Four Generations

Digging in old photos I found three pictures of my father, grandfather and great-grandfather, all wearing military or military-style clothing. I took a picture of myself in my favorite NYPD-style jacket and created this list of four generations of my family. Notice the three repeating familiy names (reflected in first names and patronymics)– Mihail/Michael, Yakov/Jack, and Zinoviy/Zalman.

Lost Generation:
Zalman Mihailovich Krakovskiy, my great-grandfather, civilian, in his late forties.

Greatest Generation:
Yakov Zalmanovich Krakovskiy, my grandfather, Senior Sergeant, Red Army, in his thirties. The picture seems to be taken in front of some crates of Lend-Lease equipment in 1943.

Baby Boom Generation:
Zinoviy Yakovlevich Krakovskiy, my father, Lieutenant, Soviet Army, in his late twenties.

Generation X:
Michael Zinovievich Krakovskiy, myself, civilian, almost 30.

RNC In NYC

Conventioneering Fingerlicans and protesting Tastycrats are out in full force, but so many New Yorkers got out of the city that the streets are almost empty (by New York standards of course). In honor of those who left the city the Empire State Building was yellow yesterday (despite the fact that the official website says that it’s in honor of US Open).

I’ve seen a lot of regular police officers and semi-military ones out before, but I haven’t seen such a concentration of police brass performing regular cop duties. There was a police lieutenant guarding the subway turnstiles, another lieutenant directing traffic and a captain guarding what looked like a normal transit bus with police “Christmas tree” on the roof filled with cages and lockers of assault rifles (and probably other stuff). They even posted a sergeant and a couple of cops to guard Victoria’s Secret (probably from Republicans who might want to find out what it is).

I took this picture because my wife was egging me on. Now she wants credit.

There was this cool bigbrothermobile driving around. Hey, it doesn’t matter if you are in a velo-rickshaw. You gotta get your 2 minutes of hate on.