Kate has learnt to smile

Kate is seven weeks old.
This week the most amazing news
reached the shores of Norway:
Over in the States Kate had gotten the hang
of a very useful skill:
She now knows how to smile!

Different kinds of snow

Today I was thinking about the names
for different kinds of snow we used
when I was a child up in the Norwegian
mountains.

Here are those I remember right now:

NYSNØ New snow, usually we would talk
about snow that had fallen in the
last day or so.

PUDDERSNØ This was a little bit like the
new snow, but more powdery.

SKARE Often the top centimeters were
harder, like a sheet of pressed snow.
Often the SKARE could even hold
over body weight while we skied
- I think.

KRAM SNØ This snow was a little wet and
perfect for making snowballs,
snowmen and building lanterns out
of snowballs.

RÅTTEN SNØ This happened sometimes
in the late spring - if you tried to ski,
the snow would give after, and you
sink into wet snow. It was a little
scary.

SNØSLAPS Here the snow was mixed with so
much water that cars and people
had made it into a thick snow soup.

This is what I remember right now, after
all these years.
When we skied, we would prepare our skies
by applying the suitable ski wax based on
the kind of snow we were going to ski on.

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

Photographing by night, without a flashlight

My son showed me, in January, how I could
take a photograph on my digital camera
without using the flash.

Last night at 9.30 the light outside was
kind of yellowish.
I decided to explore the non-flash option.

This is not a very good picture, but I liked it
because I will remember a new possibility
while using the camera.

Picking 20 liters of wild raspberries

It was July 1940 on the family farm in
Sweden.
The clock showed 6.30 in the morning.
Those photographed were all very wet from
the morning dew.

They had gotten up very early that morning
and together with the photographer (my aunt)
and my grandfather they had just finished
picking 20 liters of wild raspberries.

So here they are - my uncle, a family friend,
my mother and my aunt.

Snow and snow and snow

This photo was taken in my backyard
one time when just a tiny bit of
snow had fallen.
I imagine it melted the next day....
That has been the kind of winter weather
I have been spoiled with here in Moss.



Today I took this photo.

Since I came back from the States,
Moss has been covered in snow,
with more snow falling now and then.

Suddenly I had this feeling I had as a child.
When we lived up in the Norwegian
mountains and the first snow came,
sometimes in the end of September,
you just knew that the snow would be there
till the last spots melted away in the
beginning of June.

Snow had a life.
It was like a long film.

Till now, here in Moss,
snow has more been like snapshots.
Now you see it. Now you don't.

For the last two weeks snow in Moss
has become a film for me.
Hopefully a documentary that doesn't
last too long....

My baby jacket

My mother really knows how to knit.
I haven't inherited that :-)



This cute baby jacket she knit for me
as a newborn.



Now I wonder if she or my daughter-in-law
(another talented lady in this field)
would like to knit a new edition of this
jacket for little Kate.

Perhaps?

Grandmother's kitchen towel

This is an old kitchen towel that belonged
to my Swedish grandmother.
As you can clearly see, it has some holes.
My mother remembers her mother weaving
this close to seventy years ago.

My grandmother has embroidered the
initial of her married name .


While the towel was still used by my
grandmother, it also got a hole in it.

She carefully mended it.

House Fires

Many houses in Norway are built in wood.

So fire and wood can be a real fatal combination.
2008 came out a sad year in the statistics:
84 persons died in house fires.
That was the worst year since 1979 when
91 persons died in house fires - out of these
19 died in two separate hospital fires.

I have a few fire detectors, but intend to
buy another one for my attic.

A photo that became a piece of art

What happened?

A photo in a nylon cover got wet.
It probably happened during the last
15 years.

I do not know what the original
photo showed, but I love these two
ghosts - or whatever they are.

One Definition of Religion

As one who believes in a loving, cleansing,
forgiving God, and as one who advocates religion
as a cure for the afflictions of the soul,
I am embarrassed by the use of religion to induce
guilt rather than to cure it.

It is so sad to meet people who think of
themselves as deeply religious and to discover
that what they think of as religion is in fact
a childish fear of losing God's love if they ever
do anything against His will.

I believe that the fundamental message of
religion is not that we are sinners because we
are not perfect, but that the challenge of being
human is so complex that God knows better than
to expect perfection from us.

Religion comes to wash us clean of our sense of
unworthiness and to assure us that when we
have tried to be good and have not been as good
as we wanted to be, we have not forfeited
God's love.

To say that God forgives us for our misdeeds is
not a statement about God, about God's
emotional generosity. It is a statement about us.
To feel forgiven is to feel free to step into the
future uncontaminated by the mistakes of the
past, encouraged by the knowledge that we
can grow and change and need not repeat the
same mistakes.

(H. Kushner)

PS. Thanks, Jerry!

Sending my stuff from one country to the other

Unpacking some of my parcels tonight,
smelling the smell, looking at the books
and documents, touching some of
the personal momentos I have now sent to
Norway, made me realize very clearly:

Dragging your stuff from one country
to the other, also means dragging your
soul.

Just like the post parcels arrived fairly
battered, with one lost, so my soul feels
battered, with scratches.

The ratio of missing parts of my soul
is bigger than 1:20.

Snow and snow and snow

Arriving at the airport in Chicago, it turned
out that British Airways had not been able
to get their airplane from London on time.
On my grandmother-vacation, I had not
watched the news and heard about all the
havoc the snow in London had caused.

So I was transferred to a Virgin Atlantic flight,
even leaving one hour earlier than the
scheduled BA flight.

We flew in over a snow-covered Wales and
England, but at Heathrow they had solved
any earlier problems they had, and we landed.

The BA plane from London to Oslo took
off according to schedule.
As we got closer to Oslo, it started to snow,
more and more, and the pilot informed us
that we had to circle a little while the ground
crew cleared the landing strip.

Finally we were on the ground and I walked
quickly through the terminal to pick up
my luggage and run out to the bus that would
bring me to Moss.

By now it was snowing very heavily.
No bus in sight.
Only cold passengers waiting.

Then we heard over the loudspeakers:
"Because of the weather, the airport has
just been closed. Sorry for any
inconvenience."

At that point I couldn't even think of
where I may have landed, if our plane
had been redirected to some airport.

I was just intent at getting on the bus
and getting to Moss.
After a delay of more than an hour and
a half, the bus came.
It was snowing and snowing.

The bus had to drive carefully, but we finally
reached Moss.
The streets were covered with snow.
Getting off the bus, meant getting snow up
to your knees.

After some additional problems of finding
the taxi I had ordered in all this snow
chaos, we drove through Moss to my
apartment.

Those are the moments you appreciate
a heated bus and a heated taxi.

Snow snow snow.

PS. It had taken 22 hours from the time I left
my son's apartment till I entered my own.

Snow

Here I have been trying to explain that
Moss hardly has any snow at all in the winter,
only to return tonight to a Moss where I could
hardly get off the airport bus, where it was hard
to find a place the taxi could pick me up, and
where the taxi had a hard time getting to my
house.
Moss is full of snow!
I must take some photos tomorrow, if it is still
there.

By now, I have been on my feet for for 34 hours.
The trip from Chicago to Moss took 22 hours.
Time to go to bed!

Libertyville, Illinois

My son and I went to Libertyville one day.
They even had a little Swedish shop there!
We walked around Libertyville, and I enjoyed
this little town.

I took these two photos of a local
historical building, but here is the town's
own website http://www.libertyville.com/

The Doll's House

My Swedish grandmother, more than
35 years ago, made these pieces of
doll's furniture after she started to live
in a seniors' home.

Now, my daughter-in-law has bought
a doll's house she is renovating, and I
brought the furniture from Norway.

It seems to fit, but it will be up to the interior
decorator if it will be part of the doll's house.

Perhaps Kate one day will play
with what her greatgreatgrandmother
Ruth once made?

My face, my grandmother's face

My son has taken several videos with
little Kate and me.

In general I feel OK being close to 60.
You know, wrinkles and all that.

But in one of the videos, I suddenly saw
my Norwegian grandmother.
She died back in 1973, close to 91 years old.
My memories of how she looked would
most of all be based on how she looked in
her late seventies and in her eighties.

Looking at that one specific video with Kate,
I saw the face of my grandmother!
Something with her mouth, her expression.

Strange!

O Magazine

Being in Chicago, I watch the Oprah show
most mornings, and just HAD to buy the
O Magazine.
This despite the fact I received a beautiful
book when I arrived - the O's Big Book of
Happiness, a book full of selected
O Magazine articles.

I often feel inspired by what I watch on
the TV show and read in the O magazines.
Thanks, Oprah!

Second visit to Big Shops

Coming from a small town and small villages,
the local shops came in sizes that fit those
places.

But here a lot of things come king-size,
including the shops and supermarkets.
Walking into Walmart and Target during my
first days here, I felt uncomfortable.
Too big.
Too many products.
Too many customers.
A kind of culture shock.

These last days I have been back,
and I felt quite different.
The size was not scaring me that much.
The number of products first made me
curious, and then - as I walked through
the aisles - strengthened my inner
feeling, that I myself, would need very few
of these products.
This time I saw the other customers, but
they did not catch that much of my attention.

Tourist: Visiting the Art Institute of Chicago

www.gallagher.com/photos/city/index.htm

After we arrived at the railway station in
downtown Chicago we enjoyed walking
through the streets.
The temperatures were around zero degrees
Celsius, so it was a good winter day
for Chicago.
We passed the Chicago Cultural Center
where I attended the wedding of my
daughter-in-law and son in May 2007.
The Bean was there, now with a skate rink
close to it.
Walking along the Grant Park, we reached
the Art Institute of Chicago.
http://www.artic.edu/aic/
Nice surprise: No entrance fee , instead of
the usual 12 dollars.

We started with the Thorne Miniature
Rooms
http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections/thorne
and then went up to the second floor
to watch the incredible collections of
paintings.
I particularly enjoyed the Impressionist
paintings.
http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections/search/citi/category%3A100

This is a place you can spends days
exploring the treasures.
We only had a few hours.

I hope to be back one day.

Some of their collections can be seen
online.
http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections/

Tourist: Going by train to downtown Chicago

www.railroadpix.com/rrphotos/detail/126.html

Yesterday was my day as a tourist in Chicago.
Together with my son, we took the train from
a station called North Chicago, next to
Waukegan, to downtown Chicago.
It takes around one hour.
First surprise: the railway station in
North Chicago was a small wooden house
and it was CLOSED.
Second surprise: The train had two floors.
Third surprise: The ticket back and forth to
Chicago cost only five dollars!
Fourth surprise: The ticket had a special place
on the back of the seat in front of you,
making it easy for the conductor to check
that all the passengers had tickets.