Crouched on the same block as an Arab video store and three bustling taquerías and in the same building as the 13th Ward Democratic Organization office, the location of the Balzekas Museum of Lithuanian Culture might tempt you to confirm platitudes about the dynamism of the American experience. A peek inside the museum assures you that its founder, Stanley Balzekas, is concerned with other things. Built next to his auto dealership in 1966 before a move into a larger space, the Balzekas museum is proudly and un-hyphenated-ly Lithuanian (no Lithuanian-Americans here). And it is deeply, almost Borges-ly commemorative. Neolithic axes and Phoenician bronze traded for Baltic amber share the softly-lit hall displays with 1920s vodka bottles and potted meat products, the ephemera of two free Lithuanian states separated by only a few short millenia. An independent Lithuania comes to resemble a perennial flower, blooming between the long winters of Teutonic, Tsarist, German, Polish, Soviet, Nazi, and Soviet rule. Read the rest of this entry »