thoughts

As a child, I often wondered why the leaders behind the iron curtain could not create countries where people wanted to live and stay. I thought it was crazy to spend so much effort on building walls and guarding their own citizens. At the age of 10, none of my friends were bothered but as a Swedish child and grandchild of East German refugees, I had a different perspective.

Visiting Two Berlins

The first time I visited GDR, or DDR as I learned, was with my high school graduating class in the mid 80’s. We had a few days in the sparkling West Berlin and then spent May 1st, The Workers’ Day, watching parades on the East side. I still remember the lack of happiness in people’s faces, just totally blank expressions. The only ones that looked happy, were kids sitting on their fathers’ shoulders waving flags, too young to understand. We were of course not allowed to take a single step without our guides. We spent a lot of time waiting and apart from a bus tour around town, we didn’t see much. Strange to think that the Wall has already been gone for longer than it existed. Growing up with it seemed like such a status quo and the Baltic States and the East Block, seemed so, so far away

The Berlin WallRead More »

May 9th, 1945 is when WW2 ended in Europe. That was also my grandmother’s 40th birthday and she had her hands full raising four kids. My mom was 8 years old and the second oldest. During the winter/spring of 1944/45, they spent many nights in the basement of their house in Eisenberg, Thüringen, Germany, listening to bombers heading east towards Chemnitz and Dresden. They went to bed, often hungry, in camping beds around their dining table, to make it faster to get 4 little kids down to the basement when the alarm sounded. 

My mom does not remember any end-of-war celebrations, only that the town eventually got a bit more lively, that people dared to talk to each other again and that American soldiers were handing out chocolate to the kids on the town square. There was a sense of relief that they had ended up in the American zone – until it was turned over to the Russians a few months later.

On days, when I find the current Corona situation particularly tough, I think of my grandparents who raised 4 kids during a flaming war.

May 9th, 1945Read More »

One of our favorite days is here – Poem in Your Pocket Day! Swedish poet Karin Boye (1900-1941) lived through a very chaotic time and many of her poems resonate more than ever right now. I’ll be carrying her poem “Nya Vägar” (translates to either “New Roads” or “New Ways”) in my pocket this year. A couple of years ago, we posted a funflector poem, “Portable Superhero“. Discussions around the dinner table has revealed that some of us prefer to carry our poem in our front pocket, others in the back pocket. Hmm…

Well, maybe you are wearing sweats and a T-shirt this year, so preferred pocket wouldn’t matter. Since you should stay at home if you can, the organizers at poets.org have suggestions for how to share your favorite poems virtually! They also have a poem collection that you can search by topic here.

Please tag @funflector on social media when you share your poem. We’d love to check it out and learn something new !

The funflector team / Elisabeth

Gen Z has suddenly and rapidly turned into Gen Zoom. Instead of dorm life, lectures and long nights at the library, they are now back home with their entire student life online only. Videoconferencing via Zoom or google classroom is the new normal for lectures, seminars and group work. Covid-19 or the coronavirus is turning many lives and families upside-down, requiring all of us to do our part and stay at home. Our college student is back home and last week classes picked up where they left off before spring break. When she left for college, I turned her bedroom into the funflector home office. Sheltering at home with college students was not on our radar! Now, we had to get creative in how we use the space in our small house.

Timesharing

Her bed is in a secluded part of the house, but without much daylight. As Scandinavians, we know in our bones how crucial daylight and also a view of trees and greenery are for our wellbeing, so we had to find a brighter spot for the desk. With the attitude of “let’s try this and if it doesn’t work, we’ll figure out a different solution,” we squeezed in a small desk and some office storage in the master bedroom. The room is sitting unused most of the day, is in a corner of the house and has a door to close, so it was the most undisturbed place we could think of.

Extra Internet Capacity for Students at Home

Creative Solutions for Sheltering at Home With College StudentsRead More »

Does the thought of Friday the 13th freak you out? Well, today is another one, and it even coincides with a full moon, called the harvest moon, for most of North America. In the eastern time zone, the full moon does not occur until half an hour into Saturday the 14th. Good or bad? Some people could not care less and will go on with their day as any Friday. Others will avoid leaving the house or closing deals and in the US alone, we loose almost a billion dollars in commerce on Friday the 13th’s. If you are one of those staying inside today, you can safely order some safety reflectors from our webshop. There are black cats, but also pink ones and the cutest kittens in white, pink and silver. Whichever you choose, they will all increase your luck in not getting struck by a car in the dark! Also, they will be just as effective on any other night as on Friday the 13th!

Friday the 13th With a Full Moon 🌝Read More »