Soviet Kitsch

One of my goals for my (temporary?) unemployment period was to finally get the moonbase a little more organized.  This project started ambitiously enough.  I spent the first week taking all my records down from their shelves.  Then I spread them all out on the floor of the largest cargo bay and spent most of August trying out different cataloging systems: alphabetical (by artist), chronological, thematic, philosophical, reverse chronological, alphabetical (by title), by genre, by run time, by record label, by album sleeve color, Dewey decimal, folksonomic, analytico-synthetic, and alphabetical (by feeling).

I have yet to decide on a cataloging system.

These last couple of weeks I've spent a lot of time wandering the moonbase corridors, digging out various odds and ends: galactic bric-à-brac I've accumulated in my time on the Lost Moon, keepsakes from Earth I brought up in my rocket, etc.

Yesterday, in a broom closet under the starboard solar array, I found a shoebox containing a handful of postcards from my old broadcasting buddy Graham Fernwood.  Graham had done the news and weather reports at KTSH for a few years before I got a job at the station.   By the time I was introduced to him, however, he was mostly living in Munich, working for Radio Free Europe, sneaking the U.S. government's feel-good message about democracy and capitalism under the ol' Iron Curtain.  He and I only met a couple of times, but we hit it off.  (I used to ask him if he could hook my show up with any secret CIA funding.)

Graham had a strange sense of humor, and he used to mail me the occasional Eastern Bloc postcard, always with handwritten notes in Czech or Russian or German (languages I do not read or speak) and no other explanation.  I think he embraced these little treasures from across the Berlin Wall with the same kind of joy that wells up in me when I discover a particularly rare EP at a rummage sale.

Here's one that's appropriate for the upcoming holiday season:

Just what exactly is going on in this one?  The child is apparently some kind of juvenile cosmonaut (Graham liked to send me the space-themed ones), and he's either just completed or is about to begin a space journey with a large man who appears to be Santa Claus.  (I know that Sister Margaret May, the fourth grade teacher who impressed upon me that Russia was a land of godless atheists, would be shocked by the amount of Christmas imagery on this card.)  I eventually learned (from Peter Falk, of all people) that "С Новым годом!" is Russian for "Happy New Year," so I can only conclude the jolly old man here depicted is some kind of wild amalgam of St. Nick, Father Time, and (based on his snowflake pistol) Jack Frost.

Here's another I like:

I'm pretty confident that these two are Belka and Strelka, the dynamic duo of the Soviet canine space program and the first two Earthlings to successfully return from space.  (I can't tell if this postcard actually features their autographs or just another cryptic note from Graham.)  My favorite Strelka story is a romantic one.  When she returned to Earth, she settled down with another space dog named Pushok, and the two of them had six puppies.  Nikita Khruschchev presented one of those pups, Pushinka, to little Caroline Kennedy as a gift.  A number of presidential advisers believed that Pushinka was a spy, but after thoroughly searching her for hidden microphones, JFK decided to let her stay at the White House.  Pushinka struck up a romance with the Kennedy's Welsh terrier Charlie (this was right around the time Lady and the Tramp was re-released, so love was in the air) and the two of them had four puppies of their own.  I often think that union was the real moment that the Cold War began to thaw.

Man, the Cold War, huh?  What a weird time.  I lived two-thirds of my life during it, and it still feels totally surreal.  Up here in space, staring down at the spinning blue marble called Earth, it's hard to imagine that for all those years so much of the world was totally cut off from so much of the rest.  It's hard to believe that for all those decades we were just minutes away from blowing up the whole planet.  And I say that as someone who saw Planet of the Apes at least four times in the theater.

I know there's still no shortage of war and conflict and borders down there, but I can't help but think that things have gotten a little bit better.  A little more open at least.  I mean, thirty years ago, would Mikhail Gorbachev have been able to release an album of love ballads?  And if he had, would you have been able to hear it?