Sami Children's Easter Show

I occasionally watch children's programming not because it is intrinsically interesting – because let's face it, nothing will ever be as good as the Muppet Show – but out of an interest in the cultural education provided to children through television. Thus, children's programming is interesting in an "I'm really geeky" sort of way.* So when I was taking a break from my thesis writing with a spot of television about the life of Roald Dahl, the Sami Children's Easter program followed and I had to stay tuned. Thankfully, it was short, because it brought about two rather conflicting responses in me. The first was that it wasn't just cheesy, it was rather painfully dreadful. This is not to say that I don't think Sami people can make good programming. It's that, in a land of low-budget programming, this was really low budget, reflecting more on the Norwegian government's spending on this sort of programming than on the creativity or talents of the show's creators.** After all, there is a delicate balance between creating programming that is interesting to young children and builds their self-esteem by praising the general talent-levels of the audience without being patronizing. I've also watched single episodes of children's programming with significantly higher budgets which seem to be aimed at the same age group – Barney or Elmo-generation Sesame Street – and can say from these experiences that they are only marginally better.*** One can only pity parents who are exposed to this sort of thing on a daily basis for what one must hope is no more than a couple years. I suspect that if I get kids my favorite age for them will be once they are old enough to have a twisted sense of humor, but before they start smoking weed and generally being prats.

Back to the Easter program, the other response was of a more positive note. This was a Sami language program being broadcast nationally, though I'll grant this was on a state-owned channel and as special programming rather than regular scheduling. Really though, how many Sami children speaking a Sami language are there living in Telemark right now? While the show presented silly antics, as does any children's program, it also featured Sami kids playing in a rock band (where they sang in English, but that is another matter as many a Norwegian rock band of any cultural background choose English for their lyrics) and a young girl joiking.**** In a country where assimilation efforts tried to wipe out the Sami language, joiking was demonized and the type of drum that the girl was playing was collected by authorities and burned, this is still rather remarkable. It is remarkable, not least, because it demonstrates that the language is still actively being used and laws passed in the 1990s (oh, so long ago) are not merely politically correct window dressing. In order for such a program to be made and aired, there must be people who speak the language and in this case children who speak the language to participate in the staging of the program, and there must be children who understand the language that would be an audience for the program, not across the nation, but at least in parts of the country. This might seem self-evident to Norwegians, but without having traveled to Sami-speaking parts of the country a visitor can remain quite unaware of this official, though minority, language of Norway. It is probably also true of the program, that it is as much about keeping Sami language in active use as it is about the language actually being in active use.


*I personally prefer the word geek even though I'm such a nerd that I know that the more appropriate appellation would be nerd. Nerd, having the meaning of someone who is socially handicapped by their desire to know entirely too much information and the need to then disseminate that information to people who couldn't care less. For some reason, I prefer the old definition of "scary carny that bites the heads off of small animals" that the word geek carries, while still marking the bearer of the name as "incapable of being elected homecoming queen and thus in the same social circle as nerds" by contemporary usage.
**I have to add this contradictory statement, because I've recently discovered The Receptionist's YouTube shorts, and if there is anything more low-budget than a man with his work computer's built in camera, lots of construction paper, and the occasional use of ketchup-blood, I don't know what is. Yet, Mr. Betz creates some really bizarre and entertaining shorts, though admittedly entirely inappropriate for young children. Among other things he fantasizes in verse and graphic detail about being President Lincoln with foreknowledge of his own murder and about cannibalism on the Oregon Trail. Note that I said it's inappropriate for young children. Ten-year-olds would love this stuff, though their mums might not like his use of the word "fucker."
***Also, in sharp contrast to my peers, I never liked Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood. I did watch it occasionally as a child, but more out of rebellion than enjoyment. My mum had banned it along with Pee Wee's Playhouse from out television selection, as I remember it, because she found the hosts of these programs sort of creepy. And I don't care what anyone has to say about what a wonderful man Mr. Rogers really was, because I found him to be disturbingly "nice" and creepy too. I will, however, agree that it wasn't really a bad show, and it gave kids some degree of insight into kid-interesting things like balloon factories and cake, as well as how to be a decent person on a daily basis. A creepily nice person, but decent all the same. I do, however, think Blue's Clues is a good show for kids. At least, I did back when they still had Steve on the program, before the Steve as muder-victim on Law & Order controversy, when Blue was still a girl. It appealed to my feminism, Blue being a female and thus breaking the gender-color stereotyping of all things blue being for boys and all things girl being pink. And it had puzzles, and I approve of puzzles.
****On the unlikely chance that anyone reading this is not my mum or well versed in Sami culture, this would be a traditional singing style not unlike some Native American chanting traditions.

retrospective Edinburgh

This is sort of a retro post from when I was on the train back to London from Edinburgh and while I was on the crags, which is why the tense doesn't work for my being in a place where I could actually post anything on the internet. And also why it happened about a week ago.
___

So I went out looking for a cafe to continue working on my peacebuilding paper in, but instead I ended up climbing Calton Hill, walking past the Holyroodhouse Palace, and now I'm climbing some moor or something. And I don't have water and a matpakke. I don't have my camera. I have my computer. Ridiculous.

I also don't have my coat along, and it's pretty chilly just sitting here. Ooo.

And I think someone just took a picture of me using my computer to take pictures.



Update:
I was climbing a crag. Salisbury Crags to be specific. I did it again today with Ashley, and we took lots of pictures of each other.* We had the super tourist day, taking pictures with stuff and things and locations. I finally bought some patches for my pop's backpack. Still need to get him the Norwegian patch, and maybe something for Denmark and Finland, seeing as I was there and interacted with the cities at least a little bit.** It was a good day and all, but climbing the crags, going up Royal Mile and ending up at the Castle for a bit more upness was a tiring day. Also, I don't recommend the castle unless one is really obsessed with war museums and crowns. It's an £9 or £11 entrance fee, so something about $20 to walk round an old military installation and look down on the city. And if you really want to climb something and look down on the city, I would recommend the comparatively cheap – because they are free – crags. As a side note/trip, there is a "museum" of weaving right by the entrance/exit to the castle which is one part informative to 4 parts "buy something Scottish!" Not that I disapprove of buying something Scottish. I bought scarves somewhere else, because it was a bit chilly and they were nice. But I rebelled from the absolutely touristy by buying a dreadful pink (looks nice, but it's rather vibrant) and a more neutrally toned number that is also not a "traditional" Scottish plaid.

Now I'm on the train back home, with three Scottish boys drinking Miller that one of them opened with his teeth. As an observation, I finally managed to open a bottle with a lighter the other day, but it was a pain in the ass. I am intrigued by the Scottish boys, because they are all wearing kilts right now, and some 'I'm so proud to be a Scotsman' t-shirts. Kilts and accents can make even slightly homely boys with unfortunate bottle-opening habits something like attractive. Of course, they are too young, but still. They have kilts on. Ah, bottle man seems to open everything with his teeth. Now he's opening their bag of sandwiches with his teeth.

*Ashley is a random hostel friend. Edinburgh was really good to me for random hostel friends, and while I would really like to go back to Edinburgh and see how they are doing there, they having been settling into the city for a few months of wage earning, I don't know if it will happen. Sadly, because I was very charmed by the city.
**My blue backpack is a loaner, because I haven't had a rucksack in years and while I knew I would need one to travel with, I didn't want to buy one when I prefer destroying my shoulder with a messenger bag for daily use. Patches was his request for letting me use it.

Islands and Travel

The island at the center of the world.
Winter break travels saw the opposite of snow. My first visit to New York was dry and not especially cold. Indeed, it must have been close to 60º when I was catching my plane to Stink Town (as a friend so generously dubbed it). When I got to NYC, I was tired and soon to be sick, without a very strong idea of where I was or where I was meeting my cousin. I also didn't have a mobile phone (an experience limited to my having forgotten it, until I canceled my plan for time abroad), or any sort of clock (having forgotten my iPod on my desk back in my dorm). I did, however, manage to meet to find the correct corner in Manhattan and meet my cousin at the right time. This, I felt, was a very important accomplishment. The following day, the cousin generously showed me all the sights I wanted to see in Manhattan, from the big Christmas tree to the public library. I was not sufficiently impressed. I was impressed with my cousin, whom I hadn't seen in close to a decade. But I am possibly one of the few who is neither enraptured by, nor disturbed by the massive and culturally significant New York. I liked it. The subways were convenient and efficient. The buses seemed to be fine. The architecture was interesting and very tall. I am fully aware of the city's status as an economic centerpiece to the world. But my over all feeling was 'I'd like living here, but I don't see what the big deal is.'
Oh, and the American Natural History Museum displays their fossils nicely. Plenty of light, instead if half-hidden in mood lighting, as the Field Museum seems to like doing.

An island at the edge of the gulf.
Most of my vacation was spent in Charlotte. I don't necessarily think of the city as 'Stink Town', but my affection for it definitely waxes and wanes. I do love the friends that I have there, but they are increasingly fewer persons, as I just don't live there anymore. Charlotte couldn't even dream of a white Christmas, as the temperature neared even the 70ºs while I was there. So what do I do? Travel further south. The Florida panhandle is very nice for camping in January. Few insects (none that I would call pests), mild temperature, and while we were there, lots of rain. The first night we did sleep outside, but the second night we were rained into a sweet little B&B in Apalachicola and enjoyed hot showers and overly warm beds. I was a bit in the realm of unreasonably cranky for most of the trip, which generally manifested as sarcastic humor. I was, in fact, cranky for most of my entire break. Starting out the break with a cold that didn't get attended to immediately, and spending much of my time tired, or in transit, or tired while in transit, anticipating more time traveling and worrying about missing my various modes of transportation. This was not the best for a happy, relaxing vacation. And yet I wouldn't have wanted to give up any part of my travels.
Enumerating, I took a train, a plane, a short airport walk, a trans-Atlantic plane, a bus, several subways and much walking, another bus, another plane, several local car trips, one very long car trip, a few more local car rides, another plane, another bus, more subways and lots of walking, another train, another trans-Atlantic flight, another train, much walking, a return train, another plane, and one last train from the time that I walked down the hill from my dorm in December until I walked back up the (now snow covered) hill in January.
And I still haven't said much about St. George's Island in Florida. It was wet. It has lovely sand dunes, and pretty shells, and it was raining lightly. Until it was raining hard. But it was still nice, and I'm impressed with my sister's park scouting skills. But as she is the ekte friluftsliv person in the family, she's the best woman for the job. I went camping, hiking, sailing, fishing, and so on with my parents when I was younger. The sister and I both did. But it seems to have stuck better with her, and even seems to have worn off the parents with the passage of time. I could even see my sister going hunting, as one of her quotes on vegetarianism is "Sometimes Bambi's gotta take one for the team." Though I have not yet seen or known her to wield a gun, bow, or pointy stick.

Architecture of an archipelago.
Somewhere towards the end of all my traveling, I took a long layover in Copenhagen to see the islands that a friend had loved so well. Arriving at 07.00 and at probably the lowest point in the tourist season, there wasn't much open, but there was still plenty to see. I felt more dwarfed by the lower architecture of Denmark's head city than I had in New York. This is certainly because of language rather than the physical structure of the city. But I was also more enamored of the buildings in Copenhagen. The central train station in Helsinki is nicer I think, but the churches are lovely, especially the church with the big golden ball at the top of its spire. I learned the name of this church, but have forgotten it again. However, anyone looking for it just needs to look up frequently enough and they too will stumble upon it. It is my goal to return to Copenhagen toward the end of my studies and climb the spire to look out upon the lovely city of (I'm sorry, I love you Danes, you are all really great) homely language. All the water is very nice too. I could happily live in Copenhagen, something that I can't say for Oslo.

kiitos paljon

Last night was "Frigg: thesis concert 2, or I go and have a fun night out and call it school work, continued." I like Finnish fiddle music, but it's a bit circular I don't always get into it as much as other things. The audience continued to be predominantly young, though I did enjoy seeing a couple of grannies at a close table. And I had friends who saved me a seat. Yay friends.

Starting to read Fiddling For Norway, I was thinking about the changes that folk music underwent in this country since religious movements began to associate fiddling and dancing with sin. Fiddlers either set aside or destroyed their fiddles, or they began disassociating their music from dancing and moving into concert performance. Fiddling for an attentive audience rather than active dancers meant that they could start increasing the artistic flourishes and reflect an understanding of classical training. Without dancers the music got more complicated. So what does the pietist movement in Norway have to do with Finnish fiddles? Well, I'm not as familiar with religious movements in Finland, but it seems logical that if there was such a reactionary sin-hunting movement in Finland there might have been something similar in Finland. I don't know. What I do know is that Finnish folk musicians are trained in a folk department at the Sibelius Academy, Finland's only school for higher education in music. I'm wondering if the virtuoso fiddling of Finland is heavily influenced by this formal education, or how far back the complicated fiddling styles go in Finland.

Less academic: I had an easier time understanding the band this time. For starts, the Finnish guys spoke English. I was rather surprised, as I had expected that they would know Swedish. It is an official language of Finland, and Swedish is close enough to Norwegian that the Norwegian audience would be able to understand it. Perhaps they do know Swedish, but are not as comfortable using it, and as an internationally touring band, it might serve them better to be well versed in English instead of Swedish. I did understand the Finnish that they used too, though it was limited to "Terve, tuolla." and "Kiitos paljon." "Hi there" and "thanks a lot" respectively. There was also a string of curses or some other random muttering that I missed, because I didn't hear it clearly. He was changing a broken string and not really talking to the audience, though to be honest, I probably would not have understood anyway. What did really please me, is that I had an easier time understanding the Norwegian spoken. My friend says that I am getting better at conversing in Norwegian, and she is doubtless correct, but as far as differences between the first show and the second, Harv speaks Swedish.

abuse of power

I have bad parents. Most people, upon meeting my parents, would not realize how terrible they really are. Meeting my mum and pop, one might think that they were nice, funny, possibly even cute. The mistake has been made before. But as I was listening to Yat-Kha while trying to fall asleep tonight (you see how well that is going), I started thinking about how neat Tuva is. Here is this really unique singing style from an area that was an independent country for no more that a couple decades. The only way one would even know they were a country is the postage stamps. But there is a great pride in the regional identity. And I think this sort of thing is interesting and think other people should want to know this sort of information too. This is all my parents fault. It can't just be blamed on my own nature. They did it to my sister too. I also know a disturbing amount about NYC rats, despite not having been to new york. I think books on Louis Pasteur make good bedtime literature. Two of my favorite books are about fish. The social histories of cod and shad. I think it is really neat to know why John "Appleseed" Chapman really planted all those trees. So it isn't exactly child abuse, but they have obviously abused their position as parents to instill a profound curiosity about the world and a desire to share this curiosity with people who don't give a damn.

archives

I was lucky to acquire a diverse music collection while I was living in Madison. The city is pretty music rich given its size, and I didn't really have the time and attention to focus on everything I collected. Since I've come to Norway my resources have been severely restricted, so I've been going back and listening to some of the things that I may have listened to once and forgotten or gathered for sociological/historical purposes. In the former group is The Sea and Cake. I forget how much I like their sometimes jazzy, sometimes electronic pop sound. In the latter group, The Rolling Stones. One of my library guys who always came in for the a/v stuff recommended that I get my education up with Aftermath when I told him I was writing a sociology paper on post-punk music scenes. I like "Paint it Black", but everything else on the album just makes me snicker.

slem, slem, slem! snill, snill, snill!

I finally turned in my Hedda Gabler paper yesterday, so I'm taking a well deserved break from my required writing to do some non-required writing. Usually, when it takes me two weeks to write a paper, I mean that it took me two weeks of complaining about the paper while I thought through the ideas that I wanted to use and appeared to be doing nothing. Then I wrote the paper in one evening. No. I spent over two weeks staring at the computer screen, tired and frustrated, trying to type anything that made sense about the play. Because I had to write it in Norwegian. And my norwegian textbooks don't have that much information relating to Hedda.

I also had a traumatic experience recently, when my computer decided to freeze up while I was writing my first journal entry in several days. Not that it wasn't also traumatic when it has frozen up on my paper writing or my e-mails, but Word and Gmail have auto-save features, where as Blogger just disappears with all my clever turns of phrase. But a lot of things have happened since I last made any updates, so here are the last two weeks in review and reverse:

One of my dorm mates has a twin who, while not identical, looks enough like her that when I'm not paying attention I can confuse the two. So for the Halloween party at Kroa this Saturday it was only appropriate that they dressed as an angel and a devil. Every time they saw me they would chant "bad, bad, bad" and "good, good, good" at me. I also met another guy from Wisconsin, who I got to dance with us to Ghostbusters. Bravery points all around, because he danced despite being tanked, and we danced with him while he was tanked. I also saw another of my dorm mate's boyfriend again for the first time since the beginning of the semester. He lived in the dorm building (in fact, my room at one point) the last couple years before he graduated. Apparently all the buildings cluttering my kitchen view have gone in over the past couple years. Bø might be a rural college town, but it is growing.

While Bø is building, you can get a nice house in Tinn for a song. Since Norsk Hydro has gone inside the mountains and mostly automated, the towns around the hydroelectric plants have lost their major employer. Tinn still looks nice though, with a pretty little downtown. We drove through it on the way home from a field trip two Wednesdays ago to a stavkirke in Eidsborg and the Norsk Industriarbeiders Museum in Rjukan. Luther-girl and I were having an extra-cranky day. Being cold and rained on in Eidsborg didn't help. The tower was off the church and on the ground, and everything was wrapped in plastic, because it's no longer tourist season so it's time for repairs.* It was cool to get a mini-lecture on the structural changes to the stavkirke while sitting in the pews, but I didn't start feeling better until we got to Rjukan and were fed a nice paprika chicken lunch. The Industrial Worker's Museum is located in the old Norsk Hydro power plant in Vermork. I have had an affection for this power plant since I wrote a paper on Norwegian resistance fighters for my second college history class.

This was one of the field trips from a very evil week for we American students. Two major papers due, and three field trips. Granted, the trip to Eidsborg and Rjukan was optional, but our class that day was cancelled so that we could go. Then when we got back, I ran up to my dorm to grab a quick snack and my rain clothes, because then I was going to look for beavers as part of my friluftsliv class. We saw some beavers. Fall is not the best time to go beaver hunting. The long days of summer are better for this, because one can sneak up on the beavers while they are on land and get a good look at them. All of our beavers were in the water, and quick to disappear if we tried to get close to them. We also saw five swans. Two adults and two juvies. We got a lot closer to the swans than the beavers, and disturbed their attempts at sleep. The beaver safari was pretty cool. We got pølse. Norwegian and their sausages. Oh my. What wasn't so cool was the trip to Lifjell on Friday. At least, not for some of us. The friluftsliv class is large enough that with the Spanish alpine ecology students along, they divided us into two groups. My group got the Danish department employee. The first thing he said to us was that we were going to stick together. We stopped frequently to consult the map. He had us discuss the articles for class that day as best we could, see as we had not read any of them. He talked to us about hiker safety rules in Norway. They are pretty standard, but with the addition of avalanche awareness, not so important in flat Wisconsin. Then he gave us compasses and had us start learning how to navigate our way back with the maps on the smaller, sometimes indistinct trails. We got back right about on time. The other group, with the friluftsliv department head, they got lost. They didn't have compasses. At least, not other than the instructor. Heavy off-trail walking finally brought the two Americans in the group, far ahead of the other students, to a different parking lot than the one we started from. They got back an hour and a half after the rest of us. Fortunately, our taxi-bus wouldn't wait that long, so we all got to leave only slightly late, while our Dane stood around waiting for everyone else to arrive. Granting that we have only a select group of Danes here in Bø, they make a very good impression of the country.**
*as the church in Eidsborg is wrapped in plastic, it is obviously not the one in the picture. I took the picture on Bygdøya in the Folkemuseum.
**All of the Danes I have met are here in relation to the friluftsliv program. The are all very competent, friendly, and generally attractive. Denmark is obviously populated by some strange and wonderful race of fairytale people rather than humans.