Postcards for the Weekend – Peace

Maria’s postcard challenge for this weekend is “from a country you would want to live in if you have the chance/choice”.

The thing is, though, that I can’t remember ever seriously wishing to live anywhere else than in Sweden; and the only other country I may perhaps have imagined myself living in would have been England. And as I already postcard-blogged both those countries just recently, I wanted to come up with something else…

So for that purpose, I undertook another random search of a box of postcards from my past that I’ve been rummaging around in lately, but still don’t know how best to organize (or re-organize).

Now this one happened to catch my eye, and when I took it up for closer study, it made me think (with recent world events and terror attacks and general political instability in mind):

Yes, that’s where I want to live… On Earth, in Peace…

The card was sent to me in 1986 from a friend visiting Kiruna, the northernmost town in Sweden – situated 145 kilometres north of the Arctic circle, in the province of Lapland. The card depicts a collage made by pupils in a school in Kiruna. The photos and newspaper cuttings in the middle are all about children, war and peace. And on the back of the card this verse or quote (probably written by one of the school pupils as well – in Swedish):

“Put away all weapons – bring out peace.
Why doesn’t everyone help to make peace on earth?
[The world] must not come to an end.”
Dennis

I also found a few more cards from the 1980’s on the same theme:

From a Swedish friend on holiday in Spain in November 1982; but posted in Sweden (with Swedish stamp) by her sister, who had been visiting and took the card back with her to post.
© “Los Angeles Art Projects GMBH”; and printed in Germany.
So a very “international” card!

 

This one, with photo of a wall tapestry (made in 1979), I received as a welcome from friends/neighbours in Borås when I first moved here to live in January 1986. The card used to sit on the noticeboard in my hall as long as I lived in that flat (22 years).

The text on the tapestry is a quote from Martin Luther:
“Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces,
I would still plant my apple tree today.”

My last contribution for today:
A Prayer for Peace, sent to me in 1989 from a Swedish friend;
nowadays (since many years) living in Norway.

Prayer for Peace

Lead me from Death to Life,
from Lies to Truth.

Lead me from Powerlessness to Hope,
from Fear to Trust.

Lead me from Hatred to Love,
from War to Peace.

Let Peace fill our Hearts,
our World, our Universe.

 

Around the World

Time to get started on getting these off around the world!

And speaking of the world… Frances Garrood was wondering the other day “why America is always on the left, and the Eastern countries on the far right, and what would it look like if it were seen from a different angle”.

Well, I suppose it depends on what angle… But this is what it looks like if you just spin it around from our usual European view of it. (Which might actually explain why most of us don’t really look at it from that angle very often.)

The world is my deskpad, and my money box…

I think it was when I joined Postcrossing 2-3 years ago that I bought the globe. I don’t actually use it as a coin box; but I do sometimes find it a helpful tool for a not-quite-so-flat perspective of the world.

 

The Advent of the Buddy Bears

*The Latin word adventus means "coming."

The Buddy Bears have arrived in town.  I’ve already mentioned the upcoming exhibition both on this blog and in the Picture Book, but now it’s here, and will be staying for the duration of December.

With the invasion of colourful bears, there’s no room for the traditional “Santaland” in the town square this year, but we do have a big Christmas tree.

There was also a choir dressed in santa-hats, and some guys serving porridge (I don’t know how popular that was, there didn’t seem to be much of a queue)…

As you can see we’ve had switch to cold weather. The temperature dropped below zero yesterday and we got a fine sprinkle of snow. Today we had about –5°C, the sky was mostly cloudy. No more snow fell, but the fine layer of powdery white from yesterday stayed. Rather perfect weather for 1st Advent. (My feet got cold from standing around during the opening of the exhibition though… I walked into town, but took the bus home afterwards.)

I’ve decided use the Buddy Bears as “advent calendar” in my Picture Book, until Christmas. There are more than enough bears to choose from, as there are 108 of them in the exhibition. Each bear represents a country, and was uniquely painted by an artist from that country. I’ll start with countries where I know I have friends and fellow bloggers, and then we’ll see.

In the town square, they have put the bears in alphabetical order according to country. After a while I was reminded of the Olympics parade… and how many countries there are in the world that I know little or nothing about. (Maybe I should follow GB’s example and make a donation to Wikipedia as well while I’m in charitable Christmas mood!)

Straight Out of the Camera: World

With all the things going on in the world lately, my atlas book
somehow felt too flat when I was trying to grasp distances.

Then I remembered that high up in a box in a cupboard
I had this tucked away… an inflatable beach ball…

So I huffed, and I puffed… And there it was.

 

The whole world in my hand.

 
 
But still physically impossible
for me to see all of it at once. 

See all those lines stretching across it?
Must be the World Wide Web, don’t you think? ;)

… … …

From Heaven the Lord looks down and sees all mankind;
from his dwelling place he watches all who live on earth -
he who forms the hearts of all,
who considers everything they do.
~ Psalm 33:13 ~

… … …

Straight Out Of the Camera Sunday