Monday Memory, a Trip Tale: July 21 Hvitträsk

I'll cheat a little here, because this memory is only about 2 weeks old. Our last full day in Finland (having returned the day before from Russia), we drove west out of Helsinki, past Espoo and visited Hvitträsk, the Finnish home of the Saarinens, architects who emigrated to the United States in the 1920s. It was the working space, and now a museum, of three young architects 100 years ago, Eliel Saarinen (1873-1950), Herman Gesellius (1874-1916), and Armos Lindgren (1874-1929). Gesellius died young and Lindgren returned to Helsinki after a few years, so the Saarinens lived there with their children. Eliel Saarinen was designer of the Finnish National Museum in Helsinki (1902-1911) and the Railway Stations of Helsinki (1904-1919), from which we travelled to Russia, and Vyborg (1904-1913) where we stopped to have our passports checked.

The style of the complex is called National-Romantic, but to my eye it appears very similar to the early arts and crafts movement which influenced Frank Lloyd Wright and many others in the arts like the Roycrofters (Elbert Hubbard), which we visited on our trip to East Aurora, NY two years ago.

The main building of Hvitträsk is now a museum and includes furniture designed by the elder Saarinen and fabrics by his wife. His son, Eero (1910-1961) also became a famous architect. Both father and son are represented in Columbus, IN which we were visiting the following Friday. One of the restored houses in the complex contained a nice restaurant where we enjoyed a nice brunch/buffet for 12 euros on a glassed in patio. It was a wonderful place to visit, especially for the three architects--reduced ticket price for them, but Riitta and I thought it was terrific too.





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When I get back from Michigan, I'll link to commenters. 1. Reverberate58 2. Mrs. Lifecruiser 3. Melli 4. Friday's Child

2735 Pot calling the kettle black

Geoffrey Nunberg is on C-SPAN discussing his theme that our social and political language is pulling to the right, having written Talking Right. He runs political speeches through speech analyzers, and is concerned that the Republicans can produce a coherent, but bland, standard speech from an archive, but Democrats' speech is gibberish (my word), implying I suppose that there is variety, but no message. But I noticed he uses the word "right" exclusively for conservatives, but the word "liberal" or "Democrat" and never "left," i.e., "At that moment, the right began to brand liberals as. . ." He also refers to Democratic politicians by their full name, i.e., Geraldine Ferraro, Spiro Agnew, and Republicans by surname only, Reagan, Limbaugh, with a little spittle. I don't think he reads the NYT, WaPo, or listens to CNN.

2734 Save a word

My friend Carol from grade school, sent me a list of words and phrases we rarely hear anymore--we being people young in the 1950s. I liked this line: "Some words aren't gone, but are definitely on the endangered list. The one that grieves me most "supper." Now everybody says "dinner." Save a great word. Invite someone to supper. Discuss fender skirts." Yes, and serve some "oleo." This year, "Bible School" went on the endangered list at our church--seems it scares away some folks so it was changed to "Adventure Week."

2733 The Purple Martin House

At the end of our street we have 4 Purple Martin houses. They eat a lot of bugs and need to be encouraged to stay. My favorite is the one that was built to look like the Lakeside movie theater, Orchestra Hall.





My brother-in-law has written a book about them.

Lakeside, Ohio
Purple Martin
birdhouses

2732 Hand dryers vs. paper towels

One thing I liked about public restrooms in Finland (didn't like paying 1 euro to use them) was the "old fashioned" cloth towels on a roller. But I'll take paper towels if I can get them and sometimes take them with me. I'm thrilled that more and more restaurants and public buildings are at least offering us a choice. Jenna has the 13 perfect comebacks for the lies they tell us about those machines that blow feces and urine around public restrooms and spread germs through damp hands on door handles.

2731 Plaskolite

When you open your cell phone and look at the screen you're seeing this product, whose headquarters are in Columbus, Ohio and which has recently opened a huge plant in Zanesville, Ohio. The vice president of marketing owns the coffee shop Coffee and Cream where I enjoy my first cup of the day.

Trip Tale: Our tour group, The G-6

It's not clear what happened to the rest of them, but by the time we got on the Sibelius train from Helsinki to St. Petersburg, there were only six left of the original tour group. The G-8 had caused some shuffling of hotels and tourist sites, so I suppose the others decided to go another time. The six of us had a terrific time and were great companions. Both of the other couples had been touring Scandinavia, although not together, and like us, decided they'd rather have a little help with Russia. We called ourselves the G-6 since the G-8 was meeting in the city at the same time. This way we could all have a window seat in the van, and could all hear our guide. The other two couples, Betty Lou and Barry from Seattle and Gloria and Doug from Cape Cod, had much more travel experience than we did, but we were all novices in Russia!

At the Hermitage

In our hotel dining room

Nordic Saga Tours

2729 It wasn't political, just silly

WaPo's editorial on the House hearings on energy was not political, just silly, off the mark and clueless, says Amy. She suggests that editorial writers at least look up the webcasts of the hearings if no one can attend.

You know, I'm so old that I can remember when heat waves weren't the President's fault. Like 1988 when we had a drought in Ohio, and in 1953 when they closed the schools in my home town (northern Illinois) in September because it was too hot. I can even remember when 92 year olds died in July and they didn't blame global warming.

2728 Demand and Minimum wage

". . . I’ve met no one who, upon finding that he cannot sell his house at his current asking price of $250,000, reasons that he will attract more potential buyers if he raises his asking price to $260,000. I’ve never heard of a supermarket that seeks to clear out excessively large inventories of canned peas or laundry detergent by raising the prices it charges for these items. I’ve never heard of a construction contractor who believes that the higher the price he asks to do a job the more likely he is to be awarded the contract for that job. I’ve never encountered a car salesman who, upon my rejecting the price he asks for a car that I just test drove, says “Okay, okay. I’ll talk to my manager and ask if he’ll accept an even higher price for this baby.” I don’t encounter advertisements by merchants bragging that their prices are the absolute highest in town -- guaranteed!

Do any of you, Dear Readers, know of such behaviors? More importantly, do you know people who are generally more likely to purchase something as its price rises? If you do, surely you are by now a person of enormous wealth.

What is it about unskilled- and low-skilled labor that makes many people fancy that the law of demand does not apply to it? Are the greedy, profit-lusting employers of this labor so foolish that they’ll just dish out more money for the same output as before, without economizing further on labor – say, by buying less of it or by extracting more work from each man-hour hired? Or are low-skilled workers so daft or dysfunctional that they consistently refuse to respond to pre-minimum-wage-hike differences in wages and work conditions?" Don Boudreaux

2727 It takes a computer

Seems that 46 inmates released as far back as 1987 appeared on the municipal jail rolls and were billed to Franklin County (Columbus, OH). They're blaming a Y2K glitch. (Toledo Blade) Oh please. What about the guys from the 80s? How did they get brought forward? Sounds like my checkbook.

And in an unrelated Ohio computer story, Ohio University (Athens, OH) has fired two employees for failing to protect the University from security breaches that exposed 367,000 files with social security numbers, names, medical records and addresses. Earlier their boss had resigned. I think there was a total of 5 break-ins. And now the auditing firm investigating it has destoyed the records according to the Columbus Dispatch. So that's a mess too. I tried to track this on Google and there were so many stories about OU's computer problems, I just gave up. Sounds like they had a lot of extra money. And in searching the inmate story I used the search term "46 inmates." Could hardly believe how many totally unrelated stories involved 46 inmates.

2726 Trip Tale: Russia, first views

We met our trip companions, Gloria and Doug, in Helsinki at the beautiful train station designed by Eliel Saarinen. Martti and Riitta gave us big hugs and repeated the warnings about the dangers we would meet and we boarded the train for Russia on Monday of our second week. The Finnish countryside was beautiful, tidy and meticulous as our Sibelius train neared the border with Russia near Vyborg (which used to be in Finland). Even if it hadn't been announced in three languages we could tell we were in Russia by the smartly uniformed border police and the corresponding crumbling buildings.

But if the Russian countryside was gray and forlorn, the outskirts of Saint Petersburg (formerly Leningrad, formerly Petrograd) were almost horrifying after tidy, dynamic Finland which has so overpowered its former enemy in everything but military might. From 1917 to the break up of the USSR in the early 90s, the people have suffered the worst form (well, not as bad as North Korea) of totalitarian despotism. And for years before that regime, it was the Tsars and serfdom with not a lot of the population in the middle ground.

The cheaply built high rises of the Soviet era we saw in the distance were in various stages of decay, depending on their ages which ranged from 10-40 years (I'm guessing). Our guide who met us at the train with our other companions, Betty Lou and Barry, told us that after the revolution in 1917 the homes of the rich were broken up and the rooms were given to the poor--sometimes six families sharing a bath and kitchen. But even 90 years later, it is still the same in many housing area with several families sharing a bathroom and kitchen. Housing is very difficult to find.

Now in the post-soviet era, crime families have taken the place of the party and the criminals who ousted the Czarist system. One can only pray for the Russian people--that this will be a temporary phase on their way to a republican form of government.



The G-Eight Summit was meeting in St. Petersburg at the same time, so our talented van driver had to take many detours and we sat in a lot of traffic (although not as bad as Washington DC) as traffic was being rerouted so the visitors would see the restored areas with good streets. My husband with a new digital camera was giddy with snapping photos, so a lot of the pictures of our first day look like this.

Other entries about the Russian leg of our trip
Our tour group, the G-Six
Peter and Paul Fortress
Hermitage
St. Isaac's Cathedral
Russian Folk Singers and Dancers
Tsarskoe Selo
Tsarskoe Selo, pt. 2
St. Petersburg by canal boat
Church of the Spilled Blood

2725 I wonder how they do this?

Incredible.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RB-wUgnyGv0

Thanks, Mickey.

2724 Lakeside, Week 6, Rhein Center for the Arts

Other classes this week are

• beginning knitting
• ceramic painting
• kites, planes and parachutes
• glass projects
• stepping stones
• stained glass
• beginning and intermediate creative writing
• candles and crafts
• photography
• ceramics
• herb projects
• caricatures and cartooning
• basket weaving
• scrapbooking
• silk painting
• jewelry making
• tin embossing
• easel painting for little kids
• creative crochet
• decorated flip flops
• mosaic top table
• watercolor workshop
• Chinese calligraphy step-stones

Lakeside, Ohio

2723 Lakeside Week 6, Perspective Drawing Class

These are photos of the class my husband is teaching this week. Thirteen brave students have struggled through a 105 heat index in an un-airconditioned building. He has promised them 3 paintings to take home for their efforts.







Lakeside, Ohio

2722 Lakeside Week 6, 2006

Not much to say about the programming--it has been so hot I've been staying inside the house, or slipping off to the coffee shop early. But we had a thunderstorm this morning and the temperature has dropped a bit. So I decided to go for a walk. Then the rain began again, so I just took a few photos. I ducked into the Lakeside Archives and found Jan, the archivist, helping my neighbors Ed and Karen research their house. Shortly after we bought our cottage, we cleaned out the crawl space. The former (and only other) owner had been a house painter, so in addition to old paint and turpentine cans and garden tools, we found his parents' 19th century marriage license and his baptismal certificate in fancy frames. We donated them to the archives.



Jan had put several panoramic photos on display from the 20s, 30s and 40s. Observation: people in the "old days" were thinner and they wore more clothes. Most of the women were wearing hats and the men suits. Must have been dressed for Sunday services. Didn't see many children or teens, who may have all been sleeping in or swimming--assuming it was allowed on Sunday.

These ladies are all from our church in Columbus, here enjoying a respite at Lakeside, and admiring my husband's paintings at the Patio Restaurant.

Our friend Wes is enjoying a novel in the Pavilion by the lakefront. Notice the puddle to his right from the morning storm.

Lakeside, Ohio

2721 Ann Coulter's Godless

Yesterday a friend loaned me her copy of Godless. I had requested it from the library, but was out of town when it became available.

I'll probably return it today--not having made it through chapter one, because I don't agree with her main thesis, which is clearly stated at the beginning (I give her credit here--she's up front). Ann has some peculiar views about Christians. She thinks, or writes for sales, that they are all political conservatives. She sees liberals as worshipping in another faith--a state religion ruled from the temples of NOW, unions, Darwinists, and abortion clinics. I know hyperbole sells books (as it did for Michael Moore), but this is pure hogwash.

I've been an evangelical Christian since 1974 (I score much higher as a Calvinist than a Lutheran), and a Republican since 2001. I voted for Bill Clinton his first term, but not his second. I can't wedge a piece of dental floss between the theology of Bill Clinton and George Bush, one a serial philanderer and one a recovering alcoholic. Both are sinners on earth trusting a merciful God for the next life and guidance in this life based on the saving work of Jesus Christ and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. God doesn't grade on a curve, but Ann does.

Most of the liberals I know are Christians, active in their churches, volunteers in community organizations that enhance the welfare of all, good parents and grandparents, veterans of WWII, Korea, and the Gulf War who love their country. Some are Unitarians or Mormons or Spiritualists or Wiccans, but most of the liberals I know are Baptists, Lutherans, Methodists, Catholics and United Church of Christ. I haven't met any who worship in the godless temples she describes or who drive fewer SUVs and Hummers. Two of the most godly women I know, members of my Lutheran church, are public school teachers who don't like the NEA or NCLB. They love Jesus and children.

When I was a "liberal"

• I believed that abortion was murder, just as many consevatives believe it is a woman's right to choose. I know the real me was one time a fetus.
• I have never believed in evolution, although I was taught nothing else all through my school years--it wasn't a religious decision as much as it just didn't make any sense to me. After more study as an adult, I am now a 6 day creationist, and that is religious.
• I know very few conservative Christians who go that far--they burble around in million year long "day" theories and Intelligent Design.
• I've always believed that animals should be protected from human cruelty, and that is rooted in my Christian faith.
• I don't believe smokers should pollute my air and lungs--and that's a health decision. And I don't like stinky clothes and paying for their medical bills with my tax money.
• Since first visting Lake Erie in 1974 (where I now have a summer home), I've believed that we need to protect the 95% of the USA's fresh water supply from industrial and agricultural pollution. That isn't liberal or conservative--that's called self preservation.
• When I was a liberal I believed blacks and women should not be denied access to houses, jobs and political office. I'm guessing Ann Coulter believes that too.
• I believed then and now, that only the marriage bed is undefiled as Paul writes in the Bible. But that's a message conservatives as much as liberals. Both liberals and conservatives know Paul wasn't talking about 2 men or 2 women, or groups of people who claim marriage, or serial marriages as many conservatives seem to love.
• I grew up in the anabaptist tradition and firmly believed then and now that we Christians and Americans put way too much faith in worldly goods and social status to bring meaning to our lives--"things" help the economy but they don't do much for the soul. That is not liberal property, but is firmly Biblical.

I still believe what I believed in the 70s and 80s, which is why I know Coulter's thesis is incorrect. Liberals are not godless. They have a solution to sin that is different than mine--more government in our lives. And it isn't a whole lot more successful than conservatives posting the 10 commandments and wagging their fingers at gays.

Ann Coulter
Godless

Thursday Thirteen: 13 places I visited in July

July was a busy time. At night I'm dreaming about train stations and airports and wake up at 3 a.m. not knowing where I am. So here's where we've been. The trip to Finland was to visit friends of 30 years; to Russia just because we could; and the Ohio/Indiana sites were part of an architectural tour taken each summer by Frank Lloyd Wright enthusiasts from Columbus, OH and vicinity.

1. Helsinki, Finland, see the city with web cam.
2. Suomenniemi, South Karelia, Finland, see my blogs
3. Suomenlinna, Finland (6 islands that make a fortress), see my blog.
4. Porvoo, Finland. See my blog.
5. Hvitträsk, Finland, home of the Saarinens before they moved to the USA. See my blog soon. "Always design a thing by considering it in its next larger context - a chair in a room, a room in a house, a house in an environment, an environment in a city plan." Eliel Saarinen (1873-1950)
6. Tallinn, Estonia, see my blog.
7. Vyborg, Russia (Actually, we were only at the train station for an hour while they checked passports. This town used to be in Finland.)
8. St. Petersburg, Russia; I haven't had time to get all the blogs up, but they're coming. A very interesting city.
9. Pushkin, Russia to see Tsarskoe Selo. Read a first hand account of what happened in 1917.
10. Springfield, Sidney and Dayton, OH on a Frank Lloyd Wright Tour. The architecture is amazing. The bank in Sidney was designed by Sullivan, Wright's mentor and employer.
11. Columbus, Indiana, rated the 5th most important site in the USA for architecture. But don't clutter your sanctuary if your building is world-class and famous.
12. Madison, Indiana, old river town on the Ohio River with 133 restored blocks of homes. I haven't posted about it--yet.
13. Cincinnati, Ohio to see two Frank Lloyd Wright homes, and we got inside! We also saw the new museum of contemporary art. Thumbs down from this visitor.


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2719 Fudge Report

The Democrats (don't know who) have launched the Fudge Report (find your own link) to track Republican stories. When we were in Madison, IN last week we took a trolley ride and the driver, a nice lady whose family had been in Madison since 1835, stopped at a fudge shop and honked. The employees came out with free samples. And advertising. It's a good way to publicize your product and make sales. Fudge Report will be citing official Dem sources and lefty blogs. Sweet deal. But don't consume too much--could cause a tummy ache.

2718 The Mel Gibson flap

I have little sympathy for drunks, especially when they are driving. The problem with the designated driver idea is that after a few drinks the brain is so impaired, that it is hard to convince a drunk he needs a taxi. But the media are really mad that Gibson proved them all wrong with his movie Passion of the Christ, so they are beating this story to death. I suppose it is to make up for their own anti-semitism in coverage of the Israel Hezbollah war at the moment. So now they need to be very self righteous. But I thought Maverick Philosopher made a good point.

"What's worse: Driving while legally drunk at 87 miles per hour in a 45 mph zone, or making stupid anti-Semitic remarks? The former, obviously. And yet a big stink is being made about Gibson's drunken rant. I call this misplaced moral enthusiasm. Calling a Jew a bad name won't kill him, but running him over in your speeding 2006 Lexus LS 430 will."

2717 Trip Tale: Visiting Porvoo

On Sunday returning from the cottage to Helsinki we stopped for 90 minutes in the old city of Porvoo/Parvoo, 2nd oldest city in Finland. Most of the old town section has cobblestone streets and one story wood homes. We browsed small shops by artisans and purchased a ceramic image of the parish church that had recently burned (vandals). It would be a great place to vacation.

Every tourist who visits must take this photo!

What I like about Country

They smile, they're cute, and you can actually sing along and clap. Eat your hearts out Dixie chickens.



"You take your all-right; you take your can't-wait.
A lotta of bring-it-on, an' some damn straight,
An' mix it all up with some down home southern drawl, y'all:
You got your yee haw!.

I'm talkin big time, I mean saddle up an' hold on tight,
An' if you know what I'm talkin' about, y'all, yeah:
How about a yee haw, ha, ha.
Yep, bow wow, y-e-e-h-a-w: yee haw."

As seen on ABC this morning.

Trip Tale: the birch bark slippers

These are a reminder of how valiently the Finns fought the Russians for Karelia in the 1940s. They hang in the guest room/den of our hosts' summer log home in the forest of Southern Karelia of Finland.

I could hardly believe the beautiful workmanship and skill. Martti's father made them for his mother as he waited in the trenches and needed to keep busy. The dark is the inside of the birch bark and the light is the outside. They are over 60 years old now. The children of the veterans of this war have not forgotten, but the younger generation has never known a larger Finland, and the teens and twenty-somethings don't remember the USSR. Many Finns from Russia have been repatriated, but their children speak Russian. And we think we have border problems?

2714 The naked truth

I'm just guessing here, but I'm betting all the folks on the Naked Bike Ride are Democrats, when they put on their underwear and vote.


"In their latest Democracy Corps strategy memo, Stan Greenberg and James Carville highlight key points of engagement that clearly demonstrate what the Democrats and Republicans stand for. . . " Democracy Corps Memo, July 28.

2712 Plan B again

Plan B has been in the news again. But this isn't about THAT plan, but this one, written in March:

"Plan B is pretty simple: stop trying to put Iraq together. It has no history of existing as a single country other than in the ruthless bonds of a tyranny or, before that, as an convenience for British imperial administration. What was India became India and Pakistan; what was Pakistan became Pakistan and Bangladesh. The end of Soviet imperial rule was quickly followed by Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia splintering and the splinters are finally beginning to prosper and escape their legacies of hatred. Who says there has to be a country called Iraq?

The most likely partition of Iraq is a “Kurdistan” in the north; a Sunni country in the west; and a Shiite nation in the east. There’s plenty not to like about plan B."

Read the rest at Tom Evslin's Fractals of Change.

2711 Guard the Borders Blogburst

"Our government has undertaken some monumental legislation that fully impacts the American way of life, our freedom, and our sovereignty. The purpose of such legislation is to homogenize Canada, Mexico, and the United States into a North American Union - and we’re all going to sleep through it.

Have you heard of a little-known program called the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America? This tri-lateral partnership was signed by President Bush last year without Congressional oversight or public approval. Opponents of the SPP have called it NAFTA on steroids - and we all know how disastrous NAFTA has been for everyone except Mexico. It also appears to be modeled on the ineffective and highly unpopular European Union (unpopular with the people, that is).

I went to the website, www.spp.gov, to begin my research. There are, indeed, no boundaries between Mexico, Canada, and the U.S. when it comes to the cooperation of financial, trade, and foreign affair departments. Though some of the PR language on the website sounds fairly benign, the commissions are picking up momentum. And you know what happens when bureaucrats start grasping at influence and power! Except that now we don’t have to just worry about our own greedy bureaucrats - but Canada’s and Mexico’s too."

Continue reading at Heidi's Euphoric Reality.

2710 Just because

Castro's been in the news today, here's one of my favorite stars from the 1980s. Gloria Estefan and the Miami Sound Machine. Florida Cracker has all the lists of the hits with links. I was looking at 1986. Not my era, but my kids, so I remember many of them.

FLW tour group, 2006

We were a melting, but hardy group standing on the deck of the Boulter House in Cincinnati. The heat was oppressive, and the sun brutal. Twenty-six and a half folks talking nothing but architecture for three days. Well, the four year old found other things to talk about. I missed one of the group photos because I'd gone back to the bus to sit in the air conditioning. We are third and fourth from the right in the back in this photo.



Frank Lloyd Wright
Boulter House

2708 Site of the day

My stats received a big boost from the University of Waterloo Daily Bulletin, which selected my poem "Last day of July" as its site of the day. Thanks. . .to whomever. . . up there in Ontario.

2707 Trip Tale: Reading in the woods

One course of action when you are up early in a log cottage in the pine and birch forest by a pristine lake in South Karelia is to read by the morning sunlight (no electricity) with a freshly brewed cup of coffee (bottled gas). Days without TV, radio, the Internet, or newspaper has a way of returning one to the joys of reading known by earlier generations. The hand woven birch bark baskets and pine shelves of the cottage were full of books--flora and fauna, old novels from the 40s, biographies, guides/tourism for the local events, and some old how-to-manuals. I found only one in English, "Eastern Approaches" by Fitzroy Maclean who was a member of the British Diplomatic corps in the 1930s-40s and wrote of his experiences traveling in the USSR and Balkans during 1937-45.

There was one eerie passage that seemed true even 60 years later. [Communists in 1942] all had one thing in common, their terror of responsibility, their reluctance to think for themselves, their blind, unquestioning obedience to the Party line dictated by a higher authority. . . the terrible atmosphere of fear and suspicion that pervaded their lives." This would be a book to read for anyone wishing to do business in Russia today, needing to understand the roots of the culture.

Either Maclean was an outstanding writer or after a week of being deprived of reading, I was like a starving woman at a banquet. In either case, it was a good read, given the years I had spent studying the history and politics of the USSR in the 50s and 60s. The chapter on the purge of the Party in the late 1930s was riveting because of all the old familiar names, particularly Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin (who was posthumously rehabilitated in 1988).

Maclean sat through the entire trial and with friends tries to sort it all out. He decides that everyone needs a cause to die for--judges, prosecutor, prisoners and NKVD. And for the prisoners, it was the Party. Even in facing death, they were characters in a theatrical production about good and evil. The trial served as a reminder to the people to be suspicious of everyone--to see spies and traitors everywhere, to shun foreigners, to explain the shortages of food and goods not on a failing economic and political system, but on those terrible traitors who were on trial. Certainly the benign and benevolent Stalin couldn't be at fault, but these traitors now being purged from the Party.

When I got home I looked up Maclean and found he was a very popular writer who had written a number of books (some think his life was the inspiration for James Bond) and that Bukharin, one of the more unforgettable characters in this book, had written an autobiographical novel while imprisoned before his death.

Trip Tale: In the beautiful lake

After dinner Riitta carries the plates and flatware to the lake in baskets, feeds the fish (who love her) the scraps, and washes the dishes in hot water from the sauna and lets them dry in the sun. This may be the first and last time I washed dishes with my feet in water.

Years ago I took the kids to the community pool every day, but haven't even owned a swim suit in years. I found this full-coverage, retro-version at K-mart. Here Riitta (not dressed for swimming) is encouraging me to just take the plunge, which eventually I did--for about 5 minutes. The lake is quite shallow and warm.

Finland
Karelia Finland
dishwashing

Trip Tale: A visit to a farm museum and artist

On Friday we visited a living farm museum. "Located in the village of Lyytikkälä at Suomenniemi, near Highway 13, the Lyytikkälä Museum Farm comprises one of South Karelia’s best preserved complete farming estates. A former 18th century “augment” or a farm which paid its land tax to a rustholli estate (a larger farm under obligation to equip a cavalryman), Lyytikkälä Farm was purchased as an independent hereditary estate in 1859. It remained with the same family for well over 250 years." Check site here.

We walked through stables, with walls about 5' thick with fir branches on the floor to drain the urine and manure into a pit and to keep the animals warm. The ovens in the house could bake 17 loaves of rye bread.

On Saturday morning we ate warm Karelian pies for breakfast, a wheat pastry with rice filling, and then we visited artist Pirjo Lindberg, watercolorist. She and her husband have a small farm/country house. He raises bees and she paints and invites other artists to show with her.

Trip Tale: Driving through Suomenniemi

This is the municipality in which our hosts built their log summer home. At one time it was under the control of Russia, but the Finns secured it in 1917 when they obtained independence. The area was contested again in the 1940s, and Finland lost a lot of territory to the Soviets. Our hosts parents lived in the area which is now part of Russia.

On Friday morning we visited a living farm which had been in the same family for generations and was the subject of a film which we previewed at the museum. We also stopped at a library which had been moved from Russia in 1936.

Kirjasto library was closed that day.

Lutheran church in Suomenniemi. This has been a Lutheran parish since 1689.












War memorial at the Lutheran church--the reason the Finns (children of the veterans) don't like the Russians.

Trip Tale: The summer house in the Karelian Forest

Our hosts in Finland have a summer log home which Martti designed and built in the 1980s. He also built the sauna and latrine. The house has no electricity or indoor plumbing, but they have a wonderful system, and the simplicity of it all works.






The view from the porch. Is this perfect, or what?

2702 OCLC to launch Open WorldCat

When we moved to Columbus, OH in 1967 and I was a Slavic cataloguer at Ohio State University Libraries, what was to become OCLC was located in the main library on the third floor, and had 3 or 4 employees. I was new in town and used to lunch with one of the female employees who also didn't know anyone--although I've forgotten her name and she moved on, as did I (to be a stay at home mom).
Mr. Kilgour's belief that there must be a better way to manage bibliographic information proved true (he died yesterday at age 92), and the Ohio College Library Consortium, which I think was its name then, grew and grew, moved out of the library building over to Kinnear Road, and then built a huge facility in Dublin, Ohio. In 1983, when my kids were teens, I worked for OhioNet, a vendor for OCLC's services to Ohio libraries. By that time, it was a world wide bibliographic network offering many library services.
Here's the item from Information Today. "In a move designed to reach users outside library environments, OCLC (http://www.oclc.org) is planning to launch a new destination site and downloadable search box for searching the content of libraries participating in WorldCat. Scheduled for a beta release sometime in August 2006, the new WorldCat.org site will continue OCLC’s efforts begun with its Open WorldCat program (http://www.oclc.org/worldcat/open/default.htm)—to make library resources more visible to Web users and to increase awareness of libraries as a primary source of reliable information. The WorldCat.org search box will make visible all 70-plus million records in the WorldCat database—not just the smaller data subsets of 3.4 to 4.4 million currently made available by the Open WorldCat partner sites, such as Google, Yahoo!, and others. And, where Open WorldCat inserts “Find in a Library” results within regular search engine results—where they can get lost—WorldCat.org promises to provide greater visibility and accessibility of library materials."

OCLC
WorldCat
Frederick G. Kilgour

2701 FLW Tour: When you visit Springfield, Ohio

Be sure to ask for Kevin for your historical walking tour of High Street. The Springfield Preservation Alliance sponsors walking tours of neighborhoods filled with the wealth of 19th century Ohioans who built large homes along High Street, designed in Neoclassical Revival, Italianate, Queen Anne, and Richardsonian Romanesque style. Our Frank Lloyd Wright touring group, on its 16th or 17th summer tour (depends on whom you ask), walked past these lovely homes in various states of repair and renovation to get to the Wescott House. Our tour guide, Kevin Rose, of the Turner Foundation, was outstanding. A booming voice to fight with the traffic, a love of Springfield, and a farm background, makes him ideal for this job of shepherding an architectural tour, or any tour.

The above house is actually not Henry Hobson Richardson designed, but was completed by the same builders who often did his designs. It is on the National Register of Historic Places being completed in 1888 as the personal home for American industrialist and two-term Ohio Governor Asa S. Bushnell. The mansion was designed by architect R. H. Robertson. It is now the Richards, Raff & Dunbar Memorial Home. The staff invited us in, and it is unbelievable inside. Might be worth being buried out of Springfield!


Springfield was a very wealthy town in those heady days, with many farm implement manufacturers located there. In the 20th century it was the home of several automobile factories, including the Wescott, and the Crowell-Collier publishing empire.
The Wescott House designed by Frank Lloyd Wright is, of course, well worth the trip, but don't miss the rest of Springfield! Make a day of it.

Westcott House
Frank Lloyd Wright
Springfield, Ohio
historic preservation

2700 Home again, sort of

We're home from a fabulous architectural tour that included Springfield, Sidney, and Dayton, Ohio, then Columbus, Indiana (5th best sige for architure in the USA) and Madison, Indiana (133 blocks of restored river town), then on to Cincinnati and Lebanon, Ohio, then home. We've laundered and repacked, and today it is back to the lake for a week. My husband is teaching an art class this week, and the facility has no AC--so I won't be surprised to see dropouts, and dropovers. Hopefully, he'll get some sailing and I'll get to the coffee shop to write some blogs.

We're off on another trip

We're touring the architectural sites in Dayton, Cincinnati, and Columbus, IN for several days. I didn't get my Finland stories finished because blogger.com wouldn't cooperate with the photos, but I'll work on that next week. Have a good week-end.

2698 Wedding wear

For his sister's wedding in September in California, my husband's choice is simple--his black tuxedo. He and brother Rick are walking her down the aisle together (second marriage). I'll probably cry. They didn't grow up together, so it is so neat to see them so close now.

So where does that leave me? No matter what I wear in California, it always looks like I just stepped off the boat plane from Ohio (probably because I did). It doesn't help much that we rarely dress up any more, or that I'm 20 pounds heavier than when I started blogging (which is very broadening, I've discovered).

So yesterday I tried the summer sales. My top priority is always: price. I don't even fight it anymore. Next is comfort. Then coverage. I actually found three dresses at Talbots summer sale. One black and white bold print looked right out of the 70s in the days we first discovered polyester. I'm positive I must have had one from this pattern, but in a different color. It fit, but because it was long sleeve and snug, I thought it might be too hot if their warm weather continues.

This is the style, but it was black and white. I didn't choose this one.

One was sleeveless, and one had a small loose sleeve, so that's the one I went with. It is black silk gorgette with little color dots, and I can wear a light weight jacket in any of the colors, I think. It is a body skimmer with an eased v-neck, so I think it will be comfortable, and has two lengths with small ruffles.

In Russia, we saw many brides--it is the custom to have your photo taken in front of an important monument or government building. So they were everywhere we were. If I can get blogger to cooperate, I'll add some photos. They were the prettiest brides I've ever seen.

2697 Great teeth, good fashion

Brains and good looks apparently do go together. Enjoy reading (and looking at) "50 Most Beautiful People on Capitol Hill" in The Hill. I've never seen such beautiful teeth.

2696 The real minimum wage

Dick Morris suggests it should have been indexed to the cost of living rather than givin one-shot increases, but figures the real minimum wage as:

"Much of the debate over the minimum wage is, of course, obviated by the earned-income tax credit which kicks in for all minimum-wage mothers. The credit, plus Medicaid eligibility, plus food stamps, plus day-care allowances, plus rent subsidies, plus exemption from income taxes, means that those who earn the minimum wage really have a pre-tax income equivalent over $20,000."

Tell that to beginning librarians and school teachers who earned a master's degree to earn about that much.

2695 Trip Tale: Tallinn, Estonia

The five of us went through customs and boarded the hydrofoil for Tallinn, about a two hour trip (it's about 4.5 hours by ferry). The waves were high and it was really bumpy, but with the help of a motion pill and keeping my eyes shut the whole trip, I kept my breakfast. Not so the pretty young Swedish girl next to my husband.

Little Estonia (at least its major city) has created a miracle in only 15 years of freedom from the Soviets. We were blown away by the restoration of its "old town," and the vibrancy of its newer areas. I'm sure it's going through some of the growing pains that countries experience as they transform themselves from totalitarian to democratic regimes, but compared to what we were to see in Russia the following week, it is really a transformation.

Riitta had been there under the old regime and she could hardly believe it. Old Town is now colorful gold, pink and blue buildings with red tile roofs and lovingly restored old Catholic, Lutheran and Orthodox churches open for tourists and worshippers. It was like a German city without the hordes of Japanese tourists.

We docked at a huge decaying concrete "ice palace" built during the Soviet era. This ?? is on top--sort of looks like a Russian bear, but up close seems to be an ethnic-asian person inside a fish or animal skin.

Although not as crowded as other European cities, driving is a bit dicey because before freedom 15 years ago, no one had automobiles--so it's sort of new to them.

We skipped lunch in the pricey market place (for tourists) and Tomi led us to a lovely local restaurant with great food and reasonable prices, called H.H. Rüütel.

Lower left of this photo shows some unrestored and crumbling buildings--what the whole town used to look like.


Tallinn, Estonia
Estonians
USSR

2694 The stem cell veto

There was a cartoon in the international ed. of the NYT last week that showed a distinctly Simian, slumping President Bush vetoing stem cell research with a reference to the flat earth society. If Bush's veto will make no difference in stem cell research (except to those of us with "narrow religious views" who believe it is immoral to create life for the purpose of destroying it to benefit someone else), where's the beef? There is plenty of private money for this, and no one has yet found any cure for any disease using the cell lines created before 2001 which are available. The media are creating yet another victim class--all the people who haven't yet benefitted from research that hasn't yet produced any cures!

Also, according to New Atlantis, the U.S. isn't falling behind in stem cell research. "Far from showing the United States lagging behind in the field, they found that American scientists had by far the most publications—46 percent of the total, while the other 54 percent were divided among scientists from 17 other countries. They also found that the number of papers in the field published by Americans has increased each year, with a particularly notable growth spurt beginning in 2002. . . [the study showed] more than 85 percent of all the published embryonic stem cell research in the world has used the lines approved for funding under the Bush policy. Since this is almost twice the number of papers published by Americans, it is clear that a great deal of the work done abroad has also involved these lines, even though most of it could not have been funded by the NIH. The lines are used, in other words, because they are useful, not only because they are eligible for federal support."

The media--NYT, CNN, WaPo and their sibs and blogs--flog this story that the U.S. is falling behind, but like a lot of the other anti-Bush stories published by them, it's a lie.

stem-cell-research
George W. Bush
media bias

2692 Trip Tale: Visiting Suomenlinna, the Fortress

When Peter the Great built St. Petersburg in 1703 so he'd have a port on the Baltic, the Swedes decided to fortify Finland (which it ruled) and built Suomenlinna on the islands. The fortress was lost to the Russians in 1808. It fell into disrepair, but now is a historical preservation site with cobblestone and brick streets, old walls, ramparts, cannons, a working dock for repair of wooden ships, a museum, art shops and a nice little town library. About 800 people live on the islands, but at one time it was quite a bit larger. The ferry there is part of Helsinki's city transportation so it is very accessible and a delightful spot for either tourists or residents.

With the long summer days, the island was filled with picnickers and families, sunbathing even as late as 8:30 p.m. We had dinner at a lovely white tablecloth restaurant called Walhalla, Charr with lobster mousse.

2692 The gasoline cost survey

Today I got an e-mail questionnaire from my congresswoman Deborah Pryce asking my opinion on gasoline prices. Although ANWR and more refineries were included as a choice (to solve the problem of high prices), I can't believe our congresspeople never mention the gasoline taxes (20% of the cost). So I reminded her of that option. I don't know why they even run that price gouging question past us! Yesterday in Bucyrus it was $2.85 a gallon. When it gets to $3, which it is around Columbus, and people just stop buying, then the supply increases, and the price goes down. Adjusted for inflation we're about where we were in 1981.

In Norway which is an oil rich nation and now very wealthy with the highest standard of living in the world, I see tourists are advised to fix their own food if possible--$14.50 for a chicken breast if you cook it yourself. They put their oil money in a trust fund for the future, so they pay high prices now. Our Finnish friends all drive small, efficient cars, they conserve, they pay huge fees to have a license to drive, and they have an excellent public transportation system. And they are paying well over $5/gal for gasoline, a lot of which is taxes. And they are very unhappy that huge Russian transports are using their highways paid for with their gasoline taxes to haul automobiles from the Finnish port cities of Turku, Hanko and Kotka across the border into Russia.

Gas Prices

2691 Trip Tale: The new veterinary hospital in Helsinki

On Tuesday we toured what is probably the finest veterinary hospital in the world--at least until the next one is built--having opened just this past spring. "The Veterinary Hospital serves the Helsinki region in all small animal or horse medical cases and the whole of Finland as a place of treatment for referred patients. The design of the new hospital building takes into account the needs of the future inmates. Particular attention has been paid to the adaptability of the premises." Annual Report

Riitta was still on call when we arrived on Saturday, and had just completed two major surgeries, and was called in the middle of that night for a third. I don't know if doctors of human medicine spend as much worry and angst over their patients as we observed with Riitta, with frequent calls to the hospital to check on her horses. When we toured the small animal and large animal sections, we not only visited her patients, but saw where the surgery and care takes place.

Riitta is looking for an internal medicine person willing to come for 2-3 years who has a Dip-ACVIM. Because this is a Finnish hospital one of the staff perks includes a lovely sauna.

This was an extremely sick animal, but was still alive two weeks later when we left. I won't even describe the surgery or post the photos!

2690 Less Stress Chickens meet the same fate

One of the things I can’t resist (I should save this for a TT) is trying a new and interesting product--especially if it is at Trader Joe’s, which I consider a responsible chain for health, nutrition and price. So today I picked up Chicken Sausage mixed with fresh spinach and feta cheese (Han’s All Natural, Olympus brand). It has no antibiotics and no nitrates, and is “minimally processed” with no artificial ingredients. If you’re really picky, I’ll note that it has pork casing, and everything else on the label you can read without a chemistry degree.

Anyway, I thought of Murray, from my hometown, who left a little story in my comments a few weeks ago about rescuing baby chicks from the local hatchery years ago when he was a child. They had been thrown out live into the trash can because of various imperfections. The chicken (sausage) I’m about to eat for lunch has been raised in a low stress, environmentally focused practice, and ate an all vegetable diet (don’t chickens eat bugs if they are free-range and happy?). But like Murray’s little peeps that survived to grow up to be halt and lame, but happy, their fate was the same. Low stress or not, it's a chicken's life.

2689 Learn a few Finnish phrases

Helsingin Sanomat (the on-line international edition), the main newspaper of Helsinki, is on midsummer vacation until the end of July. Just about everyone seemed to be on vacation--at the summer lake cottages, or little farms in the countryside. But here's a page I wish I'd found earlier, called Speak up in Finnish. It has recordings so you can hear how the phrases should sound.

Finland
Helsinki
Finnish
Helsingin Sanomat

2688 On being illiterate

In Finland, I am illiterate. Finnish and Estonian are related languages--the Finns and Estonians may have been one people centuries ago, but their languages are not like any romance or germanic language. I think Finnish has 12 or 13 declensions for its nouns. Swedish is the second national language, and because it is germanic, you'll have a better chance trying to pronounce the street names and directions and store types in Swedish to figure them out than to try Finnish. In Copenhagen I looked through a Danish newspaper and could at least figure out pieces of it. Nothing in Finnish made much sense.

On Wednesday I went shopping with Riitta for groceries and tried to find an English language publication. Truly, after three days of being unable to read, I was desperate. At the news stand my choice was between the international edition of Time Magazine and Vogue. It was a tough choice, believe me. But I paid 4 euros (about $5.00) for 52 pages of Time, 19 of which were photos of the World Cup. Photos I can figure out in Finnish. Five pages were devoted to bashing the "Bush Doctrine." No mention or credit for liberating the Iraqi people from a cruel dictator; no credit for identifying North Korea within months of taking office as part of the Axis of Evil; no mention that his neo-con advisors are former Democrats; or the 500 WMD that have been found; that the Iraqi people have voted in free elections. Although Bush has always acknowledged we were in for a long battle against Islamic terrorists, when he reiterates this, the MSM seems to think it is a victory for their side.

So what does Time recommend? Some Truman era reruns. They don't mention how extremely unpopular Truman was his second term--I think he was lower in the polls than Bush. Another article by Jos. S. Nye, Jr. pined nostalgically for the days of FDR and containment. Tell that one to the Estonians and the millions of other east Europeans who died in the Gulags waiting for the Americans to come and free them. Sixty years ago we sold out 40 million East Europeans to the USSR; let's not repeat that mistake by selling out the Iraqis.

Even so, it was good to be able to read again.