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tcr ultramarathon colorado bendIn the latest dispatch from Texas Country Reporter, meet the man behind dozens of ultramarathon trail races organized under the banner Tejas Trails. Runners at these events accomplish extraordinary feats—sixty-kilometer distances during overnight races on rugged routes in places like Colorado Bend State Park. And supporting them from start to finish, often during a twenty-hour marathon shift, is PJ Izaguirre. Watch for the full story.

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Climate Change Is Killing Texas BatsOn a recent day in November, under a mesh tent in their Austin backyard, Dianne Odegard and Lee Mackenzie took turns hand-feeding the dozens of bats in their care. Partners both in life and in the Austin Bat Refuge, a nonprofit they run from their home in the Cherrywood neighborhood, the septuagenarian couple has rescued thousands of injured bats over the past two decades. Their garden is full of night-blooming greenery: fragrant jasmine, Mexican honeysuckle, and burnt red shrimp plants, all in service of their nocturnal charges, who take practice flights under the tent come nightfall. Mackenzie, his shoulder-length gray hair tied into a ponytail, wore a black latex glove as he fed live worms to Sylvie, a hoary bat (so named for its white-tipped fur, resembling…

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Smoked oxtails at Charlie’s Bar-BQue, in Beaumont.Every Thursday morning Charles Brewer procures sliced oxtails from his local H-E-B. He sprinkles them liberally with TexJoy barbecue seasoning, then adds extra dashes of paprika and onion powder. After that, he smokes them over red oak and hickory for twelve to fifteen hours at his joint, Charlie’s Bar-B-Que, in Beaumont. That’s how long it takes a much bigger brisket to cook, so it might come as a surprise that a three-inch chunk of meat is equally stubborn. “It’s a long process, but the payoff is worth it,” Brewer told me. “We never have any leftovers.” Oxtails are sliced from the tail of a cow. With nose-to-tail cooking being in vogue, the cut of meat, long prized for its richness, has found new fans. The…

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Texas Salt Co. owners Daniel and Andrew Almand.So many rodeo champions hail from Bandera County that the monument on the courthouse lawn has no more room for names on its bronze plaque. A small town about an hour’s drive northwest of San Antonio, Bandera beckons folks with other sorts of cowboy dreams too. It inspired Robert Earl Keen, who moved here in the late eighties after a disappointing stint in Nashville, to start writing songs again. Tourists come for the staged gunfights behind the visitors center on Saturday afternoons. And just down Main Street from the legendary Arkey Blue’s Silver Dollar honky-tonk, a couple has built a business by giving the cowboy treatment to a simple ingredient.Daniel and Andrew Almand launched Texas Salt Co. three years ago after creating a briny blend…

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heartdrum cynthia leitich harper imprintSoft watercolor smudges of vibrant red, turquoise, and yellow sprawl across the first pages of the children’s book Jingle Dancer, by Cynthia Leitich Smith. Head in hand, Smith’s young protagonist, Jenna, imagines her grandmother donning Native American regalia as she dances a traditional jingle dance: “Tink, tink, tink, tink, sang cone-shaped jingles sewn to Grandma Wolfe’s dress.” Inside the wisps of Jenna’s daydream, Grandma Wolfe stands tall in a red dress sewn with neat rows of silver metal cones, which hit one another to create a tinkling, rainlike sound. She’s also wearing a contestant number strung along the bottom of her gown; she’s about to participate in the women’s jingle dance, a powwow event in which dancers compete for prize money. Smith and illustrators Cornelius Van…

The post Less Than 2 Percent of Children’s Books Feature Indigenous Characters. Heartdrum Wants to Change That. appeared first on Texas Monthly.

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Willie Nelson, Bill Wittliff, and Lawrence WrightWhen Willie released “Roll Me Up and Smoke Me When I Die” as a single on, of course, April 20, 2012, it became an instant fan favorite, and there are a host of reasons why. For one, it’s a great mix of three Willie hallmarks, namely a catchy melody, his insouciant wit, and weed, and concertgoers have been waving joints overhead when he plays it ever since. On the record, it’s a bright-line example of the wide net he’s always cast when it comes to collaborators: a Highwaymen-esque partnering with Kris Kristofferson, Jamey Johnson . . . and Snoop Dogg. And then, for the real-deal Willie nerds who notice Buddy Cannon’s name among the co-writers, it’s a pivotal entry in his songwriting catalog, a crucial first step into the…

The post Pulitzer Prize Winner Lawrence Wright on the Existential Quality of Watching Willie Nelson and Trigger Grow Old Together appeared first on Texas Monthly.

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Jermaine O’Neal coaching the Dynamic Prep basketball team.Chances are, you’ve never heard of the boys basketball team that’s by far the best in Texas, at least according to ESPN’s national rankings.Dynamic Prep has only been a school for two years. Its regular-season record was 21–1 , and ESPN has it at number 14 in the nation. The only other Texas team in the rankings is Plano East Senior High, at number 24. “They have the most talented team in Texas,” said Sam Lowe, director of the Metroplex-based Great American Shoot-Out, which scouts players and holds offseason tournaments across Texas.Three of Dynamic Prep’s players are in GASO’s top hundred seniors in the state: number 35 guard-wing Leon Horner, number 42 point guard Jaylen Washington, and number 67 forward Malachi Hayes. Three more are…

The post Texas’s Top High School for Hoops Has Eleven Students, and They’re All on the Basketball Team appeared first on Texas Monthly.

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Texas House primariesThe nation is beset by dangerous radicals, according to those who lead the Republican Party of Texas. But some are more dangerous than others. To see the face of radicalism in Texas today—to bear witness to a truly dangerous and seditious man—skip over the purple-haired anarcho-communists of Deep Ellum and Montrose. Turn instead to Palo Pinto County, an hour west of Fort Worth, and the frightening visage, if you can bear it, of Glenn Rogers, representative for Texas House District 60.Rogers doesn’t look particularly dangerous: He’s a bespectacled, Texas A&M University–trained rural veterinarian and sixth-generation rancher with a shock of salt-and-pepper hair and a cowboy hat to match. He owns land on the Brazos River, which he surveys, through transition lenses, from his Ford F-350.…

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Get in-depth coverage of news, reviews and conversations about Texas barbecue. It's basically Christmas every day for barbecue-lovers.

Jermaine O’Neal coaching the Dynamic Prep basketball team.Chances are, you’ve never heard of the boys basketball team that’s by far the best in Texas, at least according to ESPN’s national rankings.Dynamic Prep has only been a school for two years. Its regular-season record was 21–1 , and ESPN has it at number 14 in the nation. The only other Texas team in the rankings is Plano East Senior High, at number 24. “They have the most talented team in Texas,” said Sam Lowe, director of the Metroplex-based Great American Shoot-Out, which scouts players and holds offseason tournaments across Texas.Three of Dynamic Prep’s players are in GASO’s top hundred seniors in the state: number 35 guard-wing Leon Horner, number 42 point guard Jaylen Washington, and number 67 forward Malachi Hayes. Three more are…

The post At Texas’s Top High School for Basketball, Every Student Is a Player appeared first on Texas Monthly.

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A spread of dishes at Katami, in Houston.The Texas restaurant scene is as delicious as it’s ever been. I said, “THE TEXAS RESTAURANT SCENE IS AS DELICIOUS AS IT’S EVER BEEN!” It is also noisy (not to mention expensive and in a state of serious flux). Last year I was all worked up about small plates and the chaos they bring to the tabletop. This year, though I indulged in many glorious bites, I found myself stewing over another unsavory development. Where is all this noisy energy coming from? Clubstaurants, mostly, and they’re here to stay. (In case you’re wondering, I didn’t make up that word.) Most restaurants cannot survive selling food alone. They need booze to stay in the black, especially in the big cities. That’s why more and more new…

The post Texas’s Best New Restaurants in 2024 appeared first on Texas Monthly.

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