Old Spice Tales

Aftershave in a classic
"buoy" shape.

I hesitate to admit the following, because – despite heroic attempts at self-delusion – it might reveal just how uncool I really am.

But in reality, that ship sailed long ago, right about the time my kids became teenagers, so what the hell. . .

I cannot lie, I am an Old Spice man.

Taking brand loyalty a little too far, I have persisted in using the same kind of Old Spice deodorant (“original scent”) that I first applied to my armpits as a rank teenager decades ago.

Finns, probably unfamiliar with this “legacy” nautical-themed line of men’s toiletries, might not realize that Old Spice is old school in the extreme, kind of “your father’s” aftershave and deo. I’ve often felt that for the under-fifty crowd, the subtle message of my favorite grooming products isn’t so much “rugged, manly, tamer of the seven seas”, but rather “geezer”.

Despite this, I've chosen to stay in this deo rut, which isn't to do in Finland where, until recently, it was not possible to buy Old Spice (I’m not sure it can be found even now).

This lack of Old Spice in Suomi, plus my crippling inability to consider using anything else, has forced me to stock up whenever I’m in the States. On every trip to the US, I eventually show up at the checkout counter in some Wal-Mart with about a dozen or more sticks of brightly red packaged deodorant. Not surprisingly, buying a two-year supply of the stuff all at once elicits some intriguing looks from the female cashiers – and not the “come hither” kind.

So it was also on my recent visit to New York a few weeks ago. After I got back to Helsinki with my newest stash, I noticed that the marketing folks at Old Spice seem to have embraced the brand’s heritage and its retro reputation. Printed on the back of the deo container is the slightly cheeky message:  

Who knows, maybe Old Spice is becoming cool again. Good thing I didn’t switch to something else. 

Gun Play

When a heavily armed psychopath began murdering members of the audience at a screening of the newest Batman movie in Colorado last Friday, it was mid-morning in Finland. Almost immediately, there was blanket coverage of the rampage on the three biggest cable news channels I receive here in Helsinki.

CNN switched to its US-based broadcast, which we see in Finland only when something big happens back home. Also, the BBC and Sky News ran a non-stop live feed of the scene outside the Century 16 cinema, bathed in red neon in the early morning Colorado darkness.

I hate to admit it, but as I flipped back and forth between CNN, BBC and Sky, part of me was surprised by the saturation coverage of the events in Aurora. A thought, perhaps a callous one, occurred to me: “Why all the fuss? Doesn’t this happen all the time?”

For some, guns are at the center of the US
presidential election.

Well, maybe not quite. After all, there hasn’t been a killing spree in the US on this scale in at least three years, not since 2009, when 14 people were killed in a rampage in Binghamton, New York, then ten others in another mass shooting in Alabama, and finally 13 in a third attack at Fort Hood, Texas. All in one year.

The Ft. Hood rampage gained lots of media attention, also oversees (the shooter was a Muslim and an active-duty U.S. Army officer), but I can’t recall ever hearing about either of the other two incidents earlier that year.

And then there was Virginia Tech. This horrific murder of 32 people in 2007 remains the national’s deadliest rampage by a single gunman and a particularly ugly scar on the national character.

Maybe an even uglier scar is the fact that less attention-grabbing mass shootings do take place practically “all the time”. 

Three days prior to the shooting in Aurora, 17 people were shot in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, none fatally. Six days before that, four young people were wounded in Chicago. Two days before that, five people were shot, three fatally, in a shootout at a soccer tournament in Delaware. (Yes, a shootout – reportedly some spectators joined in.) Three days before that, July 9, saw 22 people shot (three to death) in separate incidents in Chicago on a particularly violent Friday night. Four days earlier, six people were wounded at a party in Seattle, one later dying, and to wrap up this grim litany, three people were wounded, one fatally, on July 1, again in Chicago. 

That’s just for July, this year – and, of course, that’s not counting the Aurora shooting. I suspect it’s not a comprehensive listing.

Clearly, the shooting in less than three weeks of 57 people, resulting in seven fatalities, makes gun deaths in America an all-too-routine affair. It’s a predictable part of American life.

And it’s one of the ways that the US truly is exceptional. America’s bizarrely intense love affair with guns sets it apart. I recently saw a comment on the Internet from a defender of America’s gun culture who tried to push back on the notion that the US is abnormally gun-happy. He pointed out that, despite the dismal picture gun-control advocates often paint of gun violence in America, things are much worse in some other parts of the world. Such as in Africa.

When conservatives start trying to score points by comparing the US favorably to the third world, you know they’re grasping at straws. (To be fair, like most people who make comments on the Internet, this guy was definitely not the 21st century answer to William F. Buckley, Jr.)

It is true, though, that the US isn’t the world’s most deadly country. On a per capita basis, the level of gun violence in the US is far below that of such places as Honduras, Jamaica and Venezuela. (A relative of mine who used to live in Venezuela once saw a enraged motorist with a pistol threaten another driver who had cut him off during the morning rush hour, firing a couple of shots just over the terrified man's head.)

Turbulent states such as Colombia are not typically the kind of nations America likes to benchmark itself against. But, when it comes to gun violence, it has no choice. Compared to other developed and stable countries, the US seems like a banana republic, with a rate of gun deaths a level of magnitude higher than any European country, Canada, or Australia.

In 2009, which admittedly was a bad year for mass killing in America (and Finland, too), there were 24 gun-related homicides here, opposed to 9,416 in the US. That’s four gun deaths per million Finns, versus 30 in the US. And this is just murders, not deaths from suicide or accidental gunshots.

Europeans justifiably wonder why my countrymen put up with such a situation, and the truth is Americans are okay with it. Of course, no one is happy about incidents like the Aurora shooting, but such bouts of violence is a price most Americans seem willing to pay to be able to stockpile their own little arsenal of firearms. How else can you explain the fact that, in the wake of last week's shooting, gun sales have spiked in Colorado, gun owners have insisted everything is fine the way it is, and no politician on the national stage dares utter the words “gun control”?

The reason for this is America’s particular fetish for guns, but also fear, if not fear of actual crime, then fear inspired by the foreboding threats of a powerful nation-wide syndicate that spreads its own brand of panic and paranoid – by which, of course, I mean the National Rifle Association.

Venus in Transit

Next Wednesday, Finland will experience a rather neat and rare astronomical event, though not one so easy to notice. The transit of Venus is essentially the same as a solar eclipse, though instead of the moon blocking out the sun by passing between it and Earth, it’s Venus that’s blocking out the sun. Only, not so much.

Faraway Venus appears so small from Earth that we see it only as a small dot as it crosses the face of the sun. So, I imagine the transit won’t exactly be spectacular. But it is rare -- it won’t happen again for another 105 years – and it does have a unique scientific pedigree. 

When I heard that the transit of Venus was coming up, I immediately thought of James Cook and Tahiti. Naturally. Any excuse to think of a place like Tahiti.

The most recent transit, 2004.
Photo: Jen Herold.

What makes the solar transit of our neighboring planet so interesting is its role in a geometry exercise of astronomical proportions. Over 400 years ago, Johannes Kepler, a founding father of astronomy, revolutionized the field by discovering a more accurate model of how planets move around the sun. He was thus able to predict when Venus and smaller Mercury would next transit the sun, but died a year before the first of these events took place, in 1631, and no one was prepared to observe it. The opportunity to gleam some important data was lost.

When the next transit of Venus occurred in 1639 (they usually come in pairs eight years apart, then again after 105 or 122 years), it was seen by two astronomers in England, who then took a stab at measuring part of the solar system.

Because these two Englishmen observed the transit from slightly different angles (from villages about 40 kilometers apart), Venus appeared to each to take a slightly different path across the sun.

From this, they could use fairly basic geometry to calculate the distance of Northern England from that big yellow orb in the sky. The resulting estimate of almost 60 million miles (97 million kilometers) was way off the mark, though closer to the actual distance of 93 million miles (150 million km) than anyone had come up with previously. 

An early observation of a transit of Venus, 1639.

What was needed for a more accurate measurement was more and better observations, and from more widely separated spots on earth. That and, of course, another transit of Venus. This wasn’t scheduled to occur again until 1761 and 1769, by which time scientists around the world were ready. Astronomers were dispatched to such widely scattered places as Norway, Newfoundland and Madagascar to measure the transit on June 6, 1761.

Two of those taking part in this international effort were English astronomers by the names of Mason and Dixon, who successfully observed the transit from the Cape of Good Hope. This pair went on to gain wider fame by accurately marking the southern limits of the colony of Pennsylvania. This more down-to-earth feat led to one of their names, in the form of Dixie, being applied to such diverse items as disposable paper cups, an all-girl country band, a type of jazz, not to mention a large part of the future United States where I come from.

For the next transit, eight years later, some astronomers traveled even further afield. The Royal Society of London organized an expedition to the amazingly agreeable destination of Tahiti, which had been “discovered” by an Englishman only two years before. The very able James Cook, a master navigator and mapmaker, was picked to lead the voyage, the first of his three explorations of the Pacific.

I love the idea of an expedition setting out on three-year journey to exotic parts of the world just to observe a single brief celestial event with no other purpose than the advancement of pure science. I would have signed up for that trip in an instant.

Aboriginals encountering 
Cook's men in 1770.

But, there was a second, secret and slightly less noble, though just as romantic, "assignment for Cook. The British Admiralty instructed him to search for Terra Australis Incognito before returning home to England. This mythical continent was rumored to exist in the far reaches of the southern ocean and would have made an epic addition to the British Empire.

After leaving Tahiti, Cook spent a year sailing around and mapping New Zealand, proving it was a pair of islands and not part of any legendary continent. He also discovered the eastern coast of Australia, ran aground on the Great Barrier Reef, and observed original Australians and their habits, which included cooking shellfish on the beach, apparently an ancient Ozzie custom that has now been elevated (or reduced?) to a fun-loving cliche.

He, however, did not succeed in his secret task of finding a gigantic landmass in the vastness of the South Pacific, the original mission did contribute to a much-improved measurement of our solar system.

Next week’s transit will be another opportunity for scientists somewhere to gather data. For us laypeople it will be just a chance to watch Venus obscure a small part of the sun. That is if our slice of the sky is not obscured by clouds.

Of course, no one can safely view it without proper eye protection. I’m hoping to use the safety glasses handed out to us by Air France back in 1999 on a flight to Paris from the States that was landing just as a total solar eclipse sweep across the City of Light.

The transit should be visible in Finland beginning at one a.m. Wednesday morning (three hours before sunrise in Helsinki) and lasts until almost eight. I hope I can catch some of it. It would be a shame not to. Something tells me I won’t be around for the next one in 2117.

Citizenship

Last week we applied for a new passport for my daughter, which required a visit to the US Consulate here in Helsinki. Though her current passport expired last summer, we decided to hold off on applying for a new one until she turned 16, a few months ago.

There were some concrete benefits to waiting. As a 16-year-old, she now gets a passport valid for 10 years, like the rest of us grownups, rather than the five-year passports issued to kids.

Less crucial, but still an advantage, is the fact that since my daughter is now “of age”, we parents are not needed for application purposes. Prior to this, both my wife (who is not a US citizen) and I needed to make an appearance at the US Consulate in five years intervals to renew each of our children’s passports.

The sad rationale (as I believe) for the policy of both parents showing up is to ensure one who is a US citizen and facing the breakup of his or her marriage can’t impulsively arrange travel documents for the kids and sneak them out of the country without the other parent’s knowledge. This is an extremely heartbreaking risk of transnational marriages, and it does happen.

Some ten years ago, there were a couple of widely publicized cases of such parental child abductions in the opposite direction, with Finnish mothers refusing to return their American-Finnish children to the US. Fighting over who gets to keep the kids in a divorce is bad enough, but it can be made even uglier because of dual citizenship, which is otherwise usually a win-win arrangement for those who have it. 

All my children are dual US and Finnish citizens. Though they were born here in Helsinki, they were also born American thanks to US law, which grants citizenship to the children of native-born Americans who live abroad. (Donald Trump, take note: Barack Obama would be a US citizen, even if he had been born – against all evidence – in Kenya, and not Hawaii.)

To certify the citizenship of their children, expat Americans need to obtain a “Consular Report of Birth” from the US State Department. Soon after each of our children were born, we schlepped down to the US Embassy, taking with us various documentation (Finnish birth certificate, marriage license, etc.), and of course the actual baby in question, in order to apply for the report of birth and a passport.

When I first came to Finland, a visit to the US Consulate was a simple affair. The American diplomatic mission to Finland occupies a small campus of mostly Georgian-style buildings on the edge of Kaivopuisto, a scenic park overlooking the sea and islands off Helsinki’s southern shore. I distinctly remember on my first visits there driving into the complex and parking right outside the front door of the gray, gabled Consulate building.

Those were more innocent times. Things started to change after the 1983 suicide bombing that killed 241 US servicemen in Lebanon. Security at the Helsinki embassy, as I’m sure with all US missions, became tighter over the years following that, and after 9/11 became extremely rigorous. Sadly, a visit to the Consulate nowadays is a grim reminder of the potential threats oversea Americans face, though such worries are not something that ordinarily intrudes on our lives.

Photo credit: Noble

Today, while the Embassy complex in Kaivopuisto is undergoing extensive renovation, the Consulate is operating out of a temporarily location in downtown, which means security is even tighter than normal, if that’s possible.

Still, it’s a relatively busy place. Once my daughter and I found it and got through the security check, we shared the waiting room with three people seeking US visas:  a Helsinki-based African scholar and two 16-year-old Finnish girls off to spend a year as high school exchange students in Idaho and Massachusetts.

After a relatively short wait (I can remember some interminable waits on previous visits), the whole thing went smoothly and we were done. The Consulate staff was, as you would expect, business-like, but also really pretty friendly. Interacting with the other Americans there was a bit like briefly being back home in the States – which, in a sense, it was.

Still, I’m not unhappy about not having to return there any time soon. My daughter will get her new passport by mail, hopefully before our upcoming trip to North America in a few weeks. Otherwise, she would have to travel on her Finnish passport and apply for a “visa waiver”.

Most Finns don’t need a visa to visit the US, because in effect they are granted a waiver. Before 1991, this was automatically granted upon arrival, on the basis of a form visitors could fill out on the plane. Simple. And free. Nowadays, they must obtain the waiver online before departing, at a cost of $14. That’s simpler than visiting the Consulate for an actual visa, and cheaper, but still a bit of a hassle for Finns traveling to the US.

It’s a small hassle my children can avoid, not to mention the longer lines and probing questions at immigration that non-citizens have to endure. That's one of the perks they, as dual citizens, enjoy along with all the other rights of Americans, though they’ve spent their entire lives in Finland. 

When my boys were young, however, I worried they might lose those rights when they turned 18. Finnish men of that age must register for military or civilian service, and according to the law at the time dual citizens joining the Finnish army had to give up their other citizenship. Thankfully, the law was changed before my sons had to choose between being Finnish or American. 

I would never give up my US citizenship myself, and have never much felt the need to take on Finnish citizenship. I have permanent residency here. I can come and go and work as I please. The only complication is that whenever I renew my passport, I need to have a new stamp added.

Lately I have been thinking that after being a resident for 25 or so odd years, maybe it’s time to apply for become a kansalainen as well. And maybe, just maybe, after a few months of cramming I could even pass the very daunting language exam required to apply. If not, it’s no big deal, since I’m perfectly happy with the citizenship I have.

Pollen Nation

Here in Finland we have been enjoying a glorious, warm spring, already hitting daytime high in the 20s (70s Fahrenheit), with the gray and brown landscape left behind by melting snow rapidly morphing into brilliant shades of green.

Only, not everyone is completely enjoying this stunning and sunny transformation. As you would expect in a northern country where summers are short, Nature here is on a tight schedule once the long winter is over. All the plants and animals are in a hurry to make hay while the summer sun shines, especially the plants. With the coming of longer and warmer days, trees such the ubiquitous birch seem to leaf out overnight and release their pollen to the wind with a vengeance.

Anatomy of a spring-time nuisance,
Silver Birch (Betula pendula). 

“Vengeance” is exactly how the early-spring spike in pollen must feel to the hundreds of thousands of Finns who suffer from allergies. The main culprits at the moment are birch and alder pollen, to be replaced later by grass as the biggest tormentor of noses, eyes and throats.

This year has been worse than normal for pollen. A thin, green layer of the stuff seems to coat all surfaces – like my car – left untouched by water or wet rags. We’ve had very little rain to wash the tiny floating particles from the air. Even people like me, who are luckily not normally affected by any kind pollen, are experiencing some reactions this spring. Others are suffering miserably.

The University of Turku, which monitors the pollen situation in Finland, has reported the highest levels here in almost twenty years. What’s more, as of last week, every part of the country is experiencing the highest levels of birch pollen, all at the same time. So, for now at least, the entire nation is suffering the effects of spring in runny-eyed solidarity. It might not cause anyone to wish for the return of winter, but maybe a few well-time spring showers would be, um, just what the doctor ordered.