A memorial monument is planned, to be built in the middle of Lithuania by February, 2019. The design is by sculptor Tadas Gutauskas, in collaboration with an architect, Saulius Pamerneckis. It will be like the Vietnam memorial – a place to commemorate, grieve, and pray.

See the initial website: http://partizanumemorialas.lt/en/  for photos of the target design, and information about the sponsors. The website provides instructions for donation. Soon there will be various options for donation including Paypal.

Tadas was a painter when he gave me permission to use his art as images in my illustrated novella, Vilnius Diary. Since those days (2006) he’s done a number of public monuments in Vilnius, like The Road to Freedom.

The partisans are men who decided to try to fight the Russians who returned to occupy Lithuania in 1941. They organized, armed themselves, and retreated to the forests to fight back. There is a movie about them: The Invisible Front (1914). See here. And here.

About 20,000 of them died. Many of their remains were not found. One of their leaders said, “We are not afraid to die.” The odds were greatly against them. Their resistance movement was between 1944 and 1953.

One of the emotional triggers for me is an awe for their heroism. Lithuania is a small country (about the size of West Virginia) and it was easily overrun by Germany and the Soviet Union. The Nazis quickly killed nearly 200,000 Jews and other “undesirables,” and then came the Soviets who exiled hundreds of thousands simply because they were educated people and might organize to resist the occupation.

Many people like my parents successfully fled the massacres and deportations. But the partisans stayed, and resisted, to their deaths. They chose to stay and fight.

The website shows photos of individuals and there might be video interviews with several survivors, who are in their nineties now. These are the faces of heroes. I think their circumstances are what make this movement so poignant: the small ad hoc force, overwhelming odds, meager resources, living year-round on the run in the forests (like other guerillas), dying horrible deaths (torture, mutilation), and lost remains.

Lithuania has only been free of Soviet and Russian occupation since 1991. (That’s 27 years ago.) It has taken YEARS to rebuild. It is going to take DECADES to process what happened. (Consider: how America has processed the Civil War, the Cold War, the Vietnamese War, the war in Afghanistan, etc. etc.) The stories ARE JUST COMING OUT.

The stories of the escapees, emigres, and gulag-returnees are JUST COMING OUT. (See my other blog entries.)
We need this for therapy, understanding, healing, and appreciation for the sacrifices of others for good.  Could you do what a partisan did?

Below is an ad for the project which will appear in Draugas News (English) in the U.S. every month for a year.

​Lots of things to be upset by, especially as the #MeToo movement reactivates long-suppressed memories and anger.

My teen years were saddled with depression as it dawned on me that “you can be anything” was not true. And that a hostile world – professions and workplaces – would greet your enthusiastic leap into their arms to fulfill your dreams of how and what you wanted to be.

One of my stories: as a college student, in an airport, I met a woman who said she was one of four female surgeons in the country. (1960s) I told her that that was one of my dreams. She said: “It will be very hard to get in, and you will be battered every step of the way. You will have be to very tough.” She explained to me why there were few female surgeons, and doctors overall. For example, there were quotas for women entering medical school at that time. (And they probably did NOT get financial aid equal to men.) I had NO IDEA how someone like me could finance the education. I was too timid to ask anybody in authority (…refugee mentality, lay low). No internet. No kind librarians in my daily world. I knew I was not that tough. I majored in literature. (You’ll be able to teach elementary school!)

Several college mates who went into science and whom I met again 20 years later had QUIT. Harassed out. Disgusted. Discouraged. Wasted years of trying. And they were tough, and assisted by savvy parents.

There are so many books and movies explaining subtle discrimination, and what it’s like to be put down, harassed, and even raped or killed with no compunction. About racism: Ta-Nehisi Coates Between the World and Me. A mind-blowing experience watching the documentary based on James Baldwin’s work, I Am Not Your Negro (directed by Raoul Peck, 2016).

There is a poignant and insightful piece by Christine Emba after the white supremacists landed in Charlottesville. (Washington Post, August 18, 2017) She writes, about painful memories of current racism and marginalization: “No, I can’t just ‘get over it.’” Her last line: “Why is it so hard for you to care?”

Petula Dvorak writes about the abuse of girl gymnasts (six years old and up, over decades) as the result of a systematic denial of their complaints.

After mentally reliving some incidents in my past, I thought, how could I have responded better? In some of my experiences, I froze up, walked away, ran away from insults and aggressions. (No assaults, thank you, God.) There must be guides on what to do? Any tips for the weary?
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Yes, there are, it turns out, for example:
“How to Respond to a Harasser? 10 Things to Say”

“Assertive Responses [to street harassment]”
 
I saw a video tutorial by Act.tv, on “Understanding White Supremacy (And How to Defeat It).”

It inspired my own take on MISOGYNY. It is 7.5-minute tutorial on WHAT is misogyny, what causes it, how it is expressed in social practices and rules, and how we can reduce it.

Finally, on a positive note, the wisdom of the recently departed Ursula Le Guin, a writer, who gave a commencement speech at Mills College in 1983, that tells women a way to think about where we find ourselves.
 
There is MUCH WISDOM out there. It just wasn’t in my mind when I needed it and could have handled it, e.g., entering college. I wish for a boot camp on “the world for women and minorities.” It is possible to be better equipped for the bad stuff, and to learn to roll with some punches, ignore, resist, and succeed in chasing your dreams in spite of it. Bring your sisters along on the wisdom. And, if you have any strength left, act to change it. 

It hurts to get a bad review of your book because it is a rejection. It says “I don’t like this thing” but feels like “I don’t like you/your taste.”

It is worse if you think the review is unfair. What is “unfair?” “Unfair” means “unkind, inconsiderate, or unreasonable.”

I think the following are unreasonable and unkind: “I hate this beach [but I hate all beaches].” “I wish you hadn’t served peaches because they make me sick [but I ate them].”

In matters of art, of course, your experience of a product depends on your taste, your preferences, your experience, and your sophistication with the medium, perhaps. “That play was long and boring. [Because you like short comic sit-coms on TV.]” “I would never buy an abstract painting –they are all bad. [Because you like representational art, especially puppies and kittens, on your walls.]”

There is no objective measure, except maybe regarding technique. “That photograph of a kitten would be better if the photographer would have used special lighting, framed it to be more interesting, etc.” That is, the photographer did not employ what you think are “good” techniques. Although, to be fair, the photographer may have tried to break with convention and notions of “good” technique.

Or, YOU JUST DIDN’T LIKE THIS PHOTO, although you normally like photos of kittens.

The very first review of my novel MY BOAT IS SO SMALL to be posted said: “This is the most depressing book I’ve read.” I looked up the reviewer and her favorite genre is light romance. My book is in the category of dark, psychological drama. Like Ingmar Bergman. Whom I never recall apologizing for being depressing.

Was it easy to ignore her? No. I want to please everybody. I want everyone to “get” me, and find my themes and characters to be rich and interesting. I want them to find insights about people and find that they relate emotionally to some dark scenes. I want them to be fans of Bergman movies.

One of my first impulses was to convince myself that the book is not as depressing as other best sellers. For example, THE HANDMAID’S TALE, whose concept is so depressing I will not read it. Then I found that a new book called THE INCEST DIARY is ranked #642 overall among millions of ebooks. In the preview of this book, nearly every page is a gruesome “scene” (in my opinion.) One of the reviewers thought that the author was a man who wanted to write child porn and found a way to do it. (The publisher is mainstream. The book is not classified as erotica.)

My book is not that “challenging.”

To further soothe myself, I looked up some of my fellow authors. For example, an experienced writer of romances who got some bad reviews. One reviewer gave her a one-star rating because she used the F word, the reader stating that the story was probably going to include sex, so she didn’t finish the book. (And apparently that was not true. No sex in the story. Just an F word.)

Then I found an author who has sold one book very well, but had a few challenging books. One was a memoir about her marriage and divorce, which is right up the alley of MY BOAT IS SO SMALL. There were only few reviews and they range from one to five stars. She was in my category in having a book of “contemporary fiction” coming out on August 8th, and her ebook was also offered on preorder. The preorder had NO reviews yet.

Do you know the word “schadenfreude?” It means deriving pleasure from another person's misfortune.  I was NOT GLAD that she got a bad review before, and that she had no reviews on the new book. I feel BAD for her. Mostly, I feel RELIEF THAT I AM NOT ALONE in a certain combination of topics (in our novels) and experimental styles.

Has that cured my depression? No.

These days, social media invites everyone to opine, but our level of civility has taken a dive. Hostility has taken on a pleasure in itself. Hostility has become a hobby. The haters gotta hate because it is fun. They hope for “likes”—i.e., affirmation.

In fact, writers, and reviewers, like to opine too. We are all indulging in self-expression.

Another of my peers was horrified to receive a one-star review and begged her friends to “vote it down” it on amazon. That means we called up the review and where the question is posed: “Did you find this review helpful?” we chose NO. You are VOTING ON THE REVIEW, not the book. You do not need to read the book to have this opinion. There is some satisfaction in having your gang “vote down” what feels like an unfair review. The review will “sink” on the list of reviews, hopefully a few page-scrolls out of sight.

Back to the meaning of “unfair.” If I say “I hate beaches,” then I should not rate your favorite beach. It isn’t even helpful to tell the world, “beaches are not my thing.” Why do you feel the need to join the conversation about anybody’s favorite beach?

One reason, my group has speculated, is that some reviewers are in a program that REWARDS MANY REVIEWS. They will submit reviews of books they don’t really like and didn’t really finish, because they get points and they want more points.

I am just glad I didn’t produce a $25-million movie only to read an early review that gives it one star.
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My other sanity exercise is: “Imagine this book is not yours, it is not you, and maybe it doesn’t exist.” Writing the book was an optional undertaking. Art is optional entertainment. Note to self: Opt OUT of taking it too seriously and wishing the world was one big LIKE.

A man was telling how, a century ago, his father sought 20 acres in the middle of rural Pennsylvania so he could raise his children away from “the mean streets of Huntingdon.” (Huntingdon has a current population of 7,000. The word “mean” seemed hilarious, and I hope it referred to raccoons.)

Also, recently, a young couple near me was speculating about the best place to raise their toddler. Should you isolate them from exposure to harsh realities, or coach them through? That is, how do you teach children about “reality,” and also instill in them HOPE and JOY, and keep them safe?

This is playing into my feeling that our society has turned mean in the last two years. Yes, hate and meanness are being modelled by our leaders on a daily basis. And it is expressed by random “haters,” also on a daily basis, who are killing Muslim children in the formerly-safe suburbs or plowing their cars into crowds or blowing themselves up in popular cafes. Or posting vicious—the worst--things you could say, in great numbers, on social media.

We are hearing that some things we held precious are going to be destroyed: national parks, spiritual places on Indian reservations, whales and dolphins, and clean drinking water. Dog fighting is okay again. It’s okay to say you love dog fighting. BRUTES and BULLIES are in!

Yes, I think we have entered a dark age. And I believe we will come out of it.

But meanwhile, there is period (one year, a decade?) of visible evil and suffering. And yes, a democratic society voted for a leader who is bringing this catastrophe, possibly because they felt so hopeless already that they wanted the whole country to get blown up and suffer along with them. We are headed to be like the banana republics in South America, where the rich live in gated communities and drive from house to rich play-grounds in black-tinted limousines. Like Africa, where septuagenarians suck all the money out of the population, sock it into foreign bank accounts, and turn away from refugee camps full of starving, sick people (who comprise most of their society).

Yes, there are thinkers who say Africa will be saved by the youth, who will rise up and take power back.

Who will save us? Will there be enough leaders and activists to put jobs, health care, money and opportunity back into the hands of the majority of the population? Undo the “wired” capitalist systems that let billionaires avoid taxes, export jobs, exploit workers, make higher education exclusive again, and disdain charity? It doesn’t look like our elected leaders are willing to fix this. Those in power have reached levels of corruption and sell-out formerly seen in other countries.

While the pendulum swings between horrible and okay, in our daily political life, we have to find redeeming hope and joy, and not succumb to hopelessness and anger. Be more kind than we’ve ever been. Help others as much as we can. Random acts of kindness, tolerance, respect, and appreciation. Materially, most of us still live better than most of the world.

I am compartmentalizing. Most of my day, I try to behave like my best self, the person I would want to be in a good, spiritually ideal society. The kids need to witness decency and respect. People around us will see that and we can lift each other. But during other moments of the day, I am angry, incensed. Depressed, hopeless about the good things I value: equal rights, support for the weak and sick, equal opportunity. Social justice. We need to keep acting, and voting, for the values we hold.
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Thanks to all the people who are RESISTING the transgressions against democracy, against civil rights, against charity and giving, and respect. I think we will prevail. I am sorry we could not take it for granted, and the election swung us into a dark age, making it hard work again. 

My writing life just took a BIG turn: Kindle Press selected MY BOAT IS SO SMALL to be published as an ebook.

Marketing started immediately with a Facebook group called Kindle Scout Winners. It seems we are coached into tweeting, and, most impressive, being a supportive peer. I suddenly have dozens of new friends. 

I feel a new persona landing.​ Planet "Kindle Scout Winner." Actually, winner anything is FINE.

In weeding my files, I came across my father’s short memoir. Since it was written in quite readable English and actually edited into a book (by my mother?), it was easy to turn it into a publication.

I put it on amazon because the other “family memoirs” have found a readership beyond family.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0990586286/   A RELUCTANT CITIZEN

There was a big surprise in the memoir. The man I grew up with was silent and reticent. He was bothered by the noise of children. He barely said “Hello” in the morning and wanted to be alone, in the woods, if he could.

The man in the memoir is a completely different version of my father. He is outgoing, ambitious, assertive, engaged in the community and in politics. He is an eager and idealistic teacher, at all levels including the first grades. He is caring of others, adaptable, even goodnatured and resilient. He sings, he dances with exuberance, he hikes, swims before work in the morning.

Much of his charm was invisible to me (although my mother assured me she knew a different person). Now I appreciate even more the toll of the war on both of us. And, I appreciate how well he recalled those early years, writing in his sixth language.

If you are retired, drop a little picture of yourself on paper for the future family who may never get to hang out with you long enough to get to know the inner person. If you’re young, keep a diary to share later.
 
Recently, Sheryl Sandberg wrote about her family’s recovery from the early death of her husband. They made videos recalling good memories that they could revisit when it felt like his presence was fading. See her book, Option B.  These "recordings" helped them mourn him and kept him alive in their hearts.

MY BOAT IS SO SMALL is up for nomination to get published by Kindle Press.

The window is April 21 through May 21, 2017.

If you nominate, and they end up publishing the novel, you will get a free copy of the ebook.

HELP!! Give me a boost! Tell your children you supported a writer, and they can be one, but it is hard to get published. Take part in a new trend in publishing (crowd-sourced review).

Here's the place to NOMINATE:
https://kindlescout.amazon.com/p/10GJ9H8B1HRC7

This is simplistic: in the olde days, a patron decided an artist was “worthy,” and supported him/her financially. “Keep up the good work.”

In the last century, social marketing found that surveys of consumers would be a way to reduce the risks around a new product. They SURVEYED, and had FOCUS GROUPS, looking for a winner. It was costly.

In publishing, a VERY SMART EDITOR was the filter: he or she “bet the farm” on an author. Some were great at predicting success in the marketplace.

Now, we have CROWD-SOURCING. I am a big fan of the TV show THE VOICE. After their judges (“editors”) screen singers, they turn the competition over to THE PUBLIC. We get to vote for our favorites, and they are advanced to the finals. At a certain point, the judges’ picks are filtered by THE MASSES, in picking a winner. It is feasible to test the goods with the ultimate consumer, en masse.

Literary agents are telling us that they are bombarded by thousands of manuscripts a year and “they have to fall in love” to pick a winner which is still a speculation that they can sell the mss to a publisher, using their contacts. Everybody needs to make money. This means a HUGE “slush pile” – the mss that are queued up to be rejected. No love, sorry.

The Kindle Scout program is about crowd-sourcing the review of new novels. If someone is a winner, the cost of publishing a book is low, because they mainly do ebooks (=no inventory, dirt cheap reproduction).

My new novel – MY BOAT IS SO SMALL – is up for a Kindle Scout Campaign. YOU – YOU -- YOU can vote for this book to make the finals and get a publishing contract with Kindle Press.

JOIN ME IN THIS FUN! NOMINATE my book! If they publish it, you’ll get a free copy!! You are part of the team, making decisions about “winners.”

Please make my book a winner, at least here…   Thanks!
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Link for nominating my book: https://kindlescout.amazon.com/p/10GJ9H8B1HRC7
​

The Crimson Blight by Ona Eirosiut Algminiene, translated by Leo Algminas. 2014.

Crimson Blight fictionalizes a short period in Lithuania’s history, between 1940 and 1941 when Russians occupied the country. It belongs to the genre of personal accounts of a horrible time during WWII. As a novel, it has a lot of weaknesses. As a fictionalization of memories or a diary, it offers something interesting: what was the daily experience of seeing the Russians come in and take over. The perspective is a land-owner’s in a small Lithuanian town.

Be warned it is also in the category of atrocity stories. A few things I learned here: Common Russian soldiers were mad to discover all Lithuanians lived better than they did, no matter what class; they were victims of Stalin’s forced conscription; and that might explain some of their anger and brutality.

The narrator’s experience of a level of brutality that shakes your faith in God and humanity explains why many Lithuanians who stayed through the German occupation that followed could not bear to live with Russians again—they fled and they would not go back to Russian occupiers after the war. Jews were not inside the Lithuanian social circles (in this story); they helped the Russian occupiers run the place; and this family of Lithuanians did not identify with them nor sympathize with them. Nor did they hate Jews.

Finally, I learned that it is very hard to figure out when you’ve had enough abuse and you are ready to run for your life. Clinging to routine, tradition, faith, work, and family is normal, especially when the devil starts living in your house.
 
A Woman in Amber: Healing the Trauma of War and Exile by Agate Nesaule. 1997.

The author is a professor of literature in America who captures as a memoir her journey from living as a child in Latvia during the invasions of the Soviets and the Germans, fleeing the country and living in a DP camp, and then immigrating to the U.S. There is a therapeutic theme as the author draws on her early traumatic experiences to explain difficulties she had in relationships later in life. It is a story of perseverance in spite of awful early experiences, and insights gained over decades that followed. People who shared similar experiences will find it especially meaningful.
 
Forest of the Gods by Balys Sruoga, translated by Aušrinė Byla. 2005.

Balys Sruoga was a literary intellectual in Lithuania and a professor at Vilnius University. German occupiers sent him to the Stutthof concentration camp in 1943. Like Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five, Forest of the Gods is written as fiction that tries to present an experience of war, in this case, the concentration camp, as a microcosm of civilization and its absurdities. Sruoga died in 1947, soon after the war. His manuscript (in Lithuanian) was banned, then finally published in 1957. It is a shocking and gripping story of the ordeal of victims of the Nazi invasion.

Fading Echoes From the Baltic Shores by Edward R. Janusz. 2012.

Janusz’s story is told as a memoir left by his mother, of which twenty pages were true and more filled in by him. Alongside the personal story of finding a war arrive on your property, forcing decisions about who/what to trust and what to do to save the life of your family, Janusz also fills in substantial researched history, especially his favored military history. The juxtaposition of highly personal events and the course of World War II as affecting Lithuania are powerful. The book is not perfect and could have been edited and cut for a few things, but it is highly readable, fascinating, and meaningful to émigrés from that era.
 
We Are Here: Memories of the Lithuanian Holocaust by Ellen Cassedy. 2012.

The story of Ellen Cassedy’s journey to Lithuania to learn Yiddish and uncover family history is a wonderful and personal story written as a memoir. She meets with a whole spectrum of people, for example, some of the few Jews remaining in Lithuania, and Lithuanians who wanted to “witness” something to her (a Jew) before they died. Like a mystery writer, she uncovers tiny pieces of evidence and puts them together. Like an anthropologist, she captures deep values and prejudices.
Most important and most interesting to me were the moral ambiguities. Did Lithuanians help and even independently carry out genocide for the Nazis? Did Jews who served as police in the ghettos collaborate or protect lives when they delivered up hundreds of ghetto occupants at a time knowing they were being sent to be shot in the forest? Why didn’t Jews fight back? Did Lithuanians help them survive? Who suffered the most, Jews or thousands of Lithuanians deported to Siberia by the Soviets (a question debated in Lithuania)? She captures views from every perspective, whether we like them or not.
If you are Jewish or Jewish-Lithuanian-American, this is an fascinating adventure into horrible events and the views of every-day people possibly including your family. If you are interested in the Holocaust, it is painfully detailed.
Her narrative is told as the experience of a visitor in Vilnius, like a diary. It shows that she is an accomplished journalist. The book filled in many blanks for me. I am glad to see it won many awards.