Digital Preservation Update April 2018

Dear Friends and Supporters of RAIVAAJA:

The digital preservation project continues to move forward and now several exciting and important portions are completed and others planned:

• February ’18 Another three years of RAIVAAJA newspapers are  digitized including the 50th Anniversary editions. We will preserve the remainder of the 1950’s this month.  Your donations and total for the 2017-2018 appeal are noted on a separate page.  http://www.raivaaja.org/Blog/?page_id=480  Each dollar given to the Foundation preserves about three newspaper pages!  Paljon kiitoksia!
  
• October ’17- The Foundation digitized another three years (1957-1959) of RAIVAAJA newspapers bringing the total to over 4500 RAIVAAJA newspapers  which is an additional 3600 pages of RAIVAAJA During the 50’s, RAIVAAJA was published on 5 days each week.
• August- The Foundation digitized another decade (1960-1970) of RAIVAAJA newspapers bringing the total to over 3600 RAIVAAJA newspapers  which is an additional 8905 pages of RAIVAAJA . We find that a few pages are missing or damaged and are searching for replacements.
• MAY- All newspapers from Dec 1970 to the last issue in April 2009 have been preserved on microfilm, in computer search-able portable document format (pdf), and, in digital jpeg. format. There are 22080 individual pages now on multiple RAIVAAJA hard drives and we will archive all 1.4 Terabyte of the files to a cloud server in addition to maintaining copies locally .  Our intent is to make these files available to all. For the time being, many complete newspapers are available for viewing through our website: http://www.raivaaja.org/DigitalPreservationPage.html
• All files will be available in the future for on line viewing when web hosting details are worked out. (Individual newspaper files are available though the Foundation for a small donation to cover our costs. Please note that a CD will hold up to 15 issues and a DVD around a year of complete newspapers.)
• Finlandia Foundation National awarded Raivaaja Foundation $3000 in April to begin the digital preservation process. The award covered about 75% of digital conversion of the 1970-2009 microfilms. We added $1000 of your donor gifts to completely digitize the 1970-2009 films.
• To keep the project going, we do need a continuing source of funds. Each donation, grant, and award gets us a fraction of the way to completing digital preservation of over 100 years of RAIVAAJA archives which will make the photos, the newspapers, and the books available to anyone with access to an Internet connection. Your support in any amount will help keep this project going and a donation form is attached for your use.  Each dollar to the Foundation preserves about three newspaper pages!

We are very pleased that over 100 donors gave $5750 to the Raivaaja Foundation in the 2016-2017 appeal for preservation of and access to this important Finnish American historical record. Your encouraging notes are gratifying. (Supporters are recognized on the donation pages at our website (blog):  http://www.raivaaja.org/Blog/?page_id=334

Paljon kiitoksia!

For the Board

Bob Hanninen, Treasurer 01/15/18

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RAIVAAJA

Since 1905

Donation Form

Thank you for your gift to Raivaaja Foundation,Inc,
the nonprofit publisher of the Finnish American RAIVAAJA

NAME ____________________________

ADDRESS________________________________________

AMOUNT ________________________________________

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Kiitos!

RAIVAAJA FOUNDATION^*

c/o Robert Hanninen, Treasurer

640 Townsend Road

Groton, MA 01450

Phone: 978-343-3822 e-mail: raivaaja@net1plus.com

RAIVAAJA FOUNDATION is a fully qualified 501(c)3 non profit incorporated in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. RAIVAAJA has no paid staff and depends entirely on your generosity to preserve over 110 years of Raivaaja photos, books, and newspapers. Fed. Tax ID 20-2651367

When Finns Speak, Everybody Listens- it’s just that nobody else understands!

By Bill Farmer (Knight-Ridder newspapers)

“Finnish is easy. All you do is tape-record English and then play it backwards.” (quote from somewhere in Berlitz Language School)
The language itself is like the Finns  themselves – it has nothing to do with Russia or

Sweden, despite their proximity.
>
Finnish, I think, was invented by an ancient king who commanded the people in his dominion to speak
like him upon the penalty of death. The monarch’s name I shall give as Toivo I, or Toivo the Stutterer. It was Toivo’s
lingual philosophy that ‘why use one letter when two or three would do.’
>
Take the word for cigarette lighter. It is savukkeensytytin, which is the reason why so many Finns carry matches.
>
When the Finns start a word they see how many foreigners they can weed out on the first syllable.
>
Take the Finnish word for “93”. The first three letters are “yhd”.That eliminates a lot of competition right there.
For the full Finnish word for “93” I would advise you fasten your seat belts and put on your crash helmet.
Here it goes – “yhdeksankymmentakolme”.
According to Berlitz, that is pronounced simply: “EWHdayksaenKEWMmayntaeKOALmay”. Finns have died of old age trying to count to 100.

like an “a” and an “e” slopped together. It also means that you are going to find a lot of dull pencils in Finland.
>
It is the only language I know of where phonetic spelling is more complicated than regular
spelling. for example, To say “pencil sharpener” in Finnish, you should start with a bottle of good
Finnish beer. Take a deep breath, roll back your eyes and say: “KEWnae” (run the “a” and “e” together
now, remember?) “nTAYR” (stop here and have a sip of beer) “roa” (then comes a very, very small “i” that fools a lot of people,
but, without it the word means “spinach” or something entirely different from “pencil sharpener”) “ttin”  (more beer,
please). Okay, all together now “KEWnaenTAYroaittin!”
>
>There here now, wasn’t that easy? Where’s the bottle opener?
>
During a recent visit of Finland I never saw a crossword puzzle. The papers weren’t large enough to cover both horizontal and vertical I guess.
The word for “no” is “ei” pronounced “aye”, which means yes in English, and the word  “hyva” as in “hyvaa paivaa” (means good day) means
hello and “hyvasti” (goodbye – a deravative of “Hyva”) (with two little dots side by side over both “a” ‘s or “ae-ae”)
depending on what direction you’re going.
>
Now the word for “yes” is simple. It is “kylla”. The trouble is, nobody uses it. They all say “joo”
or “yoa” or “yo”, which naturally, is not Finnish at all,but is Swedish. To say “yes, yes” they all say
joo – joo” = “yo-yo”.I can’t imagine what the finnish word for actual “yo-yo” is, but it must be dandy-dandy.
>
Finnish is related to Hungarian by a previous marriage.
That’s why the second language of Finland is, of course, Swedish.
>
Thank God, everyone speaks English, however, so don’t worry if you ever go there.
>
For an emergency, I tried to learn the Finnish expression for “Get me a doctor, quick”, which is “noutakaa nopeasti laakari”, with the dots
over the “a”s  in the word laakari (doctor) but by the time I memorized it I was well again.

2/23/17

The book RAIVAAJA KYMMENEN VUOTTA has been digitized by Raivaaja Foundation.
The book was originally printed by the Publishing Company in January 1915 to mark the 10th year since the beginning of the “crazy enterprise”.  A few pages of the digitized book are available on http://www.raivaaja.org and include photos, diagrams, and details (in Finnish) of the founding and first years of the newspaper which also established  the very successful Workers Credit Union in 1914 (http://www.wcu.com/home/about-us/history)

Morley Safer, a CBS television correspondent who brought the horrors of the Vietnam War into the living rooms of America in the 1960s and was a mainstay of the network’s news-magazine “60 Minutes” for almost five decades, died on Thursday at his home in Manhattan. He was 84.  http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/19/business/media/morley-safer-dies.html

While more renown for his other more serious reporting,  he introduced    “Tango Finlandia” to the world in 1993 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgcyf11Lgao) noting all those well known Finnish traits disappear on the dance floor.  His Tango piece has spawned academic research: http://www.academia.edu/8852306/Cultural_frames_Loci_of_intercultural_communication_asynchrony_in_a_CBS_60_Minute_news_segment