VOICES OF CHANGE Two of the state’s women’s rights pioneers—Dallas attorney Louise B. Raggio, known as the “mother of family law in Texas,” and Vivian Castleberry, the first woman to serve on the editorial board of the Dallas Times Herald, will be among the featured guests at Southern Methodist University’s
LADIES ONLY Recently, Ruby Nelda Perez, a locally popular San Antonio performance artist, tried to describe Rosita, the Latina restaurant owner who is the sole character in Perez’s one-woman show, Doña Rosita’s Jalapeño Kitchen. “I think she’s a combination of women I’d like to be, women I am, women I
TRUE LIVES The museum building boom of the past few years has enriched Texas’ cities with many new entertainment and learning opportunities. Especially impressive are the museums devoted to the women who have had a hand in developing our state and country. Fort Worth’s National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of
O SUSAN! The Houston Grand Opera is throwing a party this month for Texas-raised diva Susan Graham, celebrating her triumphant Houston (and world) debut as the hero in the HGO’s staging of the Handelian melodrama Ariodante in November. Where’s the shindig? Why, in the second act of Lehár’s Merry Widow.
THE CABLE GUY Conservative political columnist Robert Novak, the co-host of CNN’s Crossfire, will speak at the University of Texas at Tyler’s R. Don Cowan Fine and Performing Arts Center on January 30.You’ve cultivated this image of yourself as tough, even mean, but everyone I know in Washington says you’re
“YOU A REAL COWBOY?” Debra Winger asked that question of John Travolta more than twenty years ago in the film Urban Cowboy. Today, with a couple more decades of urban sprawl under our big, shiny belt buckles, it’s even harder to find one. But this month, if you look for
PLANE TO SEE Despite claims from folks in East Texas that a Pittsburg preacher named Burrell Cannon created the first operational aircraft in 1902 (see “Two Wings and a Prayer”), Austin’s Centennial of Flight Celebration observes the Wright brothers’ December 1903 takeoff. Even so, the commemorative event, held on January
GIMME SHELTER This month, as various towns across the state stage Las Posadas processions, in which actors portraying Mary and Joseph reenact the biblical couple’s search for shelter, directors will be challenged with the question of casting. This year McAllen, which hosts the largest production in the state, marks its
TELL IT LIKE IT IS Aaron Neville will be the featured performer at the Mayor’s Official Houston Holiday Celebration in the Bayou City December 6. His newest record, Believe, will be released in January. What is the most dramatic change you have seen in music over the years? I guess
GOTTA SING! Every holiday season offers the chance for thousands of singers—and wannabes—to burst into song. As regular choristers dust off Handel’s Messiah for appreciative audiences—Austin, Dallas, El Paso, Fort Worth, Houston, and San Antonio all have excellent performances lined up—hosts of shower singers start looking for alternatives that bring
POWER PLAY Hockey in Texas, eh? Even though the National Hockey League’s Dallas Stars—who, need we remind you, drank from Lord Stanley’s Cup in 1999—have been shining in the Lone Star State for a decade now and minor league franchises have found more homes here than in any other state,
READ ALL ABOUT IT November is an ideal month for books: The weather is cooler, a perfect excuse for staying in and escaping into the world of your favorite page-turner. But if bumming indoors isn’t your style, then mind your p‘s and q‘s and hit the road for these literary
ATTENTION, SHOPPERS No doubt, holiday consumers who turn a sickly green upon hearing the word “mall” will search desperately this month for alternatives to the slew of chain stores. Some people will test their artistic capacities by creating their offerings; some will purchase presents online. Still others—thousands, we are told—will
THE HARD CELL Beaumont has the Texas Energy Museum and Kingsville has the King Ranch Museum. Likewise, Huntsville promotes its industry—incarceration—with the Texas Prison Museum. Since 1989 museum visitors have surveyed exhibits dedicated to prison art, contraband, and capital punishment, gawking at the decommissioned electric chair Old Sparky along the
DRUM UP SOME FUN Whether you’re a folk art lover, a foodie, or just ready for a fall frolic, here’s an itinerary that should make your mouth water. Head to San Antonio November 1 and begin with First Friday, a monthly art walk that takes over the funky Southtown neighborhood’s
This recipe is hotel executive chef David Bull’s adaptation of Texas cooking maven Helen Corbitt?s original cheese soup. He likes it a bit spicier and he uses Velveeta, which melts beautifully. If you substitute cheddar, which was called for in the original, be sure to grate it finely or it
HOT WHEELS Whether you like to ride low and slow, in high style, or with the wind in your face, this month offers several events that will get your motor running. Start your engines at San Antonio’s Low and Slow Classic Car Show, where more than two hundred flashy vehicles
Pop artist Peter Max brings his psychedelic stylings to Fort Worth’s Milan Gallery for a month-long show beginning October 26. Max will christen the exhibit with an appearance. What can people expect to see in the exhibit? Well, my exhibitions are sort of semi-retrospectives. What you will see are works
COMING ATTRACTIONS For thirty years El Pasoan Willie Varela has been best known for his avant-garde super 8 films. This month, however, the 52-year-old debuts his other artistic undertakings. On October 31 the El Paso Museum of Art and the UT-El Paso Fox Fine Arts Center open a two-part exhibit,
JAZZ IT UP Jazz, the great musical art form invented in the U.S., became a part of world culture, fusing different rhythms along the way. This month sample the new sounds beginning October 6, when Calle 54, a musical performance based on the film of the same name about Afro-Cuban
DO, RE, Sí San Antonio loves a fiesta. And during the Diez y Seis de Septiembre holiday, which celebrates Mexico’s independence from Spain on September 16, 1810, there is plenty of evidence of that. On September 14 the streets of the Alamo City will be filled with music and dancing
THE GUY CAN’T HELP IT Little Richard, arguably one of the greatest performers in rock and roll history, is playing in Texas this month at Galveston’s Grand 1894 Opera House on September 28 and 29. So you’re coming to Galveston. Have you ever been to that part of Texas before?
WORD FOR WORD Ogden Nash once wrote, “I’m so full/Of Holy Texas/I’ll be hallowed ground/When they annex us.” Nash never lived in Texas, but his papers are permanent residents at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at UT-Austin. You can examine the comic poet’s original manuscripts, letters, drawings, and photographs
DIVERSIONS OF GRANDEUR Trashy romance novels may be perfect for summertime escapism, but fall calls for more enlightened pastimes. Houston delivers with an artistically packed weekend September 27-29, one built for cultural indulgence. Begin Friday evening, when the Houston Ballet performs Madame Butterfly, an adaptation of the operatic favorite. On
ANALYZE THIS Ever wonder how a rat can see in the dark? Well, this month you can attend some eye-popping exhibits around the state that will satisfy even the most inquisitive minds, and you don’t have to have a Ph.D. in biology to appreciate them. “Animal SuperSenses” at Galveston’s Moody
LEAVE IT TO DIVA What do Cher and Dolly Parton, two of the most recognizable performers in the world—one for her outlandish outfits and the other for her, well, smile—have in common? Not much—on the surface, that is. Other than the obvious (they are both singers, actors, and blondes; yes,
‘TIS THE SEASON As the World Cup reminded us, soccer, where you kick the ball up and down the field, is really football. But when Americans talk about football, we mean more than feet. We mean hands, arms, heads; we mean hard-hitting blocks, bubbly cheerleaders, marching bands. We mean spectacle.
THE GREAT INDOORS Kids’ late-summer doldrums usually leave them particularly restless. They become prone to manic behavior—fads flourish, fixations blossom, expectations intensify. But as any well-informed individual between the ages of five and ten knows, nothing is more anticipated this month than the premiere of Spy Kids 2: The Island
USA TODAY If you’re looking for a way to make this Fourth of July memorable, then head to Big D, where “big” is the operative word. Dallas is planning the largest fireworks display in the history of the state as part of the AT&T Trinity Fest. The free celebration (tickets
TALK TO ME Rock and roll crooner Chris Isaak, known for his signature rootsy, soul-stirring sound, is currently on tour with a new CD, Always Got Tonight, and will be making stops this month in Austin, Dallas, and Houston. Meanwhile, The Chris Isaak Show, the Showtime series in which the
LORDS OF THE RINGS Remarkably, you’ll be able to witness a ringmaster get eaten by a lion this month. M. C. Bot, a mechanical master of ceremonies, will meet his fate via mechanical lion Max Fang in the Space Center Houston’s latest exhibit, “Robot Circus,” which features a choreographed catastrophic
STAR POWER Sure, you can point out the Big Dipper, but did you know that it is an “asterism,” a well-known star pattern that is usually part of a constellation (in this case the constellation is Ursa Major)? If not, this month you can gain a little more knowledge about
Having Their Say The 2000 U.S. census indicated that Hispanics make up 12.5 percent of the population, yet Hispanics make up only 2 percent of prime-time television characters, with stories spotlighting contemporary Mexican American families and neighborhoods remaining dreadfully few and far between. More and more, though, Texas audiences are
Boys Will Be Girls Tony Curtis (born Bernard Schwartz) will turn 77 on June 3, one day before the opening night of Some Like It Hot, a musical based on the 1959 Billy Wilder movie in which he co-starred with Jack Lemmon and Marilyn Monroe. In this production Curtis will
Now Town Rest assured, there’s always plenty to see and do in Fort Worth. While mainstays like the Stockyards National Historic District and Sundance Square are sure to amuse, the weekend of June 7-9 promises to impress with charms of its own. On Friday head out to Maverick Stadium at
Holy Moses and More An exhibit of medieval religious frescoes from the Vatican Museums on display in . . . Lubbock? Let that sink in—like paint applied to wet plaster on a permanent wall. Wouldn’t you have to move the whole wall? Well, no, says the Reverend Malcolm Neyland, the
Treat Your Mama Right If Mom is an arts lover, then your search for the perfect Mother’s Day gift is over: Treat her to a weekend in Houston. You wouldn’t want to subject her to the inevitable Friday afternoon traffic, so arrive Thursday, May 9, and enjoy a stroll around
All the Right Moves For someone who grew up studying classical ballet, modern dance seems foreign to me. Where are the outward foot positions? The high jumps? Of course, ballet and modern share some of the same principles, and this month you can see moves that reflect both traditions. In
MODEL ATHLETE LISA LESLIE, the starting center for the defending world champion Los Angeles Sparks, sashays into the Compaq Center on May 27 to play in the Houston Comets’ season opener.First of all, let me congratulate you on winning the WNBA title. Thanks. It’s a pretty great feeling. Our team
The Awakening Unlike Houston, whose thriving art market allows its artists to live in the Bayou City and sell globally, Austin has always had a tough time cultivating a reputation with dealers as a serious visual-art town. Before the high-tech economic boom, Austin artists complained that nobody bought art in
Point of View Since 1993, the bodies of 266 murdered young Mexican women have been found in the desert surrounding Ciudad Juárez, an industrial city that sits directly across the border from El Paso. A multimedia exhibit that opened March 8 and runs through April 11 at the UTEP Union
Sports Center May I have your attention, please? Fort Worth is the place to be the first weekend in April. For starters, check out Chevy Thunder Days in Sundance Square, a NASCAR celebration with concerts, racing displays, and driver appearances. Of course, you’ll also want to head out to the
Nanu, Nanu Academy award- winning actor and comedian Robin Williams brings his first one-man show in fifteen years to the University of Texas at Austin’s Performing Arts Center on April 9, the Music Hall at Fair Park in Dallas on April 10, and the Verizon Wireless Theater in Houston on
Independents’ Day In 1982 John Kunz opened the doors to a 1,200-square-foot music store on Lamar Boulevard called Waterloo Records. Austin has changed over the years—for one thing, Lamar had considerably less traffic in those days—and so has Waterloo. While Kunz watched other independent music stores barely stay afloat, and
TEXAS, OUR TEXAS On March 2, 1836, as Mexican president Santa Anna and his army prepared for their final assault on the Alamo, 59 Texian and Tejano representatives at Washington-on-the-Brazos boldly signed the Texas Declaration of Independence. Amateur historians can experience those epic events this year on March 2 and
JUST DO IT It’s springtime. Quit neglecting your New Year’s resolutions and get up off the couch. If it has been a while since you’ve gone out for a run (or taken the stairs), the following events should be a source of motivation to get your blood pumping, whether you
HAIL TO THE DORF! If you thought your only hope of seeing the comedy duo of Tim Conway and Harvey Korman was by watching reruns of The Carol Burnett Show, you’re in for a treat. You can catch the veteran comedians live on tour this month in San Antonio and
ABSTRACT IMPRESSIONS Some theatergoers, when ruminating on the plays of director Robert Wilson, sigh deeply, rub their eyes, and murmur comments like, “So the giant fish was really a time machine?” The Waco native’s work—such as the twelve-hour Life and Times of Joseph Stalin—usually elicits a strong reaction, and for
A GRAND AFFAIR During the Great Depression, a group of friends in Brownsville came up with the idea to boost morale by paying tribute to what their city and their Mexican sister city, Matamoros, had to offer. Sixty-five years later, Charro Days is still rockin’—and still celebrating border culture. Back
Funny girl Janeane Garofalo, the actress and stand-up comedienne, plays the Empire Theatre in San Antonio on February 1 and the Paramount Theatre in Austin on February 2.You spent some time growing up in Houston, didn’t you? We were there on and off starting in the early seventies. My dad
