Innholdsfortegnelse for January/February 2021 i The Texas Observer

I contracted COVID (“How We Got Here,” November|December 2020) in a town that remained convinced it was a Democratic hoax and chose not follow prevention protocols or enforce them, encouraged under the irresponsible leadership (Abbott and Patrick) that led to COVID’s unnecessary spread/outbreak that affected even the cautious. After a month of total isolation in bed, my infection is inactive but the serious symptoms are not. I’ve had five terrifying ER runs and two admissions (one in ICU) for runaway blood pressure that doctors are not sure is COVID related. Too much is not known. You do not want this virus and definitely do not want to carelessly spread it and be responsible for needless misery or someone else’s untimely horrible death. Barbara Ramirez VIA FACEBOOK I’M A RURAL TEXAN…

In November, Texas became the first state to pass 1 million confirmed COVID-19 cases. Hospitalizations surged through the fall and winter, particularly in hot spots like El Paso and Lubbock. More than 23,000 Texans had died as of mid-December. The Texas prison system has a COVID-19 infection rate 490 percent higher than the state of Texas overall, according to a November report from the University of Texas at Austin. People in Texas prisons are getting COVID-19 at a 40 percent higher rate and dying at a 35 percent higher rate than the national prison population average. In the Duncan Unit, a prison in East Texas, about 6 percent of all inmates have died of COVID-19. The Texas electorate is more diverse than ever, but the party that controls both chambers…

WITH THE PROMISE OF A COROnavirus vaccine this year, Texas has an opportunity to return not to life as normal, but to a better, more equitable, and more fair place. What that looks like is up to you, to all of us. As journalists, we adhere to ethical guidelines that prevent us from donating our time or money to political candidates and causes, and make sure that we avoid conflicts of interest. But we hope our stories empower and inspire our readers and the communities we cover to take action, armed with information and context. When the legislative session begins, the number of Texans to die from COVID-19 will have surpassed all Texans killed in World War II. Texas has the dubious record of having the highest rate and largest…

Down Ballot AFTER THE 2020 ELECTION, IT’S TIME FOR TEXAS DEMOCRATS to stop setting unrealistic expectations about top-ticket races and instead start focusing on the down-ballot seats they’ve already won. Over the past decade, Democrats have flipped district courts, appellate benches, sheriff’s departments, and county governments across the state. These positions languish at the bottom of the ballot but assert more direct control over life in Texas than any individual legislator could dream of. Texas Democrats can promise to pass all sorts of laws if they ever sweep the Legislature, but a more powerful message would point to the things they’ve already done. Consider the race for justice of the peace (JP) in Harris County’s Precinct 5, Place 1, where Democratic challenger Israel Garcia beat Republican incumbent Justice Russ Ridgway.…

“At the end of the day, if we don’t combat the climate crisis, there will be no school to worry about.” CHANTÉ DAVIS, A 16-YEAR-OLD NEW ORLEANS NATIVE, knows that climate change is urgent and personal. In 2005, she and her family were evacuated right before Hurricane Katrina decimated their hometown. They settled in Houston, where, over the past decade, she’s lived through several more storms, made stronger and more dangerous because of the rapid warming of the planet. In 2019, Davis joined the Sunrise Movement, a youth-led climate action organization. Since then, Davis, an aspiring marine biologist, has helped mobilize teens across the Houston area and the nation. As a lead organizer at Sunrise, she’s coordinated everything from school strikes drawing attention to the United States’ lack of climate…

NEARLY EVERY WEEK M.J. Jennings went shopping at the Dallas Galleria with her mother, Leah Corken, an 83-year-old widow who had moved to Texas to live near her daughter. On their last visit, Corken, who had tiny feet and hands, needed a new pair of slides, so they stopped at her favorite shoe store, the only one with a decent selection in size 5. Later, they caught a matinee at an upscale theater. “We always got a pepperoni pizza and split it,” Jennings said of their weekly ritual. “She always got her own popcorn from the popcorn stand and put on just the kind of butter she wanted.” They leaned back in reclining seats, munched popcorn, sipped wine, and laughed out loud at a comedy that featured Meryl Streep singing…

The year 2021 is upon us and many of you have made New Year’s resolutions. It’s a tradition started by the Babylonians 4,000 years ago to curry favor with their gods. Which of the following facts about New Year’s resolutions is not true? a. Twenty-two percent of resolutions are failed within the first week they’re made. b. The Romans made sacrifices to the deity Janus as part of their resolutions. c. The most common resolution is to stop swearing. d. Americans tend to make health-based resolutions; Russians are more likely to focus on education. ANSWER C. The most common resolutions are to stop smoking and to drink less.…

ISABELLE PAPADIMITRIOU WAS FINALLY A GRANDMA. The baby girl, Lua, was born in August 2019 in Brooklyn. Though Papadimitriou lived in Coppell and worked as a respiratory therapist in Dallas, she’d been able to visit her granddaughter in New York twice, and in June 2020, she was eager to visit again. “Lua was her everything; it was all about Lua,” says Fiana Tulip, Papadimitriou’s daughter and Lua’s mother. Then, COVID-19 cases spiked in Texas and the trip no longer felt safe. They called it off, and the 64-year-old Papadimitriou started to put in extra shifts at work instead. Later that month, around the time she was supposed to be visiting family, Papadimitriou caught the coronavirus. After a weeklong battle with the virus, she died on July 4. A Brownsville native,…

Sanitizing the death penalty has been key to this modern resurgence, masking the violence of state executions. DALTON COBLE DIDN’T KNOW HIS grandfather particularly well, but stories of Billie Wayne Coble have cast a shadow over his family since before he was born. In August 1989, Billie murdered his estranged wife’s parents and brother. The slayings shocked Waco, and the Coble name continued to raise eyebrows as it surfaced in headlines about appeals in the case over the following three decades. Billie’s son from a previous marriage, Gordon Coble, was only a teenager when his father was sentenced to death. In an attempt to shake the stigma, Gordon moved his family to outside Austin when Dalton was a child. He grew up meeting his grandfather through birthday cards and the…

I took a tripto west Texasby myselfpulled over at nighton a stretch nowhere near McDonaldor Ft. Davisand just walked a long whilethe soundof my feet on sandthat hadn’t been touchedin perhaps centuriesand I never looked uponly downfocusing my gazepicking out onetinytwinkling grainwhisperingYoutooare seen. Sean Petrie travels Texas and the country writing on-the-spot poems for Austin’s Typewriter Rodeo. He also teaches legal writing at the University of Texas School of Law.…

ROGELIO CHAVIRA AND DOLORES CHACON were sweethearts in high school, class of 1970. Although they split up before starting at the University of Texas at El Paso, Dolores and Rogelio have fond memories of their first romance. “He was just so polite, just the sweetest and most respectful man,” Dolores says. “He was reserved and very hardworking. I’ve really never understood how such a hard worker wouldn’t want to be a Republican.” Forty-five years later, in 2013, Dolores and Rogelio ran into each other at the mall in El Paso. Both were single. After their run-in, Rogelio followed up with a phone call and they started dating again. Soon enough, Rogelio asked Dolores if she would marry him. The newlyweds moved into Dolores’ childhood home. The single-story adobe, built by…