Flashes-Back
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Behold Grace Slick, ca. 1975. I took this photo at a Jefferson Starship show at Radio City. The first song was Sunrise, the opening of side 2 of Blows Against The Empire. In case you're wondering what my favorite album of all time is, look no further. (Update 26 March 2017 - Part two of my interview pod cast that mentions this album has just been posted.)
RIKL Review - Costco Slide Scanning Service
I took a few hundred 35mm photographic slides to Costco to be scanned and digitized, of which this Grace Slick photo was one. Here's a brief RIKL Review of the process.
- They give you as many small boxes as you need in which to stuff the slides.
- You fill out a form on a touch-screen computer monitor at the counter. I've done this twice at two different Costco stores. I would call it somewhere between a pound-screen and a jackhammer-screen. Be frustrated as you enter common characters and the space bar many times each.
- You give the counter person the slides and get a receipt.
- Wait for a month or two. (You might think this is irritating, but remember that the slides have been gathering dust at home for decades and silently cope with the delay.)
- Give them money, get the slides back along with a DVD of the scans.
- Be disappointed at the poor quality of the scans.
- Repeat process with any that you really care about somewhere else, for a lot more money per slide.
Many more pictures of Grace, Jefferson Airplane/Starship, Yes, ELP, and other notable bands reside on the hundreds remaining. I wouldn't count on their not making an appearance here.
From 1975 to Yesterday
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From Yesterday to 1948
The story about Nikolai Gorokhov reminded me of another event I remember hearing about in history class, even though it dates from shortly after WWII, when the Soviet Union was having its way with eastern Europe. It involves a Hungarian fellow named Jan Masaryk, the lovely word "defenestration" and, unsurprisingly the Soviet Union. As befits the cold war, the death of Masaryk was never fully resolved. An excerpt from the Wikipedia article reads:
The initial investigation by the Ministry of the Interior stated that he had committed suicide by jumping out of the window, although for a long time it has been believed by some that he was murdered by the nascent Communist government. (Others in the country put it thus: "Jan Masaryk was a very tidy man. He was such a tidy man that when he jumped he shut the window after himself.")
Jan Masaryk remains dead, Nikolai Gorokhov's condition is unavailable as of this writing.
