November/December 2020

The Texas Observer

Observing Texas since 1954

The Texas Observer2 min readCrime & Violence
Dialogue
Here is a legal argument about homelessness which few recognize: Half of the homeless are disabled Americans (“No Place to Be,” September|October 2020). The Supreme Court mandated in its 1999 Olmstead decision that all disabled Americans must be prov
The Texas Observer1 min read
The Texas Observer
VOLUME 112, NO. 6 FOUNDING EDITOR Ronnie Dugger EDITOR Tristan Ahtone EXECUTIVE EDITOR Megan Kimble ASSOCIATE EDITORS Christopher Collins, Sophie Novack DIGITAL EDITOR Sunny Sone SENIOR REPORTER AND EDITOR Lise Olsen STAFF WRITERS Amal Ahmed, Michael
The Texas Observer10 min readRelationships
Political Intelligence
THIS MARCH, AS PROTESTS OVER THE DEATH OF GEORGE Floyd spread across the globe and monuments to colonists and racists began to be pulled down, Texas A&M University faced its own reckoning. Since 1918, the school has had a statue of Lawrence Sullivan
The Texas Observer1 min read
Trivia Texas
Deer hunting season begins November 7 in Texas. Which of the following deer-related facts are false? a. A white-tailed deer will raise its tail to signal possible mates.b. Mule deer are so named because their ears resemble those of mules.c. Last year
The Texas Observer1 min readMedical
Texas Tally
The number of registered voters in Texas has surged to 16.9 million as of October, up about 700,000 since March and 1.8 million since 2016, according to the Texas Secretary of State. An analysis by the Food and Environment Reporting Network estimates
The Texas Observer3 min readMedical
Texas Observed
AS THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC HAS HIGHLIGHTED THE CRUCIAL NEED for health services, you might think state officials would work to reduce barriers to access. Instead, the Texas Health and Human Services Commission (HHSC) proposed cutting funding for women’
The Texas Observer3 min read
Strangest State
SLATON // In an attempt to beat the lockdown blues, a woman in the West Texas town of Slaton has taken up a new hobby: piñata-making. KLBK reports that 78-year-old Hilda Rivera started with the usual, making unicorns and characters from the video gam
The Texas Observer2 min read
Editorial
THE KIOWA WORD FOR A “reporter” is Khoot piah-gyah Maw-tame-Kxee. The closest English translation is “a person who teaches with a newspaper.” I have always interpreted this word not so much as a description of the profession, but as a directive, the
The Texas Observer5 min readCrime & Violence
A More Progressive Prosecutor
“PROGRESSIVE PROSECUTOR” CAN SOUND LIKE A CATCHall descriptor for any district attorney willing to pack fewer bodies into jails and prisons. But one race this year seems to have redefined the term. In a July primary runoff, José Garza, a former publi
The Texas Observer18 min readMedical
How We Got Here
THE ROOM WAS PACKED, the shutters drawn against the Austin heat. It was September 17 and Texas state leaders took to one of the smallest rooms in the Capitol building for a press conference on the coronavirus. They filed in that afternoon and took th
The Texas Observer12 min readCrime & Violence
The Blacklist
LAST YEAR, Jona Perales was evicted from an apartment they shared with their stepdad in southwest Dallas after failing to pay rent. Since then, Perales has applied at hundreds of places—apartments, second-chance housing, rooms for rent—only to be den
The Texas Observer11 min read
Bringing the Dead Home
Ramón Vásquez can’t tell you exactly how many of his relatives have been dug up. He can’t tell you how many are now stored in climate-controlled rooms at museums or universities. And he can’t tell you how many more will be unearthed when shovels hit
The Texas Observer9 min readAnthropology
How To Die In Texas
IN 2017, IN A TINY CEMETERY CALLED ST. MARY’S in a tiny Texas town called Frydek, Eric Keyes prepared to bury his mother. She’d died two days earlier, at 2:30 p.m. on a Monday. It wasn’t a surprise—Keyes’ parents had moved with him to a house in Rich
The Texas Observer10 min read
Immaculate
IT WAS A BIG GODDAMNED LAND. COULD FLY TO PARIS OR LONDON IN THE time it took to drive the distance between Harris and Castro counties. Not that Mae had ever been to the Old World. She told herself she had no need to go, that this world was plenty ol
The Texas Observer4 min read
Quilts of Color
ON A MILD, SHOWERY DAY IN august, Laverne Brackens sits in her bedroom with her daughters Lily Mays and Betsy Johnson. This is also her workroom, where she pins together cloth and sews while watching The Price Is Right on a TV mounted on a wall. Outs
The Texas Observer1 min read
Why I Hide My Poetry From Texas
If they find out, they stare like you could spurt doggerel. Your father realizes you’re worse than he believed. Your wife looks sideways— you hide a life that shocks her. You tell post office employees that letters with Poetry Editor in the address a
The Texas Observer1 min read
Eye On Texas
THROUGH MY PORTRAIT SERIES “ESSENTIALS” I’VE BEEN photographing the women working in essential positions in Austin during the COVID-19 pandemic. The shelter-in-place order called for citizens to self-isolate—all citizens except those doing essential

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