View North

What? She's posting again? Yeah, yeah, yeah... There's an explanation: No pilates tonight. The class was canceled. The teacher is sick. So here's your picture:






















This is the view North from the upstairs staircase window. Probably taken sometime before Christmas. Our next door neighbor towards North is a bit to the right in the picture: if you look closely you can see a yellowish hue in the right hand side. The red house is the neighbor after that. It's a big beautiful house on a cliff, with a mansard roof and a majestic look. But our little house is just as cosy and we don't need to sand 30 icy steps to our front door during winter. Only five.

Speaking of the ice. It was glorious on the window that day. It transformed the garden into a soft milky dream and just below the sun made it glow and sparkle in millions of funny shapes and there was just this tiny crack that you could see quite clearly through.

The ice is pretty but it's also evidence of bad ventilation in the bathroom. All fixed now. We have a light switch and we have a switch to turn on the mechanical exhaust. Just like in America. Totally awesome!

Snow Cat

So why haven't I posted anything in such a long time? Well, the truth is that I haven't had any news worth writing about. But the snow cat is worth writing about. Or rather, it's worth a picture.

This last week has been beautiful and sunny with rapidly melting snow and a strong promise of spring. But yesterday I woke up to a silent snowfall which made me instantly happy as it never fails to do. Today however, the snow is already melting again and the cat has lost first it's tail, then the head and now finally it's back.

Luckily I took pictures yesterday to share with you and remind me of the wonders of snow even after it's all melted away. How about the past months then? Did I panic? Did I get everything packed? Did I take any pictures to share later? Was I truthful earlier when I said I told you the truth? Shall you find out later? Nobody knows, but the Snow Cat's here to stay. And if it snows a little more, I can always make a new creature from the two leg pillars still standing.

As always, the Snow Cat from left and from right and from back and from front here.

Packing Now, Panicking Later

So we are moving just 11 days from now. I'm packing. There's still no electricity, no heating, no water, not even a toilet seat. Somebody pointed out to me that there's no use for a toilet seat if you don't have any water. But I've thought this through, trust me. You see, one could fetch water from the garden tap, which is working. At least I think it is.

We are happy it's getting colder as the porch will provide a great fridge and we are planning to buy a mikrowave. The eight months of dust do worry me though. The vacuum uses electricity, you understand. And the cats do worry me. They are ment for pillow imitating and purring, not as renovation hazards or dust redistributers.

But there is one thing I've learned this fall. We all know it and I've known it too for a long long time, I've been told it hundreds of times and I've said it hundreds of times more but I was never able to truly live by it before. To take only one worry at the time. If you feel your life is spiralling out of your hands, that your worries are drowning you, that you simply can't handle it anymore, I have a suggestion you can't pass: Acquire a house to renovate, the older the better, the worse the shape the better. Prefarably wooden. Prefarably with memories. And I promise you, you will finally be able to live one day at the time.

Yes, we are moving in 11 days from now, we don't have electricity, heating or water, not even a toilet set, and I'm not panicking. There is still plenty of time for that next week.

Legacy

It was a basement restaurant and I walked the white steps down from the street. It had been raining the whole day and I was happy to get inside from the wet darkness. I was a bit early as you can imagine but there were already some people bustling about and I slowly chose a table from the far end of the room. They had coffee and pastries. The room was small and softly lit and the walls were decorated appropriately in the spirit of Kalevala.

Once it started the meeting did feel like a community. I am using the word very consciously. We are living in history. I know that a member can be discharged from the cooperative by a simple decision of the administrative board. And that this in effect means that you lose your property. No quarreling about.

I observed the discourse from my sofa. Most of the members present had beards and everyone who spoke did so with steady confidence. I was surprised to be able to follow everything that was being said without effort. I rather think that I knew quite a lot of it already. Of the construction details that is, not of their history. My vocabulary has already changed and I felt homey and affirmed by the discussion.

On the way home I remembered an evening at my grandparents'. Mikko had to leave for the cooperative meeting. I was bummed that he had to go, but I couldn't say anything as I somehow saw in his face the importance, the necessity and the dignity of his mission. I don't know if he ever spoke there with the steady confidence but I know that he must have sat in the same room with some of the same people I'd hear speaking today. I also don't know if he liked going to the meeting, probably he would have rather stayed home with his granddaugher. But I know that he did go and that he did everything right, just like grandfathers and grandmothers do. And I know that he would have shaken his head in worry and his brows would have furrowed in his ever-present anxiety over me but that he would have known what to do now, too. Just like grandfathers and grandmothers do.

As I walked home to the home that is almost not home anymore as the move date is getting closer and closer I was crying and for the first time I really felt the weight of legacy on my shoulders. Enough so that I am now able to realize that however clichéd it sounds, it really is a thing that feels in your shoulders. And it feels quite lonely. With this house it is just me now. I have to be the one who knows what to do, just like I do. And just tonight I miss my grandfather.

Overflight

Mums are pretty cool. Mine came to pick me up me for a bird watching expedition this Wednesday night. We drove to Viikki, a nature area in Helsinki, just a bit east from Kumpula, and walked to a birdwatching tower on the waterside.

There were already two guys there, you know the kind: brown greenish jackets with 25 pockets, rough beards and alert friendly eyes, huge cameras standing on tall tripods, relaxed poses looking silently out to the bay. We were silent too. My mum was happy with her binoculars, I was happy with my camera.

The wait was worth it. After an hour or more of standing there, seeing and breathing and watching the sky get darker and darker there was a sound. Cackling from north-east, from the direction of the fields. There were maybe 20 of them. Barnacle geese. They flew just over us and towards west and landed on the bay.


A few seconds and then there was a louder sound, more cackling, from a wider area now, then building up, getting closer, thundering towards us, turning into a machine or a train or an airplane, all around us, and then 3000 geese are flying right above us, over us, everywhere around us. We can see them quite clearly. Their shapes, their wings, their formations, their strength, they are everywhere, they fly fast and in a minute it is over. The last are descending on the bay nearby. The cackling continues more distant on the calm of the bay and when we walk back to the car after some tea from the thermos it is already dark.

Here's some audio:



And pictures, as usual, here.

Women and Math

Check out the new layout of the department wep page. The person making the page asked me politely if they might use my picture. Let us recall the standard answer. Yes, of course, anything for the department! However, I did first check that there was nothing obscene written on the blackboard. Which makes me quite angry now that I get asked: "So what did you write on the board that they had to censor it?" Yes, for the nth time: the box on the right hand side is not a censor box but in fact the logo of the university. For reference check out any department, physics for example, or the University's main page.

When I'd started as a grad student, or perhaps even earlier during my undergrad there were a lot of studies of "math and women" floating around and I got asked all the time: "How does being a woman affect your studies and your career?" I always answered that if anything it has had a positive effect. Which is obviously true, whether for the good of women in math in general or not let us leave for some other discussion. Now, however, I would like to add one point that seems insignificant after one incident and still quite insignificant after twenty but starts slowly getting on your nerves after a few years of such treatment.

What on earth am I talking about? Let us recall. Why is my picture on the web page again? Well, a few years ago there was a need to take pictures for some departmental leaflet. Naturally all the females were asked to pose as fake lecturers in order to get socially influential pictures. No big deal, I said, anything for the department!

But any time there is a need for a representative, a teacher, a panelist, a comittee member, a person to be interviewed, they will want a woman. And as there are not expectionally many women, the same people are asked all the time. And god help you if you once do a good job, they will never ever ever ask anybody else again. And so your precious work time trickles slowly away as you will never ever ever learn how to say no.

Details

The room was full of light. Maybe there was a slight greenness in the furniture. We stood on a soft carpet almost at once. There were two candles on the table and I put the small white box down beside one of them. He looked at us in the eyes and spoke with conviction and I agreed with everything he said. We wanted to kiss long before he was done. Then he came around the table and shook my hand and said: "Congratulations, Mrs –". And yes, before you ask, I did keep my name.

Afterwards we were standing by the sea. There was a wind blowing almost like in Iceland. I was slightly afraid of being blown away. The trees were still yellow and orange and the sun was bright and sparkling on the waves. There was a sailing boat or two. We walked on the cliffs for a while and then sat down in the white gazebo. We were both speaking on the phone for a long long while.

There are no pictures. I wore my green highschool graduation dress, a necklace from Iceland and a hair pin from Alexandria. Tommi had a dark suit and a grey tie but his pin with Kevätpörriäinen was unfortunately in Vaasa. My camera was in my purse.

But don't be angry if you didn't know. Nobody knew. We got married just the two of us.