Rosebud A visit to a famous downtown department store offers an interesting revelation about Dallas: this city has a more virulent cult of personality for beloved retailer Stanley Marcus, now celebrating his 90th birthday, than North Korea has for its dictators. Which makes us wonder: if Stanley’s such an arbiter…
Armey’s army I read the Dallas Observer once in a blue moon, and today must have been that blue moon. I read your article on Dick Armey [“The improbable rise of Richard Armey” May 4] and was not entirely surprised to find that you barely got through a paragraph without…
AUSTIN–A truism of education debates is that somebody, somewhere, has already figured out how to solve whatever the problem is. In Los Angeles, there’s a Jaime Escalante, about whom the film Stand and Deliver was made, successfully teaching physics to kids in the barrios. In Philadelphia, there’s a terrific program…
It was a beautiful afternoon, one week before the Dallas mayor’s race, and Ron Kirk was in the unusual position of having 45 minutes to kill. Political candidates in the home stretch of the fight do not have lives, let alone free time. But Kirk had just emerged from a…
News spotlights new form of economic development Leave it to the Morning News to find the silver lining in the darkest storm cloud. You could call it optimism, the upbeat attitude perfusing Dallas’ Only Daily that always seeks to make the best of a bad situation–that believes tomorrow will always…
Wild at heart Who would know more about affairs of the heart than St. Paul Medical Center, where they regularly repair and transplant them? The hospital’s cardiac-rehabilitation program’s “Going Home Instructions,” handed to recovering surgery patients, is full of common-sense advice about exercise and warning signs. And to their credit,…
Norman Mailer stands behind the lectern, leaning against it as he addresses the 150 or so who have come to hear the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner speak. He wears a blue blazer, an argyle sweater vest, and gray slacks; his tousled white head of hair barely peeks above the lectern. He…
Hit man Thanks to both the Observer and David Pasztor for the article on William Dean Singleton and his career of destroying major daily newspapers in Texas [“Citizen Dean,” May 4]. As a former employee of both the Dallas Times Herald and the Houston Post, I was always amazed to…
The municipal motto of Northfield, Minnesota, is “Cows, Colleges, and Contentment.” Honest. Last year, they had a contest to think up a new motto and, after some civic thought, decided to keep “Cows, Colleges, and Contentment.” So as we veer rhetorically toward the apocalypse, as various social prophets mutter direly…
What happened to ‘Dilbert’ One day it was there, in its usual, reassuring place, between “Wizard of Id” and “Curtis.” The next day, it was gone, wiped from Dallas nerds’ essential reality without so much as an explanatory word. BeloWatch is speaking, of course, about “Dilbert,” the popular cartoon chronicling…
The women at the post office cringed every time they saw Ella Patterson heading their way. The busty, energetic teacher-turned-author would arrive at West Dallas’ central station lugging cartloads of her book, Will the Real Women…Please Stand Up!, packed one-by-one in red-and-white overnight envelopes. The postal workers just saw packages…
When Cloyce Box was alive, three things seemed destined to come his way: money, notoriety, and lawsuits. Box may have left behind his millions–and his reputation as a freewheeling businessman–when he died in 1993. But the lawsuits just keep on coming. The former football star’s estate is on the hook…
On target The most insightful Morning News coverage of the city’s $175 million bond program came not from the paper’s on-the-team news coverage, but from veteran columnist Phil Seib. Seib, an SMU instructor and political consultant who writes for the “Viewpoints” page and has written for the News for 15…
How do you spell m-a-y-o-r? Thanks to former vice president Dan Quayle, we know spelling isn’t a prerequisite for elected office. But shouldn’t a candidate at least know how to spell his own name? Dallas mayoral candidate Domingo Garcia found himself in an embarrassing situation last week when his television…
By nightfall last Tuesday, the Ambassador Room of the Regal Row Ramada Inn held more empty chairs than crowd. The rumor of television cameras had scared a fair number of regulars away. On ordinary Tuesdays, the unadorned ballroom is packed with as many as 300 true believers. But in the…
Sometimes there is solace in having the right words to use, in being able to call something exactly what it is. I would like to thank President Clinton for the phrase “evil cowards.” Evil cowards killed babies in the springtime. Evil cowards made death in Normal, Oklahoma. A pickup truck,…
Deadhead Whoa! Matt Seitz’s vehemence re: the Grateful Dead and the movie Tie-Died [“Dead on arrival,” April 20] was more bracing than the usual morning cup of coffee, but I fear his passion is untrammeled by much knowledge of the subject. The parking lot scene around Dead shows has been…
The incredible shrinking designer Dallas designer Victor Costa is known in fashion circles as the copy-cat couturier for knocking off the work of leading fashion designers. Recently he’s borrowed something else–the time-honored method of dealing with civil lawsuits by filing bankruptcy. Thirty days before Costa was supposed to appear in…
Self-serving star On April 7, A.H. Belo hosted a “Stars of Texas” gala at the Loews Anatole Hotel so the 600 or so ink-stained wretches of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, which was holding its national convention here, could mingle with luminaries of Texas business, entertainment, and politics. (BeloWatch,…
Selena la Reina Let’s see…”Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, John Lennon…Elvis Presley…” And Selena? [“Myth, martyr, musician,” April 20.] Please, Mr. Wilonsky, see a doctor. Anonymous I’ll cry if I want to I found the review of Letterman hosting the Academy Awards [“Stupid Dave Tricks,” April 6] both insensitive and one-sided…
Don’t you think the greatest heroes are those who persevere? Some people get medals for being in the right place at the right time to do a splendid thing in a split second–and deserve medals for presence of mind alone. But those who hang in there for a long time…
Breezy was a beautiful bitch, and Chuck Milner loved her dearly. He loved the way she seemed to float as she walked, the way she held her exquisitely formed, regal head high like a princess. She had perfectly shaped almond eyes, an aquiline nose. She was very well-traveled and a…
