Mushrooms on Election Day
It's the day of the quadrennial elections, and we celebrated it by taking a walk in the nearby woods, picking mushrooms with the kids, before voting lefty. It's a good year for shrooms, and we had a basketful in little more than half an hour, only five minutes' bike ride from home. Most of what we found is Gypsy mushrooms. I'm cooking the water out of them now. Here's the kinds we got:
- Gypsy mushroom, Rynkad tofsskivling, Rozites caperata
- Slippery Jack, Smörsopp, Suillus luteus
- Velvet bolete, Sandsopp, Suillus variegatus
- Birch bolete, Björksopp, Leccinum scabrum
- Slimy Spike, Citronslemskivling, Gomphidius glutinosus
- Copper brittlegill, Tegelkremla, Russula decolorans
- Green brittlegill, Grönkremla, Russula aeruginea
- Flirt, Kantkremla, Russula vesca
- Terracotta hedgehog, Rödgul taggsvamp, Hydnum rufescens
- Common puffball, Vårtig röksvamp, Lycoperdon perlatum
In the voting room we met a lot of acquaintances, including our friend Eddie the goldsmith. He's a neo-pagan lefty Star Wars fan and a great woodsman. He noted with satisfaction that we had a few brittlegills, and a green glow of avarice lit in his eyes when we showed him the Gypsies -- a species he wasn't familiar with.
Early forecasts for the election results don't look so good: seems we may be saddled with one of our infrequent right-wing governments for four years. But it's no catastrophe. The big Swedish right-wing parties are really pretty decent compared to what you find in other countries. It would have been nice though to get the Christian Democrats kicked out of Parliament. At least we're unlikely to see any crypto-Nazi extreme-right populists there.
[More blog entries about elections, mushrooms, Sweden; valet, svamp.]
posted by Martin at 21:16
7 Comments:
Hmmm, politics and mushrooms??? Odd - I hate mushrooms and politics often enrages me, usually due to the incompetence of most of the politicians in North America. Interestingly enough, there's a talk at my favourite bookstore this week by their history expert-type guy on the life of King Charles XVI Gustaf of Sweden. May just have to go and check it out.
Ooops sorry - Carl, not Charles.
From a political point of view, Charles XVI Gustav is about as important a figure as Pee-Wee Herman. The last time a Swedish king tried to meddle in politics was in 1914.
Paradoxically, the innately undemocratic institution of monarchy enjoys great popular support in Sweden. I find it really embarrassing.
Well, there you go, the centre-right aliance has won. I tried to do some research on them and it sounds like they're closest in ideology to the Progressive Conservatives, especially here in Alberta (thank god Ralph Klein is retiring...). Ugh, I feel bad for Sweden. And don't they now want to bring in the Euro (which they were opposed to originally) or was I looking at old information? What impact would this have on Sweden's economy?
I wish I knew what you seem to know about mushrooms. I only pick chantarells and possibly Karl Johan-svamp, whatever that is in English.
As for the Euro I think that is reasonable to believe that there will be a new referendum about it. On the other hand I think we'd have that regardless of who is in power. I'd say that all the politicians (possibly excluding the former communist party and the green party) want it and I'm sure we will get it. I'm not sure if that would be a bad thing or not. I'm not all that impressed with this whole state thing that the concept of protecting the national currency implies. I live where I live and I don't care that much if it's called Sweden, Europe or Blatchnia. There are much more interesting issues.
I agree with Hans, I don't care much what state or federation I live in as long as it has decent humanistic legislation. In my circles, patriotism is a joke and nationalism is a dirty word.
As for the euro, it seems that not even the national economists can agree whether it would be good or bad for the country's economy. To me it's just money. Actually, it would be convenient not to have to change when travelling. So I say bring on the euro.
A scary thing though: the crypto-Nazis got 1/5 of the votes in Landskrona, a small municipality (pop. c. 9500) in southern Sweden.
Monarchies these days are outdated concepts that no longer work. We ditched the queen years ago although she still appears on almost ALL our currency. She's not even Canadian....
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