luscious_purple: Snagged on LJ (great news)
On this date SEVENTY-FIVE years ago, my parents were married!!

They had to hold their nuptials at 7 a.m. -- yes, THAT early! -- because, back then, Roman Catholics got hitched only on Saturday morning, and the first Saturday of July was especially popular because the factories traditionally shut down for the first two weeks of the month and everybody went on vacation at the same time. It wasn't until I was a college graduate that I knew it was possible to take a vacation at a different time.

And today it makes FIFTY years since my mother made me mow the lawn while my father did his Saturday errands. I was 13 going on 14 and I *hated* doing yard work.

But then Dad came home and he was carrying a white vase filled with 25 large red roses, which he presented to Mom for their 25th anniversary.

Later that day we went to a camp on Lake Shirley. It belonged to the family of a woman whom my Uncle Pete was dating (they would marry the following year and she would become my Aunt Bev). Uncle Pete had brought fireworks up from the Carolinas and I played with the sparklers while my older male cousins shot off firecrackers and Roman candles. I think we were there until three in the morning.

Obviously, as a younger teen, I wasn't in a position to arrange a fancy party for my parents' 25th. I was just starting to think about planning a 35th anniversary party for them when Dad died.

It was seven years ago today that I danced in the Lithuanian folk dance festival in Baltimore. I had such a blast, even though I didn't have time to journal about it while it was all happening.

And, speaking of journaling ... TWENTY years ago today I made my first LiveJournal post. Who would have "thunk" it would have triggered many other events that shaped my life. And who would have "thunk" the site would end up in Russian hands? The world of today is indeed strange.

I wish I could post lots of photos, but I don't feel like doing all the linking. I am tired and I want to go to bed.
luscious_purple: Lithuanian map and flag -- "Proud to Be Lithuanian" (lithuanian map and flag)
Anniversaries...

My parents were married 74 years ago today.
Tom Cruise turns 60 today.
It's been six years since I danced in Sokiu Svente 2016 -- the Lithuanian Folk Dance Festival. (Today was the next Sokiu Svente, delayed two years because of the pandemic.)

And today makes 19 years since joining LiveJournal (which eventually led me to switch over to Dreamwidth).

How times have changed.
luscious_purple: The middle class is too big to fail! (middle class)
I tested negative for covid-19 several days after Balticon and have felt fine ever since.

The weekend after Balticon, I spent a Sunday at AwesomeCon, the commercial "comic con" for Our Nation's Capital. My barony had set up a booth in the exhibit hall to attract new people, and my role in the proceedings was to teach dancing for an hour. Patches, who knows much more about teaching dances than I do, had been drilling me on the ins and outs for more than a month. Something like 70 or 75 people showed up to learn an alman, a couple of English country dances and a few bransles. Thank goodness the room was equipped with a speaker that I could plug into my phone. I had brought along my friend's battery-powered speaker, but I think the carpeting and clothing would have muffled it up completely.

After AwesomeCon, I turned my attention to church stuff. Because we would be holding our annual congregational meeting virtually for the third straight year, I volunteered to run the electronic voting. So I signed up for an account on ElectionBuddy and performed test after test to try to get everything right. I think it turned out OK; some people said they didn't get their ballots, which had ended up in their spam folders, but that's to be expected. I let out a giant sigh of relief after sending out the official ballots and turned my brain off by taking a nap on the couch.

A few weeks ago, I learned that my former partner in the Lithuanian dance group back in 2016 had died. He went by the nickname Vyts (pronounced "veets") and had really badly bowed legs and was a terrible dancer. Plus, he said he had been divorced three times, and I couldn't help feeling that he was auditioning me as a possible wife #4. (The boy toy called him my "Lithuanian boyfriend.") I saw him at the Lithuanian Hall from time to time -- the last time in April when I went up there for a dancing event. (I am not dancing anymore -- I was just in the audience.) He looked as if he'd had surgery on his legs because they were straighter. I didn't have much to say, because I know from his Facebook posts that his political views were entirely opposite mine ... bleah. Still, it was a bit of a shock to learn that he had dropped dead at the age of 65, almost 66. Apparently he really was a big supporter of the Lithuanian community in Baltimore.

I know I'm rambling here, but I can't let June 17 end without noting that today is the 50th anniversary of the one day I went to school on a Saturday. The school board in my hometown could not end the academic year on Friday the 16th, because we would have been one day short of the state regulations. The teachers strongly preferred getting the school year over with on a Saturday rather than Monday, so that's what we did. (Not that we ever did any learning on the last day of the school year. It was always like "watch a movie, then get your report card.") And that's how seventh grade ended.

My strongest memory of the day is that someone let off a stink bomb in the playground crowd just before we were allowed into the building, and our assistant principal, Mr. R., stood on the steps of the main doors and shouted, "I see who you are! You're in trouble now!" That stentorian voice of his could silence hundreds of tweens and teens like nothing else before or since. We tiptoed around his massive bulk and crept to our homerooms.

And there was a giant disruption in the Force in the form of the Watergate break-in, and nothing was ever the same again....
luscious_purple: Star Wars Against Hate (Star Wars Against Hate)
Since last Thursday (or Wednesday night here) I have been intensely following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. I have no Ukrainian ancestry, but several of my friends do. Plus, Lithuania is one of those Baltic states that Putin would probably love to scoop back up in his insane quest to re-create the Soviet Union. Heck, he'd probably prefer Lithuania over Latvia or Estonia because he could just steamroller through Lithuania to get to the Kaliningrad exclave.

So, yeah, Ukraine's problem makes me worry about Lithuania's future.

R. is SO convinced that Russia will take over Lithuania within a year. He keeps telling me I should have gone to visit already, but it's too late now. He never tells me where he got this information, though -- he falls back on his past work in defense contracting. Whatever. I like to know *sources*.

Anyhow, back to mainlining CNN's live coverage....
luscious_purple: Lithuanian map and flag -- "Proud to Be Lithuanian" (lithuanian map and flag)
Just keeping busy with my own crises and the church crises and the Ukrainian crisis.

Worried that the crisis in Central Europe will spread to the Baltic states.

I am amazed that LJ is still up and running.
luscious_purple: Boston STRONG! (Boston Strong)
Yep, the summer heat and humidity are here, big time.

This was possibly the quietest Fourth of July weekend I've had in a long, long time. Because of the pandemic, my neighbor-friend T.V.P. did not have her usual blowout birthday-solstice-Fourth party, complete with the public fireworks display over the lake. My town did not have its municipal fireworks display this year. The boy toy and I watched the coverage of several major cities' fireworks on CNN.

Earlier in the day yesterday, I finally got to see Hamilton on Disney+ (courtesy of the boy toy's parents -- they subscribe on one device, and the subscription says "up to four devices," so they sent him the code). OMG. SO EXCELLENT. Of course I've listened to the soundtrack in bits and pieces over the years, and I've read the Ron Chernow biography on which the show is based, but somehow it all came together when I could see the action and could tell who was singing when. I've said it before and I'll say it again: Lin-Manuel Miranda is his generation's Shakespeare.

(I know some people don't like rap music, but I can take it in reasonable doses, and I don't find the speed of the lyrics any worse than listening to well-performed Gilbert and Sullivan operettas.)

On Friday I watched the YouTube video of the Lithuanian folk dance festival from 2016. The festival was *supposed* to be TODAY in Philadelphia, but because of the pandemic it has been postponed to August 2021. Smack dab in the middle of Pennsic, which of course has been postponed from this year too.

Le sigh. The whole year is being postponed. EXCEPT for the election. We MUST have the election.
luscious_purple: Lithuanian map and flag -- "Proud to Be Lithuanian" (lithuanian map and flag)
So, still chugging along. Still plugging along on the boring assignment for the European marketing firm. It's having a "team meeting" via Zoom tomorrow morning (that's mid-afternoon in Stockholm). Maybe I will get some brownie points for it.

At some point last week I had to push aside the boring assignment to get my information together for teaching a Virtual University of Atlantia class. After a hiatus of several years due to general laziness, I decided to teach "Medieval Lithuania" again, especially since I could do a screen-share on Zoom and use slides. In a physical classroom (or classroom tent as at Pennsic) I feel weird about doing the PowerPoint-and-projector thing, because it's such modern technology. But since we are unabashedly using high-tech teleconferencing stuff anyway, why not use it to full advantage?

Because I'd registered for other classes earlier in the day, I didn't have time to practice the talk, but my students seemed to enjoy it. I had students from at least six different SCA Kingdoms, including two from Lochac (Melbourne, Australia)! [personal profile] zhelana was one of the students too, from the Kingdom of Meridies. It was great to hear voices of people I know only online, even if it was just for a moment. (Yes, Mistress Sigrid did a lot of the student talking....) Today, several *other* people posted on Facebook that they'd like to hear the class, and Mistress Teleri wants me to teach it again at one of the Storvik A&S gatherings ... so I think I'm starting something here....

In terms of weather, today was absolutely gorgeous. Gorgeous! I had to spend a lot of time on Zoom, though, because it was our church's annual meeting, and we had to have it virtually because of the pandemic. I was especially interested to hear what people thought about the proposed budget, because I've been on the budget team, but then I zoned out during a procedural discussion. Toward the end I ate some leftover pasta for lunch, and later I took a mid-afternoon walk around the local lake.
luscious_purple: Lithuanian map and flag -- "Proud to Be Lithuanian" (lithuanian map and flag)
Last weekend the boy toy and I did some reorganizing of the small storage unit behind my condo (basically, it's an extra, non-climate-controlled closet). That involved opening a bunch of boxes of fragile items that had been sealed since I packed them after Mom's death in 1997. I did a good job back then -- absolutely nothing had broken over the years! And there were some things that I'd totally forgotten I had, like a couple of salt and pepper shakers made of blue and white china. They look like nesting chickens. I think my mother acquired them during her "blue and yellow kitchen" period in the 1970s. Boy toy and I added some of the items to the corner cabinet in the dining room and repacked others with less padding so that they would fit into fewer boxes.

I'm amazed at the amount of stuff my parents had. And the boy toy's grandmother too (who was about my mother's age, and who was close to the boy toy, so he inherited her china). I think it was their generation's culture -- they were the ones who didn't have much money in the Depression, and thus not many material possessions, so once they became young adults with their own homes, they wanted to "catch up." Plus, a lot of the modern kitchen gadgets we take for granted hadn't been invented yet, and add to that the social conventions that everybody wanted to entertain and that brides and grooms needed to receive gifts. No wonder, then, everybody had collections of china and covered candy dishes and aluminum-and-glass fruit "baskets" and pretty vases and hors-d'oeuvres trays and punch bowls and ... well, you get the picture.

I suppose I could try to sell this stuff, but I have no idea if it's worth anything. There's probably already too much of it on the market and not enough buyers. Ah, well. I will keep on enjoying these pieces, and maybe someday people will use them to pay for my funeral.

Tomorrow I'm driving out to the Eastern Shore for another "Revenge of the Stitch" SCA event -- a "garb wars" kind of competition in which six-person teams have 24 hours to sew up a whole medieval outfit from scratch. Should be fun, and I will continue to learn hand-sewing techniques.

I should end on a light note: you've got to see these briefs. Warning: you can't *unsee* them! :-D
luscious_purple: Boston STRONG! (Boston Strong)
Packing for Massachusetts tonight! I haven't been "home" since 2015. About time....

I updated my "Lady Patricia" blog with my two batches of Lithuanian cookies: http://ladypatriciaoftrakai.blogspot.com/2018/12/cookies-or.html. The entire second batch was consumed at Tina's party last night.

Between cookies and Washington Revels and parties, I'm finally feeling a bit festive in my personal life. Of course, politics in Our Nation's Capital sucks ROCKS. 2019 is going to be an economically tough year, I fear.

Back to packing. Happy Holidays, everyone.
luscious_purple: Lithuanian map and flag -- "Proud to Be Lithuanian" (lithuanian map and flag)
It's July 3, a big anniversary in my book, and not *just* because I started my LiveJournal 15 years ago today.

Seventy years ago today, this happened:

Parents' Wedding Portrait, July 3, 1948

I think my parents looked nice on their wedding day, don't you?

Also, it makes two years today since I danced in the big Šokių Šventė in Baltimore. Here's a photo of our "seniors/veterans" group, taken the morning of the festival:

seniors only

Right now a subset of my Malunas friends are in Lithuania for the Centenary Song Celebration (which also includes dancing and instrumental music and displays of tangible folk arts). I really wish I could be there, but I lack both money (duh!) and a steady male partner (I kept getting shifted around during rehearsals for the 2016 festival, and mostly I got put with a bowlegged guy who kept dropping hints that he'd like me to become his fourth wife). I hope I can get back into Lithuanian folk dancing in time for the 2020 Šokių Šventė in Philadelphia.
luscious_purple: Lithuanian map and flag -- "Proud to Be Lithuanian" (lithuanian map and flag)
1. This week saw the 40th anniversary of the Blizzard of '78. I remember it well. I was a freshman at BU and I was not expecting the storm to be so bad. I walked backward across Commonwealth Avenue to get from my work-study job to my dorm. A few hours later, the snow was so heavy and the wind so strong that the view from my 16th-story room was a complete whiteout. It was as if the outside world had vanished.

2. Four of my friends lost immediate family members this week (two mothers, one sister, and one grandmother). Death, GO AWAY!

3. At least last night I had a great time going contra dancing at Glen Echo Park with Patches and Melinda. It was my second time there -- the first was two or three years ago -- so I was able to use the "second time free" coupon I got at my initial visit. The men at contra dances tend to remind me of the men at SF cons -- "the odds are good, but the goods are odd" -- but they are polite and friendly.

4. Speaking of dancing: A couple of nights ago I learned that the 2020 Lithuanian folk-dance festival will be in Philadelphia. Yay! If I participate, I would probably have to spring for a hotel room, but at least I wouldn't have to pay air fare.

5. And next Friday will be the 100th anniversary of the restoration of the Republic of Lithuania in 1918. It's such a momentous occasion that the Pope has waived the no-meat-on-Fridays-in-Lent requirement for Lithuanian Catholics. (Of course, I am now a UU, but I still understand this.) The boy toy and I plan to go to the Lithuanian Hall for celebratory eating.
luscious_purple: Lithuanian map and flag -- "Proud to Be Lithuanian" (lithuanian map and flag)
Once again ... when you have to log into LJ/DW, you know you've been gone a while. But, hey, I've been living my life.

I didn't go to Pennsic again this year. Still not enough money. However, this might have been a good year to miss, as the weather turned out to be brutally hot and humid. Even the King of Atlantia said on Facebook that the weather was the real enemy this Pennsic, not the opposing alliance of SCA kingdoms. Both among my Facebook friends and the denizens of the Pennsic War group on FB, person after person reported that her feet and ankles were all swollen up from the heat. Lots of people packed up and left early. A full day of martial activities was canceled because of the heat -- who wants to risk heat stroke under several layers of metal and padding?

In other news ... I've been having a blast with my Lithuanian dance peeps. On Sunday the 14th we drove up to Frackville, deep in the heart of Pennsylvania coal country, to perform in the town's annual "Lithuanian Days" celebration. It was held in a nearly empty shopping mall that was built in 1980 and hasn't been updated since. I mean, I could imagine myself going with there with both my parents ... and my Dad has been dead since 1982. Both the younger and older dance groups (obviously I'm in the older one!) performed two sets, and then we went for pizza and beer in between them. The (mostly elderly) audience really appreciated our performances. And then on Saturday the 20th, we had a crab feast alongside the Severn River. Let's just say you know it's been an EPIC party when you come home and have to wash the sand off your butt!!! :-)

P.S. Tall Dancer phoned me last Monday and again tonight. In lieu of Internet chatting, he tends to call me while he's driving home from his Monday night dance group.
luscious_purple: Lithuanian map and flag -- "Proud to Be Lithuanian" (lithuanian map and flag)
Why, yes, I *know* I haven't written for a few weeks. Because ... Svente! That's the Lithuanian word for "festival." Last weekend was the big Lithuanian folk dance festival up in Baltimore, also known as Šokių Šventė 2016. I haven't been writing much about my participation in the Lithuanian folk dance group since last October, but it's been building to a crescendo ... and, finally, an awesome festival.

Oh, gosh, I could go on and on about how wonderful that festival was, even though it took me a day to get over it (I am getting so OLD). Truly awful national news this week, though, and I need to get up early in the morning for Storvik Novice Tourney and Baronial Investiture -- only my third SCA event of 2016. I feel so out of practice....
luscious_purple: Lithuanian map and flag -- "Proud to Be Lithuanian" (lithuanian map and flag)
Whew, between the Baltimore Lithuanian Festival on Saturday and the Maryland Faerie Festival today, I have been on the go a lot this weekend!! Now that I'm sitting down at the computer, I want to go curl up and sleep ... when I still need to do some of my freelance writing.

But first: This Mother's Day I thought I would honor my paternal grandmother, the one I never got to meet. I posted this photo of her on Facebook.

IMG_0700 grandmother

Here is the sum total of what I know of her:

She was born somewhere in what is now Lithuania. She came to the United States sometime before 1917, perhaps in 1911.

Her first name was Nellie. Her maiden surname began with a B. (I have seen at least three radically different spellings of it.)

She had two sons, and the older one (my Dad) looked more like her than the younger one.

In 1931, she took an "advanced beginner" class in English.

In January 1934, she died of pneumonia. She was either 42 years old (according to city death records) or 45 to 46 (according to the cemetery gravestone).

That's it. That is all I know. I have no idea whether she was a good cook, whether she liked to sew or knit, whether she sang songs to her sons or read them stories or whether she could read at all. I never asked my Dad what kind of a mother she was. But I am her granddaughter just the same.
luscious_purple: Lithuanian map and flag -- "Proud to Be Lithuanian" (lithuanian map and flag)
I already summarized the weekend on my "Patricia of Trakai" blog, so if you don't already subscribe to its feed, here it is.

Tomorrow, back to my freelance writing work.
luscious_purple: Lithuanian map and flag -- "Proud to Be Lithuanian" (lithuanian map and flag)
Today I got a nice message from one of my Atlantian heraldic peeps. The subject line said, "From my German family to your Lithuanian one..." And in the message he wrote: "Congratulations on a battle well fought." Yes, today is the 601st (601th?) anniversary of the Battle of Grunwald, and after last year, I would be remiss if I didn't mention it. :-)

This year, BTW, I didn't sign up to teach any classes at Pennsic. I just still don't know how long I will stay there. I want to travel there on Friday, August 5, when the $40 premium for getting there during the first week goes away. I have a big feature article (freelance) that is due on Monday, August 1, so there will be no land-grab weekend stuff for me, that's for sure.

I checked on the standard DC-to-Pennsic route online. Tolls have gone up slightly on the Pennsylvania Turnpike since last year. The "standard route," Exit 161 (Breezewood) to Exit 28 (Cranberry), will cost $11.35 if you're paying by cash or $10.61 if you have E-ZPass (as I do). Last year it was $10 flat.

For the heck of it I put my address and Pennsic's into Google Maps and found an alternate route that is supposedly a couple of miles shorter and a couple of minutes faster, with less time on the PA Turnpike. It goes something like this: Exit 161 (Breezewood) -> Exit 146 (Bedford) -> north on I-99/U.S. Route 220 -> Exit 28 (just south of Altoona) to U.S. Route 22 west -> that becomes U.S. Route 422 west of a town called Ebensburg -> through Butler -> turn right onto Currie Road.

Has anybody gone that way? I'm thinking that there might be fewer trucks to dodge on that route. I'm no fan of the PA Turnpike -- I appreciate its historic significance, but it's full of trucks and construction zones and too often, when the slow-uphill lane is supposed to end, the left-hand lane ends instead, making the slow-uphill lane into the normal right lane and the normal right lane into the left/passing lane, where I suddenly have speeders up my butt. At age 15 years and 151K miles, my car isn't as peppy under a full load as it used to be, and I hate to do a number on the engine or transmission.

(A possibly little-known fact: On the trip from my place in the DC 'burbs to Pennsic, there is a net gain of about 1,000 feet in elevation. So the trip to Pennsic really does seem to be uphill.)

In other SCA news ... the dance group is having a sewing afternoon on Sunday, so I will probably go to that, now that I've found my sewing machine's "missing" foot pedal (it wasn't really missing, I just didn't look in the tote bag that was hanging on the back of the bedroom door). I have some light blue IKEA linen that I bought in 2004, and slowly I'm making it into a short-sleeved T-tunic dress. Not terribly historic, but something to wear in soupy-hot weather besides a chiton or "bog dress." I'll trim the sleeves with that "Spike" ribbon that Baroness Janina gave me years ago, and I could wear it to Atlantian 30-Year in September.
luscious_purple: Lithuanian map and flag -- "Proud to Be Lithuanian" (lithuanian map and flag)
OK, so why was this woman standing in front of the Maryland National Guard armory holding a long string-and-wood thing and with a funny-looking tasseled pouch hanging out from below her jacket? Read on.

Yesterday I decided to go to the Bright Hills Birthday and Investiture. Yeah, I figured that I would get there after the morning court ceremonies, and I knew the feast was already sold out, but at least I would get to spend a nice afternoon with friends, instead of sitting at my keyboard and stewing over missing a fun event. At this point, I probably know more people in Bright Hills than any other barony except my own.

I zigzagged in a general northerly direction to the event site, which looked vaguely familiar, so I probably did attend another event there in the past. It's up near the PA border, in real farm country, and I drove through the hamlet of Boring to get there. The temperature up there was at least 10 degrees colder, with more rotting snow on the ground and a sharp wind. (Thank goodness for indoor events.)

When I first got there, the Kingdom Seneschal was leading a discussion on the "northern principality" issue. It had already started, and I couldn't quite hear everything because there was too much noise from the back of the hall. Oh, well, I'll just have to see what develops on the mailing list.

After that was lunch. Bright Hills can make even a simple lunch tasty. Lady Ingeborg (the wire-weaver) invited me to sit with her and a newcomer (I think her name was May). Then the newcomer and I watched part of the "bardic bear pit" in which Lady Ingeborg was competing. I also started a bit of tablet weaving using a pre-warped loom I bought from Herveus at Darkover.

Next, I decided to check out the merchant area. I asked some questions of Herveus, and then I went to see Fabricdragon, because you can't ever have enough pearls for an Italian Renaissance outfit (see, I was thinking of the upcoming Three Left Feet paid gig on the 26th). I ended up buying two strands of pearls of varying sizes and color tones; I think they'll make a nice necklace.

Right after my purchase, a guy I didn't recognize came up to me and asked if I was the herald of Storvik. When I said yes, he said, "The King would like to see the Storvik baronial herald now." Well, I thought that was rather strange, because there was no shortage of heraldic firepower at this event -- at least four of the heralds in attendance, including the current Clerk of Precedence and former Wreath Sovereign, are much more senior than I. And even though territorial barons and baronesses sometimes allow outside baronage to hold court in their lands, it isn't done often, and then only for unusual circumstances (for example, they want to present an award to someone who's about to go off on military deployment).

When I got to the other end of the hall, Lady Alexandra was just starting King Bryan's court (the Queen was taking a nap). His Majesty was presenting the Opal to a woman whom I think was a past baronial herald, so I figured that's why I was invited to the court, as I am a Companion of the Opal myself. (Storvik's Baron William and Baroness Sorcha were among the onlookers, but not doing anything else active.) King Bryan presented several other Opals and Coral Branches.

Then I heard *my* name called. It almost didn't register with me! (Well, with the background noise...) I knelt before the King on my left knee, which is slightly more accommodating of contact with hard floors than the other one. The King asked me if I could speak Lithuanian, and I said not much, but I knew that "thank you" is "aciu." Then he said that he has heard lots of good things about my Lithuanian studies, and that it was great that I have been studying such a small country -- at which time I said something like, "But it used to be a much bigger country!" I'm sure I was blushing quite a bit and my face was pulling the blood out of my brain or something. Bottom line, the King inducted me into the Order of the Coral Branch for arts and sciences.

I got lots of congratulations afterward; plus, a woman who said she is 77 years old sat me down and said she wants to write a historical novel about Queen Jadwiga. I don't know if anything will come of that, but we exchanged phone numbers, and she said she has a copy of the book Lithuania Ascending, which I have been really eager to read (and which is really expensive to buy).

Tale to be finished tomorrow... I will just note that my Coral Branch came on the same day as Zygmunt's elevation to Laurel in the Midrealm, so it was a really good day for Polish-Lithuanian studies in the SCA!

May 2025

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