An American in Iceland

This week, I got to hear Minnesota author and travel writer Bill Holm speak.

He's a fascinating character and a man of many talents. Not only did he read from his latest travel memoir, The Windows of Brimnes: An American in Iceland, but he also played the piano -- well.

Holm's ancestral roots are in Iceland and some years ago he put down actual roots there. He purchased a bitty little house that he described as "...a series of magical windows with a few simple boards to hold them up..."

Those magical windows of his offer up views of the west. If he could just see far enough, he could see all the way to America.

And it is from this great distance that he is better able to see America for what it is. Only by stepping outside it and staying away from it, he argues, has he been able to understand his country.

Here is a bit of what he writes in The Windows of Brimnes:

After a while, the United States is simply too much: too much religion and not enough gods, too much news and not enough wisdom, too many weapons of mass destruction - or, for that matter, private destruction (why search so far away when they live right under our noses?), too much entertainment and not enough beauty, too much electricity and not enough light, too much lumber and not enough forests, too much real estate and not enough earth, too many books and not enough readers, too many runners and not enough strollers, too many freeways, too many cars, too many malls, too many prisons, too much security but not enough civility, too many humans but not enough eagles. And the worst excess of all: too many wars, too much misery and brutality - reflected as much in our own eyes as in those of our enemies.

I enjoyed listening to Holm's voice (and his keyboard stylings) and went online to check out his web site.

Turns out, he's leading a writers' workshop in Iceland this May.

If Iceland and writing call to you, and you've got some free time in May, perhaps you should check it out.

Photos from Bill Holm's web site.