Oct 26, 2014

Passing on valuable knowledge/saved by helping hands

It’s been poring down. The winds at gale force and gutsy. The last couple of days have been like a Seattle winter. And I can hear the sturdy wind chimes playing at my front porch, the one I bought down at Pioneer Square on my first stay in Seattle 21 years ago. It was on the very end of the stay, 22 $ we couldn’t afford, but yet couldn’t leave behind.
Entering the dark and cold season isn’t my cup of tea. The combination of closing the front door to keep the cold out for nine months / all the things that didn’t get done at my place this summer. Not this summer either. Doesn’t make me happy.
Saving the roof of the Big Barn. Lifting up the front of the wood shed/coach house. Painting the carport roof trusses. Fixing the leaking gutter. Burning the huge stack of twigs topped with discarded wooden furniture. Cleaning out the coach house which has become a black hole of recycling. What to do about the baker’s cottage, it looks like the ants are ruining our summer cabin? Taking care of all the windfall birches surrounding my house. To mention a few of the tiny things on my never ending to do list.
The art of focusing on the things that actually got done and can be (temporarily) crossed out from that list is, unfortunately, something I am not mastering very well. But I am remembering now how Trouble 2 made a heroic effort cleaning out the wood shed which had turned into a giant garbage storage, not to mention him carrying down most everything from the bakers cottage attic, which, among other things, is the extended family furniture storage. Hurray for Trouble 2, that was an amazing job he did!
To keep a place like mine, with a house, a summer baker’s cottage, a wood shed/coach house, an old hay barn, carport, out house, a sweet play house and a big yard and forest property, you need knowledge, tools, a strong physical body, interest and time. I have a lot of interest, a bit of knowledge and some time. My sons have strong bodies, some interest and no time. We have been lacking pieces of knowledge and all the tools. The equation is a hard one to figure out.
So, what to do? Well, you ask Mats for help.
Mats is a dear friend who builds baroque flutes and lifts an out house which is sinking down into the ground with equal enthusiasm. Mats also loves sharing his knowledge about most everything, holding lectures which can be terribly annoying, but sometimes a lecture is exactly what you need.
So, at the end of this summer Trouble & Trouble, Mats and I got together for a work day. To start with, Mats taught my sons how to build a tool to lift the heavy branches of my grandfather’s apple tree, something that needs to be done every summer. Mats is an extremely thorough person and the apple tree has never looked this good after the yearly face lift before!
Then on to the main mission for the day, saving the out house from tipping over. Why do I need an outhouse? I usually don’t but it’s there because it’s always been there, and it’s an unusually stylish out house built by my dad. And this summer when I needed to dig up the sewer system I actually used it for a couple of days, and hey, was I happy it was still there! But as the front is tipping forward you could hardly open the door, and that was needed to be taken care of.
I loved watching Mats and my sons together. Trouble & Trouble were soaking Mats’ knowledge and skills like dry sponges, and the way Mats showed them how to do, he made sure they could do it themselves next time. And that’s how a really good teacher does it. I was moved, a little bit sad, and deeply grateful.
So how come I don’t have tools? At a place like mine you got to have tools! Well, I do have tools, but none working. The lawn mower was quite all summer, the trimmer has been sitting in a dark corner for as long as I can remember, the chain saw died years ago and the clearing saw who I own in shared custody with my ex brother in law Kjell, hasn’t come my way since I don’t know when. So, even if my sons had the time they don’t have the tools. And I can’t help them out since I can’t transport any of those things to get them repaired.
Then, out of the blue Kjell called and asked me what I needed to have cleared out! I had made some comment on Facebook that led him to the question. The next thing I knew he was in the grove across the road and I had free sight down to the fields east of it! And then he searched all my sheds for non working machinery, filled his trunk, brought everything to the Husqvarna repair shop and then back here when it all was up and running again!
At that point I was close to crying out of gratitude. But Kjell wasn’t done. On top of that he met up with Trouble 2 for a lesson in how to run a clearing saw. And a long list of what we need to purchase to make power sawing of all kind safe. This is serious stuff.
Kjell lost his father when he was eight years old. He didn’t have a dad passing on his knowledge to his son and had to learn everything by error. Or, as he told me, what he later learned, was from my dad, his father in law. Kjell has three sons who are accordingly well educated in practical matters, and now he willingly is ready to take on an uncle mission with my sons. And Trouble & Trouble and I are equally grateful and relieved to receive this unexpected support.
Now, a note from a feministic perspective. It so happens there are no girls in the generation after me. My sister and I have altogether five sons. If there had been daughters I can assure you they would have been educated in how to keep an old homestead. My father taught me everything from changing tires to lifting the corner of a house in need  (which means I have the theoretical knowledge of  how to lift a house, but I can’t be there with my hands). The only thing he kept from me was the chainsaw. Which I found annoying.
This Sunday Trouble & Trouble, Audrey and I are making fall at Stoltergården - Mats’ name of my place here at the end of the road. The rain is taking a break today, but the wind is still at gale force and gutsy. We are putting in the winter windows, ironing the fall curtains, turning off the summer water and preparing for the Christmas lights in the garden. The leaking gutter is temporally taken care of, and the damned and huge stack of twigs and discarded wooden furniture is burning! It took my sons quite some time to get the fire going, and when it finally did the wind turned the situation a bit risky for a while, but now that stack is gone, hallelujah!
And for next summer, Mats’ plan is to teach my sons how to take care of my grandfather’s wooden windows. And Kjell will be holding a class on the subject safe power sawing. Trouble & Trouble are lucky to have such enthusiastic teachers. And I am lucky having such great friends. 

Oct 19, 2014

The ramps to nowhere - the story of a legendary citizen uprising

I drove through Arboretum most every day. It was my afternoon treat when picking up Trouble & Trouble at Valley School in Madison Valley on the edge of Central District. Being embraced by the greenery on the winding Lake Washington Boulevard on my way down there, then one more time on my way back. I loved it, I just loved it. And knowing there might have been a freeway instead of the Japanese Garden, made the drive even more precious.
First time I saw them was 1993 when we stayed in Juanita, Kirkland, east of Lake Washington for three months. Passing the lake on the 520 bridge they are on your right side driving from Seattle. The Seattle ramps to nowhere. It was our friend Harold, Trouble & Trouble’s American grandpa telling us the story.
In the 1960s there were far advanced plans for a north-south freeway, the four-lane R.H. Thomson Expressway to parallel I-5. It would have run through the Arboretum, mostly destroying it, and then south along what is now Martin Luther King Jr. Way. But the legendary citizen uprising in the late 60s and early 70s ruined those plans and that’s why Arboretum is still one of Seattle’s green lungs!
Although, there is the ramps.
The freeway project was so far gone some parts of it was already built. Like parts of the ramps leading from the 520 bridge over the water and into the Arboretum in the Montlake neighborhood. But right in the middle of those ramps, the R.H. Thomson Expressway was killed off in a 71 percent vote of the city after a 10-year battle. And since then the cut off ramps over the water nature preserve has been a ruin telling the story of  the power of citizen uprising.
Until now. Because this week the work taking down those ramps started. So is everyone happy now? Of course not!
In unofficial Seattle, there’s more sadness than joy. In fact there has been a drive to try to save the ramps — pushed by some of the same activists who fought them being built more than 50 years ago!
- “I still can’t quite believe they’re coming down,” says Anna Rudd, 74, who was in her 20s when she  helped make sure the ramps would never lead anywhere. 
When Rudd went to community groups to drum up support for saving the ramps, she was amazed how almost everyone had a ramp-jumping story. There’s a whole secret society in Seattle Anna Rudd found out. Generations of kids would ride their bikes down to the ramps to jump off, then not tell their parents about it until they became adults. Countless UW students jumped. The whole Garfield football team used to jump. It turns out it’s a Seattle rite of passage. Also popular was sunbathing, stargazing and frat-hazing rituals. The homeless used the ramps for shelter, lovers to canoe beneath.
But the ramps are coming down. The new 520 bridge over Lake Washington is wider, now in process and progress, and the Arboretum folks want their preserve back. The activists who blocked the expressway now quixotically hope to save pieces of the ramps for a monument.
- These aren’t just ramps, Anna Rudd said. “They’re literally a concrete example of how citizens can gather together and choose their own destiny. 51 years ago, they were an embarrassing mistake. Yet over time they became a real place, wriggling into the life of the city until they turned into the most unlikely objects of Seattle pride".
The cut off road on giant concrete pillars are symbols of hubris. Or maybe the ramps show that you can beat City Hall. Either way it was on those ramps that the ethic of progress at all costs gave way to the everyone-gets-a-say process that so defines Seattle politics today.
I am trying to think of a similar example in Umeå. As the Umeå politics is defined by the same everyone-gets-a-say process I’m sure there is one but from the top of my head I can’t come up with an example. 
I am thinking though about the new public indoor pool that’s under construction in Downtown Umeå. I haven’t heard of one single person who wants it there. We need a new great public indoor pool, yes, but there are several other spots to place it than right in the middle of the city center. This was the only spot the Umeå politicians could agree on though. What had happened if the Umeå citizens would have had a vote on it? If we would vote now, in the middle of the construction? It’s an interesting thought.
Trouble & Trouble and I used to watch the 520 bridge through the panorama window in our home on Boyer Avenue. I still love driving through Arboretum, and since my chiropractor and dear friend Randi has her office on Madison in the valley I have had many reasons to take that route and enjoy the winding greenery. Will I miss the ramps? Well I don’t have a personal connection to them other than they being a part of the Seattle history. And in that sense they are important. Even to me.

Oct 12, 2014

This is the case. My case.

For close to 29 years now I have had severe back problems. They have escalated, attacking more of my body every year passing, and two years ago I needed to ask the Swedish society for help, my sons and friends weren’t enough any more. It was a huge and horrifying step letting strangers into my home, but I was hoping for it to be temporary. I was wrong.
It is the City that evaluates how much help I am entitled to. Then it’s my choice if I want the City services to help me out or one of the private companies which also provides that kind of service. In the latter case, the City pays the private company to do the job. My choice was a small local private company, Civil Care, which literally rescued me in a time of unbearable pain and despair. They have been with me for two years now, wonderful people, and become a part of my family.
October 2013 I had to ask the City for more help. My problems continued to get worse, and the hours approved earlier on wasn’t enough, I needed even more care. The City declined my request. Civil Care though, never once considered leaving me in the lurch. They expanded their hours with me without getting compensated by the City, and has been loosing money on me for a year now, never complaining.
This is, of course, an unsustainable situation. When Civil Care took me on, they, as well as I, thought it would be a temporary thing. Well, it turned chronic for the both of us. And who knows, I might live for another 30 years and they will be stuck with me!
So, what I did when the City declined covering my needs was an appeal, which I am entitled to do. I have no knowledge about legal processes what so ever, have never been even in the fringe outskirts of anything in that neighborhood, and here I am right in the center of it. It would be an interesting experience if it wasn’t for the petrifying fact that my future life is depending on the outcome of it.
I am terrified. Nothing but terrified. But I can’t lose myself being petrified. Because I need to be the project leader of the case. My case.
I wrote the appeal in July. I have spent most of the summer and fall working myself forward learning the drill as I go. It’s terribly scary. I don’t sleep. I start my days crying in the arms of the Civil Care people. I am in total limbo. I feel like I just want to give in and run away. That’s not what I do, I am not a quitter, I am a fighter. In this case though I feel like I just want to lay down flat on my back and let the City officials run over me. But I don’t have the choice of giving in. Not this time, when I want it the most. I need to stay and fight.
I am feeling a lot as when I was diagnosed with cancer. Being terribly weak, needing to stay extremely strong, fighting something I don’t know how to fight, and not knowing the outcome of it. In both cases it’s fighting for my life.
Fighting for my life, isn’t that being dramatic? No, it isn’t. If Civil Care would only do the hours approved by the City, I wouldn’t even get out of bed in the morning since the official handling my matter with the City has decided I can do it myself although I can’t. I would lie in my bed and pee all over me, that’s the naked truth. I won’t embarrass you with more explicit graphics, but this is the place I am in.
Civil Care can’t go on loosing money on me forever. They are pushing themselves, stretching and bending to help me out in the best way possible, but they simply can’t do it forever. And I feel awful, a parasite, knowing they don’t get payed for all the work they are putting in with me. And somewhere there is a breaking point. I have a sense it’s not that far away.
So, I need to fight. In a week or two I will be summoned to a hearing. I have never been in a courtroom before. I will speak up in a foreign country where a different language is spoken. I am terrified. Because I have to win this case. My case. Although I think the chances are minimal. And if I don't? I have no idea. I have absolutely no idea.

Oct 5, 2014

Swedish governing in historic limbo/Part 3

- The new government is a feministic government.

Those words are Stefan Löfven’s, the new Swedish Prime Minister. Expressed in the Statement of Government Policy. Is the new Swedish government the first official feministic government in the world?

Three weeks after the election Sweden has a new government! The exclamation mark might be an overstatement, because it’s a minority and in reality a very weak government, but it’s a government expressing the same values as I have, and it’s like a heavy rock is lifted from my chest.

The new government is formed by the Social Democrats and the Green Party (Miljöpartiet), 24 cabinet ministers: 12 women and 12 men. The actual change of government took place on October 3 at a Council of State at the Royal Palace. Earlier the same day, Stefan Löfven presented the Statement of Government Policy.
I was lying on my couch, doing only that. Not checking emails, not being on the phone, not working on some text, not scrolling Facebook, mind not wondering around. No, being totally focused and present in the fact that Sweden is presented a new government and a new Statement of Government Policy.
For eight years we have been living under a right wing yoke. In the Swedish political history of social democratic values we have never been governed by right wing rhetoric for such a long period before. I was terrified they had been so successful drumming their message in (eight years is, as you Americans know, a long time, a first time voter becomes a grown up during a double government term) there was no way back and Sweden would be forever a country lost in the cold where only strong people contributing to GDP (BNP) are included as human beings.
So, I was focused. I was present. It was a historic moment hearing the word solidarity from a Prime Minister again. I am a bit embarrassed here, but I had tears on my cheek while listening to the declaration. A giant rock was lifted from my compressed chest. I wasn’t even aware it had been there. You can get used to almost everything. Political abuse, in words and in practice too. Every system can turn into a normality.
The giant rock was gone and I could breath again. That’s why the tears.
Now, I am not naive. And I am not stupid. I know this new government is historically weak and I know every ideology and value has a rhetoric vocabulary. But there are intentions. Very different from the last eight years that was forced on me.
I agree on most things in the Statement of Government Policy of October 3. I know though that it will be extremely difficult for this government to make the declaration a reality. We might very well have a situation similar to the one in the U.S where only a few bills actually are passing. But even if it will be only a few, it’s still better than living in a country where most every bill passing feels like a violation on a nation.
So, is the new Swedish government a feministic government? Well, it’s up to the evidence. 50/50 when it comes to cabinet ministers doesn't prove anything although it looks a lot better then 80/20. And words are just words. But the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is led by four women, fronted by Margot Wallström as the Minister of Foreign Affairs. So that’s a start.
I could shortlist the Statement of Government Policy to tell what this new Swedish government wants for change, but instead I will quote one sentence from Prime Minister Stefan Löfven:
- We will work for a global order of capital and labor that secures an international economy that benefits all and subjugate no one. 

Those words, I find beautiful.