{"id":1185,"date":"2010-06-17T09:32:30","date_gmt":"2010-06-17T17:32:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artesianmedia.com\/blog\/2010\/06\/17\/stalins-uniform\/"},"modified":"2010-06-17T09:32:30","modified_gmt":"2010-06-17T17:32:30","slug":"stalins-uniform","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artesianmedia.com\/blog\/stalins-uniform\/","title":{"rendered":"Stalin&#8217;s Uniform"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"text-align: left; padding: 3px;\">\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/hardnewsinc\/4707956503\/\" title=\"photo sharing\"><img decoding=\"async\" data-src=\"http:\/\/farm5.static.flickr.com\/4070\/4707956503_0bdd64541d.jpg\" style=\"border: solid 2px #000000;\" alt=\"\" src=\"data:image\/svg+xml;base64,PHN2ZyB3aWR0aD0iMSIgaGVpZ2h0PSIxIiB4bWxucz0iaHR0cDovL3d3dy53My5vcmcvMjAwMC9zdmciPjwvc3ZnPg==\" class=\"lazyload\" \/><\/a><br \/>\n<br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/hardnewsinc\/4707956503\/\">Stalin&#8217;s Uniform<\/a>, originally uploaded by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/people\/hardnewsinc\/\">Wordyeti<\/a>.<\/span>\n<\/div>\n<p>\nMan, this was tempting. A true WWII relic; this jolly guy spoke pretty good English and kept trying to get me to buy the Medal of Meritorious Motherhood, given to a sturdy Georgian woman who had produced 18 (eighteen) children. In service to the glorious state, of course. <\/p>\n<p>It was about 100 degrees in the shade here, but the old ladies sitting and arguing next to their blankets coated with tattered junk didn&#8217;t seem to feel a think.  The area next to this is called &#8220;Dry Bridge.&#8221; It&#8217;s kinda near the odd brick domes that are the Turkish Baths here &#8230; which is where Tbilisi gets its name. <\/p>\n<p>Apparently, back in the 2nd century, one of the Great Kings was hunting in these here parts with his pet eagle, and the raptor knocked another bird (allegedly a pheasant) out of the air and into one of the bubbling pools of water. Which, as any good farm kid knows, makes it dead easy to strip all the feathers off &#8212; a feature of the area that made it seem quite handy to that king of yore, who decided this was just the kind of place to build a little hunting chalet. Which became a mansion. And then a castle. <\/p>\n<p>The feelings of the locals here towards their Soviet past are decidedly mixed. There&#8217;s still some pride and recognition of winning WWII, and there&#8217;s even the village where Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili (aka Stalin) was born, that stubbornly maintains a statue of bloody Uncle Joe. But by and large, the stirring bear to the north has made people hereabouts feel as nervous as a sociology professor who has errantly wandered into a Tea Party rally.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Stalin&#8217;s Uniform, originally uploaded by Wordyeti. Man, this was tempting. A true WWII relic; this jolly guy spoke pretty good English and kept trying to get me to buy the Medal of Meritorious Motherhood, given to a sturdy Georgian woman who had produced 18 (eighteen) children. In service to the glorious state, of course. It [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[1],"class_list":["post-1185","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artesianmedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1185","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artesianmedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artesianmedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artesianmedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artesianmedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1185"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artesianmedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1185\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artesianmedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artesianmedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artesianmedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}