Tear Downs. Progress in Houston?

HOUSTON CHRONICLE REAL ESTATE BLOG:

Demolition crews began taking down the 1930s-era Josephine Apartments this morning.

In May, the Houston Chronicle reported the 75-year-old complex was sold to Tricon Homes, a local homebuilder known for putting up new townhomes in Inner Loop neighborhoods. At the time, the company said it did not know what plans it had for the complex, which sits the corner of Ashby and Bolsover in a Southampton neighborhood.

The complex was built in 1939 by architect F. Perry Johnson with one-bedroom units arrayed in a U-shape, a floor plan common to that time period. The exterior is notable for horizontal bands of dark brown brick on the sides and parapets to mask the roof. The units, roughly 750 square feet each, have hardwood floors and faux fireplaces. The original owners had it built with central air conditioning to make the units more marketable.

The residents were previously asked to move out by July.

Well, there ya go. I lived in this neighborhood. These are charming 1930's Art Deco apartments in Houston gone to be replaced by cheap yuppie hovels. Another neighborhood trashed.  

Years ago, I'd take out of town visitors on the AIA Houston walking tours.  On one tour, the guide pointed out the Medical Arts Building and sadly commented that the next day it would be demolished. True, it had fallen on bad times, and when I saw it in the early 80s it was filthy and neglected, but the design and detail were memorable. 

If a town has no historic features left, it shows itself to be short-sighted and lacking in the ability to recognize what is valuable and in the innovation necessary to repurpose and preserve old structures. But the developer who bought the Josephine Apartments property clearly didn't want to do that. 

WASHINGTON POST: An economic defense of old buildings

Jane Jacobs, a woman akin to the patron saint of urban planners, first argued 50 years ago that healthy neighborhoods need old buildings. Aging, creaky, faded, "charming" buildings. Retired couples and young families need the cheap rent they promise. Small businesses need the cramped offices they contain. Streets need the diversity created not just when different people coexist, but when buildings of varying vintage do, too.

"Cities need old buildings so badly," Jacobs wrote in her classic "The Death and Life of Great American Cities," "it is probably impossible for vigorous streets and districts to grow without them.”  

Ever since, this idea -- based on the intuition of a woman who was surveying her own New York Greenwich Village neighborhood -- has been received wisdom among planners and urban theorists. But what happens when we look at the data?

The National Trust for Historic Preservation has tried to do just this, leveraging open property-parcel data in three cities to analyze the connection between the kinds of places Jacobs was describing and the numbers that economists and businesses would care about: jobs per square foot, the share of small businesses to big chains, the number of minority- and women-owned businesses.  

The novel geospatial analysis, drawn from the District of Columbia, Seattle and San Francisco, suggests that older, smaller buildings do matter to a city's economy and a neighborhood's commercial life beyond the allure of affordable fixer-uppers. In Seattle, the report found one-third more jobs per commercial square foot in parts of town with a variety of older, smaller buildings mixed in. In Seattle
San Francisco, it found more than twice the rate of women and minority-owned businesses. In the District, it found a higher share of non-chain businesses.

The findings don't necessarily mean we should save all old buildings from demolition, or even that one old building is better than one new one. But they give preservationists (and Jane Jacobs enthusiasts) new data in fierce development debates over how rapidly changing and relatively older cities like Washington should grow.

Photo credits - Josephine Apartments, Preservation Houston. Medical Arts Building post card photo, CardCow.com.

In other news: "You're just numb."

'"You're just numb," said Roemer Saturday as she surveyed the scene of devastation in her once perfect closet, "How can this happen? I live in a gated community with all this protection?" she said.'

MENIL COLLECTION AT 25

The Menil Collection celebrates its 25th anniversary today. OffCite recalls how revolutionary John and Dominique were to the Houston community before the collection was even built! I lived less than a block from the Menil, and it was my oasis from the dog eat dog of Houston life.

Before they brushed their great gray wings across an otherwise ordinary neighborhood of bungalows in lower Montrose, before their place in Houston’s history felt as ordained as the live oaks, and before Houstonians began trading stories about sightings of a thin and ethereal woman seated in front of her museum’s great paintings, there was simply a couple: John and Dominique de Menil. A pair of émigrés who fled France after the Nazi invasion with their three small children in tow. A couple whose wealth, a prominent Houstonian once told Grace Glueck for a May 18, 1986, New York Times Magazine article, was “really peanuts,” when measured on the same scales as Houston’s old oil aristocracies. A couple whose story is as much about Houston’s coming of age during a time of social upheaval as it is about their pushing a cadre of visionaries to accomplish the extraordinary wherever an institution gave them the space and freedom to act. To recall just a few of the details of this story is as much an elegy as it is a celebration.

AN ORDINATION ANNIVERSARY: 4/29/77

This is the 2,000th post for Blazing Indiscretions! And what a better way than to celebrate this anniversary:

On April 29, 1977, the Episcopal Diocese of Texas ordained its first woman priest, Helen Havens. In 1981 St Stephens parish at Woodhead and W. Alabama, Houston - where I was a member - was the first church in the Diocese of Texas with the vision to call a woman rector. Guess who? From the parish history pages:

Clax [Monro, the rector at the time] appointed Bob Evans to chair a search committee and the work began. Members visited other churches to hear their candidates, and received recommendations from parishioners. Helen Havens, an assistant at St. Francis, was recommended and some members of the committee were alarmed. The idea of a woman rector was very new. In fact, there were not women rectors in the Diocese of Texas and very few in the United States. Three members of the committee agreed to meet the prospect and were quickly convinced that she was the best choice. After numerous meetings, debates, and prayers, the vestry finally and miraculously recommended that the church call Helen Havens. The Vestry vote was close, but favorable, and Bob Evans and Sidney Mitchell called on Bishop Benitez to request the call.

The Bishop was concerned about St. Stephen's choice and took the unusual step of requiring the Vestry to reconsider its vote. The Vestry met again and voted with a greater majority to sustain its original vote. Messrs. Evans and Mitchell met again with the Bishop who was still concerned and again asked the Vestry to reconsider its action. At this, Bob Evans said that he would comply, but that he wanted the Bishop to explain to the Vestry why he wanted another vote. This ended the matter, and Helen Havens was called to St. Stephen's. The first woman to be called as rector to a parish in the Diocese of Texas, Helen began her ministry with us on Thanksgiving Day, 1981.

Tar Sands Action

The Keystone XL pipeline is a project would pump over one million barrels of “tar sands” oil from the Alberta Tar Sands, Canada, to Texas every day. The oil in the Keystone pipeline could poison drinking water, threaten the communities it runs through, and wreck the climate.

350 Vermont is helping to coordinate a 4-day expedition from August 28th to the 31st to be a part of this historic action. Local coverage in Seven Days,  the Burlington Free Press,  Senator Sanders Youtube video. For those that care, there is a Facebook group.

Surprise!

The New York Times came out today with an editorial against the Keystone XL pipeline.

On This Day

Roberta Worrick, my Senior year English teacher at The Mountain School, wrote novels and short stories set in Africa under the name of Maria Thomas; she was a Peace Corps Writer, having volunteered in Ethiopia in 1971-73. Roberta, her husband Jeff, U.S. Congressman Mickey Leland (D-TX; he represented my congressional district in Houston) and 11 others died in a plane crash in Ethiopia on August 7, 1989. May they rest in peace.

Right now - in the middle of 2011, parts of Somalia, Kenya and Ethiopia are facing one of the worst droughts in 60 years, and nearly 12 million people are desperately in need of food, clean water and basic sanitation. The flight which Roberta, Jeff and Mickey and the others were on was to bring food aid, too, to the Horn of Africa.

Robert came to TMS after having just graduated from Mount Holyoke. She was slim and short and looked younger than the teen agers she taught. Roberta introduced me to the poet, Denise Levertov.

This is not satire from The Onion.

This is for real from Reuters

"Members of a new Texas association are starting a college scholarship program for a group of students they say do not have as many scholarship options as others -- white men. Colby Bohannan, a student at Texas State University in San Marcos, and some friends have formed the non-profit Former Majority Association for Equality, which will provide the scholarships."

Texas Textbooks Decison

You can read the blow-by-blow of what happened yesterday in The Texas Observer.

But Steve Benen in the Washington Monthly says it best:-

At its core, this is not just a travesty for academic integrity and students in Texas, but it's also a reminder of what's gone horribly wrong with the twisted right-wing worldview. These state officials have decided they simply don't care for reality, so they've replaced it with a version of events that makes them feel better. The result is an American history in which every era has been distorted to satisfy the far-right ego.

Congratulations, Annise Parker, Mayor-Elect of Houston

'“I promise to give to citizens an administration of honesty, integrity and transparency,” she said. “The only special interest will be the public. We are in this together. We rise or fall together.”' - Annise Parker

I lived in Houston for over 20 years and voted for Annise Parker when she ran for city council. She got her start in civic activism in Houston's Neartown, which includes Montrose - where I lived. She's now the first lesbian elected mayor of a major American city!

From the Houston Chronicle:

When Parker finally appeared at 10:30 p.m., resplendent in a gold pantsuit and pearl necklace, the room at the George R. Brown Convention Center jammed elbow-to-elbow with supporters erupted with a deafening cheer. Some were newcomers to political waters. Some had been with her a dozen years ago when she claimed her first City Council seat.

“Tonight the voters of Houston have opened the doors to history,” she said. “I acknowledge that. I embrace that. I know what this win means to many of us who thought we could never achieve high office. I know what it means. I understand, because I feel it, too. But now, from this moment, let us join as one community. We are united in one goal in making this city the city that it can be, should be, might be, will be.”

She was interviewed by NPR's Melissa Block:

BLOCK: You said on election night that you hope your election will change people's minds about Houston. What do you think needs to be changed in people's mind?

Ms. PARKER: A lot of Americans have an image of Houston as a, perhaps, stuffy, conservative, southern city. We are a huge, sophisticated, international city. We are one of the most diverse cities in America. And we clearly value people more on what they can do than who they are. I do believe that my election will cause people to give Houston a second look as a place where they might want to live and work.

Right on. Houston's come a long way indeed. I do look forward to the day when electing an lbgt person to higher office (in civic life or in religious institutions) will not be a big deal. But there's work still to be done!

Austin Citizens Do Battle with Fluoridation

Take a look at this video of citizens testifying before the Austin Environmental Board on December 2. We see both ordinary citizens and specialists, who have been shocked after reading up on the stupid practice of water fluoridation, speaking truth to power.

Houston LBGTs in Mourning

Sad news - two stories via the Houston Press.

The Houston Voice has been given the axe. The paper had been around since the mid 1970s, and I read it regularly when I lived in Montrose. Apparently the paper had been in trouble for quite some time.

The chain that publishes the Houston Voice and other gay-community papers nationwide -- including the venerable Washington Blade -- has gone kaput.

Gawker and other media are reporting that Window Media, the financially strapped company that owns more gay news titles than any other chain, has shut everything down.

The Houston Voice website now gives you an error message, and the phone "is no longer in service."

Oh Mary! The venerable Mary's Lounge at Westheimer and Montrose has closed! I could tell you stories!

Mary's, the bar that many people think of as the gay bar in Houston history, is no more, a victim of unpaid rent.

But there's a scramble going on to try to keep as much of the place as possible, as a way to preserve a cornerstone of Houston's gay past.

A Facebook page has been set up to encourage ways to get artifacts from the 40-year-old place.

"The old sign with Ronald Reagan smoking that hung in the bathroom?" writes one commenter. "The old 'Mary's' sign that hung outside the building on the patio? What about any of the artifacts stored in the back building? Or some of the items from the back patio, like the motorcycle and statue?"

Tim Brookover, an activist in the gay community, is urging the GLBT Community Center board to get active in saving whatever can be saved. "Mary's contains a number of objects and artifacts that are significant to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender heritage," he says. "Our ad hoc Mary's heritage group, spearheaded by the GLBT Community Center, is seeking to get access to Mary's and, we hope, permission to remove at least some of the items. At the very least, we hope to document what is left with photography."

If those walls could speak...

Photo of Mary's mural (now gone) by eatcorndie on Flickr.

Best of Texas: Lyle Lovett

"Natural Forces," the new CD from Lyle Lovett is out. MadPriest has some more tracks from it.

"Yee Haw" it ain't

From The Texas Observer, a cool story about an up and coming talented Texas musician!

... The mixture of ancient Chinese symbols and modern American rock illustrate Yang’s uniqueness: he’s a rock guitarist and self-proclaimed Asian cowboy, a fan of barbeque, high school football and all things Texan, but also a lover of Mozart and Brahms, a violin virtuoso thriving in America’s most elite conservatory. While this rare blend of elements might seem contradictory, it’s actually the key to his exuberant personality. His versatility isn’t a shortcoming; it’s his chief attraction.

Yang’s exposure to classical music began in the womb—his mother played for the Austin Symphony—but his love for it was not congenital. “I hated it,” he says of his first few years. “I was 3-years-old when my mom shoved a violin in my hands, you know, it’s like the Asian rule, and I remember hating it and thinking, ‘Man, it doesn’t even sound good.’”

At his first recital, when he was 4, he turned and faced a corner while he played. “My ass was facing the audience the whole time,” Yang says. To get him to practice, his parents would bribe him with M&Ms. Even so, it was a struggle: “Past 30 minutes I’d always cry and shout, ‘Why do I have to do more?’”

Last night in Texas, "the nation's busiest death penalty state"

Andre Bios, Iraqi War veteran and brother of Reginald Blanton, speaking on Tuesday morning with Amy Goodman and Sharif Abdel Kouddous on Democracy Now! -

Amy Goodman: Andre, you’re about to visit your brother. Are you going to be, if in fact he is executed, one of the witnesses to the execution?

Andre Bios: Yes, I am. It was one of the things that I did not want to do, but he has been requesting over and over again for me to be there ...

And the reason why I didn’t want to witness what was getting ready to happen to my brother is because it’s like a slap in my face from my own country, you know? His constitutional rights were violated, but yet I can go overseas and fight in another country to uphold peace, liberty, for them to have, but I can’t uphold peace, liberty and equality for my own brother.

Reginald Blanton was executed on Tuesday, Oct. 27th, injected with poisonous chemicals considered too cruel to use on dogs, and pronounced dead at 6:21pm.

On death row since 2001, Blanton was the 19th prisoner to be executed this year in Texas, the nation's busiest death penalty state. He was the third from Bexar County.

The family of Garza said in an interview about a week prior to the execution that they hoped it would bring them closure.

His attorneys filed two last-minute appeals to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals and the U.S. Supreme Court and Blanton also requested a commutation of his sentence. All were denied.

Six more men in Texas have execution dates in 2009.

Cross posted at The Peace Tree.

YEE HAW

The Vancouver Sun

Texas hospitals charging sexual assault victims for rape detection kits

As if coming forth with an allegation of sexual assault wasn't demeaning enough in many parts of North America, Texas has quietly decided to allow hospitals to charge a fee as high as $1800 to victims for the rape kits used to prove an attack.

Despite Texas' crime victim compensation fund being flush with cash, and most parts of the United States seeking to lessen the stress involved in a sexual assault investigation rather than increase it, Texan women have to hand over a credit card before their investigation can commence - or face debt collectors afterwards.

The office of Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott says the standard practice is for the state to cover the costs of the kit automatically, but "many follow-up or added costs are not covered." Staff added that the victims compensation fund only pays as a last resort, when police and the victim's health insurance company refuse to do so.

Texas isn't the first place where this rule is in place - the town of Wasilla, Alaska, home to former mayor and current state Governor Sarah Palin, also charged assault victims for their rape kits until the state government outlawed the practice.

During her campaign for the vice presidency, Palin told a reporter at the Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman newspaper that such a rule was ridiculous, stating, "The entire notion of making a victim of a crime pay for anything is crazy. I do not believe, nor have I ever believed, that rape victims should have to pay for an evidence-gathering test."

And yet, when she was Mayor, Wasilla did just that, billing rape victims between $300 and $1200 after the fact for their test.

Wasilla is not alone. In North Carolina, the vast majority of rape victims were being asked to cover some or all of the cost of their rape kits, until the local Raleigh News & Observer newspaper brought the practice to light. A state victims compensation fund had reportedly run low on cash, meaning it could only cover around $1000 of the $1600 hospitals now charge in that state for the kit. Similar situations have been reported in Arkansas, Illinois, and Georgia.

Rape kits generally include bags for clothing, a comb to collect pubic hair, test tubes for blood collection, swabs for DNA checks and fluid, and a series of tests for sexually transmitted diseases, pregnancy and DNA collection.

TEXAS: Bugging Out on Pesticides

Texas Observer Political Intelligence

In a state known for flying roaches the size of small planes and a fire ant population that outnumbers humans, it’s not surprising that many people use pesticides. Of course, the pesticides are often more dangerous than the pests, especially to children. Now some of Texas’ anti-pesticide advocates—there aren’t many—are concerned that the Texas Department of Agriculture is considering loosening restrictions on pesticide use in schools.

Mary Hintikka never really thought about pesticides sprayed on school grounds, including outdoor gardens and athletic fields, even inside buildings. But as she watched her school-age son develop frequent, unexplained illnesses, she began to suspect that pesticides might be the cause. She was alarmed to learn that the powerful chemicals sprayed in and around her son’s Houston school included chemicals on the Environmental Protection Agency’s list of the most dangerous pesticides. Children with long-term or acute exposure to some of these chemicals, numerous studies have shown, are more likely to suffer from childhood leukemia, soft-tissue sarcoma, and brain cancer.

In 2007, the Legislature passed a bill by Corsicana Republican state Rep. Byron Cook that abolished the Structural Pest Control Board—by most accounts, a lax regulatory body—and folded its duties into the Agriculture Department. The idea behind the bill was to strengthen oversight and regulation of pesticides, especially for schools. The bill instructed the department to create new regulations for pesticide use at schools.

The agency released a draft of the new rules last summer, and they were much stricter. Schools could only spray the most powerful pesticides—those in the so-called red category (there are also green and yellow designations)—if students wouldn’t be within 100 feet of the spray area for at least 12 hours. The proposed 100-foot buffer was double the current standard, 50 feet for 12 hours.



(That’s still not ideal. Beyond Pesticides, a nonprofit advocacy group based in Washington, D.C., has recommended that students not be allowed in sprayed areas for at least 24 hours.)

The pesticide industry and school boards didn’t like the proposal. They complained to the agency, saying the buffer zone was too onerous, says Bryan Black, a department spokesman. So in its most recent revision, released earlier this year, the department recommends that schools spray only where students won’t be within 25 feet for eight hours. That’s not only lower than the agency’s draft, it’s lower than the current standard.

Black says the department consulted experts at Texas A&M’s Southwest Technical Resource Center in formulating the new standard. “We believe these standards are absolutely safe,” he says. “We’re not going to do anything that would put children in danger.”

But Hintikka—like Sue Pitman, a pesticide expert who once worked in Texas and now lives in Colorado—worries that the department is bowing to pressure from industry and schools. Hintikka says the reason for moving pesticide oversight to the Agriculture Department was to strengthen standards, not weaken them.

The department hasn’t finalized the rules. The agency will decide in the next month to either implement the proposal or revise it again. In the meantime, Hintikka says, parents should find out exactly what pesticides are being used at their kids’ schools.

—Dave Mann

Illustration by Alex Eben Meyer

Texas Secession? The stars at night are big and bright....

From McClatchy we read this morning, "Texas' Perry raises secession issue at 'tea party' protest."

Though I have moved back to New England, where I grew up as a kid/teen, I lived in TX for over 20 years and remember those bumper stickers back in the 80s, "Texas Secede" and "Texas Native." This secession idea has been kicked around for years. It's that whoop and holler "Don't Mess with my white, anti-hispanic, anti-gay Texas" mentality, and with the changing demographics, that dog don't hunt. Perry's a fucking opportunist anyway. It was all bluster. When pressed with questions about his statement, he told reporters that Texas probably wouldn't secede anyway.

A TOUCH OF TEXAS CLASS

An Appreciation by Robert Leleux in The Texas Observer:--Eleanor Tinsley—the only person I’ve ever met who was also a park and an elementary school—died Feb. 10. For anybody who doesn’t already know, much of what’s best and most beautiful about the city of Houston was a gift of Tinsley’s imagination. As a public servant and civic leader, she was a figure of great guts and dignity. She was also a very nice lady.

Houston, my hometown, is that strange place on the map where New Orleans manners meet western wildness, and where white-gloved refinement so often collides with cowboy coarseness and bigotry. White gloves never graced finer hands than Tinsley’s. A soothing presence in cupcake colors, she gave every impression of being the well-born Baptist matron she was (her great-grandfather, Dr. Rufus Burleson, was a president of Baylor University). But she was also one of those trailblazing women of the ’60s and ’70s who helped define our state as surely as any man at the Battle of San Jacinto.

When Tinsley was elected to the Houston School Board in 1969, the city was charged with the daunting task of racial integration—a cause to which she was unwavering. The Houston Chronicle reports that, during this tumultuous process, Tinsley was approached by a man made furious by the idea that his daughter might “catch something” from a black student.

“Perhaps, sir,” she replied, “she might catch tolerance.”
...
In 1979 Tinsley joined forces with Houston’s gay community to oust an outspoken homophobe from the City Council. That year, she became one of the first two women elected to the council, not to mention a champion of women’s and gay rights causes. By the time she retired in 1995, after 20 years in office, she’d played a major role in the creation of Houston Community College, Houston’s High School for the Performing and Visual Arts, Houston’s 911 emergency service, and literally hundreds of public parks. Former Councilman Jim Greenwood, quoted in the Chronicle, considers her “the most effective member of the City Council that Houston has ever seen.”

Oh, man, when I read this today, I realised that I really miss Houston. Eleanor Tinsley was truly one of the beacons of light during my 20-odd years in the Bayou City. I remember that incident with the homophobe on city council; I'd only been in Houston for three years. Tinsley cared about "quality of life" issues before doing so was popular. These were the years of Houston's unfettered growth, yet she worked on getting a 1980 sign ordinance to regulate billboards and championed green spaces and parks. R.I.P. Mrs Eleanor Tinsley.

Photo: Sharon Steinmann / Chronicle

BLOOD SAVERS

The Coffee Memorial Blood Center in Amarillo, Texas, is working with area hospitals to reduce unnecessary blood transfusions in an effort to address low blood supplies. The Northwest Texas Healthcare System has tapped a company with a Web-based program that can analyze whether or not patients should have received a blood transfusion, helping to educate staff on blood use. The Baptist St. Anthony's Health System is using Cell Saver, a device that collects patients' blood during surgery and prepares to pump it back if needed.

This idea is nothing new. When at St Luke's in Houston, already Texas Heart Institute had developed ways to save blood during surgeries. Fortunately, some doctors have been educated about efficiency in transfusion medicine. The days of only whole blood transfusion are over.

CHENEY & GONZALES INDICTED BY TEXAS GRAND JURY