Welcome Summer!

My kind of fast food: raspberries, nature's sweet candy and a summer delight.

On this summer solstice, reflect on your favorite summer memories as a child, and what you most look forward to. Has it changed much? Favorite childhood summer memories: watching fireflies, searching the backyard for a twig for a spear for marshmallows for toasting, swimming, and something we never appreciate: having the summer off.

Keith Donohue, in his haunting Angels of Destruction, talked about the "endless nirvana of doing nothing at all" that summer offers. We need a little more "nothing" in our harried lives.

Some delights I anticipate each year: going to the beach, lazy weekend naps, the air perfumed with honeysuckle, reading in a shady breeze on a lounge chair. Also...

Eating outdoors: on the patio, at a quaint cafe, on a picnic blanket, or at the farm. At Demarest Farm in Hillsdale, New Jersey, shaded picnic benches await just beyond this cheerful scene.


Lemonade stands. Learn about the history of lemonade from FoodTimeline.org.

It's comforting to know 50 cents can still buy you refreshment on a hot summer day.

Early evening strolls in the park with the family's adopted dog, Scotty, who doesn't seem to care at all (nor do I) if I'm not beach body ready (what a ridiculous concept). How much people fret needlessly over their appearances in the summer. Animals seem to have their priorities in order: love, food, home, play, rest (all cherished four letter words).

Farmers markets abundant with summer's bounty. At the Thursday Port Authority Bus Terminal in New York City, Katchkie Farm has spearmint basil ice tea, $2, an infusion that transports me straight to the garden and not bustling 42nd Street.

I can just smell the basil looking at this picture. For me, no manmade perfume created in a laboratory can compete with the perfume of nature.


While I keep my suit on, I love swimming, including the peacefulness at night. R.E.M.'s poetic Nightswimming (from their Automatic for the People record) is a favorite anthem for summer.

"Nightswimming deserves a quiet night.
The photograph on the dashboard, taken years ago.
Turnaround backward so the windshield shows.
Every streetlight reveals a picture in reverse.

Still it's so much clearer.
I forgot my shirt at the water's edge.
The moon is low tonight.

Nightswimming deserves a quiet night.
I'm not sure all these people understand.
It's not like years ago.
The fear of getting caught. The recklessness of water.
They cannot see me naked.
These thing they go away replaced by everyday.

Nightswimming, remembering that night.
September's coming soon.
I'm pining for the moon.
And what if there were two side by side in orbit around the fairest sun."



Enjoy the delights of summer.

A Letter on Learning

"Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by this some have entertained angels without knowing it." Book of Hebrews, as quoted in Keith Donohue's Angels of Destruction.

Dear readers,

Since I can't have those "Here's what I learned in class today" moments at the dinner table, I've decided to tell you what I learned this week in daily life.

I have so much to learn. This week, I met an 83-year-old man named Robert, who by lucky chance (for me) was seated next to me at the Banff film festival (think National Geographic, come to life on screen), which I attend each year with my sweetheart. Robert was telling me about this book: Slave: My True Story, by Mende Nazer and Damien Lewis, a true story about a 12-year-old sold into slavery in 1993. He said it's one of the best he's ever read. I love readers. I once saw a man walking to work in front of me with a brown bagged lunch and a library book and thought - how great, he's frugal because he's bringing his own food, and he's smart and budget minded reading a library book! Anyway, Robert is a retired reference librarian, and I agreed with his sentiment that another lifetime is needed to finish everything one wants to read.

What are you reading? I'm in the middle of Celia Rees' Witch Child, about a 14 year old girl who may or may not be a witch fleeing England in 1659 for America. I thought about how witches were an easy source of blame, and how witches take many forms. I also thought about the displacement of people fleeing tyranny caused the displacement of others whose lands they occupied. It was Tori Amos (who has a Cherokee bloodline) who sang in a Cherokee edition of Home on the Range, "Jackson made deals, a thief down to his heels. Hello long trail of tears. The white man came, this land is my land this is your land they sang."

I've just ordered Ben Gadd's Raven's End directly from the author after seeing his stunning words featured in A Life Ascending, which follows mountain guide Ruedi Beglinger and his family in British Columbia. They said there's a belief if people who die who love the mountains, they come back as a raven to live there.

Here' a preview of that film.

"I believe that mountains have energy in them which get passed onto us as we travel in it. I believe mountains are fully alive," Ruedi says.

Isn't he so right? Do you get positive energy from nature?

I have so much to see. When a film was on showing footage of the Grand Canyon, my sweetheart, Steve, to the right, whispered, "I was there." He had gone with his brother in the B.C.-age (before Catherine). Robert, to my left, said, "I was there with my daughter." (He biked from New York to California after retirement. I get winded walking up a flight of steps). I thought - I need to see these things. Other than a childhood trip to Hawaii and California (I've been to the latter to San Diego on business as well), I haven't left the East Coast in my 35 years.

Robert might not have been an angel, but I'm so glad I spoke to him. Speaking to each other - something we don't do enough. Everyone's face down in their gadgets checking e-mail or Facebook status, missing it all (yes, as soon as the intermission began, poof, out came the gadgets).

I'm coming to peace with the fact that my time machine idea isn't so realistic, and I was inspired by Michael Stipe's reading of a poem, Blue, in R.E.M.'s Collapse Into Now.

"I am made by my times, I am a creation of now, shaken with the cracks and crevices. I'm not giving up easily. I don't have much, but what I have gold.

This is my time and I am thrilled to be alive.
Living, blessed, I understand this.
Twentieth century, collapse into now."

I am thrilled to be alive. I hope you are too, and you are filling your life with experiences that make it richer, and people that make you better, even if you only sit next to them for a fleeting moment.

That's what I learned in life this week. While learn wouldn't fit into my favorite four letter words, perhaps I can add, "Know."

Warmly,
Catherine

Before Hallmark, Love through the Ages

On this St. Valentine's Day, a tale from American novelist Keith Donohue's haunting Angels of Destruction, as told by Norah, who may or may not be an angel.

"The past is no more certain than the future. Little is known about the real Valentine, only this. There may have been two. Both were martyrs who died for what they believed. Both lived and died long ago. The first Valentine was a priest in the Roman times when the emperor outlawed marriages for young soldiers. This was done so that they would be more devoted to fighting than their sweethearts. But Valentine felt sorry for those men and married them in secret. When the emperor found out, he had Valentine killed! Off with his head, chop. Sometimes love means sacrifice."

"The Second Valentine was just a man who had been falsely imprisoned. He fell in love with the jailer's daughter and had to smuggle love letters in secret. He signed them, From 'Your Valentine.' These two stories are legends, and not much is known about Saint Valentine."

"The day of February fourteenth is related to love and fertility rites of the pagans. The pagans were people believe in more than one god or sometimes not at all. This is love and fertility rite is the time of the marriage of Zeus and Hera....It was also the feast of Lupercalia, when the boys of Rome ran naked...in the streets, striking women with a leather strap. This custom was continued by the Christians. In the Middle Ages, during the coldest part of long winters it became a day when men and women sent each other notes of their true love. These were the first valentines."

"It is a day to look forward to the end of winter and death and to celebrate a new beginning. The Middle Ages poet Chaucer said, "for this was on Saint Valentine's Day, when every bird chooses his mate.""

Learn more about Keith Donohue.

Isn't little Norah right, the past is no more certain than the future, but it is worth exploring so we don't just easily brush this day off as "Oh, that's just another Hallmark holiday." We can overlook the commercial aspect, which is ingrained into almost every aspect of American modern life.

Celebrate romantic love and the art of romance, which seems to be another dying American tradition. Courtship, does that word even exist in our modern age? Eating lunch Sunday at a restaurant, so many sweethearts were not engaged in conversation or looking into each other's eyes - they were looking at their gadgets. It kind of seemed to say, "Sorry, you can't hold my attention for a full meal. Let me check my e-mail!" Dick Powell may only have had eyes for Ruby Keeler in Dames and declared it in song, but eyes seem to stray toward an electronic in the company of others, romantic or mutual.

Look at your bird today, or consider this even if you don't have anyone in your nest: Give thanks that you have the right to choose your mate, which was not always the choice. Although not everyone yet can have their love recognized in the eyes of the law.

Today, give thanks for love.