On Self-Checkouts

In the end of April, I was contacted by an old acquaintance who usually shops at Szolnok supermarket. According to his description of the situation, all the cashiers had been laid off and you can now pay only at self-checkouts. Since Rimi also saves on having a consultant or helper present, many older people feel extremely uncomfortable, not to say humiliated.

Making Home in Old Age

Jakob D’herde explores homemaking in one’s later life by drawing upon the findings of his socio-spatial doctoral research project ‘Living (at) Home: On Older People’s Making of Home and Dignity’. He argues that homemaking is a continuous negotiation process between a dwelling and a person’s image of home. When this negotiation is successful, the home and dwelling can be conflated into what he calls the househome.

A Rolling Stone Gathers No Moss

How should we understand age? Or old age? In some cases, it is perceived as a value—something good, like in wines that improve over time. Old cities and old works of architecture likewise comprise a number of values that new-made ones can lack, and even in people, it is generally taken to be a positive thing that they become wiser, more mature, and more experienced with age.

1-2025 (119): Baltic Extra

Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, collectively known as the Baltics, are three small countries that most of the world finds pretty much indistinguishable. As a geopolitical term, ‘the Baltics’ took root only in the 20th century. The more distant past and cultural history of the three countries differ on several levels.
Perhaps it is namely in defiance against externally imposed homogenising simplifications that we tend to turn to more distant places for inspiration and view local trends and tendencies as something confined only to national borders. However, anxious times encourage unity, urging us to discover and interpret our identities ourselves instead of letting others define us. In order to be carried and consolidated not only by fear, but also joy, pleasure, and curiosity we invite to discover commonalities and peculiarities of the Baltic countries!
Wide breadth, blurred boundaries, ambiguous endings and beginnings—the charm of the Baltic condition is not easy to grasp. But as Latvians say, per Reinis Salins: ‘Katram savs stūrītis’ (‘Everyone has their own corner’).

Is Don Quijote at It Again?

This piece by geologist Rein Einasto and engineer Hubert Matve was first published in newspaper Sirp ja Vasar on the 13th of July, 1987. Forty years later, Rein Einasto maintains that sustainable and multifaceted use of local stone is a necessity without an alternative, and a wide open road of possibilities.