tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31010232024-03-29T12:02:51.781+01:00How to learn Swedish in 1000 difficult lessonsby Francis StrandFrancis S.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15986770311214994440noreply@blogger.comBlogger1002125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3101023.post-17119973354448743752011-10-15T10:06:00.004+02:002011-10-15T10:19:40.904+02:00Nearly a year has gone by since I've written anything here. Real life seems to have taken over, any new lessons to add to the more than a thousand already here left undocumented. Maybe it's because the Swedish language has at last become truly embedded in my life, I've conquered it about as much as I'm going to - I still hear myself make mistakes, I have my pat expressions I use over and over, and my accent is still far from perfect (for some strange reason when I speak Swedish, people invariably think that I'm a Brit, what's that all about?), but Swedish pretty much pours out of my mouth effortlessly. Has that made it harder to blog? Or is it that I feel like I'm repeating myself, I have nothing new to say after 1,004 posts? Is it that at heart I'm a lazy bastard? Or that I want to put my energies into a real book?<br /><br />At any rate, I'm not ready to throw in the towel, despite a year of not blogging here. I've gotten too much out of it - great friends, even my current job - to quit just yet.<br /><br />The question is: How do I get the motivation back?<br /><br />(Apologies for the metablogging. I hate metablogging, mostly).<br /><br />The Swedish word for the day is <font color=red>lektioner</font color>. It means <i>lessons.</i>Francis S.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15986770311214994440noreply@blogger.com252tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3101023.post-65707396138993834872010-10-18T23:00:00.002+02:002010-10-18T23:24:57.385+02:00They poured themselves through the door at 6:30, bearing gin and vermouth and game. "He was such a bore," M. the cameraman said. "But he's dead now." It was A. the TV producer and her boyfriend, come early to prepare the main course: wild boar. <br /><br />Ha ha, I said.<br /><br />The guests - best friends of M., mostly TV people and a guy with a sock company - were due at 8:00, so there wasn't a minute to spare. And of course I'd done my bit much earlier - American apple pie (as opposed to Swedish apple pie, which just goes to show you that apple pie isn't particularly American at all, really. It was probably the French who invented it) and homemade cinnamon ice cream. So we had to sear big chunks of boar, and chop carrots and onions and parsnips, and pour cans and cans of tomatoes, and add red wine and sage and rosemary and cep mushrooms. The kitchen was, briefly, a hurricane, and all that boar-searing generated a lot of smoke so we had to open wide the window in the kitchen and open the balcony door in the living room. But it all turned out in the end.<br /><br />Everyone arrived more or less eight-ish, and they were duly impressed by the apartment, and they drank martinis and yakked it up, and then sat obediently to dinner (all except the baby, who slept in his baby carriage in the spare bedroom). They ate the boar and the pie, and a few of them showed off their tattoos (strange collections of tiny drawings - half-hearts, pirates and parrots, a tiny bottle). Then the guy who is supposedly the best video editor in all of Stockholm and who has a thing for calves (not the animal, the body part) examined all of our legs. Apparently, for a calf-fetishist, long and muscular is the thing. Mine are pleasingly long, but he claimed he'd never seen such an unmuscular calf. For which I felt duly insulted. Unmuscular indeed. I should have stuck my heel up and pressed on my toe. But then, he really only likes women's calves anyway.<br /><br />They left at 2 a.m. or so, leaving us with dirty dishes and probably a good 5 pounds worth of wild boar stew.<br /><br />Good thing it tastes better warmed over.<br /><br />The Swedish word for the day is <font color=red>vildsvin</font color>, which of course means <i>wild boar</i>.Francis S.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15986770311214994440noreply@blogger.com179tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3101023.post-43295123042180609682010-10-15T00:58:00.003+02:002010-10-15T01:00:56.453+02:00Quick plug for the new project: queercult interviews Linas Alsenas, author of Gay America: The Struggle for Equality. He says he wouldn't mind meeting Emma Goldman, Walt Whitman, Oscar Wilde... and Larry Kramer and Ellen DeGeneres. I think he's got a chance with the last two. Check it out <a href="http://queercult.com/2010/10/14/im-interview-with-linas-alsenas/">here</a>.<br /><br />The Swedish word for the day is <font color=red>författare</font color>. It means <em>author</em>.Francis S.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15986770311214994440noreply@blogger.com89tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3101023.post-33915173289730483762010-09-30T22:48:00.003+02:002010-09-30T22:51:54.274+02:00I've contemplated giving this up, since I've reached the thousand mark. But despite my barely posting once a month, I can't quite do it. Which hasn't stopped me from starting up something new: <a href="http://www.queercult.com">queercult</a>. It's all about pre-Stonewall gay esoterica. Check it out and let me know what you think. It's just the beginning...<br /><br />The Swedish word for the day is <font color=red>projekt</font color>. It means <em>project</em>, of course.Francis S.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15986770311214994440noreply@blogger.com64tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3101023.post-83244399339319650752010-08-29T10:56:00.004+02:002010-09-30T22:48:24.125+02:00We spent the day - an idyllic late-August day, late-August being unabashedly full-on autumn here in Stockholm - wandering around the south island of the city, almost aimlessly. We ran into a range of random friends and acquaintances, making plans to meet up next week or in some nameless future. We ordered tile for the bathroom and bought an old LP at Pet Sounds, the cover a black and white photo of Ray Bourbon in full drag leering at a couple of sailors, circa 1950. We had Chinese food, and we went to see <span style="font-style:italic;">La Danse<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1500496/"></a></span>, which has been playing forever at the Grand. <br /><br />The thing was, though, that before the movie they showed a trailer for <span style="font-style:italic;"><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1071812/">Mao's Last Dancer</a></span> - another dance movie, so it was appropriate. Except the trailer left such a bad taste in my mouth. It made the movie seem as if it was all about how repressive and demanding China was in comparison to wonderful, glorious, free America. As if it were trying to capture an America that used to be, since we've lost our luster of late. It seemed so very nationalistic. Somehow so very tasteless, to be presenting America as a shining beacon of freedom, when it's so mired in partisanship right now that politicians would rather let the ship go down in flames than work together to actually try to work together to fix the mess they've made.<br /><br />At least the actual movie was good - in usual <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Wiseman">Frederick Wiseman</a> style, the narrative is oblique and I can imagine many people might find it too aimless. But not us, we all marveled at what life is like at the Paris Opera Ballet.<br /><br />And that's what I'm thinking today, as I write this, my thousandth post.<br /><br />There, you've gotten your thousand difficult lessons! Now, how is your Swedish?<br /><br />The Swedish word for the day is <font color=red>inlägg</font color>. It means <em>post</em>.Francis S.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15986770311214994440noreply@blogger.com83tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3101023.post-86450870409913025582010-07-25T15:46:00.003+02:002010-08-04T18:03:28.705+02:00They stood at the elbow of the bus - you know the part I'm talking about, the part where the back end is joined to the front on those extra long buses, which are blue in the city. But out in the far suburbs, the extra-long buses are red like all the other buses. The husband and I were on our way back from his great niece's fifth birthday, sitting and sweating in the back and watching the two boys in the bus's elbow. <br /><br />They were somewhere between 20 and 24. The shorter one, with his wide smile and perfect white teeth, was in love with the taller one. Anyone could see it. The way he couldn't take his eyes away from the taller boy's face. The way he straightened the taller boy's collar. The way he kept moving his hand on the hand grip so that his fingers were touching the taller boy's fingers. It was all he could do not to hold onto the taller boy.<br /><br />I sat in my seat and smiled wistfully. I'm surrounded day in and day out by straight people who very visibly show they are in love. They don't have to think twice about it. But for a great big homo like me to show I'm in love becomes a huge statement. So I don't do it, and neither does anyone else in Sweden, not really. So to see my own life reflected in those two boys, it tugs at my heart, and I'm enraptured.<br /><br />Did you see those boys, I asked the husband as we got off the bus.<br /><br />"Yes," he said, smiling at me. "I think the one guy liked the other guy more. We're almost home, thank god."<br /><br />The Swedish phrase for the day is <font color=red>ett par</font>. It means <em>a couple</em>.Francis S.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15986770311214994440noreply@blogger.com36tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3101023.post-5540043421433686982010-06-03T11:05:00.001+02:002010-07-12T23:06:54.373+02:00Spring has been so late in arriving after the long hard winter. Not that I'm complaining really, I'm all for a long hard winter. It's how I grew up. But still, it felt a mite miraculous to drive out of the city, into rolling hills and past a long thin lake, and further, to the pop star's country house.<br /><br />Oh, the green - when the tree doctor came to look at the trees, he told us that the grass had grown six inches in a week - and the lilacs, as late as I've ever seen them, lining the country lane and making me think of my mother, who come spring always had a vase of lilacs on the kitchen table in an old jade-colored ceramic pitcher from the thirties.<br /><br />So the pop star drove her rider mower madly about the lawn, like a cowboy, like some vision out of the American suburbs I grew up in - the grass was more than a foot high. While I made rhubarb cream - which is just stewed rhubarb with a bit of sugar and a pinch of potato starch to thicken it - one of those beloved Swedish treats that you serve warm with milk poured over it, a reminder of how poor the country was until relatively recent (and how hard it is to grow anything up here in the far north - you get far enough north and there are no fruit trees, so strawberries, raspberries and rhubarb are about all you've got to work with.)<br /><br />Then we walked down the road, past the peculiar Scottish cows with their wooly hides and broad faces and curly horns, and turned down a path.<br /><br />"This is what I wanted to show you," said the pop star. "This tree is a thousand years old, the oldest one around. Can you believe it? It's beautiful!"<br /><br />Apparently everyone around knew about the thousand-year-old oak. (Just think, it was around when the Vikings were still rampaging, and Sweden was still a century away from official christianization.) A fairly large branch - as big as a tree itself - had fallen not so long ago, but otherwise it looked fairly healthy. The four of us - me, the husband, the pop star and the girl from L.A. - tried to reach around the tree, holding hands, but it was too big.<br /><br />"Look up," said the girl from L.A., gazing into the branches above us. "it is beautiful, really, really."<br /><br />The Swedish word for the day is <font color=red>ek</font color>. It means <i>oak</i>.Francis S.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15986770311214994440noreply@blogger.com22tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3101023.post-38281599917982730602010-05-29T18:20:00.000+02:002010-06-03T18:41:29.896+02:00Have you ever been to Monte Carlo? <br /><br />It's about what you'd imagine: yachts in the harbor, the Hotel de Paris with tourists snapping photos, not nearly enough cabs because everyone has a car and driver. <br /><br />We were there for a wedding, though - the sister of A. the TV producer - and we got the full treatment, since the bride and groom live with their daughter there, in that little principality where gamblers foot the government bills instead of citizens paying taxes. A wedding complete with Swedish parson (although the church was Anglican), champagne on a long jetty carpeted in white, a dinner of six courses including a cake that turned out to be macarons, macarons and more macarons, peonies and roses and lilies and freesia enough to cover a field in Holland. And dancing wildly into the wee hours, lesbian photographers who were a couple, both named Emilie, neither of whom really spoke English taking pictures that I will be most curious to see. <br /><br />Then there was the lunch the next day for everyone with gallons of rosé wine at beach a boat ride away from the harbor. And then dinner all over again, in a club with more champagne and fish and vodka and dancing wildly yet again, not realizing until later that that was no DJ playing cool covers, it was a real-live woman singing.<br /><br />(Did I mention the call girls in the club? Russians in one room, Brazilians in another. Didn't hear of any rent boys though. Oh, and then there were the awful names on the yachts: The One and Solid Gold. But really, what can one expect? The place is all about conspicuous consumption.)<br /><br />It was the most luxurious kind of exhaustion you can possibly imagine. And the best way to get to know the very strange place that Monte Carlo is.<br /><br />The Swedish word for the day is <font color=red>skumpa</font color>. It means <i>bubbly</i> - as in champagne.Francis S.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15986770311214994440noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3101023.post-47029378364228570122010-04-30T12:29:00.005+02:002010-05-01T13:35:05.695+02:00As I sat at my desk, writing blissfully away about iPad apps - or was it tips for getting into shape for the summer? - my phone rang.<br /><br />It was my friend the former punk rocker.<br /><br />"<a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=sarah+waters&x=0&y=0">Sarah Waters</a> was here and I hugged her and gave her a book!" she said breathlessly into the phone. "I feel like one of those crazy fans."<br /><br />It turns out that the author of one of my favorite books, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Fingersmith-Sarah-Waters/dp/1573229725/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1272713037&sr=8-3"><span style="font-style:italic;">Fingersmith</span></a>, was in town for a special reading at Kulturhuset, and the former punk rocker's daughter not only went, she managed to get a 45-minute private interview with Waters for her blog <a href="http://www.bookleaf.se">Bookleaf.se</a>. And of course she mentioned that she works at the<a href="http://www.sfbok.se/"> Science Fiction Book Shop</a> and that Waters should really check it out.<br /><br />So my friend the former punk rocker, who is one of the managers there, wasn't completely surprised to see Sarah Waters wander into the store. But she did lose her cool - but only in the best way, all gushing and full of admiration. <br /><br />"I'm a huge fan of yours," she told Sarah. "And I know you haven't read this and I think you'd like it, it's by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ajvide_Lindqvist">John Ajvide Lindqvist</a>, it's <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Let-Right-John-Ajvide-Lindqvist/dp/0312355297/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1272713408&sr=8-1-fkmr0"><span style="font-style:italic;">Let the Right One In</span></a>. It's a present from me because you've given me so much because I love all of your books."<br /><br />Sarah apparently is very kind and gracious and is completely unruffled by gushing fans.<br /><br />"And you're the one who turned me on to her, " the former punk rocker said to me. "So I just had to tell you!"<br /><br />I only wish that I had been there to gush, too. <br /><br />The Swedish phrase for the day is <font color=red>förtjust i</font color>, which means <i>to have a crush on</i>.Francis S.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15986770311214994440noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3101023.post-60230147438145575012010-03-29T23:41:00.000+02:002010-03-30T21:09:37.821+02:00And the ticker goes up a notch in the bio at the left. One more year to half a century.<br /><br />The Swedish word for the day is <font color=red>fyrtionio</font color>. It mean <i>forty-nine</i>.Francis S.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15986770311214994440noreply@blogger.com21tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3101023.post-87365317700383729202010-03-27T16:46:00.004+01:002010-03-27T20:19:21.958+01:00At last the ice has melted out by Skeppsholmen and Kastellholmen, the ducks and coots and swans swimming and diving. Quite different from three weeks ago, when we took one of the ships overnight to Åland with <a href="http://www.linasalsenas.blogspot.com/">the children's book author</a>, the sea captain and the <a href="http://www.antipodean-erica.blogspot.com/">Australians</a>. <br /><br />Because of the unusually cold winter, the Baltic was all iced over and we wanted to see what it looked like out on the open sea. Of course the day before we left, some 50 boats had gotten stuck fast in the ice. But the sea captain assured us that <span style="font-style:italic;">we</span> wouldn't get stuck.<br /><br />"The boat is too big," he said. "It's made for seas full of ice like that. Besides, they wouldn't let us go if we were going to get stuck."<br /><br />So on Friday afternoon, we boarded the boat with several hundred teenagers, bound for the island of Åland, which is all of 85 miles from Stockholm. <br /><br />We took a look at our cabins, which were actually kind of charming with their round portholes and all the wooden detailing. Then we walked around the boat, checking out the tiny little pool, the various restaurants and the casino (well, slot machines anyway), the nightclub and the bar, where we had drinks and watched the city lights disappearing behind us. <br /><br />We had dinner at about 8:30 or so, and about 9:15, as we were deciding whether or not to have dessert, an announcement came on the intercom telling us that due to recommendations from the authorities, we would not be going to Mariehamn in Åland for fear of getting stuck in the ice. The captain had set anchor and we would be spending the night where we were, returning to Stockholm the next afternoon.<br /><br />"What?" we said all together.<br /><br />You promised us we wouldn't get stuck, I said to the sea captain.<br /><br />"We aren't stuck!" he tried to claim.<br /><br />We were all terribly disappointed - and probably the only people on the whole boat who even cared since most people were there just for the cheap liquor. In fact, we were probably the only people who even noticed.<br /><br />The next morning, when we got up, the sun was nearly blinding on the ice, and even if it wasn't the open sea, it was spectacular and terribly arctic. <br /><br />As we looked out onto the snowy islands in the distance on either side, with people walking on the ice in between, I realized we were just outside Birds Island, where I've spent many a summer day. I could even see the very rocks where I sit every day at about 9:30 a.m., midway through my morning constitutional. In fact, if we'd wanted to, the husband and I could've actually gotten down off the boat and walked over the solid ice and spent the night there. If we'd wanted to.<br /><br />Dammit. There I was, no further out in the archipelago than I'd ever been.<br /><br />The Swedish word for the day is <font color=red>en förbannelse</font color>. It means <i>a curse</i>.Francis S.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15986770311214994440noreply@blogger.com22tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3101023.post-34810251085471986372010-02-18T21:40:00.002+01:002010-02-18T21:46:52.111+01:00I dreamt I was pregnant. About three months pregnant, and I could feel the little fetus in me, a hard little knot twirling around in my gut. It was so strange, but a good thing. And then suddenly it was gone.I think it was a dream in sympathy with a friend who just had a miscarriage.<br /><br />Or does it mean something else?<br /><br />Do other men ever dream they are pregnant? Men whose wives aren't pregnant, I mean, which I imagine is common... or is it?<br /><br />The Swedish word for the day is <font color=red>gravid</font color>. It means <i>pregnant</i>.Francis S.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15986770311214994440noreply@blogger.com43tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3101023.post-21143888851728531472010-02-06T18:04:00.003+01:002010-02-13T10:05:00.720+01:00We stood in line to get on the bus to take us out on the tarmac at the airport on Gran Canaria - the Canary Islands sound so exotic to us Americans, who rarely know that they are the southernmost outpost of the European Union (though geographically they're part of Africa, sitting 100 kilometers west of Morocco) and the only part of the EU with guaranteed January temperatures in the 70s (Fahrenheit) and an ocean warm enough to swim in. Gran Canaria is a tourist trap, but a glorious one - long and wide beaches with pale sand blown over from the Sahara mixed with black volcanic sand, rugged mountains, even an old colonial capital with a certain charm. I guess the Canary Islands are Europe's equivalent to Florida. (Strangely enough, in tacky Playa del Inglés where we were staying, there is a shopping mall with sleepy little souvenir shops during the day and something like 20 gay bars at night - drag shows and leather bars and discos and pubs where they played show tunes. WTF? Fun, though...)<br /><br />Anyway, we were standing in line, the husband, <a href="http://linasalsenas.blogspot.com/">the children's book author</a>, the sea captain and I, when a drunken bearded Swede started talking to the children's book author.<br /><br />"Where are you from?" he asked.<br /><br />"How long have you been in Sweden?" he asked.<br /><br />"What do you do for a living?" he asked.<br /><br />"Do you have a condom?" he asked. <br /><br />He told the children's book author he wanted to jerk off in the bathroom and didn't want to make a mess. He said he wanted to join the mile-high club. The children's book author didn't tell him that the mile-high club takes two - mere masturbation doesn't count towards membership.<br /><br />Then he told the children's book author that he was very drunk because he's terrified of flying, and his girlfriend would be furious because he did crazy things when he was drunk.<br /><br />"I have to pee really bad but I have VD so it really hurts," he told the children's book author.<br /><br />All this in two minutes as we waited for the bus to take us onto the tarmac and to the plane that would take us back to Stockholm.<br /><br />Once we got on the plane, the children's book author saw him go to the bathroom before we took off, and we tried not to think of him jerking off, or peeing painfully. A stewardess finally had to open the door to get him out, and the children's book author saw her brief look of disgust. "Don't use the bathroom on the left," he warned me.<br /><br />When we got back to Stockholm, there was a foot of snow on the ground and it was about 10 degrees Fahrenheit.<br /><br />"We should never go without a sunny and warm vacation in the winter ever again," the husband said to me.<br /><br />Home, snowy home.<br /><br />The Swedish word for the day is <font color=red>charterresa</font color>. It means <i>charter trip</i>.Francis S.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15986770311214994440noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3101023.post-53845920843620653732010-01-10T00:14:00.003+01:002010-01-18T23:32:40.841+01:00Christmas has been swept out the door at last: the smell of oranges, cloves, saffron buns and sage stuffing, of hyacinth, pine branches and cold winter air, the glitter of glass and metal-filagree ornaments, the guests and the wrapping paper and finally, the tree all rolled up in a sheet, just like the victim it is, hauled out and dumped into the little plaza outside the city library with a bunch of other trees in various states of needledom.<br /><br />It was the most yulish of Christmases in years: house guests for weeks, lots of dinners, lots of snow. Just the way I like it. And then we jaunted off to Oslo for a long weekend, where it was just as cold and snowy, and we hiked up and down icy hills all through the town, then had a glorious five-hour dinner fixed by a Frenchman and we danced in the new year, sweating and laughing in our fine clothes, swigging champagne until it was too much for me, and I had to go to sleep at 4:30, or was it 5:00?<br /><br />But taking a long promenade through Stockholm today, after we'd taken down the tree, in the 2:30 p.m. dusk, with all the lights glittering in the windows and people walking on the ice of Lake Mälaren off of Kungsholmen and parents pushing their children in sleds down snowy hills in parks and a lone ferry making its way through the ice out into Stockholm Harbor, I realized: I miss having real winters. It seems to never get very cold, and we're lucky to have a total of two weeks of snow from the end of November to the middle of April. Strange to think that we are so far north, and yet it's a far milder climate than in Chicago. The truth of it is, the snow and cold make me happy. <br /><br />So, how long will it last? <br /><br />We've had nearly a month of it already. More than our fair share, it seems.<br /><br />I'm keeping my cold fingers crossed.<br /><br />The Swedish word for the day is <font color=red>vintertid</font color>. It means <i>wintertime</i>.Francis S.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15986770311214994440noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3101023.post-67106005595763679072009-12-10T08:19:00.001+01:002009-12-22T09:43:19.381+01:00Are 21st century Americans the New Victorians? <br /><br />A culture inordinately influenced by a wacked view of Christianity that values censure over love, exclusion over generosity and generally is mostly concerned about extending its power to control people’s lives? Check.<br /><br />A squeamish prudery when it comes to the realities of sex? Check.<br /><br />A belief that the country is not only blest by, um, “God” – but the country has the God-given right and duty to exert control over the rest of the world? Check.<br /><br />A blind faith in the progress of business and industry – what’s good for business is good for the individual – yet science (read: evolution) is suspect? Check.<br /><br />“Victorian” has always been a pejorative adjective in my books. I learned that from my mother and father, I suppose: my grandparents, three of whom were born when Queen Victoria was still alive (only my father’s father was born after her death), all suffered one way or another due to the Victorian values that they carried with them until they died. To me, Victorian means self-righteous, smugly pious, inhibited and stifling.<br /><br />What brings this whole, well, facile comparison to mind is a recent reading of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A.S._Byatt">A.S. Byatt’s</a> curious <a href="http://www.powells.com/biblio/2-9780307272096-2"><em>The Children’s Book</em></a>, which puts a different spin on the original Victorians, (including a faddish adult love of children’s literature with one of the main characters a sort of less-successful 19th century J.K. Rowling I’d say). The book is all about Fabians and syndicalists, medievalists and suffragists, social reformers all. Victorian England wasn’t just a time of moral hypocrisy, it was a time of great upheaval. Which I suppose is true of our time as well. Although at this very moment, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/12/10/us/AP-US-Gay-Marriage-Schools.html">what’s</a> <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/03/nyregion/03marriage.html?scp=8&sq=new%20york%20gay%20marriage&st=cse">happening</a> in America regarding that issue closest to my heart, gay rights, makes me inclined to think that the moral hypocrites are winning. <br /><br />Feh.<br /><br />Will people look back a hundred years from now and think of us Americans the way I think of the 19th century English?<br /><br />The Swedish word for the day is <font color=red>förträngning</font color>. It means <em>repression</em>.Francis S.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15986770311214994440noreply@blogger.com23tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3101023.post-7316010498832079802009-11-16T08:01:00.000+01:002009-11-16T14:39:46.195+01:00If I lived close by, I would be a doting uncle. Or if I had lived close by when my nieces and nephews were little kids. Which most of them are not anymore. Take my <a href="http://de-braedbroadsabroad.blogspot.com/">oldest niece</a>, of whom I am inordinately proud (well, I'm proud of all of my nieces and nephews - the cleverest, funniest, handsomest, prettiest, kindest and strongest kids in the world). My oldest niece has always had a will of her own, even from the time I first met her when she was only six weeks old and without even crying, she exerted an iron control over both her parents. <br /><br />Anyway, instead of going to college when she turned 18, my niece decided to go to Bhopal, India for seven months, volunteering (inspired no doubt by my parents, who are the biggest do-gooders I know) with the community there that is still suffering the after-effects of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster">a terrible disaster </a>when a Union Carbide factory blew up. She's written about going inside the long-abandoned factory - <a href="http://de-braedbroadsabroad.blogspot.com/2009/10/definition-of-eerie.html">a disturbing tale </a>- and about the difficulty in getting proper compensation from Dow Chemical (which owns Union Carbide) for those in Bhopal still affected by the explosion. <br /><br />And now, my niece wants me to get the word out that this week in Stockholm you can learn more about how to help at the <a href="http://www.bhopalbus.com/">Bhopal Bus</a> (times and places at the link), a traveling informational exhibition manned by volunteers trying to raise awareness of the tragedy, which happened 25 years ago.<br /><br />So, this one's for you, my dear niece. May you succeed in making the world a better place.<br /><br />The Swedish word for the day is <font color=red>katastrof</font color>. It means <em>catastrophe</em>.Francis S.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15986770311214994440noreply@blogger.com23tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3101023.post-56957957731007697372009-10-17T17:15:00.001+02:002009-10-17T17:17:02.168+02:00I'm on youtube.<br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/2JXxT1v_c5o&hl=en&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/2JXxT1v_c5o&hl=en&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>Francis S.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15986770311214994440noreply@blogger.com29tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3101023.post-13202375186536270942009-10-11T10:25:00.002+02:002009-10-11T11:09:49.322+02:00While sitting on the train with the husband, a family got on and sat next to us, parents, teenaged stepson, and a toddler and a baby together in one of those unwieldy double strollers. I looked at the sleeping toddler's mittens: tiny, brightly colored, with a repeated design of skulls. How odd, I thought, that this <i>memento mori</i> has become such a popular pattern for the clothes of small children. <br /><br />Was it started with irony - dress your two-year-old in goth death metal biker style with a big old wink - or is it a distant reflection of our warlike times? Or did it just filter down, with little kids demanding to have the same things that the big kids have?<br /><br />More, I wonder if it gives parents pause to pull a wailing baby into a little green onesie patterned with skulls? I want to know if it feels odd to show off this squirming bundle of your genes and proof that life just goes on and on, with a nasty reminder that death gets us all in the end. I guess a hundred years ago and more, when the chances of making it to your third birthday were far slimmer than today, no one bothered with skull patterns since children were a reminder in and of themselves that death gets us all in the end.<br /><br />As for today, well, we're so removed from death these days that the image of a skull is really nothing more than a fashion statement. I would be surprised if any parents gave any of this a second thought. <br /><br />But it never fails to startle me.<br /><br />The Swedish word for the day is <font color=red>ben</font color>. It means <i>bone</i> or <i>bones</i> as well as <i>leg</i> or <i>legs</i>.Francis S.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15986770311214994440noreply@blogger.com24tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3101023.post-24540765567364722552009-10-10T12:40:00.003+02:002009-10-16T08:50:50.019+02:00We went to see <span style="font-style:italic;"><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1135503/">Julie & Julia</a></span> last night with the girl from LA and her boyfriend. The movie opened yesterday here up in the far north. As every person I've spoken to, every review I've read, says: Julia good; Julie, um, not so good. But the husband came back from the gym this morning and I caught him in the kitchen, making an omelet, Julia-style, shaking, shaking, shaking it in the pan.<br /><br />"It didn't really work" he said. "I did it wrong at the beginning so it stuck."<br /><br />Plus he put tabasco sauce on it, decidedly un-Julia.<br /><br />"It's good anyway," he said.<br /><br />The Swedish word for the day is <font color=red>omelett</font color>, which surprisingly means <i>omelet</i>. An interesting fact, however is that when Swedes want a smile for the camera, they say "omelet," which gives a decidedly more subtle and less radiator-grill-like result.Francis S.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15986770311214994440noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3101023.post-61910160701365661812009-10-02T07:57:00.004+02:002009-10-17T12:25:32.261+02:00How old is too old to be out dancing until 4 a.m.? <br /><br />I am proof in the flesh that 48 is not too old. And we are not talking wimpy dancing, either. I got all sweaty and soaked, in my t-shirt and green suspenders, shaking every part of my body hard and fast.<br /><br />We were just coming off of a dinner of saffron curry chicken and fried bread and homemade coconut ice cream with cardamom caramel sauce for dessert. Not so heavy going, despite the sound of it. The girl from L.A. had at last moved to Stockholm (well, not at last – she’d been here for a month but we were all absorbed in marrying off the children’s book author and the sea captain) so we were celebrating.<br /><br />“Welcome,” the husband toasted to her and her boyfriend, and all 11 of us raised our glasses. "Here's to the first of many dinners."<br /><br />Absolutely, I thought to myself. <br /><br />So we talked and ate, each group having its own conversations, discussing everything from Maira Kalman - the girl from L.A. went to a knitted hat party at her house! - to getting lost in the Ikea at Kungens Kurva, and the insanity that is shopping at Ikea on a Saturday, to the stripey goodness of her boyfriend's socks (I forced him to come and look at all our stripey socks in the newly refurbished dressing room at the back of the apartment.)<br /><br />Then, at about 12:30, we all put on our coats and trooped out to go to some club where the pop star was playing, except when we got there push had come to shove, shove, shove as we stood around listening to the tunes being spun, being so manhandled and elbowed by the crowd that our little group nearly imploded.<br /><br />"Someone pinched my ass," the boyfriend of the girl from L.A. said. <br /><br />"Was that you, Francis?" the children's book author said.<br /><br />I denied it.<br /><br />"Well, I wouldn't have minded if it was Francis, at least I know him," the boyfriend of the girl from L.A. said.<br /><br />Then some girl tried to pick him up. That is totally un-Swedish I said. I told him it must be his naturally curly hair that was attracting all the attention. Then we left for some new gay club that's opened up, near Norrlandsgatan. Push had not come to shove there, thank goodness. Push hadn't even come to push yet, although at least one of the dance floors was pleasantly packed. It was there that we ended the night.<br /><br />The Swedish phrase for the day is <font color=red>klockan fyra på morgonen</font color>. It means <i>four in the morning</i>.Francis S.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15986770311214994440noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3101023.post-23268784226695173922009-08-16T13:47:00.003+02:002009-08-16T14:23:50.567+02:00When we rushed into the liquor store down the street - Sweden's alcohol monopoly <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systembolaget">Systembolaget</a>, of course - I scoffed at the husband for buying six bottles of South African shiraz. Then when La Francaise, who is visiting from Oslo with her husband, the Belgian, insisted on paying for the bottles, I told her that's not fair to her since we'd never end up drinking all the bottles at the upcoming dinner. We're only seven, I reminded her. <br /><br />Silly me. <br /><br />We're all borderline alcoholics in this country, and I guess we needed all six bottles, plus one purchased the previous day, to wash down the turkey molé I made (the easy version, which only took three hours. I hate to imagine how much time and effort it takes to make the Mexican classic chili pepper and chocolate sauce that is authentic molé), rice and beans and fried plantains and avocado-with-fresh-corn salad. <br /><br />Somehow, towards the end of the meal, after the coffee and the homemade dulce de leche ice cream, the children's book author and La Francaise and I got onto the subject of song lyrics. The question was: What exactly <i>are</i> good song lyrics?<br /><br />"You know," said La Francaise, "It sounds really weird but sometimes I like Eminem. You know that song about his mother and cleaning out his closet? The lyrics are really good."<br /><br />The children's book author nodded. "I think "If I were a Boy." It's actually pretty deep when you think about it. Beyoncé. She's hot."<br /><br />I was smart enough not to actually do it, but I came dangerously close to saying that in the old days, lyrics were better.<br /><br />What about "Both Sides Now," I asked. Can you recite any of the lyrics to Beyoncé or Eminem? I think you should be able to recite good lyrics word for word, I said. And I proceeded: <i>Flows and flows of angel's hair, and ice cream castles in the air, and feather canyons everywhere...</i> <br /><br />I think I botched the lyrics about then, but neither La Francaise nor the children's book author noticed.<br /><br />"Sure, but that's folk music," the children's book author said. "It's all about the words and they're so sing-songy."<br /><br />Folk music? Joni Mitchell, a folk musician? I was aghast. But really, I couldn't accurately describe her music, other than to say that it was pop music when it came out at least, in the early 1970s.<br /><br />The children's book author wasn't buying it.<br /><br />"Folk," he said. "She's folk. You can't convince me."<br /><br />And really, I couldn't. <br /><br />Was it the bottle of wine I'd consumed?<br /><br />But I found myself wondering, what exactly is wrong with folk music anyway? Why do I bristle at someone describing Joni Mitchell that way? When did folk musician become such a horrible way to describe someone? When did <i>folk</i> become a dirty word?<br /><br />And the big question remained unanswered: How do you define good song lyrics?<br /><br />The Swedish phrase for the day is <font color=red>en flaska per person</font color>. It means <i>one bottle per person</i>.<br /><br />p.s. for Swedish readers and those wanting to test just how much Swedish they've actually learned here the hard way, <a href="http://www.gaybloggar.se/how-to-learn-swedish-in-1000-difficult-lessons">I've been interviewed briefly</a> by Micke for the gay blog aggregator site www.gaybloggar.se.Francis S.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15986770311214994440noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3101023.post-57855070077314705722009-07-20T12:15:00.002+02:002009-07-20T12:44:31.620+02:00I always consider myself to be in fair health, psychologically speaking. Just enough angst to not be terribly lazy. High in empathy, yet not altogether unselfish. A bit stodgy around the edges but basically fairly unrepressed. I credit it to having had a pretty easy life with little in the way of trauma, all things considered.<br /><br />And then I go on a binge and I realize: OCD is me. <br /><br />To whit my current, um, frozen dessert obsession. I contemplated buying an ice cream freezer for weeks before I finally stopped in at the nearby hardware store at lunch late last month. For dinner with C. the fashion photographer, I was determined to make rhubarb ice cream from a few stray stalks sitting in the refrigerator that needed to be used up before we went to New York.<br /><br />What I didn't reckon for was that the metal canister of the machine needed to sit in the freezer for 24 hours, rather than the six hours I had until dinner time. It ought to work anyway, I told myself. But when the manufacturer says 24 hours, it turns out they really do mean 24 hours. And so we had cold rhubarb soup for dessert - creamy and delicious, with a hint of cinnamon and a little tang of sour cream, but soup nonetheless.<br /><br />An inauspicious beginning, I thought, but it turned out not to be so. When we arrived in New York several days later, not only did my brother have an ice cream freezer, properly frozen, but I was able to find sour cherries in Manhattan to make sour cherry sorbet.<br /><br />Then there was the night I fixed the gingery chicken and scallion pancakes for everyone - all of us adults and kids alike sitting in my brother and sister-in-law's living room - and I made pink grapefruit sorbet for dessert, which seemed vaguely Thai-ish. (Is grapefruit and crab salad Thai, or Vietnamese?)<br /><br />Now I was on a scallion pancake and frozen dessert craze. Scallion pancakes with spicy cold melon soup and soba noodles, with fresh ginger ice cream for dessert, then scallion pancakes with soba noodles, with green tea ice cream for dessert, both rather delicate but, I have to admit, delicious. Oh, and at some point in there, for our friends visiting from Norway, I managed to make white nectarine sorbet, which comes out pale pink it turns out, and is best served right away to get the maximum flavor, rather than freezing it longer to make it harder.<br /><br />But the upshot, really, is that sometimes being OCD is a good thing, to be honest. No one is complaining yet, that's for sure.<br /><br />So, what should the next flavor be?<br /><br />The Swedish word for the day is <font color=red>glass</font color>, which means <i>ice cream</i> and shouldn't be confused with <font color=red>glas</font color>, which means <i>glass</i>, as in both the material and something you drink from.Francis S.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15986770311214994440noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3101023.post-88664191333892437462009-07-09T14:17:00.003+02:002009-07-09T15:35:00.631+02:00O great mystery that crowded, dirty and expensive Manhattan can feel at W. 89th Street between Broadway and West End Avenue at 7:30 a.m. on a weekday summer morning so new and full of promise. All those endless leafy blocks of brownstones leading to Central Park. The park itself a green rectangle battened down and secured in place at its edges by high rises with terraces and roofs copied from French chateaus or Greek temples or Egyptian monuments or Spanish cathedrals or Roman forums. Or roofs of simple solid geometry. <br /><br />I know I'm shamelessly romanticizing the place in my elitist way (easy to do as we never make it to any poorer neighborhoods), idly purchasing suspenders on the snootier end of Bleecker Street or strange white Japanese robot monkey things in Soho, or <a href="http://www.mayahuelny.com">drinking tequila cocktails</a> and talking a mile a minute with the divine <a href="http://www.lisakatherinelucas.blogspot.com">Lisa Lucas</a> in the East Village, or snarfing down delicious Chinese steamed buns filled with fatty caramelized pork at a jammed <a href="http://www.momofuku.com">Momofuku</a> (not to mention the short-cake-flavored ice cream) on a Tuesday night or wandering breezily around t<a href="http://www.metmuseum.org/Works_of_Art/the_cloisters">he Cloisters</a> with my dear sister and sister-in-law and niece and nephew while the husband with his Spanish blood notes: "Every other thing was stolen from Spain it looks like!" <br /><br />But really, living in New York is tight both in space and money, and in truth, full of the same drudgery as living anywhere else. <br /><br />So why does it seem so exciting, so much better than anywhere else?<br /><br />O great mystery that returning back from New York I somehow love Stockholm even more than when I left. Our apartment! So airy and grand and white and full of light as I sit reading on a sofa at 3:30 a.m. on account of the jetlag, the sun fully up and flooding the apartment. The streets! So rooted and charming on a human scale, never far from a glimpse of the water. The ethos! Circumspect rather than brazen with everything hanging out and in your face, elbows and tongues well-sharpened.<br /><br />Still. What I wouldn't give to have both New York and Stockholm.<br /><br />The Swedish phrase for the day is <font color=red>välkommen åter</font color>. It means, more or less, <i>come back soon</i>.Francis S.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15986770311214994440noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3101023.post-70463344089050841362009-06-18T23:50:00.003+02:002009-06-19T09:09:20.686+02:00The second pin of the two pins on which the Swedish year is wrapped - Christmas is the first - has arrived: Midsummer. Pagan holiday made half-Christian, it used to be tied to St. John's Day, which is June 24. Which would put it precisely six months after Christmas Eve, when Christmas is celebrated in Sweden. Very symmetrical, very orderly. Very Swedish.<br /><br />Tomorrow we're off for the weekend, going out to the archipelago to the country house of the children's book author and the sea captain. Bearing salmon and caviar torte, strawberry rhubarb pie and 20 tiny bottles of Norwegian schnappes.<br /><br />We almost always go to Birds Island for midsummer, to the country home of C. the fashion photographer and A. the TV producer. But after 14 years together, they are going their separate ways. <br /><br />Strange how someone else's separation can tear one apart.<br /><br />The holiday will be bittersweet, despite the strawberry rhubarb pie, even with whipped cream on the side.<br /><br />The Swedish word for the day is <font color=red>skilsmässa</font color>. It means <i>divorce</i>.Francis S.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15986770311214994440noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3101023.post-58785688239797594942009-06-08T08:12:00.001+02:002009-06-09T16:04:21.447+02:00We were late for lunch yesterday as the husband and I left the Matteus school where we had just cast our votes for seats in the EU parliament. On our way out, a tiny old woman - in her late 80s I would say - walked up on her way in to vote, leaning heavily on a cane. Three political workers stood in front of her, one each from the Green party, the People's party and the Moderates (I would describe the People's party as, um, maybe, populist and it is part of the center-right alliance currently ruling Sweden, which is headed by the Moderates). <br /><br />The old woman looked up, and barked out: "Pirate party?"<br /><br />The husband and I looked at each other. The Pirate party is a brand new entity. They are interested in one thing: free file sharing on the internet.<br /><br />"I guess she downloads a lot," the husband said, and we laughed.<br /><br />And so the Pirate party ended up winning one of the 17 seats that Sweden has in the EU Parliament.<br /><br />Oh, the power of the internets.<br /><br />The Swedish word for the day is <font color=red>val</font color>, which has been the word of the day before. It means <em>election</em>. (And as <a href="http://vatine.livejournal.com/368758.html">Vatine</a> has pointed out, also means <em>choice</em> as well as <em>whale</em>.)Francis S.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15986770311214994440noreply@blogger.com6