This very important latrine training video reminded me of my own groundbreaking and unfairly neglected series of posts covering this subject.
httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKkryfdtMNQ
I was following along until he started using water. I imagine people in Europe faced with the prospect of pouring icy water on a certain tender region invented the toilet paper.
And now, as I promised, some relevant links to my own posts.
People used to be easily amused. A ride on a painted horse in a circle could’ve been a high point of some Midwestern kid’s year. The sights, the sounds, the smells of carnival rides became the cherished memories people carried through their lives. Even I remember when a carousel ride wasn’t lame, but, of course, I am much older than my physical age.
Pretty interesting article about a local (now-defunct) piano seller. It’s notable how in 1940 people didn’t think twice about the phrase “salesman lures the farmer’s daughter into the truck”
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 a poll this year, 50 percent of easterners agreed with the statement that “East Germany had more good sides than bad sides.” Eight percent signed off on the statement: “People there were happier and better off than today in reunified Germany.”
Just as some easterners long for their lost paradise, many westerners think they would have been better off without reunification.
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.
Life Magazine photographer Hans Wild traveled through Kansas City in 1945, while collecting materials for the article about the Missouri Valley. These images didn’t get published.
The image below was painted in 1990, later destroyed and was being repainted last summer.
