sunday morning reflections

sunday morning finds me leisurely looking through pinterest, facebook, my flipboard blog feed and the new york times on my li'l iPad. husband always gets up and makes tea and delivers a cup, milky and sweetened with honey, so i don't have to leave the warmth of the quilts. the cats curl up next to me, purring and jockeying for position and it's pretty much my favorite hour or so of the week.

if i view the world through the lens of my various feeds, i have learned that vladimir putin has some canny editorial writers, we can no longer use the words lame, crazy or insane, disney has been infiltrated by the illuminati, the reason that time magazine didn't put putin on the cover in the US this week (he was on the cover everywhere else) was because the media is controlled by 6 corporations, sweden is awesome, there are a lot of injured, homeless animals in need of homes, iowa beat iowa state (i surmised this more from the silence of certain iowa state folks in my feed), people think it's homemade if you combine 4-5 premade ingredients (cake mixes, oreos, cool whip, jello and tortilla chips), eating the resulting sweet dessert will likely bring you closer to jesus, there is major flooding in colorado, berlin is where all the cool stuff takes place, triangles are the new circle, autumn is upon us, the latest trend in photographing food is to place it against a dark background, which serves to make it more moody and poetic and according to my myers-briggs profile (ENTP), i am sirius black from harry potter. 

i do wonder what effect this melange of input has on me? does it connect new synapses in my brain or reinforce the old ones? are my horizons expanded or narrowed? do i end up feeling helpless about my ability to do anything about the state of the world? do I even have the first clue about what state the world is in? does it take away my desire to argue against the madness before i even begin? am I even allowed to call it madness (that illuminati thing is pretty out there)? is it all a load of bullshit?

i listened to a pretentious panel of "experts" yesterday on P1 (our NPR equivalent, only even better) debate the ability of individuals to live more sustainably in practice. they justified their purchases of non-organic food, designer bags, frequent airplane travels, long showers and wasting of energy with homes filled with electronics they never turn off and ended up concluding that we as individuals cannot do anything about living more sustainably. we might as well load our grocery cart with cheap chicken and sit in front of our enormous flat screen televisions, clad in prada, planning our next holiday in bali. they decided that we should wait for governments to wake up and regulate us, since we were too lazy to take steps ourselves.

and while that's a pretty dire and cynical conclusion, and it rather pissed me off when i heard it (as i was driving instead of biking, no less) upon reflection, i don't think it's that illogical in light of the input we feed in to our brains. a lot of what we read and expose ourselves to points to individuals not being able to make one iota of difference (after all, the illuminati and those 6 corporations are controlling everything). and i'd like to say that it's lame and crazy of us, but apparently that avenue is now closed as well.

also in my various feeds, i came across a guardian piece by jonathan franzen about our frustrating way of conducting ourselves in the modern world. he harkens back to an austrian intellectual, karl kraus, who was  blogging in a journal called the torch, before blogging was invented. maybe we need to do as kraus did, and spend a lot of time reading stuff we hate, so as to be able to hate it with authority. i'll admit i'm not good at that, as i blogged the other day, i've been turning off those who post the most objectionable stuff on my facebook feed, because i don't want their vitriol polluting my mind or messing up the steady stream of photos of kittens and lego minifigures. 

i think i've said it before, but we have to start fighting back. we've been slacktivists long enough. it's time to start arguing against the madness. because not doing so clearly isn't working.

knowing the story is the key

i read in the atlantic that storytelling may be the key to our evolution. whether that's true (or provable) or not, i know that it's the key to my ability to negotiate my way through the world. from the stories i tell myself in my head about various situations to the ones i relate out loud to generate a laugh to the ones i write for my clients, stories are pretty much the central feature of my existence.

this week, a very interesting story has unfolded that has made me so much more able to handle the situation with my nemesis the troglodyte. probably the biggest problem i've had with him has been that i could find no logic in his behavior or even for his involvement in the group, let alone his desire to so firmly grip the reins of control that everyone else's thoughts and contributions are obliterated. but thanks to a story, that all makes so much more sense. because it can all be explained by plain old boring selfish economic interest. it turns out that the troglodyte owns several properties which are adjacent to one of the potential locations for our project. his desire to place a new building on a square near his properties and his stubborn and oftentimes nasty refusal to consider the possibility of remodeling the existing building that's being used a "culture house" today make so much sense in light of his selfish interest in his own bottom line. i also learned that he's in the process of trying to sell the properties to a developer, one to whom he has undoubtedly promised that the new culture house will be built nearby and bring traffic to a new square right in front of the properties. hmm, i wonder if such petty little town kings (which are surely not rare) reflect in those world corruption list standings?

funnily enough, as the various options progress with our architect, it turns out that reusing just part of the old building will result in 1500 square meters of usable space for the money that's been budgeted, whereas a new building on the tiny lot on the square will result in 410 square meters of usable space. it seems there isn't much choice there. and it will be very interesting on monday evening to see what story he tells to he continue to justify his desire for the project on the square, adjacent to his own properties.

i have the most evil delicious sense of delight in the fact that he doesn't know that anyone knows that he's the owner. he doesn't realize how easy it is to google your way to answers. he's also been very dismissive of our group's online presence and the internet in general. it seems that one doesn't do well to underestimate the power of a girl and her computer. i can't wait for this story to unfold.

a little fairy tale

this evening, our heroine, the forest maiden,

with more than a little help from the warrior princess

and a little bit of help from the guy with the tomahawk,

found out the troglodyte's secrets.

even tho' he had tried to oh-so-cleverly disguise them.

and now the forest maiden (changed out of her forest garb) can kick back and relax and wait for the news of the new iPhones tomorrow.

or is it later today?

a wise child once said, "you can be interested in god without believing in god."

my deeply engrained cultural background, which constitutionally mandates a separation of church and state, bristles at any hint of religion mixed into the public schools. denmark has no such separation of church and state. in fact, they have a state church (a brand of protestantism that's more or less lutheran in its manifestation, tho' they refer to ministers as priests). it's the kind of religion i can get behind, mostly because it's perfectly ok for ordained, practicing ministers within the church to say, out loud, that they don't believe in god. that's just how the danes roll. however...

you knew there was a however.

sabin is in the seventh grade and that's when all good danish children are conformed confirmed. they go through 8 months of conformation confirmation preparation classes and activities (including, oddly enough, some kind of orientering run in a forest near silkeborg) and then in april or may, they dress up in really slutty-looking white dresses (think along the lines of danish design meets my big fat gypsy wedding here) and have a big party where family members and their parents' friends throw a rather obscene amount of cash at them for saying yes to jesus. it's quite a racket, since no one really believes in that stuff in this country. the kids do it for the dress, the party and the money. and many of them will actually say so out loud.

so let's just say that i'm a bit skeptical of this whole thing.

sabin isn't baptized. we aren't religious and tho' we have no objection to her choosing to be baptized, we didn't wish to make the choice for her as a baby. if she wants it, she can choose it, but she needs to learn about it and understand what she's getting herself into. in order to be confirmed, you have to be baptized. she's not keen on that if it means a big, public brouhaha, so she wasn't going to go to the confirmation preparation classes. however, as her friends began talking about it, we all realized there is an element of social pressure in it and an element of socializing in it that she will miss out on if she doesn't go to the preparation course. so, she signed up after all. we also learned that she can be quietly and privately baptized a few weeks before the confirmation, so that was a factor as well.

and as she very wisely said, "you can be interested in god without believing in god."

the other thing about the confirmation preparation course is that it takes place during school hours. not after school or in the evening as one would expect. but from 8-9:30 on a thursday morning, when everyone should be in school. in fact, it counts as part of their school hours. because of that whole lack of separation of church and state. and at the end of the month, they have a whole day off from school to go to that orientering run together in a forest near silkeborg. tho' what that has to do with jesus is beyond me (it's not very well explained). maybe it's just teambuilding, i don't know.

but the whole idea that school time is taken up for an activity that is not compulsory really gets to me. if she were choosing not to take part, she could just stay home until 10 on thursday mornings and have a day off from school that thursday at the end of the month (hmm, maybe i could sell it to her on those grounds). they're doing this instead of learning something like science or math or english or even german.

i want to scream.

then, on top of it all, at the first meeting last thursday morning, the minister (i refuse to use the word priest) spent the whole time showing off to each kid how many of that child's relatives he had baptized, married and buried. since sabin's not from this little town, he couldn't do that for her, so quickly skipped her over, making her feel at least quasi-heathen (she is half american and a quarter swedish after all) and less important, when really the whole thing was an exercise in how important he felt himself to be.

i fear this is going to be a long school year. and i will likely have words with that man before it's over.

i'll admit that i hope that in the end, she does as her father did - he went through the confirmation preparation and on the last day of it, attempted to convince the minister that god didn't exist and left never to be confirmed. he had the the party anyway. and his father was very proud of him. the same will be true for sabin - we'll happily throw her a nonfirmation party and even buy her a foofy, slightly trampy dress if she insists.  but it really truly is up to her to make the choice for herself. happily, i think she's perfectly capable of that.

sparks are flying

it's going to be a great week. i can feel it. there's just something in the air. happy monday, one and all.

an assortment of bottled-up thoughts

an assortment of bottled-up thoughts are tumbling through my head after a weekend of mad amounts of cooking (on saturday, i made chutney, pickles, raspberry jam, bread, ricotta, lasagne, garlic mushrooms which i picked myself in our forest and a plum cake). i did it all while watching doctor who on netflix (except the walk in the woods to pick mushrooms, i took a break then). i'm not sure i'm fully onboard with the doctor. there are a few too many zombies and crude robots with funny voices for my taste. it leaves it seeming a bit cheesy in a way that becomes tiresome after awhile. so today, while patching up all of husband's work jeans and shorts, i went over to the spinoff - torchwood. i think it's a bit more up my alley. but how great is netflix? what did we do before we had it?

* * *

i'm pondering ways of displaying my minifigure collection. i think i need a new typecase drawer, as i don't want to use the "official" display cases made by lego. i wanted husband to make me a little shelf that goes all the way around the ceiling, but he's not really that keen on the minifigure collection. something about plastic junk we don't need that i tuned out. there are worse things i could collect. shrunken heads, for example. or human teeth. or toenail clippings. it could be much, much worse.

* * *

this morning, a friend on facebook posted this piece on the power of language and the power of appropriating someone else's terminology (e.g. racism) and i found myself thinking about it all day. i've had racism on the brain of late, as i look around at denmark and find it becoming increasingly racist (just check out this proof). i've also been uncomfortable using that term, as i feel it's reserved for the black vs. white discussion and have hesitated to appropriate it more broadly. in the danish context, it's less about skin color and more about general xenophobia - fear of The Other, many of whom are as white as the danes. i've wondered if racism as a term really applies. but when considered in terms of power, oppression and privilege, it is in many ways racism which is on the rise in denmark. and if we don't use that stark terminology to point it out, we contribute to allowing it to happen (remember what happened last century when no one spoke up against a little moustached fellow named hitler?).

i do realize that this isn't what the ambiguously-gendered jamie of the article is saying - s/he's saying that outside of the black-white context, we shouldn't go bandying around the word "racism." but i think we not only should, we need to (tho' i agree with the examples given that it is a misuse of the word on the part of a bunch of whiners who have been slighted by someone). because racism needs to be stopped and it needs to be said, out loud, that it's not ok. 

oh, and i completely disagree with jamie that anyone's mind will ever be changed by a discussion on facebook.

* * *

a month or so ago, i came across a reference to ray bradbury's zen in the art of writing and ordered it from the library. i've not read any bradbury before (perhaps the odd short story back in school), but it is absolutely uncanny how i keep running across him all of a sudden. zen in the art of writing is a marvelous little book and i've got to own it, not just have it from the lbirary, it won't do to be without it. i am already making lists of nouns as he advises and can't wait to see what kind of stories come out when i sit down to use them.

then, on friday, i came across this spoken word piece by corin raymond and who does he refer to but ray bradbury? it's an hour long, but very much worth it. play it in the background while you're cooking or ironing or sewing or painting, it's about listening to it anyway. after listening, i ordered fahrenheit 451 and dandelion wine from the library. how can i have gone this long without reading them?

and then just now, i sat down with infinite perspectives, a book on the history of mapmaking. and who do you think wrote the foreword? ray bradbury. 

this can't be a coincidence. 

* * *

amazing albanian women who have lived as men for their whole lives.

spoken word

spoken word by tanya davis.

i need to find a way to get more spoken word into my life.
there's going to be a salon evening, focused on women at mungo park in kolding.
i'm hoping it's a place to start.
interestingly, it's not on their website, only in an email newsletter i get.
somehow i like that. it makes it feel like it's especially for me.

* * *

happy weekend, one and all.