Blue Shoes

« One of the five bright blue towers of the 110 kV Salmisaari-Meilahti power line that was installed in 2003 which crosses the seurasaarenselkä that are collectively known as "Antti's Footsteps" in honor of their designer, Antti Nurmesniemi. Look at the tiny little people on the right for a sense of scale. [They were named from a HE contest with 1,496 entries and the winner receiving 5000 kWh of electricity for a year. The finalists were: Sinijätit (blue giants), Johtokurki (guiding cranes), Hattiwatit (Moomin characters), Meritoverit (sea friends), Seireenit (sirens), Stadin Eiffelit (Eiffels of the city), Sinilinja (blue line), Sinimastot (blue masts), Virtaviivat (currents?) and Antin askeleet (Antti's footsteps).] Hattiwatit should have won as it sounds cooler, it has the 'watti' wordplay, the characters look a lot like them and epoynymy is terribly boring. It's no wonder nobody remembers the name. »

Helsinki Energy seems to go out of it's way to make power plants look good as though people might notice, and perhaps blame them, that the Baltic is still so polluted that it's not recommended to eat Baltic fish more than once a week or the layer of smoggy gritty haze over the city today if they didn't sex them up a bit. As though they might be saying, "Yes, this is a coal fired power plant but, hey, aren't these lovely blue power lines beautiful?" Sure, they say the plants are ultra clean but the people they're saying that to probably don't live next to the strip mine somewhere with cheap labour and no pretty blue pylons. Energy production is with rare exception a dirty, ugly business that we'd all like to pretend that we don't participate in and depend on utterly each and every day. I look at those blue giants daily and I'm reminded of the lengths we will go in our own self-deceptions and how we are so willing to be fooled. We are energy junkies.