Books|
September 30, 1997
MY MATERNAL GRANDMOTHER, Grandma Page, was up at three-thirty or four o’clock in the morning to bake and churn and get ready for the cotton fields on our family farm in Bloomington. At night, after all the cooking and sewing, there was energy left for her reading. “Come, Danny, I’ll
Should Texas execute a woman? You could debate that question to death.
The biggest economic news in Texas is the merging of the electric and natural-gas utility industries in anticipation of the coming deregulation of electricity. Huge deals are in the works: Houston Industries, the parent of Houston Lighting and Power, is acquiring Houston-based NorAm, the nation’s third-largest gas utility; and Texas
Celebrity portraiture often requires that the subject be ready for anything. An imaginative photographer like Houston’s Pam Francis will conjure up unusual settings and costumes to best evoke her subject’s true nature, as when she lured oil tycoon Oscar Wyatt and his German shepherd to the roof of a building
Governed by generosity.
On the money.
Good chemistry.
Taxes are his target.
Culinary assimilation.
Growing up in Houston, J. C. Herz spent much of her time defending the city from incoming ballistic missiles. She accomplished this while sitting in front of her family’s television and playing Missile Command—just one of the many video games lovingly described in her second book, Joystick Nation (Little, Brown;
Accessories for sexual adventurers, columns for your Craftsman bungalow, tasteful tables made from old manhole covers: You can find it all on this reborn Houston strip.
A cryptic puzzle you’ll utter no cross words about.
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
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
I grew up playing alongside some of the best Texas golfers of my generation. Then I started to lose my grip.
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
Investors are bullish about Houston’s AIM Management Company, whose mutual funds have been on target for two decades.
How a man named Eldrewey Stearns began the fight for civil rights in Houston.
“Sure, I miss having a locker and going to the prom,” says gospel-singing sensation Jaci Velasquez. True enough, the seventeen-year-old Houston native has not had what you would call a normal adolescence. At age ten she began traveling around the U.S. and Latin America with her family’s music ministry. Four
Now that both its building and its mission have been renovated, Houston’s Contemporary Arts Museum is ready to win back the public and reestablish its eminence.
Whether playing for the luckless Houston Astros, running the world-champion New York Yankees, or confronting racism, Bob Watson has always stepped up to the plate.
New restaurants in Dallas and Houston are serving up authentic interior-style Mexican dishes that turn the tables on Tex-Mex.
I thought I’d teach my young son’s Laotian friend about all the essentials of American culture, including Dr. Seuss. I just never imagined how much he’d teach me.
William Guess seemed to be an ordinary man: He had a wife and three children and owned his own business. So why did he become the most prolific bank robber in Texas history?
When I was a little girl, the thing that I most wanted to do was to be able to sing, but as fortune would have it, I can’t carry a tune. One year at River Oaks Elementary School, a humane decision was made by the principal that anyone who wanted
The Houston mayoral election doesn’t occur until November, but the race to succeed Bob Lanier is already the talk of the town. Three blacks would like to be Houston’s first black mayor, and many blacks—among them Houston Chronicle editorial writer James T. Campbell—think that’s two too many. Former top cop
Houston has every reason to be proud of the Alley Theatre: After fifty years in the business, it has national clout and a Tony award. Still, not everyone is pleased with its direction.
Computer users at NASA don’t get Mac—they get even.
Private prisons lock out the press.
STEPHEN KLINEBERG IS A MAN WHO REVELS IN STATISTICS, finding a pleasure in them so intense it borders on the sensual. We sat at a small round table in his breakfast room as he led me through the arrays of numbers that he has worked each of the last fifteen
In February two stolen frescoes paid for and restored by Dominique de Menil will be unveiled in a new Eastern Orthodox chapel in Houston.
To perfect a promising new gene therapy, doctors at Houston’s M. D. Anderson need time. Unfortunately, that’s one thing people with malignant brain tumors don’t have.
Why hire an architect, an interior designer, a graphic designer, and an image consultant when one person can do the whole job? That’s the idea 29-year-old Trinh Pham has been building on since she earned an architecture degree from the University of Houston in 1991. Her first big job had
The latest star pupil of the so-called Houston school.
In excerpts from his upcoming memoir, legendary newsman Walter Cronkite remembers his days as a cub reporter in Houston and his introdcution to the realities of racism.
If you’ve seen a Kiss concert, a truck and tractor pull, or Miss Saigon recently, you can thank Houston’s Pace Entertainment for the privilege—and for the price you paid.
HOUSTON FINANCIER (or, as he is often described in the Golden State media, “Texas tycoon”) Charles Hurwitz clearly got the better side of his recent agreement to swap 3,000 acres of ancient redwoods in Northern California for $380 million in federal and state funds plus other public forest acreage. In
The University of Houston thinks Frank Stella is frankly stellar.
The inside story of how industrious NASA scientists discovered signs of life in a Martian rock and boosted the fortunes of the tabloids, Hollywood producers, and even the president.
It was strange enough that I returned to my hated Houston high school after twenty years—but stranger still, I enjoyed it.
Carolyn Farb wrote the book on charity fundraising, so when she calls, the stars come out to play, and Houston�s high society has a ball.
Not long after he moved to Texas to enroll in the Houston Ballet Academy, Trey McIntyre discovered he wasn’t good enough to dance the classics. But that didn’t stop the six-foot-six Kansas native from towering above his peers. Recognizing his talent as a designer of dance pieces, the company’s artistic
Practicing what he preaches.
Scripting success.
Head of the class.
Freedom fighter.
Operation Lightning Strike, the FBI’s bizarre NASA probe, accomplished many things—all of them negative. Plus, the bureau strikes (out) again in Houston.
WHEN WE LIVED IN RIVER OAKS, three or four boys and I would go down to the creek when it was hot, when the dragonflies were louder than the wind and the air was so still that it felt like it weighed a ton—but you’re seven years old and you
In less than a decade, the upstart Houston diapermaker has come a long way, baby. But taking on the big boys has hardly been child’s play.
It doesn’t matter that his most famous pupil was shark- bitten at the Masters. Butch Harmon is still Texas’ hottest golf pro since Harvey Penick.