Stamp of the Day: Julbak

Swedish Christmas traditions includes a big baking day - the 'Julbak', where the most common thing to make is 'pepparkakor' (gingerbread cookies).  Here on this Swedish stamp Pippi Longstocking ('Långstrump') is baking on her kitchen floor with the help of her monkey Herr Nilsson. Pippi is my favorite character in Astrid Lindgren's children's books.  We haven't made any cookies at all this year, but plan to make hazelnut bread, a family tradition from my grandmother, and maybe the kids will make some cookies too.  In Sweden ginger bread cookies are called "Pepper cookies", but they have no pepper in them at all.  I wonder how that name came about. 

Friendly Moomins

This cute video was made singlehandedly by our neighbor girl with a camera, sofa, and some toys - isn't it wonderful? It has music, so make sure you have the sound on. I love the Moomins, or Mumintroll as we call them in Swedish. Thanks EL!

A bunch of books...

Do books come in bunches?  Or are they in piles?  Groups?  Heaps?  Anyway, here is a couple of short reviews of books I have read in the last couple of months, from the great to the not so great.  So, the best first.

Tracy Chevalier: Remarkable Creatures.  What a great novel!  It is in the early half of the 1800s and a poor girl gets her living from discovering and selling fossils from the beach by her home village along England's southern coast.  An unmarried woman and her sisters move to town, mostly because it is a cheaper place to live than London, and she befriends the girl and learns about and collects fossil.

They discovered the most amazing fossils of the time, fossils that were bought and transported to natural history museums in London, Paris, Oxford, and so on.  These fossils were fodder for a lot of discussion in this pre-Darwin era, and fueled scientific thinking.  Plesiosaurs, ichtyosaurs...  However, the women didn't get proper credit, since they were women and fossil collecting and science were unwomanly activities. A few of the contemporary paleontologists gave them proper respect and credit, but the divide was enourmous, especially for Mary who started out illiterate and extremely poor.  For example, women were not allowed even into the meetings of the British Geological Society.

The young woman's name was Mary Anning, and her older friend was Elizabeth Philpot, who specialized in fish fossils.  This book tells the story from their viewpoint.  The general story is true, but it is a novel so gaps have been filled in with possible scenarios.  It is a great book that not only describes natural history and its discoveries in historical context, but also highlights and make the inequality come to life. And that inequality is not just between genders but also between classes and religious groups. I highly recommend this book. So, 5 stars.

Sandra Newman: The Western Lit Survival Kit.  This book is fantastic! Well, near fantastic, because sometimes she goes overboard. I read the whole thing straight through, laughed, smiled and took note on which classics that I wanted to read and which ones I never need to open. Actually, I don't feel the need to read any of the classics after reading this book, I have too many books already here at home waiting to be opened.  Probably around a 100 unread books... and only a few of them are classics.  Like Marco Polo... I want to read that one, but I digress. 

Her style is out of this world funny and knowledgeable. Ah, we need to let high school students have a look in this book! The book is exactly what the subtitle says "An irreverent guide to the classics, from Homer to Faulkner". Each classic book is graded on Importance, Difficulty, and Fun, and she of course admits that that is a very subjective scale she has graded these on. She is not always trying to be dead serious, which is what I like, but some other bibliophiles that have reviewed this book have a problem with that. 4 stars.

Jill Ker Conway has written three memoirs about her life as a child in Australia, student, emigrant to the US to study history at Harvard, her scholarly work on women in history, her years as a Dean at a Canadian university, and then as the President of the small all-female Smith College in Massachusetts.  I reviewed the two first books here on this blog, and they are fantastic and refreshing. 

The writing is exquisite, intellectually so rewarding, and she makes you think.  There was much more anti-woman stuff going on in academia going on back then, but some things are still the same.  And many things that we struggle with today have not changed at all, and they are not based on gender.  People unwilling to change, people that want too much change, the will to look beyond what you have learned in the class, the willingness to discuss without arguing, and so on.

I read her third book recently, A Woman's Education, which is smaller and less strictly a memoir in a way.  It describes her years at Smith College, and goes in depth into how it was to administer a small independent school.  It wasn't all easy, not at all.  What infuses the book is her caring about students and their education, on a very deep, serious level. 

I admire her, she has been a big inspiration in my recent work.  She tries to change the view of some older professors, make reformations in educational thinking, and is seen as a rebellion, but it is how things have to be done.  The world changes and so do we and so do how we do things.  This book I am keeping! 5 stars.

Last book in the pile.... Daniel Beard's The Field and Forest Handy Book. This is a reprint of a 1912 book about camping, scouting, outdoor recreation, hiking, etc., and includes great illustrations, which I think were made by the author as well. Daniel Beard was a co-founder of the Boy Scouts of America, and boy, is this a boyish book.  Girls do not exist.  At least not outside any house.  The book is really a time capsule of how things were back then.

There are many useful skills described in here, how to make a raised platform for a place to sleep in a swamp, how to make a logomaran so you can drift down a river (never ever use fresh wood, or you might sink), how to make fire without matches, how to make a play house, what to eat in camp, and that you should bring a flour sack to make into a pillow case.  He even have instructions on how to build a fire engine. Oh, and even how to make a herbarium is in here.

This book is not really about true survival based on old traditional knowledge like the book Wildwood Wisdom (reviewed on this blog), but about fun wild stuff boys can do outside.  Some certainly has survival tones to it, but some is more silly, like How to Play Pirate and How to Make an Aquarium.  Under Novel Food Used in Camp, he writes: "...Wolf meat is said to be sticky and disagreeable.".  Times were different back then.

Grade?  I am not sure.  Maybe 2-3 stars, but it has certainly historic interest and I would have loved this book when I was 12-14 years old. I learned a lot of useful information that I probably won't have much use for in my life, but that is OK. One day it might come in very handy.

OK, that is it for this batch.  If you read all the way to down here, good for you!  Now you know more than before :)

A princess is born in Sweden

This morning, for real.  I love that the Swedish crown princess and her husband Daniel does it the modern way.  Not that the first official photo of the princess, still unnamed, is on Facebook (it was, here), but that they do it like most Swedish families do, share the burden of carrying the newborn and I bet everything else too.  Look at the photo and you will see.  The video of the press conference is very moving too, where the new Dad is describing the little girl (sorry, it is in Swedish). Congratulations!

Update: And her name will be Estelle!  And here is some more info about the event in English.

Under your control or not? Internet addictions are real...

Some new studies are out, pointing out the troublesome backside of our connectedness online via e-mail, Facebook, Twitter and texting (SMS in Swedish). A new study concludes that the internet is more addictive than alcohol and nicotine, and I am starting to believe that (I don't have the link to the study yet, will post it when I find it). I have worried about this a long time, and have made a conscious decision not to be active on Facebook, not to have a twitter account, and try to keep the flow of information into and out of my head under my own control.  But in today's world you can't do your job unless you are connected online, and without an e-mail account that you check everyday, your career and job availability would mostly be dead (well, maybe not if you are an artist living in New Hampshire, but I think you know what I mean... :).

I make it harder for me to be or get too addicted by not getting a smartphone, not having the laptop at the breakfast table, and consciously turning off e-mail and Skype during stretches of time at work, but the feeling is still there - "Oh, what is new? What is going on?  Who needs me now?  What cool things am I missing!?"  I believe that this deluge of wanted and unwanted information plays straight into our psychological triggers in our brain.  We get addicted, if we want it or not.  And the more we use it, the more addicted we get.

 (from Toothpaste for dinner, used with permission on this blog)

I teach at a university and cellphone and internet use is not allowed in my classroom.  But 30 seconds before class starts half the class is sitting with their cell phones and earpieces and hangs out online.  They are not present in the moment in the classroom.  After class starts, they put it away, because I do stop the lecture and ask students who text/surf/etc. on the internet if they want to leave the classroom.  So far, nobody has when I asked, everybody just apologies.

Some professors just give up and let the students do whatever they want, but I want to present a counterpoint to the deluge and addiction out there.  If you are in my class you should be focused on the class and the topic, nothing else.  I know this is hard, from my own experience, since I have been through many boring lectures, meetings and seminars in my day.  But if so, then doodle with a pen while listening, don't run to the internet and get totally off-track.

Meetings, which is a whole other subject.  I often sit in meeting at the big university with fancy professors, busy staff, or pompous administrators, and nearly half of them are playing around with their gadgets (mostly Blackberries, iPads or iPhones these days).  It is not only horribly rude to the persons that are trying to get things done, it is also inefficient and leads to longer, and more boring, meetings that take on the feeling that these meetings are unimportant.  If I lead a meeting from now on, I will ask everybody to refrain from any internet use, pay attention to the meeting and focus on solutions, instead of drifting off into unfocused realities.  Senior professors that just got an iPad or iPhone are the worst...

Remember when TV was all bad for you?  Carrying an iPhone with you is a lot worse than having a TV on at home (I do think TV on all the time is bad too).  But the iPhone is there, in your pocket, like a happy pill that you can take as often and as much as you can.  Who can say no?  And when there are free games that become truly addictive, a hundred contacts (that you really don't know), and everything is instant, forever, and shallow - it is not necessarily always a good thing.

The internet and social media could be used in a good way, and often is, but how do we make sure WE are in charge of our time and lives, and not someone else?   Gambling is considered an addition, but I think excessive internet use should be classified as one as well.  The problem is that internet use is EVERYWHERE, and includes kids from 2 years old and upwards. And here I am, blogging about the problems with the internet... :P

(from Toothpaste for dinner, used with permission on this blog)

So, here is my advice.  Turn off your cell phone sometimes.  Never check e-mail or your phone in bed. Read a book.  Insist on being unavailable at times.  Refuse to get addicted, use the internet on your terms.  Focus, focus, focus.  Laugh at funny YouTube videos, blog, and post photos and videos online, when you feel like it, not when you feel like you have to.  Let us enhance the good things about the internet, and not forget that the real things are things you can touch and think about without the help of a screen, like a deer vertebrae in a forest, a good book, making pasta primavera, and creating things that are possible to touch, view, smell.  In 3 months, nobody will care how many friends you have online, but you will care about how many friends you could have a good time with in person at your house.  And that is what really matters.

Don't get me wrong here, I think there are really creative and positive uses for internet resources, it is just the addiction and the lack of focus on real things that gets to me. It is all about the quality of the input to and output from of our brains. There isn't enough thinking in the world anymore. 

OK, enough ranting from me, and here are some articles about this for those of you that want to read even more:

Uppdaterade och sömnlösa (DN.se, in Swedish, "Updated and sleepless")

Why studios need to think about the ethics of social gaming (The Guardian, UK)

Internet addiction test 

Internet addiction disorder 

Attached to Technology and Paying a Price (NY Times article)

The most popular baby names in Sweden 2011

	Flickor/Girls			Pojkar/Boys
1	Alice		1	William
2	Maja		2	Lucas
3	Elsa		3	Oscar
4	Julia		4	Hugo
5	Linnéa		5	Elias
6	Ella		6	Oliver
7	Ebba		7	Liam
8	Molly		8	Alexander
9	Wilma		9	Viktor
10	Emma		10	Emil
11	Nellie		11	Axel
12	Alva		12	Anton
13	Isabelle		13	Erik
14	Olivia		14	Leo
15	Agnes		15	Filip
16	Klara		16	Vincent
17	Elin		17	Olle
18	Emilia		18	Arvid
19	Freja		19	Ludvig
20	Ellen		20	Theo
21	Lilly		21	Charlie
22	Nova		22	Isak
23	Moa		23	Edvin
24	Ida		24	Albin
25	Stella		25	Gustav
26	Alma		26	Elliot
27	Saga		27	Nils
28	Amanda		28	Adam
29	Alicia		29	Melvin
30	Astrid		30	Wilmer
31	Vera		31	Max
32	Tuva		32	Viggo
33	Isabella		33	Noah
34	Felicia		34	Benjamin
35	Elvira		35	Alfred
36	Sara		36	Alvin
37	Selma		37	Leon
38	Signe		38	Kevin
39	Matilda		39	Simon
40	Hanna		40	Theodor
41	Ester		41	Casper
42	Ellie		42	Jonathan
43	Thea		43	Melker
44	Tyra		44	Sixten
45	Tilde		45	Ville
46	Lova		46	Rasmus

Quote from the news: Tools for kids

From today's New York Times, about girls at Gadget Camp:

“Not letting your children learn the hands-on component of the theory of science is killing us as a nation,” Ms. Sharris said. “You have to stop giving kids books and start giving them tools.” (source)

 I agree.  Is is nothing bad with books, not at all, but when books replace the real things like carving a stick with a knife, make and tend a fire, drill a hole, cut a plank, fill up a gas tank, and dig a hole, then kids get lost.  We need books and tools.  And skills.  Reading a book is just one skill.  If you can do all the things listed above, then you have six more life skills and you will also be more confident and independent.

New Swedish money

Sweden is changing its kronor (kr) bills in a few years and no, it won't be to euros, but to newly designed bills. To find out what the Swedes wanted, the National Bank of Sweden arranged a way for the public to vote on their favorite Swedes. Today they announced the winners of who will be on the new bills.  No more kings on our bills! These are the winners (final designs to be developed soon):

20 kr: författarinnan Astrid Lindgren och naturmotiv från Småland. (The author Astrid Lindgren [Emil, Ronia, Pippi Longstocking, etc.] with nature scenes from Småland where she was from and wrote about. She got the most votes from the public, we love her!)

50 kr: sångaren Evert Taube och naturmotiv från Bohuslän (The singer, poet, author and songwriter Evert Taube and nature from the west coast province of Bohuslän, a place depicted in many of this songs.)

100 kr: skådespelerskan Greta Garbo och naturmotiv från Stockholm. (The moviestar Greta Garbo and scenes from Stockholm.)

200 kr: regissören Ingmar Bergman och naturmotiv från Gotland. (The movie director Ingmar Bergman and nature from Gotland, the big island in the Baltic Sea where he lived the last part of his life.)

500 kr: sångerskan Birgit Nilsson och naturmotiv från Skåne. (The opera singer Birgit Nilsson and nature scenes from Skåne, the southernmost province.)

1 000 kr: diplomaten Dag Hammarskjöld och naturmotiv från Lappland. (The WWII diplomat and UN secretary general Dag Hammarskjöld and scenes from Lapland, the northernmost province.)

I think this is amazing and wonderful.  First, there are 3 women and 3 men, none are royalty or nobelmen (well, Hammarskjöld was by ancestry...), all are part of the current Swedish heritage and culture, and they will include nature elements from all parts of Sweden, showing the strong connection Swedes have with nature, landscape and wild places. And, how is this for wonderful logic - Astrid Lindgren will be on the smallest bill because that one is the one kids will see the most!  I love it.

The National Bank said that they 'didn't include any currently living people because nobody should be able to pay with themselves'. Ha! True, and funny.  The coins will change too, except for the 10 kr coin. If you can read Swedish, the whole report from the National Bank is here, 5 pages, in easy to read Swedish with clear nice formatting, just like government reports should be but rarely are, except in Sweden.

I wish more governments in the world did more reasonable and democratic things like this.

Guess what this is...

DSC_6941copy11, originally uploaded by Scotty Da Q.

Click on the photo to find out. :)

Helping the spring....

I had to do it, I did some helping with the spring this morning. Moved away 4 dm of snow from my flowerbed, and poured out some room temperated water from the aquarium, to melt the snow. If the snow drops (Galanthus) don´t get this hint I don´t know what to do. ... And in the afternoon, snow was coming down again. I haven´t done much complaining this long winter, but after 16 weeks of snow, you start feeling a bit fed-up. The kids don´t even want to go in sleighs downhill anymore, they long for bikes and basketball and such.

Gimme sunshine.!!

And don´t you even mention sunshine and 20 degrees Celcius LS! :-(

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!

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?

Santa Claus in the shape of kindergarten gnomes

Illustration: South African stamps: Jungle Bells

Today is Lucia at the daycare center for one of my boys. All the children dress up as small versions of Santa, Lucia and pepparkakor (ginger cookies ?) an sing christmas carols for the cheering parents and relatives. And of course, it´s raining instead of snowing...

Minuscule- my and dads favorite childrens show

This is fantastic, a childrens program with no speech, just insects on adventures.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GnHd6rNRrmM

Also look at their official website www.minuscule.tv

Swedish sleep

We have a ban to post photos of people's faces here on the blog, but I think this one is OK. If you can't tell who this cutie is, don't worry, you are not meant to. The people that know know. Funny thing happened with the camera, because the blanket was purple, not blue. I think it is that 'vivid' setting that changes it.

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).

Small boys and big machines

The roadbuilders had a practicant for a while the other day. He got to drive all the different machines, dumper, excavator, drilling machine and front loader. He was so happy!

Stamp of the Day: Fox in Socks

From the wonderful world of Dr. Seuss, here is a sock-related stamp from the children's book Fox in Socks. I wonder if Dr. Seuss was translated into Swedish? His unique language must be hard to translate, and in English it is wonderful to read his books to children. In this book, there are many tongue twisters, like this one:

"Now, when Tweetle Beetles fight, it's called a Tweetle Beetle Battle. And when they battle in a puddle, it's a Tweetle Beetle Puddle Battle. AND when Tweetle Beetles battle with paddles in a puddle, they call it a Tweetle Beetle Puddle Paddle Battle. AND when Beetles battle Beetles in a Puddle Paddle Battle, and the beetle battle's puddle is a puddle in a bottle, they call this a Tweetle Beetle Bottle Puddle Paddle Battle Muddle. AND when Tweetles fight these battles in a bottle with their paddles, and the bottle's on a poodle, and the poodle's eating noodles, they call this a Muddle Puddle Tweetle Poodle Beetle Noodle Bottle Paddle Battle. AND--"

Can't you just imagine all those bugs in the puddle paddling around and battling each other? Yep, this book is really entomology in disguise.