Jacob Holdt - samples of my writing 

I may have written one successful book - with the strong editing help of American friends such as Mog Decarnin - but I am not a good writer. Particularly not in English! 
 

Success - a long hard climb

Yet, I love writing - as an escape from the problems of the world - or in the delusion that they can be solved on my laptop screen. It was the same kind of delusion that brought me to the barricades at the American, Russian and South African embassies in my youth - that somebody "over there" were actually listening! 

Most of my writings are in Danish papers. In addition I have over the last 25 years written a yearly Christmas letter (often 40-150 pages long) to all my old school friends. 
To my American friends I often send long e-mails instead to avoid cutting down so many trees. 

Here are a some samples: 

"Trying to get life in balance .....with Americans"  
A letter on European vs. American ecology. Since I live in the US half the year I have noticed how Americans have fallen behind in environmental awareness. So I wrote this to tell my friends about the enormous progress I see on European store shelves. Feel free to edit it and publish it in your own language under your own name in college papers etc. to help spread the ecological awareness. But remember to send me an e-mail copy of your version! 
 

"On seeing oppressors as victims" 
Picking up a hitchhiking mass murderer and hitchhiking myself with a Jewish girlfriend leads to a large scale executioner of people in mass graves...... a bizarre day in my life well worth sharing with others. 
 

Homeless woman on Wall Street

On the welfare state: "Fighting for more vacations..... or women power bringing a country to its knees"
With the cradle-to-grave insecurity Americans live in - the institutionalized and growing inequality - and the crime it breeds - some are searching for alternatives.
In this e-mail Jacob Holdt shows American friends an alternative: - how the Danes love the security of their welfare state so much that they at times shut their whole country down to fight for even more of it.
No wonder when you hear how it allows them 6 weeks - or even 1 year long - paid round-the-world vacations - while more and more Americans work "like slaves" to make ends meet during their 1-2 week vacations.
 

Development aid and racism
The Danes are the world's most generous providers of foreign aid - presently giving 7 times as much per capita as Americans. Yet, Jacob Holdt is one of the strongest Danish critics of the racism often involved in the way Denmark gives aid to developing countries and shows an alternative way of doing it.

 


Other pages under "The book" menu:

My family
         
My world family: Genealogy         My luck   
    
My writings             
My curriculum vitae 

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