Lanterns in the Works

Glowing night procession planned for Buffalo Bayou Park opening and you can help light it up

When Buffalo Bayou Partnership celebrates the official grand opening of Buffalo Bayou Park on October 3, among the numerous activities will be an after-dark procession of hundreds of whimsical lanterns representing various aspects of Houston.

An alligator, a margarita glass, an art car, even an athletic shoe, all lighted by batteries, will be carried aloft by volunteers in four roaming corteges moving between between Carruth Bridge at the Houston Police Officers Memorial and the Sabine Street Bridge.

Twenty-nine floating lanterns in the shape of magnolias will be escorted along the bayou by supporters in kayaks.

Created by Alex Kahn and Sophia Michahelles of Processional Arts Workshop in New York, the presentation, titled "Confluence: A Journey in Five Movements," is a community-wide project enlisting volunteers to both create the lanterns and to carry them during the procession.

"We really love the fact that this is a community-based activity," said Trudi Smith, Buffalo Bayou Partnership director of public relations and events. "People come together and make new friends here."

In a workshop at the corner of Canal and Navigation east of downtown, volunteers are pouring in daily to help assemble lanterns in the shape of mosquitos, rabbits, nutria, boats, cowboy boots, fish and more. In all, there will be 55 large lanterns and around 150 smaller lanterns created by children in school programs. Twenty-nine floating lanterns in the shape of magnolias will be escorted along the bayou by supporters in kayaks. (That odd number represents the 29 years that the partnership has existed.)

The workshops run through August 14 and interested individuals can sign up for a shift here.

The current flock of lanterns is in the early stages of construction with bamboo and wire employed to create the frame, later to be followed by the application of papier maché and then colored paper. Professional puppeteer and retailer (Iko Iko) Camella Clements and artist Justin Dunford are leading this session of workshops that continue through most of August.

Volunteers walk in off the street to help, some get such a kick out of the project that they return several times. Cases in point, cartoonist and artist Mary Lawton and sculptor Arnold Vanek, who were working on a nutria and a fish, respectively, on a recent afternoon.

More than 50 over-sized lanterns, including this "art car," will be lighted by batteries for the night-time procession.

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Poison pen

Engaging Houston author's new Heights-based whodunit stirs up cocktails — and murder

Photo courtesy of Michelle Hillen Klump

Author and journalist Klump has a passion for introducing readers to Houston.

Houston author Michelle Hillen Klump loves cozy mysteries. Typically set in a quiet English village inhabited by a whole series of eccentric characters — think Miss Marple or Murder She Wrote territory — they don't got in for guts and gore, but offer plenty of clues to keep readers guessing.

"You know what to expect from a cozy," Klump tells CultureMap. "There's a fun puzzle to solve and everything works out ok in the end."

So, when Klump — a trained journalist — decided to take a hand at writing a mystery of her own, she knew it would be a cozy. And she knew she wanted to set it in Houston. Thus was born her Cocktails and Catering series.

Klump will read from the series' latest title, Murder Served Neat, at 3 pm Saturday, February 24 at beloved Rice Village purveyor Murder by the Book (2342 Bissonnet St.).

Her new book, her second in the series, is set in a fictional version of The Heights called The Highlands. It finds her main character, Samantha, introduced as a caterer in the series' first book A Dash of Death (2022), working at a Fourth of July celebrated hosted by a Texas German-heritage group.

The organization, however, is divided on what path it should take going forward and when a society maven turns up dead, Samantha finds herself in the middle of a mystery.

Not surprisingly, the author-journalist, who moved to Houston in 2008 and has family in Katy, loves giving nods to Houston's neighborhoods in her books, and readers, she thinks, will like that they can see the spots they know well — Montrose, the East End — in the pages.

More than that, however, she likes the idea of introducing readers from other cities and states to the magic that is the Bayou City.

"A lot of people overlook Houston," she says. "Or, they think of it as an oil and energy city. It's really this great melting pot with lots of hidden corners to explore. I think I am doing my part to shine a light on the city."

With a series title like Cocktails and Catering, readers should expect to find healthy doses of food and drink, something any Houstonian knows is part of the fabric of our city. Klump herself is a cocktail connoisseur; she and her husband love checking out the Bayou City's cocktail bars, as well as experimenting at home. For Murder Served Neat, she learned to make shrub, a vinegar-based mixture that's used as a mixer.

"My main character is more aspirational than I am [with cocktails]," she laughs. "I'd rather research and write about it."

In addition to offering up some H-Town love, Klump is enjoying how she's grown as a writer in creating the series. As a journalist, she had to be focused on facts and interviews and sources. With a blank page in front of her in her fiction, though, she had to tap into a different creative side.

"You have to throw in red herrings and alternate suspects," she notes. "I learned to go with the flow. I really had to let myself go with the process."

She'll chat about that with readers in her Murder By the Book appearance, as well as sign copies of her novels. And, naturally, share her love of Houston.

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Michelle Hillen Klump reads from Murder Served Neat at 3 pm Saturday, February 24 at Murder by the Book (2342 Bissonnet St.). For more information, visit Murder by the Book online.