Into the distances of the afternoon

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The photographs were taken on June 28th while visiting Vallisaari island in Helsinki.

(Posting title is from the poem Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota by James Wright.)

He shrugs and offers up his empty hands

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The photographs were taken at Suomenlinna Fortress Island on July 6th.

Yesterday I and the children visited Särkänniemi Amusement Park in Tampere. Between 12 AM and 3 PM it rained quite a lot, but then the weather got better, and there was even some sunshine. We spent over seven hours at Särkänniemi, and we had a lot of things to do, especially as the queues to the rides were short or even non-existent.

(Posting title is from the poem A Ride in the Rain by Blas Falconer.)

I walk this good road between rock

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The photographs were taken at Suomenlinna Fortress Island in Helsinki on July 6th.

The car passed the annual vehicle inspection yesterday. I was a bit surprised. The car is 16 years old but still mostly ok. I cleaned the interior of the car, and did some car headlight adjustment. Also, I noticed that the windshield was slightly chipped, and I had it repaired, which cost 40 euros. I guess the car is now fine for another year of driving.

A colleague said that I should enjoy the "cheap kilometers" of the car as long as it lasts. And a car repairman said that there is no monetary value to the car any more, but still lots of value in driving it.

(Posting title is from the poem In The Summer After “Issue Year” Winter (1873) by Roberta Hill.)

Unless you turn your mind on its side

Ship

House

Yesterday I walked for two hours in forests and swamps, and it felt good, looking at the late autumn scenery. I didn't meet anyone while walking even though there were a couple of cars at the parking place. Half of the way I used a map and a compass to get where I wanted, not following paths.

I'm slowly going through photographs taken earlier. These were taken on the ship in the morning when arriving at Stockholm on September 20th.

(Posting title is from the poem How Long by Ron Padgett.)

What did you see?

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I'm hoping to have time to go for a long walk today in swamps. We had a storm during the night, and lots of rain, which should have filled the swamps.

The photographs show sea scenery near Helsinki.

(Posting title is from the poem Some Questions about the Storm by Hilda Raz.)

And the polar bear, is he here too?

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On July 18th we went by car to Tromsø in Norway. A cable car goes up to mount Storsteinen, 421 metres above sea level. From there we had a rather grand view over Tromsø and the nearby islands. "Tromsø is located beside the mighty Arctic Ocean, surrounded by towering mountains."

Later we walked in the city, doing a little shopping, and on the way back to Kilpisjärvi we stopped by the seaside to explore the beach.

Some years ago I attended a conference in Tromsø, in summer, and we had a late dinner in the restaurant on top of mount Storsteinen. The sun never set, and we saw how the sun approached the horizon, only to start rising again. There were people hang-gliding in the updrafts of warm air by the mount, until the air cooled down late in the evening. This time there were no hang-gliders, maybe the season for that is over.

The norwegian hosts told us how it was to live in Tromsø a hundred years ago. They said that a typical story of a family was that the grandfather was poor, but managed to finally buy a boat for himself. The father enlarged the boat to a fleet of boats. And the son drank it all away so that the next generation started from scratch again.

Also, there were stories of polar bear hunting on the remote islands in the north by the polar ice cap, where one had to spend months or even a year before it was possible to return home by boat.

Some years later I read a book by Fridtjof Nansen, describing the Fram expedition, and those stories didn't seem to be so fantastic any more.

(Posting title is from the poem Glazunoviana by John Ashbery.)

Life falling into the thin

Island

Would you believe that this island is called "Big Island", Isosaari in Finnish?

(Posting title is "computer poetry" generated with Infinite Monkeys N-GRAM Algorithm.)