Stephan the Red In the last few months, Dallas-bred fantasy novelist Stephan Grundy has been the subject of plenty of ink, from a cover story in Dallas Observer (July 21) to reviews in Publisher’s Weekly and the fantasy magazine Locus of his first novel, the Norse epic Rhinegold–a number-one bestseller…
Bad memory chip? The East Dallas reader of The Dallas Morning News thought what she was reading seemed familiar–suspiciously familiar. Veteran News editorial-page columnist Ann Melvin was weighing in on the debate over whether books on computer will someday make the paper-and-ink version obsolete. Absolutely not, Melvin opined, in a…
Rabbi David Shawel is not an imposing figure. Standing only five feet and four inches, he talks fast and rarely stands or sits in one place for long. But lately it is Shawel who has had powerful grocery chains hopping. Shawel is The Man–that’s The Macher in Yiddish–in Dallas when…
The FBI is investigating allegations of public corruption in Ferris involving Waste Management and its consultant, former Ferris mayor Billy Don Dunn. In a nine-page affidavit filed in federal court to establish probable cause to obtain a search warrant for Dunn’s home, Dallas FBI agent James Kendall states that he’s…
By 1989, Earline Jackson recalls, the convoys were rumbling down old highway 75, trailing behind them that awful smell. They’d line up at the gate to Skyline Landfill–dozens of trucks from God knows where–dumping ton after ton of trash in the tiny burg of Ferris. Residents of the little town…
The San Francisco publishers of STEAM magazine are in an uproar over a waggish letter from Fort Worth police Chief Thomas Windham. The national gay and bisexual-oriented publication, which reaches about 45,000 readers each month, prints a directory of the best places around the country for public sex. A copy…
Clueless Your recent two-part series on the construction of Reunion Arena [“Arena wars,” October 13 and October 20] confirms my worst fears about the city of Dallas. Our city managers who presided over this fiasco were either too behind to see the obvious or crooked. They should be sued for…
Delvin Gray watches as two stray mutts–one black, one gray–circle a trash can in a small South Dallas park beside a pond. Gray’s six-month-old son, Julius, sleeps soundly in his lap. It is dusk now, and so quiet in the park, so peaceful, you can almost hear the baby’s breath…
Knowing when to fold ’em Texas first husband Ray Hutchison, spouse of U.S. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, must be counting his blessings these days. Last year, the former legislator and hotshot bond attorney uncharacteristically rolled over when a group of bondholders sued him and his Dallas firm, along with former…
The last time Richard Sledge Harvey ran for office, his defeat was sealed when opponent Ted Lyon pointed out Harvey’s unfortunate tendency to land his private airplane with the landing gear up. After licking his wounds for six years, Harvey is back, making another pass at the District 2 seat…
BOSTON–Oh boy, now this is starting to be fun. Senator Ted Kennedy and his opponent, Mitt Romney, duked it out here Tuesday night while the Senate candidates in New Jersey were getting blood all over the floor down there. In New York, they’re still reeling from Republican Mayor Rudolph Giuliani’s…
A real killer Thanks to Laura Miller for her splendid though distressing “Arena Wars,” parts one and two [October 13 and October 20]. Her concluding paragraphs regarding old-style standards vs. new-style private profit explain a lot. Some of us moved here from the East, 30 to 35 years ago, with…
Sitting at his modest desk at City Hall last Wednesday, Tracy Pounders couldn’t help but smile as he spoke. It wasn’t the pictures of his six-year-old daughter and two-month-old son that were making him feel warm all over. It wasn’t the compact disc of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons that was filling…
Brain drain Dallas’ Only Daily has suffered a trio of major-league defections. The first is the departure of business editor Karen Blumenthal for the Dallas bureau of the Wall Street Journal. Blumenthal, 35, became News business editor about two years ago, after a long stint as a reporter at the…
