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UimWiMMili
PLUPERFECT
*(ploo pur'fikt) adj. more than perfect
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Its all news to us!
BY GABRIELLE COSGRIFF
The first issue of Breakthrough came out
in January of the bicentennial year. We
couldn't tolerate celebrating 200 years of
the nation's history without making the
statement that women are news.
Now, four years later, in the first
month of a new decade, we want to build
on that statement, and declare what we've
known all along: women's news is everybody's news. In the last year, particularly,
we've broadened our scope to include
more political and environmental stories,
more people issues.
We feel it's time to acknowledge this
growth, and to enter the 1980s as a
general circulation newspaper. This will
not lessen our commitment to women.
As Don Gardner, co-founder of KPFT
Radio, says in this issue: "Once you see,
you cannot unsee."
We want Breakthrough to be a newspaper that will speak to both women and
men, that will affirm our common humanity.
With this issue we welcome David
Crossley as a new editor to Breakthrough.
David has worked with us for over a year
and is responsible for many of our design
changes - he loves big pictures and feels,
as we do, that photographs communicate
as significantly as words.
David is a former editor of Houston
City Magazine and the co-author of the
nuclear story that appeared in our June
issue. He was a reporter-editor for Texas
Monthly, and, 8 years ago, was manager
of KPFT-Radio.
We are also establishing an investigative
reporter's fund, through the tax-exempt
Breakthrough Foundation. In time, this
will enable us to tackle important community stories that go unreported. We
want to report on all the news. As our
new logo says, "It's all news to us."
Coming out of the 1970s reminds me of
the exquisite cartoon by Max Beerbohm,
"Lord Byron shaking the dust of England
from his feet." With an elegant flick of
the ankle, the foppish Byron departs for
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a/o.'vo/svdp\t!
turn it off/ i
cant sear to
watch anymore/
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Italy's more civilized clime. His good-
riddance-to-bad-rubbish sneer could well
serve as a comment on the 70s, as we
shake the dust of Nixon, Vietnam and
Three Mile Island from our disco-weary
feet. Or, as Texas Monthly put it, "There
just had to be a better way to get from
the 60s to the 80s."
So how to document the decade?
Ms. magazine gave us an impressive
account of what had been happening to
women. Time and Newsweek and TV
gave us the highlights and lowlights on
the national and international scene.
Everybody had a 70s roundup, from
Agnewto Zimbabwe.
We preferred to look closer to home,
and find out what Houstonians had been
up to for the past 10 years.
David Crossley (see photo) shot the
cover picture of Gary and Pearl Chason
and we set about asking the question,
"Who were you 10 years ago?" We found
some interesting answers — a jewel thief
who went on to become a social activist,
and a closed-circuit television producer
who became a two-term mayor of
Houston. A man who fled the city to
settle on Goose Summer Farm in east
Texas and a woman who found peace in
an Indian ashram. Sixteen Houstonians,
all of whom have changed their city and
its future, make up our cover story.
Not everybody we asked is represented.
Some found it too painful to relive those
years. Others didn't feel them worth remembering. Still others we never could
contact. Lee Otis Johnson, for example,
was a local cause celebre 10 years ago.
He is now in the federal correctional fa
cility in Tallahassee, Florida, sent there
from Huntsville "for his own protection,"
we were told.
Marvin Zindler went to the hospital for
heart surgery the day after we talked to
him. "The only difference with me is,
10 years ago, I was behind a badge, now
I'm behind a TV camera," he told us.
(In 1970, Zindler was with the Harris
County Sheriff Department's consumer
fraud division). "I don't put (wrongdoers) in jail now, I put them on TV.
That's probably worse, anyway."
1970 was the most dramatic and
least-remembered year of the decade retrospectives. David Crossley chronicled its
key events spending several days at the
downtown library.
Liberty Hall was a 70s institution in
Houston, as much a social experiment
as a musical one. Janice Blue interviews
its co-founder, Ryan Trimble, who has
"played more famous people's guitars
than anybody else in town."
We introduce a new contributing editor
from London, David Helton, a transplanted Texan. Unlike Lord Byron,
Helton likes living in England.
Houstonian Niami Hanson tells of her
involvement in the march on the Seabrook,
New Hampshire, nuclear plant last fall.
It's interesting that the 70s began with
the anti-war movement and ended with
the anti-nuclear movement — maybe a
sign that the 'me' ethos was not as pervasive as we thought.
Anyway, if the 70s was really the 'me'
decade, how come everybody was walking
around with someone else's name on their
jeans?
HOUSTON BREAKTHROUGH
DECEMBER/JANUARY 1980 |
