Texas Monthly articles from October 2005

Texas Monthly archives from October 2005

Is Wright wrong? American Airlines and Southwest Airlines are at war over the law restricting flights out of Love Field. I know who's right: the customer, as always.(Behind the LINES)
October 1, 2005... If the civic and business leaders of Dallas and Fort Worth had gotten their way back in the sixties and seventies, the flight I took to Love Field on a steamy morning in late August would not exist today. Nor would Southwest Airlines, the...

Ode to Joel.(Roar of the CROWD)(Letter to the Editor)
October 1, 2005... I am mortified that TEXAS MONTHLY would choose the cover heading "And on the eighth day, God created Joel Osteen" ["Prime Minister," August 2005]. While Joel Osteen delivers a feel-good message and may be a good businessman, please reacquaint...

Ten commandments.(Roar of the CROWD)(Letter to the Editor)
October 1, 2005... The good news is that Paul Burka is thinking about ways to fix Texas ["Ten Ways to Fix Texas," August 2005]. The bad news is that Paul immediately wants to collect more taxes with a personal income tax. To his credit, he mentions that the law...

Picture imperfect.(Roar of the CROWD)(Letter to the Editor)
October 1, 2005... TEXAS MONTHLY's illustration for "Borderline Insanity" [August 2005] is shameful and deplorable. The artwork you chose to accompany the article does not address the subject matter. Instead, it is a manipulative compilation of graphics that...

Domestic dispute.(Roar of the CROWD)(Letter to the Editor)
October 1, 2005... I was disappointed that Patricia Kilday Hart's article "Home Buyer Beware" [August 2005] did not discuss the many positive aspects of the Texas Residential Construction Commission. The TRCC was created to put in place a quick, efficient process...

Immaculate correction.(Roar of the CROWD)(Letter to the Editor)
October 1, 2005... If Sarah Bird was indeed a Catholic schoolgirl, she must have flunked religion class. In "Permission: Impossible" [August 2005], she incorrectly attributes the Immaculate Conception to the birth of Jesus. That's the Virgin Birth. The Immaculate...

10.15.05.(October: PEOPLE, PLACES, EVENTS, ATTRACTIONS)(Saint Peter and the Vatican: The Legacy of the Popes)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2005... In mid-April the world waited patiently for white smoke to billow over Vatican City's Saint Peter's Square, the signal that the closely guarded keys to the Catholic Church had come into new hands. Now San Antonio unlocks the two thousand years...

Around the state.(Calendar)
October 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. No...

Fair game: pick a festival, any festival. Every one's a winner.(ON THE ROAD / Oh, the places you should go.)(Calendar)
October 1, 2005... Oktoberfest 9.30-10.2 Oompah. It's not just a music genre, it's a lifestyle. Join Fredericksburgers at this twenty-fifth celebration of all things Teutonic and take on a blitzkrieg of more than twenty bands in proper style: with a...

Egghead heaven: lectures and readings to scratch your intellectual itch.(COMING ATTRACTIONS / The month in letters)(Brief Article)(Calendar)
October 1, 2005... Gemini Ink's Autograph Series: Mary Gordon A public reading, Q&A session, and luncheon with the author of The Company of Women, The Shadow Man, and Pearl. October 6 and 7. Reading and Q&A at San Pedro Playhouse, 800 W. Ashby, San Antonio;...

The books stop here.(COMING ATTRACTIONS / The month in letters.)
October 1, 2005... If your book club feels more like happy hour these days, corral your fellow gossipers and renew your literary vows at the TEXAS BOOK FESTIVAL. The October 28-30 bash turns ten this year and will have a decidedly political slant, with former...

Hear the word.(COMING ATTRACTIONS / The month in letters)
October 1, 2005... John Ashbery, the famously daring poet known for his free-flowing syntax and meditative tone, is a more than appropriate muse for "ASHBERYANA," a new chamber piece composed by Charles Wuorinen and presented by Da Camera of Houston on October...

Monster Inc. Nighttime field trips, gripping testimonials, scientific seminars: in East Texas, the hunt for Bigfoot is serious business.(Reporter)
October 1, 2005... It wasn't as if Daryl Colyer's encounter with Bigfoot in May 2004 was a chance meeting. The gym-fit 44-year-old banker from Lorena had actively gone looking for the creature one Saturday evening along the banks of the Trinity River, where he'd...

Texas myth #665.(ENCYCLOPEDIA TEXANICA)(Austin White House ghost)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2005... SAM HOUSTON'S GHOST HAUNTS THE GOVERNOR'S MANSION. Sam has reason to lurk posthumously around the Austin White House: He was governor in 1861 and was kicked out of office for refusing to swear allegiance to the Confederacy. But the mansion's...

Encyclopedia Texanica: Anne Dingus solves the state's greatest mysteries.(Reporter)
October 1, 2005... Q: What was Dale Evans's real name? it seems that no one knows for sure, A: She didn't either, for more than forty years. When the Queen of the West, a.k.a. Mrs. Roy Rogers, applied for a passport in 1954, she suffered instant identity...

Cripple Crow.(Sound Recording Review)
October 1, 2005... By now it's a familiar story: A street musician makes a series of low-fi cassette recordings, which somehow find their way to a label owner and on to a sea of adulation. Cliche or no, this happened to Houston-born DEVENDRA BANHART, who, three...

Waterloo.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
October 1, 2005... The journalists, politicos, and barflies who inhabit TEXAS MONTHLY writerat-large KAREN OLSSON's first novel, WATERLOO (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), could have strolled right off the streets of Austin, real-world counterpart to the title's...

The Real Deal.(Sound Recording Review)
October 1, 2005... With BILLY JOE SHAVER, it's a package deal. Along with the amiable stylings and songwriting genius that have attracted everyone from Tom T. Hall to Elvis Presley, you get the foibles: odd musical choices, a sincere but heavy-handed Christian...

Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
October 1, 2005... Three years ago, thirty-year-old JULIE POWELL was a would be actress working a lousy temp job and living in a lousy Queens apartment. In need of a Great Undertaking, the Austin native decided one night to cook her way through every recipe in...

Canvas.(Sound Recording Review)
October 1, 2005... If there were a downside to ROBERT GLASPER's inking a deal with Blue Note Records, it would be that he is the second Houston jazz pianist to be signed to the lab el, forced to follow the widely acclaimed Jason Moran. Glasper is a few years...

The Color of Law.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
October 1, 2005... The shadow of To Kill a Mockingbird looms intentionally large over THE COLOR OF LAW (Doubleday). Atticus Finch is quoted at the outset, and protagonist A. Scott Fenney's mother admonishes him to "be like Atticus. Be a lawyer. Do good." Quite a...

Saved by the bell: when I first came to Austin, I fought to live. Now, as a professional boxer, I live to fight.(AS TOLD TO / Stories from Texans in their own words.)
October 1, 2005... I'm from the streets. I grew up in Louisiana, and my parents died when I was eighteen. My mother died from cancer, and my father was murdered. About three and a half years after that, my brother was murdered in Austin, so I moved here in 1992...

Tomb it may concern: how can you secure a plot in the tranquil and tony Texas State Cemetery? Hint: You'd better start padding your resume.(FAQ / Christopher Keyes on the story behind the story.)
October 1, 2005... Are a lot of famous Texans buried at the state cemetery? Well, some. Since the grounds were established on the east side of Austin, in 1851, the eighteen-acre site has become the final resting place mostly for Confederate veterans--who account...

The last empire: a rootless steamboat captain carved the King Ranch out of the frontier more than a century ago. Today Captain King's descendants, rooted in the land she conquered, struggle to hold his legacy together.(VINTAGE / Twenty-five years ago in our pages.)(Reprint)
October 1, 2005... ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN OCTOBER 1980 The two men seem to be floating quietly on a sea of cattle. They ride through the herd slowly, without rippling its surface. The rust-colored Santa Gertrudis cattle make room for them, then close back...

Culture of strife: both stem cell research and embryo adoption destroy the building blocks of life. So why do many religious conservatives criticize one and champion the other?
October 1, 2005... When Congress threatened to loosen limits on stem cell research earlier this year, the Bush administration called in the snowflakes. Rescued as embryos from fertility clinic freezers by families who had "adopted" them and brought them to...

Rental illness: what's it like to be a landlady? I could tell you stories. And will.
October 1, 2005... I am a landlady, which lumps me in the same social heap with grifters, puppy kickers, the Man, and familial leeches. The recent stampede by otherwise decent folk to join me in this stinkpile has me spooked. Real estate investment is the new...

Red McCombs: the 78-year-old San Antonio salesman--is there any better way to describe him?--on football, cars, radio, cattle, and giving away his millions.(Talks)(Interview)
October 1, 2005... You recently sold the Minnesota Vikings, which means this is the first football season in seven years that you won't be the owner of an NFL team. How does it feel? Well, I miss it a lot. We approached this season as if we'd own the Vikings...

Flipping out: two, four, six, eight! What do preachers, legislators, and feminists hate? Cheerleading! Cheerleading! Boo, cheerleading?(Cover Story)
October 1, 2005... They had names like Kaylee and Hailey and Ashley and Brittany, and they all had long legs and glossy hair and tan summer skin. More than a thousand of them--1,345 cheerleaders from across Texas--had come to Southern Methodist University, in...

Keep Waterloo weird: in this exclusive excerpt from "Waterloo", Karen Olsson's forthcoming novel about life, love, and politics in a capital city that very much resembles our own, a candidate for governor arrives, an ex-congressman departs, and a reporter tries to make sense of it all.(Excerpt)
October 1, 2005... His ability to put tasks in sequence was the first thing to go. William Stanley Sabert, the former congressman, ambled into the kitchen, carrying in his good hand, the left one, a glass tumbler. With the weaker hand, the only partially...

Tour de Texas: mount your steed and start ... pedaling. From big climbs to big descents, from rural farm roads to scenic byways, these ten rides are a cyclist's dream.
October 1, 2005... MORE THAN A DECADE AGO, as I was driving along U.S. 90 in West Texas outside Sanderson, I saw a lone cyclist grinding toward San Antonio under a brutal sun, followed closely by a two-man French TV crew in a station wagon. This apparition, some...

Wheel in the sky: fifty years ago this month, members of the Memphis High School marching band traveled to Dallas to perform at the State Fair. One of them never came home. And the town hasn't been the same since.
October 1, 2005... There's a 64-year-old woman in a small West Texas town who walks with an unmistakable limp. People where she lives know what happened and do not bring it up. Because there are no jobs in town, the woman commutes 29 miles to Childress, where she...

I am a student again.(A Soldier's STORY: PART III)
October 1, 2005... It seems like the learning never ends, only the lessons change. Instead of cramming for finance exams in the MBA program at the University of Texas, I'm studying how to handle dislocated civilians and refugees and how to coordinate humanitarian...

Six brothers: and now there is only one. To live through the horrific cycle of suicide and tragedy that wiped out the other five, Kevin Von Erich has relied on the strange code of the professional wrestling world his family once ruled: what's real is never certain, and what's fake is never, ever talked about.
October 1, 2005... IN THE SUMMER OF 1983, the center of the pro wrestling universe, in terms of time and space, was indisputably Friday night, Dallas, Texas, in a white, corrugated-till coliseum called the Sportatorium. Grandfathered out of city building codes...

Pat's pick: Gravitas.(October: PEOPLE, PLACES, EVENTS, ATTRACTIONS)(Restaurant Review)
October 1, 2005... Take one defunct sandwich shop and strip it down to its architectural skivvies (bare industrial bricks and concrete floor). Add designer elements like found copper lighting fixtures, displays of artisan bread (pictured), and Texas mesquite...

The dining guide.(Directory)
October 1, 2005... 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' identities are kept anonymous...

Shrimply the best.(SHELF LIFE / We read cookbooks so you dont's have to)
October 1, 2005... It's one thing to have a dream, quite another to keep it alive. To celebrate three decades in business, the founders of Austin's best-known interior Mexican restaurant have compiled their first cookbook. Fonda San Miguel: Thirty Years of Food...

Read 'em and weep: the chardonnay I like. The snacks I like. My only problem with Book Club is the book.(BOOK CLUB)
October 1, 2005... The first rule of Book Club is you do not talk about Book Club. The second rule of Book Club is you DO NOT talk about Book Club. The final rule of Book Club is, if this is your first night at Book Club, you have to READ THE BOOK. After the...