Tagged: obiterphotos

25
Jun
2005

MIDSUMMER MADNESS

The weather cooperated and for one of the very few times in the 8 midsummers I’ve celebrated in Sweden, everything went off just right under a warm summer sun. Everywhere you looked, blue and yellow flags and pennants were snapping gaily in the breeze. We met up with a group of Anders’ old friends in Älmhult, a little village 2 hours north of us, and celebrated a compleat midsummer, rife with the smell of strawberries, wildflowers and sunshine. We joined the village celebration and were treated to accordion music, the sight of ladies young and old sporting flower wreaths in...

18
Jun
2005

THE REAL MIRACLE IS NOT TO WALK EITHER ON WATER OR IN THIN AIR BUT TO WALK ON THE EARTH

Today = perfect. Perfect weather, so unbelievably perfect that if I could bottle it in a tiny, frosted, gold-corked decanter that I could then hang around my neck on a thin golden chain so that it nestled just so, and open the bottle whenever I was feeling a bit down to uncork some of the blueblueBLUE sky, sunshine, and sparkle, and take a BIG sniff, I would be perfectly happy forever and ever. Nicolai Tower Founded by Bishop Absalon, archbishop of Roskilde (and Lund!) in the 12th century, Copenhagen is a fascinating, beautiful, lively city. King Christian IV, the great...

16
Jun
2005

ONE FOR MY INNER CHILD

I think that it must be some sort of parental overcompensation to want to buy your children all the things you never had when YOU were a kid. Especially the toys. I mean, I ALSO want to share with them all the things I had and loved, like certain books,* and Spirograph, and Etch-a-Sketch. But when I stop and think about it, who did I really buy that Slip-n-Slide for last week? We’ve been kicking around the idea of getting one of those gigantic bone-breakers trampolines for the kids for the last year or so, and I think if we...

08
Jun
2005

SUMMER SUN SOMETHING’S BEGUN BUT UH-OH THOSE SUMMER NIGHTS

Summer was so long when I was a kid. I’m pretty sure they’ve shortened it. And they’ve definitely made it colder. THEY’VE got a lot to answer for. Althooouuugh, they may have shortened the LENGTH of it, but the days! Wow, are THEY long! And this! Sunshine makes me so happy, especially after a couple of weeks of unseasonably cold and grey weather. This was the sky a few minutes ago, at 8:30 p.m. in the evening. Then I walked around and took some more photos of things green and growing and things lilac and lovely.

22
May
2005

PUPPY UPPERS

We drove through the afternoon sunshine up a green and wooded way, a gravel road leading to an old brick farmhouse. The lane narrowed and slid between two rickety gateposts. As the car crunched forward, a beautiful black dog suddenly came galloping toward us, roo roo roo roo she barked, clearly telling us to stand down and state our business. 2 flaxen-haired toddlers appeared behind her and advanced on the car as well, forcing us to shift down from crawl to stop. I got out to shepherd everyone away from the car, and ended up leading the procession into the...

17
May
2005

WHEN EVERY LUSTY HEART BEGINNETH TO BLOSSOM

This actually happened a couple of weeks ago, but I keep forgetting to write about it. One weeknight at dinner, after work/school/daycare, when Anders and Martin and I were a bit flat from a busy day, Karin was completely full of beans. The jumping kind. She bounced around in her chair, interrupted repeatedly, broke into song, made wild grimaces and generally behaved as if she had ants in her pants. I kept threatening to throw her outside to burn off some energy. Finally, after a particularly prolonged oingy-boingy-fit, I pointed at the door and said in no uncertain terms, “OUT!...

16
May
2005

OFF TO SEE THE WIZARD

Rapeseed sounds so wrong. Which is probably why, in America, the product it provides us with is most often referred to as Canola. Canola is only one kind of rapeseed, however, and the name is made up. Canola was developed in Canada and its name is a contraction of “Canadian oil, low acid.” Rapeseed is the third most important source of vegetable oil in the world, after soybean and palm oil. During the past twenty years, it has passed peanut, cottonseed, and most recently, sunflower, in worldwide production. But it’s used in lots of other products, many of them non-food-based....

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