byAnissa Sanchez
From a booth on the east side of Zilker Park, a husband and wife from Ohio exceeded their dreams of helping to save lives by distributing 6,000 doses of overdose-reversing drugs.
“We thought we were gonna do a couple of festivals in the Midwest; that’s all we hoped for,” William Perry said of his lifesaving operation called This Must Be the Place. “This year, we went coast to coast and now we’re here in Austin.”
Their booth at Austin City Limits Music Festival the past two weekends served as a beacon of information on preventing fatal overdoses of fentanyl and other opioids with the nasal spray naloxone.
Perry said they found a receptive crowd in Austin.
“We were prepared to talk people into taking it and talk people into why they should have it, and obviously that was not the case,” Perry said. “All you have to do is sit and listen to us explain the signs and symptoms and how to administer the medication. It takes people two and a half minutes or so and now they’re equipped to go save a life.”
byIsabella McGovern
As the sun went down over Barton Springs Pool, dozens of people said goodbye to “Flo,” a 120-year-old pecan tree set to be cut down the next day.
“I think of Flo as a symbol of our love for trees and our love for nature and Mother Earth,” Austin arborist Don Gardner told the crowd. “We used to always be a lot more connected to trees than we are now, and I’m so happy to see those who still have some sense of that.”
Flo has leaned over Austin’s spring-fed pool since 1925, but the city’s parks department and tree experts determined it must go because of Kretzschmaria deusta, a root and trunk fungus known as brittle cinder that weakens trees and has no treatment.
byJinpeng Li
Few Austin residents use e-bikes for most of their transportation needs, but the city wants to change that. In January the city doubled down on an already existing Austin Energy rebate program, which provides refunds of up to $600 to customers who purchase new light electric vehicles, such as e-bikes and electric scooters, from authorized local dealers.
Hundreds of kites of all shapes, sizes and colors filled the skies over Zilker Park during the 95th ABC Kite Fest in Austin on April 1, 2023. Austinites of all ages sprinted across Zilker’s lawn trying to get their kites airborne as part of the event that has been around since 1929. Started by the […]