Dispatches from Vilnius

Interesting article on how the sinking of the nuclear submarine Kursk 20+ years ago represented a turning point in Russia's fledgling democracy, as Putin began his clamp down on independent journalism in the country.  He was none too happy for the blame he was taking over the incident.  Rather than answer questions he decided it was better to end any discussion whatsoever, at least on terms other than his own.  One by one, the independent news channels, newspapers and journals were shuttered, citing tax evasion in most cases, and then reformed as an organ of the Kremlin.  There was a lot of protest at the time, but it mostly went ignored, even when leading journalists like Ana Politkovskaja turned up dead.  It was widely believed that Putin sicked his Chechen "dragons" on her. This pressure on journalists and indeed anyone that questioned the Kremlin narrative literally became a target on your back.  In 2015, the same "dragons" offed Boris Nemsov in broad ...

I was standing on an overhead walkway with a bag of popcorn in my hand watching this man clean up crumbs below me in front of Cinderella's castle.  I was no more than 12 at the time.  He was picking up the smallest speck of waste, so I started tossing pieces of popcorn down on the ground beside him.  He would immediately sweep them up.  After the third or forth piece, he looked up.  I smiled.  He returned to his work.  I tossed down another one.  A minute later I felt a tap on my shoulder and a security guard politely asked me to stop.  Sorry, I meekly said and walked away. It struck me how clean Disney World was.  It was immaculate.  It had only been operating three or four years and still had its freshness.   Tickets were sold in little booklets, so you had to be judicious with what you chose to ride.  Space Mountain was under construction, which was a disappointment.  I had so hoped to ride it.  There wer...

Ukraine is no longer occupying the news media 24/7.   We now hear how Netflix lost 200,000 subscribers last quarter, resulting in a plunge of its stock value on Wall Street.  Elon Musk and others blamed this on Netflix's "wokeness," which is becoming as tiresome an expression as "snowflake."  Meanwhile, the South African megabillionaire is trying to buy out Twitter so that he can liberate it from said "wokeness."  Trumpists delight as they hope it will mean the return of their savior if Musk can round up enough cash, $43 billlion and counting, before the " poison pill " Twitter voluntarily took doesn't make its cost prohibitive even for a man of his immense means.  It makes you wonder that if Musk has so much money to spare, why not arm Ukraine himself?  Not just provide his Starlink satellite dishes for better communication. It seems we are losing the magnitude of the situation in Ukraine, as we return to our comfortable lives, feeling ...

We went to a funeral in Marijampolė yesterday.  It is about a two-hour drive from Vilnius, heading west toward Kaunas and then south toward the Polish border.  The small city lies in the Suwalki Gap between Belarus and Kaliningrad.  The deceased was the father of a friend of ours.  He was born before WWII, not quite a teenager when Lithuania was absorbed into the Soviet Union.  Arūnas led the procession to a little town near Kalvarija, which is even closer to the Kaliningrad border.  He said his father never gave up hope throughout that long Soviet winter that Lithuania would be independent again.  His father was one of the last of a generation who can recall Lithuania's first independence. However, remembrances took on a more personal tone.  Arūnas and his sister prepared a slide show that poignantly captured their father.  The pictures focused on their father's love for the outdoors.  I particularly liked one where he stood in waders i...

One of the big surprises to come out of the war in Ukraine is how effectively President Joe Biden has been able to unite NATO countries against Russia without resorting to heavy handed tactics.  He has walked a tightrope in getting Germany to cut off NordStream 2, keep Hungary quietly on the sideline, and tamp down the urge of Poland and Baltic states to more actively engage with Ukraine against Russia.  The credit belongs almost solely to his administration in keeping this war contained, while at the same time exerting a tremendous amount of pressure on Russia to rethink its position.  We see the value of 50 years of experience, as opposed to the impetuous actions of men far less capable.  I hazard to think what the situation would be right now if another man was in the White House. My wife has asked me repeatedly why Putin didn't attack Ukraine while Trump was president?  He, like many world leaders, underestimated Biden.  Putin thought Biden was the dodd...

I couldn't resist a couple pair of " Ghost of Kyiv " socks from Heel Tread, as quite a few of my old pairs of socks had holes.  The Ukraine War has begun to be marketed, often with matching contributions, but there is a lot of profit to be made as well.  Ukraine flags are a big seller, going for 28 euros here.  You can buy them for much less on amazon, but these are Chinese made, and no one wants to support China right now either. Ukraine finds itself front and center, not only in its fight to retain its sovereignty but in a battle for democracy.  Foreign leaders use this quiet moment to meet Zelenskyy in Kyiv to bolster their own image back home.  You knew it was an opportunity Boris couldn't pass up, making the most of it by talking with local residents and coming away with ceramic rooster carafe in the process.  These cockerel jugs have become the symbol of Ukrainian resistance.  At least, Boris anted up, providing badly needed munitions for Ukrain...

I enjoyed reading this interview with Jewel.  Her sweet, melodic voice has long belied her tough nature.  I suppose that is in part from trying to straddle folk, country, rock and even dance hall.  I would like to see a little more rawness in her voice.  It's almost like she is trying too hard to please her listeners, rather than just letting go. Maybe Freewheelin' Woman will finally be it? Quite a few things stand out in this interview.  I liked the way she sized up cynicism, calling it a "coping mechanism to hide your dreams, your aspirations ... you're just hiding behind a mask."  Very true.  She goes on to note all the flack she took for her book of poems, A Night without Armor . She said she was influenced by Bukowski and Anais Nin, offering raw verses in a 1998 MTV interview with Kurt Loder, only for him to give her a grammar lesson.  It took all these years for him to finally issue an apology . You begin to realize just how difficult...

Looking for a little diversion last night, I watched Apollo 10 1/2 .  I'm the same age as Richard Linklater so I could easily relate to his fascination with the space age and wanting to go up in a rocket myself.  I drank Tang and ate space sticks as a kid.  I had the National Geographic map of the moon on my wall.  My mother had it glued to a piece of Masonite (itself a space age product) so that it could be hung from a concrete nail in the porous concrete block of our Florida home. At one point, I had learned the names of many of the craters and knew my way around the moon as well as I did any map.  I imagined myself so often in space that I had dreams of weightlessness, and even ones where I floated off in space, watching the earth diminish in size until it was no more than a little speck in the cosmos, waking with a start.  A friend of mine at school claimed to have a telescope that was so powerful he could see the footprints Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldr...

To be honest, I don't know quite what to think of this , but I'm sure the images will be picked up quickly by the international news services.  A number of young men and women stripped down and waded into the red-dyed pond in front of the Russian Embassy in protest of the latest atrocities coming out of Ukraine.  The blood-soaked pond was the idea of Berta Tilmantaitė, Neringa Rekašiutė, Rūta Meilutytė and Aurelija Urbonavičiutė.  Rūta's solo swim yesterday was enough in my opinion, but others wanted to take advantage of the situation this morning to display their indignation in front of Russian diplomats.  Unfortunately, it just comes across as some strange baptism.   I worry that there will be a lot of virtue signaling in the weeks ahead.  It is a cause that has captured the imagination of the world.  Everyone wants to voice his or her frustration and anger, turning such moments into viral memes and videos that serve mostly to draw attention to...

A former high school friend shared this article with me on facebook, in which Pres. Nauseda declared Lithuania completely free of Russian natural gas.  I wish we could say the same for gasoline but that will take longer to do, as Russia still remains the primary source of crude oil.   Like it or not, the EU is far too dependent on Russian oil, gas, coal and timber.  There is no way to make a clean break, at least for the moment.  So now Putin attempts to extort the EU by making it pay in rubles, which he appropriately announced on April 1, in an effort to prop up his failing currency.  The EU has some leverage in that demand is falling, but not a lot.  We will only gain an advantage when we completely wean ourselves off Russian fuel supplies. It makes you wonder where Europe got its gas and oil before the Soviet Union collapsed.  In the early 1960s, there was virtually no connection but temptation was great.  The USSR had begun to reach out ...

My son and I were checking out the progress on the renovation of the garden house.  His friend was called up recently for a three-week preparedness drill near the border of Kaliningrad.  The military doesn't let reserves use live rounds of ammunition or even blanks, so they had to literally shout "bam bam" when pretending to shoot their rifles.  They all got sick with COVID after the first week, forced to live in very close confines.  They tried to battle it as best they could, as they wanted to finish the training so that they would be free to get back to their lives, but the military doctor declared them too sick for duty and sent them home in the middle of the second week, so they will have to repeat it all over again at a later date.  Needless to say, his friend was upset by the experience, wondering just what good, if any, this training exercise did.  One can only hope that active duty military has better training and conditions. There are all sorts of...