Dispatches from Vilnius

When I first joined facebook, I was surprised to see how many of my old high school friends were farmers.  I had grown up in a rural Northwest Florida community so it wasn't a stretch.  Well, it turned out they were all playing FarmVille , trading crops and livestock as if they were real things.  They invited me to join in but I said no thanks.  Turns out you needed to buy "farm cash" to build any sort of capital.   Not surprisingly, Bitcoin came into being about the same time.  I saw it as just another form of "farm cash."  What could you do with it?  Turns out you could do a lot if you had a nose for this sort of thing.  Mostly fool other people into buying it so that you can build its value over time.   Non-fungible tokens became a big thing.  They can take any digital shape or form, even art work.  This so-called cryptoart was very popular a couple years ago but like cryptocurrency hit its peak and started tumblin...

There was a time when the future seemed so bright you needed to wear shades, but such is not the case anymore.  Either we have lost our innocence or we just love to wallow in our own misery.  The future is now primarily seen as a post-apocalyptic nightmare that we have to scratch and claw for survival, often with little hope that things will get better. For some the only way out is to leave this planet all together and start a new life on Mars or somewhere else within our yet to be determined cosmic reach.  Not that we are designed for space travel.  Human beings have never spent more than 437 days in space.  Our bodies have a hard time handling weightlessness, not to mention the amount of water and nutrients necessary to sustain life in transit or on some inhospitable planet.  Science fiction has given any number of possibilities for extended space travel, principally suspended animation, but I would think the only way to transport human life from one plan...

The Nemunas River at Žemosios Panemunė Sometimes the old ways are the best ways.  My son dug a battered wood snow shovel out of the basement that worked much better than the new plastic one in cutting through the packed snow.  As a result we were able to get our respective driveways cleared much more easily.  It's my winter exercise.  I'm not confident enough to run in this weather as the city doesn't do a very good job keeping the streets and sidewalks cleared in the suburbs.  I've had my share of falls over the years and at 61 don't want to bust a hip.  It takes about an hour to clear the long driveway at a relative leisurely pace.   I will wait till Spring to start running again. I'm hoping I will be more motivated this time around.  COVID really zapped my vitality.  Not the disease, as I didn't get it as far as I know, but the general sense of malaise that comes from working at home.  I started going to the office three times a ...

You really have to hand it to Republicans.  They went all out on Herschel Walker the past four weeks with many prominent GOP senators visiting Georgia in an effort to bolster his candidacy.  In the end, he will be remembered most for his werewolf meme.  While such comments are  comedic gold , they only served to prove how incredibly unfit the former football player is for public office.   It goes without saying that the Republican Party finds a new bottom in each election cycle. This is what happens when you let Donald Trump call the shots.  Any other Republican probably would have unseated Raphael Warnock.  Kemp won the governor race by a relative landslide back in November, but it wasn't enough to drag Walker over the goal line , as Chris Christie put it.  Just enough Republicans couldn't bring themselves to vote for Walker, including the state's Lt. Governor , who called Herschel "one of the worst candidates in our party's history."...

Judging by the size of the Christmas tree and myriad of lights, there's no great worry about electricity bills in the city council.  Same around the country as these ornamental trees are more brightly lit than ever.  I suppose it is a way to cast all our cares and worries behind us and enjoy the holiday season.  Yet, much of Ukraine remains plunged in darkness, so I'm not sure what kind of message this is sending. For Vilnius the cake tree represents the 700th anniversary of the city in 2023.  The remote location made sense back in 1323, placing the capital closer to the heart of the Grand Duchy that stretched all the way to the Black Sea, encompassing much of present day Belarus and Ukraine.  Ruthenian was the language spoken between the nobility.  However, Mindaugas had chosen Catholicism over Orthodoxism, earning him a crown hand delivered from the Vatican in 1253, the only Duke to be coronated by the Pope.  Not sure what the story was with Gedimina...