Dispatches from Vilnius

At 73, Prince Charles has spent virtually his entire life in waiting.  Queen Elizabeth has shown remarkable longevity (although her mother lived to be 101) as well as resilience.  She has had to put up with a vast number of indiscretions in the royal family, most recently Prince Andrew being forced to settle a sex abuse lawsuit that stemmed from his association with Jeffrey Epstein .  Yet, most of the royal wrath has been aimed at Harry and Meghan for breaking ranks and making a go of it on their own in LA.  Meanwhile, Charles bides his time. The Queen has passed some of her duties onto him , but most of these had previously belonged to his father.  No one is ready to call him King, and many would like to see him abdicate and pass the title onto his eldest son, William, who is far more popular among the English populace.  That's unlikely to happen as Charles has been waiting for this moment far too long to pass it over. Not that he hasn't occupied his time....

It would seem that Sergei Lavrov is now under house arrest after his ill-advised comments about Hitler being half-Jewish and Israel's support of the neo-Nazis in Ukraine.  Peskov has become the front man for the Kremlin, and Putin issued an apology of sorts for Lavrov's comments on Hitler.  Israel accepted this apology but didn't say anything about the Kremlin likening Zelenskyy to a Nazi, which it has repeatedly done.  I suppose the two countries' vested interest in Syria keeps Israel from being too critical of Russia. I never really understood this approach to Ukraine.  Yes, there are some ultra-nationalist elements in Ukraine, namely the Azov Battalion , but they don't represent the government.  Zelenskyy, who is Jewish, leads a young dynamic government that has been openly democratic in its approach.  But, the Azov Battalion has been fighting in Donbas ever since 2014 and to some degree had gained the upper hand before this war broke out in February....

I've had my share of friendly arguments with my daughter over the Johnny Depp-Amber Heard case.  I suppose I should wait until a decision is reached, but it struck me as pretty amazing that Johnny actually thought he could win a case like this.  Even if he does, where is Amber going to come up with 50 million dollars?  It's not like she's palling around with Elon Musk these days.  Besides, the damage is done.  It is pretty hard to look at him the same way after all those voice recordings . It's well recorded how he quickly went through his 50 million dollar paydays from Pirates of the Caribbean .  He went through money like water , or should I say wine, and now that he no longer has such lucrative roles he blames Amber for ruining his good name.  I personally don't know how much truth there is to either one's stories, but it is pretty clear that this guy doesn't understand the value of money, and has now reached a late mid-life crisis where he no long...

Poor Francis seems at a loss as to how to size up the situation in Ukraine .  Thinking if he could just have a friendly chat with Vlad, preferably at a more intimate table, he could get the Russian president to cease and desist in his special military operation.  After all, the Pope got assurances from Viktor Orban that Russia is ready to end the operation on May 9, although most observers see this as the day Putin will officially declare this operation a war.  How else to explain his massive losses? Pope Francis would have probably been better advised not to get himself involved in this conflict, as neither country answers to the Vatican.  But, I suppose he felt the need to intercede after calling special attention to it at Easter Mass by having Russian and Ukrainian Catholic women carry the cross together .  One certainly senses that the Pope's heart is in the right place but his naivety is astounding!  Does he really think Ukraine simply should lay down...

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...