Texas Monthly articles from June 2005

Texas Monthly archives from June 2005

Uncivil union: the defining issue of the legislative session isn't school finance or taxes or gay marriage--it's Dewhurst versus Craddick.(Behind the LINES)
June 1, 2005... In his third volume about the life of Lyndon Johnson, Master of the Senate, Robert Caro writes of the indifference of the United States Senate to the great issues of war and peace as World War II reached its climax, in 1944. To describe the...

Time out.(Roar of the CROWD)(Letter to the Editor)
June 1, 2005... S. C. Gwynne's "Safe at Home" is not really about the children [April 2005]. It is about the parents' need to be "the best." By having their children compete for regional, state, and national titles, parents can feel that they have done a...

Science? Fiction?(Roar of the CROWD)(Letter to the Editor)
June 1, 2005... In a word, brilliant! Michael Ennis has shown an admirable degree of journalistic chutzpah by (rightly) taking the citizens of this state to task for making "evolution" a dirty word ["Dissing Darwin," April 2005]. It's high time we started...

An officer and a gentleman.(Roar of the CROWD)(Letter to the Editor)
June 1, 2005... It is easy for the media to insist that our country has not fully assessed responsibility and held people accountable for Abu Ghralb when they don't get the story they want ["The Buck Stops Nowhere," April 2005]. There was no failure of...

Schools of thought.(Roar of the CROWD)(Letter to the Editor)
June 1, 2005... Paul, I am sorry to say that your political analysis of school finance gets a C [Behind the Lines: "Disaster!" by Paul Burka, April 2005]. Our Texas "school community" is not a mandarin community but more like the orphans of a long-lost cousin....

Give 'em the bird.(Roar of the CROWD)(Letter to the Editor)
June 1, 2005... As I read "Sibling Ribaldry," by Sarah Bird, I found myself laughing out loud [April 2005]. I am pleased with your newest writer, and Lord knows she is better-looking than Kinky Friedman, and probably smells better too! Karen R. Thompson...

06.02.2005.(June: PEOPLE, PLACES, EVENTS, ATTRACTIONS)(Republic of Texas Biker Rally)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2005... As the REPUBLIC OF TEXAS BIKER RALLY gets under way for the eleventh year June 2-5, Austinites prepare once again for the low, eardrum-piercing rumble that thunders throughout the city like a doomsday alarm. Some 40,000 leather-clad,...

Around the State.(Calendar)
June 1, 2005... WHEELCHAIR ACCESSIBILITY KEY (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. ...

Perennial pleasures.(Brief Article)
June 1, 2005... Cowtown may be best known for two-stepping and cattle driving, but this month it's the place to stop and smell the roses. Wander the primrose paths of five of the city's most beautiful secret gardens June 11 and 12 on the Hidden Gardens of Fort...

George Jones.(Brief Article)(Interview)
June 1, 2005... The 73-year-old country legend plays the Bass Performance Hall on June 10. What's your favorite song to perform? That's a hard one. I always love to sing "He Stopped Loving Her Today," because people's reaction is wonderful. But I love...

Texas Blueberry Festival.(GATHER ROUND: Fairs, fests, and other reasons to get together.)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2005... What's the size of a marble and packs more fiber and antioxidants in one cup than your grandma's prune juice? Why, that squishable, finger-staining pod known as the blueberry, of course. Pay homage to this season's tiny jewel June 11 at the...

Let them eat pancake.(Nacogdoches Kiwanis Club)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2005... The Nacogdoches Kiwanis Club serves some 2,400 blueberry flapjacks to about eight hundred people at its annual breakfast. Aron Kulhavy was last year's pancake chair. So how many blueberries is that? About ten gallons, donated by local...

You pick 'em.(GATHER ROUND: Fairs, fests, and other reasons to get together.)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2005... Why buy a flat of pre-picked berries when you can do the plucking yourself? Select your own at the BLUEBERRY PLACE, a farm with two full acres devoted to three varieties of the luscious fruit. Sherrie Randall, who has tended the pesticide-flee...

Get out the Vo: before Asian voters flooded the polls, nobody gave an unknown Vietnamese-born democrat a chance to upset one of the most powerful Republicans in the legislature. Houston, we have a new political landscape.(Hubert Vo)
June 1, 2005... Wedged among the karaoke bars, orchid shops, halal butchers, sari stores, dim sum restaurants, taquerias, African groceries, Zen meditation centers, and Persian rug dealers that line Bellaire Boulevard in west Houston is Sally Jo's Old Houston...

Encyclopedia texanica: Anne Dingus solves the state's greatest mysteries.(Texas Monthly Reporter)(history of Texas)
June 1, 2005... Q: I've heard all my life that Texas has the right to redivide into five states. If it's true, then how come the flag pledge says "Texas, one and indivisible"? A: Good point: What if someday we're singing "Texas, Our Texas Texas Texas...

Another Day in the Sun.(Brief Article)(Sound Recording Review)
June 1, 2005... In the eighties KATHY MCCARTY was co-leader of Glass Eye, a peerless Austin band that attracted a cultish national following. Her songs were awash in mysterious imagery and old-world melodies, and no one expected her music to stop along with...

36 Yalta Boulevard.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
June 1, 2005... Former Austinite OLEN STEINHAUER (currently of Budapest) invents a fictional Soviet bloc nation circa 1967 as the setting for 36 YALTA BOULEVARD (St. Martin's Minotaur), the third in a series of brainy espionage novels featuring commie spy...

Who is Mike Jones?(Brief Article)(Sound Recording Review)
June 1, 2005... Who? MIKE JONES. Who? Mike Jones. Its a mantra repeated on almost every song of this aptly named Houston rapper's major-label debut, WHO IS MIKE JONES? (SwishaHouse/ Asylum/Warner Bros.) None too shy about self-promotion, Jones even works his...

Bitter Milk.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
June 1, 2005... BITTER MILK (Picador) doesn't lack for offbeat and entertaining citizens to populate Chilhowee Mountain, the backwoods East Tennessee setting of Austinite JOHN MCMANUS's first novel. There's Avery Garland, who suffers from gender dysphoria. And...

Pearl: Legacy Edition.(Brief Article)(Sound Recording Review)
June 1, 2005... Thanks to movies like The Rose and, okay, to JANIS JOPLIN herself, the Port Arthur native is remembered as a drug-addled mess. But as one of the great white blues singers of her generation, Joplin left significant work behind. What's...

The Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King: Inside the Richest Poker Game of All Time.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
June 1, 2005... In the wake of America's obsession with Texas Hold 'Em comes the tale of Andy Beal, the Dallas banker and amateur numbers-theory whiz whose poker-playing exploits are chronicled by MICHAEL CRAIG in THE PROFESSOR, THE BANKER, AND THE SUICIDE...

Tom DeLay: hey, Mr. Majority Leader! How, er, ethical are you?(PASS/FAIL: Sharpen your pencils for a quiz about ...)
June 1, 2005... 1. Which of the following fund-raising feats did Enron pull off on behalf of U.S. congressman Tom DeLay, who sponsored two energy deregulation bills and a bill that would have provided a retroactive tax break of $254 million to the failing...

The good rats: the women of my generation see cancer not as a death sentence but as a riddle to be solved. And thanks to clinical drug trials, we're solving it.
June 1, 2005... In 1998 Bitsy Brumage, one of my friends in San Antonio, had a recurrence of breast cancer, the same disease that had killed my mother five years before. Unlike my mother, Bitsy decided to participate in a clinical trial to test a new cancer...

Critters and fritters: vintage cookbooks are among my favorite heirlooms, although you might not want me to plan a meal with them. Barbecued armadillo, anyone?
June 1, 2005... When it comes to good cooking, I am the bad egg of the family. Many of my meals are unintentionally flambe, and I commit assorted chefly sins--for example, dumping flour directly from the bag into the bow]. (If my kids hadn't long ago borrowed...

Se habla espanol: as a third-generation Mexican American raised in Texas, it's only natural that I speak better English than I do Spanish. Try telling that to a radio audience of one million Latinos.
June 1, 2005... I "found my voice," as they say, in 2003. Actually, it was an editor who found it and published my first book, a collection of stories set along the border in South Texas, but I was the one who traveled across the country for the different...

Boone Pickens: The 77-year-old iconic Dallas bidnessman on oil and water, making tons of money late in life, and sticking up for the little guy.(Interview)
June 1, 2005... You bought 65,000 surface acres of water rights in Roberts County in 2003, adding to the 25,000 acres you already own, and you recently tried to make a deal with ranchers there to buy 94,000 for what would have been the region's highest average...

Hello to a river: pick your pleasure: whether it's the remote canyons of the Rio Grande, the peaceful currents of the Sabinal, or the rip-roaring rapids of the Guadalupe, our team of thrill seekers has found the best places along our favorite Texas rivers to go tubing, kayaking, fishing, camping, birding, picnicking, and more.
June 1, 2005... Slither Through the Swamps [1] SABINE RIVER BELOW TOLEDO BEND Many miles from the modern-day hurly-burly and rich in primeval border mystique, the Sabine slips down the Louisiana line past forests and swamps like a giant water snake...

Carole Keeton Strayhorn has guts. Carole Keeton Strayhorn is nuts. Discuss: if anyone wants to tell us what the bomb-throwing, slogan-spouting, governor-antagonizing comptroller of public accounts is up to, we're all ears.(Interview)
June 1, 2005... The framers of the Texas Constitution were not trusting souls. They didn't trust the governor to act with restraint, so they made his office weak. They didn't trust the Legislature to be prudent with the taxpayers' money, so they created the...

Happiness is a warm gun: that was the consensus at the 134th Annual NRA Convention in Houston, where thousands of pistol packers swapped notes on concealed weapons, took aim at their enemies in France and at the U.N., and basked in the glow of political victory.
June 1, 2005... THE BALD, MUSCULAR MAN in the red shirt pulled a pistol from the front of his pants, where it had been hidden in a specially designed holster. "If I need a gun," said Steve Wiesner, who was giving a how-to clinic to about fifty people on...

Brooklyn heights: the gym rats want her to keep dunking. Her coaches want her to play "vanilla." So what does fifteen-year-old Fort Worth phenom Brooklyn Pope want? To give the other team a stomachache.
June 1, 2005... DURING THE SATURDAY GAME of the March 2004 Adidas All-American West Coast Evaluation Camp in Los Angeles, one of those perennial shoe-company-sponsored all-star gatherings for high school basketball players, a few of the game's top women's...

Pat's pick: La Barranca Grille.(June: RESTAURANTS, CAFES, BISTROS, JOINTS)(Brief Article)(Restaurant Review)
June 1, 2005... Poor Laredo. Not even its most rabid civic boosters would call it a mecca for fine dining--or at least they wouldn't have until last October. That's when La Barranca opened, instantly creating a local venue for big nights out. In charge of the...

The dining guide.(Directory)(Product/Service Evaluation)
June 1, 2005... 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 list. The reviewers'...

Tyson Cole.(WORD OF MOUTH: Tales and tidbits from the pros)(Brief Article)(Interview)
June 1, 2005... In April the 34-year-old chef and co-owner of Uchi, a Japanese restaurant and sushi bar in Austin, was named one of the ten best new chefs of the year by Food & Wine. Is it really that difficult to slice raw fish? Yes. It requires...

Music to my years: there was a time when I grooved to something other than "It's Raining Men" at aerobics class. Which is why I wanted a last hurrah, yo.
June 1, 2005... When I was eighteen, I got stopped for dancing while driving. I talked my way out of a ticket thorough my incredible skill at being both eighteen and female (a trick I couldn't accomplish now with a bag of Krugerrands and a box of Krispy...