monday musings

i have a love-hate (hate, mostly) relationship with the work of lena dunham, but her fierce, feminist lenny letter is growing on me. it's a gathering of smart, honest, courageous, strong women, writing about politics, culture, the workplace and even menopause. i highly recommend subscribing, especially if you're a woman, but also if you know any women. 

in one of the many excellent podcast newsletters i get, (this one from gimlet's reply all) i learned about the vibration cooking cookbook, by vertamae smart-grosvenor. i found it available as an eBook through my library and i was paging through. it's only part cookbook (including recipes for racoon and squirrel), but mostly memoir. and in it i came across this lovely notion on the upside of being tribal. i'll admit i didn't think tribal behavior had an upside, what with the state of the world today, but this passage made me reconsider:

"when you are tribal you don't have slots for loving--you love. you can find a different kind of love for everyone. you love cousin blanche because she was your granddaddy's sister's child; "aunt" belle, even though she ain't really your blood aunt, because you feel just like she was kin to you. what i mean is, it (being tribal) gives you a big heart."

and it strikes me that these days, we are in need of bigger hearts.

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it was about time we started to openly discuss the lies.
and you know it's bad when the wsj calls him on it. 

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and because we need to think about something else:

why not about design, AI and future cities?

or the future of photography?
speaking of feminism, the british library is making material from spare rib available online.
maggie may is always able to write beautifully, even about the pain of life.
look what you can find if you go dumpster diving in denmark - enough to feed an army!
and how about a writing assignment from the vinyl cafe?
this animation by kristen lepore is profound and sad.
and this one is just plain weird.

monday morning at my desk

i don't know what made me open twitter first thing this morning. it's not something i normally do. i guess it was to complain to pinterest about how they changed their "oops, you've already pinned this" message to the much more boring and impersonal "you've already saved this pin." it's like they experienced people not knowing what "pinned" meant and so they changed it to "saved" to serve the lowest common denominator. come on pinterest, give us more credit than that.  but i digress... i went to twitter and then i foolishly stayed for awhile. and discovered that the feed is full of complaints (ironic that i'm complaining, i know, since i went there to complain myself) and fear and speculation and righteousness. whether it's arrogant white dudes admitting murder on HBO or the apparent disappearance of putin or vanuatu's destruction at the hands of a tropical cyclone (do cyclones have hands?) or the persecution of confused elderly people by the DSB or just jeremy clarkson, it's all negative somehow. and definitely not conducive to starting off my monday morning (which is already a bit grey and dull and generally blustery and march-ish) on the right foot. and making it slightly difficult to see what today's #100happydays post should be.

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words matter. expat? just another term of white privilege? yup.

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would love to see this exhibition of native plains art at the met.

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a danish sexologist thinks porn should be taught in the classroom.
i've been in denmark long enough to agree.
and my child is actually in the target age group.

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check out the putin's missing clock.
i love the internet.

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this may be advice for young writers,
but i think it applies to old ones as well.
and to humans in general.

"Life is most transfixing when you are awake to diversity, not only of ethnicity, ability, gender, belief, and sexuality but also of age and experience."

the outside view from the inside

lego me being buffeted by north sea waves.

i've been quite bowled over of late by all sorts of things...things which have kept me from my usual amount of time in front of the computer. but they've also been good things...an abundance of strawberries that demanded processing into juice and shrubs and jam and such; my mom's visit for sabin's confirmation party (and the party itself); lots of work projects growing in intensity in the push towards summer holidays; and a visit from my cousin. (actually, my cousin's daughter - what is that called? first cousin once removed? second cousin? we're not really sure.) it's all been quite wonderful, but it has cut in on my sanity time in front of the internet.

not our house. if our place looked like this, this would be a different blog post.

both my mom's visit and emily's visit have me pondering how things look around here from an outside perspective. this is a falling down farmhouse and a 10-year project (where we're only 4 years into it) and we're in our late 40s and should have a more settled, prosperous life than the house (and my aging, dirty toyota) may make it appear we have. and while i'm normally quite comfortable with that, when you think about how it looks from the outside, you (and by you i mean me) may start to feel a tad, well, insecure, no matter how much you (again me) try not to.

a walk in the creek with mom.

as for my mom, i know she feels a bit sorry for us with our lack of microwave and fans and proper curling irons. i've lived without a microwave for 15 years and have only missed one on two occasions...once when making homemade lip balm and all the recipes gave microwave directions and once when reading recipes for homemade mozzarella, which also seem to all call for microwaves. neither made me give in and buy a microwave. where fans are concerned, we need one for approximately 3 days per year if we're lucky, so we haven't invested in one. people don't have air conditioning or screens on their windows either for the same reason. the season for those things is so short, we invest our money elsewhere. and as for the curling iron, since i haven't had a perm since 1987 and left my hot rollers behind in 1997, i've been pretty much a flat iron girl. but i'm certain these things feed into my mother's notion that europe is, at the heart of it, a backward, old-fashioned civilization that can at best be pitied. i think she hopes it's just a passing phase for me.

fourth of july wish lanterns (we didn't have any fireworks).

as for emily, who is young and sweet and open and curious and smart and just at the beginning of becoming who she will become, i loved the freshness of seeing things a little bit through her eyes (even tho' it's actually impossible to see what another person sees). or at least what i imagine that to be. and i've laughed a lot today, to myself, as i imagined what she may have seen.

everyone around here will eventually have to build lego

she would have seen that we drink a lot of wine around here. we build lego for fun, tho' we aren't under 12. we eat late. we're a bit casual about doing the dishes after dinner and content to actually load the dishwasher the next day in the interest of hanging out, talking or watching a british crime show. we go to bed late and we sleep in. i dress casually for work, preferably in a superman t-shirt and converse. we have a lot of cats. and bunnies. our remaining hen is a bit mad and insists on spending her evenings up a tree and coaxing her chicks, who can't fly as well as she can, up there too. emily took it all in stride and we truly enjoyed her visit.

summer poppies - just thought they were pretty, so i had to use this shot.

there's something to having a shared foundation. we both grew up in that small town in south dakota. we know the same people. we share crazy family members (some of them crazy in a good way and some less so) and although we have different perspectives and memories of them, that shared foundation means a great deal. it helped us bridge what is arguably a generational divide. we can share stories and memories and fill in the gaps for one another. it was, in short, wonderful. and it made the falling down, cluttered house just a comfortable setting in which to talk about it all over a glass of wine and some awesome cheese and bread. because although this house isn't how we would wish it to be (yet), it is, if nothing else, a welcoming place where you can feel comfortable and relax and have room to be yourself. and by you, i might mean me, but i hope that i also actually mean you.

* * *

what if your password could change your life?

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what is the deal with the anti-feminist women? and why do they have a voice?

wouldn't it be cool to...

wouldn't it be cool...

...to create an art scavenger hunt (or maybe a lego scavenger hunt!).

...to have a folding bicycle.

...to revive theosophy. (or maybe i should just reread bulgakov while gazing up occasionally at a kandinsky in order to synthesize my logical and mystical knowledge.)

...to go to this exhibition of the works of hilma of klint at louisiana. (i was inspired by this article (for which you'll need to read danish).) (i'm linking to it mostly so i can find it again.)

...to look for moments of happiness every day and blog about it for 100 days like judith, james, isaac and rebecca? (well, to be fair, i haven't seen any posts written by rebecca, but she is only 9 months old, so i suppose that's fair enough.)

...to find mr. burns and complete my simpsons minifigures collection?

...if a bearded drag queen won the eurovision song contest? (oh wait, that happened.)

...to host a pecha kucha evening?

...get a good nights' sleep unmarred by dreams of horses retaining water, or falls from a 4 meter tall structure while sitting on a pallet or cats demanding to come in or out the bedroom window (that last bit isn't so much a dream as reality).

and on that note, i'll leave you to think of all the things you think would be cool...

monday enthusiasm

i often wake up on monday morning, full of energy, ready to face the week head on. it generally helps if there is sunshine. but monday mornings, i am full of ideas and full of enthusiasm. i always make a list for the week. oddly, i seldom refer to it as the week progresses, but i do often complete the majority of the items on it - somehow the act of making the list hones my focus. and odin knows i need that.

i think my reading of crossing the unknown sea has me feeling especially empowered and enthusiastic this morning. the book is a deep philosophical musing on the nature of work and how it shapes our identity.  i think the writer i can most compare david whyte to is alain de botton and his musings on architecture and travel. his words leave me fortified and feeling brave.

"whenever we attempt something difficult there is always a sense that we have to wake some giant slumbering inside ourselves, some greater force as yet hidden from us. we look for better work by first looking for a better image of ourselves. we stir this inner giant to life in order to find the strength to live out the life we want for ourselves." 

"to wake the giant inside ourselves, we have to be faithful to our own eccentric nature and bring it out into conversation with the world." 

i mentioned this book the other day and how i felt i picked it up at precisely the time i needed the words contained within, and then whyte said that himself, "a time when paths cross at exactly the moment when both writer and reader are ready to know something of the territory through which they have passed and a glimpse of the unknown future which might lie ahead." 

on a sunny monday morning, i feel an incredible impatience and unbearable exuberance for whatever that unknown future holds. and the strength and the will to shape it myself.

weather permitting

sex is apparently very hot amongst the elderly. (pun intended.) first we had the whole madness of fifty shades of grey (which i haven't read and do not intend to read). now there are at least two plays in denmark featuring the sex lives of the over 60 set.  there was even another play (or was it an art exhibition) featuring naked people having sex live. but that one closed (and i can't find a link). and they weren't old, i don't think, tho' i do think the audience they attracted was.

and all of this swirl about elder sex has meant that there have been a lot of radio programs discussing the phenomenon of late. and i'll admit that when i hear people going on and on about orgasms and trying to describe them on the radio, it makes me nervous. because what if what i thought was an orgasm isn't (because the way they described it sounded pretty strange to me) and horror of horrors, what if i've not ever really had one?

and honestly, i don't really like to think thoughts like that.

i guess this means the baby boomers are old now and it seems they consider themselves still vital  and sexual beings. and i say, awesome for that, since i'm getting older myself. but do we have to be so public and arm-waving about it? can't we just leave the sex in the privacy of the bedroom or the back yard (weather permitting)?

monday musings

i could tell a tale of a greedy and righteous troglodyte (is there anything worse?), but i don't want my monday ruined in that way. suffice it to say that i need to find another way to deal with this person. fantasies of gunning it when i see him crossing the street are becoming slightly too vivid in my mind at this point, so i'd best not spend much time behind the wheel today.

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as you can see from my new banner, we had a good weekend at our riding club horse show.

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isn't it sad that a person who never gives others room to do what they have promised, but stands over them and checks up on them incessantly will never find out if they can be trusted to do what they say they will? and ironic that they say they'll stop doing that as soon as people prove they will do as they promised. and pathetic that they can't see the logic.

but i promised not to dwell on the troglodyte anymore today. 

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they promise rain all week. so a typical danish autumn is upon us. it makes my thoughts turn to candles and baskets of yarn. i've even lined up a knitting teacher, so this year, i'm going to get serious about actually using some of that yarn. tho' molly did just just singe off some of her whiskers jumping up on the shelf by my desk, so candles can be dangerous.

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on friday at school, sabin and her friend (who are in the sixth grade) were on their way to class and some tough little fourth graders, in what is a rather confusingly-explained incident, threw a chair at them. they were apparently bitter over some altercations last year when they were in fifth and third grade respectively, tho' that part of the story is also a bit unclear. the chair hit sabin's hand and it has become steadily more swollen and sore over the weekend and we're going to have the doctor have a look at it today. i did say she had to explain to the doctor herself that she was beaten up by a fourth grader.

i asked her how she responded and she said that they went and let a teacher know it had happened. so in essence, they told on the little shits. some part of me wishes she'd thrown the chair back at them or at least grabbed them by the scruff of their necks and roughed them up a bit. but on the other hand, i'm also charmed by her utter faith in the authority figures at her school. we'll see what happens next.

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i wonder if my parents ever received a communication with my sixth grade teacher that was signed, "hugs," mrs. b. looking back at the battle-axe of a soul-scarring sixth grade teacher i had, i'm thinking not.

i do remember that my dad once stamped one of my papers with a little "horse shit" stamp we had in the drawer at home and asked my second grade teacher whether she shouldn't be slightly more encouraging than that to small children. she practically died of mortification while my dad laughed. i thought it was pretty funny too. probably not entirely fair of dad what with him being on the schoolboard and all. poor mrs. luze.

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i sent my absentee ballot today. and yes, i voted for the good guys.

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i just reread the guernsey literary and potato peel pie society by mary ann shaffer and annie barrows. i gave it only 3 stars on goodreads the first time around and i actually wonder why. i was utterly delighted by it this time and feel a bit sad to be finished with it. i'm already missing those friends within the covers of the book. i do think you need to a read a book at the right time. i could vaguely remember reading it before, but i obviously didn't absorb it in the same way (that often happens, i think it's a product of the speed at which i read) as i did this time. i'll have to go in and update that rating.

here are a few gems:

"men are more interesting in books than they are in real life."

"reading good books ruins you for enjoying bad books."

"i think you learn more if you're laughing at the same time."

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and on that note, i'll wish you all a happy monday.

standing apart from the crowd

the coolest new zealander i know, stacey (remember discounderworld and shoe per diem - those are her brainchildren), has a new blog to go with her new job and already she's making me think. this morning, i read her post on the word entrepreneur and found myself nodding.  as you know, i often ponder language,  and stacey's thoughts on entrepreneur not really being the right word for someone who is starting a little business had actually occurred to me of late.

entrepreneur seems to be a whole lot bigger than small business owner. and while i admire anyone who has their own little company, whether they be a plumber or electrician or specialize in communications in english, there is somehow a difference between daring to go out on your own with a small business and true entrepreneurship. i find entrepreneur as word laden with the notion of a unique invention or The Next Big Thing. i find it interesting stacey also associates it with time and how you as an entrepreneur build up your business in order to spend less time at it, so you can move on to the next thing. i would actually call that investment, rather than entrepreneurship, but i find the thought interesting.

in danish, there is another word for entrepreneur - iværksætter. literally - one who sets work in motion - i like that, as it feels to me like it applies better to the business i'm setting in motion. we've not invented a smart new wheel or the answer to twitter or a truly good battery for storing wind power (whoever invents that will be rich) - we're providing high quality communication services in english for other iværksætter in denmark, who want to grow their businesses globally. and iværksætter seems like the perfect word for it. i guess that's the advantage of living in two languages, you can take the best words from both to express what you would really like to express.

it strikes me as i think about entrepreneurship and read advice about it (and there's a LOT of advice out there), that it's all glowingly positive, evangelistic and rather cheerleader-y. i'm slightly disappointed that no one really talks about all of the fear and night terrors associated with it. because while it's exciting, it's also a tremendous amount of pressure to place on yourself - because the success or failure is all on you - there's no one to blame. and whether or not you get a new kitchen anytime in the near future may be resting entirely on you.