Olla Auki

Mandatory Costumes and Work Today

2012-01-21T23:21:00.001+02:00

In his dystopian fantasy, CivilWarLand in Bad Decline, the New York writer, George Saunders, imagines a decaying country and degraded labor force. He envisions a world of simulation—not home-cooked meals, but, “like mother would have made it” fast food; not home, in fact, but residence in home-like stage-sets and dioramas; not residing, actually, but performing-for-pay. Nation-defining history is just an opportunity to make a profit: the civil war caused by America’s reluctance to end slavery is reduced to a CivilWarLand that anyone can visit for a fee. Employees play all the roles, from soldiers to candle-makers, and because they are in debt, rarely leave the workplace. Spouses telephone to say hello; children live at care-centers; employers are self-absorbed and penny-pinching. They expect—and earn—a lot, and pay very little. Saunders was onto something: his book was published before the “Great Recession” but its description of current working conditions was prophetic.

The American employee does, in fact, now wear a costume. I’m not talking about the standard uniforms of the past—the overalls of agricultural labor, the aprons of domestic work, the scrubs of medical technicians and surgeons, or even the suits worn by office-toiling men and women alike, though all these forms of clothing have been turned into romantic and nostalgic fun-wear by those not doing the actual jobs. Most of these outfits have had at least some link to practical purpose, such as protection, ease of cleaning, and standardization—a black suit is a black suit, and only needs a low cost red shirt or purple tie to be made one’s own.

In contrast, the costumes of today’s worker are increasingly cartoonish: In recent months I’ve seen people walking the streets dressed as giant hot dogs with mustard spines, chickens with flapping wings, green Statues of Liberty holding torches aloft, super-heroes with capes, wrenches with legs, dogs with drooping ears, gorillas wearing bow-ties, prancing carrots, and a number of other animals, fruits, vegetables and objects. In most instances I haven’t been able to see the faces of these workers; the costumes worn mostly keep them covered, head-to-finger-to-toe, so that no part of the actual person can be seen. And that’s the point: to attract attention to businesses—the hot dog was promoting a fast food restaurant, the Statue of Liberty pointed toward a legal office, the gorilla encouraged the purchase of a used car—and not to the employees advertising them.

This trend to the cartoon-costumed worker must be linked to the economic decline of the United States. Perhaps it’s a sign of increasing levels of personal desperation: to take a job dressed as a carrot is better than to have no job at all, and employment of any kind is getting harder to come by. Over five million factory work workers lost their jobs over the last decade, and that’s just one, albeit badly hit, employment sector.

Or maybe it reflects the will of our leaders, who seem to have endless ire for those who work: we are a nation in which Presidents criminalize organized labor actions, as Reagan did in 1981, when he fired over 11,000 striking air traffic controllers, and local governments attack unions, as the state of Indiana did this week, when it passed legislation making it illegal for unions to collect dues from employee members. Perhaps that’s why bosses now insist on costumes: it’s easier to feel okay about mistreating a wrench than a human, and frankly, who wants to see anyone weeping while she works?

This new mode of employment might also indicate the hollowness at the core of our financial systems: Americans no longer produce much of anything but entertainment, and these walking, talking vegetables and Supermen are our reminders of that. Americans have always been “going to Hollywood”; now it looks like Hollywood is coming for all of us, no matter where we live.

In the face of what is clearly the inevitable (if not already actual), I’m trying to see the useful possibilities of costumed employment. Since salaries are stagnant, employer-provided costumes may lower the cost of work-appropriate wear. Also, they are fashion-resistant; while skirts and heels go up and down, a gorilla always looks the same. Perhaps best, though, I think I could make any costume do double-duty: I’d like, for example, to wear Statue of Liberty garb to the office, and then again, with torch in one hand and hand-painted sign in the other as I march to an Occupy Any City rally where I’ll work with friends to make the kind of country where costumes are for play and not how we earn our daily bread.

(This is a longer version of a column written for Yliopisto, the magazine of the University of Helsinki)

From Blackness

2009-11-29T18:00:00.015+02:00

What follows are a loose string of observations on the presence of race and ethnicity in Finnish language and daily life.

Shortly after I arrived in Helsinki the academic year festivities started. There was an abundance of ritual, including casual and formal speeches, dinners, receptions, and parties. But what was most stunning and interesting to me were the large groups of students walking around the city, usually but not always near the campus, wearing brightly colored coveralls, usually plastered with cloth badges and labels sewn or glued on by the wearers. These additions announced favorite bands, group affiliations, interests and personality traits. The uniform colors identified the academic homes of the students—architecture, education, fine arts, and so on.

About a week after I noticed people wearing the colorful coveralls there was a period when clusters of twenty or thirty students in wacky costumes followed one or two coveralled students, again, walking around campus, or settling on grassy patches near the water for picture taking and group activities—mostly talking and beer-drinking, but also some chanting, singing, and dancing. The first day was pure fantasy: I saw groups of pirates wearing eye patches and swords, and what I think were…zombies? in ghoulish white make-up with trickles of blood oozing from bandaged limbs.

The next day’s costumes, though, really surprised me—a “tribe” of “Indian chiefs” replete with feathered headdresses and tomahawks, and the kicker, a large group of ‘fro-wearing, brown-face painted “Michael Jacksons” wheeling a large coffin painted with “RIP MJ.” This group did a couple of dance numbers (they are gearing up to that in this photograph); there were plenty of single gloves waving and white socks flashing during this. But also crazy big Afros bobbing. Michael, of course, hadn’t worn a ‘fro himself since, oh, the 1970s; he was strictly jheri-curl from the ‘80s on, as I remember it.

So what was all that big hair about? And all that brown grease paint? That “blackface.” The moving feet and waving white gloves?

The dance number was jarring to these eyes, reminiscent of the minstrelsy that I am too young to have seen myself, but which was still present in American popular culture throughout my childhood (and, in some cases, to this day)—Aunt Jemima, Mammy, and Uncle Ben in the kitchen, Sambo (“Little Black,” we were reminded) in the popular children’s book, and Buckwheat and Stepin Fechit on television—every US child growing up in the 1950s knew those images and sounds.

But we also witnessed the rich culture of protest and social change fueled by the civil rights and Black liberation movements of the 1960s and ‘70s, and participated in the fierce debates, whether we wanted to or not, over the power and use of images of people, from "Indian" sports mascots (check out artist/activist Charlene Teters on this subject) to the stereotypical advertising image of the Frito Bandito. When were depictions insulting? And who could decide that? Those questions aren’t settled; they are still contested in the US, but I think it’s fair to say that most white Americans know that putting on black-or-brown make-up and a fake ‘fro for fun is likely to be seen as an offensive action, and will "spark outrage." Ditto “Indian” outfits.

When I’ve described the students dressed as Jacksons and chiefs for Finnish friends here, two people said some variation of “the students are really creative this year.”

To date I’ve learned about a range of related things—the Fazer candy wrappers that featured “gollywogish” black faces until 2007, and were only changed after hot debate, protests by famous Finns of color and support from the EU, and at least two years of pressure; the other candy made by Brundberg that was until recently called Neekerin pusut, “Negro’s Kiss” (today, this has been shortened to Suukko, kiss, a kind Finnish reader poined out to me!) and which sill has a wrapper showing some large-lipped “African natives” with grass skirts and a spear; and various charged uses of “black” (although, as you will see if you read the linked dialogues and articles, that the images have been modified and look, as a contact here commented, far less "tribal").

For example, mustalainen, literally of or from blackness (musta = black; lainen = of, as in a nationality—for example, Finns are suomalainen, from or of Suomi, the Finnish name for Finland), means “gypsy” in common although now impolite usage in Finland: Roma is the term generally preferred by Roma themselves.

And then there was The Nights & Days of Tribades program, a weeklong festival of queer arts right at the beginning of my stay here, that featured a one woman revue by Kaisu Kurki playing two male blackface characters among many others—one of these was a sort of Public Enemy’s Flava Flav, the other a version of Bert Williams, the famous minstrel performer (though Williams was actually black).

The show was a critique, though not very pointed or sustained, of masculinities. Not pointed—Kurki didn’t delve into any analysis, such as what does a hip hop style mean, when rubbed up against (so to speak), Williams, or for that matter, Danny of Armi and Danny, and then stirred into this drag king show? Not sustained—Kurki started the show by murdering one after another of her masculinity-characters, but this idea wasn’t plumbed for meaning and disappeared before the show ended.

Matt Richardson has written about the way minstrelsy has not disappeared in the US context, but instead has been reconstituted as the appropriation of black cultural styles into mass culture, including in drag king performances, where masculinity is achieved through what he calls “performative Blackness.” He asks if this explains the popularity of drag kinging right now. It—blackface dragging—cites historical precedents: racial impersonation and the objectified “sexy black man.” Perhaps this isn’t just a US thing.

Maybe here in Finland, too, blackness is the cool that always sells.

(I want to thank the reader who noted a misspelling and offered feedback that helped me make this post more accurate.)

Mad Bad Nordic Little Girls

2009-11-20T15:45:00.005+02:00

Or maybe I should just say girls, not only little ones. Or more accurate, women, because these are thoughts that start with Little My and Pippi Longstocking, but I can’t talk about them without also talking about their creators, Tove Jansson and Astrid Lindgren. I was distantly aware of Lindgren’s Pippi as a child but knew nothing about Moomin or Little My or any of Jansson’s other creations. I would have liked them, I think, the same way I liked the feisty girls created by E. L. Konigsburg for her books, Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley, and Me, Elizabeth and From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, who had adventures and imagination, and may have been a bit odd or perhaps too bookish, but who cared? They were too interested in their own thoughts to worry about what other people thought or how they were judged by the world.

As I wished I could be.

So it was with curiosity that, as I became more familiar here with all of Moominlandia, I noted Little My’s permanently furrowed brow and expression of…anger? Irritation? Mischief? It didn’t surprise me, later, when I researched Moomins for a class at the Open University, to discover that Tove Jansson was queer and that she considered Little My her alter ego. The reason for that cranky mien, then? Well, Jansson shared a life with her partner, Tuulikki Pietila, for four decades. They split each year between an island off the coast of Finland and a home in Helsinki, and although they were the first openly homosexual couple to be invited to the important President’s Ball in 1992, and although both partners are now dead, Jansson’s books have continued to include the false claim that she “lived alone on an island”—at least, the copies I purchased in 2009 are still marred by this inscription. Cranky probably isn’t the right description; furious might be more apt.

Jansson represented her lover, Tuulikki, in her books as the character Too-Ticky, and wrote her own coming out story into her children’s novel, Moominvalley in November. This was her last book for children, but Moominvalley has been re-purposed as the name of a queer group in Helsinki, Mummolaakso (granny valley), which is a project for old lesbians.

And what was going on with Astrid? This Swedish woman was an unmarried and single mother in the late 1920’s, forced for a time by poverty to leave her child in foster care. She refused to marry the father of this child, and moved to Stockholm to work and save money until she could bring her son to live with her there. Quite independent, it seems, and somewhat like Pippi, who always does what she wants and has also been adopted as a lesbian symbol; look for her on lapels near you!

And Little My can be seen everywhere, from tattoos to hairstyles, and beyond. Mad and bad—the moods that are always in.

Investments, Democracy, and Communality

2009-09-13T13:49:00.004+03:00

This week, at the opening celebration of the University of Helsinki, a formal affair in a grand room, at a throne-like podium flanked by marble busts, including of Queen Christina of Sweden, who founded this 400 year old institution, Pasio Hario, the “chairperson” of the Student Union of the University (HYY) got both a standing ovation (from students, mostly) and a smattering of polite applause (from professors, I suspect) for his statement. Posted online here, it is titled University of Helsinki Bolsters the Position of Professors. As a professor myself, my first thought, was, “That’s a good thing, right?”

Thus making Hario’s point for him.

In brief, the statement identifies the university’s positioning of students as “customers in university administration” rather than “members of the academic community” and outlines how recent shifts in rules governing representation—there will now be more seats for “professor representatives than for students and other members of staff” (all University employees, including professors, are considered staff), thus eroding “democracy and communality.”

The published statement notes the demand of HYY for equality, and closes with a pointed musing: “The constant under-representation of students in administration organs makes you wonder why the Student Union should still give its support to the current administration.”

This question packs punch here, because, unlike any student union I have ever been part of, HYY is fantastically rich. During its many years of existence, it has collected fees from students which it then invested, wisely, it seems, because it now owns real estate throughout the city center (keskusta). In fact, it is incorporated as the HYY Group, an entity which is owned by the Union, and operates a variety of businesses including internet tech, publishing, and hotel and restaurant. This group employs over two hundred people and in 2007 was worth $29.7 million Euros. So, how loudly will this money talk?

My colleague, Erica Meiners, has worked with a similarly wealthy group of US-based nuns. These women, many of whom as left-political as they are Catholic, also collectively invested well over the years, and now they can fund study and projects and many other things. While this work may still have to “fly under the radar” of the grand inquisitor, Pope Benedict, the model of community, as opposed to individual, wealth is inspiring—a version of the commons that all groups on the downside of power might consider. In the higher education context, this could include all faculty senates, graduate student organizations, collective bargaining units, and American Association of University Professor (AAUP) chapters.

Riding for Free

2009-09-01T22:17:00.008+03:00

As I waited for the number 68 bus from Viikki to keskusta, I watched any number of parents hoist their strollers through big doors like these, and then plunk themselves down on the little folding seats that flank the baby space. Everyone riding with a stroller rides for free.

This is a simple gesture, but it's only one part of a system that buoys up parents and children; in fact, people in Finland are supported before birth and all throughout their lives. They can, if they need to, get housing from their home city (very nice housing, not just comfortable, but also often beautiful); of course, it goes without saying that they have health care when they need it; at birth their parents will be given a box (converts to a cradle!) full of baby goods; parents are paid while they stay home with their children; and on and on. And did I mention that there is state-supported day care, and pre-school, and the schools here are uniformly (really) excellent? And that higher education is free, too?

Any parent living in the United States who is reading this will no doubt feel a bit bitter now, as s/he faces job cuts and dwindling unemployment funding, and non-day-care, and difficult school choices, and, do you still have health insurance?

Well, there are changes afoot here in Finland, too, of the sort that hit the United States quite a few years ago.

Here's one example; the University of Helsinki, and all higher education institutions here, are undergoing "reforms" mandated by the new government. These include mergings (of programs, faculties, and as I will explain below, even entire universities), a focus on "internationalization" (this has several connotations, such as attracting international and paying students, and another is to attract international research funds and investments), and ominously, the new designation of the University of Helsinki (one of only two universities in the world founded by a woman, Queen Christina of Sweden) as a "person," according to the Ministry of Education spokesperson who gave the Fulbrighters a talk about all this. The bottom line with "person" status is that beginning in January 2010 the University of Helsinki will be autonomous, no longer supported by the government; it will have to raise its own funding, in other words. The focus is shifting, and entrepreneurial is the new name-of-the-game. Can student fees, and then loans, be lurking right around the corner?

As another example, three Helsinki-based higher education sites, the University of Art and Design, the Helsinki University of Technology, and the Helsinki School of Economics are being merged under this plan to form one new institution, Aalto University. Creative industries, here we come! But what happens to the unpopular and non-lucrative in this scenario? As, frankly, so much (hey, nearly all) art is?

Riding for free might be part of the ephemeral beauty of this place. I'm glad I was here to see it.

Inevitable Errors of Newcomers

2009-08-27T20:16:00.003+03:00

Mona, from whom I have learned practically everything I know about Finland and Helsinki, gently informed me that this blog's name (Olla Auki), which google translator and a book told me meant an evocative, "Be Open," practically means, in actual Finnish use, "To Be Broke"!

Of course.

To get at the sense of personal openness that I hoped to, Mona said I should have used the phrase, "Ole Avoin."

So, that pretty much sums up why it's important to get out of the cyber, the book, the chair, the library, the city, the country...to "get" the words you have to say and hear the words within contexts, from actual people who breathe and live the deep meanings into their cultural forms, from language to art, and everything else.

For a flash, even though Mona was gentle in her correction, I was embarrassed and thought right away, I'll just fix that mistake, rename the blog, and make my "expert" image as seamless as possible. But that was just foolishness, hubristic. This goof is a good one, and it's the real reminder that I wanted to offer myself anyway. So I'm keeping the error, thanking Mona (again), and putting it out there: Like bent, and twisted, and any number of other reclamations, sometimes broke is fine to be.

Summer Gardens, Sunflowers, Peas and Other Delights

2009-08-17T21:41:00.008+03:00

There are many, many things I like about Finland (Helsinki) so far, but among the most wonderful I've discovered are these:

Trails into forests, alongside rivers, and through fields: These are nearly everywhere, and they are as much for bikers as hikers.
Summer gardens, which are also tucked back away from main roads, and are filled with flowers like these hollyhocks, vegetables, fruits trees and bushes, and many people enjoying their time in the sun and dirt.
The free pea and sunflower fields (huge whole fields) near bike and walking trails in Malmi: These have signs that invite passers-by to pick the peas and flowers, but not to sell, only to eat and share with family and friends.
Cherry, raspberry, plum and other fruit planted along paths (even in the cemeteries); the Finnish have a law that all people have a public right to access; they may pick berries, flowers, mushrooms and other delicious and beautiful things as they travel the land.
Moomin. Cartoon characters by the queer artist Tove Jansson.
The big rock boulders, pink, grey, and speckled, that form the sides of roads, the edges of paths, and the places people perch while basking in the sun.
The lettuce that comes wrapped with a little root ball moistened with soil and a little mesh container, so it stays nice and crispy.
Marimekko. I know, it's been said and nothing new, but I still love it; I can't ever get too many dots and stripes, and bleedy-edged rainbow colors.
However, I also love Nanso, a Finnish brand still made in Finland (word is that Marimekko is often sewn in Croatia and China); beautiful bright all-cotton clothes.
Public rug-cleaning places. This seems so very perfect, making the drudge of cleanliness communal.
The skinny little trams that bend as they swoop around street corners.
I'm sure I've already mentioned the bike trails, but--the real bike trails! Could someone please tell Daley what real bike-riding safety and access is all about?
The many, many, many good breads. None bad, all brown and chewy. Yum.
Reflectors, which one must, by law, wear in the winter (it's dark!). I have three already--Moomin, snowflake, Marimekko VeeDub.
The illegality of spanking.
No one-cent coins; everything gets rounded.

Oh, really, I could go on, but will save some fawning attention to Helsinki for another day.

Caring for Strangers

2009-08-12T19:06:00.005+03:00

Here's where it starts for lucky international scholars and students at the Department of Applied Sciences of Education at the University of Helsinki, with Mona-Liza Eid.

A place, it's said, should be judged by how it cares for its strangers. That task can be large; where to start? What will a new person in a new place need, and how would we, who are so familiar that we no longer really see the place, begin to know what to share with strangers?

At home in Chicago, where I have lived since 1979, I still have two views of the place: It's the daily path I can walk without looking, and the massive grey and brown place I rolled into 30 years ago, and then needed a guide book to show me where to go. I still use the guides sometimes when family and friends visit, and I also have my favorite places to show off and visit—Emma Goldman's grave, Malcolm X's car, Pullman, the river, the rows of bungalows to the northwest.

So that's what Mona is helping me with here, how to know where to go. Maybe, as the daughter of one of an early immigrant to Finland (Mona's father is Egyptian by birth and a Finnish citizen), or because she has also traveled and studied in several parts of the world, including a year spent in Egypt, she has a clearer sense of what it means to be not-from-here, and more patience with the inevitable goof-ups and confusions.

In any case, Mona has given me a stack of already well-thumbed papers, from maps of the city and guides to the university, to festival programs, class listings, and books by colleagues in the Department of Applied Sciences of Education, that are helping me find my way. Even better, she has showed me the showers and sauna, the place in the old building people go to share tea and coffee, even the public pool with free water exercise classes. It's that humans-together stuff that makes strangeness easier to bear, and not so alone.

Thinking About School

2009-08-09T11:34:00.009+03:00

I’ve only been in Helsinki a week, Sunday to Sunday, but I’ve seen a lot of schools during my bike rides—all closed for summer vacation, no year-round schools for the Finns! In fact, children don't start school (basic education) until they are seven years old, though they may attend pre-school before that.

Helsinki is in the midst of a baby boom, according to Statistics Finland (I love this place, the oldest governmental agency in Finland, and the source of all things factual about the country, in English and Finnish). It does seem as if every third woman is pregnant and there’s a lot of stroller pushing going on.

New parents get to stay home with pay for at least 105 days, and receive a “child benefit” allowance until each child is seventeen, as well as a “maternity” grant of either a box of baby goods or a cash grant.

This all indicates something of the support that parents and children can expect. It’s a context that makes a baby boom reasonable.

And this leads me back to the schools. There are a lot of these, too, often very close to each other—schools for the very young, like day-care centers, are near the schools for the slightly older, and so on. So, a few observations—the buildings are beautiful and well-cared for; they have big play yards; and they all have well-tended green areas. In addition, many are sited within green areas—in Viiki, for instance, schools are near birch forests and hiking trails: take a look at the view of one here. The schools bring the term, kindergarten, to life!

Seeing these schools makes me happy—all children should be near other growing things and surrounded by beauty. And it also makes me want to weep—Chicago’s schools are more likely to be surrounded by seas of asphalt and broken glass than gardens. I’m not sure when it happened in Chicago, that so many playground were turned into parking lots, but I’d like to know the history and see the policy (there must be one) reversed.

The Meaning of Alone

2009-08-06T11:39:00.007+03:00

Oh, rough night. I left my key card in my apartment when I left it at about 8:15 PM to make a run to the Prisma, a large supermarket. It seemed urgent that I buy some fabric washing substance, a "woolite" sort of thing. And I wanted to ride my bike again. So I dashed out (Prisma closes at 9:00) and as soon as the door shut I realized that my key card was on the table in the apartment, and I was now locked out. For a moment, I had an icy, panicky feeling--all alone. My new phone, which I have not yet even used, was also in the apartment. Ahh, my bad dream, come to life, the one about finding myself in another country where I don't speak the language and can't figure out how to use the pay phones, and am loosssttt...

Luckily, I had introduced myself to a young father in the apartment next to mine on my first day in Viikki. So after walking downstairs to the building management office (which closes at 4:00), and looking around and finding a number for security, I knocked on his door. Vanina opened it, the mother of Clara, the one-year-old I met on the first day, and let me in. She also helped me call security, served me a bowl of creamy vanilla ice cream, and kindly distracted me for the next two plus hours with questions and her own observations about Finland and Finns (they think more about preserving heat than allowing coolness, hence the tightly sealed and often never-opened windows), why she and Marcos left Brazil (dangerous, noisy), the beauty of the area (she and Marcos discovered a small beach only a ten minute bike ride away and suggested we go there when it's warm to observe Finnish sun-lust), stem cell research (that's her work), Finnish foods (try more ice cream, but avoid salmiakki, both as an ice cream flavor and the candy--it's a salted licorice--and herring in all forms), Sweden vs. Finland (they lived there for two years before she got a job in Finland; people look more glamorous and artistic in Stockholm than Helsinki, but both countries have excellent educational systems), and Clara (I praised her and Vanina demurred, "But I'm the mother..." while also beaming), who smiles nearly all the time, will soon speak four languages, and knows her bees and cows.

Finally, after one more call and what felt like a quiet scold by the security person ("If you remember I said he would get there when he was able to...") someone arrived to open my door. He was nice about it, asked me many questions to make sure I was not scamming my way into someone else's home, and apologized for taking so long to get there (about two and a half hours, and Marcos and Vanina had already offered me their couch, seriously, though I said I would wait in the lobby soon). Ah, back inside, safe, in my place-in-the-making.

So I missed the store excursion and had a nice chat with new friends, and got to hold that cute baby. But I also reflected on my near-instant feeling of aloneness, how quickly it took me, how useless it is, and undermining. But real.

And now, in the next morning, after staying up too late to check email and create my label cloud, then sleeping too long and having crazy dreams, I'm getting ready to explore again.

Travel Dream

2009-08-04T22:07:00.010+03:00

When I last wrote I had a pile of legitimating papers, and a passport and a ticket with a leave date–August 1. I had an apartment, even two, in Helsinki, and a Finnish Dictionary, but no residence permit. I had a class to teach, too, at the University of Helsinki, in the Department of Applied Sciences of Education–Social Justice in Education–but it still pretty much felt like a travel dream. Too slow to feel the go.

Now I'm sitting in Viikki, in a researcher's apartment. It's small, with birch shelving and desk, and white and grey table-tops and cupboards, and a door that could open onto a porch, but doesn't–it does open, though, to a gravel road that I like to hear cars and bikes crunching over, and some birch trees, sweet rugosa roses, and wild yarrow.

My bathroom is equipped with an industrial size squeegee so I can swipe the floor dry after showering. The windows and doors are so thick and seal so tightly that I can't hear the one year old girl who lives next-door with her Brazilian father, Marcos, as much as I'd like to. But in the mornings I see children in the sandbox and on the swings in the little playground in front of my building. It's very green here, at Maakaari 1 A, 00790, Helsinki.

The director of the department in which I'll be teaching, Juhani Hytönen, has spent the last two and a half days helping me create a complete life here, from gathering me and my $150-too-heavy suitcases at the airport, to taking to buy a tangelo orange Finnish bike, to waiting with me while I registered myself with the city and opened a bank account and bought my first groceries. He helped me discern the butter–Voi Smör–from the not. Cheerfully!

I'm feeling grateful for Juhani's generosity, because I'm also feeling surprisingly off-kilter. Finnish is hard to read, and I am a big reader; the loss of constant access to written words is tough to take. We rode 10 km together after my bike, a Tunturi City Hybrid Trekker, was ready to be picked up, with Juhani showing me the route, short-cuts, more beautiful paths, and finally, the best way to my new office. Then I rode the same distance home.

Not There Yet...

2009-07-13T03:53:00.002+03:00

No visa yet. I have a stack of books, though.