Muriel Barker (1892 – 1949) was a British mathematician and aerodynamicist of the Royal Aircraft Establishment, Farnborough, who made significant contributions to early advances in aerodynamics. In August 1922-08 she published her paper On the use of very small pitot-tubes for measuring wind velocity in the Proceedings of the Royal Society. A pitot tube is a slender tube with two holes used to calculate speed through the air or water, used by both ships and aeroplanes. Barker was the first researcher to demonstrate that the difference between the pitot tube’s reading and the static pressure is proportional to the flow speed rather than to its square. That same year she married Hermann Glauert (1892 – 1942).
Hermann Glauert was also a British aerodynamicist and Principal Scientific Officer at the Royal Aircraft Establishment who laid the groundwork for optimizing wind turbine performance. His primary work, The Elements of Aerofoil and Airscrew Theory (1926), was regarded as the most important instrument for spreading airfoil and wing theory around the English speaking world. His approach, however, overlooked critical aspects, limiting its effectiveness.
Divya Tyagi (1990 – ) is an engineering student at Pennsylvania State University who has completed her undergraduate degree in aeronautical engineering and is now conducting pioneering research in computational fluid dynamics, for a master’s degree in aerospace engineering, with the goal of the finding the maximum attainable power coefficient of wind turbines.
Tyagi reapproached Glauert’s challenge. She applied techniques such as the calculus of variations to enhance the aerodynamic performance of wind turbines. These modifications identify optimal flow conditions to maximize energy output. This is important, for the world to increase energy demand from sustainable sources.
Aeronautical engineering professor Sven Schmitz (1978 – ), recognized gaps in Glauert’s original solution and challenged his students., including Tyagi. Tyagi created an addendum to Glauert’s problem, which determines the aerodynamic performance of wind turbines by resolving ideal flow conditions. Tyagi’s work required persistence but addressed the problem and provided an elegant resolution. Every 1% improvement in the coefficient of power boosts wind energy production by 1%. Her work provides a pathway to more efficient wind turbines by addressing factors previously neglected, such as total force and moment coefficients on the rotor and blade flexing under wind pressure. This is fundamental for the production of next-generation turbines that are more efficient while minimizing environmental impact.
I am not a mathematician. I have acquired a copy of Baker’s On the use of very small pitot-tubes for measuring wind velocity, and of Glauert’s The Elements of Aerofoil and Airscrew Theory. I am also hoping to get copies of works by Divya Tyagi. I intend to work my way through these works in the coming months, during 2026, the centenary of Glauert’s work.
Without having to do any work ourselves, Trish and I (along with Louise Yeoh and Don Wong) became grandparents for the first time on 2025-05-31. Grandson Quinn has travelled north to meet Louise and Don in Richmond, British Columbia, and they have travelled south to visit him. At the beginning of November 2025, Trish and I visited Sequoyah Heights/ Hills, in Oakland, California to meet Quinn, Shelagh and Derek. This is a report on our adventure.
The name Sequoyah has its origins with George Gist or George Guess (1767 – 1843), a Native American polymath and neographer = a person who creates new writing systems, in his case, of the Cherokee Nation, in Tennessee. The genus name of the coast redwood tree (Sequoia sempervirens) was long presumed, initially in Josiah Whitney (1819 – 1896), The Yosemite Book (1868), to honour Sequoyah. However, an etymological study published in 2012 debunked that myth, concluding that Austrian Stephen Endlicher (1804 – 1849) derived the name from the Latin word sequi = to follow, because the number of seeds per cone in the newly classified genus aligned in mathematical sequence with the other four genera in the suborder.
A coastal redwood tree growing in the backyard of the McLellan-Wong house.
This suburb in Oakland is probably not named after either the tree or the person, but Sequoyah Country Club, an adjacent 18 hole golf course, founded in 1913. Wikipedia tells us: the members of the club intentionally chose the traditional Indian = native American, First Nation spelling.
The house the McLellan-Wongs live in is an Eichler, built in 1965. Between 1949 and 1966, Joseph Eichler’s (1900 – 1974) company, Eichler Homes, built more than 11 000 houses in nine communities in Northern California and in three communities in Southern California. One of Eichler’s stated aims was to construct inclusive and diverse planned communities, ideally featuring integrated parks and community centers. Eichler established a non-discrimination policy and offered homes for sale to anyone of any religion or race. In 1958, he resigned from the National Association of Home Builders when they refused to support a non-discrimination policy.
This photo shows the rear of an Eichler house.
His houses have come to be known as California Modern, with feature glass walls, post-and-beam construction, open floorplans, with exteriors with flat and/or low-sloping A-framed roofs, vertical 2-inch pattern wood siding, and spartan facades with clean geometric lines. A signature concepts was to bring the outside in, with skylights and floor-to-ceiling windows with glass transoms looking out on protected and private outdoor rooms, patios, atriums, gardens and swimming pools. Most of these houses lack street-facing windows. There are fewer than 50 Eichler houses in the Sequoyah Hills subdivision.
While my son, Alasdair, I have visited Newfoundland, Labrador and Saint Pierre et Miquelon in 2024, and the other maritime provinces and Maine in 2025, the last time we (and Trish) were in California was in 2020. The last time Trish and I were in British Columbia was in 2017, in part to celebrate my mother’s 101st birthday. On both of these last two trips we met Trish’s sister, Aileen.
We arrived shortly after Halloween. Throughout the neighbourhood there were lots of decorations. Here a skeleton and five bats, along with some dying plants are prominent at Derek and Shelagh’s house.
We arrived on 2025-11-01, All Saints day. The day before, Halloween, seems to be a major celebration in the Sequoyah area, with most houses having suitable decorations. One neighbouring house was equipped with a 3m60cm (12 foot) skeleton, that remains in place all year. Over the next few days, most of these decorations slowly disappeared from view.
We were surprised when Aileen showed up in California on Tuesday, 2025-11-04. Someone had done some planning, others had managed to keep it a secret, still more people (including myself and Trish) were not informed. The two sisters seemed to appreciate the opportunity to meet in person, and not have to communicate using emails or other apps.
The two Commins sisters, Aileen Adams (left) and Trish McLellan (right).
I am thankful for having lived in an automotive age with mechanical powered vehicles, avoiding horses, reindeer, dogsleds and other animal powered conveyances. Admittedly, I could have accepted that there were more electric vehicles, earlier.
Not all of the neighbours have entered the EV age. Here is a 1955 Chevrolet Bel Air.
One neighbour owns a 1955 Chevrolet Bel Air. I correctly told the owner its year, which impressed him. Yes, I can recognize most American car models from about 1954 to 1967. I am not particularly skilled beyond that range. He then showed me its fully chromed 350 cid (5.7 litre) V8 engine. This seemed a bit large, but I did not have the facts about the original engine in my head. That larger engine was not introduced until 1967. The 1955 model originally had a 265 cid (4.3 litre) engine. Despite that, I managed to impress its owner further by telling him we owned a two-tone yellow and white VW Buzz. It totally lacks chrome! Thankfully. He had seen his first Buzz the day before.
Not everyone has car restoration as a hobby, so a little further away there is also a neighbour who provides a little free library.
We were out walking through the hills of Sequoyah most days, with or without Quinn.
The view from Sequoyah with the tower of Oakland International Airport (OAK) on Bay Farm Island prominent.Some people at Sequoyah had unconventional pets. Here is someone with a couple of bears.
During our stay we left home several times by car to visit Emeryville, Lake Chabot, San Leandro, Dublin and Pleasanton. I was certainly happy to leave the driving to Derek. At Emeryville we ate dinner at Trader Vic’s. I had last eaten a meal at one in 1962 in Vancouver, so this repeat performance was on my bucket list.
Trader Vic’s in Emeryville, with Shelagh and Aileen in the background.
The photo below shows some of the waterfowl at Lake Chabot. We had originally planned to rent a pontoon boat to explore the lake, but boat rentals were closed when we visited, due to illness at the marina.
Waterfowl at Lake Chabot.
We did some shopping at Trader Joe’s in San Leandro. For me, the most important item on the list was some Virgil’s root beer. Root beer is probably the one North American item I have not learned to live without. It should also be noted that I was unable to visit the first A&W rootbeer stand at Lodi. So it remains on my bucket list.
In Dublin we visited REI = Recreational Equipment, Incorporated. It was here that I was able to buy an insulated Swedish Fjällräven Skogsö jacket on sale. As I age, I have found my uninsulated Swedish Haglöfs jacket, bought in Molde, Norway in 2008, increasingly too cold. Back in 2020, I had purchased a Swedish Wesc winter coat on sale in San Francisco.
We visited the town of Pleasanton twice. It is ranked #2 on the American Social Progress Index. On each visit we bought ice cream treats at the Meadowlark Dairy. Yes, I bought a root beer diablo on both occasions.
A waterway through Pleasanton, CaliforniaAt the bottom, this area is Sequoyah Hills, but at the top it is Sequoyah Heights.
Note: A visit to the Left Coast of North America gives a time displacement of eight or nine hours, compared to much of Europe. For us, the outward journey is relatively easy to adapt to. By staying up a couple of hours later each day, one is fully adapted within four or five days. It is the return journey that is more problematic. My son tells me that one has to adapt to a fifteen or sixteen hour time difference. Once again, this is done by staying up later each day. On day five of our return, I took a six hour nap between about 15:00 and 21:00. This allowed me to stay awake until about 05:00 in the morning, when I returned to bed to get a few more hours of sleep. I estimate that it will take me another three or four days to become fully acclimatized to Norwegian time.
As good as it got, in 1954. This is a Heathkit OL-1 oscilloscope. Photograph: Jeff Keyzer, 2009-05-09.
Starting dates are difficult. Take the companies started by Edward Bayard Heath (1888 – 1931), often described as an American aircraft engineer, who built assorted planes starting in 1909. He purchased the Chicago-based Bates Aeroplane Company in 1912, renaming it E.B. Heath Aerial Vehicle Co., which became the Heath Airplane Company. This company produced kit aircraft, most notably the Heath Parasol series powered with Henderson Motorcycle engines. Heath died in an aircraft accident.
In 1935, Howard Anthony (1912 – 1954) purchased the then-bankrupt Heath Company, and focused on selling accessories for small aircraft. After World War II, Anthony decided that entering the electronics industry was a good idea, and bought a large stock of surplus wartime electronic parts with the intention of building kits with them. Heathkit manufactured electronic kits starting in 1947. Heath’s first electronic kit was the O1 oscilloscope with 5-inch diameter cathode-ray tube (CRT) display. Anthony died in another aircraft accident.
After Anthony’s death, the company was sold to Daystrom Company, a management holding company that also owned several other electronics companies. Daystrom was absorbed by oilfield service company Schlumberger Limited in 1962, and the Daystrom/Schlumberger days were to be among Heathkit’s most successful. Products included electronic test equipment, high fidelity home audio equipment, television receivers, amateur radio equipment, robots, electronic ignition conversion modules for early model cars with point style ignitions, and hobbyist computers.
The success of Heathkit was dependent on the working and middle classes realizing that kits gave them the ability to acquire equipment once reserved for the upper class. Another part of this solution was the rise of TV and radio repair shops. This meant that equipment could be repaired. In addition, and perhaps most importantly, it meant young electronics enthusiasts had the means to explore their interests. Heath-equipped test benches could be set up wherever space permitted: basements, attics and garages. These became the proving grounds for a new generation of technicians. Amateur radio operators will also note that with its introduction of amateur radio products, Heath brought tens of thousands of new operators into that hobby.
Kits were produced in small batches mostly by hand, using simple roller conveyor lines, that were put up and taken down as needed. Some kits were sold completely assembled and tested in the factory. These models were differentiated with a W = factory wired, suffix after the model number.
For much of Heathkit’s history, there were competitors. In electronic kits: Allied Radio, an electronic parts supply house = KnightKits; Dynaco made audio product kits = Dynakits; Eico; Fisher; David Hafler Company; Lafayette Radio; Radio Shack = Archerkit; H. H. Scott, Inc. and Southwest Technical Products.
Heathkit’s approach to electronics required no knowledge of electronics to assemble a Heathkit. The assembly process provided basic electronics literacy, such as the ability to identify tube pin numbers or to read a resistor color code. Assemblers who wanted to be able to troubleshoot/repair the product, could use assembly manuals that were clearly written, profusely illustrated and usually included a detailed Theory of Operation chapter, which explained the functioning of the kit’s circuitry, section by section.
In 1979, Zenith bought Heath, but Zenith was interested only in Heath’s computer products and an opportunity to siphon off huge quantities of cash and other resources to pursue its own agenda. This internal destruction resulted in layoffs and a plunge in company morale. Heath’s original customer base was aging, and younger people had neither the time or inclination to assemble kits. The age of instant gratification had arrived.
Heath stopped manufacturing kits in 1992, but continued to make products for education, and motion-sensor lighting controls. The lighting control business was sold around 2000. The company announced in 2011 that they were reentering the kit business after a 20-year hiatus. However, that did not seem to happen. It filed for bankruptcy and closed in 2012.
The Heath kits I am familiar with always identified their origin as Benton Harbor, a city in Berrien county, Michigan state. According to the 2020 census, its population was north of 9 100 people. It is the smaller, by population, of the two principal cities in the Niles–Benton Harbor Metropolitan Statistical Area, an area with 156,813 people. Benton Harbor and the city of St. Joseph are separated by the St. Joseph River.
Currently, there appears to be an online store operating under the name of Heathkit. However, the About section of their website is vague, at best.
For many years, it has no longer been cost-effective to assemble kits. The price difference between kit and finished product, is small, especially when takes into consideration the possibility of making an mistake that damages a component or sub-assembly. Repairing that damage will be difficult and expensive because electronic = radio and television, repair shops are no longer ubiquitous, or cheap. This situation applies both before and after the imposition of large tariffs on products.
From about 2010, there has been an emphasis on microprocessor based kits. These include products from: Arduino (outdated), Raspberry Pi (too expensive), ESP8266 (outdated) and ESP32.
Note: in the above text a population was adjusted from 9 103 people in order to add the phrase north of. Someone I know had recently commented that she disliked this expression north of to refer to something greater than or more generally above, while south of referred to something less than or below. Here, the term is used simply to give attention to the problem. She felt this was a misuse of language, by adding an unnecessary obstacle to understanding. I thought I would test out this assumption. If, when you initially read the phrase, you reacted negatively or positively to its use, please contact me by email or some other way. Should I receive any replies, I will tally up the pros and cons and put them in a comment, after a week. If no one can be bothered to reply, there will be no comment.
Jean Courtney, portrayed by Sue Lloyd (1939 – 2011) with her colleague, Harry Palmer, portrayed by Michael Caine (1933 – ).
On 2025-11-11, it is five years since James Bond celebrated his 100th birthday. I will use the opportunity to mention some facts, mostly Canadian. Herschel Saltzman (1915 – 1994), known as Harry, is best known as a co-producer of the first nine Bond films, from Dr No (1962) to The Man with the Golden Gun (1974). Saltzman was born in Sherbrooke, Quebec, but raised in Saint John, New Brunswick for the first seven years of his life. Shortly after World War II began, he enlisted with the Royal Canadian Air Force in Vancouver. He received a medical discharge in Trenton, Ontario in 1943, and joined the U.S. Psychological Warfare Bureau, because he wanted to get back to Europe. In 1945, Saltzman helped Lin Yutang (1895 – 1976) establish UNESCO’s film division. Later, in Paris, Saltzman became associated with Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette ( 1873 – 1954), known mononymously as Colette, a French author, mime, actress and journalist. Colette is best known in the English-speaking world for her 1944 novella Gigi. Saltzman working as a talent scout for European productions on stage, television and in film, but gradually became more successful producing stage plays.
In 1958, Saltzman had set up the production company Lowndes Productions, but he did not use it for film production until 1965, and used it for eight productions thereafter, among them his three Harry Palmer films with Michael Caine: The Ipcress File (1965), Funeral in Berlin (1966) and Billion Dollar Brain (1967). The company’s last production came out in 1988, and was dissolved in 1992.
Harry Palmer, the Len Deighton (1929 – ) character, celebrated his 100th birthday sometime in 2022 or 2023, no specific date is given. I contemplated publishing this weblog post on Deighton’s 100th birthday, but planning years into the future is not always wise when one is an old man. Thus, I chose five years after my previous discussion of Harry Palmer, which was on 2020-11-11.
I have now rewatched the Harry Palmer films, but not in chronological order. I have seen them before, but not for many years. Thus, much of the content surprises me, especially the introductions. It is almost as if, I have never seen them. Then there are relatively insignificant scenes that have etched themselves into my memory.
The first one I rewatched was Billion-Dollar Brain (1967), the third Harry Palmer film, with Michael Caine (1933 – ) and directed by Ken Russell (1927 – 2011). Some of it was filmed at Honeywell’s computer facilities, possibly in Charlotte, North Carolina. It shows what a main frame computer looked like in the 1960s. Helsinki portrayed itself as the capital of Finland, while the city of Porvoo, 50 km east of Helsinki, took on the role of Riga, at the time in the Soviet Union. Pinewood studios about 30 km west of London, England, took on the task of portraying other locations, including a Texas ranch.
While working on this blog, Trish was working on a mystery jigsaw puzzle 2025-10-17 that turned out to be the riverbank of Porvoo. Photo by Elena Noeva. For more jigsaw puzzles see: Jigsaw Explorer.
For lack of a more encompassing term, here are some technologies that fascinated me in the films. I have deliberately not indicated which films these technologies are from, so that people can enjoy them all and be surprised when the techologies show up.
Village Swings
Kyläkeinu in Finnish with kylä = village and keinu = swing. In Estonian it is külakiik, divided the same way küla = village and kiik = swing. It can best be understood by examining the photo below, believed to be taken somewhere in the 1950s. The village swing is a large swing designed for multiple users, including adults, traditionally built on village communal land in Finland and Estonia.
A Village Swing
In 2025-05, Alasdair and I visited the Baltic island of Hiiumaa, in Estonia. We stayed in the village of Jausa. About 8 km to the south west, in the village of Harju, there is suposed to be such a swing. I could not find it. Some days later (2025-05-30) we were on the island of Saaremaa, were we did find one, but it was nothing like what I was expecting. See below, and the post about our trip to Estonia.
A village swing on the island of Saaremaa, Estonia anno 2025.
Snowmobiles
Bombardier B12 Snowmobile
The B12 has nothing to do with a vitamin, but the number of passengers the Bombardier snowmobile could carry. Before snowmobiles, people had to rely on sleds and cutters, such as the one shown below. Most could not carry twelve people.
A cutter pulled by a Norwegian Fjordhorse at Lake Elmo, Minnesota. Photo Pete Markham 2008-01-27.
In 1934-01, a blizzard prevented Joseph-Armand Bombardier (1907 – 1964) from reaching a hospital in time to save his two-year-old son, Yvon, who died from appendicitis complicated by peritonitis.
Bombardier was a mechanic who dreamed of building a vehicle that could float on snow. In 1935, in a repair shop in Valcourt, Quebec, he designed and produced the first snowmobile using a drive system he developed that revolutionized travel in snow and swampy conditions. It was equipped with front skis and rear tracks. Alternatively, the front skis could be removed and replaced with front wheels. In 1937, he patented and sold 12 of the 7-passenger B7 Auto-Neige = snow bus/ coach. They were used in rural Quebec to take children to school, carry freight, deliver mail and as ambulances. In 1941, Bombardier opened a factory in Valcourt. In 1951, the wooden body was replaced with a steel body.
Fluoroscope
A shoe-fitting fluoroscope Photo: Museum of Applied Arts & Sciences, Sydney, Australia
The shoe-fitting fluoroscope was an X-ray fluoroscope machine installed in shoe stores from the 1920s until about 1970, in the stores I frequented. The device was a metal construction covered in finished wood, approximately 1.2 m tall in the shape of short column, with a ledge with an opening through which the standing customer (adult or child) would put their feet and look through a viewing porthole at the top of the fluoroscope down at the X-ray view of the feet and shoes. Two other viewing portholes on either side enabled the parent and a sales assistant to observe the toes being wiggled to show how much room for the toes there was inside the shoe. The bones of the feet were clearly visible, as was the outline of the shoe, including the stitching around the edges.
The machines were sold in Canada and many other countries,
In the second half of the 20th century, growing awareness of radiation hazards and increasingly stringent regulations forced their gradual phasing out. They were widely used particularly when buying shoes for children, whose shoe size continually changes until adulthood.
Parking Meter
Multi-space parking meter, Main street, Ann Arbor Michigan. The wikipedia article about this stated that similar machines were in use in White Rock, British Columbia, which is why this illustration photo was chosen. Photo: Dwight Burdette, 2010-05-20.
It has gone many decades since I plugged a parking meter with nickles and dimes. These days there are not many places where we use paid parking. Most of the time when we do it involves a camera taking a photo of our front licence plate. After shopping, but before we enter the parking lot to drive our car away, we find a parking payment machine. We enter our plate identification, and pay the requested sum using a bank card. I am told that some, usually younger people, pay with apps on their phones.
Pay Telephone
A pay telephone alleged to be a Western Electric 191 G from the 1950s found on https://www.oldphoneshop.com. I find it interesting that users are asked to insert a dime or two nickels, both slang terms for two types of coins, not the monetary value = 10 cents.
Pay phones were shown in the original Harry Palmer films, but that was part of the technology makeup at the time. My worst experience with a pay phone in a film involved Blade Runner (1982), an adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968). The film is set in a future Los Angeles of 2019. It is so dystopian, that people use pay phones!
Band Shell
The King George Square bandshell in Saint John, New Brunswick, taken 2025-07-01 by Brock, when visiting.
King’s Square in Saint John lies in its uptown, established in 1785, a year following the formation of New Brunswick. The bandshell was a gift from the City Coronet Band in 1909. The publicity blurb described the square as a serene retreat and a living museum, in a bustling city. I don’t think any of the adjectives used apply. The bandshell was an urban retreat for pigeons. The question that plagued me, while there, was how the musicians entered the second floor of the bandshell?
Ubiquitous cigarette smoke
Despite having smoked into the 1970s, I was shocked at the amount of smoke that appeared in these movies. I tried to look at some data about smoking and found: Considering a conservative value, cigarette smoking worldwide, releases about 22 Gg of nicotine and about 135 Gg of particulate matter into the atmosphere each year. See: P. Jacob, M.L. Goniewicz, C.M. Havel, S.F. Schick, N.L. Benowitz Nicotelline: A proposed biomarker and environmental tracer for particulate matter derived from tobacco smoke Chem. Res. Toxicol., 26 (2013), pp. 1615-1631. The article referred to the quantities in millions of kilograms, which seems a strange way to express mass, when the metric system uses prefixes so: 1 000 g = 1 kg, 1 000 kg = 1 Mg, 1 000 Mg = 1 Gg. Thus, I converted the published values to Gg.
The country with the fewest smokers is Nigeria, with 2.8% of the population = 5.2% of males, and 0.4% of females. In terms of other countries, including those with people who receive weblog notifications, the values in ascending order are: Canada = 10.7%; New Zealand = 10.9%; Australia = 12.0%; Norway = 12.2%; China = 22.9% and USA = 23.6%. The country with the most smokers is Nauru with 46.7% of the population = 47.8% of males and 45.6% of females. I am uncertain if these values include the use of snuff = snus (Scandinavian). From my perspective, this is a major health issue.
A Newsweek advertisement encouraging smoking from 1962.
Tias Eckoff (1926 – 2016), with his Maya flatware in 1991, thirty years after he designed them. Photo: unknown.
I read Edward Morgan Forster’s (1879-1970) Howards End (1910) during the 1966-7 school year. The phrase, Only Connect, is associated with Margaret Schlegel, the novel’s protagonist. For Margaret, the most important quality in a person is an ability to connect their Inner life with their Outer life. Yes, in the novel inner and outer are capitalized. Other characters, notably Leonard Bast and Henry Wilcox, initially fail to connect, but for different reasons. However, they end up making a connection out of necessity at the end of the novel. This connecting destroys them both. Part of the process of living is to learn how to make these important connections. Throughout my life, I have ended up thinking about this novel on numerous occasions.
For the rest of this post, I want to concentrate on one design, one designer and one location. They are: Maya flatware, Tias Eckhoff (1926 – 2016) and Vestre Slidre. In addition I will add some other people including one Norwegian novelist, Knut Hauge (1911 – 1999 )and his novel, Nymåne over Filefjell (1955) = New Moon over File Mountain, except both File and Fjell refer to the same word, so it should be: New Moon over Mountain Mountain.
Let me begin with a feeling of astonishment. I was absolutely certain that I had written about these topics previously. After all, they are all about as close to my Norwegian soul as anyone can get. Unfortunately, no amount of searching, even using misspelled words, resulted in a reference to any post. My contention is that household (Outer) objects should embody a connection with an (Inner) soul. Designed objects, that a person chooses, are not just random things, but items carefully selected for a reason.
The next step in this story is in 1973 when I discovered a newly opened housewares shop in Vancouver’s Gastown, Karelia, named after an area in Northern Europe of historical significance for Russia, Finland and Sweden. It is currently divided between northwestern Russia and Finland.
While Janis Kravis (1935 – 2020) was studying architecture in Toronto, he became aware of Scandinavian architecture and, especially, the Finnish architect Alvar Aalto (1898–1976), who had a humanist approach to architecture, and a scope that encompassed everything from city planning to housewares. In 1959, Kravis found that Finnish products were largely unavailable in Canada. He approached about twenty companies and integrated their products into his Toronto studio/ store that opened in 1960. A Vancouver branch opened in 1973. The company closed down in the 1980s.
One product that I bought at Karelia, and at other places including a shop in New Westminster, was Maya flatware. It was purchased one place setting at a time. I appreciated it for several reasons. It fit my large hands comfortably. It was made of stainless steel, worked at its assigned tasks effectively, and looked attractive. Maya had been designed by the Norwegian industrial designer Tias Eckhoff. It was manufactured in Bergen, Norway. After we moved to Norway, we increased the number of place setting from about six to twelve in the 1980s. Thus, about half of the flatwear is about fifty years old, the rest forty years old. My estimate is that it will last somewhere between one and two centuries. Yes, I will be very disappoined if my children sell or discard it.
Tias Eckhoff was born in Vestre Slidre, which is about 9 hours driving/ 900 km south west of Cliff Cottage. It is on the E16 highway that connects western and eastern Norway. The village is on a main west–east highway that runs through Northern Ireland, Scotland, Norway and Sweden. I have driven the Norwegian section of it several times. I regularly dream about driving through tunnels, including one on the E16 highway, the Lærdal Tunnel, 24.51 km long, the longest road tunnel in the world. It was the final link completing the main highway that now enables car travel between Oslo and Bergen with no ferry connections and no difficult mountain crossings during winter. So when other mountain passes are closed, the E16 remains open. Gradually, Norwegian tunnel dreams are replacing my standard Canadian dream, where I am running an Esso fuel station on Highway 15, in Cloverdale, Surrey, British Columbia. Note: power station is now the correct term in Norway, since electricity is being offered along with gasoline and diesel. Prices for all three are now on display.
Filefjell is famous in Norway for its mountain road, the Filefjell King’s road, It is named for Sverre Sigurdsson (c. 1145/1151 – 1202) who was the king of Norway from 1184 to 1202. There has been an official road there since 1791.
It took me many years to read Nymåne over Filefjell. It is sometimes referred to as a thriller that takes place on an isolated farm, in the middle of winter. I started it in 1981, and gave up on it several times. I finally completed it about 2000. The main problem is that it is written in that other Norwegian written language, Nynorsk = New Norwegian, while I read and write Bokmål. I find it easier to read Bokmål, Danish or Swedish (in that order) than Nynorsk.
When I am enjoying a meal, most often using Maya flatware, I have many thoughts flowing through my brain. I am thinking of E. M. Forster, and the novel Howards End. I am also thinking of Knut Hauge, and the novel, Nymåne over Filefjell. I am thinking of tunnels that interconnect west and east, as well as interconnections between the outside and inside worlds. Sometimes, I am even thinking about Esso or Circle K power stations! Increasingly, I think about who will be inheriting the Maya flatware, and the novels.
