And beyond 2014?

I sometimes wonder if there will be a 2015. For close to a decade now the focus here in Umeå has been set on 2014. First it was a fantasy, then a vision, then an application, then The Win, and after that years of planning for taking on the incredible and challenging assignment being The European Capital of Culture 2014.

It is incredible indeed. Every year, within the European Union, cities are carefully chosen to be the Capital of Culture. To start with it was one city (1985, Athens) 1999-2000, at the Millennium there were multiple cities, and after that mostly two a year. Sweden has carried the title once before, Stockholm 1998. 2014 Sweden was on the schedule for the second time, in pair with Latvia. And in competition with three bigger cities in Sweden, teeny-weeny Umeå way up north in our skinny country grabbed the title!

I once heard Fredrik Lindegren, artistic director of the year, bending his head, covering his face in his hands, saying: I wish it was 2016.

I can easily understand that. Putting together a cultural year by rank, all Europe watching, would make anyone sweat. Then organizing it.

The title has affected Umeå in major ways even though it hasn’t yet started. I think we are experiencing something along the lines of what happens in a place which is getting ready for The Olympics: gosh, this is going to be a big party, we have invited a ton of guests and we need to make room for them (nice rooms!) clean everything up and make our city a show case!

A bit like when you are having a party at your house; you suddenly have a deadline to change the towels in the bathroom and maybe you get to finally hanging that painting that’s been sitting on the floor leaning against the wall for months. And yeah, a new bulb over the front porch so they can find their way in!

The front porch in Umeå is what used to be the downtown port at the Umeå River many decades ago. Since then, it’s basically been a big parking lot. Not anymore though. The new building for cultural arts, Väven, has been under construction for a couple of years now. The Norwegian firm Snöhetta (the Alexandria Library, the Oslo opera house) is the architect and the exterior (the lower part of the building will be for the arts, the tall part a hotel) glass plates inspired by the black and white graphics of the birch stem. http://kulturvaven.se/#/start/trailer

Big changes always cause concerns among people, and this building creates a lot of change. First, it’s the building itself. Some perceive it as big and loud and out of proportion compared to the city center. It changes the skyline (we still have a very modest skyline though). Then it’s the content. The city library is going to move in to the building and this is making people very emotional. Its’ current location is optimal to many, and why change a winning team?

Cultural arts are also theater, dance, photo, music, film and crossovers from most anything you can think of, now spread all over town. Will they afford the rent in this new flashy city front porch?

During this fall it turned out that the City’s budget for the building only will cover the costs for running the place, there will be no money over for the different art scenes in the facility. This might sound like an incomprehensible problem to an American. But you see, in Sweden cultural arts are to some degree sponsored by the government, and we are relying on that subsidy for our operation. For example, my choir Kammarkören Sångkraft (Sångkraft Chamber Choir) is sponsored with 100 000 Skr (today about 15 000 dollars) a year by the City of Umeå. No strings attached. Yeah, it’s pretty amazing.

So, there is no wonder people are concerned about the future of the culture in the European Capital of Culture 2014. Also, the City has failed spectacularly when it comes to digging up private sponsors for the year, which leaves the question: what will happen 2015? Without a doubt 2014 has to deliver, so will there be any money at all left for the different art scenes in the future? And that’s how we are entering this big year of events. This New Year.

Hey, will there be a 2015 whatsoever? I feel a lot like I did before the Millennium. It was such an event. Nobody talked about an after in other terms than all the computers would be crashing and it might even be the end of the world for all that we knew. I was in Seattle (people over here were concerned; if something bad would happen, wouldn’t it be safer for me entering the Millennium here in the woods than in a big American city?) since I imagined that would be really cool.

Well, what happened? Some guy with explosives in his car was caught at the Canadian border heading south, and the big celebration at Seattle Center was cancelled for security reasons. Roomer had it that there was no money left after The Battle in Seattle. At 00.00 I was standing at a roof in Wallingford with family and friends watching a pretty lame fire works at the Space Needle, ousted by Bill Gates’ at the Gates residence on the other side of lake Washington. I would say it was an anti climax, and then the world continued with no fuzz.

2014. In only two days. Umeå European Capital of Culture. Will it be an anti climax? And will time go on beyond that like nothing happened? Will there be a 2015?

Josephine

Her plan for this afternoon was to cut a tree in my grove. But it’s poring down outside and I wonder if she got it done.

Her name is Josephine. She is the grand daughter of my beloved neighbor Alida, 96 years old. Josephine moved back here this fall with her little baby girl.

Her dream, since she was a little girl herself, was to have a horse. To have a horse you need somewhere to keep it. And you need to take care of it. You need to be mature and responsible. Josephine is 22 years old and she takes care of two horses, a baby daughter, her grandmother and me.

Alida has been here for me all my life. For my sons all their life. For my mother all her life. And for my grandmother a big part of her life. Alida remembers and tells stories of great-grandmothers and grandfathers. And she is playing with her great-granddaughter. Alida is carrying every generation within her. She is a dear friend and the one I go to for grounding myself, and when she for some reason is not at home I feel like my back bone is gone.

Josephine tells me she always wanted to be a young mother, and she is. She feels her home is here in the woods and so she moved back here when her baby turned one. She is taking a break from school and is working for Civil Care, the home care company that takes care of Alida and me.

Her horses are Daisy and Grevinnan (The Countess). Daisy is young, only two years old, and Grevinnan ten, a bit more mature. Their winter home is an enclosed pasture basically on her front yard and my backyard. I can see them next to my Big Barn when looking to the north. They are so beautiful! I have never been a horse person and never been close to horses, but I love having Josephine’s horses as neighbors.

Josephine is the one now fixing my breakfasts. It’s such a treat! She comes here every morning, cheery and always in a good mood. We share our every day stories, big and small, high and low. I love it, and I know she enjoys it too. Sometimes her baby girl comes with her, and I love the idea that she is now getting familiar with my house the way I got familiar with Alida’s house when I was a baby.

I so admire Josephine. I have seen her with her grandmother since she was a teenager, always warm and caring. And now I see her with her daughter, such a natural mother. She doesn’t have a manual and yet she does everything right instinctively. I didn’t. You would think it’s in your genes how to take care of your children, but it isn’t. It’s trial and error. Some seems to be equipped with the right tools from the start though, and Josephine is one of them. Her baby girl is very fortunate.

Boy, it’s raining. I am not a big fan of snow, but for Christmas I would like some. Now it actually looks like we will have a Seattle Christmas, wet and foggy. I am thinking about last year when our Seattle-Becca was here for two weeks over the Holidays. Did she pick the right year for visiting her Swedish brothers and family! 5° F (-15°C) 3 feet of snow (90 cm) and clear skies. My place in the woods was an out of this world Christmas card and brought Becca a Holiday memory she will forever cherish. I am glad we don’t have any foreign guests this year; Sweden isn’t delivering!

Gosh. I am crashing on my coach. My choir Kammarkören Sångkraft (Sångkraft Chamber Choir) did just close the season with our traditional Christmas concert. Three full houses. As my back keeps being difficult I had no clue if I could do the concerts. Through this fall I have only been able to attend like every other rehearsal. My plan was set for two of the concerts, the one yesterday and the second today.

At the end of the one yesterday I had to be lead out by my friend and alto colleague Agneta. Today I was in such bad shape I was thinking it had to be the worst decision this year heading off to Umeå stads kyrka (the Umeå City Church) to stand up singing for 1 hour and 15 minutes. Yet I did it. And yes I did it! I did the whole concert and was even able to be present and enjoy welcoming the Holiday together with my friends in the choir and an attentive audience. I am so happy and grateful.

Trouble & Trouble cut our tree some days ago and it’s all dressed and very beautiful. We will spend Christmas here together with my sister’s family, all together 13 people. Not since 2007 there has been a real big Christmas Eve celebration here at the end of the road, and I am so happy about it.

And at my neighbors Alida and Josephine will celebrate Christmas with their family. I feel safe knowing they are there. Knowing that our families will continue being interlaced with each other. Alida has been such a safety in my life, a warm and solid point. I am hoping that I can be Josephine’s. The woman in the house next door. The one who is always there.

Ship ahoy!

Oh how I loved being in Seattle during the Holiday Season! Just loved it!!

The Christmas tree lighting ceremony at Westlake Mall! The lit up Downtown, crazy with Christmas shoppers! The ferries filled with dressed up people going to Christmas parties! The neighborhoods competing about the most insane over-the-top light displays! But most of all I love the Christmas Ships!

For many years I made sure getting my dosage of Seattle Holidays. I packed my bags in December with an assignment of a story for Swedish National Radio or Television as an excuse and headed over for a week-ten days in a rainy city making the lights even more vibrant in the reflecting puddles.

I shot Seattle Men’s Chorus in Beneroya Hall and the Dreamliner Virtual Rollout, I reported about the different ingredients of the American Holidays and about The Washington Software Alliance. I told the story of the Cool House, the new city public library and I interviewed the author Russel Banks on a Seattle December visit. I also spent days sitting at the Blackbird Bakery on Bainbridge Island working on the texts for my photo show Away is Home, Home is Away. A couple of times the visit was postponed to right after Christmas, making me spend New Years in the Emerald City!

The Holiday memory I treasure the most though is the year we stayed in Seattle. Cause there can’t be any better place for a Holiday experience than Portage Bay overlooking the Montlake Cut!

Our place for the year was a small house that didn’t look like much from the outside, but was such a wonderful little home for my family. It was on Boyer Avenue about five blocks from University Bridge, and Portage Bay was the best entertainment all year round. I used to have my afternoon tea lying in my cushy cream colored love seat watching whatever was going on down on the bay through my big panorama window. I never got tired of that view! All those boats in different shapes and sizes! Trouble & Trouble and I had our different Argosy cruise ships favorites. Come to think of it, Trouble 2 and I actually agreed on the same preference.

This weekend is the opening for the Christmas Ships in Seattle. And I know exactly what Portage Bay looks like this evening! A parade of lit up, dressed up, spruced up boats glittering and glimmering in the dark night! And some of them have music, choirs singing on the black water!

Trouble 2 and I could sit for hours watching the floating lights waiting for our ship. Here it comes, there it is! Let’s just sit here forever and enjoy this! Oh how I miss that! And where did that little boy go?

Actually, he and Audrey are down in my kitchen making dinner for us. He is right here. In the woods at the end of the road. The opposite to Portage bay. No water for ships to sail on. I am doing what I can to lit up the dark though. Strings of lights in my maples guarding my gate. Light curtains from the roof of my front porch. Spotlights shooting up my dad’s ash tree down in the corner and the big pine next to the field.

There is one ship though! My grandfather’s old apple tree is lit up with spotlights and along the round wooden deck underneath sits a string of lights. Another string is attached to the rope tied around the stem at the crown of the tree and anchored in the ground some feet away in the lawn. That device actually looks like a backstay and in the summer I even connect a light piece of fabric to it, which makes you think of a sail.

It’s been snowing today. In the snow there is a lit up apple tree that in wintertime looks like a space ship. No, I don’t have any waters. And there are no ships sailing here. I might be able to arrange some singing though. On my space ship in the woods at the end of the road.

Italian like a delicate pencil drawing

A little more than half way through now!

I took German in school for six years. Spanish for one, we didn’t get along. But I’ve always been attracted to French. Like we would be a cute match.

Language studies were my thing in school. It came easy to me. I don’t think I have ever been more devoted to my studies than when I trained for being an assistant nurse. This came as a surprise to me as I wasn’t really on for the profession. But I figured out why. Learning every bone and organ in the body in Latin was nothing less than language studies and I just couldn’t help myself being bent over my books late all night!

Winter 2002 was a hard one. I was working on a documentary project for the European Broadcast Union and it was absolutely killing me. Spring came, I was finally out of it, and I laid my eyes on an ad in a newspaper offering language classes abroad. Studying French in Nice, of course, of course!!

Well, it turned out that taking Italian in Florence was less expensive, and hey, why not?!

I had never even glanced at Italian before, but here I was suddenly, late April in Florence, trying to learn a language I didn’t know a word of in a small group of German, Canadian, Japanese and American students, even a guy from Seattle! Our Italian teachers didn’t know any English, so this mix was quite an adventure.

The class was running extremely fast. The morning hours were every day filled with new grammars, and in the afternoons I was sitting outside the Dome, next to Ponte Vecchio, or at Piazza della Signoria going through my notes, trying to make sense of everything squeezed into my little head.

My roommate was a Japanese girl who didn’t know a word of English. Since my Japanese wasn’t quite there, there was no way for us to communicate what so ever. Although I, of course, kept speaking English anyway, I don’t know why, I could have walked around the apartment speaking Swedish for all that I know! Anyhow, at the end of my two-week stay we could actually communicate in three word sentences in our now common language Italian, and it’s actually hard to express the feeling when that happened. Pure happiness! We had conquered a giant obstacle, and this has to be how children feel when they get through to their parents in words instead of noises and cries!

When I left Italy after two extremely intense weeks, I felt like I had been run over by a jet plane. But I had really grown attracted to Italian. I loved the sounds, the speed, and the passionate way of expressing the most ordinary things.

The years to come, I took some evening classes to learn more. And then I found another ad. “Learn Italian like a child does!”

This was a self-studying course. Perfect! I had been thinking about that for a while. The ad was a little bit funny though. It looked like something from the Fifties. A pencil drawing with a text. But there was a website that looked a bit more promising. I ordered the class and some days later a brown card board box arrived.

In 2008 the Fifties arrived on my desk. The box was packed with stacks of thin yellow booklets. They looked like something I would have found at my bakers cottage attic, left there by my mother’s aunts. I opened them up. They were filled with text (and I mean filled), top to bottom, only once in a while interrupted by tiny delicate pencil drawings, a perfect image for that time and age.

It was interesting though. The text was only in Italian. No translations. And under the text lines phonetic transcriptions. You learn the language by a text where words are repeated in different contexts until you actually get it. There is also a dictionary following the chapters if you get stuck. And a manual, which explains the purpose of each chapter, what you are supposed to learn.

Boy, was this funny! The complete course is 50 chapters divided on 16 booklets. If you are an ambitious student working through one chapter a week you are done with the course in a year and you have a vocabulary of 4000 words. But I tell you, that’s a lot of work! This class is as intense as the one in Florence, although different.

The Fifties design and approach was a concern to me though. I checked with my dear friend Agneta who is an Italian teacher: am I learning a kind of Fifties Italian here? She looked through the first chapters and approved of them, quite impressed by the grammatical ambitions.

So, I took my assignment on! I was aiming for a chapter a week, but then I found a tumor in my breast and made it one chapter per chemo treatment instead. And after the 6^th and last treatment my brain shut down and I was incapable of any kind of studies.

My yellow booklets had a rest for about a year, and then I started all over again, repeating everything from the beginning. Summer 2012 I was back to where I was interrupted and decided on studying five minutes a day. Yeah, that’s not a lot, but I figured that’s something I could actually do.

And I have. Five minutes after writing my journal in the evening. The last thing I do before lights out is filling my brain with Italian words and grammars. That’s my daily brain-workout. At midnight. Some do Wordfeud, some sudoku, some cross words. I am learning Italian.

Now, five minutes a day doesn’t add up to a chapter a week. It’s more like a chapter a month. So it took me a while to get back to my Italian support Agneta for a check up. And when I did it turned out that Italian had changed from the Fifties after all… I am now finding out that I am learning an Italian that is only still spoken on Sicily and in the southern parts of Italy. The most conservative areas of the country. If all.

I am laughing long and hard at this. I find it quite funny. I learned how to play bar chords on my grandmother’s old hard stringed guitar. On that foundation every guitar thereafter was a piece of cake. I am fantasizing my Fifties Italian will work the same way!

Agneta, who besides teaching Italian, French and English also has a head for numbers is telling me five minutes a day makes half a high school course in one year. That’s not bad! And since my late night class actually varies between 7 and 15 minutes, I guess I am in fact doing one full high school course a year!

So, 50 chapters. And I am just now finishing up chapter nr. 26. I do not have a head for numbers, but at the speed of a chapter a month doing the math tells me it will take me 24 more months to finish the course. Two more years before I have a vocabulary of 4000 Italian words. I wonder if I will know how to put them together? Will they still exist? And will I put them together in a way that not even Sicily or the most conservative southern parts of Italy will understand in 2015? Will I come across as a delicate pencil drawing?

Missing Thanksgiving

It’s Thanksgiving and 4^th of July. The two days on the year when I miss Seattle and the US the most.

It might have been 1998, my second Thanksgiving in Seattle. Visiting with my family, living a hotel downtown life. My sons and their dad headed back to Sweden when dad was done with his work, and I stayed for another week or so to get my job for the Swedish National Radio done. This was the regular pattern for our shorter stays during a lot of years.

It was perfect. Family time with family friends added on with time for myself in the big city.

Only. My sons and their dad departing Seattle leaving me behind was the worst. I loved staying at what’s now Homewood Suites at Pike Street. I loved my downtown life. I loved doing my journalist freelance work. I loved the feeling of temporary freedom. But I hated the moment for separation from my family. I knew I would be fine in a day or two, but I just couldn’t bare them leaving me. Yet I chose to go through that, time after time.

So, 1998 (or was it -97?) they kissed me goodbye and headed back to Sweden on Thanksgiving. I was deserted. Downtown deserted. I cried. I cried my eyes out in my Homewood suite. This was my choice and I cried. Knowing that nice people would surround me in just a few hours didn’t help. I cried.

When it was time for it I crawled out of my self-inflicted misery, put some casual nice clothes on and made my face. I drove my rental through a quiet city and in a little while I was welcomed into a warm house by warm people. Close friends, friends, and friend’s friends. It was Thanksgiving.

My inside was still grieving. Knowing that Trouble 1 would be in pain on the long flight, his ears all clogged up. And maybe Trouble 2 was a little bit sad going back home without his mom. I don’t know how I was perceived that evening. Distracted. Uptight. Shy. Rude. Not quite there. Everyone was truly friendly and nice to me though, making me a part of their Thanksgiving spirit, which was still fairly new to me. The table was long and at my turn, saying the thanksgiving, made it a very special evening.

Late that night I drove back to my downtown home. I’ve never seen the usually 24-7 lit up Seattle skyline that dark. Understanding that most everyone at that time was sitting at a table somewhere surrounded by family or friends. And that some had a very lonely evening. You are never as lonely as when you know you are not supposed to be.

This year I am watching my playwright friend Elizabeth posting video clips on Facebook. Act 1 is already in the morning, someone starting preparing the food. The clips and different acts moves through the day at Grandma Betty’s house in the Catholic part of Capitol Hill where about 30 people from different generations are getting together.

Oh how I miss them. Oh how I miss all my Seattle friends on a day like this. I miss how they are loud and warm and crazy and witty and fun and smart and caring and… I miss them so it hurts. They are a part of me.

And I miss the little bit of American life that I once had. And wanted a lot more of. During those years when I was commuting between US and Sweden I often got the question: so where would you prefer living? A tricky one to answer. I remember responding that if I had to sell my place at the end of the road in my village to become a Seattleite, the choice would be very hard.

For many years though, I had the best of both worlds. But I always wished for more of Seattle. And that’s what I also always pictured. I can still hear myself driving my routes across University Bridge, Downtown, Arboretum, down to Lake Washington, Montlake Cut, Wallingford and U Village, saying out loud: someday I am going to live here! For real! Tanning in Gasworks Park, power walking around Greenlake, watching the sun set in the skyline from Kerry Park, strolling among the house boats in Portage Bay feeling it deep down in the core of my body: someday I am going to live here! For real! Just watch me!

In 2007 I took a first step for more Seattle life. Trouble & Trouble were 19 and 21, big boys already, and I felt that the stretches in Seattle could be extended. I bought a car! Yes I did! I would have my own car waiting for me whenever I landed in The Emerald City! And I invested in a storage unit for my Tempur Pedic mattress, my special Seattle clothes and other essential necessities, which until then had been dragged between tolerant friends basements. The storage even had a view of the new light rail! Yayy!

But life had different plans for me. And today I am thinking that I might have to find a way bringing back all my things to Sweden. It is not likely that I will be able to come back to Seattle. Even if I at some point could do the trip, I couldn’t do it by myself and I couldn’t stay by myself. If I am very lucky maybe my sons will go with me and visit if my body can do it. But a life in Seattle, as it once was and even more as I pictured it, longed for and wanted, no, my hopes for that is buried deep down in me.

So, hearing Elizabeth’s voice and laughter on her Thanksgiving morning makes me sad for myself. I know, it’s not a pretty feeling. But I love that laughter and miss it so much! And only hearing the North West Coast American English that happened to become my language is unlocking a piece of myself, (yes, go ahead and laugh my friends, I am aware of my accent and all my quirky slips, it is still one of my languages!). And I want to be in that language! I want to share 4^th of July with 30 000 people at Gasworks Park (yes friends, laugh on, I will still love it!) and I want to be a part of Thanksgiving, I want it to be one of my Holidays.

I have tried introducing the thanksgiving into one of my Swedish holiday traditions. Not the turkey, the stuffing or the pumpkin pie, but the thanksgiving. I am finding the ritual everyone around a holiday table expressing their gratitude one of the truly most beautiful. My efforts, so far, hasn’t been glorious. But maybe I just have to be persistent. Maybe I need to give it a few more years. If Maria won’t come to Thanksgiving, then Thanksgiving must come to Maria.