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!