Stone Street Interview: The McDuffie Project

What to say about Robert McDuffie?  How to introduce him?  Maybe better to introduce the interview.  I'll start by saying I didn't do a very good job with it.  The recording quality isn't terrific, a hilarious final sign-off from Mr. McDuffie was inadvertently edited out, while some of the other edits are confusing and don't give enough context for the conversation.  For my money, the questions aren't thought out enough to elicit the really complex connections and insights that one would want to discover along with one's interview subject.  And it's several months late--Mr. McDuffie (who, by the way, would want us to call him Bobby) came to us in Vilnius in mid-October.  All of that is my fault.  What can I say?  Mea culpa.

But, what I hope comes through anyway is the utter irrepressibility of the man, the sheer force of his experience, intelligence and humor.  The example: when my wife and I first conceived of the plan to bring McDuffie to Vilnius (after hearing him on NPR's Performance Today), he responded to our emailed invite with an email of his own: "Great!  The last time I was in Vilnius, I was 19 years old, touring the Soviet Union, and I was smuggling gold for Rostropovich!"  I said to my wife, we have to have this man here, and interview him for Stone Street.  Well, at least we did get that story out of him, and it is predictably hysterical.  Enjoy it here, or via the RSS feed to right of this post.  Please listen.  It's worth it.

For more on Mr. McDuffie, his very famous (and expensive) violin, the +Rome Chamber Music Festival , and the McDuffie Center for Strings at Mercer University, see Bobby's website here.

Stone Street is Back

After a regrettable hiatus of many months, the Stone Street podcast is back.  Check out the interview with Ambassador Robert M. Beecroft here, or click on the RSS feed to the right of this post.


Ambassador Beecroft has worked on virtually every major U.S. foreign policy question of the second half of the twentieth century. From the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) of the 1970s to Egypt-Israel relations, to the post-Warsaw Pact enlargement of NATO, to the Balkan wars of the 1990s, the Ambassador’s career encompasses some of the most complex global issues in history.  I caught up with him while he was in Vilnius as part of a Dept. of State inspection team conducting a review of the embassy.  One note: if you listen to the interview, you'll hear me referencing another interview he gave several years ago, in which he gives extraordinarily detailed accounts of the policies, events and personalities he's worked on, for and with over the years.  It's an extraordinary document, which you can read here.

Enjoy.

New Stone Street, Available Now

Just a note about the newest Stone Street: last week I spoke with some members of the Junior Professionals Program instituted by Invest Lithuania and the Lithuanian Ministry of Economics.  The program (known as JPP) brings young Lithuanians who've graduated from universities in North America, Europe and elsewhere, back to Vilnius to work in various ministries of the Lithuanian government for one year.  I met several of the program participants at an event in Vilnius during the summer, and was sufficiently impressed to invite some of them to a sort of panel discussion of their experiences prior to and at the outset of their year of government service.  The panel participants were +Paulius Vertelka, a recent graduate of the University of Illinois-Chicago, Gintarė Janulaitytė, who holds a master's degree from the University of Hawaii-Pacific, and +Milda Darguzaite, who lived in the U.S. for sixteen years before returning to Vilnius to work as a special adviser to the Minister of Economics, and who, in that capacity, essentially created the JPP program out of whole cloth.  All in all, an interviewer couldn't have asked for a funnier, more thoughtful, more exciting or dynamic panel.  Click here to listen or sign up for the Stone Street podcasts, or click to the right for an RSS feed of the show, and hear what the future sounds like.

Stone Street Conversation with Brent Glass

Just a note that, after an extended hiatus, Stone Street is back.  Last weekend we had the pleasure of spending some time with Dr. Brent Glsass, Director Emeritus of the +Smithsonian Museum of American History in Washington, D.C.  Dr. Glass was in Lithuania to discuss the challenges and opportunities faced by museums around the world in the 21st century.  After his final day of official visits, we had dinner with him in Vilnius, and let the recorder roll while we ate and talked.  The result is a little different from our earlier Stone Street Q and A sessions, but it should be a lot of fun.  As ever, subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, listen here, or click on the RSS feed to the right of this post.  Happy listening.

Stone Street interview with Mischa Iossel

Episode III of Stone Street available now.  In this episode I spoke to Mikhail Iossel, writer, professor of American literature, and founder of the Summer Literary Seminar series, which this year was held in Vilnius.  Professor Iossel was born in St. Petersburg (then Leningrad) and left the Soviet Union for Boston in 1986.  He later received a master's degree from the University of New Hampshire, and a Stegner fellowship from Standford.  He has taught at the University of Minnesota, NYU, and St. Lawrence College, and now teaches at Concordia University in Montreal.

So have a listen.  Professor Iossel has terrific stories and insights about his experiences which he shares in the free mode of a natural storyteller.  His memories are alternately powerful and hilarious (and occasionally both at the same time).  His book of short stories is titled, Every Hunter Wants to Know.

Stone Street

Now available, the first ever episode of Stone Street, the new series of podcasts on which I've started work here at Embassy Vilnius.  As the website says,

Every week, in its new series of podcasts called "Stone Street" the U.S. Embassy in Vilnius will explore life in Lithuania, America and the spaces in between through interviews with prominent and interesting people.

The first episode, at the link above, is an interview with Aistė Ptakauskė, a Lithuanian writer/translator/director/producer of novels, plays, screenplays, and television series.  Aistė is currently the head writer for the Lithuanian television production group Videometra.  She received a master's degree from the Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University, and was awarded a residency at the Banff International Literary Translation Center for the translation of the novel 'Beautiful Losers', by renowned singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen.

So far, in addition to the interview with Aistė, I've got two more of these interviews in the can (as they say), and am looking forward to as many more as we can possibly do.  Obviously they're aimed at Lithuanian, American, Eastern-European, Post-Soviet, etc. sorts of audiences, but I hope and think they'll be rich enough to be meaningful for any curious listener.  So please do subscribe to the podcasts if you're able, and enjoy.  Let us know what you think, and tell us about any technical issues you may have, in the comments section.  Happy listening.