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?

the latest chapter of LEGO Friendsgate

it seems that lego friends is under fire again. the latest lego club magazine has advice for girls about haircuts suited to a particular face shape and that made a righteous nytimes mommy blogger just a tad unhappy. the website boingboing responded with similar tongue-in-cheek beauty advice for male lego executives. and cool mom picks had a more thoughtful response about the implications that our judgements about "girl's toys" have on how girls think of their toys and themselves. in my view, the face shape/hairstyle advice is a bit out of place in the lego club magazine and someone should have known better, but whether it warrants a whole online kerfluffle is another story. in any case, lego friends continues to have the capacity to inspire passionate feelings on both sides of the issue of toys aimed at a particular gender. but seriously, give me wonder woman any day.

* * *

the paleo diet is also under fire, so what's the next diet trend?

we've come a long way, baby

yes, that is one of wonder woman's fabulous boots on the couch beside her.
it snapped off my wonder woman christmas ornament and it has a kind of morbid hold on me.
so i included it in my photo. and this wonder woman comes in this set with her invisible jet. 

i'm reading jill lepore's the secret history of wonder woman. there's a whole lot more to wonder woman than just a comic book heroine (as if that wouldn't be enough). and although my love of her comes from the 70s television series starring lynda carter, i just love her even more now that i know she finds her roots in the whole suffrage movement and the attendant fight for birth control and general women's rights that women waged at around that same time.

here in denmark, this year is the 100th anniversary of women gaining the vote (that was why we had our wonder woman salon a couple of weeks ago), so that's part of why the topic has surfaced on my radar. and it's funny how once it's on your radar, you keep coming across things that are related to it. like these horrendous anti-suffrage posters that circulated 100 years ago. i don't think i'd fully appreciated how far we women had come and how much those early feminists did for us so that we have the rights and norms that we, quite frankly, take for granted today.

the jill lepore book is one of those where i find myself staying up late to read it and simultaneously feeling eager to turn to the next page to drink in the story (and this is actual history) and wanting to slow down and not come to the end of the book too quickly.

the inventor of wonder woman was a very strange man named william moulton marston. he was a harvard educated psychologist and the original inventor of the lie detector test (hence wonder woman's truth lasso) and generally a rather weird and possibly perverted guy. he lived in a very strange relationship with his wife and his mistress and their four children under one roof. because he was a polemic figure, he had a hard time keeping a job and his wife was the main breadwinner of the family, with the mistress playing nanny to all four children, despite only 2 of them being hers. and yet he was also quite a compelling figure - charismatic in a way and quite a prolific ideas man. and he believed that women were powerful forces to be reckoned with, so he couldn't have been all bad.

wonder woman came to life just as the US was entering WWII and thus there were many themes with a patriotic tinge to them. once she was allowed to join the justice league, things got a little less feminist for her, as another writer took over from marston and relegated her to secretary status, while the other justice league members went off to fight. not to make excuses, but that reflected the times as well, the men went off to war and the women stayed at home to handle the everyday duties.

it's also pretty fascinating, the insight into the early days of comic books and how they arose both out of the film and pulp fiction industries. all of the creative artists and storytellers and maverick publishers that did battle with censorship make you wish you had lived in a more dynamic time.

i'm only a little more than halfway through the book, so i'll wind down for now. i'm sure i'll be back with more thoughts on it once i'm finished. but suffice it to say, wonder woman is even more awesome than i ever knew.

wonderful wonder woman

in our second of a series of salons i've been co-creating at our local library, the theme was wonder woman. but not only the comic book character wonder woman, but the wonder woman in us all. this year is the 100th anniversary of women's suffrage in denmark, so we brought in that aspect as well. we didn't get the vote in the US for another 5 years! afterwards, i looked up when women got the vote in countries around the world and there are some pretty surprising facts on that list. like that switzerland, which i would have thought was a pretty progressive place, didn't allow women to vote until 1971! appalling! and turkey gave women the vote in 1934, but france didn't follow suit for another 10 years in 1944. also appalling.

we prepared two rounds of questions for the tables to discuss. my thought was to start it off a bit lighthearted in the spirit of wonder woman and ask people what they thought their super power was. or what they would want it to be if they could have one. the age range at my table went from a bit younger than me (early 40s) to 60s, so approximately a 20 year span. and i quickly realized that aside from one (my partner in the arrangement), they actually didn't know what was meant by a super power. and they definitely didn't take the question in the lighthearted way it was intended.

i came to find out that they actually had no idea who wonder woman was at all! they weren't familiar with the cartoon, nor the fabulous series from the 70s starring lynda carter that so defined how i jumped out of the swingset for a good portion of my childhood. so, they looked a little blankly at my superman socks and wonder woman converse. they just didn't get it. and i have to say that it made me feel so sorry for them! but then, it hit me that they felt sorry for me for knowing about a comic book heroine. it was just another example of those shallow americans and their lack of culture.

they obviously didn't know that jill lepore (a harvard scholar, no less), recently wrote a history of wonder woman and the story behind her debut in 1940 as well as her place in feminist history. they didn't know that the book just beat out 132 other contenders to win the american history book prize. wonder woman is huge and awesome and a feminist icon. she is not merely a cartoon character, she is so much more. she is strong and brave, a real amazonian princess. and it was funny, because several people mentioned that they wished they could be more like those amazon women of legend. they just didn't seem to realize that wonder woman was the best known one of all!

next time, i'll not assume that everyone is on the same page and prepare a bit more explanation so that we all start on equal footing, or at least that we understand where we're all coming from.

in all, tho', a very interesting evening anyway.

arbness: on lost planes, the fear of not knowing and which bond catwoman would prefer

i sit here at the computer, frieda on my lap, lying on the red curly sheep fleece pillow that is all of the cats' favorite bed, so it seemed appropriate to use a recent photo i took of another catwoman, this one perhaps much cooler than i am as i sit here, wearing my now beloved norwegian sweater which i found in a second hand store for 50kr, a comfy pair of pants and slouchy warm socks. (how was that for a very long sentence?) catwoman is very cool, canny and fearless. 

i am still voraciously reading every article i can find about the disappearance of that malaysian airlines flight and as i write this, there is still no news. what happened to the plane and all those people? how can a plane just disappear with scarcely a trace in today's connected world? and why is it so fascinating to us? why can't we stand the uncertainty of not knowing what happened and where it is? is it the people who are lost? oddly the articles i've been reading in places like the new york times and the guardian have had little mention of the passengers. is it our own fears of flying? i honestly don't have any, despite having some kind of feeling for years and years that i will die in a plane crash. is it just the 24 hour news cycle and endless access to information, no matter where we are, that has us obsessing over the lack of an answer? why are we riveted by this story? i flew malaysian airlines once, from KL to chennai. the worst part was a long layover in KL and no access to a lounge because none of the star(ve)alliance carriers cooperated on one there. alas, my plane carried me safely to chennai, where i didn't really want to be anyway (it being one of the most uncharming places on the planet). but really, where is james bond when you need him? i'm thinking pierce brosnan is the right bond for this case. it seems like it could somehow be a media-driven thing and that seems right up the alley of the brosnan bond. daniel craig is too deep and dark and mysterious (now that i think about it, maybe he is the right bond for this mystery). i suppose in the end there will be some shallow answer worthy more of roger moore as bond than either brosnan or craig. 

and while we're on the subject of bond, i think catwoman would probably like pierce brosnan as well. wonder woman, on the other hand, i'm not sure...

* * *

a couple of really cool articles on the cinematography of the LEGO movie...

here and here.

* * *

rené redzepi on copenhagen in the guardian.

guess where wonder woman and i went?

a fantastic weekend in london. a bit of shopping (mostly involving me sending photos to the child to see whether she wanted various items - what did we do before iMessage?), hitting some bookstores (the wonderful foyle's and an enormous waterstones near picadilly), walking with lizzi (you may know her from many steps sideways and do go check her blog, as she wrote about our day much more pithily than i will) until our feet were nearly bleeding, some legography at big ben and parliament square, lunch, starbucks and a last-minute inability to stop myself from going into the gap (like google, apple and the new york times, they just get me). all of this and glorious sunshine, cherry blossoms in full bloom and a surprisingly delightful stay in a little radisson blu edwardian just off oxford street, not to mention a workshop and meeting some really wonderful lego enthusiasts who were generous in sharing their ideas. in all, it really couldn't have been a better weekend (except that my feet are still a bit reluctant to speak to me after i subjected them to nearly 12 hours of tromping around london in doc martens (so much for those cushiony air soles).

i know i've been a bit absent here in the past week. i was fighting off a cold and that left me zapped for energy.  plus i've been reading a good book (popco by scarlett thomas) and watching a few too many episodes of fringe. but i can feel that i'm missing my daily writing! blogging is, after all, cheaper than therapy and nothing else quite does the trick for keeping me sane like sending all those thoughts which tumble around in my head out my fingers right here in this blogger compose space. so i hope to be back on form this week. for all of our sakes.

oh, and catwoman had to come along too and see the london eye. she nearly blew off into the thames, but i grabbed her in time. that would have been a tragedy.

* * *

and speaking of tragedy, 

i can't get enough of the story of the lost malaysian airlines plane.

what do you think happened?

will they be found safe and sound?

and where are they?

isn't it a job for james bond at this point?

or maybe for catwoman.

the formative years - on wonder woman and barbie

i've always loved wonder woman. especially in the form of lynda carter's portrayal of her during my formative years. she was so brave and true and tough and beautiful, all at once. and man, those wonder woman jumps. i practiced those by getting the swing at the park going as high as i could and then leaping off. i'm sure i was very graceful and strong, just like wonder woman, tho' i'm glad that video mobile phones were not ubiquitous then, so that i don't have to sacrifice that memory. i too wanted bracelets that could deflect bullets, a lasso that could make people tell the truth and an invisible jet of my very own. wonder woman inspired me to greatness. i've probably let her down, but she was inspiring to me just the same.

charlie's angels were around in that same era and with their beauty and bravery, they inspired me as well. i know charlie ultimately took care of them, but they seemed so strong and capable by themselves. they were tough and beautiful and they had great hair and clothes and they always caught the bad guy in the end - what more could you ask?

speaking of great hair and wardrobe, i'll admit that i loved barbie as well. she also had great hair and clothes and those shoes, they were awesome. my cousin had a fabulous barbie collection that burned up in a fire and i missed those lost barbies for years afterwards. they'd never been promised to me and i'd only been allowed to look at them, not touch them (being much younger and probably much stickier), but i adored them anyway and lamented their passing. of course, i had barbies of my own, but her collection was something special.

i read this morning about a very thin study suggesting that playing with barbie limits girls' career opportunities. at least in their own minds. and i have to say i think that's crap. barbie always had way more going on than ken and we all knew it. she was the brains and she had her own car and house and he was a mere accessory, who she didn't even really need (my barbie personally liked johnny west way more and in fact, she taught him a swear word or two (goddamn son of a bitch, jesus christ almighty was her go-to swear phrase of choice). yes, her feet were forever stuck in high heeled position and her waist is abnormally tiny, but she was fabulous. like wonder woman and charlie's angels, she was strong and capable and the leader of her pack. i don't feel at all that my love for her has held me back or made me not pursue a career in science or math. what kept me from that was the fact that i spent most of my time reading dostoevsky during physics class in high school.