The best bits of Iceland are still here. I didn’t come to buy a no-money down Mercedes jeep with a loan in Euros, I didn’t come so I could spend my weekends in shopping malls, and most of my friends are not that sort either. We’re here, going about our daily business, having coffee, preparing for new babies, going to work, reading, talking, swimming, running.When I think of Iceland, I think of many things–gray moss, the ruins of turf houses, wind and rain and startling moments of stillness, children hyped on sugar riding their bicycles round and round, hot dogs with crunchy onions, old stories close enough to touch, the clink of volcanic stones beneath by feet, scalding hot pots, good conversations, countless other things … and that’s only after two two-week (too-short) visits; I know well enough there are layers and layers I haven’t seen. No country is its economy and nothing else (or else Americans would think of ourselves as living in “that place with the bad mortgages and the people losing their homes”), something at least some of the folks reacting to Iceland’s particular economic troubles seem to forget sometimes.
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PW interview with Ellen Klages on White Sands, Red Menace:
Q: Like Suze’s parents, Suze, an artist, and her more scientific-minded best friend, Dewey, are two very different individuals. Do you identify with one of the characters more than the other?And they both have to think creatively, yes. And being one doesn’t mean you can’t understand the other–can’t also be the other, for that matter.A: I started out thinking I was more like Suze since I am more into art than engineering. But sometimes—like when I’m fixing the Xerox machine—my friends have said, “See, you’re just like Dewey.” I’ve come to realize that artists and scientists are alike. They go through the same processes using different tools. They are both driven to answer the question, “What if?”