La la la la la la, it’s a small, small world.

I looked at Ann’s blog photos from NYC (you MUST check them out here) and I couldn’t believe it. There’s a shot from her hotel window. Oh, oh, now doesn’t that look familiar! I could not mistake that view. That is a photo that, if curved slightly to the other side, could be labeled: “Nina’s view from her window when she moved back to the States in the middle of her college years.”

The next obvious question is how could a college student from an Eastern European country afford a view that looked out on Fifth Ave. and the Metropolitan Museum of Art? The answer -- I was taken in by the S’bergers (I feel pseudo-protective of their privacy) of NY Times fame to look after their daughter and work as an ‘au pair’ for the family in exchange for room, board and college expenses. I did this for two summers and the months in and around. Clearly they could afford a Fifth Ave apartment.

Why was I lucky enough to land in this terrific position? Simple. I had 3 basic qualities that got me far: I was energetic, I loved kids, and I belonged to the .00001% of college students that came out of the 60s and had no interest in drugs (reminder: I did come out of the Polish college scene).

So there I spent my college years, looking out the window at the steps to the Museum feeling oftentimes that the world was too big, too cold and too strange a place to call home. But the S’bergers were wonderful and their daughter was the sweetest kid on the planet – outdone only by two other sweet girls that I got to know even better. Much later.

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Who can forget these? The Great Communicator. The Teflon President. The 9 to 5 President. The Gipper. A Made-for-Television President. Author of Reaganomics and the Reagan Doctrine and Star Wars.

Quote of the day from the NYT and IHT (attributed to Former Speaker of the US House of Representatives “Tip” O’Neill):
"I've known every president since Harry Truman and there's no question in my mind that Ronald Reagan was the worst. But he would have made a hell of a king."

The Revenge of the Killer Bugs

It came a month too early this year: my turning a back toward the little Giverny that is my yard. Why? Why? Why walk away when colors like this are just beginning to take hold?


la vie en rose 


evening primrose 

I’ll tell you why. It’s the bugs. Bad enough that a walk through the Arboretum yesterday felt like I was battling the insects and reptiles of a steamy Amazon jungle (yes, turtles in the path, flying arthropods colliding with me at every turn). But worse, here at home, I woke up to that telltale buzz in the ear. Odd, I thought. There are brand new windows everywhere and I just installed the screens for the summer season.

This morning, I look up at the kitchen ceiling and I see that we are at war and I am outnumbered. Twenty of them, one of me. Not only that, but these guys fly with super speed.

My conclusion: just as new, hardier strains of bacteria have evolved in response to antibiotics, so, too, there are now new strains of mosquitoes that are screen-resistant. They are able to downsize their bodies to fit through even the fine mesh of new Pella window screens. And they fly faster than the swat of a human hand.

I have no great desire to be out there among the foliage flapping at bugs around me. Am I giving up too soon? I am not entirely abandoning everything, I am just stepping aside and taking stock, assessing the maliciousness of their intent and the strength of their battalion.