Bogged Down in the Bog

The New York Times published an opinion piece this week screaming the virtues of those soggy, timeless, ecologically-critical places called bogs. Merritt R. Turetsky wrote that "Bogs are a living archive. Because of the bog’s specialized ecology — an oxygen-poor, acidic habitat created in part by the otherworldly mosses that grow there — the decomposition of dead plant material slows to a near halt. Year after year, layer after layer, plant debris accumulate, storing carbon and recording the changing world with it." On a recent visit to Tallin, Estonia, I went with friends on a guided walk through the bog on the Viru Bog Nature Trail. Or, should I say, we waddled and windmilled our way, trying to trudge across the squishy terrain.

Merritt R. Turetsky went on to write, "The first thing any bog teaches you is that the ground cannot be trusted. You step onto a patch of moss that looks solid, only to feel your boot sink into layers of partly decomposed plants, peat that has accumulated over millenniums. Somewhere below lies stable earth, but in a bog, safety is always elusive."

A Dramatic Claim to Fame

It takes a mouthful of qualifiers to establish this claim to fame. There's a theater from the 1700s that is...ready for it? ...the oldest theater in the world that regularly uses original 18th-century stage machinery. The theater is in Stockholm, on the grounds of Drottningholm Palace, on a beautiful little island that can be reached by ferry (or car, for the less romantic approach).

The venue stages productions that use the original 18th-century stage machinery, which was built in 1766. To change the scenery, stagehands use hand-operated wooden winches, ropes, and pulleys. For special effects, they turn to the original mechanical wind, thunder, and wave machines. Here's a video shown to visitors to reveal the behind-the-scenes workings.

Makes one wonder. Why? How did the theater's operators manage to preserve that outdated equipment? How did they resist the temptation to pitch it all out and modernize? The answer is that after its first century or so of productions, the theater people lost interest in it. The space ended up being used as a warehouse. It was forgotten that the building had been a theater in the past. But in the 1920s, it was rediscovered and preserved. Now it's a unique celebration of the past.

Being Bookish in the Baltics and Scandinavia

Drop-dead fabulous public libraries were highlights of my sightseeing in Latvia and Finland.

Latvia’s capital, Riga, touts its new National Library one of the most significant cultural buildings in the country. They’re right. Of course, it is packed full of books, audio and visuals, but it’s also a major venue for exhibitions and festivals. My favorite, though, was Helsinki, Finland’s cool OODI. It is so much more than a library. It is a destination. Once you get past oohing and ah-ing over OODI as architectural eye-candy, you encounter the magnificent spaces for working, meeting, 3-D printing, sewing, collaborating, making music, having coffee, and oh yes, reading. It’s a fantastic cultural center, wrapped up in the gorgeous aesthetic of Scandinavian architecture.