Over coffee yesterday with the priest and her boyfriend the policeman, the priest said that she had run into a girl who had bullied her when she was young. The priest had just moved back to Sweden from Africa, where she had spent her early childhood, and she was the strange new girl in school.

"Petra?" the priest asked when she ran into the bully.

Yes, it was Petra, who was now working as a waitress at Gondolen, a fancy cocktail bar and restaurant on Söder overlooking Stockholm harbor, not a mile from where the priest lives.

"And what are you doing, now?" Petra had asked.

The priest said that all the old feelings came rushing back and it felt strangely as if in that sentence, Petra the Bully was trying to assert herself all over again.

This isn't surprising, really, because one of the priest's great strengths is her vulnerability. She lays herself open when she leads, which gives her tremendous power because one can't help but believe in her deeply. But at the same time, I know that she finds it exhausting to be so vulnerable.

"I may be wrong," she said, "but I feel like I can always pick out people who were bullied when they were young."

I wondered how she could see this.

"They have a certain sensitivity about how other people feel," she said.

I asked her if she could tell whether I had been bullied or not.

"Well," she said, "With you I can't tell whether it's because you grew up in a very kind family, or because you were bullied. I think maybe it's a combination of both."

She laughed.

She was right.

The Swedish word for the day is of course mobbing. It means bullying.

- by Francis S.

Vi ses på Nangijala, Astrid...*

They held the funeral for Astrid Lindgren today in the Great Church. All day the streets of the old town have been swarming with children holding bouquets of flowers and little old ladies in black. Lindgren's funeral cortege - four stallions drawing an antique carriage holding her coffin, a young girl leading a riderless, unsaddled white horse - wound through Stockholm from Adolf Fredrik's Church and ended at the Great Church next to the Royal Palace, which just happens to be directly outside my office. She was buried in the church, witnessed by the king, the queen and the crown princess, as well as numerous dignitaries and friends.

The frustrating thing of it all, however, was that the journey from church to church took about half the time expected, so I missed it, horses and all. As I was walking up Bollhusgränd with a sandwich, an old woman came from the other direction and said to me "förbi" - past. The cortege had gone ïnto the church already, a full 20 minutes before they said it would.

I didn't get a chance to pay my respects. So here they are.

- by Francis S.

* We'll see each other in Nangijala... A phrase on everyone's lips in Sweden today. Nangijala is the name of the land after death in Astrid Lindgren's Bröderna Lejonhjärta or The Brothers Lionheart, which happens to be one of the two books I've read in the original Swedish.

Someone told me that we are now gaining more than five minutes a day of daylight, some 40 minutes per week. It's a bit disorienting and my sleep patterns are all awry. But it's wonderful nonetheless, no matter how much I love the winter, to be tantalized by this frantic push toward summer.



The Swedish verb for the day is att lova. It means to promise.



- by Francis S.

Walking through the nasty blue-tiled and filthy passageway under the road at Slussen - the sluice - I noticed graffito that read:

Long live proletarian feminism

Down with bourgeois feminism

I'm not sure what the difference is between the two. But it reminded me of my two favorite pieces of graffiti from my days in Washington, D.C.



The first one, which was on the Ellington bridge for years, read: Rich people will fall. Someone added an over at the end of it. Seeing it always made me laugh.



The second was on the side of the building that years ago was the site of the Cuban restaurant Omega, once a Washington institution. Last time I saw it, there was a tiny neighborhood grocery on one side and a Persian rug store on the other. Back in the days of the Omega, there was graffito on the side of the building that read: Paul Volcker sux. Paul Volcker was Alan Greenspan's predecessor I think. Only in Washington could one see such graffiti. And I love the way the writer spelled it s-u-x. The whole thing was all so post-modern. Bourgeois feminist as well, undoubtedly.



The Swedish words for the day are röd, grön, blå and gul. They mean red, green, blue and yellow.



- by Francis S.

Things change, no matter how much it seems the world keeps sliding backwards and to the right.



The husband and I watched a fascinating television documentary last night about Jin Xing, a former Chinese military officer who has become a woman and is now one of China's most celebrated modern dancers and choreographers - her stagings of "Carmina Burana" and "Shanghai Tango" were apparently wildly successful. (She's also played the part of a Lara Croft-like heroine in a Korean action flick, among other movies, and owns her own nightclub and performance space in Beijing. She's a veritable culture maven.)



I guess with the Chinese government supporting her, you can't really call Jin Xing a sexual outlaw anymore.



The Swedish word for the day is hoppfull. It means, of course, hopeful.



- by Francis S.

Yesterday, I spotted rhubarb among the pathetic display of fruits and vegetables at the ICA grocery store on Folkungagatan. Pink as a pink begonia and with even a few leaves on the stalks, it was a sure sign of spring, despite the five or so centimeters of lingering snow outside.



So I bought it and made a sort of rhubarb cobbler to have for dessert with creme fraiche.



C. the fashion photographer came over with his two children, and M. the television producer came with his laughing sexual innuendo, and R. the popstar came with her goddaughter, who at nearly three is quite the actress and capable of easily commanding the undivided attention of four adults and two teenagers with merely the slightest display of her dimples.



"Was the rhubarb cobbler good?" I asked the husband afterwards.



"Oh, yes," he said. "But it wasn't enough food."



Maybe he was right, but his own mother is of a generation where one should always serve four times as much food as needed on the table at any given occasion. Because that's what hospitality means, an embarrassment of riches so no one ever feels worried about taking second or third helpings.



"And I didn't get so stressed fixing the food, did I," I said to the husband.



He looked at me skeptically. Then he laughed.



I guess I didn't do a very good job hiding it. I'm definitely not a team player when it comes to cooking. I want to be alone when I'm fixing food.



The Swedish word for the day is vår. It means spring, as in the season of the year.



- by Francis S.

Reading about sex education that preaches abstinence makes my blood pressure sky rocket. And makes me sad. It sounds like Victorian attitudes toward sex are back in favor in the United States, not that they've ever really disappeared. Worse, organizations such as SIECUS, seem to be worn down on fighting this battle against dangerous prudishness.



I am incredulous at the stupidity of adults trying to convince teenagers that sex is bad except when one is married. Is it the intention of U.S. government policy to create a generation of sexophobes? Do these policymakers and administrators honestly believe that teenagers will really buy this argument, or should buy it? There is so much love and pleasure to be derived from sex, why turn it into something scary and evil? I first had sex when I was 15, real sex as opposed to childish sex play, and it was wonderful and exciting and taught me many things about how to treat other people in all sorts of situations that have nothing to do with sex.



I still don't understand what the big deal is.



The Swedish word for the day is vanlig. It means normal.



- by Francis S.