[extropy-chat] Lest We Forget: A small photodocumentary

[Amara Graps]

Last weekend, I created a web documentary of my slides and notes to to
accompany the Baltic Republics new step into the European Union. I
hope you find it interesting.


http://www.amara.com/Independence/LestWeForget.html

(from the Introduction)

Latvia and Estonia and Lithuania are now officially part of the
European Union. For three-quarter's of my life, these regions were
immersed in the steel wire of the Soviet Union, and freedom and
independence was a distant memory of the past and unthinkable for the
future. I ask, dear viewer, that you pause for a moment and remember
the republics' location in liberty-space in 1991, and compare that to
where we are today.

These photos document one small part of the Baltic Republics' fight
for freedom. In July 1991, one month before the Coup in Moscow that
brought the USSR tumbling down, I travelled for my second time to
Latvia and Estonia. My previous visit was in January 1990, and the
changes from one-and-a-half years before were clear. Lithuania had
already declared its Independence (March 1990), even though the USSR
didn't agree. Latvians and Estonians had also made significant steps,
pushing the freedom envelope. I saw Latvian and Estonian flags flown
for the first time. I read literature that talked of the USSR as a
country 'abroad'. Everyone was talking openly, nervously, excitedly.
They didn't know then, that their independence would be real one month
later, nor in their wildest dreams could they have imagined that they
would be part of Europe thirteen years later. It makes one a bit dizzy
to think about it.

Amara
-- 

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Amara Graps, PhD          email: amara at amara.com
Computational Physics     vita:  ftp://ftp.amara.com/pub/resume.txt
Multiplex Answers         URL:   http://www.amara.com/
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"The best presents don't come in boxes." --Hobbes