Paris, Easter, 2019 The Spring of 2019 was hectic and stressful for Folke and me. We had made the decision to sell the Swedish farm. We had also visited Rochester where Folke’s daughter Rebecka and her husband had moved to from Hawaii. The last thing on my mind was travel for fun. Still living at…
Editor’s Note: “God Jul” is the Swedes “Merry Christmas”. Ann Sigford delights us with a follow up to her story “Christmas Eve on our Swedish Farm”. *** It’s 3:30 a.m. on Christmas Day — Jul in Swedish — and two alarm clocks have gone off in the otherwise silent yellow farmhouse. Two, just to be…
Editor’s Note: The image shows the Advent candles, a placemat with the tomte, and a saffron bun symbolizing the hoped for return of the sun. The author writes this delightful, charming story in present tense to invite you to join her. *** My husband Folke and I enjoyed 15 Christmas Eves on our farm. In…
Editor’s Note: Writer Ann Sigford joyfully embraces Mother Nature including one of her smallest beings, ants, in this delightful poem she spontaneously wrote upon catching sight of them. A smudge on the sidewalk catches my eye early, early Solstice morning. Town criers meet deep underground check the date, double check this is it, the earliest…
Long ago I worked at the College of St. Scholastica in Duluth, and through that job I got to know many interesting people. This is the story of one of them. The College sent me to Washington, D.C. On a free day, I decided to take a boat trip to see Mount Vernon. When I…
I’ve had a crush on Carl since I was a kid. I think my dad told me about him. I wished I could have met him, but he died before I could do that. But in his honor, I followed his trail all the way to Lapland, in the very far north of Sweden, and…
She was born in 1912, in a little Swedish town. She didn’t have it easy. Her mom died shortly after she was born, leaving her father with seven little daughters to feed and raise on a laborer’s salary. It was her mother’s sister, Julia and her husband, childless, who took in the waif and raised…
