A truck broke his leg

Moss is a town full of public statues.
Outside the public library sits this little boy, in bronze, reading his book.


On Sunday the stone he sits on looked like this.
What had happened?

At the museum a lady explained that a truck had accidently hit the little boy's bronze foot, breaking it.
The little boy was removed, sent to bronze hospital, but will hopefully soon be back.

Chequered rain suit for children, 1960's

After telling you about the black stiff version of a raincoat I wore as a little girl, here is the next version Helly Hansen developed - chequered , in a softer material and in two pieces.

My sister, eight years younger than me, had one just like this.

Gingerbread models

This is from the part of Moss where the old mills used to be.
In those same buildings you can now visit the museum or the library or a cafe or the college - just to mention a few of the places housed here.

Some of the students from one of the local schools made models of these old buildings - gingerbread models.




I photographed the results of their project at the museum.

The storm Tuva

This is the first time I have heard that storms in Norway are assigned names. I guess the next storm will be something starting with the letter U.

It really was windy!
A bus blew over in a nearby town.
Some big trees fell down here in Moss - see link to photo at the bottom of this entry.

The wooden house I am working in made really strange noices.
One could imagine a troll making those sounds. Perhaps it was!

But the second part of the bad weather was the rain.
Sometimes it hit your face like small needles.
That is the time you try to remember the saying "There is no bad weather, only unsuitable clothes."

Moss Avis had a series of photos taken during the last days, including one of a fallen old tree near the Canal.
http://www.moss-avis.no/apps/pbcs.dll/gallery?Avis=MA&Dato=20080131&Kategori=NYHET&Lopenr=198568445&Ref=PH&Params=Itemnr=4

Alcoholics

Two men in their forties were sitting on the bus in the middle of the day, very close to me, keeping a conversation all the passengers nearby could easily hear.

It was all about alcohol.

One had just bought a new supply of beer, and was going home to drink that.

They then talked about going to Vinmonopolet (State Shop where you can buy alcoholic drinks) and what alcohol you can buy there - "Strong and pure stuff".

Then they started to talk about Hjemmebrenning (making alcohol illegally at home) and how once the result of that production had been so bad, the persons drinking it had all vomitted.

"Do you drink every day?" one asked the other.
"No, I have to take a break now and then; otherwise it goes to hell completely", was the answer.
"Also she screams at me if I drink all the time."
(She is the wife or girlfriend, I assume.)
"Well," says the other, "my girlfriend and I have separate apartments, so when I need to drink, I live in my own apartment".

What was so strange , to me, was the fact that the conversation was so public, as if this was a completely normal situation.

Remembering Knut Mykland

These four books are part of my library here in Norway.

They give the names, often photos and a short biography for around 11000 Norwegians who were killed during World War Two.



During my recent visit abroad I, by chance, met a Norwegian lady named Solfrid. During our conversation she told me her uncle had been one of the Norwegian victims of World War Two.



Now back in Norway, I checked the third volume of Our Fallen (Våre Falne)

There I found the profile for Solfrid's uncle Knut Mykland.







MYKLAND, KNUT, lieutenant, Vegusdal. Born October 6th 1913 in Herefoss, son of farmer and lieutenant Eivind T. Mykedal, born 1878, and Torine nee Mykland, born 1889, both in Herefoss. Military command school (befalskole in Norwegian), artium (high school graduate), military school (krigsskole), air force school (flyskole).
Was stationed at the offices of Engineer Corps of Troendelag.
When the war broke out he was stationed at Kjeller.
Was part of the military campaign going from Eastern Norway to Aandalsnes.
Was seriously wounded at Setesmoen April 30th 1940 and died the same day in Molde.
Buried in Vegusdal.

Looking for more information on the internet I found a list of graves in Vegusdal
http://aa.disnorge.no/gravregister/vegusdal.htm
In addition to Knut Mykland's grave I also found that his parents were buried there.
His father Eivind Mykedal died in February 1945, not yet 57 years old.
His mother Torine Mykedal died in 1987, nearly 98 years old.

A raincoat bringing back memories

As a little girl I had such a raincoat.

In particular I remember the soft fabric touching my neck.

The coat itself was rather stiff.

Then of course we wore those special rainhats covering the neck.

We looked like little fishermen!

Helly Hansen - clothes for bad weather

Helly Juel Hansen was a sea captain who came back to his wife Maren Margrete in Moss and decided to make better clothes for seamen.

So the two of them started in 1877 and constantly improved their models and production, keeping a high standard.
To read more about this, check out Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helly_Hansen

Some of the first products, shown at the exhibition.


If you need good sportswear, high class work clothes or even a survival suit, Helly Hansen have all these in their catalogue.

The municipal museum of Moss

My mother says that in the end of the 1940's the saying went that Moss had 250 small and large industries.
It is therefore natural that the municipal museum is also a museum for Moss as an industrial town and that it is located in one of the old mill buildings.
On Sundays the museum is open for three hours so today I went there to see one special exhibition about Helly Hansen and one about Il-O-Van.
More about that later.
The photos above show the entrance to the museum. As you walk towards the entrance door, over a bridge, you see part of the river down below. Now with very little water.

My dear Ricoh camera

This is the camera I used for about 25 years before buying a digital camera.

The greatest difference for me has been that now I can take an endless number of photos and then chose afterwards at home, which photos I want to keep.
Back then I had to work in units of 36 clicks, developing and printing all those 36 photos, and then perhaps liking one or two or three of the photos.

As for printing out photos in a photoshop, I hardly ever do that any more.

I have one favorite photo shop in my other country.
In the past they would have earned money from selling me films, developing and printing my films.
These days their main income from my hobby would have been from selling me new digital cameras, memory chips for my camera and a battery charger with rechargeable batteries.

Anything on this film?

Probably around ten years ago, I got this simple camera when I subscribed to Time magazine.
I used it a few times, for fun.
After all I had my Ricoh 5 for taking photos back then.

Now I found the camera in my old stuff, and before opening the cover, I took into consideration there might still be a film inside.
So it was!

Now the question is: Will there be any images on this film?
I will wait and see til I develop it.

Some more sweaters

This sweater, knitted by my mother around fifty years ago, if I remember right, was in a good enough shape to give as a gift to a friend.

A third sweater I gave as a present to my daughter-in-law Cheryl.
That sweater is a combination of both knitting and woven colorful bands and tin buttons.
It was made by my mother around forty years ago, when I was constantly talking about emigrating.
One day my mother said: "I will have to finish the sweater before you leave". That was the first sign that she had accepted my decision to emigrate.

One generation later, my son has emigrated to the States, so the sweater has now emigrated for a second time around.

Hope you will enjoy it, Cheryl!

The fish bone

In the summer when I was five or six, I was going by bus from Oslo in Norway to some place near Stockholm, Sweden, without my parents, with my little brother.
On this trip one of the passengers, an English-speaking tourist lost a box on the bus floor and out fell his artist tools.
With no knowledge of English I quickly helped him collect the stuff back into the box.
As a thank you, he gave me this fish bone, made in metal.

Now in 2008, it was a little rusty, and after photographing it - into the garbage bin it went.
The memory of a magic moment will stay with me.

How I did not become a knitter

It was no loss to humanity that I did not become a typical Norwegian knitter of sweaters, caps, mittens and socks.

This is the story I tell:

In fifth grade my best friend Nilla knitted a light blue sweater, with no pattern, all by herself.
I was very impressed and asked my mother if I too could knit my own sweater.
My mother and I went to a shop where I chose the pattern and my mother bought the yarn.

I started with one arm and probably knitted the first five centimeters.
Then my mother wanted to show me how it is done - before I understood what had happened , she had finished the whole arm.
And so it went.
My part in knitting this sweater was more or less non-existant.
But I loved the sweater and used it for many many years.


The historical arm of the sweater, also including some historical fraying of the sleeve.


Well, I have kept this sweater for around 45 years, but now, trying to downsize my life, I decided that this particular sweater, after being photographed, should be thrown in the garbage bin, and so it was.

Dust bunny = Hybelkanin

According to http://www.answers.com/ the definition of dust bunny in informal speech is "A mass of fine, dry particles of matter, especially hair and skin particles, that is formed by static electricity".

According to the Norwegian term "hybelkanin" the dustbunnies prefer to live in a "hybel" (small apartments for singles, students etc). Probably the oldfashioned honorable housewives would not be caught dead with one of those "pets" in their home.

In German, I just found out, they call it Staubmaus - a dust mouse.

In Swedish, it was written on the Norwegian Wikipedia, they call it "dammrotta" (dust rat).

Does the difference of terms in Swedish and German reflect the actual difference in sizes of those two, or just the fear?

PS. The above photo is NOT from my house :)

In a pajamas in front of the PC

One way to feel you have the day off work is to walk around in the morning in your pajamas.
In particular I feel great checking my email and writing on my computer dressed this way.
It is a time when I am in my own little world.
I find it very relaxing.

But now, at ten thirty in the morning, it is time to enter the world again....

Your clothes dangling from a gallow

In Norwegian we use the word "kleshenger" for a clothes hanger.

So far I have only thought about that word as being connected to a more neutral version of hanging up something.

Now, when I bought new wooden clothes hangers (I have this "thing" about wooden clothes hangers) in the Clas Ohlsson shop in Moss, the Swedish tag (shown above) made me rethink the the connection between the word "hanger" to the very aggresive word of "gallow" (galge).

Imagine your clothes being hanged in a gallow!

In my case, in a wooden gallow.

Blue Praha

At the airport in Praha I admired the Blue Praha shops selling beautiful modern glass products like these. You can check their website and the galleries there for more details of their products.

http://www.bluepraha.cz

I am no expert, but felt the designs and colors reminded me of Scandinavian design.

Blue and green glass bowl

Hunting for the Aztec cutlery at Fretex I found this blue and green glass bowl, brand new, with the artist's name Harriet Stensrud .
I liked it.
It reminded me of what I had seen at the Praha airport in shops called Praha Blue.
I bought it and brought it home, though in general I am trying not to add a lot of "stuff" to my apartment.

Assignment: Aztec cutlery by Don Wallance

Many years ago, friends abroad got a Scandinavian cutlery named Aztec as a wedding present.

One knife is now broken, and six dessert spoons missing.

Will I be able to locate the replacements?

Today I visited both Fretex and Masvo here in Moss, rummaging through their baskets with assorted cutlery. If the number of knives, forks , spoons and teaspoons ending up in those shops, can indicate which pieces of cutlery get lost the least, the clear winner would be the forks.

In particular there were very few teaspoons.

At Fretex I found one Aztec knife, but as long as I am looking for the dessert spoons, I may look a little further to find a more perfect specimen.

I discovered that IKEA had made a cutlery with a knife that seems to be inspired by Aztec.

Then I became curious about this cutlery and found that an American designer named Don Wallance had designed the cutlery in 1965 and the Norwegian factory Norstaal had produced it.

What I had thought of as a big teaspoon was called a dessert spoon.

http://www.norstaal.no/aztec.htm

http://www.stelton.se/ProductView.aspx?id=202

I will also find out if you can buy this cutlery in single pieces, new, and the price.

Nice surprise

When I was away, the owner of my house painted my bathroom, installed a new shower stall and a new mirror. It was a wonderful surprise that I am very thankful for.
The bathroom still smells of fresh paint!

Living in a little town

Most of my life I have lived on the countryside.
Small rural villages.
Beautiful nature. Quietness.

But the shops, the hairdresser, the dentist and other services, in addition to cinemas, museums, public offices, galleries, concert halls etc. have all been somewhere else.
And transportation has always been a problem.

So now, living in a little town like Moss, I find such pleasure in living in a place where transportation is not a problem and where I easily can get to what I need.

Excellent!

My days on the countryside are over!

More thoughts

Waiting for six hours in the transit hall in Praha in the end of December, I wrote a little story about The Man, the Woman and the Blue Car.
I will still have to work on the end of the story, and I will probably never publish it here.
But one part of that story has a connection to what I wrote yesterday about the "advantage" of sitting in the plane between my two countries. "Advantage" and not advantage.

I once used a lot of money to learn how to drive, but I found out I didn't want to drive.
I was afraid of making a terrible mistake while driving, a mistake that would cause somebody else harm.

On the negative side, I have learnt the advantage of being a passenger.
Somebody else is driving.
Somebody else is most of the time chosing the destination.
To my defense I can say I am good at being a navigator, giving directions.

On the positive side, I have found that if I do not drive myself, I can get where I want by chosing public transportation - taxis, trains, ferries and planes.

Sitting on a plane between my two countries, and feeling some kind of relief, is - as far as I see it just now - again not chosing the destination, but being a passenger.

Thoughts on a plane

On my trip back from my other country to Norway, I remembered something that happened when I studied, many years ago.
Some of the students were already mothers with young children, often frustrated with sharing their time between being a student and a mother.
Our psychology teacher tried to explain: "When you are home, you are feeling bad that you are not at school. When you are at school, you are feeling bad you are not with your children. The only time you feel some kind of peace, is sitting on the bus, going back and forth."

Having two countries is something like that.
So perhaps the only time one feels some kind of peace is sitting on a plane going from one country to the other?