Being Texan
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To Love Houston Is to Accept That Making Sense of It Is Futile
Just as my husband and I were moving away from the city, we found ourselves embracing our adopted hometown. Read Story
We Didn’t Think We Would Live in El Paso Permanently. It Became Home.
The border city treated my family with care and invited us to find community there. Read Story
A Parent’s Problematic Pandemic Bequest
When my mother died, she left behind hundreds of items that my family might need if civilization goes south. Deciding what to do with them forced me to weigh the demands of the present and the future. Read Story
The Latest
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In the first film for our new Being Texan docuseries, three pint-size cowboys make their inaugural rides on flesh-and-blood steers.
A resident of “The Texas of Canada” is having second thoughts about retiring to the Lone Star State.
Social distancing on a ranch in South Texas, one writer finds a diversion—and a sort of community—in studying the fragments of English dinnerware her predecessors left behind.
A Texas transplant to California is unhappy about the ubiquity of the “nasty and repugnant weed."
A Sugar Land man wants to know if his friend from out of state could be the official greeter at the State Fair of Texas.
A Texan deployed overseas wants to know if there’s any foodstuff weirder than armadillo tail with gravy. (There is.)
He was a high school band director and the cornerstone of a lively music scene in southeast Texas—and then a Saturday night gig exposed him to the coronavirus.
The infamous anti-Communist senator had a lot of fans in the Lone Star State.
The Texanist
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The Texanist: My Husband Shouldn’t Be Driving Around Town Without His Shirt On, Should He?
Q: My husband, who is a grown man, sometimes drives around town without a shirt, as if he were some kind of a small-town teenager coming home from mowing lawns or the swimming hole. He says that it’s no big deal, but it is a big deal, right? He shouldn’t do this, should he? Please back me up here. Sandra Garcia, Fort Worth A: Wading into dustups between wives and… Read Story
Country Notes
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Passing the Time With the Ghosts in the Dirt
Social distancing on a ranch in South Texas, one writer finds a diversion—and a sort of community—in studying the fragments of English dinnerware her predecessors left behind.
The Signs of the Big Bend Are a Sign of the Times
Some were written long ago. Some appeared this year. But whether it’s a sign about snakes or a sign about diesel fried chicken, a simple message seems to mean the most.
The Desk on Hancock Hill
Some forty years ago, a desk was dragged to the top of a hill in Alpine that overlooks the Big Bend. The notebooks stashed inside continue to capture big thoughts from the people who travel there.
The Art of Racing Pigeons
Lelton Morse races homing pigeons in Central Texas. He sends his birds hundreds of miles away, waits and watches, and knows they’re flying home.
A Lone Postman Delivers the Mail to the Far Reaches of the Big Bend
Not many people will drive the mail to places the U.S. Postal Service won’t. Seventy-one-year-old Gilbert Lujan is one of them.
Long Live the ‘Big Bend Sentinel.’ Viva ‘El Internacional.’
Small-town papers often serve as bearers of civic pride. But the former owners of Marfa’s Big Bend Sentinel and Presidio’s International learned long ago that writing the news meant looking out for their neighbors.
How Animal Psychics Helped Untangle a Mixed-up Horse
Healing a spooked horse takes time, patience, and skill. And maybe a little help from beyond.
The Romance of the Rail in West Texas
The railway and Marfa are forever intertwined.