Why did I decide to open a blog? The easiest answer is that yesterday during lunch with two of my professors from Brandeis they asked me why I don't have one. Actually, there is little need to look for reasons behind that... Journalism is still in my blood and I can't renounce it. So is civil activism, which has started to complicate my understanding of anthropology. Until now I was a youth activist and my work as a news correspondent only contributed to that mission and responsibility for the people I felt. Anthropology was a discipline that allowed unexpected insights into the processes surrounding me, therefore, it was fun. It was a sophisticated, almost magical Glasperlenspiel. I could reflect on my activism - organizing protests in front of foreign embassies, campaigning for the reform of higher education in Lithuania, transgressing the boundaries between a reporter and a participant in the revolutionary Minsk - using anthropological concepts and theories, however, it was never the other way round. But in September with Mark Auslander's class we started working for the development of a refugee art exhibition. And a month or so ago for Elizabeth Ferry's class "Power and Violence" I had to read two books - Samantha Power's "A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide" and Paul Farmer's "AIDS and Accusation: Haiti and the Geography of Blame". The first one tells the story of Washington's permanent inaction in the face of all the genocides of the twentieth century and the second is about structural violence affecting the survival of sick people in rural Haiti. Therefore, although being lost due to the detachment from all my previous activist engagement in Lithuania, I rediscovered it again here. From a different end, though. Now I am willing to ask whether there can be other than activist anthropology? Is there an alternative to socially aware and publicly engaged research? Can an anthropologist continue observing his subjects when they, one after the other, disappear from his field? How to behave in such an encounter? And is it possible to remain an observer for the sake of objectivity in life-threatening situations? Can anthropologists do fieldwork anywhere else than in dangerous, war-ridden places? What is the meaning of analysing the food culture in France other than just intellectual satisfaction of applying old or developing new abstract theories? How can anthropology be something other than politically engaged? Although I have some experience that makes these questions relevant, I still lack encounters... Therefore, I won't try to answer them right away. They are too complex, maybe too immature still. But I hope to use this space as my diary open to others whose critique is more than welcome (either directly here or at my e-mail address ieva@brandeis.edu). I hope it will help settle my thoughts down. And much more than that... much more than anthropology. I often find myself willing to comment on life in the U.S. or at Brandeis as an interesting academic institution in particular, but lacking a semi-public space to do that. Just record some notes on the margins of big politics, international relations, minor cultural issues, controversies... everything that might be interesting and can get lost in the daily flow of information, if unreflected, if let go...