Who Are You Calling Tacky?! At Festive Function, YoPros Stuff Backpacks Instead of Stockings

Daniel Ortiz and Michelle Watson
Who Are You Calling Tacky?! At Festive Function, YoPros Stuff Backpacks Instead of Stockings

Jeff Carnrite and Joselyn Tego

NEARLY 2,000 BOOKS were bundled up and distributed to local kiddos, thanks to the young-professional supporters of the Barbara Bush Houston Literacy Foundation.


Forty guests donned their tackiest sweaters to a festive event at the Children’s Museum, where they stuffed backpacks with books, school supplies and sensory toys, all of which were purchased using the funds from the organization’s Storybook Gala. The next day, they distributed the backpacks at San Francisco Nativity Academy of Houston and Small Steps Nurturing Center, where they found dozens of kids eager to continue their learning through reading, writing and critical thinking.

Members of the Foundation’s young professional group are proud to carry out its mission of breaking the intergenerational cycle of low literacy in Houston.

Alexa Bode and Grace Gosnell

Victoria Villarreal and Allie Jarreau

Eleni McGee and Lindsey Hennigan

Stephanie Marcos

Saqqara Campbell and Jennifer Thompson

Cameron Nazminia

Kevin Aguilar, Ashley Monic, Elyssa Buntzell, Cameron Crenwelge, Eleni McGee, and Grace Gosnell

Pre-K student at San Francisco Nativity Academy looking through his new book

San Francisco Nativity Academy students holding up their new books

Students with their new books

Rachel Willis-Sorensen (photo by Olivia Kahler)

THIS WEEKEND, ON June 1 and 2, the Houston Symphony celebrates the work of Richard Strauss with a concert of two very different works: An Alpine Symphony (Eine Alpensinfonie), an epic tone poem completed by Strauss in 1915 that depicts a dawn-to-dusk Alpine mountain ascent and includes subtle references to the music of his close friend Gustav Mahler, who died in 1911; and Four Last Songs, which Strauss completed in 1948 at age 84 and was destined to be the composer’s final completed work. HGO Studio alum Rachel Willis-Sørensen, now one of the world’s most in-demand operatic sopranos, joins Music Director Juraj Valčuha for a performance of these majestic, sublime compositions for voice and orchestra.

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Art + Entertainment

Októ will have a lively bar like the one at Doris Metropolitan, pictured here. (photo by Kirsten Gilliam)

AFTER YEARS OF operating solid, Israeli-influenced concepts — Doris Metropolitan on Shepherd, and Badolina and Hamsa in Rice Village — Sof Hospitality is set to debut its latest concept in Montrose Collective this summer. Surprise, this time it’s Mediterranean cuisine!

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Food