The bumper sticker on the truck outside of Karen Joiner’s Richardson home sums up what she wants. “Adoptees deserve their original birth certificates,” it reads. Yet for Joiner, a 40-year-old Missouri native, and thousands of other adoptees nationwide, gaining access to their records is no simple task. Petitioning the courts,…
Convicted contract killer and insurance swindler Michael Lee Davis has a gift for making money from other people’s mortality. Now someone finally might make some from his death. Davis, who was called Walter Waldhauser Jr. when he took part in a triple murder in Houston 21 years ago, was sentenced…
Elijah, please shut up The last time we heard from Elijah McGrew, the Oak Cliff activist and erstwhile city council candidate, he was making his third forlorn attempt to win the District 4 council seat. McGrew, a gadfly who gained recognition in the early ’90s by crusading against topless clubs…
Talk to Evan Smith for long–and you will talk to him for long, because every answer is a speech, every speech a term paper–and two impressions quickly emerge: ··· One, that Smith is a very sharp guy, a good thing given that he was recently named the third editor in…
Dented reputation Last week, in one of his final columns at the San Antonio Express-News, former Dallas sports writer Jim Dent asked the following question: How will we remember Michael Irvin–as the ultimate team player, or as a seedy cat? His answer: “In truth, his life has been a succession…
The prophet The Dallas Observer should hereby tithe one fifth of the advertising spoils to Eric Celeste. After his May 25 column, “Misguided Muslims,” we can be sure of one thing: Celeste is a prophet. How else to account for his opening paragraph, where he states that he’s “asking for…
HUGHES SPRINGS–From the porch of her red-brick home, poet Leafie Mason could stand watch over the energy that kept the small town she called home alive. Just beyond West First Street, yards away, runs the railroad track, a pathway for Kansas City Southern trains that daily hurry westward from Shreveport…
Dallas police ignored or dismissed Assistant City Attorney Robin Page’s claims that she was the target of a deliberate smear campaign, so now they have a federal lawsuit to defend. That’s how Page’s attorney, David Miller, puts it, although he says his client wants more than an apology for being…
Not yet begun to fight The 5th Court of Appeals ruled last week in Rick Finlan and company’s long-running legal battle with the Dallas school district, and things did not go well for Finlan et al. Or, as lawyer Lawrence Friedman, one of 11,000 or so appellees, appellants, cross-appellants, repellents,…
When you call 911 for help, you might expect a delay, but would you anticipate being ignored entirely? The Dallas police internal affairs division launched an investigation earlier this month into whether that is precisely what happened one day last March. Police dispatcher Julie Weidner is suspected of “n-coding,” or…
Cultural ignoramuses I have read your “Fluff” column (“Misguided Muslims,” May 25) in the Dallas Observer. What’s so ridiculous is you! If anybody is misguided, it is you! You think Steve McGonigle is one of the best reporters The Dallas Morning News has! People like you and Steve McGonigle are…
Amid the restaurants that line the cobblestone road on downtown Dallas’ Market Street stands a plain brick building. To this place come seekers of the right ingredient that neither nature nor prayer has given them: a healthy human egg. Up the elevator to the fifth floor, a door with two…
Without prompting, “Flor” will show anyone her last report card from Sunset High School. She is proud of it, and with good reason. She had a 96.79 during her last year of classes, boosting her final grade-point average to 87.89. Flor, an ambitious student who once hoped to become an…
“I was the first to light the torch of literature in this part of the country, however small, frail and easily extinguished that flame may be…” –from a 1933 letter written by Robert E. Howard to H.P. Lovecraft At first blush it is little more than parched flatland, colored only…
PAYNE SPRINGS–The tree-canopied blacktop roads wind endlessly along the shores of Cedar Creek Lake, past mobile home after mobile home in this out-of-the-way maze of communities with names like Payne Springs, Malakoff, Mabank, and Gun Barrel City. It is here that bass boat meets cattle trailer, gimme caps share fashion…
A mural covers the wall behind Deep Sushi’s sushi bar. It’s a cartoonish landscape with a tree strategically positioned to camouflage a drainpipe and a length of conduit within the tree’s trunk. Still, it has drama, even humor. A pair of samurai swordsmen, snarls on their faces, prepare to draw…
T he ugly battle that would divide a school started innocently enough, as such battles often do. It began with two unfortunate and seemingly unrelated injuries to children, the sort that could happen anywhere. But here, at Ascher Silberstein Elementary School in Pleasant Grove, they served as seeds, triggering within…
Dale Hansen is happy to be interviewed, so long as he can talk now, not later. That’s because it’s May, his favorite sports month, and he’ll be at the Colonial golf tourney later this week, and he’s got Rangers games to worry about, and the Cowboys are starting minicamps, and…
Wonder women Are women in comics (“Fatal femmes,” May 18) treated like second-class citizens? You mean, like in real life? As one of the fanboys you wrote about in your article, I have to admit that you hit a couple of proverbial nails on the head. At the very least,…
Bullish on Belo Now comes a time of year that Buzz truly hates. Once again someone has sent us the annual report for Belo Corp., our favorite monolithic media conglomerate, and our job is to make sense of it. Let us reiterate. If Buzz knew anything about business, we wouldn’t…
Misguided Muslims I know I’m just asking for trouble, but I can’t help myself, so, sigh, here goes: Area Muslims’ campaign against The Dallas Morning News’ perceived bias against them is, to say the least, ridiculous. If you want to see just how absurd it is, go to the Web…
Jesus Gabriel Sandoval Chavez stands on top of a mountain at the outskirts of Delicias, Mexico, and takes a deep breath of clean air. For once, his eyes aren’t watering. His lungs feel good. Below him are the dust-filled towns of Delicias, Rosales, and Saucillo. Within an hour or two,…
