Food Best Ever: LITERALLY the most wonderful egg sandwich in the world is at Swiss Bakery (objectively speaking) and some tips for college freshman

The college students are back, folks. With a vengeance. Everywhere. Still figuring out the crosswalks. I love them. I want to squeeze them. Let's teach them some rhetoric and then go out for breakfast, shall we?

A big part of teaching writing turns out to be helping adolescents to understand the difference between objective experience and subjective experience. To whit: what happened to you on Saturday night with the jello shots was not, in fact, LITERALLY the worst thing ever. It might be, OBJECTIVELY SPEAKING, the most horrible thing that happened TO YOU, but that doesn't take into account, ahem, the suffering of others.

These are the lessons I try impart on my freshman in the first crucial weeks of college: crosswalks (use them--somebody loves you), breakfast (eat it--or else you'll lose your mind), subjectivity (it's a thing--I promise).

Primarily, though, I try to drive home the fact that without breakfast, the other two are pretty much impossible.

And since we all know that the best part of teaching is breaking your own rules, so I also tell them that, objectively speaking, the best egg sandwich in the world can be had at the Swiss Bakery in Springfield, VA.  Literally. Ever. If you happen to think that another egg sandwich is better, you are wrong.

Perfect square of omelette, melty cheese, a soft, tender cloud of a bun call a SNOWFLAKE ROLL. Don't argue with me-- just go get one. And a swiss coffee. And an amaretti cookie.

 Objectively speaking, in these first rough weeks of the semester, you deserve it.

Places: The Detroit Institute of Art and Rivera Court

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In 1932,  twenty-four-year-old Frida Kahlo suffered a miscarriage at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, an event which further devastated her relationship to her body, and which she depicted in her painting, Henry Ford Hospital, 1932. Around the same time, my grandmother was born healthy at Hutzel Women's hospital, two miles away.

In 1933, Diego Rivera unveiled the Detroit Industry Murals, a twenty-seven-panel fresco in a huge, sunlit atrium at the Detroit Institute of Art.  The fresco depicts the union of natural magic and human potential-- the earth gods creating iron ore, the growth of crops, the muscular fabrication of auto parts, the vaccination of a small child.

Fifty-one years later, I was born to a twenty-four-year-old mother via crash C-section, also at Hutzel women's. My mother took me to the DIA while I was still in a stroller. I ran as a toddler across the huge tiled expanse of Rivera Court.

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As a teenager, struggling to master my own mind and to conquer the unremarkable and devastating chaos of adolescent identify, I found in the Detroit Industry Murals a way of seeing the world that helped me stand still. Beauty in the order of things.  The tying together of the earth in paint. The binding of time with art.

Lots of people with much more knowledge than I are making well-reasoned and researched arguments regarding why it's a terrible idea to sell off the Detroit Institute of Art's collection to deal with the city's worsening economic problems.  I really, really hope they don't do it.

Rivera painted his frescos as a tribute to the vitality of Detroit's workers and the genius of the auto factory. These days, in the press, Detroit seems like the poster child for the death of American industry. Kahlo experienced a surge of artistic growth in Detroit, but she lost her baby, and her mother died far away in Mexico. To her, Detroit was a "shabby little town".

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If Rivera's fresco are built into the very walls of the DIA building, can the be auctioned off as well? Will they take hacksaws to the walls of Rivera Court and send the panels off in 27 different directions? I don't have a grand argument for why the DIA is worth saving. I just have this series of connections, and some shadowy ideas about their importance in my life. It's not enough on its own, but it's part of the story.

My favorite picture of Rivera and Kahlo shows them high up on the scaffolding surrounding a half-finished Rivera Court, wrapped in passionate kiss. The huge red hands which for Rivera represented the union of God and Nature reach up behind them to cup the sky. I'll spend the rest of my life figuring out why I love that photo so much. Perhaps the ties that bind me to that image are yet to be spun-- thread that will spool out over decades. I only know what I see now: these places, those people, the raw materials, and the potential it all ever holds, which might carry us forward through time.

Places: Great Cape Herbs, Brewster MA

This June, when I turned 29, I was on Cape Cod with some of my favorite people, so I shocked even myself when I asked to spend the morning alone. On purpose. Just hanging out. 

I went to the beach and put my feet in water. I took a yoga class. And I stumbled on Great Cape Herbs.

The owner, Stephan, made me great Americano and showed me around the shop. Herbs drying! Baby chicks hatching in an incubator! While I was wondering around, people kept passing through, some tourists and some locals. They all had questions, and Stephen answered them. Sometimes, he didn't have the answer to their question, so he told them that.

As a doula, I have a touchy relationship with herbs-- I get really worried when my pregnant clients start talking about taking them will-nilly because that shit is powerful. That's why I'm so glad that there are people like Stephan who are both super knowledgeable and extremely cautious. 

One of Stephan's big projects is WORLD WAR LYME: combatting and treating Lyme Disease-- a big health issue in that part of Massachusetts. He grows his own Japanese Knotweed and processes it into tinctures that make a big different in the health of people afflicted with Lyme, but he also encourages his clients to seek help from medical doctors. 

Stephan made me a tincture for my digestion that I now put in my water each morning. It's just for me, based on what I need. Also it has a hand written label on it that says "Anna's Tummy" which pleases me very much. When I left, Stephan was already surrounded by new customers. He's got a calm air about him that feels perennially unruffled and unrushed. Like, that each person he talks to is important, but that very little of what they have to say is a surprise. It's nice.

I left Great Cape Herbs thinking a lot about the way that people take care of themselves. I thought about the way that I take care of myself based on my instincts, and the parts I leave up to experts.

This is the last year I'll spend in my 20s. Everyone keeps telling me how much happier I'll be in my 30s-- apparently I'll be more self-assured. I'll know myself and what I want. That sounds great! I'm always up for more happiness! But I feel pretty good about what I accomplished with this decade.

Discerning how to best keep myself going has been the main project of my twenties, I think. Learning how to work my body and mind. I might be happier in my thirties-- I'll take it for sure-- but I think my twenties will be the decade I learned how to take care of myself. When to take herbs and when to take medicine. When to call the doctor. When to be with friends and when to be alone.

 Or, rather, I think I'll always be learning how to take care of myself. In my twenties, I learned that it's worth my effort to get it right. I'll take that, too.