Mid March..

..and winter is still on..

There is an imminent need for flowers..

And colorful veggies..

Making new things like two silk pillows..

There is still a need for light and candles..

..and to pick up (for a dime) and bring home pretty stuff like this needlework at the Red Cross flea market ..

 

Cooking in the cosy kitchen. Yes, uncorking a bottle of bubbles, too..

Or: Cuddling a sweet Dalmatiner snuggled up on a cosy Gotland sheep skin. Soon, very soon we hope this winter is over and we will regain an outdoor focus again! But..alas! This morning there was more snow coming. Please STOP! Enough!

Notions of winter..and a fox dashing across the ice..

M/s Vindöga breaking ice in the Stockholm archipelago. 

This is the relible ship that has brought us to the island of Sandhamn in the Stockholm archipelgo hundreds of times over the years. Not the most comfortble of boats - but a reliable partner and sturdier than most. She was built 1978 and operates in the public transport system. 650 hp, single propeller, 27,5x7,2x3,25m and can take some 180 passengers. By the way, I haven´t seen so much ice in the archipelago since early childhood´s ice breaker trips to Sandhamn with my parents during winter holidays! I am still fascinated by this sound  of heavy ice cracking..(Recorded in March 5th 2010 and published by Carljesper on Yutube)

Notions of spring..

Days are getting longer and heavy chunks of snow are falling off the roofs with roaring thunder..

Time to check on the lovely Easter paraphernalia..

Why does it look like a tear in her eye?

Is it because it is still winter? But some of us try harder! (This is by my sister!)

Bringing out the sunchair ..starting humbly with one.

Beautiful sunsets at 5.30 PM. Alas!

One of my favourite scents of spring is the sweet fragrance of daffodils. "They actually smell yellow!" (as probably Muppet it-is-not-easy-being-green Kermit would have had it!)

 Easter welcoming!

Waiting in rows for the eggs brought from the neighbouring farm..

Jane Eyre - the 1944 film version

I have been looking for the 1944 film version of Jane Eyre with Orson Wells and Joan Fountaine for quite some time. Last night I vas happy to find it on...yes..You Tube! Of course you had to piece allt the parts togther but what the..! 

Once more; to almost die for that glance in Orsons eyes, for the "Rebecca" like intrigue, and Joan´s eternal innocent, shy smile! What I didn´t  know was that a very young child actor Elizabeth Taylor played a small part in this movie. Here is the short clip with her, pretty as a doll:

Happy birthday Malcolm!

 Mille´s first steps in Sandhamn some years ago..

On the beach - Trouville, Sandhamn,some years later.

Mum´s digital drawing after a photo of Malcolm´s first year at Brahegatan, Stockholm..
Who is on the T-shirt?

The fastest shooter in Saltsjöbaden!

A happy guy in tartan slacks..

Growing up. Summers in the archipelago..

Moving to Zimbabwe and bringing Swedish customs to Africa..

Holiday break from Speciss College, Harare, Zimbabwe. Mombasa, Diani Beach..

Living and working for many years in Paris left a certain impact..

Business trip to the Dead Sea..

Meeting the love of his life, Hinda, at the World Bank in Washington. Moving and working there.

Getting Married in Sandhamn ..

 

Becoming a father in Washington!

Malcolm and Thalia.

Happy, happy birthday my dear son and I´ll be seeing you soon!

Mum

100 years of struggle ..

"We come along way - but the struggle is needed more than ever:

 Afghan wives choose to burn themselves to death to escape a life
of domestic torture and abuse.

(Video clip from REUTERS November 2009) 


Monday 08 March 2010
 
International Women's Day
The first International Women's Day

In 1869 British MP John Stuart Mill was the first person in Parliament to call for women's right to vote. On 19 September 1893 New Zealand became the first country in the world to give women the right to vote. Women in other countries did not enjoy this equality and campaigned for justice for many years.
In 1910 a second International Conference of Working Women was held in Copenhagen. A woman named Clara Zetkin (Leader of the 'Women's Office' for the Social Democratic Party in Germany) tabled the idea of an International Women's Day. She proposed that every year in every country there should be a celebration on the same day - a Women's Day - to press for their demands. The conference of over 100 women from 17 countries, representing unions, socialist parties, working women's clubs, and including the first three women elected to the Finnish parliament, greeted Zetkin's suggestion with unanimous approval and thus International Women's Day was the result.

The very first International Women's Day was launched the following year by Clara Zetkin on 19 March (not 8 March). The date was chosen because on 19 March in the year of the 1848 revolution, the Prussian king recognized for the first time the strength of the armed people and gave way before the threat of a proletarian uprising. Among the many promise he made, which he later failed to keep, was the introduction of votes for women.

Plans for the first International Women's Day demonstration were spread by word of mouth and in the press. During the week before International Women's Day two journals appeared: The Vote for Women in Germany and Women's Day in Austria. Various articles were devoted to International Women's Day: 'Women and Parliament', 'The Working Women and Municipal Affairs', 'What Has the Housewife got to do with Politics?', etc. The articles thoroughly analyzed the question of the equality of women in the government and in society. All articles emphasized the same point that it was absolutely necessary to make parliament more democratic by extending the franchise to women.
Success of the first International Women's Day in 1911 exceeded all expectation.
Meetings were organized everywhere in small towns and even the villages halls were packed so full that male workers were asked to give up their places for women.
Men stayed at home with their children for a change, and their wives, the captive housewives, went to meetings.

During the largest street demonstration of 30,000 women, the police decided to remove the demonstrators' banners so the women workers made a stand. In the scuffle that followed, bloodshed was averted only with the help of the socialist deputies in Parliament.
In 1913 International Women's Day was transferred to 8 March and this day has remained the global date for International Wommen's Day ever since.

During International Women's Year in 1975, IWD was given official recognition by the United Nations and was taken up by many governments. International Women's Day is marked by a national holiday in China, Armenia, Russia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bulgaria, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Macedonia, Moldova, Mongolia, Tajikistan, Ukraine, Uzbekistan and Vietnam. 
(Cut from  the IWD official page)

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The Trouville jetty..

..in Sandhamn yesterday! It´s been many years since we were covered with so much ice in the archipelago!

I was not there. The photo was snapped by my friend Paivi (her shadow can be spotted in the left hand corner!) who defies and endures any weather and made her way out there over the weekend! People living in Sandhamn confirm that they never experienced a winter like this with so much snow in their lifetime!

(Personally I´ll wait to Easter to go there..) 

More pictures from Sandhamn on Paivi´s blog here.

Unprecedented amounts of the cold, white stuff show the inaccessability to get to my house in Sandhamn.

Paivi was kind to send me this photo as well.

With Alice once more leaping into that rabbit hole..

.in the fresh release of Tim Burton's "Alice in Wonderland", here's a rare clip from her very first film leap in the1903 original:

..and the official trailer for another "Alice" - 110 years later:

In the mid 80´s..

  ..1,5 million refugees from Chad, Ethiopia, Eritrea and Uganda fled their homes and crosses the borders into neighbouring Sudan - one of the poorest countries in the world. How would they cope and how would the Sudaneese handle the situation?

Massive international efforts had to be coordinated to help the Sudaneese in their huge task. An international refugee conference for potential donors in Khartoum in 1982 was the starting point to focus on the plight of this poor country. I participated in this conference and was subsequently contracted by the Sudaneese Commissioner for Refugees to do fund raising internationally for an information project based mainly on collecting facts through the writing and publishing of a number of booklets on the needs of the refugees. These are some photos on my mission and from my booklet:  "The swelling toll of war and disruption: Refugees in southern Sudan : a photo essay on Ugandans in exile"  to Southern Sudan where the Ugandans came in across the border in huge numbers to seek shelter from a dangerous and deadly situation prevailing in the northern part of their home country.

Early morning in the UN Cessna from Khartoum to Juba. 

  

Landing on a field strip in Juba in southern Sudan -country of the Dinkapeople - following a four hour plane ride southwards along the Nile provided a good view of the massive Sudd region with its swamp  below.

A fisherman on the Nile with his excellent Nile perch! 

Humidity of 70 % and degrees sometimes reaching 45 C!
 

Getting the aid across to the refugees camps-one way or the other..

 

An old refugee woman in a make shift clinic. A spectrum of deprivations.. 

   A young refugee with scabies.

  

 A shallow bore well providing the refugees with water.

  

Dry, dry, drought! This is a refugee camp in Eastern Sudan taken from the Cessna on another occation when we were flying East.

  No paper, books or pens or the refugee schools..Sand will have to do.

  

 There is a time to make yourself pretty no matter what..

..or to make your fellow man laugh in a very poor refugee camp in Southern Sudan.

(Photos above from my book by photographer Otto Pfister)

(The text and picture captions here are just randomly chosen fragments on a difficult and complex situation that ruled a poverty stricken and refugee burdened country in the 80`s. P E)

Chasing the Red Baron..

I found Rebecca Salced´s painting of Snoopy "entering his Sopwith Camel" and just had to download it! Loved it!

 And then I could not help but to add Sherry into it! The first bitch to fly a Sopwith during the Second WW! Imagine! And in style!