Deborah Markey

Deborah Markey became the Executive Director of the Houston Arboretum & Nature Center in 2005.  She guided the 155-acre nature sanctuary within Memorial Park through the dual devastation of Hurricane Ike and the subsequent drought.  She has succeeded in increasing not only the Arboretum’s financial capability, but also its impact on the Houston public through its work with both children and adults.  A Houston native, she has served for many years as a community leader in The Heights area of the city where she lives.  She has three children – Connor, Hunter and Madeline.

What’s your story, Debbie?

Going through two major natural disasters in three years was something that I would never have expected to be dealing with nine years ago when I joined the Houston Arboretum.

Hurricane Ike came along in 2008 and we know the hurricane then brought on the drought. The reason is a scientific phenomenon called El Niño and El Niña. El Niño is a period of time in the Gulf of Mexico when the water is really warm and causes a lot of precipitation to come off the Gulf across Texas.  During those years, Houston’s atmosphere dumps lots of water on us and it’s very humid. When I came to the Arboretum in 2005, that's how it was.  But Hurricane Ike cooled those waters and switched the oscillation patterns from El Niño to become La Niña, a very strong current which prevents any cold and wet weather coming from the north.  It means if you looked at a weather pattern, you would see cold fronts stopped as if at a barrier around Texas.  

Generally, Houston has about 55 inches of rain a year but in 2010 it was just 11 inches and in 2011 only 12 inches. Everyone in Houston felt the drought and knew that less rain was falling than usual each year, but it wasn't until 2012 that we all realized the enormous damage that the hurricane followed by the drought had really done.

During Hurricane Ike, we lost one thousand trees.  It was painful to see. These were live trees, big trees, every walking trail was deeply blocked and there was no power to the park.  We had shut down on Thursday night knowing the storm was coming, and when we came back to work on Monday, it was way more devastating than we had expected it to be.  To their credit, all my staff came ready to clear the park. I had to laugh with them that this was the line in their job descriptions which said “Will undertake other tasks as needed!”

Everyone joined in, even the office workers and me. I put all the guys on chainsaw duty and all the girls on brush clearing. Luckily my Conservation Director had made the decision on the Thursday to reserve a backhoe to come after the weekend, otherwise we would never have got one.  So the backhoe and operator arrived on Tuesday to clamp and haul stuff for us.  Of course, I could not depend on the City of Houston to help because they had so much else to do around the city, but we did have lots of people turn up to volunteer through the week, and even more on the weekends, so we found a way to do it.

We piled the stuff in the parking lot – huge tree trunks and underbrush – and I had three 40-foot containers being emptied three times a day! This was of course incurring huge haulage charges and I soon discovered that the insurance would pay for none of it.  The insurance covered damage to the building – of which, luckily, there was very little – but covered none of the forest.  That took a long time for us to recover from.

It wasn’t until that week that I ever thought of myself as a leader.  I suddenly realized that people were looking at me as if to say, “What should we do?”  I understood then that there is a difference between being a manager and being a leader.

That was such a painful time, but it was worse to watch the forest die over the following few years.   Memorial Park, of which the Arboretum is a part, is a population of trees planted 75 years ago all competing for the same water.  By August 2012, when you drove through the park and looked at the tree line, you thought, “Wow, it looks like fall in the park,” but then it hit you. That was not fall, that was death.

Then, of course, the wildfires at Bastrop happened. The Houston Fire Department and the Texas Forest Service called us all together to create a plan to be implemented in case of a forest fire in Memorial Park. We had to clear our driveway back a certain number of feet so that the fire department wouldn't get stuck if there was a fire in the park and we had to clear a lot of acreage.

We lost five thousand trees in the drought. There was a 50% mortality rate across Memorial Park.  But as one of the park’s stewards, I get to help fix the problem. It's not an overnight fix, of course, it's going to take millions of dollars and many years, but we will do it because we have to and we will use the knowledge we have now to make the park more sustainable.

Last year we went through a master-planning process to raise money to restore the land, and raised about $700,000. The restoration will cover the 155-acre forest sanctuary and also all of the building work that needs to be done. For example, we only have 91 parking spaces and that's not nearly enough. We're full every weekend and have to have parking attendants to handle it.

Although it does make parking harder, I am very proud of the work I have done to raise public awareness of the Arboretum in the nine years I've been here.  When I first arrived, business for the Arboretum totaled $600,000, but now the total gross revenue is $2.2 million. I’ve taken a small organization with a small footprint and have grown it. We have homeschool programs and preschool programs. Our Summer Camp which was half a day for six weeks and cost $85 a week is now all day for six weeks and brings in $295 a week from each child. We have Winter Camp, Spring Break Camp and we partner with lots of different folks to add a lot of other programs too. We know many adults who want to be here, but how do you get the others to come?  You serve them wine and cheese!  Just recently, we had a very successful Tapas on the Trail event with 250 people in the forest in the evening with gourmet food. We also have a family event called ArBOOretum in October and that’s very popular.

So though we've done a great job of encouraging people to come here, they don't necessarily see the devastation I see and they still love coming here.

What’s your Houston story?

I’m Houston born and bred, but because I went to college at Texas A&M in College Station, I was ready to come home afterwards.  But I've always thought that if I had going to UT in Austin, I probably would never have left. I love Austin.

I was married for a long time and lived in the Houston Heights and when I got divorced in 2002, I moved to the Woodlands Heights, close to my children's schools.  I had a website development business which was great because I could work from home so I could be there for the kids. I had a number of really great jobs including working for a management consultant who was a Harvard MBA and ten years working with her really helped me a lot. I was also very involved in the Houston Heights Association. I was on the board and in charge of many projects within the Heights including raising funds to renovate a neighborhood park called Donovan Park.

Although I didn't have any paid non-profit experience, I wrote up my résumé listing all my skills and asked people I knew to let me know if any suitable jobs came up. Then one day my son came home with the book from Writers in the Schools on the front of which was his picture of a turtle. I asked him where he had seen a turtle and, he said he’d seen it at the Arboretum. Though I hadn’t been there myself for a few years, he had gone there on a field trip.  Within a couple of months of that conversation, I was appointed Executive Director at the Arboretum. It was an amazing coincidence!

Who or what has been the greatest influence on your life?

My mom – I was the first from my family to go to college and I was a bit miserable for the first couple of years. I was not happy in my science-based course and I was struggling with my grades. I remember coming home and saying to my mom that I was going to drop out, but she wouldn’t let me.  She said I was too smart and I’d worked too many years to throw it away.  Instead, she arranged for me to take an aptitude test which found that I had an above-average business brain.  My mom suggested that I go back to school and change course to major in Business, so I did and it was like second nature to me.  It was really awesome.

What advice would you give to someone new to running a non-profit?

I'd say collaboration is the key to success and also being open. Houston Mayor, Anise Parker, said recently in one of her speeches that “collaboration is the new competition”.

I am so lucky to be within an organization which is part of the larger Houston picture, and to be one of the leaders working to make Houston an amazing internationally-known city in which to live and work. People think of us as having cowboy boots and pick-up trucks, with horses in the backyard.  They think we have no culture but it's really not like that. Houston's a very diverse city.

How do you find balance in your life?

I like to find balance. I'm an avid outdoors person and have to spend a lot of time outdoors to be happy.  Exercising and keeping in shape are important to me. Also my job is super fun so it's not like I don’t look forward to coming to work. I'm good at not taking work home, so while I work a lot here and I do work on the weekends if I need to, when I go home I have my own time in my house with my wonderful dog and the one child I have left at home. Living in my neighborhood is really awesome.  We have access to so many trails so I can bike up here at the weekend to check on things and then I ride back home which is a great experience for me.

Balance is important, but in the greater scheme of things, we are lucky that we are living in a time where we have so much that other people in the world do not have. I'm very aware of the fact that we are in the top 1% that has this amazing quality of life that other human beings don't have.

What does Houston mean to you?

Being part of a program called Leadership Houston has really made me realize how much I love the city. Mayor Parker recently came to the graduation ceremony of and said that when she was part of the Leadership Houston program, she had no idea she was ever going to be the mayor.  I have watched her throughout her career and she has done some amazing things in this city.  She said that she always makes time to come back for that event because any one of us could end up as mayor too.  This is such an inspiring program. Mayor Parker was a graduate from Class 12, I am in Class 30 and they are already recruiting Class 34.

Also, in Houston, the spirit of philanthropy runs very deep. So many men and women who have money because they made good in this town have then given back to the city. Look at Bill White and what he achieved during his time as mayor, for example.  He rallied his philanthropist friends and said, “I want to build a beautiful city park near the George R Brown Convention Center and I want to get it done before I leave office.” Few people realize how much collaborative work it took to transform a series of dusty parking lots and private spaces into Discovery Green, the most beautiful urban park space you've ever seen.  Now this huge effort has moved on to transform Buffalo Bayou Park as well.  In this city, there are so many people investing time, energy and money to create real quality-of-life experiences for the people who live there.

Where is your happy place in Houston?

I think my favorite place is Buffalo Bayou Park. I really enjoy spending time there, like this weekend when I took the trail from my house which connects to the Buffalo Bayou Trail right at Spaghetti Warehouse.  It’s great to see this renovated space and everyone on their own bikes or using the bike-share program.  There are skateboarders too and even groups on Segways. 

What is your favorite restaurant?

My favorite place is a neighborhood restaurant called The Glass Wall.  It’s right down the street from my house and has fond memories for me.  When the power went off thanks to Hurricane Ike, they accommodated half the neighborhood, so we have found a way to pay them back.  The bar is reserved for people who live in the neighborhood and when we go in there, it's like Cheers! where everybody knows your name.  They serve great local food and wine, and anywhere the bartender knows what you’ll have to drink before you even get to your table is really a great place.

There are so many good places to eat in Houston, it's hard to choose another one, but it would have to be The Grove on Discovery Green.  The food is fantastic and the atmosphere’s incredible. If you have the chance to sit on the porch outside overlooking all the people that are using the grassy green space, it's really lovely.

What is your Houston secret?

I would have to say that the Arboretum is the best kept secret in the city and I would love to keep it for myself, but I do realize that's probably not the best business model for an executive director to have! I’ve met many people who say their favorite place in the whole of Houston is the meadow pond, so it’s not only me that loves it here.

If you could change one thing about Houston…

Mass transit – it's terrible that we don't have it.  It is embarrassing that we have a city of this size and we are embracing the rubber tire model of getting around. I do realize that though lots of people are trying to stop that being the case, we're too far into it to make much change. I am disappointed that I have to take my car to work every day but even the buses are just not an option for me because the route would take me over ninety minutes each way.

To find out more about the Houston Arboretum and Nature Center, click here. 

For further information about Leadership Houston, click here.

Amy Weiss

Rabbi Amy Weiss is the founder and executive director of Undies for Everyone, a non-profit organization that distributes new underwear and socks to underprivileged students in Houston’s school districts.  She founded the Initiative for Jewish Women and serves on the Independent Police Oversight Board in Houston. She is the Director of Food and Nutrition for Houston Hillel, the campus organization for Jewish students, where her husband Rabbi Kenny Weiss is the executive director. She has two sons, Eli and Joshua.

What’s your story, Amy?

Ever since I was a child I wanted to have a house full of people.  As a rabbi, I meet so many people who are new to Houston – we called them strays – and we welcome them in.   That’s just so fulfilling to me. I became a rabbi to make Judaism more accessible, so it's not unusual for us to have fifty people for Passover in our house every year. I love making people happy and I love nurturing people. That's why I do all the cooking here at the Hillel. For example every Tuesday and Wednesday we do lunches here for the students.  A friend of mine and I bake cookies at the beginning of every semester and put them in the freezer so the kids have homemade cookies for every lunch, because they should feel comforted and nurtured.  I guess that I treat others like I would like to be treated.

Growing up in Dallas, I was very involved in my youth group and was a song leader, playing the guitar all over Texas and Oklahoma at conventions of hundreds of Jewish kids. After getting a degree in advertising from the University of Texas, my first job was selling advertising, but on the first day, literally the first day, I remember thinking this just isn't right for me.

Eventually I found myself involved with my synagogue again and the rabbi there took me under his wing.  He wanted me to become a rabbi and after getting my Masters in Jewish Education, I began the rabbinic program at Hebrew Union College in New York. On the last day of my first week, I met my husband Kenny who was there leading a teen trip. He came to my house for dinner and we've been together ever since. That was 1991. It seems like yesterday but at the same time it just seems like so far away.

In 1995, when we were living in Washington DC, our first son Aaron was born prematurely and died. Then, after having trouble getting pregnant again, we had Eli in 1997.  When Eli was eight months old we moved to Pennsylvania and since there nothing else to do I got pregnant again, but I lost that one. I got pregnant again and in 1999, we had Joshua.  Aaron, Eli and Joshua – you can tell we're rabbis, we're so biblical!

We moved to Houston in 2001 when Kenny got the chance to apply for the job at the Houston Hillel.  He just fell in love with it, so we moved here a year later.

Why do you do what you do?

Losing our first son, Aaron, really changed me. When Eli and Joshua were born, I figured if God is going to give me these children I’ve got to do something with them, I have to be there for them. I can't be a congregational rabbi and have two kids. Some people can do it but I can't.  So I started the Initiative for Jewish Women (IJW) and did that for seven years. I was programming for Jewish women, but the truth of the matter is that there's a zillion things for Jewish women to do and I after a while I found I couldn't differentiate myself.  

By 2008, I was also blogging for the Houston Chronicle’s religion section and around October time, when everyone was doing endless holiday toy drives for underprivileged children, a social worker said to me, “You know what these kids really need? Underwear and socks!”  So I blogged about it and people started dropping things off here.  I got a few hundred pairs and I talked to Waste Management to get boxes. I pulled together a committee and Undies for Everyone just sort of grew and grew from there.

Then last year, my dad died. So I stood back and re-evaluated my life, and I thought, “You know, the Jewish ladies don't need me as much as these kids need their tushies covered.” So I let the IJW go, and focused my energy on Undies for Everyone. I got some friends, filled out the paperwork and it is just unbelievable how fast it all developed.  In our fourth year, we gave out 10,000 pairs and this year we gave out somewhere between 33,000 and 38,000. We even had a donation from the man whose family owns the company which supplies Target with all the Disney and Marvel-type underwear.  They are Jewish so someone had given him our details and he sent us 43,000 pairs of underwear. Elyse, our board chair, and I flew to New York in October to meet him, so now we have a relationship with him and another company in New York. That's where we get the big stuff but also individual people or schools have underwear drives, where they ask everyone to bring one packet.

There are two parts to our organization. Obviously our first priority is about covering the kids who are disadvantaged, so there is the collection and distribution of mass quantities of underwear, but we also offer the opportunity to give to anyone who wants to do something for someone else.  Some people can write really large checks or even medium-size checks, and other people can go buy one packet of underwear.  Either way, they will know that they have changed someone's life and I think that changes their life too.
 

Our idea is also that we have to teach our kids how to give. A parent can use Undies for Everyone as an opportunity to take a kid to the store and say, “You have a whole drawer full of underwear and you take it for granted. But there are kids out there that don't have any underwear at all, and doesn’t most everyone deserve to have underwear?” Everyone can identify with that.  So let your kids pick a pack of underwear to give to someone else and that's the start of teaching those kids about being philanthropic and giving them the opportunity to repair the world.

Once we have all these undies, we distribute them in a number of ways. The City of Houston runs a Back-to-School event which pre-registers 25,000 kids in fifteen school districts. Each of them gets a wrist band which gets them a backpack and supplies, vaccinations, uniforms and even haircuts.  We, of course, give away underwear.  I think 15,000 pairs went there and another 10,000 pairs went to Houston Independent School District nurses, not only for the elementary schools where little kids have accidents but also to the middle school nurses who really love it because teenage girls are not regular yet in their cycles. We gave 3,000 to Fort Bend schools, 2,000 to Alief and to Waller and we will soon expand into charter schools and places like that.

For the future, we already have a trademark attorney and we are looking to go national within a few years. You know, it's God's work. This is not just about covering these kids’ privates, it is about dignity and self-esteem. It represents so much more for them, it’s about being like everyone else so they don’t have to worry about someone else finding out they aren’t wearing any.

Is there more to your story?

I don't blog for the Chronicle anymore but I do make mezuzahs out of Lego! And yes, that is extraordinary, but I am all about making Judaism accessible!  A mezuzah has a prayer in it and you put it on your door frame.  When I was growing up, people only put up one mezuzah, but in traditional Judaism, you're supposed to have one on every door in the house, except the bathroom and the laundry room. So for people who normally wouldn't put a mezuzah on their kid’s bedroom door, here's this really cool thing, and since everybody loves Lego, you're giving the kids an opportunity to connect. It's not scary, it's not old and it's not weird. It’s just really cool!

Who or what has been the greatest influence on your life?

It's really hard to say because there have been a lot of people who have influenced me, but I think my husband is really the greatest influence.  He allows me every opportunity to be successful. I worry a lot and it can be paralyzing and he just doesn't let that happen. He doesn't let difficulties or worry stop him. He will do anything to give me an opportunity to shine and he has just been the best thing that ever happened to me. He’s an awesome, awesome guy.

What advice would you give to someone who sees a need in the community and thinks they have something that can help fill that need?
Go talk to lots of people and make sure that need isn't being filled by someone else.  If you want to succeed and you want to make a difference, you have to know that you are doing something different from all the many other non-profits in Houston. Otherwise you are not going to get funded and you're not going to get people on board. The other thing I would say is take Rice University's Leadership Institute for Non-profit Executives course which has been phenomenal. It's a one year course and I have met some of the greatest people. I've just loved it.

How do you find, or seek to find, balance in your life?

You know I’ve given that a lot of thought and I don't think there really is balance. My family comes first and everything else comes after. There are always things to do, including this job, so that I can be there for the kids and for Kenny, because the home is the center of it. Everything else just fills in around it. I have also just accepted that I'm not going to be able to do everything fabulously.

What does Houston mean to you?

It is so clichéd, but I think Houston is the city of opportunity. It is a really diverse city, in thinking and believing, with lots of different religions, but ultimately so many people do so much work for Houston to make it a better place. It's just amazing.

Where is your happy place in Houston?

It’s the swing on our front lawn at home. It hangs from a tree and sometimes Kenny and I will sit there and just hang out, throwing a ball for the dog. But really, wherever I am, if I have my family and my friends near, I'm okay. As long as the food's good!

What is your favorite place to eat?

Our go-to place is India’s, on Richmond, which is really good. It's from the 80s or the 70s, it has commercial carpet but the food is great and the people are so nice. It’s so quiet, you can go on Saturday night with another couple and have a conversation and some really good food.

What is your Houston secret?

The Chocolate Cinnamon Shake at Goode Company Taqueria! It's not even a milkshake really, more like soft serve ice-cream. In fact, they don't even serve it with a straw. I don't know if it's actually a kids’ thing though because it has quite a cinnamon bite to it. It's awesome!

If you could change one thing about Houston…

The weather or the potholes! The weather because I'm not good at sweating. And the potholes? I think the tire people go out at night to dig them.

For more information about Amy’s work at Undies for Everyone, click here. 

To see Amy’s Lego mezuzahs, click here.  

For more information about the Rice University Leadership Institute for Nonprofit Executives, click here.

Anita Kruse

Anita Kruse trained as a classical pianist and composer before becoming a singer/songwriter and has performed her songs internationally.  In 2006, Anita founded Purple Songs Can Fly, the first ever recording studio housed within a pediatric oncology center and in it she helps children undergoing cancer treatment create their own songs.  Working within Texas Children’s Cancer and Hematology Centers, Anita has helped over six hundred young cancer patients and their siblings create, perform and record their own music.  Anita has also made sure that these Purple Songs Can Fly – literally.  The songs have travelled all over the world – and beyond - on The Rolling Stones’ world tour, to the top of Mount Everest and even into space.  Thanks to Anita Kruse, many very sick children have made their Purple Songs – and their hopes and dreams – truly fly.

                                                 

What’s your story, Anita?

I was born in Riverside, California. My father was a pilot in the Air Force so we moved many times as I was growing up. It meant that I had a very interesting childhood. I was fortunate to see other countries of the world, learning about other people and other ways of living. 

My mother was a pianist. She was amazing because, though she was a trained pianist, she could play anything that she heard by ear. That always impressed me because though I was naturally musical, it wasn’t my particular gift. So I was around music a lot and of course because of my mother, I wanted to play the piano too.  Wherever we moved, she always found the best teachers for me, but she was herself a great musical influence on me.  It was only much later in life that I discovered that my father was also musical too, but he didn’t talk about it very much.  He’d played the cornet in his high school and college bands, and I learned recently that he played in the inaugural parade when Eisenhower became President.

I got my degree in piano performance from the University of Connecticut and then I went to the University of Michigan for graduate school. I studied with the incredible pianist, Theodore Lettvin, and he was a great influence on me too.  There’s a famous book called The Great Pianists and he was one of them. I feel very fortunate that I got to spend time with him, to watch his hands and learn from his wisdom.  It was during that time, when I was in my second year of my Master’s degree, that I also decided to study composition.  There was a composer named Nicholas Thorne visiting the university on a year’s fellowship. The first thing I wrote was for piano and saxophone and when I took it into my composition lesson, Nick Thorne said, “Wow, Anita! I think you should keep doing this!”  So I didn't stop!  It just felt like I was just meant to do it.  I had never felt anything as powerful as the feeling of creating my own music and hearing it come to fruition.

At first, my composing was very classical, mainly art songs for piano and voice. I worked with a soprano because I didn't think of myself as a singer.  I was always very shy and very inward.  I was happy to play the piano in front of other people, but the idea of standing up to sing?  No, I just couldn't do it!   But I carried on writing songs which I would sing only in my own little bubble until one day a friend heard me and said, “Anita, you need to sing your own songs.”  That was many years ago and since then I've become more comfortable and less afraid, but I truly understand when children are shy and not ready to sing out.  That’s why I have made the Purple Songs Can Fly studio very intimate and secure for them.  There’s no big audience and they can create something that doesn't hold the same feeling of fear as live performance.

What is the story behind Purple Songs?

For several years I came up to the Cancer Center here at Texas Children’s Hospital (TCH) as a visiting artist.  I performed piano and flute duets with a wonderful flutist and friend, Jennifer Keeney.  The music was on the mellow side, and we used to setup in the central waiting area where the music could be heard throughout the Cancer Center. The patients and staff seemed to enjoy our music, so we were invited back to play every couple of months.

During that time, I was developing my own small studio at home and I was also teaching piano and composition.  I started taking my students into my studio to record what they had written. One of my composition students wanted me to help her write songs so she came in one day and I helped her write a song during her lesson. So within that hour we wrote a song, recorded it, and I handed it to her on the CD.  Thinking about that and also about my work at Texas Children’s, I suddenly saw an image of myself with my own studio in the Cancer Center.  I called Carol Herron, the Director of the Arts in Medicine program at Texas Children's and I told her about my idea. Carol already ran an incredibly extensive arts in medicine program with many artists coming in to work with patients – visual artists, creative writers, sculptors and musicians, but all the musicians were there to perform music, not to write music. Carol didn’t think that anyone had ever created a recording studio in a cancer center before, so I put a proposal together, we met the director of the Cancer Center, Dr David Poplack, and between us, we made it happen.

At first, we didn't have a designated space. I created a portable studio on a little computer desk with wheels that I could take in-patient. It had a keyboard, a microphone and a laptop and I attached monitors on Velcro. I even had a chair on it.  I was just like the Beverly Hillbillies with everything hanging off my cart!

Then I noticed that right behind the waiting area there were three little phone booths that had been built years ago.  Of course nobody used phone booths anymore because they had cell phones so it had become an unused space.  But those three little rooms were perfect for me, so I raised money to renovate them into a studio and we painted them purple. I have been obsessed with purple my whole life so I knew, as soon as I started this, everything had to be purple.

The Purple Songs Can Fly studio at Texas Children's Hospital

More recently, when they renovated the Cancer Center they gave us a different, roomier space and anyone can come and take part or just visit.  Like everything else in the Arts in Medicine program at TCH, it is completely open to any child who wants to take part. We include information about Purple Songs in every new patient handbook, the children might also hear about the studio from other patients, from the nurses or see our flyer in the reception area.  They can come and see the studio, and I ask them if they want to write a song.  I’m here every weekday morning, but we can arrange a time in the afternoons as well.

Some children want to create an instrumental but in general I start with the lyrics. Houston’s creative writing organization, Writers in the Schools, has been involved in Texas Children's Cancer Center for many years and its writers are amazing.  In fact, the very first Purple Song was a Writers in the Schools collaboration.  I help the children create words, a beat, and we choose the sounds that they like. Some children, once they have words and an underlying harmony, will start hearing a melody. Some children hear a melody right away and I will ask them to sing it to me and I will accompany it. It's different for every child, but even if they only sing a fragment or have just a couple of words, I can hear where their voice would naturally go.

A Purple Songs CD signed
by Mick Jagger

Most of the songs are simply about things that the children want to share – things that make them happy or things they are thinking about, and they are often unrelated to their treatment. Many children have written songs to give to someone, perhaps to their mother or caregiver to say thank you. There have been many beautiful thank-you songs. One girl wrote a song to thank her karate teacher for giving her strength called 'Strong Heart, Strong Mind'.  There have been a lot of songs about faith and about God and about angels, and for some reason, lots of songs about butterflies. One little girl wrote a song with the idea that her wishes attach themselves to butterflies and the butterflies then carry her wishes to God.  We’ve had so many really beautiful ideas like that.

There was a wonderful boy, Jonathan, who was about seven years old and wrote a song called, ‘I Hate Shots’.  He also really loved to make origami and wanted to make cranes for me, so I got him some purple origami paper and he made the cranes that I included in all of the framed CDs.

It’s wonderful to record the children singing because most have never heard their voice recorded before. They take their song home on a purple CD to share with family and friends, though I keep all the songs in an archive too.  To date, we’ve written and recorded over 600 songs and a selection of them can be heard on our website.

Once we have them captured, we let the Purple Songs fly.  People tell us where they are going in the world and I give them a CD or all of the songs on a fly-drive and purple lanyard to take with them.  Then they send us pictures from famous places and I share the photos on our website. The Rolling Stones took our CDs on their world tour and Dr Poplack recently took them with him on a trip to Africa.  For several years, Purple Songs flew on the in-flight playlist on Continental Airlines and then United, which was amazing. 

They even went up into space on a Space Shuttle mission in 2007 with astronaut Scott Parazynski.  Scott then came back to the clinic to meet with the children and share a film of his mission. He’s been back to see us several times because after he retired from NASA he fulfilled his lifelong dream to climb Mount Everest.  He took our CDs with him and came back to the clinic to share his adventure.  In 2008, another astronaut, Heidi Stefanyshyn-Piper, took Purple Songs up to the International Space Station.  When she came to meet with the children at TCH, she brought incredible pictures of the CDs floating in zero gravity.

I am often amazed to see how Purple Songs Can Fly brings many elements together which lead to further connections.  For example, I got permission to use Roger Payne’s famous recordings of the songs of humpback whales, so I mixed them with a Purple Song called, “That's Why I Don't Eat Fish”, written by a boy who wanted to be a marine biologist.  The song ended up being played underwater at the NOAA deep-water research facility. We set up two monitors in the Cancer Center and the children were able to interact with the undersea researchers via a live video feed.  Dancers from Hope Stone Dance Company also performed a specially choreographed piece to go with the song and performed it as a part of the event.  So many amazing connections have happened through Purple Songs, with people coming together to offer support and ideas, all of them understanding the importance of music and how songs can affect our lives.

Purple Songs Can Fly in zero gravity in the International Space Station

Who or what has been the greatest influence on your life?

I have had so many incredible influences on my life, so many people, including the children I work with here. But actually, I have a sibling who is severely mentally ill and I think that he has been the greatest influence on my life. Seeing the fragility of life, the fragility of the mind and seeing that it could just as easily have been me, has motivated me to use my own gifts in ways that can hopefully help others.

What advice would you give to someone who, like you, wants to use their gift to help others?

I think it’s important to find inspiration, to strive to learn from other people and other ideas. I love to see people use the influences around them, filter them through their own particular way of doing and seeing and being, and then create something that has never been created before.

How do you find, or seek to find, balance in your life?

I would say that is my biggest life challenge. I haven't found it yet but I do seek it. I know how much of an introvert I am and I do need quiet time by myself. It is interesting that I am all about sound and yet I really crave quiet and I need it daily. I am at the moment fantasizing about a silent retreat. I've never done that but I really think that would be good for me.

What does Houston mean to you?

I love Houston. It’s a great city, with an incredible arts community and an incredibly high level of arts involvement. There are so many artists here working in all different fields and from so many cultures too. I lived in so many places growing up, so I didn't ever have a place that was my home but after I came to Houston to visit a few times, I kept feeling a really strong connection, but I didn’t know why. Then I read a beautiful article about the Native American traditions of why we are connected to a place. It is said that if you have had an ancestor who passes in a place, that is where you will find your roots. My grandmother actually passed in Houston, in a car accident, though it wasn't the place she lived. So in my mind I have had an ancestor who has passed in Houston and that is as good as an explanation as any as to why I feel this connection to this city.

Where is your happy place in Houston?

My happy place is right in here in this purple studio.

What is your favorite restaurant?

I love to eat Japanese food and there are a lot of Japanese restaurants here, so I love anywhere where I can get really good sushi.

What is your Houston secret?

I lived in Japan when I was a little girl, so I have this strong connection to all things Japanese and there is a beautiful Japanese garden in Hermann Park.  Every time I go, it is quiet, peaceful and beautiful.

If you could change one thing about Houston…

My parents live near Seattle, so a long way away from Houston.  If I could change one thing, it would be to have them closer.

Anita was nominated as one of the many Inspiring Houston Women by Trish Morille. 

For more information about Purple Songs Can Fly and to listen to some of the songs Anita has helped the children write, visit the website here.

Purple Songs Can Fly has its own internet radio show on Voice America Kids, hosted by Zachary and Emily who are patients at Texas Children’s Cancer and Hematology Centers and wrote Purple Songs with Anita.  To listen to the show, visit the website here.

Anita Jaisinghani

Photo by Louis Vest

Anita Jaisinghani is the Chef/Owner of two award-winning restaurants in Houston. Raised in India and trained as a micro-biologist, Anita came to Houston via Canada in 1990.  Having been a stay-at-home mother for her two young children, she gradually developed her love of food into a very successful career, starting out as a pastry cook at Houston’s famous Café Annie, then with her own restaurants, Indika in Montrose and Pondicheri in River Oaks.  With both menus, Anita combines the complexities of Indian cuisine with the goodness of fresh Texas ingredients.

What’s your story, Anita?

I have always loved food.  As a teenager I wanted to learn more but Indian food is possibly the most undocumented undisciplined cuisine there is. People just do their own thing.  There is no prescribed way to make anything in India and every dish has a different version in every family.  The one culinary school in India is in Mumbai and it’s more of a catering college so my parents asked me, “Why would you go to cooking school?”  All my family were professionals and very respectable, we employed a cook at home, so in the end I went into micro-biology. 

I left India and moved to Canada in 1980 and I loved it there.  I have a degree in microbiology, I was working towards becoming a pathologist and my daughter was born there in 1988.  We moved to Houston in 1990 and my son was born here so I was a stay-at-home mom for about four or five years. 

But I still had this affinity for food and I began to play with it more and more when I got to Houston.  I had some friends from Morocco, from France and from Holland.  Talking and making food with them was a great influence about food on me. We opened up a little catering business out of our homes and that did well, with some very high-end clients in town.  Then I opened up a little business selling sauces to Whole Foods. I did start to study at the restaurant and hotel management school at the University of Houston, but when you are older than most of the students, you get most of it so fast and I just felt that I could learn all that I wanted to learn through real-life experience instead. 

I wanted to work in a restaurant, so I looked at the list of Houston restaurants and said to myself, “What is the number one restaurant in the city?  Café Annie?  Let’s go there!”  I sent my résumé to them and they let me come in for a day’s trial. I had the wrong shoes on and the wrong clothes and the guy who had to spend the day with me, the seafood cook, had me down as some wannabe and told them, “Don’t take her.”  But there was a pastry chef there at the time who had been watching me on the other side of the restaurant and she said, “If you want to come and work in pastry, you can come and work for me.”  I said, “I’ll work for free for you, just let me in the kitchen!”.  I started working for Café Annie for free for two days a week - with the right shoes and the right clothes, of course – and within a month, they offered me a job.  It was part-time as a pastry cook.  My husband couldn’t understand it.  We paid our maid more per hour than I was earning, but to me it was like gold.

I worked at Café Annie for about two years. They did offer me the job of Pastry Chef, but I turned it down because I didn’t want the responsibility, and also I’ve never had a sweet tooth.  We have these sweet cookies which we serve at Indika at the end of the meal and that was the only thing that I knew how to make really well when I walked into Café Annie.  Then, when I started looking at locations for my own place, they gave me a lot of support and at the end of my two years working there, I brought them a plate of those cookies as a gift. Chef Robert Del Grande immediately said, “I want the recipe!”

We opened Indika in 2002 and I ran it for about ten years, but I wanted to do a restaurant which would take food to more of a street level.   I wanted a mass appeal restaurant without compromising on the authenticity of the cuisine, not just keeping it traditional, I wanted to add a creative touch.  That’s what I’ve tried to do here at Pondicheri.  I opened here on March 1^st, 2011, so I’ve been here just over two years.

Of course, I have a crew at each restaurant that I have trained very carefully so I can spend about two days each week in the kitchen at Pondicheri and two days at Indika. Outside of that, there is a lot of other stuff that I end up doing, but I am trying to delegate more and more of that.  I try to focus as much on the food as I can.  It’s a balancing act, knowing how to delegate, and knowing how to train other people is something I’ve learned on the way.

With my children, I made a very strong decision to put family first, though my kids might disagree with me on this!  Within a year of opening Indika I got a divorce, so I was pretty much a single mom with two kids of 12 and 14.  That’s a tough age to be a single mom, but we lived within a block of the old Indika location in Memorial and those were some of my best years, you know, and my kids turned out great.  I had a few rules that I followed as a mother.  I ate breakfast with my kids and that was our time together, an hour every morning and I would make them whatever they wanted.  Then I was always at home when they came back from school at 3.30.  That was the middle of my working day anyway, so when they came home we all had a snack and a drink together and would talk about our day.  Then I would go back to Indika at about 6.30 or 7pm and come home at ten or eleven.  They were home alone most evenings, but I had Sundays and Mondays off because we were closed.  Sometimes they would walk over to the restaurant and we would eat dinner together too if I wasn’t too busy.  Other than that, I stayed on top of things as best I could. 

Why do you do what you do?

I am such a big lover of everything I grew up with in India, though I didn’t realize that until I left.  I couldn’t wait to come to America and to try all the new food.  In fact, my first week in Canada was spent in the supermarket examining the food – it looked like art!  In India, if you visit the markets, they are very visceral, you can smell and feel everything.  Here, everything was so beautifully packed and presented, and I thought it was so clever.  It took me a few months to ask myself, “Why doesn’t it taste as good?”  At first I denied that there was a difference, but when I went back after my first year away and had some chicken at my mother’s house, it tasted simply amazing!  This was in the early 80s and the chickens over here were already being pumped up with stuff, unlike the scrawny chickens we would eat in India.  The bananas over there might be spotty, but they tasted so much better in India than they did over here. 

That’s really what made me look at food and ask why does it all taste so different in India than here?  At first, I used spices as a way of masking the inherent taste that I didn’t like about American and Canadian food.  At that point, I had never heard of organic or of national/local because that was just how we lived in India, it wasn’t special, that’s just the way it was. So that took me some understanding. 

I used to talk about opening a restaurant when I was a young mother, but I never thought that I’d actually do it. I was going to work as a micro-biologist!  By the time I came to the US, however, I loved to entertain.  I could make a dinner party for forty people, cooking all day. It would be the most seamless party you’d ever been to because all the food would be perfectly done and that just came easy to me.  I loved the organizational skills to run a dinner party. I wondered how I could take that up to the next step and do it in a restaurant and that became my journey of reinterpreting Indian food. 

My parents were from a small province called Sindh which now only exists as part of Pakistan, so my food is different from most Indian food that you taste, although I love all Indian food and I try to represent the country as best I can.  I bring in local Texas ingredients because asking me to cook in Houston without using local ingredients is like asking me live here without breathing the air.  I have to use what I have close by.  Indians do a lot more than what you see in restaurants too.  In the south you get all sorts of octopus, mussels and crab and in Rajasthan where my uncles live, there is lots of hunting. We used to eat whole pig roasts and ducks and quail, so there is a lot more to Indian food than most people know.  People ask me if I use these ingredients because they are Texan but I say, “No, it’s because they are things I know about.”

Who or what has been the greatest influence on your life?

I think opening my own business gave me great confidence.  I own Indika with my ex-husband, but opening Pondicheri on my own has definitely given me a lot more confidence.  I’ve learned more here than I did there because here I deal with everybody.  I’m not fighting a battle though and I’m not trying to prove anything so if I don’t enjoy it, then I’m not going to do it anymore.

My mother was a great influence on me too.  She’s been gone for sixteen years so she didn’t live to see my two restaurants, but she used to tell me that I could do anything I wanted to with my life and that I was the best thing in town. Like an idiot, I believed her! 

What advice would you give to someone new to the restaurant business?

I’d say, get experience in the business, whether you are man or a woman.  Learn everything about the business from A to Z, don’t depend on anyone else to tell you how to work the numbers, what the tax implications are or about financial planning.  And you have to know that what goes out must be less than what comes in.  If you follow that, you’ve got a business!

How to do you find, or seek to find, balance in your life?

That is my greatest challenge!  But it’s all about having the right team and I do have a great team in each restaurant.  I could be the greatest cook in the world, but I need to have a team who can follow my vision.  Or not even my vision, I am a very collaborative person. I’m not stuck on my own ideas, so if one of my team tells me that there’s a better way to do something, then I will do it the better way.  I always talk to my staff the way I would want to be talked to, I don’t shout at people and I’m not an abuser.  As a result, I don’t have a high turnover. I don’t pay them more than the industry standard, but I have learned how to treat people well.  In any business, picking out the right people and knowing how to treat them well is crucial. That means that I can walk away, so I travel a lot and I can take vacations.  When I’m away, I don’t call all the time to ask if they are okay, if they need something, they’ll call me. 

What does Houston mean to you?

I love Houston because of the weather – people always laugh at that!  Houston is my home now, but I have to admit I didn’t like it at first, I thought it was an ugly city.  We moved here from Calgary which is at the base of the mountains and then we were in Boston for about six months. It’s so beautiful there in the fall and I just didn’t want to leave.  When we came to Houston, I still had one leg out but now that I have two businesses here, I have definitely put both feet down.  What I love about Houston is the people.  I came here out of nowhere and opened up a business and I had more support from native Houstonians than I did from anybody else, even from my friends.  It was the native Houstonians who have helped me out and so I have a lot of affection for them.

Where is your happy place in Houston?

My home and my two kitchens.  I don’t get out much and I’m not a very public person. I’m not a media hog, I turn down every request to be involved with things unless I am really required to do it. I’m not a social butterfly, I never go to bars and I’m usually home by ten!  I’m not like some chefs who finish their work and then go to bars drinking.  Also I am a strong believer in leading by example.  If I am a drinker and a talker, then what am I teaching my kids or my staff?  I can’t do one thing and expect them to do another.  

What is your favorite restaurant?

For special occasions I will still go to RDG – which used to be Café Annie – because I am very fond of the people there because they gave me a start. Outside of that, I love Korean food and also there’s a phenomenal place called Mala Sichuan on Bellaire Boulevard – I’ve eaten there twice in the last week!  You know, Indian food has a lot of Chinese influences and I’ve been playing with some Chinese cooking here. Then I discovered that place and I now want them to give me a lesson in how to cook their food!  That would be awesome.

What is your Houston secret?

The park by Allen Parkway – it’s under construction just now but it has bike and walking trails and I’m on it every other day.  A few people know about it and I’m sure once the construction is finished it’ll become a more public park and more people will go there.  For me, logistics are important.  I don’t want to give up half a day to go somewhere, but I can walk there from my house or go on my bike and it’s just beautiful. 

If you could change one thing about Houston…

Mountains would be nice!  Or even just a hill!

To find out more about Anita’s restaurants, please visit Pondicheri at 2800 Kirby Drive and Indika at 516 Westheimer Road.