AlterNet has a really good article today, On God’s Side. As a non-theist raised in the Presbyterian church, these are politics I can really get behind. Even if I’m not a Christian, my ethics are to a great extent based on Christian morality. I just wish more sensible Christians would speak up so people would realize that being Christian doesn’t mean being a crazy neocon evangelical.

Some excerpts from the article:

But did anybody really suggest or imagine [gay marriage and abortion] are the only two moral values issues? I’m an evangelical Christian and I find 3,000 verses in the Bible on the poor, so fighting poverty is a moral value too, or protecting the environment – protecting God’s creation is a moral value. The ethics of war – whether we go to war, how we go to war, whether we tell the truth about the war – are fundamental moral and religious questions.

…

But in the public square, religion has to be disciplined by democracy. That means you don’t enter the public square and say I’m religious so I ought to win. Or God has spoken to me directly and I have the fix for Social Security. You say my faith motivates me. It shapes my convictions or it compels me to act on behalf of the poor or peace or whatever.

But then you say, here is my best offering on this question, and I have to persuade my fellow citizens. I have to persuade them that what I think is best for the common good – not that it’s the best religious vision, but it’s best for all of us.

…

So I think religion has to be taken to the street. It has to be real on the ground. And I also think Christians ought to be those who lead by example. Religious people – I mean, the best rabbis I know, the best priests and pastors I know, the best lay people I know, are the ones who just do their faith. You know, they don’t just proclaim their faith, they do their faith. St. Francis once said, ‘Always preach the gospel, and use words if necessary.’ You know, so he’s making your point. He’s saying it’s what we do. That’s the key. And then people say, ‘Why do you do all these things?’ And I say: ‘Oh, it’s because of my faith, because I think that’s what Jesus is calling me to do and I’m trying to be a follower of Jesus.’ So I think putting faith into action is critical.

…

These are the two ways of bringing God into public life. This is our American history. One is God on our side, and that leads to the worst things in politics. It leads to overconfidence and hubris – triumphalism – and often to bad foreign policy, often to wars, and in this case, now pre-emptive, unilateral war.

The other way about worrying – praying earnestly if we’re on God’s side – brings into politics the things that we’re missing today, like humility and penitence and reflection, and even accountability.

I am lucky enough to be one of the few people in the western world who doesn’t have food issues. However, there do exist a couple of food items I love so much that I cannot control myself around them. One of these is lemon sorbet. The other is shanghai potsticker dumplings.

Today I made the dumplings. They are extremely labor intensive. I have to grind the pork, chop and blanch bok choy, chop and mix in about 10 other ingredients, and then let that mixture fester for four hours or overnight. Then I have to make the dough, which is a major pain in the ass. It’s just flour and water, but one recipe of dumplings calls for 32 dumpling skins. I have to divide the dough into 32 balls and roll them out, then pack and fold all 32 little dumplings together. The lucky people in the US can apparently buy pre-made dumpling skins, but such are not available here. If it weren’t for the making of the dumpling skins, I’d make these little treasures a lot more often.

After the dumplings have been folded together, they have to be fried, then steamed, then fried again, all in the same pan. It usually takes three batches of cooking to get them all made. They’re served with vinegar soy sauce. It’s just heaven.

I don’t make these dumplings for guests very often. I don’t like to share.

NEVER buy a front-loading washing machine.

I understand why these are the only–yes, the only–kind of washer that can be bought in Norway. They are supposed to be efficient when it comes to space, water usage, and electricity. Well, it’s true about the space-saving bit. All Norwegian washers are 58 cm wide. That’s less than 23 inches, for those of you not using a “real” system of measurements, as my husband likes to say. Hold your hands up in front of you, two feet apart. That’s how wide my washer is. I can’t get one bigger than that. I can get ones that are smaller than that, and I can get ones that actually load from the top, but even the ones that load from the top still rotate the clothes on top of each other, like in a clothes dryer, so they have nearly all the disadvantages of a font-loader. So yeah, front-loading washers are space-efficient. But this means that you must do your laundry in many small loads, instead of in a couple of large ones. Because of this, I have to do laundry almost constantly. It doesn’t help that a load takes 65 minutes to complete–and that’s the “short” cycle! Part of the reason the cycle takes so long is certainly due to the fact that they only accept a cold-water hose. They heat their own water. Most likely this makes it easier to get a very specific temperature of water, but I imagine it’s terrible for the energy bill. Even though hot water is included in the monthly fee we pay to the borettslag (co-op?), I don’t get to use any of it to wash my clothes. No, the washer must heat up several little loads of freezing-cold Norwegian tap water each time it does a load, and I must pay for that electricity separately. How can this possibly be energy-efficient?

Supposedly these kinds of washers are also efficient in their use of water. Well, I can tell you it sure doesn’t seem like it when you have bucketfuls of dirty, soapy water all over your bathroom floor. Why might you ever get into that situation? Well, if there’s something wrong with the washer, it will just stop, regardless of where it is in the cycle. The door will be locked, as the door immediately locks as soon as you start a cycle (making it impossible to add any last-minute items). It should lock, of course–if you open the door, you’ll have bucketfuls of water all over the floor!

There is a little door on the front of the washer that you can open, under which is a valve that can be turned to drain the washer in case anything goes wrong. Fine and dandy, but it’s just a recessed hole in the front of the washer, so there’s no way to get the water that’s gushing forth to gush gracefully into a bucket. You just have to hold a bucket in front of it and accept that maybe only 60% of the water will actually make it into the bucket. When the bucket is full, you have to keep holding the bucket with one hand while tightening the valve with your other hand to stop the water (and you have to twist the top of the valve many times to get the flow of water to stop), all the while balancing on your knees in previously mentioned cold, soapy water. This is not a particularly easy task, especially given that the hole from which the water is gushing is about two inches off the floor. You can, of course, adjust the speed at which the water gushes from this whole by how far you open the valve, but it’s a catch-22. The slower the water gushes, the less water you get into the bucket–more water runs between the hole and the washer’s casing. The faster the water gushes, the easier it is to get it into the bucket, but the bucket fulls up faster then, and since it’s at an angle of about 20° from the floor, it fills up really fast. Then you get the problem of holding up the overflowing bucket with one hand while trying to tighten the valve several turns with soapy water gushing all over your hands and the floor.

*sigh*

I’ve had problems with washers at least four times while living in Norway. Three times the problem resulted in buckets of water on the floor, once in an insurance claim from the buy living underneath us. I guess this is part of the reason why all Norwegian bathrooms have drains in the middle of the floor. (I just love the popular Norwegian method of showering that involves just standing in a corner, not even necessarily with a shower curtain, and letting the water run all over the floor. They use a long squeegee to get it all into the drain afterwards.) Once the washer stopped working because it got a SIM card in it. For the uninitiated, SIM cards are as thick as a credit card, but measure about ½” by ¾”. Not a large piece for foreign material. This time the washing machine stopped working because it got a couple of hair ties in it. It doesn’t take much. Lord have mercy upon me should I accidentally wash a tube of Chapstick!

You may have had the experience with your dryer that sometimes the clothes get twisted and tangled up together. This happens in Norwegian washers, too, but on a much grander scale. Every time I wash anything that consists of articles of clothing larger than underwear, I have to take the articles of clothing out of the washer one by one, untwist them, and then put them in the dryer. If I don’t, they’ll take even longer than usual to dry, and they’ll dry twisted so they’ll be all wrinkly. This is partially my dryer’s fault, too. Not much tumbling happening since it’s also less than 23 inches wide. (Again, I want to impress upon you that these are not compact models built for apartments or people concerned about energy costs–this is it, all you can get here.) The low water levels, long cycles, and lack of separation by a central axle also cause an inordinate amount of wear and tear on clothing. New clothes start looking old real fast when you put ‘em on one of these babies.

Speaking of wear and tear: Recently, after my dog pissed on my bed, I washed my queen-size (thankfully rubber-backed) mattress pad in the washer. It barely fits, but I’ve washed it before without incident. I remember sitting in the office when I hear a weird thumping sound come from the bathroom, after which the spinning of the washer, which was centrifuging at the time, slowed waay down. It started up again right after that, so I figured everything was OK. When the load was done, however, and I went to take the mattress pad out, I saw that it was twisted and bundled up like a belly button or roll or something–completely smooth on the outside with all the material twisted up on the inside. Completely smooth except for the huge rip at the bottom of the bundle. The washer was spinning, see, and pulling the mattress pad in all different directions. Since the material had been all twisted up earlier in the cycle, the pressure was too much and it just ripped. Not a silk blouse–no, a rubber-backed thick cotton mattress pad. Amazing. It took about five minutes to untwist the damn thing.

I think it’s particularly amusing that Norwegians somehow believe that it’s tumble-dryers that cause clothing to get torn up and worn-looking. They also believe that tumble-dryers will make clothing be stiff and scratchy. Instead, they prefer drying their clothing on lines outside, or inside during winter. Or, if they’re gonna get real high-tech, they’ll get a drying closet, which is basically a closet-sized cabinet with a heating element and fan and rods on which you can hang your wet clothes. Particularly nice with towels–after you shower, you can remove the outer layer of your skin with a cuddly-soft line-dried piece of sandpaper…I mean, terry-cloth. Fabric softener is just beginning to come into vogue here, thankfully. Of course, they don’t know not to use that on towels, though.
Other irritations–you cannot dye in the washer, you cannot control the load for a lengthy soak, you cannot add bleach, all detergents and fabric softeners must be added through a little drawer that gets all disgusting and gummed up and crusty, the spin cycle vibrates the entire apartment building (no, I’m not exaggerating).

In short, NEVER buy a front-loading washer.

Mental Floss has an interesting article in its current issue about Michael Marmot and his Status Syndrome Theory. Interesting…I haven’t seen this research mentioned outside of fat acceptance circles before.

I may be many things, but I’ve never considered myself to be a prude. Sometimes the ads I see here in my city, though make me wonder. Scandinavia is of course known for its relative level of “comfort” with the naked body, but sometimes I think it really goes too far.

Ikea recently had an ad campaign featuring all different colors of asses next to their wares. Likewise, some stocking company advertised using a bare rump. I found both of these ad campaigns to be a little–well, not shocking, exactly, but definitely gratuitous and not something I’d ever see in the US. Now Oslo City, the big mall in the middle of downtown, has has jumped on the bandwagon. They’ve been getting edgier with their advertising for a while now: recent campaigns have included scantily-clad, freakishly-muscular female dancers and, *gasp*, old people dressed and behaving as if they were teenagers. For Valentine’s Day they’ve gone all out and are featuring photographs of naked men and women together in suggestive positions. Asses only–this isn’t pornography after all, it’s art! Some of the ads are just sexual, while others, well, it looks like the people in the ads are actually having sex. (I’ll try to get my digital camera down to the bus stop and take a picture for you.) The ads are all over the city, mostly at the public transportation stops, close-up and bigger-than-life. The consumer ombudsman has censored the ads. Instead of taking the posters down, Oslo City has instead glued a big black banner over the offending areas of the models’ bodies, doing little to decrease the titillation factor.

Apparently this kind of thing is just wallpaper to ethnic Norwegians (I once remember seeing “Ai no corrida” on one of the Norwegian Broadcasting Network’s public TV channels). I imagine it’s only us ferners they’re scandalizing with this kind of advertising. If they really want to be edgy, they ought to show some fat models in skimpy clothes. Then the Norwegians really wouldn’t know what to think.

My New Webcam

My parents were finally able to get broadband, after many years of only getting crappy 36k dialup connections. Unfortunately, they’re only getting 206 kbps since they’re so far from the central station, but hey, it’s better than nothing! I’ve reinstalled Apache and put up a webcam so they can see the dog. Ada is three now and they still haven’t met her.

Good post from Brutal Women that came just a day after I dealt with this issue in Aikido:

Brutal Women: Another Day, Another Roundhouse, Another Bad Right Hook

The room we practice in has mirrors, which were covered at the previous practices. They were uncovered Monday, and I had to look at myself standing doing footwork alongside all the other people. It was quite demoralizing. Because I’m very fat. Way fatter than most people in this country, and nearly always the fattest one by far in the room (often not the fattest one in the room in the US, though!).

The thing is, though, I don’t feel fat. I mean, I weigh about twice what a person my height ought to weigh, but I don’t usually feel like it. Sometimes I’m reminded, though, like when trying to do those yoga poses where my bulk gets in the way. I definitely got reminded in Aikido when having to do all that falling down and getting up again. Got reminded the whole week afterwards, that is! But usually I don’t think about it when performing physical tasks. I did not like the mirror, because it reminded me–and at a time when feeling negative about one’s body is not conducive to learning and performing.

(As an aside, I don’t think fat people get nearly the credit they deserve for the exercise they do, whether purposeful exercise or just going about their day-to-day tasks. Just imagine an “ideal weight” woman with another “ideal weight” woman strapped to her back at all times, going about her business. That’s me on a daily basis. Now imagine her going up several flights of stairs, rolling and falling in Aikido, or doing a shoulderstand. There–that’s my life. The US government and their new guidelines for physical exercise can go screw themselves. At least I don’t get harassed for exercising in public, like many fat people do. What is wrong with people?!?)

The fat acceptance movement has helped me a lot. It’s helped me realize that it is possible to be fat and healthy, and that fat people deserve to be treated just like anyone else, etc. It has helped me see a lot of discrimination that I otherwise wouldn’t have noticed. When I spend a lot of time around other fat people, like at a NOLOSE or NAAFA convention, the fat acceptance movement has also helped me to be able to see fat people as beautiful. But it doesn’t take long after I leave that supportive environment and come back to Norway to see myself as the freak I really am (freak as in “a thing or occurrence that is markedly unusual or irregular”). I’m not dissing my looks, as I generally think of myself as more attractive than average–heh. But I know my body is very fat, and I know that other people would do damn near anything not to have a body like mine (cf. the 1994 Esquire magazine poll in which hundreds of young women stated that they’d rather be run over by a truck than gain 150 pounds.). I know what others think when they see me. And of course I wish I weren’t fat. I may be able to see fat people in general and myself in particular as beautiful, but I don’t generally find fat bodies aesthetically pleasing. (There, I admitted it–SA police come arrest me now! Oh wait, I’m in Norway, and there is no size acceptance in Norway.)

It’s a common belief among many people who consider themselves to be “enlightened” that when looking for a partner, you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. Certainly not solely, but appearances are an important part of the chemistry between two people. I think this is a big misunderstanding that a lot of people have about the fat acceptance movement–that we want to force people see us as attractive, or ignore their personal aesthetic preferences for thin people when it comes to dating. But no rational movement would seek to change people’s aesthetic preferences. Rather, fat acceptance fights discrimination based on appearance when appearance isn’t important to the case (e.g. Jennifer Portnick’s troubles with Jazzercise). Fat acceptance also helps fat people to see the beauty in their own bodies. I’ve experienced this firsthand. I just wish the effect lasted a little longer.

This just demonstrates the importance of fat role-models in fitness. People like the previously mentioned Ms Portnick or the lovely lady in this yoga gallery. We never get to see fat people exercising, often because they avoid doing so in public due to harassment, lack of workout gear that fits them, or because they just feel uncomfortable exercising alongside a bunch of thin people (perhaps because they imagine what people are thinking about them).

It makes me angry that I got so down, just by seeing an image of myself exercising. And this despite all my time involved with the fat acceptance movement. Johannes says it’s important to use the mirror to observe yourself when training to be sure all the parts of your body are in the correct positions. I know he’s right. Monday’s training was just a shock to me. It made me realize that I still have a lot of work to do, personally, when it comes to fat acceptance. And society has a lot of work to do if it’s serious about getting fat people to exercise.

Today was Aikido, and I didn’t go. I actually felt fine physically, amazingly enough. Monday’s practice, while still a lot of work, did not leave me feeling like I’d been run over by a truck. Last week I didn’t feel like a normal human being until Sunday. Johannes said that when he starts working out, the first and third weeks are the worst for him. In my case, I don’t think I’ve ever made it to the second week before! Well, with the notable exception of the yoga.

No, I didn’t go to Aikido because I’ve been feeling quite depressed lately. Yesterday was bad, today is worse. I don’t experience the depression now like I did when I was younger, nothing so dramatic like that. Rather, I just want to sleep all the time, can’t concentrate, get stressed out if I have too much to do (and it doesn’t take much!). I still feel depressed mentally, but for whatever reason, I can stand outside of the feelings, observe them while they’re happening. So on the one level, I am depressed and unhappy, but on a higher level, I know that these are just feelings, not “me”, and I’m not depressed about anything. However, while this knowledge has made it easier to deal with the depression in a way, it has not minimized the effects. I still sleep a lot, still feel unhappy, cannot concentrate enough to read anything more than a Nemi comic, etc. It just sort of brings home the fact that this disease is physiological. Genetic, even–since my biological mother got in touch with me, I found out that she has depression, so does her mom, and her son. So I can think of it like diabetes, or even alcoholism. Something I inherited and can control, but that I will always have. Not something that is my fault.

My work with meditation in yoga has helped me a lot with my depression (not to mention a lot of other stuff). The physical stretches can vary greatly in strenuousness, so even if I have virtually no energy whatsoever, I can usually manage a while in universal position. The stretches feel really good for the physical aches that the depression brings. Even when I am too depressed to move, the self-observation tactics of yogic meditation (”I am not my body, I am not my feelings, I am not my thoughts–but I can observe myself experiencing these things.”) help me to keep mental distance from the stupid, crappy, horrible unfair things going on in my brain that make me feel like shit.

Sadly, I’ve found that I’m enjoying my yoga classes less and less now that we’re focusing more on strenuous classical poses (like headstand, plow, or Lord of the Fishes) that just don’t work with my bulk. I know the solution is to start up a home practice, but that kind of thing isn’t easy for me. I’m hoping my yogaferie this summer will help.

I’m afraid that I might have taken on too much this term. Last term I tried to go to yoga twice a week, and I made it a lot of the time. This term I’m supposed to be going to Aikido twice a week plus yoga once a week. I’m finding it difficult to motivate myself to go to the Aikido because it’s a long commute and the building it’s in is a long, hilly, slippery walk from any of the nearest public transportation stops. Well, it’s not too long, actually, but it seems long because of the ice on the hills. I still haven’t found a way there and back that I’m satisfied with. And it doesn’t help that if I don’t time things right, I have to wait 20 minutes in the cold for the next tram to come. None of these are big obstacles, but they just stress me out. I have a long history of quitting things, so these stupid obstacles don’t help. There were never any obstacles to the yoga. Plus this term I need to finish the vast majority of the writing on my thesis, since I have to turn it in on October 1st. I am getting better at writing spontaneously, thanks to this blog, but I haven’t written anything on my thesis. I don’t know where to start. No, that’s not true–I know lots of places to start. I can start anywhere. I just haven’t. *sigh*

Eeeh, I don’t know. I’m really rambling here. Like I said, I’m not doing too well lately.

The New York Review of Books: Europe vs. America

Some quotes:

The US is an excellent place to be rich.

…

In the words of Valgard Haugland, Norway’s Christian Democratic minister for children and family: “Americans like to talk about family values. We have decided to do more than talk; we use our tax revenues to pay for family values.”

…

In its widespread religiosity and the place of God in its public affairs, its suspicion of dissent, its fear of foreign influence, its unfamiliarity with alien lands, and its reliance upon military strength when dealing with them, the US does indeed have much in common with other countries: but none of them is in Europe. When the international treaty to ban land mines was passed by the UN in 1997 by a vote of 142–0, the US abstained; in company with Russia and a handful of other countries we have still not ratified it. The US is one of only two states (the other is Somalia) that have failed to ratify the 1989 Convention on Children’s Rights. Our opposition to the international Biological Weapons Convention is shared by China, Russia, India, Pakistan, Cuba, and Iran.

…

The risks inherent in a “war of choice” (Iraq), or the abandonment of international agencies in favor of unilateral initiative, or an excessive reliance on military power, are thus clearer to Europeans than to most other peoples: “Europeans want to be sure that there is no adventure in the future. They have had too much of that.”[21] The United States, by contrast, had no direct experience of the worst of the twentieth century—and is thus regrettably immune to its lessons.

I don’t regret having moved here, but I do very often miss home. Ignorance is definitely bliss–now I feel like I’m not going tob e able to be happy either here in Norway or in the US.

I got through this week. I went to Aikido yesterday and participated fully. Well, almost fully. I started to get dizzy during some of the rolling, my hands were shaking, and my whole body felt weak. I figured out that I probably need to eat a little bit more before I go to practice. But I made it through, and it wasn’t as bad as I’d feared. Maybe I do have endorphins after all, but instead of giving me any kind of rush, they just protect me from being in major pain. I can’t wait to see how long it takes until I feel like a normal human being again. My legs are about as useful as overcooked spaghetti. The 600 mg doses of ibuprofen Eleonora recommended don’t seem to be helping. Or maybe they are–I hate to think what kind of a state I’d be in without them, then!

I also made it to yoga tonight, but there were no endorphins to help me there. I barely made it down the stairs, and I had to skip a lot of the stuff we did in class, like sun salutations, bridge pose, and headstand. My legs just wouldn’t support me enough to do those things safely. I sincerely hope that things will get better soon, because yoga is too important to me to allow it to get ruined by aikido.

But anyway, I’m off. I joined OSI and the aikido club. I’ll be going twice a week from now on. Yoga will be just once a week this term, because the class schedule is so bad. Wish me luck.