All It Takes Is A Little Love

There is a question going around that gives me pause. The query asks, “Are you proud to be an American?” I hesitate when asked this because of the word proud. I tend to be proud of my accomplishments because they took hard work, determination, willingness to go the extra mile to achieve. Pride indicates some kind of effort has been expended not just being born in American. Living here for all of my life has happened almost passively. I feel incredibly fortunate to be an American. I like being an American. I believe deep down that Americans want to be good and generous people but being proud is the wrong word to use. 

I am proud of Americans who suffer slings and arrows of condemnation for having the courage to stand up for what is right. I am proud of those souls in Minnesota who literally risked their lives and their livelihoods to attempt to protect their neighbors. I am proud of American athletes who train for years to represent us well in the world at large whether they win or lose. I am proud of the moments when Americans are welcoming to those who come to visit or to live in our country. I am proud of the courage of our Founding Fathers who so courageously and audaciously declared their independence from a tyrannical king. I am proud of myself when I have the courage to point out problems that need to be remedied. Just saying that I am proud to be an American requires no effort on my part unless my pledge of allegiance acknowledges that we are one nation of many diverse people who must always insure that there will be liberty and justice for all, not just the sheepish followers of a particular person. 

What the history of our nation tells me is that even our beginning was an attempt to right wrongs. It was revolutionary to question the king and his rules. Those founders and the citizens who followed them were protesting a system that had too long been simply accepted as a kind of divinely blessed way of life. They were radical. They were brave. They did what they believed was right even as their actions were illegal and might have landed them in jail or hanging from a noose. I am proud of what they were willing to risk and of the democracy that they ultimately created even as they themselves understood that it was not perfect. 

We honor the flag and our national anthem as symbols but those things in themselves are not who we are as Americans. They are things, personifications of the nation that we have built. When someone uses them to protest, they are literally following the example of the people of long ago who understood the importance of using such images to express our needs in the continuing efforts to insure our freedom. I am always proud of the people who risk their careers and livelihoods to peacefully stand up against any form of persecution. 

I am proud of that my great grandfather fought in the Civil War to save our union. I am proud of my father and uncles who fought against fascism. I am proud of my grandchildren who are willing to point out problems that are affecting Americans who have little power. I am proud of the brilliant Americans who have made scientific breakthroughs that have saved lives and helped us to keep improving the world in which we live. I am proud of the Americans who go to work each day to teach, or protect, or create, or soothe, or repair but I am not proud just to live in a certain place. But for the vagaries of the universe I might have never even existed much less lived in the United States of America. Millions of things done by the people who came before me had to happen in certain ways to get me here. Mine was nothing more than the act of being born and I am very happy about how things turned out but not necessarily proud.

There are indeed meaningful ways of being a proud citizen but those things require much effort on the part of each of us. We must pay attention to the issues and take the time to learn truth from multiple sources. We can’t simply tune in to media that supports our views. Our jobs should be to seek the bare faced realities even when doing so can be distressing. With our knowledge we then must make decisions of how to vote, not only for only our personal beliefs but for the welfare of the largest number of people. When we take the time to vote intelligently we can certainly feel a sense of gratitude and even a bit of pride. 

It is all too easy to fall into a state of blind allegiance if we stay too busy to seek out what is really happening. We do not have to walk in lockstep with the crowd. Wearing a flag pin on our lapels only means something if we are willing to be active citizens working for the betterment of all. Being a proud American is not about a circus. It is a serious endeavor in which we should all be hard at work. I am proud of how much time I have dedicated to studying the issues that face us all. I am proud of all of the hard work that brave and concerned Americans have done over two hundred fifty years to make this nation better and better for all. I think that is what most of the founders had in mind. We must never forget that the work is never done. We will always be a work in progress. I am proud to be part of that work right now.

We have reached the two hundred fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence which was signed in Philadelphia on July 2, 1776. The tiny room where this historic moment took place is still there and so is our nation which continues the process of evolving. The document announced the attempt at creating a more perfect union, not a perfect one. Our founders understood that there was still work to be done but most of them believed that they had created a system of government that would incrementally become a better and better version of itself. 

In this moment in time our democratic republic is teetering a bit. The kind of disagreements that allowed slavery to stand even as our nation declared its freedom from tyranny are still raging two hundred fifty years later. At the time of the signing there were already indications that this grand experiment might not stand for very long. War with a powerful nation and a well trained army would test the resolve of the citizenry while all the world watched with many doubts that the independence would last. 

Somehow we have muddled through another war with Britain, a civil war between Americans, the end of slavery the Jim Crow efforts to keep Black citizens segregated, two world wars, depressions, wars in Korea, Vietnam and the Middle East and now an authoritarian president who is taxing the system of checks and balances that should have curbed many of his one sided measures. Through it all we have somehow seen heroes arise to lead us forward even in times when we seem to be moving backwards. 

The recent FIFA games in the United States have been a delightful reminder of who we are as Americans. We were great hosts, embracing athletes and fans from many nations with an openness and kindness that defines the true heart of our nation. Yes, we have dark forces that persecute immigrants, still hold racist views of black and brown people, ugly persons who use religion to threaten members of the LGBTQ community and even some who would set back women by confining them to homes under the authority of husbands. Still, there are warriors insisting that this is not who we are as Americans. We are better than the dark visions that are posted by our president and his enablers and deep down inside we know that this too will pass just as we have rallied again and again to become better versions of ourselves. 

On this day I celebrate the ideals of our beginnings many of which are still to be insured. As long as we believe in freedoms not just for ourselves or certain groups but for all we will make it to the next big celebration even as we appear to be faltering in this moment. I for one believe in the goodness of Americans. I do not think that our ugly side can last for much longer. It is not who we have become through a beautiful evolution of extending the rights and privileges of our democratic republic to all. 

We are a nation of many people. The color of our skin should no longer define the level of respect and acceptance that each of us should give to one another. The greatness of America has always been in our willingness to be honest about our faults and to remedy them step by step. We should not be flaunting our freedoms and the wealth that we have experienced but rather sharing our bounty with all of the world. Surely we have learned that all humans are engaged in a daily hopefulness that blends our dreams together. Our greatness in the United States is measured best by our embrace of our fellow humans across the globe. 

I love the United States of America. I have festooned my home with red white and blue not because I believe that we are better than every other country but because I want the freedoms that I enjoy to be extended to has many people as possible. I celebrate the brave souls from all over the world who have enriched the American experience with their presence and their hard work. I am a descendant of immigrants as well as members of the American revolution. My ancestors all came here looking for opportunities and in most cases their dreams were fulfilled. I can trace my heritage back to a time before the Declaration of Independence when my people were fleeing the kind of tyranny and religious persecution that was so rampant in the world of long ago. I have flourished as a woman living through a time when the limits to what I might achieve were ended one by one. 

I am watching what is happening in our nation today with great caution. The undoing of progress worries me but I also see and hear the determination of the freedom fighters of today who relentlessly work to keep and improve on a republic that has incrementally become better. As forces attempt to take us back to a time when only white males were able to rule the roost I still have the right to resist, to speak out with freedom. For this reason I am still proud of our nation and I intend to do everything in my power to keep it from devolving into a different kind of tyranny from wealthy power brokers who seem to believe that only a certain group of Americans are worthy of running our nation. 

I truly believe that on this July 4, 2026 we have reached yet another watershed moment that will test our mettle and our willingness to keep the United States as the land of the free regardless of how different each of us may be. Happy Birthday, America!. May we all work to keep our republic and remain a destination of hope and change until one day perhaps our union will be closer and closer to perfection. 

A man with an outstanding educational background living in a million dollar home in one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in Houston has been found dead in what appears to be a case of murder suicide. From the outside looking in his life seemed to be so wonderful. He had a beautiful wife and two children. He owned a restaurant and had all the trappings of success and yet it appears that happiness was not one of his riches. 

We live in a society that adores money far too much. The evidence of a good life most often admired are possessions and conspicuous consumption. Some become so obsessed with wealth that their lives are driven by focus on material prizes. Living and breathing depends on accumulating more and more of everything. There is never enough and never too much. 

We become fans of “A listers” who fly around on private jets, build homes far bigger than they will ever need, buy expensive cars, and spend every waking hour wondering how to gather more and more and more signs of power. They are far past simply fulfilling basic needs. Happiness with just enough eludes them. 

We are surrounded by such people who seem to have lost their interest in the good of humanity. Instead they want to invest in expensive toys and clothes and shiny things while seeming not to notice or to care about the many people who struggle from day to day just to have a safe place to sleep at night or enough food to keep their family members from being hungry. They are oblivious to needs other than their own. 

There is nothing wrong with doing well in life and enjoying the fruits of one’s labor. We all strive for being our best and enjoying our successes, but there is something very sick about those who literally lose all sense of balance in their lives without first taking into account how they might feel so much better if they work instead to make certain that everyone has a shot at living a good decent life. 

We don’t have to hoard our riches or devote ourselves to becoming ever more important, more powerful, more wealthy. Such is a kind of sickness that eats away at happiness both for the obsessed individual and the people around him or her. It does not have to be that way. It is possible to be successful and enjoy some luxuries while still understanding the joys that come from sharing good fortune. 

I once tutored a young woman whose parents were both incredibly accomplished. Their home was the most remarkable abode I have ever seen. They had a full time maid and cook but they did not live in excess. They were humble people who were also incredibly generous. They paid me double for helping their daughter. They made me feel comfortable in their home and showed gratitude for my efforts. I saw that they treated everyone the way that they treated me. 

Their maid told me that they purchased a car for her when they saw that she was driving a clunker that was on its last legs. They made her feel as though she was a member of the family and paid her enough that she was able to afford to live in a nice house in a safe part of town. They remembered her and me whenever they went on vacations, bringing back thoughtful gifts that told us how much they appreciated the work we did for them. In fact it was pure joy to be around them.

I do not begrudge the success of people. I understand how much effort they have had to put into their work to get where they are. I admire their hard work but when they pass a certain boundary of decency I lose my positive feelings for them. The woman who marries into wealth with nothing more than her beauty does not impress me when she treats the highly educated family accountant with disdain. I have heard tales of such people making the “hired help” meet them in the garage rather than inside the house. They constantly show disregard for anyone that they see as being beneath them. 

I have known a famous doctor who drove an ordinary car for over ten years. He had a nice home in a good neighborhood but nothing about it was showy. He made sure that his children got summer jobs and saved the money that they made to use for savings. He invested in their educations, not things. His was a very comfortable life so he used his excess energy to work without fanfare in a free clinic in an economically depressed area of town. He and his family were always happy and grateful for what they had. He made certain that the nurses and secretaries and accountants who kept his office going understood how important they were to him. Nobody ever wanted to leave his employ.

Each of us should strive to be best by using our talents in positive ways and sharing whatever we can whenever we can. That is the key to a happy and prosperous life. Nobody needs billions of dollars while the people around him/her are barely making it. Nobody with billions of dollars should be slashing jobs and programs that leave people without a decent income. Nobody needs jets or ballrooms or gold ornamentations as long as someone is suffering somewhere. Each of us should always be asking whom and how to help. Therein lies the good life.  

Growing up in a home without a father in the nineteen fifties and sixties was a lot more unusual that it would be today. Back then women were still fighting for equality in the workplace and generally in American society. My mother had to operate a home on a very thin margin in which every penny that she spent had to be used to its utmost. That included her grocery allowance. 

We were taught that snatching food for a snack was akin to a mortal sin. Mama carefully planned the menus for each week and then purchased the ingredients knowing that there was no room for a slip up. She doled out our food with an iron fist, demonstrating how to get many meals out of a pot roast or even the bones of a chicken. 

We never missed a meal but frivolous items were rarely a part of our diet. We did not have cartons of soft drinks cooling in the refrigerator for our moments of thirst. Cookies were stored in tins that we dared not open without permission from our mom. Taking anything without her knowledge might have had the effect of denying the entire family a careful distribution of the food that we had. 

I learned to cook from my mother with the result that I can recycle scraps of food in uncanny ways. Those Costco chickens that sell for just under five dollars are one of my favorite purchases. I learned from my mother’s skills as a chef that even the bones have value after most of the meat has been scraped from the carcass. Bone broth is a fabulous way to provide seasoning for a big pot of beans. 

That chicken might be featured as a main dish with an assortment of vegetables on one night, a lovely salad on another and a huge pot of soup that lasts for two or three more days. It becomes one of the best purchases that I make with regard to stretching my food budget. I learned those skills from a woman who sometimes boasted that a Home Economics class at Austin High School had shown her how to be a thrifty cook who still provided hearty meals for a family. 

When I first went to visit my husband’s family when we were dating I was stunned when he opened his refrigerator and began helping himself to whatever he desired. The shelves were filled with soft drinks and snacks and a cornucopia of produce and meat. I had never seen such plenty nor had I witnessed someone taking it all for granted. My husband was an only child and his parents had a substantial income that allowed them not only to keep their larders full but also to regularly eat away from home at upscale restaurants. His world and mine were so very different but I tried not to act as though raiding a refrigerator was unusual to me. 

We married young and were still finishing our college educations on salaries that barely paid the rent, kept our car running, and brought food into the house. Our first years might have been a disaster but for the fact that I had learned from my mother how to survive on next to nothing. I kept the meals coming but I had to retrain my husband’s thinking about helping himself to the groceries that I purchased because the budget would fall apart if we did not follow strict rules of apportionment. To this day he marvels at my skills in running a household on a dime. 

Of course we are far beyond that kind of sacrificing now but my instincts still cause me to get as much out of my food purchases as possible. I can’t stand the idea of waste because I too often think of someone who might have benefitted from the scraps that I throw away. I try to use every bit of a vegetable as possible even down to recycling the parts that are generally thought to be inedible. It’s amazing how yummy a vegetable broth becomes when all those stalks and rinds are simmered together in a bit of water. 

I have a friend who is much like me and she has taken her food stretching to new levels. She takes the broth that she makes and pours it into ice cube containers that freeze the tasty tidbits until she needs them for seasoning or making a stew. 

I often think of people who are hungry around the world and do my best not to be wasteful. My husband used to joke that I was a bit too obsessive with my attempts to use every bite of food in a fruitful way. “You can’t put that bit in a box and send it somewhere,’ he would say. I knew that he was right but I still feel that tinge of guilt when I see how much valuable “garbage” we humans all too often make. So much that we throw away still has value. It’s a lesson that I learned long ago and one that drives me to take care of our world and the people who live in it. Somewhere out there is a person who does not have my bounty and if I can give my savings to provide him or her with a meal it is worth the small efforts that I make to reduce the amount of waste that I create. A Costco chicken can create many feasts or as a wise man once observed “It all makes good gumbo”

So here we are just a few days away from the two hundred fiftieth anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence which led to a revolutionary war with England and the eventual creation of the United States of America and a new kind of government run by the people rather than a king. There will be much official celebrating in our nation but I have chosen to follow my own path for honoring the story of our democratic republic. 

Perhaps it is just my personality at work but I see this historic moment as one that is not about a bash that seems to have nothing whatsoever to do with the dreams and expectations of our founding fathers. It is not about food or parties or fireworks or bloviated speeches but rather a moment of reflection on the enormity of what happened on that July fourth of seventeen seventy six. It was the beginning of a radical idea that we the people are the rulers of our own fate. It eschewed the idea that a king somehow had a divine right to rule over us and use our treasure for his own whims. It was a radical moment in history that like all such events was as imperfect as the men who initiated the idea but at its center was great possibility for common folks. It was a shocking and daring move that much of the world believed was impossible and yet two hundred fifty years later here we are.

It would be years before the dream of those signers was clinched and the war with one of the best trained military forces was over thanks in part to the aide of France. There would be much more work to do to craft a viable constitution that ended up forcing uncomfortable compromises to keep the new government from falling apart before it really got started. The new rules outlined in the Constitution began with the most important phrase “We the People.” Suddenly it was up to commoners to muddle their way into the future with the radical idea that the people were in charge. 

Of course many of us were not counted to determine representation in Congress. It would be years before we actually had the right to vote. The southern states stalled the acceptance of the the document until their slaves were counted as two thirds of a person and slavery was declared legal. The representatives who saw slavery as an evil had to swallow their beliefs to keep the government united. Some of them ultimately refused to sign the document in protest of what they saw as an horrific original sin. The hope was that somewhere in the future the problem of slavery would be rectified but for the moment they simply hoped for the best and then looked away. The rift would never really go away until a civil war and amendments to the Constitution ended the vile practice once and for all. 

It would not be until the twentieth century that women also earned the right to vote. We took our time acknowledging the Native Americans who had lived on the land in our nation for thousands of years before the first colonists set foot on the North American continent as well. Bit by bit we have been able to improve on the government that changed the world two hundred fifty years ago. Ironically we have found ourselves asking the same questions about our Constitution that James Madison set forth from the very beginnings of the United States. We wonder why a state with 500,000 people would have the same number of Senators as one with tens of millions of people. We ask why we elect a president by the electoral college rather than by popular votes. We wonder why it took so long to include all people living in the United States in the process of self government and why slavery was not outlawed from the outset. We continue to debate many of the same issues that our founders attempted to settle with compromises that were not always as fair as they might have seemed. 

I plan to spend this week learning about the people who founded this nation, this democratic republic. I will read about their individual philosophies and the impacts that they had on the direction of the new government that precariously attempted to provide unheard of freedoms and responsibilities to common citizens. I will follow the arc of history that led to Abraham Lincoln and a civil war, the outlawing of slavery and the eventual inclusion of women in the government. I will study the trends and the arguments about what is best for our nation and fully enjoy my right to criticize even our president. How wonderful it is that I am able to do this with impunity! That is the main point of what happened two hundred fifty years ago.

My celebration will be serious but also hopeful just as those men were in seventeen seventy six. We have achieved much as a nation but to keep our republic we must always be vigilant. Tyrants will rise in our midst just as they always have but we have the right to vote them out. In this moment we would do well to remember that that we have the power, not our president. No king or authoritarian can or should limit our freedoms nor should he or she curtail the rights of any people for reasons of race or place of origin or religious beliefs.

Our ancestors were not perfect. Nobody ever is but they had a dream that continues to evolve for the betterment of humankind of all varieties. Learning our unvarnished history with its genius and horrific mistakes is how we will move forward into the next two hundred fifty years. Our celebration is not about blood and soil or bread and circuses. It is about imperfect humans who did their best to form a more perfect union. They hoped their idea would ultimately honor all of the people who came together to make the United States the vibrant and welcoming place that it was meant to be. It was a solemn promise that depends on all of us working together to keep the dream alive and becoming ever better. There is much work for all of us to do.