Former First Lady Laura Bush Takes Us on a Tour of Her Prairie Chapel Flower Garden
On a warm summer morning, former First Lady Laura Bush walked among the butterflies in the garden behind her dogtrot-style vacation house on Prairie Chapel Ranch in Crawford. The likes of former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and U2 singer Bono have ventured on these grounds before, but on this July day viceroys and queens were the VIPs. They flitted about as Bush interpreted the landscape. There’s antelope horns milkweed, she said. There’s gaillardia. There’s basket-flower, and there’s a gourd. “This one’s called purple mist, or blue mist,” she said. “If you want butterflies, then plant this.” Read More »
Executive Chef Gerard Thompson Embraces Biscuits and Frito Pie at the Lauded Rough Creek Lodge
Gerard Thompson wields a large, sharp knife with one hand and carries a wooden stand holding a cured hog’s leg in the other. He moves quickly to greet tables of newcomers and regular guests at Rough Creek Lodge. Thompson, the lodge’s executive chef, shaves off paper-thin slices of prosciutto from the ample pig trotter and hands them out as appetizers. Read More »
Need to Recenter? Try the Silent Treatment
In an attempt to quiet my mind and turn my attention inward, I’d come to the small town of Windom, an hour and a half northeast of Dallas, for a 36-hour silent retreat. Over a dinner of white rice, lentil curry, and homemade yogurt, my fellow retreaters at the Siddhayatan Spiritual Retreat Center, a Jain ashram, smiled knowingly as I folded my handwritten greeting into a square and tucked it into my pocket. “Oh, I did that for half a day once,” said Carmen, a 37-year-old mom from Saskatchewan, Canada, a devotee who’d come to the ashram to help out with a kids’ camp the following week. “It’s so hard if you’re a chatter like me.” Read More »
At Paisano Ranch, the Spirit of J. Frank Dobie—and the Muses—Abide
My personal slice of Texas paradise lies 14 miles southwest of Austin, tucked into the idyllic canyon that cradles ... Read More »
My Hometown: Explore San Felipe with the Town Mayor, a Descendant of a Slave from the Days of Stephen F. Austin’s First Colony
San Felipe, the hub of Stephen F. Austin’s original colony, may be the most historically significant Texas town you’ve never heard of. But that’s understandable: In 1836, residents burned San Felipe to the ground to keep it from the hands of the advancing Mexican army after the fall of the Alamo. The entire town—homes, taverns, one of the earliest print shops in Texas—was left in ashes, and few of its citizens returned. Read More »
How Phoenix Restaurant and Bar in Port Aransas Got its Caribbean Flair
The Worsham clan’s enthusiasm for Mouttet’s food motivated Worsham to start her culinary apprenticeships as soon as she graduated from high school. It also influenced her preference for piquant dishes and reinforced her choice in hiring Omar Brown, the Phoenix’s current sous chef who grew up in Ocho Rios, Jamaica. Read More »
Beaumont R&B Legend Barbara Lynn Named a National Heritage Fellow
The National Heritage Fellowships are the United States’ highest honor in the folk and traditional arts. Lynn earned the recognition for her pioneering rhythm and blues career, which has garnered acclaim with her distinctive guitar play, soulful singing, and songwriting. From nightclubs in her native Beaumont—where her mother chaperoned her gigs when she was a teenager—Lynn’s career has taken her to the Apollo Theater in Harlem, American Bandstand, and other venues around the world. Read More »
Ray Wylie Hubbard Revisits the Snake Farm That Inspired His Famous Song
Any good songwriter knows when the muse strikes, write it down. For Ray Wylie Hubbard, it was maybe the 10,000th time he was driving southbound on Interstate 35 from New Braunfels toward San Antonio, passing Exit 182 at Engel Road and the so-big-you-can’t-miss-it sign that screamed “SNAKE FARM” in red and black letters. The words, meant to entice drivers to stop at the long-running roadside attraction, conjured the image of a farm full of snakes, and Hubbard physically shuddered. Read More »
Passionate Chefs Make Boxed Sandwiches A Thing of the Past at These Fort Worth Museums
When chef Denise Shavandy walks into the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, she often wonders if she’s dreaming. Before she found her way to cooking, Shavandy considered other career paths that might have landed her in a place like this. Fortuitously, her job as executive chef of Café Modern, the museum’s restaurant, involves crafting beautiful food next to some of the most important art anywhere, inside a building created by one of the world’s foremost design talents. Read More »
After Tackling Topics like Al Qaeda and Scientology, Texas Writer Lawrence Wright Is Now onto Examining the Lone Star State
Wright, 71, welcomed 2018 with the Hulu miniseries The Looming Tower, based on his 2007 Pulitzer Prize-winning book about Al-Qaeda and 9/11. Then came the world premiere of his play Cleo, about the love affair between Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton during filming of the 1963 epic Cleopatra. Most recently, Wright played a key role in the acclaimed documentary Three Identical Strangers, which is informed by a study he unearthed in his 1997 book, Twins. Read More »
Frank X. Tolbert 2 Interprets ‘Incredible Creations of Nature’ in the Texas Bird Project
The art aficionados at the opening of Frank X. Tolbert 2’s Texas Bird Project exhibition in Austin were clearly enamored with the artist’s prints, paintings, and drawings of the state’s winged and feathered beings. But the birdwatchers who came to meet the Houston artist were absolutely rapt. Read More »
Before There Were Mavericks, There Was Texas Legend Sam Maverick
Deep down, every true Texan wants to be a maverick. Whether your folks have been here for centuries or you just ... Read More »
Find Texas Events
[gravityform id="1" title="true" description="true"]