A Sunday 300 years ago

The words that follow under my pics aren't mine. But I have permitted myself to take an already translated text because when I was reading it in english I learned a lot. This place is situated just some minutes walk from my house. The last pic isn't from my cellphone:)

The Church Town has existed since the 17th century and is a result of the Swedish conformist movement and the dawn of the Protestant Church in 1527. The Church was looking to achieve an effective education of Christianity among the Swedish population as described in Luther’s writings. This resulted in a demand of continuous visits to the church with rigorous tests performed by the local priests at people’s own homes.

So, as the people now had to come to church every Sunday and obviously also on all the religious holidays, those demands had greater impact on people who lived up here in the North compared to those in the South and their shorter distances. Unsurprisingly, those great distances caused more people in the north to fail in their education. This led in 1681 to an agreement between the priests and the village leaders called “the Church Ride”. This meant that the people who lived within 10 kilometres from a church had to attend every Sunday and that those that had between 10 and 20 kilometres should attend every other Sunday. If you had 20 to 30 km you should visit every third Sunday and so on.

A social meaning also came forward during these weekends when people gathered in the Church Town. Among the usual messages of a religious context read out by the priest, there was also information about upcoming markets.

In the Church Town itself people exchanged gossip from all over the area. For many, this was the only way to meet others outside the family and here, many young people met and relationships as well as job opportunities were established. In fact, the tradition of socialising in the Church Towns grew so strong that it continued long after the Church Plight ended during the middle of the 19th Century.

Halloween-regards to my cyber-friends

Me and my musicals

I've told you before that I participated in some musicals when I was younger. After a question from Bart Boehlert I've been thinking about how much that has affected my life. I was very young when I bought the album Dreamgirls, and I remember me standing on the steps between the kitchen and living living room singing loudly with Jennifer Holliday "I'm telling you". After that I had a period in life when I just listened to Barbara Stresiand.

If I had grown up in a family with music ore theater traditions I think I would have looked for some kind of theater educations. I really loved the time on, but also behind the scene. But it wasn't in my mind that it could be something for me to do more than a hobby, it wasn't a real work.

So I didn't became an actress, a director ore a set designer. I'll just became a teacher.... But, now when I've been thinking about this for the first time in my life, I understand that it wasn't a bad choice. I really love my job, one day isn't like the other. My classroom is my scene and the pupils are both my audiences and my actors on a ordinary lesson. I have almost every subjects so I'm abel to plan a week and the days so it will be a good mix of tasks for the kids, like the director planing his work. When the children are painting and making pictures I try to arrange them with a suitable background ore putting them on the walls so It will be like a gallery.

But I have also put up a real musical with a class some years ago. It was about two children traveling around the world. I did it with an other teacher who was responsible for the music and I took care of the acting and scene-building. We had the audience in the middle of the gymnastic hall and the scenes were along the walls so the audience have to turn around during the play. I wanted to have it that way because than we could have all the props on site and only the spotlight was showing the right scene. The gymnastic hall was a perfect place for this because I could use terminals and ropes as pops. I made a ballooned of hula hoops and rings so it looked like it was flying.

I still like to dress up to be someone else for a day at the school when we have a special theme as the 100 year of celebrating. We don't have so much of Halloween here in Sweden but next week me and my colleagues are having a party and the theme will be pop-stars so I'm trying to find out who I'm gonna be...

...and finally I must say that all this "blogging" also is a way of searching for an audience who might find something interesting in my pics ore the things I write about even if it is a simple language.

Thanks Bart for asking me.

Come away with me

This is one of my favorite singers. I like to listen to her when I have a moment by myself and a cup of coffee. I wanted to have this song as a background music for my last post but I didn't understand how to make it first. But as you see I didn't give up. Then when I was at YouTube I suddenly realized how to do. So now you can listen and watch Norah ( she's really beautiful) ore my pics.

Tranquil Sunday

A week ago I went outside to get a power walk along the river. But I couldn't stop myself taking pics of everything beautiful I saw. So afterwards I understood that this gave me more power to the soul than to my muscles.

On the river there's a little island where they have a café in the summer. I went over the bridge and run into an art exhibition with a religious theme.

When I was here I could hear the water and far away the church bells. I don't have words to describe all this I hope you understand that this was a strong experience for a busy mother sometimes wishing that she could ask for a Time Out in her life!

It's still there

I was afraid that the snow would melt immediately this morning so I had to take the pic in the dark before I went to work 10 kilometers from home. There it was storming wet snow for ours and when we left the school all the snow had melt. But when I got home it still was a white beautiful quilt covering the ground in my neighborhood. My work is situated closer to the sea and that makes the difference.

The first snow!

It is still dark outside so the pic isn't good. But everyone in our house came up this morning and yelled happy:

- Wow, snow!

But than we thought about the difficulties when we're going to our works and schools because it's very slippery outside and we haven't been able to change to winter tires.

Will be continued

Memories and creativity

As I told you before I work at a school. Today when I was out at the schoolyard when the children had a break, I found some of my pupils (about 10 years old) in the forest behind the old school-building. They wanted to show me what they have been building. A sentimental but also happy feeling got in to me because I went back 35 years and remembered myself building exactly the same things with stones and branches. Sometimes it happened that there were some other builders near that took a special stone or perch from us - and that wasn't popular!

I think it's so fascinating that children do this things nowadays even if they have so much toys and other things to play with.

The shrinking world

This amazing blog-world! Nelle, in Stone Hill Farm wrote in her comment on my post (Bart, Anne and Th Meehan) that she had really met Th Meehan and talked to him, a few years years ago! Isn't that hard to believe. But I love these coincidences.

Anyway, the chicken-dish on the pics isn't a coincidence. No, it's an example of a food inspiration that I got when I red Nelles blog. We had a very nice Friday dinner, the whole family together and the chicken with goat cheese and spinache tasted very good. Thanks Nelle and E!