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Maggie Steele, the storybook heroine who vaults over the moon, has been attracting thousands of visitors from around the world. So many visitors, in fact, that she’s using a time zone map to keep track of them all.* People are … Continue reading →

Inspired by Jean of Howling Frog Books, whose January posts focused on lesser-known children’s titles from (mostly) outside the U.S., I thought I’d share a few of the classic Lithuanian stories I grew up with. . . . . . . . . Meškiukas Rudnosiukas (Little Bear with the Brown Nose), by Vytė Nemunėlis This [...]

In honor of Midwinter and the world not ending, I’d like to share the following video from a folk song festival I attended back in October. First, a little background:  When my mom and her sisters were little, they used to spend part of their summers at a Lithuanian camp called Dainava, in Michigan.  And [...]

I have been reading for three days now and my desk is a mess!.  After reading Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys  I feel lucky to even have a desk.  As Hitler prepared to invade Russia, Stalin  forced millions of Eastern Europeans, including 15-year-old Lina, her younger brother and their mother, out of their homes and into labor camps in Siberia.

Their "relocation" lasted for the most of their lives.  And many of those lives lasted only a few days, or weeks or months after these people were loaded like cargo into box cars.

 In the boxcar with Lina and her family, there were teachers, a librarian, a veterinarian, a stamp collector.  They were all "criminals"; some merely because they were educated.  Others were accused because they had business dealings outside of Lithuania.  Lina's family committed the crime of helping family members leave Lithuania.

This story of survival is unrelentingly bleak.  There are touches of lighter gray when strangers are kind; a Russian soldier, a native woman forced to share her home with these foreigners.  Lina's mother is always a lady and always kind, while Lina rails bitterly against their fate.  And then, Lina finds herself responsible for keeping her younger brother alive against cold and starvation and cruelty.

This novel opened my eyes to a holocaust story of a different kind.  Hitler killed over 6 million people in death camps.  Stalin was responsible for the deaths of 20 million people whose biggest crimes were that they were not Russian and they did not worship Stalin.

Through the entire book I hoped that Lina's story would have a happy ending.  Some ray of sunshine would cut across the cold and ice and pain of the steppes.  And then the book ended.  What is happiness, after all?

We’re back from our Comic-Con hiatus with the fifth film in Cartoon Brew’s Student Animation Festival: The Impossible Moon by Meinardas Valkevičius. The film was made at the Vilniaus Academy of Arts in Lithuania. To comment on the film or read extensive behind-the-scenes notes from the filmaker, click HERE.

This just might be my personal favorite film of the festival. There are countless student films that tell stories set in space (with a large percentage of them revolving around the Russian dog Laika for some inexplicable reason), but this one stands out, mainly because it dares to challenge our perception of a famous historical event. The Impossible Moon convincingly presents an alternate history of an iconic moment through superb command of the animation medium, especially camera, staging and sound. Regardless of your feelings about the story (and for the record, I’m a space buff who doesn’t buy into any conspiracy theories), the film immediately grabs the viewer with its audacious, thought-provoking concept. My favorite part of the film is the relationship between astronaut Michael Collins and his two inflatable travel companions, which affirms that an emotional bond can exist even in a conspiratorial setting.

Cartoon Brew’s second annual Student Animation Festival is made possible through the generous support of Titmouse and JibJab.

Cartoon Brew: Leading the Animation Conversation | Permalink | No comment | Post tags: Lithuania, Meinardas Valkevičius

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By David A. Leon

Making a difference to the health of populations, however small, is what most people in public health hope they are doing. Epidemiologists are no exception. But often caught up in the minutiae of our day-to-day work, it is easy to lose sight of the bigger picture. Is health improving, mortality declining, are things moving in a positive direction? Getting out and taking in the view (metaphorically as well as literally) can have a salutary effect. It broadens our perspectives and challenges our assumptions. Looking at recent trends in European life expectancy is a case in point.

Since 1950 estimated life expectancy at birth of the world’s population has been increasing. Initially, this was accompanied by a convergence in mortality experience across the globe—with gains in all regions. However, in the final 15 years of the 20th century, convergence was replaced with divergence, in part due to declines in life expectancy in sub-Saharan Africa. However, this global divergence was also the result of declining life expectancy in Europe. Home to 1 in 10 of the world’s population, and mainly comprised of industrialized, high-income countries, Europe has over 50 states. These include Sweden and Iceland that have consistently been ranked among the countries with the highest life expectancies in the world. But while for the past 60 years all Western European countries have shown increases in life expectancy, the countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), Russia and other parts of the former Soviet Union have had a very different, and altogether more negative experience.

Trends in life expectancy between 1970 and the latest year available are shown in the Figure 1 for an illustrative selection of countries. These data were taken from one of two open sources : (i) the WHO Health for All Database or (ii) the Human Mortality Database, depending on which one had the longest time series. Differences between the sources are minimal for the purposes of this editorial. It is important to emphasize at the outset, that with one exception (discussed below), the trends shown in the Figure 1 are overwhelmingly driven by changes in mortality in adult life, not in infancy or childhood and are not the result of artefact.

Former communist countries of Eastern Europe

Between 1970 and the end of the 1980s, life expectancy at birth in the former communist countries of CEE (Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia), Russia and the Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania) stagnated or declined (Figure 1). This led to an increasing gap between them and Western European countries as the latter steadily improved. However, within a few years of the collapse of the Berlin wall in 1989, life expectancy started to steadily increase in the countries of CEE. This vividly illustrates that mortality can decline rapidly in response to political, social and economic change. Interestingly, once underway, the post-1989 increase in life expectancy in these countries has continued at a steady rate that is very similar to Western Europe. These parallel trajectories mean that the East–West gap, measured in terms of absolute differences in years of life expectancy, is proving very difficult to eliminate, despite earnest hopes to the contrary.

The trajectories of Russia and other Soviet countries, including the three Baltic States in the Figure 1, were strikingly different to those of the CEE countries. The anti-alcohol

While researching her debut novel about Russia’s 1939 invasion of Lithuania, author Ruta Sepetys interviewed survivors, isolated herself in a deportation train car, and endured a prisoner’s immersion experience.

We caught up with her to find out more about the research for Between Shades of Gray.

Q: How important is it for writers to ‘get their hands dirty’ during the research process?
A: I imagine it’s different for every writer. I personally love the immersion experience. If at all possible, I want to see it, hear it, smell it, touch it, and experience the emotions associated. That makes it easier for me to write about it. But I do have to say, I doubt I will ever go the lengths I did to research Between Shades of Gray. I damaged my back during research and spent two years in physical therapy. Next time I don’t need to get my hands that dirty.

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