SWEA North Carolina Nyhetsbrev Våren 2016

Smakprov ur kommande program

Keramikkväll påMad Platter i

Greensboro torsdagen 7 april.

Bowling på Kings Bowling i Raleigh

fredagen 8 april.

Följ med oss på årets Regionmöte i Virginia Beach! En tjejhelg i oktober att se fram

emot!

Mer information om anmälan och program kommer under våren.

Hej SWEA North Carolina! Vilket spännande år vi har framför oss. På

årsmötet den 21a januari blev jag vald till ny ordförande. Några i styrelsen sitter kvar ifrån

2015 men många är nya för i år. Jag tror att 2016 kommer att bli ett roligt år och jag vet att alla i styrelsen jobbar för att alla ska få ett bra år.

SWEA är en intresseförening utan vinstintresse. Vi ger ut donationer och stipendier för att stödja

svensk kultur. Det är kul och viktigt att kunna sprida svensk kultur och svenska traditioner

utomlands. Vår största höjdpunkt under året är vår julmarknad. Vi i styrelsen jobbar även för att

våra medlemmar ska vara nöjda och glada. I år har några svenska kvinnor i Charlotte visat

intresse och kommer att gå med i SWEA NC. Jag tycker att det låter jättespännande och ser fram

emot ett samarbete med dem. På återseende!

Måla en tavla tillsammans på Wine and Design i Apex onsdagen 13 april.

Bokfika i Oak Ridge onsdagen 13 april.

Prova på golf i Bur-Mil Park i Greensboro måndagen 18 april.

Fullständigt program finns på vår hemsida

SWEA NC

Inför varje aktivitet skickas en inbjudan ut

till samtliga sweor. Välkomna och hoppas vi ses under våren.Varmt Välkomna hälsar styrelsen.

Med vänliga hälsningar Frida Hegde

SWEA NC Ordförande

Årsmötet 21 januari på Swedebread i High Point

Torsdagen den 21 Januari samlades fjorton Sweor på SwedeBread i High Point för SWEA NCs årsmöte.

Mingel, prat och Lenas smörgårtårta följdes av traditionella årsmötesförhandlingar. Styrelsen för SWEA NC 2016 består av både nya, gamla och nygamla medlemmar som ser fram emot att utveckla och driva SWEA NC framåt genom attraktiva aktiviteter och trevlig gemenskap. Stort tack till avgående styrelsemedlemmar för era insatser under 2015.

På nästa sida finns ett sammandrag av SWEAs syfte och också en beskrivning av hur, och till vad vi får använda våra intäkter.

Varmt välkomna till SWEA-året 2016 hälsar styrelsen!

Styrelsen för SWEA NC 2016 från vänster till höger:

Nina Parker - Programansvarig RTPElin Nilen - MedlemsansvarigJessica Villing - WebbansvarigFrida Hegde . - OrdförandeAnna Bray - SekreterareLiselott Fiskerud - NyhetsbrevMadelen Trolle - Vice OrdförandeLinda Jonsson -Programansvarig GSOKatarina Örje - Kassör

SWEA - Swedish Women´s Educational Association International, Inc

SWEA värnar om det svenska språket, stödjer och sprider kännedom om svensk kultur och svenska traditioner, förmedlar personliga och professionella kontakter, etablerar ett

nätverk emellan Sweor samt stödjer utbildning genom utdelning av stipendier och/eller projekt som har svensk anknytning genom donationer.

Av medlemsavgiften på $50 per år betalas $30 till SWEA International, och $2 till SWEA OAME som är regionen för avdelningarna: Philadelphia, Boston, New York, New Jersey,

Washington DC, Virginia Beach, North Carolina och Atlanta. SWEA NC behåller $18 per år och medlem.

Hur kan man använda SWEAs pengar

Grundprincipen är att SWEAs pengar inte får gå tillbaka till medlemmarna, utan skall användas enligt föreningens målsättning som är att sprida svensk kultur och tradition till

andra. De skatteregler och den skattebefrielse som gäller för SWEA i USA grundar sig på syftet ovan och är det som kvalificerar föreningen som en “non profit organization”. Alla

SWEA avdelningar är skyldiga att följa SWEA Internationals regler för att inte den grundläggande skattebefrielsen skall äventyras.

SWEAs pengar får inte användas för att subventionera medlemsaktiviteter eller skänka pengar till medlemmarna. En medlemsaktivitet som är förenad med kostnader, skall vara

självfinansierad av medlemmarna. Medlemmarna i organisationen är medlet och inte målet för verksamheten.

Används pengar i strid med de tillämpbara amerikanska skattereglerna kan SWEAs hela status riskeras och man kan bli tvungen att betala skatt bakåt i tiden och riskera stipendieverksamhet och annat. SWEA är priviligerade att få den exceptionella

skattebefrielse som den amerikanska lagstiftningen erbjuder.

DONATIONER

När man ger till välgörande ändamål, som är ett brett uttryck, skall detta vara länkat till ett svenskt intresse. SWEA är skyldiga gentemot skattemyndigheterna att övervaka och

redovisa att pengar inom SWEA inte används för andra ändamål än de som skattebefrielsen bygger på.

STIPENDIER

Stipendiets ändamål är främst att stödja eller möjliggöra för någon person eller organisation att studera eller på annat sätt sprida kunskap om svensk kultur, tradition, språk, historia, eller samhällsliv.  I andra hand, att uppmuntra alla slags utbyten mellan

Sverige och North Carolina av forskare och studerande i andra ämnesområden. Kriteriet för att söka stipendier är stipulerade av SWEA International.

SWEA-fika och semmelfikor runt om i NC

Fettisdagen den 9 Februari samlades SWEor hemma hos Nina Parker i Apex och hemma hos Madelene Trolle i Greensboro för att fira Fettisdagen och äta semlor. Anette Tjäder stod för bakningen i Apex och i Greensboro kom semlorna från SwedeBread där bagerskan heter Lena Westerlund. Tack till Lena och Anette för goda semlor och till Nina och Madelene för att ni tog emot oss i era hem.

Årets första SWEA-fika lockade sju SWEor hem till nya ordföranden Frida Hegde. Sockerkaka och smarrig kladdkaka dukades fram och försvann fort. Tack Frida för trevligt fika.

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SWEA NC finns i Charlotte!

Vi välkomnar våra nya SWEA-systrar i Charlotte. Varmt välkomna till SWEA NC!

Onsdagen den tionde februari skrevs historia inom SWEA NC. Då hölls ett första möte i Charlotte där det planeras en uppstart av en egen programgrupp. Håll utkik efter mer information och programpunkter i Charlotte.

14 mars höll Madelene och Katarina ett informations- och rekryteringsmöte på IKEA Charlotte. Nio svenska kvinnor dök upp och nu fortsätter planeringen för ett SWEA-program i Charlotte.

Kvinnodagen och bokfika hos Pernilla.

Våfflor serverades hos Lisa Fiskerud i Apex och Tina Verolin i Jamestown. Bokfika hos Linda Jonsson i Greensboro lockade inte bara Sweor utan vovvarna Ozzy och Pepsi hängde med sina Swea-mattar på fika. Gott fika och trevligt sällskap är en bra start på dagen.

Planerade Programpunkter SWEA NC 2016

Datum/Tid Aktivitet

Torsdagen 7 april

18:00-21:00

Keramikkväll på The Mad Platter i Greensboro

Fredagen 8:e april

18:00-20:00

Bowling på Kings Bowling i Raleigh

Onsdagen 13 april

10:00-12:00

Bokfika i Oak Ridge

Onsdagen 13 april

18:00-20:00

Wine and Design i Apex

Måndagen 18 april

11:00-14:00

Prova på golf i Bur-Mil Park , Greensboro

Torsdagen 21 april

18:00-21:00

Tjejmiddag på Melting Pot i Durham

Tisdagen 10 maj

10:00-12:00

Bokfika i Summerfield

Juni Svenska Flaggans dag och Midsommarfirande

September Kräftskiva

Oktober Regionmöte i Virginia Beach

Lördagen 3 december

10:00-17:00

Julmarknad i Holshouser Building på NC State Fairgrounds

För aktuellt och uppdaterat program kika in på vår hemsida SWEA NC.För aktuellt och uppdaterat program kika in på vår hemsida SWEA NC.

SWEA NC Travel Scholarship Report When I got the okay from my university department to spend two whole blessed weeks in Sweden

to attend the August 2015 World Water Week conference, I could not pack quickly enough. Sweden is dearer to me than nearly anything. It’s always been a matter of “A thousand miles seems pretty far but they’ve got planes and trains and cars, I’d walk to you if I had no other way.”

So here I was arriving in the airport in Stockholm, and catching a ride first on an airport train, then on the blue metro, and then on a red bus, and finally walking the last mile through quiet wind-riven paths to where I was staying near the seashore.

I had some time before the conference started, so I got in touch with my dad’s old boss in Linköping. Even though my dad studied physics under Dr. Sven-Erik over twenty years ago, he still sends us UNICEF cards every December, so he was definitely someone I wanted to see. He wrote back, “what a nice surprise!” and ‘Welcome to Sweden!’ and we worked out a plan for me to visit him on a Wednesday.

I rode a train to Linköping. It was the dearest train imaginable. It was warm amber-colored on the inside, and rode as smoothly as a flute over the train tracks, past little towns called things like Flemingberg and Kolmården and Nyköping. I pressed my face against the window and saw meadows purple with wildflowers, that then swapped for stands of white birches that grow in rings of five, that then switched for the silver glimmer of a lake behind a long, long field.

My seat-mates at first were teenagers who were holding a serious discussion on feminism, and who must have stared as I tried most assiduously to force my laptop’s power cord into the seat bolts, because I could not accept that they were merely seatbolts when even the Amtrak has power outlets, for crying out-loud. The teenagers all disembarked in Nyköping and two young brothers took their place, one holding an Asterisk comic book and the other with a long spool of yarn twined around cardboard. They talked softly, and the train hummed steadily, and I felt so safe, so secure. Dr. Sven-Erik has become something of a family tradition because he was always so good to us. We talk about him all the time, and meeting him was so nice. He drove me to my childhood home (which the blasphemous present owners have shorn of its original red and painted a drab blue) and I saw the birches where I used to play, and the hill where all of us children used to go sledding. Then we went to my dad’s old university, and we met Ulf and Kenneth, both classmates with my dad ‘back in the day’. I kept taking pictures and sending them to my dad, and kept getting ‘wow’ and ‘gosh, I miss them’ in response. I took the train back from Linköping a tired, happy soul, and just a little edge of sadness mixed in.On the Friday before the conference, I visited a school in Stockholm. I really like visiting schools when I go someplace new, because kids always think they are the center of the universe, and I suppose it can’t hurt to indulge them in that assumption. I met with a class of seventh-graders, and I was full of enormous hopes that by the end of my talk with them, they would be just as enthused about my PhD work (using satellites to monitor water pollution) as I am.

I started off by introducing myself to the kids, telling them about North Carolina, and they in turn asked me the standard questions all kids ask: how old are you and are you married?

Next, I showed them satellite images of the Chesapeake Bay (my study area), which they thought was very beautiful, and then I had a surprise for them: I showed them a mystery image, and they all said, ‘oh! That’s Sweden!’ They even guided my finger along the coastline exactly to where Stockholm lies.

My real surprise for them, though, was that I wanted them to help me make a short animation that summarizes the research I do as a PhD student. I had prepared an animation file with all the pictures we would need, and as I told the class about my research, I picked student volunteers to come up to make the animation in step with each learning point.

Unfortunately, we were delayed by technical difficulties, and when the school day closed, we had finished only half the animation. The boys all exploded into chatter and made a beeline for the door. I was so disappointed. But the girls stayed after and kept working until the animation was entirely finished. I was really impressed with them. Every single girl got to contribute. When we were finished, before they went home to their families, they all gave me a hug. The completed animation is available here: https://youtu.be/yeGnCle_FcM. I rode the two blue metros and the red bus back to my place by the seashore, exhausted and realizing I am more out of touch with teenagers than I had previously thought. Finally, the World Water Week conference - the official reason for my visit - began with great fanfare. The conference had almost 300 sessions over six days, and we 20 junior rapporteurs were supposed to cover each of them, take detailed notes, and sort out the major themes to relay to our supervisors. In between, I tried to take selfies with as many of the important and famous people in attendance as I could track down. On the first day alone, I managed to snap a shot with Malin Falkenmark, a noted water scientist who is now in her nineties and yet still gave a talk; with Johan Rockström, who heads the Stockholm Resiliency Centre and is a leader in ecology and human impacts on the planet; and Mattias Klum, a very famous Swedish photographer (and it doesn’t hurt that he is very handsome, too). On the second day of the conference, the Swedish Prime Minister himself turned up! He was going to give the keynote speech, and it became my avowed mission to take a selfie with him, too. I clung, as inconspicuously as I could, close by the police roadblocks, and a fellow rapporteur who is better versed in these things told me about the type of car in which the Prime Minister might show up. We lingered and loitered, even as crowds were streaming into the lecture hall, and were rewarded when Angelica poked me and said: “there he is, Mejs, there he is!” I dropped my purse, bag, and jacket, and rushed over, cell phone camera in hand, but alas, there were too many black-suited men hurrying the processional along for me to dare to get closer, and then every time I tried tried taking a picture, something got in the way. So we rushed into the lecture hall, me conniving ways to ambush the Prime Minister the whole way. But I was thwarted by security at every turn, so I finally had to content myself with giving the Prime Minister a big smile all throughout his speech. He gave a very nice speech. He said things like: in Sweden, we can take a swim even in the middle of the city, because the water is so clean, but we still have challenges with chemical and pharmaceutical contaminants. And he added that Sweden is still committed to setting aside 1% of GDP to help relieve global poverty and inequalities, with an emphasis on improving clean water access. This got big applause.

Then, the Swedish Prime Minister addressed the president of the Marshall Islands, a hunched, rather pitiful man due to the fact that his country is slowly but surely sinking into the ocean, and who, when it was his turn to give a speech, never dared to lift his eyes from his note-cards. The Swedish Prime Minister said: “Mr. President, I share your quest for a fair, binding, legal agreement to keep temperature increases as far below 2 degrees Celsius as possible.” That also got applause.

After his speech, Angelica said she thought it was rather mediocre, and that he had merely said what she expects every Swedish Prime Minister to say, but I know that this is not true. No one has to say anything, and the fact that the Swedish Prime Minister says so many wonderful things is just, quite simply, wonderful.

The next night, we were all invited for a special dinner at the Crown Hotel at which the Crown Princess Victoria was in attendance. This time, it was not just me wanting a selfie wtih Victoria, but all the other junior rapporteurs, too. However, by now I was well-known to the security team, and one of them - whom I recognized from the day before - gave me an exasperated look that said, “don’t even think about it.” So we emerged selfie-less, but it was a classy, elegant, sparkling evening nevertheless.

World Water Week was not all chasing royalty and world leaders. I heard discussions about new innovations and cooperations all over the water world. One session included members from the Swedish Armed Forces, university researchers, the Swedish Rescue Squad, and the business community, discussing how each entity was cautiously starting to feel out working partnerships with the others in a quest to distribute water during natural disasters.

I also got a feel for how complex issues can be when I attended a debate on wetlands. One of the teams took the position that all wetlands in Africa ought to be drained! I thought for sure they were going to get laughed off the stage, but while the debate was indeed very entertaining, the Drain-All-Wetlands Team had a competent, though snarky, answer to every challenge from the pro-environment teams. It really showed me how complicated resource decisions can be. I saw how important dialogue and communication are. A lot of water scarcity issues are messy affairs that affect people of different cultures and countries all at once. For example, the Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA) is doing a lot of work in the Mediterranean in helping to build the space and structure for Palestine, Jordan, and Israel to create water-sharing partnerships peacefully. To be honest, it was a little hard for me to wrap my head around at first. Some of the sessions very bluntly said: our achievements are in convening meetings and having dialogues. “A bunch of talk” can seem a little insufficient and wishy-washy to meet a challenge as large as water access and shortages. But then, I started to realize that these dialogues, if structured properly, are among the most important work that can be done. They are building the venues through which countries can have the important conversations they must have about how to allocate water and how to combat corruption.The most inspiring session I attended centered on a Brazilian program called Cultivating Good Water. The program began in 2003, and this year they won the Water For Life “Water Best Practices” Award. I could soon see why, after listening to the speech of the Brazilian man in charge of it. He explained how they had planted 43 million trees and created passages to reconnect fish to a lake after a dam had blocked them, but those were just structural changes. At its core, the program was a big environmental education scheme. They have been able to get people onboard and to change behaviors without a single lawsuit. I especially loved it when he said: “We try to touch the hearts and minds of people, we never blame or point fingers. Rather than having and conquering, we try to get people to think about loving and caring.”

And he said even more: “We need research on how to train people to work with people. We need training in wisdom.” It left me with an overwhelming feeling of: oh, dear, I wish I knew how to do all this, seeing as I couldn’t even manage 20 seventh-graders just a week earlier!

The conference ended, we submitted all our notes, we had a final lunch together, and I was left with the unquiet realization that I had a mere 19 hours remaining in Sweden, out of which I had to pack, shower, sleep, and travel to the airport.

Before I could face doing all that, I got off the blue metro at Bergshamra, where if you walk five minutes you come to a beautiful stretch of water called Stocksundet. I sat there and wrote Dr. Sven-Erik a card (UNICEF, of course) in thanks for hosting me.

“Rather than having and conquering, we try to get people to think about loving and caring. We need training in wisdom.”

- Nelton Friedrich, World Water Week, 2015

Many thanks to the North Carolina chapter of the Swedish Women’s Educational Association who supported and funded this trip, and the UNC Geology Department Martin Fund.

Mejs Hasan

Before I could face doing all that, I got off the blue metro at Bergshamra, where if you walk five minutes you come to a beautiful stretch of water called Stocksundet. I sat there and wrote Dr. Sven-Erik a card (UNICEF, of course) in thanks for hosting me.

I wrote him first that I wished an earthquake could strike on the morrow which would hurt no one and nothing except for clinically destroying the airport, so that my stay could be extended; and then that I was tired and a little scared that it would be a long time before I again got to see the sunrise in Sweden, or see the half-moon rise over the water in Stockholm, or get to pick blackberries and blueberries and gooseberries abundantly wherever I went, and the birches! I would no longer see birches.

But, I think now that I was just skimming around what really I was a little scared of, and didn’t quite know how to express. I think I was touching on another fear altogether, more in communion with what the North Carolina author Thomas Wolfe means when he says, “you can never go home again.” The thought of never going ‘home’ to Sweden again is agony.

I feel a little better when I think of the things I got to do on that last happy trip: I played Idas sommarvisa and Härlig är kvällen, Fredful och Ren on a piano we chanced to find in the Linköping University cafeteria, to an audience of bemused students while Dr. Sven-Erik clapped; I spent the long hours on the plane and the train ride on my laptop, making animations about all lovely things in Sweden, and I hope that some Swedish person peeked over and felt glad to see his/her country represented with so much joy; and I got to eat Daim ice cream and breathe deeply of the clean, earthy smell in the Danderyd hospital metro stop, where I always transferred to the bus, and see spikey blades of grass and the broad shoulders of trees tugging softly onto the mist every morning, holding it close.What didn’t I get to do? I didn’t get to tell everyone just how much they mean to me; I didn’t get to explain just how beautiful I think the whole country is, just how important it is to me, just how haughty I’ve always acted in the US because although decades have made me a firm American devotee, it was always with the underlying sense that I was born in the very best spot of earth that ever has existed. Out of the billions or trillions of human species that have ever lived, I am one of the infinitesimally few who was born in Sweden. This realization has always been a bulwark against inconfidence, a stalwart ally when I am confused. Sweden is the very underpinnings of my faith in goodness, fairness, and love. But this is a grief-stricken, crippled world, where we are not allowed to love what we want to love for fear of being called delusional and stupid, where efforts to spread love are certainly never encouraged and always ignored, and where giving the very best of ourselves to the things most precious to us is not going to be enough. There is no respite, no haven, no chance to daydream, and only a constant unendurable dread that what happens tomorrow will be worse than what has already happened today.

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Annonspriser

$100 per år för en plats på vår hemsida och annonsen publicerad i årets nyhetsbrev.SWEA medlemmar får 20% rabatt.Kontakta webmastersweanc@hotmail.com om du är intresserad av att se din annons här.

Redaktörens raderHej igen, Hoppas du njuter av våren och att du hittade något läsvärt i det första nyhetsbrevet från SWEA 2016. Vill du bidra i nästa nyhetsbrev som kommer ut i juni? Har du gjort en resa du gärna berättar om, läst en bok du gärna rekommenderar eller besökt ett mysigt cafe? Saknar du något i nyhetsbrevet? Kontakta mig på liselottfiskerud@gmail.com så gör vi nästa nyhetsbrev ännu bättre tillsammans!Vårhälsningar från Liselott Fiskerud