In Loving County, residents still feel the specter of the pandemic.
Being Texan
Eight miles from the nearest town, our ranch felt like a sanctuary. Until it didn’t.
A Belfast woman is looking for a few good corn husks.
In our second Being Texan video, Peter Holley explores San Antonio's botanicas, which have seen an uptick in customers amid the COVID pandemic.
A Midland woman wonders what to do if she meets a member of the family Ursidae in the wild.
The ofrenda we build to honor loved ones will include not only our distant past but also the very sorrow that we’re living through now.
Plus, fifty thousand purple martins descended on a parking lot in McAllen.
An Austin man ponders the unthinkable.
A Houston mom has had it with Minecraft.
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.
A Houston man would like to maintain an annual summer tradition.
Just as my husband and I were moving away from the city, we found ourselves embracing our adopted hometown.
The border city treated my family with care and invited us to find community there.
A Houston poet laureate believes that outrage by any other name is hope, and protest is its ultimate demonstration.
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.
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.
A sad and anxious time may offer a silver lining.
Suzanne Ohlmann is a heart failure nurse based in San Antonio, serving rural Texas. On Facebook, she’s waging a war against misinformation.
I’ve been employed with Austin Resource Recovery for sixteen years. I’ve always wanted to work for the city. It’s good benefits: it’s a job that a lot of people want. It’s steady, and you know it’s something that you can depend on and your family can depend on.
Unable to make her weekly appointment because of social distancing, Carlene takes her hair into her own hands.
Robert and Vickie Lyle’s lives revolve around hunting and trapping hogs. Wildlife refuge managers count on them to keep the destructive pigs in check.
The kids are alright, but they’re getting a little bored.
Teaching our three-year-old to use the bathroom has added structure to hours that feel like days, and days that stretch on like weeks.
Plus, a rare pink grasshopper was spotted in Travis County.
On a remote property near Terlingua, a prepper community is thriving.
There are about 2,000 migrants in the camp now. It changes every day—20 new families arrive, then 40 leave. Two months ago, the government made everyone move from the plaza—a park near the bridge—to the river bank. They were…
“I guess the pandemic didn’t exactly end my marriage. It just revealed that it no longer really existed.”
In the face of specious medical advice and hoarding, Dallas pharmacist Emile Abdo tries to keep vital medications in stock.
Shortly after Holly Allen fell ill with COVID-19, she learned that her mother had died. At home in Fort Worth, she grieved in isolation, watching her mother’s funeral online.
A squirrel went postal in a Houston suburb, and Waco finds something new to feel some civic pride about.
A Portland man is confused by the Menger Hotel's and Excelsior House Hotel's dueling claims. The Texanist is, too.
A Michigander with dreams of owning a massive piece of Texas land isn't sure how he would occupy himself on his $32.5 million spread.
A California man tried to bring his pet possum on a passenger plane, and a clerical error brought a temporary $37 million windfall to a Rowlett couple.
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.
A McKinney man wants to see William Travis singing and dancing his way across the Alamo Plaza.
As Valentine’s Day beckons, a Midlander in a new relationship is looking for an intimate getaway.
A San Antonio football fan wonders if the squad’s already small outfits have gotten even smaller over the years.
Plus, a woman goes to a pharmacy and discovers she's dead!
A Dallas man worries that he should have let a British couple continue to believe that cattle run rampant through the streets of his city.
A Grapevine man is puzzled by those ubiquitous roadside grills.
A Lufkin man asks a sports-related question—and gets more answers than he bargained for.
Our lonely, difficult childhood—and our love of books—always connected us, despite the wildly different paths we took.