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March 2012

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March 31, 2012

Justice in Time

Fifteen years after being released from death row, Kerry Max Cook is still looking for freedom.

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Food & Drink|
March 31, 2012

Woodshed Smokehouse

HOLY SHIN! THE SIGNATURE dish of the two-month-old Woodshed Smokehouse is so paleo that you can almost hear drumbeats when they deliver it to your table. Tipping the scales at a minimum of three and a half pounds and smoked over hickory to an ebony turn, the brazen bone-in beef

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Behind the Lines|
March 31, 2012

General Admission

Will Fisher v. The University of Texas at Austin help the U.S. Supreme Court decide affirmative action once and for all? Not likely, which is why it's time to let public universities make their own decision about which students to accept.

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Letter from Matagorda County|
March 31, 2012

A Grain of Doubt

For more than 75 years, rice farmers in Matagorda County and elsewhere along the Gulf have shared the waters of the Colorado River with urban residents in the Hill Country. But with city centers booming and an almost-certain drought ahead, the state is being forced to choose between a water-intensive

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Style & Design|
March 31, 2012

Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge, Dallas

“The Trinity River is the biggest problem you have in Dallas today,” declared landscape architect George Kessler in his comprehensive plan for the city a century ago. And so it has remained: an undeveloped flood-prone eyesore that requires an extensive system of levees to protect residents and property. On March

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Travel & Outdoors|
March 31, 2012

Kerrville

The annual folk festival celebrates its fortieth anniversary next month, but there's more to this Hill Country town than banjos and fiddles.

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The Culture|
March 31, 2012

Rick  Reichenbach, Lighthouse Keeper

Reichenbach is the caretaker for the Aransas Pass Light Station. Built in 1855 to mark entry into Corpus Christi Bay, the now privately maintained lighthouse—which is on the National Register of Historic Places and is owned today by H-E-B CEO Charles Butt—is the only manned lighthouse in operation on the

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Music|
March 31, 2012

The Mars Volta

Omar Rodríguez-López on the meaning of Noctourniquet, doing a reunion with At the Drive-In, and getting bored.

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The Culture|
March 31, 2012

Kind of Blue

Two framed letters hang side by side in the main conference room at the offices of TEXAS MONTHLY, both of them written and signed by the magazine’s founder and former publisher, Mike Levy. The first is a note that prefaced the inaugural issue, in February 1973. The second is a

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Roar of the Crowd|
March 31, 2012

Roar of the Crowd

Smoke SignalsThe fantastic and engrossing “Of Meat and Men” left me flashing back to childhood weekends spent at my dad’s place in Waco: Hugh’s Pit BBQ [February 2012]. We’d go with him to Buffalo to get special wood and then kick the sawdust on the floor while consuming insane

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Politics & Policy|
March 31, 2012

Obamacare and the Court

The outcome of the battle over healthcare before the Supreme Court was preordained. The majority was going to rule against Obama because he called them out in an earlier State of the Union Address over the Citizens United decision. Readers may recall that Alito was shown on TV, sitting in

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BBQ Joint Reviews|
March 31, 2012

Heavy’s BBQ

The former McBee’s in Hondo has gotten a new lease on life. Heavy purchased the joint after moving back home from Austin where he had worked at Bert’s BBQ. He’s using the same methods of indirectly smoking with mesquite in the same brick pit

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Politics & Policy|
March 31, 2012

Romney win in WI could end GOP nomination fight

Romney holds a comfortable lead over Rick Santorum going into Tuesday’s primary election. Wisconsin does not have the profile of a state that is Santorum-friendly. I saw a graphic on TV on Friday showing that the percentage of  voters who are evangelicals is much smaller in Wisconsin than in Ohio,

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Eat My Words|
March 30, 2012

Pecan Pie from Pie It Forward

We couldn’t resist asking Gesine to share her pecan pie recipe with us. Check out the instructions for that crunchy, gooey Texas dessert, below.Pecan Pie from Pie it Forward ⅛ batch Quick Puff Pastry (page 22 of Pie It Forward) 1/2 cup unsalted butter 1 1/2 cups light brown sugar,

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BBQ Joint Reviews|
March 28, 2012

Miller’s Smokehouse

Dirk Miller knows his way around meat. He’s a deer processor, taxidermist, sausage maker and a master at the barbecue pit. Hidden a couple blocks down a side street in Belton you’ll find his small but expanding storefront. On the way there it’s hard to ignore the billboards

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Politics & Policy|
March 27, 2012

D.C. Court sets Tx voter ID trial for July 9-13

From Michael Li’s “Texas Redistricting” Web site, earlier today: The D.C. district court has set trial in Texas’ voter ID suit for July 9-13. That’s nearly three weeks earlier than requested by the Justice Department and intervenors. However, the court also directed that issues related to the constitutionality of

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Politics & Policy|
March 27, 2012

When Rick Perry became a movement conservative

This was the topic of a breakfast discussion yesterday, in which I participated. One of our group, a former legislator who served with Perry in the House, said it happened it 2002. Kay Bailey Hutchison was giving indications that she planned to run for governor against Perry, who had inherited

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BBQ Joint Reviews|
March 26, 2012

Vera’s Backyard Bar-B-Que

I’m not here to tell you that I’m an authority on barbacoa. I know enough about it to be dangerous, and I’ve eaten enough of it to know that what I ate at Vera’s was something special. The funny part is that the best place to get barbacoa

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Eat My Words|
March 26, 2012

Foodways Texas Is Getting Fat and Sassy

Foodways Texas, which was founded in July 2010 “to preserve, promote, and celebrate the diverse food cultures of Texas," held its second annual symposium in Austin this past weekend. A couple of hundred participants listened to talks on the theme of “Texas Preserved”—a deliberately wide-ranging topic that covered

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Politics & Policy|
March 26, 2012

Williamson County DA faces tough race

John Bradley, Rick Perry’s choice to block the Forensic Science Commission’s investigation into the flawed arson science that led to the conviction and subsequent execution of Cameron Todd Willingham, is in a tough Republican Primary reelection battle with county attorney Jana Duty. Bradley has also been in the news recently

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Politics & Policy|
March 26, 2012

Health care debate begins today

I watched the morning news shows today. The most interesting comment I heard was on Morning Joe, and it was that from Obama’s perspective, losing the case is not all bad. The White House can blame nine folks in black robes. FDR mastered the strategy during the New Deal. The

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