Picnic in Durham, June 13, 2009

MyVaiva blog readers, you are invited to a picnic in Durham on Saturday, June 13. Time yet to be determined. BYOB.

For several years (about 10?) we celebrated the Feast of St. John with a picnic and bonfire in Durham. St. John's night is the shortest night of the year, much shorter in Lithuania than it is here, and so they celebrate it. My very first St. John's night celebration was in Vilnius in 1980, when Vaiva and I were with a tour group of civil engineers and urban planners. I think that the celebration was only marginally legal (an expression of Lithuanian nationalism, a no-no in the USSR of the 1980s).

I'm not promoting this picnic as widely as our past ones. I hope to have a bonfire, but the town ordinance now prohibits fires after dark. This picnic is not for St. John's, of course, it is the six-month anniversary of Vaiva's death.

I'm putting the date up now so you can plan for it if you are interested. Details will follow, suggestions are welcome. You don't need to RSVP, though it would be helpful for planning purposes.