400 friends/distorted self

Christian became my number 400 Facebook friend! It happened this week. As the winner of this title I offered him a delicious chanterelle dinner here at the end of the road. He accepted. It might be a while though since Christian lives in Paris.

I was a reluctant Facebook joiner, and it didn’t happen until 2010. I have a tendency of feeling invaded and the idea of a lot of people who I might even not know showing up on my computer was appalling to me.

The decision to join came with starting singing with my choir Kammarkören Sångkraft (Sångkraft Chamber Choir). It was after the cancer and a long time being out of context and community. In 24 hours I was befriended by about 30 choral singers, quickly added by Sångkraft alumni and some close friends finding me.

I did feel invaded though. What were all these people doing in my home? And I really hated the design of Facebook. Yuk! So ugly and totally without any sense of style and finish. 

Trouble 2 taught me how to handle the “invasion”: Mom, think about it as you are taking a downtown walk. You see all these people and you might hear what they are saying, but you don’t need to take notice of them or say hello if you don’t want to.

It was a good advice. I learned to handle this new situation in my sacred home. Early on I also decided on only making friends with people I knew or had met. Except for a few exceptions when it comes to professionals in my field, I am still keeping that rule.

My relationship to Facebook is somewhat conflicted though. I know I am not the only one fed up with all the happy successful lives painted on peoples walls, and there are even scientific research proving that Facebook makes people depressed.

That’s not my biggest concern though. Trouble 2 was the one teaching me who to be on Facebook. Because that’s the thing. You need to learn not to be yourself. I can’t be Maria the complete person. I need to be only a part of me. And hide the most of me. Facebook makes us be half persons. If even.

It’a a peculiar situation. On the one hand we are living in this time of brutal transparency where people are turning their private lives inside out like it was a casual t-shirt. If you are not transparent ( especially as a public person) you have something to hide and are not reliable. On the other hand we learn the tactics of covering ourselves and our privacy by putting up a glossy facade, dispatching our difficulties and failures down in the darkest corner of our mental basements.

Is it really that bad? I actually think it is.

Facebook and social media really is a downtown square where we are meeting and displaying ourselves as in any other community. It is a reality as real as IRL. Only, with very little room for nuances, subtext, grey shades and context. We create a window reducing ourselves to a few black and white (mostly white, hide the black away) letters in a simple font. And where is the rest of yourself?

Well, hopefully most people have other communities. Other squares where they can be more real. Where there is time and space for a conversation that goes beyond the simple font. Where a person can be valuable in all his/hers complexity.

But if you don’t have that kind of environment? If you don’t have everyday people around you? If you don’t have a family? No friends showing up at you door step? If you don’t have a “how was your day”-conversation as an natural ingredients in your life?

If Facebook and social media is your connection to the world? What a distorted picture that world is. And what a distortion it will make out of you. 

The 30-some friends who found me in my first 24 Facebook hours quickly increased to my first 100 thanks to the Sångkraft alumni and former work places such as Swedish National Radio and Television. 200 came pretty easy, when I reached 300 though I thought I had attained my limit, considering the only-people-I-know rule. But what do you know, here I am celebrating Christian, my 400 Facebook friend! And I just love when someone from my former life who I had forgot about shows up, and hey, here we are again!

I am distorted, of course I am. Most of the time I keep quiet down in my mental basement, to look after myself but also to not pollute the world out there.

For me though, physically limited as I am, not being able to get out and about, Facebook is a great asset. I can’t walk downtown squares, but I take my morning and evening Facebook stroll and get a sense of what’s going on out there. Even though the contact with former work colleagues and choral friends is mostly superficial, it is still a contact. And I have been moved to tears by people offering me the most unexpected help in my helplessness.

There is one really nice thing with my only-people-I-know rule: scrolling my friends list I am doing it with a sweat little smile. Most every face that shows up makes me happy and grateful. 400 people who are or have been a part of my IRL. And those who I don’t meet in person any more, well, we are still sharing a tiny corner of our lives.

Today Facebook delivered it’s 10 year anniversary film on my wall. And yes, I can’t help being a bit moved. A bit moved by myself, how is that for a proof of this self reflecting time and age… anyway, enjoy!

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=656946267703529&set=vb.100001644844611&type=2&theater&notif_t=video_processed

The men in my life

AND THEY DID IT! SEAHAWKS MADE HISTORY! CONGRATULATIONS SEATTLE!!!

And now over to something completely different.

My father’s workshop was my safe haven. It was located behind the laundry room in the basement of our sixties red brick house behind the school canteen in the small town were I grew up. The laundry room was mom’s room, the workshop dad’s. And my safe haven.

Sensing the work shop now I am thinking it was the warmest room I’ve ever experienced. And the brightest. Even though it was cluttered with things it was bright from the presence of my Dad. He was a pastry chef dressed in white, and although I am sure he didn’t wear his bakery clothes in the workshop, my sense about him there is white and glowing. Filling up the room with happiness and untamed creativity.

My dad taught me everything he thought a girl should know. He was home in the afternoon already, done with the baking for the day. After a ten minutes nap in the bathtub (!) he was ready for whatever was on his agenda around the house and garden. And I was always included if I wanted.

I can feel his hand on my arm, teaching me how to handle the saw, making it find it’s smooth way through the plank. How many nails did I hammer into Dad’s cutting block just for the joy and practice of it? Countless! And the workshop was where I learned the fine art of painting. Every coat thin, no dripping. Three delicate coats with fine brushstrokes made a smooth pretty surface. Yes, annoyingly slow, but I learned the joy and pride watching a beautiful result.

Dad’s workshop smelled from wood and paint, the best scent ever. Opening the door in there was an adventure. What is he up to now? And what will I be up to? Walls, cabinets and drawers filled with bits and pieces, in mom’s eyes junk, in my eyes treasures possible transforming into something very special in my hands.

As I grew up Dad taught me how to mow the lawn, change oil in the car, switch tires and do a proper hand wash. When boyfriends later occurred I felt betrayed and put a side when my Dad opened up the secrets of our old car to them as I didn’t exist anymore. I can see myself perplex watching them on the driveway in front of the garage. I knew what was going on though. With only women in the family it was fun for my beloved Dad having a man in the house, and he is forgiven.

Dad and I was a great team. As a young woman I moved into my grand parents old home stead at the end of the road in the little village, and there were years and years of renovating, making use for all the skills he had taught me. Later, when those days came, it was very hard on him watching me getting physically limited from my back problems.

My Dad made me independent and self reliable. I am grateful he didn’t live to see me spending most hours of the day on my couch because that’s all I can do. It would have made him absolutely heartbroken.

So, what do I do, when I can’t be the man in the house? Well, I have to surrender and ask for help. And it turns out that in most cases there are men helping me out. My phone book is full of men providing me their expertise, and from my couch perspective I can’t be anything but grateful.

For pluming there is Leif and his guys (one woman!), Broman and Jonas are the electricians. Jonna and Patrik are the indoor carpenters I am relying on, Bengt and Hans the out door. Sören is the one I am calling if anything needs to be fixed with a tractor, and Bertil helps me out with issues involving trees and forest. Roland has the kind of machinery every man dreamt about as a boy and can fix anything you think is impossible. Kjell takes care of kitchen appliances, Kurre my cars and Per and Daniel are my aid when the village broadband is failing. Add to that my insurance broker Anders, accountant Lars and mentor Torstein. That’s a pretty impressive list I have to say! The men in my life.

How did this happen? How did Dad’s independent and self reliable Maria end up with this harem of craftsmen? Well, I know how it happened and I know why, but I still can’t wrap my head around the fact that I am now in this sense everything I could never picture myself being. Growing up the way I did, I didn’t even know it was an option!

I am sighing here. A deep sigh into my bones and the warmth of my Dad’s workshop. It is hard. It is very hard. Yet, I am thinking, this list might be a proof for self reliance as good as holding the hammer and the nail myself. I have found (all except Sören, Roland and Bertil who lives in the village and are interlaced with me since generations and therefore good to me), and kept all these people who I can totally rely on and know they will helpfully come to my assistance whenever I am in need.

Cleaning out my mother and father’s house after they passed away, we saved the workshop for last. Disassembling and sorting out Dad’s collection of “come in handy” things picked up from everywhere kept in his warm cave was like putting the bones in his body in different boxes. When the room was empty we could feel a damp smell and saw signs of water damage in a corner. My father had filled the room with such warmth we had no idea it was there. When the room was empty, my Dad was gone. 

It’s been falling heavy wet snow here for a couple of days. Yesterday evening there was a power outage and my house was completely dark and silent for some hour. Trouble 2 and Audrey have stayed here this last week as I have been in a bad condition. The two of them heading into town today, a big branch had fallen over a power line and was blocking the way. We called Sören. He came with his tractor.

Umeå/Seattle - historic weekend!

My two cities are on fire this weekend! Umeå is going on red and white, Seattle blue and green. And both cities are vibrating from the excitement of making history!

So, this is the thing: Umeå is the European Capital of Culture 2014 and the Seattle football team Seahawks has made it all the way to the Super Bowl this season! Yesterday was the big inauguration of the ECC in Umeå and today is the thrilling game between Seattle Seahawks and Denver Broncos at the Metlife Stadium in New Jersey!

The preparations for the inauguration in Umeå have been a contest between man and weather, a stake as high as any big game. The plan was to have the opening show on the Umeå River. As the premiere was set to the first weekend in February, that wouldn’t be a problem. This is the time of year when nature is all frozen and white and the river is covered with thick ice. Downtown Umeå is extended with extra area to walk, ski and have fun on. Although some eye brows were raised at the ambitious and somewhat crazy plan, the concerns didn’t have anything to do with water turning to more solid substance.

Isn’t it funny though how Universe is playing it’s trick on us? At Christmas the lawns were still as green as in June and there was hardly no ice on the river. Therefore they started producing a big circle of ice at the place which was planned as the stage (I never really figured out how) and in mid January a headline in the local newspaper declared “we are pretty sure the ice will hold up”. Promising and reassuring!

The weather gods stopped laughing though, the temperature dropped to 14°- -4°F (-10° - -20°C) and in a few days the ice was good for the 9 metric ton equipment needed for making the set for the show.

I am passing the river every time I am going to Umeå for my treatments and watching what’s going on on the ice has been interesting. Riding back home after my choir rehearsals in the evening these last weeks has been exciting, as they have been testing the lights and illuminations for the show. I have sensed this extreme desire to be at the inauguration, I really wanted to be a part of this once in a lifetime event!

It was an impossible dream though. I can’t stand for hours in the cold. And I can’t walk. Since downtown would be closed for traffic, walking was the only option to get to Rådhusparken (the City Hall Park) which was the place for watching the show. So; impossible.

But what if? What if I could borrow a wheel chair? I could! Trouble 2 promised to drive me into town , my friends Mats and Agneta would meet up with me and push me around, and my neighbors Jenny and Hannes offered to come pick me up after the show and get me back home. Friday evening, surrounded by good people, I had all the pieces that would give me my impossible dream!

I woke up with my back in a painful mess. Rephrasing: I didn’t sleep because of the pain so I didn’t really wake up, but painful it was and I had to drop my dream. Just like that. It was the worst back day in a couple of months on this once in a life time-day, and I had to call around and cancel that little organization of mine. It was a bitter moment.

I set my mind on thinking that my view would be a lot better watching the whole thing on TV and I would be nice and warm under my big blanket. And Jenny would join me, how fun! Swedish Television (PBS) would stream the inauguration on the web, and later in the evening there would be a show in the programming. We made the streaming work on my TV set (yes!), but than the streaming itself didn’t work (no…) and the whole thing turned into a disappointment. Okay, I’ll just watch the late show in the programming. Then my TV went dead. It didn’t want to make the change from the web to actual TV. By that time I was close to tears, and I ended up watching the spectacle on my lap top. 

I dreamt about being one in the crowd this very special evening, being a part of Umeå on this historic day, watching the red fire on the white ice in Burning Snow, the inauguration of Umeå the Capital of Culture 2014. Instead I was lying on my couch with my laptop. 

Well well. Trouble 2 and Audrey came over this afternoon giving me the reality check I needed. It had been very cold. And extremely crowded. They didn’t really see anything, they actually left in the middle of it because of those factors. And the show was so slow people lost focus, started talking and weren’t a part of it.

I can understand the slow problem. I, who was on the front row (it turned out!) found it slow and then there was nothing around making me loose focus. The show was beautiful and spectacular, but it was slow. Really slow. I can totally understand why people wondered off in the cold evening.

As a start of the Capital of Culture year I am sure it was a success though. We’ve had a very unusual winter with warm temperatures until only a few weeks ago only a thin white layer of snow. But then the night until the big day it started snowing. Cold, fluffy snowflakes, like they were ordered for the occasion! It was 14°F (-10°C) and the ice on the Umeå River was covered with 4 inches of snow that looked like the fake version they use in Hollywood! The setting must have been very exotic for foreign guests and international journalists. And they say 55000 people were gathered to be a part of this historic event. So congratulations Umeå!

http://www.svtplay.se/video/1742593/invigning-av-kulturhuvudstadsaret

In just a few hours it is Seattle that is up to the evidence. Like Umeå (which is the smallest and on the map most insignificant city being chosen as Capital of Culture) Seattle has been the underdog. And the Seahawks are playing for not only a Super Bowl championship but Seattle's sports psyche. A victory would help erase years of disappointment and provide a lift to the city, just as ECC is lifting Umeå. If Seahawks returns to Seattle with a Super Bowl ring, it will be the first in it’s 38 year’s history. 

I hear a snow plow outside my house, the premiere one this winter. In Seattle the Space Needle is lit up in blue and the Great Wheel is spinning blue and green. Thousands and thousands are cheering for the upcoming game just as Umeå is cheering for the upcoming year. I can’t even imagine what Seattle will be like if it’s team takes the Super Bowl, but however it is, I would have loved being a part of it. Well, there is always my laptop! I might choose one more night of no sleep and join the fun.

So, go Seahawks go, go make history!

Kung Fury is king!

 -       It’s absolutely insane!

In only 24 hours he had reached his goal of 200 000 $, and yesterday when the one month campaign closed the amount was more than 600 000 $!

It was on Christmas Day 28-year old Umeå animator and filmmaker David Sandberg launched his trailer on Youtube simultaneously with the Kickstarter crowd funding campaign. The goal was set on 200 000 $ to make a 30 minute film; a free release for the web. Today David is signed by the biggest talent agency in the world, William Morris Endeavor, WME, in Hollywood. American distributors and investors have made contact with him and the trailer has more than 6,4 million hits on Youtube!

-       I am on the same agency as Quentin Tarantino, Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg and Matt Damon, it’s nothing but unreal!

So, this is the story:

David had an idea about a playful martial arts police action comedy breathing the eighties. The plot is the Kung Fu cop Kung Fury who’s friend is killed by the most dangerous Kung Fu crook ever; Adolf Hitler aka Kung Fürher. To take revenge Kung Fury is traveling back in time, but those time machines aren’t perfectly reliable and he ends up among dinosaurs, Vikings, Nazis and mutants. Yeah, the plot is as crazy as the month that’s just passed!

David, who looks a lot like a young Johnny Depp, is starring as Kung Fury, and friends from the young film scene in Umeå (mostly) fills in as the characters Kung Fury meets on his voyage. The plot is set in Miami, but the whole trailer is shot in front of a green screen and most of the locations and environments created in computerized post production, an incredibly time consuming work, made by David.

-       That’s where the Kickstarter money is going, says David.

The Kickstarter campaign has been the most successful in Sweden so far, and David’s goal for a 30-minute film is more than fulfilled. If investors start kicking in, a full-length movie might even be possible; the executive producer Mathias Fjellström at locally based Salmonfox has been on the Sundance Festival with interesting meetings this week.

- Special effects people from Harry Potter and Lord of the Ring have been in touch with me. Elijah Wood, the actor doing Frodo in The Ring has tweeted on the project, it’s all incredible, David continues.

I am thinking, watching all this, about boys. I don’t know David Sandberg myself, but he moves in the same creative crowd as my sons. I have been watching them growing up playing their way towards an adult life. They do what’s fun and are not compromising on that. They have picked their joy, cultivated it, worked hard (absolutely!) and are going towards 30 carrying professional titles on what once was their after school fun.

I don’t see girls doing that. Girls stop playing in their pre teens and become serious good girls. Doing the right thing. They study hard and get better grades than the boys. They are suffering from anxiety from being competitive, they don’t sleep, they have headaches and stomach pain and it seems to me they are not having fun. They are turning way too serious way to early in life (still just kids!) meanwhile the boys are running around laughing their heads off in something that might very well be there future occupation.

I find this very unfair. And disturbing, Umeå is a young, creative and fairly gender equal city. As boys and young men have surrounded me, I have to think hard to find examples of girls to compare with. We have young women who fill up their space and make headlines doing what’s closest to their hearts. Many musicians.

But the ones coming to my mind are girls working for gender and race equality, for getting men to understand their role in sexual abuse and rape, for having people make the right choices when it comes to organic food and fair trade clothes. Serious, good, young women. Doing the right thing. But are they having fun? The way young men are having fun? There are the fashion bloggers of course, their subject seems from a distant to be more superficial, more of being in the entertainment business. Are they having fun? Are they playful? I don’t know.

God forbid I am putting a damper on David Sandberg and Kung Fury here, that’s not my intention at all. We are so incredibly proud of this young man from nowhere (Umeå) who is making headlines all over the world! And what an inspiration he is to men and women all ages! I am just turning a little bit philosophical on the subject.

The Kickstarter final status landed on 630 019 $. From 17, 713 backers. The backers will be given something in return; a brief product placement, a logo swirling like a ninja roll star through a frame. The biggest contributor did put 93 000 $ in. He wants to do a character in the film.

-       I just have to bring all my directing skills to the set and I think we will be fine, David says.

28-year old David Sandberg didn’t sleep the first crazy weeks of the campaign, not from anxiety, he was just too wired up from the excitement. I hope he will get a little bit of rest now, before his playfulness will be cashed in to fulfilling his dream. It will be very exciting seeing what will come out of it. And hey, if this viral phenomenon still hasn’t reach you: watch and enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72RqpItxd8M 

Holding my life in my hands

This year it’s made out of purplish leather. It’s a very solid hard cover and there is a hand written poem by Edgar Allen Poe on the front. My pen runs smooth on the paper and it’s a joy picking it up every night before I go to bed. It’s nothing but beautiful and I love the feel of it in my hands.

I have kept a journal since I was thirteen years old. I have been ending my day by writing it down every day in my life but the twelve first years.

My first journal was purchased at the bookstore in the small town south of Umeå where I grew up. The dates were printed on the pages, so whatever was on my mind it had to fit on one page. I can still recall standing at the back wall in the little store around Christmas picking the journal, as I did for many years. When I started high school and moved to Umeå, the range of books working as a journal grew bigger, and I moved over to hard cover note books, allowing me to adjust my writing after my needs.

My journal was and is my best friend. I probably wasn’t perceived as a lonely girl, but within me I was. I had friends, but I always felt different and estranged. I think I took life very seriously even at a young age. And I didn’t have parents to turn to when I was troubled.

My father was a warm and loving man but not really equipped for listening to and advising a teenage daughter. My mother was a complex woman who was the root to my alienation and therefore impossible to turn to. She was anxiety-ridden and punishing so whatever my problems were I needed to keep them from her. As she was so different from other moms, I couldn’t share that matter with my friends. I was ashamed and sometimes I even defended her, coming up with good arguments for her behavior. I guess I was a codependent family member. My journal was the only one I could talk to, and I don’t think I would have lived today without my journal, always there. My rescue. My best friend.

At times, going back in my journals, I wish I had been writing more. There are allusions, half images and glances, making me curious about details, about the whole picture. My memory is very good and I remember more from my life than most people do, still, there are of course lost pieces. And sometimes I wonder how my ability of remembering is connected to the fact that I have been writing most of my life down.

The older I have gotten the more I have been writing. The more challenging life has been, the more I have been writing. And the lonelier my life has turned, the more I have been writing.

I need to like the things around me. I need to love the esthetics of the couch I am spending most of my hours in. My cereal bowl needs to make me happy, so does my teacup. The music I am playing needs to fit my emotional mood. The light from the lamp needs to be right. The wall paint needs to be the one I had pictured. And I am designing my dinner table so that I get what I am imagining.

My hands are holding the journal every evening. I am closing my day 365 times a year with reaching for that book. I need to touch something that is inspiring.

Some years have been entered in complete darkness. New Years 2009 when I had a malignant cancer tumor in my breast I picked a dark brown leather journal. There wasn’t room for being inspired. My body and soul were scared and lonely. The year after, being a survivor, the journal was high pink linen (not breast cancer pink but high pink) as in I am living, I am actually living and I am ready for life!!

For years I have wanted to design my own journal. As I have a lot of photos in my archives I’ve been thinking it would be cool to create my own cover. This fall I finally got to it and put a lot of time into it. I was so excited when the books arrived and terribly disappointed watching my pictures look like a storm cloud had parked over them. Contrast, dynamics, colors, none of all that was there! I made a complain, reassured that they would fix it. The second arrival didn’t happen until ten days in to January, and my heart just sank when the outcome was exactly the same as the first one.

At this time I was trying to talk some sense into myself: Maria, this isn’t so bad. The journal still has a nice feel to it. You can get used to this! You don’t actually have to LOVE everything around you to get through the day…

Well, I made a deal with myself; if I couldn’t find anything in the local book store that would make me a little bit more happy than this big disappointment, I would adjust and check in to this reality of mine.

So, I couldn’t have been more surprised to find the most beautiful collection of Canadian handicraft leather note books in amazing designs if I had bumped into them at Barnes and Nobles or some well equipped art supply in Seattle! Expensive of course, but there it was, the book that will harbor the next year of my life and be the last thing on my mind and in my hands every day 2014!

Now, I could make this a cute learning story about fighting hard for something, having to let go, and something else will come your way. That’s actually what if felt like when I breath taken laid my hands on that gem. But I know that life isn’t that simple. Sometimes you have to let go, and nothing else comes your way. The only thing there is, is a deep dark whole. A vast cold tundra. And it’s cold and dark forever.

Life isn’t always a success story. In this time and age we are run over by the message that we are in control of our lives, the only thing we need to do is set a goal, think positive and work hard. I find that approach extremely cynical. Life, as we know it, can change in a split of a second no matter what are goals are, however positive we think and how hard we work.

I am sometimes wondering about the meaning of my life. I don’t know. I don’t know what the meaning of my life is. But there is my bookshelf. Filled with my journals. I am looking at it. I can follow my preferences and taste when it comes to the design of them through the years. I can spot the years I was indifferent, just grabbed something to write in. The years I had purpose and goals. The dark ones. The life changing ones. The happy ones. I am watching my life neatly sorted in colors and shapes. And I am thinking: this is the meaning of my life. The documentation is the meaning of my life.

I am holding my purplish stunning journal in my hand. Of course I did the right thing not adjusting myself to a storm cloudy cover picture that would make my heart sink every night at lights out. This is my life! I am holding my life in my hands. And this year I feel obligated doing everything I can to fill the blank pages between that gorgeous cover with days resembling the sense of the book. Right now – and now is all we know - my life isn’t gorgeous, but it isn’t dark brown either. And I feel my journal will inspire and help me making the best out of it.

Gay/Socialist: the people's choice!

It’s been called a watershed moment in the US history. And it happened this Monday. Seattle’s first out gay Mayor and it’s first socialist were sworn in to office. To me, I must say the latter is more surprising.

In my photo show Away is Home Home is Away, which I produced on commission for The Nordic Heritage Museum in Seattle 2002, there is a pair of pictures called Love.

One of them is from my Swedish village, picturing the hands of my beloved neighbors Alida and Värner at that time 85 and 92 years old. The other one two tall and fit macho men in tanks, one of them black the other white, holding hands, looking at each other. I caught them from behind at a red light on Broadway. It’s a street shot and they are not aware of me. To me the Seattle gay community is a signum for the city.

Mayor Ed Murray took the oath from former governor Gary Locke (the first Asian governor on the US mainland) on a Gaelic bible held by his husband. Socialist City Council member Kshama Sawant’s oath was administered by Washington State Labor Council Vice President Nicole Grant, after which both women turned to the audience raising clenched fists.

I must say, I have never seen a raised clenched fist in Seattle. Perhaps I need a new set of photos juxtaposed, one fist in Umeå and the other one in Seattle.

The event was moved from more or less closed chambers to the City Hall, which was packed with about 1000 people. Reporting happened in national and international news outlets including CNN, Fox News, The Guardian of London, The New York Times, The Times of India and Al-Jazeera International.

Seattle is a liberal American city, no doubt about it. Certainly all my friends are. A couple of years ago I had a meeting with a friend of an acquaintance who was a Republican. I had never even met a Republican before. Driving there I felt like I was meeting with someone from a different planet. It turned out he was a nice person, and we didn’t discuss politics.

I would say my friends are not only liberal, but very liberal indeed. They are opinionated and on top of the political debate not only in Seattle, but national and international. We have never discussed the subject but I doubt that anyone of them would call themselves a socialist though. That’s why I am amazed I have to say, to find a raised clenched fist in the City Council.

Kshama Sawant is known for her uncompromising stands and idealism. She is a former Seattle community college economics instructor, and in her remarks at the ceremony she denounced the “glittering fortunes of the super wealthy” in the city, saying they came at the expense of working people, the poor and unemployed whose lives, she said, “grow more difficult by the day.”

Ed Murray is the architect of the state’s marriage-equality law, which made same-sex marriages legal in December 2012, and one of the country’s longest-serving gay politicians. Murray and Sawant come from different places, but I am thinking those places might be befriending. And this far they agree on a very specific subject: the raise of the minimum wages.

The minimum wage in US is 7.25 dollars per hour. State of Washington has the highest minimum wage in the country, 9.19 dollar by 2013. Now, Kshama Sawant is set on making 2014 the year of the minimum wage 15 dollars in Seattle. Ed Murray chose to make a $15 minimum wage for city employees the topic of his first official press conference. And the pledge by both Murray and Sawant to propose a $15 minimum-wage ordinance to the City Council by April has fueled national interest.

The buzz around the Monday inauguration seems to be an extension of Seattle’s progressive reputation around the country. Washington State already was in the national spotlight for its recent legalization of gay marriage and marijuana. Seattle also was the third city in the country to adopt a paid-sick-leave ordinance that primarily benefits low-wage workers. Since then, three more cities including Portland and New York City have followed suit, putting Seattle at the forefront of liberal initiatives.

Growing up in the Umeå area in the sixties and seventies a raised clenched fist has been more natural to me than same sex marriages. Although Sweden was the seventh country in the world making same sex marriage legal, it didn’t happen until 2009. Umeå has been voted Gay City of the Year twice, but I wouldn’t say gay is a major signum for the city as I feel it is for Seattle; hey, Seattle recently sailed past San Francisco as the most gay city in the US! I would say though that Red Umeå, an epithet from the sixties, still has an accurate ring to it.

Anyhow. Anyway. I am wishing Ed Murray and Kashma Sawant good luck serving the people and City of Seattle, and I am looking forward to what will come out of it! 

The entertainer

-       Will you be going to the family fika tomorrow?

-       If I can get a ride I absolutely will.

-       Would you consider riding with me?

-       I most certainly would!

It is Bertil, calling me the other day. Bertil will be 93 in March and he is my mother’s cousin. He lives on the original family homestead down across the field from me, in a yellow house with a well-kept baker’s cottage and barn.

Every year during the Holidays the family on my mother’s side gets together for a major fika. It is saffron bread and Christmas cookies of many different kinds, and of course coffee, tea, Christmas candy and fruit. This year it was at my sister’s place, and that’s where I needed a ride.

The rain changed to snow just as Bertil was picking me up. I should of course have given him a ride, not the other way around, but things are what they are. The road is slushy, Bertil is an excellent driver though and his eyesight is still unrestricted.

Bertil is a widower since six years back. He was married to the beautiful Kristel who escaped the Nazis through the Berlin sewer system, fleeing her country with her two young daughters. One of the little girls didn’t make it, and Kristel arrived in Sweden with the great loss of a husband, a child and a country. That’s when she met Bertil.

Loosing Kristel has been very hard on Bertil. Yet, it is like he has entered a new phase in life.

I love Bertil, he is very dear to me. He is an intellectual, intelligent, sharp, witty, warm, caring, elegant and an extraordinary storyteller. Being with Bertil is a lot like meeting my father again. They are very similar although not related. I know my mother was very fond of and close to her cousin Bertil, and maybe she saw something in my dad reminding her about her dear cousin. And the funny thing is; my mother and Kristel had similarities too. They were both independent strong women with a lot of character.

In his old age Bertil has become an entertainer. His qualities as a storyteller is widely known, and quite often he is combining that talent with playing the piano, sometimes even singing. In his profession Bertil was an elementary school teacher and church organist, he is still practicing the piano every day. At passed 90 he has refined his teaching skills into his stories, and his fingers are flying the piano keyboard in the most elegant way still.

You could put Bertil into any radio or television broadcast. On stage he is taking everybody in the room in, seeing everyone, giving each and everyone a special word, a nod, a message. His stories are timed on the second and he never runs too long. He knows exactly what he is doing.

One day Bertil told me: ”Maria, I don’t know if I will ever get over the fact that Kristel is gone and won’t be coming back.” I said: “of course you won’t, how could you? She is the one you chose, and she chose you, you had a long and good life together which of course you miss incredibly. Why are you asking from yourself to get over her? That’s just too much to require from yourself, don’t do it!

Bertil is often sad, wondering by himself in his childhood home, most everyone from his early years and adult life gone. He keeps is brain and mind alert with following the news and debates in the world, he watches concerts and theater from Germany on his satellite TV and finds different versions of his favorite music on Youtube. I am sending him a rose by email on his birthday when I can’t walk across the snowy field to give him tulips in March.

And most every week he takes the seat in his white Mercedes which has 187 000 miles, running like it’s still new, and enters a stage where an attentive audience is all eyes and ears for him. He switches his charm on, his gaze young as a boy, his voice expressive and humorous. The entertainer.

Yesterday we were 19 people around the Christmas fika table at my sisters. Three generations, Bertil the oldest, my sons’ cousin Kasper the youngest, just over 20. Bertil isn’t aware of that he is the center for all of us; we are all in love with this wonderful man who can tell the stories of where we all come from.

There is a family tree, and at Christmas Eve the young cousins were gathered around it. Now Kasper started asking Bertil about how it all was connected, who was his father Oscar and how was he related to the young cousins great grandfather Carl? And how come the homestead was divided into two? And tell us the story about their sister Lina who immigrated to America?

The normal duration for a Christmas fika was well passed when we finally rose up from the table. Something very special happened around that table. Three generations together around the family story. No one playing with their phones for other reason than recording Bertil and what he had to tell us. Everyone focused on the same thing. On ourselves in a perspective that we all were very aware of will be gone when Bertil no longer can tell the stories.

To end the day we were all summoned for a summer event we cherish: Bertil’s waffle party in his barn, which he has made into an inn! I know his garden will be at it’s best, him driving the riding mower the day before, making the lawn look like a golf course. And he will play the organ he built in the barn and of course he will tell the stories we ask for. The entertainer.