A Sadistic Relationship to the Creatures of the Sea

After our family Christmas dinner and several days of leftovers, I'm going to offer you "Guide to Swedes #42: Seafood."

The first time I visited Fredrik, he asked me if I wanted caviar or paté for breakfast. Wow, Europeans don't mess around, I thought. It turns out the caviar in question was Kalles Kaviar, a light orange paste in a tube that's made from cod eggs, salt, sugar, and god knows what else. Kids like it. It has such a strong flavor that the latest TV commercials for it show a man standing in a little booth on the sidewalk in various other countries, offering people samples on crackers, and showing them react in disgust to this exotic Swedish tube-food.

In August, Swedes have crayfish parties. There's nothing particularly gross about how crayfish taste. The tail is small and rubberly, like a shrimp, and since they're always cooked the same way it tastes almost exclusively of salt and dill. But you don't just eat the tail; that defeats the purpose of the crayfish party. They are cooked whole and have to be dissected at the table. Think lobster, but miniature. You get your hands wet and slimey with salty dill juice, crayfish eggs, and a greasy blob of fat that they call "crayfish butter," and comments such as "sucking out the brain juice is my favorite" can be heard, uttered by 80-year old women.

Some people opt to have surströmming parties in August instead of crayfish parties. No one understands why.

Surströmming is fermented herring. It smells like biology class on dissection day. And that is not an exageration. Here are some rules about surströmming:

• You are not allowed the pack it in your checked luggage on an airplane, because the can is under extreme pressure and might explode. But wait, they don't care if a bottle of wine breaks in my bag, so why care about the surströmming? Because they don't want you spreading the stank all over everyone else's lugage.
• You are supposed to open the can wrapped in a towel and/or under water, because that way it won't squirt stinky juice all over you.
• It is considered gauche to have a surströmming party indoors. Your house would stink for weeks.

All of the above is honestly, seriously true. As is the fact that people have parties where they eat the stuff. Seriously.

Surströmming isn't the only herring that Swedes have an unholy relationship with. There's pickled herring. And any holiday is an occasion for pickled herring. Pickled herring on Easter. Pickled herring on Midsommar. Pickled herring on Christmas. With onions, or dill, or tomato sauce, or mustard sauce, or apple curry sauce, or any other of a large varity of different flavors that can be purchased at the store in a delusional pact to pretend it doesn't just all taste like strongly fishy raw fish.

I saw a show about food history/trends where they got old Swedish ladies to try sushi, as a way of discussing how certain foods can be considered perfectly normal just a generation or two after they were considered exotic. The ladies weren't so into it. I suppose they prefer their raw fish to be soaked in vinegar and onions and taste like it's still alive.

On Christmas Eve, it's traditional to eat a buffet that contains almost exclusively pork products. The only non-mammal food on the table tends to be a dish called Janssons frestelse (Jansson's temptation). It's like au gratin potatoes, but with a very important twist.

Anchovy fillets and anchovy juice.

So you've got the potatoes, the cream, the butter, all that, but instead of the cheese that you would have in au gratin potatoes, you go "I know! Let's put scaley anchovy fillets in there instead. And then we wouldn't want to waste the juice in the anchovy can, so we'll pour that over."

And now, we come to my favorite. Another dish reserved for the festive Christmas season.

Lutefisk.

It's actually called lutfisk in Swedish (the word lutefisk that we've adopted in English is the Norwegian word). Lut is the Swedish word for lye. You know the stuff that they used as an example of an extremely high pH substance in chemistry class; the stuff that people used to use to clean clothes and very dirty stuff but that we always heard horror stories about some pour unsupervised kid drinking it and thereafter needing 37 surgeries and a lifelong need to be fed through a tube?

No surprise then that, if you soak cod in lye, it develops a Jell-o-like consistency. What is surprising is that someone decided that this was a good thing to produce and eat. It's one of those foods that makes you wonder "how many people died in the quest to discover just how many days of soaking and rinsing in water is required to make lye-soaked whitefish non-caustic?"

Now, I make it sound like I think all of this fishy fish is disgusting. Not at all; I love fish, and with the exception of the surströmming and lutefisk (because I'm not keen on food that requires supressing every instinct in my dry-heaving body), I eat and enjoy all of it.

All I'm saying is, for all my non-Swedish friends who might be curious about my adopted people, Swedes have a macabre knack for doing unspeakable things to seafood.

Sore Losers

Okay, can't take it anymore, must explode. 

To those of you thinking that "both Democrats and Republicans need to sit down and negotiate," I have a bone to pick with you. 

In some countries, when one party loses an election, they refuse to accept it. This is called "being a sore fricking loser."

Sometimes these sore losers violently overthrow the government. This is what we call "not democracy".

In some countries, instead of using violence to disrupt the democratic process, the above-mentioned "sore losers" (hereafter known as SLs) use passive-aggressive whining, money, 24-hour news networks that have nothing better to do and no journalistic integrity, the ignorance and gullibility of an easily-manipulated populace, and a hefty helping of lies and hypocrisy. 

The result is the same. The difference here is that the SLs in America have lost in a properly-executed, constitutional democratic process on the issue in question not once, but more than FOURTY-FOUR TIMES and still refuse to accept the verdict. 

A functioning election's job is to pick a leader or a representative. Your guy maybe doesn't win. GROW UP AND DEAL WITH IT. You are free to bitch and moan and complain, but not to blackmail them into a corner where they can't do the job they were democratically chosen to do. That is what we call "bullshit."

A functioning legislature's job is to pass laws. You maybe don't like the laws it passes. GROW UP AND DEAL WITH IT. You are free to bitch and moan and debate and even to try to get the laws changed by trying to change people's minds. But when you turn the body into a NON-functioning legislature by forcing it to vote on the bill 42 more times in the hopes that maybe everyone will see things your way this time, you are wasting everyone's time and money. That's called "being a douche."

A functioning U.S. Supreme Court's job is to judge the constitutionality of laws and set precedents. This is called judicial review. You might not like their decisions. GROW UP AND DEAL WITH IT. Just like Francis in Rome, the infallibility of SCOTUS on issues of constitutionality is a question of definition. You are free to bring a lawsuit to their desks and hope that they will see things the way you do, but if they refuse to hear your case or rule against you, that doesn't mean you "lost" or that they are being "activists."  It means they are "doing their fricking job" and that you, by definition, were "WRONG."

Negotiations have occurred in several national elections and in all three branches of government. The Republicans lost. They need to put on their big girl panties and move on. 

No matter how deeply they feel that Jesus wants sick poor people to die. 

Hate the Sin, Love the Sinner

Neil deGrasse Tyson has apparently gotten a lot of attention in response to this video where he discusses why he doesn’t label himself as an atheist. I suppose I’m about to add to it, but not so much to talk about him and about atheism. It’s just a starting thought on the road towards talking about Christianity. Or rather, American Christianity, as all of the points I plan on taking up are, as far as I know from a bit of experience and extrapolation, fairly unique to the United States.


deGrasse Tyson says he wouldn’t call himself an atheist because “the moment when someone attaches you to a philosophy or a movement, then they they assign all the baggage and all the rest of the philosophy that goes with it to you. And when you want to have a conversation, they will assert that they already know everything important there is to know about you because of that association.” (0:19) Of course, then he himself goes on to talk about how he’s not an atheist because he’s not an activist, he doesn’t lobby Congress or want to change policies, he doesn’t meet other atheists in pubs and talk about how very much he doesn’t believe in God, etc. – so he seems to box things up as much as anyone else does, of course. Aside from the fact that I’m not convinced he’s telling the truth about not wanting to change policies (he is known for being miffed about the end of manned space travel, for instance), the sentences in his video that really stuck on me were the following:

It’s odd that the word atheist even exists. I don’t play golf; is there a word for non-golf-players? Do non-golf-players gather and strategize? Do non-skiers have a word and come together and talk about the fact that they don’t ski? I can’t do that; I can’t gather round and talk about how much everybody in the room doesn’t believe in God. (2:55)

Being an atheist is, perhaps, very different from all other spiritual views in that it is defined as a lack of subscription to any existing spiritual views. But whether or not it only consists of that lack is debatable. Many atheists would object strongly to deGrasse Tyson’s description of atheists as active, debating, gregarious folk simply because their atheism is a lack of belief in the prevailing religious system and nothing more. But if other atheists are meeting in pubs and discussing their life views, one has to admit that atheism, for those people, consists of more than just a lack of belief in something else. I consider myself an “active” atheist, but I don’t do nearly as much research into evolution and current thoughts on free will and the deterministic universe and the latest updates in the fossil records as other atheists, spurred on at least partially by a desire to deepen their own reflections on the questions “how did we get here?” or “what is morality?”


But rather than starting a possible fist fight over whether atheism is a religion or whether it’s a belief in something rather than a lack of a belief in something, I want to talk about why it’s perfectly logical that there is a word for it. In a way that is completely incomparable to being a non-golfer or a non-skier. The majority of the country does not golf, nor does the majority ski, at least not in a way that they claim it is the source of their morals. Whether or not a person golfs has miniscule to no impact on me. But what they believe about how other people should be treated does. It is not necessary for people who would like to lead our country to suddenly start playing golf once a week and make sure cameras follow them on their rounds, just so the rest of the country can see that they are faithful golfers. People don’t turn en masse to golf gurus, instead of just using their own mental faculties, in order to get advice about how to vote or how to treat their spouses or how to raise their children or what food to eat or who to hate or ask whether or not other people should be allowed to be married or whether or not it’s okay for people to have sex before marriage (or after) or whether or not a person is worth as much as another based on which golf course they prefer to play at. Whether or not abortion, birth control, marriage, slavery, women’s suffrage and equal status as citizens, segregation, etc., are legal, has never been affected by the golfing views of the country’s citizens. I have never had the experience of being called names, had my character denigrated, or being told that I deserved it when my child died or that I'm the reason someone has cancer because some insecure golfer is offended by my non-golfing status.


Need I go on?


Arguing that the label “atheist” is unnecessary is like arguing that we don’t need a word for “homosexual”. But that would only be possible in one or possibly two scenarios. Number one, if every single human being were heterosexual and there was no fathomable alternative. Number two, if homosexuality were so common as to actually be the norm, and/or we assigned absolutely no decreased worth to a person for being in the minority – this would be the reason we don’t have a word for non-golfer, or, say, non-murderer.


So people’s religious views affect others, and those of us who reject religion -- and are therefore in the minority in the United States -- feel the need to call ourselves something. Because we want to make it clear that we exist and that we’re not a part of any of the clubs that everyone else considers normal and necessary in life. Because we want to be able to identify ourselves to the few people who might share our views. And quite honestly, it’s not just because people’s religion has an effect on others, but because many of us believe it has a very negative affect on people that those of us who reject it feel the need to do so actively and openly.


But now I’ve come to the meat of my thoughts for the day. Isn’t that very fact – that the religion of one person has so much effect on another person – the thing that’s weird here? Isn’t it also the beginning of the explanation for how American Christianity is so very different than the flavor currently found in the otherwise much more de facto secular societies of the Western world?


Today I read this article at CNN about how the author, Stephen Prothero, thinks it’s important for realistic, nuanced Christians to be shown on television. He applauds the fact that the new Christian character on Glee, Joe Hart, goes through a struggle between his sexual desires and his Christianity. I agree with him on that point, as criticizing the show for showing a Christian boy as anything but a Flandersesque-eunuch is just silly. But I want to take it one step further.



Prothero’s blog post describes another dilemma that Joe has on the show. Their Christian singing group is raising money by performing singing telegrams for $10 a pop, but then they get a request from a lesbian to send a singing telegram to her girlfriend. Should they say no? Apparently the struggle is played out on the show by having Joe and another character argue about whether the Bible forbids homosexuality: 

Mercedes (Amber Riley) calculates that since “one out of every ten people are gay . . . one of the twelve apostles might have been gay.” Sam (Chord Overstreet) observes that “the Bible says it’s an abomination for a man to lay with another man,” prompting Quinn (Dianna Agron) go ask, “Do you know what else the Bible says is an abomination? Eating lobster, planting different crops in the same field, giving somebody a proud look. Not an abomination? Slavery. Jesus never said anything about gay people. That’s a fact.”

I’m a big fan of pointing out how hypocritically and dynamically people literalize the Bible for their own ends. But I actually don’t think any of that is the point here. Let’s all agree for a moment that the Bible does say that homosexuality is a sin. Let’s just assume that a person engaging in homosexual acts or a homosexual lifestyle is, in fact, going against God’s and Jesus’s will. My question becomes: so? Is that really what the dilemma should have been about?


The point of defining yourself as a Christian would, correct me if I’m wrong, imply that you derive your morality from the Bible and from Jesus’s teachings, and that you use that as guidance in your own decisions, actions and lifestyle. But it seems to be treated as a given in American society and politics that being a Christian also supposedly means being not only perfect and sin-free yourself (hence the criticism against Glee for showing Joe as a boy with hormones), but also being a person that rejects, condemns, and refuses to associate even in an everyday, operational, business-like manner with people who are not, according to your definition, perfect. But refresh my memory, where does the Bible – contradictorily or not – state that I’m supposed to keep a 100-meter distance from anyone whose shit stinks? If this is such an important aspect of Christianity, shouldn't the other Christian teens in the show shun Joe for having his own struggle with lust?


In fact, as anyone who has a simple 3-sentence understanding of what the basic philosophy of Christianity is supposed to be knows, neither the Bible nor Jesus says any such thing. Christianity presumes that we’ve all been sinners since the first two human beings to walk the earth; that our lives are a constant struggle to resist temptation; that we will often fail; and that Jesus is there for us to turn to and ask for forgiveness when we have made mistakes. The Gospels are verse after verse, chapter after chapter, of Jesus associating with the people that everyone else has rejected, and telling the hypocrites that the way into heaven is to accept that humans are flawed and treat each other with dignity, respect and kindness.


But this message doesn’t exist in American Christianity. Churches are an exclusive club into which only perfectly sin-free people (which according to Jesus don't exist!) are welcome, and the imperfect but perfectly human that Jesus created his church for are not allowed through the gate. I find it laughable that politicians on the Christian right are constantly being caught in scandals when they are shamed and condemned because their “un-Christian” behavior is uncovered. But not because their hypocrisy is uncovered; rather, because they are missing a golden opportunity! If they had a real understanding of what Christianity is about, they would embrace their foibles! Don’t try to pretend that your daughter didn’t get pregnant before she was married; proudly proclaim that she did and that that’s why we need Jesus and abstinence-only education! Don’t go around pretending to be the straightest fucking arrow in Congress and resign when you’re found playing doctor with a male intern; instead, tell us that it’s your personal experience with man-lust that drives you to make laws against homosexuality and that gives you first-hand knowledge of how homosexuals can be “cured” with the right “treatment”!


I’ve been affected by my culture’s false brand of Christianity enough in my life to have almost completely lost my ability to keep my mouth shut about my distaste for the church. Sometimes I’m sure I’m downright obnoxious. One day my colleague, the guy who teaches the world religions course at our school, teased me by saying something along the lines of “Yeah, a philosophy that teaches you to love your fellow man, I can see why you hate Christianity so much.”


Indeed, very funny, we both laughed, but in all seriousness he was missing the point. The version of Christianity in which loving your neighbor and accepting his flaws are considered the most fundamental has been beaten down and relegated to, at best, a few chapters in a very long book that people profess to live their lives by, but their actions never match their lip service. The verses about loving your neighbor -- or anything from the New Testament, for that matter! -- are hardly the ones that get quoted during election years. If they were, the hot-button issue about marriage would be making divorce (Matthew 19:3-9), not gay marriage (Leviticus 20:13), illegal*.


The irony is that I, despite my extremely firm belief that there is no God, would respect and admire Christianity anyway if the majority of Christians practiced what they (claim to) preach. But as it stands, the public and open practice of Christianity in America seems to be an exercise in doing the opposite of what Jesus taught as often as possible, and expecting everyone else (the president, your next-door neighbor, your kids' teacher, your kids, your friends, your employees, the rest of the world...) to fall in line and do the same.


So it sounds like Glee has given us a bit of nuance in portraying a Christian on TV by showing us that he is not free from lust but rather that he must actively make a decision about whether or not to act on it. That personal, private struggle against sin is, indeed, real Christianity! But the program falls short of giving us a full version of real Christianity.  That would have required showing us that Joe and his friends went and sang for the lesbian’s girlfriend without any moral struggle or discussion about whether or not homosexuality is a sin. They would have cited the Gospels** and treated her as a neighbor, despite her not being “one of them”.

---

*In fact, I'm disappointed with these Leviticus hounders. Forget the aforementioned fact that the same book forbids me to wear jeans; how can Santorum or Bachman look at themselves in the mirror when they're not advocating the death penalty for homosexuals? Why go half way?
**Here or here or here or here or...

Moral Priorities

Our son Benjamin is learning new words at lightning speed, and in two languages no less. He's starting to get to that age where he can form a full enough sentence to make mistatements or out-loud ponderings that can embarrass Mommy and Daddy (i.e., ”wasn't Daddy in the bed!” shouted to the entire supermarket).

Sometimes the thing that slips out of a toddler's mouth and embarrasses Mom and Dad is a swear word, which are of course especially banished in my home country. But anyone who's been within 100 meters of Fredrik and I will know that we don't give a fuck if Benjamin says fuck. In fact, I'm not proud – though not embarrassed – to admit that we might actually have been encouraging it lately. My philosophy is that it's not the words, but the content, that is okay or not. If it's swear words that are bad, does that mean it's more taboo to say ”I'm so fucking tired” than to look a person in the face and say ”You're an ugly idiot”?

I feel we have no reason to actively discourage language we use ourselves – and since our son will never hear us use words, curse- or otherwise, to denegrate a human being, to hurt someone's feeling, to judge a person by anything other than their actions or statements, then we think he's going to turn out alright. This is a household where it's perfectly acceptable to say ”Ow, fuck!” when you stub your toe but not acceptable to say ”She's a fucking bitch.” The choice of vocabulary is completely irrelevant as a measurement of moral quality.

Anyone who's been within 100 meters of me lately also knows that I've fallen in love with Tim Minchin. A carrot-topped Australian piano virtuoso comedian with a Shakespearian vocabulary, a hard-on for rationality, Atheism, and both grammar and math jokes? I'd be hard-pressed to ask for more. His songs have been playing constantly around the Paulsson-Ceangailte household lately, and Benjamin has a favorite. The Pope Song. (The quality of that particular film is not the best, but the performance is as fabulous as ever and I WAS THERE! Ahem. I digress.) The lyrics consist of at least 40% ”fuck” if I'm forced to estimate. The chorus is, to make a long story short, ”fuck the mother-fucking pope.” Benjamin likes to dance to the song and, when it's over, cries ”again, again, more fucka fucka!” Am I now a hypocrite after saying that we don't teach him to use words to slander people? Not at all. Anyone with an ounce of listening comprehension will listen to the song and hear that it has two messages. It's not about mocking religion or a belief in God. The fact that the pope is a religious figure is at most indirectly related to Minchin's rancor. The first message: the pope has protected priests that have molested and raped children. The second message: we are a sad society if we are more offended by the word ”fuck” than the support and adoration of one billion Catholics for a man and an organization that protects child rapists. The song is as much a deceptively potty-mouthed masterpiece of social commentary as South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut. ”Horrific, deplorable violence (and war) is okay, as long as people don't say any naughty words!”

DO we live in a world where people can somehow torture up a moral relativity where child rape isn't a big deal? The message this week is, depressingly, yes. The news from Penn State reads like something out of some dark and misanthropic cousin to the Onion.

For those of you who haven't read or heard the news and might still have some hope for humankind, here's the summary: assistant coach Jerry Sandusky of Penn State's football team is being charged with a long string of crimes involving molesting and raping children. The allegations state that he used his workplace – specifically, the showers in the locker room – as the scene of his crimes. Further, that his colleagues, including the head coach Joe Paterno, were aware of his crimes and did jack squat, allowing them to continue.

Now that Sandusky has been arrested, Paterno has been fired because of his role as an accomplice to Sandusky's crimes. Riots have ensued on the campus of Penn State. But sadly, the riots are not in outrage over the fact that their school was a shameful party to years unimaginably heinous acts. They're rioting in outrage over the firing of their beloved head coach, who has ”done so much for the university”.

In Jon Stewart's report over the incident on the Daily Show, we hear that among the allegations is an incident in which a 6'5” man walked into the showers and was an eyewitness to Sandusky raping a child, and that the man did NOTHING. The description of this incident is in no way graphic, but has upset me so much that I'm a bit off-kilter. We had friends visiting last night and the topic of these Penn State riots came up, so Fredrik wanted to show them the Daily Show video, but I told him that I couldn't stomach listening to the description again.

I'm aware of the fact that other voices have come out of Penn State this week, and that the upside is that most people are genuinely outraged over what has happened to child victims. But that the first voices we heard on the subject were from people who had so violently missed the point, and that there were enough of them to constitute RIOTS, leaves a person speechless.

As usual with my blog posts, I have no conclusion, no happy ending, no deep philosophical seed of wisdom to impart. I'm really just getting it off my chest: the idea that people can muster up collective moral outrage over a slight blow to their sports program instead of pondering the hideousness of human nature revealed by this case sickens me. The priority given to sports programs at American universities has always been outrageously inflated compared to the priority given to the universities' actual mission of educating people, but this takes it to tragicomic proportions.

So I will continue to be perfectly fine with Benjamin throwing the word ”fuck” around. I have sense and priorities enough to know that that's much better than him becoming a rapist.

Accent

I'm proud of the fact that I speak Swedish with almost no noticeable accent. What little imperfections there are in my pronunciation and language only serve to make people wonder if I'm not from 'round here, but without them being able to guess where I am from. Every year when we get new students I ask each class to guess where I'm from. I do this at the end of the first lesson I have with them, so they've had plenty of time to hear me speak. Each class gets 20 guesses. None of them have ever won.

That's why I smile a bit when people say ”I DID hear that you had a bit of an American accent!” Without fail, a person has always said that AFTER finding out that I'm American. Again, forced to come up with it on their own, there are few that venture to ask if I'm foreign, and none that have managed to guess where I'm from. Their confidence that they could hear a characteristic American ”R” really only comes after I'm said where I'm from.

So I was a bit put out this morning when I was at the playground with Bennie and, after I'd exchanged about 3 sentences with her, another mom said ”Are you from the U.S.?”

But I was only crushed for a few seconds before realizing: 1) I'd been walking around the place speaking English with Bennie (or even yelling English AT Bennie) and 2) Bennie was wearing a t-shirt with a stars and stripes monkey on it.

Still, I feel the need to practice some vowels.

Jingoist Jingle

I have no idea what reminded of this today, but I've felt for a long time that the U.S. ought to change its national anthem, "The Star-Spangled Banner." A song about bombs and war doesn't seem like the best way to celebrate national spirit or start a baseball game.

I've always preferred the song "America the Beautiful." It was one of the songs we sang along with our teacher's guitar in kindergarten, so I suppose it's got a nostalgic air for me, but it also focuses on things that I think are better to be proud of. Instead of bombs, wheat fields and high mountains. Instead of victory in war, spacious skies and two vast oceans. It's a theme not unlike that of the Swedish national anthem, "Du Gamla Du Fria". Though there are apparently a lot of people who would like to change the Swedish national anthem to Ulf Lundell's "Öppna landskap," the theme is basically the same: focus on Sweden's natural beauty. (Since "Öppna landskap" mentions moonshining, though, I don't know if that change would jive with the officials...)

But whatever it was that reminded me of my distaste for "The Star-Spangled Banner" today, I decided to search Facebook to see if anyone agreed with me. There's always a group for these things, right? I can't say I put a huge amount of effort into finding a group, but nothing came up on the obvious search terms (except groups calling to change the U.K. and Canadian national anthems). I looked at the Wikipedia page for the national anthem and saw nothing mentioning a movement or campaign to get it changed. After a Google search, though, I did find this blog post by Amanda Marcotte. She argues that "America the Beautiful" is just as bombastic (pun intended, certainly) as "The Star-Spangled Banner," but personally I'm not PC enough to think a "hey, we're awesome!" attitude in a national anthem is wrong. She also says that it would be just as difficult to translate into Spanish as the current anthem -- translation into Spanish is the context in which she's brought up the issue -- but besides not agreeing with that (nothing says that the language in the Spanish version of either has to be as advanced as in the original in order to be beautiful), translatability is not necessarily my first priority here.

However, the suggestion that Amanda makes for our new national anthem, "This Land is Your Land," certainly has its appeal. Aside from echoing "America the Beautiful"'s spirit of America having a huge and varied landscape, by mentioning California, New York, the squares of the city, the shadow of the steeple -- I like the fact that it makes America not just a landscape, but a landscape with people in it. The main theme, "This land was made for you and me," a theme of inclusion that reminds us that we all came from other places, is much more worthy of celebration than superiorly bombing your enemy to smithereens. Just like with Emma Lazarus' "The New Colossus," there's a risk of feeling sarcastic when singing this song of inclusion and welcoming. But like Amanda mentions in her blog post, the last lines of "This Land is Your Land" are:

In the squares of the city - In the shadow of the steeple
Near the relief office - I see my people
And some are grumblin’ and some are wonderin’
If this land’s still made for you and me.

As Amanda writes, "Best part is the implied challenge at the end for this country to actually live up to its promise." At any rate, I'd rather sing "America the Beautiful" and feel a bit ashamed about us not quite living up to the spirit of caring for America's landscape, or sing "This Land is Your Land" and feel a bit ashamed about us not quite living up to the spirit of welcoming all types of people in our country, than to sing "The Star-Spangled Banner" and feel ashamed that my country doesn't even strive towards these priorities and focuses pretty exclusively on "bombs are kewl."

My Name is Lori - Karma Lite

Tonight I managed to commit an act of charity, and also to lose my bank card.

About 13 years ago I had a summer job at the 3M tape factory. I worked the graveyard shift, 10 pm to 6 am, so my days were naturally turned around. Personally, I thought it was ideal; you get to sleep as late as you want and still have your evenings free. Can't they open a graveyard shift high school that I can work at? I doubt the students would complain...

One weekend morning at about 2 am I was grocery shopping at Cub Foods and was approached by a petite Hispanic girl in a Taco Bell uniform. She probably weighed 50 pounds soaking wet. She'd just finished work and was supposed to be picked up by a family member, but the family member never showed. She wondered if I could give her a ride home. I took a quick look around while the gears were whirring in my head -- what the hell, why are there so many elderly people shopping at Cub at 2 in the blinking morning -- and decided that the quotient of possible danger to logical explanation for why she asked specifically me multiplied by the unlikelihood of someone dressing up in a Taco Bell uniform in order to kidnap me seemed pretty okay. Her house was on my way home anyway, so I told her to hop in.

When we pulled up to her house, she pulled out a Taco Bell-stamped envelope of money (it was apparently payday, and I totally wondered at the time why Taco Bell paid her in cash) and gave me a $5 bill. I most certainly did not want her money and very much wanted to refuse it and explain that I was glad I could help her get home safe, but I've always had a shyness of the "avoid ANY kind of conflict AT ALL COSTS" type (don't worry, I'm mostly over that now), so I thanked her and took the money and went on my way.

And that bugs me to this day. I was actually thinking about it earlier today. I'm excellent at holding a grudge, especially against myself.

Now, 13 years later, I'd just put Benjamin to bed here at my parents' house and headed out to pick up some milk and OJ. I took a drive over to Byerly's, just because the place gives me the super warm fuzzies. When I was putting my groceries in the car, I remembered that I wanted to take out some cash, and while I was looking back at the store to see if they had an ATM, a woman approached me and asked for help.

She wasn't a tiny Hispanic girl, but rather, a kind-sounding middle-aged lady that happened to be missing a few teeth and was on the brink of tears.

Her explanation of what she needed was a bit fuzzy to me, given that she was visibly shaken and speaking quietly, but the gist of it seemed to be: she was visiting someone at St. John's hospital, her wallet was either lost or stolen, she needed to get home to Stillwater, and wondered if I had a few dollars for gas.

I answered, quite honestly, that I didn't have any cash.

Before I had even finished saying so, she excused herself for bothering me and walked away.

This is where I go back into the store to get the cash I needed anyway, and lose my bank card.

See, American cash machines have the unfortunate routine of spitting out your cash and THEN your card. I'd forgotten this and am once again grateful that Swedish cash machines work the other way around. I grabbed my cash from the machine, went over to a cashier to ask her to break up the bill for me, and walked back past the cash machine in time to wonder why it was beeping so loudly. Then I swore pretty loudly and lunged at the machine a split second too late to save my card from being sucked back in and shredded, and was greeted by the message "Your card has been destroyed for security purposes, please contact your financial institution." (And you have to admit that you, too, would have stood there pressing buttons and hoping to magically reverse that process, yes?)

Anyway, whatever.

I went back into the parking lot and saw the dejected lady sitting in a rather vintage-and-not-in-a-good-way vehicle with two equally dejected looking men. The window was down, and as I approached I could see that she was crying. When I asked if she was alright, she tried to brighten herself up and say that she was fine. I asked about who she'd been visiting -- her dad had had a heart attack but he was doing alright now -- and saw that her gas gauge read bone dry. I gave her $5 and said that I hope her dad will be alright. She thanked me and said she was going to sit and compose herself for a while, but as I buckled up and started my car, I saw one of her male companions on his way to the 76 station with a gas can in hand.

I hope 2 gallons of gas was enough to get that clunker home to Stillwater. Perhaps now I will let myself off the hook for not refusing that other girl's money. But mostly, I just think it's funny that I've added to the list of times that my mother thinks I've narrowly escaped a kidnapping attempt outside of a St. Paul grocery store.

Klyftpotatis

The gap between poor children and rich children is up for discussion again, this time in regards to the grades they get in school: Choice in School Widens the Grade Gap .

I'd like to provide an alternative analysis.

There is indisputably a positive correlation between having well-to-do parents and performing well in school. Therefore, I don't find it inappropriate for me to exchange the concept of well-to-do kids for the concept of talented kids.

We see on the graph that grades for all 4 categories -- what has been labeled high, fairly high, fairly low, and low income kids -- have gone up since 1990.

Parents being given the opportunity to choose an alternative to mediocre public schools has therefore, according to my analysis, not brought down the lower income children. Rather, it has helped put an end to the holding back of children who are more talented at traditional schoolwork. It has even, perhaps, created the desired effect of causing the public schools to get their butts in gear and improve themselves -- thereof the rise in grades for all categories of children.

I do believe that we need to make sure everyone can choose a better school and that income, which is only symptomatically related to success in school (but, once again, undeniably related nonetheless) is a barrier that we should make efforts to break. But there would be little point to having grades if everyone got the same, wouldn't there? If anything, I think the real story in this graph is "what's up with the general grade inflation going on here??" I don't doubt Fjelkner's analysis (she is the head of my teachers' union) about returning the responsibility for schools to the national level -- I have yet to form an opinion on that subject, and frankly think it would be 12 of one, a dozen of the other -- but I appreciate Margareta Pålsson (schools spokesperson for the ruling conservative party) saying that choice in school is critical and what we need to do is make sure that those choices are open to everyone. I'm also pleased to see that even Ylva Johansson (schools spokesperson for the socialist party) sees school choice as a part of Sweden now, and that solutions to both problems and "problems" must be found in other areas.

Either way, I don't see the benefit to Sweden of making sure everyone is equally poorly educated. But, with a bit of deja vu from the earlier article I blogged about on the subject of the growing number of "rich" children, it appears that I'm surrounded by people who feel that everyone getting the same grades is an obvious end unto itself.

Lasse

I'm sitting here wondering if it's kosher for a teacher to blog about her political views. Mja. Let's say that it is.

Today is the first day of my summer vacation. My school has been open since 2006, so it was our second class of high school graduates that entered real life last Friday. Work wasn't quite over for us teachers though, as we still had our company's yearly conference/meeting to attend. The question was, what was I looking forward to more: seeing my colleagues in party mode or listening to the one speaker on the lecture list that made me drop my jaw, Lars Ohly?

Here comes the obligatory explanation of Swedish politics and whatnot. In Sweden, there are public schools (in the American meaning of the word; school that are financed by and run by the government) and there are "friskolor," which most closely resemble the American concept of "charter schools". They are financed by public funds (they receive a certain amount of money per student that attends the school) and, with a few exceptions, they must follow the same rules as any other school. The important difference is that they are run by a private company, which like all other companies wants to make some kind of a profit.

Lars Ohly is the head of Sweden's Vänsterpartiet -- the "left party". It used to be called "the left party communists," and though they've removed the communist bit from their names, it gives you an idea of where they stand politically. Of the 7 parties that make up Sweden's parliament, Vänster is most strongly opposed to charter schools.

This, and the fact that teachers are known to lean very strongly towards Folkpartiet (the Liberals, on the other side of the political spectrum), meant that I giggled when I saw that Lars Ohly would be speaking at our conference. A conference for Baggium Utbildning AB, operator of 41 charter high schools. Lars Ohly's audience would consist of 700 men and women whose monthly paycheck comes from a system that he thinks should not exist.

Oh, and it's an election year.

Ohly opened his speech by telling us that he believes it's important that there's a school out there for everyone. He worked on a government initiative which had as its goal that 50% of all Swedes would continue on in higher education after high school, but he understands that not everyone -- heck, not even 50%, he says -- should be an academic. There have to be "practical" schools, schools for people who want to be carpenters and plumbers and hairdressers and everything else that society needs but that often gets looked down upon in relation to fancy degrees and university pedigrees. But, he continued, we're making a mistake if we give these more hands-on students an education that is devoid of the theoretical; of math and English and civics and everything other kind of knowledge that may not seem important in a car mechanic's or an assistant nurse's working life but which is important for every individual citizen in their everyday, private lives and for their participation in a democratic society.

This, according to Ohly, is where the current conservative government is going wrong with education. And this, according to me, is about where his audience started to squirm in their seats.

It's not that we didn't agree with him. Well, I suppose I can't speak for the other 699, but I CAN say what our company's vision is: educate the future plumbers, carpenters, mechanics, florists, painters, and all other kinds of hands-on workers of tomorrow, in an apprenticeship-based format where they spend about 50% of their high school hours working at an honest-to-goodness company. "Everything that can be learned on the job should be learned on the job." But we also think it's important that all of our students become well-rounded and prepared for real life, not just working life. Future voters and law abiders need to know civics. Future homeowners and wage earners need to know math. And future members of a rather small European country in a quickly shrinking world need to know English. Our students study the same core subjects as all other high school students and are qualified for university studies when they graduate.

We agree, in other words, with Lars Ohly. Is that what made us uncomfortable? No, rather, it was merely the fact that he talked to us as though we didn't. Or, perhaps, as though WE did, but worked for a company that didn't. Was it the case that he wasn't entirely up to speed about our company, or was it all the OTHER schools he was talking about ("NOT you guys, you guys are good.")?

He continued by talking about how it's important to provide for those who make the wrong choice or who change their minds after choosing a certain program. Students in Sweden are forced to choose a specific educational program when they apply for high school, and that's a rather heavy burden we put on the shoulders of our 15-year olds. But what about those who discover "too late" that they've made the wrong choice? What if they finish high school, start working, and then discover that the job that they've trained for is really not their thing?

Then he came to the meat of the speech, the bit that we were all waiting for. "I can't come and talk to Baggium Utbildning without talking about charter schools." In short, Lars Ohly is sceptical to a profit motive in a system financied with public funds and which has a mission as important as educating our children. It leads to charter schools hiring unqualified teachers, skimping on the teacher-student ratio, and cutting corners wherever possible in terms of materials, school nurses, libraries, and all other forms of things that make an education richer but a school's wallet emptier.

His central critique of our concept -- yes, now he was getting personal -- is that we ought to have our students out at a workplace less often. "It's important not to abdicate responsibility for the student's education. Sometimes it works well, but sometimes it works really poorly."

Of course, I have translated his comments into English and shortened them, but I do not feel that I have paraphrased too brutally or corrupted the tone.

After his speech, Ohly took questions. I was hoping the microphone might come my way before time ran out. I was calculating our teacher-student ratio in my head and thinking about which of my colleagues were qualified. I was trying to piece together what he said at the beginning of his speech with the seemingly conflicting remarks he made at the end. But I didn't have to worry that his comments would go without opposition. I felt that the best comments came from the leaders of the company, perhaps because they took the words out of my mouth. But since this is my blog, I'll let myself get a bit more wordy and put it my way.

Charter schools are not subject to the same laws that require public schools to hire qualified teachers as often as possible. That doesn't mean that we don't. Baggium's goal is prioritize qualified teachers. When a qualified teacher isn't available, we prioritize highly skilled professionals with experience in their fields (that is, experience as plumbers, small business owners, etc.) with the good communication skills it requires to instruct young people and keep up a good relationship with the companies out students are placed at. Our hiring processes are, in other words, the same as at a public school. It's not an easy task finding a person who is both a plumber and has a teaching degree, no matter if the employee is a private or a public institution. In my eyes, a plumber with 30 years of experience and an open and pedagogical attitude is preferable to a person who's never held a wrench (or, for that matter, much better than no teacher at all). In the case of core subjects, 80% of Sweden's working teachers are qualified. At my school, that number is 100%. Perhaps because our school doesn't hire unemployed civil engineers to be math teachers and then work around Sweden's school laws to avoid having to fire them when a slightly more expensive qualified teacher comes along -- a practice not at all unheard of at public schools.

But our core teachers are not "just" qualified. I have a Swedish teaching degree in mathematics and English, but I also have a master's in math, English is my native language, and my education in computer science and art make me a valuable asset at a workplace where students have to be taught to use our intranet, computers often have to be fixed up after our students have used them, a website has to be administrated and a whole mountain of addresses, grades, and schedules has to be databased with pedantic precision. None of these things are necessary in order for me to count as an officially qualified teacher, but they make me a better teacher and a better employee. They are valued by my employer, both figuratively and literally: I command a salary more than 10% above what I would receive at a public school, where my age and number of years of experience would have been plugged into a formula and my "extra" merits would be verbally praised once or twice but otherwise ignored. The story is much the same for my colleagues in our core subject department. Add to the fact that our employer provides salary bonuses after 5 and 8 years of experience or after we've done something "above an beyond" our everyday duties that benefits our students, as well as the fact that they help our unqualified teachers become qualified by providing classes or time off of work for studies, and many of Ohly's criticisms fall flat on their face.

So we clearly don't skimp on our teachers, whether we're talking qualifications or purely in dollars, so what do we skimp on? Surely something has to give if the company is going to make a profit? We don't have the money to buy all the equipment we would need to train a mechanic, a plumber, or a groom. We can't have a state-of-the-art workshop on site or a fully functional stall with 5 horses. But we don't have to. We put our students where those things already exist, where they get to learn by doing instead of just reading, and that gives us more freedom to invest in textbooks, a school library, healthy school lunches instead of re-heated, transported, mass-produced food-like substances. Ohly's main critique of our schools is that our students are too often at a workplace and too seldom at school, but aside from "learning by doing" being the core idea of our company it's also what allows us to have the resources to build a better school and gives our students the ability to discover "hey, this job really isn't for me" long before they graduate. It doesn't mean we abdicate responsibility for our student's education -- a theory that our work subject teachers can disprove by showing how many miles they drive every week to visit and evaluate our students at work.

Pure numbers can say a lot. Ohly mentioned that the teacher-student ratio in Swedish schools has dropped from 9.1 teacher per 100 students to 8.3 to 100 in recent years. At Baggium's schools the average is 10.3 and at my school it's 12. And that's not counting the mentors at our student's work placements. In core subjects, our students are in groups of about 16 -- about half the size of groups at the public schools. In their work subjects, the groups are even smaller. I know the name of every student at my school and have had all but a handful in some subject. Since we tend to get kids who don't think school is fun, this level of attention is incredibly important. So Ohly? We're not skimping.

You can tell that I really believe in what we're doing at my place of work. I don't believe it's a concept that would have developed or survived in the public school system. And after my company has been doing it for 11 years, we've been noticed by the current government and been made a "model school" for the high school reforms being planned for next year. And I believe in the concept of charter schools and choice in education enough that my son will be starting at one this fall. "Sometimes it works really well, but sometimes it works really poorly." Ohly's words apply very well to the public school system.

I don't have much hope that Ohly's opinions would change after standing in front of 700 teachers (representing 5000 students) that prove the opposite. But I think something he mentioned at the beginning of his speech says a lot. His son is a student at one of our schools. I guess he doesn't think we're so bad after all!

Baby bites

Some of my cooking skills are now going to making baby food for the littlest human in the house. I am absolutely no expert on baby nutrition, but I would like to think that I am at this point at least in the 90th percentile of well-informedness about baby food and nutrition among the group of baby mommies. So the recipes I'm making for Benjamin are based off of carefully pondering over the labels on commerical baby food, reading and re-reading all the literature that magically appears in one's mailbox once one has a baby in Sweden (from Nestlé, Semper, and other baby food companies, as well as from the pediatric clinic and the Swedish food administration), as well as some pretty good websites about baby food and nutrition.

One thing that I've noticed is that recommendations about what babies can and can't eat are even less universal than recommendations about what a pregnant woman can eat.

We're told that a breast-milk only diet until 6 months of age is best, but that it's okay to start giving some solids at 4 months if you choose to. I believe that most BVC (pediatric) nurses in Sweden say the 6-month thing because social services requires them to say so, and it's a shame that they have to feel conflicted when they feel a specific baby needs something more (as Benjamin did). However, I have a super BVC nurse who is very supportive of the super-fast food track Bennie has been on since I finally waved the white flag at 5 months. He was barely gaining any weight and was very displeased and impatient every time we nursed. Once we started him on solids, he sucked down everything we put in front of him. Already now at 7 months he's eating sandwiches and even biting and chewing bananas with a relative minimum of help. I'm sure some nursing or baby experts would hit the roof, but Benjamin has never once choked, never vomited from not being able to handle bigger bits of food (as I've seen other babies do), had most foods, especially common allergens, introduced one at a time, has never refused anything that we've given him, and is now following his weight curve very nicely. He still breast feeds on a schedule that works for us, and most importantly, he's so happy most of the time that we're starting to suspect that someone has spiked his toys with baby-nip.

The list of no-no foods we get from the pediatric nurses here in Sweden seems to be more relaxed than most; before they're a year old, the babies are not supposed to have veggies like spinach or beets (nitrates are hard on a baby's kidneys), excess salt (also kidneys), or honey (spores that can produce botulism). They also suggest we avoid sugar, nuts, and milk as a drink, but for far less "dangerous" reasons -- avoiding bad habits, avoiding choking, and avoiding replacing iron-rich foods and formula with milk, in that order. Aside from those things, everything else is pretty much A-OK from 6 months, as long as it's a reasonable consistency and the diet is varied. I've seen plenty of sites from other countries that say carrots and blueberries are a no-no until 1 year of age, despite the fact that they're sold as 4-month foods here, and I have Australian friends who have made spinach curry for their babies (which means I know, knowing these women, that no doctor has forbidden spinach for their babies). And of course, all the other moms my age here were subject to completely different recommendations when they were babies -- they ate spinach, were started on sugary juices are solids at the age of 6 weeks or something crazy, etc.

The point is, sometimes they seem to be talking out of their asses. Or at the very least, the recommendations might actually have about as much meaning as a swimmer shaving his legs. My son might or might not have a marginally larger chance at perfect health because I follow the prevailing recommendations where I live and don't feed him spinach, but perhaps the fact that he eats blueberries and carrots will cancel it out, who knows.

One site I've used a lot, at least for inspiration or comparison, is Wholesomebabyfood.com. It's run by a mom who has studied nutrition and fed all of her kids, including a set of twins, on homemade baby food. The site contains recipes for everything from single-ingredients purées to whole meals and finger foods for older babies, nutritional facts about different foods, information about storing and freezing, and even things like introducing cups and straws. The age recommendations for introducing different foods are also a bit more on the conservative side, but the plus side is that the site explains why they think a certain food might not be appropriate before 8 or 10 months -- and therefore it's easier to decide if you think it will work for your baby earlier or not.

The following recipes are perhaps not perfectly balanced for baby nutrition, but I do think I've done a pretty good job anyway. I make them fairly chunky, so by typical recommendations these foods might not be right for most babies before 8 months or even later. My baby food is also very thick (as in, not watery), as Benjamin is very particular about this as well (he's like the anti-baby...) so for other babies you might need to add extra water or formula and therefore these recipes would make more portions. Peas and tomatoes can also be tough on small tummies, the former because of the skins and the later because of the acid, but Benjamin hasn't had a huge problem with either. Milk, wheat (as in the pasta, couscous or flour) and fish are among the 8 most common allergens, so you want to be extra careful to first introduce them alone for 4 or 5 days (that is, make sure fish or wheat or dairy is the only new food the baby eats that week). But anyway... here they are:

Cod Casserole
2 dl rice
400 g cod or other white fish
600 g green peas
1 T canola oil
1 T flour
2 dl whole milk
dill

Cook the rice as directed. Boil the cod and peas until the cod is thoroughly cooked and the peas are soft. Purée the cod and peas -- and if you feel you need to, the rice -- until they are the desired consistency. Mix the oil and flour in a saucepan; add milk and simmer for a couple minutes until the sauce has thickened a bit. Add a bit of dill. Mix everything together to make a pretty green mush! This ought to be 8 full baby meals -- that is, the amount of food you'd find in a store-bought jar.

Baby Thanksgiving
400 g chicken (I used frozen thighs; make sure you get the type without salt added)
500 g sweet potato, cut up into cubes
500 g frozen green beans (not canned; that has salt)
1 T canola oil
1 T flour
2 dl milk
sage, rosemary, thyme

Pretty much the same as the last one, just with a different kind of meat and veggies! I boiled the sweet potatoes for about 20 minutes, adding the chicken after 5 minutes and the beans after 10 or so. You want it all cooked through and soft anyway. Then it was into the mixer to purée it all. The sauce is the same as well -- mix the oil and flour and then add the milk and simmer until thickened -- but this time I added some sage, rosemary and thyme instead of dill. Mix it all together, this time you get orange goop instead of bright green. And this is also 8 portions.

Lasagna
350 g couscous or crushed pasta
2 T canola oil
250 g zucchini
250 g mushrooms
500 g canned crushed tomatoes (or perhaps tomato sauce if you find it without added salt)
2 T flour
6 dl milk
50 g shredded cheese
basil, oregano, parsley, garlic powder

Cook the pasta as directed. Grate the zucchini and mushrooms on a cheese grater. Cook zucchini and mushrooms in the oil in a big pot until they're very soft. Add the tomatoes and pasta. Add spices. If needed, purée the pasta mixture in your mixer, but it might not be necessary. In another pot, milk the flour with a little bit of the milk until smooth. Add the rest of the milk and simmer for a few minutes. Add the cheese, whisking constantly so it melts without sticking to the bottom or lumping. Mix the cheese sauce and pasta mixture. This one is probably about 12 full-meal portions for baby. I actually thought it tasted pretty good myself, or at least would have with salt!

A note about the lasagna: it contains no meat, is a bit on the low side as far as protein goes, and I don't believe it contains a good source of iron. So it's not the kind of thing a baby should be eating every day, as protein and iron are big deals for baby. But I'm sure it's okay as part of a large variety of foods and meals.

Freezing
I put together a collection of small tupperwares (okay, fine, small plastic food storage containers) so that I can freeze up Bennie's food in portion sizes. You want tupperwares that hold at least 200 ml, but preferably not so much bigger than that, and that have pretty flexible sides. Glop the baby food into them portion by portion, and then when they're frozen they can be popped out (perhaps after letting them sit with their bottoms in cold water for a short while) and stored in freezer bags. It means I get away with making baby food once a week instead of hecticly trying to cook and mash and purée and whatever at every meal. The point with being able to pop them out of the tupperwares is so that you don't have to use up all the baby food before you can freeze more.

I heat Bennie's food in the microwave, as I don't believe the hype about it destroying nutrients and turning babies into cyclops, but you can thaw it out in the fridge as well.

Freezing single-ingredient baby food in ice cube trays also worked really well at the beginning, before Bennie was eating more complete meals. The Wholesomebabyfood.com site has very good info about freezing.

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So, uh. Do my mood swings between political rants and housewifey baby food recipes seem too violent for you? No? Glad to hear it!

Did you bring enough for everyone to share?

In our last episode, we eluded to our disgust with many Swedes' definition of "democracy".

Today's vocabulary word is "rich". And while we're at it, "poor". And "divide". And... well, either way, as often is the case, this post includes math (or perhaps lack thereof?).

Background info for non-Swedies: Sweden has been more or less run by socialist governments for most of the last century. Since the 2006 election, however, we have had a "conservative" government. If you're an American, IMMEDIATELY shift your idea of "conservative" to somewhere around the vicinity of Al Gore and Barack Obama for the remainder of this discussion.

Here you have an article that outs itself right from the start with its headline -- which is unfortunately very hard to translate properly: "More rich child-families". That is, of all the families in Sweden that have kids, they're saying more of them are rich now. (Well, fine, go ahead, YOU try to translate "Fler rika barnfamiiljer" and have the meaning come out right. Not so cocky now, are you?)

The immediate problem is how you define "rich". Is it going to be like the "rikemansskatt," the "rich man's tax" that means people with an income over a certain point pay not just municipial but also state taxes here -- and which is paid by something like half of the working population?

Yes, I do, in fact, believe there's a similar definition of "rich" being bandied around here. If you dig deep into the article (that is, read it), you'll find that the number of children living in what the article is calling "rich" families has increased from 18% to 30% since 2006.

Awesome, 30% of all families in Sweden are rich! Oh wait, it's not awesome, because rich people are evil. Boooo, 30% of all families in Sweden are evil!

But I digress... I think.

How have they defined rich? They have an index where a score of 1.0 means just being able to afford everything you need. "Rich" is what you are, then, if your family has a score of 2.0. I'm going to guess that, by that definition, my little family is "rich".

What I'm trying to say here is: I reject any definition of rich under which the label is slapped on me for being able to make a mortgage payment and feed my cats; I reject any definition of rich that encompasses 30% of the population. That is, of course, unless the other 70% are eating garbage from the dumpster. If we were talking about the world population, then I know that I am (rich, that is) and that they are (33% surviving on less than $2 a day, that is). But we're not. We're talking about Sweden, and so you have to wonder what definition of "poor" is going to be thrown up to match the wide-berthed definition of "rich".

The "poor" families in the article have a quotient of less than 1.0; they are, in other words, unable to afford the package that has been defined as the "basic standard". The article, sadly, fails to give a statistic matching the "30% are rich". However, they do say two things that at least help us to extrapolate: number 1, the percent of kids living in poor families hasn't changed since 2006. Number two, the Swedish region of Skåne has the highest percentage of kids living in poor families, and there it is 9.3%; the lowest is apparently in Jönköping, where the percentage is 3.5%.

This is the point at which all of my fellow aware Americans raise an eyebrow at how awesome it must be to have a country where well over 3 times as many kids are rich than are poor, and only then using a very mild definition of poor by global standards.

Well then, here comes my pissed-offedness: how is this information viewed, in talking-point form? "Divide widens," says one headline, and this blog links the article as evidence that the conservatives are "consciously creating a 'hungry' lower class of uneducated, sick and unemployed (who just need to 'lift themselves by their bootstraps') which can then be exploited and help to drive down wages."*

I cannot agree that these statistics are evidence of any gap having widened. When I asked a left-wing friend of mine "which is better, some people having grade A health care and some people having grade B, or everyone having grade C?" he actually answered me that it would be better if everyone had grade C -- and I don't think his view is uncommon, consciously or unconsciously, among Swedish socialists. But even I can agree that there is a "divide" in the former, A vs. B, situation (I just don't think that that divide is automatically a bad thing). But seriously, I do not see how an upwards shift in the poorkids-averagekids-richkids scale is by any definition a "widened divide". If it used to be the case that 50% of the population earned $10,000 a year and the other 50% earned $20,000, but this year the ratio is 40-60, does that constitute a "bigger divide"? I'm sorry, I'm just not grasping the math.

But for me, the best part is this: as I said in the opening of my rant, the conservatives have been in charge since the 2006 election. Those of you with your SAT glasses on will have noticed that that's also the year being examed in the article -- the increase in "rich" kids and the non-change in number of "poor" kids is since 2006. So if these however-many-but-less-than-9.3% of Swedish kids who are poor were created as a class by any set of public policies... well, whose were they, then? I'll even speculate that it's quite a feather in the current government's hat that the lower group hasn't increased in size given the current economic climate.

I really am at a loss for words about how a person's political viewpoint can allow them to believe that we live in a WORSE world if the average child's family resources has gone up without the lowest income group increasing in size. I will never understand the world view that sees it as an automatically and indepedently bad thing that life has improved for someone. The Robin Hood rhetoric is perfectly acceptable for me when we're talking American-top-1%-rich and American-Mommy-sells-crack poor, but as for this stuff I'll just continue to be amazed at our ability to whine about being possibly the most privileged 9 million people on the planet.


*Original: Man skapar medvetet en ”hungrig” underklass av lågutbildade, sjuka och arbetslösa (som bara behöver ”ta sig i kragen”) för att sedan kunna utnyttjas och hjälpa till att driva ned lönerna.

How do you say "oxymoron" in Swedish?

I don't affiliate myself with a specific political party in Sweden. I am pretty solidly sure which side I'm on when the parties are organized into two blocs, but the bloc I side with contains 4 parties and I am on pretty good terms with all of them.

The one that calls themselves the Liberals, though, is the Swedish Folkpartiet. I was a member of their youth and student organization when I studied here. They say that almost all Swedish teachers are Folkpartister. However, I don't find their recent shenanigans to be all that Liberal. As much as I, as a teacher with an American background, support their ideas about a slightly more strict Swedish school system where attendance, homework, behavior and performance actually matter and are documented, I don't see what those things have to do with Liberalism with a capital L. Even less so do I understand why so many ideas about making immigrants take Swedish tests or sign a contract promising that they won't break any laws etc. has to do with a more negative-freedom-based type of political ideal.

That's why I'm glad to see today that Folkpartiet has voted down an obligatory "citizenship course" for immigrants as part of their integration program. Since I come from a country where one must pass a test in the English language and in civics in order to become naturalized, and I don't feel either of those is a bad idea, I can't say I would protest against such a program in Sweden, either. Especially since, theoretically, Sweden does, or ought to, provide training in both to all immigrants, whether they are seeking citizenship or not. But speaking the working language of your environment and knowing how the country is run and how you can vote -- these are good things for anyone who has planted themselves and their families in a new place.

An obligatory course in "Swedish values" is, however, bullkaka. I'm really rather sick of hearing the word "democracy" thrown around in this country, both inside and outside of a school context, without any sense that anyone knows what it means. Suggesting that all people who come here from another country need a chance to "reflect on the values they grew up with" and how they might not match those of the Swedish culture is not only a poor attempt at subtlety, but is also something that meshes rather poorly with the democratic ideal of freedom of opinion. Even our Minister of Intregration Nyamko Sabuni, who I generally have a lot of respect for, makes it clear how silly the idea is without perhaps meaning to: "Sabuni also said that Sweden is in a class by itself, when you compare values with those of other countries, for example that self-actualization comes before family."* What does she mean by that? Is this one of the Swedish values she thinks needs to be impressed upon immigrants to Sweden? Aside from making it clear that we're not just talking about a helpful civics course here, her choice of which Swedish "value" to use as an example makes you wonder if we really would even want everyone to think the way we do.

It's a good thing I'm already a Swedish citizen, and that the only thing I had to prove in order to become one is that I had 1500 Swedish kronor I felt like spending. If I somehow had had to promise to stick out from the crowd as little as possible or drink snaps at Midsommar or watch Donald Duck on Christmas or whatever the hell else is integral to this mystical and very unique class of values that Swedes have, I'd have been fucked.

*Original: Sabuni uppgav också att Sverige hamnar alldeles ensam på utkanten, när man jämför värderingar med andra länder, till exempel att självförverkligande går före familjen.

Professor Baby Longsleeps

Every time Benjamin takes a nap that's longer than 30 minutes, I feel like I've won a prize.

That is all.

Mushroom and Pumpkin Risotto

We had good friends over for dinner tonight before our male halves went to play a gig with their jazz band. Fredrik disturbed this friend deeply by mentioning his new-found distaste for meat -- "this just doesn't sit well with me," O. said, looking a little distraught. I suggested it might be because, since they work at the same company (and also worked at the same company before that), are members of 3 or 4 or ten bands together, constantly start and stop and start and stop and start again using tobacco together, and otherwise seem to live intertwined and parallel lives, that O. might be afraid a meatless future is also on the horizon for him. It didn't help that his wife said she wouldn't have a problem with that either!

I used some of the several kilos of pureed pumpking I now have on hand to try my hand at a mushroom and pumpkin risotto. It was quite good except for two things -- one, it had too little salt. But everyone knows that about my cooking at this point, so no shocker there. Two, it really is a bit light on fat and protein to be served alone. But bah, if we add more cheese or... I dunno, drink a glass of heavy cream along with it? Then it's fine! Noone complained, anyway. :)

Mushroom and Pumpkin Risotto (6 portions)

3 T butter (45 g smör)
3 cloves garlic, finely chopped (3 vitlöksklyftor, finhackade)
1 yellow onion, chopped (1 gul lök, hackad)
1 lb assorted mushrooms, chopped (450 olika sorters svamp, hackade)
3/4 c cracked wild rice (2 dl vildris)
1 1/2 c long-grain rice (4 dl parboiled ris)
20 oz. pumpkin meat (600 g färdigpurerad pumpa)*
5 c vegetable bullion (1,2 l grönsaksbuljong)
1 t salt (1 tsk salt)
1 t sage (1 tsk salvia)
1 t thyme (1 tsk timjan)
6 T dried cranberries (6 msk torkade tranbär)
6 T grated parmesan (6 msk riven parmesan)

In a large pot, saute garlic and onions until tender. Add the mushrooms and continue to saute until they are soft. Add the rice and cook another minute or two. Mix in the pumpkin until it coats the rice and then add the bullion, sage, thyme and salt. Bring to a boil; lower heat and simmer for about 30 minutes, adding more liquid if needed. Sprinkle over the cranberries and cheese after dishing up on individual plates.

Calories per serving: 455
Protein: 11 g
Fat: 10 g
Carbs: 79 g


*I believe pumpkin typically comes in 15 oz (450 g) cans. I'm sure this amount it fine. I just happened to have 20 oz from the pumpkin I baked this morning.

Hazelnut patties -- engh, okay.

Well hello there. I'm writing twice in the space of a couple days. Imagine that!

So, Fredrik's announcement that he now believes it's unnecessary for us to kill da widdle baby aminals in order to eat, I was actually quite pleased. I've never been a stranger to such thoughts myself, and as a matter of fact, I ate vegetarian for about a year before marrying my carnivorous ex-husband a decade ago. I actually believe that pairing up causes the world to have far fewer vegetarians than it would have otherwise.

But I also was a little pissed off, in a playful sort of way. Here I've spent a good long time trying to find recipes that both he and I like and that contain plenty of vegetables, balanced nutrients, and all that other blah-de-blah. And it happened more than once that, when I asked him what he thought of a new recipe I tried, he could comment "It's okay, but there's no meat in it!" Indeed, an entire series of "All-meat parties," a potluck gathering that entailed very specific rules about the dishes people brought, was spawned because Fredrik and another friend joked about faintness and iron-deficiency when presented once with a meatless meal. On top of that, I'm the shopper and usually the cooker in this family.

What this means is that I welcomed his new-found interest in vegetarianism with both a sort of inner "yay, new project!" excitement as well as a desire to get him to work for it! First I suggested that we start by cutting back on the mammals rather than attempting to entirely quit meat cold-turkey (ha.). I think I could easily adjust to life with beef and pork, but I'm not quite ready to give up cheese, even though I know that a little baby cow has died for my cheese...

I also said he'd best have picked out at least 2 vegetarian recipes that he wanted to cook this week, before I made my weekly trip to the store.

I noticed a trend when he started sending me recipe ideas and I compared them to my own ideas: I was attempting to come up with recipes that simply didn't contain meat -- indeed, that perhaps never were intended to contain meat in their natural form -- but Fredrik seemed to be finding recipes that contained meat-replacements -- spaghetti "meat sauce" made with soy-based fake meat and a recipe for hazelnut patties were his first offerings. :)

He made the hazelnut patties last night, along with a very good tsatziki (which was our best guess as to what might taste good with hazelnut patties...). I won't share the recipe with you because, quite frankly, we weren't impressed and decided not to make it again in the future. It's possible that we could turn it into something good, but we'll have to come back to it later.

In the meantime, I'm very excited about a cheesy spinach pasta I'm going to try!

I'm also pretty jazzed about pumpkin. I just made about 2 kg of pureed pumpkin after following the directions in these videos: Processing pie for pumpkin. I used a big jack-o-lantern pumpkin, but it turned out just great for cooking purposes. I've got a couple small pumpkins that I'm going to process for baking, and I'm looking forward to playing around with cooking with the rest. And Bennie thought it was tasty just as it was!

Vege... wha?

My husband has decided that vegetarianism is the way to go.

Seriously, just like that.

Like, say you're lying in bed with a book, next to your husband and his book, winding down at the end of the day. And he sort of mumbles lazily, "I think I'll have lunch with my coworkers tomorrow instead of taking leftovers." Or "By the way, I'm playing squash on Thursday after work, hope that's okay." Although this was sort of more like "by the way, I think animals are conscious and experience suffering and therefore we ought to quit eating meat. Oh, and the cats are due for their vaccinations."

Okay, interesting! But like I said to him, it's a crying shame he doesn't like cilantro...

Abyss

Benjamin is lying in his buggy basket on the floor. Sleeping soundly after having a whole big bottle of milk that I thawed out yesterday but didn't end up using. Twisting and turning in silent irritation over the flies that keep landing on his face, but not waking up. Generally looking like an angel.

Mom is sitting on the couch, staring at him and bawling her eyes out.

I will never forgot turning my fingers into bloody stumps on the jagged walls of the deep, dark nightmare of losing our first baby and seeing it treated like a piece of trash.

I will also never, ever forget that I have gotten off easy. A woman I've never met but would like to call my friend has had the completely unnecessary and cruel experience of living through a repeat second trimester loss. Another acquaintence has survived the unspeakable experience of one full-term stillbirth, followed later by the death of her 5-day old little boy. Since Benjamin came less than a year after our loss, the period of time in which I was forced to wonder "What do you call a mother without a child?" for my own sake was forgivingly short. I feel deeply humbled by the stories that I know are worse than mine, and desperately hopeful that they will eventually have a similarly "happy" ending.

That is why I want anyone who has children to read the following blog. Over and over again. Until your eyes bleed, seriously.

Mirne's blog.

I know too many women who understand, or at least have a fraction of an idea about, the terrible road Mirne has just started down -- and I hate the vile taste of having to add: for the third time.

What's the uplifting punch line? None, I'm afraid. Sorry to bring you down. But you knew the name of the blog when you came in.

Harald is a nag.

Alright, alright. I'm starting to have time to blog again. And even to cook sometimes.

On the other hand, my computer has now started to show signs of old age (the warranty expired a month ago, after all), so aside from no longer having working speakers, it decides to type not one but two "I" characters every time I hit the "I" key. You will have to, therefore, forgive any consequent misspellings.

Tomorrow I hope to post some recipes, but tonight I'll leave you with this: Fredrik has just walked into our bedroom to tell our son, who I put to bed 3 minutes ago after his extensive good-night routine, that "every night you start to cry, and every night I put your pacifier back in and tell you that every night you start to cry and I put your pacifier back in..." I feel that if Benjamin doesn't learn to fall asleep on his own soon, this meta-routine will get out of hand.

Benny, let me tell you about Erectile Dysfuntion...

So I've just finished the day's 15th or so breast-feeding session, after earlier contemplating the idea that I might get sideways, angry glances for doing so in public in Las Vegas (you know, where prostitution and marijuana are legal, right?), and wouldn't you know, I find something at CNN.com that gives me a related opportunity to say "Grow the fuck up, America":

Congressman wants to ban ED ads.

Admittedly, my last post about what people don't want their kids to see on TV would have been a "Grow the fuck up, Great Britain," but still. Seriously. Ms. Shelley Hix replies to the article:

"Thank you Jim Moran. I have voiced oposition to these ads since day one. I have teenage grandsons and have to be on guard every single minute they are visiting and watching TV. While we are on the subject of ads, the women’s feminine products are getting more explicit by the day. It’s time to get them under control also."

Dear god! Her teenage grandsons! Someone might be forced to explain erections and menstruation to them (things which I'm sure they know NOTHING about yet), and gosh darnit all to heck, do they expect the boys' FAMILY to have to discuss it with them? Heavens to Betsy, the nerve of some people and their naughty TV ads!

Time in a bottle

So, as I'm sure you've figured out, this is why I have no time to blog:



No time to blog, I say? Hell, since April 17, I barely have time to piss...