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Queen Citriana and King Citrus atop their float in Mission, TX during the annual Texas Citrus Fiesta parade on January 27, 2024.About fifty folding chairs are lined up in front of the Border Theater in downtown Mission, a town of 86,000 just west of McAllen. The row of onlookers is composed mostly of multigenerational families, from toddlers to grandparents. They all gaze north toward the parade coming down North Conway Avenue, and many hold up their hands to block the sun that pierces through this breezy January morning. R. J. Gonzalez and his wife, Eva, are waiting for the float carrying their sixteen-year-old granddaughter, Natalia Flores. Today she’s the Princess of Emerald Dove, a dignitary of the White Wing Royal Court, representing the neighboring city of Peñitas. Over the din of police sirens and tejano music pumping from speakers on the parade floats, Flores shows me a…

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The Houston Artist Helping Locals Send NudesNurse practitioner and author Emily Medley entered a concrete-floored studio on a cold February day and took her clothes off. She centered herself upon a platform heaped with soft blankets and pillows, ready to be drawn nude. As ambient tunes played during the next two hours, a spotlight illuminated her nearly fifty-year-old body while studio artist Nyssa Juneau transferred her figure onto a piece of green pastel paper, a shade that just happened to be Medley’s signature color. As Medley recounts it, the surreal, cerebral, and private experience resulted in her feeling like an artist, too. Designed to be a birthday gift for both herself and her husband, who had it framed in “the most expensive frame possible,” the portrait was also a way of memorializing…

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Damla Karsan, a Houston-based OB-GYN (C) speaks during a press conference outside the Travis County Courthouse on July 19, 2023 in Austin, Texas.Dr. Damla Karsan was filled with a mixture of anger, fear, and anxiety. It was a Thursday in early December, and Texas attorney general Ken Paxton, in an unprecedented move, had threatened the OB-GYN—and the hospitals where she worked—with prosecution if they helped Kate Cox, a 31-year-old woman with a nonviable and life-threatening pregnancy, obtain emergency abortion care. Karsan’s thoughts immediately shifted to her women’s health practice in downtown Houston: How would she pay the rent? Or pay her staff? And most importantly, what would happen to her patients?“I was really nervous. I did not want to be forced to give up my practice and caring for my patients,” Karsan, who has been an abortion care provider in Texas for more than two decades, told…

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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.

Ray Charles, Whoopi Goldberg and Willie Nelson.To hear Whoopi Goldberg tell the story, there is no way a person could grow up the way she did, as a little girl listening to AM radio in New York City in the sixties and seventies, and not become a musical omnivore. Still, the breadth of the artists she cites as formative finds for her young ears—the list ranges from Glen Campbell to the Four Tops to English song-and-dance man Anthony Newley to Willie and Waylon—is impressive, not to mention well-informed. On this episode of One by Willie, she details the exact moment she went from being a casual Willie fan to an abiding devotee.It came a few years later, when she was a young mother scraping by in San Diego’s avant-garde theater scene…

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Willie and Me Eva HassmanWillie Nelson is probably as responsible for romanticizing Texas in the eyes of the rest of the world as John Wayne movies, the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders, and barbecue. The reach of his music pulled in Eva Hassmann all the way from Germany, where the 51-year-old actor, writer, and director was moved enough by Willie to center her first feature on him.The resulting film, Willie and Me, had its theatrical and video-on-demand debut this week. In it, Hassmann plays Greta, a dissatisfied German housewife who, upon unearthing her copy of Always on My Mind for the first time in years, learns that Willie is playing a farewell show in Las Vegas. From there, the adventure begins—she sells her husband’s Porsche, books a flight, and hits the…

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Austin's Épicerie collaborated with Franklin BBQ to release a special croissant filled with shredded smoked brisket, a dab of cream cheese, and chopped candied jalapeños.When I was growing up in Shreveport in the nineties, there were these little groceries everywhere that were also restaurants, like Maxwell’s Market and Cush’s Grocery & Market, or Stein’s Deli in New Orleans. I don’t know if it’s that common anymore, but that was on my mind when I opened Épicerie. The space was small, just sixty-five seats, in a converted house with a courtyard in a north-central Austin neighborhood, but we designed the dining room with shelves along two walls, with packaged specialty foods and wines, and a cheese case in the back. I cooked and we also made and sold pastries, jams, pickles, pâtés, and rilletts to go. The restaurant menu was eclectic—lots of Louisiana influences, obviously.  We did really well, and…

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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.

Willie and Me Eva HassmanWillie Nelson is probably as responsible for romanticizing Texas in the eyes of the rest of the world as John Wayne movies, the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders, and barbecue. The reach of his music pulled in Eva Hassmann all the way from Germany, where the 51-year-old actor, writer, and director was moved enough by Willie to center her first feature on him.The resulting film, Willie and Me, had its theatrical and video-on-demand debut this week. In it, Hassmann plays Greta, a dissatisfied German housewife who, upon unearthing her copy of Always on My Mind for the first time in years, learns that Willie is playing a farewell show in Las Vegas. From there, the adventure begins—she sells her husband’s Porsche, books a flight, and hits the…

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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.

Don’t Miss the Dinosaur Tracks at Government CanyonDriving into Government Canyon State Natural Area is like entering a time portal. In this 12,244-acre preserve on the northwestern fringes of San Antonio, visitors can walk alongside 110-million-year-old dinosaur tracks, an 8,000-year-old rock midden left by ancient Texans, and a 140-year-old cottage built by German settlers—all on the same trail. Hikers wander across forty miles of trails atop the Edwards Aquifer recharge zone, which is responsible for providing half the city’s drinking water. The aquifer stores water underground in its spongy limestone and is central to Government Canyon’s distinction as a natural area (not a state park), with a focus on protecting its resources. That means fewer crowds and more pristine nature than you’ll find at a state park.It also means your visit may…

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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.

Kacey Musgraves's Album Reveal Drowns in a Swiftian SeaFame, as a concept, is relative. Kacey Musgraves is easily the most famous person from the tiny East Texas town of Golden, but that undersells her stature in the world: the country singer is one of the most successful crossover artists the genre has produced in the past several decades, a superstar capable of headlining festivals around the U.S., and an Album of the Year Grammy winner. Put Kacey Musgraves in pretty much any space, and watch as all the light in the room attaches to her. Unless, of course, Taylor Swift is also in the room. On Sunday night, Musgraves—after several days of teasing an announcement—released a trailer for her long-anticipated fifth album of original material. The trailer is vintage Kacey: artsy, elegant, pastoral, weird. She…

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Beyoncé and Jay-Z attend the 66th GRAMMY Awards at Crypto.com Arena on February 04, 2024 in Los Angeles, California.Awards season is in full swing and, as usual when trophies are involved, you can’t count us out. Seven Texan musical acts were nominated for Grammys this year: Willie Nelson (Best Bluegrass Album), Travis Scott (Best Rap Album), the Black Pumas (Best Rock Performance), Pentatonix (Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album), Edgar Barrera (Songwriter of the Year), Seth Parker Woods (Best Classical Instrument Solo), and Kacey Musgraves (Best Country Duo/Group, alongside Zach Bryan). East Texas native Musgraves won her award, but the rest of the group is coming back to the Lone Star State empty-handed. We’ll get ’em next year. But even without a bunch of golden gramophones added to our state’s collective shelves, our style continues to reign supreme. Taking in the red carpet as a…

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