back at henry coe: buildings edition

otherizing obama

Interesting column from the NY Times again, this time by Nicholas D. Kristof:

What is happening, I think, is this: religious prejudice is becoming a proxy for racial prejudice. In public at least, it’s not acceptable to express reservations about a candidate’s skin color, so discomfort about race is sublimated into concerns about whether Mr. Obama is sufficiently Christian.

The result is this campaign to “otherize” Mr. Obama. Nobody needs to point out that he is black, but there’s a persistent effort to exaggerate other differences, to de-Americanize him.

five months without sushi

Five months +30 seconds.

anthropomorphising

People are walking their dogs a lot in the park and on the mountain trail close to my house. Sometimes these people bring water for their dogs, which seems reasonable when it is hot outside. Dogs drink sloppily out of bottles, and seem happy.

Yesterday, though, I saw a woman who went one step further. She had brought not only water, but also a snack for her little dog. A snack in a plastic container, so the little dog wouldn't be hungry on the walk home.

Haven't we gone a little too far in taking "care" of our best friends? Americans love to walk and eat at the same time. They also like to eat while they do a whole slew of other things: drive, watch ballgames, watch TV and movies, the list goes on. No activity is too small not to warrant a snack. But to train your pet to do the same? Isn't that insane?

halloween food

Dan always tells me I throw out food that is perfectly fine. So for that reason today I took the seven carrots that were hiding at the bottom of the crisper and made carrot soup. The carrots were a bit beyond their prime (had they been furniture they would have been shabby chic), but the only other ingredient was garlic, and that was fresh.

I took: carrots, cut up in pieces, and garlic, and let that sweat in olive oil.
I added: salt, black pepper, cumin, and allspice.
And then: water to cover generously, and a chicken bouillon cube.
I let it: Boil until the carrots were soft.
Then I zapped it with the hand blender.
Natural yogurt (yeah, the Russian again), and dill on top.

fiber

One thing I never have the energy to make is muesli. Every recipe lists hundreds of ingredients and have multi-step instructions. Too much work, too much planning, too much time at the whole grain bar at Whole Foods.

And I never buy muesli either. Too much sugar.

So for breakfast today I had plain yogurt ('Russian', yum), a little apricot jam, and oats. Plain, dry.

Needs improvement.

maureen dowd again

Referring to her recent trip to Alaska, she ends today's column like this:

R. D. Levno, a retired school principal, flew in from Fairbanks. “She’s a child, inexperienced and simplistic,” she said of Sarah. “It’s taking us back to junior high school. She’s one of the popular girls, but one of the mean girls. She is seductive, but she is invented.”

Wow.

mmm it was good

I made a pretty good spinach soup, and then I remembered that you are not supposed to reheat spinach.

My insides are very green now.

defending palin

Anyone who talks negatively about Sarah Palin's tanning bed (which she bought for her own money to have put in the Governor's Mansion in Juneau, AK) doesn't understand exactly how pale a white person gets that far north in the winter when there is barely any daylight. (Juneau and Stockholm are roughly on the same latitude.)

Myself, I turn a sickly blueish green.

les mis meets the office meets obamamania

Tipstack till Mayka.

anyone remember adam morris?

Thanks to Netflix I have been able to watch again a TV series (or, more like a series of related plays written for TV) that I loved in the late 1970s. It's called The Glittering Prizes and I don't think many people remember it.

The focus is on a group of friends who meet at university in Cambridge in the 1950s. We then follow them for 20 years, into the 1970s. I am sure I liked the series when I was young because it gave me an idea of what growing up might be like. I also loved the romance of British university life.

What struck me when I watched it again was that I still like it. The actors are good, and for the most part the stories are interesting. I also liked the feeling of watching plays rather than TV. It had to do with the lighting and the writing, and how the tension is allowed to build. Very cool, and very unlike American TV of today.

One thing that surprised me was how all of the actors were super skinny, men and women both. Apparently that was the ideal in the 1970s. Skinny, no muscles. People today are much more toned. Gives a very different feel.

The sad part: I remember the main character, played by Tom Conti, as witty and funny. Now I found him slightly annoying. I guess my taste has changed. I also wonder why wikipedia's only photo of him in his older years is this one:
In a robe? Who took that photo? Apparently someone very short who didn't want to do him a favor. Disgruntled grandkid mailed it in?

shameless self-promotion

As you may or may not have discovered, I show my photos on smugmug.com. And guess what? I just created a new gallery for the Henry Coe State Park pics.

I have millions of flowers on that site, but other things too. A couple of random examples: If you want to know what a Swedish forest looks like, click here. And here are pics of Stockholm from last summer.

"I probably should have wanted it more"

more on palin: thanks to monica

... The Huffington Post, and Deepak Chopra.

"vapid — if vivacious and visceral — scripted cheerleading"

I just found this three day old column where Maureen Dowd talks about Sarah Palin as providing the first My Fair Lady moment in American history. That was very funny.

I feel a little better about school starting in ten days now

In three autobiographical books Francisco Jimenez chronicles his journey from migrant child to starting grad school to 'become a college teacher'. I just read the third installment, Reaching Out, that tells the stories from Francisco's undergraduate years.

Like many other students - and people in general - Francisco Jimenez received help when he most needed it. Often the help came from his teachers, but it also came from strangers. His books are quiet reminders to help others when we can.

thanks andrea

Oh this is just lovely:
On Wednesday, September 3, we sent out an email to 40 friends and colleagues asking them to respond to Sarah Palin’s candidacy as Vice President of the United States. They forwarded the letter to their friends across America. To date, we have received more than 90,000 responses from women of all ages and backgrounds. Below are their voices.

The blog: Women Against Sarah Palin.

silly

henry w. coe state park (III): the golden state

the europeans get along

I randomly met a Swiss woman today. 'Other people think we are the same', I said. 'Yes', she said. 'I tell them I am from Switzerland, and people say Oh, I've been to Sweden'.

She was probably in her fifties, and she told me that she still remembers how her hands and feet hurt when she was sitting on the train going to school at 6AM when she was at university in Geneva.

When it's cold outside and you come into a hot room, your hands and feet hurt in a very special way. I had forgot all about that until she mentioned it.

yum-my

Cardamom in the pancake batter.
I am just saying.

henry w. coe state park (II)

henry w. coe state park (I)

yellow little flower

oak

and don't tell me I have no sense of humor

I'll be honest, what might happen in this election scares me. If Sarah Palin pulls John McCain to a win... that won't be fun.

But fun is exactly the word the Swedish press has been using. They think the campaign is fun and exciting now with the addition of new female blood.

Obviously an American election is international news. The US is a powerful nation. But when the election coverage gets reduced to ideas of what is exciting and not, and people forget that the candidate is strongly anti-abortion and a creationist... not so fun to me.

last chemo

So yeah, I just completed 20 weeks of chemotherapy.

For several reasons I haven't talked about it much, but I was diagnosed with stage two breast cancer earlier this year. I had surgery, and then the chemo. And now it's over. Yesterday was my last day.

It hasn't been bad. (Knock on wood.) Before you start they tell you all about the different side effects. It's a long list. I've been lucky. I haven't had many. I am doing good.

I did loose my hair, eyebrows, and eyelashes. But a scarf and make-up make that less obvious. The hair is coming back already, short and gray. I am thinking in a month I'll have styling options.

Cancer is a scary disease, but it also teaches you to focus, and to appreciate life. A woman I met today was talking about the horses she wants to raise when she is done with all her treatments. She had had eight horses before she got sick, but she said that cancer had made her poor. A single mom she had had to stop working, and sell the horses. And move to the city to be closer to the hospital.

Horses, not for me... But I find myself wanting to make things. Time to think.

“we’re not going to get into discussing her religion,” said the spokeswoman

The New York Times on Sarah Palin's religious views.

Also in the New York Times, here someone talking about women and politics. It's well worth reading:

"One of the worst poisons of the American political climate right now, the thing that time and again in recent years has led us to disaster, is the need people feel for leaders they can “relate” to."

And:

"Why does this woman – who to some of us seems as fake as they can come, with her delicate infant son hauled out night after night under the klieg lights and her pregnant teenage daughter shamelessly instrumentalized for political purposes — deserve, to a unique extent among political women, to rank as so “real”?"

little flowers

mini heirloom tomatoes, feta cheese made from goat's milk, kalamata olives, olive oil, salt, pepper

Yum.

no, I can't stand her

Last night's The Daily Show was extra funny. Highlight: Woman attending the Republican National Convention said that "Sarah Palin shows that anyone can become President."

"she didn't like the way I was pouring"

Someone is adjusting to new room mates:

I thought maybe I was just being oversensitive so I exercised my much worked on patience. Then today after she re-applied the trash bag in the trash can AND took my milk carton out of my hand because she didn't like the way I was pouring, I realized I'm not the crazy one.

local? news?

Headline on my local news right now: Meet the father of Sarah Palin's daughter's baby!

the teenager

me? right now?

Catching some rays.

in america, they talk

I was on the trail just now, and a family of four or five came bicycling up behind me. Every kid (ages 4-7, roughly), and then mom, practiced their best "On your left, please!" as they passed me and another woman walking ahead of me.

Last came dad on his bike, pulling one of those little wagons behind: "Good job, Jeremy! Thank you, ladies!".

I know a country where this entire episode would have taken place in complete silence.

gustave

Seems most of the TV folks have given up on the German in favor of a French-ish pronunciation: Gystavve.

pretty much the best music ever (images suck though)

yesterday

From The Summit Daily News:
On Aug. 28, 1955, in Money, Miss., two white men kidnapped Emmett Till, a 14-year-old boy who whistled at a white girl. The men beat Till, gouged out one of his eyes, shot him in the head, tied a cotton gin fan to his neck with barbed wire and hurled his body into the Tallahatchie River. A jury acquitted them, but the incident galvanized the civil rights movement, then in its infancy.

Eight years later, on Aug. 28, 1963, King stood in front of the Lincoln Memorial before 200,000 people and looked ahead to a day when the dynamic would be different.

"I have a dream," King said that day, "that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident — that all men are created equal. ... I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."

And on Aug. 28, 2008, Barack Obama became the first black man to accept a major political party's presidential nomination.

thanks tira

This is a really cool site that allows you to help out a teacher and donate money to a specific classroom project. You can search and find projects in your area, or in a specific subject.

no, I don't think paolo reads my blog

Filipino kid taught me to eat mango with soy sauce. Oh my.

I had asked, "Where do you feel you belong?", and he said, "Under the mango trees where my dad is from in the Philippines."

still it's better than when they addressed a letter to me to 'ladda'

My 13 year old nephew's first name is Gustav. It's a solidly Swedish name, the name of kings.

Now it's also the name of an approaching hurricane. The American pronunciation of the name is weirdly German-sounding: 'Goooshtaff'. Cracks me up every time.

this doesn't mean racism is dead, though

An African American was made a candidate for president today. I sat in a parking lot listening to the voting because it was a historic moment.

speaking of fish

In America, if you want fried mackerel (and there really is no reason why you wouldn't since it's one of the best things ever), you'll have to find yourself a Japanese restaurant.

Yum. Just like home.

for this information we thank the new york times, and our trusty household iphone

How cool is this: George Orwell's diaries, from 1938-1942, are being published as a blog. Entries are posted exactly 70 years after they were written.

americans won't use toilet paper to blow their nose

Once or twice I have offered toilet paper to an American who needed to blow their nose.

I won't make that mistake again.

They look as if I had offered them used toilet paper, at least.

Seemingly unrelated, but related story:

A nice dinner in Sweden, especially on the West coast, likely features seafood of some kind. Sometimes nothing else, except for toast and sharp cheese. It's very good.

I remember listening to an American who had been invited to an upscale version of a dinner like that. He was in shock. The hostess, seated next to him, had been using her fingers, and the juice from the crab and the lobster and the shrimp had been all over her hands and forearms. He said she had behaved like an animal. He was appalled and intrigued at the same time.

I said that's how you eat seafood in my country. He didn't believe me.

One of my best friends goes fishing a lot when she visits her parents on the West coast where we grew up. Then she transports her crab and lobster and fish across the country to Stockholm where she lives. She and her mom (who boils the lobster and the crab, and boy are they delicious) has perfected a system for her to get them home safe and still frozen.

When I visit my friend in the summers, I get to pick what I want to eat. I am so happy I don't know what to do with myself. We eat in her kitchen. The juice from the crab or the lobster is all over our hands and forearms, but we dry ourselves off before eating a piece of toast, or drinking some wine. That's how you do it.

What we use to dry ourselves? Had it been my parents' house, or most other people's houses, it would have been paper towel. There would be a roll sitting right there on the table. Informal and practical.

At my friend's house it's toilet paper. She can't be bothered to buy both paper towel and toilet paper. She says it's the same stuff anyway, just cut differently. There is always a roll of toilet paper in her paper towel holder on her kitchen wall.

So that's a cultural difference right there.

(And in our country paper towel and toilet paper actually are the same. Swedish toilet paper is sturdier than the American version. But that's another story.)

sad

Barack Obama had promised his supporters they would be the first to know his choice of vice president.

But last night the news was leaked, and none of us got the email or the text message or the twitter update until after CNN and everybody else knew.

I was disappointed because bypassing established news channels would have been historic.

forty years ago, another olympics

In a famous gesture John Carlos and Tommie Smith raised their fists at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics. They wanted to draw attention to human rights and poverty. They were harshly punished.

Carlos and Smith were students at San Jose State University at the time, and in recent years the student union at the university has worked hard to get a statue put up. It was unveiled in 2005. The ceremony was the first time Carlos and Smith had been honored for what they did.

In a creative move silver medalist Australian Peter Norman is left out to make room for visitors.

It's been 40 years, but the image and the act are still powerful.

Here is what the New York Times writes on Aug. 23, 2008.

Peter Norman's nephew, Matt Norman, has made a documentary called Salute. Here is the trailer:

wild lilies

look, jeanne

bk has a new blog!

davenport, calif.

I am embarrassed, ok

On a recent morning television panel, former Swedish Green Party leader Birger Schlaug said that all Chinese look alike. In particular he was talking about the young women who, dressed in uniforms and in identical hairdos, carried the signs bearing the names of the different countries during the opening ceremony.

I've seen similar comments made on Swedish blogs.

Intercultural research states that it's easier for us to recognize and remember faces within our own race. But I would guess that tendency decreases when, or if, we are actually exposed to people of other races.

It may be that the China Olympics is the first opportunity many Swedish people have had to see large numbers of Asians. Because obviously Asians don't look any more alike than Swedes do.

So, yeah, look a little closer everybody.

no a sports fanatic I am not

I just watched my first ten seconds of Olympic coverage, and I got all confused. It was an underwater shot and it seemed to me everything was upside down. I almost got a little sick.

Backstroke.

italian flair: the fiat 500 interior

happy friday

Remember these?

what the guy outside safeway was singing

let's talk about the fiat 500 (I am getting a black one to match the iphone dan is getting me for christmas)

This is an old Fiat 500. Those are small Italian cars, and they were made between 1957-1975. Super cute if you ask me.
This is a new Fiat 500. It was first presented in 2007. Cool, huh? It's super popular in Italy, and it's won a bunch of awards. I want one pretty bad.

Here is a British TV road test where they are comparing it favorably to their own new Mini:

o people are funny

Somebody's Facebook status line: If Michael Phelps were a country (Phelpsylvania, perhaps), he'd be tied for third overall in gold medals won.

Edit: Guess the someone had borrowed the joke.

Thanks Mayka.

from the atlantic.com

Here is an article I'll read tonight when I have more time.

being offended

When I first moved to the US there were certain American words and expressions I hadn't heard before, and that I had to learn. The reason I didn't understand them was usually that the word or expression referred to a phenomenon that was new to me. In those cases guessing doesn't help. Otherwise North American and Northern European cultures are similar, and most things seem familiar.

The concept I struggled with the longest was to be 'offended'. I asked dozens of classes to explain the word to me, but I still wasn't sure. We don't use that idea in that way in Sweden, I kept thinking to myself.

But, actually, from what I read, now they do. The word 'kränkt' in Swedish seems to be used in a similar way nowadays.

When I finally got the American concept of 'being offended' I thought it was dumb. To me it sounded as if people assume they have a God given right not ever to step in dog poop in their lives, and if it happens anyway, they are offended. That's unrealistic, and dumb. Whenever I come across the word 'kränkt' in Swedish I think the same thing. Too much emotion in the wrong place, self centeredly directed at the world in general. Wipe the poop off your shoes and move on already.

well well well

What Maureen Dowd has to say.

man on wire

This is one of the most amazing films I have ever seen. It tells the story of how, in 1974, Frenchman Philippe Petit managed to walk a tightrope between the Twin Towers. That's him in the photo there.

I don't know what to say. Just go see it already. You won't regret it.

green of envy

Dan bought an iphone.

All I hear is Look! and there we go again showing me another cool application. Grrrrr.

I like my people

I watched the 'Parade of Nations' part of the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics.

It was a long winded affair. There are a lot of nations in the world.

I was waiting for my people, who came in 20th from the bottom. That took a while, but then I got to see them for about five seconds. Yay!

Obviously the parade of nations was a highly symbolic affair. Most nations chose to wear outfits that were nationalistic, or at least showed off the design talents of the country.

The Swedes? Not so much. The women wore Chinese inspired tunics, and it looked like the men's sports jackets had Chinese collars. Not very stylish, and not very Swedish.

Still those outfits struck me as very Swedish choices. In their quiet ways Swedes are cultural extroverts. We might come across as shy, but we like to try new things, travel, and be changed.

However many political interpretations can be made of those Chinese collars, to me they are endearing. Wearing those frumpy tunics the Swedish women attempted to do one thing no other nation did: communicate with the Chinese in their own language.

someone else is furious

If you read Swedish, read the entry "Den stora bron".

monterey, calif.

carmel mission basilica

redwoods

date my ex: the dumbest show ever

Someone at LA Times had a good time writing this.

so I am furious again

One of my students this summer commented that it is hard to know how to deal with members of underrepresented groups because on the one hand they want to be treated like everybody else, and on the other hand they want respect for who they are and their unique experiences.

I think that's very well put, because I think from his perspective, that's exactly it.

What I try to teach my white students is to come up with a practical solution to that dilemma, for themselves. They need to figure out how to act to both ends of the spectrum, at the same time.

And so does the rest of society.

I am not saying it's easy. But who said life was going to be easy?

Right now Barack Obama is being criticized for injecting race into the presidential campaign, and for playing the race card from the bottom of the deck. Things are fine as long as we pretend no one has color, right?

In a hierarchical society, pretending that race, gender, sexual orientation, or class does not matter always benefits those on top. The experiences connected with being oppressed are silenced. That's how it works.

In a political campaign an African American candidate interested in winning cannot talk about race, or how race comes into the race. He cannot speak the truth because the truth would upset the white majority, and he would loose.

One lesson I try to give my white students is that you can show respect by shutting up and listen when members of underrepresented groups speak of their experiences.

That's easy.

As a society we need to do the same, and fast. What we have now is a situation where the first African American candidate for president cannot talk about his race. It' s a disgrace.