A new logo! and some old ones

I am a member of at least 5 different Amateur Societies/Clubs which all reflects my hobbies.

Here are some of their logos, the first one is brand new, designed by me . The bug is a stinkbug, Graphosoma lineatum, which is called strimlus in Swedish. Our old logo looked like something copied on a blue-ink copiator in the basement, rather outdated.

The society Sörmlandsentomologerna. 

  The Swedish Garden Amateur Society, with linneas of course.

 The embroidery society, started in Täcklebo but now has members from all Sweden.

Södertälje ridklubb

My dear Horse Riding Club which is organizing competitions for the Swedish Horse Jumping Elit this weekend, the logo looks like this (below). I will be there all Friday and Sunday.

The Canoeing Club in Södertälje, I keep my canoes in their house.

And at last, not my club anymore, but in my heart since 1980 when I joined Fältbiologerna. We had two logos during my years in the club. I read on their web site they are discussing a name change. The first name of this old club was SFU. The club slogan is Youth Nature Environment.

This is the present logo, LS, did you vote for it back in the days??

The old logo, the scythe is added to the original image. The slogan was more down to earth then,

in the 1970´s. "Keep your boots muddy"

Philatelic blast from the past: Polish steam

I found these in my old stamp collection.  Steam locomotives on Polish stamps.  PP, can you help out with the ID? British engines?  The top one seem to have a horizonal cylinder with a very strange gear work.

Matchbox label of the day: Cherry blossoms

On the spring theme; a matchbox label from Japan with cherry blossoms! LS have found her stamps, I have my matchbox labels in my storage. What were you collecting as a kid? Or now? I still have all my grandma´s buttons too. It´s a bit like a candybox to me! Or all the embroidery threads....mmm.

Swedish food: Falukorv

Inbäddad Falukorv, originally uploaded by Cayene.

In Sweden there is a long, light pink sausage called Falukorv encased in red plastic, and it is commonly used as a major dinner ingredient. It tastes kind of like bologna, and should be cooked before eaten (but I know several weekend campers who gave up trying to light a fire or camping stove and ate it raw without dying from it).

When I grew up we had this sausage made in three versions.
1) you slice it into 1/4 inch slices and panfry it, and serve with mashed potatoes and ketchup.
2) you cut it into 1/4 inch thick sticks and make something called 'sausage stroganoff' with it, including lots of ketchup and cream.
3) you keep it whole, but slice it 2/3rds through and put slices of apples, onions and cheese into the cuts, and then bake in the oven. Ketchup and more cheese is good on top!

Both 1 and 2 were served as lunch food in the public schools.

I don't really miss falukorv here in the US, and for me this is real childhood food. And yes, there was lots of ketchup when I grew up. Next week we will go on to another Swedish childhood food - blood pudding.


Photo 'Inbäddad Falukorv' =Embedded Falu Sausage (copyright Cayene on Flickr).

The other night I asked PP if he could remember the name of that Wild West comic character, Lucky Luke?  PP had no idea who I talked about, and it turned out that Lucky Luke, who I read all the time as a kid, probably didn't make it over the Atlantic.  But he was my first introduction to the Wild West.  The real Wild West, with bandits, cacti, sunsets, coyotes, and sharp-shooting cowboys in cowboy boots and western hats.  This comic was dreamed up and then started by a Belgian artist,  Maurice De Bevere.  The Belgians were really into this, and gave us kids the unforgettable Asterix and Tintin too.  Thanks, we loved you as kids!   It is amazing that Americans don't know about the most amazing comic book Wild West hero of them all, Lucky Luke, and his mangy dog (Rantanplan, the stupidiest dog in the universe), riding away in the sunset after getting the bad guys... 

Lucky Luke always smoked, and when I realized there were Lucky Strike cigarettes, I thought these two things obviously were connected. Not so.

Equinox

Today is Equinox, the day when day and night are the same length. Wikipedia has an article about this astronomical and earthly fact here.

I checked up the English name, in Swedish it´s "höstdagjämningen".

Equinoxe...thoughts go back to childhood and music of Jean-Michel Jarre, a french musician who made music with synthezisers only. Very futuristic at the time, by 1978. LS used to listen to this at home a lot. Do you recall the music, LS?

Furry evening visitor

A few nights ago I met not a nemesis, but a furry face and naked wings when I was about to turn off the lights in the living room downstairs.  A bat was flying around unhappy and couldn't get out.  How it got in is a mystery, since all our doors and windows have screens.

Wise from past experiences with bats you should not try to catch them in the air, you just can't.  Better to turn off the lights on the room (and the rest of the house), and turn on outside lights, and leave the doors to the outside open (and hope not many night-flying insects come in).  LA and I did this, but the bat disappeared.  We turned on the lights again, and didn't see it, but we heard it.

A small high-pitch chirping sound from behind the uninstalled cast iron wood stove... We got thick leather gloves (bats can bite) and the old salad spinner bucket we use to get salad from the garden, and then looked for it.  It was hanging from one of our thick cotton curtains and was not that happy when I tried to remove it and put it in the bucket, but eventually it loosened up its grip on the curtain with its thumbs on the wings.

In the bucket it first acted dead, but suddenly came alive and started walking around in circles on its knuckles on the wings, which looks just like the vampire bats walking towards some unsuspecting cow that will be bitten in its leg (except ours was just crawling, not walking).  Camera out, to prove the presence of the bat, camera on, take picture, take picture 2 while bat is desperately trying to get out.  They can't get out of buckets, at least I don't think so.  We then let it onto the porch railing and it took off fast.

I e-mailed a bat research friend, DW, and asked him what species it was based on the photos.  Around here we have two common species with the most boring names you can imagine for bats: Little Brown Bat and Big Brown Bat (I am not making this up). Do bat researchers call these LBB and BBB?  I don't know, but I would if I was doing bat research. Except LBB is used for any Little Brown Bird by the birders too, so you have to keep track of night and day animals.

What we had in our living room turned out to be a Big Brown Bat (Eptesicus fuscus), but a small version of it, like a teenager.

As DW said: "See the really dark fur around the face? That is actually subadult pelage, and this little guy is just molting into adult pelage. He may not have been flying on his own for all that long, and got a little confused."

pelage:  the complete furcoat of a mammal

Life and love in words

This wonderful poem showed up in my e-mail inbox today:

American Life in Poetry: Column 321
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

For me, the most worthwhile poetry is that which reaches out and connects with a great number of people, and this one, by Joe Mills of North Carolina, does just that. Every parent gets questions like the one at the center of this poem.

 How You Know 
How do you know if it’s love? she asks,
and I think if you have to ask, it’s not,
but I know this won’t help. I want to say
you’re too young to worry about it,
as if she has questions about Medicare
or social security, but this won’t help either.
“You’ll just know” is a lie, and one truth,
“when you still want to be with them
the next morning,” would involve too
many follow-up questions. The difficulty
with love, I want to say, is sometimes
you only know afterwards that it’s arrived
or left. Love is the elephant and we
are the blind mice unable to understand
the whole. I want to say love is this
desire to help even when I know I can’t,
just as I couldn’t explain electricity, stars,
the color of the sky, baldness, tornadoes,
fingernails, coconuts, or the other things
she has asked about over the years, all
those phenomena whose daily existence
seems miraculous. Instead I shake my head.
I don’t even know how to match my socks.
Go ask your mother. She laughs and says,
I did. Mom told me to come and ask you.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2010 by Joe Mills, whose most recent book of poetry is Love and Other Collisions, Press 53, 2010. Poem reprinted from Rattle, Vol. 16, no. 1, Summer 2010, by permission of Joe Mills and the publisher. Introduction copyright 2011 by The Poetry Foundation.

Childhood memories

valentine for Hubby
Originally uploaded by Miss Paula in Stitches

LS blogged about cars and SAAB and I thought about childhood. And then this came in my way, also a part of our childhood.

OK snapshot: Art by Stina Wirsén

Click for larger images of Swedish folklore. Snapshots by OK.

Very Swedish childhood...

"Hösten städar sig själv med vindar."
(The autumn is cleaning itself with winds.)
(first line in a poem named "Höst", Fall, by Harry Martinson).

This summer we went to the Nordic Watercolor Museum in Skärhamn and saw an exhibit of the paintings by Elsa Beskow. In the early 1900s she started to write and illustrate children's book in a style that became famous and much loved in Sweden. When I grew up we probably had all her books, even if it was 50 years at least since they were first published. Her drawings, made at the kitchen table while she was taking care of her 5 children, are amazing in their clear colors and accurate depiction of nature, both animals and plants. But there is magic and wonder in there too - a feeling of amazement and joy. Here are some more of her drawings (click on the small images to see them bigger). I always thought that the yellow aspen leaves (falling in the drawing on the left) looked just like golden coins, but I am not sure if I read that in her book first or came up with it myself. It was probably Elsa Beskow...
































Enjoy!

A night story from second grade (Smygande natt)

Another old story written by me in 2nd grade:

Inbrott
Det var månsken och regnade och var tyst. Bakom den höga muren, där borta var juvelerna. Nu, sa tjuven till sin kamrat. De sprang över skogsgläntan. Nej, jag vill inte vara med om det här sa tjuvens kamrat, med en rysning. Tjuven klättrade upp i ett träd och hoppade ner på andra sidan. Hans kamrat gjorde likadant men hamnade i en jordhög och gav upp ett skrik av skräck. Tyst, sa tjuven. Han var stel av spänning. Nu såg dom huset. Det var mörk i fönstren. Nej inte i alla längst upp var det tänt, där syntes en skugga av en figur. Det var nog en flicka. Tjuvens kamrat gjorde stora fotspår utan att han visste om det. Han öppnade väskan och tog ut några vapen och en kniv. Då, fick dom syn på de gula, runda ögonen. Slut.

Theft
It was moonlight and rained and was quiet. Behind the high wall, over there was the jewels. Now, said the thief to his partner. They ran across the opening in the forest. No, I don't want to do this, said the thief's partner, with a shiver. The thief climbed up a tree and jumped down on the other side. His partner did the same, but fell into a soil heap and screamed out of fear. Quiet, said the thief. He was stiff from tension. Now they saw the house. It was dark in the windows. No, not in all, up at the top it was lit, and there you could see a shadow of a figure. It was probably a girl. The thief's partner made big foot traces without knowing about it. He opened the bag and took out some weapons and a knife. Then, they saw the yellow, round eyes. The end.

En värld av kritor (a world of crayons)

When it is gray and dreary outside, then you can melt some crayons and make things like this! This is by an unknown artist, and I saw it at an art gallery in Newark, NJ, in 2008. It was amazing. The sculpture was much larger than this photo shows (look here), and was all made from melted crayons. Fascinating! Like a wonderworld from Dr. Seuss.

Everyday is National Cat Day!

At least at our house... We have all been small once (Alla har vi varit små). Smokey too. Photo by OK about three years ago.

We live in strange times, when family time has to be scheduled..

From a recent newsletter from the school district and township we live in:

"What does Night Off mean?
It means a community-wide observance of the importance of family by taking the night off from
regularly scheduled commitments. The schools, township, houses of worship, scouts, and
various community organizations agree to a night without meetings, practices, games,
rehearsals, and homework on March 3rd.

Each family decides how they wish to recognize the importance of family. A family can
participate in a wide range of activities such as eating dinner together, playing board games or musical instruments, going skating or to a movie, or attending a sporting event, just to name a
few.

Why? To encourage and promote quality family time." {My bold italics}

My questions -
For us that have family night most nights of the week, do we get the night off to do something without our families? Can we have a Night On?

They need to schedule a night so families can eat dinner together? Other families must not be like ours. We eat dinner together every night. But I already knew we were the exception, this announcement just puts it on paper so it becomes the truth.

What qualifies as quality family time? Three hours one night out of 365 days? This reeks of Big Brother mentality. "We will schedule your quality time, from 6.05 PM to 8.34 PM on a Tuesday in March." Or do they really think people have to be taught how to get together as families? Probably, yes.

I find the whole thing depressing. Here are some more real things for families to do together, any day of the year: turn off the TV, take a hike, plant some seeds, compost your green stuff, carry firewood, photograph a sunset, draw a faucet, cook a meal, paint a door, make a cookie, build a bird house, chop some rose bushes, build a fire, smoke some bacon, listen to old stories, blog your thoughts, discuss black holes and infinity, pet a cat, donate some books, go to the library, write a letter, design some ear rings,l watch George Carlin on Youtube about cats and dogs.... (note how none of these costs any money and don't involve commercial things you have to travel to like movie theaters, skating rinks, sports events, etc.).

So, is this an issue in Sweden? Do people have to be taught how to have quality family time over there?

Broken arm

Ouch, my son broke his arm on Tuesday this week. He´s not as happy as this guy on the picture, it´s been a hard week for everybody but especially for him. I myself broke my arm when I was seven and I still remember the feeling, very vividly too.

for modern techno babies

Seen in Vancouver. My Dad always wondered where the OFF button was on our heads, and look, here it is, in the Ipood baby shirt. If you have a small car (like a Mini Cooper) and a baby, then you of course need to have the Mini Pooper shirt too. No, KV, I didn't buy one for your newest one :)

Overheard in the supermarket today

Setting: SUPER Stop & Shop in Franklin Township in NJ, two moms pushing a shopping cart with a screaming and teary 2-3 year old boy in the front in one of those plastic car things attached to the shopping cart. The moms are oblivious to the screams, just chatting away.
One says to the other:
- I spend most money on veggie burgers, it's the only thing he eats!

That made me start thinking and my conclusions are:
1. If all I got to eat was veggie burgers I would cry too.
2. If veggie burgers, about $1 each, is the most expensive my mom was buying for me, what else is she serving? Rice porridge and peanut butter.
3. This is really an example of how stupid parents are in this country. Serve the kid some other food for a change. No kid will starve, eventually they will try different things on their plates if the parents don't give them the same thing over and over and over again. Give the kid a carrot. And a real burger (and read this article from Gourmet.com).