Arved Plaks
My wife and I spent a week in our nation’s capital! The draw was the celebration of 60 years of the Estonian American National Council’s (EANC) work on behalf of Estonia’s struggle for independence and of the work to maintain the Estonian community’s cultural heritage in the United States. But we used this trip also to take a broader view of where we have been and where we are heading.
Our daily experiences left us exhausted so that we skipped watching our usual daily dose of television news and thus missed all the current statistics: “today in Syria blank number of people were killed,” and “in Iraq a suicide bomber blew blank people up in a market” - you fill in the blanks. Instead we tried to digest the meaning of what we saw or heard.
The main event of the trip was the gala on September 29 to recognize the work of EANC. The occasion well justified the gathering of our Estonian community and friends to recognize people who contributed to its success. About 200 people attended the $175 per plate dinner at the Willard Intercontinental Hotel’s banquet hall. We heard presentations and speeches, socialized and at the end of the evening danced to the tunes appropriate to the average age of the folk present. (Artklit saab täispikkuses lugeda Eesti Elu 19. oktoobri paberlehest.)
