April 12th is the Cosmonautics Day celebrating the first manned space flight accomplished on that day in 1961 by the cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin. I mentioned it last year so today I will just post some pictures and a video clip.
Space theme in the Soviet Greeting Cards. Notice that the Soviet postcards didn’t include any text so a person had to actually write something, not just sign their name under some sappy Hallmark verse.
Lastly, this song “Do you know what a guy he was” about Gagarin became the Song of The Year in 1971. Gagarin would have been 75 this year.
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 →
20 years ago today a popular Russian rock singer Victor Tsoi died in a car accident.
20 years ago his songs spoke to us.
20 years ago we raised our arms and yelled “We Are Waiting for Changes” together with him.
20 years ago his songs sounded like a war cry.
20 years later it’s still the most played CD that I own.
Tsoi Wall in Moscow
httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DB0ErvJfT7Q
We want changes!
It’s the demand of our hearts.
We want changes!
It’s the demand of our eyes.
In our laughter, in our tears, and the pulse in our veins.
We want changes!
Note to a future visitor: Visiting the Salt Museum takes about 2 hours, while the Cosmosphere can keep you busy all day. Plan accordingly and attend the latter when you have plenty of time.
Given Hutchinson’s salt-mining roots and multiple working and abandoned mines in the area, it’ no surprise that one of the biggest museums of that kind in the world is located there.
Although numerous old people are seen approaching the building with the sign “Underground Bound”, it’s not an old people recycling facility. Many of them actually make it back to the top.
This post should be titled “I have a camera too, you know…”. There are people in this town who are really good at taking pictures, and then there is me. I don’t set an aperture and exposure on my camera, I just push the button. That doesn’t make me any less eager to share my photos. Plus I have better captions.
