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Mäenpää, vice-chairman, A. A. Parviainen, secretary, Alice Anderson, treasurer, and Nicholas Aho, financial secretary. Two-year appointments to the committee were given to E. A. Beckman, Charles Latvala, Frank Linjanen, Erland Rustari, and Amanda Wuopio, and for one year, Wäinö Kortesmäki, Henry Pakkari, Carl Parta, John Räihälä and Verner Saranen. Following this meeting, Pulli made extensive trips throughout the state to consult with local chapters, to collect material, to conduct interviews.
Typical of Pulli's trips is, perhaps, the vignette he has given of one of his midwinter days : "It is possible to go on only a step or two at a time, carefully, along this narrow path shoveled through snowdrifts. Not a person is in sight, and no smoke is rising from the chimney of the solitary house which lies ahead. Apparently there is no one at home. Then a door of one of the outbuildings opens, and a woman appears in the doorway - dressed in a short overcoat, a shawl over her head, her skirt pinned up, revealing high boots. She wipes her face with one hand; in the other is a long knife, dripping with blood.
"I greet her and suggest that the sauna in the background indicates Finns living here, and she concurs, but in accents that hint she is not from Finland's northern provinces. Now another woman appears at the door, much older, dressed like the first. These women turn out to be the farmer's wife and her daughterin-law, and in the dark shed they are skinning sheep just slaughtered. The older woman starts to walk toward the house, and walking past me she is almost at the door when she asks if a cup of coffee would be welcome.
"Thus a conversation has been started, and there is an opportunity to explain my business, and as soon as the hot coffee is on the table the old woman grows more talkative; she begins to tell her story, speaking haltingly, falling silent, continuing.
"It is just the ordinary tale of the Minnesota wilderness, but to prepare for this history of Minnesota, tales like this have been collected from all corners of the state - from weathered, grey wilderness homes, from villages, towns, the cities."
Approximately at the time when all these materials had been sorted out, Hans R. Wasastjerna, a Finnish student, arrived at the University of Minnesota on a Fulbright scholarship. The MFAHS acquainted him will all the problems facing them in the preparation of their history, and for a year Wasastjerna served as a technical adviser to the board and the editorial committee, and, in addition to his own graduate studies, he did research in St. Paul and Minneapolis libraries for the history. Then, when
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