Dream of a Common Language. Sueño de un Idioma Común.
The future of Texas depends on how well we are able to educate kids who can’t speak English. Has an elementary school in El Paso figured out the best way to do it?
September 2009 Issue
Features
Fairest of the Fair
From Luling’s Watermelon Thump Queen to Gilmer’s Queen Yam, small-town Texas is full of festival royalty, and pretty is the head that wears the crown.
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.
Columns
Lowe and Behold
An open letter to the lucky new chair of the most dysfunctional agency in Texas, the State Board of Education.
Letter From Galveston
No Man’s Island
A year has passed since Hurricane Ike slammed into Galveston, but my hometown is still reeling from a storm without end.
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.
Reporter
How to Dove Hunt
The SeasonFor many hunters, Labor Day weekend is synonymous with the soft coos of the mourning dove. Every year, roughly 350,000 people in Texas are seduced by this avian siren song and harvest about five million of the four-ounce birds—that’s about 30 percent of the total number shot in the
Music Review
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
Music Review
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
Music Review
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
Author Interview
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
Book Review
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
Book Review
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.”
Street Smarts
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
Object Lesson
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
The Horse's Mouth
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
Web
Talk Rodeo
From the cowgirls racing around barrels to the cowboys hanging on for their lives atop bucking bulls, there’s nothing quite as exciting as watching the rodeo at the Fort Worth Stockyards.
Queen of Hearts
She’s the girl who wears cowboy boots under her poufy white taffeta dress every weekend as she rides in some other town’s parade.
Widespread Panic
Despite its status as a public health emergency, is the swine flu just another flu?
The Filter: Dining
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
Recipe
Grilled Salmon With Spring Onions and Brown Butter Cauliflower
Recipe From Chef David Bull’s Interactive Cookbook, Bull’s Eye On Food
Web Exclusive
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
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.
High Society
Colum McCann’s new novel revolves around Philippe Petit’s high-wire walk between the Twin Towers in 1974.
Revolutionary Kind
Daniel Miller, the president of the Texas Nationalist Movement, is a proud secessionist. And the tea parties were just the beginning for this true believer.
Miscellany
Editor's Letter
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
Roar of the Crowd
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
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