Strange planet – try to be nice!

So, today it was the 60th anniversary of Auschwitz. I watched the news, read the papers, and I cried. Many years ago, a friend of mine committed suicide. He was a great guy. Before this, he wanted to investigate his past. I’m not sure if I have the right story, but as far as I know, he’d been adopted. His real parents were killed in the Final Solution. A year or so after he had visited the sites in Germany, Poland, etc., he was quite depressed. Suddenly, he came out of his depression with, what appeared, new positive energy. Next, he was dead. The killing goes much further than you think.
We, humankind, have learned NOTHING! People are still killing, exterminating, torturing and starving each other – for what?!
I guess the Western world had a shake-up with the tsunami in the Indian Ocean, as some white people perished. What about the rest of the world, where this happens every day?
Why don’t we start with a Be-Good day all over the planet? Next year, we’ll have two Be-Good days, the year after 3. In 365 years, we might get somewhere. If people start to notice the difference, it might come sooner. If you have – give. If you need – ask.
If you read this: tomorrow, when you wake up, think, “today I will be nice to everybody, I will help everyone, I will forgive everyone”.
Johnny Be Good – Tonight!

Gôtt Mos

For Christmas, my mother sent me a VHS-tape with selected highlights from Swedish television. One of the programs covered the street kitchen (gatukök = chipper) in our old home town. Apparently it’s known to have the best mashed potatoes (potatismos [short] mos) in the world. Since then, we’ve been talking about this as probably the only thing that we really miss. But as a keen chef I decided to try to replicate the recipe and – sic – this evening we had Halv Special (half special) for dinner!

The design of this Swedish speciality is:

1 oblong piece of white bread
1 really good sausage
some mustard
Mashed potatoes
Prawn salad
Pickled cucumber salad
The really adventourous might even add some lingon-berry jam on top.

Bon Apetite
(or Bonnaptit as it’s said in the local Swedish accent;-)

Life without electricity

We had a great Christmas, or rather, Midwinter. Some time off, and the weather was quite pleasant. Then we got to West Clare for a week over the new year and a bit. Still very nice, but the weather was slightly more hostile (but not bad. There is no bad weather - just the wrong equipment). Standing out there, on the Atlatnic coast, makes you think more deeply about the power of nature. There's no way you can outrun a wave. If you're in the wrong place at the wrong time, it'll kill you. If anybody reads this, please make donations to teh Red Cross.
This evening, Sweden is off-line due to one of the storms we had a few days ago. Nuclear power plants did shut down due to too much salt water. Networks collapsed. Also telephones. I bet you, the Swedes will use this incident as an argment to go more nuclear (which is the wrong strategy) instead of trying too figure out how to design sustainable living (wich is something completely different).