White Christmas..

 Yes, we had a lot of snow the last few days in Gotland. The sun came up for a while and created a marvellous scenery..

 

 It is time to hit the forest in search of the prettiest Christmas tree!

 

The snow is almost half a meter deep around the house and the night was the coldest so far this winter - 9.3  C below!

Gotland in December..

 Rain and shine produced a glorious rainbow close to my house the other day..

 

 I went around with the camera to see if there were any flowers left mid-December. There was!

 December patterns and colors.
The forest is damp and muddy and looks like drowned in a  sepia palette.

 

  We light up candles..one for each Advent Sunday leading up to Christmas.

 

  The Church next door is now illuminated. It is appreciated. It is now VERY dark.

 The sunsets are sometimes splendid..

Last night, the snow started to fall..

   Christmas chores are gaining momentum..

 And the little church takes on an air.. of a Christmas picture postcard..

Photo from the same spot six months ago!

Guess who came for dinner? And strange bedfellows..

 

Sunday dinner at Lugnet, my sister and  brother-in-law´s welcoming farm.

Guess who she invited for dinner? Haven´t seen him for almost a year!

The thing was - he was drinking a bit too much where he was sitting at the end of the kitchen table and was not very talkative.

 After dinner, when I was driving the 800 meters to my neighbouring home, the first snow blew in from the west. It was almost a blizzard and at home, I put the car in the sheltering barn.

In going to bed, I was harassed by rats in the attic. They were having a party: "Grand Attic Seasonal (bring a friend) Opening", fixing up a warm shelter for the winter! Sounds just like they are about to make their way into the bedroom! I don´t  dislike rats - smart people they are, closely related to elephants, I have heard - (had a Japanese dancing mouse named Fifi as a child that I was quite fond of ) but maybe not in my house. Be they rats or elephants.

I banged the celing in a dopey "old-lady fashion" and asked them to shut-up! In fact tried to scare/silence them by making some akward: "Meows..meeeoooow" (Mjau, in Swedish) Did not help. I could just figure them laughing behind their paws.. (Rats have paws?? Clawpaws?)

Hmm. At least,I am happy no one saw or heard me!
(..and the tap dancing finally stopped around 2 am!)

(Rat: "Click on me!")
Well, night, night for now. 

Tomorrow I will wake up in the snow.
Ho,ho, ho.

Happy birthday my sweet daughter-in-law!

It is raining cats and dogs..

This one is from The New Yorker!

 

Grey, muddy, rainy and three degrees C above. December weather in Gotland has not exactly given us any reason to purr.
 The little pregnant stray cat we found, however, who is now comfortably..

..settled in my sister´s stable chamber, really has. Warm, and cosy and with nurishing food, Spinett has now gradually learned how to purr again. And she is now getting acquainted with all the big horses in the stable. Soon, I hope, I will be able to publish some pictures of her litter..

Here are Korre and Polly snuggled up in front of the fireplace in my sister´s library. Outside, it is raining cats and dogs! Is there any chance of a White Christmas I wonder?

Today is a day for writing Christmas cards. Here is a hilarious one I recieved the other day. I love these old greeting cards..

..like I used to love the oldfashioned bookmarkers I collected as a child. I still have a few albums full of angels, flower bouquets, noble aristocrats in rococo silk outfits, pretty cats with glitter and flower-studded wagons and absurdly ornated lily white hands, left.

These folksy memorabilia tells us a lot about the colour, attitudes, and dreams of eras long gone !

Peace and American ideals..

 

 President Barack Obamas Nobel Peace Prize speech last night in Oslo has been lauded by both Liberal and conservative pundits for its eloquence, humility and realism. I couldn´t agree more. A brilliant speaker he is and leaves no one untouched. However, what did he really express in his speech?

Early this morning, I tried to check out the international reactions to Obamas Nobel Peace Prize Award winning speech, and found very little so far. (Well, yes, the US is still sleeping back there in the west..) 

But here is some of the reactions I' spotted on the Web From FirstRead The first place for key political news amd analysis today:

 "Strikingly, there has been little reaction so far to President Obama's Nobel speech today among the political players. Even the Republican National Committee's Michael Steele, who quickly criticized awarding the prize to Obama back in October, has yet to release a statement." NBC's Mark Murray

"Obama seems to be trying to recast idealism in foreign policy as of a piece with realism, in the sense that a realistic and self-interested view of the world should hold that American ideals are more likely to foster peace and stability. Realistic idealism? Idealistic realism?"

Greg Sargent  More..

 The immediate reflections after the speech that came from the TV commentators in Oslo directly at the ceremony were only those of "how very skilled a speaker Obama is". The task of a quick analysis was obviously far too complicated...

And it is.

Well, the world will soon wake up and I look forward to see some comments to the speech of yet another controversial Nobel Peace Price laureate.

I remember suddenly the days of the secret 1969–1975 campaign of bombing against infiltraiting NVA in Cambodia, the alleged U.S. involvement in Operation Condor—a mid-1970s campaign of kidnapping and murder coordinated among the intelligence and security services of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay and a far more controversial laureate - Henry Kissinger, 10 Dec. 1973 - when some peace activists went as far as to suggest that the Nobel Peace Prize has become irrelevant due to Kissinger being a laureate. Peres, Begin, Arafat, Sadat..

Here is the list of the controversial Top Ten laureates, as seen and published by Listverse.

And here is a complete list of  Nobel Peace Prize Winners 2009-1901

(Part 3 of 4 of the speech)

.

Watercolors from Sandhamn

 Someone recently asked me to see some of the watercolors I painted of various motifs from the archipelago and especially from Sandhamn. I really had nothing to show since I sold them all - but then I realized I had been far-sighted enough to take picures of a few of them. Here they are:

 The harbour of Sandhamn in Midsummer.

The clubhouse as we "oldtimers" call the Seglarresturangen - the hub of the little village.

November stillness and the ice slowly forming in the harbour..

A good friend and distant relative´s beautiful house situated just on the sea approach of the harbour of Sandhamn. This house had been in the same family for generations.

January light.

 

The well known little island of Grönskar with the lighthouse called "The queen of the Baltic."

 

 Old days festivities at Sandhamn painted from a photograph at the Seglarresturangen - or Clubhouse as it was called then when the impressive building was the homebase of the Royal Sailing Club of Sweden.

 

 Winter in the village.

 

The village of Sandhamn in February. Very few people, just under 100 are living here all year around. They recently closed the little school and the small post office on the island. Needless to say, in Summer there is an invasion pressing the island´s logistics down on it´s knees!

 

 Arriving in style in Sandhamn!

 

The narrow but deep entrance to the island from the West.

 

Sunset from Kvarberget. (The Mill Hill) Traditionally a romantic place for young lovers to sit 
and watch the sun setting in all of its Summer glory. 

Sandhamn folks in the old days as it were..

It´s early morning..

..December 2nd. The full moon which woke me up in the middle of the night with a full blazing light show through my bedroom window is saying goodbye and sinking slowly behind the horizon. The wakening sky is painted in intense cobalt..

 

The timers for the Xmas lights now turns on around the house..

 The little neighbouring church which is illuminated during the dark season has now switched off its comforting night illuminations .

And there is a need for flowers. The morning sky is so very blue just before sunrise. In the evening the Frenc call it "L´heure bleue" - do they have a name for the same stage in the mornings? I wonder.

 

This candelabra below I bought yesterday in the fleamarket organized by Gotland´s Home for stray cats, for equv. 8 dollars! Soooo happy with it! (I caught a small stray cat the other night with the help of a cat trap from the Cat Home. The small cat  had been hanging around my garden all summer, hungry and a stomac full of worms. When I caught her, I found out she was pregnant. She is now happily installed in my sister´s stable, dewormed, not hungry anymore and tucked into a warm basket with a Gotland sheep fur. She slowly learns to purr and gradualy getting acquainted with all the horses in her new home. We named her "Spinett" after a beloved cat my grandma once had a long time ago. I will visit her today and see how she fares. Will bring the camera and post some pics of the little-mother-to-be. And then later, of the kittens!)

 The moon disappears and here comes the sun!

 

Have a great December the 2nd everyone! I am off for the kitchen downstairs for some polenta porridge with home made apple sauce. Blogging makes U hungry!

There he was..

..a handless Bobby Kennedy behind bars squeezed between one of the guarding wolves of Rumulus and Remus and Michelangelo´s ever mourning Pietá. I found him in the marble town Pietrasanta, in Tuscany a few years back. In spite of being surrounded by famous philosophers and other historic gigants made from the white Carrarra marble, this sight of him was a bit chocking in a strange way. Poor Bobby. Where will you end up? In a rich Roman´s garden? Will they eventually add your  hands?

I saw Bobby four days before he was shot. Suntanned, waving with both hands and grinning from the back of an open campaign van in Oakland, California. Healthy and alive. A lot of hopes for the future was pinned to Bobby in this era of the Vietnam war.
I remember he was so close I could have reached out an arm and touched him.

And then, four days later: