oh what a beautiful morning

i'm finally feeling better after battling a low-grade fever for several days. i think i've got it licked now.
or maybe it's just that the sun came out and it was a glorious morning.
the chickens love hanging out near the horses.
as soon as i let them out in the morning, they run over there.
it's like they're friends. or maybe they just like horse poo.

* * *

and the nobel prize for literature 2013 went to alice munro.
oddly, i've never read her.
actually, not so oddly, as i don't often read north american writers.
except jonathan franzen, barbara kingsolver, paul auster and siri hustvedt.
and david foster wallace.

* * *

did you know about the bandcamp website?

it's full of cool, indie music. 

like this - something fierce by marian call

or this song - cats and netflix that i suspect is about me.

bandcamp might be myspace for hipsters. 

in a good way.

MAD: ID - co-creating the future of local food

last week, i participated in a co-creation event called MAD:ID (food (mad in danish), identity and design) at a place called spinderihallerne - a converted factory that's coworking, museum, café and event space all in one. madværket, a collective of local food producers (farmers, berry producers, breweries and even a whiskey maker), was behind the event. they were all there, along with politicians, people like me who do communications and happen to be interested in food (and who isn't?), bloggers, cooks, chefs, designers and events producers.

we were divided into several groups and asked to workshop various questions for two hours in the morning and two hours in the afternoon. throughout the day, we were fed these gorgeous little tidbits of local produce made by local chefs, who had spent a couple of days slow cooking pork bellies and making hawthorne sirups. an area woman who both grows unusual herbs and forages for them provided all of the beautiful flowers and herbs that decorated the food. she was also a participant in one of the groups.

my group was given the question of how to make the unusual and often wasted cuts of meat marketable and appealing to an enlightened audience. we discussed ways of enlightening that audience (who we determined to be busy families who cared about the food they put on the table), as well as down to the details of packaging and even the whole supply chain - as one of the premises was that it would be grass-fed, organic, local beef, slaughtered at a nearby butcher and then somehow made available to a discerning consumer. so, as you might imagine, we talked a lot about the whole rising trend of farm to table, wherein people want a relationship with their food. we actually discussed ways of giving calves instagram accounts and facebook pages, so people could follow the life of their beef, quite literally, from when it was born.

one thing our group was missing during the morning was one of the farmers. we were a group of rather affluent women with lofty notions of what we'd like to put on the table and how it should be delivered to our doors. but we didn't really know that much about the reality of getting the steer to the butcher and from there to further processing if that were required. in the afternoon, we were joined by a down-to-earth beef farmer (who is also a politician), who helped us anchor our ideas a bit more in reality. i think that helped us and we would have been more productive had he been with us from the beginning.

other groups worked on topics like how to expand local food tourism opportunities, since there are a lot of exciting things happening in our area food-wise, at least where production of interesting, local food products are concerned. another group worked on connecting foragers to chefs and i learned that you don't have to have foraged in an enormous amount for it to be interesting to local chefs, you just have to establish contact and let them know when you've found something interesting (e.g. mushrooms). in the presentation round, i found myself wishing i'd been in that group. a couple of groups worked on the question of making obscure cuts of meat more commercially viable, as we did and interestingly came up with solutions we didn't - like starting already in school, teaching the very youngest children the importance of using the whole animal and not letting any go to waste. that makes good sense to me.

in the middle of the day, after lunch, we took a break to listen to a lecture by the utterly amazing dutch eating designer marije vogelzang. i was very disappointed when her lecture ended, as i could have gone on listening to her and being inspired by her for at least another hour. i came home and ordered her book immediately. she has put together the most amazing food-related projects that are part art, part happening and part design, with a whole lot of history and thought and emotion thrown in. she will make you think about eating in whole new ways.

it seems that co-creation is the new black, but it's risky business. you don't really know what will come of it and you have to be open to that. they opened the doors to this event (which was free) and hoped that everyone came with their own particular angle and view on things, as well as a willingness to share their ideas. it seemed to me that they did. hopefully madværket can go further with the beginnings of ideas that were shared and begin to make a real difference for local food producers and consumers alike. i know i'd love to know that the beef (or pork or chicken) i buy was locally produced and i'd go out of my way to obtain it. we all have to start thinking more about the food we consume. the future of the planet may very well depend upon it.

this little savory "dessert" was served late in the day - tender, long-cooked strips of shredded beef and a savory, cool green ice cream. a twist on dessert and a festival of flavors that made me stop and think about what i was eating. we all need more of that in our lives.

* * *

marije vogelzang's dinner at spiers.

i so wish i were going.

* * *

stuck for what to read next?

this just might help.

i've waited 15 years for this

we've had starbucks in the airport in copenhagen since 2007, but they never really spread beyond there. i heard tales of one in a mall that's near the airport in copenhagen, but alas, that's far from me and i no longer spend enough time there. so my visits to starbucks are too few and far between.

but that is no longer the case! on saturday, i learned that one had opened just a few weeks before in a mall in kolding, only about 40 minutes from where i live. tho' i was running a low-grade fever and had a cold coming on, i packed up the child and her friend and her friend's mom and we headed down there for pumpkin spice lattes and frappuccinos and berry-hibiscus refreshas (with their high does of green caffeine, those are sabin's favorite).

and then on monday, after school, i said, "let's go have a pumpkin spice latte" to the girls and we went back. just to have coffee. real live starbucks coffee. the people who work there were trained at starbucks in ireland and they are friendly and wonderful just like in a usual starbucks anywhere in the world. and the PSL is just as heavenly as i remembered.

and you can never get the children started on their caffeine addiction too early, eh?

where are all of the dannede people?

danish has this great word, dannelse. google translate tells me it's formation in english, but it's more than that. it's a combination of education (the danish word for that being uddannelse), being widely read (at least partly in philosophy), having travel experience (slow travel of the kind favored in another age) and displaying good table manners. kirkegaard was a dannede man. erudite, gracious and a deep thinker.

the dannede person is capable of synthesizing complex thoughts and having a coherent overview of complex situations, further s/he is able to articulate real arguments with a basis in logical thinking.  s/he dresses well and can equally well dine with royals or with a table full of smoking intellectuals at the algonquin. s/he probably writes - essays, novels, fairytales, poetry or perhaps even the constitution. s/he commands respect because when s/he says something, it's thought-through and erudite.

we are sorely lacking such people in the world today. and i'm not sure how it happened. husband's theory is that it all went sorely wrong when the masses got money. once we no longer needed to be particularly educated in order to succeed financially, people stopped seeking education. eventually these people, who lack any basic training in how to form logical arguments and systematic ways of thinking about the problems facing the world, end up in places like the congress of the united states. and it all goes horribly, horribly wrong.

they have a lack of respect for the principles of a democratic process they don't understand - instead behaving like naughty children who throw a temper tantrum and stand and stomp their feet when they don't get their way. they don't understand the bigger picture or the tradition into which they've fallen - that when a bill is passed by a majority and signed into law, you cannot later tack it onto some other bill which has nothing to do with it and hold a whole country hostage. that's not how democracy works.

what seems to be the saddest part of the kindergarten that is now the american house of representatives (and i'm being sorely unfair to kindergartens here) is that there doesn't seem to be any adult supervisors. i have read time and again over the past week that this is a handful of extremists with a new and decidedly not dannede stranglehold on the repugnant party. there was a time when there were smart republicans out there, but they seem to be curiously powerless and silent and not doing a damn thing to rein these clowns in.

how on earth can the united states go around the world, forcing democracy down on the heads of afghanis and iraqis when they can't even get their heads around how it works at home?

i shake my head and feel grateful to be observing it from afar.

* * *

please help gwen get stories to her students.

sometimes you have to call a spade a spade

that pipe says "danger zone"

imagine this scenario: you're coming down with a cold and feeling a bit achy and under the weather, so you're making yourself a nice warm cup of elderberry cordial. your phone rings and you answer, stating your name in lieu of hello, as you've been forced into coerced taught by the culture of the country in which you live. the person on the other end doesn't identify himself, but instead sarcastically asks who he has gotten hold of. you repeat your name, mentally kicking yourself for not asking who the hell he was first. then he finally reveals that he's the rhino from the ungdomsskole (remember the one that's supposed to be taking sabin to st. petersburg in 10 days?) and you've filled out the visa application totally incorrectly (despite filling it out exactly as he advised you on the phone last saturday) and you need to turn some password over to him immediately, as he's sitting at the russian embassy in copenhagen. you say that rather than turn over a password (who does that to someone on the phone?), you would gladly log into the application and make the requested changes (tho' he hadn't said what they were yet at that point), since it should probably be you anyway as the child's parent. and despite not having said what the changes should be, but just condescendingly accusing you of filling it out wrongly, he gets very snippy and demands your password again.

you're standing outside, since the reception is rubbish in the house, but you can't for the life of you remember any password on the visa application site. and if you did set a password, it's one you commonly use (you bad) and you don't want to just hand it out to some condescending asshole on the phone. so again, you try to calmly state that you would be glad to log into the russian embassy system and make the changes (provided you are told what they are, since, again, you filled it out per the rhino's instructions while on the phone with him last saturday). since he was at the actual embassy, they would surely be able to access the updated form on their end and use the correct information.

but he goes on in the most condescending tone, as if you are a small, dull child, saying the equivalent of "listen here missy" (høre nu her) that you must immediately turn over the password to him or you can just go to copenhagen yourself next week and secure the visa. and that point, you completely see red, switch to english and end up calling him, and i quote, a fucking asshole, among a rather lot of other things, which may also have included swear words. bearing in mind that danes use the word fuck freely and it doesn't have the same impact to them that it does to you, you mean it with every fiber of your being in that moment and you mean it in the strong american sense of the words, even as you realize you probably shouldn't have gone there. but seriously, this asshole, who has been abominably disorganized and has still, tho' the trip is due to leave in 11 days, not provided an itinerary, flight details or any other information about the trip, has the nerve to be a condescending prat to you on the phone because you filled out a form as he instructed. unbelievable.

as you might guess, all of this happened to me this afternoon. and after i hung up and went inside to make changes to the visa, i learned that there isn't a password - all you needed was the visa application number (which he had on a physically-printed piece of paper) and the first five letters of sabin's last name, which was clearly stated in the blank beside it. there wasn't a password. so he was a complete ass for absolutely no reason.

there is a worrying thread running through all of the encounters i've had thus far with the ungdomsskole. it started already at our parents meeting when the leader of our local outpost told a highly sardonic and condescending (not to mention sexist) story about how sometimes young people's mothers call him to sign their kids up for things that he thought the kids should sign themselves up for. i suppose i'm being put in this box as well, as i am a mother who, funnily enough, is involved in preparing her 12-year-old daughter's visa application for a trip to russia. apparently, these kids should just do these things for themselves. and if, as a mother, i want to know something more about what my child will experience, is that seriously too much to ask? an itinerary, possibly some flight details, for a school trip to russia? isn't that just a given? these disorganized clowns haven't even managed that. on the other hand, it's likely that the trip will fall through, as they've gone to hand in the visa applications far too late. from what i can read on the russian website, it will take at least ten working days, maybe 7 if we're lucky, and there are only 6 working days left before their departure.

i truly hate to find myself becoming one of those sort of righteous danish women, but there you have it. i've been pressed into it by a condescending, misogynist ass of a danish man. and while i will admit i shouldn't have called him a fucking asshole. he really was a fucking asshole.

* * *

and to take our minds off all of this, some interesting photos.

or have you read sinead's open letter to miley cyrus?

video killed the radio star

as i told you all last week, my TEDx experience opened up a whole new avenue for me - on nationwide talk radio! it was a bit nerve wracking to "appear" on the radio in a language not my own, and i'm sure i made mistakes (that whole det and den thing still eludes me), but i'm also pretty happy i was able to do it. i also managed to find the clips to share with you.

my radio "appearance" on october 27 with the new US ambassador to denmark, rufus gifford. fast forward to around 35:00, that's where i begin - in danish initially, but in english once the ambassador joined. and i would like to note that just as i began to answer their first question, the ambassador and his entourage (including a guy who puzzlingly had a herring sandwich on plate) came in and i was very distracted. i was nervous, but my fumbling around was much more due to my utter inability to multitask than to my nerves and i did get better:

the conversation i had  that day led to a second "appearance" this week, in a conversation with lise thomsen, who is responsible for a website called expatindenmark. this whole thing is in danish, but you can catch a word here and there (chicago and golf club). i was much more at ease the second time around and i feel so privileged to be part of opening the conversation around the expat experience in denmark (the very next day, berlingske ran a piece on the unfriendliness of the danes by a 12-year-old girl!). the only way to change things is to talk about them and i'm glad we're finally doing so. this one starts at about 41:40:

* * *

big storm heading for south dakota.

watch more of this guy's videos on youtube, he's a worldwide weather man. 

have your rubber boots ready!

if i were...revisited

if i were a month i’d be september.

if i were a day i’d be friday.

if i were a time of day i’d be midnight.

if i were a font i’d be courier.

if i were a sea animal i’d be tuna.

if i were a direction i’d be true north.

if i were a piece of furniture i’d be one of those awesome foldable swedish tables.

if i were a liquid i’d be chardonnay sur lie from delheim.

if i were a gemstone i’d be a sapphire.

if i were a tree i’d be a maple.

if i were a tool i’d be a paintbrush.

if i were a flower i’d be a sunflower.

if i were an element of weather i’d be thunder clouds.

if i were a musical instrument i’d be a saxophone.

if i were a color i’d be aqua.

if i were an emotion i’d be content.

if i were a fruit i’d be a mango.

if i were a sound i’d be the purr of a cat.

if i were an element i’d be hydrogen.

if i were a car i’d be a smart car.

if i were a food i’d be forest mushrooms in garlic butter.

if i were a place i’d be home.

if i were material i’d be linen.

if i were a taste i’d be salty.

if i were a scent i’d be sisley no. 2.

if i were a body part i’d be hands.

if i were a song i’d be sheryl crow's all i wanna do.

if i were a bird i’d be a swan.

if i were a gift i’d be handmade.

if i were a city i’d be istanbul.

if i were a door i’d be painted blue.

if i were a pair of shoes i’d be stilettos.

if i were a poem i’d be ithaca by constantine cavafy.

and don't forget to check how i answered back in 2010 and 2011. i had completely forgotten about this list, i found it by following one of my own link within links, which is odd, because that's not something i normally do.  it was rather fun to just listen to my intuitive answers to the questions. drop me a comment if you try it too!