writing maps: on language

i follow the writing maps account on instagram and i've even ordered a few of their writing maps. i'm sick today and have stayed home from work. i've got a fever and that ache in the shoulders that comes with the flu. so i'm sitting in bed, propped up with pillows and my laptop and i thought i'd use one as a prompt. 

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being from south dakota, second languages weren't really the norm. in the era i graduated from high school (1985), a second language wasn't even a requirement, though a requirement was passed around then, so my sister, who graduated in 1991, had to take german in high school. i didn't even have the option, so it was only english for me.

when i got to south dakota state for my freshman year, i signed up for french with a little near-sighted woman with a white bob called madame redhead (rather a misnomer with her white hair) to fulfill my language requirement. i wasn't a natural language-learner and i always felt rather silly trying to speak it.

then i moved to california and took a russian class at fullerton community college. i was interested in russian thanks to my deep and abiding loathing of ronald reagan. my teacher, tatiana gale, was a russian emigré with shockingly purpley-red hair that i later came to know as russian red (it comes straight from a bottle). i dedicated myself to learning the cyrillic alphabet and even decided to go back to university and major in russian after tatiana, with her late 80s new age vibe, told me that she had a feeling that i should do something with russian. being 19 and looking for guidance, i jumped on that advice wholeheartedly.

like the french, learning russian didn't come easily to me - i suppose i missed the language-learning window in my brain, not being exposed to any other languages when i was younger. but i had much more motivation for russian and fell in love with the literature, so i persevered through my bachelor's degree, a master's and well into ph.d. studies. adding a summer course in serbo-croatian (as they still called it in the early days after the dissolution of yugoslavia) and macedonian and even getting that fateful fulbright to macedonia that meant meeting husband in skopje.

and meeting him meant adding yet another language, that has ended up my second most fluent language today - danish. and through danish, i can read (if not entirely understand) swedish and norwegian and a surprising amount of german, if i can't actually speak those languages. 

the prompt asked about family languages - my parents only spoke english, though dad remembered his grandmother who more or less spoke only german. that must mean that emil, my grandfather, also spoke german, though he died when my dad was 16, so i never knew him. his father julius and mother frederikke, had come over from a little town near koenigsberg in east prussia and settled on the prairies, though if i remember correctly, emil was born after they got to south dakota. they surely kept speaking their native german together for the rest of their lives. 

my grandmothers, to my knowledge, only spoke english as well - i never heard of them having any knowledge of another language. their stock was sabins and barnhardts, which i oddly know less about than the nachtigals. funny how one strong branch of the family sticks out and becomes the dominant one.

i don't necessarily know how this informs the stories i write or will write, but it surely informs who i am, or at least the foundation of who i am. i definitely feel like i don't have the full spectrum of my personality when i speak danish. who i am at my core, is who i am in english. 

i'm happy to have raised my child with more or less two native languages - as i always spoke english with her and her father (and the school system), always spoke danish. she had some german as well in school here in denmark, though, like me and french, she didn't really take to it. 

when she first went to the US, she had a bit of a danish accent, but after 5 years there, that's gone. i doubt my accent in danish will ever disappear and i'll never get the hang of those danish articles (et/en), but i'm happy that she inherited her father's language ability and not mine. 

road trip :: brobergs take the south 2018 :: part 2 :: school bus graveyard

alongside a georgia highway, we were looking for a stand to buy peaches when we came across an amazing sight - a line of graffiti-clad old school buses.

it was part of an auto mechanic shop and we went up and asked if we could have a look. a rather crotchety man with a heavy southern drawl directed us back out to the highway and a path you could take to walk up along the row. he very sternly warned that we shouldn't try to go beyond the row of buses or climb on them in any way. we assured him we wouldn't.

it would have been impossible to do so anyway, as they're very well blocked-off in between. there are multiple warnings to stay off, so it's not the most welcoming place.

there are some cool old cars up on top as well - i suppose to add discouragement for climbing them.

i don't know the story of it, as i think it's primarily a working mechanic & junk yard and only incidentally a bus graveyard, but it seems like proper graffiti artists were involved in painting the buses. at least some of them.

the starkest warning was one about snakes. i'll admit that worked on me and i didn't want to get too close to the buses.

it's quite a large area and it would have been cool if they'd had an observation tower you could climb up to get a better view.

i couldn't help but include this shot of this really cute guy i saw there. gotta love that scruffy beard.

road trip :: brobergs take the south 2018 :: part 1

we had a family road trip in the southern united states this summer. we visited 6 states none of us had ever been in before - tennessee, alabama, mississippi, louisiana, florida and south carolina.  the others hadn't been in georgia before, but i had. and technically, i flew through miami in 1988, but that doesn't really count as being in the state. this time, we visited beaches and the state capital, so it must count. i expected to have heavy exposure to trumpanzees, but we didn't actually speak to a single one. that surprised me quite a bit, but then i saw this piece in the nytimes - it seems we followed that blue route through the south, perhaps guided by some subliminal survival instinct. or maybe we just didn't really talk to enough people along the gulf coast. but we also ran into a surprising amount who vocally volunteered their embarrassment at the mangled apricot hellbeast.

a quick list of impressions/lessons/thoughts:

~ two weeks was just the right amount of time, even tho' we did have our occasional flagging moments. at the end, i was both longing to go home and wishing we still had a few more days and that's exactly how it should be.

~ cheesecake for lunch is awesome in the moment, but come late afternoon, proves not to be such a good idea.

~ way-finding and map-reading were the biggest challenges, even in this day and age of ubiquitous gps. we didn't have a phone plan where we could roam, so we were constantly looking for wifi to help us do our route planning. in the morning, we would plan our route in google maps while on wifi and then the gps does actually follow where you are, but if you deviate from the route you planned while on wifi, the google maps app doesn't handle it well. also, husband was horrible at being the navigator if i was driving, which is weird, because he spent 18 years in the military and is otherwise good at maps. everyone stayed happier if i did the map-reading and husband did the driving. tho' even then there were a couple of kerfluffles. lesson was that maybe we should just know where we are in a general sorta way. and we did buy a big atlas of the united states. it helped out on the highways and byways, but not as much within cities.

~ several of the best things we found were quite random -  a cooling creek/waterfall (mardis mill falls) on a hot alabama day, windsor ruins off the natchez trace, which we found by talking to an older couple at another point of interest along the way, and the space museum just over the louisiana-mississippi border on the way towards biloxi.

~ we actually stuck to our budget and we didn't really deny ourselves much to do so.

~ since we were five more or less adults, we needed two hotel rooms, so we were looking for rooms on the budget end, since we were mostly looking for a good night's sleep and not a place to hang out. plus, we wanted to save our money for great coffee, fun experiences and shopping in goodwill! after a few days of disappointment in the mid-range ($65-$80/night) hotels, we looked to airbnb, and we felt much, much happier. there, we found quirky places with personality, a bit more luxury and charming hardwood floors, still in our price range. if you haven't tried it, i'd be very grateful if you used this link when you do.

~ you should stay off the interstates and get onto smaller highways and byways. we did some of this, but undoubtedly not enough. when you do hit the small highways and byways, make sure you have a full tank of gas, as gas stations can be surprisingly few and far between. we stopped at one in a small town in mississippi where it was clear we were the only white people who had passed through in a long time. that made for some amusing conversations while we waited to use the bathroom.

~ shopping at goodwill is awesome and our child is a wizard at finding the best stuff there, no matter the location. probably the best one we visited (and we tried to visit as many as we could) was the first one, south of atlanta. maybe our eyes were freshest, but i think it also had the best selection. i got an awesome t-shirt that says, "sorry i'm late, i didn't want to come." that makes me laugh.

~ there seems to be a disturbing trend in the states - one of which i was previously only peripherally aware - from barbara ehrenreichs' amazing nickle and dimed book, but never imagined i would actually encounter (which sounds more arrogant than i mean it to). when we were staying at the lower-priced hotels, it seemed like many of the other patrons were folks who seemed to be living with what they euphemistically call housing insecurity. it appeared that the hotels were full of people who probably had work, but not enough money for the deposit on an apartment, so they were forced to live on a weekly or even day-to-day basis in these hotels. i was waiting to ask for a wifi sign-in and i witnessed two young women paying their rent, peeling the fee off a roll of one dollar bills (perhaps from waitressing tips). initially, they gave the clerk, who was behind thick bullet-proof glass, since it was nearly dark, less and he said, "no, it's $63." the second girl reached down her cleavage and got a roll of her own bills out and peeled off the remainder, saying, "there goes my fun money," and rolling her eyes. i felt a little bit shocked. others stood in their doorways, smoking or chatting on the phone, obviously very at home in the hotel. it made me aware of a stark reality in my home country. and also acutely aware of my own privilege.

and on that note, i'll sign off for now. more about the trip, with actual photos, tomorrow. i'm still sorting through all of them.

100 happy days :: day 57

when you live in a falling down farmhouse in the countryside that was probably never that nice, even in its prime, it is a pleasure to go somewhere where the house is finished and not only livable, but wonderful and perfect, but still comfortable and inviting in its perfection.

it's a reminder that these things are possible and somehow offers a glimmer of hope that we will get there someday. what we wanted was a project and we definitely have that. and at times, it's not that much fun living in the middle of the project. but we will get there. we too have wegner chairs and lots of candleholders and books. this too will be a wonderful home someday and in the meantime, we can always go for a visit. and that is definitely a happy thought.

100 happy days :: day 56

this stylish little foot bridge, connecting the old and "new" harbors in landskrona was named after my late father-in-law on saturday. we went to the ceremony. the ceremony was a bit strange and confusing and it became clear from the passers-by that the bridge had actually been open for some time, as people kept wandering across, just lifting up the ribbon which hadn't yet been cut. there was also an odd potato-head woman who did the actual cutting of the ribbon. since i couldn't really hear that well and my ability to understand spoken swedish is a limited at best, it was unclear to me what her connection to it all was. perhaps she's the one who drove to holland and picked up (stole?) the bridge in the first place. 

because the bridge looks like it could have been lifted out of amsterdam (and quite possibly was), but pretty cool that it can be raised up so boats can sail through. they demonstrated that with a little rescue boat of some kind, which sailed through and then sailed back, to show us all how it works. another weirdness of the ceremony was that i'm not sure they mentioned peter's four children, who were all in attendance. i would have thought they'd have been invited up to at least be close observers of the ribbon cutting, but oddly, they were not. i was left wondering if those organizing it all had ever attended such a ceremony before.

me, i mostly wished there would have been an exciting corpse lying the bridge, leading to another season of broen, that fantastic nordic noir murder mystery series that's a danish-swedish cooperation. of course, that program is about a slightly larger bridge.  but still, a murder mystery would have added a bit of spice to the whole thing.

as it was, probably the best part of the day was that we had a long wander down to the beach and around the castle grounds. we'd been there a lot when husband's two oldest girls were little, so we did all of the old, traditional things, despite the grey day. it was fun to see the three sisters together, talking and laughing and looking so grown up.

in all, a very nice day, seeing family and having more than one good laugh and toasting to peter broberg's bro (bridge). worth the long drive, for sure.

too much

one bright spot in today.
an A+ from my high school english teacher
she probably doesn't know about my lack of caps on this blog.
the barrel she's talking about is here.

i know i've written fondly before of the liminal space, but i have to say that right now, it pretty much sucks. waiting is never easy, especially when you're waiting to know whether you're bought or sold. or just confined to the scrap heap as the case may be.

on top of it, i learned today that a beloved aunt, who has always been this amazing, steadfast presence of goodness, kindness and general interest in life at the center of our rather chaotic, otherwise presenting a pretty good image of having been raised by wolves family, has cancer and is declining treatment. i can appreciate her decision because she has had a long and amazing life and i can completely appreciate that she doesn't want an undignified ending. but it all seems a little bit unfair in light of losing dad so recently and not being over that (will i ever be over that? i don't think so.).

but really, how much more can we take? and by we, i mean me. it's just too much.

* * *

oh dear, sarah palin is back at it again.

what she's doing to the language and politics in general is a criminal act.

* * *

thoughts on what changes when you move abroad.

a brilliant bird

the turkey was, in the end, completely worth the second mortgage we had to take out in order to acquire it. a veritable triumph of a turkey. tender, juicy, really the best one ever. but i'm a bit exhausted, so i'll have to tell stories about it tomorrow.

so for now i'll just say that i'm thankful for such interesting, funny, erudite, well-traveled, intellectual friends and family. it was indeed a privilege to share a bit of my cultural imperialism tradition with them. and i was really impressed with how much they ate. and drank. brilliant.

scenes from a wedding

i think the pictures will suffice for now...

no place like home

waiting for me when i got home yesterday were my beautiful wobblies from atelierBB. i was ordering a wedding present for my sister-in-law and couldn't resist a little something for us as well. i ordered these sweet little orange, yellow and red dessert plates.

and the green was a little surprise that brigitte included. how awesome is that? thank you brigitte!! and if you haven't yet checked out her work, do it here.

also waiting for me were the latest additions to my fast-growing collection of resurrection fern crocheted stones and merfish. the teal merfish was so lovely "swimming" in its packaging that i hated to take it out:

but take it out i did and it posed for several pictures with its old friends:

and how exquisite is the "missing pieces" covered stone? it's even prettier in person than i had imagined.

i you haven't visited margie's blog to see what she's working on next, you really must. it's a most inspiring place.  here's my entire collection of her beautiful stones:

and just now, the mailman brought me this beautiful little felted bowl that i ordered from artemis artemis in new zealand (on etsy of course). it's my very favorite colors and the perfect size to keep my rings in (even the big one):

also waiting for me was a wonderful REAL letter from my aunt mary. she wrote four pages, sending birthday greetings and telling me how she's getting along after my uncle jim died last fall. she's surrounded by her children, grandchildren and soon to be 18 great-grandchildren, all of whom live in south dakota except one of the grandchildren and his two(?) kids, so although it's hard to lose her best friend of nearly 70 years, she's getting along well. she sent along a really neat picture from 1946 of my dad and his brothers and the first of many nieces that they eventually had (i have 29 cousins!). that's dad on the left (he was the youngest of 9):

i love so much about this picture. the car behind them. the fact that they're all dressed up. that the baby is crying and clearly wanting to be handed back to her mama. such a lovely thing to get in the mail.

and speaking of  mailboxes, i'd better go work on those 50-follower prezzies i've promised and do a bit of work work since i'm now gainfully employed. happy weekend everyone.

the highlights

the folks are now safely back at home, no doubt enjoying their microwave (it was a source of constant irritation to them that we didn't have one and moreover don't even want one), newspapers in english (we had lots of newspapers around, but all were danish), weak coffee (i constantly made it with too much sock to it in my french press), proper spatulas (for scraping the dough off the sides of the bowl--it's true ours are strangely hard and unhandy) and just generally being back in their own home again, rather than surrounded by the mysteries and frustrations of another country.

because i love lists, here are a few of the highlights:

1. discovering that grandma can make that whistling sound with a blade of grass between her thumbs.
2. sabin learning to hunt for 4- (and 5- and 6-) leaf clovers with grandma.
3. walks in the autumn sunshine.
4. a simple meal of different kinds of cheese, sausage and good bread eaten together outdoors with good friends.
5. great conversation on american politics over said meal.
6. mom and dad cleaned all of the windows of our house, inside and out. turns out our view is pretty good!  who knew?
7. hunting mushrooms in the woods at buresø.
8. mom making apple bars out of apples from our own tree.
9. mom's help in finishing the edges of the patchwork.
10. lots of laughter over funny stories.
11. sabin playing tennis and golf and bowling and boxing on the Wii with her grandfather (and beating him!).
12. sabin saying, "don't think of it in dollars, think of it like it is," which was a pretty astute comment.

it was a good visit and i'm very glad they came. but it made me realize that we're in transition. i'm in my 40s now and have to face that my parents are getting older. it's strange for me to see my vital and active mother walking slowly because her knee and her heel bother her. my dad seems now like a bit of a fussy eater (or maybe he always was and i never really noticed). but having them visit and see our home and meet our friends and have a little window into our life here was a very good thing.