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Best Thing in Texas: Rice Scientists Discovered a New Tiger Beetle Species and Named it After HoustonIn the 1970s, Stephen J. Roman was working as a juvenile corrections officer in the Houston area and hunting for beetles in his spare time. He was especially excited about tiger beetles, a diverse group of small, speedy predators with jewel-toned shells. Roman often spotted the eye-catching bugs foraging across the roads and salty soils near Sour Lake, an hour east of Houston. Guidebooks described the local beetle as Eunota circumpicta, the cream-edged tiger beetle. But the beetles Roman was seeing behaved differently and had different colors—enough so that he wondered whether he was looking at a different species. More than fifty years later, Roman’s suspicions have been borne out. In a recently published paper, the citizen scientist joined Rice University biologist Scott Egan, William Godwin of…

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How Eagle Pass is preparing for the eclipse with the backdrop of Operation Lone StarOf all the places to watch Monday’s total solar eclipse, Eagle Pass is, astronomically and meteorologically speaking, the best in the country. Located close to the center line of the path of totality, it will fall into shadow for 4 minutes and 23 seconds—about 4 seconds shy of the longest duration anywhere in the United States. The border town’s weather historically has been clear in April, and it’s the first place in the country to experience the eclipse.Preparing to seize its upcoming moment in the sun—or, rather, out of it—the city of 28,000 in 2022 started planning a major music festival to celebrate the event. Locals listed spare rooms on vacation rental sites, built campgrounds, and printed T-shirts to sell. “I remember one of my coworkers said,…

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Solar-Eclipse-Musical-Baylor-TexasOn a Wednesday afternoon in March, the 22 students in the Baylor University Musical Theatre Workshop trickle into their classroom, chitchatting and pulling last-minute gulps from water bottles. Clad in backwards ballcaps, ripped jeans, and T-shirts, they slide into chairs and adjust the stands that hold their sheet music or tablets. Their instructor, Lauren Weber, passes along a few pieces of feedback from a music director in New York, and the students jot them down before the pianist plays a few introductory notes. The class takes a collective breath and launches into “An American Eclipse.”“It’s the coming / of our future / and of progress / brave and bold . . .”Instantly the room is transformed. The song is immense and celebratory; the space feels too small for…

The post Lights Down, Curtain Up: A Solar Eclipse Musical Debuts in Waco 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.

TPPF Tax ReliefThe Texas Public Policy Foundation, a right-wing think tank with ties to the state’s most powerful politicians and political donors, has long lobbied legislators to abolish property taxes. So far, this effort has failed. But TPPF has succeeded in another ambitious goal: ducking its own property taxes.For the past decade, Texas Monthly has learned, the think tank hasn’t paid a single dollar in taxes on its lavish, limestone-fronted, six-story headquarters, just two blocks from the Capitol in downtown Austin. The building’s appraised value is $18 million. How did TPPF manage this feat? Under state law, exemption from property taxes is reserved only for some nonprofit organizations, including orphan-aid groups and animal shelters. A well-funded think tank that promotes the interests of the oil-and-gas industry and undermines…

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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.

TPPF Tax ReliefThe Texas Public Policy Foundation, a right-wing think tank with ties to the state’s most powerful politicians and political donors, has long lobbied legislators to abolish property taxes. So far, this effort has failed. But TPPF has succeeded in another ambitious goal: ducking its own property taxes.For the past decade, Texas Monthly has learned, the think tank hasn’t paid a single dollar in taxes on its lavish, limestone-fronted, six-story headquarters, just two blocks from the Capitol in downtown Austin. The building’s appraised value is $18 million. How did TPPF manage this feat? Under state law, exemption from property taxes is reserved only for some nonprofit organizations, including orphan-aid groups and animal shelters. A well-funded think tank that promotes the interests of the oil-and-gas industry and undermines…

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Rhett Miller Ranks Every Old 97’s AlbumOld 97’s released their debut album, Hitchhike to Rhome, thirty years ago. Since then, the band’s lives have changed a lot—back in 1994, they were young hell-raisers in their early twenties, tearing up Deep Ellum and rising out of a Dallas scene that included the Reverend Horton Heat, Toadies, and Tripping Daisy, with a country-meets-punk-rock sound so fresh the name for it hadn’t even been coined yet. Over the years, those circumstances changed. Their music came to be known as “alt-country,” and the nineties major-label feeding frenzy saw them feted by folks with deep pockets. They signed with Elektra Records, recorded three albums that didn’t make the label much money, then returned to their indie roots. Hell-raising turned to heck-raising as the band members got married,…

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Mike and Heather Harbin of Mo-Chilli BBQ.An unexpected bounty of barbecue awaits in the farthest northwestern reaches of the lower 48. Uprooted pitmasters and chefs from distant lands have converged here, between Seattle and Canada, to create everything from destinations where you can dine by firelight with a glass of cabernet franc to shacks with picnic tables just outside the front door. A decade ago, Dallas native and Texas A&M grad Jack Timmons opened the first Jack’s BBQ location in Seattle’s industrial SoDo neighborhood. Today he’s working on his seventh location, and has added Jack’s Chicken Shack and Jackalope, a Tex-Mex restaurant, to the fold. The local appetite for Timmons’s oak-smoked barbecue is still strong, though he was forced to close a poorly performing location in Bellingham, about ninety minutes north,…

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Democrats for Ted Cruz?Perhaps there is no surer sign of the impending apocalypse than Texas Democrats voting for Ted Cruz. And yet, consider energy expert Marty McVey. The fifty-year-old bespectacled Houstonian, who sports slicked-back brown hair, has voted in all but one Democratic primary. But in the fall of 2022, he listened to Cruz speak to a few dozen energy-industry insiders at a conference in Washington, D.C., about the importance of the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy. “He should be talking about this more,” McVey recalled thinking. “I was surprised. I just couldn’t find something I disagreed with him on—at least as it related to energy policy.” Afterwards, McVey shook Cruz’s hand and thanked him. He remembers Cruz taking a moment to chat with him.McVey ran…

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How Muslim Chefs Handle Fasting During RamadanGrowing up in a Muslim community, I knew many people who would fast during Ramadan, a month-long religious observance where participants abstain from food and water from sunrise to sunset. My family wasn’t particularly religious, so I only fasted on occasion, but I admire people who fast—especially when they work in a strenuous, food-centric environment like a professional kitchen. There’s no doubt that working with food while fasting can be a challenge, especially since it’s customary for cooks to continuously taste dishes to maintain quality standards. Aside from the nature of the job, it’s hard to be on your feet for half the day on an empty stomach. I asked a few Muslim chefs and restaurant owners in Texas about how they operate their businesses during…

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Lucinda Williams on December 27, 2019 in New York City.Lucinda Williams was just another no-name singer-songwriter when she moved to Austin the second time, in 1981, and rented a dirt-cheap apartment in a sketchy complex on South Congress that residents jokingly called “the Willie Hilton.” In its heyday in the sixties, the fourteen-acre property had been billed as the state’s largest motor court lodge, though its fortunes had fallen mightily by the time Willie Nelson bought it in 1978, its accommodations converted to month-to-month bungalows and efficiencies. When he took the spread over, he refashioned the old motel conference center as the Austin Opera House, making it his home base for concerts and the city’s premier road show venue. But he pretty well left the apartments as he found them, and they gradually filled…

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