• Old Photos: Just Some Old Photos

    I’ve been meaning to use the word maven  on this blog for a long time, so here goes:

    Local antiquing maven and dealer Susan let me scan some of these random old photos before she puts them up for sale. Susan’s antiques can be found on Etsy, her Twitter, Facebook and blog, as well as at the River Market Antique Mall booth 622, but she highly recommends visiting the other 621 booths as well.

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  • Behind the Iron Curtain:Chernobyl

    On this day 22 years ago Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant exploded and became the world’s worst nuclear disaster. I don’t have much of a Chernobyl personal story. It happened right before the May Day when we were looking forward to a weekend of camping and drinking. Soviet Government did not even acknowledge the disaster and obviously didn’t know how to deal with it, so all the information was coming in the form of rumors and Voice of America shortwave broadcasts. Some unconfirmed whispers about a fire on a nuclear power plant did not stop us from spending few careless days in tents around the campfire. It was literally the wind direction that decided who will be affected by the fallout. My friends and me were among the lucky ones, wind blew in the opposite direction. There are few people in Kansas City who were drafted to work on the site clean-up and decontamination. There are probably hundreds of thousands of people who were affected in various degrees. Nowadays, there are plenty of pictures of the ghost town which is still stuck in 1986 and tours of the disaster area are freely available. The eerie images from the 30 km zone would make a suitable background for the final scene of the Planet of the Apes. Just like the destroyed Statue of Liberty in the movie it stands as a reminder of a good intentions gone bad, government inefficiency and lack of caring for the people, and heroism of the simple people in the face of unknown and deadly force.
    More information is available here.

    Chernobyl,
    Reactor is still going,
    Still taking lives.

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  • Nuff Said

    Somewhere between Gardner and Edgerton:

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  • Old Photos: More From 1938 Kansas City

    Continuing from my previous post, more photos of 1938 Kansas City made by William Vandivert. Most or all of these are previously unpublished; I could not find a corresponding issue of the Life Magazine from 1938. At the end of the post there are a few vintage burlesque show photos, they are hardly NSFW but be careful scrolling all the way to the bottom if someone is looking over your shoulder.

    © Time Inc. William Vandivert
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  • Fencing Tournament

    Couple of weeks ago unbeknown to you the Russian population of this Metro Area has doubled for a few days. A surprising number of Russian-speaking coaches, parents and participants arrived to Kansas City for the U.S. Fencing North American Cup Tournament. There were of course many others (some of them even Americans :-)) but the number of foreign languages spoken at the Bartle Hall that weekend was indicative of a huge European influence on the sport of fencing. Among the participants was my niece from New York City which gave me a good reason to see the sport for myself. I spent two days at Bartle Hall watching and taking pictures, and while my photos are nothing to write home about, the people with good cameras probably had better things to do, so this is all I have.

    Fencing may not be as popular as other sports but it’s lightning fast, physically demanding, psychologically challenging and beautifully choreographed. It doesn’t hurt that fencing may be an asset for college admissions. For kids like mine who don’t seem to enjoy team sports this is an attractive option. There are a few local clubs in Kansas City, one was started by a famous Russian Coach who since moved on to become a head coach at Ohio State and the other one still has a Russian Coach.
    Here are just a few out of almost 300 photos I took with my slow camera.

    In this video I slowed down the motion a little just to demonstrate ballet-like quality of fencing.

    httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPDpdezHTx0

    This video is a short clip of one of the final bouts.

    httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-H2nCganaWc

    By the way, commonly used word touché originates in fencing (not to confuse with the Yiddish word tuches which means something entirely different).

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