Little Sweden USA

Another Midsummer’s Festival has come and gone, and from all reports this year’s event was one of the best in recent memory! Hurrah for the Lindsborg Midsummer’s Day Committee; if I do say so myself, we did a great job this year.

From the excellent stylings of the Swedish rock band Tiny Toads through the always excellent performances by the youth and adult Lindsborg Swedish dancers, the weekend was almost perfect. Sunny skies, happy crowds, great selections in the crafts vending area and a wide selection of children’s activities contributed to a wonderful celebration that was capped off with the raising of the Maypole and more dancing! Even the food was more varied than in years past, but fans of Lindsborg’s Viking on a Stick were still able to satisfy their cravings.

I took a few photos, but it may be a while before I get a chance to review and publish them. In the interests of more quickly sharing our wonderful weekend I’m going to link to fellow area artist Julie-Ann, who has posted a great Flickr set of Midsummer’s 2007 photos; enjoy!

Here’s one of the pictures I took:

The Smoky Hill River in Lindsborg peaked at a height of 23.07 feet at 6pm on Monday, the 7th of May. That’s technically a couple of feet above flood stage.

The first photo below was taken on the morning of the 7th, and the rest were taken right around 5:30pm. There was no damage, thankfully, but there were constant crowds dropping by to see the river at its highest level in years.

If you enjoy these, there are a bunch more at my Flickr Lindsborg Flood of 2007 set.

You can click the graph above to (maybe) see the current river conditions in Lindsborg. The Mentor gauge is always active, and is usually very similar to Lindsborg in terms of water flow.

The Midsummer’s publicity postings in the form of press releases, etc. will now be posted at the Midsummer’s Day blog. The press release announcing this year’s celebration the weekend of June 16th has just been posted and you’re invited to check it out!

Fans of the Swedish traditional handicraft known as the Dala Horse are encouraged to read one of the latest postings at luminosity, my personal photoblog. I’ve posted a nice image of one of the more unique Dala Horses, Stubborn Dala (shown below).

In addition, the article contains a number of informational links regarding the Dala Horse history, where they’re made and where to buy them.

Stubborn Dala, as presented on luminosity.

As the masthead indicates, this is a blog about Lindsborg, Kansas. Lindsborg is known as Little Sweden USA, and I thought it would be a fitting name for a blog that covers Lindsborg. The Chamber of Commerce values the Little Sweden slogan, but feels that their official site is better recognized if Lindsborg is part of the name; you can visit the Lindsborg Chamber of Commerce at http://www.lindsborg.org/. (Lindsborg’s official city site is at: http://www.lindsborgcity.org/.)

I decided to create this site in order to have a single spot for all of my postings about Lindsborg. My other site will remain what it is, a digital cornucopia, but most if not all Lindsborg related entries will be posted here. My earlier Lindsborg blog entries are still available.

I’m still considering what kind of content to post here. I want to include announcements and information about events in town, but don’t want this to be exclusively an events calendar type of site. (I’m working to convince our local volunteer events coordinator, who emails a weekly list of activities to a wide variety of folks, to start an events blog.)

I’ve started with a link to an Ellsworth resident who wrote on her blog about visiting Lindsborg, and have another similiar story to post in the near future.

This year I have volunteered to work on publicity for the annual Midsummer’s Day festival, held the 3rd Saturday of June, and so anticipate some stories about that event. Beyond that, time will tell. Of course I will continue to post images of Lindsborg and the surrounding area. I don’t anticipate much, if any, political coverage on this site; we have plenty of other places for those discussions.

The design of this site is pretty bare-bones right now, but that will change over time. One thing I plan to include is a set of links to other web sites of interest, including both “official” sites and relevant personal sites.

LittleSwedenUSA.org is powered by MovableType, a leading producer of blog software, and is hosted at Pair Networks, whom I highly recommend for your hosting needs. I’m Mike Rodriquez, and more information about me is available here.

Welcome to LittleSwedenUSA.com, Lindsborg’s (un)official blog. The goal of this site is to provide information about Lindsborg, its history, events that are happening in town and so on.