The photographs were taken at the Elma event in Messukeskus, Helsinki, on November 11th.
We got 15 cm of heavy snow today. I didn't commute by bicycle, which was a wise decision as the road conditions were challenging in the afternoon. There is some snow shoveling in the program for the evening.
(Posting title is from the poem The Ancestors Explain How Envy Grew by Afaa Michael Weaver.)
The photographs were taken at the Elma event in Messukeskus, Helsinki, on November 11th.
Last week it happened that alpacas became a symbol for those who resist nazis in Finland.
(Posting title is from the poem There Is a Birdsong at the Root of Poetry by Jennifer Moxley.)
The photographs were taken at the Predator Center in Kuusamo on June 29th.
This morning I rode the bicycle around the Helsinki-Vantaa airport, a distance of 42 km, which took two hours with a couple of stops for taking photographs. The weather is warming up, as there is warm wind coming from Lapland.
(Posting title is from the poem 2000 lbs. by Brian Turner.)
I commuted by bicycle on Friday, and it was good. During the winter the city was spreading gravel to give pedestrians traction, and that is not so good for bicycles, but fortunately on some places the gravel has already been cleaned away.
I bought some new clothing to be used this winter for riding the bicycle, but there hasn't been much use because the cold part of the winter was so short. Also, I bought a new backlight, but now the sun is soon rising early enough so that there is no need for lights any more. However, I don't complain, it is great that spring seems to be starting this early, a month or so before normal.
The photographs were taken in Luomus, the Finnish Museum of Natural History.
(Posting title is from the poem Bones and Shadows by John Philip Johnson.)
Luomus, the Finnish Museum of Natural History, provides lots of things for the photographer. And it was nice to see how the children used their phones to take photographs and record videos.
(Posting title is from the poem Why Nobody Pets the Lion at the Zoo by John Ciardi.)
Here you see an eager little thing that is spending time in our garden, nosing the grass, looking for things to eat, and snuffling rather loudly when doing this.
I don't think it has good eyesight, and it doesn't know how to count. I and my three children had a look at it and talked aloud, and then it went hiding into the bushes. But when the two oldest daughters went inside, it came out and didn't seem to realize that I and the youngest daughter were watching quietly right beside.
On Wednesday I had seriously bad cramps in the big leg muscles. I was sitting in a seminar, and first I got cramps in the left feet, so painful that I almost shouted out loudly. And when that eased, the same happened with the right leg. And this happened again when I got back home, after commuting by bicycle.
I think I have been exercising a bit too much this week. First 4 1/2 hours of walking in forests and swamps, and then commuting by bicycle, 1 1/2 hours daily. Thus on Thursday I'm not using the bicycle but instead commuting by bus.
(Posting title is from the poem Wilderness by Carl Sandburg.)
I went with the children to Korkeasaari Zoo today (meaning Wednesday, I posted this a bit after midnight), where we had a nice time, walking around and enjoying the scenery. It wasn't hot, below +20 °C, which was fine, and we saw quite a lot of animals.
The photograph of a bear is dedicated to Errol who was interested in whether one should worry about bears when picking blueberries in Finland. This is the closest I have ever come to a bear.
As I wrote yesterday, I switched from Firefox to Google Chrome, and so far so good. But then there is the question of whether Google is to be trusted.
Yesterday there were some headlines on how Google was spying on users, gaining access to their information: "[Google] is nearing an agreement to pay $22.5 million to settle a U.S. Federal Trade Commission probe[...] Google, using its DoubleClick ad network, violated users’ privacy."
So, am I naive in trusting Google with Chrome?
But anyway, I think I'll try Chrome for a while, and if it works better than Firefox (as it seems to do), I'll continue using it.
Today I got the HP Photosmart 6510 multifunction printer, of which I wrote earlier. As an unanticipated bonus I got an extra black ink cartridge for three euros, a quarter of the normal price.
And surprise, surprise, the printer was easy to set up through the wireless connection, no USB cables needed. I managed to do duplex printing, and also scanning seems to work perfectly using the supplied Mac software. The printer is not the most speediest, but it seems to be of reasonably good design.
(Posting title is from the poem Why Nobody Pets the Lion at the Zoo by John Ciardi.)
I went for an evening walk today, to the pond which is depicted in the photo book Treasure Pond. I caught some bugs, and a squirrel, with the camera.
Here are three quite different photographs taken today. Two first are rather complex and the last one is a simple one. Or perhaps I'm mistaken?
Despite the weather forecast, we didn't get snow here in the Helsinki region, although a bit north of here there was some. Early in the morning I saw a car with 1 cm of snow on top of it.
I'm listening to U2 - both old and new albums - and for some reason, I'm feeling extremely tired. It is getting clouded outside, but we did get some sunhine around noon. Here are photographs of some man-made things; at the moment they fit my mood better than "nature" photographs.
This afternoon we finally got a little bit of rain, which cooled the air somewhat, down to 24 °C or so. However, the relief was temporary, hot weather will continue for quite a while still. Yet it was nice to see some water on the ground and on plants. We have seen more dead animals in our garden than is usual, the heat and lack of water must be the reason for this.
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