Captain’s Log – Page 19

2.11

I’ve never really made New Year’s Resolutions because I know myself well enough to know that I would never actually have the discipline to carry out some radical new change in my standard operating procedure. But, this past year, 2.10, I achieved a radical new change in status: I am a college graduate and a married man. I thought that perhaps this should signify a change in the way I think about each new year.

For the past 18 consecutive years, my life has primarily been centred around one thing: school. Since I was five I have been in school every year for most of the year. Summer was the part of the year, like Christmas and Spring Break, that I wasn’t in school. I defined my life by my various scholastic incarcerations. This was true through homeschooling, a year abroad in Papua New Guinea, two years at Bible school in New York, and three years at college in Pennsylvania. This past September was the first September since I was five that I was not enrolled at any sort of academic institution.

One would think that a wedding day would be a defining, pivotal moment in their life (and in many ways, it is) but for me, it really wasn’t. My pivotal, life changing day was my graduation day. I had been hanging out with my girlfriend for three years, and had been practically living with my fiancee for a year, and then we got married and made it official and moved all the way in together, so for five years my wife was a constant part of my life even if she wasn’t my wife. Having Hannah around won’t ever change, and so, like having brothers and a sister I can’t ever get away from, Hannah is a part of normal life.

But school is not normal life, it is, in point of fact, quite abnormal, and for me, quite over. I plan on going to grad school at some point, but even if I do return to some sort of educational institute, it won’t be full time like it was before. I won’t live there; I won’t centre my whole life around it. It will become something I am doing, not something that I am.

And so, as I look outwards on the 6th of January in the year 2011, I feel out of place. This past September I was aware that my still enrolled friends were heading back to school and were hitting the books as hard as ever while I was out of the game. On my graduation day, and before, and after, many people asked me the third most hated question ever: “what are you going to do after you graduate?” (For the record, the other two most hated questions are: “What college will you go to after you graduate from high school?” and “What can you do with an English degree? Can you even get a job with one of those?” – the answer to the second is “No”.)

I knew what the right answer to the third most hated question was supposed to be: “I will get a job and become a happy, productive member of society” but my real answer was “Sleep. Lots of sleep.” I had been going to school for 18 years straight and the bottom line was exhaustion. I was very tired. I know that in the “real world” (whatever the hell that is) most people do not have the luxury of graduating and immediately falling into a sweet slumber. Most people have to take whatever job they can find, finagle, or steal and work hard to earn enough money to buy pizza, beer, and a monthly cell phone contract. Most people can’t sleep, unless they want to do it on the street in a cardboard box or something. For some reason, my situation allows me the luxury of taking the time off.

Six months Post Graduation, I am finally starting to feel a little of the weariness fade from my bones. I struggled until a few weeks ago with actually keeping to any consistent sleeping schedule. I would often stay up until 4am and sleep until noon or 1pm. But now I am actually in bed by 11pm and up by 0730. I would see my wife for only a few hours each evening between when she got home for work and when she went to bed. Now, I see her for those hours, fall asleep with her, and wake up with her. My wife-time has doubled (not really, but it feels like it).

And now I have about 9 hours during the day to fill. I could get a job, but honestly, I can’t face that prospect quite yet. I haven’t the mental energy or the psychological stamina. A job may be surmounting the horizon, but it is still many miles away.

But, I want to do something. I want to have some sort of structure to my day. Right now it looks like this:

Wake Up
See Wife Off to Work
Make Bed
Watch Colbert Report with Breakfast
Empty
Turn on Lights Around House
Welcome Wife Home
Make Dinner
Hang Out with Wife
Got to Bed

Rinse and Repeat

I want to turn that “Empty” part of my day into something, and be conscious about it. Sure, mostly I still struggle with staying awake all day long and fighting an overwhelming sense of fatigue, but sometimes I am fascinatingly lucid and I write blog posts like this one. So, with it being a new year and all, I want to (not make resolutions) set some goals for myself and blogging about them makes them more real to me. I think that my brother reads this blog and I know my wife does, but I imagine that some other people might, and in any case having the sense that other people read about what I say means that making such a decision is more binding than simply speaking into the empty air of my apartment.

[I just got distracted by this: http://www.filmschoolrejects.com/features/watch-scrats-continental-crack-up.php You can check it out if you promise to come back.]

Now that I have lost my audience, my goals for 2.11 are as follows:

1. Blog at least twice a week.

2. One blog must be a Star Wars: Deconstructed blog. These will be available here on my blog.

3. Write one poem a week. Learn and try new forms. These will be available here on my blog.

4. Take one creative picture a day, preferably with Instagram [link], an awesome creative picture taking app for my iPhone. These will be available on my flickr! [link] and on my twitter @PhilipJoelM

5. Write a publishable work, either memoir or short story. Submit for publishing.

6. Prepare for grad school (this might actually entail applying).

They aren’t many, but they are good, and (for the most part) are centred around what I put myself into massive debt to learn: writing. It figures that whatever I do with my life ought to include that in some aspect or other.

So, I am hereby resolved. I do hope it works out.

Roadtrip

I have come a long way to be in Cleveland for the game tonight: 488 miles from Verona, Wisconsin, through Chicago, Illinois, past South Bend, Indiana, and finally to Strongsville, Ohio, the suburb where my grandmother lives in her condo on a quiet street. In about half an hour I will drive to downtown Cleveland, and hopefully get to watch batting practice.

I left Verona around 8 am, and about two hours later I was driving in heavy traffic through Chicago. My brother has a route that will take him around Chicago, thereby saving time, but I didn’t follow those directions, and am glad I didn’t, because I got to see US Cellular Field, the home of the White Sox. It rose high above the highway, steel girders and concrete frame gleaming in the morning sun. I resisted the urge to take the exit and stop and marvel at the stadium’s wonder.

But the ballpark stood empty, as the White Sox were already in Cleveland, preparing for last night’s game, so I passed it by. I always feel there is something sad about an empty ballpark, a structure built for the sole purpose of housing its fans.

All in all, the trip was smooth and uneventful. I cruised into Strongsville around five o’clock.

During the trip, I thought about how much travel a baseball team endures during the course of the season. I hope they get frequent flyer miles, for when they retire, they could fly almost anywhere for free on what they must accumulate. In the old days, a team would drive by bus, back when there were few teams, and they were close, and I am sure they still do to play their geographic rivals, but now in 2010 with teams spread from Seattle to Oakland to Arlington to Tampa Bay to Kansas City to Boston teams fly to many of their destinations.

So as I traveled, I thought of the Life of a baseball player that centers around two things: the game, and the road. That long eternal road, and a new game each evening (or afternoon). There must be comfort in all the old familiar places on the road, and in the renewal that comes from a brand new start after each nine inning battle.

Or maybe I am just an old romantic in a new era of baseball.

The Pre-Game Show

I am about to embark on an historic journey….what am I thinking? I almost forgot to bring extra plutonium!

Actually, I won’t need plutonium where I am going, which isn’t Hill Valley, 1955, but rather Cleveland, Ohio. Earlier this year I applied on Indians.com to receive an invitation to the Tribe Social Deck of Progressive Field, the home of the Cleveland Indians baseball team. I never figured that I would actually be the recipient of such an invitation, and had actually mostly forgotten about it when, a few weeks ago, I received an email asking if I would like to attend the August 31st game and watch the Indians host division rivals the Chicago White Sox. With no hesitation, after asking my wife’s permission, I said yes.

As anyone who knows me can tell you, I am a die- hard Indians fan and a life-long lover of baseball. I watch every game that I can, and shout at the TV when the Indians play like Little Leaguers, and leap for joy when they manage to do the impossible. I watched 13 years ago when they almost won the World Series against the Florida Marlins, and I watched 15 years ago when they lost the World Series to the Atlanta Braves. My heart has been broken many times, but I cannot help but cheer for them.

Despite my love of the game, and my passion to watch the Indians, I have only attended one game at their ballpark, at the time, Jacob’s Field. It was the inaugural season for the new stadium, the 1994 season which will always be remembered as the year there was no World Series because of a player’s strike. I don’t remember much about the experience: I was only 7 at the time, but I do remember going with my mother, my uncle (who lives near Cleveland and who we were visiting at the time) and a brother of mine (though I am unsure which). I remember drinking a Coke out of a large cup, and knowing that below me in right field was the legend Kirby Puckett. Because of that detail I know the Indians were hosting the Minnesota Twins. It must have been early July, and it was a day game. I think.

Now I am 23, and can’t wait to hit the road to once again see the Indians play in their coliseum. Two of the players that were on that field 16 years ago, somewhat amazingly, will be again. Sandy Alomar, Jr was the Indians catcher that day, and Omar Vizquel was their shortstop. On Tuesday, the day I will be in the park, Alomar will be standing behind first base, coaching for the Indians, and Vizquel might be at third base for the White Sox (he only plays occasionally). This time I will be in left field, and have a much better grasp on what is happening. There is an electric feeling in my heart, an excitement that builds.

I know that right now the Indians hold the dubious honor of being the 3rd worst team in the American League, and that they will likely to lose, if they don’t win. I know that the stands around me will probably be mostly empty in a city that is weary of losing seasons and injuries to star players, but for me, I will be channeling the spirit of Ray Kinsella, who built a left field in a corn field, and watched Shoeless Joe when no one else cared, or thought him a fool. The breath of the game will catch me up, and I will be lost in baseball reverie. (It seems like fate, too, that Shoeless played for both the Indians and the White Sox, and was the ghost in the cornfield and that the White Sox will be in town.)

Or, somewhat less melodramatically, I will enjoy a night out at the ole ballpark, watching a team and a game that I love.

Time to Think

Aaaah. Room to stretch. I am writing this post from the Messiah College campus on my iMac, all of the rest having been written on my iPad, and I can tell you, it is nice to get a little room to maneuver. Don’t get me wrong, I love the iPad, and am amazed that I have lived with it as my only link to the world wide web for so long without going mad, but I own a 21″ iMac for a reason. More on that on Monday.

I have been graduated for all of twelve days, and after moving, and cleaning the old apartment, I have been sitting around the new apartment.

My Jeep has a weird issue that restricts me from driving it above 40 mph, safely that is, and Hannah takes the car into work, so I can’t really go anywhere. This being central Pennsylvania, the drivers really hate it when you drive the speed limit, much less 10 mph slower than the posted limit, and this being central Pennsylvania, everything is distressingly out of walking distance. No, really, I would walk to the grocery store out of sheer boredom, but I draw the line at anything over 8 miles. Besides, this walking would be along the roads where the maniacs drive, and that doesn’t make me feel any safer than driving my Jeep does. So, I sit around the apartment.

I could get a job, maybe, though I have tried and haven’t been successful so far (apart from not having a safe car to drive) but my wife might be hired for a job that would require us to move to Wisconsin, and it isn’t fair to an employer to get a job and quit a week and a half later. So, for the moment, I sit around the apartment.

While I do, I watch baseball, blog a bit, but mostly think. I think about my life, and all that I have accomplished: graduating from high school, Bible school, and college; dating and marrying a wonderful woman; making a few friends; and, um, I am sure other things. If I were honest, or depressed, I would say that it doesn’t feel like I have really done any of those things. Sure, I have a woman who sleeps in my (our) bed now, and I guess in a few weeks Messiah College will mail me a diploma, but if I went by feelings, as far as I can tell I feel like I did when I was 15, sitting around at home playing Need for Speed on my computer.

Maybe that is because I sit around by myself most of the day. I don’t know, because I have no basis for comparison, not having ever had a full time, or part time, job that required me to be outside of the house. I honestly don’t know what kind of job would appeal to me, though the idea of lifting heavy things or working at McDonald’s turns my stomach. If it were up to me, and money didn’t matter, I would rather just hang out with my wife and create. Create writing, create art, create music, create photography…just create. Being alone for a large part of the day saps my energy and my creative momentum. Writing this blog takes most of what I do have. That might astound me, except for the observation that my most highly creative times in the past three years have come right after my favorite English classes.

Where do I go from here? I am not really sure. For the time being, I have to wait anyway to see what happens with my wife’s job/no job thing. On the complete other side of things, the past five years of college have worn me out more than I can say, so it is really nice to have no real demands on my energy besides dishes and making the bed.

Forgive my personal ramblings, dear readers, but that is what Thursday is about on this blog, and it is mildly therapeutic for me to write this stuff. Tomorrow is baseball day, and I have a feeling it may be a bit of a rant. The Indians haven’t been playing too well as of late.

Don’t forget to email me questions, musings, or random thoughts for Tuesday’s Q&A blog, or just to say hi.

Peace.

A Brief History

For most of my life, I have been a PC guy, that is, after my Commondore 64 days. I was there for the the very beginning of Microsoft Windows 3.1. I spent hours being amazed at their killer program, Paint, and the thrilling games Minesweeper and Solitaire. And then came the fully featured Windows 95 which became 98, ME, and 2000 before finally being updated for real in XP which was the last Windows OS I actually used for any length of time.

My paternal grandfather became my patron saint of computers through the evolution of the home PC, and the rise of the Internet. He tended to upgrade his system fairly often, and when he did he would pass his old computers onto my family. My older brother Joe learned more about the inner workings of computers, but I jumped right into the mode of the everyday consumer user. I remember logging onto the very first Lego.com and StarWars.com, back in the day when the Internet was still a novelty. I loved games, playing DOS favorites Commander Keen and One Must Fall, and the very first Need For Speed game that launched their rise to fame: Hot Pursuit.

While I was such a PC user, let’s be clear, I was never a PC fanboy, I was aware of the other side of computing: the Apple computer. Some friends of my parents were Mac users from beginning, and whenever we visited for dinner, they would invariably stay late talking, and I would get bored and be allowed to play Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego on the Mac.

Eventually though, through the mid to late 90s, Apple started to make their rise to dominance, which they are continuing through today, and I started to hear a lot more about them on a regular basis. I was so taken with them, that by the time I contemplated my very first computer purchase, I was dead set on buying an Apple computer. I hadn’t used one in years, and only knew about them by reputation, but that reputation was strong enough to convince me to spend three times what I knew I could spend on a PC.

My family was about to move to Papua New Guinea for mission work, and I didn’t want to lug my old beige tower and huge CRT monitor across the world. Besides, I knew I would soon be starting college, and wanted a smaller computer to take with me. So I sold my PC, and bought a 2004 generation Apple iBook.

Since that time I have owned another older iBook (a G3), one of the first Intel iMacs, a Macbook, and now currently use an Aluminum iMac and an iPad. My only prenuptial agreement with my wife was that she ditch her Toshiba laptop, and I bought her a Macbook Air. I will never go back to PCs, and that decision runs deeper than a Mac fanboy fascination.

I really believe that Apple will be the computer of the future. Computers began as a digitization of two things: math and file storage. Way back to the UNIAC and ENIAC days, computers were glorified building sized calculators. By the time Microsoft came along, computers were glorified typewriters that also stored all your documents. That is why Windows Explorer is a file manager. Programs, or applications (games, picture editors, and other things) really were sort of an afterthought. People began to see the potential of computers, and started to write more sophisticated programs for them to run. But still, computers were primarily file cabinets.

Once the Internet went mainstream and Mac rose from the ashes, Apple turned the computer into a machine that was about the program, not the files. In other words, it wasn’t that you could also store your pictures in a digital format on your computer, but it was that your computer could show you pictures in a way never before thought possible. Music on the computer wasn’t just an alternative to a CD player, but a whole new way to play music. And movies, and so on. While the PC could do all those things, the Mac was built from the ground up to be all about those things.

Mac took the daily life things, and exploded them. My iBook was my first step into the larger world of computers that were not machines to be used, but were extensions of myself, in the same way that clothing is not just something humans wear, but part of their being.

To be continued….

Back Up and Running

Hello, readers.

After several months of unintentional hiatus, my blog is back! I would like to welcome any new readers that I have solicited.

If you would like to be more active, please register and you will be able to comment, and if you were to contact me, there might even be the possibility of a guest post. Also, if you are good with editing, and would like to help, I might distribute a few editing privileges.

On Saturday past, I graduated from Messiah College, the liberal arts college in small town Pennsylvania that I have been attending for the past three years. I graduated cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts in English.

I have also recently moved into a splendid little apartment, one with windows and a tall airy ceiling, and I feel like my life is moving forward. However, I have been unable to find a job, but for the moment, I am very glad that I haven’t. The past few years have been really tough for me, and I am physically exhausted from the past few days of graduating-moving-cleaning and am mentally exhausted from all the college.

But, while I am weary, I am also excited for the future. Part of that future is a commitment to regular blogging, something I really enjoy but, as a college student with a myriad of other things to write, never really had the time to do. Now that I am free I want to write something every day, for the discipline in writing and for the joy of sharing my thoughts.

I have devised a simple schedule of one topic per day, to help me plan and keep writing, and also to make sure things stay easy to follow for my readers. The schedule, tentatively, is as follows:

Monday is iGeek, and I will post about my iPad, Apple, and other tech things which excite me.

Tuesday will be a double post day. I will start with Q&A. If you have a question, query, or wondering that you want me to write about, email me, and I will select one and write about it. I will finish with a poem. I consider myself to be a poet, and will write, or revise, a new poem every Tuesday.

Wednesday is about literature and language. iRead day will be the day I disseminate and parse through whichever book(s) I am currently reading. Nothing too formal or academic, just my thoughts based upon my college degree.

Thursday will be my iLife day, the post being about myself, and my life, and something interesting or significant that occurred during my week.

Friday, always a fun day, will be about baseball. I love the sport, and watch every game that I can. I am a die-hard Cleveland Indians fan, and will be till the day I die. (Today’s game vs the Kansas City Royals starts soon!) I have also become a Philadelphia Phillies fan, but will always love the Tribe first and most. Anyway, Friday I will talk all about baseball.

Saturday and Sunday I will take off, though there maybe eventual guest posts if anyone wants to contribute to my blog.

Anyway, sounds like a plan, and I hope that you can enjoy the experience.

Follow me on Twitter @PhilipJoelM, and email me stormrider@wordflood.net.

Be seeing you!

Ca$h for Clunker$ is Not for Me

Being in the middle of the complex process involved in purchasing a vehicle, I feel I can now, at least a little bit, comment on the government’s Cash for Clunkers program.

First, and my biggest problem with the program, is that in order to get a credit for your clunker you must purchase a NEW car. USED cars do not apply. Now, I understand that the idea is to get rid of older, less fuel efficient and more pollutive cars, but it seems that the program considers any car manufactured before 2009 to be a clunker. I am a college student, and cannot afford both tuition and car payments on a new car. I can only afford to purchase a used car outright, and hopefully for only a few thousand dollars. However, given that most new cars lose several thousand dollars in value as soon as you drive it off the lot, that usually makes them cheaper alternatives to purchase under the moniker “used” than would be a “new” car. As far as I know, we have been making relatively fuel efficient and cleaner cars since the turn of the millennium. What I really want to know is this: why can I not trade in my 1995 “clunker” (which I can afford) and purchase a used car manufactured after the year 2000?

In particular, I have been searching for a Jeep to purchase. My father owned a Wrangler at one point, and I have very nostalgic feelings about Jeeps. Furthermore, I don’t intend to drive my Jeep farther than six miles a day, simply needing transport back and forth to college for classes, and occasionally to the local Giant store for groceries, so fuel efficiency isn’t a terribly big deal to me. However, I have found that most used Jeeps made before 2000 are within my price range of $3500, that is, if you can find someone willing to part with their Jeep. Most of these Jeeps are 87-91’s, which, unfortunately, is within the Cash for Clunkers timeframe. If any of these owners wish to trade in their old Jeeps for credit towards a new one, my available pool evaporates. Unfortunately, my troubles are not over. Those Jeeps that are made after about 1998 that are available on the used car circuit are likely to still be in condition and mileage to make them priced around $6-7000, which is almost twice what I can afford, that is if they are being sold at all, because they are likely to be more fuel efficient, and still owned by somebody because they aren’t clunkers, just a few years old.

Here I come to my point: if the Cash for Clunkers program applied to used cars manufactured after 2000, I could indeed afford a used 2001 Jeep for $7000 because the program would net me at least $3500, which combined with my own budget would allow me to get a vastly cleaner and more fuel efficient Jeep, but in my price range. And isn’t that the point? Instead of driving a 1995, or worse, a 1988 Jeep, I would have one at least 15 years newer, but without having to pay for a brand new vehicle.

In general, I like the idea of an incentive to help people decide to drive cars better for the environment and that conserve fossil fuel usage, but that doesn’t demand the purchase of something new, or the total destruction of the old.

However, I am very glad to have found, and be taking possession of this afternoon, a 1995 Jeep Grand Cherokee that has a new engine and transmission and will (hopefully) last me a few years until I can trade it in for perhaps a post-2000 Jeep, which by that time will be old enough to fall within my budget, that is, if they haven’t all been wantonly destroyed.

And, let’s say nothing of my fiancee’s 1992 Toyota Camry which is still getting around 29 mpg, which isn’t the best, but is still twice what “clunkers” must be under in order to qualify for the upper tier of credit ($4500). Why destroy such a fuel efficient and affordable car (she got hers used for $2300)?

I just simply do not understand destroying valuable vehicles, and in the process, an entire segment of the economy, for as we all know the Used Car market is an old and honored American tradition. We may be cleaning up the air, or at least, not polluting if further, but who will care if they are out of work or unable to afford transportation?

A New Step

Hello There!

Last week I took a new, rather large, step in my life: I put down a security deposit on a small apartment. This will be my first independent dwelling place, and I am very excited (though not as excited as my fiancee…more on that later).

It is a one bedroom apartment, actually located beneath a large house about 2.5 miles from the campus of Messiah College. It has a rather large bathroom (and it is private!! which, after 4 years of sharing a bathroom with college guys, is a Really Big Deal) and a large, spacious kitchen. The bedroom is about average sized, and the living room is slightly small, and all-in-all it is a terrific place to live.

I will move in around the 15th of May, and live there for year. Hannah, my fiancee, will move in the middle of December, but won’t start living there until we get married January 3, 2010. This would be why she is soo excited! Hannah is realizing that this will be our first “home” together, and where we will spend the first 5 months of our married lives. She literally bounced all the way home, and couldn’t keep a large smile off her face. It was very cute!

The grounds around the house are large and beautiful, with two weeping willow trees and many shrubs and flowers. A small creek runs along the edge of the property. Next to my apartment is a recreation room, which my landlords have graciously allowed me access to, which includes a pool table which is also a table tennis table, and a treadmill for exercising. This is a huge plus.

Also, this apartment is at a fair price, especially considering that it includes utilities, cable television, and internet access.

I am very excited, and cannot wait to move it. I praise my Father God for his provision and blessing.

This will be another big step for me, and I feel ready to make it!

The Rains of Spring

Hello readers!

It has been awhile since I have posted on this blog, and I therefore apologize. Ironically, I spend alot of my time these days writing, but writing poems for my Workshop class, and writing essays for my Advanced writing class, and writing reports for my Ethics classes, and not writing insightful blog posts.

Lately, spring has been sluggishly arriving to central PA, with a few warm and sunny days interspersed with many rainy and overcast cool ones. I don’t mind, I enjoy rain, both literally and physically, but also metaphorically and spiritually. The rains outside my window run off the top of my dorm, down my window pane, and out across the brick and concrete of the campus. It trickles across the branches and drops off the leaves and sparkles on the green green grass. It washes clean the grime and dust that collects across our hives of rooms and classes.

Last night, I experienced a rain of a different sort: I had a good cry. I consider myself to be a real man and crying isn’t something that I do often, but once in a while some things just get to an overwhelming point. Hannah came by, and we sat in the room and cried together. After a bit of time passed, I needed to hear a song that often encourages my heart, and one that I had not played in a long time: Ready for the Storm by the late great Rich Mullins. The song talks about a lonely sailor at sea during a storm, desperately following the dim light of a lighthouse, and finding out that, after the storm, he was near to shore and safe the entire night, and had “no reasons to be frightened.” After that, I listened to a great many of Rich’s songs. After about an hour, my heart was uplifted, and I felt cleansed and refreshed.

Rich Mullins, known by many as a “ragamuffin” (n: person who is poor, tattered), wandered around most of his life, and sang about the trials of life while praising God through strange Scriptural references. He was on the outside, the fringe, and the edges of popular Christian thought, but he really had a notion of what it meant to follow God and really serve him.

Today, I actually spent most of the day sleeping. I think my body and mind got so weary that I needed to recharge. And it was raining again, and was just one of those days that want to curl up next to a fire and read. I am thankful for the opportunity to slow down and renew.

I feel like a ragamuffin, wandering about and working hard to understand life, God, and the universe. Most days I can’t explain my faith, even to myself, but I do know that God is worth following, in spite of my doubts and confusions. Some days, I enjoy a nice rain shower to wash the stress away, and make things new, clean, and young: like a spring time that creeps upon a wearied winter world.

Uniquely Lithuanian

When one first encounters Lithuania, the most striking feature for many is the language. It has its own melody, a cadence that is mesmerizing. Life here is the same way: melodic and rapturous; but this isn’t something that you can see, that is obvious, it is an undercurrent, that comes at you from behind and sweeps you along. Suddenly, you realize that you are in Lithuania, and it is amazing. But this culture did not appear, or gradually evolve: it was fought for, and forcibly built over one thousand years of history, occupation, oppression, revolution, and finally freedom.

When the Roman Empire spanned the breadth of the Mediterranean and further, Lithuania was there, though not in a strictly national form. The loose Baltic tribes that would become this amazing nation mined a rare golden substance, and traded it with other “barbarian” tribes, who in turn, carried this strange jewel to the centers of Rome along what was know as the “Amber Road.”

At the turn of the first millennium these amber traders were immortalized forever, this time as a nation called Lithuania, for in 1009 a brief entry in a German manuscript notes that the first person who tried to bring the growing religion of Christianity to the pagans of Lithuania was killed in the attempt. Lithuania would be the last European nation to adopt Christianity, desiring to remain free, even from the religion of their neighbors. Russian manuscripts from the next 100 years make mention of Lithuania, usually to note battles fought with the Lithuanians. Ironically, the Russians should have listened to what was already evident: Lithuanians do not take to being ruled by foreign powers.

By 1253 a man by the name of Mindaugus unified the loose Baltic peoples into the State of Lithuania and he was crowned king of the Lithuanians. Lithuania grew until Vytautas the Great came to power and instituted a rule that encompassed Belarus, Ukraine, and parts of Poland and Russia, but the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was not to last. By the 1400’s Lithuania as a nation was starting to break apart, and under threat of a growing Russia, they formed a union with Poland in 1569. This lasted for almost 200 years until 1795 when Russia grew to enormous size and swallowed Poland and 90% of the land that was Lithuania. They would not be free again until 1918 when Lithuania would declare its independence from the Russian Empire.

Even though the political nation was under much duress and change during the latter half of the first millennium, the culture was stronger than before. In 1547 the first book, a catechism, was published in Lithuania. Books would become a unique feature of the culture, and a sign of rebellion, once Lithuania fell under the control of Russia. By 1865 there was an underground publishing movement that printed books by the thousands and smuggled them throughout Lithuania. The Russians had forced the populace to learn Russian, and only allowed Russian to be printed, but these illegal book makers preserved the language, and through it, the culture of Lithuania in a time of oppression. Fascinatingly enough, the majority of those involved in this process were ordinary peasants, and not intellectuals. The common people of Lithuania fought a revolution, not with swords and bullets, but with culture and literature.

For forty years Lithuania struggled to maintain itself, and in 1940 a new Russia, the Soviet Union, occupied Lithuania. Utilizing their self-reliance and deep commitment already learned under hardship, the Lithuanians maintained their culture and endured. From the 1970s and beyond, a small cultural revolution was being fought, again, mostly through culture: music, films, and literature. The Soviets were cruel, and ruthless, but they could not conquerer, only occupy, and when, in 1991, the Iron Curtain shattered, Lithuanians were there to sweep away the pieces and found a new Lithuania for the second millennium.

Since March 11, 1991 Lithuania has been free, joining the European Union and NATO of a free will, and in 2009, on the 1000 year anniversary of their first mention, they will become the cultural centre of a unified Europe. Surely this is a moving tribute to the long standing Lithuania that refused to die.

Throughout their history, Lithuanians have been set apart by fierce independence as a nation, and unyielding devotion to language and literature as a people, building from that a culture truly unique.