Blogs

Every year in August the celebration of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary takes place in Aglona, to which pligrims arrive not only from all corners of Latvia, but from many other countries, too. The Aglona church, dedicated to the Mother of God Blessed Virgin Mary was blessed in 1751 and today it is considered one of the main Catholic holy places in Europe. In 1980 the Pope has assigned the status of a basilica to the church, and after the restoration of Latvia's independence, in September 1993 John Paul the Second honoured Aglona with a personal visit. The main relict of the basilica is the miraculous icon of Aglona's Mother of God, near which, according to legends, not one wonder occured. There is one episode of my life that deserves being told about exactly on this day...

Geography and politics may change our national identity, but it doesn't change the essence of who we are.

This summer is so intense, working on the creation of the new short film, The Only Photograph. The days pass so quickly that I don't notice them - the filming at the Latvian National Theatre at Jāņi is already history. But the bringing to life of the historic moment so long ago - the moment of Latvia's proclamation - continues to be right here with us.

August 19th is approaching. Probably untill the end of my life this date will remain associated for me with the year 1991... On that day, seventeen years ago, I was woken up at six in the morning by a telephone call: the worried voice of an elderly acquaintance, who literally slept with a radio reciever in her bed, breathed into the reciever only two words: "Turn on the radio".

Earlier this year I wrote a blog which asked whether Latvia was old. I discovered that at 90, the Republic of Latvia was older than about 150 other countries in the world. Of course, before there was a Latvian Republic, there was a land inhabited by Latvians, as well as their ancestral tribes known as the Latgallians, Couronians, Semigallians and Selonians. Although the Germans and Vikings started arriving well over 800 years ago, these early Latvians go back even further. Their ancestors, known as the proto-Balts started arriving here about 4,000 years ago. As far as scientists can tell, the first human inhabitants of Latvia - whoever they were - showed up 11,000 years ago, about a thousand years after the end of the last glacial period.

The older we get, the more we value traditions. Sometimes, when there is not enough traditions, we create them ourselves and from that moment on - follow them religiously. Tradition to twice a year explore one of Latvia's provinces by taking the country roads, with director of the Latvian Academy of Sciences Institute of economics Raita Karnīte behind the wheel, started in my life six years ago. Usually this happens early spring - the first leaves appear on trees during those days - and late autumn, towards the end of the leaves falling. For the academician Raita Karnīte these are her work trips. She believes that in economics numbers only cannot be trusted. To understand how depressive one or another region is, or on the contrary - how it was able to adapt to the new market conditions and is picking up economic development speed, one needs to drive through this region and see how it all looks in real life - houses and surrounding land, fields and gardens, by-the-road restaurants and country hotels...

My Teacher has passed away - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. No, he has never taught me physics or math, of course. I did not go to the country school in the Ryazan region, where after being freed from the GULAG the future Nobel prize winner in literature urned his daily bread, drawing out on blackboard formulas and equasions in chalk.

Sometimes books not only tell history, they make it. In 1959 Uldis Ģērmanis wrote a history book about Latvia while he was living in Sweden. He was in Sweden because Latvia was under Soviet occupation, and he wrote The Latvian Saga (Latviešu Tautas Piedzīvojumi) for other Latvian refugees and their children, because the Soviets were trying to erase what they didn't like about Latvia's history.

I will tell you upfront: I borrowed the title for this blog from a local newspaper Bauskas Dzīve (Bauska's Life). I saw the flashy headline on a page and read an announcement under it: "The municipality is giving a unique calender 400 days before Bauska's 400 years to prominent Bauska citizens on June 20th. There is and can be no similar publication since the year in this calendar starts on June 20th and ends June 25th 2009 - on the day of the town's 400-year anniversary".

I once made the mistake of saying that storks are Latvia's most spectacular summer tourists. An ornithologist quickly corrected me. ‘Home' is where you build your nest and raise your children, and each summer an estimated 8,000 pairs of White Storks make their homes in Latvia. They just spend their winters 7,000 kilometres away in Africa.