When I stopped using facebook a marvelous piece of music that was recorded in the shop was left behind on my old facebook page. It didn’t make it on to the new website because it didn’t fit into any of the pages. It wasn’t an event and it wasn’t a publication, it was just one of those things that happened to have happened at the shop, a video recording that Katlijn Sergeant arranged to be made of an original piece for piccolo and marimba written by Anders Koppel based on a poem by Shelley. I was reminded of it when Margareta Langeen’s son came by yesterday to pick up the loudspeaker and microphone that his mother had used at Saturday’s event. Turns out he was once the bassoon player at the Malmö opera orchestra and his replacement was the fellow who had made the video. Anyway here’s the piece. Lovely stuff. Enjoy.
A trip to Vermont
Greetings from Burlington, Vermont where I have been spending the weekend on a family visit. From the view across Lake Champlain to the automatic pancake-making machine in the breakfast room at the hotel, from the sublime to the ridiculous, there’s no end to the things you can wonder about in the old homeland. I should be back in Malmö on Wednesday.
Our next event
will be in Swedish, a “theater lecture” with Kristina Grebelius and Margareta Langeen on April 11 at 5 p.m. (kl 17.00).
Here’s Margareta’s description:
“Vi har under 2025 deltagit i Färnebo folkhögskolas resande-kurser i Norrland med spetsen riktad mot Norrbotten och Västerbotten för studier av den sk Gröna Omställningen, dess inverkan på samhällena, klimatet och naturen. Vi har besökt Kiruna, Piteå, Luleå, Älvsbyn, Övre bygden, Markbygdens Vindkraftpark, Vittangi, Boden, Vännforsbäck, Umeå, Jokkmokk. Vi har mött stadsflytt, gamla gruvor, planerade gruvor, vindkraft, hotade naturområden, hotade dricksvattentäkter, hotad samekultur, lokalbefolkningar, deltagit i gruvkonferens, hört om tillverkning av tallolja, lyssnat på flera föreläsare.
Vi kommer att berätta om en del av detta, framför allt om samerna, skogen och gruvorna. Är den så kallade Gröna Omställningen verkligen Grön??
Föredraget tar cirka 1 tim. Efter det är arenan öppen för frågor och diskussioner.”
*******
We’re off on a family visit to North America this weekend so the shop will be closed. We’ll be open again at the usual hours on April 9. In the meantime, may peace be with you.
Springtime
Every year around this time I go out looking for pasque flowers (backsippor) on the heath by the sea at Stenshuvud near our country house.
It’s become a kind of ritual, and it was especially exciting this year when I got lost wandering through the woods on my way back from the heath – spring fever? – and discovered a marvelous place with a view, Kortelshuvud, where I had never been before.
The pasque flowers still haven’t started blooming but if you look hard enough you can see them popping up out of the ground, little furry things that, for me, have come to mean the onset of a new season and with it the prospect of better times. So happy easter or passover or whatever else you may wish to celebrate this time of year. For me the coming of spring is good enough.
Enshittification revisited
Some time back I posted an article about Cory Doctorow’s new term enshittification and now the consumer council in Norway has made a film to help spread the word and show what it means. And it is actually quite funny. Read all about it (and watch the film):
The life of the party
Sven Nilsson has been a friend of Andy’s Corner since we opened and it was a real pleasure to welcome him and his friends and family to the store last week to celebrate the release of his autobiography, Solfläckar, or Sunspots. Sven grew up and went to school nearby in a much poorer and smaller Malmö and served as city librarian for many years as he took on the powers-that-be over the planning and, most significantly, the location of the new library, not far from the shop, losing his job in the process. In his book he generously shares memories of both his public and private lives, and concludes with a few pages of short self characterizations that are almost a book of prose poetry in themselves. His life story reflects in so many ways the recent history of Malmö and makes for fascinating reading. Here he is reading from his book as his childhood friend, Jan Mark looks on.
Laughing at the lies
I just finished reading Frankissstein by Jeanette Winterson and warmly recommend it for its thoughtful take on contemporary life. Winterson is both insightful and downright funny about AI, transpeople, Mary Shelley, sexbots, and so much more and, in the process, manages to “update” Shelley’s immortal tale most impressively. And speaking of AI there was an interesting article in the Guardian today by a fellow who teaches people how to use it. He even offers an online course of instruction for those of you who must use it.
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/ng-interactive/2026/mar/10/teaching-ai-what-i-learned
As for me I think I’ll stick to my own human intelligence and keep laughing at the lies as long as I can.
Just a click or two
and you can have done something useful. And then you can go on and read this young man’s books. I’ve just bought his latest, Moral Ambition.
Our next event
As part of Malmö scenfest on March 28 – a whole day with free theater all over Malmö – theater maker Dina Gordon will bring her performance art to Andy’s Corner in which she plays her namesake, Dr. Dina S. Gordon, self-published author and dynamic therapy advocate, who invites you to a workshop on how to locate, understand and overcome what’s keeping you from unlocking your full potential. Through exercises, personal accounts and working through and with discomfort, you are familiarized with methods from his book “Lose again, lose better”, which will be available at a discounted price during the break.
Dress comfortably and bring water. The show will start at 6.15 (kl 18.15).
Here’s a trailer from Dina’s performance at Malmö Stadsteater:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1FY80ip5icf9abMblA1wqX2LfZwjAzXaW/view
and here’s the program for the day:
Goodbye to Bigtech
A year ago I stopped posting on facebook, and started more actively posting on the blog on this website. And as the year has brought a never-ending stream of “news” of disgusting behavior by the owners and users of facebook and all the other (anti)social media I have felt like I did the right thing. But why stop there? Apple and Google and Amazon have also shown, to say the least, a distinct lack of social and moral responsibility. Here’s an article in today’s Guardian that can help you find a way out of the bigtech jungle.
AndrewJamison 