From a top-floor perch in their tiny, handcrafted, award-winning live-work compound at 5910 Grace Ln. (featured a while back in Dwell magazine), architect Mark Schatz and designer Anne Eamon had front-row seats to the ongoing smelly, toxic, and deadly shitshow that marked the over-the-back-fence tenure of CES Environmental Services, in its facility at 4904 Griggs Rd., just a mile and a half south of the UH campus. Among the joys they were able to plug their noses and record was this tableau from July 2009: “In the first photograph [Schatz] took of the scene unfolding below him, shot like all the rest with the eye of an architect, perfectly framing the site, the tank farm is to the left, and a worker races from the right to the warehouse, which has a smoking hole blown through the roof. In a subsequent photo, oxygen tanks are wheeled in. Then the oxygen tanks fall over. Then a forklift shows up, and a crew starts setting the oxygen tanks upright. All this time, while they go through this Three Stooges routine, their co-worker is lying inside the warehouse covered in burns. You can see the back of a metal cylindrical tanker truck in the photos. [Schatz and Eamon] learn later that the fatally burned worker had opened the hatch on the tanker and switched on his flashlight to peer in. A spark from the flashlight set off a flash fire.”
“. . . Houston is indeed one of the best cities around for middle class folks, but it all comes down to time management and space. Houston provides a convenient lifestyle that affords families much more time and space than they could claim in the hustle and bustle of larger cities like SF, LA, or NYC. however, let’s not sit back and pride ourselves as if this doesn’t pose serious drawbacks that we casually buy into and accept, whether absent-mindedly or begrudgingly.
That same abundance of space and time means our city still isn’t cultured enough to be a mecca for the foreign investors and rich elite seeking out stability in world class cities with lots of amenities, nor is it hospitable for those growing up in low income communities where transportation and education costs all but ensure a lifetime of low-wage labor (for reals, just look at the statistics if you don’t believe me).
But hey, i’m a glass half empty kind of guy and won’t be happy until more strides have been taken to make Houston even more hospitable to all and everyone. We may be alright, but we’re certainly not there yet and it remains to be seen what life would be like in this city in a free market that accurately priced energy, pollution and consumption. If you’re middle class, then yes, come to houston and bask in the glow. If you’re on the lower end of the economic spectrum, you should be fighting to get out and place your family in a better environment with greater probabilities for success.” [
A listing for the 
Nuclear historian Alex Wellerstein, creator of the online Nukemap nuclear-blast simulator, finds the following charming nugget in a September 1965 report issued by the nonprofit Institute for Defense Analyses, which wad been hired by the U.S. Army’s Office of Civil Defense to 
