Hi Peter C:

Thanks for the thought-laden reply.

Your geometric hubris got a bit carried away a wee bit on that last post, but I’ll give you a pass because I liked it. Actually, I thought it was some neat, cool stuff you wrote about. I hope to respond in kind soon. I’m besieged with about a million leaves at the moment and can’t afford to have to someone else deal with them, so I’m doing it all myself and running short on discretionary time.

Just consider the possibility for a moment about the difference between a “badly posed question” and a provocateur’s purposely posed “bad question”. If there’s been one thing I’ve been consistent about my entire brief time on LOL, it’s been a commitment to provoking good, healthy dialogue here. When you’ve been available, Peter C., you’ve been providing much of it. You’re certainly doing it now. I’m grateful for that.

I’m also wishing to wake up a few others. There are many otherwise incredibly intelligent people here who have been sucked into the same polarized mindset that poxes our non-LOL lives on both sides of the pond. I’m just trying to do my measly best to create reasons and avenues for people to actually believe that there is no such thing as a bad question, whether it is posed by a Lett, by a former Lett, by a born-again Lett, or by a wannabe Lett such as Vidas (grin). Lett the discussion march forward…..

Alberts

Alberts,

Absolutely, the additive-free locally sourced stuff tastes oodles better. I prefer it without question. The organic aspect? Better be wary of the marketing hype on the labels unless you are growing your own, which few of us do. Just because you are paying more for those features and benefits, around here it doesn’t really mean that you are getting what you think you were paying for.

I can’t think of a single Lithuanian relative of mine, be it a home dweller or cement box dweller that doesn’t have access to some spot of summertime garden they grow things in. By organic I mean basically home grown. The quality of fruits/vegetables available in summertime is very high in Lithuania. It has to be as vendors compete against grandma’s garden plot - and thus the consumer demands quality at reasonable prices. In the US we pay $5 a pound for organic tomatoes that taste of something because 90% of the population in the US has yet to taste a real tomato. The market and demand for quality isn’t there yet.

Have I had better vacations in other places? Of course I have. I struggle with it. Struggle with the guilt. Struggle with the realization that I have options that they don’t enjoy.

Peteris noted and I concur that Balts love to travel. My relatives go on various extensive travels on a regular basis. They have no problem staying at questionable hotels/hostels or fly some patched up YAK to Tbilisi. My curse is my comfort standards and comparable lack of vacation time - but that’s me. They are much more imaginative in their travels than I am and have many opportunities.

I have no struggle with guilt as my relatives - generally - have fared well in independence. In fact they fared well in the soviet period as well. These people are survivors by nature. Our respective languages have been tested with extinction time and time again and still live. Did the post war diaspora support that language survival ? Absolutely. Can the diaspora take credit for it ? I don’t think so. The fact that both communities developed separately for 50 years and that the languages developed in different ways over 50 years speaks to the fact that the languages had the opportunity to evolve organically on their own. My Lithuanian, as I wrote, is considered “Smetoniska” ie the language of Smetona’s interwar period. The language I learned was a snapshot of that time. When I went to Lithuanian Gimnazija in Germany where my Lithuanian was spoken amongst soviet era Lithuanians, the differences were very clear. One wasn’t better than the other because on developed English loan terms while the other developed Russian loan terms.

I call it the “power of good questions”. Those are good questions. You deserve public credit for publically asking them. I sincerely hope that we make good progress on supplying equally good answers.

But we know some answers already Alberts. There are attitudes that are clearly identifiable as regressive, confrontational and frankly detached. Using the scientific method - certain points of dialogue can be clearly eliminated as paths to resolution to the questions I asked. So why haven’t they been eliminated ?

The wannabe Lett thing is cute by those who cite it - but it speaks more to their ignorance that my want is to be something I am not (a condition that they don’t necessarily have a problem with at all). Lithuania and Latvia are too small to create their own power - the states are commonly referred to as the Baltic States and even that characterization is microeconomic and microsocial. What affects Latvia affects Lithuania more often that not - including radical fundamentalism and the cost that it has upon our respective reputations. If that radicalism wants to live amongst the diaspora - fine - but don’t handcuff me with irrational fears.

Hi Peter C:

You mentioned Dylan’s popularity there and I thought I’d share my favorite Dylan tune covered by an artist I’ve been lucky enough to see in person a few times over the past 2 decades and will again soon. This particular YouTube version was recorded in the UK. His fingerpicking style is simple and unpretentious.  His voice is weatherbeaten and gruff, but more pleasing to my ears than Bobby’s. I listened to Chris Smither’s (“the man with the blue guitar”) version of “Desolation Row” more than 100 times continuously the day my mother died. I related to it deeply then and still do now:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07QS1ChrPD0

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desolation_Row

Lyrics to Desolation Row:
They’re selling postcards of the hanging,
they’re painting the passports brown,
the beauty parlor is all filled with sailors,
the circus is in town.
Here comes the blind commissioner,
they’ve got him in a trance,
one hand is tied to the tightrope walker,
the other one is in his pants.
And the riot squad, they’re restless,
they need somplace to go,
as Lady and I look out tongiht on Desolation Row.

Albert Einstein, disguised as Robin Hood,
with his memores in a trunk,
passed this way an hour ago with his friend,
a jealous monk.
He looked so immaculately frightful
as he bummed a cigarette,
then he went off sniffing drainpipes,
Lyrics http://www.allthelyrics.com/lyrics/chris_smither/
he was reciting the alphabet.
You would not think just to look at him
that he was famous long ago
for playing the electric violin on Desolation Row.

Ophelia, she’s ‘neath the window,
for her I feel so afraid.
On her twenty-second birthday
already she is an old maid.
Now here comes Romeo and he’s moaning,
‘You belong to me I believe,’
and then someone says ‘You’re in the wrong play, my friend,
you’d better leave.’
They all play on the pennywhistle, you can hear ‘em blow
if you lean your head out far enough in Desolation Row.

Cinderella, she looks so easy,
‘It takes one to know’, she smiles,
and she sticks her hands in her back pockets,
Bette Davis style.
To her death is quite romantic,
she wears an iron vest.
Her profession is her religion, her sin is her lifelessness.
And the only sound the you can hear afrter the ambulances go,
is Cinderella sweeping up on Desolation Row.

Yes, I got your letter yesterday,
about the time the doorknob broke.
You asked me how I was doing,
is that some kind of joke?
All these people that you mention, yes I know them,
they’re quite lame,
I had to re-arrange their faces and I gave ‘em all another name.
Right now I don’t feel too good,
don’t send me no more letters,
no, not unless you mail them from Desolation Row.

Right now I don’t feel too good,
don’t send me no more letters,
no, not unless you mail them from
Desolation Row.

Wishing you and others a happy, undesolate Thanksgiving,

Alberts

Paldies, Albert! And thanks to those who welcomed me back—I won’t be back much, as I’m still buried under mountains of texts, here in schwarzer Novemberzerstörung…

I transferred what little money I have into Latvijas Krājbanka, the only bank with a branch in northern Courland, shortly before it was shut down. Catching a ride to Roja with some of my new friends, we actually had a good time standing in line (mēs stāvam pēc desām…). There was no panic, not even among the very elderly (some of whom recalled losing their money in Banka Baltija… but that was before deposits were insured).

A brief note about bio produkti—they’re often even cheaper than the suspect food one can get in the shop. Tomatoes, in season, ran 50 s for 2 kg. The tomatoes are fabulous, and you get to inspect the gardener’s saimniecība, flowers, ponds ... ... ... Milk is 40 s a liter. It’s unbelievably delicious milk, ca. 5% fat—in the shop, zilais piens (something of a double entendre), of dubious origin, runs about 70 s. A pūrs of blue-eyed potatoes (a pūrs = 6 sieki = 54 stopi... though a Courland pūrs is smaller than a Riga pūrs ... these are old measures) costs Ls 10 in autumn (many wait till spring to take them to market, depending on the variety, since prices rise over the winter). Curd is from whole milk, and runs Ls 2 a kilo. Salmon is well below market price. Lesser fish (as well as beets, beautiful red onions, and comely carrots)... are not rarely given as gifts. The neighbor hangs a bag of fish from my doorknob nocturnally, when he returns from the sea.

So Vidas is spot on—I don’t mean going to an “organic” supermarket and paying through the nose; I mean profoundly human interaction in the polis, leading to homegrown food. Nor is this confined to the countryside—you can find an expensive but charming market in Riga, such as the one Mārtiņš Rītiņš cooks at, in Bergs Bazaar, and turn it into an elitāra lieta (though Riga has become excitingly diverse even in such prestigious places—Satori recently moved to Bergs Bazaar [check out their office, where you can work when in town!], and Otrā Elpa is also there, where you can find warm mittens and woolen socks knitted by female prisoners, and antique glassware for far less than you’ll pay in an antique shop), or—go to the Night Market and buy wholesome food directly from farmers at decent prices. That experience can also be blended with culture high and low—catch a performance at Dirty Deal and an exhibit at kim? Dine at Kitchen, where a Latvian-American globalizes fresh local ingredients.

Latvia has actually become far more interesting since the crisis forced people to become more creative, and one of the things we have going for us is the interpenetration of the rural and urban. Whether that will last, who knows. There is a lot of justifiable complaining about foreigners buying up farmland… and the Night Market is being forced out of Spīķeri, now a UNESCO site, as Riga prepares to become a European culture capital in 2014.

Visu gaišu,
/P

Now I’m really p’od at the nonsense that’s being posted, that also has the audacity to once more use my name in vain.  You really need to stop pretending, PC, that you know me since we have never met and we do not know each other.  You also need to stop bashing my Latvian since not only have we never met, I have never spoken to you - in any language.  If you want to post about your life and your perceptions about your life in Latvia, own it.  You friggin don’t know me to draw me into your expositions.  I see you as a very traditional male who fits in well with others in Latvia who still are lost in very traditional gender thinking and roles.  I cringe at your list of male (chauvinist) artists.  I cringe at your undying belief in the value still to anyone in this world of dead male theoreticians like Marx and Trotsky who grotesquely failed you, me, and everyone who was imprisoned in Latvia or elsewhere for all those years of big C Communism.  You, Peter C, would never have survived actually living under the big C Communism.  You are an elitist who wants his freedoms and rights yet you think for some others being nobodies without any rights but lots of terror and repression is fine as long as there is work at the local kolhoz.  Just what would have been your job at the kolhoz?  You and your friends can choose to organize communal residences and cooperative farms right now, so why aren’t you?  Does it take some brutal leader to separate you from your personal belongings, all your homes in Daugavpils, and order you to be milking cows at the local kolhoz?  If you yourself can’t live the life you advocate for others, you have no right to suggest that some other chump should have those crumbs.  If you can’t figure out better ways of life that would fall between brutal Communism and brutal Capitalism, then take an internet course in creative thinking.  Also, “organic” is more than a good tomato from the wife’s garden.  If Latvians, especially the males, continue drinking and smoking like they do, eating organic tomatoes won’t save them.  If that Soviet big C deformity had not happened for all those years, I bet Latvians would now be the leaders in organic products and an organic lifestyle.  The big C job economy robbed Latvians of health and longevity and gave Latvia grotesque pollution that is nearly impossible to clean up.  Kaltene at the Baltic coast may look beautiful to PC but the Baltic Sea is wretchedly polluted, worse than the beautiful Lake Michigan just down my current block, and the Baltic’s fish are too polluted to eat, even if they look “organic” to some whose idea of “organic” is un-evolved and limited as is their political and gender thinking.  There is absolutely nothing to be thankful for that came to Latvia from the big C system since Latvians would have done so much better evolving and developing on their own without the “unorganic” blight poisoning them for fifty years.

...use my name in vain…

I shall surely observe this as an eleventh commandment, Ma’am.

/P

Well, that was quite the A-bomb!

On this day here in the good ol’ US of A I am thankful for the open exchange of ideas this forum is supposed to foster. It is good to see opinions voiced that reflect the broad range of opinion and experience amongst ethnic Latvians, Latvijas citizens and those who have a stake in Latvijas future.

Lai dzīvo sveiks!

Ambersun, good idea to inspire the Latvians to survive by eating healthier. It’s no accident that your pseudonym is an anagram of “Bran Muse”.