With toilet paper question solved you ask your host where the restroom is.

Communal (shared) restrooms.

After the Great October Socialist Revolution in 1917 the housing problem was solved by adding more tenants to the existing apartments sometimes leaving original owners with a small room in their previously spacious quarters. This went well together with some idiot’s dream of communal living but created lifetime of conflicts and misery which is still going on. The resulting apartment was called “kommunalka” which is simply a communal apartment. All my life from birth till age 22 I lived in such an apartment. First, our family of 3 shared an apartment with my grandparents (2 people) and my aunt’s family (3 people) and the apartment had a total of three rooms, one small kitchen, one shower and one toilet. Then we moved to a place where in a larger apartment five families shared the same common facilities sans the shower and hot water. Imagine for a minute your Christmas guests permanently moved into your house, then multiply the misery times 5 and you may get close to what the kommunalka was.
Communal leaving did not translate into shared fiscal responsibilities. That’s why when you approached the restroom you would see a number of light switches of all shapes and sizes, everyone had their own electric meter. Using your neighbors electricity was a huge faux pas, I don’t recall any fights in our apartment but we were “lucky” to have non-violent and mostly sober neighbors. Guests using lights other than their host’s would probably get a nasty look.
Hygiene problems were solved by each family owning a toilet seat. If you read carefully so far, you can easily calculate that our restroom wall sported 5 toilet seats and looked something like this. Needless to say that I did not anticipate the thirst of my readers for toilet stories, so the picture below is not mine.
In lieu of the toilet seat game some people resorted to climbing up on the stool somewhat resembling an eagle but, anyone who had seen me knows that I am not a contortionist and not a huge risk taker to perform something like that. Note: I don’t know who the model on this photo is, I am posting it strictly in the interest of truthiness.
Finally, clutching your precious square of toilet paper, with the correct light switch on and your favorite toilet seat in place you are ready for the act. Of course, I don’t even have to mention the need to mouth-breathe at all times, most places did not have any ventilation and deodorizing sprays were not available. My apartment had a window in the restroom so the smell problem was somewhat fixable. At times you would hear suggestive knocks on the door reminding you that you are not alone and other people have to use the bathroom, you are not in the frigging library, etc. Sometimes knocking on the door would become more intense indicating that your time has expired, or else. You get up, you use you allocated TP, you pull the handle and….nothing. We lived on the third floor and half the time we didn’t have running water. Years later the pipes were replaced and they found that the old pipes where completely clogged up. Until then we had to carry the water upstairs in a bucket like mythical Sisyphus just so we can flush it down the toilet. So if your host left around a bucket of water you breathe the sigh of relief, flush the toilet and exit into the crowd of people giving you evil eyes and nervously dancing by the restroom door.
Still, you are lucky you were able to use indoor plumbing. In most of the rural areas and old buildings in the city the facilities were outside but that’s a different story.
To be continued…

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Korean Spicy Carrots are like American Chinese food – they are not known in their supposed country of origin, but that doesn’t make them any less delicious. There is a fairly large population of ethnic Koreans in the former republics of what used to be the Soviet Union; many of them live in the Central Asia courtesy of comrade Stalin who thought that they might be thinking of spying for Japan. Sometime between then and now Korean Spicy Carrots were born. The average citizen may not know much about Koreans but there aren’t many people who haven’t tried the carrots. Koreans guard the secret better than the Coca-Cola recipe, but there are many that come close and they are fairly easy to make.
Attention: Do not attempt to change the following recipe. John Dickerson of Bowling Green, MO changed the recipe and was soon beaten, robbed and repeatedly sodomized, his wife left him and he has a confirmed case of the swine flu. Dick Johnson of Butte, MT, didn’t change the recipe, instead sending it to 45 of his closest friends; soon he won the lottery, married Ms.April 2008, and discovered that he is fluent in 6 languages. Make your own conclusions.

For this recipe you will need julienned carrots, ground or crushed coriander seeds, cayenne pepper, vinegar, vegetable oil, onion, garlic and salt (kosher is good). It is very important to have julienne carrots, they look similar to thin long matchsticks. You can learn to do your own, try a special peeler, or do what I do and buy them. The package I have says “shredded”:

…but as you can see on the photo they are square shaped and not flat shreds. Real Koreans manage to have them cut in long almost spaghetti-like strands.

Mix carrots with salt and leave for 20 minutes. The amount of salt should be slightly more than you would use for a regular salad.

In the meantime, in a skillet heat up some oil and place a sliced onion in it. I used 1/2 cup of oil for the amount of carrots I had and that might have been a little much, maybe 1/3 cup will do next time; adjust accordingly with the amount of carrots.

Press as much juice out of the carrots as possible until they look fairly dry.
Construct a volcano-looking mound out of carrots. Place coriander and red pepper into the “crater” area. I used 1/2 teaspoons of each. Adjust to your own heat tolerance.
Remove onions from the skillet (they should be golden, not burned) and pour almost-smoking oil into the “crater”. Add a splash of vinegar, 2 finely minced (or pressed) cloves of garlic and mix.
Place the carrots in a container and refrigerate for 12-24 hours. Some recipes suggest to chop the fried onions and add them to the mix. I didn’t, I ate some and threw away the rest.
Korean Spicy Carrots can be enjoyed as a salad, pickle-like condiment, on a sandwich, in a taco or with whatever else that may benefit from a spicy kick. Make sure you go easy on heat if you can’t handle it. Enjoy!

Here is another recipe.

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Guardian published an interesting list of 25 people it the heart of the meltdown listing 25 individuals and entities who (in their opinion) had a hand in our current economic situation. As indicated in the comments to the article, not everyone agrees with their choices which include Alan Greenspan, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and others. Other people think that Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and Milton Freedman deserve to be included as well.

My favorite nominee – American and British Public:

There’s no escaping the fact: politicians might have teed up the financial system and failed to police it properly and Wall Street’s greedy bankers might have got carried away with the riches they could generate, but if millions of Americans had just realized they were borrowing more than they could repay then we would not be in this mess. The British public got just as carried away. We are the credit junkies of Europe and many of our problems could easily have been avoided if we had been more sensible and just said no.

To that I add overly-encouraging real estate agents, overestimating appraisers, extra-helpful mortgage brokers and anyone who profited on these loans. The reason the scheme worked is that it was structured as a multi-level-marketing pyramid with profits multiplying at the top, while the bottom supplied new applicants. These were the members of the public too, just as guilty as the rest.

I wrote about it earlier, but some years ago I was predicting this collapse when it still sounded a lot like conspiracy theory and I’d like to be included in the list of people who saw this coming. I guess I am always pessimistic (and defeatist) anyway so my predictions didn’t sound out of character.Right now my pessimistic worldview tells me that no one knows how to get out of the crisis. Many qualified people offer solutions both in academia and business but any action would be experimental, and I can only hope it will be easy on the test subjects.

In the meantime I’d like to wish all victims of the economic crimes, especially local Sprint employees, good luck. Every day I think about what would happen if I lose my job and nothing encouraging comes to mind, so I feel for the people who have to make these choices today, on someone else’s terms, in this economy. There is no question your company was mismanaged and robbed and it’s not your fault (unless you are the one who did the mismanaging and robbing, then it’s your fault, I hope you invested with Madoff). I hope you will find something soon, a secure well-paying job where your talents will be appreciated. You’ll be better off even if the pay is not the same. Good luck!

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Today’s feature may be called “Back to the future” or “Forward to the past” because it goes back to the time when this metro area had a commuter rail which some of us so desperately want now.

The description of this image reads:
Black and white film negative of two trolley cars on the Strang Line between Pflumm & Haskins on Walnut. The car at the left is an open car. Text on the left end: “SANTA FE TRAIL ROUTE.” Text along the side of the car roof: “MISSOURI & KANSAS INTERURBAN RAILWAY.” The car has a number of seated passengers and two children stand in the end of the car. Several of the women passengers wear hats. The right car is an enclosed car. An oval on the side of the car, in which the name of the car is may read “OGERITA.” The building at the far right is the Lenexa mill. A portion of a railroad stations appears to be visible behind the cars. Several utility poles run along the track. A portion of a house is visible at the extreme left. Bare dirt in the railroad right-of-way is in the foreground.

You can find a brief history of the Strang Line on the the JoCoHistory website. Strang Line (officially named Missouri and Kansas Interurban Railway) was developed by William B. Strang Jr and existed between 1906 and 1940 providing a link between Olathe and Kansas City and further on to St.Joseph. A book by Monroe Dodd (recently laid off from the Star so buy the book!) A Splendid Ride: The Streetcars of Kansas City, 1870-1957 has more details and a better quality picture of the same or similar train. A website by Ed Gentry is dedicated to the Interurban linking Kansas City and St. Joseph.

Today the old Strang Line can still be traced on the map and in a surviving street name.

The site of the old picture still has rails but they belong to the real railroad.

In the end it’s always the real people who make the old pictures come alive. Someone named Bob Blackwell commented on the museum photo in October 2006: “The picture is looking to the Northeast so the dirt road is probably at the front of the old Trails End Hotel. I have fond memories of the Strang Line although I do not remember any open cars. I do remember the Obregon car. My mother Francis Blackwell used to take me to Kansas City on the Strang Line so she could shop. I rode the Strang Line to Olathe to high school in 1938 until it closed down.”

Maybe some day we will be able to ride “the highest, coolest and most beautiful ride out of Kansas City” and create our own fond memories.

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This look at the past was brought to you by the Kansas City Lunch Spots : Where Lunches and Spots Meet In The Open. Also sponsored by: My Job: Three-day weekends – plenty of time to waste Additional financing by: Light Rail: Dream on.
Previous posts here.

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Russian Police, known as Militia or Militsiya doesn’t enjoy much respect among the people. They are known for corruption, ignorance, skirting the law, unfairness, carelessness, disrespecting the people they’re supposed to protect and periodically arresting some of the people when no laws had been violated.

Since not too many of you will ever come face-to-face with these guardians of law, you may find these photos entertaining. Pictured are reportedly the new Militia uniforms, continuing in the fine traditions of the old Soviet ugliness and institutional design. Looks like the models are the real men and women of the Russian Militia; it’s hard for anyone else to imitate the indifferent, self-important faces, with dead eyes and no sign of mental activity.

For today’s musical number I present the song “We Are The Moscow Militia”:
We have one tradition we can’t forget – We are the people’s Militia, people are our friends.

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nEJZEUV11Y

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