Lessons from Lemons
Plus recs for Tony Schwartz's Nancy Grows Up, George Lewis' parent comedy, and Sarah Larson on historian Ruth Goodman.
It’s officially Spring and here in Los Angeles the lemon tree in our garden is weighed down with giant, football-sized lemons. These are not the kind of lemons you can buy in the store. They’re big and heavy and when I hand one to a friend, their immediate first reaction is “this lemon is HUGE.”
It’s not at all clear to me that huge is a desirable quality in a lemon.
A huge, fresh peach? Love that.
A huge, crisp apple? Sounds great.
A huge lemon? That’s probably too much highly acidic liquid for me to handle at one time. I’d prefer a moderate to small lemon.
But huge lemons are what we’ve got. So we’re going to pick them and give them to friends and neighbors and bake with them and cook with them and squeeze them onto salads and fish and stews.
The one thing we’re not going to do is make lemonade. Frankly, I think that lemonade is one of the worst ways you can use a lemon. If life gives you lemons and you’re making lemonade, you need to step back, take a deep breath, and google “lemon recipes.” You can do better.
Slightly unrelated tangent: I do think there are some cliches that turn out to be more helpful and true. The other day, I had finally managed to make it to the grocery store with our toddler and get all the ingredients I needed for dinner and make it home in time. But as soon as I open the car door, one of the grocery bags fell out onto the concrete and the plastic milk jug exploded. Everything was covered in milk. I was so upset that I had dropped it, that I had wasted the money, and that I was now going to need to go back to the store for more milk. I was getting really worked up and then I realized, “hold on… I’m about to cry over spilt milk! Don’t do that.” And you know what? I didn’t cry! The cliche helped!
Anyway, back to the lemons. I grew up in a tiny fifth floor apartment in New York City. We did not have a yard. We did not have a garden. Even when we went to the park, the idea of eating something that you found growing there seemed like the most disgusting concept I could imagine. So now, I’ve had to mentally adjust to living in a place where freakishly large citrus is just dangling by our recycling bin. It feels like magic. It feels like something I’m going to get in trouble for. “You got lemons without paying money for them??? That’s a felony, sir.”
I realize that, if you grew up anywhere with any modicum of connection to nature, I sound like the kids in my fifth grade class in Boston who were absolutely shocked when I told them that lettuce grows in dirt. “You’re telling me salad comes up out of dirt? Out of the dirty ground? And we’re supposed to eat it???”
I wasn’t a good salesperson for cafeteria salads.
But now, seeing up close how plants and vegetables grow, I love it. It’s amazing to see how the garden works. How unpredictable the harvests can be. How you patiently wait and sometimes it seems like nothing is happening, but actually there’s tremendous growth underway. How sometimes you get cartoonishly large fruit and other times it’s all tiny and misshapen. I’m learning about how you need to prune branches and remove some of the smaller fruit so the tree can focus its energy on what's important. Those feel like good lessons for life right now.
Life gave me lemons this week and I’m trying my best to give 90% of them away.
My projects and upcoming events:
PODCAST: How to Be a Better Human (TED/PRX) - Naisha Randhar is the youngest guest we’ve ever had on the show. She’s still a high school student but also a published author and the Youth Poet Laureate of Dallas, Texas. Naisha has so many brilliant ideas to share about art, creativity, and what it’s going to take to fix the problems in the world today. If you listen to one episode from this season of our podcast, listen to this one! Listen here (or wherever you get podcasts).
This week’s list
GREAT:
I was chatting with Jocelyn Gonzales, the audio genius who produces my podcast and many others, about artists whose work has had an influence on us. She told me about Tony Schwartz, a sound designer, who was one of the most pivotal and influential artists in the field. I’d never heard of him and it’s been fascinating to dig in. Jocelyn told me that, in particular, one short piece Schwartz made called “Nancy Grows Up” is the most beautiful audio she’s ever encountered. Schwartz, using reel-to-reel, recorded the sound of his daughter’s voice from a newborn baby to a teenager and spliced them together so you hear the transformation in just two minutes. It’s very moving and worth a listen: Nancy Grows Up
EDIT: After sending this email, I was informed by the great Zak Rosen, an audio luminary himself, that actually Nancy was Tony Schwartz’s niece not daughter! Let the record stand corrected
FUNNY:
George Lewis is a British comedian and writer, who’s been involved with some of my favorite panel shows. But he’s become extremely famous in his own right for the videos he makes about seeing the world through the eyes of kids. They’re excellently written and very quotable. Here’s “peekaboo” and “playground designers.”
There was also a very fun profile of George and his career in the NYT. (h/t Jenny)
INTERESTING:
When I was in middle school, one of my favorite books was Panati’s Extraordinary Origins of Everyday Things. It’s like a dictionary or encyclopedia but with the history of the objects you’d find around your house. Toothbrushes used to be made from badger hair! Ice cream originated in China! Thirteen is an unlucky number because of Norse folklore! That’s a sampling of what it was like to make small talk with me as a child. These days, there’s a podcast that scratches the same itch: The Curious History of Your Home and Sarah Larson wrote an essay about why it’s so delightful: The Show That Finds the Intrigue Lurking in the Everyday
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That's it for this week. Thanks for reading! Please share Bright Spots with anyone you think might enjoy it.
Fully squeezed,
Chris Duffy
This has been Bright Spots, a newsletter.
…wait, who are you?
I'm Chris Duffy, a comedian, TV writer, podcast host, and both a former fifth grade teacher and a former fifth grade student. I’m currently writing a nonfiction book about humor for Doubleday.
Please make lemon curd. That is the best thing to do with lemons. I agree with you about lemonade.
My buddy lives in SoCal and has a lemon tree. Neighbors can just take what they want.