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January 23, 2002

 
Sveiki, all!

Silvija and I were away for a few days, in fact, we were on the road to Virginia when we should have been sending out last week's mailer. :-) Following is the mailer for 1/23...

In the news,

  • Those who forget history make it up as they go along; on the lighter side, a professor studying serious topics such as historical aspects of Latvian 19th century society collects students' re-inventions of history
  • Lithuania urges Bush let Baltics in NATO; and analysts think Baltics have a good chance
  • Latvian bobsled captain reinstated for Games; dietary supplements are the culprit for his positive drug test; a sigh of relief, but not by the team doctor, who was fired
  • Latvia drops action against Charles' 'flower girl'; the saga of the flower swung in protest comes to an end as the last vestiges of possible legal action are dismissed

This week's link deals with a bit of brethren history from south of the border.

This week's picture is of Riga grandeur still awaiting its renascence.

As always, AOL'ers, remember, mailer or not, Lat Chat spontaneously appears every Sunday on AOL starting around 9:00/9:30pm Eastern time, lasting until 11:00/11:30pm. AOL'ers can follow this link in their AOL browser: Town Square - Latvian chat. And thanks to you participating on the Latvian message board as well: LATVIA (both on AOL only).

Ar visu labu,

Silvija Peters

 

  Latvian Link


Well, almost Latvian. Few realize that our kindred Baltic state, Lithuania, once stretched from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea.

This week's link deals with how Lithuania stopped the Mongols and the European Knights:

     http://www.cadana.com/ashton/lithhist.html
 

 

  News


Those who forget history make it up as they go along
AP WorldStream Thursday, January 17, 2002 9:59:00 PM
Copyright 2002 The Associated Press
By VICKI SMITH
Associated Press Writer

      MORGANTOWN, West Virginia (AP) — Anders Henriksson calls it "the creme de la creme of student vacantness," a horrifically hilarious compendium of the ramblings of ill-prepared college students.
      From thousands of papers and exams, he has plucked these gems:
       — During the Dark Ages, it was mostly dark.
       — Hitler's instrumentality of terror was the Gespacho.
       — Christianity was just another mystery cult until Jesus was born.
       — The mother of Jesus was Mary, who was different from other women because of her immaculate contraption.
      Mangled vocabulary, inventive spelling and historical blunders, it seems, are the stuff of best sellers. Chuckles — some smug, some sympathetic — have carried "Non Campus Mentis: World History According to College Students" onto The New York Times miscellaneous best-seller list.
      "The cause that underlies most of the silly things these kids say is desperation and pressure. I think the reason we laugh is that we relate to it," says Henriksson, chairman of Shepherd College's history department.
      "We have all been in a situation where we haven't prepared when we were supposed to."
      His book knits together errors, assumptions and creative fact-making that are shocking and hysterical. Together, the hundreds of entries create a revised history of the world in 26 chapters, from the "Stoned Age" to the "Age of Now."
      Names are withheld to protect the ignorant.
      Although Henriksson has taught in West Virginia since 1985, his book features students from across North America, with about half the submissions coming from Canada. Each one, he says, is genuine.
      "I don't think anyone could make this up," Henriksson says. "You'd have to be Mel Brooks or Woody Allen, and I'm not that clever."
      If anything, the history professor is quite serious. His last book was a scholarly work, "The Tsar's Loyal Germans: The Riga German Community, 1855-1905."
      He has spent six summers and a spring sabbatical in Estonia and Latvia researching his latest project, the role of class, language and gender in the formation of a collective identity in the Imperial Russian Baltic provinces.
      Yet Henriksson clearly appreciates a good laugh.
      His collection began when he was a teaching assistant at the University of Toronto in the late 1970s, grading 500 student papers on Machiavelli. He read one to his wife: "Machiavelli wrote The Prince to get a job with Nixon."
      She laughed and told him to save it.
      The first collection of astounding errors appeared as "College Kids Say the Darndest Things," an essay for The Wilson Quarterly in 1983. Colleagues read it and began sending Henriksson their favorite foul-ups.
      He has woven them into textbook form, with lined, notebook-style pages and photo illustrations. There are even maps of the ancient, medieval and modern worlds, with the "Kingdom of the Tarts" and the "Automaton Empire" clearly defined.
      "The spelling may be avant-garde and the logic experimental, but no one can fault these young scholars for lack of creativity," Henriksson says.
      Some have suggested the compilation is a warning about the state of education, but Henriksson doesn't see it that way.
      Sure, he says, students may rely too heavily on spell-check programs. But he doesn't think they're getting dumber. Nor has he noticed any patterns based on age, gender, class or region.
      "I think exams and papers written in the 1920s would be just about the same," he says. "Of course, there's an element of students getting into college without managing to absorb some basic things, but it's mainly the human response to, 'Uh oh! I'm not prepared.'"
      It's a perennial problem: Students who skip class or fail to study are forced to fill the vacuum with something.
      "A world history or Western civilization course can be a daunting swirl of unfamiliar ideas, names, places and events for those who start from near ground zero. It's so easy to get them all jumbled," Henriksson writes in a sympathetic postscript.
      "Add to this a dose of distracted note-taking, last-minute cramming and limited vocabulary. The result is the kind of bizarre free associations that have Roman senators exchanging togas for tubas, Caesar perishing on the Yikes of March and monotheism originating with a God named Yahoo."
      Most students, perhaps blocking the memory of the panic attack, are surprised when their papers are returned "hemorrhaging in red ink," Henriksson says. And a few have been stunned to find their work in print.
      "They were just like, 'I can't believe I wrote that,' and asked me to sign a copy of the book," he says.
      So far, no one has been angry.
      "Most of them get a good laugh out of it," he says. "I have not had a student complain. On one level, though, who wants to admit, 'I thought there was a Mexican bandleader named Pancho Vidalia.'"
      — — —
      On the Net:
      Workman Publishing Co.: http://www.workmanpublishing.com/

Lithuania urges Bush let Baltics in NATO
Reuters Financial Report Thursday, January 17, 2002 9:59:00 PM
Copyright 2002 Reuters Ltd.

      WASHINGTON, Jan 17 (Reuters) — Lithuanian President Valdas Adamkus pressed his case for Baltic nations to join the NATO military alliance in talks on Thursday with President George W. Bush.
      Adamkus offered a joint appeal to Bush on behalf of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia to grant the Baltics membership in NATO at a summit in Prague in November.
      "We covered a lot of topics as far as NATO is concerned, bilateral cooperation between Lithuania and the United States," Adamkus told reporters after the meeting.
      The Baltic states each made NATO membership a top foreign policy goal when they broke free from the Soviet Union in 1991 following a 50-year occupation.
      Bush held out some hope, affirming his support for NATO enlargement for "all those nations ready to meet NATO's requirements and contribute to common security," said Sean McCormack, spokesman for the White House National Security Council.
      "The president urged Lithuania and all aspirants to NATO membership to keep up their efforts and reforms," he said.
      All three Baltic nations — who share borders with Russia — are also on track to join the European Union in 2004. Moscow opposes NATO membership for former Soviet states but has softened its rhetoric, signaling it will acquiesce in Baltic NATO entry.
      NATO has committed itself to inviting in at least one of nine ex-communist applicants at the Prague summit, and analysts say the Baltic states as well as Slovenia and Slovakia have the best chances.
      Adamkus said Bush told him that all those who would like to join NATO "should actually be ready for it, there should be no exceptions made, no privileges given to anybody, and that message should be conveyed through me to other participating nations."
      A key factor in joining NATO is providing proof that the government applying for membership has successfully launched democratic and economic reforms.
      McCormack said Bush discussed with Adamkus Lithuania's commitment to continued reforms, improving its investment climate, and working on issues of concern to the United States, including respect for the Jewish community and wiping out corruption.
      Adamkus was in the United States on Sept. 11 and his visit was partly a rescheduling of that earlier trip, which was cut short due to the attacks on Washington and New York. McCormack said Bush and Adamkus recalled that day and Bush thanked Lithuania for its support of the war on terrorism.

Latvian bobsled captain reinstated for Games
AP WorldStream Sunday, January 20, 2002 11:23:00 AM
Copyright 2002 The Associated Press
By J. MICHAEL LYONS
Associated Press Writer

      RIGA, Latvia (AP) — Latvia's Sandis Prusis, one of the world's top four-man bobsled drivers, is back in the Olympics despite testing positive for a banned steroid.
      The International Bobsled Federation has imposed a three-month retroactive suspension on Prusis that will end Feb. 9, making him eligible for the Salt Lake City Games that run Feb. 8-24.
      The federation on Jan. 7 banned Prusis from World Cup competition and the Olympics after he tested positive for nandralone on Nov. 9 following a training run at the Olympic track in Park City, Utah.
      Prusis and Latvian Olympic officials appealed the decision, blaming the positive test results on dietary supplements.
      The federation agreed.
      "There was compelling evidence that while the test was positive it was through no fault of the athlete," federation General Secretary Ermanno Gardello said in a statement.
      Latvia fired its Olympic team doctor on Jan. 8, but refused to say if it was related to the Prusis case.
      In addition to the suspension, the federation stripped Prusis of World Cup points earned in December, which will affect his start position in Salt Lake City.
      An early start usually guarantees cleaner, faster ice. Prusis would have been one of the first to start.
      "That's probably going to cost me a medal," Prusis told the Associated Press by telephone Sunday from his home in Ventspils, Latvia.
      Prusis, 37, steered Latvia to fourth place in the world championships last year and also is a coach on the national squad. Prusis said next month's Olympics will likely be his last.
      Steroid use has rocked the sport in recent months.
      In November, former Olympic hurdler turned bobsledder Ludmila Engquist of Sweden confessed to using performance-enhancing drugs. Jeff Laynes of the United States was suspended for two years after testing positive for the banned steroid stanozolol in December.

Latvia drops action against Charles' 'flower girl'
Reuters North America Tuesday, January 22, 2002 9:43:00 AM
Copyright 2002 Reuters Ltd.

      RIGA, Latvia (Reuters) — A Latvian court said Tuesday it would not take any further action against a girl who tried to hit Britain's Prince Charles in the face with flowers during his visit to the Baltic state in November.
      Initially police had said Russian-speaking Alina Lebedeva could face charges of assaulting a foreign dignitary, which carries a sentence of up to 15 years in jail, but Prince Charles himself made a plea for leniency.
      In the end, charges of hooliganism were brought against the 16-year-old schoolgirl, but prosecutors later dropped these too. It was left up to the court to take any action against her.
      Lebedeva was seen on television screens worldwide lurching at the heir to the British throne with a bunch of carnations in a protest over U.S.-led bombing in Afghanistan.
      The incident drew an immediate apology from Latvian President Vaira Vike-Freiberga. Lebedeva and her family later sent the prince letters of apology.
 
 

  Picture Album


Number 4. on Krisjana Barona iela is still awaiting its face-lift. But how glorious it will look someday!
 

Number 4. K. Barona iela awaits its facelift
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