Every once in a while I get a link to the beautiful color photos of Russia made in the early 20th century by Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii. For these photos he used a complex technique called digichromatography involving making and then combining three separate shots using red, green and blue filters.

In the 1920’s and 30’s Branson DeCou used a different method – hand-tinted slides to document his trips, including his tour of Russia.

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I thought that Miley would be someone that my girls who they could look up to, but I guess that I was wrong. Thanks a lot Miley!
Posted on Kansascity.com

Many comments left in response to the article about Miley Sirus’ Vanity Fair cover fiasco are way more entertaining than the story itself. These comments are from parents who are upset because their kids’ role model is now disgraced after posing for “inappropriate” pictures for the magazine. What’s inappropriate is their kids even having a role model such as Myley Sirus. What do people even know about her to encourage their kids to look up to her? Is she a future Nobel Prize winner? Maybe she will cure cancer? Is she a great artist, composer, writer? Winner of American Idol? Up-and-coming porn star? (that may be). For all these people know, she could be torturing kittens, be a bully on a rare day when she shows up at school, she could have eating disorders, she could be a pathological liar and steal her neighbor’s paper.How can you possibly present her or any celebrity as a role model for your kids based on her 30 minute show on Disney Channel and an occasional concert is beyond me. No wonder these children have problems when they grow up.

Of course when I was growing up there were no shortage of role models offered to me and they weren’t some creepy child-actors who could sing and jump on stage. They were bona fide heroes: Pavlik Morozov – a 13-year old boy who denounced his father to the authorities and was in turn killed by his family, Yuri Gagarin – the first man in space, Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya – a 17-year old who was caught trying to sabotage Germans during the war and was tortured and killed, or Alexei Maresiev – a war pilot who was shot down, lost both legs trying to get back to the hospital, then trained himself to fly with prosthetic legs and returned back to being a pilot. There were hundreds and thousands of others. There were books about them, songs, movies, poems, their portraits hung in our classrooms. Years later we found out that some of their stories were nothing but well produced propaganda. Others were true heroes who are still honored many years later. Despite the abundance of supplied role models, I never wanted to be like them or look up to them. I admired their actions, cried when their lives tragically ended but I could always separate the action from the actor. This may not be the case with the false role models of today.

The only people who I knew in real life were my parents and relatives. They were my real role models. My Father was a doctor with a gift and a selfless dedication to his patients and profession; a writer, a poet, with great sense of humor; a true intellectual. From his childhood in the Jewish ghetto under German occupation, his father never returned from WWII, he went on through discrimination and poverty to become a beloved and respected physician. Many people whose lives he saved or touched came to remember him at his funeral. He was a hero to them. He is a hero to me.

I hope that if anything my daughter gets from me (besides liking strange-for-Americans Russian foods) it’s enough common sense to tell the difference between someone like Miley Sirus or whoever else Disney Channel thinks she should look up to, and real everyday role models who are around her and not on TV. Miley Sirus’s come and go, sometimes forgotten, sometimes disgraced, their likenesses scattered amidst garage sales and donations to the Salvation Army. That’s not the road you want your child to follow. Or maybe you do. Then reread the title of this post.

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In my recent post about shopping in the USSR the following photo and its caption raised some questions about the shortages:

I implied that by the time when I was growing up® no elaborate displays or advertisements were necessary, items appeared in stores sporadically and people swept them off the shelves. Even everyday groceries like bread and milk  frequently required standing in line. Any imported clothes, perfume, shoes, and even toys had the lines snaking out of the door and around the block. Supplies depended on the city; Moscow where the government was located and frequently visited by foreigners was known for its well stocked stores with items that were never seen elsewhere. People from surrounding areas were making long-distance shopping trips to Moscow to stock up on food and imported hard-to-find retail goods. Those who lived too far from Moscow had to either know someone in retail or pay black market prices.

In the early 80’s standing in line was pretty much the norm of life. Once I was walking home from school in the 4th or 5th grade when I noticed a huge line to the kiosk selling mandarins. Mandarins were a rare find, available only in winter. I didn’t have any money with me so I got a spot in line and had a number scribbled on my hand to verify my place. Then I went home, got the money and was back before too long. By then the people were worried that the mandarins will run out and people in the back of the line would have to leave empty-handed. I showed my number and got back in line, although some people where not too happy that I came back. Even with me running home I still had to stand in line for several hours. Not sure if I wanted the mandarins so badly or just didn’t want to leave half-way to the end of the line. Somehow I remember this one night and tell this story often, and, of course, I am eating a mandarin as I type this.

The reason I remember standing in line that night is that I wasn’t exposed to shopping very often. My parents did their share of waiting in lines or found other ways of getting stuff they needed like farmer’s market for foods which weren’t that cheap or black market for other things. Knowing someone in retail or grocery store was a goldmine. These people knew when the deliveries were scheduled and could hold on to an item for their friends, relatives and people who were willing to overpay. There was also barter going on, a retail employee would trade a favor with a doctor who could in turn try to find a rare medicine, or an auto mechanic who had access to hard-to-procure spare parts. Trading favors and black market led to some items never appearing in the front of the stores for general public, they were gone as soon as the delivery truck left the dock.

And now for some photos. Unfortunately not too many people had a bright idea to photograph the lines and empty stores; in some cases it could be interpreted as some anti-Soviet activity. Many photos floating around the internet are taken from here and I found a few more elsewhere.

When people think socialism, they often have these images in mind, but in all truth this has nothing to do with socialism; this was the result of many years of corrupt power, terror, breeding out competition, trying to force rules and principles on people that were going against common sense and human nature. Labels applied to what was built in the USSR are irrelevant; was it communism, socialism or just a big lie – what difference does it make. The only thing that matters is learning something from this experience. Then the years the Soviet people spent standing in various lines would account for something.

My kid gets annoyed when I walk out of a store or a restaurant when I see too many people waiting in line. I tell her that all the time in my life that was allocated for standing in lines has been used up already and I have little patience for waiting in one.

And then I buy more mandarins.

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I know even less about anime than I know about He’Brew beer; that’s why I put on my costume of a “regular overweight white guy” character and visited the Naka-Kon at the Hyatt where I proceeded to totally blend in. I was surprised by the number of visitors from kids in the colorful costumes, to weirdos in giant multi-zippered human-eating pants who walked their girlfriends on a chain, to some middle-aged child-molester-looking characters. Wide-eyed Hyatt employees where yearning for the days of their regular wrinkled-old-people conventions. My pictures didn’t turn out so great but here are a few that I liked:

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Recently State of Missouri made an announcement about repealing some old ban on “yellow-tinted imitation butter and the other restrictions imposed on the sale, possession or shipment of substitute sandwich spread that is a different hue”. The question is why would anyone want to eat this crap in the first place. I understand that the law was written for different reasons but I wouldn’t mind them actually enforcing it to get fake products out of our grocery stores. And while they are at it, they might as well get rid of

• disgusting turkey bacon
• any food that has the word “flavored” in it’s name
• products that have ingredients that can’t be explained
• things that have artificial coloring (I wonder what their real color is)
• fruits and vegetables possessing some unnatural characteristics such as crunchy tomatoes and strawberries
• breads that can be compressed to 1/10 of original volume
• anything in green packaging, green doesn’t mean healthy, it’s just a color
• no-fat sour cream
• rename rice- and soy-milk into rice- and soy-juice or whatever; it’s not milk even if it’s white
• non-dairy dairy products
• artificial powdered coffee creamer, WTF is that made of anyway
• cheese in a can and powdered cheese
• stop McRib comebacks

I am not a believer in things that are “good for you”, or “locavores”, or “slow foods”, or whatever else is in fashion right now. I do believe that if you want butter, you should eat butter, not some yellow crap in a tub. If you are unable to eat some foods due to health reasons, just enjoy something else, don’t eat fake chemical concoction designed in the lab to fool your senses.

In these times when most of our activities had been replaced by imaginary and virtual things, maybe we should draw the line at fake foods. Homey don’t eat that crap!

UPDATE: How could I forget the scam that  is organic food. Thanks, L.L.!

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