Tagged: obiterphotos

21
Sep
2008

TOGETHER TIME

It’s been a bit of a game-playing weekend, which has been really nice, since I grew up in a game-playing family and miss it quite a lot. My husband didn’t, though he plays sports (which is not the same thing at all), and in this particular area, his background is winning, since we rarely seem to play games as a family, even though we have an awful lot of them. Yesterday we went in to Malmö to the castle and toured the museum which is a combination natural history / art / historical museum. Some of the art was fantastic...

15
Sep
2008

SLAVE OF THE GOLDEN CAP

Not too long ago, Marilyn linked to a really cool site that allows you to make word maps of text that you upload or that exists on a website: Wordle. So, of course, I popped this journal’s URL into the engine and came up with something that surprised me, though it shouldn’t have. The 2 most frequently used words on this here journal, on that day*, were Liz (no surprise there, perhaps) and KARIN. Her name was many times larger than both Anders’ and Martin’s and it took me a bit aback for a moment, and then I laughed since...

23
Aug
2008

COMFORT ZONE

I haven’t felt much like writing this week, too much happening at once and feeling very bombarded by lots of things. First week back at work after vacation went well, but I have some friends going through some really hard stuff right now and my heart goes out to them. I wish there was something I could do to help them get through to the other side of suffering and grief, but right now I just seem to be too far away from everyone and everything. Trying to find a peaceful place from which to send comforting energy, it helps...

19
Aug
2008

UP ON THE ROOFTOPS

The company I work for is an international one, with offices in more than 20 countries. It also has a very diverse demographic, hiring people from all over the world to work in those offices. Though we are headquartered in Sweden, non-natives make up a significant portion of the employee list. On the floor where I work, which comprises 3 different departments, there are 2 Germans, 5 Americans, 1 Canadian, 1 French, 1 Mexican, 1 Brit, 1 Malaysian, 1 Indian, 1 Dane and 1 Norwegian. That’s a quarter of the total number of people on our floor alone. The Frenchwoman...

17
Aug
2008

GARGOYLES GALORE

One of the things that we wanted to do in Paris was to climb the South Tower of Notre Dame to see the “gargoyle viewing platform”, Galerie des Chimères, that is atop a climb of some 380-plus steps. The word gargoyle comes from the French word gargouille which means “throat” or “gullet” and that is exactly what gargoyles do: they function as drainpipes to carry rain from the roof of cathedrals, thereby preventing water damage to the masonry, and not incidentally, frightening away evil spirits while doing so. In architectural parlance, if a gargoyle is purely decorative, in other words,...

15
Aug
2008

MAGIC IN THE AIR

As anyone who has been to a Disneyland park knows, the parades are of paramount importance to the kids who stake out places an hour in advance along the parade route, roosting on the curbs and any available surface: benches, garbage cans, parent’s shoulders. Eventually the crowd is 3-4 people deep, and during the parade itself, the spectators are constantly shooed back against the edges by perimeter guards, making it impossible for an adult photographer to get a shot of anything but the heads in front of him unless he wants to risk the wrath of the wee set by...

14
Aug
2008

IT’S HUGE, EUGENE!

I don’t know why I’m continually surprised that southern Germany is so lush and green. There are endless fields of grass and pasturage and every village and town sports buildings layered with flower boxes in storied rows, filled to overflowing with geraniums and petunias. John and Simone have a garden now, for the first time, and it’s their passion and delight. They’ve built a raised bed rock-wall herb garden and filled a large patch with vegetables and a second one with flowers for cutting so that Simone can have fresh flowers in the house cycling constantly through the summer season....

12
Aug
2008

EACH TIME SOMEONE SHOWS THAT HE CARES

The day we walked around Paris was boiling hot. The sun beat down and baked the city to a fine simmer and the white dust of the Jardin des Tuileries rose up and coated the trees silver and dusted the tourists. The Garden is 63 acres and was designed by landscape artist, Andre Le Notre in 1664 (he was also responsible for the park at Versailles); it still looks much like his original design. We entered at the end by the Place de la Concorde and walked all the way through to the Louvre. Because it was such a relentlessly...

11
Aug
2008

BORTA BRA MEN HEMMA BÄST

I can think of much better ways of spending my birthday than 7 hours of nausea and fever in the car, culminating with a bout of stomach flu. Regardless, now we are back and I am oh so glad to be here. Sweden, even with a thick cloud cover and pouring rain, never looked so good as when we crossed the bridge from Denmark and knew we were nearly home. Although maybe it was partly the comparison with eastern Germany where we spent the weekend that helped. We left my brother’s place on Friday and drove to a little town...

06
Jul
2008

WATER BABIES

3-day weekend: hot summer days and cool summer evenings, blazing sunshine and electric blue skies with fat, white puffclouds. A green grasshopper clinging to the side of the house. Wilting roses, sun-struck geraniums, though no one here calls them geraniums any longer. Giant slices of watermelon, potato salad, rice krispie treats with red, white & blue sprinkles, steak on the grill. Hours in the pool, towel-wrapped kids with blue lips and red shoulders. Clover in the grass, butterflies on the wing. Photos by Anders Ek Super Summer Belated Birthday Wishes to idahoswede!