The Library and Wes Moore

This place is a favorite of mine. I came here about once a month and read magazines,

and borrow books.

Some weeks ago I read a blogpost by Nelle, at Stone Hill Farm, where she wrote about a Book Club. They had been reading The Other Wes Moore. It caught my interest and I read some more about it and saw some interviews with the writer on the internet. I also decided to ask for the book the next time I visit the library. As expected it wasn't translated into Swedish but they didn't have it in English either.

- Do you think it's possible that you could order it in English? I hesitantly asked the librarian.

- Well, perhaps we can, she answered and I understood that she had to ask someone else. But she took my email. And I must admit that I was very surprised two weeks later when I got a mail from the library that I had a book waiting for me there.

I'm only in the beginning of the book but I like it so far. The story is very fascinating.

Thanks Nelle!

The last lesson every week

Two days of snowing this week and it's full winter here now.

My class spend the last lesson every Friday outside. The subject is physical

education but also a combination with nature study. We play games, go for a walk, skate and ski depending on the season. Behind the red school building there's a forest and the last five minutes before we wish each other a happy weekend we sit quiet together on a long dead, dried stock listening and watching things happening around us. Today we both saw and heard a flock of geese that probably were traveling to the south.

A visit by Mr Frost and Mrs Snow

My husband was catching fishes and I was just taking a walk to get some fresh air and trying to catch some pics. My catching was more successful than his. The frosty branch was taken yesterday inspired by Bill from Gowganda. Our daughter saw his photo some days ago and thought it looked like coconut flings. When I was inside cooking she ordered me to come out and take a photo of the branch in our garden.

- It looks like the one on your computer!

A beautiful song for a future Queen

The summer of 2010 will be remembered as the Wedding-summer in Sweden. That's because our Crown Princess Victoria married her Daniel Westling. In the church there were two popular swedish artists singing a song which was composed for this occasion. Maybe you remember the song Hooked on a feeling from 1974. It was a young Björn Skifs who did a cover of that song than.

I don't know what you think about monarchy but I think that Victoria is a very good person representing Sweden because, as we say in Sweden, she stands with both feet on the ground. She doesn't feel like a rich spoiled person even if she has grown up as a princess.

I usually don't write about designing cloths, there are so many others doing that much better, but this is an exception. I really loved her wedding dress, it was so beautiful even if it was simple and clean. The designer was Pär Engsheden.

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.