Texans are blessed with an extra hour of sleep with the return to standard time this month. Turning back the clock keeps Cowboys and Texans games from conflicting with Sunday morning church services. November also marks the kickoff of the busiest time of year for restaurants that provide mail-order meats.
Daylight Saving Time Law Intercepted
Daylight saving time ends November 1, much to the chagrin of some members of the Texas House who sought to exclude the state from the twice-yearly practice of adjusting clocks one hour. Football is partly to blame for us “falling back” this month. Lawmakers in May defeated a bill sponsored by Rep. Dan Flynn of Van, who called adjusting the clocks every spring and fall “simply a hassle that we don’t need anymore,” The Associated Press reported.
Support for the bill, which would have become law in September, waned amid realizations that being out of step with most of the rest of the country could create a scheduling conflict between the times of church services in Texas and NFL games elsewhere. As Dallas Rep. Rafael Anchia declared:
“I don’t want to miss church, and I don’t want to miss the Cowboys game.”
Good Taste in Gifts
The holiday season is right around the corner and with it the strains of coming up with gift ideas and then shopping. It can be the pits.
The pits, though, might be your solution. Consider sending a package straight from the pits or grills of some of Texas’ legendary purveyors of brisket, ribs, sausage and steak. Many make gift giving as easy as a phone call or an online visit.
Perini Ranch in Buffalo Gap ships its mesquite-smoked, peppered beef tenderloin —“many thousands every year,” says co-owner Lisa Perini—all over the country, and 85 percent of its mail-order business happens between Thanksgiving and Christmas.
“It really is a thrill when we get a call, and it’s somebody in Iowa, and they’ve tasted our beef,” Perini says. “They’ll tell us, ‘My kids won’t come for Christmas if we don’t have one of your tenderloins.’”
County Line’s Air Ribs business peaks this time of year, too. “The real crunch is the last week before Christmas,” says Scott Ziskovsky, marketing director and a member of Pedernales Electric Cooperative. “It’s crazy.”
Reaugh’s Texas Landscapes
The works of Frank Reaugh, one of the Southwest’s most distinguished artists who documented and interpreted the region before the turn of the 20th century, enthrall admirers at museums and online. Frank Reaugh: Landscapes of Texas and the American West, an exhibition exploring his life and work, continues through November 29 at the Harry Ransom Center in Austin. The book Windows on the West: The Art of Frank Reaugh (University of Texas Press and Harry Ransom Center, 2015) accompanies the exhibit.
“As a witness to the cattle drives of the 1880s and the trail drivers’ way of life, Reaugh gave his artworks an authoritative quality that will undoubtedly sustain his well-deserved reputation as the painter of the Texas longhorn for many years to come,” says Peter F. Mears, curator of art at the Ransom Center. Online visitors can explore the Ransom Center’s digital collection of 217 Reaugh pieces. More than 700 pieces are rotated on display at the Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum in Canyon. The National Ranching Heritage Center in Lubbock holds 200 pieces and periodically exhibits them.
By the Numbers: 1.68 Million
Veterans Day is November 11, and Texas is home to 1.68 million military veterans, based on September 2014 statistics from the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs. Of those, 1.31 million are wartime vets. In The Next Song, musician Darden Smith tells about the healing process of helping veterans put their feelings into words through songwriting.
