by Marja-Leena 
by Marja-Leena my architect cousin
Seppo Mykrä has designed projects such as the Hotel Oscar expansion shown in the background, where hands were even wrung.
captured from Warkauden Lehti
Very occasionally I browse the online newspaper from Varkaus, Finland, the city where I was born and where most of my father’s family came from and where many of my cousins still live. Imagine my stunned surprise last night when I was checking it out and found a photo and article about my cousin Seppo Mykrä. He has been the city’s architect for 40 years and now has an exhibition of photographs of some of his hundreds of designs in that city.
Here’s my translation of the article:
by Rauno Ylönen 4.8.2011
Architect Seppo Mykrä’s touch is strongly reflected in the city of Varkaus and its streetscape. 70-year-old Mykrä has designed hundreds of buildings for Varkaus in the past 40 years.
Some of these are on display as photographs in the Unknown Creator exhibition at the Varkaus library starting this Wednesday. The exhibition is divided into three parts: industrial buildings, residential buildings and public buildings.
Photography and exhibition design has been carried out by Seppo Mykrä’s granddaughter, Emma Luukkala, a student at the Tampere Art High School. We are still making the book of these photographs, Luukkala says.
Read more in Warkauden magazine on Thursday.
Unknown Creator – an exhibition of Seppo Mykrä’s architecture in Varkaus from 1972-2011 at the Varkaus library exhibition room August 31st.
Can you tell how proud I am of my cousin, who is my late father’s late sister’s son? I deeply wish I could be there to see this exhibition and all his lovely family and home. The last time we met was in 2002.
Now, just a few words about the curious name Varkaus or Warkaus about which we are often teased:
Oddly enough, ‘Varkaus’ translates to ‘theft’, even though it is not the reason for giving that name to the city. In old Finnish, the same word also meant strait, and this city is located in the lake district […] on straits between two parts of Lake Saimaa.
I’ve heard many different explanations for the name but this one is new to me and does make the most sense.
And, oh, I just remembered that it’s my father’s birthday today (as well as being special for a few others in our family). If he were alive he would be 91 years old, and very very proud of his nephew!
by Marja-Leena on a beach
a quintessential scene of summer made black and white becomes somehow both timeless and historical looking, like something found in old family albums
reminding me also of these images
by Marja-Leena sepia
Elisa and her little girls arrived safely in London in the early hours of this morning, Vancouver time. They are joyful seeing husband and father after more than two months. The last few days have been a whirlwind, then the very sad parting hit hard and we’re missing them terribly. We keep expecting to hear the sounds of happy children.
Eldest daughter is still here for a few more days so that’s keeping us entertained and busy. Then it will be time to catch up on a few home and garden jobs. Most of all I want to start working on some new prints and hope I’m able to get into the print studio in September.
Recalling this oddly related older post: sepia memories
by Marja-Leena busy
We are having the dog days of summer here… at last, for those who like the heat, which I don’t, but just in time for our “English” daughter and granddaughters to get in some quality beach time. They will be returning to their home in the UK in a few days so we have been doing a little more than usual babysitting this week whenever mommy has last errands, appointments and visits with friends. Eldest daughter has also come down for a week so things are busy and lively around here with all our daughters and granddaughters here, only missing their partners.
I did catch a few moments in the sunny garden this afternoon to practice some macro photography. I know I really must use the tripod, sigh. Another trouble with shooting in macro is that it is like looking through a magnifying glass, and thus sometimes finding some unpleasant surprises. See those tiny black dots in my lovely purple clematis flowers? They are not part of the flower itself as I thought, they are oodles of busy bugs. Shudder, shutter!
by Marja-Leena early one morning
around 4:45 a.m. a week or so ago,
the insomniac’s sweet reward
by Marja-Leena dying languages & technology
I’ve written before about my interest in the loss of minority languages around the world. The dominance of the English language on the internet and in popular entertainment is just one factor that is blamed, but here is a hopeful note about how young people are using today’s technology to communicate in their native tongues.**
This was accompanied by another article called Silenced Voices**, how a huge number of languages are dying along with the remaining few elders who still speak them.
So, in light of the first article, is this not a very a good reason, amongst others, to provide the internet and related technology at a low cost to still-deprived isolated communities such as many of Canada’s First Nations and Inuit people to assist the younger generation in practicing their native languages in a lively manner? Language loss is surprisingly quick without usage, even for me since I rarely get to speak Finnish since my parents passed away two decades ago. The internet and reading Finnish blogs and news is preventing complete loss, and keeping me in tune with my original culture. Language and culture go hand in hand, or should it be, hand in glove.
For interested readers, more related links can be found under the linguistics theme. I would be happy to hear what experiences you, dear readers, have had with language loss, personally or in others you know.
Also, a bit about the photos here… how very timely for me to have suitably related images literally come up while reading and writing about this. This ancient typewriter, now old technology within just a generation, was retrieved out of the storage dungeon, erm, crawl space for our ten-year-old granddaughter who is eager to try it out. It needs a cleaning and new ribbon which I believe are still available in some shop in Vancouver.
P.S. This was probably made sometime in 1930’s, says husband. I also learned that the typewriter was invented in 1870 – so that is well over over a hundred years of steady use. A little off topic, yet interesting.
** UPDATE 15Dec2013 – links have expired already! I really must stop linking to the Vancouver Sun’s articles which are not kept active for very long!
by Marja-Leena revisiting macro photowork
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I fell in love with macro photography about a year and a half ago, going through a long learning process and taking lots of photos for many months.
It’s been an embarrassingly long time now since I took any new macro photos. It’s partly laziness in getting the bigger DSLR camera, the lenses and the extension tube out, especially if I have to change them after husband has used it with other lenses. When it comes to the technical side of photography, my memory does not retain the information for long without regular use. One gets too spoiled with today’s point and shoot cameras but ours does not have a great macro feature. Anyway, I’ve had a strong urge recently to take it up again and relearn it.
Here are some of my first little efforts. Having shot these indoors on a cloudy day, they came out very dark, but with iPhoto and PhotoShop I was thrilled to tease out some exciting-to-me results. The imperfections that I find in this kind of photography actually satisfy the artistic and creative side in me, sort of like the “happy accidents” I like to cultivate in etching and other printmaking processes.
Because I know you will ask what the subjects in these images are, I shall tell you they are small shells in a plant pot on the windowsill next to my computer desk in our home in a city on the west coast of Canada. Enjoy!
by Marja-Leena summertime is
the taste of homegrown tomatoes