Michael Barnes

1 week ago | statesman.com | Michael Barnes

Statement of fact: Texas Performing Arts, the city’s largest arts company by a long shot, is known to most theatergoers as the Central Texas home to touring Broadway musicals. Every season, several hundred thousand audience members confirm that assumption. Yet the University of Texas program is about much more, including education at all levels. All of us could learn a little something fresh from its next eclectic series of non-Broadway shows.

1 week ago | statesman.com | Michael Barnes

Rosalee Martin taught at Huston-Tillotson University for 50 years, a third of the school's history. A sociologist and licensed social worker, she recently wrote “Their Stories, Our Stories: Four Presidents of Huston-Tillotson University” (Texas Tech University Press). Minutely researched and ultimately uplifting, it is not always flattering to the principal characters. The book offers candid, insider accounts of the tenures of four Huston-Tillotson University presidents — John Q.

1 week ago | statesman.com | Michael Barnes

Austin couple preserves 1968 house, part of civil rights historyMichael Barnes, Austin American-Statesman |  Hearst - Austin TransitionIn 1968, Dr. Sidney White Jr., a dentist, and his wife, Helen White, an educator and community activist, set out to build their dream house. They ultimately chose the newish Austin neighborhood of Westover Hills, just north of better-known Northwest Hills. The only problem: The late Whites were Black. A half dozen prospective home builders turned them down flat.

1 week ago | statesman.com | Michael Barnes

The title of the exhibit at the Bullock Texas State History Museum promises to cover quite a stretch of territory: “Acts of Faith: Religion & the American West.”After all, faith is an experience that touches, in one way or another, almost everyone. The American West?

1 week ago | statesman.com | Michael Barnes

From the Archives: 'Pidge' writes what Austin asylum was like in 1874Michael Barnes, Austin American-Statesman |  Hearst - Austin TransitionDuring the 1870s, a contributor who wrote under the pseudonym “Pidge” sent a few dozen letters, reports and poems to two Austin newspapers, including the Democratic Statesman, an ancestor of the American-Statesman. Before reviving one of his witty stories from the archives, let’s answer the initial question. “Pidge,” who also wrote as “T.