Betsy Devine: Funny ha-ha and/or funny peculiar

New Zealand tree ferns

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine

There are many bits of New Zealand that pleasantly echo English village lifestyles in old cozy backstories of Angela Thirkell or Dame Agatha Christie.

But this is another country, with its own skies and climates and trees and flowers and amazing birds.

And its own (at least in Palmerston North) charming semi-tropical living spaces, white breezy one-story houses set among gardens with dark, shady paths.

Did I happen to mention that I like Palmerston North?

Beautiful view from breakfast

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine

I have been asked to blog some fine New Zealand landscapes.

Our first morning in Palmerston North, I saw something amazing without even getting up from our motel breakfast table.

Palm trees? umbrella tables? blue summer sky (which doesn’t come through in this photo)?

What took my breath away was the wide, wide open door. Yes, I am in a place now where people indoors enjoy full contact with the warm breeze coming from outdoors.

I love January in Palmerston North!

Biker chicks banner

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine

This morning I almost got fined $200 for packing undisclosed broccoli!

Yes, Frank and I are in transit again. Out of Boston at 8 a.m. Saturday to San Francisco (6 hour flight, 7 hour layover) to Auckland, New Zealand (13 hour flight, 4 hour layover), and soon onward to Massey University in Palmerston North.

I’m sitting typing this blogpost in Auckland Airport, where, as we picked up our baggage to go through customs, a cute little bio-contam-sniffing beagle got very excited about my carry-on bag!

I couldn’t imagine what she was sniffing–the past aroma of Frank’s lunch sandwich of lox? The beagle kept begging to look inside my mini-suitcase, and her very nice female handler had to check.

And guess what? I had packed our toothbrushes in a used plastic grocery bag that had still inside it two fragments of broccoli!!!

The beagle got several treats for finding my broccoli, and they very kindly let me off with laughter and warnings.

Travelers everywhere, do you know where your broccoli is?

A bit more “wisdom” if you should ever follow in our crazy footsteps:

1) Both BOS and SFO airports have TMobile wifi. I bought a 24-hour Tmobile pass in Logan and was able to keep using the same pass in SFO. Better yet, I was able to put my computer to sleep and then let Frank use the account to go online with his computer.

2) Among the things New Zealand wants to know about if you have them–hiking boots or other camping equipment. They worry about your bringing in dirt on the treads.

3) A 13-hour flight is much more comfortable than a 7-hour flight in some ways–you have real time to sleep, for one thing. And I love Air New Zealand!

The Infamous House of Lights

Originally uploaded by stomptokyo

Picture this picture half an acre wide.

One of the most amazing Christmas displays in the USA — I think that’s what NBC said, or maybe it was People Magazine.

• Half a million lights…
• 118 electric trains running round in meshed circles…
• Reindeer(s) and wise men and big glowing plastic Virgin Mary statues set off, in a warm-hearted way, by Biblical texts about the importance of Jesus.

All on half an acre of St. Petersburg, Florida, lit up like…see title above for (I think) the right metaphor.

Florida? Yes, for a few days…

Part of the mesh and mismatch of a year of travel is that even when “home” there are places we have to go, family we can’t miss seeing. So, somehow more travel breaks into our Christmas break, three weeks long, between home-from-Stockholm and headed-out-to-New-Zealand, quickly to be followed by four-months-in-Oxford.

I’m on my annual and always delightful visit to my little sister in Florida. And last night after dinner she and Bill asked if I would enjoy “some Christmas lights.” Maybe I should have guessed from their smiles as we headed off that they were planning to surprise the houseguest from understated New England.

And they sure did!

But sadly, I can’t surprise you with my own many photos of St. Pete’s famous or infamous House of Lights–which has its own website at ChristmasDisplay.org. My camera-to-computer cable got left at home. Thanks to StompTokyo (and to Flickr’s “Blog This” button) for this panorama to give at least some sense of scope.

Dragoyle

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine

Here, from a collection of scientific instruments, is the lovely dragoyle.

Elsewhere In the he fascinating Whipple Museum of the History of Science, you can find “scientific” apparatus for phrenology (diagnosing head bumps and lumps to measure such human traits as “combativeness.”)

Phrenologywas once a time-honored way to do scientific study. Melvil Dewey gave "Phrenology" an entire integer (139) in his library decimal catalog system. For comparison, "modern Western philosophy" also got one entire integer (190).

The history of science is full of fascinating discoveries and proud achievements, but it is also full of cautionary examples and multiple proofs that calling something “scientific” doesn’t make it so.

Beautiful cold English December day

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine

I walked several miles yesterday through the lovely cold green of an English December, under its pale sunlit sky.

Frank is here to discuss early-universe cosmology with a lot of the same friends who were gathered here by Stephen Hawking 25 years ago, back when the idea of inflation was just a tiny pre-nugget of its present, er, expanded state.

That was in summertime, a lovely English summer, with our whole family housed by Robin and Polly Hill out in Rupert Brooke’s own Grantchester. I did feel some misgiving when we jet-lagged four on the doorstep were greeted with a dismayed “My god, they’ve got a baby!”

(The form I’d filled out for our housing requirement had a space asking for “number of children.” Foolishly, I filled that space in “1*”, adding by * footnote that (in December, and planning a six-months-later visit) I was eight 1/2 months pregnant.)

Anyway, things got much better quite soon after that.

There is no better cure for the mental whiplash of packing and moving and shlepping your worldly goods onto one more long plane ride than taking a long walk through peaceful cool sunlit weather.

In fact, I think that I need another walk now.

We just got email from our friend Piotr Haszczyn in Poland with a bunch of links to recent Polish news articles, whose contents (I hope) are guessable from the photos on them:

• Four photos of Frank in Babice School, meeting its children and staff: This looks like a serious article about Frank’s visit to his Polish grandmother’s home town and the really nice ceremony put on by Babice School.
• Photo of Frank with Betsy smiling, photo of Frank with Uncle Walter joking around, plus a title that plainly mentions pierogi: To make Americans happy, just feed them pierogi!
• Photo of Frank next to Nobel monument in NYC; photo of Frank’s Babice cousin expertly repairing some complicated machinery: Polish men look good in hats…and they are all very smart.

The internet and newspapers being what they are, those links may vanish–but our memories of a great party most surely will not.

Ljungdalen0579

Originally uploaded by skrubtudse

Turnips. Parsnips. Carrots. Maybe an onion.

When we get home from yet-another-trip, these are the foods that will still be potentially dinner.

The green beans will be black and the spinach leaves will be liquid but the root vegetables will be waiting and looking delicious.

Just the way root vegetables waited in the cellars of my French and Irish peasant ancestors as the long days of winter slowly wore away.

If those ancestors had only had Knorr’s veggie bouillon cubes, plus ICA’s fullkorn rice and canned fish balls in bouillon, they could have had the same winter soup that we ate last night.

Frank says he doubts the Neanderthals had canned fish balls but he’d have to admit that, after way too many meals in too many restaurants including (scary thought, I know) airport restaurants, the winter soup I made last night was simply perfect.

Dorthe and JP

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine

Dorthe Dahl-Jensen and JP Steffensen are two of the climate scientists Frank and I met when we sailed around various icebergs in Chile, way back January-ish 2007.

These photos are from a little bit before we met them–they appear in Willi Dansgaard’s book Frozen Annals: Greenland Ice Sheet Research. Danish scientists have been capturing and cooking ice for a long time–and we know much more about our past and future thanks to their work!

Dorthe and JP gave us a wonderful tour of the ice-core research lab at Copenhagen’s Niels Bohr Institute yesterday.

My photos don’t do it justice but they’re still undeniably “cool.” JP, I think my nose finally unfroze this morning!

Nyhavn with Christmas market

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine

One of the many good things about traveling is that it gives you a new perspective on home. For example, in the US I often hear complaints about how awful it is (and how dreadfully “American”) that the stores all start “Christmas shopping” so early.

In Stockholm, Christmas got started when October ended. And, here in Copenhagen, outdoor Christmas markets have been open for business since mid-November.

So the US is not the only place on our planet where storekeepers look forward to Christmas with all the eagerness of five-year-olds longing for Santa.