50/50

Fairness

2012-01-27T20:58:00.000Z

I am a Libra, and I mean really a Libra. Of the 8 planets, 7 of them were in the constellation of Libra when I was born (not just the sun, which is the main determinant of astrological sign).

What this has meant for my daily life is that I have all sorts of weird OCD type things I do to try to live my life fairly. I try to not favor my right side too much, by doing things with my left hand, or putting my computer to my left, or getting out of bed on the left side, as often as possible. I try not to favor pants over skirts: I usually wear one one day and the next the other day. I have done this since I was 10 years old. Same with heals and flats. The article in Bleikt.is today made me think of this.

When people talk about finding the Golden Mean, I try to figure out what in the world other way there is to do something. Because finding the balance is inborn into me; I really do not even have to think about it anymore.

Hypothetically speaking

2012-01-27T16:55:00.000Z

So I have been given the opportunity by a company that specializes in the make-believe to do a bit of make-believing myself. If Duffensmirtz from Phineas and Ferb were a real person, and he wanted to make a runestone, what sort of runes would he use?

I would not normally engage in such a futile intellectual exercise, except for the fact that I know they are actually going to make said rune-stone. There is a place picked out, a deadline to follow, and so this hypothetical is for real.

Unlike many others in my life.

Sunday

2012-01-25T05:51:00.001Z

Sunday would have been my brother Billy's 49th birthday. My family did the best they could to find a way to think of him and about him that day, without being too terribly sad.

My sister, in a weird bit of paranormal that fits better in with Iceland than the U.S., even had a mysterious message on her phone that morning about Billy, which she thought one of us had sent, but we hadn't. That was comforting, to think that he is somehow still with us, still communicating with us.

In a family dynamic like ours--where we are spread out all over the place--it is not so much not seeing Billy that makes me realize he is dead. Even when he was alive, I would go months, maybe even a year or more, without seeing him. It is not hearing from him that is so hard. No emails, no text messages, no phone calls. Not hearing his voice, not reading words filled with his signature wit and intelligence, not having texts from him reminded me to do this or that, these are the things that remind me every day my brother is gone.

Even if I believe he has become an andi, watching out for us somewhere.

Always looking for a way out

2012-01-24T02:05:00.000Z

Students at Berkeley are supposed to take 12 units to be fully enrolled, and each unit is supposed to represent 5 hours of work a week. Since most classes are 4 units, the University expects the students to be taking 3 classes per semester. I am pretty sure this is what I did, although perhaps one semester took a 4th class on a pass/no pass basis.

Anyhow, most of the students today take 15 units, or even 18 units, which is totally crazy. And so we, the instructors, get lectured all the time about how much of a work load our students have. Very rarely is it mentioned that this is their own choice; no one has told them they have to take such a heavy load. They sign up for the classes they want to take, and it should not be my job to assign less just because the students have figured out that they can graduate sooner if they stuff their schedules.

But no matter what I assign, they always find a shortcut, utilizing what is called "minimizing effort." In other words, they are always looking for a way out of doing all the homework they are assigned. Read as little as possible, write as little as possible, invest as little time as possible. Now sometimes this is for academic reasons, but other times it is so that they can have more time for their extracurricular activities.

Anyhow, I don't really mean to gripe about it. Students will always be looking for a way out, that is just how it is.

Ah, to be young and carefree again....

Explicate and Simple

2012-01-19T23:16:00.000Z

Yesterday I went to a teacher training course, in other words a class for teachers to learn how to teach. One of the major differences between teachers at the primary level, and teachers at the secondary level (college and above) is that college teachers do not really know how to teach. They get teaching positions because they know a subject very well. Primary school teachers are teaching things to kids that most adults already know, so their specialized training is in how to teach something properly, given the huge range of learning styles and intellectual aptitudes one encounters amongst a random group of 7 year olds who just happen to live near one another. College teaching is totally different, in that the students of a university are generally speaking at the same intellectual level.

But this does not mean their learning styles are the same, nor does it mean their maturity and motivation is the same.

So there has been a trend in college level teaching to try to get professors to understand some of what elementary school teachers know: you can't just stand up in front of a classroom and talk and talk and talk and expect the students to learn what you want them to learn. I once heard that only 20% of people actively learn by hearing things orally: not surprisingly, 80% of professors are this sort of learner. This means they think they should be able to stand in front of a student, tell the student to do something directly, explicitly, and simply, and that the student will understand what they have been taught, and do it. But lots and lots of times, especially in a course like the one I teach, where students may come from disciplines that attract more tactile or visual learners, it may totally backfire. Not only might they not understand, they might actually do the exact opposite of what they have been told to do.

So teachers are supposed to present the same learning objective--say for instance get students to empathize with a character in a novel--in at least three different ways (ie: repeating themselves, but with variation) if they really want to reach all of their students.

But on the other hand, maybe the old system worked OK: only people who could understand what they were told did well academically and rose to the top of their class. Not because they were smarter, but because by some accident of fate, they were of the 20%.

Charlize Theron

2012-01-19T08:00:00.001Z

I may be spelling her name wrong, but I suppose you all know who I am talking about. She put in a guest appearance on Top Chef tonight on the Bravo channel to promote her new film, Snow White and the Huntsman. Charlize plays the wicked queen, so the aspiring chefs had to make food fit for a wicked queen. But her role tonight was that of a food critic, which she played perfectly, critiquing how well the dishes were cooked and seasoned. Although I found the premise of the show interesting, it was also sad seeing such a talented actress act so shallow.

It was also sad to realize that she is now old enough to play the wicked queen, rather than Snow White.

Interesting

2012-01-16T21:30:00.000Z

Yesterday I wrote a blog about a football game, and my dad commented that he was surprised I could write about sports with such alacrity.

Part of the reason for this is that I have taken the words of Professor George Lakoff from Berkeley to heart. We live by metaphors. Even the most mundane of things in life contains within it the possibility for metaphorical application to larger and more complex issues. And so to me it is always worth having a conversation even about something simple, in as much as it helps us think about our world.

Sports in particular have a plethora of metaphorical layers to them; they are basically a metaphor for life. So to me, there are no boring conversations about daily life. There are only doorways into more interesting subjects that we either choose to walk through or not.

Military retirement

2012-01-15T17:19:00.000Z

Although I am no longer a military dependent, my son still is. Which means the vagrancies of the military retirement process affect him and his life. After retirement, the military pays for one final move of all household goods. By defacto, this is back to where the enlistment first took place, i.e. Georgia. Of course that can be changed to any destination Dave chooses, and well, since this isn't happening until early 2013, he hasn't made up his mind yet. Depends on where he gets a job.

And well of course he'd rather stay in California. Who wouldn't?

Well, anyone who was interested in actually buying a house might not. The Bay Area housing market is unbelievably expensive, and recession proof. Well over a half a million dollars for even the smallest most ordinary 2 bedroom house. In Georgia, you can get a 5 bedroom, 2 story home with a pool for $300,000.

Makes the Icelandic housing market not seem so bad at all.

49ers

2012-01-15T06:45:00.001Z

The National Football Team in San Francisco is the 49ers, named after the hardy souls who poured into California from "back East" in 1849, when California became a state. This was mostly gold miners, but also businessmen of various sorts, and of course writers like Mark Twain looking for adventure.

Tonight the 49ers were playing the New Orleans Saints, a team named for the fact that New Orleans is one of the most Catholic cities in the U.S., besides perhaps Boston. Anyhow, as the saying goes in sports talk, the 49ers "pulled it out", which means they won the game in the final few minutes. And in this case, it was literally the final minute. With 2 minutes on the clock, New Orleans scored a touchdown to pull ahead, and Dave (with whom I watched the final quarter of the game as I was picking up Palmer) walked out of the room, pretty sure the whole thing was over and the team he was rooting for would loose. But they didn't. Once the 49ers got the ball back, a long run by one runningback with less than 1 minute left put them within striking distance of the end zone (i.e., within their own 50), but after a few missed plays, they were down to 14 seconds at the 25 yard line or so. I thought for sure they would go for a field goal and then try to win in overtime, but instead they ran one more pass action play, and oh my god it was amazing. The quarterback threw the ball to his receiver, who was right on the edge of the end zone, with a Saints defender to his right and left and straight behind him. But he caught the ball just at the right second, and fell into the end zone. Touchdown! It was incredible.

Of course I was already ushering Palmer out the door, having stayed longer than I meant to and getting hungry. So we headed over to a Mexican place, where everyone was talking about the game. And when we were done eating, we went to the grocery store, where I got into a long conversation with the check out guy about the game. He said the store had been completely empty that Saturday afternoon while the game was on.

So, well, it doesn't happen all that often, but today I actually felt part of something one could call a community, here in the sprawling Bay Area, thanks to some remarkable football playing. It was a feeling I used to get often in Iceland, every time I drove past the soccer field in Sandgerði actually, and could hear the people yelling out "Áfram!", and remembering doing the same many times myself.

And the question that bobbles in my head like a bad pass floated in again: On a planet with 7 billion people, does it make more sense to live with only 350,000 of them, (.005%) or with 35 million of them (.5%)?

I really have no idea.

No snow

2012-01-14T15:11:00.001Z

While Reykjavik has been experiencing a thick heavy snow fall, the Sierra Nevadas and other mountain ranges in California haven't had any snow fall. It hasn't rained here since November.

Perhaps that is something to envy, 65 degrees and sunny in December, but without a winter snow pack, we could have another drought year.

At least in Reykjavik you have the hope of Spring. We here in California do not.

Charlie Sheen

2012-01-13T23:15:00.000Z

The other day I saw the youtube clip of Charlie Sheen "winning" and immediately it made me think of how odd it is that Charlie Sheen and Robert Downey, Jr., both dark haired, dark-eyed actors of about the same age, who started out in Hollywood at about the same time, could have turned out so differently. Both had a raging alcohol and drug problem, but one overcame it while the other one did not. I wonder what strength of character allowed Robert Downey, Jr., to pull himself up and remake himself, and what flaw of character kept Charlie Sheen in denial that he even has a problem. I really don't have the slightest clue.

But what I do know is that I very much want to go see the new Sherlock Holmes film.

Staircases

2012-01-13T02:03:00.000Z

Both the National Museum of Iceland and the National Library have what I would call obvious stairways. As soon as you walk in the front door, there they are straight ahead. Of course at the National Library, one has to choose if one walks up the set to the left or to the right, whereas at the National Museum, it is one semicircular incline. But in both cases they are solid, formidable staircases.

Today on campus I was in Kroeger Hall, where the Hearst Museum of Anthropology is, and at the University Library. And I was realizing both of these buildings have an entirely different staircase ethic than the one I encountered at intellectual buildings in Iceland. Both of those buildings have "floating staircases", huge spiral staircases four stories high that are not attached to any walls. And both are tucked away into the interior of the building. For the library, it is the central architectural feature around which most of the library is organized. And it is totally cool.

Here is the staircase in the library, when the "flying books" art installation was in place.

Of course it is also a bit dizzying looking up at it from the bottom floor, with no supports from beneath and no supports from the wall, just one central column holding it all together, but I guess that is the magic of math and engineering and good architecture.

30 Rock

2012-01-12T05:53:00.000Z

Now that I finally have TV again I find myself mostly wanting to watch a show I started to get hooked on in Iceland, 30 Rock. There are reruns of it shown on a couple of different stations at different times, so I can go for about 2 hours most nights doing nothing but watching 30 Rock. I usually try to stop myself.

One episode I watched tonight was all about the office trying to cut down on their energy usage, and at the end of the show, Al Gore made an appearance. He was changing lightbulbs at the studio. He was actually pretty funny, and had some good lines. One of them was "Like the old African proverb that I made up says, 'If you want to go quickly, go alone, but if you want to go far, go together'. We need to go far, quickly."

All of you hipsters may have already seen this, since it is from 2009. But it is no less true today than it was then.

Either way, the result is the same

2012-01-11T08:13:00.000Z

I have tackled the conclusion to my dissertation several times; this week I really need to get a complete draft done. The problem is, however, that I have a very associational brain. Whereas the other chapters were focused on particular issues, this chapter is about bringing all the strands together, and I cannot figure out where to start.

So this evening I decided I needed to do a detailed outline for the whole conclusion. Usually, if I need to outline at all, I never need to do it more than once. But tonight I have revised the outline back and forth, first starting with one concept and then starting with another. And well the weird thing is, it really makes no difference. It all circles back on itself, one idea brings up the other and can be approached from varying angles with equally interesting results. I guess the problem is that I don't have a final definitive "answer" I am offering, but rather wish to open up for further discussion an array of issues.

Because the point of a good book is to get people talking.

A very strange reaction

2012-01-08T17:02:00.001Z

Last night I was perusing some Icelandic blogs before heading off to bed, as per my usual. I almost hate to admit it, but my heart literally skipped a beat and I had to sit back on my couch and recollect my thoughts after I read this one. Actually, just reading the header got me a bit dizzy.

Then I remember that nothing ever gets ultimately decided through the aegis of blog entries, anyhow.

San Reykjavík

2012-01-06T18:24:00.000Z

Last night me and two friends of mine from the department--Amanda and Nan--plus Amanda's good friend Shannon went out in the city last night.

The discussion turned to Reykjavík on several occasions, since everyone at the table had been there at one time or another, and by the end of the night, driving home past the Marina, we even agreed there was something about San Francisco that reminded us all of Reykjavík, especially that part of town, near the Palace of Fine Arts and the harbor.

We also decided that the four of us having dinner and drinks at an upscale restaurant before going to an adult mixer at a museum counted as a "Sex in the City" sort of evening. And it occurs to me that was something that also reminded me of Reykjavík.

In the U.S., since I was 19 years old, when I have gone out for an evening somewhere, I have done so always as a couple, with a boyfriend or husband. It has only ever been during my trips to Iceland that I would go out on the town with "the girls" (my cousins usually). That is until now, this last year being back in the Bay Area.

My Dad's 70th

2012-01-05T05:42:00.000Z

Birthday's are really good days to celebrate, whether they be milestone birthdays or not. This December 31st was my dad's 70th, and I am still replaying in my head all the laughs and hugs and excitement of that adventure. Here's to my dad, and a life extraordinary.

Dentalia

2012-01-04T19:45:00.001Z

I wrote a blog two years ago about how great the dentist was I used in Iceland, how funny it was that his assistant was the mother of the woman who had been my assistant at Vikingaheimar for one summer. That's how it is in Keflavík.

Today I called the dentist I used to use in Berkeley, where the file is still under my old married name. That office has the same assistant it had back in 2007, a woman with a thick accent who cannot spell anyone's last names just from hearing it. The odds that her and I have mutual acquaintances is rather remote.

Tomorrow I will be going to my new dentist in Walnut Creek, and the office manager there seems, from our phone conversations, to have a doctorate in dentistry herself. So I am looking forward to going there and hopefully finding a way to fix my upper teeth. I also due for a check up and cleaning.

By the time I go out with my friends Thursday night, I hope to at least have the big gap in my smile plugged. That would be nice.

Very strange

2012-01-04T06:39:00.000Z

On December 27th, I took all the decorations off my Christmas tree, and then Dave and I moved the tree out of the livingroom and onto the balcony. Today I told the building manager that as soon as the water evaporates out of the base of the tree, I will wrap the tree in a sheet and drag it outside (like a mobster would with a dead body) so as to not leave a messy trail all over the building.

In the mean time, my balcony has a rather odd appearance. Somewhat Christmassy, but also somewhat sad. I hope not too many people see it like this. Surely they will think it very strange indeed, to have a dead tree out on one's balcony.

In fact, I am freaking myself out, just thinking about it.

Hilton hotel

2012-01-01T16:50:00.000Z

Last night we celebrated my dads birthday, and New Years Eve, at a Hilton Hotel on San Diego bay. My friend Kim got our rooms upgraded, soy parents had a suite and the rest of us on the same floor nearby. It was really wonderful, as if we'd rented a party room. Even better was that when we got into the room, we were greated by a chocolate birthday cake and by bottles of Icelandic water. It was a good night.

Togetherness

2011-12-31T00:34:00.001Z

Today is a good day, and tomorrow will be even better.

Hitting the 5

2011-12-28T18:40:00.000Z

Today Palmer and I will be driving down to Southern California, and I have decided to take the 5 freeway, instead of the 101. The 5 is less scenic, which goes through the Central Valley where there is nothing but flat farmland for miles and miles, than the 101, which snakes along the California coast.

We are undertaking this 6 hour drive for the sake of my dad, who is having his 70th birthday on Saturday. He keeps telling us how touched he is by the effort we are making on his behalf (my sister is driving down from Seattle!).

This coming from the man who has driven up to the Bay area and helped me move several times, driven to Florida several times to help my brother move, fixed all of our cars, given all of us money, taken care of so many many practical things for us through the years. Although he may not be the most verbally affectionate of fathers (he did however once write me a poem), he shows his love in lots and lots of other ways. So considering all the stuff my dad has done for us through the years, well it is of course the very least we could do. Help him ring in the New Year in style.

Afterthought

2011-12-26T22:27:00.000Z

My son's father, Dave, was born on December 25th. So he never really had a birthday party as a kid, he just got one or two extra packages under the tree. Yesterday when we talked, I made a point of saying Happy Birthday to him, and he kind of grunted, as if he had been trying to forget about it.

But I like to remember it, because I am glad he was born. He is a good friend and a terrific co-parent, and I am grateful he is in my life. Our "Scandinavian divorce" is working out quite well, I am happy to report. Makes life more interesting, anyhow.

Rockin' with Ragga

2011-12-26T19:25:00.000Z

In one of those remarkable Icelandic coincidences, a woman I worked with in Iceland, and became friends with, is here in California for Christmas. She's invited me over to her parents house this afternoon for an Annan Jól party, which is so perfectly Icelandic, I love it. Americans don't do anything the day after Christmas, probably because Americans are too focused on what is to come, and less concerned about what just passed. But I do like the idea of extending the holiday out to a third day; that seems very civilized.

In another weird Icelandic coincidences, an American girl I know who is dating an Icelander reports to me that her boyfriend and my friend Ragga have a mutual friend. She found this out on facebook. I am not entirely convinced that facebook is a perfect representation of the closeness of people's real world friendships (I have plenty of facebook friends whom I have never met), and therefore I don't make a habit of looking through people's facebook profiles. But it might be interesting to ask Ragga today, whether or not she actually knows this person, of just added another facebook fan!

Giant leaps?

2011-12-25T16:53:00.001Z

This morning I gave my cat her Christmas presents, which must count as very American of me, not only because of the timing of the gift giving but also because of the genus of the recipient. I do not believe many Icelanders give their pets Christmas gifts, but I could be wrong about that. Americans on the other hand like to give their pets gifts at Christmas, and some owners even celebrate their pets' birthdays. Anyhow, that is a half-hearted attempt at justifying giving my cat Ásdís some new toys this morning.

One of them is called a Cat Dancer, and it costs $1.99. It is a simple toy--several little rolled up pieces of cardboard attached to a thin, springy wire. So it is pretty darn impressive how enthusiastic my cat was about playing with it, twirling around and jumping. After a few minutes of chasing after the cardboard pieces, she was already puffing and panting, and I thought to give her a break. But she kept wanting to play, getting bolder and bolder in her moves.

Next time I expect to see a giant leap across the room.

Christmas in California

2011-12-24T18:17:00.000Z

Although I am far from Iceland this Christmas, I think I will join in the Icelandic tradition of taking this opportunity to wish all my readers a moment of genuine peace and happiness during the holidays, and may that moment sustain you all through the year. Merry Christmas. Gleðileg jól.

Saga Conference

2011-12-22T00:57:00.000Z

I got the email yesterday informing me that my abstract was accepted for the 15th International Saga conference. It is amazing to me that I last went to that conference three years ago (well, only two and a half years ago, but it feels like it was only just last year, really).

I was excited to get accepted, of course, but I had heard through the grapevine that there were not very many abstracts sent in this year, so that means they rather had to accept most if not all of what they were sent.

I wonder why fewer people submitted abstracts--it doesn't seem that Uppsala would be more of a draw than Aarhus, quite the contrary. But I suspect it might have something to do with the fact that they are changing the pre-conference publication. It used to be that getting a paper accepted to this conference was equivalent to getting a paper published, since they published all the papers in a large two volume set. It was a real perk of going to the conference that they have decided to do away with for the 15th International Saga Conference, and that strikes me as a bit of a shame.

Anyhow, I was thinking I would go to the conference after my trip to Iceland in the summer, but Palmer will be with me for that trip, so I am not sure how the timing will work out. Perhaps I will just need to make two trips to Scandinavian in the summer, to make up for not going there at all this winter.

Happy when that happens

2011-12-20T23:23:00.000Z

Today, driving over to Dave's house to pick up the mail and print out some photos for Christmas cards, I had a devaju. Those don't happen to me very often, but whenever they do, it always makes me happy. It makes me feel like my life is actually on track, heading in the direction God or fate or my own will wanted it to go. It has been a long time since I've felt that way, I have to say.

And if one does not believe in dejavu, then I would just say I was in good mood, and I felt open to life.

Krusteaz mix

2011-12-18T17:24:00.000Z

A while back when my mom was up visiting, she brought along some pancake mix from a company called Krusteaz. Her and my father both confirmed it was the best pancake mix they had ever used (my father has been experimenting with pancake mixes since he was a short order cook in highschool). So when Palmer's school was doing a fund raising drive, by selling certain items, my mom encouraged me to buy the Krusteaz (whose name is a play on easy crust--the company was started in Seattle by some homemakers that found a trick to making great pie crusts) cookie mixes.

When Palmer was over here this week, I told him we'd make some cookies, and of course he wanted to make the chocolate chip cookies. I mixed up the batch, put the dough in the fridge, and then whenever we have wanted fresh baked cookies, we just scoop out six on the cookie sheet, and bake them.

I of course had to teach Palmer about how this was done, and especially the importance of making each scoop the same size. It is really hard to tell, of course, with the raw dough if you have gotten the scoop the exact same size, but it makes a big difference while they are baking in the oven. Otherwise the smaller scoops get burned and the larger scoops are half-baked, which is no good at all. But if you get all the scoops the same size, you have a beautiful batch of yummy chewy cookies.

The mix is only part of the trick.

David

2011-12-17T07:09:00.000Z

Shortly after Palmer's father and I moved into our apartment in Berkeley together in 2004, Dave said he had chatted with a guy out on the playground who seemed kind of cool, named David. A few months go by, and I put an add on the bulletin board that I am looking for someone to perhaps exchange babysitting duties with, so I can attend class. A cool and smart lady named Jana answers my ad. We meet, and in the course of the conversation, she mentions her husband is named David. Yes, the very same David my exhusband Dave had spoken to several months earlier.

They have a daughter the same age as Palmer, named Elizabeth, and the two of them are like cousins or an old married couple or something. They are always eager to see each other, have a lot of fun get but they also always have at least one fight during the visits.

Oddly enough, Jana divorced David about the same time Dave and I got divorced. But while I was in Iceland, Dave would sometimes invite Elizabeth over for a playdate with Palmer, and which ever parent had her that weekend would either accept or decline.

Halloween this year was my first chance to participate in this visit-go-round; I brought Palmer to Jana's house for trick-or-treating. So when I had the idea for a small Christmas gathering at my house, I asked Jana what she was doing. She said David had Elizabeth this weekend, so I invited David and Elizabeth over.

David has a brace on his back, which I was quite shocked to see. I knew he had had back surgery, but I did not know he needed a brace. He says he hopes 5 more weeks of this is all he'll need. But otherwise we talked about his involvement with the Occupy protests. He has been going to lots of events and has a 30 minute speech he likes to give, especially when cops are around, reminding them that they work for the people, not corporations. I kept thinking all night how much I wished my brother Erik had been there as well to join in the conversation.

Anyhow, Dave and David and Elizabeth all left together, promptly at 8pm, the witching hour for everyone with kids. If the little ones aren't asleep by 9pm at the latest, things are not pretty the next day. Palmer I think dozed off by 9:10, so I am keeping my fingers crossed that our last day together before he heads off to Georgia in the evening goes smoothly.

And I keep thinking about this time last year, when I was packing up my stuff, leaving Iceland, on December 18th if memory serves. I cannot believe it has been a year.

Christmas party

2011-12-16T16:43:00.000Z

Today I am having a Christmas party for Palmer. It is the last day of school, and I am going to pick him up early. Then we are going to get my apartment set up with the Christmas table cloth and cookies and cakes and food. Some of his friends are coming over at 4:30 this afternoon.

Tomorrow he is leaving for Georgia for 10 days, so for me, today is Christmas.

Blogging

2011-12-16T01:57:00.000Z

Yesterday I discovered that not only do my parents read my blog, but so does my sister-in-law. So now their Christmas surprises are a little bit spoiled, since I discussed what I was getting them in my last blog.

I have to say though that even with mishaps like that, I agree with Arianna Huffington, who raves about how great blogging is. And I think it is exactly for things like this that blogging is so great. When I post an update on Facebook, I know that 293 people are going to get it in their feed, the next time they log onto facebook. And so what I write on there, I write more or less for those 293 people, to make them smile or laugh or think.

But what I write in my blog, I write pretty much for myself. Of the 43 people officially following me, I think I only know two of them. So although my blog is more accessible to more people than my facebook account, it feels to me much more like a personal communication. I say here what I want to say, what is important to me, what I have been thinking about. As I have demonstrated on a number of occasions, I am not thinking much at all about my audience when I blog. It is something I do because I enjoy it, and I expect to keep doing it.

Today for maybe the first time I thought about blogging about an incident with my neighbors, but decided instead to just tell a friend on gmail chat about it. He didn't seem to think much of my little anecdote, and well I really felt I should have just blogged about it, and not bothered to try to tell him a funny little story. That is, afterall, exactly what blogs are for. To talk about those parts of ourselves we are thinking about and don't mind sharing with the world, if anyone actually bothered to read it.

Mourning

2011-12-14T01:41:00.000Z

This year I am buying Christmas gifts that are mourning gifts, things by which to remember my brother and my brother in law, both of whom passed away well before we who love them finished our need to hear from them, to get their input, to listen to their thoughts and ideas, to feel their hugs and kisses and to hear their laughs.

This January it will be three years since my brother passed away, and all any of us can do is just wake up each morning, get through the day somehow, try not to be too sad or too angry or too anything else about something we have no control over. But the sadness over not being able to just pick up the phone, and ask them how they are doing, never really goes away.

Hafragrautur

2011-12-12T20:10:00.001Z

This morning I made Palmer some oatmeal (Irish btw, not American) and although I put plenty of brown sugar and honey in it, I also put way too much salt in it. It was not very good.

On the way taking him to school, I was remembering a more successful batch of oatmeal I made, when I was working at Víkingaheimar in Iceland. I think it was just over a year ago, when the Ríkistjorn decided to come have their meeting in Suðurnesja, and Víkingaheimar had the honor of hosting. The meeting started really early, and although the township came in with bread and cheese and pastries for the officials, I thought to also whip up a batch of oatmeal. While the meeting was going on, our staff and the drivers for the raðherrar ate the oatmeal.

Everyone raved about how good it was. I don't know if this was just because no one usually bothers to feed the drivers, or if it actually was that good, but they said anyhow that it was much sweeter and creamier than regular Icelandic hafragraut. I was informed this must be because I was American, that I had done it this way, with maple syrup and honey and raisins.

But the funny thing is, this is how I remember my mom, and my grandma, making hafragraut also. I guess it just runs in the family.

Meatballs

2011-12-09T16:50:00.000Z

Today is the "Christmas Cluster Luncheon", where the three departments that share the same floor of Dwinelle, and share the same administrative staff, have our joint Christmas party. That is the Italian department, the Slavic department, and the Scandinavian department. There is a sign up sheet of what everyone is going to bring that went around last week. I didn't think about it when I signed up, when all I wrote down was meatballs. I did not specify Swedish meatballs. But it occurred to me this morning that when Italians see the word meatballs, they think of something very different than what Scandinavians mean. So I suppose I should have specified, so as to not disappoint

Grading

2011-12-07T19:28:00.000Z

Well it is coming up on that time of the semester, when student grades are due. I started figuring them out yesterday, although one assignment is still outstanding, just to make sure I had the spreadsheet formatted correctly and everything else entered into it.

Although it is always stressful assigning grades, a part of me definitely enjoys it. Enjoys seeing the entirety of the semester, summed up in one number. Enjoys the feeling of getting to make a final decision about small details. Enjoys in a way the responsibility of saying something, for good or for bad, about a student. I have been entrusted with evaluating them, and that is a nice feeling.

It is something I do not get to experience in my museum work. In a historic museum, you don't evaluate the visitors, you are just grateful they came. The dynamic is completely opposite.

DV

2011-12-05T16:04:00.000Z

In 2001, I was interviewed by DV about the project I was doing that summer at the Saga Centre in Hvolsvollur, southern Iceland. It was an interview the director of the Saga Centre at the time, Arthur Bjorgvin Bollason, had set up. It was fun going to the DV offices, and then down to the harbor to get my picture taken. I insisted on having Esja in the background instead of the city skyline, as that seemed more suitable to the topic of my research. When DV ran the article, the picture was huge and the text tiny, just like almost every story there. That did not bother me too much, since it was a decent picture, but what did bother me was that DV had actually changed one detail in what I had said during my interview.

They asked me what I would be doing if I wasn't researching Icelandic sagas, and I said I thought I would probably be living on a sheep farm. In the story that ran, however, it said that if I wasn't studying the sagas, I would be living on a horse ranch. This annoyed me, so I asked Arthur why they had changed it. He said that in Iceland, sheep farming was looked down on, but raising horses was considered high status. He said that the reporter had done me a favor, by changing my quote.

I suppose I should have said that I would be running my own museum. A historic house museum.

Autumn in California

2011-12-01T18:53:00.001Z

It has been four years since I have been in California during the autumn. In other parts of the U.S., autumn is in September or October, but in California, it is in December. That is, in northern California. In Southern California, it is never autumn: LA only has a brief rainy season January and February. But in the Bay Area, I am enjoying a real honest to goodness Fall, where the leaves change colors and the air is crisp and cool. Today is an especially breezy day, and the leaves have been swirling around, everywhere I go. I keep saying to Palmer, "Look! All the leaves on that tree have turned yellow!" and "Look! All the leaves on that tree have turned red!". He barely looks up from his book, because of course he's seen it every year now, but for me it is noteworthy.

Of course, since this is California, when the leaves fall, the city takes care of cleaning them up. An army of men with leaf blowers are scouring the streets and roads and parks, blowing all the leaves off of the pavement, and onto the grass, or into big piles, to be picked up later by huge trucks with gigantic vacuum cleaners on the back of them, that suck up all the leaves. The leaf blowers are amazingly loud -- my cat went and hid under the bed when they were working on my street a few days ago -- since they are gas powered engines strapped to people's backs. But they do the trick much more effectively than a broom or water or anything else. Leaves respond to the wind, as they are meant to do, not caring if it is artificial or real wind blowing them around.

So although the leaves come and go, what one is reminded of here in California is that the trees, and the roads, are eternal.

Triple the fun!

2011-11-27T23:07:00.000Z

My mom and dad braved the freeways of Los Angeles to come up to see me for Thanksgiving, which is the busiest travel holiday of the year in the U.S. It is like Icelanders on Verslunamannahelgi or something. Well of course someone has to stay home to bake the turkey, but usually at least three or four other households join in, meaning that at least 2/3 of the population is simultaneously leaving their home and heading to someone else's home, all trying to be there by 10pm Wednesday night. That is a lot of traffic on the road all at once. Today, the Sunday after Thanksgiving, the same thing happens again: everyone tries to head home. But the timing is less strict, since some people get sick of their families already by Friday and head home then.

My parents stayed all the way until Sunday morning, which is quite an honor really, since they'll have to hit a lot more traffic on their way home than they would have had they left yesterday. So that is nice.

Even nicer is that my mom--always thinking ahead--brought up my Christmas gifts with her, and this morning, I got to "unwrap" them (none of them were actually wrapped in wrapping paper, but most of them were in plastic or in the box still, so same difference).

And just like on Christmas day, we saved opening the biggest gift for last.

So I can now report on what I got for Christmas, a month early. It is a triple crock pot, the kind of thing a caterer uses or the sort of thing I could use at a fondu party. There are three 3 quart pots in one large metal tray, each of which can be set on a different temperature. I could serve an entire meal to 30 friends all at once with this thing, make myself three different dishes at once, or even start my own little catering business with it.

If I were still in Iceland, I know I would get a ton of use out of my triple crock-pot, because there were so many occasions in Iceland where I got to see my friends and family, where we all came together at one relative's house or another. But in the U.S., that rarely if ever happens. We are a world apart from one another here, and it takes something as formal as Thanksgiving to really bring people together.

But maybe if I'm lucky, I'll get to use my handy-dandy triple cooker, sometime before next year.

Salvation army

2011-11-22T00:22:00.000Z

I read about a church taking donations of frozen turkeys to give to families for Thanksgiving, so today when we were at the store, Palmer and I bought a frozen turkey. The store was offering a discount to anyone who bought over $50 dollars worth of groceries, giving 50% off the price of the turkey. Since I spent over $100 I must have gotten an even better discount, because the turkey was only $7 dollars.

But when I brought it over to the church, and saw all the people in line waiting for groceries in order to make a Thanksgiving meal, including many families and older couples, well, that turkey seemed very valuable.

Busy week ahead

2011-11-20T18:36:00.000Z

This week is Thanksgiving week here in the U.S., and as seems, elementary school kids in most of the U.S. get this week off. At least Palmer does, and every other child I know. This is different than when I was a kid; we only used to get Thanksgiving Thursday and the Friday afterwards off. But now it is a whole week. So Palmer is coming to stay with me this week, which will be fun. And my mom and dad are coming up on Wednesday evening or Thursday morning. Dave is, as always, going to do the honors in terms of most of the cooking, but I think I will at least make some sweet potatoes and a pumpkin pie or maybe lemon bars (my mom left a package of that at my apartment last time she was up, and it is about time it get used!).

But actually I am not thinking all that much about the holiday. My mind is still rather preoccupied with the Occupy protests and what has been going on at University of California Berkeley and Davis campuses.

On top of that, I have a lot of work issues I am thinking about. A professor from my department is coming to observe my class on Tuesday, so I need to have a rather effective lesson plan in place, rather than just winging it (which I of course never ever do ;). The Tuesday after that, I am meeting with another professor for lunch, and was just now thinking about what I would say to him while vacuuming my livingroom. I have never met with him before, but he strikes me as having a rather strong personality, so I suppose I will let him lead the conversation mostly (which is unusual for me!). And I am also thinking about my student's papers, hoping I have given them an assignment that is not too difficult, although with students as bright and hard working as I have at Berkeley, they always manage to impress me.

Plus Thanksgiving is always around the time when it hits me that Christmas is just around the corner, and another year has almost past away. Next year I will be 40 years old.

I am happy I lived in Iceland before I got to be 40. I guess that is one thing I will tell the Professor, if he asks.

Real problems

2011-11-18T01:54:00.000Z

One of my students was a witness to the police shooting that took place here at UC Berkeley on Tuesday. He came to see me during office hours, and we had a long discussion about the horrible event. He said the man who was shot and killed by police was a student he had taken a class with last semester, a rather quiet and sullen young man. The information he had heard was that the young man was a security guard, and the gun he pulled out of his backpack was the one he had been issued at work. It is unclear if the police over-reacted in terms of shooting him when he did not immediately drop his weapon. It could have been that the student simply was sitting down to do some lab work and wanted to have the gun where he could see it, instead of in his backpack; he should have known however that bringing guns onto campus is not allowed. So in that sense it seems more likely that the student might have thought Tuesday--when demonstrations were going on and most of the classes cancelled--would be a good day to carry out some sort of shooting. Students have been known to commit suicide during finals week, or go on shooting rampages. So it is hard to say what the truth is.

Although my student seemed pretty calm about the whole thing, he also seemed more aggressive and uptight than he had been before. I am sure witnessing an event like that makes a person feel out of control, and puts them very much on edge. He could smell the gun powder and heard the shots, saw the cops rushing around. The whole thing must have been disorienting and upsetting. Plus it turns out he knew the student who was killed, and although they were not friends, no one thinks about students loosing their lives. The kids here are just supposed to be starting their lives.

I heard a report from a community activist who works with gang members, and he said that for gang members, there is a whole range of terminology around shootings. They make distinctions between being at a shooting versus being shot at, for instance, like the way Eskimos are said to make distinctions about snow. But for most of us, we never do experience any sort of gun related violence in our lives, and cannot imagine just what that is like.

I think I will be careful about using gun related metaphors, like taking aim, pulling the trigger, taking a shot, finding the golden bullet. None of that seems so innocent any more.

Cultural tourism in Iceland

2011-11-14T02:38:00.001Z

I just finished writing a chapter of my dissertation, which resulted in a much larger discussion of cultural tourism in Iceland than I had intended.

But the fact is, this is an issue I have been extremely interested and concerned about for at least 15 years, if not 20. I have never, ever liked the way Iceland is marketed to tourists in the U.S. Everything from the unspoiled nature to the crazy city life in Reykavik. It has always left the part of Iceland I loved--the simple joy of being in a relaxing and lovely place with my family--completely out of the picture.

In 2001, I went to Hvollsvöllur to examine the Saga Centre as part of a study commissioned by the National Park's service to look into cultural landscapes as heritage tourism. I thought that endeavor might represent a change in how Iceland was presented to tourists. But in the last 10 years, and especially while working at Vikingaheimar, and at meetings with the Saga Trails Association, I came to see just how completely the marketing mechanism of Iceland Excursion and Icelandair work against genuine cultural tourism in Iceland.

It is an absolute shame in my opinion that the cultural ministry of Iceland has not done much much much more to amend this situation. They seem perfectly content to let the foreign perception of Iceland be radically off kilter. It is as if they have never read any of the anthropological literature that demonstrates how detrimental such a disjuncture can be for the local population. Because what foreigners think of Iceland comes to influence what Icelanders think of themselves.

Last September I was at a conference in Reykjavík where a small group of professionals, including myself, talked about the use of the term "Viking" in Icelandic history, tourism, and archaeology. The audience was primarily workers in the cultural tourism industry in Iceland, and the discussion at the end was almost heartbreaking. The people running the centers out in the countryside that the intellectuals in Reykjavík find so unacceptable were literally begging for cooperation, for shared knowledge, for discussion, for--simply put--help. If anyone is looking for a project to do, something that would actually make a difference, there you go.

But instead the Penis Museum gets all the attention, and everything else gets ignored.

Sex scandals

2011-11-13T06:15:00.000Z

Wednesday afternoon, my son's father started talking to me about the Penn State football coach criminal sexual abuse case. Although I had seen a headline that day about Joe Paterno stepping down, I did not pay it much attention, mostly since Joe is 84 years old and I have been expecting his retirement for a while. But also, I must admit, because I generally speaking keep much better track of Icelandic news than U.S. news.

So the sex scandal I had been following was not the one most American's were following. I was instead reading all about the book written by the daughter of a deceased bishop accusing him of repeatedly sexually molesting her through her childhood, and the reaction to that book by the woman's family. Of course I am referring to Iceland's child sexual abuse story of the week.

With all due respect to everyone in Iceland involved in this, and with full cognizance of the status and power of a bishop, the child sexual abuse case at Penn State so completely dwarfs the Icelandic issue, I feel honestly rather upset at myself for not paying attention to it as it was unfolding. It now appears that the entire football program at Penn State colluded to keep the ongoing predatory rape of children from public attention simply because it would harm the reputation of their football program.

The Icelandic case is comprehensible in a way; I have heard of father's doing this sort of thing before to their children, and I can understand a family wanting to try to cover it up somehow. Families are supposed to love each other, for better or for worse. But here was a man who went out and sought victims, brought them to his place of work, and although his coworkers had direct evidence he was doing this, they did nothing to stop him because of money, because of some convoluted, artificial, overinflated sense of school pride?

At times like this, I do indeed miss Iceland. But the fact of the matter is it does not look like I will be going back to that idyllic little island in the North Atlantic anytime soon, and I need to start paying more attention to what is going on right here, in my own back yard.

Novels

2011-11-11T17:59:00.000Z

Yesterday I gave my students an article entitled "The Aesthetics of Reading" which was published in 2002 in the journal Aesthetic Education. The articles thesis was that there are several exceedingly important mental skills that we acquire from reading novels that we do not acquire from watching movies, or even from reading other types of printed material. Specifically, he identified three things 1) the way time is treated in novels, which is rarely a natural chronological flow; 2) the way we have to remember characters, part of a skill he called "funding" and 3) the depiction of conciousness, in the form especially of reading a character's internal thoughts. In all these things he said that the reader's experience of a novel over a very long period of time, at least days if not weeks and months, makes for a very different mental experience than seeing the same narrative in movie form. The elongation of the unfolding of the narrative heightens our reliance on the mental skills of memory and gives us, more importantly, critical time to process and understand the narrative. Breaking up the continuum of time gives us an opportunity to reflect on the reality of time, and by getting to know a group of characters through a novel we have an opportunity to reflect on human nature.

It was this latter point I have been thinking about a lot lately, as we have been reading Smilla's Sense of Snow. We also, by the way, watched the movie. But it seems to me Peter Hoeg's point in writing this novel was not so much to describe a crime, but rather to delve deeply into the human psyche. Novelists are surgeons of human emotions, always wanting to dissect them more and more finely. Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing, I do note that Smilla's Sense of Snow ends specifically with the point that there will be no resolution.

Holiday Plans

2011-11-10T20:48:00.000Z

Tomorrow is Veterans Day, and Palmer has the day off school. When I noticed this two weeks ago, I thought it would be fun to drive down to Southern California with him, to visit my parents. Then I started having car trouble. And my mom starting having back trouble. And a large rain storm was predicted for the exact day we'd be driving. So on Monday of this week, we decided to postpone the trip, and go down there over Thanksgiving instead. Then last night, things changed again. My dad said he would rather come up to see me in Northern California, than us come down to Southern California for Thanksgiving. So as of today, that looks to be the plan. Thanksgiving is though two weeks off, so things could change again, of course.

Do I have Christmas plans yet, you ask? You tell me.

Little red corvette

2011-11-09T05:10:00.003Z

I am having car troubles. On Friday, my Saab worked just fine, getting me safely back and forth to lovely Stanford University. But on Saturday morning, when I tried to get her in gear to take me to Palmer's soccer game, nothing doing. The clutch pedal was completely flat against the floor, and any attempt to shift gears made a tremendous racket. I just had the clutch worked on by a shop called Svensson Automotive (yes, they specialize in Swedish cars; yes, the owner is of Swedish decent), which is (like any good Swedish company) not open on the weekends. So yesterday was spent getting the car towed from my apartment to Svensson's.

Dave was kind enough to let me borrow his second car until my car is fixed, a red Chevy HR2. And that worked out great this weekend for Palmer and I when we went to a birthday party Saturday night and when I took him to school Monday morning. This morning I also took him to school no problem. Then the weirdest thing that has ever happened to me with a car happened. I drove the car into a parking spot, put the car in park, and then tried to turn the key so that I could turn off the car, planning--obviously--to get out. Nothing doing. The key was not only stuck in the ignition, it was stuck in the on position in the ignition. There was literally nothing I could do but keep driving the car. After proving to Dave that this really was not just a matter of me not knowing how to turn a key, we took it to a shop where they disengaged the wires in order to stop the car. Otherwise I guess the thing would have just kept running all night. It was bizarre.

And as if that was not weird enough, when I got to the Bart station, and put my card into the reader, I got an error message. It was a really old card, but the attendant said that shouldn't matter and told me to try going through the gates with the card. I put my card in, and EVERY SINGLE GATE opened simultaneously. The attendant looked at me with a stunned look on his face, and said he had never seen that happen before. Then he told me to try again. That time everything worked OK, and I was able to get on the train. But it was spooky.

I seriously have not a clue what is going on.

Perhaps an electronics curse was put upon me. Perhaps this is a divine sign I am not supposed to go anywhere. Perhaps it is a sign to stop driving. Or perhaps it was all just a super weird coincidence.

As usual, however, I have found a way to look on the bright side. Because I took the Bart into Berkeley today, and then back home, and then rode the bus from there to my apartment, I had a chance to have a long chat with my neighbor, Beverly. She lives in the apartment right next door, but until we rode the bus home from the Bart together tonight, we had never had a good long face to face chat.

Árbók hins Íslenzka fornleifafélags

2011-11-08T02:41:00.001Z

I think I spelled that right.

The library here at Cal has the issues of this journal from 1926 to 1936 bound together and on the shelves. That is it. Nothing from before 1926, and nothing after 1936.

Other university libraries in the UC system (UCLA and UC San Diego) have earlier issues, but nothing later. So I went online to look at the digital holdings. I found a Google Library version of the issues from 1885 to 1890. I am reading through that now. And then bingo, the website Timarit.is has all the articles, 1881 to 2001, online.

I am enjoying the issue from 1885 though. It is fascinating because back then, 125 years ago, Icelandic was written different. Jeg instead of Ég. Sjer instead of Sér. I suppose these spellings, which make Icelandic look more like Danish, were removed for just that reason. It is also fascinating because of the way archaeologists back then used the sagas in their work and knew all the saga characters and events. Very different from today.

So, thanks to the miracle of the internet, I am spending tonight in conversation with a long-dead Icelandic antiquarian. And I can also keep perusing to my hearts content the journal holdings of the National Library of Iceland, from thousands and thousands of miles away.

Of course I would rather have the actual books, either have all the volumes here in California, or be in Iceland myself. Either way would be OK with me. But I can't fix the budget of the University of California, and I can't fix the job market in Iceland.

All I can do is be grateful that at least the internet if free, and useful, and not to be taken for granted.

Occupy vs. Tea Party

2011-11-07T00:27:00.000Z

Yesterday, or maybe the day before, I heard some commentator saying that the Tea Party movement and the Occupy movement were two halves of the same coin. In a way, this is good news, because it means that there is space for productive cross-dialogue between the two movements. And indeed they are both upset about overlapping issues, as illustrated in this diagram.

But what this analysis misses is that the two movements have at their core fundamentally different moral codes. The Tea Party wants to go back to the conservative values of the 1940s and 1950s in the U.S., in which Christian Religion was central to defining behavior. The Occupy movement--although it has been depicted as somewhat amoral--has instead a very different moral code at its center. I had heard the term "socially progressive" lots of times here at Berkeley and San Francisco, but I never really understood what it meant, until yesterday when I was reading coverage of the Occupy Walnut Creek event on Saturday and found myself suddenly defending that stance.

Social progressivism is not about gay marriage or universal health care or any of these single buzz issues. Social progressives believe, unlike people in the Tea Party, that our society is evolving into a community of cooperation, support, shared knowledge and understanding. In fact, the internet has made this evolution happen much faster than anyone could have imagined in the 1960s. And the key difference here is that Social Progressives believe this is a good thing, not a bad thing. And that the government needs to catch up, and stop treating us all like rats competing for scraps off a table.

That is why comparisons between the Occupy movement and the Arab Spring are far more apt. Because in both cases, the idea is that current forms of government are completely unable to deal with a truly informed, knowledgeable, and socially responsible populace.

Born to Travel Show about Iceland

2011-10-30T23:37:00.000Z

Yesterday morning, a television show focused on Iceland finally aired here in the U.S., after having been heavily hyped by Inspired by Iceland. The show was only a half hour long, but it must have run a promo for the give-a-way of a trip to Iceland 4 times in that time period. I must say the affect was a little bit like the show was a paid advertisement for Iceland or something.

But actually it is part of ABC (American Broadcast Cooperation)'s Educational and Entertaining Saturday morning lineup, which includes Jack Hannah's Wild Animals and this show. So it is kind of a throw back to good old fashioned family friendly programming by one of the national broadcast companies.

The show was however not about Iceland, really. It was about the host, Richard Weiss, "investigating" what it is like for Icelanders to live so close to volcanoes. He did a good job of explaining the terror and downside of this fact of Icelandic life, especially by a long bit on the Westmann Island's eruption, complete with closeups of the ruins still found around Heimey. The dramatic pictures of the recent volcanic eruptions and glacial melt floods spliced in between his interviews with various people also helped make Iceland seem rather terrifying.

The latter part of the show though was supposed to show how Icelanders had adapted to this situation, and made the best of it. Unfortunately, the host seems to have largely missed the point of the geothermal heating and electricity, since after some dramatic shots of the pipeline going from the hotspring near Reykholt, his voice over said something about how this made opening the gas and electric bills in Iceland a lot more bearable. He seemed to understand better that the hot soil around volcanic vents can be used for baking bread and cooking eggs, as if everyone does that on a daily basis. He also had a bit about a farm near Vík which had been covered in 4cm of ash two years ago, but now had very green fields all around it, thanks to the fertilizing affect of the volcanic ash.

Among the people he interviewed were Haraldur Sigurdsson of the Volcano Museum, the lovely blond who lived on the aforementioned farm, and my own dear friend, Gunnar Marel Eggertsson. Of course Gunnar was interviewed inside Vikingaheimar with his ship Íslendingur behind him, but actually the show never even explained what that was. Not a single reference to Vikings not giving up life in Iceland despite the volcanoes, nothing about Gunnar building a Viking ship after leaving the Westmann Islands. Instead the clip was just of Gunnar talking about what it was like the night he was evacuated from his home in the Westmann Islands as a child, with a incongruous image of a Viking ship over his shoulder.

Anyhow, I am glad I made the effort to watch the show.

On the flip side

2011-10-28T01:53:00.000Z

The Bay Area Rapid Transit system, affectionately called Bart, zips all around the bay area, from the hills of San Francisco way out to the back bay. It is one of the real unifying points of the diverse communities in the area, and something the local people are pretty proud of.

Ironically, however, when riding the Bart, no one talks to each other. All these individuals standing and sitting right next to each other, and yet they are not conversing at all. When I used to ride Bart a lot, as an undergraduate, everyone had their nose buried in a newspaper or book. But nowadays, almost 20 years later, everyone has their attention on their smart phones and ipads. They are, in other words, far more interested in letting the people who aren't on the Bart with them know what they are up to, than in taking the time to talk to the people around them.

And I think that happens more and more to travelers these days, that their primary concern is to make sure friends and family back home get to vicariously experience their trip through facebook and twitter and vimeo and whatever else, rather than just focusing on the moment.

Of course I was as guilty as the next person, logging onto facebook on the Bart. But I would indeed recommend a trip at some point in time where the technology is left behind, and everyone who you want to share the experience with is actually right there with you. Just so you can look up from the Android every once in a while.

Black and white and gray

2011-10-27T03:33:00.000Z

When I moved into my new apartment in Walnut Creek, I decided to go with a black and white decorative theme in the bedroom. I have a white dresser drawer and some black and white accessories, so I bought a black wooden platform bedframe with a cool swooping headboard (called Miami style). It was however a bit more challenging than I thought to find a bedspread I liked with a black and white design. In fact, I found one for Palmer's bed (a small single bed in the corner of my room, which can fold up into a chair) before I found one for my bed. It is a black and white and grey with some orange and teal on it, a sort of skateboarder motif. Then I finally found a bedspread I liked, mostly grey with a dark grey border on the bottom and black and white leaf design in the middle. I thought I would end up folding Palmer's bed into a chair most days, but actually the bedspreads go so well together I just leave both beds out and made even on the nights Palmer isn't here.

I was pretty dismayed when I was making my bed the other day, and tugged at my fancy bedspread to get it lined up right. It tore. Just a few inches, but still, a brand new bedspread that cost me quite a bit. Now I am trying to figure out how to fix it, and imagine I will have to embroider some sort of leaf pattern over the tear.

Anyhow, the bedroom decor has not quite come together the way I expected, but at least Palmer has his own bed and a bedspread he thinks is cool.

The danger with praise

2011-10-25T19:10:00.000Z

Last week I gave back my students their first papers, which they had written about the Viking Age in the North Atlantic. I actually gave them their papers one day with my comments on it, but without a grade, and let them tell me what grade they thought the paper deserved. Most students gave themselves a B+, which actually is about what I was going to give them. One student gave himself a C, which was too low; his paper was not that bad.

Another one of my students came up to me all freaked out about my comments, and wanted to argue every single point I had made. He tried to verbally explain things he had not explained well in the paper. After about 5 minutes of this, I finally put my arm around his shoulders and asked him if he thought his paper was really terrible or something? "Yes! You said my thesis contradicted my conclusion, that makes a bad paper!" I simply shook my head and took the paper away from him. Today I am giving him back his paper and he'll see his final grade. It is an A-.

I am concerned of course that now he will think he does not have to try very hard on his next paper, since he did not get a failing grade on this paper. That would of course be disastrous, if he were to decide that a paper with that sort of flaw was indeed good enough. But instead I am keeping my fingers crossed that he will know next time not to write something so incomprehensible and vague in his introduction as to even appear to contradict with his conclusion.

I am hoping, in other words, that he is self-motivated to write well, rather than being motivated by some sort of arbitrary grade.

The thing that changed

2011-10-22T23:44:00.000Z

A few years ago, I decided to make a cake for my Christmas at my cousin's house. I made up the recipe myself, using a custard mix for part of it but I left off the carmel icing and used a cookie-bar base and whipped cream topping instead. It looked good, but once I took my first bite, I realized that without the carmel coating, the custard had no sweetness to it. And the cookie bar bottom had basically no sweetness to it either, since it was supposed to have a very sugary fruit toping, instead of a very mild custard topping. So I made a dessert that had basically no sweetness.

It took me a while to learn the moral of this tale, and to really make it part of my new thinking. Because I have always prided myself on my ability to improvise on the spot, or to make a situation work.

But when I tried to fix this dessert, by adding a sugar coating to it afterwards and trying to rebake it, creme brule style, it became even more of a disaster. The custard and whipped cream melted into the cookie bar base and the whole thing became a soggy mess, and it still did not have any flavor.

So now I simply have to say that I have learned a very simply lesson, one which I suppose most people instinctively know.

I have learned that if I want dessert, I have to use a recipe. And best if I use a recipe that has already been tried at least once by someone else, before I go mucking about in it.

In at least this one area of my life, I no longer have a strong desire to "wing it." I'd like to just do something tried and true that actually tastes good.

Tonight I am trying to make salt fish and potatoes, and hope I can manage that OK.

China syndrome

2011-10-22T16:50:00.000Z

After reading all the blogs and news reports about the Chinese businessman/official who wants to buy up a sizable piece of realestate near Sandir, I suppose I was extra sensitive to a news item that I heard last night about realestate here in California.

California was very badly hit by the recession, especially because so much of our economy is in realestate. So I had been curious why housing prices have not fallen more dramatically; 9-12% unemployment should have brought it down a notch or two. But nope, it is still as ridiculous as ever. $450,000 for a tiny house in a run-down neighborhood, an absolutely impossible sum to save up for. So one has no choice but to take a huge loan from the bank or rent the rest of one's life.

Anyhow, after the crash there were not so many people willing to buy homes, especially homes worth more than 1 million dollars.

But last night I found out that the clever realestate agents and bankers in California, and in other parts of the US, did not take this predicament as a sign that they needed to lower housing costs. Oh no, that would not only cut into their salaries, which are a percentage of sale costs, but would lead to a cascade effect where all houses would start going down in price. This is of course the upside to a recession, and something, frankly, the rest of us were looking forward to. I actually thought I might be able to afford to buy a house someday.

But the realestate agents and loan officers were not willing to let that happen. Nope, they cleverly realized that although no one in the U.S. had money, plenty of people in China did. The news interviewed a well-dressed woman here in California who speaks English with a very heavy Chinese accent, explaining how ever since the crash she has been able to get lots of "foreign investors". Then another good looking gentleman with a Spanish accent explained that the pool of foreign investors was starting to dry up, so now they were so pleased the US government was going to offer residence visas to anyone who can buy a home worth more than $500,000. The report made it clear these were not work visas, just residence visas, and the realestate agent claimed the purpose was just so investors could "see the property they are buying." Finally, they interviewed a white broker who seemed very nervous, explaining what a good thing this is for the economy, because it ensures prices stay high, and that is good for everyone, he stuttered.

Right, everyone but the rest of us.

Roof liner

2011-10-21T19:49:00.002Z

I have a white 1993 SAAB 9000CS, and today I am putting a new liner on its interior roof. The old liner got a hole in it sometime in 2003 or 4, and then it started to sag around that point, right over the middle of the back seat. The sag got worse and worse as more and more fabric came loose from the metal roof of the car, until eventually it was hard to see out of the rear view mirror. This, plus the fact that the car leaked oil terribly and the engine head was cracked, made my dad and others suggest I should probably sell the car. I of course was unwilling to do so. Not only do I not have the title to the car (long story - I lost it during my move to California in 2003 and have never had a chance to go back to Virginia to get a replacement), but I wouldn't want to sell the car anyhow. I bought it in 2000, from an Ethiopian guy who owned the gas station where it used to get serviced by the doctor who bought it new. That part doesn't matter so much I guess, save to suggest that new, a SAAB is considered a luxury car. And indeed many things about my car still retain that mark of sophistication: power windows and locks, great AC system, wonderful handling, and a 12 CD changer. Although my mother suspects the main reason I like the car is because of the music system, which I do like a lot, my dad recognized that the car is indeed really fun to drive. Although it is only a 4 cylinder car, it has a really nice little power range right where you would need it, when trying to pass a semi-truck going up a hill, for instance. I also like how fun it is to drive on windy roads in general. So, although it costs me a lot of money to get the car repaired, and new problems and repairs keep cropping up, I remain loyal to my old 1993 SAAB. Today I am using some spray glue to try to fasten new fabric up over the back seat, having cut out the old saggy stuff with the holes in it. Palmer picked out the fabric--it has various goofy cat faces all over it.

I imagine putting up this fabric will not add much to the resale value of the car, but then since I don't have the title, and no one in their right mind would buy a 18 year old car, I guess I don't really need to worry about it too much.

Instead I imagine I will have to limp along with my increasingly quirky SAAB for the foreseeable future. It reminds me in a way of my cat Ember, who I kept alive for a remarkable 8 years after he was diagnosed with diabetes, by giving him insulin shots twice a day, taking his blood sugar readings, and injecting extra saline solution under his skin. I can nurse something along for a mighty long time, if I do so say myself.

Of course, now I have a new cat, a 1 year old, healthy and happy and playful kitty not at all like Ember.

And if someone wants to give me a newer SAAB, I would indeed accept.

Occupy Walnut Creek

2011-10-19T16:42:00.000Z

Last week no one thought anyone would show up at the protest planned in the affluent suburb that I now live in, Walnut Creek. But they were wrong--200 people showed up. And the protests are planned every Wednesday at 4pm. This is not quite the die-hard protests you see elsewhere in the country, where people are actually camping in front of public buildings and banks, literally occupying the space. This one is a more moderate affair, lasting only a few hours, and yet still considered noteworthy in that it is happening at all. This is not a place known for protests. And unlike some other protests, which have an aggressive edge to them, this protest is being organized mostly out of the peace organization in the area.

I am planning on going. I have been drafting slogans and think I finally decided on what I want to put: "Billions for the Banks! Trillions for the Military! Nothing for the Middle Class!" but I am worried that has too much anger in it. This protest is not about being angry, or wanting someone to remedy my anger.

The current economic priorities in this country do not make me angry. They make me sad. They make me less hopeful about my son's future than I would like to be. And for a die-hard optimist like me, that is actually saying a lot.

Temporary reprieve

2011-10-15T04:39:00.002Z

My students have been writing "response papers" to each reading we have done in class. Although they constitute 20% of their overall grade for the semester, I am grading each paper on a check, check plus or check minus scale, with a maximum of 5 points per paper. In other words, I am grading those response papers really easy.

By contrast, this week I am grading the first research paper they have had to write for this course. They will have a second one later in the semester. These I am grading much harder, in as much as I have made it clear that an A paper has to not just meet all my expectations, but actually exceed them.

Though I am not done grading, it does seem that the students are putting in a sincere effort. But so far none of the papers have really wowed me.

The one about cows inhabiting Iceland did amuse me, however.

And inordinate amount of time

2011-10-13T19:48:00.000Z

We had a meeting with Palmer's teacher, the school principal, the class room assistant, and the school psychologist today. The main issue seems to be that Palmer takes too long to do everything. It is making his teacher kind of crazy in the head, always trying to coax him into the next activity, always trying to console him when he missed out on getting this or that because he is too slow.

I suspect this has something to do with his zodiac sign--Cancers are not known to be great at being efficient and quick about things--because I tell you what: he sure did not get it from his mom.

Columbus Day Uncertainty

2011-10-08T22:46:00.000Z

My Saab has a hydraulic clutch, which means the clutch only works when the fluid in the line is full, with no air bubbles, etc. Otherwise, if there is pressure missing in the line, when I step down on the clutch petal it goes all the way to the floor and basically nothing happens to help smooth the transition from one gear to another. After two days of forcing my car into gear, I have made an appointment with a local Saab specialist to get the clutch serviced.

The funny thing is I made the appointment online, and I did it for Monday. Monday is a holiday here, Columbus Day. Like many of the lessor holidays in the US, it is almost impossible to predict whether or not a business will be open or closed on Monday. UC Berkeley is closed, since we are run by the State, as will be the post office. But usually nothing else is.

We'll see though. I could have a surreal experience on Monday, standing in front of the shop, appointment reminder in hand, with no sign of life anywhere inside, and a sign on the window saying "Open M-F, 7am to 5pm"

The nice thing about this shop though is it only takes cars on an appointment basis, and it always tries to return the car the same day. I like that kind of responsive customer service, I like the idea that the customer's time is valuable and that they deserve to know exactly when they will have their car back.

I hope it all works out.

A return to a regular life

2011-10-07T21:53:00.000Z

Starting in May of this year, when I packed up my apartment in Iceland, through July, when I thought I might be getting a job in Seattle, and into August when I moved to a new place in Walnut Creek, my life has been in a constant state of transition. I did not have time to think or really even process all that, in my rush to get a chapter of my dissertation finished and prepare for a conference in Sweden.

When I got back Tuesday, it was straight to teaching and then celebrating my birthday on Wednesday. Finally today, Friday the 7th of October, for the first time in about 6 months, I have time to look around and just take stock of my life. Get organized, get focused. Goof off. Play Suduko. Watch TV. Go to the gym. Get a bicycle. All these things I have half-thought about doing but have been too stressed out to actually do.

Of course I like having tension and excitement in my life, but in all honesty, I am really very ready for its opposite. I think I deserve it.

Shortest trip ever

2011-10-03T17:06:00.001Z

I was in Iceland for a total of two hours, but still got to buy skyr and hotdogs, eat hankikjot and kiss my cousin.

Kalmar Castle

2011-10-02T15:42:00.001Z

Today I took my first real look around a real castle. I had dinner at a castle in Uppsala a few years ago, but I never got to look around. The only other castle I had been in was Cinderella's castle in Disneyland.

It turns out a real castle is a lot different than that.

A foggy view of a real castle

Kalmar castle has a very long history, starting in the 1100s and in use as a royal residence all the way into the 18th century (as far as I understood it). It was really interesting to see the models of all the different phases of building, and the way different kings changed the castles.

What surprised me about it though was that the castle was far more than a royal residence. Of course I assumed it would have outbuildings and servants and stables and kitchens, etc., but I did not expect that castles were also prisons.

Kalmar castle's interpretative text and set up makes this use of the castle very apparent. There are only two rooms visible to the public which they cannot enter, one is the woman's prison, and the other is the maximum security room for the men's prison. The dungeon, though not visible, was very disturbingly described. There was also a photo exhibition adjacent to the woman's prison, where a photographer had women pose in the punishment practices known historically from Sweden. The black and white photos were accompanied by black and white text describing how it was all done; it was an uncomfortable and upsetting experience.

Me in Agda's room

It also made me think more about another room up on the top floor of the castle, a room visitors could partially enter but not completely (the only one so situated). That was the room of the consort of Duke Erik, Agda, with whom he had two children. After he was made king, she was "married off" to someone else. It occurred to me she was in a sort of prison too, and that by choosing to display Agda's room as it would have looked in her life, even though she was only a part of the castle for a few years, was a specific statement on a point of the curator's of the castle.

Like the fact that the "kings stairs" and the "queens stairs" in the castle are made from the slabs taken from tombstones.

Here is not the king and queen of fairytales, but kings and queens obsessed with punishment, death, control, and protecting themselves.

Give me a house in the suburbs instead of a castle any day.

Inspiring

2011-10-01T16:36:00.000Z

Today I went to an exhibition at the Smaland Museum entitled Embrace! The curator of the exhibition is a Chinese-American who recently moved to Vaxjo from New York City. She has an amazing eye for art, and put together a beautiful exhibition of Swedish artists working in New York that pairs so well with the permanent exhibition about Swedish emigration to the U.S. She is using the exhibit as a spring board to discuss emigrant/immigrant issues in Sweden today, working especially with school groups. It was so inspiring to meet her.

One of the people on the tour with me is an American anthropologist, younger than myself, who has been living in the Marshall Islands. She is the State Anthropologist for that country of 70,000 people, a country that will, by all projections, be wiped off the map in 50 years, thanks to the rise in global sea levels. We talked about what a weighty responsibility she has, to work with a community in such a tremendous period of transformation, and under real threat of permanent loss. I am heading out to join her for dinner now, since we are some of the last remaining people in town after the conference.

I suspect this will be a bit less rambunctious of an evening than last night, a bit more serious and heartfelt. Which suits me just fine, I must say. Afterall, this conference is part of a European working group on Emotions and Geography. An intriguing pairing, and inspiring people.

Hmmmm

2011-09-30T22:25:00.000Z

So well I have no idea what to do with myself tomorrow night and Sunday night here in Sweden. My flight leaves Monday afternoon, and the conference activities are all over at 3pm tomorrow, leaving me 48 hours with nothing to do. I had hoped something would come up during the conference, and I contacted all the friends I know in Stockholm also. Nada. So that was poor planning on my part.

Some magic words

2011-09-29T15:18:00.000Z

Here at Kalmar I just heard an interesting talk from a man talking about Russian Blood Stopping Charms. Words and the imagination and concentration seemingly were used to make people who suffered from hemophelia suddenly stop bleeding. I remain skeptical.

So excited!

2011-09-26T14:34:00.000Z

Well I am finally getting jazzed/stressed/excited about my trip to Sweden, which begins tomorrow night. This is I think the first conference I have ever been to where I literally do not know anyone before I go. There is one Icelander who is giving a keynote address whom I have met briefly, but never spoken to. Other than that, everyone--including the speakers in my own session who come from the Bay area--are people I have never met or seen in my life. Just a bunch of people with the same interest in me, in how places of violence become landscapes we forget.

Having just finished putting my own ideas to paper on the subject, I am so looking forward to hearing how other scholars conceive of and discuss this obscure little corner of scholarship.

The best Saturday night ever

2011-09-25T00:16:00.000Z

Palmer just came over a few minutes ago, and he is cracking me up playing with the toys he keeps here in such exuberance. I need to go make the boy some Mac and Cheese and hot dogs, but it is much cuter listening to him tell me about the semi-aquatic vehicle he just built.

I have had plenty of good Saturday nights in my life, some more memorable than others, and some longer ago than it seems. But I am thankful that I have not had a Saturday night like Katy Perry's "Last Friday Night" in a very, very long time.

When my Old Norse friends and I went out in Reykjavík last time, the craziest thing we did was climb Ingjolfur's statue.

Heathrow

2011-09-23T10:10:00.001Z

Icelandair has had my international travel dollars consistently for years now, even before I moved to Iceland; of course once I was living there that was all I used, except maybe twice on Iceland Express.

This upcoming Tuesday, however, I will be flying international on a British airline, direct from SFO to Heathrow. I am so excited about this change of pace, and already trying to figure out how to best use my time during the 12 hour flight. I think I will buy a new battery for my laptop, since this one is 3 years old now and looses juice in about an hour. I will probably also buy a Soduko book, and bring some other reading with me. And sleep. I believe I will arrive in London ready to change clothes and start my day of intra-European travel.

I had of course checked Icelandair first, but the flight took much longer that way, especially because I would have to take a domestic flight first. Now instead I will be flying the route preferred by professional businessmen, and I am feeling very sophisticated about the whole thing.

On the way back though, I will be flying Icelandair. I am afterall a loyal customer. Plus with online booking and no fare difference between one-way tickets and round-trip tickets, a gal can arrange things to really suit her best, just the way she wants it.

Shoes for Óskar

2011-09-21T20:32:00.000Z

The cousin in Iceland whom I was closest to as a child, Fanney Halldorsdóttir, has three kids. Two beautiful twin daughters who have our family's dark hair and dark eyes, and a younger boy who takes after his father's family, with reddish hair and blue eyes. I babysat the twins a lot, but never did so with Óskar. But he was always great with Palmer, and of course as he got older I started to notice that he has at least one thing in common with me: he is a Libra. Very much so. He is turning into a funny, smart and outgoing teenager, and cuter by the minute. So when he sent me a message on facebook asking me to do him a favor, well of course I could not refuse.

He needs me to bring a pair of sneakers to him when I come to Iceland. Problem is I am not really coming to Iceland; I am just landing at the airport for a couple of hours. But his mom is going to come up to the airport and meet me, and hopefully bring me some of my stuff stored at her sister's house.

I realized this morning that this means Óskar's shoes will need to be in my carry on luggage, since I will need to be accessing it during millilending. I also realized that I will have to check whatever my cousin Fanney brings me up at the airport in Iceland. This means I really won't be able to have any checked luggage at all with me on my trip to Sweden. Traveling light is a good idea anyhow, since I have to fly and take the train and walk all around a little medieval town. But with Óskar's shoes taking up probably a third of my roll-on bag, I am basically not going to be able to bring anything to wear at all.

Ah, the sacrifices we make for family.

Ásdís

2011-09-20T21:58:00.000Z

Next week, I am going to Sweden for a conference. So when my mom and dad and brother were hear this weekend, I was talking to them about my upcoming trip. Then my brother asks me, "What are you going to do about kitty?"

Now of course I have had a lot on my mind preparing for this conference: making the travel arrangements, writing the paper, figuring out how to cover my class, and how to pay for it. But still I felt really bad when my brother asked me this question.

I had totally forgotten that I would be leaving my cat all alone for a week. It is like I had forgotten that a cute, sweet, funny, lively kitty lives with me, and depends on me to take care of her (even though she jumps on my bed every morning and lays on my computer when I write).

Although she might not perceive the ownerly-slight, I do, and I am determined to make up for it. Putting her in boarding at the vet's office is totally out of the question. I am not heading off to an international trip, while she sits crammed in a cage.

Mango

2011-09-18T15:51:00.000Z

Yesterday I bought a huge organic mango at the store, but have still not gotten up the nerve to eat it. Instead I have opened the fridge several times, and stared at the mango suspiciously.

No matter how many times I buy a mango, cut it up, and eat it, it always strikes me as a very weird thing to do. I literally remember every time the first time I ever ate it, at Wendy's mom's house when I was in my 30s. It is almost as if part of my brain is saying, "I don't think this lumpy green thing is food" and the other part of my brain is saying "Yes it is, remember that time we had it a few years ago, and it was good?" Then I look at it trying to figure out how to cut it, always mystified by the size and placement of the pit, where the stringy parts are, etc.

Needless to say, buying mangos in Iceland was even harder for me to come to terms with.

Of course, once I get a piece properly cut and manage somehow to get the slimy texture into my mouth, it always taste really good. Which is the thing I force myself to remember.

A good beginning

2011-09-17T05:56:00.000Z

So this week was an interesting one for Dave and I as parents. Palmer's teacher informed us that he's a very intense and emotional kid, and that she thinks he needs some at-school counseling.

Of course I guess a parent hopes to hear nothing but perfection and praise about their child, and constant perfect model behavior. But this news about Palmer having some difficulties has actually, ironically, made me rather happy. It has made me feel like I have a mission, something I need to focus on, something I can actually contribute to improving. Usually one goes around with this sort of helpless, directionless feeling of wondering what it is they are really supposed to be doing. And so well now I know. Now I know that I can stop worrying about teaching him Icelandic or shoving lots of high-calorie food in him. Those artificially and self-prescribed goals have been replaced by something tangible, something immediate, something that definitely needs to get done.

I am excited by the prospect of working together with Palmer, his teacher, his counselor, his friends, Dave, my mom, and my friends to start making things better.

It is, by my count, a very good start to the school year.

Academic journals

2011-09-16T17:50:00.000Z

Yesterday I was explaining to my students the requirements for their research paper, namely that they have to use at least three peer-reviewed academic journal articles. I then proceeded to tell how such journals work. Academics write an article that they think is good. They send it to the chief editor of a journal they respect, who is generally knowledgeable about the field. He or she may immediately reject a submitted article because it is not relevant to the journal or for other technical reasons. But judging the content of the article is left to an outside reviewer who is more specialized in the subfield of the article.

I told my students I had been through this process. Sent in article, had the editor forward it to an outsider reviewer. Then I explained the role of the outside reviewer is to give the editor feedback about whether or not to accept an article, and that the feedback usually went something like: "If you rewrite the beginning and the end and take out the part in the middle that is wrong, this article might be fit for publication."

Some students looked shocked, others looked concerned, or confused. One student laughed.

Recommendations?

2011-09-15T17:35:00.000Z

My son needs some basic pointers in conflict resolution. His current strategy is to let conflict escalate as far as possible at home, and seems to enjoy the process of arguing (it is a skill many in my family possess). But at school, he immediately runs to the teacher for even the slightest offense. I don't know why he refuses to engage directly with his classmates, and am looking for suggestions for shows, books, or movies that might be good for him to watch. Apart from Lord of the Flies, of course.

Words

2011-09-13T20:03:00.000Z

Working on my dissertation, which is about Þórðar saga hreðu, has redoubled my skepticism towards narrative and words as any sort of reflection on reality. Instead the more I work on it, the more I see the way words try to distort reality. After months and months working on this thing, I can honestly say I would be very grateful, very glad, to have my faith in words restored, if it ever could be.

School systems

2011-09-13T17:26:00.000Z

I once read an article that the public school system developed at the same time as capitalism because what school systems really train children to be is good little factory workers, or good little office workers. Follow instructions, do what you are told, get along with everyone, have marketable skills. As much as math and science and art, school systems teach conformity, social conformity and intellectual conformity for the assembly line of life.

I think they are efforts to change this, efforts to make it more flexible to different learning styles and aptitudes. But at a certain point, it becomes clear that, really, the best place for a child to learn is at home, with family who love and understand him, or her.

The revolution could not come soon enough for my little Palmer.

Tennis lessons

2011-09-12T19:47:00.001Z

Well-off Americans have, for at least the last 20 or 30 years, been rather diligent about enrolling their children in "enrichment activities" of various sorts. I have always found this a bit distasteful, because it seems to be about parents showing off their expendable income, and thereby their status, plus it is a preemptive attempt to give one's child a competition edge for college. If little Johnny or Suzy ends up being great at water polo, they will get a scholarship to a good college or admitted to a great college, even if their academics are less than stellar. The pressure therefore is manifold in the United States to be a "good parent" by signing one's child up for afterschool learning--either of a sport or of a skill like chess or music or art.

In Iceland, either because it is less expensive or because the pressure to get into college is not so great, these afterschool activities, which all my cousins' kids are involved in, just seem like a normal healthy part of growing up, developing social skills and physical skills and having fun.

As I am contemplating signing up Palmer, who is already in soccer, for chess, tennis, and possibly piano, I am making the inevitable comparison with my own childhood. I was never, ever one of the richy-rich kids, who had a pony and vacationed in Hawaii and was picked up from school in a Mercedes and a BMW. I was not one of the kids who was told from the age of 5 that I would be going to college. I was not enrolled in enrichment activity after enrichment activity. These signs of status were not afforded to me as a kid. Even still, a graduate student at UC Berkeley who used to work at the Smithsonian, I think of myself as utterly average and middle class.

One fall I was the cheerleader for my brother's pee wee football league. That's it. That's the only afterschool program I could put on my college applications, had it lead to me being on the cheerleading squad in highschool. Instead, I never even tried out for it.

Palmer I guess will have a different story to tell about his childhood.

A plan well executed

2011-09-11T15:13:00.001Z

I know everyone has their own thoughts and ideas and memories about 9/11. I have recently acquired renewed interest in it, because my dissertation deals with communal trauma like 9/11, when a community as a whole is forced to experience something they were not prepared for.

I went through a phase right after the events where I felt a great deal of sympathy with the patriotic outpouring. I never hung a big American flag from my window, but I was happy to see them hanging on the freeways around Washington D.C. I worked in D.C. when the attacks happened, and it was a frightening day for me personally. I wonder though, because I did not watch the events at the WTC live on television if I actually experienced less trauma and disbelief than some others. My experience was specific, personal, and tied to my memories of one specific place. It was not abstract or unbelievable.

After that patriotic phase faded, I began to think a lot about Osama bin Laden. I remembered seeing a video of him discussing the attacks before they happened, and I remember him signaling with his hands how it would unfold. The finger on one hand was the airplane. His other hand was outstretched upright. As the finger hit the upright hand, Osama curled the fingers of that hand down, signaling that he anticipated the entire building would collapse. Still it amazes me. And not in the repulsive way I know it is supposed to amaze me: that only a monster could conceive of such a plan. But I have to admit I was amazed by the brilliance of it, the imagination, the knowledge and effort that would go into executing a plan like that. That he had amassed an organization that could make that happen. And perhaps more to the point, that he felt this was the only way to get his message across. Maybe this last point is incorrect. Maybe he could have just gone to the American Embassy in Saudi Arabia and asked them nicely to please leave his holy land. Maybe he could have written a letter to the Pentagon and asked them not to give any more weapons to the Israelis. Maybe he should have just realized that the world is the way it is, and that one person can only hope to change it incrementally.

I think in a way that is the thing that upsets Americans so much about 9/11. His bold, visionary, dramatic plan worked. It was as spectacular as Hollywood, it was as lawless as the Wild West, it was as technically sophisticated as going to the moon, it was everything America admires in herself.

Even in his death, Osama bin Laden was like an American. He was not camping out in a cave in Afghanistan like we thought he was, eating food he caught and roasted over a fire. No, he was in a nice airconditioned house, watching TV, getting his favorite homecooked meals in a neighborhood where his trash was collected. The seals went swooping in just like us Americans have seen in movie after movie. We know our military can flawlessly execute a man in another country; it is another one of those things we admire about ourselves.

Service call requested!

2011-09-09T23:34:00.004Z

When I moved into my apartment in Iceland, they threatened to take away my garbage disposal, which would have ceased to work after they switched over to 220 volt electricity. I told them instead to leave things at 110. There were several reasons for this, but one of which was my desire to keep my garbage disposal. That thing is magic. I do not have to throw any icky food into the trash where it sit there rotting. Nope, straight into the garbage disposal where it gets ground up and washed away. Whala! Discovering how useful the garbage disposal is has significantly changed my attitude about doing dishes, which is something I had a bit of a complex about when I was a kid (my mom always left the dishes soaking overnight until the water had gotten dirty and cold!)

Imagine then my dismay when I came back to the states, only to find my apartment had no garbage disposal. I had assumed an American apartment would, but neglected to reckon one built in 1904 would not. So for seven months I scooped out food from the drainage basket, with a reluctant blech everytime.

So now I am in a proper American apartment, with all the cabinets and ceiling fans and airconditioner one expects. Plus a garbage disposal. A week after moving in, the garbage disposal stopped working. I was dismayed. I told the landlord the next day, which was last Friday. The following Monday was a holiday, so I knew I would have to go all weekend without my garbage disposal. Tuesday went by. Then Wednesday. By this point I was seriously considering knocking on the landlord's door to give him a piece of my mind. But he had said he had put in a work order, so I tried to relax. Thursday the worker showed up to take a look at it, with the landlord. After a half hour, the technician said, "Wow, I don't know how to fix this," to which the landlord replied, "We better get someone who knows what they are doing." I was sitting in the next room, trying to write, but the specter of being garbage-disposal-less haunted me. I was informed it might be a day or two until the proper technician could come. Ok I thought, I could make it.

To my utter delight, he came ahead of schedule, that very afternoon. So today I am the proud owner of a working garbage disposal.

Academic articles

2011-09-09T12:25:00.001Z

In the last month, I have gotten two requests for a PDF version of an article I published in 2009, both from colleagues in Iceland. I knew that the journal I was publishing in was relatively new, but still I would think that a Scandinavian journal (Nordisk Museologi, published in Norway) would be accessible in Iceland. I once published an article in Material History Review, and am not at all surprised no one has ever read that, even though it is a really good article (about how objects were re-appropriated by Viking raiders). I should become more particular about publishing in journals that are more widely read, I now realize.

There are other tricks to publishing academic articles also. Most academic journals have a rather long lead time. Sometimes a submitted article takes over a year to make it to print, although on average it is about 6 months I think after acceptance. My Nordisk Museologi piece was in print less than 3 months after I wrote it, which was great. Because you never do know how the field is going to develop over the course of several months. One must therefore be a bit of a clairvoyant to ensure that an article will still be relevant by the time it reaches print, and more to the point, still be relevant once people start to realize it has actually been published (which can take years). Thus in some sense, one is taking a stab in the dark when one submits an article, not knowing exactly when or how it will ever reach its audience.

Those academics who do manage to make a positive, interesting, important, meaningful, or unique contribution through an academic article, even months or years after the fact, get a big thumbs up in my book.

Spádomur

2011-09-08T02:35:00.002Z

Four years ago, I was at my sister's house, trying to figure out if I should take a job I was being interviewed for in Seattle or not. My sister could tell I was stressed out about it, so she suggested we draw runes and see what they said. The order in which runes are drawn are important.* As I recall, the first one says something about the person drawing the runes, the second one is the issue that must be worked through, and the third one is the outcome. Here is what I got:

The first one was pretty generic, Raido, a person in transition.

The second one was kaunaz, the rune for Loki.

The third one was ehwaz, the rune for an incredibly strong and lasting bond.

I still have no idea what any of it means.

*Also if the rune is drawn upside down or right side up makes a difference, but I don't remember which one of these I drew upside down.

Maybe, just maybe, this will actually make a difference

2011-09-06T16:50:00.000Z

Palmer's elementary school divides the kindergarden, 1st and 2nd graders into something they call "early birds" and "late birds". The Early birds come to class at 8:25, but the Late birds come at 9:25. The Late birds obviously get out an hour later than the Early birds.

Last year Palmer was an Early bird, and my feeling was that he rarely got enough sleep. So this year, I am hoping he will be a Late bird. I arranged my schedule so that I can be home with him in the mornings easily until 9:30, and I wrote the teacher a note expressing my preference. Maybe it will not make everything magically better this year than last, but I am willing to try. A simple change of schedule could be all it takes.

Pretty disappointing

2011-09-05T04:50:00.001Z

When I left Iceland in May, I told everyone I would be seeing them again in September. Because I knew that I was going to Sweden in September, and I assumed I would route through Iceland on my way. Even after I got a teaching assignment this fall on Tuesday and Thursdays, it still seemed like I would be able to come to Iceland for a few days, because by missing one day of teaching I get a whole week worth of vacation. Since the conference is only three days long, simple math meant I should have four days in Iceland.

Well, I did not reckon entirely on a few things. First of all is just how long it takes to fly from San Francisco to Sweden. Even with leaving San Francisco immediately after teaching, I will miss the entire first day of the conference. I do not speak until the third day of the conference, so this is not a big deal. But it suddenly meant a week in Scandinavia was actually only five days. Still, only two days would be occupied with the conference, so I thought I could spend three in Iceland.

Until I realized one other little tidbit. Tickets are really, really expensive. Especially on certain days of the week. So the day I wanted to leave Sweden and go to Iceland, the ticket was three times as much as waiting two additional days. And just like that, the three days I was going to spend in Iceland became none days, or more precisely, two and a half days became one and half hours.

So now I have to figure out what to do with myself for three days in Sweden after the conference is over. Whereas three days in Iceland seemed like such a short period of time, three days in Sweden seems like such a long period of time.

Orkneyinga saga

2011-09-02T18:44:00.000Z

For the next two weeks, my students at UC Berkeley are reading Orkneyinga saga. One student said yesterday in class discussion, "so far there has just been generation after generation of devious behavior" (they were assigned to read through chapter 20). I laughed and said, "Well, actually, that is how the whole book is." Everyone looked at me in amazement. I told them that they were not reading this for the plot, they were not reading this to find out "who won or who done it". Rather, this saga features repetition with variation; certain circumstances are fixed, others variable, and in each generation, because of the characteristics of the players and the specific circumstances, events unfold in subtly different ways. In this sense, it is like going through different levels of any video game, even Angry Birds. There is always the same set up, but slightly different birds and slightly different arrangement of pigs to shoot.

Then I asked them, "what can we read for, when we are not reading for the plot?" We discussed a lot of ideas, and they got especially interested in two of them: the political system this work describes, in which centralized authority is still very weak and individual responsibility and freedom is very high; and the way the personalities of the characters were described in such precise and revealing details. For instance, King Harald is not described in any other way other than to say that it was well known that he spoke the least about the things that affected him the most. My students seemed to understand the psychology involved in a statement like that.

I hope this helps them delve deeply into Orkneyinga saga, read it slowly and carefully, looking out for details and nuances, and actually enjoying it.

Building aesthetics

2011-09-01T17:49:00.002Z

The manager of the complex I moved into explained to me that it was "built by a bunch of hippies in the 60s". Ever since he told me that, I have been looking for evidence of some sort of hippie-love-commune aesthetic to the building. The shape of the building, seen from the air, would be like a hammer and sickle, maybe? Well anyhow, the main section of the building is a u shape that has a pool in the middle, and maybe the idea was that all the residents would hang out at the pool together? (Now a days, no one goes to the pool if they see anyone else there.) Inside the apartment, there is even less evidence of some sort of hippy aesthetic; rather it seems to inculcate a traditional family life, with his and her sinks and his and her closets. This is not a swinging bachelor pad.

So, anyhow, I think I may offer to the building manager that the building is built in a Scandinavian modernist style, which is not a hippy aesthetic.

The thing that is rather hippy commune about it, though, is the rent. I could afford to keep paying the rent with nothing other than a part-time job at a coffee shop, I do believe.

Pear tree

2011-08-31T16:38:00.000Z

In Iceland, picking berries in the fall is a regular tradition. Everyone heads up to the headlands and gathers basketfulls of the wild northern blue berries and moss berries (black, small, sour little guys) that spring up there every summer. Then everyone puts them in everything they can think of, or just eats the berries whole by the handful for several weeks. It is a lovely tradition.

California's natural chaparral does not offer much in the way of wild fruit. Some cacti do bear fruit occasionally (though it is dangerous work to get them), and Native Americans knew how to make a paste out of the acorns that come from the California Oak, but it is toxic without proper preparation.

But since the late 1800s, farmers have found a way to plant all sorts of non-indigenous species in California, and they have flourished. It turns out the first farmers who came out to Moraga, in the hills behind Berkeley, planted pear trees and walnut trees. Those trees, now over 150 years old, are still alive, and still bearing fruit, even though the farmers who tended to them are long gone. So the town of Moraga has started a Pear Festival every fall. When I read about this, I started looking around to see if I could spot any pear trees growing around Moraga. Turns out there is one beside the parking lot to this apartment building. I went to take a look, and indeed the pears were falling off the branches, very ripe, even though they are small. I picked some pears, let them sit out on the counter for a few days, and Palmer and I ate them this morning for breakfast. They were the best pears I have ever eaten in my life.

Proving the adage that a crooked branch yields the best fruit.

Neighbors

2011-08-30T16:39:00.000Z

In Iceland, I lived next door to a lovely couple for almost four years. I would occasionally chat to the husband or the wife if they were out front, but it never got more neighborly than that. I tried once to see if they would keep an eye on my apartment when I was leaving for a few weeks, but either my Icelandic wasn't good enough or my request was too subtle: they assumed I was just giving them some basic information. So when I moved out of my apartment, I did not make a special effort to say goodbye to them.

I only lived in my apartment in Berkeley for 8 months, but I developed a neighborly report with the couple that lived downstairs. We bonded pretty quickly, because they had a new puppy Palmer liked to try to pet everytime we saw Liz or Colin taking the dog out for a walk. And we had regular discussions complaining about the landlords. We were inching towards friendship sometime in June, after they went out of town for a week, and Liz asked me to watch her cat, Eva. After that there were some discussions about having a glass of wine on their patio with them some evening. I moved out before we had a chance to make that happen, but anyhow, they were a nice friendly couple, and they are on my list of good recent contacts I have made here in California.

Anyhow, I would hardly say this is a universal California/Icelandic dichotomy, since in most instances Californian's are not particularly friendly neighbors. Nice to find an occasional exception to the rule.

Walnut Creek

2011-08-27T15:21:00.000Z

The heart of every town is the mainstreet shopping area. In Reykjavík, this shopping district is not on "Aðalstræti" (Main Street), but rather on Laugavegar (Bath Way).

Walnut Creek, CA, where I now live, has its shopping district on its literal Main Street, actually two distinct shopping areas along North and South Main Street, and the adjoining side-streets. One is a cozy, small scale, shopping district with independent shops and restaurants occupying little wooden buildings along oak lined streets. It is an old shopping area, one that has grown up slowly over time, a lot like Laugavegar. It was here when I was an undergraduate at UC Berkeley, and for decades before that.

On the other side of Mount Diablo Boulevard, still along Main Street (but this time South Main instead of North Main), is another shopping area. It is new and huge and full of all the high-end big chains. Neiman Marcus is moving in soon, Macy's is there now, Sur la Table, PF Changs, etc. Very nice, high quality, if a bit pricey, chains in a well designed four or five block wide area. There are fountains and sculptures and brick walkways, all very well done.

These two shopping areas each offer their charms, but I must say I prefer the old Walnut Creek on North Main Street. It is interesting without being intimidating, welcoming without one feeling pressured to buy, fashionable without one feeling that one's clothes are never good enough. Yeah, I like the shopping district I knew from my undergraduate days, maybe because it also reminds me a bit of Iceland.

School supplies

2011-08-24T16:43:00.000Z

Last year I was in Iceland for Palmer's first day of kindergarden, but this year I am here in California and took my little guy to his first day of First grade. It was a fun moment; he was happy and everyone was in a good mood. On the way back to the car I was chatting with some of the other parents, feeling like a super mom. That is, until I realized that there had been a wee bit of miscommunication between his father and me. Neither one of us had taken it upon ourselves to buy Palmer's school supplies: the new set of crayons, the box for storing pencils, the special white eraser, etc. Nope. Palmer's backback contained only his lunch, two pencils and an old eraser. Now my mommy guilt is at about a level 7.

I am keeping my fingers crossed though. So he did not have the proper supplies for the first day of class. It does not mean we cannot get them tonight, before the second day of class.

Siggi's Skyr

2011-08-21T16:29:00.000Z

When I was in Boston last summer, I bought some of the skyr that is being made by Siggi here in the U.S., mostly because I had heard about it on RUV in Iceland and was excited to see it at a grocery store in Boston.

A few weeks ago I saw that it is now also for sale here in California, at Whole Foods markets. Then a colleague of mine in the Scandinavian department told me he had bought some. So it seems Siggi's business is doing well.

Unfortunately, my colleague, like myself and this reviewer, did not like "Siggi's yogurt". He looked at me wided-eyed and asked me if Icelanders really eat that. He is a terribly polite young man, so he choose his words carefully. I knew what he meant though.

I said to him that in Iceland, skyr is mixed with milk, so that the texture becomes both smoother and thinner. I also told him that my grandmother always sprinkled plenty of sugar on top. We both then wondered why in the world Siggi could not be kind enough to at least let his customers know that this is an option. There is room on the packaging to just have a short sentence saying, "a traditional food in Iceland, naturally non-fat and protein rich. Icelandic grandmas serve it with a few tablespoons of whole milk and a teaspoon of sugar. Siggi prefers just a touch of fruit."

Then everyone who takes a bite would know that Siggi clearly has the taste buds of a squirrel, but that Icelandic grandmas know what human food should taste like.

Or he could just say, "Best served mixed with 1/4 cup milk", and be honest about it.

My point is, American consumers need to be told how to eat skyr. You have to tell them it is not like other yogurt, ready to eat straight out of the carton.

Honk honk!

2011-08-19T03:17:00.001Z

A colleague of mine is leaving San Francisco and moving to Stockholm. Ironically, she needed to divest herself of some IKEA furniture before doing so. So I took some bookshelves and a desk off her hands tonight, which necessitated a drive into "the city."

I have never lived in a city, nor have I really ever wanted to. Even in Iceland, I could not see the point of living in Reykjavík.

So going into San Francisco for me is always an adventure. I wonder how people manage to live there, and what it is like really. Living in the Berkeley hills for the last 6 months is the most urban living I have ever experienced, and I finally did see some advantage to walking down to the corner shop, seeing lots of people along the way, chit chatting with this one and that. So I was wondering if that is what people in San Francisco do too: chit chat with one another.

I stopped at a grocery store near the corner of Castro and Market to check my hypothesis. It was an extremely cosy place, with brick walls and a salad bar and gourmet type food, called Harvest I think. Nice place. But no one in there talked to one another, and the clerk seemed shocked when I asked him about the parking policy. So I got back in my car guessing that maybe Berkeley was friendlier than San Francisco somehow.

Until we went through the Angel Island tunnel, and everyone started honking their horns. At first I thought they were honking at each other, and then I realized they were honking just to hear the echo, exactly like people do in Hvalfjarðargöng.

So there is the lovely truth in black and white.

The pool at the hotel

2011-08-18T06:40:00.000Z

Yesterday evening, when Palmer went into the pool at the hotel we were staying at in Capitola, I merely put my toes in at first. Then I went up to my ankles, finally sitting on the edge and dangling my legs up to my knees in the water. It was heated by California standards, which means the pool was about 75 degrees. I however do not consider that warm enough to submerge myself in it completely.

I suppose I got spoiled with the pools in Iceland, naturally heated with geothermal water. Or maybe it was because the air was so cold in Iceland. Anyhow, I never hesitated to jump in a pool there.

Too far ahead to take a step back

2011-08-15T21:33:00.000Z

Today I turned in grades for my students, and I am trying to justify why just about everyone in the class got an A-. Of course, in the humanities, we do not grade on a curve, so we do not intentionally, and artificially, make 10% of the class get an A, 20% a B, 30% a C, 20% a D, and 10% an F. We are not so draconian about it. But I do believe that papers should be graded by whether they met expectations, exceeded expectations, or were below expectation. The question is, what grade should the papers that "meet expectation" get. Should they get a C? Or perhaps a B? Generally speaking, I think papers that meet expectations get a B or B+, because afterall at a school like Berkeley, our standards are already really high. For clarity, for complexity, for originality, for insight, for proper spelling, punctuation, and word use.

Walnut Creek

2011-08-14T17:03:00.002Z

When the economic collapse hit Iceland in 2008, one of the major concerns is that there would be no way to import food to Iceland, because there would be no acceptable currency with which to pay for said imports. This got me worried. Of course Icelanders have survived on the island for over a thousand years, and there were years and years when no imports came. But those were lean years. And that was also when Iceland's population was about 70,000 instead of 300,000. Would the island be able to sustain that many people, I wondered. My friend, a scientist, assured me that it would, because Iceland exports fish and lamb meat, which means there is a surplus. That seemed logical.

Now I am living in California, and although the San Joaquin valley is called "The grocery store to the world," I'd prefer the feeling that my food supply is not 200 miles away on the other side of a mountain range. When looking for a place to live, therefore, I always make sure there is at least some fresh water supply near by. I have done this everywhere I have ever lived, from my first apartment in college until the present day. It does not need to be a huge river--that only happened in Columbus Ohio--but it needs to be something. Right now I live near Strawberry Creek, and I am moving soon right next to Walnut Creek. I like my odds much better in Walnut Creek though, since there are less people out there.

The North Atlantic

2011-08-12T04:45:00.001Z

Today was my last day of teaching summer session here at Berkeley. The course this term was focused on readings that are set in the North Atlantic. I am going to do the same theme for the course I am scheduled to teach in the Fall.

For the last day of class, I drew a VERY bad map of the North Atlantic on the black board (actually green, as you can see from the attached photo). Then I had the students go in groups up to the board, and illustrate the map according to how each of our reading depicted the various regions. Unfortunately, the outlines of the coast that I drew were hard for the students to decipher; even though I told them what was what, one group initially put everything in Spain they meant to put in Norway.

Poor Iceland did not get much attention from the majority of our readings, and in fact only the students focusing on the book "Cod: A biography of a fish that changed the world" even bothered to include Iceland in their illustrations. They labeled it "Old School" since they somehow got the impression that Icelandic fishing fleets are not trawlers, and are still fishing in the traditional way.

I don't imagine it will make too much sense as just a photo, but then there is always the comment kerfi if anyone is really curious what in the world my students were thinking. Or how it is that I can make such a terrible map.

My amazing boy

2011-08-09T13:47:00.000Z

I had a really wonderful weekend with my son, who had been in Georgia last week. I had really missed him! It seemed like he grew up so much in that trip in some ways. Or anyhow I had never really noticed before how intuitive he is becoming.

Children are supposed to be intuitive, and more in touch with their extrasensory perceptions. So I should have taken him more seriously Sunday morning, when I said that I did not know where I cat was. Palmer immediately said, "She's probably hiding in the basement." I thought that was no way possible, since she had been inside Saturday evening and none of the windows or doors were left open. But after tearing the house apart looking for her Sunday afternoon and again Monday, I finally decided that she must have pushed the door open to my apartment when it was not locked (one does not need to turn the handle to exit, since I live in a converted attic). And from there, if the main front door was left open, which it often is, she could have just walked out. All this my Palmer intuitively knew, and I wish I would have just gone to the basement Sunday morning to check, per my smart little guys advise. Instead of waiting until Monday night, to find a hungry and tired and scared little girl cat.

Palmer was also amazingly intuitive on Sunday afternoon. We went to go look at the two apartments where I have put in an application. The first one is a roomy one bedroom about 10 minutes from Palmer's house, in a nice area. The property manager told me Saturday he would leave the place unlocked, so Sunday Palmer and I went into the empty apartment, looked around, played hide and go seek, and used the bathroom. Palmer seemed relaxed and happy. He also told me he was not sure I had enough money for such a fancy place. I hope his intuition is wrong about that one.

He was spot on though when we went over to the second place, a room in a house just around the corner from Palmer's house. He declared, moments after we arrived, that he did not want to live there. Then he started climbing on her antique furniture and not listening when she told him to put down the frame for her needlepoint. I told my friend Amanda about this and she started laughing, "Palmer knew just what to do, it seems" she said.

Indeed he does.

Room with a view

2011-08-07T17:50:00.000Z

When I moved from Iceland back to California, one of my main priorities was finding somewhere with a nice view, because I had gotten so spoiled with my view in Iceland. My office window looked straight at Keilir, and to the left I could see across Flaxafloi all the way to Reykavík, while to my right billowed the smoke from the Blue Lagoon. It was a fabulous view, so peaceful and so vast.

I have a vast view from my apartment here in Berkeley also. I see almost the entire length of the San Francisco Bay, across to San Francisco and the Golden Gate Bridge. But my reaction to this view is very different than my reaction to my view in Iceland. This view does not seem peaceful to me. This view makes me think about how many people are on the planet, this view makes me think about the gangs in Oakland, this view makes me think about the Big One (the apocalyptic earthquake all Californian's believe is imminent), this view makes me think about California's economic woes. And when the fog rolls in every night, I am reminded of Jimmy Stewart's character in Vertigo in uncomfortable ways.

Now I am looking for a new place, but I am not looking for a view. Unless it is a simple view of rolling hills dotted with some cows and oak trees. That would be OK.

Pride San Francisco

2011-08-06T19:15:00.000Z

San Francisco hosted the first gay pride parade in the 1970s. At that time, and especially after city council member Harvey Milk had been assassinated for being gay, taking to the streets was an extremely brave and bold move. It was a declaration that the homosexual community of San Francisco would not be forced into hiding and made afraid, that they would declare themselves and claim their absolute right to live the life they choose to live. It was beautiful, but it was borderline militant. "I dare you to shoot me" the participants were saying.

That this has concept has evolved into a carnivalesque opportunity for "gleði" in Iceland is something I must say I do not entirely understand. All cultures need carnival, all communities like to come together. But the political fight for equality regardless of sexual orientation is to me a very serious affair, and in the streets of San Francisco, Gay Pride retains its political edge.

Equals

2011-08-05T22:21:00.000Z

Today I looked at an apartment--put in an application actually for an apartment--that is in the area pretty near where Palmer and his father live, one town over. I liked the apartment as soon as I walked in, because it is on the top floor, because it has a little balcony, because there was a place for my brand new and really pretty stool.

But mostly I liked it because it is really similar in both design and layout to Palmer's dad's apartment. The bedroom leads into the bathroom past a series of mirrored closets, which is really nice. The carpet is white, the layout open. It definitely has the same feel as Palmer's dad's house, and I believe Palmer will see it as if his mom and dad have equal living conditions.

Maybe it seems like a silly issue, but I do not want my son to think his mom is "worse off" than his dad. Financially, of course, I make much less money than Palmer's father. But I try to manage what I have, and I like to think I do alright.

Plus Palmer got used to his mom having a certain standard of living because of my apartment in Iceland. That place was big, it was comfortable, it was nicely furnished. Palmer did not have the impression his mom was hardly making ends meet, just as he does not have that impression from his father.

I hope I get the apartment I went to today.