A fat hallelujah

I don’t know, but it actually sounds better in Swedish, Fettisdag, which is the same expression as Fat Tuesday, maybe because putting fat and Tuesday together creates a new word, also pronounced a bit different. Of course Mardi Gras has a whole different and more exotic ring to it, although it’s still means exactly the same thing. And it comes with traditions.

February in Sweden is way too cold for parades, and we aren’t much of a parading people anyway. Seattle did some of that in the late 70ies, but it ran amok and was first banned for a while, then too controlled and boring and therefore abandoned. Today though, Fat Tuesday in Seattle is a family-friendly face painting event, and lots of great music at the clubs down in Pioneer Square.

So, what do the non-parading Swedes do on Fat Tuesday? Well, we are performing a different and very well behaved kind of parade. All over the country people are lining up in pastry shops hoping for one of those seductively tasty buns impossible to eat without dipping your nose in that wonderful whipped cream. Or of course, you make them yourself, out of your grandmother’s recipe. In both cases, the first semla of the year is a  hallelujah moment. Those buns have a name: semla. In plural: semlor. The word probably comes from the German Semmel, rooted from Latin semila, which means light flour.

I grew up in a bakery. Yes I did. My father was a pastry chef. Yes he was. And yes, it was nothing but wonderful. And of course my father and his colleague’s semlor were the best. My childhood Februaries were a heavenly mix of snow, sun and dad's semlor. A semla is a round bun made from light wheat, spiced with cardamom. The bun is cut in half, so the upper part makes a top. In between there is this filling of whipped cream mixed with almond paste. Yes, hallelujah. And on top of the top part of the bun, a bit of icing sugar. Hallelujah. And there is no way you can eat this thing without getting white tasty stuff all over your face and hands. Triple hallelujah.

So, as my father is no more around and he never taught me how to make semlor (that’s another story) the Fat Tuesday that just passed I simply had to buy these desirable items that is something in between a pastry and a light wheat bread. At 4.30 pm the bakeries and coffee shops can be all out of semlor, big notes on the door and disappointed people walking away, dropping their heads to the chest in a big saddened sigh; day ruined! But I was lucky this year, a few of them still on the shelf. And I learned that only in this bakery 6000 semlor were produced during Fat Tuesday! There are six-seven bakeries in the Umeå area, assume they all made about 6000 semlor each, it adds up to around 40 000! Which actually isn’t that many, considering a desiring population of 115 000 people. So, do 75 000 of us make our own semlor the way our grandmas did? I need to do some research on that part until next year. And more important, I need to find out my father’s recipe. And make myself a February hallelujah moment.

Being bold on a scale

Making big changes when it comes to city planning is a tricky thing. Well, all changes are tricky in one way or the other, but changing the physical environment in the place we call home is serious business. To feel safe, we need to know our way around, the practicalities. We don’t even have to like them, the force of habit is so strong that we a lot of times prefer things as they are, because anything else is unknown and therefore scary. Our comfort zone is a powerful force.

Big changes are to come in Umeå and in Seattle as the two cities front porches, their waterfronts, are going to be redesigned. As if that wouldn’t be hard enough, both cities have chosen to hire people from out of town for the job. Ohhh. What would they know about our city? What would they know about us? Who we are? What we need?

In 2004 six acclaimed Scandinavian architects presented their different visions for the river waterfront in Umeå. They flew in with their models and eyes and minds seeing things in our city we weren’t aware of, telling us things foreign to us. The reactions were all over the map, from anger to happy excitement, but I would say Umeå landed on overwhelmed skepticism. The proposals were bold, the match with the more modest residents of Umeå was hard to reach and nothing of it happened at that time.

So, it was interesting reading Seattle Times the other day, quoting Marshall Foster, planning director for the city: "We're not afraid of bold. We love bold. But now we're trying to make it fit Seattle.” He was referring to the redesign by applauded James Corner of James Corned Field Operations of the downtown waterfront, proposing a grand promenade between the Pike Place Market and the Seattle Aquarium, including a series of tiered plazas and staircases overlooking Elliott Bay and the Olympics. Corner is now scaling back, responding to the local architects and city planners.

The City of Umeå’s way of scaling back was to take back the overall design of the waterfront, and hiring an out of town celebrated architect only for the new building for cultural arts, Kulturväven. Kjettil Thorsen of Norwegian firm Snöhetta, responsible for the building that is actually now going to happen, has an awareness of these matters: “ We have these ideas about everything old being beautiful and needs to be taken care of. So; everything new is foreign, scary ugly, and makes us uncomfortable. Snöhetta is trying to make contemporary architecture available to the public, to make it positive. If we succeed in bringing out that contemporary architecture adds something to the community, we have come a far way.

Building solid foundations

The light is coming back! Every day is now noticeably longer in Umeå, the cold has been paralyzing (-23 F the other day) but it’s stunningly beautiful as the low sun is making tall blue shadows on the sparkling snow, promising that spring isn’t that far away after all.

I was surprised to see the building cranes moving, in spite of the cold. It’s pretty quite though down at the waterfront. It will still be some time before the main attraction down there, Kulturväven - the new building for cultural arts, is to get started. The project has been stalled by appeals, preservers fighting developers. Democracy is a wonderful process, which can be as constructive as it can be annoying.

Important projects need a solid base. In the community as well as at the physical sight. And in both my cities some basic foundational work needs to be done before the big waterfront projects can take place. Seattle has to replace the sea wall protecting downtown from the powerful sound. In Umeå it’s essential to refurbish the riverfront; the streams of the water is a violent force.

So, what about the foundation in the community? Well, the City of Umeå did invite to a number of public meetings. There is a problem though: those meetings tend to draw the same group of people, quite a small crowd, mostly former city officials and well known preservers. The City webpage about Kulturväven http://www.umea.se/kulturvaven is kind of silent. It’s possible to put in a question and you are promised an answer, but the form is a bit stiff and not that inviting.

Väven AB, the City and Balticgruppen (The Baltic Group, the main developer in Umeå) joint company, which will be building the new Umeå landmark, has a webpage too, http://www.kulturvaven.se/. It’s a bit more promising. Filmed interviews with, among others, the architect makes it more alive, there is a web cam at the building sight and we are invited to ask questions via email. It still feels a bit dumb though.

Seattle is making a very ambitious try, involving the public in the design of the new waterfront. The webpage http://waterfrontseattle.org/ greats us with the inviting and challengingly statement “Its your waterfront, help us shape it, come join us”. The calendar tells us not only about the public meetings, but finance, stewardship and executive committee meetings. There has been surveys addressed to the public, and I must say the questions give the impression the City and The Central Waterfront Committee really want to know how the inhabitants of Seattle would like their waterfront in the future.  A series of public discussions on the subject takes place this winter, and the project presentations by James Corner of James Corner Field Operations are open, draw a big crowd and I can watch them in Sweden on the webpage. I get the impression the City and The Central Waterfront Committee intend making the whole process as transparent as possible.

Because of this, I was very surprised finding that my Seattle friends (who are all very engaged in the city and the Seattle community) didn’t know about these efforts at all! In fact, I was better informed than they are! Asking about it they all gave me the same answer: “There is a fatigue among Seattleites about the waterfront. And if anything is going on down there, it’s all covered by the ever ongoing discussions about the Viaduct and the tunnel.”

I would say that fatigue has been a wet blanket in Umeå too, when it comes to the waterfront. But the sleepy state of mind is now exchanged by equal parts hope and skepticism. The cultural arts communities were invited for discussions about the contents of Kulturväven. Some are now happy, others disappointed, and the inside of the building is going to be decided on in June. June is also the month when a strategic plan for the design of the Seattle waterfront is going to be delivered to the mayor. So, will the future be built on solid foundations?

Out of power

Close to a quarter-million people in Western Washington have been out of power this weekend after the worst ice storm ever. There are areas looking like following the big storm Gudrun in Sweden 2004, forests wiped out like they were clear-cut. Quite a lot of snow was expected but most of it turned to frozen rain.

In Umeå though, the forecast was accurate, and the two feet of wet heavy white stuff tucked us in. My place at the end of the road was totally embedded and Trouble 1 and Trouble 2 had to shovel me out of my wooden castle and save my grandfathers apple tree from the dangerous weight of this thing falling non stop from somewhere up there. No, although I am born and raised here I am not a big fan of winter and it’s unpredictable predictability.

I must admit though, that I am rather in Umeå than Seattle when winter weather arranges surprise parties. My latest encounter was December 2006 with gusty winds at 95 miles per hour and the 520 Bridge closed down. I arrived at SeaTac in company with the snow and felt so bad for my friends Terry and Doug who picked me up and had to spend two dangerous hours on black ice back to Seattle, a 20 minute commute a normal day. To make my stay even more adventures I was staying over at Bainbridge Island. The usually cozy Smith-Heffron residence turned pretty cold during the four-day power outage, the gas stations ran out of gas and the only warm place was the ferry where the cafeteria was out of soup 11.30 in the morning.

Extreme conditions have another side to it though. The ladies room at the ferry turned to a sisterly gathering where blow driers and mascaras were passed between us, preparing for the Seattle Christmas parties we were heading for. And all over the ferry people took friendly turns at the power outlets to charge computers and cell phones, storm stories, chocolate bars and a warm coat.

Winters in the north of Sweden are snowy and cold, that’s a natural. But when we are measuring snow in meters and mercury falls below -10 F (ca -23 C) I am often struck by the fact that this is really a dangerous place. These conditions would be life threatening if we didn’t know how to handle them. How to build our houses safe and warm. How to dress. How to drive. How to walk. How to breathe. Knowledge that is passed on from generation to generation. Like the forests. But when the storm hits, in Western Washington or the Umeå region, and trees falls like matches, we have to surrender. There are things that are out of our hands. Things out of our power.

Refuse nirvana

Big news in Umeå this week, Refused will be reunited this summer! My youngest son, Trouble 2, comments that it’s too bad Nirvana can’t do the same.

Refused, one of the most (if not the most) important hardcore punk bands in the world started out in 1992 right here in my Swedish hometown. Their first EP, This is the New Deal, was released the year after, the same year as Nirvana released their last studio album In Utero. The very same year as I first sat my feet in Seattle.

The ragged wool sweaters, the knitted hats, the greasy hair, the flannel shirts, that all grey beige dress code of the city surprised me. I figured it was about the rain. In a place where it’s damp and wet nine months out of twelve and no one is carrying an umbrella you can’t really be to fuzzy about your hair, and the hazy drizzle kind of makes everything look beige-grey anyway, why don’t just go with the flow? And I sort of think it really has to do with the rain. But it has a name: Grunge. That first time though, I didn’t quite get it.

Nirvana was in company with Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Alice in Chains: Seattle’s Big Four. The grunge culture, music and fashion, was spread all over the map and flannel and knitted hats popped up most everywhere. Curt Cobain became a myth, alive and dead. My second visit, May 1994, it had just happened, and my friend Lisa’s brother who was in the same class as Cobain in Aberdeen Washington when they grew up, just vaguely remembered a shy kid no one was paying much attention to. That was the end of Nirvana, as we new it, but just as the name says, Nirvana is an eternal condition.

So, did Refused play Seattle the famous US tour 1998 that ended with the group announcing themselves as Fucking Dead? I don’t know, I can’t find any notes about it, but they should have, Seattle and Refused would be just the perfect match. So, I’m not surprised noting Seattle Weekly (a free magazine) spreading the happy word this week that the Swedish punk band will be reunited later this year. And they will show up in US, at least at Coachella, the legendary festival in California.

While Seattle was grunge-ing in the mid nineties, Umeå was on the straight edge. The city was the hubbub for vegans and animal rights activists, and Refused was shouting out Marxism, veganism (if there is such a word) and straight edge; how to live without alcohol, drugs and probably E-numbers. A whole culture was formed around the hardcore scene, and bands were born and bred in every basement and garage. Refused released The Shape of Punk to Come in 1998, Kerrang!, the outstanding UK rock magazine appointed the album nr.13 among the most influential albums all time, and Umeå became the punk city of the world.

So, Nirvana can’t be brought to life. It was the parents of one of Trouble 2’s 2^nd grade classmates who bought Curt Cobain’s house at Lake Washington when Courtney Love moved away from Seattle. His fans are sneaking around the tucked away place with their cameras, engraving their devotion on a bench nearby. The members of Refused have reached middle age, we were told the group was dead, but it turns out they will be rocking again! David Sandström, the drummer engine of the band, once told me all that energy pro animals and con a lot of things back then had mostly been testosterone, so what will they sing about 2012? What will they refuse?

In the middle of a time line

- Where do they all come from, my sons are asking me this Christmas morning.

The little white wooden church in my village close to Umeå is temporary awakened from its hibernation. It’s filled with people up very early for the Christmas morning service, the traditional “julotta”. So where do they all come from?

I am the seventh generation on my mother’s side in my village, my sons the eighth. That’s as far as the family tree takes us. Once this church was a bride. Born and built in the late twenties by my grandfather and the farmers of the village, dressed in white by their women. Every Sunday they greeted her. They filled her soul with hymns and dignified rest of the seventh day. 70 years later her body is still solid but mostly cold, empty and forgotten.

Except for the Christmas mornings. My sons question is legitimate, for there are more people in the church this morning than inhabitants of the village. The room is warm from the electrical stove. The light is shut down, replaced by flickering candles. People gather in the pews, shaking hands, nodding, smiling, scooting after to let everybody have a seat.

I am a grand daughter of these Christmas mornings and I am sitting on the front row with my sons and their cousin ready for our contribution, the music. The people of my village has been known for being musical, and my grandfather Carl had the most beautiful voice. He had been told that putting reed in the wooden walls of the church would make a wonderful acoustics, so he did, and it was proven to be true. Through the years Carl had enclosed the Christmas morning ceremony with singing the song that to parts of the western world was the most powerful one, Adolphe Adam’s “O Holy Night”. It was sung in churches and cathedrals in capitols and cities, and it was sung in a white wooden church with the sound of a concert hall in a tiny village in the woods.

Carl died before he got to know that his voice was carried on to his son and his grandchildren. This morning O Holy Night was sung by his great grandson, who at the age of 26 has already carried that tradition for more than a decade.

I feel like I am standing in the middle of a time line. On one side; the generations behind me. My mother and her siblings, my grandparents, great grandparents, that is as far as the stories go. On the other side; my children and their children and grandchildren to come. And the stories they will be told. And that’s why the wooden church is filled with people on the Christmas morning. To be a part of this. To be a part of the big story.

A nobel day

Winter has arrived. A big storm hit Sweden yesterday, covered a lot of parts in heavy wet snow. Although we are, in comparison, prepared for this kind of weather, power outings and impassible roads are still an inconvenience.

But it’s beautiful. Although the snow and I aren’t best friends while I am forcing its powers, I can recognize the Christmas card beauty here at the end of the road in my little village in he outskirts of Umeå. And the winter landscape is laid out just in time for the Lucia celebration on Tuesday December 13.

But today a different celebration, as reliable and enlightening as Lucia. I am watching the Nobel Prize Ceremony on television. I’ve only watched the whole thing once before, in 1997. I had promised to tape every minute of it for The Nordic Heritage Museum in Seattle, they were preparing for their own Nobel celebration. So, I was loading hour after our on my VHS while watching this ceremony with new eyes. Eyes that had just arrived in Sweden after spending a year in Seattle.

This was a year when the snow had laid out its soft quilt all over Stockholm. Venice of the Nordic countries, a picture in the dark December afternoon. The City Hall with its characteristic tower the main setting, inside The Blue Hall all spruced up with Italian flowers, glowing warm from artistic lights, candles, music and gorgeous dresses. And then there is a king. And a beautiful queen. A handsome prince and two lovely princesses.

With eyes who had just spent a year in the US I could sense the foreign guests astonishment being a part of all this. This tiny country close to the North Pole frozen in frosting. Hosting one of the most important events of the world. Is it really for real? And today, I hear Alexis Steinman, daughter of late Ralph Steinman, Medicine Laureate, saying what I was thinking back then 14 years ago: “It’s like a fairy tale!”

I’m not sure that we in Sweden are fully aware of the impact of the Nobel Prize. It’s an institution in the Swedish society that passes by like a glimpse every dark December, out in the world though it’s a torch for scientific and intellectual enlightenment. Nobel is one of very few magic words in any language, for most parts unquestioned and solid. And a Swedish brand, I would say understated and somewhat overlooked by us. Maybe we are too close. Maybe you need to get your eyes opened far away to see. Maybe you need to get out of your own shadow. And even then it might be hard to find the words. To quote Tomas Tranströmer, the Literature Laureate 2011:

I am carried in my shadow

like a violin

in its black case

All I want to say

gleams out of reach

like the silver

in a pawnshop