First the U.S. Supreme Court overturns Bowers v. Hardwick. Now Nancy and Philo have started a one- stop- all- the- homo- news- you- could- ask- for- web- source called Queerday and it looks pretty damn fab.



Things are looking up for us poor downtrodden homosexualists.



- by Francis S.

Saffron is a favored spice in Swedish cuisine, the empress of the kitchen if for no other reason than the fact that it is ridiculously expensive. In summer it is occasionally used to flavor ice cream, which some people find disgusting, but I find a great luxury. So, today I inaugurated a four-week stint of vacation by eating saffron ice cream in a café on Nytorget with the husband, and the priest and the policeman and their baby Signe.



All hail the glory of Swedish law, which mandates a minimum of five weeks of vacation for all. Me, I actually get seven.



The Swedish phrase for the day is lugn och ro. It means peace and quiet.



- by Francis S.

Breaking news: at last, the U.S. Supreme Court knocks down sodomy laws.



It's about, er, fucking time. One small step for homosexualists, one great leap for justice.



- by Francis S.

Hannes is in town, flirting indiscriminately with men and women alike, showing off his movie-star white teeth, wearing a cool blue-jean hat and jacket, and generally being irresistible.



Oh, and he brought along his parents, J., and her boyfriend, my favorite Finn.



"It will be strange to hear Hannes' first words in Finnish," J. said. She mentioned an Estonian acquaintance of ours who lives here in Stockholm and speaks Estonian with her own 2-year-old daughter, but the daughter replies in Swedish.



I suppose it could be a little worrisome, in some small private way, when one's own child speaks another language. Will he understand the subtleties of what I say, will she be hampered somehow or torn between two languages, will he resent me or be embarrassed because I speak Finnish or Swedish or English with a strange accent and can never know it as well as he can?



The Swedish phrase for the day is rädda barnen. It means save the children.



- by Francis S.

The best thing about living two floors above a great chef is the leftovers.



"I'm down at L.'s," the husband said on the phone. "She has something good for you, a little surprise." The surprise turned out to be hot glögg stirred with a stick of cinnamon, and tiny gingerbread men topped with blue cheese and fig jam and slices of fresh fig.



L., the chef, had been filming a pilot for a television series for channel four - a cooking show, of course. They'd filmed her in her apartment preparing for a party with her own version of glögg and gingerbread. Everyone's trying to copy the success of that guy who claims to cook naked but in fact never seems to take his clothes off, dammit. Sweden does have its own increasingly popular home-grown female version of Jamie Oliver, but I think L. could do better. She's a curious mix of funny, serious and enthusiastic, and she's already done well on cooking segments of some of the morning magazine programs.



The Swedish word for the day is pepparkakor. It means gingerbread.



- by Francis S.

Every day I pass various sets of kiosks with advertisements for a local mobile telephone company that sells pre-paid cards, advertisements featuring teenagers drinking piña coladas and speaking into a phone "yes, Dad, I'm having fruit every day" or a girl slipping under the covers with a boy, saying "yes, Mom, I'm going to bed early." But the one that intrigues me most, naturally, is the one with the naked teenagers (you can see one of the guy's pubic hair!) playing miniature golf, the boy on his phone saying "yes, Mom, I'm wearing a hat."



Why wasn't there nude miniature golf when I was a teenager? Not that I probably would've been able to play, on account of my teenage tendency toward, um, priapism. Hell, I guess I would've just settled for advertisements of naked teenagers when I was 16.



Hurrah for nudity. Go, Sweden! (If you're up for a little Swedish conversation, check out what the remarkably observant and always enlightening Erik Stattin has to say about a slightly more controversial advertisement that can be seen here around town.)



The Swedish word for the day is trottoar. It comes from the French and means sidewalk.



- by Francis S.

The husband and I are doomed to yet another summer of rising early. It's because workers arrive every morning at 7 a.m. to blast and pound rocks in the courtyard of our building. It is astounding how much noise is required to lay a circular pattern of rough granite paving stones, checking and rechecking everything with sticks and metal rods and measuring tape in some undecipherable ritual devised to ensure that all the stones will fit properly in their places in the end. At least that's what I hope it's all about.



The Swedish word for the day is morgonpigg. It is an adjective that describes those annoying people who are, for some reason, all perky and chipper in the morning.



- by Francis S.