VISUAL and culinary ARTS
Herein of painting, sculpture, dance, acting, food preparation, wine appreciation
My Experiences
My lifelong interest in dance got started when, during law school in 1976, I attended a ballet program featuring Suzanne Farrell and Peter Martins. A few years later, in Nashville, I was fortunate to see Mikhail Baryshnikov perform. More recently, my granddaughters have taken dance lessons for many years, privately and in school, and have joined me in watching the Houston Ballet and Ishida Dance Company. I am currently an active donor to Ishida Dance, and a volunteer, my time utilized with its outreach to high schools. In 1980, I gave substantial monetary support to a fledgling stage acting company in Nashville. It was a company hiring only union actors, which made it what is called an equity theater. Its first production featured the second tier Hollywood actress Piper Laurie, who won a Golden Globe and was nominated three times for an Academy Award. I left Nashville the following year for Houston, and so had no further involvement with the company. Upon landing in Houston, I soon learned that the salutatorian of my high school class in Nashville (Franklin), Vance Ormes, was one of the staff directors for Houston's premier equity theater then and now, Alley Theater. Vance soon left to return to the University of Denver, where he had learned theater direction. My wife very much appreciates the Alley. I also attended over the years productions at Stages Theater, Main Street Theater, and The Ensemble Theater. I also attended a couple of touring shows sponsored by Theater Under the Stars, but determined that I just did not like musicals, no matter how highly acclaimed by others. In 1997, while undergoing divorce, I sought out connection to an arts organization as a place to interact with women. That place was the Art League of Houston, where I was promptly made secretary. The Art League, decades old by that time, maintained a small campus in the Montrose neighborhood at which it held accredited classes and displayed paintings, sculpture, and mixed media pieces. I served as secretary for a year and then president for three years. Separately, my wife had several friends among Art League insiders, and so we were both involved for years in the Houston art scene acquiring new friendships and art for our home and law offices. That activity included purchasing multiple works by Houston artists Salli Babbitt and Jan Van Leer especially, and a variety of works during our travels in the US and abroad. During the years around when we closed our law offices and built a new house, 2016-2019, we sold or gave away well over 20 works. A couple of those works were pieces my wife had created during the several years she took classes at the Glassell School, a part of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. My stepdaughter early on was engaged as assistant to the director of the MFAH and her being in that position added immensely to our visual arts time and attention. I began cooking - most especially breakfast items - when I was ten. Simultaneously, I began the serious study of nutrition as related to sports performance. I continue to enjoy cooking, but I am only very good, not excellent, with that skill. My wife has achieved excellence. Our focus for the recent several years has been on eating only food items, that is, avoiding eating non-food items. Like most persons in my social circles, I occasionally drank beer, spirits, and wine. During the early part of my law career, the consumption of alcohol with business lunch was common. That slowed down considerably in the late 1980s (after the federal tax act of 1986). At about 2005, I joined the wine committee of my business club, The Houston Club. Soon after, my wife planned a trip which included a week in Burgundy, and I took that trip as an opportunity to study wine in a way I had not previously, which is, in the way I had studied architecture or natural landmarks for other trips. That study did not end with Burgundy wine or the Burgundy trip. Along the way I obtained certification as a wine expert from one organization, I spent time at wine tastings and other events, and I acquired well over 1,000 bottles of wine that I had to store at correct temperature. Maintaining this hobby was beyond silly. When I finally sold or gave away the wine, I "lost" about $25,000-$30,000 out of pocket on the hobby. I also regularly wrote and provided lectures on wine, which while enjoyable, took time I might well have spent in my law practice or with my family. My habit took me to "tastings" at home, and thus consumption of alcohol while alone. This was a slippery slope, and while I did not become addicted, I did on occasion become drunk, until I stopped cold turkey one Saturday morning in 2010. I did attend AA for many months (perhaps over a year), but not being addicted (as I determined) the twelve steps had no positive affect on me, as only the discipline of not drinking did. The end of that story is that in 2024 my wife and I took a month long trip to France. On the Air France flight in Business Class there was an exceptional Champagne on offer, and I decided to have that with the meal. Since then I do have wine on occasion only during mealtime, but I still leave beer and spirits alone completely.
My Comments Cooking: Read a list of ingredients on a food label; all that stuff at the end is non-food: preservatives, flavors, colors, conditioners, emulsifiers, etc. ALL "bread" packaged as loaves in plastic bags on store shelves is full of non-food items, as is ALL store ice cream. (All here means 98%, not 100%.) It is considerably more expensive, but only somewhat more time-consuming, to avoid non-food ingredients. Heating up factory-produced items for your family meals is much faster than actual cooking, but the time out of the day is really not that much. As retirees, we do have much more time available for cooking and for exercise than do working persons, but for everyone it is a matter of time allocation to get in actual food cooking and exercise. Food is an area of life in which there are constant fads. Beware of food fads. Almost every time there is a big discovery about eating, it is in fact a fad, not a new miracle insight. This is true even from physicians, who long wrongly preached that the absence of cholesterol intake would produce a lessening in the blood system - the body regulates cholesterol in blood. The Trump administration is delusional about healthy living. Secretary Kennedy is an extremist on many fronts, including on nutrition. Seed oils are not evil substances. However, Secretary Kennedy is absolutely correct in the advice to severely limit highly processed foods. There are a number of the "world's greatest cuisines," which are not absolute best but vary by personal tastes. In my view, the world's great cooking includes (not in order) that from Oaxaca, Mexico; Provence, France; Tuscany, Italy; Friuli and surrounding areas in northeast Italy; southern Thailand; northern India, including Uttar Pradesh and Punjab; southern India including Kerala and Tamil Nadu; Yucatan, Mexico; Brittany, France; Lebanon; Sichuan, Shandong, Huaiyang, and Hunan, China. Wine: People have been making wine for thousands of years. In the Hellenistic world, including at the time of Jesus Christ, diluted wine was the ubiquitous drink for all persons all day. Wine consumption may or may not be good nutrition for you, but it is good. In the Old World, wine is known by its location name because the recipe at certain places is more or less fixed. The quality of the wine increases when the name is of smaller areas, Burgundy by large area, Pomerol by smaller area. In the New World, wine is identified by grape, but area identification plays a role here, too: Cabernet Sauvignon, from Napa Valley, California. National governments set the rules for names, including label information. Yes, French wines are the most famous for good reason, but both Bordeaux and Burgundy wines of high quality require long aging, which thus requires a higher price be paid for that time. Get expert advice when buying a red Burgundy wine less than seven years old, or a Bordeaux less than five. France has only so many exceptional wine producing areas; but Italy produces excellent wines in almost every province. I am no longer an expert on wine, as I am not current.Sample of my old writings: 2012 Houston Restaurants for Wine booklet; and 2008 Seminar on Wines of Italy and Spain Visual Art: Despite my years of attention, I am no visual art expert and thus make no recommendations, other than to say do make time for art for you and your children.
My lifelong interest in dance got started when, during law school in 1976, I attended a ballet program featuring Suzanne Farrell and Peter Martins. A few years later, in Nashville, I was fortunate to see Mikhail Baryshnikov perform. More recently, my granddaughters have taken dance lessons for many years, privately and in school, and have joined me in watching the Houston Ballet and Ishida Dance Company. I am currently an active donor to Ishida Dance, and a volunteer, my time utilized with its outreach to high schools. In 1980, I gave substantial monetary support to a fledgling stage acting company in Nashville. It was a company hiring only union actors, which made it what is called an equity theater. Its first production featured the second tier Hollywood actress Piper Laurie, who won a Golden Globe and was nominated three times for an Academy Award. I left Nashville the following year for Houston, and so had no further involvement with the company. Upon landing in Houston, I soon learned that the salutatorian of my high school class in Nashville (Franklin), Vance Ormes, was one of the staff directors for Houston's premier equity theater then and now, Alley Theater. Vance soon left to return to the University of Denver, where he had learned theater direction. My wife very much appreciates the Alley. I also attended over the years productions at Stages Theater, Main Street Theater, and The Ensemble Theater. I also attended a couple of touring shows sponsored by Theater Under the Stars, but determined that I just did not like musicals, no matter how highly acclaimed by others. In 1997, while undergoing divorce, I sought out connection to an arts organization as a place to interact with women. That place was the Art League of Houston, where I was promptly made secretary. The Art League, decades old by that time, maintained a small campus in the Montrose neighborhood at which it held accredited classes and displayed paintings, sculpture, and mixed media pieces. I served as secretary for a year and then president for three years. Separately, my wife had several friends among Art League insiders, and so we were both involved for years in the Houston art scene acquiring new friendships and art for our home and law offices. That activity included purchasing multiple works by Houston artists Salli Babbitt and Jan Van Leer especially, and a variety of works during our travels in the US and abroad. During the years around when we closed our law offices and built a new house, 2016-2019, we sold or gave away well over 20 works. A couple of those works were pieces my wife had created during the several years she took classes at the Glassell School, a part of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. My stepdaughter early on was engaged as assistant to the director of the MFAH and her being in that position added immensely to our visual arts time and attention. I began cooking - most especially breakfast items - when I was ten. Simultaneously, I began the serious study of nutrition as related to sports performance. I continue to enjoy cooking, but I am only very good, not excellent, with that skill. My wife has achieved excellence. Our focus for the recent several years has been on eating only food items, that is, avoiding eating non-food items. Like most persons in my social circles, I occasionally drank beer, spirits, and wine. During the early part of my law career, the consumption of alcohol with business lunch was common. That slowed down considerably in the late 1980s (after the federal tax act of 1986). At about 2005, I joined the wine committee of my business club, The Houston Club. Soon after, my wife planned a trip which included a week in Burgundy, and I took that trip as an opportunity to study wine in a way I had not previously, which is, in the way I had studied architecture or natural landmarks for other trips. That study did not end with Burgundy wine or the Burgundy trip. Along the way I obtained certification as a wine expert from one organization, I spent time at wine tastings and other events, and I acquired well over 1,000 bottles of wine that I had to store at correct temperature. Maintaining this hobby was beyond silly. When I finally sold or gave away the wine, I "lost" about $25,000-$30,000 out of pocket on the hobby. I also regularly wrote and provided lectures on wine, which while enjoyable, took time I might well have spent in my law practice or with my family. My habit took me to "tastings" at home, and thus consumption of alcohol while alone. This was a slippery slope, and while I did not become addicted, I did on occasion become drunk, until I stopped cold turkey one Saturday morning in 2010. I did attend AA for many months (perhaps over a year), but not being addicted (as I determined) the twelve steps had no positive affect on me, as only the discipline of not drinking did. The end of that story is that in 2024 my wife and I took a month long trip to France. On the Air France flight in Business Class there was an exceptional Champagne on offer, and I decided to have that with the meal. Since then I do have wine on occasion only during mealtime, but I still leave beer and spirits alone completely.
My Comments Cooking: Read a list of ingredients on a food label; all that stuff at the end is non-food: preservatives, flavors, colors, conditioners, emulsifiers, etc. ALL "bread" packaged as loaves in plastic bags on store shelves is full of non-food items, as is ALL store ice cream. (All here means 98%, not 100%.) It is considerably more expensive, but only somewhat more time-consuming, to avoid non-food ingredients. Heating up factory-produced items for your family meals is much faster than actual cooking, but the time out of the day is really not that much. As retirees, we do have much more time available for cooking and for exercise than do working persons, but for everyone it is a matter of time allocation to get in actual food cooking and exercise. Food is an area of life in which there are constant fads. Beware of food fads. Almost every time there is a big discovery about eating, it is in fact a fad, not a new miracle insight. This is true even from physicians, who long wrongly preached that the absence of cholesterol intake would produce a lessening in the blood system - the body regulates cholesterol in blood. The Trump administration is delusional about healthy living. Secretary Kennedy is an extremist on many fronts, including on nutrition. Seed oils are not evil substances. However, Secretary Kennedy is absolutely correct in the advice to severely limit highly processed foods. There are a number of the "world's greatest cuisines," which are not absolute best but vary by personal tastes. In my view, the world's great cooking includes (not in order) that from Oaxaca, Mexico; Provence, France; Tuscany, Italy; Friuli and surrounding areas in northeast Italy; southern Thailand; northern India, including Uttar Pradesh and Punjab; southern India including Kerala and Tamil Nadu; Yucatan, Mexico; Brittany, France; Lebanon; Sichuan, Shandong, Huaiyang, and Hunan, China. Wine: People have been making wine for thousands of years. In the Hellenistic world, including at the time of Jesus Christ, diluted wine was the ubiquitous drink for all persons all day. Wine consumption may or may not be good nutrition for you, but it is good. In the Old World, wine is known by its location name because the recipe at certain places is more or less fixed. The quality of the wine increases when the name is of smaller areas, Burgundy by large area, Pomerol by smaller area. In the New World, wine is identified by grape, but area identification plays a role here, too: Cabernet Sauvignon, from Napa Valley, California. National governments set the rules for names, including label information. Yes, French wines are the most famous for good reason, but both Bordeaux and Burgundy wines of high quality require long aging, which thus requires a higher price be paid for that time. Get expert advice when buying a red Burgundy wine less than seven years old, or a Bordeaux less than five. France has only so many exceptional wine producing areas; but Italy produces excellent wines in almost every province. I am no longer an expert on wine, as I am not current.Sample of my old writings: 2012 Houston Restaurants for Wine booklet; and 2008 Seminar on Wines of Italy and Spain Visual Art: Despite my years of attention, I am no visual art expert and thus make no recommendations, other than to say do make time for art for you and your children.