A Rainy Day with Lucy

I love Lucy.  Lucille Ball was quite the pioneer.  She helped set the stage for women in comedy, had a baby at almost 40,  and was married to her second husband-13 years her junior-for 27 years.  Lucy also had a fashion style that we imitate today.  I think if she went out for coffee on a rainy day in 2012, it would like a little something like this:

Vintage long dress / Prada long sleeve top, $460 / Hunter wellies rubber boots / Radley vintage satchel, $315 / John Lewis umbrella, $16

I Don't Have the Answers

"You know that song 'If a body catch a body comin' through the rye'? I'd like—"
"It's 'If a body meet a body coming through the rye'!" old Phoebe said. "It's a poem. By Robert Burns."
"I know it's a poem by Robert Burns."
She was right, though. It is "If a body meet a body coming through the rye." I didn't know it then, though.
"I thought it was 'If a body catch a body,'" I said. "Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around— nobody big, I mean— except me. And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff— I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I'd do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to be. I know it's crazy." 

(from The Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger)

I suppose life is the inspiration for literature and literature is the inspiration for life.

Suffering. I don't have the answers for why it exists or what to do with it.  But I have thoughts on it and I see some of these thoughts in the passage above.  Holden Caulfield.  Old Holden, old sport.  

The cliff in this passage reminds me of suffering.  The cliff and the darkness, the shadow that we find when we peer over the edge at all the we never want to experience.  When we dangle from the edge, white-knuckled, pleading that we don't fall.  When we balance precariously on the brink.  

But life often doesn't end at suffering.  Or, I guess it is more accurate to say it doesn't have to end at suffering.  Time has a way of making us rise.  Of realizing that our hearts are going to beat again, even if we think it's impossible that they will.  We are a revenant, I suppose.

I think that suffering can be an impetus.  A drive that makes us want to be the catcher in the rye.  There can be a desire to save those who come after us from falling into the depths that we did.  To keep them innocent, safe, perhaps even joyful.  That we can catch them, pull them securely close, and then release them.  

But the hard (hard, hard) part is that we won't want to do this, or even know how to do this, until we know the cliff.  And perhaps that is why suffering comes.  Or, at the least, what we need to reap like rye from the suffering--the hope, the desire, the passion to catch those around us.  To either help them escape the fall entirely and, when that is impossible, to love them through it (to love them through it, to love them through it.)  

Again, I don't have the answers to explain the whys of suffering.  Or to justify it. Or to casually explain it away.  I just know that we are not exempt from suffering but somehow we can choose not to exempt ourselves from loving others who are in it and desperately need us to.

A Delicious Salad Recipe for You.

Beets with Walnuts, Goat cheese, and Baby Greens

(Trust Andrea on the beets and goat cheese.)

From Cooking Light, April 2011, page 130

6 medium beets (red & golden), about 1 1/2 pounds
1 cup water
8 cups mixed baby salad greens
1 cup loosely packed fresh flat-leaf parsley leaves
1 tbsp white balsamic vinegar (regular balsamic works fine, too)
1/4 tsp kosher salt
1/4 tsp black pepper
2 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
1/2 cup (2 ounces) crumbled goat cheese (not feta)
1/4 cup coarsely chopped walnuts, toasted

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

2.  Leave root and 1-inch stem on beets; scrub with a brush.  Place beets and 1 cup water in a 13 x 9-inch glass or ceramic baking dish; cover tightly with foil. Bake at 375 degrees for 1 hour and 30 minutes or until tender.  Cool beets slightly. Trim off roots; rub off skins.  Cut beets into wedges; cool completely.

3.  Place greens and parsley in a large bowl; toss. Combine vinegar, salt, and pepper, stirring with a whisk.  Gradually drizzle in oil, stirring constantly with a whisk.  Drizzle dressing over greens mixture; toss gently.  Arrange 1 cup salad on each of 8 plates; top evenly with beets.  Top each serving with 1 tbsp cheese and 1 1/2 tsp nuts.

Warning:  This salad is addictive.  It's also an excellent substitute for the usual garden salad at your next dinner party!