Speaking of architectoral gems threatened by demolition, the house we are currently residing in is one of the quite few remaining old houses on our street.



It's a truly amazing building, with many interesting little details, such as these iron ornaments over the entrance to the inner yard.



We live on the top floor, in the nicest part of the house.



Unfortunately, we can't access the attic, to which the small round window belongs, except by removing the roof of our shower cabin and climbing up to the attic from there (it's actually open - in the shower cabin's place, there probably used to be a ladder).

If the owner would have the money and the interest, this house could be made into one of the coolest and flashiest apartment buildings in Lund. Luckily he/she doesn't, so we can live here now, and enjoy the view to some of the town's greatest landmarks.



(All pictures were made by the great photographer Mihai Tomescu.)

Thanks to "In My Skin", the comic book biography of Eminem, (which completely made me reassess my conception of its subject), a slight fascination I've been nurturing at times for the city Detroit has reawakened in me.

It only got worse since I came across the website "Detroit Pix" by Greg Kacir.

While 'Stalinist' skyscrapers in Moscow are being kept in pretty good shape, and new buildings in much the same style are being erected, many of the buildings that once inspired them are rotting away and being demolished in Detroit.

Among them are the abandoned buildings of Hotel Eddystone and Michigan Central Station:



Also fascinating is the Motown building, where the record company used to reside until they moved to Los Angeles in 1972.



But the most interesting part of the website so far might be the pages dedicated to the "E-Zone" (And if you're wondering what the hell this "E-Zone" is, try the official website).

Even more Decaying Detroit can be found at David Kohrman's website "Forgotten Detroit".

*Edit August 1st:*
Yet more Decaying Detroit is depicted in the film 8 Mile, featuring Eminem as a young working-class aspiring hiphopper (partly based on his own life, I guess). One of the most bizarre places is the Michigan Theater, which has been remade into a parking house (!).

The main reason for Detroit's decay might be that its population, not counting the suburbs north of 8 Mile road, has diminished from about 2 million in the 60's to less than 1 million today (85% of which, according to DetroitYES, are Afroamerican).

Ever since I spotted them on the map, I've always been wondering about the islands Suvorov and Vostok in the Pacific Ocean - the former belonging to the Cook Islands, the latter one of the Line Islands and claimed by Kiribati. Apparently they were both 'discovered' by Russians in the 19th century, who named them after their respective ships.

While Vostok doesn't seem to be very hospitable, being a single island covered with extremely dense forest, Suvorov is actually a small atoll enclosing a lagoon, and was by Robert Louis Stevenson's wife described as "the most romantic island in the world".

Apparently she was not the only person to maintain this view. A man by the name of Tom Neale lived in solitude on Suvarov Island between October 1952 and June 1954. He later returned in April 1960 and stayed until December 1963.

Extracts from the book where he recorded his experiences can be read on Jane Resture's Oceania website. It's a quite pleasant book, save for the negative feelings he nurtures against the island's wild pigs, who apparently are his main rivals in the fight for survival ...

This is from the run-down allotment gardens by the railway tracks near Stadsparken here in Lund.

Sergei's profile. There's always something diabolical about him ...

This is from around Easter.




I sewed a dress for me and a collar for Mitsu from the same fabric. But I think it suits Mitsu better than me ...


Mitsu doesn't want to step on the wet mud. She doesn't like getting her toes wet at home. On walkies, though, she doesn't care the least.

Sometimes (after an exam, or when I just feel lethargic in general) there just isn't anything better to do than to look for pictures of nice animals in the Google image search.

It's kind of like porn, but with furry animals. My most often searched topics:

1. Akitas (or Great Japanese Dogs, as the variation I like the most is called nowadays)


From http://www.firemanrocketry.com/shugo.htm

2. Furry pigs, such as mangalitzas or kune kune pigs


A mangalitza from http://www.zeneggen.ch/fauna/fauna.htm

3. Big, muscular horses, like belgian horses, north swedish horses or friesians


This big boy was recently for sale at http://www.hastnet.se

Last Sunday, me and Mihai went biking into the countryside near Gunnesbo. Mihai wanted to find a nice, big rape field to photograph.

After biking around for a while trying to find one, we came to a pond in the fields near Gunnesbo, where many birds were hanging around. There was a swan patrolling the waters, as well. On the other side of the pond, the female swan apparently was sitting in her nest, and the male was protecting her. Mihai took some paparazzi pictures of the swan, who was very cross that someone had dared come near his pond …

When we continued on the path from the pond, we came across a young rook, who seemed unable to fly. When we approached it, it hopped away into a sheep fence, and got its claw tangled into the wire of the fence. Mihai picked up the bird and got it loose again, and we tried to see if there was anything wrong with it.

The rook was breathing heavily (from the stress), and sounded as if it had a snotty nose. We suspected that it might have fallen out of its nest. No rook parents were attacking us, so we also suspected that they had abandoned this bird-child.

Well, since we didn’t want it to die or anything, we decided to take it home and see if we could help it. To make it easier to bike with a bird, Mihai wrapped the rook into his shirt and carefully put the bundle in his open backpack.

At home, we unpacked the little rook, whom we had now named Rudolfo.

Rudolfo, who was breathing normally again, with no snotty sound, took a dump in Mihai’s shirt, and then started to explore his surroundings a bit. We put a bowl of water in front of him, but he didn’t want to drink. Instead, he walked a bit uneasily over the floor (too slippery for bird’s feet), until he had settled down under my desk. He stayed there, while I went searching for information on the internet about what to do with findling rooks.

I didn't find much about rooks, but after changing 'rook' into 'crow', I came across Kevin McGowan’s baby crow FAQ at Cornell University.

And it turned out that we were real rookies when it came to young rooks (and other birds) … According to McGowan,

“When a young crow leaves the nest it will be somewhere around 80 to 100% adult body weight, have legs that will never grow any further, and wings that are nearly full size. This is a large bird, to be sure, up to 300 to 450 g in weight. But they still cannot fly! I have had a number of fledgling crows picked up off the ground because the people thought they were injured.”

And on the ASCAR home page, I also found out that all birds are lactose intolerant, so our plans to feed Rudolfo cheese were not really a good idea. ("Oh, so *that’s* why all those sparrows died in my care", Mihai mused as I shared this fact with him.)

So, we decided to bring young Rudolfo back to where we found him. When we were going to pick him up, we realised that he was sleeping under my desk. After Mihai had gently woken him up by stroking his beak and talking to him, Rudolfo seemed very trusting towards us. He climbed on Mihai’s hand, and just stood there calmly. We wanted to give him something to eat, but he didn’t quite like our vegetarian cooking (corvidae are omnivorous, but prefer meat products). After tasting a piece of pasta, he wiped his beak on Mihai’s arm and fleece jacket, as if he wanted to get rid of the taste. I also tried an adzuki bean, but he spit it out into Mihai’s arm hair.

Well, after marvelling a bit about his trust towards us, and starting to be afraid that he might have imprinted on us, and would be far too trusting to all humans from now on, we packed him into the backpack again, and took the bikes back to Gunnesbo.

We let him go on the same spot where we had found him. We hope that he has found his way and met his parents again, and will grow up to be a fine rook with a just as nicely bald face as his older relatives.

I doubt that we could have given him the care and attention he truly needed, anyway.


(Rudolfo just took a dump on my finger.)

My other blog "News from the Underground" has, miraculously, been updated. It's mostly just an English-language summary of an article by Johannes Wahlström about the Ukrainian Orange Revolution, but it might be interesting.

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Missa inte den spännande andra delen av Dokument inifrån: Könskriget på söndag klockan 20.00 i SVT2. Genom suggestiva montage, rumphuggna intervjusnuttar och guilt by association, samt genom att rent av lägga ord i munnen på personerna som intervjuas, konstruerar Evin Rubar en bild av alla svenska kvinnojourarbetare (och helst alla feminister rent allmänt) som paranoida galningar som vill döda alla män. Det är så oprofessionell journalistik att det är roligt.