Newspaper rekindles merchant marine history

Andris Straumanis | 

A chapter in the forgotten history of Latvia’s merchant marine is making waves thanks to the Russian-language daily newspaper Chas, even earning rare accolades from the Latvian government.

The Rīga-based newspaper recently published a series of articles about the crews of the eight merchant ships that refused to heed orders to return to Latvia after the Soviet Union occupied the country in 1940. Instead, the ships continued to fly under the flag of an independent Latvia, aiding the allied war effort against Germany.

Latvian Foreign Minister Sandra Kalniete sent a letter March 25 to the newspaper thanking it for illuminating an aspect of history that for years had been hidden from Latvians. While Latvians in the West had known about the ships, Soviet authorities kept the history hidden.

Six of the ships were lost after being attacked by German submarines, according to the series, which has been retold by the Associated Press.

The first of the Latvian ships to be attacked was the Ciltvaira.

Just weeks after Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Germany unleashed a series of attacks on merchant vessels sailing off the eastern coast of the United States. The 3,779-ton cargo ship Ciltvaira was sunk Jan. 19, 1942, by the German submarine U-123 near the Outer Banks region of North Carolina. It was one of three merchant vessels attacked by the submarine that day.

The existence of the Ciltvaira wreck is known to some people along the North Carolina coast. At least one Web site shows photographs of the sunken ship, also known locally as the Green Buoy Wreck. According to the Web site of the Outer Banks Dive Center (www.obxdive.com) in Nags Head, the Ciltvaira wreck is found in 120 feet of water and is covered with marine life that is popular with underwater photographers.

The community of Nags Head has a street named after the Ciltvaira.

According to media reports, city leaders in Rīga are considering renaming streets for the eight merchant ships.

In addition to crew members aboard Latvian ships who were lost during the war, several Latvians serving on American merchant ships also lost their lives, according to information posted on the Web site of the U.S. Maritime Service Veterans (www.ummc.org).

The sailors included John Alost of the West Ivis, killed Jan. 26, 1942; Sergei Burmeister of the Pan New York, killed Oct. 29, 1942; William Karklin and Jānis Krastiņš of the Equipoise, who died March 26, 1942; Victor Frank Liskovs of the LaSalle, who died Nov. 7, 1942; and an unknown Latvian who died in October 1942 when the El Lago was attacked.

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

Use Adobe PDF to share Latvian documents

Arnis Gross | 

In today’s electronic age we constantly share information using the telephone, fax and e-mail. E-mail is emerging as the clear winner because of its low cost and immediacy: type a message, attach a file, click a button and a few minutes later your intended recipient has the information.

The information you attach to the e-mail message can be a photograph, document, spreadsheet or even a multimedia clip. All the recipient of your message needs to open the attachment is software associated with the attachment. But if the recipient doesn’t have the proper software, he or she is basically stuck or will have to purchase the required software. The most effective solution for Latvian users is Adobe’s Portable Document Format.

Pioneered by Adobe Inc. in the early 1990s, PDF preserves all of the fonts, formatting, colours and graphics of any source document, regardless of the application and computer platform used to create it. Adobe PDF files are compact and can be shared, viewed, navigated and printed exactly as intended by anyone with the free Adobe Acrobat Reader software now used by more than 300 million users. The Adobe Acrobat Reader is available for Apple Computer’s Mac OS 8.6-9.2 and Mac OS X; Microsoft Windows 95, 98, NT, 2000, ME and XP, as well as Unix and several mobile devices.

Several months ago I prepared some advertisements to send from our Melbourne office to several Lithuanian newspapers based in Chicago and Toronto. These ads were created in Adobe PageMaker page layout software and contained high resolution type and artwork that would need to be reproduced at the best possible newspaper quality. I saved the ads to a PDF file and e-mailed the attachment to each of the newspapers. Just to confirm that they had received the files I also asked them to print out a copy on their local printers and fax it back to me. What used to take one to two weeks I was now able to accomplish in less than 24 hours and in the end achieve a better quality result. My other options would have been to fax the ad (which would have resulted in a blurry and less than satisfactory ad), snail-mail the copy one to two weeks earlier (making last-moment changes in a multiple-week ad campaign nearly impossible) or send it as a rather large PageMaker or Microsoft Word attachment but not be guaranteed of the end result.

Many government offices, larger corporations and libraries around the world have already standardised on the PDF format. PDF files are the preferred format for storing documents on the World Wide Web. Because PDF documents are not normally alterable and retain the original formatting they are the ideal archiving solution for the legal profession. Books, catalogs, reports, flyers, newsletters, promotional brochures and memos cluttering our desks can all be easily converted to PDF files. The built- in compression of PDF means that the file sizes are typically five to 10 times smaller than other formats and are also less likely to contain unexpected viruses.

Rīgas Laiks is one of the first Latvian magazines to offer a PDF version for Latvians to enjoy worldwide. The Melbourne Latvian Society last year published a limited number of its 50th anniversary book, but at the same time produced a PDF version that—unlike the hard copy version—contains full colour photos and is fully searchable and browsable from a CD-ROM.

In fact, anyone thinking of publishing in Latvian—whether it is a Latvian organisation preparing its latest newsletter or minutes from the last meeting or a budding author keen to publish his or her memoirs while keeping within a reasonable budget—should seriously be considering the PDF format.

So how do you make a document into a PDF document? The latest versions of Word have the ability to do this (select the “Create Adobe PDF” from the File menu or click on the “Create Adobe PDF” icon in the toolbar), even without the full version of Acrobat. The full version of Acrobat lets you take any print output from any program and make it into a PDF. When you install the full version of Acrobat, it creates a virtual printer called “Acrobat Distiller.” When you want to make a PDF you just choose “Acrobat Distiller” as your printer, give the file a name and tell the computer where you want to have the file sent to when it is created. Once you have created a group of PDF files it is easy to merge them together, pull out pages or create new files that contain only selected pages from a larger PDF document.

If you are on a shoestring budget and wish to create PDF files from your word processor or page layout program you can use the freeware utility Ghostscript (available for both Macintosh and Windows) which will convert Postscript files to PDF files.

Other inexpensive solutions are Free PDF Creator, WordtoPDF and PDF2Mail for Windows and PrinttoPDF for the earlier Macintosh versions. If you are using special or non-standard fonts you might need to choose the option whereby the fonts become embedded into the final PDF file.

Mac OS X users have the best deal because PDF capabilities have been built right into the operating system: simply click on the “Save as PDF” button from the print dialog of an application and a few moments later a PDF version of your document will be created.

Several online PDF services are available from as low as USD 1.99 per document, but in general these won’t work that well in Latvian unless they are using standard Unicode fonts or you are able to supply them with your special Latvian fonts.

The next time you shoot out an e-mail with an attachment, think about your audience by ensuring the document is in a format that anyone can open. Not everyone chooses to use Microsoft Word or PowerPoint. Information is only valuable if it is fully accessible.

And now for something completely different

Amanda Jātniece | 

Sirdsgrieži

I was told that Sirdsgrieži is much different from Biruta Ozoliņa’s earlier recording, Bolta eimu, so I was prepared for something different. Now I am preparing you.

But I don’t know exactly how to properly describe her new sound. Maybe easy listening? Maybe New Age lounge music?  Maybe something jazz-influenced? Because of the folk song content, though, it’s probably considered a type of world music. In any case, the main instruments on Sirdsgrieži are keyboard, bass and percussion. A couple of songs have the traditional kokle for flavor, but the instrument does not make those songs sound any more traditional.

At least the type of songs that Ozoliņa sings has not changed since 1999’s Bolta eimu. They are mostly songs about young women’s lives, with the emotions and doings of courtship and marriage predominating. Not all of the songs are sad—some are even slightly humorous—but the overall mood of the music has a hint of melancholy.

I, of course, particularly like the beginning of the song, “Deļ meiteņu rūzis zīd,” which features a field recording of Marija Golubova, an old Latgallian woman from whom it seems Ozoliņa has learned many songs. Ozoliņa continues the song with the same melody and text that Golubova sings, but takes great liberty in tempo, ornamentation and style. It is hard to decipher whether the other melodies on Sirdsgrieži are also traditional folk songs or Ozoliņa’s own compositions.

The men’s voices at the end of “Nūreib zeme” sound comical and out of place, but in fact do relate well to the lyrics of this light-hearted song. The jingles at the end of “Laimes muote” add a nice touch for the same reason, although I don’t care for the gurgling brook and other nature sounds here and there throughout the compact disc.

After a while all of the songs on Sirdsgrieži start to sound very similar and meld into one another. A few songs with their a capella or kokle beginnings seem at first to promise a change (“Deveņi buoleleņi” and “Par zylū zagiuzeiti”), but sure enough, the keyboard and bass kick in soon after that.

Despite not being too enthusiastic about this album, some of the songs have started to grow on me after listening to the CD several times. I have found that some of the melodies, for example “Pyut viejeņ” and “Pateik man,” get stuck in my head and I catch myself still humming them the following day and the day after that.

I like that the lyrics are written in the liner notes, because all of the songs on Sirdsgrieži are sung in the Latgallian dialect, which is not always easy for us non-Latgallians to understand. But otherwise there is sparse information about the songs or Ozoliņa herself. The notes do include a quote and short excerpt by popular author Nora Ikstena that hint at the emotions involved in developing this recording. Reading a recent Santa magazine interview with Ozoliņa, I learned that her life has not been easy and that this recording may mark a turning point in her life. After all, “sirdsgrieži,” a newly invented word meaning “heart solstice,” implies a time of extremes, a profound change, a turning point.

I have absolutely no complaints about Ozoliņa’s choice of songs or her singing style. It’s the same delicate, fragile, heartbreakingly beautiful voice as before, used this time with even more freedom. But I don’t care for the accompaniment. That said, the author of the above-mentioned interview was very impressed with Sirdsgrieži and enjoyed it very much. I guess it’s just a matter of taste.

Sirdsgrieži is contemporary, relaxing music that is pleasing to many, but not all, ears. Be forewarned, though, that it is completely different from Ozoliņa’s earlier music.

Details

Sirdsgrieži

Biruta Ozoliņa

UPE Recording Co.,  2002

UPE CD 039