The photographs were taken in Helsinki on May 28th.
Here is Lapland the summer is only a little more advanced that it was a month ago in Helsinki. This morning I walked the Pyhän Jyssäys route which goes up to the Pikku-Pyhävaara hill. It took some time to find the starting point of the route, so I got some extra walking in the beginning.
(Posting title is from the poem Scenes of Life at the Capital by Philip Whalen.)
The photograph was taken on May 28th in Helsinki.
I'll be traveling and there can be breaks in the postings. Have the courage to #resist.
(Posting title is from the poem Life by Anna Lætitia Barbauld.)
The photographs were taken on May 27th in Petikko.
Tomorrow I'll be traveling to the land of the Nightless Night where the sun will next set on July 10th.
(Posting title is from the poem Life by Edith Wharton.)
The photographs were taken at Petikko on May 27th.
The weather has been changing rapidly, from sunshine to rain to thunder. Now the weather seems to be warming up a bit, becoming less wet. Yesterday and today I didn't get wet when commuting by bicycle.
(Posting title is from the poem The Triumph of Life by Percy Bysshe Shelley.)
The photographs of spring flowers were taken on May 27th.
Update: Here is a list of the flowers shown above: violet, lily of the valley, marsh marigold and cherry.
(Posting title is from the poem A Psalm of Freudian Life by Franklin Pierce Adams.)
The photographs were taken in Nuuksio on May 26th.
(Posting title is from the poem Another Night in the Ruins by Galway Kinnell.)
The photographs were taken in Nuuksio on May 26th.
Today I went to Träskända park in Espoo, riding a bicycle, and explored the river Glims on foot. Lots of noise from birds, and only a couple of people to be seen, and two dogs.
(Posting title is from the poem A Sheep Dog Locked in Photograph by Hershman John.)
The photographs were taken on May 26th in Nuuksio at Soidinsuo swamp.
Today is Finnish midsummer's eve, and there is bonfire watching in the program. Photographs taken in 2010 were depicted in my photobook Impressions of Midsummer's Eve (also available at Blurb). This year the weather will be cold, 10-15 °C, but there shouldn't be rain.
(Posting title is from the poem Acceptable Dissociations by Sina Queyras.)
The photographs were taken at Sipoonkorpi on May 25th with an iPhone SE.
Today I didn't get wet when riding the bicycle. There was an intense hail shower with thunder, but that happened before I started commuting back home.
(Posting title is from the poem Vivas To Those Who Have Failed: The Paterson Silk Strike, 1913 by Martín Espada.)
The photographs were taken at Sipoonkorpi on May 25th.
Today there was strong headwind when commuting back home by bicycle, and it started to rain heavily. I got completely soaked. Lightning hit about 200 m away.
And not to forget: length of day is today 18 h 59 min.
(Posting title is from the poem Rite by Henry Dumas.)
The photographs were taken at Sipoonkorpi National Park on May 25th, using an iPhone SE, because I forgot the LX100 camera at home. The photographs are rather different than they would be with the LX100. Not necessarily better or worse, just different.
Yesterday an important news items was that data of almost 200 million voters in the United States leaked online by GOP analytics firm. What is interesting about such data is the way it can be used to subvert democracy. By targeting ads to each individual person, a political party can give each person a different message (or "promise"). And when they get in power, they can do whatever they want, regardless of their campaign promises, because none of this information was publicly available or widely known.
(Posting title is from the poem Guns by Katrina Roberts.)
The photographs were taken on May 20th at Timmermalmi.
This morning I commuted by bicycle through the central park in Helsinki, and got the fastest time so far this year: 38 minutes. This was due to the traffic lights being almost optimal, and a little bit of backwind. One needs to be careful when riding the bicycle, because there are quite a lot of other people on the road, so going faster than this is not feasible.
(Posting title is from the poem Was He Married? by Stevie Smith.)
The photographs were taken on May 20th.
I'm feeling somewhat tired today. I did half an hour of lawn mowing, that is all the exercise so far for today.
(Posting title is from the poem I married by Lorine Niedecker.)
The photographs were taken on May 20th.
In six days I have got 11 1/2 hours of exercise, of which 7 1/2 hours riding the bicycle. I should take a rest day, but there is so much to see out in the forests, swamps, and fields.
(Posting title is from the poem culebra canal by Roberto Harrison.)
The photograph was taken at Kytäjä-Usmi on May 13th.
I woke up early today, and rode my bicycle to Timmermalmi, exploring the forests and swamps on foot, getting 2 1/2 hours of exercise. Later today I have some more exercise in the program.
(Posting title is from the poem Inside the Blues Whale by Afaa Michael Weaver.)
The photographs were taken on May 14th in Petikko.
The stock market in Finland is doing rather fine. The OMX Helsinki index is +28% from one year ago. I have bought stocks in 41 companies listed in Helsinki, and the value of this investment has grown 35% in one year. Mostly my strategy has been "buy and hold", but I have done some selling as well. For example, India's Motherson Sumi bought Finland's PKC Group, and I got a nice profit as I had bought shares in the company a long time ago when it was valued much lower.
However, these days the world is changing so rapidly that things can be rather different one year from now on. I wonder what my thinking about investments will be then.
(Posting title is from the poem Over a Cup of Coffee by Stephen Dobyns.)
The photograph was taken on May 14th in Petikko.
On Monday and Tuesday it rained, and the bicycle got dirty. I did some repairs to it, replacing brake pads, and cleaning and lubing the chain. Today was a sunny day, great for commuting by bicycle.
(Posting title is from the poem Repression of War Experience by Siegfried Sassoon.)
The photographs were taken at Petikko on May 14th.
The political situation in Finland changes almost hourly, as if we were following a scripted drama. The populist Finns Party selected an openly racist leader, and the government was on the verge of breaking up, but today the parliamentary group of the Finns Party broke up instead. It may be that soon we will have two populist parties, one of them less openly racist as the other one.
(Posting title is from the poem Allegory of Evil in Italy by Stanley Moss.)
The photographs were taken on May 13th at Kytäjä-Usmi.
Today was a rainy day. In the morning I got soaking wet while commuting by bicycle. The clothes were still wet in the afternoon when I started riding back home. And I got soaking wet once again.
The Finnish government fell today, after the "Finns Party" elected an openly racist leader yesterday. Now the Finns Party is out of government, and negotiations about a new coalition have started. I hope human rights are remembered.
Yesterday, after the Finns Party election result was announced, I was quite shocked. As therapy I made a donation to the Disaster Relief Fund of the Finnish Red Cross. That helped a bit.
(Posting title is from the poem Idea 20: An evil spirit, your beauty, haunts me still by Michael Drayton.)
The photographs of river Vantaa were taken at Kytäjä-Usmi on May 13th.
Here in Finland things are not fine. Yesterday the "True Finns" party elected a convicted racist Jussi Halla-aho as their leader, and all chair persons of the Finns Party are hardcore anti-immigrants. The Finnish government could fall as a result, and in fact this might be the best case scenario. As a sidenote, the Norwegian far-right terrorist and mass murderer Anders Breivik (now known as Fjotolf Hansen) credited Jussi Halla-aho's writings as his inspiration for considering "the left" as the enemy.
(Posting title is from the poem Covenant by Alan R. Shapiro.)
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