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Four Years After COVID Canceled Prom, College Kids at Sam Houston State Got a Second ChanceWHO: The students of the Sam Houston State University Department of Theatre & Musical Theatre, led by assistant professor and coordinator of theater studies Patrick Pearson.WHAT: In conjunction with a musical performance of The Prom this spring, the Sam Houston State theater department hosted an actual prom the evening after the musical’s closing night and invited the whole school.WHY IT’S SO GREAT: Students who were seniors in high school four years ago, when COVID-19 shut down the world, got a chance to enjoy the prom they never had. Plus, the organizers of the event turned it into a fundraiser for LGBTQ students in Houston who might not feel welcome at their own high schools.In February 2020, Leah Bernal purchased her dream dress for prom. It…

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Archaeologists Dug Up a Vanished Texas Town and Found 10,000 ArtifactsIn 1843, Sam Houston toiled away at a desk in a sixteen-by-sixteen-foot log cabin not far from the muddy banks of the Brazos River. From that makeshift office in Washington-on-the-Brazos, about halfway between Austin and Houston, the then-president of the new Republic of Texas penned letters inviting the chiefs of several Native American tribes to join him for a council meeting. Many of the chiefs came, among them leaders from the Caddo, Delaware, and Shawnee tribes. They spent nearly two weeks in the rough-around-the-edges little town, meeting with officials, demonstrating skills, dancing and playing music, and signing a treaty.Today, there’s not much to indicate the significance of the spot where Houston’s cabin once stood, at one end of the long-vanished town of Washington-on-the-Brazos. This place…

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Sweetwater wind turbine blade dumpThe Sweetwater Cemetery welcomed its first permanent resident, an infant, in 1880. That was four years before the incorporation of the city, about forty miles west of Abilene, where the short-grass prairie that sweeps down from Canada peters out. Today the graveyard houses the final resting spots of many pioneers, immigrants, and Civil War veterans, according to a historical plaque on its gate.Across the street sits another graveyard, of sorts. It opened in 2017 and has become a long-term home for thousands of discarded wind turbine blades. Each has been cut into thirds that remain as long as modest ranch houses. They are not buried in the earth but stacked haphazardly in rows of undulating off-white fiberglass.This blade boneyard was built by Global Fiberglass Solutions,…

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The Power Couple of Houston PinballTim Hood is standing inside a building he calls the Vault, giving me a tour on a warm spring day in Houston, when there’s a knock at the door. He isn’t expecting anyone, and as a man and woman step inside, they’re also taken by surprise.“Is this the embroidery shop?” the man asks. Clearly it’s not, but the pair are not really sure what they’re looking at.That’s because the Vault is filled with pinball machines in various states of assembly. There are several dozen here, some set up and ready to play but many still wrapped in shipping plastic, their back boxes separated from the cabinets or opened to reveal their electronic and mechanical guts.There are valuable rarities alongside popular titles you’d see in many…

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On April 30, the James Beard Foundation announced its 2024 Media Award nominees. For the third year in a row, taco editor José R. Ralat and Texas Monthly have been nominated in the Columns and Newsletters category for José’s Tex-Mexplainer series. According to the organization’s website, “This award recognizes the work of an individual or team/group that demonstrates thought-provoking opinion and a compelling style on food- or drink-related topics.” José’s pieces “Defining ‘Guisado’ Is Just as Messy as the Dish Itself,” “A Head Above: How Barbacoa Paved the Way for Barbecue,” and “Red, White, and Covered in Salsa: How Two Colors Came to Dominate Taquerias” were specifically cited in the nomination. Winners of the 2024 James Beard Media Awards will be announced live in Chicago…

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Representative Henry Cuellar (D-Laredo) testifies during a House Rules Committee hearing at the U.S. Capitol on July 25, 2023.U.S. representative Henry Cuellar (D-Laredo) was indicted with his wife, Imelda, on Friday on charges of accepting almost $600,000 in bribes from an Azerbaijani energy company and a Mexican bank, the Justice Department announced.Cuellar allegedly accepted the payments after they had been laundered through fake consulting contracts to shell companies owned by Imelda Cuellar, according to the DOJ. In exchange, Henry Cuellar allegedly pursued policy in favor of Azerbaijan, the department said. Cuellar also allegedly took money from a Mexican bank and influenced members of the executive branch to make policy favorable for the bank, according to the department.Cuellar asserted his innocence in a statement Friday after NBC News reported federal prosecutors’ plans for an indictment. The Cuellars appeared in a federal courthouse in Houston…

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An illustration of the Alamo flippedAt a symposium organized by the newly formed Alliance for Texas History in Fort Worth last weekend, University of Houston doctoral student Shine Trabucco, who is of Taos Pueblo and Quecha descent, began her talk by “acknowledging that we are on the ancestral lands of the Caddo, the Comanche, and the Kickapoo. We are just visitors and guests on Indigenous people’s land.” Later in the day, University of New Orleans professor Max Krochmal declared that “we are meeting on stolen land in a city built by enslaved Black people and exploited migrant labor.” Not to be outdone, University of North Texas professor Michael Phillips pointed out that the state of Texas was built by “exploiting the labor of enslaved people, Indigenous people, and poor whites.” Such…

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For an American sports fan, following a rugby match can be disorienting. The constant action is a remedy against boredom, but the experience is like watching every other sport you might be familiar with happening all at once. “It has a combination of basketball, football, hockey, soccer, and even some elements of track,” said Rodd Newhouse, COO and part owner of the Dallas Jackals. The pace of play drew him to the game, and he’s hoping it will draw new fans to a professional league that most Texans have never heard of, Major League Rugby.MLR was founded seven years ago in Dallas, though North Texas has only had a team since the Jackals debuted in 2022. The Houston SaberCats have played since the inaugural 2018…

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Parker McCollum performing in Nashville during the 2022 CMA Fest.Country singer Parker McCollum epitomizes cowboy swagger. His usual white tee, gold chain, and heavily starched jeans are as much of a uniform as Orville Peck’s mask of fringe. Heck, he even has a whole album, Gold Chain Cowboy, dedicated to the classic look. It’s the cowboy version of effortless chic. McCollum says his fashion sense is a tribute to MTV Cribs and Pure Country, the shows he spent his youth watching in Conroe, north of Houston. “I grew up cowboying a lot from my granddad but also, I wanted to be a country singer and have a big ranch, have a bunch of cars, and maybe some jewelry and some fly stuff like that,” McCollum says. The “weird hybrid mix of the two” has worked…

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Dan Rather DocumentaryDan Rather was perhaps the most famous journalist in America back when being a news anchor at one of the big three network television channels—ABC, CBS, and NBC—mattered.  The Texas native’s long career, including 24 years as the face of CBS’s Evening News, is one of the most storied in the history of American journalism—even when considering his sudden, ignominious fall from his CBS perch—and is the subject of Rather, a new documentary streaming on Netflix. The film, directed by longtime Hollywood producer Frank Marshall and featuring Rather, who is a sprightly 92, is snappy and well-crafted, but it’s mostly interested in defending and celebrating the newsman. In its more transcendent moments, it touches on larger questions about journalism, how it should be done, and…

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