It was so warm today...

...that you just wanted to wrap yourself around a tree and collapse.

Conversation from earlier in the day

kr (kind reader): Why wont you go with us to the Simon & Garfunkel concert in Milwaukee? I thought you liked Simon & Gurfunkel.
nc: I do like them. I just don’t like concert crowds.

kr: Wait a minute! Didn’t you say you enjoyed Lilith Fair? Dar Williams? Indigo Girls? Didn’t I read something here about you and the Rolling Stones?
nc: That was then. Now, transport all that music, any music for that matter, into a nice atmospheric café or music club and you’ll find me there. But not at a mass concert that draws millions.

kr: You are inconsistent! You say you like to be around people. You talk all the time about looking for communities of people!
nc: I mean by that a manageable group of people, the numbers of which don’t tax my counting capabilities.

kr: But you go to non-pop music concerts in large halls..
nc: It’s civilized in those halls. Sometimes too civilized. As in fall-asleep-civilized. But civilized nonetheless. At pop music concerts I feel everyone is poised to attack – the singers, each other, anything in the line of fire.

kr: You never struck me as the nervous nor the quiet type.
nc: Correct, I am neither. But those places can be TOO LOUD and that can make me NERVOUS.

kr: You have again managed to make so sense.

Uttering something in a “bombastic declamatory fashion”

I don't think I am much of ranter. I know, you’re supposed to rant on blogs. Everyone does it: I read funny rants and serious rants, rants about spelling, about politics, about cigarette smoke, about verbose cab drivers, about life. Yet, I find myself sidestepping this form of blogging. It’s as if I can’t get into the swing of it, which is a shame because reading a rant is inherently more provocative and funny than reading a description of something without the sting of a critical edge.

Maybe I like the idea of this blog being more like the French film without plot, the character development without the slap, the stick that pokes around the tall reeds that grow at the riverbank rather than poking at the ribs of some hapless erring idiot. If there is zest to be found, it wont be because I’ll have swung out at the multitude of things that can (and do) annoy in the course of the day.

Still, may I make an exception?

WOULD WISCONSINITES PLEASE TURN DOWN THE AIR CONDITIONING IN PUBLIC PLACES? Yes yes, it’s warm today, nice in fact, toasty (REMEMBER WINTER??) , a bit steamy, so alright, yes, turn it on, turn it on,BUT NOT SO THAT PEOPLE ARE WEARING SWEATERS AND WOOLY SOCKS INSIDE!!

Oh, how I dislike this side of the ocean’s love affair with the AC unit! The close-the-windows attitude of shutting out air, putting a halt to the outside breeze that is so gentle and sweet and summery. We sit in chilled restaurants, shop in frigid stores, all of it COLD, really cold, as in I-am-soon-going-to-have-to-pack-up-my-belongings-and-get-out-of-here cold.

Please, let the summer work its warm charm. It all comes to an end soon enough.

Okay, now to get my stick back into the gullies and the riverbanks.

A Very Long Post On How Camp Can Make You Leaner and Meaner

A neighbor is sending his daughter off to camp next week. Camp. I went to camp four times during my childhood. They all get mixed reviews. What could I eek out of each experience?

1. Camp Robinson Crusoe: My first camp was thrust upon me when I was freshly on the shores of this country. I’d just turned 8 and was sent off, along with my sister, for the entire two month period. My sister balked. She was sure my parents were dumping us so that they could enjoy romantic clambakes on some Cape Cod beach without us. Give me a break, my mother is so not the romantic type.

Why were we sent there then? New Yorkers are always looking for ways to off-load their kids to places with ‘fresh air.’ And, my parents were anxious for us to get our English speaking skills up and running. Why that particular camp? I’m sure they heard somewhere that it was liberal enough to be generally accepting of Commie kids.

You could say that I got into the spirit of things at camp. I was so active that the counselors worried I would return scrawny-looking and so I was put on a regimen of double milkshakes, force-fed daily in the infirmary. Milkshakes in the clinical setting don’t taste as good as, say, at an ice cream shop, especially when a stern camp nurse (didn't any of them read Cherry Ames books and pick up tips on how to cultivate the saccharine side of the profession?) is staring at you to make sure you finish every last drop. And you have to wonder what else they put into it – maybe a dose of cod liver oil, that era’s dreaded cure for all kid ills.

2. Kolonjia Ruskaja: My second camp experience came several years later, when I was 10, still living in New York. My parents thought I needed to learn Russian and so I was sent to a camp run by the Russian Delegation to the UN. Several hundred Russian kids, squeezed into a compound somewhere on Long Island.

What I learned in Russian camp:
- I learned to count up to 19 in Russian (because in the morning line-up, which was according to height, I was always number 19. After shouting out “dzievietnatsat!” I could basically tune out).
- I learned to say SPA-SI-BA (thank you) very loudly because if you got up in the dining hall and shouted out ‘spasiba,’ you could retire to the dormitory room (each room with 20 beds, all in a row) for ‘naptime,’ even if you didn’t finish the godawful food.
- I learned something else – this from the one other Polish child at the camp. Oh, this girl was way ahead of me in her vocabulary. With my freshly expanded word-base, I returned home and said to my sister: “get your f***ing feet off my chair!” My parents’ idea of discipline was in line with the early 60s: swift, irrational, no Qs asked, no explanation given: no TV for a month and no more visits with the poor Polish kid who had, after all, only wanted to introduce me to the ways of the world. At least I escaped the slap on the behind – another 60s favorite.

3. Camp McDonald: My third camp experience was two years later, at a YMCA camp in New Jersey. There I learned that girls in the ‘tweens can be mean. What they did to each other was beyond the beyond. Still, chocking down fistfuls of candy late at night was great fun, as were the lethargic horses that we could ‘ride’ and the murky pond we could ‘swim’ in during the day.

4. Kolonia Mlodzierzy Katolickiej: My fourth camp experience was back in Poland. I was then 16, and the love of my life (or so I thought, for far too long a period of time) was trying to get me to understand his relationship to God and the Catholic church and so he convinced me to go with him to a teen camp for Catholics. What did I get out that experience?
- I witnessed what today could land the priest in charge in jail on child molestation charges.
- I did not learn a lot about my boyfriend’s relationship to God, possibly because I was far more interested in cultivating his relationship to me, so the church part was a wasted effort.
- The camp also confirmed my minority status in Poland: as I was the only non-Catholic there, I was always asked to mind the tents while everyone went into the woods to pray, sing and do all sorts of Catholic camp type things. [Though I did conspire with a friend to sneak off one very early morning so that we could watch the first shots of the American moon-landing on some village community center TV. Awesome (especially the sneaking off part).]

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.

Labels

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.

More reader comments…

A reader not favorably inclined toward blogs wrote the following email yesterday:
“your blog (appears to) overshadow(s) too much else…” I take that to suggest a certain amount of excessiveness.

I feel compelled to respond: true, yesterday’s post cost me several hours of frustration. So that I was blog-occupied for the better part of the late afternoon (rather than training for a marathon like a friend was, or cutting the lawn like my neighbor).

I have always imagined that some would be inclined to scribble two words on my tombstone should necessity force that circumstance: “too much.” Then, on the less visible, external side some would prefer to write “too little.” When the time came, a line of mourners would form (presumptuous of me to think that perhaps) and walk by the “too much” side and nod their heads in agreement – “yes, she traveled too much” (recalling especially my graduate school years and perhaps more recent times), “..emailed too much” (no comment needed here), “frolicked with the children too much” and “..blogged too much” (a new 2004 addition), etc. On the other side, another (smaller?) line would form -- a trail of mourners who would recognize the other two words. Nodding their heads they would say “yes, she slept too little” and “worried too little” and “followed the straight and narrow too little.”

Wherein lies the truth? It depends on the mourners as much as on the mourned, doesn’t it? Their “too much” may well be my “not enough.”

Reader Comments

Thanks to the reader who suggested adding the CD “Story of Chanson” to a list of these French classics. I myself also like “Paris After Dark.” But what is really terrific about the “French Café” CD I wrote of in yesterday’s post is that the songs are fresh. I’d not heard any of them before. But all these CDs are worth their weight in French gold.

And, to the reader who admitted to not reading the bill board correctly either – thank you as well. That makes two dummies who aren’t ashamed to recognize human frailty.

Finally, to the reader who is now inspired to start a family blog – yeah, go for it. Can’t wait to see the sparks fly as Uncle Joe admits to not really liking Aunt Minnie’s mashed potatoes and little Lucie ‘fesses up to having gone out for a puff at the curbside rather than sitting through another boring class of English Composition. And it’s not only the revelations that are potentially interesting. I find that people do not like being described by others in a blog (unless it is in a string of complements). They are always wanting to make corrections. So, my pal, do let me know how your family-togetherness-through-the-blog idea works out.

My Stupidity is no Longer in Question, it is a Given.

Q: Why did it take you so long to post something to your blog today?

A: I am so mad. I do not even want to answer that. Okay, briefly: the new Blogger photo program creates a new post with each photo you submit. So, any fool would understand that if you post 11 photos, they will appear on your blog from the last, meaning most recent one you submitted to the first of the bunch. As will your text. Anyone who may have been cruising around blogs in the recent hour and happened to come across ‘Oceans,’ would have had the pleasure of reading my blog backwards. To correct this, I had to go back and delete one file at a time, while saving the text into the original file. And republish everything at each step. It took FOREVER. I wont even bother explaining why the photos are on the small size. Retrofitting photos that are already on the blog would take, under the spiffy new Blogger program, even more time. Not worth it not worth it not worth it! If I never see another one of those 11 Market photos from today again, I will not be unhappy (a triple negative for emphasis).

Market Watch

Today was a classic! The sun brought out thousands, thus it was fortuitous that I started my L’Etoile foraging early.

The Madison market succeeds for many reasons. One is that it is scenically located around the Capitol and there are enough stalls to make it worth your while to go downtown. And, the farmers are there themselves, with the commitment and earnestness that displays their passion for their work. Felix, the renegade Swiss businessman started making goat feta a couple of years back. This week he is introducing his goat milk ice cream – it’s fantastic, worthy of his enthusiasm and that’s saying a lot. Rainbow’s End herb growers are giving us lime thyme – if you taste it, you get an immediate bite of lime followed by the savor of thyme. Blue Valley’s asparagus is exceptionally flavorful and they are so proud of it. They have an old woman who has been trimming it for them for years – she shows up each year and reclaims the cutting blades. Kim from JehnAire Farms has a handful of recipes to distribute along with her chickens. Anne at Fantome speaks of her young goats as if they were her kids. Yes, okay, that was lame, but if you talk to the farmers, it is like that: each has a story and a new idea for the season ahead.

By comparison, I read recently that the Green Market in New York is floundering. The sellers show up with cigarettes dangling from their mouths, knowing nothing of the foods they are attempting to sell. Discarded produce rots at the side. The visual impact is strong. You don’t enjoy being there. It is just another grocery store without a roof.

Today’s sunshine added new light and glimmer to the foods.
The jars of honey had a jeweled amber glow:


sunny honey 

Even the radishes looked sunbeamy bright:


bright radishes 

And the gourds danced in buoyant celebration:


dancing gourds 

Of course, the flowers now are extraordinary. I am limiting photos here, but it is hard because the colors are just so intense that you want to preserve them forever:


blue and purple 


poppies 

For one seller, there could never be enough displays of flowers:


hairstyle of the day 

…Though the colors are everywhere in the Market, not only in the blooms. The sheeps’ milk camembert rounds look milky white against the blue basket:


blue and white 

What’s new this week? The strawberries are now appearing in numerous places, and for the first time, I see the baby potatoes:


dozens of new babies 

Back at L’Etoile, the bakers can hardly keep pace with the lines outside. Here, Olga is putting the finishing touch on the sweet apple croissants:


the final step 

Outside, the drummers bang out the happy rhythm of the day:


energy 

And an off-the-square vendor lures buyers to invest in Madison-like clothes for the young:


peace 

It really is a brilliant day. I did not mind making 6 trips around the Square with the L’Etoile wagon. I could have done a dozen more.

Chanson

Nostalgic yet progressive. Diverse, creative and multicultural. Gipsy jazz and musette. Rich in poetry, satire, drama and emotion. The example of Edith Piaf. Born and raised in the cafes and music halls of France. These are words used to describe French chanson. The best compilation I’ve come across thus far is in the Putumayo recording entitled “French Café.”

I am listening to it constantly. Interspersed with a reader’s recommendation of Martina McBride’s “How Far” – an extremely sad song for me, for the lyrics alone. I should add a Polish retro recording, like “Yellow Calendars,” by Szczepanik (so, you Americans out there, how do you pronounce THAT, huh?) and also “the Peace of the Prarie” (only one reader could possibly get the inclusion of this) but my cup at this point runneth over.

Trains, Trams and Automobiles (Nostalgia run, part 3; what’s with me this week??)

I walked along the railroad tracks today and predictably, they reminded me of how much I love things associated with trains.

My grandparents’ home, secluded in a northeastern Polish village, was accessible from Warsaw for many years only by train and even then you still had a hike of about an hour from the train station to their house. (Is a one room shack with no attendant on duty most of the time really a train station anyway?) I didn’t mind. Even as kid, I liked the ride and I liked the hike. Every once in a while, when we had more luggage than reasonably could be carried, my grandfather would get a farmer to come to the station with his horse and farm wagon and take us home. Such comforting smells! From grease spilt on tracks to horse manure and scratchy wool blankets, I liked it all.

As I grew older, my parents made friends with a man who had a car, and once or twice he would drive us to the village. I groaned on those occasions – maybe because his car was an old VW bug, and there were four of us plus him, the driver, that would have to fit into the ratty old machine, along with assorted bags and containers of foods. And since car travel was so rare for me, inevitably we’d have to make stops so that I could settle my young, inexperienced stomach at the side of the road, to the disgusted eye-roll of my sister, who somehow held her food better during car trips. This was reason enough to favor a train over the automobile.

Oh, but those great, powerful trains with their steam locomotives! When we were young and reckless, we’d go with friends to the tracks and place coins before an oncoming train. The flattened result was worthless, of course, but it was cool to compare the oddly shaped shards of metal that the train left behind.

But the biggest form of bravery was to stand on the wooden train bridge that spanned the river at the same time that a train was passing through. Technically, there was enough room for the train and for pedestrians, but the bridge was old and it shook violently as the train moved along. The terrifying rumble was something you could never quite get used to, but feeling myself to be a spunky kid, I had to be up there with the rest, shaking along with the rattling bridge, defiant, invincible.

It is interesting then, that the city trams, which cross Warsaw at the modest speeds of 25 – 30 mph scared me more than the country trains. Perhaps all city kids had a healthy dose of fear instilled in them by their parents, for trams killed far more pedestrians than trains ever could. And, on top of this, trams were crowded. One of my earliest memories has me riding in a tram with my mother, squeezed tightly among dozens and dozens of others. “We’re getting off now,” I remember her saying. But I lost her hand and to me it seemed at that moment that I had lost the world or at least my place in it. Amazingly, the tram spit me out onto the platform with a host of others, like a rejected sardine who had to be let go because the tin could hold no more – spit! –I’m out, lying there on the tram stop, crying, crying for my lost mother who finds me quickly enough and groans at my soiled coat. God, I hated those trams!

Madison’s trains are more of a nuisance than a big factor in anyone’s life. They slow down traffic on the rare occasion that they pass through the city. Still, they get my fondness vote. I can’t look at a train and not like it and I can’t walk along a track without thinking back to the years of squished coins on railroad tracks.

Nostalgia run, part 2

A curious reader asked about the Polish first grade experience. A photo is worth a thousand words in this case. Here we are, in the first month of my first year in school. It’s 1959, I’m six, the rest are seven and the teacher looks to be not quite 30 as she ‘teaches’ 40+ kids to recognize words in a book. “Point to the word “las”!” she instructs, and we all point. (The young man in the first row is either cheating, or checking on the intelligence of the braided lass behind him.)



Such disciplined kids we were, with nothing to distract us from the task at hand: bare walls, navy uniforms (white collars had to be changed daily), and badges indicating the school number. No badge stitched on that morning? No entry into the building. The blog author, btw, is recognized by the arrow. The band on the arm signifies “monitor” status. We took turns being monitors – keeping order during recess, etc. I’m sure I was quite effective against all those kids with pent up energies.

God, reading lessons were boring!

Test your smartness against my stupidity, part 2

Am I the only one who read this at first (and second and third) glance to say “New! No Low-carb Options!” ? I know, I know, there is indeed an “&” in there, but when you’re driving by, does it throw itself at you*? No it does not. At least not at those with less than average intelligence which is, Prairie Home Companion notwithstanding, 50% of the population.


Madsion road sign 

*Comments about my distance vision are inappropriate. And they’re misguided as I have perfect distance vision, hence the fallback option of low intelligence, though it can’t be too low since when my very intelligent Polish friends and I were playing “guess the next symbol,” the answer did indeed throw itself at me. A stroke of luck perhaps.
Here’s the game, for the Mensa types out there: what symbol should come next in the following sequence?

what's next in this sequence? 

Rosie in the Morning, Rosie in the Afternoon

For as long as I have lived up Old Sauk hill, I have passed Rosie* in the morning as she helps cross school children to the other side of the street. I asked her today how long she’s been doing this and she said “40 years!” Amazing.

She has a smile and a wave for me each time I drive by – the same smile and wave that she gives to virtually anyone who may be in a half-familiar car. Of course, she knows me not at all by my face, but by my old truck (excuse me, sore subject: van]. But she has a smile and a wave even as I’m walking. And a pat on the back for the little kid traipsing off to school. Why can’t everyone be that friendly? [The crossing guard on Gammon, by Jefferson Middle School banged my car once with her stop sign because she thought I had pulled out too soon. Rosie would have never done that!]

*Technical update: not all photos are uploaded under the nifty but more cumbersome new Blogger system. No hand appears over the photo? No logo underneath the photo? That's a sign that I'm shortcutting to my old method of posting and you cannot thus get any enlargement. Shucks, right?

Nursery School and the Law

The side stairwell in the Dane County Court House smells like my state-run nursery school did back in post-war Poland. No one here can confirm this because I am 100% certain no one in Madison ever was within ten miles of my Polish preschool, especially during the 1950s. But it is true. When I worked on cases with my law students, I’d pause in the stairwell and breathe deeply to allow myself a reel back to the old times. I’m sure others thought me to be unfit, needing to pause and catch my breath every ten steps like some chain-smoking 90-year old, but I did it nonetheless.

The two years at my nursery school are a half-pleasant memory because when I was old enough to attend (4), I could finally move from the village where I lived with my grandparents, to the Warsaw apartment where my adored mother (and father, but I hardly noticed) resided. And the preschool wasn’t too bad. I had a little cubby with a picture of a little black African boy over it. I am sure it came from some horribly racist story that we listened to, but I liked him anyway, he looked after my outdoor shoes and coat and was much more imposing than the red mushroom over the cubby next to mine.

[Here is a photo of me in the nursery school. My mother had said over and over that morning: “don’t forget to comb your hair, DO NOT forget to comb your hair!” and so I remembered to comb my hair, but I forgot to take off my black flannel outdoor pants on that cold cold winter day and since the kid-teacher ration was I’m sure something like 40 to 1, no one seemed to notice, hence my odd attire.]



I liked my teacher, too, and I sucked up mercilessly, making sure that I was in place to grab her hand for park walks, transferring all my love and affection onto her during the day before I could have my adored mother in the evening again.

When I ‘graduated’ to the next level of preschool and lost my prize teacher, I fussed so much that my mother finally pulled me from nursery school and enrolled me in regular school even though I was too young. My mother is a forceful woman and usually gets her way in these matters. There began my odd educational climb, during which my parents placed me in random grades they believed were suited for me, regardless of what the Ministry of Education or any principal would tell them. By the time I finished high school in Poland, I was three years ahead of my peers and I had gaping holes in my schooling, knowing little of the history and literature that my classmates had spent time learning. No matter, my parents had lost interest by then in the education project and anyway, I made up for my rush through schools by having the most protracted university climb of anyone I know. I meandered my way through colleges and graduate schools between the years 1969 and 1987 when I finally did finish my last degree – that of the JD – which then, of course, lead me to the court house with the stairwell that smells like my old Polish nursery school.

Iris mania

I am continuing with my efforts to learn more about the tricks and gimmicks available to me for blogging purposes. Blogger has new photoblogging systems in place and this post is merely an attempt to take a photo from this week and run it through their program. There's a nice new feature: the reader may now click on the photo and enlarge the image -- a great option for the otherwise eye-squinting reader, or one who wants to study the minute details of a fried grasshopper, for example (see Nagano post last month).

It's the season for irises and these, against the ripples of a pond are reason enough to launch a new photo post.


Madison irises 

One Bicycle

I went for a walk last night. I roamed the streets of the neighborhood – something that I don’t often do since it is basically a suburb and I find suburbs very boring to walk in.

Inevitably, I passed the public elementary school. John Muir Elementary. It is only a block away. My daughters, grown and living elsewhere now, both went there and though my work was at the Law School, much of my off-hours energy went to the school. I was the PTO pres for two years running, I lobbied hard for capital improvements before the school board. I set up and produced with the kids a school newspaper for 5 years running (do you know what cut and paste layout was like before computers??). One May 10 years ago, when I was very very sick, the school teachers, staff, parents basically offered to take care of my family, because I could not do it myself.

Then, suddenly, it ended. My youngest child graduated from fifth grade and our attention focused on the next stage and the next cycle of people, events.

Life is that abrupt. Nothing lasts. People come and go. I am born in Poland. I live in the States. My mother lives in Berkeley, my father lives in Warsaw. I live in the Midwest, my daughters live on the East Coast. I have life-long to-die-for friends in Warsaw, Singapore, Madison, Minnesota, Texas, Arizona. All once were but a few steps away and now so many are accessible only by use of more complicated technology.

I mention this because for me, the last week of May has almost always been (coincidentally?) the period of tough and often unexpected changes. And I mean more than just adjustments in the blog template. The turn of the calendar, from May to June has had a penchant for drama, and I mean drama: illness, death, police brutality (in Poland), relationships beginning, ending, all have had their end-of-May moment.

So I suppose I should be grateful to have survived this year’s crisis-prone season. A knock here, a bruise there, but still tripping along.

And last night? Last night as I walked, now at the end of this period of high velocity, I saw one lonely bicycle standing forgotten outside the school building. One lonely bicycle. Let it be reclaimed, I thought. It should be at home, safe, protected from the elements.

Aren’t Reunions Supposed to be an Occasion for Partying-the-Night-Away?

So how do you explain this email that came to me today:

Please join us at the Annual "All Alumni/ae and Teachers Reunion"
June 18, 2004
6:00 - 8:00 PM
UNIS Manhattan, Third Floor Library
Kindly RSVP by June 11th to alumni@unis.org

I am a UNIS (United Nations International School) alum. A great many of us are spread now all over the world. I live in the Midwest, but a former classmate may well be receiving this same email in Cairo or Helsinki. Would they book a flight and travel (even from the Midwest) to a two-hour reception at the school library, for Pete’s sake? How fun can that event be? And how many can fit in between stacks of children’s books? They can’t be anticipating a huge turn-out. Wonder why…