Lots of Links!

I'll get them in the layout sooner or later, but in the meantime, here they are for you to enjoy in blog form.


John F. Kennedy Presidential Library
Somewhere within is the tale of the little girl and wrote to JFK telling him she'd heard the Soviets were testing nuclear weapons at the North Pole, and she was afraid Santa would be hurt. He wrote her back and told her Santa was fine. Boy, he really had connections, that Jack Kennedy.


Stalin-era Research and Archives (University of Toronto)


National Aeronatic & Space Administration (US)


Richard Nixon Presidential Library & Museum
(check this web layout, man, it's grroooovy!)


By the way, I'm certain I will eventually have every Cold War presidential library up....from Truman to at least Bush 41 and perhaps Clinton, given his friendship with Yeltsin and aid we gave the Soviets during that time (also the impact the war in Kosovo may have had on US / Russia relations). At this time I'm only putting them in as they seem to correspond to the research I'm doing with interviews.



The CONELRAD CAfe: Podcasts of PSAs, songs, and dramas about the cold war


"The government is functioning under certain extraordinary circumstances....until then, I urge you to stay in shelters and obey all local curfews. God bless you all." --Not the Real President of the United States from "The Day After", 1980s


"It's party time in my radiation station." Fallout Shelter, a rocking little PSA, sung by Peter Scott Peters.

CYBER USSR

Cyber Yugoslavia might have finally disappeared leaving behind a wave of cyber refugees with goofy ministerial titles, but Cyber USSR appears to have had a tiny update as late as September 2007. This site is very tongue in cheek, with a great deal of affection. You want to find a translation of an English story that children read in school that seems to leave a few of the minor (non horrific) details out? Absolutely HAVE to hear Stalin's favorite folk song, Suliko, now? Need comfort from Paul Robeson's English translation of the Soviet National Anthem? Want to see the hidden scripts of a film by Oliver Stonesky about a good man assassinated by the government so they could go on with their murdering ways....."Kirov"? (Hey, KIROV...that's my license plate! How did Olvier Stonesky know? asks Kelly Ivanovna).

























Well, if these are your concerns, or if you just need a 10 letter Russian word for "denounce" for the Sunday Pravda crossword puzzle, keep http://www.cyberussr.com/rus/index.html close by on your favorites list. It is sort of a kinder, gentler People's Cube.



(Not that I'm saying that the People's Cube does not provide Correct Opinions for Progressive people...or that The Fearless Leader is in anyway unkind or ungentlewomanly....please don't turn me in.... I don't have warm clothes and a shovel....I will tow the line, I will tow the line....)


Russian Space Agency


Russian Archives (like, film archives, not. like, kgb archives) online

It's not that St. Cyril hates me, it's that I'm cursed.

The story linked below will most likely appear, in some form or another, in the tome that is the goal of the Cold War kids' project (which, by the way, I'm seeking a name better than "The Cold War kids' project" for, so if you have an idea for the name of an apolitical book about children's experiences on both sides of the iron curtain during the cold war, please feel free to suggest them. Be forewarned that I will likely forget who suggested it unless you post it here un-anonymously, i.e. with your real name).

It partially explains, or gives a somewhat implausable excuse for, why I can't speak a lick of Russian after trying to learn it for 5 years. It also is a vignette from my experiences as a child during the cold war.

Why I Can't Learn Russian, and Why I'm Afraid to Go Back to France

"Everyone Thought They Were Captain Kirk"

This is a line in a popular song during the "what if MADD doesn't work" years, "99 Red Balloons" ("99 Luftballoons" in the original German) that I don't think gets translated right into the English version.

We Will All Go Together When We Go

There are some sobering details in an otherwise uplifting article by Tyler Wigg Stevenson in Christianity Today online this week entitled "A Merciful White Flash," insinuating we still have nuclear warheads aimed at Eastern European cities and on trigger alert.

One of Stevenson's readers begs to differ, hopefully the research in the article is a little off.

Regardless, it is an article that belies, in a more serious way than I have in the past, how frightening the possibility of nuclear war was during the Cold War and even afterwards.

Welcome to the new site of the Nuclear Cafe

We hit a few bumps along the way here (sorry about that; those of you with missing relatives in Cincinnati or in Novosobirsk, please check with the men in bright yellow slickers over to the side). Somehow I managed to create an entirely new radioactive blog with the url "koolaidforall.blogspot.com" but can't figure out either how to get it on my dashboard or to disappear it. But "kooladeforall" will do pretty nicely, and soon I hope everything on the old "coldwarbaby" blog will be transferred here.

For those of you arriving from Live Journal, thanks for coming. It's a testament to your loyalty that, despite months of radioactive biscuits, you still come to the nuclear soda fountain seeking company and new treats. Or maybe it's a testament to your IQ, but we'll let that rest for now.

For those of you new to the place, you may wonder how the Nuclear Cafe got started. It had its beginnings in my 8 or 9 or 10 year old head when I began to become aware of the fact that there was a Cold War, and that there were 8, 9, and 10-year-olds living in the other party to that conflict, and was unable, despite my best efforts of asking my mother "Why" questions and turning the television dial, to determine whether or not they had access to the same luxuries we had. The same fine dessines animes, such as "Road Runner" and "The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show"; the same fine cuisine (Burger Chef greasy fries and cheeseburgers); and above all, the same thirst-busting elixir that adorned every birthday party table: Kool-Aid.

I didn't worry very much about this, because I forgot about it after a few days until I had a chance to ask someone from the Soviet Union if they had Kool-Aid there, some twenty years later (answer: no, as far as he knew). But that and other informal formal exchanges proved so educating and interesting that I thought I'd make a whole project out of finding out about the cultural life of kids in the Soviet Union....while allowing a space for those of us who grew up in the states in the 70s to talk about our own experiences, especially when it came to how we dealt with the whole Cold War thing.

I drank a lot of Kool Aid.

Red was my favorite.