2000 year old Thracian chariot and horse skeleton found in Bulgaria

Going to Richmond, Virginia

Next week, we will be in Richmond, Virginia, for my wife's high school reunion. It's a small Southern city with a lot of history. It was once the capital of the Confederacy. The biggest mansions are along Monument Avenue. There have been calls, of course, to take them down.

If this promotional video is to be believed, the town has been taken over by hipsters. So there's hope!

Ken Burns Vietnam War documentary

Watching this 10-part, 18-hour series has been gut wrenching. I just watched Episodes 5 and 6 last night. I've been in a funk all day today as a result. The atrocities. The futility. The waste of hundreds of billions of dollars on helicopters, fuel, and ammo. Everything was just so fucked up.

The documentary is paired with dozens of iconic songs, like this one.

 

JFK McNamara at Lawrence Berkeley Lab, 1962

Hungarian Revolution, 1956

1993 New York City in HD

Apparently, it was shot with Digital-VHS. Was this technology available to the average consumer?

Walt Disney-designed children's gas mask, WWII

Interview with a Lithuanian

Thanks, BHF!

1 What are your fondest memories of growing up in Lithuania?

Summers in the city. The city would get almost empty since most of the parents would ship their kids to the villages to stay with their grandparents. I had nowhere to go, everybody lived in the city. I mostly stayed with my grandparents that lived in Zverynas, one of the oldest residential parts of Vilnius and was allowed to do whatever I wanted. Then there were summer vacations on Lithuanian beaches that are beautiful. One place is the Curonian Spit. The other is the seaside resort town of Palanga.

2 What are your worst memories?

I really have nothing. My biggest complaint was that I was not allowed to have a dog.

3 Did Communism permeate through every aspect of life?

Pretty much. I knew that we lived in an occupied country since I was very little.

4 When the Soviet Union broke apart, what were you doing?

I was on the streets. On January 11, 1991, I was outside the Lithuanian Parliament. We honestly thought that the Soviets are gonna attack. We all were ready to die.

5 Before the Soviet Union broke apart, could you ever imagine it would happen one day?

The hope was almost lost.

6 What is the relationship between Lithuanians and the Russians who stayed in Lithuania today?

It's really hard to say, I do not live in the country since 2000. The Russian community was not that big there. The biggest issue is so called local Polish community that is supported by the Soviets. It's pretty complicated, would require a lot of writing but if you wanna now I will try to put something together.

7 Are Lithuanians afraid that Russia will invade again?

Yes, very much so.

8 How similar are the Lithuanian language and culture to the languages and cultures of Estonia and Latvia?

The Latvian language is pretty close, but Estonian is totally different, it belongs to the Ugro-Finnish language group. We were mostly united because our countries were occupied by the Soviets. 

9 Did your family have a car when you were growing up? What was it? What do you remember about it?

We did not have a car. There were very few people who had cars when i was a kid. My great uncle had a Pobeda, but I saw it only in the pictures. That was a beautiful car.

10 What would you like people to know about Lithuania? 

We were the last pagan country in Europe. We were baptized only in 1387. I think that says a lot about our resilience. Also, we are very proud of our language, one of the oldest spoken languages in the world.

Glory movie trailer

I just watched this 1989 movie for the first time. It's particularly powerful given all the Confederate statue controversy going on today. Denzel was masterful. I'm going to watch Philadelphia next.

Future posts about northern Minnesota

We had a wonderful vacation along the shores of Lake Superior last week. But with the baby and work, I am simply too exhausted to write anything cogent.

For example, I deleted two drafts of a post about race and the two diners I visited. Race is a sensitive subject and I don't talk about it much, so I wanted to make sure the blog post came out clear. It's a work in progress. Maybe this weekend.

We stayed in a cabin north of Duluth. Duluth is an absolutely foreign place. With its no-nonsense industrial port and Soviet apartment blocks, it's more Siberia than Upper Midwest.

I spotted a couple of Travco Dodge RVs on my way to get some smoked fish.

And here's a view from our porch. Lake Superior holds 10% of the world's fresh water.

Here's grandpa holding Tamerlane Jr at the Split Rock Lighthouse, once the most visited lighthouse in the United States.

A view from the lighthouse.

Peruvian TV airing programming in Quechua

Other than Paraguay, indigenous languages in Latin America have been marginalized and looked down upon. This is changing in Peru, as the new-ish president is promoting Quechua and other languages with TV and radio programs in those languages. Here's an ad promoting Quechua programming. You can read more about this positive development in this Economist article.