AGREE!!!

Peteris Cedrins - 03 May 2008 10:38 AM

one must remember, that “tautiba” is long gone in the big part of the world…
(...)
Regards,
/P

Tautiešami roku devu, labu devu ne kreiso.”

Got that?  “Labu devu,” and “ne kreiso!”

Tautība pastāv, southpaw.

/R

Peter C has his head up where the sun does not shine. He has shown this many times in his posts. For a person not born in Latvia he takes it upon himself to put “real Latvians” down. He seams to forget that while he was a child growing up in the U.S.A. and not born in Latvia people continuously kept telling about how much foreigner they were. “I am this % French, this % German” etc. Maybe he was not smart enough to hear what they were saying. Unless you are Indian or Mexican, everyone in the U.S.A. is a result of immigration. Peter C is a result of immigration or a result of the DP syndrome.
Part of my family sailed to Brazil in the 1930’s but they considered themselves as Latvians. If you have watched the film"The Baltic Tragedy” you can remember the group of ladies in Siberia who are singing Latvian songs but not wanting to return home for they have nothing to return to.
People tell of Stalin being a Georgian but no where do I find a country called Georgia in the 1900’s. He many times has said he was a Georgian and spent much time in Georgia so either he is a liar or he is a Georgian in his soul and Peter C. is a fool.
This post could go deeper but racism is not my forte for I have studied it and it is a disgusting item.

He seams to forget that while he was a child growing up in the U.S.A. and not born in Latvia people continuously kept telling about how much foreigner they were. “I am this % French, this % German” etc. Maybe he was not smart enough to hear what they were saying. Unless you are Indian or Mexican, everyone in the U.S.A. is a result of immigration. Peter C is a result of immigration or a result of the DP syndrome.

And just where do you see any indication that I didn’t hear what they were saying? Yes, people continuously spoke of their ethnicity and did those breakdowns—“I’m a quarter German on my mother’s side and...” But not many of the people citing their ancestry spoke the languages of their ancestors or knew much about those backgrounds. Though there are numerous exceptions, most immigrants fully assimilate within a couple of generations—that’s why it’s called a melting pot.

Vysu lobu,
/P

Peter C. I get my opinion of you from you in your posts.
While in the U.S.A, how many generations did it take for some of the U.S.A./Latvians not to be able to understand Latvian? . To some it was very short.
Somewhere in your feeble mind you have trouble equating The U.S.A. melting pot with the one we are watching in Latvia. Latvia is more than Russians and Latvians. Eventually those not citizens of Latvia will either want to become citizens or will still live in Latvia, work in Latvia, and pay Latvian taxes. I give you the Chinatowns in San Francisco and Los Angeles CA. as examples.

I was sent this link about the brief history of Latvia.

http://www.tribine.lv/articles/4136/1/0/Latviesi

Somewhere in your feeble mind you have trouble equating The U.S.A. melting pot with the one we are watching in Latvia.

My mind must be feeble indeed—in this instance I don’t even get your drift, Courlander… I have no idea what you’re talking about. Please help.

Vysu lobu,
/P

Peteri, the way I understand it, Courlander doesn’t like you. 

No idea what the rest of it meant.

Anita, you see just what I see here; but after all George Twigg had got us accustomed to incomprehensible postings, and at least Courlander’s is short and all the words pronounceable. As to what it means, I haven’t a clue either.

Stephen

I do not dislike Peter C. for I do not know him. I only hate some of the people I have met.  I do dislike his posts for as a foreign born Latvian he seems to be telling us that his vision of Latvia is what we should hope for.  I also have a sister who returned to Latvia after it regained it’s freedom and for several months received complaints about how bad the people were about freedom and other items. I finally had to tell her to only write about how she was doing or I would cut her off in my email system. Peter C. sounds just like my sister.
Whenever I take a vacation I usually spend a day or two sitting around and observing people. In London I spent one day at Piccadilly Square. This was while the IRA was bombing London and every place there were notices of how to be careful, The people moved on like it was nothing. In my two weeks I felt three bombs go off within three blocks of me but I still moved on. Londoners moved on like nothing happened. It was their city.
When I was in Turkey , one of the seaside resorts I had visited was bombed several days after I left and people kept telling us to be careful , but we did not listen for we could just as well been killed in a car accident. The people acted like this was an minor incident.
Some of you might wonder what this has to do with this line of posts. Everything . A Johnny come lately (Peter C.) has no influence into the society he enters. The locals control the system and outsiders can watch and complain.
This was my reference to Chinatown. A white man can enter the territory but he will not change the politics. I spent a day sitting in front of the motel and watched the people while my wife went shopping and it reminded me of me sitting in the park by the Latvian freedom monument. No difference. I heard several languages but I knew what country I was in.
I will use another reference. During WWII , several times Latvian soldiers entering villages in Russia met occupants who spoke better Latvian then they did but had never lived in Latvia.
The topic is what constitutes being a latvian and I still say “it is in the mind” as it is for any other nationality.

Wow. With all incredibly due respect Courlander- we ain’t on vacation here. I live here. I get to have opinions, bitches and all that goes with LIVING in a place. Visiting London for a week or two is not the same as living in a place.

Just out of curiosity- when does someone live in a place long enough to earn the right to complain etc.??

Complain all you want but unless you have a goose stepping army following you when you move back or for the first time, they will not conform just because you think your thoughts are better than theirs. You have to remember that you are one vote only ( I walked around Phom Phen with all my finger tips painted black the day after their elections several years ago) so you have to convince the voters that your opinion is the best.
In the U.S.A. right wing media is always complaining about the liberal media but can you give me a list of left wing talk shows? If the liberals are so bad then why do they still get elected? The same for Latvia. If things are so bad then why do those party’s get elected?

Yes, how much influence could a recent immigrant / diaspora Latvian possibly have?  That Johnny-come-lately Vaira Vike-Freiberga was just being silly.  Or, if the fact that she lived the first few years of her life there means everything, then someones like Nils Muiznieks… Karlis Streips… Ojars Kalnins… Egils Levits (and the list goes on and on and on)?

Truth is, many of us don’t make a difference - but that has little, if anything, to do with where we’re born.

Furthermore, your Chinatown analogy is inapropos.  Remember, Chinatown is part of America.  Each individual there has a choice of staying within their group if they wish, or going out into American society and making as much of a difference as they wish.  Look at Latvians in America - quite a number have affected American society.  Why could it not work the other way around?  True, this is not accomplished by visiting and whining.  But Peteris is neither a visitor nor (mostly, ahem!) a whiner.  And if the rest of us Forum participants are entitled to state our opinions, why shouldn’t he?

And if what Peteris is saying doesn’t matter, why do you let it bother you so much?

p.s. Tom, took a look at your website.  Seems like good work you’re doing… best of luck.  (Yet another example of one non-local born person making a difference).

I’m still having trouble following your “lines of thought,” Courlander. The topic is what constitutes being a latvian and I still say “it is in the mind” as it is for any other nationality. But elsewhere you are drawing stark lines between “locals” and “outsiders,” and I don’t think that gels very well. 

I don’t feel much like an outsider and am rarely treated like an outsider, but this obviously depends upon context. I’ve been living and working here since late 1991, so (assuming that one enters the work force at eighteen or so, and subtracting time away) I’m as “local” as a Latvian-born person in his or her early 30s.

The contexts in which I’m an “outsider” diminish not only because of the time I spend here, but also because Latvia is more and more of an open society—more Latvian-born people have spent time abroad, working and/or studying, for example. People here have now been exposed to information longer in other ways, too—if my students in 1992 were mostly products of the Soviet system, that’s no longer true.

Re those contexts—they’re complex. Where I am an outsider most often is when I’m among Russophones, for example. But when you consider those relations—then there are aspects in which most Latvians here are actually closer even to Western Latvians who really are here only as tourists. Language is the obvious one. Knowledge of history? Well, on that score, anybody who went to Kr. Barona skola Čikāgā probably knows more than the average Latvian. Politics? Well, I suspect that most Western Latvians are closer to my Latvian-born wife than the numerous people setting off fireworks into the night in celebration of Victory Day yesterday (by the way, I don’t think the day has ever been celebrated so fervently, so the passage of time isn’t necessarily a healer...).

On the other hand, the Russian guy kitty-corner is a lot closer in other ways to the locals (myself included in this case)—we pay the same taxes, suffer many of the same indignities, shop at the same shops, call the same creepy medics, and have the same trouble making ends meet.

Then there’s the large part of me that’s indeed American and/or Western—so I share some things with Aleks, for instance, who was born in Latvia but isn’t Latvian and spent nearly as much time in the US as I have in Latvia.

Then there’s class, and field. I’m an outsider in Svente village… but, then, a Rīga yuppie, born and bred in Latvia, is also an outsider in Svente village. A Latvian-born banker is closer to a banker in Timbuktu in some ways—a car thief is closer to a car thief, a plumber to a plumber, a poet to a poet, etc.

The Latvians in Ireland are starting a political party, to influence the Irish government on issues that matter to them and, possibly, to eventually influence Latvia’s government on issues of import to the diaspora.

The really boring part of being an outsider, Courlander, was (I would say “is,” but I haven’t heard it for a while) the “oh you will never understand us,” you “don’t get the latviskā mentalitāte” chorus. “We Latvians think that...” The reality is that Letts are rather diverse, and the supposed “mentality” is not nearly as impenetrable as Chinatown according to Polanski.

Identity is always multiple. Latvia is ostensibly European, and more than 80% of our laws originate in Brussels. If I have “complaints about how bad the people [are] about freedom”—so do many Latvian-born Latvians. When it comes to things like transparency and tolerance, cultural relativism is a crock, to my mind.

Regards,
/P

What I did last night by Tom Schmit-

Without a single jackboot in sight I conspired with three Latvietes to change Latvia!  Our little organization (Pro Futuro LV) had an informal brainstorm to decide about project directions in helping children with learning difficulties living in LV. Given that we were mostly (3 of 4) fully locals, I suspect that we represented the native mind about education.

I think that we are slowly creating really change. Paldies to our group, 3rd, 6th and 9th grade students in LV who have dyslexia (and other special needs) will be able to have extra time on national tests (normal practice in the rest of the world). Last year we actually had to put our 3rd grader on strike against national tests to get him extra time (in a special school!). This year, after lots of arguments and the fun of the ministry and its operatives trying to ignore us, we forced through regulatory changes that allow for this.

Unfortunately, our big decision last night was that we don’t have the financial capacity (hint, hint) to support an application for Norwegian money (http://www.eea.org). We want to develop a national literacy development centre, but we lack the money for the first year before the project money bulk would come through.

I post this here to possibly explain that change occurs when we force it and work for it. It does require mind changes, but it is happening.

I may not be Latvian but I know people who know what that is. The Latvian mind can be convinced of the need and desirability of change.