November 30th, 2023 | Family, General, Holidays, Loss, Time Passes
The most difficult change has occurred, as I have pondered for the last six months in this blog. Dan’s struggle with kidney failure and other chronic illnesses came to an end on June 6. It wasn’t something unexpected. I had a sense of being ready. I don’t think,...
October 11th, 2023 | Education, Europe, General, Memory, Politics, Society at Large
I expected the village of Žiežmariai to be a quick stop. My target was the church, St James the Apostle, where so many Tomkuses had been baptized, married and seen off to the hereafter. The wooden prayer house those ancestors would have known was replaced in 1924 by...
October 7th, 2023 | Architecture and Design, Europe, Family, General, Loss, Matters of the Spirit, Travel
The cemetery in Balbieriškis is a beautiful place, whatever the metric you choose. It is a place of peace and transcendent love that is evident in the tending of the space, the care for the ancestors. The Old Cemetery is the most beautiful of all, with its signs of...
May 17th, 2015 | Europe, Gardens and Gardening, Genealogy, General, Matters of the Spirit, Memory, the world and Mother Nature, Time Passes, Travel
It was possibly the best day of the trip. Or maybe not best. Maybe it is the one most firmly nestled into my visual cortex, the collection of images most likely to reappear when I am asked about Lithuania, what I experienced, what I remember. In television programs...
May 4th, 2015 | Europe, General, Matters of the Spirit, Memory, Travel
The location is still marked on Google Maps: Balbieriškio Švč. Mergelės Marijos, Holy Mary of the Rosary in Balbieriškis on Vilniaus gatvė. On maps.lt, the church is outlined, a classical basilica, a rectangular nave with a semicircular apse at one end. Yet if you...