughter, but I have to say that she is the best of her father and me, and our good genes couldn’t have been passed down in a finer vessel than Jolene.

If you’ve met Melanie Ridings Cazier, formerly Program Officer, and now board member of the inimitable Austin-based Topfer Family Foundation, and the Coordinator of the San Antonio Texas Cavaliers Charitable Foundation, you’ll understand my description of her arrival at the VSG Salon as a “game-changer!” Melanie’s dynamism creates its own climate so we were immediately swept up in her funny and fun little universe. Melanie, who all within a year’s time, got married, had a baby, moved to San Antonio, and changed jobs, radiated such a positive attitude. I enjoyed hearing how much she loves San Antonio and the people of San Antonio, who she spoke of with palpable endearment. Before leaving us (Austin), Melanie was involved in the Breakthrough Austin Community Leadership Council, and held several positions on the Elizabeth Ann Seton Board, including co-chairing its Gala. She is a Leadership Austin alumna, and received the "Austin 40 Under 40 Community Service and Non-Profit Award."

I wish I’d known Melanie and Michele better when they were living in Austin – which just goes to show - when you snooze you loose! So get out there and meet those Very Smart Gals. But back to San Antonio!

When I drove to San Antonio to meet with Vanessa Lacoss Hurd, Executive Director of the San Antonio Children’s Museum for the fist time (they were looking for a grant writer), I was intrigued by the fact that they are building a new $47,000,000 children’s museum, The Do Seum.  But what really captured my attention about Vanessa, and my interest in working with her, was during our interview when I said I would provide details about donor prospects to assist her board in cultivations. Instead of just sitting there listening to my spiel, she quickly retorted with, “Like what?” This simple question not only invited me to present my deeper skills, it also signaled that I was dealing with a deep thinker and that excited me and I knew it was the beginning of a “beautiful friendship.” Vanessa has a MPP from the Harvard University Kennedy School of Government and her background with Teach for America, and working against educational inequality at The New Teacher Project, primed her to shake up early education in San Antonio, and that is exactly what she is doing. 

Annie Montgomery Lebatt, Assistant Professor of Art History, The University of Texas at San Antonio, is apparently all the rage in the San Antonio arts community as her lectures at the San Antonio Museum of Art are standing room only and her classes at UTSA are highly rated. Annie struck me as someone who is inordinately quiet until presented with an opportunity to talk about their passion – which in Annie’s case is Byzantine art, and in which she has a doctorate from Yale. Annie is a recipient of the prestigious Rome Prize, which is awarded by the American Academy in Rome each year to emerging artists and scholars who “represent the highest standard of excellence in the arts and humanities.” In spite of the many honors and degrees achieved by Annie, when I asked what was her “15 minutes of fame,” which I asked everyone there that night, she replied that she didn’t think she had yet achieved her 15 minutes – the true sign of an overachiever.  I thought that response was super! Annie actually came to the VSG San Antonio to help invitee Katherine with her little daughter, Georgiana, but what a bonus for us! Annie is certainly a Very Smart Gal.

Last, but certainly not least is my “daughter-in-law” Katherine Moore McAllen. I call Katherine my daughter-in-law simply because I adore her, but really, she’s my daughter’s sister-in-law (Jolene’s husband’s sister). When asked about her 15 minutes of fame, Katie said it had to be when her then 2-year-old daughter and 4-year-old son walked across the stage with her at Harvard, when she received her PhD in art history. She said that Harvard even had tiny little diplomas for her children, which I thought was such a beautiful acknowledgement of the amazing accomplishment of getting a PhD as a mother of small children. Katherine, a San Antonio native, now lives in south Texas with her husband and three children, but maintains her ties to San Antonio through family, friendships and philanthropic involvements. Katherine serves on the Advisory Board of the San Antonio Museum of Art and has been a guest lecturer at Austin’s Blanton Museum.

Although logic and experience dictate that there are Very Smart Gals in every city, and in fact on virtually every corner, convening the VSG of San Antonio, or at least a sampling of them, was an exceptionally rewarding experience for me, and I believe an enjoyable one for everyone there.

Come on Houston, Dallas, San Francisco, San Diego, New York City, Miami and Chicago Very Smart Gals! Let’s go!

Our Time – Our Turn

Two events happened this week that lit a flame under me about politics as relates to women. One was Patricia Arquette’s acceptance speech at the Academy Awards, and the other was a comment "bomb" that Craig Smith (the Clinton’s sort of “go-to” guy for forever) dropped on me at an Austin Ready for Hillary fundraiser.

In her Academy Awards acceptance speech for Supporting Actress for the movie 'Boyhood,' Patricia Arquette said…

 

To which Meryl Streep, Jennifer Lopez and Shirley MacLaine reacted:

Women in media are fed up with being paid less than their male peers. Check out some of the shocking and depressing results in this recent report from The Women's Media Center.

The second event was the Ready for Hillary fundraiser, which I sponsored in Austin because I have always supported women in politics and always will, because gender matters.  Sheryl Sandberg, chief operating officer of Facebook and author of Lean In says Stereotypes are very reinforcing because as human beings we expect what is familiar. In tech, girls don’t code because girls don’t code. The same goes for politics. The halls of congress are sparsely populated by women (20%) because the halls of congress are sparsely populated by women. Female perspective is relevant and important. Gender matters.

Before I tell you the Craig Smith "bomb," here are a few Very Smart Gals who were at the Ready for Hillary fundraiser.  (l-r) Debbie Tate, Lulu Flores, Jan Soifer, yours truly, Shannon Sedwick and Nan McRaven.

Debbie Tate, who comes from a long line of political activists, is the Director of Development and Communication at The Center for Child Protection. Lulu Flores, the immediate past chair of the National Women’s Political Caucus, has been a dedicated social activist her entire life. Jan Soifer is the hard-working Chair of the Travis County Democratic Party, and a trove of entertaining stories about Austin politics. Shannon Sedwick – well who doesn’t know Shannon - Austin’s venerable actress, comedian and owner of Esther’s Follies. Nan McRaven, McRaven Consulting, provides PR primarily to tech and education organizations and is a long-time member of the Austin Community College Board of Directors and a highly respected community leader.

The morning of this fundraiser, I'd seen an article in the NY Times saying that Hillary Clinton was going to "finally play the gender card." I was anxious to ask Craig Smith about this, because I believe women want to be acknowledged for the power they possess as voters, and when I did, his reply sort of blew me away. 

I can’t quote exactly but it was something to the effect that high-income women over 60 years of age are a huge block that could or could not make Hillary, or any woman, a viable presidential candidate.  Then he said (again, not a direct quote) that high-income women over age 60 secretly want to vote for Hillary (a woman), but they fear for their incomes (higher taxes) and they fear for the security of their neighborhoods/homes (terrorism). The conversation went on, but this was particularly provocative, and stimulated many more questions in my mind.

If you would like to support the campaign to get Hillary Clinton into the presidential race, you can do that here. If you would like to support all women running for public office, you can do that here.

Cluster Critiques

The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution by Walter Isaacson

Did you know that Lord Byron’s daughter, Ada Lovelace, pioneered computer programming in the 1840? I suspect that few others do either. Why is that? Is it a non-issue, or does it matter? Well it matters because we hear all the time about the dearth of girls/women in STEM-related industry (science, technology, math and science), and yet it was a “fru-fru” who ignited it all. Interestingly, but not terribly surprising, it seems there’s an ongoing, raging debate on whether or not Lovelace really played that big a role, along with Charles Babbage, the “father of computers," in the birth of computer programming.  An English mathematician and writer, Lovelace wrote the first-ever computer algorithm, put forth the idea that humanities and technology should coexist and dreamed up the concept of artificial intelligence. Isaacson goes on to demonstrate that the exclusion of women in the history of technology is embarrassingly flagrant, arguably impacting the future. To repeat the observations of Sheryl Sandberg, chief operating officer of Facebook and author of Lean In.

At Google, men make up 83 percent of engineering employees. Of Google’s 36 top-ranking executives and managers, only three are women. At Apple, male tech employees account for 80 percent of the work force. And at Facebook, 85 percent of the company’s tech workers are men. Stereotypes are very reinforcing because as human beings we expect what is familiar. In tech, girls don’t code because girls don’t code.

Isaacson, who also wrote Jobs, the Steve Jobs biography, provides a blow-by-blow, or should I say bit-by-bit chronological history of the birth of computing and computers beginning with Ada and Charles, and including Alan Turing, the character recently play with such finesse by Benedict Cumberbatch  in the movie The Imitation Game. He includes a wad of other particularly interesting misfits and geeks including Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Grace Hopper, who created Cobol and coined the term “computer bugs” after discovering a dead moth in a computer. And there's a herd of other women you’ve never heard of. But what is compulsively intriguing about Isaacson’s portrayal of this history is that although a few characters do jump out at you, i.e., Lovelace, Gates, etc. the overarching theme of The Innovators is that computers didn’t maneuver into the center of our universe because of individuals, but rather as the result of groups of individuals, and the alchemy of their individual intellectual quirkiness, and how those idiosyncrasies combined to create momentum. In other words, it took a village. And for all these reasons, I found The Innovators completely fascinating.

Savage Harvest: A Tale of Cannibals, Colonialism and Michael Rockefeller’s Tragic Quest for Primitive Art by Carl Hoffman

I’ve always been absurdly fascinated by the moneyed icons of my generation, the Rockefellers, the Kennedys, Randolph Hearst. So when I saw a book had been written about Nelson Rockefeller’s son, Michael, who disappeared at the age of 23 in New Guinea in 1961, I couldn’t resist. My interest in this ilk of families links somewhat to the fact that they are subject to the same tragedies of life that smite us all – their financial capacities impotent to the will of chance.

Carl Hoffman capitalizes on the unknown to exploit our curiosities, but he does it so well we forgive him. No one really knows what happened to Michael. He could have simply drowned when his catamaran went adrift off the coast of New Guinea. He had spent several years in New Guinea studying and searching for primitive native art to add to his father’s famous collection. Or he could have made it safely ashore when he tried to swim from his capsized boat, then been taken captive and eaten by the Asmet cannibals. According to Hoffman the Asmet may have killed and eaten Rockefeller to make the point that they were tired of colonials, missionaries and art collectors messing with them. 

Hoffman explores every thread of history surrounding the incident, including Nelson Rockefeller’s heartbreak and the expansive search for his son, to provide a rather breathless account leading up to an inconclusive conclusion. Either the natives or the crocodiles ate Michael. Read Savage Harvest if you have an interest in primitive New Guinea, the Rockefellers, and/or an affection for exotic tales well told.

The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History by Elizabeth Kolbert

There have been five mass extinctions in the history of our planet, Cretaceous–Paleogene, Triassic-Jurassic, Permian–Triassic,  Late Devonian, and Ordovician–Silurian. Meaning, practically everything alive suddenly disappeared - relatively speaking. Elizabeth Kolbert, and anyone else who has drank the global warming Kool-Aid, believes that humans are on a fast track to, and responsible for, the sixth extinction, the Holocene,  or what I loving refer to as the Buh-Bye-ocene.

Don't get me wrong, I agree, as will anyone with a brain, that global warming is happening and that it will change life as we know it. But I also believe that every species of flora, fauna or SueAnna has forever decidedly impacted the earth and will continue to. I also believe that the earth, unless totally blasted out of the galaxy by some gigantic meteor or fried to a crisp by a massive solar flare, will continue just fine, albeit differently, with or without us.

With that said, and this being a book review, I would say that Kolbert’s story of how she camped on the doorsteps of researchers in geology and botany from the Andes to the Great Barrier Reef rendered a surprisingly intelligible and rather entertaining 336 pages of scientific (de jour) information.

If you have a perverse appetite for frog minutiae, the need for further evidence that we are ecologically headed  down the highway to hell, or as in my case, an illogical interest in all things science, read it.

100 Things I Want to Tell My Children and Grandchildren: #11

Roy Orbison worked for your grandfather.

On some indistinct night around 2003, while my 95-year old mother and my husband sat patiently waiting in our living room as I channel surfed for something that could entertain two people whose tastes in TV rarely intersected, I came across a movie featuring live performances by Roy Orbison and a host of other musical giants. That movie, originally filmed in 1988, was Roy Orbison and Friends: A Black and White Night, and featured Jackson Browne, Elvis Costello, k.d. lang, Bonnie Raitt, Bruce Springsteen, Tom Waits and others.

Hearing Orbison croon “Dream Baby,” “Only The Lonely,” and other iconic tunes brought back a flood of memories for me, one of which was a very vague memory of Orbison playing at a dance in my little hometown (Iraan, TX), which is geographically situated very close to the little town in which Orbison grew up (Wink, TX).

In between songs I mentioned this memory, and mother, who at the time could hear little and had recently lost her ability to speak due to a stroke, said, out of the blue, clearly and distinctly “He used to work for your daddy. He was a pretty good hand.”

“Roy Orbison worked for daddy?” I blurted, as shocked to hear my mother speak as I was by what she said! But her eyes had already returned to the thousand-yard stare sometimes common to stroke victims, and the tiny window of connection was gone. And although mom eventually regained some of her ability to speak, I was never able to get her to remember or say anything more about Orbison and his stint working for my dad.

Since Orbison’s history confirms that he worked in the oilfields of West Texas, and played lots of local dances, I believe that mom’s memory and mine are probably true.