paradox :: soft, cuddly guns

our annual spring exhibition is fast approaching and this year's theme is paradox. i was collecting ideas on pinterest (of course) and then i came across natalie baxter's work somehow or other and suddenly felt very inspired. 

so this weekend, i dug out the sewing machine and loads of scraps from various quilts and other projects and i got down to work. making soft, cuddly guns.

i think in these politically charged times, i was drawn to creating something political. each gun will have a stick in the top (to make them easier to hang), with a flag hanging from it - kind of like those toy guns with a flag that pops out and says "pow." the flags will have words on them that are at odds with the violence of guns. words like love and peace and happy.

i made a dozen of them, but i'm not sure that i'm finished as of yet. i was discussing it with husband and he had some good ideas. perhaps a sort of soft, plush jesus icon in the middle, since the mantra of certain subsets of the land of my birth these days is "more guns, more jesus." you don't get much more paradoxical than that. and it just might be the final title of my work.

it was very good to be making something again. i had missed it. i love that i had some scraps of gold and silver from long-ago making some pants for sabin, those shiny bits are just the right touch for my soft, cuddly guns.

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norwegian state broadcaster nrk implements quiz before comment policy to ensure that those leaving comments read and understood the article.

all news sites should do this.

norway for the win.

to be or not to be (danish)

a friend on facebook shared an interesting article yesterday. it's an interview with a german journalist who has lived in denmark for 15 years, is married to a dane and is raising danish-german children. unfortunately for most of my readers, it's in danish. but, i'll tell you the gist of it. the rhetoric in today's denmark is much like that in the uk, which recently precipitated their brexit vote - anti-immigration, anti-foreigner. when i came to denmark 18 years ago, it was easier, today, you have to put an obscene amount of money in a bank account and pass a high level danish test to achieve permanent residence. in my day, you married a dane, met up once a year at the immigration office for two years and then after three years, you were a permanent resident. in those days, there was talk of integration, not assimilation. that's all changed. the danish justice minister recently said that anyone coming here should "adopt danishness," with the implication that our original cultures should be obliterated and we should just give ourselves over to being danish (he's a bit thin on what exactly that entails, but it has something to do with paying taxes, eating pork and thinking christmas is december 24).

and like marc-christoph wagner, the german in the article, i think "no way!" i am, in many ways, less american than i once was, in the sense of being less loud, outgoing and open to talking to strangers. but where i was raised is imprinted in me in ways that i can never change. i just have to hear a cars song and i am transported to teenage summer nights, driving around with friends, singing along, the radio glowing green in the wide front seat of the car, windows open. talking about everything and nothing. sometimes all it takes is a scent to touch something deep inside me, triggering a flood of memories and a sense of who i was and where i grew up. while i have memories and songs and scents from denmark that do that for me as well after all these years, i can never and never want to, be free of the ones that stem from the culture where i grew up. to want to take that away and replace it with pork rinds and thinking that christmas is the 24th would be to try to erase who i am. not to mention that i don't even think it's possible.

i was thinking the other day, as i biked 16km across copenhagen (the stuff of another blog post), that denmark has changed a lot in the 18 years i've been here. when i came, people were more open, more prone to public nudity (sprawling out in their underwear in the parks and cemeteries at the first rays of sunshine), more rebellious (they had the highest percentage of women smokers in the developed world). it was ok to be proud of what you did for a living, whether you worked in an office or on an assembly line. that's all changed. now it's scandalous to go topless on a beach, men are hardly allowed to work in kindergartens for fear that if they hugged a crying child to comfort them, they would be seen as pedophiles. and everyone wants a career and not just a job. and there's a big rise in nationalist rhetoric and xenophobia. a few months ago, it was perfectly ok to stand on an overpass and spit down on the refugees as they come in, as some danes did down at the border with germany.

i realize it's not just denmark. it seems that the zeitgeist of the moment is right wing extremist madness. those with less education and less money are frightened and pressured all over the world and they are speaking out with their bigoted viewpoints and votes. it's what caused the brexit vote and the rise of a clown like donald trump. and it's why even politicians who once seemed sensible are saying increasingly awful things in the interest of remaining in power.

and as usual, i find myself out in the middle of the atlantic, wanting to feel neither danish nor american.

pondering the world she will inherit

four years ago at this time, this blog was filled with politics. after eight years of dubya, and with the colorful figure of sarah palin (i actually kinda miss her) involved, i just couldn't get politics off the brain. plus, the air was filled with hope and promise with obama in the race. now, four years later, i find i feel much less passionately about it. and i don't feel even a glimmer of hope. what i feel is an inability to comprehend and a great degree of fear for the world which my child will inherit.

that said, i think obama is getting a bad rap. memories are short as to the mess he was handed after eight years of dubya. no one really yet knew at that point what the financial crisis meant. i would postulate that we still don't fully know. but he does seem to be a bit mired down. partially in an uncooperative house and senate and partially in an overwhelming array of things gone wrong. there aren't any easy answers.

i am bewildered that anyone could possibly be against universal healthcare. just read this story by nicholas kristof and tell me it makes sense. we have universal health care in denmark and although i was frustrated last winter with my local doctor, that had far more to do with a lack of customer service-mindedness than it had to do with socialized medicine. it is an enormous relief to know that if something is wrong...sabin falling from her horse in a riding lesson...we don't have to hesitate to go to the ER to find out if her collar bone is broken. we don't even think twice (tho' next time, we will get food before we go there, as there can be a wait - but that's true of ERs everywhere and again, has nothing to do with socialized medicine).

i am puzzled that anyone accepts the rhetoric against women being spewed by the republican party. it is the twenty-first century and it's simply unacceptable that in the so-called developed world there should be any question about access to birth control or a woman's decision-making ability over her own body.

and how romney can be forgiven for his 47% statement, made to a group of people he was sure were like-minded. he has said outright that he has no respect for half of the population. he won't release his tax returns. and he doesn't give a single detail of any concrete plan. and his supporters and their shirts saying, "let's put the white back in the white house" are simply beyond shameful. how anyone with a functioning brain can consider voting for him is beyond me.

but i really, truly don't get people who should seriously not be voting republican - for example, because they are living in a lesbian partnership and work for the federal government on an indian reservation and until recently had a child that was in state-sponsored care in a home - are intending to do so. because that seriously makes no sense.

it's like there's another logic in play in the US, one to which i no longer have access.

but that said, i have cast my absentee ballot for obama. i think he's the best choice if i want the world to still be a place i can in good conscience hand over to my child. plus, i want my president to be smarter than me. and i'm sure he's that. i can't say the same for slippery mittens romney.

molly likes michelle

despite my distance from the US, i am keenly interested in the american election. i read extensively online and in our daily newspaper and we get the daily show with only one day's delay. i'll admit my viewpoint is filtered through the brilliance of jon stewart and his team. but that's mostly because it fits my political leanings anyway. liberal political leanings which have only been strengthened by 14 years of living in europe.

i have closely followed both last week's republican convention and this week's democratic one. it strikes me that there is a marked difference. last week's felt far more mean-spirited, but i will admit that the democrats have a hard time overcoming the bleak economic picture. it has been a hard slog, overcoming the mess that obama was handed by the dangerous war-mongering buffoonery of the bush administration (which people seem to forget), and admittedly, things aren't there yet.

molly and i watched both michelle obama's speech and bill clinton's speech in their entirety today. molly really liked michelle. and so did i. i found what she had to say beyond reproach and have been pleasantly surprised to see that there has been little criticism of her (at least from what i could find online). bill showed, once again, his particular brand of authentic charisma. he really is something. i loved the shots of chelsea sitting next to steve jobs' widow (interesting to see what that was about), looking proudly on at her father. he struck the right notes - he was honest, but real and convincing. and who else could make you listen, riveted, as he talked about medicare block grants? seriously, that man is a gifted speaker.

but honestly, i worry about the political rhetoric in the US. it seems so filled with hate these days. so polarized and extreme. things that don't seem like they are relevant issues - rape, abortion, gay marriage - to whether a person is qualified to be the president take up the forefront. my impression is that the democrats are at least trying to talk about the economy and the future in a more hopeful way, rather than spending time on lies (see Paul Ryan's speech), misrepresentations (again, Paul Ryan) and issues (see that asshole from Missouri) that are irrelevant.

but i think what's contributing to making this election seem like the worst, most vitriolic one ever is actually facebook. i'm simply astounded at some of my facebook friends. i mean, i knew a few of them watched fox news, but i wasn't clear on how much they believed it and how filled with hate they seem to be. and i simply don't understand it. how one can be in a same-sex relationship and work for the government and still be rabidly against the democratic platform i am at a loss to understand. and don't even get me started on those who simply cannot possibly afford to be republicans...

but bill's speech put the thoughts i was beginning to have about changing my passport (for all of my complaints about denmark, at least i don't ever feel i have to be ashamed of it and i've felt ashamed of america on more than one occasion recently as i watched or read the news (or the olympic coverage)) out of my head for now. but time will tell, i guess. and in the meantime, all i can do is vote (as many times as i can - that being the advantage of being registered to vote in chicago). 

i hope you will too. and when you do, i hope it will be for the good guys. because they're not yet done cleaning up the mess bush left.

back to the caves

i get my news largely from the newspaper and from online news sources like the new york times, the guardian and the huffington post, but also from radio station P1, the danish answer to NPR. i am also a devoted fan of jon stewart's daily show, which we get here in denmark, only one day behind. so, like many, i get my news from sources where i am likely to agree with the slant that's presented. and that's a problem of this increasingly online world we live in...we can isolate ourselves in enclaves of people who share our beliefs and our interests. less and less do we challenge ourselves to listen to views not in line with our own. i'm as guilty of it as anyone.

and so views and the expression thereof become increasingly strident and dramatic (see the streets of london, the recent massacre in norway and the behavior of the so-called "tea party" members in the US congress). and i'll admit that as an educated, liberal-thinking, left-leaning sort of person, i continue to think that arguing with those extremes is still somehow not worth it. the beliefs they spout seem to be so ridiculous as to be beneath argument ("intelligent" design? a new knights templar? a congressional "super" committee? please.).

but those of us who are educated and have the power to reason and articulate good arguments are going to have to start arguing. because what a lot of these groups appear to want to do is to completely turn back modernism and possibly even all of the gains made after the enlightenment, taking us back to something resembling the dark ages, but with really cool electronics.  

take just the tea party conservatives....they're against abortion, homosexuality, humanitarianism, taxes, welfare, the environment. they're for the bible, guns, the death penalty, censorship and the general surveillance of society. what they preach is a fundamentalism not unlike the fundamentalism preached by breivik in norway and even members of al quaeda, who are also largely against that same list of things. and what's worrying is that, like al quaeda, the tea party appears to be shouting loudly and are well-funded.

if we're not careful, we'll find ourselves clubbed over the head and dragged back to the caves by our hair. i don't know about you, but i'm not keen on that...