Oh, the Story I Found: Pelle Svanslös in America

My morfar (grandfather on my mother’s side) hunted alligators by a lake in Småland. If this sounds strange to you, imagine how my mother must have felt when as a child in the 1940’s in Sweden she read Pelle Svanslös i Amerika. Or for that matter, how strange and incredulous a journey to America Gösta…

"Welcome to Sweden": American and Swedish Bathos?

In order for something to be funny–In Sweden or the United States–it must first be funny. The challenge with being funny is that being deliberately funny is not very funny. No, I am not talking about the entire episode of the new NBC show Welcome to Sweden. I am referring to the opening scene in…

A Swede Appreciates Fourth of July

When I was a child visiting America, I remember my aunt having these square pans, deep, with chocolate cake, and upon it in the right colors, the American flag was drawn in enough sweetness to now make my teeth hurt.  That was the summer, too, she took me to a drive-through bank, and I recall…

Fathers and Sons

My father was an absent man and perhaps that is why his presence appears more often now, once I have opened my memory bank.  When my brother and I were growing up, he was gone most of the time, traveling and making a living for his family.  But before his travels grew to Gulliver proportions…