Bridges

There's an astronomical phenomenon peaking between yesterday and tomorrow, called the "Orionids". It happens every year towards the end of October when earth passes through an ice and rock belt left by the Halleys comet when it last passed by in 1986. Some of the comet debris gets caught by the earths gravity and burn while entering, commonly called shooting stars. I thought I'd get a good blip out of it but it was a total failure. Living on Öland means being at an extremely flat place. If you are on "Alvaret", the big flat area in the south part of the island, where it is almost completely dark and the horizon is open all around. I was there for an hour to experience the "shower" of shooting stars. I saw two. And the camera didn't have a way of leaving the shutter open to get a long exposure. The blip was a failure but it's incredibly humbling to experience the vastness of the universe.

So, the blip today is all about bridges. I was rehearsing a song with an Arabic friend of mine who wants to sing a song from Iraq where she came from in the nineties. I love hearing poetic Arabic, it can be very melodic and is an extremely rich language using a lot of strong words to express emotions. It's a happy love song and it feels important not only to make her happy singing in her mother tongue but also to share a love song from one of the countries in the "Axis of Evil", not high on the popularity list today. 

I would like to encourage you to listen to "Lullabies from the Axis of Evil" from 2004 sung by women from the area named by president Bush. You will find it on cd or on Spotify.

The blip is from Alvaret on Öland. Someone dug a ditch to catch the rain water, preventing it from creating a swamp where the poor farmers wanted to plant. One good thing with Öland is that the ground consists of great big slabs of flat limestone so after considerable work quarrying it and placing it nicely over the ditch you have a bridge. Me and my Aarabic friend didn't work that hard to create our cultural bridge but all the same it feels important.