Encouragement vs useful advice

Note to self : Encouragement is great. But when you’re trying to empty a full tub with a teaspoon, wouldn’t it be more helpful to get the news that you can simply pull the plug?

Remember, Lynn, wisdom comes unexpected and unsolicited. Remain an open, lifetime learner!

Blessed to the moon and back!

As a friend with a beautiful new palatial home displayed a new luxury vehicle I found myself  celebrating her blessings wholeheartedly. Wait. Shouldn’t I be singing a whiny version of Janis Joplin’s “Mercedes Benz?” I’m as shocked as anyone that I wasn’t!

I’ve had friends out of my league financially my entire life. I been entertained in mansions, listened to stories of trips on family yachts. As I write, I remember I’ve rubbed elbows with a millennial who, despite the fact his father’s personal net worth is estimated in the mega millions, is one of the unbelievable nicest and most unassuming folks I know. If I were as blessed as these wouldn’t I want others to rejoice with me?

Southern inspired eats above the Mason-Dixon Line

In August I traveled to Chicago for a week long intensive stand-up comedy class at Second City. I might have been living in Chicago when Second City opened its doors in December 1959 if Mom had agreed to Daddy’s plan to retire from the military to Chicago in his home state the previous year. Instead, I was 8-years-old and in Mrs. Blackwood’s second grade class at Oaklawn Elementary School in Hot Springs, Arkansas. I was back in Hot Springs, a recent graduate of the University of Arkansas and mourning the recent loss of my father to cancer, when SNL was birthed in October 1975 with Second City alums John Belishi, Dan Ackroyd, and Gilda Radner.

While in Chicago, I stayed down the street at the Hotel Lincoln, home of the Perennial Virant. My second day there, I sampled a delightful brunch dish at Paul Virant’s “farm-to-table restaurant.”

What could be better for a southern girl than “grilled cornbread.” Virant starts with braised greens, in this case collards,

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tops them with roasted summer beans, pickled grilled leek relish,

 

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 corn bread and a sunnyside up egg.

imageChicago clearly was a comedy and culinary delight for this Southern gal. No joke.