Happy Halloween!

It’s that time of year—fall in all its golden-leafed glory has settled into Vilnius and Halloween is just around the corner! On Saturday, October 26^th, the Embassy ushered in the spooky holiday almost a week early with the second annual “Monster Mash” 5k family run in Vingis Park. Employees, their families, and furry canine friends all braved the nippy autumn air to run (or stroll) through Vingis Park decked in an assortment of costumes and warm running clothes.

Everyone assembled at the starting line--on your marks, get set, go!

A view of the forest and river from the bridge in the park.

Some of the costumes were really creative! I know it was difficult for me to come up with my costume, so I was impressed with what others put together. I was particularly impressed with the Whitney family--they all coordinated as the Incredibles:

Cool costumes!

Danielle (our Presidential Management Fellow), Matt (the Political and Economic section intern), and I all improvised with what we had and this was our result:

 A pumpkin, Miley Cyrus, and Minnie Mouse.

The race was scenic and enjoyable. Vingis Park has paved running and cycling paths, and we weren’t the only ones out enjoying the crisp fall weather. In our bright orange t-shirts and interesting costume ensembles, we turned quite a few heads as we all circled around the running route! The race finished with the presentation of pumpkins to the first- and second-place winners, as well as the consumption of some delicious cake brought by the Deputy Chief of Mission and his wife.

 The winners with their pumpkin prizes--Jonathan Silberstein (R) and Drew Brown (L).

This race is just one of several great examples of how hard overseas posts work to coordinate family activities. Events like this are a nice way to get acquainted with the embassy community outside of the office—and for interns, that is definitely something to take advantage of.

Lithuania's Honorary Consuls: Rimas Chesonis

Another installment in our continuing series profiling Lithuania's Honorary Consuls in the United States. Thanks to Aiste Zalepuga who conducted the interviews with each Consul and collected additional materials. 

Rimas Chesonis has been involved in the Lithuanian-American community for more than thirty years. He began as President of a local chapter in Grand Rapids, Michigan and continued to serve much later as President of another local chapter, this time in Atlanta, Georgia. He has served as a member of the Board of Directors as well as a member of of the National Executive Committee of the Lithuanian-American Community of USA. Mr. Chesonis has been appointed the Vice President of the  Lithuanian World Community.

New York is the U.S.'s third most populous and seventh most-densely populated state. It is also the home of New York City, Amercia's single most populated city with more than 8.3 million people. In addition to serving as the leading center of banking, finance and communications in the United States, New York State is also a major agricultural producer, contains a large manufacturing sector, and exports approximately $70 billion worth of goods each year. "We are proud to boast a vibrant high-tech community, universities which lead the way in many areas including medicine, laser technology and business, a family-friendly environment, and our own seacoast, affectionately known as Lake Ontaro," Mr. Chesonis said of the state.

New York is fortunate enough to have within its community a number of dynamic organizations dedicated to the promotion of Lithuanian culture, such as local chapters of the Lithuanian-American Community, the Lithuanian Heritage Society, Baltu Vaikai, and weekly Lithuanian language radio broadcasts. These organizations coordinate concerts, invite singers and dancers from Lithuania to perform at special events, and conduct a Saturday Lithuanian Language School, which teaches not only the Lithuanian language, but the culture and customs as well. Three years ago, Rochester also held a Lithuanian Catholic Parish. It has since been sold, but the preservation of the Lithuanian identity still exists within another local church. 

To further increase ties with the old country, Rochester has formed a sister city relationship with Alytus, Lithuania. The mission of the Alytus-Rochester Sister Cities Committee is to nurture and strengthen the bonds between the people of Alytus and Rochester and, in so doing, strengthen those between the Republic of Lithuania and the United States of America. "We have enjoyed much success," says Chesonis, "in developing and executing projects in the areas of commerce, education, culture, sports and philanthropy.

For Mr. Chesonis, sustaining relations with Lithuania is as much personal as it is societal. He was born in Lithuania and relocated to America only after World War II; he was 12-years old and displaced. Because of his parents' efforts to retain the culture in their new lives, he continued to speak the language, and practice the customs and traditions. "I have remained a Lithuanian at heart throughout my life," he explains.

Like the other Honorary Consuls we've espoused in this series, Chesonis' central task is to represent, maintain and improve Lithuania and Lithuanian relations with America. He regularly provides consular assistance, help in questions of citizenship, property rights, and other similar matters. At present, his main project is to help locate companies that would like to invest in Lithuania and to promote commerce between the two countries. When necessary, he provides a voice to Lithuanian citizens who live in the area "I keep an active profile in our various organizations and assist them whenever and wherever I can."

The Hill of Crosses: Commemorating Suffering, Survival, and the Human Spirit in Siauliai

 Another installment from Dr. Windy Petrie, Associate Professor and English Department Chair at Colorado Christian University, who was a Fulbright grantee to Lithuania in 2006.

During my time in Lithuania, I had the opportunity to visit the northern city of Siauliai to speak about American Woman Writers for the 50^th anniversary celebration of the Humanities at the university there.  After my speech, one of the professors who teaches there took us to the Hill of the Crosses.  I had no idea what to expect from the name, and, frankly, even if I had, the site, and the sight, would still have completely blown my mind. You drive a ways out of town, then down a little side road, and a spreading clump of hills come into sight. When you get out of the car and walk up to them you see that these hills, these mounds, are entirely composed of crucifixes, one piled atop another, and you try to imagine just how many must be there to create such height, such breadth, and you can’t conceive what the total number must be. Or at least I couldn’t. And then you start imagining how each cross placed there was placed by an individual, who made the trip from near or from far, each for a personal, individual, reason.  And you really, really, can’t conceive of that.

This place is truly amazing. It is thought that the tradition might have begun when the town was founded in 1250 AD, although existing records mention them in the early 1800s, possibly due to a local rebellion against the presumption of the czar in the 1830s. People brought crosses in honor of those who had been lost in the fighting at that time, and have continued to bring them during all local and national struggles for liberty since then. It has also served as a site for Christian pilgrims for many years now. It's no wonder that these hills, representing to an extent the collective protest, faith, and hope of the people, grew so large during the Soviet occupation (and grew larger after each Soviet dismantling via bulldozing, blockades, and intentional flooding) and continues to grow today.

Lithuania has had a very complex National history, having been claimed by nearly all of the regional powers at one time, or another, in its long history. Russia, Germany, Poland, and I believe even Sweden, have all staked a claim to Lithuania and its people in the last 500 years. Even Napoleon occupied Vilnius during his losing bid to invade Russia. Lithuania has remained, through it all, a very independent people. Think of it: they were the last people to accept Christianity in the whole of Europe. They fought off the German Teutonic Knights for what I believe ended up being more than a century. More recently, Lithuanians engaged in clandestine, guerrilla warfare with the Soviets for decades after WWII. And they were the first Baltic nation to claim and secure independence in the early 1990's.

As a non-violent means to defy the Soviets during their occupation of Lithuania, the Hill of Crosses became a historical monument to the human spirit. For hundreds of years, individuals have been bringing crosses of all sizes, some taller than a man and others smaller than a key, made of every imaginable material from precious metals to scraps and rags, to express faith and loss in times when such expression was forbidden. 

After the breakup of the USSR, the Hill of Crosses gained worldwide fame. Pope John Paul II visited the sacred site in 1997, and declared the Hill an international site of devotion. At that time, it became known not only a spiritual symbol of Lithuanian tenacity, but a contemporary shrine. When I visited, I saw many new additions to the Hills, bearing labels from all over the world.

Lithuania's Honorary Consuls: Dennis Garrison

Another installment in our series profiling Lithuania's Honorary Consuls in the United States. Thanks to Aiste Zalepuga who conducted the interviews with each Consul and collected additional materials. 

Dennis Garrison is Lithuania's Honorary Consul in San Francisco. He received his undergraduate education from Illinois Wesleyan University and his graduate degree in business from Illinois State University. Formerly a Certified Public Accountant and college professor, he has worked in the  Sports Club business for the past 33 years.

San Francisco, California is the fourth most populous city in the state and the fourteenth most populous in the United States. Today, it ranks within the top 35 tourist destinations in the world. The large area around San Francisco is also the center of technological innovation and venture capital, including Silicon Valley, home to the world's largest technology companies and thousands of small startups. It is the leader in high-tech innovation and development, responsible for thirty-three percent of venture capital investment in the United States. Moreover, the surrounding area includes some of the world's most highly regarded universities, including Stanford and the University of California at Berkeley, both of which are renowned research centers, which produce highly qualified graduates in technology, medicine, law and business.

A moderately sized Lithuanian community also exists within Northern California, and as Lithuania's Honorary Consul to the region, it is Dennis Garrison's job to promote Lithuanian social and artistic events there. "Right now, we have a growing Saturday Lithuanian language club for children and adults," he informed us. "Opportunities for education, research, and employment are also outstanding. Certainly, this is the best area in the world for innovation in technology related fields. While opportunities for exporting Lithuanian products here are limited, the exchange of ideas and technologies for the development of new products and jobs in Lithuania are available."

Garrison first visited Lithuania in 2001 to assist in the development of the Forum Palace in Vilnius. While there, he traveled to a variety of schools in the country's rural areas and helped to establish summer programs for the children. "My wife and I have developed friendships with over twenty children that we stay in contact with and support whenever we can," he said. "We have hosted Lithuanian college students in our home and traveled to Lithuania often. We have friends in most major cities and many small towns."

Honorary Consul Dennis Garrison and wife, Sally, at a summer camp in Dubingiai, Lithuania

In San Francisco, he works to ensure proper representation of Lithuanian culture. As Honorary Consul, he is also a member of the Consular Corps. In other words, he is responsible for helping to support the Embassy in Washington, DC, the General Consuls in Chicago and New York, and the other Honorary Consuls in the United States, Mexico, and Canada. Often, Garrison finds himself as a liaison between Lithuanian government official and business delegations who visit San Francisco and the Silicon Valley. On a daily basis, his duties range from assisting Lithuanians with any passport issues they may encounter whilst in the United States to researching Americans' relatives and ancestors in and from Lithuania.  "Certainly, I also make an effort to recognize the accomplishments of Lithuanians in athletics, especially basketball," he adds.

Teaching Tolerance through English: Forging Friendships across Baltic Borders

U.S. Embassy Tallinn hosted its first “Teaching Tolerance through English” Camp from August 12-18, 2013. Twenty-five boys and girls aged 10 to 14 years from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania came together for one week to learn about diversity, how to counter bullying, and how to act as a positive force in their communities. While campers’ native languages were Estonian, Latvian, Lithuanian and Russian, all activities were conducted in English. This year’s was the third camp in a series in the Baltics, with the two previous having been held in Latvia.  

Lithuanian students teach fellow Estonian and Latvian campers about their culture

Five Lithuanian students—two fifth graders and three sixth graders—from Pumpenai Secondary School attended the event, along with Ms. Olga Daugene, who provided instruction on English as a Foreign Language. They, along with their peers from Latvia and Estonia, engaged in an interactive session with U.S. Ambassador to Estonia Jeffrey Levine, through which they gained an insight into American culture, even learning to make S’mores around a campfire.

Tolerating the Intolerable: Lessons Learned from Dr. David Frick's Lectures in Lithuania

Dr. David Frick with book Kith, Kin, and Neighbors

Last week, Dr. David Frick, a professor of History and Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of California Berkeley, visited Lithuania to deliver a series of lectures based on his book Kith, Kin, and Neighbors: Communities and Confessions in Seventeenth-Century Vilno.

Dr. Frick began his lecture, titled “Tolerating the Intolerable: Coexistence in Seventeenth-Century Vilnius” with the following address:

To say that early modern Vilnius was a multi-confessional city risks understating the variety of competing and overlapping demands that religions, cultures, languages, and ties of ethnicity made upon individual Vilnans; it also obscures the means by which co-existence in the city was made feasible.  In my comments today, I will attempt to locate Vilnius on the map of confessional Europe:  to assess the range of its multi-confessionalism; to reveal some of the manners and mechanisms its citizens developed for encouraging, facilitating, and sometimes imposing toleration among its inhabitants; and to place the city on a spectrum of the solutions found in contemporary European communities for addressing the problems that arose when members of more than one confession attempted to live in one city—from exclusion at one extreme to types of inclusion at the other.

In the course of an hour, he took me and the other audience members back to 1665, to a place known then as Vilno, a modestly-sized city populated by Poles, Lithuanians, Germans, Ruthenians, and Tatars (in addition to some numbers of Scots, Italians, and other immigrants). These people worshipped in 23 Catholic, nine Uniate, one Orthodox, one Calvinist and one Lutheran church, one chief synagogue, and one mosque; they spoke Polish, Ruthenian, German, Yiddish, Lithuanian, and some Tatar; and they prayed in Latin, Church Slavonic, Hebrew, Aramaic, and a little Arabic.

For me, and I’m sure for many of you reading this post as well, such a city is not unique. We, after all, live in a globalized society. But imagine yourself in 1665. For that matter, imagine yourself in a royal city in 1665. English Parliament was in the process of enacting the Five Mile Act, seeking to enforce conformity to the established Church of England. The Portuguese were battling Spain to retain their independence. In what is now present-day India, the Mughals were fighting the Maratha Empire for territorial gains. And yet, within all of this madness, there existed the city of Vilno.