If it wasn’t for bad luck, as the song goes, Gerald Peters wouldn’t have no luck at all. The well-known art dealer with galleries in Dallas, Santa Fe, and New York City was recently forced to refund $5 million for a collection of Georgia O’Keeffe paintings he sold to Kansas…
In the venerated legal directory Martindale-Hubbell, North Dallas lawyer David A. Schiller appears to lead a flourishing practice. Even though the 36-year-old Louisiana native graduated from the South Texas College of Law just four and a half years ago, according to his directory entry, Schiller now operates his own shop…
Slip up Buzz was just a boy when the great Sears catalog penis scandal rocked the nation. Maybe you remember. A model for a pair of men’s boxer shorts had a vague shadow on his inner thigh that might have been the man’s dangling johnson peeking out — if you…
You would think the decision would have been a minor blip on the food-industry radar screen. After all, Plano-based Frito-Lay, the huge snack-food unit of PepsiCo Inc., uses just 1.2 billion pounds of corn, or about one quarter of 1 percent of total U.S. corn production, for its snack chips…
For the right Price Hooray! Finally, a local newspaper with enough gumption to call Al Lipscomb exactly what he is — a corrupt public official (“The plantation burns,” January 20). What is so discouraging about the whole stinking mess is that so many black leaders in this community failed to…
Brian Fridge doesn’t look like he’s about to become an art-world celebrity. With his shorn head, thick glasses, and stiff blue blazer, you’d swear he was just another museum security guard. Standing very still, his long-fingered hands clasped low in front of wrinkled khakis, he casts a faraway gaze over…
The scripture inscribed on his stationery offers some indication of just how sacredly immigration attorney John Wheat Gibson takes his calling: Cursed is the man who withholds justice from the alien, the fatherless, or the widow. — Deuteronomy 27:19 It also should have been Immigration and Naturalization Service District Director…
Image is everything We’re sure resting easier now that The Dallas Morning News assures us that folks in, say, New Jersey aren’t troubled by the stink of corruption rising from City Councilman Al Lipscomb’s conviction for taking bribes from Yellow Cab. At least we think that was the point of…
Many have the same dream: finding the six magical numbers that unlock the treasure known as the Texas Lottery. Then life would be good. Problems would vanish. There are even the collective fantasies of what to buy and with whom to share this new, instant wealth. Billie Bob Harrell Jr…
We give a lit I’m sure you won’t print this e-mail in its entirety, but I’m compelled to write it anyway. When I began writing my novel, The Protégé, I promised myself I would welcome constructive criticism when it came, no matter what the form. I stuck by that promise…
Helen Bass enjoyed an ordered if unremarkable life. The 42-year-old vocational nurse worked the second shift at the state hospital in Wichita Falls. A tidy woman who lived alone, Bass occasionally entertained a friend in the evening but mostly kept to herself. After work, according to her neighbors, she would…
Odell Barnes joins a growing list of death-row inmates whose convictions have become a lot less clear-cut during the appeals process. That’s supposed to be the point of an appeal: a chance to revisit the case and make sure that if a serious mistake was made at the trial, that…
When you meet him, you can’t help but like Aurelio Castillo. At 36, he’s a big man, but in the jolly sense of the term. There’s no menace to his presence, despite his reputation for unbounded machismo. He invites you into his constable’s office with a glad hand and a…
Claude Albritton, owner of the celebrated McKinney Avenue Contemporary arts and performance space in Uptown, is steamed. Last year, city building inspectors forced him to heed zoning restrictions and scale back his plans to expand the MAC’s Kitchen Dog Theater. Because of the order, Albritton, one of Dallas’ top arts…
A series of lawsuits against anti-fur protesters — the latest naming John Paul Goodwin and his Dallas-based organization as defendants — appears to be opening a new front in the conflict between retailers and activists, who are facing some of the same legal weapons developed and used over the years…
Breaching the stonewall There’s a saying newspeople like to toss out whenever we’re feeling particularly macho: “Don’t pick fights with people who buy ink by the barrel.” It’s probably not a good idea to start battles with people who buy videotape by the mile, either, but apparently word hasn’t reached…
The FBI is conducting an investigation into possible criminal violations of environmental laws committed at the Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, according to five people with firsthand knowledge of the agency’s inquiries, who spoke on the condition that their names not be published. On the record, neither the FBI nor airport…
Wade through this Since no one from The Dallas Morning News responded to your calls regarding last week’s Buzz on Norma Adams-Wade, I guess you didn’t know that not only was Cheryl Smith flooded with e-mails and phone calls, but so were Gilbert Bailon, Chris Kelley, and other DaMNewsers. By…
Washington Elementary is housed in an old beige brick building in a neighborhood near downtown Sherman, a blue-collar town of about 35,000 near the Oklahoma border. It’s in a part of the city where nearly every house needs a paint job, roofs sag, and the occasional worn sofa rests on…
“That’s me and Gotti…Not that Gotti. Gene Gotti. John’s brother,” says Norm Berger, pointing to one picture on the Las Vegas-Atlantic City wall of fame he’s nailed up in his spare, one-bedroom apartment in Far North Dallas. Next to the man he identifies as Gotti, who looks every bit the…
In a small, windowless meeting room at Fair Park’s Martin Luther King Jr. Community Center, 20 people sit around an oval-shaped ring of tables and plan their strategy to make Dallas, recently rated the nation’s “best city for business” by Fortune magazine, a worker-friendly metropolis as well. The activists present,…
With friends like this… Representatives of seven historically black Texas colleges have a message for the anonymous author who is circulating an e-mail that claims Gov. George W. Bush is responsible for the schools’ imminent closings: Knock it off. The e-mail says that Bush, who once served on the board…
