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How Brenham Schoolhouse Hotel Went from Schoolhouse to HotelThe walls of the Brenham Schoolhouse Hotel are so alive with layers and texture, they might actually talk. If so, it would be nice if they could answer some questions. Were the schoolchildren who studied Cicero and German here in 1883 actually attending the first public school in Texas, as some locals claim, or was this just one of the earliest? Did the Dominican nuns from Galveston, sent here in 1909 to start a convent, actually hold mass in the chalkboard-lined classrooms, as one neighbor reported? And who inscribed lines of Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s poetry on the wall in suite three? Walls, we want answers.When Jake and Meagen Gumm first bought the approximately seven-thousand-square foot Italianate schoolhouse in 2018 and began to pull away the…

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Behind Baylor's Title IX Religious Exemption RequestBee Matthey, a nineteen-year-old junior at Baylor University, feels lucky. As a nonbinary student at the largest Baptist university in the United States, they hear the stories of harassment on campus and know that making it to their junior year relatively unscathed is a blessing. “I’ve never been scared,” Matthey said, shrugging off what they call “random microaggressions.” For example, “I definitely have had people tell me ‘you’re going to go to hell.’ ”Matthey is not alone. Queer students at Christian colleges hear direct or implied condemnation all the time. Baylor alum Veronica Penales, in a high-profile lawsuit following a Title IX complaint filed against Baylor in 2021, reported receiving a Bible with all of the so-called “clobber verses”—Scriptures that appear to condemn homosexuality—highlighted.When leveled at…

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Yearby’s Barbecue & WatericeThe brisket at Yearby’s Barbecue & Waterice, in Pilot Point, was so good last year that I had to write a review, even if the business wasn’t at full strength yet. CJ and Sabrina Henley were serving a small menu from a food truck parked next to their brick-and-mortar, which was under renovation at the time. They prepared sides and smoked meats off-site at a commissary kitchen. Last summer, the couple finally received approval to build a new pit room big enough for their thousand-gallon offset from Big Phil’s. It was completed last September, and the dining room was ready for customers in November. I stopped in on a recent Saturday to see the new digs and try the expanded menu. The Henleys are Muslim,…

The post Beef Ribs, Smoked Meat Loaf, and All-Beef Sausage Star on the Expanded Menu of This North Texas Joint appeared first on Texas Monthly.

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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.

Nurse-Family-Partnership-Lauri-Mannon-maternal-mortality-Texas-featBeside Angel Perez’s plate of congealing cheese fries sit what look like four disembodied wombs—rubber cross sections depicting the progression of a woman’s pregnancy. The seventeen-year-old plucks one fetus from its uterus and cradles it in her palm, petting it with her finger. It’s the size of a baby mouse, typical of human development ten weeks after fertilization. Across the table, nurse Lauri Mannon gestures at the next-biggest womb, the week-sixteen model. “You’re somewhere between these two,” she tells Perez, who is fourteen weeks pregnant, before hoisting a fifth womb, the forty-week version, up from the floor. Perez’s big brown eyes widen at the sight of the fully formed fetus, with its discernible features and tiny fingers and toes. It’s early November and only the second…

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Should Texas Democrats cross over and vote in GOP primaries?It’s hard to imagine a world in which Texas Republicans reject Donald Trump as their nominee for president in the March GOP primary. Despite mounting criminal charges and his attempt to overturn the last election, which he lost, the former president has a sixty percentage point polling lead over his nearest competitor among likely Republican voters. But in Texas, not everyone who votes in the GOP primary needs to be a “Republican voter.” Take Zach Hinds, for instance: a Democrat in Arlington. He told me excitedly earlier this month that he had hatched a plan: he will cast a ballot for Trump’s chief foe, former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley, assuming she hasn’t dropped out by the start of early voting, on February 20. “Priority number one…

The post The Best Way for Many Texas Democrats to Make Their Voices Heard? Vote in the Republican Primary.  appeared first on Texas Monthly.

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Booker T. Jones One by Willie podcastTo many Willie fans, both the casual and hardcore, his 1978 album Stardust is the best he ever made, and the reverence is well-earned. It’s the biggest-selling record of his career, spending a full ten years on Billboard’s country albums chart. It’s also an undeniably beautiful collection of songs and performances, quiet and contemplative and marked by Willie’s unmistakable affection for the music and his band. Simply put, it’s a perfect record. For all those reasons, it’s easy to forget that Stardust was the most radical move he ever made.Think back to the year it came out. On the strength of such albums as Red Headed Stranger, Wanted! The Outlaws, and Waylon and Willie, Willie was at the forefront of the outlaw country revolution, and…

The post Booker T. Jones on Why He Recorded Willie Nelson’s ‘Stardust’ in Emmylou Harris’s Living Room appeared first on Texas Monthly.

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The Masters of El Llanito Country ClubLocated on the desolate southeastern edge of the small, dusty border town of Del Rio, El Llanito Country Club was never much to look at. It had no clubhouse, no pro shop, no driving range, nor any kind of facilities at all. The parking lot was not filled with fancy cars, because there was no parking lot. And the club’s golf course was in such rough shape that it was only barely indistinguishable from the sunbaked, southwest Texas scrubland from which its nine holes had been carved.El Llanito is gone now, all but forgotten. The area where it was located, in the vicinity of the present-day intersection of Dr. Fermin Calderon Boulevard and East Garza Street, was long ago developed, covered by sundry small businesses and…

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TEXAS! the MusicalPalo Duro Canyon is a breathtaking surprise for anyone who stumbles upon its dramatic vistas in the plains of the Texas Panhandle. Many histories have intersected here, including Texas cast member Benny Tahmahkera’s personal history—his great-great-grandfather was Comanche chief Quanah Parker, the role he plays in the show. The musical was commissioned in the 1960s and designed specifically for the canyon. In the latest dispatch from Texas Country Reporter, members of the cast and crew reflect on the meaning of this production and this place.

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This Year’s No Good, Very Bad Crawfish SeasonCrawfish lovers likely won’t be feeling the “laissez les bon temps rouler” spirit this year. Farmers and restaurateurs are in a supply crisis as crawfish season kicks off, but the bleakness of the situation depends on where you look and when you expect to find them. Last summer in Louisiana—where 90 percent of crawfish production occurs in the U.S. (Texas is the number two producer)—brought record-breaking drought and temperatures so high that Governor John Bel Edwards declared a state of emergency. There also wasn’t enough freshwater to flood the fields in October, a procedure that gets the crawfish to emerge from their burrows and repopulate. A January freeze was no help, either. The result of all those factors is an estimated 60 percent loss to Louisiana’s…

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State Senator Drew Springer (R-Muenster) on the senate floor on May 17, 2021.State senator Drew Springer has had a change of heart. In September, the North Texas legislator heard extensive testimony about Ken Paxton’s alleged criminality, much of it related to the accusations from whistleblowers that the attorney general had used his office to benefit a campaign donor and had accepted a bribe. Springer says he believed evidence presented during the impeachment trial that showed Paxton had conducted an extramarital affair and used a burner Uber account, but he was unconvinced by charges that the AG had done anything to violate his oath of office. The senator, who represents a solidly red district that stretches from north of Dallas to the Oklahoma border and toes the party line on issues important to the right, voted with all…

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