Return of the sweet green monster

Time to replace the suitcase. My trusty dusty broke its handle in Asia and I need a new one. It has to be: light, not too expensive, NOT BLACK! If I see another 26 inch upright roll off the belt, to be snatched by a person who is not the TRUE OWNER , I’ll go mad (okay, okay, MADDER).

Today I found one! It’s green. A steely, almost light-toned green. And on sale. And XXLight. Wow! I’m in love with it, it is like getting a new backback at the beginning of the school year.

But but but, wait a minute. Nostalgia! I once had a green suitcase. I've gone through many 26 inch uprights in my life and I remember a green one some two suitcases ago. Wasn’t it the one that was once ridiculed at the airport (“sweetie, not that one, that one’s GREEN!”), lost and forgotten in some strike of European baggage handlers (now that Poland has a market economy, will baggage handlers strike there as well? During my visits? NO!)? Wasn’t it the one that refused to give up even though it was called the “skinny belonging to ninny?” (Oh, did I not admit that in grad school I was affectionately given the nickname of “ninny”? No, it was NOT a reflection of the smartness thing (see post yesterday). At least, I think not. I mean, would you really call a person with intellectual deficiencies a “ninny?” Of course not! You’d reserve the nickname for those who were thought to be truly BRILLIANT! (Chalk it up as additional evidence..) [btw, the “ninny” stuck. However, if you are a student, you are NOT ALLOWED TO CALL ME THAT EVER! Others? At your own risk.]

Suitcase purchased. Tomorrow, thoughts about packing begin.

Wait, did we really have those lazy hazy crazy days this year?

It is the last summer market for me (I will not be in Madison during the next three Saturdays) and so I foraged forever (this is in my “I’m wearing the L’Etoile hat now” capacity) just to get my fill (ten times around the Square, six hours total). Some of the farmers wont be back by the time I return to my buying in September. Kind of sad.

The question asked at each stand was the same: was there even a summer this year?

Ultimately, the market is, of course, all about food. Though I don’t know why I post pictures of potatoes and apricots and crab apples. It befuddles me too. I think, for me, the lure is in the color of it all. So many tones, so many fantastic tones!

Some people have blog rolls, here I go with my market food roll. Last week it was the bees and honey, this week it’s birds and milk. Milk?? Sure enough, today there was a demonstration in favor of breastmilk. As one farmer asked me – who here is against breastmilk??

The very first local apricots. Of course they're from our state! Why not? Just because we had all rain and little sun this year? 

what the heck is so special about a potato? At dawn, in gold, purple and red... 

before the sweetly disposed apples come the crabby one 

getting in the mood for Italy 

Capitol Square: our own little St. Mark's-- and they're 'cleaner' than pigeons 

dried flowers are on display; already?? 

is it time to buy these for winter use? 

Was there a single person on the Square not in agreement with this protest march? 

My political commitments are being challenged today

At the closing luncheon for the Law School's Summer Program (a course of study for foreign attorneys), I spoke to one lawyer who was anxious to return to his home base in Venezuela. Under normal circumstances, he would have liked to stay in the States for a bit, but he tells me he wants to be back in time for next week’s referendum in order to put in his vote to oust the corrupt leadership in his country. I asked what the chances of a success are and he told me 60 – 40.

Would I fly back hurriedly, almost as if attending to a sick family member, simply to cast my vote where the odds where already strongly in favor of a win? Honestly, would I?

Maybe. If I were engaged enough, if the referendum or election significantly changed the political framework, if I wished desperately that damage from the past could be arrested, or even reversed...

Wait a minute. I think that now. I guess no matter where I am in the first week in November, it will be close to a polling booth.

hey, I am NOT one of the students... I just snuck in on one of the group shots. 

the women banded and bonded (wait, I see myself there!) 

a last good-bye to an amazing group 

I dabble in twaddle?

Dang it all, as if this week didn’t offer enough fretting and worrying to last me a lifetime, here’s a fragment of a message I just got from a prof I know:

Unless they're put in front of me, I do not read blogs as I tend to view them as self-indulgent twaddle.

Self-indulgent. Okay, I guess I just am. Throw me down the tunnel to hell’s doors, I indulge the self in my desire for a creative outlet, for a stab at good, honest writing, for friendship, for community, for all of that – I am guilty!!

But do I really twaddle?

Some are born smart, some achieve smartness and some have smartness thrust upon them

The thing about bloggers is that they have such wonderful “take me back to the old days” impulses. Here I am, posting about ancient dusty trunks and days when mail was gold (see earlier post), and fellow bloggers (here and here) are speculating about what can-should-could-might be used as measures of presidential candidates’ smartness.

Why is this a throw back to the old years? Why I remember this discussion! In my first year in law school, and my extended years putzin’ around graduate school, EVERYONE talked about who is and who is not smart. [Now there’s MY marker of smartness: anyone else ready to boast that they ‘wasted’ 6 years on graduate school, to walk away with an MA and an ABD – which, to my knowledge, is an unrecognized by the accreditation chiefs (who does decide these matters anyway?), useless credential – meaning something I can line my bookshelf with, if indeed I had a bookshelf since I may not be smart enough to READ books given my lackluster grad school credential-procurement record*. But I can post all this and remain unfazed because I KNOW I am brilliant. Basis for this? My parents told me! I don’t place much weight on a lot of their claims, but on this one assertion, I’m going to go out on a limb and stick with you, Mom and Dad!]

And let me throw out some more tailored-to-my-own needs markers of slam-dunk geniusness: I got into every law school I ever applied to (all of one)! And, hold on now, I’m on a roll --I was ranked in the 101 percentile for my TOEFL (the test for non-native speakers of English) scores! I swear! I have the paper to prove it! No, I do not understand what that means either unless perhaps, having passed 100 you are to retreat to the beginning, so it’s like back to square zero and one point into the game. But I got into all kinds of cool grad schools with it so it can’t be that dismal. Okay, I must qualify: I did NOT get into one grad school (it shall remain unmentioned – I hate the place! At least twelve students were preferred over ME! It pains me even now to recognize my inferiority) and at least one school on this short list of a mere five was NOT ranked high on the scale of intellectual coolness (has anyone ever even heard of Carleton University in Canada? I thought it might be fun to live up in Ottawa for a while. I had such interesting criteria of selection, ‘elite’ being conspicuously absent I guess.)

I’m digressing. Back to smartness. I love this! I feel young again! Carter was soooo smart, and Kerry – let’s tally up his smartness assets: hmm, there’s ‘Skull and Bones’ (Skull and Bones? My God, the man should be running for president!), BUT IS HE SMART??

Anyway, I wanted to join the discussion and be part of the blogger gang, so here I am with my very own post on whether or not Kerry is smart. My conclusion: YES HE IS! Basis? I don’t know, he just seems smart.

* Immediately after posting this I received the following email:

Client#: 266Email ID: nlcamic@wisc(dot)edu
Dear Sir/Maddam;From our records we understand that you are qualified in your profession andwe are going to offer you a 1 time offer. Our Univsersity can offer you a Pre-Qualified degree.To obtain your degree with valid transcripts follow this link:http://1highereducation.com Sincerly;Pearlie IngramAdministration Office

I am not about degrees, guys! I'm like Kerry! I have a proven record already!

These days the mail carrier brings only junk mail and bills

This most definitely is a “how times have changed” type of a post. I feel I ought to be writing it from a rocking chair, positioned next to my steamer trunk of faded memories.

Because, in fact, I do have a large steamer trunk (see photo below) filled with letters from my young adult years --letters sent to me when I returned to live in the States to finish my studies here. Apparently, instead of attending to my studies, I attended to my correspondence because there are literally hundreds, possibly thousands of letters there, dated from the years 1973 – 1977 (end of college, beginning grad school – up until the point when I got married; the cessation of correspondence at that moment is in itself a sad statement about how we treat our friends at moments of transition.)

What should I do with them? I am typically not a keeper of paper. It overwhelms me – there is always too much of it and I can’t remember where and what most of it is. These days I throw out as much as I can. I think I can safely say that I do not regret having discarded 99% of all that is now decomposing in a landfill or being recycled into grocery bags.

But the trunk of letters is another matter. It holds all sorts of personalities in one heap of faded paper. There is a small stack from a good university friend who committed suicide shortly after writing me his last letter. I feel I ought not throw that stack away. And the rest?

It’s the entirety that has me stumped: I pick up any single letter (most are from friends in Poland and other distant places) and it is mildly amusing but not much more than that. Quite a number of my friends were, let’s face it, terrible letter writers. I always longed for the personal statements, the ones that contained some small inkling to what was on their minds, an idea, a revelation, a display of weakness, an uncertainty maybe. I know I asked probing questions that sought to elicit these kinds of musings.

But more often than not there would be chronological accounts of who did what and when, gossipy stories and, especially from men, lengthy descriptions of academic work.

Yet the entirety seems to me to be some kind of testament to the transition that I went through as I slowly relinquished my links to my Polish world and connected more and more to people on this side of the ocean.

And so I can’t get myself to simply put this all in ten garbage bags and lay it out with the trash come Wednesday. Still, all that faded paper, locked in a musty trunk…

[n.b.: Though almost all the letters are addressed to me, occasionally there will be an unsent letter written by me. I’m sure I was waiting a decent amount of time to send the next one and the next one. I had firm ideas about how one ought not respond immediately and with five letters to every one that came in. I have no doubt that I violated my own rule then, just like I violate it all the time now in email.]

It sailed with me during my first entry into the NY harbor. Really. Kind of a classic way to begin life in the U.S. 

…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.