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As if Lithuania herself wanted to back me up: This hunting/meat festival was held in Rotuse, the town square, on the same spot as the vegetarian festival. (Here for article.)

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Some pics from abouts a month ago.

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Some more bagel photos, courtesy again of Andrew Miksys. Article here.

As mentioned, article’s up. There wasn’t really any space to go into just how we made the bagels, which are not typically made in the average American kitchen. What I left out was the process.

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All photos, btw, were snapped by the marvelously talented and nice and tall Andrew Miksys.

We had two test runs before the big bagel event. In the first, we forgot the salt — but when we served them, they were toasted and slathered and loxed. Capers, as well — these make superb taste-diversions for the salt-lacking bagel. The next batch, which was more someone’s date than a party, were terrific and beautiful. The final batch — the bagels we eventually served at the party — was hard. We multiplied everything by five, to have enough (in the end not nearly enough), and math+alcohol, as everyone knows, =  not so smooth. And when putting in the salt, the flimsy bag tipped over and released a good deal more than was recommended. (This was the minor mishap I had referred to.) We had an immediate emergency powwow: Do we isolate the infected bowl (about 1/4 of the whole thing) and call them salty bagels? Or do we combine it with the other 3/4 yet unsalted, and hope it wasn’t too toxic and thereby ruin the entire thing?

These are questions that no man should have to face.

Sorry about the hiatus. This blog thing should get a whole lot more regular now, even if I’m unsure why I’m doing it at all.

So, aside from intense bagel-making, -preparation, and -marketing, I’m currently writing – or, rather, assembling the interviews, research, photos, and energy to write – a niceandeasy article about vegetarianism in Lithuania. Of which there isn’t; or at least, as a movement, it’s not at all western-like. That’s not to say there aren’t vegetarian-friendly places (there are, but very few) or vegetarians (again, they exist, but they’re very removed from the mainstream). Whatever – I’ll expand in the article. Interesting things to report, interesting people (including major Lithuanian celebrities!) who chime in – be there.

But at the risk of rendering my article dated upon publication, I simply must mention an event: the Vegetarian Festival, the first ever in the country. Because these images are burning a hole in my memory card.

Some context: In the middle of the festival’s festivities, which were little booths manned by all sorts of granola businesses and organizations, was a raised platform, maybe a foot tall and measuring 15×15. A little person-crane, the sort that phone line repairmen use, stood next to it.

No one I talk to knows anything re crane/stage; no one seems to particularly care. And then, thirty minutes in, about 15 girls in but their undies emerge from a tent and arrange themselves in two rows on the stage, supine, bums down, developed chests up. And then: the stage’s floor, girls and all, is layered with saran-wrap. The wrappings’ lines run perpendicular to the girls, horizontal stripes of plastic gradually packaging the strangely serious group. And then: a large exaggerated sticker, announcing the price of human meat per kilo, plus some statistic on annual animal deaths, is slapped on the corner. And then: paint is dribbled all over, presumably to represent blood. (I say presumably because the paint is pink, not red – which I presume is either an oversight or a compromise to aesthetic sensibilities, or squeamish ones.) Take a look, and lose count of the fetishes…

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It bears pedantic mentioning that it’s a sort of mixed-metaphor protest: either it’s just raw, gross human meat, with blood and stuff; or it’s packaged human meat, which would mean it’d have to be relatively clean — would you buy meat, human or otherwise, with blood (or paint) on the outside of the packaging? Maybe this question is an extension of a greater philosophical confusion underlying the stunt: Is it protesting the sale of meat, or animal cruelty? Either employs the same crude mechanics: humans are animals too! – and the display of human meat is raunchily absurd; ergo, animals should not be eaten/sold/mistreated. But the arguments do diverge at a point. Is meat just wrong, unjustifiable under any circumstances, which would be protested nicely (if amateurishly and derivatively) by simply a ‘human meat’ display? Or is the moral issue animal cruelty, and that the meat of an animal painlessly killed just might be okay, which is probably more aptly protested by visceral, viscous things, like blood and stuff. It could of course be both, the protest being a good deal more sophisticated than it initially seems. Or it could be just a sensationalist display of whatever might get a rise.

The crane, btw, was for the photographer (nice guy, not a vegetarian) to snap a bird’s eye shot.

UPDATE: You pervs seem to really like the pics. Click here for the album.

An Uman-schmoozer (a term that, if it does not exist, sure deserves to) told me that no Pushkina dwellers are allowed to sleep in their apartments when the hasidim take over. I don’t know if this is true. But I do know that some sleep in their cars.

Not that all the pilgrims are necessarily schluffin’ better.

Probably most fascinating in Uman is the cheder ochel. It’s way beyond a military operation — like i wrote, more than 20,000 people served per meal. Two meals a day. Plus kiddush, snacks, coffee, things like that. All free. From what I understand, it’s all sponsored by one extremely generous Brooklyn yid. And aside from financial support, he also organizes the thing. I couldn’t even get an estimate of the workers. There are at least a few dozen Ukrainian workers, plus security, plus servers, chefs, general organizers, machers. It’s a major, major operation. (I was lucky enough to get a glimpse past the curtain.) Also, it’s worth bearing in mind that this entirely temporary. They pitch these tents on some fields or lots, and the kitchen has to be assembled. Some behind the scenes photos:

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