Flea Market Saturday #2: Valkemmen (Welcome)

The thrill of flea markets and garage sales is not knowing what you'll find. And so it was when I began writing this week's FMS post.
I was going to tell you it's such a relief not to have to know several languages in order to read "foreign" blogs these days. That for instance, you don't have to know Swedish to enjoy Maria Berg's Allt kan grönska (Everything Can Be Green) because a Google Gadget like the one here will translate her words into 35 of the most common languages. That the translation may not be grammatically perfect for your particular language, but good enough. And to be aware the Follow widget only works in a page's original language.

After that, I was going to tell you about a delightful blog in Hampshire, England, and another in Provence, France.

But first I wanted a little something to dress up the paragraph about Maria's blog. Something with "Valkemmen", a word learned not from my American-born Swedish grandmother, but from seeing it everywhere within 10 miles of Lindsborg, Kansas. (One King of Sweden said Lindsborg was "more Swedish than Sweden", and I tend to agree.)

So I typed valkemenn into Google Images, and the City of Lindsborg medallion came up.

It wasn't what I was looking for, but being the curious sort I clicked on it anyway and landed on The Lope's "Valkomenn, Dalalope", the first of a series of articles about Lindsborg.

Dalalope, btw, is a play on Dala horse, wooden horse-like figures like the one on the medallion, and jackalope, a mythical rabbit with antlers.

So much for Hampshire and Provence until next Saturday...

The Lope has traveled all over the world from his home base of Hutchinson KS, and takes fabulous photos wherever he goes.

After visually feasting on images of Lindsborg, I was next enchanted by The Lope's in-depth tour of London's Sherlock Holmes Museum that rivals, and in some aspects even bests, most of the "official" Holmes sites.

But the piece de resistance was the breath-taking photos of the little-known full-size church hidden inside Via Christi Hospital (formerly St. Francis Hospital) in Wichita, Kansas.

Be forewarned if you go to The Lope, take a lunch. You'll be there awhile.

Oh, about the mailbox at the beginning of this post.

Back in 1981 or '82, a friend and I were driving around west of Bridgeport KS. We thought the mailbox was charming, so I snapped a pic. And another of the other side, which shows it belonged to Charles and Maxine MAGNUSON. I learned later that Charles is a cousin of some degree on Grandma Emma's side.

Just another example of 'never know what you'll find'!