Well, I am actually not so sure about it being Russian, but it’s definitely a gourmet recipe shared by my Mom. What prompted me to make it was a visit to a local soup place where I paid four dollars for a ladle of mushroom soup. For some reason that price really bothered me; I’ve always thought that the soup was a poor man’s meal, often seen dispensed to the hungry people waiting in line in the Depression movies. Unless the soup is made of some exotic ingredient, I don’t see why it should be pricey, and mushroom soup is no exception. So the same night I called my Mom and wrote down the recipe.
A recent clip of a base jump from the 404 ft. spire of the Peter and Paul Cathedral in St.Petersburg was widely discussed on the Russian-speaking internet.
I interrupt slow vacation coverage and other musings to report on my recent archaeological trip to the Missouri Valley Special Collections to waste a day off photograph some artifacts from the Republican National Convention, hosted in Kansas City’s Kemper Arena in 1976.
After a popular post about the sorority girls of KU I searched the Life photo archives for something about the University of Missouri. There weren’t too many photographs but they led me to this interesting story.
Infamous Miss Mizzou appears among other “ever-luscious ladies” who frequently graced the comic strip (sorry for the quality, I had to splice this from two sides of the magazine).
“For some time I had been mulling over a girl character who would be what a Marilyn Monroe type might be like if she had not hit the jackpot in Hollywood,” Caniff explained in a 1954 letter. “Every college town has girls who live and work on the edge of the campus and who are very much a part of the life of the school, but who who do not get invited to fraternity formals. Usually they come up from small towns and often become as loyal to the school as the best-heeled alumnae. I decided my gal wold be from the University of Missouri, if not of it.”
But he did also base the character off of Bek Stiner (born Bek Nelson) too. He would often model new characters off of real people with the intention of having the photos of the model in the paper to publicize the strip.
Even though Miss Mizzou was fictional, the street-naming fiasco mentioned in Life was real, warranting a humorous article in the 1958 Time Magazine:
Faintly but distinctly, the mesmeric boomlay-boom of publicity drums on Manhattan’s Madison Ave. is heard 980 miles away in Columbia (pop. 43,000), site of the University of Missouri. Stout-souled citizens wonder what is wrong. Chamber of Commerce members writhe to the beat and get the message. It is so nonsensical that at first it seems to be garbled: name the new boulevard (boom-lay boom) after Milton Caniff.
