50/50

With each passing festival, I find myself thinking about last year, and how much fun they were, how exciting and fresh, so much going on. Palmer and I went to Fískidagur í Dalvík, caught some of the action at Menningarnótt, had a good time at Sandgerðisdagar. I am not sure if this summer was as much fun for him, what with me working so much, and us not getting to many festivals, but I hope he was entertained by the trip to Prague, at least.

Fanney Halldorssdóttir, franka mín og skólastjóri Grunnskóla Sandgerðis, haldaði opið hús í dag og ég vil gefa hana hamingjuóskum. She oversaw the revamping of the entire school and the construction of a new building which links all the old buildings together and also the town pool. The new building houses the cafeteria and assembly hall, staff offices, and classrooms. The school was also reorganized at the same time, and new equipment installed. If there is any truth what so ever to the idea that architecture affects people, then I believe the open and colorful new school gives kids in Sandgerði a headstart on a bright future.

Two flocks of blackbirds are looping over the field across from my house. Appropriate, it seems, on a day when I am otherwise thinking about a highschool classmate of mine, who died in Iraq. I had heard something about someone from my highschool dying in action, but I did not realize until today that she was in my same class, and someone I spoke to pretty often. Megan McClung, a really nice girl.

On Friday, I checked with some friends of mine that are taking classes in the city, to see if I could carpool with them. One reminded me that if I went to talk to the people at Keilir, I could probably get a bus pass for free, and thus, well, I really ought to take the bus. But you know, there is just enough of a Southern Californian left in me that the bus bothers me. I don't like walking down the center aisle, looking for a seat (and here I might mention that the ReykjanesExpress is not a regular city bus with various seating options, but rather a tour bus with the dark lighting and high backed seats). I also dislike that there is no radio playing, or that it is so quiet you can't hear it. Last time I rode that bus, I noticed lots of kids listening to their Ipods, so I guess I could do that, but the thing is, I like to sing along to songs I hear, and well, that is really awkward on a bus. Probably also if I am carpooling, come to think of it. At anyrate, it seems quite clear ...

The Kennedys are often called America's Royalty, and I always understood that not to be a reference to their wealth or their political power, but to the potential for drama in their lives. Ever since the assassination of John and Robert, every calamity that befalls a member of the Kennedy family is explained in the media by the fact that they are a Kennedy. A family with that much wealth and power is also understood to be incredibly passionate, willing to take risks, living life on the edge. When terrible things happen to them, it is not an accident, but a further sign of the extraordinary nature of the family. I have always been hesitant to buy into that narrative frame, preferring instead to see them as regular people who are trying their best with their circumstances. And I think that has something to do with Chappaquiddick. I was born in 1972, so I missed of course the national trauma that the assassinations surely were. Instead my first association with the Kennedys came when ...

Clearly I like a challenge, I would not have moved to this rocky little island if I did not. But the challenge of getting Vikingaheimar to be what I think it could be -- a place for people with like interests to share their knowledge and experience -- sometimes seems too abstract, and of course the dissertation is that too, abstractly challenging. My friend Koleen is pregnant, and worried about how the delivery will go. A hard challenge, an important challenge, and one everyone can relate to, because it is not abstract. I told her to give the acupuncture a real try. Then there are the little things, like the challenge of figuring out what to do with the stale taco shells I just bought two days ago.

I posted a comment to my previous entry, about the Jazz festival, wherein I mentioned meeting my cousin Einar there. I am still thinking about it, thinking about what a very nice coincidence it was. I'm sure no Icelander would find it noteworthy, but I still do, the stability of the connection, the instant recognition that we know each other and care about each other, no matter the years, no matter what comes to pass between then and now. He still likes music, I mean of course he does, but now he's a doctor, and it is nice to see him finding ways to keep that interest going. I was especially happy, since his plan was to leave after the first act (an Icelandic trio) and I encouraged him to stick around for part two (a German trio) and they were absolutely beyond belief. Avant guard but with such skill and humor and intelligence, it was really a joy once one got used to it. I bought their CD, and so did Einar.

Having previously posted on happenings in the hinterlands, it seems only fair to mention that although Menningarnótt has passed in the hofuðborg, the 20 day Jazz festival continues. I think the main reason I like to listen to jazz live is that there, like at classical concerts, I feel no need whatsoever to sing along. Which is really good, since I have a terrible voice. Seriously.

Suðurnesja is abuzz with activity, between Sandgerðisdagur this weekend and Ljósanótt next weekend. Yep, Suðurnesjamenn are making plans. And that is really good for morale.

I think in the last year, I have spent a grand total of 7 days in Reykjavík, after being there quite a lot the first year I was living here. Now, with my dissertation research, it is quite likely that I will have to be going to the libraries in the city a lot, but I can feel myself stalling, wanting instead to keep working on the exhibit. The price of gas is probably the main reason I like to stay local.

All the children started school this week here in Iceland, though in the United States the school year generally does not begin until after Labor Day (the first weekend in September). Good thing for my niece, Kelsea, who squeezed in a trip to Ireland this year, late summer.

The summer time here in Iceland is of course wonderful. But on the other hand, everyone is always on summerfrí , no one is really home. Even things like Menningarnótt , many people who live in Reykjavík just are not home to enjoy it. Summer is in some ways the time of tourists, and it has almost a dampening affect on Icelanders. I never noticed that in California. In California, we were the ones at the beach early in the morning, we were the ones riding the surfboards, taking bikerides through the woods. In California, one never felt the need to suppress one's enthusiasm for life when a bunch of strangers were around.

We are building stairs down into Islendingur, the Viking ship we have on display. When we first opened, we used the stairs Gunnar had built to allow Hillary Clinton to climb on board, but they were actually rather steep and did not have a handrail. So now we are trying to build something more stable. There is unfortunately not a lot of room between the side of the boat and the fiski, the piece of wood that holds the mast in place, and we have never really figured out a good way to allow handicap access onto the ship, but at any rate, this is a step in the right direction (pardon the pun!). Museums in the United States design for handicap people, specifically, people in wheelchairs. Turns out they are about the same height as most children, so actually, designing cases to be at their eye level is a very good way to ensure that the largest number of visitors can see the exhibition. The privileged gaze is not the gaze of the 1.8 meter tall man, who in fact has the hardest time seeing the ...

Thank goodness for my big, unused storage closet. It means at least one friend of mine is smart enough to make my apartment her first and last stop in Iceland. I hope she won't mind, but this time I have set aside some clothes for her to look through. Now that all my clothes are here in Iceland, I have some redundancies and thought I might as well give away one of my two short green skirts, for instance. Giving does the heart good. Even if she does not really have room for it in her suitcase, I will probably make her take them. Pushy, pushy, pushy.

I just gave a tour of the exhibition to a group of British journalists who are on a 4 day trip to historic sites around Iceland. Rangvaldur told me that there was a ton of interest for participants from Britain to come here, so I use this as anecdotal evidence that indeed, Icesave has not ruined our relationship with the British Isles completely. I think I am going to start telling visitors that by the time women in the Viking Age were my age, they would have been grandmothers. I am so sick of people looking at me and thinking, 'How could such a young lady be an expert in anything?'.

In many of the Icelandic sagas, a person with a legal case goes to see the local goði, and the most clever of them will say, 'let us go for a walk.' The device in the saga is probably meant to build up suspense, since the household will not hear all that is being said and thus neither will the readers. But there is also a sense in which a walk in nature lessens the difference in status between the two, it is an offer on the part of the goði to treat the visitor as an equal, because within the household, the goði naturally engenders certain formal signs of respect. After reading two such passages lately, I was also thinking about the walking conversations I have had, like the times I walked beside my professors after class. And I was thinking about certain philosophers who have a definite preference for thinking while walking. Within the context of the saga society, this may not be terribly important, but I think the saga author also expects the reader to understand that convers...

Over the last two weeks, I had to field the question, 'So, what is your dissertation about?' many, many times. My standard answer is sufficiently baffling that most people, even serious academics, do not really comment much afterwards: 'It is on the relationship between literary culture and material culture.' Because the fact is I have developed my dissertation topic basically öfugt from the way most others do so. I've thought a lot about the theory, a lot about the baseline, I know what conditions I need met in order to begin exploring my topic. Where the dissertation goes from here I have no idea. All I can vouch for is that I have thought about the conditions a lot, I have chosen the best possible examples. Now all I can do is move forward, letting it go where it wants to go and needs to go, no preconceived expectations one way or another, no hypothesis to test, just the confidence that with the examples I have chosen, it cannot help but go somewhere interesting.

The bloggers here in Iceland made a lot out of Michael Jackson's death, but then I heard from several friends of mine how absolutely sick and tired people were getting of the coverage in the media of his funeral and the investigation into his death. Not having a TV, I had missed most of this. So today when I popped by CNN.com, I was genuinely saddened to read that the police have probable cause to file murder charges against his doctor, who started this May and had been experimenting with different drugs to help Michael fall asleep. The reports seem to question the integrity of the doctor, but I prefer to think of it as one more example of the hubris of modern western medicine, an establishment which thinks it knows more about life than any other civilization in the history of mankind. All I can hope is that the doctor genuinely thought this was the best way to help him.

After three weeks of speaking almost exclusively English, it took me a while to start speaking Icelandic coherently at a meeting this afternoon. I suppose the people who know me well understand that I sometimes have trouble expressing myself, as I imagine others do sometimes as well, even if they are native speakers.

I have been listening to the wind all last night, and all this morning. I think it has something it wants to say, though I have not yet been able to tell what it is. Perhaps the wind does not speak Icelandic very well.