I remember I used to go out and buy milk for my little daughter. There were retired people there who did not buy one liter of milk, but 4 or 5 or 6, because they were sick and the doctor told them to eat sweet cheese. So they bought all that milk and let it curdle and made sweet cheese out of it. (22)

"MIORITA" (EWE LAMB)

I don't want to describe the evolution and grievous mistakes of Ceausescu's regime in Romania. His cruelty and banality became obvious in December 1989 and made a bad impression on people.

One summer day in 1985, while I was looking for new ways of overthrowing the communist regime and its tyrannical Council of Culture in my office on Snagov street in Bucharest, I set eyes on a slides box about Romania given to me by Kiki Munshi, my assistant and director of the American Library. They belonged to the American photographer Lawrence Salzmann.

Things somehow got connected in my mind and gave birth to the idea of an American exhibition on "Miorita". Finally I made a selection of 38 pictures in order to accompany the text and a new translation into English.

Romanian Council of Culture was not the only one obstacle to this project. The American authorities that supported me proved to be uncertain as well.

In the end, the exhibition was organized at the American Library?The banner fluttered the following days on the roof of the Library and not above the heads of the visitors we were waiting for. It was just a way of reminding Romanians who found out about our exhibition that the access to their own national ballad was denied.

No use to say that the exhibition could never be visited to its native place, Poiana Sibiului. Nobody could foresee in those days of 1987 that 12 years later the exhibition would be organized again, accompanied by a book published in Romania. (I.P., Ernest H. Latham, Jr., diplomat)