Month: July 2026

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”