pondering happiness

loving inna's post about happiness...and pondering it myself. how connected is happiness to contentment? to gratitude? to satisfaction? to feeling safe? to sunshine? to being well rested? to things? of course, i'm pondering this in relation to our happiness project and those eternally happy danes, but also just in terms of my own personal state of being. and i'm wondering if i'm happy? i think in moments that i am, but that those moments feel fleeting and elusive. how can we better hold onto them? and disconnect them from material things? i don't really know the answers. but maybe this will help...i signed up for 100 days of happiness starting march 1.  i don't know if it will help, but it should at least give me renewed motivation for my daily photos.

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by the way, something that makes me very happy that i had not yet shared, is this little project which i had the pleasure of working on at the end of last year: 

wonderful wonder woman

in our second of a series of salons i've been co-creating at our local library, the theme was wonder woman. but not only the comic book character wonder woman, but the wonder woman in us all. this year is the 100th anniversary of women's suffrage in denmark, so we brought in that aspect as well. we didn't get the vote in the US for another 5 years! afterwards, i looked up when women got the vote in countries around the world and there are some pretty surprising facts on that list. like that switzerland, which i would have thought was a pretty progressive place, didn't allow women to vote until 1971! appalling! and turkey gave women the vote in 1934, but france didn't follow suit for another 10 years in 1944. also appalling.

we prepared two rounds of questions for the tables to discuss. my thought was to start it off a bit lighthearted in the spirit of wonder woman and ask people what they thought their super power was. or what they would want it to be if they could have one. the age range at my table went from a bit younger than me (early 40s) to 60s, so approximately a 20 year span. and i quickly realized that aside from one (my partner in the arrangement), they actually didn't know what was meant by a super power. and they definitely didn't take the question in the lighthearted way it was intended.

i came to find out that they actually had no idea who wonder woman was at all! they weren't familiar with the cartoon, nor the fabulous series from the 70s starring lynda carter that so defined how i jumped out of the swingset for a good portion of my childhood. so, they looked a little blankly at my superman socks and wonder woman converse. they just didn't get it. and i have to say that it made me feel so sorry for them! but then, it hit me that they felt sorry for me for knowing about a comic book heroine. it was just another example of those shallow americans and their lack of culture.

they obviously didn't know that jill lepore (a harvard scholar, no less), recently wrote a history of wonder woman and the story behind her debut in 1940 as well as her place in feminist history. they didn't know that the book just beat out 132 other contenders to win the american history book prize. wonder woman is huge and awesome and a feminist icon. she is not merely a cartoon character, she is so much more. she is strong and brave, a real amazonian princess. and it was funny, because several people mentioned that they wished they could be more like those amazon women of legend. they just didn't seem to realize that wonder woman was the best known one of all!

next time, i'll not assume that everyone is on the same page and prepare a bit more explanation so that we all start on equal footing, or at least that we understand where we're all coming from.

in all, tho', a very interesting evening anyway.

double exposure project: two cameras, two continents, two views of the world, one roll of film

i am ashamed to say that back in 2011, the wonderful marinik and i exchanged a roll of film. i'm ashamed to say it because although i put it in my camera almost upon receipt of it, i didn't develop it until a couple of weeks ago when i was in new york. life intervened, film developing places became scarce and untrustworthy and so i sat on that film for ages. ages developed into years. i think 4 of them, to be exact. but oh my, was it worth the wait. there is a special kind of serendipitous magic that happens in these double exposure projects. you load the film into your camera, having no idea what has already been done with that film. and while not every photo is magical, some of them are. and it makes you want to do it again.

so if any of you would like to exchange a roll of 35mm film that you've sent through your camera with me (be careful when you rewind, because i'll need that tail to be exposed so i can put it through my camera too), just let me know in the comments. we're going to do this again. this is the kind of magic we need in our lives. and by we i mean me. but i also mean you. let's co-create something, baby.

everything's just peachy!

it may have seemed that i fell off the face of the earth. it's been a crazy couple of weeks. getting lots of work done so i could have a few days off during my mom's visit. plus, we held a big party for 40 friends to celebrate sabin's confirmation. that and a whirlwind day where i worked all morning, picked up four teenagers and raced off to copenhagen to drop them off at a one direction concert, had dinner at nyhavn in the sunshine with my mom and then picked up the girls (along with about a zillion other parents who also had escaped actually attending the concert) and drove 3 and a half hours home to arrive here at 2:30 a.m., fell asleep by 3:30 only to wake up at 4:30 to take my mom to the airport for her flight at 6, came home and got ready for work as usual. whew. it makes me tired all over again, just typing it. but anyway, that's my excuse and i'm sticking to it.

meanwhile, along the way, i collected small snippets i wanted to blog about, but oddly, the words haven't wanted to flow out my fingers as they usually do. i think it's because so much of my work life now consists of things which are secret. i'm an immediate type of person and if i'm working on things which can only be talked about sometime next year or the year after, it gets in the way of the here and now, even if it's not those things i would even want to write about. you get a few secrets in your life and then everything starts to feel like it's a secret. and so my words have been blocked.

so until they clear, here are a few shots of our beautiful party last weekend. it was absolutely perfect weather-wise and the company was top notch. i highly recommend these chinese wish lanterns. they were a big hit. we will definitely be buying them again. they couldn't have been prettier or more joy-inducing. 

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maybe we as a nation shouldn't have stopped drinking at breakfast.

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words do change meaning.

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interesting thoughts on brands and co-creation.

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yes, we do have the best business cards. 

(tho' they take an eternity to come.)

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pockets of common sense, logic and decency are still to be in found in the united states.

but not on the comments to this post.

spring exhibition - works in progress

our local art group's yearly exhibition is on the horizon. which means that we've stepped up the creativity around here. i'm putting together some rusty bits and pieces with driftwood, to fit the "skrot" (scrap) theme.

these are going to hang from something or other in a way that's still but a vague and blurry (partially due to my eyes being very affected by the birch pollen in air) picture in my mind.

i like that this one ended up having a kind of talisman feel.  it has slightly less rusty bits, but that's just the direction it went in.

tho' i'm still composing in my head, i know that the pressure of the deadline and an otherwise rather busy week will work together to make it happen. that's how it always is. i'm a girl in need of a deadline.

this old bottle of ink i got in a box of goodies at the autumn flea market a couple of years ago. rather fun to put it to use .

this broken pot is a piece that our drink & draw group worked on together on friday evening. the hostess of the last drink & draw dropped it and thought it would be a good idea to paint the shards and try to reassemble it. so that's precisely what we did.

i love how it turned out, even if it did take me 2 days to glue it together. we've got plans for it as well, involving some old shoes, a horse hoof with the shoe still one (the rest of the horse was long ago fed to the lions at a nearby zoo - that's how we roll in denmark, after all, we do like to keep our lions fed). due to all of us using the same inks, it harmonizes but bears the style of each of us. i like that. i'll be sure to share the final version once it's finished. i've passed it along to another from the group now.

noticing...

noticing...

...the birch pollen is bad right now. my allergies are much better than they once were, due to eating loads of honey made by our own bees, but the birch pollen gets me every year. this year, with a dull headache that i can't shake (in addition to the usual itching throat and watering eyes).

...that it requires a whole new language to even read about minecraft, let alone play it.

...sometimes, it just feels like you're herding cats. and even if you love cats, that's not an easy task.

...that saying how busy you are and how packed your calendar is as a marker of your importance does not impress me. nor does it actually make you important.

...that i have, without my knowing, suffered a loss of confidence. i'm more tentative and less sure than i used to be. i wonder if this is simply a consequence of being older and wiser or if i've actually truly lost something that i cannot regain. i used to go so boldly through the world and now i feel i tread more lightly. this is both good and bad. puzzling and a bit frustrating. but also fascinating somehow.

...that walking out into the yard and feeding the animals is my favorite part of my day. and honestly, my days are pretty filled with good things, so that must be awesome.

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have a look at what my boss says about co-creation.

(have i mentioned that i love my job?)

and this review of the new lego brickumentary, which just debuted at tribeca, is funny.

it's official!

it's official! i've known for a month, but i signed my contract today! i'll officially start working at LEGO on february 3! and i'm so very excited. it's really a dream job for me - working together with all kinds of creative people who have great ideas, to bring their ideas to life as LEGO products or projects. for someone who loves ideas and loves floating them out in the world to see what happens, it's pretty much perfect. i also think it will be good for my minifigure collection.

good news and good links

got some wonderful news today.
let's just say that you can expect a whole lot more LEGO
here on MPC in the new year.

i'm so excited.
and grateful to all of you who helped me with my co-creation question.
and sent good vibes and prayers my way.
they worked.

and after a run to germany for gin and other supplies,
i think i'm almost ready for christmas.

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inside the life of a bookie.

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an interesting blog.

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deep thoughts from john.
worth reading.
worth pondering.

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and for a laugh,
these hilarious answers to test questions.
really worth a look if you need a laugh.

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a pretty accurate little personality test.
and it's short too, so it won't take too much time.

reindeer games

i took sticks and twigs and little bitty aspen cones and acorns and moss to the library today and turned anyone who wanted to loose making charming little twiggy reindeer. the materials from nature seemed to set everyone's imaginations alight and the idea expanded and became something even more than it was originally. young and old seemed to be happy and delighted to take their deer little deer with them.

pinterest for the win!

see my pinterest here.

i am a sucker for being part of a group. especially if they make it seem exclusive and cool and perhaps a little bit secret. oh, and if they flatter me when they send the invitation, hello, count me in! so when i got an email from pinterest this morning, complimenting my pinboards, and inviting me to apply to be a translator for the danish version of pinterest, i was like, sign me up, baby! so i dutifully clicked through and applied. a few hours later, i was approved and invited to my first secret facebook group. i think the difference with secret groups is that the rest of the folks in your timeline can't see what you're posting and commenting on. the whole thing makes me a little bit giddy.

but really, what it is is pinterest being very smart. they've flattered their users into doing the expensive translation job for them. for free! all by making it seem cool and exclusive. there is much to be learned from this (can you say co-creation?). they get a much better translation from native speakers (and folks like me who are picky about language and have lived here so long that i'm pretty good at it as well). they create loyalty among users. and they don't pay for it. i predict we'll be seeing a lot more of this from businesses in the not-so-distant future.

a little while later, someone in my facebook feed shared a status of someone from their feed who is pissed at pinterest. pinterest's terms forbid "pin to win" contests and they will go after users who are engaging in such things. and frankly, i think that's awesome. pins should be there because they are things people love, not things people are trying to win (tho' one might argue that you wouldn't be trying to win something if you didn't love it). and i like the purity of it. if those i followed suddenly started pinning shit from etsy (because etsy just opened their doors much wider to shit) instead of moodily-lit figs, just because they wanted to win it, i would be one unhappy camper. i do love me some moodily-lit figs, not to mention triangles, don't get me started on triangles (they're the new circle).

so, to recap. pinterest flattering their users (including me) into doing their enormous translation/localization task for them = score. and cracking down on "pin to win" greedy bastards = score. so it's pinterest for the win!

creativity and co-creation

this morning an article with the shocking headline of ted talks are lying to you caught my eye. my initial thought was, "say it isn't so!" but then i remembered that brené brown drivel on which i once spent 20 minutes of my life that i'll never have back. brené - what kind of a pretentious crap name is that? but thomas frank lays out a pretty good case for the pop phenomenon of self-help/business books on the topic of creativity. they're formulaic (like most business books), they're filled with the same stories (invention of the post-it with a few bob dylan lyrics thrown in) and they're not really about creativity at all, but about conformity and societal norms. and that made a lot of sense to me. because i've experienced myself how truly thinking outside the box will get you thrown out of the club, because what people really want is to be surrounded by people who think as they do, not by people who push them to think differently and behave in new ways.

it's an interesting read and it makes a lot of sense to me and articulates the aversion i've found that i have for books on cultivating creativity, without really knowing why i found myself rolling my eyes at them. what he doesn't go into is something i've been pondering of late and that's whether it's even possible to be truly creative and think outside of the box (i hate that phrase)? i'm beginning to think that creativity has much more to do with regular, even dogged, practice than it has to do with any epiphanies. the possibility of developing something unique and which is truly yours or truly an expression of what you'd like to, well, express, is nearly null. anything we make is somehow a conglomeration of influences and experiences and contains grains of them all, rather than being something completely new and unique. even a post it is really just weak tape and a small piece of paper, it's not anything new.

but that said, i do believe in a creative practice, tho' i admit that i do it myself in fits and starts and not very consistently. and i believe in the power of co-creation - where a group of people from different, seemingly diverse fields, come together and put their ideas into one big pot, where they are stirred together and become new and improved ideas. and i'd say that one of my main talents lies in an ability to put such groups together and have magic come of it. but it's unpredictable and the magic is always, always different than you imagined it would be. that's actually the magical thing about magic. to co-create ideas with other people also means being very open and willing to throw an idea into the mix and see it change and morph and become something else that only carries a kernel of what it originally was. and it's there that a lot of people have problems. they're not willing to let go of their precious baby ideas and really let them outside of their original box. i think that's where the dogged persistence and the actual nitty, gritty work come in. you have to keep going and pushing and seeing what happens. just like in real life.

and ultimately, it's why i still think ted talks are a good thing - ideas are floated into the world, consumed by people, who combine them with their own ideas and they become something else entirely. life, it's an act of co-creation.

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always pondering libraries, so i liked this guardian piece by neil gaiman.

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fantastic photos and stories of a forgotten russia.

MAD: ID - co-creating the future of local food

last week, i participated in a co-creation event called MAD:ID (food (mad in danish), identity and design) at a place called spinderihallerne - a converted factory that's coworking, museum, café and event space all in one. madværket, a collective of local food producers (farmers, berry producers, breweries and even a whiskey maker), was behind the event. they were all there, along with politicians, people like me who do communications and happen to be interested in food (and who isn't?), bloggers, cooks, chefs, designers and events producers.

we were divided into several groups and asked to workshop various questions for two hours in the morning and two hours in the afternoon. throughout the day, we were fed these gorgeous little tidbits of local produce made by local chefs, who had spent a couple of days slow cooking pork bellies and making hawthorne sirups. an area woman who both grows unusual herbs and forages for them provided all of the beautiful flowers and herbs that decorated the food. she was also a participant in one of the groups.

my group was given the question of how to make the unusual and often wasted cuts of meat marketable and appealing to an enlightened audience. we discussed ways of enlightening that audience (who we determined to be busy families who cared about the food they put on the table), as well as down to the details of packaging and even the whole supply chain - as one of the premises was that it would be grass-fed, organic, local beef, slaughtered at a nearby butcher and then somehow made available to a discerning consumer. so, as you might imagine, we talked a lot about the whole rising trend of farm to table, wherein people want a relationship with their food. we actually discussed ways of giving calves instagram accounts and facebook pages, so people could follow the life of their beef, quite literally, from when it was born.

one thing our group was missing during the morning was one of the farmers. we were a group of rather affluent women with lofty notions of what we'd like to put on the table and how it should be delivered to our doors. but we didn't really know that much about the reality of getting the steer to the butcher and from there to further processing if that were required. in the afternoon, we were joined by a down-to-earth beef farmer (who is also a politician), who helped us anchor our ideas a bit more in reality. i think that helped us and we would have been more productive had he been with us from the beginning.

other groups worked on topics like how to expand local food tourism opportunities, since there are a lot of exciting things happening in our area food-wise, at least where production of interesting, local food products are concerned. another group worked on connecting foragers to chefs and i learned that you don't have to have foraged in an enormous amount for it to be interesting to local chefs, you just have to establish contact and let them know when you've found something interesting (e.g. mushrooms). in the presentation round, i found myself wishing i'd been in that group. a couple of groups worked on the question of making obscure cuts of meat more commercially viable, as we did and interestingly came up with solutions we didn't - like starting already in school, teaching the very youngest children the importance of using the whole animal and not letting any go to waste. that makes good sense to me.

in the middle of the day, after lunch, we took a break to listen to a lecture by the utterly amazing dutch eating designer marije vogelzang. i was very disappointed when her lecture ended, as i could have gone on listening to her and being inspired by her for at least another hour. i came home and ordered her book immediately. she has put together the most amazing food-related projects that are part art, part happening and part design, with a whole lot of history and thought and emotion thrown in. she will make you think about eating in whole new ways.

it seems that co-creation is the new black, but it's risky business. you don't really know what will come of it and you have to be open to that. they opened the doors to this event (which was free) and hoped that everyone came with their own particular angle and view on things, as well as a willingness to share their ideas. it seemed to me that they did. hopefully madværket can go further with the beginnings of ideas that were shared and begin to make a real difference for local food producers and consumers alike. i know i'd love to know that the beef (or pork or chicken) i buy was locally produced and i'd go out of my way to obtain it. we all have to start thinking more about the food we consume. the future of the planet may very well depend upon it.

this little savory "dessert" was served late in the day - tender, long-cooked strips of shredded beef and a savory, cool green ice cream. a twist on dessert and a festival of flavors that made me stop and think about what i was eating. we all need more of that in our lives.

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marije vogelzang's dinner at spiers.

i so wish i were going.

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stuck for what to read next?

this just might help.