The Earth Moved…

Around 5 am on Monday morning (6 August 2012) a shallow earthquake of magnitude 4.4 with the epicenter below Kattegatt occurred off the south-west coast of Sweden. It was felt in both Sweden and Denmark and woke up a lot of people.

Earthquakes with a magnitude 3 occur almost every year in Sweden but earthquakes like this approx. every 10 years. It’s said to have lasted about 15 seconds. No damage has been reported.

In a village on the coast south of Halmstad, people first thought that a freight train must be derailing near the community. Others report that their first thought was  that a heavy truck must be passing by just outside their home, or something like that.

Today (Tuesday) my local newspaper informs me that the quake was felt by some even as far inland as in and around this town.

At that time of morning, if I felt the earth moving a little while I was asleep or half-asleep in bed, I guess my brain would have interpreted it as just another a train passing… Living close to a railway, I’m used to heavy freight trains shaking the ground a little a few times a day (and night).

A reminder that in a global perspective, our little corner of the world is still, after all, rather quiet and secure.

The Beginning of the End

… or perhaps the other way round?

I never know quite where to start, I still don’t see The End (even if I think it’s getting closer) - and just like both the Edwards brothers (GB and CJ) said this week, all too often “I keep meaning to” … only to find myself doing something else instead…

Can someone tell me what happened to July, I see to my astonishment that we’re almost a week into August already, and no idea how that happened?! I still have things to blog about from the few ‘touristing’ daytrips my brother and I made a couple of weeks ago. Now he’s been and gone a second time and his holiday is over; and so is mine - if I count as holiday the five weeks summer break from going to the rehab pool on regular hours twice a week. (They open again tomorrow. I’ve no complaints about that, mind. Even if it makes my time less flexible, hopefully it will help to keep aching joints and muscles more flexible…)

Last week I spent two days out at the House on my own, emptying wardrobes and continuing my raids in the kitchen cupboards and various drawers etc.

As those were two of the most summery days we’ve had this summer, this may sound like a masochist way of spending them. But that’s really also the best kind of weather for me to be able to go out to the House on my own and get anything done. It can even feel like a good thing on such a day to get up early and take the bus out of town and away from the (presumed) heat of midday in town…

I had the back door to the garden open and kept to “downstairs” work so that I could easily pop outside for a break every now and then.

And I took a camping chair to the very back of the garden so that I could sit and enjoy a view no one has seen for years…. We asked our “gardener” to do an extra job for us this summer, before we sell:

Makes us almost want to keep the place now!

But even if there is some nostalgia involved, the dominant feeling when the day finally comes will probably be relief. Hopefully we’re talking months rather than years ahead now. (The house is not officially up for sale yet but we have a presumptive buyer with whom we’re keeping in touch, and if all goes well maybe we won’t have to look further.)

My brother came down again this past week, and if last time we did more touristing than work, this time it was more work than holiday. I lost count of how many sacks Per ended up driving to the recycling centre…

Did I tell you dad’s motto?

(from dad’s notice board – as if he needed the reminder!)

Every time I’ve spent a day or two out there, I end up throwing away things at home as well when I get back. Partly to make room for things I take home with me (see the first photo) and partly as some kind of magic ritual perhaps. (“I shall not become my parents…”)

This week we continued with dad’s study upstairs and mum’s study/sewing room. Just as I was beginning to think that it seemed as though mum at least must have been a bit more radical about getting rid of old papers at some point in the past… oops, we found a big old box tucked in under a bed… full of old notebooks, diaries, letters… Bridges of Madison County, anyone?? 

The content in that box seemed to be from before mum started dating dad, though. Much to our relief (if also some bewilderment!), most of the notebooks also turned out to just be old schoolbooks. I saved one or two as samples, but felt no hesitation about throwing away the rest. But… there were also some diaries…

What does one do with one’s mother’s diaries?

My own teenage diaries (not that I ever kept one on a regular basis) I got rid of years ago. I had no idea that mum had kept hers – not sure I even ever knew she wrote them. Even less do I know if she would have wanted me to read them or not.

Hesitatingly, I took her teenage diaries home with me and ended up browsing through them yesterday afternoon. I decided to keep only the first one, written when she was 14 (1944). It has some some fun little doodles in it, references to family names I recognize, and lists of books she got for Christmas and her birthday, things like that. The later diaries proved less interesting from family history perspective, so I “let them go”.

In my hall stands a heavy moving-box full of mum’s photo albums from the mid 1970’s onward; i.e. from after I moved away from home. They’re the loose leaf kind so I’m hoping to eventually be able to reduce them to perhaps one binder to save/scan… (Optimistic?)

We also found more documents from dad’s side of the family this week, like the original deeds from when my grandfather first bought the piece of land upon which the house was built, back in 1930; and inventories of the estates after grandma’s half-siblings (those who wrote and collected the old postcards. I hope I’ll be able to devote more time to blog on about them and other family history after we’ve sold the house).

On top of all the “paperwork” we also made some (more) decisions about what we want to keep of china and glassware and such… And so, to make room for old coffee cups and tea cups and side plates, I’ve had to spend the rest of the weekend reorganizing my kitchen cupboards!

So if you haven’t seen me around in Blogland much, now you know why.

Sometimes I read a few blogs on my Android phone without leaving comments though; so I may not be quite as absent as I seem! ♥

BTT : Picking and Choosing

Two questions from Booking Through Thursday this week, about selecting your books.

Pooch asks: Overall, what factor most influences your choice of your next read?

Sefcug asks: What is it that makes you want to read a book by an author you have never read before?

Good questions, but not easy to answer. My choice of my next read could be influenced by anything, really. What mood I happen to be in. If someone mentioned a certain book recently. What happens to catch my eye when I visit the library or bookshop. I don’t keep a “to read” list except perhaps vaguely in my head.

As for what makes me want to read a book by an author I’ve never read before… That too might be a review in the newspaper, a recommendation from a friend, a discussion between readers with different opinions about it (so that I want to form my own opinion) or just a cover or title catching my attention and the blurb sounding promising. 

Right now, for example, I’m listening (in Swedish translation) to an audio book: The Dream by Harry Bernstein. Never heard of it before I borrowed it at the libary last week. Basically I think I was looking for something, anything that was not a murder mystery.

Now when I look him up, I find that this is his second autobiographical novel and that he published the first one at age 96. He lived to be 101, with three successful books behind him; and the fourth will be published posthumously in 2012.

Never too late, it seems!

C for Charlottenberg (ABC Wednesday)

Just as with the letter Z, at first I could not think of any locality in Sweden beginning with C , but when I looked it up, I did find one:

Charlottenberg with about 3000 inhabitants is situated about 7 km from the Norwegian border and is the seat of Eda Municipality in the province of Värmland.

It was named after the wife of the founder of an ironworks there back in 1827.

Charlottenberg railway station is the last station in Sweden before the Norwegian border, and serves as the frontier point between the Swedish and Norwegian railway systems. The town is also situated on Swedish national road 61, which becomes Norwegian national road 2 at the border.

As a border town, Charlottenberg benefits from the border trade encouraged by the difference in retail prices between Norway and Sweden. The influx of Norwegian shoppers is so great in the period leading up to Christmas that many Charlottenberg locals prefer to do their own shopping in other towns that time of year.

Charlottenberg shopping mall (photo from an advertising site)

I must have passed through Charlottenberg when going on a mini-holiday to Norway from Karlstad way back in 1978. (I lived in K. then.) There is no photo from C. in my photo album – but there is evidence consisting of a small map glued into the album where I marked our route (the X added digitally now):

Just possibly we may have stopped at C. to buy food before crossing the border into Norway. More likely we bought what we needed before we started, but never mind… Let’s assume we did buy our tin of sausages in Charlottenberg, ‘cos that gives me a reason to insert this photo of our advanced roadside cooking (somewhere along the river Glomma in Norway):

Yep. That’s me back in 1978, aged 23. And below is a photo of my friend opening that tin of sausages with a knife, because we had forgotten to bring a tin opener…
Another C for coping!

On Tuesdays, We Resurrect the Dead

It was seeing Paul McCartney at the opening of the Olympics in London (on TV) that reminded me: I have not yet told you about how I ran into his old buddies John and George a couple of weeks ago.

‘What?’ say you. ‘That’s impossible!’
‘Hush,’ says I. ‘Let me tell the story…’

If you happen to be passing by an old cemetery in my town on a Tuesday evening in July, you may notice a surprisingly large crowd of people gathering. If you ever do – please take the time to join them.

You see, these people aren’t waiting for a funeral, but rather for a resurrection.

Here they come, the team performing miracles:

A theatre group by the name of Ada.

(The name is in honour of a female journalist from about a century ago, whose stories they often use in their cemetery performances.)

I knew from before that they could act, but this time they proved to be quite good singers and musicians as well.

The first to rise from his grave was a man who once upon a time had a big influence on making choir singing popular in this town. Here they sing a classic song about spring and nature:

http://youtu.be/yCpABRl_ijE

We also got to meet a female translator from the early 1900s, and a local poet.

 

Moving on through the town’s cultural history in the 20th century, we were also reminded of some of the great artists who may not have lived here – and aren’t buried here either – but who at some point in history visited this town and left a lasting impression...

On  Monday 28th October 1963, the Beatles played in Borås. After three (!) successful concerts in Gothenburg the day before, The Beatles headed for Borås; a short journey about 60 kilometres. The boys spent a couple of hours signing records in a music store in the afternoon. Thousands of fans had found their way there. The Borås concert in the evening was the biggest during their tour in Sweden. 2500 people saw it and the audience screamed and shouted so loud that it was nearly impossible to hear anything. (A common phenomena during The Beatles later concerts around the world…)

Just as we had been reminded (I think I was barely aware of The Beatles back in 1963 – at age eight), an old bus drove up close to us, and… Hello, who is that?

Hello Boraaaaas…

http://youtu.be/GOJC9c7ymh8

See! I told ya’… They’re back!

John Lennon (9 October 1940 – 8 December 1980)
George Harrison (5 February 1943 – 29 November 2001)

Afterthought: Linking to Taphophile Tragics