Adventures in Taking the Bus Just for Fun

It's been a super busy week for me here on the Lava Rock, pretty much all good stuff. For starters, I was on BBC World Service again last Tuesday. I was sitting in my kitchen nursing a rare cold brought home by my son from school and feeling a bit blue the way colds make you do, when an unlisted number called. I don't know who I thought it would be, but definitely not a producer from an international radio program! She introduced herself and asked if I'd be willing to go live on World Have Your Say in two hours' time, and I said yes.

Vibe

GUEST PHOTOGRAPHER: Keira Brown

I met Keira on the last night of Airwaves and we pretty much bonded right away. Music does that, it brings people together. She showed me this soulful photo and we agreed that it was a beauty. I asked her to write about the story behind the shot, and here's what she had to say:

88 ~ a love letter to an island

This is my book ~.~ It's a love letter to my favorite island home, written over the course of 88 days in Reykjavik, Iceland, during one glorious and apocalyptic autumn season.

I've known for years that I would write it in 2012, starting on my birthday, but I didn't really understand how much it would mean to me. I'd like to share it with you all, and give you the chance to purchase your own copy via the Blurb Online Bookstore.

Since I was 17 I've known that I have the same birthday as F. Scott Fitzgerald, and that we're both born in the Year of the Monkey, he in 1896, me in 1968. I knew that he died far too young of alcoholism, at age 44, after having, in large part, destroyed his family (the amazing Zelda and their daughter Scotty) and so decided that I'd try starting up where he left off and begin to write with dedication at that same age.

A few years ago I discovered something that frankly boggled me: F. Scott passed away on December 21st, 1940, at 44 years and 88 days old. It just so happened that I would turn 44 years and 88 days old on December 21st, 2012, the famous end day of the Mayan calendar. So a decision was made. I'd start writing on our birthday. And because he drank himself to death, I'd even try living a bit of his lifestyle while writing. So I had a plan from the start. But what I didn't account for were all the things that happened during those days, and how they were to influence how the story unfolded: life, death, sex... and love.

Buy yourself a copy and take the journey I took, experiencing the autumn season of a white girl living on a volcano who knew she was supposed to die.

(88 is free now as an ebook through Blurb, though not yet on iTunes.) 

The Way a Tree Covered in Fairy Lights Looks Like Life

It's been an intense week* for our big little island, and because I try to keep this space more news-free than not it's been a bit of a challenge to imagine what to write. Too peppy a tone, and it would be an insult to all those here who have been affected by loss these past few days (loss of loved ones, of jobs, of privacy), while getting too deep and dour would dampen what we most need right now: hope.

Voices

I'm going to wager that every one of you who has been here has stood in this spot, at the top of Skólavörðurstígur in front of Hallgrímskirkja, but not for the reason we were there this morning. Today about 300 students from Austurbæjarskóli and their parents gathered with flags and drums and fire-lit torches to march down to City Hall and demand that an important promise be kept. The city had allocated money and shown intent to turn an unused space on the school property into a community center for the kids in our neighborhood (which is basically a wide circle around the Big Church, from the town lake to the northern shore of the bay, and from Snorrabraut over towards the BSÍ bus terminal and Hjlómskálagarður park.)

Austó, as it's called, has a rich 83 year history, and was the first building in Reykjavik to be heated with then-new geothermal technology Here's an informative PDF in Icelandic with images (the school is on page 10) for those of you want to practice the language. (Wow, while looking for old photos of the school, I discovered this blog post by Roddy Fox, a geology prof at Rhodes U. in South Africa, doing research into his father's army time in Iceland during WWII. A short must-read, and once again, why I love maintaining this site!)

While the newer neighborhoods the capitol region often had community spaces incorporated into the overall design, and though culture center Hitt Húsið has been a great success for the 16-25 year olds, younger kids who live downtown don't really have anywhere safe and social to go after school. As stated on the main website for what they call Leisure Centers, these are crucial places for the children of immigrants to go and feel welcome and like they belong. Our Midtown neighborhood is (thankfully) very culturally diverse, and our kids deserve to have the city fulfil their pledge to create a proper one, and soon! (Update: our mayor Jón Gnarr and our city council chairman, Dagur Eggertsson - good looking men! - are going to make it happen! :) 

Re: building and development, today's front-page headline article is on the Icelandic Touring Association's  new idea to protect Icelandic nature via crowdfunding (like our local Karolina Fund) basically inviting businesses, individuals and of course tourists to invest in "nature passes" and thereby avoiding what's becoming a messy bureaucratic issue about how/whether Iceland should be charging for access to our most popular natural attractions. It's our responsibility to keep them pristine for all the generations to come (for example, Icelandic Eden Project, anyone?)

Vision

GUEST PHOTOGRAPHER: Margrét Gústavsdóttir

Margrét posted this pic on Facebook last week and I fell for it right away. I asked her if I could use it, and if there was any story behind the moment. Here's what she wrote back to me last Monday:

I was driving home today and decided to take the 'scenic route'. Saw these amazing clouds and just had to stop. The picture is taken on an iPhone 5, out of the car window. 

I walk this way every day with my dog. One of the best things about living in this city is the nearness to nature. And one of the best things about living in Iceland is the spectacular sky, the lighting, the contrasts in colors and the constantly changing scene it brings to us humble observers from below. It's an ongoing ever-changing art show that never fails to amaze us.

I'm sure that all of you who've been here fully agree with Margrét, who has been a journalist and online media presence for over a decade. As a matter of fact, she was one of the first very well-known bloggers here in Iceland, back in the old days when the blogosphere was in its infancy and there were really no other social media outlets to speak of. She's always written with sass and style, and has taken on some pretty important issues in her time.

Today she owns, runs and writes for the gorgeous and super popular Pjattrofur (Pjatt.is) website, where she's brought together a group of very sleek and savvy women writers to cover current happenings in the world of fashion, fame, lifestyle and culture. With nearly 25,000 Facebook followers they're definitely doing something right!

Speaking of culture, I was contacted by the BBC World Service radio earlier this week (via the Iceland Eyes Twitter feed! : ) and was asked to join in on the Reykjavík episode of World Have Your Say. Of course I said YES! We did the live show on Friday evening in Harpa  which was thoroughly enjoyable, and pretty content-rich. The theme was "life after the financial crisis" and you can listen to it online here. I'm hoping that the dream that I talk about of Iceland becoming a model eco-sustainable society can, one day in the not-so-distant future, come true.