Rememberment

Besides having just broken a toe playing beach volley a couple of days ago, I'm not exactly the sportiest of people. Just recently there was a news article about how Ostrobothnians are the fattest people in Finland  and I'm certainly not making that statistic any prettier. But hey, I try - in fact, I'm just picking up a new sport. I'm sure it will get me in shape in no time. I've always had a bit of a problem with sports. If you read my previous post (and if you didn't, why the hell not?) you already know I didn't particularly enjoy the subject when I was in school. Back then, the common practice when forming teams was that the teacher chose two of the most skilled kids as team captains, who then took turns picking members for their team. Being dead last to get selected every time didn't exactly help me fall in love with the game. But that was in the 80s. Surely things have gotten better over the decades? Recent studies show that most students in the low...

Dad got very ill and had to go to the hospital. After he had stayed there for some time, the doctors told us he probably wasn't coming home anymore. I didn't believe them - I was sure God would help him. And eventually Dad did come home, but he was weak. It was clear that he couldn't work anymore and had to retire permanently. This meant that our poor family was now going to be even poorer, and that Mom had to work even harder - not just to earn money, but because she had to care for Dad as well.  Ari started his business and Tapio was working with him in the workshop. It started out pretty well, too, which helped feed our family. But the workshop was also a constant source of fighting - Dad didn't agree with all of Ari's decisions, and Mom didn't agree with either of them. Ari and Tapio also had their quarrels: Ari wasn't the easiest of bosses and Tapio wasn't the easiest of persons overall. I once saw the two of them trading punches, and was so disturb...

Everyone can draw a face, right? Yup, that's clearly a face. Even though it most definitely isn't. Five years ago my kids pulled an April Fools prank on me. During the night they got up quietly and stuck googly eyes on every goddamn thing in the house. That toilet sign still haunts my dreams. Turns out we don't need much in order to see faces where none exist. Something vaguely resembling the eyes and a mouth will suffice. It's called pareidolia - our brains have a natural tendency for pattern recognition, and since faces are so central to our social interactions, it's no wonder we tend to see them everywhere we look. But there's more. In his wonderful book, " Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art ", author Scott McCloud presents another explanation for why the simplified face - the cartoon - is so appealing to us. When we converse with other people, we see their faces in vivid detail. At the same time, we maintain a mental image of how we appear to ...

My second grade started in a new school. It was just slightly closer to my home, but enough so that I was no longer eligible to travel there by taxi and had to take the bus instead. This rightfully worried my parents, as it meant I had to cross the dangerous road in the morning to get to the bus stop. But I was a Good Boy, and took extra care so I would not end up as a broken heap at the side of the road. After all, I knew what that looked like. The new school was bigger than the old one, and it was a proper school building too unlike the last one. This one housed the second, third and fourth grades, with two groups of students for each. We still had the same teacher from first grade which made me happy, and we also had a couple of new kids in our class. One of them was Lauri, who I became friends with. There was a small piece of forest right next to the school building, which soon became the favourite place for all the kids to play in during breaks. It was like a wonderful little imag...

It's my summer holiday now, and I'm kicking back. For the next couple of weeks, my updates here will be more brief. So, instead of my usual wall of doom and gloom, here are some of my most played tracks from recent times. Which, of course, will mostly be all doom and gloom. The Pretty Reckless remains a criminally underrated band, although their recent touring with AC/DC should change that at least some. This particular track from 2021 serves as a chilling prophecy for what is happening in the USA right now. Speaking of criminally underrated bands, Nothing But Thieves always finds itself represented in whatever new playlist I create. VANT is a British alt-rock band. Their lyrics often deal with the darker side of humanity, which kind of resonates with yours truly. I don't think they've released anything new since 2018, which is a shame. The Blue Stones always manages to scratch a certain itch in my brain. This is their most recent track and I love it. LEAP is another Lo...

My first school year was over, and it was time again for one of those childhood summers that seemed to last forever. There would be lots of time spent collecting butterflies with Matti, the neighbour's kid, as well as many nights of staying with my cousins at their farmhouse. And of course, another Free Church summer camp with my dad. I also had to finally try to properly learn how to ride a bicycle. I still had my training wheels on which was rather embarrassing. Not that there was much anywhere I could ride my bike anyway except for our own dirt road and the yard, as there was yet no bicycle lane next to the dangerous main road. Our cat went missing that summer. One day, she was just gone. She had gone missing before, sometimes for a few days, but always came back eventually. Not this time. We spent some time searching but in vain. I was sad, but at least we didn't find her dead by the side of the road. Our family also got invited to a wedding. The groom was another adult rel...

A number of nice things started happening in Finland after the Second World War. Our heroic veterans wasted no time making babies after getting back home, and soon the nation had to really roll up its sleeves in order to deal with the sudden surge of Boomers. A Finnish Boomer ( Homo perceles ) in its natural environment. The coming decades saw huge investments in education, housing and infrastructure. The country also underwent rapid industrialization in order to repay the massive war debt and to create new jobs. Our maternity and children's clinic system founded in the 1920s became standard and spread all over the country, and mothers started giving birth more often in hospitals than the sauna. National vaccination programs practically eliminated a number of diseases that used to kill lots of children, and the overall rapid improvements in healthcare and education contributed to Finland becoming one of the safest countries in the world for having kids. Because it was no longer nec...