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.

R.I.P. John Worrell, priest, chaplain and friend in Texas

The circumstances of our lives may already have given us a simple way of living. But for most of us the call to simplicity is a call to examine the way we live, the things on which we spend our resources of money and time and strength.

Simplicity is a spiritual discipline and a spiritual goal. We can in times of privation or limited resources have our sacrifices extorted from us, as we are forced backward step by step into a simpler life. Or we can embrace an opportunity to learn new ways of living sacrificially, new ways, and spiritually richer ways, of growing closer to God as we re-order and re-arrange the priorities of things and activities in our lives. We face a new encounter with the reality of God, our need of him, and the power of his grace. -- John Worrell on Simplicity

THE LEAD

Though he accomplished much in his long career as a working priest, John will likely be remembered chiefly as the force behind Nevertheless: A Texas Church Review - founder, publisher (along with wife Vivian), and head writer of a thoughtful publication that prided itself on being an independent voice crying for a little sanity in the Anglican Communion - no, not just in Texas ... and not just in the years before before 2003, but especially, and with hard vigor, in 2003 and beyond, until finally just a few years ago Nevertheless and other small occasional pubs like it were forced to run up the white flag and surrender (swearing many cautions to the rest of us) to the immediacy of the Internet.

John was profoundly captured by the notion that The Episcopal Church was a place capable of having a wide, fair, giving, and intellectually honest conversation about faith and the politics of faith. (He was also less apt to confuse the two, as we sometimes are now, in our rush to keep the story going.) He was, simply, a broad churchman who did not accept the smallness one sometimes perceives in clergy - including bishops - and who never shied from pointing out both the location and remedy of faults. Upon handing over the reigns of Nevertheless to an editorial board, he noted, with a tinge of melancholy, that

... [w]e never quite succeeded in providing, as we had hoped, a place where very different views were argued out in "charitable yet rigorous" debate, at least not often. Perhaps the times had already turned to discomfort with diversity and serious exploration of important differences in a shared environment. It is also likely that our willingness, on the rare occasions when it seemed needed, to question the wisdom or fairness of our Bishops gave us a partisan reputation we had not desired ... I hope that our shared concern for the success of the Gospel and the welfare of the Church will continue and grow.

Let's remember that The Episcopal Church, like any American expression of Christian thought, was upheld by many in the last century who cared enough about her fortunes to do something to in the hope of making a lasting impact upon them. There were many who toiled with blue pencils, pica-poles, and reduction wheels to make their drafts better - who would stay up late copying, folding, applying stamps and fueling it all with cold coffee, because they loved their Church enough to sacrifice for it in ways that just made sense to them. And if today entirely web-based news-and-views organs like Episcopal Café succeed, they do well to recall their forebears in this lineage.

So farewell, John, and thanks for all the carp. We owe you.

I knew John Worrell chiefly as the celebrant of the 8 o'clock Holy Communion at my parish during my years in Houston, St Stephen's Episcopal Church on West Alabama, Houston. When the (former) rector Clax Monro retired, John was interim priest and was for a time in the running as a candidate for the rectorship of St Stephen's (it eventually fell to Helen Havens, another prophetic witness in the church). St Stephen's always attracted not renegades, but rebels who were thoughtful and challenging in their arguments for the faith. I also knew John as the chaplain for Rice University and Texas Medical Center students at Autry House. He was a good friend of the Houston chapter of Integrity.

Ken Kesselus and Robby Vickery writing a retrospective on John Worrell in the Easter 2008 issue of Nevertheless

In 1959, he came to the Diocese of Texas to serve at Beaumont's St. Matthew's Church and as Chaplain to students at Lamar State College. Shortly after arriving, a young black college student was confirmed in St. Matthew's Church. This new Episcopalian took part in sit-in demonstrations seeking desegregation of lunch counters and public facilities. A dangerous impasse threatened as city officials resisted. On the strength of their pastoral relationship, John went to a critical meeting about the crisis. Unexpectedly, he was designated as an unofficial emissary for the black protesters to business leaders and City of Beaumont officials. Along with other local clergy from both communities in the city, he aided a process that achieved a measure of justice in a peaceful manner. He came to know, practically, the reality that people with differing views could meet to reason with one another and find a good and peaceful agreement.

Similarly, after moving to Houston in 1965, he worked with an interdenominational, multi-racial group of clergy which was informally named the "Crisis Commission." They met regularly to build community and trust, strategizing how to avoid the violence and race riots that were spreading across America. Their strategies were opening conversation, learning to appreciate those on the other side, and finding the leverage to bring feuding parties together enough to at least prevent tense situations from getting out of hand.

John sought to use Autry House, which housed his ministry to students at Rice University and schools within the Texas Medical Center, as a meeting place for such gatherings. He passionately promoted processes that would put people with different perspectives at the same table, working to better understand one another. He labored to bring diversity into that holy place, seeking to sanctify it through reconciliation and understanding.

Video: Lord of the Streets Episcopal Church in Houston

Lord of the Streets (LOTS) Episcopal Church began in 1990 as an outreach program of Trinity Episcopal Church to help serve the homeless population near downtown Houston. In 1993, the Episcopal Diocese of Texas made Lord of the Streets a Special Evangelical Mission. At this same time, a Bishop’s Committee was appointed to help with the governance of the mission. In 1994 the National Episcopal Church Executive Council named LOTS a Center for Jubilee Ministry, a designation for ministry affirming the biblical priorities of God—in partnership with the poor, the powerless and the vulnerable. Jubilee centers are charged with emphasizing four action ideas; these are empowerment, education, outreach and advocacy.

LOTS is one of the many ministries in Houston which offer service to people living downtown on the street. I was a member of another parish, but attended services there frequently when I lived in Houston.

Thanks to Episcopal Cafe.

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!

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.

Houston: No more moderately priced rentals in Montrose?

From 1986 to 2000, I lived in Richmont Square apartment complex in the Montrose area of Houston, close to the University of St Thomas. The property is owned by the Menil Foundation - Dominque de Menil placed her fantastic art collection in the Menil Museum, on Sul Ross, just behind Richmont Square. Rice, University of Houston, St Thomas students and Texas Medical Center staff lived there amid amazingly tall live oaks. The site had been previously owned by an order of Roman Catholic nuns who stipulated that the trees not be cut down, when they sold the property.

Now the foundation plans to demolish the 495 unit complex to replace it with...who knows what. Good-bye reasonable rents in the near-town!?

... its board has already approved a master plan that would clear much of the area for galleries, sculptures and program-related buildings.

However, the details on exactly what would replace Richmont Square remain part of “a flexible plan” that will likely not be implemented for “five or 10 years, even longer,” according to Vance Muse, communications director for Menil.

“We now have to decide how to implement it, emphasizing careful growth,” Muse said.

In its current form, the approved master plan for the Menil-owned area, adjacent to Richmond Avenue, calls for dense residential use and commercial development.

Will the character of an already changing character of the Montrose be changed for ever?

“We’d like to keep it bohemian, if at all possible,” he said. “There has always been a commitment (by Menil) to offering a break.”

If not, Richmont Square would join the ranks of other large, moderately priced rental properties in the area that have been replaced in recent years by more expensive dwellings — or by nothing at all.

Related Posts on Richmont Square and the Menil:

• Chipperfield Sculpts the New Menil: Goodbye, Richmont Square
• The Menil Looks at Richmond
• What the New Collection of Menil Collections Might Look Like

Photo of Richmont Square parking lot courtesy River Oaks Examiner; photo of the Menil courtesy of the Menil Museum.

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

ESSAY: HOUSTON AFTER DARK

HOUSTON CHRONICLE (14 SEPTEMBER 2008):

Essay: Houston after dark

How to fathom that 5 million people are without power? The best way is to see it for yourself, to see a normally luminescent city - a bonanza of lights and billboards and ever-beckoning commerce - engulfed in almost total darkness.

Out on the highways and thoroughfares, in the middle of the night, you can drive for miles without seeing anyone, or any light other than that coming from your car.

They become so scarce as to greet you like a friendly smile.

Gaudy car dealerships. Gas stations with no gas. Flashing logos at tacky bars and restaurants. Even still-burning cigarette butts. These are your friends while you drive in pitch black Houston.

Cruising through a neighborhood with no lights can conjure an eerie feeling. You know people are there, tossing in bed as they sweat, cursing the hurricane for all their discomforts, but when you cannot see them or any sign they exist, you feel like the only person in the world.

Drive deeper into the darkness and you see the detritus of old trees in the street, cars parked in the driveways of big Texas houses, discarded plywood or generator boxes, but you don't see any people. And you don't see any light.

So you head back to the big streets, back to see your friends, the lights, and wonder at the randomness of where light remains. On the east side of the North Freeway, Greenspoint Mall is but a silhouette, but the other side of the median is as bright as a summer's day, where a host of businesses look as though they could open any moment. Carmax is bright enough to resemble a sports stadium, but a neighboring dealership has not only no lights but no cars, either.

As you drive around the two loops, all you see are bright, flashing sirens, which mean something too, as they are bringing scarce light to dark places and maybe darker happenings.

Then, as you wind around a bend, heading back downtown on U.S. 59, you see it, the only place that never darkened during the storm: the Houston skyline.

Light, alas, is everywhere.

--Bradley Olson

IKE MAKES ITS PRESENCE KNOWN

Waves crashing into the Seawall reach over the memorial to the hurricane of 1900 as Hurricane Ike slams Galveston.

Photo: Johnny Hanson/Houston Chronicle.

Brennan's restaurant burns [I've dined there, my favourite restaurant in Houston, a landmark dining experience!]

Brennan's opened in downtown Houston more than 40 years ago and constantly rated as one of the best eateries in the city.

It's a favorite spot for Sunday brunch and family celebrations.

It was only one of several fires across the city of Houston late Friday and early Saturday morning. But as hurricane force winds approached Houston, the fire department ordered a handful of fire stations to not go out and battle any blazes until the storm threat subsided.

MICHAEL DEBAKEY, 1908-2008

I'VE blogged about Michael DeBakey here and here. Today's news from Houston is that Dr DeBakey died yesterday at Methodist Hospital, where he practised cardiovascular surgeon since 1949!

Medical statesman, chancellor emeritus of Baylor College of Medicine, and a surgeon at The Methodist Hospital since 1949, DeBakey trained thousands of surgeons over several generations, achieving legendary status decades before his death. During his career, he estimated he had performed more than 60,000 operations. His patients included the famous — Russian President Boris Yeltsin and movie actress Marlene Dietrich among them — and the uncelebrated.
---
Debakey almost died in 2006, when he suffered an aortic aneurysm, a condition for which he pioneered the treatment. He is considered the oldest patient to have both undergone and survived surgery for it. He recovered well enough to go to Washington earlier this year to receive the Congressional Gold Medal, one of the nation's two highest civilian honors.

He remained vigorous and was a player in medicine well into his 90s, performing surgeries, traveling and publishing articles in scientific journals. His large hands were steady, his hearing sharp. His personal health regimen included taking the stairs at work and a single cup of coffee in the morning.

MAKING UP IS SO HARD TO DO

I worked for nearly twenty years at Texas Heart Institute in Houston, so today's story in the Times' Science section about the end of the "feud" between two giants in cardiology medicine, Michael DeBakey and Denton Cooley, is, well, heartwarming! 'Bout time, I'd say! After all, Cooley is 87 and DeBakey is 99!!!

TO MY HOUSTON READERS.....

Don't forget to Vote! Harris County elections are this Tuesday, November 6.

"All together now, SLIIIME in the ice machine."

Marvin Zindler was a consumer reporter for Houston's ABC affiliate, KTRK/Channel 13. He died last Sunday, age 85. The Houston Chronicle has an extensive obituary. His "fame" came from investigative reporting about - and forcing the closing of - the Chicken Ranch in LaGrange, Texas, the oldest and continuously run brothel in the US. It was made famous in the movie starring Dolly Parton, Burt Reynolds, and Dom DeLuise.

"I didn't care that they had a whorehouse," he'd say in later years. "We had plenty here in Houston."

Zindler seemed to enjoy the spotlight the musical and movie shone on him — he kept a poster for the film on his office wall — though he always said he felt his most important stories were 1985 reports on financial mismanagement by the Hermann Hospital board of trustees.

And those Hermann reports spurred investigations of the policies of other Texas Medical Center non-profit hospitals. As a result, Methodist, St Luke's (where I worked), and Texas Children's - all excellent hospitals - expanded their charity and outreach to the city and beyond. No more arbitrary refusal of indigent trauma patients (well, claiming the census was full, when it wasn't) and sending them to the county hospitals, Ben Taub and Jeff Davis (it was against the law, anyway!).

My ex and I used to watch his weekly Channel 13 "roach and rat" report of unsanitary conditions in area restaurants (sliiime in the ice machine). Marvin could make or break a restaurant. I remember one citing the New York Deli, a sandwich shop we frequented near the Galleria. A week later it closed up shop for good, the queues for take-away having slowed down to a trickle.

Zindler also loved to talk of the thousands of children who'd received free medical care from Marvin's Angels, doctors who donated their services because Zindler asked them to. In addition to his frequent on-air reports about such cases, Zindler started a foundation with his friend and plastic surgeon Dr. Joseph Agris that helped children around the world.

These activities, he told a reporter last year, were why — in his 80s and after enduring open-heart surgery and surviving a previous bout with prostate cancer — Zindler continued to work.

Marvin also traveled extensively, documenting how Houston doctors helped alleviate suffering in developing countries. Recently, for example, he helped seven Iraqi men get prosthetic devices to replace the hands that were cut off during Saddam Hussein's regime.

Watch some of Marvin Zindler's stories from the 1970s here and here. Gonna miss that good ol' sign off in his inimitable Texas twang, "Maaarrrrvin Zindler, Eeeyyyewitness News." R.I.P.

Oil Guzzlin' GewGaws in Houston

Yesterday was the 20th annual Art Car Parade in Houston.

Art Cars or art mobiles usually begin their lives as an older or used vehicle (car, truck, van, bus, jeep, golf cart, etc.). The owner of the car decides they want to alter their automobile, not necessarily converting what's under the hood (unless it is a lowrider.)* but instead transforming the exterior/ interior of the car. To what degree and how this transformation is made is entirely up to the imagination, skills and resources of the car owner.

As the Chron reports, it's now become a corporate parade.

COMMENT: The Art Car Parade's origins were definitely iconoclastic and countercultural and gave Houston's alternative art scene a chance to show off their creativity. It made life in Houston funky and tolerable for me. But it's weird to see something like this happen in the current era of global warming. Houstonians love their cars, but what about the pollution these old klunkers cause? There was no mention of alternative vehicles in the Chron story.

The Man on the Table Was 97, but He Devised the Surgery

Several readers and friends of this blog know that I lived for over 20 years in Houston and worked at St Luke's Episcopal Hospital/Texas Heart Institute where Denton Cooley is chief of Cardiovascular Surgery at St. Luke's.

Michael DeBakey worked next door at The Methodist Hospital.

So, I was astounded and amazed - he was ancient when I lived in Houston (actually I thought he had long since died) - to read in today's New York Times: Over the past 60 years, Dr. DeBakey has changed the way heart surgery is performed. He was one of the first to perform coronary bypass operations. He trained generations of surgeons at the Baylor College of Medicine; operated on more than 60,000 patients; and in 1996 was summoned to Moscow by Boris Yeltsin, then the president of Russia, to aid in his quintuple heart bypass operation.

Now Dr. DeBakey is making history in a different way — as a patient. He was released from Methodist Hospital in Houston in September and is back at work. At 98, he is the oldest survivor of his own operation, proving that a healthy man of his age could endure it.