Paradise Park residents sharing their blessings

Residents at Paradise Park in Harlingen are sharing their blessings this year by gathering donations for a couple of organizations. They are gathering donations for Dr. Bill Harrison’s Sow the Word mission in Nuevo Progresso and for Loaves and Fishes food pantry in Harlingen.

The park has a reverse advent calendar set up where they ask residents to donate a designated item each day. For example, today, December 11 is 105 ounce can of veggies, and tomorrow is a bag of rice. The list doesn’t only include food items. The list also includes items such as soap, shampoo, crayons and coloring books.

The Winter Texan Times went and visited the park last week just to see what they were doing.

Criss Hastings, one of the organizers, said they have been blessed with the amount that has been donated already. In just six short days, residents had nearly filled up the front of small trailer home with the donations already given.

“The amount of donations for the Reverse Advent is already amazing,” said Hastings.

Hastings and her husband Jeff, park chaplain, and Sharon Bargel are leading the gathering.

Even though they are collecting items through December 24, they are having a big celebration on Friday, December 20 during their Burger Friday and jam session.

They will collect a big portion of their donated items and present them to Dr. Harrison.

Jammers start playing at 10:45 a.m., lunch is served at 11 a.m. and announcements will be made at noon. Residents also wear read on Fridays to Remember Everyone Deployed.

Hastings thinks the stage will be a sight to see with all of the donations gathered around.

If you want to help out call Sharon at 320-248-2167 or head on over to the jam session on Friday, December 20. There is a fee for lunch. The park is located at 1201 N. Expressway 77, in Harlingen.

Evening of holiday fun with the McAllen Wind Ensemble

The McAllen Wind Ensemble continues their 45th anniversary celebration with an evening of magical holiday fun. The December 20th event entitled “Tinsel and Tutus” will feature another of McAllen’s artistic institutions, the Deborah Case Dance Academy.

Dancers from the Deborah Case Academy will be featured in the holiday concert performing selections from Tchaikovsky’s famous Nutcracker Ballet to the McAllen Wind Ensemble’s live performance of the suite. The Wind Ensemble will also feature the unforgettable voice of Alberto Escobedo, the Singing Barber of Rio Grande City. Alberto Escobedo will lend his stirring vocal abilities to Schubert’s “Ave Maria” on Friday evening’s concert.

Alberto Escobedo has earned the reputation as the Singing Barber of Rio Grande City. He has not received formal vocal training after his high school experience, but his talent is a true testament to the strength and quality of the Rio Grande City Fine Arts Department. Alberto is also an active member in the community. He is the driving force behind Casa de Esperanza. Casa de Esperanza serves as a soup kitchen, and the building serves as a shelter for the homeless when needed.

No McAllen Wind Ensemble holiday concert would be complete without a Christmas carol sing-along. Alberto and the McAllen Wind Ensemble’s own Annabelle Zapata will lead the audience in a medley of favorite Christmas carols.

The McAllen Wind Ensemble is excited to host the Ballet’s encore performance of several of the dances from the world’s favorite Christmas ballet and vocalist Alberto Escobedo.

“Tinsel and Tutus” will be held December 20 at the McAllen Performing Arts Center. Tickets, starting at just $10, are available at the McAllen Performing Arts Center Box Office, through Ticketmaster, or at the door. Visit their website at www.McallenWindEnsemble.org for more information.

Doors will open at 6:30 p.m. with music starting at 7:30 p.m. Pictures with Santa and ballerinas will be available before the concert.

Come share the wonder and traditions of Christmas joining family and friends at the South Pole of Texas. Celebrate the 24th day of the City of McAllen’s Winterfest with the magic of holiday music!

Razz Ma Tazz: developing bonds; producing music

What happens when wishes are granted; when people’s fantasies become fiction?

In the upcoming Razz Ma Tazz performance entitled “Into the Woods,” several scenarios will be explored. But before the McAllen Nikki Rowe sing and dance group flies off to fantasy land, they still have some Christmas cheer to spread. And very few high school groups in the Valley can do it as cheerfully as Razz, a group made up this season of 20 incredibly talented high school students.

The group is well known for taking their Christmas show on the road to Winter Texan parks and resorts all along the Valley. As one group of seniors graduate, another group of first-year participants, many of them a little shy after reaching such heights, step into place.

As with other extracurricular groups from sports to academic groups, the bonds within these groups are what keeps them going.

“The Christmas show is a high energy show with 20 students involved,” said director Joshua Watkins, who started with the program in August and the group immediately began rehearsing. “They are very polished for this part of the season.”

Songs such as “Merry Christmas Darling,” “Baby it’s Cold Outside” and “Come Home for Christmas,” are just a taste of the fun holiday tunes the group, which has been performing for 29 years, brings onstage.

“There’s quite a bite of harmony that sounds excellent,” Watkins said.

The group also has pieced together some medleys that are quite entertaining. “Swing Into Christmas” is a three-song piece that includes parts of “Silver Bells” among other songs.

Everything builds up to an energetic and exciting grand finale, a medley of a dozen or so songs in an arrangement called “Boogie Woogie Santa Claus.”

“It’s a very long medley, about eight minutes,” Watkins said. “It’s a big finish.”

Right after the big finish that marks the end of the season, Razz will dance their way onto “Into the Woods.” Unlike the Christmas show that goes on the road, these performances will take place at Nikki Rowe High School Jan. 18-21 and Jan. 24-25.

“It’s a mishmash of several different fairy tale characters like Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, Rapunzel and Jack and the Beanstalk,” Watkins said. “It interweaves all the different story lines in a unique way where each character has a wish they want. That’s the first act.

“In the second act we see what happens after they get their wish. It goes from a Fairy Tale to reality. It’s very unique.”

Tickets are still available for “Into the Woods.” Call (956) 632-5152 for more information or visit RoweTheatre on Facebook.

Following are the remaining Christmas Shows for Razz Ma Tazz:
Dec. 14 Tip O Texas, 7 p.m.; Dec. 15 Pleasant Valley, 2 p.m.; Dec. 15 Valley View Estates, 7 p.m.; Dec. 16 Aladdin Villa, 7 p.m.; and Dec. 17 Trophy Gardens, 7 p.m.

Warthogs now on exhibit at Gladys Porter Zoo

They have finally arrived! Two male warthogs (Phacocherus africanus) have made their debut recently at the Gladys Porter Zoo. These two brothers, Leonardo and Rollo, arrived from the Indianapolis Zoo and have earned the title of Gladys Porter Zoo’s very first warthogs. They may not be the most attractive looking mammals, but they are incredibly intelligent and can quickly adapt to their environment.

Native to Sub-Saharan Africa, warthogs will typically eat vegetation such as roots and grasses but will occasionally eat meat when the opportunity arises. When startled, warthogs can run up to 30 miles per hour, or when necessary, may use their face bumps and sharp tusks for self-defense.

Although their conservation status is listed as Least Concern, warthogs are targeted for their tusks and still face endangered habitats and fractured breeding grounds.

Visit the zoo to see soon them for yourselves.

Quinta Mazatlan hosts Nights at the Mansion speaker series

Native plant communities are the foundation of healthy wildlife populations, functional ecosystems, and sustainable land use. On Thursday, December 5 at 6 p.m., Quinta Mazatlán will host Director of the Texas Natives Seeds Program, Forrest S. Smith, for Nights at the Mansion speaker series. Forrest will present his research and work within the Texas Native Seeds Program.

Forrest S. Smith is the Dan L Duncan Endowed Director of the Texas Natives Seeds Program located at the Caesar Kleberg Wildlife Research Institute in Kingsville within the Texas A&M University-Kingsville (TAMUK) campus. He earned a degree in Range and Wildlife Management from Texas A&M University-Kingsville in 2003. Forrest has worked with CKWRI since 2001 and has led the native plant conservation and restoration programs there since 2008.

Forrest has published numerous scientific and popular works, and notably, his editorial in the journal Ecological Restoration titled Texas Today: A Sea of the Wrong Grasses remains one of the top 10 read most-read articles of the journal since it was published in 2010. In November 2019, Texas A&M Press released the book A Photographic Guide to the Plants of the South Texas Sandsheet which was co-authored by Forrest.

Forrest is a frequent speaker on native plant restoration and conservation, including giving invited talks at the 2015 World Conference on Ecological Restoration in the UK, and a keynote address at the 2019 Wildlife Society Annual Meeting in Reno, NV. Under his direction, in 2019, the TNS Program was awarded both the Texas Environmental Excellence Award for Agriculture and The Wildlife Society’s Group Achievement Award.

Nights at the Mansion speaker series presents noteworthy speakers and scholars to present lectures related to our global environment, local cuisine and the arts and culture. The program takes place on Thursday evenings through May 2020. The program fee is $3 per person and no advance reservation is required.

Quinta Mazatlán is located at 600 Sunset Drive in McAllen, one block south of La Plaza Mall on 10th Street. For more information, contact Quinta Mazatlán at (956) 681-3370 or visit www.quintamazatlan.com or the Facebook events page facebook.com/McAllenQuintaMazatlan.

Even a nickel multiplies

Thanksgiving is here. It's a special time when all of us can give thanks for our lives and the many blessings that we have received. Then it is Christmas – a wonderful time of year when families get together and share the excitement of opening gifts among family and friends. And before we know it, it is December 31, New Year's Eve, and time for us to look back over the past year at what we have done and what we failed to do. Most of all, we need to look forward to what we will do in the coming new year.

The new year, 2020, is truly upon us! As we meditate on our blessings, perhaps we should examine how we have shared those blessings with others. Perhaps we are using the excuse that we have so little to share, it wouldn't make a difference. Not true! Over time, a little at a time can add up to a whole, whole lot!

For example, let's look at what a difference the Minten Sisters have made with their gifts to Driscoll Children's Hospital. The three sisters, Dorothy, Esther, and Janie, have made a huge difference with their sharing during the past years. In 1976, they had decorated their entire home with their collection of Christmas memorabilia kept from their childhoods and into their adult years. To all of these they had added many new decorations. They had a couple of parties and an open house that year for family and friends. The next year, they had the parties but needed to have two open houses to accommodate all the family and friends who wanted to see all the different things they had collected during the past year.

By 1981, they were having six open houses plus several other parties with over 600 people attending. Before sending out the invitations for the 1982 events, the three sisters and their parents (now deceased) decided to make these parties count for something. It was decided that the family would give $2 for every guest that attended that Christmas. By 1986, so many people had heard about their Christmas decorations and the imaginative, creative way in which they displayed them in their ranch home, that they were prompted to open their home for public tours by reservation only. (Do not just drive up to their home unannounced! You must have reservations or be part of a pre-arranged tour.)

Their home became known as The Christmas House, and next door in the farmhouse, their grandfather had built in 1926, they opened a year 'round Christmas store called Santa's Texas Workshop. Now, the sisters (Dorothy aged 92, Esther, 88, and Janie, 75) are currently in their 34th year of having their home open to the public. They are still raising money for Driscoll Children's Hospital.

How have they done this? There are several ways--$1 from each modest entrance fee charged to paying guests; $2 for each non-paying guest (family, close friends, paying guests who return for subsequent tours during the same season). The sisters share the latter by adding their 1/3 to their own personal donations which they give annually.

Then there is the ORGAN FUND. In 1993, a guest from McAllen jokingly gave Dorothy a nickel "tip" for playing the antique pump organ. Dorothy didn't want her to do that, so she told the lady that she would make sure that the nickel would be given to Driscoll at the end of the season. Other guests left money on the organ during the remainder of the season, so it became a separate way to raise money. Since then, every year, guests at the first tour of each season have started the Organ Fund, and tour guests have perpetuated it to the tune of a grand total of $91,590.46. Every penny of that Organ Fund goes to Driscoll Children's Hospital to help children in South Texas who have heart problems. It is part of the grand total, $360,025, raised since 1982. It is proof that everyone makes a difference.

According to Janie Minten, some of their most generous guests who contribute to the Organ Fund are the students from La Gloria School, a small elementary school founded in 1909 to serve the educational needs of the rural ranching/farming community. (The Minten Sisters grandfather was one of the three founders). Five generations of Minten family descendants have attended that school, and Dorothy and Esther came back after college and each taught there for over 30 years each!

Every year, the sisters invite the school to bring each of their classes (pre-k through 6th grade) to tour the Christmas House. All of those children are admitted free, but they love to bring donations to put on the organ. They also love to shop the after Christmas ½-price sale after their tour of the house. When paying, if they have change coming, most of them say, "Just keep the change, I want to help the children who are sick!" That money is always added to the Organ Fund!

So, what started in 1982, as a small donation from the Minten Family has now become a sizeable amount contributed to by thousands of people during the years. What started as a nickel donation on the organ has contributed a grand total that is now getting close to $400,000.00. None of us have so little that we cannot share what little we have. We, too, can make a difference!

Over time, even a nickel multiplies and continues to multiply. Let us all share our talents and our blessings and remember what Charles Dickens said through the character of Scrooge, "I will honor Christmas in my heart and try to keep it all the year!"