Nearly one in five Americans live in
rural areas where there are often
fewer licensed therapists and
longer travel distances to mental
health care.
But hotlines like 9-8-8 give
people access to the help they need.
Find out why the support for that
lifeline is stronger in some
states than others.
Plus Daniel Johnson was known for
his art and music.
When he died in 2019, he left behind
a trove of his work, and some
of that work is on public display
as part of a new exhibit at Texas
State University.
More on that coming up.
The Austin Signal is a production
of KUT News, hosted by
Miles Bloxen.
This month marks 100 years of
celebrating Black History Month, and
one local organization is creating
space to celebrate Black Austinites.
Find out what they have planned this
weekend. That's up next on Austin
Signal.
Hello, hope your day is going well.
You're listening to the Austin
Signal.
Thank you for spending part of your
Tuesday right here with us.
I'm your host, Myles Bloxson.
Well, we're more than a week away
from the primary election day in
Texas. That means there are just
four more days left for you to cast
an early ballot.
And we've got everything you need to
know before heading to the polls
right at KUT.org.
Mental health hotlines can be
particularly valuable in rural areas
where there may not be therapists
or social workers close by.
That includes 988, the
National Suicide and Crisis
Lifeline.
It launched less than four years
ago and has already responded to
nearly 20 million contacts.
But support for that lifeline is
stronger in some states than others.
For Harvest Public Media, Texas
Standards, Michael Marks
has that story.
The 988 system was designed
to give people in crisis an easy
to remember number that's available
24 hours a day.
Every state has its own set of call
centers with trained operators.
And since the hotline started taking
calls in 2022,
demand has increased nationwide.
We have been seeing a month over
month increase in utilization of
9-8-8.
And so we are also working pretty
hard to keep up.
That's Monica Kerr's Chief
Administrative Officer for
HealthSource Integrated Solutions in
Kansas, one of the state's 988
call centers.
She says the service is a necessity
for rural Kansans.
We know that in our rural and
frontier counties in Kansas,
folks might be traveling hours to
get to their nearest mental health
clinic.
And this is a way to
access services right away without
that kind of distance barrier.
Responding quickly is essential.
A caller frustrated with a long wait
time might hang up.
Plus, if they spend two minutes on
hold, the call is rerouted
from a local facility to a
national backup center.
A backup operator may not be able to
connect someone with local
resources, says Lauren Moyer,
chair of Missouri's 9-8-8 task
force.
If someone is really struggling
with substance use and needs
connected to a residential substance
use bed in the moment,
somebody from another state is not
gonna have access to that
information.
When the 988 hotline launched,
the federal government paid for it,
but states were expected to pick up
the tab eventually.
That has not happened in Texas yet.
Jennifer Battle is vice president of
the Harris Center in Houston, which
fields 988 calls.
During a legislative hearing last
year, she said the state's call
centers get around 200,000 calls
annually, and the state needs to
step up and help fund the program.
As impressive as these numbers are,
that we're able to serve with the
current federal funds, these
funds only allow for us to be
able to answer on average 84%
of the 988 calls that originate
in Texas.
The federal 9-8-8 bill recommended
that states pay for the program
through fees on telecommunication
products.
That's how 9-1-1 is largely funded.
Only it doesn't have done so,
including Minnesota and Illinois.
But in Missouri, they're doing
things a little differently,
dedicating money from the state's
general fund each year.
Lauren Moyer, the Missouri State
Task Force Chair, worries about
sustainability.
You know, general revenue support,
it's its own line item, and that's
not guaranteed long-term.
Oklahoma doesn't have a recurring
fee to support 9-8-8 either.
According to State Representative
Kevin Norwood, a Republican from
the Tulsa area, there's little
appetite in the state legislature
for a new tax.
Before I became a legislator,
that idea was introduced and
it gained no traction.
Norwood is now sponsoring a bill
that would create a trust fund for
9-8-8, which would ensure the money
is only used for the hotline.
When I jumped into it, I was like,
OK, we need to make it where
it's not just a short-term fix,
that it would be long-term.
Term and sustainable.
Texas has followed a similar path.
Lawmakers there have been unable to
pass the telecommunications fee
through the legislature.
In 2025, Texas established
a trust fund, but the balance
is currently zero.
Jonathan Pertle studies 988 funding
at the New York University School of
Global Public Health.
Those trust funds are
a strategy, but if
there's not funds in the trust
fund, it's not going to have
that much of an impact.
But it's something that some states
are trying.
It's a signal of effort, I suppose.
Pirtle is near the end of a
five-year study.
He's analyzing the funding of 988
systems in all 50 states.
So far, he's found that those with
long-term, dedicated funding for
staff are generally more
efficient.
The big thing is people, right?
The staffing, the people who work in
these call centers is the main
thing.
He may have a new data point in the
near future.
Missouri's legislature is set to
consider a 988 funding fee later
this year.
That was Texas Standard's Michael
Marks reporting for Harvest Public
Media, a collaboration of
public media newsrooms in the
Midwest and Great Plains,
including Texas Standard.
There were lots of touchstones that
raised the profile of Austin as a
hub for the counterculture in Texas
in the eighties and nineties.
But certainly one of the most
enduring is the art and music of
Daniel Johnston, the musician and
artist known for his bare bones, a
lo-fi recording, as well as
his striking visual art, his famous
high, how are you frog that's down
the street from us here at KUT.
But when he died in 2019,
Johnston left behind many, many more
recordings, drawings and other
creations.
Much of which were collected
by his close friend and manager,
Jeff Tartikoff.
Now, some of that work will be on
display for the public as part of a
new exhibit at the Whitliff
Collection at Texas State University
in San Marcos.
Tartickoff spoke about the
collection with Texas Standards'
David Brown and Whitliffe curator,
Hector Saldana.
Let's begin with you, Hector.
The name of this exhibit, True Love,
will find you in the end, which is
obviously a reference to a
wonderful song that
Daniel Johnston wrote.
But it goes on, the title of
the exhibition, The Revealing
Art of Daniel Johnstone.
And I understand the idea for this
has been in the works for what, a
couple of years?
Yes, ever since we acquired
the Jeff Tartikoff collection,
which was amazing from
the get-go.
I mean, meeting Jeff, who's an
expert and was a friend of
Daniel's, but also because the
materials allow a
peek inside the mind of this artist
that we love but
don't always understand.
I mean I think these materials let
us understand more about
the person, the human being.
As well as the artist, which
fascinated me.
And so to put this exhibit together,
Jeff and I had talked about curating
it, but then came the opportunity
for myself to work with
a young student,
a photographer named Lucas Kraft,
who was a fan.
We curated these original
drawings, writings,
and photographs.
Jeff, you knew Daniel Johnston,
and certainly given how much of
these materials you've preserved
over the years, y'all must have been
pretty close.
Can you tell us more about how you
came to know and work with Daniel?
Sure. I first met Daniel Johnstone
when I was in high school.
Daniel in 1985,
a month or two after his appearance
on MTV's Cutting Edge program.
That was a big deal for Austin back
then.
Yeah, I mean, I watched it, but
I had never met him before.
When I was out in San
Marcos, a year
ago today,
they probably would have put me
in a home.
But I threw all my
belonging into
a garbage bag,
and out into the world
that I've been grown.
I was living with a musician named
Bill Anderson who played in the band
Poison 13 and
Daniel was a big fan of theirs and
he became good friends with Bill and
he began coming over to the house
that fall.
So I got to know him that way.
He'd come over and start flipping
through my album collection,
see my Beatles records and that
was where we kind of first bonded.
We should talk a little bit about
something. A lot of people know
these stories that are associated
with Daniel Johnston but for the
benefit of people who don't.
There are these stories that go
around maybe some of them apocryphal
maybe you know if they're true.
One of the stories was he was
working at a nearby McDonald's not
too far from where we are right now
and he would tuck away
cassette tapes of some of his
recordings that he had made and
uh... People would would find these
uh... These albums uh...
Effectively in their happy meals
especially happy meals
He did a little bit of that, mainly
if it was an attractive young
lady or anybody who looked
like a
musician.
Hector, you were telling me
something about how important it
was that you
didn't want in this exhibit for this
to be a kind of psychoanalysis of
Daniel Johnston. You wanted this to
sort of reflect the
integrity of the person.
I think you said something to me
that was really striking, that you
hoped this would be the kind of
exhibit that if Daniel Johnstone
were around today, he'd be proud
Well, yes, because I
didn't want to play psychoanalyst.
If you come at it from loving
the music, misunderstanding the
mystique, maybe feeling
a certain thing about him because of
his mental health issues,
I thought the materials could help
you, give you some insight
if you walked into that space.
When someone goes to see this
exhibit, how do you lay it out?
What do they see? What do the
experience?
You're gonna see, first of
all, a very bold
for a museum setting, at
least for the Whitleth collection.
We use this passionate purple for
the walls.
We have a beautiful
Niles Fuller image,
larger than life, huge.
I wanted to present it the way we
would do almost anybody
and also try to
show this artist in
a sense at his peak,
but maybe at his most vulnerable.
Those who have been exposed, I'm
always, Jeff, I am always struck by
this, that people who are exposed
to his music, they never stop
there.
They always want to dig more into
it, and I'm curious, what do you
think that's about?
Well, first of all, there's just so
much of it to be discovered.
He was very, very active
as far as his songwriting goes.
He never stopped writing.
No, and it's actually kind of
unfortunate that in his last
few years, the recording didn't
keep pace with the songwriting.
What do you think he made of his
place in pop
culture? Did he have a
strong sense of that and how
did he feel about it?
I think he did.
I think he
was aware that he had
reached most of his goals,
probably all of his goals, except
for ending up with the woman
who married the undertaker.
But professionally, he
probably felt like he reached
the top.
I think he had
given up on being as big as the
Beatles and was happy just to be as
big as The Butthole Surfers.
Hahahaha
I think, you know, again,
going to whether he
felt, I mean, obviously he felt he'd
made it, but I think there was a
cost to it.
And some of the drawings even show
that, you know, where this, this
happy frog, you know, that
we love so much and sort
of captured by the media.
Yeah, yeah. But you know one of them
shows it all shackled.
So you wonder, did it become an
albatross around him?
You know, did he wonder, you I
mean this is the stuff I guess for
researchers, you know, did it become
something that he wanted to escape
or embrace?
I mean, I think the material showed
that at times he was embracing that
sort of image, and there were other
times when there is a question
of how much it
might have caused him some pain.
There's some lingering sadness
because we don't really
know if true love found him in the
end. It did not in a conventional
sense, but I think he felt the
love from his fans.
True love will
find you in
the end.
That was Jeff Tartacoff
and Hector Saldana speaking
with Texas Standard's David Brown
about a new collection of
recordings, drawings, and other
creations from Austin icon
Daniel Johnson on display
at the Whitliff Collections in San
Marcos.
We'll have an extended version of
that conversation in today's
podcast, Show Notes.
More Austin Signal after this
break.
This is Austin Signal, welcome back.
This February, we are celebrating
100 years of Black History Month,
and one local organization is
creating space to celebrate black
history right here in Austin.
Third Spaces is hosting Celebrate
Black ATX this Saturday,
February 28th, shining a
spotlight on the culture and
contributions of black Austinites.
In the studio with me are the
co-founders of Third Spaced and
Celebrate black ATX, Brian
Edwards and Jane Obey.
Great to have you here.
Yes, ma'am. Thank you for having us.
Of course. Can you all tell us what
Third Spaces is and how y'all got
started?
Absolutely.
So Third Spaces is a
community organization
and we focus on
curating and creating Third Spaced,
which a Third Space is not home, not
work, a third place that
you can join, commune fellowship
with your neighbors and your
community around you.
And we really like
to center the Black lived
experience here in Austin.
And so we host community events.
And festivals where people
can come sing dance
live and just be right
here in the community in Austin
And your website says the goal is to
create spaces where people can feel
heard, seen, and celebrated,
especially in a time where people
feel disconnected.
Why are organizations like Third
Space is critical to sustaining
culture and community?
Yeah, I think culture is
the backbone of every city.
It's the backbone of every community
at the end of the day.
And it also helps us flourish, helps
us grow. It helps us kind of touch
the next generation.
So culture is so important to
how we actually just commune with
one another.
And I think there's a lot of
organizations who are doing great
work, like Where You At, though, or
Art is Cool, or Water Your Plants.
There's just a few of the amazing
organizations here in Austin who are
are doing that work.
It's a labor of love as well,
so.
It's definitely something that a lot
of organizations are doing out of
the passion for the community.
I love that and y'all are clearly
making a real impact in the
community when it comes to community
and connections.
And this is like your fifth
year of hosting Celebrate Black
ATX and it's become a
powerful community tradition.
So what was the early vision
behind it and did y'al anticipate
that this thing would grow into what
it is today?
Absolutely.
The early vision was
just me being a
wife who likes to give her husband
honey-to-do's.
And I was like, honey, could you do
this quick history tour since
Javier Wallace of Black Austin Tours
was not available at that time
because he was getting his Ph.D.
Shout out Black Austin Towers.
And my husband Brian, he
loves history.
He's great at retaining loads
of information.
And at that we were with our church
and we were like, we would love to
do this little history tour for the
church. And I was like, Brian, you
can do it. And so it was just
like 30 people from our church that
showed up and then year after year
after year we just kept growing
and adding more
community impact and output.
And now here we are, we got grants
from the city of Austin, we've
befriended people in the
neighborhood and people keep telling
us we need this, we wanna see
it and we appreciate what y'all are
doing. So of course it fuels us to
keep doing more.
Absolutely, I think she hit it right
in the head. This was never
something that we thought it would
become.
It's just kind of blossomed and
grown out of something out of
passion for the community.
Oh wow, I've been speaking to
co-founders of Third Spaces,
Brian Edwards and Jane Obey, about
their event, Celebrate Black ATX,
coming up this Saturday, February
28th.
Okay, so y'all have been doing it
for five years.
You have to tell me what your
favorite memory is from this
particular event.
I would say my favorite memory is
from the last year.
Last year, it felt like a
mini Coachella
in the heart of East Austin.
And we had a line dance class
hosted by We Outside ATX, which is
the local black run club here in
Austin. And it was just
beautiful to see hundreds
of people stepping in
rhythm, stepping and singing,
turning around at the same time,
whipping their bandanas in the air.
And it just felt like home.
Yeah, for me, it was also
last year, but I think being able
just to sit back and see
four, at that time, four years of
just work and connections with
the community really come to
fruition. I think, being able to see
the joy that we put on people's
faces, that's really why
we do it.
It's not really out there to
make money or do anything else.
It's really just to get people a
space, right? So they can feel at
home and they can call home, right.
And so. Just being able to see that
firsthand last year especially when
it was probably our biggest
iteration yet to that point.
So it was just a blessing to see.
And what can people expect this year
from attending Celebrate Black ATS?
Yeah, similar to last year,
we used to have a walking tour,
historic walking tour of East Austin
early in the morning that starts at
11 a.m.
And our black party starts at 1
p.m., we'll have the HT Jazz
Collective there again.
Oh wow legendary
led and taught by Professor
William Oliver, H.T.
Shout out to him and his team
and his collective there.
We'll have DJs, jazzy,
and also male vibes
there, performing from two to six as
well. And we'll have also that line
dance class again coming back at
three o'clock. That'll be led by
Step It Up Austin this year.
And most importantly, we're gonna
have great food provided by
the historic Victory East.
They're doing a cookout menu for us
and a crawfish boil this
year. And so I don't know about you,
but for me, what gets me showing up
to events is the menu and
the food, so we're really excited.
And Radio Rosewood across the
street, they're doing special coffee
menu for use and 10% of proceeds
will be going to the East Austin
Creative Coalition, which is what
Kenny Durham's backyard is under.
Also, I would name also that we
do have some awesome artists who are
doing exhibits there, Jacob Guzman,
The Prophet, Asia Lana Vegas,
just those three amazing artists
that are going to show up and
exhibit their art.
We're really excited just to give
them that space to just pour what
they've actually created into the
community and let it come to
fruition in light.
And a marketplace.
We're going to have black owned
businesses selling their
products and services.
And that was also one of my favorite
parts last year and everyone almost
sold out. And so to be able to put
money back into the pockets of local
black Austinites is incredible.
Come support and shop.
That's what it's all about.
Sounds like an amazing event.
And you guys have planned for this
Saturday. For those who are
listening, who wants to get
involved, how can they support Third
Spaces and celebrate Black ATX?
And where's the best place to learn
more?
Ooh, you can support, we're always
looking for volunteers.
If you wanna sign up, we have it on
our website or our GivePulse,
but also just come out and show up,
all right, and just enjoy the space.
It's gonna be a family-friendly
event. All ages are welcome, all
ages will have fun.
There'll be a kids activation there
for your little ones, so bring them
too.
You can follow us on Instagram at
spaces underscore wecreate.
You can find us online at
celebratespaces.com and.
Keep on the lookout for any other
the the the cool collaborations of
partners we will announce this week
too. So
I've been speaking with Brian
Edwards and Jane Obey about their
upcoming event, Celebrate Black ATX,
a Celebration of Black Culture here
in Austin.
To find out more information about
the event or ways to support the
organization Third Spaces, visit
celebratespaces.com.
Thanks so much for joining me today,
Jane and Brian.
Thank you for having us, bro.
Happy to be here.
And have a good history month.
I cannot believe it's been 100
years. Happy Black History Month.
We only have a few days left in the
month for that.
And that's it for today on Austin
Signal. I hope you enjoyed the
show. We'll have more about the
stories we shared with you today in
the podcast show notes page.
And you can find more from us
at kut.org slash
signal.
Casey Cheek is our technical
director today and Jerry Kehano is
wearing a different hat and he is
the show's producer.
I'm your host, Myles Bloxson
And I'll be back with you tomorrow
on the Austin Signal, so I
hope you have a good rest of your
day. Talk to you then.