On the grounds of Drottningholm, the palace where the royal family of Sweden lives, there stands a little baroque theater, built by a Swedish queen with the unfortunate name of Lovisa Ulrika. Through chance, the fickleness of fashion and political change, and through the benefit of nearly 150 years of complete neglect, the theater survived intact with some 15 complete sets of original scenery, including all kinds of pillars and trees, clouds and machines for making thunder noises or delivering gods from the skies.

It is a charming place, and even more charming to see the dress rehearsal of an opera there, the theater so intimate you feel you can reach out and grab the hands of the singers when they implore, or help them up from the ground when they fall down in a poisoned faint, or protect them from an evil sorcerer in black inciting human sacrifices in an elegant and rich bass voice.

The orchestra is tiny but muscular, just like the director, who sways and bounces his way through the score, batonless, clapping the beat in frustration at the chorus who do not keep time crisply enough for his taste as the third act (or was it the fourth act?) finishes and they are playing the part of writhing demons pressed downstage to the very edge of the proscenium, threatening the audience with all kind of evil and mayhem and making the hairs raise on one's arms. Even the dance, which I usually detest, is enigmatic and Mark-Morris-but-in-high-heels-ishy quirky, all heiroglyphic gestures and oddly graceful.

And despite having only the faintest grasp of the plot and no grasp of the language (except for the constant repetition of the word "amour" and the odd word, such as "peutetre" here and there) and being unable to read in the dimly authentic lighting, I was enchanted by Rameau's Zoroastre.

The Swedish word for the day genrep, which is short for generalrepetition. It means dress rehearsal.

- by Francis S.

It's difficult not to be discouraged by the latest news from the U.S.: The New York State Court of Appeals ruled, in a 4-2 decision, that gay people don't have the right to get married.

But what puts me in a black mood isn't the decision, which isn't surprising even if many hoped that it would have gone the other way. What's really awful is the rationale behind it. As Patrick Healy wrote in the New York Times: In particular, ...one section suggesting heterosexual couples need marriage to be preserved as a way to shore up their faulty relationships and protect their children who might suffer in broken-home situations.

Can these judges really believe this to be true? The logic escapes me. And this is supposedly one of the most liberal states in the union. And now every other state court will cite this in their own rulings that will, sometimes subtly and sometimes harshly, say that not only are gay people unworthy of having their relationships recognized, but having them recognized will somehow ruin the relationships of heterosexuals and destroy the lives of children.

The same article rightfully says that the ruling is a shocking insult to gay people.

As for me, I give up.

The Swedish word for the day is teokrati. It means theocracy.

- by Francis S.

I'm baaaaaack.

Well, actually, I didn't go anywhere much. It was my parents who came to visit, and I'm still recovering from their busy social schedule: Along with midsummer, which was spent out in the archipelago with A., the TV producer and C., the fashion photographer and select members of their families, we managed to have dinner with some group or other every single night my parents were here, except for one Sunday, in which we had brunch with the husband's nephew and girlfriend and baby. Oh, and the Thursday before they left, when they went out to Lidingö without us to have dinner with the guy who was a Swedish exchange student living at our house back in the early 1980s, when my beloved little brother was still in high school and I was away at university.

The thing is, everyone always wants to see my parents, and I thought about having one huge dinner party, but then I knew some people would be hurt not to have time alone with them, so it ended up being a week of hosting dinners.

It was grand.

But isn't it embarrassing when your mother and father have more of a social life than you do, in your own city, thousands of miles from where they live?

The Swedish words for the day are mamma and pappa, which are of course what most Swedish people seem to call their mom and dad, and even, strangely, how I refer to my mother and father in Swedish to other people (and which I accidentally used with my parents once or twice, shamefully, when the evening involved a lot of translating and back and forth between English and Swedish.)

- by Francis S.

Uh, this is the 21st century, isn't it?

Does anyone with a grain of intellect in 2006 believe anymore that women are inferior to men?

Because really, no matter how you cut it, any objections to the Rt. Reverend Katherine Jefferts Schori as Primate of the Episcopal Church in the United States boil down to a belief that women are second rate and only worthy of being spiritual handmaids, and not ecclesiastical leaders. But obviously, according to an article in the Guardian, there are people out there who think this:

The Rev Martyn Minns, a British-born conservative evangelical who has been active in opposing the church's leadership over its support for homosexual clergy, particularly its election three years ago of the gay bishop Gene Robinson of New Hampshire, issued a statement saying: "It is sad. She will bring into sharp relief the difference between being an Episcopalian and being an Anglican. It is not clear how she can do anything other than lead the Episcopal church in walking apart from the rest of the communion. She has my prayers."

Wow. I guess I'm glad for once to be an American Episcopalian and not a British Anglican. And I was shocked to see that the Anglican church still hasn't resolved the conflict over the appointment of women as bishops.

Just as bad, but less surprising, is that the Roman Catholic Church has been bullying and threatening the Anglican church to sever ties with it if women are appointed as bishops.

Uh, did I miss something, but wasn't the Anglican church formed because some king didn't want the Pope telling him what to do?

This whole thing makes my blood pressure go up. It's bad enough that gays get bashed by "christians," but hell, I expect it. Can we really still be arguing about whether it's appropriate for women to be bishops?

Feh.

The Swedish word for the day is kyrkan. It means the church.

- by Francis S.

It's time to make amends. Because I've been sadly shirking my duties. I was interviewed awhile back on Schlockholm, and I failed to put in a link. Tsk, tsk.

And now I've been, uh, probed again, this time by Nathaniel of the blog film experience, with a bunch of movie questions, natch.

The hardest part was when he asked me who would play me in a movie of my life. Not only was the husband stumped when I asked him, but after I called up A., the TV producer, she couldn't come up with anyone either. It was her fiance, C., the fashion photographer, who finally hit on the right person: John Malkovich.

So, who would play you in the movie of your life?

The Swedish word for the day is frågetecken. It means question mark.

- by Francis S.

The difference between men and women:

Merck had originally hoped to get the vaccine approved for use in boys. But although women have routinely allowed swabs to be taken of their vaginal cells, the company found that men rebelled against the use of emery boards to collect cells from their penises. Researchers eventually discovered that jeweler's-grade emery paper effectively removed cells without alarming men and were able to complete their studies.

("U.S. Approves Use of Vaccine for Cervical Cancer", New York Times, March 9, 2006.)

The Swedish word for the day is gynekolog. It means gynecologist.

- by Francis S.

Who would have guessed it? The biggest threat to U.S. citizens isn't the war in Iraq, terrorism and security breaches, or even high [sic] taxes. It is hosts of crazy people burning the flag and great big homos who want to get married. At least according to George W. Bush and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, who have been spouting off on measures on each of these issues that will be voted on in the U.S. Senate this week. In speaking of the proposed amendment to the U.S. Constitution to restrict marriage and the rights of marriage to heterosexuals, Frist was quoted in the Hartford Courant as saying: "[Marriage], more than any other [institution], concerns the well-being of our future, of our children, of the states that my colleagues and I represent - indeed of this country."

The Swedish word for the day is skamlös. It means shameless.

- by Francis S.

I used to despair at trying to explain the phenomenon of the Eurovision Song Contest to Americans, it just seemed to defy description.

But my new friend, the children's book author, reminded me that this is no longer true.

"American Idol," he said.

Now why didn't I think of that? Because really, if you imagine it in terms of countries instead of people brimming over with insecurity, delusions of grandeur and a warped sense of self-worth and what is worthy of attention, trying their best to manufacture something that can be sold to the greatest number of people possible, well, there you have Eurovision.

To my surprise, this year the contest was won by a joke: Finland's, uh, "heavy metal band," Lordi. As we sat with A. the TV producer, her sister, C. the fashion photographer, the former football player and A.'s parents, everyone thought that it was sort of nice that Finland won, but they hated the song, everyone except the minor royal who thought it was all great.

I was, after the fact, disappointed not in the Finnish song, but that a much funnier joke, Iceland's "Silvia Night," didn't qualify for the finals. Especially after the actress playing the part of Silvia referred to Sweden's slightly scary born-again Christian contestant as ugly, old and a fucking bitch.

The Swedish word for the day is schlager. There is no real translation in English, but it is a word no doubt stolen from the German, and is a certain type of cheesy pop song that occasionally transcends its kitschness so far as to become indelibly printed on the culture.

- by Francis S.

I called my beloved little brother the other day to confirm the rumor that he and his wife had bought an apartment on the Upper West Side, and in the background, amid the noise of the baby and the household, I could hear a police siren: a slow long wail, as opposed to the more rapid quacking of the police sirens here.

Swedes love the way police sirens in the U.S. sound. Someone, I don't remember who, once said to me: "When you go there and hear them in person they sound exactly the way they do on TV!"

Yes, I said, they certainly do.

Aren't Swedes just the cutest things?

The Swedish word for the day is hörselskadad. It means hearing impaired.

- by Francis S.

Is euthanasia a good thing? As with all complicated issues, the answer is finely shaded with grey. And let's be realistic, how much is life really worth, should no expense be spared to keep someone alive? Is it really worth more than 9000 Swedish crowns to revive our ancient (that would be nearly four years old) iBook?

Only a fool would say yes.

Pollice verso: Death it is.

The Swedish word for the day is dödshjälp, which means euthanasia.

- by Francis S.

If you set aside the people behind technology (the telephone, television and computers, automobiles and airplanes) and medical researchers (the discoverers of antibiotics, any number of vaccinations, and birth control), I would argue that the person who has had the most effect on our lives is Sigmund Freud.

Can you believe he was born as long as 150 years ago, one of the great fathers of modernism? It's easier for me to think of it this way: He didn't die until 1939, so my parents actually could have met him when they were small children, if they hadn't been living on small farms in the middle of nowhere at the time. Or if Freud had been hanging around the Christian Reformed Church in Sully, Iowa instead of 20 Maresfield Gardens, Hampstead, London.

The Swedish word for the day is psykoanalytiker. It means, of course, psychoanalyst.

- by Francis S.

Spring has been so cold and graceless this year, it wasn't until this past weekend that we made it out to Birds Island for the first time for the season. It was windy and raw on the island, but here and there little purple anemones had bravely sprung up in the woods, about the only sign of spring that I could see.

When I walked out to the end of the island on Monday morning, I came upon the smoking remains of a bonfire from the night before, a celebration of Valborg, one of those witchy pagan holidays that Swedes have kept right alongside the more familiar Christianized and political ones that the rest of Europe also celebrates.

Back in town, it was just as windy and raw, and there had been a big gathering of kids just outside our apartment on Odenplan, a group called Reclaim the City. I'm not altogether sure who they want to take it back from and who they then want to give it to, but they are supposedly against motor traffic, violence, racism and other bad things, but also apparently believe that windows need to be smashed in order to redistribute sporting goods to needy athletes. Which they did at Sergels Torg and not at Odenplan, for which I am thankful.

But really, why ever did I think that Stockholm was a laughably safe place to live? It seems that Odenplan is a magnet for the more, um, energetic Swedes in Stockholm.

The Swedish word for the day is kravaller . It means riots .

- by Francis S.

In the middle of grating ginger for dinner, I was startled by shouting out in the courtyard. I dried my hands and walked into the dining room and looked down. There, sitting with their backs against the wall, were some 30 young men in orange jackets, sweatshirts and t-shirts, along with some 15 policemen pacing back and forth, occasionally brandishing a billyclub or asking one of the young men to stand up to be frisked.

I ran to the library to look outside to the front of the building, where traffic was stopped by a swarm of 30 policemen and several orange-shirted men being roughly escorted into two of the five police cars that were blocking the street.

Just as I was returning to the dining room windows, the phone rang.

"What's going on? I'm stuck in traffic on Odengatan and there are all these police outside your building!" a friend said, breathing hard into the phone.

I told her the hell if I knew, but that there were 30 guys in orange being held by the police in the courtyard. Wait, no, I told her, they've brought more guys in. It looks like about 50 guys.

An hour and a half later, after the last of the orange-shirted guys had been marched into a bus (where they would be brought to the edge of the suburbs out in the middle of nowhere and left to walk back into town, which would likely take a good hour, according to my friend the policeman), the drama was over.

It turns out the guys in the orange shirts were hooligans, although they were amazingly quiet for hooligans. At least that's as far as I could make out, there was nothing in the paper or on TV about it that I've seen, despite all the people taking photos. But someone told me they heard there'd been hooligans at St. Eriksplan, which isn't so far away.

What I want to know is, why did the police decide to herd them into our courtyard, huh?

The Swedish word for the day is lugn och ro. It means peace and quiet.

- by Francis S.

So a group of, uh, religious personalities (that's like TV personalities, except instead of being famous for being famous, they are famous for not only knowing God personally, but for letting the rest of us know what God thinks) have decided to boldly come out against gay marriage. They call themselves the "religious coalition for marriage," which I don't understand, because they are obviously not for but against marriage, except in certain cases.

Interestingly, one of the persons behind this is everyone's favorite Pennsylvania Republican Senator whose surname, curiously, is also the word for that frothy mixture of lubricant and fecal matter that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex.

All I can think is: Poor God. She must be awfully sick of having these smug bullies throwing her name around all the time for the most ludicrous of things.

The Swedish word for the day is arsle. It means asshole.

- by Francis S.

Authoress Marie Corelli, 19th century lipstick lesbian and the Gilded Age's answer to Dan Brown, once wrote: "Let me be mad...mad with the madness of Absinthe, the wildest, most luxurious madness in the world."

A., the TV producer and C., the fashion photographer arrived back from a week in Spain with a bottle of poisonous green absinthe for me and the husband.

Apparently, all that ranting about absinthe being a dangerous drink that will unhinge you is just a bunch of hooey.

How terribly disappointing.

The Swedish word for the day is sprit. It means alcohol or spirits.

- by Francis S.

It wasn't until we were out in the hallway getting our coats to leave the party that I realized that the person we were making small talk with and who'd called a cab for us was Anakin Skywalker's mother.

The force was with us as the cabbie made his way through Kungsholmen, Stora Essingen and back to Vasastan to leave us breathless and pleasantly tipsy outside our apartment at Odenplan.

The Swedish phrase for the day is Stjärnornas Krig. It means Star Wars.

- by Francis S.

As we sat in the dining room - me and the husband, A., the TV producer and C., the fashion photographer and a few others - guzzling wine and laughing and eating filet mignon, potato gratin and salad prepared by L., the chef, (the ultimate luxury is having someone come and fix a glorious meal for you), someone started telling the story of her recent amorous escapade with an electrician who came to work on her apartment and how put out she was when he just up and left as soon as his, uh, work was done.

The husband left the room and came back shortly, brandishing two pairs of handcuffs. "You should've used these to handcuff him to the bed, then he couldn't have left," he said. He had gotten them long ago for a photo shoot, he explained. "They're actually real!"

The dinner quickly degenerated into an orgy of handcuff jokes and storytelling and the men in the party rolling around on the dining room floor, trying desperately to slide their handcuffed hands from behind their backs, over their asses and their feet so that the cuffs were in front instead of in back.

Sadly, I couldn't even get my hands past my ass. In fact, my skinny husband was the only one who succeeded.

"Remember the one about when our friend the policeman as a joke handcuffed his wife the priest one morning before work and then couldn't find the key, and she nearly had to go to a meeting with her boss or the bishop or someone, with handcuffs on?" the husband said.

Oh, yeah, I remember that. That's my favorite handcuff story.

The Swedish word for the day is handklovar. It means, of course, handcuffs.

- by Francis S.

Time for the annual change to the biography column at the left.

The Swedish phrase for the day is tiden går. It means time passes.

- by Francis S.

As I sat in the dentist's chair at 8:15 this morning, the left side of my mouth not quite numb enough to prevent me from feeling the dentist's drill and nearly flying out of the chair and seriously injuring the dentist, but managing to restrain myself to a pathetic whimper, the kind you make when your mouth is full of dental instruments and your eyes are tearing, I thought to myself how interesting it is that torture seems to be all the rage on American TV these days, and how curious a mirror television is, held up to American culture.

Of course, by all the rage, I mean one episode of a TV show that we saw a couple of weeks ago: A character whose backstory is that of a former Iraqi military officer forced to torture a fellow Iraqi officer by his American captors, tortures another character in a situation in which TV viewers are nudged into thinking that the torture is probably a good thing under the circumstances.

Isn't TV wacky?

Anyway, it gets my conspiracy-theory juices flowing, making me wonder if the producers of "Lost" have been hanging out with Alberto Gonzales, the latest in a long line of nutcase- uh, I mean, outstanding Republican U.S. Attorneys General that would include John Ashcroft and Ed Meese (who famously said in the 1980s: "I don't know of any authoritative figures that there are hungry children. I've heard a lot of anecdotal stuff, but I haven't heard any authoritative figures...I think some people are going to soup kitchens voluntarily. I know we've had considerable information that people go to soup kitchens because the food is free and that that's easier than paying for it...I think that they have money.")

Actually, it doesn't really get me thinking conspiracies, it gets me thinking that there really is no excuse for torture. That's why they call it torture.

My mouth is still kind of sore.

The Swedish word for the day is häftapparat. It means stapler.

- by Francis S.

Woe is me.

Five days ago, they closed a Stockholm institution, the Lydmar Hotel. Kinda funky, definitely hip in its way, nice lunches, great for afternoon drinks, and we put up my family there when they came for our wedding.

According to the husband, the bank that owns the building wanted the space for offices, or something like that. Which is typical bank behavior, actually.

Why wasn't I notified?

The Swedish phrase for the day is vad trist. It means, more or less, how depressing.

- by Francis S.