(insert mushy song title/lyric about people needing each other)

Today's notable activity: contacting tour guides to take me to the shtetls.

I tend to be independent. I want to do things for myself. As in, "I'm capable, why shouldn't I? Are you saying I can't do it?" and/or "Other people just slow me down." These not-always-useful characteristics are magnified during solo travel, which is most of my travel. So I was a bit reticent when the guides were first mentioned to me.

At the opening of my "Jewish Lithuania" program, there was a large reception at which I met a woman named Sara and we started chatting. I mentioned wanting to travel to these family places and she mentioned being taken by a tour guide.

Mentally, one eyebrow goes up; me? take a tour guide? A *tour* guide? I don't go on tours. Okay, occasionally, but not as my usual posture. Not as my way of getting to know a less touristy side of the place I'm in.

But I listen to what she is saying and respond that it sounds like it was a really good experience for her. And she mentions that she has the name of a guy and summer is the busy season so a lot of guides are booked. I say that even if I can't get someone, at least I can go and see the places on my own.

Long story slightly shorter, I am convinced that I'd be a moron to not go with a guide. Sara tells me a story of some guy who didn't want to come with her and her couple friends with the guide, did it on his own, and saw nothing. The reason is that without these guides, I would go there and be that guy, and not understand anything I was looking at.

First, I wouldn't know where to look. So many things are hidden or outside where town is now or are just the spaces where things used to be. Second, even when I was looking at something, I probably wouldn't be able to read its significance.

When looking at hidden cities, it's best to bring someone with the decoder ring. Many of these places only exist insofar as these experts know how to see them and reveal them to others.

So this morning, I followed up on some names I had been given of good guides. All who do independent tours, specifically tailored to one's personal map. You can bring friends to split the cost or go alone. I'll probably end up going alone because no one has availability in the next couple of days and after that, friends in this program who would otherwise come with, will have left town. I'll get prices and details and then, I'll choose one.

I will spend two days because the towns are spread out. Gorzd (Lang-land) and Shalel (Leibowitz-land) on one day and Linkeva (Yaffe-land) on the other, with a stop in another big town on the way there.

I have been promised sites of massacres (fun!) and some gravestones, among other sites. More surprisingly, in Linkeva, because it was so small and out of the way, it also has an intact synagogue and Jewish cemetery. Either of those things are rare to find post-WWII (especially when the smaller towns didn't have as many synagogues to be destroyed so that some would remain, and the gravestones were used in building projects), but to have both is kinda crazy.

It's unlikely that any words will still be legible on stones from before WWI, but it's possible. It's also unlikely that in a huge intact cemetary I would be able to even find the right stones, but again, possible. Either way, I know I can at the very least get to the cemetary, which is likely where Baubie's (Sally's) mother's family is buried.

On the Mom's-side front, there happens to be a man in town (Vilnius) here who is from Shalel. I was talking to my professor here and when the names of the shtetls came up, he mentioned this man, who is probably in his 70s, at least. (I say 'at least' because I am a terrible judge of age and tend to guess too young.) He doesn't speak English, but there are others around who speak Yiddish and so we'll be fine.

He goes to the Choral Synagogue regularly, a synagogue which is the only pre-war shul still in use and used for its original purpose. Unconfirmed: It's possible that people are paid for regular attendance because if Jews aren't using it, the city can take the building, or something like that (but that is another topic). So there is a regular group. He is part of it.

Even better, there is a DVD of an expedition that took him and another congregant of another nearby shtetl, back to Shalel (and the other place). I am trying to get a copy. The only issue is that the soundtrack will likely be in Yiddish. So I propose that we gather all those fabulous family members with an understanding of Yiddish in someone's living room, and watch the DVD there all together, pausing for translation, to see Shalel and what he has to say. (He was likely there in the prewar period, after Anna Leibowitz's family left, but still, neato.)

And I am able to follow up on all these details because of the help of my family. (Cue audience: Awwww.) Which brings us full circle, now doesn't it? Only because of the help and information I've gotten from you guys have I been able to do this. Thanks to everyone who has passed along a found record or document over the years. And thanks Uncle David for all the assembling of bits and pieces in your work. And Aunt Rose. And Nonny for every call where I had just one more thing to ask you because you know about everyone. And thanks Nonny, Uncle Danny, and Uncle Herbie for dealing with the list of all my questions. And thanks Aunt Linda for asking that list to them for me when they were all together and filling me in with all the other info you have! And thanks Mom and Dad for sending me your records!

Oh, the records.

If you don't know, Mom has a hugehuge file of collected records and so many detailed notes taken over the years, asking extended relatives who pass through questions about parents and grandparents and back and back. And without her pressing Baubie a number of years ago, the chart from the Cohen/Becker/Yaffe side would be significantly smaller. And Dad filled in holes in the chart when I kept getting confused about who goes where from when...

But because of all that, I have three shtetls that I'll visit sometime in the next couple weeks, and a broader family context in which to put it all.

This is in no way an independent project.