Features

Going out to the Montesino farm, my mind, on a endless loop, kept playing Crosby Stills and Nash’s version of the Joni Mitchell classic, “Woodstock.”  Especially the three part harmony on the “got to get our selves back to the garden.” The new farmers on the land took that literally and have followed that everyday.

Heather Lundy and John Stanley decided that farming was the way to live life. Stanley was a preacher for 20 years and a stockbroker; Lundy was an administrative assistant at Chapel in the Hills and learned to swim just down from the Little Arkansas Bridge.

The two had lived and farmed together in Nova Scotia, Kentucky, and Mississippi. They liked being off the grid. But the call of family in Texas lured them back. Last July they leased the front nine acres of the Montesino Ranch when it became available. 

A young Orson Wells proved the power of mass communication when he and the Mercury Theatre created mass hysteria with the broadcast of H.G. Wells “War of the Worlds” in 1938. The broadcast was done as if it was a real newscast, alarming American as if it was really happening even though the program, at station breaks told listeners in that it was only a radio play. 

“Later it was translated into Portuguese, broadcast in Brazil and it happened again, there. It showed the importance of radio,” Mike August said, KWVH’s organizer of a project to tell live ghost stories on the radio.

On the eightieth anniversary of that broadcast, KWVH 91.4, the local radio station is asking local listeners for their own ghostly radio plays and ideas. Along with the help of the Wimberley Players the stories will be broadcast live on Halloween.

Wimberley High School took a double hit when Coach Chris and Colleen Ellis decided to retire. Retiring as a family is really the only way you can describe it. Their daughter, Haley was a 2018 WHS graduate and both agreed that it was finally time.

Education was the family business, you might say, as both of them went to Southwest Texas State where they met. From then on, education became both their livelihoods. 

Colleen was born in Ft. Worth but was raised in Bastrop. She graduated from Bastrop High and this is where the family’s love of Central Texas originated. She attended SWT majoring in Biology and minoring in Chemistry. She student taught in Wimberley.

An exemplary community partnership began when Wimberley High School Junior Amelia Jordan became one of the winning grant recipients of the Keep Wimberley Beautiful Community Achievement Awards. 

It took as while but the Central Texas Gardener will finally air its program which includes the EmilyAnn Gardens during the weekend of June 16 – 18.  It will also show the program on KLRU-Q (Channel 18-3) on June 16 and 20.

“The EmilyAnn Theatre and Gardens represents how a community that came together, in honor of a beloved daughter, to create gardens that bring countless families up close with butterflies and all wildlife,” Central Texas Gardens Producer Linda Lehmusvirts said. 

The segment will also be aired on San Antonio PBS station KLRN Saturday June 16. It will air all over the state and across the nation including Puerto Rico the Virgin Island and Mexico.

Casino Night was another rousing success with a capacity crowd filling the Wimberley Community Center on Saturday night.

The fundraiser is put on by St. Mary’s Knights of Columbus and raises money for the Warrior and Family Support Center at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio.

The center helps injured service members heal and return to society as well as providing a location for their family to stay in what is often a long-term recovery process. On Saturday night, 18 warriors were in Wimberley to enjoy casino night themselves.

“These are young men and women who really gave a significant part of themselves to defend this country and those that you talk to would do it again,” Mike Steinert, co-chair of Casino Night, said. “It just gives me goose bumps when I talk to them. These people are really heroes. It’s not just a cliché.”

When thinking of small town events, the Wimberley Institute of Cultures preserves one tasty tradition, that of a pie social. In earlier times, a pie social is where bakers in the community would bake their best pie recipes, well-guarded secrets, and have the pies raffled. The proceeds from the sale of the pies would go to a local charity such as for a school or fire department.

For the WIC’s 28th Annual Pie Social, it was a great small town event. Neighbors, children, music and best of all pie, it was all there on Saturday at the Winters-Wimberley House, that comfy, homey, feeling.

Tracie Lynn entertained the hometown crowd, and the slices of pies kept them coming back for more. Entrants ranged from six to 96, with a separate kid’s category. Serving the pies were local celebrities, as everyone in Wimberley is a celebrity if you’ve been here long enough. 

Thousands of butterflies will take flight during the annual Butterfly Festival at the EmilyAnn Theatre & Gardens, Saturday, April 21 from 9 a.m. -  5 p.m.  Area students have been carefully tending cages of caterpillars, and the waiting will soon pay off as beautiful Painted Lady butterflies emerge from their chrysalises, ready to be released at the festival.

Why travel to Vegas or Lake Charles to visit a casino when you can get your fix right here in Wimberley? Casino Night will be hosted by the Knights of Columbus at the Community Center on April 14. To top it off, all of the proceeds go for a great cause, the Warrior and Family Support Center for wounded soldiers and their families at the Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio.

“The Knights of Columbus has done this for the past seven or eight years and raised $75 to $80,000 over the years and every penny goes to the Brooke Army Center. The Knights of Columbus pick up all the expenses. We are not affiliated with the Wounded Warrior Program,” Mike Steinert of St. Mary’s Knights of Columbus.

Al Lewis and Willie Clark were a successful vaudevillian comedy duo known as the Sunshine Boys. For 43 years, the pair delighted audiences with their iconic routines but, over time, the partnership staggered into animosity. By the time they called it quits, neither was speaking to the other. Al retired from show business, leaving Willie to try to make it as a solo act.

Now a forgetful old man living in his New York apartment, Willie reluctantly accepts an offer from his nephew Ben, a talent agent, to resurrect the act for a TV special. Can they put aside their ill will long enough to do the show? Or has the sun set on The Sunshine Boys? 

Neil Simon’s play The Sunshine Boys opens on the Wimberley Players stage April 13 and runs through May 6.