What a beautiful portrait of these families. I love the haunting song about the Aral, sung so beautifully. Grandad stacking it on the iron horse and then being told by the grandchild that he gave it too much gas, was hilarious.

Amazing sift kudos on the find!!!!

Before I knew about the Aral Sea, when I was years younger, I always wondered what the deal was with the occasional Nat'l Geographic picture of rusty boats sitting in the desert (also before the internet really became a good place for researching that sort of thing). The story of the Sea and how the Soviets plundered it is mind-boggling, as is the story of how the Central Asian republics' bickering is allowing the catastrophe to continue rather than be slowed or stopped. I suggest "The Devil and the Disappearing Sea" (link below, and you can read the first few pages):

http://www.amazon.com/Devil-Disappearing-Sea-Ecological-Catastrophe/dp/1551927373

BTW, in the best-selling FPS game "Half-Life 2", the same imagery of boats stuck on the sand recurs fairly often around the middle portion of the game; the setting is also the former USSR.

She wont load captain! I'm not sure if she be dead or not?

*dead

This published video has been declared non-functional; embed code must be fixed within 2 days or it will be sent to the dead pool - declared dead by kulpims.

Bollocks!

Awarding geo321 with one Power Point for fixing this video's dead embed code.

The thumbnail image for this video has been updated - thumbnail added by geo321.