Romas Kalanta

I took these photos a week ago, on my way back from Treblinka and Białystok, but hadn’t posted them, not satisfied with stitching them together and also not satisfied with the effect of their being displayed separately. Listening to a charming group of a dozen senior German tourists in a Ukrainian restaurant tonight has me thinking of Holger Meins and Romas Kalanta. That and the degtinė. (I won’t lie to you.) And an article on Leonard Cohen. Somehow international news about Brett Kavanaugh attempting or not attempting a drunken rape at a party with the sort of students I successfully avoided before dropping out of the alternative high school I went to in order to avoid the Kavanaughs and Fords at the traditional high school has me thinking again of those years. 1972. The Christmas Bombing. I remember the Christmas Bombing. The streets were snowy and cold. I wore my green corduroy coat with the peace sign, „War is Not Healthy for Children and Other Living Things“ and „What if they had a war and nobody came?“ patches. Kalanta would have been at that time seven months dead, burnt to death.

The Übersetzerin is telling a story from 1961. As I was an infant in a cradle others were fleeing from russische Soldaten. Now she’s on the phone and I can understand some of the Lithuanian.

What do I think of drunken prep school kids? Because Trump! I remember reading once that one of the I think it was Rochester draft board raiders later moved to Italy and opened a tourist agency. This is making more sense to me now.

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