Indice dei contenuti per January/February 2020 in The Texas Observer

Left Behind When I saw this article (“Critical Condition,” November|December issue), it immediately made me think of Clarksville and what the town has gone through since the hospital closed. It was surreal to open the article up to see that Clarksville was the focus of the story. Both sides of my family came from Clarksville, and we still own a house there. This hospital shell is what greets us when we arrive to town now. The closure has been devastating to the city, and it derailed my grandmother’s long-term retirement plan. I hope like hell that Dr. Hashmi can get it reopened! Carrie Rosenbaum DALLAS I GRADUATED FROM A PHYSICIAN ASSISTANT PROgram in Texas whose mission was to train students who will serve rural communities. Many of our rotations were…

▸ It took only a one-hour meeting to unravel the 22-year career of Texas House Speaker Dennis Bonnen. Michael Quinn Sullivan, the leader of Empower Texans, secretly recorded a June conversation with Bonnen, revealing that the speaker asked Sullivan to target 10 incumbent Republicans in primary challenges. Bonnen announced in October that he would not seek reelection. ▸ The 23-year-old case of Rodney Reed, a man convicted of murder who maintains his innocence, gained national attention in the weeks before his scheduled execution date. People called on Governor Abbott to stay Reed’s execution, which didn’t seem likely given that during his tenure, Abbott has presided over 50 executions and granted only one commutation. The Texas Criminal Court of Appeals ended up referring Reed’s case back to court, delaying the execution.…

THE NUMBER 2020, WITH ITS rhythmic repetition and round-bodied look, seems as though it should be full of consequence and meaning. It might be tempting to project heavy-handed symbolism to a year with those double figures. Indeed, some Americans might have felt teed up by 2019, as they looked upon the Democratic presidential primary debate stages and witnessed the most diverse primary field in U.S. history. And yet, that earnest troop has been winnowed down to a mostly white, mostly male collective. It’s as if the universe purposefully wanted to deflate the expectations of those who seek significance in numerology—if you believe in those kinds of things. The Observer doesn’t believe in lucky numbers, but 2020 does dovetail nicely with a figure significant to our history: This marks our 65th…

A group of people can quite easily unite to make a decision where everyone suffers, if they misunderstand what the others are thinking. AS THE 2020 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION DRAWS CLOSER, A LOT of people are struggling to make up their minds—about what is in other people’s minds. The last election was a disorienting experience that made Americans second-guess the way they thought things worked in politics, and the intervening years have been disorienting too. It makes sense that some people are wondering how to make the system work in their favor again. The problem is that people aren’t very good at knowing what other people think, and that sometimes, asking this simple question can lead them astray. One way this has been playing out in the Democratic primary is the…

AS AN 18-YEAR-OLD FRESHMAN AT THE UNIVERSITY of Arizona, Jeremy Slack began crossing the border into Mexico not to down shots of tequila, but to interview the displaced. Tall, blond, and at first speaking only high school Spanish, the Virginia transplant and aspiring ethnographer stood out mightily as he began interviews in soup kitchens and shelters—first in dusty Arizona border towns and later in cities along the Texas border, like Ciudad Juárez and Nuevo Laredo. Slack found the borderlands both “fascinating” and “severely misunderstood.” As he continued his research in graduate school in Tucson, he sometimes served meals or cleaned in Mexico’s many shelters for displaced migrants, learning to fit in as a self-described “out-of-place gringo” who specialized in hot spots hard hit by cartel turf wars. He hung out…

In November, U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers confiscated 154 pounds of what dangerous substance at the El Paso-Juárez border? a. Chickens b. Bologna c. Tamales d. Meth ANSWER: B. In a statement, CBP officials said that they discovered 14 rolls of Mexican bologna in a Chevrolet pickup. Importing bologna is illegal because it’s made from ham, a product that “has the potential for introducing foreign animal diseases.” Customs officers seized 450 pork tamales at Los Angeles International Airport in 2015 for the same reason.…

Visit texasobserver.org/strangest-state for more “Strangest State” and links to original stories. Got a local oddity or some small-town news to share? Tips are welcome at cahalan@texasobserver.org.…

THE AVERAGE AMERICAN EATS ABOUT 279 EGGS EACH YEAR, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and that’s no surprise. Eggs are cheap and available everywhere, and sandwiches featuring them are a staple of fast-food restaurant value menus. They also have a reputation for being healthy, thanks to decades of advertising campaigns by agricultural lobbyists. (Though, as with many “healthy” things, that claim has come under scrutiny.) ¶ For years, people seemed content with their limited supermarket options, but as terms like “free range,” “organic,” and “animal welfare” have entered the common lexicon, there’s been a growing awareness of where our food comes from. If you’re spending two bucks for a dozen eggs at your local supermarket, the hens that produced them aren’t living their best lives frolicking in open…

It was fun naming clouds and deciphering shapes, until she showed up, pointed at the sky, at a series of clouds wrestling, and said, that looks like me fighting off my mother’s boyfriend, let’s wait, maybe blood will spring from that cloud, that one there she pointed, the one that looks like a pair of scissors or is it legs, with tears already making a pool on her neckline, I never looked up at clouds again during my childhood, where blood seeped not only from our scraped knees and noses after a brawl, but from heaven’s gates. Edward Vidaurre is the 2018-2019 poet laureate of McAllen and the author of six collections of poetry.…