The Quiet Picture

Looks like I lamented about the fate of Savonlinna a bit too early - there seems to be life left in the old town yet, reaching the foreign news. If only they could spell it right!

*sigh*

So, I went driving for a bit, went cycling for a bit, did hoovering for a bit, washed the dishes for a bit, read a book quite a lot, idled around for a bit, and took some lousy pictures for a bit. …What a forgettable day.Next!

So, guess who’s a lucky one and has an explosive battery in the Powerbook? No prizes. The Dell Latitude I have at work had a good battery so I didn’t have to exchange it, but the Apple Powerbook - the very same Powerbook I will take with me to Canada in two weeks! - has one of these Sony inflammables and the replacement battery won’t arrive until in 4-6 weeks’ time. Alright so I’ve been using the Powerbook on battery power and no problems, and the likelyhood that it will explode is very small… but I guess the airline would prefer me not to use it during flight, or risk getting arrested with charges of taking explosives on board. And that’s not really even a joke!

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I realise that it’s been more rants and less photographs lately in this blog. I’ll try to make an effort to shoot something this weekend but to be honest, I don’t feel particularly inspired. August seems to be a bit of an off-month for me; in August 2004 I took exactly one (1) photo, and it wasn’t even a good one.

Should we download whole albums or just selected songs? Even if the music industry as a whole has finally accepted the fact that music downloads are here to stay, some artists still argue against it. Apparently, the possibility of downloading just selected tracks instead of the whole album is an insult to their artistic integrity (and profits). One of the problems I used to have in the pre-download age was that I was forced to buy the whole album if I wanted just one song from it, so now my shelves are full of CDs which I never listen to. So if someone wants to sell me a long-play CD with the argument that I would appreciate the music more if I heard all the songs on the album, I would just laugh. I really couldn’t care less about the context - all I want is a good song!

I recently got the sad news the Savonlinna School of Translation Studies (Kansainvälisen viestinnän laitos, KVL) is going to be moved to Joensuu to be housed together with the rest of the University. I spent five years of my life at KVL studying translation and Savonlinna has always had a special place in my heart. Firstly, it’s my birth place. Secondly, the family summer house is nearby. Thirdly, I’ve spent just about every summer of my childhood in and around Savonlinna. If there’s one town in Finland I miss, then it’s this one. But the problem is that it’s a fairly small town tucked away in the Eastern Finland. Unemployment is sky high with all the businesses leaving the town one by one, so the loss of KVL feels like a death blow. Just about the only thing that is holding the town up now is the Opera Festival and the rest of the tourist attractions, with what Savonlinna ideally situated between two major waterways and the Linnansaari National Park close by. But how many people can the summer tourism support? It’s just two months of the year… for the remaining ten, the town dies.I would dearly like to be a positive statistic for the old town. But I might as well stop dreaming right now, because there’s no job for me either. My only chance would be to freelance - as a translator? No, haven’t done that since 1995 when I got my degree. As a photographer? No, I don’t have what it takes. Could I get a job as a Lotus Notes Administrator? Nope, doubt there’s a domino shop left in town.

Since I heard the bad news, Amy Grant’s old song Nobody Home has been playing in my head. It’s always been a favourite as I’ve considered it to be a metaphor for my life; a bright future behind me. But now it also has a literal meaning as an epitaph for my beloved Savonlinna. It’s even more depressing.

Main street u.s.a boarded up and dry
Knowin’ what once was here just makes me wanna cry
Used to be the favorite place
Now what remains are memories even time cannot eraseOld man johnson’s store, where we grew up too fast
All that remains today are echoes from the past
Used to be a boomin’ town
All that’s left is either broken up or broken down

Singing, oh ah, oh ah, oh ah, oh
Where we used to belong
There ain’t nobody home
Said, oh ah, oh ah, oh ah, oh
You can knock all you want
But, ain’t nobody home

Packed up, moved away, runnin’ from the past
Leaving behind the dusty dreams and broken glass
Used to be a busy town
Now, everybody passes through, but they don’t stick around

Was a newsstand on the corner
Right next to the barber shop
And down the street there
That’s where all the kids would stop
And they would tease the neighbor’s bulldog
Laugh and run away
Now, there’s no one left who knows the truth in what you say

(song written by Glen Ballard & Siedah Garrett)

There’s a good number of devilsbit scabious (Succisa pratensis; ängsvädd; purtojuuri) growing by the Loossjön lake. I think it’s an interesting flower, not least because it blooms at a time most other flowers have already given up for the season. Normally the flowers are blue/violet but some light pink and white variants exist, and I found the white variety - growing only in one spot, with their normal coloured brethren lining up the road leading to the boat launch.
Speaking of Loossjön, the Big Rain did a good job at raising the water levels. The Likholmen island is visibly smaller now as the water level has risen about half a metre from a couple of weeks ago. And a month ago the water level was probably closer to a whole metre lower, that’s when I did my shoreline walk. It would be impossible now.

Would you believe that I got stopped by the police for the first time ever? And that with me sitting in a new car with a temporary vehicle tax sticker and no registration document in sight! Well, all was well, my alcohol level was zero (for a lifetime tee-totaller, I would’ve been nothing short of shocked had the meter even twitched) and the nice policeman was happy with both my English drivers license and the explanation that I just got the car yesterday.I am also starting to get in terms with the automatic gearbox. A few more days and I’m sure it will be like I never drove stick shift at all. LOL!

So, my new car arrived ahead of time and yes you’re right, I’m very very very happy! It was originally estimated to arrive in September so it was a nice surprise when I got a call from Toyota on Tuesday.I got the car armed to the teeth with extras and the coolest of them all is the multimode gearbox - i.e. automatic, but not quite. This is causing me a lot of headache because you have to help the gears with the break and gas pedals and I’m naturally only used to the clutch and manual shift. If you see a green Yaris stutter along in traffic, it’s not me. [looks innocent]

Buying the car was a learning experience.

1. Never take “medlemsbilkredit” (car loan via the union). It’s worth paying a percent or two extra just to skip the bureaucracy.
2. Read the documentation before you act. I had searched for all the documents I had concerning the old car, but couldn’t find the registration document. So I decided to order a new one just in case my second round of searching would turn out blanks also. But of course I did find the document later on, it was right where it should be but I just hadn’t realised that it was it. Which meant that when I presented the old registration document at Toyota when I left in my old car, it couldn’t be used - only the new, due to arrive to me on Monday, qualifies now. Duh!

It’s such a cool car! Small, but cool. Just need to learn the gear operation before I look entirely too much like I only got my drivers license yesterday. LOL!

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This morning I noticed that Furuvägen had re-opened after the torrential rain had washed away the road earlier this week. I took a look in the evening and sure enough, they had already patched it up. I’m impressed - I thought it would take them weeks to get up to it because this road is surely not a priority.

Up here in Sweden we are normally well protected from extreme weather. We just have our normal four seasons, but no hurricanes, monsoon rain, tornadoes, etc. They had a big storm in the southern Sweden last year (just about the worst ever in this country), there’s been large scale flooding in different parts of Sweden every year, and sometimes some places get dumped a meter of snow in a day.. but I doubt that any of our weather phenomena make it in the news outside the Nordic countries.Well, yesterday we had weather conditions that are just about as extreme as it gets over here. Rain, and lots of it. 136mm to be exact. Loos seems to have been on the western edge of the weather front, because in Ljusdal it didn’t seem too bad. But when we drove home, we were amazed to see the roadside ditch spill over the road at Dåasen. Then when we turned to Loos, we got greeted by new warning signs - a landslide! There’s a short stretch of a road with a high embankment and the upper layer of this sandy embankment had relocated itself on the road, blocking a lane.

Then I read in the news today that there had been more damage - when small creeks turn into raging torrents, not much is safe. Houses get flooded, roads get eroded, and drainpipes get blocked. My house is safe from flooding, but there’s still a big puddle on the lawn behind my garage.

Both Kylätyevägen and Furuvägen (both are gravel roads) had suffered some damage and were closed off. By the time I got home today, they had re-opened Kylätyevägen but Furuvägen was still closed. I was curious to see why, so I went to have a look, paying lip service to the first barrier because the road looked ok to me. But then I found out why the road was closed, and decided to respect the second barrier:

It’s going to take a while before this road opens again…

I’ve never been much for studio and still-life photography. Just couldn’t see the point. The charm with nature photography is to actually be out there in the nature. But lately I’ve started wondering if I should try to explore new aspects of photography so I decided to build a mock studio to see if I can create something new. It’s a total DIY job, I’m certainly not going to spend thousands of SEK on something I won’t use (I’ve already got a closet full of stuff I don’t use!). The cost so far is 130 SEK and you’d keel over laughing if you saw it, but it works! Sort of… I still need to invest in better lighting (160 SEK) and some backgrounds, but we are not talking about any brand names here.
I can see the potential and this would certainly be something to do during those long dark winter evenings. Now I just have to find some bits and bobs to shoot in my DIY studio…