Autumn in the Middle West of the United States

I had cause recently, to look at the weather forecast for my home city of Lincoln, Nebraska (though I'd do it without cause as well; Midwesterners are like that about weather).  Supposed to be uncommonly warm, hot even, into next week, the first week of October.  As a general rule, early October can be counted on to bring unmistakably autumnal weather to the northern great planes, although since my undergraduate days some fifteen years ago, it seems to be staying hotter longer.  Still, Lincoln does tend to get the cool mornings and evenings and the dry sunshine of fall by this time of year irrespective of daytime highs.  And while weather of almost any sort can be a powerful evocator, I think it's autumn in the midwest (however warm) that will always break my heart.  The smells, or actually the lack of them, the light, the feel of the air, the early darkness, the ancient rhythms of the harvest, playoff baseball, pumpkins, apples, brown grass, firewood, silence.  Autumn in the midwest was always the time when I wanted to fit in, when I looked around me and thought, yes, I want to be a part of this, I want to try.  But of course, I never found a way.  Brown grass and apples happen everywhere in autumn, but there's a particular quality to it all in the Midwest, owing to the sparseness and openness of the land, and it's that quality which, no matter where I am in the world, will always remind me of what I wanted to keep and couldn't.

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, Pt. II

The second installment of Stone Street is now available.  For this hour I spoke with Jeannine Oppewall, the Oscar-nominated production designer of such films as The Bridges of Madison County, L.A. Confidential, Catch Me if You Can, and Seabiscuit.  Jeanine is a wise, wise woman who has spent an amazing life thinking seriously about big questions, and I only hope our interview here offers some sense of her great insight, wit and passion.  Enjoy.

Also, we think we've gotten a few things ironed out re: subscribing to the podcast via iTunes, so if you were frustrated in your attempts to sign up the first time, do give it another go.

In our next Stone Street podcast, I'll talk with Mikhail Iossel, founder of the Summer Literary Seminar series, currently taking place in Vilnius, about language, literature, and leaving St. Petersburg in the 80s.

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.

Common Problems Associated with Having a Heart

 
Yesterday the US Under-17 boys basketball team, in town to compete in the U17 world championships, visited an orphanage in Kaunas, and I was fortunate to be able to tag along as an extra photographer and minder from the embassy community.  It was a beautiful event.  The American guys were friendly, funny, patient, generous, thoughtful, and the Lithuanian kids, shy at first, eventually lit up like flood lights.  The thing that stays with me though, is what one might call the American guys' honesty.  What do I mean?  I mean that in their natural teenage indifference, I think the guys on the team intuited something that's easy for those of us with overdeveloped senses of empathy and other such molten emotions to run right by: the fact that these orphan kids were more kids than orphans.  Put another way, the American kids didn't care that the Lithuanian kids were orphans.  They cared that they were kids.  And what do kids do?  They goof off with round rubber spheres.  They don't need to tell themselves stories about themselves to do it.  They just play.  This is a blessing.  Because for all the adults, it's maybe a little too easy to look at the orphan kids and see nothing but heartbreak.  (One of the coaches asked if the kids at the orphanage had mostly lost parents to accidents or illnesses or some such; the answer was no, they were mostly just abandoned--my God, what a brutal, unbearable word!  Abandoned!)  To view the kids this way, though, obviously denies them the full measure of respect due them as individual humans.  They don't want to be orphans, they want to be people.  To hell with our pity and clichés.  True, one or two of the tricky, manipulative ones (let's say 'opportunistic') might have caught on that he or she can milk the whole poor orphan thing for some pretty sweet goodies, but even such conniving is a sign of a unique mind at work.  More power to it, I say.

And so here's to the American guys who didn't prejudge, or assume really anything, who just played, and thereby let the Lithuanian kids develop more fully into their own personalities and roles: leaders, observers, hustlers, doubters, clowns, stars.

As for me, I'm such a putz--I stood there with tears in my eyes, wearing my sunglasses the whole time so nobody would know.