too much

one bright spot in today.
an A+ from my high school english teacher
she probably doesn't know about my lack of caps on this blog.
the barrel she's talking about is here.

i know i've written fondly before of the liminal space, but i have to say that right now, it pretty much sucks. waiting is never easy, especially when you're waiting to know whether you're bought or sold. or just confined to the scrap heap as the case may be.

on top of it, i learned today that a beloved aunt, who has always been this amazing, steadfast presence of goodness, kindness and general interest in life at the center of our rather chaotic, otherwise presenting a pretty good image of having been raised by wolves family, has cancer and is declining treatment. i can appreciate her decision because she has had a long and amazing life and i can completely appreciate that she doesn't want an undignified ending. but it all seems a little bit unfair in light of losing dad so recently and not being over that (will i ever be over that? i don't think so.).

but really, how much more can we take? and by we, i mean me. it's just too much.

* * *

oh dear, sarah palin is back at it again.

what she's doing to the language and politics in general is a criminal act.

* * *

thoughts on what changes when you move abroad.

6th annual halloween party

every year, we try to rise to new heights of creativity with our halloween party. i do my part in the area of refreshments and husband does things like moving the target shooting indoors (yes, upstairs above the new kitchen, they shot at cans) and building a pulley system so they could hoist one another up to look at a selection of items that were up high and try to remember as many of them as possible. the girls put together creepy candy bags in rubber gloves.

inspired, as always, by pinterest, i sent karoline out to cut me some sticks for my caramel apples.

we don't have kraft caramels here, so i had to make homemade (thank goodness). it took time, but it is out-of-this-world delicious. besides, it takes time to unwrap all those kraft caramels from their plastic wrappers too and at least this way, i knew went into them.

i had a bit of the 7-minute frosting left from the cupcakes and dipped the last apples in that when i ran out of caramel. it's funny, those four were the ones that went first.

a vampire came by and bit into each of our cupcakes. the cupcakes were chocolate, into which i threw a big bowlful of freshly-picked raspberries (our unseasonably warm temperatures mean the raspberries are still going strong). with cream cheese frosting, they were delicious.

cookie cutters and ready-made puff pastry sprinkled with poppy seeds and a spicy seasoning made for light little airy critter snacks.

and coolest of all chicken wing "bats." we told the kids that we'd gotten lucky out at the butcher in farre and were able to source some fresh bats for the party. a number of them believed it and wouldn't eat them. bwah-ha-ha.  a good time was had by all, even tho' they're in 7th grade now and some have to pretend to be bored. they weren't.

* * *

this will make you want to fix breakfast for dinner.

* * *

laura's piece on the politics of food will get you thinking about what you put on your table.
it's worth the time it takes to read it thoroughly.

* * *

just when you thought sarah palin couldn't get any dumber, she says this.
and i link to it even tho' snopes says it's a hoax.
it's still pretty plausible for her.

pondering the world she will inherit

four years ago at this time, this blog was filled with politics. after eight years of dubya, and with the colorful figure of sarah palin (i actually kinda miss her) involved, i just couldn't get politics off the brain. plus, the air was filled with hope and promise with obama in the race. now, four years later, i find i feel much less passionately about it. and i don't feel even a glimmer of hope. what i feel is an inability to comprehend and a great degree of fear for the world which my child will inherit.

that said, i think obama is getting a bad rap. memories are short as to the mess he was handed after eight years of dubya. no one really yet knew at that point what the financial crisis meant. i would postulate that we still don't fully know. but he does seem to be a bit mired down. partially in an uncooperative house and senate and partially in an overwhelming array of things gone wrong. there aren't any easy answers.

i am bewildered that anyone could possibly be against universal healthcare. just read this story by nicholas kristof and tell me it makes sense. we have universal health care in denmark and although i was frustrated last winter with my local doctor, that had far more to do with a lack of customer service-mindedness than it had to do with socialized medicine. it is an enormous relief to know that if something is wrong...sabin falling from her horse in a riding lesson...we don't have to hesitate to go to the ER to find out if her collar bone is broken. we don't even think twice (tho' next time, we will get food before we go there, as there can be a wait - but that's true of ERs everywhere and again, has nothing to do with socialized medicine).

i am puzzled that anyone accepts the rhetoric against women being spewed by the republican party. it is the twenty-first century and it's simply unacceptable that in the so-called developed world there should be any question about access to birth control or a woman's decision-making ability over her own body.

and how romney can be forgiven for his 47% statement, made to a group of people he was sure were like-minded. he has said outright that he has no respect for half of the population. he won't release his tax returns. and he doesn't give a single detail of any concrete plan. and his supporters and their shirts saying, "let's put the white back in the white house" are simply beyond shameful. how anyone with a functioning brain can consider voting for him is beyond me.

but i really, truly don't get people who should seriously not be voting republican - for example, because they are living in a lesbian partnership and work for the federal government on an indian reservation and until recently had a child that was in state-sponsored care in a home - are intending to do so. because that seriously makes no sense.

it's like there's another logic in play in the US, one to which i no longer have access.

but that said, i have cast my absentee ballot for obama. i think he's the best choice if i want the world to still be a place i can in good conscience hand over to my child. plus, i want my president to be smarter than me. and i'm sure he's that. i can't say the same for slippery mittens romney.

time to clear my head

i'm thinking about...



...how much i adore this photograph that i took today. it's one of my favorites in a very long time.

...how many hours i've wasted that i'll never have back.

...totally changing around the living room.

...painting the inside of some drawers a surprising color.

...how lulled we were into thinking there was real summer on the horizon, only to be (cold)snapped back to danish summer reality.

...a sewing/design problem.

...really being a vegetarian.

...the different reactions stress causes - sleeplessness, excessive counting, a sore jaw, curtness, snapping at loved ones, unarticulated and unarticulatable anger, cleaning frenzies (i could go on, but i'll stop here, since it begins to look like i'm in need of stress treatment).

...how badly the garden needs weeding.

...reseeding some of the things that didn't seem to come up and whether it's too late for that.

...what a great week sabin has had with her friend maria.

...how much i love the design (of the front page, not the little scrolly bits in the actual page windows) and (dare i say it) the down-to-earthness of GOOP.

...how unintelligent chickens seem to be (standing on top of each other up on a little ledge where they're not meant to be, but apparently desire very greatly to be).

...how on earth this can be true.  and is sarah palin shitting her pants now that bachmann is taking her flaky inarticulate freak for president role?

...whether i can apply for asylum in denmark if this lunatic beats obama (thankfully it's early days, so this may not be necessary).

...how i know i read and really liked jonathan franzen's the corrections, but i'm reading it again and find i have little or no recollection of it and am a bit mystified by the passages which i underlined on the first reading. i must have been someone else then.

...how much of a bust today really was. and how i'll never have it back.

...if i get a good night's sleep, tomorrow will be a fresh new day and i can begin again.

updating "about me"

with new people joining this year's flickr group - postcards to blog camp, i found myself typing an introduction of myself over there. since the group isn't a 365, but more of a community founded on last year's 365 and others who love their cameras and/or blog camp, it's not too late to join us (so get on over to flickr and request an invite)!! but anyway, what came out when i introduced myself there seemed like a good update of my bloggy "about me" page, so i thought i'd share it with you here, since there are also lots of new faces around here. you can also find it on the "about me" tab above.

i'm american, but have lived in denmark for a dozen years (and counting) after following a very cute danish boy home from the balkans in the late 90s. i still have my US passport (unless sarah palin becomes president - then i'll be giving it up and applying not only for a danish one but asylum on the grounds of cruel jokes played by the universe (but i digress)).  in the past year, we (my danish husband, who is actually called husband, and our daughter, sabin) moved to a falling-down farm property in the uncool part of denmark (jutland), which i promptly tried to convince everyone was "the new black," (no one believed it). the property itself isn't falling down, just the house, which was built in 1895. but we have a lake and room for a pony and the land itself is beautiful, so we're happy to have to spend the next ten years tearing it down and rebuilding it getting it the way we want it.

i struggle all the time with trying to live a simpler, less consumer-oriented life, but then apple comes out with some fabulous new product and i fall once again..sigh. but our move to the farm is part of that seeking simplicity...we'll soon have a big garden and intend to get a few pigs and chickens so we know where our eggs and bacon are coming from. hoping to live a bit of that old BBC series - the good life - but with ultra-modern, attractive and well-designed electronics.

i recently left a job that was crushing my spirit and am excited about a new venture i'm starting with a friend i met first here in the blogosphere and then in real life. so you never know where your bloggy friendships might take you.

i love nikons, iPhones, horses, cats, bunnies, my macbook air, the iPad (you're getting the picture on the appleism, right?), sewing, quilting, stitching, pretty paper, cooking, antiques and traveling. i'm not very religious (unless you count the appleism) and i don't much like capital letters.

further proof of a world gone mad

cross-processed expired slide film in lomo fisheye2

this morning when i took sabin to school i heard a woman on the radio enthusiastically talking about her new book. i missed the title of the book and the woman's name (ya gotta cut me some slack, i've got pneumonia and my brain is bruised from all of the coughing), but the premise of the book was that Sex in the City has indelibly changed culture. in her words, the bible had ten commandments, but sex in the city has only one: "be fabulous." it was a given, to her, that this makes sex in the city vastly superior.

she went on to argue that the cultural seachange wrought by sex in the city was one of the cool, hip independent woman who doesn't need a man. i may not have seen every episode of carrie and her cohorts, but in those i have seen, the age old striving for a man and a relationship has been pretty much the main focus. that and shoes. and freakishly thin women with a lot of issues. and i'm not sure how that has really advanced us (women) as a species. other than perhaps upgrading how we look upon shoes, which frankly was already pretty much a priority for many of us even before they came along. but according to this woman, it's got something to do with a hip new yorker attitude. blah, blah, blah.

what is wrong with the world where someone can get PUBLISHED and go on the radio with such an absurd premise? the next thing you know, sarah palin will be president....

the naughty noughties

what a decade it's been. we've gone from monica lewinsky to sarah palin. ken starr to osama bin laden. clinton to bush's non-election in 2002 to obama. from the Y2K scare to the triumph of the iPhone. september 11. the asian tsunami. wars in afghanistan and iraq. from the skeptical environmentalist (bjorn lomborg) to an inconvenient truth (al gore). from the matrix to avatar. it's been an eventful decade.

my friend zuzanna wrote not long ago about all of the words that are forever changed by the decade, so i won't repeat that, tho' i did argue in a comment that the word "bush" is forever changed. we do things differently now than we did at the beginning of the decade. we blog. we google. we tweet. we have clever phones and GPS and digital photography.

although i think that forty is the new thirty, i spent the prime years of my life thus far in the noughties. i had a daughter. i accidentally worked for microsoft. i traveled the world. i had a good decade. but i'll admit, i'm ready for the new one to begin. i'm ready to leave behind the excess. the striving. the constant accumulation of more stuff. i think the decade ahead will be a simpler decade. we'll do more for ourselves - growing more of our own food, learning more, remember more of how things were once done. we'll return to a place where we can simply do more things for ourselves (sewing, canning, making cider are on my list). or at least that's what i hope.

i hope a lot of other things too, but only time will tell.

secret 19 - when i grow up

as kids we all go through phases as to what we say we want to be when we grow up. we try them on and abandon them for different reasons. over the years, i've wanted to be:

: : a paleontologist - abandoned this idea rather early when i decided that all the good dinosaur bones would be discovered by the time i grew up.

: : a lawyer - this is the thing i assumed i would be for years. right up until i didn't get into law school.

: : a riding instructor - i actually carried around application materials for johnson & wales college in rhode island for this. i think i just wanted a really cool trunk for my riding equipment and i never did really apply.

: : governor of the state i grew up in - yup, i could have been the sarah palin of the upper midwest. or not.

: : russian literature professor - got the farthest towards this one. but then life took me in another direction. and i never really liked the teaching that much, what i liked was the writing and the research. and the theory. oh, the theory. still love that.

: : spy - abandoned when i realized that i never really could keep a secret and that if i were to spy it would most likely be for the other side (due to deep and abiding loathing for ronald reagan).

: : writer - i've always thought there was a highly autobiographical novel in me, waiting to come out. it might still. when the conditions are exactly right. it's kinda why we built that whole writing house place in the garden.

: : stewardess - this one never really seems to go away. it stays in the back of my head and although stewardesses are really just waitresses in the sky, i still have some kind of romantic picture of that job in my head (despite how much time i spend on planes).

jobs i've actually done:

: : secretary - a couple of times, once to the vice president of a refrigeration company and once to the head of a foundation.

: : newsroom gopher - at a daily paper during college. spent a lot of time at the courthouse writing down who had gotten all those public intox and public urination tickets on the weekend. i also had to call all the bars and find out what bands were playing where, so i always knew what was going on. that was cool.

: : waitress in my favorite pub - it really was a pub and i was hanging out there so much i decided i might as well get paid for it.

: : eLearning developer - making training materials for a product i knew very little about. ha! funny how that can happen.

: : middle management - responsibility for big budgets and some 200 days a year of travel.

: : journalist - now i'm editing a magazine.

and here we come to the secret...i still don't know what i want to be when i grow up. do you?

friday lists

very busy day ahead....here's my list (because we know i love lists):

1. lots of work to do (yes, i do work, believe it or not, i just don't sleep enough)--it's this work that's currently giving me nightmares about global warming and the environment in general. 
2. hair appointment (desperately needed, nearly unable to appear in public). 
3. thing at child's school where parents must buy middle ages inspired things made by twenty-first century danish children over the past week (i saw piles of cool leather in a classroom this week, so i'm looking forward to that). 
4. having visitors from north carolina for dinner (they are not the dinner, we intend to serve dinner to them). 
5. figuring out how to connect macbook pro to big-ass flatscreen t.v. for gala confirmation party on saturday. 
6. transporting said t.v. + Wii, wiimotes and basket o'Wii games to party location without breaking or losing any of it or having to strap self to roof of elderly toyota to serve as cushion for big-ass t.v.
   
7. creating playlist for party and putting it on one of our many iPods.
8. clean out horribly dirty ancient yet reliable toyota so husband can transport the north carolinians without being completely humiliated.
9. thank heavens for GEC* and the EU because they have brought me my beautiful, wonderful, fabulous sent-from-heaven cleaning girl from poland.
10. figure out what the hell this is:

edited: second picture added for full effect:

seriously, these are the only two extra large phallic protrubences (is that a word, it's the second time i've used it this week) on this tree. i know i said that the entire plant world is behaving in an overtly sexual manner, but this is simply carrying it a bit far.

* * *

and because it's a friday a mini grateful friday list, i always forget to do these, but i love that del remembers and she's the one who originally gave me the idea. it's good for the soul to stop and think about what you're grateful for right now at this very moment (in totally random order, if it was order of importance, 3 would be 1, followed by 5 and then 6 or perhaps 4 (if husband brings home asparagus, we get them both at once)).

1. someone from the middle of siberia visited my blog (or so site meter told me). for some reason, that just tickles me. maybe because i studied in kazan and although that's not siberia, i felt the pull of siberia from there, so it's always held some fascination. i'd like to go there and dig up a frozen wooly mammoth.
2. this whole zany week of the bestowing of BoN by the blogger illuminati (thanks suecae sounds for that apt word) and the influx of new friends--thank you all so much for stopping by! double thank you for following. and quadruple thank you for the comments. looking forward to getting to know you better.
3. all of my "old" blog friends, who've been here with me through all the rants and the laughter and that whole thing with sarah palin.  you guys totally rock.
4. that husband's coming home today after being away at a course all week. 
5. there's a lovely south african chenin blanc in the fridge (6 bottles of it, to be exact).
6. asparagus is in season.
7. the sun has shined all week.
8. the birch pollen counts are already on their way down (my eyes are grateful for this).
9. jon stewart and episodes of the daily show that are only a day old.
10. that i don't have to do anything special on sunday.

 i wish you all a most glorious weekend and i hope you have lots to be grateful for this friday. and if anyone knows why that tree produced two mutant pine-cone-agtig thingies when all the rest of its pinecones are totally normal and petite, please do let me know about that....botanists...anyone...bueller?

* GEC = global economic crisis (i get tired of typing it out)

insecurities and haunted castles

i packaged up and sent off the very first order from my long-procrastinated etsy shop this morning. if i had realized exactly how motivating that act would be, i would have done it a long time ago (oh please, who am i kidding, i probably wouldn't have, i would have procrastinated it exactly as i did). it is a bit with trepidation that i did it, as all sorts of "am i good enough" thoughts swirl in my head. why do we do that to ourselves? is it the small town girl in me? is it a woman thing? is it because i went to grad school at the university of chicago where self-doubt comes complimentary with every degree? why is my head filled with the idea that i might not be worthy of having someone buy what i have created? do i have to go all stuart smalley here and repeat an "i'm good enough, i'm smart enough and doggone it, people like me" mantra? so i'm trying to fight those thoughts and focus on the feelings of inspiration and motivation i also feel from packing the things up and getting them ready to send. and new ideas are already popping into my head, some of which actually do not include eyeballs, believe it or not. :-)

* * *

a lazy weekend stretches ahead. sabin's downstairs finding carrots to give to silver star after her riding lesson. we made red velvet cupcakes last night and we'll take a couple of those for her instructor and the sweet little girl who helps out with the lessons. i'm wondering if the woman who looks like sarah palin  will be there today. i have a hard time not staring at her.  i sneaked this picture of her last time. isn't it uncanny? that's her daughter in the light pink sweater on the left. couldn't she probably pass for piper palin? poor family, i wonder if they know...

* * *

we're going to dinner this evening at my favorite little castle. it's called dragsholm slot. it's haunted and is totally one of my favorite places. it's been a couple of years since i was there and the last time, we kept the ghosts at bay by singing around a piano, or did we try to coax them out, i don't really remember anymore:

through the years, i've used it as a venue for workshops whenever i could. the food is great (the chef is french), the wine list top notch (which is why can't really recall if we were trying to attract or repel the ghosts above) and while it's a bit worn and slightly shabby, it's super charming and inviting, despite, or maybe because of, the ghosts. i hope we might run into them this evening. i'd love my last experience at 41 to be an other-worldly encounter.  i'll definitely be back with more stories and photos from there tomorrow.

great adverts

i'm not usually one for posting you tube videos here (unless they make fun of sarah palin and let's face it, she's a bit over), but there are several ads running in denmark at the moment that are just so good that i want to share them. the danish ad people are really irreverant and innovative and they must be some of the best in the world.

the first is for carlsberg sport, a soft drink (kind of a cross between sprite and mountain dew). it takes place on an antarctic research base and depicts what happens when you get really bored all by yourself and have only penguins for companions. you'll get the idea without any translation:



and this one from scandinavian airlines does such a great job of capturing the ennui of business travel and i love, love, love the plane at the end, where it's just the orange and blue of the engine and tail--pared down to the simplest elements, but still recognizable as a plane--scandinavian design at its best. the man in the ad is uffe elleman jensen, a former danish foreign minister. the ad may be echoing lost in translation a bit as well, there's a lot going on and i find it very evocative.



and on the lighter side, a commercial for a mobile phone plan where a girl goes into the changing room to try on clothes during winter and is having so much fun with her phone that when she comes out, it's summer. check out the awesome wallpaper in the changing room. love:



my response to watching that the other day was, "as if her battery would last that long." for some reason, husband laughed uproariously at me for that.

i'm off to put my studio in order now. a real post later...

stacked books and balderdash

i hadn't stacked any books in awhile, but this morning, these books leapt off the shelves and just stacked themselves. strange, i'm not feeling as bleak as this stack would indicate, perhaps it's just residual withdrawal from the antics of sarah palin.

* * *

for several weeks, i've been collecting those blogger verification words that look like real words. it's so much more entertaining now that they changed their algorithm and the words look like they might mean something. i find myself constantly scrambling for a pen and paper when i'm surfing the blogosphere, so these words are scribbled everywhere in the house..on the edges of newspaper, in the notes on my iPhone (for those times when no pen/paper were available), i even started a document with a bunch of them in it, but mostly, they're scribbled here, along with phone numbers and movie seats and journal prompts and stamped owls and the name of a fabulous chanel perfume, on a scrap notecard at my desk.

but, inspired by amanda's post nearly a month ago, i thought i'd make up some definitions for some of the ones that seem most fun.

cringo: i was going to say that it's what you do when you see a WTF Wednesday posting like this one, but upon further reflection, i think it's a curly-haired white person in mexico.

rhorifer:  a filter which clears away boring conversations like "do any of you ever use the highest temperature wash on your washing machine?" at dinner parties. i'm looking into a portable version of one of these.

domit: a small home constructed in the garden to attract hedgehogs.

menwisms:  the all-too-seldom clever utterance or observation by the male of the species. as in husband's statement last week while watching news of california wildfires on CNN that it so typical of americans to participate in global warming in such an extreme way.

brapigic:  that itchy feeling you get when you've just taken off an ill-fitting bra.

mismar:  to accidentally get caught in the waves and get the bottom of your pant legs all wet.

kajushin:   spontaneous squatting.

quinort:  an orangey-colored moss found at the foot of evergreens in the forest.  can be brewed into a healthy (if somewhat bitter) tea.

this reminds me of playing balderdash, that game where you make up funny definitions for words, at family holidays. 

on intellectualism and feminism

i admit it, i can't stay away from the huffington post, even though the election is over. this morning, it was bob cesca's article on the madness of the far right in cyberspace. although some pretty wacky stuff is being said out there...he cites "impeach obama" groups on facebook (ahem, guys, can't really impeach a guy who hasn't taken office yet...) and some far out far right blogger who is actually claiming that bush made no verbal gaffes in the past eight years...we would do well not to ignore it, as beneath argument as it would seem to be. i think that's what got us into that anti-intellectual space in the first place. tho' it does seem pretty absurd to have to go head-to-head on issues like whether africa is a continent or a country or which countries are part of north america.

* * *

debi's comment on my quick michelle obama post yesterday has me thinking about feminism and what it means, at least to me. and although i posted the article link light-heartedly and more as a justification for my love of middle-of-the-road/pocketbook fashion, debi brings up a valid point about what feminism means today. i'm not sure that i really know because it's a word that gets bandied around quite a lot and used and abused by all sides.

when i was in college, i studied lots of feminist literary theorists--bell hooks, camille paglia, julia kristeva, to name but a few. i was, for a time, interested in the whole notion of "the gaze" and how it often objectifies women, especially on film. i read naomi wolf's the beauty myth and the classics by betty friedan and simone de beauvoir. but i had to admit that i was still hesitant to call myself a feminist. yes, i thought women should have equal pay for equal work, the same opportunities as men, control of their own bodies, but feminists just seemed so angry and strident and righteous. and i'm just not really cool with righteous.

i had this feeling that to be feminist, you had to forsake makeup and beaded cocktail dresses and i simply wasn't prepared to do that. i love high heels and eyelashes and mac paint pots and sparkly clothes. so, instead i embraced a strong woman like madonna, who is arguably a feminist, but one who someone like me could believe in. she was sexy, strong, determined, capable and successful. with her sex book in the early 90s, i felt she took that "gaze" by the horns and in embracing it, subverted it and made it hers, wresting it away from the male who would objectify her. i'm not sure now that it really worked, but for me, it worked at the time--i felt that was a feminism i could identify with.  frankly, madonna at 50 represents a feminism i can still live with (even if i wouldn't personally go there on the plastic surgery)...she's still sexy, feisty, successful and going strong. 

i was a little dismayed to read last summer that camille paglia was coming out as anti-madonna on her 50th birthday. although she's a bit of bitch (something a feminist is also free to be, so i mean it in a good way), i always kinda liked camille for her daring. it just feels a bit wrong for her to abandon madonna on the feminist front. 

i guess what i'm trying to say is that the label "feminist" has always been a bit problematic for me. it is a little too equated with bitch (in a bad way) and perhaps a bit too anti-man in its formulation for me to fully identify. i like men and i like being able to use my femininity in the very male world in which i find myself making a career. would a feminist do that? i'm not sure. they would probably castigate me for indulging in feminine maneuvering to accomplish my goals--like wearing my "audit dress," a grey suit with a short skirt, and sexy black wolford tights--on days when there's an audit. but isn't using your feminine side to be strong and achieve the upper hand also a form of feminism? or shouldn't it be? enjoying one's ability, even at 40-something, to possess a room full of men just by walking into it wearing the right clothes and makeup and then having the further satisfaction of sealing it when you open your mouth and they find out that you're smart on top of it! that's feminine power if not feminist power. and as i see it, the only way to achieve equality in paychecks and career opportunities.

i guess i don't think feminism has that much to do with the abortion issue. i can imagine that feminists think that women should have control of what happens in and around their bodies. and to believe that just because you believe in free choice means that you think everyone SHOULD get an abortion is naive. it's called pro-choice, because we think that people should have the choice to decide for their own body and their own life. although i used to provoke my mother by saying i wished i needed an abortion whenever we passed those clinics in wichita with all the protesters outside of them, i'm really glad that i never needed one. i'm certain it's a heart-wrenching choice for those who choose it. however, i would fight to the end for their right to do so and never imagine that i could make that decision for them (not unless i had already donated the kidney that i'm not using, in which case i could really argue that i 'm pro life...but i digress). 

i objected to sarah palin's citing to katie couric that hunting moose was a form of feminism, but if i reflect on it, perhaps it is. because it's about making your way on equal footing in a man's world--and hopefully transforming it to a more human world, without gender distinction. hunting moose is just her way of doing it and wearing my audit dress on audit days is mine...perhaps that's the beauty of feminism, it's what we make of it.

and me, i'm gotta go put on some of my new eyelashes because husband and me have a date night tonight..we're gonna go see the new james bond!

reality t.v. and inspiration

i'm jetlagging. i wake up promptly at 4:30 a.m. these days. and because i'm wide awake, i just get up. i actually quite like it, because i can sip my chai in quiet, early morning darkness and ponder things...things like how although obama won, we still aren't rid of sarah palin. she's busily being spoon fed fox TV opportunities to appear innocent and maligned by the meanies in washington. and people are still writing her love letters like this one (it's really quite hilarious, do go read it). and it struck me that she actually thinks she's some kind of winner on some (far) stranger than fiction reality show. then again, what reality show isn't stranger than fiction? the problem for me is that although we voted her off, she's STILL HERE, so it's like some especially perverse twisted reality show from hell. i do wish they'd stop broadcasting it soon.

* * *

but, thinking about reality t.v. reminds me of some concepts that husband and i once came up with for reality programs. one of our best friends is head of entertainment at the danish t.v. channel that i like to think of as the CSI channel. but, in addition to CSI, they also have a few locally-produced reality programs. gems like "farmer wants a wife" and "gay army" and "the young mothers," which could soon offer a spot to bristol palin (but i digress).   husband and i pitched the following to her:

1. gay construction--very flamboyantly gay men are given asphalt and paving equipment and asked to lay some road.
2. near miss--ordinary people as air traffic controllers in some of the world's busiest airports.
3. quack docs--ordinary people performing surgery on willing victims. we figured with the whole me-me-me culture of fame that there were enough stupid people out there on both sides to make half a dozen episodes or so.

strangely, despite how clearly inspired these ideas are, our friend didn't actually take any of them further...

* * *

and speaking of inspiration, in order to escape the SP channel, i went looking in the blogosphere for inspiration. and i found some here. and here. and here as well. and i totally love this, i mean who doesn't need some encouragement? and there's always so much inspiration on flickr.

i love the echoes journal so much, the notion of selecting and photographing objects, then trading them with three others and photographing them again is so appealing. does anyone want to do something similar? i'm seeing a cross-continental collaboration...won't you please play along?

teasing meaning and significance from the chaotic stream of daily contingencies

dear sabin,


you’re only seven and you’re growing up mostly danish, so i’m not sure that you understand the significance of this american election. you’ve watched with me on BBC and CNN, but i realize you don’t really comprehend it. i hope that one day you will. one of the things that i have worried about with you growing up outside the US is that you won’t be instilled with the good bits of the american dream...that part where you believe so much in yourself and your abilities that anything can happen.


for a long time now, i haven’t really believed in that...i’ve felt much more ashamed to be american than anything. although many cite sept. 11, 2001 as the beginning of the end, for me, it started with the whole clinton-monica lewinsky thing followed by the debacle of the 2000 election and the resulting eight years of bush. it hasn’t been good for my identity, nor has it been good for me knowing what identity i hoped you would have.


but now, with the election of barack obama, it all feels different. it feels like hope has returned to the world. and with it my pride in being an american. i haven’t felt proud of that for a very long time. it’s strange how pride comes back intact in one fell swoop. i literally no longer feel the need to hide my passport as i stand in line for passport control.


don’t get me wrong, those people who found their voices during the bush years...people who are hyper-religious, people who believe jesus was hanging out with the dinosaurs, people who think that evolution is just a fluffy science thing that masks the “truth” of the bible, and especially people who would compromise a woman’s right to choose what happens in and around her own body...they were always there. it’s just that bush and those who brought him to power...the aptly named (because it means ass in danish) karl rove and the dark lord dick cheney...made it ok for those people to speak up and be the loudest voices, spreading their bigotry and narrow-mindedness. those people who made sarah palin not only possible but logical as a VP candidate. those people who were afraid of other nationalities, didn't have passports and who weren’t really aware that there were other countries...those people were in power during your entire lifetime. and that gave me pause. because i wanted you to have the good parts of growing up american...especially the part about not believing there were any limitations if you worked for your dreams.


and i worried about you growing up danish, because the government that’s been in power in denmark since your birth has been equally if not more mediocre. no big ideas, actually not even any medium-sized ideas...only small minds and small thinking, anti-intellectualism..the ultimate in mediocre. not to mention afraid of the other. of which i have feared you would be classified with a foreign mother. so, what kind of world had we brought you into? i have to admit it has worried me. rather a lot.


but somehow, in my mind, the election of barack obama in the US changes everything. it’s a return to an intellectual politics. (at least it feels like that right now.) it’s a return to ideas. it’s a return to sanity. it’s a return to a world that acknowledges (and even just realizes) that there are a whole lot of other countries out there and holds a passport. it’s a return to thinking and logic. it’s a return to the silence of those radical right wingers (at least i hope it is), a space in which they don’t feel it’s ok to spread their hate and narrow-mindedness and try to force their version of god and their morality down everyone else's throat. it’s a return to the good parts of the american dream. and it makes me worry less about the world you will inherit and inhabit.


but for you to understand it, perhaps i need to share with you with some thoughts from the guardian weekend edition (8.11.08) on what the election of barack obama seems to mean for the world...


“when, at 8:01 p.m., pacific time, CNN called the race for obama, we collapsed...the champagne, whose presence in the fridge i had thought to be ominously bad karma, was opened. no toast. just ‘thank god, thank god, thank god’,’ spoken by four devout atheists.” --jonathan raban . (i took the title of this post from his article as well.)


“for the last eight years, it’s been hard to keep the flame alive. those of us who have admired america since childhood--seeing it as endlessly fascinating, brimming with energy and founded on the deeply radical ideal of self-government--felt increasingly beleaguered after 2001. how to admire the land of ‘you’re with us or against us,’ embodied by a president with a cowboy swagger, waging a fraudulent war and threatening to choke the planet by belching out a quarter of the world’s CO2 and damn the consequences? america became bush country, its national symbol no longer the statue of liberty but abu ghraib. the flame was sputtering out.” --jonathan freedland


“palin may despise the cities and the coasts, the new yorks and californias and the university towns--but that is the america that the rest of the world treasures. and now it is in the ascendant.” --jonathan freedland


i think through the election process, especially since the naming of sarah palin as mccain’s VP, she is what provoked me most. probably, if i’m honest, because she in many ways, reminded me of me...a failed beauty queen who hopped from one university to another before finally gathering a degree. although my geography is better than hers, and i did eventually complete more than one degree and earn a fulbirght, would i really have been any smarter? or less ambitious? or less anxious to prove my small town background was good enough? i was left with the overwhelming feeling of wanting more and expecting more. and hoping there was more. after all, i know i wouldn't make a good vice president. this self-knowledge seemed to be disturbingly lacking in her.


i was a hillary supporter, mostly because i have a soft spot in my heart for bill. i heard him speak at commencement at the university of chicago in 1999 and could understand why monica lewinsky did what she did. he is such a dynamic individual, and although weak as a person, an embodiment of the good parts of the american dream. in a way, i felt it was hillary’s turn. and i was heartened to think that along with hillary, we would get bill. but somehow it’s different with obama and it’s become ok for me that he ended up the candidate and that he won. more than ok, actually. it’s the beginning of something new. a sense of hope and a return to all that’s good about the american dream.


it isn’t going to be easy. the world you will inherit will be a different one. energy consumption will change, banking will change, the way you travel and how you spend your money will be different. but, i hope that you will be able to consider the entire world your home. but i also hope that you will feel a tie to a particular place that you consider your base...because a home is important. wherever it is, be that place denmark or the US (hopefully some of both, because you are the product of both). or perhaps it will be another place, should your parents choose to move you to norway or singapore. whatever the place, i hope that it will be a space in which you can be the thinking, intellectual being that i already see in you. i want so much for that space to be free for you to inhabit.


whatever may happen, i am more filled with hope now because of the election of barack obama. whatever he proves to do in the coming years, this moment of hope, this very one, is an important one. for us and for you and for the future. please treasure that and hold onto it for the future, no matter what else happens.


(composed on KL804 MNL-AMS, nov. 9, 2008)

we did it!!!!

i've been busy all morning with my comference, but when i had the chance, i sneaked a look at huffington post on my iPhone and had to restrain a victory whoop! i seriously got goosebumps over my entire body when i read "president-elect obama," and tears in my eyes as i sat in the hotel lobby just now and read this:

"If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible; who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time; who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer.

It's the answer told by lines that stretched around schools and churches in numbers this nation has never seen; by people who waited three hours and four hours, many for the very first time in their lives, because they believed that this time must be different; that their voice could be that difference.

It's the answer spoken by young and old, rich and poor, Democrat and Republican, black, white, Latino, Asian, Native American, gay, straight, disabled and not disabled - Americans who sent a message to the world that we have never been a collection of Red States and Blue States: we are, and always will be, the United States of America."

i am so thankful that i don't have to write any more posts about sarah palin! :-) we really did it!!! let's hope that the energy that swept him to victory will enable all of us to pull the country (and the world) out of the mess it's been left in by 8 years of bush's mismanagement. it seems that hope has arrived!

the twilight of mcpalin

it's long past sunset on election day where i am and i thought this picture, taken of the sun setting over manila bay this evening, was a good metaphor for the dark hours ahead of the mcpalin campaign. we are surely in the twilight of their negative, counter-productive, no-ideas, anti-intellectual, moose hunting, QVC pork knife-selling, massacre of the constitution and everything it stands for (alas, if only sarah palin had read it (and understood it), it would surely have been a lot less amusing).

let's all raise a glass to the waning hours of this election...

i think we're really gonna make it...i just can't really bear to watch.

like watching beavis & butthead

i've just been chatting with amanda and we've been discussing that feeling we get these days whenever we see the latest antics from sarah palin. whether it's falling hook line and sinker for canadian comedians posing as sarkozy (seriously, did she REALLY think that sarkozy would be calling her?) or claiming the first amendment is to protect a politician's right to say stupid shit without media scrutiny. or claiming obama is a communist. as amanda said, it's like watching the olympics and the girl falls off the balance beam and you can't watch anymore because you know she'll do it again. for me, it's the feeling i get watching mr. bean or beavis & butthead...an uncomfortable, fist-clenching, squirmy, can't-sit-still feeling.

i have the same feeling about watching actual election returns tomorrow. it's been such a long, mad road and i have such a feeling of dread about it. from where i sit, i have an excuse...i'm in a time zone that makes it slightly inconvenient to watch the returns. plus, i'm really busy tomorrow, so i can probably escape watching. because it's no doubt going to be uncomfortable, fist-clenching and squirmy.  i hope i'm wrong, but i will not trust these clowns and their banana republic-esque voting irregularities until it's all over.

speaking of banana republic, i've learned that one has opened in greenbelt 5, so perhaps i'll check that out tomorrow evening, rather than torturing myself with election returns.

what are you going to do? be glued to the t.v. or trying to stay far away until it's all over?

p.s. this was my 400th post. we all expected so much more....

that does it...

canadians take the piss with sarah palin and surprisingly (or not), she doesn't have a clue! i wish i could say something nice about her, but the only thing i can think of is that she's hilarious.

it gave me goosebumps!

i was a little bit worried when i heard that the obama campaign had bought 30 minute spots on the networks and cable channels. i wondered if it would be overkill. i needn't have worried. i sat this morning at my computer and watched it with goosebumps and occasional tears in my eyes. there is just such a contrast between the hope and positivity of obama and the vitriol and negativity of mcpalin. obama presents his ideas and his plans, everything i hear from the opponents is not about what they intend to do, but about how bad what obama is going to do is. they don't seem to have ideas and obama has nothing BUT ideas. but don't take my word for it, watch it for yourself:



and don't forget to have a look at obama's appearance on jon stewart. he's funny and totally able to laugh at himself. brilliant.  and one last link, if you didn't see michelle obama's appearance on leno, you've gotta watch it, even if, like me, you're not a leno fan. she's gonna make an awesome first lady--she's smart, gracious, humble and funny. we couldn't wish for more!

P.S.  if you'd like to let out a cheer, go read "the mandatory rejection of sarah palin" by bob cesca. so, so spot on.