Just Hilarie

The Lonely Sci-fi Life

On March 6, 2022

I’ve been watching a lot of science fiction TV series lately. Always by myself, since my husband doesn’t like that sort of stuff.

I spent a night on my sofa, binge-watching the 6th season of the Amazon Sci-fi series The Expanse. I had just gotten access to it and was only going to watch the first episode but then I got caught up in it and continued on to the second episode and then the third and by 2am I had finished the entire season. It was only 6 episodes after all. I had been waiting till the season was finished so that I could get all the episodes at the same time – so why not just watch them all at once? It’s just like what happens when you find a great book and just can’t put it down at the end of a chapter but continue reading each chapter after the other until you discover you have either been up all night or the book is done. Which ever comes first.

I also finished watching the Apple TV+ series, Foundation, based on Isaac Asimov’s Foundation books. I watched the first two episodes before the entire series landed. After those 2 episodes, I had very little desire to watch the rest. I spent a large part of those initial episodes exclaiming out loud, in rather bad language, what I thought of them. But I couldn’t hold out, curiosity and hope got the better of me and a few weeks after the first season ended I binged the rest – with lots more bad words escaping from my agonized throat. I decided that Isaac Azimov would be turning in his grave with what they did to his great story. Oh well, that’s what happens when other people think they know better than the original author.

After recovering from Foundation, I watched Disney’s The Mandalorian, mainly because it was there and I had heard about it. I liked The Mandalorian. Unlike very “woke” Foundation, it was old fashioned space opera sci-fi – with a gun-toting hero, space ships, lots of fast action, and lots of wild west style shootouts. But after the second season it started to get repetitive and boring and began to suffer from the Law of Success, which means producers keep a successful show going even though they have no new ideas for it. So I stopped watching.

In between all these shows, I also watched the second season of The Witcher, which technically isn’t sci-fi but I like looking at Henry Cavill. That’s enough reason for me. And I also like Fantasy…if it’s good fantasy and The Witcher is.

I have been a fan of Science Fiction since before my wisdom teeth came in. I read Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles when I was 11 and by the time I finished high school I had read everything by Bradbury, Asimov, and Heinlein that my dad had on his bookshelf.

The Winter Hare

By Hilarie

On January 10, 2022

In Life

It’s 4 am and I am still awake. I went to bed early, at 12.30, but lay there reading, not tired enough to fall asleep. And now it has become 4am. I give up any attempt at sleeping and get out of bed, looking towards the window. Beyond the mostly open blinds covering the window frame, the world is filled with multiple dark shades of blue light. It’s still night and still winter dark but instead of just darkness this bluish glow lights up the view from my bedroom window. I go to it and pull up the blinds. Off to the right is the lonely streetlight shining on the path behind my building. In the glow of the lantern I can see snow falling gently within the circle of light. At such times it always brings to mind the street light in winter Narnia that the children come to after leaving their closet. It looks magical.

The path, the trees, the bushes and everything else within view is covered in a layer of sticky snow. Not deep but deep enough to cover the grass tips. There is no wind so each flake stays where it lands. Here in winter Stockholm, when snow covers the world, the darkness recedes – even without a moon, just the white snow-filled clouds covering the sky and the fallen snow covering the landscape – and turns into monochrome blue with everything visible to the eye as though it was day.

I notice a misshapen dark blob on the surface of the new, untouched white snow just to the left of the lamppost.

A new season

By Hilarie

On November 14, 2021

In Family, Life, Pratt, Stavsnäs

To everything (turn, turn, turn)
There is a season (turn, turn, turn)
And a time to every purpose, under heaven*

Celebrating 70 with princesstårta

This summer, on the 29th of June, l shared a Princesstårta with a few friends at our country house, thus observing and commemorating the last day of my seventh decade and officially turning 70. Four days later, I celebrated beginning a new season and the start of my eighth decade, together with a much larger group of friends at a big party at our summer house.

OK… so I am now 70 years old. There is no new age box for when you reach 70. The highest seems to be simply 65+ as if over 65 is just one big blur. What does that mean?

Originally, I hadn’t planned on doing anything special to mark my seventieth birthday. All I really wanted to do was hide and pretend it wasn’t happening and just go on from there. But I got talked into celebrating by my long-time friend and summer neighbor, Barbara Eveaus. She insisted I had to have a party and it would be a breeze because she would take care of planning everything for the party. LOL…you can not say that to a control freak like me. I am compelled to take care of that kind of thing. So… I gathered the long list of email addresses, I designed the invitation, I composed the overly wordy email message that sounded just like me, and then…I pressed send.

Take the first step

By Hilarie

On February 5, 2021

In Uncategorized

As some of my readers might know, I sit on the board of a small Jewish organization here in Stockholm. Within the auspices of the larger official Jewish Community we offer as an alternative to the other religious services here, a Reform/Progressive service. During Corona times we do our services via the Zoom app. Since the beginning of autumn we have been doing regular Friday evening services, called Kabbalat Shabbat services. For our services, we use the relatively new prayer book that one of our board members Eva Ekselius compiled, translated, wrote, and designed. I helped with the production of the book by creating it in InDesign from Eva’s design.

This past Friday, January 29, 2021, I had the honor of giving the short sermon that our one hour service usually includes. A sermon usually should relate in some way to the portion of the Torah that was read the same week on Saturday morning. Since this blog is the place where I put most of my short written pieces, I figured I would include this speech here too.

The first step

This week’s parashat tells the story of how after leading our ancestors out of Egyptian slavery, Moses finds their way blocked by a great sea. In the Torah version, Moses obeys God’s command to “lift up his hands and the sea will part” – thus leaving dry land for the Israelites to walk across, on their way to finding freedom.

Now, that’s the Torah ’s version of events, the one we read aloud at our Passover seder tables. A spectacular miracle, to be sure, but something totally passive; missing the element of human purpose.

A different story is offered by the rabbis in the Babylonian Talmud. Here, in this version, the Israelites gathered at the water’s edge, Moses lifted his hands as God commanded… and nothing happened. The sea remained still.

Can you imagine the fear of the people at that moment? They were expecting another miracle by Moses to save them – and they get nothing bubkes.

Then, out of the crowd, walked a solitary figure: