Yesterday I was giddy with excitement thinking about the start of the State of the Beaver Conference, I got snippets of news from friends Janet Thew, Molly Folly and Judy Atkinson about how the day was going. I heard that around 35 federal employees who were signed up to be there cancelled because of the government shutdown had already devoured their vacation days. I heard that Ben Goldfarb and Sarah Koenisberg’s talk on the most effective ways to persuade others about beavers mentioned Martinez in glowing terms and that was nice. I heard that Derek Gow received his Worth A Dam t-shirt and he gave me back a carved beaver he made that I will surely treasure. I was nice to be mentioned and remembered, even if I couldn’t be there in person.
But now it’s been a whole day that they get to talk about beavers and I can’t listen, so I’m done living vicariously and plan to just bitter, Yes,there is inspiration I am missing out on and yes, there are experts there that I desperately need to learn from, but inspiration is overrated and experts don’t know everything.
Let’s tell secrets and be bitter together.
For example. let me tell you a well-kept secret about one of the smartest countries in the entire frickin’ world – the country that passes out nobel prizes for pete’s sake – and show how truly stupid they really are.
Are you sitting down?
This is the coat of arms of the municipality of Härnösand, Sweden. Painted by Vladimir A. Sagerlund when he was the heraldic artist at the National Archives of Sweden (Riksarkivet). It Harnosand is just across the Baltic sea from Finland and close enough to Duncan Haley in Norway to know better. When I first saw it I thought it must be an ancient relic from back before we knew better than to say beavers eat fish. (Pike?) But alas, no. It is the current image by the modern artist recapturing an image that has been represented since at least the 1500’s.
Wiki says :The arms were officially granted in 1931. The arms were first granted in 1586 by King Johan III. The arms probably indicated the importance of fur trading and fishing for the new town.
Heidi says: the arms probably indicate that everyone who has ever lived in this town in this town is an idiot and should never, never be taken seriously. Honestly, was the flying pig heraldry already taken?
Experts don’t know everything.
