At Dian Avriett’s Lunch Box, the homespun signs for Christmas cakes and 22-pound holiday hams are easier to spot than the two small holes in the plate-glass windows at the front of the shop. One is located behind the drive-up doughnut counter, the other in the dining room, near the…
Fighting Faith Cultural bias against Krishnas: As both a journalist (and former contributor to the Dallas Observer) and a former resident of the Dallas Hare Krishna community, I would like to address Mark Donald’s article (“Tortured Souls,” December 6). It is a sad reality that religion can be used as…
“It is not known precisely where angels dwell–whether in the air, the void, or the planets. It has not been God’s pleasure that we should be informed of their abode…” Voltaire There were carols and warm holiday-season embraces as those who had come gathered near the Christmas tree to contribute…
Steven Spiritas, chief executive officer of Supreme Beef, still works in the office above what just two years ago was his family’s thriving ground-beef plant in Fair Park. The plant below him is darkened, with most beef-grinding and other equipment sold as part of a bankruptcy. The U.S. Department of…
Sweetness and Light As innocent as you or me: I am writing to express extreme displeasure at your recent unnecessarily biased and negative article about the Hare Krishna community here in Dallas (“Tortured Souls,” December 6). The abuse suffered by these women was truly horrifying, and I don’t mean to…
Last week the Dallas Observer printed an article about Charles Wilkerson, an itinerant minister who seems to have a knack for buying struggling private schools and closing them down. The article reported that those he left behind with piles of debts dispute Wilkerson’s versions of how school closures came about…
The Reverend Charles Wilkerson fell to the floor at the bottom of the staircase. He clutched his chest and curled into the fetal position. The Eastlake Christian School and Daycare investor and church pastor was having a heart attack. Or so it seemed. Administrators ran down the school hallway to…
You’ve come home from work–late as usual. Dinner is done; your wife is frustrated; the kids are out of control. It’s time to get them to bed, but they haven’t even been fed. The phone rings and you pick up, hoping for a pause in the disaster. Although the prospect…
A reunion seemed like a great idea. Get together 10 years after the slaying to drink heartily, remember the good times, bad times, all that was the Dallas Times Herald. Some of its former employees, who tossed the idea around for months, could meet at the great journalist’s bar Joe…
Shit happens: During this mayoral campaign season, when talk of getting back to basics–fixing streets, sidewalks, etc.–is all the vogue, the city’s plans to replace aging, overburdened sewer lines in Deep Ellum should be good news. You’d think that business owners there would be happy. They’re not happy. In fact,…
Fixing Downtown Nothing but skyline: Thanks to Thomas Korosec for his enlightening article about Victory and the redevelopment of the city core (“The Thing That Ate Downtown,” November 29). As a strong advocate for the resurgence of downtown, I urge the city to tell Tom Hicks and Ross Jr. that…
Two women stand warily by a chain-link fence in old East Dallas, peering over their past, searching their fragile memories for landmarks of the abuse they suffered as children of the Hare Krishna movement. By age 5, each was sent by her devotee parents to a religious boarding school at…
In the black pre-dawn of a 1998 summer morning, Carrollton resident Jack Laivins was munching on an apple and trying to find an early newscast on his car radio as he drove toward work along Keller Springs Road. At 4:30 a.m. on that July 23, the technical specialist for the…
There wasn’t the slightest sign of trouble at the American Airlines Center in July when the Eagles took center stage to mark the grand opening of the controversial, taxpayer-financed venue. Now members of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, Local 127, say they regret abandoning their plans to picket…
Buzz is thankful for many things this holiday season, foremost among them that with The Dallas Morning News around, no bad, unsettling, evil thoughts will cross our minds, because they won’t be allowed in the paper. Now, we know Buzz is a bit late in realizing this, but we’re just…
Because DISD Sucks Money for nothing: In your story (“Agin and Agin,” November 22), you say that those of us in Northwest Dallas will vote against the upcoming bond issue because the school district has been taken over by people of color. As a non-white North Dallas resident with a…
Whoever decided to release a flock of caged white doves at the end of the Cowboys halftime show Thanksgiving Day no doubt intended them as symbols of peace during these unsettled times. Except they weren’t doves. At least one was a pigeon. How does Buzz know that? Because we located…
Like other public officials, Dallas City Council member Veletta Lill got the pitch in the Victory Marketing Center, a former machine shop made over to sell the prime, quite empty real estate around American Airlines Center. The show was impressive. Flickering down the granite-topped table were slides of new hotels…
Richard Deniker’s cramped living room is chotchke heaven. Standing in the middle of the place, a visitor feels under siege from advancing legions of vases, wood carvings, display platters and porcelain statuettes that cling to almost every bit of open shelf and table space. That’s what happens when a collector…
Aginners for Schools Miller backs bonds: I’m one of those Laura Miller-supporting Northwest Dallas “aginners” that Jim Schutze theorizes may be the key to the success or failure of the upcoming DISD bond election (“Agin and Agin,” November 22). I voted against the arena deal, against the Trinity scam and…
When Macie Stafford was admitted to Terrell State Hospital in November 1999, he spoke about the inner desperation consuming him. Today, his words read like an eerie premonition of the violent end he would soon meet. During his intake interview, Stafford lamented that he was broke. He had no job,…
On Sunday afternoon, as the Cowboys are showing the Eagles a good time across town, a caravan speeds down Ross Avenue, toward Laura Miller’s party in Oak Cliff. The councilwoman and erstwhile Dallas Observer columnist is not scheduled to announce her mayoral candidacy for two hours yet, but the caravan’s…
