City Portrait: Houston, Texas

Which leads us back to the top and my CAMH friend with the ten-carat diamond. Well-heeled Houstonians are not afraid to show off their very real furs and their very large rocks, but when they say bigger is better, they follow through. The city has always been known for its socialites (think Joanne Herring, who funded Charlie Wilson’s War, or Lynn Wyatt, whose sculpted arms are by now a local landmark), but even the silliest among them rally behind the institutions so important to the life of the city.

The night I was there twenty-five years ago, despite the dire assessment of the Wall Street Journal, the CAMH made a lot of money. In my own article, I reported that the bust had not dimmed the spirit of the citizenry and would likely be but a speed bump on the city’s historically forward-looking road. It’s like what an executive told the woman from the Times: “We did get our comeuppance. But we didn’t whine about it, and I think the rest of the country respects that. Other places would have had an ‘oh me’ type of attitude. I never did hear that down here.”