O jul med din glede...

This last week three internationally known figures died, Christopher Hitchens, Vaclav Havel, and Kim Jong-Il. Clearly the side of reason of humanity lost in the balance, if you're counting such things. This article by Hitchens on Kim Jong-Il from Slate last year is a nice commentary on both men. To get a sense of Hitchens' strength as a public speaker, check out his no-holds-barred comparison of Christian theology with North Korean totalitarianism here.

In this season of more people--both known and unknown--dying than I like to think about, it is comforting to be preparing for Christmas with a very eager 7-year-old in the house. Last year I figured out that waiting until Christmas Eve to put the tree up (the Norwegian way) just didn't cut it with me. I didn't feel like Christmas was even here before it was over. I missed having a pile of presents to admire. It made no sense to put up the tree in a rush on a day otherwise filled with cooking and socializing. So I insisted that we put the tree up a week before Christmas this year, and I'm so glad we did! There was a little tree growing in an unfortunate spot in our yard, so KE cut it down, and E and I decorated it yesterday. Here's the result:

Probably not everyone's cup of tea, but we like it. It's great to have a small tree, since then we only use a few of our most beloved ornaments, and don't feel the need to fill in with mass-produced stuff. There are ornaments (and crazy plastic icicles!) from my Dad's childhood and paper heart baskets made by KE's mother, who died in 1970. E got really into it, and was thrilled to see a small pile of packages. He was particularly intrigued by the gift labels, and upset that the biggest package didn't have one. Being a take-charge kind of kid, he quickly took matters into his own hands:

That says "FRA MAMA ÅG PAPPA TIL EIVIND HILSEN MAMA ÅG PAPPA" (roughly translated: "from mom an dad to Eivind from mom an dad"). I love watching him grapple with language!

Today I finished up the last task of grading, and did the last bit of gift shopping. I'll do a little work tomorrow and Wednesday while E is in school, but otherwise I'm going to go into vacation mode. I've been doing a little desultory knitting with the Peer Gynt yarn my colleague gave me. My dying experiment was in one sense a failure (I didn't get blue or purple), but in one sense okay, since I'm always happy to have black yarn. I decided to start making a traditional Norwegian Fana pullover for E with it. I've gotten to just below the star pattern on the body:

That should look pretty good on a red-headed kid. I'm not really aiming to finish this by Christmas, though theoretically speaking I think I could. My main focus now is just to relax and get my head readjusted before the new term starts. I'll be having a totally different type of semester, with virtually no teaching (only about four guest lectures plus a couple of conference presentations). It's going to be all about a job application and finishing my cabin book manuscript.

Not sure how much I'll be posting, so have a very jolly Christmas and enjoy the solstice! For those of us up here in the far north, it's wonderful to think that after Thursday the days will be getting longer again. Now if only we would get proper snow...

Småting

Just coming up for air after a major article revision that took me way too long to finish. Sometimes my work really flows, other times not at all. All my knitting has stalled, and I don't want to start yet another project for fear that will stall too. I did do a little easy knitting on the trip to New Mexico to use up my left over Noro Silk Garden, though:

I used up all the black that I cut out of the Noro raglan pullover that I made earlier this spring. There wasn't all that much, so the scarf is pretty short. And, as you can probably see, I have yet to darn in all the (many!) ends.
We've been having really muggy weather, alternating between sun and rain. The garden is blooming and cherries and berries are ripening. I love this time of the year. Unfortunately, E is still suffering from a lingering stomach virus, though today he seemed to perk up for the first time in over a week. I think he may be over the worst of it.

Otherwise, we're anxiously awaiting word on various job applications, and I'm engaging in big time escapist fantasy. Even though I love living here, I can't help but dream intensely of living some other life in some other place. Will that ever stop?

Oh, at work today I had an amusing little cultural exchange that reminded me that I'm an American in Norway. One of the administrators came to my office and said "Dette er ikke en purring men, jeg ville bare høre hvordan det går med den karakterbegrunnelsen..." (this is not a reminder, but I just wanted to hear how it's going with that grade report...). Hello, that totally IS a reminder! Norwegians are so indirect...

Romanens rom

So I'm back from my conference and working out the kinks and jetlag from the trip. Other than the dancing, the conference was, well, kind of boring this time. I don't know what happened, but somehow I just never quite got into it. I did get a lot of positive feedback on my own paper, which was gratifying.

Right now, I'm desperately trying to pull together my MA-level literature seminar for the fall. I need to get the book order in asap, but there are still a lot of question marks. The course is NOR4410 "Samtidslitteratur" and the subtopic is "romanens rom." I'll have about seven novels that all use space/place in interesting ways. There are a few that I've already definitely decided to use:

1. Nikolaj Frobenius' Teori og praksis
2. Kari Hotakainen's Juoksuhaudantie [On the Homefront]
3. Dag Solstad's 16.07.41

Then there are a bunch that I'm toying with. I'm basically trying to limit it to the last 10 years, but there are a couple that are a little older than that.

1. Erlend Loe's L
2. Mikael Niemi's Populärmusik från Vittula
3. Hanne Ørstavik's Like sant som jeg er virkelig

And then, finally, there are some books that I've only heard of, but that might work really well.

1. Peter Törnqvist's Kioskvridning 140 grader
2. Mala Naveen's Desiland
3. John Erik Riley's Heimdal, California
4. Monika Fagerholm's Den amerikanska flickan 
5. Helle Helle's Ned til hunderne
6. Mette Moestrup's Jævnet med jorden

Crikey. I'm feeling overwhelmed and stressed out about making the choices. I think I have the primary theory book figured out, thanks to a conversation at SASS though: Ann-Marie Mai and Dan Ringgaard's edited volume of space/place theory, Sted.

No knitting to report. Or rather, there is, but I haven't taken any pictures and have too much work to catch up on this week to spend time blogging about it (or the rest of my Chicago trip)...

Standhaftighet

I'm not usually one for making "resolutions"and "intentions," but this year I actually am feeling the need to be more conscious about maintaining my focus, not getting overwhelmed, and not giving up hope. I've reached the halfway point in my postdoctoral fellowship and when it's done my academic career may very well be at an end. While perusing another blog (I forget which) the writer listed "tenacity" as her intention for the year and it resonated with me immediately, so I'm claiming it as my own for this year.

There are a bunch of areas of my life that require a lot of tenacity this year. On the home front, I need to work on being more consistent and present with E; I need to keep working on communication with KE; I need to let go of savings (for our garage) and be vigilant about building it up again.

(Can you believe these two piggy banks? The skinny one on the left was my Mom's when she was an obviously deprived fourth child, the one on the right belonged to my apparently over-indulged Dad when he was an only. Now I'm the last person to criticize only children for being spoiled in general, but my Dad was pretty darned catered to... I've always loved having the two of these next to each other on my shelf, and this year I'll use them as a reminder to save.)

In terms of work, I need to be on top of the manuscript submission process for the Peer Gynt book; and I really, really need to buckle down and start writing the cabin book. My main work goal for this year is putting together a complete manuscript by December. Surely if I can write 2/3s of a book between September and January, I can write a whole one in a calendar year? I'm going to aim for 80,000 words. It's a big and complicated project, but I know I can do it if I just exhibit a little ... tenacity!

I finished my Plain & Simple Pullover this week, but I probably won't be able to photograph it until the weekend. I'm very curious as to whether I'll actually wear a short-sleeved wool sweater. To celebrate getting that done, I cast on for an Eleanor cowl with more of the alpaca yarn from the frogged fair isle sweater from last year:

Wheee, look at me, I'm knitting lace. Only a little bit, though. I also bought a used copy of the legendary Fall 2007 issue of Interweave Knits. It has at least three sweaters I want to knit right away, so there's no danger of me not having a bunch of knitting goals for 2011!

Romjula

We've turned the corner, and the days are slowly starting to get longer. We also had a very nice and mellow Christmas celebration. Since all three of us in the Kverulantinnen household have been sick with a nasty cold and hacking cough, it was a big relief that this year my sister-in-law offered to host Christmas dinner.

I decided to take a couple of days off from my usual routines after Christmas. That means a few days off from both academic work and knitting (gasp!), and the chance to revel in some of Jane Austen's novels. I read Sense and Sensibility and Emma in the course of about three days, before heading back into work to take care of some nagging tasks. Having now submitted both a peer review of someone else's article and a revision of one of my own, I came home today with a clear enough conscience to pick up Mansfield Park. I'm skipping Pride and Prejudice this round of re-reading, I think. I have to admit that this time I was totally blown away by Sense and Sensibility. I have become a huge fan of the level-headed and gracious Elinor Dashwood. In comparison, Emma Woodhouse is exactly what Mr. Knightly calls her, namely a "nonsensical girl."

I did a big rush of pre-Christmas knitting: two Zissou toques for KE and E, and most of the Plain and Simple pullover for me. I've knitted up to the shoulders, but have completely lost my steam on it. All I want to do is read Regency novels! It's pretty clear that I won't finish it by January first, so I'll have to just live with the fact that I "only" finished knitting 10 sweaters this year.

We don't have any plans for New Years at all this year. We're really all just trying to gather strength for the coming term, consciously or unconsciously, I think. 2010 has been a hectic, productive, and emotionally challenging year for me. I'm glad it's over, and am not quite sure how to face a new one. It's a little overwhelming to think of all the things big and small I'd like to change. As always work and knitting goals are easier to identify and carry out than personal ones.

Disiplin og tukt

Brrr! It's icy cold here in Norway. You can tell that it's really cold because even the tough guys at my bus stop in the mornings have hats on. Despite the cold, and despite coming down with a sore throat, I made it through two days of the three-day Bjørnson conference this week. My own paper on Thursday went really well, though I was unexpectedly gripped by nerves, and stumbled a lot over my words in the beginning. Really, I should have know it would be well received, given the fact that I devoted way too much time to revising it.

The next day one of the nestors in the field gave a paper on the same text (Synnøve Solbakken) and he explicitly praised my paper from the previous day in his presentation. I was kind of blown away, to put it mildly. Of course he had two points to criticize, but that is actually the best thing about being engaged in that way. One of the points was something I definitely overlooked, but the other was a point of interpretation, and we had a nice little chat afterward discussing our differing interpretations of the passage (Synnøve's dream sequence in chapter six, in case anyone's interested).

Having given a good paper made it easier for me to focus on the social networking that I really need to do. I put myself out there more than I usually do, and had four or five interesting conversations with people I don't know all that well or had never met before. And to top it all off, my friend S rather unexpectedly invited me to participate in a brainstorming seminar he's arranging this week. It's quite an honor to be invited, and it will give me another chance to network with people who may be in the position to hire (or not hire) me for a permanent position in the next few years. I'm very grateful and excited!

My mom sent us a package, mostly for E's birthday, but it also contained some yarn that she picked up for five dollars at a garage sale. It's about 1100 yards of worsted weight two-ply New Zealand wool in a beautiful brown-gray color:

When she first told me about it I initially thought I would use it to make a matching scarf, hat and mittens, but now that I see how much there is, I'm thinking I need to make some kind of garment instead. This is a color I've been eyeing appreciatively in various contexts, so I'm thrilled to have some to work with. ETA: I'm thinking Cathy Payson's Placed Cable Aran would be a good choice, if only I had the Fall 2007 issue of Interweave Knits. I've put out a request on the book and magazine swap group on Ravelry...

I'm trying to be disciplined, however, and finish up the Riborama pullover. Once I finally got the second sleeve done, the body has (as anticipated) gone much faster. I'm down to the waist, and I'm just going to keep going until I run out of yarn. I've done some slight waist shaping, and I think I may continue some gentle increasing over the hips to make it kind of an a-line tunic. Here's a shot:

The color is way off. It's really hard to take good pictures these days, since the light is so low even at ten o'clock in the morning. The green is much more intense that in the photograph.

I've been participating in an academic writing group on Ravelry for the month of November. We all stated our research/writing goals for the month, and have been posting daily updates (most people petered out after about seven days, unfortunately). I've found that quite helpful, and it has certainly encouraged me to squeeze in even a tiny bit of book-related work on days when I otherwise wouldn't have done so. The potential shame of having nothing to post is a very motivating factor for me!

So even with the Bjørnson conference craziness, I did some planning for the book on Thursday, and a tiny bit of writing yesterday and this morning (about 500 words). I am now about thirty pages short of my goal of 170 pages, and most of that is spread out among the various chapters. There are a bunch small sections I want to add throughout, so it was helpful to write up a list of those missing bits. Some of them are the hard parts that I've been avoiding, others are new material that I haven't yet fully processed. I was feeling overwhelmed -- like, how do I even get started on these last thirty pages after my two week fling with my conference paper?! -- but now I'm more on track. I started this weekend with the easiest of the new sections, and even though it's not very good, at least I have written something. I have had such fun and flow with this project that it's only to be expected that it would get hard at some point.

Interior link of the week: The Swedish furniture design firm G.A.D. They have some lovely, minimalist/modernist furniture made with materials from the island of Gotland. It's very puritanical furniture, which suits my current ascetic mood.

Brodder

That's it! Today, November fifteenth was the day that I broke out my brodder, which is to say strap on spikes for my shoes. We had a centimeter of snow and the temperature is vacillating between freezing and thawing, so there's slippery ice all over the place. Sigh. It will be like this for the next four months.

I got my Bjørnson conference paper more or less done today, which is a big positive. I still need KE to proofread it, and I really should do a bunch more research for it, but I just don't have time. I so need to get back to work on the Peer Gynt book. I did my mid-month tally today, and I'm way behind schedule.

I also survived and actually really enjoyed our early Thanksgiving dinner for ten on Saturday. I spent two days cooking and I think I finally have the menu nailed. I even consolidated all the recipes from various sources into one document, complete with metric conversions and a shopping checklist. So I guess I'll be really ready for Thanksgiving in years to come.

No interesting knitting to speak of. I'm working on a very simple pair of fingerless mitts for office wear, and finished the first one last night, but it's too dark to take any pictures now. It's so plain that I may have to add some kind of decorative crochet edge to it. We'll see...

Litt vaklende

Found a new favorite small house: the so-called "Friggebod" from Sweden: apparently as of 2008 you can build a dwelling of up to 15 square meters without a permit, so there are a lot of cool designs for them now. There's a company producing elegant little upscale prefabs. And there's also a Norwegian company producing a series of small, high-quality prefabs. Their Blåtann series (named after the Viking king Harald) is very modern and elegant as well.

At work today I had a nice meeting with a colleague from ILOS, got a bunch of Synnøve Solbakken secondary literature, and watched the Peer Gynt in Cairo production from 2006 as broadcast by NRK on New Year's Eve of that year. Really interesting. I recently read three absolute hatchet job analyses of the performance (by Helland, Helland again, and then by Rem), and I have to say I agree with most (though thankfully not all) of what they say. I also added about a half a page to my conference paper, so it was an okay day, though I've had a headache for most of it. Not sleeping well, but family life is much more harmonious than earlier this week.

So now it's time to gear up for an early Thanksgiving dinner this Saturday. We have commitments the next two weekends, so we have to do it early or else it conflicts with December madness (E's birthday, final exams, and Christmas...). I'm already feeling enervated just thinking about the holidays...

I started knitting some fingerless mitts since my office is kind of chilly. More stash yarn.

I balanse

KE and I fell back in step this week. I actually think it helped just to acknowledge openly how far apart we are on some issues (relating to our interpersonal communication and expectations about our life together). Certainly the theme for the rest of our week has been how much we have in common and how much we really enjoy each other as people. We just had a fabulously interesting conversation that managed to encompass some of my thoughts about the Peer Gynt book and KE's thoughts about becoming an art teacher. The conversation was so good that I had to take notes afterwards! So, yay for us, we really are a good couple after all, despite driving each other crazy at times.

I got to spend today at home writing. I managed four pages (about 1000 words): two additional pages for the theoretical introduction and two pages' worth of additions to chapters four and five. In the introduction I'm trying to write about "cultural appropriation" and adaptation. I can really feel the project coming together (despite lots of holes and problem areas), which is just so darned exciting. It's a good sign (or not, depending on how you look at it and why you read this blog) when my work is more interesting and fun than my knitting!

To artikler

Earlier this year I submitted two articles to the main American scholarly journal in my field. One of them, the Frobenius article, had been rejected by a Norwegian journal previously, the other, the one on children's novels by Aanrud and M. Hamsun, was "fresh" as it were. I've just heard back on the second one, and I'm gobsmacked: both have been accepted for publication without revisions. Anyone who is a professional academic knows that only vary rarely do things get accepted without a laundry list of revisions suggested by the two anonymous peer reviewers that read each manuscript. Often times the two reviewers have vastly different visions of what needs to be changed, and sometimes one recommends rejection while the second thinks the work is brilliant. It can be a maddening process. It usually means a long and difficult round of revision. It can be really hard (not to mention demoralizing and even humiliating) to change fundamental things about the analysis that one has worked so hard to construct, and sometimes the reviewer comments can be mean spirited and petty.

I am so incredibly relieved to have had not one but two pieces of recent work make it through the process intact. For one thing, it means a lot less work for me, but beyond that it means that my work appears to be viewed as of very high quality, and that feels fantastic. I think a lot of the credit has to go to my friend L, who critiqued both drafts before I sent them out. She always has good insights and asks all the right questions that challenge me on all the right issues.

We're struggling (as usual?) here at home. Had a tough discussion with KE last night. Sometimes it feels like we just don't understand each other at all. E is doing fine, but I think he caught a cold on Halloween. He went to his friend S's house for a party and for trick-or-treating, and somehow he managed to go out without a coat. I would have never let that happen. Last night he was froggy so I'm preparing myself for staying home with him today if need be.

Kulturstudier

Today was the day I set aside to flounder around looking for a theoretical model for my Peer Gynt book. It started out really bad, but I think I caught a glimpse of where I need to take things by the end of the day, so I have to count myself satisfied. I've been thinking of this as a cultural studies project, but I really haven't done any reading in recent cultural studies research or theory in a long time. I had spent some time in the library on Tuesday looking for stuff on consumer and tourist culture, plus some art history stuff (the most well known probably being Hal Foster's The Return of the Real). I had skimmed over the big stack of books I brought back with me, and had actually intended to stay home to read today.

E got me up at four o'clock in the morning with a bed wetting episode (yay new washer and dryer! It was so much easier to deal with than it used to be), however, and since I couldn't fall back asleep I started reading, and I didn't like what I saw. I could just tell that none of what I had brought home was going to work for the project, so after taking E to school I went in to my office. I did a bunch of poking around on databases, and what seemed to work the best was to go to the "best" journal in the subject area (Cultural Studies--the only one at level two in the Norwegian ranking system) and do searches in their archive for relevant terms. Bingo! I downloaded eight articles, and two of them have my research radar going "zing!" A scholar named Lawrence Grossberg has come up with an approach to Cultural Studies that builds on the philosophy developed by Deleuze and Guattari. This branch of Cultural Studies is being labeled "Spatial Materialism" and it combines all the things I love: the non-transcendental (or "monist"--a new word for me--basically a rejection of dualism) philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari, a focus on space/place questions, and a concern with cultural production of all kinds, including popular culture and stuff we don't even think of as "culture." If I weren't so outrageously tired I would try to explain it some, but my head is about to hit the keyboard out of sheer exhaustion, so I won't even try.

The only other thing I wanted to add before I crash was that I finally got around to asking an IT person to install Zotero on my computer at work. He came late in the day today, so I got about a half hour of playing around with it in before I had to go home. That's some incredibly clever "reference management software" there! I think this may really change the way I work for the better. It will be especially useful in that I'm writing two books that are going to have some bibliographic overlap, and also because it will make it a lot easier to switch between citation styles. The weird thing, though: Zotero works in Firefox. I had received a message last year from the UiO IT folks saying we couldn't use Firefox any more because of security issues. When I brought that up to the guy who came to set up Zotero, he said he'd never heard of that happening, and that Firefox is what they recommend. D'oh. Further evidence of the inscrutability of UiO IT support, I suppose.

Picked up the tickets for Trolljegeren for tomorrow night...

Tenke tenke skrive skrive

Today I hit 114 pages of manuscript on the Peer Gynt-book. Here's the page breakdown:

• intro: 1/10 pages (this is the hardest part to write. I'm saving it for the end. I need to come up with a theoretical approach lickity split. I mean, I have a theoretical approach, otherwise I couldn't write the material. I just don't have it laid out neatly yet.)
• chapter 1: 27/30 pages (from a 2008 article)
• chapter 2: 30/30 pages (all new material since August)
• chapter 3: 16/30 pages (half of a 2007 article)
• chapter 4: 11/30 pages (the other half of the 2007 article)
• chapter 5: 29/30 pages (all new material since September)
• conclusion: 0/10 pages (I have no idea what this is going to be. It seriously scares me. I hate conclusions. I think my friend L has a good one in her new book, so I need to read that for inspiration...)

Blimey. That's starting to look like a book manuscript! My English class was cancelled today, which gave me two extra hours of writing. I also had to submit my paper for that class on line. I'll be really curious to read the instructor's response. At least I had fun writing it.

I gave a lecture on Norway's national anthem in my literature class today. It was actually pretty fun. The students seemed to find it interesting to talk about national anthems as a genre. Here's a nice recording of the Norwegian one from 2005.

I ran across a thingy that I think I'm going to want to do an article on at one point: "Ekko av Ibsen," which was a big film project for the Ibsen centennial in 2006 consisting of 8 short films created in dialogue with Ibsen's work. Can't wait to check it out. I need to find out if any relate to Peer Gynt. If they don't, it will still probably be worth putting together an analysis. ETA: here's the list:

• Dobbel salto (Lars Göran Petterson, 2005), inspired by Bygmester Solness
• Klippan i livet - kan du leve uten? (Pia Lykke, 2005), inspired by Peer Gynt, Lille Eyolf, Fruen fra havet and Gengangere
• Nora (Geir Henning Hopland, 2005), inspired by Et dukkehjem
• Kjøter (Marius Holst, 2005)
• Edderkoppfest (Aril Østin Ommundsen, 2005)
• Trøbbel (Dag Johan Haugerud, 2005)
• Terje Vigen (Mari Monrad Vistven, 2005) inspired by the poem "Terje Vigen"
• Hvis jeg faller (Johanne Helgeland, 2005)

Basically, this is just a quick note to say I really dig my job.

"Beskikk dit Hus"

I think nearly everything that could go wrong since last Thursday did. Our washing machine broke. With impeccable timing, E wet his bed three mornings in a row as a celebration of the fact that we had no washing machine. I did a terrible job teaching. I had a monumental case of PMS. I was stood up about three different times in different contexts, including the girl we hired to cover our week to clean E's preschool (yes, the parents have to do it all, from scrubbing toilets to emptying trash to vacuuming and washing about 120 square meters; yes the girl who agreed to do it blew us off on two of our three evenings). E was kind of on the warpath. KE had what seemed like dozens of extra activities scheduled, meaning I barely saw him. Our house just reached a new nadir of filth. And to top it all off, I had to dip into savings to make it through to my next paycheck, which thankfully arrived yesterday. I can't remember the last time I had to do that.

As of today, I'm slowly starting to impose some order on the chaos. I actually spent most of the day cleaning, which is a rarity. KE was a hero and, with the help of a neighbor, carted home our brand-spanking-new laundry facilities. With a huge sigh of relief, I present you with...my bathroom:

What is that strange creature on the left, you ask? Lo, it is a dryer. We haven't had one since leaving the US. I have been quite smug about not needing one, but I had to bite the bullet and admit that there's no way I can keep up with all the bedding and workout gear by air drying on two indoor drying racks. I feel like a sellout, but I also want to have a tidy house. And of course I don't have to use it for every load of wash.

Even better than these behemoths (well, almost) is what E did with some of the packaging:

Too cute.

Rarely can I say that I'm too stressed out to knit, but that was certainly the case this week. Normally I would have been done with the Riborama pullover by now, but I have barely made any progress at all. I've managed to finish one arm and get a few inches on the other. In the meantime, I've done a little experimenting with the Shetland yarn I bought in Denmark this summer. Five of the eight colors I bought looked really lovely together, but I couldn't get any of the other three to work into the combination, so I broke down and ordered another color online (BC Garn). Here's the result, which is the corrugated ribbing for an Ivy League Vest (Ravelry link here, non-Ravelry link here), which I'll probably add arms to:

I'm thinking that looks pretty good. I'm not going to agonize any more over it, and just go with what I have. It's the lightest, wheat-ish color in the middle that I just ordered.

Another good thing about this terrible week bears remembering: I exchanged WIPs with my friend L at work, and we had a really productive and exciting critique session yesterday morning. She had such amazingly insightful comments about my chapter on the Peer Gynt films. Since yesterday was the fifteenth of the month, I also did a page tally for the book, and I now have 110 (out of a projected 170) pages written! Granted much of that is rough, but still, I'm making decent progress. I was really anxious for L's feedback on this chapter so that I could get a sense of whether I'm on the right track with the book, or whether it's a big waste of time. She was enthusiastic about it, which gives me a lot of hope.

ETA: a link to one of the coolest studio apartments I've seen in a long time on Apartment Therapy. Here's the same place during an earlier decorating iteration. I think what I like is less the individual elements than just the idea of starting out life as a college kid in a place like that. I'd love to be able to set up E in a funky place of his own if/when he goes away to study (in about 12+ years...). Look at me, already living vicariously through my child and he's not yet six!

Stolt forfatter!

Title: Figurative Space in the Novels of Cora Sandel
Publisher: Alvheim & Eide akademisk forlag
Year: 2010
Pages: 194 (including the bibliography...)
Author: me me me me me!

This is only my second academic book. I finished writing it in March 2007, and even thought I already had a contract for it with a publisher the publication process took over three years. Three slow and painful years, I might add. I am so happy to have it in my hot little hands, finally!

Eplekjekk

This was yet another week that has me waking up on Saturday morning exhausted and a little overwhelmed. For the most part it was good, but we did get bad news about our on-going project of building a garage. I don't think I've ever even mentioned that here because it has just taken so incredibly long. At any rate, we have long wanted to build a garage, and it has taken a really long time to get a building permit and to find someone to fell some trees and do the foundation (the garage itself will be delivered and built in just a few days by the company that produces them once the foundation is in place). We finally got a quote for that, and it's at least twice as much as what we had planned for. It will wipe out a lot more of our savings than I had bargained for, and since I'm pretty (okay, incredibly) neurotic about having a savings buffer I totally freaked out. And predictably that led to a big discussion about finances in general, where the conclusion is that I'm a control freak with a compulsive need to know all the exact balances on all accounts at all times. You see, we have separate accounts, even though we've been married over six years, and neither of us has any access to the other's accounts. Is that weird? I think so. But we're working it out now--better late than never!

I spent much of the week in the archives of NRK, the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation, watching three film versions of Peer Gynt. It was totally fascinating. Even though there are only three films (a taped stage production, a television mini-series and a documentary) there is just so much interesting material to work on. I already have 12 pages written--just my first impressions and ideas about what I want to do in the chapter. While I'm doing that, I'm also reading Hans Midbøe's three-volume performance history of Peer Gynt, and learning a ton about the 1876 stage production (the first ever, almost ten years after publication. Critics said it couldn't be done, but it was a huge success). Needless to say, I'm going to have to visit some theater archives too. And of course the wonderful thing is that since I live here, I can just do that, pretty much any old time I like. This is so different from when I worked in the US and half the time didn't even know what resources were available, let alone visit them. It's great to be able to just poke around and follow where ever what I find leads me. Yay archives!

I have reached a point of frustration with the English course I'm taking. This week we had a class "discussion" that was the farthest thing imaginable from a real discussion. The instructor doesn't appear to have the faintest idea what the purpose or format of a real discussion should be. We were given a list of questions in advance, then divided up into groups of two to discuss them. So far so good, though with only about 10 people in the room that day, not really a necessary step. Then he brought us all together for a large group "discussion" and simply proceeded to lecture us again. One (older) woman and I tried to say stuff, and tried to talk to each other, but it was all so strictly mediated through the instructor that it totally didn't work. I don't remember anyone else even trying to say something. The hilarious thing was that at the end the instructor said "Okay, good discussion today!" Uh, no... From there I went to my own class where every single student in the room was engaged, where they had come with their own questions, and where we learned just as much if not more. The thing is, if you're going to allow discussion in class, you have to trust that the students are actually capable of intelligent thought and the ability to communicate. If you as the instructor are going to control every aspect of the thought process, then really you should dispense with the notion of "discussion" entirely and just lecture.

My long list of finishing tasks on the Fanakofte apparently scared me off, and I spontaneously started working on some comfort knitting without a pattern. Actually, I wasn't just scared off, I was foiled by demonic forces in my house. Somehow, things have been disappearing rather inexplicably recently. First E's cowboy had vanished (kind of a crisis because his buddies at school have started a "cowboy club"), even though it hasn't been out of the house, and now my "kit bag" (with scissors, stitch markers, etc.) is completely gone. I had it in the living room last Sunday, and since then I have not seen it. I've checked every imaginable place, of course, and it is gone. Argh.

After doing some desultory knitting on the brown tweed Aran pullover, I'm back to that lace weight alpaca yarn that I've tried repeatedly to use for something, this time trying to make a scarf. I was so enamored of the bias construction of Lanesplitter skirt that I want to make a scarf in the same way. I wanted it to be plain stockinette on tiny needles, but that curls so much I gave up and settled on 1 x 1 rib:

Still not sure whether I like it or not, and I would definitely have to increase every other row instead of every fourth. I may just go back to the stockinette, curling be damned. I've toyed with the idea of double knitting, which might get rid of the curling problem and still give the plain surface I want. With lace weight that might just work (I'm worried about it being too stiff). I may give it a try, though I'll need to find a how-to somewhere on the internet. Though when I compare this experiment with the brown tweed Aran, I have to wonder why I'm even bothering:

I mean, that's actually kind of amazing. I don't know why I can't get more revved up about it. This is actually really quick and easy to knit. This far into it I don't even need to look at the pattern or use stitch markers (a good thing, since they have been spirited away...). Okay, that's it, I'm stuffing the hopeless blue alpaca back into a bag and focusing on this project instead!

KE had promised me an apple tree for my birthday, and yesterday we finally went to pick one out. "Pick one out" is a bit of an exaggeration. It's the end of the season here, so there wasn't much left. We did see a green Gravenstein (the apples we had in my yard growing up) but alas that tree was already sold. All we saw (at first) was a bunch of trees with red apples that we feared would be the mealy kind. I can not abide mealy apples. We were about to give up, but went back for a second look once we found out they were all 50% off. Lo and behold among the mealy ones we found a red Gravenstein. We were bold and bit into one of the apples, and it was absolutely perfect: crisp, tart and juicy. We snapped it up, did some logistical juggling to get it in the car, and KE planted it (I got to pick the spot) right away when we got home:

(I just ran out into the cold wet grass in my pjs to take that picture). It's the very small, spindly tree with the yellow leaves. This is my first time ever having an apple tree as an adult and I am thrilled! Here's what the fruit looks like:

Nifty, eh? According to Wikipedia the Gravenstein is a Danish variety discovered "as a chance seedling" in a town called Gråsten in 1669.

Frenetisk

Wait, what, is it only Wednesday? I feel totally and utterly blown out by this week, with two more active days to go. Golly!

My primary work focus has been the proofreading of my (old) book manuscript. It's done now, after another hour this morning before classes. I ended up with a list of corrections that was five pages long! I'm not quite sure how I feel about the book after having read it closely again for the first time in a couple of years. Some parts hold up pretty well, others are a bit cringe-inducing. It will be interesting to see if it gets any sort of critical reception (it's being published by a really obscure publisher).

I've also been getting my ducks in a row for the Peer Gynt book. I had a really good talk with a colleague who said she liked the idea a lot, but pointed out that I really have to stop writing articles, as they are totally killing my book mojo. I love writing articles and hate writing books, and she's totally right. As I was talking to her on the phone I was eying my research agenda for the fall, which I had posted on my bulletin board, and it was chock full of totally fun, but totally irrelevant article ideas: Norwegian horror films, Lars von Trier and geography, etc. After she pounded into my head that I needed to only work on the book projects (Peer Gynt first, with a firm deadline of the end of December, then the cabin book after the new year starts), I crossed out that list, added a big NO at the bottom, and made a new list that has a month by month schedule for finishing the Peer Gynt book. I can tell that this is great advice based on how uncomfortable it made me feel when she said it!

I do think I'm on track now. With all the proofreading I haven't really been able to do any actual writing for the PG book, but I did call the NRK television archives today to set up appointments to view the two television dramatizations of Peer Gynt next week.  Given the wild, amorphous form of PG I find it kind of astounding that there haven't been more Norwegian attempts to film it. I'm thinking the last chapter of the book will be on these two television versions (1986 and 1993), a film I haven't yet seen called Peer Gynt i våre hjerter, and Gatas Gynt.

On the home front there are lots of Steiner school activities this week. I went to the first group parents' meeting on Monday night. It was interesting to meet some of the other parents. I felt out of place, not because I'm foreign but because I seemed to be the only really career-focused woman of the bunch. I hadn't expected that. Tonight E and I decorated a basket of vegetables to take to school tomorrow. Each family is supposed to bring vegetables so that the kids can make a soup for the fall Thanksgiving party they'll hold on Friday. I just emptied my knitting basket into an empty drawer and taped pictures that E drew to the outside of it. Thankfully we had a good supply of root vegetables in the fridge, so I didn't have to make a grocery store run...

I attended my English class today--full on lecture, and it appears that my many questions are perceived as pure distraction, rather than an integral part of the learning process. Ugh. It does inspire me to engage my own students much more in the following hour. We had our first real seminar discussion of a text today, and it went pretty well, especially considering how miserable my presentation was last week. I came home with an incredibly upset stomach and throbbing headache, though, so I'm just waiting until E falls asleep before I myself crawl into bed to try to recuperate for tomorrow.

I'll be meeting with my mentor for the first time since spring term, which should be fun and interesting. I also have to work on stuff for my former Ph.D. student, who is going on the job market again this fall, so there probably won't be time for any writing tomorrow. Friday I'll stay home to go to the Steiner school party, since KE will be in class. Then I'll collapse!

Clearly there's no pretending that I'm not smack dab in the midst of what is turning into a very hectic semester. The leaves are turning yellow and red too, and we've had frost at night, so I can no longer delude myself into thinking it's still summer.

Hurra for meg

Yesterday was my birthday, and it was a very mellow, very nice day. First off the sun was shining, for which there is certainly no guarantee in Norway in September. I woke up early and was excited to bang out my thoughts on my new book plan. On Friday I had a major conceptual breakthrough. I realized that I have another book gestating that is not the cabin book. This other book, which is on Ibsen's Peer Gynt and the production of meaning, is begging to be written. I have a strong feeling that I can get it done by December of this year. The cabin book just isn't coming together, and I think it needs more time to percolate in the background. So now I have a chapter outline for the new book and I've gathered together all the related work I've done on Peer Gynt (which turns out to be a lot) and apportioned it out into the right chapters. I have over 70 pages and a very clear plan for the rest now. That was a great way to start my day. How exciting to discover that I have nearly half of a book written!

Once the guys were up and running we drove down to the local Kiwanis Club barn sale and I scored in a big way! You have to understand that I am a real tightwad, I hate being parted from my kroner, and that I live in a country with ridiculously high taxes on consumer goods. Things that would cost $2 in the US sell for closer to $20 here. This makes furnishing a home a difficult challenge. I have been looking for a table cloth that fits on our very wide table when it is fully extended since at least Thanksgiving time last year. There is just nothing out there, but in the stacks of linens upstairs in the Kiwanis barn I found one, and not only is it big, but also new and clean and really nice: 100% cotton in lovely, deep blues from Habitat that will work with our colorful Fiestaware dishes.

I have also been looking for a pepper mill since we moved here in December 2008. I see them in stores all the time, but I am just not going to pay $40 dollars for a freaking pepper mill. The fabulous Kiwanis had three to choose from. I took the least garish and gunky one. It had an irritating label stuck on, but after soaking the mill in hot soapy water for 15 minutes it scrubbed off like a dream, and now I have a sparkly little pepper mill:

KE thinks it's hideously ugly, but clearly he's just plain wrong about that! How can someone who barely ever uses pepper be expected to appreciate the glory that this is?  I paid 30 NOK for both the table cloth and the pepper mill -- just under $5 right now. Now that's a price I can live with, and it was the best birthday present I've had in I think five years! Okay, so I'm easily amused and "billig i drift" (cheap to maintain) as they say here in Norway.

We went grocery shopping (thankfully painless) and then I baked myself a cake and made pizza on a gloriously sunny afternoon in our kitchen, with the door to the patio wide open. After the pizza we took a walk around the neighborhood. We were feeling bold, so we scoped out the yard of the abandoned house that we desperately want to buy. That only made us want it more, so on the way home we were scheming and trying to figure out how to make that work. I know it's possible to find out who owns a particular property, and I'd like to contact the owners, but we have a lot of financial stuff to work out, and plus we need at least one of us to have a permanent position. It is totally my dream--an old house on the verge of collapse--combined with KE's dream--perfect solforhold (a quintessentially Norwegian word that I don't think has an English equivalent. It means "sun conditions"--meaning how early the sun shines on the property in the morning and how late in the evening at all times of the year. Norwegian are--quite justifiably--obsessed with solforhold) and a little bit of a view of the fjord. Sigh. Want want want want want. I would be willing to sacrifice a lot to buy that house. Since we can't do it, we went home and consoled ourselves with birthday cake.

It was the same cake I baked last Saturday for KE's birthday (yes, we're exactly seven days apart, born in the same year). Last weekend I tried out the ginormous stand mixer that KE insisted on buying for baking bread. It ended up producing a huge amount of big, awkward parts to wash and a cake that wasn't even close to properly mixed (seriously, it looked like a failed marbled cake, with random chunks of yellow cake in what was supposed to be plain chocolate). This time I baked in my usual way, which is to say by hand, and the result was much better. The cake was as light and fluffy as the machine mixed one, but it was actually blended. I like being a Luddite when it comes to baking. The icing was chocolate too, with a few tablespoons of coffee in it. I hate coffee, but I do love coffee ice cream and chocolate-coffee icing. Yum. KE and E sang both "Hurra for deg" and "Happy Birthday" and a good time was had by all.

I finished nearly everything on the Lanesplitter skirt last night while watching MPGjr (cringe)--now all I need to do is buy elastic for the waistband, sew it down, and it's done. It turned out to be a size large rather than medium, and I think it probably would look better on if it were a medium, but I'll still wear it. Pictures to come, once the elastic is in.

Skolestart

The first week of school is always crazy, and this one was no exception. KE was in full swing with his pedagogy program, E was home sick three out of five days, and I had to scramble to find an open English course to enroll in. There wasn't much to choose from, but I'm actually thrilled with the one I ended up with. It's a civilization rather than a literature course, and nearly all the readings relate directly to my own work. My own teaching went really well, despite feeling frazzled and unprepared. My schedule is such that I go straight from the class I'm taking to the class I'm teaching with only a fifteen minute break in between. I have a big group of students and quite a few appeared enthusiastic and engaged on the first day. I think it's going to be a really stimulating term.

I just found out about a visiting associate professor position in another department on campus that I'm going to apply for. I'm pretty sure I won't get it, but I think it's a good exercise to apply and to make more people aware of who I am and what my qualifications are. The application is due this coming Wednesday, so there's not a lot of time to pull it together. That's actually probably a good thing, so that I don't waste a lot of time agonizing and obsessing over it.

Unfortunately I also had a bit of a run in with one of the Ph.D. students in our program. I had asked the person to give me some feedback on something I had written, and I was confronted with what I perceived as a surprisingly arrogant attitude--the basic assumption that I as a foreigner can't possibly know anything about Norwegian cultural history or academic publishing. I was incensed, and it really underscores how wonderfully the permanent faculty in my program have treated me over the past year and a half. I have never perceived even the slightest indication that they did not consider me an intellectual and professional peer. I lost my temper and I shouldn't have. I take that as a sign of my own insecurity about my professional status, given my temporary position and the hiring freeze that my department is under. (I know that in Norway people working on their Ph.D.s are technically considered university employees rather than students. I'm apparently feeling the need to distinguish myself as a postdoctoral research fellow even further from this poor person!)

In addition to my crazy day of writing on Monday, I also did the proofing for a book review, finished the first round of revisions of an essay, wrote a draft of my application letter, and finished off an article (with the help of the feedback from that provoking Ph.D. student) and sent it off to Scandinavian Studies this week. All in all not bad for a week where I felt I could barely get any work done with E at home most days. I think that dust up with the Ph.D. student and the awareness of how vulnerable I feel really motivated me to focus on getting things published. At this point, I know that the only thing I can do to influence my future is to publish as much as humanly possible.

I also got a sample of the cover of my Cora Sandel book and I really love it. The designer used the picture of Tromsø from 1890 that I found in the Library of Congress archives. It really dominates the cover, so I'm guessing he loved the picture as much as I do.  The proofs for the whole book will be coming soon, I hope. It turns out that it's actually to my advantage that it has taken this book so long to come out, since the "publikasjonspoeng" (the Norwegian bean-counting system for scholarly productivity) will count for me now, even though I finished writing the book almost four years ago. So this year alone, with two articles in tier 2 journals, one tier 1 journal article, and one book, I'll have twelve publication points in a program where the average is just under two points per year. Last year I only had two myself. The fact that I have five articles or essays out "in the pipeline" right now bodes well for 2011 too.

Gah! I am obsessing over all this. The fact that I'm currently revising my CV for the job application makes me even more neurotic about my publication record.

Produksjon

Phew! For some unknown reason, I was able to crank out text for a new article book chapter (I need to start forcing myself to think of it like that) like nobody's business today. I chose to work from home, and promised myself that I wouldn't do any household tasks at all, but treat my just under five hours of having the house to myself as though I were in my office. It totally worked. I wrote eight pages in just under five hours, and then in about 45 minutes after dinner I spewed out two and a half pages more, in addition to the four pages I had from last week. It's still a very rough draft, but having fifteen pages to work with instead of four makes such a difference. I'm thinking the final product will be somewhere between 30 and 40 pages.

More importantly, I have a much clearer idea of what it is I'm trying to say and how to say it. Initially I set out to discuss four early "national dramas" by writers other than Ibsen. They all utilize variations on the same set of motifs, and were exceedingly influential in their day, but totally forgotten now. Then I had the vague notion of relating these obscure works to the more canonical foundational national texts. While walking to school to pick up E it suddenly dawned on me that the single most iconic national text in Norway, Peer Gynt, shares all of the major tropes that I am analyzing in these four plays. It became clear that I needed to clear away everything else and make this an analysis of the relationship between these older plays and Peer Gynt, and that I actually have a whole bunch of really exciting things to say about them all. I have one particularly good idea that is so cool I have to keep to myself, even on an infinitely obscure (but still public) blog like mine. I am so excited I'm practically vibrating.

Maybe my brain was cleared by our "traditional" family walk (and by the fact that KE and I are starting to clear the air and settle into new routines--oh and that we are having beautiful early fall weather). We headed out to our favorite secret spot in the woods mid morning on Sunday, at my initiative no less. E complained bitterly the entire way there and back, which was a real drag, but we just have to hope that eventually he will work things out and start to enjoy activities like that. I was regretting the whole endeavor, thinking that it would have been much easier to just avoid the whole complaining thing, but really, who am I to let this whiny little kid (whom I adore, of course, but sheesh, give me a break!) keep me from getting out into the woods?!

I have to admit that I was motivated primarily by the lure of blueberries. I had visions of groaning bushes laden with dusky berries, but alas they were few and far between. Only toward the end of E and KE's patience did I happen upon a densely packed patch. But even so, we came up with 2 1/2 cups of blueberries, which was enough to make some more jam. Here's the jam in use, on a waffle produced by KE in celebration of the jam:

Unfortunately, I used too much sugar (though it was still less than the recipe called for), and I find the jam too sweet to really nosh on it. I can only take a little bit at a time, though the blueberry taste is ever so delicious. I'm starting to really like making these miniature batches of jam, and I actually think it's one of the few cooking things that I have a natural talent for. I'm terrible at meals, but good at baking and apparently good at jams and jellies. I guess they call for different skills and temperaments.

In knitting news, I finished the second sleeve on the Fanakofte over the weekend. Here's a snap of them nestled together, unblocked, and with one hem still unsewn:

I'm really happy with how they are knitting up, especially since I'm using two totally different yarns (merino and shetland). I made a mistake on the checkerboard pattern. This version of the pattern calls for four by four squares rather than the usual three by three. These are three by three, but on the body I'm going to go with the four by four. I doubt anyone will ever notice the difference.

I had trouble starting the body, though, as a result of not reading the instructions! I started in the round right away, rather than knitting the hem part back and forth before casting on five extra stitches (for the steek) and then joining in the round. D'oh. I had to rip it all out, and am now finally back up to the beginning of the checkerboard. I just tell myself that I knit because I enjoy the process, so it doesn't matter if I have to do things over (and over) again...

ETA: I forgot to mention that we did watch Gatas Gynt the other night and really enjoyed it. It's an interesting blend of performance and documentary about the actors, who are homeless people struggling with substance abuse. I'm definitely going to use it in my class this term!

Insomnia...igjen

I have a triple whammy: a hacking cough, and upset stomach, and a mysterious bug bite on the inside of my upper arm that is seriously the size of an orange. I feel and act pathetic. I also keep waking myself up. I've withdrawn to the guest bedroom so as not to keep KE awake.

Work wise, I think I'm very close to wrapping up the old bygdebarn article on the seter as a trope in a couple of Norwegian children's books. Yesterday I finally came up with a conclusion that I can live with, so now I'm just waiting on one article that I need to reference. Not quite sure where to send it. I have asked a colleague in children's literature to read it, and she said she would in a few weeks. I'm going to try to be patient, rather than sending it off in a flurry of impatience like I usually do.

With my decks now almost clear (grading all done, no other articles-in-progress, course prep basically done), that means I get to start on something entirely new--though still within the bounds of the cabin project of course. I'm thinking of cabins in Norwegian horror/thriller films! I'm not usually a fan of the genre, but that is such an outrageous topic with such a rich history that I think it could be a lot of fun.

While I was  at the conference, someone suggested to me that I reconceptualize my cabin book as a collection of articles rather than one master narrative. I'm not quite sure what I think about that. It would certainly make things easier, but on the other hand I have sort of been composing a master narrative in my head along the way, though there's still very little on paper. If I go the article route, I'm not sure that I could present as much evidence for how central the cabin is in the Norwegian cultural imagination, or make all the points I want to make. But if I only need eight articles (a colleague is just finishing up a dissertation that consists of eight articles), then I'm closing in on it and would have time for other things. And I could always write an introduction and conclusion that frame the articles... So far I have completed articles on:

1. Knut Hamsun's Pan
2. Edvard Storm's Døleviser
3. Henrik Ibsen's Når vi døde vågner
4. Hans Aanrud's Sidsel Sidsærk and Marie Hamsun's Bygdebørn hjemme og paa Sæteren

and I have the beginnings or ideas for the following:

5. Peter Christen Asbjørnsen's Norske Huldre-Eventyr og Folkesagn
6. Maurits C. Hansen's "Luren"
7. André Bjerke's De dødes tjern
8. Gunnar Larsen's five cabin novels
9. Per Petterson's Ut og stjæle hester

Plus bunches of half baked ideas on other texts and authors (like the horror film idea). One that came up in my conference paper that I think is really worth pursuing is a comparison of four national dramas, all of which share similar tropes and themes:  Bjerregaard's Fjeldeventyret, Wergeland's Fjeldstuen, Riis' Til Sæters, and Aasen's Ervingen. I guess technically I should start working on that, since I have the Bjerregaard material fresh in my head.

Sigh. I'm staying home today to play with E and tend my ailments. I can't believe he starts first grade on Monday! I'm totally not prepared, and I don't think he is either!