Joe M. O'Connell: Austin Community College

Showing posts with label Austin Community College. Show all posts

Friday, May 1, 2015

Last Day at Austin's Highland Mall

It was the first indoor shopping mall in Austin, Texas, when Highland Mall opened in 1971. It has gone into decline in recent years with the last big-box stores closing in 2011. I went into the mall for its final day and snapped photos. The mall is already in the process of being transformed into a giant campus for Austin Community College. More photos here.

©Joe O'Connell

Monday, February 10, 2014

Wendy Davis pulls a presser at ACC

Wendy Davis wants to be Texas' next governor. She kept a chilly press corps waiting outside Austin Community College-Rio Grande this morning to talk education. I watched and snapped some pix.

Friday, December 14, 2012

In the shadows

Walking the shadows at Austin Community College. See more of my photos on flickr here.

Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Virgin Mary image appears in college's 'weeping wall'

An image of the Virgin Mary has appeared in the residue from a wall outside Austin Community College's Rio Grande campus that appears to weep water.

Tuesday, July 10, 2012

Kicked out of the mall for taking photos

Yes, I was kicked out of Austin's Highland Mall yesterday for taking photos of the dying place!

The first indoor shopping mall in Austin, Texas, opened in the 1970s. Now it's mostly vacant with no major anchor department stores left. Austin Community College has bought the whole thing and will make it into classroom space, but some little stores survive. I dropped in Monday to take a look and take photos.

It turned into an interesting adventure as I was literally led out of the door by some overzealous security guards who photographed (irony!) my license plate and then followed me for a mile or so away as I drove away. I did some quick research and discovered they can kick people out for taking photos, but they can't keep you from shooting or displaying the photos. Despite private ownership, a shopping mall is a public place.

For more on the rights of photographers, read this.

Here is the full set of Highland Mall photos. www.flickr.com/photos/joemoconnell/sets/72157630511990964/

Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Ready for Denmark students, part III!

This will be the third year for me to teach Texas literature to visiting students from Odense, Denmark, through Austin Community College. That's Jennifer, Katrina and Larry at our meeting yesterday to hammer out the details. It looks like this year will be the best yet.

Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Denmark invades Texas

For the second year I'm teaching students from Denmark about Texas literature at Austin Community College, including my own novel EVACUATION PLAN. This past Friday they came out to my house and then we brought them first to the SPJST Hall down the road and then to the Thrall-Thorndale high school football game. The author Carolyn Osborn came to speak to them this week.

The students with famed Texas short story writer Carolyn Osborn.

Jennifer with the Thrall Tiger!

Talking with a real Texan.

Eating a burger at the SPJST with a knife and a fork?

Hook 'em!

What they're saying about EVACUATION PLAN

"Tales alternately gentle, dramatic, surrealistic, that collectively affirm the beauty of being alive, even as they acknowledge that all of us face the necessity of making our own 'evacuation plan.' "
-- Brad Buchholz, Austin American-Statesman

" The chapters about Matt and the short stories demonstrate O’Connell’s ability to develop sympathetic, true-to-life characters using intriguing details and compelling dialogue. The stories remind us of those times when a brief encounter with a stranger left us wondering about that person’s past. In Evacuation Plan, O’Connell satisfies that curiosity. "
-- The Texas Observer

"It was very hard for me to put this book down. It carries us through the deepest meaning in life and most painful, most hopeful memories for a wide range of fascinating characters. Based in a hospice, this book could have easily resorted to cheap sensationalism, or whacked us upside the head with stereotypic melodrama, but instead it was respectful, honest, and tender. The characters will stay with you - you may even recognize some of them within your own life. "
-- Award-winning author Carmen Tafolla

"An excellent, thought-provoking diversion from our own inevitable plummet toward the grave, and we highly recommend it to you, the living."
-- Wayne Alan Brenner, The Austin Chronicle

"O’Connell has drawn some colourful and believable characters. The material relating to the hospice and terminal care rings true, all the way to reconciliation and forgiving."
-- Dr. Roger Woodruff, International Association for Hospice & Palliative Care

"The tales are nicely written, and some are quite compelling; “The Male Nurse,” for one, is a dreamlike reverie."
-- Texas Monthly

“Evacuation Plan: A Novel From The Hospice by Joe M. O'Connell is nothing short of remarkable … a novel that walks hand-in-hand with death and yet, somehow, the reader finishes the book feeling inspired to live.”
– The Paisano

"A wonderful blend of lives ordinary but with sometimes extraordinary elements. We all share these stories of life in some way, despite moments of harshness or unforgiving pain. There is always a common thread of humanity and ultimately forgiveness to be found, even if it's in the last moment of life."
-- Elaine Williams, author of A Journey Well Taken

"Reading Evacuation Plan is akin to unwrapping a series of small perfectly-chosen presents. Both human and humane, The book resembles a modern Spoon River Anthology with its vivid, touching glimpses into the lives of those in and around a hospice."
-- Tim McCanlies, screenwriter The Iron Giant, writer/director Secondhand Lions

"In Evacuation Plan Joe O'Connell does for the process of dying what Sherwood Anderson did for middle America in Winesburg, Ohio--he shows us in brief flashes the aching beauty of the grotesque, and shows us how extraordinary small lives and quiet deaths can be."
--John Blair, Drue Heinz Literature Prize winning author of American Standard

"Here's a book so rich with stories of the living, so filled with people's bountiful problems, as well as incidents of wry forgiveness, one realizes over and over the circling forces of life's completeness. It's not a sad tale nor a needless feel-good account but a balanced, sometimes comic, affirmation of what is here and what we all know is waiting."
-- Carolyn Osborn, award-winning short story writer

"The broken, the hopeful, the frustrated, the clueless, and the forgiving touch one another with words, remembrances, and hands. Inevitably, readers will quietly wonder about their own evacuation plan."
-- Will's Texana Monthly

O'Connell's protagonist skillfully navigates under the guise of a writer seeking raw materials for his craft in the stories of the dying, but mines and refines instead the stuff we're all made of. In this finely crafted novel, we come away with much more than the astute observation that many of the best stories begin at the end. But, then again, that notion is also worth a lot.
--Jesse Sublett, cancer survivor, rocker and author of Never the Same Again

"Joe O'Connell's Evacuation Plan--this Decameron of the hospice--encompasses a paradox. Death comes for everyone, but death is the only human universal because everyone dies, and witnesses dying, with private, unspeakable shame. Yet there are a few minutes left to speak. As people die, they tell stories which spawn new stories, which remind us that death is agony, a violent struggle, but so is living."
-- Debra Monroe, Flannery O'Connor Award winning author of Newfangled and Shambles

Joe M. O'Connell