Probably our relatives brushed shoulders in the marketplace
Two new books making a splash in the literary world—Between Shades of Grey by Rūta Šepetys and We Are Here: Memories of the Lithuanian Holocaust by Ellen Cassedy—take place in WWII Lithuania. Though the two women’s stories begin in much the same place—Sepetys’s grandfather is from a village near Biržai, while Cassedy’s great-grandfather hails from Rokiškis only 60km away—the books, and their stories, couldn’t be more different. We Are Here is a first person memoir about Cassedy’s journey to discover her Litvak heritage while studying Yiddish at Vilnius University. Between Shades of Grey is a young adult fiction novel about a 15-year-old girl who is deported to Siberia along with her mother and younger brother.
Individually, the books have met with incredible success. Between Shades of Grey, which came out in paperback this month in the US, has been translated into twenty-five languages and sold in thirty countries. Only in bookstores for a little over a month, We Are Here is racking up rave reviews at home and abroad. When speaking of the book, which will be released in Lithuania in May, former president Valdas Adamkus said, “This eloquent book can help us to reach out, open our hearts, and rediscover one another in a spirit of mutual understanding.”
Read the full article on Vilnews.com.
May 15, 2012
A nation can be defined by several different characteristics; geographical location, language, a common history, cultural body, or race. The Lithuanian nation is defined by all of these. Lithuania has a language which is unique in the world and a culture that runs deep. It shares more than two centuries of its history with Poland, and few other nations have survived occupation by so many different groups. There are several types of nationalism; primordial, civic, organic, and liberal. Because of the lack of opportunity in Lithuania, young Lithuanians have recently tried to convince themselves that they want to “forget” their Lithuanian culture and move on to a new life in the West, but it is not possible. Lithuanians will always be Lithuanians whether they are in Lietuva or not. This is evident in the Lithuanian-American community, though they are clearly Americans, their Lithuanian identity stays with them. This is because Lithuanian nationalism is both geographic and organic, an entity to which all Lithuanians belong, as parts of a whole and independently of their will, choice or consciousness.
Read the full article on Vilnews.com.
May 15, 2012
Sailing on Akyla sometimes feels like sailing with a really high-maintenance girl—and I don’t mean because I’m on the boat. For any given race, we’ve got upwards of ten different sails, the sheets to fly them, spare sheets, a bowsprit and a spinnaker pole, after guys, two masthead halyards, two jib halyards, a short spin halyard, running backstays, and an autopilot. Our bowman, Jeff, often finds himself sitting in a macrame of lines running from the bow to the cockpit (we can potentially leave the dock with jib sheets, spin sheets, code 0 sheets, after guys, and the code 0 furling lines wreaking havoc on the deck). Not to mention having to deal with the main halyard, main sheet, backstay, vang, cunningham (jib and main), and the outhaul. One of the greatest challenges with all that stuff has been not just sailing the shortest, fastest course as well as we can, but deciding exactly which of that stuff to use—and then trying to use it well.
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February 19, 2012
The forecast was for rain. But we got wind. A heck of a lot more wind than normal for a late January day on the San Francisco Bay.
I’ve been sailing on Akyla since early October. Over the last few months, the windiest day I’ve seen was 12 knots, with gusts up to 15kts. Okay, maybe it’s been a little windier than that, but not by much. Today, we were in for a treat.
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January 22, 2012
Rokas Zaveckas and Laura Pamerneckytė at the opening ceremonies of Innsbruck 2012
Kalnų Ereliai veteran and member of the Lithuanian National Ski Team Laura Pamerneckytė of Vilnius is in Austria this week for the 1st Winter Youth Olympic Games. The 16-year-old is one of just six athletes on the Lithuanian team (two alpine skiers, two cross-country skiers, and two biathletes). In Innsbruck, she will compete in the Slalom and Giant Slalom competitions. On the eve of her first race, she took a few minutes to catch up with kalnuereliai.com and provide some insight into her experiences at the YOG.
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January 20, 2012
There was an eerily warm north-easterly blowing over the mountains and into San Francisco. The air turned dry while whitecaps rose and broke across the Bay; the conundrum of living in a place with ocean in one direction, and desert in the other. On the street, people wore t-shirts and carried winter coats. Dressing is always a challenge when it’s 65 degrees despite the calendar’s insistence that it’s December 1st.
The weekend rolled around, but the wind did not dissipate. I headed over to Pier 40 early to help thread a new topping lift for the new spinnaker pole on Akyla. I was strapped into a bosun’s chair and hoisted up to the top of the mast where I had to find the end of a tiny white pilot line that I had previously sewn to the end of the bright red line laying in a tangled heap on the deck and use it to pull the topping lift up through the mast. It sounds a lot more complicated than it was. The whole thing took only a few minutes; the bulk of the chore was hauling me up the mast. (I made a mental note to get more aggressive with my diet!)
When the boat was rigged and ready to go, we motored out of the South Beach Harbor, following the Embarcadero around the city to the start of the Golden Gate Yacht Club’s Seaweed Soup Regatta. I was driving, and did my best to steer our way through the chop. It was a rough ride, with what looked to me like four-foot swells—though I’ve never understood how to measure waves. Suffice it to say, we were getting pretty thrown around.
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December 7, 2011
Oktoberfest. Oh yes it was.
That and the title of this article is really all you need to know how this Saturday’s sailing went. The fog was tickling the ribs of San Francisco Bay, but the sun was shining over Akyla. I got to South Beach harbor and helped to finish rigging the boat. Within minutes we were under sail, making our way to Berkeley for the BYC Oktoberfest. It was a pursuit race starting in the middle of the Berkeley Olympic circle out and around Alcatraz, skipper’s choice of direction—we would be sailing clockwise—and finishing in front of the Berkeley Yacht Club. The forecast was for light winds, but when we got there, it was blowing at 10-20 knots. We had an hour before our start, ample time to make a headsail change to accommodate the stronger winds and put on extra layers of foul weather gear to stay warm. Though the sun stayed out, it was not to be the tank-top day I was hoping for, and pulled my pants and sweater out of my bag.
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October 19, 2011
Just another Sunday sailing on the Bay… or was it? I was on a boat for only the second time, with a crew I had never met, doing a job I’ve never done before alone with light shifty winds. If that sounds like a Mission Impossible to you, well then you would be right. In fact that’s the name of the boat, a Merit 25 out of the Berkeley Yacht Club. For some unknown but kind of fun reason, when Merit 25′s were first brought to San Francisco Bay they started a trend to name the boats after old television shows. There’s Twilight Zone, Dr. Who, and in the slip right next to us, a new arrival, Star Trek.
It was foggy in San Francisco while I waited for my ride. By the time we got to the Berkeley marina the skies were clearing, but there wasn’t any wind. We spent the morning going over spinnaker procedures and the crew plan. Sandwiches at the club followed, and we jumped into our foulies for the race—the temperature was in the 70′s, but I was to be the bowgirl and therefore at greater risk of getting wet. Tacking out of the marina (no Dad, we didn’t use a motor) was exciting, especially with an enormous catamaran bearing down on us. One thing I have not gotten used to is being under sail with other boats all around us. I’m certainly not on Lake Charlevoix any more, where beautiful boats line the lake like Japanese dots, and rarely—if ever—make it out to sail.
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October 10, 2011
From Lithuanian Heritage September/October 2010
(Mushrooming)
My favorite word in Lithuanian, grybauti, means “to go mushrooming.” In English the meaning is simple and to the point, but in Lithuanian, the sentiment of the word is much more poetic. I didn’t fully understand it until recently, when some friends put me in a pair of rubber boots, handed me a basket and a knife, and drove to a “secret spot” some 20km outside of Vilnius on a cold, damp morning. Wandering through a moss-covered forest with your head down, looking for small brown lumps hidden in the earth, it’s easy to get lost. You never walk in a straight line, glimpses of baravykai and voveraitės pulling you this way and that. If you were to leave a trail of red paint on the ground it would look like a drunk lost on his way home from the bar, only to wander around and around in circles outside the front door. Lithuanians use the word not just to describe the act of picking mushrooms, but also any time they want to describe someone who is perhaps a little bit lost in life. When one of my ski racers takes a particularly wide race line through the course, we might say, “Nu, kur tu grybauji?” (Where were you wandering?) Or, if taking a wrong turn means arriving late to a party, we might explain our delay saying, “Grybavome!” (We were mushrooming!) The mountain bike race in Anykščiai this year was muddy from a week of rain forcing hundreds of riders to get off their bikes to trudge through the mud, creating a massive traffic jam at the start. I heard riders all around me exclaim, “Ir ka, visi grybauji? Baravykai daug šiais metais!” (So what, everyone is stopping to pick mushrooms? There are a lot of porcini this year!)
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October 7, 2011
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