We admit: The audio on this thing is truly awful. And we introduced the podcast with a song. It’s supposed to be funny, but we have a weird sense of humor. We had fun with the podcasts in those days, because we were pretty sure that none of you listened.

Since when did HUD get into the business of building parking garages? And does a HUD loan for the Lake Highlands Town Center mean low-income housing to follow?

We probe these questions today on the Lake Highlands podcast, as we look into the recent news that the city is hoping to jump start construction with a HUD loan. It turns out that if HUD is interested in loaning money to Prescott Realty, the Town Center developers, it will be because of jobs created by the yet-to-be-determined grocer anchor and other businesses in the project’s first phase of construction. Keep visiting the Lake Highlands Advocate website this week for more information.

Listen to the Lake Highlands podcast by subscribing on iTunes, or listen to the podcast below.

What is the top requested day off of teachers and staff in the Lake Highlands Richardson ISD schools? This Friday, Dec. 2, which is the annual Lake Highlands Women’s League Holiday in the Highlands home tour and market. It always falls on the first Friday in December, and on this week’s podcast, home tour chairs Michelle Harris and Deah McCoy give us a preview of this year’s event.

Learn why one tour homeowner who has attended the tour every year will be skipping her own house this year, and hear about the scholarship recipients and neighborhood teachers who drive league members to pour so much time and effort into the event year after year. (In 41 years, the league has raised $1,611,587 for scholarships, neighborhood schools and organizations, and other improvement projects in Lake Highlands, which is why the tour and market was highlighted in our December cover story featuring gifts that give.)

Purchase Holiday in the Highlands home tour tickets in advance for $10 by contacting Diana Milan, 214.348.8718 or dianamilan@sbcglobal.net, or purchase them on tour day for $15 at any of the homes. A few tickets to the 11 a.m. luncheon are still available for $12; contact Milan for those, too. Admission to the market is free. The market will be open on Thursday, Dec. 1 from 1-4 p.m. and resumes on Friday from 9:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m. The home tour begins on Friday at 9:30 a.m. and lasts until 5 p.m.

Listen to the Lake Highlands podcast by subscribing on iTunes, or listen to the podcast below.

Read Rev. Mason’s thoughts about the Advent Conspiracy, which seeks to bring back the spiritual simplicity of Christmas without any Scrooge-like sneering, and listen to our podcast with him about why his church has joined the movement.

If the demands of the holiday season already are causing heart palpitations, take a few minutes this week to read the Rev. George Mason’s worship column in the December Advocate (which should be delivered to your doorstep starting this weekend). It focuses on the Advent Conspiracy movement,  in which Mason’s congregation, Wilshire Baptist Church, is participating.

Coincidentally, the Rev. Blair Monie, who pastors Preston Hollow Presbyterian Church and writes a worship column for the Advocate in other neighborhoods, also chose Advent Conspiracy as his December column topic. For this week’s podcast, we brought the two pastors together to discuss why they decided to join the conspiracy, and what that looks like for their churches.

“If we could simply accomplish one thing, that is that loving each other at Christmas is not synonymous with spending,” Monie says during the podcast.

The Christian season of Advent begins this coming Sunday, Nov. 27. Wilshire Baptist will be posting corresponding devotionals daily on its website and Facebook page, and neighbors also can request to receive them via email.

Listen to the 10-minute interview below, or subscribe to the podcast on iTunes.

If you flipped through the print version of November’s magazine, you probably noticed that it looks, well, different. The section designs and fonts are updated, with the goal of giving readers more information while simultaneously giving the stories more room to breathe. Also, we’re hoping you saw quite a few invitations to visit our website. (Perhaps that’s how you ended up here.)

The last time we changed the look of the magazine was four and a half years ago, and much has changed since then — namely that we now have this robust, dynamic website with new stories, photos and videos added daily. If you’re reading only the print version of Advocate, you’re getting only a small portion of our neighborhood’s news. So we hope the more obvious, more colorful and more frequent mentions of website content will remind you to add us to your blog feeder, like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, subscribe to our weekly newsletter or even make us your home page.

With our new apps, You can also peruse our redesigned magazine on your mobile device, whether iPhone, iPad or Android. (For the best user experience, make sure to download the entire magazine before viewing.)

Is there still room for improvement? Definitely, and we hope you’ll give us feedback on what you see in the magazine and what else you’d like to see. Email us or comment below.

For those of you interested in things like font choices and specific section approaches, listen to this special podcast with art director Julianne Rice and editor Emily Toman, who were the driving forces behind the Advocate print magazine redesign. After the jump, we’ve excerpted a few of the highlights and provided the full audio version, which lasts roughly six minutes: (more…)

How does Lake Highlands High School compare to other Dallas high schools in terms of TAKS scores and state academic rankings? Are this year’s drops indicative of something amiss at the school?

In this week’s podcast, we posed these questions (recently discussed on the Advocate Back Talk Lake Highlands blog) to LHHS social studies teacher Casey Boland. If your children haven’t been in one of her classes, you might recognize her name from the Hate Monster column she wrote for the Dallas Morning News last fall.

Boland, quite frankly, doesn’t spend much time thinking about the TAKS tests. That’s not because she doesn’t care about them; it’s because she doesn’t really need to. The students who take her rigorous Advanced Placement class  — or any AP class(es), she says — have no problem passing, and she’s thrilled to see the “100 percent passing rate” when her students’ TAKS tests come back every year. Boland’s testing concerns have to do with the AP exam, with challenges such as how to teach American history to a student who recently moved to the United States from Nepal. For her, the biggest issue is college readiness, an area in which Richardson ISD is known to do well.

Boland shares why her “privilege” of knowing her students personally makes her believe that apples to apples comparisons are rarely that simple. It’s a podcast that every parent of a Lake Highlands student should listen to, and that any neighbor concerned about test scores and school rankings shouldn’t miss.

Listen to the Lake Highlands podcast by subscribing on iTunes, or listen to the podcast below.

Tate Gorman and Adam Meierhofer are a couple of neighborhood guys who love sausage and beer, and came up with an idea to parlay that love into a huge event that will raise money for the Exchange Club of Lake Highlands, of which they are members. The event is Oktoberfest, and it’s happening from 11 a.m.-8 p.m. this Saturday, Oct. 1 at the Lake Highlands Town Center, specifically the southeast corner of Walnut Hill and Skillman.

Admission is free, but expect to pay $5 for parking (Gorman gives very good reasons as to why in the podcast). Attendees can buy fair-style coupons to purchase beer, wine and food, and the list of restaurant vendors includes Kuby’s, The Grape, Eat the World, Urban Crust, Fat Daddy’s and Enchiladas. Listen to the podcast to hear the lineup of “awesome polka bands,” as Gorman says, and to learn about the entertainment for kids organized by the Lake Highlands Area Early Childhood PTA.

Meierhofer tells us that the Exchange Club Fourth of July parade, which draws 3,000 to 4,000 people every year, is the most attended event in Lake Highlands “up until this Saturday.” The Exchange Club will use proceeds from Oktoberfest to do even more incredible things for neighborhood students and charities. Gorman tells us tongue-in-cheek that “the more you drink, the more money we raise.”

Listen to the Lake Highlands podcast by subscribing on iTunes, or listen to the podcast below.

On today’s podcast, we react to the news that Sprouts seemingly has all but signed a lease to open at the Lake Highlands Town Center.

We also discuss Councilman Jerry Allen’s recent efforts to curb the spread of payday lending and check cashing businesses in Dallas, with kudos to banks for taking on some higher-risk customers as well as to Allen for championing this issue.

Lastly, Carol recalls her “run-in” with a cyclist during a White Rock Lake race. What’s the answer to this dilemma? We’re not sure, but we have some ideas.

Stay tuned until the end for our shameless plugs.

Listen to the Lake Highlands podcast by subscribing on iTunes, or listen to the podcast below.