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My Slippers (Maybe)

December 17, 2010 - View Single Entry

The late great Rhodry Malamutt was born 16 years ago today. Rhodry eventually led to Travvy, and one thing Travvy has in common with Rhodry is a sly sense of the goofy. So here's Travvy with (his version) the toys I brought him from Norway but selfishly won't let him play with, or (my version) the wonderful wool slippers I bought for 200 kroner (about US$33.50) at the Julemarked at the Norsk Folkemuseum in Oslo.

Maybe I will drop it. Maybe I will not drop it.

It smells promising, but it does not squeak. Maybe you can play with it until I want it back.

Just in case you're wondering who runs the show around here.

Home

December 16, 2010 - View Single Entry

Home is a big dog curled up on your bed, going for the usual long walk in the morning, then downloading e-mail and starting to work while the oatmeal cooks and the water boils for tea.

One of the many joys of my travels was that at Lynn's house I had a dog curled up on my bed. This is Sasha:

Sasha's father was a golden retriever; her mother was a mix of Labrador retriever, German shepherd, and Siberian husky. She looks like a golden with Sibe coloring and a Sibe undercoat. The Nygaards chose leather sofas on Sasha's account: fur sticks to fabric, but it slides off leather. I brought some Sasha fur home on my fleece jacket, jeans, and various other articles of clothing. Travvy was very interested. Having done some serious sniffing, he could probably tell me a good deal about Sasha, though not as much as I told Sasha about him.

When I went to pick him up at Animal Health Care, Travvy was all wiggly and excited, less because I was there -- though he did notice! -- than because he'd just come inside and there were all sorts of smells and sounds to catch up on. We went out the back way because there was considerable activity, feline as well as canine, in the reception area. Managing Travvy while carrying both my bag and his was almost too much, so I dumped the bags in the car and we went for a short get-reacquainted walk. At first the world was way, way too exciting, then basic commands -- sit, front, down -- started getting through, though with plenty of wiggle in the execution.

This dog needed some real exercise, so I carried the Red Menace (which stayed in the apartment while I was gone) down the stairs, put Travvy's harness on, and we went for a bike ride. I didn't want to overdo it, since he hadn't had any remotely strenuous exercise in 10 days, but along the bike path he saw a Bernese way up ahead and decided to run. Exhilarating! I didn't have to pedal. Trav didn't try to follow the Bernese when it took one of the paths into the nearby subdivision. Good puppy!

I left him home alone when I went to rehearsal at 5. If he wanted revenge for being abandoned for nine days, this was the time -- but whether because he'd blown off the excess energy or because I left him with the usual peanut-butter-slathered bones and a toy with treats inside it, he was fine. The apartment was intact when I returned an hour and a half later.

Trav has shown a distinctly proprietary interest in my new slippers, however. This is not surprising, because they do look like stuffies, even if they don't squeak. When I'm not wearing them, I put them out of reach.

Out of Time

December 15, 2010 - View Single Entry

That's the view of the Woods Hole ferry dock from the departing Nantucket, taken a minute or two after noon. Note the nearly empty staging area. This is how you know it's a December midweek. In warm weather or with holidays impending that lot is so jammed with cars and trucks that you can't see the white lines. I took the picture at the beginning of the last leg of my trip home from Norway.

The first leg began when Icelandair Flight 319 left Oslo at approximately 14:05 (that's 2:05 p.m.) yesterday. Oslo is on CET, Central European Time, which is Greenwich + 1 hour. The Eastern Time zone, in which Martha's Vineyard lives, is Greenwich – 5 hours. That means that the difference between Oslo time and Martha's Vineyard time, which is also Logan Airport (Boston) time, is 6 hours. Thus a person can leave Oslo at 2:05 p.m. and arrive in Boston at approximately 5:30 p.m. -- some 20 minutes ahead of schedule -- having spent about 7 1/2 hours in the air.

And thus a passenger on Icelandair Flight 631, from Reykjavik to Boston, can see sunset out the west-facing window of the Boeing 757 for more than three hours. This was very cool. Some people watched movies or TV shows on the screen in front of them. I watched our flight charted on various maps. Some maps showed the landmasses we were passing over, with major cities labeled. One gave a directional heading. Even without it, I probably would have realized that the sunset direction was more or less west. And one showed a map of the globe with night and day marked out in big Arctic-to-Antarctic loops.

Early in the flight most of Australia was dark; only the southeastern coast, Sydney and Melbourne, were in daylight. By the time we reached Boston, the light of day was bathing all of Australia from east coast to west. All North and South America was in daylight while nearly all of Europe, Asia, and Africa was dark. I thought of the old joke: "Why does the sun never set on the British Empire?" "Because God doesn't trust the British in the dark."

The thought of all those North Americans wide awake and making mischief while Europe, Africa, and Asia slept gave me the creeps.

Icelandair Flight 631 flew along the cusp of the day/night line most of the way to Boston, which was why sunset lasted more than three hours. "Our" time, the time for those of us flying west, was given at the bottom of the screen. Across the top were the times for various cities around the world. Boston wasn't there, but New York, also in the Eastern Time zone, was. Oslo wasn't either, but I knew Oslo was London + 1, the same as Praha (Prague). I watched the miles and kilometers from departure point increase while the miles and kilometers to destination decreased. Likewise the flight's elapsed time increased while the time to destination decreased. "Our" time gained an hour every time we entered a new time zone. I wanted to catch the moment of change but I never did.

By the time we landed in Boston, it was dark. In Oslo, which I had left at 2:05 p.m., it was now 11:30 p.m. or so. I'd been up since before 8 a.m. Oslo time, 2 a.m. Boston time. Between Reykjavik and Boston I ate noodles and drank an Icelandic beer. It was too early for supper, too late for lunch, and probably too early for beer, but it seemed a good idea to eat something.

The next leg of my journey was by bus. The last Peter Pan/Bonanza bus leaves Boston for Woods Hole at 7:30 p.m. Knowing that at this time of year the 7:30 bus reaches Woods Hole after the last boat has left, I had made a reservation at Inn on the Square in Falmouth, which is just around the corner from the bus station. All this fluidity of time made me uneasy: Would the 7:30 bus show up in my time zone, and where would it stop? I cruised back and forth with my reclaimed bags on a luggage cart, hoping that this wouldn't be the night of nights when the bus driver forgot to stop at Terminal E.

He didn't forget. I was the only Logan Airport passenger. A few got on at South Station, but this was not a crowded bus. I'm pretty sure I slept part of the way: I remember rolling through Quincy, just south of Boston, but the next thing I knew we were crossing the Bourne Bridge. I wasn't sure it was the Bourne Bridge till the rotary appeared right where it should be on the opposite side.

Inn on the Square was quite satisfactory. The wi-fi was free, and the new restaurant next door serves an excellent breakfast. Checkout time was 11 a.m., and shortly thereafter I appeared at the Falmouth bus station with my bags. I rode to Woods Hole on a ticket stub. I suspect that most bus drivers honor the stubs of Vineyard ticketholders who have to abort their journeys in Falmouth for want of a late ferry. I also suspect that the rules and regs don't explicitly allow this much leeway. The rules and regs don't know the situation. The bus drivers do.

Here is what the Vineyard Haven ferry dock looked like at about 12:45 to the eyes of the returning islander.

Operahuset/Opera House

December 14, 2010 - View Single Entry

My plane was scheduled to depart at 1405, aka 2:05 p.m., meaning that I had to be at the airport by noon, but Lynn's 10 a.m. meeting was pushed back to 11, so she suggested that we visit the Opera before she put me on the airport train. Sight-seeing with baggage? I was schlepping two midsized suitcases, Hekate the laptop, and an unnamed tote bag. She hadn't been doing all that swimming for nothing, said Lynn, slinging a suitcase over each shoulder, and besides, the Opera House wasn't all that far from Oslo S, the central rail station. Off we went.

The Opera overlooks both the fjord and, if you stroll up to the roof, downtown Oslo. Its planes and angles fit wonderfully into the site. Here's what it looks like as you approach:

I love this sculpture. It looks like a tangle of tall ships sailing up the fjord. In the photo above it's in the middle distance to the right of the building.

Opera, fjord, and city seen en route to the roof:

The inside is both airy and warm, aspiring and solid, a graceful blend of shapes and textures -- with extra shapes and textures added to celebrate the season. You can see the gingerbread village in the photo on the left, but doesn't it deserve a picture of its own?

And here is Oslo from the roof of the Opera. Shortly thereafter my bags and I were on our way to Gardermoen, the Oslo Airport.

Physics, Ferries, War & Peace

December 13, 2010 - View Single Entry

Monday in Oslo was half work and half play. The work part -- giving a last once-over to Kristin's "The Office" paper that's going to be published in a British journal, getting my receipts in order, and filling out forms for the accounting office -- didn't lend itself to pictures, but Kristin showed me around the University of Oslo, and I was struck by these murals in the foyer of the physics building.

The murals were overhead, on the ceiling. Moral of story: Look up!

After lunch in the cafeteria (very good), I headed back into town via the underground, which is above ground at the university stops (I got off at Blindern and on at Forskningsparken). At 1:30 the light was already dusky, but I still had a couple of hours before pitch-dark. My two missions for my last afternoon in Norway: (1) see the harbor, and (2) buy myself a sweater. As it happened, there was a Julemarked (Christmas craft market) down by the fjord, and that's where I found my sweater.

Trust a Vineyarder abroad to find a ferry -- and take a picture of it. In summer, ferries run to the various islands out in the harbor. This is a local ferry. Stena Line runs big car-carrying ferries between Frederikshavn (Denmark), Oslo, and Göteborg and Varberg (Sweden). No, I didn't compare their rates to those of the Steamship Authority.

From that dock you can take a sight-seeing cruise of the Oslo waterfront. The sign on the left says (in English)

OSLO SIGHTSEEING
FJORD CRUISE

December is not peak cruising season, however. I'll have to come back some other time. The sign on the right is for Bygdøy. Bygdøy is the part of Oslo where the Viking ships and the folk museum are. We took the bus, but (at least in warm weather) you can also get there by boat. I don't know anything about the two-master on the right; I just liked the look of it.

Exploring the Julemarked, I found a vendor selling sweaters, socks, and other wool stuff. The sweaters looked good and not exorbitant -- the ones I liked were 490 NOK, a little over US$80 -- but of course I had to think it over.

Across the plaza was the Nobel Peace Center (Nobels Fredssenter). In conjunction with the presentation of the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize to a Chinese peace activist, the center featured an exhibition of Chinese photography. Unfortunately, the sign outside said "closed Monday," and this was a Monday. So I strolled along the waterfront to Akershus Slott, also known as Akershus Festning. Festning means "fortress." With its thick stone walls and commanding height, festning it is.

The fortress was started in the very late 13th century (1299) and has been in continuous operation ever since. For several centuries it was a palace as well as a fortress. Who controls the castle controls Norway, goes a saying, and it's not hard to see why. The best access to Scandinavia is by sea, and the castle guards the marine gateway. Because time and, especially, daylight was short, I didn't visit the many inside exhibits, which include restored medieval and Renaissance era halls, dungeons, and a museum of the Norwegian resistance. The Nazis occupied it by default after they invaded Norway and the legitimate government fled. Vidkun Quisling, head of the Norwegian government that collaborated with the Nazis, was convicted of high treason after the war and executed here (in case you've forgotten where the word "quisling" comes from).

Pretty impressive walls, eh? I saw a mounted policeman ride through that gate.

During some wandering around downtown and a bus trip to take photos of the U.S. embassy, I decided that I really did have to have one of those sweaters, so back I went to the craft fair. By then it was dark dark dark. I took another photo of the neon sign outside the Nobel Peace Center.

What you can't see in the photo is the way the initial "S" flickers on and off, struggling to turn LAUGHTER into SLAUGHTER.