Showing posts with label Teenagers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Teenagers. Show all posts

Tuesday, February 13, 2024

Wednesday, February 13, 1924. When We Were Very Young and corruption.


Winnie the Pooh debuted as Mr. Edward Bear in the pages of Punch. The work was When We Were Very Young.

Congress decided to try to regulate the employment of very young labor.

H. J. Res. 184, A Bill to Limit, Regulate, and Prohibit the Labor of Persons Under Eighteen Years of Age, 2/13/1924

And this in the form of a Constitutional Amendment called the Child Labor Amendment.

It would pass Congress, but it failed to secure the necessary state ratification.  Most of its provisions were later incorporated into law in any event.  It'd likely be regarded as obsolete today, and the fact that the same provisions were adopted by law provides a lesson to later day supporters of the moribund ERA.  Having said that, recent runs at child labor by some members of the GOP provide a bit of a lesson as well.



German nationalist attacked the headquarters of Rhineland separatists in Pimassens. Thirty-six  people were killed in the event.


Emblem of the British Fascisti.  Note the call to traditionalism, patriotism, and religion. By MrPenguin20 - Own work. Based on emblem visible here., CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=36730872


British fascists met at the Hotel Cecil in London.

Felsch in 1919.

Former Chicago White House outfielder Oscar "Happy" Felsch was arrested for perjury, following his prior day's testimony in Shoeless Joe Jackson's back wages trial.  White Sox lawyers in the intervening 24 hours produced letters that contradicted Felsch's testimony.

Thursday, January 25, 2024

My father's side.

Lex Anteinternet: I had always thought my grandfather on my mother's...: but it turns out, he died in 1958. He was, therefore, about 67 years of age. Still not ancient by current standards, but not 58 years of age...

Carrying this forward, or over, or whatever it would be just a bit, my father's father died on October 9, 1949.  He was 47.  I'd been told by one of my aunts that it was on her birthday, but it was the day after her birthday when he died.  Close enough to burn in an indelible mark, I'm sure.

That aunt was born in 1931, which would have made her 17 or 18 at the time of his death.

His youngest son, my father's brother, was born in 1936, which would have made him 12 or 13, which is a bit older than I recalled.  It's still pretty young, however.  My father was born in 1929, which would have made him 19 or 20, older than I recalled, but it makes sense in context.  In both these instances, I think it's the younger age, 12 and 19, that would be correct.  My father would have just completed junior college, as they called it at the time.  His oldest sister, born in 1926 (the same year my mother was born) had been married three years and was living in Nebraska.  She was the only married sibling, naturally enough, at the time.

My married aunt would come back to Casper when her husband graduated from dental school.  He'd grown up at least partially in Nebraska, but had strong Casper family connections, but I'm not sure how that had come about.

My other aunt would go on to the University of Wyoming, something unusual for the time.  She didn't graduate.  I never thought much of that, but as the family story developed following her death the rest of us ultimately learned of a trauma that would have been about the time of her senior year there, so her failure to graduate, surprising for an extremely intelligent women, make sense.

My father's mother died in 1973, she was 71 at the time. That'd definitely older than I recalled (I had thought it was 65).  Somewhat unusually, both she and my father's father were born in the same year, 1901, making them about a decade younger than my mother's parents.  They married in 1923, when then both would have been 21 or 22.  It's interesting that the oldest of their children wasn't born until 1926, which at that time was a little bit of a delay.

I would have been ten when she died.  I can definitely recall it, and having been up at the hospital while she was ill.

Related thread:

I had always thought my grandfather on my mother's side died at age 58. . .

Monday, January 22, 2024

Friday, January 5, 2024

Saturday, January 5, 1924. Ironic?

Sounding like a story line out of an Alanis Morissette song, Eleftherios Venizelos, a Greek hero, was elected as the Speaker of the Hellenic Parliament by his colleagues only to go on and have a heart attack that day during the parliamentary session.  He'd serve in the position for only six days, but would live until 1936.

Walter P. Chrysler introduced his first car, the Chrysler Six Model B-70.

Celia Cooney, age 19, commenced her criminal career with the robbery of the Thomas Ralston Grocery store in Brooklyn.  Her husband, Ed Cooney, drove the getaway car.



Their criminal career ended in April when they were caught.  Ed Cooney lost an arm due to an injury while in prison and recovered $12,000 against the State of New York in 1931 as a result.  The same year they were released.  He died in 1936 of tuberculosis, and she remarried in 1943. She passed away in 1992.

Thursday, January 4, 2024

The Ongoing 2023 Legislative Session of Other States.

How we all imagine legislatures once were. . . because they didn't have the opportunity to put every dumb thought they had out on Twitter.

At least Wyoming can be thankful that its citizen legislature can't afford to be in ongoing session.

May 21, 2023

Minnesota, deciding that Americans aren't stupid enough, and don't already have enough in the way of options to make themselves even stupider, voted to legalize marijuana.

It also passed a new gun measure.

June 3, 2023

Connecticut banned marriages under 18 with no exceptions.

September 7, 2023

California has banned caste based discrimination, which is something prevalent in the Indian culture. The Governor has not indicated if he will sign the act.

While I agree with the measure, this is frankly an example of a Western culture declaring its values to be superior to that of an Asian one.  Western cultures have a Christianity based concept that all people are equal.  Lots of cultures hold the polar opposite.

Massachusetts has passed funding for universal "free" school lunches.

Of course, they aren't free, they're government funded. And the government doesn't make an income through production, so they're tax funded.  This means they're taxpayer funded.  Massachusetts has ain income tax, so this means that Massachusetts is separating cash from the wallets of everyone in the state in order to buy lunches for school kids, irrespective of parental obligations to pay to feed their kids.

October 3, 2023

Nebraska is requiring transgender youth seeking "gender-affirming care", the Orwellian term for gender mutilation, to wait seven days to start puberty-blocking medications or hormone treatments under emergency regulations as well as to receive at least 40 hours of “gender-identity-focused” therapy   This followed a Nebraska law that took effect on Sunday which bans "gender affirming" surgical mutilation for those under 19.

Nebraska, intentionally or not, is following a global trend here which is limiting such procedures in minors, with the data showing its frequently regretted.

October 8, 2023

California has put into effect a law requiring  requires public and private US businesses with revenues greater than $1 billion operating in California to report their emissions comprehensively.

January 4, 2024

Passed last year, some new state laws:

  • A new Minnesota law allows authorities to ask courts for “extreme risk protection orders” to temporarily take guns from people deemed to be an imminent threat to others or themselves. 
  • Colorado has banned "ghost guns"
  • A Connecticut law requires online dating operators to adopt policies for handling harassment reports.
  • A North Carolina law requires pornographic website operators to confirm viewers are at least 18 years old by using a commercially available database. Parents can sue for failure to comply with the law.
  • A new Illinois law allows lawsuits by victims of deepfake pornography,
  • Bans on chemical gender mutilation of minors take effect in Idaho, Louisiana and West Virginia. 
  • A new law in Hawaii requires new marriage certificates to be issued to people who request to change how their sex is listed. 
  • In Colorado, new buildings wholly or partly owned by government entities are now required to have on every floor where there are public restrooms at least one that does not specify the gender of the users.
  • A new Indiana law makes it easier for parents and others to challenge books in school libraries. 
  • A new Illinois law blocks state funding for public libraries that ban or restrict books.
  • Kansas dropped the sales tax on groceries drops from 4% to 2% .  It plans to eliminate the slaes tax on groceries entirely.
  • Connecticut and Missouri reduced their state income tax rate.

Friday, December 15, 2023

On being an only child.

My father (left as viewed) and his siblings.  I don't know the date, but given their apparent ages, this photograph would have been taken in Scotsbluff, Nebraska, in the late 1930s.  His borther is the only one left alive.  My father was the first to pass, at age 62.

My father was very close to his three siblings, one of whom is still living.  He was particularly close to that sibling, his brother.  They spoke by phone nearly every day when my uncle, who was a fireman, was not working.

My mother's parents and their children.  My mother is seated, fourth from the left as viewed, next to her mother.  Her youngest sister, seated far right, was the first to pass.

My mother was close to most of her siblings.  They were a feisty bunch in general, and they argued amongst themselves, but they were close. Like all such relationships, some were closer than others.  My mother was particularly close to her youngest sibling, one of her four brothers (she had three sisters as well), and he was very close to her.  A very long-lived family as a rule, her sisters have passed, but three of her brothers are living.

I'm an only child.

That was not my parent's desire.  They simply had a very hard time having children, and they were not young when they married, really.  Indeed, in the common understanding of the time, while they'd be regarded as "young" today, but only barely so, at the time of their marriage, at the time, they would have been regarded as middle-aged. Certainly my mother would have been, she being three years older than my father. They were married five years at the time of my birth, and she was 37 years old.  My birth was it, she'd never have another child.  Indeed, in retrospect, while was a remarkably fit person her entire life, my birth took a lot out of her in other ways and a significant psycho-medical decline would set in with in thirteen years of that event.

When you grow up as an only child, you constantly hear how "lucky" you are.  That's the point of the post.  You really aren't.

People like to imagine that only children are "spoiled", but at least in my case that wasn't true. The concept of being spoiled even has a name, Only Child Syndrome, but research has shown it's largely a myth.  My parents probably made a dedicated effort to keep that from happening to me.  What you are, however, is deprived in some very significant ways, all of which have to do with the close bonds that form between siblings being absent.

If you grow up an only child, you miss out on ever having that close relationship that can only come through a blood bond.  Siblings never escape their siblings, even under extreme stress. This is not true of any other relationship whatsoever, although a real, not an American Civil Religion, marriage does that in another fashion.  

And having siblings teaches you things that lacking them does not, and which can never be made up for.

Growing up as a child, my closest friends were my parents.  Having no siblings to distract me, if I wanted to interact with somebody close to me, my parents filled that role.  In most houses, you see children play various sorts of games with each other.  I'd certainly do that with friends, but there was no playing board games or card games with my siblings. I've never developed an affinity for card games, although both of my parents were good at them, and my father taught them to me.  For board games, however, my father was the go to.  It wasn't until I was an adult that I appreciated that most children, if they wanted to play a board game, would do it with a sibling.

Moreover, if adults are your playmates, you enter the adult world very quickly.  And not only that, you enter the adult world of your parents.  Either genetically or through environment, I obtained my parent's love of history very rapidly.  Not only that, however, but I entered it at an adult level quite quickly.  When I went from grade school to junior high at 7th Grade, at which time I was 12 years old, I remember being glad that the library had such adult books.  One of the first I checked out was Cornelius Ryan's A Bridge Too Far.  The sight of a short 12-year-old lugging up the massive tome to the library desk caused the librarian to nearly reject checking it out to me, and she warned me that it was a book for adults.  I was stunned.  I was reading adult books at home already, almost all the history tomes.  I loved A Bridge Too Far.

This made me, I suppose, "bookish" and it gave people the illusion that I'm "smart".  My father and mother were both extremely intelligent, likely both geniuses actually, but I'm not as smart as either one of them by a long measure.  I'm just well-read, really.  And being an only child makes you a loner in significant ways, as you do so much all by yourself that other people simply do not.

In my case, this was amplified at age 13 when my mother became profoundly ill.  Then it was me and my father, and from that point on, really, I was an adult.  And for a lot of things, I was an adult with nobody to turn to.  My father was my closest friend, although I certainly had other friends, but the problems you take to your siblings, I bore, like I am sure all only children do, by myself.

I still largely do.

This makes for a rough existence in a lot of ways.  As an adult, I really didn't have anyone to go to advice to.  I mostly made my own decisions, and started doing that at about age 13.  A lot of those decision, made only in the context of my own experience, were wrong.  Being insecure about the state of existence itself due to my mother's condition and due to a childhood asthma condition, I valued security way over that which other people do, which ironically ends up making you potentially insecure in certain fundamental ways.  My post high school academic career can probably be defined by that.  I studied geology first, and then law, not because of a deep love of the topic, but because they seemed to offer secure occupations.

My father died when I was in my 30s.  My mother when I was much older, I think in my early 50s.  With them both gone, there is no connection like that.  My wife was great during my mother's illness, particularly since they did not get along, but the strain of that did not help in our relationship and continues to have a lasting impact.  I can't go to siblings like she does with family problems, and her being the one I'm closest to on earth means that I'm uniquely vulnerable there in a way, frankly, that she is not.  My connection with things, basically, is razor-thin.

I note all of this for a simple reason.

Being a teenager without siblings proved to be difficult.  As a young adult, out in the world like young men are, I didn't notice it at all, but once my parents started their final descent, the lack of a sibling was agonizing.  As I've aged now into my 60s, I feel imperiled by it.  I wish I had a brother to talk to, like my father did, or like my mother did.

I don't understand why married couples forego children, and in a lot of ways I feel that people who don't have kids never really become adults.  Those having children, however, shouldn't have a single child.  It's not fair to the child.

Monday, November 20, 2023

Tuesday, November 20, 1923. Navy Debutantes, Not giving up, Germany returns to the Gold Standard, Traffic light patent.


The National Photo Company published some photographs of "Navy Debutantes", which were likely the daughters of Navy officers.



Oklahoma's governor had been impeached, but he wasn't giving up.




Germany returned to the gold standard as a successful measure to address hyperinflation.

Oddly, the Reichsbank's president, Rudolf Havenstein, died on this day at age 66.

Patent No. 1,475,024 was issued to Garret Morgan for the three position traffic light.

Morgan, an African American who had only a 6th Grade education, was an inventor with a number of inventions to his credit.  Very unusual for the day, he was also a party to a "mixed marriage", his wife being a Czech immigrant.

Monday, November 13, 2023

What the Young Want.* The Visual Testimony of the Trad Girls. The Authenticity Crisis, Part One.


Or maybe they're not.

At any one time, I have a bunch of posts in the works, some of which are on concurrent themes. This is one, basically, as it touches on a larger topic.

Something is going on.

A couple of years ago I started to see some women, by which I mean, let's say, women 40 years or older, resuming the wearing of chapel veils (mantillas).  They were clearly on the traditional end of things.

Recently, however, I'm seeing young women do this.

I shouldn't, probably, have used the term "girls" in the caption, but for whatever reason, culturally, we tend to use the term "girls" for young women well into their 20s.  Maybe somewhat beyond.  It seems to encompass women in their late teens on up to that point.

And that's what I'm referring to here.

I noticed it first the year before last, and at an early morning Mass on a Holy Day (All Saints Day, I think).  Two young women, probably very late teens or very early twenties, sat right in front of me.  One was dressed conservatively but contemporarily. She was wearing a leather skirt. . . and a chapel veil (mantilla).

Now, there was a young woman from a very trad family in the parish who dressed almost as if in a Medieval costume for young women every Mass. That's not what I'm talking about here.  This young woman was wearing a nice wool sweater, and a leather skirt, and a chapel veil.

It caught me off guard.

I'm seeing stuff like that all the time now.  Young women, often early twenties, dressed conservatively, but not in costume, who have adopted the mantilla.  Indeed, just yesterday, at the early morning Mass Sunday, the Church did the Ritual for the Elect for those who were coming into the Church.  They all have a sponsor.  One young woman coming in had, as her sponsor, another young women.  

Frankly, the sponsor was stunning.  And she was wearing a chapel veil.  Last Sunday across town there was another young woman dressed in that fashion who was eye catching as well, and the week before that there was another so dressed who was a head turner.**

I note that, as it was easy, when the only women who did this were let's say older, and otherwise dressed in a fashion that was old-fashioned, perhaps, or dour.  These young women aren't.   They're hard not to notice.

Indeed, yesterday, the young woman mentioned went from the front of the Church to the back with a very proud carriage, which is not to suggest sinful pride. Rather, she carried herself the way that people who are very self-assured, for very good reasons, do.

Something is going on.

And It's not just here.  A friend of mine in Oklahoma noticed the same thing at his local parish.  And it's crossed into other regions, or perhaps hit there first.  For example, notable Korean figure skater Yuna Kim is Catholic, and people like to snap photos of her at Mass wearing a chapel veil.

And it's interesting that this is going on at the same time that some members of the leadership of the Church, which tends to be up in years, seems to be trying to insert the liberal.  

I've often noticed that people who come up in particularly devise or stressed eras, and maybe more of us do than not, tend to form our view of the world in those times.  A lot of people in their upper 60s, 70s, and 80s assume that "what the young want" is what they wanted when they were young.  

The evidence for this is to the contrary.

There's a lot more to this.  It's interesting.

Footnotes

*It's important to note that categorizing what an entire generation, or generations, want is hazardous.  For example, at least superficially, here I'm noting a return to Catholic tradition among the same generation that is exhibiting such things as a belief that you can change your gender.

Well, a couple of things.

At any one time you can have an overall trend in a generation while individual members of it hold an opposite view.  There were, for example, more volunteers who served in Vietnam than there were conscripts, contrary to popular imagination, meaning that quite a few young men sought to serve in the war at the same time history informs us their generation had turned against it.  By the same token, you can find a few examples of Americans who were adamantly opposed to the country entering World War One or Two, and continued to hold that view after the country declared war.  Beatniks were a feature of the supposedly superconservative 1950s. 

Secondly, people are more complex than categorists and political parties may suppose, and as a result they can often hold contrary views, or views that seem to be contrary, or views contrary to the ones they themselves exhibit.  Indeed, I've heard some of the stoutest denouncements of tobacco from smokers.  They smoked, but wished they didn't. 

You get the point.

**For some reason, you're not supposed to say this. Well, noticing that a woman is attractive is not the same thing as engaging in Hefnereque behavior, and the fact that creeps have co-opted this entire aspect of communication is just evidence of how weird and pornified our culture is.

Monday, July 31, 2023

Tuesday, July 31, 1923. Monitoring Harding

The nation was tracking President Hardin's health:


The Tribune was optimistic on that score.  And it was also anticipating the upcoming county rodeo.

Harding's speech planned for that day was delivered as a written statement.

The High Court of Justice in Ireland ruled that a state of war in that country was over and 13,000 prisoners were entitled to release. They were not, as the following day the Public Safety Act of 1923 was enacted, causing their ongoing internment.

Parliament passed the bill sponsored by Lady Astor prohibiting the sale of alcohol to anyone under 18 years of age.

Friday, June 30, 2023

The Steer. 1942.


 Annual agricultural show at the state experimental farm at Presque Isle, Maine. Prizewinning "baby beef", raised by a daughter of a Farm Security Administration client.



Friday, May 26, 2023

Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist. XLVII. Aging, Russian military culture, Cinematic explortation of the 60s and 70s, The King of Canada.


Older America.

The median age of Americans is now 38.8, a figure brought up from last decade's 37.2 due to the obvious advance in aging of the Baby Boomers and the decline in the birth rate.

This is not a surprise, nor a disaster, contrary to how it seems to be sometimes portrayed.  The median will obviously advance into the 40s shortly.

This brings up this next item, from the Adam Smith blog:

Older World

Fertility rates and the conflict with the liberal vision

That headline wouldn't seem to make sense at first, but it actually does in context.

One of the things that people are wringing their hands about is the declining birth rate all over the world.

This brings up piles of incorrect analysis and ignored facts.  In the short term, by which we mean very short term, you can find plenty of pundits, often of the environmentalist inclination, still giving Malthusian warnings that we're about to breed ourselves into oblivion.  In fact, the data shows that in most regions of the glob, the trend is reversing, and in some very much reversed.

Which brings up the next example of hand wringing.   Conservatives at first, but now liberals as well, are worried about the demographic death of entire societies.  Some countries are now at the point where they're doing something that hasn't been done for eons, which is to take official measures to encourage couples to have children.

The Adam Smith institution isn't worked about it. They state:

This past century has included glorious events - the economic liberation of women for one. The result of that freedom and liberty is fewer children. Oh well, that’s just what humans want to do with their freedom and liberty.

It’s therefore the politics that needs to change, nothing else. For the people have spoken in their most intimate acts and decisions.

It might well be true that some don’t like that aggregate result, the society that results from freedom. But bully for the complaint, not the acts.

And there's a lot to that statement.

Frankly, almost all the angst over declining birth rates is misplaced.  Some of it isn't, but much of it is.  We're about to enter an era in which there will be much reduced employment in advanced societies, for one thing. Another is that frankly, societies with smaller populations are much nicer to live in, something that politicians in the US don't seem to grasp.  Lots of countries passed the level in which they were really nice to live in some time ago, including for that matter much of the US.  An overall declining population reverses that.

And it doesn't cause economic disaster, as so often predicted.  

At any rate, no matter how a person feels about it, what Adam Smith notes is in fact the case.  Reversing the trend at the present time is darned near impossible.  I think it will reverse, or stabilize, but not during my lifetime.  Probably when, for example, Europe reaches an overall population below 200,000,000, and North America's is about the same.   That's quite a ways off.

I'm not commenting, I'd note, on the moral aspects of this, which is in fact an aspect of it. But in an era in the West, at least, that large sections of the population can no longer actually tell what is naturally male and female, and we're back to the era in which "science" supports a societal movement that's wrong, much like it once did with Eugenics, race science, and many other now despised movements of the past that claimed scientific basis, we're probably not going to see much progress in this area, whatever progress would mean.

Speaking of a country with a declining population, and a tradition of baby bonuses, we have Russia, which gives us this. . . 

Field Wife

Not really a surprise.

'Field Wife': Officers Make Life Hell For Women In Russia's Military, A Female Medic Says

As with all things Russian military, pretty horrific, but with long-standing precedence in the Russian military.

We have a long paused thread on women in armed forces which will be unpopular, but we'd start off with this.  Mistreatment of women in any military is very common.  The conditions are prefect for it.

They're also perfect for giving rise to temptations that are hard to address and are embarrassing to address when they arise.  The U.S. Armed Forces have been working on this for decades, presenting it mostly as a male abuser on female victim situation, which is large true, but it wasn't all that long ago that the Marines had to come in and order female Marines to quit posting nude photos of themselves on line, such as a photo of a group of female Marines stationed in the Middle East running on a beach naked.  Everyone knows where this is going.

Suffice it to say, the circumstances of military life.  In spite of ongoing American hagiography about servicemen, Kipling's 1890 poem Tommy remains just as true for U.S. troops on some things, including this:

We aren't no thin red 'eroes, nor we aren't no blackguards too, 

But single men in barricks, most remarkable like you; 

An' if sometimes our conduck isn't all your fancy paints, 

Why, single men in barricks don't grow into plaster saints; 

This doesn't excuse the conduct, but eradicating it would require eradicating the situation, which we're not going to do.

And we aren't the Russians. The Russians aren't going to do any such thing with their military.

The recent war in Ukraine has shown, to a very large degree, that the Russian Army is the Red Army, and the Red Army was an overrated armed gang for parts of its history, and just overrated when that wasn't true.  It was an armed gang in the immediate post Civil War period, and certainly during the Second War.  Its aura of greatness was heavily impacted by Soviet propaganda.  In reality, rape was a common thing once it crossed out of Soviet territory and the taking of "field wives" very common.  So much so that it was a major source of domestic strife in the post-war Soviet Union, as men's actual wives knew that their husbands had engaged in both behaviors.

Believing that your enemy is impressive is wise, but in realty, the Red Army was not all that good in the Cold War, and the Russian Army isn't now.

We'll get back around to the Russian Army momentarily.  Sticking with our current theme. . . 

Exploitation suit dismissed.

I was going to report on this headline some time ago.

Olivia Hussey, then 15 and now 71, and Leonard Whiting, then 16 now 72, filed the suit in Los Angeles County Superior Court alleging sexual abuse, sexual harassment and fraud.

This in regard to their nude scenes in Romeo & Juliet.

They basically alleged that they were told that nudity they posed for would not actually be shown, when Hussey's breasts briefly were, and Whiting's butt was as well, and that they suffered years of shame as a result.  The suit sought punitive damages for an act which was illegal, at the time, under California's law, but which obviously nobody did anything about at the time.  They were asking for $100 million in punitive damages, but theoretically could receive more than $500 million to match what the film has earned since 1968, apparently.

If you are wondering how this could be brought now, California temporarily suspended the statute of limitations for older claims of child sexual abuse, which expired at the end of 2022.

This is an interesting development for a number of reasons.

One is that the nude scenes were noted at the time, but obviously, nothing was done about it.  Indeed, while the scenes noted above are the ones that have been picked up by the press, Hussey's also had at least one scene in which she rolls over while inclined, exposing her full bare back and rear.  At least one poster for the movie depicts an illustration of a nude Hussey on a nude Whiting, although you can't see the generally forbidden features.

This film isn't really unique in this regard.   A little later, but not much, a genuinely shocking scene was included in 1976's Ode To Bobby Joe, which is an overall horrifically bad film, but which had some popularity at the time.  The whole film is incredibly stupid, but it also features a nearly nude scene. The actors were in fact in their majority when it was filmed, but they're portraying, at least in the case of the female lead, underage teenagers.  It's really pretty sick overall.  

And recently, because of her bringing it back up, the public has had the opportunity to ponder the films Pretty Baby and The Blue Lagoon.  Ick.

If nothing else tells us something about the moral depravity of the late 60s and the entire 1970s.

Anyhow, I don't know much about Whiting, but Hussey went on to be a famous actress, somewhat discrediting the claim that they subsequently lost roles.  Indeed, given the moral climate of the late 60s and entire 70s, I doubt it.  Her career actually goes back to 1964, at which time she was very clearly still a child, and she was cast as the Virgin Mary in 1977, when she still would have been quite young.  Interesting, FWIW, her age in Romeo & Juliet would have been closer to what Mary's is speculated to have been at the time of the birth of Jesus, but the point is that her reputation hadn't been so tarnished as to keep her from getting the role of the most significant of all the female saints.

Oddly, FWIW, my high school English teacher, who later was arrested and convicted on what we might call a morals charge, didn't like her portrayal of the Virgin Mary, but did like the portrayal in Romeo & Juliet, in part due to his perception that her depictions in both were juvenile.

I haven't seen Jesus of Nazareth, that latter film, and I've only seen part of Romeo & Juliet.  I don't like Romeo & Juliet, the play, as it strikes me as boring and juvenile, and the parts of the movie I've seen, years ago, struck me as boring at the time.

Hussey also portrayed, Mother Teresa in a 2003 television movie,

Anyway, I feel they were exploited, if they brought their suit to address it a bit late. The California judge did not, stating that they, "have not put forth any authority showing the film here can be deemed to be sufficiently sexually suggestive as a matter of law to be held to be conclusively illegal.”

Too bad, in my view.

Maybe just bringing it to light, however, served an overall good purpose.

Let's go back to topics Slavic.

Where's the offensive?

In much of the Northern Hemisphere, it's late Spring, and we were expecting a Ukrainian offensive.

Well, maybe we'll get one, or maybe not (we probably will), but what seems to be the case is that spring came late to Ukraine, and everything is really muddy.  Therefore, the Rasputitia is still ongoing.

The Ukrainians, in the meantime, are using the time, it appears, to their training and logistical advantage.

Without getting into it too deeply, the Ukrainians also seem to have managed to cause the Russians to fight a 2023 version of the Battle of Khe Sanh.

Speaking of things with a long past. . . 

Charles the Third, by the Grace of God King of Canada and His other Realms and Territories, Head of the Commonwealth.’

Canada has changed the honorifics for the King, or Queen.  

The late Queen was known as ‘Queen Elizabeth the Second, by the Grace of God of the United Kingdom, Canada and Her other Realms and Territories Queen, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith.

Changing the titles of people in this fashion says something.  And in this case, not something good.

Last prior edition:

Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist. XLVI . To what extent is that new?

Saturday, May 13, 2023

Sunday, May 13, 1923. Mother's Day. Russian's bluster, Elopement frustrated, Pool Halls closed, Shirt Sleeves Slim back, Parachute Jump.


The Russian habit of threatening other nations was in evidence on this Mother's Day of 1923.

And related to the theme of the day, in a way, an elopement was frustrated.  The intended bride was 16, the groom 20.

I wonder if that ended it, or if their union later developed? Seems like the parents, implicitly, were not thrilled.  Note also the judge intended to go ahead with it.

Ritualized bride kidnapping is a surprisingly common human custom, perhaps derived from actual bride kidnapping.  In Christian societies actual bride kidnapping cannot give rise to a valid marriage, but in many non-Christian societies, including pre-Christian European ones, it was fairly common. The entire origin of Rome came about that way.

After the rise of Christianity in various cultures, some retained a ritualized form of which, as in this instance, existed to overcome parental objections.  The bride was complicit in her kidnapping and consent was generally given afterward with a negotiation on the bride's price.  This was common, for example, in Medieval Scandinavia.  Implicit in the negotiation was; 1) as women could freely consent to marriage, there was no stopping it, and 2) the girl was likely "ruined" by that time, or would be so regarded.  Additionally, the use of force by the groom implied that the kidnapping was not so much that, but an armed intervention in favor of the couple's intentions, which was a dicey thing to disregard without violence.

In spite of the constant boosterism, the real nature of Casper was showing through.  Pool Hall fights were breaking out during an era when Casper had a really thriving open red-light district.  "Shirt Sleeves" slim was going to be escorted out of town.  

In boosterism, a parachute jump was planned over a new subdivision.

Mother's Day (Muttertag) was officially recognized for the first time in Germany, although it had been widely celebrated the year prior.  Lacking the nationalist tones that it had in Germany, the day had been recognized in the United States since 1908.  The celebration also spread to Czechoslovakia and Poland for the first time in 1923.

It was of course Mother's Day in the US.


In Philadelphia, the unknown mother of the unknown soldier was honored.

In various states, such as Michigan, the Governor issued a proclamation in honor of the day.

A Proclamation By the Governor

Mothers' Day Proclamation By the Governor

In compliance with our beautiful custom, which in a few years has come to be universally observed throughout the land, the time has come to set apart a day in honor of American motherhood.

The American home is at once the cradle and the bulwark of all that is finest and best in our present day civilization, and the American mother is the heart of that home. If the home spirit is what it should be the major portion of the credit belongs to her.

It is impossible for us to compute the debt we owe our mothers, and it is only fitting that in this way we should pay our tribute of respect and devotion to the mothers of the nation, living and dead.

Therefore, by virtue of the authority vested in me as Governor of the State of Michigan, I do hereby designate and proclaim Sunday, May thirteenth, 1923, as Mothers' Day, and I call upon our people, both old and young, to gather in their several places of worship and take part in services appropriate to the day.

And let absent sons and daughters take this occasion to visit the mother in the old home, or, where such a visit is impossible, let them send a message of cheer and greeting.

In accordance with a resolution of the Congress of the United States, I further request the people of Michigan on the day aforesaid to display the United States flag in their homes and in other suitable places, as a fitting expression of their desire to pay homage to American motherhood.

Given under my hand and the Great Seal of the State this Twenty-seventh day of April, in the year of our Lord one thousand nine hundred and twenty-three, and of the Commonwealth the eightyseventh.

Alex J Governor.

By the Governor:

Oddly, the Casper paper for the day didn't mention Mother's Day at all. 

Monday, May 1, 2023

Positive Indicators



A thread that looks at good trends.

Good news tends not to make the headlines, by and large.  Indeed, it's worth noting that one of the things that's so newsworthy about the Russo Ukrainian War is that it's a big conventional war. Those tend just not to happen anymore.

This isn't going to be cheerful, as it's in the contest of the purpose of this site, which is really focused on the first couple of decades of the 20th Century.  We're looking at good, long term, trends here that have hit the news somehow, recently.

May 1, 2023

Adult smoking hit an all-time low.  About 1 in 9 American adults are smokers.

The degree to which average Americans smoked in the 20th Century, after World War One, is stunning.   Women didn't start to really take it up until the 1920s, but by the 30s, everyone was smoking in earnest.

Teenage (high school) sexual activity is way down, with 30% reporting having had sex, down from over 50% a few decades back.

Teen pregnancy is also way down.  It's often not appreciated the degree to which this was common in the past.


Of course, this can be explained in more than one way, including the spike in young marriages in the 50s and 60s, but there are other explanations as well.

Monday, April 17, 2023

Tuesday, April 17, 1923. Scouting in Casper.

I'm putting this edition of the Casper Daily Tribune up for one reason.


The article on the Boy Scouts.

It notes its explosive growth at the time, and that there was a troop in Mills. There's no troop there today.

Indeed, church troops, which this article notes, have really dwindled, although they still exist.  I know that in the 30s, St. Anthony's Catholic Church and St. Mark's Episcopal Church both had troops. They no longer do, although St. Mark's retains a cub scout troops.

According to the short search of it I did, today the local troops are:

6Units found near this ZIP Code

1
Troop 1035 American Legion George W Vroman Post 2
-1 miles
1868 S Poplar St
Casper WY 82601

Contact: Devin Hutchinson

Phone: (307) 337-1185

Email: devin930@hotmail.com

Boy Troop

Online Registration available for this unit.

Meets on Thursday nights at the church.

2
Troop 1167 Elks Casper Lodge
17.9 miles
3
Troop 1167 Elks Casper Lodge
17.9 miles
108 E 7th St
Casper WY 82601

Contact: Richard Summerton

Phone: (307) 259-8878

Email: rlsummerton@gmail.com

Boy Troop

Online Registration available for this unit.

Meets on Tuesday nights in the basement of the Elks Lodge.

4
Troop 1094 Casper Five Trails Rotary Club
18 miles
701 S Wolcott St
Casper WY 82601

Contact: Craig Dutcher

Phone: (307) 258-9379

Email: craigdutcher@hotmail.com

Boy Troop

Online Registration available for this unit.

Troop 1094 is dedicated to provide an educational program for boys and young adults to build character, to train in the responsibilities of participating citizenship, and to develop personal fitness. Our Troop camps during most months of the year, participates in several community service projects, and meets every Tuesday evening for regular meetings.

5
Troop 1113 First Christian Church Of Casper
18.1 miles
6
Troop 1013 First Christian Church Of Casper
18.1 miles
520 Cy Ave
Casper WY 82601

Boy Troop

Online Registration available for this unit.

Great Troop! Great fun! Meets on Monday nights at the church.


A few things to note.

Two of these are associated with a church, that being the First Christian Church.  Way back in antiquity when I was briefly a Boy Scout, even though I'm Catholic, that was the troop I was in.  I think this was solely because somebody we knew was in it, and I was invited.  In retrospect, I'm surprised that my parents didn't suggest I look at the St. Anthony's troops, which was still around at the time, although its members were no doubt mostly alumni of St. Anthony's school.

The George Vroman legion troop actually meets at College Heights Baptist Church, based on that address. So is it a church troop?  That's not clear, but probably not.  That Legion post meets at the National Guard armory, so it doesn't have its own meeting site, which might explain it partially.

Two of these troops are associated with service organizations, the Elks and Rotary.  Service organizations are on the decline as well, although both of those seem to be doing well in Casper.

Most of these troops have a girls troops associated with them.  The introduction of girls into what had been the Boys Scouts happened a few years back, and when it occurred it took all the LDS troops out of the organization.  They'd had a big presence in it.  The move also irritated the Girl Scouts, for obvious reasons.

I don't know if It's helped the Boy Scouts or not. They've certainly been in decline, but I suspect that the introduction of girls hasn't helped.  Mostly what it probably has served to do is to create one more way in which it's impossible for boys to be with men in a formal way. Scouting was reeling under homosexual rape/seduction scandals at the time, although I'm sure that some would object to that characterization, even though there really is no other way to accurately describe it given as it was obviously male on male.  I'm not claiming, of course, that male on underage female, and for that matter female on underage male, sexual abuse does not occur.  Indeed, in the last year there's been a host of female on underage male abuse reported nationwide from public schools, school teachers in general being the number one sexual abusers of the underage.  Something, suffice it to say, is really amiss in our society, as it is likely that all of this reflects a big increase in this conduct, not merely the discovery of it.  

At any rate, the introduction of girls into the organization wouldn't seem to be directly related, but in a way it was, designed to show that Scouting was cleaning up its act and becoming inclusive.  It could have addressed that in another way, as it really undercut the basic nature of the organization.

As noted, my connection with Scouting is thin.  I was only briefly a Boy Scout.  I shouldn't, therefore, really care too much about its decline, but still, it says something about the evolution of American society over the past century, and whatever it says, it isn't really a good thing that it's a shadow of its former self.

Scouting no doubt has a lot to compete with these days.  However, the irony of that is that when it was first formed, it did to, and in some ways was formed expressly for those reasons.