Here we are at the end of January already. Lights in the Heights is now well behind us. Immediately following our neighborhood event, the holiday season hit like an avalanche. There was barely time to recuperate before the first WHCA board meeting of the year.
The board met on Tuesday, January 6th. On this occasion, we invited the various committees involved in Lights in the Heights to participate in an after-action-analysis of the event. There was much discussion of the various aspects of the event. Who did what? What were the processes? What were the problems? Where are the opportunities for improvement?
On the whole, the collected parties felt the event ran well this past year. It was an incremental improvement over last year in some ways. We also jotted down some ideas for ways to evolve both the event and the organization, to make things easier, and potentially more remunerative, in the future.
I’d like to personally thank everyone who participated, from start to finish. Lights in the Heights is a huge event, involving dozens of volunteers. In the end, most of the work falls to a handful of extremely dedicated neighbors, who invest a huge amount of the time and energy.
January also finds WHCA holding the first Member’s meeting of the year. That gather was Tuesday, January 13th at Zion Lutheran Church. While we did go through some of the normal business of the civic association, the major draw was a presentation by Jim Parsons, Director of Special Projects at Preservation Houston.
Jim’s talk, “Time & Place: Unlocking the History of Your Home or Building” was both enlightening and entertaining. He described the various available resources and paths of investigation that could reveal the history of older homes. His slides were tweaked to show historic maps of Woodland Heights, so many in attendance could see references to their own homes!
The presentation drew a crowd of about 40, which is well above average for a Member’s Meeting. After the formal presentation there was about 15 minutes of Q&A from a very engaged audience.
We had an inkling this would be broadly of interest to the neighborhood, so we recorded Jim’s part of the presentation. If we can get a copy of his slides, we’ll try to make this part of the meeting available via the WHCA web site.
That said, if you have any interest in this subject, and missed our January meeting (tsk!) you can sign-up for their next formal presentation, which is Tuesday, February 10, at PH Studio in the Preservation Houston office, 3907 Main Street. Registration is $10 for Preservation Houston members and $15 for non-members.
Jim was referred to us by Debbie Hall, a former WHCA board member, who oversees the Venerable Home Project. That project sets out to recognized homes in the neighborhood that have been verified as 100 years old.