Taking a little break

Sometimes I feel that writing my blog is a kind

of "meter".

Sometimes a "physical energymeter".

Sometimes a "mental energymeter".

Sometimes a meter for the importance of

withdrawing a little.

Sometimes I write more.

Sometimes I take a break.

Just now, I need a break.

First snow this year in Moss

Last night around eight o'clock I came out of a meeting

in the centre of Moss, and despite the darkness,

saw that it was snowing, at least a little bit.

Today there was no trace of snow downtown,

but we will follow the situation..........

Which in my case means I hope there won't be very

much snow this winter, but then again, who am I?

A house that makes me smile

I probably should learn more about this wooden house

because every time I walk by, it brings a smile to my

face.

I think it is mostly because of the cupola that looks

quite oriental for Norway and for Moss, but in particular

because I think that one day, so-and-so many years ago,

somebody designed and somebody (else?) approved

this building for this little town.

Daring souls?

Biggest? Tallest? It all depends how you look

A colorful alarm clock

In my other country there are just two seasons

(one with rain and one without) as far as I am

concerned.

Here there are definitely four seasons.

I love looking at the autumn colors.

But I know that in many ways the colors are

like a seasonal alarm clock:

Soon winter will be here!

Helpdesk in Medieval times

I remember how stressful it was to start with the PC

around 12 years ago.

My son became my Helpdesk, solving big problems for

a newbeginner - problems that of course turned out

to be small problems.

The computer was back then (and sometimes now too)

a completely new and fairly scary world.

That is why I loved the following Norwegian sketch

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

Hope you will too!

Thank you to friends and family

It was a nice and fairly quiet day, and it was just perfect

for me, here and now.

It is getting colder

During the colder weather I strive for the temperature

in my apartment being around 20 degrees Celsius.

My philosophy:

I feel really miserable if it is much colder.

If it is much warmer, the electricity bill will be very

high, and too hot makes me drowsy.

Today it felt cold. Checking the thermometers in

the different rooms, I discovered it was now around

17 degrees Celsius.

I brought out one of my two radiators and officially

started the heating season.

Autumn rain

Tonight it has been raining.

The sound coming in through my windows reminds

me of autumn rain back when I went to highschool

in Moss.

Back then I usually used my bicycle.

I dressed up in my Helly Hansen's rain suit - orange

pants and orange jacket, and I wore "sailor boots",

low Wellington boots, in such weather.

How did my schoolbooks get to school dry?

Was the rucksack enough?

I don't remember.

But I do remember the feeling of bicycling in the rain.

What should I do less of, and when?

Yesterday I had a "thinking-about-my-life day".

Sometimes I do this as a Mindsweep , noting down

whatever comes into my head.

Yesterday I was just thinking and thinking.

It is a different challenge for somebody who likes

to get things down on paper right away.

I remembered something I worry about:

Somebody I know is still driving a car at the age of 80.

When family members talk about this with

the person concerned, he gets very defensive, pointing

to the MD's recent approval. He is of the firm

opinion that he is still capable of driving.

Driving of course gives this person the possibility

to get out and do what he has done a whole life.

Not driving would mean a great change in quality of

life.

Then I look at myself, and wonder in what fields of

life I myself am of the firm belief I am still fully capable,

but that in fact I may not be so.

What should I do less of?

Worth thinking about.

Remembering my friend G.

Today I have been sitting here, going through my inbox

and checking the emails I got from G. since January 2010.

In one of his emails he refers to himself as "your friend

and informal career advisor". I like that description.

Most of the emails give me links to articles he had read

in the field of our common hobby, but now and then

other subjects would pop up.

Sometimes he wrote like a big brother, a mentor, trying

to give me more selfconfidence.

I made an eight page text listing the articles and some

of our comments, and sent it to his wife, who is now

a widow, and to some common friends.

I think the four hours I kept doing this, was a kind of

personal goodbye ceremony , a virtual funeral.

I miss him.

Email on Friday, dead on Sunday

My friend G. sent me an email last Friday

with a link to an interesting article he had read

and that he thought would interest me.

On Saturday he was at home when he suddenly

called out to his wife, before losing consciousness.

On Sunday he was dead.

He was a good man.

Opening my inbox, I see there are hundreds of emails.

Many of them were just like the last ones -

links to interesting articles he had read.

We shared a hobby. Sometimes I have been able

to help him a little with his projects in that hobby.

His wife told me this morning that he liked to read

my blog, so I hope I gave something back to him too.

Every time I have visited my other country during

the last three and a half years, he and his wife made

the effort so that we could meet.

What made G. such a special person for me?

I will think more about that later.

For now, blessed be his memory.

Grandma! Grandma!

Kate, soon twenty months old, was watching the old
movie about Pippi Longstocking, enjoying it very much.

Then enters the character of Mrs. Prysselius, the lady
who wants to reform Pippi . If I remember right, she
looked very stern, not smiling like on this photo.



In any case, Kate's father told me today on the phone,
as soon as Kate saw Mrs. Prysselius on the screen, she
called out: Grandma! Grandma!

In general, the report goes, ladies with glasses, may
be recognized as "grandma".

PS. This grandma would very much like to be as young
as this actress.....

Shampoo and something else....

When I grew up in Norway, we washed our hair with

SJAMPO as we called it in Norwegian.

BALSAM was , at least for me back then,

a skin ointment.

When I grew up and moved to my other country,

I discovered you could , in addition to the shampoo,

also use a conditioner.

Forty years later I am back in Norway, looking for

shampoo and conditioner.

I easily found the shampoo, but the conditioner

was more diffcult.

It took me quite a long time to discover that in modern

Norwegian conditioner is called balsam.

Now it seems silly, but when I first saw balsam bottles

next to the shampoo bottles, I thought Norwegians

used some special ointment on their hair........

In the forest today

My mother loves to go the forest and pick mushrooms.

So the following mushroom is one she keeps away from,

because it is POISONOUS.

I am not such a big fan of these trips, but when I can

bring my camera and pick what I want to

photograph , I don't even have to know what

mushrooms are edible.

I just leave them where they are.

Sometimes, the size of the mushroom becomes

irrelevant. You can imagine you are a little troll,

any size.

Perhaps even a tiny troll....

Jeloy Radio: Inside

From the dining hall.

The food was excellent.

Tapas, a fishdish, dessert.

The lobby when we left to go home.

In Norwegian http://www.jeloyradio.no/

Their Photo Gallery

http://www.jeloyradio.no/hXGYynNljW5Z.8.idium

Jeloy Radio: Inside

My sister had arranged for my mother and me

to do a pre-birthday celebration. It was a very nice

gesture of her, enabling me to see how this building

look inside.

In Norwegian http://www.jeloyradio.no/

Jeloy Radio: The Exterior

This radio station, originally sending telegrams to

America, was built in 1930.

The style is popularly called "funkis" in Norway and

most buildings in this style were built between 1930

to 1940.

These days the building has become a conference hotel

where you also can eat at their restaurant if you contact

them beforehand.

In Norwegian http://www.jeloyradio.no/

Jeløy Radio : The Hotel and the Museum

On the top floor of the barn, there is now a

Telegraph Museum I hope to visit one day.

I thought the stairs leading up to the museum looked

interesting.

The first floor of the barn now houses the hotel.

In Norwegian http://www.jeloyradio.no/

Dental clinics - then

Dental clinics have come a long way since they

looked like this in my childhood. Thanks for that!

It was in a chair like this, with equipment like this,

that I started my fear of dentists. In Norway

back then, we had a dental clinic at school, and I was

near hysterical when I had to be dragged there at

least once a year.

But when I as a grownup finally understood that

I must go to the dentist at least twice a year to

prevent major problems with my teeth, by then

the drills, the possibility to get help against the pain and the

attitude of the dentists had changed so radically that

I find that for the last thirty years a visit to the dentist

is not traumatic any more.

I don't like it, but I feel the dentists I have used during

these thirty years have been very competent, had very

modern equipment and have been very considerate when

I tell them about my fear.

But seeing this old dental clinic at the local history

center in Horten, brought me straight back to such

a chair and such a fear - a long time ago.

The website for the local history center http://www.lhs.no/

Romatikk and Love

Among a collection of old magazines at the local

history center in Horten, I saw this copy of a magazine

I read more than 45 years ago. "Romantikk" - romance -

is the name and a similiar magazine was called Love.

Of course this kind of litterature was considered real

thrash, so most of us did not get the money nor

the permission to buy these magazines.

But one girl in my class bought both Romantikk and

Love, and brought them to school so that her friends

could borrow them from her, secretly of course, during

the breaks.

She would hide the magazines under her sweater to

keep the patrolling teacher unaware of what was going

on.

But one day disaster struck! We had a very strict

head teacher who now and then would inspect the

pupils as we marched , two and two, class after class,

to our classrooms. As we passed this stern teacher,

we had to greet him, the boys by bowing their heads

and we girls by what we called "neiing".

Imagine our class walking in, my friend with a bunch

of romantic literature under her sweater, and there he

was , the head teacher. My friend instinctly put her

two hands to her side and folded her one knee slightly,

the correct way for girls to be politely greeting a grownup,

- and the magazines slid to the floor, just in front of the

head teacher!

What a scandal!

My recollection of her punishment may not be right,

because I was not there, but as I remember being told,

she had to take the magazines to the schoolyard and

burn them.

True or not true?

The website for the local history center http://www.lhs.no/

A chance meeting around a school table

At the local history center in Horten, they also

have a little classroom where this table was

standing.

Two young boys, perhaps 13 or 14 years old,

were there talking to each other about what they

saw. "We had a table like this at school two years

ago", said one of them.

I could not resist asking them if the table they were

talking about also had the hole for the ink bottle

and the carved out part to put your pencils in.

They said yes, so I told them that I had used

tables like that in my school 50 years ago, and that we

now and then used the ink bottle, but not all the time.

Imagine our joint surprise when another visitor,

80 years old, told us he had had the same kind of table

when he went to school 70 years ago, though their

tables were double, for two pupils.

The website for the local history center http://www.lhs.no/

Learning how to sew by hand

In fourth grade at my village school, the girls had

sewing classes. Imagine how strange it was for me

to see some of these exhibits at the local history center

in Horten - just the kind of projects we had to do

and in the same materials!

I still do not understand why, but we had to sew

everything by HAND!

Then the year after, in fifth grade, we started

cooking classes, only the girls.

But two years later a political decision had been made

and from then on both girls and boys took the

cooking classes.

The website for the local history center http://www.lhs.no/

Local history in Horten

Last Sunday I went with the local history club in Moss

(Moss Historielag) to visit a local history center in

Horten, the town on the other side of the Oslofjord.

It is located near the Photo Museum and the Marine

Museum that I have visited a few times during the last

few years, though I had not even seen that this

center had opened in 2007.

Part of the exhibition are rooms furnished in the style

of my childhood.

Like this kitchen

and this livingroom.

I felt as if I was 50 years back.

First I thought : "There should be something like this

in Moss too", but then my second thought was :

"Good that Horten made this center, we can crosss

the fjord with the ferry and see their center."

The website for the local history center http://www.lhs.no/

So when in my life did interesting things happen?

A friend in my other country brought up the idea

that I may have many more interesting things

happening in my life here in Norway than when

I lived in my other country.

I was thinking about this last night before falling

asleep, and feel very strongly that I have had very

interesting things happening all my life.

My life in my other country was a wonderful row

of meeting fascinating people, learning things, having

experiences I can only be very grateful for.

It was an incredible life.

BUT

in my other country I never wrote a blog like

this, so most of what happened to me is only in my

head and heart, if I still remember it consciously :-)

My friends only got to hear about some of it -

here and there.

My other country is a very special country,

with a mixed population hard to imagine,

with nature so different from Norway,

with a history hard to understand.

That country, my other country, has so many

private citizens who have opened their homes and

their hearts to me for so many decades.

I am, sorting out box after box of personal

documents, trying to keep some of my "paper life"

in chronological journals.

Just imagine if I one day tried to recreate 40 years

of living in my other country in blog form.....

Torderoed - a work in progress

Last year our guide Arnulf Johannesen showed us the

White Room where the ladies would withdraw now

and then from the dancing and the entertainment.

He said that the expert Viktoria Brand had established

the original color scheme of the room and that she had

found part of some amazing old wallpapers with 18

different colors, printed in France, with an English tax

stamp. From this Viktoria Brand would now make

reprints to be put up in this room.

So this was my last visit in August 2010, more or

less of that same corner. Different colors - the right

colors - but the wallpapers will only be ready next year.

I find this exciting!

This year's visit at Torderød = Torderoed

Every year I go to see what is new at Torderoed, the

mansion here in Moss.

These are the photos I took during my last visit.

If you are in Moss during the summer keep a

Sunday at 15.00 free and join the tour.

It is interesting and amusing, well worth the

around two hours you will spend there, and it is

even FREE.

This season's last tour will be the coming Sunday

August 22nd,

My earlier postings about Torderoed

http://rediscoveringnorway.blogspot.com/2007/07/moss-torderoed-gaard.html

http://rediscoveringnorway.blogspot.com/2009/07/dancing-in-ballroom-at-torderd.html

http://rediscoveringnorway.blogspot.com/2009/07/torderoed-torderd.html

http://rediscoveringnorway.blogspot.com/2009/07/torderd-collage-made-in-2007.html

http://rediscoveringnorway.blogspot.com/2009/07/little-bit-more-about-torderd.html