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By D Magazine |

A Tour For Life

EVENTS The first time the music tugged at David Rogers’ heart, he was just the local vocal director. That was two years ago, during the first tour of Heart Strings, a national musical production designed to increase understanding of and raise money for AIDS-related services. Now he’s the music director/conductor for the ’92 program, “Heart Strings, The AIDS Memorial Quilt, and You: An Event in Three Acts,” stopping in Dallas April 26 and 27 at the Majestic Theater as part of a 35-city tour.

Rogers has been a Dallas resident since 1977. He studied business and French at SMU, but it was in musical theater, particularly with the Dallas Theatre Center, that he made his mark. He’s been involved in scores of regional productions, worked his way to a current teaching position at Mountain View College-and watched many friends succumb to AIDS. “The time was right,” he says, “to give something back and honor the friends I’ve lost.”

“Heart Strings” is his-and audience members-way to give. The first act is the musical production; the second is the displaying of 800 panels from the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt (individual panels can be seen at the Dallas Museum of Art and in the windows of the downtown Neiman Marcus store, April 3-5); the last act is a call for people to give their money or time to AIDS services. (For more information call 871-1053.)

-Eric Celeste

Old World Customs in Castroville

GETAWAY No other small Texas town clings to its heritage as fiercely as Castroville, settled by Alsatian immigrants from France and Germany in the 1840s. In food, customs and architecture, the old ways still seem right in Castroville.

More than a century and a half after colonists battled drought, disease, Indians and Texas summers to settle Castroville, the butchers at Dan’s Meat Market still hang Alsatian sausages to dry and the ovens at Haby’s Alsatian Bakery continue to turn out anise cookies and fruit stolen. Ninety-seven of the structures built by founders still stand today in the largest Alsatian community in the U.S., and all of them are recorded in the Historical American Building Survey at the Library of Congress.

Mayor Madelyn Koepp’s privately owned tour business takes visitors around town to see some 70 points of interest along the quiet, tree-shaded streets. The sights include not only the usual attractions of antique stores and restaurants but also limestone block cottages with steep, sloping roofs, built by immigrants who assumed they would need such architectural forms to repel heavy winter snows. Dominating the landscape, a towering spire rises above the St. Louis Catholic Church, a Gothic Revival structure built with local limestone and labor between 1868 and 1870.

Visitors will find amazingly pleasant lodgings at a local motel, the 40-unit Alsatian Inn with a lovely view of the Medina River Valley. Prices range from $54 to $59. Call (800) 528-1234 or (512) 538-2262. For information on tours, call Mrs. Koepp at (512) 538-3160. For general information, call the Chamber of Commerce at (512) 538-3142.

-Derro Evans

HOT TICKET



Don’t miss Teatro Dallas’ production of Malintzln this month, which Is being staged In celebration of the discovery of the American continent. A mix of history and mythology, the play’s script is a compilation of the work of some of Mexico’s most distinguished playwrights. An educational tour de force. On stage April 20 through May 16. For more information, call 741-6833.

JUANITO’S BAG

PEOPLE Juanito Moore is a 20-year-old college student who doesn’t like to buy nice-looking, fashionable clothes. He makes his own instead. Moore designs shirts, jackets and coats, and has his own line, which he calls “Swahili Jive.” He’s also the original designer of the now-popular loose, lightweight coat with the fold-up hem and the extra-large hood. (He’s wearing one at right.) Moore makes them nearly ankle-length so that when they’re folded up, they hit anywhere from mid-calf to the knee. “They’re actually based on the Roman toga motif,” he says. But, unlike the commercial copies you see In the malls, his line uses rope instead of snaps and zippers. “Instead of zipping up your coat,” he says, “you tie it up like a sleeping bag.” Originally from Portland, Ore., Moore lives in Duncanville and goes to Waco’s McLennan Community College. He says he learned to sew by watch ing his mother when he was a kid. “Now she copies me,” he says. -Tom Dodge

Blind Ambition

PEOPLE As the Monkee’s I960’s hit, “I’m a Believer” ends, he pods up the next song, gently and precisely on cue, with the finesse of a surgeon. “It’s a bee-u-ti-ful day, just a few clouds in the sky. We’re expecting a high in the mid-60s… I’m Blake Lindsay. Coining up next hour on OLDIES 94-point-nine, K-O-D-Z.. .Lovin’ Spoonful, Dave Clark Five and The Rascals.” Lindsay, weekend disc jockey at Dallas radio station KODZ-FM since November, is a nine-year veteran in the radio business. He is also blind. Lindsay lost his vision when he was 10 months old, but he never lost sight of his dream to be in radio. When he was a kid, he pretended to be a disc jockey by playing songs into a tape recorder and talking into the microphone. Since graduating from high school, the 27-year-old has been doing it for real-at commercial stations in Indianapolis, Austin, San Antonio and, now, Dallas. “The funniest thing people say is that I don’t sound blind,” says Lindsay, with a deep-throated chuckle. He uses a braille typewriter on a corner table to write notes about the upcoming artists each hour, and when the weather forecast is long, he types it up. Otherwise, Lindsay memorizes-weather briefs, plugs about special events and station promos. His sister, Molly, acts as producer for his show; a “talking clock” gives him the correct time. “I don’t feel handicapped,” says Lindsay, putting on his headphones. “If I were to get my sight back right now, 1 don’t know what I’d do with it” -Ellise Gunnell

Suffering in Style

TRENDS Just look at this place: valet parking at the front door, a lobby with Oriental carpets and antiques, a concierge desk, walls adorned with a 298-piece collection of Asian textiles and afternoon tea served in all the rooms. Ah, you say, a four-star hotel. Guess again. It’s a hospital-Zale Lipshy University Hospital at Southwestern Medical Center, where suffering in style ranks as the norm, not the exception. It may be the only hospital in the country with an aesthetics committee, and it gained the stamp of approval from benefactor Wendy Reves, who’s not known to be casual about her surroundings.

Interior designer Linda Byrne of the Oglesby Group, who gets credit for the interiors, says Zale Lipshy follows the current trend of making hospitals seem “more pleasant and homelike.” Philanthropist Margaret McDermott obviously agreed; she donated funds for the textiles collection, assembled under the expertise of DMA textiles curator Carol Robbins. Administrators of the 160-bed hospital hasten to point out that this isn’t just another pretty place: the hospital draws all of its physicians from the nearby University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center.

-Derro Evans

The Art of the Home

What kind of art gallery is filled with birdhouses, place mats, flowerpots, tables, plates and boxes? Barbara Paige, owner and co-founder of Artisan a has an answer to that question. Instead of a business plan, she set up shop with a manifesto: Artisana’s goal is to raise the credibility of craft, to lift it from “low” to “high” art. Fascinated by the European tradition in which painters and sculptors produced decorative arts, Paige and former partner Judith Williams created the idea of Artisana for Dallas artists and patrons. Now they have a stable of over 4O artists making usable art out of such seemingly mundane objects as dog beds, teapots and sofa pillows.

Shown at right: Bookends by Judith Williams and Barbara Paige ($75 each); dot platter by Linda Lee ($150); candlesticks and teapot by Linda Lee ($28-$180); tangerine vase by Linda Gossett ($5O); cascade box by Michael Chavez ($200); flower power box by Brian Bosworth ($150); blown glass vase by Luis and Sandra Collie ($120); cow fantasy pillow by Leslie Daum ($100); birdhouse by Will Duran and Scott Moncreiff ($90);

platter by David McCullough ($250); steel cactus by Roy Cirigliana ($ I80); refrigerator magnets on cactus by Candis Wheat and Barbara Paige ($3-$15); mask by Pam Nelson ($300). 2526 Elm Street. 748-5815.

-Mary Brown Malouf

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