Goodbye Chicago, Hello Paris
Lithuanians rule the world - or at least they pop up a lot
The five days I spent in Chicago had so many random Lithuanian sightings it is a category of its own.
The David Byrne show had three in my fifteen person audience group - all living in Chicago for around ten years but born in Lithuania.
Streets and restaurants teemed with yellow green and red t-shirts and outfits.
Not to mention the occasional full-on Folk Costume showing up.
I met a group of Lithuanian ladies from Luxembourg on the Red line near Wrigley Field on my way to a lunch with a Pen Parentis participant from Massachusetts.
The poetry reading I did to celebrate the opening of the Balzekas Lithuanian Museum’s new event space and gift shop on Michigan Ave steps from the Bean was attended by more dignitaries than I can count, but among them were recognizably an ambassador from Lithuania, an ambassador from Ukraine, the Consul General from New York, and the former President of Lithuania (who was also briefly a leader in the EU) - our first female President and the first (and so far only) person elected for two terms.
Then of course the Lithuanian folk-dance festival - what a show! Thousands of Lithuanian dancers, many of them my friends or my friends’ kids - and one dance was nontraditionally marvelous. Have a peek at “the river.”
But all of this was nothing compared to my last day in the City. I had expected to be alone and quiet - recovery of a few hours before flying back to NYC on a Monday afternoon crammed into a plane with yammery corporate sales teams.
No such thing!
At my Chicago hotel, the front desk clerk, a young woman around my daughter’s age, was wearing amber so I asked if she’d been to the festival.
Not only had she not been—she hadn’t heard of it! Random women in folk costumes had been in her lobby all weekend, and she did not know the costumes were Lithuanian! Needless to say I showed her many photos on my phone (and some folk dances) and she got very excited that the Balzekas Museum was open to the public right around the corner. I checked out and she - she checked in!
Then I went outside with my suitcase and promptly got lost. (GPS doesn’t work among the steel towers of the Windy City) - but lucky for me, two women were speaking Lithuanian on the street corner, so I asked (also in Lithuanian) where the Blue Line was. Naturally it was only a block away. We wished each other copious blessings and went on with our lives.
At the airport, the first thing I see?
Well, certainly I would get a break at the gate, no?
No! The former president of NYC’s Lithuanian-American Guild (among other titles) happened to be hanging out at the gate with her close friend….
We chatted quite some time, until I broke off to go stand in my group. Well guess what? Right behind me in line were two strangers speaking Lithuanian! They asked after some amber or pin or something that I was wearing and I discovered the young man was a pilot for the airline I was about to board.
All in, I figure. This has to be the end of it. But my seatmate….
Here’s to running into your community everywhere you go!
Me? I’m supposed to be flying to Paris right now but instead I’m in the tenth circle of hell! (I’m going to Paris to teach a one-day class called Maintaining Your Creativity. Here’s a link to the conference for those of you curious or ready to sign up for next year!) So far, I got in a subway and it announced it was staying in the station “we don’t know how long” because Brooklyn had a power outage, but my flight was on time, so along with six hundred other New Yorkers who had places to be, I grabbed a cab and got to the airport on time. It wasn’t even raining (just lightning & thunder), so the fact that the board showed mostly canceled flights was nerve-wracking but not that threatening — as long as my plane was there I should be fine, right? All flights to Europe seemed to be going out… I checked in, dropped my luggage, but the machine didn’t work so I went to an agent—okay so that was a small delay but the agent was very friendly—however, the TSA Precheck didn’t get printed on my new boarding pass so I was turned away at security and told to check in again, which I did and got through security in a flash, got to the gate an hour early! However, as my butt lowered into the seat, I got a text alert that the flight was canceled.
I rebooked via an app and got the last seat on a flight that was two hours delayed but ready to fly at the time my canceled flight had been previously due to fly (gosh I love strange verb tenses) then we all sat at the gate for another two hours. When they announced boarding the cheer was genuine and soared like a wave through the entire seated assembly (huh, is there a word for a planeload of passengers that are not yet on a flight?). We all cheerfully gave up our extra bags to baggage handlers and got into the plane. Then we sat on the tarmac another two hours. First to redistribute a “load” and then there were 50 planes ahead of us on the runway, then just as we were going to fly there was some A/C issue that the pilot assured us would be fixed but everyone needed to clear the aisles since they needed access (passengers at this point, two hours in, were standing and chatting or getting stuff from luggage or going to the bathrooms) — I fell asleep in my seat because it was after midnight by this point. I had arrived at the airport at 7pm.
At 2am there was a regretful announcement from the formerly cheerful pilot. Short and succinct, it crushed us like an anvil from the sky: “Sorry folks, the flight crew timed out. Please gather all your things as you deplane.”
Long story short? My flight will go out tonight at 7:15. So much for Sunday in Paris— but you got an extra long newsletter!
Writing News
It’s official, my piece came out in print in Lithuanian in Lithuania! What a great feeling!
I was sent the PDF of the upcoming issue and if you are dying to read it in translation, please feel free to send me your email address. Or follow this link in a few days and it will be posted here - it is in issue 13 - https://www.satenai.lt/ - but like I said, it will be on the main link in a week or so.
ALSO this is up next, as soon as I get back from France!
Hope to see you there!
Random Final Thought
The end of the Lithuanian folk dance festival was too fun to keep to myself. Here’s a video of the dancers celebrating (Lithuanian groups from 17 countries) —beware, the joy is contagious!
PS: I just got this absolutely riveting article from the NYTimes about a guy who published (so far) 445 books on Amazon using AI. Read it!
Texas džiaugiasi su pasaulio lietuviais! Ačiū. Nežinau kada tu gauni kvėpuoti.
You are amazing, that's all there is to say.