January 1980 Cover

January 1980

Table of Contents

Features

At Houston’s Jefferson Davis Hospital, the wonders of modern medicine collide with the raw realities of birth, poverty, neglect and hope.

Once Texas was a land of fabulous, ornate county courthouses. It still is, but today they’re flamboyant relics in our streamlined urban landscapes.

A look at a longish list of last year’s lamentable lunacies, lawless louts, licentious larcenies, and laughable lies.

Beefing and chewing the fat about a rare pleasure that’s almost done for.

Don’t despair, learn to Think Positive! Success and happiness are only a seminar, a cassette library, and several hundred dollars away!

Columns

Politics

The Panhandle is home for the country’s only H-bomb assembly plant. Aren’t you glad we told you?

Film

A boy and his horse reach great heights in The Black Stallion. The Rose, with Bette Midler, is no American beauty.

Books

John Updike’s problems are our pleasures. Mean Scrooge McDuck returns in a nostalgic comic-book collection.

Environment

Galveston has withstood tidal waves, hurricanes, gamblers, and tourists. Can it survive a superport?

Theater

When Stage #1 opened as a halfway house for theater graduates from SMU, the participants weren’t pitied but applauded.

Popular Music

New records from Texas’ die-hard country, rock, and punk musicians.

Classical Music

Houston and Dallas opera companies could fudge on shoe sizes when it came to casting Cinderellas, but the voices had to fit just so.

Church

A Dallas rabbi says Christmas is a form of persecution for Jews; a Disciples of Christ pastor discusses suffering with equanimity.

Jazz

The Midland Jazz Classic wasn’t cheap, but it was worth the price.

Stepping Out

By reputation Dallas is a staid city. But there is one strip where Dallas is fevered, excessive, and lascivious, and where every night is party night.

Reporter

Reporter

George Bush wants to shake your hand; Rita Clements wants to paint your Governor’s Mansion; Dallas wants to bring you art, lots of art.

Miscellany

Movers and fakers.

Steering Bum Steers.

A helicopter plague descends on Dallas; is the Texas environmentalist an endangered species?; cattlemen won’t be cowed.

Night stalkers and day walkers.

Letters please.

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