2009 – Page 7 of 24

Being a Super Model

I avoid saying the word “diet” like the plague. I try to be careful about what I eat and what I do because I know my six-year-old daughter is watching me. She’s listening.

An Excerpt from Just Food by James McWilliams

Chapter 1Food Miles or Friendly Miles?: Beyond the “Farm to Fork” Paradigm of ProductionWho gets to define “the local”?—Melanie DepuisNo single concept unites the locavore movement more powerfully than food miles—the distance our food travels before we eat it. It’s an elegantly simple measure of environmental consciousness, has the benefit

Exchange Rate

One Lebanese student’s experience in Austin, Texas.

Shelley Calton

The photographer talks about her new book and life on skates.

Grilled Salmon With Spring Onions and Brown Butter Cauliflower

Recipe From Chef David Bull’s Interactive Cookbook, Bull’s Eye On Food

The End of the Affair

Everyone was shocked when San Angelo’s hugely popular mayor suddenly left town with his gay lover. Everyone, that is, except the citizens of San Angelo.

Contributors

Sam Gwynne, David Strohl and Karen Olsson.

Letters to The Tedator

Nugent mail accounted for roughly 90 percent of the letters to the editor regarding our July issue. A sampling of the remaining 10 percent can be found here.Capitol LettersCould you please explain to me why you consider Wayne Christian’s advocacy of “no scholarships for illegal aliens” such an outlandish idea

New and Noteworthy

Fig TreeSan Antonio The recession has had many negative side effects, one being that notable new restaurants are not rolling off the assembly line with the regularity they used to. A positive side effect of the production slowdown is that we get a chance to recognize an old friend

School of Talk

Two years, four months, and 26 days ago, I had a very different view of the world from the one I have as I sit down to write this letter. That was the last day that I wasn’t a parent. March 6, 2007. The next day my son was

Why Are Tortilla Chips So Damn Good?

Is it the crispiness? The crunchiness? The saltiness? Thankfully, a small cadre of researchers in the Department of Soil and Crop Sciences at Texas A&M has spent much of the past thirty years munching on this question.

Kris Kristofferson

At 73, the Brownsville native has had a recording renaissance.

Somedays the Song Writes You

He’s got a bit of a rep, yet while Guy Clark is every inch the crusty, ornery cuss he’s always been, there’s a sad sense of resignation on Somedays the Song Writes You (Dualtone). After his wry 2006 triumph, Workbench Songs, this tone is a surprise from the

Acquired Taste

Not much in life has proved more reliable than Delbert McClinton. Like slipping into your favorite old T-shirt, you know what to expect with a new album of his, even if both the shirt and McClinton’s roadhouse-weary voice have started to fray a bit around the edges. The Lubbock-born

They Know What Ghost Know

In the electronic-music world, inserting humanity into the coldness of a kilowatt ether is a challenge. Without vocals, things get even trickier. Yet for Houston’s Joe Corrales Jr., who records under the name Yppah, personality is all a matter of knowing the right knobs to tweak. His debut, in

Benjamin Moser

Born and raised in Houston, the author of Why This World: A Biography of Clarice Lispector developed an early fascination with Latin and South America that he later stoked with travels to Brazil. His research on the late Brazilian novelist who, it has been said, “looked like Marlene Dietrich

Just Food: Where Locavores Get It Wrong and How We Can Truly Eat Responsibly

If the phrase “eat local” stirs your activist soul, meet Texas State University associate professor James E. McWilliams in Just Food: Where Locavores Get It Wrong and How We Can Truly Eat Responsibly. He is not necessarily opposed to your ritual Saturday trip to the farmers’ market (though

End the Fed

Ron Paul, the eleven-term congressman from Texas, first sought public office in 1974 to speak out against government monetary policy, and End the Fed proves how passionately he still wants the Federal Reserve’s carcass in his trophy room. The libertarian-cum-Republican rails against the central banking system for its

Tanya Tucker

“I don’t let people run over me. From the very beginning, I’ve never changed my ideas about what music should be.”

King of The Hilarious

How Mike Judge got his groove back.

Marfa

1. The Thunderbird HotelSpare but chic sums up this refurbished motor court. A cowhide rug, a wood-and-metal table, and a single framed art poster is the extent of the interior decor, but you never feel deprived of accoutrements. After a day of sightseeing, take a splash in the pool or

Tina Knowles’s Handbag

Tina Knowles’s Handbag

Clothing designer and stylist extraordinaire Tina Knowles has taken the meaning of “stage mother” to a whole new level by creating flamboyant, one-of-a-kind costumes for her songbird daughters, Beyoncé and Solange. Miss Tina, as she’s known industry-wide, has parlayed her flair for fashion into two clothing lines, the ready-to-wear

The Texanist: Will Hiring a Lawn Service to Do My Mowing Make Me Soft?

Will hiring a yard guy make me soft?

Dawn Cockrell, Midwife

Cockrell has lived in West Texas for twenty years and has been delivering babies for fourteen. She opened West Texas Birth Services, in Odessa, in 2001.My mother gave birth to my younger sister when I was sixteen. They induced her at forty weeks, and I was present for the

Teaching Yoga

NAME: John Friend | AGE: 50 | HOME: The Woodlands | QUALIFICATIONS: Founder of Anusara, an increasingly popular style of hatha yoga / Has taught yoga for almost thirty years / Author of numerous yoga books, CDs, and DVDs, including Anusara Yoga 101 and Growing a Lotus• I was precocious

Mammary Dearest

It was the breast of times, it was the worst of times.

Who has the best chance to hold the Senate seat for the GOP?

I don’t think it is any of the announced candidates. It’s a member of the Texas congressional delegation, whose members are worried about whether any of the wannabes can hold the seat against a Democrat. –This candidate has a large, enthusiastic constituency that goes beyond the boundaries of his district

The Rumor

Readers may have heard today the “news” that an internal Hutchison poll shows her 17 points down. I received a phone call early Friday morning about it. As it happens, I was meeting several Hutchison operatives for lunch at The Tavern, and I asked them about it, right off the

Note to readers

I posted an earlier version of “The Perry Puff Piece Revisited.” The post was full of coding–bold face in particular–that I could not clean up. Ultimately, I posted a cleaner version of the same article. Unfortunately, I was unable to salvage the six or so comments that had already been

The Perry Puff Piece, revisited

Most readers are familiar with the Wall Street Journal's interview with Rick Perry, conducted by alleged journalist Emily Efsahani-Smith, that appeared last Saturday in the online edition. The article includes a drawing of Perry. The article itself appears in italics. California needs a strong leader, says Texas governor

Tell me again why the Legislature had to spend $40M on a new law school for Dallas

From today’s American Statesman: Baker Botts lays off more lawyers in second round of cuts this year Baker Botts LLP, one of Texas’ biggest law firms, laid off lawyers this week, the second time it has done so this year. Mike Cinelli, a spokesman for the Houston-based firm,

Oh, say can you Seay?

A new name has surfaced in the thus-far nonexistent race for the Senate seat which may or may not be vacated by Kay Bailey Hutchison. It’s George Seay III, of Dallas. The name may be new, but the family is familiar: He is Bill Clements’ grandson. Here is a slightly

Mike Leach Is Thinking . . .

And you would be too if you were an itinerant Rollerblader with a passion for pirates who’d reinvented the game of college football, brought joy to Lubbock, beaten UT, and narrowly missed a shot at a national championship. And what you’d be thinking is, “Gangway!”

Rove on Rove

Today’s Wall Street Journal carries an article by Karl Rove, who defends himself against allegations that he improperly intervened in the firing of U.S. Attorneys and in the prosecution of Alabama governor Don Sieligman, which Rove attributes to the New York Times, the Washington Post, and congressional Democrats.

The anticlimax

Why has attendance lagged on the Hutchison announcement tour? For one thing, it’s summer, it’s hot, people aren’t paying attention to politics right now. For another, this campaign couldn’t draw a crowd if you gave them a box of crayons. But I think the biggest reason is that it’s an

Tom DeLay’s 10 favorite songs to dance to

1. “If I Had a Hammer” (Pete Seeger) 2. “This Old House” (Stuart Hamblen, also the Statler Brothers) 3. “Can’t Buy Me Love” (The Beatles) 4. “Take the Money and Run” (Steve Miller Band) 5. “Takin’ Care of Business” (Bachman-Turner Overdrive) 6. “If You’ve Got the Money, I’ve Got the

Can’t Anybody Here Play This Game?

Baseball aficionados may recognize the headline as the title of a book by Jimmy Breslin about the 1962 New York Mets, lovable losers of 120 of their 162 games. I was reminded of the book — the title was a quote from Mets’ manager Casey Stengel — by the astonishingly

Would Perry pick Patrick?

I confess that I didn’t pay a lot of attention to Dan Patrick’s reelection announcement last week, but one thing struck me as very peculiar. Here are the first three paragraphs of the release: “During the past few weeks there has been speculation I might run for, or be appointed

Does Dewhurst have a future as lieutenant governor?

Senate Republicans continue to have conversations about what to do in the event that (a) Dewhurst resigns his office to run for the Senate, or (b) opts to run for lieutenant governor again. The GOP caucus has three factions. The lines are not set in stone, and, depending on the

Watson decides to run for reelection to the Senate

The significance of his decision is not only that he has passed on the governor’s race. It is that he will not be a candidate for attorney general — the office he sought in 2002 and was said to have been considering this year. This increases the likelihood that the

J.M. Lozano vs. Tara Rios Ybarra (District 43)

We're five months from the filing deadline and this is already one of the nastiest races I've ever seen -- reminiscent of that 2003 Republican primary race in Waco in which the two Republicans were so scuzzy that the GOP district (now represented by Doc Anderson) ended up electing Democrat

The world will little note, nor long remember…

.. that a Houston Democratic precinct chair and oil and gas lawyer named Jeff Weems is running for the Railroad Commission seat currently held by Republican Victor Carrillo. This leads me to ask this question: Who will be the first Democrat to announce for statewide office that anyone has actually

Will Troy Fraser succeed Dewhurst?

Some Senate Republicans, Fraser foremost among them, have been cooking up a plan to exclude the Democrats from choosing the successor to Dewhurst if and when Hutchison resigns her Senate seat. The idea is to impose a unit rule — a term not heard in Texas politics since the days

Hashknife on the Chisholm

This joint has been on my list for a long time. Back in June 2008 Texas Monthly’s “Top 50 BBQ Joints” listed Hashknife on the Chisholm, and a name like that really piqued my attention. Peadenville is barely a blip on the map at the crossroads of two

Barton may seek Hutchison seat

I missed this story from the Startlegram on Saturday. The first few paragraphs: No one seems to be mentioning U.S. Rep. Joe Barton, R-Arlington, as a candidate to replace outgoing Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas. Turns out that Barton — who came in third in the 1993 special

Should Hutchison Resign?

The answer is: No, no, and hell no. What is the upside of resigning? The only advantage is that it gives her more time to campaign in Texas. That is worth something. But the upside of staying is far greater. Perry set out to define the race as Texas (him)

The Unemployment Insurance Issue and the Governor’s Race

Let's just start out by reviewing what has happened so far. As those who have followed the debate know, $555 million in federal stimulus funds was available for Texas, provided that the Legislature agree to make several changes that increased the number of people who would be eligible for UI

Gallup ranks Texas as “competitive”

Inconvenient writing assignments have kept me away from the blog in recent days, so I have a lot of catching up to do. (I have stories in the September issue on the status of Galveston’s recovery from Hurricane Ike one year later and on the prospects for Gail Lowe, the

Bringing Down the Dogmen

The bust that nabbed Houston’s top dogfighters was the work of two gutsy undercover cops who knew that the only way to infiltrate this secret world was to become dogfighters themselves.