Culture
Strangest State: February 2019
Year in Review: Loon Star State in 2018
The year in political cartoons from the strangest state in the union.
Trump’s sophomore year in the White House made for plenty of ammunition for political cartoonist Ben Sargent. In the pages of the Observer in 2018, the fo...Read More
‘Man on Fire’ Searches in Vain for the Truth About Racism in East Texas
The new documentary asks why a minister self-immolated in the town of Grand Saline, but doesn’t uncover any new answers.
On June 23, 2014, 79-year-old retired Methodist minister Charles Moore drove to the parking lot of a Dollar General store in his hometown of Grand Saline, east ...Read More
‘Life Was Her Art’: Nadine Eckhardt Remembered as an Influential Cultural Conduit in Texas and Washington
A lifelong progressive activist, Eckhardt always managed to straddle both the establishment and counterculture.
Nadine Brammer Eckhardt, first wife and muse of novelist Billy Lee Brammer (The Gay Place) and second wife of Texas Democratic Congressman Robert C. Eckhardt, d...Read More
East Texas Photographer Captures 50 Years of Haunting, Ordinary Magic
Over and over, Keith Carter finds transcendence in scenes of everyday East Texas life.
Ordinary Magic Over and over, Keith Carter finds transcendence in scenes of everyday East Texas life. – by Michael Hardy December 12, 2018 Photographer Ke...Read More
Strangest State: December 2018
Weird news from far-flung Texas.
DAINGERFIELD // The hunt for Bigfoot continues at Daingerfield State Park, where rangers held a weekend of events dedicated to the mythical forest giant. The Lo...Read More
Our 10 Favorite Texas Books of 2018
Politics, immigration, poetry, LSD, art and yes, vampires: There’s a little something for everyone on this list.
If there’s a bright side to the fact that, politically speaking, we spent 2018 still deep in what people on Twitter wearily call “the darkest timeline,” i...Read More
The Trouble with Yoga
Why yoga studios are the new country clubs.
Courtesy/Instagram It was a sunny Wednesday afternoon in south College Station when I arrived for yoga class, like I had on any other Wednesday for the past thr...Read More
Who Writes History? The Fight to Commemorate a Massacre by the Texas Rangers
In 1918, a state-sanctioned vigilante force killed 15 unarmed Mexicans in Porvenir. When their descendants applied for a historical marker a century later, they learned that not everyone wants to remember one of Texas’ darkest days.
In 1918, a state-sanctioned vigilante force killed 15 unarmed Mexicans in Porvenir. When their descendants applied for a historical marker a century later, they...Read More
Eye on Texas: Ghosts of the City
Sandy Carson Since 2011, I’ve been working on a project called “Ghosts of the City.” The idea is to document Austin landmarks that have recently undergone...Read More