…Off they go to find a broader point of view

A reader was brilliantly quick at naming the song from yesterday’s post. This one (see post title) may be trickier (go ahead, guess). But it's so fitting!

I spent the better part of the afternoon with Lucy (this is not her real name and she does not read blogs). Lucy may as well be regarded as my alterego. So much of my everyday, I am sure, is odd to her. Just take our appearance: I come in a seersucker skirt to see her (I was in my office later and so it seemed fitting), she’s in purple cords. I haven’t a tattoo on any part of me, she has more tattoos on her arms than I would imagine possible. She is 16 years younger than me. She cooks dinners with a group of people, half of whom I know and they all are much like her and not at all like me, at least at the most basic level of presentation.

Lucy is an exceptionally smart person, though she doesn’t parade this. She studied philosophy and comparative literature, but she doesn’t throw either into the conversation much. Her best friend, Tom (not his name) is a brilliant comparative lit grad, and he is still younger – a mere 23 perhaps?

It may seem odd that Lucy and I are good friends, but we are. I met her when I was baking croissants at L’Etoile. At the time, she was the head baker there as she worked her way to complete her degree. Now she dabbles in cooking in a variety of places around town, most notably, helping Sofia run her East Johnson Street bakery and café (what – you haven’t been to Sofia’s? You are missing Madison’s gem).

There was a reason for today’s longish date with Lucy. She and Tom are heading for Europe this fall, just to get inspired, energized. They plan to roam there for some 3 months and want to meet up with me when I am in Poland in December. They are on a shoestring budget and so the idea of going to the mountain farmhouse I often speak of appeals to them. They wont mind the absence of indoor plumbing.

But I write now about Lucy for another reason. I sometimes wonder if by a hairpin turn, my life could have turned out to be as undefined as hers is now. Having moved between countries makes me a bit of chameleon—I adapt to wherever I am placed. Might I have wondered into a community where no one judges you by the presence or absence of tattoos? I am too wise about life’s trickery to reject the idea completely. It could have been me now, with bold patterns on my arms (Lucy did it with a friend, on an impulse) and a thousand dollars in my pocket to spend on three months in Europe.

I asked her, will she manage? She told me – “I’m taking my puppets with me. Maybe I’ll do shows to lure my way into the hearts of people we meet there.” I don’t think they need puppets. They ooze charm. They’ll manage just fine.

True fame

If in academia fame comes from a history of prolific writing and publishing, in the world of food it must come from having products named after you. I read that Capriole Goat Cheeses has named one of their cheeses after Odessa Piper of L’Etoile (read about it here). There’s also a farmer that has named a potato “the Odessa.” In the world of plants, true recognition of your growing talents comes when you have a flower bearing your signature. I know a Madison woman who has a daylily named in her honor.

I’m more likely to have a weed named after me at this point, as I seem to have cultivated them in abundance this summer. There’s a song floating around out there in CD land that was written in my honor, but “Nina” is conspicuously absent from its title so I suppose that doesn’t count. I have to be grateful with what I can get. So, thanks, JFW for at least giving my name Net recognition (here). I know it’s not quite a household word yet, but then neither is the Odessa potato.