Mikael Jolkkonen's Homes
Part 2: Life in AMERICA
As a foreigner in the USA, I can't help noting many peculiarities and - to me - mysteries with various American lifestyles and phenomena. For my own amusement, and maybe to some extent the amusement of other strangers to the American Way of Life, I am making some notes on this subject. Americans will probably not find anything they would think remarkable in my
Underligheter.
More strange aspects of life in America, especially for the Swedish readers.
Things you might not know, no matter how much TV you watch. In Swedish
only.
Said
and Done in America. Still more material from this intriguing society,
ranging from deep thoughts to utter hogwash. Includes some interesting
rulings from American courts of law.
The collection of "Pictures of America" is not available right
now, since the pictures have been taken down and sent to cleaning. Instead,
we offer a look at Miami as it was fifty to seventy years ago. The pictures
are selected after two criteria:
a) the motif still exists in a recognizable form today, and
b) it is familiar to us, meaning that we live nearby, like to visit the
place, etc.
Miami has gone through tremendous change since these pictures were taken,
mostly for the worse, but here are a few surviving
If
you wish to read the latest Miami news, you can access the biggest of the
local papers, the Miami Herald, over the adjacent link. It's not
very informative of the world events, though, and I seldom bother to read
it myself. Still, if you want to check the results from the latest baseball
games, drive-by shootings and other popular Florida sports, go ahead.
An alternative paper is the Miami New Times. It is a weekly magazine
with an ambition level 
which
is amazingly high for a free, advertisor-financed publication. In-depth
reports, environmental and social issues, muckraking, campaigning against
the ongoing bananarepublification of Miami's corrupt government, informed
reviews of film and music events, and generally a liberal outlook at the
society. No conventional news reports, though. Here we may have that often
heard of but seldom spotted capitalistic marvel: the cultural quality product
financed by advertising only. Perhaps made possible because the advertisers
are mostly local restaurants, sex services, gyms, cosmetic surgeons and
fortune tellers, none of which are likely to be easily offended by the
magazine's often controversial articles.
Those who know Swedish can read the story of how I tried to bake classic Swedish Yule bread in Florida. It's more difficult than one might think. Get the whole story of
You may also find it amusing to read some texts by other authors at