3D street art or brande beats give again

brande, the next little town over, and where sabin went to school for the past year, held a street art festival a few weeks ago. we were busy with vikings that weekend and didn't attend, but many of the works are still there and i had a quick stop to have a look the other day. they had done these 3D pieces. it's so funny how in person, the eye compensates and they don't pop out, but in photos, they do. i wish our little town could get together about something and stage similar events. but alas, there's too much infighting and too many factions. why are little towns their own worst enemy sometimes?

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have you seen the photo of nixon's last meal before he resigned?

it's arranged, it's styled, it's prosaic.

it's positively instagrammable.

(thank you, bill.)

pondering the ways of teenagers

teenagers seem a bit like raptors at times

the child came home from italy more of a moody teenager than when she left. i guess two weeks of sunshine and eating real pizza and lying on a beach and staying up too late will do that. she was, in any case, tired and not really that happy to be landed back in this little town in the middle of nowhere. apparently, she's convinced that within her beats the heart of a city girl, or at the very least, the heart of a copenhagen girl (little does she know that copenhagen, with a population of only a little over half a million, isn't really a city in the strictest sense).

over dinner, she expressed dissatisfaction with plans to spend a year in the states (school year 16-17) in the little town where i grew up. apparently going from one middle of nowhere town to another isn't appealing when you're tired and have just been hanging out in italy. but i imagine she'll go willingly when it comes down to it. we may have scared her last week with talk of extreme religious nutcases and long distances to amenities like movies and proper shoe shops and apple stores. but then, i got out of there non-religious and there's always the internet for shopping, so she'll be fine.

initially, her negative reaction to studying for a year in my little hometown hurt. it felt like a rejection of me. i think it's important for her to know her roots - to get to know the extended family still living there and to have a taste of what it means to be a member of our family and to have a sense of groundedness in that place. but then i realized that rejection is a natural part of the rebellion of growing up. and i had to admit that i too cannot imagine ever living there again, so how can i expect her to imagine it, if only for a year?

but i'm also confident that she'll get over it and will undoubtedly want to go and look forward to going. she'll be able to get a driver's license (something she can't do until 18 in denmark, to my great dismay), make new friends, spend time with family, participate in competitive cheerleading (after a year at a gymnastics-focused boarding school, she'll be awesome) and try a whole host of other things that you can only do in a small high school, where the very life of the place is dependent on everyone participating in everything. and she will get in touch with a part of where she comes from. it will undoubtedly be uniquely her own perspective and grounding and that's ok too.

in a few weeks, she's off to boarding school. it's only 30 minutes away and she will come home some weekends. people keep asking us if we're freaking out and sad about it and i keep looking within for those feelings. and they aren't there. i love seeing her taking flight, setting goals, working towards them. it's the natural progression in her growing up into the person she will become. i think i've felt all along that as a parent i'm witness to something magical, but which i have only had the smallest modicum of control over. and i feel privileged to be there for each stage of a natural progression of this amazing child coming into her own. going to the gymnastics boarding school for her final year of primary school is exactly what should happen next. she's ready and so are we.

100 happy days :: day 55

not long ago, an organic boutique opened in town.
fresh, organic veggies from local producers.
frozen organic chickens.
local, inventive, amazing ice cream.
organic flour from a small mill.
awesome fair trade coffee (with the coolest labels) by just coffee.
in short, just what we needed in town.
so much happy.

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this piece, reminding me of what i love about russian literature.

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slow fashion?

yes, please.

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finding this more than frightening.
on both ends - both the problem and the "solution" offered in the piece.
what is happening to the land of my birth?

100 happy days :: day 14

today's happiness, seen through the haze of a headcold and slight fever; an intimate concert with viggo sommer and a two-man (very talented) jazz band in the children's area of our local library. what makes me happy is that all the seats were full, people were close to the stage (hence "intimate concert"), the musicians were relaxed and talented and entertaining, everyone appeared to have a nice time. but even more happy-making is the creative thinking that led to it - who would have imagined we could move around a few bookshelves and create an intimate music stage in the library? who would have imagined we could attract people who had never been seen in the library before? who would have imagined we could pull it off? and yet, it was a very successful evening for the 70 or so people who attended. here's to daring to make things happen even when it would appear, on the surface, to be impossible.

getting out of the irritation zone

i've been a total crab all day. a regular bearcat, as my dad used to say when i was a lazy teenager, lurking around the house like a threatening storm. it started when i lost all hope for humanity watching the extreme display of mediocrity and crimes against superlatives that is the danish X-factor, a singing talent program. and i use the word "talent" loosely. as a parent, you have many battles to fight and so you have to choose them carefully. in the interest of not blocking the child out of all schoolyard conversations next week, we let her watch the finale. and in the interest of being together as a family, we watched it with her. and i became increasingly irritated and crabby. it's everything to do with the chabuduo thing that i talked about recently. i was so irritated at myself that i let her watch it and waste two hours of all of our lives - that's 6 hours that we'll never have back. why didn't we use the opportunity to talk about quality and talent and how if everything is "the best ever" or "iconic" or "diva-esque," then nothing is. sigh.

on top of it, this morning, in my mailbox, some forwarded right wing vitriol from a random stranger was awaiting me. and although it seemed like spam, it actually wasn't. and it further irritated me to think that this person who apparently knows my mother, but whom i have never met,  thought i would enjoy such a thing. and although i knew it didn't deserve my energy, i stewed about it all day. in fact, it pretty much spoiled the majority of my day.

but then, the tide began to turn. i had changed all of my statuses to something about how crabby i was feeling. my sister IMed me to suggest that tequila might help. and i briefly considered it, but it was a bit early for that. she also suggested that spreading the crabbiness around on twitter, FB and gmail probably wasn't that helpful. then i got a message that heather has a fabulous free shipping offer going on in her shop. and might have indulged in some new tea towels to cheer myself up. but only because i had just ironed all the old ones and noticed how stained some of them were getting.

then, my sister told me about her wild weekend back in that little town where we grew up. and it involved old milwaukee lights at the local bar with a few classmates who stayed there - one of which had a husband so kind, he delivered $40 cash to her at the bar because he wasn't sure she had enough money with her for the evening's festivities.  then there was a round of drinks bought by the mayor, who turned out to be a bit smarmy (it's a very small town and mayor is surely a thankless job). then some cute young local boys showed up and shots of tequila appeared on the table. then someone suggested that it was time to go check the cattle (as one does), so everyone picked up their drinks, wandered out to the nearest pickup truck and piled in. my sister said that if she was going to check cattle, she would need one of those long rubber gloves that goes all the way up to your armpit. and someone promptly produced one. which she put on. cattle were checked, but unfortunately, the pickup, perhaps weighed down by 8 people having piled into it, got stuck in a creek. some people went to get a "mulie" which my sister described as a cross between a four-wheeler and a golf cart. and another person called a very drunk guy who had a tractor, which came and pulled the pickup out. and some mouthy high schoolers showed up in the middle of the field, looking for a party. as one does. however, they brought fresh supplies of alcohol, which was good, because everyone was losing their buzz by that point. girls squatted and peed in the weeds. and the night ended with my sister covered in mud from head to toe. she got home and true to the the old family rule that applies to her - no pot in the living room - sat down at the kitchen table with mom and proceeded to regale her with tales of the evening. while mom cleaned the mud off her fancy, expensive danish leather boots.

and i have to say that story cheered me right up. because how you can you not smile at that? at the very least, it takes you back to high school and at most, you're grateful that you didn't stay there where that would be a typical saturday night every week.

and then, we had a little fire out on the terrace and roasted some marshmallows and all was again right with the world.