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sepia-toned photo of Luther Hotel in 1910The 121-year-old Luther Hotel, in Palacios, looked spooky enough to star in a horror flick. When I visited in mid-January, the bottom-floor windows were boarded shut, and the white paint on its cypress facade was peeling in stripes that stretched the length of the structure’s east and west wings. Weeds grew tall around its broad lawn, which hadn’t been mown since the hotel closed its doors in July 2022. The interior, I would soon discover, was worse.I was there with local retirees Margaret Doughty and Edith Gower, who cofounded the all-volunteer Palacios Preservation Association to save the Luther and find an investor who will restore it. “You cannot tear down something that has such a remarkable history,” Gower told me. The Luther holds the story…

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The Billet Room at Bowie House.Over the past few years, Fort Worth has two-stepped into the national spotlight with polished boots. One of our fastest-growing cities—not just in Texas but in the U.S.—has become an “it” destination, thanks to multimillion-dollar investments in historic areas and museums, new hotels and restaurants, Taylor Sheridan, Bella Hadid, and locals committed to celebrating the area’s diversity and traditions. One of the Cultural District’s newest gems, the five-star Bowie House, Auberge Resorts Collection, which opened in December, is a natural, elevated extension of both Fort Worth’s cowboy culture and its world-class visual arts scene.The 106-room boutique hotel (88 studios, twelve lofts, and six suites) is the second Texas property from Auberge, which operates more than two dozen luxury hotels and resorts around the world—from Napa…

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Can Beyoncé’s ‘Texas Hold ’Em’ Save Lives?It’s hard to imagine today, but less than two weeks ago, none of us had even heard Beyoncé’s “Texas Hold ’Em.” In the ten days since its release, the song’s impact on culture has been dramatic. With it, Beyoncé made Super Bowl ads briefly relevant again. She inspired thousands upon thousands of TikTok dance videos. She reminded us of the 1992 Disney labor-rights musical Newsies. She has already begun to remake country radio in her image. She’s given everyone who wants an excuse to doff a cowboy hat in the spirit of Texas—which is to say, pretty much everyone—the perfect opportunity to do so. But can her song save lives? According to a small but authoritative niche of social media—nurses and ER doctors—the answer is yes. How…

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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.

Texas moon landing“Why, some say, the moon? Why choose this as our goal?” asked President John F. Kennedy during a 1962 speech at Rice University’s football stadium. “Why does Rice play Texas?” We are a bold and confident people, he explained, willing—nay, eager—to take on difficult challenges simply to prove that we can.  In comparing the ambitions of NASA’s Apollo program to the Owls taking on the Longhorns, Kennedy hinted at a notion that we’ve chosen to embrace wholeheartedly: the moon is spiritually, if not geographically, part of Texas. After all, Houston is home to our nation’s human spaceflight program—where the astronauts train and where Mission Control guides them. The first word spoken on the moon, if you ignore some technical mutterings from Buzz Aldrin, was “Houston.”But…

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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.

Texas moon landing“Why, some say, the moon? Why choose this as our goal?” asked President John F. Kennedy during a 1962 speech at Rice University’s football stadium. “Why does Rice play Texas?” We are a bold and confident people, he explained, willing—nay, eager—to take on difficult challenges simply to prove that we can.  In comparing the ambitions of NASA’s Apollo program to the Owls taking on the Longhorns, Kennedy hinted at a notion that we’ve chosen to embrace wholeheartedly: the moon is spiritually, if not geographically, part of Texas. After all, Houston is home to our nation’s human spaceflight program—where the astronauts train and where Mission Control guides them. The first word spoken on the moon, if you ignore some technical mutterings from Buzz Aldrin, was “Houston.”But…

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Roar of the Crowd: March 2024What the Hullabaloo?I read your “interview” with Ol’ Sarge in the “Bum Steers of the Year” [January 2024], and I wasn’t amused. I graduated from Texas A&M in the middle of the last century. I’m familiar with the Ol’ Sarge character, and he never would have said the words attributed to him in your article.Ol’ Sarge was tough, he was gruff, and he was demanding. When we failed to meet his expectations, he held us accountable for our mistakes. Ol’ Sarge would take cadets who were not suited for the spartan life or the rigid discipline of the Corps of Cadets and counsel them to seek an education at a less demanding institution, like TU.Aggies enjoy a good laugh, and we encourage everyone to laugh…

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Senior editor Russell Gold.Over the past several months, one publication after another has announced significant layoffs: Business Insider, the Los Angeles Times, National Geographic, the New Yorker, Sports Illustrated, the Texas Tribune, the Washington Post, and many others. Among the few journalistic organizations still growing in readers, listeners, and viewers, revenue, and editorial staff are the New York Times—and Texas Monthly.That distinction wouldn’t be possible without the diligence and creativity of TM’s editorial and business professionals. But those qualities are also abundant among our friends who have been laid off elsewhere. TM is blessed in two ways that most other publications aren’t. We get to focus on a sprawling, fascinating state that is growing rapidly economically and in its population, which includes lots of new folks who love…

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Taco plates at Suarez Restaurant.Suarez Restaurant has a patina that belies its age. The restaurant looks decades old, despite having only been open for six and a half years. Outside, a pit room greets customers, while inside, knickknacks are placed perfectly on wall-mounted bookshelves, photos of the menu items plaster the walls, and customers gather around lacquered wood tables. What’s more, most of the diners seem to be senior citizens—at least first thing in the morning, when I visited. The Laredo restaurant is small space with a long line and seating that’s hard to come by. Customers just have to share tables. My friend and I asked an elderly couple if we could sit across from them, and they happily asked us to join them. “It’s all about community,” says…

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'God Save Texas' Iliana Sosa interview“Writers have been sizing up Texas from its earliest days, usually harshly,” writes Pulitizer Prize winner and Texas Monthly alum Lawrence Wright in the opening of his 2018 book, God Save Texas. The same could probably be said of filmmakers, especially where the Texas-Mexico border is concerned. Narcos and migrants, desert and dust—one easily falls into the trap of depicting the starkness of two sides without adequately capturing the nuance of those who live in between. Inspired by Wright’s book, a new HBO documentary trilogy by the same name introduces viewers to the Lone Star State in its immense complexity by sending three Texan directors back to their hometowns. Richard Linklater presents a portrait of Texas’s criminal justice system in his native Huntsville; Alex Stapleton spotlights…

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Ken Paxton Watch: Ken Paxton Takes on the Catholic ChurchThe Catholic Diocese of El Paso loaned out a run-down, two-story red brick building on the city’s East San Antonio Avenue, ten blocks from the border with Mexico, to a group of five young parishioners who felt moved that “the gospel calls us all to [serve] the poor.” In El Paso, that often means asylum seekers and migrants, so providing them with food and shelter became the mission of the group, which created a nongovernmental organization called Annunciation House. That was back in 1978, and in the decades since, Annunciation House quietly ministered to migrants without stirring controversy—until Tuesday. That’s when Attorney General Ken Paxton posted a tweet announcing a lawsuit against the NGO, declaring that such organizations “facilitate astonishing horrors including human smuggling” and decrying them as…

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