A glimpse of the past

I'm sure everybody reading this has had some thoughts at some point about what makes some people turn out well in life and some end up having nothing but trouble. A lot of it will often be of their own making, of course, I'm not denying that. Some people are habitual criminals, constantly in trouble ... but how do they become like that, while others never have any problems with the law at all and just surf through life? That's a question that I think everyone's asked themselves. And of course a lot of research has been done on that issue. I've read some really interesting work by a psychologist ... I think he's French ... who's done research on murderers and serial rapists in prison, he's compared their brains to 'normal' brains and gotten some fascinating results. But that's kind of beside the point. This post is about something more personal.

I was at the library yesterday - I use the main library downtown - and on my way back to the subway I stopped by to check out the newspaper pages displayed outside the VG building. Completely by accident I caught sight of an article that was about this very issue. They ran it, obviously, in response to a research report that was published here last week about how children of divorce or who lose their mothers at a young age are statistically much more likely to end up as troubled adults. The article is about a 34 year old man who lost not only his mother, but both parents when very young, grew up in various orphanages and foster homes and ended up leading a life of crime for years and years and spending altogether 7 years in prison. It says in the article that he's been convicted on altogether 350 different counts. :-o

What makes this personal is that I went to school with this guy. His name is Geir Strid Moe and he was a classmate of mine for three years, at our junior high equivalent. And this is interesting, because my memories of him just really reflect what these researchers feel that their results show ... that the situation a child finds itself in will shape its future to such a significant extent. Geir was a real troublemaker, the biggest of our year, hands down. He was the kind of kid that absolutely everybody had heard about, someone parents warned their kids to stay away from. You'd always be hearing some new crazy story about what he'd done. And it'd usually be true. :-) He was constantly in trouble, and it was usually trouble of his own making. In other words, he was always doing something to get himself into trouble.

But what I first and foremost remember about him is what an incredibly kind person he was. He always struck me as having, if you'll excuse the metaphor, a profoundly kind and good heart. Whenever there were young children or animals around, he was so protective of them and didn't know how to be kind enough to them. He would never let anyone do anything that might be even conceivably mean to them. It was strange to me back then that he was always in so much trouble, and did so many crazy things, because he clearly was, in his heart, a good boy. He wasn't mean. I remember having that impression so strongly. And I also remember thinking that it was probably because he lived in an orphanage - which was very strange and almost exotic to the rest of us - that he was like that. Because he didn't have anyone to steer him right, so to speak. I really felt that he was 'supposed to' be a really good kid. He had it in him, but he clearly didn't have anyone there to show him how.

I have to think that that must have been really, really obvious. Because, I'll be honest with you, I wasn't that perceptive as a 14-15 year old. :-)

Now he's broken away from his life of crime and works for a very worthwhile organization, WayBack. They do really important work helping habitual criminals start their lives over. I am so glad to hear that he's turned over a new leaf. He really deserves it. He was a good guy, despite appearances. :-)

You can read the article in VG online here.

Do you love elephants?

Then you've got to see this. Sorry if it's old news to everyone - this happened in the spring of 2010 - but I hadn't heard about this till I saw the documentary on Norwegian TV just a couple days ago. You can still see it on nrk.no, here, through this coming Sunday. That version has Norwegian commentary, though. The whole thing is on Youtube with the original comments in English, just look at the bottom of this post and click through. If you love elephants and you haven't seen this documentary, you just absolutely have to. :-)

It's called Miracle at the Zoo and it's the story of one of the Thai elephants kept at Taronga Zoo in Sydney, Porntip. She is their herd's matriarch and last year, at the age of 18, she was due to give birth for the first time. But like many first time mothers experience, she had a very difficult delivery. Just watch the documentary, it's beyond fantastic.

And it really makes me think about what kind of thoughts and feelings these very intelligent animals have towards their human carers. Keep your eye on Porntip when the keepers intervene during her labor and afterwards ... it's really moving. As I've mentioned before, I believe in protected contact for zoo elephants, for several reasons, but ... yeah, this is very moving.

Fullscreen here. The documentary's in five parts, the other four will come up as suggestions when you click through to this first one. Enjoy. :-)

Tomorrow's the day

Fingers crossed ... ! Keanu's latest, Henry's Crime, seems to be going straight to video here in Norway - alas!! - so I pre-ordered the DVD on Play.com. The UK release date was June 6th, and I got an email on the 5th saying it was in the mail. It kind of should have arrived already, but obviously it's been delayed by the holiday. But I am seriously hoping that it'll be in my mailbox when I get home tomorrow afternoon.

Not that I'll have time to actually watch it tomorrow, because I have to go out again, but at least I'll know that I have it. My precioussss ... !! ;-)

23 hours to Denmark

And back.

I forgot to blog yesterday, because I went to Denmark. :-) There and back again in less than a day. I was going to post some pictures from the trip tonight, but I think I'll put that off, I don't feel quite well. For some reason the floor seems to be moving somehow ...

Quote of the Week

Bladet Jakt har heile to fengjande slagord på framsida: "Bladet for deg som tar jakt på alvor!" og "VI tester DER ANDRE tror!". I dette siste slagordet ville eg nok ha nytta store og små bokstavar heilt motsett, men det er greitt. I artikkelen om albinodyr har dei berre greidd å finne tre ulike dyr å illustrere teksten med: ei albinoelgku som liknar på Eyvind Hellstrøm, ein albinomink og eit tredje, ukjent albinoeksemplar som berre er karakterisert som "albino dyr" i biletteksten. Eg skulle gjerne sett fleire. Ein albinojerv eller ei albinokråke, til dømes. "Husk at isbjørn ikke er albino," står det i teksten. Å ja! Tusen takk for opplysninga. Setninga

Hvis det ved ren tilfeldighet var noen av grevlingene som kom til Trøndelag som var bærer av genene for albinisme så vil det når bestanden har sitt opphav i noen få dyr bli slik at denne egenskapen opptrer hyppigere enn ellers.

er eit døme på skrivekunst som ved rein tilfeldigheit eller ikkje i jakt- og villmarksblad hyppig opptrer, og som er ein eigenskap som gjer lesinga av nemnde blad noko meir tungvint enn hva ein elles kunne

ønskt seg, og gjerne der ein kunne ha fått fram same bodskap på langt enklare vis. Så det er ikkje berre i offentleg sektor ein slit med å få bukt med kansellistilen.

Agnes Ravatn, Folkelesnad.

Kapittel 10: Når villdyret sovnar. Friluftsblad

Crazy story

This is a crazy story from real life that I haven't thought about for a really long time, but I just remembered it today because of all fuss about Arne Treholt. Again. It's probably mean, but I gotta say it ... I am seriously sick of that guy. To the point where I don't really care whether he did it or not, I just want him to go the hell away. Anyway.

This happened on the airport express bus from Torp one time I was coming home from England. About ten years ago. I think it was the summer of 2000. I'd been traveling for hours and was getting pretty tired, and when I got on the bus I remember thinking that I hoped no one would sit next to me, and if someone did, hopefully not a talker. I just really wanted to sit quietly and relax and stare out the window, basically. But no such luck. The bus ended up being chock full and of course the person who ended up in the seat next to mine wasn't only the chattiest guy on board, but the craziest too.

He started out seeming kind of normal, but he quickly veered off into serious bizarroland. I don't remember all of it now - nowhere near all of it, and maybe that's just as well - because there was a lot of it. All kinds of crazy conspiracy shit. Of course the government is out to get us all and Norwegian society is rotten to the core, it's unbelievable. I was really fascinated, because he really was incredibly normal, you never would have guessed what a nutcase he was from looking at him, or, in fact, even from talking with him, if he didn't start saying all these crazy things. He really gave the impression of having a firm grip on reality. It was really interesting.

What I do remember that he told me, though, was about the Orderud case. (Now those people I am even more sick of than I am of Treholt. Lock 'em up and throw away the keys, I don't care, just keep them out of the media at absolutely any cost.) He knew something SO serious about that case, and he knew so much more, all these things that when they came out they would just blow the establishment sky high. It was him and this one other guy, they had been collaborating for year and had collected so much information. Our entire society, according to my temporary friend, is completely corrupt, and it reaches up into the highest level, you'd never believe it, but the info he was sitting on was enough to topple the government. Which it totally would. And soon.

Now I'm starting to think that this happened in 2001 ... ? Because I remember him saying that all of this info would be presented in the media before the next election, and that was specifically in reference to the parliamentary election of 2001. So this may have been early summer 2001. OK, not that important, but he did say that they had had so much trouble trying to get this out into the media, everything that they knew, they had worked with any number of journalists but they had all chickened out in the end. Of course that was the reason, totally. Now though they had found this really brave guy who would put his neck on the line, and it would all come out, and it would totally rock our collective world. It would change everything about our political life and the election, boy, that'd be anybody's guess.

Not sure I remember anything enormously different about that election. Or the time before it, or the time after. But that's probably just because the government's putting something in my water.

Anyway, back to the Orderud case. Of course the police were barking up the totally wrong tree with this inheritance shit and it was all a coverup, and you wouldn't believe how far up it went. (He didn't tell me how far, just that it was really really far.) What really happened was this. The real target of the murders was Per Paust. But he'd already died on his own, right? But he had known something - which was what he was supposed to have been killed for - and before he died he told his wife. So she had to be eliminated. And she might have told her parents, or maybe she definitely had, I don't remember, so they had to go too. That was the reason. But what was it that he knew?

OK, so, this was not that long after the documents had been released in the Treholt case. And of course my bus buddy had copies of every single document. Of course. BUT. He had somehow gotten to see these papers before they were released, and had copied them then too, AND GET THIS - three pages that had been in the original files were now different, with different information. Someone had swapped them with other papers. He had them at home, blown up onto oversized plastic sheets for an overhead projector. It was really really important that they were oversized, for some reason. I'm not entirely clear on that. But the point is that there was info in these three pages that SOMEONE doesn't want people to know, and Paust knew what that info was and that was why he had to die. It's all because of Treholt. Paust apparently worked with him at some point. Or so my informer told me ... I actually haven't looked into it, crazy as that sounds.

This guy is to me the epitome of the crazy conspiracy theorist. It was fun talking to him, but thinking back I see him as a very sad character. It was just so obvious to me that he had an enormous need to feel important and special, his life was pretty empty and he was clinging on to this worldview he had constructed for himself as a way of forcing meaning into life. That really is sad. And it makes me think that there really is absolutely no way you can talk sense to a conspiracy nut. They are just way too emotionally invested in it. They can't let go of what they believe, because that would leave only reality behind, and for some reason they can't face that, they have to self-protect with their conspiracy of choice.

Kind of makes me think of Arne Treholt, actually. o_O

'The Boy Next Door'

I'm sure nobody remembers this, but a few months ago I had a book on one of my Books I've Read lists that was a debut novel by a Zimbabwean author. The Boy Next Door by Irene Sabatini. This book was really impressive considering it was by a debuting author. I would never have guessed that if I hadn't known it. It's a really wonderful literary work. I came across it accidentally when I read a special on new African literature in a newspaper this winter. I immediately wanted to read it and reserved it at the library the first chance I got. Yeah, that one too. :-) I love the library website. :-)

Anyway ... it's a great book and I really recommend it. It even inspired me to write to the author - she has a contact form on her website, which is here. I just sent a short email telling her that I had just read her book and I'd enjoyed it tremendously. She wrote me back, which was really nice of her. I didn't write anything that needed a response, but she still took the time to write and say thank you; I appreciate that. She genuinely deserved every word of praise I wrote. :-)

Some more of my thoughts on the book are in this video. I really recommend it. The book, obviously. ;-)

Widescreen here.