A Roll in the Universe

Wordless Wednesday

This brilliant film is making the rounds. I found mine over at A Pacific View . Here's the comment I left there after seeing this video: Absolutely stunning video! Finally one that clearly gave me an idea of scale. Especially going back home. If any aliens are visiting us, it must be purely by accident, because finding us is like finding a needle in a haystack. Or more like finding a partial needle in a 1000 haystacks. Thanks for posting this, Tom! So if you aren't impressed with the story of three wise men following a star, this journey through the stars ought to give you a nice sense of awe (play the HD version at full screen for best effect!):

A friend of mine has an excellent summary of what's really wrong with society, the economy, etc.: People. No, there's nothing wrong with people. The problem is that we aren't taking care of people. The Starving Economist: People--A Liability?!

Wordless Wednesday - Known as julestjerne ("Christmas star") in Norwegian

It snowed during the night. And not the usual pathetic paper-thin layer that melts within hours we usually get. No, this snow landed in rich amounts on frozen ground. It'll stay as long as we have below-freezing temperatures. Wednesday I hung up a bird feeder with seeds, and a tallow ball with seeds on my balcony. One lone blue tit was on the feeder Thursday when I got home early enough to still have daylight. Yesterday, a couple of sparrows had found the feeders. This morning, a half dozen magpies sat in the little beech tree next to my building, and only a few feet away from my balcony. A little later, I looked out and saw a dozen sparrows in the beech tree and three on the tallow ball. I immediately thought of Alfred Hitchcock and grinned. All the birds keep fighting and jockeying for positions on the feeders, making me laugh out loud. The cagiest are the great tits, who are not yet comfortable when I come to the door. The sparrows are quicker not to mind a human shape. I...

Wordless Wednesday

Norway's newspapers are, of course, full of articles about president Barack Obama's visit to Oslo in order to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. Paging through one of our online newspapers, I found a juxtaposition that amused me. The top photo shows Obama and the First Lady disembarking upon arrival in Oslo this morning and the ad underneath is self-explanatory - and quite appropriate:

Wordless Wednesday

Astro.com tells me this about my solar return: Happy birthday! Today the Sun returns to the position it was in when you were born. As would seem appropriate with this transit, today is a day of new beginnings, and the influences you feel today will affect the entire year to come. However, this does not mean that the whole year will be disappointing if today doesn't work out exactly as planned. You are receiving a new impulse from the energy center within you, as symbolized by the Sun. Therefore any new venture that you start at this time will ride the crest of this new energy and will very likely come to an acceptable conclusion. Whatever you do or begin today will bear the stamp of your individuality more than anything else. This is the day to assert yourself anew. Beats the current Neptune square Mercury which represents fuzzy thinking. And I thought that was just hormones. ;-)

Wordless Wednesday

Norway has a unique feature in its culture, and with it, a unique word: Matpakke. The word literally means "food package" and is the traditional Norwegian work lunch. Norwegians have traditionally had four meals a day - breakfast, lunch, dinner and supper - of which three are made up of very plain, open-faced sandwiches. Only dinner is a hot meal. The open-faced sandwiches may have a slice of cheese, lunch meat or fish on them and are not to be confused with the sort of sandwich an American would make and put a lid on. Since there is no "lid" (top slice of bread) on a Norwegian sandwich, the solution is to slip a slice-sized square of waxed paper between the open-faced sandwiches. Then the stack is wrapped in a larger sheet of "matpapir" (literally, food paper, which feels and acts like a thicker version of baking paper), creating the easily recognized white package. Part of the entertainment at work is watching how people handle the used food paper. T...

Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday In Norwegian: Nedre Hamburgersmauet

I have always been interested in Christianity. More specifically, I have always been interested in the answer to this question: Does Jesus save? I have always struggled with having a faith in Jesus. My own family is made up of theists, but nobody ever bothered with the traditional religions. Grandma couldn't understand why anybody wanted a faith where you looked up at a bloody, half-naked man every Sunday (good ol' Catholics), and I couldn't understand how anybody could put their faith in a man who looked like a hippie (good ol' Protestants). So while Grandma and I both ended up deists (that's not a typo), we found our spiritual sustenance outside the mainstream. Still, I've always had the question. Norway has a state religion. It allows for freedom of religion for everyone - except the nation itself and its monarch. The reigning monarch of Norway must be - according to the country's constitution - an Evangelical Lutheran, since the Evangelical Lutheran ...

Comments here and there in the blog world, prompted the question about whether or not I had kept anything from childhood. The answer is no. Both times I left California (age 8 and age 20) for Norway, it never occurred to anyone in the family that it would be for an extended stay and so little was sorted or packed or stored. The first time, we gave a lot of stuff away, and also had a yard sale. My memory from that time of my life is quite bad, so I don't know what happened to some things I had, like a stuffed snake I named Oscar, or a toy typewriter (yes, I had one of those). It didn't matter. It's not just in death you can't take it with you; you can't haul your whole life with you when traveling, either. But one thing did make the trip with me in 1969, clear across America in the back seat of my grandparents' blue 1964 Mercedes Benz 190D: My Raggedy Ann doll. I have a vague recollection of my family buying her for me. I believe it was the toy department at...

Wordless Wednesday

…because at 5 am I had all kinds of great ideas for a blog post today, and had several paragraphs ready in my head. Can't remember a thing - not even what the topic was. What's the point of waking up way too early if you can't use it for something good? I need to take my MacBook to bed with me from now on. If I'm going to keep waking up way before the alarm clock goes off, I may as well make good use of the time. Watch this space. It'll either be brilliant (ha!) - or jus ajkfjiebu aehf zzzzzzzzzzz…

Lately, Princess Märtha Louise has been in the news because of her new book about angels , co-written with Elisabeth Samnøy, with whom the princess also runs an angel school with. I kid you not. The funny part is that the usually staid Norwegians are flocking to hear her speak and to buy her book. Nothing like a royal title to get you some free advertising. And sadly, that is exactly what is happening. I like the princess. She has always struck me as a sweet, intelligent and stylish woman who nevertheless remained her own woman, in spite of the strictures that come with being a member of the Norwegian royal family. (She won't be queen because at the time she was born, the Norwegian constitution still held that only male heirs could inherit the throne, so it's her kid brother who is Crown Prince, and his daughter who is next in line now that the law has been changed.) And so she throws herself into a line of work that is far from mainstream or royal. The reaction to princess ...

I have noticed that with things like Twitter and Facebook, getting something off one's chest can be done in a few short sentences, and the immediacy and convenience (and lack of expectation of more than a paragraph) mean that more people "tweet" or post to Facebook rather than blog now. I was hunting for some old information on my blog, when I found myself rereading some of my old posts. And I found that I missed writing. I missed blogging. I missed my voice. So I am trying to get back to posting more frequently (preferably daily), only to find a Paul Simon lyric running through my brain: "[…]why am I short of attention / Got a short little span of attention…" Instead of a thought morphing into an exploration of an idea or experience over several paragraphs, it gets "tweeted" and left there, lost in a million other tweets or just on my page alone, dozens, quickly pushed out at the bottom and forgotten even by its author. As delightful and as use...

It wasn't my night last night. The night belonged to two very nice co-workers who were both hired November 1 1984. 50 people enjoyed a lovely meal, speeches, entertainment, conversation, a bit of dancing and a lot of wine. But as their guest until about 2 am, I was thoroughly enjoying myself. And my outfit. I tried on clothes on Wednesday, only to discover that I'd "outgrown" my favorite party clothes, and wasn't terribly thrilled with the alternative left me. I spent Thursday looking for alternatives. With the exception of the V-necks and lovely purples, there is little about the current fashion that attracts or suits me - or fits me (skinny jeans really are for the skinny-legged). And a bum shoulder also meant I couldn't even get some garments one. I did buy silver-colored leggings (or tights, as they are literally called in Norway - often misspelled as thights which also makes sense); I figured if I didn't like them, I could still use them for yoga. ...

Hah! I'll bet my blog post title made you take a second look! But I woudn't give up sex. No, it's the title of the song embedded below. In connection with the release this week of a rock-and-roll encyclopedia covering the last 50 years of music in Bergen (Bergen actually headed the rock-and-roll revolution in Norway back before my time), this blast from the past got some airtime. So not only was this band ("Blind Date") Norwegian, it was from Bergen! Yay! And I love the song - still.

Earlier this week, in a comment on my Halloween post , Protege asked me a question: Do I ever feel the urge to return to California for good, or do I feel Norwegian at this point? My answer was neither. Although many people believe I am Norwegian, I'm not. Not even by blood. I am a mere transplant, who has had only one citizenship her entire life: American. My parents were both US citizens and so was my Norwegian grandpa - my mother's step-father. He became a naturalized citizen in 1950. I remember teasing him about having been a citizen only 10 years longer than I had. So I have never had dual citizenship nor an option for it. Culturally, I'm a mix, having split my childhood between California and Norway. I share some common cultural memories with people my age in Norway, and I share some common cultural memories with people my age in California. In my mind, Star Trek sits next to Radio Luxembourg. Both stir up emotions in me and bring back years of growing up. The or...

Wordless Wednesday - see also Saturday's post

A warm "fohn" wind blew yesterday morning. A cold and wet wind blew yesterday afternoon, and I - who didn't have an umbrella - took the bus home. Typical November weather. The wind comes in hard and sideways and dumps huge amounts of rain on you, also sideways. And it makes the darkening evening even darker. I didn't discover until I was an adult why I hated November as a child. I usually notice stuff, including stuff other people don't notice, but the autumns of my childhood are a mystery to me. I can't remember what they were like. Except for November. As an adult, however, I have solved the mystery. I simply hadn't had the sense to appreciate the brilliant colors of fall: The stunning golds and reds and yellows, that arrive slowly and leave so quickly. All I remembered was that one month where there was no color at all: November. November was just gray. Gray skies. Gray ground. Gray leaves. Gray trees. Gray weather. Gray, gray, gray. No wonder i...

I can barely remember childhood Christmases or Easters. One Christmas stands out because it was the last before I moved to Norway at age 8; one Easter stands out because we ended up spending the day in the ER getting stitches put into my sister's forehead. The holiday I remember best is Halloween. I always went as a witch, all in black with a pointy hat. I had no interest for skeletons or ghosts or vampires, and to this day I disdain any girl who shows up dressed as a princess. You know, looking pretty in pink. What's scary about that??? I was lucky: I had family members who could sew. One Halloween I had a gorgeous outfit because it was decorated with red tulle and sequins, and I wore a domino mask. I may not have been a scary witch but I was certainly no princess! Carving pumpkins is a lot of fun, too. Sort of the grown-up version of playing with mud pies (oh, and don't throw the pumpkins innards down the kitchen sink; it'll clog) - and then you get to be creati...

In an attempt to escape Halloween (I'll talk about that later) yesterday, I went to a theater play. "Operasjon Almenrausch" (sorry, little info in English) was more like a live docudrama, and what a great way to tell a story! Extremely clever staging, with the action taking place all over and the audience seated in the middle of the floor and in the middle of the action. The director defines the play as an audiovisual hearing. The actors didn't act anything out; they (and the audience) were told they could never recreate the terror, so just tell the story; just answer the questions. And they did, backed up by vintage film footage and actual recorded interviews from the people involved. The play was about a couple of unsung war heroes. Norwegian resistance folk who were never invited to ride in any ticker-tape parade nor given a memorial plaque or any medals. Why? Because they were communists. No matter what they had sacrificed on behalf of their country during five...

Wednesday's photo was taken from a bus stop at one of Bergen's main intersections, between our historic, Hanseatic wharf "Bryggen" and our open-air fish market. In the comments, Alice asked me what the building in the middle was, and this was my reply: The building in the middle with the stepped gable used to be our meat market. We shopped there when I was a kid, ropes of sausages and whole sides of beef or mutton hanging all over, and a contrasting black and white tiled floor (which is still there). The tiles are large, and on a diagonal. Today, the meat market houses a café and a few delicatessens. What used to be the city's main delicatessen (with jerkied reindeer meat and innumerable types of cheese) in the basement, is now part of the restaurant chain "Egon" (oddly, the traffic isn't that disturbing when you sit in the outdoor part). But when I was a kid, and going to the city was a project, with lists of which stores to hit where, and ther...

Wordless Wednesday

So somebody missed me (hi, Protege !). If it weren't for Wordless Wednesdays, they wouldn't know I was still alive. Well, I am, and here's a run-down of what's been grabbing my attention this month: Autumn got busy, as it usually does. I've been trying to focus on my astrology in order to forecast the weather and am rather behind on that. But maybe I'll catch up today because I'm home from work. Which brings me to the other distraction of the month: Inner health I bought a book about adult children of abusive parents , trying to sort some things out from childhood because my shoulder problem (it is doing better, thanks) is related to my stomach problems (I've had IBS since I was a kid), and stomach problems have their root in emotional upsets. Whenever I do a number on my stomach, it usually takes a week for it right itself again. After a party last Friday, I've been queasy ever since Saturday (which I spent throwing up - not good), and finall...

Wordless Wednesday

Well-meaning people in the US ship me stuff via UPS, FedEx, TNT and the like (hereinafter referred to as Other Delivery Company, or ODC). The latest to do this was Amazon.com. You know what? They all suck. You know why? Because in Norway, you get the best service from our post office. Seriously. Some mail order firms in Norway will use some alternative delivery system and deliver to a store near you. For an extra NOK 95, I can get my local post office to deliver the same package to my own front door, in the evening when I'm home, if I want. Or, I can walk in the opposite direction of the aforementioned store to my local post office and pick it up myself if I want to save some money. Since I pass by the post office every day to and from work, it's actually convenient for me to use them. The alternative package delivery firms that companies seem to be so fond of are not for regular working people. They are best suited for company-to-company deliveries that take place during w...

Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday

I first saw a computer in the 1970's and my first job out of high school was for a manufacturer of so-called mini-machines: The size of a washing machine, with storage and memory measured in kilobytes, not megabytes, and running BASIC. Barely 10 years later, I was an expert with WordPerfect on an IBM PC, after several years of using a Wang (look it up), and what I learned about Lotus 1-2-3 back then has helped me use Excel ever since. Then came e-mail. What fun! Then came the internet, and I got hooked up at home in 1997. More fun! I even learned HTML and designed my own webpages. I became an eager user of Usenet. I even figured out IRC and took an entire course via ICQ. Web 1.0 was good to me. Web 2.0 came along with interactive applications embedded in the web browser. Some were cooler (and more useful) than others. I like del.icio.us and still use it, and Twitter and Facebook are also in use. And blogs and Blogger, of course! I found a good use for Google Docs the day I ...

Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday

Give me a good digestion, Lord, and also something to digest. Give me a healthy body, Lord, with sense to keep it at its best. Give me a healthy mind, good Lord, to keep the good and pure in sight, which seeing sin, is not appalled, but finds a way to set it right. Give me a mind that is not bored; that does not whimper, whine or sigh. Don't let me worry overmuch about the fussy thing called I. Give me a sense of humor, Lord; give me the grace to see a joke, to get some happiness from life and pass it on to the other folk.

Wordless Wednesday

So there I was, waiting for the bus home, feeling sluggish because of an exhaustive round at my acupuncturist's . I leaned against the side of the bus shed, reading the latest issue of "Science of Mind Magazine" , idly paging through the daily affirmations. I started reading the accompanying text for today's: Sometimes it's easy to forget that there is only one volitional factor in the Universe, and that is Spirit. Easy to believe when things go well. Instead of feeling abandoned by God when things don't go well, the article suggests we focus on the above-mentioned core truth - one power, one source: Then we could say, "This must be good. It's all God, so let me look for the good." As I read that, a wailing ambulance drove by. I continued to hear it for a while, remembering that a friend had said that because of having to drive in and out of streets to get to the urgent care entrance, which was within view from my bus stop, you could hear the amb...

Wordless Wednesday

A little change in routine, and I suddenly find myself with a new delight. My acupuncturist's office is right next to the rail yard. The most convenient way to get to my bus home is mostly under a roof: Through the train station, the adjoining shopping center and bus depot, down into the underground pedestrian tunnel. I am exposed to the elements only during the one block from my acupuncturist's building to the train station, and the same stretch from the pedestrian tunnel to the bus stop. Today I took a different bus to town and ended up experiencing rush hour traffic on different streets, and arrived much earlier than I expected. I found myself people-watching as I walked the pedestrian tunnel, caught the only rush-hour traffic of my day - in a long line of pedestrians - and continued to enjoy being part of the crowd through the shopping center and into the train station. That's where I decided to stop and wait. According the signs in front of two trains, passeng...

After Protege turned me on to Anggun via the hauntingly beautiful "Snow on the Sahara", I decided it was time for payback. Oddly, both Protege and I felt lost during the 90's musically, but there were gems then, too. "All I Need" (from Air's album "Moon Safari") is from the same year as Anggun's song - 1997. I hope you like this, Protege!

The latest activity to capture the interest of the fringe and lunatics (never was that description more apt) is the fact that NASA/the US is going to set off a nuclear bomb and blast our dear Luna out of its orbit. Following the sage advice of others to consider Google my friend (though there are some that would disagree even with that), I have found what the current paranoid hoopla is about: It is the LCROSS mission , which is about finding water on the moon, to see if the moon can support a human space station there. NASA intends to shoot (or crash) a missile into the moon. Some people believe " missile " only means something loaded with explosives, and nuclear ones are the most likely. That has led some people to interpret this as not only damaging the moon, but as damaging it so much it would shift in its orbit or its shape would be changed forever. The truth is, it's all just simple mechanics and physics, and no nukes: Slam something hard enough into the ground a...

Another day, another needle. My acupuncturist did say I'd feel something after the third time, and she was right. I definitely felt like she'd peeled away a few layers and new ones were now coming to the surface to be taken care of. After hunting around on the 'net, I have come to realize that I do have "frozen shoulder". It may even be hormonally related since so many women my age get it. Very well. That sort of thing acupuncture can deal with. In the meantime, I found a series of short videos with exercises to do to stretch and strengthen the joint. The problem won't go away on its own. I have to help. As I said to my acupuncturist, I'll take care of the outside, if she'll take care of the inside. She said it was a deal. But, boy, do I miss my yoga! So I whipped out my mat and a DVD and did a relaxing routine. In fact, so relaxing, I wished I'd thought to do everything else I want to do this evening first. Oh, well. I'm a bit short on ...

Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday

The tips of the acupuncture needles have colored caps. As I looked down my body, I saw cheerful light blue and pink sticking out of my leg and foot. One needle went into my hand and when the acupuncturist pulled it out, I was surprised to see it had been more than a centimeter (half an inch) deep in my flesh. No blood. As I look at that hand now, I can hardly tell it was poked. As I said to my acupuncturist, who turned out to be a girl I had sat next to for nearly three hours at the astrology meeting last Thursday (I'm such a ditz sometimes), I have managed to spend a lifetime immersed in New Age stuff but only now have I tried acupuncture. I'll have to ask her on Friday (my next appointment) what my pulses and tongue told her today, but based on what I told her, she focused primarily on my digestion. She told me that the meridians for the intestines cross the shoulder and since I do have digestive trouble, she decided to work on that. So she started with a needle in my foo...

I was telling some friends that I can't give up my blog. It provides an outlet for those times when I want to put my thoughts to writing and maybe even have someone else read them. Why would I consider giving up my blog? Well, this year has not been a year of much writing. It's been an introverted year, a year of repeats, of same old same old, of just going through the motions. Like a good rest. And then I woke up. This is what I wrote to some friends on July 31: Well, I was musing on what the heck to do with my time when a thought quietly shrugged through my brain: Astrology. Then the local meteorologists managed to bungle yet another weather prediction and I thought, "Astrology can do better!", and tried - in vain - to get Astrolog running on my Mac. Then Time Cycles offered a half-price upgrade on all my expensive (but now useless because Intels don't run the Classic environment) astrology software. So I upgraded. Then I looked up the old astro-weather g...