Thanks to a broadband connection to the Internet, it has not been uncommon for someone visiting my home to hear a Latvian radio station playing from a computer’s tinny speakers. But no more. For the holidays I gave myself a present, an Airport Express wireless device that now lets me play audio from my computer on a better-sounding stereo system.

The Airport Express, manufactured by Apple Computer Inc. and sold for USD 129 (EUR 149 in Europe, AUD 219 in Australia), extends an existing wireless network and allows for connections to devices such as printers and external speakers. It plugs into any available electrical socket and works with both Macintosh and Windows computers. In my case, I’m using the Airport Express to feed audio to a stereo in the living room. It picks up the signal from my Airport Extreme base station. Any computer that has access to the wireless network now is able to use Apple’s iTunes software to “broadcast” a signal to the stereo.

Anything that iTunes can play can be sent over the network, including MP3, AAC, WAV and AIFF audio format files. Hook up an iPod to the computer and you can transmit its content through iTunes to the external stereo or speaker.

The one problem is that iTunes only handles one kind of audio stream from the Internet, the so-called streaming MP3 or M3U playlist formats. Listeners to Internet radio via Shoutcast already are familiar with the formats.

More than a dozen radio stations in Latvia now offer streaming audio over the Internet (that’s counting the four services of that state-owned Latvijas Radio (Radio Latvia) and the three of the commercial Radio SWH). But only half of those use the Shoutcast format that can be understood by iTunes.

Those stations that can be heard through iTunes include three Russian-language broadcasters in Rīga—Gold FM, Mix FM and Radio PIK—and the tiny Radio Ef-Ei in Rēzekne. Latvijas Kristīgais radio (Latvian Christian Radio) also has streaming MP3 audio.

A new favorite is Radio Skonto, which offers its signal to Internet users in several flavors, including the Shoutcast format. Listeners outside Latvia only get the monoaural signal, not the bandwidth-eating stereo stream. But the mono stream is good enough. Skonto plays a mixture of American, European and Latvian pop in the “adult contemporary” format. Controlled by the U.S.-based Metromedia International Group, the influence of American broadcasting is clearly heard in the musical mix and the jingles and slogans tossed to listeners several times an hour.

“Mazāk runu, vairāk mūzikas,” says the recorded voice of a female Skonto announcer. Less talk, more music, just like many American stations.

Also sending a Shoutcast stream is Top Radio.

It would be great if iTunes could handle the Windows Media Player and RealMedia formats. Then I could use the Airport Express to listen on my stereo speakers to state radio, Radio SWH and the college station, Radio NABA. I wouldn’t be surprised if in the future iTunes will support these other popular formats. Already there is a third-party product, Nicecast by Rogue Amoeba, which can relay Windows Media and RealMedia streams in format understood by iTunes.

It also would be great if more stations in Latvia would put their signals on the Internet. Noteworthy broadcasters such as Rietumu radio in Liepāja, Kurzemes radio in Kuldīga and European Hit Radio are missing from the list.

I had never seen an episode of the USA Network’s crime show Monk, so when I happened to tune in tonight, I was surprised to run into yet another Latvian connection to popular culture. The episode (actually a rerun) begins with the killing of the Latvian ambassador to the United States.

Titled, “Mr. Monk Takes Manhattan,” the episode is the opener for the third season of the show. But like so many other references to Latvia that have appeared in American popular culture over the years, this one gives the audience bad information.

In the episode, neurotic San Francisco detective Adrian Monk has traveled with his colleagues to New York to try to solve the murder of his wife. They are checking into their hotel when shots ring out. The Latvian ambassador is among three men killed in an elevator.

Within minutes, Monk is on the case, somewhat to the chagrin of a New York cop named Captain Cage who, suggesting a possible motive for the murder, claims Latvia is on the brink of civil war.

How can Hollywood scriptwriters be so stupid?

Latvia, they should know, is not on the brink of civil war, not now, not back in June when the episode first aired.

Of course, it might be easy to dismiss the gaffe as part of the fiction of the show. It’s not real, after all. But in that case the scriptwriter could just as well have made up a fictional country.

If Hollywood insists on using real places to bolster its fiction, it should at least get the facts straight.

Further in the episode of Monk, the detective and his assistant, Sharona Fleming, interview a couple of supposed Latvian men, one of whom had been sending threatening letters to the ambassador.

One of the things Monk wants to know is what the ambassador meant when he said, “She’s now gone meatless,” a phrase the detective heard the ambassador say in the hotel before the shooting. But Monk has misheard, one of the men tells him. It’s not in English, but in a dialect spoken in Latvia. It means, “It’s not my coat.”

What dialect?! Whatever it was, it wasn’t Latgallian, Russian or anything else recognizable.

Regardless, it turns out to be the key to solving the ambassador’s murder. The murderer wasn’t gunning for the ambassador after all, but wanted his coat. The murderer had earlier killed his wife, taking her jewelery to suggest robbery. Afterward, in a bar, his coat containing the jewelery was inadvertently switched with the ambassador’s.

Heck, they couldn’t even get a real Latvian to play the ambassador. Instead, he’s portrayed by Dmitri Boudrine. Among his other credits, Boudrine is cofounder of the American Russian Theatrical Alliance. Not that Boudrine can’t portray a Latvian, but maybe if folks in charge of casting for Monk had found a Latvian, they would have at least been able to use the Latvian language in the show.

Perhaps the real Latvian ambassador to the United States should give Hollywood a call.

Her aunt, Gale Cushman says, has a bee in her bonnet about this thing. But it is Cushman who lives in the small northern Mississippi town of Senatobia, where she recently got the city government’s approval to erect a memorial to Latvian immigrants in a local cemetery.

Cushman hardly remembers the 40 or 50 Latvian Displaced Persons she said were settled in Senatobia after the Second World War. But her aunt, who now lives in California, went to school with some of them. It is she, Cushman said in a telephone interview, who got the idea that they ought to be honored in some way.

The Latvians lived in Senatobia from about 1949-1953, picking cotton on local farms. Although there were enough of them to own a church and put out a newsletter, today there is no sign of them but for about 15-20 graves in the city-owned Bethesda Cemetery, Cushman said.

“Here’s this cemetery with mostly Smiths and Joneses, and then there’s this one corner with these strange names,” she said. “There’s nothing here left. And they were such a unique people who lived among us for a while.”

That’s why Cushman’s aunt decided something ought to be done to memorialize a small part of Senatobia’s history. And, as it turns out, an interesting part of Latvian history.

After the Second World War, tens of thousands of Latvian DPs came to the United States. With the help of their sponsors, most settled in northern states. But a small group found themselves in the south, with the Senatobia colony being perhaps the best known.

It was a Major Callicott, a U.S. Army official working with Displaced Persons in Europe, who arranged for the Latvians to come to his hometown of Senatobia and, according to Cushman, other locations in the south. The Latvians arrived in New Orleans on the U.S.S. Omar Bradley and were taken by train north to Senatobia. Along the way, some were let off in other communities.

(According to a series of messages posted on GenForum in 1998, the major was actually Col. A.T. Callicott. He owned a large plantation in Senatobia and helped 200 Latvian families settle there.)

The Latvians apparently organized their ethnic community quickly. They purchased a church built in the 19th century and published a newsletter, Ziņu biļetens, from 1949-1953, according to Benjamiņš Jēgers’ Latviešu trimdas izdevumu bibliografija, 1940-1960.

After the Latvians left, the Senatobia Latvian Lutheran Church eventually became the Senatobia Christian Church. The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1996 but soon after was destroyed in a fire, Cushman said.

One elderly Latvian woman may still live in Senatobia, Cushman added.

Now that she has the city’s approval to erect a monument, Cushman said, she will be soliciting donations from local civic organizations. She said she is not sure how big the memorial might be or how much it might cost, but she would like to have enough to also arrange for a permanent display of Latvian memorabilia in the Tate County Courthouse.

Interested in helping Cushman—and her aunt—honor the Latvians of Senatobia? Write her: Gale Cushman, 4461 Highway 51 S., Senatobia, MS 38668.

I just wonder how many other places like Senatobia there are in the United States and Canada where all-but-forgotten small communities of Latvians once lived.