Bits and pieces from the internet: Shaken, not stirred edition

If you ever wanted to know how a dog REALLY feels and looks in the middle of shaking off water from its body, you should look at Carlo Davidson's fantastic photos.  Amazing, and incredible.  I remember that we blew in the labradors' ears when I grew up to get them to shake off the water by the shore, and not in the middle of the picnic blanket. The fur coat of a lab can hold a lot of water, indeed.

Earthquakes are scary.  Yesterday there was a rather big one here on the east coast of USA, which is very unusual.  I missed it, was probably in the car or walking outside, but people in my work building felt desks and walls shaking and heard cracking noises.  A friend in Washington said his whole lab building was shaking for 15 seconds and everybody ran outside; most people realized it was an earthquake. Considering it was a 5.8 on the scale, very little damage happened.  But at first, many thought it might be a terrorist attack.  We are getting awfully close to the 10-year anniversary of Sept 11, 2001...

Talking about terrorism, here is an interesting list of 25 people and industries that profit from fear. This is worth reading and thinking about.  It is not just insurance companies and the beauty industry, but also seemingly harmless groups such as advocacy groups, the pet industry, and toy companies.  It is much, much worse here in the US than in Sweden, mostly because here in the US people has to blame and sue someone when something bad happens.

And here is the answer to why James Bond wanted his martinis shaken, not stirred. In case you wondered. (I don't like martinis, so I don't really care either way, honestly.)

OK snapshot: Östermalmsmeny

För lilla Fido, hundmeny på Östermalmshallen.
For the little dogs, a menu at the posh Östermalmshallen market in central Stockholm.

Menu translation:
Mager falukorv med mammas köttbullar = lean Falu sausage with Mom's meat balls
Strimlad flaskfile å kycklingfile = Cut up pork tenderloin and chicken tenderloin
Ungnötslever = Calf liver
Mix - MEZA tallrik = mixed plate

Correction and update - this was actually at Djurgården, not Östermalmshalle.  I stand corrected. Still posh, at least parts of it.  And more appropriate,  Djurgården means the Animal Farm.  Really.

Book review: Lost & Found by Jaqueline Sheehan

I have always loved books when people live on islands, and especially if they are suddenly there and have to create a new life for themselves.  When I was a kid it was Robinson Crusoe, later more modern day tales of people running away from something or seeking solitude or a new kind of life.  This book fits that trend as well, and takes place on an island outside the city of Portland in Maine in the US. 

A woman is suddenly widowed and decides to change her life, at least temporarily, by moving to a tiny island where nobody knows her.  She applies for, and gets, the part-time Animal Warden job, which is mostly catching the cats the summer tourists left behind when vacation is over, but also dealing with skunks and racoons. 

One day an injured dogs shows up, shot with an exquisite homemade old-fashioned arrow in the shoulder.  Nobody claims the dog, so the animal warden takes it in and fosters it back to health.  The mystery deepens and eventually the story is sorted out.  There are many wonderful characters in the book, including an older woman with synesthesia and a teenage girl with anorexia.  I won't tell you more about the story here, because then I spoil it for you.

This is a really well-written book, and it could have become a shallow, sappy, and superficial romantic story, but it is not.  The descriptions of the characters are great, and describes how people think and feel in depth.  The author is a psychologist and it shows (in a good way).  Even if part of the book is really sad, in the end it is a feel-good book that is easy and fast to read. 

Just two things bother me, and it has nothing to do with the author and her writing.  Whoever put a brown labrador on the cover hadn't read the book, or just wanted any good dog photo on the cover.  The dog in the book is a black lab.  And, the symbol at the beginning of each chapter in the book is a golden retriever, not a lab. I grew up with labradors, and there is a big difference between the two breeds. Goldens are more air-headed, and were never good hunting dogs.   Another major design flaw.  Harper Collins, shape up.  Details like this matter - I like factual accuracies, not sloppiness.

If you need a laugh

"the cat ate it", hehehe! (found by PP)

OK snapshot: Hot dog

More of inner-city zoology. (Mer av storstadsfaunan.)

Halloween is scary for dogs too...

Yoda, lion, and crocodile attack. Photos by unknown.
Found on the internet, of course...

Kids are carving pumpkins now, and you'll see the result soon!

How dogs became pets...

Right now I am reading a really interesting book called Catching Fire, about how humans probably have large brains because they started to cook, not because they started to eat meat. I am still only halfway through, so you will hear about this later. About the dogs - new scientific data has shown that dogs have become domesticated (=pets) many times from wild species, so I bet there was something that attracted them to us rather hairless strange humans. Maybe cooked meat?

However, I thought I should share our dinner plans:

• Chile rellenos (stuffed poblano and green New Mexico peppers, locally grown of course, and the stuffing is cheese, then they are dipped in flour and egg and fried - oh my god so good! but a lot of work)
• New Mexico red chili sauce (not hot sauce, this is a sauce you spoon over the chile rellenos)
• Spanish yellow rice
• Refried beans with chopped onion and cilantro

and for dessert

• Tarte Tatin - upside down apple cake that I will try to make for the first time.

Do you want to come over for dinner? I'll try to remember to take some photos, but I might be busy eating...

Collectibles: Dog tax marks

Picture of dog tax marks in metal, these are not from our dogs.

Sweden is a land of peculiar taxes and tax relieves. And I´m not talking about the dogs called "tax" but tax to the state. Did you know that in Sweden we paid "dog tax" for dogs older than 3 months from 1923 to 1996? I have tax marks in metal from all our dogs, each dog had its own number and the city had to be named.

Utdrag ur lagen 1923:116 7 § 2 mom. Å erlagd hundskatt skall lämnas kvitto ävensom särskilt skattemärke, dock att kvitto icke erfordras då skatt erlägges genom insättning å uppbördsmyndighetens postgirokonto. Skattemärke skall vara tillverkat av plåt och lagom stort att fästas vid vanligt hundhalsband. Märket skall vara försett med kommunens namn, vederbörande årtal samt hundens nummer i hundskatteregistret.

Do you have any strange collectibles at home?

OK snapshot: Hundbar

Man's best friend also needs a drink now and then. Hund = Dog in Swedish.
Photo by OK, from Stockholm.

Fulufjället National Park - mooses, lichens, and water

During our mountain trip to the Swedish 'fjällen" the name for the alpine mountains in Sweden, we visited Fulufjället National Park (English link1, link2). I hadn't been there since fourth grade I think, and it is a lovely place. The mountain is large and flat, and in the northwestern part of Dalarna province. We stayed in the hostel in the village of Mörkret (=Darkness!), which is next to a large enclosed area with wild moose (Moose Adventures). One of the moose had had twins earlier that year, and we saw them through the tall electric fence (it was late, dusk and rainy, so the photo is not good). If you buy a ticket you can go inside the fence and see all the moose better, including the giant bull, The King of the Forest ('Skogens Konung').
It had rained for days, so everything was wet, including the gorgeous lupine flowers that actually come from North America and have spread like a pink-lilac-purple wildfire over Sweden.



















The next morning we drove a couple of miles up to the entrance to the National Park, at Njupeskär, the tallest waterfall in Sweden. It is about a mile's hike up to the waterfall, first through boardwalks and trails on bogs, and then through an old virgin spruce forest filled with ferns, blueberries, lichens, mosses, and some mosquitoes. The lichens are amazing, from the 'map lichen' (kartlav), which grows extremely slowly on rocks and makes topographic maps in its patterns, to the lobaria (lunglav) that we saw on a few birch stems. The lobaria looks like lung lobes, and was therefore used as lung medicine in the old days. The soldier lichen is cool with its red spore-bearing parts on top of small trumpet-shaped structures.
It was still raining but not so hard, so my photos are not the best. On one spruce tree we saw the markings of the three-toed woodpecker (tretåig hackspett) that had looked for food, probably bark beetle larvae or other insects. The fireweed (mjölkört) was flowering, and flies took refuge in the flowers that provided shelter from the rain. On the bogs where some cloudberries (hjortron), but not too many. To find lots of them you have to go away from the trails. Old log cabins, without Falu redpaint here in the north!, provided shelter to hikers.












































Near the parking lot is a small interactive science center, a Naturum (nature room), which is one of the best I have seen anywhere. The design is astonishing - one wall is all glass an out towards the bog, with not one human-made thing in sight. Kids (and adults) can sit and watch the birds with provided spotting scopes. There is information about the forest, forest fires, mammals (including wolves and bears), birds, lichens, weather (which is extreme here by Swedish standards), and history.
Things are arranged so that toddlers also have things to look at, it is at all levels, which I really like. You can touch and hear different animal's fur and sounds, look at videos of forest fires, and find out what you saw during your walk. Nothing is plastic, or at least you don't get that impression, everything seems to be sustainable and from natural origin (wood, rock), except for some metals.
One cross-section through an old pine tree showed healed fire damage nine times since 1497 - so this tree is older than Colombus' discovery of America. And it was just a tree like any around here. Well, a lot of Dalarna was clearcut for the mining industry, but the logging didn't reach all the way up here, thankfully. Another tree was standing at a road crossing and people carved their initials or signatures (bomärken) and year into it for the last 200 years at least. That tree fell down and the trunk was preserved here as part of the local history.
























One of the typical rocks in the area is porphyry (porfyr), a kind of rock that locks like colored clay with little tiny dots in it. The basic color can be many, here is Blybergsporfyr which is dark with light dots. Many more photos from Fulufjället kan be seen here.

Day 7 in Abisko: Gone fishing

More from OK and his iPhone in the northern Swedish latitudes:

Idag planerar jag att ta en tur med tält några dagar. Tills dess jag är tillbaka får ni hålla tillgodo med följande (mycket) lokala sevärdheter.

(Today I am leaving for a hike with a tent for a few days. Until I am back, you will have to be satisfied with these (very) local sightseeing items.)

Bastuns omklädningsrum. Som en norrlänning skulle säga: "Å här häng man använda handdukar som ska bli ren." (The dressing room in the sauna. As a northerner would say: ".. can't translate.. but the point is that reindeer and clean is the same word in Swedish :) [LS noted])

"Any frolic in your pocket?" [Frolic is a kind of dried dog food]

Den verkliga bossen på vandrarhemmet är dock Murre. (The real boss at the hostel is Murre.)

Långväga gäster har med sig sina inhemska specialiteter. Vad det är? Krylli-Cola kanske? :) (Far away guests are bringing their own cultural specialities. What is this? Cyrrilli-Cola maybe?)

More from the Swedish North, day 2

Another travel report from OK, via me and with the help of an iphone:

Fin dag, Torne träsk låg till stora delar blank på morgonen. Mamma tog bilen mot Björkliden för att måla. Jag vandrade med lätt packning upp längs Abiskojåkk, där den möter Nissunjåkk följde jag denna upp till dess kanjon. Tog vägen tillbaka via Paddus, ett gammalt offerberg med fin utsikt över torne träsk. Ca 15 km blev det nog. Jag låg och slöade vid en bäck i bjorkskogen i en dryg timme, mao är det mygg-, knott- och björnfritt. :)

(Nice day, Torne Lake was mostly still in the morning. Mom took the car towards Björkliden to do some painting. I hiked with light packload up along the Abiskojåkk stream, where it meets Nissunjåkk I followed that up to its canyon. Took the trail back via Paddus, an old pagan offering mountain with nice views over Torne Lake. Probably ended up to be 10 miles or so. I laid down and rested by a creek in the birch forest for an hour at least, in other words, there are no mosquitos, gnats, or bears around. :) )

[LS says: I am officially jealous now.]

Abiskojåkk forsar in i en tunnel under järnvägen.
(The Abisko stream rushes into a tunnel under the railroad.)
Abiskojåkk
Klafs, klafs. (Schlip, Schlop = wet)
Nisusjåkka. Anmärkningsvärt lite vatten i bäckarna. (Remarkable little water in the streams)
Fjällvy. (Mountain view)
I lav this rock. :) (I lichen/love this rock. [untranslatable pun])
Lite duggregn var det en stund. (It rained a little a little while.)
Någon slags blomma. ;) (Some kind of flower. [Fjällglim (Silene acaulis)])
Nå LS, hur är det med geologikunskaperna?
(Well, LS, how much do you remember of your geology? [Hmm, definitely metamorphic rock, all bent out of shape from the formation of the Fennoscandian mountain range, maybe 300 million years ago? Must be some lime stone in there, and quartz, and feldspar. Ask our mom, she knows better :)]
Mera geologi. [More geology]
Torne Träsk (Torne Lake)
Lapporten. (The Lap portal)
Keron m. fl. speglar sig. (Keron and friends mirrored)
Trot om ni vill, men vi bor på Barking Dog Plaza. :)
(Believe it or not, but we stay at Barking Dog Plaza. [internal joke])
En av de 49 råbarkade doggarna. ;) (One of the 49 hardcore dogs.)

(This one didn't have a caption from OK, but it is a mountain poppy.)
Photos and Swedish text by OK, translation by LS.