http://www.leecullum.com en-us http://www.leecullum.com N/A lee@leecullum.com Thu, 09 Sep 2010 15:16:32 -0500 20 http://www.leecullum.com/articles/108/1/A-Governor-for-Texas If at first you don't secede, try, try again. It was last April 15, the cruelest day of the cruelest month, when Gov. Rick Perry appeared at a tea party in Austin and told an agitated crowd, disturbed about taxes due that moment, that the country was being strangled by taxation, spending and debt, this from the Huffington Post. Afterward, he explained to reporters that Texas could secede from the U.S. anytime it wanted to, though he wasn't pressing for it then. However, he said, "Texas is a very unique place, and we're a pretty independent lot to boot." lee@leecullum.com (Lee Cullum) Sun, 17 Jan 2010 00:00:00 -0600 http://www.leecullum.com/articles/106/1/City-Design-Studio The Wyly Theatre and Winspear Opera House have burst into being, bringing with them glamour, glory and great promise of things to come. Now Deedie Rose, one of the major movers of the performing arts center, and her husband, Rusty, have put up $2 million (from a gift of $5 million to the Trinity Trust) to create the Dallas City Design Studio, an essential effort if Dallas is to build on the brilliant beginning in the Arts District. lee@leecullum.com (Lee Cullum) Sat, 12 Dec 2009 00:00:00 -0600 http://www.leecullum.com/articles/103/1/Don%26%2339%3Bt-Lower-the-Flag-on-Culture-at-City-Hall Who would envy Dallas City Manager Mary Suhm, as she rides the whirlwind at City Hall, struggling to cut $200 million from next year's budget? The figures are one thing; fairness another; and good, farsighted sense another still. lee@leecullum.com (Lee Cullum) Sat, 08 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0500 http://www.leecullum.com/articles/99/1/How-Non-Profits-can-Survive-the-Deluge It's a tough time for everybody, but especially for non-profit organizations. While they might not be as tyrannized by the bottom line as a business, even so, they do have to take in as much as they spend, and that's not easy. How, then, to survive? lee@leecullum.com (Lee Cullum) Thu, 18 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0500 http://www.leecullum.com/articles/98/1/Ron-Kirk-Hit-Stride-as-U.S.-Trade-Rep lee@leecullum.com (Lee Cullum) Thu, 18 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0500 http://www.leecullum.com/articles/95/1/Wanted%3A--Action-in-the-Arts-District Dallas has a way of doing big things in bad times. It passed the bond election for the Dallas Museum of Art in the midst of raging inflation in 1979. It opened the Meyerson Symphony Center during the collapse of real estate, banking and oil and gas in 1989, and now, in 2009, it's about to launch the Winspear Opera House and Wyly Theater, in the middle of the chronicle of a crash foretold. Every ten years, with catastrophe on every front, Dallas has a way of renewing itself. lee@leecullum.com (Lee Cullum) Thu, 12 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0500 http://www.leecullum.com/articles/91/1/Two-for-the-City It's a tale of two cities, in a way. The race that's shaping up next May for City Council District 13 pits the best of Dallas as we have known it against Dallas in a great wave of becoming. lee@leecullum.com (Lee Cullum) Sun, 11 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0600 http://www.leecullum.com/articles/87/1/Something%26%2339%3Bs-Always-Happening-on-the-Katy The future of any city depends on its ability to attract and keep bright and innovative people. So said Richard Florida of the University of Toronto. If he is right, and I suspect he is, then one thing that will really make Dallas a Mecca for young talent is the Katy Trail- Arts Loop. This is a walk-and-bike promenade that connects the Katy Trail not only to the Arts District but also to Victory Park, the Harwood buildings and, eventually, the Trinity River. Using existing streets, it would separate cars from walkers and bikers in a way that keeps everybody safe and happy. How often can you do that? More often than we know. lee@leecullum.com (Lee Cullum) Wed, 09 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0500 http://www.leecullum.com/articles/80/1/Developers%26%2339%3B-Escort-Service Weep no more for Turtle Creek where new cement now grows;Don't plant a tree; it might be just where a turnpike goes. That was a song from the Dallas Press Club's Gridiron Show years ago, when Turtle Creek was threatened by annihilation, or death by development. Now the Katy Trail, the second treasure in this lovely, leafy part of Dallas (the creek itself, of course, is the first), may be about to come under siege, and some at City Hall seem oblivious to the danger. lee@leecullum.com (Lee Cullum) Mon, 25 Feb 2008 00:00:00 -0600 http://www.leecullum.com/articles/78/1/Crystal-Ball-2008 What lies ahead in 2008? A new president elected for the country, to be sure. A new presidential library settled, finally, for Dallas, in all likelihood. What else? Here are a few predictions of things to come. lee@leecullum.com (Lee Cullum) Mon, 14 Jan 2008 00:00:00 -0600 http://www.leecullum.com/articles/73/1/SMU-Drinking What can be done about the persistent allegiance to alcohol that troubles too many campuses across the country, including Southern Methodist University? Holly Hacker reported in the Dallas Morning News that campus police "issued more than 230 violations related to alcohol and drugs between August and October 8, up from about 160 during that period last year." However, for those same weeks in 2005, the number was 300, but it's hard to glean much from these figures. After all, 2006, which would appear to be a moment of relative restraint, saw the first of three deaths among SMU students from substance abuse. lee@leecullum.com (Lee Cullum) Tue, 30 Oct 2007 00:00:00 -0500 http://www.leecullum.com/articles/69/1/Individual-Efforts-Can-Make-Schools-Better The news has not been good for schools in North Texas. According to one press report, seventy-six campuses in this part of the state have failed for the second year in a row or more to meet standards set by No Child Left Behind legislation. Still there are bright lights in spite of everything, and they emanate from individuals -- bold, imaginative, persistent and steady -- who have started programs drenched in clarity, unburdened by ambiguity and dazzling in their results. Here are a few of them. lee@leecullum.com (Lee Cullum) Wed, 05 Sep 2007 00:00:00 -0500 http://www.leecullum.com/articles/65/1/Scientists-Please-Apply Lee Fikes, no-nonsense president and CEO of Dallas' Leland Fikes Foundation, is alarmed by the loss of scientific integrity at all levels of American government. What passes for science, he is convinced, is too often really propaganda, signifying nothing but the views of the zealous or the cynical. lee@leecullum.com (Lee Cullum) Mon, 09 Jul 2007 00:00:00 -0500 http://www.leecullum.com/articles/63/1/A-Mayor-for-Dallas What do the people of Dallas expect in a mayor? The answer is not an administrator with a Jimmy Carter-like concentration on the details of government. We have a city manager for that and a good one in Mary Suhn. Ironically, since the powers of the mayor are weak, the force of that mayor's imagination must be especially strong. The great mayors of Dallas have been champions of great projects. lee@leecullum.com (Lee Cullum) Mon, 21 May 2007 00:00:00 -0500 http://www.leecullum.com/articles/56/1/The-Bush-Library To see how the think tank George W. Bush has in mind to accompany his library might work, it's useful to look at the model he wants to follow -- the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. As a media fellow there three times, most recently last spring, I can report that this is a respectable organization where the views you hear primarily are those of the Reagan wing of the Republican Party. lee@leecullum.com (Lee Cullum) Wed, 24 Jan 2007 00:00:00 -0600 http://www.leecullum.com/articles/50/1/Brainy-Cities There was a time when the sea was the great creator of cities. Ports such as Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Newport and Charleston arose on the eastern coast of what would become the United States. Then it was inland waterways that took urban America westward and led to the birth of Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Lexington, Louisville and St. Louis. lee@leecullum.com (Lee Cullum) Wed, 01 Nov 2006 00:00:00 -0600 http://www.leecullum.com/articles/48/1/Dallas-Style Style, I have come to believe, is not necessarily a superficial matter. It exists on many levels. Style is an attitude of the spirit. Style, when it works, mocks fate, keeps fate at bay. So where, I wonder, do we go in search of the Dallas style? lee@leecullum.com (Lee Cullum) Mon, 02 Oct 2006 00:00:00 -0500 http://www.leecullum.com/articles/39/1/Marching-On Women's Equality Day -- that's what's coming to Dallas City Hall August 23, with a luncheon to follow at the Women's Museum -- all to celebrate the triumph of the suffragists, that great First Wave of feminism led by Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and others who won the right to the ballot box on August 26, 1920, when legislators in Tennessee approved the 19th Amendment by one vote. lee@leecullum.com (Lee Cullum) Wed, 23 Aug 2006 00:00:00 -0500 http://www.leecullum.com/articles/40/1/Beyond-Left-and-Right This city -- every American city -- is beset by isms. For a long time leaders in Dallas thought they were free of such things. They believed, like John F. Kennedy, that they had no ideology, that their ideology was problem solving. This persisted through the years of Lyndon Johnson, who carried Dallas in 1964 despite the growing wave of Republican economic conservatism lead by Peter O'Donnell, Rita Clements and a band of breathtakingly effective forces. lee@leecullum.com (Lee Cullum) Fri, 07 Jul 2006 00:00:00 -0500 http://www.leecullum.com/articles/30/1/How-To-Assess-A-City%3F How can we assess the essence of a city? It is to be found, I believe, in two aspects that never can be disguised -- the quality of its cultural life and the care with which it ameliorates the plight of the poor. The two are not unrelated. lee@leecullum.com (Lee Cullum) Mon, 19 Jun 2006 00:00:00 -0500 http://www.leecullum.com/articles/28/1/Peggy-Anschutz I have long since believed that Dallas cannot afford to lose a single talented person. So it will be hard to say goodbye to Peggy Anschutz when she leaves at the end of May, to live in Cape Cod. Peggy Anschutz virtually has been the mayor of Forest Heights neighborhood in South Dallas. Nestled in a triangle bounded by Interstate 45, Martin Luther King Boulevard and Lamar, only a short space from the Trinity River, this is a section of the city that was harassed by the vilest kind of degradation until Ms. Anschutz arrived and willed it into renewal. lee@leecullum.com (Lee Cullum) Mon, 01 May 2006 00:00:00 -0500 http://www.leecullum.com/articles/9/1/Taiwan Never underestimate the canniness of leaders in Beijing. No sooner had they riled Washington with an anti-secession law that called for force against Taiwan if its feisty President Chen Shui-bian made any moves toward independence than they invited the chairman of Taipei's two top opposition parties to China for high-level talks. lee@leecullum.com (Lee Cullum) Sat, 01 Apr 2006 00:00:00 -0600 http://www.leecullum.com/articles/8/1/Snider-Plaza There is no more charming shopping center in Dallas than Snider Plaza, unless it's Highland Park Village. But where the Village is blessed by a small circle of enlightened owners and excellent management, Snider Plaza must stagger through life with each of its parcels held by a different proprietor. Now Albert Huddleston and his Legacy Hillcrest Investments are returning with a new proposal for the center that will be considered at the University Park Planning and Zoning Commission March 6. lee@leecullum.com (Lee Cullum) Sat, 01 Apr 2006 00:00:00 -0600 http://www.leecullum.com/articles/7/1/Orange Suddenly the color orange is hot, hot, hot. Look at men's ties. Notice blouses on women. Take a look at bridesmaid's dresses this season.  Orange has spread from Hermes in Highland Park Village, where it's long been the signature shade, to fashion emporiums all over the city. It connotes sunshine, radical youth, radiant independence. Threatening always to be too much, orange can scarcely contain its own exuberance. lee@leecullum.com (Lee Cullum) Sat, 01 Apr 2006 00:00:00 -0600 http://www.leecullum.com/articles/4/1/Casino Is anybody up for a casino in downtown Dallas? Mayor Laura Miller is, and she has said she would lobby the legislature to get one for Reunion Arena. It would be, she told the Dallas Morning News, "a great shot in the arm for our city." lee@leecullum.com (Lee Cullum) Sat, 01 Apr 2006 00:00:00 -0600 http://www.leecullum.com/articles/1/1/Katrina "There's only one thing as powerful as the Mississippi River," Abraham Lincoln once told a visitor from Britain, "and that's the London Times." The Times may have faded under the aura of Rupert Murdoch, but the Mississippi River goes on, still a force, but a force with which governments sometimes forget, to their regret, to reckon. The same could be said of the Gulf of Mexico and Lake Pontchartrain. lee@leecullum.com (Lee Cullum) Sat, 01 Apr 2006 00:00:00 -0600 http://www.leecullum.com/articles/6/1/Intelligent-Design Here we go again. Evolution once more is under attack, this time by opponents far more sophisticated than those who push creationism. In Dover, PA the school board voted to have teachers read to their students a statement that Charles Darwin's "theory is a theory. . .not a fact." Everyone in the classroom should  "keep an open mind" and consider the possibility of Intelligent Design. This is an approach developed by Michael Behe, a biochemist at Lehigh University, who argues that the "irreducible complexity" of human life would be impossible without an overarching architect. lee@leecullum.com (Lee Cullum) Sun, 01 Jan 2006 00:00:00 -0600 http://www.leecullum.com/articles/5/1/Dallas-Identity lee@leecullum.com (Lee Cullum) Sun, 01 Jan 2006 00:00:00 -0600 http://www.leecullum.com/articles/61/1/Ray-Nasher-and-His-Garden Ray Nasher has the stamina of a revolutionary, the staying power of a long-distance runner and the standards of Leonardo da Vinci. He insists on the best, and that is what the city will get when the Nasher Sculpture Center opens next month. It will be not only an extraordinary gift to Dallas but also the crown of a life quintessentially devoted to quality of the highest order. lee@leecullum.com (Lee Cullum) Mon, 15 Sep 2003 00:00:00 -0500