Trinity University

The worst wildfire in Texas history ravaged most of Bastrop County in September 2011. The blaze left many residents without homes and Bastrop County without much of its beloved Lost Pines. Thirty four thousand acres of the wooded land was torched.

One of the victims of the fire was Randy Fritz. He has written a book about how the fire impacted his him and his family and how they learned to deal with the experience Its called “Hail of Fire: A Man and His Family Face Natural Disaster”

Prolific poet of the Beat age, and Pulitzer-Prize winner, Gary Snyder has spent a lifetime reflecting and observing life both professionally and personally. 

His new book "Nobody Home: writing, buddhism, and living in places" brings his personal reflections to light through a 30-year correspondence with Julia Martin, South African writer and literary scholar.

Trinity University is bringing a highly acclaimed musician to the school next week. He's organist Christopher Houlihan. (If you hit "Listen" you can hear him playing) I asked him what he loved about playing the organ.

“I love that it can be terrifyingly loud in one moment, and also have some of the softest, gentlest sounds. I love that it is so diverse and so, so colorful. And that is one of the things that really excites me about the organ.”

I told him that I'd seen footage of him playing--“You’re not that staid old lady at the church playing the organ.”

Their music sounds almost other worldly. They’re called New York Polyphony, and if you’ve never heard of them, it’s because their musical genre is relatively obscure.

“Singing Latin, sacred, texted polyphony.”

It’s also called early music. That’s countertenor Geoffrey Williams. They’ve traveled the world and have many fans here in Texas. In fact…

“We’ve sung in the state of Texas more than we’ve sung in the state of New York.”

I had to interrupt--"So you’re saying New York Polyphony has sung more in Texas than it has in New York?"

A chance find in a basement has cast a new light on San Antonio’s not-so-distant past. It started out with an e-mail received by Trinity University Assistant Professor Kathryn O’Rourke.

“Kathryn, you’re not going to believe this. We have made this amazing discovery. I can’t even tell you over e-mail what it is, it’s so exciting.”

An intern named Jason had been sent to the basement to archive old files.

"Pretty typical intern grunt work, frankly,” said O'Rourke.

But O'Rourke says he found some sketches there that gave him pause.

An estimated one in five women are sexually assaulted on college campuses across the country, according to Vice President Joe Biden and the White House Task Force to Protect Students from Sexual Assault. While the numbers themselves have been questioned, the issue of campus sexual assault is a real one claiming too many victims. 

From The Sunday Times of London and The Times-Picayune, New Orleans, to Time magazine and CNN, Walter Isaacson reported and edited stories on people, a skill he would need when he began his life as a biographer.

Albert Einstein, Ben Franklin and Steve Jobs were the subjects of his tomes. Isaacson's book about Jobs, "Steve Jobs: A Life," shattered records for first day sales; the book came out shortly after the Apple founder's death.

There’s a unique training opportunity coming up for singers in San Antonio.

“I’m not sure there’s ever been a world music symposium in San Antonio before, so Benissimo Music is collaborating with Trinity University and we’re going to put on this wonderful two-day event" said Benissimo Music's Ruth Moreland.

Moreland said there will be master classes and they are bringing in Balkan music specialist Eva Salina Primack.

It’s a music and arts event which has ties to something that happened long ago and far away. Chile’s Salvador Allende was overthrown in coup forty years ago. The Allende period, and its aftermath, has been marked with an unusual metric.

"There was a real soundtrack that went along with the rise of the Allende government," said Trinity University’s David Spener. "And its fall due to the military overthrow, and the long dictatorship that followed it. And that soundtrack was known as la nueva canción, the Chilean new song.”