The state’s political maps: will they need to be re-drawn? The stakes are high in a case to be argued before the U.S. Supreme Court, we’ll have the latest. Also in Texas there’s a lot of love for Southwest. But today, lots of frustrated travelers as the Dallas based airline grounds nearly a hundred planes for engine inspections. We’ll hear what inspectors are looking for. And the nation’s biggest psychiatric ward also happens to be a county jail. How did the criminal justice system become the biggest provider of services to the mentally ill? We’ll explore. And a new wave of National Guard troops arrive at the border. How’s this playing out down in the Valley? We’ll take you there. Those stories and so much more on today’s Texas Standard:
Archives for April 2018
Lemonade Anniversary Live Show Celebration (Ep. 8)
DaLyah and Jackie celebrate the two-year anniversary of Beyoncé’s visual album Lemonade with their first live show at the Tiny Texas Podcast Festival. They speak linguistics and Southern identity with Alexis McGee. McGee is a doctoral candidate in the University of Texas at San Antonio Department of English studying black feminist theory, black women’s language & rhetoric. Two&Fro also hosts their first live lip sync and “Who Bit Beyoncé” debate.
Higher Ed: The Teacher-Student Relationship
A college student requested a “Higher Ed” discussion about meaningful student-teacher relationships – both how to form them, and how those relationships could impact grades and behavior. In this episode of KUT’s podcast Higher Ed, KUT’s Jennifer Stayton and Southwestern University President Dr. Ed Burger discuss how students and teachers can best engage each other to insure that dynamic goes well. The relationship between teacher and student can be complex. Teachers can be mentors, advisors and role models to students. But teachers also grade students’ work and are thus in an assessor role as well. And, as Ed points out, those two roles can sometimes be in conflict. Ed and Jennifer discuss ways that students and teachers can build relationships that go well for both sides. Ed’s tips for teachers: don’t play mind games or play favorites with students. His tips for students: engage teachers about the material and show enthusiasm and curiosity. Listen to the full episode to hear more about teacher-student relationships and the one student behavior Ed won’t tolerate. It is also time to solve the mystery from the last episode about the scarf, carrot and coal.
This episode was recorded Feb. 28, 2018.
Dr. Brittney Cooper, pt. 2 (Ep. 20, 2018)
On this week’s program, producer and host John L. Hanson, Jr. concludes his conversation about black feminism and race and gender issues with Dr. Brittney Cooper, assistant professor of Women’s and Gender Studies and Africana Studies at Rutgers University, and author of Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower.
Tomar & The FCs: “Shine Your Light” (Live in Studio 1A)
In the grand scheme of his career, Tomar Williams only recently pivoted from hip hop producer to return to his roots as a knockout soul singing frontman. Residing and performing regularly right here in Austin, Tomar & The FCs bring a new energy to a classic soul sound. A couple years ago Tomar & The FCs were featured as KUTX Artist of the Month back when they released their debut full-length Heart Attack, culminating in several KUTX features.
Tomar & The FCs have a new album in the works, due for release later this year and they’ll be topping off tonight’s non-campsite performances at Old Settler’s Music Festival on the Bluebonnet Stage from 10:45pm all the way to midnight. Prepare yourself for a lack of light pollution and compensate with Tomar’s bright aura and infectious positivity with the live Studio 1A Recording of “Shine Your Light”.
–Jack Anderson (Host, Monday-Wednesday 8-11pm, Saturday 6-10am)
Texas Standard: April 20, 2018
Look! In the skies over Galveston. It’s a bird, it’s a plane… No, it’s a plane. And it just might be the next Concorde. NASA’s mission- today on the Standard.
There’s a new policy for meetings at city hall in Amarillo. If you’re caught clapping you might get thrown out. An unusual policy to be sure—but is it constitutional? An SMU legal scholar raises a red flag.
Remember the Alamo? Sure you do. But never like this. Virtual reality comes to the cradle of Texas liberty.
Also why a Texas city ranks #1 for black homeownership. You might be surprised which city it is. Plus the week in Texas politics and more.
Grackles Be Stealin’
Those loud, black birds are infamous across Texas — and they were the inspiration for this Typewriter Rodeo poem.
KUT Weekend – April 20, 2018
An increase in homeowners protesting their property tax assessments. Plus, on the anniversary of the Waco siege, lessons learned by law enforcement. And why is a map on the floor of Austin’s airport filled with misspellings? Those stories and more in this edition of KUT Weekend!
Subscribe at https://weekend.kut.org
What’s The Story Behind The Different Tags On Trees Around Austin?
You can’t not notice the trees that line the paths on Austin’s many hike and bike trails. But have you ever noticed a fair amount of them are numbered?
Charisma and Leadership
It turns out you can have too much of a good thing when it comes to your charismatic leader. On this week’s edition of Two Guys on Your Head, Dr. Art Markman and Dr. Bob Duke explore why that is.
Texas Standard: April 19, 2018
Too close to call? As long time experts scratch their heads, a new survey says Texas, you’re in for some fireworks in that Senate race. We’ll explore the battle of Ted and Beto. Also, who or what is the Queen of the Hill? Short answer: what may be a last chance for a deal to protect young immigrants from deportation. A Texas Republican Congressman among those pushing for an unusual parliamentary procedure to break the daca impasse. Also, the Waco Siege 25 years on. And the pilot hailed as a hero in Monday’s Southwest Airlines emergency landing, has made history before. We’ll hear how and a whole lot more today on the Texas Standard:
Jess Williamson: “I See the White”
Jess Williamson‘s upcoming third release Cosmic Wink follows suit of the last two like a seamless saga ready to unfold the next part of the greater story. Following her 2016 move from Austin to L.A., the album was written during a period of great transition for Williamson with several unrelated events, good and bad (specifically love and loss, as it usually seems to go) coming to a head simultaneously and putting her through an emotional challenge that she works through the only way musicians know how. True to her smokey-folk aura, there’s heavy emphasis on the lyrics of this introspective meditation that beautifully float on top of a bed of catchy, understated hooks and haunting echoes.
“I See the White” appears on Cosmic Wink out May 11th via Mexican Summer. Jess hits the road with Austin supergroup LOMA this month, but not before playing the North Door this Saturday.
-Taylor Wallace // Host, Thursdays 8p-11p & Saturdays 2p-6p; Producer, Eklektikos with John Aielli
Texas Standard: April 18, 2018
A first lady and political matriarch, but a thought leader? We remember Barbara Bush and her intervention in an American crisis of compassion. Plus, President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee sides with 4 liberal justices in an immigration case. The shape of things to come? A Texas legal scholar has his doubts, we’ll hear why. And Houston’s so-called Dangerous apartment epidemic. We’ll hear the charge and how the city’s responding. Also, choppy waters: a lawsuit challenges a longstanding licensing rule for maritime pilots. And in the US capitol, are Texans the only statues bearing arms? We’ll Politifact check that claim and a whole lot more today on the Texas Standard:
This Song: Bully
Alicia Bognanno, lead singer, songwriter and guitar player for the Nashville based band Bully explains how the imperfect beauty of the Breeder’s Pod showed her that she could make music the way she wanted to make it.
Bully has a new record out called Losing.
📸 Jorge Sanhueza-Lyon/KUTX
Subscribe via the Podcasts App, iTunes or Stitcher to get the new episodes of This Song delivered to you as soon as they come out.
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Listen to Bully’s latest record Losing
Listen to Kelley Deal of the Breeder’s episode of This Song
Check out Bully’s set from KUTX Live at the Four Seasons
Listen to Songs from Episode 127 of This Song
Night Drive: “Anyone’s Ghost”
Night Drive‘s Brandon Duhon and Rodney Connell don’t hide their taste for dark music. Their 80s-flavored synth-pop is inherently dark and Depeche-Mode like, relying on a thick web of samples and sounds to create an atmosphere and energy that is simultaneously appropriate for an arena of several thousand people or a damp, smokey nightclub of a couple hundred. (It’s also worth noting they were the first group to bring smoke machines into Studio 1A.) Selling out shows across town for a while, Night Drive’s sound and essence offer an experience that literally no one else in Austin is delivering. Their latest single covers the National, plucking it from its minimalist comfort zone and injecting it with the buzzing life force that is uniquely Night Drive.
“Anyone’s Ghost” is available now via Night Drive’s Bandcamp.
-Taylor Wallace // Host, Thursdays 8p-11p & Saturdays 2p-6p; Producer, Eklektikos with John Aielli
Texas Might Have Been Smaller
Aimee Nezhukumatathil
Poet Aimee Nezhukumatathil talks with poet and novelist Carrie Fountain about reclaiming the power, beauty, and wonder of a C-section birth through her poem “Self-Portrait as C-Section Scar.”
They also talk about Nezhukumatathil’s entry point into poetry through the work of Naomi Shihab Nye, and she shares one of her favorite poems, “Eclipse” from poet Jenny George’s debut book, The Dream of Reason.
Texas Standard: April 17, 2018
The Commander is Chief wields a lot of power over U-S military action, but where do those powers begin and end? We’ll explore. Also, it’s been almost 10 years since Hurricane Ike devastated Galveston. But the city still hasn’t rebuilt much of the housing many depend on. And it’s been exactly 5 years since a fire and explosion at a Central Texas fertilizer plant killed 15 people and destroyed a large part of a small city. What’s been done to prevent another catastrophe like West, Texas? Also, Pulitzer prize-winning author Lawrence Wright’s new book hits shelves today. “God Save Texas” is all about the state he calls home, including what he describes as AM and FM Texas. Plus we’ll hear the argument for why it seems Texas lawmakers could have been drunk when writing the liquor laws. Those stories and more today on the Texas Standard:
Jamestown Revival: “Love Is A Burden” (Live in Studio 1A)
This Magnolia, Texas-born troubadour team is ready once again to return to their roots! Sharing vocal responsibilities, Jamestown Revival is fronted by Zach Chance on piano, Jonathan Clay on guitar, and supplemented by drums and bass to create a unique melding of folk, rock, blues, country and of course, Americana.
Jamestown Revival is no stranger to Studio 1A, having made a couple appearances since their 2011 origins, and later this week they’ll be playing Friday night, 7PM on the Original Black’s BBQ Stage at Old Settler’s Music Fest. The folks of Jamestown Revival have been working every day on a new album to be revealed later this year, so fingers crossed that they’ll be performing some of the new stuff out at Old Settler’s! Even in the off chance that they’re not, treat yourself right now to a Studio 1A performance of “Love Is A Burden” and just try to keep your foot from stompin’!
–Jack Anderson (Host, Monday-Wednesday 8-11pm, Saturday 6-10am)
Texas Standard: April 16, 2018
With US missiles striking Syria over the weekend, the calculus changes for Texas’ biggest export. What does the conflict mean for the lone star state? We’ll explore. Also, a 92 year old Texas political matriarch said to be surrounded by family after an announcement that she’s now declining medical treatment. More on the former first lady Barbara Bush. Also, as the number of seniors in Texas skyrockets, a shortage of physicians to care for them. What’s next? We’ll explore. And will Democrats win the US house of representatives? NY times columnist Frank Bruni says “ask Texas”. We’ll ask Mr. Bruni just what he sees. And a second chance to see long lost moving images from the Lone Star State… the you tube of Texas? Those stories and so much more today on the Texas Standard:
The Worst Land Survey in U.S. History
By W. F. Strong
You can never underestimate the value of a good friendship forged early in life. If not for such a friendship, Texas would be nearly 1,000 square miles smaller.
Before I get to the friendship, come with me up to the northwest corner of the panhandle where Texas meets Oklahoma and New Mexico. If you were looking at a map you would see that the border between Oklahoma and New Mexico doesn’t meet up exactly with the border between Texas and New Mexico. The line makes a jog to the left. It goes 2.3 miles left before heading straight south. That jog is the result of a survey error that some have called the worst survey error in U.S. history. But it isn’t just a two mile error – that error gets bigger as it continues south 310 miles to the bottom Texas-New Mexico corner, where it turns west and heads for El Paso. All total the mistake amounts to a 942 square mile error, a land mass bigger than Houston, though long and skinny, like a gerrymandered voting district.
In truth, that land should have gone to New Mexico. That was what was supposed to happen when Texas sold off its northern and western territories for ten million dollars in 1850. The border between Texas and the New Mexico Territory was to be exactly along the 103rd Meridian. When the official survey was undertaken, almost ten years later, there was a problem with water,, Indians, stars, algebra and math, which all contributed to the error that ended up a blessing for Texas.
Naturally, there’s quite a good long story behind the mistake. It is far too complex for these few minutes. I will give you the “cut to the chase version.”
A man named John H. Clark was hired to do the survey and plant the monuments along the 103rd meridian. He started from the south and surveyed northward until he ran out of access to water. So he stopped and said, “I’ll just go up to the north end of Texas and come down.” So he did.
Clark started again northwest of present day Dalhart and headed south until the native Americans frightened him off. Though he was about 70 miles from connecting his two lines, he figured it was good enough and turned in his work. His two lines wouldn’t have intersected anyway. The problem was his northern starting point was about 2.3 miles west of where it should have been and his southern corner was nearly 3.8 miles west of where it should have been. Consequently, that border slides imperceptibly 1 ½ miles ever so gently southwest over a distance of 310 miles. Pull up a google map on your phone and align the southeastern corner of New Mexico with your left straight-edge phone border. You will see that the border slants off to the right up at the top. That’s the error. It amounts to 603,348 acres. About ¾ the size of the King Ranch.
Well, nobody knew it was wrong and so the bad survey based on poor calculations was certified by the U.S. in 1891 and it became the legal boundary.
By the time New Mexico was about to get statehood with the Enabling Act of 1910, it had become aware of Clark’s error and slipped into the statehood law a clause saying that the eastern boundary would be the true 103rd meridian. New Mexico would get its land back. All was going well and nobody was paying attention to the land grab except for John Farwell, who was an original investor in the XIT ranch. Those were the same investors who essentially built our state capital in Austin. Well, he realized that the XIT would lose hundreds of thousands of acres (and mineral rights) if the New Mexico plan went through as it was.
He couldn’t get any legislators to listen and so he did what we all do in times of trouble: he said, “Who do I know?” Just so happened that he knew President William Howard Taft. They had been good friends during their college years at Yale. So he went to see his old buddy, Howard. He explained the predicament and Taft immediately summoned powerful men to his office and told them that the Clark border would be the legal border when New Mexico was made a state or it wouldn’t be made one. He said that since the boundary had existed for more than fifty years, and had been certified 20 years before, it had to be grandfathered in. Otherwise, people who believed they were Texans would suddenly be in New Mexico and litigation over land titles would never end.
And that is how a survey error, and an old friendship ended up making Texas almost a thousand square miles bigger than it was supposed to be. Once again, it’s all about who you know.
A final note of interest. There is a town out in the Panhandle called Farwell, Texas. It’s just a few feet on the Texas side of the border with New Mexico. It is named after John Farwell. Had he failed to convince Taft to keep the old border line, the town named for him would have become Farwell, New Mexico.
Sources:
Brock, Ralph H. “Perhaps the Most Incorrect of any Land Survey in the United States”
Southern Historical Quarterly, April 2006, pp. 431-462.
Haley, J. Evets. The XIT Ranch of Texas and the Early Days of the Llano Estacado, University of Oklahoma Press, 1953.
Hoover, Mike. “The Southeast Corner of New Mexico.” The Texas Surveyor, May, 2015, pp. 16-23.