Rodeo season is a bit different for the Desperados trail riders this year. For the first time in more than four decades, they are riding without their matriarch, Beverly Wilson Smith.

The trail-riding posse was founded by Beverly and her brothers, Welcome and Jack, in the late 1970s. Beverly, who also became the first female wagon boss in the Salt Grass Trail Ride Association, died last April of complications from Alzheimer's, just a month after RodeoHouston wrapped up.

But her legacy lives on

In one painting, a young woman kneels over a bed with a sword in her right hand. In her left hand, she claws at a man's hair, the blade at his throat, as blood cascades down the bed's white sheets.

In a second painting, a Black woman stands before a background of colorful flowers. In her left hand she holds the severed head of a white woman by the ponytail. Her sword, in her right hand, is partially obscured behind her back. Unlike the first painting, this one shows only a few drops of blood.

The co-founder of an early '90s Houston gay rights organization has some advice for queer Houstonians and allies who want to fight against harassment and attacks like the one that happened last year in Colorado Springs.

Document everything, says Glenn Holt, one of the co-founders of Q-Patrol, a group that worked with Montrose bars and Houston Police throughout the 1990s to prevent gay-bashing incidents. "If there's anything going on anywhere, anytime, record video," says Holt, now 64. "Because

A group of Houston-based activists is enlisting bartenders in the fight against the overdose crisis with a new educational program intended to teach service industry professionals how to spot — and help — someone who is experiencing an overdose.

The informal collective of activists, who go by the name Harm Redux HTX on Instagram, makes use of a practice known as harm reduction, which seeks to mitigate the adverse consequences of drug use. “It’s the principal belief that all life is precious,” s