secret 24 - devaluation

it's no secret that a few years ago i had a fulbright scholarship to study in the balkans. i've written about that several times here on the blog, mostly because it's where i met husband and if i hadn't gotten it, i don't know how we would ever have met (shudders and blood runs cold thinking of that one).

but here's the kicker. getting a fulbright totally devalued the fulbright in my eyes. because i figured if even i could get one, it must be easy. the mystique was totally gone. it must be that they hand them out like candy. (frankly i feel a little bit that way about Blog of Note now that i got it too, tho' i'm not as ready to say that out loud, so please just whisper it to yourself.)

living the right life

living the right life. how can we ever really know? we're so in the middle of living our lives, that how can we ever see if it's the right one we're living or not? twelve years ago, i was living the wrong life. only i didn't know it. i was practically a newly-wed when i headed off on my fulbright. why did i go away to an obscure balkan country, leaving my new husband (he was an old boyfriend, so it didn't feel that new) in a new city (we had moved from arizona to chicago)? i thought i did it because it was an academic/professional opportunity that i couldn't pass up. i mean, who turns down a fulbright, especially for a guy? that would just be silly if not downright stupid.

when i was in that balkan backwater, i encountered a lot of lost souls and i silently thanked my lucky stars that i wasn't one of them. because i didn't think i was. i even had a conversation with a friend one evening about how so many of the people around us seemed to be running from something...responsibility, loneliness, boredom, relationships (or lack thereof), a picture of themselves they didn't have to face when there were there outside of their "real" life. i remember that we decided we weren't running from anything. and i meant it at the time. i felt not so much like i was running away as running toward. towards a career that i could see on the horizon and to which a fulbright was an essential component, just like presenting at conferences and scholarly publication.

but, about halfway through my time there, i realized that i was in fact running away from a life that wasn't working. i had gotten married for all of the wrong reasons. it was a combination of a lot of factors...peer pressure--all of our friends were getting married, even the ones who hadn't been together as long as we had. his residency was ending. we'd been together for years. people thought we were a great couple--being with us was like hanging out with paul and jamie from mad about you, only even funnier and wittier and not at all annoying (or so we thought). he was a doctor, so i didn't have to explain what i was doing studying russian literature. he was funny and nice and i liked him. key word being liked. i wasn't in love with him and never had been, but the time was simply right, so we got married.

but i didn't know, or at least didn't admit, any of this, especially not to myself, until i actually had met the person i should have been spending my life with. he too was funny and nice and so cute, but was so much more than that. he challenged me--i remember a heated discussion about postmodernism at a cafe high on the hill in thessaloniki, warm summer breezes wafting in from the aegean, him waving a forkful of cool honeydew melon at me while telling me that postmodernism was just laziness, it wasn't possible that everything was equally good. and in challenging me, he took me seriously in a way that my starter husband never did. he indulged me, but never took me seriously. and in taking me seriously, i realized that j-p respected me. and he made me laugh and do silly things (stealing fries from some friends of ours who were standing in line in bull's (a greek equivalent of mcdonald's) even tho' we didn't even know one another at the time. we immediately started in on the practical jokes together, already then. it was destiny that we would be together. meeting him made me feel like i'd been holding my breath for such a long time and could at last breathe for real. it was the great love that i had stopped believing could exist outside of big-budget hollywood films.

we had to go through a lot to be together. it's one thing to meet one another and fall madly in love when you're both out of your element, away from your everyday life and your everyday responsibilities. but we knew we wanted to try to be together back in the real world as well. we talked openly about how we had each been living the wrong life up to that point and we didn't want to wake up in another twenty years and realize that it was too late to correct it. so we went through the pain of divorces and not having much money and transporting me to a new culture to which i am still at times resistant. but we were always resolved in wanting to have lived the right life and to treasure the great love we had found together.

and today, we've been married for ten years. what a life it's been. i didn't end up the academic i expected to be, but then i would never have traveled the way i have, nor had the experiences i've had career-wise. and today, on our tenth anniversary, i'm completely sure that i'm now living the right life. and we still have the great love that we found in one another back in that balkan backwater. it's deeper and more sure than ever.

we still discuss deep issues like postmodernism and social theory and evolution and the shockingly aphoristic, crap-like quality of business/leadership-related books (even those from harvard university press), if not daily, then every other day. sometimes we have these discussions in bed at night, giggling in the darkness as we elaborate on bourdieu's notion of cultural capital or whether the next steps of evolution are taking us into cyberspace. and these discussions keep us vital and engaged in one another and in the world.

he builds me things, like my beautiful kitchen and my writing house/atelier/studio/building-in-the-garden-that-i-don't-know-what-to-call (so he had the help of a wonderful polish guy named rafy on that one). we have a style together that we've developed over the last decade. it encompasses everything from our home to our cooking to our music collection (admittedly, i influence that rather heavily because i'm the one with iTunes and have banished his 18 supertramp albums to his workshop--didn't they only have the one song, you ask? yes, and they did it over and over on many albums, but i digress). but we have come to a place, after ten years, where we know who we are as us.

although we each have a professional life that is individual, we are definitely living our life together and it feels like the right life, even more so ten years in. and i hope it goes on for several more decades before that plane crash, but today, we will celebrate that first decade.

oh, and it's also husband's birthday. that way he couldn't very well forget our anniversary. clever, eh?

husband, you are my life.

interview with a...well, not a vampire, but more of a small town american girl in europe

i've recently discovered a blog called willow manor. and i'm playing along on a fun little interview game that willow has going on, here are the rules (there are always rules):

willow says:

1. Leave me a comment saying, "Interview me." check.

2. I will respond by emailing you five questions. (I get to pick the questions). check.

3. You will update your blog with the answers to the questions.  see below.

4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the same post. check.

5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions. please comment below and i'll ask you five questions and we can keep the interview chain going!

and the questions that willow asked, not in the order that she asked them, but you'll see why in a minute:

2. You mentioned in one of your recent posts about a Fulbright Scholarship. Tell us about it.  

arizona state university was (in the mid 90s) year after year playboy magazine's #1 party school (perhaps it still is, i've lost track). i was there, doing a master's and they were eager to shed their party school image, so their scholarship office went on a campaign to help their students get fulbright and NSEP scholarships in order to raise their perceived academic standing. seven of us won fulbrights that year. i pitched a project to study macedonian literature in, you guessed it, macedonia. a couple of months in, i found out it didn't exist (difficult to create a viable national literature when your language was codified in a political move in 1945), so i was hanging out in the balkans. 

1. How did you come to live in Denmark?

"there among the concrete slabs, great love was born." --monica b., skopje, macedonia, sometime in august, 1997. 

along the way, in the ex-pat community in macedonia, i met a wonderful (and very cute) danish boy who was there with peacekeeping troops. at the time, there were two battalions there--a US and a nordic, the nordic consisted mostly of finns, but there was a single dane, a single swede and a single norwegian. since my danish boy was in the army as a career officer and i was a graduate student, it was logical that i came to him, tho' at the time, i was a snob for eastern europe and used to proclaim that i didn't DO western europe. however, suddenly you find that more than ten years have gone by and you find yourself with a house and a child and friends and a career and, well, a life, and you live in denmark, which you never imagined you'd do, growing up in a small town in south dakota.

3. If you had to choose one spot in the world to live, where would it be?

cape town, south africa. i've been there twice on business and fell madly in love with the natural beauty of the winelands and the cape. tho' i could also easily live in manila. i love the philippines and find filipinos so friendly and warm. but i'm supposed to choose only one, so i'll say cape town.

4. Apart from your loved ones, what is your most treasured possession?

these days, it would seem to be my camera, but probably, it's our home. we built on in 2008 and it's really great now, exactly as we wanted it. we not only built on, but built a number of smaller buildings in the garden...one for me, one for husband, a fantastic a-frame greenhouse and a sauna. and our home is filled with us and our life together...things we've collected on our travels, our memories, our laughter. it's definitely a most treasured possession.

5. Before blogging, what, if any, was your main mode of personal expression?

my small black moleskine full of "to do" lists that i still carry wherever i go. it's full of everything from travel impressions to lists to small sketches to snippets of song lyrics to clever or funny quotes said by people i've encountered.  people who know me well are always trying to get a quote into my book. and in my last job, people were a little afraid of my "little black book." once one is filled, i save them, because i feel like half my brain is in there.

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so, now it's your turn, if you'd like me to interview you,  asking five questions of my choosing, please leave a comment below and let's keep this ball rolling. this is gonna be fun!

updating "about me"

it seemed like it was about time to update my "about me." so i did.

waves hello!  this is me. or at least my feet (if you like them, you can see more of them over here). i'm american, but i've been living in the little land of denmark for nigh on 14 years. i met a lovely danish boy in the balkans in 1997 when i was on a fulbright there and i followed him home (after going back home to the states to get rid of that starter husband take care of a few things). it's really true that a fulbright can change your life.

i thought i was going to be a professor of russian literature, as russian literature is my first love but life took me in another direction and i've worked for some of the biggest companies in the world. however, now, together with a couple of friends, i have a very tiny little consultancy specializing in all kinds of communications and strategy development in english. and that suits me just fine.

at that point in life where you're supposed to be settled down, enjoying your career, your volvo and your perfect house in the suburbs, we gave it all up and moved to a falling down house on a little 17 acre farm property in the middle of nowhere in denmark. i live there with that danish husband (and i really do call him husband) and our daughter who is not quite a teenager, but starting to show signs. we actually live in a town called give, which i feel makes me a little bit kinder and gentler towards the world, just because of what it means. actually, being kinder and gentler towards the world is something i'm working on - both literally (in terms of consuming less) and internally (in terms of trying to turn off my evil corporate persona, which, if i think about it, started out as an evil academic persona). and i don't always succeed. but hey, it's a process. (damn you apple and your shiny, appealing products. and damn you cult company who made me drink the blue kool-aid for four years.)

we have horses and chickens and bunnies and cats and bees. and one end of a beautiful lake. we've planted cider apple trees and 15 rows of potatoes. we have a big kitchen garden and want to live a more sustainable life, knowing where our food has come from and how it's been treated. but that too is a process. i share a bit of it here.

i struggle and laugh and love and try to make sense of the danes. i am trying to be involved in my community. i don't travel as much as i used to. i miss that a little bit. but i want different things now - to open a little posh bed and breakfast, to have a rustic office space in the back garden, to hold creativity weekends where people can get back in touch with themselves and their creativity. husband, he just bought equipment for a sawmill, so he clearly wants something new as well. oddly, with all these things we want, we are also feeling quite content with how things are right here and now.

this blog is where i work out what i think about things. after all, blogging is cheaper than therapy.

#5 - what if?

this week i'm writing each day about a person, place or thing that has had a big effect on my life. i'm going to be leaving aside parents, sister, husband and daughter because those are a given for having had a big effect and writing about that effect would be way more typing than i should do with the angry nerve in my left hand.

this is the last installment. it has been a very interesting assignment and i have even discovered a few things along the way (the thing about reagan) and confirmed others (the iPod posting proves what we have long suspected--i have a very deep shallow streak). i think i'll try to come up with some other writing assignments for myself in the coming weeks. if there are any ideas/suggestions out there, please do leave a comment!

this last of the 5 people, places or things that have had a big effect on my life is another professor. as i pondered this one, i found myself thinking how different my life would be if i'd never met her.

if i'd never signed up for a graduate course called intro to comparative literature during my first semester at playboy magazine's #1 party school, i might not ever have met elizabeth horan. 

i was interested in comp lit because i thought i eventually wanted a ph.d. in it. in fact, i had applied to a ph.d. program (only one, silly me) and didn't get in because i had had only russian lit and thus nothing to compare, so i found myself seeking another master's degree, in humanities, to try to get something to compare to the russian stuff.

if i hadn't taken that course, i wouldn't have:

• had my first exposure to magical realism.
• or reception theory.
• or had my first thoughts on the implications of translation on the literary work.
• met two fantastic and interesting people who i am still friends with to this day.
• had a truly fantastic discussion about the poetry of osip mandelstam and anna akhmatova.
• found my voice and thus my confidence in the graduate classroom (despite already having a master's degree when i started, i wouldn't say i'd really found my graduate feet).
• met the professor who would head my thesis committee.

and i certainly wouldn't have signed up for another of prof. horan's courses:  nobel prize winners from north and south america. and if i hadn't done that, i wouldn't have:

• made the completely hilarious and annoyingly consistent mistake of referring to the swedish academy as the "swiss" academy throughout the bit i wrote for a group assignment! (in fact, i still haven't lived that one down!)
• suggested that a figure like camille paglia might eventually win a nobel prize for literature (i was a bit off there, but i intentionally wanted to go for a longshot and my arguments were good).
• i wouldn't have stuck my foot in my mouth about annoying high school teachers who thought they could fit in in graduate courses, saying it TO one of said annoying high school teachers. (sigh...we learn from these experiences).
• had the chance to prepare in depth and teach a session on octavio paz.
• read a whole lot more gabriel garcia marquez and pablo neruda and gabriele mistral.
• gone out to casey moore's for beers and wings twice a week with the gang after class.

i adored prof. horan's teaching style. she was very laid back and very much let the course be student-driven. we took turns presenting the assigned readings and it went a long way towards preparing us both as researchers and as teachers, which is more than most graduate programs do.

but the most important thing she did for me was point out a poster for meetings regarding applying for fulbright scholarships. she said, "you should go, they'd be crazy not to give you one." i was blown away. i hadn't even been considering it. what would i research? where would i go? how would i pitch it? would they really give one to me? but those are prestigious! how could that be?

so i went to the meeting. it seemed that the #1 party school year after year wanted to shed that image and raise their academic reputation (and in all honesty, at the graduate level, it was awesome--very engaged teachers and students all around!). they saw helping their students gain fulbrights as one way of doing that. and help us they did. there were 7 or 8 of us receiving a fulbright that year.

and prof. horan was probably the biggest help to me of all, not only by suggesting i apply, but in helping me shape my application (she'd had at least one herself, so she knew how it all worked), but also writing me what my dad called the mother of all recommendation letters. it was like having a letter from god that would open any door. and although i hardly recognized myself in it, i was and will be eternally grateful for the kind words that were there.

but the biggest "what if" in this is that if it hadn't all gone as it did, i wouldn't have been in the right place at the right time to meet that lovely danish boy who is now my husband (and has been for nearly 10 years!) and i shudder to think about that. i would have lived a completely different life without elizabeth horan. so i am forever grateful to her for all that she taught me--both in the classroom and about myself and even more so for the guidance she gave. she definitely steered me in the right direction.

the teachers you remember - a post without pictures

we all have teachers we remember...sometimes for good reasons and sometimes for not so good ones.

~ mrs. polly, who made us try sardines on saltines in kindergarten and who made sheila madsen disappear after she cried at school, leaving one thinking one had better not cry at school or one might disappear oneself. tom pranger also cried and both he and his brother tim, who did not cry, disappeared as well. crying was not a good thing to do in kindergarten.

~ mrs. bushman, who divided us all into blue birds, red birds and yellow birds according to our ability to read "saw" as "saw" and not "was" and to not leave a puddle of pee beneath our desks on a regular basis. come to think of it, you could still be a blue bird and pee your pants regularly, as jody hoekman proved again and again, so it must just have had to do with reading ability.

~ mrs. luze, who was the subject of a horrible joke by my father, who stamped one of my worksheets with a "horseshit" smiley stamp and asked her if that wasn't a little harsh. she stared at him in wide-eyed horror, her jackie o bouffant perfectly coiffed (it was the 70s, but the 60s lingered on in south dakota, we were a little behind, after all).

~ miss maryann. my favorite grade school teacher. she who taught us about chicken soup with rice and allowed us to choose spelling words like uruguay and triskaidekaphobia. she was in a horrible car accident and ended up in a body cast in pierre. i think i had nightmares about that for years afterwards. i think her husband owned the seattle mariners for awhile at one point. or was it the super sonics?

~ mrs. petersen. she put up with horrendous plays we made up ourselves, based on various combinations of nancy drew and the hardy boys. they were interminable and she allowed them, but she punished us by making us sit together in desk groupings with boys.

~ mr. teller. he lived in the apartment across from my grandmother and always had the yuckiest warm coffee breath which he breathed on you in a moist, uncomfortable way if you asked him a question. not that long ago, dad mentioned that he was a vietnam vet with issues. that i did not realize at the time...the vet part at least (tho' of course, for years, i thought veteran's day was veterinarian's day, so there was that aspect), i do, however, think i picked up on the issues.

~ mrs. blunck. she had been a teacher for too long and hated children. i remember when i wore my first pair of high heels to the 6th grade...they had awesome wooden, chunky heels and were brown leather with colorful leather stitches. she told me to wait to grow up. which, in retrospect, might have been wiser than i thought it was at the time. but i still maintain she hated children. and i think she might actually have been a man. a very short, stout, child-hating man.

~ mrs. walker. the superintendent's wife, with her severe haircut, gabardine pantsuits and cowboy boots. on the day ronald reagan was shot, they announced it over the school's pa system. i, perhaps a bit too cheerily, and with more than a tinge of hope in my voice, asked, "is he dead?" and she made the entire class stay after school because of my disrespect for the president (that made me very popular, i tell you). i was already a liberal in the 7th grade. i will say tho', that she taught me how to draw using perspective and for that, i am grateful, tho' i've never been that fond of polyester since then.

~ mrs. tappe. she always seemed classy and a little bit above the fray and like she didn't really need the job but did it just for fun. she taught us girls how to take shorthand and do other officey-things, like filing, that girls should learn in those days. i liked her and i liked shorthand too.

~ mrs. leistra. gabardine and cowboy boots - she and mrs. walker clearly shopped the same fashion crime scene, but she had an even more severe haircut. i learned to type from her on an ibm selectric. i'm still using that skill at this very moment (tho' i have thankfully graduated to an apple product) and no, i don't need to look at my keyboard. tho' maybe i'd have learned it anyway as i'm pretty much bred to be good at typing.

~  mr. hirt. they gave him history because it didn't matter that much (maybe they knew we'd eventually be able to google any historical knowledge we needed to know). he was actually the football and wrestling coach. he could be easily led astray during a boring recounting of the civil war and made to tell stories of the brave wrestlers of the university of iowa, which always seemed a little bit like being in a john irving novel, so i liked it. i believe i eventually went to the university of iowa because of him, but oddly, i don't think he went there himself.

~ mr. schaefer. i'll never forget the day he droned on and on about filling out tax forms while dressed as gilligan (tho' i have a more hazy recollection of why he did that). he looked strikingly like gilligan even in his regular attire and it was very difficult not to laugh during the entire hour. i think there was more to him than we realized at the time. he coached girls basketball.

~ mr. harvison. bitter man who, despite the triple major to which he loved to refer, never really seemed to amount to all that much himself. he was, naturally, appointed guidance counselor, as we weren't really supposed to amount to all that much either, being from a small town as we were. we shouldn't have too many aspirations. after all, we could never live up to mr. harvison's own triple major. i was never clear what it was in, but when he taught psychology, he liked to use, by name, various people in town and former students as examples of the various psychoses (there's likely a whole other blog post in recounting those). i spent my time in his physics class reading dostoevsky. i think it's probably why i eventually got a fulbright. funnily, enough, i don't think mr. harvison ever got one of those.

~ mr. markhart. the math teacher. he had a ruler and he wasn't afraid to wack it against a desk. i think i was actually better at geometry than i was supposed to be as a girl, but managed to pull myself back to the level where i belonged where algebra was concerned. mr. markhart wanted us to think he was strict, but actually, he liked kids and got more of a kick out of us than he let on. and we really did learn stuff from him, and not only how much force it took to break a wooden ruler, but actual math and things.

what teachers do you remember?

let's get lost: ohrid

lake ohrid, in macedonia, is close to my heart. i had an idyllic three weeks there in the summer of 1995, which led me to return on a fulbright in 1997. a time which changed the entire course of my life for the better (and ultimately enabled me to live the entire bush administration outside the US). if you want unspoiled beauty, great pizza, some lovely (but inexpensive) local wine and to feel history under your fingernails, visit ohrid.

st. clement of ohrid

st. jovan kaneo on the horizon (where you can get a glass of raki at 10 a.m.)

enjoying the lake

not really at ohrid, but at a little hotel near tito veles (also in macedonia).

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these photos were taken in macedonia in july 2007.

aging system fails to keep up with new economic reality

it's a very interesting experience, this being unemployed and encountering the social welfare system to which i've paid so dearly for so many years, both through my (rather alarmingly high) taxes and through an extra unemployment insurance called an A-kasse, through my union. although a job is on my immediate horizon, it won't start 'til april, so i need to enter the "dagpenge" or "day-money" system for a month. and in fact, having paid into the system for so long, i actually want to try it out, to see how it works.  it is an interesting, frustrating and yes, even infuriating experience. and a huge eye-opener into a system that has not kept up with the reality of those facing unemployment today.

in many ways, i think it's fair enough for there to be some oversight and monitoring of people who are, as the brits put it, on the dole. so a certain amount of paperwork is fair enough. it's also fair enough that you have to be actively seeking employment so that you can rejoin the ranks of taxpayer and not payee (tho' interestingly, you ARE taxed on the money you get from the government - that's a whole 'nother issue that i won't go into at the moment).

the first thing you are asked to do is enter your "CV" into an old-fashioned and cumbersome online system called the jobnet. i am, as you know, quite good at things internet and it still took me the better part of an hour to do this. there is one point where you should give a written description of your work life thus far and the skills and talents you have to offer to an employer. sort of like you do at the top of a normal CV - a profile of yourself. however, it is limited to 250 characters, so it's kind of like the twitter version of who you are and what you want. i found this quite limiting, i must say.

at the end, after you have entered all of this, the system helpfully suggests some jobs to you that are found in its database. for me, the system admitted that it didn't have anything that matched my profile, but suggested that i have a look at several jobs that were marked as "hot" with a little red chili pepper symbol. the "hot" jobs the system suggested i apply for included: telemarketer for a mobile phone company, helper in a nursing home and yes, you guessed it, cleaning staff in a hotel. at this point, i said, aloud, WTF?

apparently the system, which forces you to spend the best part of an hour entering a whole lot of information about your work experience and education, but will not allow you to actually upload your real CV, doesn't actually know what masters degrees and ph.d. programs and fulbright scholarships and elite american universities really are. is it really relevant for me to enter my real and true information into this system that is so clearly targeted at someone on a totally different plane(t) than i am?

i realize that this sounds rather arrogant and in a way, i don't mean it to, but in a way, i do. seriously? this system was clearly developed when denmark's unemployment was for all intents and purposes nul. so anyone who was on the job market was looking for telemarketing or a cleaning job. but now, the reality is something quite different--there is a job market full of highly-educated people with extensive work experience on the market. and the system hasn't changed to reflect this.

next week, i actually must attend a two-day course which will help me determine my "competence" and then write a CV. hello, people. i could TEACH that course. without preparing in advance.

i also have to log into this ridiculous jobnet on a weekly basis and apply for two jobs. two jobs that are apparently listed there in the jobnet. so they are actually FORCING me to apply for telemarketing and cleaning jobs in order to get grocery money for one month. it makes no difference whatsoever that i have a job lined up, nor does it matter that i've paid into the unemployment insurance scheme for ten years. if i want that one month of assistance, i have to jump their hoops, because they have made the hoops the same for all.

although it gave me a serious headache mid-afternoon when i was knee-deep in all of it, i am now more relaxed and ready to take it as the sociological experiment that it is for me. a test of the system, if you will. and i'm going to do quite a lot of writing (in my journal, don't worry, i won't subject you all to all of it) about the psychological effects of such a system. i have to admit that it already feels quite defeating and psychologically damaging to enter my experience and education and have the system suggest to me that i become a telemarketer. the implications on job seekers and society at large are potentially devastating.

i'll bet this isn't the only example of a system that's broken in the face of the new economic reality.

the fifth circle of hell or weird wednesday gets even weirder

descending to the fifth circle of hell (wrath and sullenness)

my morning found me trudging up a staircase, following a fifty-something woman who had clearly eaten loads of garlic for breakfast, or perhaps just used it instead of perfume. i prayed frantically silently to odin that she was going somewhere else, but no, she was headed to the same classroom up on the top floor that i was. apparently odin was otherwise engaged.

because there is a gap of time between old job and new job, i have applied for unemployment benefits and one of the hoops one must jump through is to attend a two day "competence assessment" course during which one ends up with an online "CV" in a government system (the one which, if you recall, suggested after analyzing my education and experience that i do telemarketing). thus, you know that i have already placed my CV in the system on my own and am, as it were, well aware of my competence(s). so anyway, that's why i found myself following the clearly-afraid-of-vampires woman up the stairs early on a wednesday morning.

myself and 17 others were attending the day's sessions, which opened with the most patronizing 30 minutes of instructions and warnings i've witnessed in as long as i can remember. we were referred to as "unemployed welfare recipients" (very motivating) during the entire spiel, which included a whole lot of references to the apparently given fact that we were looking for jobs as chauffeurs and nursing home attendants (not that there's anything wrong with those things, but i didn't spent nine months on a fulbright in the balkans to lift old mr. hansen from his bed to his wheelchair). anyone who came in late was subjected to cutting and even more demeaning and patronizing remarks about their ability to tell time.

once i realized that i was making serious fingernail marks in the palms of my hands from holding them in fists to keep from screaming, i tuned out the capri- and thigh-length "sporty" boot-wearing woman's patronizing droning and looked around. nearly half of my fellow participants were in their upper fifties, four were clearly carpenters or bricklayers or the like, there were two who looked a bit like me and a few young women who looked like candidates for channel 4's the young mothers program.

the capri-clad woman with her asymmetrical haircut turned us over to an energetic bald man who told us straight away about his messy divorce and life with his three kids, who only spend half the month at his house. for otherwise cold, closed people, the danes surely do share some all-too personal details rather easily. he proceeded to throw every remaining scrap of political correctness out the window in what i eventually decided was a charming way (after i recovered from the shock that he outright called me an asshole for joining that more general union instead of the one for people with master's degrees). he actually said to a young girl who worked part time in a church, "what the hell does a kirketjener (her job title) do?" not really appreciating the irony of swearing about a church. i had to actually cover my mouth to restrain outright boisterous laughter at that one.

one of the women, who i thought i had spotted as a fellow academic, turned out to be a former computer programmer turned papergirl turned failed nursing student who left her 4-year nursing program after 6 years without finishing due to "ideological reasons." i came to feel real empathy for her, because i think she had a soft heart and it caused her to be unable to take the overwhelming reality of the world. on the other hand, i do think there are meds for that.

once i arranged not to be forced to go back for day two (i was clearly in the wrong room and apparently the wrong union), i sat back and enjoyed it. some of the more amusing stories that came out during the day:

~  a girl in her late 20s with two kids and no husband who wanted to be a mechanic because she liked cars (but had no training or skills in being a mechanic whatsoever and no idea how to get them. and she didn't even have a car).

~  a sweet (and very talkative) man of nearly 60 who had spent a lifetime as a salesman and had already applied for 500 jobs (he had a stack of documents to prove it).

~  a boy in his early 20s who said his ambition was to become a garbage man (after he attained the correct qualifications, including a driver's license, which he currently lacked).

~  a real asshole of a (self-declared) dyslexic bricklayer whose phone was in his coat pocket and kept ringing every 15-20 minutes all morning and who actually refused to turn it off or on silent when asked to do so (turned out he didn't know how to do it, so the future garbage man helped him out, but not until it had rung 4-5 times).

i'll admit i didn't get a whole lot out of the day, other than 11 pages of notes in my "blog about this" notebook. so perhaps it was worth it. but thank odin i don't have to go back tomorrow. so i can stay home and write some more about it, because there's so much more to share.

an egyptian adventure - part 1

after leaving russia by taking a train to the finnish border all by myself in 1994, i felt i was an invincible traveler. there was nowhere i couldn't go and no adventure i wouldn't attempt. it was with this attitude firmly in place that i arrived in macedonia on my fulbright to find the university and the library i needed for my research closed for several weeks for a winter holiday. finding skopje in january a bit drab and boring (not to mention empty, since everyone had apparently headed for australia or toronto to visit relatives) i did what anyone would do. i took a vacation.

i got in touch with a german friend who i had studied together with in russia and he said, "let's go to egypt, i saw some cheap tickets in a travel agency window." before i knew it, i found myself on malev hungarian airlines, squeezed in between my friend and an elderly muslim woman with a enormous duffel bag (from which i swear i heard a muffled "baa") that she intended to set across both her own lap and mine for the duration of the flight. i immediately told on her to the stewardess and they took the bag away and stowed it somewhere.

armed only with let's go egypt (and isreal. what were they thinking?) and the blankets we appropriated as souvenirs from malev, we stumbled out of the dark airport at midnight and allowed ourselves to be herded into a taxi and taken through the surprising amount of honking traffic for the hour to a random hostel owned by the taxi driver's cousin. not bad at $3 a night, but we were sure glad we had those blankets.

we took off bright and early the next morning for giza and the pyramids, talked into a day trip by an enterprising young "guide" (read: random dude with a car). before taking us to the pyramids, he had other plans for us, taking us to a papyrus "museum" where he surely would get a cut of anything we bought and then to a perfume shop. at that point in time, i traveled with a minimum of cynicism, so i was, in retrospect, charmingly open to the entire experience. the papyrus was lame, but the perfume shop was marvelous.

egypt, for centuries, has been famous for the essences and perfumes and oils that they make. we met this marvelous man, adel (thank goodness i wrote his name on the back of this photograph):

he had presence and bearing. he held himself very elegantly and you can see that his crisply-pressed clothes contributed to his manner. the room itself was wonderful--plush red velvet benches around a dark wood round table, pleated crimson fabric lining the ceiling. the bottles of mysterious and marvelous oils lining the walls. he showed us ingredients from all of the world's best perfumes and told us about how they were made. we were, of course, served sugary tea in small glasses. i loved the experience. i felt privileged to have met such a person and had such an experience. as a poor student, i bought a few small bottles of oils and a selection of the beautiful decanters as gifts. my friend bought a few things as well, tho' he later had buyer's remorse and felt taken advantage of. frankly, we hadn't spent enough money to have been taken advantage of.

as we were leaving for the pyramids, adel mentioned his carpet factory and that we should visit it and see the women (and children!) working on the rugs. but, we were anxious to see the pyramids, so we left him with a vague maybe.

it being early february and ramadan to boot, it wasn't high tourist season, so we had a good day at the pyramids. we were able to get tickets to go inside all 3 and we managed to escape the many offers of camel rides.  in fact, i'm quite surprised we managed to get this picture without any visible camel ride guys getting into it. they must be just out of the frame, because there weren't many tourists and they were quite desperate.

i don't entirely remember why, but i was carrying around a stuffed seal named schuster (i had a cat at home named simon). i think i found it whimsical to have a little arctic seal in the desert, so i took his picture everywhere. i even have a picture of him inside one of the crypts in the great pyramid. i remember that the locals were quite charmed by this eccentricity and often scurried to help me position him just so for his photo or suggested other poses. i definitely talked to a lot more people than i would have because i was carrying him around.

we did go back to adel's carpet shop and it was from him i that i bought the little silk rug that's now in my studio. i never saw the small children who he proudly said knotted the silk rugs because their tiny little hands were suited to it. i guess it was before that became politically incorrect.

i have mixed feelings about it because those kids doing that work are often providing an essential income to their families and would end up involved in all sorts of far more sordid activities if it weren't for the job in the rug factory. but i am glad i didn't actually see them, so i can still tell myself that perhaps my rug wasn't made by children. i must have been out of film at the rug shop because i don't have any pictures from there. alas, remember those days before digital? i think the camera i had was actually a clunky old kodak advantix with the panorama setting. i have to admit i actually really liked that camera, tho' i seem to recall that film was tough to find.

more stories from this journey later this week.

500th post - an interview of me by tangobaby

that 499 was staring me in the face in my blogger dashboard this morning. i knew this would be my 500th post and i had nothing but a really weird dream that i had last night (strangely not in a mall) which although i took a page and a half of notes when i woke up from it, wouldn't have much sense to all of you...so, i was very fortunate that the lovely and talented tangobaby was staying up late during her staycation and just sent her 5 interview questions for me. we can all breathe a sigh of relief about that one! especially me, because i didn't want to waste my 500th post on drivel. so, here goes...

tangobaby:  I see now in your profile that you're currently working as a bee charmer. Since previously you were in the shipping industry, can you please elaborate on the change of career and tell us how you do charm bees. Is charming a bee easier than charming a sailor?

me:  back in '97 when i was on my fulbright in macedonia (at the point where i was just hanging out because the subject of my research turned out not to exist), a couple of NGO/peace corps types who i had met in the ex-pat community in skopje were going to travel to russia during the summer. they had been to the russian embassy to acquire their visas and had faced a lot of bureaucratic red tape and had come away discouraged. one of the women, bless her heart, was a prematurely grey 40-year-old with one of those eyes that looked off the other direction during the conversation and the other was a frumpy, slightly lumpy, no makeup, very granola-type. they were very nice, don't get me wrong, but they just weren't getting anywhere on the visa front. they knew i spoke russian (and had a few very short skirts and some nice new high-heeled sandals), so they asked me to help them out.

it just so happened that i needed a russian visa myself as i was headed on my friend gabi's honeymoon. so, i took my paperwork and theirs, put on my short orange dress and walked over to the russian embassy, which was about two blocks from my apartment. the dress is here on another occasion (when i was too afraid of heights to stand all the way up on a column at a ruin in central macedonia):

in those days (and maybe still today), you needed an invitation to get a visa to russia. my friends had a formal invitation from the place they were going to stay--very official-looking. i had an invitation from some friends. now there were some issues with my invitation. for one, it only had my first and middle names on it, not my last name. oh, and although the passport number was correct, it said i had a german passport. so, when i fronted up with a last name and a US passport, i expected i'd have some explaining to do.

it was a bright sunny day in early june. very summery and i was in a buoyant mood (it was probably the dress). i was let into the courtyard to the consular window by the guards. you actually stood outside and there was a picnic table there where you could wait. i went up to the window and explained in my rusty russian about the three visas and avoided mentioning the problematic bits with my invitation, hoping they might not notice.  then, i sat down at the picnic table to wait.

before long, the visa officer, a stocky, 50-ish russian gentleman, came out to the picnic table. he asked if i'd like a coffee and i said, yes and he asked someone to bring us coffee. then, he asked me about my invitation. he pointed out that my last name was missing and that it stated that i had a german passport. i was, of course, aware of these facts. but he was quite nice about it, laughing a bit and not at all intimidating. i explained that i was going together with german friends and they had arranged for our invitation and the russian friends must have not realized i wasn't german too. and then he laughed and said he'd issue the visa and that i should have a nice trip. and that i was welcome to come back anytime for coffee. then he went in and issued all 3 visas while i waited (which was quite unheard of, people normally waited at least a week).

when i went back to my friends to give them their visas, ellen pronounced me a bee charmer, so that's the long version of where that came from. actually, i think it's a line from the lovely 1991 movie fried green tomatoes at the whistle stop cafe.  that same summer, i had several other bee charming experiences, which i'll save for another day, so it was somehow the place i was in and the aura i was giving off.

i decided that i wanted 2009 to be such a bee charming year--to call some of that positive energy back into my life, so that's why i recently changed my blogger profile. and sailors are just as subject to bee charming as anyone else (if the queen bee can swear), so i expect to keep right on charming them as well.

tangobaby: You're remarkably candid about your feelings on your blog, especially in the area of the media and politics. If you could distill the greatest differences between the media and politics in Denmark and the US, what would they be. If you could infuse part of Denmark into the US, what change would be most beneficial? (Feel free to expound voluminously.)

me:  first, i guess i'm remarkably candid about my politics and opinions in general pretty much all the time, so it's natural for me to be so here on my blog as well. my blog is an extension of me, so to speak, so i behave here like i do in "real" life. and i guess i'm honest to a fault. husband has said that he understands the phrase "brutally honest" now that he knows me. this has been both good and bad for me, but is so closely tied to my identity and how i want to live my life...in a very real, raw, true manner, that i can't imagine being otherwise. i have tried to learn to temper it a bit when necessary, but i don't always succeed.

now back to media & politics...the largest difference surely comes from the fact that running denmark, with a population of 5 million, is like running a moderately-sized US city. of course, cities don't have embassies or a navy, so that's a bit of an over-simplification, but, it's still a scale. it's a bit easier to put a national health care system in place for 5 million people than for 300 million, just as one example.

there are a lot more parties in danish politics than in the US and people are starting new parties all the time. and because denmark is so egalitarian, it's really quite difficult (for me at least) to see any real difference between parties. the social democrats, the radicals and the socialists are the opposition to the coalition government that's in power at the moment, which consists of the left (venstre) party (which confusingly, is actually right), the conservatives and, as a "supporting partner," the danish people's party (dansk folkeparti). dansk folkeparti is the most colorful party, with a very colorful leader named pia. she's a real piece of work with her madonna-esque gap between her front teeth (the comparison most decidedly stops there) and speaks for the lower classes (whatever they may be in denmark, since everyone is SOOooo middle class)--those people who want to keep denmark for the danes, who are afraid of any foreigners and who go on charter holidays to mallorca, where they take their rye bread and liver pate along from home and stay in a hotel full of other danes. i'm sure that the woman who ran into the disabled guy in the wheelchair the other day was a member of dansk folkeparti's core audience.

as far as media, there is DR--danish radio, which would, in being publicly funded, be something akin to PBS in the US. however, it's a major media force in denmark--with two t.v. channels, 4 radio channels and lots of local radio. they do a limited amount of own production quality t.v. dramas and then crap like a danish version of x-factor (5 million people is not a large enough pool to draw talent from, let me tell you), which appeals to the masses.

i learned just the other night that if a t.v. station broadcasts from denmark, they cannot have commercials during their programming, only between the programs. a friend of ours works for a commercial station that broadcasts from the UK to get around this. weird how these things work.

as for other media...we have disney (the hannah montana channel, as nearly as i can tell), which strangely has ads only for their own programming, discovery, BBC world, CNN, BBC entertainment, 3-4 swedish channels, a couple of german ones, one swiss, a couple of french. but the main thing i watch is british detective shows and comedies. nothing is dubbed in danish (except children's programs and hannah montana for the morning broadcast), the market is too small, but it's good for people's english.

the DR popular radio station, P3, is great. they are some of the funniest DJs i've ever heard on radio (and i  lived in the southern california, chicago and phoenix radio markets) and they do a lot of really edgy stuff. the DR satire department is not at all afraid of lampooning any aspect of danish society and current events. nor do they have issues swearing on air. much freer in that sense than US media and not so restricted by political correctness.  i think it's this that i would infuse into US politics/media. a figure like jon stewart is doing so in the US, but he's on comedy central and that's not exactly wide distribution/mainstream media.  here, the daily show is broadcast on CNN and DR2, which says something interesting.

another interesting aspect of denmark that i'd like to inject into the US is a bit hard to describe. one of our best friends is black--her danish mother was studying in london and met a nice nigerian boy and produced our friend. she grew up in denmark, as danish as can be, but her skin is really black. and i always joke (even to her), that she doesn't know she's black. not in the way that people who are black in the US know they are black. she's completely complex-free and that's so refreshing. the US could use more of that and perhaps it will come for the generation growing up today now that obama is our coming president. i would wish that for the US.

tangobaby: You're a girl of many blogs. What does your hubby think of all of us in Bloglandia? (I ask this because my Boy is still befuddled about it all.) Does he encourage and/or enjoy your pursuits, or does he try to unplug your computer and hide it?

let me explain all those blogs, because they're for different purposes and not all active.

• moments of perfect clarity - this is the main blog. this is the one i write on (nearly) every day and where it all happens. this is my REAL blog.
  
• balderdash - this blog seemed to be needed as a place to put the funny made-up definitions i was coming up with for the WV words. and making a new blog afforded me the opportunity to invite a others to contribute. i've found that i really need to be inspired to write them and so my entries there are more sporadic than i would like them to be. i faithfully write down the words tho', they're scribbled on surfaces all over the house.
• just know where you are - this is the blog my sister and i put up about a year ago, when she was getting ready to go home to the US after being here for five months. we thought we'd continue our conversation there. that hasn't really happened (mostly because i think she lost the link and doesn't remember it exists). it has ended up being a place where i post pictures and small vignettes of what's been happening on our side of the atlantic. i do this because i have set it to send an email to our parents when there's a posting there and it's a good way to keep them informed when i don't call them often enough. i also post recipes there and i do think my sister goes there to look those up. we named it just know where you are because my sister wanted a GPS last year for christmas and husband's response was to buy her a map and a compass and tell her, "just know where you are," which i thought was pretty clever.
• too late nathan - my cousin does a family newsletter twice a year. i put up this blog as a supplement to that...to be a place where we could share a few more pictures and where my cousins would tell their stories. they haven't really done so. i think my family is actually rather luddite, if i'm honest. and it disappoints me a bit, because i have 29 cousins and i know that some of them must have something witty and/or humorous to say.
• getting it outta my system - only has 3 posts in it, but i write there when i want to vent about something that no one else should read, but which i need to get out of my system to move on. it's completely private and no one can go there but me. :-)
• sea skill - this is an invite-only blog where i put my work-related writing over the past year. i was having a writer's block in october and thought it might help cure it, since i seemed to have no trouble writing within this little blogger compose space during that time. it did help. it was also a way to solve the problem of my working on a mac in a PC environment and the issues i had with working on three different computers and never having the file i needed on the computer i needed it on at the moment i needed it.  basically, it's a sharepoint.

and as for husband's opinion...he thinks it's madness. i'm occasionally petulant to him about him not reading my blog, but he says, "i get to have the conversation with YOU, in person, i don't need to read it." and he's really right. many of the things i write about are the result of conversations i've had with him over a cup of tea in the evening or breakfast on a sunday morning.

tangobaby: As a former almost beauty queen from SD, what in your childhood prepared you for your life abroad and your years of travel? 

me:  i didn't have a passport or travel outside the US (except to canada and mexico, which didn't count since all you needed was a blockbuster card) 'til i was 26 if you can believe it. but, despite growing up in a very small town (1334 people), i learned to be outward looking from my mother, who hauled us in a 7-state area showing horses every summer. she drove us miles and miles and i learned from that to be fearless and that you didn't have to sit around waiting for a man to do stuff for you, since dad stayed home and golfed and no doubt enjoyed the peace and quiet.  and i've written before about how the made-for-t.v. movie the day after with jason robards and a deep and abiding loathing for ronald reagan (which i must have learned from my dad) made me want to study russian and visit russia.

i don't think i ever imagined that i'd live outside the US, especially not in denmark, which wasn't even on my list of places to visit--kind of in the same way that north dakota wasn't really on my list either--it just seemed boring. it just goes to show that you have to be open to what life throws at you and just go with it. and that, i learned growing up.

as for the beauty queen thing, i don't think that had anything to do with it, that was about revenge on a boyfriend who dumped me.

tangobaby:  To me, your photography is very graphic, vibrant and playful. Does your vision of the world inspire this aspect of your photography? What do you wish to learn most through your photographic exploits, what lessons are you looking for?

me:  this is an excellent question, mostly because it's provoking me to think about something that i never really thought about before.  i think that i'm very attracted to strong colors (which may contribute to my winter depression in this dark, grey danish landscape) and find myself taking pictures of things with strong colors. i only just started to play with the black & white presets in lightroom, to try to force myself off the direct positive and to expand my horizons (hence the new avatar pic).

as for the lessons i'd like to learn through my photography...i'm not sure i have consciously had any. but, i've been positively surprised on numerous occasions to notice some detail in a photo that i didn't realize was there when i was taking it...a shadow, a detail, some depth. i enjoy noticing those things. and i would say that noticing my surroundings has been one side-effect of photography. i think in photographs now in a way that i didn't used to. i tend to have a camera on me all the time, tho' i discovered the battery was dead on the pink sony when i was in ikea the other day and had to use my iPhone, which takes crap pictures, but i NEEDED a picture of this lamp to show to husband:

i'd like to learn a lot more about my camera. i have a nikon D60 DSLR and i've invested in some great lenses--an 18-200mm zoom lens and a macro, plus a fun lensbaby. i'm using the manual setting and choosing my own ISO more and more often, but still use it on auto settings most of the time. so from a learning standpoint, i'd like to work more on manual. my rolleicord TLR and other analog cameras help me on that front as well. i guess developing a photographic eye involves new, fresh ways of looking at the world. i look at things more closely than i used to, noticing chipping paint and details that i wouldn't once have noticed. photography grounds me and places me more firmly in the world, here and now. and although i hadn't articulated it until you asked me, that's what i want from it.

* * *

well, that's it, that's my 500th post and my interview with the fabulous and wonderful tangobaby. thank you, dahling, for asking me these great questions! and now i've got to go pick my sister at the airport, which means my postings for the next ten days may be sporadic at best. but i'm sure i'll find time to share some pictures!

the last "bottom of the barrel" (including uncharacteristic capital letters)

From the Bottom of the Barrel - 26/11.2014 

Gulp. Deep breath. These are some very big shoes to fill. My dad bought the Platte Enterprise in 1965 and he’s written a weekly column in this very space for nearly 50 years. I’ve done the odd guest piece over the years, but this is the first one where I really feel I have to fill his shoes. Because those shoes are so sadly empty now. 

We lost my dad just after midnight on November 22, just a few weeks shy of his 81st birthday (it would have been December 7). I live in Denmark and I was entirely too far away when the news of his hospitalization came through. It took me way too long to get to McKennan Hospital in Sioux Falls from my home in Denmark. I missed a lot. Friends and family came out of the woodwork and gathered at his bedside. And although I wasn’t here for all of the visits, we are so grateful for this - for your stories, for your laughter, and yes, for your tears. Because my dad, Ralph Nachtigal, meant a great deal to all of us. It was awe-inspiring to see how much he meant to so many.

Ralph wasn’t an easy person or a simple person - he could be hard on you (my rule growing up was “win or don’t come home”), he assessed the blame, his humor could be ironic and a bit harsh, he was unafraid of discussing politics and he had a competitive streak (and he would have hated how long this sentence is getting). He was an avid gambler and could place bets on everything from football to his next putt.  But, he was also probably the funniest person I ever knew. He could laugh about anything and make any situation, including being picked up by an FBI agent and taken for a little drive and a chat around Platte Lake, into a humorous anecdote, even while he admitted that he was completely crapping his pants at the time. He was ornery, but he had a heart of gold and I know he helped many more people than I even know, in ways of which I was never aware, through the years. 

He studied agricultural journalism at South Dakota State. While waiting for his assignment for Associated Press, the Enterprise came up for sale and he bought it, sealing his future in the little town where he had grown up. He’d been out to see the world in the Navy (coming close to, but not really that involved in the Korean War). He once hitchhiked from San Diego to Platte and those adventures were apparently enough for him, so after stints as a sports reporter at the Watertown Public Opinion and the Sioux Falls Argus Leader, he settled down again back home. 

He and Mom and their friends made a yearly winter pilgrimage to Las Vegas (that was, in retrospect, pretty dumb of them to leave their teenagers home alone, each with an empty house (hello, party for the last episode of M*A*S*H!)) that seemed to satisfy his wanderlust. He was content to do his part to make the small community where he grew up grow and thrive - and he wasn’t afraid to get involved, as a state legislator, chairman of the school board and then the later of the hospital board. He knew that if you want a little town to thrive, you have to get involved. 

He was a lifelong Democrat (one of about 12 in South Dakota, at last estimate). He always said that he hoped that one day he would have enough money to become a Republican. Alas, that didn’t happen. He served two terms in the South Dakota State Legislature (1976-79) and during that time, tacked an amendment onto a particularly absurd bill to make the fence post the state tree, to further underline the absurdity of the bill. It failed and the Black Hills Blue Spruce is still our state tree, but he made his point with humor. That was definitely a trademark. 

When I studied in Russia in 1994, he and Norm Huizenga came for a visit. We took the 13-hour train ride out to Kazan and back and explored Moscow and he met all of my friends. We stayed with a grand elderly lady fittingly called “Aunt Kate” in Moscow and we drank a bit too much vodka on a couple of occasions and generally had an awesome time in post-Soviet Russia. I heard him say, for the first time (and last) in my life, “get out there and buy something!” at a middle-of-the-night stop where workers from a crystal factory sold their wares somewhere between Moscow and Kazan.

I went on a Fulbright to Macedonia in 1997 and Dad and Monica came there for a visit as well. We toured ancient ruins in Macedonia and hung out in Greek tavernas eating octopus and drinking ouzo and the most fabulous cold Nescafé frappés. We laughed and laughed together amidst the ruins of ancient Thessaloniki. And although I don’t think he ever said so, at least not to me, I know he was proud of me and that Fulbright.

He and Monica had a couple of trips as well. When they left Macedonia, they explored the pubs of Vienna. And a year and a half ago, when they came to see us in Denmark, they went home via London, the beaches of Normandy and Paris. Monica even made him go to a Pink Martini concert at Royal Albert Hall in London. Pretty cool for a 79-year-old. And he was the kind of person who always had a song lyric for any occasion, so taking him to Pink Martini concert wasn’t really that far off.

Now we may never know what really happened with the Ole Horn Incident (it got him kicked off as Editor of the Collegian) or that time his legislative roommates got caught temporarily appropriating saddles from a tack store late at night (he swore his innocence in both until the bitter end and probably he even was innocent). But, I do know this, it was a privilege to have him for a father. He showed me that there was a world out there and that I should go explore it. He raised me to be confident and unafraid, but to remember my roots. I am privileged to have had him for a father and I hope that you all feel privileged to have called him a friend. He will be missed. Sorely missed.

I know there are many other stories to tell and that Dad’s friends in the Platte area meant the world to him, and we heard many of them on Monday evening at the Lake Platte Golf Club. A big thank you to everyone who came and told their stories! I know that you all will miss him as much as we do. There is a big, gaping hole in our hearts right now that no one else can ever fill. Ralph Nachtigal was really something - larger than life, full of life, truly one-of-a-kind. This little corner of the world is forever changed by his having been in it. 

———————

As Dad wanted his body to be donated to the University of South Dakota Medical School, there will be a memorial service in lieu of a funeral at 3 p.m. on Saturday, November 29 at the Platte Community Building. We ask that instead of flowers, you make a donation to the Platte Health Center Avera in his name.*

*originally i suggested that folks contribute to the Ready for Hillary campaign, but since there are only a handful of Democrats in SD, i changed that. tho' it does make me chuckle to think of all those R(h)INOS (Republicans In Name Only) contributing to Hillary....

throwback thursday - macedonia, summer 1995

oh, to be so young and thin again. it was the summer of 1995. a month at lake ohrid, ostensibly studying macedonian. but also having an awful lot of fun in absolutely glorious weather.

these were some of my fellow students from arizona state. that guy on the left was from alaska, but i'll admit i can't remember his name. the other one, whose name also escapes me (bob?), was the one who taught me the phrase, "it always comes back to me." the one is the cap and sunglasses is my friend dmitry, him, i remember very well and he's still a friend.

those high-waisted shorts are almost going to be in again. i don't know if i was pretending to be spiked on that spikey thingy or what. it was the balkans, after all, and those probably usually had a head on them in ottoman times.

another beautiful summer day on gorgeous lake ohrid. it was this wonderful summer that lured me back there on a fulbright in 1997. i have no recollection of who those girls on the left were. memory is funny like that.

at the foot of the statue of cyril & methodius. cyril was the guy who came up with the cyrillic alphabet. and they were scholars right there in the beautiful old churches of ohrid.

this guy was the owner of a place we found for my friend from belgrade to stay when she came to visit. it was a private home and he actually took us around on the lake in his boat and we drank quite a lot of rakija with him and ate some small silvery fish whole, heads and all. they were grilled and salty and really quite delicious. it all resulted in a toast to milosevic at one point, but we were young and we had to be nice to him because dajana was staying there. and then there was the rakija.

why have i never felt young? #tbt

sabin and i in chicago in, i think, 2005. i was clearly still in my morning news anchor hair phase. i put this on facebook and a friend remarked that we were sweet and oh, so young. and it's true, i can see that (especially with sabin). but looking back, i don't think i felt young then. i can't remember ever feeling young, actually.

ever since i left college after my first year and lived for a couple of years in california (finding myself? losing myself?) before going back to a different university to finish my studies, i've felt older than the rest of the pack. because i'd spent those couple of years, i was then a couple years older than my fellow sophomores when i did return to university. that left me older than my fellow students in my various master's programs as well. tho' less so at arizona state, where there were other "mature" students in the program. i was a couple years older than my fellow fulbright scholars back in macedonia. i was rather old when husband and i got married (31) and pretty old when i had sabin (33), my first child.  that would put me at about 37 in this photo and i have to say that i didn't feel young. i was an older mother. older mothers are the norm now, i realize, so it's not with any sense of shame i say that. it's more that i feel a little regretful that i can't remember feeling young.

what is it about the times that we are in, that we can't appreciate them or really see them until later, in retrospect?

craft is cool

not long ago, my sister said, "you're too educated for all those arts & crafts." she was making fun of me for my constant preoccupation with whether or not i'm being creative. and she was, of course, trying to be funny and perhaps a little bit trying to appeal to my inner snob (that would be the one who went to the U of C). but, her statement actually gets at a larger issue. it seems that a return to traditional ways of being and doing things is on the rise.

mmm, homemade schnapps

just a couple of years ago, i would not even have imagined myself knitting or quilting or embroidering (still having trouble on the knitting, tho' i'm only a mildly retarded monkey now, not a profoundly retarded one like before). it seems there is a whole community of people all over the world who are making these old-fashioned handicrafts fashionable and hip again. handmade is totally in--whether it's pickles, flavoring your own alcohol, making coffee cozies and coasters, crocheting covers for stones, knitting for your friend's baby, giving a quilt to someone special for christmas. it's not just for little old hunched over grannies anymore. craft is cool.

i wonder what these are going to be when they grow up?

and why is that? what is it in the zeitgeist that makes us want to remember how to DO things with our own hands? is it a reaction to the information age? to the fact that most of us work in some kind of service sector and don't actually MAKE anything anymore in our jobs (except a bunch of meaningless consultant speak fashionable words that say a lot without really saying anything)? are we driven by some kind of biological instinct to want to make things with our own two hands?

or is it, as denis dutton (editor of the fabulous arts & letters daily) suggests, that appreciation of art is the result of human evolution--sexual selection--to help us find the right mate. actually, he's talking more about the ability to appreciate beautiful, artistic things, rather than the ability to produce them, but this quick overview of his theory is worth a click and a bit of a think anyway.

my theory, and it's still under development, is that this desire to hold the fruits of our own labors in our hands is a reaction to the world having gotten so fast. information travels at light speed. i'm spending a lot of time hanging out in cyberspace with people from around the world, having what i can only term real friendships with people i've never met in person. so some part of the core of who i am desires to have something that's here and now with me, in my own two hands (and which isn't a pretty mac keyboard, which is often what's at least near, if not in my hands). there's so much information out there that our grasp of it is only fleeting, and by the time we might grasp it, it's already moved on to the next thing. therefore we feel a need to have something to hold onto.

free form embroidery by sabin

i think that's why i'm--despite two master's degrees, fulbright, an ABD Ph.D. that i probably won't ever finish, and a rather meaningful career in shipping that takes me around the world--spending all of my spare time doing arts and crafts (or thinking about doing them, as the case may be). it makes me feel in touch with my here and now. it's tangible. it brings beauty into my home and my very molecules into alignment (which usually only happens in the lobby of the manila pen). it feels meaningful to see sabin sewing around the edge of her cards for her swap or helping her thread a needle so she can embroider a flower that she drew onto some fabric with a chalk pencil. it makes me feel good to make gifts for the people i love. it feels like it was time well spent and yes, i also feel proud that i have the ability to make something with my own hands. so, i guess i'll keep doing it, despite being over-educated for it.

maybe it's a product of a childhood spent reading the laura ingalls wilder books over and over. i just want to homestead. homesteading in the 21st century, that's what this is. i really can't wait for spring so i can get started on the garden. i vow that we're gonna have enough tomatoes to can some next summer!