Pop in the Kitchen

And suddenly a pop duo entered into my kitchen, singing old songs by Ted Gärdestad, and made all the everyday duties magical...

On Soccernomics and Peace at Work

I´m back in the newsroom at TT, for a few weeks of work while dear A is stay-at-hom-dad - he´s one of the vikinga men who has it all, according to a lovely article the other day in New York Times :)
Working is on one level very peaceful. No one messes with my stuff, I get to go to the restroom alone and I only have to feed myself at lunch. It is also really stimulating and rather intense. I´ve written stories on Ship to Gaza, Swedish telecom, BP and the environmental disaster in the Mexican gulf, American politics, next years fashion trends, the upcoming royal wedding in Stockholm - and soccer. Everyone who knows me knows that I´m NOT a football fan. But when I was assigned to write about the economic effects of the World Soccer Cup and when I found the report Soccernomics 2010 that a senior economist at the Dutch bank ABN Amro had wrote, I thought it was rather fun. Not only had the bank through careful calculations figured out which country should win in order to benefit and balance the world economy (Germany). They had also - in a dry, academic paper-writing-way - calculated which country should win if we only listen to our hearts (Cameroon or Ghana whose inhabitants are least happy and among the poorest in the world). Fascinating that economists spend their time doing this - se my story in DN here.

The door behind where it all started...

...or at least part of it. Behind this door is the house where my grandfather Frans was born in 1909 in Dalecarlia. They were nine siblings, he was youngest and his mother died when he was 16. They were not to well off, but the old wall paintings in one of the rooms tell us that there was creative joy. Frans was the first in his family who got to study, he worked hard and he created a wonderful life. He married Viola, from the same village, and became a musical director, conductor and teacher. They had three children, one of them my mother. When Frans got old, and couldn´t hear to well, he started to paint mainly landscapes. I remember him from my childhood as warm but full of a spectrum of deep feelings, a man who sometimes was caught by sadness.
We can learn a lot about ourselves by just looking a generation or two away. My children love his old house, now called the Bakery because people in the village still bake in the old oven there.

Pulitzer-congrats and Joy over Journalism with Moral Force

Congrats to Washington Post for winning four and New York Times for taking home three Pulitzer Prizes (the Oscar of journalism) for work in 2009. But an extra big congrats to online, nonprofit news organization ProPublica who won the prestigious award in print journalism.
Reading ProPublica - and reading about the publication - makes me happy. It presents itself as "an independent, non-profit newsroom that produces investigative journalism in the public interest. Our work focuses exclusively on truly important stories, stories with moral force."
According to ProPublica investigative journalism is at risk and seen as a luxury in many newsrooms. But they state that it is fine to steal their stories, as long as you credit and link to ProPublica :)
The newsroom is led by Paul Steiger, the former managing editor of The Wall Street Journal. The managing editor is Stephen Engelberg, former investigative editor of The New York Times. You go!
The Pulitzer Prize is awarded from the Journalism school at my old and very beautiful university Columbia in New York.

Baby Grace

Every morning this little bottle makes me happy. It simply smells the best - purity, soap and water and happiness and clean sheets. And since I´m the proud mom of three beloved girls I must concede to the text on the back: if God has a face, surely it is that of a child. and if there is a place called heaven, it must smell like a baby. Thank you Philosophy.

Clean, sexy water...

...is the title of a New York Times op-ed by Nicholas D Kristof. It tells the fascinating story of former Manhattan night club promoter Scott Harrison who founded charity: water - an extremly successful aid group focusing on drilling wells and providing clean water to people in Asia and Africa. In three years the group is said to have raised 10 million dollars and provided water to nearly one million people.
Harrison has a natural gift for marketing and social media - part of the success story is the way the group uses the web. There are "twestivals" among followers on twitter, new donors can see how their money have been used since wells have gps-coordinates so they can be found on Google earth. And the videos produced really rock and go viral on the web.
Most important - Harrison seem to have found the joy in giving (the same that Bill Clinton describes in his book Giving). Another driving spirit in that context is my friend Amelie Silfverstolpe. She founded Volontärbyrån, an internet based service who matches volunteers with various groups and assignments - all because she believes in the great force of getting involved and helping others. You go!

Hammocks with Spirals and Pearls

I just fell in love with Brazilian artist Maria Nepomucenos exhibition at Magasin 3 in Stockholm. Nepomucenos creates large, colorful hammock-like sculptures that seem to grow organically in a never-seen-before garden. It is said that she always lets the rope take its natural spiral form - and that she sees the rope as an umbilical cord and the pearls as fertile points. The sculptures cross the room and create a feeling of traveling or transmission. To me its a lovely and interesting crossover between ancient traditions and a warm, philosophical - and beautiful - approach to art.