The Summer Exhibition at Tomb Gallery

The following five artists, all women, exhibit their works at the Tomb Gallery (Galleri Gamle Tomb, in Norwegian) this summer:
Wenche M. Henrichsen (oil and acryl), Mariann Nilsen (acryl, acrylcollage), Jorun Halsnes Schumann (textiles) , Ragnhild Winsvold (ceramics), Helen Molin (mixed media).

I am fascinated by visual elements, but without real knowledge.

I liked this arrangement in this specific space.

Most of the time, less is more for me.
Clean lines.
Few colors.

The three burnt ceramic elements placed next to each other became something else than if just one had been hanging there alone.

This made me smile.
One does not always have to fit completely within the frame.....

The old Granary at Tomb is now a Gallery

On some other occassion I should perhaps photograph this building from the outside. It looks quite plain, and is now painted in red.
It was once the granary at Tomb.

These days the inside walls are painted in white.
The rooms no longer contain wheat and rye, but art.

Two floors of art in a very special space.

In Norwegian this gallery is called Galleri Gamle Tomb.

Studies in Green at Tomb

Today Tomb is an agricultural school, not very far from Moss.
But once, I imagine, upperclass women would walk in their long dresses through the park, looking at the artifically created ponds and enjoying the greenery of it all.



The water is covered with some tiny green plants.
Ducks are supposed to eat those green plants, I am told, but there were no ducks around.

The tall trees surrounding these ponds and paths transfer you, mentally, into another mood.
Studies in green at Tomb.

Tusen takk = Thousand thanks

My son improved the look of my blog.

Tusen takk!
Thank you!

Good news for January 2009

Bestemor=Grandmother

A few days ago when I opened a parcel I received by post from my daughter-in-law, I found
1. a card (this shows only the front of the card)
2. this little onsie (new word in my vocabulary)
and realised I am now training to be a grandmother!
This is the best parcel I ever received!

Thanks to those two who are making this possible!

Age at giving birth in Norway

This weekend, in the newspaper Dagbladet, the following information was given:
1. Norwegian women, on the average, get older and older before they give birth to their first child.
2. The average age for a Norwegian woman to give birth to her first baby was 28,1 years in the year 2007.
3. Few teenagers give birth today in Norway. Less than 1 out of 20 women give birth before the age of 20.

A travelblog? no!

Today I actually started a new blog,
but decided within the hour to delete it.

The theme was going to be a trip I am
doing in July.
But within a few minutes after opening
the blog, my stomach told me
I did not really want to share
it with the rest of the world.

I then found that through "Settings"
you can decide who can read your blog.

After deciding that "Everybody" was
not my choice, there was one choice called
"Selected Friends" or something like that.
Here I could have added emails of selected
friends.
It felt wrong.
Poor friends, signing them up!
It felt like I would have drafted them.

Last option was "Only blog author".
I clicked on that and felt real stupid.
Was I going to use the blog as a
personal notebook?
Then I could as well use a regular
WORD document.

Conclusion:
No blog for my upcoming trip.

I may send reports to friends,
but nothing public through
a special travelblog.

Something to strive for

To grow is to go beyond what you are today.
Stand up as yourself.
Do not imitate.
Do not pretend to have achieved your goal,
and do not try to cut corners.
Just try to grow.

Swami Prajnanpad (1891-1974)

Missing my other country

Some days when I miss my friends back in my other country,
I have to face the fact that I don't actually have a physical space
that is mine in that other country.

I still have my personal belongings there,
but not a space that is mine.

Sometimes I imagine
one big room with all my books,
a big table and some chairs,
and a bed,
a kitchen corner and a bathroom with a shower,
and a big veranda outside.
An airconditioner
that will warm the room in the winter
and cool it in the summer.
White walls.

That room would be my home in my other country,
also when I am in Norway.

Sadness

Sometimes you visit a very weak elderly person or a very ill person, and you realize there may not be another visit.

Local folk museum in nearby Raade

Many rural communities try to preserve
some of the local history in small folk museums.

In Raade, not far from Moss, some old houses
have been moved to an area in the village center
Karlshus.

On this particular day the houses were open
and you could even buy some coffee and cakes.

I love the windows in those old houses.

Eating in Son- Cafe Neptun , Backyard

We decided to sit in the backyard.
It was quite easy to imagine this place several hundred years ago.

Then came my hot chocolate - heaven!
A pity I didn't take a photo of the salad too!

Update November 2009:

I have just watched how chef Eyvind Hellstroem

helped Cafe Neptun in his reality show

"Hellstroem rydder opp".

As I am trying to learn from his programs, I guess

I should go back to Cafe Neptun once more.

They also have a website in Norwegian

http://www.cafeneptun.no/

Eating in Son - Cafe Neptun

We decided to eat our lunch at Cafe Neptun, located in an old building from 1761.
It used to be the shop with supplies for the seamen.


The menu included a salad with bread at 78 NOK (14 US dollars?).
You even could get glutenfree bread.
They also had hot chocolate, one of my favorites.
We ordered, and I took some photos.




It was a bright day, so we decided to eat in the backyard.

Update November 2009:

"Hellstroem rydder opp" is a Norwegian reality series

with chef Eyvind Hellstroem helping cafes and restaurants

in trouble.

In 2009 he helped Cafe Neptun.

Guess we should visit the place once more....

Son Harbour

Son is a small community along the Oslo fjord, just north of Moss.
A few hundred years ago the harbor here would be full of Dutch ships coming to pick up wood from the Norwegian forests.


These days, the ships in Son are mostly for recreation.
Many Norwegians have boats, yatchs etc

There was also this older wooden boat from Bergen.

Two swans were swimming proudly with their eight ducklings, hoping the humans would throw them some bread crumbs.

This small building at the harbor now belongs to the Sailing Club of Son.

Tertitten - an old train

The first part of a narrow gauged railway

in the area of Aurskog Hoeland was ready for use in 1896.

In 1903 the last part was finished.

Back then this was a railway covering a distance of 57 km.

The width between the rails is 75 cm.

The railway worked till 1960 but a group of entusiasts

have managed to keep 4 km going as a museum railway.

On Sundays in the summer you can travel back

and forth along the four kilometers, even taking

a break on Bingsfoss station.

http://www.tertitten.no/

I have taken this trip once many years ago and

would like to do it again.

I feel a special connection to this train,

popularly called Tertitten.

My paternal family used to live in this area.

My grandfather, as a young man, helped build

the railroad.

My father told me that because my grandfather was

rather short and fairly thin, his job was to bring the

needed materials on a wheelbarrow along planks

of wood to where the big strong guys could assemble

the railway.

A young, short, thin man balancing a heavy wheelbarrow.

You can also check this

http://www.cameramagica.no/About_Train.htm

Talkative and silent

Today I was reminded of two traits I have inherited, one from my mother and one from my father.
Most of the time I am very talkative - too talkative probably for most of my surroundings.
But if I don't feel very good physically or in any other way, I can shut down, nearly completely.

Post in Moss

A recent article in the local newspaper Moss Avis revealed the following facts:

1. The Norwegian postal system was organized in Norway in 1647 by a man named Hannibal Sehested.
2. In Moss there are 60 men and women bringing out the post, using 44 cars, two scooters and seven bicycles.
3. This district includes Moss, Rygge, Vaaler, Son and Hoboel.
4. Daily the postmen and postwomen in Moss district have 23000 deliveries.
5. In 2007 the post in Moss had 13 million deliveries.

Norwegian postal services on the web http://www.posten.no/Portal/English/AboutNorwayPost/

A walk at Framnes on June 2nd 2008

This path is part of a whole series of paths along the coast.
In this case, you start walking from Framnes in the direction of Alby.

Down at the beach you see two of the ferries going between Moss and Horten crossing each other. On a regular weekday there are 36 departures from Moss to Horten, starting at 5.00 in the morning till midnight.
.
The play of shadows on the stones on the beach.

Every half an hour two ferries crossed right outside where we were sitting.

This was really summer!

Choice of perspective

In every event, in every circumstance, we have
a choice of perspective.
Faced with difficulty, we can choose between
disappointment and curiosity as our mind-set.
The choice is ours.
Will we focus on what we see as lacking or
will we look for the new good that is emerging ?
In every moment, however perilous or sorrowful
it may feel, there is the seed of our greater happiness,
greater expansion, and greater abundance.

----- Julia Cameron

Sent to me by my internet friend Jerry. Thanks!

Life expectancy

According to the UN database for 2005, the numbers of years we are expexted to live, according to the countries we live in, go like this:

WOMEN
Japan 85 years
Australia 83 years
Spain 83 years
Italy 83 years
Switzerland 83 years
France 83 years
Norway 82 years

MEN
Iceland 79 years
Australia 78 years
Israel 78 years
Switzerland 78 years
Sweden 78 years
Japan 78 years
Singapore 77 years
Norway 77 years

According to an article I just read, people in Norway now live , on an average, thirty years longer than what they did 150 years ago. The article's explanation was that fewer babies die today and that there are fewer persons dying of tuberculosis and other infectious diseases.

Perhaps men from Iceland should marry women from Japan? :-)
Australia seems to come out well, according to this chart.

My two grandmothers became 85 and 91.
Where will my mother and I end up?

Pyromaniac?

One of the strange phenomena in a country full of wooden houses, is that sometimes mental problems in the local population comes out as pyromania.

The other day, in the middle of the day, a fire started in an old wooden house, next to a cafe in Moss. The police is now investigating if this is "just a fire" or something much more serious.

For all of us living in wooden houses, we hope they will find out soon.

Oslo around 100 years ago

This photo was taken in the same apartment I knew as my grandmother's apartment in Oslo. She rented that place for about seventy years!
It wasn't big - a small kitchen, a bedroom, a living room and a small entrance hall. The WC was half a floor up in the staircase and used by the two families living on that floor.
This photo is probably taken after they had lived there for about four or five years.
There is my grandfather and my grandmother and their two eldest daughters. My father was only born around ten years later.
The old lady is my paternal greatgrandmother. She used to live in a village on the countryside and had become a widow fairly young.
Now she had moved in with my grandparents in this small apartment in Oslo.
The young lady standing in the background "looks " like a relative, though I don't know who she is, at the moment.

It is interesting to note the many objects my grandparents had managed to buy or get for their apartment.
Next to the baby, on the table, is a photo of what seems to be my grandparents with their oldest daughter as a baby. True?

A promise made in 1962

Without revealing who wrote this , probably as a Christmas present in 1961, here is the translation:

To Mom

From now on I am going to tidy up my room twice a week in 1962 and I will also fetch the post every day. I will also shop for you once a week.

This is only valid for the year 1962.