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Posts Tagged ‘sweden’

Sweden Runs out of Garbage

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on November 15, 2012 | 3 Comments »

I just got a great lead from Erik. It seems that Sweden has run out of garbage for running its waste-to-energy program. Fortunately, Norway has garbage it can spare. (I wonder if Erik’s buddy Svein knows that.)

Check out Matt Hickman at Mother Nature Network:

“Sweden, birthplace of the Smörgåsbord, Eric Northman, and the world’s preferred solar-powered purveyor of flat-pack home furnishings, is in a bit of a pickle: the squeaky clean Scandinavian nation of more than 9.5 million has run out of garbage. The landfills have been tapped dry; the rubbish reserves depleted. And although this may seem like a positive — even enviable — predicament for a country to be facing, Sweden has been forced to import trash from neighboring countries, namely Norway. Yep, Sweden is so trash-strapped that officials are shipping it in — 80,000 tons of refuse annually, to be exact — from elsewhere.

“You see, Swedes are big on recycling. So big in fact that only 4 percent of all waste generated in the country is landfilled.

“Good for them! However, the population’s remarkably pertinacious recycling habits are also a bit of a problem given that the country relies on waste to heat and to provide electricity to hundreds of thousands of homes through a longstanding waste-to-energy incineration program. So with citizens simply not generating enough burnable waste to power the incinerators, the country has been forced to look elsewhere for fuel. Says Catarina Ostlund, a senior advisor for the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency: ‘We have more capacity than the production of waste in Sweden and that is usable for incineration.

“Public Radio International has the whole story (hat tip to Ariel Schwartz at Co.Exist), a story that may seem implausible in a country like garbage-bloated America where overflowing landfills are anything but scarce.” Read more.

Photograph: Smath/Flickr

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Swedish Harp

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , on July 7, 2012 | 2 Comments »

Asakiyume writes that an old friend visited her and brought along an unusual harp. Asakiyume explains that the nyckelharpa is “a Swedish musical instrument that’s both keyed and bowed.”

That sounds harder than walking and chewing gum. Even the hurdy-gurdy that I hear in the subway doesn’t look as hard as that sounds, and the hurdy-gurdy involves keying and cranking.

“It’s older than the violin,” Asakiyume says of the nyckelharpa, adding, “my friend tells me there are old tapestries and paintings showing the angels playing these nyckelharpa in heaven.”

(Readers of this blog will note that I can seldom resist tidbits about Sweden. Egypt is another favorite. Both for family reasons.)

Here is Asakiyume’s friend playing the nyckelharpa.

 

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Biking in Sweden

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , on June 19, 2012 | 7 Comments »

Most of my family (other than me) does a lot of biking. John, for example, biked from Arlington, Mass., to Syracuse, N.Y., last week just because he felt like it. It took several days.

My husband bikes most weekends in good weather. And he reads a biking magazine where he saw a story he thought would interest my Swedish readers.

Writes April Streeter at Treehugger (reprinted by the biking magazine), “If you want to find an unassuming place where bicycling is a way of life and nobody makes a big deal about it, head south. The south of Sweden, that is, where the small university town of Lund has a big bicycle habit. They just don’t advertise it.

“In Lund, 60% of the populace bikes or takes public transport to go about their daily tasks. And then there’s Malmö, Sweden’s third largest city — only 20 miles southwest of Lund. Malmö also doesn’t have a reputation for fantastic biking. But some [Swedes] say it is the country’s best biking city — ahead of both Stockholm, the capital; Gothenburg, the second largest Swedish metropolitan area, and a host of smaller bike-friendly burgs.

“Just across the Øresund sound from Copenhagen, Malmö has always lived a bit in the shadow of the Danish capital. But in the last few years it has done a lot to take a place among the great biking cities of Northern Europe, mostly by its investment in infrastructure and pure commitment to get people on their bikes. That has paid off — cycling has increased 30% each year for the last four years, while car trips under five kilometers have dropped.

“Now Malmö is upping the stakes by putting up 30 million Swedish crowns (about US$4.1 million) toward the building of a four-lane super cycling highway between it and its bike-happy northern neighbor city Lund.” See the article here.

Here is a slide show on Lund, at the NY Times.

Ramboll/Screen capture

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500,000 Lenses in the New $100 Bill

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on June 6, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

A new $100 bill is in the works. For security, it will have half a million tiny lenses in a special strip, and the lenses will create a particular optical effect as you tip the bill this way and that.  Kind of like a hologram, is my understanding. There will be even more tiny lenses on the Liberty Bell and the numeral 100, and as you tip the bill, the one will turn into the other, thanks to the lenses.

This rather surprising information I learned from a speaker today — Doug Crane, vice president of the family company that has been making America’s currency and some other nations’ currencies since 1801. He makes paper only from cotton (80%) and linen (20%).

There are a lot of interesting old documents about the history of Crane & Co. — and how it overlapped with key events and players in American history — at this blog on WordPress.

More information is on the regular website of the company, which is based in Dalton, Massachusetts, and employs 850 people locally. Among them are the people who make print so tiny you could “print the Bible twice on a dime.” They also employ optical engineers who create the micro lenses and are responsible for Crane’s 80 patents.

Other employees work in Tumba, Sweden, ever since Sweden asked Crane to take over its currency making. At the Tumba site, Crane makes currencies for additional countries.

A paper-making enterprise requires a lot of energy, so Crane is working with numerous alternatives as it moves toward its goal of 100% sustainability. It has   already drastically cut its oil use in a partnership with a steam-producing landfill enterprise. Hydroelectric is proving trickier because there are so many jurisdictions on the Housatonic River to give permission to remove waterfalls.

Perhaps the river could become a Blueway and get everyone working together. (See yesterday’s post.)

Postcard from cranesbond.com

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Swedish Poet Writing in English

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on February 2, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

Margareta sent me a poem in Swedish by Karin Boye. She said it was apt for Erik and Suzanne, who are embarking on several new “voyages” simultaneously.

Erik sent a follow-up: “That poem is very well known in Sweden; everyone will know the sentence ‘Nog finns det mål och mening i vår färd-Men det är vägen, som är mödan värd,’ which roughly means that it is the act of voyage, and not the end goal, which is the purpose of acts, and life.”

Erik also sent me a poem by his childhood friend Jonathan. “The poem is written with the Lake District in mind, where he traveled frequently with his family as a child.”

FALLS, by Jonathan Wallis

Waterfalls,
silently,
crystal clear to frozen ground
Snowdrifts from currents, lightly
muted all disturbing sound

Colours bound, in touch of frost
Summer’s splendour lost,
and found

Touched now, mirth is drained
Laughter caught, angels choir stained

No whisper above, but below,
Scurrying
feet

Hair twisting,
body rushing, twisting

Here I cannot see only feel

In dark,
colours shift too rapidly
Body heat, maddeningly
Why did I laugh at the beauty of such curiosity?

Run, silently
beneath covering snow
and in time
warm life shall grow

Waterfalls
lightly now,
Crystal clear to spring warm ground
Naked body laughs
All is sound
Colours unbound,
in touch of waters tossed
Dreams are lost,
and found

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Creativity at Age 8

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on January 13, 2012 | 6 Comments »

We have a fierce wind here today. A woman in the elevator where I work said she went outside to mail a letter, and all the pedestrians were walking at a 45 degree angle trying not to be blown off their feet. Which gives me a great opportunity to highlight the creative endeavors of a young relative (age 8) who, with a classmate, wrote a quite wonderful poem about the wind.

The Wind
By Axel L-R and Constantinos F

I may be scary
I may be cold
I’m all around you and I never get old
If you enter the woods you may hear me howl
Or maybe it´s just an owl
When I get angry I become a hurricane
Look out!
You may not want to come out
The apples tumble down the hill after I throw them off their branches
I shake things
I take things and sink all the ships
I am the wind
Something that´s everywhere and you should take care of me
Or I will never be there

You might be interested to know that Axel has other creative irons in the fire. While my husband was in Sweden, Axel interviewed him for a possible article in a magazine he was putting together. The interview didn’t make the cut, but the magazine came home, all in Swedish, crossword included. 5 kroner.

Here is Axel as the wily Ali Baba.

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Meanwhile, in Northern Sweden

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on January 1, 2012 | 4 Comments »

In Eastern Massachusetts, it’s been a mild and sparkling day.

In Northern Sweden, there’s snow.

Suzanne, her dad, Erik, and Erik’s family are doing cross-country skiing there. At Fjallnas hogfjallshotel and Strandgarden, where Erik’s extended family stays every year between Christmas and New Year’s, dusk descends at 1 p.m.

Can you read the signpost for Strandgarden? Me neither. But it’s pretty nice for skiing in those latitudes. Last year, dog sledding was on the agenda, too.

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The From Scratch Club

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on November 20, 2011 | 5 Comments »

We’re hopping an early Acela train Wednesday to join Suzanne, Erik, and other family members for Thanksgiving.

I’m assigned to make cranberry sauce, stuffing, and a squash dish. Although I have already placed my ingredients order and can’t use the recipe I just saw at another WordPress blog, you might like to. It’s a maple-citrus-ginger-cranberry sauce.

The blog in question is the public face of a collaboration in Upstate New York, the “From Scratch Club”: “We are a small group of women, living within the Capital Region of NYS (Albany, Troy, Schenectady, Saratoga Springs) striving for a sustained connection to the whole food we, our loved ones, and our communities consume.

“We meet twice a month for food swaps, and maybe even a food-related adventure, field trip, cheesemaking party or potluck. Once a month we participate in community outreach at various local farmers markets in our area.”

These ladies understand that the key to enjoying great cooking is to have others to share the results with.

Consider Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is mostly about preparing lots of food and bringing groups of people together to eat the food and talk and not rush off to anything.

This year at Suzanne’s, my sister and her husband will join the fun. Also Erik’s cousin and her family, who have just relocated from Sweden to the U.S. It’s great that little kids will be part of the festivities.

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Swedish Poet Wins Nobel

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on October 11, 2011 | 2 Comments »

At their wedding, Suzanne and Erik seated me next to Erik’s uncle on one side and Jonathan on the other. Jonathan was into literature. In fact he wrote a poem for Suzanne and Erik that he read as a toast. (You would not believe how many toasts Swedes give at weddings. It’s an awful lot of fun!)

Jonathan knew a lot about American and English poets, and I asked him to suggest a Swedish poet that I could read in translation. I figured that Google Translate might not be optimal for poetry. He recommended Tomas Tranströmer. After the wedding, I bought Tranströmer’s The Half-Finished Heaven, translated by Robert Bly. (Who knew Robert Bly translated Swedish?)

Last week, Tranströmer was awarded the 2011 Nobel Prize for Literature. Here is a short Tranströmer poem from the book, illustrated by a photo my husband took before Hurricane Earl in 2010. (The photo is called “Red Sky at Morning, Sailors Take Warning.”)

Storm, by Tomas Tranströmer

The man on a walk suddenly meets the old
giant oak like an elk turned to stone with
its enormous antlers against the dark green castle wall of the fall ocean.

Storm from the north. It’s nearly time for the
rowanberries to ripen. Awake in the night he
hears the constellations far above the oak stamping in their stalls.

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A Use for Old Bridesmaid Dresses

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on September 29, 2011 | Leave a Comment »

Nicholas Kristof writes in the NY Times about a Kenyan called Jane, who was pushed out when her husband took a second wife and who found herself supporting her children through prostitution. That is, until she joined a remarkable nonprofit and made a better life for herself through sewing. She takes used wedding gowns and bridesmaid gowns and cuts them up to create several smaller dresses that she can sell.

Kristof writes that in 1999, Jane was fortunate to find “an antipoverty organization called Jamii Bora, which means ‘good families’ in Swahili. The group, founded by 50 street beggars with the help of a Swedish woman, Ingrid Munro, who still lives in Nairobi, became Kenya’s largest microfinance organization, with more than 300,000 members. But it also runs entrepreneurship training, a sobriety campaign to reduce alcoholism, and a housing program to help slum-dwellers move to the suburbs.” Jane became an entrepreneur, was able to get her children into good schools, and rejoiced to see them thriving.

But as Kristof explains, the lives of the working poor tend to remain one accident or illness away from upheaval. Jane’s daughter was hurt in a traffic accident and treatment for the injury sucked up all Jane’s savings, affecting her ability to pay for school.

Kristof likes to go beyond traditional reporting in his columns and give readers a way to help, so you might want to check his blog.

More on Jamii Bora:

 

 

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Sailing in Sweden

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on July 27, 2011 | Leave a Comment »

To recap, I started this project in May, having been asked by Suzanne and Erik to write a blog affiliated with Suzanne’s birthstone jewelry company, Luna & Stella. This first post explains.

Folks who have been reading know that Erik is from Sweden. He and Suzanne often go sailing when they vacation there in summer. Erik’s mother recently sent along this photo, writing, “Suzanne, Erik and Jimmy leaving Veddö hamn [harbor]. Sailing along the Västkusten shore in beautiful weather.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Soon they will be sailing for the honor of Sweden.

OK. Maybe not right away. I like Jimmy’s boat better anyway.

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Horse Agrees Not To Be Extinct

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on July 13, 2011 | Leave a Comment »

I’ve been reading Jason Elliot’s book Mirrors of the Unseen, which is about time he spent in Iran (not long before the green revolution of June 20, 2009, was trampled).

He’s a lovely writer if a bit overwhelming with his ability to compress centuries of history. I liked his earlier book, too, on Afghanistan, An Unexpected Light.

In the car on Sunday I read aloud a section of Mirrors that describes Elliot’s extended stay with Louise Firouz, an American who married an Iranian in the 1960s and has lived in Iran ever since — despite stints in prison and twice having all her family’s property confiscated.

The part I read aloud was about how she had researched, rediscovered, and bred a small horse thought to be extinct, one that turned out to have an ancestor going farther back than the Arabian horse. It’s the little Caspian, which was finally found, in pitiful shape, near the Caspian Sea and in Turkmenistan.

Nowadays you can find lots of videos of these horses on YouTube. I thought I would include this video, which is from a Caspian stud farm in Sweden.

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Nation of Immigrants

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on July 11, 2011 | Leave a Comment »

A friend of mine has a new blog on economic education.  He’s a very good writer with a great sense of history and how history repeats itself. Here he notes that there have always been vested interests in America giving immigrants a hard time. Those immigrants become integral to the fabric of American life, but sometimes their descendants forget the struggle and turn against newer immigrants. We need to remind ourselves of how well things have worked out when newcomers have gotten education, started businesses, hired people, run for office, invested in communities.

Personally, I love to think of America as built by immigrants. Besides, Erik is from Sweden and my daughter-in-law’s parents came from Egypt.

If you sign up to make comments on my friend’s blog, I know he will be happy. I myself am happy when people make comments.

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Fun with Google Translate

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , on July 8, 2011 | 3 Comments »

Caroline A. and Suzanne met during the senior year of high school, when Caroline left her home in Sweden to spend a semester in the U.S. After graduation, we took Suzanne on a trip to Stockholm. We hit the tourist spots, hung out with Caroline’s family, and helped celebrate her birthday with a pig roast.

Sweden made a big impression on us all, especially Suzanne. Later when she was attending business school in Switzerland, she met Erik, and that was that.

Nowadays I have Swedes as Facebook friends, which forces me to rely a good bit on Google Translate. that can be fun but  puzzling. When Caroline writes –

“Tack så mycket! Nu ska vi bara ta kål på det förbaskade viruset som belägrat min kropp och sen fira lilla mig. :) ” –

I can sort of understand Google’s “Thank you very much! Now we just kill the damn virus that besieged my body and then celebrate the little me. :) ” — I especially understand the universal emoticon.

With “Finsk midsommarsoppa: häll upp vodka i en blommig sopptallrik,” I barely need Google Translate to tell me it means “Finnish midsummer soup: Pour the vodka into a floral soup plate.”

But more often than not, I find myself skirting the edge of a dark intrigue. Consider “och inte lär de sig. Plattsättaren la ner jobbet direkt då uppdragsgivaren lämnade landet. Nu är det hot som gäller eftersom vädjan inte fungerar,” which means, says Google, “rather, they learn. Flat assembler put down the job immediately when the client left the country. Now is the threat posed by the appeal as not working.” Hmmm. I believe an international crisis is brewing. Hard to say where, though.

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Rediscovering the Beach

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on July 3, 2011 | 2 Comments »

One of the great things about going to the beach with your toddler grandson is seeing it through his eyes and remembering your own early experiences.

I remember the first time I went to Fire Island and played in the tide pools on the broad, sandy beach. My brother and I didn’t want to leave, and my parents also seemed relaxed and playful.

This morning I asked my in-law children whether they recalled any early beach memories. My daughter-in-law remembered an overcast week on Cape Cod, where she and her younger sisters liked climbing on a rocky jetty that stretched out into the water along the sand.

Erik, growing up in Sweden, didn’t see a lot of sandy beaches but has lovely summer memories of the islands of the Archipelego — climbing on the rocks and exploring. He also spent a lot of time on the water in boats and remains an avid sailor.

Here is Erik’s nephew climbing the rocks on the Swedish seacoast as Erik did at that age.

Here is my grandson with his mom yesterday. He was crazy about the ocean. And although he is not quite walking yet, he held hands and ran like mad along the sand, shrieking for joy.

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