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…
History lesson Jim Schutze’s comment that “compared with Dallas, the racial time warp here puts Amarillo somewhere in the early ’70s” is going off the erroneous assumption that single-member districts have created a progressive utopia out of Dallas (“Black out,” January 13). I have to laugh. Do a little more…
Gohan, the spiky-haired, monkey-tailed kid hero of Dragonball Z, has fallen asleep during his studies. He dreams he is being embraced by his long-lost father Goku, a tower of muscle with a geyser of brunette hair sticking straight out of his head. Parent and child stare into each other’s eyes…
AMARILLO — The federal legal charges against Dallas City Councilman Al Lipscomb consist of 65 counts of bribery and conspiracy. But the real charge is treachery. The government’s underlying case against Al Lipscomb — the moral subtext that runs beneath every syllable of government testimony — is not that the…
Tall and self-confident, Elizabeth Willett looks more like a model than like an elementary school art teacher. As she walks down the sunny hall toward the art studio, as her classroom at Fort Worth’s Alice Carlson Elementary School is known, her black pleated skirt brushes her ankles. A line of…
“Let me get a look at them,” a petite twentysomething black woman says to the woman sitting next to her in the city council chambers. “I like to look my adversary in the face.” She stares at the white man with silver hair taking a seat in her row. They…
Paper tiger Here’s a quick question for you regular readers of this column — both of you. If Buzz were to get in a fight with our boss and wind up suspended or sacked, would you organize to save our skin? You can stop laughing now. Obviously Buzz needs to…
In another sign that prosecutors are ready to do some legal arm-twisting, a North Texas man with vague links to the case of missing atheist Madalyn Murray O’Hair and that of a headless, handless corpse found in Dallas County has been indicted on weapons charges. Gerald Lee Osborne, 50, of…
