The very spot where William Barrett Travis wrote his famous “victory or death” letter is a Ripley’s Haunted Adventures. And other ways gross commercialization has desecrated the Alamo’s sacred battleground site.
The BP oil spill hit the small world of Houston’s oil and gas business hard. So now that the well is plugged, who’s up and who’s down?
When it's time for her to give the gift of a revenue estimate, Comptroller Rylander could be naughty or nice. Either way, the Legislature better watch out.
Scenes from the new oil bust.
Drew Brees's parents don't look forward to seeing him get thrown to the ground on national TV each week. But they sure do love having an NFL quarterback for a son.
For every one hundred people diagnosed with cancer of the tonsil, fewer than nine survive. I hope I’m one of them.
The truth—what we can discern, anyway—about Tom Landry’s leukemia.
While some Texas-born writers had to leave home to do their best work, for John Graves the reverse was true.
How cuts to the budget of our mental health care system have created a nightmare for police officers in Houston—and everywhere else.
R. C. Slocum is the winningest football coach in A&M history. So why are some Aggies hoping he gets sacked?
I’ll give the new conference a fifty-fifty chance of lasting four years.
A charter school that makes the grade.
An East Austin high school shuts its doors.
An open letter to the lucky new chair of the most dysfunctional agency in Texas, the State Board of Education.
What happens to your belief in God when your son commits suicide after being molested by a priest? That's a question Nancy and Pat Lemberger have been struggling with for years.
Gangland-style executions are par for the course these days in Juárez, where drugs— and despair—flow freely.
Why reporters who cover the border are finding themselves more and more under the gun.
A cool, brilliantly blue day in early February found me driving north from Austin on a sort of pilgrimage. I was going to see John Graves, the writer and gentleman farmer, now 73 years old, at his place on four hundred acres of rocky blackland prairie near Glen Rose.My visit
Why the Emma L. Harrison Charter School in Waco flunked out.
TALK OF CHANGE AND REFORM has been in the air since the Sharpstown scandals more than perhaps at any time in our state’s history. Such talk is welcome, and, as most of us apparently felt in the last elections, mandatory. One imagines that talk of reform came as uncomfortably, but
Last election’s star campaigner may be taking thewrong road back.
One woman’s unlikely crusade to help poor kids succeed—and what Texas can learn from her example.
My mother trained me to be a naturalist in our suburban backyard, one bird call at a time.
In 2006 Texas schools still can’t teach English to Spanish-speaking students. Here’s what we should do about that—now.
Forty years after its publication, Horseman, Pass By is still one of Larry McMurtry's finest novelsand as groundbreaking as J. D. Salinger's masterpiece.
Increasingly so. Surprise, surprise.
How Texas can become the world’s clean energy leader.
When the doctor told me my third child had Down’s Syndrome, I knew that my life had changed forever.
For a laid-back coastal paradise that's reminiscent of the Greek Islands in the seventies, pack a bathing suit and head to Montezuma, Costa Rica. But be forewarned: Half of the adventure is getting there.
Wring your hands, cut your wrists, do anything, but just listen to how Kinky can sing.
Should a monument featuring the Ten Commandments be allowed to remain on the grounds of the Texas Capitol? A homeless former defense lawyer says no.
Houston
Today my grandfather is buried in a family plot in Laredo. But to understand who he was and what his family was like, you have to know the story of his first burial, seventy miles away and nearly twenty years earlier.
The Texanist dishes up a heaping helping of fine advice.
A fond look back at Temple, a.k.a. Ratsville and/or Tanglefoot, that fair burg wherein your dedicated advice columnist learned the location of the thin line between right and wrong.
Vegetarian offspring, a barroom dispute, maintaining the “Texas identity,” and whether anything can be done to cure a marriage-threatening case of snoring.
The trouble with black beans, an unnatural attachment to Texas license plates, the perils of striking up a conversation in the restroom, and the discomfort of two men riding together on the same Harley.
Is it legal to be buried on my own property? Illustration by Jack UnruhQ: My wife and I are working toward finally buying some property in Washington County to retire on and have a place for the kids and grandkids to come and enjoy the
Dance hall guilt, faded accents, SUVs with “Truck” plates, and the ancient initiation ceremony at which a young Texan male is presented with his first firearm.
Austin
As Sandra Scofield, Shelby Hearon, and Janet Peery are proving, you don’t have to live in Texas to be a Texas writer.
Temple
How Lamar Hunt and Clint Murchison Jr. cooked up the first Super Bowl.
Poteet
One year ago tejano star Emilio Navaira was nearly killed in a tour bus accident outside Houston. What are we still learning about the experimental medical procedure that may have saved his life?
Amarillo
Dallas
I was raised by one, I married one, and I raised one myselfand I wouldn't be who I am without them.
Quitman
You can take the six-time Oscar nominee out of the small town . . .
