Showing posts with label Fouth of July. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Fouth of July. Show all posts

Tuesday, July 4, 2017

Musings on American Independence Day #241

On this Fourth of July, Independence Day #241, so much to be grateful for, including among others things:

 High-flying friends who think of me and tweet me from the most-unlikely of places... like an SAS Airbus 330













I also think of lost-dead ancestors who, when it mattered most, stepped-up and did what what was needed in order to make that dream they had for a free and independent nation, a living reality.




 On IndependenceDay, I always think about a particular paternal ancestor of mine who was a spy for Gen. Washington during the American RevolutionaryWar, and think about all the problems and the daily peril he knowingly put himself in, to serve, knowing that he'd be killed if caught by the #British Redcoats.




When they were both younger, this same ancestor had marched with George Washington 21 years before under British Gen. Edward Braddock from Alexandria, Virgina to Fort Duquesne (Pittsburgh) to fight in The #FrenchandIndianWar, 1755.


Having survived that living hell, and many years of being a Revolutionary War spy, he lived to see the Thirteen Colonies full of vary different cultures and traditions become one free nation.

He was the first of many ancestors of mine who were to live in Ohio over the next 200-plus years, living there on bounty-land he was given by Congress as partial payment for his services during the war effort. 

 He was in Ohio even before it became a state in 1805, and was then part of the Northwest Territory, the Ohio Territory, settling in an area north of Steubenville, where the U.S. land grant office was established.

 And there he lived right near the Ohio river, an hour southwest from Pittsburgh and the general area where he had witnessed firsthand wholesale bloodshed of a sort that he never saw before and never wanted to see afterwards.



@HamiltonQuotes: There is a certain enthusiasm in liberty, that makes human nature rise above itself, in acts of bravery and heroism. #Hamilton

In case you are new to the blog or unaware of the good news, starting in October, SAS, @SAS, will start flying non-stop flights between Stockholm Arlanda Airport, @Arlanda and Miami International Airport, @iflymia, after SAS initiated flights last fall between Copehangen @CPHAirports and Oslo @Oslolufthavn and Miami..

Check out @bjornpilot on Twitter Instagram and YouTube
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Monday, July 4, 2016

Celebrating U.S.A.'s 240th birthday today from hot & humid Florida, but wishing I was in Sweden, on a boat in the Stockholm archipelago, eating strawberries with friends, and enjoying the Midnight Sun; Ingmar Bergman's "Wild Strawberries"

Snapshots, in a few tweets and words, of what I'm thinking about today, the Fourth of July...
Celebrating U.S.A.'s 240th birthday today from hot & humid Florida, but wishing I was in Sweden, on a boat in the Stockholm archipelago, eating strawberries with friends, and enjoying the Midnight Sun; Ingmar Bergman's "Wild Strawberries"







A photo posted by fullofkeys (@fullofkeys) on

Above, a great recent snapshot of a boat in an archipelago in Sweden taken on Midsummer Day by super-talented Anni Bernhard, a.k.a. singer Full of Keys, a friend of the blog and someone we adore for a whole host of good reasons, many of which we've written about here in the past.



Updated on 2016-07-05

Well, it's the Fourth of July, Birthday #240 for the USA.
Owing perhaps to the oppressive heat and humidity of Florida as I'm experiencing it in 2016. I mentioned strawberries in one of my tweets earlier today to Magnus Lundin, savvy and personable CEO of SISP, the Swedish Incubators & Science Parks, located in beautiful Stockholm, because 
a.) I really do LOVE strawberries, and,
b.) It seems without ever planning to, more often than not, most Fourth of July weekends, at some point, often after watching fireworks, I end up watching Ingmar Bergman's iconic film "Wild Strawberries" because... it's SO perfect, SO summer and SO Sweden!

I can't believe that I and my then-friends put up with this crazy summer heat as a kid growing-up in South Florida in the early and mid-1970's, riding our bikes EVERYWHERE during the day, without benefit of plastic water bottles!


Which is to say, for me, it's a perfect film for transporting me away from my everyday, mundane concerns, including helping me to forget how truly hot it is outside, with mosquitos buzzing around aiming to make me their meal ticket, something that was just as true this time of the year when I was living and working in Chicago and Washington, D.C. as it is today back in Florida. 

Part of the genius of this film, at least to me, is that like the best films, it always gives gives the viewer a reason to contemplate a life very different from the one they are currently living, since it has a huge dollop of wistfulness in it, something I, perhaps, already spend too much time considering.
This classic film of remembrance, known as Smultronställe in Swedish, officially opened in Sweden on December 26th, 1957, but for me, it remains a film of #summer.

One of my all-time favorite films, I've probably seen it, conservatively, over two dozen times, mostly on Turner Classic Movies (TCM), though I have a DVD and videocassette of it and many other Bergman films. It's a film that I always gets something new out of, and never tire of watching in part because there's so very much going on, even when it doesn't always seem that way.
It stars Victor Sjostrom, and a 22-year old Bibi Andersson, Ingrid Thulin and Gunnar Björnstrand.  I've got some good clips of it at the bottom of this post for you to peruse.

 For those of you who are new to my blog and the wide variety of subjects that I like to discuss, share and analyze here, or newbies to my ever-expanding number of Followers on Twitter via my @hbbtruth handle, https://twitter.com/hbbtruth, I note here that Swedish film director Ingmar Bergman was accorded one of the greatest honors of any film personality I can think of when a few years ago, he was chosen to be the face of the newest Swedish 200 Kronor note, starting last year, replacing Selma Lagerlöf, who was the first female writer to ever win the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Designed by Göran Österlund

I previously discussed who the newest faces of Swedish currency were in this April 25, 2012 blog post titled, "Beautiful, just like the original! Greta Garbo will be featured on the new Swedish 100 Kronor note, with Ingmar Bergman on the 200 SEK note, all designed by Göran Österlund, starting in 2015"
http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2012/04/beautiful-just-like-original-greta.html

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