REVIVAL OF MY BLOG TO CELEBRATE BEING 90 YEARS OLD IN SWEDEN

My blog has been dormant for an entire year but I choose today to revive it for very personal reasons.

I have only been posting life stories at my Facebook, where creating a post is a very different proces than creating one here as I quickly discover.

I begin with a single photo taken on Saint Patricks Day in Hus 9 (The original name in 1925). Here you see Ann Frodi and me, two dual citizens of Sweden and the United States looking happily at  the 22 or so visitors she invited to the even she created for my 90th Birthday. She asked me to allow her to follow Swedish tradition with  the modification that it was not to be me who  would arrange the event but she herself. I agreed since she would do this far better than I and since she has so many friends who live on one of these islands that many  would be able to come without too much  difficulty.

After posting a new entry with one photo, Ann and me, I  walked to my Arboretum - at the lower end of Storatorpvägen, a long existing road that leads the several lakes that have the Swedish name Delsjöarna. Then I walked with double poles all the way up to Lyckan a red wooden building that serves coffee, Annika's favorite Banana Bread,  and my favorite single waffle with whipped cream and rasberry jam on top. We'll get to that but first back in history. When I first came to Sweden with Ann she took me to this small house on the lower edge of our forest. There we met a truly original couple, Carl and Hedvig in this house when it was far  simpler She had known them from the time she was 13 years old and had been given responsibility for a pony that she rode on all the trails in our forest. That was at least 40 years ago and in those 40 years I have run and walked on most of those trails and know them almost as well as she does.

Adding friendships in my new home

In Linköping almost all my friends and acquaintances were younger people who had come to Sweden as Asylum seekers from a long list of countries / I name those of some of my closest friends there: Areas in Iraq that were originally a cradle of civilization where predecessors of modern Assyrians lived, and the overlapping area that is now autonomous Kurdistan, Eritrea, and Iran including the Kurdish region in Iran. My only age-mate friends were Swedish women who were volunteers at the Red Cross as was I. I may be the only one of that cluster who is still living. In Göteborg, all my first friends were in Ann's family and then gradually those who came to my 90th birthday event. But here in Örgryte I hope to find a few new friends and to do that I joined Örgryte föreningen,a group of people who want to keep the history of this area alive and to keep is best qualities alive as well. When Covid 19 partially released its grip it became possiblefor this group to have its Spring meeting - Dinner for 200 and a presentation by political figures from most parties followed by questions and discussion between audience and the political figures. This event was held at the building at the foot of the bedrock cliffs that are the black foreground of this picture taken last night at 21:00 h. I had the extreme  good fortune to be embraced by 3 men who were arriving just as I was completing my long walk up the mountain. They were  especially welcoming, and I got to tell part of my story to one who professionally overlaps in some ways with me. He took me in, helped me meet others whom he already knew and I was over the friendship threshold. A wonderful evening. I simply add that here in Göteborg there are many churches built before or in the middle of the 18th Century and then the additions like this one, Nya Örgryte kyrkan high on the top of a remarkable bedrock peak. 

Later this summer I will introduce first two former students to my forest and the islands and then, if all goes well, my two children in America just reaching the age of retirement.