Texas Monthly articles from January 2009

Texas Monthly archives from January 2009

Emergency! Hurricane Ike devastated the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston. Another storm is brewing over why the regents don't want to rebuild it.(Behind the Lines)
January 1, 2009... Steve Ogden, the sharp-witted, white-haired chairman of the state Senate Finance Committee, is not often stumped, but lately he has been mystified by the behavior of the board of regents of the University of Texas. Ogden can't figure out why,...

Texas vexes.(Roar of the Crowd)(Letter to the editor)
January 1, 2009... Your story concerning Longhorn athletics really brought back memories ["Come Early. Be Loud. Cash In," November 2008]. I remembered how my wife and I struggled for eight years to put our two children through the University of Texas, scrimping...

Scale of injustice.(Roar of the Crowd)(Letter to the editor)
January 1, 2009... As the mother of David Pope, one of the 37 exonerees Michael Hall wrote about in the November issue, I am grateful for this further exposure of the grievous injustice suffered by these men ["The Exonerated"]. I know how false imprisonment-in...

Beach bummed.(Roar of the Crowd)(Letter to the editor)
January 1, 2009... It breaks my heart that so many lost so much in Galveston during Hurricane Ike, but it is the risk you take to live in paradise ["My Frail Island," November 2008]. If there is anything left of my 401(k), I hope E-mall us at...

Battleground state.(Roar of the Crowd)(Letter to the editor)
January 1, 2009... I'd like to commend Gary Cartwright for his wonderful article on the vigorous denigration of the Alamo and the surrounding battlefield by the encroaching entertainment district ["You Aren't Here," November 2008]. For too long the Alamo Mission...

Trap flap.(Roar of the Crowd)(Letter to the editor)
January 1, 2009... What's the difference between Bill Applegate, the president of the Texas Trappers and Fur Hunters Association [Reporter, The Working Life, November 2008], and the four high school boys featured in an earlier issue who trapped and pummeled a...

Dramalada!(Roar of the Crowd)(Letter to the editor)
January 1, 2009... Shame on you, TEXAS MONTHLY! I can't believe you published the recipe for tamales in your November issue [Reporter, The Manual]. Not everyone has the knowledge to throw a tamalada. That is reserved for us few who put in the countless hours...

The E decade.(the past years since 2000 and the Texas Monthly)
January 1, 2009... With this issue we begin the final year of the Aughts, also known as the Two Thousands, the Zeros, the Naughts, the Ohs, the Oh-ohs, or, as seems recently to be the case, the Oh--nos. Before long we'll be heading into the Tweens, trying to make...

In the chute.(Reporter)
January 1, 2009... 1/7 EL PASO CHAMBER MUSIC FESTIVAL 1/10 R.C. HICKMAN 1/25 TEXAS DOMINO CHAMPIONSHIP [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Chamber Made BLAME GEOGRAPHY. Or the hassle of traveling. Or the ignorance of smug urbanites living in the cultural bubbles...

Working on a presidential campaign.(The Horse's Mouth: EVERYTHING I COULD EVER TELL YOU ABOUT ...)(Interview)
January 1, 2009... NAME: Kenny Thompson AGE: 28 HOMETOWN: Pflugerville QUALIFICATIONS: Member of the advance staff for Barack Obama's 2008 campaign/Visited more than three hundred cities in 31 states over an eighteen-month period * In February 2007 there was...

Chad Jistel, 35 locomotive engineer.(The Working Life: STORIES FROM THE 9 TO 5)
January 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] I grew up going to the depot in Giddings with my dad, who put in 39 years with Southern Pacific as a clerk. He'd take me with him when he was working the midnight shift, and I'd watch the trains roll by before I fell...

The Texanist: offering fine advice since 2007.
January 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Q: How old need a boy be to receive the gift of a first gun? Christopher AUSTIN A: Assuming that we are not speaking of some wild-assed hellion who will bury his relatives in a torrent of tiny steel...

Roping a calf: how to lasso a little dogie.(The Manual: WHAT EVERY TEXAN SHOULD KNOW ABOUT ...)
January 1, 2009... THE RATIONALE [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Ask a ranch hand how to tell if someone's a good cowboy and he'll say the proof is in his lassoing. The rope has always been "the long arm of the cowboy," writes Midland native John R. Erickson in...

Washington Avenue, Houston: the once forgotten corridor emerges as an eclectic enclave.(Street Smarts: A QUICKIE GUIDE TO ...)
January 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATIONS OMITTED] [1] What would a gentrifying neighborhood be without a coffee hangout? CATALINA COFFEE is the perfect place to witness Washington Avenue's transition from funky to fab. Crunchy moms, Gen Xers staring down their...

In jazz those lacking a distinctive style can often go unnoticed.(Previews + Reviews: Music: JEFF MCCORD ON THE MONTH'S RELEASES)
January 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] In jazz those lacking a distinctive style can often go unnoticed. Dallas-born CEDAR WALTON is neither a barrel-house-blues roller nor an edgy avant-gardist, but the pianist-composer, who turns 75 this month,...

Their country roots music is as welcoming as a pair of old slippers, but on closer inspection, you find the slippers are full of boiled squash.(The Gourds)(Sound recording review)
January 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Their country roots music is as welcoming as a pair of old slippers, but on closer inspection, you find the slippers are full of boiled squash. If that imagery is strange, it's at least in keeping with the GOURDS,...

Everywhere in indie rock, from the hushed voice of Dripping Springs' Sam Beam (Iron & Wine) to the arranged pop of Denton's Robert Gomez, or even beyond our borders to Midwest wunderkind Sufjan Stevens, it has become cool to turn it down.(Previews + Reviews: Music: JEFF MCCORD ON THE MONTH'S RELEASES)
January 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Everywhere in indie rock, from the hushed voice of Dripping Springs' Sam Beam (Iron & Wine) to the arranged pop of Denton's Robert Gomez, or even beyond our borders to Midwest wunderkind Sufjan Stevens, it has become...

Erika Wennerstrom.(Previews + Reviews: Music: JEFF MCCORD ON THE MONTH'S RELEASES)(Interview)
January 1, 2009... The 31-year-old leader of the Ohio-based band the Heartless Bastards--which earned critical praise for the albums Stairs and Elevators and All This Time and toured with Wilco and Lucinda Williams-disbanded her three-member group and relocated...

The Big Rich: The Rise and Fall of the Greatest Texas Oil Fortunes.(Brief article)(Book review)
January 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] They were dubbed Texas's Big Four for the long shadows they cast across the oil business. And BRYAN BURROUGH, in his eminently readable biography THE BIG RICH: THE RISE AND FALL OF THE GREATEST TEXAS OIL FORTUNES,...

We Agreed to Meet Just Here.(Brief article)(Book review)
January 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] A sense of imminent and unskirtable dread hangs like woodsmoke over Texas native SCOTT BLACKWOOD'S finely wrought first novel, WE AGREED TO MEET JUST HERE. Not for the chronically depressed, it is a downbeat parable...

Robb Walsh.(Sex, Death & Oysters: A Half-Shell Lover's World Tour)(Book review)
January 1, 2009... Sex, Death & Oysters: A Half-Shell Lover's World Tour captures the Houston food writer at his best, offering culinary insight, scientific fact, and offbeat humor as he travels the globe in search of the truth about oysters (including their...

We shall overreach: Hollywood's excessive high-mindedness about race is dooming the sports movie.(Hollywood, TX)(Critical essay)
January 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] When did filmmakers decide that sports movies are an effective means of re aching racial tolerance and unity? And when did Texans become so complicit in the propagation of this increasingly insufferable trend? ...

Sheila Jackson Lee: "there is a gospel song, usually sung by someone with a deep baritone, that goes, 'Sometimes it causes me to tremble.' That was the feeling that a lot of us had on Election Day. Even as the numbers were coming in, we were just holding our breath to see if it would really happen.".(Texas Monthly Talks)(Interview)
January 1, 2009... You're the most prominent African American Texan in Washington, and you have Barbara Jordan's old congressional seat, so this must be an incredibly resonant moment for you--to see the election of the first African American president in our...

Baghdad, Mexico: it's time we saw El Paso's sister city for what it is--a war zone.(Letter From Juarez)
January 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] A story about Juarez made the rounds in El Paso last summer. Surrounded by guards, a well-dressed, impeccably polite man enters a restaurant. He apologizes as the guards round up cell phones and cameras. No one is...

The long goodbye: as a geriatric physician in San Antonio, I've spent the past thirty years battling against the gradual decline of my Alzheimer's patients. Now the disease is stealing my own father.
January 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATIONS OMITTED] February 24, 2006, is my parents' sixtieth wedding anniversary. My family plans a brunch for them in their home. We are keenly aware that this may be the last anniversary my parents will celebrate together. It won't...

The new new deal: how can Texas bring the economy back from the brink? By listening to certain ex-presidents--and tuning out certain Texans.
January 1, 2009... He ran against an administration that believed unfettered free markets would guarantee boundless prosperity but instead plunged the nation into an unprecedented economic crisis. His opponents called him a socialist and a Marxist, a dangerous...

The 2009 Bum Steer Awards.(funny news)
January 1, 2009... WE KNEW IT WAS GOING to be a Bum Steers kind of year when, right off the bat in January, Harris County district attorney Chuck Rosenthal was found to be using his official e-mail account to send sexist and racist jokes and pornographic videos....

Holding Garmsir.
January 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [THE JUGROOM BATTLE] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Only a handful of the Marines in Mustang Platoon actually saw Gallucci get hit. They were three hours into a battle that had started at four-thirty that morning,...

The idiot's guide to the speaker's race.(Tom Craddick on the election for the House Speaker)
January 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] I'M PAUL BURKA, THE SENIOR THE EXECUTIVE EDITOR OF TEXAS MONTHLY. THE MAGAZINE HAS BEEN SENDING ME TO THE TEXAS CAPITOL TO REPORT ON THE LEGISLATURE FOR 34 YEARS, BUT THIS YEAR JUST MIGHT BE THE MOST INTERESTING OF...

Children of the storm.(Erica Alphonse and Rhonda Tavey on kidnapping case)
January 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, Erica Alphonse escaped with her kids to Houston, where fate delivered them into the hands of a guardian angel named Rhonda Tavey. For three years the young evacuees lived with...

Neighborhood Services.(PAT'S PICK)(Restaurant review)
January 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Dallas "I COULD HEAR THAT CRUNCH across the table!" said my friend the Good Doctor in mock alarm as I bit into the fried chicken. We were at Neighborhood Services, the latest project of Dallas chef-restaurateur...

Frederick's Bistro.(NEW + NOTEWORTHY)(Restaurant review)
January 1, 2009... San Antonio The expanded former home of the Eclipse Cafe now holds an offshoot of Frederick's, the reliable and highly regarded restaurant on Broadway. Less formal, less fusion-oriented, but equally accomplished, the Bistro serves classic...

Cowboy Chow.(NEW + NOTEWORTHY)(Restaurant review)
January 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Dallas First there's the concept of "open-range dining," allegedly inspired by chuck-wagon cooking, the feisty cuisine of the cattle trail. Then there's the reality of new Dallas restaurant Cowboy Chow:...

The Filter: Dining.(restaurant reviews )
January 1, 2009... POLOCIES 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...

PoiDog pondering: hey, Barack, get a mutt after all!(advice for Barack Obama)
January 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Dear President-elect Obama, Congratulations! I think you might've won Texas if you'd only been a little stronger in the middle-name department. Middle names are one of the few things we really care about. All in...