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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
Feb 6, 2002 | Read the story
I love Katharine Mieszkowski! Having grown up in the same God-forsaken suburb of Texas as I did -- the same one where Andrea Yates killed her whole family -- she is the only writer I've ever seen do just what I always wanted to do -- enumerate Houston's faults, hypocrisies, ugliness and blockheadedness, with great glee.
Houston deserves every single word of it.
-- Mark Pritchard
Katharine Mieszkowski's story about Houston was dead on in a way, but sort of missed the point. Lots of people do enjoy living here, even retiring here. Lots of Houstonians travel around the world; we've enjoyed other cities that have more charms; we know that few people come here for vacations. Houston is an unformed city, it's nebulous, and certainly ruthless. But life here can be pretty fun considering. Annoyances abound: traffic, gentrification, weather, politics. However, it still feels freer than any other place I've been, more wide open, more seat of the pants.
California has a gloss of libertinage, but all that settling on little strips of land in canyons and valleys has annealed Californians into living between rules and regulations and boundaries, and all that just seems so stifling to me. I like seeing the huge sky here. I like having the weather change in a flash. I like all the different people and cultures with hundreds of ways of cooking chicken. I like that nobody's so rich or esteemed here that they're beyond being taken down a peg. I like that ill-mannered and snotty people, no matter how much money they have, have a hard time making it socially in this town. I like that people in Houston enjoy art here for its own sake, and not as a way to launder their money or put on the gloss of aristocracy.
I even like that crime is bigger and more fabulous here, fabulous meaning making for a much better story. It reminds me of what Harry Lime says in "The Third Man," that Renaissance Italy was full of war and poisoning and tyranny and inquisitions, but they produced the most beautiful heritage of art in the world. Meanwhile, little Switzerland, ringed by mountains and ossified into a rigid republic managed to produce only a venal avaricious banking system and the cuckoo clock. I guess Houstonians break too many eggs sometimes for our big omelet, but honey, that omelet sure is tasty.
-- Scott Bodenheimer
As a Houstonian, I read Katharine Mieszkowski's story about Houston with great interest. She's right, unfortunately, about a lot of things about Houston -- the inferiority complex, the need for reform, the air quality, the lack of zoning. But there was something about her tone -- the sarcasm, the bitterness -- that made me really question Mieszkowski's motives. I'd have been far more interested in a balanced story or some real investigative reporting about how Houston's business climate creates havens for companies like Enron, but Mieszkowski didn't do either. In fact, it seems like she has a personal vendetta against Houston. And seeing how she grew up in Clear Lake -- and has written in other papers about disaffected Houstonians who have moved to the Bay Area and "found" themselves -- I'd say her reporting on Houston isn't that of a reporter looking to write a good story, I'd say she's looking to kick us when we're down.
The points that Mieszkowski makes in her story about Houston's "laissez-faire, pro-business" approach are true, but she fails to name any major American city that does it better. She refers to the fact that the city is selling naming rights to various buildings around the city, but she fails to mention that this is a trend (and I agree it's a negative one) around the entire country. Houston isn't the only city with a defunct or soon-to-be defunct business name prominently displayed on a sports arena.
She talks about how Houston's mayor hasn't railed against Enron and its business practices, and she suggests that he hasn't done so because his campaign received financial backing from the company. She's probably right, but, again, that isn't a Houston problem--it's a problem all over this country. And it's a bipartisan problem -- I find it interesting that Mieszkowski never mentions that Brown is a Democrat.
She mentions that in the '80s, 82 percent of the economic activity in Houston was energy related and now it's less than 50 percent -- that's a drop of over 32 percent, yet she casually blows it off as if the statistic is meaningless. Mieszkowski rails against Houston's low cost of living and the fact the taxes here are so low. She also adds that despite the recession that has befallen the country, despite Sept. 11, and despite both Enron collapsing and the blow that Compaq has dealt the city, Houston's economy is still much stronger than the country's at large. She acts as if these are trivial points.
Yet in Houston, as a single, 29-year-old writer making around $40,000 a year, I was able to purchase my own home (in the city, not the 'burbs) and get a quality higher education without owing thousands of dollars in student loans. I could not have done those things living in the Bay Area or the Pacific Northwest.
I'm not saying that Houston is without faults, big ones, and as a liberal (who voted for Nader), I've sometimes felt isolated in this big-business town. But I've lived in several states in this country and visited many more. My sister moved to the liberal bastion of Portland, Oregon last year, and though she loved it, Oregon has the highest unemployment rate in the country. She came back to Houston because we have these things here we call jobs. And San Francisco, home of the San Francisco Bay Guardian, a newspaper for which Ms. Mieszkowski currently writes, is a wonderful and beautiful progressive city. Yet it's also the homeless capital of the country. See Mieszkowski's own story about parking-lot living for more.
I spent quite a few years hating Houston when my family moved here in '86, but I've come to love this city and the opportunities it's given me. It's got problems, but so does the entire country -- there are pros and cons to every city in America. I don't believe Houston bears any more responsibility for the Enron mess than the rest of this country does. Houston's problems are merely a reflection of America's problems. If anyone needs to do some "navel gazing" about these issues, it's the entire country.
-- M. Yvonne Taylor
I live in Houston and agree with much of Katharine Mieszkowski's portrayal of the city. While Houston is the prototypical example of the unzoned city, I would argue that it is also simply the extreme example of the corporate capitalism that guides our entire country and for that matter the whole western world.
While I will admit that this is one of the strangest cities on earth, I think characterizing the city and the Enron debacle as the crazy shenanigans of backward cowboys loses sight of perhaps the most important lesson of what has recently come to light, that is the fact that much of our economy is a horse race. Uninformed betting based on the (manipulated) perception of profitability decides what goes up and what comes down.
To make it worse, none of them are really paying any taxes to boot. It might take an example as extreme as what goes on down in Houston to illustrate this, but it by no means does not extend to the entire U.S. stock market and economy. Maybe now we will have a real examination of the circumstances these crazy wildcatters took advantage of ... but I doubt it.
-- Caleb Groos
Katharine Mieszkowski is a fine writer. She seems to miss the point, however.
If she lives here in Houston, she should move away. If she lives somewhere else, she shouldn't come here. Either way, none of us here will ever care. Houston is a city that is very aware if its weaknesses yet still able to poke fun at itself. This is a pretty well advertised fact and anything but news.
Inferiority complex? Hmmm. Whose? She sure seems to be worked up over an opinion that won't change anything and no one cares about. You're screaming at dead air Kathy-Poo, give it up.
I moved to Houston from San Diego where I grew up, and now I would not live anywhere BUT here. I wouldn't trade Houston for Seattle (a.k.a. RiotLand or SuicideLand, take your pick) or anywhere else on the West Coast. So you see, President Bush 41 and I, at very least, are evidence that people do retire here.
It sounds to me like Ms.(Mizzzzzzzz, no doubt) Mieszkowski is part of the whopping seventeen percent of America that thinks our current President is doing a poor job of governing, which in turn makes her part of a very small group of people that still can't handle the results of the 2000 Presidential Election, an overheated, self-righteous Democrat that would like to impose her will and political correctness on the world. Sorry, Kathy, we're not buying.
We in Houston are passing around her articles, agreeing with most of what she says and smile knowingly to ourselves at the beauty of it all. No one here wants Houston to change and nobody's moving away. Unless it's her. And in that case, good riddance.
So what's her point?
-- Nick Houston
Your story, "Houston, We Have a Problem," reminds me of all those "Don't Mess With Texas" bumper stickers. I'd be more than happy never to "mess" with Texas again. I'm tired of bailing out the state and crooks like Enron every couple of years.
Wonder if Mexico would take it back?
-- George Leopold
