From the Plane

Although I have been here for a few days now, I did write down a few thoughts here and there. I wrote these notes on the plane.

I am reminded of differences in "service." Flight attendants for SAS [Scandinavian Airlines] carry around a basket of bread and disinterstedly ask, "Want some?" And yet, we get a free alchoholic drink with dinner and are passed out hot wet towells in the morning.

The first song I listened to off the ground and into the air: The Replacements, "Hold My Life." For that matter I listened to Tim all the way through to Chicago. "Waitress in the Sky" was fun to listen to with a sneer.
Since, I have had the ipod on shuffle. I am reminded of my enjoyment of Neil Young's "Like a Hurricane" last time I was here. Right now digging on Cat Power's "Willie" from The Greatest. I'm looking forward to getting into her. Thanks Tory!

Am reading Jonothan Kozol's Savage Inequalities, 1990, about inequities in funding American public schools, particularily looking at the influence of race and class.

I'm still not sure what I'm doing. I need to remind myself that while I loved my life in MN, my work at Youth Farm and Jane Adams School was coming to a close. Nothing could have done (I assume) this year would have been as good as this opportunity.Perhaps I couldn't have dealt with not doing this. Who passes up ten months expenses paid in Oslo with travel to Stockholm, Copenhagen, and Poland while learning Norwegian for free and being a HECUA Teaching Assistant? It helps that Tim, the program director, is also one of the best teachers I've had.

The above quasi-justification reminds me of an exercise from SUST '05 we undertook in one of our first days of classes. We did a short free write on why we did the program. At the time I didn't have much of a notebook so I wrote in a smaller note pad that I've continued to use over the last several years. That free write I've come across occassionally in MN and has always reminded me of the hope and excitement I felt and the beginning of the program. It is almost reminiscent of a founding charter.

A quote from Knut Hamsun's Hunger , 1890. Oslo is "the strange city no one escapes from until it has left is mark on him."