Latvia reports first case of H1N1

Andris Straumanis | 

A woman who traveled to the United States and Canada is the first verified case of the H1N1 flu in Latvia, the Public Health Agency in Rīga has announced.

The woman returned to Latvia on June 21 on a Berlin to Rīga flight on airBaltic, the agency said in a June 23 press release. The woman exhibited symptoms on the flight and was hospitalized as soon as the flight landed.

The agency has recommended that passengers who were on the flight monitor their health during the next five days. Symptoms of H1N1, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), are flu-like and include fever, cough, headache, muscle and joint pain, sore throat and runny nose. If such symptoms are observed, a spokesperson for the Latvian agency said, the person should contact their family physician or the Public Health Agency’s epidemiologist at +371 67271738.

Health officials were prepared for this first case in Latvia, the agency said in the press release. The agency has notified German officials of the case so they can organize assistance for passengers who traveled with the woman from Canada to Germany.

WHO on June 11 labeled the spread of the virus as a pandemic.

“Globally, we have good reason to believe that this pandemic, at least in its early days, will be of moderate severity,” WHO Director-General Margaret Chen said in a statement. “As we know from experience, severity can vary, depending on many factors, from one country to another. On present evidence, the overwhelming majority of patients experience mild symptoms and make a rapid and full recovery, often in the absence of any form of medical treatment.”

According to WHO, a total of 52,160 cases of H1N1 have been reported around the word as of June 22. In all, 231 people have died as a result of the virus. No cases of the virus have been reported in Lithuania, but Estonia has had five. The United States, Mexico and Canada remain the top three countries in the number of infections.

Andris Straumanis is a special correspondent for and a co-founder of Latvians Online. From 2000–2012 he was editor of the website.

Practice makes for better Midsummer celebrations

Amanda Jātniece | 

Several years ago Ilga Reizniece of the folk-rock group Iļģi began a campaign to popularize traditional Latvian methods of celebrating the summer solstice. The campaign, called “Piedzīvosim Jāņus”, consisted of various folklore groups and folklore-minded individuals leading short seminars that were open to the public.

These took place throughout the month of June at various locations throughout Latvia. Each seminar was a bit different, since each group or individual focused on those songs and traditions and aspects of the celebration that were important to them.

The seminars were fairly popular, and I’m happy that they still continue today, although this year’s financial crisis has toned down the advertising effort and publication of song booklets.

I have taken part in a few “Piedzīvosim Jāņus” seminars, both as a spectator and as part of a group leading a seminar. This June, however, I helped organize an informal seminar at a friend’s house near Burtnieki in northern Latvia. In other words, this gathering was not on the published list of “Piedzīvosim Jāņus” seminars. But it must be one of the things that Reizniece had hoped would eventually happen: friends getting together on their own, learning songs, trying out dances, thinking about and preparing to include some “folkloric” elements in their own summer solstice celebrations. 

I’ll admit that our gathering began a bit stiffly, everyone (mostly women, since most of their husbands “weren’t interested in that sort of thing”) sitting in a circle and singing songs from photocopied booklets. But the pace picked up when we refreshed a few of the typical solstice dance-games.

Later in the evening we made caraway cheese—Jāņu siers—outside over a small fire and discussed the different ways of “tying” the cheese. Later still we rested in the sauna, and then the last couple of night-owls finished off the evening by singing ballads (sans photocopied booklets) around the bonfire. OK, not the sort of thing that excites machos… but you’ve got to start somewhere.

What we pretty much ended up doing was holding a rehearsal about two and a half weeks before the popular celebration. Not a very spontaneous, organic thing to do (did our great-grandmothers ever hold rehearsals for Jāņi?), but probably necessary in our times. Next year’s celebration will already feel a bit more natural to this group of friends.

Preparing traditional Midsummer cheese

The traditional Jāņu siers is drained of water through a cheesecloth by a group of Latvians practicing Midsummer traditions. (Photo by Amanda Jātniece)

Preparing traditional Midsummer cheese

Cheese is placed in bowls to set, following a method used in Vidzeme. (Photo by Amanda Jātniece)

Midsummer offers hope the sun will come up tomorrow

Ojārs Kalniņš | 

Latvia awaits the longest day of the year in what seems to many like the longest year in their lives. Especially if you are trying to balance a budget. Your own, or a government’s.

But the summer solstice on June 21 is a turning point. Spring ends, summer begins, the days get shorter, the nights get longer, and plants, animals and other living things all feel a shift in the world around them.

In ancient times when people watched the sun rise and fall every day with great care, the solstice was a singular event and signaled a significant change in cosmic direction. If you were used to one climactic pattern from January until June, you got ready for the reverse in the second half of the year. You hoped the same applied to your fortunes.

Those who live in steel and concrete cities with fluorescent sunsets, or in tropical climes where the sun is always around, may not relate much to the wonders of the summer solstice. But up here on the 57th parallel by the Baltic Sea where the sun goes away to hide for months on end, and sometimes barely comes up for a few hours, the month of June is a month to be treasured.

For reasons I can’t begin to explain, Latvians celebrate Midsummer’s Day on June 23. We call it Līgo Day, and the day after that we call Jāņi. For Latvians, this is both their favorite holiday and also their oldest. We’re fairly certain that our ancestors have been singing and dancing around bonfires at this time of the year for several thousand years.

Latvians celebrate the solstice by gathering flowers, decorating everything, building bonfires, drinking beer, singing songs, eating cheese, dancing in circles and staying up all night.

It’s very important to stay up all night in Latvia on June 23, because if you don’t, the sun won’t rise the next day. We have special songs you have to sing when the sun goes down, or else it won’t come up again in the morning. We light the bonfires before sunset so that the wandering sun can find a light once it approaches Latvia again. We do all this with ritual tenacity, and our ancestors have been doing the same thing, year after year, for countless centuries. So far, it has worked. The sun has always risen on June 24.

In the last week, the Latvian government, parliament, business community and their social partners have also been working around the clock to avoid an economic catastrophe. The entire world has been watching as Latvia has struggled with massive budget cuts, painful gross domestic product drops, struggling businesses, and growing unemployment lines. The finest economic minds in the world have taken up their rhetorical swords and have been bashing each other daily in a global debate over whether Latvia should devaluate its currency or not.

But as I write, the lat is still pegged to the euro. The government has agreed on a 500 million lat budget reduction, and the parliament has approved it. Now we await the International Monetary Fund and European Commissoin to give their nod of approval.

And we go out to the countryside, to build bonfires, pick flowers and fill pitchers of freshly brewed beer. We also stroll out into the forest in search of fern blossoms. You can find fern blossoms only at this time of the year, and if you don’t believe they exist, you will never find one.

If it sounds like Latvians look for a little magic around this time of the year, you are right. It can’t hurt. After all, we are facing another turning point in our lives. But one thing we know for sure. The sun will come up tomorrow.

Midsummer

The Midsummer holiday marks a turning point, and for Latvia perhaps things will get better. (Photo by Andris Straumanis)