Friends in high places Because Mr. Schutze so unfairly concluded what my intentions were as they related to a political contribution to Ronnie Kendall (“The art of the touch,” April 13), I feel it is necessary to write this letter. I’ll preface my comments by noting that I am proud…
It’s 10 a.m., and all is quiet on the battlefront. Conditions breezy and cool, water calm. The thin, dead stumps of the Black and Amber forests poke baldly from the surface. An occasional logging truck laden with tapered trunks grinds across the Highway 147 bridge, temporarily breaking the silence. A…
Dallas’ garment industry has all but died, but critics say Plano-based J.C. Penney still has a connection to one of that sector’s most notorious practices. The national department-store chain is one of four major retailers that has yet to settle class-action lawsuits alleging sweatshop conditions in factories owned by their…
It’s February 2000, the primary season is in full tilt, and busy worker bees from both parties are delivering their yard signs, marking their turf, extending their reach. A lone Jeep Wrangler rolls into the parking lot at Martin Weiss Park and Recreation Center, looking as if it were about…
The shallow end Imagine how bitter the taste of defeat must be for Laura Miller on her wading pool deal, especially since it looked like she had the thing won. Miller, trying to keep two city wading pools open in poor neighborhoods in southern Dallas, persuaded the ExxonMobil Foundation to…
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The view of Denton from Parks Olmon’s kitchen window has changed over the years. He speaks wistfully about the rolling countryside he used to see while eating breakfast. But these days, his view is not of lush oak trees or acres of crab grass. Every morning, Olmon gets an eyeful…
I survived Adamson High As a teacher at a feeder school to Adamson High School (“Lost and found,” April 6), I will have to beg that you not publish my name. No surprise there. No surprises in your article also. I have so much respect for many of the teachers…
As lambs to slaughter they come, pitiful men with middle-age paunches, clueless characters with bad teeth, tortured souls who have emotionally abused their wives and are now prepared to sacrifice themselves on the altar of daytime television. Just why they come seems incomprehensible: A trip to foggy Chicago in mid-March?…
By now, it hardly matters whether Elián Gonzalez wants to return to Cuba. The law has spoken. He’s going back. But well before Attorney General Janet Reno upheld the Immigration and Naturalization Service ruling, everyone — from politicians to pundits to people on the street — knew, it seemed, what…
ennifer Mallett flips through photos of her late boyfriend, Juan Carlos Oseguera, seeking a good one to send to his parents in Honduras. She laments that there isn’t one showing the couple together. “I know my father has a videotape with both of us on it,” she says listlessly. “He…
Silence is not golden The last time Buzz took a potshot at Dallas Park and Recreation Board member Ralph Isenberg — for painting over graffiti on an Arcadia Park house without the owner’s permission — he was not happy. So unhappy was he that he sent us a 5-gallon bucket…
The problem is you Once again, I realize why there is no hope in Dallas. I left this city almost four years ago because Latinos can’t tell their own stories in this city — not in The Dallas Morning News opinion section, not at KERA, certainly not in the Dallas…
ngel Munoz meets only one of the demographics of the gamers in his Cyberathlete Professional League. He’s male. He’s not Anglo, and, at 40 years old, he’s old enough to have fathered many of the 17- to 25-year-olds who flock to his tournaments to play Quake and compete for cash…
Sonia Even when her bags were already packed in her friend Anthony’s car in the driveway, her parents continued to beg her not to make this terrible mistake. But she was stubborn and determined. Her mother cried, but she refused to change her mind. Finally her mother stepped forward, exhausted…
On a recent Friday evening, the third-floor foyer and ballroom of the Galleria Westin Hotel was crawling with well-fed Dallas matrons. Clad in jeans and T-shirts, the 50 or so women were keenly focused on their task: transforming the standard-issue upscale-hotel-chain version of splendor (ostentatious chandeliers, ruby carpets) into a…
Since Dallas City Council enacted a ban on roosters last summer, the Oak Cliff Coffee House on Davis Street has become a shrine to the forbidden bird. Partly out of protest, partly from nostalgia, the cock has been made the caffeine hangout’s logo; the is bedecked with stuffed and illustrated…
When Sam Wyly began kicking around the idea of environmental advocacy ads in late February, the Dallas billionaire called his son. A 20-year-old freshman at the Denison University in Ohio, Andrew David-Sparrow Wyly says he wasn’t surprised to hear from his dad: Sam Wyly knows his son has long been…
Caught napping How many tranquilizers would it take to put an entire lake of fish asleep? One, Buzz figures, if it was the same brand of sleeping pill used by the staff of The Dallas Morning News, who let a fishy tale slip into print last week. On March 30,…
Those magic bridges Thank God for Jim Schutze, the Dallas Observer, and the truth. Schutze’s series of fine investigative reporting on the city of Dallas’ Trinity River project has revealed a shocking level of deception (recent articles include “Jack! Jack!,” March 16, and “Whoa, Noah,” March 9). Trinity project proponents…
Catherine Shelton puts down her glass of Beaujolais and walks quickly out of her bedroom, searching through her pitch-dark house for a gun. “Where is that damn gun?” she says, walking back into the room and rifling through two sets of dresser drawers. She’s looking for a handgun loaded with…
On a Sunday night in Brooklyn, Misty Owens sits cross-legged on a worn futon, methodically mending holes in the black tights she wears for dance class and performing. She selects one pair at a time from the amorphous pile of spandex and cotton resting beside her on the comforter that…
