The somber Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur begins at sundown, extending until precisely 7:44 p.m. tomorrow. So while you all are stuffing your faces with festival barbecue, Oktoberfest beers, fried fair fare and pumpkin-flavored everything, I, and millions of other Jewish folk, will be consuming absolutely nothing. No food, no…
A major theme — a very dangerous one — in the reaction here to the arrival of Ebola is the notion that we are protected by our cultural and economic superiority from the kind of contagion now in Africa and that all we need to do is remain calm. I…
There’s a power-story making the rounds — I just heard it for the first time a couple weeks ago — about why people in the business community are changing their minds on the Trinity River toll road. It goes like this: “Oh, no, Angela Hunt was not right. Absolutely not…
Today in multiple stories, our only and always comforting local daily, The Dallas Morning News, reiterates the official public line of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control: that physical contact with a person suffering symptoms of Ebola disease is the only mechanism of transmission by which the Ebola virus can…
I have a column that hasn’t quite been published yet that I would like to withdraw in advance. Well, not withdraw. More like re-draw. I don’t think it’s possible to correct something you haven’t said yet, is it? So let’s think of this more in the vein of an expansion…
Old hippie, nanny-state, fault-finding, problem-centric, negative-minded, knee-jerk liberals — and I speak only of myself — were quick enough to jump all over Highland Park school district last week for banning seven books from the high school curriculum. Now I guess we’re under some kind of obligation to come back…
Just heard a good one this morning about another visit by the toll road goon squad. The back story is about a prominent person who let slip recently that she had changed her mind on the proposed 10-lane Trinity toll road through a park cutting off downtown from the river…
Photo courtesy of EB MediaBy Chris Gray and Matthew Keever HONORABLE MENTION: SUNNY SWEENEY Thus far mainstream success has eluded Sunny Sweeney, but not for lack of either talent or trying. According to her Facebook page, Sweeney (a former standup comic) has now played the Grand Ole Opry 41 times…
Ah, you hate to see it. Ben Sandifer, the bicycling nature photographer, has always exuded a certain purity of heart. But on the way back from a city-sponsored tour of a recently decimated portion of the Great Trinity Forest, a colleague and I speculated about him. We both thought he…
“There’s nothing sure. The rich get rich and the poor get poor. In the meantime, in between time, ain’t we got fun?” “Ain’t We Got Fun,” Van and Schenck, 1921 Hate that lyric. Always did. Don’t think it’s true. The most recent big upward mobility study found that, while mobility…
Transportation projects are like the rest of life. Sure they offer benefits, but they carry costs, as well. Powerful Dallas City Council member Vonciel Hill, chair of both the council’s transportation and legislative lobbying committees, stops meetings to introduce the rich people whose families will have bridges named for them…
All weekend long I was pondering great moments in leadership. And then I thought about Dallas Fire Chief Louie Bright III. Dallas firefighter Stanley Wilson burned to death May 20, 2013, when a building he and other firefighters were searching for survivors collapsed. Surviving firefighters said they were ordered to…
September has been a long one for Texas Agriculture Commissioner Todd Staples. At the month’s start, Staples drew some heat for an op-ed he fat-fingered for the Austin American-Statesman. It denounced efforts to get school children to eat less meat and sparked an Internet backlash that preceded Staples’ resignation from…
It was 10:20 on Friday night when I found out. I had just left the Meyerson when I looked at the clock: 10:00. “Just enough time.” The new Aphex Twin album had just dropped and I realized that with the right amount of luck, will and vehicular skill I could…
Here’s a nice little moment when the truth comes home to roost: Yesterday Stephen Young shared with you here a memo sent to Dallas City Council member Scott Griggs by council member Vonciel Hill in which Hill basically called a Griggs a liar. Hill accused Griggs of distorting the facts…
In the coming weeks, you will start to see everything from the sleeve on your coffee cup to the jerseys your wife-beating running backs wear in the National Football League turn a Pepto-Bismol shade of pink. October is National Breast Cancer Awareness Month. You’ll also start to see restaurant promotions…
Monday, I look at The Dallas Morning News, and I see a headline, “Dallas ISD likely breaking attendance law, former lawmaker says.” So immediately right there in the same headline I see a lawmaker and a lawbreaker. I’ve already got a mental image of somebody at school headquarters in cuffs…
In the fall of 2011, I got a gig as an in-house scribe for 35 Denton. It wasn’t paid, save for a complimentary wristband to the four-day festival (which is damn near a golden nugget for any young music fan). One of our tasks leading up to the festival’s weekend…
With four former City Council persons, the ex-city manager and a loyal philanthropic supporter as members, the mayor’s task force on Fair Park knew before its first meeting where the bones were buried. But how much dirt did they want to get on their hands? Sorry, but the issue was…
The saga of Highland Park Presbyterian Church and gaydom reached another milestone last week when the church agreed to pay its too-gay national church body $7.8 million in order to break away and join a new no-gay version of Presbyterianism, a Protestant denomination which traces its name from the Greek,…
If you haven’t been to the West Village in a while, you might not have noticed LYFE Kitchen, which sprung up recently in the spot that used to house Lemon Bar. The fast-casual restaurant is devoted to meeting your every dietary need while supplying you with plenty of shrubbery. Outside…
You have to take a deep breath first. Anchor yourself. Pinch your nose. Then you might be ready to contemplate the sheer unadorned shamelessness of the Texas Legislature in its confrontation with University of Texas System Regent Wallace Hall of Dallas. See also: Wallace Hall Was Right. Back story: After…
