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...
May 2nd, 2015 | Europe, Genealogy, General, Memory, Travel
Researching my Dear One’s Family Tree has been, shall we say, a slow process. Facts and documentation, though, when found, bring a thrill, a surge of excitement that renews belief that the project isn’t fundamentally doomed. The problem is two-fold. Records pertaining...
April 30th, 2015 | Education, Europe, Friends, General, Matters of the Spirit, Memory, Politics, Society at Large, Travel
Most of us choose what to remember. We cherish feelings illuminated through rose-colored glasses and forget the uncomfortable; sometimes we nurse the grievances and grudges that give us our sense of self. In any case, the content and color of the past, the limning of...
April 25th, 2015 | Cooking, Kitchen and Table, Europe, Friends, Genealogy, General, Travel
We reached out to Audrius about fifteen years ago as we jumped into the quagmire that is the genealogy of Lithuanian immigrants to the United States. He shares a surname with my Dear One and a rather random Internet search turned him up in Kaunas. We grasped at that...
April 19th, 2015 | Architecture and Design, Europe, General, Popular Culture, Travel, visual arts
Art Nouveau is not really my thing—too ornate, too feminine, too precious. I admire certain artists and objects and connect to the focus on materials and their unique qualities, but l would not want an Art Nouveau home or Art Nouveau furnishings, or even much in the...
April 18th, 2015 | Architecture and Design, Friends, General, Memory, Shopping, Travel, visual arts
I was here in the summer of 1970, an eighteen-year-old hitchhiking around Europe after a year on an English-Speaking Union scholarship at Princess Helena College in Hertfordshire, England. My traveling companion, Sue, was a school pal of a school pal, and we joined...