Texas Monthly articles from March 2004

Texas Monthly archives from March 2004

Troubled waters: get-rich-quick schemes abound for getting water to thirsty Texas cities, but the state's protection of its most precious resource is mighty poor.(Behind the Lines)
March 1, 2004... THE ROUTE INTO THE WILDERNESS southeast of El Paso does not, at first glance, give the impression of a road to riches. A dirty track crosses a cattle guard and heads into the desert, just a few steps from Interstate 10. A cold wind is hurrying...

Stampede!(Roar Of The Crowd)
March 1, 2004... YOUR DEPICTION OF REPUBLICAN legislators as the Three Stooges ["The 2004 Bum Steer Awards," January 2004] and "awarding" them the Bum Steer rather than the Democrat legislators who did not even have sufficient ethics of manners to attend the...

Paradise lost.(Roar Of The Crowd)
March 1, 2004... MY ROOTS ON THE WAGGONER RANCH are as deep and as long as the tendons that hold the mesquites to the banks of Beaver Creek ["Showdown at Waggoner Ranch," Janary 2004]. I grew up on the ranch, along with my twin sister, my brother, and the other...

Fire lines.(Roar Of The Crowd)
March 1, 2004... PAMELA COLLOFF CAPTURED THE essence of the Aggie spirit with her article on the unsanctioned Texas A&M bonfire [Texas Monthly Reporter: "Eternal Flame," January 2004]. Aggies continue a tradition that killed twelve of our classmates not because...

Bill's due.(Roar Of The Crowd)
March 1, 2004... THERE IS NO DOUBT THAT BILL Ratliff has done a marvelous job of serving his constituents and the rest of Texas [Behind the Lines: "A Giant Void," January 2004]. As a fellow Republican, I salute his wireless efforts and his ability to "work both...

Around the state: a selective guide to amusements and events.
March 1, 2004... AROUND THE state A SELECTIVE GUIDE TO AMUSEMENTS AND EVENTS MARCH 2004 WEDNES- SUNDAY MONDAY TUESDAY DAY THURSDAY FRIDAY SATURDAY 1 2 ...

Green days.(Get Out)
March 1, 2004... GREEN DAYS Austin is known for its music scene and for its slackers (offset a little by the Internet start-up entrepreneurs in the late nineties), but the state capitals is also famous for being green--in more ways than one. And this month--the...

Blues clues.(Blues)
March 1, 2004... BLUES CLUES Once in a blue moons, a blue-ribbon month like this comes along. And your true-blue friends at this magazine will talk till they're blue in the face if that's what it takes for you to notice. Sensing a theme? Yes, March is a...

Root cause.(Festivals)
March 1, 2004... Modern music would likely sound very different if not for song collectors. Consider John A. Lomax (above), In the early 1900's, the American granddaddy of field recorders trekked 200,000 miles around the U.S. to document folk music, ignoring...

Mo' better.(Straight Talk)
March 1, 2004... Fifty-two-year-old blues artist Keb' Mo' (born Kevin Moore) just released Keep It Simple and will be playing at the One World Theatre, in Austin, March 4. How would you describe your new album? I'd say it's a labor of love, and it's a set...

Six ways to Sunday: with one week under the world's spotlight, Houston showed off its lust for flesh, booze, sports, and business--and took Super Bowl revelry to dizzying new heights.(Texas monhtly: reporter: the state of our state)
March 1, 2004... EVERY ONCE IN A WHILE YOU GET the chance to see Houston reveal itself with a bracing, eager purity. Its anxious to please, we-belong-in-the-big-leagues nature was fleetingly evident during the premiere of Urban Cowboy, in 1980, when almost...

The machine age: electronic voting could put an end to paper ballots. Is that a good thing?(FAQ)
March 1, 2004... Can everyone in Texas vote electronically? No. When Texans go to the polls for the March 9 primary, only 12 of 254 counties will be using what are known as direct recording electronic voting machines (DREs). But that number is expected to...

If, as F. Scott Fitzgerald famously claimed, American lives have no second acts, where does this leave 24-year-old Norah Jones?
March 1, 2004... If, as F. Scott Fitzgerald famously Claimed, American lives have no Second acts, where does this leave 24-year-old Norah Jones? Sell 17 million of any record, much less a debut CD of sleepy pop ballads, and in walks the eight-hundred-pounds...

Sunset and Sawdust.
March 1, 2004... Sunset and Sawdust (Knopf) is another step toward the literary mainstream for East Texas iconoclast Joe R. Lansdale, but this offbeat Depression-era mystery still delivers the unexpected and bizarre that his fans have come to expect. Sunset...

Around the Bloc: My Life in Moscow, Beijing and Havana.
March 1, 2004... Twenty-four-year-olds should not write memoirs, but Stephanie Elizondo Griest earns conditional exception conditional exception with her charmingly self-effacing memoir Around the Bloc: My Life in Moscow, Beijing and Havana (Villard). Following...

The Floodmakers.
March 1, 2004... In The Floodmakers (Putnam), Houstonian Mylene Dressler applies a sort of emotional calculus to solve the relationships between struggling New York playwright Harry Buelle and his sister, Sarah, stepmother, Jean, and father, Dee, now 81 but in...

Most live albums are liked enforced community service, something artists do to get out of a bad situation.
March 1, 2004... Most live albums are liked enforced community service, something artists do to get out of a bad situation. But there's no contract fulfillment in mind on James McMurtry's incinerator, Live in Aught-Three (Compadre. It would be easy to dismiss...

Benjamin McKenzie: the Austin-born star of the hit FOX drama The O.C. on getting his start, losing his privacy--and kissing in front of his mother.(A Few Words With ...)
March 1, 2004... What's the biggest difference between Austin and L.A.? The traffic, which is pretty darn miserable. Unless it's changed in Austin since I left five years ago, it's much worse out here. The air quality is quite a bit different too. And people's...

Hood riddance: Rick Perry's approach to getting rid of Texas's rob-the-rich school finance system seems like politics as usual--as usual.(on Politics)
March 1, 2004... MARK YUDOF IS THE CHANCELLOR OF the University of Texas, but he also happens to be a thirty-year veteran of the Texas school finance wars. As a young UT law professor, he was co-counsel in a case challenging Texas's method of funding its public...

Siege mentality: a hardy band of guys who saw Disney's Davy Crockett as kids have strong opinions about the Alamo--and will defend them to the death.(on Texana)
March 1, 2004... THE CRISIS HIT, NOT IN THE SOUTHERN PART OF Texas in the town of San Antone but on U.S. 83 somewhere between Abilene and Childress. My siblings and I were driving along a few years back, belting out the "Ballad of the Alamo" at the top of our...

Nation state: two new books from big-time publishers tell our mythic story yet again. Does anybody outside of Texas care?(on Books)
March 1, 2004... SPRINGTIME IN TEXAS IS DIFFERENT than it is in other places; here we have to rave about the goddam bluebonnets and remember the Alamo and a whole bunch of other stuff: Texas Independence Day, Goliad, San Jacinto. I can hear the speeches now....

This land is your land.
March 1, 2004... >From Caprock Canyons to Matagorda Island, from the piney forests to the Gulf Coast marshes, the state parks of Texas were made for you and me. What's the best way to enjoy them when the weather is perfect for an outdoor adventure? With a...

Conversations with a grasshopper.
March 1, 2004... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Want to really get away from it all? Try spending a week completely alone in the most remote corner of Big Bend Ranch State Park. I did, and other than facing rattlesnakes, confronting my most primitive fear, and...

This is who I am: what I am afraid of is the first thing I was ever afraid of and what I have told my daughter countless times she need not fear: being alone in the dark.(Ends of the Earth)
March 1, 2004... A flyspeck of human vanity in a trillion miles of stone-dead interstellar space; a graceless lump of flesh and fear in a remote desert where nearly everything that I can see or touch is designed to hurt me. [paragraph] At least that is how I...

The pedophile next door: thirteen years after he was convicted of molesting more than a dozen boys at the East Dallas YMCA, David Wayne Jones says he's a changed man. You'd better hope so: He could be moving into your neighborhood any day now.
March 1, 2004... IN EARLY MARCH 1991 half a dozen police officers arrived at the East Dallas YMCA and handcuffed a young child-care employee named David Wayne Jones. At the time, the nineteen-year-old's arrest could not have come as more of a shock to parents...

Good-bye to a horse: my daughter's first love was tall, dark, and handsome. He helped her grow from a girl into a woman. Then the day arrived when she had to say ...
March 1, 2004... WHEN MY ALARM WENT AT 6:01 A.M., I found a paper plate outside the bedroom door. "Please don't wake me up in the morning," it said. "It's 3:00 a.m. I can't go to sleep because I'm thinking about Mark. I've just laid in bed for two, but nothing...

The world according to Bob Inman: how should we change the U.N.? Why didn't we plan for the peace in Iraq? Where could the terrorists strike next? The intelligence and national security guru has the answers you're looking for--and a few choice words about that leak.
March 1, 2004... IT WAS GOING TO BE A DRIVE-BY war--or so the armchair generals predicted. But a year after the invasion of Iraq, the United States is still mired in a conflict without end, battered by mounting fatalities (more the 460 since the statue of...

Restaurant guide: a selective guide to food and drink: March 2004.
March 1, 2004... Policies and Definitions The Restaurant Guide is a service to our readers. The magazine accepts no advertising of other consideration in exchange for a listing. Reviews are written by resident critics in the cities that we list. The...

Bank statement.(Pat's Pick)
March 1, 2004... I love the scene at Bank Jean-Georges. On my visit, the downtown Houston restaurant hadn't been open a week and already it was filled with Prada-toting air kissers, dignified couples of a certain age, and the occasional table of passionate...

Red, white, and true.(Bookshelf)
March 1, 2004... Even non-Texans know that chili enjoys near-mythic status in the Lone Star State. What they may not know is that biscuits are mighty important too. Two new cookbooks have the last word on these staples. In Strictly Chili. A.D. Livingston lauds...

For chow hounds.(Happening)
March 1, 2004... Whether you're a native or naturalized Texan, you should be ashamed of starting your day with a latte and a toaster tart. Get in the swing by having a "cowboy breakfast," a diet-defying spread of scrambled eggs, home fries, biscuits, gravy,...

Case open: no physical evidence. No witnesses. A recanted confession. So why is Max Soffar still on death row?(The Last Roundup)
March 1, 2004... I'VE SEEN COOL HAND LUKE and The Green Mile. I like Steve Earle, but I'm not a prison reform activist. I'd never interviewed anyone on death row until the middle of January, when I picked up a telephone and looked through the clear plastic...