Maine Owl

See the Maine Owl calendar for this date

Here is another entry in my calendar series. I haven't really been keeping up with writing a piece for 3/4ths of the entries. I guess it'll end up more like 1/4th. Oh well, it is a very busy semester.

Anyway, the item for today concerns events in Finland during the time of WWI. These had rather strong repercussions for my own forebears. From late January to May of 1918, Finland was beset by a bloody conflict born of worker dislocations after 19th century industrialization, the tumult of the Russian revolutionary period of 1917-18, and of course the general insanity of World War I. In addition to the above link (my favorite of the pieces I read today), also go HERE for more, and to the Wikipedia entry HERE.

My father grew up on the Iron Range of northeastern Minnesota. Already by 1918, my grandparents had experienced a devastating bankruptcy I believe related to the 1916 Mesabi iron miners strike. (More on this will be published in June on the 93rd anniversary of the strike.) This was a great blow to my father as a seven-year-old child. My grandfather went from being a very-well-off merchant to a struggling municipal employee. My dad as a result had a sort of scrappy approach to making a living that I seem to have inherited.

While he was alive, he never spoke much about the splits that occurred in the Finnish community and within our own family during these times. (My grandparents as merchants were quite conservative, as I understand it.) Except once.

In November 1990, just after Paul Wellstone had first been elected senator from Minnesota, I asked my dad to talk on tape about how the Finns might view Wellstone. He explained about the "Reds" and the "Whites"--the terms used for the belligerent sides in the 1918 civil war. This clip is only 45 seconds and he does not even mention the conflict at all, rather suggesting that the politics of those old days had been patched up so that the progeny of the Reds (losers in 1918), the Communist Party of Finland, were legitimate in politics after the mid forties. Mostly I like this because he uses the Finnish names for the "Reds" and the "Whites." Play the clip below: