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Updates log from your
webmaster
- an intermittent journal of
what's happening at AFU
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January 1, 2012 |
Finally some time for an update here,
see Recent donations for the latest AFU parcel from Norway.
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22 July - December 16 |
Five months that have changed
AFU (again..). On July 22 a severe
thunderstorm - by local news media termed 'the
rainstorm of a century' - hit Norrkoping. Large parts of the town
were flooded. AFU was no exception. Three of our (then)
seven venues had a few centimeters of water all over the floors.
In some ways 'the AFU planning system' with many smaller facilities
spread geographically over a residential area, and with all of our
collections at least 10 centimeters above floor level, proved
successful.
No one has counted the
hundreds and hundreds of hours we have now
put in to regain our strength after the July 22 storm. Luckily,
damages on collections were minor and only included three
soaked books that had to be tossed away and a donation of (mostly
non-unique) magazines from our Norwegian friend Ole Jonny Braenne.
These items were temporarily kept directly on floors as the rain
hit. The real drawback appeared later when our three
fate-stricken facilities were inspected by representatives of our
landlords. Most flooring and skirting-boards in the three places
were soaked and has to be removed and the venues dried out before
new flooring. Sort of a night-mare for an archive with lots of heavy
shelves resting on the floors.
While depressing at first,
the catastrophe made us look for new alleys to handle the AFU
future. With help from the landlord we soon found a nice
above-ground-level venue, close to several of our basements, to help
us start a chain of castling maneuvers. Our 'work base', the 'A'
facility was evacuated in mid-November and a gang of ten people
spent one Saturday moving our report and clipping collections, plus
six work-places to the new over-ground venue. The old one is
currently being dried out with dehumidifiers working around the
clock for weeks. Early in 2012 the 'A' facility will become the 'new
Evans library' to house the psychology and folklore parts of the great
Hilary Evans book collection. The nice thing will be that our two
libraries will now be in two adjacent houses, just across a yard.
Our librarian Ingrid will probably move into the Evans library with
her cataloguing department.
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March 7 - August 6 |
I realized that writing a daily
(sort of...) 'blog' stole so much time and energy from other work
in my professional life and, especially, at AFU. The Hilary Evans
library has been my main task this spring and summer with some
interruptions for other collections and a lot of administrative work
to keep AFU on foot. We now have our first salaried full-time
employee, which is a great step forward. In the mean I work four-six
hours every day with sorting and cataloguing collections,
with our economy and planning our projects. So, there is a limit...
If you are curious about what's
happening here at AFU you always have the Clas Svahn
blog and the
Håkan Blomqvist
blog
to inform you. Both written in Swedish but with a lot of pictures
for those who want a general feeling about AFU's work. You can
always use Google translate to aid with the Swedish!
 |
The soul
of Hilary Evans left this plane of existence on July 27.
I found this photo in a small booklet, Little book of BIG
ideas, published in 2009 as a promotion for the
Mary Evans Picture Library. A little fuzzy, when scanned
from the printed page, yet I think it says so much about the
great couple that created the fabulous picture library which
financed one of the finest private book & magazine
libraries, anywhere in the world.
Every day I stand in wonder
over the old 19th century volumes on spiritualism, folklore,
apparitions of the Virgin Mary, magic and the Devil, the
witchcraft trials during the 15th century, or the haunting
of British estates; or the more modern collection of books
on psychology, religious sects and psychiatric maladies that
might explain some of our elusive reports.
The Evans collection helps
us widen our horizons. Everything he collected seems
relevant in a broader picture of our world and of our
beliefs. Read Clas Svahn's English
blog
on Hilary or the obituaries,
here and
here. I will always remember the cozy and silent man who
spent a night with us in 1996 and probably told his Mary, as
he got home, about our two lively Westie dogs. |
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March 6 |
Continued cataloguing Evans'
mags for another three hours before
today's visitors arrived from nearby Finspång. You can see our
guests Göran and Jan-Eric (plus yours truly) on Håkan's Swedish blog
today - plus some new pictures from the Evans library which
Håkan has built so patiently throughout recent weeks, no less than
33 IKEA Billy shelves....
Jan-Eric was an active
UFO-Sweden field investigator in the counties bordering on
Norway, in the west, about two decades ago, but has since moved with
his family to Finspång (just 20 kilometers from Norrköping and the
archives). We gave them a tour of the archives, but I had to break
with the company not to miss out on the nice Sunday lunch provided
by my sister, where we also met my sister's son, his new fiancée and
their two nice dogs. My fiancée got the 'dog sickness' again,
wanting us to buy a another dog when I go into pension. I once
happened to say that I could have the dog as an 'archives dog', with
me to AFU, each day, when I start to work there. She doesn't forget
that glimpse of hope of having a dog. |
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March 5 |
Catalogued Hilary Evans' magazine
collection at the 'D' archives. This is a hefty collection to
say the least! The new laptop for cataloguing works perfectly but
the needed system backup (for recovery) took more time than expected
so I had to leave the archives with the laptop turned on. |
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March 2-4 |
A few days overexposed to the
mysteries of raising the rents for 10.000 households in the town.
One of the evenings I worked late until 19.30 - so very
little time for AFU. |
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March 1 |
Håkan B and me have been at
the archives for a few hours this evening.
I have catalogued some Evans books and magazines while Håkan built
four-five new Billy shelves in the 'Evans' library. |
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Febr 28 |
Nine o'clock in the morning
Gunilla Holmlund came to visit the archives to donate a collection of
Swedish and Finnish books, plus some clippings from Finnish
newspapers. The collection was inherited by her from her father
Henry Holmlund who had lived his life in the Swedish-speaking
eastern district of Finland where he worked as a musician and
choirmaster in Lovisa. A very valuable donation of Finnish materials
to AFU. I catalogued it in the afternoon. Out of some 30+ books no
less than 17 were new titles/editions in our inventory! An unusually
high hit per cent! I gave Gunilla a tour of all our archives and
then we all enjoyed the coffee bread she had brought with the AFU
staff.
About 15.30 Clas came in a
rented car from Mariestad with a heavy piece of furniture that
AFU will help keep safely under roof for some time. He also brought
some books and archives materials, including another donation from
Finland. More to come on this! Tobias also came by to handle over
the new AFU lap top computer which I will use for 'mobile
cataloguing' throughout our facilities. In stead of carrying
materials to the library computer for cataloguing I will bring the
computer to where we presently have materials that need cataloguing.
Pictures from the day on Clas'
blog.
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Febr 27 |
Biked to the archives
in the evening and started to catalogue bound volumes from the
Hilary Evans magazine collection. The gold letters on the privately
bound, orange-red volumes are nice but nearly impossible to read.
Black letters would have been better. |
|
Febr 26 |
In between carrying our
furniture & all other things back to the
kitchen and to fiancées room, and helping fiancée with cleaning up,
I have managed some AFU administration like paying a bill for three
of our most recent computers and doing some needed updates on this
web. A new donation from Finland is credited today on Recent
donations. |
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Febr 25 |
Since Wednesday
a painter has been redecorating our kitchen and fiancées room. New
painting, a decorative wall paper on one of fiancées walls and
dark-brown painting on one of the kitchen walls. Result is quite
striking! This evening we rested in front of the TV and the
Swedish-Norwegian Skavlan show, but tomorrow we will take the
bull by its horns and clean up the mess after the painter was here.
n |
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Febr 24 |
After regular work, I spent a few
hours at the AFU libraries, again, finishing off Ingrid's
work (yesterday) on the last batch of Hilary Evans UFO titles. Some
final comparing of book quality (what copy to save in our
library..?) and signed titles that were to be exchanged for
non-signed copies in the prime collection. Books singed by
ufological luminaries like 'Geo Adamski' and 'Jacques Vallée'. I
made a small 'book mountain' of all the books we carried over
yesterday that belonged to the Clancarty Library for Ingrid to work
on next week. |
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Febr 23 |
Another full day at AFU
(tolling on my shrinking saved-up vacation
account). First, me and Ingrid carried four paper bags of Contact
International books from the 'E' to the 'B' library where Ingrid
will catalogue them. It seems we are now almost finished with the
Hilary Evans UFO collection, unless there are some residues left in
unopened boxes not marked 'U' (for UFOs). The Contact International
library, packed in November by Clas and Anders P during their UK
tour, has hundreds of books, many of them marked 'Clancarty Library'
or simply signed by 'Brinsley le Poer Trench', once probably coming
from the lord's private collection.

I also paid a first visit to our
new audio digitization 'centre' where Claes and Oskar just
started transforming hundreds of roll-to-roll audio tapes from the
BUFORA archives to a digital format. The two merry guys have made a
bright start of it all with some of the smaller tapes from BUFORA
meetings as a first test batch. Thanks to 'Bebbe', a third guy in
the gang (Håkan L who worked previously for us is the 4th guy in
this knowledgeable 'electronic technology' gang), we 'borrow' two
work places in their facility against a regular monetary
compensation and against us paying for an internet broadband
connection in the facility. This facility is behind the door next to
our own 'D' archive. Maybe we should call it 'D-b'? Five days a week
two BUFORA tapes will continuously be on their tape recorders to be
migrated into their computers. This will go on for two years, unless
the guys get regular jobs. Next we need to acquire some hefty hard
disk drives - audio files suck a lot of memory space!
This is a win-win situation
first suggested by Bebbe where we can employ two of his friends on
'Phase 3' jobs, paid for by the government and also give them
something back, including something meaningful to do (compared to
less meaningful 'Phase 3' positions). In the pictures above
(left) Oskar's station with the tape recorder inherited from
BUFORA and (right) Claes sitting in front of his own work
station with his own private tape recorder. The guys generously lend
much of their equipment and technical skills to the project. This is
so great! |
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Febr 22 |
Tomorrow a painter will start
working in two of the rooms of our flat.
Fiancée and me spent the whole evening carrying furniture, carpets
and other things over to the other two big rooms, heaping things
like what you see careless people do on strange soap series on the
commercial channels... |
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Febr 21 |
Spent a nine hour day at work
trying to squeeze out as many needed changes to our company's flat
rents as possible checking data from our maintenance files for our
10.000+ flats. Changes of floor coverings, a new double
fridge/freezer or better standard for scavenging should result in an
altered rent, according to our rents model. I found changes that
affect almost 1.800 of the flats - some rents up, some rents down.
Tomorrow I will turn over the resulting files to my colleague who
will work on it for about a week before it will be returned to me
for finalizing the rents on our next invoices. I calculated that the
total rent for the AFU facilities will rise from 5896 SEK to 6055
SEK, or about 2,7 per cent. |
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Febr 20 |
Me and my sister visited our
uncle and gave him back all the things we
have borrowed from him to help him handle his life while he was
sick, including the keys to his apartment. The man has a very
suspicious mind so I had written a long list of things that were now
returned, and had him sign the list as a receipt. Without this one
never knows what one can be accused of. We both sighed with relief
as we left. |
|
Febr 13 |
My workmate worked for J.
Allen Hynek... Thomas is a middle-aged man
who has been my workmate for 6-7 years. He was very surprised when
he first learned that I worked with UFO research & archiving in my
spare time. For a couple of weeks, in his youth as a student in
Evanston, Illinois, in the 1960s, he had worked for the astronomer
J. Allen Hynek, helping him to sort out some papers. The work was
not related to UFOs but Thomas learned about Allens engagement with
UFO research. This is the kind of synchronicity that continue to
surprise me, now and then. Like when I asked for the book written by
Swedish fortean Elis Sidenbladh at the library and the surprised
librarian told me that another library customer had just asked for
Sidenbladh's book on clockworks, just a few days before. Sidenbladh
had two main interests (besides being a statistician): strange
phenomena and clockworks. So what is the probability for things like
that... |
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Febr 12 |
AFU hours.
Had e-mail exchanges with the CEO of a small IT company that may be
able to help us with a library license for Microsoft programs. We
agreed to meet next Wednesday. We do need programs that can be run
on our computers, lawfully. Our old second-hand computers
have all come with previously installed programs paid for by private
persons (like myself) so we really haven't done anything unlawful,
yet... We haven't cheated on Mr. Gates. With five new computers
bought during 2010-2011 we need, however, to have a definite policy
in this area. Open Office is of course a much, much cheaper
alternative but on the other hand Microsoft may want to sponsor us?
Maybe like a streak of luck from heaven this Monday we will be
interviewing a man who has worked with Open Office and computer
networks throughout his life. He may be interested in a 'Phase 3'
job with us.
Talked to my uncle
and we agreed that I will finish off my work helping him out with
his economy next weekend. He is a very suspicious old fellow so we
had better part ways with each other. Then I walked in the
sunshine to AFU where I met Håkan B who had just finished
building the first four Billy shelf sections (out of 34 that we just
got) and had filled them with books from the boxes that Clas and
Anders P packed in Hilary's London home in late November. Håkan soon
headed home, after a couple of hours of work, and I took up the
baton. After some cataloguing, and sorting out another heap of Evans
books for Ingrid to catalogue; after a coffee break with a semla;
and after carting one of our new computers and the BUFORA tape
recorder from the 'C' to the 'A' facility (where we will establish a
digitizing work station), I went back to the 'E' facility to
continue unwrapping another four Billy shelves for Håkan to work on,
probably tomorrow. |
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Febr 11 |
Our 8th facility?
A 45 square meters facility will soon be available
with the same main entrance as our new 'E' (Evans) library. There
are three localities with the same entrance and we may soon have two
of the three. This may be another brick in 'the AFU building'
(eventually the 'E' facilities may become our new library
center where we could also occupy the hallway with our shelves).
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Febr 10 |
My recurrent nightmare dream.
For decades I have had a strange dream about a semi-secret archive
facility in between our old and new AFU facilities in the Ljura
residence area of Norrkoping. This is kind of a 'shadow archive'
in a basement floor that contains all the rarities we have
almost never heard of and which is just available to us at very
definitive points in time, like it was behind an SF-like portal or
gate in time. I am the only one who has visited this facility and,
in my dream, I have a hard time to describe where it is,
geographically, to my AFU colleagues. I have woken up up many
times feeling anxiety and sweating over this lost archive. It has
become less frequent during recent years. Maybe because the shadow
library has taken substance in the real 'B' and 'E' (Evans)
libraries?
After lunch I biked to AFU,
today, to take delivery of 34 new IKEA Billy shelves that came by
lorry. We will surely have a lot to do during the coming weeks,
building our new library. Håkan B. has posted some first pictures on
his Swedish
blog. |
|
Febr 9 |
My job is advertized all over
the town. You can see the advertisement
posters all over Norköping, announcing 12 job positions available
from my employer. The 12 will be "new players in our team" and each
one has a numbered sports dress, from one to twelve. Like a football
team. Well, we all know the company executives are a little football
crazy (with sponsorships to several football teams) so there is no
surprise here. My own job as "business system specialist" comes out
at as #1 in the team. Maybe I am sort of the goal-keeper, my
knowledge of the numbering of dresses in a football team is
absolutely nil!

It is of course a curious
feeling to see your own dear old job on display like this, open
for someone else to seek. My early pension at 61 is getting closer
with each day! I will have absolutely no trouble finding other
things to do but I will miss my job very much. |
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Febr 8 |
According to my order
confirmation from IKEA the preliminary
delivery date for our 34 shelves was today. In the afternoon a guy
from IKEA phoned to report that delivery had been set for February
10. OK with me, I could stay at work where I will be very much in
need during the coming weeks. Every minute of time is needed to work
out the puzzle of the new rents and cost debiting. The negotiations
for new rents in our 10.000 apartments has, finally, three months
belated, resulted in an agreement. The upcoming month will be rather
hectic.
Biked to AFU after work.
First, I checked up a long sale offer listing from a French
researcher where I found about a dozen items that would of interest
for us to buy. Then, I catalogued a bag full of Clas Svahn
(mint condition) book titles, checking them against our book
database & shelves. This small collection comes from the home of
Clas' deceased father and mother and all are autographed by the
author. All were added to the collection with previous copies,
not autographed, withdrawn for our sale shelves. I also had
the time for a walk to some of our other facilities to lighten
them up as a preparation for tonight's showing of the archives.
For about two hours we entertained a company of Håkan's
workmates from the Norrkoping community library with information on
AFU, our history, our aims and our work - and of course a grand tour
of our facilities. You can find some pictures on Håkan's blog
here. A very nice evening ending with cider and canapés,
discussing UFOs around our coffee table. |
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Febr 7 |
No updates possible here
during past weeks due to a log-in problem. My password had a 90 days
limit but that problem is now solved. This was another vacation
day - off from work - and at AFU. Our new co-workers
Claes and Oskar started their two year 'term' with us today, on the
digitizing projects. They will both work in the 'C' archive in
company with Leif and Benny. There will be four pairs of hands in
the digitizing team, and, in the end, two will be working on
documents while the other two work on audio files, with some
flexibility possible.
Leif gave us all an authoritative
crash-course of the work procedure for scanning the BUFORA, Contact
International and FSR files that he has developed. Leif is an
effective guy who also managed to install and put into work two of
the three eMachines computers delivered at our door, shortly before
noon. He also put into work our second A3 scanner connected to one
of the eMachines.
The second new PC was
installed by Leif at Elisabeth's workplace replacing my
'ex-computer' (one of them) that I once donated to AFU (two
PC-generations back!) and on which we have kept the ScanCat reports
database during past years. Finally we will have some modern gear!
While Leif was doing this, I tried to figure out how to activate the
Microsoft Office program suite on Leif's and Elisabeth's new PC's.
It seems there is but one solution, we will have to crawl to
the cross and buy a Microsoft 'volume license' for a larger number
of AFU machines, maybe as many as ten. I found a local dealer and
will get their prices tomorrow. During lunch eight of us
walked to the Hageby shopping center to have us a good meal paid for
by money from the unemployment agency. Thank you, 'Arbetsförmedlingen'!
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Febr 6 |
Spent six hours in the afternoon at
the AFU archives. Almost 'in the doorway' I met Håkan B who had
spent four morning hours, tidying things up before the planned visit
to AFU by a number of his library colleagues this coming Tuesday. In
this afternoon I visited five of our facilities several times,
mostly carrying books & other things from one to the other.
Finished-off with a few hours of cataloguing and some research in
our collections on commission by some of our international contacts.
Scanned the front cover of one Norwegian book and emailed the
result, located (for a British contact) the issue of a Japanese
magazine where there are photos from a visit by Brinsley le Poer
Trench (in 1966), and checked out the feasibility to scan a larger
number of articles from an American magazine for a US researcher.
Since most of this magazine is in bound volumes we soon need to
acquire a book scanner! |
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Jan 30-Febr 5 |
A week mostly spent at work
(6 hours per day) but with 3 hour afternoons at the AFU library,
cataloguing materials from the rich Hilary Evans' collection. Ingrid
and I have now catalogued a formidable 1.750 books from the Evans
collection! |
|
Jan 29-30 |
Saturday spent with my
uncle's problems. On the Sunday he, then,
phoned my sister and rewarded me with the words that he doesn't
trust me anymore! The coward doesn't have the guts to tell it
directly to me. How can I help that he has become old and forgetful
where he places things? It's himself that he should not trust, but
who can tell him that? And he is eating too much pain medicine that
darkens his brain. What can one do? After a sleepless night I have
decided to get my 'new-born' uncle back out of my life as soon as I
can manage but I will have to do it the right way not to create even
more trouble. I would have found the time for him if he had
correctly understood my very friendly and interested intentions. As
far as I know, no one else has previously categorized my pour soul
in the way that my uncle did. |
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Jan 26-28 |
Back in full swing again
after a sick Tuesday at home. At work I am
doing some cleaning up of 'old projects' to prepare for my
retirement later this year. Then, each day, after work, I have spent
3-4 hours at the AFU library doing catalogue work on the Hilary
Evans collection. We have now credited Evans for more than 1.400
volumes in our library - and we have but started the work on the
hundreds of boxes that contain his life's work. More and more we are
having three mint condition, or near perfect, copies of so
many UFO-related books... Talked to my uncle who is seemingly
a little angry and a little dissatisfied with my work on his economy
and tends to fantasize up things. I made a couple of phone calls to
make things happen and plan to visit my uncle on Saturday to
straighten out some things.
Clas reports
on
his blog that his Mac computer has died completely after six
years of service. A computer that crashes is like an old friend, or
family member, who suddenly leaves this world. First you get angry
(why...? and why at this very moment...?); then you start to morn;
then the work to recover all that was lost begins. I understand that
Clas has lost parts of his most recent book and will have to back
track what he has just done. |
|
Jan 25 |
Stayed at home feeling
nauseated and with a slight fever. Did
manage, however, a short tour downtown to eat my weekly raggmunk
at the library and to shop some household things. Otherwise quite a
dead day in my life! Nearly no AFU work at all. Clas phoned
to report, however, that he has just had a meeting with people at
the FOI (Defence Research Institute) to discuss and plan the
scanning of their official Swedish UFO report files, also reported
on his blog.
|
|
Jan 24 |
Felt tired and nauseated
when I had arrived at the library after completing work, so I
decided to walk home before the sickness would grab hold of me
completely. Probably same sickness as my sister had about a week ago
(and a few days later she had the winter vomit disease - sincerely
hope I will not follow her down that line...). Håkan mailed me that
he is planning a tour of AFU libraries and archives with his
colleagues at the Norrkoping community library, on February 8.
|
|
Jan 22-23 |
Fiancée and me motored to Örebro
to visit her mother and stay the night. We bought food at a nearby
Chinese restaurant that would have been enough for feeding ten
persons. We ate Chinese chicken and fillet for lunch for three days
in a row. |
|
Jan 21 |
Another four hours cataloguing
books at the library after work. How can I describe this silent
work in words without repeating myself? |
|
Jan 20 |
Spent another four hours at
the library with the Evans collection.
Ingrid and I have by now checked/catalogued well over 500 items. The
enormous task ahead has me focused. I am slowly moving forward, one
book/booklet after the other. I feel extremely calm while doing the
job. I will bring the library USB stick with me to Örebro for the
weekend to try and get some editing job done on the database while
me and fiancée visit her mother. |
|
Jan 19 |
The morning hours I spent on an
outdoors job for my (prof.) work in the southern suburbs of
Norrköping. My fingers almost froze as I tried to work my pen and
digital camera to document some things that need to be recorded in
our central database. Worst of all was the low sun in the south east
that almost blinded me!
Then I biked to the 'C' archive
to meet Leif and Benny (after emptying the post box and a lunch
in Hageby). I received their 'wish lists' of new things needed in
the project. Of course one or two computers for scanning/sound
digitizing, a hard disk drive for Benny, waste paper baskets,
electric cabling, and some other office equipment. No problem since
we received our monthly contribution from the unemployment agency
today! That money should cover everything we need for the second
phase of our digitizing project. When, later, UFO-Sweden's money
arrives (for invoices sent to them) I will also order some 30-35
Billy book cases for the new Evans library. Not having to dig deep
into once own pockets, or crawling on our knees before our group of
sponsors, is quite an unusual feeling. To be self-sufficient with a
good portion of money is a revolution in our world. We are not
talking about "millions" here but just the "regular" money we have
always needed, but never had. Until now.
Teamwork.
The cataloging of the Hilary Evans collection is a fine example of
teamwork. Håkan B has, first, sorted the UFO books in carrier bags.
The bags are then carried over to the main library by Sven-Olov and
Susanne. Then I, myself, have done a preliminary sort where books
are divided between "new titles", "probably new titles" and "well
known titles/editions". The last group (probable 2nd, 3rd, etc copy
for our collection) is then cared for by Ingrid, while I spend more
time on the first two groups. I sort out letters, postcards and
publisher advertising found inside the books. After Ingrid has
catalogued new 2nd/3rd copies and, maybe, finds that this is the 4th
copy, not needed by us, I again take another look at the book.
I take it to the shelf where the
previous three copies are kept and compare the quality of the
book itself, the quality of the dust jacket, possible dedications by
the book's author, and other conditions, before I decide which of
the four copies at hand should be sorted out to be sold on eBay.
This is a time consuming job. Mint condition books are nearly always
kept by us, while worn books are put on sale. But there are also
cases where we already have three mint condition books and get
another 4th book of the same quality that can be sold for good money
for the foundation. Finally, I take all "for sale" books over the
'C' facility where Håkan sorts them into the proper alphabetical
order on our sale shelves. Hopefully soon we will be able to market
a fine selection of books for international customers. |
|
Jan 18 |
No work at home for our
Russian lady. The unemployment agency
phoned, while I was at work, to report that they couldn't approve
that the Russian lady works from her home even though it's close by
our archives and she could come to us and socialize and exchange
work materials. From that perspective we cannot employ her since we
have no workplace that would be good for her. After work: Another
evening spent at the 'B' library, cataloguing books. What else?
|
|
Jan 17 |
Four new "Phase 3" applicants today. Vacation day from work,
again (my workmates mocks me because of all my short vacations -
without going to Thailand...),
came to AFU at 9.30. Not yet possible to bike, had to walk. First
applicant, a lady of Russian descent, arrived at 10. We discussed a
possible project for her: translating/summarizing original Russian
reports in our files. Since we cannot find a good work place in our
facilities the work would have to be done at home with regular
visits to our headquarters for exchange of materials. At 11, during
our coffee break, the second applicant arrived. A lady, a refugee
from the Balkans. We will probably engage her in work with our
clipping archives but there are also other possible tasks for her,
like being a participant in the international scanning project.
After talking to many people I spent a few hours in the library with
the Evans collection. |
|
Jan 16 |
Up at nine and arrived at the
archives at eleven to meet Clas who came from Stockholm with a
carload of mainly Flying Saucer Review archives materials. This is
the second delivery of FSR correspondence and background material
from what Clas and Håkan E gathered during the UK tour in the spring
of 2010. Still, it's just a small part of what's stored in a garage
in the UK. I should have photographed the shelf where we put this up
(for our digitizing) but I did remember to preserve Clas
Svahn's first visit to our new Evans library in a photo. Here, the
man surrounded by the five tons of material he has organized the
saving of, for posterity (and, in some cases, future digitizing):

To the left, close by Clas's hip
are the many boxes crammed with invaluable BUFORA roll-to-roll tapes
from lectures and witness interviews since the early 1960s, and the
BUFORA report archives. There is also parts of the Contact
International/Lord of Clancarty archives including some early
magazines which are absolutely unique. We opened some of the boxes
to get a taste of it all... The E library is full of boxes but empty
from shelves. In couple of months we hope to have a full set of new
IKEA shelves here. With time we hope to have organized the combined
Evans-AFU library of books on mainly parapsychology, occultism and
religion here, as a 'daughter' library to our main library.
|
|
Jan 15 |
Saturday at home, mostly doing paper
work for AFU. Phoned five people who have
stated their interest in a "Phase 3" position with us. We have now
appointments with four of them for meetings/interviews on Monday. I
will be off-work (one of the very last vacation days from 2010 that
I have saved up..). One of the ladies I talked to had unfortunately
gotten another "Phase 3" job so we lost her. All because of my
tardiness! Talked to Clas on the phone who suggested that we use one
of the ladies we will meet, of Russian decent, for translating basic
data from the Russian ufo cases we have archived in 14-15 file
folders. Clas and Stefan brought the material from Moscow many years
ago. This is original letters written by Russians to a Soviet ufo
research organization. Great idea to maybe use the Russian lady for
such a project.
Did some scanning. First
documents concerning a case from the 1946 wave where a luminous ufo
collided with and cut off electric cables. Christer will try his
hands on an English translation. Then I scanned three recent
news clippings which I sent off to subscribers on our yahoo mailing
list. We have some ten subscribers. More would be welcome. Swedish
clippings on UFOs are getting rarer and rarer with each year.
Compared at least to all the Wisconsin clippings that Rich Heiden
sends us through his mailing list. Some weekends my mailbox
is swamped with 20-25 clippings from Wisconsin! I have a feeling
that much of Swedish media interest in UFOs now comes through
radio/TV media so I sent off an inquiry to Infopaq, today, for the
cost of a widened surveillance of media. But, I doubt this, since
only the news papers cost us 2.300 SEK each months. Dreaming of more
is probably just a dream. |
|
Jan 14 |
One of those days when a lot of "AFU"
things happened. Had an email that Anders H will stay with us,
work training, another couple of weeks. Then had a phone call from
the unemployment agency concerning a person they want to place as a
"Phase 3" person with us. I promised to contact her during the
weekend. And my boss came by to tell me that my job was now
advertised on the unemployment agency's web. Another step towards
pension. If you are interested in my job - make a run for it!
Walked to the AFU library
after work, bringing with me, on the way from the 'E' archive, two
bags crammed with heavy Evans books. Håkan B had been off from his
work this afternoon and had taken over some truly fantastic heaps of
books I have never heard about nor seen. Where did Hilary find
all these? Everyday is a Christmas now at AFU. I was
almost dressed to walk home when one of our friends phoned to
suggest two seemingly very competent persons for our outstanding
"Phase 3" positions. His proposals were extremely interesting and I
will follow up on them during the weekend and try to arrange
meetings with these new people to check them out. All in all we now
have five people who are interested in our two free positions. With
the vacant position after Håkan L we are probably looking for three
persons. |
|
Jan 12-13 |
Another few hours of cataloguing
Hilary Evans books. Made a surprising find in the Dutch edition
of Hilary's The evidence for UFOs. Tucked away inside the book was a
small plastic pocket marked "British Rail", containing nine 20 pound
notes. Probably money not spent during one of Hilary's tours to the
European continent. Clas has now written Hilary's daughter Valentine
to enquire what we should do with the money.
 |
|
Jan 11 |
Overslept and decided to go to AFU
during the morning hours and to work after lunch and late in the
evening. Ingrid was cataloguing Evans' books in the library. Anci
was back after her Christmas 'holidays' and was doing a needed
cleaning up of the 'A' facility. Richard was visiting us. Sven Olov
started to pack a large collection of UFO-Aktuellt mags sold by
UFO-Sweden. We are now distributors for UFO-Sweden. Discussed with
Susanne details about our upcoming attempts to sell surplus books
and magazines on eBay. Susanne is a very active seller on the
Swedish eBay (Tradera) so she knows how to run the machine. Hope we
can make som money this way. She suggested using DHL instead of the
Swedish Post. Why not? Elisabeth wanted me to delete her surname
(and Susanne's) from our web for the sake of internet integrity. I
understand and will act on it as soon as I can. |
|
Jan 10 |
A Monday spent full time at work. Then
home to work a few hours on editing a new magazine inventory
that I intend to publish soon, on this web. We now have magazines
from 55 different countries. |
|
Jan 8-9 |
Took on the mantle of being
the AFU economist & book keeper. Two days
spent on completing the book keeping and final check of the AFU
economy for 2010. Just need one more paper (from the bank, on the
dividend from our interest fund) before it can all be finished.
Downloaded the annual statistics from PayPal to track down all the
second-hand things I bought through our eBay account for the AFU
collection. Turned out I had bought eBay books for 9.700 SEK, drawn
directly from my own Visa. In the future I hope we can get a better
turn-round on our eBay/PayPal so we can support needed
books/magazines from eBay directly from AFU money. Our PayPal income
for 2010 was just about 20 dollars.
Then wrote four invoices to
UFO-Sweden (their agreed share of clipping subscription costs,
service costs for the AFU copier, postage costs for materials sent
to UFO-Sweden, and the rents 2011 for the UFO-Aktuellt magazine
store). Then planned book cases to be bought for the new 'E' site.
Made a simple drawing from the measures that I took a couple of
weeks ago and then managed to get (in theory) 34 book cases into the
30 square meters. It's all possible if we also use the floor
effectively. It will add some 150 shelf meters to our library
capacity. We will order from IKEA as soon as we have the money.
|
|
Jan 7 |
Days off from work are such a
luxury. I promenaded in the sunshine and
snow down to the archives at about 11.30 (which is morning to me).
It was a couple of degrees above zero and birds were singing like it
was in the spring! First to the 'C' archive where I had a short
conference with Leif who may have a suitable candidate for the
'Phase 3' position we are seeking. Then on to the 'A' archive where
Sven-Olov and Anders H were at work. Most of the crew is still on
season's vacations but will be back now on Monday.
Catalogued a couple of dozen books
and booklets from the Evans collection. Can't keep my fingers
from that project now. It's such a fun to see and feel all those
items I have (at the most) just seen in pictures or advertisements.
Some of them are completely unknown in the combined 120+
years of ufo knowledge shared by Sven-Olov, Håkan and me. This
is unique! Finally walked home after sunset and bought three bottles
of soup (ready-made, frozen) on the way for me, sister and fiancée.
Sister and fiancée had spent the afternoon on the internet doing
genealogical research.
I have used this evening to do some
updates to board member Andreas Ohlsson's presentation on AFU
people and also posted some new pictures on that page. |
|
Jan 6 |
Defying the snow.
There is no ending to the snow & winter -- while the world outside
northern Europe seems to have a continued warming of the atmosphere
with heat and floods... This morning it was evident that it would be
very hard to walk through the new snow all the way out to the
Hageby petrol station, where we have our post box. So I decided to
take the tram. Of course, I missed the first tram (by some twenty
meters) but I didn't have to wait the usual ten minutes for the next
one. Just a few minutes later there was the next one. Obviously they
were out of regular schedule because of all the snow. I emptied the
post box and walked the long way back towards the AFU archives. Not
easy to be an effective Swede these days!

Arriving at AFU I found
Håkan B laboring in the slow-clearing business outside our 'D'
archive (see photo). Me, Håkan B and Håkan L had a warm cup of
coffee and a nice semla each (picture, right). Håkan L has now left
AFU and his work on our clipping collection to work for Ericsson in
Katrineholm (the phone company) but was at home today because we all
have a holiday.
Then Håkan B and I headed for the
'E' (Evans) archive to fetch new bags of books for the cataloguing
project. All in all, we packed eight full bags of extremely fine
books from the Evans collection and carried them down to the 'B'
library. I did a couple of hours of cataloguing there before walking
home. Håkan and I found many books we had never even heard of.
Hilary seemingly had the economic resources to buy almost all things
made available on the international market during the 1960s when we
were poor students. The remainder of this day I will spend on
answering emails and scanning articles to respond to international
info requests. |
|
Jan 5 |
My dream job!
After work I spent a couple of silent hours in the AFU library,
cataloguing 32 completely new books and booklets from Hilary Evans.
Truly unique items; some that I have bid on eBay but not had a
chance to win since they have gone into the hundreds of dollars;
some rare privately published booklets that I have never seen
even on eBay.
Some books surprise you when you
open them. Many are dedicated to Hilary by its author(s). Some
include letters to and from Hilary, even pictures. I have already
assembled a small stack of things to archive outside of the book
collection, in a Hilary Evans personal file. I have left five
half-meter high piles of mostly hardbacks for Ingrid to work on,
eventually. Most of them I recognize, some are probably new editions
for us. And...it's only a start. Tomorrow, I plan to fetch another
load of boxes from the 'E' site so that I can continue this
extremely interesting work during the coming days. |
|
Jan 4 |
Linking to other sites.
We are frequently asked to put up links to other web sites that
might be of interest to AFU visitors. From the beginning I
decided not to have a link page. Sites that were up in 2002,
when we started, would often be out-of-date and produce '404s' on
your screen. I am now seriously considering doing a special link
page but restricted to archives, libraries and very serious resource
sites. But...this will have to wait until I can put more time &
energy into AFU, maybe later in 2011?
For the moment I would like to direct
your attention to this
French
blog, maintained by Benjamin Dupuis, with a lot of
historical material. I saw for instance an original French interview
with famed humanoid witness
Marius Dewilde from 1954. Nice! |
|
Jan 3 |
A new credit note, to John
and Dawn, on Recent donations was all that I could master
AFU-wise this evening -- after a long day at work and three
'necessary'-to-watch (?) programs on the TV... This credit to the UK
couple was long overdue like many things we have received without
having the chance, yet, to post proper credits. We are
working on the backlog! |
|
Jan 2 |
The final day of the Xmas/New Year
vacation. Just a few more hours away from regular work. Tomorrow
it's back to 'business as usual'.
Biked to AFU through the snowy
townscape. Roads slippery so had to take it slow and be very
careful when changing direction. Håkan B had already been at work
for a few hours in the 'D' archives. He is the morning guy while I
am the evening guy. During the past fortnight he has done wonders on
our personal and organizational files, sorting and tidying
everything up.
We joined for a cup of coffee at
the 'A' archives, then I went over to the 'B' library to catalogue
some remaining magazines and books while Håkan continued in the 'D'
archives. I solved a couple of 'catting' problems that were waiting
on the library's sorting desk. Wanted to make space for the first
batch from the Evans collection. Then took a bag of Swedish surplus
books (from the Kjellson donation) over to the 'C' archive, for the
sales shelves.
From there I went to the new 'E'
(for Evans) archive where I investigated the status of our two wheel
carts. The London shipment on Dec. 13 had, more or less, wrecked
them both. The newer green one has a puncture, I tried to pump it up
and thought I had succeeded but when I had loaded two heavy boxes on
it the puncture was there again! So, I had to change cart for the
yellow one, which no longer can balance so well. Despite that it's
still OK.
The cardboard boxes packed by
Clas and Anders P in London are a little too heavy for my back
so it will be wise to divide the contents of two boxes into three,
before carrying them up to the street level and putting them on our
carts for the transport some 200 meters to the main 'B' library. I
carted four 'restored' boxes. Built small mountains of books on our
sorting table for Ingrid to start on, this coming week. Below, the
first batch of Evans books with quite a number of 'unknowns'
(meaning: new titles I do not immediately recognize from previous
cataloguing), directly on the table, in the front: (How many such
pictures have we posted by now...?)
 |
|
Jan 1 |
A lazy day at first, slept
until 11.05 in the morning. Great after a late new year's evening. I
looked myself in the mirror and discovered there were still some
streaks of youth after a good nights sleep. Thank you!
Worked some hours on updating this
web, including a completely new version of our Book collection
page. New recent pictures from a 'new' and expanded library. Took
away a lot of unnecessary texts and alternatives on the right-hand
menu. And posted links to two new up-to-date versions of our
Library inventory on same page. Can hardly believe we have such
a huge library!!? Håkan B has been hard at work during the past
month, or two, with creating chubby texts that nicely divide the
books by subjects.
|
|
Dec 31 |
Me and fiancée went shopping some food
for the new year's evening at the rebuilt Hageby shopping mall. Too
many people for my taste! I
then spent a few more relaxing hours creating and checking
the new library up-to-date inventories for our web, to be posted
here tomorrow. Checking up any database you can always
find things that are wrong so it's a question of getting rid of the
most obvious mistakes, like doubled data or missing codes that
disturbs the order of things.
We spent a nice New Year's
evening with our friends who had to leave
one hour before midnight. Their
dog, like most dogs, does not tolerate the fireworks and needed a
walk before all hell broke out. Being very sensible to all kinds of
noises, myself, I sympathize with the dog race. If they could decide
everyone would use silent UFO balloons but that would obviously take
away the fun some people feel when they can create deafening noises.
Håkan and Clas have both
posted their positive reviews of the year 2010 on their respective
Swedish blogs,
here and
here. They both mention the great Hilary Evans donation that
sort of 'crowned' the end of a very successful year. We are all
trying to come down-to-earth with the thought of having such a great
collection to care for during 2011...
Myself I hope to go into pension
(or at least reduce my level of 'professional' work) next
summer. I have no doubt that I can occupy my 24 hours, 365 days a
year. Besides sleeping and reading some books that I haven't had the
time for the last 20 years, I am choosing between making detailed
written project lists for my after-professional-work period, or
just lettings things happen in the order that they appear before my
very eyes...
I think I have discovered that the
second method is the most effective, it's sort of an old man's
first wise thought... No need to push oneself to cardiac arrest,
so I will pick up the projects as they come along. There is one
limit I am putting, however, I am only going to engage in projects
that are interesting and worthwhile to myself and my own way
of thinking. I do not intend to let myself be led by other people's
(sometimes) high-flying ideas.
The archival functions of
AFU are at the very centre of my thoughts. We need to be good at
archiving and creating new information technology-based search
systems that can help people find the info they need for their
research. Finding the needle in the haystack. We are not going to
digitize everything, we will not attempt to do the impossible. The
really curious researchers will still have to board the plane or
train heading for Norrköping, Sweden. That is how it still works in
every archive, all around the world. There is no replacement for
hard labor!!
It is our intention that well in
place, here, researchers will find well-ordered and interesting
detail files never to be found in their entirety anywhere on the
internet. It's not a negative thought, just a realistic
assessment that we will never have the work-force to digitize the
many millions of pages we have. And if we are to digitize parts of
our collection (which we will) the material will, first of
all, have to be ordered manually - or at least in a theoretical
model - before digitizing can be effective.
Happy new year!
|
|
Dec 30 |
Took a leave from the archives but
still worked at home, throughout most of the day, with AFU
administration. There are always emails to write, bills to pay
and book-keeping to do. Foremost I worked with the new library
inventories.
|
|
Dec 29 |
Eight-nine hours at the AFU library
cataloguing the Lennart Kjellson donation. My goal was to finish
the Kjellson shelf which is, sort of, the main obstacle for starting
with the huge Evans library (which tickles our curiosity). Needed
also to put a limit to year 2010 acquisitions and produce a new
library list (soon) that can be downloaded as a PDF. Very nice
books from Dr. Kjellson (he was a medical doctor) on psychology,
parapsychology, the Egyptian pyramids, the new physics (Davies,
Hawking, etc), and other borderland areas to our core of UFO
studies. A very fine collection of well kept books which is now
completely integrated into our collection with but a few exceptions
(for instance a book on alchemy, a little bit our of our interest
range).
Håkan, Sven-Olov and Susanne was
today's AFU crew and we were also visited by Cristoffer, a young
student writing an essay on the work of UFO-Sweden. Pictures from
today on Håkan's blog
here.
|
|
Dec 28 |
After visiting my job
(not in person but through my home link-up), where I answered some
urgent emails, I wrote an appreciation letter aimed at our sponsors
in Sweden. They are thirty people, a slightly diminished crowd from
previous years. Printed copies and put them in 30 envelopes with
stamps. Took them to the grocery store, sorry post office, where I
did some household shopping (yoghurt, cheese and all that stuff).
Walked home, consumed a salad I had bought at the store, and then
continued the project of numbering all the 1100 new acquisitions for
the library during 2010. Each new title now has a unique number.
Another annual ring completed. But, we have already started on the
2011 ring of the library tree with some of the books from the Hilary
Evans huge library - so work never stops.
Watched an interesting documentary
on the American Stealth aircraft on our new TV-10 channel. They are
not unbeatable!
|
|
Dec 27 |
Annual rings of the library.
Been working most of the day with checking up and numbering books
catalogued to the library collection during 2009. 832 titles during
that year. Will continue with the 2010 'annual ring' of the tree,
tomorrow. Each completely new title/translation is given a unique,
consecutive library number that is then used to group new
editions/versions of each title by adding a letter A, B, C,
etc. The system has proven to be a good thing to group our library
holdings by titles/manuscripts that are essentially the same. We can
also easily create, in the future, direct links from the catalogue
to e-books that are in our possession.
AFU this time of the year,
between Christmas and New Year, is empty except for three of us
volunteers: Sven-Olov, Håkan and me. We were all there today for a
couple of hours today. I 'ferried' a lot of things between our
different sites including the two new vacuum cleaners to the 'C' and
'E' facilities. Håkan was working on our personal/organizational
files in the 'D' facility and Sven-Olov was doing his regular tasks
in the 'A' site.
|
|
Dec 26 |
AFU is growing by the meters
and by the gigabytes! I have spent most of
the recent week cataloguing e-books and e-documents to our library's
database. We are now at exactly 1.100 new additions to our
library during 2010. Out of these, several hundred are available
on our library digital memory as e-books or both as e-books and in
printed form. It is not necessary for us to have a representation of
each work on paper. E-books will save a lot of shelf space in the
future, I guess. The total files of e-books are now more than 3,3
Gigabytes of storage. We soon need to buy a new extra hard disk for
the library computer. We do need a more thought-out strategy for
memory storage early in 2011.
Spent an hour and more
at the Media Markt store today. My sister
came home with a new digital camera, my niece bought a DVD recorder
and (myself) I bought two Philips vacuum cleaners for the 'C' and
'E' archives.
|
|
Dec 25 |
Continued cataloguing e-books in
between TV films and good food. Who said that one shouldn't work
during Christmas? Fiancée and me looked at the second local history
DVD and discovered that this one was even better than yesterday's.
We should have chosen the second film to show to our guests
yesterday but there will be more occassions in the future.
|
|
Dec 24 |
Christmas day with fiancé,
sister, niece and her husband. Nice food and one and a half hour
with one of the new local history films I bought earlier this week.
Very nice sceneries from the old Norrköping.
|
|
Dec 22-23 |
Cataloguing e-books for the AFU
library. About one year ago I downloaded a large number of ufo-related
books from the Scribd database but have not had the time window to
process this into our own library memory and database. Also started
off with a similar huge file of about 1.500 documents received from
Erik Östling. Some goodies will be in our catalogue, although not on
our shelves.
|
|
Dec 21 |
Another day free from regular work
and with a late wake-up around 10 o'clock. Fiancée and me are
typical 'B' people - we prefer to stay up late in the evening and to
sleep long morning hours. Walked a couple of hours downtown, late in
the afternoon, to buy Birthday presents for fiancée and also two new
DVD films (at the town museum) on the local community history
intended for us all to view on Christmas day.
|
|
Dec 20 |
Four hours at AFU,
mostly walking between our different facilities, talking to people.
Brought a small gingerbread cake for our collective coffee break.
Håkan, Ingrid and I discussed the new problems we are facing with
shoe-horning the Evans collection into our Ufocode classification
system which is basically intended for ufo-centered
collections, not a collection of parapsychology, behavioral
sciences, folklore, theosophy or miracles. It is very evident that
all these subjects are inter-related with ufos, so we shall have to
take the bull by the horns. Instead of owning just one or two books
about the Lourdes miracle we will now have maybe twenty (or even
fifty?). We will have to subdivide sections, and, in some cases,
rethink the whole structure. It will be a slow but interesting
process over the coming years!
The lock to our new 'Evans' archive
won't work at times and I went to my (professional) workmates
office, close by, for help. Told Tuija - who is fighting with
keeping all the tenants in the area happy and satisfied - that I
needed help from the locksmith, not noticing that the locksmith was
sitting silently right behind a pillar! So I got an immediate help;
he followed me down to our facility to check up on the lock. It
seems some parts in the lock will have to be changed for new ones to
make it work better. Talked with Leif and Benny who need a
new vacuum cleaner for the 'C' facility (and we need another in the
'E', too, for dusting off the Evans collection!) plus a new hard
disk drive for Benny's augmenting collection of digitized sound
files, now getting close to 1.000 files! It is important that we can
keep his valuable work backuped all of the time. More AFU work at
home. Walked slowly home, climbing over the small hills of snow
in almost every street corner. After dinner I started to sort a
large number of commercial & privately recorded CD discs (100+) that
I have kept at home with the good intention to catalogue them to our
book & media database. They have been in-th-queue for years but now
decided it was time to let that particular project slip through my
fingers for the moment and instead add it to our super-long list of
'AFU-things-to-do-in-the-future'. Anyway, I sorted the discs by
category to somewhat aid anyone who needs to find anything in
particular, in the haystack. All kinds of files on those discs: PDFs,
audio files, video files, pictures. Most of them come from Clas
Svahn, Mikael Sjöberg and Ole Jonny Braenne.
|
|
Dec 19 |
Finished a 'thank you' letter
to our closest AFU co-workers and put it into eleven envelopes. The
letter should come out to its recipients early next week, parallel
to a small amount on their respective bank accounts to help them
through Christmas. This is the first time we have the economy to
really show our appreciation of their work. Fiancée and me then took
our car to the only remaining 'real' Post Office right across town,
only to discover that they had already emptied the post boxes three
hours before, the last time on a Sunday! So the letters, and our
private Christmas cards, won't go away until tomorrow despite our
efforts.
|
|
Dec 18 |
Slept until 10 and then me and
fiancée went to my uncle and later to the Ingelsta shopping area.
This area is a traffic mess during summer and even worse during
winter. And you absolutely have to have a CAR to go there. How can
people build such inhuman areas? Society needs completely reverse
ideas that puts a priority on our environment.
During the evening I booked
a large number of bank payments to make AFU completely free from any
possible debt on Dec 31/Jan 1, when the new year comes along. No
less than 26 payments (!) will go out to our 'employees' and to
companies & institutions that have provided goods and services to
us, including 12.000 SEK to Schenker's (for the transport from
London) and another company where we have bought 11.000 SEK worth of
supplies for our shape shifting library.
|
|
Dec 17 |
Colleague Håkan Blomqvist reports
on his blog
today (with pictures) about his first visit to our new 'E'
(Evans) archives after our concentrated transport work, carrying 230
boxes into the facility on Dec 13. He dug into a few sampled boxes
and found 'A gift from the Gods'. i.e. extremely rare items
related to ufology, parapsychology and theosophy. We shall have a
repeated Christmas Day day-by-day during upcoming months. Both Håkan
and me now have 14 days of Xmas vacations from our respective works.
|
|
Dec 16 |
Spent the usual six hours at work
with updating things concerning a couple of our rebuilt houses in
the Ljura area (where AFU's facilities are), for instance adding new
connections to proper new type drawings for each flat. Then I
checked out from work and went to AFU to catalogue another batch
from the Kjellson collection, this time a number of titles on/by
Emanuel Swedenborg, the great 18th century mystic/scientist.
Literature about/by him is very relevant to an archive such as ours.
|
|
Dec 15 |
At work I sent off the usual 11.000
invoices to our customers of which now almost 1.000 are
electronic invoices no longer printed on paper. Saves a few trees
from our woods, maybe. After work I walked through the heaps
of snow up to the archives where I catalogued about a dozen Nostradamus books
from the Kjellson collection. Took me a couple of hours and then I
walked home to spend a few hours in front of the TV where we had a
nice supper. |
|
Dec 14 |
Went with twelve of my workmates to the
neighboring city of Linköping to visit our
colleagues at the
Stångåstaden real estate company.
Their head offices are in a new 19 floor building called "The Tower"
and we had our meeting on floor 18 with an excellent view over
Linköping. Nice food (Xmas dinner plate) and lots of good humor
during the day.
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Dec 13 |
Santa Lucia day in Sweden.
Thousands of light queens and her sisters, all dressed in innocent
white, marched singing at preschools, schools, workplaces and homes
for the elderly. I missed out on the professional Lucia light train
at my work and in stead took a day off at AFU.
This was 'E' day with the
Evans library and BUFORA & Contact International archives arriving
by lorry from the UK. The DB Schenker driver was a little curious
about the secret load of eleven Euro pallets he had driven to an
unknown UFO archive in Norrköping. He hardly knew beforehand that he
was taking a small part in preserving several of the finest
phenomena-related collections in the world. As you can see from the
picture below - and at Håkan's blog
here - Sweden is all covered with snow. We all fighted with the
snow, the cold air and the super-heavy boxes packed by Clas Svahn
and Anders Persson, in London.

In the picture to the right the
proud group that 'did it', assembled after work. They had just
carried 5 tons (!) or 230 (!) big boxes cram filled with books,
magazines, audio tapes and report archives down the rather icy
stairs into our new-painted facility. Standing (from the
left) Leif Åstrand, Sven-Olov Svensson, Håkan Landin, Susanne
Mårdberg and Elisabeth Booth. Sitting on their knees, front
row: Patrik Carlsson, Benny Dahl, Christina Klöfver and Håkan
Blomqvist. And behind the camera one guy who had just collected the
keys to our 7th facility so that the material could be locked in. We
did the job in just one hour and 15 minutes. Having completed our
work we all went to a well-earned traditional Lucia celebration with
coffee, cakes and the kind of red wine we call 'glögg', and then we
all went home to rest, straighten out our aching backs and maybe
take a needed shower. Great work, everyone! |
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Dec 12 |
Had planned to go for a few hours
to AFU in the evening but it's 10 degrees cold outside. So, I
choose to stay home and work on filing booklets in folders, instead.
Have finally gotten to the bottom of a huge heap of
booklets/documents on the floor of my room. I have pulled out a lot
of rusty staples from documents even from the 1990s (but mostly from
older and rarer pamphlets from the 1950s and 1960s). I have filed a
large number of "BUFORA Library" documents in this way, some of them
have come from the BUFORA Library, some have come from the files of
other UK researchjers. Now they have all finally passed all the
stages in our cataloguing process and can be put on the proper shelf
in our library.
Did another credit write up on
Recent donations --- see the one on the German IGPP, second from
the top as I write this (I have a feeling that relative position
will change very soon, though...). The IGPP has a fantastic
library/archives on anomalistic phenomena. |
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Dec 11 |
Spent a good part of the afternoon and
evening on AFU administration and on updating our Recent
donations page with five new credit notes on some of the
material recently received. All fantastic additions to the AFU
archives, especially the Kjellson library and Cynthia Hind
investigative files. |
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Dec 10 |
Monday will be 'E'-day as in
Evans collection. The collection (11 Euro
pallets, 5 tons) will cross Sweden during the weekend and arrive
about 11.00 at our new facility. Håkan B had prepared for the
traditional Lucia celebration on the exact hour when the lorry will
come to us so we will have to redirect our attention for a few hours
before we go back to the 'A' facility for Santa Lucia celebrations
with coffee, cake and Swedish glögg. Five hours in the
evening fiancée and me spent at the annual Christmas festivities
along with 80 of our workmates. Good food and fantastic music.
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Dec 9 |
AFU has some nice sponsors!
Today we had a payment to our bank account of 765 SEK from Tage Bång
and the Skaraborg UFO Society in Töreboda. This small group (picture
below) has visited AFU a number of times. Shortly before Christmas,
each year, they celebrate a traditional 'porridge party' where a
collection of money is made for AFU! Very welcome money to help
paying our rents and an excellent example to follow!

Left work rather early in the
afternoon and spent four hours at AFU mostly carrying (in plastic
bags) new collections between our different facilities. Books
to the library from our 'C' facility to be catalogued, surplus
books on the return leg from the library to our sales
department in the 'C' facility. Collections of VHS and DVD videos
over to the 'D' facility, and a cryptozoology clipping collection to
the clippings department in our 'A' facility - and so on. I
also had the time to catalogue a small 'pre-view' of French books
from the Hilary Evans library brought here by Clas the day before
yesterday. I guess some of the specialized books in Hilary's library
will be rather 'tricky' to code by subject so that they can be put
on the appropriate shelf. My guess is that we will have to
sub-divide and move about with some of our Ufocodes when confronted
with the realities of the extremely rich Evans collection. Our
Schenker representative phoned to report that the Evans library is
now on a ship on the North Sea with expected arrival in Gothenburg
tomorrow. |
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Dec 8 |
Never give up!
I found this Ex Libris in a book donated by Clas Svahn. I
have spent a couple of hours at the library, after my regular work,
cataloguing the two most recent heaps of gifts from Clas. Quite
many new and interesting books donated by him, including
Wonders in the Sky by Jacques Vallée & Chris Aubeck, and
Mirage Men by Mark Pilkington. The ex libris text in Swedish,
"Ge aldrig upp", was the motto of a young book collecting man
during the 1970's who never gave up and most certainly
never will give up. His perseverance is the driving force behind
most great acquisitions to AFU and also behind the impressive work
of UFO-Sweden. Clas is always at work with some ufo-related project.
Right now it is the upcoming issue of UFO-Sweden's UFO-Aktuellt. If
McDonald's hamburgers gave me the same energy as they seem to give
to Clas I would eat them every day (but I know that diet won't work
on me)!
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Dec 7 |
Getting to the AFU archives early
this morning wasn't easy with all the new snow. I had my bike
but had to lead it most of the way. Spent nine hours there. Met a
lot of people, including Anders H who started his five-week term of
work practice with us, and Anders O who might be a candidate for our
'Phase 3' positions. But we do have several other people to choose
from, maybe with more computer experience, which is what we really
need.
Clas Svahn came by car from
Stockholm bringing a lot of material, mainly two collections:
the book library from Lennart Kjellson (a wide area of subjects from
air historical literature to books his father Henry used when
writing his books on Egyptian ancient technology - see Nov 26..)
and the Cynthia Hind's files from her investigations in Zimbabwe. He
also brought a large tape recorder donated by BUFORA for our common
digitizing project. Clas, Leif and me had some nice time while
planning the continued scanning, then Clas and I went in his car to
the library restaurant where we also met Tobias. After we had
returned from lunch Clas showed us pictures from the work done at
the Hilary Evans house (the house is now sold to another family) and
at other places during the recent UK tour. Anci suggested I
should put up more photographs of people here. She's right, so here
she is, from today's coffee break with Rickard (sipping coffee),
Anders O and Susanne at the table and Håkan L working with the
clippings collections in the background, right behind Anci:
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Dec 6 |
A day mostly spent at professional
work with updating new data, new rents, etc for the rebuilt
house "number 17" where, in the basement, AFU:s next facility will
be, the 'E' (for 'Evans') facility. Before we move in with the Evans
library we will have it painted and a new floor laid. From my rather
geeky, professional viewpoint we have our other facilities in the
houses numbered 20, 22, 24, 25 and 28 so we are sort of undermining
the whole area! My Schenker contact mailed that the shipment from
London had not yet left the warehouse in Lewisham. The British are
having a severe snowstorm. |
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Dec 5 |
Spent nine hours today trying
to finish my article on the recent visit to CISU
in Torino for the upcoming Christmas edition of UFO-Aktuellt. It's
first written in English and when read through by my Italian
colleagues (and maybe corrected?) I will publish a PDF version here.
Then it will be translated into Swedish for the benefit of our
Scandinavian audience. Scandinavian and Italian ufology share some
parallel tracks! |
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Dec 4 |
A day completely spent at
uncle's flat helping him to refurnish to
make it easier for his new wheelchair life. If you sit in a
wheelchair you do need some space to turn around! I think he was
satisfied with the work we (fiancée, sister and me) did this
afternoon. I moved his book case (books out, then back again, after
moving the case) into his living room. Well, I am kind of a specialist
in the field of moving books & bookcases! |
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Dec 3 |
Another day spent 100%
with/at AFU. First, from my home, I
checked up with Schenker's about our London shipment. It turned out
that it hasn't left Tilbury yet. This is in part due to us
not wanting it here too soon, in part due to the snow storm
that has so surprised the British. Some North Sea ships have even
been cancelled due to the storm. Then went to AFU with a full
load of archival materials to sort throughout our A, B, C and D
facilities. A little here - a little there. Håkan B was also
in place working at the D archives. At the main archives were also
Sven Olov, Elisabeth, Susanne, Håkan L plus Leif in the 'C'
facility. At the breakfast table we discussed job applications from
two ladies who want to work with our 'Phase 3' project. We plan to
interview them this upcoming week.
At noon Håkan B and I biked
in the snow to the library restaurant and then I went to Kjell & Co.
to buy a new Plexgear USB tape machine for Benny's work and then to
Clas Olsson to buy six new file folders for the recently acquired
Sundberg picture collection. I spent an hour sorting these pictures
into five of the folders and discovered there were a lot of
'architecture' in the pictures from Sundberg's travels across the
world. I who love pictures of nice buildings - but maybe not
very relevant for our UFO/fortean archives?! I also met
Anders H, who came with Bertil W from the ArbetslivsResurs company
that places people with us on account of the social security system.
Anders will be a work trainee with us for 4 x 3 hours each week for
at least five weeks in December and January. I will take a day of
vacation from my regular work on Tuesday to introduce him in the
work. |
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Dec 2 |
Worked a few evening hours on
printing and putting labels on file folders to hold small
booklets in our library. Has borrowed the library database USB stick
and must remember to return it! |
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Dec 1 |
After work I have been watching the
TV, including a Swedish criminal series. During commercial breaks
in the programs I catalogued and labeled eight Russian documents,
seven of which were written and typed by a famed Russian ufologist
by the name of Valentin Goltz. Thanks to our friend Mikhail
Gershtein in St. Petersburg we now have no less than 11 unique
documents of the Samisdat type, by Goltz, in our library inventory.
And the Samisdat literature keep flowing from our Russian contact.
In the picture the contents of the latest parcel from Gershtein
received by Clas Svahn last week:

(Before Dec 1 see "2010", menu on
the left.) |
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