Dispatches from Vilnius

Nice to see a professor and a university standing up to DeSantis.  The Florida governor has gone out of his way to pitch a "colorblind society," eliminating courses from the AP curriculum that present race and gender identification.  At Florida Gulf Coast University, Ted Thornhill is being quite blunt about it, teaching a course called " White Racism ," in which he lays out the cold, hard facts as to how white Americans have created a system of racism that continues to this day.  He only has to point at his governor to prove it. His central argument is that many Whites believe they live in a post-racial society thanks to Civil Rights legislation and the election of Barack Obama as president.  Yet, there is still so much discrimination in society, much of it institutionalized, making it even more difficult for persons of color to get a fair shake.  Everyday we see examples of this, yet this notion of a "colorblind society" has permeated the cultural narrat...

The Oscar controversies trumped the New Hampshire primary this week.  People were more upset that Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie got snubbed for Oscars than they were Trump winning another primary.  It wasn't like Barbie got shut out.  Ryan Gosling and America Ferrera both received supporting actor nominations, but the snubs were slaps in the face for a movie that pulled in nearly $1.5 billion worldwide. It was pretty much a foregone conclusion Trump would win the Granite State.  He was polling more than 20 percent ahead of his nearest challenger.  Yet, Nikki scored almost 45% of the vote. Of course this didn't stop him from  celebrating his "yuge" victory , urging his former UN ambassador to accept defeat before he trounces her in her home state of South Carolina.  He even had SC Senator Tim Scott behind him chanting USA! USA! USA!  As if he had won a gold medal in the Olympics. Meanwhile,  Biden won  without his name even being on the...

I always thought the Civil War was a pretty easy subject to tackle, especially if you regard yourself as an American citizen.  Apparently, it is more difficult for those who live in the South.  It seems they still haven't gotten over losing the war.  But, Nimarata"Nikki" Haley is different.  Her parents are both immigrant Sikhs from India.  You would think she would have no Southern identification, yet she grew up in South Carolina and seems to have absorbed the "Lost Cause" hook, line and sinker.  She got a big F at a rally when asked, What was the cause of the Civil War?   I grew up in the South too but I learned pretty quickly that the root cause of the war was slavery.  You'd hear these constant arguments about states' rights but the right they were talking about was to continue to have slaves while the rest of the country moved toward a free market economy.  The industrial revolution was in full bloom when the Civil War broke out in 1861...

I never realized how bulky plasma televisions were until I tried to move one. They're even heavier than the old tube televisions.  I had to get my son to help me move it out of his grandfather's house so that the handyman could finish painting the living room.  No wonder plasma TVs didn't make the cut.  They were discontinued in 2014.  Hard to believe it was more than ten years ago when Daina and I bought this television for her father and mother. At the time, these massive sets were considered the best of the best with a much higher picture quality than LED televisions.  However, things change.  LED sets have improved tremendously and Plasmas have been relegated to appliance recycle centers.  Although I'm tempted to hang onto this one and put it in our basement.  It still works just fine.   It's funny how technology has this period of experimentation with different prototypes before one dominates the market and pushes all the other prot...

Oddly, it is much nicer when the temperature is -10 C or even less.  The snow is powdery and light and easy to shovel.  The air crisp and clean.  There usually isn't much wind.  It is actually quite pleasant outside as long as I have decent gloves to protect my hands.  They get cold quickly due to poor circulation.  The best gloves are a pair of old fur-lined mittens that don't leave my fingertips numb after working outside. Still I see a lot of men wear no gloves at all.  I don't know if they have skin like a walrus or if this is some badge of honor.  That was the case when Daina and I went to check out the new windows for the Signatories House.  Out of respect, I took my gloves off to shake their hands but just as quickly put them back on. Bit by bit the state museum is restoring the Signatories House, which was used back in 1918 to sign the first act of independence from the Russian Empire.  That anniversary is coming up in March....

I hate it when I can't shake something out of my head at night before falling to sleep.  Usually, it is an insipid Christmas song or movie this time of year, but last night it was the news that Russell Wilson had been benched for the remainder of the season so that Denver didn't risk triggering a clause that would guarantee Russ an additional $37 million if he was injured in the two remaining games.  Why do I even care? I quietly shouted at myself as I didn't want to wake Daina up. This forced marriage between Sean Payton and Russell Wilson wasn't going to work out.  It was just a pleasant surprise when Denver won five games in a row and was on the cusp of staging one of the most remarkable comebacks in NFL history.  All that came to a crashing halt Sunday night when the Broncos lost to the Patriots, leaving pundits to ponder what next?  It didn't matter that Russ almost pulled off a Christmas miracle.  His days at Denver were done.  Bring in Jarrett S...

As the year winds down I find the blog getting more hits than usual.  At least this time people are looking at posts.  Mostly old posts, like Colonel , when we actually had discussions and this was a pretty lively place.  The contributors went their separate ways.  Only Trippler is still around.  I suppose the posts get shared and others look at them but no comments.  It's like a curious form of voyeurism. Blogging isn't very cool anymore.  I've shared some of my posts on facebook and gotten some response but no additional followers.  I had written a few articles on LinkedIn, mostly to do with architecture like a high school my wife and I designed in Vilnius.  But response wasn't overwhelming so I stopped writing. An old high school buddy promotes himself on facebook and has managed to garner 3.4K followers.  His is a garden variety philosophy mixed with religious observations in the form of memes that you can pick up anywhere, but it s...

I had an interesting taxi ride home.  The driver was Lithuanian, which is pretty rare these days.  He was complaining about the Central Asians taking over Bolt, which is the service I use.  They don't speak English.  They don't speak Russian.  It is impossible to communicate with them, he said.  God knows how so many got in but Bolt doesn't seem to care what language its drivers speak as long as they can meet the heavy demand for rides this time of year. The driver became even more animated when I told him I was an American married to a Lithuanian wife.  How do you guys meet all these Lithuanian women?  There are only 3 million of us and more than 300 million of you.  I would think it virtually impossible.  Just lucky, I said.  He laughed as we putted along in heavy traffic.   He spoke between Lithuanian and English.  I could pick up most of what he said as long as he didn't speak too fast.  His biggest frustrati...

A24 bought the film rights to Musk's biopic and signed Darren Aronofsky to direct the film.  Given the type of movies A24 is known for , one can only hope Aronofsky will turn it into a horror movie.  At the very least, pull no punches like he did in The Wrestler . I've covered Musk way too much in my posts.  It was refreshing to see John Oliver take a turn at him this past weekend, but he did seem to pull a few punches.  Maybe HBO was worried Musk might go " nuclear " on them, so John was asked to do a "net positive" piece on the tech billionaire.  But, John did point out some glaring red flags like Musk now controlling 50% of the telecommunications satellites orbiting the earth.  If anyone saw Moonraker that is not a good thing.  What I'm more worried about is how this man has come to insinuate himself into our lives to the point he is probably the most talked about person in the multimedia universe next to Trump. According to John, much of the prob...

While Zelenskyy is in Washington to make a last ditch appeal to Congress for continued funding of the war effort in Ukraine, Netanyahu was on the phone with Putin admonishing him for the "anti-Israel positions" Moscow's envoys have taken in the UN.  The massive shelling of Gaza the past two months has distracted nearly everyone from the ongoing war in Ukraine, and breathed new life into Putin, who has been presenting himself as a " peacemaker " in Israel, much to the chagrin of Western allies.   With munitions rapidly depleting, Ukraine has failed to make anymore advances and is losing ground in key areas, resulting in what its top commander called a " stalemate ."  This is perfect for Russia, which just wants to hold onto the ground it gained in its initial offensive in the Spring of 2022.  Putin can bide his time, rebuild his military infrastructure and at some point in the future renew his assault on Kyiv. Throughout this ordeal, Israel offered no...

I've never seen Love Actually from beginning to end.  Over the years I've picked up bits and pieces of it on television.  It is cluttered with a whole bunch of disjointed scenes with a who's who of British actors that makes it hard to believe all these scenes come from the same movie.  Look at that cast !  There's even Bill Nighy doing a Christmas version of The Troggs' Love Is All Around .  Unfortunately, it is insufferable to watch for more than five minutes at a time, yet the studio is rolling out a  20th year anniversary edition  for theaters this holiday season. We get hung up on these "old movies" much the way It's a Wonderful Life with Jimmy Stewart  became venerated over time.  They all try to be heartwarming and clever, giving their saccharine-coated stories a little twist like a curled lemon peel in a Christmas martini to give the unnecessary syrup a bit of zing.  It works because people are less discerning this time of year...

I've been seeing a lot of MTG license plates recently.  Seems like the Lithuanian motor vehicle departments is near the end of its M series.  I resent that Marjorie Taylor Greene is the first thing that pops into my head. She branded herself MTG  like some trailer trash rapper from the boondocks of Georgia. The media has not only done a great job of making Trump front page news again, but has elevated a number of his MAGA cult members to celebrity status by constantly running stories on them.  When they are not trying to shutdown federal government, they promote non-issues like Sister Sarah's recent effort to lead 16 red state governors in demanding the Biden administration ban the sale of American farmland to Chinese investors .  It doesn't matter that China holds less than one percent of foreign-owned property in the US, it's the principle that's at stake.  The media blythely obliges them by putting these stories at the top of my news feed on yahoo and ot...