No strings attached? Buzz likes trees. Buzz likes plants. Some of our most memorable moments–well, not memorable, but enjoyable, anyway–come from plants. So we’re as happy as anyone to hear that the Dallas Arboretum and Botanical Gardens has completed plans for a $16 million expansion, funded largely with private donations…
Failing all children In the September 10 issue, your cover story “Some fly, some die: How DISD betrays children of color,” by Jim Schutze, was mistitled. Based on the numbers within the article, DISD is failing all children. This is not a racial issue. Even the last sentence of the…
By any measure, January 16, 1998, was a historic day for the state of Texas. At the federal courthouse in Texarkana, Attorney General Dan Morales announced the multibillion-dollar settlement he’d brokered with the tobacco industry–money that would flow directly into state, county, and hospital-district coffers for legislators and local government…
Among those who gather outside the red-brick mission on Harwood Street are day workers, drug addicts, shelter people, the mentally ill. Sitting on the curb, queuing up restlessly, they wait for some indication that their hot lunch is ready. Once inside, they become part of the 200 people who daily…
Here we were, two intrepid reporters from the Dallas Observer, sitting in a small, dark library next to the chambers of state District Judge John Creuzot as the wiry jurist prepared to jab sharp needles into our ears. “All you’re gonna feel is a minor prick in your ear,” Creuzot…
Perhaps the mayor and The Dallas Morning News and the Dallas Citizens Council forgot to mention it when they said a Dallas Olympic bid would not involve any real tax money. But shouldn’t the people of Dallas be informed about the $2 billion to $3 billion note they will have…
Coarse description We generally hesitate to point out weaknesses in others’ grammar and spelling, because we’ve received our share of snippy letters from retired seventh-grade English teachers raising doubts about our parentage over some improper use of subjunctive mood, but this course description from Southern Methodist University’s Meadows School of…
Rogue elephant Stuart Eskenazi’s treatment of the Log Cabin Republicans [“GOP to gays: Butt out,” September 3] was very charitable. I’m glad to have seen this merry band of Quixotic political wannabes receive the journalistic scrutiny they have long craved. (The Dallas Morning News dares no such investigation.) Eskenazi’s exploration…
On his path to the White House, George W. Bush must pass by the Dallas Independent School District–the Bates Motel of local politics. (Think of school board meetings as the shower scene). Maybe that’s what the Fates were thinking of when they created DISD. Maybe it’s… The test. You can…
Early on a mid-October day in 1991, Phyllis Glazer barreled down Highway 155 on the way to her son’s elementary school in Winona, an East Texas hamlet northeast of Tyler. Her 9-year-old son, Max, had forgotten his math textbook the previous day, and he was determined to be at school…
Man bites bulldog When Buzz thinks of victims, our thoughts generally don’t go anywhere near Jim Mattox. But the former attorney general, who wants the job again, is fretting over the possibility of being a victim of negative campaigning. This is the same Jim Mattox who spread rumors during the…
Freddie King is not alive to battle those who would seek to profit from his legend. The blues guitarist, a man whose music inspired the likes of Stevie Ray and Jimmie Vaughan and Eric Clapton, has been dead since December 28, 1976, when years of bleeding ulcers and pancreatitis caused…
Radio bloodbath “Souled out” [September 3] was one of the best things I’ve ever read in the Dallas Observer. Anyone who grew up around here in the late ’70s and early ’80s like I did can’t help but stop and reflect for a while after reading something like this. Someone…
Inside a dimly lit banquet room in a tony downtown Dallas hotel, about 250 Americans who consider themselves brave soldiers for civil rights sit around tables adorned with pots of plump pink and red roses. Almost all of them men, they enthusiastically devour their entrees of beef medallions and celebrate…
The beginnings of the little statuette weren’t exactly steeped in idealism. It was 1977, and Dallas commercial artist Paul McKay was sitting around talking with a friend. “You ought to do something on this ‘Roots’ thing,” McKay remembers his buddy saying. The TV miniseries–which depicted the enslavement of a fictional…
The Rev. Al Sharpton wants the citizens of Dallas to know, for the record, that he is not the disruptive sort, and he certainly isn’t coming here with any intention of stirring up trouble. “I think anyone who has that perception wants to have that perception, because the record clearly…
Sacred cows? What sacred cows? Ah, the things Buzz does on your behalf, readers, such as reading a 14,000-word love letter to the Belo Corp. to be published in an upcoming edition of the American Journalism Review–and before lunch, to boot. Buzz received an advance copy of the article, one…
Mark Aguirre redeemed Robert Wilonsky should have qualified the statement of “the crowd” [“waiting to tear Mark Aguirre apart with their boos”] to “most of the crowd” or “the majority of the crowd.” I was there the night my all-time favorite Maverick Mark Aguirre [“Rebound,” August 20] came back to…
Tommy Smith lay dying on his own bed, his body ravaged by the aggressive strain of cancer that first attacked his colon some 18 months earlier. He no longer had the use of his legs. Festering sores on his stomach refused to heal, and his wife, Margie, barely managed to…
One day in June 1995, Mary Ellen Lloyd called in sick to work, citing a variety of ailments. Then she vanished. She would later recount how she packed a few personal effects from her modest home in suburban Fort Worth–such as her collection of gold and porcelain swans–stowed them in…
Surely, the 22 people gathered in the back of the Denny’s restaurant at LBJ Freeway and Midway Road on this Friday afternoon are kooks. They are there for the weekly lunch meeting of the Dallas Area Y2K Community Preparedness Group to discuss what to do when the world as we…
Serendipitous politics Buzz believes that it’s better to be lucky than smart, but being a little of both is best of all. So we envy Karl Rove, the chief political consultant to Gov. George W. Bush. “People are calling me up and asking if I’m a genius,” says Rove, who,…
