Desperate Politicians

As an American living abroad, I probably see the political goings on in the States differently than I would if I lived there.  Hopefully, that means viewing current events with a lot less of the “noise” that surrounds everything Congress or the President does.  Take, for example, the time Congress saw fit to rename the French fries served in its lunchrooms.  In the wisdom of Congress, the deep-fried potato slices, introduced to America by Francophile Thomas Jefferson, were rechristened “Freedom Fries” - a provocative demonstration, if there ever was one, of America's anger over the gall of our Gallic friends not to get hopelessly bogged down in a senseless war. 

I recall at the time being embarrassed for my countrymen and thinking how idiotic this must have looked to everyone outside the States (and to be fair, also to a great many people living there). 

And here we are again.  The drama playing out now in Washington over the debt ceiling looks to me, far from the onslaught of 24-hour cable news, maybe even more bizarre than Americans must find it.  I would hate to try to explain it to any of my Finnish friends curious enough to ask what it’s all about (thankfully, no one has). 

Here we have the Republican-controled house threatening not to honor the debts incurred by the budget that they approved a few months before.  That is, not without concessions from Obama on further reductions in …  Wait a moment.

Maybe it’s best to think of it all as a scene from TV, like something from a popular Hollywood sitcom set in an idealized American neighborhood of lovely homes and likeable characters who come together weekly to deal with their whacky, but entertaining, problems.  Consider, if you will, Tom and Lynette, two all-American suburbanites who have just had their kitchen completely redone: 

*   *   *    *    *

Tom and Lynette, with mugs of fresh coffee, are sitting across the counter from each other in their newly renovated kitchen, going through a stack of bills. 

“Tom, these are coming due soon,” Lynette says, pointing to the invoices.  “And we’re about to run out of cash.  We need to talk to the bank about getting that loan.”

Looking serious, Tom hesitates a bit before speaking.  “Ah, yeah, about that, Lynette.  I’ve decided we’re not going to take out the loan after all.  Not before we cut back on spending.”

Lynette is dumbfounded.  “Why not?  You know we have great credit with the bank.  They’re happy to loan us the money.”

“No, we owe too much already.”

“Which we don’t have to pay back for years.” 

“No, Lynette.  We’re spending way too much as it is.  And, you know, things have been slow at the pizza restaurant.  We don’t have enough money coming in.  We can’t keep this up.  You’re going to have to cut back on everything.” 

“Food?  Clothes?  Gas?”

“Everything.”

“The kids’ college fund.”

“Yep, even that.”

“Tom, be reasonable.  What if I took a job?  The ad agency has been begging me to come back and freelance for them.  And it's good money.”

“No, Lynette.  More income is not what we need.”

Lynette gives Tom a puzzled look.  “Come again?”

“Don’t you see, Lynette?” Tom lowers his voice, squeezing her hand.  “We can do this by living more, you know, more simply.  We don’t need two cars.  We don’t need to eat steak every week.  We don’t need to buy …”

“New golf clubs?”

“Let’s not go overboard here.”

“And, if I don’t cut back?”

Tom slaps his hand on the stack of bills between them.  “Then we don’t pay these.”

Lynette’s mouth drops.  “Tom, if we don’t pay these bills, our credit is ruined.  We’ll never get another loan.”

Tom shrugs his shoulders, “So be it.”

Lynette gives Tom a look.  “Wait a minute, am I talking to Tom or Eric?”

Tom smiles slyly.  “It might be Eric.”

You see, Tom is not a well man.  He suffers from multiple personalities that often battle with each other over big family decisions.  “Eric” is his brash, reckless personality. 

Lynette breathes a sigh of relief.  “Okay, can I talk to Tom now?”

“What about John?” says Tom, referring to the more mature, slightly more reasonable personality that briefly inhabits his mind. 

“Okay, sure.  John, what do you think about this?”

“Well, maybe you could do some work for the ad agency,” “John” answers in raspy, smoky voice.  “I guess we could use the extra money.  But we still have to cut back some.” 

“I can live with that.”

But, suddenly “Eric” is back.  “Hell, no!” he shouts.  “I’ll let us default before I let you go back to work.”

“And we’ll be ruined!” Lynette protests.

Suddenly Tom’s voice takes a shrill, high-pitched tone.  This is his “Sarah” personality.  “No so fast, there,” he says.  “Thought you could pull one over on me, didn’t ya?  It’s just a lie that we’ll be ruined.  You’re just making stuff up to try to scare me.”

Before Lynette can say another word, Tom’s voice changes once again.  “I think I have a way out.”

Lynette cocks her head to one side.  “Mitch?” she asks, referring to the name of Tom’s drab but scheming personality. 

“That’s right.  I think we could agree that you go ahead and get the bank loan, if you want.  It’s up to you.”

“And I don’t have to cut back on expenses?”

“Not if you don’t want to.  That’s up to you.”

“And you’re okay with this?”

Tom smiles.  “As long as I don’t get blamed for it later.”

Lynette raises her eyebrows.  “Huh.”

*   *   *    *    *

I only wish that following the real debt ceiling fight were this easy.  To see how this amazing bit of political theater finally does play out, please stay tuned for the gripping final episode, due to air on August 2^nd, at the latest.  Depending on how it all turns out, a special presentation of “The Great Recession, Part II” may air immediately afterward.

Summer break

I’ve been taking a long break from blogging, mostly due to some holiday travels with the family and a home renovation project that’s keeping us busier than usual for this time of the year.  Our family vacation this summer was a walking holiday in the Italian Alps and a very abbreviated Midsummer celebration in Finland, which I hope to write about in future posts.  But for now, I’m just happy to be enjoying a glorious Finnish summer. 

I never really knew how to appreciate summer until I moved here.  In fact, the last few years I lived in Georgia I had grown to hate summer – it was way too hot and way too long – and I couldn’t wait for the first crisp mornings of autumn. 

Here in Finland, I can’t get enough of the season.  By definition, it can’t get too hot here for my taste.  I say that, though to be honest we were sweltering a bit last week when temperatures soared to nearly 30 degrees (about 85 F).  We don’t have air conditioning in our house and only one tiny table fan, so on those few really hot days (by Finnish standards, that is), we have to rely on cross ventilation.  That’s usually enough, though it was so hot last week that, even with all the doors and windows open wide, it started to get sweaty inside.  The only thing that helped were occasional trips to the basement to cool off. 

But those days are rare here, and this year we were also lucky enough to avoid the other, darker, side of Finnish summers – the nonstop rainsqualls that can last for days.  Fortunately, we were in Italy the week in June that the Finnish summer decided to take a nasty and wet detour.  Other than that, Helsinki has been experiencing an exceptionally fine summer.  In fact, while rain showers and even thunderstorms have hit other parts of the country, Helsinki has been by-passed completely, and it’s actually become a bit too dry here. 

As someone who grew up in the southern US, I find it quaint how much attention gets paid to the few thunderstorms that do occur in Finland.  Unlike Georgia, where there can be almost daily storms in summer, Helsinki gets maybe only half a dozen thunderstorms in the whole season.  (My daughter and I were caught out in one of those while kayaking last summer.) 

It’s true that, lying on the coast as it does, Helsinki has more moderate weather than the Finnish interior.  Still, nowhere in the country do you experience anything like the kind of violent weather that often rakes across parts of the US, especially in spring.  And Finns should be thankful for that.  So far this year, at least 15 Georgian have died in severe thunderstorms and tornadoes.  A relative living in my home town recently found a piece of paper from the town of Piedmont – 135 kilometers away in neighboring Alabama – that was carried and deposited by the storms that swept through southern states on April 27th killing over 300 people.  Nothing like that happens here in the calm climate of Finland. 

Even when a Finnish thunderstorm does form, it’s a much more sedate affair.  Back in Georgia, a typical day in high summer often starts out clear, hot and humid, with the heat building up until by afternoon towering thunderheads loom above.  Then a storm lets loose with some serious thunder and lighting, and everything cools down until the next day. 

In Finland, this same cycle can also take place during the hottest part of summer, but in slow motion.  Here we’ll sometimes have three or four days of non-stop hot and sunny weather that eventually results in a whole day of more-or-less stormy, at least rainy, weather followed by a few cooler, cloudy days before clear skies return.  Compared to Georgia storms, it’s plain boring. 

Still, as much as I enjoy watching the spectacular displays of lighting that we often have back in Georgia, when you consider the tragedy that sometimes comes along with it, I guess I can’t complain about boring, and never-too-hot, summers in Finland – as long as there’s plenty of sunshine.  

Glory Hallelujah

What a weekend we had in Finland.  By coincidence, two big events that could bring some international glory to Finland took place over the weekend.  The first was the Eurovision song contest.  The name Eurovision means nothing to folks in the US, but for many in Europe it’s a legendary pop-culture institution, though just as many people probably also see it as something of a joke. 

Eurovision, a yearly contest pitting the best pop songs European nations have to offer against each other, was around long before Idol was even a glimmer in someone’s eye.  The contest was conceived in the mid-1950s as an entertaining way to unite post-war Europe.  Or rather post-war Western Europe.  Before the fall of the Iron Curtain, the only Communist land to take part in Eurovision was Yugoslavia, which joined in 1961, the same year as Finland. 

From its first broadcast, when only seven nations took part, the show has evolved into a gaudy extravaganza expanded to include over 40 countries – especially thanks to the breakup of eastern European countries into smaller states – and watched by an audience of well over 100 million worldwide. 

All competing countries have the same voting rights, even tiny places like San Marino (pop. 30,000 – which incidentally would fit, with room to spare, into the stadium venue of this year’s contest in Dusseldorf).  Even tinier Vatican City, as an active member of the European Broadcasting Union, would qualify to participate, though it never has.  I’d love to see what kind act the Vatican would come up with for Eurovision, though I suspect the Holy See would find the whole thing a little too tacky to ever take part in. 

And often it would be right.  While some song entries are stirring acoustic ballads or operatic solos, most of the acts in recent years tend towards the highly energized, highly choreographed, highly sexualized, and even highly farcical.  In fact, farcical often seems to do quite well.  For example, donning giant gnome hats, as the Moldavian entry did this year, might help an act stand out among all the cookie-cutter boy bands and clones of Céline Dion and Shakira strutting across the stage. 

Even the winning acts don’t typically stand out for very long after the show ends.  Céline Dion is one who actually did.  Canadian vocalist and future Las Vegas attraction, Dion won the contest in 1988, representing Switzerland.  That goes to show that when it comes to the Eurovision song contest, nationality is fungible.  Another well-known alumnus is ABBA, which launched its international career after winning the 1974 contest with “Waterloo”.  These two are the exceptions, however, with most winners usually fading from global view rather quickly. 

And doing well in the contest doesn’t even always come down to having a decent song, as very often the voting is based on cultural and geographical politics.  Countries tend to give most of their votes to their closest neighbors, or at least to songs they can understand.  This has historically worked against Finland, especially earlier when contest rules called for songs to be sung only in the national language.  This made it difficult for Finland to garner many votes, even from like-minded Nordic countries, because no one outside the country could understand the lyrics.  (To be honest, for some Eurovision songs, not understanding the lyrics can be an advantage.) 

Finland’s peculiar language might help to explain its tradition of always doing badly.  In nine out of 45 Eurovision contests, the country has come in last place, three times receiving no points at all.  This is why the 2006 contest was a seismic event, with Finland blowing everyone away to win the top spot with “Hard Rock Hallelujah”, a monster hit by a thematic band called Lordi.  I guess you could say it was a freakish win. 

This year, Finland’s entry was Lordi’s polar opposite, a fresh-face singer-songwriter of 20 named Paradise Oskar, who sang “Da Da Dam”, a song about an idealistic young boy setting out to save the world from ecological disaster.  (Disclosure: Paradise Oskar is a friend of one of my sons.)

The song was a breath of fresh air, I thought, with a clean, positive (though perhaps slightly naive) message.  Almost unheard of for today’s Eurovision, the song was written by the singer himself and, bucking the trend even further, performed without the aid of pyrotechnics or impossibly leggy dancers.  Not even (gasp) a wind machine.  And it was certainly catchy enough, I thought, to do fairly well in the contest. 

We were encouraged when Paradise Oskar came in third-place in the semifinal earlier in the week.  Still, like most everyone watching the show on Saturday, we were realistic enough not to expect a repeat of 2006, though an outcome near the top ten seemed possible.  Sadly, it was not to be.  “Da Da Dam” came in 21^st place behind the winning entry from relative newcomer, and seriously peripheral European, Azerbaijan. 

It was a result that I think doesn’t do real justice to Finland’s entry.  To be fair, the Azerbaijani number wasn’t too bad and more typical of Eurovision fare.  (It was bought from Sweden, where there is something of a cottage industry in Eurovision songwriting.)  And it came in first place in the semifinal, just 30 points ahead of Paradise Oskar, which makes the Finn’s poor showing in the final even more disappointing.  I chalk it up to Eurovision politics. 

The other big contest of the weekend was a much more serious one for ice-hockey obsessed Finland.  For two weeks every spring, the Ice Hockey World Championship brings out the ardent fan in almost every Finn.  I admit I’m only a fair-weather hockey fan, and certainly no expert on the sport.  To be honest, I only get interested when the high-stakes championships games roll around and the international rivalries heat up. 

Finland has long been a hockey powerhouse, though this isn’t always reflected in its performance in the world championship finals.  While the Lions – as the country’s team is called – have won a total of 11 medals over the years, it has won gold only once, a distinction it shares with – wait for it – Great Britain, a country probably associated more with hockey of the “field” variety. 

Though Finland has reached the finals in almost half of the last 20 championships, the gold medal always eluded it until 1995, and has continued to do so in the ensuing 16 years since that first taste of gold glory.  Some have attributed the long dry spell to a tendency of the Finnish team to choke under pressure, especially when playing archrivals (and neighbors) Sweden and Russia.  Whether that’s true I’ll leave to be debated by others who know the game better than I do.  What I do know is that this serial disappointment has left a serious bruise in Finland’s national sporting pride. 

So, it was with huge anticipation that we sat down on Sunday night to watch the Lions face off against eight-time championship winner Sweden.  The history of grudge matches goes way back for these two.  The play was fiercely even in the first period, which ended scoreless.  Only about halfway through the second period did the puck find the net, deftly delivered by a Swedish player who ironically has a Finnish surname.  In such a tightly contested match, the goal could have been a psychological blow for Finland.  Then, with only seven seconds left in the period, Finland evened the score, setting up the third period to be a tense all-or-nothing battle. 

It didn’t take long to see which way it would go.  Less than three minutes into the period, Finland took the lead after scoring in a spirited two-man attack.  Then almost without a beat, a lone Finn broke away half a minute later to charge the Swedish goal and narrowly miss scoring.  A mere 47 seconds after that a scuffle in front of the Swedish net produced Finland’s third goal, essentially sealing Sweden’s fate.  The Finns didn’t let up, pummeling Sweden with three more goals.  It was impossible to sit still for the rest of the game. 

Winning the gold, and doing it by giving Sweden such a thrashing, unleashed wild scenes of spontaneous partying the streets of Helsinki have rarely seen.  The next afternoon over 100,000 exuberant fans gathered in front of a hastily erected stage at South Harbor’s market square to welcome the team home, cheering as the jubilant – in some cases perhaps a bit too “jubilant” – Lions celebrated on stage with President Halonen.  A visiting colleague of my wife’s, who witnessed the throngs in the streets and stayed at the same hotel as the Lions, reported that the party was still going strong, and loud, at four the next morning.  Being from Canada (winner of 24 gold medals), he might wonder at such celebration over just one long-awaited, but absolutely glorious, victory.  Or maybe he understands it completely.

Thin Ice

When my children were small, they religiously watched Pikku Kakkonen (“Little Two”), a TV program that I dare say enjoys the undivided attention of the entire Finnish-speaking population of preschoolers every afternoon around five-thirty.  (Swedish-speaking youngsters are probably likewise riveted to Pikku Kakkonen’s linguistic counterpart, BUU-klubben.)  Pikku Kakkonen has been an institution on Finland's channel two for over thirty years now and – like most shows aimed at very young viewers who don’t mind predictable programming at all – the show has an amazing timelessness to it. 

For decades, one sure sign of the changing season is the little public-service announcement added at the end of Pikku Kakkonen for a few weeks at the beginning of spring.  The short animated spot stars a boy and teddy bear – who, along with a moon, fish, ghost and a TV-shaped bird, form the mosaic of the show’s logo.  As the spot opens, the bear and the boy are playing in the snow across a lake from the TV studio and are interrupted when the bird summons them to hurry back.  Presumably, they need to take their places in the logo before the show signs off. 

While the boy does the prudent thing and walks around the lake, the impetuous bear decides to cut straight across to the studio, as he’s probably done dozens of times during the winter when the ice was thick.  But now it’s spring and the ice is thin.  Near the other shore, he falls through to the frigid water underneath and is saved only by the quick action of his friend.  The boy demonstrates the correct rescue technique by flattening himself on the ice to reach the floundering bear and extend his scarf as a lifeline.  The bear pulls himself onto the fragile ice and, lying flat to distribute his weight, carefully rolls safely to shore. 

The animation ends with the teddy bear, recovered from his ordeal, joining his friends in the logo and solemnly intoning:  "Varokaa heikkoa jäätä."  ("Beware of weak ice.") 

The animation is quaint, but the message is deadly serious.  Throughout the long winter, the ice of countless lakes and rivers is usually more than strong enough to bear the weight of anyone who ventures out on those inviting, flat expanses of white.  Skiers and the heaviest of ice fishermen can safely travel across the ice in many places, even on the sea in certain spots near shore.  In some places the ice is strong enough even for cars and buses.  But once the days turn longer and milder, it’s only a matter of time before – although the snow on the surface might look unchanged – the ice becomes treacherously thin.    

Every year, the spring thaw brings tragedy to some Finnish family, a sad reminder that despite the welcome sight of emerging crocuses and tender leafs spouting on the birches, the coming of warm weather also has a deceptively dangerous side.  

Reds

The first time I saw Helsinki, the city I've ended up spending half my life in, wasn’t from a plane overhead or from one of the ferries from Sweden that dock at South Harbor.  Instead, my first glimpse of the Finnish capital was inside a movie theater in Athens, Georgia.  On the big screen, as it were.  It was at a showing of the newly released movie Reds, which my Finnish girlfriend had been especially eager to see. 

This epic film from 1981 chronicles the career of journalist and devoted communist, John Reed, apparently the only American to be entombed in the Kremlin in Moscow.  Directed by and starring Warren Beatty, along with Diane Keaton and Jack Nicholson, Reds is based on the book “Ten Days that Shook the World”, Reed’s firsthand account of the Russian Revolution of 1917. 

"V.I. Lenin lived in this house in 1917", plaque in Hakaniemi.

To report on the happenings in Russia, Reed traveled through Finland, which was still part of the Russian Empire, on his way to Petrograd, the former St. Petersburg, arriving just in time to witness the tumultuous events that led to the takeover by Lenin’s Bolshevik Party.  The title of the book Reed wrote about his time in Petrograd is no exaggeration.  The course of history was indeed radically changed in those few weeks, though in this post-Soviet era it all begins to feel like ancient history. 

(By the way, it’s funny how in the States the color red – the “brand” of socialists and communists throughout the world – has recently come to symbolize the conservative Republican Party.  A small example of American exceptionalism, if you will.  If you think about it, it gives a whole new meaning to the “Red Scare” of the 1950s and Republican Joseph McCarthy’s Communist witch hunts.) 

At the time Reds was made, almost a decade before the collapse of the Soviet Union, filming behind the Iron Curtain was apparently no easy matter to arrange.  Beatty’s film was just one of several Hollywood productions over the years that used Helsinki as a more accessible stand-in for St. Petersburg, Moscow or some other place in the USSR. 

Helsinki doesn’t make its appearance until about halfway through the three-hour movie, as Beatty and Keaton, in the roles of Reed and his companion Louise Bryant, finally make it to Petrograd and are driven through its magnificent Palace Square (played here by Helsinki’s Senate Square).  With an Empire Style architecture that mimics the look of its Russian counterpart, Senate Square does a well enough as a cinematic substitute for St. Petersburg. 

On his way to the real Petrograd, Reed followed in the footsteps of Lenin who had passed through Helsinki a few months earlier on his return from exile in Switzerland.  When the revolutionary government in Russia cracked down on the Bolsheviks, Lenin retreated to Helsinki to lay low for a few months.  There is a plaque on the corner of Hakaniemi Square marking the building where he stayed as a covert guest of the Helsinki chief of police, a fellow Bolshevik. 

The "capping" of Havis Amanda, May Day Eve.

Hakaniemi has long enjoyed a reputation as a leftist stronghold.  It has been the traditional home of Finland’s Social Democratic and Communist parties, as well as all the major trade unions.  I recall when I first came here, even the large advertisements on the buildings overlooking the square added to the leftist atmosphere.  There were the corporate logos of Interflug (the state airline of a former country called East Germany), Intourist (a travel agency founded by Joseph Stalin), and Pepsi (the cola of choice in the Warsaw pact, not that there was really any choice about it.).  Of these, only the Pepsi logo remains high above the cobblestones of Hakaniemi.    

Despite those changes, Hakaniemi Square is still the traditional site for leftist rallies and gatherings, especially at May Day, the international workers’ day.  (In the US, May Day is ignored entirely, in favor of the all-American non-socialistic Labor Day in September – another bit of expectionalism.)  Hakaniemi serves as the starting point for the May Day Parade, where supporters of labor unions, leftist organizations, and assorted socialist and communists parties march a couple of kilometers to Senate Square to listen to speeches made from the steps of the Cathedral.  Nowadays, the number of marchers has been greatly diminished from the early 80s when almost a quarter of the Finnish electorate voted communist. 

Today, the worker-related celebration of May Day is more like a minor sideshow to the real focus of the holiday, namely huge crowds of students – past, present and future – having a good time.  May Day Eve is the closest thing to Carnival in Finland.  While you won’t see as much samba dancing as in Rio (in fact, none), the sea of revelers in their white student hats, still generate plenty of gaiety with the help of lots balloon, streamers, noisemakers and, of course, alcohol.  For first-time visitors, it can be alarming to see such crowds of normally reserved and restrained Finns filling the streets and publicly losing all their inhibitions.  The evening’s main event takes place at the Havis Amanda Fountain near South Harbor.  To roaring encouragement from the crowd, university students – often suspended from a construction crane – place a large white student’s hat on the bronze statue of a nude mermaid at the center of the fountain. 

In recent years, we’ve chosen to skip the chaos at Havis Amanda and instead celebrate May Day at home.  And we seldom ever watched the May Day Parade, most recently in 1989 when my very pregnant wife and I decided to follow along as the ranks of leftists decked out in red and carrying red flags and banners marched earnestly to Senate Square.  Though the route of the march isn’t strenuous by any means, the act of walking that far was for my wife physical enough to kick off a labor movement of an entirely different type.  The next morning our first child was born.  Six months later the Berlin Wall came down.  As far as I’m concerned, they were both equally world-changing events.  

A curious American at the May Day rally, Senate Square 1983.