A Roll in the Universe

Robbi asked me a lot of questions in the comments to my post about writing about Norway , and asked a lot of questions, which I decided were better answered in a post, rather than in the comments: Robbi: My friend and I were at dinner the other night, and she brought up Garrison Keillor. She is married to a guy who is third generation American with Swedish background, and she says Garrison Keillor's books describe her husband perfectly, even down to his being prudish about nudity. Keera: I haven't heard of Garrison Keillor. Today's Scandinavians are not prudish about nudity - certainly not compared to Americans. Perhaps I was unclear in my previous post. In Victorian times, everybody was prudish. Robbi: Frankly, I don't care for Garrison Keillor or Sons of Norway. I can't relate to them. It seems that their version of Norway is the way Norway used to be in the 1800s. Keera: I was a member of Sons of Norway when I lived in California, and found it to be a pos...

Robbi asked me a lot of questions in the comments to my post about writing about Norway , and asked a lot of questions, which I decided were better answered in a post, rather than in the comments: Robbi: My friend and I were at dinner the other night, and she brought up Garrison Keillor. She is married to a guy who is third generation American with Swedish background, and she says Garrison Keillor's books describe her husband perfectly, even down to his being prudish about nudity. Keera: I haven't heard of Garrison Keillor. Today's Scandinavians are not prudish about nudity - certainly not compared to Americans. Perhaps I was unclear in my previous post. In Victorian times, everybody was prudish. Robbi: Frankly, I don't care for Garrison Keillor or Sons of Norway. I can't relate to them. It seems that their version of Norway is the way Norway used to be in the 1800s. Keera: I was a member of Sons of Norway when I lived in California, and found it to be a pos...

in the typeface. Trebuchet looks too annoying to me when there is a lot of text. Let me know what you think about the change!

Over at Tim's there are links to other American bloggers living in Norway or other places in Europe. One blogger Tim just linked to , a Norwegian, lets his American wife guestblog sometimes, to let readers see her new home country through her eyes. After reading some of her posts, I realized why I don't write (much) about Norway as an American expatriate. What strikes an American (or any foreigner) as exotic about Norway, is already under my skin since I spent part of my childhood here. I therefore don't necessarily stop to think if something charming in Norway is charming by virtue of being in Norway. Am I charmed by Norwegian countryside because I am an American, or because I can appreciate beautiful countryside, wherever I am? I'm thinking it's the latter. Certain western Norway countryside does have sentimental value for me because I grew up with it. I also feel sentimental every time I see pictures from the desert of southern California because I lived there...

Via Alice I have learned of the blog Don to Earth making the rounds and gaining an understandably larger following. The 93-year-old man who writes it, writes well and, as Alice notes, thoughtfully. If I were to start reading another (new) blog at this point (I currently have little time for my regular reads and just weeded a bit), I'd definitely read Don's. But… Don is 93. He just had a minor stroke. His wife is ailing and has been moved to a nursing home. My grandma died at almost 95 of a massive stroke in a nursing home. This is hitting a little too close to (my) home. I can feel that my heart is just not ready to take the chance on delighting in another person of my grandma's generation, and possibly having to relive losing that person. Dammit. I know I'm going to miss out on some fine writing. I've read enough to know that. Me and my aching heart will get back to you on this. We need to think… In the meantime, you can go check out Don's blog.

Tim asked me a question a while ago: Does liking Star Trek make one a nerd, geek, dweeb, dork, etc.? I had mentioned Star Trek conventions and that's what kicked that off. For the record: I have never attended a Star Trek convention, and even though it looks like some of the folks attending need to get a life, I believe the majority are fascinated by the Star Trek phenomenon for pretty much the same reasons I am. A while back there was a discussion on Usenet regarding science fiction in Norway. The consensus was that there isn't any. There was a heyday for sci-fi in the 70's, spearheaded by Norwegian authors Bing and Bringsværd (and I have one of their books), but it died out. It's hard to rekindle because most Norwegians don't "get" space or space exploration or science fiction. When the matter of space exploration comes up during lunch at work, the majority view is, "Why are they wasting money on going out there ? What for?" Sometimes foll...

It finally snowed! by thinkbigshrinktofit . Started this afternoon, kept up this evening, a quiet, gentle falling of white stuff, now over two inches thick. I never thought I'd be so happy to see the stuff, but I am. Squeeked under my feet as I walked home today, which means it's fairly dry snow. (Streaks in picture are close-ups of snowflakes bungee-jumping. No, really. OK, fine, they're parachuting. Details, details.)

Norway's main selling points, even to its own inhabitants, are clean air, clean water, and clean living. We get our electricity from waterfalls (which is why you don't see them cascading down the mountainsides any more); we get our water from mountain lakes (but lack proper cleansing of that water in many places); we love to hike in the mountains (but hate waiting for a bus so we drive everywhere); we eat many kinds of fish (but only at fancy restaurants). Our claim as an ecologically aware nation is being called seriously into question. Although not a member of the European Union (EU), as members of the European Economic Area (EEA Agreement) we are subject to many EU rules and regulations. And the EU wants to clean up. It wants to lessen Europe's carbon footprint. And guess who has as much work to do as the other European nations? Norway. How can this be? The discussion at work went something like this: We have assumed we would always have clean air and clean water, ...

I have always believed that the most significant medical discovery of the past century or so was penicillin. Perhaps I think that way since penicillin was a part of my childhood, prone to bronchitis and pneumonia as I was. But according to a poll by the British Medical Journal, the most important medical breakthrough of the last 167 years is (i.e. the entire existence of the BMJ): Sewers. Fond as I am of the flushing toilet and a well-functioning drain in my sink, and in spite of touring a water-cleansing plant here in Bergen, I did not think of sewers. I may instead have thought of hand-washing or of aspirin. More than 11,000 readers responded, and sanitation won with 1,795 votes. London was one of the first modern cities to improve public sanitation after John Snow showed that cholera was spread by water, and Edwin Chadwick came up with the idea of sewage disposal and piping water into homes. (From the Washington Post ) Bergen was one of the first cities in Norway to get indoor...

Most people treat the present moment as if it were an obstacle that they need to overcome. Since the present moment is life itself, it is an insane way to live. — ECKHART TOLLE in "Science of Mind Magazine" October 2006 That one got me. It is an insane way to live. Eckhart goes on to explain living in the now later in the article and gives these suggestions for staying focused in the Now: One thing we can do is to notice the little things all around us, paying attention to details such as the birds in the trees and the flowers in the garden or the park—just notice the beauty everywhere. To notice seemlingly insignificant things requires alertness. That alertness [...] is consciousness itself. This, or focusing on your breathing, or meditation, or being completely submerged in a task, like doing the dishes (I’ve tried that and got several minutes of complete bliss), is about freeing yourself from thinking. Tolle says that we identify with thinking, which gives rise to and m...

A trail of salt for pedestrians by thinkbigshrinktofit . Sravana expressed an interest in hearing more about Norway, so I thought I'd accommodate her. What you see in this picture (besides my apartment building on the left) is typical of winter in Bergen, Norway: After a good rain, comes a freeze, and those responsible for roads and walkways bring out the salt. Roads are salted here, the alternative being studded tires which tear up the asphalt and pollute. Road salt itself is not without problems: It gets into the soil, pollutes water, and dries out dog paws. If it's wet, it'll soak into boots, leaving them white. It gets tracked into buildings, leaving milky footprints everywhere. The lobby where I work is white all winter long from the salt being tracked in. A mess. But necessary. If it snows, we won't need it nor can we use it. Snow is best if it gets packed, whether on roads or sidewalks. Add salt to it, and you get miles of the ugliest, slipperiest slus...

One of the neighbors by thinkbigshrinktofit . Here is the white cat from an earlier post . She approached me, curious and friendly. She has lovely light hazel eyes and the tiniest ears. Her tail feels really thick with all that fur. As I was petting her, a teenage boy walked by, with something clicking on him (keys around neck, perhaps?) and the cat crouched down. I'm not sure if it's males or sounds that get to her.

My grandma was quite the reader and she read everything. In her bookshelves I found the treasures of Egypt, the fairytale of Soria Moria Castle, palm-reading, seeing Europe on $5 a day, the history of the US, dictionaries, atlases, art books, murder mysteries, and even Robert Anton Wilsons' Illuminatus! trilogy. I happened to surf by the L.A. Times and caught sight of Wilson's obituary . I remember when I read his trilogy that it was a fun and unusual read, though I would have enjoyed it more if I knew more about the US political personalities of the time that he kept referencing (the male sex organ was constantly called a Rehnquist , a mockery that escaped me back then). But it was one of those stories that left you feeling it could have really happened - a nice tickle of paranoia. One thing did stick: The number 23. Wilson's exact words escape me, but it was along the lines of the number 23 being the Illuminati's secret number so seeing it was significant. And you...

One of my childhood memories is of home-made pizza. My mother would make pizza from scratch. Very tasty pizza. Her challenge was a husband that loved mushrooms on his pizza and a daughter who didn't. My mother's solution (she should run the UN): Sometimes a pizza with mushrooms, and I've have to pick them off my slices (very annoying); sometimes a pizza completely without mushrooms and my father a bit grumpy about having to concede to a kid; sometimes a pizza that was half-and-half and my mother sternly reminding us to pay attention to which half we were grabbing a slice from because she wasn't going to listen to any complaining. (It fascinated me no end that my mother had no preference. She ate either type, equally happily.) Now I love mushrooms on my pizza. Absolutely! They are as much a mainstay of the pizza as is the dough, the tomato paste and the cheese. I discovered that PJ feels the same way, right down to the proper consistency of the mushrooms: Canned. Why...

…I'll sometimes start reading a blog regularly, think it's a good blog and worth linking to, and then I lose interest. Takes a couple of months to test the permanency of a new find. So I read far more blogs than I link to and what you get on the left-hand side here is the cream of the litter. At any rate, here's PJ . She links to me, and that goaded me into finally including her here, which I'd been thinking about doing, anyway. Gekko mentioned misc.writing in her post mentioning me , but it's worth repeating here: For a while I was looking for writers to hang out with and found the Usenet group misc.writing. The people there used mw as a water cooler. Some place to hang out when you need a break from writing, so they discussed anything but writing (though that came up, too), and they argued and stomped all over each others' egos and politics and made quite a mess for the maid to clean up. Then someone said, "Let's meet!", and they did, and had...

A fluffy white cat and a short-haired striped red-and-white cat that I have seen before in the neighborhood are over by the aparment building across from me. They are having a Mexican stand-off at about 8 paces. The red cat approaches. The white cat stays put, but shows no aggression. They stay about 3 feet apart. Two girls see the cats and approach them. The white cat turns towards them, lifts its tail and rubs against the lamp post in greeting, and one of the girls pets the cat. So that's who owns you, I think. Red cat approaches, too, but does not want to be petted. The girls ignore him. The girls test a slippery patch of ice on the footpath. The white cat follows them and pretends to climb a tree. The owner's friend notices and the white cat comes over to the girls. The friend scratches the white cat's head and tries to pick the cat up. The cat stays heavy, signalling it doesn't want to be held and the girl leaves the cat alone. The girls head off in the direc...

I read this (displayed below) and that's the question that popped into my head. Anyone? And I don't mean a dead shark, either. Anything marine and dead always smells like fish. So what's a live shark smell like?

With way too much time on my hands, I am surfing the 'net, jumping off from Metafilter , and making myself laugh at things like this: Q: How does an elephant get down from a tree? A: It doesn't, you get down from a duck. (From http://paul.merton.ox.ac.uk/misc/elephants.html I liked the pair featuring ostriches, too. More jokes here .) Apparantly there's more to laughing at elephant jokes than I thought. I've oftened claimed that my sense of humor is that of a ten-year-old. Turns out, the humor of a ten-year-old is exactly what is needed to appreciate elephant jokes . I have to admit I don't like the jokes because I'm invested in keeping my feet out of food. I like them because of their absurdity - and their hidden logic. And if, like me and thousands of others, the new year has drawn your attention to your waistline, here's what 200 calories look like . (The picture of Fiber One Cereal reminded me that I missed "CSI" last night...). Ove...

Which touched me quite a lot. Thanks, Gekko! (Now featured in my links.)

Friday night, a freighter ran aground off the coast to the northwest of Bergen, breaking in two and releasing 300 metric tons of bunker oil. The sparsely populated municipality of Fedje, a beautiful archipelago, is doing its best to contain the oil and clean the shores. Extreme weather (i.e. this ain't your grandmother's storm) is both helping, by breaking up the oil, and hindering, by blowing the oil ashore and tossing oil booms around on waves higher than the booms are meant for. About 3000 seabirds are now assumed to be affected by the poisonous sludge. When I first heard of this disaster, my impulse was to go to Fedje and help clean rocks and shore and birds. I was thinking that maybe someone would organize something that I could join. Hands is what is needed when something like this happens. But the next day, such volunteering was discouraged, because no one can help without proper training or protective gear, nor was it safe as long as the storm was raging. I have no su...

I found this via Beep and decided to do it: You Belong in Dublin Friendly and down to earth, you want to enjoy Europe without snobbery or pretensions. You're the perfect person to go wild on a pub crawl... or enjoy a quiet bike ride through the old part of town. What European City Do You Belong In? My first answer was Barcelona, how it was the perfect city for tapas and art and napping and partying all night. Except I don't like tapas, so I tweaked an answer or two and got Dublin. Yeah, I know, who doesn't like tapas? I assumed I did and enrolled in a tapas course last fall. After one evening of making aïoli, gazpacho and more, and eating it, I was Wide Awake. I later found out that a little garlic is relaxing, while a lot will wake you up. Since I'm not crazy about seafood or losing my sleep, and the only dish that I really liked that night was the gazpacho soup, I thought about whether or not to go back. Other factors that normally would be ignored now ended u...

I got this via Paula and ended up Yin like her. I don't think there's a connection. Anyway, yin fits. You Are More Yin Feminine Devoted Forgiving Fall Winter Afternoon Moon Time Passive Metal Honey Are You More Yin or Yang? There is one thing wrong with this, though. I reversed all my answers to see what Yang would look like, and discovered that Yang is associated with chocolate ! I like honey, but I like chocolate even more. Why can't chocolate be yin?

Posted because this made me giggle when I thought of the part of the song that this line is from: The boys in Queen going all operatically overboard with rather funny voices. But I'll concede to the message (ahem) it sends about me. :-) I'm 'Galileo! Galileo! Galileo Figaro! Magnifico!'! Which Line from Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody Are You? (Via another one who spells her name with a double-E: Arleen )

YES! I saw the McNaught comet ! As I walked home from work, I saw that the skies were clearing thanks to an icy wind. At home, I kept looking out my west-facing windows, and then: I noticed something not supposed to be in our skies. I couldn't get a picture through the window, so I ignored my freshly heated dinner waiting in the microwave, threw on boots and down jacket, wrapped scarf and camera around my neck, and went out. I walked to the top of the knoll in front of my building, on soggy and muddy ground getting a crispy, white covering as the wind froze the pathetic bit of snow we got earlier today. Looking out over the roof tops towards the fading light to the southwest, I got a perfect view and a long moment of awe. I love that tail!

OK, fine, whatever, the weather's been quite variable but regularly cloudy and rainy. Now it's been so many days, we may as well hold out until the end of the month and beat the national record for number of days in a row with precipitation. Except: I wanna see the comet! I may, just may, get a chance this afternoon, as the weather forecast calls for "clearing skies, chance of sunshine by sunset". That was after stating wind and some rain earlier in the day. I hope the meter--, mitter--, weather guys have got the timing right. Lemme see the comet! Comet McNaught , that is.

Sravana 's comment on the previous post , suggesting that being spiritual is harder than not being spiritual, reminded me of why I struggled so trying to be a "good" Christian: It was an act of will. Willing myself to think good thoughts, do good deeds, keep my hands above the bed covers... And constantly failing at it. My will wasn't enough. But the thing is, being happy, finding joy, experiencing a smooth day is easy ! It's not about effort ; it's about focus . The focus may require getting a new habit, but there's a nice short-cut there, too: Affirmations. Do affirmations when you remember to and it will have an effect. Try "The Great Affirmation" in the right-hand column, if you don't have any of your own. It's not magic. I am, I must admit, terribly lax when it comes to self-discipline. So if I can experience instant goodness in my day repeating phrases in everyday language, so can you. To those who have been raised in the self-flage...

Mohandas Gandhi said: "If you don't find God in the next person you meet, it is a waste of time to look any further." I could analyze this to death, so I'll limit myself to this: We all have a divine spark in us and if we cannot recognize and acknowledge that in each other, we cannot recognize or acknowledge it in anything else. By focusing on seeing God in another person, we are also seeing past personality, habits, physical appearance, and behavior. We are seeing what makes the other person both unique and valuable. I have found the above difficult to grasp and to practice. I do not automatically see the spirit in my fellow man. I would sooner stop at the surface, charmed or annoyed, and that would be that. On the days when I have focused on the above, affirming to myself that I will see God in the next person I meet (or that I will learn to see God in the next person I meet), I invariably experience a less critical mind in myself. I can see someone else's overw...

It's one of those days. It's one of those blogging frequencies. I sit a little too aware of the absolute blackness outside. I can hardly wait for the days to get longer. A combination of short days and little daylight because of heavy clouds coupled with darker than usual nights because of no snow and no stars is getting to be tiring. We've had over 70 days straight of days with precipitation, meaning that we haven't had a single 24-hour period where something wet didn't come out of the heavens. I think it's getting to me. So what do I do? Stay in. Again. I'm not motivated to go out when it means donning my raincoat and rainboots. Again. So I have stayed in with lights and candles and an aroma lamp with tea rose scent keeping me company but not quite able to hold off the sense that I should be hibernating under these conditions. So I'll do the next best thing: Curl up in the sofa with a book and a big cup of tea. I'll probably fall asleep doing...

What A Trip 1: Some spiders will shoot off a long silken thread from whatever they're sitting on (like a tree), then let a breeze catch them, and they float along in the air like a kite with a tail (also called "flying spiders" ). Some spiders have been found high up in the atmosphere by hot air balloonists. This is one of those factoids that boggles my mind. What A Trip 2: (Via The Zero Boss ) And in case you're wondering if the makers of the above movie pulled it out of their ass (much like a spider does), not exactly .

This switch to a new year seems to have a lot of people just ignoring it. No summaries of the year past nor any comments about the coming year. Going by some American bloggers, I'm sensing that the folks on that side of the Atlantic are feeling rather frazzled by how 2006 ended (like, more killed in Iraq than on in the September 11 attacks). One comment to that effect at Alice's prompted me to respond with this: I see every new year like meeting a new, fun friend. You have no idea what the new person is really like or if the friendship will last, but that initial contact, filled only with promise and not one bad memory, is exciting. And I mean it. I always like this time of year, the focus on wrapping up the old - not without gratitude, if only for having survived it - and looking ahead at the new. And because I am not alone in hanging up new calendars, wrapping my brain around writing dates with a new digit in the year, and other matters that come with January (like a rai...

My dear, funny and fun friend Ann on skis (more or less), her brother Tor behind camera commenting in Norwegian and English: PS: That snow's in California. And have your speakers turned on!

New Year's Eve, or rather, 10 minutes into the new year, we were invited next door for a New Year's drink. Introductions were made, and I pronounced my name the way my teachers in school initially did: Keh-ra. (E is pronounced eh in Norwegian, whether there's one or two.) The introductions included the dogs: A collie who was handling the fireworks outside very badly, and a dwarf poodle who didn't mind the racket at all and never had. Eventually, I grasped the name of the poodle: Kira, a variant spelling of Keera (or the other way round, actually). I was already aware that Keera is becoming a popular dog's name in Norway, so I wasn't surprised. What was surprising was Kira's age: 19 - a whopping 133 in human terms, and extremely rare, even for a small breed. Neither human nor animal gets to that high age without showing it, and Kira had thinning fur, missing teeth, failing eyesight and hearing, and a heart condition. Her twisted wrist and accompanying limp,...