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If you weren’t aware, I’ve been walking around Dallas, mostly downtown, for the last six or seven years at least, taking photos with my iPhone while I do so. A year or so ago, I turned some of them into a book. I also post them pretty regularly to my Instagram page. Starting now and (most likely) every week going forward, I’m going to drop a few of them here on Wednesdays. Just a little break for all of us from the news.

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Last Updated, 7/13, 7:45 p.m.

Temperatures in North Texas reached 104 degrees by 3 p.m., which was exactly an hour after the agency that manages our power grid formally requested conservation from its users.

Around noon, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas warned that demand for electricity on Wednesday may outpace supply. The press release asked that everyone conserve once again between the hours of 2 p.m. and 9 p.m., but said that it expected no system-wide outages.

An hour before the conservation measures started, the state’s demand for electricity was 73,390 megawatts, while its committed capacity (or supply) was at 76,601 megawatts. There was about 2,900 megawatts of reserve capacity, which is markedly less than we had at that point Monday, the first time ERCOT asked everyone to power down. One megawatt can power about 200 homes on a summer day. 

Unlike Monday, ERCOT predicted that the tightest hour would be between 3 p.m. and 4 p.m., with a forecasted demand of 78,451 megawatts. At 4 p.m. demand was at 78,350, and committed capacity was 76,897, with about 2,702 megawatts of reserve capacity. One megawatt can power about 200 homes on a summer day. 

By 7:30 p.m., it looked like once again the state had dodged a bullet when it comes to the prospect of rolling outages, with demand at 74,139 megawatts and committed capacity at 77,512 megawatts. While there were some close calls (at one point it looked like there was a considerable gap between demand and supply around 3:30 p.m.), most were breathing a sigh of relief by about 5 p.m. when it looked like demand was slowing.

However, around 5:30 p.m., the city of Farmersville tweeted that it would be conducting its own rolling blackouts at the behest of ERCOT. Both ERCOT and the Public Utilities Commission denied making that request, and by 7 p.m., the city walked that back, telling WFAA that it was a “miscommunication.”

“We are aware that the previous post caused alarm and we are sorry for any inconvenience that this may have caused,” City Manager Ben White told the station.

Some residents in northeast Dallas reported outages, but those don’t appear to be due to anything related to today’s supply concerns, as the PUC said any outages “are local in nature.” And it’s worth noting that a lot of things can shut power down, anything from a downed tree, a car wreck hitting a utility pole, or a transformer malfunction.

You can keep an eye on outages here and here.

The ongoing worry about demand outpacing supply comes from a confluence of things. ERCOT says that thermal generation—that means coal- and gas-powered plants—is experiencing forced outages beyond what the agency anticipated for the day (coming up about 13,000 megawatts short), wind generation is down, and developing cloud cover in West Texas reduced the amount of solar power available. 

I don’t know Dr. Norma Melamed. She’s a neurologist. She sent me an email this morning. It read:

“With the sweltering temps in Dallas, I thought you might enjoy some pics of my little secret garden oasis that is surviving & still happy with a lot of attention & loving care, multiple outdoor ‘rooms’ each with their own ambience to enhance the senses and mood, every seasonal plant planted by me to create an artistic environment within the ‘frame’ of the yard perimeter fence. ENJOY!!”

Here’s the thing: my own personal backyard in East Dallas is turning into a hellscape. So is my front yard. And my side yards. Which is why I especially dug Bethany’s LeadingOff newsletter this morning, because she gave me a tip about a yard-watering alert that the city of Dallas can send you based on your address. Here’s where to sign up. Oh, and you might want to subscribe to the daily LeadingOff newsletter because it’s awesome.

I digress. My plants and grass are withering. We put in a 15-foot red leaf maple at the start of the pandemic. I noticed this morning that some of its leaves are burned. I mean, like, as if someone had held a flame to them. Here’s what the Texas Trees Foundation says you should do to save your trees. Anyway, I’m struggling to get through this heat.

Not Dr. Norma and her little secret garden oasis. Such a smug neurologist!

I’m kidding. I actually found it therapeutic to look at Norma’s backyard. I want to go WFH in Norma’s backyard. Wonder if she’d give me her wifi password. Anyway, have a look for yourself. And stay hydrated, my friends.

The best part of writing this profile of Lory Masters was the road trips. Sometimes she drove, sometimes I drove, but after only speaking to her a couple of times, it was like we were old friends cruising Dallas and reminiscing about the good old days.

During one of our first visits, she drove me around Loryland, the neighborhood in Northwest Dallas that was informally named for her. We visited her friends, saw beautifully remodeled homes, and visited the quaint pool clubs that dot the neighborhoods and provide respite for local families trying to beat the heat.

Later, I would drive us both up Interstate 35 to the University of North Texas to visit a special collection at the university library, most of which is made up of her personal belongings. It documents the history of the LGBTQ community in Dallas.

While it was amazing to look through old photos and see her motorcycle club jacket, the chat during the drive was what made the trip special. She told me stories about entertaining political leaders in her home and raising millions of dollars for causes too numerous to mention in the story, how she battled bigots and once feared that her way of life could get her arrested at any moment. But she also spoke of her daughter and granddaughter, who she described with just as much pride as when speaking about Judge Sarah T. Hughes or Barney Frank.

This, I learned, was what made Lory so special. When you were with her, you were family. No one else mattered when you were on a drive with her. She made you the center of the world no matter who you were, and it was impossible not to feel like you had been friends for decades. On our road trips, I shared the feeling. As I interviewed those who knew her, friends and family told me they all felt the same way.

Somehow it made sense that she would be at the center of so much North Texas history, from a fiery speech at the Texas Republican Convention and starting on the defensive line for Dallas’ women’s professional football team to starting her own realty business and founding a lesbian motorcycle club.

I hope you enjoy reading the story as much as I did reporting it. It’s a wild ride, and the story from the July issue of D is online today.

You Saved the Grid. Brad Jones, the chief executive of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, said Tuesday that Texans heeded the call for energy conservation on Monday. The supply was touch and go heading into the high demand of the afternoon, but Jones said enough people turned up their thermostats and flicked off lights to save the same amount of power produced by two large plants. We’ve already broken the record demand for energy eight times this summer, and maybe relying on conservation efforts to keep the energy flowing isn’t the best solution, but we made it. For now.

Catalytic Converter Thefts Up 5,300 Percent Since ’19. Yeesh. I know a few of my coworkers have had to deal with this over the years, and so have a ton of Texans. AAA Texas says the percentage increase comes from analysis of claims data, and they have a few tips that include such extremes as engraving your VIN number on the catalytic converter.

Deck Parks Head North. McKinney is trying to figure out how to help pedestrians cross Texas Highway 5 between Louisiana and Virginia streets. One idea is lowering the highway and creating a park over it, like a baby Klyde Warren.

Another Day of Triple Digits. It’s still this week, and it’s still July, so it’s still hot. Today will be the 11th straight 100-degree day.

Let me start this whole thing off by saying that I am not a lawyer. If I were a lawyer, I would lawyer all day long in my lawyer office doing lawyer things, making lawyer money and occasionally saying things in Latin that aren’t hexes or prayers.

Now that we’ve gotten that out of our way, let me alert you to the fact that apparently there has been some movement in the defamation suit filed by noted energy titan, park namer, and Preston Hollow resident Kelcy Warren against Beto O’Rourke, who is the Democratic nominee for governor and faces heavy war-chested incumbent Greg Abbott.

In short, Warren’s case stays alive for now, thanks in part to where he filed it—San Saba County, which is pretty much right in the center of the state, and about three-and-a-half hours from Warren’s Dallas house.

If you do not remember the particulars of this case (because, let’s face it, there are so many notable court things going on right now), let me explain what’s going on.

The city of Dallas has launched a survey to help inform how it will update its 11-year-old bike plan. That survey is live through July 17.

But first, an anecdote.

I live in Oak Cliff, where the city recently reverted Polk and Tyler streets into two-way thoroughfares. The city began this process in 2016 with a goal of slowing traffic and encouraging more pedestrian activity along these streets. When they were one-ways, they were raceways in and out of the neighborhood.

There’s a new roundabout that allows drivers to access both directions of Tyler and Polk at their northern junction, a few blocks above Davis Street. Past Davis, Polk Street splits into a driving lane, a bike lane, and another lane for on-street parking abutting a dozen or so new homes.

When there are no cars parked in those spots, drivers take the lane as their own, zooming perilously close to the designated bike lane, as the gentleman in the red Hummer did in the photo above this post. I’ve seen some cars even wait for the traffic light at Jefferson Boulevard while idling in that bike lane. (That light and others in the corridor still blink red six weeks after the street opened up to traffic, for some reason.)

This is the sort of thing I would like to share with the city.

By now I hope you are aware of the concept of Alex Stein. He’s a local guy who does his best to look like Tucker Carlson, sound like Alex Jones, and live large in his father’s Highland Park duplex. D Magazine published a story about him in our May issue, wherein we explained how he was using open-mic time at public meetings to troll municipal bodies and catapult himself onto a national stage. Stein wanted to be a reality TV star; he has settled on this.

So when I heard last month that the Dallas County Young Republicans planned to have Stein speak at one of their meetings, I emailed the group’s president, Chad Cohen, who is an SMU Cox grad and managing partner of Lone Wolf Oil, which doesn’t appear to have a website. I asked Cohen to confirm whether his group planned to host Stein. Cohen wouldn’t answer the question and wanted to know why I was asking. I told him I didn’t have a high opinion of Stein and was curious why the Dallas County Young Republicans would entertain his comments.

In part, Cohen replied: “I’m not going to share information regarding any of our upcoming speakers. I will tell you that our organization is committed to hosting a broad array of speakers with a diverse set of viewpoints. One of the fundamental tenets that we hold as Republicans and as conservatives is that the free and open expression of ideas is vital to the preservation of democracy. We welcome engagement with conflicting viewpoints that promote a climate of ideological independence.”

Cohen wouldn’t speak to me on the phone. I suppose engaging with my conflicting viewpoint was a bridge too far for him.

My kid’s feet are bigger than his bedroom, so we decided it’s probably time to start looking for a new house to fill with our shin guards and never-used craft supplies. And the timing really couldn’t be better. Right now, everyone is paying $4 million over the asking price and the description of every house includes words like “BEST AND FINAL OFFERS ONLY.”

It’s super. 

Interest rates are going up. There’s a recession looming. And inventory of houses is still near record lows. From a recent Zillow report dated May 19: “Over the next three months, Zillow expects home values to grow 5.2 percent, down from an expectation for 5.5 percent growth in the previous month’s forecast. Zillow’s forecast for existing home sales has been lowered as well, now predicting 5.73 million sales in 2022. That would mark a 6.4 percent decrease from 2021.”

Translation: your Dallas home-buying forecast calls for 100 percent chance of bidding over asking against 110 potential buyers while the house is still marked “Coming Soon” on Zillow (no pictures available).

Even though it’s the worst time to try to buy a house and the whole process of counting your pennies to figure out what you can even afford is incredibly stressful, you get caught up in the excitement. Like, way too caught up. When you get a notification that “There’s a house in your zone!” the heart skips a beat. “In your price range!” You feel the promise of a forever-65-degrees-and-sunny future overtake you. “And zoned for your preferred elementary school!” Holy outdoor kitchen. The Wordle can wait.

You click the link, and the description starts off great: “This two-story stunner in the sought-after neighborhood of White Lake Hollowlands boasts a master suite on the first floor for ease of passing out after a long week of trying to pay off this house, and so much shiplap, it’s an actual ship now. You ship this home.” But then comes the bad news: “This isn’t a house—it’s an experience.” Oh, no. 

More Heat. Join in with everyone’s favorite new pastime. Watch the ERCOT dashboard all day and see if those supply and demand lines cross while you wonder why Texas really deregulated an electricity market that runs on a power grid isolated from the rest of the country. Not great, Bob!

Marion Barber’s Cause of Death. The Collin County Medical Examiner’s office determined that the former Cowboys running back died of heat stroke. He was found dead in his apartment on June 1. His unit’s thermostat was set at 91 degrees. The coroner’s report noted: “Mr. Barber was known to exercise in sauna-like conditions.”

North Texas Housing Market Cools. Data out of the Texas Real Estate Research Center at Texas A&M show that the number of pre-owned home sales in June declined by 8 percent in Dallas-Fort Worth when compared to the previous June. And supply is up. We’ve got about two months of inventory now, whereas in April it was just .9 of a month. (Six months of inventory is considered a balanced market.)

A group of conservative Texas legislators on July 7 sent a letter to Dallas law firm Sidley Austin threatening to file future legislation to outlaw the firm’s ability to cover the cost of abortions and reproductive health travel costs for its employees.

The letter was signed by 11 legislators in the Texas Freedom Caucus, including North Texas state Reps. Matt Krause, whose District 93 includes portions of Fort Worth, Arlington, and northern Tarrant County; Matt Shaheen, of District 66 in Plano; and Brian Harrison, who represents Waxahachie, Ennis, and Midlothian in District 10.

It is addressed to North Texas lawyer Yvette Ostolaza, who chairs the firm’s management committee and effectively functions as its CEO. Sidley Austin is one of the largest firms in the country and is one of several large companies that has promised to pay for its employees’ reproductive health costs following the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade and the state of Texas’ restrictive abortion law.

“It also appears that Sidley has been complicit in illegal abortions that were performed in Texas before and after the Supreme Court’s ruling… We are writing to inform you of the consequences that you and your colleagues will face for these actions,” the letter says.

The 11 legislators would need to generate enough support for the bill to pass out of committee and then be considered and approved by the full House and Senate before it would end up on the governor’s desk for his signature.

Nevertheless, the letter threatens legislation that would make it illegal for companies to pay for employee costs associated with reproductive health support. The letter suggests that an employer would be prohibited from paying for elective abortions or reimbursing abortion-related expenses, regardless of whether the abortion occurs in a state where the procedure is legal. It would make such action a felony.