http://www.texasobserver.org/lege.php The Texas Observer Archives en webmaster@texasobserver.org Copyright 2009 2009-11-06T15:33:20+00:00 http://www.texasobserver.org/features/boots-on-the-ground http://www.texasobserver.org/features/boots-on-the-ground/#When:17:21:00Z Sierra Blanca—“Y’all got here just in time. We’re going to look for a body. Are you up for it? It’s gonna get rough out there, but I can have you back by lunch.” It’s 7 a.m. I’ve already driven two hours from El Paso with my husband, whom I’ve convinced to shoot ­photographs for my story. If it hadn’t been for the Border Patrol checkpoint just outside of this dusty, half-abandoned town on Interstate 10, we might have missed it altogether. Smack in the middle of the Chihuahuan Desert, two hours east of El Paso, we’ve arrived at the office of Arvin West, sheriff of Hudspeth County. Features 2009-10-28T17:21:00+00:00 http://www.texasobserver.org/features/the-pecos-insurrection http://www.texasobserver.org/features/the-pecos-insurrection/#When:13:56:29Z Last Dec. 12, on the outskirts of Pecos, Texas, the immigrants doing time in the world’s largest privately run prison decided to turn the tables on their captors. It was the Day of the Virgin of Guadalupe, an important religious holiday in Latin America. But the inmates were in no mood for celebration. The motin, as the overwhelmingly Spanish-speaking inmates called their uprising, began in the Reeves County Detention Center’s Special Housing Unit (SHU), better known as solitary confinement, with two men—a Honduran and a Mexican—using the wires in an electrical outlet to set a mattress on fire. Features 2009-10-08T13:56:29+00:00 http://www.texasobserver.org/features/texas-prodigy-goes-pop http://www.texasobserver.org/features/texas-prodigy-goes-pop/#When:14:02:50Z Charles Yang got his first tattoo at a parlor in his hometown of Austin on his 18th birthday. When his parents found out, they didn’t speak to him for a week. The tattoo was the latest rebellion from a man whose parents wanted him to be a classical violinist. He’d joined a rock band and become the lead guitarist; he’d grown increasingly social and popular. In short, he was spending less time practicing the violin. Features 2009-10-07T14:02:50+00:00 http://www.texasobserver.org/features/i-was-just-a-junkie http://www.texasobserver.org/features/i-was-just-a-junkie/#When:13:42:33Z She warned him not to go alone. It was a Wednesday morning in late August, and Alejandra Quintanilla was driving to the courthouse in downtown Houston. Sitting next to her, in the passenger seat, was her older brother, Alfredo Guardiola. He had been subpoenaed to appear before a grand jury to testify about one of Houston’s most notorious house fires. Four people had died despite the rescue efforts of Guardiola and several other men who had rushed from neighboring houses to help. He wasn’t a suspect. Prosecutors said they just wanted him to recount for the grand jury what he saw the night of the fire. Still, the subpoena made Quintanilla nervous. Her brother was a gentle man and a heroin addict, and she feared the police would take advantage of him. Features 2009-10-01T13:42:33+00:00 http://www.texasobserver.org/dialogue/eulogy-of-judge-justice http://www.texasobserver.org/dialogue/eulogy-of-judge-justice/#When:16:06:01Z Letters to the Editors Departments, Dialogue 2009-10-23T16:06:01+00:00 http://www.texasobserver.org/editorial/burning-justice http://www.texasobserver.org/editorial/burning-justice/#When:13:57:37Z For decades, fire investigators walked into charred buildings in search of the same clues, the same subtle traces, that they thought indicated arson: the furniture and windows buckled by extreme heat, the burn patterns on the floor scorched by gasoline. Their methods weren’t scientific. Investigators relied on a set of assumptions—inherited knowledge passed from one generation to another—about how buildings burn. They used those pieces of evidence to send thousands of defendants to prison. And much of it was wrong. Departments, Editorial 2009-10-30T13:57:37+00:00 http://www.texasobserver.org/pi/site-unseen http://www.texasobserver.org/pi/site-unseen/#When:15:23:39Z Departments, Political Intelligence 2009-11-02T15:23:39+00:00 http://www.texasobserver.org/pi/open-question http://www.texasobserver.org/pi/open-question/#When:15:22:33Z Departments, Political Intelligence 2009-11-02T15:22:33+00:00 http://www.texasobserver.org/pi/justice-deferred http://www.texasobserver.org/pi/justice-deferred/#When:15:20:27Z Departments, Political Intelligence 2009-11-02T15:20:27+00:00 http://www.texasobserver.org/hightower/obama-must-get-going-on-jobs http://www.texasobserver.org/hightower/obama-must-get-going-on-jobs/#When:16:32:56Z Just before taking office, Barack Obama called on the millions of people involved in his campaign to stay active: “I don't want them to just sit around and wait for me to do something,” he said. “I want them to be pushing their agendas.” Well, since he asked for it, let's shove this agenda forward: Jobs. Middle-class jobs. Jobs with a future and a satisfying purpose. Lots and lots of those jobs. Departments, Jim Hightower 2009-11-04T16:32:56+00:00 http://www.texasobserver.org/botb/cultivating-creativity http://www.texasobserver.org/botb/cultivating-creativity/#When:13:58:31Z Our environment has always shaped our artistic undertakings. In Africa, elaborate wooden masks and sculptures come from the west, where rainforests dominate. On East Africa’s savanna, wood is a precious commodity, so the arts focus on jewelry, clothing and body modification. In Texas, folks frequently lament a cultural landscape as desolate as the scrublands of Amarillo. But two exhibits in Houston address how location and settings influence creativity, and one in particular tries to turn lemons into lemonade. Books & The Culture, Back of the Book 2009-10-06T13:58:31+00:00 http://www.texasobserver.org/reviews/american-ideas http://www.texasobserver.org/reviews/american-ideas/#When:14:33:20Z In April, William H. Goetzmann, a Pulitzer-prize winning historian at The University of Texas at Austin, told the Austin American-Statesman that as a boy his family had rented an apartment in St. Paul, Minnesota where John Dillinger had once lived. The enamel surface of the bathtub had spots eaten away by the acid that Dillinger’s gang had used to erase their own fingerprints. Touching the tub gave Goetzmann a feeling for history, a knack for seeing human beings for what they were when they were. Goetzmann likes to take his readers into that kind of American past and “get them used to living there.” Books & The Culture, Reviews 2009-11-06T14:33:20+00:00 http://www.texasobserver.org/reviews/border-teens http://www.texasobserver.org/reviews/border-teens/#When:16:24:03Z The larger publishing industry is crumbling, but “young adult” fiction appears to be holding steady, even growing. As someone who as a child read novels with “adult” content years before I was supposed to, and who as an adult can frequently be found browsing the young adult section of my public library, I turn to the genre, time and time again, for the immediacy one finds in YA fiction. Books marketed to teenagers are rarely told through the altering prism of experience and nostalgia, which makes sense considering how young people go through life—with a limited sense of proportion and perspective. At that age, everything seems intense and life-altering. Books & The Culture, Reviews 2009-11-04T16:24:03+00:00 http://www.texasobserver.org/critics-notebook/los-lonely-boys-take-us-back-to-1969 http://www.texasobserver.org/critics-notebook/los-lonely-boys-take-us-back-to-1969/#When:19:00:02Z Rock trio Los Lonely Boys were a strange fit for the Billboard charts in 2004, a year dominated by hip-hop experimentalists Outkast, R&B heartthrob Usher, ardent piano diva Alicia Keys, introverted piano diva Norah Jones and Josh Groban, whom one could only describe as a tenor Celine Dion. Yet there were the Garza brothers—Henry (guitar), Jojo (bass), and Ringo (drums)—with their long hair, their San Angelo pedigree, their slick “Texican” riffs and their ubiquitous hit single “Heaven—”­ soulful enough to attract the attention of Willie Nelson and Carlos Santana but innocuous enough to rise to the top of the Adult Contemporary charts. Books & The Culture, Critic's Notebook 2009-10-12T19:00:02+00:00 http://www.texasobserver.org/dateline/alone-with-the-greasewood-and-the-sage http://www.texasobserver.org/dateline/alone-with-the-greasewood-and-the-sage/#When:14:23:01Z I move along on my own two good feet down an Upper Valley road, the sun mildly shining after an early morning rain, the air a bit muggy but full of the smells of grass and weeds and wet dirt, the sound of water tumbling in a nearby canal. As it happens from time to time when my inner psychological coffee pot is perking nicely, I begin to sing. At first I just tootle snatches of a song to the roadside—a bit of “Till There Was You” from The Music Man—but before long I am in full throttle, letting rip a Robert Preston, straw-hat-and-striped-coat tribute to the pleasures of being alive: a thanks for still being able to walk my personal glory roads. Books & The Culture, Dateline 2009-10-09T14:23:01+00:00