High Over My Head – The Birch Trees And The Sky

November afternoon sky in town (view from my balcony)

 

  

Left: Birch tree “block of apartments” for town birds! (picture taken about one month ago)

Right: Three weeks ago, the birches in a town cemetery still in their golden autumn glory.

Below: Last Sunday: Defoliated birch forest out in the countryside; and “country cottage” bird house. 

 

 

 

 

Batik art by my mother’s father back in 1973.

Going out to my parents’ old house, I got off the bus a couple of stops early,
and took a roundabout walk through the woods to get there.
Just having viewed the birch trees through my camera lens outside,
as I entered the empty house I was struck by a very similar view
hanging there on the wall to greet me.

 

I’m entering this post for Friday My Town Shoot Out (‘Over Your Head’) and Skywatch Friday.

Mosaic Monday: Church Reflections

Same church as in yesterday’s post. Look carefully at the window. Part of what you see is the reflection of the view outside (compare the street photo), but at the same time you also see across the church room inside and get a glimpse of another window on the other side of the building. The church is from the 17th century but there was another church in the same spot since medieval times.

See more Monday Mosaics at Mary’s Little Red House.

Bird’s View

Photo taken through the window on the 6th floor of the hospital.

To see the Summer Sky Is Poetry

Visit Skywatch Friday to see more summer skies from around the world.

Flower Boxes on the Bridge

In the summer, the railings of this walking bridge are decorated with flower boxes.
There is a café on the other side; you’ll get to see a bit more of that in tomorrow’s post.

Celebration

It’s been a while since I last had a really big birthday party, so I thought… No, just kidding! But I did have strawberry cake for lunch today, and so did a lot of other people. The “birthday child” though was our Town. It celebrated its 389th birthday. What? Never heard of celebrating a 389th birthday before? Well, now you have. You might prefer to call it anniversary rather than birthday, but still – how many 389th anything have you been to??

Today was the hottest day of summer so far. And usually I would not have said that my favourite place to be at noon on a hot summer day is in a crowd of people in the town square. Since I became a blogger, though, I find myself doing many strange things! 

And, in case you wonder – that really was a delicious cake!

Fountain

The fountain in the square in front of our Town Hall is from 1941 by artist Nils Sjögren.
The reliefs surrounding the fountain show working life through the history of the town.

I see now that besides the fountain, I caught something in the picture above which I was not aware of at the time. Do you see it? Don’t worry. It’s not a man about to jump off the roof. It’s just another statue… I’ll get back to that one another day!

Photo taken from the stairs of the Town Hall looking across the square.
This day was also Military Music Day, and all the people are waiting around for a parade.
More pictures of that coming up some other day.

Non-Violence Sculpture

Anna Lindh was a Swedish Social Democratic politician who served as Swedish Minister for Foreign Affairs from 1998 until she was murdered in 2003. She died on the early morning of September 11, following a knife attack in Stockholm on the afternoon of September 10.

A small park in our town (across the river from the main park) has recently been renamed in her honour, in connection with acquiring the sculpture Non-Violence by Carl Fredrik Reuterswärd.

A similar sculpture (a revolver tied in a knot) by the same artist is placed outside the United Nations Headquarters in New York City.

Peace Like A River

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“Peace like a river ran through the city….”
~ Paul Simon (Album: Paul Simon) ~

(full lyrics can be read here at Paul’s official website)

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When peace, like a river, attendeth my way,
When sorrows like sea billows roll;
Whatever my lot, Thou has taught me to say,
It is well, it is well, with my soul.

~ Ho­ra­tio G. Spaf­ford, 1873. ~

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More Laundry

    

Some more pictures from Laundry Day. I’m afraid I don’t have names for all contraptions and vessels used (not even in Swedish).  I’ll just let the pictures speak for themselves.

 

Above on the left you can see there were also musicians present.
I’ll get back to them in another post.

   

  

  

 

Washing Rag Carpets

More pictures from Laundry Day in our town centre.

“In England nobody understands what rag-carpets are; but in every part of America they are more or less used. The wealthy use them for their kitchens, and sometimes dining rooms; the farmers, for their chambers; and often every room in the house will be covered with them ... Every conceivable kind of woollen cloth was cut into little shreds about half an inch wide, and an inch long. These were all joined together lengthwise, and then wound in balls. The children's employment was to help in sewing the shreds together, and thus to make hundreds and thousands of yards of woollen band. This was afterwards woven into a coarse kind of carpet, and produced a mottle of all colours, not at all unpleasing to the eye. Occasionally such carpets would be dyed all of one colour; sometimes they were woven into a regular pattern, stripe or plaid; but this...was to be a mottled one; and their young friends...were invited for a few days to help in this homely but curious work; during which, however, some amusing book was read, and thus the time passed pleasantly.”
Mary Botham Howitt, Our Cousins in Ohio, 1849

Without any research to prove it, I’d say the traditional Swedish rag-carpets are usually striped; as can also be seen in these pictures.

“Rugs made of cloth would generally stand up to being washed in a tub if they were small enough. Bigger ones could be rinsed through in a creek or stream. In Finland there is a tradition of washing rag rugs in summer in the nearest lake or river. Some Finnish women used to freshen their rugs at the end of winter by spreading them out on snow, sprinkling more on top, then hanging them to dry in sunshine and/or breeze.”

 

Quotes from: http://www.oldandinteresting.com/history-rag-rugs.aspx

Mosaic Monday: Washing Dirty Laundry In Public

On Saturday, we had a rather unusual event taking place in town: Laundry Day, arranged by the Textile Museum, to show how this was done a hundred years or so ago.

On 10 March, I had a post here entitled Looking Forward, Looking Back. That included a photo of a mural painting in our Town Hall of how people used to do their washing in the river back in those days. The Town Hall was built in 1910 and celebrates its centenary this year.

Yesterday’s post Going Back In Time also had some pictures of Saturday’s festivities, including the possibility to take a ride around the park on a horse-drawn wagon.

Today, since I intend to partake as usual in Mosaic Monday at Mary’s Little Red House, I’m sticking to collages, and taking the opportunity to give you the “overall view”. But it was perfect photo weather and  I took nearly 100 shots, so I intend to get a few more blog posts out of them. I’ll be showing more detail another day.

Going Back In Time

There were some rather unusual things going in our town centre yesterday.



More pictures will be coming up in the next few days...

Pansies in the Park

It is good to see some colour back in the town parks!

Easter Tree

This year in the town square we have a giant Easter Tree

Looking Forward, Looking Back...

This "promenade" along the river is a lot more popular in the summer!
(Right now, it's pure ice...)



Back in the 19th century, the place was used differently:



Mural painting in the Town Hall.

UPDATE:
... Hm, I thought this was exactly the same bend in the river as on my photos above, but it turns out I was wrong about that! My aunt (born and raised in this town, and attentive follower of this blog!) telephoned me and pointed out that you don't see the church tower from that place, and moreover she had found photographic evidence in a book! My humblest apologies ;) even though I suspect it does not really matter all that much to my American and British friends... (It is still the same river, and the same town.) There were other paintings in the Town Hall that seemed to take liberties with the perspective of the church tower; and nearly all the old low wooden houses have been replaced with higher stone buildings since then.

Old black-and-white photo of the same place as that mural painting

(scanned from a book, and emailed to me by my aunt!)

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