Texas Monthly articles from August 2006

Texas Monthly archives from August 2006

He walks the line: every member of Congress thinks he knows what to do about immigration, but only El Paso's Silvestre Reyes spent 26 years as a Border Patrol agent. So why isn't anybody paying attention to his sensible five-point plan--except me?(Behind the Lines)
August 1, 2006... This is not the ideal way to start a column about illegal immigration, but... I don't get what the fuss is all about. My sense is that illegal aliens work hard, perform essential tasks, and benefit the economy. They are exploiting us, and...

Water log.(Roar of the Crowd)(Letter to the editor)
August 1, 2006... I'm sure glad you decided to exclude Belton Lake from your "Water, Water Everywhere" story [June 2006]. Maybe it will stay one of the most gorgeous, least crowded, clearest, and most enjoyable lakes in the state. George Dutton ...

Mystery science theater.(Roar of the Crowd)(Letter to the editor)
August 1, 2006... No, no, no, no! I can't believe that smart folks like y'all haven't figured out the Marfa lights yet ["The Truth Is Out There," June 2006]. In the town of Marfa, you have your night for the PTA, your church night, your poker night, and, of...

Money matters.(Roar of the Crowd)(Letter to the editor)
August 1, 2006... I can agree with Dr. Leininger on one point: Many Texas schoolchildren are in need of help ["MoneyTalks," June 2006]. More funding for public schools would provide the necessary assistance. Dr. Leininger asserts that his intent is simply to...

Eyes of the storm.(Roar of the Crowd)(Letter to the editor)
August 1, 2006... Finally someone is telling the world how we in Southeast Texas have been treated [Behind the Lines, "Blown Away," June 2006]. We returned the Sunday following Hurricane Rita armed with supplies, gas, water, and a generator. We cut our way into...

Change, pardners.(periodicals)
August 1, 2006... Two related points about the state of the increasingly crazy business we're in. First, like delicate species in the ecosystem, magazines can't survive if they don't adapt. Second, rumors of print journalism's death have been greatly...

Topic A: mapmakers, mapmakers: make us a map. And another. And another ...(Henry Bonilla to restore latinos )(Brief article)
August 1, 2006... The ghost of Tom DeLay haunts Texas politics still. On August 3 the three-judge panel that previously blessed the DeLay-inspired mid-census redistricting plan will hear oral arguments on how to fix District 23, the one flaw that the Supreme...

Being a character actor.(The Horse's Mouth: EVERYTHING I COULD EVER TELL YOU ABOUT ...)(Interview)
August 1, 2006... NAME: G.W. Bailey AGE: 61 HOMETOWN: Port Arthur QUALIFICATIONS: Sergeant Rizzo in the M*A*S*H television series / Captain Harris in the Police Academy movies/ Detective Lieutenant Provenza in TNT's The Closer * My mother died when I was...

Pay as you grow: will performance bonuses for teachers fix Texas schools?(FAQ: BRIAN D. SWEANY ON THE STORY BEHIND THE STORY)
August 1, 2006... Teacher incentive pay has replaced block scheduling and wired classrooms as the newest rage in the state's public schools. So what's the plan? Actually, there are two plans. The first is called the Governor's Educator Excellence Awards Program,...

Coming home.(A Soldier's Story: Part X: DISPATCHES FROM THE FRONT)
August 1, 2006... It's like a reawakening of the senses. The air is cool and sweet, the trees and grass seem greener, and the simple act of driving down the highway--no body armor, no weapons, no fear of being attacked--is exhilarating. My first stop in the...

Highland Park United Methodist Church.
August 1, 2006... Dallas | May 7, 2006 Since the early seventies, the demographics of American religion have undergone a significant shift. Immigration has enlarged the population of Roman Catholics, Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists. Revival has swollen the...

The mosquito diaries.(Minister of Health: JIM ATKINSON CURES WHAT AILS US)
August 1, 2006... I have killed two rattlesnakes, a tarantula, and three scorpions in my time, but in no case was I seized with the blind rage that overtakes me when a mosquito buzzes in my ear. For a while, I regarded this as just an anger-management problem....

Fanfare for the common man: in praise of Mike Judge.(Hollywood, TX: CHRISTOPER KELLY ON OUR STATE OF ENTERTAINMENT)
August 1, 2006... By all available evidence, writer, director, producer, and animator Mike Judge should presently be basking in triumph and adulation. Both his MTV series Beavis and Butt-head (1993-1997) and his big-screen comedy Office Space (1999) have come to...

Legends of Country Music: Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys.(Sound recording review)
August 1, 2006... Texas without BOB WILLS? If you can even conceive of such a thing, you need to spend some serious time with the four-CD LEGENDS OF COUNTRY MUSIC: BOB WILLS AND HIS TEXAS PLAYBOYS (Columbia Legacy). Crowing his trademark "a-haaaa!" over this...

Movie Monster.(Sound recording review)
August 1, 2006... SOUND TEAM initially gained notoriety with their DIY work ethic: They gigged constantly, hawked cassettes, built their own studio. Like many young bands, their early music lunged from one direction to another, finally coalescing in their...

George Jones.(Interview)(Brief article)
August 1, 2006... Still going strong a month away from his seventy-fifth birthday, Jones is currently back in the studio recording a new album with Merle Haggard, Kickin' Out the Footlights... Again (Bandit). You're about to be 75, Anything you'd do over? I...

The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda And The Road To 9/11.
August 1, 2006... THE LOOMING TOWER: AL-QAEDA AND THE ROAD TO 9/11 might be the bracing splash of ice water that alerts the Great Satan America to how little it knows about the radical Islamic culture that spawned its bete noire, Osama bin Laden (the seventeenth...

Brief Encounters with Che Guevara.(Brief article)(Book review)
August 1, 2006... One might suspect that gremlins erased all the peaceful democracies from BEN FOUNTAIN'S office globe, so fascinated is the Dallasite with the world's trouble spots in BRIEF ENCOUNTERS WITH CHE GUEVARA, a collection of eight finely crafted short...

Fear.(Brief article)(Book review)
August 1, 2006... JEFF ABBOTT's star has been slowly but steadily on the rise. A string of paperback-only mysteries earned the Austin writer a bump up to the hardcover big leagues. His second hardback, FEAR, is a pharmaco-thriller about a clandestine medical...

Allen Wier.(Tehano)(Brief article)(Book review)
August 1, 2006... The San Antonio native--a former Guggenheim and Dobie Paisano fellow--offers his fourth novel, Tehano. The lively, sprawling fiction is set in Texas's tumultuous post-Civil War period. What about this era appealed to your novelist...

Dinner theater.(Buy This Now: AMY PRINCE ON THE THINGS YOU CAN'T LIVE WITHOUT)
August 1, 2006... Pioneers, anglers, poets, and fiddlers have long lauded the natural beauty of the Hill Country and onward west. Now the Texas landscape--our creeks, sunsets, and dirt--has inspired something that's anything but organic: plastic dishes. A...

South Padre Island: it's not just for kids.(Street Smarts: A QUICKIE GUIDE TO ...)
August 1, 2006... 1 Whether you are looking for a soothing wind chime or a flashy spinning wheel to go in the yard, B&S KITES carries it. The number of kites to choose from is daunting, so save yourself some time and ask for assistance. That way you won't end up...

Joe Allbaugh: "they take a shot at the president indirectly through me, which is fine.... It just angers me that our professional journalists have accepted lower standards. I feel like Sergeant Friday: 'Just the facts, ma'am.' We can make up our own damn minds.".(Interview)
August 1, 2006... You're notoriously press shy, You didn't give a lot of interviews while you were in the public sector, and certainly not since leaving your last government post. That wasn't my job. I wasn't hired to be a press person. If they were going...

The old college try: before he graduates--or goes back to the graveyard shift at the gas station--a 23-year-old mayor is working to make life better in his impoverished hometown.(Letter From El Cenizo)
August 1, 2006... The call about the produce in the roadway came into El Cenizo's city hall late on a Wednesday morning. Heads of lettuce were lying out in the street, a concerned citizen reported, posing who knew what kind of health risk. Magdalena Gonzales,...

My father's war: as a naval officer at Okinawa, my dad survived one of the most hellish battles of World War II. What he learned there tells us everything we need to know about Iraq.
August 1, 2006... Like almost all the civilian architects of our war in Iraq, including the president, vice president, and Secretary of Defense, everything I know about actual combat I learned secondhand. I once sat in a tiny Pentagon office with the late,...

96 minutes: on August 1, 1966, Charles Whitman climbed to the top of the University of Texas Tower and started firing--and the rest, literally, is history. Here's what happened on that fateful day, in the words of more than three dozen people who got shot, fired back, lost loved ones, saved lives by risking their own, and otherwise witnessed the nation's first mass murder in a public place.
August 1, 2006... ON THE MORNING of August 1, 1966, not long before summer classes at the University of Texas at Austin were about to let out for lunch, an architectural engineering major named Charles Whitman arrived at the Tower dressed as a maintenance man....

The bad guy with the badge: Conrado Cantu called himself "the people's sheriff." He spoke to schoolchildren about the evils of drugs and patrolled the dark back roads to prevent crime. But all his charisma couldn't hide the sad truth that he was yet another crooked South Texas lawman who betrayed his community.
August 1, 2006... It WAS JUST PAST TWO O'CLOCK ON AN EARLY spring day in 2004 when the Cameron County Sheriff's Department received a call from a desperate woman. Her brother-in-law was holding her sister hostage inside their home in Olmito, a normally serene...

Light in the darkness: in the stunning series of photographs, James Evans captures the rugged landscapes of Big Bend when nearly everyone--and everything--is sound asleep. Himself included.
August 1, 2006... The title of James Evans's new series of Big Bend photographs, "The Camera Never Sleeps," begs an easy joke: Doesn't the camera have to stay awake when the lazy cameraman is so often out like a light? It's a crack Evans makes himself. If you've...

American idol: twenty years ago he was a ditchdigger living on welfare. Today he's one of the most powerful--and one of the richest--preachers in America. Can T.D. Jakes get an amen?(Biography)
August 1, 2006... In 1998 "New York-Times" religion writer Laurie Goodstein called to ask me a familiar question: "Who is going to be the next Billy Graham?" More specifically, she asked if I thought that T.D. Jakes was a likely candidate to assume the mantle of...

Free for all: a tank of gas now costs as much as your first car. Your utility bill equals the gross domestic product of Luxembourg. But Who says you can't afford to have fun? We searched high and low for the best museums, meals, music, movies, and more that won't cost you one red cent.
August 1, 2006... Food and drink The Big Texan Steak Ranch, in Amarillo, has been giving away 72-ounce top sirloin steaks, complete with baked potato, salad, roll, and shrimp cocktail, since 1960. The catch? You have to eat it all in an hour or less,...

You're driving home after Thanks-giving on Interstate 10.(Brief article)
August 1, 2006... You're driving home after Thanks-giving on Interstate 10. Somewhere between Austin and El Paso you realize you're sick of microwaved burritos and, even if you weren't, you've spent your last nickel on gas. Now's the time to heed the call of the...

Are you an Internet-oholic?(Etc.)
August 1, 2006... Are you an Internet-oholic? If so, stay out of Austin, a major enabler ranked second in the nation for wireless connections. But temptation lurks across the entire state, with Wi-Fi hotspots popping up from Abilene to Wichita Falls....

To earn the coveted title of Texas Master Gardener, you must complete a fifty-hour Texas Cooperative Extension course that covers the secrets of weed control, fruit production, lawn care, and other botanical challenges.(Brief article)
August 1, 2006... To earn the coveted title of Texas Master Gardener, you must complete a fifty-hour Texas Cooperative Extension course that covers the secrets of weed control, fruit production, lawn care, and other botanical challenges. Then you must complete...

Texas fish don't want you to know about the Junior Angler and Advanced Fishing Clinic classes or the fly-fishing workshops taught by Texas Parks and Wildlife at various locations throughout the year.(Etc.)
August 1, 2006... Texas fish don't want you to know about the Junior Angler and Advanced Fishing Clinic classes or the fly-fishing workshops taught by Texas Parks and Wildlife at various locations throughout the year. Largemouth bass, in particular, wish people...

Considering the scenes of wine-samplings-gone-wrong in the movie Sideways, who could blame a winery for pulling the plug on free tastings entirely?(Etc.)
August 1, 2006... Considering the scenes of wine-samplings-gone-wrong in the movie Sideways, who could blame a winery for pulling the plug on free tastings entirely? Then again, how else can Becker Vineyards, in Stonewall, hook you on its Viognier or Val Verde...

Texans who are unable to read standard print because of visual, physical, or reading disabilities can borrow audio, large-print, and Braille books from the Texas State Library Talking Books Program, which includes 80,000 titles, from best-selling novels to biographies, and eighty-plus magazines.(Etc.)
August 1, 2006... Texans who are unable to read standard print because of visual, physical, or reading disabilities can borrow audio, large-print, and Braille books from the Texas State Library Talking Books Program, which includes 80,000 titles, from...

The state's free museums--from big-city contemporary to tiny-county historical--could sate a culture vulture for years.(Etc.)
August 1, 2006... The state's free museums--from big-city contemporary to tiny-county historical--could sate a culture vulture for years. Thankfully, the Texas Association of Museums has information on hundreds of museums, some always free and almost all of...

You can forget picking up any free samples from the Bureau of Engraving and Printing's Western Currency Facility, in Fort Worth, but the 45-minute tour is an exquisitely cheap education on the moneymaking process.(Etc.)
August 1, 2006... You can forget picking up any free samples from the Bureau of Engraving and Printing's Western Currency Facility, in Fort Worth, but the 45-minute tour is an exquisitely cheap education on the moneymaking process. (Warning: Don't try this at...

Regardless of the weather, anywhere from twenty to a hundred participants--adults, children, even pets--show up at the Ridge Oak Drive scenic overlook.(Etc.)
August 1, 2006... Regardless of the weather, anywhere from twenty to a hundred participants--adults, children, even pets--show up at the Ridge Oak Drive scenic overlook, in Austin, during the full moon for an hour of gentle stretching led by yoga instructor...

My name is Tonnyre Thomas Joe.(ranch life)
August 1, 2006... I live on the Thomas Ranch, which is in Kenedy and Willacy countries, just north of the Rio Grande Valley. It is a Family Land Heritage Ranch, which means it has been owned and continuously operated by the same family for more than a hundred...

Shinsei: Dallas.(PAT'S PICK)
August 1, 2006... IN MY 31 YEARS AS A REStaurant reviewer, I've never seen this before: The wives of two of the most famous chefs in Dallas have gotten together and opened their own restaurant. No, they're not cooking, but they are definitely running the show,...

New + noteworthy: a Mexican shrimp cocktail in Dallas; prime rib in Tyler.
August 1, 2006... Austin CRU This wine bar from Dallas is our kind of place, even though that's heresy to admit in Austin. The civilized space is outfitted with bare oak tables and banquettes, and the grazing menu offers wine flights (samples), cheese...

The Filter: dining.(Brief article)
August 1, 2006... POLICIES AND DEFINITIONS The Filter: Dining 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 list and are...

Shakespeare Festivals: Houston, Odessa, Winedale.(JORDAN'S PICK)
August 1, 2006... WHAT IS IT about this time of the year * That breeds such great love for thee, O Shakespeare? * 'Tis said the sun's heat doth render one giddy * Is it more likely your verses so witty?. * In hamlets, in towns, no thought for the weather * All...

The Filter: events: where to go, what to do, who to see.
August 1, 2006... Focus Group SAN ANTONIO Photography as medium has reached maximum saturation. Any snap-happy amateur now owns at least three cameras--the requisite digital, the point-and-click cell phone, the webcam--to document every Kodak-worthy (or...

Marketplace.
August 1, 2006... Texas Real Estate Hill Country NEW LAKE TRAVIS Luxury Town Homes for Lease Scenic view Boat access, golf, and workout facilities close by $1,150. 512-327-1812. NEW HOME in Ridge Harbor Views of Lake Travis! Versatile floor plan,...

Pedal to my mettle: can it really be that Teen Boy is old enough to drive?
August 1, 2006... I never wanted a Humvee before; I considered it the automotive equivalent of a Hardee's Monster Thickburger. Then my child started learning to drive. Suddenly, the Humvee seemed a perfectly reasonable mode of transport. In fact, I'm now...