The last fifteen hours have taken me on a mesmerizing journey. Since Saturday is one of my travel blog days it is good to have a fascinating and what turned out to be an unstoppable reading adventure to share. I picked up The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt at 1:00AM and finished minutes ago almost exactly at 3:00PM. The Goldfinch is described as a literary novel and it also happens to have won a Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2013. Love this book…love it love it love it.
Literary novels are not my go-to reading matter which tends to be histories, travel literature and crime/mystery novels. This is not to deny that some of my greatest reading hours have not been spent nose deep in some great works of—mostly American but a few British, Russian, Australian and soon-Norwegian—literary fiction.
The Goldfinch has all of the ingredients I need for a reading binge: a fascinating, and engagingly flawed protagonist and his, in some ways, even more uniquely-construed sidekick for much of the book. The other main actors in this unlikely but believable (barely) drama range from stellar to all-too-human but they are generally an appealing lot.
Because Time and Place is a travel blog, let me make an extra mention of the story’s geography which is much to my liking with vivid descriptions of cultured Manhattan, uncultured Las Vegas and even some clear and bright pictures of Amsterdam at Christmas. Having spent time in New York, the desert southwest and Amsterdam, I can attest to the clear descriptive eye…and nose and ears and taste buds of the author.
To further add to my all-night reading pleasure there is a mystery and there are some criminals, let’s call them art gangsters. They are not a huge part of the story—or The Goldfinch would edge over into crime fiction wouldn’t it and I probably would have read it even sooner.
In case you haven’t read The Goldfinch yet the story goes something like this: A young boy and his mother are visiting an important Manhattan museum when there is a massive explosion, killing many including the mother. The boy makes it out with a tiny but priceless painting in hand. The intent is not to steal it exactly but in his dazed state and with the beautiful object literally next to him it happens. This beautiful and famous painting (it is a real painting) of The Goldfinch provides the framework upon which the tale is hung. This is Theo’s story from his childhood through roughly his mid-thirties. The locales shift as Theo lives somewhat briefly with the Park Avenue family of a school friend, and meets the person who will eventually come to mean the most to him, an antique dealer/furniture restorer. All too soon his ne’er-do-well father comes to claim him for the Las Vegas years where he leads a wildly undisciplined and drug and booze-logged existence for a high school kid. Best-friend-for-life, the unusual Boris, is his partner in all things good and bad in the barrenness of life in a nearly deserted subdivision on the outskirts of Vegas.
Eventually Theo winds up back in Manhattan to make his more-or-less permanent home with Hobie the furniture restorer—he has always been in love with Hobie’s grand-niece who was seriously injured in the same explosion that killed Theo’s mom which complicates his already way-too-complicated life. The plot thickens with more drugs, always more drugs; reconnecting with what remains of his Park Avenue family; his legal and illegal antique dealings and the ongoing issue of The Goldfinch which has become more albatross than songbird or painting by this time.
Fifteen hours with a good book can never be a bad thing although this was not part of the Saturday plan. It happened like this. During the course of a lovely visit with my poetry friend last evening, I drank more than one glass of wine. Friday night busy week past why not.
When I drink wine in the evening I wake up in the middle of the night. When I wake up in the middle of the night I read. When I wake up in the middle of the night and get into a really good book I read all night. When I wake up in the middle of the night and read a good book all night and don’t have to go to work the next day I keep reading until I finish the book.
I think of it as ‘dropping out’ for a day (or an occasional weekend). And being a drop-out now and again is a mentally restorative activity. Remember ‘turn on, tune in, drop out?’ You can pretty much accomplish all of that with a good book, flannel pjs and some leftover Brownies and Caramel sauce.
Oslo, 2008 or 2009.
This is a story about Norway. In a way. Well, it is actually a story about my DNA. Which is Norwegian. Like all DNA, it has an extensive travel history. (This was part of a longer paper for one of my writing classes. It’s nice. Enjoy!)
THE DNA
Thanks to AncestryDNA I could verify my Norwegian bona fides by sending my spit away with the mailman. The results are in and I am almost fully (93%) Scandinavian. I wanted to be that—but also to have a few DNA strands of something a little different.
And, it turns out; I do have a modicum of more exotic blood, probably Saami (formerly known as Laplander). That makes sense because, according to family legend, one of mom’s grandfathers was a reindeer herder in the Arctic north that encompasses Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia. This territory is home to the Saami, a people that have occupied that land since before the last great ice age, and whom I will now claim as very distant relatives. My ethnicity chart just says I’m 3% Finnish/Northwestern Russian but you can see why that, juxtaposed with Great Grandpa, the reindeer herder, spells Saami family ties to me. The fact that I find this very exciting is probably some indication that I was destined from birth to become Marjorie the Far-Traveler.
Then there’s the 2% Irish which is quite natural since the Vikings were the primary settlers of Ireland for some time and brought their possibly reluctant Irish brides back to Norway.
And finally 1% British (you do remember the Vikings overran, ruled and populated that lovely British region called Yorkshire don’t you—and surely some nice English girls wound up in Scandinavia) and 1% general northern European, which could be (AncestryDNA says) from Belgium, France, Germany, Netherlands, Switzerland, Luxembourg or Liechtenstein. I’m claiming France, both because I love Paris and because Normandy, like Yorkshire, is a creation of the Vikings and vouches for our long and complicated relationship with the Frankish people. Going for a slightly more unusual heritage story though is appealing. Suppose great-to-the-nth-degree grandpa kidnapped a Liechtensteinian princess and brought her back to Byglandsfiord. Surely the Alpine royal would have loved Norway and stayed to raise a long line of little Liechtensteinian Norwegians. Come to think of it, Grandma, on dad’s side had an arrogance about her that could have signified grander origins than being a northwoods homesteader implied!
On my first big trip to the old country in 1985 DNA obviously guided my spiritual and other interesting paths. For example, there was the night in Narvik, Norway, far above the Arctic Circle, where I dined on reindeer stew and searched the faces of the local inhabitants for a telltale Floren signifier—slightly darker skin than your average Norwegian, unusually deep set eyes, blue or green. Unfortunately no one in the whole of Narvik rushed up to me shouting, cousin you’ve finally returned.
Continuing on I met a Brit on a boat and we became lovers for a year or so. And the few days in Ireland turned into a Galway memory thanks to a pleasant one-night stand with an Irishman who explained what peat was and how friendly the Irish found Americans. I was a loyal Clancy Brothers fan for years after. Retracing ancestral journeys is not a bad hobby.
Drunk in Oslo, 2008-09!
NESET. THE VERY PLACE MY DAD WAS BORN. IT’S A CAMPGROUND NOW. AND VERY PEACEFUL AND LOVELY. DAD WOULD ENJOY IT.
“I’m Norwegian,” I say whenever I have the chance. “Oh really, how long have you lived in the U.S.?” Then I have to admit I was born here. “But I’m full-blooded Norwegian,” I insist—ignoring that wee bit of Irish, English, Russian, Lichtensteinian blood that Ancestry claims flows in my practically pure Norwegian veins.
Up North, my history/geography/travel memoir will have a very long introduction or a first section steeped in Norway and Norwegianness.
Which means the first week to ten days of 2015’s Up North/Far East trip will be Norway Revisited. Scandinavia, including Iceland, is not new and I’ve been writing about Odin and lefse and DNA throughout my two UCLA classes but two things remain to do. A well-researched (meaning books, not just Wikipedia) chapter or more on Norwegian history and a solid few days in contemporary Norway with laptop and camera in hand, cousins to visit.
I will, beginning today, go to Ancestry a few times a week and avail myself of a U.S. second or third cousin’s research. I will begin (again) reading at least half a chapter a day of a Norwegian novel that’s not crime-based (which means I have time for a whole chapter of the latter). That would be Knut Hamsun, Sigrid Undset and/or that hot new guy, Karl Ove Knausgaard. I actually have dipped into each previously and find them all rather hard-going but I’m sure that’s only because Karin Fossum and Jo Nesbo have spoiled me. I will report back on these activities in January as an attempt to keep myself honest—and because I have Russia, Mongolia and China to cover as well.
Norway is scenically beautiful, socially advanced and economically successful. While not quite the paradise we imagine, it does rank #1 or close in all quality of life charts.
I love it there. Of course my visits have been brief and much of my love is based on my inherited Norwegianness from Ovidia Mathilda Floren of Baltic, South Dakota (first generation American) and Sven Neset of Byglandsfiord, Norway (immigrant, age 7) and on growing up in a northern Minnesota Norwegian community.
For all of these reasons plus the fact I am increasingly sick of us/U.S. and the myth of ‘American Exceptionalism’ I am becoming more Norwegian by the day.
Also we all seem to get more attached to a past, the past, our past, my past as we age. I have a wall of restored family photos from Norway and from the Norwegian communities of the Sioux River Valley in South Dakota and Koochiching County in Minnesota. I fall asleep with them every night.
Besides I’ve never believed in heaven but Valhalla has possibilities.
In Romania but a railroad track is a railroad track is a railroad track…
Travel out among the glaciers and to the outlines of those original Viking farms, hiking among mountains, sheer walls of ice, not a Starbucks in sight.
AND.
Out onto to the steppes, ride a camel, spend a night in a ger, walkabout among the mountains and Mongolian ponies and a sheep or thousand. No Starbucks here either.
AND.
Norway.
AND.
Lapland.
AND.
Beijing.
AND.
South Korea.
AND.
A stopover in Latvia for the stamp.
TOO MUCH YOU SAY.
It has become obvious over the last week of planning that Greenland, Lapland, Norway, through Europe over to St. Petersburg and Moscow, on the Trans-Siberian Train to Ulan Bator, a few days out on the steppes, back on the train, into Beijing, ferry over to Seoul and finally back home—is too much. Too much time. Too much money.
So pieces are dropping by the wayside. First to go was Seoul. I’ll wait until I can go to one united Korea. Many years ago, in Berlin, I went to some trouble to take the train from West Germany into East Germany. Visiting two countries in one short train ride. Then look what happened—I can only count one Germany. Don’t want to make that mistake with Korea (s).
Flying from Greenland to Copenhagen and then training to the far north Lapland of Norway, Sweden and Finland is a too time-consuming and expensive proposition. Must go also.
Sidestepping into Latvia for a passport stamp isn’t worth the effort since I’ve given up the every-country-in-the-world quest. No offense Latvia but you’re sort of near the bottom of the-countries-I-really-really-want-to-go-to list. When I visit Belarus I’ll definitely stop by though.
Since Norway and the Trans-Siberian Railroad are at the heart of this northern odyssey, they are the only destinations that cannot go away. So given reality…darn reality…something more has got to go. The problem isn’t just getting into the countries; it’s the essential side trips so that you’ve actually been there. Greenland out among the ice caps, Mongolia out among the yurts and the ponies. What to do?
In fact Lapland and Greenland go together: the harshness and cold; the aboriginal people of the far north—Greenlanders and Sami; the general out-of-the-wayness and the very high costs. Together then they go to the top of my 2016 travel agenda. And I’ll maybe throw in Switzerland to get those scenic mountains and cool temperatures out of the way while I’m still in the north.
Big Trip UP NORTH 2016 now looks like this. A week in Norway. Train and ferry to St. Petersburg, then Moscow. Trans-Siberian Railway to Ulan Bator, a few days out on the steppes, train to Beijing, some days there. DONE.
I am just hoping my friend Beth wants to do some version of this. In fact she’s the one that started the scuttling by eliminating South Korea right up front. She was still excited a few days ago. Yay. Hopefully we’ll still be great friends when we’ve spent a week together in a railway compartment. I think we will. Maybe we will. I hope we will. Yes, We Will.
Down the snowy road to the “Old Place.”
Minnesota has weather drama. A resident of Minnesota is always anticipating, dreading, reveling in, huddled against, praying for protection from, practicing ice driving for and/or talking about…always talking about…the weather. Most of us don’t have a lot of drama in our lives; we go to work and come home and go back to work and come home and watch TV. So to live in a land with weather is a good thing.
Here’s Minnesota a few winters ago. We’re on a visit to the “Old Place” where we grew up and to the last of those wonderful neighbors where we all ate cake together lo those many years.
I AM VERY SENTIMENTAL ABOUT ALL THIS AS YOU MAY HAVE NOTICED.
The cabin is quite lonely in the winter I imagine.
Mom’s chore jacket hanging uselessly on a nail in the corner for 30 years or so. Waiting to go out and milk the cows I suppose.
I used to sit on the edge of the woodbox with the fire burning and mom baking cinnamon rolls. These wall colors were not there when mom and dad still lived out here. But one summer after it had been empty for years, I cleaned it up, painted with some donated paint neighbors had lying around, and moved in for several months. It was wonderful.
Robert, among the festive ceiling hangings.
Looking back as we desert the “Old Place” for another year.
Barb & Helen. Why the word “neighbors” should make you feel all warm and fuzzy.
How is it that people slaughter each other instead of getting up and going to work and cooking dinner and seeing a movie and going for a drive and playing with their kids and feeding the dog and reading a book? Not just in Israel and Palestine of course but they certainly do their share of the slaughtering.
The latest hideousness in Jerusalem by deranged killers fed a line of religious crap just ups the ante one more time. Granted there’s reason for anger on both sides and enough murder to go around but this butchery in the synagogue, like the general neighborhood beheadings, is beyond easy comprehension even in our extremely violent world.
And guess what is at the heart of it all. On all sides. Yes. Religion. There have been wars and fights and brutal skirmishes not caused by religion. Just not that many.
On the other hand religion has been responsible for some grand and glorious buildings. And on the Palestinian hillsides some ordinary housing which it turns out is ground zero for a good share of the hatred leading up to this latest monstrous event. But then it seems like Islam can drum up enough hatred to cover any situation.
Ah well. Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists continue touting your beliefs one bullet at a time.
A few years ago I spent a a little time in Jerusalem with a day out and about in Palestine ending up in Ramallah. Jerusalem is one of the most interesting cities I’ve ever visited…the buildings, the wide array of humankind, the food, the history (bloody as it is) and experiencing the checkpoints crossing into Palestine and being taken to Yasser Arafat’s tomb and viewing the settlements and back over to normal everyday seeming Tel Aviv and back to beautiful Jerusalem.
It was brilliant and moving and sad. Here are a few photos.
STOPPED. WHY? NOBODY KNOWS.
Teresa and Robert, this will bring back fond memories…of Williston North Dakota and Port au Prince Haiti. Although in the first case it was summer and in the second the surroundings were MUCH more interesting.
Just after 3pm yesterday I reached I-40 at Santa Rosa. Aaahhh, I thought. Hard driving over. Imagining pajamas, Sunday Evening with PBS, to bed early. Not to be.
About 10 miles or so past Santa Rosa, traffic came to a standstill. The highway of big rigs became a big rig parking lot—with one dirty Mazda along for the experience.
No cell phone service but I searched on the web through every news possibility. Nothing except one blurb on a road site saying traffic stopped on I-40. Duh! Lost faith in Google knowing everything.
Between three and four hours later we moved a few miles, stopped a long time, moved a few miles…and so on. Reached Cline’s Corner after 10pm. Peed for the first time in a very long time. I had a plan for what I would do if there was one more hold up before I reached a restroom but you don’t want to know it.
Home at midnight. Taking one of the vaca days today that I’m going to lose anyway. Little Bailey’s in my coffee, naps, poetry…I STILL LOVE ROAD TRIPS.
Here are all of the big truck photos you’ve ever wanted to see.–POSSIBLY MORE:
BIG TRUCKS BEHIND.
BIG TRUCKS AHEAD.
ONCE AGAIN. POOR MAZDA IN THE MIDDLE. REMEMBER TERESA…
DUSK APPROACHES ON THE HIGH PLAINS OF STALLED TRAFFIC.
NIGHT SOON FOLLOWS.
THE AVERAGE TRAVEL SPEED FOR THE DAY.
COMING IN TO TIJERAS CANYON. MADE IT.
JUST WANTED TO SHARE THIS PHOTO UPFRONT. ALMOST SPENT NIGHT THERE. MAYBE NEXT TIME.
Here is my story of Sunday, November 16, 2014 in photos. I suppose the theme could be ‘Lubbock in my Rear View Mirror’ which is a line from an actual country song but I don’t mean it in a bad way.
Too many snow and truck photos for one post…Part One just covers the trip from Lubbock to Clovis. Normally about an hour I think. Yesterday three hours.
One day I will stay overnight in Muleshoe, this just wasn’t the right moment.
DAY STARTED OFF OKAY. PATRICIA & I AFTER A BIG EGG AND I BREAKFAST.
‘LUBBOCK IN MY REAR VIEW MIRROR.’ LITERALLY.
IT IS ALL DOWNHILL (FIGURATIVELY) FROM HERE.
SLOWER AND SLOWER WE GO.
WINDMILL ON PLAINS. ONE OF MY FAVORITE SUBJECTS.
FELLOW TRAVELER.
GLAD I DIDN’T WASH THE CAR BEFORE I LEFT.
AFTER CARLSBAD IT GETS BETTER.
Patricia, looking happier than she actually was about the food.
‘Poor New Mexico! So far from heaven, so close to Texas!’
Manuel Armijo, Mexican governor of the territory of Nuevo México, 1841
Places, all places—as in all the geographies on the planet—are each interesting in their own way. Finding out what it is about any one of the pinpoints on a map that makes it worthy of your attention is the trick, especially if you realize you may be visiting there off and on for a few years.
I am on a mission to discover the secret to liking Lubbock. Granddaughter Patricia is in school here and intends to stay long enough to graduate as an architect. So I’m here for my first Saturday night sleepover of many.
There are things to tell about the drive over and the restaurant where we ate and raucous football sounds from the Texas Tech Stadium next to where Patricia works and the grocery store and cold weather and listening to Terry Allen’s Lubbock on everything from the Texas border on over. Well some things at least. All of them will be incorporated into the ‘Liking Lubbock’ project but not tonight.
A photo or two from the today.
A little color in a bleak landscape.
Little souvenir I picked up in Estonia. Seems right as I plan a Siberian train trip.
In Minnesota, on VERY cold days, we always said, ‘my god, it’s just like Siberia out there today.’ The only other thing we knew about Russia was that it was a VERY big and VERY scary place. Now it’s 2014 and Russia is still very cold, big and could be considered just a little bit scary. Not the countryside or the cities or the people just, exactly like everywhere else, the politicians and their armies.
But the boys with their toys aside, I am going to Russia to take the Trans-Siberian Railway for many days and nights, six to be sort of exact. Of course there are possible stopovers in the middle and add-ons at the beginning and end that could add days, but the basic Moscow to Beijing through Mongolia trip is a six-day/six night railway marathon.
Can’t remember when I was last this excited about going somewhere. Today I’m staring at next year’s calendar. How many days vacation will I have? How long can I be gone before they change the locks at work? How long until the AmEx card just whimpers and dies?
I have suggested to my potential traveling companion that we each design our own perfect trip and then see how far apart we are and make some compromises if need be. So I am merrily moving along—and am as far as putting the Trans-Siberian part of the trip on the last week in August, 2105. The journey begins in Moscow and arrives five days later in Ulan Bator, Mongolia. After two or three exciting days there, sampling every variation of mutton, we move on to Beijing, where we immerse ourselves in pollution at its finest for another couple of days. Then it’s off to Seoul by ferry and, finally, back home to the good old USA. Which will still be full of Republicans but one can only stay away so long.
I am going to book first class which just means two berths/beds instead of four, which will keep me from climbing up and down in a moving train every time I have to pee. Since it will be toilets (regular or squat) and wash basins down the hall, I probably won’t drink anything for five days. Will I die if I do that? Better risk death by dehydration than too many trips down the hall to a nighttime train toilet going through Siberia.
Enough writing for now. More planning. It’s 6:30pm and I cannot go to bed for at least a couple more hours. Since my last Big Trip, my schedule is generally 8-9pm in bed, 4:30-5am up, at work by 6:45-7am. It’s crazy—what being halfway around the world for a while will do to you. Next year I AM GOING ALL THE WAY AROUND THE WORLD. Here over the Atlantic to Denmark/Greenland, Norway, then Russia, Korea and back over the Pacific to Albuquerque. I may never sleep again.