Fire ants continued to roam the beds of Flower Mound nursing home residents nearly two months after the state ordered the place cleaned, a state report obtained by the Dallas Observer late last week shows. Fire ants repeatedly stung a Cross Timbers Nursing Home resident while she lay in bed…
Whoa, Baby Too easy to blame the lawyer: I think Jim Schutze’s article about Dan Peavy (“Big Man Bites Back,” August 17) may have been too harsh on Paul Watler, Belo’s outside lawyer, who has a long and distinguished career representing First Amendment interests. As you correctly note, the lynchpin…
Carolyn Osborn vividly remembers the day in July two years ago when the nurse from Cross Timbers Care Center in Flower Mound telephoned. We have a little bit of a problem with your mother, the nurse said. She has a couple of ant bites. Don’t worry though; your mother is…
This is not the place you’d expect to find a physicist. It’s early September, and John Hagelin stands before nearly 400 roaring delegates and supporters in a hotel conference room in suburban Washington, D.C., accepting the presidential nomination of the obscure Natural Law Party. It is roughly one month since…
With only a cursory glance at the two teams sparring on the parched field, you could predict the outcome of my 9-year-old daughter’s first soccer game this fall. In the first five minutes of play, the opposing team scored five goals. My daughter’s Blue Angels scored zip. The other team,…
When Lee Jackson interviewed for the job of Dallas schools superintendent two weeks ago, minority advocates picketed, angrily blasting the board’s consideration of the Dallas County commissioner and former state lawmaker. Jackson apparently lacked a certain je ne sais quoi. Something just wasn’t right about the Dallas County judge, something…
The music was too loud for anyone else to hear the stripper crying. She was weeping, begging the coked-up humor columnist for more money because her car was about to be repossessed. The columnist, high and drunk, felt sorry for her and ordered that a lap dance be given to…
Wake up, Dallas: The article Jim Schutze wrote about DISD (“They Walk by Night,” September 28) is one of his best. I retired from Dallas last year and was sitting at my desk here in New York, just thinking about the crazy politics in Dallas. I clicked onto the Dallas…
AUSTIN–It’s an unseasonably hot Sunday in August, and the roaring air conditioner in the cavernous building that houses Redeemer Presbyterian Church is struggling to keep the congregation cool. One by one, church programs are turning into fans along the rows of folding chairs that serve as pews, and the sun…
DEL RIO, Texas–In the moments before the trial began, the small blond girl sat close by her grandmother on a hard oak courtroom bench, chatting nonchalantly about Creed and getting a troublesome artificial nail filled. “Why should anyone be nervous? Lots of people want to know my story,” she said,…
It was just before 5 p.m. last week when KXAS Channel 5 anchorman Mike Snyder answered his phone, his voice hoarse from giving interviews. He’d spent the better part of the day as a news subject instead of a newsreader, talking to newspapers from across the country about that day’s…
INDIA DMZ, 2022–The first mine exploded under an armored personnel carrier. It went up with a bright orange flash and a miserable chorus of faint shrieks. The fire and the cries faded fast. Cursing the Americans, the Taliban commander ordered his armored column to halt and backtrack, waiting for the…
Buzz is always a little uncomfortable when the subject of our attention is the Dallas Observer’s parent company, Phoenix-based New Times Inc., because Buzz likes our paycheck, and those mortgage payments aren’t going away anytime soon. But Buzz is what Buzz is: an annoying little fly, strangely and helplessly attracted…
Vendyl Jones certainly looks like an archaeologist, or at least like an aging, Hollywood back-lot version of one, as the tall Texan stomps about the desert near Jordan dressed in leather boots and hat, a tan shirt and tan slacks held up by snakeskin suspenders. Balding and bearded, Jones puffs…
Stevie grabbed the phone in her parents’ bedroom because the one in the kitchen was bloody, just like the counter and the floor leading to the laundry room. The frantic 13-year-old dialed 911 but hung up after just one ring and went back into the kitchen. Maybe, she thought, it…
Seated at his kitchen table, former Dallas County prosecutor Clark Birdsall–his voice soft, his speech measured–didn’t act like a man who had just left the courthouse a free man, judged innocent of a tawdry crime he had spent the last four months insisting he hadn’t committed. Only a day had…
It’s easy to spot the city’s most pressing issues. In fact, it’s impossible to miss them when you’re driving to a city council member’s Town Hall meeting. The experience of jerking into and out of potholes, rolling past piles of uncollected garbage, and dodging three-legged, mange-ridden hounds shows you exactly…
Frank Lindsay sounded troubled. As the vice president of marketing for Conair hairdryers, Lindsay wasn’t expecting this–a telephone call from a prominent Dallas gay activist telling Lindsay that his company was sympathizing with the enemy. As far as the executive was concerned, all he did was advertise his product on…
The Olympic gold medal is the ultimate badge of international athletic achievement, material proof that its owner has reached the highest rung on the sports ladder. And although the Sydney Olympic Organizing Committee will put no monetary value on the gold medal, they do admit that, in fact, precious little…
Here’s a digit for you: To Buzz, a man approaching 40, it was an ominous warning: “You’re about to be digitally converged,” said the Digital:Convergence software we had just installed on our office computer. Not yet, we hoped. Our dad warned us about the intrusive medical exams that men of…
Creating controversy: After reading Jim Schutze’s article, “Sinking Fast” (September 14), I now understand the term “meat-cleaver journalism.” The readers of the Dallas Observer have been offered misinformation that has been diced, sliced, and chopped, then served as investigative reporting. The column implies that I want to help develop an…
