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- Cultivating Creativity
- by Chris Tomlinson
- 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 …
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- Views of the Frontier
- by David Cleaves
- El Paso is as far from Texas as you can get while still being in it, a fact that holds a certain appeal to anyone with a love-hate relationship with the Lone Star State. In Literary El Paso, the newest anthology in the Literary Cities series from TCU Press, there’s plenty …
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- Don’t Fence Me In
- by Kirk Forrester
- The invention of barbed wire in 1874 marked the end of the open range in America's West, and the 20th century ushered in settlers who sought security rather than adventure. The Wild West became tamer, more homogenized. Still, pockets of insurrection, physical and philosophical, remain in the West, defying conventionality and …
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- The Oyster Is His World
- by Richard Holland
- For almost 20 years, Houstonians have learned to depend on Robb Walsh's articulate enthusiasm for food, particularly Texas food. We’re not talking fancy—Walsh writes about roadside barbecue, venerable Tex-Mex, sandwiches wrapped in greasy paper, the beautiful varieties of hot sauce and chile peppers. As the food writer for the Houston Press, …
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- Becoming Brazilian
- by Ryland Barton
- The Brazilian author Clarice Lispector is not well known in the United States, but in her native land she is considered part of a Latin American vanguard that includes Gabriel García Márquez, Pablo Neruda and Jorge Borges. Lispector’s prose—with its open form, lyricism, and mystical metaphors—transcended narrative and meaning and suggested …
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- American Ideas
- by Tom Palaima
- 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 …
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- The Art of Destruction
- by Chris Tomlinson
- When we think of art, we think of museums, places where we preserve human creations for later generations. Not all art, though, is meant to last forever. Some artworks are designed for destruction, and a couple of Texas artists are at the forefront in modernizing this ancient, ritualistic fusion of art …
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- The Wind Delivers
- by Chris Tomlinson
- The streets of Lubbock are remarkably clean. The good people here can certainly take some credit for keeping litter at bay, but so can the wind.
More often than not, the wind blows down the brick lanes of downtown Lubbock with a gentle urgency, like a constant nudge to …
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- Going with the Flow
- by Brad Tyer
- I have something in common with Laura Bush, and it’s not narcotized adoration of George W.
John Graves’ Goodbye to a River is my favorite Texas book, too. It’s a common choice, but no less defensible for being so often chosen. I like the book for all the usual …
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- One Man’s Trash Fish ...
- by Brad Tyer
- The West Fork of the San Jacinto River was dammed to form Lake Conroe in 1973. By the early 1980s, the 20,118-acre lake was choking on hydrilla, an exotic aquatic weed originally imported to Florida for use in aquariums. From there boat trailers and dirty props flushed it into the ecosystems …
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- Jerky Boy
- by Brad Tyer
- Brad Tyer on the mythology of Texas BBQ and why jerky deserves top meat billing.
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- Where the Wild Things Are
- by Stayton Bonner
- The rubber Sasquatch head stared with glassy eyes from atop its pedestal. Beneath its gaze, Bigfoot Conference attendees milled about Tyler’s Caldwell Auditorium. Children peeked at the hairy visage from around parents’ legs. A pale man wearing black cowboy boots crossed his arms as a friend snapped a picture with his …
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- Fort Hood Notebook
- by Suzy Spencer
- Killeen -- “I’m blessed.” Those are the two most important words I jotted down as I stood in the courtyard of Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan’s apartment complex, 27 hours after he’d allegedly shot 55 men and women. Thirteen of his 55 military and civilian victims at Fort Hood had died, including …
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- Alone With the Greasewood and the Sage
- by Elroy Bode
- 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.
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- The High Price of Loyalty
- by Josh Rosenblatt
- In burnt orange they come. The hordes.
Ninety-four-thousand, one-hundred and thirteen of them. All dressed in burnt-orange shirts with burnt-orange hats, grasping giant burnt-orange foam “No. 1” hands and burnt-orange beer holders to hold their burnt-orange beer.
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- After Ike: Same As It Ever Was
- by Jennifer Mathieu
- The night Hurricane Ike hit Houston, I was jittery and basically drunk by 7 p.m., having consumed all the Miller tallboys in our refrigerator to calm myself and prepare for the upcoming power outage (though the storm would not hit until well after nightfall). As Ike moved in, thudding and howling, …
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