Wait, we’re playing tag?

So I guess I’ve been tagged. By Elijah, no less. The last time I did something like this, I had a Xanga. Beat that MySpace generation.

Here are the tag rules:
1. Go to where you store your digital photo folders. Open the 4th folder.
2. Go to the 4th picture and post it.
3. Explain the picture.
4. Tag an additional 4 people.

You’d think that, being an Apple employee, I would use iPhoto to organize my photos, but because my primary computer died, I’m using a Mac old enough not to support the version of iPhoto I had been using to organize my photos. So my pictures, all 28GB of them, are in sort of a disarray. The ones I took in high school are pretty well organized because I didn’t have a photo library software, so I manually managed all of the folders and files. But since then I’ve just imported all of my photos and let iPhoto do the rest. It’s wonderful. But anyway, here’s my 4th picture from the 4th folder:

The original of this photo is actually buried beneath the hierarchy of my photos from Latvia, but I found this copy in a folder I had created to organize photos I wanted to print for a contest. At first, I was a little disappointed I didn’t land on a picture with people in it, because I generally find them more interesting, especially for purposes like this. But this one has a great story. 

I shot this photo in 2002 during a mission trip to Latvia with Houston’s First Baptist Churc – my first of four such visits to Latvia. I’m standing inside of a large concrete monument, built on the grounds of a former Nazi concentration camp just outside of Riga, the capital. This long, hollow block is just a small part of the entire memorial – complete with 6 or 7 seven large statues and similar smaller monuments. The statues and various monuments are all awe-inspiring on their own, but the collected sum is magnificent. What’s so interesting about this specific group of monuments compared to any other marking a former concentration camp? It’s pretty much defunct. The eternal flame no longer burns, what’s left of the museum room is pretty empty. Why? Because this memorial was built by the Soviets right after World War II and in the words of one of my friends and guides to the memorial, “It was built to  say, ‘Look, we liberated you! We’re so great,’ just as much as it was built to memorialize the dead.” Though you can’t see it in the photo, above my head is steel lettering spelling out, in Russian, Latvian, and Lithuanian (I think), the numbers and nationalities of those who died at this camp during the war. One of the things that is is so touching about this place is that even though the Latvian government doesn’t officially or financially support the memorial, hundreds of Latvians and tourists alike visit it every month. 

So that’s the story of my 4th photo from the 4th folder.

I tag Evan, Annalee, John, and Jonathan (If he even still knows the password to his own blog.)