What in the world can make learning fun? Would you believe—the National Geographic Society? When the staid Washington, D.C., institution wanted to turn the database of questions from its National Geography Bee into a computer game that would appeal to parents and kids alike, it turned to Austin’s Human Code,
Remember the Sherlock Holmes story in which the great detective solves a mysterious death case because a dog did not bark at a thief in the night? The lesson is that what doesn’t happen can be just as important as what does happen—in crime or in the Legislature. (Please, no
With his spectacles and bushy mustache, he looks like everybody’s favorite uncle, and appropriately, his niche in the Legislature is to take care of the kids: juvenile justice, safe schools, and adoption laws. In the age of family-values politics, Goodman brings a quiet rationality to issues that have been known
Caught in a real-life episode of E.R., Senator Teel Bivins spent the final week of the legislative session performing triage on bills that were at death’s door. As our story begins, a perspiring Bivins frantically tries to revive Governor Bush’s charter schools program, which is among the 52 bills that
Hugo Berlanga said at the start of the session that he was tired. The time had come to do something else. He was burned-out.Mark it down that this burnout had a long fuse. Hugo—he’s a first-name figure—had a session for the ages. Through behind-the-scenes negotiations and timely amendments, he influenced
From Bush’s good try on property taxes to Bullock’s grand finale, from savvy Sadler to weaselly Wohlgemuth, from Duncan’s beginning to Howard’s end: Our sorting of the session’s standouts—best, worst, and in between.
Why do reviewers from Condé Nast Traveler to the Zagat and Mobil guides swoon over Dallas’ Mansion on Turtle Creek? I wanted to find out, so I checked in.
Like it says on her newly acquired bumper sticker, movie mogul Lynda Obst is “Texan By Choice.” But while you can take the girl out of Hollywood …
Best PunGovernor George W. Bush. Explaining at a pre-session gridiron dinner how he had turned a deaf ear to his wife’s entreaties that he purchase new formal wear for the event, Bush said he told her, “Read my lips. No new tuxes.”Going…Going…GoneThe legislative leadership team had a lot more on
Say what you will about Arlene Wohlgemuth (and everybody did), but she will go down in legislative history. Way down. Wohlgemuth was the perpetrator of the Memorial Day Massacre, when in a fit of rage she killed 52 bills and managed to unite a previously divided House—against her.It is the
Most legislators who land on the Worst list do so through ineptitude or blunder. John Shields is different: He actively auditioned for the role. He performed as if he had researched the bad old days and come up with a surefire course of action that the greenest freshman would know
Ask not what Senator Eddie Lucio’s bills do for the public; ask what they do for him. Lucio is a poster child for the kind of legislator whose primal urge is to please his friends, punish his enemies, and promote himself.What, do you suppose, lay behind his proposal to restrict
Bless his heart, he’s just in the wrong place. The Legislature is not right for him. His conservative beliefs are too extreme, his suspicions are too easily aroused, his learning curve is too flat. The man isn’t dumb. He’s got an MBA from Harvard. They read books there. But he
“If you’ve got me in your sights, I’d like to talk to you before you write anything,” said Kent Grusendorf in the closing hours of the session. He deserved a fair hearing. He is a thoughtful man who was once a fine legislator. But he has become the most radioactive
No one will admit we’re in the middle of one, even as the economy surges. How come? Because the last time we had it this good, bragging only hastened the arrival of another four-letter word: “bust.”
Last session, passionate debate raged through the Capitol over which of these two East Texas freshmen was the worst member of the Senate. Given a second chance, Galloway and Nixon showed that they had learned…absolutely zero.“He doesn’t have two sessions of experience,” a Republican colleague said of Galloway. “He’s had
His true peers are not members of the Legislature but rather Thomas Chippendale, George Hepplewhite, and Duncan Phyfe: Like these names, that of Charles Finnell has become synonymous with “furniture”—a term that in Capitol parlance refers to those members who, by dint of their inactivity or incapacity to grasp what
The best that can be said about him is that he could have been worse—and was, just last session. Faults ranging from pettiness to mendacity, which landed him on the Worst list in 1995 (when we described him as “one of the more dismal products of democracy to reach the
Before Kevin Bailey erupted this session, sixteen years had passed since the House had seen an outspoken liberal leader in action. An extra two years would have been a blessing. Bailey is a demagogue straight from the old school—disposed to make personal attacks, preferring cliché to argument, always righteous in
Every Catholic girls’ school has one student who is Little Miss Perfect. To the endless irritation of her peers, she never misses class, always does her homework, raises her hand to answer every question, bosses her classmates around, and is as prudish and humorless as the nuns. But don’t
Two veteran warriors are facing off, and the House is enjoying it immensely. Kim Brimer of Arlington, a former University of Houston football player and one of Speaker Laney’s chief lieutenants, is trying to pass his sports arena bill, which will let local governments use tax dollars to build stadiums
Did he change the world? It’s too soon to tell. But this much is certain: Ron Wilson’s bill requiring scholarship athletes to meet regular admissions criteria at state universities was a stroke of legislative genius. Wilson, of course, was trying to make a point about the Hopwood decision, which
The best tributes are the unexpected ones. As Senator David Sibley argued for his bill to halt the costly practice of school districts’ granting property-tax breaks to businesses, a seldom heard-from San Antonio Democrat named Greg Luna joined in the debate. “I’m so glad that a senator of your esteem
At least he tried. He was the dominant figure in the session’s dominant issue, Governor Bush’s drive for significant property-tax relief, and he drove it farther than anyone thought possible, though not quite far enough. But the mere recapitulation of his role only begins to reflect what Paul Sadler
It is late in the session, and a sticky procedural issue has brought Senate debate to a momentary halt. Senators Teel Bivins of Amarillo and Royce West of Dallas are huddled beside a desk, puzzled about what to do. West, a Democrat, nods in the direction of Bill Ratliff, who
In the wake of Heaven’s Gate, the media marched en masse to Abilene, the home base of the House of Yahweh, whose charismatic leader, Yisrayl Hawkins, was supposed to be the next David Koresh. Not even close.
Officially, Israel Hernandez is an aide to George W. Bush, but the 26-year-old is used to hearing all sorts of less-than-glamorous descriptions of his job, such as professional schlepper and purse carrier. But while it’s true he totes around the black canvas bag containing the governor’s stuff—personal numbers, signature cards,
I arrived in El Paso as a small child and grew up within sight of the Rio Grande. Juárez was part of our lives, and it was comfortable and easy to cross the border. My friends and I were part of rat packs: We had jackets, and zip guns were
EDS, the company Ross Perot imbued with his own conservative image, is designing Internet sites for magazines like Elle. What a tangled Web we weave.
Boone Pickens no longer wears a tie. Herein lies a tale.
A little-known financial institution could be the future of the war on poverty in Texas.
High in the Mexican mountains and only a day’s drive from Texas lies El Cielo, a stunning cloud forest where exotic birds soar but the temperature doesn’t.
GEORGE W. BUSH may have the most power in the Capitol, but when it comes to power over the Capitol, he’s just number two. In one of the strangest rivalries of a contentious legislative session, the Texas Film Commission, an arm of the governor’s office, squared off against the State
I grew up playing alongside some of the best Texas golfers of my generation. Then I started to lose my grip.
Aggies: Gig ’em or dig ’em? Plus: Bringing up babies.
A massive buildup for Texas Tech University’s Vietnam archive.
The state prison name game; Dallas alternative-country band the Old 97’s is feeling no depression.
A little-known financial institution could be the future of the war on poverty in Texas.
That’s what Mick Jagger and Jerry Hall got on their recent trip to West Texas. West Texas retailers got it too.
Which sports did Babe Didrikson dominate, and in what Hepburn-Tracy film did she appear?
After five years ex-Austinite Lucinda Williams’ follow-up to her 1992 CD Sweet Old World is finally kicking up dust. The album’s title, Car Wheels on a Gravel Road (American Recordings), refers not to the sound of the Grammy award winner’s voice but to the cross-country travels that inspired such
For her history of Texas fashion (see “The Way We Wore”), senior editor Anne Dingus began with—who else?—Sam Houston. “He’s always a good place to start,” she says, “and he distinguished himself by being sartorially flamboyant.” Then, drawing on library research and her personal archive of vintage postcards, ads,
Hot CDsThe Horsies are an extremely unusual outfit, so it figures that the perverse, polymorphously percussive Austin combo’s second record, Touch Me Columbus, is only available on the relatively obscure Japanese label Benten (though some Texas record stores will be carrying it). A giddy three-man, three-woman band with five often
Left: Untitled, 1993. Right: Beware, 1994. The old stereotypes have only been repackaged, Charles says. Right: Clockwise from top left, four paintings from the Liberty Bros. Permanent Daily Circus series: Blue Period, 1995, Oop’s, 1995, Desperados Leap for Life, 1996, and Smiles, 1996. “I’m trying to be as honest
For seven days Rick McLaren and his armed cohorts were holed up in their Republic of Texas “embassy” while reporters dug for stories, lawmen kept watch, and the residents of nearby Fort Davis wished they’d all go away.
Dallas’ Sloane Simpson was a society queen who enchanted New York, seduced Mexico City, and turned Acapulco into a jet-set getaway. But when she died last year at age eighty, she was almost completely forgotten.
By employing stereotypes like Sambo and Aunt Jemima, Austin painter Michael Ray Charles hopes to master the art of racial healing.
Frankie Mitchell and Janet Evans want to be together, but their families are feuding. It’s a story as old as Shakespeare—older, in fact, because they’re Gypsies, the children of two prominent Dallas clans, and ancient superstitions guide every aspect of their lives. Even love.
While she was still in high school, Uma Pemmaraju persuaded the editors of the San Antonio Express-News to let her write the weekly fishing report—even though she was, so to speak, out to sea on the subject. “I knew nothing about fishing,” she says. “I was basically calling around different
When I got out of high school at three o’clock each day, I went to work giving away movie passes and hanging up posters in barbershops and drugstores for coming attractions at the Iris or the Texan or the Ritz theaters in downtown Houston. Unfortunately, when I graduated I didn’t
