2023 February Oak Cliff Advocate

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ABOUT THE COVER

A mural that used to be painted in Bishop Arts off West Davis Street. Photography by Jessica Turner.

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George Mason, Patti Vinson, Carol Toler, Sam Gillespie, Lucy Erspamer, Matthew Ruffner, Eric Folkerth, Kathy Tran, Emil Lippe, Corrie Aune, Yuvie Styles, Shelby Tauber, Azul Sordo, Johnathan

MAXWELL RASOR

MEET MAXWELL RASOR

Interview by ANDREA HANCOCK Photography by JULIA CARTWRIGHT

It was an unseasonably warm November day, and the open-air market at Greenville and Oram was packed with people. Among the vendors offering all sorts of wares, like custom skateboards or homemade hot sauce, there was a tent filled with wire sculptures of animals.

Maxwell Rasor, the man who made the sculptures, sat at the back of the tent, twisting a bird into life with a pair of pliers and looking just as wiry as his creations. He sat the bird down every time people stopped by the tent in order to greet them. His hands were stained black from the oil coating the wires, so handshakes were out of the question, but he offered every guest a wave and a hello. Then, he waited patiently to see if they had any questions about the art.

Here are the answers to the most common ones: Each sculpture takes about an hour to make, maybe longer if it’s particularly detailed. Birds and fish are the most popular with customers, because sporadically people will recognize their favorite species. Dogs are a popular choice, too, but Rasor says that a lot of the dogs he makes are by commission, so customers can receive a sculpture based on the likeness of their own pet.

One of the other common questions is how Rasor conceptualizes each creation in a 3D space. That question is trickier to answer, because it comes to Rasor naturally. But part of it is because he’s been making sculptures for almost his entire life.

“My dad was a sculptor growing up, so I was always kind of into it,” Rasor says. “I kind of grew up sitting in his lap with him bending wire right in front of my face, and it just kind of caught on.”

Rasor was born and raised in Oak Cliff, and he made his first creations when he was about 6 years old. That is also about the same time his father stopped sculpting; Rasor’s parents got a divorce, and his father had to focus on being a single parent. But Rasor never stopped, and he attended W.E. Greiner and Booker T. Washington for middle and high school to keep honing his artistic skills.

After high school, he moved with his then-girlfriend Ariel Reno, who is now his wife, to Austin. They moved around Texas as Reno, who designs prosthetics, completed residencies. Her last residency was in San Antonio, and when she completed it, she received a job offer in the city. A few years later, she gave birth to the couple’s first child. When Reno returned to work, Rasor would stay home to watch their son, but he continued to sell his artwork, too.

“My wife is definitely the breadwinner in our family,” Rasor says. “She was like, ‘I can make more money than you can, but make what you can.’ And I do. I watch the kid and save cash and make sure he is learning how to read.”

Then, when their son was a few months old, the COVID-19 pandemic began.

“And so I spent two years just making stuff,” Rasor says.

Rasor and Reno moved to East Dallas in October 2021 to be closer to Reno’s parents.

“I think the pandemic changed everything here,” Rasor says of Dallas’ art scene. For example, before he moved away, there were few vendor markets. “When I got back to Dallas, they were just all over the place, which is just awesome.”

In addition to the vendor markets, Rasor says there’s a strong network of artists involved in various collectives around the city, and galleries will occasionally do open calls in order for local artists to showcase their works.

For Rasor, the biggest challenge to being an artist is not selling his works, but finding time to make them. His first priority, of course, is raising his son. Reno is pregnant with the couple’s second child, and Rasor knows a second kid will make life even more hectic.

Rasor says most of his sculptures hang in his home before he takes them to market.

“Just having a 3-year-old, he eats up 90% of my time. I have about an hour and a half that he takes a nap where I can work quietly,” Rasor says. Then, when Reno gets home, the family has a sit-down dinner and spends time together until Reno and their son go to bed.

“Then I start working again. I work until the late hours in the night, and then I go to sleep, and I don’t get enough sleep, and then I wake up at 7 o’clock all over again.”

But when I asked if Rasor still finds his work rewarding despite the stresses associated with it, he didn’t hesitate to answer.

“Oh, yeah. I would never be in a situation where I couldn’t make stuff all the time,” Rasor says. “I am, at my core, a maker.”

Rasor’s home is filled with his artwork. Not just his wire sculptures, but other creations, like wind-up automatons and kaleidoscopes. Rasor doesn’t usually make anything that he wouldn’t display in his own house, which is a good thing, because that’s where he keeps most of his artwork before he takes it to market.

“If I didn’t have to, I wouldn’t sell anything that I make,” Rasor says. “I would just give it to people if I wouldn’t get in trouble for it. But I have to pay the bills.”

He sees his love of creation reflected in his son.

“My kid is already like a little builder guy,” Rasor says. “Like, I can barely give him toys. He’s just taking them apart immediately, because he (has) spent the first two years of his life watching me cut wooden cogs out.”

Rasor’s creations are best enjoyed in person. If you ever get the chance, be sure to stop at the Underground Market, which is held every Sunday at Greenville and Oram, and look for the wiry man with his palms stained black.

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CREATING

by EMMA RUBY Photography by JULIA CARTWRIGHT

The Better Block staff sit beneath a mural painted at their new office on S. Ewing Avenue.

Story

The employees of Better Block had not yet moved into their new office on S. Ewing Avenue when they noticed something.

Around 3:30 p.m. every day, students from neighboring schools would congregate in the parking lot of the Family Dollar next door. The parking lot had become a social scene for the students who didn’t have anywhere else to hang out.

It was exactly the sort of problem Better Block was founded to tackle.

Better Block is an urban design nonprofit that is dedicated to helping communities rethink their neighborhood spaces.

They build pop-up parks, turn abandoned parking lots into plazas, install greenery and shade and get rid of conflict points at intersections, just to name a few past projects.

Krista Nightengale, Better Block’s executive director, says the nonprofit chews through dozens of questions when deciding how to best serve a community.

They start by asking things like “Are streets safe for kids walking home from school?” and “How do we slow down a street so passing motorists see the businesses here?” and “Is there a community here that wants to make a change or is nervous about too much change happening?”

Then, in a 120-day process, Better Block helps enact changes that can be made to the surrounding area.

“We try to get people to not overthink, and try to get over that analysis paralysis situation,” Nightengale says. “On days 119 and 120, we have a demonstration where it looks like it's just this big fun event. But really, we're trying to get people there to experience the changes to the streets and to the plazas.”

While Better Block only officially hosts their demonstrations for two days, Nightengale says communities have the opportunity to activate a space and carry it forward for as long as it benefits them.

While Better Block is based in Oak Cliff and has worked on projects throughout Dallas, their projects span across the United States and even abroad. Nightengale says each community's needs are nuanced and specific.

Still, the underlying driver for almost

all Better Block projects is a desire to give neighbors a place to build relationships.

“I don't feel like anything we do is all that innovative or … terribly creative. It's really just creating spaces (where) people want to bump into one another,” Nightengale says.

Better Block projects are hard to miss. They are painted with bright colors and geometric patterns, and accessorized with plywood furniture called “Wikiblocks.”

Draven Pointer is an architectural designer for Better Block and manages the Wikiblock library. It’s an open-source library of cut files that can be accessed on Better Block’s website and built by anyone with a CNC cutter — a machine typically found in makerspaces and workshops — and plywood.

“You take those files, send them through the machine, and it cuts these specific pieces out of wood. And then those pieces come together to create a table, furniture or a bench,” Pointer says.

Pointer says all of the Wikiblock furniture fits together like a puzzle, and assembly does not require glue, screws or nails. The goal of the Wikiblock design is to lower the barrier to entry on creating furniture that can be used to enhance or create a community space.

The new Better Block office has a CNC cutter in the back room, and Nightengale says the office hopes to start hosting workshops for community members and camps for younger kids.

Before opening their new office at the end of 2022, the Better Block employees converted their office parking lot into a yellow and orange plaza that has shade structures, Wikiblock furniture and an airconditioned shipping container.

At first, Nightengale says community members warned her that the chairs would be stolen if left outside, and that the airconditioned shipping container would be taken advantage of. “Humans are good at coming up with ‘what ifs,’” Nightengale adds.

But at 3:30 p.m. every day, students come to the Better Block plaza to relax, socialize and play.

“We build for love, not for fear,” Nightengale says. “(The furniture has) been out there for a month now … We want people to come and use them and set up however they want. But they're still there.”

Business is looming

THE SALON THAT’S OFFERING

LATINA BEAUTY SPECIALISTS

A PLACE TO GROW

Story by EMMA RUBY | Photography by YUVIE STYLES

VICTORIA LEIATO was wearing a hazmat suit covered in paint when she first met Melinda Rodriguez.

After the burnout of working a corporate job and being furloughed through the pandemic, Leiato was taking her business skills into her own hands.

Leiato could practically see it in her head: a beauty salon that “did it all,” nestled right in the heart of Oak Cliff. On the day Rodriguez stepped into the bare bones building to meet Leiato, it didn’t matter that there weren’t yet salon chairs — or anything, really — set up in the space.

“I saw her vision, and I just had an overwhelming feeling that this was going to be my second home, and here I am. I’ve been here from the beginning,” Rodriguez says.

The Bloom Space opened in May 2022 and offers services in hair styling and coloring, manicures, nail art, teeth whitening, waxing and more.

Rodriguez jumped on board after that first meeting and became one of the first team members at the Bloom Space. She specializes in teeth whitening and teeth jewels — Swarovski crystals that can be attached to teeth in glimmering patterns — and prides herself on her affordable pricing.

Leiato and her husband built out the space from scratch to ensure that it would be exactly what she imagined.

But while Leiato did envision the white brick walls, the

Michaela Raley shows off her Valentine's Day-themed teeth gems and manicure from the Bloom Space.

large gold mirrors and, yes, even the completely pink bathroom, there was a bigger motivation behind the Bloom Space than just aesthetics.

Leiato’s mother immigrated to the United States not knowing English but was able to break into the beauty industry in El Paso, where Leiato grew up. Leiato credits the beauty industry with creating a path of upward mobility for her family, and she knew that with the Bloom Space, she wanted to provide the same opportunity her mother received.

At the Bloom Space, all of the stylists are women, and 70% are Latina.

“We were the most financially marginalized during the

pandemic; we lost the most jobs and were the most unemployed,” Leiato says. “I wanted to make sure that if we created a space, it was going to help women, but predominantly help Latina women.”

Leiato says the Bloom Space's rental model was designed to give agency to the women who work in the salon.

Instead of requiring longterm contracts, stylists pay a weekly or monthly rent to use the space. While an uncommon practice for salons, Leiato says that allowing stylists the flexibility to enter and exit the space ensures that there are “only happy people” contributing to the culture.

Thais Wise has been a hair stylist in Oak Cliff for 23 years and says the ability to try out the Bloom Space without committing to set up shop permanently was what initially attracted her to Leiato.

“That I could come in and try this and not sign a year’s contract was really big. That really is what settled it in the end,” Wise says.

It was the third move in Wise’s career, which she says is unusually low for what is usually a “transient” profession. She worried she would lose clientele because of her move, and she says she spent many nights “sweating bullets” about how the switch would impact her career.

sit at the

stations at The Bloom Space. Below: Jenica Sullivan models a curly hair-do styled by Thais Wise.

Right: Clients chat in the Bloom Space's waiting area.

Bottom right: Stylist Thais Wise says her clients love the environment at the salon.

Below: Nail artist Christina Alvarez paints pink French tip nails on a client.

The Bloom Space is located at 938 W. Page Ave. @thebloom.space

In her first three months at the Bloom Space, Wise says she had 100% client retention.

“(My clients) love it here,” Wise says. “I’m so happy to be in a place where I can really pamper them and take care of them and make them feel really welcome.”

All of the stylists at the Bloom Space own their own business, Leiato says. Each stylist controls her pricing, her schedule and her clientele. Leiato offers monthly classes on things like marketing, branding and social media, which she calls the basic tools of getting a business “up and going.”

“The biggest thing on my résumé is that I can teach two women who are in their 40s and 50s to make (Instagram) reels,” Leiato says. “That shows I can do anything.”

Leiato says the salon offers both clients and stylists a “peaceful, calm and efficient” salon experience. While the clientele is made up of both men and women, she describes the space as a “feminine haven.”

“I love making sure that they have everything they need to come in here and just do what they love,” Leiato says.

For Rodriguez, her time at the Bloom Space has been unlike any other work environment she has been in. The difference, she says, is Leiato.

“With everything, she helps us,” Rodriguez says. “She really is a different type of owner.”

THE MENU FROM DOWN UNDER

Story by EMMA RUBY | Photography by KATHY TRAN

An espresso martini from Isla & Co. Store owner David Orr says the restuarant takes their espresso martinis "especially seriously."

Isla & Co. is introducing Australian cuisine to Oak Cliff

WTF IS AUSTRALIAN FOOD?

Isla & Co. knows that will be the first thing on your mind when you step into the Australian restaurant, so they get the question out of the way on the first page of their menu.

Australian food, according to restaurant owner David Orr, is largely influenced by the waves of immigration the country has seen over its history, not unlike American food.

“Where America has the Latino influence, we've got that Southeast Asian influence,” Orr says. “It's sort of been molded from that different settlement of Australia, so our menu reflects that.”

Isla & Co. opened in Bishop Arts in October 2022, and Orr says that while the menu may not be completely

foreign to Americans, it is the ethos of Australian dining which may present a culture shock.

The restaurant is “all day,” meaning the menu spans from brunch to dinner, with a full page of coffee options complemented by a full page of cocktails. “All day” restaurants are common in Orr’s hometown of Sydney, he says, and was something he found missing in American dining when he first moved to New York City in 2014.

Orr opened a coffee shop in Manhattan to provide the craft quality he missed, alongside the “cheeky” service he says Australia is known for. When the coffee shop did well, he released a brunch menu and, nine years later, Dallas is one of eight Isla & Co. locations.

The dining room at Isla & Co. is best described as crisp. White walls, brown tables and black chairs give a clean, minimalist look. Hanging plants mounted high on the walls and a spattering of framed photos round out the decor. The main pop of color comes from the bar, which is built with emerald green subway tiles.

Isla & Co. does not strive for an overwhelming visual impression in their dining room. Instead, the restaurant is a blank canvas, and they are happy to let the food do the heavy lifting.

The brunch menu has familiar items such as avocado toast, but while the dish may be familiar, it is far from basic. The toast is topped with slabs of bright yellow delicata squash, purple pickled onions and crumbles

Isla & Co. is decked out in neutral furntiture that is accented by the emerald green bar in the back of the restaurant.

of feta, making it both delicious and Instagrammable.

One of the most popular brunch items is mushroom toast, which is loaded with buttery, rich mushrooms and topped with red chili flakes. The spice of the chili flakes breaks up the savory mushrooms to balance out the dish, and the thick artisanal bread provides a satisfying crunch.

The dinner menu is equally tantalizing.

The spicy prawn vodka sauce rigatoni wins the dinner time popularity contest, but while the pasta dish is delicious, an Isla & Co. first timer would be remiss not to try

the braised lamb shoulder.

According to Orr, the lamb shoulder is one of the most authentically Australian dishes on the menu. It is also head chef Malik Cantu’s favorite dish on the menu, and his love for it is almost palpable.

Cantu braises the lamb for up to three hours, making it so tender a knife is rendered obsolete.

Topped with zhug, a spicy cilantro sauce, and labneh, a strained yogurt with a slightly sour taste, the lamb shoulder is an approachable venture into Australia’s Middle Eastern and Mediterranean influences for even the most trepidatious tasters.

Cantu is an Oak Cliff native, and leading a restaurant in Bishop Arts is a dream come true, he says. He graduated from South Oak Cliff High School in 2014 and worked his way through the Dallas restaurant scene, developing his skills and working his way up in the kitchen hierarchy.

“I got lucky; I was in the right kitchens at the right times,” Cantu says.

But while a readthrough of the brunch or dinner menu is sure to make anyone ravenous, Isla & Co. is also happy to be a spot for a casual cocktail or a quick coffee.

The bar menu experiments with drinks like the East Side Spritz,

The burrata is a popular brunch menu item. The cheese is topped with delicata squash, charred leek, herbs and jalapeño vinaigrette, and served with thick slices of toasted bread.

which is a cucumber-aloe twist on the French 75. But there are also familiar favorites, such as the bloody Mary or espresso martini.

Isla & Co. takes the espresso martini especially seriously, Orr says.

According to Orr, Aussies are coffee snobs. Isla & Co. roasts their own espresso blend in house. They also aim to eliminate excess sugar from their drinks and dishes across the menu, so the espresso martini is not as sweet as some may expect.

“That's, I think, probably the secret to the espresso martinis. You've got fresh espresso, that's quality espresso, and it gets brewed right there, and then the lower sugar content,” Orr says.

The house espresso blend, “Hole in the Wall,” is named after that first Manhattan coffee spot. Isla & Co.’s selection of lattes, cappuccinos, hot teas and more make it a good spot for anyone who finds themselves in Bishop Arts and in need of a craft caffeine fix.

Shortly after opening the Dallas location, Orr and his family moved to Northwest Dallas. But, he says, they knew Bishop Arts would be the home for their restaurant as soon as they visited the district.

He says Bishop Arts is the perfect combination of Sydney, New York City and Dallas, the three places he has come to love.

“It's a walkable part of the city, which is pretty unique, and that reminded us of New York. And it reminds us of Australia in that you can stop and chat to anyone on the side of the road, and anyone will talk to you,” Orr says. “That welcoming community environment was really appealing to us and feels like home.”

Isla & Co., 408 W. Eighth St., isla-co.com

to good health and good friends

Story by EMMA RUBY | Photography by JULIA CARTWRIGHT

BRANDON SCOTT considers himself a nerd.

A nerd about tequila, that is, which is arguably one of the cooler nerd varieties.

But he knows the liquor inside and out, down to details like how to harvest an agave plant and negotiate a contract with a distributor.

It would be expected that Scott, alongside his three lifelong friends, has learned a thing or two about tequila over the years running the company Tequila With Friends.

In his first week of college, Scott got diagnosed with diabetes and turned to research to deal with the diagnosis. It was then that he found out that tequila metabolizes well, making it the best option for a diabetic to drink.

At that time, he was roommates with Roddrick West at the University of Texas, and while their friends Curnelius Arnick and Devin Woodson were in college in different states, the four men had grown up in Oak Cliff together and supported Scott in the way any college student would.

“He switched over to tequila, and his good friends were not going to let him drink alone,” West says.

The group began drinking tequila casually at first, but enjoyed the process of learning about the liquor and discussing the varying flavors of brands.

Eventually, Scott, West and Arnick decided to launch a blog to write about the different brands they tried.

In January 2018, the blog Tequila With Friends was born.

The blog started to get some traction, but it wasn’t long before Scott realized that all the energy the men were putting into writing about other brands of tequila could be harnessed to create something of their own.

“We were like, ‘Why are we telling their story, instead of telling our own story?’” Scott says. “We have our own unique story, our own unique perspective that we wanted to bring folks. Especially for us, where there aren’t a lot of Black men in this space, we can bring folks along for the ride.”

Scott, West and Arnick hopped on a plane to Mexico, where they rented a car and drove

out to the countryside to meet with distillers.

Tequila is made from a large, cactus-like plant called agave, which is distilled into the liquor. As the men met with distillers, they were able to see the sweeping fields of agave for themselves.

“You’re driving through, and there are just rolling hills of blue agave, and it’s absolutely beautiful,” Scott says. “You realize, man, for tequila enthusiasts, this is a pretty special place. And I think for us, we got that feeling.”

Scott and West say that as tequila nerds, it was important to them that their liquor be made from 100% agave, which indicates a certain level of quality.

Some tequilas use masking agents like vanilla to hide the flavor effects of a lower agave percentage, Scott says, but he and the other TWF founders were not interested in cutting corners with their product.

On the Mexico trip, the group was also able to build a flavor profile for their

Previous page: From left to right, Roddrick West, Brandon Scott, Curnelius Arnick and Devin Woodson cheers glasses of tequila on the rocks.

We were like, ‘Why are we telling their story, instead of telling our own story?’ We have our own unique story, our own unique perspective that we wanted to bring folks.

tequila and settled on a blend of lowland and highland agave.

“You’re going to get those sweet tones that come from the highland as well as those vegetable earthy types of tones that come from the lowland,” West says.

Right now, Tequila With Friends offers both a blanco and a reposado tequila. The difference, it seems like everything else, goes back to the agave.

Blanco tequila can be bottled as soon as it is distilled from the plant, but reposado is aged from three months to a year, which gives it a more golden coloring. Scott says TWF’s reposado is aged for 11 months, which creates a full-bodied and smooth effect.

Scott, West and Arnick co-founded Tequila With Friends, but they brought Woodson back into the picture in late 2019 to help with product marketing.

A year later, in November 2020, Te quila With Friends began appearing on liquor store shelves. All four men live in Southwest Dallas, so from the beginning it made sense to launch the tequila throughout Texas.

an añejo tequila, which is aged between one and three years.

While things are heading in the right direction for the company, Scott and West say that getting to this point has been a “labor of love.”

“None of us come from the spirits industry, so there was a pretty steep learning curve,” Scott says.

Learning about things like varying state liquor laws, and working with a distributor have been challenges the company has had to overcome.

And right now, all four men are contributing to Tequila With Friends on top of other full-time jobs and families.

Juggling all that has made it important for the men to prioritize maintaining their friendship — the original cornerstone of their passion — as well, West says.

The blanco tequila is one of three spirits made by Tequila With Friends. The blanco tequila can be bottled as soon as it is distilled.

The group comes together to celebrate events like Friendsgiving or major life milestones, West says, to pay respects to each other and the other people in their lives who have helped them, and the TWF brand, grow.

“It’s been beautiful to see over these past two years the amount of support that we’ve had behind our brand, not only here in Dallas, but in Houston and within Austin,” West says.

After starting in Texas, the company expanded to California, D.C. and Maryland.

In 2023, Tequila With Friends sees lots of growth on the horizon.

For one, the company plans to expand into three more states: Louisiana, Arkansas and Oklahoma.

And they are launching their third spirit,

And eventually they hope to get the company to a place where it can give back to Oak Cliff and the city of Dallas.

“And the beautiful thing is that once we can actually make this profitable, we will be able to give back to the city that has given us so much and that raised us,” West says. “I think that’s what excites me the most.”

Tequila With Friends can be purchased at bars, restaurants or liquor stores across the metroplex, or at their website, www.tequilawithfriends.com.

Coyote

Story by CHRISTINA HUGHES BABB Photography by JULIA CARTWRIGHT

Jackie Sutherland and her dog, Missy, patrol Dallas’ wooded areas for coyotes that neighbors have reported. “She draws their attention so I can do my high-intensity hazing and teach them that there are negative consequences if they try to approach a dog,” Sutherland says.

Following an unnerving attack on a child last spring, the city called in wildlife expert Jackie Sutherland

It has been almost a year since a coyote attack on a small child had Dallas residents on edge.

An incident involving 2-year-old Knox Thomas was the driving force behind a coyote management plan the city of Dallas launched in 2022, city spokesperson Margo Clingman says. An uptick in sightings throughout residential neighborhoods over the past couple of years also contributed to the decision, she says.

Following the event, in which a coyote grabbed the boy by the throat and held on until his siblings screamed and mom charged the animal, Dallas partnered with the U.S. Department of Agriculture to create a comprehensive program to educate people and observe the animals. The goal: Broker peace between human and beast. The city web page BeDallas90. org/coyotes includes a coyote reporting system and displays a map that tracks sightings.

DALLAS’ COYOTE LADY

The attack also prompted our city government to appoint a coyote czar, of sorts, whose primary role is investigating, advising and helping to coordinate wildlife policy specifically related to the increasingly problematic canines.

That’s Animal Services officer Jacqueline Sutherland. She says she was called to the scene immediately and led the investigation.

As the little boy underwent surgery and recovered from his injuries, Sutherland’s team, with help from USDA hunters, captured and euthanized four neighborhood coyotes.

Lethal removal is only for extreme cases. Extracting or exterminating coyotes typically does little good, Sutherland explains, because the species will breed precisely to replace each family member lost to death or relocation.

Sutherland has been Dallas’ coyote point person since that investigation.

Urban coyotes have been a hot topic in Oak Cliff neighborhoods for decades.

Residents in 2018 reported an extra large “super coyote” killing a beloved pet in a Kessler Park backyard and terrorizing Coombs Creek trail travelers.

But until the toddler’s attack, people had been led to believe that, while cats, squirrels and small dogs are at risk, coyotes are not likely to harm humans.

It remains true that assaults on people are atypical. But when a neighborhood child is the victim, it doesn’t matter how rare they are, parents pointed out during public meetings. The city did not do enough to prevent an attack that was imminent, they said.

Anecdotal evidence suggests an increase in Dallas’ coyote population, Sutherland says.

“In some neighborhoods, I’ve spoken with people who lived there 30 years without seeing a coyote but (are) now seeing an entire family of them,” she says.

For an even more scientific assessment, the coyote management team is analyzing data they began collecting after the toddler attack.

“Now that we’re monitoring families, territories, activities, behaviors, that kind of stuff is going to give us some insight in regard to their growth and how they function and how they distribute themselves.”

PLEASE DON’T FEED THE FAUNA

What she knows for sure is that coyotes are quite content to live among people, especially when they connect a human with a food source.

“It makes them want to hang around.” And that turns into a habit for the animals and their offspring.

“People who come from Colorado or East Texas are shocked by the way the coyotes behave around here,” Sutherland says. This habituation can result from unintentional or deliberate feeding, which does happen, Sutherland says, though people don’t want to admit to it.

She says some people use food to get good wildlife photos. That includes social media users with feeds to fill.

“I was working with an apartment where we found kids throwing food over the fence to get a coyote to come out of the woods so they could get it in a TikTok video,” she says.

The more problematic members of the coyote populations tend to be tweens, Sutherland says, because, like their human counterparts, young coyotes push the boundaries of where they are supposed to tread or how long they stay out.

These “teenage” coyotes are “going places they shouldn’t be; they’re missing curfew,” she quips. They are going to be asking a human’s permission, in a sense, to get close, and people just need to make it clear that that is not OK.

“If people are on board with that, then the behavior goes back to normal relatively quickly,” Sutherland says.

Coyotes serve a vital role in the ecosystem by helping to control the population of rodents. That means they go where the rodents go — unsecured trash bins, for example.

Even feeding ducks and other birds can inadvertently attract coyotes. An ordinance banning wildlife feeding will go to a City Council vote sometime this year, and Sutherland says it’s necessary.

She added that if everyone did their part to tackle the coyote-feeding problem, the risk of further injuries to humans would be almost nil.

“We’re really struggling to educate people about the dangers of feeding, and we’re still trying to get that (ordinance) passed,” Sutherland says. “I’ve got areas where I’m basically having to beg people to stop leaving food out in an inappropriate fashion.”

Sutherland says there have been a dozen or so incidents on record of coyotes attacking humans in the entire state of Texas, and in every one of those cases, “they’ve been able to trace back to somebody feeding the animal.”

By DR. ROBERT HUNT

The elephant in the city

Spiritual but not religious

Changes in the religion of a neighborhood often happen so slowly, you hardly see them.

We can see this happening throughout Dallas. My daily drive takes me past churches that have become bilingual or host a whole new congregation. It takes me past churches clearly in decline, holding fewer worship services on a Sunday morning or simply having fewer people.

There has been an invisible elephant in the religious world, and its name is secularization. Part of this is the process of religion becoming less visible in public, the classic sign of a secular society. Yet the secular age in which we live is characterized less by the disappearance of religion than by religious transformation.

The biggest transformation is people who used to say they were religious now say they are spiritual. These changes, often so slow that they go unnoticed, are accelerating. Recent polls carried out by Pew Research, Gallup and others show the number of Americans who identify as Christian (by far the dominant religion in the United States) has declined from 90% to 64% in the last 50 years.

It’s the abandonment of institutional religion. Since each generation is less religious than the last, the continued decline is certain. The youngest generation of Americans, Gen Z, is 20% less likely than the national average to identify as Christian.

But while we Americans and Dallasites are less attached to traditional religion, secularism is transforming rather than destroying the religious landscape.

Moreover, younger generations who are turning away from traditional

religion are turning their energies toward organizing new religious groups, adopting new spiritual practices and engaging in social entrepreneurship based in religious ethics. America is becoming “spiritual but not religious.”

For every story of a church turned into a bar, there are a dozen of a coffee shop turned into a Bible study, a restaurant into a prayer group, or a failed business into a Christian clinic, a Muslim food pantry or a Jewish counseling center.

These changes don’t even take into account the way that religion and spirituality have moved online. One of my students has a daily Christian meditation podcast with hundreds of thousands of listeners. The largest online Bible study has more than three million subscribers. If we add the number of people participating in online ministries of existing churches, the number increases exponentially.

For nearly a century, the boundaries between self-help, positive thinking, motivational speaking, political organizing, entertainment and worship have become increasingly fuzzy. Online or in spaces that resemble arenas, auditoriums, gyms, coffee shops and even bars, it may be hard to tell where religion ends and secular society begins.

When we look closely, religion in our city isn’t going away. Instead, it’s going to look different than it has in the past, reflecting the dynamism and energy that continue to make this an exciting place to live.

DR. ROBERT HUNT is director of SMU’s Perkins School of Theology Global Theological Education department.

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By EMMA RUBY

A landing pad for women in distress

Remembering the Virginia K. Johnson Home

In 1913, a photographer from Oshkosh, Wisconsin, found himself at 901 S. Madison Ave.

Before him stood a large, three-wing brick building with a grand staircase leading up to an entrance framed by thick white pillars. “Virginia K. Johnson Home” was written over the balcony in white letters.

The photographer was Lewis Hine, and his short stint in Oak Cliff was part of the 16 years he spent traveling the United States photographing child labor for the National Child Labor Committee.

Hine took two photos in Oak Cliff: one of the aforementioned home and the other of a girl named Leila Prater. Both pictures are in the collection now owned by the Library of Congress.

The Virginia K. Johnson house intrigued Hine for the refuge it offered North Texas women. His notes say that a large number of the women in the home had come to live there from surrounding farms.

“Their lives (were) stunted by the monotonous work of cotton picking,” Hine wrote.

While little is known about the photographed Leila Prater, Hine’s records show that before coming to the home, Prater had worked in a Georgia cotton mill “ever since I could remember.”

According to the Texas State Historical Association, Virginia K. Johnson was a woman from Lynchburg, Virginia, who moved to Dallas in the 1880s. Her first venture into the Dallas philanthropic scene was in 1892, when she opened a home for

young women at risk of resorting to prostitution.

In 1911, the home closed, but by that time Johnson had raised the money to purchase 18 acres of land in Oak Cliff and build the three-story structure Hine later photographed.

That became the Virginia K. Johnson Home and Training School.

The school was opened to over 200 girls who were required to stay on the campus for two years and were given a curriculum of general education, religious studies, typing, vocational training and homemaking.

The home became a landing pad for women in distress, with the Library of Congress records noting many unwed mothers under the age of 21 lived there.

SueAnn Wall Kosydar, a Kimball High School alumna, says her mother and aunts spent time in the home following the death of their mother because their father could not both work and care for them.

John Swindells was born in the home in 1938 and says he was adopted several months later.

Swindells was raised in Oak Cliff and graduated from Sunset High School in 1955.

In 1934, Johnson died; the home shut down in 1941 after a Texas law forbade the home’s two-year residential requirement.

After the home shut down, the land was acquired by the Bishop Joseph Patrick Lynch and was converted into the St. Joseph's Home for Girls. Later, the campus became a Catholic youth center, and in the '90s, the diocese decided to convert the site into a retreat center.

Today, the Saint Raphael Retreat Center stands on the plot of land that Virginia K. Johnson originally bought.

To this day, Johnson is one of the namesakes of Virginia-Snider Commons, a residential hall at Southern Methodist University.

While the home she built no longer stands, it is immortalized in the photo by Lewis Hine and is part of the photo collection that is considered a main catalyst behind the first child labor laws in America.

The Virginia K. Johnson Home was photographed by Lewis Hine as part of a collection of photos for the National Child Labor Committee. Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress.