Culture

Liepa Boberienė. Few moments in history capture the essence of human determination and solidarity as vividly as the Baltic Way. On August 23, 1989, this momentous event not only hastened the demise of our Soviet occupiers but also sparked a worldwide movement for freedom. It serves to this day as …

Julius (Jay) Sakas. In the early hours of July 15, 1933, a heavily laden airplane, the Bellanca 300 christened the Lituanica, lifted off from Floyd Bennett Field in New York City. Two Lithuanian aviators had just taken to the air in pursuit of their dream. Steponas Darius and Stasys Girėnas …

Laima Vincė. The global quarantine of 2020–21 was like the game Musical Chairs. Wherever you were on planet Earth when the music stopped and the quarantine went into effect, that’s where you stayed. I found myself on a sandy strip of shifting dunes held tentatively in place by ancient forests …

The most ambitious internet project documenting Lithuanian American heritage sites is nearing completion. The dynamic duo of Augustinas and Aistė Žemaitis, known as the “Destination Lithuanian America” team, have created an interactive online map and encyclopedia showcasing Lithuanian heritage sites in North America. They have been exploring the U.S. and …

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 …

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., …

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 …

Reminiscences of Bernard Terway about his youth from 1940-1959 in Seltzer City, Pennsylvania, composed by Sandy Baksys. In June 1940, when I was just five weeks old, my father Joseph Tirva, 45, was buried alive in an accident in a “bootleg” coal mine. Dad’s so-called “coal hole” couldn’t have been …