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When I went to Lithuania I took along my radio. It's a little portable job with antenna and short-wave capability. Before I left on my trip I hadn't listened to any radio for quite some time. When I arrived in Vilnius I set down my backpack on the bed. Suddenly. I heard the lovely sounds of music and Lithuanian voices. My radio had switched on!
Everywhere I went in Lithuania I had that radio. In Vilnius I could get the BBC. It was my only English language for weeks. I had no newspapers. The only books were travel guides that I brought along. Most people that I met spoke little of my language. So I communicated with smiles and gestures and my 12 word Lithuanian vocabulary. That radio was my lifeline! In Kaunas I was unable to tune in anything in English. I had been told to stay in after dark so that radio made a superb companion. Waking at dawn, I would turn it on and listen to ridiculous pop songs and commentators droning on about something, I knew not what?
When I got to Klaipeda on the Baltic coast I found CLASSICA, the Lithuanian state station, all classical music with very rare interruptions. One heard long, gorgeous pieces of symphonic and choral music. No weather. No commercials. Perhaps once or twice an hour a guy with a booming voice would say:CLASSICA! I was in heaven!
On the morning of April 7, I awakened to hear that Lithuanian President Rolandas Paksas was going to probably be impeached later that day. So, I headed up to the Seimas and I got within a few feet of the soon to be deposed leader. Later that day I filed the story for NPR.Radio is a dream. It is imagination. It can be magic. The human element has been torn out of radio. Let's put it back!
Posted by Vick Mickunas on 6/29/04; 10:55:39 AM
from the dept.
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