Ooh. Want! I do have a plush Cthulhu hanging over my desk at work, so I’m by no means Great Old One deprieved… but still.

Humming is good for you! (And your sinuses. Sssinuses.)

Whee! My new posts are visible! Thanks, Walter.

Comic goodness for role players: Order of the Stick! (OK, not just for role players. But they will get more of the in-jokes than other people, I think.)

Have been ill since mid-August, more or less. It’s not fun any more…. not that it ever was. But now I’m getting seriously panicked about my work. However, the latest development is thumpingly aching sinuses which prevent me from thinking much. Maybe that’s a blessing.

In any case, I was succoured today, by Terry coming all the way out here with the food of the gods. That was a very nice thing to do.

And maybe one of these days we’ll be able to download new sinuses from the Internet!

The statue called “Liberty Enlightening the World” was unveiled in October, 1866. The pylon and framework were designed by Gustave Eiffel (of the Tower) but the actual statue was designed by a sculptor called Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi. I’m sure art historians are familiar with the name – I must admit to not knowing it before today.

Today, however, I looked in an encyclopedia of historical events, to see what happened on October 4, 1904. I found a lot of interesting things that happened during the year – Salvador Dali, Pablo Neruda, Johnny Weissmüller and Count Basie were all born in 1904), but the only event of note for Oct 4 was the death of Bartholdi. He died of tuberculosis in Paris.

And on the same day, in far-away Kärrbo, my grandmother’s cousin Edith was born. Today she celebrates her 100th birthday.

Edith was born when Sweden and Norway were still a single kingdom, ruled by Oscar II. She experienced both world wars and was old enough to remember even the first. With her sister, she travelled extensively in Europe and North Africa, sending long postcards to our family. They owned a fashion store together, and later Edith worked in an art gallery – and her flat always looked a little like an art gallery to me, every wall covered with paintings. Only five years ago she still lived in her own flat, although when we came by for coffee we generally got instant coffee and not all the biscuits were home-made – and she came to Uppsala for my wedding in 1998, and stayed rather late in the evening. Her walking isn’t so good now, and she needs bifocals, but she’s still reading, and enjoying music and cross-words. She’s happy in the nursing home although some of the people there are a bit, well, old… She is a remarkable, remarkable person.

This last se’endays has been a week of strong and very different emotions.

Last Wednesday, the birthday of a beloved nephew; he turned 12 and that’s odd for an old aunt to understand. When he was born I studied English. I still do.

Yesterday, the death of a beloved uncle – Torwald – who had been ill for quite some time, although I didn’t know just how bad it was. Maybe I’ll write some more about him later.

On Saturday, two weddings of which we could only attend one for tempo-spatial reasons. It was marvellous.

On Monday, the funeral of my mother-in-law’s husband (ex husband to be precise) whom I’d only met once, but who was a very big personality. It was sad, beautiful and moving.

And three friends of mine have had babies.

The theme for the author relay at this year’s Culture Night was “Sing in the darkness of despair”; a reminder, I assume, of the events of that day last year and three years ago.

But there was not much despair to be seen on Culture Night, and rightly so. It is a long evening filled with cultural events; when walking between the different events we attended, we heard barbershop in a streetcorner, we saw flamenco dancers in the middle of a cordoned-off street, we saw four young women dressed like Xena fighting with staffs and juggling with fire at the edge of a square with the rock concert at the other edge of the square forming an incongruous backdrop. (I was happy to notice that this year, the volume of the rock concert had been turned down – I was really annoyed when it drowned all other activities in all the buildings around the square a few years ago. I don’t mind hearing it, but the point of this night is for different forms of culture to coexist, not for one to kill all the rest.) There was Armenian modern dancing on Fyristorg, and the Salvation Army’s brass band played across the river. The public library had a sale of weeded-out books; we bought one about the wood-carving art of the Indians on the western shores of Canada (the ones with totem poles.)

We went to a concert with medieval pilgrim songs – but missed Joculatores Upsaliensis singing in the university library, as by then we were looking at Irish tap dancing. We saw silent movies accompanied by period music live on the piano in the cinema from 1914 (and preceded by some wonderful commercials from the 1930s or 40s), and we visited the scout tivoli on Castle Hill. Miranda had been working there earlier in the afternoon, but we didnt see her. The main event for both of us was the Balinese dancing in a small room under the castle – hot as a summer’s evening on Bali, the presenter said, packed with people. The performance was short but magical, accompanied by cymbals and bells, slow and graceful and, well, magical.

After Erik Granström’s reading and talk we caught the 22:30 bus home. Johan and I are both slightly unwell – still, or again, or whatever – and felt rather culturally satisfied and not particularly inclined to go anywhere else at that point. We didn’t go to the Greek or Persian dancing, or any art galleries, or any of the performances in the Cathedral, or the free Yoga class, or…. Doesn’t matter though. The evening was proof of how it is possible for a multitude of different cultures to coexist peacefully with a minimum of tolerance needed on everybody’s part. It couldn’t have been held on a better date of the year.

Yes, you can click on the picture and be taken elsewhere.

Happy Birthday .