Our Texas psychoanalytic community is pleased to welcome APsaA’s 106th Annual meeting to Austin. T he Austin San Antonio Psychoanalytic Society, the Center for Psychoanalytic Studies in Houston and the Dallas Psychoanalytic Center will be co-hosting a pre-conference reception for APsaA members Thursday, June 8, at the Palm Door on Sabine. We look forward to meeting you and introducing ourselves to you. We are aware there was some controversy about holding the meeting in Austin due to the recent legislation legalizing the open carry of guns. But despite this provocative legislation, we reassure you that you are unlikely to see anyone marching around the streets of Austin with weapons.
Austin is a thriving, sophisticated urban center known for its music, natural spaces and progressive politics. It was also home to the notoriously funny Ann Richards, the lady with the beehive white hair and the one-time governor of Texas who once quipped that, given the chance, women can do anything men can do, “After all, Ginger Rogers did everything that Fred Astaire did. She just did it backwards and in high heels.”
When I moved to Austin in the mid-’70s, Austin was a sleepy little town with a pronounced regional culture. Home to both the state government and the University of Texas, it was also known as the home of the Armadillo World Headquarters, a music venue, which featured the likes of Willie Nelson, Jerry Jeff Walker, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Asleep at the Wheel and Kinky Friedman and the Texas Jewboys. Whole Foods Market was a small organic grocery store in an old house. Weekends, you could drive on the main streets in town and see few cars. The sign that said Austin City Limits really did mark the limit beyond which the lights faded and the Hill Country began.
Today the population of Austin and the surrounding metropolitan area is around two million and still growing. The Austin city limit sign is just a sign in an otherwise unbroken sea of electric lights. The city now hosts the annual cutting-edge tech/film gathering SXSW (South by Southwest) and the highly popular Austin City Limits music festival where local, national and international musicians come to play. The University of Texas at Austin, with more than 50,950 students, is known as a major research university. In summer 2016, the University of Texas medical school, with an eye on innovative community-based care, welcomed its first class of medical residents. Meanwhile, the city continues to invest in promoting live music venues and bills itself (perhaps somewhat hyperbolically, but what else is new about Texans?) as the Live Music Capital of the World.
The cultural history of Central Texas is the history of three distinct ethnic groups: the original Mexican settlers. (Texas once was part of Mexico, existing briefly as an independent republic before joining the United States), later Mexican and Latino immigrants, African-Americans, and Anglo and Central European immigrants, many of the latter arriving in the 19th century to found utopian communities. More recently Austin has welcomed immigrants from Asia, India and elsewhere around the world. The traces of this history are still evident in Austin although gentrification has unfortunately pushed some of the original populations out into the surrounding area where housing is less expensive.
With the population growth in Austin and the influx of people, the distinctive regional culture of old Texas is less evident but still can be found in Austin’s reverence for Texas Bar-B-Q, all varieties of tacos and for two stepping, a form of dancing to a distinctive style of country western music known as Texas swing. (Though there is plenty of opportunity to dance salsa as well.)
To learn more about this history, spend half a day at the Bob Bullock Texas History Museum or visit the George Washington Carver Museum and Cultural Center in East Austin. For those who can afford the extra time, I highly recommend a half-day spent at the LBJ Presidential Library on the University of Texas campus. There you will find, among other things, exhibits that document the civil rights struggles of the 1960s and 1970s as well as the history of American involvement in the Vietnam War and Johnson’s efforts to address America’s poverty and inequality through his Great Society program. While these exhibits document a particular time in our national culture, they also portray the history of a man steeped in the culture of mid-century rural Texas.
If you get tired of sitting in meetings and need to stretch your legs, a few blocks from your hotel you will find Lady Bird Lake Trail, a 10-mile trail along the banks of the Colorado River. Early mornings and evenings are particularly nice for running or walking the trail. You can also rent kayaks and canoes if you want to paddle the lake.
One of the most distinctive and beloved features of Austin is Barton Springs, an outdoor swimming area fed by natural springs from the Edwards Aquifer. Particularly in the sweltering heat of the Texas summers, Barton Springs with its year round temperature of 68 degrees feels like an oasis in the middle of the city. Considered sacred by the original inhabitants, the Tonkawa Native Americans, the springs have been protected as the result of a hard fought battle by local environmentalists who for years pushed for zoning and environmental regulations. Today you can swim there along the limestone cliff, see the five-finger and maidenhair ferns, and watch the turtles and small fish swim at your feet. There is a nice democratic quality to this public space where families from all over the area come on weekends to swim, picnic, bar-b-q and play soccer.
While there are many more things I could tell you about Austin, I will mention only one other unique experience Austin has to offer: the flight of the bats at dusk from under the Congress Street Bridge. Luckily this bridge is within walking distance from the hotel where the meetings are held. The underside of the bridge is home to the largest bat colony in North America. Every night at dusk the bats, all 1.5 million of them, emerge en mass in wave after undulating wave for their nightly feeding. In a single night these bats eat an estimated 10,000 to 20,000 pounds of insects. It is a special sight to see people lining the bridge to watch and kayakers floating in the waters below the bridge waiting to greet the bats. The bats fly in only one direction so be sure to stand on the side of the bridge where the crowd is standing.
There is more to see and do in Austin. I have given you only a flavor. Come and enjoy the 2017 APsaA National Meeting as well as our city. I hope some of you will find the time to swim in Barton Springs, visit one of the history museums, see the bats or go hear local music and maybe even try out two stepping to the sound of Texas swing.