Celebrate overalls day with overalls photos all over the web

getting close to 1st international overalls day, I am posting a photo from my recent visit to San Francisco visiting my dear friend Mary, our landlady, when we lived in SF for a year. Sometimes I may feel crazy doing all this about overalls ! but Mary supports me with full heart ! and I am also so grateful for people like Laury who is posting overalls photos every day now and Farmer Lee who is going to have everybody on his farm to wear overalls on November 20 and make a group photo on the web on November 20, so if a lot of blogging people, who love overalls, are going to put photos on from now on and especially on November 20 and tell why they love overalls ! it could be really fun and please take a look on my own flickr album as well as Laurys album and I also have an idea on making a book and I will come back to that !

are we all farmgirls ?

well, yesterday I discovered a ministry of overalls ! and as usual I wrote that I and a bunch of farmgirls were working on making an international overalls day ! well, perhaps I would have love to be a farmgirl, well I am a man, working as university professor etc. , but it might not be completely true despite I feel very much comfort in the company of farmgirls and other men and women and all in-between, gay etc. etc. and in fact advocate for a diversity as broad as possible and funny enough many of us loving to live a simple life, enjoy food and gardening, love to wear overalls ! and it is not only elder people like me and others over 50 ! take a look here to read an amazing story about overalls through generations ! a perfect example for an overalls book (hope that we can make that)

overalls and talk beyond gender and age ! an old man’s thoughts on good life!

Happy Sunday, these two photos have nothing to do with gender, but they show the moon the other night viewed from our farm house and the other one show how trees are being formed by the yearlong western direction of the blow of the wind ! and then to my thoughts of roles of gender. For years I have been struggling with being a man, an ordinary man ! When my kids were small, I was often in kindergarden and school as parent and attending the parents group etc. and liked to make cakes and to make festivals for the kids, but I also experienced that most of the things were done by women, the mothers, and not by the fathers. Taking care of baking, cooking and clothing, garden, house design, laundry etc. were sort of the women area and even in the liberated 70′ties you were a strange male if you were interested in all this. You was supposed to like fishing, hunting, to build carports etc. etc. I tried several times to discuss this issue with my female academic colleagues involved in developing gender research as a new field, but it did not suit into their agenda ! and when I meet them today, they have in many cases returned to their pre-revolutionary female style and have turned into very traditional women with very traditional husbands as well, thats hopefully fine for them, but still unsatisfactory for men like me who wants to be all right making house things. Last night I talked with my wife last night about all this and about when I as 14 year old boy, in 63, moved from Copenhagen out in the countryside on a farm, which my father bought in order to realize his dream of being a farmer. In the beginning my parents didn’t live their, but they had a guy as farm manager taking care of the farm. So I lived alone in our house at the farm, while I went over to the farm managers house to eat and have some social life, when I came home from school! They were a very down to earth family and I really enjoyed their company. I could relax and and in fact enjoy to work in the field, driving tractor etc. and then after getting completely dirty and tired, eat as many strawberries as you can and watch a funny movie ! At the same time, I was almost scared to death to visit some of the farms of my own family, why ? because they sort of expected the tough boy of me ! well, I might have been wrong and misunderstood my folks , but that’s what I remember ! but what about overalls ? how do they play a role in this ! well, the wife to the farm manager, the mother to two boys, she wore overalls, and one of the first things I remember was when she asked my mother whether she could wear some clean overalls when she went up to our neighbors ! and I also remember that she patched her overalls and rolled them up, just like I am doing now ! she also convinced me to wear jeans in school back in the 60′ties and it was not only the overalls, but also the fact that she listened to me, although I stuttered a lot, and she talked a lot and I listened as well ! even if I was just a young kid! well, I don’t know If I can make a consistent conclusion from this, but anyway, it makes me feel okey in doing the house things, making food etc. and wearing overalls, when I think of her and I like people like her, also today. Overalls and good talk are taking you beyond gender and does not make you less woman or man, but enables you to create your own way of living ! I don’t know if that makes sense to anybody apart from myself and my wife, but it really doesn’t matter !

butterflies, lavender and black currants – from my Danish garden

one of the fantastic things with overalls is that they suit so perfect for gardening as well as for cooking etc. so almost nothing is better than wearing overalls while you watch butterflies in the lavender and you pick beautiful and not least tasteful and healthy black currants to make you fresh to resist flues etc. etc. so it is such a privilege to one day pick cloud berries in Norway and the other day black currants in Denmark ! doing the garden and the food ready for visit of my grandson next week, so you bet, there are also more than overalls which count for me, but in any case, it is so wonderful to enjoy all the other things and easy to do all kind of things, when you wear overalls !

overall is nature, also just behind you and you can eat it !

today and tonight we have the socalled tropical version of midnight sun summer with more than 20 degrees celcius at midnight, it is incredible hot at day noon and very delicious cool at midnight, nice dry air and you can walk up in the mountains just behind your house and sit and rest and find a few berries, the very special one for the northern region, the yellow one, and just relax, unbutton your overalls and enjoy summer time and more berries soon to come !

thoughts about why I feel happy and sort of found myself !

well, today I really feel so happy, why ? well, I believe I have found my true friends among overalls fans, Laury, Maya, Susan etc. apparently mostly farm girls and artists!, why, perhaps I’m not an ordinary man, but I happens to like down to earth simple life, to garden, make food, cakes etc. and do shopping in thrift stores finding cool and comfortable clothes, read: well worn, yeah, almost worn out clothes, especially overalls! I have not met many men with same interests ? well, perhaps I should not worry about that ! but I also like music and art in general, especially opera and all this have very little to do with science and academia and I am professor in documentation studies and just submitted a scientific article on document theory, how does all this fit together ???, well, if you earn money as professor and have time and possibilities to enjoy thrifting, food, garden, coffee etc. it makes sense, at least for me, so I am so happy to have found myself by getting connected to all the other overalls fans united in making November 20th to an international Overalls day! “national day” for the “overalls nation” ; well, in order to say that not everything is perfect, I am wondering how we honor all the guys who wear overalls every day without thinking of it as something special ! or is that at all a problem?, probably not, it is just me who is rabbling now! so I will stick to the good feelings and enjoy good life as much as possible. The photo is taken in July 2007 in front of our Danish farmhouse with my wonderful wife and our oldest son and a nephew and his friend.

revisiting who am I,really? what about an overall ethnicity ? apropos July 4th

Well, today people in U.S.A. celebrate the independence day and this takes me back to the whole start of this blog 2 years ago, when I wrote about an “overall ethnicity” and I am wondering if that is what unites me with people like Susan, Maya, Tigon, Laury, etc. etc. no matter where you are in the world making us one overalls nation, not in an exclusive sense, but just a nation of free choice of people wanting to wear something which makes you happy and easy going and more and more beautiful as your overalls are worn, good life in a simple way, and the photo is from my Silver wedding in 2005 in SF, really a nice place for overalls people, so today I am happy and thankful today for having a US with so many nice and creative overalls people and I want to congratulate you all.

genetic reason for simple clothes design ?

Well, I love overalls and I have decided not to leave them behind in order to obtain some power or money for my other professional projects ! just like the brother to my 4th great-grand father, Jens Harpoth, a merchant, who lived in a small Danish town around 1800, had his very own frugal style even if he was very wealthy !, and one story about him goes like this: one day he went out to a country inn; wearing his old well worn clothes since he thought clothes should be worn to its limits and patches were not a bad thing! but anyway, the inn keeper was another kind of man and he thought that his new guest without looking close, didn’t look “properly” so he throw him out of the door. Then some of the other guests shouted: you just kicked out one of the richest men around here ! and then the inn keeper tried to get Jens back, but that was too late ! in other words, simple living has a long history ! lets celebrate it every day, and especially on November 20 of course !

my very first overalls: young bibfessor anno 1972 !

scanned photo from my Summer holidays July 1972 in Denmark on a Chinese bicycle

Be ready for 1st International Overalls Day November 20th !

Now Susan, notquitejunecleaver,com, and I are ready for the big day, November 20th, celebrating overalls, so be ready to wear your overalls, get a pair if you don’t have them already or find them in your closet !