November

It is something special with the autumn.


November med skiftningar av ädelt pälsverk
[November with Nuances of Noble Fur]
skrivet av nobelpristagaren i litteratur 2011 Tomas Tranströmer
[written by Nobel Prize winner in Literature 2011, Tomas Tranströmer]

Just det att himlen är så grå
får marken själv att börja lysa:
ängarna med sitt skygga gröna,
den paltbrödsmörka åkerjorden

Det finns en ladas röda vägg.
Och det finns marker under vatten
som blanka risfält i Asien-
där stannar måsarna och minns

Disiga tomrum mitt i skogen
som klingar sakt mot varann.
Inspiration som lever skymd
och flyr i skogen som Nils Dacke.
 ____________________
Update and translation by LS

They are back... en masse!

The Asian invasive species, brown marmorated stink bug, is once again crawling over the outside of our house in hundreds, maybe thousands...  Every little crack for them is a possible place to overwinter.  What a stinky pest. Here is how you identify them, and we think the best way to kill them is to take a glass of water with some soap in it, and drown them in there.  They smell less when they are in the water, and they die quickly.  More good information about these pesty insects here.  (I can smell them where I sit in the living room, from the outside.  Ick.

So, what now?

I guess I'll start with saying hi to all the readers of this blog.

Hi! :)

I am one of the relatives and I said to LS this spring that I felt like starting to write on this blog - I had so many ideas and things I wanted to share. Well, summer got the best of me and my login got left unused in a dark corner of my computer. But LS latest blog about the future and now really got me thinking, so here goes my first blog entry. I guess the next one will be a proper presentation of myself.

So, regarding the future. I recognize a lot of the same patterns, problems and attitudes here in Sweden that LS describes. And from a lot of the countries I have been visiting too. But what strikes me is that this is only true in the Western countries. If you go to Asia - China, Vietnam and even the really poor countries like Mongolia or Cambodia - you will meet a huge optimism, big beliefs and hopes for the future and lots of ideas for how the world will evolve.

I believe that this is natural in many ways. The 20th century has been marked by a huge increase in living standards in the West - we have moved from large families and low life expectancy to smaller families and a very high age. This has been followed by a rocketing in economy and growth - and with this comes of course optimism, dreams and thinking about the future for humanity.

This is what is now happening in Asia, in South America and in some parts of Africa - they are all moving towards a much better life and feel as optimistic as the West did 50 years ago.

The West on the other hand have in many ways reached a plateau of living standards and we also have to face that more and more people reach the same plateau, thus losing the feeling of having a superior life. With this also comes problems of environment and food for everyone - problems caused by us spending a lot more of Earth's resources than we should.

Our economies and societies also seems to be shaped after always growing. They are made to becoming bigger and when we reach the plateau of economical growth we start facing a lot of problems. This can be seen in US now where a lot of tough decisions has to be made and perhaps even clearer in Greece. The politicians in Greece are heavily pressed by the rest of the world to take some very tough decisions and also extremely pressed by their own people who are pissed off - pissed off by having to lower their standards, their salaries and their way of life, due to no fault of their own. But perhaps that's what it takes when a country suddenly reaches the plateau and is no longer growing? In that case, US and many other countries have some very tough times ahead...

So, what will happen? I believe that we will live with this despair for a while. Until we either come up with a way of society, a way of living and an attitude that can handle not growing and not becoming better - or until the next explosion in living standards. What will trigger this? My guess is when we solve the energy problems for good by really getting fusion to work - and when (not if) that happens I also hope that this jump in living standards will reach the whole world within a decade, rather than waiting more than a century to spread over the continents. And with this I also think we'll restart space flight and start having other dreams for the future of humankind.

So it's really a bright future ahead - as long as we learn to deal with living in the now for a while. :)

Checking out Bucks County Art, part 1

The weekend before last, AREA and I participated in Elephant's Eye, a great little event put on by artists in Bucks County, Pennsylvania.  You get a map, some directions and information, and then it is up to you to find the home studios of the sculptures, painters, and other artists that are part of this.  We spent 5 hours driving around in this rural, but rather upscale, part of Pennsylvania, across the Delaware River from Lambertville, NJ, and saw some really great art, some really interesting art, and some that didn't move me much.  Just like art should be.  Here is our story (part 1).

 

The first artist and studio we visited was Alex Cohen at King Oaks Farm in Newton.  This turned out to be the highlight of all the studio visits, not only because of the art, but also because Alex is funny, interesting, and likes to talk.

His studio (and apartment) is in the old carriage house (photo above) of this big estate which was owned by his grandparents.  They used to cut a meadow into a landing strip for planes in the early 1900s, and some of Alex' art is inspired by this.  What I really loved about his art was the diversity in the paintings, and they were happy (or less so, but not just depressing), interesting, alive, and varied in method, colors, and themes.  Some looked like colored-in black and white movie scenes from 1940s gangster flicks, others were more abstract and showed swaths of green in a spring forest.  Wonderful versatility, and lots of art.  Some of the studios we visited later had much less art and things around, and were therefore less interesting.  And many of the older artists seemed to have gotten stuck in a rut and only did one particular thing.  I won't mention their names here, because this is just a personal opinion, and others might love their work.

After a while, we got hungry. AREAs comment to this was: "Mom, you always know where the good places are, can't you take me to some little inn or something?". Well, I was in uncharted territory.  We drove and looked, drove and looked, but nothing looked good (just fast food or junk food or greasy pizza). Eventually we came to Gardenville, a tiny crossroads with a few houses with a sense of times past (the post office address is Pipersville).  A general store served sandwiches and we went in to ask if there was a place around that served sit-down food.
"Yes, you can sit outside at the garden tables," the young clerk said.
"No, like a place that serves warm food," I clarified.
"Oh, I guess the bar is open across the street," she said, "it is after noon.  Yep, it is open!"

We looked across the street, catty-corner to the general store was the Gardenville Hotel and Bar, of obvious ancient prestige (and I mean ancient here).  We weren't really sure about the whole bar-thing, but it said Dining Room on the sign too, so we crossed the street between giant GMC trucks and horse trailers.

 

We went inside, and after the dark hallway with wallpaper anno 1924 or so, came into a very dark dining room of similar decor.

 

Tiffany-lookalike lamps in the ceiling, metal chairs with red 'galon' (the kind that sticks to your skin through your pants on a hot summer evening), and an unmistakable smell.

"This smells like a hotel in Uzbekistan", I told AREA.  That musky, moldy, and old smell brought me back to some memorable times in the old Communist Party's summer vacation places (I wasn't making that up, it was from personal experience). Nobody was around, no waiter, no guests.  We made our way around the corner and found the bar, which actually was populated and didn't smell.  Nice waitress too, extremely nice and funny.

We sat down, by this time weak from hunger and thirst, at the table under the reindeer (they say caribou here, but they look the same).

 

A couple of regulars were sitting at the bar, one watching an old movie on the TV, and everybody was eating or ordering food.  Well, the food can't be that bad I thought, not if the regulars that know the waitress eat here.  (I don't really take photos of nice people I don't know, so the photo of the bar shows it empty)

So we ordered - grilled veggie wrap for the herbivore and Corona with lime and a Gardenville burger for me.  With SPECIAL potato salad, that all the regulars told me to get because I would love it (I did, it was fantastic). The food was really, really good, and it was not just because we were hungry.  We had happened to find a food oasis in the hybrid zone between rich people's suburbia and farming play country, and old real rural communities.  It was such a great experience.  So all of you readers on this blog, go and visit Gardenville Hotel and Bar in Gardenville, PA.  Oh, I didn't tell you, there is a real modern hotel in the back of the building, without Central Asian smells :)

The waitress told everybody a story about a man who had come in the weekend before and eaten 2 dozen oysters, 1 plate of steamed clams, one Gardenville burger, and two more big dishes. How did he fit it all?  Just the burger was giant.

OK, that was half the day - the rest will be in part 2.

(And a side note - AREA passed her drivers test and got her drivers license a few days earlier, so she drove the whole day, excellent job, kiddo!)

Jazzy restaurant

This Asian sushi restaurant, Thelonious Monkfish, actually exist, in Cambridge, MA, USA.  I love the logo image. Do you think Thelonious Monk would have been happy or appalled?

Gorgeous: Tiles in Samarkand

Mosaics at Registan, Samarkand 3, originally uploaded by Vilseskogen.

Samarkand is a magical place, an old market city on the old Silk Road and home to ancient scientists and poets. The old mosques are still there, and with detailed and large mosaic patterns, often in turqoise. Here is a tiny detail of a regular wall in one of the historic compounds. Each brick is painted, glazed and burned before you make the wall, so these colors are hundreds if not a thousand years old.

Mount Merapi is blowing up...

Mt. Merapi, originally uploaded by Renee Picasso Manoppo.

...in Indonesia and our friend AP lives only 15 miles (c 20 km) away from this volcano. Keep safe, AP!

Visste du att... (Did you know that..)

Vattenkastanjer är rotknölarna av starrgräs som odlas på vattendränkta fält runt om i Sydostasien. De har neutral smak och har för växter den ovanliga egenskapen att vara krispig i konsistensen även efter konservering och tillagning. Detta beror på att cellväggarna är korskopplade och förstärkta av vissa fenolföreningar, egenskaper som vattenkastanjer delar med bland annat lotusroten.

Läst i ett matmagasin på en hemsida från Martin Olsson, grossistföretag i Sverige.

LS, please translate if you like.

Translation by LS (and I added a photo too):
"Water chestnuts are the tubers of a sedge that is grown in wetland fields in Southeast Asia. Their taste is neutral and are unusual among plants that their consistency is crunchy even after preserving and cooking. That is because their cell walls are cross-linked and enhanced by phenolic compounds, which is also found in the lotus."

Swedish-Asian New York

The day after AREA's 15th birthday she and I spent in New York. We went to our favorite handmade soap store - LUSH - and splurged on fantastic scents and suds. They have stores in Sweden too, and you should try this brand out. We are never going back to the supermarket brandname soaps. AREA got some clothes are the Swedish favorite H&M (cheap and popular here). We had lunch at the great Thai restaurant Republic. I wonder how many non-Swedes know that H&M comes from the names "Hennes & Mauritz".












At Republic I had milky hot cardamom tea, the orange drink in the photo below, and lemongrass noodle soup with scallion, chicken, and cilantro. AREA had pad thai which also was great but the photo didn't come out good. The restaurant has no chairs, only long tables with backless benches, so at first it feels very different. Great photo art on the walls, and exceptional food.

Kim chi, miracle food

There was a time in my life I didn't know that kim chi (kim chee) existed. Later there was a time I eyed it suspiciously when it was served in little appetizer bowls (banchan) at our favorite Korean restaurant in the Bronx, to which you had to walk through some streets that I found particularly nasty. I always made sure I had company when I walked there. But the food was fantastic, the waitresses didn't know English, and we were often the only Westerners in there. But the kim chi I didn't really eat much of.

Then I moved to New Jersey, and the kim chi at the local Korean restaurant suddenly looked more appetizing, no doubt after being fed lots of spicy chile pepper dishes by PP. Kim chi after all is fermented cabbage infused with chiles. Kind of like sauerkraut (surkål), but made from Chinese (Napa) cabbage instead of regular cabbage and with lots of red chile stuff in it.

And today I saw a jar in the local Korean fruit market where I buy cheap limes and lemons and got a whole liter (pint) of it. Brought it home and opened it, and it was heavenly. Not to spicy, just right, and both PP and I said we could live on this if we had to. A fourth of the jar is already gone, so I better buy more. Do you have kim chi in Sweden? The Swedish food stores have become so internationalized since I moved from Sweden nearly 15 years ago, so I wouldn't be surprised if the kim chi is right next to the fermented herring (surströmming) on the shelf.

So, don't be afraid of kim chi. It is healthy too, it has lots of good bacteria that will help your stomach, just like living yogurt. Long live kim chi! It was invented 3000 years ago, so it is a long-lived food already.

Some facts: Koreans eat 40 lbs of kimchi per year (about 20 kg) per person. Kim chi has been called one of the 5 most healthiest food ever. And here is how it looks and how to make it.

The American Dream?

There is a great opinion article by Thomas Friedman in New York Times today. A sample:

"A few weeks ago, my wife and I flew from New York’s Kennedy Airport to Singapore. In J.F.K.’s waiting lounge we could barely find a place to sit. Eighteen hours later, we landed at Singapore’s ultramodern airport, with free Internet portals and children’s play zones throughout. We felt, as we have before, like we had just flown from the Flintstones to the Jetsons. If all Americans could compare Berlin’s luxurious central train station today with the grimy, decrepit Penn Station in New York City, they would swear we were the ones who lost World War II."

Read more here. (you might have to sign up for free, let me know if you can't get access)

Book review: Three cups of tea

My friend SS lent me this book, Three Cups of Tea, and I have to admit that it probably wouldn't have been a book I picked up in the store based on the cover. But after I started reading it, I was hooked. It is a fantastic book, and a true story.

Greg Mortenson is an American mountain climber that fails to climb K2 and then spends some time recuperating from his failure in a small village in northern Pakistan, high up in the mountains. After a month he asked if he could see their school, and the elder chief brings him to an open field where the children are sitting outside in the cold wind without any books or desks and just with a teacher in front of them. Greg decides to build them a school as a thank-you gift for their hospitality, so he goes back to the US, tries to raise money for the school and finally finds a donor.

He comes back to Pakistan, builds the school, and realizes that there are many more villages that need schools. So he continues to build schools together with the local people, raise money, and the focus is especially to educate girls in this Muslim society of many different tribes and cultures. He co-founds the Central Asia Institute, which is now involved in many efforts to help the people in this part of the world.

The language is so vivid, the characters so well-explained with so much humanity, and you get a very good understanding of this part of the world nested in between India, Afghanistan, and China. At the same time this is happening you have the raise of the Islamic fundamentalists in northern Pakistan, the Taliban in Afghanistan, and 9-11 happens. Throughout the whole book there is a streak of hope and persistent, despite setbacks and difficult circumstances. In the end of the book he describes Afghanistan after the war between the Taliban regime and the US, and how so much money dedicated to rebuilding the country never showed up. It is sad and it also makes me angry. First the US bombs and destroys, then the promised money to rebuild schools and hospitals never show up. Kids are having lessons in bombed out tanks because their school has no roof, they have no books, and no pencils.

Now 60 schools have been built and over 25,000 students have been educated, all due to one man's inspiration and dedication. It is an amazing, lovely, and important story.

Piggly wiggly munsbit!

Appetizing appetizers!? What do you think?

These are scorpion appetizers and part of National Geographic Society's on-line image archive.

Photo by Anne Garofalo.

Have you all had any interesting appetizers lately?

{Munsbit = bite-size portion}

Rice art in Japan

An example of what you can do with agriculture as long as you grow a variety of varieties:

"Each year, farmers in the town of Inakadate in Aomori prefecture create works of crop art by growing a little purple and yellow-leafed kodaimai rice along with their local green-leafed tsugaru-roman variety. This year’s creation — a pair of grassy reproductions of famous woodblock prints from Hokusai’s 36 Views of Mount Fuji — has begun to appear (above). It will be visible until the rice is harvested in September." (from Pink Tentacle where there are more pictures from other motives too)

Stamp of the Day: a machine

I think, but I am not sure, that this is a lathe on this Soviet Union 1957 stamp celebrating Russian Machine Shops. PP, maybe you can tell? The thing in the background hanging from the ceiling is a travers in Swedish, which is probably the same in English. Note Lenin up to the top left.

A good boy poster

Today's picture is a poster from an Indian-owned store selling silk shawls, incense and spices in Brattleboro, Vermont - what do you think, should we have bought it?

Chinese made soup out of dinosaur bones

Imagine eating a soup of a something that is more than 65 million years old. You can read more here (AP story) or here (in Swedish from DN).

(this was found by O.K., but I am posting it)

Today's News: Tajikistan to ban lavish weddings

From correspondents in Dushanbe, Tajikistan (link), May 25, 2007 04:38am. Article from: Agence France-Presse

TAJIKISTAN'S President Emomali Rakhmon asked parliament overnight to crack down on lavish weddings and funerals, continuing an anti-luxury campaign that has already targeted gold teeth.

Mr Rakhmon submitted a bill limiting weddings to 200 guests, a single day, and the use of no more than four cars, saying that extravagant weddings thrown "by businessmen, bureaucrats and religious figures seem like competitions". Tajik weddings can swell to as many as 1000 guests, though Mr Rakhmon's assessment in April of their cost to the country also raised eyebrows.

The president said that 500,000 cows and sheep had been slaughtered for such events in 2006 alone, and that the country spent $US1 billion ($1.22 billion) a year on them - a questionable figure in a country with a GDP of slightly more than $US2 billion ($2.43 billion). The new bill also forbids feeding guests at funerals and burial ceremonies. It allows free meals at traditional events marking the 40th day after a death, but only a single dish - and no more than 100 guests.

Our wedding seem like a piece of cake compared to these traditions. Only one sheep was slaughtered! But I have to agree, we had more than a single dish, potluck as it was.

And gold teeth are really common in Central Asia, see picture here.