Texas Monthly articles from April 2005

Texas Monthly archives from April 2005

Disaster! New taxes to offset tax cuts for the rich and no new revenue for the schoolchildren of Texas? The Legislature must be back in session.(Behind the Lines)
April 1, 2005... It's a common jest around the Capitol that, as New York judge Gideon Tucker remarked back in 1866, "No man's life, liberty, or property are safe while the Legislature is in session." Only this time, it's no joke. The school finance bill passed...

Power outage.(Roar of the Crowd)(Letter to the Editor)
April 1, 2005... After reading your enlightening article on the 25 most powerful people in Texas, I now completely understand why I am out in the cold, looking in as one of the hapless, impotent citizens of this state ["Power," February 2005]. One readily...

Price war.(Roar of the Crowd)(Letter to the Editor)
April 1, 2005... Like Patricia Kilday Hart, I grew up in a middle-class family in Texas ["(Much) Higher Education," February 2005]. After eight years of undergraduate and professional school, I incurred an impressive amount of student-loan debt. My wife and I...

Webb masters.(Roar of the Crowd)(Letter to the Editor)
April 1, 2005... I found Don Graham's review of Walter Prescott Webb's classic work on the Texas Rangers as biased against the 182-year-old organization as he claims Webb is toward it ["Fallen Heroes," February 2005]. The biggest flaw in this book is not Webb's...

Get along, little stogies.(Roar of the Crowd)(Letter to the Editor)
April 1, 2005... I was touched by Kinky Friedman's column assuring us that our dogs will run to meet us in heaven ["My Pet Project," February 2005]. Unfortunately, some readers may be seeing their pets up above sooner than they intend if they follow Kinky's...

Editor's note.(Roar of the Crowd)(Correction Notice)
April 1, 2005... EDITOR'S NOTE: As published in our March 2005 issue, Gary Cartwright's "Dan Rather Retorting "includes a sentence that closely resembles one written by the Washington Times editorial page editor, Tony Blankley, whose column on Rather and CBS...

April: people, places, events, attractions.(Around the State)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2005... 04.07.05 It has been ten years since my daughter SELENA was killed, and my family and I decided that we should organize a concert to remember her life and her music. Shortly after she died, I promised to keep net music alive as much as I...

Rocket Science.(Coming attractions: the month in baseball.)(Roger Clemens)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2005... Roger Clemens has a lot of reasons to go to work every day--18 million, to be precise-but this season be's outlined two in particular: to win a first World Series for the Houston Astros and, just as lofty, to steal a base. Can he pull them off?...

Opening gambits: what to see and who to watch in April.(Coming attractions: the month in baseball.)(Brief Article)(Calendar)
April 1, 2005... April 1: Houston Astros at Round Rock Express... 4: Baseballin the Lone StarState: The Texas League's Greatest Hits, by Texas League president Tom Kayser and David King, hits stores this week (Trinity University Press, $19.95)... 5 & 6:...

Small ball.(Coming attractions: the month in baseball.)(minor league baseball)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2005... Hot tub seating, Friday fireworks, heroes close enough to touch, and mascots slow enough to tackle: Starting this month, minor league baseball in Texas promises more excitement than ever. The Round Rock Express moves closer to the majors as the...

Around the state: wheelchair accessibility key.(Calendar)
April 1, 2005... (W) The place is accessible to wheelchairs: The main entrance is at least 32 inches wide and there are no steps; restrooms, however, are not accessible. (W+) The place and its restrooms are accessible. No symbol: This place is not...

Jonathan Franzen: the best-selling author of The Corrections will be at the Inprint Brown Reading Series, in Houston, on April 11.(Hey, you! Look who's coming to Texas.)(Brief Article)(Interview)
April 1, 2005... What are you reading these days? I have a preposterously high standard for fiction, so let's see... Recently I've liked The Radetzky March, by Joseph Roth. It was written in the thirties. You've probably whistled the Radetzky March without...

I Inject, your honor, no one fought harder to rid the Panhandle of its methamphetamine epidemic than district attorney Rick Roach. In retrospect, an addict may not have been the best guy for the job.(Letter From Pampa)(Biography)
April 1, 2005... He would stride into the courthouse in a perfectly pressed gray suit, every hair on his head brushed into place, and he would bound up the stairs to his fourth-floor office, usually skipping a step or two at a time. Sometimes, as soon as he'd...

Encyclopedia Texacina: Anne Dingus solves the state's greatest mysteries.
April 1, 2005... Q: After those wacky Norwegians misinterpreted the "Hook 'em, Horns" sign--flashed at the inauguration by George W., Laura, and Jenna Bush--as a satanic symbol, I started wondering what that particular gesture might mean in other cultures....

Black Sheep Boy.(Previews + Reviews)(Sound Recording Review)
April 1, 2005... Two talented guys, WILL SHEFF and JONATHAN MEIBURG, meet in Austin when Meiburgjoins Sheff's band, Okkervil River. To display Meiburg's songwriting talents, they form a second group, Shearwater. Now both top the list of the city's best young...

A Slight Trick of the Mind.(Previews + Reviews)(Book Review)
April 1, 2005... Texas-raised MITCH CULLIN has taken a lion-in-winter approach to the Sherlock Holmes myth, portraying the legendary sleuth as a beekeeping retiree drifting into the mists of forgetfulness on his Sussex Downs estate in A SLIGHT TRICK OF THE MIND...

The Complete Mercury Recordings.(Previews + Reviews)(Sound Recording Review)
April 1, 2005... THE COMPLETE MERCURY RECORDINGS (Hip-O), from DOUG SAHM AND THE SIR DOUGLAS QUINTET, is a five-CD godsend that rescues many long-out-of-print albums and rarities from obscurity. Recorded just after Sahm's initial Texas success, when he bolted...

Towelhead.(Previews + Reviews)(Book Review)
April 1, 2005... Thirteen-year-old Jasira's sexual explorations are the truest gauge of her emotional state in ALICIA ERIAN'S brassy novel TOWELHEAD (Simon & Schuster). She is variously transported when she discovers the Big O, confused and hurt by a predatory...

Hotwalker.(Previews + Reviews)(Sound Recording Review)
April 1, 2005... Subtitled Charles Bukowski and a Ballad for Gone America, HOTWALKER (HighTone), from El Paso singer-songwriter TOM RUSSELL, is not an album of songs but rather an ambitious, historical audio collage of music and spoken word that pines for the...

Dishing.(Previews + Reviews)(Book Review)
April 1, 2005... "We ate our way through the Eisenhower recession, the Cuban missile crisis, Vietnam," and a smorgasbord of other tragedies, says New York Post gossip maven LIZ SMITH of her ready-for-prime-rib social circle in DISHING (Simon & Schuster). This...

Band of mothers: as frazzled middle-aged Dallas moms, my friends and I needed a new lease on life. So we decided to make some noise.(As told to: stories from Texans in their own words.)
April 1, 2005... After I had my third child, seven years ago, I looked in the mirror and I just couldn't believe it. All of a sudden I was shopping in the plus-size section of the store. It was really depressing. I felt like my whole life had been sucked away,...

Dissing Darwin: as Texas grapples with the future of biotech, our long-standing hostility toward one of modern science's founding fathers is about to cost us plenty.(Charles Darwin)
April 1, 2005... By all accounts, Charles Darwin was quite a nice English gentleman. A former divinity student who had once hoped to become a county parson, the reclusive naturalist was so concerned for his family and friends that he kept his theory of...

Making up is hard to do: when it comes to lipstick and the like, Texas women have gone from avoidance to "anything goes." Which is good news for the cosmetically challenged among us.
April 1, 2005... This month's topic is a beaut: the history of makeup in Texas. Overtime, Texas women have moved through five stages of cosmetological development: No Makeup, the nineteenth century's mandate for decent women; Whoa, Makeup!, the introduction of...

Texas pharmacists ... serving you.
April 1, 2005... Contents not available due to copyright restrictions.

The buck stops nowhere: we still don't know what role three-star general Ricardo Sanchez, of Rio Grande City, and his superiors played in the Abu Ghraib prison scandal. And we may never.(Biography)
April 1, 2005... Last December Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez paid a visit to Rio Grande City and performed all the duties of a hometown hero. He served as grand marshal of the Christmas parade, are lush with the Rotary Club, and attended the official...

Thomas Haden Church: the 43-year-old Oscar-nominated actor on the role of his lifetime, working with Brando, and the Hill Country ranch he calls home.(Texas Monthly Talks)(Interview)
April 1, 2005... When you were making Sideways, did you at any point think to yourself, "This is a film that's going to change my career, get me an Oscar nomination, propel me"? The answer is no. I did believe that the movie would garner some attention because...

On the road again.
April 1, 2005... Mountains and desert, forests and canyons, hills and plains: These four day trips revel in the endless variety of the Texas landscap. Come along for the ride.

Panhandle: Amarillo to Canyon to Tulia to Caprock Canyons State Park to Turkey to Palo Duro Canyon to Amarillo.
April 1, 2005... THIS IS THE BIGGEST sky you will ever see. Twenty minutes south of Amarillo, running down the backbone of the southern High Plains on Interstate 27, the land is so prodigiously, stupendously flat that at its margins, at the milky-blue line...

Hill Country: dripping springs to Johnson City to Blanco to Fischer to Wimberley to Driftwood to Dripping Springs.
April 1, 2005... IF I HAD ONE of those blabby, know-it-all navigation systems in my car, I'd rip it out right now. I don't want to know the shortest route to my destination. I don't even want a destination. I just want to wander the Hill Country along my...

Big Bend: Alpine to Study Butte to Terlingua to Lajitas to Presidio to Marfa to Alpine.
April 1, 2005... THERE ARE SOME three dozen mountain ranges west of the Pecos River, and on this drive you'll pass through or near half of them. You'll also cruise along one of the most picturesque stretches of the Rio Grande and through the wavy grasslands of...

Piney Woods: Lufkin to Nacogdoches to San Augustine to Zavalla to Diboll to Lufkin.
April 1, 2005... THERE'S A BUDDHIST parable in which several blind men argue about the appearance of an elephant after each has touched a different extremity. I imagine that early travelers to the vast area we now call Texas must have brought back similarly...

Truth, justice, and the (UN) * American way.(Clark Ervin Kent)(Biography)
April 1, 2005... Barely a teenager, the bricklayer's son wandered down the marble corridors of the Capitol and through the portals of the White House, a lone black face in a crush of Caucasian bodies, and reminded himself that this city of unfathomable power...

Safe at home: I never thought I'd be the kind of dad who'd spend thousands of dollars so that his eleven-year-old daughter could suffer a sore arm, practice in freezing weather, and spend every other weekend on the road playing cutthroat softball. But that was before Maisie wanted to.
April 1, 2005... HI MY NAME IS SAM, I am a Softball Dad' and these are my transgressions. I took my perfectly contented daughter, Maisie; out of her cozy, relaxed little neighborhood fast-pitch softball league and propelled her into the hyperaccelerated,...

Unholy act: forty-five years after the body of beauty queen Irene Garza was pulled from an irrigation canal in McAllen, there is still only one suspect: the priest who heard her final confession.(John Feit)
April 1, 2005... It is the glory of God to conceal a thing, but the honor of kings is to search out a matter.--PROVERBS 25:2 YOU DON'T KNOW what a welcome surprise it was to hear from you," Irene Garza wrote in her graceful longhand, in a letter to an old...

Pat's pick: Jaden's.(The Dining Guide)(Restaurant Review)
April 1, 2005... Jaden's formula for success involves equal parts style and sustenance. Totally of the moment, this new Dallas restaurant sports the obligatory slick fifties motifs set off by exposed ductwork and oversized hanging tamp shades. Some race...

April: restaurants, cafes, bistros, joints.(The Dining Guide. R)(Restaurant Review)
April 1, 2005... The Dining Guide POLICIES AND DEFINITIONS The Dining Guide is a service to our readers. The magazine accepts no advertising or other consideration in exchange for a listing. Reviews are written by resident critics in the cities that we...

The sipping news: give these splashy spring cocktails a spin.(Liquid assets: these are a few of our favorite drinks.)
April 1, 2005... THE KISS Dragonfly, Hotel ZaZa, Dallas Layers are fashionable in cocktails too. 2 ounces Stolichnaya Razberi vodka 1 ounce fresh lemon juice 1 ounce simple syrup (2 parts sugar briefly boiled in 1 part water and then cooled) 1...

Sibling ribaldry: where did I get my twisted sense of humor? Competitive wisecracking was my family's favorite game--and survival mechanism.
April 1, 2005... Wow, was I grateful after irony was declared dead awhile back that I'd gotten through junior high before it went extinct Irony, cheap humor, cynicism--how else does anyone survive adolescence? It was how, back in the mid-sixties, my family...