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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.

Clockwise from top left: moonseed moth, ladder-backed ethmia moth, bent-lined carpet moth, ailanthus webworm moth, blackberry looper moth.On a steamy June evening, Curtis Eckerman embarks on a mothing expedition in the Bauerle Ranch greenbelt, in far South Austin. Towing a wagon full of supplies, he follows a narrow trail that leads between mesquite trees and into a secluded oak grove suffused with golden late-afternoon light. Eckerman, the chair of the biology department at Austin Community College, parks the wagon and begins to wrap a tree trunk in white cloth. Next he suspends a battery-powered ultraviolet light from a low branch. He’s optimistic we’ll see lots of different moths tonight; it’s been a warm, humid day, conducive to plant growth and, by extension, activity by plant-eating creatures. The oak grove is full of frostweed, persimmon trees, and various grasses, each vital to different…

The post More Than 4,000 Moth Species Flit Across Texas. One Scientist Photographed 550 in His Yard. 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.

Profile of Lemonada Co-Founder Stephanie Wittels WachsAs a kid growing up in southwest Houston, Stephanie Wittels Wachs transformed her parents’ living room into a performance space. She’d put makeup and costumes on her younger brother, Harris Wittels, directing him in full-scale plays she’d dreamed up. That early passion for the stage led to courses at Houston’s musical theater company TUTS (Theater Under the Stars), followed by a degree from the performing arts high school HSPVA, which is the holy grail of high schools for many creative kids in Houston. Back then, before podcasts were even a thing, Wittels Wachs never could have imagined she’d wind up cofounding Lemonada, an independent podcast network and soon-to-be publishing imprint with Simon & Schuster. Lemonada is home to 61 shows (and counting), hosted by celebrities…

The post How Grief Fueled a Podcast. And Then Sixty More. 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.

Early career Plinky ToepperweinTexans You Should Know is a series highlighting overlooked figures and events from Texas history. Ice water splashed over the sizzling gun barrel as the woman tried to cool her shotgun down. She’d been shooting for more than two hours. On this cool November day in Montgomery, Alabama, she was sweating. Her arms ached from holding the seven-and-a-half-pound Winchester. But the clay pigeons kept coming, whirling out of the trap machine like flying saucers from hell. Crack. Crack. Crack. One by one she pulverized them, the shards joining the layer of remains from the 950-odd pigeons she’d already dispatched.The spectators at the gun club that day in 1916 couldn’t take their eyes off her. Thirty-four-year-old Elizabeth “Plinky” Toepperwein was America’s only female professional trapshooter (one who…

The post The Forgotten Female Sharpshooter Who Surpassed Annie Oakley 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.

Simone Biles GOAT status Paris OlympicsThe final image of the 2024 Olympic women’s gymnastics competition captured an iconic moment: Simone Biles and her U.S. teammate Jordan Chiles—both of whom train at Biles’s World Champions Centre in Spring—kneeling on the silver and bronze steps on the medal podium, pointing toward Brazil’s Rebeca Andrade on the gold level with her arms raised and  her smile stretched ear to ear. In the final event, floor exercise, the Brazilian gymnast managed to edge Biles for the title, winning the gold medal that had eluded her throughout these Olympics. This is the first time that Biles has ever lost the floor gold in world-championship or Olympic competition. But judging from the display of admiration on the medal podium, Biles didn’t seem too upset about it.…

The post In Paris, Simone Biles Finally Found a True Rival 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.

100th Anniversary of James Coney IslandFew foods bring upon a tinge of nostalgia like a hot dog on a summer’s day. While it may be the star of a backyard barbecue, the fully dressed frank’s popularity as a year-round meal has diminished over the past several decades. For long-standing Houston restaurant James Coney Island, this is evidenced by the company’s downsizing from 21 locations at its peak in 2013 to just 6 today. But, with its rich history and reliable menu, the brand is tapping into the allure of being one of the state’s great nostalgic destinations.James Coney Island is among the oldest food establishments in Texas, dating to 1923, when Greek immigrant brothers James and Tom Papadakis opened the first location at Walker and Main Street, in downtown Houston.The…

The post In a New Era, Century-Old James Coney Island Leans Into Its Nostalgic Roots 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.

Sandhu quadrupletsWhen Mercedes and Jonathan Sandhu found out they were pregnant with quadruplets, joy quickly gave way to anxiety. “We were terrified parents,” Jonathan, who, like his wife, is an engineer, said. “If anyone ever looks up things about higher order multiples, everything is daunting.”The Sandhus had a 1 in 15 million pregnancy. Those are the odds of monochorionic quadruplets, four kids with identical DNA sharing the same placenta. Only about seventy-some-odd cases of monochorionic quads have been recorded in the world. Many quadruplets, sadly, do not survive to birth (one study found a 30 percent neonatal mortality rate). Texas has been home to some of the most recent successful cases —Dallas’s Jenny and Chris Marr welcomed four identical boys on March 15, 2020—but this was…

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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.

CenterpointDid a relationship that began a decade ago between a chief executive of a Fortune 500 company and a recent college graduate lead to a controversial $818 million deal that Houston-area residents could be paying off for years? That’s a question elected officials and energy regulators may grapple with as new revelations arise about the contract that Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick recently described as “potential fraud.”The deal under scrutiny was struck in 2021 between CenterPoint, the electric utility to which state officials granted a monopoly to serve Greater Houston, and Life Cycle Power, a small start-up based in the northwest Houston suburb of Jersey Village. CenterPoint told regulators it needed to lease twenty tractor-trailer–mounted mobile power generators from Life Cycle to help keep the lights…

The post CenterPoint’s Puzzling Deal for Generators Faces New Scrutiny 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.

CenterpointDid a relationship that began a decade ago between a chief executive of a Fortune 500 company and a recent college graduate lead to a controversial $818 million deal that Houston-area residents could be paying off for years? That’s a question elected officials and energy regulators may grapple with as new revelations arise about the contract that Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick recently described as “potential fraud.”The deal under scrutiny was struck in 2021 between CenterPoint, the electric utility to which state officials granted a monopoly to serve Greater Houston, and Life Cycle Power, a small start-up based in the northwest Houston suburb of Jersey Village. CenterPoint told regulators it needed to lease twenty tractor-trailer–mounted mobile power generators from Life Cycle to help keep the lights…

The post Critics Say CenterPoint CEO’s “Relationship” Influenced $818M Deal For Generators 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.

Inside the Harris County Democratic Party Civil WarHe anxiously picked at a bowl of chips and salsa while watching two friends lose their elections. Art Pronin, a longtime activist and president of the Meyerland Area Democrats Club in southwest Houston, who sports well-kempt sideburns and a faintly nervous smile, had only reluctantly attended a watch party for the 2024 Texas primary. He had developed what he calls a “phobia” of such events in 2016, when he stayed up late with a group of activists only to be poleaxed by Hillary Clinton’s surprise loss to Donald Trump. This March, he had braved the trip to a Day of the Dead-themed bar in Houston at the invitation of Friend One, Todd Litton, an attorney seeking the Democratic nomination for a seat in the state…

The post Houston Democrats Clawed Their Way to Power. Now They’re Clawing at Each Other. 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.

Beyonce Simone Biles Olympics tributeIf you’ve been lucky enough to catch the Paris Olympics live streams, you’ve had a fun week. The women’s gymnastics all-around competition kicked off around lunchtime on Thursday, and as expected, Spring’s own Simone Biles walked away with the gold. In doing so, she became the most decorated American gymnast in Olympics history and the first two-time all-around winner since 1968. (Biles won gold at the 2016 Rio Olympics, though she bowed out of the competition in Tokyo in 2021.) It was a can’t-miss event, as evidenced by the number of celebrities in attendance at Paris’s Bercy Arena that day. NBC couldn’t keep the cameras off them, constantly panning to reactions from the likes of Steph Curry and Seth Rogen.  As I watched, I wondered, as I…

The post In Case You Missed It: See Beyoncé’s Chills-Inducing Tribute to Simone Biles appeared first on Texas Monthly.

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