Al Reinert

An Astrofable The county commissioner was positively indignant at the way everybody, particularly the news media, kept calling the new county facility by the wrong name. “The county built it and the county paid for it,” he loudly complained to a packed hearing room, “and, dammit, the county owns it!” Growing purplish, the commissioner blustered that “People by God ought to start calling it by its right name: The Harris County Domed Stadium!!” “Well,” soothed the agreeable Judge, “you can call it…

This article appears in our February 2019 “Love Letters to Texas” collector’s issue. Subscribe today. Frantically squealing and moo­ing, as if somehow aware of their destination, two cows and four calves lurch and bounce through an August Monday morning in the trailer towed by J. B. Haisler’s half-ton Chevy pickup. The cows are ten and twelve years old, the calves about five months, and none has ever before left the cozy 230-acres of pasture that now lie fifty traumatic miles behind them. The c…

What astronaut Alan Bean saw on the moon changed his life. Now, with paint and canvas, he’s trying to let the rest of us see it too.

The seeds of the Challenger disaster were sowed long ago, in the space agency’s conflict between its ideals and its politics.

Cool, clear, and pure, it’s the bounty of the Edwards Aquifer, and if something isn’t done to limit pumping by Hill Country farmers and a thirsty San Antonio, it may also be dry.