The Most Important Day of the Summer

So I had a funny, amusing, and clever blog all written out last night to inform and amuse you...and then this morning I went to the Museum of Genocide Victims (aka the KGB museum) and left in tears as an overwhelming sense of remorse and homesickness washed over me simultaneously...Hours later I barely have the words to explain the devastation met by Lithuanians (and Latvians) under the evil that was Stalin, the Soviet Union, and Communism. More importantly, I barely have the words to explain how much I love my own country for all that it allows me to do. I take everything for granted--all my rights (freedom to think, speak, write, travel, vote, resist), my family, my friends, my school, and my life. I realized, in a flash, why I leave my country every year--because the rest of the world draws into focus the whole point of my life: to learn and to pass that Knowledge on to others. Here I am travelling the world, an affluent TOURIST (there is no other word for it), taking pictures of churches, statues, monuments, funny people, and things and then posting it all on the Internet in an attempt to show my worldliness...and I am now thinking its all bullshit...unless I can pull it all together somehow into a universal understanding of the way things are. So, far from my classroom (a place I missed for the first time all summer), here is my free lesson for you. In all the museums depicting genocide/oppression/death/torture/evil there are three clearly human endeavours that make the victims of such crimes persevere--Faith (family or religion), art, and language (arguably the three cornerstones of one's culture). In other words, if you are a Stalin or a Hitler the destruction of churches, national art, and, most importantly, the national language are of key importance. However, you cannot crush human will entirely an in every instance the victims of oppression will keep their faith (small prayer books made with cast-off materials), practice their art (from small postcard-like paintings to knitted pieces of cloth), and save their language (poetry, songs, even simple passages scrawled on boards in their prison cells). Therefore, if you can, do the following for me: phone your mom, your best friend, your siblings, and your lover. Tell them how much you appreciate. Read a book...I don't care what. Paint a picture or scribble graffiti on something. Write a poem or a song and if you are at all religious go to your church and talk with someone there about why you are there. Oh yeah, vote when the opportunity presents itself and speak out when it seems necessary. I love you all. Be well.