On the morning of August 19, 1991 I was eating breakfast and watching news on my TV (something like this) when the announcer reverted to the official voice they used when someone died and announced that due to the health reasons M.S.Gorbachev can no longer perform his duties and  the control of the country is being taken over by a State Committee of the State of Emergency. This was the beginning of the 1991 Soviet coup d’état attempt. People had different reactions to the events; I for one wasn’t surprised at all: many people weren’t happy about Gorbachev’s reforms and were hoping for some form of reversal, and this was just what they were asking for.

This is what their first press-conference looked like (in Russian). For a group of conspirators they acted too strange and spaced out. Some of them were not exactly well-known before the events.

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4eV8ffgDF8

The coup was over in 3 days with the press and the army refusing to support the conspirators and suppress demonstrations in Moscow and other places.

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqoAhfEIfXo

Gorbachev returned to Moscow but never regained his full capacity and the USSR was over before the year’s end.
One might say that right there over my breakfast I witnessed the beginning of the end of the country I grew up in. Recently I had a chance to find out how these events were covered in the American press. After the the putsch was over the Kansas City Star combined all of its coverage into a special insert.

18 years later people still argue if this was the right way to go. At that time it probably couldn’t go in any other way, but every forum is overloaded with people mourning the loss of the USSR – the superpower.
I witnessed it then and thanks to one of my readers had a chance to revisit it now from the other side of where the Iron Curtain used to be.
More videos of the American news coverage.

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I haven’t done this for a while:

Undecided?

And the prize for the biggest penis sign goes to (drum roll) Julia Lynn for State Senator. She wins by a skin an inch small margin.

If I had a religion I would be switching it right now. You probably can’t read this sign photographed at a local Backyard Burgers restaurant but it says:”FREE 1/3 BYB (backyard burger) with church bulletin”. Last time I went to a synagogue I didn’t even get a free bagel. For those keeping a score: Jesus – 1, other deities – 0.

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I guess I am closing in on the age when people around me start dying off. When I was younger these people already seemed old, now that I reached their age that seemed so ancient to me not so long ago, I find myself attending funerals more often than I’d like. And this is just the sad beginning, many of my relatives and relatives of my few friends are in their 70s, 80s and 90s. As the new immigrants these are the people who will be the  first in their families to be buried in the New Country. They had the courage to leave everything, including many generations of their ancestors buried in the old Motherland, and they will be the first to be laid to rest here. And we, the younger generation, will be the first to have our loved ones separated by the ocean, the old gravestones there will eventually be forgotten after we are gone.
The people we are losing now had truly legendary lives: they were born in the young new country, they fought in the war, they came home to rebuild, they raised their kids, they lived, they loved, they suffered, lost friends and relatives, lived through lies and propaganda, managed with very little and lived to see their children and especially grandchildren prosper in this country. Their eulogies will be said in the language they don’t understand, and Rabbi will pray to God they were taught didn’t exist. The Rabbi will talk about their lives, struggling to pronounce their names and places they lived in, knowing that most of the mourners do not understand a word of Hebrew, but still love the sound of it and a feeling that the same exact words were said for millions of people for thousands of years, for a moment bringing them in touch with all the generations before them.

Jewish Cemetery,
Brown dirt frozen
With millions of tears

Photo: Rose Hill Cemetery, Kansas City, MO 

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So we made it another year, which went by so fast it didn’t even pause for the end of the world. Apparently I have a habit of writing nostalgic retrospective posts around this time of the year, and this being the fifth year of this here blog they are all starting to look the same; even the photos have been posted before. I’ll be brief for a change.

Here I stand in 1976, barely 7 years old, not knowing that even 36 years later this is the biggest and the only beard I will ever have. I don’t even know what 36 years feels like. I can’t yet say to my friend “I’ve known you for 39 years.”, or “It’s been 15 years since we talked face-to-face.” I guess that’s why I am smiling.

On January 1st, I will wake up after 2 hours of sleep, with a headache and a hangover and my only New Year Resolution will be not to do this ever again; I know that’s not going to stick.

I’d like to wish you all a Happy New Year. I hope you are better at Resolutions than I am and everything you wish for comes true. And if we find ourselves at the bottom o a fiscal or whatever else cliff, I hope there is a lot of alcohol down there.

And now we dance – Kola Beldy – I will take you to the tundra:

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AP released the photos of the Russian rocket Soyuz TMA-14 being prepared for the launch on March 25th (click the photo for more).

Some of you may be old enough to remember the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project (coincidentally called “Soyuz-Apollo” in Russian) launched in 1975. Years before the International Space Station Americans and Russians shook hands in space.

I don’t have much recollection of the flight, I was 5 years old, but Soyuz-Apollo became a familiar phrase in Russian and the mission insignia still was around years later.

Trivia:”Soyuz” means “Union” in Russian, as in the Soviet Union.

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