DRAUGAS NEWS Lithuanian World Wide News in English

Laima Vincė. When I was growing up in the 1970’s and 1980’s, our family made a yearly summer pilgrimage to the St. Anthony’s Guest House on the Franciscan monastery grounds. My mother recalls spending her summers here in the 1950s and 1960s. Back then, we would hear Lithuanian spoken on …

Interviewed by Gailė Vitas, Lithuanian Research Center, Musicology Archive Last summer and for the past two months I have had the pleasure of working with Yusuke Ishii. He is Japanese, studying music in Lithuania. He speaks Lithuanian fluently. In addition to his academic work, Ishii has won various prizes in …

Juozas Skirius. Each summer, we recall the tragic fate of Steponas Darius and Stasys Girėnas, the two Lithuanian airmen who attempted a pioneering flight across the Atlantic. This event was widely covered by the media of its day and deeply impacted the Lithuanian community on both sides of the Atlantic. …

On May 23, the Lithuanian Jesuit Fathers signed over ownership of the Lithuanian Youth Center to Chicago’s Lithuanian community. The center is a large complex located in Chicago’s Gage Park neighborhood. It has been the epicenter of Lithuanian cultural activity for over a half-century. The new owner, Lithuanian Center, Inc., …

Victor Nakas. As Ronald Reagan was halfway through his second term in the White House, his vice president was making plans to succeed him. Unlike Reagan, who excelled at communicating with the public, George H. W. Bush was being faulted for a dearth of vision — the ability to communicate …

Sandy Baksys. Just as we might expect of a biopic about a female champion in the sport of “ultimate” fighting, the new documentary, “Thug Rose: Mixed Martial Artist,” by veteran Lithuanian-American filmmaker Marius Markevičius, can be described as the ultimate sports psychology film. Whereas Markevičius’ Lithuanian basketball documentary, “The Other …

Victor Nakas. Once upon a time, thousands of people, mostly men, decamped deep into Lithuania’s forests. They established underground bunkers from which they would emerge to battle Soviet troops tasked with occupying and pacifying the country. Initially, these “forest brothers” (miško broliai) succeeded in making large areas of the countryside …

Laima Vincė. Ten years ago, two couples met in Jamaica to spend their vacation together. New York-based Lithuanian-born artist Ray Bartkus and his wife, Ina, a fashion designer, flew from New York to Jamaica, while Algirdas Kumža, signatory of Lithuania’s Declaration of Independence, and his wife, Toma, and their two …

Laima Vincė. My first Lithuanian folk dance festival – as veterans of Lithuanian folk dance festivals like to say – took place in Cleveland in 1984. I danced with “Liepsna” from Elizabeth, New Jersey. We’d dance in the church hall, just like all over the United States and Canada, young …

Sandy Baksys. Sometimes the buried war crimes of the past and the brazen crimes of the present vibrate at the same emotional frequency. This was clearly the case at a recent World War II “Victory Day” incident in a Soviet military cemetery in Warsaw. Online videos showed the Russian ambassador …