Laura Mallonee

What a delight! Thanks @longreads.com

This Texas Teenager Is the Best Female Grappler in the World. Don’t Expect Her to Talk About It. Not yet twenty, Helena Crevar is one of the most feared fighters in martial arts. What’s her secret?

Not yet twenty, Helena Crevar is one of the most feared fighters in martial arts. 🤼

What’s her secret? https://www.texasmonthly.com/arts-entertainment/teenager-helena-crevar-best-female-jujitsu-grappler/

Saving the Venus Flytrap: How One Woman Rallied a Town Around Its Weirdest Attraction Despite their outsize hold on popular imagination, Venus flytraps are native to a tiny corner of the globe: the Coastal Plain of the Carolinas. As development threatens, one town—spurred on by one tir...

“'When I was young, I wanted to see old trees,' Moore says as we walk along a sandy path littered with pine needles. 'Now that I’m old, I love to see young trees.'" Lovely piece on the woman (and town) saving the Venus fly trap from development, via @longreads.com gardenandgun.com/feature/venu...

Issue drop, November, Texas Highways.

Christopher Collins on East Texas Forests

@lauramallonee.bsky.social on Parks Volunteers

@bobby-aleman.bsky.social on Barton Springs

After the July 4 Hill Country floods, residents of Sandy Creek in Travis County felt ignored, even as officials insisted they were doing everything possible to help them. This gap in perception fuels a crisis of trust that threatens unincorporated communities nationwide. My latest @grist.org

Washington, DC under military occupation in last August 2025, with banners proclaiming the absolute power of the primus inter pares

This is a real photograph of Washington, DC this week, where the United States president has ordered military occupation in peacetime, and ordered the display of colossal portraits of himself.

www.wsj.com/politics/pol...

The History Behind Texas’ First Woman Governor How Miriam “Ma” Ferguson won the state 100 years ago

Texas politics has never been short on controversy—and the state’s first woman governor, inaugurated a century ago, brought plenty of her own. I unpacked her bizarre story for the July/August issue of @texashighways.bsky.social

texashighways.com/culture/hist...

My latest @grist.org , co-published with @texastribune.org, follows a group of prep school boys in Dallas who rise early on weekends to rescue rare native plants from bulldozers — to the consternation of some professional conservationists in Texas.

For perspective, Musk's fence is just a couple feet shorter than some stretches of the US-Mexico border wall.

Austin Is Getting Bigger. So Are Its Fences. New homeowners are skirting city codes to close themselves off from their neighbors with sky-high, opaque barricades.

16 feet might be a record though. It's one foot taller than what I found while reporting my story on rising fence heights in Austin for @texasmonthly.bsky.social '
www.texasmonthly.com/style/austin...

Won’t You Be My Neighbor? No Thanks, Elon Musk.

Tbh, Musk's fence isn't exactly an outlier. In Austin, a lot of rich people are guilty of "building stuff and then asking for permission later."

www.nytimes.com/2025/05/05/t...

My first piece for @gristnews.bsky.social explores how restoring the thorn forest of South Texas can boost community resilience. Turns out, what's good for animals may also be good for humans.

A Museum Exhibit Challenges the Myth of the White Cowboy. It Opens With a Trigger Warning. The Amon Carter added a mature content warning soon after opening “Cowboy,” a show originally aimed at “disrupting” the portrayal of the Western ideal as cisgender, straight, and white.

Minutes from Fort Worth's historic stockyards, an exhibit exploring the myth of the white cowboy was temporarily shut down after complaints about "mature content." Artists and many museum staff were left in the dark. My story for @texasmonthly.bsky.social

www.texasmonthly.com/arts-enterta...

I did a crazy thing and wrote about it for @texashighways.bsky.social. This is a story about me, my dad, and the part of Texas where he grew up, a place that both enchants and bewilders me. Oh, and there are alligators, too!

Here I am on yet another social media site, which happens to share the same name as the company that tunes up my furnace.