kittens don't care if they're black or white

like the rest of the world, i have looked on in dumbfounded horror as the reports rolled in last week of two innocent men in louisiana and minnesota who were killed in cold blood by those meant to protect them for no reason other than the color of their skin. then, when a sniper fired on a demonstration in dallas, killing and injuring police, it seemed that the united states was on the verge of meltdown.

during a long drive back from germany, on my phone i read the early accounts of the dallas events, all of which were very careful not to name the color of anyone's skin. some part of me appreciates the caution, as it's somehow borne of politeness and a wish to reserve judgement. but the fact is that these things are happening due to the color of people's skin and to be afraid to talk openly about it only adds to the problem.

the problem seems pretty insurmountable. instead of making things better, having the first black president in american history (who will also undoubtedly go down as one of the best) seems to have made things worse. the toothless mouth breathers are angry and with open carry gun laws in force, they're not afraid to show it.

i don't pretend to have any knowledge of what it must be like to be black in america today. as a white, educated, midwestern female living in europe, i'm surely steeped in about as much white privilege as one can be. living outside my culture, i have my moments feeling Other, but they are no doubt mild compared to daily fears of being stopped and shot by police just for going about my life within my own skin.

all these events seem to be bringing out the worst in people, especially on facebook. i suspect it's not good for us. we isolate ourselves in silos of those who believe as we believe. and we shake our heads at the sharing of treacly videos about how people are not born racist, considering ourselves above such superficial analysis. we don't really engage with the question at all. and it all feels quite hopeless.

some part of me feels as i did during the reagan years with his anti-russian rhetoric. i imagined a young girl in russia who was my age and maybe looked a bit like me and wanted the things i wanted. and i thought, if we could just meet and talk to one another and get to be friends, we wouldn't need all of this. maybe we all need to start making friends with people who are different from ourselves - whether it's skin color, sexual orientation, nationality or something else. maybe it's a place to begin.

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.

feeling the moment

a slightly disgruntled molly surveys the world around her. she's not super keen on all those other cats that seem to be milling around the place, so she's got a slightly sardonic look. but i admire how she lives completely in the moment, just feeling what she feels and experiencing what she experiences. she does have expectations - that breakfast and dinner will be provided, that there will be some petting and rubbing under her chin when she desires it. on her terms. and when she's not pleased with those other cats, they get the occasional bop on the head with a lightning quick paw or else she climbs the nearest tree to put some distance between them and her.

now, i'm not advocating going around bopping people on the head, but i am advocating just feeling what it is you're feeling in a given moment. when, last evening at the choir, i felt i wasn't accepted and welcome, there is validity to that feeling. something (several somethings, in fact) did provoke me to feel that way, it was real and so were my hurt feelings. so all of the explanations and making light of them and saying, "that's not how it was meant" (because apparently no one really wants to be xenophobic, they just do it for fun) do not actually change the reality of how i felt in that moment. and i'll admit i feel a bit resentful of not just being allowed to feel what i feel. why do people always try to talk you out of it, instead of accepting your right to your reactions and to how you feel? feelings are valid in the moment. while they may not always be right or grounded in the intentions of those who provoked them, they are real. and to recognize that reality is the only way to process them and get through them. whether it takes a bop on the head (including your own sometimes), or whether it just takes running off and climbing a tree to absent yourself from a situation, feelings need to be experienced for what they are.

a little assemblage of thoughts on the tragic events in paris

the tragic events in paris at charlie hebdo are on my mind, like they surely are for you as well. i'd frankly never heard of the magazine before, but my french is pretty weak, so it's no wonder. i have great affection for biting satire that forces you to think deeper and from what i've seen and read, they produce a newspaper in that vein. it is a horrible tragedy that they were slaughtered for doing so by people who didn't agree with their views and methods. it's so horrible that i think on some level i can't even really fathom it. it seems quite unreal, even in the face of graphic videos shot by bystanders. so it's taken me a few days to begin to collect my thoughts enough to write something about it. but i have been reading a lot of articles about it in a variety of places, from the nytimes to the guardian to danish newspapers to a friend's blog. that blog is probably the best, most sensible piece i've read.

i find it exceptionally disheartening what the tragedy seems to have done to people. i see it in my facebook feed, but i'm also reading it in the various opinion pieces online. it's not only the blood and gore of it, but how it has turned on a hatred of an entire religion, based on the actions of a few fanatics. my facebook feed is full of people calling for closing denmark's borders and sending home syrian refugees, calls to withdraw all resources from programs which help people in need who happen to be muslim. there is a mass reaction that is very black & white, very unnuanced and which, in my view, contains as much hate as those men with the guns must have felt on wednesday. it's a similar kind of reactionary fanaticism.  and it's tinged with more than a little racism and xenophobia. and to me, it means that the terrorists have won beyond their wildest imagination. if they can make us fear and hate at the same level as they do, they have reduced us.

i am heartened to see pockets of rationality and sense here and there. twitter is our barometer these days and like in australia, where a supportive hashtag surfaced, saying #illridewithyou, after the lunatic held all those hostages in the lindt café, there seems to be a groundswell of folks rallying around the policeman they so brutally shot, saying #jesuisahmed, rather than #jusuischarlie, which carries with it a more radical connotation.

it is hard to see what good can possibly come of this, but i do hope that we are able to take up a discussion which allows us to discuss the nuances and actually begin to address the problems that underlie these things...like the imbalance of resources in this world, the imperialist notions of those in the west, so sure of our own superiority, like getting education to women and the young populations of the muslim countries, so that they can see that they have options other than violence. rather than saying we need to send all of the foreigners home, maybe we should make them more welcome around here. it's much harder for people to hate and kill when they are your friends.

of handsome men and not so handsome politicians

as you know, i spend a rather inordinate amount of time trying to figure out what makes the danes tick. i have assorted bloggy (and real life) friends who do as well. here's an especially amusing new theory - the theory of the handsome danish men. yesterday, i observed a Handsome Danish Man in action (he was Handsome, just ask him, he'll tell you himself (flips hair fetchingly)). he sauntered around importantly. he flashed smiles at himself when he caught sight of his salt and pepper hair in mirror-like surfaces. he oddly kept calling attention to the fact that he is an embedsmand (non-political government official), which frankly, detracted significantly from his handsomeness, but must have been making him feel important. and it was more than obvious that he feels important as well as Handsome. however, i'm not yet ready to fully buy the theory as in my opinion, it's danish women who exhibit the most appallingly rude behavior in public space. perhaps they're just bitter about being treated badly all those years by the handsome men. i'll have to ponder this new theory a bit more.

* * *

apropos attempting to understand the danes, there was recent swirl in the billund newspapers surrounding a report on quality of life among expats in that municipality. (billund is where the second largest airport in denmark is located and is the home of lego.) apparently one local politician was so incensed that the report was in english that he publicly declared that it was over with addressing politicians in english in the municipality. 

the report is the result of interviews and a workshop with 22 expats living within the municipality (which is more like a county-sized entity in US terms). they had a lot of positive things to say about denmark (it's safe, it's not corrupt, it's a great place to raise children, there is a good work-life balance), but they also expressed a lot of negatives, largely surrounding how hard it is to break down the barriers and establish a social life with danes. people had tears in their eyes as they told tales of feeling rejected by their neighbors and even strangers in line at the grocery store. some were on the verge of clinical depression due to inability to connect or get meaningful work. two said they had actually taken antidepressants. so the overall story was of a pretty harsh reality of daily life as an expat in a place where people felt invisible and rejected. and the people of billund were outraged. how dare foreigners complain about this idyllic little land? they should just pack it up and go back to wherever they came from.

the reaction of the politician, to declare that this is denmark and all municipal business must take place in english simply underlines the results of the report. foreigners feel rejected by danish society. he apparently advocates taking away completely the voice of the minority population within the municipality when he declares in a news story that "it's over with addressing politicians in english." how a grown man who is an elected official in a little land with a minor language can stand up and say out loud that he doesn't speak english is beyond my comprehension. the largest business within the municipality is the very successful toy maker lego. foreign workers are essential to their continued growth and success, so to deny these people, who bring jobs and money into the community, a voice is absolutely absurd. the politician actually said, "i wasn't there on the day we had english in school," so he further negates the importance of english in a globalized world. happily, there is an election coming up this autumn and foreign residents of a municipality are allowed to vote in municipal elections (at least for now, tho' the xenophobic danish people's party would like to take that away), so perhaps this clown will be shown the door and replaced by someone with a more global view. 

another interesting side note - in three articles about the report, the reporter in question never once made an attempt to contact the authors of the report for more information on methodology or the results or to have a more nuanced view on the story. and this despite declaring in a sidebar that they will spend the next week looking in depth at the contents of the report. and that's journalism today, folks.

* * *

and speaking of danish politicians, i spent yesterday with several of them. i sat down next to one of them at lunch, a heavily pockmarked older man with a shaggy and decidedly non-hipster 70s mustache and a dried sweat stain on the back of his shirt. he didn't ask me my name or tell me his (perhaps assuming i knew he was An Important City Council Member). instead, apropos one of my uncles at a family reunion, basically asked me what i did with myself to deserve the air i was using up. when i explained that i do all kinds of writing and communications in english, he asked if i was english. on the principle of not offering more than you're asked, i said no. what i should have done next was ask him what he did with himself to deserve the air he was using up. instead, i just sort of gulped and fumed a little bit about being made to feel inadequate by this unfashionable-shoe wearing git. it then came out that i was american. and where i lived. and that was that.

sometime later, as we toured a library, he asked me how long i'd been in denmark. i said 15 years and he said, "oh, well, you're danish then." i replied that i most decidedly was NOT. (funny how we're most our nationality in defensive situations.) and he asked, incredulous, why. i pointed out that i have an american passport (i've heard those are quite sought after) and why on earth would i give that up? (he'd ticked me off by then.) he said, oh, but you can have both. and i said, no, i can't. the americans would allow it, but the danes won't. even the former prime minister's own son had to give up his danish passport when he became an american citizen a few years ago. this guy should have known that, since he is from that same party!

i'm sure he's pondering ways of trying to get me thrown off the local group which is involved in establishing a "culture house," on the grounds that i'm a bad foreign influence. he probably doesn't realize that i get to vote in municipal elections. and i know who i'm not going to be voting for.  he also speaks a bit against the handsome danish men theory, as he was most decidedly not handsome (i have a photo of him, but i don't dare to publish it). but again, i'm not done pondering that one.

* * *

monty python and the holy grail lego sets. awesome.

the danish model rears its ugly head

i love the danish model. NOT.

honestly, there are times when i'm less than fond of the danish model. i mean in general, not the union model being referred to in this headline (i just couldn't resist using it, since it fit my ironic mood). even down to the word nydansker - new danes - in the little headline below the big one. that term has, in the past decade, taken on a negative connotation. and really, does anyone expect to be allowed by the old danes to actually become a new dane? i don't think so. the danes are too much of a tribe for that. i could go on and on about this, but today i'm thinking about one aspect of the broader danish model that i'm not that keen on...and that's blind allegiance to bureaucracy.

sabin will move over to what is effectively middle school next year. in connection with this, there is a form we had to fill out. after name, address and social security number, the next questions are "mother tongue" and "land of origin," followed by whether or not danish is spoken in the home. it is unclear how this information will be used.

i wrote to the principal yesterday, expressing worries about the purpose of that information. i said that i hoped that the fact that we speak mostly english in our home wasn't going to be used to discriminate against or exclude my child in any way.

i promptly received the answer that the reason it was there was that the school had to send a report about two-language (tosprogede - another word that's taken on a very negative connotation in danish) students to the municipality every year. she assured me that it was not, under any circumstance, used to discriminate or exclude children - tho' she offered no proof of this and provided no information as to what it was to be used for. she also offered no information as to the municipality's purpose in gathering such information on a yearly basis. i can make some guesses about this, with extra funding being at the top of the list. she further advised me to contact the municipality if i wanted further information.

if you recall, this isn't the first time the school has tried to pigeonhole my child with objectionable questions about the languages she may consider native. in that instance, they were also very poor at explaining the purpose of the questions.

and i've thought a lot about that. and i think the answer is twofold. 1) danes trust blindly in their bureaucracy. if the municipality wants a yearly report of what languages the school age children speak in their homes, then they must have a reason for it, so we'll just provide them with that information without asking or even wondering how it will be used. 2) the danish higher education system does not include a set of general education credits which force students to have at least been exposed to basic rhetoric and argument-building. therefore, the principal of the school thinks she actually answered my questions and concerns, not realizing that "the municipality asks for it" is not an argument and does nothing to persuade me that there are not ulterior motives behind it. nor does her proof-less assurance that the information is not used for discrimination or exclusion. these are not arguments, but i have encountered such statements so many times that i have come to believe that danes believe they are arguments. because they don't know any better. me, however, i'm grateful to the TA who taught my rhetoric course at iowa because what i learned from him is still helping me recognize bad arguments on a daily basis.

overt racism becoming endemic in denmark

even our little black bunny was the last one to find a home.

in recent weeks, there's been some media swirl about a horrendously racist, pompous, superior and fascist-leaning blog post written by a danish politician, marie krarup (of the danish people's party (dansk folkeparti)), after a trip to new zealand. the blog was published on berlingske's website and is an absolutely stunning exercise in xenophobic, arrogant offensiveness. there is a full text (in danish and english) here. krarup stands by her racist remarks and refuses to apologize. but how do you apologize for stupidity?

being shockingly racist is nothing new for krarup - look here to see what she said about a visit to niagra falls. since it's in danish, and i do realize that's a minor language, i'll tell you what she said, "Niagara Falls in Canada has been allowed to remain White. In this multi-culti country a white person is always seen next to a black, one brown and one yellow. And they're all smiling so happily! As if to say to us: multi-culti is really good! But the waterfall is just white." this was posted on her facebook page and the comments all glowingly agree with her that multiculturalism is bad. jesper (the peasant) frederiksen actually comments,  "multi-culti functions only if there aren't too multi of the antisocial culti." i am rendered speechless by such a public display of racism in an elected official.

when i first came to denmark fifteen years ago, it was frowned upon to say things like this in public. a politician's career would have been over for such behavior. now, it's commonplace and even encouraged. granted the danish people's party is the most extreme right wing example, but they're the ones who have made it ok to bash foreigners and lump them all together into one big, bad group that's out to destroy the danish way of life.

all of this underlines the power of storytelling. for a good decade, in denmark the story has been told and repeated that foreigners, especially from the middle east, come to denmark to cause trouble and live off the supposed fat of the danish welfare state. there has a been an entire bureaucracy built up around a push for integration that looks a whole lot more like assimilation. and fear of The Other has become the order of the day.

i've spent some time in recent weeks interviewing foreigners who have moved to denmark for various reasons and i can safely conclude that this rhetoric and tone are not without damaging psychological consequences on the immigrants themselves. in the push to be stuffed into boxes at danish language schools, many of these people end up in a fog of depression and loneliness. they are bewildered that their danish neighbors don't speak to them and aren't interested in them. they feel isolated by a lack of language and bewildered by a culture that feels like it's rejecting them (and may actually BE rejecting them). many more of them than is healthy made the distressing statement that they began to feel they didn't know who they were anymore.

perhaps this is a common phenomenon for all who are in exile (chosen or not). it's hard to retain who you are in the face of an alien culture and way of thinking. especially when a psychological switch lays the entire burden to suck it up and integrate at your feet as the alien.

it's important to return to enlightenment values which value all individuals as equal and equally having something to offer if we are just open to what that might be. we've got to stop the negative, racist rhetoric in this country. we need to get a whole lot more outraged about it and show the elitist, fascist marie krarups of this country that it's not acceptable. i'm increasingly convinced that as individuals we can and must make a difference, starting right here in our own neighborhoods. my project gives me a chance to do something and i definitely intend to use that chance.