At the Archives

I'm in Austin, TX, until Friday to work on OHC's archival holdings on deposit at the national Episcopal Church archives, which are located on the campus of The Seminary of the Southwest (SSW) (which used to be prefixed with Episcopal Theological, as in ETS-SW). There was no room in the inn there, so I am staying at the Austin Presbyterian Seminary, in very nice digs called the Presidential Condo. It's a one-bedroom condo on the third floor of a married student housing building north of the seminary, very close to SSW and the Archives.

The flight down took me from Stewart-Newburgh to Detroit and Atlanta and then on to Austin. No problems at all. You would never know Detroit is collapsing from its airport, which is quite spiffy, as is Atlanta. The less said about Stewart the better, but the planes leave on time and occasionally arrive on time as well. The TSA people at Newburgh are not at all like the caricatures of those folks. They were pleasant, efficient and friendly. But we still had to take our shoes off.

The Order has had the bulk of our archives in Austin since 1976, and it is a lot of stuff. I'm mostly confirming and improving the descriptions of our holdings and will do a bit of scanning as well.

Austin being in Texas and all, I'm going to go out for a steak tonight. Last night I had a pretty good burger at a little place just down the street, but tonight I'm up for the real thing. People have recommended the Austin Land and Cattle Company (not to be confused, I was urged, with the Texas Land and Cattle Company). Apparently the Austin version has the more authentic down home Austin feel to it, and perhaps more reasonable prices as well.

I visited Austin and the Archives in the mid-80s when I did research there for the history of OHC. The Archives then was run by Nell Bellamy, of very blessed memory, a great woman, a great Christian and something of a saint, at least in my book. Today I had the opportunity for a good conversation with her successor, Mark Duffy, and he is, as they say, Worthy.

Austin is pretty much as I remember it, at least this part of it. I was struck then and continue to be by the casual approach to sidewalks and curbs here. Not at all like southern California, where they approach fetishism. There was some rain a couple of weekends ago, so things are not totally parched, but the drought is still very much on.