Ruth Pennebaker

  • Despair in Fashion

    Justin Sewell isn’t perfect. He admires “outliers” like Ralph Nader (even after my insistence that Nader can never, ever be forgiven for helping to [...] Full Story

  • Edsel U.

    Using a car analogy, [University of Texas System Board of Regents Chairman Gene Powell] said a $10,000 degree would be more like a Chevrolet [...] Full Story

  • Shut My Mouth

    In the immortal words of the great Tammy Wynette, sometimes it’s hard to be a woman. Anyway, that’s the tune I’ve been humming — [...] Full Story

  • Bringing Up Baby

    On a wintry day in February, I went to the Texas Senate to hear citizens and medical and legal experts testify about the sonogram [...] Full Story

  • Unearthing Aurora

    Lost Books of Texas “Terms of Endearment is a book?” a well-read friend asked recently. “I didn’t know that. I thought it was just [...] Full Story

  • The Year Nothing Changed

    You remember 1968. That was the year everything changed. The North Vietnamese began the Tet offensive, widely regarded as a turning point in the [...] Full Story

  • Ulterior Designs

    In the fall of 2005, a camera-toting, microphone-wielding crowd of international media descended on the federal courthouse in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. They came to cover [...] Full Story

  • Sledding Through a Bush Family Fantasy

    Growing up in West Texas marks you forever. Mountain ranges give me the creeps. Rain was such a stranger that I still can barely [...] Full Story

  • Back in the UAE

    We are a strange family when it comes to travel. My husband and I were almost deported from England years ago. We once hired [...] Full Story