weird kid thoughts

when i was little--maybe 5 or 6--and we lived in the house in town (the wetzel house, with a telephone in every room), i thought the local news people could see me. someone must have made a distinction in my presence between local and national news. it was this that caused me to think that the local news people could see me. so, if, for example, i was taking a bath upstairs and all of the clean clothes were downstairs by the dryer, i would sneak in behind dad's big gold chair, wrapped in a towel if there was any sign of les and gina harding on the screen. those were their names, right? if it was anyone else, i knew they couldn't see me from inside the t.v., but those local news people, you just never knew...

becoming a nachtigal author on this blog!!

hello nachtigals!

if you like what you're reading here and you are nachtigal or closely nachtigal-affiliated and it's making you burn with your own stories that you'd like to share, just email myself or monica - jknachti (at) gmail (dot) com or mqwest272 (at) gmail (dot) com. (replacing the words in parenthesis with @ and .) and we will send you an invitation to be an author.

when you receive that invitation, there will be a link in it that you should click on and follow the instructions. if you don't have a gmail account, it will make you create one. this is no big deal and will not generate a single piece of spam or other unwanted email, so there is no danger in it whatsoever.

if you mail me between thursday afternoon central european time and the following wednesday, i will be slow to respond, as i am in barcelona and then oslo. that's april 4-8. i'll be back within email range on april 9. i'd advise emailing monica during that time. she might be in so dak, but as you have noted, our parents' house is now a wifi hot spot!

"what's that clicking sound?"

i had a friend over today who is from ireland and who is a fantastic storyteller. somehow, we got on the subject of electric fences. and i was reminded of how we spent endless hours of fun during one summer of my childhood, baiting the dimick boys into touching the electric fence that we used to string up for the horses to eat the grass off in the ditch out front of the house. those red-haired dimick boys were living out on the "harm hippen" (sp?) place not far from our house--at least for that summer. what was completely amazing was that getting them to touch that fence worked REPEATEDLY, providing endless source of amusement, all summer long. they simply never learned.

red-haired dimick boy: "what's that clicking sound?"
me: "huh? i don't hear anything..."
red-haired dimick boy: "ouch!"

i wonder what ever happened to them....

all alone again

so, once again, i'm the only one posting here. but i shall soldier on...and hope you're all still reading.

i was flying into oslo on tuesday evening. very late tuesday evening (tho' it wasn't planned that way...thank GOD for the GOLD LOUNGE at Kastrup!!)

the pilot mentioned something about kristiansand soon after takeoff. and it reminded me of a story. that although it's not technically a nachtigal story, it's a story from my dear danish husband, jens-peter, who, after ten years with me has at least earned honorary nachtigal-hood.

a number of years ago when he was still in the danish army, he went to a "PFP" exercise (that's some kind of partnership for peace-thingie) in kristiansand. which is in norway. it seems that the italians were among those invited (being in favor of peace and all, as well as having a penchant for crooked, mafia-run governments).

it seems that in sweden there is a place called kristianstad. that looks quite a lot like kristiansand, if your english isn't so good. so, imagine the surprise of the swedes when a whole bunch of italians parachuted into kristianstad and said, "we're here!" now, bear in mind, the swedes have prided themselves on their neutrality in recent decades (including WWII and the Cold War). so, to have a bunch of italians parachuting in was, to say the least, a tad alarming.

but, the italians' shoes were immaculate. and they were a little late for the exercise in norway.

those scandinavians. they all look alike...

very good reading

i just sat in a hereford steakhouse in oslo (it was near my hotel and i was alone, so shoot me) eating dinner and doing what one does when one dines alone...reading. and what i read was this:

feature by gene weingarten from the washington post in which he watched all the political pundits and monitored all the political blogs for 24 hours on february 14.

very hilarious reading...not that great if you don't want to look like crazy laughing lady with no dinner companion, but worth it nonetheless...

enjoy. those of you who are democrats. any of you who can afford to be republicans (what we're all hoping to be as soon as we have that kind of cash), you probably won't like it, so you might not want to read it.

a note for my sister

...with whom i had a small disagreement about spelling "yeah" instead of the EXTREMELY colloquial "YAY"

from dictionary.com

yeah
adverb
not only so, but; "I therein do rejoice, yea, and will rejoice" [syn: yea]

because i was, in fact, rejoicing...

and


yay
noun
a branch of the Tai languages


because i don't know any thai (if that's what they mean) and in fact, don't like thailand at all...

double yeah!

yeah #1: welcome nancy and alan! it's so cool that this is starting to happen!!!

yeah #2: i'm back online! new broadband up and running right here at my desk in my very own home! no more mooching off friends or driving around, looking for an unsecured wireless connection outside someone's house...

although i'm back online, i may be a bit absent this week, since i'll be working in oslo. but keep writing! the radisson has wireless and i want to read what you're writing!

Family Talent Shows

So there I was, watching "Dan in Real Life" with some friends. The fictional family met up at a cabin...aunts, uncles, grandparents, grandchilren...where suddenly the story had them all putting on a talent show for each other.

Everyone I was watching the movie with started ranting how no family would EVER do that. It was "too nice" and "too contrived" and "not realistic."

But we did this, right? Talent shows, making movies. Remember "Cousins from Outer Space?" So my memory limits these things to being at Dan and Nancy's, but how long ago did they start? Was it just crazy Gisel forcing us kids to be creative?

Good for Ralph!

Congratulations to Ralph for being courageous enough to begin his new computer adventure! Glen only plays Solitaire on the computer, although recently he expressed a mild interest in e-mailing. Maybe Ralph posting a renewed "From the Bottom of the Barrel" will motivate Glen to explore the computer further. Doreen prints out the e-mails for Dad to read. She had for years been using a dinosaur that Norm Natvig had the nerve to sell her when he upgraded. And she refused to pay for high speed service ("what do I need that for? I have nothing to do but wait...") Jane once reported that it took 12 minutes for her to open a single photo attachment that I sent to Mom. Finally just before Thanksgiving she bent to our pressure (we grew tired of getting a busy signal on the phone line while she was using the computer). She called the phone company to order high speed but they reported that Norm's old p.c. was not compatible. So despite her protests we forced the new computer on her at Christmas. The high-speed installation was a bit of a fiasco but all systems are smooth now.

yeah! you’re getting started!

i’m pleased to see that in my week-long lack-of-internet imposed silence, there are now other nachtigals starting to post! yeah! i realize that it helped that moneek sent out a clearer set of instructions (using capital letters and such). i think that perhaps my years of working for microsoft caused me to assume that all were equally computer savvy. but, people have lives and those lives are (thankfully) not necessarily lived in front of a computer. but hey, now some of you are posting and others are (hopefully) reading.

march 21--strong (strange) memory

here's the second of the postings i wrote over my past few internetless days...

i don’t know how old i was, but i have a strong memory. i went somewhere (i don’t remember where—that’s not part of the memory) with mom and aunt pearl. we had car trouble (or was it a snowstorm?) on the way home and ended up hitching a ride in a semi. i remember that i was boosted up into the sleeper compartment of this semi. i had a brown paper bag of old dolls—naked and with frizzed hair—from wherever it was we went—could it have been an auction or antique stores? there was a snow storm. i have a distinct memory of a dead bee up in that sleeping compartment of the semi. i spent a long time examining that bee, convincing myself that it was indeed dead. i never touched it, just in case it wasn’t. but i have a very, very clear picture of it in my head—that and the snow are the clearest aspects of this memory. somehow that paper bag of naked dolls got thrown out and i remember going back with my mom and looking in a snowy ditch (ala that scene in fargo where steve buscemi is looking for the money along the row of fence posts) for them. as i remember, we did actually find the bag, but that memory might be more wishful thinking than truth. memory is that way sometimes.

ASIDE: after writing this, i talked to mom to confirm. she has more to the story...we were shopping for curtains with pearl in various good will stores—starting in mitchell, then apparently on to sioux falls and sioux city—tho’ i have no recollection of the “where” of this story. mom says i was 3. this must be one of my earliest memories. she did confirm that there was indeed a really bad snowstorm and that we did indeed find the lost bag of toys.

let’s hear some early memories from some of the other authorized bloggers here on TLN..and if you have a story you’d like to share, but aren’t yet an author on this blog, send me an email: jknachti (at) gmail (dot) com to be added. big thank you to monica for sending out proper instructions to the group.

march 20

in my internetless state, i've still been writing blog entries anyway. in word. and now that i'm online (momentarily, still no 'net at home), i thought i'd use the opportunity to post them.

this one is from march 20--

it’s the easter holiday in denmark. that’s a lot of days off here. it starts on maunday thursday, everything’s closed on good friday. saturday, things are open again and there is a rush on the grocery store and the danes begin to “hamster” (as it’s called in danish) all of the yeast and milk and bread, since nothing will be open again ‘til tuesday. there are times when i feel this country is insufficiently capitalist. easter is one of those times. it’s four whole days of closed stores..thursday, friday, sunday and monday. of course, it’s nice that one doesn’t have to work those days, but the least they could do was keep my newspaper coming, especially since i can’t get online at the moment. and the bakery, that should be open too.

but, with all this time off and what with not being distracted by the ‘net otherwise, since i have no access at the moment (i’m writing in Word with the idea of posting later when i get back online), it’s reminding me of other stories.

as i mentioned in a previous posting, i’ve been reading siri hustvedt. now i’m on her book of essays, “a plea for eros,” in which she talks a lot about her family and about growing up in a small town of scandinavian heritage in minnesota. now she’s lived in new york city for years and years, but she still feels it was a good place to grow up. which is much what i feel about platte, despite having lived more of my life away from it now than i did there.

i’m really happy to have grown up there. in a small school, everyone has to try and do everything, because there aren’t enough kids for there to be the band kids, the sports kids, the theatre kids, the choir kids—we all had do it all in order to make the school function. i remember my classmate who was the quarterback of the football team joining us and marching with the band at halftime during the football games. that was cool and no doubt wouldn’t have happened in a larger school. it meant that there was less being labeled as a certain type just because one was in plays or one was a cheerleader—because everyone did it all. i think i came out of it a more rounded person than i would have otherwise, even tho’ all of my sports performances were a disappointment to my father. i was pretty good with those horses, tho’. just because we had to try it all, didn’t mean we couldn’t and didn’t choose an area of specialization.

what i regret about attending platte high school was that i wasn’t made enough aware of the university opportunities outside of south dakota. i probably ended up at iowa thanks to mr. hirt’s waxing philosophical about the greatness of the hawkeyes during those long history classes, but iowa city was the extent of my higher education horizon. even as i later applied to the university of chicago, i didn’t really know that it was the UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO. not until i had a full scholarship and actually got there did it hit me what it was. and i was in my late 20s by then. i suppose i’d have been eaten alive had i gone fresh out of PHS. just a little rube from the sticks.

easter reflections

Today was Easter, and as such, I reflected on the Easters of my childhood growing up in rural South Dakota. Shiny, patent leather, black shoes. Church on Easter morning. Family gathering for "dinner", which my family called "lunch", because "supper" was "dinner". It was so important to have an Easter dress. One could always pick out where Grandma Kate was sitting in church by her strong singing voice. Tom Deadrick playing the organ. Traditional hymns. Never quite figuring out why the Academy church wasn't Presbyterian, yet they shared the same minister and sermon.

My mother had a creative burst one year when she hid clues leading to the treasure, verses the traditional Easter egg hunt. The clues were riddles which had to be solved in order to lead Kent, Gisel and "the little boys" (my three younger brothers were never called by their individual names...they were always referred to collectively as "the little boys") to the next place where another clue would be hidden. At the end of the hunt were large chocolate Easter bunnies. Hollow chocolate, which seemed strange in that the bunny looked so solid, but nevertheless, a chocolate reward for the wild Nachtigal kids.

Grandma Kate's Chicken Noodle Soup

I'm thinking tonight of the noodles that Grandma Kate used to roll out and put into chicken soup. I remember nibbling the uncooked, uncut, rolled-out noodle dough around the edges when Grandma looked away. She'd chase me away from the dough if she caught me, but it didn't stop me.

I spent the entire winter completely healthy and finally got a cold & cough this weekend. Today, I boiled up a chicken and added noodles I bought from the store (pictured above.) It's not the same. Does anyone have a recipe for Grandma's chicken noodles? If so, I'd like it!

i'm lost, of course.

I read all of the comments on Too Late Nathan

I just started to write something and in trying to correct it hit enter so I suppose it is going around the world as I type. Most of the Nachtigals are too old for this, at least the original Nachtigals. The next couple of generations should do better.

Word has it that a 160,000 bushel corn bin at the Pierre farm is on fire and you don't just put a little water on something like that and put it out. I don't know more than that but I guess it started a couple days ago. I don't know how to put a space between the last sentence and this one. So I'll quit and hit send.

edited by julie on 24.3.08. i couldn't help myself...

Old Dogs: New Tricks

A little note of warning to all the Nachtigals flocking to the blog. Uncle Ralph is soon to be entering the World Wide Web! He'll have his own blog here, appropriately called "From the Bottom of the Barrel." Once my sister gets back online, I'm sure she'll go in and link you to that blog from here. I'm rather computer iliterate, so I have trouble with such things.

out of touch...

just a quick warning...i am more or less (considerably more of more than less of less) WITHOUT INTERNET for the next week!!! because of the stupidity of our new ISP...so i won't be posting much (unless i am at a friend's wired house--like now). however, do not worry, i will be back!! and in the meantime, welcome to cousins Dan & Karen, who have now been invited as authors (as have Mom, the E'Prise and Gisel--who have not yet accepted their invitations...), so, there should be fabulous stories coming your way, even without me! :-) happy posting! see you next week! happy easter to all!

now i get it.

when i was a kid it used to infuriate me the way grandma kate would always move my glass in from the edge of the table. even when there was no danger whatsoever that i was about to spill it. but now that i have a child myself, i totally understand. sometimes it takes years before you understand stuff.

short memory

when i was in the second grade, i was given a BB gun for christmas. for the express purpose of shooting the neighbor's annoying dog. i got quite good at it. after it was demonstrated for me.

stuff i remember

it's a grey, rainy, dreary, windy day in denmark today and i've just been ranting on the other blogs, so i decided to think happy thoughts. i decided to think about memories from my childhood. the ones that immediately popped into my head are all set in what is today dan & nancy's house, but then it belonged to doc & pearl:

1. a whole roomful of nachtigals lopping around on the three leather couches, facing the t.v. and the fireplace. i seem to remember a great deal of struggle with adjusting the satellite dish.
2. trying to negotiate down some not-quite-completed stairs in icy, snowy conditions with grandma kate holding on heavily to my arm and dad's arm to get into that basement room.
3. helping pearl dry and put away those cream-colored dishes in an antique cupboard.
4. playing cards around a round table adjacent to the football-watchers. different players rotating in and out of the game as excitement waxed and waned on the football screen.
5. vacuuming the cat. who strangely loved it.

that's all for today. hope these prompt you (yes, YOU) to come forward with your stories soon. Feel free to send them to me or to monica and we'll be happy to post them for you if you don't want to do it yourself.

a small corner of peace

...but not really that quiet. (that might be a good name for this blog.)

i know people are busy and not necessarily computer-savvy, so i'll try to be patient and i'll just hope that all of you nachtigals are at least LOOKING at this blog and that you'll be moved, like cousin Karen, to send me a little note. Here's what she shared:

"I still remember when Grandma Kate lived with us and I would get peace and quiet while the Price is Right was on. Ryan would always yell Gamma - Bob's on and he would go and watch with her!!!"

If you'd rather get your stories out there this way, I'm happy to do the posting! :-)

technolution

on monday, i sent out an email to a whole bunch of nachtigals, informing of the existence of this blog. like 25-30 nachtigals. 3 of those mails bounced back because apparently the addresses weren't active anymore. how many responses do you think i've received to those mails which didn't bounce? exactly ONE. seriously, people. what's going on? are we, as a family, really so non-computer-minded? this isn't rocket science. all it would have taken was one click, which was no doubt highlighted as a link in the mail that i sent. i guess i need to face that maybe our family simply isn't interested in preserving our stories. however, i still am, so i will continue, even if i'm talking only to myself.

this lack of response to technology got me thinking...about all of the technological changes seen by the nachtigals over the past century. and wondering what advances will happen in my lifetime.

take for a minute grandma kate, and imagine the changes she saw. she saw the advent of widespread use of electricity, indoor plumbing, the automobile, the airplane, even the telephone--from a central switchboard community-kind-of-thing to landlines and maybe the beginning of the mobile (she never had one, but they must have been starting to be around during her lifetime--if only in the form of those heavy monster boxes that used to crush your foot in the car if it fell over). she didn't necessarily partake of or even be properly socialized into all of that technology--she never did, after all, learn how to be polite on the phone. when she was done talking, you knew it, not because she said "good-bye," but because you heard her voice receding and then an abrupt hang-up. and i don't recall her ever driving a car, but she was certainly a passenger in many of them--asking along the entire journey, "now who lives there?"

dad remembers that first oh-so-bright lightbulb hanging over the table at the house down on the creek. in the version of the story in my head, the electricity was generated by a windmill. and now i'm living in a country where one of their biggest exports is the modern vestas windmill and where a good percentage of the power is generated by wind. just look at the changes that have happened there:

farm windmill

the copenhagen wind farm in øresund

what technolutionary* changes has our family gone through? and what further developments will we and our children see? these are interesting questions to ponder. i find that i can't really imagine what they might be--but can imagine some applications on the medical front. i can see that sabin, who is 7 now, is completely at ease with a computer and has always been. it's intuitive for her to click the mouse and to explore an online universe--whether it's a littlest pet shop world or a word girl game on PBS kids. perhaps there will be some union of man and machine that i can imagine only the faintest glimmer of. what i would like to think though, is that these stories of our family will be here, in cyberspace, for her to read and grow and learn from. that they will, thanks to technology, not be lost.

* this word was coined by my father-in-law, peter broberg, who invented a field of study by the same name which looks at the effect technology has had on evolution. but, i use it in a more local sense--to express the technological advances, or technological evolution, we have seen as a family.

on memory and storytelling

for me, the important reason to have this family blog is to share and thereby preserve our family stories. i'm reading a wonderful book by siri hustvedt--her best-known book is the wonderful what i loved and she's also known for being paul auster's wife. she has a new book out called the sorrows of an american. or actually, from what it looks like on amazon, it will soon be released. what's strange is that i bought it in a bookshop in the oslo airport last friday, in paperback, so it is released some places. like oslo, i guess. i'm already nearly finished with it, since i can scarcely put it down. her prose is simply luminous. i find myself constantly underlining passages because she has put some thought or other that i've long had so succinctly and given voice to what i feel as MY thoughts and feelings. i feel she's speaking directly to me. it's wonderful when an author does that.

the central preoccupation of the book is memory and it centers on a minnesota family of norwegian heritage (which might be why it was released first in oslo). it takes me back to growing up in platte and although this family has many secrets and i don't experience our family that way, it makes me feel that this family space in which to share our stories is that much more important.

i want to simply share some of the wonderful thought-provoking quotes from the book:

"there is no clear border between remembering and imagining."

"memory offers up its gifts only when jogged by something in the present. it isn't a storehouse of fixed images and words, but a dynamic associative network in the brain that is never quiet and is subject to revision each time we retrieve an old picture or old words."

"i try to talk about the way we organize perceptions into stories with beginnings, middles and ends...our memory fragments don't have any coherence until they're reimagined in words."

"that is the strangeness of language: it crosses the boundaries of the body, is at once inside and outside, and it sometimes happens that we don't notice the threshold has been crossed."

"we make our narratives, and those created stories can't be separated from the culture in which we live."

i find this book thought-provoking as i desire to put down and preserve family stories in this electronic medium. of course, they will be necessarily filtered in the telling, their tapestry woven by the various storytellers who (i hope) will tell them. i look forward to the texture of that tapestry unfolding here in cyberspace.

please start sharing soon.