I thought of another item to put on my bucket list (if it existed): I’d like to become a groupie (or is at a roadie? I need to get my terminology straight before I do it) for a mini donuts stand:
I’d just follow this thing around the country and feed exclusively on “Lil’Orbits” until I die happily and quietly from clogged arteries at some random state’s fairgrounds. Now you could say that I should buy this miracle machine and stay home, but what do I do with my free spirit?
Today, on April 22nd all progressive humanity celebrates the n-Th birthday of the Leader of the World Proletariat, founder of the USSR and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Vladimir Illyich Lenin. Something like this would make a traditional headline in every newspaper in the USSR as recently as twenty years ago. For years Lenin’s likeness was everywhere, every classroom had a portrait, every school had a bust, every city had a monument or ten, and then there were countless pins, flags, medals, certificates, photos, paintings and other visual aids. On this picture I am posing with Lenin in the parade uniform which I had to borrow because I was too lazy to sew the badges onto my own. In my day, Lenin was not as revered as he was in years before, but we still had to read the stories about his childhood, his love for the common men, his wisdom, his humbleness, his bravery and genius. We didn’t care but it was something that had to be done. As we grew up he was growing up with us, from “Grandpa Lenin” to “Comrade Lenin”, always omnipresent, always watching us from every wall and every city square. Stories of his childhood were replaced by his works that we had to study and quote. Every respectable establishment would have all 55 volumes of his “Collected Works“,which were lovingly translated into every language known to man.We didn’t know about “Red Terror“, hunger, repressions, killings,murder of the Romanov family; people who remembered knew better not to discuss it, every mention of the horrors wiped out or edited to look necessary to establish and protect the new country. Just a kindly old man who cared about us.
No one knows how the world history would have turned out without Lenin. Probably the same. Lenin wasn’t the one killing, robbing, kicking out of the country, starving and raping. He was just issuing the orders.
His body is still out there as a morbid reminder of his genius, evil and determination, a lethal combination which affected billions of people in every corner of the world for generations to come.
I went to the library today with an idea to look up some articles about the streetcar battles of the olden days, and even though the article was there, the quality of the scan, or most likely the paper itself was not that great and I couldn’t easily make a readable copy. So I gave up on that idea, but the time was already wasted invested and I continued to ogle women scan the old papers.
*all images should be more or less readable when clicked.
Few clips are from 1882 and the rest of them are from the Kansas City papers from exactly 55 years ago, April 2, 1957.
This ad shows some effort – both sides of the column spell the name of the subdivision.
Google Life Magazine photo archives were broken for the past month or so and I was starting to think that I would eventually need to write a post by myself. Luckily the photo search is working again and I am back to posting pictures.
On another technical note, I changed the comment system here, after liking how it worked on the Pitch’s blogs. Hopefully it will work faster, look cleaner and be easier to use with multiple ways to log in and subscribe. Give it a shot, I really don’t feel like figuring out how to go back to the old system.
In 1963 Life Magazine published a special issue dedicated to the USSR, which included unique photos taken by the Life’s correspondents over a period of one year. Although the foreign correspondents were usually “gently” guided by their KGB “guides”, they managed to obtain an unprecedented access and photograph the real Soviet Union, its people and sights. Today I will post some color photos, which are a rare find for these years.
Ernest Hemingway is thought to have said that you must do four things to be a man: plant a tree, fight a bull, write a novel and father a son. My life didn’t follow Hemingway exactly but I think I am pretty close: I am raising a daughter, write a blog, planted a sunflower which grew to the size of a small tree and if a bull ever shows up on my doorstep willing to fight, I’ll have only two words for him: “steak dinner”.
This spring I planted some mammoth sunflowers on the 0.00034 acres of land that I own and it proved to be a source of constant amazement and comments from my neighbors. The tallest sunflower is now 9 feet tall and is crowned with a huge flower.
At first is was taller than me…
…than way taller than me.
Soon it was ready to bloom…
…and then it did.
But the most amazing thing is what’s inside.
Sunflowers in front of my house inspired me to get out, play my guitar and sing.
Today, on April 22nd all progressive humanity celebrates the n-Th birthday of the Leader of the World Proletariat, founder of the USSR and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Vladimir Illyich Lenin. Something like this would make a traditional headline in every newspaper in the USSR as recently as twenty years ago. For years Lenin’s likeness was everywhere, every classroom had a portrait, every school had a bust, every city had a monument or ten, and then there were countless pins, flags, medals, certificates, photos, paintings and other visual aids. On this picture I am posing with Lenin in the parade uniform which I had to borrow because I was too lazy to sew the badges onto my own. In my day, Lenin was not as revered as he was in years before, but we still had to read the stories about his childhood, his love for the common men, his wisdom, his humbleness, his bravery and genius. We didn’t care but it was something that had to be done. As we grew up he was growing up with us, from “Grandpa Lenin” to “Comrade Lenin”, always omnipresent, always watching us from every wall and every city square. Stories of his childhood were replaced by his works that we had to study and quote. Every respectable establishment would have all 55 volumes of his “Collected Works“,which were lovingly translated into every language known to man.We didn’t know about “Red Terror“, hunger, repressions, killings,murder of the Romanov family; people who remembered knew better not to discuss it, every mention of the horrors wiped out or edited to look necessary to establish and protect the new country. Just a kindly old man who cared about us.
