Showing posts with label basketball. Show all posts
Showing posts with label basketball. Show all posts

Thursday, March 30, 2023

Tuesday, March 30, 1943. The Martyrdom of Sister Maria Restituta. Patton and his B-3. UW wins the NCAA. The 505th Jumps.

Sister Maria Restituta, age 48, was beheaded under orders of Martin Bormann.  An absolute vocal critic of Hitler and Nazism, she refused to be quiet about her opinions, no matter the cost.

Sister Restituta.

Sister Restituta had been born in Austria, and was of Czech desecent.  Her full name, after becoming a nun, was Maria Restituta Kafka.  She had been born Helene Kafka and had joined the order in her 20s, having first been a nurse.  She was a member of the Franciscan Sisters of Christian Charity.

She was beatified in 1998.

One of the most iconic photographs of George S. Patton to be taken, was taken on this day in Tunisia.


This photo is justifiably famous, but it's sometimes a bit misinterpreted.  It really doesn't show anything that unusual for a senior officer of the period.

Patton is wearing a B-3 flight jacket, the heavy sheepskin jacket that was issued to aviators who flew at altitude until synthetics and electrically heated flight suits started to replace it mid-war.  It would not be fully replaced during the war.  Both the heavy B-3 and the light A-2 saw widespread use beyond airmen, however.

A-2s were issued as a semi dress item to airborne officers (and perhaps enlisted men, although I'm not completely certain on that), signifying that 1) they were an airborne service and 2) there were a lot of them.  A-2s made their way into the Navy in some roles as well.  They were also widely worn by officers.

B-3s were issued not only to air crewmen, but to ground crews as well, as there were a lot of them.  They were a private purchase item with officers, and senior officers sometimes favored them as they were warm.  

Patton's B-3 here has had some alterations made to it, including at least one front pocket.  You can see his reading glasses held in the visible pocket.  You'll frequently see it claimed on websites that Patton had epaulets added to this coat, but that's completely incorrect, at least at the time this photograph was taken. His general's stars are visible, but they are neither pinned nor sewed on epaulets.  Indeed, the seam that's visible is simply a coat seam.  Other, sometimes later, photos do show Patton wearing a B-3 with epaulets, but that probably actually depicts a different coat, or that this one was subsequently altered as he was promoted.

Patton, perhaps with same B-3 as it has reinforced upper sleeves, but now featuring also epaulets, with the coat featuring the 1st Armored Corps patch.  The other figure is Major General Geoffrey Keyes, whose coat features II Corps insignia.  This photograph was taken in January, 1944.

The odd things about those photographs are that they show that Patton had that coat at the time that he was the commander of the 1st Armored Corps, which he had relinquished prior to March 1943 when he took over II Corps.  Patton was a bit of a stickler about uniforms being correct, but at least in that case his having had the 1st Armored Corps patch put on an expensive coat probably proved to be a mistake, as it couldn't be removed, so he therefore kept wearing it.

The stars on this one, or this coat at this time, are probably painted on.

This coat does have a reinforced upper arm, which is also an alteration, but not one that's as uncommon as might be supposed.  I've seen at least one photograph of a conventional aviator with the same alteration.  Alterations, often done at the local level, were very common.  The location of the unit patch on the reinforcement probably explains why the patch was never replaced.  Subsequent promotion probably explains why epaulets were later added.

Sailors in 1950.

Today In Wyoming's History: March 301943  Led by legendary UW basketball player Kenny Sailors, UW beat Georgetown 46 to 34 in Madison Square Gardens.  Sailors would enter the Marine Corps as an officer at the conclusion of that year.  UW would suspend basketball due to the war after that year.  Sailors eventually became a hunting guide in  Alaska, but returned to Wyoming in his old age, where he still lives, following the death of his wife.

Note: that item was originally penned, Sailors was in fact alive.  However, he subsequently passed on January 30, 2016, in Laramie, Wyoming.  Sailors remains a Wyoming basketball legend.

The 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment made a 2,000 trooper jump, the first such mass jump in US history.


The 505th had been formed in July 1942 and was originally under the command of James Gavin.  It had been assigned to the 82nd Airborne Division only a month prior to its first mass jump.

The jump took place near Camden, South Carolina.

Sunday, March 26, 2023

Friday, March 26, 1943. The Battle of Komandorski.

The USS Salt Lake City damaged due to Japanese fire.

The Battle of Komandorski, a battle with a deceptively Russian name, took place between the U.S. Navy and Japan.  The Navy intercepted a convoy of Japanese ships attempting to reach Kiska and engaged in a pitched surface action.  No ships were sunk during the battle, but the Japanese ultimately withdrew.

Today In Wyoming's History: March 261943  Wyoming beat Oklahoma, 53 to 50, in basketball.

Friday, March 17, 2023

Wednesday, March 17, 1943. St. Patrick's Day Speech, Japanese Murder of Missionaries.

Plures efficimur, quotiens metimur a vobis: semen est sanguis Christianorum.

Tertullian.


The Japanese destroyer Akikaze Maru took 39 mostly German Catholic missionaries, from the island of Kairiru.  Eighteen of those were nuns, six were priests, and one was a Bishop.  Included was a Chinese woman and her two children.

The ship then proceeded to Manus Island and picked up an additional 20 individuals, again mostly German, most of whom were Protestant in that case.  Outside of the Germans picked up there, there was one Hungarian missionary and some Chinese civilians, six of whom were women.  

The commander of the ship, Lt. Commander Tsurukichi Sabe took steps to care for the prisoners and assumed they'd be offloaded at New Britain, but at Kavieng, where he next put in, he received orders to murder all of them, which took place on March 18th.

On the 18th, the ship's crew killed them over a three-hour period, dumping their bodies in the sea.  Most were shot, but some children were simply thrown in the sea.

The ship would be sunk by a submarine when it intercepted torpedoes fired at the Jun'yō, an aircraft carrier, on November 3, 1944, going down with all hands including, of course, all those still living who had participated in the murder.

Why did this happen? All we can really say is that it wasn't atypical for the Japanese. The Germans and other Europeans were just that, Europeans. The Chinese were Japanese enemies.  Killing them all was a pretty Japanese approach to things.

In spite of cooperating with Germany in the export of Jewish residents of Yugoslavia, the Bulgarian parliament balked on plans to do the same in Bulgaria and refused to allow Bulgarian Jews to be taken out of the country to their deaths, thus saving them.  It might be noted that the actions taken by the Bulgarian Army in Macedonia and Thrace were not parliamentary directives, so here too, in spit of being an Axis ally, the parliament was not like so many German allies and willing to follow the Germans into murder.


Irish Prime Minister Eamon de Valera delivered his The Ireland We Dreamed Of speech on the radio, in which he stated:

The ideal Ireland that we would have, the Ireland that we dreamed of, would be the home of a people who valued material wealth only as a basis for right living, of a people who, satisfied with frugal comfort, devoted their leisure to the things of the spirit – a land whose countryside would be bright with cosy homesteads, whose fields and villages would be joyous with the sounds of industry, with the romping of sturdy children, the contest of athletic youths and the laughter of happy maidens, whose firesides would be forums for the wisdom of serene old age. 

The home, in short, of a people living the life that God desires that men should live. 

With the tidings that make such an Ireland possible, St. Patrick came to our ancestors fifteen hundred years ago promising happiness here no less than happiness hereafter. It was the pursuit of such an Ireland that later made our country worthy to be called the island of saints and scholars. It was the idea of such an Ireland – happy, vigorous, spiritual – that fired the imagination of our poets; that made successive generations of patriotic men give their lives to win religious and political liberty; and that will urge men in our own and future generations to die, if need be, so that these liberties may be preserved. 

One hundred years ago, the Young Irelanders, by holding up the vision of such an Ireland before the people, inspired and moved them spiritually as our people had hardly been moved since the Golden Age of Irish civilisation. 

Fifty years later, the founders of the Gaelic League similarly inspired and moved the people of their day. 

So, later, did the leaders of the Irish Volunteers.

We of this time, if we have the will and active enthusiasm, have the opportunity to inspire and move our generation in like manner. We can do so by keeping this thought of a noble future for our country constantly before our eyes, ever seeking in action to bring that future into being, and ever remembering that it is for our nation as a whole that future must be sought.

The Washington Bears won the World Professional Basketball tournament, prevailing over the Oshkosh All Stars.  The Bears were an all black team.

Thursday, July 7, 2022

Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist Part XXXV. Griner and Russian Law, Senseless Destruction, No. 10 Cat to get new Roommate, Russia threats on Alaska, Where's the followup?

Don't be stupid out there


Russia is not the United States.

Brittney Griner is accused of bringing CBD oil into Russia, supposedly in vape pens.

Did she do it?  I don't know.

But what I do know is that Russia isn't the US, where a celebrated athlete would likely get a slap on the hands for a drug violation, and where this isn't one.

Americans seem to believe for some reason that if they fall afoul of the law in a foreign nation, the US should rescue them.  The US has no obligation to do that.

And like it or not, other nations have much stricter laws on a host of things than the US does.  The US in contrast has lots and lots of laws, which isn't necessarily a good thing either.  In part, that leaves Americans with a sort of combined quite contempt and ignorance for the law. We don't know what all the laws are, so we don't tend to worry about them overly much.  And people can do some pretty bad stuff and not get punished all that much.

In contrast, there can be real penalties for things in foreign countries.  In one Southeast Asian country, for example, people get beat with canes for spitting gum on the street.  When I went to South Korea with the National Guard in the 1980s I recall us all being warned that you could be jailed for possessing a Playboy magazine, which didn't bother me as I wasn't going to be running around the Korean Peninsula with one, but that's a much different approach to pornography that the US has.

You get the point.

On Griner, my present understanding is that she plays basketball in Russia as women basketball players make less than male ones in the U.S.  So she goes there on the off season, where apparently they are then running their leagues.  I get that, and that's not just, but that's not a reason to be careless, if she was.  Her minority status, her numerous tattoos, her homosexual status, and her American citizenship all made her a target in a nation where all of those are either very unusual or not at all tolerated.  On top of that, there's a war going on.

There's not much the US can do to spring her.  The Russians will let her go when holding her no longer serves a purpose.

Senseless Destruction.

Somebody blew up the Georgia Guidestones.

For those who are not familiar with them, there's a really good episode of Jimmy Akin's Mysterious World about them, identifying the builder and why he did it.  For a really brief synopsis, based on memory, a physician who lived in another state built them out of concern that things were going down the tubes and giving his own personal guidance and thoughts on how to avoid going down the tubes in the future.

Frankly, they were very 1970ish.

Why would somebody blow them up?

Apparently, some people believed they were evil, which is silly.  

Regarding guidestones, with all the crap going on in the US right now, the builders thoughts probably wouldn't be altered if he were around right now.

Boris Johnson falls.

Americans tend to be so self focused on their own politics, which are distressingly weird right now, that they miss the politics of other nations.  On top of it, the American press is phenomenally bad on reporting political events in other nations.  Added to that, the press of the subject nations tends to be no better, so you are only left with the suggestion that he did something horrible, with nobody ever telling you what it was.  An article in the Guardian, for example, calls him the worst leader the Tories every had, but won't say why.

Canadian changes of power, by the way, are completely that way.  It's like the entire topic of the election is a big secret.

Anyhow, Prime Minister Boris Johnson has resigned.  He will briefly remain Prime Minister until his replacement is chosen.

Usually this happens following an election with the party in control loses.  This, however, was due to an internal revolt in the Conservative Party.

Apparently a lot of this has to do with "Partygate", a scandal in which parties were held at No. 10 Downing Street (as if they were going to be able to keep that secret) which violated COVID restrictions in the UK.

I guess it says something in favor of the British that this would bring a Prime Minister down, whereas in the United States a sitting President would attempt to illegally retain power and nothing happen to him.

Russia threatens Alaska.

One of the Russian strategies to deal with its pathetic performance in Ukraine is to threaten everyone else.  Now it is threatening the United States, stating it might fight us to take Alaska back.

Seriously?

Usually, bullies have to win to be credible.

And now. . . ?

I'm not going to bother to name names, but there is a politician in Congress who came on Twitter nearly daily to blame Biden for rising gasoline prices.

Now gas prices have fallen for eight days straight.  So is he going on and giving credit?

Yeah. . . right.

Monday, January 27, 2020

Some random observations on a Monday morning . . .

on which I'm once again up way too early.

http://paintedbricksofcasperwyoming.blogspot.com/2016/11/houston-sidewalks.html

1.  Twitter Tantrums.

I have a Twitter account and indeed I'll hit the tab to link most of my posts there (they aren't all linked in there). That's a species of shameless blog promotion.

Anyhow the political rants on Twitter are generally moronic and apparently dominated by people who have the absolutely most hardcore views on everything.  All the time I'll see rants that start off with "I can't believe that my (put in opposite camp here) Twitter friends believe . . ."

If you repeatedly post that "you can't believe" that a lot of people whose feeds you are on hold something, they probably can't believe that you believe the opposite, and there's probably a reason for that.

2. Twitter Tantrums 2. Confirmation bias.

I saw a Twitter Tweet today by somebody who is mad that Trump keeps noting that the economy is doing well and states "it isn't for me".

It likely isn't doing well for that person, and a lot of other people, as at any one time a lot of people aren't doing well for a variety of reasons. One reason it isn't doing well for everyone now is that there's been huge economic and technological developments over the last several decades that make it tough on certain sectors of the economy.  Perhaps a person can argue that Trump should address this, or that he isn't addressing it correctly, but frankly no President since 1945 has addressed this really adequately.  Personalizing it in this fashion doesn't prove anything, as the economy actually really is doing well in the context of how our economy works.

Indeed, while I have a lot of economic opinions including ones I think would address this, I don't see any major candidate of the left or right who has any really novel ideas about this.  The worst ones in fact come from the left where the left is reviving a morbid fascination with the dead corpse of socialism, which we know is a really bad idea.

Also, let's face it, the economy doesn't do well for some people because of their life choices.

This has really become a huge topic of denial in the United States, but its true.  If you go down an unemployable path and, to compound it, if you engage in conduct of certain types, you will not do well.  I'm reminded in this instance of the Art History Major who appeared some years ago at the Occupy Wall Street event decrying that she couldn't earn sufficient income to pay off her student loans.  Of course she couldn't.  That has nothing to do with the economy as there will never be an economy which pays really high wages to everyone in Art History. That's not a reason not to pursue it, but your economic expectations, and your expenditures, in securing that goal should take that into account.

On this finally, every news item that even slightly backs your view isn't ground shaking and sure to convince your opponents of anything.

3. On Death.

Yesterday basketball player Kobe Bryant and his young daughter lost their lives with a group of other people in a helicopter accident.

This sort of things impacts me in odd ways that it didn't use to.  I'm in that category of people who, when I hear such things, usually silently say a prayer for the victims of such tragedies.  At the same time, however, I don't like the endless up to the moment reporting on it.

That may be really personal to me.  I work on things all the time where people have died or been badly injured and the tragic nature of it is really evident to me.  When last week the news was reported that Selena Shelley Faye Not Afraid's body had been found not far from a rest stop in Montana it really bothered me, and it still does.

But what I'm commenting on here is the none stop news coverage, and that really may be just me.

I was out when this was first reported on and when I came home, my wife mentioned it.  Again, as with Not Afraid, I was shocked and said a silent prayer to myself.  But soon the television came on and it was non stop reporting on the event.  At 5:00 I redirected the television to the nightly local news, which because it is a weekend and because the channels are not really local anymore but Cheyenne channels, it was the Cheyenne news, which I'm not hugely interested in. But when that was over, it was redirected back.

Finally about 6:30, while I was working on something that a net outage had kept me from working on the day prior, I had to intervene with "that has to stop".  If you work with materials in which there's a constant flood of tragic death, television reporting on it over and over is just too much.

On comments, I'll note, this one was the best I've seen:

Father Dan Beeman
@inthelineofmel
I'm not a basketball fan. But I always felt a bond with
@kobebryant
because I knew that he shared in the Eucharist and loved the Catholic faith. We'll now share in the banquet of the Lord together in another way. Praying for his soul and for those he loved.
I'm not a basketball fan at all, but in all the stuff I heard, I didn't know that Bryant was a religious man, let alone that we were coreligious.  It's interesting, and Father Beeman's observation tends to be the way I look at such things.

The stupidest observation I saw was also on Twitter where somebody posted "I wonder how many soldiers died defending freedom yesterday".  I don't know the answer to that but I bet its easily discernible.  Chances are that it may well be none as on most days the answer is none.

The point of the crabby commentator is supposed to be that soldiers are dying unheralded and unknown while a man who is only famous for playing a game is mourned.  Well, that's a stupid point of view.  There is a lot of attention paid by Americans to American casualties for one thing, and it isn't the case, as the comment implies, that the only death worth noting are those which are due to heroic sacrifice.

Sunday, June 19, 2016

Cuts in higher education? Is this a good time? And a comment on UW football

 http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-JukLVw4UGGI/T09-Fg5KEWI/AAAAAAAAC58/n1hmI6WctqQ/s1600/2-28-2012_017.JPG

Earlier this week Wyomingites were reading about new UW President Laurie Nichols declaring a "financial crisis" in existence that will allow her to act with greater freedmon in making the $41,000,000 in cuts that she has to make due to budget shortfalls, brougth about by the decline in energy revenues.  This followed the University of Wyoming Board of Trustees declaring an emergency to be in existence.

And an emergency it surely is.

And its an emergency for the University of Wyoming because the funding isn't there, but that  is, in part, a man made emergency.

It makes me sound  like a follower of John Maynard Keynes, which I am not, but this is a very poor time for the state to be cutting our colleges and university in terms of funding. The worst possible time, in fact.  Young men and women who were working in the energy sector will not be enrolling in college and university in droves, hoping that education will give them a second chance.  And for many of them it will.  Law school gave me a second chance when the energy industry collapsed in the early 1980s.  And I'm not the only one who was in that situation, and law wasn't the only route taken.  But the educational opportunities were there.


This state makes a lot of noise about "learning" from our past mistakes. But we don't.  We don't diversify our economy. We don't seem to learn that limiting education means exporting our young population.  And we don't grasp that trying to grab the Federal domain, which we attempted in an earlier Sagebrush Rebellion that we're trying again, comes back to haunt us.  

Cutting education now is a terrible idea.  If we are really going to diversify our local economy, the generation entering college now is the generation that's going to do it.  This guts their chances, and ours by extension.

Before I leave U.W., I'll additionally comment, although I probably shouldn't, on the pablum in today's paper about UW football.

There's a column in the paper today just gushing about how "we" all love "our" football team.  It's just flowing with gushing admiration and praise about how this institution pulls the state together.

Well, bull.

I've lived in Wyoming my entire life and I haven't ever seen a UW football game.  Never.  I attended UW twice, starting off in 1983 and finishing up in 1990, and not once did I go to a game while I lived there.  When I lived there I mostly noted the home games by the influx of alumni and football attendees flooding Laramie, which after all isn't that big.

And I'm not a lone in that.  Yes, while I attended UW students went to the games, but I don't recall there being a fanatic devotion to the team while I was there.  Indeed, the basketball team seemed to have a bigger following, perhaps because it was really good in that time period.

Now, I'm fine with people having a fanatic level of devotion to UW football, but how is it that that the same week I'm reading about education, which is the real, and only, purpose of a university, being cut, while still reading about a program, football, that's entirely surplus to that purpose?  Something is amiss in that.