Good Trouble, Decent House Guest
Do you love a flea market? I don’t. But my kids love the one on the weekends at the Wellfleet Drive In, where 50 purveyors lay out stuff I don’t need, and the asphalt scalds the paws of pets.
Wanting to be a good house guest, I picked grandma up a very pretty, matching, ceramic pitcher and basin marked RRP Roseville Ohio - a lil’ googling turned up that it’s a now-defunct pottery maker that launched in the Great Depression.
I didn’t haggle with the 70-something man who sold them to me for $40 - in the heat, I forgot to bargain, and with my Manhattan, John Derian mindset, I figured they fetched for somewhere around $695, so forty dollars felt like a total steal.
I asked the man for a box and he said he didn’t have one, but he offered up some bubble wrap and a light green padded sheet.
“Is that an adult diaper?” I asked. And he nodded, wrapping up the pitcher in it.
I laughed. He did too. “They were leftover from my sister,” he said, spitballing, just in case I was wondering why he kept adult diapers in his van. “And then my other sister used ‘em for her dog.”
Ok! “Well I know about adult diapers from after when I gave birth to a child,” I was going to say, but I held back; we had surpassed what we were ever supposed to know about each other.
On Saturday my girls and I went to a rally for democracy on Route Six in Eastham, holding signs and bogeying to protest tunes as people made their way to the end of the outer Cape. We wouldn’t have normally done this kind of thing but these aren’t normal times. Plus grandma’s in a militia now and where she goes, we go.
It was fun. I mean, sure, a few fans of autocracy gave us the middle finger, but mostly people seemed eager to honk and show support, some offering a subdued fist pump in the air while others emoting in such a way that you could know how they look when they orgasm. I hadn’t seen this many liberals this happy about something for a long time - that said, they were also reaching their beach destination after many hours in traffic. “Thanks, fellas,” grandma would say to the cheering men in cars that seemed to be heading to Provincetown.
You can find your own fun times rallying for democracy here. There will be a wave of “Good Trouble” rallies on Thursday - if you’re in NYC, here’s a link to register. Grandma went to a talk with Jamie Raskin and he said, “A rally a day keeps the fascists away.”
Wanting to make vegetables and salads in ways I haven’t before I stumbled on this recipe for Summer Stone Fruit Caprese which turned out to be every bit as beautiful, easy and tasty as promised. It’s not really good for anti inflammation - there’s too much sugar involved and there’s fatty cheese. But if you put it on a table, you’re gonna catch some happy glances. I did mine with plums, a nectarine, mint and burrata but there are so many variations that would work - like using peaches and cherries, and basil instead of mint. I served it with grilled hunky pork chops I bought at the Wednesday morning Wellfleet Farmer’s Market - they paired nicely.
All tiles by Clotilde Ponroy for Suzanne Manufacture. Aren’t they great?
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I will leave you with this gem by my pal and collaborator Phoebe Kreutz.
xo Lizzie
😂
So funny!