Winning Hand Fascinating “sport”: I am probably alone and certainly biased in my assessment, but I must say it’s nice to see some coverage on a player I respect (“The Player,” July 19) and on a game I love to play and watch. For some reason, poker is treated like…
Stephan Pyles almost didn’t move into his new 5,000-plus-square-foot, three-story house. It earned him two offers before construction was even completed. One anxious buyer even asked Pyles to throw out a number. He was stunned when the would-be buyer grabbed it. But the offer fell through, and Pyles had to…
Mark Brandon Read was 17 when he entered prison for the first time. A young man, yes, but one who had never really been a child. His father had spent 24 years in the Australian army; the old man was battle-scarred, to the point where he always slept with a…
ALVARADO–There are days now–rare but more frequent than he’d ever thought possible–when John Maddux’s life follows a routine path that he finds both welcome and comforting. But then, with the slightest provocation, his mood will darken and the memories flood back, returning him to that moment almost a quarter of…
I have read a local newspaper almost every day since I was 8 years old. I began by reading Boston Red Sox box scores to see how well my favorite player, Jim Rice, hit during the previous night’s game. In high school, I cut out editorials or political essays that…
When we last checked in with Amelia Core Jenkins, proprietor of a downtown bed-and-breakfast, she was in a tussle with the Convention and Visitors Bureau over that agency’s decision to remove her inn from bureau publications that recommend lodging to tourists. There were too many street people near her establishment,…
Soak the Middle Class Stinks of corruption: Many thanks for Thomas Korosec’s revealing article “The Little-People Tax” (July 12). His description of how the wealthy rather than those in the middle- or lower-income brackets were helped by the state Legislature’s 1997 decision to cap property tax increases at 10 percent…
Oh, shut up: Although still low in the ratings, KLIF is emerging as a pioneer in the crowded talk radio genre. In recent weeks, it’s broken new ground by eschewing the conservative AM-talk format for flat-out fascism. If you’re looking for radio that makes your skin crawl, turn to KLIF…
Contrary to what you may think, you most likely will never beat T.J. Cloutier at the poker table. Oh, you may get lucky and win a game on the last card, but that’s a “bad beat,” which is not really a beat. You may get a big hand, maybe put…
Maybe it was her “P.U.N.K. Keeping kids on the street” bumper sticker, which mocks the D.A.R.E anti-drug program slogan, or her fire-engine-red hair, or more legitimately, the burned-out taillight on her 1994 Olds that prompted a Dallas police officer to pull over Traci Davis. The 25-year-old software analyst says she…
In a perfect world, where youthful fantasies grow into reality, 42-year-old Bryan A. Garner would right now be making his way to the next stop on the PGA tour instead of standing in front of a stuffy room filled with corporate attorneys. The Dallas lawyer/author would be high on the…
What Beats What? Poker hand rankings of five-card hands, from best to worst: royal flush (A-K-Q-J-10, same suit), straight flush (five cards of the same suit, in order, e.g. J-10-9-8-7 of hearts), four of a kind, full house (any three of a kind, plus any pair, e.g. 9-9-9-3-3), flush (any…
Scared of the Kink Struggle for acceptance: I loved “Happy Nappy Girls” (July 5). It was as though the writer had interviewed me for the piece. As an African-American woman, I had been conditioned to think that I am not beautiful just the way I am. Thank you for letting…
Like a lot of other homeowners in Dallas, Wanda Taylor wasn’t exactly thrilled to see her annual property tax appraisal when it came in the mail this April. In each of the past four years, the Dallas Central Appraisal District has raised the value of her stone cottage in East…
On quiet evenings, before Malcolm X Boulevard teems with late-night life, Harold Williams climbs into an old pickup with a cranky transmission and visits the ghosts of the city’s past. Caretaker of the 60-acre Oakland Cemetery, one of the oldest and most historic graveyards in Dallas, Williams takes with him…
Even barren and buried beneath a construction crew’s detritus, the Angelika Film Center & Café–a long-standing promise on the brink of becoming a reality in the middle of Mockingbird Station–is a remarkable building. For now, one can only imagine what it will look like when its café is serving food…
When the public complained about how animals were being cared for at the city’s educational farm located north of Dallas, the city’s park department responded. It got rid of most of the animals. When the public complained about how the horses at Samuell Farm’s privately operated trail ride were being…
Ain’t too proud to beg: As sins go–and in Buzz’s experience they go quite nicely, thank you–running a ministry that’s too proud to ask for money seems a pretty minor, and rare, offense. Yet pride is a sin nonetheless, one that Ole Anthony of the Dallas-based Trinity Foundation, publisher of…
Muzzle the Barking Dog Narrow and intolerant: Bravo to Dave Faries for writing this article (“Being Avi Adelman,” June 28). I, and many of my neighbors, are tired of the media portraying Avi Adelman as the “voice” of Lower Greenville. He isn’t. Many, if not most, of Mr. Adelman’s neighbors…
Once was blind: When Buzz has a problem with our eyes it gets written off to any number (one, to be exact) of seedy activities from the night before. But when former Dallas Observer managing editor Emily Benedek briefly lost her sight a few years back, it was a religious…
PRESIDIO, Texas–On April 2, 1839, a caravan of Mexican traders led by Missouri merchant Henry Connelly left Chihuahua City in search of a more direct trade route to the north than through El Paso. Accompanied by 50 Mexican dragoons, Connelly and his company marched northeast through the Chihuahuan Desert past…
To hear some insiders tell it, finagling absentee ballots out of elderly voters has become routine practice in some of Dallas’ thinly attended city council and school board races. This type of vote cheating, in which campaign workers magically show up at an elderly voter’s doorstep the day he receives…
