The FMTSO theme this week is Human Labor: “Show us the laborers of your town that make it what it is today and keep it going on a daily basis.”
Well. My town this week went a little bit beyond “on a daily basis”. But it did involve a lot of Human Labor…
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Some fresh flowers had to be planted around town. (Sorry, I did not get a picture of that, but you know how that’s done, don’t you.)
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A very special meal had to be prepared by students at the restaurant school. I was not invited, so could not take pictures of that either.
But here is a dessert prepared by the same (or other) students at that school back in May (and which I did have the pleasure of eating).
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A special toilet had to be renovated. Here’s the queue:
Just kidding… But it’s inside that building!
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And then the town sculptures all had to be tied into knots…
… Kidding again, but some of them were cleaned and polished extra …
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A lot of blue ropes also had to be put up and tied into knots:
… or held up manually, if there was nothing else to tie them to:
And policemen made sure the public stayed on the right side of them.
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The Press did their job…
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And people who had nothing better to do (like me) just hung around:
… waiting to watch these people do their job …
King Carl XVI Gustaf and Queen Silvia
Their job today was to visit our town’s refuse recycling plant
(I wonder if that gave them good appetite for lunch?)
and then to go for a 1 hour walk in our town center
and park, looking at some of all our sculptures.
(I do hope those shoes the queen was wearing
are more comfortable than they look.)
Smiling and waving is included in the job description.
~ Bye! ~
… … …
The sculpture of the gun tied into a knot is
Non-Violence by Carl Fredrik Reuterswärd.
The sculpture stands in a little park
named after a Swedish Minister of Foreign Affairs,
Anna Lindh, who was assassinated in a shopping center
in Stockholm on 10 September 2003.
… … …
Whatever opinion one may have of the King’s and Queen’s “jobs”… and monarchy vs republic etc… I have to say that today’s event made quite an impression on me. Not because I’m all that devoted a royalist; but seeing the king and queen in the Anna Lindh park with that non-violence memorial, and then be able to “follow them around” through the town center, was quite a powerful reminder that it is far from self-evident to be able to have a public event like this at all.
From the local newspaper: The King’s and Queen’s sculpture walk.
The Non-Violence sculpture is No 3 on the map.
