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Spamarama
Spamarama (SPAMARAMA) is a long-time annual festival and competitive cookoff held in Austin, Texas, during 1978–2007 and in 2019 and 2022 to celebrate Spam, the branded canned pork product. The festival includes a Spam cook-off, Spam themed competitive activities, and live music. Origin The Spamarama began in 1978 as a joke between David Arnsberger and his friend, Dick Terry, who believed there were too many barbecue and chili cook-offs. The frequent contests seemed silly to them and they felt that a real challenge would be to make dishes with Spam. “If you could make Spam edible, that would be a feat,” Arnsberger explained. The two friends considered calling the event a "SPAM-Off", but the name quickly became Spamarama. Arnsberger was one of the frontmen for the Uranium Savages, the Austin parody band, which had a gig already booked on April Fools' Day at Soap Creek Saloon on Bee Cave Road. They piggy-backed their festival idea on to the band's gig and 300 spectator ...
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Spam (food)
Spam (stylized as SPAM) is a brand of canned cooked pork made by Hormel Foods Corporation. It was introduced by Hormel in 1937 and gained popularity worldwide after its use during World War II. By 2003, Spam was sold in 41 countries on six continents and trademarked in over 100 countries. Spam's basic ingredients are primarily pork shoulder and ham, with salt, water, modified potato starch (as a binder), sugar, and sodium nitrite (as a preservative). Natural gelatin is formed during cooking in its tins on the production line. Concerns about Spam's nutritional attributes have been raised, in large part due to its high content of fat, sodium, and preservatives. Spam has affected popular culture, including a Monty Python skit, which repeated the name many times, leading to its name being borrowed to describe unsolicited electronic messages, especially email. It is occasionally celebrated in festivals such as Austin's Spamarama. History Hormel introduced Spam on July 5, 1 ...
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Nick Barbaro
Nick Barbaro (born Nicolo Rafael Barbaro; 1952) is co-creator of the South by Southwest (SXSW) festival and co-founder of ''The Austin Chronicle''. Barbaro's contributions have helped define the Austin, Texas music community. He co-owns the South by Southwest festival, which he co-created with Roland Swenson, Louis Black and Louis Jay Meyers in 1987.A Guide to the South By Southwest, Inc., Records, 1987–1997
Briscoe Center for American History, The University of Texas at Austin He is also the publisher of ''The Austin Chronicle'', an alternative weekly newspaper, which he founded in 1981 with .

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Austin, Texas
Austin is the capital city of the U.S. state of Texas, as well as the county seat, seat and largest city of Travis County, Texas, Travis County, with portions extending into Hays County, Texas, Hays and Williamson County, Texas, Williamson counties. Incorporated on December 27, 1839, it is the List of United States cities by population, 11th-most-populous city in the United States, the List of cities in Texas by population, fourth-most-populous city in Texas, the List of capitals in the United States, second-most-populous state capital city, and the most populous state capital that is not also the most populous city in its state. It has been one of the fastest growing large cities in the United States since 2010. Downtown Austin and Downtown San Antonio are approximately apart, and both fall along the Interstate 35 corridor. Some observers believe that the two regions may some day form a new "metroplex" similar to Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, Dallas and Fort Worth. Austin i ...
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Festivals In Austin, Texas
A festival is an event ordinarily celebrated by a community and centering on some characteristic aspect or aspects of that community and its religion or cultures. It is often marked as a local or national holiday, mela, or eid. A festival constitutes typical cases of glocalization, as well as the high culture-low culture interrelationship. Next to religion and folklore, a significant origin is agricultural. Food is such a vital resource that many festivals are associated with harvest time. Religious commemoration and thanksgiving for good harvests are blended in events that take place in autumn, such as Halloween in the northern hemisphere and Easter in the southern. Festivals often serve to fulfill specific communal purposes, especially in regard to commemoration or thanking to the gods, goddesses or saints: they are called patronal festivals. They may also provide entertainment, which was particularly important to local communities before the advent of mass-produced entert ...
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Paul Prudhomme
Paul Prudhomme (July 13, 1940 – October 8, 2015), also known as Gene Autry Prudhomme, was an American celebrity chef whose specialties were Creole and Cajun cuisines, which he was also credited with popularizing. He was the chef proprietor of K-Paul's Louisiana Kitchen in New Orleans, and had formerly owned and run several other restaurants. He developed several culinary products, including hot sauce and seasoning mixes, and wrote 11 cookbooks. Early life The youngest of 13 children born to Eli Prudhomme, Jr. and Hazel Reed, Prudhomme was raised on a farm near Opelousas, the seat of Saint Landry Parish, Louisiana. His father was a farmer, who struggled financially during Prudhomme's childhood, and his mother was a creative cook. Previously named after Saint Paul, as chosen by a Catholic priest, Prudhomme adopted the pseudonym "Gene Autry Prudhomme" during his youth. His maternal ancestors include early Acadian settlers Martin Aucoin (c. 1651 – 1711) and Marie Gaudet ...
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Liz Carpenter
Mary Elizabeth Sutherland Carpenter (September 1, 1920 – March 20, 2010) was a writer, feminist, reporter, media advisor, speechwriter, political humorist, and public relations expert. As the first woman executive assistant to Vice President Lyndon Baines Johnson from 1961 to 1963, and then as press secretary for First Lady Lady Bird Johnson from 1963 to 1969, Carpenter was a prominent member of the Johnson White House and also a close personal friend of the Johnsons. Carpenter was an ardent supporter of the Women's Movement when it began and never wavered from her convictions. Her projects and causes ranged from supporting the Equal Rights Amendment to fighting cancer. Her lighthearted memoir of her time in the White House, ''Ruffles and Flourishes'', published in 1969, was a national best-seller. Often called the "funniest woman in politics", she was in demand as a public speaker until her death. Early life Carpenter was born in her great-grandparents' antebellum home in ...
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Margaret Moser
Margaret Moser (May 16, 1954 – August 25, 2017), or Margaret Moser Malone, was an American journalist, music enthusiast, critic and historian, groupie, and backup singer. She was best known for her work as the director of the Austin Music Awards (AMA) in the South by Southwest festival and for her career in music journalism and criticism, which lasted more than thirty years. Moser also supported young artists, helping them get started and finding appropriate venues where they could play. She has been called the "patron saint of Austin music" by the Paramount Theatre. Early life Moser was born on May 16, 1954 in Chicago to educated parents, Phyllis Jackson Stegall and Willard Cummings Moser, and raised in New Orleans, Houston, and San Antonio. She dropped out of high school. In 1973, Moser moved from San Antonio to Austin with her boyfriend Gary Kellaher. Groupie years For several years, Moser was a groupie, getting into "where the action was." She often was seen with a grou ...
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South By Southwest
South by Southwest, abbreviated as SXSW and colloquially referred to as South By, is an annual conglomeration of parallel film, interactive media, and music festivals and Convention (meeting), conferences organized jointly that take place in mid-March in Austin, Texas, United States. It began in 1987 and has continued to grow in both scope and size every year. In 2017, the conference lasted for 10 days with the interactive track lasting for five days, music for seven days, and film for nine days. There was no in-person event in 2020 and 2021 as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic in Austin, Texas; both years, there was a smaller online event instead. SXSW is run by the company SXSW, LLC, which organizes conferences, trade shows, festivals, and other events. In addition to SXSW, the company runs the conference SXSW Edu and the upcoming SXSW Sydney festival, and co-runs North by Northeast in Toronto. It has previously run or co-run the events North by Northwest (1995-2001), West by ...
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Jim Hightower
James Allen Hightower (born January 11, 1943) is an American syndicated columnist, Progressivism in the United States, progressive political activist, and author. From 1983 to 1991 he served as the elected commissioner of the Texas Department of Agriculture. He publishes a monthly newsletter that is notable for its in-depth investigative journalism, investigative reporting, ''The Hightower Lowdown''. Life and career Born in Denison, Texas, Denison in Grayson County, Texas, Grayson County in north Texas, Hightower comes from a working class background. He worked his way through college as assistant general manager of the Denton Chamber of commerce, Chamber of Commerce and later landed a spot as a management trainee for the United States Department of State, U.S. State Department. He received a Bachelor of Arts in government from the University of North Texas in Denton, Texas, Denton, where he served as student body president. He later did graduate work at Columbia University in Ne ...
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Austin American-Statesman
The ''Austin American-Statesman'' is the major daily newspaper for Austin, the capital city of Texas. It is owned by Gannett. The paper prints Associated Press, ''New York Times'', ''The Washington Post'', and ''Los Angeles Times'' international and national news, but has strong Central Texas coverage, especially in political reporting. The ''Statesman'' benefits from the culture and writing heritage of Austin. It extensively covers the music scene, especially the annual South by Southwest Music Festival. The newspaper co-sponsors Austin events such as the Capital 10K, one of the largest 10K runs in the U.S., and the Season for Caring charity campaign. In the Austin market, the ''Statesman'' competes with the ''Austin Chronicle'', an alternative weekly. Circulation In 2009, the ''Austin American-Statesman'' ranked 60th in circulation among daily newspapers, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations. Figures from Scarborough Research show the ''Statesman'' — in print an ...
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COVID-19 Pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identified in an outbreak in the Chinese city of Wuhan in December 2019. Attempts to contain it there failed, allowing the virus to spread to other areas of Asia and later worldwide. The World Health Organization (WHO) declared the outbreak a public health emergency of international concern on 30 January 2020, and a pandemic on 11 March 2020. As of , the pandemic had caused more than cases and confirmed deaths, making it one of the deadliest in history. COVID-19 symptoms range from undetectable to deadly, but most commonly include fever, dry cough, and fatigue. Severe illness is more likely in elderly patients and those with certain underlying medical conditions. COVID-19 transmits when people breathe in air contaminated by droplets and ...
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The Smithsonian
The Smithsonian Institution ( ), or simply the Smithsonian, is a group of museums and education and research centers, the largest such complex in the world, created by the U.S. government "for the increase and diffusion of knowledge". Founded on August 10, 1846, it operates as a trust instrumentality and is not formally a part of any of the three branches of the federal government. The institution is named after its founding donor, British scientist James Smithson. It was originally organized as the United States National Museum, but that name ceased to exist administratively in 1967. Called "the nation's attic" for its eclectic holdings of 154 million items, the institution's 19 museums, 21 libraries, nine research centers, and zoo include historical and architectural landmarks, mostly located in the District of Columbia. Additional facilities are located in Maryland, New York, and Virginia. More than 200 institutions and museums in 45 states,States without Smithsonian ...
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