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In Defense of Y'all, a Perfect WordThe English language is a remarkable and unwieldy beast. It lacks the musicality of French or Italian and the precision of German. It doesn’t, as The New York Times explored in a column published yesterday, even possess a natural word for the second person plural. Spanish has ustedes and vosotros, French has vous, Italian has voi, Mandarin has nimen, and English has . . . well, therein lies the problem. As linguist John McWhorter noted in the column, for want of such a word, English speakers have spent much of the past several decades transforming “you guys” into a gender-neutral term to fill the void. It’s an interesting linguistic analysis—and one that is entirely unnecessary in Texas, or throughout the South. We’ve long had a word that serves…

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SMU head coach Rhet Lashlee sideline photoFew opponents have been able to rein in the SMU Mustangs as they’ve galloped toward Saturday’s Atlantic Coast Conference championship game. Led by quarterback Kevin Jennings and defensive end Elijah Roberts, the Mustangs posted a nineteen-point average margin of victory over ACC opponents this year. With a win this weekend, SMU could secure a spot in the twelve-team College Football Playoff.Moneyed backers have played a crucial role in helping the Mustangs reach this year’s ACC title game. Those boosters and the university negotiated SMU’s way into the ACC in September 2023. But there was a catch. SMU football had to agree to forgo nine years of TV revenue—rights fees that are reportedly worth about $30 million per year. To ensure SMU wouldn’t fall behind its…

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Writer Oscar Cásares had long seen the Texas-Mexico border as associated with spillover violence, crime, and drug cartels—but he had another story in his bones. Cásares teamed up with photographer Joel Salcido, and the two natives of the border took a road trip from El Paso to Brownsville. Along the way, Salcido took photographs and Cásares wrote about the many people the duo encountered—chronicling the kinds of human stories often overlooked by the media. These writings became postcards addressed to Cásares’s daughter, in an attempt to show her the many stories that make up the heart of the border region of Texas. Read the full story here.The article has since been adapted into a stage production featuring Salcido’s photography, live readings from Cásares, video footage, and…

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Dade PhelanHouse Speaker Dade Phelan on Friday announced he is dropping his bid for another term leading the lower chamber, ending a bruising, months-long, intraparty push to remove him from power.Phelan, a Beaumont Republican, had previously insisted he had enough votes to thwart a challenge from the right led by state Representative David Cook, of Mansfield, a former ally.“Out of deep respect for this institution and its members, and after careful consideration and private consultation with colleagues, I have made the difficult decision to withdraw from the race for Speaker of the Texas House,” Phelan said in a statement. “By stepping aside, I believe we create the best opportunity for our members to rally around a new candidate who will uphold the principles that make our House…

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garcia barbecue burger photoIt didn’t take long for Alex Garcia and Jonathan Garcia to come up with a name for their San Antonio barbecue venture. “It was a hard decision,” Alex said jokingly, with Jonathan adding, “We went the whole twelve rounds and decided Garcia Barbecue would be best.” The friends, who are not related, began serving their barbecue at pop-ups in 2019, using a 250-gallon smoker they welded together in Jonathan’s garage. They opened the Garcia Barbecue truck in 2020 and added another vehicle to the business three years later. They moved between different food truck parks and served in front of bars in downtown and Southtown. Chopped beef sandwiches and barbecue tacos were popular, but the pair couldn’t really show off their smoked meat skills. “It’s not…

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Calder Allen ProfileFrom under the brim of a black gunslinger’s hat, Calder Allen stood onstage at the Capri in Marfa and surveyed his audience. The crowd was what you’d expect for a Thursday night: hip-adjacent young residents in Open Road Stetsons; local artists who looked like they’d just ridden in with a Lonesome Dove–era trail drive; women who could be either yoga teachers or blacksmiths (in this Trans-Pecos village, it can be hard to tell); neighbors catching up with one another; a quorum of dogs.Allen’s four-piece band, which included his uncle Bukka Allen on keyboard and accordion, was in the midst of a sprint through a set of a dozen or so songs, all of them written or cowritten by the 21-year-old front man. By all available evidence, folks…

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Hoop Dreams star William GatesThe acclaimed 1994 documentary Hoop Dreams intimately followed the high school years of William Gates and Arthur Agee, two Chicago basketball stars who set their sights on following in the NBA footsteps of hometown products Isiah Thomas and Mark Aguirre.However, they didn’t reach the NBA or even star in college. Gates’s basketball career was sidetracked by knee injuries he suffered in high school. Almost twenty years later, Gates experienced a personal conversion connected to the game that he has so loved, one that has affected the next generation of hoop dreamers in his family. His epiphany took place 1,200 miles south of the Chicago neighborhood where he grew up, while he sat high in the stands at Samuel Clemens High in the San Antonio suburb…

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James Swisher homeSometime before the Civil War, a horseshoe settled among tree roots near the home of James Gibson Swisher (1794–1862), a Texas Ranger and member of the group of signers of the Texas Declaration of Independence known as the Fearless 59. When he had the original brick structure built, in the 1850s, this region of Austin south of the river was sparsely populated. (The wooden Victorian structure that stands today was added in the 1880s.) The skyline to the north, now cluttered with high-rise buildings, was likewise empty; the Texas Capitol would not be erected for three more decades. That the humble horseshoe clung to the Texas mountain laurel, sinking into its trunk and branches, seemed to symbolize the enduring legacy of this property.In its new…

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Texas Christmas FestivalsEvery December, more than 400,000 revelers flock to Zilker Park, in Austin, to admire some two million lights during the Trail of Lights holiday festival. Folks online always make the same wry observation: The real Trail of Lights—so the joke goes—is the long line of taillights from all the cars idling in the event’s infamous traffic jams. (We suggest taking the shuttle bus for a more relaxing experience.) For those willing to brave the crowds, Texas boasts lots of big, splashy holiday events—not just the Trail of Lights, but also San Antonio’s floating parade along the River Walk, Sugar Land’s Holiday Lights, and Grapevine’s forty-day Christmas extravaganza, whose more than 1,400 (yes, you read that right) events and attractions include a drone show and a…

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Taquitos RossOne of the many changes COVID-19 brought to the dining scene in this country was the sudden proliferation of ghost kitchens. Dallas restaurateur and Mexico City native Markus Pineyro became part of that wave with Oomi Digital Kitchen, which he opened in 2022. At Oomi, diners can order—either online or in person, via touch screen, at the East Dallas headquarters—from several different “restaurants.” In actuality, all of the food is made in the same kitchen by the same employees and delivered to cubbies, which diners unlock to remove their orders and then go home to eat or sit down at one of the few counter stools.Oomi serves chicken wings from Clucky’s, smash burgers from Okie Dokie, and flautas from Taquitos Ross, Pineyro’s first Oomi collaboration…

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