ALSO A TICKET FOR THE CHOW TRAIN Can a Car Town Make PERFORMING ‘TEXAS’ IN THE PANHANDLE Room for Bikes?

JULY | 2015

Migrant bodies buried in shallow unmarked graves and the Texas Ranger who found nothing wrong with it. Graves of Shame BY JOHN CARLOS FREY IN THIS ISSUE ON THE COVER: ILLUSTRATION BY TAYLOR CALLERY

LEFT: Joan Cheever, founder of the Chow Train, prepares green beans for her weekly Tuesday-night outings to feed the homeless San Antonio. PHOTO BY JEN REEL

18SAVING GRACE When Joan Cheever was ticketed as she fed the needy in San Antonio, she invoked the state’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act in her defense. Can it be illegal to share food? by Katie Sherrod

GRAVE CONCERN CULTURE Undocumented migrants who die in In the Panhandle, in summer, Texas Brooks County are often buried in takes the stage in Palo Duro Canyon. OBSERVER 10 mass graves without identification or 24 A lot has changed since the musical honor. They may also be buried illegally. was first performed 50 years ago. A lot hasn’t. ONLINE by John Carlos Frey by Robyn Ross There’s no rest for the wicked in REGULARS 07 GREATER STATE 36 DIRECT QUOTE 43 STATE OF THE MEDIA the dogs days of 01 DIALOGUE Outside the Lines Keeper of the Creek #nofilter summer. Check 02 POLITICAL by Claire Bow as told to Jen Reel by Andrea Grimes out original INTELLIGENCE reporting on 06 STATE OF TEXAS 32 FILM 38 POSTCARDS 44 FORREST FOR THE TREES mobile home 08 STRANGEST STATE Wild Horses Doesn’t Kicking Cars in Houston Home in the Crosshairs park profiteering 09 EDITORIAL Know When to Say Nay by Ian Dille by Forrest Wilder and unregulated 09 BEN SARGENT’S by Josh Rosenblatt LOON STAR STATE 42 POEM 45 EYE ON TEXAS waste disposal 34 THE BOOK REPORT “Rattlebone’s Rant” by Jay Lee at texasobserver.org In Her Words by B.R. Strahan by Amy Gentry

THE TEXAS OBSERVER (ISSN 0040-4519/USPS 541300), entire contents copyrighted © 2014, is published monthly (12 issues per year) by the Texas Democracy Foundation, a 501(c)3 nonprofit foundation, 307 W. 7th St., Austin TX, 78701. Telephone (512)477-0746, fax (512)474-1175, toll free (800)939-6620. Email observer@­texasobserver. org. Periodicals Postage paid in Austin, TX, and at additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER Send address changes to: The Texas Observer, 307 W. 7th St., Austin TX 78701. Subscriptions: 1 yr $35, 2 yr $60, 3 yr $85. Students $20. Foreign, add $13 to domestic­ price. Back issues $5. Airmail, foreign, group, and bulk rates on request. Microfilm available from University Microfilms Intl., 300 N Zeeb Rd, Ann Arbor MI 48106. INDEXES The Texas Observer is indexed in Access: The Supplementary Index to Periodicals; Texas Index; and, for the years 1954 through 1981, The Texas Observer Index. INVESTIGATIVE REPORTING is supported in part by a grant from the Open Society Institute. BOOKS & THE CULTURE is funded in part by the City of Austin through the Cultural Arts Division and by a grant from the Texas Commission on the Arts. A JOURNAL OF FREE VOICES since 1954

OBSERVER VOLUME 107, NO. 7 DIALOGUE FOUNDING EDITOR Ronnie Dugger Then They Came for our Bats… EDITOR Joe Cutbirth MANAGING EDITOR Brad Tyer My trainer at the gym is really a big baseball fan. He played for TCU and is raising his ASSOCIATE EDITOR Forrest Wilder MULTIMEDIA EDITOR Jen Reel son in his image. So when I told him (as a joke) that the Texas Legislature was about STAFF WRITERS to outlaw baseball, he said, “No way, that would be dumb!” My reply was, “Wait a Melissa del Bosque, Alexa Garcia-Ditta, Christopher minute, they are about to pass a law allowing guns in public and private colleges, and Hooks, Patrick Michels ART DIRECTION Chad Tomlinson another one that would prevent an abortion when the fetus is severely deformed. POETRY EDITOR Naomi Shihab Nye STAFF CARTOONIST Ben Sargent Isn’t that dumb?” So don’t sell our legislators short. Baseball just might be next! COPY EDITOR David Duhr Herman I. Morris CONTRIBUTING WRITERS F o rt W o rt h Lou Dubose, Saul Elbein, v i a e m a i l Andrea Grimes, Alex Hannaford, Carolyn Jones, Steven G. Kellman, Robert Leleux, James McWilliams, Bill abortion access for low-income people nationwide. Minutaglio, Priscila Mosqueda, Mission Creep? We’re very proud of our funds, and the connections Rachel Pearson, Robyn Ross Regarding your Eye on Texas photo showing how to and support that we provide and that they provide CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS Alan Pogue, Matt Wright-Steel crash a pool and “shotgun” a beer (June issue): Let’s each other. Lindsay Rodriguez ommunications a n a g e r INTERNS see, your mission statement reads in part, “We are C M Lyanne Guarecuco, Teresa dedicated to the whole truth, to human values above N at i o n a l N et w o r k o f A b o rt i o n F u n d s Mioli, Alli Rubenak all interests … never will we overlook or misrepre- B o s t o n , M a s s . PUBLISHER Emily Williams sent the truth to serve the interests of the powerful v i a e m a i l MEMBERSHIP MANAGER or cater to the ignoble in the human spirit.” In the in- Jacqueline Galvan terest of the whole truth you might want to see how While the organizations highlighted in “Navigat- AUDIENCE DEVELOPMENT MANAGER much Modelo is making off of all of us, young folks in ing a New Reality” are not directly affiliated with one Michael Schrantz particular. You might also want to take a look at the another, they are indeed members of the National Net- DIGITAL ASSOCIATE Tess Bonn “catering to the ignoble” part as well. I suggest tak- work of Abortions Funds. —T h e E d i t o r s BUSINESS ASSOCIATE Beth Bond ing a look at the numbers that CDC has on the social TEXAS DEMOCRACY costs of alcohol, and how much the alcoholic bever- FOUNDATION BOARD age industry is raking in, promoted by articles such as Cade Bernsen, Carlton Carl, this one in The Texas Observer. Bob Frump, Melissa Jones, Susan Longley, Vince LoVoi, If you need some additional help with your arti- Jim Marston, Mary Nell cle on the alcoholic beverage industry, its income, Mathis, Heather Paffe, Ronald its advertising and its social costs, you can give Rapoport, Peter Ravella, Texans Standing Tall a ring. They are very handy, Katie Smith, Greg Wooldridge, right there in Austin. Some additional very good Ronnie Dugger (emeritus) help can be obtained on advertising techniques OUR MISSION We will serve no group or party from the New Mexico Media Literacy Project. but will hew hard to the truth Rex Carey as we find it and the right as M i d l o t h i a n we see it. We are dedicated v i a e m a i l to the whole truth, to human values above all interests, to the rights of humankind as the foundation of democracy. We Better Connected will take orders from none but I would like to ask for a correction to the other- our own conscience, and never wise excellent story by Alexa Garcia-Ditta (“Navi- will we overlook or misrepresent gating a New Reality,” May issue). The piece states the truth to serve the interests that these abortion funds have no official affiliation, of the powerful or cater to the ignoble in the human spirit. when in fact they are member funds of the Nation- Sound Off CONTACT US al Network of Abortion Funds, a network of local 307 W. 7th St., Austin, Texas member funds across the country and beyond that [email protected] 78701, (512) 477-0746 funds abortions and works to protect and sustain or comment on facebook.com/texasobserver and texasobserver.org

JULY 2015 THE TEXAS OBSERVER | 1 POLITICAL INTELLIGENCE

LGBT FILES No Special Session on Gay Marriage Anti-LGBT activists are livid about the 84th Texas protect Texas’ sovereignty from being usurped by Legislature’s failure to pass discriminatory bills. A the federal government and the federal judiciary,” he day after lawmakers gaveled out, 14 leaders from continued. “We are convinced that he will continue to anti-gay groups delivered a letter to Republican Gov. fight to protect Texans from having the federal courts Greg Abbott demanding that he call a special session illegitimately impose homosexual marriage on Texas.” to pass a bill aimed at undermining an expected U.S. Abbott’s office didn’t return a phone call seeking Supreme Court ruling in favor of marriage equality. comment, but the governor has indicated that he From left to right, Cindy Asmussen, Jan Jones and “This issue is not about equality. It is about rede- doesn’t intend to call a special session. Mary Smith hold signs at fining marriage, which would lead to individuals, The letter to Abbott capped weeks of finger- a Defense of the Texas Marriage Amendment families, churches, schools and businesses being pointing by anti-gay activists after it became clear rally outside the state forced to accept, affirm and celebrate those who prac- that none of the more than 20 anti-LGBT proposals Capitol on March 23. The event was headlined by tice homosexuality,” wrote Dr. Steve Hotze, president introduced in this year’s session would pass. In May, Alabama Supreme Court of the Conservative Republicans of Texas, in a post on Texas Values President Jonathan Saenz lashed out Chief Justice Roy Moore. AP PHOTO/AUSTIN AMERICAN- his website announcing the letter. at the Texas Association of Business over the group’s STATESMAN, RALPH BARRERA “As Attorney General, Governor Abbott fought to opposition to anti-LGBT legislation.

2 | THE TEXAS OBSERVER WWW.TEXASOBSERVER.ORG POLITICAL INTELLIGENCE TRIVIATEXAS “The business lobby, the Texas Association of But Texas has other plans. In the last year, the Reveling in the Business, has decided now they’re going to put all state has refused to issue birth certificates to chil- power of his high their investment in the homosexual agenda, and dren who were born in Texas to undocumented office, Gov. Greg that’s one of the things they did,” Saenz said. “It was parents. In May, four women filed a civil rights law- Abbott tweeted a a big surprise to a lot of lawmakers. … The Texas suit against the Texas Department of State Health photo of himself Association of Business has clearly turned their back Services alleging constitutional discrimination and in June raising a on the values of Texas.” interference in the federal government’s authority giant “veto” stamp Dave Welch, executive director of the Texas Pastor over immigration. Jennifer Harbury, a lawyer with above his head Council, blamed state Sens. Joan Huffman (R-Houston) Texas RioGrande Legal Aid, who is representing the as a doomed bill and Jane Nelson (R-Flower Mound) for the demise of women, said the deluge of birth certificate refus- lay helpless on his an anti-gay marriage bill in the session’s final days. als began last winter. “I’ve never seen such a large “It is an astounding and appalling reality that in number of women with this problem,” she says. “In desk. Such bravado one of the most Republican-dominated state govern- the past someone might be turned away, but it was aside, the guv was ments in the U.S., with a strong majority in both House always resolved. This is something altogether new.” far kinder after and Senate, that the Texas Legislature did nothing According to the lawsuit, the women who requested his first legislative meaningful to protect religious freedom, traditional birth certificates for their children at the state’s vital session than Gov. marriage or oppose the radical agenda of the sexual statistics offices in Cameron and Hidalgo counties Rick Perry was back perversity/gender confusion,” Welch wrote. “The were turned away because of insufficient proof of their in 2001. good news is that the only way for evil to triumph is identities. State law allows the use of a foreign ID if the for us to be silent, and we have proven that pastors all mother lacks a Texas driver’s license or a U.S. passport. Of the 83 bills over Texas are no longer willing to be passive as the But employees at the offices, which are run by Perry vetoed enemy of our souls and his pawns influencing media, the Texas Department of State Health Services, told that year, which entertainment, education and politics assault God’s the women they would no longer accept either the was the first to moral law and created order.” matricula consular, which is a photo ID issued by meet its end Cathie Adams, president of the Texas Eagle Forum, the Mexican Consulate to Mexican nationals living by his hand? said same-sex marriage will put people out of busi- in the U.S., or a foreign passport without a current ness if they refuse to serve gay couples—even though U.S. visa. Undocumented Central American women a. Creating a state Texas has no LGBT-inclusive, statewide nondis- are also being turned away because they only have a crimination law. Adams also said same-sex marriage passport without a U.S. visa. “They are locking out a health plan with a is “taking decadence to a new low level,” because not huge chunk of the undocumented immigrant com- focus on pollution even the “decaying” Roman Empire sanctioned it. munity,” says Harbury. b. Allowing cars to Adams said of state Rep. Cecil Bell (R-Magnolia), Harbury believes the rash of refusals is linked to park on sidewalks the author of four anti-gay marriage bills, that the influx of Central American families who crossed c. Raising the “his head was handed to him on a silver platter” by the border last summer seeking asylum. “They are limit on legal other Republicans who killed the legislation. And she targeting the undocumented population, but immi- bingo prizes said that because the Legislature failed to pass an anti- gration is a federal function and not the job of the d. Allowing out-of- gay marriage bill, the state will “bow and scrape before Department of State Health Services,” says Harbury. state police to 1 percent of the U.S. population that is homosexual.” Women are unable to enroll their children in school openly carry “I am supporting the call for our governor to call or daycare without a birth certificate, or to authorize handguns a special session now, or forever hold our peace,” their child to be treated in a medical emergency. “It e. Requiring Adams said. “We must stand up for marriage. We causes all kinds of problems,” Harbury says. “How is valet parking must push back on this tyranny from the bench.” a woman going to prove she’s the child’s parent with- companies to —John Wright out a birth certificate?” carry insurance

Since filing the lawsuit in late May, Harbury says,

they’ve received dozens of calls from women who year. that later DEPT. OF CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS have been refused birth certificates for their -chil vetoed Perry those among were

dren: “The phones have been ringing off the hook.” bills other The Mexico. from would not require cooperation cooperation require not would

Children of Harbury says they plan on adding several more proposal the that objected

women as plaintiffs in an amended lawsuit. Perry NAFTA. of wake the in Immigrants Denied James Harrington, an attorney with the Texas Civil border the along particularly

Rights Project, is also representing the women. The Texans, facing hazards

Citizenship health other and pollution of

legal team is seeking a court order to reinstate the use impact the study to agencies

For nearly 150 years, the United States, under of the matricula consular and foreign passports as valid environmental and health state the 14th Amendment, has recognized people born proof of identity for undocumented mothers. “Even in directed have would Paso) (D-El

here as citizens, regardless of whether their par- the darkest hours of Texas’ history of discrimination, Shapleigh Eliot Sen. state ANSWER: ANSWER: a. a.

ents were citizens. officials never denied birth certificates to Hispanic byformer bill A

JULY 2015 THE TEXAS OBSERVER | 3 children of immigrants,” said Harrington in a state- TALK OF TEXAS ment. “Everyone born in the United States is entitled to READ the lawsuit at txlo.com/les the full rights of citizenship.” —Melissa del Bosque

POLICE WATCH EDITION CHANGING TACK “McKinney Police Cpl. Eric Former Abortion Casebolt, in a shockingly Clinic Becomes Public Education wrong-headed decision, Nonprofit

The Whole Woman’s Health abortion clinic in determined that … it was Austin has been closed for a year. Back in July 2014, the organization stopped providing services necessary to throw a at its flagship facility due to Texas’ House Bill 2, which imposes surgical-center standards and other restrictions on abortion clinics statewide. Though 15-year-old girl to the the clinic is closed, Austin women still knock on the adjacent administrative office’s door daily— ground and pin her with sometimes multiple times a day—asking for help. While staff must turn away women seeking abortion services, Whole Woman’s Health has reimagined its both knees—then bran- empty clinic. This summer, the organization’s president, Amy Hagstrom Miller, launched Shift, a nonprofit that dish his gun at two young aims to foster open, accurate conversations about abortion and to educate the community about the medical side of the procedure in the hopes of alleviating men who appeared to be stigma and combating misinformation. Texas is a battleground for abortion rights. The state has imposed dozens of regulations on women trying to help the teen.” and providers, including HB 2, which bans abortion —Dallas Morning News editorial, June 9. after 20 weeks, complicates the use of the medical abortion pill, and places structural demands on clin- ics. Through her organization’s role as an abortion provider, Hagstrom Miller sees an opportunity to “I had 12 officers on the change the conversation about abortion in the state, scene and 11 of them … where the issue is steeped in stigma and politics. On top of operating abortion clinics in some of the more did an incredible job.” medically underserved regions of Texas, including the —McKinney Police Chief Greg Conley to ABC News, June 9. Rio Grande Valley and East Texas, Whole Woman’s Health is also challenging HB 2 in the courts. “We don’t shy from this sort of conflict that peo- “I’m almost to the point of ple have about abortion. We see that all the time,” Hagstrom Miller told the Observer. “As providers wanting them all segregated we’re very comfortable talking about the issues that … on one side of town so surround abortion, and we do it every day with the women that we serve.” they can hurt each other and The sign on the front door of the former clinic off leave the innocent people Interstate 35 in north Austin reads “ChoiceWorks,” the name of the new co-working space established alone. Maybe the 50s and by the Shift nonprofit, a space open, for free, to 60s were really on to [sic] community groups, students and others for meetings, trainings or simply a quiet spot to work. The former something… #imnotracist clinic’s front waiting room feels like a lounge, while #imsickofthemcausingtrouble the former reception desk is stocked with office supplies for those using the space. The former clinic #itwasagatedcommunity.” now contains conference rooms. —Karen Fitzgibbons, a Frenship ISD teacher Much of the clinic, including three exam rooms and relieved of her teaching duties for this Facebook post, the counseling space, remains the same, intended to according to the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal, June 11. be used during public trainings that Hagstrom Miller (She has since apologized.) and her team have dubbed “Abortion 101” workshops. The facility maintains much of the signature Whole Woman’s Health vibe found at the organization’s

4 | THE TEXAS OBSERVER WWW.TEXASOBSERVER.ORG clinics in other cities: lavender walls and low lighting instance, even as its local chapter in Seattle was cel- throughout, with each room dedicated to a strong ebrating its massive opt-out drive. The national League female figure in history, complete with her photo and of United Latin American Citizens signed the letter, too, a quote on the wall. While no medical services take putting it at odds with its largest state chapter, Texas. place, the idea is to walk trainees through the entire “LULAC began in Texas, and Texas LULAC has process of getting an abortion. Hagstrom Miller consistently been against high-stakes testing,” says plans to invite local community groups, students and University of Texas professor Angela Valenzuela. elected officials at first, and then look statewide. “The national organizations do not at all reflect the “People can get factual information, but then also studied opinion of LULAC in our state.” The opt-out talk about what happens in this [exam] room, how Valenzuela is a former education committee chair regulations actually show up in the practice and how for the group’s Texas chapter and was also part of the movement has those regulations affect women’s lives and their fam- Latino-led resistance to standardized testing in the ilies,” Hagstrom Miller said. —Alexa Garcia-Ditta 1990s, when the state first began denying high school grown even diplomas to students for failing state tests. That pol- icy prompted a lawsuit from Dr. Hector P. Garcia’s faster out- ANNALS OF EDUCATION American GI Forum on behalf of poor students of color almost 20 years before affluent Anglo parents side the state, Say Yes to the rallied state lawmakers to their cause. Valenzuela’s own children opted out of tests in the particularly Test (Or Else) early 2000s, and she knows of other Latino students Late last school year, as word spread in Houston who avoided the tests out of protest, without a large in hotbeds of that a growing number of parents planned to protest movement behind them, and graduated anyway. But standardized testing by keeping their kids home on test challenging schools and facing threats from officials resistance to day, the Houston Independent School District reached is a lot to ask of parents who may be poor or don’t out with a not-so-friendly reminder. In a letter to par- speak English. Anecdotally, opt-out activists say their the national ents, a district official noted that failure to show up on growing movement is getting less white, but it will state test day would result in “negative consequences” always be easier for affluent parents to take part. Common Core such as a score of zero and mandatory summer school. Kravetz, who helped organize this year’s opt- The letter was notable, first of all, becauseit wasn’t out drive in Houston, says black or Latino parents standards. true; the district soon backtracked, calling the threats account for about 70 percent of those she knows an editing error. But the greater truth behind the opted out this year. It’s “crazy talk,” she says, to call missive is how far the opt-out movement has come the testing in Houston’s schools today a civil right; in such a short time. Three years ago, just a handful she expects next year’s opt-out effort will draw even of Texas parents, frustrated by the way testing and more working-class parents as more people realize test prep had come to dominate their children’s class it’s their best chance at change. time, were pulling their kids from test days as a sort “Had you talked to me three years ago, I would’ve of civil disobedience, to deprive schools of at least a said there’s no way that opting out is something that few precious test scores. This year, the movement was can make things better. I would say we have to change large enough to compel a response from the district. minds and change laws. But at this point, it looks like Much of that is thanks to a group called Community they’re going to be over-testing our children until Voices for Public Education, which held meetings in all our schools are closed,” Kravetz says. “You can’t homes around the city explaining parents’ rights. Ruth operate like testing people is going to make them not Kravetz, a former HISD administrator who co-founded be poor.” —Patrick Michels the group, says she knew of one parent who opted out in 2014. She counted 80 parents doing so this year. The opt-out movement has grown even faster out- side the state, particularly in hotbeds of resistance to the national Common Core standards. Around 200,000 children opted out this year in New York. The growing movement’s most visible members—in the press and in positions of leadership—have been mostly white, middle- and upper-class parents; the opt-out trend has been criticized for sidelining the voices of poor black and Latino parents. Against that backdrop, 12 national civil rights groups signed a letter in May opposing the opt-out movement and suggesting the language of civil rights had been “appropriated” wrongly by the anti-test crowd. “When parents ‘opt out’ of tests—even when out of protest for legitimate concerns—they’re not only making a choice for their own child, they’re inadvertently making a choice to undermine efforts to improve schools for every child,” they wrote. But the letter reflects a split among civil rights groups—in some cases, even different chapters of the same group. The national NAACP signed the letter, for Exceptional organic & cooperative coffee roasted to order in Austin.

JULY 2015 STATE OF TEXAS: Handgun Licenses in Texas BY JOE CUTBIRTH TEXAS BEGAN ISSUING concealed handgun permits almost 20 years ago, and the number has increased sharply in recent years. As the state prepares to implement an open-carry policy, here’s a look at the history of permit applications and who tends to apply for permits.

NUMBER OF GUN LICENSE HOLDERS STATEWIDE

900,000 Year End Total* 800,000 CONCEALED HANDGUN 700,000 Texas LICENSE 600,000 LICENSE # 12345678 CATEGORY: NSA DL ID: # 1234567899999999999 500,000 DOB 07/30/1976 EXPIRES 02/01/2012 Sex M Eyes BLU Sex M 400,000 HT: 5-08 WT: 155 SMITH, JOE BOB 1134 OLD MAIN STREET 300,000 ANYTOWN TX 12345-0000 Joe Bob Smith 200,000

100,000

0 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 2006 2008 2010 2012 2014

246,326 NEW LICENSES OR RENEWALS WERE ISSUED IN 2014

RACE American Indian or Alaskan Native 1,061 Asian or Pacific Islander 5,822 Black 17,594 Multi-racial 3,243 Other-Unknown 9,819 White 208,787

70-79 <29 7.5% 12.5% AGE 80-89 1.4% 60-69 30-39 >90 .05% 180,635 18% 18.4% 65,691 MALE FEMALE 50-59 40-49 21.7% 20.4% * includes licenses that have not expired, been voluntarily de-activated, or been suspended, revoked or voluntarily surrendered in lieu of revocation. SOURCE: Texas Department of Public Safety Regulatory Services Division ILLUSTRATION BY JOANNA WOJTKOWIAK CLAIREBOW GREATER STATE Transgender Isn’t a Sexual Orientation was taking a break recently from my work lobbying for transgender Texans, enjoying a view of the Capitol dome from a spot near the rotunda, when I heard something that took me back to my childhood. ¶ An elementary school teacher leading kids on a tour told them to form two lines. “Boys on the left, girls on the right,” she said. I watched as they followed instructions. I also listened for something else familiar. In a few moments, I heard it: the teacher telling one of them, “That’s not your line. Get in line with the boys.” ¶ I hated gender-segregated lines as a child. As long as we were all together I could feel like I was a part of the group, but when they made us separate, and put me with the boys, I I was Ifelt singled out. I didn’t belong. ¶ It would be many years before I questioned why shocked when I gravitated toward girls during recess. I just knew I liked their games. They were imaginative, cooperative and focused on make- my parents might not love me if they found out. It Caitlyn Jenner believe. One day we turned the monkey bars into a was a terrible secret for a child to have to keep. castle, and everyone was a princess or a lady, except Then there was puberty. When my little sister described her me. The ladies of the castle decreed that I should be had her first menses, my mom sat us down to have a knight and defend the castle from marauding boys. “the talk.” It was the first time I heard a woman own version I didn’t want to be a knight, even a make-believe one. talk about living in her own body. She was trying to I wanted to be in the castle. I wanted to belong. instill pride in us for the roles we would play when of that event When I tell people that I’m transgender, they don’t we had families of our own, but I felt betrayed. I understand that I’m talking about standing in the felt like there had been some momentous gender from my life wrong line in elementary school or being inside the lottery before I was born and that I lost without castle. They don’t understand how I grew up feeling even knowing it had happened. so accurately betrayed by my own body and unfit for the role I was The fact that I mostly dated girls and have been supposed to play in life. married to the same woman for 23 years really in her recent The idea that everyone has a gender identity dis- confuses people. Some think it must mean I’m not tinct from physiology and independent of sexual really transgender. I don’t quite know how to explain interview with orientation is not new, but identity so frequently to them that the ways in which women see and matches physiology that it’s hard for people to interact with the world just make more sense to me Diane Sawyer. think of them separately. When children’s gender than the ways men do, and that I’m more comfortable identities don’t match their physiology, they are in my relationships with women. transgender. Many think transgender is homosexual I’ve changed a lot since I was 6 years old. People orientation taken to an extreme, but transgender is know me now as Claire. My driver’s license and different. It describes who we are, not whom we are passport identify me to the world as a woman. My attracted to. body has changed, and I see a woman when I look I was 7 or 8 the first time I put on women’s clothes. in a mirror. The confusion and the hiding that was I locked the bathroom door and took my mom’s slip so much a part of my life is all behind me, but I still from the hamper. I took off my boy clothes and wore remember it. I’m an activist and an advocate for the slip like a dress. I was shocked when Caitlyn transgender rights because I wonder and worry Jenner described her own version of that event from about the future of that child, and so many like him, my life so accurately in her recent interview with standing in the wrong line at the Capitol. I want to Diane Sawyer. Like Jenner, I didn’t understand why tell them it gets better. I had done it. Like her, I had carefully marked the Claire Bow is a native of Alpine and a retired state position of the slip in the pile of laundry, and I put it executive who worked for more than a decade for the all back in exactly the same place. State Office of Risk Management and the Office of the I knew I could never—ever—tell anyone, because Attorney General.

JULY 2015 THE TEXAS OBSERVER | 7 STRANGESTSTATE NOTES FROM FAR-FLUNG TEXAS by Patrick Michels

LAMESA // The Honorable Judge Carter Tinsley Schild- knecht—who ran unopposed for re-election last year for a term ending in 2018—was ordered by the State Commis- sion on Judicial Conduct to take four hours of “additional SULPHUR SPRINGS // A 14-year-old Sulphur Springs Middle School student came home at the education” after she referred to District Attorney Michael school year’s end toting a handsome certificate bordered in metallic gold, announcing him as Munk as a “New York Jew.” The public condemnation fol- the winner of “The ‘huh?’ Award” in the “8th Annual Ghetto Classroom Awards.” The African- lows Schildknecht’s earlier attempts to smooth things over American child’s grandmother, Debra Jose, related her reaction to Dallas’ CBS 11: “Tears just by simply explaining to Munk, “When I tell people why you started falling out of my eyes. I was like, ‘What did they just do to him again? ... I just lay in bed are different and have different thoughts, I explain because and thought about it all night long.” Teachers Stephanie Garner and Tim Couch have since apol- you are from New York and because you are Jewish.” Schil- ogized for issuing the baffling awards, which include the forged signature of their principal—a dknecht has also explained that “I may be too blunt, but I detail that one teacher said “is what makes this award ghetto.” The Sulphur Springs News-Tele- am not biased or prejudiced against New Yorkers or Jews.” gram reported that the family was finally able to forgive the teachers after meeting with them, It’s a courtesy she may not extend to other religions. The school officials and their pastor. Morning Chapel Baptist Church Pastor Harold Nash told the disciplinary action, reported by The Texas Tribune, notes her paper the teachers’ case was compelling. “For the Jews, the ghetto was where the Jews lived. comments to another lawyer about his beard: “You look like The teachers stressed that if the Jews could overcome such incredible oppression, students can a Muslim, and I wouldn’t hire you with it.” do anything if they wanted to,” Nash explained. “It was supposed to be a positive message.”

FORNEY // Administrators put Forney High School on lockdown on May 28 in response to news that up to 40 LAMESA // Startled awake by some loud noise one night students, some dressed in costumes and brandishing foam in mid-May, high school principal Chris Riggins and his wife swim noodles, were causing a disruption. District officials were surprised to find a bull joining them in their bedroom. declined to confirm social media reports that the noodles “First reaction is, ‘No, really?’ And then I’m like, ‘Yeah, it re- were part of a massive live-action role-playing, or LARPing, ally happened,’” Riggins told KCBD-TV. Riggins suspects that match that had been planned in the school cafeteria as the bull—which spent 20 minutes in his bathroom before a senior prank, according to inForney.com. “The students showing itself back out of the house—had wandered in from involved in the incident were brought to the front office and a neighboring pasture. Frightening as the experience was, could face disciplinary action,” the site reported. Riggins counts the unannounced visit from this gentle giant as just another part of country life, and said the bull’s touch was surprisingly light: “Poked a little hole in the wall. The doors weren’t even tore up real bad,” he said.

BRENHAM // For the safety of residents in Brenham (pop. 15,716), “defensive shooting” and CHL instructor John Deans penned a timely guide to “Protecting yourself during DEL RIO // As part of its ongoing goodwill mission, the U.S. Border Patrol staged a Holocaust- mob violence” in the pages of the Brenham Banner-Press. themed art contest for Del Rio and Comstock middle school students. Part of the Congressio- “You need to have your situational awareness in high gear,” nally approved, weeklong Days of Remembrance of the Victims of the Holocaust, the contest Deans advises. “You must assume that the police cannot prompted students in South Texas to imagine a life circumscribed by fences and checkpoints, save you during those war-like events. Your survival skills under a police force that kills with impunity. “All the students did an outstanding job with their will be all that is protecting yourself and your family.” Deans art exhibits,” Del Rio Sector Chief Rodolfo Karisch said in a statement. “In the end it was about recommends keeping abreast of national news and being a learning experience and awareness of a time in history that should never be forgotten so that aware of “highly charged court decisions” and “question- it may never be repeated.” able shootings” that could prompt local reactions. Shooting or running over rioters with your car should be considered “a last resort in many ways,” employed only after one of them breaks your window. “With Ferguson and Baltimore demonstrating how the War on Cops is raging, officers are under siege in many urban areas,” Deans wrote. “I would include the massive shooting in Waco last month at Twin Peaks, but let us just see what the real story is there since things in Waco are smelling a bit fishy again.”

Visit texasobserver.org/strange for more “Strangest State” and links to original stories. Got a local oddity or some small-town news to share? Tips are welcome at [email protected].

8 | THE TEXAS OBSERVER WWW.TEXASOBSERVER.ORG EDITORIAL Stop the Gamesmanship on Voting Rights

othing is more fundamental to a Nothing Clinton has proposed would open the free society than the right to vote. gates to widespread in-person voter fraud, which is Nothing Clinton Nothing. the frequent and specious argument raised by those The political games that have who want to shrink—not grow—voter turnout. has proposed been played in recent years with The idea that there is some massive number the great American franchise of ineligible voters waiting to swamp the polls would open are unconscionable. An election each Election Day and subvert our democracy is a should be a process in which ideas are debated openly ridiculous fear-based fantasy. the gates to Nand publicly; then government should make it as easy A national investigation by The Washington Post as possible for every eligible person to cast a ballot. of more than 2,000 cases of alleged election fraud widespread Texas unfortunately has fallen into the category of during a dozen years showed that in-person voter GOP-led states that have responded to growing minor- impersonation on Election Day is virtually non- in-person voter ity populations by enacting outrageous voter ID laws. existent. All these laws do is dampen turnout. So, it was entirely appropriate for Hillary Clinton A report by the Government Accountability Office fraud, which to use a recent speech at Texas Southern University found that nearly 100,000 fewer people voted in to demand that state and national leaders stop the Kansas and Tennessee recently because of them. is the frequent partisan gamesmanship around voting rights. She Indeed, there are intentional incidents of voter was absolutely correct when she described laws fraud. They are rare, and most involve manipu - and specious passed by Republican-led legislatures as part of a lation of absentee ballots. People who commit “sweeping effort to disempower and disenfranchise willful voter fraud should go to prison. But these argument used people of color, poor people and young people.” recent laws have their roots in the ugly old Jim Clinton called for automatic voter registration Crow South. by those who for all U.S. citizens when they turn 18. She proposed We applaud Clinton’s decision to make this a sig- a new national standard of 20 days for early in-per- nature issue for her 2016 campaign. We hope she want to shrink— son voting that would include evening and weekend presses for a national dialogue on it, and that people hours. And she urged Congress to restore provisions go to the polls and cast their ballots at least partly not grow— of the 1965 Voting Rights Act that the Supreme Court because of it—in the largest numbers possible. invalidated in 2013. —The Editor voter turnout.

LOON STAR STATE Ben Sargent

JULY 2015 THE TEXAS OBSERVER | 9 Mass Graves in Texas A year ago, a Texas Rangers inquiry found “no evidence” of wrongdoing in the botched handling of migrant remains in Brooks County. New evidence indicates rampant violations of the law. BY JOHN CARLOS FREY Grave markers next to a Brooks County burial plot marked for exhumation in May 2013 by the Baylor University forensics team. PHOTO BY JEN REEL

n the summer of 2013, a team of forensic anthropologists from Baylor University and the University of Indianapolis descended upon Sacred Heart Cemetery, a small, county-run graveyard in rural Brooks County. Small metal markers with the words “Unknown” or “Skeletal Remains” were scattered through the dusty grass and along Ithe cemetery access roads. More than 300 migrants had died in the county during the past five years, and unidentified human remains ended up here. For Dr. Lori Baker, a forensic anthropologist at Baylor University, identifying migrant remains and returning them to grieving families had become a mission. “Nobody cares about dead immigrants,” she said recently. “They’re invisible when they’re alive, and they’re even more invisible when they’re dead.” For years, she and her students had been conducting exhumations and gathering DNA samples across the border regions of South Texas. But she’d never gone as far inland as Falfurrias, home to a Border Patrol checkpoint some 70 miles north of the Texas-Mexico border. As she had elsewhere, she approached the chief deputy sheriff, Benny Martinez, to offer her services. “Of course the chief was like, ‘Yes, we could use all the help we can get, any help you can give us,’” Baker said. She knew the graves might be difficult to locate. “I can tell you that we have yet to find a cemetery that has a map,” she said. “So you can’t look at a map and know where human remains are buried. Especially when they’re not marked.” Still, even she was surprised by what she found at the cemetery. Digging around a handful of markers, Baker and her team of volunteers expected to find maybe 10 bodies. Instead, they exhumed more than 50 unidentified human remains during the course of 10 days, all presumed to be border crossers from Central America and Mexico. Some were buried in coffins; others in only body bags. She planned to go back the following summer to continue. When Baker returned in early June of 2014, she came with a larger team in order to cover more ground. They recovered nearly 70 more human remains. This time, what they found made the evening news. “Mass Graves of Unidentified Migrants Found in South Texas,” read a headline in the Los Angeles Times. Reports emerged of bodies buried in kitchen Mass Graves in Texas trash bags, with as many as five piled on top of one another in a single grave. One corpse was wrapped in A year ago, a Texas Rangers inquiry found “no evidence” of wrongdoing in the botched handling of migrant a burlap bag; other remains were found inside a milk crate. Skulls were wedged between coffins, Baker remains in Brooks County. New evidence indicates rampant violations of the law. BY JOHN CARLOS FREY said. The shocking news attracted the attention of elected officials. By month’s end, state Sen. Juan received a call from her sister, Elmer’s mother, in El “Chuy” Hinojosa of McAllen, 75 miles to the south, Salvador. She sounded distraught, and pleaded with said he would ask the Texas Rangers to investigate. Marta to try to find Elmer. Marta quickly went to “This is too serious of a wrongdoing,” Hinojosa said. the Salvadoran Consulate in Houston, a photo of “I’m appalled at the number of bodies just left in her nephew in hand. She drove to McAllen, six hours body bags and, in many instances, more than one away, where Elmer was when he’d last called home, body in one bag.” and visited the Mexican Consulate there. She con- On June 25, 2014, the Texas Rangers launched tacted law enforcement and local hospitals. No one a preliminary inquiry to determine whether any had any information. criminal wrongdoing had occurred in the processing Marta returned home, where she frantically called and burial of the unidentified remains. They and emailed anyone who might be able to connect assigned the job to Lt. Corey Lain, an experienced her with someone who might know what had hap- investigator who had recently been pened to Elmer. Finally, she found honored by the U.S. attorney in a man Elmer had befriended along Dallas for his exemplary work on the journey, someone who had made a federal attempted murder case. it safely to the East Coast. He told He was assigned to look into any Marta that Elmer had injured his improprieties on the parts of Elizondo leg as they were making their way “This is too Mortuary, which was tasked with through a ranch at night. After that, collecting DNA samples, identifying Elmer could barely walk, and strug- serious of a bodies, and storing the remains gled to keep up with the group. They before burial; Funeraria Del Angel had almost reached their pickup wrongdoing,” Howard-Williams (Howard-Williams point when the guide decided that Funeral Services), which buried Elmer had become a burden and left Hinojosa said. the remains and was suspected of him behind, alone. Elmer Barahona Iraheta, 22. improper burials, failure to properly COURTESY OF MARTA IRAHETA Months later, by September, Marta “I’m appalled mark remains and gravesites, and knew in her gut that Elmer was dead. overbilling; and Brooks County, which was missing Her new mission was to find his body and return it at the number autopsy records. If Lain found evidence of possible to his family in El Salvador, so his young daughter lawbreaking, a criminal investigation would ensue. would have a place to visit her father. So she headed of bodies south to Brooks County. hree years ago, Elmer Barahona just left in Iraheta, a 22-year-old father living in On June 27, 2014, just two days after he was asked to San Vicente, El Salvador, made a fateful conduct an inquiry into the mass graves, Lain submit- body bags decision. He had been struggling to ted his report. It was four-and-a-half pages long, and find enough work in the impoverished relied heavily on an inspection of Howard-Williams, and, in many agricultural city to support his wife the funeral home, by the Texas Funeral Service Com- and 2-year-old daughter, and gang mission, which oversees mortuaries. He found no instances, violence there was spiraling out of control. But he evidence of overbilling, no evidence of the use of im- Thad a contact in Houston who would help him find proper burial containers, no evidence of irregularities more than work. He pooled scarce resources to hire the services with the autopsies, and “no evidence to show that hu- of a coyote, a human smuggler, to help him navigate man remains were buried in violation of the law.” Lain one body in the dangerous journey to the United States. It was found that DNA samples were being properly col- the only way he could imagine providing a future for lected, as required by law, and though they were not one bag. his new family. forwarded as required to a repository at the University Elmer said his goodbyes on June 10, 2012, and on of North Texas, that was only because county officials June 27 called his mother to say that he’d crossed the were “unaware of a requirement to do so.” border and arrived safely in McAllen. He said he was Far from insinuating any wrongdoing, Lain noted waiting in a stash house for a guide who would take that Brooks County’s top executive, County Judge his group north, and that he would call again once Raul Ramirez, said that Howard-Williams employ- he reached Houston. According to his aunt, Marta ees had built wooden caskets and left flowers at Iraheta, who has since pieced together the chain of gravesites at their own expense. “It is my opinion,” events, Elmer set out with the guide and a small group Lain wrote, “that sufficient information and - evi of other migrants a few days later, on July 2. They were dence does not exist to support the initiation of a most likely driven from McAllen to just south of the formal criminal investigation.” Falfurrias checkpoint, from where they would have to Texas Ranger Maj. Brian J. Burzynski, an award- travel some 40 miles on foot to avoid detection by bor- winning investigator in his own right, signed off der agents. North of the checkpoint, they’d be picked up on Lain’s findings. And that was that. “Rangers: by another smuggler and taken to Houston. Home free. No Laws Broken in Border Burials,” the Houston But it was the height of summer, with tempera- Chronicle reported. tures over 100 degrees. The terrain is rough and Texas law only lightly governs burials and the han- sandy. Water supplies are quickly drained. Bodies dling of human remains; in some cases, laws weren’t overheat rapidly. The year Elmer took this trek, 130 violated because the laws simply don’t exist. Lain migrant bodies were found in the remote ranchland notes, for example, “There are no statutes prohibit- he was about to cross. ing more than one set of human remains to be buried On the Fourth of July, Marta, then living in Houston, with another at a government owned cemetery.”

12 | THE TEXAS OBSERVER WWW.TEXASOBSERVER.ORG None of the forensic or funeral service experts I spoke with could dispute that claim. But a careful review of the practices Lain was charged with examining reveals that many laws and standard practices were violated in the handling of the unidentified remains. And these violations have made it nearly impossible for grieving families to locate and claim their loved ones. Repeated public- document requests of Brooks County produced only a fraction of what should be retained by law. According to the Brooks County Sheriff’s Office, from 2009 through 2013, the years when the mass graves were most active, 361 migrant remains were recovered in Brooks County. Each of those remains would have passed through multiple hands. When remains are discovered, a deputy sheriff is called to investigate the scene, along with a county justice of the peace who makes a determination of death. Funeraria del Angel Howard-Williams, the funeral home in nearby Hebbronville owned by Service Corporation International, the nation’s largest death services provider, then arrives to recover the remains, which are transferred to Elizondo Mortuary in Mission for processing. However, Texas law does not require processing and identification of human remains be performed by a licensed medial examiner. Elizondo is supposed to try to identify each set of remains, a process that by law includes gathering fingerprints, photographing any clothing or pos- sessions, and “proper removal of a sample from a body” for lab tests. When Ramirez or a justice of the peace requests an autopsy, it is conducted by a third party—starting in 2007, that third party was a local pathologist, Dr. Fulgencio Salinas. After some weeks, Elizondo returns any unidentified remains to Howard-Williams for burial in Sacred Heart. At every stage, a paper trail accumulates. According the 72 autopsies ordered on uniden- to Texas law, death records must be tified remains from 2007 to 2013, retained for at least 10 years. the county clerk could not produce The sheriff’s office turned over 14 of them—nearly one in five. all 361 crime scene reports. But the Brooks County clerk’s office could The autopsy reports themselves are locate files related to the retrieval scattershot at best. Many are so and burial of no more than 121 of incomplete and error-ridden, ac- these remains, leaving records on cording to Baker, that if any of her two-thirds of the dead unaccounted students had handed one in as an as- for. According to notes from a series of meetings signment she would have given a failing grade. Many that took place from December 2012 to June 2013 contain vague notes such as “teeth missing” and “cavi- between the forensic anthropologists and county ties present,” without specifying which teeth. Sali- officials, and confirmed by Chief Deputy Martinez, nas, the pathologist, typically inventories the bones, the county sheriff’s office never received from but does not include measurements or photographs, Salinas a single autopsy report during this period, which Baker said is standard forensic procedure. Sali- despite repeated requests. By law, such reports must nas describes a pelvis, a cheekbone, even a jaw as hav- be made available to law enforcement. ing the “characteristics of a male,” though the bones Also, despite requests, the sheriff’s office was could easily have belonged to a woman. “If you get the never notified about which human remains had been sex of the person wrong,” Baker said, “you’ll never be positively identified and returned to loved ones. able to make a positive identification.” According to the meeting notes from Dec. 3-4, 2012, It’s unclear how Salinas, a family doctor with a TOP: Volunteers carefully lift out human remains from “no such list exists.” private practice in Edinburg, was charged with tak- a grave in Sacred Heart Lain was tasked with looking into missing autopsy ing over the autopsies. His medical license indicates Cemetery in Brooks County. LEFT: Multiple bodies reports, but, based on a conversation with the county that he is not board-certified in pathology. Before buried in a single grave. auditor, determined that they’d been sent to the 2007, the Nueces County coroner in Corpus Christi, One set of remains buried in a red bio-hazard bag. county along with the invoices. Yet in response to a a state-accredited medical examiner, had been con- COURTESY BAYLOR request under the Texas Public Information Act, of tracted to handle identification and autopsies of FORENSIC TEAM

JULY 2015 THE TEXAS OBSERVER | 13 Salinas charged $1,500 for every autopsy documented in the invoices we obtained, including examination of bones. Salinas has been reprimanded by the Texas Medical Board several times for overbilling and shoddy record-keeping. In February 2007, Salinas was fined $500 for overbilling for copies of autopsy reports, charging $175 for a five-page report when board guidelines cap the cost at $25 for up to 20 pages. Seven months later, Salinas again charged $175 for a six-page autopsy report, plus a $25 search fee and a $35 pro- cessing fee. This time the board levied a $2,000 fine and required Salinas to provide a sample of his billing records to the board every month for a period of two years. In November 2011, the board reprimanded Salinas for failing to retain an autopsy report or provide it to family members. The board fined him $5,000, appointed a physician monitor to oversee his practice, and ordered him to complete coursework that included record-keeping ethics. Ramirez told me that he had met with Salinas personally and could vouch for his expertise as a pathologist and a medical examiner, despite his lack of certification. (Texas law does not appear to bar noncertified pathologists from performing autopsies.) There is no record that Lain had any unidentified remains found in Brooks County. But communications with Salinas. The Texas Rangers in 2007, just after Raul Ramirez was elected county declined to make Lain available for an interview, and judge, that work was steered to Elizondo Mortuary, a Salinas did not return repeated calls. small family business, which took on the task of iden- tifying remains and contracted out the autopsies to y September 2012, Marta Iraheta Salinas. The Brooks County clerk easily located the was in search of her nephew Elmer’s contract with Nueces County, which is still active, remains. She knew Elmer had been but could not locate one with Elizondo. In response left behind in Brooks County and to follow-up queries, a county auditor wrote, “There suspected that he had died there. are no service contracts between Brooks County and By now, she had gathered informa- Funeraria del Angel Howard-Williams Funeral Home tion about what Elmer had been or between Brooks County and Elizondo Mortuary.” wearing: jeans; a gray T-shirt with an embroidered I spoke with Ramirez, who said a courthouse reno- B“Jaco Jeans” logo; over the T-shirt, a short-sleeved, vation left a lot of records in boxes, adding, “It’s got to brown-plaid shirt; and black Fila tennis shoes with be there.” He said the main reason for moving the work red soles. At the sheriff’s office in Brooks County, to Elizondo Mortuary was cost—the Nueces County Marta was invited to leaf through a thick three-ring coroner, he said, was too expensive—and he claimed binder containing photos and reports on every body that Nueces County was too busy to manage the recovered in the county that year, the remains of spiking migrant death toll in Brooks County. But the some 70 migrants. medical examiner for Nueces County at the time, Dr. Marta began to look through the most recent Ray Fernandez, said Nueces County was fully staffed photographs. She flipped past gruesome images of and prepared to receive bodies at any time. “I don’t half-eaten corpses along with photos of sun-bleached know why the migrant bodies stopped coming here,” skulls and skeletal remains. Then she turned a page he said. And records indicate that costs may have actu- and knew immediately that she had found Elmer. TOP: Bones and other ally risen since the work was moved to Elizondo. Half of his skull was visible where insects had eaten human remains found in a torn and unsealed body bag. The Nueces County medical examiner billed away parts of his skin. But there were the black shoes BOTTOM: Human remains for autopsies according to the complexity of the with red soles, and the shirt with the words “Jaco collected by University of Indianapolis volunteers job. A complete autopsy from Nueces County was Jeans.” It was him. The police report said that his and prepared for transport $1,500 to $1,800, while the forensic examination of body was recovered on Palo Blanco Ranch on County to the university. COURTESY BAYLOR a skull was $750 and a visual examination of bones Road 225. Cause of death: unexplained. FORENSIC TEAM could be billed for as little as $150. Meanwhile, Marta was horrified by the images of her young

14 | THE TEXAS OBSERVER WWW.TEXASOBSERVER.ORG nephew, but after her long search she felt real relief mark, according to our analysis; five of these were shal- to have found him. She asked how she could retrieve lower than 18 inches. Two were buried in black trash his body and send it back to his mother, his wife and bags, less than 12 inches deep. Another set of remains his daughter. The sheriff’s office sent her to Elizondo was buried shallower than 2 feet and wrapped just in Mortuary, and that afternoon, armed with copies of cloth. Yet another set of remains was found 22 inches the police report and personal identification to prove below the surface in a plastic milk crate wrapped in a that she was kin, she drove the 80 miles south to biohazard bag. (No records exist indicating that Lain Mission. Elmer had been found. sought out burial-depth information; indeed, there is When she arrived, the mortuary was able to locate no record of any communication between Lain and a file on remains they had received that contained the members of the exhumation team.) same photographs of Elmer’s clothing. But she learned Though Lain was tasked with examining whether that they’d been unable to identify his remains—so remains were improperly marked, his report never Elmer had been buried anonymously at Sacred Heart.

One focus of Lain’s inquiry was to determine whether any of the burials of unidentified remains had violated Texas law. But his inquiry was cursory. His report indicates that he met with representatives of Howard-Williams at the cemetery to visit three sites where unidentified remains had been buried, and reviewed a single inquest provided by the funeral home. He noted Howard-Williams’ claim that, far from overcharging, “they were actually losing money in the removal, transport and interment of uniden- tified bodies,” and had contacted Brooks County officials regarding “their concerns about the lim- ited space available … to bury unidentified human remains,” an assertion confirmed by Ramirez. Lain attributed any commingling of remains to “environ- mental elements [that] scatter human remains over a wide area,” and noted that decomposition also pre- sented “a challenge.” “It is reasonable,” he concluded, that someone “could mistakenly remove two sets of partial human remains believing they are one.” And he notes that Texas law defines a casket simply as “a container used to hold the remains of a deceased person,” and that “there are no Texas statutes that govern the burial proximity, or positioning limitations, in relation to other buried human remains.” The Investigative Fund at the Nation Institute commissioned Baker’s team at Baylor University to do a thorough analysis of the 118 sets of human remains they have so far exhumed from Sacred Heart (the University of Indianapolis handled at least 30 other bodies), and they found potentially widespread violations of the law that would make identification almost impossible. Though Lain didn’t note this, Texas Health and Safety Code Title 8 requires human remains buried in a county cemetery to be placed in an impermeable addresses this issue. “There were many more burials container and buried at least 18 inches underground; than there were grave markers,” Baker had previously remains in permeable containers must be at least 2 told county officials, according to meeting minutes. feet deep. The analysis shows that 51 of the 118 sets of “Many graves did not have markers, some graves had human remains were not buried in coffins. Fourteen multiple markers but only one individual and many of the remains were placed in red biohazard bags; graves had one marker and multiple individuals in the four in what appeared to be grocery store trash bags. grave.” Baker’s exhumation process was hampered by Five were covered only in plastic wrap and packing the lack of a plot record; Ramirez confirmed that none tape. One set of remains was buried in a milk crate, exists—a clear violation of Texas Health and Safety while another was simply wrapped in clothing. It Code Section 711.003, which requires a record of each is unlikely that any of these constitute “imperme- interment be kept, including “the identity of the plot able” containers. Yet Lain’s report claims that “No in which the remains are interred.” Grave markers coinciding evidence exists to show that the funeral home or Lain also neglected to explore compliance with with the human remains the mortuary company used improper containers to Texas Administrative Code 203.41 Title 22, which with flowers placed on them for respect. transport or bury human remains.” requires durable, waterproof identifiers to be placed COURTESY BAYLOR Thirteen of the remains were found above the 2-foot on individual remains within the casket. Yet, according FORENSIC TEAM

JULY 2015 THE TEXAS OBSERVER | 15 to our analysis, 45 of the 118 sets of human remains had said that according to his own reading of the law, he no identification tags at all, making it next to impos- had no legal obligation to collect DNA. “‘Shall’ submit sible to correlate individual remains with a particular DNA samples,” he said, “does not constitute ‘must.’” police report or death certificate. Marta, meanwhile, was desperately trying to raise Commingling of human remains, according to our the thousands of dollars she was told she would analysis, was common, further complicating family have to pay to get Elmer’s body back to her sister in reunification. One grave contained four skulls and a pile El Salvador. She contacted law enforcement offi- of loose bones jumbled together with a white sheet and cials along the border, consulates and human rights a feed bag. In eight other cases, a single grave contained groups, anyone who might help defray the costs. But Forty-five of two, three, four or even five separate remains—some there aren’t many people who concern themselves buried only in trash bags or plastic wrap. No records we with dead migrants in Texas, she found. the 118 sets obtained from the county sheriff state that four or five Doubts nagged her. Even if she somehow gathered migrant remains were ever collected at a single loca- the funds, what assurance did she have that they of human tion on the same date—an indication that remains may would know where to locate Elmer’s remains? have been lumped together during burial. remains had no While Elizondo appears to have broken the law in nce Marta learned that her failing to collect DNA samples pre-burial, Howard- identification nephew was at Sacred Heart, she Williams was responsible for the chaotic burials set about the process of retriev- themselves. And though Elizondo, a family operation, tags at all, ing his body for repatriation to could plausibly claim ignorance of the law, Howard- El Salvador. But what Elizondo Williams is owned by the Houston-based national making it next Mortuary told her stopped her in chain Service Corporation International (SCI). In her tracks. They said it would cost exonerating Howard-Williams of any violations, to impossible $3,000 to exhume his body, and another $250 to take Lain relied heavily on an assessment by the Texas Oa DNA sample. It would cost $3,000 more to run the Funeral Services Commission (TFSC). to correlate DNA analysis against a family reference sample. And TFSC oversees all mortuaries and funeral ser- it would cost $100 a day to store the body until it was vice companies in Texas. Though the commission’s individual returned to El Salvador, a fee that could run into the executive director, Janice McCoy, has no prior expe- thousands of dollars. rience in funeral services, she is deeply connected remains with What Marta didn’t know at the time was that the to the Texas political establishment. Prior to her county was required by law to collect a DNA sample TFSC appointment, she served for several years as a particular from any unidentified remains—this is part of what chief of staff for GOP state Sen. Troy Fraser. Sev- Elizondo should have done before returning any eral TFSC commissioners also lack funeral business police report remains to Howard-Williams for burial. Elmer’s DNA experience, and some have GOP ties, including Sue sample should already have been sent to the University Evenwell, a member of the State Republican Execu- or death of North Texas for analysis at no cost to the family. tive Committee. Yet despite Lain’s assertion that “DNA samples from SCI’s CEO, Robert Waltrip, considers former Gov. certificate. unidentified human remains were being secured,” Rick Perry a personal friend, and ranked as one of Baker said that none of the remains she exhumed Perry’s top political donors during Perry’s tenure showed the classic cut marks in the long bones that as governor, personally donating a total of $310,000 would indicate a DNA sample had been taken; no more from 2001 to 2010, according to Texans for Public than six had any bone cut marks whatsoever. And no Justice. SCI also has a close tie to the Texas Rangers— samples were ever turned over to the University of its director of security, Robert K. Madeira, is a former North Texas, Baker said. Ranger lieutenant. Marta left the mortuary dejected. She returned Lain’s report relies in part on a June 26 memo to Houston knowing that Elmer lay somewhere in from TFSC’s administrator for compliance, Rodney Sacred Heart, but with no idea how to find him and van Oudekerke. Lain notes that Howard-Williams get him home. She knew it would take her years to cooperated fully with the TFSC inspection. Yet van come up with that kind of money. Repeated calls from Oudekerke’s three-page memo, obtained through an the Observer to Elizondo Mortuary went unreturned. open-records request, indicates that his inspection According to Lain’s report, the DNA failures were amounted to a single meeting with SCI attorney Sheri an innocent mistake: Brooks County officials were Sarfoh. Van Oudekerke told me that he did not visit the unaware until August 2013 that DNA samples were cemetery or speak with the forensic pathologists who required to be sent to UNT. But in February 2012, as had exhumed remains. According to van Oudekerke’s migrant deaths were soaring, volunteer search-and- memo, Sarfoh claimed that any commingled remains rescue groups alerted Ramirez that DNA samples were were the fault of the deputy sheriffs (though collecting not being collected. One group, the Texas Civil Rights the bodies is not in their purview), that any known Project, became so concerned that it solicited a legal information was included in the caskets, and that firm, Vinson and Elkins, to examine Texas legal codes if there were missing grave markers, it was because and prepare a legal memo for Brooks County officials. the markers were temporary in nature. “It is my The 19-page memo, completed in November 2012, professional opinion,” van Oudekerke concluded, “the clearly lays out, citing Article 63.056 of the Texas Crim- funeral home did not violate any rules or laws enforced inal Code, a legal responsibility on the part of county by the TFSC.” Lain deferred to van Oudekerke, who officials to collect DNA samples and send them to UNT. told me, “Everyone was doing the best they could.” According to the minutes of a March 5, 2013, meeting SCI has been mired in controversy for decades. between Baker and Brooks County officials, Ramirez In 2001, The Miami Herald reported that SCI had

16 | THE TEXAS OBSERVER WWW.TEXASOBSERVER.ORG exhumed bodies to make room for fresh burials in an overcrowded cemetery in Palm Beach. The case resulted in a $14 million settlement with Florida’s attorney general. In 2009, The Washington Post reported that another SCI funeral home, in Falls Church, Virginia, failed to properly store the bodies of veterans. The decomposing bodies were described as “disgusting, degrading and humiliating.” (SCI defended the practice, saying Virginia has no law that requires bodies to be refrigerated.) According to a 2013 story in Bloomberg Businessweek, SCI has a history of buying rural funeral homes and raising prices, charging, on aver- age, 42 percent more for funerals than rivals. According to records provided by the Brooks County clerk, Howard-Williams typically charged Brooks County $145 for each body bag—though most retail for around $30, and Nueces County had previ- ously charged only $40. In the records we obtained, he may not be contractu- every bag was billed as a ally allowed to review the $145 body bag, though 18 DNA of foreign families. remains were buried in Despite these obstacles, biohazard bags, which cost Marta’s luck seemed to be a few dollars each, or con- turning. Elmer’s remains sumer trash bags, which had been properly marked can cost pennies. There with his death certifi- are no records of billing cate number and were for consumer trash bags among those Baker and or biohazard bags. her team exhumed from Howard-Williams referred queries to SCI, and an the shallow graves that summer. His DNA was also SCI representative wrote by email that the company part of a small batch of migrant DNA information would not participate in this story. that was published on the NamUs database. By sheer luck, the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team, lmost a year after Elmer’s death, a nongovernmental organization that helps solve in May 2013, Dr. Lori Baker and the missing-person cases worldwide, had sent a team to students from Baylor University El Salvador just months after Elmer went missing. and the University of Indianapolis There they gathered a reference DNA sample from conducted their first exhuma- Elmer’s family. In a rare turn, that sample, collected tion at Sacred Heart. Though outside the U.S., and not by U.S. law enforcement, was DNA samples had not been taken run through the database. A positive match was made. before the bodies were buried, the forensic patholo- Marta thought it was a miracle. gistsA took them now and forwarded the results, as Without the help of volunteers, Marta’s search required by law, to UNT, where the results could be would never have ended—and there would be no included in the National Missing and Unidentified hope for other families in search of their loved ones’ Persons System, or NamUs. remains in Brooks County. Managed by UNT, and funded by the Department Three years after his death, Elmer Iraheta’s body has of Justice, NamUs is the definitive national repository yet to be returned to his family in El Salvador. “He is TOP: Exhumed remains for unidentified remains, used by law enforcement still here,” said Spradley, who said that the lab at Texas are taken to anthropology department laboratories at nationwide to identify missing persons. While NamUs State took in some of the unidentified migrant remains Baylor University, where they stores every DNA sample it receives, according to exhumed from Sacred Heart, including Elmer’s. “I are cleaned and analyzed for trauma, pathology, Kate Spradley, a biological anthropologist at Texas am waiting for the paperwork from the El Salvador dentition, age, sex, stature State University, it typically does not publish to its Ministry of Foreign Affairs.” Elmer’s status as “uniden- and ancestry. Results are uploaded to the National public database the DNA results of suspected undoc- tified” must be formally changed to reflect his legal Missing and Unidentified umented immigrants. Family members who live name, and only then can the remains be released. Persons System. DNA samples are submitted to abroad can check for a missing persons match only by In the year since Lain’s inquiry, Texas legislators the University of North Texas presenting themselves to a U.S. law enforcement offi- have passed only one new law to regulate the for analysis and uploaded to the Combined DNA Index cial to have a DNA reference sample collected. “The handling of migrant remains. It makes the death System. All remains and odds of someone from Honduras getting a DNA sam- records of unidentified persons public after a year. personal items are stored at Baylor awaiting identification ple collected by U.S. law enforcement?” Spradley said. This July marks three years since Elmer perished in and repatriation. “It’s not going to happen.” She said thousands of ref- the desert, and he still hasn’t come home. Yet he may BOTTOM: Personal items like these found in a backpack erence samples from Latin America are waiting to be be one of the lucky ones, to be headed home at all. buried with remains run through the system. NamUs principal investiga- This article was reported in partnership with The are examined, cleaned, photographed and catalogued tor Dr. Arthur Eisenberg did not respond to interview Investigative Fund at The Nation Institute, where John by Baylor University students. requests; he told The American Prospect in 2013 that Carlos Frey is a reporting fellow. PHOTOS BY JEN REEL

JULY 2015 THE TEXAS OBSERVER | 17 A San Antonio woman is counting on Texas’ Religious Freedom Restoration Act to trump a local ordinance that could end her decade-old ministry of feeding the homeless, mentally ill and others who are simply down Doingon their luck. the Lords Work Will Texas courts’ side with a city government that wants its new investment in a mega-shelter for the same populations protected, or will they let the law work the way it was intended?

18 | THE TEXAS OBSERVER WWW.TEXASOBSERVER.ORG BY KATIE SHERROD Photographs by Jen Reel

oan Cheever’s sharpest weapon is not one into law. Neither the federal law nor its Texas counter- of the knives in her well-equipped food part was intended as a vehicle to discriminate against truck. Nor is it her tongue, despite what anyone. They were designed to keep government from she often laughingly claims. Her sharp- discriminating against religious Americans. est weapon is her mind, a razor-sharp Cheever has a trial date later this summer, and the intellect tempered in the fires of human outcome could have implications beyond her $2,000 compassion, a family tradition of service, ticket. Her case is one example of how well-intended and a passion for justice for those on the people of faith depend on these laws for precisely margins of society. what they were meant to do: protect them from an All this came into play the night of overreaching government. April 7 in Maverick Park in San Antonio, when San A spokeswoman for the city of San Antonio empha- JAntonio police gave Cheever a ticket as she was feed- sized that Cheever was ticketed for serving food ing the homeless, a citation that carries a $2,000 fine. from a vehicle that had not been inspected by the The story of the incident quickly went viral and led city health department—not for feeding the home- to global outrage. less, as it’s been characterized. “Our public health Since then, Cheever has received emails and con- safety code is in place to ensure that all people in tributions from supporters all over the world. A San Antonio, homeless or otherwise, are served safe typical message is this one, from Joey the Horse and food,” said Di Galvan, director of communication and Kevin from ManureProject.com in Goshen, New public affairs. Jersey: “There are no words to even try to explain That nuance isn’t the issue for Raymondo Llamas, why a society like ours would do such a thing to you. 60, who has lived on the streets off Austin Boulevard … But the important thing is you are doing good for the last 20 years. “They are doing the Lord’s work and they cannot stop you!” work,” he said of Cheever and her team. “That’s what Donations from supporters in Azerbaijan, Austra- they are doing. I love these people. These people have lia, Canada, Hong Kong, Germany, Ireland, Mexico, helped us out many times, and they’re good people Norway, Sweden, Thailand, the United Kingdom and and they always help out the homeless.” every state in the union total about $30,000. As the officer was writing the ticket, Cheever- in Cheever is no mere well-intentioned purveyor of voked the protection of the Texas Religious Freedom bologna sandwiches. She is the founder of the non- Restoration Act, a 15-year-old state law signed by Gov. profit Chow Train, a fully permitted food truck from George W. Bush that has been supported by Texas which she has fed San Antonio’s hungry for 10 years. Baptists’ Christian Life Commission, the Texas Asso- Cheever is a trained chef who earned an associate’s ciation of Business and the American Civil Liberties degree in culinary arts from St. Philip’s College, and Union. These groups support the act because it pro- she even appeared on celebrity chef Rachael Ray’s tects religious freedoms while also neatly balancing cooking show in December 2014 to talk about what civil rights and government interests. inspired her to found the Chow Train. She also is a Similarly named laws passed this spring in Indiana food-safety-certified food handler—by both the state and Arkansas drew national attention because they of Texas and the city of San Antonio—who provides did neither of those things. They extended the three-course, high-quality hot meals made of fresh definition of “person” to include businesses, and ingredients to all comers. they included no civil rights protections. The result- The Chow Train essentially is a commercial ing national outrage over the specter of legalized kitchen inside a big trailer pulled by a large pickup discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual and truck. Together, the truck and the trailer are about 24 transgender people forced both states to change feet long, and simply won’t fit in some of the places their laws and to clarify that businesses could not where Cheever feeds the hungry. discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation or She prepares the food inside the Chow Train. gender identity. Then she and her volunteers, who include her hus- Congress passed a Religious Freedom Restoration band, Dennis Quinn, carefully wrap it up in Health Act in 1993 with unanimous approval in the House and Department-approved containers that keep chili and 97 votes in the Senate. President Bill Clinton signed it rice hot and salads cold. (Cheever is obsessive about

THE TEXAS OBSERVER | 19 proper food temperatures.) They pack the contain- he location of the showdown is as much ers in a big slide-out tray in the back of a pickup that a character in the story as the human sometimes pulls the Chow Train, pull a metal cover participants. Maverick Park sits only over it and start their rounds. blocks from the city’s famed River I asked city officials whether the health depart- Walk and a five-minute drive from the ment inspects all the vehicles that deliver pizza. Alamo. Its 3 acres of trees and lawn Galvan told me that vehicles that are used only were donated to the city in 1881 by Sam to deliver pre-ordered food from a commercial Maverick, a land baron famous for not permitted kitchen to a specific person or location branding his cattle; because of which, do not require inspections. If the food is not pre - unbranded cattle in the area were suspected of being pared in the transporting vehicle, then the kitchen TMaverick’s. Eventually “maverick” evolved to mean where the food is prepared would also need to be someone who doesn’t bear anyone’s brand—a fitting inspected and permitted. If a vehicle is vending description for Cheever. food (selling or giving it away) to the public, that Another major player is the city of San Antonio, vehicle is considered a mobile food establishment whose leadership is invested heavily in the success and it needs to be inspected and permitted for food of Haven for Hope, a $100 million facility built in safety standards. 2010. It consists of 15 buildings on 37 acres west of On a recent night, the menu was farmer’s veg- downtown. Its two major components are Prospects etable soup, Frito pie over rice with cheese and Courtyard, an uncovered cement area designed sour cream, garden salad with roasted beets and to offer “safe sleeping for the chronic homeless balsamic vinaigrette, bread, and for dessert, grapes population [that] sleeps approximately 500 men and with animal crackers and chocolate sauce. They now women per night,” according to the organization’s also offer high-quality dog food, after spotting sev- website, and the Transformational Campus, “a center eral homeless dog owners feeding their food to the that offers services and shelter with an emphasis dogs. “That’s not good for the dogs or the people,” toward addressing the root causes of homelessness.” Cheever said. “We want the people to eat the food. Haven for Hope was the brainchild of San Antonio But we don’t want the dogs to go hungry, either.” business and civic leader Bill Greehey and former The night she was ticketed, Cheever was serv- Mayor Phil Hardberger. Its board of directors has representatives from NuStar Energy, H-E-B, USAA, retired military, and local universities. “Officer, this is the way I pray. I pray while I cook. The city has made very clear that its goal with Haven for Hope is to bring in as many homeless as possible. I pray while I serve. This is my prayer.” One method is through the ticketing of offenses related to being homeless: Between January 2013 and early ing fresh vegetable soup, lamb meatballs over wheat October 2014, the San Antonio Police Department pasta, braised Southern greens, and a salad with gave out more than 12,000 citations for such offenses roasted beets. She and her volunteers had just begun as camping in public, lying in the right of way of others, when four officers on bikes appeared. This wasn’t aggressive panhandling, littering, spitting, urinating or unusual; officers often stopped by to ask what was defecating in public, or disorderly conduct. Officers are on the menu. But on this night one of them said, trained to urge those they cite to go to Haven for Hope. “You’re breaking the law.” Like that of most major cities in Texas, San Antonio’s Cheever asked what the crime was. She told the homeless population is believed to be from 2,500 to Observer that there appeared to be some confusion 3,000, including people who sleep at Haven for Hope. about that, and the officer had to call his supervi- The catalyst for the story of course is Cheever, a sors for clarification. He eventually gave her a ticket lawyer, former managing editor of The National Law that reads, “Violation of 13.62–Permit Required.” Journal, a Roman Catholic, and scion of one of San Chapter 13 of the city code covers food and food Antonio’s more prominent families. She is one of six handlers. The Chow Train is fully permitted, but children of Charles E. Cheever Jr. and his wife, Sally that night they were serving the food from the back McKinney Cheever, and the granddaughter of Col. of the pickup. Charles E. Cheever Sr. and his wife, Elizabeth Cheever. Cheever, who is also an attorney, told the officer, In 1941, Charles Sr. and Elizabeth founded Broadway “I have two federal laws, a federal court order in Bank in Alamo Heights, the city’s first suburban bank. Dallas, and a Texas law that trumps your ordinance.” When the colonel went off to Europe during World She was referring to the First Amendment, the War II to serve as a judge advocate for Gen. George S. federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act, a fed- Patton, Elizabeth permanently took over operations eral court decision in Dallas—Big Hart Ministries at the bank. When Charles Sr. returned, he took a job v. City of Dallas—and Texas’ Religious Freedom at USAA, a financial services company founded by Restoration Act. and for military officers, where he eventually served The police officer said, “Lady, if you want to pray, as CEO. Joan Cheever’s father, Charles Jr., succeeded go to church.” The quote swiftly made its way via his mother as head of the bank. After he retired, Joan social media across the United States and then to Cheever’s brother-in-law became chairman and CEO. other countries, as did Cheever’s reply: “Officer, this To say that the Cheever family is civically prominent is the way I pray. I pray while I cook. I pray while I in San Antonio is an understatement. serve. This is my prayer.” Cheever grew up Roman Catholic, but attends She got a ticket anyway. church only occasionally. She once asked one of her

20 | THE TEXAS OBSERVER WWW.TEXASOBSERVER.ORG good friends, a priest, “So where would you rather me be on Sunday—on the streets serving or in the pews The city has made very clear that its goal with listening?” He told her, “You make this hard, Joan.” So she asked, “What would Jesus want me to do?” He Haven for Hope is to bring in as many homeless as replied, “You already know the answer to that.” Some of the people Cheever feeds are homeless. possible. One method is through the ticketing Some are children, some are elderly. Some are work- ing poor. Some are mentally ill, and some are people of offenses related to being homeless. who have simply hit a rough patch. “It doesn’t matter if they are gay or straight or If extremists are allowed to mold the Religious transgendered or bisexual, or Jewish or Catholic or Freedom Restoration Act into a weapon of discrimi- communist or Buddhist,” Cheever said. If you are nation instead of a tool of protection, the losers will hungry, she will feed you. The Chow Train’s motto is be vulnerable populations of all kinds, including the “Fighting Hunger. One Plate at a Time.” homeless. Right now, Texas’ Religious Freedom Restoration Count Cheever among those who do not want to Act is an ally in that fight, as it has been in fights see that happen. involving other powerless or marginalized groups and individuals. It was used in 2009 to help a Native heever’s statement, “This is the way I American kindergarten student punished by the pray. I pray while I cook. I pray while I Needville Independent School District for wearing serve. This is my prayer,” is a centuries- his hair in traditional braids. Courts told the school old theological concept, expressed best district to back off; how he wore his hair was part of by St. Benedict: “Whatsoever good the practice of his religion. work you undertake, pray earnestly to It was used again in 2009 to protect the right of a God that He will enable you to bring it Santería practitioner in Euless to engage in the ritual to a successful conclusion.” slaughter of animals. And while animal sacrifice isn’t Indeed, watching Cheever and her as endearing a cause as a kindergartener in braids, team of volunteers at work is like watching prayer in the point is that the Religious Freedom Restoration action. They know most of the people they serve and On June 9, men and C women lined up at Act protected a small, marginalized group’s right to call them by name—Ed, Grandpa, Billy. They worry 7:30 p.m. for the Chow Train’s first stop near carry out spiritual practices important to their faith if a regular such as Billy, who suffers from seizures, Austin Boulevard without interference from the state. doesn’t show up. They look each person in the eye in San Antonio.

JULY 2015 THE TEXAS OBSERVER | 21 as they serve them plates of hot food. They eat with Hugs and goodbyes are exchanged, and Cheever the people they serve. They listen to them talk about and her crew pull away as the people they’ve fed what has happened since the week before: One man begin to disperse. By 10 p.m., Maverick Park is clean had been in the hospital; another’s friend was sick, and quiet. so they made him a to-go plate. They will even hand- feed the disabled, gently spooning soup into the heever’s simple requirements for person’s mouth. those she serves—if you are hungry The people they feed respond in kind. They line up in she will feed you—run headlong into an orderly fashion to be served. They are careful to let new legislation aimed at solving the “newbies” get in line first. Seconds are always available, problem of homelessness, especially but they are careful to check that everyone has been in cities with warmer climates, such as served once before coming back for more. And each and San Antonio. The National Coalition every person says “Thank you” or “God bless you.” for the Homeless reports that since Cheever’s husband, Dennis Quinn, makes the January 2013, 21 cities have passed rounds with trays of bread and desserts, making measures aimed at restricting the feeding of the sure everyone has gotten enough. Desserts of fresh Chomeless. The idea is to get rid of the people whose grapes with animal crackers and chocolate sauce also services “enable” homelessness, which would either are taken around on trays, and people can take more force homeless people to leave the city or get off the than one if they want. On a recent unseasonably street and into shelters. chilly evening in late April, he also noticed one young Melody Woosley, director of the San Antonio man shivering in a T-shirt and shorts. He quietly fol- Human Services Department, told the Observer, “We lowed him to the edge of the crowd and gave him a want to do everything we can to connect our com- gray fleece that he had earlier loaned to a reporter munity’s homeless residents to services that can who was accompanying them on their rounds. help to increase their stability and help them toward The Chow Train is 40 minutes late when it pulls up to a As people begin to finish their meals, Quinn or permanent housing. We have recommended that Ms. crowd of 30 people at its final another volunteer will walk through with a trash bag. Cheever and other organizations interested in help- stop, at Maverick Park in San Antonio. Cheever and crew Once everyone has eaten, the volunteers quietly make ing the homeless collaborate with Haven for Hope to were delayed at the previous sure all trash has been collected and disposed of. The magnify the positive impact of their work.” stop when they assisted one of their regulars—a people they feed are very careful not to drop trash on Haven for Hope has clear, stringent requirements man who had lost his job the ground. Food containers are closed, leftovers are for those it services. The city claims that Cheever is at a major corporation— who was too intoxicated carefully wrapped and sent to the Catholic Worker “dangerous” to the homeless because she is keep- to find his way home. House, and the back of the pickup truck is pulled shut. ing them from accessing services. “I’m not keeping

22 | THE TEXAS OBSERVER WWW.TEXASOBSERVER.ORG anybody from any services,” Cheever said. “First of Cheever said that she always has spoken favorably all, there’s a waiting list. I understand there’s a resi- about Haven and continues to support its work. “I dency requirement. They have between 300 and 500 thought we were partners,” she said. “I serve the people sleeping on a concrete pad outside next to people they can’t serve; I serve people who for one an active rail yard, and they tell me I’m not treating reason or another, they have mental problems, they people with dignity.” don’t want to go over there, they feel like it’s a prison. Cheever is considering using the hashtag I serve our military vets.” #chefdanger on Twitter to highlight the silliness of Cheever and other advocates for the homeless say the city’s arguments. “The health department told that criminalizing homelessness is not only inhu- me what I was doing was dangerous and I was dan- mane, it’s ineffective. There already is a waiting list at gerous to the homeless community,” Cheever said, Haven for Hope. Cheever says that if she is enabling “and they said I need to serve granola bars instead of a hot meal. And I was like, ‘You’ve got to be kid- ding—granola bars in a city that’s battling obesity and diabetes?’ And you know, what’s wrong with a hot meal? I’m food-safety certified, and I’m [working] in health department [approved] catering equipment. “Their issue was that I didn’t bring the [Chow Train]. But I’ve been doing that for six years. … One of the reasons that I refuse to bring the [Chow Train] is because that means that every other nonprofit or church or good Samaritan has got to go out and buy a $50,000 truck. You know, it’s crazy.” Cheever isn’t alone in marveling at the tortured thinking of city leaders. San Antonio Express-News columnist Gilbert Garcia attended and wrote about the April 19 briefing of the San Antonio City Council’s Quality of Life Committee on the issue of homelessness, held in the wake of Cheever’s ticketing. Garcia told the Observer, “The city wants to direct the homeless to Haven. Many don’t want to go. The city has used the food code as a way of shutting down the feeders so the homeless won’t congregate where the feeders are.” He noted that Maverick Park is Hugs and goodbyes are exchanged, nowhere near Haven. “She’s going where they [the homeless] are and feeding them there.” and Cheever and her crew pull away as the Mundo Salinas, 56, said he has depended on Cheever for about two years. “I’m homeless again. I people they’ve fed begin to disperse. didn’t want to be, but it just happened. I try to come here every Tuesday night. I feel like it’s my family,” By 10 p.m., Maverick Park is clean and quiet. he said. “They take care of me. I don’t have any family here in San Antonio.” someone to live one more day with a hot, nutritious Billy Zaniboni, 60, says Haven for Hope isn’t for meal, then yes, she will enable them. everyone. “I went to Haven for Hope but I couldn’t “It started with the Chow Train, but it’s not about stay there,” he told the Observer. “Things started the Chow Train,” Cheever said. “The issue is, they winding up missing. I stayed there two days and I want the homeless to go to one place—Haven for walked right out. … I said ‘I’m, better off going over Hope, which I have no problem with; they apparently to that tree. I don’t have to sleep with one eye open.’ have a problem with me.” Down there it’s not really good, unless you want to “I’m humbled and grateful. I know the people of buy some drugs and get neglected. I get more help San Antonio are behind me. Nobody wants to turn here. People, they help you.” their back. And all of us are raised to help someone Garcia pointed out that after the officers cited in need.” Cheever, they allowed her to continue serving food And if the court rules that she can no longer help that night. That, said Garcia, showed the hollowness people in need? Cheever will handle that if it comes. of the whole incident. “The city claims the emphasis For now, she believes Texas’ Religious Freedom is one of food safety,” he said. “There is a denial that Restoration Act is on the side of those carrying out it was to crack down on feeders. One city staffer said the Gospel imperative to feed the hungry. Diane Sharp, a Chow Train the homeless deserve the same food safety as the rest Katie Sherrod holds an honorary doctorate from Epis- volunteer of three years, adds whipped cream to red velvet of us. Why would they let her continue to feed them copal Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, for cake and peaches for a young if food safety was really the issue?” reporting on domestic violence and the full inclusion of girl who came to Maverick Park with her family. When the He said that Cheever has been doing the same women and LGBT people in The Episcopal Church. She girl came back for seconds, thing the same way for years on Tuesday nights, in is featured on the Flashpoint segment of Inside Texas she was denied. Cheever told her that she couldn’t just full sight of police officers, with no action taken. The Politics on WFAA-TV, and writes for the Texas Faith eat sweets—she needed to only thing that changed was the city’s response. blog of The Dallas Morning News. eat her vegetables, too.

JULY 2015 THE TEXAS OBSERVER | 23 Dancers portraying cowboys and farmers perform in the opening number of Texas. PHOTO BY MIKE HEARD

24 | THE TEXAS OBSERVER WWW.TEXASOBSERVER.ORG 32 FILM 42 POEM 34 THE BOOK REPORT 43 STATE OF THE MEDIA 36 DIRECT QUOTE 44 FORREST FOR THE TREES CULTURE 38 POSTCARDS 45 EYE ON TEXAS Reinventing Texas History takes the stage in Palo Duro Canyon by Robyn Ross

y the time the trumpet opens the show with its first eight notes, the herds of buffalo on the southern plains have already been killed. The Comanches have surrendered and gone to the reservation in Okla- homa. The fencing and settling of the great Texas rangelands has begun. BMeanwhile, the actors have donned their cos- tumes: bustles, bloomers, cowboy hats and character shoes. The horse wranglers have gathered in a circle for a prayer. Sixty young performing artists have spent nearly three weeks together in rehearsals run- ning for up to 12 hours a day, seven days a week. As the notes linger in the cool air, a lone rider gal- lops along the canyon rim 600 feet above the stage carrying a Texas flag. The cast and crew cheer—this is the first time the iconic rider has been added to region. The play depicts a debate over the nature of rehearsal. By the time the finale ends nearly two progress in the Panhandle, even as the production “It’s such a and a half hours from now, the sun will have set, the itself has been forced to evolve. boy will have gotten the girl, the cattlemen and The sun begins to slip behind the canyon rim, sincere piece farmers will have achieved a tenuous truce and the sending the stage into shadow. Swallows dart across railroad will have arrived in the Panhandle. the amphitheater’s expanse of empty seats. The cho- of theater. It It’s almost opening night of the 50th season of the rus and dancers cluster in the wings, poised for their outdoor musical Texas. Performed in the 1,600-seat cue, then run onto the stage whooping and shouting. doesn’t try to Pioneer Amphitheatre in Palo Duro Canyon State The opening medley begins: “We invite you all to Park, the show is a staple of the summer economy in come to Texas!” be anything Canyon, population 13,000, located 14 miles south of Amarillo. Texas fills the hotel rooms and pumps The business side of Texas is run by the nonprofit other than life into the restaurants and apartment complexes Texas Panhandle Heritage Foundation, which was that West Texas A&M University students abandon established when the show was created in the 1960s. what it is: a between semesters. It provides summer jobs for Its current executive director, Kris Miller, was “a performing artists in the Panhandle, including skinny little dancer” in the show in the 1970s and love story, professionals from Lubbock, Plainview, Canyon and went on to a career as a booking agent in Dallas and Amarillo. Several of its directors, along with their manager of the Amarillo Civic Center. Now more Americana, a children and spouses, have been with the show for Santa-like than skinny, Miller still gets stage time, years. The company is often described as a family. portraying crusty gold prospector Tucker Yelldell. spectacle.” In its heyday, in the 1970s and ’80s, Texas drew While planning and fundraising are year-round more than 100,000 patrons a year to the canyon. jobs, the performance is assembled over three break- Those numbers have since fallen, though with 58,000 neck weeks in May. Returning cast make the process tickets sold in 2014, Texas is still the best-attended easier. Brian Kuhnert, director of opera and musi- outdoor history drama in the nation. cal theater studies at Wayland Baptist University The 1,600-seat Pioneer Amphitheatre is built But the show is more than a tourist attraction. in Plainview, has played a lead role, Colonel Henry, below the canyon It’s a community ritual, an annual affirmation of for nine years. Henry’s wife, Aunt Anna, is played by wall, which provides a spectacular backdrop. Panhandle citizens’ perseverance in the face of hard- Cloyce Kuhnert, an associate professor of voice at COURTESY TEXAS PANHANDLE ship, told through a fictionalized history of their West Texas A&M who has been in the cast for 24 years HERITAGE FOUNDATION

JULY 2015 THE TEXAS OBSERVER | 25 and also serves as the production’s music director good that their onstage whispers will travel. and costume designer. (The two are married offstage The production is the first professional experience as well.) To fill open positions, Artistic Director Dave for many performers, and it doesn’t disappoint. The Yirak, Ms. Kuhnert and the show’s choreographer, long run of 65 performances means cast and crew Crystal Bertrand, an instructor of dance at West develop close friendships and professional connec- Texas A&M, attend auditions throughout the spring, tions. Performers expand their résumés by learning choosing from roughly 1,000 performers at events in to ride horses and execute pyrotechnic stunts. And Canyon, Houston, Oklahoma and Tennessee. the amphitheater itself is a draw. Rehearsals start at 1 p.m. on the West Texas A&M “There are times when you look around and see campus; in the evening, the company moves to the the canyon where you’re actually performing and canyon, 12 miles east of town. Because Yirak’s other just get blown away,” says Austin Harleson, 22, a cho- job is teaching high school theater in Canyon, he gets rus member. “Especially in the chuckwagon scene, Don Williams, a theater professor and director of when I look up at the stars.” graduate studies at Hancock College of Liberal Arts Offstage, cast and crew are embraced by the and Education at Lubbock Christian University— Canyon community. and Yirak’s former college professor—to help with “I love seeing how much pride the people of daytime rehearsals. Canyon have in the show,” says Libby Dowell, a cho- Some elements of the show have remained consistent This afternoon Williams is running the chuck- rus member who hails from Washington, D.C. “I’m an over time, such as the wagon scene, switching between its musical number outsider to the area, but all I have to say is that I’m a romance between Calvin Armstrong and Elsie McLean (an adaptation of Woody Guthrie’s “I Ride an Old canyon performer, and all of a sudden it’s, ‘Oh, how’s (left) and the lightning strike Paint”) and its dialogue between two leads. Men the show going?’ Everyone’s cordial and kind.” at the end of Act 1 (bottom right). Other scenes, such as in the chorus portraying cowboys sprawl before According to a 2009 study conducted by Texas those involving Quanah Parker an imaginary chuckwagon, chatting and joking as Perspectives Inc. for the Texas Cultural Trust, Texas (top right), have evolved to reflect historical facts and Williams works with the actors. and related tourism spending had a $17.5 million convey more complexity. “I know we start to have subplots developing impact on the regional economy. The show is part COURTESY TEXAS PANHANDLE between the cowboys,” he tells them at the end of of an arts scene that includes Amarillo’s symphony, HERITAGE FOUNDATION (LEFT, TOP RIGHT), PHOTO BY rehearsal. “Try to keep those subplots subdued.” The opera, little theater, chamber music ensemble, ballet BILL RHEW (BOTTOM RIGHT) acoustics in the amphitheater, he explains, are so and a 9-year-old, $30 million performing arts center.

26 | THE TEXAS OBSERVER WWW.TEXASOBSERVER.ORG Texas alumni have gone on to perform on Broadway the business manager of his first outdoor musical in and around the world. North Carolina, to evaluate the major highways, exist- Given that context, performers say, outsiders ing tourist attractions and availability of hotel beds shouldn’t assume that the Panhandle’s remoteness in the region. As Harper and others raised funds and translates into lack of culture. Amarillo native J.T. formed the Texas Panhandle Heritage Foundation, Sherrer, 23, a professional entertainer at Walt Disney Green began studying the area’s history. By 1966 both World who plays ranch hand Dude Forbes in Texas, the amphitheater and the script were finished, and describes the show as “a cool way to say, ‘Hey, we’ve Texas opened on July 1. got cowboys and Indians, but we’ve got people doing “Some in the community thought it was a great idea, triple pirouettes at the same time.’” and some thought it would never work in an area so sparsely populated,” says Neil Hess, Texas’ original The story is set in the late 1880s, as the Panhandle choreographer, who served the production in various plains—“where you can look farther and see less than capacities for 35 years and now lives in South Carolina. anywhere else on earth,” as Tucker Yelldell laments— Born to poor North Carolina farmers in 1894, Paul are being settled and conflicts are erupting between Green taught philosophy and drama at the University cattlemen and farmers over the use of public lands. of North Carolina at Chapel Hill while writing for Its characters are fictional composites, though most agree that the lead role of Colonel Henry is roughly based on legendary rancher Charles Goodnight. As “Hey, we’ve got cowboys and Indians, but we’ve got the show opens, aspiring farmer Calvin Armstrong returns to the Panhandle after the deaths of his people doing triple pirouettes at the same time.” parents. His plans to bring a railroad to the area meet resistance from Colonel Henry, who worries the both Broadway—winning a Pulitzer for In Abraham’s track will cut through his cattle pastures, and from Bosom in 1927—and Hollywood. A supporter of racial Colonel Henry’s younger foreman, Dave Newberry. equality and opponent of the death penalty, he was The conflict between Calvin and Dave is exacerbated drawn to the struggles of common people and railed by the arrival of Henry’s attractive niece, Elsie against the sex, violence, and what he called “cheap McLean. As an ongoing drought intensifies, Calvin material” in many movies. He became absorbed falls sick, Henry has nightmares about fires and with Greek theater and “the role of the playwright losing his land, and Elsie returns to her home in St. in building civilization,” a role he saw as his own. Louis. A good rain and the placating decision to name His left-leaning views about that ideal civilization at the new town Henrianna after Colonel Henry and his times generated friction with Texas organizers. wife, Anna, set everything right, and the appropriate “He really believed in theater for the people,” says couples get married. Marsha Warren, executive director of the Paul Green Today’s Canyon neighborhoods are a far cry from Foundation, which awards grants to projects focused the dugouts where the early white Panhandle settlers on arts and human rights. “He wanted the regular, lived, and air conditioning makes the worst heat bear- everyday people, who maybe don’t feel comfortable able. But the region is still subject to extreme weather: going into a theater or don’t have the money for it, to wind, fire, hail, tornadoes, blizzards and drought. go into the outdoors and see these plays.” “Everything that you hear about in this show, we’ve Margaret Harper later recalled asking Green suffered through it,” says 70-year-old Joe Batson, why, when he received so many invitations to write a longtime donor to the Texas Panhandle Heritage regional history plays, he’d agreed to come to the Texas Foundation who’s been involved with Texas since its Panhandle. “He felt that he would like to write a play inception. “It really does tell a microcosm of life in about a period in our society that portrayed stubborn- the Panhandle.” ness, tenacity and struggle,” she said, “and our story The idea for a show that would instruct successive could illustrate these elements better than most.” generations about that heritage started in 1960 with While Texas does convey struggle, it takes some Margaret Harper, a civic leader in Canyon and the liberties with historical fact. Most people agree that wife of Ples Harper, a professor at West Texas State Colonel Henry’s opposition to the railroad is a bit of a College, now West Texas A&M. Ms. Harper found head-scratcher, since the railroad enabled cattlemen herself perplexed by three situations: The stunningly to convey their herds to northern markets without the beautiful canyon—the second-largest in the coun- risks inherent in long trail rides. The original script try—attracted few tourists; the businesses in Canyon includes a party scene that is interrupted by Comanche struggled every summer when the students and fac- Chief Quanah Parker and his dying father, Nokoni, ulty left; and, she later told a historian, she lamented who are visiting from the Oklahoma reservation in the “how difficult it is for people to comprehend the past 1880s. In reality, Parker’s father died in 1860. and its influence upon the present.” Over the years, directors made minor adjust- Harper read an article in Reader’s Digest about ments to the show, but all changes had to be vetted by playwright Paul Green, who had written several Green or, after his death in 1981, his literary executor. popular historical musicals—he called them “sym- Directors’ inability to make major modifications, as phonic dramas”—that were performed in outdoor well as an attempt to pull attendance out of a slump, theaters. Maybe the town should get Paul Green to led the foundation to set aside Texas in favor of a write a musical for Palo Duro Canyon, she thought, new, more historically accurate script called Texas and solve all three problems at once. Harper wrote Legacies that was written by local playwright Lynn to Green, who replied within two weeks and later vis- Hart and performed in the canyon from 2003 to 2005. ited the canyon. He brought with him John Parker, Legacies scrapped the composite characters of Texas

JULY 2015 THE TEXAS OBSERVER | 27 and gave a more fact-based portrayal of history. One of for five seasons at the Fritch Fortress Amphitheater that show’s episodes followed the 1874 battle of Palo in Lake Meredith National Recreation Area, 34 miles Duro Canyon, in which U.S. Col. Ranald Mackenzie northeast of Amarillo. Later, in 2009, a majority of the captured more than a thousand Comanche horses. foundation’s board fired its executive director, and Knowing the Comanches’ strength lay in their horse- five other board members immediately resigned. manship, and unable to appropriate the enormous More recently, the leadership has remained stable, herd himself, Mackenzie set aside the best animals and with Yirak serving as artistic director for 10 years and ordered his men to shoot the rest. Miller as executive director for four. Yirak has tinkered Legacies depicted the incident with sound effects with the show to expand a few of the minor roles and of horses screaming and bloodlike red light trickling add the show’s first Hispanic characters, Diego and down the canyon wall. But audiences were not ready Isabella, betrothed as children in Mexico and reunited for A People’s History of the Panhandle, and the years later in the Panhandle. He has also reworked show didn’t catch on. As Texas Panhandle Heritage Quanah Parker’s scene, deleting the death of his Foundation board member Marsha Clements says, “If father. In Yirak’s update, Quanah arrives alone, having you want to read about that, read about it. You don’t recently taken his people on a government-sanctioned buffalo hunt and having found only the bones of buf- falo killed by white men. “The great animals who gave life to my people since time began are gone,” he announces. “I am told we must change and live with the white man in his world. But I see the hate in the eyes of your people and I know the hate in the hearts of my people, and I ask how this can ever be.” Yirak also consulted with Benny Tahmahkera Jr., a great-great-great grandson of Quanah Parker, about adding Comanche greetings to the script. Tahmahkera, a retired Marine with two degrees in Native American studies, has portrayed Parker onstage for three years and says the show’s depiction of Comanches is fair. He dresses in his Comanche regalia and gives a presentation about Comanche history and culture before the show. “I get asked on a daily basis if I live in a tepee, or if I still ride a horse,” he says. “I say, ‘No, we’re just like you. We’ve assimilated over the years. We want the want to watch somebody sing and dance about it.” same things—education, health care. The only thing Betty Propst, the Texas Panhandle Heritage that’s different is we have our own culture and lan- Foundation’s development director since 1978, has guage we try to keep alive.’” another theory: Panhandle residents feel an owner- Because of Tahmahkera’s involvement with the ship of Texas they didn’t feel about Legacies. show, members of the Comanche Nation have driven “Especially to a Texan, it’s like spitting on the the four hours from their homes in Lawton, Okla- pope” to change the show, she says. “‘Don’t mess with homa, to Palo Duro Canyon to see performances. Texas’ musical drama.’ We tried that, and they about They’re likely the only audience members who ran us out of town. They wanted their Texas back.” understand Quanah’s greetings or a recording of a So the foundation gave it to them, though the pro- Comanche hymn played during a dream sequence. cess was complicated. The 1966 agreement between They sometimes sing along. Paul Green and Margaret Harper stated that Texas Yirak has even changed the script to help the com- had to be performed—and the accompanying roy- pany recover from a tragedy. In August 2013, five cast alty payments made—with a particular frequency, members were killed and another seriously injured or the Texas Panhandle Heritage Foundation in a car accident after a cast party. The driver, a per- would lose its performing rights. The Paul Green former, had been drinking. The company decided to Foundation saw the Panhandle foundation’s deci- finish the season’s last four performances, and Yirak sion to shelve Texas for Texas Legacies as a breach commissioned a friend to write a song that would of contract. When the Green foundation moved to embody healing and perseverance. Act 2 now opens end its contract with the Panhandle foundation, the with “West Texas Rain”: latter sued; the Green foundation countersued. The groups settled in 2003, with the Green foundation There’s always a cloud in the distance it seems selling Panhandle Heritage the rights to the Texas But behind it the sky is still blue as can be script for $300,000. When Legacies was shelved and (and) Tonite the angels are ridin’ in Texas was restored to the stage in 2006, Panhandle On the back of a West Texas Rain. A conversation between the Heritage artistic staff had the liberty to make what- characters Elsie McLean and Dave Newberry is interrupted ever changes they wished. Canyon native Marissa Hernandez, who was a by the arrival of Parmalee The lawsuits haven’t been the show’s only offstage child actor in the show for 10 years and has been in Flynn. The production includes several horses and drama. In 2001, the foundation dismissed longtime the chorus for two, says the song is significant to those a donkey, and some actors artistic director Hess, and several other artistic staff who knew the deceased cast members, but it also has learn how to ride horses for their roles in the show. resigned in protest. Hess went on to start an outdoor a universal message. “The whole show has a theme of, PHOTO BY MIKE HEARD Texas history musical called Lone Star Rising that ran ‘We’re in a drought,’ and then we sing that song about

28 | THE TEXAS OBSERVER WWW.TEXASOBSERVER.ORG

rain,” she says. “It’s once again speaking to the faith celebration. Texas continued to ride that wave as and the perseverance that the pioneers of this area it approached its own sesquicentennial in 1986. In had, and really sticking it out when things got rough.” 1979, the Legislature recognized four outdoor dramas as the official state plays of Texas: Paul Green’s The Texas’ directors have also made strategic changes to Lone Star, which depicts the 1836 battles for Texas attract new audiences. For the past few years the show independence and was performed in Galveston; has concluded with the “grand finale,” a crowd-pleasing Beyond the Sundown, which portrays the Alabama- non sequitur involving patriotic songs and fireworks. In Coushatta tribes’ reactions to the 1836 battles; Fort 2011, drought forced the team to scrap the fireworks, so Griffin Fandangle, which is still staged every summer they installed a choreographed fountain performance by the citizens of Albany; and Texas. called “The Dancing Waters of Texas.” An Act 2 dream Going forward, Miller, Propst and the staff are sequence called the “fire ballet” now includes a- per always looking for new audiences and new sources former actually being set on fire—a dramatic stunt that of revenue to fill out the show’s $2.5 million annual involves extensive training, cooling gel, a special suit budget. Ticket sales aren’t enough, and it’s not clear and an offstage bucket of water. For many years, the that a younger generation is willing or able to sup- first act has ended with an explosion of lightning and plant the current donor base, Propst says. She’d like thunder, a special effect created with a 450-foot length to create a new attraction by transforming the patio of military-grade detonating cord that stretches from a area outside the amphitheater into the play’s town tree behind the stage partway up the canyon wall. of Henrianna, complete with costumed interpreters. Batson suggests building an extension of Canyon’s Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum near the the- “Everything that you hear about in this ater, or a history-themed water park that would offer the only place to swim in the canyon. show, we’ve suffered through it. It really does But ticket sales have been good so far this year, Miller tells his board at a quick meeting at the amphi- tell a microcosm of life in the Panhandle.” theater while rehearsal is in progress. One weekend that’s selling well is July 17-19, which features a Such embellishments help Executive Director reunion for the show’s more than 4,000 alumni. Sales Miller market the show. In the early days, tour buses are up 30 percent over this time last year, though it’s filled the parking lots—Hess remembers groups from too early to know whether they’ll reach Miller’s goal England, Germany and China—but while tour groups of 70,000 attendees this season. still come, the bus-tour business is smaller than it Considering the casual orientation of contempo- used to be. Miller’s current strategy is to appeal to rary Texas culture, it’s surprising the show isn’t more Panhandle residents. “We’re trying to get the locals popular. Despite some anachronistic and kitschy ele- that haven’t seen the show, or haven’t seen it in a ments, the production offers exposure to nature and while,” to come and bring family and friends, he says. a friendly, unpretentious atmosphere. “The catch line is, ‘You may have seen Texas, but “There’s nothing elite about outdoor theater,” you’ve never seen Texas like this.’” says Hardy. “Even in Shakespeare … you get a lot of It’s a good strategy, says Michael Hardy, director of families, kids, maybe even dogs running around. It’s a the Institute of Outdoor Theatre in North Carolina. more relaxed, democratic kind of environment.” The association advises the handful of companies that And Texas has a refreshing simplicity that appeals still present a few of Paul Green’s symphonic dramas, to Luke van Meveren, a Minnesota native and chorus along with hundreds of passion plays, Shakespeare member who’s in graduate school at Texas Tech festivals and Broadway musicals. Outdoor theater’s University in Lubbock. Backstage, he catches his popularity peaked from the 1970s through the 1990s breath after performing the burn stunt and changing and has declined since 2000. Ticket sales dropped back into his costume. most for historical and religious dramas, even as “It’s such a sincere piece of theater,” he says. “It they’ve risen in other genres, including Shakespeare doesn’t try to be anything other than what it is: a love festivals. Texas has followed a similar pattern, story, Americana, a spectacle. And it’s one of those boasting more than 100,000 annual ticket sales in the things that you don’t get to do in theater very often. ’70s and ’80s, but dropping to less than half that pre- In a lot of shows, it’s like, ‘All right, hmm, we really Texas Legacies. Since the original show was restored, need to think hard. What’s the concept of this going attendance has crept back up to the highest of the to be?’ And here we’re just like, ‘Let’s blow up a tree.’” institute’s 15 reporting history dramas. He’s referring to the play’s famous lightning bolt, “They’ve been very smart about coming up with which will get a test run at tomorrow night’s rehearsal. new stuff that would be appealing,” Hardy says. “All It’s nearly 11 o’clock, and as soon as the performers the history dramas are typically shows that were writ- run through the finale, they’ll be dismissed. A real ten 50, 60, 75, even 90 years ago, and entertainment thunderstorm has been building in the distance, and standards have changed so much. And the competi- a fine, light rain dampens the dancers’ hair. Between tion for the entertainment dollar” has gotten much the flashes of genuine lightning, the stars hang low more intense, whether from Disneyland, Six Flags and luminous in the night sky—“close enough,” as the and other theme parks, cable television, Netflix, the hero Calvin Armstrong says, “for a man to reach up Internet—the list goes on. and gather a hatful of them.” Outdoor drama’s popularity in the 1970s was Contributing writer Robyn Ross’ work has appeared partly a result of renewed interest in American in Texas Monthly and The New York Times. Follow heritage connected with the country’s bicentennial her @RobynRossATX.

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RIGHT: Robert Duvall, who also directed, Loose Reins by Josh Rosenblatt and Luciana Pedraza. COURTESY PATRIOT PICTURES wenty minutes into Wild Horses, the the desert never happened. Briggs and his son (Josh new Western from writer/director/star Hartnett) turn their attention to other concerns, and a Robert Duvall, a grizzled Texas rancher storyline most filmmakers would take an entire movie named Scott Briggs hides with his son to unpack and television showrunners whole multi- behind some brush, watching a small season arcs to develop just disappears into the desert group of Mexican men fill a Jeep with air like the smoke from a burning Jeep. America’s drug drugs they’ve just smuggled over the crisis—solved in a single night. border. The border butts up against Briggs’ property That sequence and its lack of aftermath tell you Tand, being a grizzled Texas rancher, he figures it’s his everything you need to know about Wild Horses, responsibility (Hell, if the federal government won’t which had its world premiere earlier this year at the do it…) to patrol it—just him, his son and a couple SXSW Film Festival and was released in June on of rifles against a rising tide of lawlessness. A short DVD. Everything about the film, from the dialogue firefight ends with the Jeep in flames, the Mexicans to the casting to the directing, feels incomplete and unexamined, as if Duvall (who is now 84) had a thousand ideas but The drug war, illegal immigration, gay rights, family feuds, a sense that his time for explor- ing them was slipping away, so he spousal abuse, fathers and sons, fathers and daughters, decided to tackle them all in one movie. The drug war, illegal immi- sexism, racism, border wars, corrupt cops, Mexican street gration, gay rights, family feuds, spousal abuse, fathers and sons, gangs: Duvall gives them all the courtesy of a quick glance. fathers and daughters, sexism, racism, border wars, corrupt cops, dashing off into the night, and Briggs and his son Mexican street gangs: Duvall gives them all the cour- heading home to await their inevitable reckoning at tesy of a quick glance. the hands of some very disgruntled drug lords. It’s a shame, too, because the movie’s premise had And then… nothing. No reckoning, no revenge, no so much potential. One night, Briggs comes upon betrayals, no climactic confrontations, no drug lords, his other son, Ben (played by James Franco), hav- no murder, no fun at all. It’s as if the showdown in ing an intimate moment with Jimmy, one of the

32 | THE TEXAS OBSERVER WWW.TEXASOBSERVER.ORG DONyourATE RIDEto THE TEXAS OBSERVER Your vehicle donation is tax- deductible and supports some To learn more please go to of the sharpest reporting in the texasobserver.org or call strangest state in the union! TOLL FREE 855.500.RIDE ranch hands, and goes all Yosemite Sam on them, hooting and hollering and (literally) firing his -pis tol into the ceiling before chasing Ben off, shouting Bible passages after him. As for Jimmy, he’s never seen or heard from again. Flash forward 15 years and Jimmy’s mother is asking the Texas Rangers to reopen the cold case on her missing son. A female ranger (played by Duvall’s real-life wife, Luciana Pedraza) agrees and starts digging around in their community’s past, discovering all kinds of nastiness and lies and corruption. So the stage has been set for a dark, twisting narra- tive about buried secrets and deep family divisions, a bloodstained domestic drama disguised as a police pro- cedural. Unfortunately, what Duvall gives us instead is a soap-opera morass of lifeless exposition and meander- ing distractions. Subplots, including the one involving the drug smugglers, appear just long enough to steal viewers’ attention from the movie’s main thread, and then vanish. As a consequence, redemption and for- giveness aren’t really earned; they’re just passed out to the characters at the end of the movie like elementary school participation ribbons. Duvall doesn’t make things easy on himself, steer- ing a largely nonprofessional cast of actors through the emotional and aesthetic minefield that is - mak ing a movie. Among that cast are several actual Texas Rangers (who have considered Duvall an honorary colleague ever since Lonesome Dove) and his talent- free wife, who, as the obsessed detective, responds to enjoying a barbecue and surviving a gang hit with the exact same look of bland indifference. Not that it’s entirely the actors’ fault. John Gielgud and Laurence Olivier together wouldn’t have been able to find the humanity, or even the sense, in a line such as “Hate can bring confusion to a man who wants to control everything and everyone around him.” Some tasks are beyond even the masters. Maybe Duvall just didn’t have enough time or money to settle in and make the movie that Wild Horses wanted to be. Or maybe when you’re a Hollywood legend no one complains when your plot points make no sense or your dialogue sounds like something rescued from George Lucas’ trash bin. Or maybe Wild Horses was just born under a bad star, a well-meaning misfire that was doomed to become a cautionary tale for filmmakers with too much to say and not enough art to say it. Josh Rosenblatt lives and writes in New York City.

JULY 2015 THE TEXAS OBSERVER | 33 THE BOOK REPORT Her Side of the Stories by Amy Gentry

exas’ women writers have always offered crucial counter- points to our testosterone-fueled state myth of rugged individualism. J. Frank Dobie, mythmaster-general of the cow- boy, the oil man, the miner and the outlaw, memorably opened the “Women Pioneers” chapter in his 1943 Guide to the Life and Literature of the Southwest by noting female absence with seeming approval: “One reason for the ebullience of life and rollicky carelessness on the frontiers of the West was the lack— temporary—of women.” ¶ The late Lou Halsell Rodenberger,

Texas educator, writer and scholar, begged to differ. data putting the Latino population at 38 percent and TRodenberger made a lifelong project of recovering Texas already a “majority-minority” state, that’s truer Texas women’s voices from the earliest history of now than ever. the state, and the anthologies she co-edited before This is “her Texas” now. If it’s predictably different her 2009 death from ovarian cancer—including from the Texas that appears in Rodenberger’s Texas Women Writers: A Tradition of Their Own and anthologies, it’s different, too, from the Texas of Let’s Hear It: Stories by Texas Women Writers, both Red Boots and Attitude (eds. Diane Fanning and co-edited by Sylvia Grider—are indispensable for Susan Kelly Flatau), the most recent Texas women’s readers seeking a state literature that acknowledges anthology, published in 2003. Though it draws HER TEXAS: STORY, IMAGE, the sadiron drudgery and fierce family joys of wom- heavily from Red Boots, Her Texas strives for a wider POEM & SONG en’s lives in historical Texas. angle, doubling the number of contributors and Donna Walker-Nixon, Anthologizing in the present tense is a trickier adding a section that celebrates the rich tradition Cassy Burleson, proposition. Aside from an excerpt of Rodenberger’s of Texas songwriters, among them Terri Hendrix, Rachel Crawford, and unfinished memoir, after which it is named, the new Tish Hinojosa and Ruthie Foster. From the 60-plus Ashley Palmer, eds. anthology Her Texas: Story, Image, Poem & Song con- contributors, many exciting voices emerge, and the WINGS PRESS sists exclusively of works by living Texas authors, poets, strongest sections are the most diverse. 449 PAGES; $29.95 songwriters and visual artists. The goal of providing a The poetry, for example, soars. Venerated poets multiethnic and multidisciplinary snapshot of creative Sandra Cisneros and Naomi Shihab Nye (the women in contemporary Texas is laudable, but the Observer’s longtime poetry editor) contribute their results continually raise the following questions: What characteristically strong voices, and Latinas repre- is Texas writing, and what is a Texas woman? sented in the Wings Press catalog fill out the section, A Texas woman has her own myths to contend including former Texas Poet Laureate Rosemary with. Words such as sassy, feisty, ballsy and brash Catacalos and current Laureate Carmen Tafolla, come to mind to describe her: a gun-toting belle of the first and second Latina poets to hold the posi- the saloon or an ironclad matriarch of the range who tion. Deborah Paredez’s imagery feels Texan in a survives in a man’s world by being twice as tough as surprising way—a Gulf oyster is “wet and private as the menfolk, with an assist from her feminine wiles. a cheek’s other side”—and Celeste Guzman Men- Like Dobie’s Lone Star loners, the tough Texas dame doza’s poem “La Pisca” experiments with form and has her roots in historical truth. Moreover, she is repetition to evoke the rhythms of a cotton harvest. a totem to which modern-day Texas women cling Frances Treviño Santos’ “She, the Owl” imagines the in times of trouble. Who could avoid whispering poet’s daughter—who “calls every bird in the sky an a prayer in front of the Capitol rotunda portrait of owl”—ascending into heaven as “half-owl, half-girl Ann Richards during the House Bill 2 protests of messiah.” It’s a memorable symbol for the strength 2013, or hoping for a newly coiffed incarnation of the of hybrid identity, an origin story unrestrained by icon in Wendy Davis? earthbound borders. In “Swings,” Rebecca Balcar- That said, there is perhaps too much elevation of the cel writes: “I’m ashamed of the girl I might turn “tough broad” myth over more marginal lives in our into— / her sarcasm, her coiled snake tattoo / her state’s literary history. After all, Texas, a former frontier stride toward forbidden sparklers, / and I’m afraid, that still contains almost two-thirds of the U.S.-Mexico so much that I can’t sleep / of liking her.” There are border, has always been about the margins. With recent too many other examples to list, including arresting

34 | THE TEXAS OBSERVER WWW.TEXASOBSERVER.ORG poetry by Loretta Diane Walker and former Poet non-native Texans who, in our more nomadic era, Laureate Jan Upton Seale. have come to Texas’ top MFA programs, fallen in The fiction section, though far too short, - deliv love with the state, and made their homes here. A ers a handful of strong, voice-driven stories from must-read on its own merits, Her Texas’ greater role diverse perspectives, including Laurie Champion’s may be to instill in readers a hunger for even more “I’m Her(e),” a punning exploration of the emotional Texas women’s voices. terrain of an extramarital affair, and “The Midnight Amy Gentry lives in Austin. Her work has appeared in Bather,” Diana Lopez’s imaginative story about the the Austin Chronicle, the Chicago Tribune, the Los struggle of a single mother to transcend “the worst Angeles Review of Books, and The Rumpus. word she could imagine, statistic.” One of the stron- gest entries, “Outsiders,” by Dallas writer LaToya Watkins, maps the geography of privilege and priva- tion among women who share a skin color and outsider status, but little else, in a university town. Narrator Consistently rated one of Miesha works a low-wage service job caring for devel- opmentally disabled adults; her sister-in-law, Ayira, Austin’s top pizza shops: a medical student from a wealthy Ghanaian family, invites her to lunch to ask for help understanding Austin American-Statesman, Austin Chronicle, ThrillistATX, Miesha’s brother, Ayira’s new husband. Struggling to The Austinot, culturemap Austin, and Eater Austin. bridge the gap between her impoverished American childhood and Ayira’s educated African perspective, Miesha lingers longingly on their differences: “I can’t 1401 B ROSEWOOD AVE. 78702 help but want her words—the Africa she put on them. M E N U It make her sound like she from somewhere different, like even if she ain’t have no money, she got some- thing special in her voice. A land.” 5312 AIRPORT BLVD. STE G 78751 Through Miesha, Watkins says a mouthful. In Texas, land is power. For some, Texas history is the history of being denied that power, whether pushed www.eastsidepies.com 467 8900 off the land to make way for white settlers, enslaved 1809-1 W. ANDERSON LN. 78757 into working others’ land, forced into racially divided urban districts, or, most recently, muscled out of those districts by gentrification. Watkins’ story aside, African-American voices get the shortest shrift in Her Texas. The songwriting section, for instance, gives a hat-tip to Texas gospel and blues, but ignores the contemporary hip-hop and rap traditions. Has there ever been a juicier ode to Texas womanhood than Erykah Badu’s “Southern Girl,” with its liquid- cool Texas shout-out, “Big D, little A, double-L-A-S”? The rights to Badu’s lyrics may be beyond reach for an independent press, but the fact that it’s so diffi- cult to imagine her, let alone a rapper, in these pages speaks to a dated vision of contemporary Texas. The creative nonfiction section is hurt most by this datedness, but a few standouts offer flashes of life on the margins. Among the best of these are memoirist Donna M. Johnson’s searing “Mockingbird Lane,” which tracks cycles of abuse, neglect and addiction through three generations of Texas women; Mary Guerrero Milligan’s “Loteria: La Rosa,” an elegy for the author’s grandmother’s house in San Antonio; and Betsy Berry’s “The Awful Rowing Toward God,” in which a dying mother addled by dementia bestows a perfect lyric of resentment on her daugh- ter: “I should have just left you in the ocean.” Other entries deal strictly in Texas pastoral. It’s hard not to long for certain missing voices, including

JULY 2015 THE TEXAS OBSERVER | 35 36 | THE TEXAS OBSERVER WWW.TEXASOBSERVER.ORG DIRECT QUOTE Brett Parker diving for golf balls at The Lakes at Castle HillsGully golf course in Lewisville.Watcher as told to and photographed by Jen Reel

oanna Wolaver is the executive director of the Shoal Creek Conservancy, a non- profit founded in 2013 to help restore and protect Austin’s Shoal Creek. ¶ “I moved here when I was 5. I actually grew up in a condo overlooking Barton Creek, so that was my backyard growing up. There was a little treehouse somebody had built, so my brother and I would go down there and play and take walks on the greenbelt. We used to wander a bunch. JSo that’s, I think, where my love for creeks and the outdoors comes from. Also I spent the summers traveling around the U.S. going to national parks with my dad. My parents were divorced and he lived in Arizona and California, so he’d come

pick us up in Texas and then we’d drive Lake. Our vision is to have it extend back via Canada—crazy road trips to all the way up to 183 and the Domain get back to wherever he was living. I so you could bike those 11 miles into was 15 when I learned how to drive on downtown. If you live downtown you those winding roads of Yellowstone. I could bike up to the Pickle Research remember my dad saying, ‘Just stay to Center for work. Really make it a true the right of that yellow line and you’ ll north-south transportation corridor. be just fine.’ And then you have the flood issue— “Shoal Creek used to be on the edge that’s a health and safety concern. And of downtown. When I grew up it was part of our mission is to work with the the Warehouse District. Now it runs city to address that flood risk. through the heart of downtown. It runs “I actually had a meeting scheduled through the heart of Austin, really. So with the watershed planning folks it’s time we start thinking about it like at the city a week after the flood, and that as a city. We can make it really a we were to talk about partnering on a world-class place. Shoal Creek’s got watershed plan. Those conversations some of the worst water-quality issues were already in the works. The strate- in the city, has major flooding issues gies haven’t changed [since the recent that we’ve seen most recently. The trail flood]—it just underscores the impor- has a backlog of capital improvement tance of doing it. And the one thing needs. Austin has the resources to really about the flood I found interesting was have something that’s beautiful and to find us in this role that people were amazing. It’s just not quite there yet. calling and emailing and checking our “I want people to care because it’s website and posting on Facebook ask- an oasis in our city. As we continue to ing what to do during the flood and develop we have fewer and fewer places how to help post-flood, not just on where we can just go and breathe or the trail but in the community, for the just go for a run or relax. It’s a gem. folks on Lamar. So we found ourselves And it’s almost a hidden gem at this moving into a watershed-wide role point, and it needs to be lifted out and rather than just focusing on the trail have a light shone on it. That’s part of and the creek itself. what we’re trying to do. You have that “We’re going to have another one. side of it, that it’s a park, it’s a green We already have relationships with the oasis. But also, it’s a transportation city, but it’s about strengthening those corridor for people commuting, for relationships so we get information bikes, for walkers. Right now [the trail] out as quickly as possible.” goes from 38th Street to Lady Bird Interview has been edited and condensed.

JULY 2015 THE TEXAS OBSERVER | 37 HOUSTON POSTCARDS

ow about you, riding a bike, in Back in Houston? You came to Houston to listen the Saddle and learn about promise, or so you’d hoped. On a cool but clammy Can the state’s Sunday morning, you arrive at downtown’s Market Square Park quintessential car capital with a couple dozen other cyclists. As you straddle Hyour bike, you watch a tall, trim man with flecks of be made bike-friendly? graying hair climb onto a decorative concrete bench. by Ian Dille The man, a current Houston City Council member, addresses the crowd gathered around you. “I’m Steve

38 | THE TEXAS OBSERVER WWW.TEXASOBSERVER.ORG group, BikeHouston. In the past year, in the wake of much tumult in the Houston cycling commu- nity, BikeHouston has grown from 80 to more than 800 members and hired three full-time employees, including a new executive director, Michael Payne, who is also riding today. The ride hasn’t even begun, but already the assem- bled political muscle is impressive. Bicycling in Houston, it seems, matters. You follow Tom and Steve and Michael as they lead the group of bicyclists through canyons of gleaming glass skyscrapers and onto a concrete path bordering Buffalo Bayou. This waterway—in parts idyllic river, in parts drainage ditch—is the thick spine of a sprawling system of marshy tributaries and concrete-lined creek beds that funnel water throughout Houston’s 600 square miles and into the Gulf of Mexico. It’s this sys- As you pedal tem of tributaries, and the ever-expanding network of paved hike and bike trails that follow them, that you’ve your way into come to see. These trails, people tell you, will form the core of a comprehensive cycling network. And that downtown, network, people say, will tie communities together, curb obesity, clean the air, and maybe even help allevi- you feel the ate Houston’s ever-snarled traffic. This trail system, along with simple but practical endorphin- park amenities including manicured green spaces and picnic tables and benches and public art, is what fueled good Houston voters overwhelmingly asked for when they approved $100 million in bond funding three mood that years ago as part of the Bayou Greenways 2020 ini- tiative. That bond was followed by $115 million in comes with private donations. Before you came to Houston to ride beside these bayous, you didn’t realize that the exercise. You initiative’s lofty goal—to complete 150 miles of paved trails along Houston’s 10 main bayous by 2020—was think, sure, actually being met. But by the time you reach the turn-around point of the ride, which is held each there’s a long month to showcase Bayou Greenways’ progress, you’ve ridden 15 miles. You’ve pedaled along brushy way to go, creek beds and watched egrets and fish leaping from the water. You’ve crossed a brand-new bike-ped but Houston bridge that links a trail running from the majestic oaks of the Houston Heights neighborhood to White could become Oak Bayou. And you’re kicking yourself, as you sweat and chafe, for wearing jeans and loafers. bikeable. Who knew you could get this far from downtown Costello, and I’m running for mayor,” he says. He tells Houston without a car? the people here for the ride that he wants to see an As you head back into a headwind, you ride beside expansion of the city’s bike-share system. He tells a man named Dick Weekley, the co-founder of David the crowd he is an avid triathlete, but that this is his Weekley Homes—he’s David’s older brother. He’s in first time on a mountain bike, and he’s a little nervous. his late 60s, tan and lean, and wearing the cycling Later, he tells you that to train for those triathlons he jersey of his namesake business. His muscular calves A boy rides his bicycle along drove 20 miles outside of town to ride his bike. look like dinner plates wrapped in skin. You know Houston’s Buffalo Bayou. Then another man stands up on the bench, and the name Weekley from the billboards, “Homes The city and the nonprofit Buffalo Bayou Partnership this man says he’s running for an at-large City starting from the $150s,” which make your stomach are spending $58 million to Council seat. His name is Tom McCasland. He’s the churn, because to a cyclist they signal suburban improve the waterway and the surrounding parks and bike head of the Harris County Housing Authority, and sprawl—developmental cul-de-sacs that funnel cars and jogging trails. he’s a board member of Houston’s cycling advocacy onto clogged arterial roadways with scant bike lanes. AP PHOTO/PAT SULLIVAN

JULY 2015 THE TEXAS OBSERVER | 39 Weekley’s business, and the demand for it, is one “creative class,” the much-sought-after golden reason you might have to drive 20 miles out of town children of the new information-based economy. to train for a triathlon. Costello says that for these people, good money But Weekley is a philanthropist, too. He tells you isn’t enough. When choosing a city in which to live that 17 years ago he was instrumental in the forma- and work, they also value amenities such as outdoor tion of a group of local business leaders and politicians space, recreational opportunities and a diversity of called the Quality of Life Coalition. Through his influ- transportation options, including walking and bik- ence, his hard work, and his money (“Whenever we ing. If Houston wants to keep these workers, if it needed funding, we’d pass the hat around”), he’s partly wants to compete for talent with cities such as New responsible for the trails we’re riding right now. He’s York and Chicago and Los Angeles—all of which have been doing group rides such as this one, exploring the transformed themselves into top cities for urban potential of the green space along Houston’s bayous, cycling over the last decade—then it too must pro- since these trails were just dirt tracks. vide these amenities. You’ve probably read the criticism, reported more For decades, Houston’s insecurity about the sus- than a decade ago in this magazine, that Weekley has tainability of its economic might, predicated on the long owned land fronting Buffalo Bayou, and so stands most unsustainable of resources, has been evidenced

READ Observer coverage to profit from the parks projects. Ask Weekley about by its official slogans. There was the unfortunate of Buffalo Bayou revitalization the motivation for his involvement and he bristles. He double entendre of “Houston’s Hot,” the painfully at txlo.com/bayou says he never would have invested in that property, plain “Houston: Energy Capital of the World,” and 12.3 acres split by the Elysian Viaduct, if he’d known the vaguely creepy “Houston: Expect the Unex- people would infer that he was after simple personal pected.” City officials and business leaders imposed enrichment. He points at the moms and dads pushing these mottos on Houston. But lately, Houstonians— strollers and the wobbly kids riding bikes and he asks: especially those in central Houston, within the 610 Really, what more motivation do you need? loop—have generated their own expression of pop- As you pedal your way into downtown, you feel ulist pride, as seen on T-shirts, stickers and other the endorphin-fueled good mood that comes with paraphernalia about town, that simultaneously exercise. You think, sure, there’s a long way to go, acknowledges and dismisses outsider doubt: “Fuck but Houston could do this. Houston wants to do this. You, Houston’s Awesome.” The (still Houston, the fourth-largest city in the nation, will That sentiment, and its fulfillment, is evident in become bikeable. the ongoing revitalization of Houston’s downtown, relatively Then, weeks later, on Memorial Day, as you scroll in the collective of owners who’ve opened 13 hip new through your Facebook feed, you learn about a man downtown bars in the last two years, and in commu- paltry) number from Houston, a father of three, a longtime cyclist nities along the Bayou Greenways, where wildflower and a leader at his church, David Rosenfeld, 47, gardens have been planted and canoe launches orga- of bicycle who died that morning when he was hit by a car. nized to celebrate the opening of new green space. Rosenfeld was riding to a memorial ride for a cyclist It’s also evident in the rise of urban cycling culture, commuters who had been struck by an inattentive motorist. The including the thousands of cycling citizens and fami- irony, so sad, so not-funny, affects you physically, and lies who come downtown on the final Friday evening in Houston your chest feels heavy, and your head feels light, and of each month to participate in Critical Mass rides, tears well in your eyes. and the multitude of social rides (often with taco doubled And as you grapple with the senseless loss, you stops) that take place weekly. read the horrible and apparently obligatory com- Houstonians and recently arrived “Newstonians” between 2012 ments that accompany such stories. Comments that are embracing biking in growing numbers. According say cyclists shouldn’t be on the road anyway, and it’s to the most recent census data, the (still relatively and 2013 (from their own fault when they get hit. That cyclists run paltry) number of bicycle commuters in Houston red lights and cut in traffic. The comments make doubled from 2012 to 2013, from 0.4 percent of the 0.4 percent you wonder when the onus of safety shifted from the city’s 2.6 million residents to 0.8 percent. In most person operating the deadly vehicle to the victim, major cities, more cyclists leads to safer cycling, as of the city’s and what scofflaw cyclists (who irritate law-abid- driver awareness increases. Yet Houston cyclists ing cyclists, too) have to do with David Rosenfeld, continue to be struck by vehicles at an alarmingly 2.6 million who wasn’t breaking any laws when he was killed. high rate. A recent public information request to the And you think, sure, there’s promise for cycling in Houston Police Department by the Houston Press residents to Houston, but people who already ride bikes in this showed that there were at least 950 crashes involv- city need help now. ing bicyclists in Houston from May 2013 (when the 0.8 percent). city’s 3-foot passing ordinance was implemented) ncreasingly, major American cities are to April 2014. Of those crashes, 213 were hit-and- compelled to care about bicycling. On our run incidents—a clear indicator, bike advocates bayou bike ride, mayoral candidate Costello argue, that Houston drivers harbor little concern talked about changing demographics. About for other road users. how Houston’s oil- and gas-driven economy, The most publicized of these hit-and-run inci- one of the strongest in the nation following dents occurred on Dec. 1, 2013. The victim’s name the 2008 meltdown, has drawn thousands of was Chelsea Norman. She was 24, and she was riding new residents from across the country and around her bike home from her job at Whole Foods Market Ithe world. Many of these newcomers are young, in the narrow, debris-littered bike lane on Waugh talented and educated, members of the oft-cited Drive when she was struck by a car and left to die.

40 | THE TEXAS OBSERVER WWW.TEXASOBSERVER.ORG Her death galvanized the Houston cycling commu- fellowship to study in Lithuania. In Sugar Land, nity. Hundreds of cyclists showed up at a memorial the fast-growing Houston suburb where she previ- ride in Norman’s honor, handing out flyers to motor- ously worked as a senior planner, she was anointed ists to explain why they were clogging the streets. employee of the year for helping develop a bicycle BikeHouston, then a tiny and completely volunteer- and pedestrian master plan there. She and her staffed organization, demanded action from the city. husband and their young daughter now live in the Mayor Annise Parker appeared to be listening. Museum District. She’s been on the job in Houston If there’s Parker, whose vocal support of cycling in Houston for only four months. She rides a bike, she says, but had not previously resulted in meaningful change, she doesn’t wear Spandex, nor does she identify as a one reason commanded the police department to ramp up cyclist. Her bike has a basket. Cycling isn’t a lifestyle enforcement of the recently enacted safe-passing for Halka; it’s just how she gets from point A to point Houston’s ordinance, which requires drivers to give cyclists a B when she’s not driving or walking. 3-foot berth when passing, and pedestrians 6 feet. When I tell her I’m here to explore Houston’s cycling Parker partnered with BikeHouston on a Goal Zero promise as a bikeable city, she smiles and says, “Yes, initiative, an idea first popularized in Sweden and there’s lots of promise.” She tells me that the bicycle infrastructure recently adopted by bike-friendly cities such as New master planning has only just begun, but she can York and San Francisco, that aims to raise driver confirm that the Bayou Greenways will form the is so far awareness and reinforce the premise that when you backbone of the city’s bicycle network. She’s excited operate a vehicle (motorized or otherwise), you’re about a pilot project to build trails in Houston’s util- behind the responsible for the lives of other humans. Parker ity corridors, which run north to south through the also hired a new director for the city’s Planning and city. The easements were made available for trails cities with Development Department, a cyclist (and motorist through bipartisan legislation at the Capitol, which and user of public transportation) named Patrick mitigated the utility company’s liability. which it hopes Walsh, and put city money toward the development We talk about the Lamar Street cycle track, a pro- of a new bicycle master plan. tected bike lane that was installed in March and spans to compete, If there’s one reason Houston’s cycling infrastruc- the length of downtown Houston from Discovery ture is so far behind the cities with which it hopes to Green to Sam Houston Park. Though cyclists have it is because compete—why its hundreds of miles of dangerous, complained that construction projects and delivery narrow bike lanes seem prehistoric when compared truck drivers often block the route, and that mounted Houston has to other cities’ modern, protected bike lanes, which police officers leave piles of horse poop in the lane, use concrete curbs and plastic pylons to create a phys- the track does provide a sense of security amid down- never really ical barrier between drivers and cyclists—it is because town’s chaos of cars. Houston has never really planned to be bikeable. “I think it shows Houstonians what types of planned to be The last citywide plan for cycling was drafted back designs there are for modern bicycle infrastructure, in 1997, and carved out space for the handful of experi- and it gives them the opportunity to experience bikeable. enced Houston cyclists who were already braving the them,” Halka says. city’s streets. The new plan will aim to create a safe and I ask Halka what challenges she anticipates with accommodating bike network for residents ranging in the new bike plan, and she talks about the potentially age from 8 to 80, catering to all the Houstonians who difficult conversations around giving bikes room say they want to ride (more than 50 percent, according on Houston’s roads. Lanes presently dedicated to to BikeHouston) but don’t feel safe doing so. motorized vehicle traffic will have to go away to make space for new, wider and safer bike lanes. Perhaps meet Cathy Halka, the woman tasked by most contentious of all, some parking may disappear Patrick Walsh with creating a plan to make downtown and on neighborhood streets where new Houston bikeable, at a place I didn’t expect bike lanes are installed. Halka describes an effort in to find here: the Houston Bicycle Museum. Sugar Land to “right-size” a key corridor from four Located in the Museum District, blocks lanes to two and install wide bike lanes. She was from the Museum of Fine Arts and the gar- excited about the plan, but the community objected. dens of Hermann Park, the Houston Bicycle And she had to put the community’s wishes first. Museum occupies a temporary space in a former “Ultimately, that is who you are planning for,” she Ibank building. (The plan is to raise enough money says. Community engagement, listening to the com- over the next year or so to construct a permanent munity, she says, is the most important thing. building on a nearby property.) Old photos and I mention that, in the wake of David Rosenfeld’s informational placards about the bicycle’s history in death, I reached out to BikeHouston Director Michael the U.S., in Texas and in Houston grace the walls. In Payne. He told me there’s a growing sense of frustra- one black-and-white image from 1897, a few dozen tion about the pace of change. People who ride bikes stoic-faced members of Houston’s Lord’s Cycling in Houston want to know what can be done right Club stand outside their two-story clubhouse at 109 now to address the lack of significant cycling infra- Chenevert St. (now a parking lot near downtown’s structure and the recklessness of inattentive and Minute Maid Park). Nearby, a turn-of-the-century irresponsible motorists. In other major cities, such bicycle with wooden rims stands on display. as New York and Chicago, forceful leaders have made Halka is in her early 30s and has chestnut hair fast and profound changes to their transportation and brown eyes and a warm smile. She grew up in networks. New York’s transportation commissioner, this neighborhood, then studied urban planning at Janette Sadik-Khan, eschewed prolonged planning the University of Maryland and earned a Fulbright studies in favor of experimenting with paint and

JULY 2015 THE TEXAS OBSERVER | 41 pylons, pouring concrete if the experiments proved sees kids in the Montrose neighborhood riding on successful. Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel spear- the sidewalks, and she doesn’t understand why. They headed construction of 100 miles of new high-quality should be more confident and ride in the road, where bike lanes in his first four years in office. vehicles belong, she says. Cathy agrees that bicyclists Halka tells me that the planning department, in absolutely have a right to the road. She says that collaboration with a consulting firm, is preparing an better cycling infrastructure will give novices some existing-facilities report, due in mid-August. She says room for comfort around cars and, hopefully, the the report will identify immediate safety concerns and confidence to get out on the road. recommend pilot projects to correct the problems. Then Cathy writes her name and phone number There’s also Mayor Parker’s Goal Zero initiative, on a piece of paper. She hands it to Joy and looks her the goal of which is to reduce traffic fatalities to zero. in the eye. “I want to hear from you,” she says. “If you But it’s unclear whether that’s a mere for-show prom- have any questions, comments or concerns about the ise or a sincere commitment. Two years after Chelsea future of cycling in Houston, please, call me.” Norman’s death, the Houston Police Department Ian Dille is a freelance journalist based in Austin. He had issued fewer than a dozen citations to drivers for is a contributing writer for Bicycling magazine. violating the city’s safe-passing ordinance. A “Share the Road” public service announcement has received fewer than 2,000 views on YouTube. Payne notes that in New York City, a similar safety campaign RATTLEBONE’S RANT resulted in a reduction of speed limits to 25 miles per hour citywide, and a 40 percent increase in the num- by B.R. Strahan ber of speeding tickets issued in the initiative’s first three months. It shouldn’t surprise anyone As Halka and I talk, it occurs to me that she is one that the prize is a restless night of those young, talented and educated workers that and a bruise that will not heal. Houston so eagerly seeks. She obviously loves her city, she came back to it, and she’s working hard to As it turns out, the skin make it a place where she wants to live. If she can’t do is not a metaphor for anything that, if she can’t one day ride her daughter to school, and the face in the mirror or safely make it from her neighborhood to the near- est park by bike, I wonder, will she stay? is just the face in the mirror. As we finish our conversation and move toward Just think: All that porcelain the museum’s exit, a woman with long gray hair and really was plastic after all a long, beaded necklace greets us. Her name is Joy Boone, and she spent years collecting the historical and all those mountains bicycles on display here. Almost 50 years ago, she and really mole hills, and the horizon her husband, Daniel Boone, opened Daniel Boone only repeats itself over and over Bicycles, located just around the corner, and for years it has been a hub for Houston’s cycling community. like the bird outside your window. Joy tells Cathy about how, decades ago, the Oh, and that dream you kept Houston cycling community first convinced the city gabbing about; as it turns out to stripe all those narrow and debris-filled bike lanes that everyone thinks are so crappy now, and how at It was only an overweight the time it felt like a huge victory, like a better city bureaucrat lost in a maze for cycling was just around the corner. Joy says that of papyrus and cuneiform. she hasn’t really ridden in decades, and that now she Well, the mercy’s gone to fat. The largess was always too little. And what’s left, a bed of shards,

a rant that once resembled reason, pieces of a puzzle you thought might even fit together?

Welcome to a Texas summer. I like the slightly hal- lucinogenic meditation on place and language and reality in Strahan’s poem, especially as another elec- tion cycle launches. — Naomi Shihab Nye

Bradley R. Strahan taught poetry at Georgetown University for 12 years. He has published six books of poetry and more than 600 poems. His 2011 book, This Art of Losing, was translated into French. His book of poems from a recent stay in Ireland was published by BrickHouse Books in October 2014.

42 | THE TEXAS OBSERVER WWW.TEXASOBSERVER.ORG ANDREAGRIMES STATE OF THE MEDIA #nofilter here are many hallmarks of a bad bill, but the sirens really go off when legislation brings the far left and the far right together in opposition. That’s what happened earlier this year when Dallas Republican state Rep. Jason Villalba filed a bill that would have prevented citizens from filming police within a 25-foot “buffer zone.” Nobody liked that idea—not the right- Cops allowed wing privacy obsessives nor the left-wing police skeptics. ¶ a white kid to Had that law passed, we would have been far less likely to have film the entire documentation of incidents such as the one at a McKinney community pool in June, where a 15-year-old boy behavior of the cops or the white neighbors—that incident, perhaps Tfilmed a local cop throwing and pinning one of the allowed us to see more sides of the story. boy’s classmates, a black teenage girl, to the ground A young black photojournalist named Elroy John- because after neighborhood adults—including a white son interviewed 19-year-old Tatyana Rhodes, one man named Sean Toon—called the police on teens of the party’s organizers, right after the incident, they were too celebrating the end of the school year at a pool party. producing a video that has accompanied most news Toon—who caught a felony conviction as an 18-year- reports. Rhodes, joined in the video by her mom, engrossed in the old for torturing animals and, two years later, was who was supervising the kids at the pool, describes charged with assault with a deadly weapon—told her older white neighbors’ harassment of her friends frothy business reporters he called 911 because “out of control kids” and fellow partygoers before cops arrived. She says were jumping the fence into the Craig Ranch pool. that one white woman slapped her in the face after of handcuffing Just a few years ago, we might have had to take Toon telling Rhodes she needed to “go back to [her] Sec- at his word. The teens who object to his story—includ- tion 8 home.” black teenagers ing the party’s organizer, a young black woman who Rhodes lives in the McKinney neighborhood said a neighborhood white woman physically assaulted where her party took place. Without affordable to care. her and shouted racist slurs before cops arrived—might smartphone technology and a growing sense that have struggled to have their voices heard. police and mainstream media are not capturing all But that was before smartphones and social media. sides of the story when they cover racist violence The 15-year-old, Brandon Brooks, kept his smart- and especially racist police violence, we might never phone camera running as the McKinney cops arrived, have heard her story. Or perhaps we’d have heard it producing more than seven minutes of video show- only after an overworked local beat reporter with ing officers chasing and handcuffing non-white kids a healthy skepticism for cop-issued narratives who’d been invited to the celebration. The officers tracked her down. breeze past Brooks, who is white and openly filming, We’ve seen this relentless dedication to documenta- their singular focus on wrangling the teens of color. tion before, from grassroots journalists and anti-racism Brooks even captured the moment when McKinney and anti-violence activists who have continued filming, officer Eric Casebolt—who resigned with pay,- pen at risk to their personal safety, in Ferguson, in Staten sion and benefits following the incident—pulled his Island, in Baltimore, in South Carolina. gun and pointed it at confused, scared kids wearing Eyewitness accounts of incidents like this no swimsuits. It takes a willful misreading of the video doubt make police departments nervous. But com- to believe that the cops weren’t openly targeting stu- munities of color live in fear of precisely the kind dents of color. Indeed, the cops allowed a white kid to of relentless surveillance that cops—with help from film the entire incident, perhaps because they were lawmakers such as Jason Villalba—are unhappy to too engrossed in the frothy business of handcuffing see turned on themselves. black teenagers to care. Without Rhodes’ story, and without Brooks’ video, Within a day, Brooks’ video made international we might be obliged to take the “official” version as news as media outlets picked up the YouTube link truth. But thanks to the bravery of black students in and delved into the story. But it was the refusal by McKinney who didn’t defer to their racist neighbors, McKinney’s young people to allow reporters to recast and thanks to the ability of their friends and neigh- the incident in the McKinney Police Department’s bors to share their own accounts of what happened, preferred frame—that race played no role in the we don’t have to.

JULY 2015 THE TEXAS OBSERVER | 43 FORRESTWILDER FORREST FOR THE TREES When Climate Disaster Hits Home bout a week after Memorial Day flooding devastated my hometown of Wimberley, I went to help some friends clean up their dad’s place on a creek that feeds the Blanco River. The neighborhood looked like a yard sale from hell. ¶ Pat had been rescued at 4 a.m. by neighbors. He was up to his neck in nasty water, his possessions bob- bing around him like sentimental flotsam and jetsam, his three daughters conferencing on his cellphone about what to do. Most of his possessions were reduced to junk, but he salvaged his father’s World War II journals, his Vietnam War army shirt, a campaignA poster from his run for state representative. A couple of weeks after the flood, a coworker and I Our climatic The skies were soggy that day and I spent only an kayaked 14 miles of the Blanco, a stretch I know well, hour or so in rubber boots and a dust mask before a to get a better look at the damage. We unloaded at a twins— sheriff’s deputy came around to warn us out of the private community park where we were greeted by river bottom. Nobody was taking any chances. Mitchell, who allowed us to launch our boats but drought and After the flood came the stories. The one that complained of con-artist “sharks” and “lookie-loos” haunts me the most is about the Corpus Christi gawking in the disaster zone. He warned that some flood—have families who rode the river on the roof of their vaca- of his neighbors were ready to “go Cliven Bundy” if tion home until it was smashed on the Ranch Road FEMA tried to tell them how to deal with the mess. sprouted devil 12 bridge. Eight of the nine people in the home died. Mitchell said he’d been doing cleanup work 22 hours They had enough time for Laura McComb, whose a day since the flood. He seemed on edge. horns thanks two small children were with her, to call and say How do you describe a landscape so changed? goodbye to her sister. Can you imagine? It looked like a raw wound, violently scrubbed, to climate Some family friends who live on the river describe unhealed. Canoes wrapped around trees. Forlorn watching, in the middle of the night, a car float down- orange life jackets twisting in the trees 30 feet above change. stream with its headlights on. They heard neighbors the waterline. The high bridge at Fischer Store Road screaming for help, only to see in the light of day that reduced to rubble. The few people we saw at the riv- some of the houses were gone, scoured off their slabs. er’s edge spoke the same refrain: “We were lucky. Our You have to understand, the Blanco River in its neighbors had it worse.” usual mood is a placid, peaceful brook, barely a river The force of the water snapped enormous, centu- at all. Only ankle-deep in many places, the gin-clear ries-old cypress trees in half. It torqued others over, water moves briskly over fluted, whalebone-white toppling them like saplings before a bulldozer. The limestone. Under normal conditions, flowing at 100 few that still stand have been skinned alive. Imagine cubic feet per second or less, it’s a glorified trickle. On Northern California without redwoods, or Vermont its best days, the Blanco is an edenic ribbon of rope without maples. That’s the Blanco without the swings, seeping cliffs and magnificent cypress trees, cypress. It won’t be the same for generations, if ever. some more than 500 years old, that line the river One of the remarkable things about the May flood- like sentinels. But the river has another side. Central ing across Texas was how quickly the state went Texas is Flash Flood Alley, home of sudden, awe- from extreme drought to extreme flood. Yes, Texas’ inspiring deluges. climate is best summed as perennial drought occa- Even so, the Memorial Day flooding is unlike any- sionally punctuated by flooding. Yes, we’re in an El thing anyone has ever seen. The river crested at 40 Niño cycle. But our climatic twins—drought and feet before the gauge broke—7 feet higher than the flood—have sprouted devil horns thanks to climate record set in 1929. Though no official report has change. Extreme rainfall events are becoming more been made, some have estimated the flow peaked common; as the planet heats, the amount of water at 223,000 cubic feet per second, enough to fill 150 vapor in the atmosphere increases, priming the Olympic swimming pools every minute. Imagine an pump for catastrophic rainfall. ocean in a ditch. Today, climate-related disaster visits Wimberley. To know the river is to be staggered by what it did. Tomorrow, maybe it’s your town.

44 | THE TEXAS OBSERVER WWW.TEXASOBSERVER.ORG EYE ON TEXAS Jay Lee

LIGHT/RAIN The rains came early in the evening on May 26, and they came in a torrent. The house was filled with the sound of the TV weatherman describing the storm, interrupted frequently by our various phones and tablets blaring out weather advisories. Lightning illuminated the house from every window. Every time we thought the rain must certainly begin to slack, it seemed to fall harder. The sound of hail hitting the roof and the crash of a falling tree drew my attention to the front of the house and I opened the door to peer out into the maelstrom. Lightning was flashing dozens of times a minute, illu- minating the street to reveal the rising water and the damage to my yard. The lightning was so frequent that I had the idea it might act as an off-camera flash. That is when I decided to pick up my camera and capture this image.

CALL FOR ENTRIES: Seeking Texas-based documentary photography. Please send inquiries to [email protected].

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