Those scary readers’ picks Reading the Observer’s staff picks for the 1998 Best of Dallas issue [September 24] makes me not want to move away from here so much. Reading the readers’ picks does. Anonymous Via e-mail I saw the mention of Burger’s Lake in your “Best of Dallas” issue…
Alexander Troup leaves you wondering at first. He talks a bit too fast, and his conspiratorial tone can make a listener wary. But once he draws you into the half-forgotten world that has been his hobby and obsession for most of his life–turn-of-the-century Dallas–his enthusiasm is contagious. Looking at a…
On the surface, William Campbell, Ricky Dale Thomas, and Adonis Baxter have little in common. Campbell is the mayor of Atlanta; Thomas is a California short-order cook and onetime petty thief; Baxter is a Richardson High School graduate who was charged with capital murder in the shooting death of a…
Cheryl Craigie, the president and chief executive of the KERA public television and radio stations, admits she just can’t keep it straight. “I always get it wrong,” the 42-year-old executive says. “What is it we promise on air? More programming and less fundraising? Or more fundraising and less programming?” Craigie,…
Slow to anger Finally, someone in the judicial system is a little steamed about Vance Miller, the rich-as-God’s-bookie real estate heir who has spent the last decade saying he’s broke so he can avoid paying some big bills. U.S. District Judge Joe Fish ordered Miller to appear at a September…
As dramas go, last week’s City Plan Commission meeting wasn’t exactly a barn burner, but it was about as close to excitement as a meeting on street widths and railroads is likely to get. Greed. Conspiracy. Suspicion. Think The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, as performed by a troupe of…
Michael Capehart likes to talk. If given the chance, this 52-year-old Oak Cliff native will keep you riveted, his lilting voice filling a room, twisting vowels and turning phrases in a way only a native Texan can. And talking is what he’s been doing these days, as often and as…
Dallas Observer reporter Jim Schutze is claiming The Dallas Morning News “subtly misrepresented” remarks Schutze made to Morning News reporter Robert Ingrassia last week in response to questions for a story Ingrassia was reporting about a full-page ad in the Morning News that contained the complete text of a story…
Whose betrayal? I’ll admit it. I’m something of a Jim Schutze fan. Jim usually brings a fresh perspective to the stories he covers. He is not a run-of-the-mill reporter; he usually does his research and presents a balanced, well-reasoned article. In addition to that, he is my neighbor, and I…
On a gentle hillside 30 miles east of Dallas, out in the countryside near Kaufman, Bailey Kemp pulls his one-ton pickup and 40-foot stock trailer up to a steel-covered horse barn and begins to unload. First he shoos from his rig 10 ordinary-looking bays. Then a palomino. Then he guides…
After three and a half years, hundreds of thousands of dollars shelled out in attorneys’ fees by both sides, and countless trips to the appeals court in New Orleans, at least one part of the legal brawl between federal Judge John H. McBryde and his fellow jurists appears to be…
No strings attached? Buzz likes trees. Buzz likes plants. Some of our most memorable moments–well, not memorable, but enjoyable, anyway–come from plants. So we’re as happy as anyone to hear that the Dallas Arboretum and Botanical Gardens has completed plans for a $16 million expansion, funded largely with private donations…
Failing all children In the September 10 issue, your cover story “Some fly, some die: How DISD betrays children of color,” by Jim Schutze, was mistitled. Based on the numbers within the article, DISD is failing all children. This is not a racial issue. Even the last sentence of the…
By any measure, January 16, 1998, was a historic day for the state of Texas. At the federal courthouse in Texarkana, Attorney General Dan Morales announced the multibillion-dollar settlement he’d brokered with the tobacco industry–money that would flow directly into state, county, and hospital-district coffers for legislators and local government…
Among those who gather outside the red-brick mission on Harwood Street are day workers, drug addicts, shelter people, the mentally ill. Sitting on the curb, queuing up restlessly, they wait for some indication that their hot lunch is ready. Once inside, they become part of the 200 people who daily…
Here we were, two intrepid reporters from the Dallas Observer, sitting in a small, dark library next to the chambers of state District Judge John Creuzot as the wiry jurist prepared to jab sharp needles into our ears. “All you’re gonna feel is a minor prick in your ear,” Creuzot…
Perhaps the mayor and The Dallas Morning News and the Dallas Citizens Council forgot to mention it when they said a Dallas Olympic bid would not involve any real tax money. But shouldn’t the people of Dallas be informed about the $2 billion to $3 billion note they will have…
Coarse description We generally hesitate to point out weaknesses in others’ grammar and spelling, because we’ve received our share of snippy letters from retired seventh-grade English teachers raising doubts about our parentage over some improper use of subjunctive mood, but this course description from Southern Methodist University’s Meadows School of…
Rogue elephant Stuart Eskenazi’s treatment of the Log Cabin Republicans [“GOP to gays: Butt out,” September 3] was very charitable. I’m glad to have seen this merry band of Quixotic political wannabes receive the journalistic scrutiny they have long craved. (The Dallas Morning News dares no such investigation.) Eskenazi’s exploration…
On his path to the White House, George W. Bush must pass by the Dallas Independent School District–the Bates Motel of local politics. (Think of school board meetings as the shower scene). Maybe that’s what the Fates were thinking of when they created DISD. Maybe it’s… The test. You can…
Early on a mid-October day in 1991, Phyllis Glazer barreled down Highway 155 on the way to her son’s elementary school in Winona, an East Texas hamlet northeast of Tyler. Her 9-year-old son, Max, had forgotten his math textbook the previous day, and he was determined to be at school…
Man bites bulldog When Buzz thinks of victims, our thoughts generally don’t go anywhere near Jim Mattox. But the former attorney general, who wants the job again, is fretting over the possibility of being a victim of negative campaigning. This is the same Jim Mattox who spread rumors during the…
