Innehållsförteckning för July 2016 från The Texas Observer

Carrying the Flag I’m hip to the Mexican wishing to be Mexican (“The 66 Percent,” May issue). Why shouldweexpectanythingelse?Butyoudon’tseeAfricanAmericanspushingAfrican music; they burst forth with their own rapper sound in these United States. I don’t hear European immigrants pushing Italian or Polish or German sounds, other than at annual festivals or ethnic parades. Hell, even Cuban Gloria Estefan went mainstream with her music. Yes, be proud of being a Mexican. But the United States, in its Grand Experiment, wishes all who come here to create the new and the novel. Conjuntos are yesteryear. Cute, but not mainstream. Tejano rock has faded for a reason. And the staple, the once-proud mariachi, has been relegated to strolling tables at cheap Tex-Mex cafes from Houston to El Paso, from Brownsville to Big D.. The…

BATHROOM PANIC! “A school may not require transgender students to use facilities inconsistent with their gender identity or to use individual-user facilities when other students are not required to do so.” —Letter from Obama administration to school districts across the nation, May 13 “This will be the beginning of the end of the public school system as we know it.” —Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick to Dallas’ NBC 5, May 12 “JFK wanted to send a man to the moon. Obama wants to send a man to the women’s restroom.” —Governor Greg Abbott on Twitter, May 17 “I don’t know.” —Attorney General Ken Paxton on whether transgender people are more likely to commit sex crimes, at a press conference, May 25 “I’m here to tell Dan Patrick: You, specifically you, are…

PLAINVIEW // An estate sale on Quincy Street ended abruptly, reports KCBD in Lubbock, after the owner came home to find a man selling the owner’s belongings and strangers carrying them out the front door. The unauthorized sale, which had been advertised in advance in the Facebook group “Plainview Buy Sale Trade,” landed its organizer in the Hale County Jail facing charges of possession of stolen property and burglary of a habitation. Local resident Maria Cornett told the station she was shocked by the news. “The audacity to go into somebody else’s house and pretend it was his and selling their things that don’t belong to him,” she said. “Now that is a no-no.” FRISCO // For just pennies, Brett Sanders paid off his $223 speeding ticket. The Bitcoin enthusiast…

THEY PAID THEIR TAB AT THE Waffle House and put the plan in motion. Phil and John Bradley guided their mother, Rosamond, to the back seat of Phil’s car, and John took the seat beside her. Driving through the familiar North Dallas streets, it wasn’t long before Rosamond realized they weren’t headed to her home. ¶ “What are you doing?” she asked. It was John who answered, “We’re taking you to Lubbock.” ¶ Though Rosamond protested the whole way, her sons didn’t know what else to do. It was March 2009, and at 73 she insisted on living alone, hours away from them. Sometimes she didn’t take her medication; sometimes she took too much. Phil had been awakened one night recently by a call from the Dallas police. She’d smashed…

WHEN THE MAIN LOBBY OF SAN Antonio’s Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center is busy, “Liquid Crystal” is in its element. The 30-foot-tall metal sculpture is studded with 3,500 pyramid-shaped LCD panels that, when triggered by motion-sensing cameras, blink in contagion. The effect is a ripple of light sweeping across the surfaces of the triangular column — the digital equivalent of a fountain. The more movement in the lobby, the more waves undulate across the surface. Its designer, London-based Jason Bruges, said he was inspired by the nearby San Antonio River to make a sculpture that reflects the motion of the water, even as it reflects the movement of convention goers. Between events, when the lobby is empty save for an occasional maintenance worker, the sociable sculpture becomes more subdued. A…

WHEN KEN ILGUNAS SET OFF ON FOOT TO WALK FROM Alberta, Canada, to Texas in 2012, opposition against the Keystone XL pipeline was at its height. A powerful grassroots coalition had coalesced around the pipeline, and protesters had successfully thrust the issue into the national spotlight. The movement, which began with rural Nebraskan ranchers and Native American groups, went on to galvanize hundreds of thousands of landowners and environmentalists throughout North America. The pipeline became a symbol for the climate movement, representing not just the immediate damage the pipeline would do to the environmentally sensitive lands it would traverse, but also the borderless devastation unfettered development of fossil fuels could wreak. In his new book, Trespassing Across America: One Man’s Epic Never-Done-Before (And Sort of Illegal) Hike Across the Heartland,…

TX OPEN SWIM While a swim on a hot day can be a saving grace for anyone, for Texans, the intense heat makes the satisfaction of finding great water that much sweeter. My “TX Open Swim” project is a peek at the faces of people at my favorite (sometimes secret) Texas swimming haunts, and the pilgrimages to them. I try to take viewers to Texas’ unexpected oases to share in our most beloved resource. See more photos from Eye on Texas at www.texasobserver.org/ eyeontexas .CALL FOR ENTRIES: Seeking Texas-based documentary photography. Please send inquiries to eyeontexas@ texasobserver.org .…

IN ONE SENSE, WHAT UNFOLDED AT BAYLOR UNIVERSITY IN recent months was a great reckoning. In May, the board of regents released a damning report that showed the utter disregard university leaders had for victims of sexual assault. Though the report, by the Pepper Hamilton law firm, should’ve done more to name names — which administrator, for example. retaliated against a student for reporting a rape? — it nonetheless made plain that there was a “fundamental failure” on Baylor’s part to follow federal sexual assault laws. The fallout was swift. The board of regents sacked Ken Starr, Baylor’s popular president, and head coach Art Briles, who transformed the football program from an afterthought to a powerhouse. Despite a failed Hail-Mary PR blitz, Starr is now largely discredited, a fitting end…

This summer, Texas officials have urged Texans to take precautions against the deadly Zika virus. The Gulf Coast in particular has coped with its share of tropical disease outbreaks in the past, though some of the old precautions may prove impractical today. Amid the 1870 outbreak of the mosquito-borne yellow fever, what strategy did Houston employ for its defense? a. aerial mosquito spraying b. a system of mechanical fans c. underground tunnels d. armed quarantine e. mandatory vaccination…

SOCIAL MOVEMENTS ARE ENTROPIC. THEY FORM, SPONTANEOUSLY or slowly; they make their mark, or not; and then they fade. Sometimes the change movements bring is long-lasting and structural, and sometimes it’s harder to see. What should left-leaning folks and young people hope will emerge from the unexpected success of the Bernie Sanders campaign? And what’s likely to happen? ¶ Sanders’ critics contend that his campaign was an aberration, and his success among young voters an anomaly that points to no clear future. Senator Barbara Boxer suggested that young people like Bernie simply because he reminds them of their grandfather. This glib analysis didn’t come out of nowhere. It reflects deeply ingrained disdain for leftists among some professionals within the Democratic Party. But this contempt ignores the searing economic pain young…

IT’S AS IF HILLARY CLINTON WAS BORN TO DO SOMETHING SHE WAS NEVER MEANT to do. Women are not president of the United States. And yet, Hillary Clinton has spent years — decades, really — making every effort to win the White House. ¶ I am a woman! I like when women win things! I especially like it when women who are not the absolute worst — with no apologies whatsoever to Sarah Palin — win things. And so I felt I should have been more excited after the delegate dust settled, leaving Hillary as the standard-bearer for the Democrats. ¶ But I have so far found this election tiresome, frustrating and, at times, genuinely scary. A GOP field that could make John Kasich seem like a swell dude is…

IN APRIL, A UNIVERSITY OF HOUSTON GRADUATE student named Zachary Turpin, 32, scrolled through a reel of microfilm and found 13 previously unknown articles written by Walt Whitman, all on the topic of “Manly Health and Training.” It was as much of a Eureka! moment as any scholar, young or old, could dream of having. The media responded as it does nowadays: It turned the story into clickbait. The New York Times marked the occasion with a lead graph claiming that Whitman’s guidance “might not seem out of place in an infomercial today.” It then fetishized Whitman’s carnivorous habits, pointing out that his advice came off “sounding more than a little paleo” — a reference to the current dietary trend that has people eating as if they were Neanderthals (tons…

THERE’S NOTHING PARTICULARLY REMARK- able about the Kaufman County countryside on either side of Highway 34. The towns along the road are tiny rural communities, notable for the occasional historic building — and not much else. But saunter down a dusty ranch drive in Cottonwood, past the cows and through a gate, and you’re met by some long-necked residents that have put this town of 185 people on the map. This wobble of ostriches, easily the best collective noun for them, belong to Don and Sharon Birmingham, a husband and wife team who are trying to generate a resurgence of the American ostrich industry. Don built the family home on 40 acres of pasture-land and cypress trees in the late 1980s, after the couple moved from Dallas. He became fascinated…