Burlington Discover Jazz Festival 2017 - Part I

Eventually, probably back in Sweden, I will create a montage of my experiences at the Burlington Discover Jazz Festival. But here today I will try to insert one video, not of musicians but of my dance partners whose line of descent like mine goes way back in Sweden.

I came down Church Street to the place that has non-stop live music outside in a tent. The music was playing and there were two women dancing right in back of the band and singer. Turned out they were mother and daughter. So I joined in right away all of us mostly in sync. There was no one I could enlist to film all of us so here is a clip of my two partners, just imagine me thewhat they are doing.

Then we talked and guess what they are mother and daughter - names in a book I do not have here - and grandfather Samuelson came from Sweden perhaps when my grandparents were coming over also. He would up in Jamestown, NY, where my great uncle Roy Lundgren wound up. They had visited the torp in Sweden where a returning Swedish soldier back from the wars when Sweden was Bernadotte country was given land. I visit a similar place at my Tree In The Pond in Linköping where returning soldiers were given land and maybe a cow or other animal.

I hope they find my blog and correct the details. Now to the Charleston Dancers and then a lesson they gave to a school class. That was a first take above, now let's have our first class.

OK they got their first moves, here is their first take as dancers

Tales of Two Cities - Linköping and Burlington

I was visiting Muddy Waters Coffee House in Burlington and write now from Speeder and Earl's Coffee neither your ordinary Starbucks place of residence. And listening to those around me led me to enter in my book above a new approach to looking at my two countries via the two cities I often use, Linköping SE and Burlington VT USA, in NYT comments.

Instead of pointing to one as offering something better, I let them tell their stories, so here I start.

I am a frequent resident of Coffee Shops where I often write. So here is what I wrote at Muddy's just to get started. The map is of my surroundings and of the people around me. These are just first notes on what I could hear and see. Just now I cannot get the text to land to the right and I have to leave. I simply note that in my 21 years in Sweden I have never been in a Coffee House where ev/eryone around me is engaged in so many different things as these people were. And I will also note that within minutes I had found an individual working on one of my passions, renewable energy, and specifically something mastered in my home city in Sweden, the systematic conversion of food and human wastes to biogas that runs the cities buses and many other vehicles. That's all for now. Just me

Heating a Swedish City

The New York Times recently gave us readers a new columnist Bret Stephens who led off with three columns about energy that suggested that his first assignment was to tell us readers, some of whom know a bit about renewable energy, that the US had best stick with fossil fuel since renewable really is not up to the job.

What he revealed is that he does not know much about renewable energy. He asked us to pose questions, some of which he would answer. My question was simple. Bret why do you and the New York Times seem to believe that there are only two forms of renewable energy technology at present, solar and wind? No answer.

Exhibit A in my list was a statement that Swedish cities are heated by using a readily available fuel, solid-waste from which as much as possible plastic has been removed and in my city from which food waste is separated for conversion to biogas.

Times comments have no place for pictures so I went out to the Gärstad plant in Linköping, probably the most advanced such plant in the world, and took a picture. Here it is.

Two glass houses located at the Linköping North Exit to E4, car in photo headed west.
Gärstad plant, Tekniska verken, Linköping, Sweden

Imagine, no coal must be mined, no bedrock fracked to produce natural gas, no transport of coal, natural gas, or oil from far off places. Simply collect waste in the city, add forest-product waste at some of the incinerators and heat this city of 150,000 people.

What this means for me, an American as well as Swedish citizen, is that here in Sweden I am freed from the periodic failure of my American hot water heaters, always electric, and from the oil burners that were terrible. Also freed from the odor of oil, the danger of gas, and the giant oil tank in the cellar. 

Instead a small white box in the basement where the incoming hot water gives its heat to two systems, one the system feeding hot water to the radiators that heat the house, the other the system that sends hot water to bathrooms and kitchen. Completely silent, maintenance free, best I have ever experienced.

Empathy at The New York Times

I'm crossing Sweden as usual in the Bus4You doubledecker and discover that the New York Times has yet another column on empathy, this time by Thomas Friedman. I filed a comment that contains a line referring to  an assertion by psychology professor and author Paul Bloom (see Room for Debate 12/29 and review of Bloom's new book on empathy.

The assertion by Bloom: We can only/find it easiest to empathise with people who look like us. He says that is what the research shows.

Not at all true for me, how about you?

Wesleyan Student Finds Answers In Trump

Time to post an entry in this blog, dormant since Midsommar, as you can see below. After Donald Trump became the next US President elect, we have been subjected to countless articles claiming that he is there thanks to the group "less-well educated white males out of work". The New York Times has had such articles. Times reporters seemingly found it difficult to actually talk with the American people (see Times Public Editor article today 10 November).

Therefore I was particularly interested to read this Times article by a Wesleyan student, Bryan Stascavage. Bryan seems to say that he was not at all aware that there is a major income gap between a select 1% of the American people and the rest us until he took an Economics course at Wesleyan. I do not know how this could happen unless Bryan only read Social Media entries until he enrolled at Wesleyan.

In any case, Brian tells us that learning this and other useful information led him to be a Trump supporter who voted for Trump. Strangely, he fails to tell us what Trump has said about this gap and  if Trump wants to reduce the gap. Brian seems unaware that such a gap does not exist in a number of 21st Century countries, one of which is the one named in the title of my blog.

So in a comment on Brian's column I have suggested he might want to look at some older posts here. They do not address the income gap directly but they do show people who receive support for their children, Universal Health Care available to every single Swedish person I show, and, in the most recent, several asylum seekers who are supported by the Swedish government while the Immigration  Agency reviews their applications.

This to Brian: Brian, many of us supported Bernie Sanders because he seemed interested in making the USA more like Sweden. Your man in the White House has as his goal the making of a US that has as little resemblance to Sweden as possible.

So if you read this, Brian, why don't you tell us what will happen to the 10s of 1000s of people covered by ACA when your man does away with the ACA. We are listening.

On Campus My Liberal University Cemented My Vote for Trump By BRYAN STASCAVAGE The econ department taught me about the income gap. The history and classics departments showed me that change rarely succeeds with a smile.

Or, copy and paste this URL into your browser: http://nyti.ms/2eFSMwF

Midsommar på Anns Ö, Styrsö - Midsommar On Ann's Island, Styrsö

All over Sweden these "Majstången" are raised to show where Midsommar will be celebrated a few hours later. This one is on Styrsö at Styrö Bratten. Videos to be added will show you what goes on here. But first three other pictures, the first a new addition on July 03 for reasons explained in the caption, all three showing new additions to the traditional Styrsö Midsommar thanks to the arrival of these young men from Afghanistan.

This photo added today July 03 after reading Nicholas Kristof's column in the New York Times OnLine where a comment from Bos closes with specific reference to the words on this T shirt. I have filed a reply to BOS telling him that if he visits my blog he can see the T shirt he is quoting, albeit in a very unusual setting, Midsommar on a Swedish island.

 

On Styrsö, hundreds of people of all ages will gather round Majstången. Many will be wearing a krans (A crown, a wreath with flowers) like the one worn by den svenska flickan (the Swedish girl) here. But next to her is a bearer of new tidings as we see from his friends in the next picture

Here are two of his friends bringing perhaps a new tradition

to Midsommar, a flower over the ear. To the left of the man 

with the hat is another svensk tjej (Swedish girl) also with

 the traditional krans.

When the dancing was over I found these three and a few more friends and asked if they spoke Dari (Persian, Farsi as spoken in Afghanistan. I had guessed right, they are all asylum seekers who have been living on the island for about a year while waiting for a decision. I told them that if I see them on the boat we can fika and I can lead them to the blog.

Burlington Discover Jazz Festival - Take One - Discover Walker Adams Project

Came down from my lair on the top of Mount Philo to discover the Walker Adams Project on Center Stage on Church Street last night, June4th. Meet the leader, Walker Adams, just briefly. (see explanation at bottom, maybe). Next is trumpet player Evan who by strange coincidence lived in Rochester, NY (Brighton) 14618 perhaps when I was starting lessons as an adult with Nate Rawls. Evan - last name not yet revealed - went to high school in Pittsford and studied trumpet with an Eastman School teacher.

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