Superstitions, New Year's and red underwear

In parts of Spain, there is a custom where people (this is a gender-free tradition in tune with modern precepts) wear red underpants on New Year’s Eve and then burn them on New Year’s Day for good luck in the year to come.



In other parts of Spain, they eat a dozen grapes as soon the clock strikes twelve. A well-placed joke immediately afterwards produces amusing results. A similar custom comes from Colombia. Burning "Mr. Old Year" is a New Year's tradition. The whole family takes part. Here, the celebration is more chauvinistic. The doll is a male and it’s stuffed with different things, sometimes with fireworks to heighten the excitement. Also, they put in objects representing sadness and failure (love letters to to an estranged lover, notices of employment termination, etc), objects that can bring sadness or bad memories. These things burn with the old year. The effigy is dressed in unwanted clothes from each member of the family. At midnight, the doll is lit. It becomes a symbol of burning the past and starting the new year on a new slate.

In some US states the new year is celebrated by eating black-eyed peas, often together with hog jowls or ham. The hog is considered lucky because it symbolizes prosperity. Cabbage is another "good luck" vegetable that is consumed on New Year's Day by many. Cabbage leaves are also considered a sign of prosperity, being representative of paper currency. In some countries, rice is a lucky food that is eaten on New Year's. In Sweden, pork and cabbage is a traditional Christmas repast, thus jumping the gun by a week.


New Year’s resolutions seem to be a world wide tradition. And breaking them the day after, too. But it’s not the resolution that’s important, but rather the making of it. It makes us feel good. We feel in control of our lives and our future. We have the power to direct our ambitions, our lusts, our desires, our cravings, our weaknesses and our prior failures.

The rest of the year

Superstition is something that seems to completely inundate our daily lives in the Western world. Playing on the state lottery, knocking on wood, crossing our fingers, feeling eerie during a late evening’s walk near a churchyard, throwing salt over our left shoulder (or is it the right?), visiting a ghost’s sumptuous residence in the local castle, checking out the latest horrorscope in this week’s women’s mag and of course our new year's resolutions. Why do we do it?

In tune with an increasing de-Christanisation (i.e. de-Catholisation) of our post-modern society, we are forced to replace the symbols, signs and rites of our spiritual heritage with shallow substitutes containing little real association with the living of our daily lives. And in concert with the various superstitions we surround ourselves with, we try to put them in some sort of semblance. According to a Harris Poll© in 2001, 89% believe in miracles, 68% in the devil, 69% in hell, 51% in ghosts, 31% in astrology and 27% in reincarnation. What we see is that about two-thirds of all adults believe in hell and the devil, but hardly anybody expects that they will go to hell themselves.

Well-educated and intellectually sharp and cutting-edge academicians see no rational risks in perusing the weekly – or for that matter, daily - horoscopes in their local tabloid or women’s magazine. Why it is mainly women who lend themselves to this transcendental gobbledygook is one of the great mysteries of our gender-free oriented society.




Historical background

Belief in spirits was (and is) a natural result of a politically-oriented Church organisation. Ghosts were the visually disembodied souls of a dead person, i.e. former mortals in Purgatory, striving for a last chance for Paradise. With the coming of the Reformation, spirits, ghosts and saints, able to intervene in our daily and mundane lives, were discouraged. Even folklore, with its elves, pixies and gremlins were banned, officially relegated to the quagmire of pontifical ostentation.

But with the advent of Romanticism in literature, music and art, ghosts became – once again – up to standard, and the Church had to adapt. Gothic cathedrals were built, folklore was tolerated and areligious ghosts entered the realm of high culture. People had a need for quasi-spiritual answers to the deeply and genuinely spiritual questions of life.

With the modern era, and the decline of institutionalized religion, the need for pseudo-spirituality has grown and become satisfied by more innovative and anti-intellectual solutions: New Age, holistic medicine, astrology, scientology, magnetic healing and suicidal sects where Jim Jones’ People’s Temple is perhaps the foremost example.



What it boils down to is this: man has always had a need for spirituality, for answers to the unsolved questions of our existence. At times, this need is channeled via an established religious organisation, denomination or institution and thusly (ad)ministered therewithal. In other situations and times, this need is met by means of self-administered panaceas such as the weekly horoscopes in the popular press.

But why do we need this, century after century? And how did a fully dressed effigy get relegated to a simple pair of crimson thongs? It will have to be a subject for a later blog entry, I suppose.

Swedish exoticism - stable style

One of the Swedish festival days that you can't miss, no matter where you are in Sweden is Lucia Day. The festival of Lucia begins early in the morning on the thirteenth of December and marks the first celebration at Christmastide. Everywhere you go, there will be some sort of Lucia celebration - at home, at workplaces, in schools, in churches, in hospitals, in day care centers, on Swedish excursion boats, on SAS flights and probably even in prisons. Lucia is the feminine holiday par excellence - no holds barred.




Early in the morning, before daylight, young girls will get up, put on a white robe, (you can buy them everywhere ahead of time) don a crown of lit candles and in procession with other females in the household, sing the Lucia song as they wake up the man of the house with song and special buns of the day, called Lucia cats.



The tradition of Lucia goes back to the fourth century and the legend of Saint Lucia, a devout Christian. A heathen prince fell in love with her and to prove the strength of her faith she put out her eyes. Her prince was so moved, that he too became a Christian, and Lucia miraculously regained her sight. Saint Lucia became the patron saint of the blind and is depicted carrying light.

Prior to the Nobel Prize festivities in Stockholm, all recipients are awakened in their hotel rooms by a procession of young maidens, Lucia with a crown of candles and her attendants. In large processions, young boys play a subservient role as "star boys", they too dressed in effiminate robes and high, dunce-like looking caps, adorned with golden stars. They usually live through it.

As for all important festivals, there are appropriate songs that are sung. Most of them hail the virtues of Lucia, but one of them, markedly departing from the genderized tones of the festival day, relates the story of Staffan, a stableboy and his five horses under the glistening light of the Christmas sky. This is when the boys to the rear of the procession can sing a few lines by themselves, often with a certain degree of pubertal discomfiture.

Mounted Lucias (don't laugh)



Every stable or riding school in Sweden worth its salt has some sort of Lucia celebration. Some only decorate their stalls with tinsel and lights, others go the whole hog. Like we did. About a hundred people attended our Lucia day at the stable and it was a great success. The Lucia procession itself was on horseback. Since I'm the wrong gender for this kind of thing, Castor and I were starboys. I tried to put a cone-cap on his head, but being a sensible horse and proud of his manlihood, he blatantly refused, sticking his nose high in the air. So I had to wear it instead, until it fell off and my red stocking cap had to do.

We were about 16 horses in the procession. First came Lucia, of course, with battery powered candles in her crown (can't be burning down the manège, you know) We followed after her, and I and Castor were to the rear, being the least dainty equipage of us all. If you've been reading this blog you know that Castor is an impressive horse, not the kind to steal the show from a petite, white-clad maiden bearing light and good tidings to all.

We followed her all in procession and I must say that Castor behaved himself admirably, especially seeing that his nose was stuck right behind his stallmate's tail which was adorned in loads of bright, glistening glitter, entwined there for the occasion.

We rode in, dispersed ourselves in a V-formation and stood completely (well almost) still while we all sang the Lucia hymn. Then we proceeded out, much to the relief of Castor and his friends.



There was a great show: horse-borne angels, Christmas duet sung from the balcony, fancy tricks and galloping Shetland ponies, dressed to the hilt.

All in all, a successful Lucia celebration, in a proper Swedish tradition.

You foreigners don't know what you're missing.

White man's burden ?

Red and yellow, black and white, all are precious in His sight...

As we all grew up, most of us, in some way or other, wanted to make the world better. As young children, all we could do with our limited resources was to sing songs (Jesus Loves the Little Children) or contribute a portion of our allowance to some church fund or school charity or maybe save it for a later moral deposit. Don't know what it's like today, but back in the fifties and sixties, we had a cardboard box and we put in a nickel or dime or a few pennies now and then. Over the course of a year or two, the box got heavier and soon it had enough in it to leave back with a clear conscience.

If you grew up in a middle class, protestant neighborhood, making the world better was a matter of saving forlorn or lost souls, teaching people not as fortunate as you or I that there was a better way to happiness than to eke out a living by toiling on a plot of barren land the size of a normal American backyard. Living in the reasonably comfortable surroundings of a neighborhood with little crime and mothers who stayed at home to take care of the kids, there wasn't much an individual could do on his own. But then there were missionaries. They did it for us - vicariously. The missionaries were usually young couples in their thirties who stayed until they reached their fifties and sixties, had a baby or two in the meantime and got paid for teaching Christ to tribes of natives in darkest Africa. Every five years of so, they came back to the local community and told us heart-wrenching or praiseworthy stories of their experiences in teaching God's word to the heathen. After that, our little boxes got heavier much faster.

The missionary mentality is the same today, but it's not limited to Presbyterian propaganda or Episcopalian ecumenism. It has grown and expanded and become politically correct in a secular atmosphere. For purposes of money and power.




Lately, the thousandth American life was lost in the "freeing" of Iraq since the beginning of the American invasion/liberation (flip a coin for the correct choice). A large majority of Americans have been suckered into much the same kind of belief that I and my sisters and my friends back in the Midwest in the fifties were conned into.

Where is the agenda?

What they didn't tell us when we were children, was that there are other forces to be dealt with in life like money in the bank, nepotism, tribalism, greed, foreign investments, political influence, patterns of culture, lack of education and religious fanaticism. They didn't tell us that you could teach a tribe of lost souls in the heart of the Congo about Jesus but you couldn't teach them not to slaughter one another when they encroached on each other's privileges and cultural values.

The reason for this is simple. A pre-condition for making the world a better (democracy, freedom of choice, human values...) place to live in is dependent on knowing what you're doing in the first place. And to complicate the picture: if you've got a hidden agenda - and this includes self-delusions of religion, culture or democracy - you are doomed to fail.

I am thoroughly convinced that there are millions of Americans who honestly believe that we are engaged in a righteous war in Iraq, just as there were -and still are today - millions of Americans who continue to think that missionizing will make the world a better place for the needy peoples of the Third World. Preaching Christ and preaching Democracy are very much alike. But it you don't know who you are preaching to, your sermon will fall on deaf ears.

Now, I am still not convinced that purveying the message of democracy in both a theoretical and operative fashion is the one and only agenda for the powers to be in the United States. There is a lot at stake here. Political influence in the Middle East is vital to the economic interests of the Western World. But the fact remains. There are still many, many people who honestly believe that the most important item on the political agenda is a fostering of democratic values in a war-torn and devastated country. And this is, of course, an honorable stance to take.

But in order to effect a change in any culture - a Midwest farming community, an urban West Coast district, an Appalachian coal mining town, a Parisian or for that matter Swedish middle class set of attitudes or an extremely complicated and historically entrenched clash of subcultures in a country like Iraq that was formed with artificial boundaries, created at the whims of European colonialism, there must be a deep understanding of who you are dealing with. And this is not happening in Iraq, or for that matter in the pockets of cultural turbulence in the antiseptically architected slums of our cities and urban areas.

To be able to change the attitudes of anybody or anyone, you have to have done your homework. You have to know who you are speaking to and you have to respect their views and attitudes that are just as meaningful to them as yours are to you. If you can't do that then you will never be able to meet on even terms.

This is why we will fail in Iraq. One: our agenda is politically and economically dubious and Two: we are disrespectful of our counterpart. We are behaving like missionaries who teach small villages of thirsty and starving misfortunates to sing "Onward Christian Soldiers" by rote to the accompaniment of an acoustic guitar, when they cannot count or spell or make personal decisions in life based on a knowledge of the world around them. And giving them medicine to help them survive in a world of poverty is not enough.

What is the best course of action for Iraq?
	Take our troops home and do our homework.
	Keep doing what we are doing now.
	Send over more troops and spend more money.
	Become like ostriches and let our president make our moral and political decisions for us.
	I have no idea.

The zombification of downtown Minneapolis

I go back to Minneapolis about once a year. When I grew up there it was a town of about two hundred thousand people. Now there are about four. There were no slums, but the poorer people lived to the immediate north and south of downtown, mostly north. Minneapolis was a vibrant city of grain mills and small to medium size industries - with a lot of textile manufacturing. It sported two big train stations, just like other large cities in America - the Great Northern and the Milwaukee lines.

They're gone now. One is demolished and the other is an art gallery, I think. Most people lived in houses back then. As a young child I thought apartment buildings were strange. How can you live in a little cubicle next to total strangers and people running past your door day and night?

My sisters and I grew up in a middle class neighborhood. Not fancy, but clean. There was Miehl's grocery store on the corner of Bloomington and 47th Ave. Old man Miehl was proud of having employed Robert Oppenheimer as a grocery clerk once for a summer. Down the street was Max Sadoff's pharmacy where I got caught stealing a Playboy magazine when I was twelve and my hormones got the better of me. Across the street was Ted's barbershop where my dad got his hair cut every other week.

But downtown was alive! When the streetcars got pensioned off and replaced by buses, my mother and I used to wait across from Miehl's for the ride downtown. It took about twenty minutes and we got off outside Dayton's, a big, seven-story department store on Nicollet Avenue.

Right down the street was a giant Woolworths and Kresge's - two five and dimes that could thrive, despite the fact that they were only a block from each other. And there were at least three other big department stores nearby. The sidewalks were full of workers, shoppers and even a few asssorted bums here and there.




It was a big deal going downtown. I had to put on "proper" clothes. No jeans or sneakers. Downtown was where other people saw you with your mother.

How to zombify a city

When you make a zombie you dig up a fresh body and do a lot of wierd things to it. People think there's nothing wrong in the beginning, but then strange things start happening. The town was just fading away a little. Kresge's goes, because Woolworth's is making more money. Then Woolworth's re-opens in smaller quarters. The big banks that used to be on every other corner consolidate and the people who own the magnificient buildings that never, never can be replaced again think they're not making enough money anymore.

So over the space of about twenty years, Minneapolis got dug up and people did peculiar things to her. High steel structures with huge expanses of mirrors that reflect the clouds were erected and the banks moved back.




Dayton's became Marshall Field's and suburbia moved in.

Who knows which councilman came up with the bright idea? These were the zombie potions and needles that did the trick - skyways.

Skyways are sort of cool. You don't have to go outside in the rain or snow or sleet or wind. You just walk in your shirtsleeves from one building to another. This can be a good thing - in measure, but the the idea sort of caught on in the city council or maybe it was in the Minneapolis Downtown Businessmen's Association or maybe they were the same bunch of people. Over the next ten years the whole of downtown Minneapolis slowly lost its soul to a vast array of bridges above the streets.

Visit some of the suburbs of Minneapolis today and you'll see a thriving city. Visit downtown and you'll see a lot less. The bustling pedestrians, the cars, the buses, the taxis, the sounds of people talking and yelling and smell of fresh food when you open the door of the Forum - what used to be the largest automated cafeteria in the Midwest. It's all gone. Everything is cooped up, antiseptic like - and expensive.

People are there, but they're all sorted away in the innards of the buildings. You can see them from below as they walk above you, but you won't hear anything, either from them or from the absence of them on the streets.

And if you look really hard at the reflection of the clouds in the facade of the IDS Tower, you can see Mr Clean in the heavens, smiling down on his urban creation.

Can skyways be detrimental to social interaction?

Yes, definitely! No, they improve it! Well, sort of. This is horseshit.

Straight from the horse's mouth...

Thanksgiving

In trying to keep up with my American traditions, we had 15 guests for Thanskgiving dinner. Now making a proper dinner with all the trimmings isn't all that easy. First of all: turkey. You can't get a decent one here. This is what it sounded like (translated, of course) when I called up a large supplier of meats (also turkey farm) to place an order ahead of time:

"Hi, I'd like to order a large turkey for the 25th."
"Sure, how big"
"Well, I'm thinking of about 25 pounds."
"Can't do. Our largest is about 15 pounds"
"But you have a turkey farm. Can't I order a larger one?"
"Nope."
"OK, I'll have to settle for two of your largest ones. Can you make them hens?"
"Hens?"
"You know girl birds. I don't want a tom turkey."
"Can't do. We only sell toms"
"What do you do with the hens?"
"Well, they don't get as big as fast, so we use them in other products. And no one asks about the gender, anyway"

Then there's cranberries. Swedes live in an area of Europe surrounded by vast stretches of cranberries, but not in Sweden. Here it's lingonberries you get. Cranberries are for the enjoyment of the Finns, the Estonians, the Norwegians, the Russians, but not the Swedes. So if you're lucky, you can buy a small bag of Ocean Spray frozen cranberries for $10.00.

And pumpkin. Same thing. Sweden is a pumpkin-infested country, but there are none to be had by the time Thanksgiving comes around. And yes, the day is saved by Gray's American Store that sells cans for $5.00 each.

Sweet potatoes. Up until a few years ago, they didn't exist. Now they do in some stores. Most people don't know what to do with them. Ah, the cultural loss they endure.

Stuffing. Nowadays you can get celery in most stores. This is real progress.

So we had 15 people. I baked for two days. One of my turkeys didn't turn out the way it was supposed to do, so being a true American I called the Butterball hotline and a nice woman with a motherly sounding Betty Crocker voice gave me the help I needed.

The day was saved.

Worlds apart?

One thing I have become even more aware of via the corespondence I've had concerning topics in my own blog and in others, is that there seems to be a problem in the European understanding of America's cultural, historical and value-based conditions and Americans' understanding of those of Europe. I say more aware because this has always been something that, at least in Sweden, one is constantly being reminded of, almost to the point of being nagged at in absurdum by the mass media. What I am trying to say is that we both have a certain nebulosity to deal with. In Sweden, you have to look really, really hard to find a Bush supporter or someone who (publicly) aligns himself on the same political plane. And in the States I think you would also have to look a while to find someone who unreservedly would want to apply the Swedish social democratic way of governance to American culture. So in that way we are, indeed, worlds apart.

•••
In Sweden, Bush has been demonized, ever since he appeared on the international scene. There are reasons for this. I list a few in no particular order:

* Bush is a strong proponent of the death penalty

* Bush comes across (is presented?) media-wise as being inarticulate and of an uncompromising nature, sort of an "America, love it or leave it" cowboy.

* Bush thinks guns are OK

* Bush hasn't done much from an international viewpoint in order to improve global environmental conditions

* Bush, at least at face value, is in deep cahoots with big business


Now all of these things are disturbing to the European mind. What Europeans do not understand is the deeply ingrained attitude to personal and civil independence that is the first and foremost trademark of the typical American. Europe, because of its war-torn and feudal history, has perhaps come a bit further in the (pseudo?)politics of co-operation. You relinquish some personal independence for the good of the community. That it can also become a dangerous weapon for politcal power can be demonstrated daily in both Sweden and other European countries where a political nomenklatura fostered in the correct ideloogy, can legislate in detail our long and ardous way from cradle to crypt.

Politicians will always talk. Kerry has talked, quite a lot, I presume. Bush talks, though not as much. It is an attractive situation where you deal with a politican who seems to do things and does more than talk. Here I firmly agreee that Bush is the better man. Bush does act. But he is, and I think all would agree with me, in a better position to do so than someone who is still an aspirant. Politicians at the UN have even more wind. They are grand masters at talking, and I agree with Kat and those others who have commented, that it often comes across as a pretty lame organisation. Now here is also where Sweden and the US have different approaches. Swedes are used to being talked to from above, so an organisation that talks a lot is, well, pretty good. Swedes say: "We have nothing else that is better." "The purpose and premises of the UN are just and right." Americans, on the other hand, perhaps see more clearly from a "put up or shut up" point of view.

The UN is toothless. And we all know that if you don't have any teeth, your daily fare is pretty bland. Now the big question is: Can the world community do something about it?

What Bush had attached to his back was his wireless DYMO

Now much of this discussion is about labels. Labels are neat things. You just pull off the protective piece of film and stick away! What is even neater is that you can push a few buttons on your labelwriter and create a new message with the same medium! I think Sweden has a DYMO-government - much more than the US, but if you look closely, even American politicans have something stuck up their sleeve. A politician who is politically incorrect, who says things that most people don't want to hear, isn't around for long.

Morals and religion are important

I may have been insuccint or insufficent in my previous blog. I also firmly think that all of our decisions and conclusions in life are related to our moral, religious and ethical framework, both privately and societaly. The problem is is that this can be stretched to the extremes. Invoking Allah when murdering innocent children by means of a bomb strapped to your chest, invoking God when dropping a bomb, however "surgical" it may be, or invoking some inflated politically correct ideology when turning away the needy from your nation's doorstep. Where is the unobscured "middle ground"?? It takes a lot of imbecilic chutzpah to think that any of us can be a spokesperson for the Divine. Who are we to know the will of God?

What is it that really guides us?

Cultural succulence

Sunday afternoons are the high point of the week. A few blocks from home is a place you'd never find if you didn't know where it was. Down the steep steps into a large cellar array of rooms is the Forum. And every Sunday is a reading of about 2-3 chapters from Proust's Remembrance of Things Past.

Well down the steps you enter a large room, unfurnished except for a counter where you pay for tickets, wine, coffee and selected books. Plus a few chairs to sit on.

Suppose you might call it a soirée, though not in the evening. The performances have been going on for several years and we're well into the third book now and that gives us a few more years to look forward to.

At three o'clock we all wander into an even larger cellar room, whitewashed stone walls and fitted with video camera, lighting and sound equipment, a grand piano, a small stage, dozens of plastic chairs and in the front, a small table and chair. On the table are a glass of water and Proust's book.

It starts by a short performance, always by an excellent, sometimes unknown, musician. Today a pianist played 3 études for the piano by Debussy. The stage is already set and the reader of the day - oftentimes an actor or author - then reads three or four chapters from Proust's novel.

For those of you who haven't read Proust, the novel is about people, places, ambitions and emulations in upper-class France in the late nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century. It is a novel that takes time. It is about the small intricacies and nothings of high-class society, with small intrigues, great ambitions and nebulous outcomes. Much of it is extremely funny in the sense of recognizing the successes and ill-successes of people who are transparently portrayed as flesh and blood. The result is both interesting, entertaining and subtly thought provoking.

You long for the next reading to come.

Taken for granted

Mulled a while today, on the way back from the stable, over the phrase "taken for granted". I don't know why this popped up in my head. It could have been from some song or some allusion to a song or - whatever. The phrase sums up in three short words the problems of Sweden (where I happen to live) and probably most of the western world. If something is granted, then it is given to us - presumably from God, the State, our employer or anyone else in authority.

Taken for granted is a distrubing phrase.

There are numerous things we take for granted. Below a short list:

* Lunch
* Busses
* Gas
* Music
* Sick leave
* Looking at TV
* Education
* Salaries
* Religion
* Sex
* Freedom of expression
* Being able to read books

In Sweden, the whole welfare state is based on the phrase quoted above. There are many people who expect a certain lifestyle. When it doesn't happen, they cheat. Call in sick when they're healthy, take time off for child care and work full time. Get "burned out" when life gets boring.

This is distressing. Nothing is free. Everything has a price. Someone has to pay. Someone has to "grant".

There is nothing that is free in life. It all has to be earned. Even the pleasure of listening to the rustling of leaves on a forest path when you're taking a ride on horseback or walking with a friend. We earn it by being aware of it and accepting it as a gift. The giving demands a sense of appreciation - and responsibility. When it is not there, when daylight or getting the morning newspaper or getting a train in the morning or feeling close to someone or being able to be alone or being able to be with friends is taken for granted, then it is wrong.

There's no such thing as a free lunch.

And God said, Let there be Bush: and there was Bush.

If God is a Republican, could Jesus be a closet Democrat?

Europe is aghast at the way Bush won the election. Morals? Religion? In Sweden, probably the most religion-alienated society in Europe, people just don't understand. What about economics, environment, jobs, not to mention education and health care. "What went wrong," they say. "Are Americans stupid?"

Not. And certainly not more than voters in Sweden or any other democratic country. Politicians say what people want to hear. In Sweden, people want to hear gobbledygook about cultural integration. In America they want to hear gobbledygook about God.

One contributing reason for this, I think, is the heavyweight influence churches and other religious denominations have on social (read: family) life ín the US. Most of the adult middle class population have grown up in an environment where a good portion of what they did with their free time was and is related to some sort of church activity. Scouts, sunday school, all-you-can-eat church dinners, cookie bake-offs, choir practice, camp, youth groups, senior citizen groups, day care help for young mothers, church-sanctioned Halloween parties, Christmas peagants, Purim pageants, and who knows, maybe even end-of-Ramadan feasting.

The church (and in this sense mostly Protestantism as far as the US is concerned), plays a leading role in the lives of millions of Americans, whether they realize it or not. If you're not a church-goer yourself, then your neighbor is. And his neighbor and neighbor's neighbor.

What doesn't rhyme with the ditty here is the fact that of all modern societies, the United States is the most officially committed to a strict separation of Chruch and State. Officially. Unfortunately, what is happening is that the moral/religious movements of today are encroaching on the boundaries of that very civilized and well-thought through tenet of the Constitution. Read recently in FoxNews on the Internet that a school board in Grantsburg, Wisconsin has demanded of its teachers that creationism be placed on par with evolution.

Why then, this upswing in interest in moral values and religion?

The basis for the upswing is the very institution of the church. It represents stability and security for millions of Americans (not counting a few thousand confessionally-molested boys), and perhaps even more so to those born soon after the war in an up and coming and economically strong country, that is to say even the generation of leading politicians today. Now connect this to Bush's war on terror, where American society is quickly becoming one of mass suspicion and where laws are factory-legislated to promote this "public awareness". What you get, of course, is an even stronger focus on that which is supposed to give you and me a stronger sense of meaning and purpose in life. And both meaning and purpose have been commercialized, institutionalized, merged, tax-rebated, nationally broadcasted and invested in.

Bush is one smart cookie.

Horseshit (Lesson # 1)

Castor is a castorastrophe when it comes to keeping himself and his surroundings clean. It seems like all the other horses in the stable shit in one corner, creating a prudish-like pile of manure in one spot, making their owners proud and much less onset than I am by manual labor when arriving at the stable. But not Castor. Castor is a hulk beyond compare. When you get there, late in the afternoon, tired and not really motivated to shovel manure, you are met by a indescribable mess of straw and you know what. It is amazing what 1500 pounds of eqine puberty can amass in one night, and in so many places.

Now I don't know if you know what mucking out entails. First, you get a pitchfork and a broom (large). Then you start sifting the dry straw from wet, placing the re-usable straw in one corner and throwing out the used. You go methodically through the box (about 16X14 feet) until everything's sorted out. Then you take a hike around the stable to the barn (in pitch-black darkness, of course) and pick out a couple of bales of straw, trip of course over some large iron farm-tool and then go back with the straw to the stable, untie the bale and strew the straw (possible name for a hard rock band) in the clean box.

Then Castor comes in, turns around a couple of times, messing up your work and then proceeds to pee about 10 quarts of urine all over the fresh straw.

That's what it's all about. Fun, huh?

Cryonics, that's the rub!

Now I finally realize why Kerry lost. It's his hair. The man looks like an (albeit intelligent) dork, frozen in action in 1972 and then thawed out in 2004 to run for President. No wonder Bush won. What we need is an Arnold in Sweden, too. But with brains. People say that looks don't count. Hogwash. Of course they do. Just ask Stefan Persson at Hennes and Mauritz.



So we're stuck with Bush. Let's make the best of it, OK?

Election Day

Today's the big, scary day. When 50 percent of Americans turn out to vote for one of two men who say more or less the same thing and are just as rich. Not much of a choice. But 50 percent? And 50 percent of those 50 percent are going to make the decision for you and me.

Let me put my two cents worth in: Kerrrrry, Kerrrrry, Kerrrrry!

Dentist

Today Castor had a dentist appointment. Let me tell you how this works. First, you stand in the box to hold the horse calm for the treatment. Then, the dentist fixes a brace over the muzzle of the horse, picks up a gigantic rasp (handyman style XXL) out of a bucket of disinfected water, sticks his hand and lower arm in the horse's mouth and starts filing away. After this rasping session, he then puts his hand in again, checks that the teeth are smooth and then picks out old pieces of munched hay that get stuck like Juicy Fruit between the teeth and the back cavity of the mouth.



Avanti, a wise old gelding in the box near Castor, had a tooth pulled. More or less the same procedure.

Castor has a good dentist. He charges more than mine does.

Hard work and Caetano Veloso

As advertised, we took the trip back. It's always a bore. You sit scrunched between 176 other people and there is a law that says that you always end up either right next to the smelly john at the back of the plane or right in front of a corpulent lady who is making the last leg of trip from Australia, who of course hasn't washed her feet in the meantime, and who feels an incontrollable urge to remove her shoes, whereupon she places her feet on the arm rest about 8 inches from your nose. Attempts to nudge her foot (o-o-o-h-h-h-) with your elbow is like punching a stone.

Anyway, you get there. You don't bend down and kiss the tarmac after getting off the plane, but it sure feels good. Everytime.

Minneapolis

Back here to help move Flora from her apartment to assisted living (= euphemism). Lots of hard work. Like what to do in three days time with a large oak porcelain cabinet worth gobs of money and which no one wants. Finally a charity took it for placement in immigrant homes. Much better than selling it to some old busybody in the apartment complex for a pittance.

For some strange reason, food doesn't taste quite as good this time around. Yoghurt is creamier and of course there are English muffins, not to speak of Rocky Road, Oreos, Grape Nuts, creamed squash, pecan pie. I take it back. No, not as far as the coffee is concerned. How a vibrant society can imbibe such dishwater, I'll never be able to figure out.

Sis was here too. She's a lawyer from down south now. I tell her it's amusing having a redneck in the family and she's not amused.

New York

First night here we met Gabe and his girlfriend, Carmen, and went to a fantastic concert with Caetano Veloso, whom I am ashamed to say I had never heard of (Sorry, all of you 50 million Brazilians out there). What presence, what talent, what stamina. We soon got three records by him and I now have them tucked away in my MP3-player.

Rest of the time was spent visiting, eating out. Damn, New York is expensive! Went to the Metropolitan Museum one day and saw some mummies.

We stayed in the International House - which is where Gabe and Carmen stay while they're studying film directing and photography. Cool place, not at all like you would find in Sweden where everything has to be modern, antiseptic and square. This building was built in the twenties (?) and is enormous, run down and cosy. Complete with a gym, study rooms, dining hall, lecture halls, apartments and divers cockroaches. No problem. The I-House has an official exterminator. Memories go back to my own younger years and the kind of cute sound they used to make when you shook the box of cornflakes. I never had an exterminator to call.

Big trip

Going back for a well-needed vacation. It's always a big trip. Even though nowadays it only takes 5-6 hours in the air, the time spent in airports, changing planes etc makes it twice as long. Not to mention the sometimes arrogant welcome you get from US immigration. They should take a charm course.

If people in the States only knew the bad reputation the US is getting abroad by making the so called war on terror an excuse for infringing on the constitutional rights of American citizens - and making foreigners feel unwelcome. It's political correctness in Texan atire.

The upcoming election is supposed to be the most important ever. Can someone tell me why, in the 21st century, that citizens in the United States still have to "register" to vote? How many less than middle class citizens are motivated by the bureaucracy involved? And why oh why is the current election concerned with who-cares-about subjects like which politician did what 30 years ago? In case people haven't noticed, we all change and mature...

I'm still vehemently proud to be an American. I just wish the crappy sides of my country and its politics were a little less protusive sometimes.

It's cold up here

This country (Sweden) is wierd. Last week it was +15 degrees Celsius and today when I left the stable it was -2. Oh, how I long for decent climate like in Nashville or in Minneapolis or in the Hague. But the chill has an envigorating effect - like eating ice cream too quickly. First it hurts, then it hurts more. Then it feels so good that it stopped hurting and you get used to it. That's what it's like when you get into the manege and start jumping at sub-zero temperatures. By the way, horses love cold weather. It's like shifting gears and initiating a turbo you didn't know was installed.

Gabriel, my son, is a new citizen in New York and enjoying his surroundings despite the cockroaches in his cornflakes. What worries him though is the company of exchange students in his school from various un-cool countries in Asia Minor, students who are so enthralled by the sense of capitalistic freedom that they endager the lives of themselves and others by climbing up lamp posts at 2 AM in the company of their fellow students screaming "I love America, ha ha ha" and shadow boxing with big, tall and unfunny strangers on the street, deep in heart of Harlem.

Being un-cool in an American city is not good.

Back in the saddle again

Did a good series of hurdles this evening! Your whole body feels like you've really done something worthwhile. Castor was in fine shape, and as always, with enough energy for 4 horses...

I really think that never learning to jump is paramount to missing out on a colossal part of life. No matter how you feel ahead of time - crummy, tired, overworked, lazy, etc, etc, life is at the top when you're finished - even if you sometimes don't do a good job of it. It's carrying it through that gives you the kick.

I'm typing and eating a piece of my fresh sourdough bread. Now that's something else most people have missed out on. Pity.

Life is good.

Sunday bike ride

Foot-loose and fancy-free. well, not really. Took a bike ride in the cemetery. Cold and rainy, but nice anyway. C is studying Italian and I've got a batch of sourdough bread rising - 3 gorgeous loaves. Wonderful to hold when they're warm. Like big breasts.



 

Castor in the field

Castor in the Field 

Still going strong

After a somewhat serious concussion from an unfortunate and unnecessary jumping incident I'm back in the saddle again. It's all part of the game. Ah, the smell of horse manure and the sound of satisfied geldings and mares when they realize that the oats are on the way.. It is music that a serious composer - or for that matter a fledgling and aspiring film director should do something about. Try to put into harmonic form the grunts, whinnies and shriks that fill the air in the stable at feeding time.

Or put the drama of it all into an art film.

Now why don't I know someone that could do that? And if I did, would he DARE?