The Good Life: It’s Still Bad, In Case You Were Wondering (Updated)

Readers who’ve kept up with their daily dosage of ginko biloba will recall that it was only last Monday when we wrote, in an uncharacteristically derisive tone, of the Houston Chronicle’s new The Good Life section and how that misguided effort at content delivery, or whatever it’s called, had contributed to the scenic blight in our neighborhood. We intended to say no more on that subject, ever, at least until the “Looking Back” retrospective we’re planning to commemorate our 10,000th posting, but subsequent to that trenchant examination of The Good Life we were contacted by someone claiming to be a Ms. Kyrie O’Connor, who in an initial emailing identified herself as “deputy managing editor/features” of the Chronicle. (Having never had the pleasure of meeting her in person, we can’t of course say for sure that the human with whom we communicated was indeed Ms. O’Connor, so we must hedge a bit; if it were some prankster-imposter we’d like to apologize to the real Ms. O’Connor here and now.) Ms. O’Connor, or the Ms. O’Connor impersonator, claimed that our handiwork of Feb. 1 was rife with what she called “wrong facts,” a not-too-clever formulation she attributed to an anonymous co-worker. In a follow-up phone conversation of seemingly unending duration she scolded us, quite mercilessly, for failing to open the sandwich-baggy-like wrapping of which we wrote and inspect a copy, or copies, of The Good Life that were pitched on the lawns of non-Chronicle-subscribing residents of our neighborhood, which she described as a whole ’nother product, or sort of a whole ’nother product, or in some way kinda-sorta different, a little bit, than the one that was home-delivered that Sunday to paying subscribers such as yours truly (and possibly non-paying ones). We explained––or tried to explain, as we found it difficult to squeeze in more than a desultory defense here and there during the wide-ranging conversation––that we are not a thief, at least not anymore, and that making an unauthorized entrance into a sandwich bag to retrieve a Good Life from a neighbor’s yard might constitute theft under Texas law. We did not add, for we did not feel the need to, that in our neighborhood many residents possess not only BAD DOGS but loaded firearms that more than a few probably leave lying around the living room with the safeties off. (In fact, our next-door neighbor, who is recently returned from a spell in the V.A. Hospital after suffering a serious stroke, within the past year or so failed to follow the rules of handgun safety when he drunkenly waggled what he described as a “loaded” .357 magnum in our presence, though not directly at us, while supine on his bed near the open window where he passed most of his hours, pre-stroke. It was just 2 o’clock on a Saturday afternoon, and at the time we had not even thought of stealing his The Good Life, nor, most likely, had the Chronicle’s master marketeers brainstormed it into existence.)

Anyway, as Ms. O’Connor surely understood from her close reading of our posting, we were not moved to throw down on The Good Life until we noticed so many copies still lying on our neighbors’ lawns late Monday afternoon, which by that time had been turned to gelatinous wads of newsprint mush by the heavy rains, thus rendering them extremely difficult to read (although we fully understanding that “reading” The Good Life is not the point of The Good Life). After many minutes of pleasant exchanges with Mr. O’Connor––we hate to be so formal, but for some unexplained reason Ms. O’Connor refused our request that she tell us how to say her first name, and we’d feel uncomfortable referring to her in print by a name that we might mispronounce aloud––we established, solely on what we believe to be Ms. O’Connor’s good word, that a story we may have suggested was in the yard-pitched non-subscriber copies of The Good Life, a story having something to do with vacationing in Aspen (which we cited, among others, to suggest that the newspaper’s marketeers were overshooting the demo in our zip code), appeared only in copies of The Good Life that were tucked into subscribers’ home-delivered Chronicles. (Are you hanging with us here?) After more pleasant repartee with the deputy managing editor/features, we further established––again, based on Ms. O’Connor’s good word, as we still have not screwed up the courage to steal a sodden week-old copy of The Good Life, although many are still available hereabouts––that the other two stories we cited, having to do (we think) with Creole cookin’ and Parisian couture––were indeed in both (that is, presumably, all) versions of The Good Life, subscriber and non-subscriber.

Also on Mr. O’Connor’s short bill of non-particulars was the allegation that we somehow had mischaracterized the commercial imperative behind The Good Life by suggesting that this episode of legalized littering apparently was meant to spur subscription sales.* In retrospect we see how stupid this conjecture of ours was, because obviously the last thing a daily newspaper needs these days is more paying subscribers. (What The Good Life is aiming to do, you see––and once again we rely solely on Ms. O’Connor’s expert testimony.––is simply to serve as a much-needed vehicle for the delivery of ad content to non-subscribers. Pure genius, no?) Additionally, Ms. O’Connor seemed disturbed, or pretended to seem disturbed, by our jesting suggestion that The Good Life had been hand-delivered by Chronicle publisher Smilin’ Jack Sweeney, although after some moments of intense palavering we believe we were able to wring from her the admission that she well-knew we were only playin’.

Ms. O’Connor had a whole lot else to say, most of which we did not commit to memory because it did not seem at all relevant to the matters at hand, although we do recall her bald and somewhat unscientific assertion that, and we quote, “Your blog is crap.” We took exception to the declaration but did not argue the point at length, since it is not entirely outside the realm of possibility. (Mrs. O’Connor at one point also mocked, or tried to mock, our vocal mannerisms, which we sort of let pass because we were multitasking at the moment; we did, however, verify the attempted mimicry by asking whether she was “mocking” us, to which she replied: “Yes, I’m mocking you.”)

The deputy managing editor/features seemed overly het-up about the entire matter, which had the effect, perhaps the intended effect, of making us equally het-up and forcing us to retreat from our backyard to the interior of our domicile so as not to disturb our neighbors with the increased volume (we’re thoughtful that way). Oh yeah, we almost forgot: To illustrate the egalitarian impulse behind the standalone yard-pitched version of The Good Life, Ms. O’Connor informed us, possibly with a straight face, that a big story in the upcoming edition had something to do with a “$7.99 ring you can buy at Target.” To our joshing query as to whether Target had “paid” for the story Ms. O’Connor seemed to take serious umbrage, and later, in reeling off a long list of our various sins of commission and omission, she claimed that we had accused her, personally, of taking a “bribe” from Target. (After sobering up, however, it seems clearer to us that the pimping of a purchase, no matter how small, from a major advertiser is––and we’re being polite here––a tad unsavory and possibly in contravention of the ethical standards of Sigma Delta Chi, if not the Geneva Convention.)

Alas, the conversation, after not advancing especially far, reached an impasse, with Ms. O’Connor accusing us of a (her word) “Birther”-like solipsism (our word) for our steadfast refusal to acknowledge any wrongdoing or malfeasance. Mrs. O’Connor, whose own solipsism rivals that of our sitting governor––and we hope she understands what we mean here, and it’s not altogether a bad thing––remained similarly unyielding in her professed belief that The Good Life is NOT mere crap and that a story on a “$7.99 ring you can buy from Target” rises to the level of “journalism,” broadly defined.

We do, though, occasionally acknowledge the validity of others’ realities, in addition to being an open-minded and big-hearted sort, so very early this morning we gave The Good Life another shot, reading (sort of but not really) not only the one in our home-delivered edition but discreetly “borrowing” one from a slumbering neighbor’s yard under cover of darkness (which we’re returning shortly, FYI). Here’s what we found:

Our 8-page Good Life: Two travel stories on Big Sur and snuba-ing in Honduras not in our neighbors’ dowdy downscale edition, as well as a tout for some beer from Southern Star Brewing Co. of Conroe (at least it’s local, but, hey, did they pay for that?) and some personal-fitness shinola.

Our purloined 6-page Good Life: All, or most all, of the rest of the schizz in the subscriber-only version, plus a Parade magazine, several ad inserts (coupons!) and––check it out––a very large advertisement for Carter's Country, where one of those Glock Model 27s can still be had for only $559.97 (maybe the Chronicle's better at the demographic fine-tuning than we thought). Cover "story" is “Hello Sailor!”, which, contrary to the headline suggestion, is not about port-side prostitution but enjoins readers to “Get nautical this spring with stripes that will take you to the yacht club” (for your job clearing tables, we guess). This appears to be the story involving the $7.99 ring from Target of which Ms. O’Connor pridefully spoke.

Sad to say, but we must conclude, oh-so-predictably, that The Good Life, in however many permutations it may be available in our expanding universe, is still crap. Yet we hope this fact-opinion, empirically verifiable though it may be, will not present an obstacle to our remaining a fast and loyal Facebook buddy of Ms. O’Conner, and she of us, until this good life draws to its inevitable close.

As for The Good Life, the newspaper section: We predict its end will be coming within the month, two at the outside. But we could be wrong!

*After posting this entry, which surely will be a finalist in the Pulitzer competition for Superior Blogurbatin', we were returning the contents of The Good Life sandwich bag for re-delivery when we noticed that it included a flier offering "complete Sunday Chronicle delivered for $1.00 a week!" Ms. O'Connor stands corrected.

Not Just Your Average Run-of-the-Mill Hispanic Museum, But a “First-Class” Hispanic Museum ...

The Chronicle’s Bradley Olson has now reported twice on Gene Locke’s campaign promise to push for creation of a “Hispanic museum” in Houston and has thoughtfully posted a recording of a recent “Latinos for Locke” soiree during which the mayoral candidate can be heard “reiterating” the promise, as the reporter put it. While it’s all vague and tenuous sounding--we assume this idea has been floating round out there somewhere and Locke has latched on to it as a show of solidarity with los hermanos y las hermanas--it does not cause us to look with great favor on Locke’s candidacy, especially if creation of this facility would require the expenditure of government funds.

The “Hispanic Museum” is included in a laundry list of demographically fine-tuned pledges Locke reels off to his Hispanic, Latino, what-have-you supporters. It sounds almost like a parody of a big-city politician’s pandering--like something from The Wire in one of its less inspired moments. (Yes, we know, all politicians pander, to greater or lesser degrees, and to all sorts of people--including to white voters, especially to white voters--but in this case Locke’s enumeration of his “commitments” is so overt and specific it borders on being funny.) After a spirited introduction by government-employee-for-life Carol Alvarado, who notes that Locke, as city attorney under Mayor Bob Lanier, was responsible for “writing” the city’s current affirmative action ordinance, Locke pledges to fight for more “diversity” at City Hall (by somehow ensuring that “there’s at least one Hispanic in the pool” of applicants for city department head jobs) and to “diversify our community developments dollars so they’re spent in all communities of Houston” (which we would take as implicit criticism of recent past mayors, including his benefactor Lanier). Then he says, “We need to be about the business of a least considering trying to build in this city a first-class Hispanic museum--that’s not just good for the Hispanic community, that’s good for Houston ...” (Locke adds something about this musuem being an economic development tool, although most of the addendum is drowned out on Olson’s tape by applause from the candidate’s supporters; he rounds out his Latino to-do list by pledging “to work to bring a soccer stadium to Houston” for the panhandling professional team, etc.)

Be about the business ... at least considering--that's not exactly whole-hearted. Then again, Locke also promises “to work night and day for the commitments I’ve made.” (A premise for a possible phone-call-at-3 a.m. TV commercial for Locke: He’s wide awake in his PJs, hollering into the receiver, “We gotta get movin’ on that first-class Hispanic Museum deal--the economic vitality of the city depends on it!”)

We’ll spare you the obvious and refrain from going on about what a bullshit idea this is and arguing why municipal government should have no hand in these little exercises of ethno-narcissism. (Yes, we know the Houston Museum of African American Culture took root way back in the Lee Brown administration and has received city funding, and where has that led? The Facebook site for the outift says “Building Completetion: 2011." We rest our case). We’d have no problem, though, if Lanier ... excuse us ... Locke were to spearhead a private fund-raising for such a facility, although we’d think a mayor would have better things to do (we’d suggest he start out by tapping some of the Hispanic politicians supporting him--the ones whose faces are starting to sag from bending over the the public trough for so long).

We find this pledge, as well as Locke’s entire brief spiel to his Hispanic backers, interesting on two counts: 1.) They show Locke to be the traditional promise-making labor-liberal candidate he apparently is--he mentions his own past membership in the OCAW and steelworkers’ union in his opening--which kinda doesn’t jibe with the politics of many of his big-money supporters. He must be the only past union card-holder who named his daughter after the site of the famous (or infamous) 1971 New York state prison uprising to have gotten campaign contributions from GOP moneybags Bob Perry, that noted friend of organized labor. And 2.) in a realpolitik sense, Locke is playing to the wrong crowd. It’s unlikely this “Hispanic museum” promise will have much influence on actual Hispanic voters, who generally seem to be a fairly independent lot (we're talking about voters here, not the "community" at-large) and who, according to no less an authority than Richard Murray, the Bob Lanier Professor of Public Policy at the University of Houston, constitute only about 8 percent of the city electorate (seems just a tad low to us, and as we’ve reported we graduated in the top 75 percent of our high school class). On the other (Caucasian) hand, Locke’s pursuit of a Hispanic Museum is liable to carry considerable symbolic weight for Republican-inclined suburban voters, and not in a good way for Locke. (Murray estimates that heavily GOP Kingwood alone accounts for 5-6 percent of the electorate.) These are the voters who will probably be the deciding factor in an election in which the three top contenders (the monied candidates, that is) are all traditional promise-making labor-liberals, of a sort. We await reports of Locke trumpeting his Hispanic Museum down in Clear Lake and out in Memorial (maybe he has and we missed it).

Orwell Avenue, a Street We Visit in Our Mind (Or So We’d Like to Think)

While recently performing deep-dish research on that alleged movement to rename a portion of Houston’s Hillcroft Avenue after Mahatma Gandhi—we’d be surprised if we hear of this proposal again, but we’re usually wrong about these things—we had occasion to re-read Orwell’s “Reflections on Gandhi.” Orwell viewed Gandhi with some ambivalence: While he admired his political skills and shared his hatred of the Raj—has there been another Westerner who wrote with such a cold eye of the soul rot of imperialism?—he was baldly contemptuous of the old boy’s “otherworldliness”—his sandals (Orwell really, really disliked such unmanly footwear), his vegetarianism, his pacifism, and, mostly, his attachment to “non-attachment” (we know folks who would say Orwell misunderstood the concept; we know others who would say he understood it too well). We had forgotten this choice bit, regarding Gandhi’s, and others’, pacifism:

Nor did he, like most Western pacifists, specialize in avoiding awkward questions. In relation to the late war, one question that every pacifist had a clear obligation to answer was: "What about the Jews? Are you prepared to see them exterminated? If not, how do you propose to save them without resorting to war?" I must say that I have never heard, from any Western pacifist, an honest answer to this question, though I have heard plenty of evasions, usually of the "you're another" type. But it so happens that Gandhi was asked a somewhat similar question in 1938 and that his answer is on record in Mr. Louis Fischer's Gandhi and Stalin. According to Mr. Fischer, Gandhi's view was that the German Jews ought to commit collective suicide, which "would have aroused the world and the people of Germany to Hitler's violence." After the war he justified himself: the Jews had been killed anyway, and might as well have died significantly. One has the impression that this attitude staggered even so warm an admirer as Mr. Fischer, but Gandhi was merely being honest. If you are not prepared to take life, you must often be prepared for lives to be lost in some other way. When, in 1942, he urged non-violent resistance against a Japanese invasion, he was ready to admit that it might cost several million deaths.

In other words, Orwell recognized that Gandhi seemed to have the courage of his convictions, and was willing to see others die for them, even if those particular convictions were, to Orwell’s mind, abhorrent.

Orwell was writing in 1949, just two years after Indian independence and the outbreak of the still-simmering Hindu-Muslim hostilities, and in the end was moved to voice his admiration for Gandhi’s particular genius:

One may feel, as I do, a sort of aesthetic distaste for Gandhi, one may reject the claims of sainthood made on his behalf (he never made any such claim himself, by the way), one may also reject sainthood as an ideal and therefore feel that Gandhi's basic aims were anti-human and reactionary: but regarded simply as a politician, and compared with the other leading political figures of our time, how clean a smell he has managed to leave behind!

All of which has nothing whatsoever to do with the misguided effort to rename part of a well-traveled Houston thoroughfare after Gandhi, but we're feeling lethargic today, and Orwell is always timely.

We’ll Give Up “Hillcroft” When You Pry it from Our Cold, Dead Fingers

A Slampo's Place Special Report

We almost choked on our paneek paneer last week while dining at our 3^rd or 4^th favorite Indian vegetarian restaurant (the one that weirdly proclaims itself “Best in Texas, Good in Houston”) and perusing the Pakistan Chronicle (which weirdly proclaims itself “The newspaper you read”). There, tucked at the bottom of the front page of the July 17 edition, was news of a looming civic atrocity, one of which we theretofore had not been informed: “Hillcroft May Very Well Become Gandhi Avenue.”

You read that right: That’s Gandhi, as in Mahatma, who as far as we know was not a Houstonian, not a Texan, not even an American, and, as far as we know, never set foot in Houston, or Texas, or even the United States. Yet, according to the story, “efforts are under way” by some outfit called the India Culture Center to change the name of Hillcroft between Highway 59 and Westpark to honor the long-dead spindly proponent of peaceful resistance and opponent of British imperialism. This supposedly is desired by Indian merchants on that stretch of the many-miles-long street, although none are directly quoted as saying so in the story. (You know that stretch: it’s a good place to get paneek paneer and/or a sari, if you’re in the market for one, and stock up on your Hallel meatstuffs.). According to the newspaper’s un-bylined report

Those who favor [the name change] say that Houston is an international city and should be reflected in the names of the various streets of Houston … Since Hillcroft between Highway 59 and Westpark, [sic] has many international shops and restaurants from South Asia, those in favor of change in name are saying that this section of roadway qualifies for a new name, which can be either Mahatma Gandhi Street or Gandhi Avenue.

But wait—if that's not good enough, there’s another justification:

Also as Gandhi’s name is associated with Non-Violence, that will help to restrain crime and ferocity in the area.

We can just imagine some tattooed, burr-headed cholo declaring, “We’re on Gandhi Avenue now, vato, therefore let us restrain our ferocity and refrain from ripping the gold jewelry from the neck of that middle-aged Indian woman.” It could work.

The red in our neck began to rise as we read this small article. We generally like most native Indians and Pakistans we’ve met in Houston (with a few notable exceptions, such as the surly anti-American Paki-asshole co-owner of the now-shuttered and torn-down Hugo Chavez Fill ’Er-Up out on, yes, Hillcroft, but far south of the “Gandhi Avenue” section). We presume that almost all of them are here legally (we’re sure there’s a few here and there who’ve overstayed a visa in their day), they have entrepreneurial drive, their kids are excellent spellers whose presence is generally a boon to the public schools they attend (with a few exceptions), the ones who are our neighbors keep their yards tidy and mind their own business, and some of the women look really, really fine when dolled up in the spangly jewelry (sorry … just call us “Rajah,” “Rajah of the Jungle”). We even enjoyed those Harold and Kumar movies, the way they turned ethnic and racial stereotypes on their heads. Yet the great, great majority of the “members” of these “communities” have been in Houston for, maybe, 10 or 15 years, 20 at the most, and suddenly they’re muscling in to claim a portion of well-traveled and traffic-choked thoroughfare in the name of “diversity” and “multiculturalism”--a street that already switches its name to “Voss” a little north of the future Gandhi Street. To that we can only say, as compelled to do so by our Franco-Germanic-Scots-Irish-Cherokee-Shanty Irish East Texas-Southwest Louisiana heritage, “Screw that” (trying to be polite). We’d bet our large right gonad—it’s very precious to us--that most of the Indo-Americans who (allegedly) are pushing this change don’t live within miles of Hillcroft, and, most likely, reside in the multicultural Valhalla of Sugar Land (future site of Tom DeLay Middle School).

Apparently we now live in a city where it is offensive to name the panhandling professional soccer team “1836”, after the year that our town’s namesake, the great Sam Houston (a practicing multiculturalist and assimilationist who, as you know, after resigning as governor of Tennessee lived among the Cherokees for six years and took a Cherokee wife) beat down the effete Euro-Hispanic Santa Anna, thus ensuring that today drug cartels are not wantonly shooting up the street of Santa Anna, Tejas (“Home of the Porfirio Diaz Space Center”). But somebody, apparently somebody who hasn’t had a stake on the soil all that long, can propose with a straight face to name a street after someone who had absolutely nothing to do with this town’s history or heritage. At the risk of repeating our self: Screw that.

We feel strongly, perhaps inordinately so, about this naming business. We were not greatly enthused when the school district named the newest eastside high school after Cesar Chavez—couldn’t they have found a local Mexican-American educator or entrepreneur or somebody local with the required Hispanic surname to honor?—but at least Chavez was an American, and the choice was in keeping with a long tradition of naming local streets and institutions after well-known presidential and non-presidential out-of-towners (MLK, of course, and Eisenhower High School and Pershing Middle School and Webster Street and Roy Benavidez Elementary, after the Viet Nam War Medal of Honor winner from El Campo). The district avoided the issue entirely (and correctly) when it dubbed the new westside high school the prosaic but more inclusive “Westside High School” (which is quite a bit more diverse [and English-speaking] than Chavez High). And we’re still puzzled why the city hasn’t taken at least some small step to honor its great and abiding blues heritage by naming something, anything, even a dead-end cul-de-sac, after Sam Hopkins. We’d take some time out of our busy schedule to start a counter-movement to name the targeted stretch of Hillcroft “Lightinin’ Hopkins Avenue,” except that we’re pretty sure that Hopkins didn’t spend a whole lot of time over on Hillcroft. (He might have driven up or down it once or twice late in his day, perhaps when he had a hankering for paneek paneer, which before his passing he reportedly declared to be “some really good shit.”)

Hillcroft seems to be suitably neutral name, too, and we’re sure the name has a history, although we’re damned if we no know it, and we’ve asked around. We’re pretty sure the platting of the street occurred after World War II (for younger readers or recent immigrants, that’s a war the United States fought against fascist Germany and imperial Japan in the 1940s, and many Americans—mostly white men--died in it to keep you from having to goose-step in the Town Square on Hitler’s birthday), and while we see no hills or crofts anywhere along the thoroughfare the name appears to be part of a general faux-Scottish theme among areas and neighborhoods of southwest Houston (“”Braeburn” this and “Braeburn” that, etc.).

Once you start divvying up streets for naming among the town’s many and various ethnicities, where will it stop? Will the Chinese, who already have their street signs in the Chinatown of southwest Houston, petition to have a portion of Bellaire Boulevard named after, say, sawed-off Commie Deng Xiaoping (who, unlike Gandhi, did actually once set foot in Houston)? Here’s the comma-challenged Pakistan Chronicle again:

There are others, who say that since the majority of businesses are South Asian, it will be proper, if both Indian and Pakistani personality names are part of the new name for Hillcroft, like Gandhi- Jinnah Avenue.

Ah, Jesus. Let's just rename the street "Kashmir" and let the Hindus and Muslims fight over it. In a stab at fair and balanced coverage, “the newspaper you read” gives us the other side of the story:

However, there are others, who say feel that this same area has famous businesses belonging to Spanish, Guatemalan, Arab and Persian communities: As such they feel that there is no need to change the name, it should be all inclusive.

Bingo! But according to the P-Chronicle, the idea has the support of at least one elected official, our very own City Councilman-Who-Didn’t-Actually-Live in-The-City-of-Houston-and-Still-May-Not, M.J. Khan, who’s now seeking to become our Controller-Who-May-Not-Actually-Live-in-Houston. Apparently paraphrasing the councilman, the ethnic newspaper says Khan is “favoring the change saying of the people of the area want the name, then it should be changed.” What a pandering weasel. This alone will disqualify him from being honored with our vote in the November election.

By the way, have any of the mayoral candidates mustered the 1/32^nd of a gonad necessary to stand up and say, at the risk of offending a teensy-tiny but probably heavy-voting slice of the electorate, “This is a stupid idea!"?

Hunger Artists Ladle Up Another Serving (Get It?) But We're Full.

No sooner had we posted this prescient piece last week questioning the highly dubious proposition that “hunger” is a big problem among Houston children* than the city’s leading daily newspaper weighed in with an editorial piquantly headlined “Hard Times: Summertime’s no picnic for Houston’s hungry children” (“hunger” … “picnic” … “Summertime” … get it?). Amazingly, this blowsy space filler (“Summertime’s no picnic for editorialists”) was based on no actual facts but rather on--check it out—an opinion piece by the head of the scare organization Children at Risk that had appeared on the newspaper’s Sunday op-ed page a few days earlier. Other than repeating the assertions made by Children at Risk—given the state of the newspaper biz, wouldn’t it be better for the Chronicle if it just sold ’em an ad?—the editorial was notable in that it appeared to be encouraging more people to apply for food stamps. In Texas. Must be a sign of the times …

No need to despair, though. Almost every comment affixed to the on-line version of the editorial questioned its premise, in mostly reasonable terms. As one reader wrote: “Show us pictures of all these starving kids with their bones showing. I'll bet most of these kids below the poverty line are fat.”**

Yes, obesity, not “hunger,” is an actual real-life problem among kids from lower-income families, so perhaps the Chronicle editorialists and Children at Risk could team up to fill up some more valuable newsprint space by campaigning for a new government program to monitor and restrict the caloric intake of Our Town’s at-risk youth.

*We know that some, perhaps many, self-righteous types will arise from the congregation and declare, with a certain self-congratulatory smugness, “Well, if there’s one hungry child in Houston, that’s one hungry child too many.” To which we’d say: Yes, that’s true, so go out and find this hungry child and take him to the Jack-in-the-Box near you.

** It wasn’t too many years ago that Phil Gramm (who, we must confess, was not among our favorite politicians, although he could be engaging in person) was reviled far and near by such deep thinkers as Molly Ivins for making the observably true statement, “We’re the only country in the world whose poor people are fat,” or something like that. While he certainly might have employed a better choice of words, Gramm was on the money, as subsequent repeated studies linking obesity to poverty have shown.

Hunger Artists

No matter what the calendar says, summer is here, and with it arrives a whole host of vexations—plagues of mosquitoes, ticks and fleas, brain-frying and lawn-toasting mid-afternoon heat, astronomical electric bills, the start of another hurricane season. And oh yeah: this is usually about the time we totally lose interest in the Astros, unless they put together eight or nine straight before the break. Even then, we might not pay attention again until they’re a lock for the playoffs.

Then there’s another small annoyance, one of which you may only be faintly aware but which nonetheless arrives each year roundabout this time: a news story or editorial or op-ed piece suggesting that there are thousands upon thousands upon thousands of HUNGRY CHILDREN in Houston, apparently malnourished to the brink of starvation. Summer appears to be a particularly acute time for "hunger," according to the monolithic social services-media infrastructure, because so many kids aren’t going over to their neighborhood schools to grab the two free meals the government makes available each weekday. You read it and maybe start to feel bad, then you walk or ride down almost any street in town and never see a kid who looks anywhere near emaciated; in fact, about every third kid (rough estimate) you run across looks to be ranging somewhere between grossly and morbidly obese (big, big problemo amongst your Hispanic—’scuse me, Latino—youth [check it out]). You yell at the kid to go run some laps or do some push-ups—men push-ups—but of course he can’t hear you ‘cause he’s zoned in on his MP3 player. Come to think of it, you never really hear about any actual “hungry” or “malnourished” child, with a real face and real name, unless he or she is the victim of severe parental abuse.

And you go hmm ...

Most of the media hand-wringings in Houston over the “hungry child” emanate, in some fashion, from an outfit with the ominous-sounding name Children at Risk, whose stock-in-trade appears to be ensuring that Houston is thought of—by Houstonians and outsiders alike—as a veritable hellhole for God’s innocents. Its solution to almost any “problem” it supposedly uncovers or spotlights is more, more, more expenditures of taxpayer funds. We don’t believe Children at Risk has ever cited “bad parenting” as at least an itsy-bitsy reason why some children may be “at risk” (although thousands and thousands and thousands of resilient Houston children actually survive that particular risk, daily).

Children at Risk is a non-profit think tank and advocacy group that’s been around since 1989 and has some fairly influential child health-and-welfare types on its board (its Web site also lists a couple of fairly influential media outlets as “collaborators”—check it out!). What we know about Children at Risk we’ve cobbled together from a few things we’ve heard over the years—nothing bad—and from the organization’s Web site. We don’t believe we’ve ever heard or seen any sort of an explanation in the local media of what Children at Risk is about and who funds it, beyond a description of the outfit as a “non-profit that focuses on children’s issues” or something equally as vague and meaningless. And this is the identifier that usually accompanies some extravagant claim or another that Children at Risk is making regarding the quality of the schools or all those “hungry children.” We figure the media take note of the name—Children at Risk—and automatically toss out their critical and evaluative faculties (which are not in large supply to begin with) and go with the flow. After all, how can you even question something that’s supposedly good for the children? Somebody might call you a Nazi or something, make you feel bad for being an actual journalist instead of a publicist masquerading as a journalist.

The latest eyebrow-raising epistle from Children at Risk appeared on the opinion page of Sunday’s Houston Chronicle in a somewhat disjointed piece authored by Robert Sanborn, the organization’s president and CEO, and headlined “Feed the hungry children right in our midst; Up to half of young here don’t get enough to eat.” Sanborn’s commentary does not reflect the second assertion of the headline—pretty much par for the course these days at the city’s leading daily newspaper—because nowhere in it does he actually make that statement. What he does say is this:

Contrary to popular belief and maybe a surprise to those of us wearing social blinders, poverty and hunger are far-reaching and widespread problems within the United States. This is especially true in the greater Houston area. Approximately 48 percent of Harris County children live in families with an income of $22,050 or less for a family of four. What is even more difficult to fathom is that here in Houston we are leaving dollars on the table by not fully taking advantage of federal money available to us to feed our hungry children. I, for one, want to see my tax dollars being fully utilized, especially if they were approved to help hungry children.

So it appears that Sanborn isn't connecting the dots on the imaginary grid by actually claiming that all these children in $22,050 households “don’t get enough to eat” or are “hungry.” Which is a good thing, because that would be patently, blatantly untrue (if difficult to quantify). What he is doing is unclear, except for reminding readers (and donors) that Children at Risk is on the case. Most of the rest of Sanborn’s piece is given over to recounting, in numbing detail, all the public and private resources devoted to providing free grub to Houston youngsters, except that they’re not enough and we need to get more, more, more kids to participate.

We’ll let you read the rest yourself, if you’re so inclined. In the meantime, we know you’re busy--possibly hungry for a salty snack--so we won’t draw down much more of your valuable but limited attention bandwidth. But before we go we’d like to make a couple of more points, in appropriately disjointed fashion, before somebody calls us a Nazi (but we voted for Obama, man!):

1. THERE ARE HUNGRY CHILDREN IN HOUSTON. This is a fact of which we are aware. But there aren't anywhere near the number the hunger artists would have you believe, and more often than not this is a temporary (but not good, of course) situation caused by poor parenting, or, more likely, by parental drug abuse or mental illness (the second cause growing from the first). And some parents just can’t get off their behinds or arrange to get their kids up to the school to get their free breakfasts and lunches in the summer—these meals usually provide ample daily caloric intake, although they generally are neither “tasty” nor “nutritious”—and instead turn the kids loose with giant sodas and a big bag of X-treme HOT CHIPS, the crap that just contributes to the further addling of young addled minds. (We’ll refrain from going off on the parents who drive the new Expeditions and F-250s to drop their kids off at school to procure their government-subsidized victuals—happens more than you’d think, mi amigo.) We definitely don’t believe the sins of the parents should fall on the children, especially the young ones, but we wonder what exactly Children at Risk proposes: Perhaps that each “at risk” child be assigned his or her own personal social worker to chauffeur them to and from school during the summertime so he or she can avail himself or herself of the free meals? HISD is offering the free food at 200 locations—seems like one might even be with in walking distance for most children. And lots of 'em could stand the exercise.

2. SINCE WHEN DID SOCIETY BEGIN DEFINING DOWN “HUNGER” AS “MISSING BREAKFAST”? Yes, we know, it’s best to eat a balanced breakfast, especially for young children, for all the reasons that Sanborn lists in his commentary, but does going without breakfast actually equate to “going hungry,” or, as Sanborn puts it in cutting-edge social-service jargon, “food insecurity?” Isn’t such a loose construction a real affront to people who fight against actual, documented “hunger” in Africa, Asia and parts of Latin America? Who’s to say that children who are eligible but aren’t partaking of the government-funded breakfast aren’t being fed? Maybe—and this is had to fathom, we know—their parents are feeding them (even hot chips-and-soda is something, although not as good for firing up the brain cells as the black coffee-and-a-cigarette breakfasts on which we subsisted for years). Diligent, attentive parents in a family of four making $22,050 annually can provide for their or her or his kids and do fulfill the first responsibility of parenting, which is to make sure their kids are fed and secure (and pass the TAKS!). And so:

3. HUNGER AMONG CHILDREN IS NOT “WIDESPREAD” IN HOUSTON. It’s just not, period. And when you cry wolf for so long, people tend to ignore or discount what you say and will continue to do so if you ever stumble across a real "problem."

Go ahead and call us a Nazi, if you wish, but now we must reattach our blinders and rest.

But Seriously: Who's the Daddy?

We noticed that our mayor gingerly sidestepped responsibility for that obviously knuckleheaded proposal to subsidize the credit-worthiness of would-be Houston homebuyers with funds originally set aside for Ike-necessitated repairs. According to Wednesday's follow-up by the Chronicle's Carolyn Feibel

While the mayor is responsible for what appears on the council's weekly agenda, White placed the genesis of the idea with the city's Department of Housing & Community Development. He said the staff member's intentions were good.

"As the mortgage markets are collapsing, banks are no longer buying mortgages, then people who can afford a house are not able to buy a house and that's what the staff was trying to address," White said.

Setting aside the question of whether this is a matter a municipal government should "address"---it's not, but let's move on---and ignoring the faulty characterization of the would-be beneficiaries of the now-junked (?) program as "people who can afford a house," we must wonder aloud why White seems to be escaping blame for this hastily aborted (?) fiasco. The Chronicle editorial page, in a recently unprecedented display of timeliness, administered a quick tsk-tsking to the "World Class Folly" but in doing so turned uncharacteristically "playful":

Maybe, it was just some smarty-pants staffer's idea of an April Fool's joke played a month early.

No, please, let's give blame where blame is due: White's the mayor, making housing in the inner-city "affordable" has been one of his high-profile initiatives, and the way we've always understood it the mayor has an agenda director whose job is to do what that title suggests (direct the council agenda). The agenda director works for the mayor. We can only assume that Councilwoman Pam Holm, in blaming the proposal's emergence on "poor leadership," was referring to the mayor, although that would be an unusually direct form of finger-pointing that would deserve the striking of a commemorative plaque. Maybe she was just talking about some anonymous, well-intentioned smarty-pants staffer.

In any case, Feibel's reporting---and by the way, these are the sort of stories you'll miss when the daily newspaper goes the way of the mastodon, miss as in "I miss my mommy" and miss as in you'll never hear about it---has turned a fertile bed for further inquiry. The reporter quotes Housing Director Richard Celli---he works for White, too, right?---saying that only one of 872 home-buying families for whom the city has provided down payments and closing costs during White's tenure has been foreclosed upon. Hmm. That seems to be an almost unbelievably salutary figure, one we assume is documented somewhere on paper. Beyond the technicality of foreclosure, though, we wonder how many of these families are actually iving in the houses they contracted to buy, and what their presence has done for the blocks where they've settled (admittedly a difficult question to qualify, but maybe it's just all good and if so props to the mayor, etc.).

Bullshit-Sniffing Media Hounds Finally Bark (Make That Hound, Singular)

The Chronicle’s Lisa Gray had a good---dare we say hard-hitting---follow-up Sunday on the arrest of the 59-year-old art teacher at Roberts Elementary last month after a drug-sniffing dog deployed by the Houston school district purportedly got a whiff of contraband in the woman’s car (a column that presumably led to this news story in Wednesday’s newspaper). A subsequent tossing of the teacher’s vehicle allegedly turned up two entire tablets of Xanax, and she could not produce a prescription for their use. (These pills---what us knowledgeable on-the-street types refer to as “bars”---are about as long as a thumbnail and maybe a fifth as wide.) This major victory in the War on Drugs was attended by a clutch of police patrol cars and at least one helicopter from a local TV news outfit---y’know, the whole Rice University-area neighborhood around Roberts was hoppin’, like the SWAT team had cornered an armed murder suspect in a backyard.

As Gray reported, the woman is a dedicated educator loved by students and parents, and the Roberts community has rallied behind her. From what we understand the teacher in no way appeared impaired in the classroom when the dope hound allegedly sniffed out the non-prescribed pharmaceuticals in her vehicle (while its human handlers up and down the line, from the superintendent and trustees to the cop who held the leash, figuratively relieved themselves all over the 4^th Amendment*) and initially was so unperturbed she was willing just to hand over her keys because she was reluctant to leave the class she was conducting.

Her arrest came as the school district continued its superintendent-ordered “sweep” of unattended vehicles in its campus parking lots, an overwrought reaction to the hysteria over a supposed widespread drug problem among school district employees that was vigorously fanned by the local media (we noticed that Channel 11, our default television news provider, had posted on its Web site an action-packed “raw feed” of the teacher’s departure from the courtroom after her first appearance before a judge last month.) The numbers say otherwise: according to the Chronicle’s count, 15 district employees had been arrested this school year prior to the sweep, and we believe that maybe three have been snagged since. Almost 30,000 people work for the district, more than 12,000 of them teachers. We’re way too high to do the arithmetic, and we never passed a TAKS exam, but we’d wager that the minuscule percentage of employees arrested (never mind actually convicted) is much lower than what would result if, say, one of the local TV stations turned a dope-sniffing dog loose in its employee parking lot.

It’s not like the drug-sniffing dog racket is an infallible science, either. We’d be interested in knowing how many “false positives” the district has notched---that is, when the pooch zeroes in on a vehicle and the owner consents to a search that turns up nothing. We were told of one school where the dog lit on four vehicles. A small amount of marijuana was turned up in one belonging to a staff employee, but nothing was found in the other three. Yet the owners of those vehicles were summoned out of their classes and subjected to unnecessary humiliation, not to mention a few moments of bowel-loosening dread.

Something worse than temporary humiliation hangs over the Roberts teacher, but in most respects she’s luckier than the average district employee who’s been pinched. She’s white (no doubt much to the relief of district higher-ups---no racial profiling by the drug-sniffing dog!) and has a top-notch defense lawyer and the support of an affluent and influential group of parents. In other words, she has the wherewithal to get her story out in the media, and that can't hurt. We’re pretty sure most of these advantages are not available to the kitchen worker at school district headquarters arrested on the first day of the sweep.


*Happens everyday, so who cares, right?

Synergistic Vibrancy: Meet the New Michael Pollack!*

Our mayor’s shilling on behalf of that downtown luxury condo high-rise (what, the new park with the Bill and Andrea White Promenade wasn’t enough consideration?) was hilarious on the face of it, but what’s truly funny is that anyone would seriously debate its propriety. Or at least pretend to consider with a straight face the possibility that El Alcalde’s letter trying to convince prospective tenants of the wonders of One Park Place was ethically sound, or even politically astute (setting aide the legal niceties).

We’ll leave it to others to point out the obvious shortcomings in that school of thought, but White’s huckstering makes us wonder whether he has advisers who actually give him advice. Advice he takes into consideration. We’re sure the production of the letter for developer-contributor Marvy Finger did not rise to a high-level policy discussion, but it would seem to be the kind of thing a politician with high aspirations might want to bounce off a trusted but straight-talking aide, someone who would have said, “I dunno, this looks kinda janky, chappie, besides being entirely pointless, and will open you up to considerable ridicule. Maybe you oughta toss that finely wrought missive in to the recycling bin and just go cut the ribbon when the place opens.” Y’know, a Rahm Emanuel type.

What it says to us is that White is not as smart as many people (including himself, we’d bet) think him to be.

Sure hope John Sharp stays in that Senate race …


*Somewhat dated reference to long-gone but not forgotten southwest Houston apartment huckster of the mid-’80s, best explained by this.

Let’s Go Downtown. For Some Bocce.

The daily newspaper’s Mike Snyder, one of Our Town’s ablest reporters (has a deep, deep knowledge of the city that can only be acquired through years of not only working and living here but paying attention here) had an excellent story in Sunday’s editions about the new Discovery Green thing-a-ma-bob downtown, which is set to open next week. In a very even-handed way, Snyder gently raises what has seemed to us to be the obvious question about Discovery Green: Will anyone aside from vagrants and other idlers actually go there, once the whoop-de-do dies down and the brass-band welcome from the tail-waggers in the media goes silent?

Based on Snyder’s reporting, it sounds to us as if the attractions at Discovery Green were concocted not by actual park patrons and/or taxpayers but by a committee of faux hipsters-cum-PR-and-marketing shills. According to Snyder

Visitors can sprawl in the grass for a concert, race model boats or splash in an interactive fountain. Runners can try out the jogging path while more sedate visitors can read a magazine in a small library or have a drink at The Grove restaurant … People who enjoy trendy games can play bocce, an Italian sport similar to lawn-bowling, while more traditional Texans can pitch horseshoes. Part of the model boat pool will be frozen during winter months for ice skating. Children can frolic in a "mist tree" that also serves as a piece of public art and a place for joggers to cool off … A farmer's market will serve a demand for locally produced food. On weekends, families can visit the park, put their pets in one of two dog runs and watch their kids play on the playground while they discard their newspapers and cans into recycling bins.

Bocce? This is Texas, podnuh: Why not an actual non-smoke-free* bowling alley? Anyway, we hope this all works out and the park is perpetually packed from dawn to dusk and taxpayers’ $41 million investment pays off (oh yeah, one of the lead designers of the park---her firm’s from San Francisco, of course---told Snyder that all activity sites in Discovery Green will be aligned “along the Andrea and Bill White Promenade, which runs through the park.”**)

We, however, are skeptical. Let us stop for a moment and consider why people go to parks, based not on the fanciful notions of some overpaid designer types but on the unfashionable evidence presented to our own lying eyes: People with little kids go to parks to let their offspring frolic on the rubberized, injury- and liability-proof playground equipment, as is available at city SPARK parks on school grounds across Houston; if there are jogging paths, as at Memorial and déclassé Bayland, a county-run facility near our home, people go to run and walk around the track, although we wouldn’t consider a jogging path a destination attraction (we’d bet most of the lithe young folks prancing around Memorial work and/or live near downtown, while we notice about the only people doing the circuit at Bayland are slightly overweight Hispanic women from nearby apartments [we when lope past we say encouragingly, “You go, muchacha!”); if there are tennis courts, the old and middle-aged go to knock the balls over the net; there are also many, many people, usually not from the upper-income zip codes, who go to the park to picnic and be with family (at Hermann Park on any given Saturday it’s like half of Mexico is having a family reunion [and that’s cool]); occasionally---meaning “not too often”---citizens will be drawn to Hermann Park to attend a special function targeted to their particular demographic profile***: Shakespeare in the Park, the Asian Festival, the Juneteenth Celebration****, the Meshketian Turk Pig Run and Roast, etc. (But apparently some of those to-dos, or related ones, are being pulled over to Discovery Green: Snyder reports that “the park plans to host a health fair on Juneteenth and an Asian festival.”)

Personally, we know of no one who’s going to drive downtown and stash their vehicle in Discovery Green’s underground parking lot (sheesh: a park with an underground lot, what a Houstonesque touch!) to read a magazine or dump their recyclables or play bocce or even horseshoes.***** We’re sure the Del Grande-Schiller restaurant operations will do just fine, but it’s a safe bet that what we’ll reductively designate as “regular folks” won’t be thronging the front doors. Snyder taps an out-of-towner, Phil Myrick, a vice president of New York-based non-profit Project for Public Spaces, which participated in early planning for Discovery Green, to delicately raise these points:

… the public and philanthropic investment in Discovery Green can be justified only if the park attracts many people from throughout the Houston area, said [Myrick].

Too often, Myrick said, "money gets poured into a place that very few people end up enjoying and spending time in."

Because Discovery Green is in a "challenging location," Myrick said, it will have to offer compelling activities to attract visitors from far-flung neighborhoods.

"Consider your average person on a Saturday or Sunday. Are they really going to pack up the kids and head downtown, or stay closer to home?" Myrick asked. "If downtown is the only audience (for the park), it will be a terrible waste."

Time will tell. In the spirit of civic-mindedness we had suggested the facility be named in honor of Lightnin’ Hopkins*****, a move that certainly wouldn’t have forestalled the bocce lanes or the Andrea and Bill White Promenade but would have generated some international buzz and perhaps ensured the park would attract the occasional visitor from Copenhagen or Lyons, should the homeless eventually take over.

*’Cause cigarettes and bowling go together like … Bill and Andrea White.

**Maybe it’s just our raisin’, but it strikes us an unseemly for a sitting mayor and his old lady to have anything connected to a taxpayer-funded facility---even a “promenade”--- named after themselves, no matter how instrumental White was in helping raise the private funding for the park. Discretion should have dictated that the mayor demur and suggest the avenue be named, say, the Bob and Elyse Lanier Promenade (plant a few roses bushes along the way) or even the Lee P. and Missus (Whatshername) Brown Promenade. Hey, while we’re on the subject, how come nothing’s named after Kathy Whitmire around here? After all, she was the town’s first and so far only female mayor and did a decent job under trying circumstances (oil bust, rampantly surreal gay-bashing, etc.), but is there even a Ladies Room at City Hall bearing her name?

***Once, it must have been in the mid- or late ’80s, we heard Sun Ra and his Arkestra in Hermann Park. Now that was cool.

****Looks like Al Edwards will be back this year in fighting trim!

*****We, of course, won’t be going, as we only venture downtown if we need to see a lawyer or a broker, and we aren’t interested in talking with a representative of either profession at the moment.

******Y’know, a local from the locality, who nevertheless was/is known all over the globe. (We’re still scratchin’ that thing.)

The Hell You Say!

Unseen dangers lurk, especially during the holiday season, but fortunately experts are standing by with invaluable counsel. We only wish we had read the dispatch headlined “Think twice before drinking and shopping” in Friday’s Houston Chronicle before we waded out into the deranged mobs that besieged our local establishments of commerce. According to the author, John Campanelli of Newhouse News Service,

The Baylor College of Medicine even issued a public advisory about it several years ago: "Don't drink and shop during holidays." Sipping and shopping "impairs judgment and decreases inhibitions," psychiatry professor Kristin Kassaw cautioned. "You may find shopping bags full of impulse buys that you might ordinarily think twice about."

What’s worse is drinking and shopping while packing a loaded handgun, which we understand could possibly be the subject of a more recent advisory from our august local medical school.

Me and Julio (and Fred and Lamont and Roberto and Dionny) Down by the Schoolyard, Then and Now

In episode 76 of Sanford and Son, recalled by posterity only as Julio and Sister and Nephew,“Fred's anti-Puerto Rican attitude suddenly changes after Julio's nephew is the victim of discrimination in school.” That’s according to tvland.com, the Web site for the cable network on which we viewed Julio and Sister and Nephew just this Saturday night.

Like most one-line summations, the TVLand listing fails to capture the nuance of Julio and Sister and Nephew. Julio, played by a rangy character actor you used to see on TV a lot, usually portraying a badass in some crime drama, is Fred’s noble Puerto Rican neighbor and often the target of the irascible L.A. junkman’s coarse ethno-racial repartee. In the aptly titled Julio and Sister and Nephew, Julio’s sister and nephew come to L.A. from the old country and, for reason or reasons we missed while in the kitchen fixing supper, wind up lodging temporarily in Fred and son Lamont’s digs. Fred treats the sister with something less than respect and puts her to work cleaning the Sanford Arms---are you hanging with us here?---but refuses to eat the ethnic dishes she cooks, explaining that “my doctor has me on a strict diet---no garbage!”

The conflict, if you will, emerges when nephew Roberto (if we remember correctly) enrolls in the L.A. school system. He’s a fifth grader but is told by the school that he must go back to the fourth grade because, according to his teacher, he can’t speak or understand English well enough to “keep up”* with the class. This makes young Roberto angry, and tearful. “I’m not a baby,” he declares, in what sounded to us like perfectly serviceable English.

Then, sometime in the near future---we missed the transition on a return trip to the kitchen---comes word that acting-out Roberto has been suspended from school. Roberto’s mother prevails upon a reluctant Fred---Lamont and Julio apparently are “out”---to accompany her to the school to suss out the situation. There the pair meet with the principal, a dignified African-American gentleman with stentorian voice, who explains that there’s nothing he can do about Roberto’s problem---the teacher is adamant that the boy’s English skills aren’t up to the 5th grade.

Then Fred has a bold idea: “Why don’t you stay after school and help him [with his English]?”

“I can’t do that---I’m the principal!” sez the principal.

“Well,” ripostes Fred G., “how about forgetting about your principal and worrying about his interest?”

The studio audience applauds heartily, and the principal, moved by the junkman’s unassailable and punning logic, agrees: “Yes, I think I will!”

This obviously was back in the day, when a school principal just rolled out the balls and burnished the heavy wooden paddle and didn’t have to fret over standardized test scores. But what really betrayed the datedness of Julio and Sister and Nephew was the fact that a 1970s sit-com created and produced by Norman Lear, the consummate Hollywood liberal of the time, was sermonizing on behalf of pushing Spanish-speaking children to immediately learn English (albeit with the help of special after-hours tutelage from the school principal).

Yes, this was so long ago (we assume the episode was made sometime between 1972 and 1975), back before the Mexican economic dislocations of the late ’70s triggered the massive and sustained illegal immigration to the United States that only recently has shown signs of abating, and back before the perfessers down the corner College of Education misread Thomas Dewey and saddled the public schools of the land with bilingualism (which, as we have noted too many times previously, turned out to be monolingualism, the lingualism being español) and other flavor-of-the-month theories regarding child-centered education (as opposed to education-centered education).

Our viewing of Sanford and Son followed our learning of the news in Saturday’s Houston Chronicle that the Houston school district was for the first time to conduct University Interscholastic League academic competitions in Spanish (and not just for the subject Spanish, we should note). The newspaper explained that this was sort of a UIL-sanctioned experiment that could spread elsewhere in the state. The school district’s organizer, identified as Michael Fain, was quoted as saying, "There is not a single person that has said we should not do this."

Obviously Mr. Fain needs to get out of the house more often.

This struck as a fairly significant story, given the hallowed place of UIL competitions in Texas public education, yet it was written with the typical gee-whilikers, ain’t-this-wonderful approach the Chronicle invariably takes to such stories (it’s FOR THE KIDS, and how could you be against something that’s FOR THE KIDS, even if it’s bad FOR THE KIDS?) The human interest angle comes in the person of a competitor in the Spanish-language creative-writing contest, 7-year-old Dionny Rodriguez, who “came to Houston this year from Mexico, where [she] used to recite poems in Spanish” (which suggests that the youngster may have been getting a better education down in Mexico, recitation being rote memorization, which is roundly condemned down at the College of Education, ’cause, y’know, it could be too hard and boring and whatnot).

She came this year … couldn’t they find somebody who had been in the country longer than a few months? (We’ll pause here to catch our breath and point out what seems to have flown right past all the geniuses and their analyses of last week’s election returns: One reason for the narrowness of victory of the HISD schoolhouse-bonds referendum is a growing backlash, especially among blacks, against the metastasizing cost [new schools, bilingual teachers, summer school, etc. and so on] of educating the children of illegals---mark it and check it out.) What about all the Chinese and Korean and African and Albanian and Bosnian kids (and don't forget the Meshketian Turks!) in the local schools who aren't being served in their respective native tongues like young Dionny and therefore have to get strokin' in English? Wouldn't fairness dictate that they get their own UIL competitions?

But don’t worry. According to the Chronicle, this foray into UIL bilingualism (monolingualism) “doesn't mean football fouls will be called in Spanish anytime soon.”

Football fouls?

Hold on, Elizabeth, I’m comin’! (Grab chest, fall over.)

*Keeping up with the class---what a quaint notion!

New Heights in Victimology: Should We Call Southampton Residents “Refugees,” or “Evacuees?"

We’re in general sympathy with homeowners of the “affluent” neighborhoods of Southampton and Boulevard Oaks in their efforts to thwart construction of a 23-story apartment tower along a two-lane stretch of Bissonnet, and we're also down with Guv’nuh White’s vow to all but position himself in front of the oncoming bulldozers, although the mayoral proposition does set an interesting precedent for similar future development conflicts.*

But we didn’t know how deserving of our sympathy the genteel folk of the Rice University-area neighborhoods were until we read an opinion piece in the Sept. 25 Village News/Southwest News, a weekly throwaway rag that circulates to the east of our domicile.** The writer is identified only as “Leslie Miller, Ph.D.,” and Doc Miller’s argument apparently was so incisive that it reappeared, with the only the slightest touch of the editor’s hand, on the front of the Sept. 30 Outlook section of the Houston Chronicle.***

In the Village News/Southwest News the doc’s piece was ominously titled “Houston: Living in the Shadow of Greed,” while the Chronicle (which more fully identified the writer as a “native Houstonian and resident of Southampton for 35 years”), opted for the similarly faux-spooky but slightly more pop culture-friendly “23-story high-rise would be nightmare on Bissonnet.” In both pieces---and here we must link to the Chronicle’s version ( thus helping to account for the newspaper’s claimed 50 million [or is it jillion?] monthly page hits), because we can find no evidence of an online presence of the Village News/Southwest News---this native Houstonian and holder of a Ph.D., who after all that time clocking-in here suddenly finds herself in the “shadow of greed,” draws a slightly strained analogy:

In this mix of unregulated development and a proliferation of developers without concerns about the impact of their actions, we are witnessing the destruction of our neighborhoods and the diminution of our quality of life.

A perfect storm is brewing — literally in my back yard in Southampton and yours.

The mayor of our city, Bill White, exercised great courage and civic responsibility in helping thousands who were escaping from the terrible storm, Katrina. I would urge him and all those on City Council to exercise that same courage and civic responsibility to stop this impending storm.

Its destruction will be every bit as real.

So can we expect to soon see the bloated bodies of Southampton homeowners floating down Main Street? Will the intrusive tower force the residents out of their homes and into shelter at the Astrodome, the first stop on the road to longtime government-subsidized residency in cramped southwest Houston apartments? Perhaps Kinky Friedman, while readying himself to run against the courageous Guv’nuh White in the 2010 Democratic gubernatorial primary, can come up with a mock talkin'-blues number---as a working title, we’d suggest Buckhead Done Drove Me Down---that could be used as a soundtrack behind CNN’s footage of the beleaguered and bedraggled Southamptonites lining up to catch a bus out of town.

Oh, we’ll stop now. At least we can’t accuse Leslie Miller, Ph.D., of exploiting 9/11.

*Say, for instance, if some developer suddenly lost his or her mind and wanted to drop down a 23-story tower along a major thoroughfare fronting our much less affluent neighborhood, would the mayor come to our rescue? On second thought, never mind---we’d welcome a 23-story tower right down the street, and if things don’t work out along Bissonnet we’d like to invite Buckhead Investment Partners to investigate our area. It’ d be prime for an “Enclave Near the Foodarama/Wing Stop.” We’d voluntarily help assemble the parcel.

**We’ve kept a jaundiced eye on this rag ever since the publisher, many seasons back, ran for a state representative seat and suddenly was having her newspaper tossed onto the driveways of our neighborhood, which was in the district she sought to represent but previously had not been in the rag’s distribution area. After her election loss the newspaper summarily, and thankfully, did not appear on the driveways of our neighborhood.

***Although the subject is only tenuously related, we are again moved to wonder about the criteria for employment at the Chronicle. We know the daily newspaper requires prospective employees to piss in a cup and have their urine inspected by a private contractor, but apparently the newspaper does not force actual employees to submit to IQ exams or random field sobriety tests. We were moved to this conclusion after being among what surely were the single-digit number of readers of Tuesday’s “Sky Watch” column, a monthly feature whose lede ran thusly: “This is a great month for early rising planet-watchers but not so good for the evening crowd.” The headline over the column read “Star-gazing better in the early evening.” Gaaawwwdamn!

Keith Haring Was Misunderstood, Too: A Councilwoman’s Sincere Commitment

Like many of you, we couldn’t make it out to the “Off the Wall: Graffiti, Art or Not?” symposium held a couple of weeks back at Houston’s Museum of Fine Arts. We semi-seriously contemplated gracing the discussion with our presence (the promised lagniappe that “attendees are invited to samba in one of Oiticica's painted capes” being especially enticing), but after sobering up we realized we aren’t that hard up for laughs.

But thanks to the Jan. 24 edition of the West University Examiner, which is down like James Brown on the enclave city of West U (“Whitest People and Blackest Soil in the Greater Houston Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area”), we were able to cop a taste of the chin-stroking and in the process learned that one member of the Houston City Council is thinking big when it comes to graffiti abatement. In a story headlined “Councilwoman’s ‘Off the Wall’ comment on area’s graffiti” the Examiner reported that at-large member Sue Lovell

made a commitment some considered “off the wall,” [one is enough with that] when she suggested creating a “free space” for graffiti artists to work — prosecution free — if they promised to stop vandalizing public and private property.“I make a commitment to you that we’ll find the space you need, a legitimate space,” Lovell told fellow panelist and local graffiti artist “Article.” [Close readers of the Houston Chronicle’s Sunday Zest section will recall that Article is the former graffiti writer-turned-graffiti artist who’s responsible for the legally sanctioned mural of Rock ’n’ Roll Hall of Famer Jimmy Hendricks.]

A brief video clip of Lovell’s comments found its way onto the video-sharing Web site www.youtube.com, where one poster expressed doubt that such a plan could actually work.

“The hope of negotiating with hundreds of teenagers and several fractious political groups of (graffiti) writers to stop graffiti in Houston is an impossible task representing a lack of understanding of the problem,” posted a user named “Cactus.”

Yeah, Monsieur or Madame Cactus is right: The idea that an officially sanctioned space for graffiti "art" would somehow deter the jugheads responsible for this betrays a deep misunderstanding of the problem. The risk involved in this puerile turf-marking is a big part of the motivation (and in our neighborhood the risk includes the outside possibility of getting greased with a 12 gauge, or so we’ve heard one of our neighbors proclaim). These dimshits don’t give a poo for art, fine or otherwise.

But after viewing the referenced clip and a second, shorter one posted on YouTube, you can see that the councilwoman is trying to toe a hard line against graffiti---in the short clip she equates ”writing your name across a stop sign” to “what male dogs do”*---while cozying up to Article and the rest of the deep thinkers who were inclined to waste part of an evening discussing this, um, issue.

One thing Lovell makes clear is that she really, really understands today's misunderstood youth:

"I certainly can relate, too,” she tells Article. “I felt really misunderstood a lot, too, and really, Keith Haring felt misunderstood a lot, but that doesn’t give you the right … ” Etc.

So we’d be inclined to ignore the councilwoman and go curl up with our 12 year old’s book of Haring's works, except for what she told the Examiner after the MFA to-do:

Lovell estimated the city spends $2 million a year cleaning up graffiti on public property, and though she made no promises to use city money to fund the spaces, she committed to do her best to find walls or free space where graffiti artists could exhibit their talents legally.

“If we can stop using city dollars to abate the graffiti that’s done illegally, we could use some of that money to put up free space where it could be done legally,” she said in a later interview. [Emphasis added, natch]

Why don’t we just give the full $2 million to Article, see what he can come up with. We’re really enjoying the city’s Third World ambiance.

UPDATE: Mr. Article has been misunderstood, too.

*What's with the anti-male bias?