Resourceful Finns much admired

To The Eagle:

Spanning several years of reading The Eagle, I have been introduced to and have come to admire the Finns of Wahkiakum from afar. I do have one Finnish friend, a retired medical assistant from Astoria, living near her family in Blaine.

What do I conclude about these folks of Finnish ancestry? Well, they are perseverant, pragmatic problem-solvers, socially conscious, keen on preserving their heritage, and light-hearted towards music, dance, learning enjoyment and the arts. I might have guessed from the evolving computer center at Johnson Park, faithfully described by Trudy Fredrickson, The Eagle's Western Wahkiakum/Naselle columnist, the Finns are also PC freaks!

Routinely scrounging financial news, I happened upon the story "An Impossible Dream: Parsing GOP Hopefuls" (Wall Street Journal, 1/14/12) about the U.S. website votingaid.com created in Finland by two 20-something brothers. Tuomas and Johannes Koskenniemi designed the site to aid U.S. voters wanting to find out where the candidates stand on major issues. They launched 12/15/12 and the website now has "more than 10,000 users, many non-Americans." How the brothers resolved flip-flops in candidate positions is humorously detailed, as is the concept, represented by a dog-breed choice website called Puppy Engine, reportedly with two million hits.

I gather the Finnish way is not our Consumer Reports type of information, but rather sentiment matching--your feelings matched to your choices whether jobs, snow tires, dogs, etc. It's trade offs and your individual comfort zone. Ah, those resourceful Finns.

Vail St. Vrain

Seattle