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Aislyn Gaddis: The Cactus Cafe’s monthly jazz meetings unite both young and old through music…and UT’s annual Mitchell Sustainability Symposium encourages campus sustainability and student engagement.

I’m your host this week, Aislyn Gaddis and this is The Texan Recap.

Here’s what you missed this week.

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Aislyn: For over a decade, UT’s Cactus Cafe has hosted monthly jazz meetings. General Life & Arts Reporter Esteban Elias is here to tell us about them. Thanks for joining me, Estaban.

Esteban Elias: It’s my pleasure.

Aislyn: So for listeners who may be unfamiliar, what is the Cactus Cafe at UT?

Esteban: So the Cactus Cafe is a free live music venue and bar that is located in the Texas Union, right by the Starbucks and the first elevator you see.

Aislyn: And can you tell me a little bit about their monthly jazz meetings?

Esteban: So the monthly jazz meetings are intimate jazz meetings where people come together and just enjoy and appreciate jazz music and really also learn some things about jazz like I learned about Dexter Gordon this time around, and they’re hosted monthly by Rabbi Neil Blumofe, and it contains a lot of dialogue balance between dialogue and music.

Aislyn: Rabbi Neil Blumofe has been hosting these meetings for 12 years. Can you tell me about him?

Esteban: So Rabbi Neil Blumofe is the senior rabbi of the congregation Agudas Achim, according to his bio on their platform, he grew up in Chicago and spent some time in New Orleans, New York, Jerusalem, and Poznan, Poland. He is also very active in the civic life here in Austin, and he regularly convenes these evenings of jazz, where he really explores identity, heritage and meaning. And really, he just combines spirituality with music and so beautiful is amazing.

Aislyn: What was he like at the Cactus Cafe event that you attended?

Esteban: He described himself he, I think I quoted it. He says, he says, “For those of y’all who are new, you’re probably thinking ‘Man, this guy’s intense,’” but he’s a passionate person, very passionate about jazz, and really jazz history, the music history. And funny, he’s a very funny person, too.

Aislyn: And what else did you see at the jazz meeting you attended?

Esteban: What I saw was a huge balance between an older audience and the younger audience, mostly made up of UT students. A lot of people who came early and then their friends came in, there were a few people who came in just to kind of check out the atmosphere and see what the noise was coming from the Cactus Cafe was, and of course, the the jazz band was composed of the bass, the piano, trumpet, saxophone, and drums, who can forget the drums. And while sitting there, I just really saw a lot of dancing in the chairs from the younger crowd. Like everyone was just kind of bopping and girls were just swinging side to side swing to the music and the older audience is just so happy. You just saw this, this bright smile on their faces while they were enjoying the music, and really seeing the younger audience members just dancing, seeing the students dancing really brought a smile to their face. That’s what I saw.

Aislyn: That was general life and arts reporter Esteban Elias. Thanks so much for being here today.

Esteban: Thank you for having me.

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Aislyn: The 12th annual Mitchell Sustainability Symposium, where experts speak on campus sustainability, happened this week. General news reporter Naina Srivastava is here with the story. Thanks for being here today, Naina.

Naina Srivastava: Thank you for having me.

Aislyn: So what is the Mitchell Sustainability Symposium?

Naina: Yeah, so the Mitchell Sustainability Symposium is an annual event that’s focused on campus sustainability. That includes like research on campus and environmental justice in the classroom. So there’s multiple speakers and panels this year. Provost Sharon Wood was the keynote speaker, but attendees also heard from various faculty and students in the sustainability space.

Aislyn: One thing you talked about in your article is how sustainability is an interdisciplinary topic. Could you tell me why that is?

Naina: Yeah. So in the article, the director of sustainability describes sustainability as inherently interdisciplinary, which kind of just means that people from all kinds of backgrounds and departments end up working together because sustainability is something that people really need to keep in mind across all disciplines.

Aislyn: One organization that the Department of Sustainability partners with is Planet Texas 2050. Could you tell me about them?

Naina: Yeah, Planet Texas 2050 is an initiative that’s dedicated to developing programs, tools and policy recommendations that will improve Texas’s adaptability and build its resilience. So it’s really just focused on interdisciplinary research and designing strategies while working with local communities.

Aislyn: And the symposium hosted two different panels this year. What did they cover?

Naina: The panels covered sustainability research on campus and environmental justice in the university classroom. Both panels had speakers from various departments on campus. So that included faculty and students.

Aislyn: And then what were the overall takeaways from the event this year?

Naina: Yeah, I think the overall takeaways, it was just really cool to have this overview of the state of sustainability at UT, as well as what students and faculty are doing on campus in relation to sustainability, and generally where we’re headed with it.

Aislyn: That was general news reporter Naina Srivastava. Thanks for taking the time to speak with me. And that’s The Texan Recap for the week of October 23rd. I’m Aislyn Gaddis.

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Aislyn: The Texan Recap is a production of The Daily Texan Audio Department. If you like this episode, make sure you subscribe to The Daily Texan on your streaming platform of choice and follow us on Twitter @texanaudio. This episode was hosted and supervised by me, Aislyn Gaddis and edited by Jack Lewellyn. Special thanks to Esteban Elias and Naina Srivastava for their reporting and to Katy Nelson, Mimi Calzada and Chloe Moore for contributing to this project. Cover art is by Emma Berke and music is by Top Flow Productions. To read the news stories in this episode or see more from the Texan, head on over to www.thedailytexan.com. Thanks for listening, and I’ll see you next week