October 2011 Issue

On the Cover

The Girl Who Played With Firearms

Miranda Lambert has a lot to be happy about—she’s recently married, with a brand-new album and a string of hits that has made her the toast of Nashville. So why is she so twangry?

Features


Straight From the Art

From Fort Worth’s Kimbell to Houston’s Menil, Texas’s museums are home to some of the world's most important paintings and sculptures. To devise a list of our ten greatest works on view, we asked more than sixty curators, gallery owners, critics, and other insiders for their favorites.

terry grier hisd superintendent

Super Collider

Terry Grier is the hard-charging, reform-minded, optimistic superintendent of the largest school district in the state. He’s also the most divisive, embattled, and despised man in Houston. Did it have to be this way?

Feature

Non-Prophet

When Warren Jeffs fired his attorneys and decided to represent himself in his sexual assault trial, many predicted, accurately, that he would fail miserably. Few realized just what a wild show he would put on.

Columns


Neighborhood Association

Why would anybody take a charming place like Highland Park, tear down the nice old homes, build new fortresses, gradually drain the neighborly spirit, and call that progress? Don’t ask me. I don’t get it either.

Here’s the Drill

As hydraulic fracturing (a.k.a. fracking) has unlocked untold reserves of natural gas, it has also unleashed a wave of concerns about pollution and, for one family in the Barnett Shale, a long nightmare.

Reporter


How to Water Dowse

This blistering summer has left Texas drier than a piece of gas station jerky. It was so hot that planes couldn’t take off from airports and train tracks were bent out of shape. And while Governor Rick Perry prayed for a downpour to end the drought, officials in Llano turned

Kool & Together

The seventies band of brothers from Victoria on getting into music, staying away from drugs and liquor, and releasing their first album.

Mina Thornton, Ropa Usada Dealer

Thornton opened Tres Hermanos Ropa Usada thirteen years ago in Hidalgo. As president of the 25-employee business, she buys ropa usada, or used clothing, from around the country and resells it in South Texas and throughout Mexico.People always ask, “Does this color look good on me?” I never ask. There’s

Web


Texas Treasures

My journey in early Texas art began while I was a student at Southern Methodist University, where I studied Frank Reaugh pastels and met Jerry Bywaters. After 24 years at the Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum, curating exhibitions and traveling the state, I’ve come up with a list of greatest hits.

The Art Lover’s Companion

More than sixty art insiders gave us their list of favorite works of art to see in Texas. So grab your notepad, sketchbook, or iPad and take the ultimate tour of must-see art in Texas.

Peter Gent, 1942-2011

The author and former Cowboys wide receiver died in his hometown of Bangor, Michigan, on Friday at the age of 69. Our coverage of North Dallas Forty (both the novel and the movie) through the years.

BC Tavern

HOW PAINFUL MUST IT BE for a restaurant’s owners to admit that the place is kaput? That a once celebrated destination has come to the end of the road and needs to be—gasp—put down? But after cozy Austin restaurant Zoot departed the neighborhood where it had been for eighteen

Miscellany


Cover Credit

Cover Credit

Photograph by LeAnn Mueller. Hair by Terri Apanasewicz for Cloutier Remix. Makeup by Billy B. Styling by Tiffany Gifford.

Editor's Letter

City Girl

Some writers are journeymen, always on the road. Others work and rework the same ground, eventually becoming identified with the places they inhabit. In this second category you often find journalists and novelists who take their inspiration from huge and fascinating cities, urban ecosystems with enough tragedy, comedy, and

Roar of the Crowd

Roar of the Crowd

Our Heroes Have Always Been CowgirlsWhat fun to find my great-great-aunt Ben in my favorite magazine [“Cowgirl Up,” August 2011]. That string of names listed for her was also a laugh. My grandmother Harbison always said her aunt had changed her name, as she did not like the one

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