Every year I drive thousands of miles on Missouri highways encountering the most bizarre religious billboards, and every time I pass one up I feel like going back and taking a photo to prove that I didn’t make it up (like the one about Jesus and porn somewhere around Columbia, I think). Some day I will drive to St.Louis and Springfield with the only purpose of documenting religious and anti-abortion billboards, but until then there are few in the Metro to keep me entertained.
This year marks the twenty-year anniversary of the triumphant end of my military service. Shortly after my long-awaited discharge from the Engineer Corps in June of 1990, the American Secret Services sensed a weak spot in the pontoon troops where I had served and used it to break up the Soviet Union. Of course, it was unthinkable while I was still in service; my fierce looks used to send the enemy running for their lives.
My Mom and Me. …long, long time ago… I can still remember
Today is the Soviet Army and Navy Day – a long-renamed holiday of a long-gone country. 20 years ago I couldn’t imagine being nostalgic thinking about my military service. But here I am – it was a time uncomplicated by work, taxes and raising kids and now it doesn’t seem like such a horrible way to spend two years of one’s life. So instead of rewriting my last year’s post I will share a few music videos on the subject.
This song is called “We Are The People’s Army”:
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANU2Rz4WNcI
And lastly – world-famous Kalinka, here you can find the lyrics and sing along.
In 1958, six months after the Sputnik was launched, the Life Magazine ran an article comparing an American and a Russian student and drawing conclusions about problems with the American education system. Many of these problems are still with us today; while the Russian education is not what it used to be, the American educators are still busy making kids feel good about themselves, rather than teach, resulting in generations of students without advanced and, sometimes, basic skills.
You can read the article for yourselves and I will post just photos starting with the Russian student Alexei Kutzkov and continuing with his American Counterpart Stephen Lapekas in the next post.
Before you look at these photos, I want to point out that not all the Soviet schools in 1958 looked like this one, complete with chemical, physical and mechanical labs and not all the students were genii. Generally in Moscow everything looked better than in the rest of the country, but in every big city there were a few “show” schools, like the one I attended, happy to display the advantages of the Soviet system to the unsuspecting foreigners. Before the showtime an extraordinary amount of cleaning, scrubbing and painting occurred, combined with special deliveries of rare equipment and teaching aids; it wasn’t unheard of to serve improved lunches during the VIP visits; the school had to impress or else. Nevertheless, even without all these things the Soviet education system was one of the best in the world, not only producing world-famous scientists but maintaining high intellectual level in the rest of the population.
For thousands of years alcoholic beverages drastically improved countless holiday parties on every continent in every political and social system. Here is an appropriate illustration from the Life Magazine Archives taken in Leningrad in 1956.
Caption reads:A party at the home of a so-called “typical Soviet worker”, the Dmitriev family. The father, a skilled metal worker, is actually a member of the Communist Party & does much side work for it, so they live far above working class average. (the line about side work for the Communist Party doesn’t make any sense to me, not sure what it means).
On my rare visit to Barnes and Noble, a store that encourages consumer to buy books online, I discovered a new batch of books containing vintage photos of Kansas City and other nearby places of interest. While I admire the effort to collect and annotate enough historic photos for a book, I don’t see myself paying over $20 for one of them. I am afraid many of these will be read at the coffee shop upstairs.
Luckily there are plenty of old photos online to entertain a cheap person like myself and even some books that can be read and downloaded for free. For example, check out A Birthday Book Of Kansas City 1821-1921 by Charles Phelps Cushing (obviously you should do it at work). The following photos and captions are taken from this book.
The Past and Present, on this block there is one of the newest and one of the oldest buildings in Kansas City. At Tenth Street and Grand Ave. arises the frame of the new Federal Bank Building. The oldest church building still in church use in Kansas City is the Catholic Church of St.Peter and St.Paul. southwest corner of Ninth and McGee streets. SarventContinue reading →
For thousands of years alcoholic beverages drastically improved countless holiday parties on every continent in every political and social system. Here is an appropriate illustration from the Life Magazine Archives taken in Leningrad in 1956.
