Weekend in Houston

The last weekend of April reconnected us with our alma mater, family, and friends in Houston. We stayed with Steve’s cousin Jay Collins at his lovely townhouse near the Rice Campus. First stop on Friday afternoon was a tour of Rice’s new Brockman Hall for Opera, guided by Pippa Jarvis and Mike Freese of the Shepherd School of Music. The Steinway piano from my Arlington studio now resides in one of the studio there. The acoustically magnificent Hall is ideal for training young voice students and a great venue for touring shows. See more in this album.

Friday evening we attended a lovely dinner honoring the retiring President of Rice, David Leebron and his wife, Sun Ping. at the Ion on Main Street, a former  Sears-Roebuck repurposed to  bring together Rice academics with city and business leaders. (Sears was where my new roommate Carolyn Cox and I bought bedspreads in 1962.) For the big party, the entrance was masked to resemble Rice’s Lovett Hall. In the large and diverse crowd, Steve and Jay were delighted to see people they had known when they served at different times on the Rice Board of Governors. I especially enjoyed chatting with Allen Matusow, my history professor in 1965-66, still going strong.

This was our first visit to the city since my 50th Class Reunion in 2016. On Saturday morning I drove Maxann’s car to the home of a friend from my Arlington book group who had moved to Houston in January 2021. Fern Bleckner, recently retired as Deputy Director of Operations at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in DC, has now become Grandmother Extraordinaire, managing the care of her son’s four young daughters, following their mother’s stroke a day after delivering twins. We drove back to Rice to meet Janann Pittman, the daughter-in-law of Jerry Pittman, Best Man in our 1966 wedding. Janann and her husband Julian are principals in Jackson&Ryan, Houston architects, and parents of twin boys now in college. Janann was very helpful to Fern in locating nursery schools and childcare in that part of Houston. It was a joy to introduce them to each other and walk with them around two fabulous pieces of public art on the Rice Campus. Unfortunately, my former piano student Stephanie Marton, a pediatrician at the Texas Medical Center, was unable to join us. She, too, was most helpful to Fern. Hope they can all meet someday.

This album shows more of these two artworks, and includes pictures from that evening, when we returned to the Skyspace for the evening light show with our daughter Shelby, grandson Stephen, and Stephen’s other grandparents, Nancy and Frank Eidson, who live in nearby Katy.

Rice played baseball against Western Kentucky Saturday afternoon in Reckling Park, which Jackson&Ryan had designed. Shelby and Stephen, who drove from Austin that morning, brought Grandpa Frank to the game. There I met Mary Jane Kennebrew, a Rice classmate who lives nearby and is a season ticket holder. Mary Jane expressed pleasure with the stadium’s design, which had allowed her and her handicapped grandson to watch games from right behind home plate. Rice won the game 13-8! Mary Jane brought me a book by our classmate Jeffery Paine, Enlightenment Town, a Godsend when our flight home was weather-delayed.

From the ballpark, we walked to Rice’s Moody Center for the Arts. The main exhibit at the Moody Center fascinated all of us, Soundwaves: Experimental Strategies in Art + Music. These works invited visitors to engage all of their senses in a wide range of themes, including perception, memory, passage of time, and the struggle for social change. We looked up to see 38 upside-down snare drums keeping various beats while hearing Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto through the sound system. Certainly a new way to experience Mozart!

This album shows additional compelling works from the exhibit. My favorite was “Reflections in Water (After Debussy)” by Spencer Finch, shown below, which inspired me to learn more pieces by Debussy. 

Saturday evening: Nancy Eidson drove in from Katy to join us for dinner at Goode Company Seafood, where Stephen was surrounded by all four grandparents. Sean stayed home in Austin with Thomas, who had a lacrosse game. The sunset light show at Rice’s Skyspace was really beautiful! The weather was glorious. Graduation would be the next weekend.

Sunday morning breakfast in the Rice Village brought together relatives we hadn’t seen in over five years:  my niece Kate and her husband Willy and my nephew Andy and his wife, Cindy. Kate is an oncology nurse at M.D. Anderson Cancer Institute; Willy, a musician and videographer. Andy is a high school math teacher; Cindy, an Assistant Principal of an elementary school. They brought along their grandson, Elijah, 6.  Kate and Willy could stay but a while. Jay took this photo and hosted everyone else the rest of the morning.

What a weekend! Family, friends, music, art, baseball, good food, and Rice! Thank you Jay and everyone who took part. I love you all!

Another Rice achievement was announced this month: the Baker Institute for Public Policy and its Center for Energy Studies is now ranked as the number one university-affiliated think tank in the world. How did this come about in just 28 years? In this thoughtful video, founding Director Edward Djerejian is introduced by Allen Matusow and interviewed by John Boles, both Professors in the Rice History Department. So proud of my alma mater!