scenes from a quick trip to stavanger

had a quick work trip to stavanger this week. it's such a lovely, charming, creative, artsy town. and the light was amazing. i had a chance to stroll around a bit, spotting street art at every turn. and there was even time for a get-together with miss buckle from the old bloggy days! we ate a great burger and had a few laughs!

what i was trying to say as i unsuccessfully tried to say it a.k.a. thank you bill

following immediately on the heels of last evening's musings on owning my own copyright, a friend posted this article on facebook. and while i can swear like a sailor myself when it's warranted, it does feature rather excessive use of "fuck," and isn't for the faint of heart if you're not in the mood to read that word quite a few times. but the message is good - about learning when to give a fuck and about how very often we're not very good at recognizing those times and that we essentially give a fuck way too often. and it is also about how not giving a fuck is different than not caring. it could be quite freeing to give less fucks, frankly, but i suppose that once you reach a certain point in life, mortgage and obligations and even age intervene and we find ourselves having to give a fuck about things we would like not to.

things like ending a sentence with a preposition (or infinitive marker as the case may be). which i clearly do not give a fuck about (there's the preposition).

time passes. i stare at the screen....the words won't loosen, the floodgates won't open. not yet.

while i was sitting here, staring at the screen, trying to uncork the bottle of words that have accumulated inside of me over recent months, bill wrote this on my previous post...and he says it all more powerfully than i can right now, so i will share it with you here in case you didn't check the comments....

I’ve never believed our synapses fire with precision or orderliness …

We are both victims and perpetrators of our own chaos, our own timeline … and then we die.

You and me and most everyone we meet has agreed to behave as if not agreeing to behave within boundaries will produce the downfall of civilizations and a spate of crabgrass in everyone’s window boxes.

We accept norms of behavior, organization or minutia and future planning as if our lives depend upon the reality of hopes and dreams.

And yet … a few individuals ignore prescribed rituals and predetermined lives and they create … art and science, being, in my estimation, the two grandest of human endeavors.

But there’s a pratfall … a quicksand … a nemesis to individual creativeness… that despicable noun and/or adjective … the word is, of course, derivative.

To search within one’s psyche to fine the non-derivative and the unique is truly a life-long chase. A lucky few find it early in their life. Sadly, I suspect, there are far too many that discover their own uniqueness and creativity when their journey is ending.

That quest for non-derivative creativity is beguiling … it and love are the only two things I think and believe are important.

Sure, sure, it’s important to feed the dog, to vote, bathe regularly, to brush your teeth, to quest after knowledge, to search out the best and brightness and/or find kindred souls … nonetheless, all these secondary elements are but kindling and energy bars for the internal fires of creativity.

That’s it; we can do nothing else of importance.

and that, my friends, is what we should give a fuck about...

100 happy days :: day 91

unexpected snail mail.

and polar bears.
it touches me more than i can say.

so much happy!

thank you, judith!

unexpected lego-related goodness in the mail

look what my bloggy friend ariadne sent to me! we haven't really known one another that long in this bloggy world (we met through the ever-fabulous lisa), but she obviously totally gets me. and she lives in thessaloniki, which is one of my favorite places (and a place i've been many times, always under blissful circumstances). in general, greece is wonderful, and obviously, so is ariadne. thank you so much! it was absolutely the perfect surprise gift for me! and i absolutely adore the tiny houses postcard.

perfect gifts

the best gifts are the surprises you don't know you're going to get. they're the ones that a friend sees and just says, "i know this is so julie, i have to send it to her." i'd rather have that kind of gift than a birthday present any day.

well, today was my day on that sort of gift - there were two surprise envelopes in the mailbox today. one covered in quite a lot of south african foliage stamps and the other with the royal mail.

one contained the elusive mermaid from series 9 of the lego minifigures. i had bought most of the ones available in town but she had proved too shy for me. but molly found her and sent her my way, as a little surprise.

funny how she had to take a trip to south africa and back to end up here with me, 20km from where she originated.

the second package contained bits and pieces of paper ephemera - stamps, small cards and two fabulous old postcards addressed to someone named sabine. perfect! there was a little stash of veronica's beautiful cards and a bookmark i put to immediate use.

but best of all were veronica's experiments in printing with some old 1950s linocut blocks. (read more about them here, where you can see she's moved on to making her own linocuts.) i jumped up and down, saying yes, please send one to me a few weeks ago on her blog. but i didn't expect to get 4 of them! each more charming than the other.

this one, printed on an old dictionary page is my hands-down favorite.

but i like this one too. there's something wonderful and about the brown ink. i just adore them!

and this little row of gnomes - they immediately found a place on the cupboard in the entryway, so everyone can see them when they come in.

here's the back of one of those postcards. sent to bob and sabine in 1978 from somewhere in france, i think. there is another one from california. both mention the weather, so i guess not much has changed.

it's wonderful how a little surprise in the mailbox from friends can totally make your day and probably even your week. and by you i mean me. thank you again, molly and veronica!

let's take a course together at MIT

i'm not ready yet to talk about autumn, but it is just around the corner. and even after all these years, autumn makes me long for a new hooded sweatshirt with my university logo on it, new pens and a stack of fresh, pristine textbooks, beckoning to be cracked open. let the enlightenment begin! in imagination i can smell the freshness of the autumn air and feel the crunch of leaves under my boots as i make my way to the quad. tho' i spent more time at iowa and arizona state, it seems the university of chicago is the setting in my imagination - the tree-lined streets of hyde park, walking past frank lloyd wright's robie house, ducking in to the seminary co-op bookstore (tho' it certainly didn't look like that modern monstrosity when i was there, it was tucked in a dark, dingy, but wonderfully labyrinthine basement in those days). i could go on, but it's making me wistful. alas, those days were nearly a lifetime ago and the hoodie has gotten a bad rap recently.

however, last evening on facebook, i learned that MIT has a load of free courses available online. i vaguely recall reading that somewhere awhile ago, but i never really went in search of it. by the way, this proves that facebook can be good for something. i reposted the link (i think it originated with those i fucking love science people, tho' i got it through an old friend who i worked with during college) and then cyndy came up with a brilliant idea. she suggested that we (and by we i mean all of you and me and cyndy) should take one of the MIT courses together - do the readings and assignments and share our thoughts with one another, maybe even in a facebook group. she suggested an anthropology course on food and culture. and i said, yes please! and then i went to bed because it was really late.

and when i awoke this morning, it still seemed like an excellent idea. so, who's in? let me know and i'll do something about organizing a facebook group for discussion of the topics and readings. we don't have to write the papers, but let's go to MIT together, what do you say?

* * *

an interesting conversation about life as an expat in denmark is going on here. 

in english and in the comments.

* * *

why the picture of panzanella, you ask? it's food & culture, so i thought the food would inspire.

catching up...

since we last "spoke," i have...

...gotten up obscenely early to drive across the country. there i had a very entertaining meeting about a potentially very interesting project that i hope to do. on the way, as i was posting my customary instagram photo of storebæltsbro (the 18 km bridge between the danish islands of fyn and sjælland), i noticed that trinsch, long a bloggy friend, was posting a photo of a morning run past the little mermaid. in one of those moments where you're grateful for social media, i suggested that we meet for coffee. and so we did!

i arrived a little early and grabbed a table at the very busy café norden and people-watched while waiting for trinsch. i had a sudden moment of nervousness. we hadn't met before and what if i was a disappointment to her? i ordered a double latte and dismissed the thoughts. she arrived, super cool moustache-print bag over her shoulder, climbed in the window from the street and we started chatting immediately like old friends who were simply picking up the conversation where we left off. it was great! nothing disappointing in it at all, except that we didn't have more time. but i had to get in the car and drive the three hours back home and she was rushing off to see family before flying back to home to israel. in all, a lovely day.

friday brought work and in the evening, an impromptu barbeque with a neighbor. there was much laughter and a bit too much white wine, but isn't that how a friday should be?

saturday found me driving once again across the country, this time to meet with bloggy friend sue, aka rxbambi (as you can see, she hasn't blogged in awhile). she and her husband were in town because they had just finished a cruise of western norway and the fjords. they wanted to go to sweden, so we hopped across another bridge and headed to malmö for lunch and a starbucks(!). that and a couple of new blank notebooks from bookbinder's design made me very happy.

a lovely dinner at nyhavn in copenhagen and a stroll through the city in the most beautiful nordic evening light, made it a lovely day to meet up! denmark was really showing off at its very best. i'd gotten all of the nervousness out of my system with trinsch, so i wasn't nervous meeting sue. we laughed and drank wine and got to know a bit more about the one another off-blog. it made me grateful once again for the friendships that blogging has brought to me. sue and bob started talking to the table next to us at the restaurant and i was also reminded of how giving those conversations with random strangers can be. i do miss that sometimes and it was nice to be reminded of that energy that acknowledging the existence of people you don't already know can give to you. the danes could really learn a lesson from that.

sunday, sabin and i arrived home mid-afternoon and indulged in some kitten time. molly is much better and her milk production is up so that the kittens don't need to be bottle fed anymore, tho' they still have a pavlovian response when they hear my voice (or the theme music of breaking bad, i must admit), and start meowing and unsteadily crawling over to me. sabin intercepted them. molly's mastitis-induced wound (it was a giant hole in her belly, if i'm graphic), is looking unbelievably better. it has shrunk significantly in the 36 hours i was away. that kruuse manuka G honey-based wound dressing is seriously miraculous stuff. the vet is going to be amazed when she sees how much smaller it is. but bottle feeding has meant that these are some seriously nice kittens.

and now i think you're all pretty much caught up. a blog can never encompass a life and all of its nuances, but perhaps there can be a moment or two of perfect clarity along the way. let the new week begin!

gifts for no reason

the past week has brought a number of lovely surprises to my door. my sister's visit wasn't a surprise as we had long been planning it. what was a surprise was that she came bearing an iPad mini and a super cute owl case just for me! (THANK YOU!) it's a bit hard keeping all of the other mitts in this household off of it. i foresee another one (or two) in our near future.

on the day my family arrived, the mailman knocked on the door. he had a little square package and a pretty flat red one. we had recently ordered alfie the jacabob from the fabulous kit lane and i thought it was that. turns out the package was from kit, but inside was a little jar of liquid sunshine in the form of orange jam from the juice of oranges from the family tree (orange tree that is) in warmer climes. in the midst of the longest, most lingering winter ever, it was a very welcome surprise. and again I had a hard time keeping everyone else's mitts off of it around here. but then again, we all had need of a bit of sweet sunshine. thank you, kit! as you can see, alfie made it safe and sound as well.

the last package was from sweet tracy in south carolina. she knows of my delight in helene hanff's 84 charing cross road book and sent me the equally delightful memoir Q's Legacy, along with a to do list tablet. tracy, you know me well, thank you! i've already finished the book, tho' i tried to make myself read it slowly, it just didn't work. i so wish i had known helene in real life and been able to hang out with her. she's charming and witty and positive - everything i need in my life!

i have to say that out-of-the-blue gifts, the kind that come just for no reason, other than to indicate that you're thinking of someone are way better, in my book, than christmas and birthday gifts. thank you all for making my day (and my week and possibly even my whole month!).

random acts of arty kindness

i met artist noelle horsfield in stephanie levy's creative courage online course. we hit it off with a similar liberal bent and sense of humor and became friends on facebook. and noelle asked me recently if i would help her out with a little art project she's got going on.

she wants to leave little works of art in random places for people to find and she asked me if would place some in denmark. of course i immediately said yes! well, they arrived this weekend from kentucky and i couldn't resist photographing them before i set them out into the world.

aren't they sweetest little tiny houses you've ever seen? (and odin knows i've seen a lot of really cute tiny houses.) it's going to be a little bit hard for me to abandon them, i think. i sent three pieces home with karoline, husband's eldest daughter, for her to place around copenhagen.

i kept four myself to place in my area. i already have an idea for two of them, but the others, i think i'll carry with me and i'll know when the right spot beckons. i'm so pleased to be able to help noelle out with her project. it reminds me quite a lot of a similar project that my friend lisa is doing as well. and it makes me want to make something to leave as well. i love the idea of randomly treating someone to a little piece of art. such a inspiring project!

oh, and i get to keep the little bunny - isn't that perfect?

the gift of NOMA

i got this lovely surprise yesterday in the mail from bloggy (and real life) friend sandra in minnesota. she's not blogging that much these days (facebook has ruined blogging in many ways), but i link you to her blog anyway. i had lamented some time back (undoubtedly on facebook) that the library wanted their copy of NOMA's cookbook back and i was regretfully allowing them that. and now i have a copy of my very own! the photography is stunning and tho' i lack liquid nitrogen in my home kitchen, i am actually going to attempt some of the recipes. i've not actually been to NOMA in copenhagen, which has been crowned the best restaurant in the world the past several years and has 2 michelin stars, but i have been to several restaurants where the chefs were trained there. they've had a huge influence on the food culture of denmark and scandinavia - there's in general much more focus on local and unusual ingredients (hay, for one) than there was before the new nordic food revolution they've led.  i've given the book pride of place on the bookshelf in the living room - with my beaded south african cow standing guard over it (an impulse buy in the airport in cape town). it's a gorgeous book and shouldn't be shut away in the cupboard in the kitchen with the other recipe books. thank you, sandra, it was such a lovely surprise!

one person's exotic is another's normal

last weekend, we had a visit from south african bloggy friend tara who blogs at c'est la vie. she's in denmark for a two-week study trip that's part of her business degree. i was pleased when she said she wanted to come a little early and hang out with us for a few days here in the old run-down farmhouse. true to form for something not unlike blog camp, the farmer who has the field across the road sprayed it with poo just in time for her visit. *sigh*

the afternoon she came in, i decided that we had to dash out to the west coast, as it was going to the only remotely nice beachy day to go there. i somehow had it in my head that it was Very Important that she got to touch the north sea. we were glad we did (tho' that water is COLD!), as it was rainy and grey the following days (no suprise there, except perhaps to the danish meteorological institute, who always seem to be surprised by the weather around here). after the beach, we got a giant ice cream and headed home to barbeque on our grill table in the garden while we laughed and told stories and learned a bit of african history too.

tho' i was running around, chasing kittens and tending chickens and bunnies and popping into the kitchen for more wine, i loved hearing tara's story. born raised in zimbabwe, she went off to college in south africa and stayed. she'll be getting married in a couple of months. this trip to denmark was her first big trip abroad. i had to chuckle at that as zimbabwe and south africa strike me as pretty abroad. but it's really a matter of perspective. a little bit like how my sister was born and raised in south dakota, but went to the university of iowa and then stayed in that area after college.

tara's excitement at her trip and the adventures she had exploring copenhagen on her own for a couple of days before coming to visit us and at her weeks of study with a group of other international business students reminded me of my own trip to study in russia when i was about her age. the excitement, the butterflies, the small niggling fears and ultimately the feeling of satisfaction that i was strong and fearless enough to make such a long journey alone. the rush of new impulses and thoughts and experiences - there's nothing like it.

of course, today, via a myriad of social media, i'm able to follow along on her adventures even after she went on to her course and i can tell she's having a great time. it makes me a little bit nostalgic for those old days of studying. yes me, nostalgic, who would have imagined that? but it's a good kind of nostalgia and for that, i'm grateful to live a little bit vicariously through tara's adventures.

so glad you visited us, tara, i look forward to reading your stories as you digest them in the weeks and months ahead.

blog swag rocks

pretty little creatively-wrapped (brown paper bags, stitched around the edges - how clever is that!) packages of bloggy swag that i won on lizzie's blog. there's really nothing more happy-making than a package in the mail. i've thus far restrained from opening, as i'm trying to wait 'til christmas. but i'm not sure i'll manage to hold out.

jody pearl, who does a lot of clever re-designing of clothing, hosted an op shop swap and i participated. she was my partner and i totally lucked out!  my package came wrapped in this great crochet-like net shopping bag.

inside was a book - have a little faith by mitch albom, which causes a mary chapin carpenter song to go through my mind every time i walk past it.

best of all was the most gorgeous, bright, felt-backed scarf that was exactly what i needed in these dark winter days. the little koala (which sabin snatched up) had on a little backpack containing lovely vintage buttons that i'll be using on some or other project in the near future. there was also a little beaded snowman, but sabin snatched him up as well.

a big thank you to both jody and lizzie!

i take it all back

freehand cut feathers made of maps of south africa by peter slingsby

my mail woman with the unnaturally red hair came knocking on the door today. bearing not one but TWO packages. one a total surprise from the fabulous molly (of arbness fame) of heaven cape town and of bloggy fame in the form of oh for the love of blog and the more recent (and less sweary-y) c is for cape town.  she made feathers from one of her father's maps. for me! feathers, maps, cape town - it couldn't get any better than that. which reminds me that i have some stuff to make for some people via some facebook promise to make stuff for people.

the second package contained the beautiful stitched and felted stones i was lucky enough to snatch up last week from the fabulous lisa of lil fish studios. her work is gorgeous and unique and always beautifully packaged. me, i suck at packaging, but i do enjoy when things are nicely packaged.  i almost hated to open it up, but i couldn't wait to see my beautiful stones. they're just exquisite and this photo doesn't even come CLOSE to doing them justice.

so a big thank you to both of you for completely turning around my grumpy, ranty day.  suffice it to say, it was precisely what i needed on this day which had otherwise started on the wrong side of the bed. thank you!!

still thinking about char

still thinking about char. feeling a bit better after reading beth's blog today. it's still not ok that she's gone and i miss her terribly...i had photo issues today and my immediate thought was, "i need to ask char what she would do." but i can't do that. and that's brought tears to my eyes more than once since i learned this yesterday morning.

this whole thing has left me thinking that passwords and last wishes about our cyberlives need to be included in our wills. i told husband that i want him to post on my blog, twitter, facebook, etc. if i die unexpectedly, letting everyone know. it's easy if he does it on one of my computers, as it all automatically signs in, so he doesn't even need to know my passwords, tho' he knows those too. but i would want to let everyone know what happened - whatever it may be.  he told me to pre-write the post, so he could just post it, but if i could predict the future...

in all of this, i am grateful for this cyberlife we have. i love that char's blog lives on (and i hope it continues to do so), so i can go back to it and read it and feel close to her and remember her. and i treasure every comment she left on my blog even more so now than i did. (why is that we most appreciate that which we no longer have?)

it all brings up interesting questions of the reality of virtual friendship that i'm not yet finished processing. i feel as bereft losing char as if i'd lost a close friend that i knew in real life, even tho' we never met. she was a wonderful person and i am grateful that the slim chance that we would find one another here in cyberspace indeed worked. of all the blogs out there, i feel richer for mine having crossed paths with hers. we share so much of ourselves here (tho' it's impossible to share it all), that we may in some ways know one another better than we know our real life friends. it's a privilege that i hope to be more conscious of after losing char. it's the least i can do.

goodbye char

a beacon of light in the blogosphere

i just learned that char of the beautiful blog ramblins died (i'm sorry to be so blunt, but i can't bring myself to use that phrase passed away) on june 6. i feel so awful that it took me ten days to realize it. we're friends on facebook and pinterest and flickr and she has been a fast friend here in the blogosphere since my earliest blogging days. i had noticed that she hadn't posted to her blog since june 1 and hadn't really been around on FB and pinterest or stopped by to say hello, but i chalked it up to it being a busy time of year, so while i missed her, i never suspected anything was amiss.

i will miss her. her laughter, her stories, her heart, her beautiful photographs, her gentle comments, her recipes beautifully photographed, her beautiful soul. i can almost hear her southern accent, tho' i never heard it in person. and i feel genuine sorrow and a sense of loss, tho' we never met in person. she was a friend, in every real sense of the word. it feels like the blogosphere will be a little less bright without her.

char, if you're out there, know that we feel the world to be a lesser place without your presence. but we also feel richer for having known you.

beautiful things

today was a banner day for the postwoman at our house. we were very happy to see her. she came bearing not only my new wellington boots (when you live on a farm, you need good wellies), but a lovely surprise package from the wonderful mari (THANK YOU!!).

you probably already know mari from her lovely blogs marinik's blog, let's mangia, and her third eye.  but what you may not know is that she's going to armenia this summer to scatter her husband's ashes and that she plans to do some charitable acts in his memory while she's there. in order to do these, she's selling these absolutely gorgeous cards. everyone can use beautiful, blank cards, so if you are in the market for some cards, please visit mari's shop and support her loving cause. at the very least, they'll definitely make you want some cupcakes!

this beautiful little nest blew down out of a tree in our yard and i couldn't resist bringing it inside today. along with a wild bouquet of flowers i found around the garden. the nest is lined with horsehair clearly "donated" by the horse next door. it's a perfectly beautiful engineering marvel.

tomorrow is a holiday and the sun is shining, so i'm off to enjoy it!