The conference room at the Hyatt Regency was hot. The meet-your-new-bosses assembly had been called so hastily that the air conditioning hadn’t been turned on when the staffers of The Dallas Morning News filed in. Not that it mattered. The reporters and editors at the Morning News, where hope springs…
Too much fund?: In the just-trying-to-help department–the Rev. Zan Holmes, pastor of St. Luke “Community” Methodist Church, has expressed fervent hope that the perpetrators of a vandalism attack on his church (“Mystery of St. Luke,” May 17) will be apprehended, no matter who they may be. The need for the…
Bombs Away The good fight: Regarding your movie review “Bora! Bora! Bora!” (May 24). Number One: How should one make a movie about Pearl Harbor? Number Two: My dad was a Marine in World War II, and my mother was a teen-ager during the war years. Their view of the…
Jan Bynum stands at the center of her daughter’s room in Bynum’s Farmers Branch house and looks around. On one wall is a University of North Texas calendar from the 1997-1998 academic year. Other parts of the room are filled with her daughter’s furniture, makeup and knickknacks, much as the…
Ted Marules’ new bathroom is neither subtle nor cheap. “We had visions of grandeur,” he says of the $20,000 renovation to his Houston-area home. “We planned to have some wonderful moments in there.” Marules and his wife sprung for all the frills: special-order Spanish tile, marble floors, gold faucets and…
On a lonely industrial road in West Dallas, Bobbie Patience stood her ground for two years. A dogged organizer for the American Postal Workers Union, Patience was often a fixture outside the chain-link fence of Pat Salmon and Sons, one of the nation’s largest Postal Service contractors, waiting for truckers…
Several Dallas Observer staff writers were honored in recent journalism competitions. Jimmy Fowler has been named a finalist for the prestigious Livingston Award, which honors the work of young journalists. Fowler was cited for his June 22, 2000, feature story “Firestarter,” which chronicled his experiences as an eyewitness in a…
We shall overcome: Buzz, being in the free-speech biz and somewhat left-leaning, generally supports an adult’s right to view and purchase images of nakedness and consensual sex acts on the Internet. Not that Buzz would ever, ever take a peek–goodness gracious no–but we fully support your right to do so,…
Down to the Grounds You and Eminem: “Bean Waiting” (May 17) must have rubbed a few of you the wrong way. It damn sure pissed me off! How could I stay angry with such a great paper as the Dallas Observer? It uncovers a lot of corruption within our fair…
NUEVO LAREDO–It’s nearly 10:30 on a Thursday night and 23-year-old Les is on the street, prowling for women. He’s come to the right–if not necessarily the proper–place. “It’s much more organized than I expected,” Les says, walking past the police station in La Zona Rosa and taking in the neon…
It’s hard not to notice the cheesy advertisement: a full page in The Dallas Morning News, screaming tabloid headlines, before and after photos of big fleshy people morphed by hypnosis into small suggestive people: “True story how Mineola man wins 20-year battle with obesity”…”Fast Weight Loss”…”Instant Results.” Take Bob Denton,…
Going to school bored Rudy Barraza, an 18-year-old North Dallas High School junior. So rather than suffer large classes and harried, aloof teachers, he brainstormed a shrewd way to spend weekdays with friends at home, the mall or the park. In the morning, he said goodbye to his work-bound parents…
TRINIDAD, Texas–When last we heard from the rebellious John Joe Gray family it was still entrenched on its 47-acre river-bottom farm near here, vowing if local authorities attempted to serve long-standing arrest warrants on its patriarchal leader all hell would break loose. It has now been more than a year…
Dallas-based CompUSA Inc. and its former chief executive James Halpin must be feeling pretty happy this week, thanks to a decision by District Judge Carlos Lopez that took them off the hook for a multimillion-dollar judgment awarded by a local jury earlier this year. Mexican businessman Carlos Slim Helú, one…
Caught in the Middle Children as pawns: Mark Donald’s article “Access Denied” (May 10) is unforgivably one-sided, as if fathers are the only parents who are ever denied visitation rights with their children, and as if men are the only human beings whose lives are forever scarred by ugly custody…
From the backseat of the single-engine airplane, Carmen Rivera-Worley watched uncomfortably as the 25-year-old pilot tapped his finger on an illuminated blue instrument. Raindrops streaked the plane’s windows as it raced at about 120 mph through a blanket of ink-black clouds west of New Orleans. Then, Rivera-Worley and the two…
A week or so ago, Chomsky was in Austin to play a gig at the Flamingo Cantina with its friends from Kissinger. Instead of making the drive back to Dallas in the middle of the night, guitarist Glen Reynolds found a place where the band could get some sleep. Reynolds…
Location: Denton County, Texas Victim: Frieda Lorraine (Becky) Powell, w/f, 15 In June 1983, Henry Lucas described to officers that he and the victim were in Denton County…He and the victim began arguing, and she slapped him, at which time he drew his knife from his belt and immediately stabbed…
After 17 years of unrelenting global expansion that has hooked caffeine fiends from Seattle to Seoul, Starbucks Corp. has, at last, penetrated one of the most remote corners of the retail world: Oak Cliff. In what is certain to go down in Oak Cliff retailing history as the espresso shot…
Let’s say you decide you’re going to be a whore. Maybe you’ve had a long, respectable life in which you’ve only rarely, quietly embarrassed yourself. Some silliness when you were young, a few wayward escapades while growing up, but for the most part you are seen as a sober person…
Flip a coin: Dwaine Caraway is black. Ed Oakley is white. Which one is best fit to be the District 6 City Council representative? Buzz, who lives in the district, would suggest that voters need a little more information than that to decide. We would say that the best candidate–for…
High Hopes Fellow travelers: The information in Joe Pappalardo’s recent article, “Mean Green,” (April 19) is the complete opposite of what occurred at a recent activist camp in Huntsville, Texas. His false information damages the reputation of the animal rights movement and has put activists’ safety in jeopardy. Pappalardo said…
