Berlin Wall: Many Years Later
In 1989 I was in the military and the events in Berlin went largely unnoticed in our little installation. We watched the news as long as it didn’t distract us from the our main occupation – counting days until the discharge. 20 years later, when the excitement of breaking down a hated symbol of the Cold War died down many people are still not sure if it was a good thing.
In the end, the Wall couldn’t really exist any longer and the resentment most likely resides in the generation who had to bear the brunt of the reunification and all the hardships associated with it. History is moving along and today is a good day to take a look back at the way it was just a short 20 years ago.
The image below was painted in 1990, later destroyed and was being repainted last summer.
The best and the funniest movie about that time is the award-winning Good Bye Lenin! It’s truly worth suffering through the subtitles.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJb4efZcFUM
Continue reading →Johnson County Improves Bus Service To Spite Itself
Every child in Johnson County, KS knows that bus is bad. Our relationship with the bus service ends on the first day we are able to get a driver’s license and our fine-leather-clad feet never step through a bus door again. From there on, our asses are firmly planted in the leather seats of overpriced imported cars which are mandatory in Johnson County. Once in a while we see a bus on a street or a highway and we give its invisible passengers the same look a person gives to a plumber who is about to go elbow-deep into a full toilet bowl. We distrust party buses, avoid shuttles, shun trolleys and only begrudgingly use charter buses but only when no one we know can see us.
All that said, why are we investing over $50 million into improving the bus service?
Continue reading →Behind The Iron Curtain: Katya’s Doves
In 1986 the Iron Curtain was starting to lift and the Soviet and American people got their first glimpses of each other. That year Katya Lycheva traveled to the United States with the mission of peace and even met with the President Reagan.
Few days ago I saw this article from some Russian publication of that time and translated it for the blog. It’s funny how even as late as 1986 the article had to include a mandatory “evil Americans” paragraph (highlighted).
Katya’s Doves:
This photograph shows Katya Lycheva. She is talking about the trip to the USA she took last spring with the delegation of the Soviet Committee for Peace.
Katya was welcomed with warmth and hospitality. Children and teachers were waiting for her in schools. They decorated their classrooms, painted greeting banners and made souvenirs for her.
From city to city a welcoming wave of warmth and hospitality was rolling with an increasing power. Chicago, New York, Washington D.C…. Children wanted to find out what Katya likes, learn her favorite songs.
When during the first days of the trip in one of the schools in Brooklyn Katya started singing “Solnechny Krug” (Sun Circle) no one knew the song and could not join in. But days later in Los Angeles the whole audience was singing with Katya “May there always be sunshine”!
However, today’s America showed Katya its hostile, slanderous, malicious underside. The enemies of peace and disarmament tried their best to harm Katya’s mission. They asked sneaky questions at press-conferences. They tried to catch her off-guard to take embarrassing pictures. They threatened her over the phone and tried to intimidate her.
Despite all these efforts, she showed up at all scheduled meeting happy, smiling and calm like the day before and again the children tried to reach out to her together with those adults, who want peaceful, wonderful life for everyone on this planet.
Katya came home, but in the hearts of hundreds of American children remained the feeling of gratitude to her, for the first time they got to learn the truth about our country. They also cherished white paper doves with the addresses of the Soviet boys and girls written on their wings – addresses of friendship.
Katya Lycheva honorably carried out the mission started by her little American counterpart Samantha Smith.
The sky’s bright blue.
The sun is up high—
This is the little boy’s picture
He drew it for you
and then wrote there for you.
Just to make clear what he drew.
Chorus:
May there always be sunshine,
May there always be blue skies,
May there always be my mama,
May there always be me!httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zr6gLQ6CmYY
Continue reading →Old Photos: A Marriage Palace in Leningrad
Every person who grew up in the Soviet Union has photos like these stashed in their dusty photo albums. Not all Marriage Palaces used to belong to the Czar’s family but any self-respecting city had a place where the new units of society were forged or at least registered under the watchful stare of
Jesus ChristVladimir Illych Lenin.Old Photos: Kansas City Bombing
I couldn’t find any article or a reference to any specific bombing in Kansas City for this set of the Life Magazine photos taken in 1953. I think they just illustrate a few unrelated episodes in a day of the KCPD’s Bomb Desk.
Who wants to identify the hotel visible in the window? And what is the headlight-shaped object on the desk – intercom?
Continue reading →