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.

fragment from 2013

janteloven (the law of jante) is what you might call the general danish philosophy to live by. and apparently it turns 80 years old this year. it comes from a book written by danish-norwegian author aksel sandemose, who, despite being born and dying in denmark, moved to norway for long enough to be deemed norwegian instead of danish. apparently after a stay in denmark he noticed that the following ten "laws" appear to be the general philosophy.

1. you shouldn't think you are anything (du skal ikke tro, du er noget.)
2. you shouldn't think that you're as much as we are. (du skal ikke tro, at du er lige så meget som os.)
3. you shouldn't believe that you're smarter than we are. (du skal ikke tro, at du er klogere end os.)
4. you shouldn't kid yourself that you're better than us. (du skal ikke bilde dig ind, at du er bedre end os.)
5. you shouldn't believe you know more than us. (du skal ikke tro, at du ved mere end os.)
6. you shouldn't believe that you are more than us. (du skal ikke tro, at du er mere end os.)
7. you shouldn't believe you're good for anything. (du skal ikke tro, at du dur til noget.)
8. you shouldn't laugh at us. (du skal ikke le ad os.)
9. you shouldn't believe that anyone likes you. (du skal ikke tro, at nogen bryder sig om dig.)
10. you shouldn't think you can teach us anything. (du skal ikke tro, at du kan lære os noget.)

-----

a fragment begun 11/5.2013 and never published. unfinished thoughts. growing dusty among my drafts.

once again, something is rotten in the state of the danish medical system

it has, once again, become necessary to write a biting letter of complaint to my local doctor's office. i have only stripped the full names from this version, but otherwise, it's as i delivered it to the doctor's office today, capital letters and all. i'm putting it here so i remember what happened and when. sadly, it probably won't be the last such letter i have write. if you want a bit of insight into the danish socialized medical system, read on...

Dear Lægehuset,

It’s been awhile since my last letter to you (that was back in March 2012). I hoped I wouldn't have to write another one, but it seems that I do.

I have had contact with your office on a number of occasions over the past week, due to severe and debilitating pain in my back. Because I knew from past experience that it likely wouldn’t end well, I actually visited the physiotherapist/chiropractor during the efterårsferie, when the issues began, instead of calling your office. However, when the problem took a turn for the worse last week, I had to call. I was, unfortunately, not at home when the problem started, so the first calls were on the phone - one with the assistance of a chiropractor in Copenhagen and the second one (which actually took more than 5 separate telephone calls and a nauseating amount of “ik' aws” from the secretaries to accomplish) myself on Friday, October 30. The first two calls resulted in prescriptions for Diclofenac and Tradolan, neither of which seem to be even remotely effective against severe back pain. (You’d think that you, being the doctors, should know that.)

On Monday, when I returned home, I called for an appointment and saw dr. MM. He took my pain rather lightly and sent me on my merry way to the physiotherapist with very little advice or insight into what might have caused my problem. Happily, the local physiotherapist is much more thorough and professional and dare I say, interested in his work (you all could maybe take a lesson from him on that front). He put me through a battery of tests and explained that he was pretty sure I had a slipped disc at #4 (up higher than the usual slipped disc), and said that I needed an MR scan to confirm it. Luckily, he made the next phone call to dr. MM and I was put into the system for a scan immediately. The physiotherapist also recommended that I have a steroid blocker put into the secondary issue of bursitis in my hip and sent me back over to the doctor’s office to get that, so that I could at least have a little relief from the pain.

Naturally, your office gave me absolutely no information on what the next steps regarding the scan would be. So, I called again on Tuesday during telephone hours and was huffily told that your office had nothing to do with scheduling, but I could call the x-ray clinic at the local hospital and ask (looking up the number myself, as no number was offered). It might have been an idea to give me this information when I stopped by on Monday afternoon to make the appointment for the bursitis block. I sincerely can’t imagine that I’m the only patient who would like information about what’s next and when it will take place. It doesn’t seem too much to ask, and yet, inexplicably, it is.

But, where things got really bad was yesterday when I came to my appointment for the bursitis block injection. I saw dr. TVM, tho’ funnily enough I don’t know his name from him presenting himself to me, I had to look it up on your website. I knew it didn’t bode well when he called my name from across the room and then didn’t even wait for me or greet me with a handshake until I had managed to find which room he’d gone into, far ahead of me. He could surely see that I was in severe pain and not able to walk quickly, but that didn’t matter. He was also very dismissive of whether I needed the shot and at first indicated that he wouldn’t give it to me. But, after checking my hip, he realised there was an acute need and agreed to give the shot. However, he just went and got a needle and the steroid, asked me to point out with my finger where it hurt most and then stuck the needle in and blindly shoved it around in a haphazard manner - not even using ultrasound equipment to find the correct spot as would be NORMAL and INDICATED and STANDARD PROCEDURE in such an instance. Then, without giving me a bandaid to cover the site of the injection, which was disturbingly leaking quite a bit of clear liquid, or letting me know that I could get dressed, he just went back to his desk AND OPENED THE DOOR TO THE HALLWAY. I wasn’t even dressed and furthermore, I was feeling very unwell from the pain and needed to lie down for a few minutes, but he was in a hurry to just get me the hell out of there. I was shocked, but in too much pain and feeling to unwell to protest.

I tried to ask about how I should remain still on my back for the MRI the next day, when I couldn’t lay flat on my back due to the pain. He just dismissed it and said I could try taking two of my Tradolan tablets ahead of the scan. This, despite me telling him that the Tradolan wasn’t effective in taking away my pain, except perhaps the top 10% of it. He just could not wait for me to leave that room and he was unafraid to show it.

When I got out to the counter, where I had to inexplicably pay 50kr for something or other that was inadequately explained (a clean needle? perhaps otherwise we’d have reused an old one on the foreigner?), I became very unwell while I was standing there waiting. I said, in Danish, to the secretary that I needed to sit down. She apparently didn’t hear me and came storming out the door into the waiting room after me, asking what was going on. I must have been white as a sheet and looking very unwell, but she insistently and loudly asked what was wrong, as if I were a small, dull child. There was no discretion and no kindness in it. I realise the office staff are not medical personnel, but it wouldn’t hurt to have a bit of bedside manner when you’re dealing with people who are already feeling ill or who might be in severe pain. Instead, I felt embarrassed and singled out by her loud, gruff treatment in front of the whole waiting room of patients.

Is this really the way you wish to treat your patients, or is it just the non-Danes? I admit I can’t help but think that my accent has something to do with the way I am treated like a second-class citizen. I would note that although I feel the need to write these all-too-frequent letters to you in English, I speak Danish when I’m at the office and have been in Denmark for 18 years, so I have a certain level of fluency. It also means that I have not misunderstood the way I’ve been treated. And I find it completely unacceptable.

You can feel free to call me if you wish to discuss in more detail. But, in any case, I’ll be eagerly awaiting word of what steps you will take to improve your interactions with your patients.

books as yet unwritten

a couple of books on denmark by expats (i know, we're not supposed to use that word anymore, thanks to its colonial, possibly racist overtones) have come out recently -  a year of living danishly and the danish way of parenting . both are getting quite a lot of press. and it makes me regret that i've not written more than a string of blog posts in my feeble attempts to understand the danes. however, i think there are still other books to be written. in fact, right now, as we speak, i'm plotting one on the danes' uncanny and impressive ability to drink exactly the right amount to maintain the perfect buzz for 12 hours straight (it's how they get through christmas). i can surely do much better than you suck at drinking, tho' you have to admire a book that advises exactly how much to drink at a children's party...

thank goodness the election season is only three weeks

nothing to see here...

today is the danish election and fittingly, DR, the national media concern, has depicted the past four years in LEGO - pretty fitting since the female prime minister has had her share of botox and thus looks pretty authentic immortalized in plastic. i can't vote in the national election, since i'm not a citizen (tho' i can vote in the municipal and regional elections), but i've followed it quite closely and husband is going to spend all day as a monitor at the polling place, because finally, at the age of 50, he joined a political party. he is, however, not going to vote for that party. or so he says. there are so many parties in danish politics that it's hard for me to know who i'd vote for (probably the radikale, as they are the well-educated, sensible ones).

mostly i'm grateful that the danish election cycle is only three weeks from the government in power calling the election to voting day, so the vitriol and madness are short-lived. there are some things about denmark that are definitely better. as of september this year, denmark will allow dual citizenship and so i just might go for it and be able to vote the next time elections come 'round.

100 happy days :: day 92

zoomed in, low light photo, but you get the idea.

there's an election on in denmark.

and lotte rod apparently selected her name from the porn name generator.

that seriously cracks me up.

i might be simple like that.

but that doesn't make it less hilarious.

taking the time

we've had an unseasonably cool spring. but at last the beech leaves have sprung forth. there is no color of green quite like it. i pulled over today on my way home and took a little walk in the woods, to soak it all in. some days, when you're feeling down and everything seems like too much and you have a dull headache, you need to do that. to indulge in the moment. to take the time. to breathe. to soak it all in. to let go of it all and just be.

while i was making dinner, i watched the first two parts of a documentary on loneliness that DR has made. the last episode will be broadcast this evening and i saw an ad for it yesterday and realized that a person who i know is one of the lonely people. well, i actually, i don't know her, i've just seen her around. when i got involved in my community culture house, she was there at that first meeting as well and wanted to be involved. but somehow, she didn't make it onto the board. i've seen her since a few times, also in connection with the culture house - she bought some cool chairs when we had the big sale before we emptied the building, so i know that we'd have that in common. but still, tho' i chatted with her about the chairs, we didn't really take it any further or become friends. and now there she is, on a program where she is standing forward and admitting that she's lonely. that some days the only people she talks to are at the grocery store. and it fills me with sadness. everyone wants to make a human connection, but somehow, we are so full of ourselves and our own lives that we don't do it. especially here in denmark, where there are few of the casual conversations you can fall into if you're waiting for a bus or in the checkout line if you're in the US. and that lack of interaction has consequences. like a woman being so lonely that she's willing to go on television and say so. right here in the happiest place on earth. (that last sentence is in the sarcasm font.)

and it feels a bit like all of the walks in a beautiful, bright green spring forest won't make it better. we need to do more. we need to really see one another. acknowledge one another. interact. be more open. talk to each other. say hello to our neighbors. drink a cup of coffee. chat. take the time.

expectations will kick you every time

i am in need of a bit of wonder woman's fearlessness at the moment.

i put myself in a situation this evening which made me realize that i'm still feeling pretty wounded. i went with a friend to sing with a little countryside gospel choir. i went with high hopes to be energized and filled with happiness by soulful gospel music and i'm afraid that didn't happen. and to be honest, i didn't know that i expected that until it didn't happen. expectations can really ruin things.

it started with the usual round of shaking everyone's hand, which always wrong-foots me. it's an aspect of danish culture that i never really get used to or comfortable with. going around a room, shaking hands with strangers and saying your name is, in fact, a really good idea, but it makes me wildly uncomfortable, even after all these years. then, i ended up standing with my friend, who was standing with the sopranos. i'm an alto and was told, rather rudely, in my opinion, that i needed to go to the other side. we hadn't been singing in parts at the time and crossing the half circle, in front of everyone, after being rather summarily sent over there, felt like a statement on my singing ability. "get over there because i can't stand the sound of your voice next to me." it probably wasn't meant that way, but it definitely felt that way.  and it took me awhile to talk myself out of my prickly reaction. truthfully, i never fully shook it off, especially as it felt like the part of the circle i found myself in kept pushing me back and kept me a step out of it.

the songs we were singing didn't help. they were all unfamiliar, difficult arrangements and for the first one, we didn't have the music. i'm a music reader. i need to see the actual notes on the page, i don't do well just listening and humming along at first. and it wasn't like the others knew the songs either, they were new for all. and it wasn't the warm, familiar songs i had expected. see, there're those expectations again. they creep in, even when you don't even know they're there, spoiling the experience.

the second song should have been familiar (happy day), but it was a new arrangement that was very different and difficult. at least we had the music to look at, but with three parts - soprano, alto and tenor, and varying ability of those there to follow the sheet music, i felt bewildered at times, thinking i was the only one in the room reading the actual notes on the page and that all of the others were in on this alternative method of reading music that i didn't know about. leaving me once again feeling vulnerable and slightly rejected.

not what i wanted to feel at the gospel choir.

i wanted to enter a room of people who were open and warm, or who had been opened up and warmed through by the familiar, energizing gospel music of my cultural background (this was a reasonable expectation, right?). because although i am a midwestern white girl, i do know gospel music when i hear it. and i wanted to give myself over to that energy and soul and warmth. and it simply wasn't there in a little parish house in denmark full of middle aged white women and a couple of men. and i am undoubtedly a middle-aged white woman as well, so maybe i shouldn't talk. but, i think you can take the gospel out of the US, but you can't retain the soul of it so far from its origins, especially if you have danish composers creating their disjointed version of it. one song was seriously like four very different genres smooshed together into one and it was downright disorienting. again, not the energy and comfort i was looking for.

tonight, i was reminded that i am wounded and it made me sad. and left me with that old familiar mid-atlantic feeling. i'll grant that i would be too white trying to sing with a real gospel choir in the states, but i can't even fit in with one here. so i'm left alone, somewhere in between.

i don't know why in these moments that i can't summon the energy to dive in and sing along on the happy day solo part, giving some of the energy to the room that i was wishing it would give to me. i don't know where my confidence has gone. and i don't really know how to recover it.

my inner wonder woman, where are you when i need you?

how do you resist the borg?

every year, i bristle at the tyranny of the gift list in denmark and every year, i swallow and succumb to it. they're like the borg*. and i've even become so assimilated that i passed along my child's gift list, including a bunch of links, to my sister in the states. much to her quite understandable dismay. the child, now a teenager, is hard to buy for and only likes very specific things. so that's why i passed along the list this year. but i'll admit that i hate it. with a passion. and i feel i should be raising her better than that. and i'm disappointed in myself for sending the list. i think i'm pretty much completely failing as a parent because of this.

i hate as well that i've been given a gift list for our nephews (not my sister's children) and i've gone out dutifully, if grudgingly, and purchased the desired items. and i didn't enjoy it. and i won't enjoy giving those gifts. because it's just a sterile transaction, it didn't require any thought on my part and it didn't require that i knew anything about them, nor will it evoke any delight in me to watch them open the item from their list. there's no surprise or moment of excitement on either side of the transaction. it's just that, a transaction. and i have to say that i think it really sucks. it's hollow and consumerist and well, lame. and every year i vow i won't do it.  and yet here i am once again, going through the expected motions. cultural norms are hard to resist. and i am apparently far too weak in the face of them.

actual meaningful gift which i made for my dad last year for christmas.
i imagine mom is snuggled up under it right now and that makes me happy.

but i realize that this gift thing isn't about me. it's about the receiver. but i have to wonder if they really appreciate just automatically getting the things they asked for. where is the delight? the surprise? the joy? i suspect it's absent on their side as well. case in point? i made the blanket above for my dad for christmas last year and he loved it. and it was not something he asked for. but it was perfect for him and it was handmade, so score all around.

but back to the tyranny of the danish gift list...now that christmas doesn't really mean what it once meant, but is just a consumerist holiday and we are living in a society that equates needs and wants and just buys whatever we think we need when we need it, rather than waiting to receive things as gifts, do we really need this gift charade?

i've said previously that i'd much rather stumble across something in the course of the year and give it to the person in question, out of the blue. but do i act on that? no, i haven't. but maybe i should start. maybe 2015 will be when i start.

*star trek: the next generation reference. get it or get over it.

condolences...or lack thereof

why do we have such a hard time talking about death? why all the euphemisms? passed away. passed on. why is it so hard to say someone has died? is it because it seems so harsh. so final. so cruel somehow. it seems that people just don't know what to say about it, so they try to package it inside more delicate words, like it will make it better that you don't have a father anymore. but it doesn't. and while you dread the next condolences, you also feel it acutely when they're not there from people who probably should say something to you, if only as a formality because it's the first time they've seen you since it happened. and then it's kind of worse if they go on and on about two recent funerals they attended, without even acknowledging that you've had one yourself. one to which you flew across an ocean to another country. that's just weird. and it hurts more than you would think. you're even a little surprised yourself how callous and hurtful it seemed, even tho' you realize it probably wasn't meant that way.

but then there are those who have precisely the right words for you. warm words about how happy they were to have had the chance to meet him and how much they enjoyed that. and others who just hug you and ask the right questions. and that makes it ok. or as ok as it can be.

but you do wonder if it will ever really be ok.

and you also wonder why a picture of a church seemed right with this post when you're not even remotely religious. but church buildings provide the frame for the ceremonies of life...baptisms, weddings and funerals. and maybe there is something to that.

what is danishness?

today's (yesterday's?) jyllands posten (you may remember them from a certain set of mohammed cartoons) had an article about a study suggesting that danes think the biggest problem with foreigners is that they don't understand and embrace danish values. i wouldn't have known about the article, not being a reader of jyllands posten, but i was contacted by my radio crush to be part of a radio program about the article this evening.

so i dashed into 7-11 and bought their last copy of the paper, which oddly, they had hidden in a back room, and i prepared for the program. what struck me about the article was that it was unclear what these danish values that we foreigners apparently reject are. that was completely unstated in the survey where people had come up with that answer and it wasn't until halfway through the second article about it, on page 6, that a list of values even was mentioned. they included things like democracy, equality, valuing work and the vague "personal freedom." those strike me as pretty universal and not exactly uniquely danish. western, perhaps or even protestant, but difficult to narrow down to a particular nationality.

after talking with the journalist, i decided to think about danishness instead and see if some values fell out of that. what are the things that strike me as so danish after all these years? a lot of workplace behaviors came to mind - like the fact that it's ok to have a conversation with the boss and to even grill him (and i do mean him, since that whole equality thing isn't as pervasive as they might like it to seem) a little bit during that conversation, regardless of your position in the firm. i've not really seen that outside of denmark. leaving at 3 p.m. to pick up your kids and having no one look askance at you. wearing a kind of monochrome (read: black) uniform for most of the year, outside of a few wild weeks of summer, where everyone breaks out the summer wardrobe they purchased back in the late 80s and which never wore out, due to the limited use it's had, and embraces a kind of retro madness during the warm weather. and then there's the full calendars which quash all hope of spontaneity because you need to book someone for a dinner party at least two months ahead, even tho' you have no idea if you'll be in the mood to have people over for dinner two months from now.  and then there's the design thing - it's important to have the right lamps (PH) and chairs (Arne Jacobsen) and couch (Borge Mortensen) and table (Piet Hein) (see, i even had so much respect i capitalized their names). of course, that design thing creates a uniformity in homes, that while it's in good taste, ends up quite sterile, impersonal and, dare i say it...boring. (yes, i dared to say it, tho' i myself have Hans Wegner and Kaare Klint chairs and some Tom Rossou lamps, plus the fabulous Triplex lamp). (i wonder if that means i'm integrated?)

and this sameness in design principles and clothing got me thinking about that supposed value of "personal freedom." if there were really personal freedom, we'd have the space in which to choose other chairs and lamps and you'd see more variety in the clothing shops (there's a great deal of black, i can tell you). so i wonder how much personal freedom there actually is. there is, of course, personal freedom in terms of one's right to be gay or to have an abortion and those are important things, but again, they are true many places and aren't uniquely danish.

so i'm still wondering what these danish values are that we foreigners are so reluctant to adopt...and why it's such a source of worry for the danes. perhaps if they got better at communicating and outwardly sharing their real, core values (and not just a bunch of stuff that could be from a UN pamphlet), we'd have an easier time adapting to them.

what would homer do?

i came home to an email from the school principal today. i've written previously about the shocking lack of communication skills displayed in these emails and today's was no exception. if i were working on a ph.d. in rhetoric, these mails would be absolutely fascinating. as it is, i'm a parent of a child who is in a class with what is essentially (and unfortunately) a really bad, weak teacher, so the mail is more worrying than fascinating.

for some time now (school started in what, august, so approximately 9 months) this teacher has had trouble controlling the classroom. she hasn't been able to gain the respect of the students at all and they are often noisy and restless during her lessons (which are danish and history). oddly, this class seems to respect their other teachers, but that's curiously not mentioned in the mail from the principal.

today, this poor teacher apparently had enough and gave up and left the classroom in tears after saying to the class that they could just go home and laugh about her with their parents. when i heard that, i was definitely not laughing, as it seems to me to be a very sad and revealing statement from a frustrated teacher who feels desperately unsupported in her work. the kids reported that she went to the principal's office and had a good cry.

in the meantime, the principal came down to the class and sat them down and had a talk with them about, as near as i can tell from her email, soccer and drippy faucets. because vague metaphors really speak to the 7th grade mind.

the email assures us that she has turned off the drippiest of the faucets and that all will be just hunky dory going forward because the students have understood the gravity of...erm...leaky faucets. whether the school understands that they have a problem and need to give extra support to a teacher that's clearly floundering in her work is less clear. and whether they further understand that respect between students and teachers is something that must be earned or commanded through force of personality, is also unclear. actually, i'm being sarcastic; it's pretty clear that they don't understand that at all.

they also don't seem to have made the connection that this class, which is largely composed of the same students as it was last year, over at the elementary school, was not a problem then and isn't a problem for other teachers at the middle school. and that therefore, it stands to reason that maybe the teacher is the problem.

i don't want to kick someone when they're down, but a teacher who has struggled with what is arguably an easygoing group of young people for nine months without success clearly has a problem. when she begins airing the dirty laundry of personal problems at home in class, including that her son is hearing voices, and that she's struggling with health issues after a lung transplant, it is quite possibly the equivalent of waving a big red flag. young teenagers have enough troubles of their own dealing with puberty and all of the changes wrought by that, without having the unexplained symptoms of their teacher's child brought into the mix. what are they supposed to do with such information? how are they supposed to react? will it make them worry? will they wonder what it means? why on earth would you as the teacher tell that to your 13-year-old students? how can she not see how wildly inappropriate that is? why is the filter switched off (just to bring in a metaphor, ala the principal)? and why is the school not effectively supporting a teacher that's so clearly in need of some serious support?

but i'm not sure what i can do about it. i could write a mail to the principal, expressing my concerns and she'd fob off a few more dissertation-worthy metaphors on me and nothing would change. i could send her a link to this blog post, but she would probably just think i'm a big meanie (really, i'm trying to work out what i think about it, and this is how i do that).

i spent some time this evening, looking at the website of a nearby private school, as that's my way of feeling that i might be able to change things. but what i really want is for this school to clean up its act. i want them to start communicating in an honest and open way and face the problem head-on. and i want them to either provide a whole lot more support to this floundering teacher or i want them to remove her and promise me that she's not going to be my child's homeroom (and danish and history) teacher next year. in other words, i want them to grab hold of the reins. we pay an awful lot of taxes and frankly, they owe us that.

i don't know what homer simpson would do in such a case. i'm not sure he'd much notice. but if he did, i think he'd be fiercely loyal to his children and go in and demand the best for them, even if he did it a bit clumsily. so maybe i should do what homer would do. my own little lisa's future might very well depend upon it.

*like how i made that photo fit the post right there in the very last second? 

religion and culture intertwine

we didn't baptize sabin as a baby. i was reminded today, during easter services at the local church, why we didn't baptize her. there were two babies being baptized and in both cases, when the minister asked the question of whether the child believed in god and accepted the whole jesus christ story, the mother answered "yes" on the child's behalf. so two children were indoctrinated into a faith without having any say in it or knowledge of it themselves. which is precisely what i didn't want for sabin. i wanted her to understand and accept for herself when the time came. it's what my parents did for me (tho' i'm not sure if it was on purpose on their part or if baptizing the baby just wasn't really in fashion back then in the late 60s presbyterian church). whatever the reason, i am grateful and have done the same for sabin.

after the baptism part of the service was over, one of the families just left and didn't stay for the rest of the easter service. that struck me as a little bit harsh. kind of like a drive-in baptism. let's get it over with and get on to our party (and most importantly, our gifts). the grandparents sneaked out during the next song, as they missed out on leaving when the family themselves left.

the minister himself, a down-to-earth fellow who clearly didn't feel like shaving this morning (or possibly yesterday morning), despite it being probably the most important christian holiday, took it in stride, seeming not to even notice. he went on with his sermon. it was an easter sermon, of course, based on the reading of the easter story from one of the gospels (i'm not a biblical scholar, so don't ask me which one). it was the verse where the marys find jesus' tomb empty and there is talk of an earthquake and the appearance of an angel. he talked about how in the orthodox faith, people take it quite literally and on easter, greet one another with "he is risen, praise be, he is risen," or something along those lines.

he seemed quite cognizant of the fact that in today's denmark, people don't take the gospel quite so much as, well...gospel. it's more of a story and a culture and a metaphor that something bigger than us is there for us. we have chosen, in our culture, to call it jesus and god and the holy spirit, but what really matters is that this is a story that endures through the ages. and that, if we let it, it has the capacity to be a comfort to us in the midst of all of our other personal crises - deaths of those close to us, divorce, losing jobs, and the like. and somehow, it felt like he was ok with the family leaving after the baptism of their child, fully aware of the purposes the church serves in danish culture and his contribution to it. and the church was full (we and about a dozen others actually sat in extra chairs in the aisle, because every pew was filled), so he must derive some satisfaction from that.

confirmation is a big thing when you're a 7th grader in denmark. the preparations are held as part of the school day (thursday mornings from 8-9:30) throughout the school year, so if you should choose not to be part of it (which you are free to do), you would just go to school late that day. but i've told you about this before, so i won't rehash it all here. suffice it to say that sabin has chosen to be confirmed, which means that today, she had to be baptized. she's a teenager, so she didn't want to make a public spectacle out of it, so we arranged to do the baptism after today's easter service. i've had my issues with this minister, since he made sabin feel negated since he hadn't married, buried and baptized her family for four generations before meeting her at the first confirmation preparation course, but i have to say he won me over today with his pragmatic sermon and his scruffy beard. he was kind to her and understanding of her teenager-y angst about not being on public display. he talked to her kindly and when she answered for herself that she was accepting the christian faith, it was ok.

some part of me wishes she had chosen not to do it, mostly because as i heard those mothers accepting on behalf of their children today during the service, i thought about what a hard time i would have had, standing there lying in a church. because although i'm also raised in the tradition, i don't think i believe in it all in the same way anymore. but i believe she has gone into this with open eyes and that what she has accepted is to be an active part of the culture in which she is raised and in the western cultural tradition as a whole. i am also confident that she is an enlightened young woman and she is aware that the bible is a collection of stories with a historical basis and which are metaphors for meditation on the larger questions of life. we didn't baptize her because we wanted her to choose for herself and now she has, which is precisely what we wanted for her, that she would be the one to choose, not us. and next weekend, along with the rest of her peers and social group, she will be confirmed, not only into the church, but into the culture.

and there is something special about the ceremony of it all. i think that we, as humans, need ceremony in our lives. ceremonies around the different junctures - marriage, birth, puberty, winter and spring transitions and yes, death. the christian religion gives us that. and maybe that's not all bad.

the kitsch of clichés

clichés go down better when painted on driftwood

i had an experience this evening which is increasingly bewildering to me, the more i ponder it. it was a supposedly inspirational talk by a self-styled "poetic clown, philosophical humorist or humorous philosopher, a spiritual pirate who juggles words like a verbal bubblebath." you might guess that these are direct translations from his own description of himself. well, this aging hippie (they're all aging now, aren't they?), spent nearly two hours rattling off the most astonishing array of aphorisms and clichés (is there a difference?) heard outside of a stephen covey seminar, all while sprinkling this oral diarrhea with sexist jokes and read-aloud newspaper clippings shown on an overhead projector. the overhead projector i could have dealt with as a kind of hipster retro thing, but it seemed quite unironically meant. i think it may have represented the extent of his technological capabilities.

here are a few of the gems i managed to scribble down before i was overcome by incredulousness at what i was hearing...and bear in mind that they were just spouted ad nauseum, without any real connection.

"how can you have a comeback if you've never been anywhere?"

"without cultural ballast, you can't navigate a life."

"they know the price of everything but the value of nothing."

"it's healthy to live for fun but no fun to live healthily."

"the direction is more important than the speed."

"we've got short-term politicians and long-term problems." (i'll grant that this one rings a little bit true.)

"get up in the morning with expectations and go to bed with experiences."

there were many, many more, a dizzying array more. each more clichéd than the last.

but most worrying of all was the audience's reaction. they. loved. it. they were rolling on the floor laughing. they ate it up, like it was porridge drenched in butter, cream and fresh maple syrup. and it was about as stickily sweet as that. even worse, several people i talked to said they found him so inspiring. i do wonder what they were inspired to do (other than slit their wrists or bite down on the cyanide capsule)? i weep for the world. are we really so unreflected as that? do we really want to be spoon-fed pap delivered rapid fire and supposedly disguised as sage advice?

they lined up during the break to plop down $30 (150kr) on his book, in which he had collected even more aphorisms. he also had planks of driftwood (see above) with aphorisms painted on them in 70s style hand-lettering (that, at least, i could appreciate, the hand-lettered type, not the clichés). i don't think he sold any of those, but i'm also not sure he was trying to, as they belonged to some old wooden boat he has, which he said "sails around with a load of thoughts." as if. a load of shite, more like.

why do people seem to need such easy clichés and what on earth about them makes people characterize them as inspiring? if they were really inspiring, we'd all go home and change our lives...begin painting our own thoughts on driftwood (oh wait, i already do that) and go dancing through the grocery store (one of his suggestions). but no one is really going to do that.

these things are a bit like horoscopes, we can reflect whatever cares are on our minds onto them, picking and choosing the ones that we feel really speak to us. but why do we want to be spoken to in such platitudes? and why do they seem to make people feel so good? the mood afterwards was buoyant and people really felt entertained and inspired. except for me. i was shocked at all of the degrading comments he made about women (they can be home secretary but never foreign secretary was just one) and far more horrified than inspired. in fact i wasn't inspired at all. really pretty much just disappointed in my fellow townspeople. how on earth could they buy into such kitsch?

am i just a total snob or is there really something wrong with the world?

the winter (and the service) that wasn't

i was driving a small back road today, just for a change of pace and unexpectedly came upon the tørskind grusgrav sculpture park. we've been there before, so it shouldn't have been so unexpected. i was just coming at it from the other way, so i didn't realize i was on that road. it's dramatic enough, being out there in the middle of nowhere, but there was something even more dramatic about it on this dreary, snowy, tho' now drizzling rain, melting fast sort of a day (it seems real winter will never come this year). it also helped the drama that there wasn't anyone else there. i did make this picture black & white in iPhoto, but i very nearly didn't need to, as the scene itself was quite starkly black and white.

i tried to go to the tax office, new contract in hand, to file the changes to my taxes for the coming year and i found out that they do not allow visits anymore. you can actually no longer talk to a real, live person who works for the danish tax authorities in person without a letter from god. one of the nice employees came to the door as i was standing there, reading their microscopic sign, bewildered at the concept. she all but admitted that it was quite ridiculous. she said i could call and have someone help me on the phone. i asked if anyone would really answer and she said, "if you're lucky." i suppose it's a money-saving measure to save on actually staffing the tax offices with qualified people who are able to answer your questions. if you can just have a couple of phone answerers trained to do that, then you've undoubtedly saved a lot of money. but i find it yet another example of the utterly dismal attitude towards being service-minded in this country.  and it's rather disappointing because we do indeed pay an awful lot of tax.

a couple of little rants about the rubbish service culture in denmark

christmas is over and we're in the liminal space, waiting for the year to end and the new one to begin. i went to bed with wet hair and woke up with what my mother would call a fright wig. and somehow, it's all making me feel rather ranty.

rant #1: post danmark

in the week before christmas, i received a ransom letter from post danmark, saying they were holding a christmas package hostage until i (as receiver of a package i had not yet seen) sent more information about the contents. they assigned the package a number and said it contained, "støvler, tæj, mm" from the USA and that it weighed 4 kilos. they did not say who sent it, nor was i able, even after asking google translate for help, to figure out what "tæj" was. so, i guessed that it was the christmas parcel from my sister and that they boots were the doc martens she got sabin for her present. so, i asked her for the receipt and sent it dutifully (pun intended) to post danmark.

i heard nothing. and more nothing. for a week.

so today i called and asked how it was going. they claimed to have sent me a letter (probably via post danmark, so its chances of reaching me are slim) saying i hadn't provided documentation for the other items - the mystery "tæj" and the equally mysterious "mm," which is the danish equivalent of "etc." since i am the receiver of the package, i have not yet seen the items which are in it, therefore, it's hard for me to document them unless you specify what the hell they are. why isn't this just common sense for post danmark?

the nice lady on the phone today could see that this was a problem. so she took my number and they are supposed to get back to me today. meanwhile, their own limit of 14 days is quickly passing and even tho' i've been in touch (twice now, once in writing and once on the phone), they will likely send the package back to my sister before it's all finished. and then she can resend it and we can start all over again.

oh, the joys of customer service in denmark.

rant #2: bus #214, licence plate TD 92845, tide bus company, driving for sydtrafik in denmark

a few days before school was out, it was a dark and foggy morning. i was right behind the bus as i dropped sabin off at school. he was in quite a hurry and gunned it away down the little side street by the school. there were two small boys on their bicycles, wobbily making their way out to the big street, where they waited to cross. the bus was right beside them and wanted to turn right. there was quite a lot of traffic and, i may have mentioned, it was very foggy and still very dark. so the boys were cautiously waiting to be sure they could cross the road with their bicycles. well, mr. important bus driver decided to help them in their decision to cross the road by beginning to honk his big, giant bus horn at them. they were wobbly and unsure anyway and the honk nearly scared them off their bikes. it did, however, also scare them into action, and he saved the 30 extra seconds it would have taken to wait for them to cross on their initiative, but decided to try to make it up for it by gunning it and roaring off down the street.

i was so taken aback, that i noted the license number of the bus and came home and wrote to tide, the company running those buses, asking them to tell their driver to be a little kinder to children in traffic near a school. they wrote back telling me that since i wasn't involved, they were going to ignore my message.

yup. danish service culture at its best.

rant #3: the hunt for the christmas turkey

danes eat pork roast and duck for christmas. turkey is unusual, but not impossible to source. most grocery stores have a frozen bird in their freezer case. ten days before christmas, i checked my local store and found their frozen turkeys were the size of large chickens (4200 grams was the largest - that's about 8 pounds). so i went over to the butcher counter and asked if they could get me a larger bird. the guy dismissed me with a snort, rolling his eyes at me, saying if i wanted a turkey, i should have ordered it 3 months ago. very helpful and service-minded. (that was the sarcasm font, by the way.) and way to go, super brugsen in give (i've got more examples of your lack of service mindedness, but i'll save them for another post).

so i began checking all of the other grocery stores and butchers in my area, driving to several other towns in the process. all to no avail, there were no turkeys of reasonable size available, frozen or fresh. then a friend sent me a link to a butcher in vejle (why didn't i think of that), which claimed to have a turkey that would serve 10 people left. i called them and asked if it was true. they said they had one bird left and mentioned to me that it was already stuffed with a mixture of minced pork and cream, but it was a fresh turkey, not horrendously expensive (at 440 kroner/$80) and i was desperate, so i ordered it.

and on christmas, i took it out and put it in the pan, thinking it looked a little strange, but i chalked that up to the pork stuffing and put it in the oven. while it was cooking, it smelled much more like pork than turkey, but i could live with that. then, the weirdest thing happened. i asked my sister-in-law, who is a trained butcher, to do the honors and carve it. and she discovered that except for legs and wings, it had been completely deboned! a boneless turkey for christmas. i find it a little funny that the butcher didn't think to mention that little fact to me. and how can i make soup now with no turkey carcass?

that said, it was delicious and moist. i had been a little worried that since it was stuffed, i couldn't brine it and make it tender, but the pork did the trick as well. and that pork stuffing was also delicious. and without the bones, it was much easier to slice, but i still find it rather weird and won't be repeating it.

and now, i feel amazingly better, having gotten that out of my system. thank you for reading!

helle thorning-schmidt behaves like a teenager at the mandela memorial service

"hey, wait a minute, i recognize you, aren't you barack obama." 

the danish prime minister helle thorning-schmidt must have been deemed pretty expendable to get a seat next to obama at the mandela memorial service. i'm sure no one could have predicted her schoolgirl behavior, flirting and laughing with obama throughout the service

it must have gotten so bad that michelle decided she had to separate them. helle was likely furiously texting her gay husband (who lives in switzerland), "you shoulda been here, stephen, obama is hot!"

i guess this will be the photo that justifies the OED's choice of "selfie" as the word of the year. it's really true, everyone is doing selfies.

these photos are circulating the interwebs, but i found them here (with a little help from my sister).

updated to include this, where obama tries to get michelle's forgiveness for the flirt with helle the star-struck groupie:

* * *

i came across a linguistic turn i'd never seen before:

“The mood where I’m at’s ecstatic,”

at with an apostrophe s

it was in this article in the reno gazette journal.
i can't quite say that i think it's wrong per se, but somehow it is.
or at the very least very colloquial.

what do you make of it?

monday will sometimes bite you in the ass

it's a balmy 8°C (46°F) outside and foggy. the winds from last week's storm (the increasingly aptly-named bodil), have finally subsided and it's so still you can hear water dripping from the trees. in many ways, it's a really beautiful day, despite it being grey. but it's also a monday and sometimes monday just bites you in the ass.

it actually started already when i woke up with a start, far too early, thinking of a group of friends i had 25 years ago in california. they were a shallow lot and hadn't crossed my mind in years. it wasn't a nice way to wake up. so, as i am wont to do, i grabbed the iPad and checked in to see what was happening in the world of facebook. near the top of my feed was a local friend, expressing delight that she could hear her elementary-age children in the other room, getting into their stockings for their advent calendar presents, and exclaiming "shit and fuck" with delight over their gifts. it made her feel like she'd really picked the right presents. yes, these swear words coming from the mouths of kindergarten and second graders, were words of joy and christmas cheer. and their mother was proud.

after all these years, i do realize that our english swear words, while in widespread use in denmark, do not carry the same meaning or impact that they do in english. and i freely use them, even the f-word, myself. however, i never get used to them coming from the mouths of babes. i just really think that's not cool. and it still causes an almost literal jolt of culture shock when i hear (or in this case, read) it.  i commented on the post that where i grew up, if i'd reacted to my christmas gifts with swearing, i'd have had my mouth washed out with soap. one of the others commenting on the post responded that there was nothing about swearing. she didn't even recognize shit and fuck as swear words. i knew then it was going to be that kind of day.

soon after that, my child began texting me, plaguing me to let her get the office package for her macbook air. yes, my child, requesting to put a microsoft product on a mac. she may as well have asked for a ferrari with a ford engine. it made me realize i've utterly failed as a parent. so, determined to end it all, i headed down to the lake. only to find that the tree from which i had planned to hang myself had toppled in the storm. trees around here just give up so easily.

ok, i wasn't really going to kill myself, that was just for dramatic and humorous effect.

soon it was time to go pick up the child from school. she and her friends got in the car and began talking in a sort of pidgin danglish and it was driving me completely mad. i was so not in the mood for it. it was like when someone keeps repeating what you say and you want them to stop and they won't. i had that same panicky feeling that comes from that. like it might never stop and you will probably have to stab someone before it's all over. and then there will be a mess and the explaining to the parents...

but then the phone rang, it was a neighbor, telling me that our horses were out and running around in the fog on the road. so we rushed home. the girls jumped out of the car (thereby ending the danglish madness) and grabbed them and started walking them home. and yes, they were just hanging out on the road. silly horses. then some maniac drove by at high speed and the two they had hold of got away again and the chase was on. and do you think that asshole took a look in her rearview mirror at the chaos she had wrought? no, she did not. but i grabbed a bucket of grain and a couple of leadropes and we got them in. they were all snorty and excited after their adventures.

i kind of just want to crawl in bed and have this day end. but i guess some days are like that. especially mondays.

i should be where people are not

i need to be where people are not. i'm on the verge of a cold, achy and crabby and a bit foggy in the head. everything and everyone is very irritating, the internet, facebook, my family, the needy cat, the less needy cat, the totally independent cat, a crazy woman who knits with yarn she's stuffed up her lady parts (i could go on but i'd like to give you a moment with that image in your head)...

my energy is sapped by the sunday market. tho' our space is limited and we only had space for a dozen sellers, so much work went into it - setting up (i was not only selling my wares, but i also was one of the organizers), making things, preparing, doing everything i could to make sure the other sellers would be happy with their spots. we had ads in the local paper two weeks in a row and still, very few people came and those who came, weren't really in a buying mood. i think everyone sold some of their work, but i think everyone also wished they had sold more. and while not all of it was my taste, the quality was high. lots of christmasy floral arrangements involving candles and bits of greenery, but homemade goodies as well.

but the most energy-sapping aspect wasn't not selling as much as i might have liked, but it was a general bad atmosphere. we managed to get it a little bit on track in the afternoon thanks to some spotify christmas music lists, but it was a long few hours before i managed to lure husband out of the woods (literally, he was out working on the trees that fell over in a storm last summer) and have him deliver the iPod HiFi to me. and i can't put my finger on what it was...too many people with the same type of items was a factor, and they spent the first hour or so sitting and glaring at one another. the lack of music was a factor, as was the lack of crowds. people didn't feel comfortable going around, looking, when there weren't very many people and everyone could hear everything they said. danes are generally shy with people they don't know and so those who came hurried around, looking, eyes averted, not wanting to talk to the sellers if they didn't know one another.

a number of people admitted out loud that they weren't going to buy anything, but were just gathering ideas so they could make things themselves. yes, really. out loud. i mean, we all think that, but to say it outright to the people who worked hard to make their wares seems a little mean. or at the very least, thoughtless. but it was that kind of day and that kind of atmosphere.

worst of all is the lack of cooperation within our little community. we tried to schedule the market to coincide with the arrival of santa and the lighting of the christmas tree on the square (which is organized by the local commerce association). when we scheduled the market, they were on the same day and then, funnily enough, the local commerce association changed the date to the day before. they did something similar with our market late last summer and tho' i'm certain it was more a lack of communication than malice, it does begin to feel a bit like the latter. would it really kill them to communicate and coordinate?

so my energy is gone. i don't want to be a pessimist or give up on organizing these types of activities (for the sense of community, even more than commerce), but it is disheartening. tho' i'm normally full of ideas for the next steps and what to learn from such experiences, i'll admit this time i'm all tapped out.

maybe a person shouldn't try to over analyze with a cold coming on...

* * *

and speaking of craft and community,

why do the craft sessions have to be so far from my hemisphere?

election day in denmark

it's election day in denmark. we vote for the municipal and regional representatives. i say we, because even i, as a non-citizen, can vote in the municipal and regional election. there are a lot of parties in denmark - left (which is actually right), conservative, the danish people's party (dansk folkeparti - they're just a shade to the left of nazis), social democrats, socialists, radicals, a left party called enhedslisten, which wants to send denmark into an ecstatic state of fourierian utopian socialism.

i have a pretty clear idea from the national level, what each party stands for, but it gets a little murky and diluted at the municipal level. and tho' you'd think the regions are between national and municipal, in denmark, they're not (basically all they decide about is the hospitals), they're really a third tier. DR, the national media outlet, has a quiz you can take to determine who you should vote for (there are so many candidates and you can only vote for one, so it's hard to know what each individual might stand for). the candidates were asked to the take the quiz as well and then the results match you with the ones whose answers were the most like yours. here are my results:

they illustrate nicely how far the local politicians are from their national party lines. i come out as most in agreement with someone from enhedslisten, which is at the far left of the spectrum on the national level. tho' i am not an advocate of utopian socialism, i could possibly be inclined towards their thinking, so the result isn't that surprising. what is, however, surprising, is that the candidate i'm next most in agreement with is from venstre, (which tho' literally left, is actually right), the second most right wing party in the country. on the side i least agree with, it doesn't surprise me that at the top is a member of dansk folkeparti, the party which has done all they can in the years i've been in denmark to capitalize on fear and demonize immigrants. what is surprising is the place in that column of a member of enhedslisten - that means that their two candidates represent the opposite ends of the spectrum in our local election.

the person that i was planning on voting for doesn't even make either list, which leaves me a bit in doubt. she is, however, one of the few i've actually spent time talking to about the issues, so perhaps that should count for more than the results of some media quiz.

tho' there is generally high voter turnout in denmark, people are saying they will stay home from this election. i personally think it's because there are too many candidates and people feel they can't get their head around it to know who to vote for (i know i feel that way). however, i do intend to exercise my right to vote. i think it's important and i'm grateful that i'm legally allowed to do so, despite not being a citizen. what happens in my municipality (which is more like a county in american terms) affects me, so i'm pleased that i have a say.  with so many candidates, the election can be decided by just a few votes, so it might even be that my vote actually counts.

i'll have to do some more thinking before i go in and tick that box later today, but i know already now that it's not going to be a member of dansk folkeparti. i never did like their politics, but last week, their "equality spokeswoman" spoke out against a toy store catalog that had featured boys playing with girl toys and vice versa, saying it was "perverse." that level of perverse thinking will definitely not be getting my vote. nor will anyone from venstre, whose national leader is in trouble (again again) for flying first class to the tune of 700,000 kroner in his capacity as director of a dodgy environmental organization (GGGI). not to mention at a more local level, one of the politicians from venstre declared in a neighboring municipality that "it's over with approaching the municipality in english."

i imagine i'll land somewhere in the middle and probably vote for the woman who seemed sensible and intelligent when i spoke with her a few weeks ago, even tho' she's not a member of the party i most identify with (radikale). sometimes you just have to go with your gut.