I have known about the festival for several months.
A reporter from the Rocky Mountain News and my facilities manager Bo Shaffer
both told me about it about a month before Christmas.
I am positive to the festival and hope it becomes
annual and as popular and long lived as the Boulder Polar Bear
Club.
NB! I am attaching a few questions I have received from various reporters and my answers.
I do have a few pictures of my grand father both
alive and just after he was frozen. These are sold as regular stock photography
at the standard fees for stock photography. To buy any, contact me Trygve Bauge
trygveb@powertech.no
If you use any of the material I provide, then please include in your
article/program that the readers/audience can find more information
at
Here are the questions from various reporters and my answers:
> 1: How do you feel about the festival this weekend? Since the town
> gave you a hard time about your grandfather some years ago, do you
> think they are taking advantage of him and you now? Or do you think
> the festival is respectful and will publicize cyrogenics?
>
Trygve's answer:
I like the idea of an annual winter festival.
This is not the first festival I have contributed to.
I also founded the Boulder Polar Bear Club in 1983.
It organizes an annual icebathing winter carnival,
that takes place at Boulder reservoir every New Year's Day,
it has over the last 19 years grown to about 350 participants
and even more onlookers.
It has had lots of national and international media coverage from the
inception.
As to the problems we had with the town board in Nederland Colorado.
You are refering to the 1994 conflict.
The town did not give me a hard time. Only the town board gave me a
hard time.
The local newspaper the Mountainear took a poll at the time and more
than 70 percent of the local residents supported my case. The town
board was replaced at the next election and we have not had any
problems with the town ever since.
I think a festival is great. It is good to have local support.
It even gives volounteers and some economic support for what I am doing.
And preempts future problems with various levels of government.
We have had local business sponsors for many years now.
The company called Tuff Shed donated the wooden cabin that houses my
grandfather.
They also financed the short movie "Grandpa in the Tuff shed". The movie was
produced by the Beck sisters and has won awards at film festivals.
It will be shown at the winter festival too.
Radio station Fox in De\nver is an annual sponsor.
And various dry ice compannies like Liquid Air has donated dry ice at
several occations,like last year when we celebrated the 101st
anniversary of my grandfather's birth.
The festival is fun, like the movie was and like the annual New Year's
Day dip at Boulder reservoir is.
I look upon happiness as a goal,
I think it is important for people to be able to play and have fun.
Or like the Danish author Pete Heine said:
"The one who only takes the serious seriously and the light lightly,
he and she has understood both poorly."
It is much better to have and to nurture local support, than to end up
with problems like the Martinots in France.
Where the authorities are still threatening to have Martinot and his
wife thawed out and cremated.
I think the festival will continue to make Colorado a safe place for
cryonics.
It is true that the town still has on its books the unconstitutional
ordinance from 1994 against adding more cryonic patients within the
town limits.
But if anyone wanted to remove that ordinance the support is there to
have it removed.
Furthermore the conflict in 1994 showed that we have nothing to fear
from the health authorities in Boulder county or from the State of
Colorado, both came down on our side in the conflict with the town
board. And cryonics is not banned in Boulder or Colorado, which is more
than one can say about many other places around the world like British
Columbia and France etc.
Thus I have every reason to think that what I am doing, and such
festivals like the one the local chamber of commerce is organizing, are
good for cryonics and are making Colorado a safe place for longrun
cryonic storage.
I think the local sponsors, the witty short movie and the annual
festival are a good and healthy expression of local support. And I
appreciate this support. It might even lead to some larger and better
cryonic facility eventually being built in Colorado.
My project is after all just a small pilot project aimed at opening for
better cryonic projects in the future.
> 2: Was your granfather interested in cyrogenics? What do you think he's
> thinking about the festival this weekend (or what do you think that he
> would think? I'm not sure if he's currently thinking, or if the
> preservation stops thought till he's reanimated?)
Trygve's answer:
My grandfather Bredo Morstol (Morstøl, the last o is actually and o
with a slash or with umlaut and is pronounced more like an "e") was
born on February the 28th 1900. He was a landscape architect. And was
in charge of the parks and recreation department in the county of
Baerum (a suburb to our Capital Oslo) here in Norway in many years
until he retired in 1967.
He died unexpectely and before I had taken time to ask him if he wanted
to be suspended.
He liked to be alive and had a strong will to live. He almost died of a
hearth failure after a ski trip in 1975. My mother was able to give him
CPR and bring him back to life and he lived another 14 years. A week
before he died his doctor told him: "If you had been younger we would
have given you a heart transplant, to which my grandfather replied:
"Oh, if I had just been younger". Under socialized medicine they don't
give heart transplants to the elderly but they couldn't stop us from
freezing him, and thereby possibly give him another chance. Thus it was
my decission to have him frozen.
I am an Objectivist (yesterday it was 20 years since Ayn Rand died),
and though I frequently dream that I am communicating with my
grandfather, I look upon this just as dreams. I don't believe that the
soul survives outside the body. As far as I am concerned the soul dies
with the body. My grandfather was dead when we froze him. All mental
functions had stopped. As I see it he remains dead until we find a way
to reverse that death. And freezing is just a means to slow down
further decay until ways of reversing this can be found.
> 3. One more question, to answer my own curiosity than for the story.
> Since you believe the soul dies when the body does -- when your
> grandfather is reanimated, do you think the soul returns? If not,
> then would the reanimated body still be your grandfather?
>
Trygve's answer:
I think the soul is a feedback reaction in the brain. If we repair the
brain or if we clone the body and retrain the brain with similar
content then the feedback reaction we call a soul will be close to the
same. Of course, once we bring back the first cryonic patient we will
find out for sure.
At least it will be a step in the right direction towards 100%
continuation of oneself.
It would be survival or a continuation of oneself to a much higher
degree than what we presently experience through regular offspring.
>4.And how far along are you in your mission to bring him back to life?
Trygve's answer:
As far as bringing him back, we still have to find a way to clone dead
tissue, and this has to become legal and economically affordable. So I
would say we are about a generation away from bringing hm back as a clone.
> 5.How much have you spent so far on keeping your grandfather frozen?
>(I have heard $130,000?)
Trygve's answer:
We have spent about $ 135.000 : $ 50.000 initially and about $ 6,000
- $7,400 a year since
> 6. What was the cause of your grandfather's death?
Trygve's answer: He died of a hearth attack while taking a nap on
November the 6th 1989.
> 7.How long has he been frozen? (I read he died in 1989, but then saw
> something that said he'd been in Nederland only 9 years?) Were there
> a few years spent suspended in California before coming to Nederland?
Trygve's answer:
He was frozen in Norway in 1989, then shipped to California on Feb 1st
1990 and stored at Trans Times facility in Oakland for 4 years until we
moved him to Nederland Colorado just before Christmas in 1993.
He has been slightly more than 8 years where he is now.
> 8.Had your grandfather ever been to
> Nederland when he was alive?
Trygve's answer:
Yes at least once possibly twice: he was in Boulder in 1980 and again
in 1982. In 1982 I recall that we drove through the town of Nederland,
and probably stopped too, on the way to Estes Park.
> 9. Do you support the festival, which is really a benefit for the
> town and tourism? Especially after town officials tried to evict your
> grandfather's corpse years ago?
Trygve's answer:
Yes I do. I hope the festival will be as popular and as long lived as
the other festival I have brought about in Colorado:
The annual New Year's Day Dip at Boulder reservoir. That is still going
strong after 19 years.
> 10. What do you say to scientists who say that your grandfather has
> not been properly stored for future re-animation or even cell
> regeneration?
Trygve's answer:
To my knowledge no human being is so far frozen in such a way that they
can be reanimated with present technology.
Some are frozen in such a way that it might be possible to glean some
of the mental content from the frozen brain sometime in the future.
Som people have already frozen live cells in such a way that they
actually could be cloned with present technology.
As far as my grandfather is concerned:
My grandfather is dead. His cells are dead. Nothing can be done to
restore him with present technology.
We do not disagree upon that.
However who is to say that we won't be able to clone people by piecing
together dead DNA fragments sometime in the future? Or by scanning dead
tissue for the DNA code, and then rebuilding live cells with the same
DNA code using similar fragments harvested from live cells in other
still live beings that carry the same DNA fragments?
And who is to say that we can't even rebuild the old body at some point
using nano technology, and using a clone as a key to or blueprint for
what we are trying to rebuild.
As far as the mental content is concerned, one
can foresee that this to a large part can be restored to a clone or a
repaired body from external sources and by conventional teaching
techniques.
Some things are common for all human beings. Other things are common
for all the people that lived at the same time. Other things are common
for many people. Much of the above is already recorded in one way or
another in public archives. And much of the rest can be restored from
personal sources that we have maintained like pictures, films,
writings. Furthermore there are still people alive that has spent time
with my grandfather or otherwise shared a lot of my grandfathers
experience. Maybe such information too could be stored and later
restored. Maybe someone would like to write his biography so that we
easier can restore his memory if or when we bring him back?
>11. Do you and your mother have plans to be cryonically suspended
> after your own deaths?
Trygve's answer:
I expect that we both will be cryonically suspended after death.
>12. And do you have any suspended clients at your business in Norway?
Trygve's answer:
Non in Norway. But I have been instrumental in the suspension of at
least 3 of the people presently in cryonic suspension in the United
States.
>13.Can you please spell out a phonetic version of your name, and
> that of your grandfather?
Trygve Bauge is pronounced:
Trig (like in trigometry) ve (like in very) Bow (like in a a bow) ge
(like in get)
Bredo Morstøl is pronounced:
Bre (like in breath) do (like in Rapido TV) Mor (like in morgage) st
(like in still) oe (like u in udder/utter) l (like light)
>14. also, what is the name of the town where you live now?
I live in Oslo, the capital of Norway.
Sincerely,
Trygve Bauge
Trygve Bauge, Life-Extension Systems, The Norw.
Icebathing club & Trygve's Meta Portal: www.trygve.bauge.com
An obscure Norwegian grandfather has the role of honor in
a bizarre festival held in the USA. Bredo Morstøl is arguably the
most famous resident of Nederland, Colorado, even though he has been
dead for over ten years.
Trgyve Bauge holds
up a picture of his grandfather Bredo Morstøl. Bauge is
optimistic that cloning technology will rescue grandpa from
the deep-freeze.
PHOTO: ALEKSANDER
NORDAHL/SCANPIX
The people of Nederland,
about 40 miles (65 km) northwest of Denver, are holding a festival
this weekend to honor the town's most famous dead resident - Bredo
Morstøl, who died in his native Norway in 1989.
His devoted grandson Trygve Bauge shipped the body to Colorado
and preserved it in a makeshift cryogenics laboratory in a shed in
his backyard for a day in the future when granddad could be thawed
and brought back to life.
But Bauge, who had never bothered to become a legal US resident,
was eventually deported and soon town leaders learned of the odd
preservation. They quickly passed a law preventing anyone else from
freezing a dead body.
Morstøl's remains have not been disturbed. "He's still there.
Things are still going well for him," state lawmaker Tom Plant of
Nederland told colleagues as he proposed proclaiming Saturday
"Frozen Dead Guy Day." But he was turned down cold by the
legislature.
That won't stop the festival, which features a coffin race,
according to Teresa Warren president-elect of the Nederland Area
Chamber of Commerce.
"We needed a winter festival," she said. "It's an opportunity to
laugh at ourselves." Nederland is near Eldora Ski Resort and local
businesses have been trying to figure out a way to get skiers to
stop and spend a little money in town instead of just passing
through, she said.
Besides the coffin race the town will offer a tour of the shed
where grandpa is still being preserved at minus 109F/78C.
There will also be a pancake breakfast and a "grandpa look-alike
contest." And it's definitely a posh affair. At the Grandpa Ball,
Chip and the Chowderheads will be the featured entertainment.
A portion of the proceeds will go toward keeping Morstøl's body
frozen, Warren said.
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