One Day at a Time

 

Left: Friday - Right: Saturday

 
The snow that fell during the week remains. Today has been sunny, but cold. Around -8'C (17-18 F) according to my weather apps - and probably feeling even colder because of wind. (Today I haven't been out at all.)

Yesterday I was expecting a delivery of groceries between 10-13. I was among the last on their list that day, and with the snow and everything, they didn't arrive until shortly after 13 this time. (And then it took me nearly an hour to unpack and sort everything into fridge, freezer and various cabinets. Because of all the holidays it was my first delivery in three weeks.) As I live only 1 km or so from the supermarket, I'm usually either among the very first or the very last on their route - and I never know which until the same day. But then I can follow updates of expected time of delivery on their app, and also get a text message when I'm next. With the present snow situation, one has to be prepared for delays; but they were only like 10 minutes late in the end, and I got everything I had ordered.   

Today I had the laundry room booked for the afternoon, starting at 12. Normally I try to avoid booking weekends; but again, with all the red days lately, normal routines have been set aside. Recently I've felt more need of keeping the few non-holidays "free", in case I should need to transport myself somewhere for some errand or other. (But with the snow situation, combined with my knee, have ended up mostly just staying in anyway...) 

One result of all this is that just now, I still frequently have to keep reminding myself what day of the week it really is!  

We have a word for this in Swedish which doesn't have an exact translation in English (to be veckovill). I asked Google AI for an equivalent in English, but instead of just admitting that it didn't know, it came up with suggestions way off the mark (like "weekly").

Turning to an old and trusted printed Swedish-English dictionary, that simply gives the matter-of-fact paraphrase: "not know what day of the week it is". 

 

Time and Time Again

 

I searched my own blog for previously posted clocks, and found this one - the Astronomical Clock in Lund Cathedral (in Sweden) - from around 1425. (If you're interested in more details, you can read more about it in my post from 2019, and also in Wikipedia.)

The reason I'm bringing up Time and clocks (again!) is of course that this weekend (here in Europe) it was time to reset ours (again!); switching back from Summer Time (daylight saving time) to what I still prefer to call Normal Time... 

I decided to do my "clock round" early on Saturday evening, rather than wait until bedtime or Sunday morning. All in all I have at least 7 manual clocks/watches to reset. Two wrist watches. Two wall clocks, one in my study and one in my hall. One smaller clock standing on the fan cover in my kitchen. One alarm clock beside my bed, and spare one in my living room. (There is also an 8th one in the old small stereo in my bedroom that has to be reset manually - which I often forget, as I rarely look at that one anyway.)

I made my round among them all, and then sat down to watch TV. 

A couple of hours later - just as all the clocks and myself all agreed that it was time to go to bed soon - it suddenly hit me that I had set all the clocks FORWARD rather than BACK... So I had to do the whole procedure over again - now setting them all back two hours.

Obvioiusly that all got a bit too complicated for my sleepy brain, because today - just as I sat down at the computer in my study to write this post - I discovered that the one on the wall above was still on Summer Time. So I had to pause the blogging project to immediately make another round among the rest of my clocks and watches to check those as well - but they seemed to be correct... 

Ever since this fiddling with time first started (1980 here in Sweden), I have been a firm advocate for going back to "Normal" all year round... Still keeping my fingers crossed that it will happen before I get much older!!

Tomorrow, I have an appointment at the Health Care Centre at 11:15 for a double vaccination. And I'll have to take a taxi to get there - still too far for me to walk. At least as it's not an early morning appointment, I hope I'll have a fair chance of getting it right...

(Note to self: I should also check the time on my separate camera, as I can't remember if I reset that one back in spring or if I decided not to bother...) 

 

Two Soons in a While

Adapted to English by me from a Swedish version I saw on Facebook:

A Moment is 3 minutes.

A Right Away is 12 minutes.

A Soon is 24 minutes.

A While is 48 minutes.

Which means that there are 4 moments in a Right Away, 
2 Right-Aways in a Soon, and 2 Soons in a While. 

I reposted the Swedish original on FB (for Swedish friends) with the comment that it's good to have guidelines, but I probably still need to double those figures...! 

 

On Monday I managed a walk to the nearest small convenience "corner shop" (to buy some bananas). Normally that takes less than 15 minutes there and back again. Walking very slowly and carefully now, it took me 25+.. (Including sitting down for a couple of minutes on a bench on the way back.)

 

Autumn keeps advancing outdoors

 

Here's a Peanuts comics strip that made me smile the other day:

I don't think I'm being quite as grumpy as Lucy yet, though. I certainly don't hate the whole world... On the contrary, I'm still very grateful to be able to communicate with the whole world, without even going outdoors!

Progress of Autumn, and Things To Do

 

Where did September go? In many ways, and not least because of mild and sunny weather, it was a month that felt more like the end of summer than the beginning of autumn. Now October is upon us, however - and it seems to come with a long list of Things To Do.

It started already on Monday this week, with having to get up early and go out for a walk without even having had breakfast first - something which I can assure you is not my usual habit. It pretty much only happens when I have to go and have fasting blood tests taken - which was also the cause this time, for an "annual" doctor's "follow-up" appointment coming up in a couple of weeks. The "annual" has in later years been replaced with at least 18 months but I can't think of one word for that. The "follow-up" part is also not quite what it used to be, since nowadays it seems to be a new doctor every time. But a general check-up of  chronic condtions and prescribed meds, anyway.

I've also had reminders about upcoming vaccinations (flu+covid), but I'll have to book a separate appointment for those. And I need to get a haircut, but I don't know where to fit that in until some other things are over and done with...!

On today's to-do-list was Laundry Day + putting in an online order of groceries for delivery tomorrow. Usually I choose delivery on Thursday or Friday, but this week I needed to make it Wednesday, because on Thursday or Friday - at any time during either of those days - I have been forewarned to expect a visit from plumbers to install new taps (faucets) in both kitchen and bathroom. (They'll be doing this in all the apartments in my area, all in one fell swoop - not just mine.)

I hate (ok, strong word...) fuzzy time indications like "between 7.15 on Thursday and 16.00 on Friday" (even if I suppose it must be implied that I can probably relax between 16.00 on Thursday and 7.15 on Friday!) ... They say the job as such will only take about 20 minutes in each apartment; but not knowing when those 20 minutes will be still makes it problematic to plan the day(s). Of course I'll have to be up and dressed at 7.15 (way before my usual breakfast time) "just in case", plus I'll be worrying that they'll ring on my door just as I'm in the bathroom, or preparing lunch, or whatever... And I predict that  I probably won't settle down to much blogging until it's over and done with!

 

Autumn is happening fast now. The two photos at the top were taken on Saturday, on my walk back home from visiting the market in town. The photo here at the bottom of the post shows the same trees today - only three days later. (It should be added that these trees are among the very earliest to turn all yellow, though. I don't know what kind they are.)

The Mystery of the Missing Watch

 

It's not just bird feeders that mysteriously go missing around here. (Cf. my recent "Weekend" post.) Yesterday, when I was going to the hospital for my scan, I couldn't find my wristwatch. I only wear the watch when I go out; but especially when I'm going somewhere by bus, and/or have appointments to keep, I really miss it if I'm not wearing it. (My phone usually rests in my handbag except when I'm using it to take photos.) When I get home, I normally (automatically, by habit) take it off and put it on top of the chest of drawers in the hall. And if it's not there, I will usually find it either on the kitchen table, my bedside table, the coffee table next to my TVchair, or the desk in my study...

Yesterday, it was not to be found in any of those places, so I had to leave home and manage my bus travels and hospital appointment without it (frequently checking the time on my phone instead). 

When I got back home, I resumed my search. Besides the most likely places, I also looked for it in a lot of extremely unlikely ones - but to no avail. 

I also could not remember when it was that I had last worn it. Sunday, I did not go out all day. Monday, I was only out for a very short walk. I might have worn the watch then - but not necessarily. Tuesday was laundry day. I probably did not wear the watch then as I had the phone with me down to the laundry room. And last week I did not walk any further than the cemetery either, and might or might not have worn the watch... But if I did, could perhaps the wristband have broken so that I had dropped it somewhere outdoors...? It did not seem very likely, but then neither did it seem likely that I had managed to "lose" the watch within my own flat!

After another indoors search this morning, I gave up, and decided that I had better just buy a new one. My "lost" one was very far from new anyway, and of no great value. It was another sunny day without snow and ice, so a good day for errands. I went for a walk into town, to a watch shop there, and bought myself a new, cheapish, rather similar one.

After that purchase, I took a bus to the shopping centre "across town" for some other errands (more about that in some other post); and from there another bus back to the railway station, and then another 15 min walk back home from there. 

Later in the afternoon, I was going to take out some garbage to the bins at the corner of the building. I opened a drawer in the hall bureau and grabbed my set of "basement" keys - which includes the keys to the laundry room and my basement storage rooms, and is on a neck strap.

As I picked them up, something came loose from the knuckled up neck strap... Guess what?

Mystery solved. Obviously, on Tuesday - laundry day - my watch had been lying in its usual place on top of the chest of drawers in the hall. Coming up from my last turn to the laundry room, I had put down the key-strap on top of it, and then when I put the keys back in the drawer, the watch had got entangled in the strap and went down in the drawer with those keys... Just a look in the drawer during my serach was not enough to detect it; and when going out yesterday and today, I used another set of keys that I keep in my handbag.

So now I have two...! (Old one, left. New one, right.)

I had to laugh, because I even said to the girl who sold me the new watch in the shop, that "if nothing else, buying a new one is probably the best way to get the old one to turn up"...

 

Plenty of Time?

Last week I borrowed a book at our district library, written by a Swedish physicist and author, Bodil Jönsson (born 1942). Between 1999 and 2019, she wrote about 20 books. As far as I can find, only her first book has been translated to English, though - entitled Ten Thoughts About Time. 

The book that I borrowed now (and have been reading over this past week) is a sort of sequel to that first one, written 20 years later (2019). Using the same headlines for each chapter as in the first one, she is updating her ideas a bit; now weighing in changes in our concepts and uses of time that have occurred over the past two decades, related to the progress of technology etc. The title of this one could be translated Plenty of Time (but as I said, it does not seem to have been published in English). The Swedish cover has an image reminding me of the new mural seen from our town park - which is why I chose that photo above. Below is the cover of the book in Swedish:

What I remember best from the first book (and I think that's also what got most talked about here back then in media reviews etc) was her emphasis on the importance of something that in Swedish she calls ställtid. I'm not sure what word is used in the English edition, but probably changeover, a word from industrial context meaning "the process of converting a line or machine from running one product to another". Anyway, she keeps coming back to the importance of pauses between various tasks, giving us time both to reflect, and to mentally prepare for what is coming up next. Whether it's about bigger changes, or just (for example) the time we regularly spend travelling (or walking) between work and home. One of her main ideas (as I understand it) is that even the time when we seem to be doing "nothing" is actually essential when it comes to being efficient; because we need such times (sometimes short, sometimes longer) in order to reset our thoughts and feelings etc as we go from one task or role or context to another.

What I think I'll be taking with me from the new-ish (2019) book that I just read, is that here she also encourages us to try to change our contemporary perspective of thinking about of time as running away from us (so that we constantly feel that we'll never be able to catch up), to instead think of time as coming towards us. Easier said than done, perhaps - but may be worth some contemplation...

 

That Time of Year

Only three days left of October... The leaves are dropping fast from the trees now; and tonight before I go to bed, I'll be changing a number of clocks back from daylight saving time to "normal" (winter) time... 

For the record, I still wish we'd stop this nonsense of fiddling with Time twice a year. (I keep repeating that every time.) For my own part I feel like my Body Clock is pretty much stuck on Normal Time all year round, but changing the clocks messes with my daily routines, and keeping in sync with the rest of the world. (Like meals vs certain radio and TV programs, and when to go out for walks. Things like that.)

 

 (AI generated images)

31st October - The Times They Are A'Changin' (Again)

 

In my opinion, we really need to put a stop to this nonsense of turning time back and forth twice a year. I think the EU actually did make some sort of decision about it a couple of years ago. But they (or I suppose I should say "we") still didn't manage to get countries to decide whether to stop the clock on 'winter' time or 'summer' time. And at least here in Sweden, so far, we're still carrying on as usual. Which means that this weekend, it was That Time of Year again.

So yesterday evening, I decided to change my clocks before going to bed, so that they would all show the right time when I woke up today. In spite of all the WiFi clocks on various modern devices nowadays changing themselves, I still have quite a few clocks that need to be set manually - because at home, I don't like wearing my wrist watch, but prefer to have at least one wall or table clock in each room that will quickly tell me what time of day (or night) it is. 

So I made my clock-turning tour last night, and put all the clocks forward one hour. But when I'd finished that job, somehow something did not feel quite right about it...

Oops!

I realized my mistake, which meant I had to make another round, putting all the clocks back - and this time two hours... 

After I'd done that, I thought to myself that tomorrow (i.e. today) I'd probably still discover at least one that I forgot about, or got it wrong with. (That nearly always happens.) 

And of course I was right! 😂 (Do you spot it? I didn't notice until I decided to take my camera with me on a check-up round this afternoon...)

(The image at the top of the post is borrowed from somewhere on the Web. The ones in the collage at the bottom are all mine.)

 

Home Sweet Home

The Midsummer weekend here has been "up and down" with a mix of sun, rain and thunder, and varying degrees of humidity. In my neighbourhood, quite a few people besides myself seem to have been spending it at home; which in turn means it tends to get noisy, especially in the afternoons and evenings, with all the windows and balcony doors kept open because of the heat, people talking, and kids out playing etc. 

I find a bit hard to cope with the afternoons sometimes, as in hot summer weather that's neither the best time of day for me to be out, nor to stay in - and I can't really think of a third alternative! (And of course, this year, the corona situation adds to the frustration for everyone.) On the other hand, the morning seems the best time for me for anything and everything from sleeping in, being lazy, reading, going out, sitting on the balcony (before the sun hits) - and for cleaning and cooking and doing computer work etc indoors. As I'm not exactly an early bird by nature to begin with, that means my active time of day is rather limited (between late breakfast and lunch!) And the rest... Phew, well, never mind! (Today I managed to fit in a nice nap while heavy rain was drumming away on my windows, though. And with the rain, no need to keep thinking that perhaps I should be out instead...)

This morning (seems like a long time ago now), I woke up with fragments of a dream lingering in my head - and thought I might blog about that later. Now is later, but of course now, my vague recollections of the dream seem even more fragmentary and blurry. Copying the photo of the bird houses from my camera to the computer reminded me of it again, though, because I know it was all somehow to do with "home" - and including some feelings of frustration. However, I can't really recapture the dream itself now, and only vaguely some of my thoughts while thinking about it back in the morning.

For one thing, the audio book I'm listening to at the moment is Coming Home by Rosamunde Pilcher. It's a 'coming of age' story set in Cornwall before and during WWII. A young girl (Judith) is left behind at a British boarding school while her mother and baby sister go to Singapore to join the father working there. The war means Judith cannot travel to visit or join them later as intended either. She had two aunts in Britain but her main substitute family becomes that of a classmate of hers, living on a big estate. I haven't finished the book yet (it's a long one - 40 hours as audio!) so not sure yet where it will end. Sometimes I'm finding it a bit long-winded, but here and there it does make interesting points - like about family, friends and what else equals "home" to us, but also how we are affected by various crises, both on personal and national level (like the War, back then - and, reading it just now, also bringing to mind the pandemic which is now the Enemy to all of us, where ever we happen to live).

I know that this morning, I also had more thoughts in my head connecting to this, but now I can't recreate them. I think some were probably to do with other people's blogs I'd been reading, too. I think a lot of us have been struggling a bit extra with coming up with ideas to blog about while being ''@home" more than usual this spring! Alas, it seems that having time on our hands does not necessarily mean also feeling inspired and creative...

December 24 - Christmas Eve

~ Merry Christmas, Everyone! ~  

Closeup details from the astronomical clock in Lund Cathedral

 - - -

"It did seem to me there was a quality about time
which had nothing whatever to do with clocks or calendars."

Quote from the novel Miss Hargreaves by Frank Baker (1940).

---

This is the last of my prescheduled "Advent Calendar" posts.

December 23 - Monday

Stained glass window and votive ship

Allerum Church (Skåne, Sweden) 

"Every day is a journey through a sea of time.
To live is to travel from yesterday to tomorrow."

(origin unknown)

The Times They Are A-Changin'

Postcrossing card from Russia (March 2019)
Desk clock by Fabergé, from the Peterhof Museum

 Postcrossing card from Poland (June 2018)

A clock from a Museum of History in Prague

 Postcrossing card from Germany (September 2018)

Yes, it's that time of year again... As in putting one's body clock out of order, and making sure that one has remembered to change every other clock and device in the house. Some of them take care of themselves nowadays, but that doesn't really make it any easier to remember the ones that don't. There always seems to be at least one I've forgotten. And if I haven't forgotten that I should do it, I've forgotten how to. (I actually thought of the camera this morning, only to discover that I don't remember where to find the date-and-time setting on that. So I'll need to find the manual first...)

My inner body clock is always the hardest to convince, though. (Surely it cannot be lunchtime already? I'm not hungry! Or bedtime when I'm still wide awake... Or time to get out of bed, when I just fell asleep? etc)

A piece of Good News (?) the other day was that the EU has now decided that all this nonsense about changing clocks back and forth really has to stop! Er... Wait a moment... Not immediately, of course... And let's not decide if the clocks should be stopped on winter or summer time; but let each country continue to argue about that for another couple of years... Maybe in 2021 we'll be ready for a whole new confusing European time zone system, with each country choosing its own time... (Or maybe we'll find we aren't, in which case we'll postpone, or decide something else...)

Lots of opinion polls being made at the moment, of course - and probably more to come, until a final decision is reached! I think I'd cast my vote on keeping "normal" time (i.e. "winter" time). But I guess "summer" time all year round would be ok as well. I just wish they'd stop meddling with it back and forth...

 Old sun dial at Algutsrum Church, Öland (2018)
(my own photo)

...

The line it is drawn
The curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is rapidly fadin’
And the first one now will later be last
For the times they are a-changin’ 

Bob Dylan - The Times They Are A-Changin'

(full lyrics here)

December 30

December 9 – Time To Watch Out

The wrist strap on my watch was worn out and needed replacing, and today when I was in town I stepped into a shop to buy a new one. Strap, that is – not watch. I was somewhat taken aback when, after I had expressed my wish, the girl behind the counter said: “It would be cheaper to buy a new watch.”

It’s not that I’m surprised at the fact as such. I know that’s how it is nowadays. My watch is not a valuable one; it was not expensive even when I bought it (some years and one or two straps and battery changes ago). I don’t wear it as a piece of precious jewellery, but for practical reasons when I’m out and about. At home, I take it off, as I have clocks in every room. But when I go out, I put on the watch. For one thing, when I’m not walking, I travel by bus. And buses run by timetables. (I might have to wait for the bus, the bus does not wait for me!)

But I digress. Back to the watch shop. From private economy point of view, I don’t doubt that it would be cheaper to just buy a new watch every time the clasp on the strap breaks, or perhaps even each time the battery runs out. To me it would still feel like a waste to do so, though, as long as I’m otherwise happy with the watch. So I just bought a new expensive black leather strap.

 

 

 

Buying More Time

In Sweden/Europe we made the customary switch to Summer Time, or Daylight Saving Time, between Saturday and Sunday the last weekend in March.

I never quite understood the “saving” part. It seems to me that what happens here in the North is that we lose an hour when the days are getting longer anyway, and don’t get it back until winter darkness falls (and then seems to fall all the more suddenly). Moreover, every six months I have to spend time just to check/reset a dozen or so clocks (and usually forgetting one or two). (Not to mention all the time spent on complaining about it!)

The most trouble in recent years I’ve had with a so-called “radio-controlled” clock, in spite of that being The One that one might be tempted to think one should be able to rely on in these kinds crises…

I think that while residing in my parents’ home it did behave as it should; but apparently it did not like moving into town with me. While I’ve had it here, it has only grudgingly agreed to adjust to the summer/winter time changes, and each time has caused me more bother than all the other clocks together… This time, neither a fresh battery nor the trick of moving it into another room to pick up the signal was any help. It had clearly decided that if it’s any time at all, it’s time to retire...

As I still kept glancing at the empty wall space (in my study) where It Was Not, today I resolutely went out and bought More Time:

 

This one I’ll have to reset manually, but that will be no doubt be quicker than spending days of frustration on coaxing the old clock into picking up its signal!

Booking Through Thursday: Spring Forward

Question  from Deb: Clocks change this weekend here in the US, which means one less hour to read … does anybody else begrudge that hour like I do? Wish the Powers That Be would just pick a time-frame and stick to it instead of inflicting clock-driven jet lag on an innocent public twice a year?

Here in Sweden, daylight saving time or ‘summer time’ does not start until the last weekend in March; which this year mercifully means not until the very last day of the month. I agree with Deb – I never saw the point myself. My body clock never seems to fully adjust and I always welcome ‘normal’ time back in the late autumn.

A clock in Borås museum.

I’ll add a clock-related question of my own:
When you think of clocks, what books (if any…) come to mind for you?
Here are three that popped up in my head:

The Borrowers by Mary Norton:

Borrowers, in case you don't know, are a little people who live under the floor or behind the walls in big people's houses, preferably close to the kitchen or dining room, because they live on what the human beans leave lying around. When the story begins, there is just one family of Borrowers left in a big old house - 14 year old Arrietty with her parents Pod and Homily; with surname Clock, because the entrance to their home is behind a clock in the hall. The greatest fear of a Borrower is to "be seen" by a human bean. One day, this happens to Arrietty… (from my review 2009)

The Distant Hours by Kate Morton:
It wasn’t actually the layers of time in this story that made me think of it now, but an image of another clock in a hall that popped up in my mind, triggered by thinking about the one in The Borrowers…  Funny, isn’t it, how you can have images in your mind of a house just described in a book even though there were no illustrations. I think in both books there was a man who came once a week to wind the clock!

The Time Keeper by Mitch Albom:

A sort of modern fable, connecting the fates of two very different people in our own time with that of the first man ever in human history to start measuring time. It also involves the myths of Father Time, and the Tower of Babel.
(from my review in October 2012)

SOOCS: That Time of Year

For Straight Out Of the Camera Sunday:
Florist’s display of grave decorations.

Those who have been following my blogging for a few seasons probably know by now that in Sweden, we focus not so much on the trick-or-treating American kind of Halloween (even if a bit of that has crept into our culture as well), but more on All Saints’ Day, visiting family graves and lighting candles. (The link goes to a blog post from last year.) In spite of our society getting more and more secular, this is a tradition that has kept growing since my childhood.

This year my mum’s sister and her husband came by yesterday, a week before All Saints, and we went to visit my parents’ grave in a village churchard outside town (plus a few more on dad’s side of the family there), and then three more in a big cemetery in town.

It was a cold day but fine and not much wind (which is to prefer when one is supposed to light candles!) We were out in the afternoon before darkness fell but the oil candles made for this purpose (which also have a lid on them to protect from the weather) are supposed to burn for around 55 hours.

For my parents’ grave I bought a lantern and a new kind of fake (but very authentic-looking) candle that runs on batteries and that is supposed to have a built-in timer to make it shine for 5 hours and then go out for 19 hours, and then shine for 5 hours etc – until the batteries run out. I bought that on Friday, and turned it on at 5 pm, and I know it worked so far as to go off automatically at 10 pm. As for the rest I can only hope it works as intended because when I “planted” it in the churchyard the time was only around 3 pm.

▲ This is the fake candle (photo taken when I first lit it at home). It looks unbelievably like a real one except there’s no flame and it doesn’t get hot. I forgot to take a photo of the lantern but it was the same kind as these ▼

Today the lamp should have gone on at 4 pm, as during the night we turned our clocks back an hour from so called summer or daylight saving time to winter or “normal” time.

I’m not a huge fan of the daylight saving time, so I’m mostly glad to be back a bit more in tune with my body clock.

I think I managed to remember to change all my clocks either before I went to bed yesterday, or this morning. Ironically, the one I have most trouble with is a radio controlled clock on the wall in my study, which is supposed to take care of itself, but doesn’t. I had to take it down from the wall and bring it into the living room, take out the batteries and put them back in, and put it on a chair and leave it there for a while to find its bearings again… (It’s been like that before, so at least this time I knew what to try, and put it on the same chair that it seemed to prefer last time!) Now it’s once more “on track” and back up on the wall!

The Time Keeper (Book Review)

As a new Kindle-fan I suppose I’m an easy target just now. (If you have no idea what I’m talking about, then you’ve been missing a lot of posts on this blog lately!) Besides all the free classics I’ve been downloading, I also keep getting suggestions from Big Sister Amazon (‘Big Brother Amazon’ just doesn’t sound right, does it?)… And not all of these deserve to be mocked; so I guess I’ll just have to keep tabs so that I don’t let my bill run up too high!

Yesterday I downloaded my most costly Kindle-book so far (not that it was really expensive), in spite of never having heard of it before – nor of the author. It turned out a little gem, though:

The Time Keeper by Mitch Albom.

(If someone is thinking “how could she not have heard of him?” please remember I’m Swedish, not American!)

The book is a sort of modern fable, connecting the fates of two very different people in our own time with that of the first man ever in human history to start measuring time. It also involves the myths of Father Time, and the Tower of Babel.

Three other books came to mind for me while reading it:  The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho, Momo (or The Men in Grey) by Michael Ende, and A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. If you enjoyed those, my guess is that you will also love Albom’s The Time Keeper. Anyway, I did - so no regrets about buying it.

On the surface, it has the simplicity of a fairy tale, while under the surface it digs deep into the very essence of our questions about life, death and meaning. And, of course – Time.

Quotes:

There are as many expressions with “time” as there a minutes in a day. But once, there was no word for it at all. Because no one was counting.

…

As mankind grew obsessed with its hours, the sorrow of lost time became a permanent hole in the human heart.

…

He was doing what man does when left with nothing. He was telling himself his own life story.

…

A heart weighs more when it splits in two; it crashes in the chest like a broken plane.

…

Sitting high above the city, Father Time realized that knowing something and understanding it were not the same thing.

Time Not Wasted

I’m still contemplating my finds from the American population censuses I looked at last week.

Among other things I found out in whose household my great-aunt Gerda was working in Chicago back in 1910: a physician by name of Otto L. Schmidt.

I tried googling Otto, and was further rewarded. It seems he was a very prominent man in Chicago, and not least in the German-American community (he was born in Chicago but of German descent). His name is engraved (among others) on the Illinois State Archives building, and 17 boxes of his papers are kept at the Chicago History Museum. He was the first physician in Chicago to use X-rays. (He was also sued by one patient for the side-effects,  in the early days…) He was also trustee or chairman in several historical societies. In 1933, he was vice president of the German Group at the Chicago World’s Fair, and seems to have taken a stand against nazism in the way he dealt with some issues in that context (the landing of the German airship Graf Zeppelin, and the use of the Nazi flag/symbol.)

Not quite coincidentally, I’m also currently reading a biography of the Swedish diplomat Folke Bernadotte. He and his American wife Estelle, born Manville, were Gerda’s employers in the 1930’s and onwards. (That she worked for them I’ve long known from family sources; what I still don’t know is exactly when, where and how she came to do so.)

Folke Bernadotte is known for his negotiation of the release of many thousands of prisoners from German concentration camps towards the end of the 2nd World War; and after the war as the United Nations Security Council mediator in the Arab–Israeli conflict of 1947–1948. He was assassinated in Jerusalem in 1948.

Reading the biography I also learned that one of his early important public appearances was to give a public speech on behalf of  the king of Sweden (his uncle, Gustav V) at the Chicago World’s Fair in 1933. (An event I didn’t know much about until combined with what I found written about Otto Schmidt.)

And old photo of Gerda with a note on the back tells me that in the summer of 1933, she visited Pleasantville (New York); which is where the Manville family lived (Estelle’s parents).

There is another photo, without any notes attached, which seems to be from the same time and place. In that one, Gerda appears together with two little boys; which I now conclude to be Folke’s and Estelle’s sons born in 1930 and 1931, in which case both photos were probably taken at the Manville family estate.

Knowing that Folke Bernadotte had an official role to play at the Chicago World’s Fair in 1933, makes it all the more plausible that he and Estelle also took the opportunity to take the boys to see their grandparents. My theory is that they left the boys in Pleasantville (with Gerda), while Folke (and probably Estelle too) visited Chicago.

See the photos and more in recent posts over at my blog Greetings from the Past.

 

 

 

BTT/Book Review: The Time Traveler’s Wife

This week’s Booking Through Thursday question comes from Bookish Sarah (as usual via Deb):

If someone asked you for a book recommendation, what is the FIRST book you’d think to recommend (without extra thought)?

I didn’t have time to write this post until today, but the first book that came to mind when I read the question was the one I’m currently reading, even though I have not yet finished it: The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger (2003).

I’m listening to it as audio book in Swedish, borrowed from the library. What made me add it to my to-read-list in the first place was repeated references to it in various BTT answers. I guess my recommendation would depend a bit on who’s asking; but disregarding  that aspect, I’ll just give some of my own reasons why I’m finding it worth reading.

Henry has a genetic disorder which makes him travel in time. In his adult life he is a librarian. His wife Clare, eight years younger, is an artist. When Henry first meets Clare he is 28, she is 20. However, Clare first met Henry when she was six, and Henry in his thirties. The time confusion is mind-boggling; usually, each time Henry appears in Clare’s life until they meet in the their mutual now and get married, the age difference between them varies. For Clare, Henry has “always” been popping in and out of her life; while Henry does not get to meet Clare in her childhood until he is already married to her as an adult.

Henry also timetravels to other places and contexts and sometimes co-exists with himself at another age. His time travelling is involontary, and when it occurs, he can’t bring anything with him, so always lands naked with nothing, and often ends up in quite impossible situations, having to try to explain things to people who don’t believe him. Along the way a few more people than Clare come to know about his condition though, including a physician who is into genetic research.

Although the time-travelling frame of the story suggests science fiction, the focus is really on relationships, and especially between Henry and Clare. I would say it is not just a love-story either though, but also a story of how to live with whatever life or fate throws at us. It is about being utterly vulnerable and learning to live with that vulnerability, whatever the cause of it. It is about clinging to hope and giving in to reality all in one. On the one hand Now is all we’ve got; and on the other, we carry all our “nows” within us, whatever age we are.

So it is about dealing with memories, and the Now, and knowledge, and a future which holds both things we know nothing about, and things that we may know something about even if still not every detail (like when living with a serious disease). It’s about trust and fear; truth and lies; life and death; reality vs dreams; and wanting to but not always being able to protect either ourselves or those we love. It’s about a whole lot of things like that; and that’s why I’d recommend it.

Happy Easter to you all!

A book-treasure chest displayed  at the Home & Garden Fair I visited a couple of weeks ago. I loved the way the light hit it.