Today marks 70 years of the beginning of the Winter War, that historical event that is still at the forefront of the Finnish psyche. The good news is that Finland kept its unity and its independence (no mean feat when your adversary is the Soviet Union), the bad news is that it created a siege mentality that survives to this day in certain sectors of society.
For more background information, you can hardly do better than have a look in Helsingin Sanomat’s archive (1, 2, 3).
I came across Remembrance Day in my last stay in London. While I find the tradition very moving (especially given the current servicemen situation in Afghanistan), I am also slightly disturbed by its militaristic overtones. There’s nothing wrong with remembering your dead, but shouldn’t be used as a justification for hating others. After all, the First and Second World Wars were already some time ago.
This time of the year it is very common to get foggy days in southern Finland. I find them very interesting because the combination of setting with metheorological phenomenon brings to my mind images of Viking longships raiding the marshes and woods of the lands of the Fenni.
A friend of mine did share a story of Vikings rading a warehouse full of precious animal furs near the town of Nokia, which is where it takes is name from (noki being “soot” and sable being as black as it). Somehow drunken barbarians warriors attacking a town for its pelts sounds pretty funny to me.
This brings me to another point: every once in a while I feel like the Arab guy in The 13th Warrior. Par for the course for a southerner living in these northern lands 
I had the chance to check (quickly) this exhibition at the British Museum. If you have been to the National Anthropology Museum in Mexico then this will not show you a lot of new stuff.
If you haven’t had that chance and you happen to be in London, I’d wholeheartedly recommend it. There’s a few pieces that are not shown in Mexico at all.
That’s September 16th. I assume it’s celebrated in the United States for two reasons:
Although it is certainly celebrated in some parts of Mexico, the whole brouhaha they make north of the border as “Mexican heritage day” is as alien to most Mexicans as hard-shelled tacos.
I came accross this archive of Life magazine photos. I became a fan in my childhood since my parents had one or two books with pictures from the magazine (I was especially a fan of this one by Robert Capa).
I immediately made two searches: Mexico & Finland, naturally. Most pictures of Mexico are of the 60′s, around the time of the 1968 Olympics, whereas most pictures of Finland are of the 40′s, especially of the Winter War.
One of the images that impacted me the most, however, was of Viipuri, which back then looked just like any other Finnish city. I’ve been there a few years ago on my way to St. Petersburg, and let’s say that there have been a few changes after it became part of Russia.
A couple of good friends live in Tampere, and we visit them every once in a while. We were there just a few days ago, and enjoyed as usual.
Tampere is called the “Manchester of Finland” and pictures like this of downtown make it quite obvious. I didn’t know that the city, given its industrial past, has been an important part of Finnish history and site of key events in the Finnish Civil War.
I picked up this book on Amazon and also read it during January. I have to admit that, given that it touches on two of my favourite subjects: history and languages, I absolutely loved it. The insight it gave on the history of the speakers of languages such as Chinese, Dutch or Akkadian was totally riveting, and it was written in such an amenable way I couldn't put it down. The text examples of each language in the beginning of the appropriate chapter was a great technique for introducing them and the author shows he definitely knows what he's writing about.
The only thing that put me off a little bit was its slight English-language bias, which is anyway not unexpected given that the writer is a native English speaker, and the book is written in English. Regardless, one of the best books I've read in a long, long time.
We visited Xcaret during our trip to Cancún, and attended their evening show. In general it was very well made, and for example it is the first time I have seen the mesoamerican ball game being played live (no human sacrifice, though).
There was, however, one thing that bothered me in the show, but it wasn’t about the quality or anything like that. It was a segment where they had somebody singing “Mi México de Ayer” by Chava Flores. I actually have one of his CDs and think his music is quite good, but at the moment I was really annoyed by one very simple fact: Mexicans can’t let go of the past. This is also reflected in the way we are taught about own own history, where everything was better before than it is now and whatever comes from abroad is a threat.
We can’t start building a future if we keep on looking at the past.
No podemos construir un futuro si seguimos enfocándonos en el pasado.
Finished reading this book last week but had no time to post about it. Highly enjoyable. What I liked the most was not his handling of facts (after all, the writer is not a scientist himself) but the way he wove together the histories of the discoveries and the personal biographies of the scientist involved.
