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

Stockholms Slott by night

Originally uploaded by bodilla77

… (at least in my life) starts with a golden crest and continues in engraved caps lock:

“THE FIRST MARSHAL OF THE COURT IS COMMANDED BY

HIS MAJESTY THE KING

TO INVITE

Professor and Mrs. … [redacted, next time could be you!]

to a Dinner

TO BE GIVEN BY

THEIR MAJESTIES THE KING AND QUEEN OF SWEDEN…”

and so on and so on.

Of course we’re incredibly honored and said “Yes please,” in our most formalistic style (though without any CAPS LOCK).

(Not least because December 11 is my birthday!)

But don’t you think it sounds just the littlest bit as though the First Marshall is wishing we’d all just stay home?

My fanciest dress-up

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine

Just a little anxiety going on here in Stockholm, where tomorrow is the huge Nobel Prize ceremony. And banquet.

Fortunately, I’m from New England so I still have all the lovely finery my sister RiRi helped me buy way back in 2004. (Our mother’s belief system, summed up in four lines: “Use it up, wear it out, make it do, do without.”)

In fact, 2007 would be a whole lot less nervous for both me and Frank except that Anna Björk of Swedish TV 4 has invited us both to show up on her Nobel TV show which runs all day long.

Tomorrow!

Frank is on in the morning and will pick up his tailcoat en route home from the studio. My little spot is right before the ceremony, which means that at least I’ll be wearing my fanciest dress, which you can see in the photo. (I got dress anxiety at the worst possible moment, when Frank was in Paris giving lectures, so I took some photos so that I could ask his advice.)

And the brilliant Alex at Clipp-er Salong (Vasagatan 19, they are wonderful) has promised to do my hair in some nice way.

I will not have my huge favorite Timex digital watch on, at least not if I can remember to take the thing off.

I had been imagining this year’s Nobel Prize parties would be less stressful because 1) I’ve done this once now and 2) Frank is not getting a prize this year. But I think being on TV is a bit more scary even than sitting next to Sweden’s handsome and charming Prince Carl Philip,

The scariest part is that Frank seems to have told Anna that he and I took dancing lessons back in the US–and now it seems our dancing together might get on TV too, though only much later on the Nobel evening.

I am certainly better at dancing, much better, than I was before we took very enjoyable dance lessons from Jeff Allen. I am certainly not Dancing With the Stars caliber either.

Eek, I just have to say. Eek.

Though I am looking forward to every bit of it, even as I tremble.

sneering squirrel

Originally uploaded by Fifi LePew

Of all the condescending and unfairly snarky non-reviews of a good book I’ve seen in the New York Times, this morning’s haute hit-piece on Gods Behaving Badly takes the let-them-eat-cake gâteau.

..although Ms. Phillips fulfills her purely lighthearted ambitions for this story, she provides a cautionary example to budding novelists everywhere. Though her background includes stints as an independent bookseller and BBC researcher, she also has a blog full of her thoughts about the hot competition on a television dance-contest show. When writers lived on Mount Olympus, they didn’t talk about things like that.

A blogger? Dear me! And she blogs about TV dance contests? How dare such a low-life pen light-hearted novels about what-if worlds of deposed Greek gods stuck into modern-day London? You or I might imagine this concept is clever. The book’s craftmanship is so seamless you or I just may not notice the author’s “writing.”

You or I might even think those are virtues worth praising in someone’s first novel? Hmmph, sniffs Ms. Maslin, the novel is “flossy, high-concept.”

Author/blogger Marie Phillips mildly remarks that Maslin “could hardly squeeze another spoiler in and still stick to the word limit.” In fact, the plot spoilers are the best of Maslin’s obnoxious review, which falls apart even by its own limited logic when she tries to tell readers that these wildly inventive plot twists have been torn from a book that is (Maslin says) “sitcomlike” and “suggests the help of fiction-writing software.”

In case you can’t tell, I’m angry because I loved this book, first published in England and given show-placement in Uppsala’s English bookstore on the front table with Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman–whose fans will adore it. I don’t know Marie Phillips and I don’t want to know Janet Maslin, whose contrastingly reverent review of Dean Koontz’s glurge about his dead dog also makes me feel nauseous.

But then “real writers,” even when they stumble, all deserve real respect (“Nice clothes there, Emperor!”), quite unlike a mere blogger.

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.

Smoked salmon with horseradish-flavored whipped cream

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine

Mmmm graphics!

The FoodPairing website illustrates food inspiration of two different kinds:

1. Food combination: (quoting the site) “A list was made of 250 food products each with their major flavour components. By comparing the flavour of each food product eg strawberry with the rest of the food and their flavours, new combinations like strawberry with peas can be made.”
2. Food swapping:(quoting the site) “A food product has a specific flavour because of a combination of different flavours. Like basil taste like basil because of the combination of linalool, estragol, …. So if I want to reconstruct the basil flavour without using any basil, you have to search for a combination of other food products where one contains linalool (like coriander), one contains estragol (like tarragon),… So I can reconstruct basil by combining coriander, tarragon, cloves, laurel. The way to use it is to take from each branch of the plot one product and make a combination of those food products.”

Thanks to the always-inspiring Tingilinde for the link!

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!

Niels Bohr

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine

Hafnium was discovered here at the Niels Bohr Institute, and christened after the Latin name for Copenhagen. Its Hungarian discoverer was just one among many young physicists who flocked to Denmark from all over the world in response to the invitation of Niels Bohr…

…who is seen here in a handsome portrait sculpture, on display in the Niels Bohr Archive. It was a young Nobel Laureate who made this sculpture–not a physicist, but a laureate in literature (Johannes Vilhelm Jensen).

My point, and I do have one, is that Niels Bohr created in Copenhagen a center of very wide-ranging inspiration.

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.

Fläckar är bra för livet…

Originally uploaded by JohanPez

When I was a little girl I longed to travel–and I still love it. I love meeting new people, hearing new languages spoken, admiring new wonderful things from mushroom dumplings to mermaids.

But oh! I’ll be glad to say good-bye to Swedish laundries, which have frayed all my sleeve-cuffs and thinned down my favorite old black pants until they just ripped straight across the now paper-thin seat…blessedly, on a cold day when I also had on black longjohns.

Laundry day here in Sweden is a much bigger event than it would be at home. In our Stockholm building, there are just four washers (and only two dryers), so everyone signs up for once-weekly, to do stuff all at once.

That means, when our day comes, I have, in a literal sense, almost nothing to wear.

Today, for example, my outfit was long underwear, dryclean-only jacket, and an insane pair of white denim trousers I still can’t imagine why I brought here from the US.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to order a whole pile more turtleneck shirts from Lands End to be waiting for me when I get back to the US next month. But if you happen to meet me between now and then and notice the slightly frayed cuffs on a shirt that I’m anyway wearing…blame Swedish washing machines like those you see in this picture.

They look very tough…and believe me, that’s just what they are!