Candles in the dark

At the darkest time of the year, we all need some

comforting light.

Kate December 2009

Some wise words from Goethe

"Treat people as if they were what they ought to be,

and you help them to become what they are capable

of being."

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Wolfgang_von_Goethe

I feel this is particularly important in a teacher student situation.

Some light experiments

A big cup

Drinking something hot is important for me.

Some herb tea or a big cup of hot chocolate.

So I have been looking for a big cup or mug,

and it should be white.

So this may be it.

4 dl of hot beverage.

A present, nevertheless.

Thanks!

"Utedo" is outhouse and it is inside - in a museum

All over Norway you can still see such small outhouses,

though in most places I don't think they are in use any more.

If they are in use, it is probably for a summer house.

But I remember a few outhouses from my life, though not as

elegant as this one.

Place for two, a grownup and a child.

Old newspapers.

Sometimes old telephone catalogues, I am told.

My Norwegian grandmother had a summer house

next to the Oslofjord with an outhouse.

My Swedish grandparents moved to another farm

in the end of the 1950's. Till they installed a WC inside

the house, we used the outhouse.

Another relative has a summerhouse next to a lake.

Still now, visiting her, means using her outhouse.

To learn more about outhouses, you can visit the present

exhibition at the Municipal museum of Moss.

I will have to decide if I am going to share more of what I saw there.

:-)

Waking up. Falling asleep.

Last night I had a thought about myself.

I realised that in my whole life there have been

just a few days when I have been excited getting

up in the morning. Extremely few.

I get up, but no excitement.

On the other hand, my excitement starts from the

evening on, particularly after it is dark outside.

That is when I don't want the day to end.

I like to work in the evening and then continue

for as long as possible.

Evening hours are so quiet, calming.

The darkness outside, the light in my office.

Peace.

I can work undisturbed.

Weird?

Real work. Real journey.

It may be that when we no longer know what to do
we have come to our real work,

and that when we no longer know which way to go
we have come to our real journey.

The mind that is not baffled is not employed.

The impeded stream is the one that sings.

Wendell Berry, born 1934

PS. I had never heard about Wendell Berry before,

but found this on the Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendell_Berry

Additional quotes on

http://www.gaia.com/quotes/Wendell_Berry

PS. Thanks Jerry !

From Anne Sofie Larsen's farm and stabbur

Enjoying what Anne Sofie Larsen makes

I bought some applemint tea with dried apple peel.

I could have chosen pepper mint tea or pineapple mint tea.

Perhaps next time...

So many products, made by one incredible woman!

This is just a small corner.

I also chose a jelly made from some mountain berries

I remember as a child.

Krekling in Norwegian.

Christmas cookies 2009

When I was a little girl, my mother would spend many

days in December baking all kinds of cookies for Christmas.

She still wants to serve her guests homemade tradional

cookies, but has decided she musn't necessarily make them herself.

I followed her to a Christmas market in nearby

Larkollen where inside a little white house, she was able to

buy all the cookies she would like.

We also ate a plate of rice porridge, another tradional

dish at this time of the year.

Often people here decorate their doors with similiar

wreaths.

The house itself, originally a private house, is now a

small community center where several organisations

hold their activities.

On this day they also sold knitted, felted and

sewn products to collect money for their activities.

Thanks for 12.5 kilos of vitamin C

Imagine my surprise when I went to the post office

to pick up a parcel and discovered that a friend had

sent me 12.5 kilos of red grapefruits and another

citrus fruit called Will Sweetie.

A full box!

Thank you, good friend!

On Monday I will let my friends at work taste some.

How to make a snow village - step by step

By chance I stumbled upon a tutorial on how to make a

little snow village. I am not sure if I will ever make one,

but it sure looks cute...

Check this

http://rosylittlethings.typepad.com/posie_gets_cozy/2009/12/heartshaped-moon.html

The train passed Torpo station without stopping

Through the years, many of the smaller railway stations

from Bergen to Oslo have been closed.

One of these stations is Torpo between Ål and Gol.

By chance I found 16 photos in Hallingdal's local

newspaper Hallingdølen, showing the residents of Torpo

with flags at the station marking the 100 years for

the train between Oslo and Bergen.

Some had dressed up in older clothes.

There was food served.

But the train did not stop.

It just passed the waving flags.

Like it does every day now.

and has for the last twenty years,

according to the article.

Would this be considered nostalgia or a positive demonstration?

For a series of the photos, click here

http://www.hallingdolen.no/hdspelar/bildeserie/article106208.ece

The train from Bergen to Oslo, minute by minute

From the train window on another train trip in August 2008.

Photographer: Cheryl

True, I love going by train.

True, for a period of ten years our family used this train,

for half the distance.

Good memories!

So I am not objective about this subject.

Back then it would take more than ten hours to go the

whole distance. Now it takes a little more than seven hours.

In 1894 it was decided to build a railroad between Oslo

and Bergen - an expensive and difficult project,

but important for connecting the eastern part of

Norway with the western part, over land, using

what was then fairly new technology.

The official opening of the whole distance was 100 years

ago. Parts of the line had been in use earlier, a fact I had not

thought about before seeing a fantastic documentary

following one trip from Bergen to Oslo, minute by minute.

The documentary produced by NRK is called

"Bergensbanen, minutt for minutt".

Three cameras in the front ( straight forward, to the right,

to the left) and one mobile camera inside the train. This

last camera was used to interview passengers and crew,

and sometimes got off for the short stops on the stations.

Few comments, but many songs and musical

parts connected to trains and to the places we passed.

Loved most of those!

When the train entered the numerous tunnels we were

shown the name of the tunnel and the length, and if it was

one of the longer ones , we enjoyed old film documentaries

and old radioprograms connected to Bergensbanen.

Looking at the passing scenery from this specific trip

made in the beginning of October 2009, it was

fascinating to see the milder climate closer to Bergen and

Oslo, and then the snow up in the mountains.

Sounds boring?

I have enjoyed it very much, and if they decide to sell

a DVD of the program, I think I will buy it.

Surprise:

In February 2010 I discovered you can download

it for free from

http://nrkbeta.no/2009/12/18/bergensbanen-eng/

This version does NOT include music, video,

side camera, interviews that we saw in the

original TV program.

You can also get a seven minutes taste

of this film on YouTube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ql2qXpNVTjw

PS. From comments on the internet, at least two

viewers , out of more than one million Norwegian

viewers, claim that when the train finally arrived at

Oslo S, they got up from their chair to leave the train ............

In a spirit of love

You will find as you look back upon your life

that the moments when you have really lived

are the moments when you have done things

in a spirit of love.

Henry Drummond

One gram of saffron!

I bought one gram of saffron at the pharmacy, as

my mother once told me that was the place to

buy it. It is called safran in Norwegian.

She used it for some of her Christmas baking.

I want to use a tiny bit of it for Yellow Salmon Soup

and a little bit for double-braided loaves.

One gram!

Many years ago I was told saffron is more expensive

than gold.

This one gram cost 126 Norwegian kroner - around

21 US dollars, I estimate.

Will it be enough for the soup and the bread?

:-)

Will I have some of it left for further projects after that?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saffron

Makes you wonder

In my second country I still have two rooms filled

with my personal stuff.

Mostly books and files with paper information

I have collected over many years.

A few pieces of furniture I would put in another home

if that home was in my second country.

But I will not bring that furniture to Norway.

Too expensive. Not worth it.

But the books and all those documents, what to do?

And what I really think about, is that after three years

I cannot really remember the details of what I have there.

Makes you wonder how much of it I could get rid of,

without feeling too much of a loss.

Moving in general, but also moving from one country to

another, is very much a mental exercise in defining

your own life, and therefore very exhausting.....

Helpdesk in Medieval times

As one of those in "the older generation" who often

feel a little lost with the PC, the mobile telephone etc,

and who still remember the beginning of my life with a

computer, I loved this Norwegian film clip from 2001

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQHX-SjgQvQ

Yes, moving from scrolls to books also had its

challenges........

Halloween 2009

As I have already mentioned, my experience of

Halloween is seeing it celebrated in American movies.

Now I know that Kate will grow up with Halloween,

it gets more real.

Here she is in her first Halloween costume.

When we were kids here in Norway there was a custom

for children to dress up (nothing fancy like this costume,

just grownups' clothes) right after Christmas and walk,

in a group of children, from house to house.

I think I participated once. We were the children

from three neighbouring families living a little

outside the village.

We knocked on the doors of each family.

There was some element of scariness , and I really

don't know why.

Because it was dark and cold and we were outside?

We sang some Christmas carols when the door was opened.

We then received an orange, I think.

This custom was called to "walk as Julebukk" (gå

julebukk).

Who or what was Julebukk? A Christmas goat?

Was this some old Norse tradition?

I don't know, so I just looked it up on the internet.

It seems to have been a custom to slaughter a goat for

Christmas, and then children would dress up with a

mask of a goat's head, covering themselves in a piece

of skin with the wool on, and walk from house

to house getting some treats from those who could

afford to give treats.

Do children in Norway still do this?

One internet source told that these days children dress

up in whatever they fancy when they "walk as Julebukk",

and that this custom is probably more prevalent

in rural areas than in towns.

Thinking about now, it seems to have some slight

similarity to Halloween.

Grand Hotel, Moss

In the 1920's a friend of my father came to work in

Moss. He first lived at the Grand Hotel, close to the

railway and the canal.

I don't know when it stopped being a hotel, but these

days there seem to be apartments on the upper floors

and businesses on the street floor.

The end wall was recently replastered.

Did it also get six new windows or were those

there before?

I am not quite sure.

Autumn in Moss

Kirkeparken with the statue of the elk / moose

in the background.

Simple fun

This is a copy of the cheese slicer my Norwegian

grandmother had in her home in Oslo.

I have now bought a copy of that cheese slicer.

It looks beautiful, and every time I will use it,

I will fondly remember my grandmother.

Simple fun.

"More humane, tolerant and eager to share"

My friend Norberto from Brasil wrote, in a longer text with

thoughts after a trip abroad:

In that respect, revisiting places and meeting old friends,

has the dual effect of registering and incorporating changes,

and reviving old feelings through smells, tastes, images,

and in less extent sounds.

The name of the game is perfecting oneself, this endless game,

the increase of consciousness and well-being regardless of

our health conditions.

The feeling of belonging to someone, a family, a musical

group, a country, or the human race is always reassuring,

and it can be achieved by listening to a symphony,

looking to a landscape either in a painting or through

a real scenery, or trivially sharing one sorrows and hopes

with a long-standing friend.

This feeling makes us more humane, tolerant, and eager to share.

Forgiveness

I used to think that forgiveness only was possible

if the person who had done something I considered

wrong or hurtful to me, asked me for forgiveness and

probably also in a convincing way.

Now I feel that forgiveness has more to do with a

conscious decision from my side to let the grievance

go emotionally.

I like these two quotes Jerry sent me:

"When deep injury is done to us,

we never recover until we forgive.
Forgiveness does not change the past,

but it does enlarge the future."
Mary Karen

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

"Not to forgive is to be imprisoned by the past, by old

grievances that do not permit life to proceed with new business.

Not to forgive is to yield oneself to another's control. . .

to be locked into a sequence of act and response, of outrage

and revenge, tit for tat, escalating always.

The present is endlessly overwhelmed and devoured by the past.

Forgiveness frees the forgiver.

It extracts the forgiver from someone else's nightmare."
Lance Morrow

"Forgiveness frees the forgiver". I like that.

Summer vacation in Sweden

I am not yet three years old on this photo,

but I remember when it was taken.

Lately I have realized that I have a few very clear

memories from the age of two and a half to three.

Renting a cottage for a ski vacation in 1939

Among my father's correspondence, I found this letter

he had received back in February 1939:

Thanks for the letter I received yesterday.

As already mentioned I can supply "dyner"

( bedcover with feathers) and pillows, but I

assume you bring woolen blankets,

because those I cannot supply.

Bread you can buy up here.

Greetings,

70 years later I think about my father and his friends

planning to rent a cottage up in the mountains to go

skiing and having a good time. I also imagine my father

volunteering to find and rent a cottage.

Then the whole group sitting on the train from Oslo

with their packpacks, including woolen blankets....

Swedish crossword

Who would have believed it?

I not only finished one of those big crosswords

in the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter, but

won their symbolic lottery ticket too.

Quite proud of that!

Interesting where all those Swedish words are stored

in my brain.....

After all, my mother tongue is Norwegian, though my

mother's mother tongue is Swedish.

I could probably say both sentences and be right:

My mother tongue is Norwegian.

My mother tongue is Swedish.

I once heard that immigrants often learn their children's

mother tongue from their own children.

H embroidered on an old pillowcase?

Or is it R or K?

Photo versus scanning

This is part of the embroidery on my grandmother's

Sunday kitchen tablebloth.

I decided to do an experiment, first scanning it

(see above)

and then taking a photograph.

A day of rest

I put this embroidered tablecloth on my grandparents'

diningtable.

My mother told me that her mother-in-law, my

grandmother, put this on her kitchen counter on Sundays,

as a way of showing that Sunday was different from the

other days of the week.

We think the embroidery was done by my paternal aunt

Kari, but it could also have been made by my grandmother.

These days, in most Norwegian homes, I doubt that an

embroidered tablecloth is placed on the kitchen counter

on Sundays.

Kate in October 2009

As Halloween is one of the holidays Kate will grow up

with, this is one of the holidays her grandma will have

to learn a little more about.

The price of travelling

It is true that Ryanair is starting up a new route

from the local airport here in Moss, but even as

a PR stunt I don't know how they can afford it.

But fact is that somebody I know is flying from Moss

to Skavsta airport near Nykoping in Sweden and the

ticket, one way, costs 58 Norwegian kroner for a flight

that lasts around one hour.

58 kr. is roughly ten dollars.

By comparison, a local bustrip in Moss will

cost you 25 kr.

Then this same person is going from Skavsta airport

in Sweden to Warszawa in Poland, and will then use

an Hungarian airline called WIZZ. The two hours flight

will cost around 210 Norwegian kroner.

Roughly 35 dollars.

True, in both cases, with only ten kilo of handluggage,

no meal, no extra insurances.

The price of travelling......

From autumn to winter

Yesterday morning it was minus 2 degrees Celsius

outside my kitchen window, but it turned out to warm

up a little as it became a very sunny day.

This morning the rain is pouring down

and just now it is plus three degrees Celsius outside.

But I should remember we are in the middle of

October already. As a child living up in the Norwegian

mountains I remember that we often had snow in the

end of September.

Moss definitely has a milder climate than most places in

Norway, and I am grateful for that!

Travelling

Tonight, through the internet, I ordered tickets for a trip

I want to take towards the end of December to my

second country.

I will be using an airline I did not even

know existed, and I will be going through an airport

I have never visited.

The most important part is that these are the cheapest

tickets I could find.

Cheap means I will travel with 10 kilo of

handluggage and nothing more, and that weight will

include the food I bring with me to eat on the plane....

:-)

Driving licence from 1914 - for a velocipede

That same Swedish greatgrandfather, back in 1914,

before he had bought his T Ford, used

a bicycle.

How far could he go on a bicycle at the age of 46?

It is far from his farm to this town.

In any case, the document above shows that he had

obtained the permission to ride his bicycle, here called

velocipede, in the town of Nykøping, Sweden.

More surprisingly, this was issued in November 1914 - brrrh, cold!

There were many rules to follow. One of them was

that he had to keep a metal plate at least eight cm high

on the back of the saddle with the issued number

4594 clearly showing in red numbers.

Hearing the word velocipede I immediately thought of

those really old bicycles with an enormous front wheel,

but googling around, my greatgrandfather's bicycle

probably looked like this

Source of photo:

http://www9.vgregion.se/vastarvet/va/resultat_enpost.asp?nr=VGM_A78229

T Ford Touring 1924

It is just a photo copy, but it still feels rather special.

In September 1924 my Swedish greatgrandfather

had bought a T Ford Touring and it cost him

2200 Swedish crowns, including 5 crowns for the

number plate he had borrowed!

He was a farmer and a politician and he must have

understood the advantages of getting around in a car

quite early. He must also have had the necessary money!

Looking for how the car had looked, I found this photo

on this website

http://www.automotivehistoryonline.com/Ford1924.htm

My mother thinks it was how her grandfather's car looked.

After he bought a second car , probably in the beginning

of the 1930's, this car ended up in the forest as a playground

for the children in the family!

Halloween 2008 and 2009

Halloween is one of those holidays I have seen on

American movies and read about in American literature.

Now that my son lives in the States, it is interesting

to see what is going on in real life,

at least through the family photos.

Last year I loved the photo of these two pumpkins

safely strapped in when they were brought back from

the farm.

That was 2008, with a baby on the way.

And here she is - Kate - in 2009.

She seems to enjoy the pumkin farm very much.

What a difference one year can make!

Listening

Photo : Cheryl

So when you are listening to somebody, completely, attentively, then you are listening not only to the words, but also to the feeling of what is being conveyed, to the whole of it, not part of it. J. Krishnamurti Thanks, Jerry!

A blunt pencil

As someone who needs to write down things,

I liked this quote:

A blunt pencil is better than a sharp mind.

Kate

In August 2008, my son and his wife were

visiting us here in Norway, and we knew there was

a baby on the way.

During that visit my son's three cousins gave them

a book - "1000 words and Pictures in Norwegian

and English" - urging the coming parents to

teach the baby Norwegian.

So here, in this photo taken in the States a few months

ago, Kate seems to have taken matters into her own

hands, so to speak.

Will she one day learn Norwegian?