I'm surrounded by Christmas cheer and I think I need to spend some time with the Grinch just to get my perspective back.
I like the family time and the food and the candles, and stuff. I like that for one day. But after one day I feel an inner teen aged rebel rumbling within me.
But here in a sleep deprived state on the eve of a new year I feel all set to start the new year off right and sleep it all off on January first.
My mom's brother and his wife have been kind enough to take me in over the holidays, and we've had a nice time together. It's been great to get to know their 4 sons better. If you click on the link and study the pictures you will learn a little bit about them.
My uncle's an interesting guy; he's a retired seaman, full of stories from way back. Here's one:

Einar Gjelsvik was a bus driver in Volda back in the 1930's. His bus route went around the fjord east of Volda. That road is still narrow and windy, (I just drove that route last week.) The weather during our story made for slippery roads that day. There are steep precipicies and at a certain precarious point the old massive shoulder stones were absent. This is where Einar lost control of the bus and by the time he finally got it stopped the right front tire was hanging off the cliff. Our intrepid, yet fearful bus driver saw the danger of the bus falling off and down the cliff into the fjord. He grabbed an axe he had there handy. Swinging the axe he forced all the passengers back to very backety back back back of the bus and shouted to the them that if they didn't stay back there he'd go after them with the axe. When it was clear that they all understood him, he said one man could come forward and get off the bus to find some men and ropes and a truck to pull the bus back onto the road. This plan worked, the bus and all the passengers made it safely home.

skateboarding in Norway

I had a skateboard once, my brother and I got matching yellow "banana boards", I managed to learn to scoot along on mine sort of, but he was shorter and lower to the ground, so maybe that's what made him braver, anyhow, he could skate.
Then in the end of the '70's we lived in Norway for a couple of years; he took his skateboard to downtown Volda and showed some wannabe's a few tricks. That gave the small town "lensmann" (sheriff) something to do, and he got onto Sven's case and we learned that skateboarding was indeed a crime.
The kids in the photo here are some I snapped in Trondheim before Christmas, I asked them how long ago skateboarding became decriminalized here, one of then said 11 years, the other one said 30 years.
Either way I'm sure they're too young to remember the "olden days"

proof that vampires exist

So you're sitting on the couch with 3 other people, someone aims a camera at the 4 of you...what should you do?
a)cover your face with your hands
b)just sit there with a vacant look on your face
c)scoot in nearer to the group being photographed

The laptop with the digital photo gets passed around the room. You are:
a)smiling and photogenically portrayed in a cool picture with 3 nice people
b)your eyes are closed, otherwise you're looking good.
c)totally missing from the picture.

Your reaction is:
a)you admire a great picture of your good friends
b)you stare transfixed and keep a smile like grimace pasted you your face
c)conclude that it's proof that vampires are invisible on photographs and go into blogger mode.

I miss my virtual life

When I was prekindergarten I had an imaginary friend named John. He was fairly "real" and we did stuff together and had a few conversations. I knew he wasn't really "there" because I'd get self conscious if anybody asked about him.
So then I grew up and a friend led me down bloggers' boulevard. It's kind of all imaginary too, but it's kind of like finding my friend John again at a yellow light on bloggers' boulevard. I almost have time to make out the features of his face and I'm trying to listen to what he's telling me, but the traffic is still moving.
I'm in the middle of real life now, it's across the fjord from google earth Brilliant thoughts make epileptic tidal waves through my brain, but I'm intent on making it through these rounds without landing with a cold or the flu, so they just roil in the gray matter without making a splash on the web. (otherwise I could stay up all night writing.) Maybe after Christmas I'll have it figured out and ready to post.

Snow driving...

I haven't driven in snow since 1980 probably; so why start now? Because in Stryn, where we were last night there was over 1 meter of snowfall and towering mounds of show piled up on spare street corners. We left Stryn for Bergen this morning and I'm happy to say that we made it safe and sound, and the car is still in good shape with four fine fenders. One stretch of road is very narrow, only wide enough for one car. There are turnouts intermittently where you stop and wait if you meet a car. Today I saw a sign there that I've never noticed before, It says "Olden - Innvik
Norway's worst road"
I was in a little car wreck on that stretch in the late 80's, so I thought about that today as we carefully skidded across the snowy washboard textured surface, to our left was the unyeilding stone mountainside, to our immediate right the frigid, grey fjord. Then we met a car, and I had to stop and back up to the nearest wide spot.. got stuck and couldn't get out of there The nice man stopped and got out to push, and Inger J got out and pushed, and a truckdriver stopped and got out to help push, push from behind...no good, push from the front, no good...it's starting to snow...a car caught up behind us and couldn't get past, then a big bus came and had to wait...oh dear, then the nice truckdriver man got great big snow chains out and laid them out front of our right front tire, then they pushed, and we're on our way! We drove very carefully from there, up over the Utvik mountain pass, and ever so carefully back down, because of those nasty slippery hairpin curves - hitting the brakes to slow down can have unpredictable consequenses when the road is as slippery as an old soap dish...finally after Førde we had clear roads, now all I have to watch out for is those speed cameras...

the six days of facebook

On the first day of Facebook my network gave to me: forty-one new-found o-old friends.
On the second day of Facebook my network gave to me: two rude refusals a-and forty-two new-found old friends.
On the third day of Facebook my network gave to me: three inbox messages, two rude refusals a-and forty-three new-found o-old friends.
On the fourth day of Facebook my network gave to me: four mystery seeds, three inbox messages, two rude refusals a-nd forty five new-found o-old friends.
On the fifth day of Facebook my network gave to me: five on line friends! Fou-r mystery seeds, three inbox messages, two-o rude refusals a-and forty-seven new-found o-old friends.
And on the sixth day of Facebook the fates hand out to me...no-broadband-basement!
No more online friends, no mystery seeds, inbox is all dead, two rude refusals, but still all my new-found o-old friends!

My brother and the King of Norway

This was also in San Bruno; my mother found out that King Olav was flying in to San Fransisco. This was before the days of terrorism as we know it today, so we could go in to the gate area and actually meet the plane. The Mayor of San Fransisco (Mr. Alioto?) was there along with a gaggle of officials to present the king with the keys of the city. We were also there, dressed in our Norwegian national costumes. My brother was sitting on our dad's shoulders and he was waving the Norwegian flag, so of course it was quite natural for the king to bypass all the black suited officials and come right over to us to shake our hands! My dad says he made one mistake that he's regretted ever since: he should have introduced the Olav to the San Fransisco mayor!

The car

This summer in Denmark a young man gave me the keys to the Diesel Toyota Corrola, then he took me out for a test drive to teach me the finer points of driving a modern car.

It's got a gearbox, a stickshift, a dashboard, a cockkpit;
It goes into 5th gear, no fear;
Sure Joe, we have a turbo, fog lights, so we can see the streetlights
We got a CD player for sound bites.

We have seat warmers for cold mornings
we have a super sonic back up warning signal system
studded snow tires and please don't forget the 60,000 km service
all under full price warranty guarantee...

It's a modern automobile...

my brother and the garbage man

The muse struck me with a vengeance, but it was short lived as you will see.
I finished first grade at Carl Sandburg Elementary in San Bruno California. At that time My brother would have been 3 years old I think. I remember he had two favorite toys, one was a police car made by Mattel. He loved it so much that he spent one morning pounding it bang bang bang flat with a silver hammer. His other favorite toy was a little two wheeled scooter made out of bright yellow and orange plastic of the type that the “Big Wheels” of the 70's were made of.. He used it so much that he wore holes on the wheels. I remember thinking that they should have been made out of something real, like good old fashioned rubber...anyway, my brother was totally impressed with the garbage man. The garbage man had a great big dump truck and he came once a week with a big impressive bang and crash, then he'd bump and rumble away with all the romance and valor of a modern day action hero. As the trash collector moved on my brother would follow him on his rounds. His little scooter didn't come equipped with GPS, so he got lost lost and didn't find his way back home so my mom had to go out all over the neighborhoods looking for him. It got quite dramatic because it would be hours before he'd be found. It's probably a good thing that the wheels were made out of plastic and not rubber.

Mommas don't let your babies grow up to chase trash trucks,
let them build plenums and peddle cold air.
Momma's don't let your babies grow up to chase trash trucks,
They'll never stay home cuz they're hero's a sanitation engineeeeeeeeer

But a Trane man's good man,
he grew past the trash can
and now he's got a wheelin dealin real estate careeeeeer.

the season is closing in on us

To share some cheer:

From Drop Box

We will be on the road for several weeks, I may take the opportunity to give the keyboard a break, rest my elbow and heal the tendons.
Or I may be back in a few days to blog my garbage truck chasing little brother...we'll see.

Grudgingly from the Pensieve

By special request from an English teacher (I think)

August 10, 1974 I was at Gilroy for a four day convention. That morning at breakfast as I was pouring her a cup of tea, Elizabeth Jamison told me that President Nixon had resigned. That was a surprise to me in that same way that Edith Hansen at the 5&10 surprised me. I didn't expect her to have read the paper before breakfast! Well, Elizabeth was an informed lady. And I remember she was cool and calm about this news.
Now, I knew about the Watergate thing, and there was plenty of turmoil and strife over the Vietnam war, also the gas crunch which all had taken place during the Nixon era. So this is some of what likely set the stage for Nixon's imminent impeachment or resignation.
Poor Gerald, the first thing I remember him doing was pardoning Richard, which was a fairly decent gesture, perhaps absolved himself in the process?
Ok, without resorting to wikipedia, this is all I can come up with. I was busy in High School: first for six weeks in Castro Valley, before we moved to Livermore. I tried to get my mom to sign me up at the continuation school down the street, but they wouldn't take me, so I had to go to Granada High. By then I'd had plenty of education and would have gladly done high school by correspondence, but it didn't seem to be an option.
What do I think of Gerald's presidency? He never asked for the job, but somebody had to do it. Just like I had to finish high school.

Lurking around in the resthome

I'm going to try and be nimble with words and think on my seat to give you a flavor of life at "Hegratun"
We are just temporary where ever we are so now we rent an unused wing of this old folks home. It's a very interesting experience for me in many ways. The residents are very friendly and kind, and a few of them are eager to chat with us. Of course they are lonely, but there is a prevailing spirit of good cheer.
My cohort volunteers to go in after meals and help with dishes. She only does this when we are here, of course we have lots going on, so it doesn't work for her to do that every day.
The community is good at coming in and looking after the residents in different ways. A month or so ago the kindergarten was here and took the place by storm.
This week a choir came to sing for the seniors. They were a fun group of retired folk who just sing, they don't do parts, they just belt it out whether they can sing or not! Their leader, a man with eleven siblings, told us that he and his younger brother (also a member of the choir) were told not to sing at school because: "you can't sing, so you just sing inside yourself" Well now they have overcome this childhood repression and are making up for lost time! (My dad, who belongs to that same generation has had the same treatment, but he sings too now!)
We all sang several songs together then we had a beautiful coffee and Norwegian open faced sandwich party. It was really touching to see how pleased the seniors were and how much they enjoyed the treats. And I loved the singing. There is something about the Norwegian language that moves a primitive chord in me. I can't explain it, but that's just how it is.
If you were once Amish you might understand.
Oh, I thought I was done, just one more thing:
The knitting cafe meets here every second week. This is also nice for the seniors who are here, because they mix with others. Today was a knitting cafe day. We are invited too, so today I was sitting there furiously knitting away, then I discovered I had gone too far and had to unravel a bunch. "So do I unravel it all here now in front of all these ladies who are pros?...or do I put it away and sit here and twiddle my thumbs?" "Aw what the rip, just go for it" So then I had a lap full or unraveled yarn, but no big deal.
Afterwards we were invited in for dinner, we had "pinne kjøt" which is traditional Christmas food. It's cured lamb ribs, we ate it every Christmas eve when I was growing up. In the picture you see the mashed rutabaga, it's the orange stuff. It was truly delicious!

Life in the retirement home

New President and my views on politics

I know that there is stuff going on that's important in the big picture of the world. But I have to think about stuff for a long time before I write about it. Check back in 30 years to hear my views on this campaign.

Tennis lessons

One summer we got signed up for summer school, it was the summer we were on Pacific Ave. in Olympia. My mom took us down to the sporting goods store and got us each a racket. Not the best ones in the store of course, because who knew if we were really going to like playing tennis or not? I was quite proud of my collegiate looking wooden tennis racket and spent a lot of time gripping its handle and studying the way the tape was wrapped around the grip. I looked at the strings how they were threaded into the head of the racket; I admired my new possession, and as a result admired my self a bit more than I had admired myself before.

I'm pretty sure that my brother and I had these lessons together, maybe. Anyway once we got to the tennis court we met our teacher. She was a short, wide, pale, husky woman with a severe haircut wearing white shorts and a yellow cotton top. As soon as I saw her, and saw the other kids already lobbing shots to each other with shiny bright aluminum rackets that reflected sunshine, skill and future victories, I got a bad feeling about my future as a tennis champion.

But I learned to enjoy just serving onto the gym wall, and amused myself that way while the mysteriously skilled and privileged kids hogged the court. I was glad not to play with them. I froze up as soon as she said I wasn't swinging my racket with proper form. Her hero was Billie Jean King; I was glad to see the last of her, Ms Tennisteacher.

Well anyway, nothing is in vain in this life. Because I have learned just in the last few weeks from my gentle readers that tennis rackets are effective weapons with which to defend oneself from bats! That information brought to mind a great game of badminton I had with some May flies.

It was the spring of 1994 in Lviv. It was May, and the flies were thick. We had an excellent view of the garbage cans from our every window; it was a straight shot for those flies to come to our place looking for desert.

They buzzed and bombed around our fifth floor apartment in the most annoying way and finally I snapped. I grabbed the flyswatter and instead of smacking a fly when it landed, I made contact with it in mid-air and shot it back across the room. I had the greatest fun! It was like a magical tennis game or badminton with several live birdies! It was better that a computer game where you get a burst of balls, because I could dash around the room and swing my arms and feel the satisfying soft THUD of connecting with a fuzzy furry fly. It was also great therapy since we didn't have anywhere to go to workout we didn't get much aerobic exercise. I had a great time with those May flies, and every year since then I've really looked forward to spring.

The forming of a nonconformist

In my infamous bellybutton post, (after which my parents nearly disowned me and Anita had to do overtime counseling) I mentioned leotards, or tights, or whatever we call them. In our house we said 'strømpebukse'. And like I said there I had to wear them and they were a sagging-down type of a garment. I also had a beautiful hand knitted sweater made for me by my mormor. I'm pretty sure she had made it. Anyway, I wore that sweater to school one day, (this was kindergarten – first semester). My fashion conscious classmates got the message across to me that it was not cool to wear hand knitted sweaters to school...it was so un-Barbie...or whatever. So I went home and explained to my mom that I'd be needing a new sweater because I wouldn't be wearing that one anymore. Also I needed a lunchbox with the Monkeys on it with a matching thermos. So my mom told me how special it was to have a hand made, hand knitted sweater made by mormor far away in Norway, and that if I was the only one to have such a beautiful sweater of course that would provoke jealousy in kids whose grandmothers couldn't even knit. They were lucky if their grandmothers could crochet afghans.
Thereafter I wore my sweater, and many other garments with defiant pride. It is interesting to remember that Mrs. Pyland, our kindergarten teacher read us a story about a little boy who had special hand made socks which he wore to school and was mocked by his classmates. It seems he also was an overcomer.
Oh yes, and I decided that I didn't want a stupid lunch pail either.

Horses I've known

Happy Birthday Anita!

I was sorry I couldn't meet your plane
when you arrived to Ukraine
way back in 1999+1.
Our boys met you, and that was fine & fun.


Your cheerful face and friendly ways
Brightened up our “everydays”.

I met new friends with you
Bucky and Satchel to name just two.

Remember Barsik and Julia​? Our two strays
who ate anything we threw their way.
Julia was an unfaithful concubine
Her puppies looked like porcupines.


And you taught me to enjoy Ukrainian candy!
Svitoch and Korivka - I found out taste real dandy!

Train a horse?
But of course!
Poor Landish died of fright...
served him right...

I've been nearly everywhere

I was toting my pack along the long dusty Winnemucca road
When along came a semi with a high canvas covered load
If your goin' to Winnemucca, Mack with me you can ride
And so I climbed into the cab and then I settled down inside
He asked me if I'd seen a road with so much dust and sand
And I said, "Listen! I've traveled every road in this here land!"

I've been everywhere, man
I've been everywhere, man
Crossed the deserts bare, man
I've breathed the mountain air, man
Of travel I've had my share, man
I've been everywhere

I've been to:
Reno
Chicago
Fargo
Minnesota
Buffalo
Toronto
Winslow
Sarasota
Wichita
Tulsa
Ottawa
Oklahoma
Tampa
Panama
Mattawa
LaPaloma
Bangor
Baltimore
Salvador
Amarillo
Tocapillo
Barranquilla
And Padilla

I'm a Killer
I've been everywhere, man
I've been everywhere, man
Crossed the deserts bare, man
I've breathed the mountain air, man
Of travel I've had my share, man
I've been everywhere

I've been to:
Boston
Charleston
Dayton
Louisiana
Washington
Houston
Kingston
Texarkana
Monterey
Fairaday
Santa Fe
Tallapoosa
Glen Rock
Black Rock
Little Rock
Oskaloosa
Tennessee
Tennessee
Chicopee
Spirit Lake
Grand Lake
Devil's Lake
Crater Lake

For Pete's Sake
I've been everywhere, man
I've been everywhere, man
Crossed the deserts bare, man
I've breathed the mountain air, man
Of travel I've had my share, man
I've been everywhere

I've been to:
Louisville
Nashville
Knoxville
Ombabika
Schefferville
Jacksonville
Waterville
Costa Rock
Pittsfield
Springfield
Bakersfield
Shreveport
Hackensack
Cadillac
Fond du Lac
Davenport
Idaho
Jellico
Argentina
Diamantina
Pasadena
Catalina

See What I Mean
I've been everywhere, man
I've been everywhere, man
Crossed the deserts bare, man
I've breathed the mountain air, man
Of travel I've had my share, man
I've been everywhere

I've been to:
Pittsburgh
Parkersburg
Gravelbourg
Colorado
Ellensburg
Rexburg
Vicksburg
Eldorado
Larimore
Adimore
Haverstraw
Chatanika
Shasta
Nebraska
Alaska
Opalacka
Baraboo
Waterloo
Kalamazoo
Kansas City
Sioux City
Cedar City
Dodge City

What A Pity
I've been everywhere, man
I've been everywhere, man
Crossed the deserts bare, man
I've breathed the mountain air, man
Of travel I've had my share, man
I've been everywhere

I've been everywhere

I haven't really been to all these places, but I like the song!

Edith Hansen shopping

There were two ladies who would visit us in Eddyville too. One of the times they came I sang them a song I'd composed, (I exhibited literary talents at an early age before exhausting them). I sang:

"Starry Queen, Starry Queen
Staaaaary Queeeeen, Staa-aa-ry Quee-een
Starry Queen."

Edith's kind comment was "I don't understand what you mean dear."

That's like I was saying about the truly gifted: nobody understands.

One time my mom and I went to Ben Franklin's 5 and 10, and of all things we saw Edith in a STORE...it didn't seem right for her to know that we'd seen her doing that, so we quietly backed right on out of there.
One time my dad and I helped, or watched, don't really know what we were doing, but there were some farmers dipping sheep. That was a fun memory, then we sprawled on the grassy hillside. I felt like I was in a pastoral scene in a famous painting. Or maybe not, but it was far from the madding crowd.
Don't go away, I had a wiener dog, Hjalmar. A man who tried to make friends with my dad had given him a box of chocolate, which was fed to poor Hjalmar. Hjalmar ended his days with a bad case of road rash. Also there was Lauritz the cat. It was fun to turn a cardboard fruit box over him, then he'd stick his paws out the round holes in the card board box, and playfully wave them around. I think of him every time I play with cats.
Now my mother tells me that the way she remembers it it was, "Starchy Queen"

Bats in the Attic

I have mentioned kindergarten here a few times. In the middle of kindergarten I transferred to Wisconsin, where I graduated from kindergarten and completed one semester of first grade.
But let's go back to before kindergarten. It was so much simpler then. One prekindergarten episode was when I was still an only child in Eddyville, Oregon.

We lived in a gigantic old farm house. An old woman had lived there before we moved in and she was dead now. There was an upstairs with long dark shadowy halls and all the doors were to be kept closed. One of the rooms had been the old lady's bedroom. The room was left as if she could come back at any time. I wasn't so sure that she didn't do that. I don't know how much a four-year-old has heard of ghosts, I don't know if anyone had told me any ghost stories by then. All I know is that one night in the middle of the dark, black night I was out in that upstairs hallway, and the banister post of the staircase turned into a a golden metallic archer and he was aiming an arrow at me. All I remember now is that I was rescued by my mom. I told her about it and she didn't look very unconvinced, if you know what I mean. After that I got to sleep in their room. That was a good thing, because it was scary in my room with all the bats flying around in there. There were bats flying around in my parent's room too, but at least my dad killed them. I remember watching him tearing around the bedroom slapping at bats with his T-shirt, or something. I remember my mom screaming until they discovered I was awake, then they made me turn around and look at the wall.
In the bathroom was a great big bathtub that stood on feet that resembled claws which gripped iron balls. I came downstairs one morning after a bath; I was wrapped in a towel and I was holding a rag doll. I opened the kitchen door and saw my mom chasing a bat that was zooming around the kitchen trying to save its life. I think my mom had either a flyswatter or a rolled up newspaper as her weapon, until she saw me, then she took my doll, and told told me to get outside. But I stood and watched as she beat the bat to death with the doll's head, then she threw the doll with the bat wrapped in its rag body into the wood burning cook stove. I must have gone outside then, because then she came and got me back inside and told me to go and get dressed if I was going to go outside!
I remember two men came to visit us, my dad wasn't very happy with them, so he invited them up into the attic to help him kill bats, and this they did! Using the ladder which was leaning on the outside of the house I followed them upstairs into the attic, but they wouldn't let me stay and watch.

Bestefar tells stories

I have a guest writer today, this will make it clear to everybody why I made my brother run home after he fell into the crick in Olympia:

I was about 10 years old or less. My older brothers did not want to go ice skating on the river with me. I was not "old enough yet" was the "excuse". So I decided to check out the ice for myself. I found that the ice at the shore was frozen onto the rocks and it was a little higher than the ice on the river, so I looked for a place where I could easily get onto the ice without jumping. Eventually I climbed onto a rock and sat down on its frozen icy surface and slid down to where the ice was level, then I stood up. I walked along the shore and felt quite comfortable. I was dressed in trousers, long wool underwear, heavy shoes, a wool sweater and mittens. The sky was clear and the temperature well below freezing, there was no wind but it was biting cold. I walked toward the other shore and knew that I should not try to cross the river, because the ice would be very thin in the area where the water was still flowing, which it was because... suddenly
the
ice
broke
under
my
feet
and
I
went
down!





I reached my arms out to the sides,and finally stopped falling when I had
water up to my armpits. I thought of the scolding I would get coming home all wet, and started kicking without realizing it. Then I hit something solid and got my chest onto thicker ice; I kept kicking until I managed to completely roll on to the surface of the frozen river. I crawled on all fours until I got to the shore I had started from, then I got onto my feet and ran in a straight line for home across the frozen fields. When I got home I quickly undressed and built a fire in the "Jøtul". My mother brought dry underwear and asked why I was so wet. "I just fell through the ice.", I answered nonchalantly, like it was a common thing to do, and there was no scolding. Just “what are you going to wear for school
tomorrow?”.

It took a long time before we got permission to skate on the river that year.

Takk far!

Another day in Hell

From Hell, Norway My mom told me about this place, in fact she told me to go there.  How many mothers have told their kids to go to Hell?

There are interesting rock carvings there too, I hope we get a chance to go back there sometime.  One thing I want you to notice if you click on the web album link is the location of Hell on the google map.  See if you can calculate how far the carvings are from the shore.  The reason I bring this up is that the carvings were originally near the shore line.  There must have been a period of very warm weather thousands of years ago when ice caps melted etc etc...

From Hell, Norway

Thanks Joyce!

From pacific Ave.
An Olympia Lurker has tracked down what's left of the house on Pacific Ave. After doing research she wrote and that the place has been torn down. Looks like the hazelnut trees are still there though!

Prisoners of War

The title of this book caught my eye in the library today, so I looked up under the "D" to find "Dahl", and sure enough.

Martin Dahl from Volda was our morfar,

this drawing must have been done about a year after he came home. I've heard mor tell the story about when soldiers came to the home to take him away, and maybe she'll tell it for us here...

The Blue Swan

A few more details about the rowboat; my mom was just telling me more about what it was really made of...
We have to go back to kindergarten, I started school in Samoa, California at Pacific Union School. We lived in one of the little cracker box houses that had been built for employees of the Samoa pulp mill, I think it was called Georgia-Pacific. My mom had some curtains that we used in that little house and they were made of fiberglass! Those curtains were the first layer of the rowboat which was later to be christened the "Blue Swan". I don't remember this but she said that on the inside of the boat you could see the pattern and pleats and seams from the old curtains.
And you thought recycling was a new, modern idea to save the planet?

Homemade rowboat

I mentioned that our dad built a boat. There was an old rowboat behind the house on Pacific Ave, left behind by the previous resident. It may not have been seaworthy anymore, but our dad took it into the garage and cloned it with fiberglass. I was baffled watching him with all this fabric, mom was the one who spent time in fabric shops. (She sewed all my clothes) He draped it over the old boat, then I think he painted glass onto the the fabric to make fiberglass... Ok it wasn't glass he used, but when this compound dried it hardened the fabric. I don't know how many layers of material he used, but one day we were ready to move the new boat out of the basement. A tight fit, but he was able to squeeze it out the door. Could it be he had to remove the door frame? Don't remember, I do remember feeling relieved that “we” got it out of the basement.
We made good use of that boat at the Weyerhauser place. That really was idyllic. I don't know if it was there that I learned to row, seems like I've always known how to do that. There is stuff that we learn as kids in the western world, like riding a bike, rowing a boat, or paddling a canoe, riding a horse, driving a car, and it's not a big deal. But I know people who've never had a chance to learn any of those things. Of course there's a lot I can't do – can't walk a tightrope, can't play the piano, can't even touch type! But some people can even row a boat and eat an apple at the same time! (He bought an electric outboard motor the day after I took this picture.)

From How to fish with an otter

Lemmings

I'm looking for the original Gary Larson for this. I got this from here.
More about lemmings here

Festus, Missouri

I even didn't start 7th grade until about 6 weeks into the semester, because we were camped out at Howard Johnson's in St. Louis looking for a suitable rental. But I got a real education the short time we lived in Festus, Missouri, until partway through 8th grade. The name of the school I went to there was Jefferson R-7. We had a very strict principal; boys were not allowed to wear T-shirts, and all shirttails were to be tucked in! The PE teacher was strict too. We were the Blue Jays, undefeated in girls volleyball, probably boys basketball too. Yes, all we did was play volleyball during gym class, but first he made us do push-ups on our fingertips. No, I was not on the volleyball team. For a while I was the “new kid”. I made up for that by getting good grades and making up rude songs about certain nasty classmates. The fact that I wasn't embarrassed to loudly sing uncomplimentary solos to my classmates helped them to let me in to their circle maybe...I don't know.
Anyway, my parents found us a really neat house to live in. I can't remember this address either, It was something like RR #1 etc, I can't remember, but yes, rural. The landlord, a doctor, was a retired army colonel. He was like an feudal land baron. His house was a log cabin type structure on the top of a hill and he told us he owned all land we could see from there.
“Our” house was an old two story farm house, whose cellar housed a Missouri Terrapin. The nearest and only neighbors, (besides the landlord, Dr. Allbee, who lived up a terribly steep hill to the left of our driveway) were – we'll call them the McCornicks. A family with 5 adolescent kids including Ma and Pa. The oldest was a daughter, Candy; she got married to Hell's Angel candidate while we lived there. Then there was Roy, named after his dad. I remember that Roy Jr. and his best friend, “Melonhead” signed up for the Army. Later, after Roy and Melonhead had been home for an inordinately long Christmas leave, I learned from his little bother Paulie what AWOL means. There were two other girls, Renee and Theresa.
This family all lived in a single wide mobile home with no skirting around it. Their big old black and white dog, King, and an adopted stray pup would huddle under there in bad weather. Next to the the mobile home was an old rectangular concrete foundation of an old shed or something. That was their garbage dump. I'm pretty sure we didn't put our garbage up there because our house and yard had a low white board fence around it. Periodically this garbage was theoretically burned, but finally the day came when my dad helped Mr. Roy McCornick shovel it all into a trailer to be hauled off. That upset the food chain a bit because the mice that had been recycling the garbage and using it for food, heat and shelter had to find another place to live and something else to eat. I've witnessed lemmings on the run, and this was about the same idea – dozens of mice fleeing. The cats were so surprised at first they just sort of stood around and watched.
Our house had three entrances, a front door with a wide cozy porch for warm summer evenings and on each side of the kitchen were doors into back yard. We almost always came and went through the kitchen door, because it was a straight shot to the garage and the rabbit hutches. The white board fence had a gate there; beside the gate was a pipe that stuck about how many inches up out of the ground...four inches? I never paid much attention to that pipe, but one day I noticed something white in a bit of gunk that seemed to have collected at the mouth of this pipe-whatever-it-was-thing. If you looked hard enough it almost looked like a toothy grin.
I was too busy being Heidi of the Alps, and Huckleberry Finn and Caddie Woodlawn to pay much attention to details like that, until Renee or Theresa told me and my brother about a tragedy that had happened at their house. Ma, or one of those girls, I can't remember, had been so sick and vomiting and stuff all day, and had lost her partial in the toilet and the dentists charge so much that they didn't know what they were gonna do. And just like that it clicked, and one of us, my brother or I, had a “plumbing-needs-ventilation-revelation” and realized that that grin in the gunk could really be someone's pearly whites. We got a stick and poked around...yep, all we need is to rinse these off and soak 'em bleach and they'll be as good as new!
Don't forget the location of the rabbit hutches, they may come up in this blog again...

Olympia, Washington

I think this is the spot, but I'm not sure, and I don't remember the address, but I think that you can still see the big white house from the freeway as you drive by.
I went to all of 5th and 6th grades in Olympia, at McKinley school. The school has been razed because of asbestos in its construction.
I have lots of happy memories from here. We had a nice little dog called "Cricket". My mom had the house fixed up so nice and neat everybody liked coming to see it. It was a two story house with 4 bedrooms. There was camel hair carpeting in the living and dining rooms and going up the stairs. My mom bought our furniture at second-hand shops and used Jasco to scrape off all the old gunk. Then she decorated it by painting Norwegian rose maling designs. I liked living there and reading Laura Ingalls Wilder books. I read nearly all the books in the library of McKinley school.
It snowed for Christmas and we had a Christmas tree, and our cat , Lakris, (Licorice) went insane and climbed to the top of the tree. I sewed little Christmas socks out of red felt and I liked thinking I was Laura Ingalls when I was making them.
There was a crick across the field to the left of the house and we would go there and catch crawdads. There was a swamp on the other side of the house and on my 10th birthday we went there with sack lunches to catch frogs and polliwogs. I've always wished I could have stayed 10 forever.
The house had a full basement where my dad had built a boat in the evenings. The house had been built on a hill where there were fruit trees: a crabapple tree, hazelnut trees, and a cherry tree where the tree fort was. There was a pulley line from the kitchen to our tree fort so we could get sandwiches and stuff from our mom. There was a front porch the length of the house.
Then one morning we woke up and there was a huge bulldozer in front of "our" house. The Bulldozer started BANGING into the porch to knock it off, another digging machine went after the crabapple tree, I left the breakfast table to run out there and pick the poor daffodils. CRASH into the wall, our paintings, originals done by a special family friend, came crashing off the wall inside. My brother and I had to go to school, and when we came back the house was naked, the mound it had been built on was shaved away by earthmoving machines, we had to wade through mud to get inside. Of course we had to look for another place to live, the landlord had neglected to tell us he was tearing the place down to put in a car dealership just like the one across the street.
It was a trick moving out of there, especially dropping the piano out the front door 8 feet down into the moving van.
We found a really nice place to live next, it was the uninhabited executive mansion of the Weyerhaeuser Lumber Company. That was nice too, but lots of work for my parents to fix it up.
The last thing I did at the Pacific Ave. house was to walk through the whole place with muddy feet and unscrew every light bulb.
And it amazed me to see the house still standing last time I was up there, some 6 years ago...is it still there anybody???

Balloon payment

I've been wondering now about an offer I had back in 1983 to invest in real estate. The plan was to pay a reasonable sum every month, then after a period of some years there was to be this big, seemingly insurmountable and huge payment to make. It seemed scary to me at the time. I had other prospects in view as well, so I passed up the opportunity to make payments on real estate in the San Fransisco Bay Area. Now I'm wondering if I had gone for it would I have been one of the ones guilty of the present economic crisis?

Notebook help from the Middle ages

If you understand Norwegian you MUST watch this video.

Cute fish videos

This fish is just walking around on the bottom of the ocean...

fishing off the oil platforms

Our host, Karl Astor, has an off-shore job, he services the oil platforms in the north sea or even fixes broken stuff way down underwater on the ocean floor. He operates an ROV which is a remotely operated underwater vehicle
He has cameras which film underwater, he watches this on several screens, then he can make repairs way deep under water.
This job used to be done by deep sea divers, but because of the enormous stress of working on the bottom of the north sea, and the high mortality rate in this occupation, ROVs are used now instead.
There are often lots of fish where they work because the fish congregate near the oil pipe which is warm.
The ROV he uses has 2 arms and sometimes they can even catch a couple fish! Watch the video!!!
This is a very interesting video if you're interested in what happens in the north sea. You can watch how the boat's deck opens up and a wire line gets dropped onto the ocean floor.

New Awareness

This won't last long, this jag I'm on, but as long as it's on my mind I'd like to tell you about this kid I met in Greece last summer (2007). This is Micheal from Australia. (do any of you lurkers from New Zealand recognize him? He and his younger brother and sister had been visiting cousins in England) Any way he told us about where he had been working for a farmer in Canada who was pumping tractor exhaust into his soil as he plowed. The claim is that they used no other fertilizer and it was a record harvest. The neighbors are still paying their fertilizer bills from 2 years ago.
Well it makes sense, the elements which came out of the soil to make fuel, (all those decayed dinosaurs and dung) are floating in the debris of emissions. This genius of a man has a cooler on the exhaust pipe, then he pumps it back into the dust from whence it came. I admire the idea and I admire the deed.

Carbon footprint of the Norwegian Moose

We pulled out of Steinkjer on the way to Kolvereid and stopped to photograph these creatures. I saw them in a clearing of the woods on the right side of the road. They came to edge of the field to look curiously at us, but when I raised the camera to shoot they streaked off. They know it's hunting season.
I learned today that one of the things moose and cows have in common is that they produce lots of methane gas. They are green back to nature type creatures and they are the ones guilty of destroying the environment. In one summer a moose belches out as much methane as a car would produce carbon dioxide on a 13,000 km trip. Is that 8,078 miles? The distance from Los Angeles, California to somewhere in India?
My cousin's wife is into saving the planet, her job is alternate energy sources/waste management and she's the one who first told me about these gas collecting balloons for cows. I can just picture these cows propelled across the sky...
hey diddle diddle
the cat and the fiddle
the cow jumped over the moon...
I could ride a cow all the way to California, hug a redwood tree and sign up for Greenpeace as soon as I arrive.
As we were driving back to our digs last night in the dark I was wondering what it would be like to hit a moose. CRASH...our nice expensive car we've been loaned...possibly a dent in in my coworker also, would we be able to keep the moose meat? The moose hide would look nice on the floor in our ascetic domicile.

I'm glad we didn't hit one, hope we don't get any closer than we got to these today.
This post is an attempt to write something which shows my awareness of the age I'm living in and that I'm in touch with the problems of our times. It's a bit boring though and I like my own world enough, but I'm just trying to be trendy or whatever.
Take nothing but pictures, leave nothing but footprints.

The Salvation Army in Hell

We've been through Hell today, you have to drive through Hell's Tunnel to get there. We avoided actual Hell on our past trips, but today we've been to Hell and back again...The only street sign I could find to document our trip is this one advertising workouts in Hell. The Salvation Army has a shop in town and I was able to find a big enough purse to make it out of Hell with all my baggage intact.
The leather coat I'm wearing is one I got last week in Trondheim at the Salvation Army there.

The hat is an astrakhan or Persian lambs skin, also from a second hand shop. Esoteric novels usually have a character in an astrakhan hat sometimes. So I volunteered this time.

I had so much fun today!

From det magiske berget (The Enchanted Rock)

I went back to the enchanted rock today, I'm so excited about that place. I was awake for hours last night thinking about how to do rubbings of the rock carvings, and today I had the chance to take the car out there myself and spend about an hour. Too bad I only had 5 sheets of paper, I'm getting more and going back first chance next week.

Stone age blogging

Only about a 5 minute drive from here where we stay at Hegratun there is a huge amazing outcropping of smooth stone with ancient hellerinstingar, or petroglyphs. We went today and looked and took pictures. I want to go back soon and do rubbings with paper and crayons. There are carved pictures of symbols and people and horses and boats, and lots of carved footprints. The footprints look like a boot with a heel.
I manipulated these pictures to make the carvings more visible. Some are very faint and best visible in evening light or in the fall when the sunlight is less brilliant.
These carvings aren't listed in wikipedia but this link is informative.
Runes are a different kind of rock writing, haven't seen any like that yet around here.
When you click on the picasa link make sure you choose to view the pictures in google earth, then it a real www experience.

the Atlantic Highway

We traveled north over a week ago to get up here. The trip was beautiful, and we had nice sunny weather.
The roads here are really nice, instead of going around or over mountains there are lots of tunnels. Some of the tunnels have replaced ferries, they go under the ocean floor. There used to be lots of ferries, but now there are bridges that connect the islands. The road we took from Ålesund to Trondheim goes over the Atlantic Highway. In the picture you can see the bridges and the land fill used to connect the islands. It would have been nice to go out and walk around there, but instead I hiked around on the web and found some nice pictures. They were from tourist sites, so I guess it's ok for me to use them here to advertise further.
I took some pictures too; they are here.

Kindergaten and the new Gym

The place where we are staying now organizes outings for the residents, and Inger Johanna was excited about going along last week. I didn't really feel like going, was only just getting over a cold and we had a class to teach in the evening. But I relented and went along. And I'm really glad I did, because it was so neat to see all the kindergartners! They meet us at the door, all friendly and welcoming, so I didn't feel weird or strange because of not knowing anyone. I like the way little children are exposed to senior citizens, and that the seniors get to be with children.
The gym was fantastic, and I loved watching the children running with balls and playing with hula hoops and climbing on the bars! There were goal lines in all bright and magical colors on the floor and the children were dressed in bright colors so it was like watching a prism's beams flitting around the floor.
An elderly man in a wheelchair buzzed around the whole time taking pictures, I hope you'll click here and look at them! You'll see Inger J in two pictures and me in one of them. You can also see the kids climbing up the side of the walls!
After we had a tour of the gym we went in to the kindergartner's room and were served coffee and tea, the kids sang for us, and of course we applauded, then we sang a few childrens songs to them and it was really cute how they clapped for us.

I goofed up today and ended up not being able to boot up my laptop. And I'd like to write down what I did here for future reference:
1 Insert xp installation disk
2 Three options are available:
a/Install windows
b/Repair windows
c/Exit
3 choose option 2
4 enter administrator password
5 choose which OS to repair; hit enter
6 type HELP
7 or type fixboot
8 then type fixmbr
It worked!!!

The Far Side

I didn't understand Anita's comment the other day, but it reminded me of this...

this free service helped me find the comic, he'll help you find any Gary Larson comic!

shout-out to Colter!

congratulations!!! the emails keep bouncing back :(, so I've temporarily given up on that venue of contact with you.
Question: do you still have that canoe I carved and gave you? If so please send me a picture of it, I'd like to post it here.
Thanks!

the morning catch

Here's Anders, the youngest of this litter of cousins. He phoned from school last night and said he wanted to come help pull in the nets, (he had other reasons for wanting to come home too)anyway he arrived home at 0800 this morning and was the designated rower for this trip.

 
We got 10 fish in this net, 4 different kinds: 3 mackerel, 4 bergylte, 1 lyre, 1 småseid, and one that my uncle threw back, he gave him a little speech first, that he was getting thrown back because he was still alive but too small for us!




My aunt, tante Mali, fried the mackerel up for Inger Johanna and me. There is nothing like fresh fish from the fjord!

fishing in Hundeidvik

Here we are on the ferry. As we were in line watching the ferry chug into the landing, we saw one of the crew come storming off the ship with a fishing pole. During the few minutes which cars disembarked and when we drove onto the ferry this opportunistic fisherman managed to haul in 2 mackerel! My uncle Arnstein is a retired ferry captain so I made sure to tell this story when we got here last night. In reply he and my cousin Håvard took us out in their "Fering". It is a very cool wooden rowboat. He says the boat is so steady in the water that he can sit out on it's edge to haul the net in without fear of capsizing it.
This is uncle getting ready to cast the net. We were hoping for crab...

Here is my cousin, Håvard, he's home on leave from the military this week.
After we came in from casting out the nets my uncle told us that it's bad luck to have women along in the boat when you cast out...so we wondered if there would be anything in the nets or not the next morning...

That rat went to heaven. All Right?

Fleet Ave. Milwaukee, WI
I don't remember the house number, but we lived there in early 1965 as I recall; anyway it was before I had started first grade. We were reminiscing today and my parents used the word "slums" to describe it. Here's how I recall it.

It was on a busy street with a candy shop nearby. You could get these red edible fake lips there. Seems they were made of a waxy substance. I've never seen them anywhere since that I can remember. In my gallery of memories that street is a Norman Rockwell painting.
Our apartment had thin walls with neighbors on the other side. I remember hearing great domestic wars in the night, sounds of banging and hitting and screaming. I was sure it was murder. But always when I'd check in the morning I'd see those two; they couldn't get enough of kissing each other to finish up saying goodbye so that he could go to work. I worried that he would be late for work. When I told my mom about it, and she said not to talk to them and not to watch them saying goodbye in the mornings. I was always glad to see that they were both still alive though and that they'd survived their big fight.
Since I wasn't supposed to talk to them my contact with the neighbors became limited to a kid who hung around there. In my memory's list of characters he's a graduate of Fagin's school of pickpocketing from _Oliver Twist_. I don't remember if I ever knew his name, but he would tell me stories about a rat. One day he told me the last story about that rat. I don't remember the circumstances, but the rat had died, and "went to heaven". Well, I was a conscientious enough preschooler and had a little background in theology, so I seriously explained to him that:

1. only a soul can go to heaven.
   
2. A rat is an animal and animals don't have souls, so
3. Rats don't have souls, and
   
4. The rat did not go to heaven.

This little lesson in eternal life ended with the kid giving me his most menacing look. In threatening tones he told me, "That rat went to heaven. All right??"
I didn't laugh in front of him, but I when I told my mom I guess I made her laugh; anyway we moved to a different neighborhood after that.

At one with the elements

Fishing to the rhythm of the pouring rain
I'll never fall for that again...

And nary a nibble we had.

The Gimp strikes again!

I'm having fun with this. Does anyone know any other gimp tricks I could do when I get tired of this one? Any are there any clues from the audience how to fix the color disparities? I sort of wish I had a regular SLR with a 50 mm lens for these pictures; the mountains are not as far away as it looks in the pictures.

This is the Grandpa of the week

I've asked for permission to post these, but the mails to the new father keep bouncing back. Let me know if I should take the post down. She was born on the 30th I think.