A child in Space

I wonder what it was like. Seattle today, 50 years ago. That thing up in the air making its first trip March 24 1962. A futuristic train soaring way up, on a concrete foundation. People on the ground, dressed up in spring coats and hats. Watching, stretched necks, big eyes. The nation’s first full scale monorail system, The Seattle Center Monorail!

It must have been absolutely spectacular!! The world moving in to Space Age, and Seattle taking the lead! Still today, 50 years later, the Monorail feels like an ahead of its time transportation on its safe, solid and eternal route between Seattle Center and Downtown Westlake Center. Adding the element of the ride passing inside the Frank Gehry-designed Experience Music Project Museum in the year of 2000 makes the space dreams still alive.

Personally, I love it! I love the idea of it, I love the sound of it, I love the convenience of it, and I love all the beautiful pictures it makes! From every angle: combined with the Space Needle, the greenery, the arches of the Science center, the EMP Museum, the mountains and the downtown high rises.

My first ride with the Monorail was pretty much exactly 19 years ago. I arrived in Seattle the first time March 23 1993, and the 25th we hopped on the bus in Kirkland where we had landed, and paid our first visit to the heart of Seattle. One little son held tight in each hand in this unfamiliar and quite intimidating new place. Trouble & Trouble 4 and 6 years old in brightly striped handmade Swedish pants, trusting their parents knowing the world. Well, the parents needed hands to hold too, and they grabbed Annie and Harold’s who became Trouble & Trouble’s American grandparents and our benefactors and Seattle guides: “You got to ride the Monorail, the boys will love it!” And so we did. And of course they loved it! The note in my journal that day says: “We went with the railway above the ground”. It was my second day in Seattle and I hadn’t quite caught the name yet. For a grown up there is something very special experiencing the world through a child’s open, innocent and unprejudiced eyes, and reading my journal I feel like I was a child myself that day.

And, I’m thinking, maybe that was what this day was like 50 years ago today. Seattle watching the city’s entrance in Space Age 1962. Like a child.

Making a safe ride

March, I love it! In Seattle cherry blossom is sprinkling the city with pink clouds. In Umeå the 1,5 foot of heavy snow is finally sliding from the roofs, collapsing from trees in loud splashes. The landscape has been frozen since Christmas, it was a very white and serious winter, and now it’s loosing its grip. The cramp is releasing, we can breath again!

When I was a little girl riding my bike wasn’t allowed until the streets were dry, no melting water anywhere. Bikes were a summer tool for fun and transportation. Oh, what a wait. At this latitude mostly until May.

Umeå is a big biking town, the Beijing of Scandinavia. During spring, summer and fall, the residents of Umeå move in fast wheeling crowds across the vast and mostly flat city. Twenty years ago we allowed the bike its winter break when the first snow fell in November, stored in garage or basements until streets were dry and safe again. Those were the days. Today those poor things are equipped with winter tires having to carry us around in feet of hardly passable white stuff. And this time of year as the winter road melts during the day and then freezes again during night, we slide around on black ice, and yes, the ER is full of broken wrists and ankles.

The typical bicycle rider in Umeå on a regular day is transporting him/herself on a regular bike in regular clothes, briefcase or groceries in a bicycle basket in front of the handle bar or in the back. Kind of very casual, straight up sitting, mostly without helmet, the bike like a comfortable extension of the body.

The bike rider in Seattle on the other hand, well that’s a completely different ball game, as my 80 + friend Helen would have expressed it. Here is a person lying over the racing bike, calves pumping in slim biking clothes, water bottle attached to bicycle frame, streamlined helmet matching the slim outfit. Riding the bike in Seattle is serious business, an aggressive art. And it has to; Seattleites are competing with cars on regular streets with highly aggressive traffic. And yes, the ERs are highly frequented by cyclists.

Both cities are working on being more bicycle-friendly and safe though. Every neighborhood in Umeå built from the 60ies and forward is equipped with bicycle lanes separated from the streets. You can actually move across town without having to interfere with cars. Seattle is planning on “urban greenways”, designated streets often parallel to arterials but much quieter — that offer everyone from cyclists to pedestrians and people in wheelchairs safer ways to get around without having to drive. But Seattle is a big city and this is a big undertaking. In Umeå, we just have to wait until May for the bike lanes to be dry and comfortable. In Seattle it will take years to create a safe bicycle environment. But it’s worth waiting for. Until then, have a safe ride!

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?