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.