Little Joys

I wrote up my visit to Scandinavia House to see the Tove Jansson documentary for Gerry at New World Finn, so I'll just briefly mention that it was just wonderful! and you can get a little taste of the experience by reading these selections from Notes from an Island (Anteckningar från en ö, Schildts, Helsinki, 1996), her memoir of this time which provided the narration for the film. Sophia Jansson was a delight and spoke warmly of her aunt and her partner Tooti, who actually took most of the super-8 films that made up the documentary. And yes, the Finnish-American world is very small, so I shouldn't have been so surprised to run into my friend Ulla Suokko, the delightful flutist, storyteller, healer and now she tells me -- flamenco musician. We had a great time catching up and, of course, Ulla knows everyone, so she was introducing me to people left and right.



More joyful serendipity came from Gene's ceaseless efforts to find amusing and odd things on the web: The Complete Idiot's Guide to Harry Nilsson. Now I have been a Harry Nilsson fan for many years, but even I found out things I did not know there. The very best was the mention of the album Flash Harry which I had never heard of before and was not released over here. It includes Eric Idle(!) and has Harry singing the Monty Python tune "Bright Side of Life." Hearing that really made my day -- thanks, sweetie!