Back in 2008, I edited the revised and expanded translation of Uldis Ģērmanis’ legendary history of Latvia, “The Latvian Saga”. Since Ģērmanis had written the book in 1959 from Sweden and the story stopped with the Soviet occupation of Latvia during World War II, I wrote several additional chapters for this new edition to bring the history up to date.

It’s time to rename Artifical Intelligence

Although AI is now a common part of our high tech lexicon, I have a problem with its semantical origins. As the European Union and national governments undertake complex debates about the legal, political, and ethical status of things containing AI, I think the source of this acronym – Artificial Intelligence – is fundamentally misleading.

First, here are the common definitions of these two words:

Intelligence = “the ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills”
Artificial = “made or produced by human beings, rather than occurring naturally.”

According to these definitions, if intelligence is produced by human beings, it must be artificial. Thus, distinguishing between Human Intelligence and Artificial Intelligence is misleading. Both are a product of the human mind.

Perhaps the problem lies with the above definition of artificial. It separates human beings from the natural world, i.e. if something is made by humans it doesn’t occur naturally. But humans are a part of the natural world. We are flesh and blood animals, subject to all the same laws of nature that apply to lions, bees, and trees.

On a practical, purely functional level, ‘artificial’ is easy to understand. We all know the difference between a real hand and an artificial hand, real sugar and artificial sugar, real flowers and artificial flowers, etc. These are all physical objects that can be seen and touched and tasted. Common sense tells us the difference between real and artificial. But intelligence is an abstract concept.

Juval Noah Harari says that man is distinguished from other animals because we make up words for things that don’t exist in nature. These are abstract concepts. We have no trouble agreeing on the meaning of words that refer to palpable physical objects: a tree, a rock, a lion, a bird. But we also have words that apply to things you cannot see, touch, smell, or hear: justice, freedom, empathy, and yes, intelligence.

Language is only necessary between two or more people. An isolated, solipsistic hermit doesn’t need words to deal with his physical environment. However, when two or more people choose to live, work, hunt, and survive together, they need words to communicate. Words for physical objects are easy to agree on. But when it comes to abstract concepts, like justice or love, each person develops an image and meaning in their own head and tries to match it with what another person understands by those words. But we cannot get into another person’s head. We assume we share an understanding and maybe come close, but we never know for sure. The concept of love in one person’s head can be very different from that in another’s.

Over time we have developed an elaborate and complex system for defining words, based on common usage, accepted definitions, and socially agreed upon standards. But none of these are absolute. None of it exists outside the individual human mind, or the collective human mind we call society. Abstract entities like love, justice, freedom, and beauty don’t exist in the natural world. Other animals can’t see them. They exist only in the minds of humans. And because we each understand these abstractions differently, we debate their meanings. We have even gone to war over differences in our definitions of these concepts. (Religious schisms, which have led to the slaughter of heretics on both sides, often arise over the definition of one word.)

Intelligence too is an abstract concept. We can argue endlessly about what it means and how we recognize and define it. But it’s all in our heads. It’s human-made. And according to the above definition, anything that is human-made, and doesn’t occur in the ‘natural’ world is artificial.

Something is wrong here. I think it’s the definition of ‘artificial’. Everything, including humans and what they produce, are a part of the natural world. It can’t be otherwise. (Unless, of course, you want to bring in the supernatural, but that’s another topic.) But if you discard the word artificial and narrow it down to “made by humans”, you still have a problem. What we think of as intelligence – the aquisition and application of knowledge – is a human activity. It’s a human product. And it remains a human product whether you store it in your flesh and blood brain, or program it into an algorithim trapped in a silicon chip.

Either all intelligence is artificial, or none of it is. It’s time to put our minds to rethinking how we describe what we know.

Since AI has become a part of our accepted lexicon, perhaps we can resolve this problem by retaining the familiar acronym, but changing what it refers to. Two possibilities come to mind. Augmented Intelligence, or Autonomous Intelligence.

“Augmented” refers to something that has been made greater in value or size. A computer, silicon chip, or algorithm that can access, retain, and process more data than the average human mind could be called augmented. It knows and works with more.

“Autonomous” is sometimes defined as “having the freedom to act independently.” An algorithm built into a program is designed to perform its functions independently. You create it, kick start it, and it goes off on its own. One can argue that it isn’t totally independent because it is constrained by the program that created it. Nevertheless, once it begins to function, it does so independent of the humans who created it.

Perhaps there are other terms that can be used. I’m sure many will think of them. They may be better or more precise than my suggestions. But I offer them as a starting point for a discussion which I think will be necessary if we hope to get a handle on the legal, practical, or ethical implications and applications of AI.

One of the ironies of globalization (the natural phenomenon, not the ideology) is that many who seemingly oppose it are themselves inadvertently furthering it.

Since the advent of the Westphalian nation state it has been a mantra of traditional statesmanship that “we don‘t comment on or interfere in another country‘s internal affairs.” Interference, of course happens anyway, but until recently those in power reserved this for clandestine activities while publicly pronouncing their respect for the sacred sovereignty and territorial integrity of their global neighbors. We all wink and look the other way.

Not anymore. Since 2016 some of the most outspoken economic nationalists, anti-federalists, and anti-globalists have openly, actively, and brazenly interjected themselves into the politics of other countries. Thanks to Steve Bannon, a US President has proudly proclaimed his support for the Brexiteers in the UK‘s great domestic debate and had no qualms about identifying his favorite politicians in Britain‘s and Israel‘s recent selection of prime ministers. To return the favor, British politicians like Nigel Farage have joyfully expressed their preferences in a US presidential election. 

It comes as no surprise that former, still unreformed imperialist states like Russia actively pursue strategies to influence elections in other countries, especially real (but fragile) democracies. It‘s no secret that Russian money has funded Euro-sceptic political parties across Europe, influencing domestic elections as well as that of the European Parliament.   

But it‘s not just Russia. Many other sovereign states had a stake in the outcome of the recent US elections, be it to protect energy interests, further foreign policy priorities or spread ideological preferences. The extent to which they may have directly funded and supported individual US politicians is not yet fully known, but the evidence is growing. For example, according to a recent US House Oversight Committee finding, the United Arab Emirates helped write an ‘America First’ energy policy campaign speech for presidential candidate Donald Trump. 

When Robert Mueller was asked by a US Congressman if the exchange of information between Russian oligarchs and US election strategists was becoming typical for political campaigns, Mueller bluntly answered “I hope this is not the new normal, but I fear it is.”

What exactly is The New Normal? It‘s not totally clear yet, but the outlines are coming into view. Unilateralism is merging with multilateralism and vice versa.

On the one hand, anti-globalists disdain organizations like the UN and EU because they inhibit national sovereignty. Yet the same anti-interference advocates have no qualms about openly engaging in the policies and election campaigns of other countries. Your country is not only your business, it‘s our business too. 

Traditional statesmen of the old school continue to insist that Brexit is a decision for the British people to decide. But Phil Bryant, the Republican Governer of Mississippi recently spoke at a fundraiser for a new US-based organization called “World4Brexit”. Peggy Grande, Chair of W4B proudly stated, “We are here to support the democratic vote of the British people – they voted to leave the European Union and we want to make this happen.”

Unlike those Americans who welcome the breakup of the European Union as such, many potential ‘leavers’ within EU countries have backed away from their own Brexits and focused their guns on the creeping federalization of the EU. Here, the campaign to ‘Euro-globalize’ EU elections in 28 member states has already begun.

For example, Europeans have established many pan-European parties, some of which already function as European Parliament party groups in Brussels. Organizations like Volt want to go even further in the European Parliament elections and replace national party lists with pan-European candidate lists. Instead of voting for local parties and candidates from their own country, every European citizen would be choosing candidates from across the continent in all 28 countries. 

So far, these attempts at denationalizing the EU parliamentary elections have been rejected. But the longterm goal is clear: allow politicians, parties, and political strategists from one country to directly engage in the national elections of another. Achieve that at the European Parliament level and the slippery slope to ‘multi-national’ national elections gets liberally lubricated.

Some fear that globalization will concentrate power in capitals like Brussels, Beijing, or Washington, D.C. But when the leaders of one country pick favorites for leading other countries, they are globalizing world politics in a different way.

Attempts to influence the politics of other countries are not just the work of spycraft. It‘s a lucrative – and legal – business. Professional consultants, many from the US, are already collecting big fees for advising politicians in other countries. (In my country of Latvia, a former Republican campaign strategist openly advised a local Moscow-friendly party during the last parliamentary election.) But when those advisors become elected officials, take over governments, and continue to push their favorites as their official administration policy, the old concept of non-interference loses its meaning.

If this trend continues, multinational business interests, stateless oligarchs, and other national election ‘influencers’ will be supplemented by governments that openly support, finance, and endorse local parties in elections around the world.

In this dystopian future, the voters of France will be choosing among parties openly sponsored and represented by the governments of China, the US, Saudi Arabia, Russia, and Germany.  The parliament of Italy will consist of MP‘s representing parties called “The US Knows Best”, “Deutschland Uber Alles”, and “Russia Today and Tomorrow”. Imagine CNN hosting a future US Presidential Primary debate in Omaha between the Presidents of Turkey, Russia, and Hungary on a dias with the Prime Ministers of the UK, India, and Brazil. Each will argue why their interests best serve American interests. Each will have a favorite US party and a direct stake in the outcome of every election, be it local or national.

In a sense, the anti-globalists who feared that the UN would emerge as a world government will have achieved their goal. Power will not be centralized in a single global capital run by One World Politicians and an army of transnational bureaucrats. Power will be distributed around the world. But it will be wielded by everyone, everywhere and anywhere on the planet. And it will be controlled by those who have the money, know how, and resources to nimbly work The New Normal. 

In that case, the ultra-nationalists who disdain the cooperation that is encouraged by multinational bodies like the UN, IMF, World Bank, and EU will pursue it through through their own political party-based ideological transnationalism. One hand not only helps the other, it also votes for it. 

In a way, that‘s not so different from The Old Normal we have come to know and loathe. It‘ll just be more openly global than ever before.

(Contemplations on content and context)

Kindle and Spotify are my best friends. They are my favorite digital apps because they bring me two of my favorite things in life: words and music. I have turned to literature and music all my life for inspiration, comfort, edification, and pleasure. I loved books and records, not as physical things but because of what they conveyed. As techies are wont to say these days, they are wonderful “data carriers”, but it’s the cargo they deliver that really interests me.

Of course, as you savor a pleasure, you tend to become fond of the objects that bring it. I liked the feel of a book in my hand, and never turned up page corners or folded paperbacks in half because I didn’t want to sully their structural integrity. I liked them crisp, clean, and intact. I did sometimes write notes in the margins, albeit reluctantly because I disliked disrupting the purity of the page and its orderly rows of dutifully aligned words and sentences.

I also treated LP’s with tender care, if only to prevent scratches that would destroy their sound. The black shiny discs did have a groovy coolness about them that required a respectful handling by the edges, and the ritual of sensually slipping them in and out of album sleeves just added an elegant importance to the music it contained.

I especially enjoyed studying album cover art and their liner notes. They were objects of affection because they housed and conveyed such delightful sounds, and offered a visual dimension to the artistic message inherent in the music. Especially when some musicians like Frank Zappa took an active role in designing the visual packaging that housed his musical offerings. It was more than just music, it was a multimedia artistic statement.

But in both cases, the real object of my pleasure was not the packaging that delivered it, but the pure content. I read to understand and enjoy the ideas that are conveyed by the manner in which writers use words to form sentences and then assemble them into paragraphs and pages. For me, reading is a twofold pleasure: the artistry of the language and the depth of the ideas that are conveyed. It’s the same with music. Imaginative album design may enhance and expand the message in the music, but it’s the pure music, best enjoyed with eyes closed, that reaches deep inside me and stirs thoughts and emotions that few other stimuli can produce.

When I first discovered e-books I too was sceptical. But when I received a Kindle as a Christmas gift, I was forced to give it a try. It didn’t take long to embrace this new way of receiving those sacred words, sentences, and ideas. I had already been introduced to the concept of words on a screen thanks to computers and the Internet. As I soon learned, my Kindle did it all so much better.

Acquiring information through words is a professional necessity for me. My first exposure to digitalized newspapers quickly proved to be a much more efficient way to acquire large batches of information quickly. Reading the news on a TV-like screen of an IBM monitor didn’t have the physical embrace of holding a hefty newspaper in my hand but it sure did give me a lot more information in a substantially shorter period of time. The laptop brought the experience even closer, and the hand-held tablet started to feel like what reading a book or newspaper used to feel like. And with each technological innovation, the ease and efficiency of fishing for, hauling in, and processing large batches of information from increasingly more distant corners of the world became exponentially better.

The Internet gave me magazines, newspapers, blogs, articles, essays, and countless other sources of words and their inherent ideas, but my Kindle gave me books. Thousands of books. A seemingly endless array of books. Not everything in the world, but more than I could ever dream of reading. It gave me any book I wanted in seconds. Entire books, from the prologue to the epilogue.

In the past, if I heard or read of a book that sounded interesting, it would take weeks or even months to search for it. It meant going to the library or the book store, unless I knew someone with a copy. In any case it took time. But the Kindle in my hand was a magic door into a enormous library that contained almost as many books as Borges famous infinite Library of Babel. And I could open any one of them, any time I wanted, and start reading. Not only could I take books out of the Kindle library, I could keep them for as long as I wanted.

I once used to collect books and stack them on endless shelves. Now I could keep them all in my jacket pocket. Pocket books indeed. All I had to do was take my Kindle, poke the right buttons, and my Personal Library opened up right before my eyes. Anything man had written, published, disseminated, and stored over the last few thousand years was there for my taking. I could dialogue with Socrates, will my power with Nietzsche or run the streets of Dublin with Roddy Doyle. All while waiting in line at the airport.

While I remember a lot of what I read, I forget a lot as well, and like to go back to refresh my memory or lift a clever quote. In the past, relocating a passage I liked required two searches: first, I had to rembember where in the blazes I had stuck the book. My shelves were somewhat organized, but not greatly so. Second, once I had the book, I had to plunder thru the pages in search of the quote, not sure whether I had underlined it or not. Often enough, either task became too formidable and I gave up.

My Kindle cured all that. It takes a second to open my Kindle, another to open any book, and only a few seconds more to find anything I had highlighted, underlined or otherwise noted. It was all there. In Kindle, anything you highlight in a book gets compiled in a handy file that keeps each quote in sequence and can be instantly accessed with a tap. The file itself becomes my personal Cliff’s Notes summary of the author’s best and brightest observations. I can navigate any book at will, jump back to earlier passages, and re-read entire sections from different points of view.

I love words, collect as many as I can, and relish discovering the meanings of those I don’t understand. Kindle helps there as well. It’s a got a built-in library that delivers meanings at the touch of my finger. Another tap takes me to Google where I can expand my exploration with pictures, maps, and a near infinite web of pages that flood my curiosity with explanations and edifications. As a student I often passed over place names and other references, vowing to look them up later but I rarely did. I missed a lot.

Kindle gives me words and Spotify gives me music. A seemingly endless stream of music that pours down invisibly from the heavens in glorious torrents every minute of the day. Heraclitus be damned, this is one stream you can step into over and over and over again.

When radio was all there was, I was a captive audience of the ratings-driven marketing mavens who packaged everything they and their sponsors wanted me to hear. The airwaves were public but the sounds that traversed them were mercantilistically commercial. We had AM and FM and little transistor radios to catch the trickle-down tunes that were spoon-fed to us in between the ads. We grabbed whatever sounds came our way.

Of course, if I really liked something, and had the money, I would buy an album. Black vinyl had a brittle delicacy to it that enhanced the near ritualistic gesture of placing the disc on the roundtable and dropping the needle into a welcoming groove. But an LP was just a data carrier and what I was after was the music it conveyed. I wanted lots of it. Since albums cost money every impending purchase led to the same old dilemma: do I buy more of someone I like or explore new musical frontiers? The music that slowly filled my existential musical cocoon was wonderful but I knew that it was just a microcosm of all that was out there. The few sounds that I could get and store on vinyl, tape, cassette or CD were just the tip of the musical iceberg that was far out of my physical and financial reach.

Spotify broke the barriers of time, space, and meagre finances and put a world of music at my fingertips. Literally. Not only new music, but old music, odd music, familiar and obscure music. With a few taps I could access everything from classical to kinky. But the clever Swedes who created Spotify learned how to get into my head, figure out what I liked, and proceeded to give me even more of everything that tickled my musical fancy.

If I liked a particular genre, like blues rock, and listened to Walter Trout and Joe Bonamassa for a day, on the next day those clever cyberelves at Spotify would dish up a dozen other artists of the same ilk. “If you liked that, you might like this.” More often than not, I did. My music collection grew exponentially. It was all in my smart phone and that put it all directly into my head.

The old radio stations forced me to listen to prepackaged pop, while Spotify offered hundreds of genre-specific radio stations and playlists that far exceeded anything I could imagine. Spotify had mastered the mind-reading of which Gordon Lightfoot had so solemnly sung. They even read stuff that wasn’t in my mind but should be. I’m a big Steve Earle fan and find that I tend to like what he likes, but rarely had the opportunity to know what he listens to. On Spotify I can spend an evening sipping whiskey, sitting with Steve and digging the stuff that he digs. Invariably I have discovered dozens of new artists that have both inspired and emulated him.

Back in the previous century I used to make my own musical mixes on tape cassettes, which was time-consuming and filled endless boxes. Spotify streamlined all that. It lets me create playlists instantly, on the run, as I’m listening. And when I’m not assembling my own playlists, Spotify offers theirs, based on what they think I may like. Their insight is uncanny. One of my favorite Spotify-produced playlists is called ‘Swagger’, where I uncovered the feisty likes of Bones Owens, Barnes Courtney and Devon Gilfillian. Spotify wasn’t just a musical provider, it was a creative partner. We make and take beautiful music together.

While Spotify gives me a lot of new artists, it also allows me to rummage back into the past and discover old classics that I missed because in my youth when I was too broke to buy their albums for myself. These days I can explore the full repertoire of bands like Alice Cooper, Dream Theater, and Pentangle, while discovering heretofore unreleased releases by Bob Dylan, Alabama 3, and Jethro Tull.

Unlike a crystal ball, my smart phone can’t reveal the future. But it is a remarkable window into the past and is pretty nimble at keeping up with the present. I’m man of words and music, and my obsessively updating digital devices deliver them both. In spades. In seconds. In full color and stereo sound. At a moment’s notice, whenever and wherever I want

In his book ‘Sapiens, Yuval Noah Harari argues that the thing that makes our species so special is its uncanny ability to communicate. He writes, “We can connect a limited number of sounds and signs to produce an infinite number of sentences, each with a distinct meaning. We can thereby ingest, store and communicate a prodigious amount of information about the surrounding world.”

My Kindle and Spotify are nothing more than the latest technical iteration of that distinctly human penchant to communicate. Once we did it with smoke signals, tribal drums, and epic poetic recitals around the bonfire. Today those same words and sounds are suspended in the endless ether that envelopes us and we just have to reach out and pluck them. Doesn’t matter how it gets there, it all eventually goes to our heads.

Dylan needed a dump truck to unload his head. Kindle and Spotify keep filling mine up. A modern-day Dylan would simply call up an app that’ll clean out his cognitive cache. The times are still changing and so is the way we choose to harness them. But the song (and the thoughts) remain the same.

Ojars Eriks Kalnins

January 2019

Globalism vs Nationalism?

Not necessarily. We each define these terms as we see fit, but in my worldview they can be complimentary concepts rather than conflicting ones. I am a Latvian nationalist by conviction and profession but I see it in terms of protecting and preserving a culture, language, and traditions in the historical territory where it all came about. I live in a period of human history where the nation state is a still popular form of social organization among the 7 billion or so who share this planet, so taking pride in my nation’s small place on this earth tends to comes naturally.

But there are countless others on this planet who enjoy a different place, culture and perception of the world. We are many nations out there and all have an equal claim to pride of place. In my eyes, we are equal and different. That’s what makes life so interesting. Oddly enough I find myself appreciating my own nation more when I begin to appreciate the same – yet different – qualities in other countries. The more I travel, see, hear, and feel the diversity of human society, the more I enjoy my inherited bond and innate loyalty to my country. None of us are “better” than the others, but we are different and that’s a big plus. I may prefer one genre of music over others, but that doesn’t diminish the pleasure I get from the symphony of sounds the rest of the world has to offer.

So while I am a Latvian, I’m fascinated by what’s happening in the rest of the world. Each culture is unique and intriguing on its own, yet culture takes on a whole new dimension when these different cultures begin to interact, blend, and produce something totally new. Call it global culture. It’s a mixed mash of influences and inclinations that undergo spontaneous chemical reactions to create art and understanding of a very different nature. I see it as a bonus culture, one we can add to all the other national ones, including our own, for our mutual enjoyment. I may love single malts, but savor a masterful blend with equal intensity.

Like Aberlour and Chivas Regal, nationalism and globalism can coexist. I enjoy them both. As long as it’s a nationalism of pride and not superiority. And as long as that which is global doesn’t threaten or diminish that which we cherish as national.

Politically, national interests can be furthered by mastering the machinations of the cultural, technical, and social globalization happening all around us. It’s individual nations that make up the multinational organizations we participate in. It’s up to them to shape these organizations to serve their shared as well as national interests. Like joining any club, we try to further and enhance our individual interests by working together with others. Latvia has a much better chance of being Latvian by joining the European Union and working with Germans, Italians, Swedes, Dutch, and Luxembourgians who share our respect for national sovereignty, territorial integrity, and cultural identity. When countries that once fought each other start working together, they all have a much better chance of surviving and thriving. On their own, and together.

It all comes down to balance. Thanks to modern technology, the gravitational pull of globalization is inescapable. Even as we cling to our national identities, we are drawn to the currents, trends, and pressures of everything global. It affects our food, music, literature, film, sports, fashion and philosophy. Our daily national consciousness is endlessly invaded by international things. There’s no reason we can’t embrace both. My knowledge of English and French doesn’t diminish my fondness for Latvian. My enjoyment of lasagne, tacos, sushi, and kimchee detracts nothing from the rustic taste of Latvian rye bread.

I reject nationalism and globalism as ideologies. To me, they are natural phenomena that need to be understood and managed. They are not doctrines to be used as tools to further some particular set of values. But as long as values differ, and some are compelled to impose theirs on others, people will use whatever’s at hand to further their cause. Today, both nationalism and globalism are defined, exploited, and imposed in a wide variety of ways, and as always, for some it leads to conflict and contention. Sadly, when that happens, all sides lose.

We may want to fly, but gravity pulls us down. It’s pointless to curse it. Better that we learn how to use it to help us stand up, move about, and get to wherever we want to go. Eventually, while working with others, we can get off the ground much higher than we ever expected. Globalism, like gravity, is not a threat. It’s just a force we need to work with. Do it right and it can take us anywhere.

Ojars Eriks Kalnins

June 15, 2018

Why deviants of the world will never unite

Frank Zappa once said that the world cannot progress without deviation. That’s why deviants are so necessary.

One can quibble over the definition of “progress” but if you replace it with the word “change”, then Zappa’s judgement seems to ring universally true.

The world cannot change without deviation. Without deviation, to the right, to the left, up or down, everything stays as it is. It stagnates. It dies. Life is constant movement. Doing something. Anything. Just doing. The moment you stop doing you stop being. And every movement is a deviation from some previous position.

You can, of course, move straight ahead and will achieve something that could be perceived as progress. It may bring some change over time, but gradually. If it’s faster and more fundamental change that you seek, you must deviate from the norm. Leave the beaten path. Break out of the box. (Pick your metaphor.)

Global society must move to stay alive as well, which is why it has constantly changed over the last 30 thousand years. Some will say “progressed”, but that’s an argument that will persist until the proverbial cows come home. (Cows move too.)

Definitions of progress are based on designations of what is good and what is bad. Values. But even the endless arguments over values and the purpose of life (progress presumes a purpose) are another form of movement, action, and activity that keeps us alive and kicking. Disagreeing over progress always brings change in some form or another.

It applies to each of us individually and to society as a whole. We do because we must. What we do has no higher purpose than that which we ourselves give it. And it’s the clash of purposes that brings about change.

Looking over the 30 thousand year timeline of human existence it becomes evident that change in human existence comes about and is largely measured by human conflict. We mark our history by wars, revolutions, and other cataclysmic events. Yes, there are long periods of relative tranquility in between, but the major changes in society take place after conflict of some sort or another.

Deviations. The men who have moved society have been deviants. The movers and shakers. Those who shake things up and bring things down. They are active players who deviate from the norm and send society hurtling into a new direction. Whether what they do is good or bad depends on your point of view. But you can’t deny that they are doers and without them life would stagnate.

Stagnation was a fashionable word in the latter Soviet days but it’s been evident elsewhere whenever a society no longer accepts the status quo and seeks change. The United States I grew up in during the late 60’s was shaking off a period of stagnation and Frank Zappa was one of the many deviant factors that brought about major changes in society.

History shows that human societies have always sought change. Change for the better they hope, but change nevertheless, even if it goes bad.

Which it often does. Change arises from deviation and conflict, and in conflict there are winners and losers. Survival, one of the primal driving forces of life in all its forms, does indeed go to the fittest. While many humans have embraced the concept of equality as a desireable state in society, the very nature of life itself opposes that.

Granted, some life forms such as ants may appear to achieve and accept a state of equality in order to work for a common goal, but even that is impossible without a queen. And compared to all the other ants, equal as they may be, the queen is a deviant. She’s the driving force that keeps those ants moving and alive.

Changes that take place in the animal world are usually not viewed as progress, but simply evolution. A species gets “better” at its primary task – being alive – by evolving over time. Humans have a need to speed up the process.

That’s why we require deviants. We may love them or hate them, but without them nothing would change.

Which raises the question, is change a good thing, in and of itself? Why can’t we reach an acceptable state and keep it that way forever? That’s what Faust wanted, and it took Mephistopheles to remind him that nothing lasts forever. Constant change is the natural condition of life and if you hope to maximize your comfortzone while being alive, you best learn to accept and adapt to change.

And while the vast majority of people on this planet are struggling to accept and adapt to constant change in their lives, some, a select few, are trying to control it, guide it, and drive it. They are the deviants.

Probably the only thing deviants could ever unite on is their common desire to inaugurate change. And that’s good. Because if all the deviants of the world agreed on which way to go and why, they would cease to be deviants. And nothing would change.

August 30, 2017

Unlike the weather, everybody not only talks about war, but many actually do something about it. Some start them, others try to end them, and over the centuries mankind has devised all kinds of rules and regulations in a desperate attempt to control them.

I’ve been invited by the UK Parliament to participate in a Westminster conference debate in March over whether parliaments should have war powers and why. Since Latvia’s constitution gives all the power to the parliament (the voters elect us and we elect the government and president) the Brits have asked me to take the side of the “more power to the parliament” adherents. Someone else will take an opposing position, and the conference participants will take a vote. A very British ritual.

Which means that I have to take some time to study the history, legality, politics, and philosophy of declaring war. How has mankind done it for thousands of years, how has it changed, how is it now, and has anything in this whole warmongering process gotten any better? And what does ‘better’ mean when it comes to war?

One of the first things I learned was that Latvia has only declared war once in its 99-year history, and we “won” it. Back in 1919 the nascent Republic of Latvia formally declared war against Germany, and ended up on the right side of history when the Allies won and the Central Powers lost.

Oddly enough no wars have been “declared” since WWII, although it seems like there are wars of some kind or another going on all around us all the time on almost every continent. Nowadays we call them conflicts, military actions, joint operations, and armed aggression, but none of them have been declared as wars with the constitutional pomp and circumstance that once was common among nation-states.

Although no countries have declared war in over 70 years, every country with a constitution has a formal procedure for doing so. Just in case. Yet it’s difficult to imagine a case where a member of the UN could declare war since the UN Charter seems to forbid it. More or less. It allows for use of armed forces to defend one’s self, and the UN Security Council has authorized military force in places like Korea and Afghanistan, but these are not legally referred to as “wars”.

But most countries have a constitutional procedure for declaring war, and in most cases that declaration can only be made by a parliament. In Latvia, the President can only declare war if the Saeima has taken a decision to do so. The same applies to the use of armed forces in a conflict outside of Latvia. Only the 100 elected representatives of the voting public can decide to make or declare war.

The rational is simple. It’s the one versus many argument. Since war is undesirable, all efforts should be made to make it difficult. One leader – president, monarch, dictator – can do so on a personal whim. A group of elected officials is less likely to do so. Plus, the actual “wagers of war”, the soldiers, are members of society, and thus need to decide if they wish to fight. They also need the blessing of that society to fight. And if that society is united behind its parliamentary majority, there’s a better chance it will be united in conducting a successful war.

In addition, many constitutions assert that citizens have the responsibility and obligation to defend their country. If so, it seems logical that they would have the authority to decide when to defend and how, be it through a military action or formal declaration of war. Since the citizens elected the parliament to represent them, the parliament has the authority to decide – on behalf of the citizens – whether it is time to fight.

The bottom line? Nobody wants to go to war, and 21st century humankind has made all kinds of laws, regulations, and treaties to prevent war. But maybe, just maybe, if war seems necessary or inevitable, we humans make up rules to run it. We hedge our bets. We consider all possibilities. And even if we don’t want to do something, we figure out how to do it if we have to.

Americans will soon celebrate Thanksgivings Day, but for Latvians it comes today, November 18th, the 97th anniversary of the declaration of Latvia’s independence. Yes, 50 of those years were under foreign occupation, but the last 24 have given me and the people of Latvia a great deal to be thankful for.

Yes, we’ve had our ups and downs, but what country hasn’t? For a country of less than 2 million people, we have shown to ourselves (and the world) that our language, culture, and people are something to be proud of. It was worth fighting for after 1918, and worth bringing back to the world community in 1991.

And we are full of surprises. We surprised the music world when Marie N won Eurovision in 2002, and surprised the political world when we joined the EU and NATO two years later. Our song festivals are a world cultural phenomenon and our ice hockey teams have been among the world’s best.

Today Kristaps Porzingis is the talk of the NBA and is carrying the Big Apple on his 7’3″ shoulders, but he isn’t the first Latvian to become a NY favorite. Yelena Prokopcuka won the NY Marathon in 2005 and 2006, and Latvian opera stars Elina Garanca, Kristina Opolais, Maija Kovalevska, Aleksandrs Antonenko, and Egils Silins have all wowed The NY Met. According to Rolling Stone magazine, the New York Latvian Concert Choir’ s “Joy of Christmas” is one of the 25 best Christmas albums of all time.

We’ve also survived one of the worst economic crises in Europe, and yes, in terms of economic standard of living we remain one of the poorest countries in Europe. But when it comes to the inner power of our people, we are rich in achievement, pride, creativity, and the undying belief that our language, culture, and people have a unique place on this planet. And that place isn’t only a 64,000 square kilometre piece of land by the Baltic Sea.

Frank Sinatra once sang about NY, “If I can make it here, I can make it anywhere.” For the last 97 years, Latvians have been proving that the world over. And that is something I am very thankful for. Happy birthday Latvia!

When I first visited Soviet-occupied Latvia in 1978 as a tourist, I was told it was best not to go near “The Monument.” There it was, this massive, imposing object with a soaring obelisk topped by bronze female figure, standing tall in the heart of Riga, and we tourists from America were told it would be best to pretend that it didn’t exist. It was smack dab in the middle of Riga’s busiest intersection, in a place where no one could ignore it. Every one of Riga’s 800,000 inhabitants who walked, trolleyed or rode by it every day had to acknowledge its presence, like it or not. It was inescapable.

But in the Riga that was ruled by the Soviet Union in 1978, it was a no man’s land. We were told that it was intensely monitored by KGB cameras in the surrounding buildings and KGB agents in the surrounding trees, and that any local who gave the monument more than a passing glance faced an obligatory visit from Soviet security officials. Some had even been arrested and sent to Siberia for looking too longingly at the monument. Someone once burned himself to death there. As foreign tourists, we were warned it was okay for us to take a few quick pictures, but any inappropriate amount of extra attention could cause us difficulties in the remaining days of our trip.

Even in 1978, it was clear that the monument by the Riga canal, built in 1935 to honor Latvia’s independence, was the focus of intense attention. And a repository of intense energy. The mere fact that the Soviet regime did as much as it did for 40 years to deny it, disguise it, ignore it and keep people away from it, attests to its remarkable power. But what puzzled me then, and still puzzles me now, is why they never tore it down.

The Latvian Freedom monument, as its name denotes, symbolizes Latvia’s independence. The Soviets had crushed that. Why then let it stand? I’m told that the Soviets feared a popular uprising in Latvia, but fear had never stopped Stalin before. In 1940 he arrested the government, annexed Latvia to the USSR and deported tens of thousands of its citizens to Siberia. In the late 40’s and early 50’s, Stalin had every repressive weapon he needed to suppress any uprisings in a decimated post-war Latvia. The monument could have been blown up and carted away in 24 hours, and any subsequent Latvian grief would have been vigorously brought under control by Soviet security forces.

What was it about this monument, this Milda (as the woman atop the pedestal is affectionately called by Latvians), that intimidated the Soviet authorities so? Was it her stern stare? As a symbol of Latvia’s independence, Milda was like a hypnotic Medusa to Soviet officials in the 60’s and 70’s. They couldn’t look her straight in the eye. They prowled around her base, surrounded her and enshrouded her, doing all they could to minimize her, but never looked directly at her, for fear they would turn to stone. The monument inscribed to Fatherland and Freedom symbolized everything that the Soviet regime had tried to erase in Latvia, but for some reason the monument itself – Milda always prevailed.

It was as if the monument was at its heart a powerful magnet of the Latvian soul. When it was built entirely through private donations in the 1930’s, its creation and presence drew energy from throughout Latvia. Rather than tear it down, the Soviets tried to reverse its magnetic polarities and drive people away.

But as Soviet power withered in Moscow, the negative forces that had shackled the monument grew weaker. On June 14, 1987 they broke altogether, when two young Latvians named Rolands Silaraups and Eva Biteniece, led a silent column of people to the base of the monument for a forbidden flower laying ceremony. The KGB watched, and did nothing as the first unauthorized demonstration at the monument in 40 years unfolded before them. On that day, Rolands, Eva and the several thousand that had the courage to join them, liberated the monument from 4 decades imprisonment. The Soviet spell had been broken. The negative energy had been replaced by positive energy, and the magnetic monument again began to draw people toward it again, more powerfully than the KGB could pull them away.

The Soviets had always feared the monument as a symbol of Latvian independence. But by allowing it to remain standing as the only surviving symbol of Baltic independence (comparable monuments in occupied Estonia and Lithuania had long been destroyed by Soviet authorities), it became a broader symbol. And on June 14, 1987 it became broader still. The Latvians who gathered at the foot of the monument that day were openly asking for independence. In doing so, as they laid their flowers, they marked both a birth and a death: the rebirth of the Republic of Latvia, and the end of the Soviet Union. Both were to happen just 4 years later, following a series of events and developments that, symbolically at least, began on this day at the foot of Latvia’s Milda.

Two months later on August 23 (the anniversary of the Hitler-Stalin Pact that subjugated the Baltic countries) an even bigger demonstration was held at the monument, while similar rallies were now taking place in Estonia and Lithuania as well. By 1989 Popular Fronts were leading the charge for independence in all three Baltic countries and public rallies, demonstrations and manifestations became commonplace in many locations. On August 23, 1989 when one million Balts linked hands from Tallinn to Vilnius, the masses that gathered at the Freedom Monument in Riga marked the spiritual center of this 400 kilometer human chain.

By the time Latvia restored its independence in 1991, rallies at the monument had become the norm. All trolley and bus traffic around its base was rerouted to prevent
further deterioration of its foundation. By 1994 the newly released magnetic power of the monument reached all the way across the Atlantic Ocean and brought a new guest to its steps. On July 6, at the spot where dissidents had been arrested in 1978, and Rolands and Ieva placed their bouquets in 1987, the President of the United States, William Jefferson Clinton and his wife Hillary, paid their respects as well. He was the first US President to ever do so. Milda looked down confidently as if she always knew it would happen.

Milda has looked down on President Karlis Ulmanis and an independent Latvia in the 1930’s, on Soviet and Nazi tanks in the 1940’s, on Soviet dreariness through the cold war and impassioned national rallies in the 1980’s. During the last ten years of independence Milda has attracted thousands of tourists, hundreds of official guests, countless ceremonies and endless photographers. When young Latvian hockey fans exploded from Old Riga’s bars to celebrate victory in the world championships in St. Petersburgh in 2000, they instinctively descended upon Milda and surrounded her with song. Official or otherwise, she still knows how to attract crowds.

The three gold stars held aloft in Milda’s outstretched hands symbolize the three historic regions of the Latvia nation and state. During the dark and dreary cold war years of occupation and Sovietization, it seemed as if she were holding them high above the fray, away from danger, as if to protect them from what was happening below. An artist’s poster in the late 1980’s depicted her just that way, sinking in water over her head, only her hands still visible, holding the stars above the flood.

Today the tanks are gone, the waters have receded, and the square below her is filled with endless well-wishers covering her base with a sea of flowers. Her surfaces have been cleaned and polished in a just completed major renovation, financed, once again, with private donations. The stars have received a shiny new coat of gold, and her arms, it seems, stretch a little bit higher, a little bit prouder. As if to better show the rest of world that her mission has been accomplished. The Latvia she symbolized and protected for 65 years, is still with us. And so is Milda.

July 26, 2001 Riga, Latvia

A few years back when nation branding expert Simon Anholt was interviewing civic leaders in Latvia he began each conversation with a simple question, “What is Latvia for?”

Anholt usually poses this question to help governments get their priorities straight before committing themselves to a nation branding strategy. What politicians invariably discover is that the pursuit of economic growth, tourism, and investment (the usual reasons nations seek a brand) is much easier if it is built on a solid set of clearly stated values. Ones they actually believe in.

A recently proposed text for a preamble to Latvia’s 91-year old constitution does exactly that. It tries to explain what Latvia is for, why it was created, and why it matters so much to the Latvian people.

Most constitutions tell us how someone plans to run a country, but they don’t always explain why. Many, like ours, were written right after a war and the number one priority was to get things running again. To the founding fathers, Latvia’s ‘reasons for being’ were self evident enough not to require a lengthy explanation. They figured someone else could do that in more stable times.

It appears that the required stability has arrived because a lot of people in Latvia from all walks of life are starting to actively debate the whys and wherefores of putting a preamble in front of our longstanding constitution.

The point of a preamble is to explain what you are for, and this one does it.

It states that Latvia is for many things, but most of all, it says that Latvia was created to allow the Latvian people to live in their native land, where they can fully embrace their language, culture, history and traditions.

While keeping Latvia as Latvian as it can be, the preamble also guarantees the same rights for everyone else, regardless of ethnicity, race or creed. It encourages a civic society and proposes three guiding principles of nationhood: democracy, justice and social responsibility. For all.

There are plants and animals that thrive best in a particular valley, along a particular river, in a locally distinctive climate, nourished by the food and water that exists only there. The same goes for human beings who have developed rich and varied cultures through this living interaction between man and nature. If we truly value this planet for its diversity, these cultures and their unique habitats should be preserved, nourished and encouraged. While Latvians can grow anywhere, they do it best in Latvia. The preamble encourages others to do so as well.

By tradition, a preamble should offer the legal and historical grounds upon which a state is based, and in Latvia’s case, that all began in 1918, was threatened by a half century of occupation, and was won back once again when full independence was restored in 1991. Legal experts call it continuity, but to the rest of us it simply means we are willingly accepting a legacy left to us by our grandfathers.

Once the legal precedents are established, the preamble presents the primary responsibilities of the Latvian state. In this case, they are: To promote the spiritual, social, cultural and material welfare of all who live here. To provide them with order and justice in a secure environment. To protect the land we love and all the things that grow, live and thrive on it.

It also adds one relatively new responsibility that may or may not be a sign of the times: it recommends that we pursue our economic interests in a ‘humane way’. After the global economic crash, many long for a kinder, gentler capitalism.

In forming a state, a society can agree on certain red lines that can’t be crossed without compromising the very reason the state was created. The preamble lists those as independence, territorial integrity, the sovereignty of the people, and Latvian as the only state language. In the minds of the authors of this text, these are Latvia’s untouchables. If the will of the people ends up approving this preamble, it places upon them a solemn responsibility to preserve and protect these principles.

But civic responsibility doesn’t end there. We are urged to take care of ourselves, our loved ones and our fellow neighbours for the good of society as a whole. We are asked to leave this state and land in good condition for the next generations. And we are reminded that both traditional and Christian values have shaped the historical Latvian identity.

Thus, in addition to the guiding principles of the state, the preamble also spells out the basic social values of the people who choose to live here. They include a respect for freedom, decency, honesty and solidarity, as well as the family unit.

But Latvia is not an island floating in the vastness of space, so the preamble also expresses some internationally state-like thoughts about its place in the global community. It stresses Latvia’s active contribution to the humane, sustainable, democratic, and responsible development of Europe and the world. Here we announce our desire to be good global neighbours.

The first draft of the preamble has been made public and as expected, a vigorous and lively debate has ensued. Some question why we need one, some wonder whether we’ve said enough. Everyone will have a say and the process could take a long time before we all agree on the words and the way they reach final approval, either by parliamentary vote or referendum, or both.

It does answer Simon Anholt’s existential question, and someone even saw it as a pre-birthday present for Latvia’s 100 anniversary in 2018. Of all the commentaries I have read, my favourite is a woman who took to Twitter to share a revelation after reading the preamble over and over again. Her observation was aptly poetic. She saw it as a love letter to Latvia. I’m all for that.

October 30, 2013

A cursory look at Latvia’s National Development Plan 2014-2020 would suggest that foreign policy seems to play a very small role in Latvia’s future. The Foreign Ministry is solely responsible for only one section and that primarily deals with strengthening Latvia’s political and economic interests abroad.

However, each ministry is assigned a “Territory of Responsibility.” Here the Foreign Ministry takes on enormous importance, because its sphere of operation is designated as “The Whole World”.

Clearly, Latvia’s foreign service cannot embrace the entire world, so it is natural to divide that world into regions of priority. For the purposes of the Latvian Parliament’s annual Foreign Policy Debates, I’ve chosen to isolate those priorities by segmenting Latvia’s foreign policy world into concentric circles of interest. I have identified six such circles.

The first and closest circle includes our immediate neighbours: Lithuania, Estonia, Belarus and Russia. While relations with all these countries are important economically, they are much more complex and diverse politically. They will remains a top priority in 2013.

The second circle is slightly larger, and includes the Baltic Sea region and the Nordic countries. Here we continue to develop good ties in such multi-lateral formats as NB8, the Nordic-Baltic Council and the Council of Baltic Sea States. This year Latvia hosts the Baltic Development Forum and in 2015 during our Presidency of the European Union, we plan to organize a special forum on the EU’s Baltic Sea Strategy.

But in 2013 most of our attention will be focused on the third circle, where I have placed the European Union and NATO. Both organizations expand our areas of direct foreign engagement, although at the moment the greatest challenges lie in the EU itself, and our place in it.

This third circle also reveals the geographic direction of our interest in the fourth circle: the EU’s Eastern Partnership. Cooperating with and supporting such eastern neighbours as Georgia, Ukraine, and Moldova has always been a priority for Latvia. Direct person-to-person ties in these countries dating back to pre-independence periods has enabled Latvia to make robust use of Cooperative Development programs, which need to be expanded. Latvia also plans to host an Eastern Partnership Summit during our EU Presidency in 2015.

History, economic interests, and Latvia’s foreign policy priorities also determine the geographic direction of our sphere of interest in the next, fifth circle: Central Asia and Afghanistan. Latvia’s embassies in Uzbekistan and Kazahkstan have been extremely successful as contact embassies for NATO, and have developed a special expertise and respect in the entire region. This needs to be expanded.

Latvia’s role in the NATO ISAF mission in Afghanistan has produced a unique opportunity for long-term economic development as well. Working together with the US, Russia, NATO and regional countries, Latvia plays a key role in the Northern Distribution Network – the transport corridor for shipping NATO ISAF supplies from Latvia to Afghanistan. This has enormous future potential, for the moment that this network becomes a commercial transhipment corridor and connects to the planned New Silk Road, the door will open for Latvia’s road to the sixth and last circle, the Far East.

If until now such countries as China, Japan, Korea and India didn’t seem within reach of Latvia’s foreign policy grasp, then today they are very palpable. China and Japan have very active embassies in Riga and soon will be joined by South Korea. These countries are part of one of the most dynamic and rapidly growing regions in the world, and are looking with growing interest at Latvia’s strategic location in Northern Europe. The time has come to focus much more attention to this region, and determine how economic and political developments there can be aligned with Latvia’s long-term national interests. While some commentators have made much of the United States’ ‘pivot’ to Asia, it’s only natural that Europe does the same. Thanks to Latvia’s eastward tangent through the six circles of foreign engagement, this once distant region of the world is the logical next step in the long-term expansion of our international diplomacy.

Last year, the Latvian Foreign Ministry took a bold (and necessary) step in providing the framework for Latvia’s ‘pivot to the Far East’. It established an ‘External economic policy coordinating council’, which brings together the Foreign, Economic, Transportation and Agricultural ministries, as well as other state institutions. This institutional model of cooperation is ideally suited to review and analyse just how Latvia’s economic interests, geostrategic location and existing logistical and transportation links to the east can be further developed to promote our national interests. Suddenly, the Far East no longer seems so far.

Latvia cannot embrace the world, but thinking strategically about our potential long-term interests in specific geographic directions and regions, Latvia’s foreign policy can play an essential role in promoting our national interests. We are moving in the right direction. But we must move faster, further and with a greater understanding of Latvia’s unique place in a globalized world.

(Adapted from a speech given during the Latvian parliament’s foreign policy debates on January 24, 2013.)

You probably don’t have a ‘policy’ toward foreigners. Most people don’t. We just deal with ‘em as we meet them.

If you live in a city like London or New York it feels like everyone is a foreigner. Them or us in an ethnic sense doesn’t mean much in a melting pot; we all become strangers in the big stew. If you have a policy of any kind, it’s toward people as such, regardless of their passports. You just want to know whether they are good or bad.

But if you are a country, or represent one, a foreign policy has always been a necessity. We live in a world of nearly 200 countries, and regardless of which one you happen to be, the other 199 are ‘foreign’. That’s by definition. They not only speak different languages, they have different laws, traditions, anthems and national sports. Not to mention visa requirements.

Every country has its internal policies, but every country also has a foreign policy for dealing with those 199 other “foreign” countries that share this planet.

This month Latvia will mark the 90th year since it first established a foreign policy. Such a policy came about because 90 years ago, on January 26th, 1921, Latvia became a foreign country too, along with all the others in the world. If you have a country, you need a policy toward everyone else, and in 1921 Latvia began to earnestly regulate its relations with the rest of the globe-spanning international community.

Those relations were abruptly cut short in 1940 by the Soviet occupation of Latvia. That was followed by a Nazi occupation, which was followed by a second Soviet occupation, which lasted until we declared our independence once again on May 4, 1990. One year later, on August 21, 1991, the international community restored its broken relations with Latvia, and Latvia in turn began rebuilding its ties with everyone else in the world.

We were back in business, globally speaking, and that meant the restoration of direct diplomatic contacts and the re-establishment of embassies, consulates, missions, permanent representations and other forms of interaction with the world’s other countries. We also joined every international organization that would take us, from the UN, OSCE, and WTO to NATO and the EU.

Looking back at Latvia’s foreign policy since 1991, you could divide it into three periods. 1) 1991-1995, re-establishing international relations and removing Russian (former Soviet) troops; 2) 1995-2004, preparing for membership in NATO and the EU; 3) 2004-2010, learning what it means to be EU and NATO members.

Latvia’s last official Foreign Policy Concept was written and approved in 2006 and lasted until 2010. It was largely focused on NATO, the EU, regional Baltic relations, promoting economic interests, and strengthening ties with Latvia’s diaspora.

This year, on January 27 (a day after de jure recognition day) the Latvian parliament will do something it has never done before. It will hold debates on foreign policy. 100 deputies will have a chance to express their views on how Latvia should relate to the 200 or so other countries in the world. The question of the day is very straightforward: what kind of a foreign policy does Latvia need to be a vital and thriving member of this planet? (And a good place to live?)

No doubt many of the issues that dominated our foreign agenda for the last 5 years will continue to shape our national priorities: the EU, NATO, the economy, the Baltic Sea region and bilateral relations with neighbours and other countries around the world. We want to do business with the world and share our knowledge, culture and values with others.

While political scientists make a respectable living analyzing the strategy, tactics and practices of modern foreign policy, it still all comes down to people. There are over 6.8 billion of us sharing this planet, and we’ve found that organizing ourselves into 200 or so countries (which form thousands of additional international and transnational organizations) is one way to regulate our lives and relate to one another.

We do so as countries because despite the unrelenting tsunami of cross-cultural globalization, we retain a firm, stubbornly primeval grasp on the joys of national identity. At least Latvians do. We created this country in 1918, lost it in 1940, got it back in 1991 and have been shaping and forming it ever since. We may not always agree on what to do with it, and will continue to engage in endless debates about where it should be going, but the bottom line at the end of day is this: we sure enjoy having it.

Back in 2008 I edited the revised and expanded translation of Uldis Germanis’ legendary history of Latvia, “The Latvian Saga”. Since Germanis had written the book in 1959 from Sweden and the story stopped with the Soviet occupation of Latvia during World War II, I wrote several additional chapters for this new edition to bring the history up to date.

I could never match Germanis’ literary flair but did my best to recount the events of the last 50 years in a style not unlike his. I especially liked the way Germanis ended his book, “Here we must end the saga of the Latvian people. Latvian history, of course, continued further. Things that are done today are history tomorrow.”

In my afterword I pointed out that history had indeed marched on and tried to capture what had happened in Latvia from 1959 until 2007. It was a challenge for two reasons. First, I was not a historian, and second, I had to write about events that I had personally participated in.

I find myself facing this dilemma once more in what will probably be my last commentary as Director of the Latvian Institute. On November 2, I was sworn in as a member of the Latvian Parliament / the 10th Saeima / and subsequently elected Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee.

During the 11 years that I headed the Latvian Institute, I had the privilege of working with a fantastic staff of people, all of whom were committed to the same cause: helping others get to know and understand Latvia a little bit better.

We’ve done it with words, pictures, film and events. We created a web page that people can use to learn something about our history, culture, people and politics. We’ve tried to help anyone who wanted to know more, including those who wanted to write, film or tell our story themselves.

When the economic crisis hit two years ago our staff was reduced from 14 to 4 and like everyone else in this country we were forced to rethink our priorities and realign our resources. The world media was reporting all the bad news coming out of Latvia, but we knew there was also good news. So for the last two years the LI has focused on the upside of the downside / providing timely, accurate and reliable news about what the government and parliament were doing to bring Latvia out of the crisis and back on its feet.

That work continued because after the downsizing I was fortunate to have three outstanding colleagues who did the heavy lifting to keep the news coming and the web page online.

If you are a regular reader of Latvia in Review, you can thank my able Deputy Director, Dita Erna Sile. She indefatigably researches and writes this weekly review of government activities, while still finding time to do a dozen other things to keep the LI fully engaged and informative.

The management of our web page, publications, photographs and distribution has always been handled picturesquely by Sandra Iriste. And until she left us last year to bring a daughter into this world, Una Veilande’s keen administrative skills made the bureaucracy seem much less bureaucratic.

The Foreign Ministry is now seeking candidates for a new head of the LI, and if the 2011 budget makes it possible, the LI will keep reporting next year on what the politicians are doing to strengthen Latvia’s recovery from last year’s doom and gloom.

Since I am now one of those politicians, I will no longer be writing about what others are doing, but will take an active part in some of the doing myself. As Director of the Latvian Institute I was always upbeat about Latvia’s future, regardless of the trials and tribulations our country faced. That’s one of the things that Uldis Germanis’ book reminded me of.

As Germanis wrote, the “things that are done today are history tomorrow.” The Latvian saga continues and I only hope that the history we make in the 21st century will be a much brighter story for future historians.

In Latvia, we celebrate the anniversary of our independence by laying flowers at the foot of our biggest dreams.

We pay homage to a past that seems larger than life and is no doubt both worse and better than it really was. The truth of Then comes to life in the conviction of the Now. Historians can and should argue about the facts, but for those of us who embrace the joys of nationhood, it’s the feelings that count.

It feels good to live in a country that speaks your language. In a place where you truly feel at home. Such feelings, of course, can exist in any language in places all around the world, but fate made me and a few million others into Latvians, and like everyone else on this planet, we think that our feelings are unique.

Well, of course they are. They are hard to describe sometimes because feelings are driven by emotions that can’t always be put into words. Poets try, and sociologists vie with psychologists to explain it all in terms only they understand, but the bottom line is a gut feeling that defies all verbalization.

So we express it through sacred rituals, like placing flowers at the foot of a monument in the heart of Riga. The monument was built only 75 years ago but it seems to embody a national feeling that goes back distant centuries. It depicts selfless warriors, founding fathers and all-embracing mothers. We use symbols of the past to give us strength in facing the future.

In our national anthem we sing of girls that blossom and boys that sing, and then pay tribute to another big dream: that our sons and daughters will dance in happiness in this land. We know that life consists of ups and downs, and in the last few years the downs have dominated, but when we sing about our kids and look at Mother Latvia at the tip of our monument, we look up.

Are things looking up in Latvia today? Latvian Independence Day is one of those times when even the most cynical and skeptical Latvians are allowed to dream. We dream about our ancestors and invite them into our hearts and homes to visit, hoping they will remind us why having a country called Latvia is so important.

We also dream about our children and grandchildren and their children as well, and hope that they will take our dreams even further. Then we take those kids to the foot of the monument and teach them the power of flowers. And the magic of dreams.

I happen to be a firm believer that dreams can come true. And that’s not a feeling, it’s a fact. Because back in 1978 I stood at the foot of that monument in the heart of Riga and had a dream that was truly bigger than life and beyond the realm of rational expectation. It defied the odds of probability and flew in the face of the ruling realpolitik and prevailing political prognostication.

That’s why I’ve been going back to that monument ever since. If you find a place where dreams can come true, you should stick with it. And always bring flowers.

A STRAIGHT FROM THE L.I.P.S. REPORT

“WORLD HUMOR CRISIS DECLARED!”

“Scientists agree…humanity’s greatest natural resource is drying up, shortage anticipated.”

“Bad laughing habits, media gag guzzlers and wasteful wit blamed for satiric shortfall.”

If the above headlines look all too familiar to you, you’ve probably grown as weary as we have about the alleged  “Comedy Crisis”. Look, no matter how long or how hard we laugh…no matter how much foreign humor we import…we won’t run out.

And don’t let the media fool you. The Multinational American Gag (MAG) companies (controlled by the Entertainment Oligarchs that run radio, TV and the Web) do not control all the humor we hear. Enterprising, yet ordinary citizens throughout the world are using the sizzling social networks to find new sources, channels  and applications for humor every day.

But does anyone tell you that? Of course not. That’s because the MAGs have a stranglehold on all channels of humor distribution, regardless of its original source. They want you to think that supplies are limited and going fast.

But you can still get choice, high-octane humor from the occasional web page, magazine or book, even if these sources are owned (but not very well controlled) by the same gag-grabbing Multinationals . While much of your global satire is being spoon-fed by the giant London-New York-Hollywood-Hong Kong network, there are pockets of bounty to be found outside the Comedy Cartel.

Thus, in order to give you a passing glance at today’s state of laughter (for who’sgot time for more?), LIPS presents the following special report.

Humor – a renewable resource or a diminishing return?

HUMOR – WHAT IT IS

In its crudest form, humor varies greatly in color, weight and consistency the world over. Humor can range from a crystalline fluid clarity to a murky, maudlin black.

Humans have used humor since they have known they were human. Its true value was not recognized until the punch line was discovered by an obscure tribe that was largely unknown to the Ancient Sumerians.

THE USES OF HUMOR

Humor is perhaps the most universal resource of all. It can be applied to any human endeavor and throughout recorded history it has been liberally used to lubricate the wheels of industry, business, government and religion. Although 95% of all human humor is recreational, it has frequently been used to topple governments, build monuments, defeat enemies and talk to dolphins.

According to a largely discredited report clandestinely distributed by the World Health Organization, every person should consume at least 4 solid hours of humor every day. This could include office jokes, rush-hour happy talk, web pop ups, comic books, e-magazines, editorial pages, television, political parties or organized religion. Twittering to one’s self (not just online) is encouraged.

WHERE HUMOR IS FOUND

Humor is found in every language in almost every country on every continent in the world. However, there are some pockets of humanity that totally lack humor. Here’s a partial list:

Recorded places on Earth that lack humor:*

• A valley near the Hindu Kush
• A city not unlike Hammond, Indiana
• The Falkland Islands
• Anywhere near Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
• Several bathrooms in the Kremlin
• The coast of New England
• Komodo Island
• Vast portions of Latvia

(*As of the end of 2^nd Quarter, 2010)

HOW HUMOR IS FORMED

The origins of humor are still subject to a major debate between the Creationists and the Big Yuk Theorists. Fundamentalist Creationists claim that God is responsible for all the laughs on earth from the beginning of time until now. Big Yuk Theorists claim that today’s laughter is just the remains of a huge Cosmic Joke told billions of years ago. According to the Yukkists, all laughter will eventually disperse into limitless space, only to come to life again billions of years from now when a new Cosmic Joke explodes into the universe.

IS HUMOR HARMFUL?

Given that just about anything a human being is capable of doing can eventually become harmful, yes. Humor, like an AK-47, can be exploited to make a rhetorical point. Humor can mislead, obscure, divert and disturb, and if ingested in excess quantities, can have a disorienting effect on one’s ability to handle small machinery and large concepts.

HUMOR TERMS DEFINED

BARREL – a standard unit used to measure concentrated hilarity, as in “a barrel of monkeys”.

DRY HOLE – an empty comedy club

PRIMARY RECOVERY – a standard comeback used to silence obnoxious hecklers

ENHANCED RECOVERY – a real zinger, spontaneously formed as a response to difficult conditions.

CRUDE – how humorless people perceive your humor

RIG – what television studios do to the laugh track on situation comedies

RESERVOIR – an accumulation of humor beneath the surface of average understanding

BITUMINOUS SANDS – a popular comedy club in Alberta, Canada

WHY HUMOR IS IMPORTANT

Someone named William James said that common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at different speeds.  Does this make any sense to you?

HUMOR’S DEEPEST TRUTH

Just kidding.

I have concluded that Latvia is the best place in the world to chop wood. I can’t prove it, but that doesn’t diminish my intense passion, conviction, and addiction to the art of slamming an axe into a load of logs and turning it all into firewood.

If you sit at a keyboard or tap away at your mobile phone all week, hoisting an axe above your head in the middle of a mossy, fern-filled forest can be quite exhilarating. Especially, if you are doing it in a place where the webs are still run by spiders and the endless twitters you hear are coming from feathered friends flittering about the sun-streaked tops of Kurzeme’s golden pines.

For those who rely on firewood for heat and cooking, chopping wood is a perpetual fact of life. It is something you must do on a regular basis if you want to keep the fireplace roaring and the kettle boiling. In the halls of government in Rīga they talk about heating the economy, but throughout Latvia’s countryside, heating the household this winter is the top priority. That, and making sure that there is something to cook in the pot.

Politics and forest management have a lot in common. It’s no big surprise that a forest worker might look upon the recent parliamentary elections in Latvia as political expression of what he does every day on the job. Dead wood is cleared away, overgrown patches are thinned out, and new seedlings are planted to replace the trees that have been cut down.

In the forest, it’s an endless cycle of endless recycling, just as in politics. But sound management requires just the right balance. If you clear away too much, the forest dies, and if you don’t clear enough, it chokes and stagnates. According to the last count, 59 of the 100 deputies that will serve in the 10th Saeima (parliament) of Latvia are serving for the first time.

That’s because in Latvia’s proportional parliamentary voting system, voters not only select which party they wish to support, but can pick and choose who they want in and who they want out. Last week, Latvia’s voters used the plus-and-minus system to clear a lot of old growth from Latvia’s stately parliamentary forest.

During one of the pre-election debates, one opinionated pundit claimed Latvia had too many trees per capita and asserted that an excess of forest served no useful human purpose. Most Latvians who spend their holiest holidays around bonfires in the middle of fecund forests would probably disagree. About trees, that is. Politicians are a different matter. They can go.

And in a healthy democracy, politicians, like trees, constantly come and go. Some get hit by lightning, others get chewed up by busy beavers, and some get sacrificed to the flames to stoke the economic fires. It’s a circular cycle that’s good for the environment and also makes life better for the people who live in it.

So why, you may ask, is Latvia the best place in the world to chop wood? I could talk about the smell of the fresh-cut Rīga pine, praise the brisk Baltic breezes that stir the leaves of our lofty birches, or direct your attention to the plaintive calls of the cranes as they dance their mating dances through our lush green fields.

Then again, I happen to be a person who thinks Latvia is the best place in the world, period, so for me doing anything here is a lot more interesting than anywhere else. Especially chopping wood.

The one thing you can’t say about voters in Latvia is that they lack for information. As we approach election day on October 2nd, Latvia’s 1,514,936 eligible voters have been talked at, written to, snail-mailed and e-mailed, pamphleted on the street, and proselytized on the airwaves. They’ve been told how to vote and who to vote for in every way imaginable, including many which didn’t exist just a few years ago.

You can still get news in newspapers, but these days those who like to log on can learn anything they want to know about the candidates and their parties in dozens of webzines, ezines, hyperzines, and cyberzines. The battleground of the blogs is spread across a landscape of websites of every description, covering the gamut of news agencies, non-governmental organizations, special interests groups and political parties that use the cyberspace of the 21st century to give their spin on the already dizzying issues of the day.

It used to be that you had to work the streets to get the vote out, but today every candidate with a PC is obligated to make the social nets work as well. The political technologists of the cyber age will tell you that he who doesn’t Twitter is a quitter. If you want to get elected, you’ve got to blog as if your political life depended on it. It just may.

The U.S. State Department’s former cyber-diplomat Jared Cohen was in Latvia recently and was told that 80% of Latvia’s September tweets were about the October 2nd election. Since Latvia’s journalists, politicians, social activists, campaign workers, government employees and advertising gurus all tend to follow each other across the tweet-o-sphere that may be an understatement.

In Latvia, the prime minister tweets and prime ministerial candidates and their parties tweet back at him. Journalists retweet what other journalists have written, and everyone with access to the right apps is using the endless online social stream to edify the electrified electorate.

Of course, not all the Latvian electorate gets their information online, so public and private television is flooding their airwaves with a daily diet of debates, discussions and analyses of various depths and every description. When LNT-TV is holding “Leader Debates”, LTV is debating “What’s Happening in Latvia”, and unless you’ve got a rapid-fire remote, you’ll never keep up with the controversies on the competing channels. TV3 and TV5 are also broadcasting political news, and the all-news stations LZK and TV24 are rebroadcasting even more. And if you can’t keep up with any of that, you can go back to the tweeters who will tell you what they think you should think about what’s being said on TV.

PROVIDUS, a Latvian centre for public policy has a website called “SmartHeads”, enabling candidates to directly and publicly communicate with voters. Transparency International’s local organization, DELNA, has created a “Candidates in your Palm” website where past and future politicians are analyzed and rated according to DELNA’s standards of honesty, integrity and legal liability. The public policy website POLITIKA.LV urges voters to “Try on a Party” – by answering questions based on party positions.

By law, each of the political parties and alliances must submit a 4000-character pre-election program. Some go to great pains to develop even longer, more detailed programs, while others let their ad men condense the 4000 characters into a forkful of tasty sound bites. If that isn’t enough, you can find loads of others promises, predictions, and pithy observations in every party or alliance website that’s been specially created for the elections.

According to recent surveys, 64% of Latvia’s populace uses the Internet to get information, chat with friends, send emails, do their banking, buy and sell products, or play online games. Latvia’s most popular social network, DRAUGIEM.LV, has 2’588’745 registered users, which far exceeds the population of Latvia. Latvia’s Facebook has 160’000 users and of the 145 million Twitter users in the world, 33’300 are in Latvia.

Of the 1’132’000 Internet users in Latvia, many use the vast array of websites to express their own views of the politicians, parties and promises that appear there. But unless they have to register and give their real names, there’s no way of knowing who is behind the endless anonymous nicks that litter the commentary sections of every on-line news story. In Latvia’s pre-election period, teams of party loyalists (paid or otherwise) flood the commentary sections with a fervour exceeded only by Latvian beavers descending on the Rīga Canal. While local authorities still don’t know how to stop the beavers, most voters have learned how to deal with the nonsense of nameless nicks. They ignore them.

According to the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), the Latvian media environment was assessed “as providing the public with diverse information and a plurality of viewpoints”. But the OSCE’s Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) has expressed concerns “with the lack of transparency in media ownership and with reported affiliations of some leading commercial broadcasters and newspapers with influential businessmen and politicians”. In other words, Latvia is like every other Western democracy where speech is so free, you can buy and sell it as you please. Or as A. J. Liebling wrote: “Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one”.

Disturbing as that may be, Mashable, a website devoted to social media, says that may no longer matter. They claim that 75% of the news we get online today comes from sources other than traditional media outlets: “We have gone from consuming news through traditional media and news websites to having the news broadcast to us by our social network of friends”.

So despite all the money being poured into overt and covert political advertising, and regardless of who owns which media outlet and why, Latvians today have no shortage of sources for information about the upcoming parliamentary elections. Some will study every party platform, read every blog, and monitor every TV, and radio debate. While others will do what they’ve always done – ask their neighbours. Only these days, that “neighbour” could be anywhere, as long as he’s just a tweet away.

Back in 1992, Bill Clinton won the U.S. presidential election because his top campaign advisor James Carville made everyone in the Clinton campaign repeat one sentence every morning when they woke up: “It’s the economy, stupid”.

This was an internal campaign theme intended to remind everyone that the number one priority of the election and the country was the economy, and how to make it better.

One way a country like Latvia makes its economy better is by attracting foreign investment. But to attract foreign investment you have to be attractive, and since 2008 Latvia has been Europe’s ugly economic duckling.

These days, however, Prime Minister Valdis Dombrovskis is describing Latvia as another kind of bird, more like a phoenix rising from the ashes. He is convinced that he has all the macroeconomic indicators he needs to back that up.

GDP is growing, production is increasing, exporters are exporting more and the consumer price index indicates all kinds of good things. If you want all the facts and figures behind Latvia’s historic internal devaluation, you can check the web pages of the Latvian Institute or Ministry of Finance, or ask the International Monetary Fund and EU. Or just read Bloomberg and Reuters. (Eventually this will all be in college text books, but that comes later.)

Latvia and its international lenders have been in this together since 2008, trying to pull Latvia out of Europe’s deepest hole. Unlike the marketing-man-made “meteorite” of last summer, this crater was for real. But the consensus now seems to be that Latvia is coming out of it: slowly, deliberately and cautiously, but coming out without a doubt. Some still say it’s not fast enough and others are looking for new pitfalls ahead.

But the international community is watching Latvia closely, and be they economists, diplomats or journalists, they are all keenly interested in the outcome. Latvia is trying to do what has never been done before, and in a country where caution is a national obsession, this is quite a leap of faith into an unknown future.

Then again, the future is equally unknown in Europe, the U.S., China and Ecuador, so we are not alone in this. Everyone is flying blind and hoping that the steps they took last year will lead to better results next year.

The people who lent Latvia the money it needed to overcome the crisis are generally pleased with the way the Latvian government has handled things. Lenders like responsible debtors. So do investors. While not everyone in Latvia is pleased with the pace and many are still waiting to find jobs, many entrepreneurs are capitalizing on the changes and producing new business. The government is doing what it can to help.

Mark Allen, senior IMF representative for Central and Eastern Europe thinks that “what has been done here” is pretty impressive. Last week Reuters reported that Latvia and its other Baltic neighbours “had turned the corner” on the crisis. The President of the Czech Republic Vaclav Klaus recently told Latvia’s President Valdis Zatlers that Latvia could serve as a good example to others on how to cope with a crisis.

A recent Bloomberg report on the first successful post-crisis auction of five-year Latvian government bonds says that Latvian financial markets “are showing signs of stabilization”. The last time Latvian bonds were on sale, in June 2009, no one would buy. If you’re wondering what a difference a year can make, it’s $21.7 million. That’s what buyers paid just days ago for the five-year notes.

While some in Latvia still don’t have confidence in the rebirth of their economy, there are many foreign investors who do. And that is something worth noting. It’s easier to believe in yourself when you know that others believe in you. And when those believers happen to be investors with real money that can develop new business and create new jobs, you better believe something good is happening.

So when a guy like me wakes up in the morning and wonders what cheerful things I can say about the country I love, I hear a little voice telling me, “It’s the economy…”. (You can fill in the rest.)

That’s right gang. America’s smallest circulation newspaper is growing by leaps and bounds. Not only have we gone nationwide (with readers from New York to California) but our European circulation has literally doubled (from 2 readers to 4).

And now, if that weren’t enough, L.I.P.S. has finally acquired its very own P.O. Box.

Yes indeedy kiddies, you can now correspond with your L.I.P.S. correspondent just like the big guys.

Send correspondence, dirty pictures, hot tips, juicy tidbits, money, beads or anything your imagination can conjur up to:

L.I.P.S.

P.O.Box 11816

Chicago, IL 60611

Unlike TIME, NEWSWEEK, PLAYBOY and all those other „legitimate” publications, L.I.P.S. will personally answer each and every letter received. No cold, impersonal form letters. No mass produced, secretary-typed, unctuously polite notes. Nope, when you  invest in a letter to L.I.P.S. you’ll get many happy, custom written, irreverently irresponsible returns.

Go ahead, try us. Give us your untruths, your fallacies, your tired and hungry fibs and falsities, yearning to breath free….and we’ll give you an appropriate response. Honest. Would L.I.P.S. lie to you?

And remember…when the truth isn’t enough, the only place you’ll ever get it straight…

……is from the L.I.P.S.

Ojars Kalnins

Editor/Publisher/Latvian

L.I.P.S.

P.S. Got any friends who might want to be on the L.I.P.S. mailing list? How about enemies? Send us their names and addresses. We’ll send them a surprise.

(Most probably 1980.)

Look, up in the sky!

That’s it, stare as hard as you can. Bet you can’t see them.

And yet, they’re there. Millions of them. And they’re comin’ right at you. Comin’on strong. Coming through your hearth and home by the megabunch every second.

What are they?

Radio waves.

So what, you say? So this is what. Those undulating electrical impulses aren’t coming here alone. Every single moment you’re alive whether you’re awake, asleep or somewhere in between (like watching Hollywood Squares), those pesky little radio waves are continuously filling the air about you with…

THE TRUTH

Bet you didn’t know the truth came in waves.

It also comes in colors.

And in creeds.

And a whole lot of different nationalities.

In fact, the truth comes in more flavors than Schrafft’s Ice Cream.

In more languages than Mork from Ork can speak.

And in more packages than Care would care to consider.

Since LIPS has always been a little short of the truth, we thought it would only be appropriate to tune into the frequency that’s a little short on the wave. And pass our combined ideological interference on to you.

Thus, as a public disservice to all those folk too busy to tune into the international Short Wave Battle of the Bands, we bring you the following summary of the news from the world’s most prolific propaganda propagators….

March 1980

L.I.P.S. – When the truth isn’t enough.

Want to buy in on some more life?

You know, pick up a few extra months here, stash an extra year or two there…maybe even get ringside seats for the year 2000 (just to be safe?)

Don’t think twice.

It’s all but downright impossible to get guaranteed-anything anymore. Lay out all the cash you can and back it up with mountains more, and you still don’t know when the fates are gonna cash in your chips. There’s just no control.

Unless you invest.

Not in the here and now…but the then and there.

And where is that, you ask? You ļl never know unless you bring your body and soul to…

COME BACK INC.

The Western Hemisphere’s first computerized life recyclers.

That’s right, we’re talking about custom reincarnation. You decide where you want to go and when you want to be, and we’ll take care of the rest.

Why spend time, money and effort trying to drag out and somehow salvage this life when you could be plotting out the success story of your next?

It’s fun. It’s easy. And it won’t harm the kids.

Come in to COME BACK INC. and you’ll be greeted by your personal “Next_Life Counselor”. He or she will help you evaluate your present life with the help of a specially trained and programmed computer. Then chart your successes and failures along our patented ā¢.O. CHART”(Goals and Objective) to see how far you fell short. You’ll get a complete computer readout of your life, showing exactly what your total existential net worth is worth.

(incomplete 1980?)

Most people don’t know that Latvia has mountains and even fewer know that they are blue. Actually, Latvia has several “Blue Mountains” on its landscape and even a popular play called “Blue Mountain Marta”. But only one of Latvia’s “blue mountains” can be seen from distant Estonia and is located in the Slītere National Park, although you might need a powerful telescope and a vivid imagination to catch a glimpse of it.
The Slītere National Park is located 180 kilometres northwest of Rīga and is best known for its Cape Kolka, that triangle of land that sticks out to seperate the Bay of Rīga from the Baltic Sea. Although Slītere is one of the oldest nature reserves in the Baltic States, several thousand years ago it was entirely under water. (If you want to know what Latvia will look like after global warming raises the seas again, check out a map of the prehistoric Baltic Sea region.)
According to geologists, the Baltic Sea we know and love today was once called the Littorina Sea and was much larger, thanks to a massive meltdown at the end of the last Ice Age. (Of course, there was no one around the Littorina Sea back then, but that doesn’t stop modern-day geologists from naming things after the fact.)
If you drive up north along the Dundaga-Mazirbe highway you will encounter a steep drop in elevation just after you enter Slītere National Park. At this spot you will see a large wooden observation tower to your right. The tower is located on what was once the ancient shoreline of the Littorina Sea and provides a panoramic view of the entire park.

This is also the location of the Slītere “Blue Mountains” although today we tend to be more modest and call them the “Blue Hills”. If you want to get an even better look at the entirety of the Slītere National Park, go to the nearby Slītere light house. From there you get a spectacular view of was once covered by water, as well as the present shoreline of Kurzeme’s “Livonian Coast”.

From the lighthouse you can also see the southern coast of Estonia’s Saaremaa island which is just across the Irbe Strait from Latvia. The Slītere National Park is famous for its broadleaf forests which cover the ancient coastline and have been largely untouched for untold centuries. It’s also famous for housing more animals than humans. While the ancient Livs and modern tourists tend to congregate in the small fishing villages of Mazirbe, Košrags, Pitrags, Saunags,
Vaide and Kolka that lie along the coastline, the inland forests are full of fox, elk, deer, lynx, wild boar and the occasional wolf. The skies are full of birds because the park is located along a major Baltic flyway. As many as 60 000 birds per hour have been observed flying over the forest during the spring and fall migrations.
This flyway is also popular with major international airlines that use this route to wing their way and to and from the Rīga International Airport. Fortunately for the birds (and their watchers) the tourist-packed passenger planes pass a few thousand metres higher in the sky.
If you prefer watching cruising ships to migrating birds, Slitere’s Livonian coastline is great place to gaze at a steady stream cargo container ships and cruise lines as they make their way between Saaremaa and Latvia into the Bay of Rīga.
Want to feel like a Viking? If you happen to be on one of those Baltic ferries, the view you will see of the Livonian coastline is still almost identical to that which ancient Vikings, Teutonic Crusaders and other Baltic seamen saw when they sailed past these shores a thousand years ago. The endless line of green pines, white sands and blue Baltic waters will also reveal why the Livs chose green/white/blue for their national flag.

So no matter how you look at it, or regardless of your vantage point, the Blue Hills of Slītere are a sight to behold. But hurry, because even if urban renewal never invades this remote part of Latvia, sooner or later, the Baltic Sea will. And anyone who has a summer house up there knows that you never really “own” a piece of land on this planet, you just borrow it for a while.

A few years ago the Latvian Tourism Development Agency ran a promotional campaign called “You Won’t Believe it Until You See It!”, which talked about such things as blue cows, flying people and extraordinary singers. If that campaign were still up and running today, the number one topic would no doubt be the turn-around of the Latvian economy.

But don’t take my word for it. EU Economic and Monetary Affairs Commissioner Olli Rehn said as much when the EU member states approved the latest tranche in loans to the Latvian government: “The program is on track, financial conditions have largely stabilized and the economic situation is showing signs of improvement”.

Yesterday in an analysis of the International Monetary Fund, Martin Hutchinson wrote in SIFY FINANCE: “Nor is the IMF’s track record by any means perfect. On the positive side, its loans to Latvia appear to have had the desired effect in encouraging the government’s austerity program, allowing Latvia to maintain its exchange rate parity and to generate the beginnings of economic recovery. Industrial production, for instance, rose 10.9 per cent in the year to May.”

The Bank of Latvia President Ilmārs Rimševičs agrees. He points out that Latvia’s growing current account surplus “…confirms the assumption that the lowest point in the economic decline is already in the past, which is vital both for the real economy and psychologically. We expect positive GDP growth also in the second quarter as suggested by the results in May, and the manufacturing industry will make the greatest contribution to positive growth.”

BBC is equally positive in its outlook for the Latvian economy. In a country-by-country review of “The Eurozone in Crisis”, BBC passed the following “verdict” on Latvia:

• Experienced one of EU’s deepest recessions, but confidence is returning;
• Fiscal measures having encouraging impact, but still much work ahead;
• Exports now expected to grow at healthy pace;
• Property market recovering and consumer spending growing;
• But fragile economy could still be hit by any threat to confidence.

Pēteris Strautiņš, an economic expert for DnB NORD bank, describes what happened from an insider’s point of view: “Almost everything that was fragile in

our economy has been broken, and the explosive potential that accrued during the beginning of the crisis has already exploded. Now the rubble is being cleared and things are turning forward.” Strautiņš agrees with other more optimistically inclined observers that the Latvian economic recovery „will be slow, but steady”.

Actually there’s a lot of good news coming out of Latvia these days. Latvia’s national airline airBaltic just announced that that it carried 1.472 million passengers during the first six months of 2010 at a 22% rise from the same period a year ago. Many of those passengers may be flocking to our beaches, because Latvia has been experiencing a record high heat wave in July, and more unbelievably hot Nordic weather is expected through August.

Economic recovery is a product of many complex factors, including perceptions, regardless of whether they are all true or not. Latvia’s sudden popularity is evident in a very hot new ad campaign by Old Spice, where the “Old Spice Guy” boasts that his products are so popular in Eastern Latvia “that they made me king”. He adds ”that’s great, because I love grapes”. And if you don’t believe me, you can see it at:

http://www.youtube.com/user/oldspice#p/p/484F058C3EAF7FA6/0/0Cs95FmimP0

Like the improving economy, the blue cows and flying people are really real, although I hope those airBaltic passengers don’t start coming here for the grapes.

Each year, toward the end of June, the sun stands still in Latvia. Actually, it stands still everywhere in the world because that’s what solstice means in Latin – the moment when the sun stops moving in one direction and starts moving in another. What the rest of the world doesn’t know is that the only reason the sun does start moving again is because the Latvians will it so.

Some scientists may disagree, but they’ve probably never stayed up all night with Latvians on the night of June 23 If you haven’t tried it, don’t knock it.

Granted, some astrophysicists may question the efficacy of this time-honored Latvian practice, since in the Northern Hemisphere where Latvia is located the Summer Solstice falls on the night of June 20-21.

But Latvians, like a lot of fellow Europeans have always celebrated this primeval pagan Midsummer’s Day festival a few days after the solstice itself. Shakespeare was so impressed he even wrote a play about it.

In Latvia, the Midsummer celebration is a 2-day affair that starts on Ligo Day, June 23rd, and continues on Jani, June 24. It is one of the oldest and popular celebrations of Latvian culture, and the one thing Latvians do not do during these sacred days of ritual and revelry, is stand still.

To celebrate Līgo and Jāņi, Latvians leave their cities to congregate around roaring bonfires in the forests and fields of Latvia’s countryside. They make special foods and beverages, sing midsummer songs, dance magical dances and partake in a wide array of traditional activities with deep roots in Latvian folklore. With meadow grasses thick and tall, and flowers in full bloom, they are without a doubt the happiest and most mystical days of the year in Latvia.

For example, most pteridologists (people who study ferns) will tell you that ferns don’t have blossoms. But Latvians know better. Centuries of trial and error have proven that if young people (especially a boy and a girl) go out into the forest on Līgo night, and are extremely patient, alert and receptive, they will see a fern reveal its blossom at precisely midnight. They may discover a few other things in the process, but that’s another story. (If you want to hear an eyewitness account of this phenomenon from a veteran fern blossom finder, go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ikPVAl1MOs

The list of things you can (or should) do on Līgo night and Jāņi morning is as long and mysterious as the Lielvārdes josta (a Latvian wool and linen belt woven with mystic symbols and often used to solve the riddles of the universe). Since the sun’s energy is at its peak, meadow grasses are greener, water has accentuated healing properties, and beer and cheese taste better than at any other time of the year. (Be sure to wash your face in the morning dew!)

According to one tradition, if a maiden stares into a lake on Līgo night, she will see her future husband. Another tradition has it that young men should strip naked on Jāņi morning and bathe in a local lake while young women cheer them on. (When you think about it, this second tradition makes the first one a lot less mysterious.)

Bonfire jumping is another Līgo tradition, but you have to do it in pairs while holding hands. Women gather meadow flowers and weave floral wreathes to wear on their heads. Men named Jānis wear wreathes made of oak leaves, although some exceptions are allowed. For example, Monty Python’s Michael Palin visited Latvia for his travel documentary “New Europe” and since he happened to be here on Līgo night, he too donned an oak leaf chapeau. (You can see him in his oaken splendour at http://palinstravels.co.uk/static-206.)

Not only Palin, but a lot of other sociologists, philosophers and journalists are coming around to the conclusion that the Latvian celebration of Midsummer plays a very special role in the whole cosmic scheme of things. As I said in the beginning, Latvians stay up all night, and when the sun sets, they sing special songs to make it rise again. To date, Latvians have been wildly successful at this, because in recorded history the sun has never failed to rise again after hearing the appropriate Latvian folk songs. So the next time you see the sun rise on

June 24th, thank the Latvians.

And don’t forget to Līgo!

Here’s a word of advice to any tourist toying with the thought of visiting Latvia. All the really great experiences you can have in this country are best enjoyed slowly.

That’s the general opinion of most people who live in Latvia, and that seems to be the consensus among international travellers, which explains why Latvia’s Tourism Development Agency recently unveiled a new tourism promotion concept based around the tagline – „Latvia. Best Enjoyed Slowly”.

Those in the tourism industry who follow these kinds of things will know that for the last 8 years Latvia was „The Land that Sings”. It really still is. We just won’t be talking about it so much anymore. Singing has a way of speaking for itself, and by now anyone who knows anything about Latvia knows that a lot of people sing here and many of them do it very, very well. So as long as the crystal clear waters and crisp Baltic air keep producing such expressive vocal chords, Latvia will always be the land that sings. Just ask the fans at the New York Met.

But we have learned some things over the last few years. Among them is the fact that most of the best and truly Latvian things you can do in Latvia, are always best enjoyed slowly. (Even the singing.) You may enjoy dashing to London and crashing around Manhattan, and you may even want to take a run around Rīga (we have a marathon every year), but once you step out into the Gauja valley or a Kurzeme forest, life slows down to the speed of nature.

Like with any new marketing campaign, not all agree with it and some fear it may suggest that Latvians are slow. Far from it. Anyone who has driven on Latvia’s country roads knows otherwise. That’s the odd thing about all the guys speeding to their country houses on the nation’s highways; they are in a hurry to get to a place where they can finally slow down.

It’s no secret that one of the goals of the new tourism strategy is to extend the length of time that a tourist stays in Latvia. It’s pure economics. But it’s also a win-win proposition. The longer a tourist stays in Latvia, the more he likes it. And the more a tourist likes and stays in Latvia, the more we like it. It’s not only good economics, it’s also good public relations.

In addition to all the official research, I’ve done some of my own and concluded that it takes non-Latvians a few minutes longer to understand and appreciate what Latvians already know about this country. That’s why we’re telling people not to hurry after they get here. Whether it’s a night in the sauna or a walk along the endless Liv Coast, the real magic of the experience only begins to reveal itself once you’ve stopped worrying about your next appointment.

Mobile phone coverage and Internet access is pretty widespread in Latvia, but there are places where you just want to shut everything down, turn everything off and listen to the woodpeckers. One of our biggest summer attractions is storks – we have one of the largest populations in Europe. And one of their most noble and admirable features is that they never rush anywhere. If anyone knows how to take life gracefully and slowly, it’s Latvia’s storks. But if you really want to relish the dignity of a stork, you have stop your car, get out and stay a while. They won’t mind.

You won’t see many storks in Rīga however, because they prefer freshly mown fields to four star restaurants, and their recently hatched storklettes are far too young for Rīga’s clubs and discos. The high energy LIVE RIGA! campaign is not for them, and that’s just the way it should be. Latvia has one of the great capitals of Europe, but for many, the forests, fields and water that surround it are even more intriguing. But you have to get out and walk around for a while to realize that everything you are experiencing is best enjoyed slowly.

You can’t help but stop and stare at the bizarre renderings of Rīga’s Art Nouveau architects, and as the experts will tell you, the longer you look the more you see. The foxes, deer and elk won’t begin to appear until you have sat for a while in the middle of a Latgale mushroom forest. The finest herbal teas of Northern Europe only begin to reveal their Latvian fineness after you’ve sipped them slowly while watching a sunset sink into the Bay of Riga.

So if you take a plane to Rīga, be prepared to take some time in Latvia. Sooner or later you will begin to understand why.

During Latvia’s boom years, our exports never exceeded imports. Last year, during the peak of the economic crisis, they did. What gives? A look at some of our top exporting companies offers some surprising clues.

At the end of 2009, 29 highly successful and respected Latvian companies competed for top prizes in the annual Latvian Export and Innovation Award competition. Somehow the words “highly successful” and “economic crisis” do not seem to belong in the same year, no less the same country, but in 2009 Latvia experienced both.

Thanks to the Ministry of Economics and the Latvian Investment and Development Agency, I participated in the jury that had the rare privilege of seeing firsthand how some of Latvia’s most innovative exporters are defying expectations on a  routine basis.

Some may rely on numbers and macroeconomic factors to explain success, but when you visit a company like Dores fabrika Ltd. near Cēsis you realize that tradition, innovation and integrity remain an unbeatable formula. Dores fabrika applies ingenious new technologies to the beloved tradition of log houses to produce stunning, eco-friendly, energy-efficient homes that dazzle the eye and warm the cockles of any heart. Even the Norwegians, global leaders in log house construction, have been impressed.

Norwegians, Swedes and Danes are also impressed by the books that are being produced by Livonia Print Ltd. So much so, that almost 90% of what this state-of art printing plant and bindery produces in Riga ends up on Scandinavian shelves. It would be undiplomatic to mention which royal families regularly turn to Livonia Print to print their life stories, but clearly the price and quality are up to regal standards.

When the Scandinavian kings and queens visit some of their leading manufacturers, chances are that the red carpet was laid down over Prime Composite concrete floors produced by Primekss Ltd. Primekss has literally re-invented the concrete floor, making it thinner, tougher, more durable and totally seamless. The fact that producing Primekss concrete floors generates 30-50% less Co2 emissions makes them even more popular in the eco-conscious Baltic Sea Region. Latvians, Estonians and Poles are the first continental Europeans to start building with Primekss concrete, but sooner or later, the rest of “Old Europe” should get the hint.

However, it’s not only Scandinavians that are upping the numbers of Latvian exports. It appears that the Italians are the prime consumers of Monterigo cheese, produced by Limbažu piens Ltd. This hard cheese is aged for 18 months and is remarkably similar to something that looks, smells and tastes like – but can’t be called – parmesan cheese. So much so, that the Italians are re-packaging it and exporting it to the UK. (Don’t tell the Brits.)

While most of Latvia’s exporters are doing well in the EU and many continue to expand their traditional markets in Russia and other parts of the former USSR, one Latvian company is beginning to clean-up, so to speak, in China. Stenders Ltd. has 190 franchise stores around the world selling their distinctive soaps, bath balls and body cosmetics, and 20 of them are in China. Not only is the market huge, the Chinese prefer to purchase their bars of Stender’s soap in “Great Wall’’ sizes.

Notwithstanding the global success of many Latvian exporters, one Riga-based company is generating out-of-this-world sales results. Literally. Bruker Baltic Ltd. specializes in the development of, (get ready,) “high-pure germanium and cadmiumzinc-tellurium detectors”. Don’t know what that means? I don’t either, but Bruker has designed their devices for NASA and the European Space Agency, and is presently working on a technical innovation for the next probe to the planet Mercury.

Speaking of long distances, when the film hero E.T. had to “phone home” he had problems making connections. While the Latvian makers of “B-Phone” may not be able to keep you in touch with other planets, they can help you listen in on your baby from anywhere your mobile phone service can reach. Their innovative baby monitoring device calls your mobile phone any time your child moves or makes a sound. You can talk to the toddler as well. The wives and husbands in our jury immediately thought of some other applications for this mobile monitoring device, but I’ll leave that to your imagination.

January 12, 2010

The Times Online ran an editorial on their comment page on March 4 where they encouraged fellow Brits to welcome the new wave of Latvian economic migrants with open arms. Said The Times, “We should welcome Latvians warmly for all that they have contributed to the world, and for what they might, therefore, contribute to Britain.”

To make its point, The Times listed a number of internationally recognized names associated with Latvia, but as several commentators pointed out, none of them were actually ethnic Latvians. Eisenstein, Berlin, Rothko and Baryshnikov were either born or simply lived here, and no doubt knew Latvians to some degree, but none were Latvians themselves.

But I don’t think that changes the spirit of what The Times was saying in its editorial. People from Latvia have always done well in other countries and tend to add rather than subtract from whatever environment they land in.

The key words here are “people from Latvia”, because the air, water and Baltic Sea vibes that are unique to this place and this place alone, have a lingering affect on anyone who’s stood under a Rīga pine in a Kurzeme forest. (Or a grove of birches on a Vidzeme hillside.) Regardless of which ethnic group you started your life in, once you’ve been through several seasonal cycles on a piece of land that the Europeans once called Livonia, the sunsets have a cumulative effect and something mystical rubs off.

The composer Richard Wagner came to Rīga to escape his debtors and France’s King Louis XVIII sought refuge in Jelgava from Napoleon. Doubt if either one learned the local language, given their preoccupation with greater concerns. But Mikhail Baryshnikov does speak Latvian fluently and once claimed that when he and fellow Russian dancer Boris Godunov visited Moscow, they would speak in Latvian to each other so that no one else could understand them. Latvian as the secret language of codes? Wouldn’t be the first time.

Code-breaking was no doubt one of the concerns of legendary U.S. diplomat George Kennan when he was stationed in Rīga in the 1930’s. It wasn’t until 1946 that Kennan wrote his famous “long telegram” warning the U.S StateDepartment to be wary of the USSR; clearly Kennan’s earlier days in Rīga left an impression.

Some social scientists debate whether ethnic identity is something inherent in humans, or an acquired taste. If you’re a “primordialist” you believe that your ethnic identity is etched in your genes, now and forever. But the “instrumentalists” argue that people actively adopt and utilize their ethnic identity in order to foster wealth, power or status.

In Chicago, everyone became Irish on St. Patrick’s Day, and stayed Irish if they wanted a good position in the city government. During the 1980’s and the rise of the Solidarnosc movement in Poland, the same people who once made fun of Poles dug out their family trees to prove that they too had noble Polish heritage.

Back in 1995, when I was serving as Latvia’s Ambassador to the U.S., I was introduced to Franklin A. Sonn, the first post-apartheid black man to be appointed South Africa’s Ambassador to the United States. When we met, he smiled and said that his grandfather was from Rīga. After the surprised look on my face subsided, Ambassador Sonn proceeded to describe his rich ethnic heritage, which included both Rīga Jews and African tribal chieftains. Michael Strautmanis, a friend and close advisor of President Obama, is an African-American with a very Latvian last name and an equally keen understanding of Latvian culture because he was raised by a Latvian stepfather in Chicago.

So the Brits need not worry about people coming from Rīga to London in search of fame, fortune or just a job. But they should keep in mind that it could work both ways. One of Rīga’s most celebrated and accomplished mayors at the turn of the last century was a Brit by the name of George Armistead. There’s even a statue of him and his wife and dog by the canal near the Latvian National Opera house.

If one of the future mayors of London happens to be from Latvia, you don’t have to include the dog.

March 9, 2010

Twenty years ago on May 4, 1990, 138 deputies in the Supreme Council of the Soviet Socialist Republic of Latvia passed a declaration that made the Latvian SSR null and void. At the same time they reinstated the independent Republic of Latvia that had been founded on November 18, 1918.

Since the Latvian SSR was considered by Moscow to be part of the USSR in 1990, this declaration wasn’t immediately recognised by the powers that be in the Kremlin. In fact, it took another 15 months for Latvia’s restored independence to be recognized by the world, and that only happened after the USSR itself collapsed and came apart.

But voting for an independent Latvia on May 4, 1990 was a bold move of enormous political consequences, and a clear indication to the world that the old USSR was rapidly losing its control of what Ronald Reagan had once famously called the Evil Empire.

For example, the Latvian Supreme Council itself had just been reconstituted through Soviet elections in March 1990, and for the first time in Soviet history, a majority of its deputies were no longer Communist Party loyalists. They not only favoured Latvia’s independence but reminded the world that Soviet rule in Latvia had been illegal since 1940. The 1990 re-declaration of Latvia’s independence began the process of dismantling this illegal rule and re-establishing the constitution, institutions and values of the sovereign Latvian state first established in 1918.

In all, 201 deputies had been elected to the 1990 Supreme Soviet, but when it came time to vote on the restoration of independence, 138 voted in favour, 0 voted against, and 1 abstained. Those deputies that were still loyal to the Soviet regime simply didn’t vote one way or another.

It was an incredibly emotional day in Latvia on May 4^th, especially in the square in front of the parliament, which was filled overflowing with thousands of well-wishers. As they emerged from the parliament building the 138 deputies who voted “yes” were greeted by tears, cheers and emotional ovations from the huge crowd.

Three days after this declaration on May 7, the Supreme Council chose Ivars Godmanis to be its chairman and (in effect) prime minister. In less than 3 months, on July 31, 1990, Ivars Godmanis and his Foreign Minister Jānis Jurkāns were sitting in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, D.C. talking to President of the United States George Bush. They talked about the restoration of Latvia’s independence.

For anyone who is under the age of 20 it’s almost impossible to imagine what life was like in Latvia under Soviet rule. It’s equally difficult to imagine that in 1990, apart from some patriotically impassioned people in Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, there was nearly no one on this planet who could imagine a world without the Soviet Union.

And yet 15 months later, not only did the pugnacious Baltic States of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia restore their full independence from the Evil Empire, 12 other Soviet Republics un-sovietised themselves. Among them was a country we know of today as the Russian Federation.

Russia, in some political form or another, has been around for centuries, but the Russian Federation that exists today was founded on December 26, 1991. That makes the Republic of Latvia – founded in 1918 and restored in 1991 – 73 years older than its prominent neighbour to the east.

While Rīga and Moscow may sometimes disagree on the details of history, I like to think that when Latvian re-declared its independence 20 years on May 4, 1990, we made it a little bit easier for Russia to achieve its independence one year later.

When I was lobbying for Latvia’s independence in the late 1980’s, I used to tell Washington politicians that the Soviet and Nazi occupations of Latvia were just a brief 50-year interruption in the history of the Latvian Republic. When Latvia’s independence was restored in 1991, I had the honour of joining one Latvian state institution that had indeed continued to function uninterrupted since 1918. A new exhibit at the Latvian Foreign Ministry shows just how this Ministry both survived and renewed itself when Latvia restored its independence 20 years ago.

This 92-year long track record was made possible during the years of occupation by Latvia’s diplomats in exile, most notably Dr. Anatols Dinbergs, who maintained Latvia’s de jure status in London and Washington, D.C., for half a century. That is a story in and of itself. But the Foreign Ministry’s new exhibit focuses on the years of 1990 – 1991, when a new generation of inexperienced but decidedly determined diplomats in Rīga began to rebuild Latvia’s diplomatic corps and re-establish Latvia’s foreign relations with the rest of the world.

Actually, the re-establishment of the independent Republic of Latvia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs began in May 1990, 15 months before Latvia’s independence was “re-recognized” internationally. Following the May 4, 1990 Supreme Council vote to restore independence, a new government was formed under the leadership of Prime Minister Ivars Godmanis. With the choice of Jānis Jurkāns as the new Foreign Minister, the “old” Foreign Ministry began to reconstitute itself.

The young men and women who assumed diplomatic duties at the small but eclectically elegant building at Pils street 11 in Rīga’s Old Town had no formal training and no ties to the former Soviet regime that had previously occupied the building. They had a few old typewriters, some telephones of questionable reliability and a telex machine that enabled them to make limited contact with the outside world. What they didn’t lack was dedication, patriotism and a fierce commitment to learn the nuts and bolts of their newly assumed diplomatic craft.

The exhibit in the vestibule of the Foreign Ministry displays some of those phones, as well as other seemingly ancient artefacts from 20 years ago, including passports, diplomatic notes, photographs and other ministry memorabilia. You can see the Ministry’s first “mobile” phone, a bulky Panasonic that was the size of a small toolbox and weighed several kilos.

The remarkable thing is that while the glass cases reveal the stuff of the past, many of the people who used that stuff are still with the Ministry today. In fact, Latvia’s last two Foreign Ministers, Aivis Ronis and Māris Riekstiņš, both began their careers in those early years. So did Latvia’s present Defence Minister Imants Lieģis.

Fresh-faced foreign service officers like Mārtiņš Virsis, Ints Upmacis, Ivars Pundurs, Alberts Sarkanis, Argita Daudze, Normans Penke, Aivars Vovers, and Atis Sjanītis, who were opening embassies and establishing diplomatic contacts in the early 90’s, are today experienced elder statesmen with ambassador rank in Latvia’s diplomatic corps. If it seems like Anita Prince, Bonifācijs Daukšts, Klāvs Sniedze and Irēna Putniņa have been with the Foreign Ministry forever, you’re probably right. (For anyone under the age of 20 today, that is forever.)

Sandra Kalniete was the Ministry’s first Chief of Protocol, went on to become Ambassador, Foreign Minister, and EU Commissioner, and today serves as a member of the European Parliament.

One of the glass cases displays Foreign Minister Jurkāns’ first diplomatic passport with the number 00003 (Number 00001 was given to Popular Front leader Dainis āªvāns, 00002 to the Chairman of the Supreme Council Anatolijs Gorbunovs, and 00004 to Prime Minister Ivars Godmanis). The blanks for these original diplomatic passports had to be shipped to Rīga from the Latvian Legation in Washington, D.C., where they had been safeguarded for half a century.

In his recollections as the first Foreign Minister of the renewed ministry, Jānis Jurkāns also gives generous credit to Latvia’s leading exile organisation, the World Federation of Free Latvians, and its leaders, Gunārs Meierovics, Jānis Ritenis, and Egils Levits. They not only helped their Rīga colleagues with the re-establishment of the diplomatic corps and sundry legal documents, but also went on to become ministers in ensuing Latvian governments. The stately conference room next to the Ministry’s vestibule is named after Gunārs Meierovics’ father, Latvia’s first Foreign Minister Zigfrīds Anna Meierovics.

The exhibit includes a 52-minute documentary film called “The Renewers”, which focuses on the recollections and life stories of 16 individuals who played key roles in re-establishing the work of the Foreign Ministry in 1990/1991. But that’s only a tribute to the last 20 years. The rest of the story, I’m happy to say, is to be continued.

On January 7, 2010 in a quiet neighborhood on the northwest side of Washington, D.C. the Latvian government sold a small piece of land that once had a big impact on our country’s history The brown brick 2-story building on the corner of 17^th and Webster in Washington, D.C. may have served as Latvia’s first Embassy in the United States for 14 years, but for many, it will always be remembered in its first diplomatic incarnation, as The Legation of Latvia.

What exactly is a ‘legation’ and why were Latvia and Lithuania the last countries in the world to have them? In the beginning of the last century, most foreign diplomatic missions were called ‘legations’, but after World War II it became fashionable to upgrade them to embassies. Unlike Latvia and Lithuania, which established legations in pre-war Washington, D.C., Estonia chose instead to open a general consulate in New York. Since all three countries came under Soviet occupation in 1940, none of them could upgrade to their missions to embassies, and their designations remained frozen in place during the Cold War.

Thanks to the U.S. non-recognition policy, and despite endless protests from the Soviets, these three Baltic missions and their envoys-in-exile retained their official status, and had the same immunity and privileges of other diplomatic representations in the United States. They drove cars with diplomatic plates, conducted business with State Department officials, and were invited to meet the President in the White House once a year.

Prior to World War II, the Lithuanians managed to purchase a splendid building on 16^th. street, coincidently, just down the block from the Polish legation. The Estonians rented an office in Manhattan’s Rockefeller Center. Both continued to use these same facilities after the Soviet occupation in 1940. The Latvians were renters in Washington until 1953, when they bought the modest brick 2-story family house in a residential neighborhood on the corner of 17^th and Webster.

The Latvian diplomats who served in the Washington Legation from the 40’s until the 90’s were all career diplomats who had served in other countries prior to the war and had refused to return to Soviet-ruled Latvia. Since the United Kingdom also allowed Latvia to retain a Legation, those who didn’t go to London came to Washington. Many were accomplished scholars, and supplemented their limited diplomatic duties in exile by writing extensively about Latvian history and culture. Two of the best English-language histories of Latvia were written by Latvian diplomats in Washington, D.C.: Alfred Bilmanis (1187-1948) and Arnolds Spekke (1887–1972). Spekke headed the Washington Legation from 1963 until 1971 and worked on his seminal work from his corner office at 17^th and Webster. From Washington, the diplomats also maintained close ties with the Latvian exile community. As head of the Legation, Julijs Feldmanis (1889-1953), played a key role in the establishment of the American Latvian Association (1953), which grew to become the largest and most influential Latvian organization in the diaspora.

Anatols Dinbergs (1911- 1993) took over the D.C. Legation in 1971, during which time he also wrote his PhD thesis at Georgetown University. Heads of mission were formally called ‘charges d’affaires’ in diplomatic circles, and Dinbergs held this title for 20 years. During the 1980’s, Dinbergs, Stasys Lozoraitis of Lithuania and Ernst Jaakson of Estonia, were well known in Washington, D.C. as the grand old men of Baltic diplomacy. They were the keepers of the keys, the guardians of Baltic sovereignty and true diplomats in every sense of the word.

When I joined the Legation in January 1991 as its public affairs liaison, Dinbergs had two fully accredited diplomats on his staff: Valdemars Kreicbergs (1912-1995) and Jānis LÅ«sis (1945). While Kreicbergs, like Dinbergs, Spekke, and others had been part of Latvia’s original diplomatic corps prior to the occupation, LÅ«sis was something of a diplomatic precedent. He was born in a refugee camp in Germany and had grown up in Canada. In the mid 1980’s as the number of Latvia’s living pre-war diplomats dwindled, Dinbergs feared that the Legation could be forced to close its doors after his tenure ended. So he convinced the U.S. State Department to allow him to appoint new diplomats to keep the Legation functioning after his eventual departure. There was just one condition: they couldn’t be U.S. citizens. LÅ«sis, a Latvian with Canadian citizenship, joined the Washington Legation in 1986. He served as 1^st secretary of the Legation until 1991 and is the only person to become a fully accredited Latvian diplomat during the years of occupation. Jānis later became counselor at Washington embassy, and served as Latvia’s ambassador in the UK, Canada and Italy.

Jānis LÅ«sis is also one of only three people still alive who have worked at the building at 17^th and Webster when it was still a Legation. In addition to myself, the third person is a remarkable woman named Luti Moran. If Anatols Dinbergs was the ‘head’ of the Legation for two decades, Luti was its heart. She also happened to be a Filipina, although by the early 80’s many Latvians who called the Legation and spoke to this charming secretary were convinced she was from Latgale. Luti not only managed the day-to-business of the Legation and served as Dinberg’s personal secretary, she also became fluent enough in Latvian to carry on lengthy conversations with callers.

While Legation diplomats maintained close ties with the Latvian-American community and its organizations, it had no contact whatsoever with Soviet-occupied Latvia. This changed with the rise of the Popular Front in 1989, as glasnost allowed Latvian activists to visit Washington, D.C. For many, the Legation was the end point of sacred pilgrimage, for when they stepped through the doors of the house on 17^th and Webster, they were setting foot for the first time on the fully independent and sovereign territory of the Republic of Latvia.

Every diplomatic mission answers to its foreign minister and home government, but during the Soviet occupation, the Latvian Legation had neither. Just before the occupation, the Latvian Cabinet of Ministers empowered Latvia’s chief diplomat in London, Kārlis Zariņš, to head all missions abroad and represent the Republic of Latvia if the government falls. After Zariņš death in 1963, this authority fell to the head of the Legation in Washington, D.C. In June 1990, another precedent was set when Latvia’s newly elected Prime Minister Ivars Godmanis and Foreign Minister Jānis Jurkāns walked past the oval metal shield designating 17^th and Webster as the Legation of Latvia, and passed through the white double doors that led to the office of the charges d’affaires, Dr. Anatols Dinbergs. For the first time since Latvia’s occupation, the head of its diplomatic corps was meeting face to face with his foreign minister.

The meeting was ‘unofficial’ because Godmanis and Jurkāns represented what was still the (diplomatically unrecognized) Soviet Republic of Latvia, while Dinbergs represented the independent (but illegally occupied) Republic of Latvia. For this reason, Dinbergs was not able to accompany Godmanis and Jurkāns to the White House later that week when they met with President George Bush. But contacts had been established between 17^th and Webster and Riga, and while de facto would not become de jure for another 15 months, the diplomatic die had been cast.

By 1991, a steady stream of Popular Front and LNNK leaders began to make regular visits. One of my key contacts was Sarmīte Elerte, who worked in the press office of the Popular Front, but was already creating the new daily newspaper ’Diena’. Communication with Latvia largely took place through my computer which had a telex connection to the Latvian Foreign Ministry. (Internet was still many years away.) In my 2^nd floor, back porch office, I got a blow-by-blow account of the Omon attacks in Riga during the Days of the Barricades from Ints Upmacis, who manned the Ministry’s telex until the Black Berets chased him and other staffers from their offices.

The Washington media had largely ignored the obscure diplomatic mission at 17^th and Webster during the Cold War, but in 1991 it became a center of attention and a major source of news about what was happening in Latvia. On September 2, 1991 Dr. Anatols Dinberg’s corner office was packed with cameras, reporters and well-wishers, all with their eyes glued to a TV set that was broadcasting live coverage of a press conference in Kennebunkport, Maine. When President Bush announced that the United States had restored full diplomatic relations with the Latvian government in Riga, we popped the champagne corks and Dr. Dinbergs became the lead story on the evening news. With that, the days of the Latvian ‘Legation’ were numbered. Not long after, Dinbergs was appointed Ambassador to the United States. And the brick house at 4325 17^th Street N.W. that for 38 years had stood on the sovereign soil of the Republic of Latvia, became a full-fledged, honest-to-goodness Embassy.

I spent the next 8 years at the ‘Embassy’ at 17^th, and Webster, seven of those as Ambassador. My first Deputy Chief of Mission was my old telex-colleague from the Foreign Ministry, Ints Upmacis, who later became Latvia’s Ambassador to Portugal. Since 2000, Aivis Ronis, Māris Riekstiņš and Andrejs Pildegovicš have followed in Anatols Dinbergs’ footsteps as Latvian Ambassadors to the United States. Māris Riekstiņš (now Foreign Minister) was the last Latvian ambassador to work at 17^th and Webster, for it was under his tenure that a new embassy building was purchased on Washington’s prestigious  ‘Embassy Row’ at 2306 Massachusetts Ave, on Sheridan Circle.

So despite its 14 years of service as Latvia’s Embassy in the United States, when I heard the news that the building at 17^th and Webster had finally been sold, I thought of it one last time in the way I knew it most fondly: The Legation. For almost 4 decades it stood as a symbol of our sovereignty, and a testimony to the patriotism, stubbornness and dignity of our diplomatic corps. It may have been a small piece of Latvia, but it played a huge role in the history of our country.

In 1989, there was a Wall and a Way.

One came down and the other rose up. The wall was named after the city of Berlin, and it extended way beyond the steel and concrete barrier that split Germany during the Cold War. The Berlin Wall was the visible portion of the Iron Curtain that had divided Europe since Churchill popularized the phrase in 1946. Ronald Reagan went to Berlin in 1987 and challenged Gorbachev to ‘take down this wall’. Gorbachev never got around to it, but in 1989 the German people took the wall down themselves. 1989 was a momentous year in world politics, and the dismantling of the Berlin Wall was one if its most momentous events.

But two months prior to the collapse of the Berlin Wall, on August 23, 1989, far behind the Iron Curtain, two million Latvians, Lithuanians and Estonians joined hands on the highways that linked their countries in a massive demonstration for national independence. They called it the Baltic Way. This human chain stretched for over 600 km from Tallinn, Estonia in the north, through Riga, Latvia, to Vilnius, Lithuania in the south. Like the Berlin Wall, the Baltic Way had a significance that far exceeded the actual kilometers it covered.

The fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 brought a crashing conclusion to a year that brought down the Iron Curtain and dismantled Soviet influence in Central and Eastern Europe. If you’re old enough to remember 1968, you probably loved 1989. This was the year that Poland’s Solidarnosc won the national elections, Hungary re-declared itself a democratic republic, the Communist government of East Germany resigned, the Romanian people overthrew Nicolae Ceausescu, and Czechoslovakia went through a Velvet Revolution that led to the election of Vaclev Havel as president. All in one year,1989.

If the end of the Berlin Wall meant the end of Soviet satellite states in Europe, the Baltic Way demonstration across Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia signaled the beginning of the end of Soviet influence within the Soviet Union. From Stalin to Gorbachev, national protest against Soviet rule had always been unthinkable. Or so everyone thought. That thinking seemed justified when in February 1989, Georgian demonstrators took to the streets of Tblisi and Soviet soldiers fired on them, killing 20. But six months later, when two million Balts defied Soviet authorities to hold an unsanctioned and unprecedented show of peaceful force, the Soviet authorities did nothing. Mahatma Ghandi would have been impressed.

Moscow did condemn the massive Baltic demonstration, and in the next two years the use of Soviet force did take lives in Vilnius and Riga. But by then the genie was out of the bottle and the Baltic States were on their way to independence. In August of 1991, just two years after the historic 1989 Baltic Way demonstration, the three Baltic States restored their sovereignty and rejoined the world community as independent countries again.

This year we mark the 20th anniversary of the tumultuous events of 1989. BBC, CNN and countless other global news networks and international organisations will mark the memories and moments, while their experts discuss the turning points, and historians reflect on the ironies. One of those ironies is that the Baltic Way itself was marking a special anniversary. August 23rd, 1989, was the 50th anniversary of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. This was the infamous Stalin-Hitler agreement in 1939 that led to the eventual occupation of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, and served as a blueprint for erecting the Iron Curtain across Europe.

In August 1989, the Baltic people started taking down their part of that Soviet Curtain. In November 1989, the German people did the same. The Baltic Way was a like a giant arrow that struck the Berlin Wall from within. To many of us baby boomers who lived through the Cold War, the stunning geopolitical convulsions of 1989 came unexpectedly. Especially if you worked in Washington, London, or Brussels. But if you lived in Riga, Prague, Budapest, or Berlin, you knew it was time for a change.

Each of us who lived through those years will remember them differently. But for me, the image is pretty vivid. In 1989 we proved that wherever there’s a
wall, there’s always a way.

This was written for a German TV station (ARTE) web page marking the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

For most Balts, the process of democratization was synonymous with the restoration of independence. We were democratic countries before our occupation in 1940, and could only be so again if our legal independence were restored.

For me, the democratization wave of 1989 began on June 14, 1987 when a thousand Latvians had the courage to defy the Soviet KGB and place flowers at the Latvian Freedom Monument in the heart of Riga. By August 23, the anniversary of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, similar pro-independence demonstrations took place in Lithuania and Estonia as well. We were inspired by what Solidarnosc had done in Poland, and encouraged (albeit inadvertently) by Gorbachev’s policies of glasnost and perestroika.

Baltic independence seemed only possible with the retreat of the Soviet Empire, and the defeat of the Soviets in Afghanistan in early 1989, coupled with growing democratic movements in the Warsaw Pact countries, was a clear signal that something was indeed changing. As a Latvian-American lobbyist in Washington, D.C. I saw the establishments of Baltic ‘popular fronts’ not only as moves toward democracy, but also independence.

From 1987 on, I worked closely with the Latvian Popular Front (LTF) and the Latvian National Independence Movement (LNNK). In August 1989, both organizations had bold plans for the 50^th anniversary of the notorious Stalin-Hitler Pact. The LNNK planned an international conference on self-determination in Riga, and the LTF was working with its counterparts in Estonia and Lithuania to organize The Baltic Way.

I had been born in a Latvian refugee camp in Munich after World War II and had grown up in the United States. Until 1989, ‘independent’ Latvia meant the country my parents had lived in from 1918 until 1940. But in August of 1989, I arrived in Riga along with a U.S. Senator named Bob Kasten, who was inexplicably allowed by the Soviets to participate in the LNNK conference on self-determination. A day later, on August 23^rd, I stood at the foot of the Latvian Freedom Monument, at the mid-point of the 600 km human chain that extended from Tallinn, Estonia, through Riga, to Vilnius, Lithuania. I was just one of 2 million Balts who sent a powerful message to Moscow – and the world – that independence for Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia was no longer a dream. Two years later, that dream became a reality.

We Balts had been watching closely what was happening in Hungary and other Eastern European countries. As Hungarians proclaimed their republic in 1989, what did they think about the Baltic chances of restoring their independence?

I’ve always liked the way words sound together, especially when accompanied by music. I can thank Bob Dylan for this because despite the valiant efforts of my high school English lit teachers, I never appreciated poetry until I first heard ‘Subterranean Homesick Blues’ on the radio. I studied Dylan’s lyrics much more earnestly than Shakespeare’s, and found myself writing verses of my own in the margins my high school workbooks. Once I got a job as an advertising copywriter I relived the angst of my professional obligations by jotting down amusing ditties for my own amusement. I wasn’t writing poetry, didn’t think of myself as a poet and never intended to show anyone what I had written.

Somewhere in the late 1990’s when I was serving as Latvia’s ambassador the United States, a musician in Latvia asked if I could write some English language lyrics for Latvian songwriters. Latvia was independent, its musicians were breaking out into the world, and they wanted to sing in the language that dominated the rock and pop world. So I began to experiment with some verses. I found myself writing songs without music. They sounded like they could be songs to me, and only lacked a melody. I can’t sing or play an instrument, but after years of studying the lyrics of Dylan, Loudon Wainwright III, Leonard Cohen, Bruce Springsteen, Joe Jackson and Steve Earle, I felt I had a feel for the patterns that words could follow as they try to hook up with a melody.

By 2001 I had amassed a goodly  number ‘songs’ in search of melodies, some about Latvia, others about other things, but all inspired by the sights, sounds, people and events that shaped my daily life in Riga, Latvia. In 2002 the Latvian composer Imants Kalnins approached me about an album of new songs he wanted to do, but with English lyrics. Imants traditionally wrote melodies to the lyrics of Latvian poets and asked if I had anything in English he could look at. I gave him about 25 songs and he picked 12, which ended up in the album “Think of Me”, recorded by the Latvian pop group, Autobuss Debesis (“Bus in the Sky”).

Since then I have collaborated with Marija Naumova (Marie N), Arnis Mednis, Renars Kaupers of Brainstorm (Prāta Vētra) and several other musicians, all of whom have recorded songs with my lyrics.

What follows is a sampler of lyrics I have written over the years, most of which have never been put to song. I have hundreds in all and will never get them all in here, and many don’t need to be. But if you are reading this, enjoy composing melodies to other peoples words, and find something that tickles your lyrical fancy, let me know. Half-baked songwriters like me are always looking for their better half.

We raise a glass to friendship

and drink it to the last

we make a toast and a dozens boasts

about our noble pasts

about our noble pasts

Let’s say it again before we go

Let’s play it again before we go

Let’s give it all another try

before we say our last goodbye

We celebrate our birthdays, and years of wedded bliss

we give each other flowers, and seal it with a kiss

and seal it with a kiss

Let’s say it again before we go

Let’s play it again before we go

Let’s give it all another try

before we say our sweet goodby

We make each other happy, we make each other glad

we celebrate the good things, we set aside the bad

we set aside the bad

Let’s say it again before we go

Let’s play it again before we go

Let’s give it all another try

before we make this our goodby

We always love our mothers and listen to our dads

we want them to be happy and never make them mad

No! we never make them mad!

Let’s say it again before go

Let’s play it again before we go

Let’s give our hearts another try

before we think about goodbye

We said we would remember and never would forget

the time we had together the moment that we met

oh, that moment that we met

Let’s say it again before we go

Let’s play it again before we go

Let’s give it all another try

Before we even think goodby

We do it for our children for husbands and their wives

we work and play and celebrate the good things in our lives

all the good things in our lives

Let’s say it again before we go

Let’s play it again before we go

Let’s give it all another try

Before we say our last goodbye

We sing of things that matter of love and hate and lust

we dance because we want to and live because we must

yes, we live because we must!

Let’s say it again before we go

let’s play it again before we go

Let’s give it all another try

and never ever say goodbye

and never say goodbye

no, lets never ever say goodbye

lets never say goodbye

I wanted to see whether I, as a Latvian, could write an Irish drinking song. Renars Kaupers wrote some music for this, and in 2004 he performed it together with the post-modern Latvian folk group Iļģi at the 5th anniversary of the Latvian Institute. There is a video of this somewhere, but it was never performed again. (To my knowledge.)

The returning

(I used a metaphor from my Glaciers article to develop this copy for the program that was used at the Gala Concert, attended by NATO heads of state at the 2006 NATO Summit in Riga)

Long before there were Latvians, there was a land covered by ice. When the ice melted and the glaciers retreated, life returned to the land. As streams and rivers flowed into the sea, people flowed into the land. Just as the landscape transformed itself through the movement of ice and water, so too the ancient peoples that settled here adapted to these changes. Tribes, languages and cultures evolved, sometimes clashing, but also coalescing.

It all came together in 1918 when the Latvian state was proclaimed, although ‘being Latvian’ had already been a state of mind for many centuries. Independence was short-lived – only two decades. Following a hot war that blazed around the world, a cold war descended upon the land. Hopes, dreams and aspirations were frozen in time. This political glacier did not begin retreating until 1991.

For Latvians today, the last 15 years have meant the end of another Ice Age. The ancient symbols of the warming sun and enriching water continue to serve as powerful metaphors for Latvia’s resurgent cultural, economic and political life.

The Baltic Sea, once a forbidding barrier to a free world outside, has now become an inland lake, surrounded by a unifying democratic spirit. Latvians are now part of a growing community of common values called the European Union. This evolution from a small state on the frontiers of Europe has continued with Latvia’s membership in an even broader transatlantic alliance known as NATO.

The Latvian poet Rainis has written that ‘He who evolves himself, endures.’ This is something every Latvian understands, for nature teaches that life is constant change, movement, transformation and evolution. Evolution can be a painful process and not all can survive its diverse challenges. Those who join with others can rise to meet the challenge and ensure a better life for coming generations.

Each human life may seem like a drop in a vast ocean. But it is an ocean that teems with life because of these individual drops and their ability to unite, flow together and become a force of nature itself. Whether it is a force for good or bad, is up to us.

Tonight’s concert is divided into seven parts which trace the path of one drop of water through this endless cycle of regeneration and renewal.

Ojārs Kalniņš

The Returning

Part I

When rain embraces the earth, a spring is born

Part II

When the spring finds its way, it becomes a stream

Part III

The place where the moon shines down on the lake

Part IV

The place where dreams of stars are safeguarded

Part V

Where the river gets the strength to break out

Part VI

So that city lights can shine

Part VII

For the rain will return to its harbor once again

In the beginning, there were solitary droplets of rain and dew, crystal clear and pure. They joined together to form a spring, which became a stream, which flowed into a river that rushed to the sea. The people of Europe have found the path to a spring of hope, which allows them to flow together once again, into a sea that unites them, yet allows them to retain their individual ethnos and independence. The Returning is a hymn to the cycle of endless movement and change, for only flowing water can nourish life.

They talked about their yesterdays and a homeland far away,

They huddled in the barracks and had nothing good to say.

They thought about the days gone by and every snap shot made them cry;

When my father played the saxophone, they danced.

They rummaged through their memories of lives they left behind,

They tried to raise their families with work that they could find.

They cursed the darkness of the night and vowed that they would always fight;

When my father played the saxophone, they danced.

They suffered through the nightmares that followed them like ghosts,

They read the news of losses and counted up the costs.

They wondered what they had to give and gathered up a will to live:

When my father played the saxophone, they danced.

They loaded their belongings in heavy wooden crates,

They filled out forms and questionnaires and then were told to wait.

They taught their children how to hope, not always sure if they could cope;

When my father played the saxophone, they danced.

They boarded ocean liners that took them to the West,

They reassured each other that it was for the best.

They knew that they would always be their country’s homeless refugees

and everywhere they came to be,

my father played the saxophone

and they danced.

I get the globalisation blues

When I read the globalisation news

Don’t know which globalisation to choose

So many globalisation shoes

In Europe they follow the laws that they got from their ma’s and their pa’s

The Yankees left home to be free, so Marines could be all they could be

In Islam they follow the mulla’s, and other fine Mecca-nized fellows

The Russians are looking for leaders with a new set of old parking meters

I get the globalisation blues

When I read the globalisation news

Don’t know which globalisation to choose

So many globalisation shoes

In China the walls are forbidding and you can’t tell if they’re only kidding

Please don’t cry again Argentina,  if the south of the border gets meaner

In Cape Town the races are on but you can’t tell who’s lost and who’s won

In Belfast they’re tossing their pints, at churches that burn through the night

The numbers keep crunching Bombay in every conceivable way

The problems that plague Indonesia are the kind that will always displease you

In Brussels they’re building their bureaus and looking for clerical heroes

In Strasbourg, The Hague and Geneva, they don’t want your senses to leave you

I get the globalisation blues

When I read the globalisation news

Don’t know which globalisation to choose

So many globalisation shoes

Each time that you watch MTV you discover a new way to be

A digital life on the run is a mobilized way to have fun

We are faced with a web of intrigue that’s taken us to a new league

The data we get is astounding as our senses keep taking a pounding

Just ask any man on the street what he’s wearing on both of his feet

Will it take him through rain and through snow and get him where he wants to go?

From Boston to Baghdad they walk, and talk like they’ve learned how to talk

If the twain are intended to meet, it comes down to the shoes on their feet

I get the globalisation blues

When I read the globalisation news

Don’t know which globalisation to choose

So many globalisation shoes

I’ve got the globalisation blues

I’m taking globalisation views

Collecting globalisation clues

To beat these globalisation blues

I’m paying globalisation dues

For all these globalisation blues

Can’t  shake these globalisation blues

Can’ t break these globalisation blues

Exchanging globalisation shoes

The sky descends in darkness as clouds block out the sun

The end he always feared appears to have at last begun.

The hope he found is nearly lost and nothing can replace it

Think of me

I am your father,

We have been through this before

We have been through  this and more

from the cradle to the grave

We have been through this together once before

His options are exhausted and his choices next to none

The battle that he faces now may be the final one

The dreams he had are dashed against the rocks of  least resistance

Think of me

I am your mother

We have been through this before

We have been through this and more

from each cradle to each grave

We have been through this together,

many, many times before

He cannot go much further, he thinks he’s reached the end

the energy he still has left is less than he can spend

All hope he had has taken flight and cannot be recovered

Think of me.

I am your brother.

We have been through this before

We have been through this and more

from our cradles to our graves

We have been through this together in so many waysbefore

All light seems gone, and love does too no shelter from the storm;

there is no place on earth he knows that qualifies as warm

He cannot find one place to be that isn’t where he’s been.

Think of me.

I am you.

We have been through this before.

We have been through this and more

in the all the cradles and the graves.

We have been through this through all our lives together.

(Recorded by ‘Bus in the Sky’ on the album ‘Think  of Me’, music by Imants Kalnins)

I drove forever and a day and I saw no one;

I sailed the river from its source in search of life;

I climbed the hillocks up and down

but there was not a soul around,

and I saw light that stayed up through the night.

This is not my land

this is not your land

someday they’ll understand

that this is no man’s land

I rode the long deserted road erasing footprints;

I felt the forest closing in on all that was;

I strolled through fields of golden dust

and kicked the tools consumed by rust,

and I saw life in every sign of strife

This is not my land

this is not your land

someday they’ll understand

that this is no man’s land

I stepped between the standing stones in sacred wonder;

I bowed my head in holy groves of oak and birch;

I walked through mighty castle walls

that had been built so they could fall,

and I felt free in what was meant to be.

This is not my land

this is not your land

someday they’ll understand

that this is no man’s land

In 2008, the Latvian government created a web page to mark its 90th anniversary. It contained daily news about events as well as background information, history, interesting stories and, of course, bloggers. As Latvian Institute Director, I was asked to be one of them. I wrote about one blog a week from spring until the celebration itself on November 18th, totaling 34 in all. I wrote them all in English, and they were all dutifully translated by someone into Latvian as well. Many later developed into longer pieces, and continue to get recycled for different contexts. This is all of them, pretty much in the order that they appeared.

#1    Why are we here?

Is the 90th anniversary of the Republic of Latvia important? It is if we think it is. How do we know? One way to find out is to talk to others about it. How do they feel? Does it mean anything to them? Will they be observing it in any special way?

We all know that the government of Latvia will be highlighting, noting, observing and celebrating it throughout 2008, because that’s what governments are supposed to do. The Latvian government of 2008, regardless of who’s leading it, represents the same Republic of Latvia that was founded in the National Theater in Riga on November 18, 2008. That’s continuity, and that is something to celebrate.

So we can expect the Latvian state government, as well the regional municipalities to be holding parades, concerts, exhibitions, festivals and fairs throughout 2008. And all 2.3 million people who live in Latvia will be able to participate in these events in any way they choose. So will others who visit Latvia this year.

We created this webpage so you could know what’s happening in Latvia during this 90th anniversary year. It’s also a place to hear what others are thinking, doing and writing. A birthday celebrates the past and welcomes the future. That’s what we will be doing here in 2008.

#2    What is Latvia?

Has anyone ever asked you ‘What is Latvia’? Ironically, it is probably easier for a non-Latvian to answer this question. Someone looking in from the outside can simply use some handy labels – a country on the Baltic Sea, a place where Latvians live, a member of the EU and NATO.

But if you live in Latvia, it’s a lot harder. Latvia is all around you. It is everywhere you look and includes everything. Where do you start? Is it Riga? Is it the wheat fields of Zemgale? The windswept dunes of Kurzeme? Is it politics, culture and economy? All of the above and then some?

This year we celebrate the 90th birthday of the Latvian State, but Latvia has been a state of mind for much, much longer. For those of us who live here, Latvia is defined by our state of mind. Some see it as a good place to live. Others as a place to do business. Some value it for its culture, and others for its naturalness. Some want to govern it and others want to exploit it. Many see it as a good place to catch a plane to Glasgow.

Latvia has been a lot of things in the past, it is several new things in the present, and will be something slightly different in the future. At the moment, it is a place where 2.3 million people have chosen to live.

#3    Latvia’s colonies

No, the Latvian Republic never had any colonies. But the Duke of Courland did back in the 17th century, and Courland today is a part of Latvia. Duke Jacob bought the Caribbean island of Tobago in 1640 and used Latvian sailors on Latvian-made ships to bring sugar, tobacco, and coffee back to Jelgava. Back then Jelgava was a major distribution point for these precious West Indian goods to Eastern Europe.

In 1651 Duke Jacob added to Jelgava’s riches by buying the Island of Andrew at the mouth of Gambia river in West Africa. From here he used Latvian sailors and ships to bring ivory, pearls and other treasures to Jelgava from the Dark Continent.

Bringing goodies from his colonies wasn’t enough so in 1654 Duke Jacob filled the warship ‘Duchess of Courland’ with 80 Latvian families and settled them in Tobago. They even built a Fort Jacob there in his honor. Today you can still find people and even a bay called ‘Courland’ in Tobago.

The Duke’s hold on Tobago ended in 1664, when the British took it for themselves. Today young Brits seem to prefer the streets of Riga to the beaches of Tobago. It surely can’t be for the climate.

#4    Innate victory

In 1951, the late Latvian diplomat Alfred Bilmanis described Latvia, Lithuana and Estonia as the ‘three natural guardians of the freedom of the Baltic Sea’.  All three were occupied by the USSR then, and the world was entering a bitter Cold War that would bring a political Ice Age to half of Europe. At the end of his book, ‘A History of Latvia’, Bilmanis wrote this:

“And still their selfhood lasted on, and still they thought their national personality and their stubborn determination to own themselves might some day be made to count. Should this ability to drink life from rock-bottom despair survive the immense inhumanity of 20^th century terror, the men of any democracy, large or small, may rightly judge that victory was innate in the very stuff of their material and spiritual society.”

Forty years later, in 1991, the three Baltic countries had not only survived the 20^th century, but transformed it. The Baltic singing revolutions contributed to the collapse of the Soviet Empire, and led to a restoration of independence in all three countries.

In 1939 Bilmanis was Latvia’s representative to the League of Nations. Today, Latvia is a member of the United Nations, European Union and NATO.

#5    The oldest place in town

The Latvian Institute’s new offices are located on the busiest street in Riga. Kaļķu street runs through the heart of Riga’s Old Town, from the Freedom Monument to the Stone Bridge that crosses the Daugava River. It’s lined with stores, restaurants and currency exchanges, and it is always filled with people. A lot more people in June than in January, but even on the most blistery bitter winter nights, Kaļķu iela is always alive with laughter, music and activity.

What’s interesting, is that it has been that way for a thousand years. Just down the street from the LI’s offices is the intersection of Kaļķu and Å ķÅ«nu streets, which is where Riga began some 800 years ago. Å ķÅ«nu street, which means ‘shed’, came first, as a row of buildings facing the Daugava river. Kaļķu street came next, because ‘kaļķu’ means lime, and this street once led to some old limestone pits.

Since the Livs already had a settlement here, long before the Germans founded Riga in 1201, chances are these two streets have been the center of activity here for thousands of years.  So why is the oldest street in town still the busiest, even now in the globalized world of the 21^st century? For Latvians, the answer, is usually hidden somewhere deep below the cobblestones.

#6    There’s something about Riga…..

The Livs created a settlement here. Rumour has it the Celts did too. The Vikings stopped here on their way down to Constantinople. The German Crusaders liked it so much they gave it a name. The Holy Roman Empire claimed it, the Hanseatic League recruited it, and the Russians and Poles attacked it. When the Swedes ruled it, it was bigger than Stockholm. British and French ships once helped liberate it and both Stalin and Hitler invaded and occupied it.

It has survived Czarism, Nazism, Communism, Eurovision and the NATO Summit. John F. Kennedy came here as a Congressman and both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush came as Presidents. Mikhail Baryshnikov learned how to dance here, and Catherine Deneuve, Elton John, B.B. King and Sting have all partied here. The world’s best hockey players held their championship here in 2006, and the World’s Ornithological Organizations came to gaze at birds in 2007. Music clubs and discos close around 5am, but the flower market never does.

While Latvia celebrates its 90^th anniversary this year, Riga is celebrating its 807^th. But if you talk to the local Livs (yes, they’re still around) they’ll tell you it’s much, much older.

There’s something about Riga that’s hard to explain. Don’t try. Just enjoy.

#7    Flower people

Latvians are obsessed with flowers. There is no doubt whatsoever in my mind that anyone with at least one ounce of Latvian blood in his family tree is genetically programmed to give and receive flowers all his life.

It doesn’t matter why, where or to whom. If you are Latvian and you haven’t had a bunch of real flowers in your hands for one reason or another in the last 72 hours, you begin to feel tribal withdrawal pains deep down in the roots of your genetic code. Latvians need a constant flower fix and will use any excuse to satisfy it.

A Latvian gives flowers on birthdays, names days, holidays and anniversaries; openings, and closings, weddings and funerals, concerts and sporting events. Put yourself in the centre of any Latvian occasion and prepare to be beflowered. Ice hockey player get them, opera singers get them, poets get them and politicians get them. Latvians give flowers to men, women, children, cows, even rocks – they don’t discriminate. An event cannot be an event if it is not bedecked in flowers.

After a careful unscientific analysis I have concluded  that in Latvia, someone is giving some kind of flower to someone else, for some very Latvian reason, every 15 minutes. I can’t prove that, but it’s obviously true. Cut that estimate in half on weekends.

Let me make your mind up for you.

Why think for yourself when there is someone clever like me to do it for you? Why waste time and effort on thoughts when you can be doing something else that you enjoy more? Are you thinking about voting in the next election? Don’t bother, just…

Vote for My Guys

Like making money? Picking mushrooms? Fishing on ice? You won’t have time for any of that if you have to think about who to vote for. Save time, trouble and stress, and vote for My Guys.

Hi! My name is Steriks Endzenieks and I am paid by people to tell you how great they are, and believe me, they are more than happy to do all your political thinking for you. That’s how they make a living.  You have more important stuff to do and shouldn’t be wasting your time.  We all know that politics is dirty, and good, honest, patriotic people like you shouldn’t be smearing your hands with it. Better those hands are pulling weeds from a bountiful garden in your back yard.

Let us dig in the dirt.

The people who pay me are professionals at sinking their hands into the social soil of politics. It’s their job to clean up your streets, even if it seems like they are also cleaning out your pockets. This happens in government, let’s face it. But My Guys will make it seem like you are getting a lot more for a lot less. If you do get ripped off, you won’t even notice it. That’s how good My Guys are.

I want to liberate you from needless stress. If I can convince you that you that My Guys are better than those Other Guys, believe me, you won’t have to think at all about the upcoming elections. Go visit a client, bring out your mushroom basket, and dust off the fishing rod, but whatever you do, don’t waste your time agonizing over who is going to run this country. My Guys will take care of that. Just watch.

Let me make your mind up for you, and that will be one less thing for you to worry about so you can think about really important things like your family, your car and the foxes in the henhouse.

Let me make your mind up for you, and you won’t have to stress out at cocktail parties when people ask who you are going to vote for.

Let me make your mind up for you and you won’t have to watch any of those long, boring TV news and discussion shows. (More time for hockey, motocross and Dancing with the Stars!)

Let me make your mind up for you and you keep can keep your IPOD turned on to full volume while in the voting booth. (No thinking necessary!)

You are too nice of a person to waste your mind’s time thinking about politics. Let My Guys do it for you!

Vote for My Guys. They’re better than the Other Guys.

They put their money where my mouth is.

(This is a well paid political advertisement created by Me and My Agency for My Guys.)

###

MY GUYS VS THE OTHER GUYS

My name is Steriks Endzenieks and my ad agency is being paid big money to convince you to vote for My Guys in the next election.  Here are ten reasons why you should vote for My Guys:

REASON #1

My Guys have lots of money and thus can afford to hire me, the best (and most expensive) guy in the ad business.

REASON #2

My Guys want to make more money. If they make a lot of money in government, then lots of other people in the country also get to make some money. Maybe you will too. This is good for the economy.

REASON #3

My Guys’ false promises have a ring of truth to them. This is probably very important to many of you.

REASON #4

My Guys believe in anything you believe in. If we’ve missed something that matters to you, just write to our web page and we’ll add it to the list. All value systems honored.

REASON #5

My Guys only lie for a good reason. Values are important to us, and we believe that whatever you do should be only with the best of intentions. We have the best intentions in the world and will tell you anything you want to hear for as long as you want to hear it.

REASON #6

My Guys think like you do. They have the same values you have. They  shop at the same stores you shop at. Some of them even know your wives. If you could get away with it, you would do the same thing we are doing. Let My Guys do it for you.

REASON #7

My Guys’ faces look good on large posters. Let’s face it, this really does matter a lot to you, doesn’t it?

REASON #8

My Guys will leave you alone after they are elected. Dealing with politicians once every four years is bad enough, no need to pollute your life more than that. Just elect My Guys and none of us will bother you again for four years.

REASON #9

My Guys will spend your tax dollars to improve our economy. ‘Us’ of course means them and me, but we’re sure that some of you will get good jobs from all this. Especially if you vote for us.

REASON #10

My Guys hate politicians a much as you do. Especially those that oppose them. Wouldn’t you?

Don’t expect Riga to be completed if it becomes a European Capital of Culture in 2014. According to legend, Riga can never be ‘finished’, or it will sink to the bottom of the Daugava River.

But you can expect the unexpected in 2014. That’s because Riga’s successful candidacy for this prestigious honour was based on an ambitious cultural programme that carries the provocative title of ‘Force Majeure’. If you’ve only seen this term in legal contracts, get ready to expand your cultural consciousness. The French term refers to an ‘overwhelming force’ or an extraordinary event that occurs beyond all normal expectations. As the name alone implies, the creative minds behind Riga’s application are definitely aiming for the extraordinary.

In its application, Riga said it would focus on culture as “the spiritual and intellectual dimension of mankind, manifesting itself through any form of human activity, and expanding the understanding of culture through liaisons with other spheres of life. It is a liaison between generations, traditions and the digital world, it means overcoming historically established barriers.”

You can find out more about the project on their web page, www.xxxxxx Riga has four years to prepare and you will no doubt be hearing a lot more about it in the future.

Riga was chosen by a jury representing various EU institutions, including the European Parliament and European Commission. Clearly the Riga application, which offers 6 intriguing thematic lines, was impressive and original. But what else could have made the Europeans decide in favor of Latvia’s bustling Baltic Sea capital?

I assume some of them have already been to Riga at least once. It’s an experience you don’t forget, especially if you didn’t know what to expect before you arrived.  If the jury members were fans of the game Monopoly, they may have been swayed by Riga’ s selection in 2008 to become one of the world’ s 22 most popular cities to be included in World Edition of the game, called ‘ Monopoly – Here and Now’ . Riga garnered the second highest number of votes after Montreal, and thus won the honor of becoming the “Park Place” of the new global game.

Then again, they may remember the Riga NATO Summit in 2006, when 26 national leaders met here to decide the future of Transatlantic security. George Bush liked the city so much, he came here twice.

But that’s all history, and the only thing more interesting than Riga’s storied past is its promising future. Back in 2001, Riga had the biggest birthday party of its life when millions of Latvians celebrated its 800^th anniversary. In 2014 and Riga will be 813 years old, and it looks like all of Europe (and beyond) will be celebrating with us. (Just in time for Latvia to take over the Presidency of the European Union in 2015.)

As for the legend mentioned earlier, as far as legends go, it really is true. According to a 15^th century chronicler of Latvia, a fisherman once got lost in the Baltic Sea and encountered a huge sea monster. The monster asked where the fisherman was from, and he answered, ‘ Riga’ . So the monster asked, ‘Is Riga finished yet?” The fisherman said, “No, not yet. We’re still building it.”  “ Alright then,” the sea monster responded, “ but when Riga is completed, tell me, and I’ m going swim into the Daugava, slap it with my tail and sink the city to the bottom of the river.”

So we can assure the EU and all our international friends, that in 2014, when Riga becomes the European Capital of Culture, it will be ready for you. But if  any sea monsters ask, tell them it’s still a work in progress.

I recently met a Swiss artist who wants to become a Latvian.
Being an artist, however, he wants to do more than just become a Latvian. He wants to study the process, find out what it means (and whether it can be done), and then present his findings to the world.

As Ruedi Schorno explained it to me, he plans to spend 12 weeks in Latvia this summer learning what it means to become a Latvian. He’s already learned the language pretty well (it always helps to have a Latvian girlfriend) and arrived in Riga in June to start interviewing people, making videos, and gathering ideas and impressions. Sometime in the fall, he will produce a multi-media art project that will demonstrate to the world the fruits of his Latvian labors. Schorno recognizes that a project like this raises a lot of interesting questions. Some, like „Why on earth do you want to do this?” can be explained by whatever it is that makes artists want to do artistic things. Given that Latvia has become a symbol for global economic grief, an economist might ask, “But, why now?”

Ruedi’s readiness to invest time, money, and a lot of hard work into becoming a Latvian also raises some metaphysical questions. What is a Latvian? What does it mean to „be” Latvian? Can you become one, even though you started your life as something else? Will your mother still recognize you after it’s done? We’re not talking about Latvian citizenship here. That’s regulated by law, and if he were to live here long enough, his language skills would make naturalization a snap. But that’s not art.

Art investigates the deeper meaning of things, and one that truly fascinates me is whether picking mushrooms while singing folksongs, and drinking beer in the Gauja National Park can magically transform a Swiss national into a Latvian good old boy.

Schorno follows a long tradition of artists who not only produce art, but become objects of their art. Not all survive. But Ruedi seems to be well on his way into the mysteries of Latvianess, and as far as I can tell, he is no worse for the wear.

Over the next few weeks he will get a lot of advice on how to become a Latvian, (and how not to be one.) In his conversations he will no doubt hear a lot about ice hockey, Riga Black Balsam, rye bread, herbal teas, oak trees, and the magic powers of amber. He may even be asked to join – or start – several political parties. Since he likes to sing he will be sung with, sung at, (and if he meets with the Suitu sievas) sung about. He will never be more than an arm’s length away from flowers, and should be prepared to give or receive them at any time of the day for no apparent reason. While I won’t try to define what it means to be Latvian, I know that flowers and singing figure in there somewhere.

I can’t imagine what the Swiss will say about him ceasing to be one of theirs and becoming one of ours. Or maybe he will be both? If he were to become a Latvian citizen, he would also acquire EU citizenship, something that other Swiss citizens don’t have. But I doubt if Ruedi is becoming a Latvian because he is eager to cast his vote in the next European Parliament elections.

As far as I can see, he is doing this for his art, and for the good of mankind. If by the end of the year Ruedi Schorno can successfully explain why someone would want to become a Latvian, what it means to be one, and how it can be done, he will have made a major contribution to this country. Turning people into Latvians won’t solve our economic crisis, but it would sure give a boost to our demographic numbers.

There is one way, however, I will know that Ruedi has truly „gone Latvian”. If he comes back from Kandava and tells me how much it looks like a „little Switzerland”, I’ll know he’s become one of us.

(I was asked to write something to welcome participants to the Golden Hammer Awards ceremonies in Riga. This appeared in the welcoming newspaper. )

The Livs created a settlement here. Rumour has it the Celts did too. The Vikings stopped here on their way down to Constantinople. The German Crusaders liked it so much they gave it a name. The Holy Roman Empire claimed it, the Hanseatic League recruited it, and the Russians and Poles attacked it. When the Swedes ruled it, it was bigger than Stockholm. British and French ships once helped liberate it and both Stalin and Hitler invaded and occupied it.

It has survived Czarism, Nazism, Communism and Eurovision. John F. Kennedy came here as a Congressman and Bill Clinton came as a President. Mikhail Baryshnikov learned how to dance here, and Catherine Deneuve, Elton John, B.B. King and Sting have all partied here. The EBRD held its annual meeting here in 2001 and the World Hockey Championships are coming in 2006. Music clubs and discos close around 5am, but the flower market never does. Although it celebrated its 800^th anniversary in 2001, if you talk to the local Livs (yes, they’re still around) they’ll tell you it’s much, much older.

There’s something about Riga that’s hard to explain. Don’t try. Just enjoy.

(I wrote this for the in-flight magazine Baltic Outlook rather quickly, because I wasn’t sure how long it would be true. )

I really didn’t want to write about this. We superstitious Latvians sometimes believe that calling attention to a good thing puts a curse on it.  But sooner or later someone else will notice and the cat will scurry out of the bag anyway. So here goes. Don’t tell anyone, but Riga, Latvia may be one of the most graffiti-less towns in Europe. Maybe even the world.

Our tourism people boast that Riga has one of the largest collections of Art Nouveau buildings in Europe, which is probably true and notably worthy. But I think Riga is even more notable for being the European city with the largest number of  buildings – public and private –  totally untouched by the disfiguring spray of unwanted paint.

We don’t know how this has happened and many here would be content to leave sleeping dogs and unscathed buildings lie. But it clearly indicates something extraordinary about the culture of this city and those who inhabit it. We just don’t know what it is.

After all, street artists are the curse of architects and the blight of city planners the world over. Apart from a  few tightly monitored dictatorships, hardly a city in the world has escaped the creative wrath of urchin urban Picassos armed with paint blasters. While some graffiti does sprout up (briefly) in police states, it seems to thrive best in democratic ones. The fall of the Berlin Wall not only brought free markets and real political parties back to Central and Eastern Europe, it also unleashed a mob of graffiti artists across the newly liberated urban landscape.

Everywhere it seems, except in Riga.  Not that we don’t have any at all. It’s just that here, the alley artists are very picky.

In most cities, graffiti artists descend upon a building façade like a swarm of wasps. They cover it with a sea of signs and symbols, filling any spare space with everything imaginable. They seem to care less about making an impression than simply making their mark. When they run out of bare spaces, they start a new layer over the old one.

In Riga, graffiti artists pretty much stay away from buildings altogether. Especially if they are inhabited. And particularly in Riga’s UNESCO-honoured Old Town, and in the remarkable Art Nouveau boulevard neighbourhoods that surround it. In fact, almost all Riga buildings are treated with equal vandalistic disinterest .Government buildings, apartment buildings, stores, offices, newsstands or flower kiosks. Even the dismally grey and monotonous Soviet-era apartment blocks are largely untouched. Apart from a few sporadic exceptions, Riga spray painters don’t do buildings.

If they do want to express themselves, they stick to bridges, railroad viaducts, abandoned warehouses, utility boxes or a trash bin.

In Riga, graffiti has its place and everyone, including the spray painters themselves, seems to respect this. For example, richly Hanseatic Riga just celebrated it’s 800^th birthday and yet has one of the newest looking Old Towns in Europe because almost all of its buildings have been freshly renovated and painted within the last ten years. Independence from the dreary Soviets came in 1991, and Rigans have been sprucing up their city with an enthusiastic vengeance ever since. Rapid privatisation and a fast and furious arrival of direct foreign investment also helped the city’s historic buildings quickly restore their former charm and glamour.  Nearly none have been touched by ‘the spray’ because almost all Old Town graffiti (as if following an unwritten law) seems to gravitate to one very narrow, two-block long alleyway that connects the Dom and City Hall Squares. If you blink, you’ll miss it.

Riga street artists seem to know their place. Or maybe they just like to see their work last a little longer. Latvians love art and architecture together, but only when it’s planned, not added on as an anarchistic afterthought. They are also obsessive about neatness, order and appearance. Deface a beloved building and your piece of art will be instantly despised. And washed off shortly thereafter. Even a good piece of graffiti doesn’t have much of a shelf life in Riga.

So when Riga graffiti artists want to see their masterpieces last a while they stick to back alleys, abandoned buildings and electrical boxes that no one cares about.  Their work does stand out better, and in some cases (I know of one stunning series of portraits under a railroad viaduct) it can last for years. You’ll never get that kind of long term exposure in Riga’s most popular galleries.

One very creative (and so far tolerated) example of Riga street art is the work of Riga’s  ‘serial stenciler’. He spray paints images, usually faces,  through a pre-cut stencil in selective places around town. His most famous ‘exhibit’ is a figure of the legendary 12^th century Latvian warrior folk hero ‘Lacplesis’ (Bearslayer). Using only buildings on Riga’s Lāācplēsis street as his urban canvas, he strategically spaced a series of ‘walking Lāāplēsis’ figures along the entire length of the street. Residents call his work. ‘Lāāplēsis walks Lāāplēsis’.

Of course, not all Riga graffiti is clever or even an attempt at art. Most of the graffiti you do find in the dark corners consists of one-word curses, profanities and expletives, and almost always in Russian.. Although the city is home to nearly equal numbers of Latvian and Russians, you rarely see vulgarities in Latvian. However, independence, the internet, EU and MTV are bringing changes here as well. English is rapidly becoming the new lingua franca of  phone booth poets.

Perhaps the EU will try to adopt some directives to halt the plague of graffiti in the New Europe. NATO could brand it as a form of cultural urban terrorism and develop a strategic ‘Spray Wars’ defence programme.. But most cities appear to have given up battling the scourge of graffiti. Or are simply losing it. Some, like New York, have embraced it (if you can’t stop it, sponsor it) and even tried to turn it into a tourist attraction .

But in Riga, the residents and graffiti artists have struck a happy balance. As Latvia joins the EU, it enters with the distinction of being the country with the least amount of graffiti per square metre of any country in Europe.  I just hope the street kids in the rest of Europe don’t read this article.

Of course I can be happy too, I’ll do it if it pleases you

I’ll turn the darkness into light and bring a brightness to your night

I’ll tell you it will be alright,

If that’s that pleases you

I’ll chase away the darkest clouds and pacify the angry crowds

I’ll give you all the laws allow

If that’s what pleases you

Of course I can be cheerful too I’ll do it if it pleases you

I’ll chase away the chilling rain and soothe you when you’re feeling pain

I’ll titillate your aching brain

If that’s what pleases you

I’ll pull a rabbit from a hat, I’ll put the skin back on the cat

I’ll make an angel from a brat

If that’s what pleases you

Of course I can be merry to, I’ll do it if it pleases you

I’ll step in the same river twice, I’ll liberate the frightened mice

I’ll pay the piper any price,

If that’s what pleases you

I’ll turn the booing into cheers, I’ll free you from your darkest fears

I’ll do it for a thousand years

If that’s what pleases you

Of course I can be goofy too, I’ll do it if it pleases you

I’ll stand all logic on its head, I’ll jump around on mother’s bed

I’ll bring to life the quick and dead,

If that’s what pleases you

I’ll twist my mouth and bug my eyes, I’ll bring it back when all hope dies

and find the truth in other’s lies,

If that’s what pleases you

Of course I can be happy too, I know the sky above is blue

And even if my words aren’t true

I’ll say them if it pleases you

(Recorded by ‘Bus in the Sky’ on the album ‘Think  of Me’, music by Imants Kalnins)

If you check Wikipedia you will find that at least 58 important things have happened on May 9, dating back to 1457 BC. They include a solar eclipse in 1012 BC, a Christopher Columbus voyage in 1502 and the convening of the first Australian parliament in 1927. For many in the world it is also Mother’s Day.

But for most people on the northern half of the land mass between the Pacific Ocean in the east and the Atlantic Ocean in the west, it means one of two things, and both are celebrations.

For members of the European Union it is Europe Day, because on this day in 1950, French Foreign Minister Robert Schuman proposed the Schuman Declaration which led to the creation of the European Union. They first called it the European Coal and Steel Community, and it’s gone through various other names as well, but today we know and love it as the EU and we celebrate it’s birthday on May 9. Thank you Robert Schuman!

In countries like Latvia, which joined the EU in 2004, Europe Day is an increasingly noticed event because we hold a Europe Day garden party in Vērmanes Park in the heart of Rīga. Thousands participate to celebrate and learn more about the EU. Most EU countries celebrate Europe Day, and so does Turkey, even though it is still waiting to join.

While Europeans will be celebrating Europe Day on May 9, many in Russia and its neighbouring countries will celebrate it as Victory Day. For them this marks the capitulation of Nazi Germany to the Soviet Union on May 9, 1945. As EU citizens celebrate the beginning of the EU, the people of Russia celebrate the end of The Great Patriotic War.

In countries like Latvia, that serve as home to EU citizens as well as Russians, both meanings of May 9 are celebrated. There are some who believe this is divisive, but it shouldn’t be. Both events are worthy of celebration, regardless of your ethnicity or citizenship. The creation of the EU has brought peace to Europe and strives to promote unity. The end of Russia’s Great Patriotic War ended a bloody conflict in which over 23 million Russians and other Soviets died fighting Nazi Germany.

Some Latvians resent the celebration of Victory Day because the end of the Nazi invasion of Russia meant the re-establishment of the Soviet occupation of Latvia. Russians resent the fact that Latvians won’t recognize their suffering in the Great Patriotic War. This resentment comes from two different interpretations of what is perceived as the same war.

But what if it wasn’t the same war? What if there were actually two different wars going on concurrently?

The explanation goes like this: World War II began in September 1939 when Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union invaded Poland. During this war, the Baltic States of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia were occupied by the Soviet Union in 1940, by Nazi Germany in 1941 and again by the USSR in 1944. That occupation continued until 1991.

The Great Patriotic War, on the other hand, began with Operation Barbarossa on June 22, 1941 when Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union, and brought tremendous destruction and suffering to the Russian people. Leningrad was put under siege and bloody battles were fought from Moscow to Kursk to Stalingrad. The Great Patriotic War was fought in the heart of Russia and it was Russian people who suffered in huge numbers.

The end of any war is worth celebrating, and there is no reason why Latvians cannot join their Russian neighbours in celebrating the end of this bloody Nazi attack on Russia and its people. Tragically, the end of the Great Patriotic War did not end suffering in the Baltic States, and there is no reason why Russians can’t join their Baltic neighbours in acknowledging this as well.

As long as we look at the conflict between 1939 and 1945 as one war, there will be endless interpretations (and thus arguments) of what is true. But if you look at it as Two Wars, it is a lot easier to agree on one truth.

The truth is, we all suffered. For different reasons, at the hands of different governments, and in the name of different ideologies. None of these exist anymore. We are Latvians, Russians and Europeans, this is the 21^st century, and May 9^th gives us all an opportunity to reflect on the past, respect each other’s histories, and work together to ensure a better future. And also tell our moms how much we love them.

The date of March 16 didn’t become controversial in Latvia until the early 1990’s, when several Latvian organisations chose this day to honour Latvian soldiers who fought and died in the Latvian Legion during World War II.

The Latvian Legion was created by the Nazi German occupation forces in 1943 as combat divisions called the Waffen SS. After their invasion and takeover of Latvia in 1941, German authorities would not allow Latvian nationals to arm themselves, for fear that they would turn their guns on the Germans. But by 1943 Latvia faced a re-invasion of Soviet troops who were pushing the retreating German forces back out of Russia and Eastern Europe. The Germans needed additional manpower to hold back the Soviets and began conscripting young Latvians into two special Latvian divisions of Waffen SS units. The Germans had created such combat units in Estonia, Finland and many other occupied countries, and despite the “SS” designation, they had nothing to do with the Gestapo.

The fact that this was a violation of the Hague and Geneva Conventions meant nothing to the Germans. The Germans needed more soldiers and would not allow foreigners in the German army, so they created special “weapons” SS units to fill their need. Those who refused the draft faced punishment or execution, so most submitted. Some justified their presence in the units because they believed that by fighting side by side with other Latvians, they would hasten the German departure and keep the Soviets from re-occupying their country a second time. In their minds, they weren’t fighting for the Germans, but against the Soviets.

But they were forced to wear Nazi German uniforms with SS emblems on them and half a century later, questions about who they were, what they did and why they did it have become a subject of earnest discussion among historians and impassioned debate among others.

Those who chose March 16th as a day of remembrance for the veterans of the Latvian Legion did so because on this day in 1944 the 15th and 19th divisions of the Latvian Legion joined forces to battle the advancing Soviet army at the Velikaya River in Russia. This is the only time in the war that these two divisions fought side by side.

The surviving veterans who wish to observe this day denounce fascism and Nazism, deny that they ever committed atrocities during the war, and insist that they were fighting, albeit in vain, for the restoration of Latvia’s independence. For them, March 16th is a day to go to church, to cemeteries or the Freedom Monument in Rīga, and honour friends and family members who died fighting with the Latvian Legion during World War II.

But not everyone sees it that way.

It’s understandable why many Jews in the world, especially Holocaust survivors, are troubled by any show of respect for soldiers who fought on the German side during the war. While many will acknowledge that the Latvian Legion itself did not participate in the Holocaust (the Nazi-managed mass murder of Jews in Latvia had ended before the Legion was created), the mere fact that Latvian soldiers fought under German command is enough to prompt distrust and condemnation.

Many Russians also object to any show of respect for the Latvian Legion because the Latvians fought, with great ferocity at that, against the Soviet Red Army. For those Russians who still identify with the former Soviet Union, the combatants of the Latvian Legion were, and still are, the enemy.

One tragedy in all this is that Latvians were forced to fight on both sides of the Eastern Front. During the first Soviet occupation of Latvia, many Latvians were drafted into the Red Army as well. Thus, Latvians on the German side fought Latvians on the Soviet side, although most felt little loyalty to Germany or the USSR. Under orders from Moscow and Berlin, brother fought against brother and father against son. They were victims of overlapping occupations and pawns in the alternating power grabs of Hitler and Stalin. They were young Latvian men caught in the middle, and no matter which way they looked, they saw the enemy.

The details as to how and why it all happened, and who did what to whom is something usually left to historians to debate. But when a Latvian veteran organization decided to honour the Latvian Legion on March 16th, they confronted a vocal and sometimes aggressive opposition, which brought the debate to the streets. Since the first commemoration of March 16th in the early 90’s, it has been a day of confrontation, controversy and conflicting international media coverage.

The Latvian government does not recognize March 16th as an official day, and recommends that all activities intended to honour Latvia’s war dead – regardless of which war they fought in – should be on November 11, or Laāplēsis Day. Because March 16 processions to the Freedom Monument have in recent years been a catalyst for conflict, most veterans choose to go to churches or cemeteries to pay their respects. They have no desire to make a political statement of any kind and simply want to honour their relatives and comrades-in-arms.

But groups with a more radical agenda have seized this day to popularize their causes and generate colourful video-bites for TV news shows. Unfortunately, the tears, flowers and all the historical nuances get lost in the shouting. The debate over what really happened in the past has become an argument over what people should be allowed to do in the present.

For some, March 16th is the day a major battle took place. For others, it is a day of solemn remembrance. Some see it as a slap in the face of their ancestors. Others see it as a way to honour their ancestors. For others still it is a chance to get on the evening news and shout slogans that no one really understands. But for almost all the people of Latvia, it is a day when the sorrow, anger and confusion of the past are painfully brought back to life in an equally confusing present.

Last summer during Latvia’s 90^th anniversary, the Latvian Institute asked young people in Latvia to tell us what kind of Latvia they wanted to see in 10 years.  We received over 500 responses from some very bright girls and boys. While talking about the project with a journalist, he asked me what my vision of Latvia in 10 years would be like.

I was taken by surprise. All year I had been asking the kids of Latvia how they would like to see this country, but what about me? Once I started to think of things, I realized my wish-list could go on forever. As a citizen, I wanted to see a country where people felt secure, happy and prosperous. As a parent, I wanted to see a country where my children and grandchildren would be glad to live.  As a diplomat, I wanted to see a state that was respected internationally and had good relations with the global community. As a person concerned about Latvia’s image in the world, I wanted to see a country that left a good impression on anyone who visited, and had a good reputation among those who hadn’t.

I want to see a Latvia that is admired by tourists, but not so popular that our streets are flooded by endless tour groups. I would like foreign investors to take a serious interest in Latvia, but not so much that they take control our economy. I want Latvia to be in the news, not for problems, crises or scandals, but because of successes, victories and achievements.

I’m sure that my wishes aren’t that different from those of most of the 2.3 million people who live in Latvia. The problem, as always, is how do you get there?

At the moment the government is focusing its efforts on strengthening the economy, streamlining the bureaucracy and cutting costs. As President Zatlers said in a recent speech, we have to learn from our mistakes and act decisively in implementing corrective measures, while simultaneously thinking about our long-term development.

Our politicians, business leaders and economic experts have acknowledged that short-term measures must be linked to long-term strategies, if we hope to make our economic recovery sustainable.

A while back the Latvian Institute conducted research on a potential brand strategy for Latvia. It concluded that Latvia’s reputation in the world could grow considerably, if we developed three specific areas of our national identity: 1) Our respect for knowledge, science and education, 2) Our love for nature, 3) Our rich and multi-faceted culture.

While our focus was on Latvia’s image, it appears now that these same factors play a key role in our long-term economic development as well. Interestingly enough, most of the 500 kids we surveyed last year agreed. They believe that brains, birch trees and song will be an essential part of the Latvia they want to live in when it celebrates its 100^th anniversary in 2018.

It makes sense. If we can make our people even smarter, make our environment even greener and rely on our culture to make it all come together, Latvia will not only be better known around the world, it will also be a better place to live.

Desegregating the Latvian school system ends a divisive Soviet legacy.

Although Latvia has made great strides in rebuilding a fair and democratic society since restoring independence in 1991, not all aspects of the Soviet legacy have been that easy to eradicate. One of those legacies was a segregated school system that divided ethnic Latvians and Russians. This year, the Latvian government enters the 6^th year of an 8-year program designed to end this divisive situation. Although the program is designed to promote social integration, equal opportunity and citizenship for all of Latvia’s residents, it has encountered opposition from some politicians and segments of the ethnic Russian population. Why would ethnic Russians oppose a plan designed to enhance their opportunities for education, employment and civic involvement?

The answer is also part of a Soviet legacy that encourages some politicians to exploit social divisions and apprehensions

During the Soviet occupation, hundreds of thousands of Soviet citizens, mostly of ethnic Russian origin, established residence in Latvia, and remained there after the break up of the Soviet Union. Many were brought in as part of Stalin’s Russification campaign. Most spoke only Russian, as did their eventual Latvia-born children and grandchildren. When Latvia restored its independence in 1991, they all found themselves in a country that had re-established its national sovereignty, state language and Latvian identity. They were former Soviets, mostly of Russian ethnicity, now living in the Republic of Latvia.

After adoption of the Law on Citizenship in 1994, a Naturalisation board was established in 1995, enabling former Soviets to apply for Latvian citizenship. All permanent residents of Latvia who could pass a Latvian language and history test could become citizens. The process of naturalisation was slow, in part because a large segment of the ethnic Russian population could not speak Latvian. A national Latvian language training programme was established in 1996 to help residents acquire the language skills needed to qualify for citizenship.

The rate of naturalisation among older persons was low due to the difficulty of learning a new language. It was hoped, however, that younger Russian-speaking residents would not find it a hardship. However, since many ethnic Russians continued to study in the 159 exclusively Russian-language state schools, the rate of naturalisation continued to lag even among the young.

While the retention of the Russian schools was initially considered a gesture of good will during a difficult transition period, it soon became clear that these schools were fostering segregation, which led to de facto discrimination. Pupils who could only speak Russian could not become citizens, had difficulty integrating into Latvian society and had limited higher education and employment opportunities.

To correct this situation, a Law on Education was adopted in 1998. The law was designed to increase proficiency in the Latvian language, while preserving and protecting the rights of students to attend minority schools where instruction was also offered in eight minority languages. Russian and pupils from other ethnic groups would receive a bilingual education that would enable them to retain their ethnic traditions and identities, while acquiring the language skills necessary for full participation in Latvian civic life.

The program to introduce Latvian language study in minority schools included a gradual phasing in of bilingual courses over a period of years, giving parents and students sufficient time to prepare for the changes. Bilingual curricula were introduced to primary schools in the 2002/2003 school year. An increased proportion of Latvian-language curricula will be introduced to secondary schools on September 2004.

The 8-year program was designed to provide pupils ample time to prepare for the transition to bilingual education. During the first 5 years no one objected. But in 2003, as changes in the secondary school courses were being prepared, political organisations emerged in opposition to the plan. Encouraged by a few radical parliamentarians and led by adult activists, some Russian secondary school pupils began to organise protests against the final phase of the program. They demanded that the law be changed and that state-financed Russian schools remain exclusively Russian-language institutions.

The size and aggressive nature of the protests has grown over the last year. Methods have become more sophisticated and confrontational, and have received sizable financial support from unknown sources. The Russian Government has also weighed into the controversy, condemning the Latvian Government’s educational program and expressing support for the protest movement. Politicians who support the protestors, both in Latvia and Russia, have also made additional demands. They not only oppose the educational reforms, but are demanding changes in Latvia’s language and citizenship policies. Both of these positions, which would increase segregation and reverse integration in Latvia, have long been Russian Government policies toward Latvia.

Despite Russia’s protests, which amount to interference in another state’s internal affairs, the Latvian government’s language, citizenship and educational policies have received broad international support. Meeting international standards on these issues was necessary in order for Latvia to qualify for EU and NATO membership. Latvia was welcomed into both organisations earlier this year. The Council of Europe and the OSCE have also endorsed Latvia’s policies, particularly in regard to educational reform.

Following a March 2004 fact finding trip to Latvia, a Council of Europe Monitoring Committee noted that the protests “have little to do with a civil society or grassroots movements as understood in the western world,” but were instead led by radical forces said to receive moral and material support from Russia. The Council strongly advised Russia to cease its counter-productive interference in Latvia’s internal affairs.

The protests are indeed counter-productive. Pupils who refuse to learn Latvian and are boycotting classes are impeding their own education, limiting their employment opportunities and alienating themselves from society at large.

International organisations that have followed this issue in Latvia have agreed that the social integration of former Soviets must be accelerated and that naturalisation rates needs to be increased. This can only happen if the permanent residents of Latvia can speak and understand the Latvian language.

The Soviet legacy of forced Russification, ethnic segregation and repression during 50 years of occupation has done irreparable damage to entire generations of Latvians and Russians in Latvia. For some, the damage can never be undone. The Latvian educational reform program is designed to help the next generations prepare for a better life. One of equal opportunity, civic engagement and prosperity in a democratic Latvia and a united Europe.

Latvia awaits the longest day of the year in what seems to many like the longest year in their lives. Especially if you are trying to balance a budget. Your own, or a government’s.

But the summer solstice on June 21 is a turning point. Spring ends, summer begins, the days get shorter, the nights get longer, and plants, animals and other living things all feel a shift in the world around them.

In ancient times when people watched the sun rise and fall every day with great care, the solstice was a singular event and signaled a significant change in cosmic direction. If you were used to one climactic pattern from January until June, you got ready for the reverse in the second half of the year. You hoped the same applied to your fortunes.

Those who live in steel and concrete cities with fluorescent sunsets, or in tropical climes where the sun is always around, may not relate much to the wonders of the summer solstice. But up here on the 57th parallel  by the Baltic Sea where the sun goes away to hide for months on end, and sometimes barely comes up for a few hours, the month of June is a month to be treasured.

For reasons I can’t begin to explain, Latvians celebrate Midsummer’s Day on June 23^rd. We call it Līgo Day, and the day after that we call Jāņi. For Latvians, this is both their favorite holiday and also their oldest. We’re fairly certain that our ancestors have been singing and dancing around bonfires at this time of the year for several thousand years.

Latvians celebrate the solstice by gathering flowers, decorating everything, building bonfires, drinking beer, singing songs, eating cheese, dancing in circles and staying up all night.

It’s very important to stay up all night in Latvia on June 23, because if you don’t, the sun won’t rise the next day. We have special songs you have to sing when the sun goes down, or else it won’t come up again in the morning. We light the bonfires before sunset so that the wandering sun can find a light once it approaches Latvia again. We do all this with ritual tenacity, and our ancestors have been doing the same thing, year after year, for countless centuries. So far, it has worked. The sun has always risen on June 24^th.

In the last week, the Latvian government, parliament, business community and their social partners have also been working around the clock to avoid an economic catastrophe. The entire world has been watching as Latvia has struggled with massive budget cuts, painful GDP drops, struggling businesses, and growing unemployment lines. The finest economic minds in the world have taken up their rhetorical swords and have been bashing each other daily in a global debate over whether Latvia should devaluate its currency or not.

But as I write, the lat is still pegged to the euro. The government has agreed on a 500 million lat budget reduction, and the parliament has approved it.  Now we await the IMF and EC to give their nod of approval.

And we go out to the countryside, to build bonfires, pick flowers and fill pitchers of freshly brewed beer. We also stroll out into the forest in search of fern blossoms. You can find fern blossoms only at this time of the year, and if you don’t believe they exist, you will never find one.

If it sounds like Latvians look for a little magic around this time of the year, you are right. It can’t hurt. After all, we are facing another turning point in our lives. But one thing we know for sure. The sun will come up tomorrow.

Give me the stuff of life, give me the morning light

give me a chance to sing, give me a diamond ring

give me all you got, I have it coming

give me all the causes I must serve

give me what I need to keep on running

give me all you think that I deserve

give me the things I need, give me a pregnant seed

give me the best you’ve got, give me another shot

give me a million bucks, give me Madonna’s looks

give me a record deal, give me a decent meal

give me a chance to fly, give me a reason why

give me another chance, give me the grapes of France

give me all you got, I have it coming

give me all the causes I must serve

give me what I need to keep on running

give me all you think that I deserve

give me the final bill, give me a spot to fill

give me the tea in China, give me a greasy diner

give me a flowing river, give me an Indian giver

give me the world’s best cooks, give me Umberto’s books

give me a hole in one, give me a job well done

give me a winning goal, give me the leading role

give me all you got, I have it coming

give me all the causes I must serve

give me what I need to keep on running

give me all you think that I deserve

give me another drink, give me some time to think

give me the morning after, give me the gift of laughter

give me the parting shot, give me the hottest spot

give me a little thrill, give me an iron will

give me the eyes to see, give me the need to be

give me a telling sign, give me a Valentine

give me a steady bass, give me a smiling face

give me that toughlove talk. give me a chance to walk

give me another try, give me the reason why

give me a needed lift, give me a lasting gift

give me a helping hand, give me a piece of land

give me the will to live, give me what I must give

give me all you got, I have it coming

give me all the causes I must serve

give me what I need to keep on running

give me all you think that I deserve

This was written as a forward to a book about Latvian bread.

Latvians won’t serve a meal without it, the Clintons ate it in the White House, and now there’s a book that extols all its tasty, textural and aromatic virtues. Bread may be the staff of life for people around of world, but for Latvians it is also the stuff of folklore, tradition and culture. Not to mention international diplomacy.

Indra āŒekstere explores all the traditions that go into the preparation, baking, serving and celebrating of Latvian bread in a beautiful new book called ‘Our Daily Bread – The Tradition of Latvian Baking.” This large format, full colour coffee table book features hundreds of stunning photographs and illustrations, and a charmingly informative text about the people, places and customs connected with the uniquely Latvian passion of bread baking.

While bread is the main story of the book, āŒekstere tells it through the stories of the men and women who bake it. Her narrative (in English and Latvian) moves through the various regions of Latvia, including Kurzeme, Zemgale, Vidzeme, Latgale and Selija, describing how the farmers, bakers and grandmothers from each region prepare their special loaves.

Each regional type of bread is described through recipes, as well as the local rituals, customs, folk songs and fairytales that accompany it. Both historical and contemporary photographs of Latvian fields, farmhouses, hearths and holiday celebrations show the settings in which each regional bread is prepared, served and eaten. Informative illustrations reveal the wide array of wooden farm tools and kitchen implements that are used in the traditional sowing, harvesting and baking process.

āŒeksteres warm, first person narrative is filled with delightful stories and customs, including this one that describes how a Kurzeme grandmother uses her hand to etch a special symbol on top of  each loaf:

“”See, you cross a loaf with the outer edge of your right palm. Pressing the first line you say: do not let it burn! Pressing the second you say: do not let it stay raw! Then with your index finger you draw four lines crossing the ends of the bigger ones saying: enough for the beggars, enough for the travellers, enough for the little children, enough for ourselves!”

There are even detailed blueprints of a bread oven in a house in Piebalga and a map showing the different signs and symbols used on loaves in the various regions of Latvia.

The book is sure to be a big hit with the growing number of tourists, business travellers and diplomats that are coming to Riga and looking for something new and interesting as a gift.  If up until now, you’ve only eaten bread but never thought much about it, āŒekstere’s lively collection of anecdotes, wives tales, superstitions and sayings will have you leafing from page to page in search of more totally fascinating tidbits of Latvian bread trivia. The accompanying illustrations and historical photographs on each page make the journey a visual delight as well.

Indra āŒekstere’s book is a labour of love, made possible through a  private-public partnership project between Latvia’s largest commercial bakery, ‘Hanzas Maiznice’, and the Latvian Ethnographic Open Air Museum. It is a welcome addition to the growing number of high quality books in English about Latvia, its history and traditions.

One story you won’t find in the book concerns the special role of Latvian bread in international relations. Back in 1994, Hillary Clinton raved about the taste of Latvian rye while visiting Riga with President Bill Clinton. After she returned to Washington, a huge loaf of Latvian rye was delivered to the White House. According to her chief of staff, it fed the First Lady, President and several staff members for several days during White House meetings. Hillary received another gift loaf in 2002 after she was elected U.S. Senator. A copy of ‘Our Daily Bread’, personally signed by the author, is already on its way to the New York Senator.

#8   Is Latvia old?

Now that Latvia has reached its 90^th birthday, one wonders…is that a lot or not? Believe it or not, by global standards, we are respectable senior citizens. If you go by the official founding dates of the 200 or so sovereign states in the world, the Republic of Latvia is older than 130 of them!

Granted, we have to make a distinction here between nations and states. Nations are a self-defined cultural or social communities that may not always be states. Or the states that represent a nation may change. The United Kingdom is the third oldest state in the world (goes back to ther 10^th century) but it consists of 4 nations – England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

The Japanese nation goes back thousands of years but its present state was established in 1947. The Federal Republic of Germany was founded in 1949. The Russian Federation showed up on the world scene in 1991.

Seven countries are the same age as Latvia – Estonia, Lithuania, Armenia, Georgia, Iceland, Poland and Ukraine – all established in 1918. But only 52 countries are older.

Who’s the oldest in the world? Ethiopia. It was established 2,000 years ago. And San Marino ranks second, born in AD 301.

So are we old or not? It all depends on how you look at it.

#9   That old song and dance

We tend to divide time up into the past, present and future, but sometimes they all come together. That’s what makes living traditions so special. They take the best of the past, make it relevant to the present and make you want to do them again in the future.

That’s precisely the reason why the 135-year old Latvian Song and Dance Celebration is still so much alive today. When Latvians talk about their world-famous songfest they tend to stress just how old everything is – the thousand-year old folk songs, the traditional dances and the authentic regional folk costumes. But at the kick-off concert for the XXIV Song and XIV Dance Celebration at the Arena Riga in March this year, everything was new. New musical compositions, new dance choreographies, and new singers, dancers and musicians.

Even older performers, composers, conductors and musicians were doing new things, alongside a new generation of Latvian song and dance enthusiasts. The new choreographies were based on traditional dances, just as the new choir compositions were based on an ancient musical legacy. To a Latvian it all looked and sounded so familiar, and yet it sparkled with dynamism, creativity and freshness of the best contemporary music.

If you want to experience why UNESCO has named the Latvian Song and Dance Celebration a ‘Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity’, try to be in Rīga from July 5-12 this year. This is one living tradition you will never forget.

#10   A place of our own

The planet Earth is home to over 200 countries, more than 6 billion people, thousands of nationalities, and a remarkably diverse melange of over 6,900 languages.

Latvia is among them. Just 1 out of the 200, and just 2.3 out of the 6 billion. Looking at the numbers helps put it into some kind of perspective, but doesn’t explain why it’s so important to a Latvian that he can speak his language in a country called Latvia.

Latvians today travel all over the world. Low airfares and a wide choice of routes from Riga let Latvians go anywhere on the globe and listen to how the other 6 billion speak their languages in their countries. It’s an enriching experience. Latvians themselves speak many languages, from the ubiquitous English and Russian, to the neighbouring languages of the Germans, French, and Scandinavians.  More and more are learning Japanese and Chinese.

Moving about the world and speaking a lot of languages makes you appreciate what you have at home. Each part of the world we visit has an essence all its own, created by the land, the people and the language they speak. Each can exist and survive independently. A piece of land will remain after its people have gone. A people can be driven from their land and still survive, somewhere else, maintaining their traditions and culture. And the language will travel with them.

But a certain kind of magic occurs when the land, the people and the language are one.  Regardless of who we are, where we live or who our ancestors were, we feel that magic when we are in a country where the three are physically and spiritually united. We breathe it in the air and drink it in the water. We take energy from it, and take memories with us when we return home.

And there is no place like home. That’s why so many of us Latvians like to visit those 200 countries and see some of those 6 and 1/2 billion people, because we know that we have a place of our own we can always come home to.

#11   How Latvians rest

Like a lot of Latvians, I live in the city but spend my free days in the country. My wife and I have a house in the forest near the northern Baltic Sea coast. On a clear day you can see the coast of Estonia’s Saarema Island, just 30 kilometres away. The locals tell us that in the old days when the channel between Mazirbe and Saarema Island froze up, young Estonians would walk across the ice to find work in the Latvian fishing villages that line the coast.

My wife and I now drive a 180 kilometres to this same place get away from work. Or so I thought. Most urban Latvians either have a house in the country, have relatives with a house in the country, or know someone else with a house in the country. We go there to get away from the city, the traffic, the hustle and bustle and the daily drudge of work. We like to be near the sea, a river or lake, and always feel more comfortable when there are a lot of trees around. Since 40% of Latvia is covered by forests, this is not a problem.

Except that once we get away from all the work in the city, we throw ourselves into working around the homestead. We grow grass and then mow it. We create gardens and then weed them, seed them and constantly cultivate them. We clear dead trees, chop wood and then stoke up the fireplace and sauna so that we can relax from all the hard work we did all day.

Sometimes after an invigorating weekend in the country, I find myself returning to the city to get some rest. And I look forward to the next weekend back in the country. For Latvians. working around the house is often the best form of rest.

#12   The Amber (Latvian) Way

Latvia, like the 200 or so other countries in the world today, is seeking to develop a competitive identity that will help it promote tourism, investment, international cooperation and general good will. Recent research has suggested that for Latvia, there are three aspects of our national identity that are distinctive: our achievements in science, our well preserved environment and our rich and multi-faceted culture.

We can find plenty examples of each but is there something that unites them all? Believe it or not, it could be amber.

Thanks to the Baltic Sea, amber has always been plentiful on the shores of Latvia and is one of our most beautiful and coveted natural resources. A thousand years ago traders from as far away as Greece followed the Amber Way north to the River Daugava to acquire precious amber from the Baltic Sea coast.

Naturally, amber plays a prominent role in Latvian culture. It is part of our jewelry, art, folklore and traditions. It is in our songs, our symbols, and our souls.

Now it is at the leading edge of global biomaterials research as well  A major scientific breakthrough in the use of amber has been achieved in Latvia by Dr. Inga Lasenko of Rīga Technical University She has discovered how to make hi tech thread from amber!

That’s right, she’s taken this familiar fossilized resin and turned it into a fine textile for in vitro medical applications in the treatment of cardiovascular diseases. She’s discovered that natural amber protects organisms from viruses and bacteria, and in a textile form this unique ‘amber yarn’ has a wide range of potential technical and industrial uses. Top fashion designers have something else in mind and are already contacting Dr. Lasenko to learn more about this new way to adorn yourself with ‘Latvian gold’. Amber scarves, blouses, skirts and pantyhose? Why not?

For Latvians, amber has always been a valued natural resource and a treasured national symbol. We’ve been unlocking its secrets for a thousand years. Now it’s a hi tech textile and a possible a high fashion accessory. Latvians really do know their amber, no matter how you look at it.

The following piece was translated and adapted from an article published in DIENA, Feb 11, 2003.

And if there is a war?

Just like everyone else, I’m worried about a war in Iraq. Wars anywhere always shake up the rest of world in some way, and I’m sure that a war in Iraq, would have an affect on Latvia.  So I’ve been following the news, reading the statements, listening to the opinions and trying to figure out who really knows what’s going on. And what should be done to fix it. Some kind of resolution is needed, because the global situation is tense and growing more dangerous.

Do I want to see a war in Iraq? Of course not. I’d prefer never to see another war ever again. Wars are lousy ways to resolve human differences.

But what if there is a war? What then? What should be my attitude be toward that war and the people waging it?

The Government of the United States of America has concluded that Saddam Hussein is a threat to the world. He’s a bloody tyrant who controls monstrous chemical, biological and nuclear weapons of mass destruction. He’s already used some of them in a war against Iran and on Kurds in Iraq, so it’s no stretch to imagine he could use them again on someone else. Most of the world’s governments seem to agree that something needs to be done about it. Utilizing the broadest international authority they have – the United Nations – they have tried to compel Hussein to disarm for the last 12 years. He’s refused.

The Americans say the situation is bad and getting worse. All international diplomatic, political and economic instruments have been used to bring Hussein around, but nothing has worked. So the US has turned to the world, through the UN, and asked for a resolution that would call for an allied military invasion of Iraq. There would be three goals: 1) remove Hussein as leader of Iraq, 2) seize and destroy all the weapons of mass destruction, 3) cut off Hussein’s assistance to international terrorist networks.

It strikes me that all three goals are worthy. But how do we achieve them?

Obviously war means death. Soldiers die and civilians die. Given Hussein’s nightmarish arsenal of high tech death machines, the potential casualty count in a war where these are unleashed could be enormous. But even if there isn’t a war, the threat remains as long as the weapons remain. Washington believes that with good planning, hi tech weapons and co-ordinated international co-operation, a successful military action could be launched against Iraq. Proponents of an invasion believe the Hussein government could be toppled and the weapons seized with minimal allied and civilian casualties.

Not everyone agrees with the US on this. Nevertheless, the US has asked for UN support and international co-operation to form a coalition that would combine its military and political resources to bring an end to Hussein’s rule in Iraq. Unity is not only important militarily, it could even be more critical politically. As long as the world’s countries argue among themselves, Hussein can sit and wait till the cows come home. But if a majority of the world’s countries agreed that Hussein had to go and announced their readiness to invade tomorrow, Hussein may finally get the hint and leave the country tonight.

Some find this highly unlikely, but it’s not out of the question. And it is the one sure fire way of preventing a war.

If, however, Hussein follows Hitler’s lead into a bunker somewhere in the hills of Iraq, the invading forces would have to contend with the Iraqi army and people. How long would they resist? Especially if they understood that 1) the world was united against them and 2) the only way they could stop the war and hope to resume normal political and economic ties with the rest of the world would be to abandon Saddam Hussein to the dust heap of history?  Do they love their leader or simply fear him? And if it is fear, then the best way to battle it is to eliminate its source.

Once again, there are no guarantees that this will happen, but it is a plausible possibility. I’d like to see the UN join forces and convince the Iraqis that this is the best way out. But what if it can’t and the US decides it’s now or never?  How should I, and how would I want my country of Latvia react to this war? If the US-led alliance attacks it won’t matter much whether the UN has sanctioned it or not. That can be debated by the political scientists and historians later. We will be faced with the fact that several hundred thousand American and allied forces will be putting their lives on the line. A war will be underway, lives will be in danger, and those who are fighting will look to those who support them for help to bring the conflict to a speedy resolution.

Latvia looks upon the United States as an ally. We have applied to join NATO so that we could be allied with the US and 18 other countries. By joining NATO we ask other nations to help us in times when our security is threatened, and thus we promise to help them when theirs is threatened as well. The US Government has concluded that their security is threatened, and that world security is threatened. They have asked the world, allies or otherwise, to help them eliminate this threat.

The issue of whether a war is necessary or not becomes a moot point once it has started. Given Latvia’s foreign policy goals and desire to join NATO, it seems that we have a moral obligation to help our allies in times of war.  Sooner or later Latvia’s parliament may have to vote on a request from the United States for military assistance in Iraq. Latvia’s parliamentarians should keep in mind that later this year American parliamentarians – the US Senate – will vote on whether to let Latvia into the NATO alliance or not. We have asked for their help. We should be prepared when they ask for ours.

Latvia’s president, foreign minister and other officials have told the US that we will help them in whatever way we can if a war breaks out. I doubt if the US will ask for much because we don’t have much to give. But I’m glad that we announced our readiness to assist. That’s what good allies are supposed to do.

Nobody wants a war, but if a war breaks out and your friends are involved, it’s important to help your friends. It’s been said that in international relations there are no friends, but simply national interests. Well, I believe that for some democratic nations like the US, having friends is part of their national interest.

Over the last 15 years, in restoring Latvia’s independence and securing it, Latvia has not had a more important friend than the US. We are lucky to have many friends in the international community, but the US is clearly the largest and most powerful. The US supported our independence legally, politically and materially, and facilitated the removal of Russian troops from our territory once we achieved that independence. It continues to help us today. (The US spearheaded support for our NATO candidacy.)

Now the US has turned to us for help. It still has differences with other allies about the war, but if it does proceed, all indications are that it will lead a fairly broad coalition of democratic countries. The US is investing the most in material and human resources and faces the greatest losses in a possible war. But it feels it is doing it for the greater good.

I don’t know how to achieve the greater good. I don’t like achieving it through war. But if there is a war, I hope it is short, effective and causes minimal casualties in achieving its goals. And if Latvia can help even a little in achieving these goals, I will feel proud of my country. As we enter our 12^th year of restored independence, we will demonstrate that we not only accept help, but can also give it.

LIPS answers 7 of the world’s least frequently asked questions.

1. 1. If Rasputin played baseball, what position would he have played?

LIPS: None. He would have worked in the training room. Prophetic prestidigitation beats a Jacuzzi anytime, especially when you’re trying to hit a curve ball.

1. 2. Why was Alexander so great?

LIPS: Drugs.

1. 3. Where was Adolph Hitler when Napoleon was marching roughshod all over Europe and where is George Patton now that we need him?

LIPS: Probably all in the same place.

1. 4. Who is the Maharajah of Mysore and how is he related to the creation of Mylanta, Myadec and Mydol?

LIPS: You’ve got to be kidding! Haider Ali, late 18th century Mysorian macho-man, ruler of what is now generally unknownn as Karntataka, was a devout Muslim and therefore had no earthly need for vitamīns, headache pills or hangover juice. Allah was a one-man drugstore even back then.

1. 5. Why isn’t Switzerland closer to the Atlantic Ocean?

LIPS: France is in the way. (A fact that remains true evento this day.)

1. 6. What happened to the Kingdoms of Persia, Prussia and Siam and why isn’tanyone talking about it in the Republic Party?

LIPS: Ever since Richard Nixon, the GOP has been gun-shy about raising the dead.

1. 7. Who was the first man to climb Mount Prospect?

LIPS: Eriks Mezmiks, a Latvian saxaphone player who was also the first person to sail around Blue Island, swim the length of Canal Street and broke a world record for continuous scuba diving in Northlake.

#13   The day the sun stands still

Each year, toward the end of June, the sun stands still in Latvia. Actually, it stands still everywhere in the world, because that’s what ‘solstice’ means in Latin – the moment when the sun stops moving in one direction and starts moving in another. In the Northern Hemisphere where Latvia is located, the longest day of the year comes on the Summer Solstice, June 21^st.  The ancient European pagan festivals that accompany this singular astronomical event are called Midsummer’s Day and usually fall a few days after the solstice itself. Shakespeare even wrote a play about it.

In Latvia, the Midsummer celebration is a 2-day affair that starts on Līgo day, June 23^rd and continues on Jāņi, June 24^th.  It is one of the oldest and most popular celebrations of Latvian culture, and the one thing Latvians do not do during these sacred days of ritual and revelry, is stand still!

To celebrate Līgo and Jāņi, Latvians leave their cities and congregate around bonfires in the forests and fields of the countryside. They make special foods and beverages, sing midsummer songs, dance traditional dances and partake in a wide array traditional activities with deep roots in Latvian folklore. With meadow grasses thick and tall, and flowers in full blossom, they are without a doubt the happiest and most mystical days of the year in Latvia.

Latvians also do something else on this day that is extremely important to the rest of the world. They stay up all night, and when the sun sets, they sing special songs to make it rise again. To date, Latvians have been wildly successful at this, because in recorded history the sun has never failed to rise again after hearing the appropriate Latvian folk songs. So the next time you see the sun rise on June 24^th, thank the Latvians.

#14   Waving the flag

Every country has a flag, and every flag has a story. The maroon-white-maroon national flag of Latvia has several stories. Some are very old and legendary, some are fairly recent, and all carry a deep meaning for Latvians.

The Latvian flag is considered to be one of the oldest in the world and dates back to a battle against Estonian tribes near the Latvian town of Cesis in the 13^th century. According to one legend, it originated from a white sheet that was used to carry a mortally wounded Latvian tribal chief from the battlefield. Soaked with his blood on two sides, his soldiers hoisted the warrior’s sheet as a banner as it led them to victory.

Austria has a similar flag (brighter red with different proportions) that dates back to the same period and comes with a similar legend about blood and battles. Since there was no Internet back then, it’s doubtful whether anyone copied from anyone. We can assume that the near simultaneous births of these two eventual national banners was pure coincidence.

During the 1860’s a Latvian student discovered a reference to this flag in old historical chronicles, and in 1917, Latvian artist Ansis Cīrulis used this historical description to design the flag that became the official national flag of Latvia in 1921.

The maroon and white flag of Latvia was banned by the Soviets after the 1940 occupation, and until 1988, anyone who dared raised it usually ended up in jail, or worse.  One June 14, 1988, five young Latvians decided that it was time to raise the flag once more. Konstatins Pupurs, Anta Bergmane, Miervaldis Krims, Roberts Klimkoviās and Jānis Alberts signed their names on the banned flag, and Pupurs defiantly carried it to lead a mass demonstration calling for the restoration of Latvia’s independence. With each ensuing demonstration, the number of flags increased until there was a sea of them at every public rally.

Latvians have been waving their flag with pride for the last 20 years. It goes up on all buildings on public holidays, and has become a familiar symbol at world ice hockey championships. If you ever go to a game between Latvia and Austria, it’s easy to tell the two national flags apart. The Latvian flag is darker, with a narrow white stripe in the middle, and the people waving them tend to sing and cheer a lot louder.

#15   Storks are not tourists

I once made the mistake of saying that storks are Latvia’s most spectacular summer tourists. An ornithologist quickly corrected me. ‘Home’ is where you build your nest and raise your children, and each summer an estimated 8,000 pairs of White Storks make their homes in Latvia. They just spend their winters 7,000 kilometres away in Africa.

Take a ride out into the Latvian countryside and you can’t miss them. Latvia has 5% of the world’s White Stork population. And one of the densest concentrations of stork nests in all of Europe – up to 65 nests per 100 sq. km. Although half are in trees, the other half are very visible on man-made objects – chimneys, telephone and electric poles, and rooftops. The average nest is around 30 years old, and the oldest known nest in Latvia today is a respectable 57. Stork nests are natural architectural wonders – sturdy, heavy and extremely difficult to remove or dismantle.  Just how those storks get those massive nests to balance on thin telephone poles I’ll never know.

White Storks were not always a part of the Latvian landscape. They started arriving around the 16^th century, as forests were cleared for farmland. That revealed that Latvia’s fields and farmlands were full of those tasty frogs and insects that storks love to dine on. You know that we couldn’t have had White Storks in ancient Latvia, because Latvian folk poems – the dainas – never mention them.

But we did have Black Storks. Although they were known by another name in antiquity, Black Storks have made Latvia their home for thousands of years. They are much rarer than the White Storks, and a bit more mysterious, but studies undertaken in Latvia since 1993 have revealed a great deal about these magnificent birds.

Because of its rarity and special place in Latvia’s landscape, the Black Stork was named Bird of the Year for 2008. The Latvian Ornithological Society wanted to call attention to the stork’s diminishing habitat and the need to preserve and protect nesting places.  But I think it was to give our feathered friends another reason to celebrate Latvia’s 90^th anniversary year.

#16   The Latvian Saga

Sometimes books not only tell history, they make it.

In 1959 Uldis ‘ā¢ērmanis wrote a history book about Latvia while he was living in Sweden. He was in Sweden because Latvia was under Soviet occupation, and he wrote ‘The Latvian Saga’ (Latviešu Tautas Piedzīvojumi)  for other Latvian refugees and their children, because the Soviets were trying to erase what they didn’t like about Latvia’s history.

While ‘The Latvian Saga’ became highly popular in the Latvian exile communities in Europe, North and South America, and Australia, it became even more popular in Latvia itself. Of course, the book was banned in Latvia, so having it and reading it was a big risk.  But that didn’t stop Western Latvians from smuggling in  copies.

I first read ‘The Latvian Saga’ in the 1980’s when I was working for the American Latvian Association in Washington, D.C. I love historical novels, and although it wasn’t a novel, it read like one. Through ā¢ērmanis, Latvia’s history came alive in a most captivating way. Almost every Latvian I knew had read it, and as my contacts with pro-independence activists expanded in the late 1980’s, I discovered that it was a ‘best seller’ in occupied Latvia as well. The KGB had failed miserably in keeping it off the shelves and out of the minds of the Latvians they were supposed to be watching.

It will take other historians to evaluate the impact ā¢ērmanis’ book had on Latvians around the world for 40 years. ā¢ērmanis said he wrote it to keep the flame of hope alive for independence. My vote is for those historians who believe ā¢ērmanis succeeded.

ā¢ērmanis’ original book covered Latvian history from the Ice Age until the Occupation. He died in 1997 and was never able to update the book. Last year, the publishing house Atena (www.atena.lv) released the first English translation of the book, and added new chapters, pictures and maps to reflect the continuing story of the Latvian saga. ā¢ērmanis had hoped that his book would someday reach a wider audience. It looks like he’s accomplished that goal as well.

Let’s sing of the rivers that run to the sea

of the things that have been

of the things that must be

Let’s glide with the tide

and climb every tree

and survey all the things

that the hawks only see

Let us run to the ramparts and stand on the ledge

gazing up at the sky

peering down from the edge

Let’s run with the sun

and float with the clouds

and strengthen our selves

getting lost in the crowds

Let’s flow with the rivers that run to the sea

and build on what’s been

and become what must be

Let’s reel with the feeling

embrace every breast

and look upon life

as a glorious test

(Recorded by ‘Bus in the Sky’ on the album ‘Think  of Me’, music by Imants Kalnins)

time takes its turn again

turn again, turn again

time takes its turn and the sun takes its time

time takes its turn again

turn again, turn again

time takes its turn and that takes a long time

from summer to autumn, and winter to spring

each season has a reason for the bounty it brings

each moment has its meaning

each question, a reply

we spin on this earth and we look to the sky

time takes its turn again

turn again, turn again

time takes its turn and the moon takes its time

time takes its turn again

turn again, turn again

time takes its turn and that takes a long time

from morning to mid-day and into the night

we circle on a cycle, awaiting the light

we start with a beginning

we bring it to an end

we do it so it happens,  again and again

time takes its turn again

turn again, turn again

time takes its turn and the earth takes its time

time takes its turn again

turn again, turn again

time takes its turn and that takes a long time

from summer to autumn, and winter to spring

each passing has a reason for the sadness it brings

each passion has its purpose

each longing, a refrain

we turn to the time that we know still remains

time takes its turn again

turn again, turn again

time takes its turn and the world takes its time

time takes its turn again

turn again, turn again

time takes its turn and that takes a long time

The most “Latvian” songs in all recorded history are sung around bonfires on the nights of Jāņi and Līgo during the Midsummer Solstice. They cannot be translated, for as the poet Imants Ziedonis has theorized, its often the sounds of the words and the vibrations they release in your body as you sing them, that produce the magic effects that have captivated generations. This was just an experiment to see if something of the sense of this celestial turning point in time could be captured in the Anglo-Saxon tongue.

turn again

turn again

turn it round and round the bonfire, turning

spring is gone and summer’s coming

turning

rain is pouring, thunder’s rumbling

turning

turn again

turn again

turn it round and round the bonfire, turning

lads are running after lassies

turning

rolling in the velvet grasses

turning

turn again

turn again

turn it round and round the bonfire, turning

sing a song and then another

turning

sing it with your sister’s brother

turning

pour the beer and make it lather

turning

raise a toast to all who gather

turning

turn again

turn again

turn it round and round the bonfire, turning

break your bread with every neighbor

turning

celebrate your earthly labours

turning

find the fern and kiss the flower

turning

feel the minutes flow like hours

turning

turn again

turn again

turn it round and round the bonfire, turning

thank your father and your mother

turning

throw a kiss to all the others

turning

sing and dance away the sorrow

turning

love today to see tomorrow

turning

Flower people

 

(Article published in the AirBaltic in-flight magazine, ‘Baltic Outlook’.

Latvians are obsessed with flowers. There is no doubt whatsoever in my mind that anyone with at least one ounce of Latvian blood in his family tree is genetically programmed to give and receive flowers all his life.

It doesn’t matter why, where or to whom. If you are Latvian and you haven’t had a bunch of real flowers in your hands for one reason or another in the last 72 hours, you begin to feel tribal withdrawal pains deep down in the roots of your genetic code. Latvians need a constant flower fix and will use any excuse to satisfy it.

A Latvian gives flowers on birthdays, names days, holidays and anniversaries; openings, and closings, weddings and funerals, concerts and sporting events. Put yourself in the centre of any Latvian occasion and prepare to be beflowered. Ice hockey player get them, them, opera singers get them, poets get them and politicians get them. Latvians give flowers to men, women, children, cows, even rocks – they don’t discriminate. An event cannot be an event if it is not bedecked in flowers.

After a careful unscientific analysis I have concluded  that in Latvia, someone is giving some kind of flower to someone else, for some very Latvian reason, every 15 minutes. I can’t prove that, but it’s obviously true. Cut that estimate in half on weekends.

In Latvia, flowers seem to grow out of a sense of obligation, only so that Latvians can give them to one another. With thousands of big and small bouquets changing hands every day, the land seems to be working overtime to keep up with the feverish demand.  What can’t be grown in Latvia is imported from elsewhere, just so long as the city flower markets are always in full fragrant supply. In Latvia, a shortage of dark bread – the staple of national consumption – would cause substantial civil rumblings, but a flower shortage would no doubt bring riots in the streets.

Latvians have such a constant, unquenchable, incessant need for flowers that the 24-hour flower market across from the Latvian Foreign Ministry on Terbates street in Riga buzzes  with buyers, day or night. Some guys buy bouquets for girls before an evening date on their way to the discos; others buy them at 5am after the discos have closed for the girls they were lucky enough to pick up. The Terbates street flower market catches them coming and going from the theatres, bars and clubs of Riga’s Old Town. Some need flowers to go out. Others (tardy husbands) need them to come home. On a festive night, the river of flowers that flows through Riga could rival the mighty Daugava river nearby.

Everyone gets into the act. Secretaries buy arrangements for their bosses to give at a colleague’s book presentation, wives buy them for dinner parties, shopkeepers buy them to decorate their store windows, and pensioners buy them for the cemetery. (In Latvia, you get even more flowers after you are dead.)

And everyone buys flowers for their teachers. What the State can’t provide in terms of a living wage, present and former students make up for with generous floral gifts. On the first day of school each September, Latvia’s schools are awash with flower-toting kids, students, parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, all participating in a ritualistic frenzy of flower exchange that leaves the teachers and schools buried in a buzzing mound of petals, pistils and pollen.

On the summer solstice, a very pagan Latvian holiday called ‘Jāņi’, you not only give flowers, you wear them in your hair. You also wear leaves, vines, grasses or anything else that can be cut and formed into a primeval fashion accessory. In rural areas people decorate their cows and horses. In Riga, they decorate their BMWs and Land Rovers.

I think it’s the law. It is most definitely a tradition. But increasingly I’m beginning to believe it’s a deeply imbedded national mission.

In regard to flowers, Latvians seem to have reached a very simple understanding with Mother Nature: as long as she keeps growing them, Latvians will keep giving them. Latvians present flowers, place flowers,  paint flowers, decorate with flowers, celebrate with flowers, mourn with flowers, sing with flowers, dance with flowers, are born with flowers and die with flowers. They wouldn’t know how to begin or end anything without them.

If the goddess of flowers wanted to hire an ad agency to promote her latest product line to mankind, she would probably ask the Latvians to manage the campaign. They’d do it pro bono, I’m sure.

September 6, 2001

 

Telling Latvia’s Story

Although I was born in a refugee camp in Munich in 1949, and never actually lived in Latvia until recently, I have been hearing and telling Latvia’s story all my life.

Growing up in Chicago, I heard about it constantly from my parents, who fled Latvia when the Soviets occupied for the second and last time in 1944. In the United States from the 50’s until the 70’s, the only people talking about Latvia were other Latvians. Few Americans were interested in a small country behind the Iron Curtain, and apart from the Pentagon and State Department, no one paid much attention to it.

From my parents I heard about the good old days of a free Latvia, when Karlis Ulmanis was president, Riga was a jewel and Latvian butter was the rage of European gourmands. I also heard about the war of independence against the Bolsheviks and Bermontians following WW I, the battles with Nazi and Red Army invasions during WW II, the Soviet occupation, and the endless executions, deportations, Russification and dehumanization that followed.

In my boy’s mind there were two Latvias. The colorful Camelot of my parent’s nostalgia and the dreary concentration-camp-by-the-sea that the Soviets had created. It wasn’t until 1978 when I actually first set foot in Latvia, that I realized there was much more to the story.

I also realized that since the end of WW II, Soviet-ruled Moscow was telling that story, as it saw ideologically fit, to the world. Between 1944 and the late 1980’s, the world only knew of a Soviet Republic called Latvia, and most of what it knew was carefully orchestrated by the KGB in Moscow. Soviet Communists liked to cut people out of official photos when they are no longer useful. Moscow’s propagandists cut huge chunks out of Latvia’s history, culture and society.

The only other source of information about Latvia, anywhere in the world, was the 200,000 strong exile community which the Soviet occupation had dispersed to Western Europe, Canada, the United States and beyond. They worked at the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe, created cultural and political organizations and constantly tried to remind anyone who would listen, that Latvia was an occupied country. And that as a result of that occupation, the very survival of the Latvian language, culture and people, was at stake.

Since I was writing ads for a living in Chicago when I first visited occupied Latvia in 1978, I decided to add my efforts to those of other exiles, in telling the story right. In the early 80’s, the American Latvian Association and the World Federation of Free Latvians were two of the most active and influential Latvian exile organizations. They represented hundreds of smaller Latvian organizations in dozens of cities around the world, and did what they could to lobby Western governments and tell Latvia’s story to the Western press. Exiled Latvians had spent the 50’s and 60’s looking inward, consolidating their communities and nurturing their culture; by the early 80’s political action and outward communication took on greater importance. A new generation of  Latvians born in exile (and speaking good English) joined their parents in telling the world about what was going on in occupied Latvia. We were naïve, idealistic and we wanted to restore Latvia’s independence. To do so, we knew we had to explain why in an honest, accurate, and persuasive manner.

In Chicago in 1981, we developed the monthly Chicago Latvian Newsletter into a regular and reliable source of current English-language information about Latvia. We produced the first major English-language book about Latvia in 30 years. In cities across the U.S. we participated in Captive Nations Day rallies and organized Baltic Freedom Day demonstrations. In 1985, I joined the Washington D.C.-based American Latvian Association as a full time publicist and lobbyist. By the time Gorbachev and glasnost rolled around and Latvians in Latvia could start speaking for themselves, the Western Latvian community had already established a base of information and a network of receptive contacts throughout the Free World.

When the dissident group ‘Helsinki 86’ emerged from Liepaja and organized the first overtly pro-independence march to the Latvian Freedom Monument in Riga on June 14, 1987, Latvia became a legitimate news story. In Washington, we made sure that every Congressman, Senator and foreign policy advisor read the story and understood its implications. When the Latvian National Independence Movement and the Popular Front came into existence in 1989, we brought their leaders to Washington and introduced them to the same politicians and foreign policymakers. To Americans, Latvia, like its Baltic neighbors Estonia and Lithuania, was suddenly a real place, with real people. The Balts were dramatically altering their own lives, and as a result, the world.

Washington sat up and took notice. Latvians in cities across the U.S. held larger and larger rallies and formed Popular Front support groups to channel direct assistance into the pro-independence movement. In early 1989 we were calling Western reporters and telling them about what was happening in Latvia. After 2 millions Balts formed a human chain from Tallinn to Riga to Vilnius on August 23, 1989, the reporters were calling us.

Reporters were also starting to call the Latvian Legation in a sleepy residential  neighborhood on 17^th Street in northwest Washington. Despite 50 years of foreign rule in Latvia, the diplomatic mission of the former independent Republic of Latvia was still legally functioning in Washington, staffed by accredited diplomats who had served Latvia prior to the 1940, and continued to do so during the ensuing decades of occupation.

The Legation itself became a news story, and combined with the restlessness in Latvia and the tirelessness of the exile community, by 1990 the story of Latvia and the Baltic States began to appear regularly on the front pages of U.S. newspapers. In Washington, working with the Legation, we focused on Congress, the State Department, think tanks and editorial writers. The idea of Latvian independence, which had been dismissed in the 60’s, was a real possibility in the 90’s. No longer was it just old Latvian exiles talking about it. The major newspapers were openly advocating it.

I joined the Latvian Legation as a press liaison in January of 1991 and on May 4,  the newly elected, Popular Front-dominated Supreme Council of the Soviet Republic of Latvia, declared its intention to restore Latvia’s independence. Moscow scoffed, even when Latvia’s pro-independence Prime Minister Ivars Godmanis and Foreign Minister Janis Jurkans came to Washington and met with President Bush in the Oval Office of the White House. Moscow was too busy with its own problems to scoff when Latvia realized that independence in August, and on September 2, 1991, I stood in the office of Latvia’s elderly chief of mission Anatol Dinbergs and watched a TV press conference as President George Bush announced the full restoration of ties between the United States and the sovereign Republic of Latvia. The Legation became an embassy, Anatol Dinbergs became ambassador and I became his Minister Counselor and Deputy Chief of Mission.

I had been a naturalized U.S. citizenship since 1968, but gave that up in December of 1991 so that I could assume full diplomatic duties at the Latvian Embassy. I had to fly to a U.S. Consulate in Canada to do so because it’s impossible to give up your citizenship in the U.S. In 1992, 86-year old Ambassador Dinbergs retired and I was appointed Ambassador in 1993.

I had been telling Latvia’s story all my life, first as an obscure refugee, then as a political activist and finally as an ethnic lobbyist. Along with thousands of others living in the U.S., I had written letters, given interviews, delivered speeches and held rallies, making the case for Latvia’s independence. I had been told it would take a miracle. Apparently miracles do happen. .

During most of the last ten years that I have served as a diplomat, I was no longer promoting Latvia’s independence, but simply trying to preserve it. During that period the exile community in the West also underwent changes. Many established close ties to Latvia or moved here, and became actively involved in rebuilding the country. Others remained in the West to revitalize their exile organizations and help tell the story of a new, emerging Latvia.

While history  – especially the Soviet and Nazi occupations – was an important part of that story, even more important was what was happening in Latvia every day. With the beginning of independence in 1991, Latvians on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean  were talking about new things – party politics, the economy, and the challenges facing Latvian society.

Latvian embassies in the West became the first and main source of information about the new Latvia. Diplomats talked not only about Russian troop withdrawal, NATO and the EU, but also about investment opportunities, tax breaks and the emerging IT (Information Technology) industry. In Latvia, English-language newspapers and magazines began to sprout up, tourists and official delegations began coming out and foreign entrepreneurs and journalists began to pour in.

When I ended my 7-year tour as ambassador to the United States in 1999 and moved to Riga to become the Director of the Latvian Institute, I realized I had come full circle. My parents’ generation had fled Latvia following WW II to tell a story and seek help in the West. I was returning to Latvia in their place. In 1978 I knew there was more to be told. In 2000, we finally have a chance to tell it.

As I sit in my Old Town Riga office and gaze at the 800-year old steeple of the Dom Cathedral, I am reminded of another number that was etched deeply in my consciousness from childhood. 22. Latvia was independent for 22 years. We are now approaching the halfway mark of the record that was set by Latvia’s founders from 1918 until 1940.

Today we are using the Internet, e-mail and multi-media magic to tell everything there is to tell about Latvia and how its is doing as we enter the 21^st century. About our goals of becoming a inseparable part of the European Union and NATO. About our desire to create a stable, prosperous democratic country. About our ports and our infrastructure, our folk songs and festivals, our people and possibilities. We have a capital that is both old and new, big and small, spectacular and stately. We have a vast expanse of untouched forest and uninhabited rural areas, mostly poor, sometimes prosperous, but everywhere beautiful.

Those of us who were talking about Latvia during the 50-year occupation were telling a story of war, suffering and injustice. But today, Latvia is a writing a new story, of opportunity, engagement, growth and development. Those of us who are trying to get this story out, are simply trying to get people in, so they can see for themselves. As we enter the 21^st century, the story of the new Latvia has only begun.

Soon we will celebrate the 10^th anniversary of the restoration of Latvia’s independence. I’m looking forward to the 23^rd.

Riga, Latvia 2000

‘God’s Horses’                                               

Wild about the Latvian coast

(This appeared in BALTIC OUTLOOK, in-flight magazine of AirBaltic, 2006)

Each summer, a small group of young Latvians go back in time. These folklore and history enthusiasts go out to an uninhabited part of the Latvian countryside and try to recreate what life was like for Latvian tribes in the 9^th century. Using replicas of ancient tools, young men and women build primitive log structures and strive to dress, eat, think and survive like their distant ancestors did generations ago. After a month of intense ’living in the past’, these missionaries of ancient tradition return to their day jobs in Riga and share what they learned.

The 35 stocky cloud-gray horses that graze in the wilderness meadowlands of the Lake Pape region in the Southwestern corner of Latvia have no idea that they are on a similar mission.  But unlike their young human counterparts at the summer history campsites,  these horses have no other day jobs. This is it. Eighteen specially bred Konik horses were brought to Latvia from the Netherlands in 1999 and put on a 250-hectare piece of private land as part of the , World Wildlife Fund’s ‘Large Herbivore Initiative’  and they have been living off the land – without human help – ever since.

The Konik is believed to be the closest living relative of the prehistoric Tarpan, a sturdy, short-legged breed of horse that once roamed freely in the tens of thousands across the vast Eurasian continent. Although the last known Tarpan died in a Moscow zoo in 1887, Polish scientists tried to preserve the Tarpan genotype through a carefully selective breeding program with free range Polish farm horses that had routinely, through the centuries, cross-bred with the wild Tarpans.

The result was the Konik. It’s actually a new breed, but close enough to the extinct Tarpan to give scientists and wildlife observers a rare glimpse into the world’s zoological past. The once ubiquitous Tarpan had been forced out of the wilderness and into extinction by centuries of European cultivation and urbanization. Wild horses that once lived entirely off the land no longer had any land in Europe to live on. In fact, over the last millenium almost all of Europe’s original free roaming herbivores  – wild bison, cattle, sheep – have been forced out of their natural habitats by land-consuming humans.

The WWF is trying to reintroduce a number of wild species back to selected areas in Europe, in hopes that they will not only survive and thrive, but also restore and preserve some of Europe’s last remaining wilderness regions.

The first successful self-sustaining wild Konik herd was established by the WWF in the Netherlands. In looking for additional ‘ancient’ homes for the Konik, the Lake Pape region on Latvia’s southern Baltic Sea coast seemed like a perfect candidate.  When it comes to unspoiled coastal grasslands you won’t find anything more authentic anywhere in Europe.

Until recently, the marshes and woodlands around Lake Pape were largely known for their quaint fishing villages and excellent water reeds (a traditional rural Latvian roofing material that has recently come into fashion among ‘back to the roots’ Latvian  architects and home owners.)  A 60 kilometer square territory around Lake Pape has been designated as a protected nature area, and less than 200 people live within its shifting dunes, coastal wetlands and musky peat bogs.  This number continues to decline because the region is one of the rare places in Europe where endless urban creep and sprawl seems to have successfully reversed itself.  Two wars and an occupation took its toll on the already sparse population, and the few surviving farms and homesteads are being turned into museum exhibits, or gradually abandoned.

But where man has left, nature has rushed in with a flourish. Thanks to human disinterest, the Lake Pape region has become one of Northern Europe’s last natural havens for wolf, lynx, otter, beaver, moose, red deer, roe deer and wild boar. And birds are just crazy about it. Hundreds of thousands of them pass through here each year as they migrate up and down the East African-European-Arctic Flyway. In effect, Lake Pape has become a major rest stop for birds along this high-traffic migratory superhighway.

Judging from the way the Koniks are thriving in Lake Pape, they seem to feel right at home.  Some think that they, in fact, are. Latvian folklore and folk songs are filled with references to ‘god’s horses’ (wild horses without human owners who roamed the Latvian forests and meadows), strongly suggesting that the ancestors of the Koniks were well known neighbors of early forest and coast-dwelling Latvian tribes.

The stolid, seemingly implacable Koniks appear to be a perfect genetic fit for this sometimes harsh, windswept, sea coast wilderness area. They have a capacity to digest and live on almost any type of wild grass, and annually acquire a special layer of fat that helps them survive the harshest Baltic Sea winters. They huddle in groups for warmth and protection, and move only when they have to, expending little wasted energy. While in English the designation ‘wild horses’ is technically accurate, their Latvian designation as ‘savvallas zirgi’ (‘self-sustaining horses’ ) is a more apt description of their quietly determined disposition.

Since arriving in Lake Pape, the number of Koniks has nearly doubled, providing WWF observers (and tourists) with a rare opportunity to observe their unique social structure.  Koniks instinctively divide themselves into family groups, or ‘harems’, where several mares follow a dominant leader stallion. Young colts are eventually pushed out of their mother’s families and forced to compete for the right to create their own ‘harems’. The mothers, however, are also responsible for upgrading the instinctive memory bank and genetic stock of the entire herd. Thus, they eventually move to other harems, passing on genes and experience from generation to generation. Experts believe that the Konik breed will get stronger with each generation, as it revives and restores its ancient genetic memory.

In the last year the steadily growing herd of Lake Pape Koniks have already split into three thriving harems and is showing all signs of adapting enthusiastically to its unfettered home in the meadows, forests and wilderness along the Baltic Sea coast.

The Koniks live on a 250-hectar parcel of wilderness land that has been leased by the WWF from several local owners. They are watched over by Velta Kupele, an energetic Latvian woman and avid horse lover, who was hired by the WWF to serve as the Koniks’ den mother, guardian, groundskeeper and tourist guide.

If you call ahead (for details contact the WWF Latvija office at +371 7505640 in Riga), Velta will greet you at the gate of the fence that surrounds the Koniks’ preserve and  personally walk you through the woods and meadows so that you can get a close up glimpse at these beautiful specimens. With no natural predators, (wolves have left them alone for the time being) the horses are remarkably docile and will let visitors come within several meters of them as they huddle together in their cozy harems. Velta claims they love the attention they get from humans, but reminds wide-eyed visitors that touching and feeding is totally forbidden.

Left to their own devices, the Koniks of Lake Pape seem set for a long and prosperous stay. But WWF Latvija is still seeking additional funds to make the area more secure for the horses, as well as more easily accessible to tourists. A bird observation tower has already been completed, and there are plans to build a special hiking trail and nature information center. There is also talk of introducing some other endangered species to the area, in hopes that they can follow the Koniks’ example.

The Lake Pape Koniks also seem to be a fitting symbol for a country like Latvia that soon hopes to join the European Union. After all, their ancestors were true Europeans, who once grazed freely across a continent that had no national borders. The have found this little corner of Latvia to their liking because it is one of the few places left in Europe where Europe still looks, feels and  smells the way it used to several millennia ago.

Spend some time with the Koniks of Lake Pape and you may feel yourself transported back in time as well. But be sure to shut off your mobile phone.

Latvia’s Glaciers

(This was written online in 2000 in response to a blog by journalist Juris Kaza.)

I was not in Latvia 10,000 years ago when the glaciers retreated, but I can imagine what this place must have looked like. No doubt quite a mess. Glaciers have a way of destroying, transforming and scarring the landscape that leaves a mark for a long time. And yet, the remarkable thing about a post-glacierized piece of land is how so much comes back to life after the ice retreats. Sure, some plants and animals are lost forever, but new ones also come into existence. And sooner or later, once the death-grip of the continental ice blanket has receded, everything begins to bristle and teem with life again.

As a Latvian born in Germany and raised in the United States I have always tried to comprehend the impact of the Soviet occupation here. While working in Washington for 15 years representing Latvia in various capacities, it started to dawn on me. And now that I have completed my first 12 months as a permanent resident, it has become eminently clear. This country has just come out from under a glacier again.

For 50 years, from 1940 until 1990, Latvia was frozen in place and time by the Cold War and crushed by the massive weight of a Soviet ideological and political glacier. Ten years ago that glacier finally receded, the ice has retreated and Latvia is coming back to life again. But it is not the same Latvia that existed before the glacier came. The war, the occupation and Sovietization all took a heavy price, destroying lives, property and the social fabric. The Karlis Ulmanis era in Latvia, like the earlier Czarist, Swedish, Livonian and Couronian eras, is now a part of history.

And yet, it is this very history –a succession of military and political glaciers sweeping over this land in regular intervals over the last millenium – that makes Latvia such a fascinating place for me today. As a Latvian who was fated to spend most of his early life outside of Latvia, I am stunned by the incredible resiliency of my people. Despite everything that has happened over the last 1,000 years, we are still singing the same folks songs, still drawn to that same midsummer’s bonfire and still talking to each other in our own language.

Of course, we use that language to argue and accuse more often then to sing, but then, what else is new?  Bickering seems as much a national Latvian trait as choral singing. So does building and rebuilding, changing and rearranging. The Latvian experience, as Uldis Germanis’ book of that title describes it, has been one of constant conflict between local and foreign, traditional and transitional, rural and urban, old and new. And somehow both polarities have always found a way to coexist in Latvia. Perhaps that is the secret of our survival.

The French claim that the more things change, the more they stay the same. In Latvia, the old patterns of development, growth (and sometimes destruction)  through conflict and competing interests continues. It’s the “same as it ever was”, as The Talking Heads once sang. Just the names and players have changed.

The Latvian countryside is still the repository of ancient Latvian traditions, Riga is still a multinational magnet for foreign investment, commerce and culture, and Ventspils remains an industrial power in the great tradition of the Duchy of Courland. It’s just that each of these pillars of Latvia’s identity over the last millennium is now undergoing another transitional phase. Latvia is not only coming out of the communist deep freeze, it is returning to a suddenly superheated world. And I don’t mean global warming.

Latvia is entering a white hot Information Age, where technology is developing faster than society’s ability to fully understand and harness it. The problems many critics like to point out in Latvia – corruption, organised crime, runaway bureaucracy, economic disparity – are global problems. We have not reinvented the wheel here, and like every post-glacial, post-communist, for-50-years-Soviet mismanaged country, we’ve got a lot of physical, political, mental and spiritual rubble to clear. Anytime you take something from the deep freeze and put it into an oven, you risk cracking it. Latvia has its share of cracks.

In a recent article, journalist Juris Kaza expressed deep disappointment over the fact that Latvia today – ten years since independence – is not the Latvia he hoped it would be. He suggested that many of us former exile Latvians were sold a bill of goods in Latvian Saturday schools in the West. I never doubted that. The idyllic exile Latvian vision of pre-WWII Latvia is as far removed from the reality of Latvia today as was the ideologically cynical Soviet version of it. Latvia never was what the Soviets claimed and never can be what our parents knew.

But the Latvia that seems to have so sadly fatigued Juris Kaza is, in his words, a singularly “sordid and sorry sight.”  It is a country of “ignorance, drunken helplessness, sullen passivity and psychological squalor”, not to mention “sleaze, incompetence and ineptitude.” Just repeating Kaza’s litany of criticisms gets me depressed, so I’ll just summarise with Kaza’s conclusion that “there is a critical mass of degeneracy at which the society self-destructs”. Kaza is not sure whether Latvia has reached this critical mass, “but I have a feeling that it is dangerously close to it.”.

I disagree. As the old story goes, a pessimist sees the glass half empty, while the optimist sees it half full. Kaza sees all that is dying in this country. I tend to notice that which is coming to life. Life beats death every time. And the kind of life that awaits the successors of the survivors of one more Latvian ice age, will be very different from that which Kaza sees on the streets of Riga and Daugavpils today.

When I think about the future of Latvia’s 2.3 million inhabitants, I don’t identify them by nationality. I categorise them by attitude. I see three groups. Those who are lost and frozen in the past, those who have been freeze-dried and left to fend with the present, and those who can’t wait to get to the future. Kaza’s survey of attitudes in Latvia was taken on the streets, where the lost and frozen tend to proliferate. He should listen to what the kids are saying in the schools. The kids  that I have spoken to this year in Jelgava, Valmiera, Dundaga and Limbazi are all thinking about the future. Their future. Latvia’s future.

They are bright, curious, enthusiastic and patriotic. They like Renars Kaupers and Vaira Vike-Freiberga. They run active student governments, play a major role in shaping the personality and programs of their local schools, and know the Internet like the backs of their hands. Not only will they inherit the Latvia that awaits us 20 years from now, they are already starting to shape it. Some may question the folkloric authenticity of a pretty Latvian girl in traditional folk dress performing at a song festival with a mobile phone clipped to her waist. But the fact that she even wants to wear that folk dress (and still use her phone) says something about the Latvia of the future. There is a place in cyberspace for a healthy national identity, and the high school kids I meet throughout Latvia, are developing their own understanding of both.

Those in Latvia’s society that recognise that they have a stake in Latvia’s future, are already doing something about it. In early November over two hundred women entrepreneurs representing Latvia’s most successful companies, held a conference in Riga’s Congress Hall. If Juris Kaza was looking for evidence of initiative, competence, intelligence, creativity and brilliant management in Latvia, he should have come there. He would have met the best and brightest minds in the country, doing real things that are making a positive difference in the lives of people who live here.

The drunks and street thugs that Kaza uses to symbolise Latvia today are all male. Yet women have always played the central role in Latvian culture. Women have been the caretakers of the Latvian language, culture, traditions  – and surviving male population –  after each invasion, war and occupation for the last 800 years. But for the first time in Latvian history, women now have a chance to run more than the family homestead. They are running businesses, ministries, newspapers, parties, ad agencies, auto dealerships and non-governmental organisations. And doing it very well.

I recently met two young women from Riga who have developed a magazine, media center and worldview that is on the cutting edge of the cyberspace information explosion. It turns out their Re Lab new media centre is better known in the vast global cyber network of ‘intercultural jammers’ than they are right here in Riga. Their publication and home page, called Acoustic.Space, has put Riga in the heart of a worldwide bee hive of electronic activity. We often talk about making Riga a regional center again. These women have already made it a global cybercenter. They are not just thinking about the future. They are the future.

A problem approaches solution the moment you stop dwelling on what is wrong and start doing something to make it right. Those frozen in the past or present can only see what is wrong. Latvia’s young women, like the kids in the schools and the girls at Re Lab, have a stake in the future and believe they know how to make things right. Latvia is entering a 21^st century where all the traditional ground rules and boundaries have long changed. Anytime you apply old standards to new problems, you get a mismeasurement. Anytime you fail to plan ahead, you get left behind. Rather than curse the glacier and what it has wrought, we should be looking at the new world that the sun has brought to life. What do we need to do in this new world, given the new rules, the amazing technology and wealth of information that has been put before us? What types of economic and social policies should we be pursuing in order to make maximum use of these new opportunities?

During the last ten years we have watched the glacier recede and have gone about picking up the rubble in the best way we knew how. This is an important task and must be continued. But we should simultaneously be thinking into the future. Where do we want Latvia to be 20 years from now? 30?  Is there anything we can plan, start and implement today that will have a long-term impact and bring about the results we desire? What can a medium-sized country (not unlike Ireland) with given set of resources and options, do to find a prosperous and secure place in the global community?

These issues are not being discussed in the streets of Riga, but they are increasingly becoming a major topic of  conversation in Latvian schools, institutions and organisations.

It’s always fun to ridicule inept and corrupt politicians as Kaza does, and Latvia has surely demonstrated its equality with European Union countries in this regard. I’ll match Latvia’s political scandals with any in Great Britain, Belgium, Italy or France. The Latvian Parliament is indeed one of the least trusted institutions in Latvia, but as I recall from my days in Washington, the members of the U.S. Congress weren’t exactly America’s most beloved public servants either. Name one country in the world where at least some parliamentarians aren’t viewed as crooks.

And yet I have also seen Latvian politicians cross party lines, put aside economic interests and talk about what really needs to be done to secure Latvia’s future. After arriving in Riga in January to head the Latvian Institute, I was invited to join an ad hoc brainstorming group that was trying to develop a long term vision for Latvia’s political, economic and social future. The group included politicians from three different parties, scientists, sociologists, economists and businessmen. What amazed and impressed me, was the fact that they were indeed thinking about the future. Not the next election. Not the next budget. Not whether the hours we were talking together would increase their profits or not.

The resultant report, called ‘From Vision to Action’, will not immediately solve all the problems that depress Juris Kaza, but it does address those active people in Latvia who have a clear stake in the future. It gets them thinking about where Latvia is going, where it can fit in a globalized world, and what life could be like in this country 10, 20 and 30 years from now.

I hope that Juris Kaza gets over his bout with transition society fatigue and sticks around Latvia a little while longer. He may be in for a pleasant surprise. Glaciers retreat slowly and those of us caught in the aftermath have to walk through a lot of muck and rubble. But following right behind us is another generation that is already picking up the pieces, planting the seeds and building the Latvia of the future. These are the people I came to Latvia to work with. They are the reason I’m staying.

December 19, 2000

A Viking looks at Latvia today

(Based on a speech delivered to a regional Scandinavian Rotary Club meeting in Riga, Latvia)

Serious historians will tell you that the word ‘viking’ is not a  noun and does not describe a person or people. It was instead an activity that was undertaken by certain people – Danes, Swedes and others – who lived in this region over a thousand years ago.

You could say that ‘going viking’ was an early form of tourism in the Baltic Sea region. A large group of people got into boats and visited their neighbors. After some negotiation, they brought home a lot of souvenirs.

However, modern marketing has turned the word ‘viking’ into a noun, and thus we refer to these early Scandinavian tourists as ‘vikings’. If Hollywood can make a large bearded Scotsman like William Wallace look like a short Australian actor named Mel Gibson, than I can call the ancestors of today’s Scandinavians ‘vikings’.

We all know that the Vikings of the 9^th century used to visit here a lot. Some came to visit the Liv settlement that was located along the banks of the river Daugava. But most sailed on further south thru Russia, all the way down to the great  ancient city of Byzantium. Thus, even before Easy Jet and Ryanair, Riga was a popular transit point for travelers.

What would happen if one of those Vikings from the 9^th century sailed into Riga in the 21^st century?  Well, if he were to start from the island of Gotland and sail along the northern Kurzeme coastline, he would probably think he was still in the 9^th century. Looking at it from the sea, that coast has not changed a bit. He would  see an endless wall of green Latvian pine trees backing up an equally endless stretch of white sandy beach. His first shock might come when he encountered a wind surfer sailing out from the fishing village of Mazirbe. To a Viking, one man on a small board with a sail, without a shield or sword, would probably seem rather odd.

Odd as he might be, a wind surfer was no threat. The threat would come when he rounded the Kolka horn and found himself confronted by a dozen crazed summer vacationers buzzing around him on high-powered Jet Skis. As a seasoned pirate, I’m sure he’d admire their speed and mobility, but he’d probably wonder  where their stored all their loot. Jet Skis are loud and powerful but they have no storage space whatsoever.

He’d get his answer as he traveled deeper into the Bay of Riga and confronted a fleet of huge metal ships carrying enormous heaps of cargo. If these were modern day Vikings, they had obviously collected an awful lot of souvenirs from the locals –  forests of tree trunks, mountains of grain, stacks of  Honda Civics and boatloads of Finnish tourists. He’d probably assume these Finns were slaves that had been collected by other Vikings from the mainland, although he would wonder why they all looked and sounded so happy.

By the time he entered the mouth of the River Daugava, he would realize that the old Liv settlement had turned into a teeming metropolis of nearly a million inhabitants. After sailing past huge docks, large cranes and hundreds of cargo ships, he would finally approach the gates of the city itself.

The Riga Castle on the right bank would look familiar. It’s been there since the 14^th century and looks no different than the old castles that guarded other cities on the Dauagava River on the way south to Byzantium. The 29-story steel and glass castle on right, however, would be intimidating. Vikings were never good at siege warfare and this one would be a tall order, to say the least.

And yet, the building would tempt him.  Once he learned that the wealth of modern cities was stored in banks, this impressively large building had to be much more valuable than the old castle across the river. After all it was called the Hansa Bank, and our Viking knew that Riga was once one of the most important cities in the Hanseatic League. If it had 29 floors, it had to be storing an awful lot of gold and silver.

But as he went from floor to floor, he’d find nothing but desks and chairs and computers. After asking around he’d realize that in the 21^st century, gold and silver had been replaced by paper money. Well, if paper money was valuable today, he might as well fill his pockets with that. When he asked one of the guards where he could find a vault where all this valuable paper money was stored, he’d be directed to an ATM machine.

Soon enough he would discover that his trusty two-handed sword was no match for an ATM machine – especially a sword without a microchip and a pin code.

So he’d head across the river into the heart of the city where the tradesmen sold their goods. There had to be lots of money there. Once he got over the first shock of all the new buildings in Riga, his next shock would come when he learned that even paper money had become old fashioned in this town.

So what does a Viking do? What else but go over to the Nordic Council offices in the Berg Bazaar and ask for help. He was familiar with Viking councils in his Nordic homeland, so this one had to have information.

Being discrete, he’d tell them that he wanted to do some ‘business’ in Riga. They’d say no problem. If he wants to acquire things in this city, he needs a laptop, wireless access to the Internet and an e-account at one of Latvia’s 23 banks. And while he might feel more comfortable at an old-fashioned market located near the train station near Old Town, if he really wanted to stock his ship with treasures from around the world, he’d have to visit some cyber markets called Amazon.com and E-bay.

Clearly, this kind of information would drive a Viking to drink. And what better place to find a drink than in the pubs and bars of Riga’s Old Town? But here he would encounter another surprise. Back in the 9^th century the Danish Vikings spent a lot of time trying to chase the Brits out of England. Where did all those Brits go? Apparently they all came to Riga, because the city pubs are full of them. So many, that their Queen, Elizabeth the II, came here recently to shoo them all back home to their wives and mothers.

Had the Viking come to Riga in the middle of the summer on June 23, he would notice something else rather strange about this Latvian capital. He would see very few Latvians. Where did they all go? He could go into an Internet Café and log onto the Latvian News Agency LETA to find out what’s going on. He’d  read about something called the free movement of labor and might conclude that most of the Latvians had gone over to England and Ireland, to replace all the Brits that had come to Riga. But that isn’t the full story.

The fact is, most Riga Latvians would be out in the countryside, celebrating the summer solstice, which we call Jāņi. A Viking always loves a good celebration, so our friend would probably rent himself a Volvo and go look for a roaring bonfire. He’d find thousands of them all over the countryside. Now here, he might start feeling at home again. There would be plenty of song, buckets of beer, wild dancing and people leaping about madly with oak leaves on their heads.  To our Viking, this would be the first real sign of civilization as he knew it.

Strengthened by beer and cheese and emboldened by all this nostalgia, he might start thinking about what any self-respecting warrior does best. He’d want to make war on these Latvians. After all, with all the flowers in their hair, they all looked like a bunch of peace-loving hippies.

But a good Viking usually checks out his adversary before he launches an attack. These dancing and singing Latvians did seem like a lively bunch, but did they have a real army hidden away somewhere in the woods?

So our Viking would go under cover and do a little spying. Over the next few months he would find out that Latvia did have an army, but no more than about 5,000 active duty soldiers. No problem. If he went back and got a few boatloads of his Viking friends, he could easily overwhelm the locals.

From the Nordic Council he had learned that there were many Scandinavians in Latvia and they were represented by embassies. Perhaps he could recruit some Viking warriors from these embassies. It would save him a trip back home. So he paid a visit to the Norwegian embassy in Riga.

But here he was confronted with another shocking revelation. It turns out that these Latvians had joined some kind of organization called NATO, and that his fellow Norwegians were also a part of this military alliance. Not only wouldn’t the Norwegians help him, they were all too busy opening hypermarkets and hotels in Riga.

No luck there. So he tried the Danish embassy. The Danes were always good Vikings and never passed up an opportunity for a little fun. There the news was even worse. The Danish ambassador told him that not only were the Danes a part of this NATO, but so were over 20 other tribes from Europe and the New World. These Latvians now had friends and allies in Germany, Poland, England, Italy, Spain and a dozen other places that he had never heard of. Byzantium, the city he used to visit by way of the Daugava River, was now in a country called Turkey and they too were a part of this NATO. Even Vinland, that large land across the ocean discovered  by his countryman Leif Ericsson,  had joined this  NATO. Worse yet, all of these NATO armies were gathering in Riga at the end of November for something called a Summit.

This was outrageous. His last ray of hope was Sweden. He was delighted to learn that at least the Swedes hadn’t joined this enormous alliance. When he asked the Swedish ambassador where he could find some friends who could help him with a special project, he was told to go to the Swedish Chamber of Commerce in Riga. ‘Commerce’? Well, that made sense. Going Viking was a form of commerce, so he tried it.

Not wanting to reveal his invasion plans right away, he told the Chamber of Commerce that he was looking to start a ‘joint venture’ with other Swedes in Latvia, one which would help all of them get rich.  The Swedish Chamber was very helpful.

They told him that he should to get a room at the Reval Hotel, open a bank account at UNIBANKA, and get a job with TeliaSonera. Then they lent him an Ericsson mobile phone and gave him a list of numbers to call.

Clearly, this was not what he had in mind. So he went back to the Swedish embassy and looked up the Swedish military attaché. If anyone could help him raise an army, he would be the person to do it. Soon enough he discovered that even if the Swedes were not a part of this NATO, they might as well be.  You see, much of the military equipment used by the Latvian army that he had hoped to defeat with his fellow Vikings, had been donated to the Latvians by, of all people,  the Swedes.

The world had really changed. Danish and Norwegian Vikings were now allies with these Latvians, and Swedish Vikings were supplying them with weapons. And that’s when he realized, he had already missed the boat. The ancestors of this fellow Vikings were already here. He could fly here on Air Baltic, buy Carlsberg beer and Danish tobacco at Narvesson, get into his Saab or Volvo and fill up with gas at Statoil before doing his shopping at Rimi. And if he wanted to learn how his fellow countrymen did it all, he could sign up for some courses at the Stockholm School of Economics in Riga. If you can’t beat ‘em, might as well join ‘em.

Riga

October 21, 2006

The awesome entirety has got me

the endless all has got me in its spell

the thing of things and all their rings

and all the wonder wonder brings

just beats my heart and makes me feel just swell

Hey, I ride the rails of the awesome entirety

hitching a ride on the all in all

moving along to the place that I want to be

making the future my next port of call

The awesome entirety won’t leave me

I can’t begin to navigate its scope

the more I see amazes me

and every lock requires a key

if only I could find the proper rope

Hey, I ride the rails of the awesome entirety

hitching a ride on the all in all

moving along to the place that I want to be

making the future my next port of call

The awesome entirety is pointless

it simply sits there in and of itself

it simply circles round and round

and makes the necessary sound

to conjur up a fairy and an elf

Hey, I ride the rails of the awesome entirety

hitching a ride on the all in all

moving along to the place that I want to be

making the future my next port of call

The awesome entirety has got me

the endless all has got me in its spell

the thing of things and all their rings

and all the wonder wonder brings

just beats my heart and makes me feel just swell

I am a man of principles

I am a man of my word

Come gather round and listen to the things you’ve never heard

Come look at all my principles

I’ll defend them to the end

But if circumstances change again, I’ll gladly make them bend

You can do a lot with principles

You can wear them on your sleeve

You can raise them up the flag pole as the enemy army leaves

Come choose among my principles

They tend to come and go

Just why that tends to happen wasn’t meant for me to know

I live a life of principles

And try to take a stand

A solid one on water and a looser one on land.

You shouldn’t sell your principles

Or calculate their cost

Unless, of course, there’s no way out and you are really lost.

The world is full of principles

We use them every day

They shape the things we do and make us say the things we say.

There is no end of principles

That we can choose to try

The prospects are enormous and the limit is the sky.

I think I’ll take my principles

And use them at my whim

I’ll take them for a walk and then I’ll take them for a swim.

I’ll exercise my principles

In every way and means

And look the other way when someone says I’m full of beans

I always have my principles

To guide me through the night

When life is full of darkness there is always room for light.

I am a man of principles

That guide me through my test

And if the ones I have don’t work I’ll have to try the rest.

I’m grateful to the gods that be

for being somewhere near to me

I thank the heavens for the time

they waste

on this mere mortal

I count my lucky stars at night

for showing me a useful light

I just don’t know the reason why

they shine

so I can see them

I know the time we have is short

for all the loves that we must court

I simply take what’s offered me

and wait

to see tomorrow

(Recorded by ‘Bus in the Sky’ on the album ‘Think  of Me’, music by Imants Kalnins)

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TABULA RASA – Our motto:  „Never a discouraging word!”

The American School of Apathy

Presents

The False Gods and Pagan Idols Lecture Series

Sponsored by the Institute of Interdisciplinary Indifference

PART 1 – Creation of the World Seminar

WHEN: Whenever

WHERE: Everywhere

TUITION: 2 hours of credibility and blind faith, bordering on acute naivete.

DESCRIPTION: The Evolutionists had their say; now it’s time for the other side. In this unique seminar the movers and shakers of the world’s cosmology talk about the world they’ve created and discuss whether it’s time to end it. Chek out this line-up of Holy heavy hitters.

Ymir – Germanic Giant and author and begetter of the human race.

Ometecuhtli & Omeciuatl – Lord and Lady of Aztec creation.

Purusha – double-sexed Vedic demiurge and practiced autoeroticist.

Liktenis – a Baltic Father of Fate and scriptwriter for destiny.

Jah – Rastafarian deity, Being of All Beings and originator of reggae music.

Pan-Ku – Taoist lead-off man and creator of Yin Yang.

Brahma – legendary Hindu vowel, vibrating outward through nothingness.

Izanag & Izanami – twin Japanese deities responsible for sushi and everything.

Hurakan – Mayan Master of Invention.

Uranus & Gaea – Father Sky and Mother Earth of ancient Greece.

Ptah – Egyptian molder, creator, father and all-round heavenly handyman.

Wakantaka – Great Sioux Spirit and rainbow maker.

Tiamat & Marduk – Mesopotamian S&M act that gave their bodies for life.

Atum – hairy palmed soloist and Egyptian procreator of Everything.

PART II – The Dialectics of Divinity

Where’s the best place to get needed info about stallion’s teeth? Straight from the horse’s mouth, right? Well, if you want to learn about the nuts and bolts of life, it only makes sense that you turn to the cosmic toolmakers. If all your puzzling questions about life and death and everything in between were always answered with the same old line, “ God only knows” now’s your chance to find out which of them really does.

Here’s the semester’s lordy line-up:

Dionysius, Pagan God of Thrace midnight, during full moon

For advanced exuberants only. Comprehensive course moves quickly through Mindless Revelry, Uncontrollable Ecstacy and Mystic Delirium, concluding with an often fatal, but nevertheless thoroughly enjoyable final exam.

Soma, Hindu Lord of Liquor weekdays, during happy hour

Seek beautitude with the greatest bartender this side of Nirvana. (B.Y.O.B.)

Huitzilopochtli, Aztec God of War break of dawn on clear days

Learn the tricks of the war trade from the name that struck fear in the hearts and tongues of Aztec enemies everywhere.

Aphrodiite, Greek Goddess of Love weekends, motel to be announced

A popular course for aspiring  parents, gigolos and erstwhile streetwalkers, with special emphasis on the 5 powerful enjoyments of the Tantric Tradition: Fish, Meat, Cereal, Wine and Sex. (And how to use them all at once.)

FILM SPECIAL:

All registrants to the Dialectics of Divinity Courses will receive free tickets to the Galaxy Premier of the film:

‘PROMETHEUS AND PANDORA GET IT ALL TOGETHER’

Starring:

Al Pacino as PROMETHEUS

Bo Derek as PANDORA

Dustin Hoffman as EPIMETHEUS, PROMETHUS’s brother.

Meryl Streep as MINERVA

Robin Williams as CHASE, the confused and shapeless mass.

John Houseman as ZEUS

And special guests, George Burns and Bete Midler, as GOD and NATURE.

Its time to go to battle,

the trumpets have been sounded

unsheath your sword, adjust your shield

and march

march into the face of those that doubt you

march into the glare of hostile fire

march along with others who surround you

march alone armed solely with desire

march the paths that others trod before you

march thru pathways never trod before

march despite the voices that implore you

march when you can ‘t take it any more

march as if there wasn’t a tomorrow

march for all the love left in your life

march to kill the pain and drown the sorrow

march  to end the conflict and the strife

march for all that’s good and all that’s holy

march for those whose marching days are through

march for all the sad and all the lonely

march for those who still depend on you

march through sunny fields and sparkling meadows

march into the darkest depths of hell

march along with memories and shadows

march where all before you nobly fell

march because you must, because you have to

march because you have no other choice

march a lively step and snappy tatoo

march because you hear that inner voice

Its time to go to battle

the trumpets have been sounded

unsheath your sword

adjust your shield

and march

march into the face of fear and terror

march into the jaws of the unknown

march because you are another bearer

marching for the place that you call home

marching for your family and loved ones

marching for your hearth and sacred home

marching to the tune of the unsung ones

marching to your destiny alone

Dedicated to the strēlnieki  and others who have fought for Latvia’s freedom –  November 17, 1999

The bankers and the businessmen are rushing to their cars

with bodyguards and drivers they head out for the bars

The ministers and mistresses are waiting for them there;

serving up that pound of flesh for a price that’s only fair

The faces in the streets could tell us stories

they’ve seen it all a hundred times before

they look down from above in frozen glory

with stone cold glares that chill you to the core

The deputies and dandies are primping for the press;

the TV commentator is trying on her dress

The poets and the painters are checking their reviews

The bureaucrats are rushing home to catch the evening news

The faces in the streets could tell us stories

they’ve seen it all a hundred times before

they look down from above in frozen glory

with stone cold glares that chill you to the core

The scientists and scholars are trying to survive

They button up their overcoats and hold tight to their wives

The  school kids and the students are laughing as they run

No thought about the future or the lives that they’ve begun

The hookers and the homeless are looking for their marks

Its tough to make a living on the streets and in the parks

The farmers and the fishermen are harvesting regrets

The brokers and the cardsharks are hedging on their bets

The priests and politicians are preaching to the masses

They know that what’s above  will always move the underclasses

The columnists and critics indulge in their negation

If only we would listen this would be a better nation

The lovers and their loved ones are living out their dreams

In hopes their expectations won’t get lost in bitter schemes

The mothers and musicians are singing lullabuys

That elevate the spirit And cut through all the lies

The faces in the streets could tell us stories

they’ve seen it all a hundred times before

they look down from above in frozen glory

with stone cold glares that chill you to the core

In 2005 a European magazine called ‘Parliament’ contacted the Latvian Institute and requested an article on Latvian culture for a special issue they were creating. I wrote them this:

An ancient culture that thrives on change

by Ojars Kalnins

The contemporary Latvian poet Imants Ziedonis has described culture as simply something ‘which is, lives, wants to live and flourish.’ In Latvia, this spiritual and emotional aspect of social life has developed a distinctive national identity over a period of 3,000 years. The fact that it has survived, adapted and flourished despite remarkable adversity, is a testimony to its vitality as it enters its 4^th millennium.

Latvian traditions, customs, decorative art and world view have always been closely tied to the Northern European land and nature that they have depended on for survival. The forests, rivers and meadows on the southern shores of the Baltic Sea, like the sea itself, have shaped Latvia’s history, politics and economy, and as a result, have formed the lifeblood of its living culture.

Ironically, the period when the modern Latvian language and culture began to coalesce, was also the period when it faced its greatest threat, for the 13^th century marked the beginning of a series of foreign incursions, invasions and occupations. German, Swedish and Polish warriors and traders brought European culture to Latvia, at times threatening the existence of the Latvian culture, at times strengthening it through adversity, and eventually co-existing along side it.

Centuries of foreign rule reduced Latvians to serfdom and prevented them from  recording their history and traditions in written form. Latvian culture was instead preserved and manifested in folklore that displayed the collective wisdom and beliefs of the Latvians’ ancient tribal ancestors. A uniquely Latvian cultural phenomenon, folk songs, or dainas, date back well over a thousand years. Rich with tradition, literature and symbolism, the dainas serve as an oral record of Latvian culture. Their subjects encompass the entire course of human life, from childbirth, youth, marriage and work, to old age and death. By the 19th century, more than 1.2 million texts and 30,000 melodies were identified. In the 21^st century, these songs continue live as an essential part of Latvian contemporary holiday celebrations and social life.

This powerful tradition of song played a central role in Latvia’s National Awakening in the second half of the 19^th century and led to the first Latvian Song Festival in 1873. The Song Festival, involving massed choirs of tens of thousands of participants was a central focus of national identity during Latvia’s first period of independence from 1918 until 1940. It survived as a distinctly national event and a bastion of Latvian culture despite 50 years of forced Sovietization during the Soviet occupation, and spearheaded Latvia’s ‘singing revolution’ in the late 1980’s. The political and economic forces that lead to the restoration of Latvia’s independence in 1991 were driven by powerful, centuries-old cultural forces.

Latvian traditions still play a central role in the Latvian identity today. This uniquely ‘Latvian’ culture is woven through its literature, music, theatre and the visual arts. Yet, the legacy of foreign rule has also given Latvia a second, European culture. As a distinctive Latvian identity emerged during the National Awakening in the 19^th century, so did an appreciation for the achievements of other cultures. Latvians enthusiastically embraced all the classical arts – literature, painting, theatre, symphonic music, architecture, opera, ballet and film. At the turn of the century the Latvian poet Rainis, and painter Janis Rozentals and Vilhelms Purvitis had established international reputations. In the 1920’s and 1930’s Latvia’s ‘Riga group’ of  painters become known internationally.

During Soviet rule, Latvia’s passion for the arts routinely broke through the rigid ideological constrictions that Moscow tried to impose on its Communist empire. Latvia’s filmmakers established Riga as the ‘Hollywood’ of the Soviet Union, while it’s provocative fashion designers made it the avante garde design centre of the otherwise staid and conservative Soviet Union. The late Juris Podnieks gained world recognition in the 1980’s for his incisive and uncompromising documentary films that exposed the dark and deteriorating underbelly of the collapsing Soviet empire.

With independence, came a revival of Latvia’s traditional and cosmopolitan cultures. Latvia’s National Opera – the ‘White House’ of Riga  – was one of the first buildings to be renovated after the restoration of independence in 1991 and is the centrepiece of a flourishing cultural life. While economists will list wood and wood products as Latvia’s top export, many believe it’s actually opera singers. Latvia’s home-grown, world class opera singers such as Inese Galante, Sonora Vaice, Egils Silins and Elina Garance, today perform in opera houses throughout Europe.

Peteris Vasks is considered one of the finest contemporary composers in the world, while Riga-born violinist Gidons Kremers and his Kremerata Baltica chamber orchestra won a Grammy in 2002. Violinist Baiba Skride took First Prize in the Queen Elizabeth International Music Competition in Brussels in 2001 and has been hailed as one of the most outstanding young violinists in all of Europe. The creative energy of Latvia’s  innovative post-modern folklore band, Ilgi, has established them as stars in the growing genre of world music. Not to be left behind by classical and traditional artists, Latvia’s youthful pop-rock band Brainstorm has gained legions of fans across Europe through its successes at Eurovision and on MTV.

The rapid renovation of Riga’s historic centre has revealed hundreds of examples of distinctive Jugendstil architecture, leading some to assert that Riga may be the Jugendstil capital of Europe. Interestingly enough, over 60% of the buildings displaying this very European Art Nouveau style of the turn-of-the-century, were designed by Latvian architects.

A hundred years ago Riga was known as the ‘Paris of the North’. As it enters the 21^st century, Riga has blossomed as a creative centre for the arts once again. Local and visiting art exhibits and the opera, theatre and ballet, compete with night clubs and discos that rock with jazz, blues and the latest electronic fusions of hip hop and dance music.  After ten years of independence, Riga is now called ‘The Second City that Never Sleeps’, and ‘The Hottest City in the North’.

The vibrancy of cultural life in Latvia is a product of talented artists, performers and writers that honed and developed their skills in cities and regions throughout Latvia. Many continue to live and work in their home towns or rural settings, blending the influences of traditional roots with the modern, cosmopolitan influences of the nation’s capital. This spiritual desire to live and flourish as Latvians, as Europeans, and as the shapers of the 21^st century, is a phenomenon that continues to shape Latvia’s multi-faceted, dynamic culture.

In an academically earnest review of an album of Latvian beer songs (‘Alus Dziesmas’ 2001) that appeared in www.latviansonline.com , the reviewer was offended by the fact that the musicians seemed to have imbibed in the beverage that they were singing about. In effect, she thought they were good musicians, but drunk and ethnically undignified.  I was dutifully motivated to crack open a bottle of Piebalgs and jot off a response:

Buy the lady a beer

In her LOL review of UPE’s ‘Alu Dziesmas’, it is apparent that Amanda Jatniece was not informed of a critical fact, the knowledge of which is an obligatory prerequisite for a full-blown, multi-dimensional, cellular-level appreciation of this album. You have to have a beer. (Preferably more than one.) The only way you can access and achieve that same refined spiritual cosmic state that gave birth to these songs (and compelled enthusiastic people to sing them), is to duplicate the conditions that created them. Have a Piebalgas tumšais and it will start to makes sense. Down a Bauskas, follow that with an Užavas, and round it out with a Cesis or Tervetes, and suddenly every grunt, groan and guffaw takes on deep bio-sociological significance.

‘Alus dziesmas’ is a collection of traditional Latvian beer songs. Beers songs tend to be about beer. The only time people write or sing songs about beer, is while they are drinking it. While drinking beer, the people singing (or extemporaneously composing) enter into a biological and psychological state that has been made possible by the manner in which the beer interacts with their minds and bodies. You could say, they get happy. Happy, in a way that only beer can produce. Some, like the young gentleman with his head on the table on the cover of the ‘Alus Dziesmas’, are simply so enthralled by the dulcet tones of the accordion, that they enter a hypnotic state of pure musical ecstacy. I have seen people do this at Bach concerts.

While the lusty state of mind induced by the interaction of beer and song (they tend to supplement and enhance one another) has been known to impair the judgement of Latvian males, I have known many cases where it actually improves their singing. And the more beer you drink, the better they sound. This is a scientifically established fact.

Thus, as a service to all easily unsettled connoisseurs of ultra-traditional music, I offer the following record warning label: ‘Alus Dziesmas’ is a collection of songs about beer, written by people who drank it centuries ago, and sung by people who still drink it today. It is about as authentic as you can get. If you want to capture fishermen’s songs in their essence, you should record them on the deck of a steamer in the teeth of a gale on the high seas. If you want to capture the essence of a beer song, you have to record someone who is drinking it. It really sounds much better that way, believe me.

If you’ve read the New York Times, Washington Post, TIME magazine, Rolling Stone or Atlantic magazine during the last 20 years, you’ve already seen one of Māris Bišofs’ drawings. Probably more than one. Since the early 1980’s, the editors of America’s most prestigious East Coast newspapers and magazines used Bišofs regularly to illustrate their cover stories and feature articles on the hottest topics of the day.

Chances are you never noticed his name, but you probably smiled when you saw the drawings. Bišofs’ art has always had that effect on people. His deceptively simple images have a way of lingering in your consciousness long after you’ve seen them. As an unexpected counterpoint to serious, in-depth articles on the complexities of international relations, the economy or controversial social issues, Bišofs wry and laconic drawings have a knack for revealing both the ridiculous and sublime in any human undertaking.

After spending the last 40 years of his life in New York, Paris, Tel Aviv and Moscow, Bišofs recently returned to his native Latvia to resume a life that had been interrupted by a half century of war, occupation and post Cold War restoration. His recently published book of drawings, called ‘My Latvia’, marks a turning point in his career and in the way Latvians look at themselves.

Bišofs was born in the northern Latvian town of Rujiena in 1939. By the 1960’s he was drawing cartoons for a Latvian satire magazine while studying interior design at the Latvian Art Academy. In 1967 his restless artistic and intellectual curiosity about the world at large compelled him to leave Riga for what was then the only Soviet city that offered some international exposure, Moscow.

Moscow not only broadened his horizons, it also introduced him to his wife. When she, as a Russian Jew, received permission to emigrate to Tel Aviv in 1972, Bišofs joined her. In Tel Aviv, Bišofs’ artistic career flourished. He drew editorial cartoons for various Israeli newspapers, had numerous art exhibits, published three books and began to emerge as an artist of some international note. In 1980 he received an Israeli government grant to pursue his work in Paris, where he continued to develop his aesthetic eye and refine his unique style.

Two years later he moved to New York where he was quickly adopted by Manhattan’s art and literary elite as a special favourite. For the next 25 years, Bišofs was regularly kept busy by New York’s prolific publishing community, providing a steady stream of whimsical pictures for their elegant prose. He also produced four more mischievously clever books of drawings about the New York social and literary scene.

When Latvia restored its independence in 1991, Bišofs, like so many émigrés, returned to his homeland for regular visits. It didn’t take long for him to realize that his life would be changing once again. He had initially left Latvia in 1967 to see if there weren’t more interesting things going on in the outside world. But by 2003, the outside world had become all too familiar, and to Bišofs, Latvia was suddenly the most interesting place to be.

Although he had decided to give up his heavy workload at the New York news and literary magazines, he wasn’t quite ready to retire. So for Bišofs, returning to Latvia in 2003 was simply a change of venue. He got an apartment in Riga and began settle into a new life. Most of all he walked around, talked to people, read newspapers, watched TV and tried to understand the issues of the moment. And as he had done in New York, Tel Aviv and Paris, he began to draw what he saw.

It occurred to Bišofs that in his long and successful career as an artist, he had touched upon a wide variety of topics, from the New York art scene and Virginia Wolf, to interplanetary tourists in Manhattan. but he had never applied his satirist’s eye to his own homeland.

Newly inducted in the EU and NATO, Latvia was a treasure trove of fresh ideas and when the sketches began to flow, he looked for an outlet. He found it in the Latvian Institute, a state agency that promotes and produces information about Latvia.  Bišofs offered to create a new book of drawings about Latvia, and the Latvian Institute eagerly agreed to publish it.

Maris Bišofs book, ‘My Latvia’, is not what you’d expect from a state agency, but everything you would expect from an unbridled creative spirit like Bišofs. His humorous take on daily life, politics and culture in today’s Latvia combines the patriotic sentiments of an insider with the bemused eye of an outsider. His drawings poke and prod with equal amounts of praise and ridicule. They celebrate contradictions, elevate traditions, smirk at the silly and embrace the elegant. They are both whimsical and poignant, and always just slightly odd.

Latvians are not known for being keen on laughing at themselves, but Bišofs’ “My Latvia” appears to have brought a smile to the face of every Latvian who has seen it.  Latvia’s President and Foreign Minister were the first government officials to request copies that they could distribute as gifts, and other government agencies are following suit.  Having finally achieved the enormous, and rigorously serious tasks of joining NATO and the EU, Latvians are learning to relax a little and smile at all the trials and tribulations that got them there. Bišofs’ book ‘My Latvia’ delightfully captures it all.

Bišofs restless energy hasn’t abated in Latvia, even though he is no longer doing assignments for US publications like Rolling Stone and Harpers. In addition to the 100 drawings he did in 8 months for ‘My Latvia’, he has become a regular contributor to the editorial page of the Latvian daily newspaper, DIENA.  From February 9 until March 13, the Latvian State Art Museum will feature a retrospective of his work. The exhibit, entitled ‘Bišofs view’, will include over 100 drawings from all periods in his prolific career.

Given that he began his artistic career as a cartoonist for the Latvian satire magazine Dadzis 40 some years ago, it appears that he has come full circle. Not unlike some of the wistfully puzzled characters in his own drawings.

Bišofs ends his book with an unfinished drawing, commenting that no book about Latvia could ever be complete. He is already talking to the Latvian Institute about a new book. That’s good news for Bišofs fans and for Latvia.

(Published in the AirBaltic in-flight magazine, BALTIC OUTLOOK)

Auld Clootie at OSCO DRUG, INC.

I circulated this memo somewhere around 1976  in the offices of Osco Drug, Inc.

OSCO DRUG, INC,

Executive Offices 1818 Swift Drive, Oak Brook, Illinois 6052 Area Code 312

After 9 months of intensive investigation the Osco security force has finally pinpointed the evil demon who has been behind all the weird happenings in the Advertising Department for the last year and a half. Auld Clootie, also known as Joly Old Saint Luke and Loki the Rumor Monger, was grilled for 12 consecutive hours in the basement interview room at the Corporate Headquarters at O’Hare Plaze.

Clootie, as he prefers to be called this month, confessed to an incredible number of invidious crimes including, starting terrible rumors about staff members, instigating petty hatreds and childish tiffs between otherwise innocent, angelic personnal, altering layouts and copy so that it includes obvious stupid errors and omissions, and a varied and rich assortment of other disruptive and debilitating actions, all geared toward destroying the wonderful harmony that exists between Advertising Department personnel.

Clootie smiled as he took the entire blame for all the mysterious incidents of the last year. Claiming to have a friend ‘upstairs’(interviewers failed to determine just how far upstairs this meant) Clootie showed little concern for the trouble he had wrought. „I’ve got a good crew to work with. They’re very obliging and some of them learn real quick. I hardly have to prod them on, just a little nudge and they do all the rest themselves.”

A Committee was formed to choose members for the Corrective Council which would vote on what measures if any should be taken when and if the Security Group decides who should be in charge. In an amusing show of good humor, Clootie volunteered to chair the committee. Members agreed to take it under consideration.

###

On the edge of the forest, at the foot of the hill

where the river runs down to the sea

A horse and its rider have taken their post

and wait for whatever will be

They wait for whatever will be

Above on the mountain the view is commanding

it is clear what must be down below

Below in the valley the people look up

for the answers they feel they must know

The horse and the rider have been up and down

and prepare for whatever will be

They prepare for whatever will be

In the brightness of day as the night is approaching

you ready yourself for the game

In the dark of the night when the dawn is awaiting

the choices are always the same

The horse and its rider know every turn

they have been from the mountain to the sea

They live on the edge of what is and what was

and welcome whatever will be

They welcome whatever will be.

We live our lives in the now and then,

We choose the rules for the how and when.

Things are the same as they’ve always been

We do it once and begin again.

I write some words and watch them fly

I wonder where, I wonder why

I kick the earth, I swat the sky

And gaze at dolphins swimming by

Doesn’t matter what I do

I never learn what’s really true

I look things up and take things down

And move the questions all around.

But nothing ever really fits

I sometimes want to call it quits

But then it all starts up again

I live my life in the now and then

I choose the rules for how and when

Its stays the way it’s always been

I do it once

and start again

you can take it all away

you can take away my day

you can trample on my pride

you can make me run and hide

you can penetrate my heart

you can break it all apart

you can stop the summer breeze

you can bring me to my knees

but you can’t make me cry forever

there’s a diamond in each piece of coal

you can’t make me cry forever

you can’t take the light from my soul

you can smash it on the door

you can press it on the floor

you can terrorise and tease me

you can try to crush and squeeze me

you can silence all my voices

you can take away my choices

you can make me sing your tune

you can steal the sun and moon

but you can’t make me cry forever

there’s a diamond in each piece of coal

you can’t make me cry forever

you can’t take the light from my soul

This city once had walls and cannons that fired balls

and every city tower would signal by the hour

if children had to fear that enemies were near

this city once had walls           but they are gone

yet when I walk the streets I feel alone

the walls that once kept people

far apart

are standing still in every aching heart

This city once had gates at which you had to wait

the soldiers with their shields would never ever yield

to stragglers and the poor who showed up at the door

this city once had walls           but they are gone

yet when I walk the streets I feel alone

the walls that once kept people

far apart

are standing still in every aching heart

This city once was cold, all memories were sold

when voices in the hall announced a chilling pall

with boots that shook the floor and knocks upon the door

This city once was locked, all passages were blocked

the shadows cast a doubt on those who wanted out

and only next of kin had hopes of getting in

Then came another age when we built barricades

they came from far and wide to fill the rising tide

the hearts that fueled the fires were burning with desire

The squares are clear again a new life has begun

the doors are open wide and all can come inside

to satisfy themselves from overcrowded shelves

But something isn’t right, you feel it in the night

you sense it in the day, when faces look away

there’s too much to remind that some were left behind

and some can’t pay the cost of all that they have lost

this city once had walls            but they are gone

yet when I walk the streets I feel alone

the walls that once kept people

far apart

are standing still in every aching heart

# 17   The land that sings (and dances)

Latvia’s Song and Dance Celebration is upon us, and everyone in Latvia who isn’t singing and dancing on a stage somewhere, is singing along and tapping their feet in the audience.  Over 35,000 people will be performing in a wide variety of events, and hundreds of thousands will be watching.

It’s obvious that Latvians like to sing and dance and will do so on any occasion. Even our national anthem refers to a place where “daughters bloom, sons sing,”  and they all get together to “dance in happiness”.

Our former president Vaira Vīķe-Freiberga, who has studied Latvia’s ancient dainas, has even released an album where she sings her favourite Latvian folk songs. President Valdis Zatlers and Prime Minister Ivars Godmanis both are former drummers, and two members of Latvia’s parliament, Raimonds Pauls and Imants Kalnins are highly regarded composers and songwriters.

A few years ago the Latvian Tourism Development Agency adopted the slogan ‘The Land That Sings’ for their tourism promotional campaigns. The key word here is ‘land’. You see, in Latvia it isn’t just people who sing and dance. Take a walk in one of our forests and you’ll hear birds chirping, frogs croaking, and elk bellowing, while trees and grasses sway along with the winds that come in from the Baltic Sea.

In Latvia we don’t just hug trees, we sing and dance along with them.

#18   A place where fish learned to walk.

Earlier this year I wrote a blog which asked whether Latvia was old. I discovered that at 90, the Republic of Latvia was older than about 150 other countries in the world. Of course, before there was a Latvian Republic, there was a land inhabited by Latvians, as well as their ancestral tribes known as the Latgallians, Couronians, Semigallians and Selonians. Although the Germans and Vikings started arriving well over 800 years ago, these early Latvians go back even further. Their ancestors, known as the proto-Balts started arriving here about 4,000 years ago. As far as scientists can tell, the first human inhabitants of Latvia – whoever they were – showed up 11,000 years ago, about a thousand years after the end of the last glacial period.

But who was here 365 million years ago? Well, it turns out that the Ventastega made Latvia his home. Who is the Ventastega? A four-legged creature that looked a little like an alligator. Some Swedish scientists recently found the fossilized skull of one on the banks of the river Venta in Western Latvia. What makes it so special? The scientists claim it’s the most primitive four-legged creature in the Earth’s history. Basically it was a fish with legs, perhaps one of the first to crawl up out of the sea and start walking on land.

Could it be that Latvia was a key link in the evolutionary chain? The place where fish grew legs and started to walk? Makes sense to me. You have to learn how to walk before you can dance, and Latvia is as good a place as any to take those first happy steps.

#19   Coming full circle

Geography and politics may change our national identity, but it doesn’t change the essence of who we are.

My parents, Eižens and Matilde Kalninš were Latvians from Latvia. They were also citizens of Latvia. They both left Latvia in 1945 after the war and met in a refugee camp where they married. I was born in 1949, also in a Latvian refugee camp in Munich, which at that time, was West Germany. My birth certificate is written in German, but identifies me as a Latvian. Although I’m not a legal expert, I assume I was born a Latvian citizen, even though Latvia at that time was under Soviet occupation and there was probably no record of my existence there.

When my parents and I moved to the United States in 1951, I received a green card and became a ‘registered alien’. I was a Latvian émigré living in the U.S. When I turned 18, I became a naturalized U.S. citizen. As a result I became what was known as a Latvian-American. My nationality was Latvian, but my citizenship was U.S., and thus I joined the millions of other hyphenated Americans (German-Americans, Polish-Americans, African-Americans). The city of Chicago, where I grew up, was full of ‘hyphenated’ Americans.

In 1985 I moved to Washington D.C. to work for the American Latvian Association, which lifted my ‘Latvian-American’ identity onto a political plane. I wrote, spoke and lobbied the U.S. Government and Congress on behalf of the Latvian-American community.

In 1991 I joined the Latvian Legation in Washington, D.C. as a public affairs liaison. I still had U.S. citizenship but now represented the Republic of Latvia, which was embodied in the Legation. In December of 1991, 3 months after Latvia restored its independence, I gave up my U.S. citizenship and became a fully accredited Latvian diplomat. I was no longer a Latvian-American, and not really an émigré. I was a Latvian citizen working in the U.S. with a diplomatic visa. I served as Latvia’s ambassador to the U.S. from 1993 until 2000.

In December 1999 I moved to Latvia permanently, to begin work as the Director of the Latvian Institute. I was simply a Latvian again. A Latvian who was born in Germany, once lived in the U.S. but was now back in the land my parents were forced to leave. They died in the U.S. and thus never had a chance to come back to an independent Latvia. It means a lot to me that I could do it in their place.

#20   The Next 90

Traditionally when we celebrate a nation’s birthday we look back at all the people who helped create it, protect it and preserve it. For Latvia, that’s a lot of people in the last 90 years.

This anniversary year we will be looking back as we always do, but we’ll be looking ahead as well. We know what the last 90 years were like. What do the next 90 hold in store? Even more important – who will be the people shaping it in the coming years?

One thing I know for sure, they are all younger than I am. The kids who are in high school today could be running companies and managing ministries 10 years from now when Latvia celebrates its 100^th anniversary. Time moves on and the kids of today are tomorrow’s leaders.

That’s why President Zatlers and the State Youth Initiative Centre have joined the Latvian Institute in search of “The Next 90.”  We are asking people around Latvia to nominate the brightest, most outstanding young people they know – kids and young adults from 1^st to 12^th grades, who are already demonstrating leadership qualities in their daily lives. They don’t have to be top students or star athletes, just the kind of kids that naturally give out positive energy. We all know many kids like that.

We expect to get hundreds of nominations and from them will choose a symbolic 90. On November 17^th of this year they will take the stage of the National Theatre in Rīga and re-enact the famous Vilis Ridznieks November 18, 1918 photograph of the founding of our republic. These 90 kids will re-proclaim their commitment to Latvia’s future and the democratic values it holds dear. They will also start looking at the next ten years of their lives in a very different way.

‘The Next 90’ are just the tip of the iceberg. Latvia is full of great young people, and as I celebrate Latvia’s 90^th this year, I’ll be thinking about them.

This rather lengthy piece on Riga was written in 2001 for a magazine called Hanseatic Business. It coincided with Riga’s 800th anniversary.

RIGA      –       An unfinished symphony on the Baltic Sea

To understand what is happening in Riga today, you simply need to remember the city legend. Since its founding 800 years ago, the people of Riga are routinely visited by a demon that asks whether the city has been completed yet. If the Rigans say that the city is ready, the demon will sink it to the bottom of the Daugava River. Rigans quickly got the hint. The Germans who founded Riga, and the Poles, Swedes, Russians and Latvians that later ruled it, always made sure that the building of Riga never came to a halt.

Since its founding in 1201, Riga has been a living symphony of diverse cultures, orchestrated by changing economic and political forces, written by people who know that they can never let the music stop.

The Riga of  2001 retains that same exuberant, unrelenting character. It is Latvia’s largest city and national capital, but it is also a great deal more. It is a city that was founded with a purpose, and despite changing identities through history, it continues to serve that same purpose in a new Europe and a globalized world.  It is the strategic heart and centre of the Baltic Sea region – Europe’s northern gateway into the Eurasian continent. More than a thousand years ago the Vikings passed through it on their way down the River Daugava to reach Ancient Russia, Byzantium and the Black Sea. Today multinational shippers, traders and financiers are using Riga once again as their preferred location in the Baltic Sea region for growing east-west, north-south business.

Riga’s role as a magnet for international business, politics and culture has never been more important than it is today as Latvia edges ever closer to the European Union and NATO, and as Riga reasserts itself once again as the cultural Pearl of the Baltic Sea. Ten years of Latvian independence has allowed Riga to take full advantage of a democratic system and an open free market economy to attract investment from around the world. This influx of foreign investment is not only renewing the old, (800-year old Riga is on UNESCO’s World Cultural Heritage List) but also creating a great deal new, steadily erasing the scars and neglect of 50 years of austere Soviet rule.

The renewal process has accelerated in each year since 1991, bringing with it new business development, major infrastructure improvements and a growing sense of excitement – you can feel it in the streets that Riga is being reborn once again. U.S. President Bill Clinton made an historic visit here in 1994, and an endless stream of world leaders, international investors and artists have been visiting ever since. In May 2000 the historic Old Riga district completed a well deserved facelift, just in time for the EBRD Annual Meeting and its 2,500 European delegates, most of whom had never seen Riga before. Riga has been the talk of Europe ever since.

While some say that Latvia has been returning to Europe ever since it regained its independence following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, those who come to Riga quickly realise that Latvia never really left. Although Stalin’s Red Army occupied the city in 1940, and the ensuing Cold War may have left it on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain, Riga never lost its European essence or charm. Fifty years of Soviet brand  communism barely made a dent on Latvia’s 800 year old Western European culture. In Riga today, Europe is discovering one of its long lost jewels.

Riga is a European city from its inception. You could say that Riga first joined Europe 800 years ago, when German missionaries and armed crusaders swept into the territory of modern-day Latvia. Although ancient Latvian and Liv tribes had settled this region for centuries, Europe arrived in the person of German Bishop Albert, who, in the name of the Pope, founded Riga in1201 and began building its first churches, fortresses and walls. Native Latvians lived in and around Riga, but from its creation it was the most international of Baltic Sea cities.

It has been a city constantly in motion ever since. As a Medieval Hanseatic city from the 13^th until the 16^th centuries, it bustled with trade and commerce, and attracted wealth and cultural riches from throughout the region. Even Greek, Arab and other traders from the far Mediterranean were well known in Riga’s Hanseatic ports and markets. Under Swedish rule in the 17^th century it was the largest city in the Swedish Kingdom, eclipsing Stockholm across the Baltic Sea. Russia’s Peter the Great coveted Riga as his ‘Window to the West’ and seized it from the Swedes in 1710, setting the stage for a new development boom that would make it one of the richest and most powerful cities of the ‘westernising’ Czarist Russian Empire.

This year Riga celebrates its 800th anniversary, but exactly one century ago the ‘never ready’ Riga experienced a cultural and commercial explosion, that converted it from a walled garrison town and with a bustling river port into an elegant, modern European city. The population reached 400,000, money poured in, and the city blossomed with development, as hundreds of ornate Art nouveau (Jugendstil) apartment and office buildings sprouted up around the carefully planned parks and increasingly elegant boulevards of the city. Anchored by its grand Opera House, theatres, concert halls and museums, Riga became a playground for turn-of-the-century artists and aristocrats, who mingled freely with the politicians and businessmen that spurred the growth of the city. It was city with a lord mayor that was properly British, an administration that was firmly Czarist Russian and a business and cultural community that was prosperously German. Riga’s wealth, high fashion style and provocative elegance prompted many visitors to call it the Paris of the North.

As Riga blossomed, so did the national consciousness of the Latvian people. During this Golden Age of Riga in the second half of the 19^th century, the native Latvian population –  subjugated so long by foreign powers –  began to experience a national awakening. In the countryside and cities, Latvians began to develop an awareness of a national identity, rooted in the language, traditions, values and beliefs of their ancestral Baltic tribes. While Latvians were not fated to run their country for seven centuries, it was the local Latvian population that actually made it run. Even as Riga created endless wealth for neighbouring powers, it was Latvians who designed and built the magnificent buildings, administered the local government and private projects, and worked in the offices, shops and factories. The emergence of a Latvian national identity, fed by pride and patriotism, and led by literature and the arts, eventually created the political power necessary to establish Latvia’s full independence on November 18, 1918. Riga became a very Latvian (yet still international) city from 1918 until 1940 and became Sovietised from1940 until 1991. Today, ever-changing Riga has a fresh personna – it is Latvia’s proud contribution to the glittering capitals of a New Europe.

If Riga is a constantly shifting unfinished symphony, then in 2001, Riga celebrates what appears to be the overture to another economic, political and cultural Rennaissance, as it hosts a spectacular series of events to commemorate its 800th anniversary. From June 7 – 10 Riga will serve as the hub of the 21^st International Hanseatic Days, hosting thousands of fellow ‘Hansans’  from over a hundred cities in Europe.  From July 25 – 29, Riga displays its deeply Latvian character at the 23rd Latvian Song and Dance Festival. For four days 30,000 Latvians representing choirs and folk dance ensembles throughout the country will pour into the city to fill its historic cobblestoned streets with traditional and contemporary song and dance.

Throughout the year hundreds of concerts, exhibits, conferences and other special events will be held to celebrate Riga’s 800^th anniversary, but the festivities are expected to reach a spectacular climax at Riga’s big birthday bash  August 17 – 19. Thousands of visitors from around the world are expected in town to help Riga and the people of Latvia celebrate the 800^th birthday of this elegantly rambunctious city.

Riga’s nearly 800,000 inhabitants speak Latvian, Russian and English freely, although German and the Scandinavians languages are becoming increasingly familiar in offices, factories and shops. Riga’s educated labour force serves the ports, the financial industry, state and local government and private enterprise. Latvia’s vigorous 10-year privatisation policy for homes and buildings, has put the majority of Riga’s most lucrative properties into private hands, spurring growth and development, especially in Riga’s bustling downtown area.

Riga is Latvia’s state capital, but it is also rediscovering its role as a cultural centre for the entire Baltic Sea region. Riga has 4 television stations and 12 radio stations, broadcasting in Latvian, English and Russian, and serves as the base of operations for hundreds of independent newspapers and periodicals (including 7 women’s magazines). Latvia is a country of avid readers and the large number of book publishers and book stores in Riga attests to this fact. (The Norwegian Narvessen chain is everywhere in the city, and doing a brisk business. )

While the stately ‘White House’ on Riga Canal – the Riga Opera – has reclaimed its place as the jewel in Riga’s cultural crown, the city’s seven professional theatres, excellent concert halls, countless music clubs and all-night discos add depth and colour to Riga’s always lively night life. In the summer, the colourful squares of Old Riga are teeming with crowds in cafes and beer gardens, yet even in the cold winter months, Riga’s younger generation keeps the clubs and discos jumping all night long. This is one city on the Baltic Sea that never sleeps.

Businessmen, diplomats and tourists from the world over are discovering that Riga not only has some of the finest restaurants in Northern Europe, but a surprisingly large and fascinating variety as well. Riga’s restaurants run from elegant to exuberant, and offer French, Italian, Japanese, Chinese, Russian, Indian, and of course, Latvian, cuisine. And Riga has no shortage of Irish pubs and Internet cafes.

Riga also has its share of stars in the sports and entertainment world. In Latvia, hockey is the national passion, and Latvia’s men on ice are the toast of the town each time they play at home or away. Latvia’s National Hockey Team has qualified for the Olympics and is already building hopes for a medal in Salt Lake City in 2002. Yet Rigans follow the results in the professional National Hockey League as well, since NHL all-stars such as Sandis Ozolins and Arturs Irbe are leading a pack of promising young stars in the league. Basketball and soccer are equally popular, and golf is becoming the hottest new activity in the city. One 9-hole course is already operating, an 18-hole course will soon be completed and a world class golf course and country club is in the planning stages. All are just minutes from the city centre and expect to be very busy.

Richard Wagner once lived and worked in Riga (a street, concert hall and cafe are named after him) but today internationally renowned Latvian composer Peteris Vasks is writing Riga’s most powerful and expressive symphonies. The Latvian Academy of Music and the Riga Opera have produced world class soloists such as Inese Galante, Sonora Vaice, Eline Garance, Inga Kalna, Egils Silins and Ingus Petersons, all of whom are now lighting up the stages of European cities. Violinist Gidon Kramer and the Kramerata Baltica are international hits and former Rigan Mariss Jansons has established himself as one of the world’s premier orchestra conductors as the leader of the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra and the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra.  The New York Times recently reported that Jansons is a leading candidate to take over the helm of the New York Metropolitan Opera.

But music in Riga takes many shapes and forms, and is being heard with increasing frequency around the world. The energetic post-traditional folklore group ILGI are widely known and respected stars of the “world music” scene and Latvia’s hottest rock group, ‘Brainstorm’ (they grew up in nearby Jelgava but now live in Riga)  became a smash across Europe in 2000 when their hit single ‘My Star’ took 3^rd place at the Eurovision Song Contest. In a recent Internet poll, ‘Brainstorm’s charismatic lead singer Renars Kaupers edged out Latvia’s President Vaira Vike Freiberga as the person who has done the most to promote Latvia’s reintegration into Europe. Both deserved the honour and both continue to be two of Riga’s most beloved and popular residents.

Post-Cold War Riga has emerged as one of the fastest growing financial, industrial and transit centres in the Baltic Sea region. Passenger turnover at the Riga International Airport (which will complete a major new expansion phase in 2001) has doubled since 1993, and cargo turnover in Riga’s commercial harbour has tripled. Riga has over 22 banks banks, including branches of the German Vereinsbank, French Societe General and  Swedish Hansabank, and a representative office of the German Dresdner bank. International electronic bank transfers are routine and easy, and the ubiquitous ATM machine has become an integral part of Riga’s street scene.

Although Latvia experienced a banking crisis in 1995, thanks to the firm hand of  the Bank of Latvia, and assistance from the World Bank and other international financial structures, Latvia’s banking system today is stable and has once again earned the trust of Latvia’s residents and the international banking community. In 1999 Standard and Poor assigned Riga a “BBB Stable A3” longer term issuer credit rating, with a positive outlook to the municipality of Riga. The credit rating is largely supported by Riga’ strong financial performance, comparatively low debt burden and healthy growth prospects.

The municipality of Riga operates in a newly created economic system that is still characterised by the ongoing redistribution of service responsibilities, equalisation  payments and tax income between the Central and local authorities. Although local fiscal power is largely restricted in Latvia, giving Riga limited expenditure and revenue flexibility, the city has shown a strong commitment to retaining viable finances. Operating surpluses (revenues minus expenses) averaging 6 percent of the operating revenues have been reported each year since the city was vested with autonomous budget responsibilities in 1993.

The city has invested heavily in its engineering infrastructure (the Riga Water Project, Riga Public Transportation Project and Riga Waste Disposal and Processing Project), yet as can be expected in a city that vows never to be completed, a great deal still needs to be done.

About 80 per cent of all Latvia’s enterprises with foreign capital and approximately 50 per cent of the country’s foreign investment stock are located in Riga. Riga has been one of the leading cities in the Baltic region for attracting foreign investment, largely because of its overall economic stabilisation, successful privatisation process and good infrastructure.

The three largest segments of foreign direct investment in Riga during the 90’s have been transport, storage and communication (35%), financial intermediation (25%), and wholesale and retail trade (15%). According to a recent EU PHARE report, the ten sectors of Riga’s economy most attractive to foreign investors are:

–        manufacture of food products and beverage/food processing

–        information technologies

–        manufacture of electrical machinery

–        manufacture of fabricated metal products and machinery

–        wood processing and paper production

–        manufacture of chemicals and chemical prpoducts;pharmaceuticals

–        manufacture of textiles

–        tourism and hotels

–        transport and transit

–        finances

In 2001 Latvia has embraced the Information Age and Riga has become the centre of an ambitious plan to make Latvia the recognised regional leader in the information technology and telecommunications sector (IT & T). 150,00 Rigans study in over 200 city schools and 21 higher educational establishments in the city. Riga’s universities and technical schools are preparing over 5,000 IT&T students presently and the number of graduating IT students is expected to triple over the next 3 years. The Riga International College of Business Administrationis is now offering professional training for future E-commerce managers. The Stockholm School of Economics in Riga offers business administration courses in English, taught by Western-educated professors.

Software companies such as Lotus, Oracle, Novell and Microsoft also offer IT training programs and IBM is contributing to computer courses at the University of Latvia. In the beginning of 2001 the Latvian government announced its intention to convert to a totally e-government system, streamlining its bureaucracy and facilitating greater information and transparency in all public affairs.

This is possible in part because of the vigorous free competition in the data-communications sector. Several companies operate in this area and provide both fixed-line and wireless communications solutions. Service is provided by the large privatised local phone company, Lattelekom, and by international providers such as Telia and Equant. Approximately 35 Internet Service Providers (ISP’s) operate in Latvia, and the vast majority operate from Riga. The are undergoing rapid consolidation. The most popular types of communication are 56K and ISDN dial-up connections, although radio links are becoming popular in the business community.

Latvia has one of the highest mobile telephone penetrations rates (20%) in Eastern Europe; in Riga the rate is 35% and growing. The competition between the two existing GSM connection providers has resulted in increasingly lower prices and a license for a third lucrative GSM network operator was recently granted.

In a city like Riga, where constant growth, change and development is an 800-year tradition, the incentives for foreign investment are substantial. While 50 years of Soviet rule did add a few odd (some would say ugly) buildings to the city, communism’s greatest impact on Riga came from sheer municipal neglect of all that was already there. Grand turn-of-the-century buildings, elegant residential neighbourhoods and a highly attractive commercial district were either clumsily converted to utilitarian (often military) purposes, or simply left to gather dust. Today, with an infusion of local and foreign capital, they are all coming back to life again.

The state and municipal governments offer competitive incentive packages and projects proposals, with no restrictions on foreign investment. There is a free land market to develop and foreign companies are encouraged to participate in the privatisation process. Many major development projects have been successfully completed and the state and municipal bodies are learning how to better support the goals and interests of the private sector.

The city that can’t stop building itself has a number of ambitious projects for the early part of the 21^st century that are sure to keep the legendary demon away.  The Latvian government is still formulating a funding package for the spectacular National Library project intended for the left bank of the River Daugava, which many believe will be join the Sydney Opera House as a world famous city landmark. The city hopes to build a major international convention and trade centre nearby, which would anchor Riga’s role as a gateway between east-west/north-south trade. A new transport corridor (bridge or tunnel) is planned across the Daugava and a modern  ‘Aquapark’ complex is on the drawing boards for Riga’s extremely popular Mezaparks culture and recreational park. Mezaparks already features a massive outdoor theatre that serves as the main site for the Song and Dance Festival’s 30,000 performers and spectators, and has hosted such international stars as Joe Cocker, the Pet Shop Boys, BB King and Brian Adams.

The city of Riga is indeed on the move again. During 2001, the organisers of Riga’s 800^th anniversary are calling it  ‘the city of inspiration’.  As Latvia joins the rest of Europe in building the new Europe of the 21^st Century, it is very likely that the inexhaustible energy of this city on the Baltic Sea will no doubt serve as an inspiration to many. Its unfinished symphony plays on.

Each year, since 1998, veterans of the World War II Latvian Legion and their family members, have gone to memorial services in churches and cemeteries in Latvia on March 16 to remember fellow soldiers that died in the war. During the German occupation of Latvia (1941-1944) over 100,000 Latvians were conscripted into combat units that fought against the Stalin’s Red Army on the Eastern Front.

This annual remembrance of Latvians who wore German uniforms to fight against the  Soviet Union has generated political controversy, some minor protests and modest international media attention, largely because of misunderstandings about the historical role of the Latvian Legion during World War II. In some cases, the misunderstandings arise from a simple unfamiliarity with the facts. In others, there is a calculated attempt to misrepresent the role of Legion veterans, both today, and during World War II.

Part of the problem comes from the intentionally misleading German designation of the Latvian Legion as ‘the Latvian Voluntary SS Legion’ which was formed under the German Waffen SS.  The 15^th and 19^th Latvian Legion divisions created in 1943 were neither voluntary, nor were they associated in any way with the notorious Nazi SS organization that was responsible for the Holocaust.

Most of the estimated 100,000 young Latvian men that made up the Latvian Legion were forcibly mobilized to fight on Germany’s collapsing Eastern Front. Draft evasion was punishable by death. The Soviets were advancing, the Germans were retreating and the Latvians were called up to fill the gap. While Hitler’s racist policies had forbidden the use non-German combatants in the early stages of the war, by 1943, desperation overruled discrimination. Similar non-German Waffen SS combat units were established in France, Italy, Hungary, Ukraine, Estonia and Belarus, all in a last ditch German effort to prevent defeat.

Hitler’s mass extermination of Jews in Latvia had already ended in 1943, long before the Latvian Legion combat units were formed. This was recognized by the International War Crimes Tribunal in Nuremberg, when the Latvian Legion and other conscripted non-German Waffen SS units were exempted from criminal charges associated with the Nazi Holocaust.

The Latvians that were drafted into the Latvian Legion were neither Nazis nor fascists, nor did they wish to see a Nazi German victory in the war. They were young men, who had just seen their loved ones and friends executed and deported by the thousands by the departing Soviet regime. Stalin’s brutal Russification of Latvia had been cut short by the German invasion in 1941, and there was every indication it would be resumed once the Soviet army pushed the Germans out and re-occupied Latvia.

Although forcibly mobilized, once armed and in uniform, many in the Legion believed this was their only chance to prevent a second Soviet takeover. As during World War I, when Latvian freedom fighters battled both Bolsheviks and Germans to win Latvia’s independence, the soldiers of the Legion hoped that history could repeat itself. They would defeat the Soviets and then turn their guns on the Nazis. But the Soviet force was overwhelming and Latvia was occupied once more. That second occupation ended in 1991 with the collapse of the USSR.

Not many surviving members of the Latvian Legion are left today in Latvia. But each year the veterans, former soldiers caught in a vice between two totalitarian powers, meet to remember their suffering and sacrifices. They see themselves as Latvian patriots who believed, however erroneously, that they were fighting for the restoration of a free Latvia. For this reason, March 16^th, the anniversary of a major Latvian Legion battle in Russia, was chosen by them as a day of solemn remembrance.

Moscow has always viewed the Legion veterans as enemies of the Soviet state and sent them to Soviet labour camps after the war. When the USSR collapsed, the Russian government officially preserved this hostility and has routinely condemned the remembrance of the Legion veterans on March 16^th in Latvia. This criticism, however, has often gone beyond the historical facts and wrongly accused the Latvian Legion of war crimes, fascism and complicity in the Holocaust.

Confusion over the Waffen SS designation has also contributed to a misrepresentation of the Legion veterans in the mass media.  Solemn flower-laying ceremonies at monuments and cemeteries, attended by aged veterans and their families have been wrongly described in the media as ‘marches’. Nothing could be further from the truth. They march nowhere, carry no banners, shout no slogans and have no political agenda. They simply wish to honour their fallen friends and comrades.

History is always a subject of interpretation, and three brutal military occupations in a 5-year period during World War II, have made Latvia’s history especially difficult for non-historians to understand. For Latvia, this was an especially tragic period when most who were caught between two invading armies became victims of forces far beyond their control.

In recent years, some radical political groups have tried to disrupt the quiet March 16^th events to call attention to themselves and their political causes. They have been condemned by Latvian authorities as well as the former Legion soldiers. But most who go to church or cemeteries on that day have no political agenda whatsoever. They are simply paying their respects to 100,000 fathers, sons and friends who became tragic victims of a very costly and complicated war.

March 12, 2006

#21   Mr. Ambassador

In 1937 a 26-year old Latvian diplomat named Anatols Dinbergs went to New York to serve as Vice Consul. When the Soviets occupied Latvia in 1940, Dinbergs, like most Latvian diplomats abroad, refused to return. Since the United States did not recognize the Soviet annexation of Latvia, but did recognize the Republic of Latvia that Anatols Dinbergs represented, he retained his diplomatic status in the U.S.

Dinbergs represented Latvia in the U.S. for the next 51 years. In the 1941 he joined other Latvian diplomats-in-exile at the Latvian Legation in Washington, D.C.  They all enjoyed the same diplomatic privileges and immunity that other Washington diplomats were granted, were invited to White House receptions and met with U.S. presidents. In the next 5 decades Dinbergs would meet with Presidents Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush and Clinton.

In 1970 Dinbergs became head of the Latvian Legation in Washington. Although he was similar to an ambassador, he was not called ambassador because you needed to have an embassy to have an ambassador. Since Latvia was under Soviet occupation and did not have a legal government, it could not upgrade the Legation to an Embassy. Thus, for 21 years, Dinbergs was called ‘Charges d’affaires of Latvia’ , although in practical terms, he was treated like any other ambassador in Washington.

When Latvia’s new Prime Minister Ivars Godmanis came to Washington D.C. and met with Anatols Dinbergs in July 1990, only Dinbergs represented the legal Republic of Latvia. Godmanis was head of a Soviet Latvian government still under Moscow’s de facto control. They worked together, although diplomatically they had to stand apart. On July 30^th, 1990, I was with Prime Minister Ivars Godmanis and Foreign Minister Janis Jurkans when they met with President George H.W. Bush in the Oval Office of the White House. Dinbergs could not be present, because he represented one Republic of Latvia, while Godmanis represented another.

Those two republics came together a year later, on August 21, 1991, when the USSR collapsed and Latvia fully restored its independence and sovereignty. On September 2, 1991 I joined Dr. Anatol Dinbergs and crowd of TV and press reporters in his Legation office to watch President George H.W. Bush make an historic announcement from his vacation home in Kennebunkport, Maine. Bush formally recognized Latvia’s independence and restored full diplomatic ties with the new Latvian government in Riga.

Bush’s announcement effectively turned the Latvian Legation into the Latvian Embassy, and made Anatol Dinbergs an Ambassador. After 50 years of dutifully serving his state in exile, Envoy Dinbergs became Ambassador Dinbergs, Latvia’s first Ambassador to the United States.

Although Ambassador Dinbergs died in 1993, he had lived to see Latvia restore its independence, and after a 51 year interruption, was able to serve his government in Riga again. The truth is, regardless of his diplomatic status, Anatol Dinbergs had served Latvia all his life.

#22   The state of being Baltic

Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia have been known as the Baltic States for 90 years. Each of our countries has a language, culture and history of its own, yet in the world at large we are usually grouped together. We have ourselves to blame for that, because we tend to experience major historical events around the same time. We all founded our republics in 1918, we were occupied by the Soviets in 1940, restored our independence in 1991 and joined NATO and the EU in 2004.  In headlines announcing all these events, we were always identified as the Baltic States, and only later as separate countries.

In the United States, where I once lived, many people who knew nothing about Latvia, Lithuania or Estonia, knew a little bit about the Baltic States. At least they knew that they existed, somewhere up north by the Baltic Sea. Some knew we were occupied by the USSR, others knew we had singing revolutions to bring about independence.

When I began traveling around Europe after we became independent in 1991, I discovered that most Europeans knew as little about Latvia as Americans did. Europeans, like the Americans, had heard of the Baltic States, but few knew the difference between Latvia and Lithuania.  If they had heard of Riga, the probably thought it was in Estonia.

In the last 17 years since independence, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonian have become better known. We win Eurovision contests and medals in the Olympics, produce internet telephones and high tech microphones, but I suspect that a majority of people in the world still can’t tell us apart. When the Lithuanian football team played in Prague recently, the Latvian national anthem was played to welcome them. Ooops!

Latvians want to be known as Latvians, just as our neighbors want to be known as Lithuanians and Estonians, but like it or not, the world is going to keep on calling us the Baltic States. That’s what you get for making a name for yourself on the Baltic Sea.

#23   Being Latvian

Earlier this summer I was visited by a young Latvian-American man who was about to graduate from West Point. Graduating from West Point is an exclusive and prestigious accomplishment for any American, but it is especially rare for a Latvian.

Technically he’s a Latvian-American because he was born in the US, and his parents are second generation Latvian-Americans whose parents were refugees from the Second World War.  But like many of us who grew up outside of Latvia, his parents taught him the language, traditions and customs, and instilled him with a deep respect for his Latvian identity.

He was visiting me because he was doing a summer research project for the Bank of Latvia about the impact NATO has had on Latvia’s economy and society. Not much has been done on this subject, and the findings of an American-educated, West Point cadet should prove interesting.

When he graduates from West Point he will be a lieutenant in the US Army and during his next 5 years of active duty, will probably spend time in Iraq or Afghanistan. If he goes to Afghanistan he might chance to meet some soldiers in the Latvian army who are also serving in the peacekeeping forces there.  The uniforms may differ and the chain of command may lead to different capitals, but they will all be Latvians and can probably sing the same folk songs.

His interest in and respect for Latvia goes far beyond just politeness to his parents and I got the impression that years from now he would be returning to Latvia in a new role, serving in some new capacity. I hope so, because Latvia needs young men like this.  The place you were born isn’t half as important as the place you hold in your heart. From what I could tell, his heart was in the right place.

The Latvian Institute in its second year

The Latvian Institute (LI) was created in 1998 in order provide Latvia with a public information agency that would help promote Latvia’s image abroad. Like the Swedish Institute, the U.S. Information Agency and other government-supported ‘state PR agencies’, the LI provides information on all aspects of Latvian life: history, culture, politics, business, tourism, sports, nature etc.

With no office space, a miniscule staff and a small budget, the LI was put on its feet during its first year by its first Director, Dr. Vaira Vīke-Freiberga. Dr. Vīke-Freiberga was elected State President in June of 1999, and I was appointed new director in August. Since I was Latvia’s ambassador to the U.S. at the time, finishing out my 7^th year in Washington, I didn’t assume my duties at the helm of the LI until January 2000.

During the first 7 months I have focused on 3 goals for the LI: 1) Develop a long term strategy for marketing Latvia to the world, 2) Build awareness for the LI within Latvia (to ensure financial support and enlist the involvement of Latvian society, 3) Create a data base of information (first in English, then it other languages) on all aspects of Latvian life.

When Latvia has been the center of controversy in the world press, most Latvian have complained that ‘the world doesn’t understand us’. One reason for that is that we haven’t tried to explain ourselves in a language the world can understand. One of the LI’s goals is to develop a body of information in a multitude of languages on the Internet, in print, on CD-ROM’s, films, video and every other media, that can help fill the information gap.

As a former ad man I know that the most brilliant promotional campaign will flop if it doesn’t reflect the real product behind it. The product has to be the star, and Latvia has a lot to shine about. A country’s image is created by it society, culture, geographical setting, politics and economics. Latvia has its own take on each of these features, and its is the combined effect of these elements that creates its image. Those of us who live here can feel it. Those who live elsewhere are only beginning to discover it.

While the LI itself writes and produces brochures and other publications about Latvia, most of the information about Latvia in the world today comes from other sources. One of our goals is to work closely with those sources and help them tell the full story. To a businessman or commercial artist, what others say about your business is much more important than what your promotional agent writes.

One of the LI’s chief responsibilities is organizing foreign press visits to Latvia. Our staff sets up schedules, interviews and accompanies journalists to sites around the country. Since January we have organized over 15 such visits for journalists from the U.S, Spain, Portugal, Israel, Sweden, Finland, France and Germany. We have worked with French and Finnish television, German and US (NPR) radio and the CNN World Report.

As a communications consultant, the LI works with the State president’s and the State chancelleries, the Cabinet of Ministers and various government agencies such as the Latvian Development Agency and the Tourism Development Agency. We work with museums, academic institutions, associations and the private sector. We are even on the advisory board of the Postmark Committee. If there’s a group or agency in Latvia producing information that goes abroad, the LI is working with them in some capacity.

We are particularly interested in working with the Latvian arts community, because it is their work that best reflects Latvia’s rich and varied culture. We not only promote the works of artists, writers and filmmakers, but hope to work with them to create new works about Latvia itself. Somewhere in Latvia’s 3,000 year old treasury of folk songs and dances there is a Riverdance ready to explode.

The pop group Brainstorm has become Latvia’s currently best known musical export, although classical composers such as Peters Vasks and Imants Kalnins have an established international audience. Our opera singers, ballet dancers and classical musicians are already world class. The post-traditional folk fusion group ILGI are respected veterans in the ‘world music’ market and there are others waiting in the wings.

While we don’t take any credit for Latvia’s hockey success in the World Championships, we are working with the Latvian Olympic Committee and other organizations to bring attention to Latvia’s outstanding athletes. Latvia has a growing number of  players in the NHL (including all-stars Sandis Ozolins and Arturs Irbe), although we can’t compete with Lithuania’s numbers in the NBA. But watch for young Latvian stars in the women’s basketball leagues.

The LI has many projects on the horizon, which will be realized as financing is resolved. Videos, CD-ROMS and other multi-media projects are anticipated. One of our longterm goals is to find funding to translate classic Latvian literature – particularly historical novels – into English. While it is difficult to do justice in translations to Latvia’s rich heritage of poetry, novels, fairy tales and children’s stories could find an global audience if the marketing is handled right. Visma Belsevics’s autobiographical series on the young girl ‘Bille’, reads like a Latvian version of Frank McCourt’s ‘Angela’s Ashes’. For every Scottish William Wallace, Latvia has a Namejs, and Ireland’s Cuchulain is a North Sea cousin of Latvia’s Lacplesis. And if you want to know who the Danish Vikings feared a thousand years ago, you need to read the novel ‘Kurish Vikings’.

My hope is that the Latvian Institute will find the means to bring this art, literature and history to a broader audience, along with information about that is happening in politics, economics and society at large. Thanks to SVEIKS.COM and other interactive Latvian home pages around the world, the job of getting the word out has become a lot easier.

Written for the July 2002 NATO Candidate’s Summit in Riga.

Since restoring independence in 1991 Latvia has had three parliamentary elections and nine governments, all of whom have pursued the same foreign policy objectives. Two of these objectives, membership in NATO and the EU, were logical steps in Latvia’s goal of re-integration into Europe. The third, establishing normal relations with Russia, appeared  more elusive, especially in light of Moscow’s long-standing objection to NATO enlargement.

As the November 2002 NATO Summit in Prague approaches, however, indications are that Latvia may at last be able to reconcile the heretofore conflicting elements in its foreign policy priorities. The prospects of getting an invitation to the join the Transatlantic Alliance have never been better, and Russia’s objections, while still formally in place, have receded against the backdrop of a growing co-operation between an expanding NATO and a pragmatic Russia. Informed diplomats are saying that Moscow has all but conceded that the Baltic countries of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia will become NATO members.

While at first glance, Latvia’s membership in NATO may appear to be a foreign policy defeat for Russia, it could in fact turn into a political and economic advantage. Latvia’s bustling ports and growing international trade and financial centre in Riga have always attracted Russian businessmen seeking broader contacts with the West. Peter the Great absorbed Latvia’s strategic coastal territory on the Baltic Sea in the 18^th century in order to provide the Russian empire with a ‘Window to the West’. Under Soviet rule, Latvia was one of the most Western oriented Soviet-ruled republics and a major outlet for Soviet exports to the West. The strategic Latvian port of Ventspils, now the busiest in the Baltic Sea, was developed by Moscow to serve as the end point of Russia’s northern oil pipeline, and still delivers up to 11% of Russia’s oil exports to the West.

Many believe that  Russia’s strained political relations with Latvia since 1991 were in part the result of a policy designed to keep Latvia out of NATO and within the Russian sphere of political and economic influence. Latvia’s steady move toward EU membership, close ties with the United States and vigorous campaign to join NATO may force Moscow to finally adjust its policy from confrontation to co-operation. Ironically, Latvia’s membership in NATO and the EU may in fact improve Latvia’s relationship with Russia and allow it to finally achieve all three of its foreign policy goals.

Russia has always been concerned with its security, especially along its eastern border with China and southern borders with predominantly Islamic states. As Russia develops a partnership with NATO, NATO countries become Russia’s friendliest and most predictable neighbours. With Latvia and Estonia joining Norway as Russia’s NATO border countries to the West, Russia’s ‘Window to the West’(including neutral Finland) becomes a reliable region of  political stability, economic prosperity and cross-border co-operation.

Preparation for NATO membership has benefited Latvia in ways that reach beyond military factors. Implementing NATO standardisation and interoperability requirements, as well as learning a common language, procedures and tactics, has enabled Latvia to actively participate in multinational exercises, peacekeeping and Partnership for Peace programs. Latvian forces have participated in peacekeeping operations in Bosnia and Kosovo, and are developing specialised forces that are tailored for NATO’s activities in regional conflict resolution and anti-terrorism.

As Latvia’s economy grows and trade relations expand with Europe and Russia, Latvia’s role as the ‘Baltic middleman’ between East and West gives NATO membership a new meaning. Latvia’s active part in an integrated campaign against international terrorism becomes essential since Riga’s growing international profile means Latvia shares risks as well a opportunities with other EU members. Within NATO, Latvia will be better positioned to share intelligence, exchange information and participate in co-ordinated security enhancing programs.

Latvia’s commitment to defence and security has grown with its economy. The costings of Latvia’s Force Structure are resource based and the Latvian Government has raised defence spending by over 60%, to 1.75% of the GDP in 2002. This figure will reach 2% in 2003. Military interoperability with the Alliance has been the main priority – in particular, the Baltic Air Surveillance System (BALTNET), which places Latvia at the centre of NATO air surveillance systems in the Baltic Sea region.

Latvia’s new position atop the list of candidate states makes it an ideal setting for the last NATO candidates’ summit scheduled for this July 5 and 6 in Riga. Nine prime ministers and three presidents will participate in the ‘Riga 2002’ Summit, aptly named, ‘The Bridge to Prague.’

#24   Reaching milestones

Although Latvia this year is marking the 90th year of its birth, another anniversary worth noting is 17. This marks the 17^th year since Latvia has restored its independence in 1991. That may not seem like a lot until you realise that Latvia’s first experience with national sovereignty, democracy and self rule lasted for only 22 years, from 1918 until 1940.

To patriotic Latvians, this first brief stab at independence, the ‘Ulmanis era’, takes on almost mythically legendary proportions, and understandably so. Those 22 years have been our only frame of reference for more than half a century. And when you remember that the previous 700 years were always spent under someone else’s rule, then those short 22 begin to loom large in the national consciousness. Latvia’s identity as a nation was shaped during that brief period, and despite the 50 years of destruction, occupation and deportation that followed, another Latvian identity, similar to the first, but different, is emerging.

And we are already 17 years into the job. That’s the part that startles me the most. Those of us who have been alive to witness and participate in Latvia’s second independence have been rebuilding Latvia for 17 years – nearly the same time that our parents and grandparents had to build the first republic back between the World Wars.

They proved you can do a lot in 22 years. How do we compare? Like them, we are rebuilding after a war. Latvia’s first state was built after the devastation of World War I and a war of liberation. Latvia today is rebuilding from an even more devastating World War II, plus 50 years of foreign occupation to boot.

We are doing it in a different world; a globalized, digitalized cyber world where small changes over a short period of time can have a big longterm impact on a vast group of people. As members of NATO and the EU, our place in that world is now known by more people than at any other time in history.

My parents lived through those first 22 years, but sought refuge in the West when Latvia was occupied. They never lived to see Latvia regain its independence. It feels like I’ve returned to Latvia in their place, to pick up where they left off. That’s why I’m looking forward to 2014, when I can say I’ve lived and worked during 23 years of independence. Kids always try to do a little more than their parents did.

#25   When the Prime Minister met the President

Few people realize that the first time a Latvian Prime Minister ever met the President of the United States, Latvia was not yet independent.

Under the Soviets, Moscow called Latvia the ‘Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic’ and our parliamentary body was known as the Supreme Council. In early 1990 the people of Latvia elected a majority of pro-independence deputies to the Supreme Council and on May 4, 1990 the Council voted in favor of restoring the original Republic of Latvia. It was a bold declaration to re-establish full independence. You can imagine how Mikhail Gorbachev felt about that. He didn’t like it and didn’t recognize it. Nevertheless, the Supreme Council chose Ivars Godmanis as Prime Minister and gave him the task of realizing the declaration.

A month later I met with Prime Minister Ivars Godmanis in Riga. I was working for the American Latvian Association in Washington, D.C. and had known Godmanis when he was a leader of the Latvian Popular Front. During that meeting we agreed that the time was ripe to bring Godmanis, and his Foreign Minister Jaņis Jurkans, to Washington. D.C.

Like Moscow, Washington, D.C. in 1990 still did not recognize the restored independence of Latvia.  Unlike Moscow, Washington was very interested in making the Latvian wish come true.

So in July of 1990 Latvia’s Prime Minister Godmanis and Foreign Minister Jurkans arrived in Washington, D.C. Since the U.S. didn’t recognize the legality of Soviet rule in Latvia, Godmanis and Jurkans could not be received as foreign dignitaries. They had no official status in the U.S., no bodyguards, no Secret Service protection. They were just two guys from Soviet-ruled Latvia who wanted to talk to someone about independence.

I greeted them at the airport in a rented car and for a week the three of us went around Washington, D.C., knocking on doors and talking to anyone who would listen. We went to the U.S. Congress, State Department, think tanks and TV stations. The Soviet Embassy in Washington watched all this with understandable annoyance, but took solace in the fact that at least, those upstart Latvians weren’t showing up at the White House.

But Soviet satisfaction didn’t last long. After a week of talking, lobbying and explaining all around town, we met U.S. Senator Robert Byrd. He was convinced that the White House was the exact place Godmanis and Jurkans needed to be. So Byrd called President George H.W. Bush and urged him to meet with the Latvian leaders. Bush agreed. On July 30^th, 1990, Prime Minister Godmanis, Foreign Minister Jurkans and I walked into the Oval Office of the White House to meet with the President of the United States. We were supposed to only meet for 15 minutes – a standard courtesy call – but the discussion went on for 40 minutes.

Thus, the first time a Latvian Prime Minister ever stepped foot in the White House, he still didn’t represent a fully independent country. That happened

14 months later when the world, and the United States (September 2, 1991), formally recognized the restoration of the Republic of Latvia. The next time Prime Minister Godmanis returned to the White House he was escorted by a full complement of Secret Service agents. The Republic of Latvia was back in business.

#26   Rockin’ the Kremlin

Once upon a time electric guitars were illegal in the Soviet Union. That’s because in the late 1950’s rock and roll was illegal in the Soviet Union. Granted, not everyone in the West was crazy about the emergence of rock and roll either. It was energetic, provocative and challenged accepted standards, beliefs and values. It shook people up.

As a college student in the US in 1968 I knew rock was revolutionary because people like Bob Dylan, Frank Zappa and Jimi Hendrix were turning the world upside down. My world then was Western, democratic, stable and even a little boring. Many in my generation agreed that society and politics were ripe for change.

It was only recently that I learned that Latvia in the 1960’s was the birthplace of a rock and roll revolution in the Soviet Union. The first ‘illegal’ handmade electric guitar in the USSR was built by Valery Saifudinov (Seisky) in Riga. A sawed-off acoustic guitar was attached to a block of wood, while magnets and wires needed for the pickup were stolen from Riga pay phones. In 1962 Saifudinov created the rock band ‘The Revengers’ which became the USSR’s first rock band.

In 1966 Pete Anderson’s Latvian rock group The Melody Makers organized a rock concert in Riga, the first ever in the USSR. 2,000 tickets were sold out in 10 minutes, but 15 minutes after that the KGB cancelled the concert. Thousands of fans showed up anyway to protest the cancellation. They carried posters that said ‘Free the Guitar!’. It was an unprecedented public protest against Soviet government policy.

Similar rock and roll protests began to emerge throughout the former Soviet bloc – in Prague, Budapest, East Germany and even Moscow.

A documentary film about these and related events, called ‘Rockin’ the Kremlin’ is now being produced by Nick Binkley and Doug Yeager, and will be directed by multi-Emmy award winner Jim Brown. It tells the remarkable story about the global social and political impact of rock and roll. It throws light on a remarkable period in our contemporary history, and helps many begin to understand that rock and roll is not just about sex and drugs, it’s also about the freedom of the human spirit.

In the past we idolized rock and roll heroes because of what they did on the stage. ‘Rockin’ the Kremlin’ tells the story of people who are rock and roll heroes because of what they did in the streets.

#27   From Park Place to Rīga

There was a time when the world’s most popular board game, Monopoly, was banned in Latvia. I don’t know if the Soviets actually had a law that made this classic capitalist game taboo, but you couldn’t buy it in stores. Like rock and roll records, foreign books and TIME magazine, Monopoly was a hot commodity in the black market, and a popular item to be smuggled in by relatives visiting from the decadent West. Really enterprising Latvians made the game themselves out of pieces of cardboard, drew their own board and cards, and gave all the properties Latvian names. On weekends Monopoly ‘dissidents’ would secretly gather in dimly lit apartments and clandestinely engage in the subversive activity of buying and selling American-named properties like New York Ave. and Marvin Gardens..

Now Latvia is free and so is Monopoly. Not only can you buy the classic Monopoly game in any Latvian store, you get it in a slick, colourfully printed Latvian version that’s set in Latvia and even sells Latvian properties.

But this year, Hasbro has a created a World Edition of this classic game, called ‘Monopoly Here and Now’.  To determine which 22 of the world’s top cities would be featured as properties in the new game, Hasbro asked fans around the world to vote on the Internet. After 5 million votes were counted, Montreal took the top position and the honour to be the ‘Boardwalk’ of the new global edition. And who was chosen as Park Place? Riga, Latvia.

Cities like New York, London, Paris, Beijing and Tokyo all made the list, but ranked lower that Riga in voter popularity. How on earth did Riga beat out the world’s most glamorous cities? I think the explanation is obvious. The people who live in those other cities, never had to make their own Monopoly games by hand.

The soldiers of misfortune

(Ode to the Latvian Legion)

Somewhere in the lonely night an angry trumpet sounds

the smoke that filled the meeting rooms heads for the battlegrounds

They write their manifestos and fill them full of lies

the men who give the orders are never those who die

Let us pay our respects and express our regrets

to the soldiers of misfortune

they fell and died while the nation cried

and now they must fall again

The words that burn with passion have forged an iron will

to reach a goal by telling men they have a right to kill

The cause is always just, they say defend it with your pride

and know with every step you march that god is on your side

Let us pay our respects and express our regrets

to the soldiers of misfortune

they fell and died while the nation cried

and now they must fall again

Don’t listen to the other side that questions our commands

this is the only way to save our sacred fatherland

You never chose the flags that flew as you went into battle

they dressed you up in gray and brown and slaughtered you

like cattle

Let us pay our respects and express our regrets

to the soldiers of misfortune

they fell and died while the nation cried

and now they must fall again

The trumpets have been put aside the smoke has blown away

but broken hearts are bleeding still with little left to say

New judges and historians are handing out the blame

and those who fought for liberty are forced to hide in shame

You once were called to battle and asked to a sacrifice

now once again its you, my friend that pays the highest price

Let us pay our respects and express our regrets

to the soldiers of misfortune

they fell and died while the nation cried

and now they must fall again

(June 14, 2000)

#28   The land that sings about singing

Just as every country has a flag, every country in the world has a national anthem. Citizens usually sing their national anthem on national days, or to begin important events, although many will sing their national songs spontaneously, when seized by a feeling of pride or patriotism. We hear others sing their anthems most often at sporting events.

But what do they sing about?

In Austria they sing about mountains, while in Bangladesh they praise banyan trees and mango groves. Denmark mentions the Vikings in their national anthem, while in the Netherlands they raise their voices for William of Orange. Brazil, Greece and Bolivia express heroic thoughts about freedom, while the United States and Turkey sing about their flags. Many countries stress God’s role in the destiny of their land.

Latvians too ask God to bless their country in Latvia’s national anthem.  The anthem is even called ‘God Bless Latvia’. But in their anthem, Latvians also sing about singing and dancing. One reason for this may be that the song was first performed in Riga in 1873 at the First Latvian Song Celebration. It was written by Karlis Baumanis 45 years before Latvia became independent, in 1918.

Ironically, the first time a Latvian choir sang the song, they had to replace the word ‘Latvia’ in the lyrics with ‘Baltija’. Back in 1873 Latvia was under Czarist Russian rule, and Moscow frowned upon national anthems in their empire. But less then a half century later, the Czarist Empire collapsed, Latvia declared its independence, and on November 18, 1918, the word ‘Latvia’ returned to the lyrics of “God Bless Latvia.” Two years later, in 1920, it became the official national anthem of the Republic of Latvia.

After Latvia was occupied in 1940, the national anthem was totally banned by the Soviets in Latvia. You couldn’t sing the words, you couldn’t even hum it. But hundreds of thousands of Latvian refugees in exile still sang it proudly in other countries around the world. Like the flag, the anthem returned again in 1989, and by 1991, when Latvia restored its independence, the anthem was restored to its place of honor as well.

Although Latvia has changed in 90 years, the words of its anthem have not.  The blessing that Latvians ask God to bestow on their land consists of a simple, and very typically Latvian request – make our daughters bloom and our sons sing, and we know they will dance together in happiness. Not a bad thing to wish for your country.

God, bless Latvia,
Our dearest fatherland,
Do bless Latvia,
Oh, do bless it!

Where Latvian daughters bloom,
Where Latvian sons sing,
Let us dance in happiness there,
In our Latvia!

#29   The returning

Long before there were Latvians, there was a land covered by ice. When the ice melted and the glaciers retreated, life returned to the land. As streams and rivers flowed into the sea, people flowed into the land. Just as the landscape transformed itself through the movement of ice and water, so too the ancient peoples that settled here adapted to these changes. Tribes, languages and cultures evolved, sometimes clashing, but also coalescing.

About a thousand years ago the idea of ‘being Latvian’ started to come together as well, as tribes with similar languages and cultures began to merge into a nation. That nation became a state in 1918, forming the Republic of Latvia. Latvia’s independence was interrupted by invasion and occupation in 1940.

Following a hot war that blazed around the world, a cold war descended upon the land. Hopes, dreams and aspirations were frozen in time by a new glacier that destroyed lives and smothered living cultures. The heavy weight of this crushing totalitarian glacier did not begin retreating until 1991.

For Latvians today, the last 17 years have meant the end of another Ice Age. The ancient symbols of the warming sun and enriching water continue to serve as powerful metaphors for Latvia’s resurgent cultural, economic and political life.

The Baltic Sea too has come alive. Once a forbidding barrier to a free world outside, it is now an inland lake surrounded by the most prosperous countries of the European Union. It is also part of what Latvia seeks to protect by being a member of NATO.

The Latvian poet Rainis has written that ‘He who evolves himself, endures.’ This is something every Latvian understands, for nature teaches that life is constant change, movement, transformation and evolution. Evolution can be a painful process and not all can survive its diverse challenges. Even retreating glaciers continue to claim victims, but they also release the earth to produce new life in their wake.

The State of Latvia has returned and is celebrating its 90^th birthday. The ice has melted. It’s good to be back.

#30   When dreams become reality

I was working at the Latvian Legation in Washington, D.C. when Latvia restored its independence in August 1991. We received a lot of congratulations in the ensuing days, from old and new friends, but there is one I will never forget.

After interviewing me for a radio program, a young American reporter turned off the tape recorder and blurted out a confession. “I really envy you Latvians. You have just won back your independence, thrown off the shackles of an occupation and have been given a chance to rebuild your country! The past is over and everything is ahead of you now. In America we had our revolution and war of independence over 200 years ago. We have nothing to rebuild here, just a lot of things we have to fix. That’s boring. You Latvians have an exciting future ahead of you, and no matter what happens, you now can do something about it.”

I have to admit, I did feel lucky back in 1991. And it was exciting. It seemed almost unbelievable. After 50 years in a Soviet Union everyone thought would last forever, Latvia was independent again. Latvia had changed, the world had changed, and those of us who wanted to live and work in Latvia had our work cut out for us.  But it was work we had always dreamed we could someday do.

In the early 1990’s we reshaped the government, the laws and the way we interacted with the world.  We privatized and made unheard of profits. We established embassies, joined international organizations, rebuilt cities and sent our presidents around the world. Our economy grew, new opportunities opened up and yes, new problems replaced the old ones. Today our economy is struggling, our political parties are bickering, and the euphoria of those early days is a faded memory.

But I think that the American reporter had it right. Life in Latvia has not been boring. For me, it has been a rare stroke of luck to be a Latvian these last 20 years. It’s also been a privilege to participate in so many aspects of Latvia’s rebirth, development and growing pains. I have not only seen a dream come true, but have also had a chance to contribute something to it.

Of course, that dream is not yet fully realized. We are still rebuilding and in some cases, already fixing things we built not that long ago. The restoration of a country and the healthy regeneration of a nation takes time, hard work and toughness. There are always many disappointments along the way.

But when a dream comes true once in your life, you start to believe it can happen again.  When I think about where Latvia has been, where it is now, and where it could be in the future, I still let the dreams fly.

#31   Brains, birches and song.

Over the summer the Latvian Institute asked the young people of Latvia to tell us what kind of Latvia they want to see in 10 years. In September we received over 500 responses from some very bright girls and boys. While talking about the project with a journalist, he asked me what my vision of Latvia in 10 years would be like.

I was taken by surprise. All year I had been asking the kids of Latvia how they would like to see this country, but what about me? Once I started to think of things, I realized my wish-list could go on forever. As a citizen, I wanted to see a country where people felt secure, happy and prosperous. As a parent, I wanted to see a country where my children and grandchildren would be glad to live.  As a diplomat, I wanted to see a state that was respected internationally and had good relations with the global community. As a person concerned about Latvia’s image in the world, I wanted to see a country that left a good impression on anyone who visited, and had a good reputation among those who hadn’t.

I wanted to see a Latvia that was admired by tourists, but not so popular that our streets are taken over by endless tour groups. I would like foreign investors to take a serious interest in Latvia, but not so much that they control our economy. I want Latvia to be in the news, but not for problems, crises or scandals, but because of successes, victories and achievements.

I’m sure that my wishes aren’t that different from those of most of the 2.3 million people who live in Latvia. The problem, as always, is how do you get there?

I then thought of the Latvian Institute’s recently completed research on a potential brand strategy for Latvia. It concluded that Latvia’s reputation in the world could grow considerably, if we developed three specific areas of our national identity: 1) Our respect for knowledge, science and education, 2) Our love for nature, 3) Our rich and multi-faceted culture.

So, if you’ve got brains, love birch trees and like to sing, you have a lot in common with the Latvian people. On the other hand, if we can make our people even smarter, make our environment even greener and rely on our culture to make it all come together, Latvia will not only be better known around the world, it will also be a better place to live.

#32   When dreams come true

I was working at the Latvian Legation in Washington, D.C. when Latvia restored its independence in August 1991. We received a lot of congratulations in the ensuing days, from old and new friends, but there is one I will never forget.

After interviewing me for a radio program, a young American reporter turned off the tape recorder and blurted out a confession. “I really envy you Latvians. You have just won back your independence, thrown off the shackles of an occupation and have been given a chance to rebuild your country! The past is over and everything is ahead of you now. In America we had our revolution and war of independence over 200 years ago. We have nothing to rebuild here, just a lot of things we have to fix. That’s boring. You Latvians have an exciting future ahead of you, no matter what happens, you now can do something about it.”

I have to admit, I did feel lucky back in 1991. And it was exciting. It seemed almost unbelievable. After 50 years in a Soviet Union everyone thought would last forever, Latvia was independent again. Latvia had changed, the world had changed, and those of us who wanted to live and work in Latvia had our work cut out for us.  But it was work we had always dreamed we could someday do.

In the early 1990’s we reshaped the government, the laws and the way we interacted with the world.  We privatized and made unheard of profits. We established embassies, joined international organizations, rebuilt cities and sent our presidents around the world. Our economy grew, new opportunities opened up and yes, new problems replaced the old ones. Today our economy is struggling, our political parties are bickering, and the euphoria of those early days is a faded memory.

But I think that the American reporter had it right. Life in Latvia has not been boring. For me, it has been a rare stroke of luck to be a Latvian these last 20 years. It’s also been a privilege to participate in so many aspects of Latvia’s rebirth, development and growing pains. I have not only seen a dream come true, but have also had a chance to contribute something to it.

Of course, that dream is not yet fully realized. We are still rebuilding and in some cases, already fixing things we built not that long ago. The restoration of a country and the healthy regeneration of a nation takes time, hard work and toughness. There are always many disappointments along the way.

But when a dream comes true once in your life, you start to believe it can happen again.  So if we want to make Latvia even better than it is, we have to keep dreaming.

#33   Still Being Latvian After All These Years

There are more than 6 and a half billion people in the world, and most of them have some kind of national identity. Our planet is full of people who call themselves Chinese, French, Venezuelan, South African or Norwegian. All of us have some national identity, although by the 21^st century most of us have inherited many national ancestries.  We tend to pick and choose which countries and nationalities we want to identify with. Some with the country they live in, others with the place they were born, others simply grow to like a certain part of the world and become a part of it.

For me, being Latvian gives me an interesting vantage point for functioning in the world.

First of all, I didn’t choose it, I was born into it. My parents both were Latvian, and as far as I know, most of their parents and grandparents were also Latvian.  Although I was born in Munich, Latvian was the first language I heard around me as an infant. I later went to school and started a career in an American-speaking country called the United States, where I was reminded every day that I was a Latvian.  (With a name like Ojars Kalnins, you always get questions.)

Language, ancestry and other people’s curiosity have made me very aware of the fact that I am a Latvian. Having worked for Latvia in some capacity for the last 25 years has also made me a bit more national-identity conscious than your average person. Being a Latvian among Swedes, Russians, Danes and Germans at an international conference on the Baltic Sea region, gives me a totally different perspective on any issue that is raised.  The Swedes are watching it all from Stockholm, the Russians from St. Petersburgh, and I see it all from Riga’s Old Town. We are all looking at the same sea, but we are seeing it through our national filters.

Being Latvian is fun at ice hockey games, and being Latvian is an experience unlike any other during the Song and Dance Celebrations. When the economy dips and inflation rises it doesn’t much matter what nationality you are, tough times are tough on everyone. But as a Latvian, I can escape into the forests of Kemeri and regenerate my spiritually batteries along the white sands of the Kurzeme coastline.

My parents taught me that their parents taught them, that being Latvian means surviving obstacles and appreciating the goodness of life when you can. When I look at the tall, straight pines of Sliltere I remember that they have weathered forests fires and Baltic Sea storms, and look as beautiful now as they did a thousand years ago.  That’s when I enjoy being Latvian the most.

#34  In the middle of things

Throughout its history, Latvia has always been in the middle of things.

From the moment the words ‘Baltic States’ first became known in the international community, Latvia was always the middle one. We couldn’t escape that. Never will. As long as the countries of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are always lumped together and called the Baltic States, Latvia will always be the geographic, political, cultural and spiritual middle one. It must come with the territory.

Latvia is also in the middle of everything that is going on in Scandinavia, Russia, and the North Sea, which is one of the main reasons why Riga looks the way it does today. Although there are financial centres throughout the EU, Riga is pretty much in the middle of all of them. If it happens in London, Paris, Brussels or Berlin, it has an effect on Riga.  Things that happen here are felt in those cities as well.

Latvia is so used to being in the middle of everything, it comes as a surprise when we are left out.  When Germany and Russia agreed to run a gas pipeline through the Baltic Sea, we were offended that they didn’t include us in the deal. Lithuania and Estonia are equally concerned, as are Sweden, Finland and a lot of other neighbors, but Latvia is in the middle of it all, any way you look at it.

Some would say that Latvians take a middle road in most of the things they do.  Back when the Baltic States restored their independence in 1991, foreign affairs analyst Paul Goble liked to distinguish the temperaments of the three nations by telling this slightly enhanced story about how we each dismantled our hated Lenin monuments:

“ In Lithuania, Landsbergis gave an impassioned speech on TV and thousands of Lithuanians rushed to the public square in Vilnius and tore it down with their bare hands. In Latvia, the government appointed a committee of politicians who supervised a committee of engineers, who studied the project for several days and then quietly dismantled the statue in Riga in the middle of the night. In Estonia, no one knew where the Lenin monument was located, so the government hired a Finnish company to come in and take it away.”

When President Bill Clinton came to toast the Baltic States in 1994, he met all three presidents in Riga, the midpoint of the legendary 1989 Baltic Way human chain that he mentioned in his speech.  When NATO decided it was time to have a summit in the middle of the Baltic States in 2006, it chose Riga as the place to host it.

At times it seems like Latvia is midway between everything. Between success and failure, prosperity and poverty, the past and the future. North, south, east or west, from Riga you can look in any direction you want and Latvia seems to be in the middle of it all. It’s not that we are self-centered as a people. We‘ve just always been surrounded by the rest of the world

Latvia experienced many nights of terror during the Soviet occupation, when the KGB came to apartments and arrested entire families, loaded them on cattle cars and shipped them off to Siberia. But even those who were fated to escape the terror physically, never escaped its legacy.

On the night that it rained

I went out

you stayed in

I came back

you were gone

That was all.

Someone came

someone went

there was no explanation

I came back

you were gone

that was all

First a knock,

then a shout

on the night that it rained

in a moment

a lifetime

passed on.

Just the clothes

on your back

when you left in the rain

I came back

you were gone

that was all

No a word

not a reason

you wouldn’t be there

Not a sign

that our lives

would be rendered

and torn

I went out

in the rain

I came back

you were gone

that was all

that was all

that was all

I would never

have gone

had I known

what would be

on that night

when I left in the rain

I went out

for a moment

I am coming back still

you are gone

you are gone.

you are gone

October 20, 1999

We planted our seed near the great Northern Sea

sending roots deep below in a land that was free

We took strength from the oak, we stood tall with the pine

we gave birth and met death within nature’ s design

When the Sword cut us down and the Knight took our land

we returned to the soil where we made our last stand

The sands will uncover

and time will reveal

who was meant to prevail

between amber and steel

They built towers and steeples where great pines once stood

as the Barons and and Czars filled our rivers with blood

They cut down the  Oak to build gallows and altars

but as forests retreated the faith never faltered

As the century turned we were caught in the fires;

like a phoenix we rose from the ravaged empires

The sands will uncover

and time will reveal

who was meant to prevail

between amber and steel

We reached to the stars, we blossomed and flowered

until tanks and sad cattle cars wrought their dark power

The Red and the Brown joined their hands in the crime

we went down but survived cruelly frozen in time

We were closed from the world by a barbed iron curtain

but the sun was our hope and of this we were certain

In the forest and seashore we returned to our roots

deep beneath the iron heels of the enemy’s boots

The sands will uncover

and time will reveal

who was meant to prevail

between amber and steel

As the castles and commissars crumble and fall

the iron and the steel turn to rust

The oak and the pine reach to freedom again

and the amber glows gold in the dust

We rise from the seashore we emerge from the mud

from the Gulag to the Gauja we return

we were once,

we are still

we will always prevail

in the struggle of amber and steel

1991

God is this

God is that

God is that which

is under your hat

God is good

God is strong

God is never, ever wrong

God is big

God is great

God amuses himself with fate

God is funny

God is kind

God is a guest

of the open mind

God is yes

and God is no

You look high

and I’ll look low

God is female

God is male

Believe in both and

you’ll never fail

God’s an asshole

God’s a saint

God looks like any

picture you paint

God is here

and then he’s gone

God is a mushroom in your front lawn.

Eat it.

November 24, 1978