I bet my family beats your family. If we're talking numbers, that is.

You see my parents both grew up on farms in Iowa, not 15 miles from one another, born at a time - 1934 - when it still made sense for farmers to grow their own farmhands. And so my mother has three sisters and six brothers. And my father has three sisters and six brothers. Which makes 18 aunts and uncles who are blood relations.

Then, each of these aunts and uncles got married at some point, which means that I have 36 aunts and uncles. Well, had 36 aunts and uncles; the number is dwindling, sadly, inevitably. And then each of my aunts' and uncles' families consists of an average of 4.27 children. Which means I have 77 first cousins. There are cousins who are opera singers, cousins who are preachers, cousins who are mayors and cousins who are garbage men. There are cousins who home-school their children (and shouldn't!) and cousins who are ex-cons. There is even at least one cousin who is a fellow avowed homosexualist (he's had kind of a tough time of it, though, poor guy.)

As for the next generation, I couldn't begin to count. We're talking more students than attended my junior high school. We're talking the population of a small town. Hundreds and hundreds. And we're not even Catholic.

I'd make a crack about whether this fecundity has any relation to improper use of prophylactics and low intelligence quotients, but I've recently learned that my parents read these pages and I don't want to offend anyone.

The Swedish word for the day is kaniner. It means rabbits.

- by Francis S.

Grownup girly-boy that I am, there are still places stinking of testosterone that send fear neurons bouncing from synapse to synapse throughout my body. Places like barbershops with red and white twirling barberpoles. Or the locksmith and model railway shop that used to be on 14th just above P Street in Washington.

The problem with these places is that I suddenly revert back to being nine years old, and I can't help thinking that I am a pathetic excuse for a male and that I will be the last one picked for the team (or if we're going to judge by history, second-to-last). I worry that I will be found out, somehow. So, I loathe these places. My soul cannot be convinced that no one is going to refuse to give me a haircut, or a new set of keys, because I don't pass the male test. Whatever that may be.

Are there equivalent estrogen- and progesterone-laden locations that have the same effect on you female-types?

The Swedish word for the day is manlig. It means masculine.

- by Francis S.

Miguel is the bee's knees.

I asked him to say "hi" to America from me when he was doing the whole family visit thing in the States, and he got America to say "hi" back.

The Swedish phrase for the day is du är en klippa, Mig. It means you are a rock, Mig, in the best way.

- by Francis S.

Happy birthday, dear diary, you demanding old thing.

Considering the day, I suppose it's only appropriate to acknowledge its geneology and give credit to the parent who inspired it, that pithy and fascinating potential pornstar who is Jonno, sadly now on hiatus.

The Swedish phrase for the day is ett år gammal. It means one year old.

- by Francis S.

This is a good year for mushrooms. Not that I know from personal experience. I've never actually hunted for mushrooms. It sounds so Hansel- and Gretel-ish. So Baba Yaga-ish. So very Brothers Grimm. And while I would dearly love to hunt mushrooms in a dim forest somewhere, I haven't, but at least I'm reaping the benefits of someone who has.

The husband is standing over the sink with a brush and big bowl of golden chanterelles that a friend gave him, gently ridding them of the remnants of the dirt they grew in.

Wait, no, now he's cooking them in butter.

The smell would be intoxicating, if we weren't still recovering from being intoxicated last night. The husband's marvelous agent invited us to dine at Pontus by the Sea. One definitely doesn't eat at Pontus by the Sea, one dines. And has bottle after bottle of very expensive champagne, apparently. And talks about how it wasn't long ago - ten years - that one could still find apartments in Stockholm where one's toilet was in a separate building out back. And smokes cigarettes even though one hasn't had a cigarette in weeks and weeks. And then when the last lamb chop is stripped clean and the final drop of espresso drunk and the last remnant of cherry tart scraped from the plate, one takes more bottles of champagne and glasses and drunkenly plays boule, the grand old buildings of the old town on one side, and on the other the waters of Stockholm harbor, black under a sickle moon. I don't remember who won.

It turns out that chanterelles cooked with onions in butter are quite good for a hangover.

The Swedish word for the day is, of course, kantareller, which means chanterelles.

- by Francis S.

I had lunch earlier this week with the guy from the Goethe Institute, one of my fellow students from the Swedish class I took earlier in the summer. He told me that he doesn't understand the Swedes.

"I've lived in South Africa, in Romania, in the States," he said. "I could basically figure them all out. But the Swedes - "

They are an enigma to him. He said he can't figure out what makes them tick.

"Some guy, a Swede, said to me once that Sweden is what America would be like if it were socialist," the guy from the Goethe Institute said. "Now that made sense to me somehow."

I didn't tell him that while George W. Bush would never admit it, the U.S. is in fact rather socialist around the edges. Still, the idea of Sweden as a socialist version of America makes sense to me, too.

The Swedish word for the day is skär. It means pink.

- by Francis S.

I live on the Farmer Street. That would be Bondegatan in Swedish.

I've always found the name charming, if a bit mundane.

Here in Stockholm, the names of streets, roads, avenues, alleys, lanes and hills seem to have practical and historical origins.

There are Kungsgatan and Drottninggatan, the King's Street and Queen Street - for some reason, the possessive -s- is only there for the king, implying that while he owns his own street, the poor queen doesn't own hers. Odd, that.

There is Narvavägen - The Narva Road - which I assume is named after a famous 18th century battle in the once-Swedish city of Narva, which is now in Estonia.

There are Linnégatan and Birger Jarlsgatan and Morten Trotzigsgränd, one named after the famous Swedish botanist Carl von Linné, one named for a medieval Swedish ruler, and one named for - uh, I have no idea who Morten Trotzig was, I only know it is the smallest street in Stockholm, basically a narrow set of steps leading from one street to another.

There are Västerlånggatan and Österlånggatan - the West and East Long Streets - both of them in the old town, the names really just a description of what were assuredly the longest streets of Stockholm some 700 years ago when the city was young.

There is Lidingövägen, the street that leads from the city of Stockholm to the bridge that takes one to the island of Lidingö.

There is Fredrikshovsgatan, a short street that runs next to the sight of a former royal palace that was called Fredrikshovs Castle.

And there is my favorite, Tystagatan, the Quiet Street.

History, honor, direction, description.

I'd love to see a map that explains why all the streets are named what they are named.

Who gets to choose, huh?

The Swedish phrase for the day is Vem är rädd för Virginia Woolf? It means, of course, Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf?

- by Francis S.

More recommendations from the tasty links to the left:

Want to know about rocks? Yami knows about rocks. But what's best about Yami is not her rock knowledge, but rather her hilariously warped yet somehow logical take on life.

Thinking about becoming a single mother? I'm not sure whether or not Miss Lauren would advise it. Yes or no, take her advice. She's awfully wise for one so young.

Looking to improve your knowledge of pop music trivia? Mike's knowledge is encyclopedic. I kid you not. But wait, there's more. You also get plenty of juicy and well-written personal details at absolutely no extra cost!

Interested in life in the other New York? Read what April has to say about life in Buffalo with her sweetheart and a veritable bestiary of animals.

Want to talk libraries? Want to talk Swedish libraries? Linnea and Erik (he's in Swedish only) actually don't talk so much about libraries, but they are both as eloquent and thought-provoking as one would expect a librarian to be.

Ever wondered if there were Chinese-West Indians? There are. And some of them, like Patrick for instance, write with great insight and warmth on birth, death and everything in between.

- by Francis S.

"Isn't it nice to lose the socks?" said my neighbor P., the guitarist. Er, that's how I'd translate what he said, more or less.

And I agree, it is nice to lose the socks. One of the glories of summer is to be able to wear sandals and even more minimal variations on sandals; it would be even nicer if I could go barefoot completely. I think I've never gotten over the barefoot halcyon summers when I was 9 and 10 and 11 years old, when my parents shipped me off to my Uncle Wilbur's farm in Iowa for a couple of weeks.

I would get up with my cousins as soon as the sun was up, then we would run outside wearing only the flimsiest pairs of shorts, slipping our bare feet into galoshes to do our chores: gathering eggs and feeding the chickens and dumping silage in a trough for the cows. Then we would kick off the rubber boots until the late afternoon, when chores had to be done again. Kicking off those boots was the mark of complete and utter freedom. We didn't even bother to put shoes on when we decided for no good reason to go running through freshly cut fields of dirt clods and hay stubble that hurt like hell, shouting, "ow, ow, ow, ow!" as we ran.

I suppose the city streets are even more hazardous to my feet than those fields were, so there's no question of trying to go barefoot now. Besides, I don't think my feet are tough enough anymore.

The Swedish verb for the day is att springa. It means to run.

- by Francis S.

The Swedish summer is over. Everyone is back from their four- and five-week vacations. It's time to buckle down and ignore the fact that the sky is bluebell-blue without a cloud in sight. Time for three meetings a day. Time to speak Swedish with all and sundry.

C'mon Francis, you can do it. Stop being a little chickenshit. Quit your worrying that you're mixing up your en- and ett-words. Quit trying to remember förstod is pronounced as if it were spelled förstog. Quit correcting yourself when you use the wrong adjectival endings, when you put the inte in the wrong place, when you use ska instead of kommer att.

Just speak.

The Swedish word for the day is liksom. It means, like, like.

- by Francis S.

Finding books in English is little trouble in Stockholm - Hedengren's has a great selection, and NK, the big expensive department store, ("kompaniet," as all the little old blue-haired Östermalm matrons call it) has an English Bookshop that is excellent. So while the husband was gone a week ago, I took the opportunity of browsing leisurely for a couple of hours, and ended up buying Love in a Cold Climate by Nancy Mitford.

Now, the Mitford girls were one weird contradictory bunch. Diana still likes to say when interviewed that what everyone forgets about the Nazis is that Hitler had exquisite manners (thanks, Simon and Alex, for the link); Jessica, who happened to have been communist, wrote scathing books about America, on the, er, mortuary industry for example.

But Nancy, she wrote about what it was like to be a member of the English upper class between the wars. There is no denying that Love in a Cold Climate and The Pursuit of Love possess a certain precious charm. The characters, most of whom are based quite explicitly on her own family, are a zany lot with some interesting priorities. Most remarkable is a hero who happens to be a, well, screaming queen; he even actually wins it all in the extraordinarily pixilated ending of Love in a Cold Climate. What is a bit dissimulating, however, is the way she imputes Nazi sympathies not to her own fictional family, but rather to villainous rich in-laws who have the misfortune to have a German surname.

Of course it is a bit hard to pick out what might and might not be irony from the distance of more than five decades since the books were written. So in the end, I'm not sure what to make of it all.

The Swedish word for the day is märkligt. It means peculiar.

- by Francis S.

As the world's stockmarkets took a nasty spill, we spent the evening dancing on a volcano, not knowing things were crashing down around us outside.

Well, not dancing exactly, more like having a dinner party on a volcano. A dinner party thrown together at the last minute in honor of two guys from America whom I'd never met before, friends of a great friend of mine who lives in Chicago. The Americans, naturally, provided the news from America; we provided the food, the rioja and the Spanish eau de vie brought by the husband from Spain, and most importantly, the charming Swedish guests.

A., the former model and aspiring producer, ravishing in her little black shawl and impossibly thin spiky heels, told us about the time the animal talker came and talked to the family dog. "Dogs can make jokes," the animal talker had said. "They're very funny sometimes."

We sang silly Swedish drinking toasts.

The Americans were stuck reluctantly defending America. Which is a good thing for us Americans because we rarely have to do it to non-Americans. It toughens us up.

M., the t.v. producer, drank so many whisky glasses of neat white tequila that he couldn't stop talking way too coherently about Israel and Palestine and the power of positive propaganda. He also graciously taught the Americans - including me - a useful Swedish verb that does not translate squarely into tight English, although the concept is simple enough: att olla. It means to touch objects with the tip of one's dick.

Isn't Swedish great?

- by Francis S.

Holy mackerel, there's a group of Christian guys who want to shut Landover Baptist down.

I guess the old equation is true: orthodoxy = no sense of humor whatsoever.

However, it is not true that orthodoxy = no sense of rhyme or meter.

"Any message you read claiming to be from Jim Carlson or any other OBJECTIVE: Ministries member that contains vulgarities, sexual innuendo, bad poetry, or other un-Christian sentiments is to be considered a FRAUD and ignored."

Bad poetry is, apparently, the sign of a pretend Christian.

(Thanks for pointing me in the general direction, yami.)

- by Francis S.

More reading recommendations culled from the list of links at the left:

You want to know about Crown Princess Victoria Ingrid Alice Désirée? Des can tell you. Don't ask me how a straight English guy knows all the latest dish on Sweden's most eligible bachelorette, find out for yourself by reading his amusing reflections.

You want to know about the California State Legislation process? Aaron has firsthand experience. But it's his tender, angry, funny and poetic jousting with life in general that never fails to impress me.

You want to hear about the ultimate in long-distance relationships? Forget the pathetic and defunct "Damn the Pacific." Those two have nothing on Ash and Fraser, who will never ask you for money because, well, they have jobs.

You wanna talk accordians? Joey, itinerant Accordian Guy, knows all about life in the accordian fast lane. The accordian fast lane being club life in Toronto. But don't let his nice bad boy persona fool you. He is domestic enough to have white sofas at home.

- by Francis S.

The tongue is such an unwieldy organ.

Yeah, it does some useful things. I'm a big proponent of licking, for instance. When appropriate, of course. And tastebuds are quite useful, although they don't really function well without an olfactory component, so they deserve only so much credit.

But the tongue seems to have its own little counterbrain that works in direct opposition to the Big Brain. And my tongue's single-minded little brain is driving me absolutely crazy because it keeps telling my tongue to press against the spot where the permanent retainer used to be, the one that had been in place for nearly 25 years but got accidentally ripped out in an ugly dental-floss accident yesterday.

I wish I could find the override function.

The Swedish word for the day is tandkött. It means gums.

- by Francis S.

My version of the Trojan War in 100 words.

Two stories about Helen

1. They all thought she was just a common whore when she showed up in the bed of the farmer’s son. Then it turned out she was worth something on account of she’d run away from money, real money. So they said the farmer’s son wasn’t so stupid after all. But it didn’t stop them from spitting on her whenever she passed.



2. “My mother screamed when I was born,” says the ancient blind woman sitting alone in the orchard. "I hatched from a lavender egg."

She tells herself, “I was an ugly child,” and she can’t remember why she is lying.

copyright 2002 Francis Strand - just a little reminder!

So, could you, would you reduce a classic epic tale to 100 words? And which one would it be?

The Swedish word for the day is novell. It means short story.

- by Francis S.

At long last, the husband comes home today. He's been gone for 10 days. It feels like a century. I can hardly stand waiting until his plane arrives at 9 p.m. this evening.

It's time for a deep-cleaning frenzy around the apartment.

But first, let me start with something I've been meaning to do forever and the first in a series, I guarantee it. That is, recommendations to some of the links on the left side of this page:

You want to talk literary criticism, social criticism, movies? You must read Tinka. The only blogger I've met in person. She's sharp, witty, intensely interested in language and speech, of a literary bent, able to nimbly switch gears. And so's her writing.

You want to know what's really happening in America? The best source is undoubtedly Nancy of the "World of Jill Matrix." Überdyke extraordinaire, I get way too much of my scary news of America from her. Oh, and she's really funny, too.

You want to know about Moscow? Read now what Fiona has to say about living with a babushka, because Fiona's going back to Scotland soon. She must surely be droll, dry and madcap if her writing is any indication. I bet she can talk a mile a minute.

You wanna know clothes? Try Jacqueline X. Or is that Miss X? Her take on life is short but sweet, and occasionally a bit obsessed with finding the right size 11 mules.

You want to hear a good yarn from an old sailor? Bill is your man. He's full of the past, present and future.

You want to know how to make Welsh cakes? Want to know what Welsh cakes are? Duncan has the recipe. And a lot of other interesting observations about life.

You interested in becoming a father? Do you like comics that feature a hero with some 20 legs who spends a lot of time in a Doblo? Want to hear what another expatriate - other than me - thinks about America? Read Miguel, whose writing is touching and hilarious.

You obviously are interested in what an Anglo thinks about living in Sweden. But what about a Swede living in England? Simon has only just begun, but I know I'm curious as to what he'll be saying about us wacky English speakers over time.

More to come.

The Swedish verb for the day is att läsa. It means to read or to study.

- by Francis S.

I should've known he wouldn't be able to resist.

R., my good buddy and proud father to be, has started his own weblog to record the anticipation of the birth of his child. Woo-hoo!

So now I can keep up on a daily basis with his emotional highs and highers as he waits to welcome a new little human being into the world.

Thanks, R.

The Swedish word for the day is Hilda. It is a name rather infrequently given to Swedish girls when they are born.

- by Francis S.

A wasps' nest is a curious thing. It can't rightly be called beautiful, there's too much menace and fear associated with it for beauty. And yet it can have a papery round perfection to it.

Wasps, on the other hand, can only be given grudging respect, except perhaps if one is an entomologist. Especially as August draws near and wasps become increasingly aggressive. Which is why C., the fashion photographer, decided it was time to remove the nest that wasps had built in the eaves of his summer house.

He started rather cavalierly with merely a jacket and long trousers, poking a little here and there as he exposed the nest to daylight. But the mad buzzing was enough to make him reconsider.

And so we fitted him out, Tweedle-dum fashion: first with a stocking cap; then on top of the cap, one of those wire-mesh hemispheres that serve as an airy cover to keep flies off of the last two uneaten pieces of rhubarb pie still left in the pie pan; then we pulled down a mosquito net from one of the bedrooms and put that over the wire-mesh pie protector so the yards of netting hung to the ground.

With his long legs and the high cheekbones of his handsome face hidden behind the netting so that only his huge hands poked out, he looked like a Gilbert and Sullivan version of a Chinese potentate. We tied the long trailing ends of the netting around his waist, and then taped his gloves to his sleeves with duct tape.

Looking now more like a comically maniacal and slapdash beekeeper, C. was ready to do battle with the wasps, tree-pruner in hand.

In the end, it was impossible in that get-up, and he got the thing into a bag with only the jacket and gloves for protection, with the help of another summer guest.

As he walked me down to the jetty where the ferry back to Stockholm stops, we laughed that he was wary that the wasps might somehow follow him even though he knew they would not.

"I wonder how long the ones that weren't in the nest will fly around before they figure out that it's gone?" he asked.

It was nearly enough to make me feel sorry for the wasps.

The Swedish word for the day is of course geting, which means wasp.

- by Francis S.

And now off to the archipelago for a couple days of sea and sun with A., the former model and aspiring producer, and C., the fashion photographer, at their summer home on Birds Island. And of course the boys will be there. It's amazing how quickly one gets used to having cats around. The two cats were here only three days, and I still keep thinking they're still here, ready to follow me around the apartment or come walking into a room for no reason whatsoever looking at me with great expectation in their eyes, or start wildly racing around in the middle of the night on a racecourse that just happens to include my poor naked butt, over and over.

- by Francis S.