Saul Elbein

  • Caldwell Czechs In

    There were four of us sitting around a table at the Longhorn Bar and Grill in downtown Caldwell, just across the street from the [...] Full Story

  • Bad Medicine

    The case of Dr. Rolando Arafiles could well be the oddest in the history of Texas medicine. In 2008, Arafiles was hired as a [...] Full Story

  • The Boy from Haskell

    If you want to clear a room in Haskell, this is how you do it. You walk in. You sit down. You say, “I’m [...] Full Story

  • Cuero Bets on Fracking

    In 2008, Petrohawk Energy sank an oil well on Charlotte Krause’s land in the green fields north of Cuero. Drillers bored into the shale [...] Full Story

  • Get Your Norteño out of My Conjunto

    McAllen Everything is going fine until Lupe Saenz sees the CDs. I’m paying my check at a run-down diner in downtown Mercedes, a town [...] Full Story
  • Demonstration of traditional amaranth cooking techniques.

    The Seeds That Time Forgot

    Once, amaranth was a staple of Mesoamerican civilization. Now a Oaxacan nonprofit is trying to bring it back. Full Story
  • Keystone XL Pipe Line: Pipe Dream

    Iron Hands Behind the Pine Curtain

    I watched him being loaded into the van. The pepper spray had not been washed off; his face was swollen and contorted, with long ropes of mucus hanging from his nostrils. Full Story
  • keepingtimeinlockhart

    Keeping Time In Lockhart

    The story of how Galbraith ended up devoting his life to the care and restoration of antique clocks reads like a fairy tale. It dates back 30 years to a now-vanished neighborhood in Austin, to the day when a simple act of kindness changed Galbraith’s life forever. Full Story

  • Fehrenbach’s Texas

    When I met T.R. Fehrenbach, the fam-ous Texas historian, I found an old man given to gloomy pronouncements about mortality wearing a camel hair [...] Full Story

  • No Shows: Why So Few Texans Bother to Vote

    I WAS SITTING IN A COMMUNITY RESOURCE CENTER in the Houston suburb of Alief trying to get a glimpse of the state’s future. Alief [...] Full Story