Shop second hand - 2: Garden Aid

Little feathered swine. Since our cat passed on around 2008 we have a lot more birds in the yard & we love that. We enjoy watching them & we feed them all year. I tell them "howdy" when I come out in the mornings & they don't even seem frightened. Why then, must the blackbirds ravage my new planted seeds & sprouts? Okay - because that's their nature, of course, & it looks like a lot more fun to freak out birdbrain style & toss the dirt all around than to politely peck at what's in the feeding bottle or on the ground. Talk about down & dirty - they almost burrow into the boxes & patches, even pull up my baby spinach. Spinach! Blackbirds! I never knew they had those appetites.

The long & short of it is, the seedlings need shelter. I always shop second hand, so off I went. Had to go 3 places before I found a great big lace curtain for 30 Dkr. or about $5. I am sure that's a lot cheaper than anything they would sell off a roll in a garden center or hardware store. I cut off big strips & covered 2 beds plus 2 flowerboxes. There is still plenty left. It looks appealingly tacky - big lace flowers among the real flowers - & it does the job.

So there it is again. SHOP SECOND HAND  & do our earth a favor. It saves money & I suspect I am the only gardener on my street with a lace curtain doing bird duty. Silly - absolutely - but it IS kind of fun to be the one with the good ideas, not? Especially at this age. Creativity counts, besides which, I have never grown my own spinach before. No blackbird is going to spoil that!

Poetry for May

Here's a little poetry to celebrate the arrival of May; 2 poems by 2 poets I go back to again & again, but it was not always thus.

        I fell for Robert Browning as a teenager in high school & Pippa's Song was most likely the poem that did it. Moving on, I wrote my university thesis on his dramatic monologues, the ones where the speakers are Italian renaissance artists - Fra Lippo Lippi & Andrea del Sarto. Checked out their lives & paintings too, so the title was something like Browning as Art Critic. He was an astute critic as well as brilliant poet with an understanding of & affection for humanity & its little ways. I appreciated his own love story, the way he spirited his true love away from her domestic prison & off to Italy where they lived, thrived, reproduced & wrote, but ...

       Elizabeth Barret Browning's poetry did not move me. Her poems seemed either self-consciously pathetic or plain sappy. The sonnet below headed the second category. I would never slip it into my own true love's valentine; it was too much, too sentimental, too quasi-religious, too - sappy. I said that to my teenage sweetheart's darling mother, who was an older lady & a teacher.

        "Honey," she protested, "That girl was in love!"

        Well, that much was obvious & did not change sappy.

Here they are, his & hers, wonderful. As for Pippa's Song, yes, I still believe God's in his heaven but would hardly claim All's right with the world. It isn't. It can look that way on a lovely breezy day in May in a country where most people are quite all right, thank you, or at any rate can choose their own direction to a very great degree. That is not the way most of the world is.

       Sonnet XLIII (From the Portuguese) expresses a love as passionate as childhood faith that yet might have been lost with childhood's lost saints. Wow! That moves me now. I had to reach a certain age & also, of course, a long running relationship - otherwise it was just another love poem. Wouldn't it be nice to maintain our childhood faith unquestioned? It would, but don't know anyone who has; I sure haven't. Some saints got lost, though God's in his heaven (doing what, forcryingoutloud?). Some saints stay to call on when all is not right with the world (but they can't change it). Both things must be accepted, thought through, wrestled with even. Wouldn't it be nice if love had only ups & no (crashing) downs? We think so, but maybe that would just be boring. It can last - that's the thing - & now I can love Elizabeth as much as I do her husband.

           Enjoy the poetry. It doesn't get better than this:

 Song from Pippa Passes - Robert Browning

The year's at the spring,

And day's at the morn;

Morning's at seven;

The hillside's dew-pearl'd;

The lark's on the wing;

The snail's on the thorn;

God's in his heaven;

All's right with the world.

Sonnets from the Portuguese, XLIII  - Elizabeth Barret Browning

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday's
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with a passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints, - I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life! - and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

Pancakes for Breakfast

Our grown children (4) plus 3 significant others & 3 grandkids here for Easter. I am well aware how privileged we are that they want to come home & even be seen with us in public. Daughter + main squeeze already here so today I made pancakes for breakfast. I operate on the principle stated by Buffy the Vampire Slayer's mother: "They only have no calories if I make them for you."

    A bit of a shock to my system nevertheless, because we fasted all day yesterday, as in: several glasses of water & 3 cups of herbal tea, period. It was Good Friday & I usually do fast - not a lot to ask given the reason we celebrate Good Friday - but it's as much cleansing as Christianity. Always send a thought to the millions fasting because they haven't got food. Here it's 'interesting' to experience actual hunger, because we wellfed westerners have pretty well forgotten what that's all about. It does feel good too - afterwards.

   Give it a try & have a Happy Easter.

Suad & Amanda - safe after Somalia

Almost quitting time last Thursday, then Suad showed up, looking worried. We had met Suad twice before, both times with her husband. They are Somali immigrants newly arrived in Svendborg & needing some local guidance. Both speak Danish but Suad is very fluent, very lovely & pleasingly plump. (Does anybody still say that? It describes Suad.) Her hair is the original afro, bleached orangey at the tips, no headscarf. Thursday she showed up alone, bruised after a beating - not the first - by her husband. She had left in a hurry while he slept & wasn't about to go back. At the volunteer/self-help center where I work we offered food, tea & sympathy & an hour later got her on her way to a women's shelter. We enjoyed imagining her husband's rage & frustration when he realized she was gone, out of his clutches, away from the repression he thought he could keep up in Denmark. Dream on, fanatic - that's not how women behave in the west. HA!

Of course Suad is the lucky one here. She gets all the sympathy; he gets despised & laughed at. What a dickhead. Did he really think he could keep a bright woman down? When will those idiot Muslim men ever learn? If they can't deal with western values, they can beat it back where they came from. Good riddance. They are all terrorists at heart anyway, aren't they?

       Yeah, I think they are, but I begin to understand the mechanism. In the case of Somalia, it's very clear. Not only is there a civil war on & no functioning government, but their livelihood was smashed when French fishermen violated Somalia's territorial waters & other nations followed their example. Most Somali pirates are ex-fishermen out of a job; that's why they know the territory so well. The lucky ones get to Europe or the US & some do really well - like the successful Somali enclave in St. Paul, Minnesota. Four young men from that community played the pirates in Captain Philips & one was even nominated for an Oscar. Then there are the others.  

       A culture that doesn't drink even a beer & forces its women to wander around in their own pup tent is as not-Danish as you can get. There has always been plenty of sympathy for the women & children, while the men were despised. Needless to say, this makes integration a whole lot tougher than it otherwise might be, & not only that. This attitude often makes the men even more repressive to their women - who figure out fast enough that western societies are going to be a lot more fun than what they came from. Here in DK girls get better educations than boys - really keep at it & are rewarded, especially if they ditch the Muslim headscarf - which of course keeps the vicious circle turning. There are jobs for immigrant women, mainly in the public health sector. Read: nursing homes. Everybody figures women from backward cultures are born caregivers at a time when there is a shortage of young people here & a crowd of oldsters needing care. Guys aren't so lucky. There's not the big demand for unskilled & semi-literate; besides, they repress their women. Yes, it's the only way they can feel just a bit manly in a country where they are not popular, but that won't get them any points & shouldn't. They have to change their ways.

       Suad is safe now; her husband is frustrated & pathetic. Canadian Amanda Lindhout is safe too, after 15 months of Somali captivity, starting in 2008. More on that next time.

Unforgivable - Utilgiveligt

There is one statement that is completely unforgivable: THAT'S JUST THE WAY I AM.

Read: I know perfectly well I should confront the characteristics that make it necessary to say this, but I am too

1. lazy

2. conceited

3. afraid

4. all of the above - however paradoxical it sounds. The human mind is capable of all sorts of excuses & self-delusion. That's just the way it is. So DO something. Even if psychoanalyzing yourself seems obnoxiously egocentric & the quest can give some silly-sounding results, it's worth it. It will eventually get you there.

THAT'S JUST THE WAY I AM is unforgiveable!

Der er én erklæring der er fuldstændig utilgiveligt: SÅDAN ER JEG BARE.

Læs: Jeg er udmærket godt klar over, at jeg burde arbejde med mig selv og de karaktertræk, der gør denne erklæring nødvendigt, men jeg er for

1. dovn

2. indbildsk

3. bange

4. dem allesammen - selvom det lyder paradoksalt. Menneskesindet er i stand til alle slags undskyldninger og selvbidrag. Det er bare sådan det er. Så GØR dog noget. Selvom selv-psykoanalyse kan virke som værre navlepilleri og søgen kan give nogle skæve resultater, er den det værd. Du når det til sidst.

SÅDAN ER JEG BARE er utilgiveligt!

Overpopulation

Overpopulation - scary stuff, that. Anyway it scares me. A lot of us enlightened westerners imagine modern utopias where the local society is as connected & supportive as back in the bad old days, back when being pushed out meant death or at least misery. There will be roof gardens with beehives, solar panels & a big windmill at the end of the road. Homegrown produce, recycling, zero growth, fellowship. It's already happening here & there. Neighborhood dinner clubs, urban greenhouses, electric cars, clothes & tool swaps, people taking care of each other. Even old fogies get a chance to form elder communes - olle kolle in Danish - that will stave off the inevitable trip to the nursing home. It's beautiful.

       It's also exclusive. Many million people on the planet are nowhere in these cozy plans. The planners ignore them because there's nothing else to do. They/we/I wish they would just go away.

Of course they won't. They will keep on keeping on as they always have, having many children, using up all the resources they can find, settling in nature preserves & burning the wood, poaching, generally making a mess. They are a whole lot better than the mining, logging & oil companies out to grab whatever they can, aided & abetted by various multi-nationals & corrupt governments, but they are still in the way of the modern utopia. They are just so annoying.

       The best thing for the planet would be to exactly achieve zero growth, stop producing a bunch of useless luxury products, dumb-ass toys no kid would miss, gas guzzler cars. And pop off half the population. Robots are going to take most of the jobs anyway, not? So as a little mental exercise, who has to go?

       We'll start with pedophiles, human traffickers, wife-&-kid beaters, tyrants & torturers, rapists. No protests there, right? Moving on to terrorists, bigtime bullies & fanatics of every stripe, swindlers, gangsters, psychopaths (one might be your boss), the mining, logging & oil companies + those who cooperate with them (okay - going to be impractical), corrupt politicians generally (there went the entire governments of India, Pakistan & points east + some of ours), drug dealers, the wolves of Wall Street & the fashionistas who tell perfectly normal girls they are fat.

        Next? This is where innocent people take a hit. Very retarded or senile & others who are almost or completely helpless + anybody dying of AIDS - or anything else, I guess. Then who? Well, here we come to the great mass of foreign humanity with no prospects, a gang of kids they can't care for or educate because they are ignorant, lazy or out to breed a million little Muslims; people I will never get to know. (The very few I do know - because they made it up here - I often like a lot.) I don't want to think about them. They are just in the way. Dang, that's annoying! 

Philip Seymour & the 10 others

Just read - a week after the fact - a heartfelt tribute to Philip Seymour Hoffman in Time magazine. It's written by his friend & fellow addict, the screenwriter Aaron Sorkin. It's down to earth & sincere & made me feel marginally better. A Late Quartet finally got to Denmark & I had just seen it when I heard the news. (My favorite remains Almost Famous. "Of course I'm home on Saturday night. I'm not cool.") Sorkin quotes Philip Seymour in one of those eerily astute statements that turn out to predict exactly what happens.

"If one of us dies of an overdose, probably 10 people who were about to won't."

Doubtless absolutely right. My daughter - who was also a big fan like me - summed it up well & directly: "What a dickhead." Yep - that he was. Even so, I wish Philip Seymour hadn't & the other 10 had. Truly unfair thought & I know it, but I also know I am not alone. Okay, 'thought' is probably the wrong word; it's something more basic, something we all feel sometimes. My further thoughts on this sort of thinking are the subject of the next blog.

Dang, Philip Seymour! I would have liked to see your King Lear.