Getting Smarter

Susan and I just spent a week in Boston, Massachusetts, getting smarter together at a few professional conferences!

We both attended the annual convention of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE). Susan chose sessions related to high school libraries, looking for new ideas for how she, as a library media specialist, can support other teachers in developing students' literacy. My own goal was to gather ideas for using artificial intelligence (A.I.) tools in college writing classes--specifically, teaching college students how to use A.I. effectively to support their learning, not to cheat their way out of learning (by having A.I. write their essays for them, for example).

Some of the convention highlights were the excellent keynote speakers (see below). Susan and I also had opportunities to explore the area near the convention center and enjoy restaurants including Seaport Social (seafood), Serafina (Italian), and Citrus and Salt (Mexican). We especially loved wandering through an outdoor Christmas market in the Seaport district (called "Snowport" for the winter holidays!).

Immediately following the NCTE conference, the convention center was used for two more conferences of NCTE-related groups--and Susan and I each attended a different one.

• She went to the annual ALAN Workshop (ALAN = Assembly on Literature for Adolescents of NCTE), which is all about adolescent literature. Attendees receive a box of about 40 works of recently published books and advance reader copies of upcoming releases. Their authors and more attend ALAN, too, and appear on panels and do book signings. There are also workshops ... and this year Susan presented in a poster session (see photo below)!
• I have attended the ALAN Workshop for several years but this year attended a different event that occurred concurrently: the annual convention of the Conference on English Leadership (CEL). I made connections with other English leaders and heard from keynote speakers, including Carol Jago, whose work I have been familiar with since my English education classes in my undergraduate days.

Susan and I both learned a lot at NCTE, ALAN, and CEL, and we have a lot of resources to share with our colleagues in the coming weeks and months. But for now, we are pooped. That was a long time to be gone--and to be engaged in learning all day and night for six consecutive days. We are ready for a little Thanksgiving break.

(Click on any photo to enlarge it.)

NCTE's keynote speaker on Thursday, November 21, was Ketanji Brown Jackson, Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court. One of her topics was her recent memoir Lovely One. Despite her important position, she seemed so down-to-earth and shared anecdotes from her impressive journey to the Supreme Court.

The keynote speaker on Friday, November 22, was Kate McKinnon, an actor many people recognize from her years on Saturday Night Live or the recent movie Barbie. She has written a work of adolescent literature called The Millicent Quibb School of Etiquette for Young Ladies of Mad Science. She was hilarious but humble, saying that she was intimidated to be in the presence of so many people doing such important work: teaching. (There were over 8,000 attendees at the NCTE convention.)

A very Moberg thing is to bump into someone we know no matter where we are. When visiting the vendor booths in the exhibition hall, Susan saw our friend Olivia, who used to work with me in Dickinson and who now teaches at the University of New Hampshire.

The keynote speaker on Saturday, November 23, was Bryan Stevenson, founder of the Equal Justice Initiative and author of the memoir Just Mercy. He was an excellent public speaker: polished and mesmerizing.

The keynote speaker on Sunday, November 24, was Ada Limón, United States Poet Laureate. She read from one new and one upcoming book of poetry (here). The already-released book is an illustrated version of her poem "In Praise of Mystery," which was engraved on the Europa Clipper spacecraft that was launched last month to Jupiter and its moons!

Here's a view of the quirky interior of Citrus and Salt. We had a great meal of several small plates that we shared ... and margaritas, of course (which we did not share).

One of the featured speakers at the ALAN Workshop was Randy Ribay, one of my favorite authors of adolescent literature. His recent book Everything We Never Had was an excellent read and has been raking in the awards lately.

Susan's poster session at the ALAN Workshop was on her work to help English teachers in her school to set up individual classroom libraries and to connect them to the school library (that she heads) for a collaborative effort to support high schoolers as readers.

Norwegian Pride, Swedish Food, and Norse Mythology

Norwegians celebrated Syttende Mai ["May 17th," Norway's Constitution Day] a few days ago (remember?), but our local Sons of Norway lodge waited until today for its annual Syttende Mai party so that we could take advantage of a weekend day to have a potluck picnic and play some outdoor games.  As Youth Director for our lodge, I was trying to figure out what I could do with the kids that would be Norwegian and fun.

I learned that Norwegians typically precede Syttende Mai with a community-wide dugnad ["volunteering"], tidying up the neighborhood before the big celebrations for Constitution Day--so I proposed the idea to the girls, who were "into" the idea of picking up garbage.  A Syttende Mai celebration usually features a barnetog ["children's parade"], and the girls were willing to do their best to put on a three-person parade; they have miniature Norwegian flags that they could wave, and they proposed wearing bathrobes instead of bunads [literally "costumes," but really they're traditional forms of dress that correspond to distinct regions in Norway; see this].

None of that came to pass, though, because the picnic was canceled on account of rain.  A continuation of days and days and days of rain, as a matter of fact.  The lodge president phoned this morning and said that we'll just have to make our Sankthansaften ["St. John's Eve," a Midsummer's Eve celebration; see this] picnic next month all the grander to make up for it.

But we made today a very Scandinavian-themed day anyway.  This is what we did:

Much Ado

Tonight we attended a play at the public high school: Much Ado About Will, a collection of scenes from a variety of plays by William Shakespeare.  It appealed to Susan and me due to our backgrounds as actors, directors, and English teachers (whose students read Shakespeare plays); and we've always been keen to have our children watch Shakespeare plays while they're young in order to struggle less when reading them in school in later years.  That approach has worked; cable TV offers well regarded filmed productions of Shakespearean plays, which we have recorded and watched with the girls over the years, and they generally have no trouble figuring out what the characters are saying or what's going on in the plot.

Pride, Prejudice, and Fish

For this week's Scandinavian Saturday supper, Hillary was my helper.  We made a pretty simple meal because we had errands to do during the day and a play to attend right after supper--not a lot of time for multiple recipes or lots of dishes to wash.  So here's what we made:

An Evening in the Underworld

Susan and I attended a play tonight at the university.  It was a production of Sarah Ruhl's Eurydice, an imaginative retelling of the myth that usually features Orpheus as its focus.  He is a character in Ruhl's play, too, but Eurydice is definitely the main character.  The production took place in the Backstage Theater, a flexible space that's ideal for more intimate productions than those done on the mainstage.  Susan and I had front-row seats; the actors were literally mere inches away from us at times.  We had a great perspective from which to take in the interesting set choices (an elevator in which people got rained on and a water pump, both of which used real water; a room established in the Underworld by lacing string through loopholes on the floors and walls; the river Lethe represented by a length of blue fabric that emerged from a sewage drainpipe).  Although each actor had his/her moments, my favorite performers were the three women portraying talking stones in the Underworld, commenting on the action to us and to the characters and serving as a sort of Greek chorus.  It was a creative production of an inventive play that reminded me of something our friend Darin would direct.

The End Is Near

FYI: The new movie Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part I is awesome.  I know because our family went to see it today.  We have all read all the books in the series, and now we have seen all the movies in the series . . . and certainly intend to watch Part II when it is released next summer.  Despite knowing in advance what to expect from the plot, we were still surprised by moments of suspense that ended with elements meant to shock (and Hillary screamed quite loudly at one point when a snake made an attack that looked as though it were coming right off the screen and into our laps!).  We gulped down our dinner in order to make it to the matinée showing on time, so we had no time or appetite for popcorn or pop during the movie.  But other than the lack of snacks, it was a perfect movie-going experience.

Music, Sculpture, Theatre, and a Bonus Video

Abigail got up early with me this morning to clear out the driveway so that she, her sisters, and Susan could get to church at 7:30 A.M. for choir rehearsals, Sunday school, and church.  I stayed behind and finished the snowblowing and shoveling, which turned out to be a two-hour job.  Fun.  Then I did some school work, knowing that I'd have no time to finish it this afternoon or evening due to our jam-packed schedule of three main events:

Multimedia

Three interesting arts/cultural events from our week:

(1) Monday night, Susan and I attended a book reading by the author of Under the Twisted Cross, an historical fiction novel based on her father's experience as a WWII prisoner of war in German territory.  The author, Margaret Barnhart, happens to be a university colleague of mine.  A good-sized crowd gathered in the Alumni and Foundation House across from the campus to listen to Margaret read a chapter from the book.  It was a compelling section that ended in suspense; and before we left, we ordered a copy of the novel.

Camp Trollfjorden, Day 2

At this camp, Day 1 is about getting oriented, Day 4 is about wrapping things up, and Days 2 and 3 are about learning and experiencing Norwegian "stuff."  We eat Norwegian food, sing songs in Norwegian, take Norwegian language classes, create Norwegian crafts, learn Norwegian folk dances, and experience programs on various aspects of Norwegian culture.

Lutefisk, I'm Calling It Quits!

The Sons of Norway lodge of which we are members (Hardanger Lodge) held a membership luncheon today that we attended. It's an annual event, and the idea is for current members to invite prospective members to attend the luncheon, learn more about the organization, eat some free food, meet some fun people, and sign up to become members themselves. We invited our friends/neighbors Chuck and Reba to attend; Reba and their daughter had an errand to run, but Chuck and their son Jack came. We had a good time and enjoyed some homemade rosettes and krumkake for dessert (and even got to bring home some leftover rosettes--awesome!).

(The luncheon was held at the Dickinson Public Library in a large community room that is the result of a recent remodeling/expansion project. I haven't been in the building much, but Susan and the girls are regular visitors and gave me a full tour today before we left. There are some terrific architectural features, including original tin ceilings uncovered and restored during the remodeling project. There's a Frank Lloyd Wright "feel" to the furniture, woodwork, and other details throughout the building. It's really a lovely space.)

It was Susan's turn to help with the weekly Scandinavian Saturday supper, and I took advantage of her culinary expertise by selecting a dessert that seemed kinda difficult to make . . . and then assigning it to her. It turned out great; sadly, that's much, much more than I can say about the fish that I selected for the centerpiece of the meal. Read on:

Colorful plate, huh? The beverages are milk and Rosa Regale. That's lefse rolled up at the top of the plate and a dish of melted butter beside it for the lutefisk at the bottom of the plate. To the left is a portion of gulrot salat med persille og pinjekjerner, and to the right is bakt asparges salat.

Here's the platterful of the fish that made us all sad during supper. You may recall my rants and stories about lutefisk ["lye fish"] or my failed experiment last summer during which I tried to cook it on the grill to make it less disgusting than it is when baked or boiled (the traditional means of preparation). I decided to give it another try tonight, this time baking it in the oven as the instructions on the package recommended. I then sprinkled it with allspice, salt, and ground black pepper as recommended by a recipe that I found online.

Well, the baking in the oven allowed the chemically treated fish to stew in its own juices and boil away into a puddle of dissolved fish substance--i.e., the same gelatinous goo that I've encountered at pretty much every lutefisk supper I've ever attended. (Seriously, reread this.) The color and texture on the plate and the texture and flavor in the mouth were unappetizing, to say the least, and the allspice and melted butter didn't do enough to elevate the gustatory experience to an acceptable level. We soldiered on until we had eaten about half of our portions, and then we called it quits, finishing everything else and throwing the remaining lutefisk (and, later, making a large bowl of popcorn to share--a much better use of melted butter).


We love asparagus, so we were likely to enjoy the bakt asparges salat ["baked asparagus salad"] no matter what. We coated the spears in a mixture of olive oil, lemon zest, fresh lemon juice, salt, and pepper and baked them until just tender (and still slightly crunchy). It was an interesting variation from the usual steaming, roasting, and grilling recipes that we use for fresh asparagus.


This was a tasty twist on serving carrots, too. The gulrot salat med persille og pinjekjerner ["carrot salad with parsley and pine nuts"] required us to use a vegetable peeler to cut carrots into long, thin ribbons; toast pine nuts on the stove top; and toss them with chopped parsley, olive oil, the juice from a lemon, and salt and pepper. The lemon juice and the crunchiness made this carrot salad a good match for the asparagus salad. (By the way, both vegetable recipes came from a cookbook by Trina Hahnemann.)


Last Saturday Susan and the girls bought homemade lefse [a soft flatbread made from potatoes] at a bake sale sponsored by Hardanger Lodge, so we ate some with supper tonight. It was perfectly made and so delicious spread with butter and sprinkled with sugar (brown or white, according to one's mood). Those fingers are Susan's as she prepares some lefse for a daughter. Notice that the lefse has been rolled out expertly and is so thin that the pattern on our place mat can be seen through it! Lefse aficionados will note, too, the perfect semicircular shape and the color: just enough brown spots from the griddle to prove that it has been cooked without being burnt.


For dessert we enjoyed ingefær kake med kremfløte ["ginger cake with whipped cream"]. I whipped the cream into a sweet, vanilla-y cloud of goodness, and Susan made the rather time- and work-intensive cake recipe. She pulsed flour and crystallized ginger in a food processor until finely chopped. In a separate bowl, she beat together butter and salt and then gradually added dark brown sugar, egg yolks, corn syrup, and the ginger/flour mixture. In yet another bowl, she beat egg whites with salt and then folded them into the batter a little at a time, alternating the whites with more flour.

The cake was cooled enough to remove from the pan by the time we were ready for dessert but still slightly warm. Each slice was soft and melt-in-your-mouth on the inside but crunchy on the outside with a crust that was sugary and chewy, as though ribbons of toffee ran throughout it. The crystallized ginger gave the cake a distinctive flavor that was offset nicely by the whipped cream. And what a pleasant way to end a meal that started so nastily.

Native Voices

This week I enjoyed attending two of the events that were part of the university's Native Voices: Conversations on Culture. At the luncheon yesterday, I heard Diane Hall Glancy speak and read some of her poetry. Afterwards she signed a copy of her poem "Grandmother Library" to be displayed in the library on campus.

At today's luncheon, I heard Joseph M. Marshall III speak and viewed a clip from a movie in which he acted and for which he served as an advisor. Afterwards he provided everyone in attendance with an autographed poster that is a gorgeous photo of bison with an excerpt printed along the side from one of his books.

It was so relaxing to sit, eat, and listen. Yes, it has been a hectic week that followed a hectic week last week and that precedes a hectic week next week. So I enjoyed clearing my brain of my enormous "to do" list and just letting the speakers' eloquent words and thoughtful messages fill my mind. Events such as this are a terrific perk of working at a university. I hope this will become an annual event (to join the numerous other literary and cultural events that the university sponsors annually).

Ole Holmes and Dr. Sven Watson?

The Sons of Norway blog recently published a post about this article from the Wall Street Journal: "The Strange Case of the Nordic Detectives." The article notes the international popularity of Scandinavian crime fiction and asks, "What's the appeal of all this blood on the snow, police boots crunching over frozen grass[,] and detectives whose every utterance comes in a puff of visible breath against a background of interminable night?"

The article is worth reading for the writer's answer to that question. Along the way, she mentions several Scandinavian authors and titles of their detective fiction so that you can head to the nearest library, bookstore, or online book source and sample the genre for yourself. Check it out!

The Play's the Thing . . . that I Need from You

This afternoon I attended a meeting of the organizers of Sneak Pique, a new community theatre group in Dickinson (remember my having written about them recently?). Susan and I had been invited to participate from the outset, but we declined to add one more thing to our weekly schedules this semester, instead supporting Sneak Pique in spirit . . . and, of course, by attending their premiere performance a couple weeks ago.

Well, last week I decided to show up at one of the group's meetings to remind them of the Mobergs' support and continued interest and to become informed of the group's current and future projects. I kept my mouth shut throughout the meeting lest anyone should discover that the Mobergs have not only an interest in theatre but also experience in it, because that would be a sure way to get pressured into directing a play or auditioning for one--and again, free time does not exist for us as it is.

One member, Karen, seems to be the de facto leader of the group and asked, at last week's meeting, if anyone was interested in being in a play reading group. I immediately pictured a gathering of a few people to read and discuss plays--like a book group, but for dramatic literature instead--and thought, "Why not?" That wouldn't take much time, and it would be fun, so I raised my hand.

Well, I later found out that Karen's intent was for that group to read plays and then return to the large group with recommendations for which plays Sneak Pique should produce/perform in the future! And she was hoping for us to bring some recommendations to today's meeting so that a play could be selected for this upcoming spring! Yikes!!

Another person in the play reading group, Suzanne, had had the same understanding as I of what the group would entail (i.e., we were both wrong), and we confessed as much by way of explaining why, at today's meeting, we had no play recommendations to offer. However, Karen liked our idea, too, and asked if we'd be willing to organize a play reading get-together for January. So I did end up getting wrangled into something, but at least it's not committing to several weeks of nightly blocks of time spent directing or acting in a play. This is low-key enough that I can probably handle it amongst my other obligations.

So, Faithful Readers, any recommendations for the first play to be read by our play reading group?

Homemade Soup, Christmas Decor, Norwegian Advent, and Ancient Greek Poetry

Have patience, Faithful Reader. Yes, another week has come and gone without a Scandinavian Saturday meal for you to read about and enjoy photos of. This and this explain what we ate instead (and why) the past two weeks. And this week I didn't prepare a Nordic feast because of an abundance of Thanksgiving leftovers that needed to be used up, and I didn't know what Scandinavian thing to do with cold turkey other than to make smørbød ["open-faced sandwiches"].

Instead I made homemade turkey soup that simmered all afternoon: bacon, a couple onions, a bunch of celery, carrots, potatoes, leftover cooked broccoli and cauliflower, turkey stock, chicken stock, beer, fresh thyme, dried rosemary herb mix, cracked black pepper, seasoned salt, lemon pepper, garlic, fresh parsley, scallions, leftover turkey, and--at the end--cream. It was mighty delicious, I must say.

In between making supper and sitting down with my laptop to get some work done, I helped a bit with Christmas decorating. I moved some furniture and got the tree set up and strung with lights and then let the ladies decorate it (well, except for the hiding of the pickle ornament, which is my job--remember?). We usually put the Christmas tree upstairs in the living room, but this year we decided to try it downstairs in the family room. There's plenty of room there for it, after all, and it does look nice there, adding a beautiful sparkle to the family room where we spend many an evening together. There's also plenty of room to stack presents underneath and beside it . . .

Thanks to Susan and the girls, the entire house now looks Christmas-y and is ready for the arrival of our holiday guests: Susan's sister Cassie, her husband Nick, and their son Davis, who will be in Dickinson with us for his very first Christmas! Yay! It's bound to feel more like Christmas for them here in ND than in SC anyway. Yesterday as the girls would set out this or that Noel knickknack on a table or shelf, they'd remark how Davis should enjoy grabbing for it or chewing on it, etc. Funny how we're looking forward to Davis' getting into things in our house, but when it was our own children doing the crawling around and grabbing, we weren't so thrilled. Hm.

In lieu of tales of my own Scandinavian cooking this week, I offer you this morsel to sate your desire for something Norwegian: info about Advent in Norway from someone who lives there(remember this catablogue entry from a couple months ago?). It seems appropriate to share it with you today, the first Sunday of Advent . . . and the day after the night on which I usually make Norwegian food for my family. The blogger offers us readers not only a traditional Norwegian Advent song but also a traditional Norwegian Advent calendar that is so simple, you may even have the supplies in your kitchen right now to make it and set it out to use and enjoy. Check it out!

P.S. This is neither Scandinavian nor Advent-related, but have I mentioned that, a few weeks ago, Hillary checked out from the library the Greek epic The Odyssey and that we have been reading it aloud as a family? It's pretty fantastic, actually, to see the girls "getting into" the story and hear them asking/answering questions about the people, the Greek gods, the plot, the characters' motivations, the dramatic irony (e.g., "We know ___, but the characters don't know that!"), etc.

So far we're at Book IV, in which Telemachus, searching for news of his missing father Odysseus, has arrived at Lacadaemon to ask Menelaus if he knows what became of Odysseus following the end of the Trojan War, in which both Menelaus and Odysseus had fought. Got that? The girls do.

And they know that Menelaus' wife Helen essentially caused the Trojan War by leaving her husband and running off to Troy with its handsome prince Paris, causing the Greeks to board warships to Troy to reclaim Helen . . . thus starting the decade-long Trojan War. So the girls knew perfectly well the meaning behind Helen's words when, thinking back in time while speaking to her husband Menelaus in Book IV, she says, "When all you [Greeks] fought at Troy, launching your headlong battles just for my sake, shameless whore that I was." I did get a "What's a whore?" after that, of course. Classic literature = good times for the entire family!

By the way, I'll save you a trip to the library to check out The Odyssey for yourself. You can read it online here, and this site is a helpful source of information to serve as a companion to your reading.

Two Web Highlights

Check these out:

Culture Pulse -- A new Web site featuring information on all sorts of arts events in southwest ND: dance, theatre, music, visual art, museums, heritage events, festivals, special events, film showings, literary events, family- and kid-friendly events, classes and workshops . . . there's even a category called "sporting and outdoors"! As more and more regional arts groups become aware of Culture Pulse and start to add information about their own events, it will become a handy hub of information for those wondering, "What's there to do this weekend?"

Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me -- This NPR weekly news quiz show is always hilarious, but today's episode features NBC news anchor Brian Williams as a guest engaging in especially amusing repartee with the show's host and panelists. He shares funny stories, comes up with witty rejoinders, and (spoiler alert) wins his game after sharing his hilarious reasoning for arriving at the correct answers. Follow the link above and, if you wish, listen only to the Brian Williams portion (about 15 minutes). If you have more time, listen to the entire episode. It's news/current events-based comedy for people with brains! (And that's you, Faithful Reader.)

Catablogue: Book Blogs

Yep, not one but three blogs are featured today! Considering that I'm married to a librarian, that I used to be an English teacher, and that reading is pretty important in our family (I submit this and this as supporting evidence), I'm a little surprised to look back and note that I have not offered any literature-related blogs in the catablogue until now. If you are a reader, a promoter of literacy, someone who desires to read more but doesn't know where to start, or some combination thereof, you'd do well to check out any of these blogs.

The Book Lady's Blog

I like the straightforward title. Books are this blogger's profession and passion ("I'm on a mission to share the love of reading and keep the written word alive in our increasingly digital culture" [citation]). Along with book reviews (a standard component of many book blogs), the Book Lady shares information on undertaking reading challenges, facilitating book clubs, entering book-related giveaways, and listening to/meeting authors at book signings or public readings. Two recent posts to sample:

• Did you know that Book Blogger Appreciation Week is coming up soon? Let the Book Lady tell you all about it.
• If you wanted to raise someone's interest in a literary classic, what contemporary (and theoretically more "accessible") work would you recommend to be read along with that classic? The Book Lady has some ideas for possible pairings.

Everyday Reading

This blogger is a librarian who originally intended to use the blog as a means for sharing her book reviews but who has, over time, added posts about whatever topics strike her fancy. She sounds like a fun person both in those "You know, I've been thinking about . . ." kinds of posts as well as in her reviews, which are written in clear language and a conversational voice (e.g., "There was one literary device in this book that made me kind of crazy" [citation]). Two non-book-review posts to sample:

• The blogger offers a possible life motto for herself ("Live Light") and tells how getting her reading materials from a library rather than a bookstore enables her to enjoy books without being obligated to store, move, dust around, sell, or dispose of them after reading them--just return them to the library and be done.
• The blogger recommends a heart-tugging article she has read that reminds her "of things that are painful to remember" but that she "want[s] to be reminded of anyway." The one-two punch of reading her post about the article and then the article itself reduced me to tears.

Maw Books Blog

This blogger calls reading her "great escape from being a stay-at-home mom"(citation) and writes reviews of every book that she reads. And she reads all kinds of books, so when perusing her blog, you're as likely to read about memoirs or adult fiction as about children's literature or parenting books. Maw Books Blog offers book-related contests and giveaways, book- and author-related news, reader polls, book lists, etc., with the occasional post about events or people from the blogger's personal life. She even shares her "library": what she has read recently, what she's reading currently, and what she plans to read next (an impressive list). Two interesting posts to sample:

• She shares the movie trailers for current and upcoming movies that are based on books, possibly increasing both viewership and readership.
• She reflects on her penchant for owning lots of books when, in fact, she rarely rereads books, speculating that the joy of keeping books comes from being able to reminisce about a pleasant reading experience when she sees a particular book title.

(What is a catablogue?)

Listening

The lovely ladies are out of town this week (remember?), so it has been eerily quiet in the house. I moved Huck out of Suzanna's bedroom into the kitchen so that (a) I'll remember to feed him and (b) I can have someone at home to talk to once in a while. He doesn't say much, but he's an excellent listener.

Speaking of listening, I got to hear from some notable persons yesterday when I attended an event on campus that celebrated the progress made thus far in digitizing President Theodore Roosevelt's papers for our library's Theodore Roosevelt Center (more details here). I was on campus anyway for the university's start-of-the-year faculty orientation, so I had time to stop in and listen to some words from Senator Byron Dorgan and Dr. James Hutson from the Library of Congress. I believe that Lieutenant Governor Jack Dalrymple and humanities scholar Clay Jenkinson spoke, too, after I had stepped out.

I heard preliminary reports from Susan indicating that our nephew Davis is indeed as cute as photos and video clips have led us to believe in the months since his birth. I'm eager to meet the little bugger myself this weekend!

P.S. Tuesday night I enjoyed a delicious supper in the back yard of our university president and his wife. It's a tradition that begins each school year, and last year Susan was my date. She was out of town this year, of course, so I attended on my own but ate enough for two, so there's that. I also visited with lots of friendly colleagues, so I had a good time. Highlights from the many tables of food: one of the appetizers consisted of slices of apple and cheese wrapped in bacon; two of the entrées were a steak casserole with stuffing and gravy and chicken breasts in a Mediterranean broth; there were plenty of savory salads and other side dishes; and I chose a huge portion of crème brûlée for dessert. More about President McCallum and video of his State of the University address from yesterday's orientation are available here.

P.P.S. Dear Reader, do you use Facebook? If so, you'll find this article amusing . . . in either a that-is-so-true-and-i'm-not-alone kind of way or wow-i'm-embarrassed-because-i-do-that kind of way.

In Search of Dignity

Today I read this column by David Brooks for the New York Times. Regardless of your political affiliation, what do you think of his points about "the dignity code" and its demise amongst those in the public sphere today?

(Is it ironic that I should ask you this via my own Weblog, a medium that itself exemplifies the liberation of feelings and trend toward public confession that Brooks decries as having contributed to the decline of dignity?)

P.S. In part I like his column for its use of words such as "rectitude," "reticent," "dispassionate," "zealotry," "ruinously," "obliterated," "artifice," "equipoise," and "constancy." I love literate people!

Aune Family Reunion 2009: Day 2

Happy Independence Day! Yesterday as we drove, we listened to National Public Radio and enjoyed hearing what has become an annual feature on NPR this time of year: the reading of the Declaration of Independence by NPR's hosts, commentators, reporters, and newscasters. It was so stirring to hear the words read aloud with meaningful expression and with awesome music in the background. You can hear it yourself (as well as read along) here.

Okay, on to my reunion recap (recall Day 1 of this reunion?): The Holiday Inn Express Hotel and Suites of Eagan, MN serves the best complimentary breakfast of any hotel I've ever stayed at, so far as I can recall. This morning Susan, the girls, and I joined the hordes of other Aunes staying at the hotel in over-running the dining area just off the lobby for cheese omelets, waffles, English muffins, biscuits and gravy, doughnuts, fruits, cereal, juice, coffee, etc. It was delicious and another fine opportunity to visit with relatives. (Interesting tidbit: We also saw and visited with a family from our church in Dickinson! They're here for a little vacation this weekend and just happened to select the same hotel that we did. What are the odds?!)

Eagan is having its annual 4th of July Funfest this weekend, and we could have attended the parade this morning. However, that would have meant cutting short the visiting, so we skipped the parade. Bea's family had arranged several daytime options for the Aunes today: those interested in golfing did so early this morning; the female first cousins or wives of first cousins (that's my dad's generation) met in the hotel's Magnolia Room for a catered dinner at noon (this is a tradition carried over from past Aune reunions); and those interested in swimming met at noon at Cascade Bay Waterpark (not far from the park where last night's festivities were held) for splashing, sunburning, and dining on hot dogs, chips, and soda. Here are some highlights:

Susan and I elected not to swim, instead keeping a watchful eye on the children and manning the cameras (Susan had ours, and I took photos using the camera of my sister Sandy, who frolicked in the water with the others). I don't know what's going on in this photo, but isn't that a weird facial expression that I'm rockin'?

Here are my sisters Sandy and Cathy, chatting poolside between trips down the waterslides with their nieces.

Here are Suzanna (in the orange), Abigail (green), and Hillary (turquoise) shooting out one of the waterslides.

And here they are in a more serene moment, floating down the "lazy river."

Here's Sandy with some of the slides in the background. The next few pics are more shots of the waterpark's slides. It's a great facility, and the kids had a blast playing in the water this afternoon.

All the Aunes gathered back at Blackhawk Park again for tonight's supper: a pig roast catered by Divine Swine Catering. While we waited for the food to be set out, the girls led Susan and me on a short walk to Blackhawk Lake, which looked just lovely beneath the setting sun. (The lake is kinda swampy--less of a lake in which one might want to swim and more of a slough at which one might want to gaze from the safety of the bridge or the shore. But legitimately pretty nevertheless, tucked as it is amongst the trees.) A short while later, the caterers served tangy coleslaw and potato salad alongside both pork and turkey with a delicious barbecue sauce on the side, and we ate and drank and visited. Here are some highlights:

See? Isn't Blackhawk Lake pretty when one cannot see the algae up close? That bridge is picturesque, too. We stood in the middle of it awhile and watched fishes and frogs moving around in the lake, darting between fronds of underwater vegetation.

This swine tasted divine but looks a bit gruesome. Notice the apple lying on the aluminum foil near the pig's snout--nice touch!

For dessert, Bea's family served Norwegian baking, including these kransekaker ["wreath cakes"], also called Norwegian wedding cakes. They're made of ground almonds, powdered sugar, and egg whites. We may not have been home for me to cook for Scandinavian Saturday, but we got our Scandinavian cuisine just the same!

Hillary got a bit too much sun this afternoon and started feeling unwell at suppertime. Although last night we took the shuttle from the hotel to the park, this evening we drove ourselves; so I had a vehicle at the park and was able to take Hillary to a store to buy some children's pain reliever and a bottle of aloe vera gel. She and I returned to the hotel so that she could take the medicine and I could cover her face and shoulders in aloe vera. She grabbed her blankie and stuffed animal, and we got back in the vehicle. On the way back to the park, she asked if she could take a nap, so I purposely drove around Eagan to pass some time so that she could rest.

By the time we got back to the park, she was alert and feeling much better. However, we had totally missed tonight's program! People had been asked beforehand to provide entertainment, so those willing had signed up to sing and play musical instruments. Our family decided to do something a little different and planned to teach everybody some of the Norwegian folk dances that we learned at Camp Trollfjorden. Susan, Suzanna, and Abigail were able to do that without Hillary and me, and they said that it went well; and many people afterward reported that they'd had a blast learning and dancing those dances, so it seems to have been a hit. Here are some highlights from the entertainment (that Hillary and I missed):

My stepmom asked Suzanna, Abigail, and Hillary to sing their a capella version of "Amazing Grace," which became a duet after I bolted with Hillary. I think Suzanna and Abigail got in on some more singing with my sisters, too.

Here are some Aunes doing one of the Norwegian folk dances that Susan, Suzanna, and Abigail taught them. We're all used to dancing at wedding dances, street dances, and similar events, so I'm not surprised that people were willing to get onto their feet and try out some new dances. In fact, my cousin's daughter, whose wedding is this upcoming weekend back in ND, asked us to bring the music to her wedding dance so that we can teach people there these dances!

Here is my dad (farthest left) playing accordion with his sister Rose's four children, who are great accordion players and who often treat us to performances at Moberg get-togethers (see this, this, and this). They were just putting away their instruments when Hillary and I returned, but I'm assuming they were all terrific, as usual.

My sister Sandy brought a tripod and used her camera's timer to capture a photo of the whole group. This looks like a bunch of people, but it's only those who were in attendance this weekend--there are still other Aunes who did not attend!

Bea's kids knew a location nearby from which one could view the fireworks displays of all the surrounding cities, but we five were amongst those who decided to skip it, avoiding a battle with traffic and mosquitoes by returning to the hotel instead. The hotel let us use the Magnolia Room as a gathering spot, and we packed ourselves in for more drinking, eating, and visiting. We couldn't ask for a better central meeting place than what our hotel has turned out to be. It was another great day!

Huckleberry Fin

No, that (the title of this blog post) is not a misspelling. Although Mark Twain's novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn uses a different spelling, "fin" is appropriate for the name of Suzanna's new fish.

Yes, today we bought a Betta fish for Suzanna to keep in her bedroom and care for. Her teacher had an aquarium in the classroom this year that she was willing to part with at the end of the year (she's retiring), and Suzanna expressed interest in it. I, however, expressed a strong lack of interest in inheriting a multi-gallon fish tank to store somewhere in the house and to stock with fish and to maintain and to clean up after whenever reckless children knocked into it and overturned it onto the carpet, etc.

However, faithful readers will recall that I used to own a Betta fish myself (read this), and we still have his little Betta-sized fish tank. We told Suzanna that she could stock that tiny tank with fish and keep the pet fish in her bedroom provided that she keeps her bedroom clean (something that she doesn't consistently do). So Suzanna dug out the Betta tank and set it up, and this afternoon Susan brought home the fish from the aquarium that she has had in the library at school this year. They put the fishies into our Betta tank . . . and they all promptly died.

Suzanna was in tears, but I promised that we'd go buy an actual Betta for the tank, and we did. She chose a male with a red belly, blue body, and long, tassle-like fins. She also got Betta fish food and two plastic plants to adorn his tank. After carefully considering many options for his name, Suzanna settled on Huckleberry Fin: "huckleberry" because he's dark blue, "fin" because he's a fish, and the combo because it's a literary allusion, and that's how we roll in our house.

So far he has been very well behaved and, best of all, he has remained living. Let's hope he keeps that up. Here are some pics: