Dispatches from Vilnius

NATO flag raised alongside Lithuanian flag at President's Palace One of the nice things about the NATO summit in Vilnius this summer is that we are getting all our roads and sidewalks fixed.  The work crews have been busy, patching holes, leveling walkways and putting in all sorts of new planted areas.  Even here in Žverynas these crews have been busy, as this is where many of the ambassadors live.  We are constantly getting fliers from realtors to lease our house out as an ambassador residence.  No thanks, we love our little courtyard, even if it feels like a fish bowl at times. Larger residential blocks have risen up around us.  A three-story office building now sits where an old wood house and garden once stood next to us.  Polish brothers split the house, finally agreeing to sell it to a developer a few years back.  Loki likes coming to the office workers each morning as they pull up in their cars by the wrought iron fence, reaching through the rai...

There was something wrong about Prigozhin's coup attempt .  For one, Putin didn't seem overly worried and no one seemed to challenge the Wagner chief as he led his 40 km. caravan of military vehicles along the M-4 highway from Voronezh to Moscow. The international media acted like he was right next door forgetting how big Russia is.  Even with a normal vehicle it would take over 7 hours to reach Moscow, with a military caravan you would have to think a couple days.  But CNN gleefully reported that he was right outside Moscow.   After taking more than 10 months to seize Bakhmut and leaving nothing more than burnt-out ruins of the former city of 73000 inhabitants, the vast majority having long since left, the Wagner group was supposed to cede the site to the Russian army and move on.  Well they did, but not exactly as everyone expected.  Prighozin led his mercenaries, which reports estimated at 25,000 soldiers, on a March on Moscow, supposedly to re...

Want to go on a ride? It's really hard to figure out what is going on today.  The level of stupidity is matched only by the hubris that goes along with it.  Whether it is RFK Jr. wanting to "debate" vaccines or Elon Musk challenging Mark Zuckerberg to a cage match or some enterprising deep sea diver believing he could make a submersible from scratch that would go down to the depths of the Titanic.  Regulations be damned, much less common sense. This seems to be all about getting attention anyway you can. The first is nothing new.  RFK Jr. has been peddling his anti-vax theories for quite sometime and has reached the point where he regards himself as an expert on the subject .  So much so that he is willing to take on all challengers, but of course the man he would like most to spar with is Dr. Anthony Fauci.  He's written a scathing book on Fauci that portrays him as one of the key conspirators in forcing unwarranted vaccines upon us.   It would b...

I've been boning up on Palladio given our current project in Žemoji Panemunė.  It is a mid-17th century villa that appears to be modeled upon Palladio's principles as laid out in his Four Books of Architecture, or Quattro Libri , which essentially served as a compendium of his work.  It's nice to finally be putting these principles to work in coming up with a modern addition to the surviving ruins. We struggled to find any direct historic analogy for this building.  The closest we came was the Palazzo Chiericati in Vicenza, Italy, which dates from the mid 16th century.  I probably saw it when I was in Vicenza many years ago but didn't associate it with Palladio.  I hoofed it to the Villa Rotonda outside of town, the most recognizable of all his villas and the one I was schooled in when I studied architecture.   Normally, the arcades are at the center of the building, not to the outside, unless serving as a connection.  The villa would have had a...

I saw an ad on my facebook timeline for the UNHCR.  They were soliciting donations for their relief effort in Ukraine.  One that has yet to really begin.  The UN was too busy honoring Russian Language Day to speak out on the explosion that rocked the Nova Kakhovka dam in southeastern Ukraine.  Of course, Russia denies they had anything to do with the explosion despite the dam being in their control.  The Kremlin claims an errant Ukrainian missile hit it, a one in a million possibility, but the UN is willing to give Putin the benefit of the doubt.  Meanwhile, Russia shells evacuation efforts in the flooded areas, determined not to let Ukraine get the upper hand in the long anticipated counter-offensive. Granted, it's not easy to get relief agencies into war torn areas, but then that's the UN's job.  It has forged a special relationship with Russia that allows them to monitor the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, which many fear could melt down due to ...

Classified Documents on view at the Mar-a-Lago ballroom. Perhaps Trump was subconsciously echoing the words of Billy Joel, but they rang hollow at his short briefing following his second indictment.  The man who made it a felony for the unauthorized removal and retention of classified documents now faces a criminal court with the prospect of up to five years in jail on each count of the federal indictment.  How's that for irony? It never ceases to amaze me how Republicans refuse to cut ties with Trump.  This is especially true of House Republicans, who voted overwhelming to block the results of the Electoral College after the January 6 insurrection attempt.  Twelve GOP Senators joined them.  You would think this would have been a red line, as it was clear for all to see that Trump had given his tacit approval for the siege of the Capitol that day.  This level of complicity is unprecedented, or "unpresidented" as Donald would say.  Yet, here we are t...

I was telling a friend of mine about the book I had been reading -  Grey Bees  by Andrey Kurkov.  It is set in the Donbas region during the civil war in 2014.  The protagonist is a beekeeper trying to keep his bees warm during the cold winter nights by stuffing the bee boxes he has stacked in the garage with musty old blankets and pillows.  Vytautas cut me off to say that is the stupidest thing you can do.  He raises bees himself and said that stuffing bee boxes like that is a sure way to lose half your hive over winter. He proceeded to tell me how bees can handle the cold.  It is wetness they can't stand, and when you try to insulate a bee box like this you are sure to create condensation inside that kills the bees. Not to mention the box becomes a perfect nesting place for rats and mice that feed on the bees over winter.  Nope, he said, you have to simulate wild conditions as much as possible.  That way bees remain strong, produce more hone...

It often feels like I am speaking into the void until I look at the Stats page and see I got 1000 hits yesterday. The traffic has been sporadic and coming from unusual places.  I would think the site would appeal mostly to Americans, yet over the past week the overwhelming majority of hits have come from Singapore.  The most frequented posts have been early ones when we still had a reading group going in this forum.  Among the favorites, a reading of The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire from April, 2011.  The infamous fire ushered a new era of building safety regulations with the hope that such tragic events would never happen again.  The fire killed 146 persons, mostly young women and children.  It also led to stricter laws on child labor. As much as I have enjoyed posting my thoughts on various topics, changing the name of the forum to suit my eclectic nature, I miss the reading groups.  We had some good ones like  The Age of Roosevelt: The Cri...

It all depends on how you capture the image It's one of those Mondays that I let slip away when I'm working at home.  I'm more of a Tuesday person.  So, I turn to the internet to see what story catches my eye.  Everyone is commenting on Biden's nasty fall at the US Air Force commencement ceremony.  No one is talking about how quickly he bounced back.  Had Trump taken a fall like that he would probably be in traction. If age really were an issue no one would be talking about Trump as an alternative.  Instead, here we are at the midway point of 2023 and Trump remains the presumptive nominee for the Republican Party next year.  He holds a staggering lead over all his challengers.   The closest one to him is DeSantis and he trails by no less than 25 points in the latest polls .  This is after all a guy who can't even recognize his second wife in a photograph.   Even funnier is that Republicans are readily admitting that senile ol...

I got a text message from our former Croatian neighbor out of the blue.  At first I thought it might have been some kind of spam and didn't respond as I couldn't imagine she and her children were still in Vilnius after her husband died unexpectedly 3 years ago.  But, she wrote again and so I responded.  She said she had stayed to see her oldest daughter through the graphic design program at the art academy, and that she was inviting Daina and me to Croatian National Day on June 1.  I appreciated the gesture and sent her an email to send us a formal invitation. We were all set to go yesterday when Daina asked me to check Croatia's position on Ukraine.  I did and found out that President Milanovic has been put on the Ukrainian blacklist for his pro-Russian outbursts.  This put him at odds with his own government but still Daina wanted nothing to do with Croatian National Day.  If Andrea wanted to invite us to her place, fine, but no way was Daina going ...