A Repair Kit for the World

I love smart games. Especially this one that was given to us the other night by dear, cool Miriam and Björn. It´s a repair kit with several assignments in order to make the world a better place. It also contains a World Repair Passport and stamps, to keep track of the good work. Of course Björn bought it in "our" old city San Francisco. And of course all of the net proceeds go the Serena & Lily Foundation who funds youth initiatives around the world. Lovely.

Om Mayan Chewing Gum, Replanting Rain Forest and a Happy Family

In a suburb of Stockhom, on a quiet ordinary street, lies a small treasury in the form of a coffee shop said to promote dialogues on sustainability, leadership and resilience. By chance a friend brought me and the girls there. It´s called Open World Café and it´s run by a Swedish family who have lived in California and South America among other places. It was not only the healthy, yummy, home made food, the Brazilian furniture and the art work on the walls that hit me. It was also the smile on the owners face, his daughters dear and aware attitude towards the clients and the organic, biodegradable chewing gum from the Mayan rain forest that was sold (made from r e a l gum, lovely lime-tasting but a bit sticky in the mouth...). And - maybe most important - the family have started a great foundation for change called Open World Foundation who among other things replant rain forest in Brazil...
I believe change comes from working in your own small circles while thinking big AND having fun. This is a great example.

The summer moment

So we get into the car, stop at an old farm to by fresh strawberries, drive to the bakery in Hablingbo, get vanilla-buns and still warm bread to die for. We keep driving through the incredible Gotland landscape, singing out loud to Frank Sinatra´s New York New York. Then we´re on the small white road that goes right down to the blue, blue sea. We laugh at the day while eating the warm bread, our dresses and faces full of flour and our minds full of peace.

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.