Texas Monthly articles from August 2008

Texas Monthly archives from August 2008

Be cool.
August 1, 2008... A narrated slide show of the best swimming holes in Texas.

Test the waters.
August 1, 2008... A video of Charlie Llewellin at his favorite summer spot, Barton Springs Pool, in Austin.

Dance lessons.
August 1, 2008... A photo essay of the prom at the Texas School for the Blind, narrated by Sarah Wilson.

Talking heads.
August 1, 2008... Eileen Smith live-blogs the Democratic National Convention from Denver, and Paul Burka live-blogs the Republican National Convention from Minneapolis-St. Paul.

Wining and dining.
August 1, 2008... Check out our new online dining guide, and search Texas restaurant listings by city, cuisine, and price.

Flashback.(Brief article)
August 1, 2008... Topical stories from our archives: Who William Broyles and Paul Burka voted for (and why) in the 2004 presidential election in "Stop Beating Around the Bush" (November 2004); Karen Olsson's portrait of a child's lost senses in "About a Girl"...

Blog on.
August 1, 2008... TEXAS MONTHLY editors strip the 2008 election bare on the irreverent Poll Dancing blog. Paul Burka talks politics, and Evan Smith speaks his mind. Plus: Patricia Sharpe on food and our editors on sports.

Podcasts.
August 1, 2008... Sarah Bird reads her latest column, Jill Patterson reads Chapter Eight of "Twin Wells," and Pamela Colloff reads "Out of Sight."

The final bell: is closing an underperforming high school part of the solution to what ails our public education system--or part of the problem?(Behind the Lines)
August 1, 2008... Seven years ago, I watched my daughter, Janet, receive her diploma from Johnston High School, in East Austin. No parent will ever do that again: In June, Johnston ceased to exist. A few days before this year's graduation ceremony, Texas...

Second helpings.(Roar of the Crowd)(Letter to the editor)
August 1, 2008... I enjoyed your barbecue story and am planning my summer trips so that they include stops at some from the top five on your list. ["BBQ08" June 2008]. But I must say that y'all missed a great one: Martin's Place in Bryan. Matt Wiederstein...

In the name of the father.(Roar of the Crowd)(Letter to the editor)
August 1, 2008... I just finished your stellar article "The Man Who Wasn't There" [June 2008]. What an insight into the forties and its effects on Mr. Burka and his family. I, at 63, feel extremely fortunate to still have my dad in my life, appreciating him even...

Security counsel.(Roar of the Crowd)(Letter to the editor)
August 1, 2008... I'd like to congratulate you on your article "The Risk Premium" [June 2008]. I have worked as an oil support helicopter pilot for well over thirty years now. I started in the North Sea, moved on to Iran and then to Nigeria, where I have spent...

Support hose.(Roar of the Crowd)(Letter to the editor)
August 1, 2008... You mentioned in your latest installment of the Green Guinea Pig that you're able to keep your flowers blooming with spot watering [June 2008]. When it comes to conservation, Xeriscaping and rain-barrel water collection are a perfect...

Fundamental mistake.(Roar of the Crowd)(Letter to the editor)
August 1, 2008... It is sad that the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints community continues to be plagued by coverage from reporters who fail to do a reasonable amount of research on the facts of the case and instead choose to believe...

A patriot act.(Editor's Letter)(voter registration)
August 1, 2008... As I type these words, it is July 4--a day filled with bunting, parades, hot dogs, and political candidates slyly impugning one another's patriotism. It is also a day to contemplate what this country of ours owes us, and what we owe it. The...

Heart's home.(In the Chute)(Lyndon B. Johnson's ranch)
August 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] DECORUM INSISTS that you never ask a man the size of his spread. But Lyndon B. Johnson didn't seem to mind fielding inquiries about his ranch near Stonewall (2,700 acres, if you must know). In fact, his tours of the...

Treasure island.(In the Chute)(Museum of Local and Natural History)(Brief article)
August 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] ONE MAN'S TRASH maybe another's treasure, but does it have its own museum? It does if the object in question has been found along the shores of South Padre Island, where you'll also find the Beachcomber's Museum of...

Living portraits.(In the Chute)(The Black List Project)
August 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] THE POSSIBILITY of a black president has us all talking (and frankly, at that) about the complexities of race in this country. So it's a ripe time for the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston to be opening "The Black List...

Sprinting.(The Horse's Mouth: EVERYTHING I COULD EVER TELL YOU ABOUT)(Jeremy Wariner)(Interview)
August 1, 2008... NAME: Jeremy Wariner AGE: 24 HOME: Waco QUALIFICATIONS: Member of the 2008 U.S. Olympic team / Number one in the world in the 400 meters / Four gold medals at the 2005 and 2007 World Championships (400 meters and 4x400-meter relay) / 2004 and...

Season on the brink: two, four, six, eight, who's your favorite candidate?(The Cheap Seats: JASON COHEN POPS OFF ABOUT SPORTS)
August 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] If you spent more than seven minutes reading Web sites during the Democratic presidential primaries, you probably encountered at least seven different sports analogies for Hillary Clinton's fourth-and-long,...

Jana Faulk, 51: long-haul truck driver.(The Working Life: STORIES FROM THE 9 TO 5)
August 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Faulk was born In Missouri and raised in Corpus Christi. Before becoming a truck driver with her husband, Tony, she lived in the West Texas town of Terlingua (population: 267), where she worked as a horseback...

Trash talk: how I learned to stop worrying and love recycling.(Green Guinea Pig: CAN JIM ATKINSON MAKE A DIFFERENCE?)
August 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Let me confess. I have been apostate. I have been known to forget to lug my recyclables out to the alley on recycling day. Worse, I often don't care, and once even told my wife, "Oh, what the hell. They probably take...

The Texanist: offering fine advice since 2007.
August 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] What are the guidelines for male friends helping each other apply sunscreen? I was recently down at the coast with a buddy of mine. My girlfriend wasn't there, so when I was putting on some sunscreen, I asked him if...

American booty: Alan Ball's teenage sex flick is the year's best movie set in Texas.(Hollywood, TX: CHRISTOPHER KELLY ON OUR STATE OF ENTERTAINMENT)
August 1, 2008... To those who would argue that all the verve, ambition, and urgency to upset our bourgeois complacency has gone out of contemporary American filmmaking, consider the following: In Towelhead, American Beauty screenwriter and Six Feet Under...

She Ain't Me.(Previews + Reviews: Music)(Seven Angels on a Bicycle)(Sound recording review)(Brief article)
August 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Austin violinist-turned-fiddler-turned-singer CARRIE RODRIGUEZ capped her multiyear tutelage with songwriter Chip Taylor in her 2006 debut, Seven Angels on a Bicycle. While the album featured several Taylor...

Rook.(Previews + Reviews: Music)(Sound recording review)(Brief article)
August 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Menacing, grandiose, romantic, apocalyptic: The music of SHEARWATER is no summertime fling. The four-piece band is the brainchild of ornithologist and Austin transplant Jonathan Meiburg, who delivers his strange,...

Two Men with the Blues.(Previews + Reviews: Music)(Sound recording review)(Brief article)
August 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] "Overexposed" doesn't begin to cover it. After innumerable recent releases, not to mention all the seventy-fifth birthday hoopla, WILLIE NELSON again? You'd think no one else made records in Texas. Actually, TWO MEN...

Carl Finch.(Interview)
August 1, 2008... Since 1979 the guitarist, keyboardist, and accordionist (below, center) has led Denton's famed "nuclearpolka" outfit Brave Combo, whose latest project has been to score the sound track for As the Wrench Turns, a PBS animated series based on the...

Why I Came West.(Previews + Reviews: Book)(Brief article)(Book review)
August 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Over the course of two decades living in Montana's remote Yaak Valley, Houstonbred RICK BASS has produced 21 books-largely about the wilderness that surrounds him--and acquired a reputation as a zealous, not to say...

Leather Maiden.(Previews + Reviews: Book)(Brief article)(Book review)
August 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Life is kicking Pulitzer-nominated journalist Cason Statler squarely in the pants at the outset of JOE R. LANSDALE'S potent seriocomic thriller LEA THER MAIDEN. Fired by his editor at a Houston paper for personal...

Nick Flynn.(Interview)
August 1, 2008... The play Alice Invents a Little Game and Alice Always Wins represents a chance for the award-winning poet and memoirist (Another Bullshit Night in Suck City) to "work a muscle [he] hadn't before. "He currently teaches creative writing at the...

East Austin: where hip meets history.(Street Smarts: A QUICKIE GUIDE TO ...)
August 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [1] Take a stroll alongthe shady stretehoftheLA DY BIRD LAKE HIKE AND BIKE TRAIL that extends east of Interstate 35. (Town Lake, as most Texans know it, was renamed last year after the first lady who helped beautify...

Twin wells: chapter eight: the break-in.(Texquisite Corpse: A STORY IN TWELVE PARTS AND TWELVE VOICES)(Excerpt)
August 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Arucksack, empty as a ghost, dangled from Deputy Dave's hand. A .357, which he'd pulled from the bag, sat on the table. Baldwin recognized both. He'd retrieved the rucksack from his car before the mechanic hoisted...

Luci Baines Johnson.(Texas Monthly Talks: EVAN SMITH SITS DOWN WITH ...)(Interview)
August 1, 2008... "My husband was in Vietnam. I had a little baby l was trying to raise by myself. My sister's husband was in Vietnam. She had an infant she was trying to raise by herself. I had a sister-in-law whose husband had just come back from Vietnam. So...

Troubled waters: what caused Texas A&M's I racing sailboat to overturn in the Gulf of Mexico, costing a heroic crew member his life and plunging his shipmates into an angry ocean?
August 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] I was sailing in the Gulf of Mexico on June 6, the night that the Cynthia Woods, a racing sailboat belonging to Texas A&M University at Galveston, lost its keel and capsized, sending five crew members into roiling...

Bad Mexican: nearly every award I have received in life has been at least partly due to my heritage. But what kind of Latina can't speak Spanish?
August 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATIONS OMITTED] I'm sputtering down Interstate 10 in a '92 Mazda, en route from Los Angeles to my parents' house in Corpus Christi. Today is the Tucson--El Paso leg. At some point, I veer off the highway onto an isolated farm road...

Springs eternal.(Directory)
August 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Key * crowded on weekends ** picnic tables *** shade **** rope swing ***** lifeguard ****** grilling ******* camping [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] When the temperature hits 100 the...

The killing field: on a Friday night last December, four high school football heroes clubbed two deer to death. The grisly crime rocked their West Texas town of Iraan--but not nearly as much as the Internet-fueled furor that followed.
August 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] IN THE TINY WEST TEXAS town of Iraan, the drumming begins two hours before game time. A dozen or so fans of the Iraan High Braves, already at the football stadium, pound on tom-toms: one loud beat followed by three...

Out of sight: for the 140 students lucky enough to attend the Texas School for the Blind, life is about team sports, class plays, American Idol parties, and prom night. In fact, it's the one place where they can see themselves for who they really are: typical teenagers.
August 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] THREE DAYS BEFORE THE PROM AT THE TEXAS SCHOOL for the Blind and Visually Impaired, I stopped by House 573, a small girls' dormitory on the school's campus, in Austin. Tammy Reed, House 573's sturdy, perpetually...

State of play: what the 2008 presidential race means for Texas.
August 1, 2008... THE 2005 ELECTION is occurring at a moment when the political pendulum in Texas could swing the other way--much as it did in 1994, when George W. Bush defeated Ann Richards as part of a nationwide Republican sweep that included takeovers of...

Bass-o-matic: how a radical plan for breeding huge fish transformed one of the most popular sports in Texas.
August 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] ON THE FROSTY MORNING of November 26, 1986, a fishing guide named Mark Stevenson took two anglers out on Lake Fork, in East Texas. By the late afternoon, he had found a prime location on the north side of the lake at...

Screen door.(PAT'S PICK)(Restaurant review)(Brief article)
August 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Dallas POOR JUNE CLEAVER WOULD be so confused. The pretty, proper diningroom at Screen Door--the two-month-old restaurant at Dallas's One Arts Plaza--looks as if it could be the Cleavers' living room. But June...

Cafe Zol.(NEW + NOTEWORTHY)
August 1, 2008... Houston This charming spot offers an intriguing selection of what it calls "Scandinavian tapas." The lobster chowder with crawfish and the Exotic House Salad of greens, grapes, and kiwi whetted our appetite for an amalgam of flavors and...

Medina Oven & Bar.(NEW + NOTEWORTHY)(Restaurant review)(Brief article)
August 1, 2008... Dallas [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] We like the intimacy of this Victory Park newcomer, where dramatic wrought iron, tile floors, tantalizing aromas, and vivid colors evoke visions of Morocco. A generous platter of pita bread with hummus,...

The filter: dining: our favorite restaurants, bistros, cafes and joints.(Company overview)
August 1, 2008... Amarillo JOE TACO MEXI-CAFE (New) Meet and eat at Amarillo's newest cantina, a bright, airy spot with delicious food. From grilled chicken with an ancho-citrus glaze to enchiladas with creamy poblano sauce, all is fresh and...

Lactation nation: how Austin's Mobile Mama made me a breast-feeding believer.
August 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Nothing can take the fun fast-feeding. Putting the mommy in mommy muffins instantly transforms our hitherto fabulously recreational lady bumpers into no-nonsense, utilitarian dispensers of the Thin White Line, the...