User:Saukkomies

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Me, waiting for pizza at our favorite local restaurant

Greetings

Saukkomies is my "handle", but not my real name. It is Finnish for "Otter Man". I chose it because I have a life-long fascination with river otters. I also speak the Finnish language more or less fluently. I am 49 years old, of Northern European descent, and have a disdain for hot muggy weather.

I live in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, on a prominence that juts into Lake Superior called the Keweenaw Peninsula. I am happily married and have a wonderful little son. I am a devoted father and husband, and spend almost all of my spare time with my family.

I have been a professional Librarian for over 15 years. Before then I worked for a number of years as a para-professional librarian, too. During this time I worked in the following positions at various academic and public libraries:

• a Reference Librarian.
• a Serials Librarian.
• a Systems Librarian.
• a Director of a small public library.
• an Inter-Library Loan Librarian.
• a Library Intern for two positions: in a systems office, and at a General Reference Desk, both in a university library.
• a full-time clerk at a Circulation Desk.
• a part-time book shelver.

I have also had experience working (as opposed to just doing something for free) in the following jobs:

• a service station attendant and small-scale automobile mechanic.
• a florist.
• a landscaper.
• an actual ditch digger, laying underground irrigation pipelines on farms.
• an English composition tutor.
• a teacher for high school age students.
• a Unitarian Sunday School teacher for teens.
• a dishwasher in a restaurant (my first job).
• a wildcrafter in Alaska when I was a youth.
• a number of jobs while working for the Forest Service in the Rocky Mountains, including:
  -a firefighter (I was on the Mink Fire in Yellowstone in 1988 when it burned up).
  - fencer where I worked on a crew that built barbed wire fences through the forests and mountains to separate public cattle grazing allotments from one another.
  - an environmental cleeanup worker for areas impacted by livestock
  - a campground and outhouse cleaner.
  - a trail maintenance worker.
  - a worker on a Forest Service tugboat for a recreational lake that managed the docks and buoys.
• a parking ticket writer.
• a greenhouse worker.
• a factory worker on an assembly line that manufactured 22-caliber pistols (not a job I'm proud of).
• a worker in a cheese factory, where I worked with the large vats where the fermented cheese curds would be separated from the whey, melted and poured into plastic moulds, and then placed in a cold brine bath where they'd cure.
• a computer technician for a mainframe computer in an environmentally-controlled operations room.
• a baker.
• and a groundskeeper.

My varied work experience has given me lots of innate understanding of many different subjects.

In addition to the work I've done for pay, I also have a working knowledge of many skills:

• leather crafting
• oil painting
• ceramics
• guitar playing - I use a bright red semi-hollow Guild Starfire electric guitar played through a Fender DuoJet tube amp, as well as an old beat-up solid spruce-top Harmony steel string acoustic folk guitar that I bought when I first went to college in 1977, and which still plays exceptionally well for a cheap guitar.
• hand drum playing. I own a tin hammered Turkish Doumbek, a large Brazilian Timbau made by Remo (this is my favorite - it has a fantastic "bottom" voice that may be heard a mile away - a true "mother drum"), a Shoshone Hand Stick Game hoop drum with a painting of a falcon head on its face, and some assorted percussion instruments. I really love cymbals and gongs, but do not own one. Maybe some day I can own a genuine Chinese Grand Chau Gong that would be powerful enough to break all the windows in my neighborhood.
• woodworking
• carpentry
• masonry
• cement laying
• cabinetmaking
• knot tying
• horse riding and working
• raising Maine Coon cats and pet fish
• rudimentary Karate
• lifesaving
• canoeing
• rudimentary sailing
• kayaking
• river rafting
• working with chainsaws
• target shooting with rifles
• archery (longbow, not modern stuff)
• wildcrafting and field plant identification
• brain tanning deer hides
• playing many different kinds of wind instruments. I have a flute collection that includes an Irish penny whistle, a cheap plastic recorder (I want to upgrade someday to a set of nice wooden ones), a Cherokee Indian cedar courting flute (which I bought from its maker out of the back of a pickup truck at a Pow-Wow in Idaho), a bamboo Japanese Shakuhachi that is very long and low pitched, a kazoo (although I'm not sure whether a kazoo is technically a woodwind or not), and a Karelian birchbark overtone flute called a Pitkähuilu that has no finger holes, and is played by varying the amount of breath blown into the flute.
• fishing
• cooking
• baking
• outdoor grilling
• fine wine
• Outdoor survival techniques
• first aid
• Nordic skiing and Alpine skiing
• snowshoeing
• snowmobiling
• camping
• weather prediction/meteorology
• geology
• mineralogy
• cinematography
• motion picture history
• field dressing of animal carcasses
• other various and sundry things.

Of all the skills I have, the one I value the most is knowing how to have a healthy relationship with my wife and son.

I grew up mostly in Alaska, but also have lived in Florida, Texas, Colorado, Chicago, Wyoming, Idaho, Utah, Nevada, Hawaii, and Finland. I currently live in Michigan (as I stated above). I have traveled to almost all of the 50 states - excluding the New England states. I've also traveled through parts of Canada: Ontario, Alberta, British Columbia, and Yukon Territory. My travels in Mexico have taken me to the tip of the Baja Peninsula (Cabo San Lucas, to be precise), Puerto Vallarta in Jalisco, and Tepic and San Blas in Nayarit. I've visited London, Surrey and Kent in England, and Leningrad, Soviet Union (back before it became Saint Petersburg, Russia).

I have a Bachelors Degree in History, a Master's Degree in Library and Information Science, and a Teacher's Certificate for Secondary Education with emphasis on Social Science and Earth Science. I consider myself to be an amateur historian, but prefer to have food in the fridge, so I do other things to make money. I have many varied interests, as is reflected by my background, and I flatter myself to think that I am a Generalist, which is a dying breed.

My family background can be directly traced on my mother's side back to Israel Putnam (and the other Putnams from Salem, Massachusetts), and on my father's side to a colonial-era indentured servant who came to Virginia and later, after working off his debt, moved with his sons to help found the settlement of Nashville, Tennessee.

My goals in life are to be around long enough to see my son grow to be a man, to be the best husband and father I can be, to find ways to help the youth in my community to gain skills they'll need to take over the reins once the people of my generation get too old to hold them any longer, and to be as honest and reliable as I can be in all my dealings with my fellow humans.

My dream job would be to become an international health spa reviewer with a large travel expense account.