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MUSICPostcards From Texas, Miranda LambertSeptember 13For her eleventh studio release, the Lindale-raised star has assembled fourteen songs that she says are each “a letter from home.” The result is an album, which she recorded in Austin, that’s Texan from hat to spurs. She wrote or cowrote ten of the tracks, many with the help of songwriters from the Lone Star State, including Shane McAnally and her collaborators on 2021’s The Marfa Tapes, Jack Ingram and Jon Randall. Conroe’s Parker McCollum lends his pipes to one tune, and the chorus of another delivers what may be the best divorce gag since Mark Chesnutt was “goin’ through the Big D and don’t mean Dallas.” On “Alimony,” Lambert croons, “If you’re gonna leave me in San Antone, remember…

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Before she pictured the dress, the ring, or even the groom, singer-songwriter Sara Woody could see the boots. “I had a little-girl dream of designing cowboy boots for my wedding,” says Woody, who married John Fitch at a treehouse resort near Austin in a “cosmic rodeo”–themed four-day affair. “The boots led the whole way.”Her vision: an intricate leather mosaic of symbols meaningful to the couple, including monarch butterflies, the planet Saturn, San Pedro cacti, mushrooms, rainbows, doves, and a lacelike pattern mimicking Mexican paper cutouts on peachy ombré leather. The wedding’s invitations, color palette, decor, and even the design of the dress—which unzipped dramatically at the hem for a splashy reveal—would follow.Nevena Christi, owner and designer at El Paso–based Rocketbuster Handmade Custom Boots, never batted…

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When he’s asked about Texas history, Steve Harrigan often starts his reply with a caveat: “I’m not a professional historian.” Nonetheless, he’s one of the most astute researchers, thinkers, and writers about our state’s eventful past. His 2019 book, Big Wonderful Thing, was widely praised as his generation’s most thoughtful and engaging chronicle of the Lone Star State. I refer to it often and always enjoy Steve’s surfacing of fascinating and previously overlooked figures, including women and Texans of color. I also appreciate his adoption of what one of my favorite history professors called “moral humility”—the discipline of studying the attitudes and standards of the time about which you’re writing, rather than assuming that we today are somehow of superior conscience. Without in any way…

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In the Wild West of ecocapitalism, where billions of dollars are invested yearly into companies that invoke some measure of sustainability, the ideas spawned by start-ups can feel like elements of the sort of dystopian future dreamed up in a sci-fi movie from the sixties: vodka made from carbon captured out of the atmosphere; sneakers made out of recycled chewing gum; a solar geoengineering project that would’ve sent sunlight-reflecting particles into the atmosphere to cool the planet. That’s why Katy-based start-up NanoTech Materials stood out, said Matthew Peña, director of the Rice Alliance Clean Energy Accelerator, which supports innovative start-ups—its idea was comparatively simple. The company produces a particle that, it claims, is extremely effective at rejecting heat. The “Insulative Ceramic Particle,” when blended into common…

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For more than four decades, the Pinata Party Palace, located on Cesar Chavez Street in East Austin, has remained steadfastly anchored to the past while the world around it has changed. Glassy office buildings and trendy, upscale eateries have flooded the neighborhood, but the beat-up looking, one-story warehouse—bright yellow and covered in sun-bleached advertisements for party supplies—has continued to delight its loyal customers. That sort of proud history might be a cause for preservation. But in East Austin, which remains the throes of a dramatic transformation fueled by gentrification, legacy can often feel like a liability. The shop’s owner, Jorge Salazar, a 50-year-old veteran who served during the Gulf War, grew up in a Victorian-style home a few blocks away from his store. Salazar is warm,…

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