February is a big month for us! It is election time and we have an opportunity to bring new talent to the Board as well as the committees. As the annual term comes to a close, I would like to say thank you to all the residents who have given of their time and energy to make Cat Mountain Villas a better place in the past year! The Villas has become a much more social community in the past couple of years, much of that credit goes to our social committee and the wine club.
The Annual Meeting of the Members is scheduled for February 17th, 2016 at 7:00 PM. I hope you will consider coming out to join us; we will have the honor of hosting City of Austin District 10 Council member Ms. Sheri Gallo. Sheri will fill us in on what is happening downtown at City Hall. You should have received the agenda, candidate bios and ballot / proxy forms in the ma i l by Mid-January. We will be electing 3 seats on the Board of Directors. I think we have a great group of candidates that will work very hard over the next two years to oversee the operations of the neighborhood.
I am sad to say we will be losing Mr. Davison Grant this year after what has been probably the longest held positions on the board at approximately 19 years. Davison has also retired this year from his legal career. I would like to sincerely thank him and wish him all the best in the future. His donation of time, experience and guidance to this Board has been invaluable.
After serving as Board President the past 4 years, I can say that I am very proud of the job done by the current Board. We
HAPPY VALENTINE’S DAYhave worked well together, have managed our neighborhood and its assets with a conservative, long term approach and have undertaken numerous litigious situations and resolved them without undue expense to the Association.
We are looking for help with our committees, specifically someone to oversee the social committee
a n d c o m m u n i c a t i o n s committee. I know there are numerous residents who would be a fantastic
fit for these positions. We are also looking for a newsletter editor to help oversee the publishing of the Cat
Mountain View. You would interface with the Communications Committee and publish a simple 4-8 page newsletter
every month. Our publisher Peel Inc. actually does the publication work; we
just have to organize the content for them. Typically it consists of the social (wine, book, yoga,
tennis) information and presidents message along with information from the manager. If you have any interest in
helping out please contact myself or Jesse.Don’t forget you can stay updated on happenings in the
neighborhood via our “Cat Mountain Community” FaceBook Page or by joining our neighborhood on NEXTDOOR.com. There is good local information as well as police related information available to you on the site.
Looking forward to a great year!Best Regards,Bryan HarterCat Mountain HOA | President
For Emergency after hours, during weekends & holidays, Please call 512.328.7316 (h) or 512.963.0940 (c)
• Bryan Harter, President...........Term February 2014-February 2016• Marc Dully, Vice President......Term February 2015-February 2017• Davison Grant, Treasurer........Term February 2014-February 2016• Ken Nirenberg, Secretary........Term February 2015-February 2017• Richard Schley, Vice President..Term February 2014-February 2016For questions or to contact any board member please email the HOA Manager at [email protected]
Photo by: Elijah Merritt, EDM Photography
Cat Mountain Homeowners Association Board of Directors
DISCLAIMER: Articles and ads in this newsletter express the opinions of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Peel, Inc. or its employees. Peel, Inc. is not responsible for the accuracy of any facts stated in articles submitted by others. The publisher also assumes no responsibility for the advertising content with this publication. All warranties and representations made in the advertising content are solely that of the advertiser and any such claims regarding its content should be taken up with the advertiser.* The publisher assumes no liability with regard to its advertisers for misprints or failure to place advertising in this publication except for the actual cost of such advertising.* Although every effort is taken to avoid mistakes and/or misprints, the publisher assumes no responsibility for any errors of information or typographical mistakes, except as limited to the cost of advertising as stated above or in the case of misinformation, a printed retraction/correction.* Under no circumstances shall the publisher be held liable for incidental or consequential damages, inconvenience, loss of business or services, or any other liabilities from failure to publish, or from failure to publish in a timely manner, except as limited to liabilities stated above.
At no time will any source be allowed to use The Cat Mountain View Newsletter contents, or loan said contents, to others in anyway, shape or form, nor in any media, website, print, film, e-mail, electrostatic copy, fax, or etc. for the purpose of solicitation, commercial use, or any use for profit, political campaigns, or other self amplification, under penalty of law without written or expressed permission from Peel, Inc. The information in The Cat Mountain View Newsletter is exclusively for the private use of Peel, Inc.
The 2016 election will be held February 17th at 7:00 p.m. Proxy ballots are due February 16th at 5:00 p.m. We would ask that you please return the proxy a soon as possible so we can meet our quorum.
2016 Maintenance Assessment (Homeowners Dues):The 2016 Coupon Books were sent out in early December. The
coupon book is for homeowners that are not using online payment method to pay their homeowner dues. Please let the Manager know if you did not receive your coupon book by calling the office at 512-451-3884 or email at [email protected].
Note: Homeowners that are now paying online will continue unless they change their payment method.
Walls and Street Repairs:We are moving forward on wall repairs along Twin Valley Drive.
We are also working with contractors to make street repairs along many of the private roads in the Cat Mountain Villas.
Trees:If you see trees that interfere along the sidewalks or roads, please
let the manager know.
Dogs:There has been a recent increase in the amount of feces noted
around the sidewalks and trails. Please pick up after your dog while walking.
Please monitor your dogs while they are outside. There have been numerous complaints about dogs barking during both daylight and evening hours.
Tennis Courts:As the weather cools off, we have a group of players interested in
getting together on Sunday mornings. Please check out the social section for more info.
Tennis court keys are available from the manager for a $10 deposit.
Swimming Pool:The pool is closed for the season. We planning to do some minor
maintenance around the pool area this winter and it should be in great shape for the spring.
If you see anything in the neighborhood that needs attention or maintenance, please contact Jesse. Pool keys are also available from the manager for a $10 deposit.
Cat Mountain ClubhouseWe will be voting on three open Board positions…we are always
looking for talented folks to guide the HOA in the coming years.City of Austin District 10 Council Member, Sheri Gallo will be
dropping by to speak to the group regarding what’s been happening at City Hall and future issues facing our district.
We will review the past year’s financials, discuss the activities of the year and give guidance to where we are headed and the challenges we face.
We are also looking for volunteers to help with the social committee, welcoming committee, communications committee (social media, website, and newsletter) and the environmental control committee.
Refreshments and dessert will be served.
Cat Mountain Homeowners Association
ANNUAL MEETING
Congratulations go out to Cat Mountain Resident Delia Adams on her son Elijah Dow Merritt’s first gallery opening last month.
The event he ld a t the Alternative Space Gallery on January 9, 2016 and showcased 10 of his original photographs.
E l i j a h i s a s e n i o r a t Huntington-Surrey High School and will graduate in May of 2016 and plans to attend St. Edwards University with double major in photography and sociology.
He has done numerous works for the Cat Mountain Homeowners Association and is available for any photo needs Cat Mountain Residents may have.
For more information contact Elijah Dow Merritt, Photographer 512.608.5561 or [email protected]
FEBRUARY Wednesday, February 3 Free Yoga 6:00-7:00 PM ClubhouseMonday, February 8 HOA Board Meeting 6:30-7:30 PM ClubhouseWednesday, February 10 Free Yoga 6:00-7:00 PM ClubhouseTuesday, February 16 Book Club Gathering 6:30-7:30 PM ClubhouseWednesday, February 17 HOA Annual Meeting 7:00 PM ClubhouseWednesday, February 17 NO FREE YOGA CLASS DUE TO SAME DAY HOA ANNUAL MEETINGWednesday, February 24 Free Yoga 6:00-7:00 PM Clubhouse
MARCH Tuesday, March 1 Travis County Joint Primary Elections 7:00 AM-7:00PM ClubhouseMonday, March 14 HOA Board Meeting 6:30-7:30 PM ClubhouseTuesday, March15 Book Club Gathering 6:30-7:30 PM ClubhouseSaturday, March 26 Annual Egg Hunt 12:00-2:00 PM Clubhouse
APRIL Monday, April 11 HOA Board Meeting 6:30-7:30 PM ClubhouseTuesday, April 19 Book Club Gathering 6:30-7:30 PM Clubhouse
MAYMonday, May 9 HOA Board Meeting 6:30-7:30 PM ClubhouseTuesday, May 17 Book Club Gathering 6:30-7:30 PM Clubhouse
JUNEMonday, June 13 HOA Board Meeting 6:30-7:30 PM ClubhouseTuesday, June 21 Book Club Gathering 6:30-7:30 PM Clubhouse
JULYMonday, July 11 HOA Board Meeting 6:30-7:30 PM ClubhouseTuesday, July 19 Book Club Gathering 6:30-7:30 PM Clubhouse
AUGUSTMonday, August 8 HOA Board Meeting 6:30-7:30 PM ClubhouseSunday, August 14 Annual End of Summer Bash 5:00-8:00 PM ClubhouseTuesday, August 16 Book Club Gathering 6:30-7:30 PM Clubhouse
SEPTEMBER Monday, September 12 HOA Board Meeting 6:30-7:30 PM ClubhouseTuesday, September 20 Book Club Gathering 6:30-7:30 PM Clubhouse
OCTOBER Monday, October 10 HOA Board Meeting 6:30-7:30 PM ClubhouseTuesday, October 18 Book Club Gathering 6:30-7:30 PM Clubhouse
NOVEMBER Monday, November 14 HOA Board Meeting 6:30-7:30 PM ClubhouseTuesday, November 15 Book Club Gathering 6:30-7:30 PM Clubhouse
DECEMBER Sunday, December 4 Annual Holiday Party 5:00-8:00 PM ClubhouseMonday, December 12 HOA Board Meeting 6:30-7:30 PM ClubhouseTuesday, December 20 Book Club Gathering 6:30-7:30 PM Clubhouse
YOGA GROUPWe have decided to keep our yoga class indoors for the month of February so please join our neighborhood yogi Charley Devany for his FREE yoga class for Cat Mountain Residents!
Wednesday, February 36:00-7:00 PM
Wednesday, February 106:00-7:00 PM
Wednesday, February 17NO CLASS DUE TO HOA ANNUAL MEETING
Wednesday, February 246:00-7:00 PM
We hope to bring the yoga back out on the clubhouse patio in March. Stay tuned for more information in our following newsletter.
The yoga is a combination of Vinyasa flow and posture holding sequences and is open to ALL ages, abilities & Cat Mountain Residents.
If you have any questions regarding the class please email [email protected] and check out his Instagram “yogichas”
WINE SOCIALThere is no upcoming wine social planned. If you are interested in
hosting a future wine or would like more information, please email Social Committee Chair: Charlene Casillas at [email protected].
BOOK CLUBUpcoming Book Club Selections and special Author Discussion
Our Cat Mountain Book Club continues to meet monthly and has chosen some great books for your reading pleasure! First up, our next book is authored by Cat Mountain resident, Elizabeth Harris. Her book, entitled Mayhem: Three Lives of a Woman, is the Winner of the Gival Press Novel Award.
We will have a discussion with the author at our next meeting, February 16th, 6:30 PM at the Cat Mountain Clubhouse.
Following month’s book club selections will be:• March: A Kim Jong IL Production, by Paul Fischer• April: The Paris Wife, by Paula McLain• May: Holy Ghost Girl: A Memoir, by Donna Johnson
For more information on joining the book club please email leader, Adrienne Boer at [email protected]
For more information on our current book Author and book synopsis see below:
Author BiographyWinner of the 2014 Gival
Press Fiction Award for her short novel Mayhem: Three Lives of
a Woman, Elizabeth Harris is a native Texan who grew up in Ft. Worth. For her first book, she won the John Simmons Prize, awarded by University of Iowa Press, for The Ant Generator, a collection of stories praised for their “sense of wonder and comedy” and “acid-etched existentialism.”
Those and uncollected stories appeared in Antioch Review, Epoch, Chicago Review, North American Review, Shenandoah, and other magazines, and have been anthologized in New Stories from the South, Best of Wind, The Iowa Award, and Literary Austin. Harris was a runner up in a previous Gival Press contest for The Look Thief, a novel manuscript; and in a Faulkner Pirate’s Alley competition for an earlier novel.
She taught fiction writing and modern literature for a number of years at The University of Texas at Austin. As yet untitled, Elizabeth’s current project is a contemporary novel with a historical setting. Elizabeth Harris and her husband divide their time between the Texas coast and Austin.
For more information on the author go to www.elizabethharriswriter.com
Mayhem: Three Lives of a Woman: A Texas Novel by Elizabeth Harris
In award-winning short fiction writer Elizabeth Harris's novel Mayhem: Three Lives of a Woman, Harris masterfully explores the way that a momentary concession can irrevocably and completely change the course of a life.
This story of violence between neighbors and one woman's subsequent fall from grace has its
origins in Harris's childhood curiosity about women who worked as home nurses at the bedsides of elderly relatives. In Mayhem, Harris's authorial narrator recounts a childhood visit to a great auntie cared for by a woman who seemed a strange combination of friend, relation and nurse. "From visits elsewhere over the years, I inferred a category of able-bodied white women who 'lived in' and took care of invalid old people... Stories of wrong clung to these women, someone else's or their own." The narrator senses that "these women" living humble lives of service had arrived at an end of the road of sorts, cast out from both family and a sense of place. Mayhem -- which won the Gival Press Novel Award -- is the deft, deeply imagined, deeply literary tale of one of these women.
Set in early 20th century rural central Texas, Mayhem tells the story of Evelyn Kunkle, a girl raised in a community of German-American farmers. At 17, Evelyn marries Les Gant, the son of a neighboring
family, in a "confident, reasonable, and widely approved union designed for devastation." From the opening of the novel, when the reader sees an adult Evelyn on the steps of the courthouse where her husband is to be tried for castrating a neighbor, it's clear that Evelyn's story will be a dark one. "In fact, she is only a witness and, being the wife of one of the defendants, a limited witness, but she is the trial's most intriguing spectacle, the origin of the crime, the modest, obedient, well regarded woman taken in adultery."
Harris uses the language of early 20th century farmers, as well as her own knowledge of the natural world of Central Texas, to create a wholly immersive, complex and layered historical novel. Mayhem captures the quirks and intricacies of rural culture. Harris does with Central Texas what Faulkner did with Mississippi, or Annie Proulx has done with Wyoming. The novel cracks open a mystifying, violent, hard world and allows the reader to wander through, to admire its beauty and shudder at its injustices.
Sex lies at the root of the story. It is Evelyn's adultery with a neighbor that results in her being banished from life as she knows it, that ultimately lands her in that lonely role of caretaker of the elderly that Harris pondered as a child. But the smaller and more poignant aspect of the tragedy -- and perhaps the true tragedy of the novel -- is that while sex is a taboo and driving force in the characters' lives, it's
one that goes unenjoyed by Evelyn herself. She sees sex as something "male animals live for and women were stuck trying to regulate." And while her husband would like to please her, he honestly doesn't know how. "Lying there alone, he wondered whether she enjoyed their copulation; he could not ask her." As Evelyn navigates the constraints placed on women, it's her necessary obedience to her husband that results in a brief lapse in judgment that causes her to lose everything. The lack of understanding between husband and wife is both perfectly executed by Harris and maddening to the reader, as is the fact that Evelyn is cast out because of sex, which she cares so little about and in some ways knows not at all.
Mayhem is a powerful masterwork. It's the quality of Harris's language, as well as her ability to viscerally summon a lost time and culture, that place her in the ranks of writers like Cormac McCarthy and Marilynne Robinson. And the novel is not without hope. Though upright, proper Evelyn can never reclaim even a scrap of the life she has lost, she undergoes her own quiet recovery; she illustrates that acceptance can be its own form of redemption.
