Showing posts with label outdoor sports. Show all posts
Showing posts with label outdoor sports. Show all posts

Friday, January 13, 2023

Saturday, January 13, 1923. The future Queen Mum says yes, the Reichstag says Nein.

 Secretary of War John H. Weeks receives polo cups won by U.S. Army.  Check out the spats.

The Reichstag voted to engage in passive resistance to the French occupation of the Ruhr.

Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon accepted the third proposal of marriage from Prince Albert, the Duke of York.  Her name had just been announced as the fiancé, erroneously, of Prince Edward.

Bowes-Lyon had twice declined the proposal, as she did not wish to be subject to the restrictions imposed on royalty.  Ironically, she would become Queen Consort in 1936 when Edward abdicated.


The mother of Queen Elizabeth, she would live to be 102.

Harry Hong Hai Wong (王汉熙) was born on Gulangyu Island, Fujian Province in southern China. He became famous in the food industry, acquring the nickname the “Noodle King” by inventing the first instant noodles.  He died at age 96, in 2019, in British Columbia.

Sunday, June 12, 2022

Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist Part XXXIV. The old and the new, and people who don't know where they are.



Casper is the biggest city in central Wyoming.  Given that, it's the focus for a lot of stuff.  In the summer, it can be crowded with events.

It's also possible to forget how many events there are, and ones that come and go are soon forgotten.  Only a couple of weeks ago, of course, there was the big Trump rally, oops Hageman rally. . . no Trump rally, which saw something like 9,000 Trump loyalist show up in, as the press likes to call it, Deep Red Wyoming.

What about this weekend?

Well this weekend, downtown, there was a big "Pride" event at the city's own David Street Station which apparently was really well attended locally.  Not very "deep red", as of course by "pride" it refers to LBGTQ "pride".

The College National Finals Rodeo, a car show, and the annual art show, are also up and running this week. And it's craft beer week statewide.

I still think the use of the word pride in regard to an inclination is grammatically weird.  That's a different topic from the LBGTQ subject in and of itself, which I'm not going to address here at all.  Anyhow, it seems to have turned out a lot of people.

I read that in one of the online journals, which is prominently featuring it as its local news.  Makes sense, it's local news.

In the same journal Chuck Gray's hand-picked intended successor, who does have primary opposition, is running an article about herself.  I.e, it's an add disguised as an article, an old advertising trick.

In that, the candidate informs the readers that she's a "refugee from "fascist Illinois".

Eh?

The candidate needs to get her hyperbole fixed, if nothing else. She's complaining about "fascist Illinois" because she's an extreme right wing candidate and is upset that Illinois is left of center.  If she wants to slander Illinois, she should accuse it of being communist or socialist. Those claims wouldn't be true either, but get the right left thing right for goodness’ sake.

The candidate informs us that the line in the sand for Illinois was as follows:
The straw that broke the camel’s back for our family was when one of our high-school daughters was threatened with out-of-school suspension for not wearing a mask. We were DONE with Illinois.

Well, we had those here and that would have been a possibility here as well.  Chances are the daughter would have been suspended here.   

I guess you can't get after somebody who arrives late to the party for not knowing that the main course was served, but you probably ought not to slam people for serving salmon before you know what the meal was.

Ward has a list of her various platforms, or I guess principal beliefs.

  • Pro Freedom:  Taxation is theft. 
  • Pro-Wyoming FIRST: Wyoming’s land and energy below (sic) to Wyoming 
  • Pro-Medical Freedom. Mask and vaccine mandates were NEVER lawful. 
  • Unabashedly Pro-Life. Life begins at conception 
  • Pro-Family. Marriage is between a man and a woman. 
  • Pro-2nd Amendment. WY has constitutional carry. Let’s keep it that way.

I'm going to deal with some of these first, and then the others.

  • Pro Freedom:  Taxation is theft.
No, it isn't.  The government can't work without taxes, and we've always had taxes.   Since the dawn of government, it's had the taxing authority.  This statement is extreme, and frankly unthinking.  Like your paved road?  How do you think it got there?

"Freedom" isn't free, people like to say, usually referring to military sacrifice.  Well, it isn't fiscally free either.
  • Pro-Wyoming FIRST: Wyoming’s land and energy below (sic) to Wyoming 
This is a policy that would turn Wyoming into Texas in about 3.5 seconds. Wyomingites like their public lands and the right wing extremist running right now never saw any public land that they didn't want to sell to the richest out of stater they could find. 

It's also completely contrary to the valid legal bargain we made when we became a state. 

This, by the way, is a real red flag to locals.  By and large, this position is detested by people who are actually from here.
  • Pro-Medical Freedom. Mask and vaccine mandates were NEVER lawful. 
Like it or not, they were always lawful.   That doesn't mean you have to like them, but to suggest they were unlawful is simply wrong.

They too actually have a legal history in Wyoming, FWIW, and you can find similar things having occurred during the 1919 Flu Pandemic herein the state.
  • Pro-2nd Amendment. WY has constitutional carry. Let’s keep it that way.
Wyoming does not have "constitutional carry". This topic isn't in our state constitution at all.  You have a right to keep and bear arms, but the state constitution doesn't address carry.  You probably have a right to carry, should that ever get to the Supreme Court, but whether you'd have the right to conceal. . . probably not.

We have statutory authorization for restricted general carry.  You can carry, but not everywhere.   And you can carry concealed by statutory authorization, but not everywhere.

This, also, is under no sort of threat.  Everybody who is running for anything is going to say that they're "pro Second Amendment".  Indeed, without commenting on the obviously highly right wing candidate in question, I've often thought that imported politicians from cities who claim to be "pro gun", had they stayed in their bergs, probably would have been all about gun control had they run there.

All of the above topics would suggest that the candidate needs a basic course on the law.  It'd do no good, however, I'm sure, as there seem to be a lot of people now who believe in a sort of secret constitution that doesn't reflect the printed one. That leaves two topics.
  • Unabashedly Pro-Life. Life begins at conception 
  • Pro-Family. Marriage is between a man and a woman. 
I agree with those, but here's something the current extreme right seems to be missing. By linking in their extremist views, like taking away public lands and the like, with long held social conservatism, they're dooming both.  I.e, if you have to be in the "the election was stolen" crowed, which I'd guess this candidate likely is (although I don't know), in order to oppose abortion, at the end of the day a lot of social conservatives are going to go into the voting booth and choose democracy over other issues.  

This kind of thing puts them there.

My guess is, in other words, if Harriet Hageman is this year's candidate for House. . . Lynette Gray Bull is going to get a surprising number of GOP votes.

Back to the Pride event.

That's actually more traditionally Wyoming than the probably horrified imported Illinois candidate may imagine.  Wyoming's traditional political culture was "I don't care what the crap you do as long as you leave me alone".

Heck, for that matter, serve beer at something pretty left wing and chances are you'd get a lot of really right wing people showing up.

And that view definitely doesn't square with what the imported heavily right wing candidates think, or what the current leadership of the state's GOP think.

Again, I'm not commenting on the Pride event itself, or the even topic that surrounds it.  What I'm talking about instead is people who truly don't seem to know where they are.

Indeed, I wonder what the candidate thinks in learning that the city she's relocated in is having a Pride event, at the city's big gathering spot, and people don't seem up in arms about it, unlike in neighboring Idaho.  Indeed, as she's a recent arrival, she likely doesn't know that such contrasts with Idaho are long-standing here.  Idaho has been a lot more receptive to the extreme right than Wyoming, at least up  until now, and that probably says something about where Wyoming is at right now.

Trump one weekend, with car shows, Pride events a couple of weeks later, with car shows.  Probably doesn't surprise anyone whose from here.

Probably a little confusing for those who thought they were moving into a prior century.

And it's craft beer week.

This weekend also features the College National Finals Rodeo, something that celebrates education and a major part of the regional culture, and the industry that created it.

I really wish we could go back.

Last Prior edition:


Thursday, May 12, 2022

Friday, May 12, 1922. Changing seasons.

Today In Wyoming's History: May 121922  A spring blizzard hit northeastern Wyoming.  Attribution:  On This Day.

It was, indeed, a significant one, causing a lot of damage.

Elsewhere, where there was nice weather, a change in women's riding styles was evident.



 

Sunday, April 17, 2022

Monday, April 17, 1972. Women run in the Boston Marathon for the first time.

On this day in 1972, women ran in the Boston Marathon for the first time.  Nina Kusciik was one of eight women to run that year and took the women's first place at 3:10:26.  She won in the women's category in the New York Marathon that year as well.

It's almost impossible to imagine that there was once an era in which women didn't compete in long distance marathons, but indeed not only was there one, it really wasn't all that long ago.

Time magazine came out with an Army of the Republic of Vietnam helmeted soldier and the byline "The Next Big Test".  By this point in the war, it was a Vietnamese war once again.

Ford recalled all of its 1972 Torinos and Montegos due to defects in the rear axles.

This was day two for the commencing circulation of The Culpepper Cattle Company, one of the greatest films in the Western genre, in my opinion.

Friday, April 15, 2022

Saturday, April 15, 1922. The Teapot Dome Scandal Breaks.


The Saturday Evening Post decided to grace the cover of its Easter issue, with Easter being April 16 that year, with a Leyendecker portrait of a woman looking at her Easter bonnet.

Country Gentleman, however, went with a different theme.


Some in Washington, D. C. took time to play polo on this day.


Horses were much in evidence on that Holy Saturday in Washington, D. C., as a Junior Horse Show was also held.



The White House received visitors.


Which included a party of Camp Fire Girls.


Not everyone was taking the day off, however.

Today In Wyoming's History: April 15: 1922  1922  Wyoming Democratic Senator John Kendrick introduced a resolution to investigate oil sales at Teapot Dome, Wyoming (the Naval Petroleum Oil Reserve).

As the U.S. Senate's history site notes:

Senate Investigates the "Teapot Dome" Scandal


April 15, 1922

Senate Committee on Public Lands hearing


Not unexpectedly, the Teapot Dome story, which was just breaking, and had been broken in the East the day prior, was big news in Wyoming.






Sunday, September 19, 2021

July 1, 1921 Field & Stream. A missed magazine cover and what it tells us about language and cluture.


This was one of the numerous saved threads I hadn't gotten back to, and then July 1 came and went, and I forgot about it.  Instead, as that day deal with the Chinese Communist Party, there was a big old hammer and sickle that appeared as the art for that day.

Wish I'd remembered this one.

This does bring up a bit of an interesting topic, or at least two such topics, one linguistic and the other cheesecake oriented.

Depictions of women fishing, and let us be more precise and say depictions of pretty young women fishing, are at least as old as print magazines in popular culture.  They're considerably more common than depictions of women hunting, even though fishing is simply fish hunting.  We sometimes forget that English has various words for various types of hunting, as fishing is the only one we commonly use to separate it out from hunting in general.  But there are others.

Fowling, for example, refers to hunting birds and was once a fairly common term. Offhand, I can't think of another sort of hunting other than fishing which is named for the prey, but there are some types that are named for the method.  For example, falconry, that type of hunting done with falcons, is named for the method.  Trapping, which is a controversial type of hunting that has been controversial my entire life, also is.

Of interest in this general topic, hunting of various types was so important in the Medieval era, when people started to first acquire family names, that various things associated with it or the practice itself gave us a series of last names that are still with us. This shows the degree to which it was significant, and even elemental.  Just as we have the last name "Farmer", for example, we have the last name "Hunter".  Noting that English is a Germanic language, and that this evolution occurred at the same time all over Northern Europe, and Europe in general, the same occupations are reflected in the common German last names of Bauer and Jaeger or Jäger.  It ought to be noted here that the last name Hunger more accurately reflects its Medieval origins, however, than "Farmer", as farmer actually meant "renter" at the time, reflecting that farmers tended to be tenants, if not actually serfs.

Jäger, interestingly, shows up as an English last name as well, in the form of Yaeger occasionally.  A name that sounds related, Jagger, isn't.  That name is a Yorkshire name meaning a horse packer.

Fisher, of course, also shows up as a last name, as does the German equivalent Fischer.

Falconer also shows up as a last name, that being for a person who kept and hunted with falcons.  Falconry was expensive back in the day and its pretty likely that anyone who was a falconer was in the permanent employment of a noble, so it's different from simply being a hunter or fisher.  The same occupation gave us the name Hawker as well.

Another name last name that may have a hunting origin is Bowman.  We tend to think of bows as military weapons, in a Medieval context, but in reality they were by far the most common hunting weapon at the time and, moreover, keeping standing armies was extremely rare.  While armies did employ bowmen in times of war, those guys were in other occupations the rest of the time, and they were likely using their bows for hunting.

Indeed, the significance of that may be demonstrated the only other weapon of the period which I can think of which reflects itself in a last name is Pike.  It would seem obvious that the name must derive from the weapon of that name, but it apparently isn't clear that this is the case.  It might be a corruption of "peak" or it might actually refer to the fish.  On that, Trout occurs as a last name, and it apparently stems from fishing for trout.  I.e., a person named Trout, back in the Middle Ages, was a trout fisherman, showing the importance of the species.  On the other hand, maybe Pike refers to the weapon, including its importance in Medieval warfare.  No other weapons directly resulted in last names, however, if that's the case, although the knife did give us the German last name of Messer.

Well so much for names.  Let's talk about clothing, or the depiction of it.

As noted above, depicting female fishermen was pretty common in the early 20th Century.  The depiction above is a little unusual in that the subject is deep sea fishing, but then deep sea fishing depictions in general were a little unusual.  Usually fishing subjects were fishing streams, or maybe rivers.

Depictions of women fishing early in the 20th Century weren't very different from those depicting men.  If you go all the way about to around 1900, they are different as women didn't usually wear trousers and therefore they're sometimes depicted wearing the bulky clothing of the day, fishing, which would have been extremely difficult, in actual practice.  By World War One, however, they were usually depicted just like men, with both tending to have the outdoor clothing, rather than the work clothing, of the day.  No doubt there were men, and women, who went out to the streams fully equipped with the period outdoor clothing, which tended to feature breeches and very high boots, but my guess is that most fishermen simply went out with the sort of clothing that they wore when mowing the lawn or working in the shop.

I note this as in the world of Reddit, Twitter, and Istagram, if you have any interest in fishing, you're going to be assaulted at some point with a photograph of a woman fishing wearing a bikini.

I don't know if any women really fish wearing bikini's. They don't fish wearing bikini's in the L.L. Bean or Orvis catalogs, that's for sure, and I've never seen a female bikini clad angler myself.  Of course, I don't have a boat, and maybe they're all on boats, rather than on your typical Wyoming stream or river where you'd be eaten alive by insects if you tried that.

Which brings me to this, wearing hardly anything outdoors is stupid in general, very stupid when you are more or less on the water where there's no shade, and who wants to smell all over like a fish?

All of which leads me to believe that such photos are in a certain category of adolescent male driving soft pornography, much like the weird Japanese cartoon depictions of World War Two ships as young women.  Maybe some young women on boats wear bikinis, but I bet they do it only once.

I was fishing the other day in a deep Wyoming canyon, the last fishing trip I'll make of the season, probably, as hunting season is now on, and even though I'm license impaired as I didn't draw anything, I'll be doing that on general tags.  On my way out, I encountered a young woman hiking in.

You could see she was a serious fisherman. She was carrying her pole in its tube and had on a large brimmed fishing cap of the type that's somewhat unique to fishermen, and wearing dark sunglasses.  Even from across the stream, and down in the canyon from where I was, you could also tell that she had on one of those bug and sun resistant pull on shirts that some fishermen now wear.  

She looked like a real fisherman of her vintage. I.e, one of the young fishermen in their 20s.

She was looking for a way down the canyon.  I pointed to a place up stream.  She nodded her head in affirmation. 



Saturday, August 8, 2020

I've been catching some videos on fishing, and subscribed to the Reddit on fishing, and have noticed its popular to depict women fishing in bikinis.

When this first became apparent I assumed it was an effort at outdoor cheesecake, but it's so common, I've now concluded that in some areas its pretty common.

It's also stupid.

Fishing illustration, 1908.

First off, there's no real reason why women should dress any differently from men while fishing.  And as fishing is an outdoor activity in which a person is really exposed to the sun, that means a person ought to dress appropriately.

Woman fishing in Washington D.C. tidal basin, 1957.

Which should mean a good broad brimmed hat, long pants and a shirt.  

I'm not hugely familiar with boats, so I don't know how hot a person gets out on a boat  Because I don't know anything about boats, I'll concede that maybe dressing on a boat is different.  Personally, I wouldn't wear shorts on a boat as I hardly ever wear shorts, but I sure would wear a shirt.

Japanese women and children fishing

Not doing so is simply an invitation to skin cancer, or to looking like you are 70 when you are 40.  And, yes, I'm aware of sun screen. 

Put on a shirt.

Saturday, August 1, 2020

The Pandemic and Outdoors


Fish and Game agencies are reporting a big increase in license sales as people who have been cooped up due to Coronavirus, or whose regular activities have been curtailed.  In Wyoming big game applications increased by about 10%.  Colorado, which has put in place a new regulation requiring users of state game agency managed lands to hold a license, saw fishing licenses increase by 90,000.

All in all this is a good thing as it means people are getting out.  It also means, however, that some licenses are now a lot harder to get, which is frustrating if you are trying to get one.

Something else that's difficult to get now if is fishing gear.  Last Sunday I bought a new spinning reel as the one I had on a rod (well, actually I have this problem with a couple rods) was 40 years old and had quit working right.  It turns out that there's been a run on this type of equipment and the one I bought was the display model, the last one left.  I guess it's been like this for months.  I had no idea.

The salesman at the store was predicting that next year he thought there's be a lot of kayaks and outdoor gear for sale.  I hope he's wrong  While I like having the outdoors to myself, I also think it's a good thing that people are rediscovering it.  I hope that rediscovery sticks.

Tuesday, July 28, 2020

July 28, 1920. Villa comes in.

On this day in 1920, President de law Huerta of Mexico and Pancho Villa met and negotiated an armistice.  Villa ended his role as a guerilla leader in exchange for a land grant of 25,000 acres in Canutillo, Mexico.  His remaining 200 troops were to go with him to his hacienda, also receiving a pension of 500,000 gold pesos upon their laying down arms. Fifty of his men were to remain in his service as bodyguards.

Villa and his acknowledged wife, Luz Corral, in 1923.  Villa's domestic situation was complicated but Corral was able to claim the position of legitimacy in regards to his female consorts.

It would be predictable that a character like Villa would not remain outside of politics indefinitely, and that would seem to have not only been correct, but to have lead to his assassination in 1923.  A person can debate whether Villas armistice on this date, or his assassination in 1923, really marked the end of the armed struggle phase of the Mexican Revolution, but the better argument would be this date.  That would, of course, regard the Cristero War that broke out in 1926 as a separate event.

It might be noted, and notable, that no newspapers appear here in our entry for this day.  That's because the news broke sufficiently late, and inaccurately, that it appeared in only one of Wyoming's newspapers. That one reported that Villa had agreed to an unconditional surrender, which he had not.

On that day, the news was focused on the fate of Poland, which was struggling within own borders against the Red Army, and on Resolute wining the America's Cup.

Resolute.

Also on this day, the Duchy of Teschen was divided between the new state of Czechoslovakia and Poland, which must have given its residents at least a little pause, given that the fate of Poland at the time did not look good.

Unknown to the world, Archibald Leach, a 16 year old actor, arrived in the United States with members of The Penders, an acting troop.  We know him as Cary Grant.

Cary Grant in 1941.

Grant had an extremely difficult early youth, which may explain his being on the road at such an early age.  His father was an alcoholic and his mother clinically insane.  His father had committed his mother to a mental hospital and told Grant that she was dead.  He would not learn that she was still alive until after his acting career had taken off.

Air Mail in the United States had two notable events, one being the end of a strike in which it was promised that pilots would no longer be required to fly in dangerous weather.  The other was the taking off of two all metal planes from New York on a transcontinental air mail flight that would take them to a landing in San Francisco on August 8.  Moving the mail by train, actually, might have been quicker in that instance.

Monday, June 15, 2020

June 15, 1920 Killings


A mob lynched three African American circus workers in Duluth, Minnesota after rumors circulated that black men had raped a white woman. A subsequent physician's inspection of the accuser came to the conclusion that there was no evidence of rape.

A memorial to the victims of the lynching was built in 2003.  The horrific event is also recalled in the first stanza of Bob Dylan's Desolation Row.  While the recent death of George Floyd in Minneapolis has been termed a lynching, this horrific 1920 event stands out as the only mob lynching of blacks in Minnesota's history.  There are other instances of lynchings, including lynchings of Native Americans, but this one stands apart for that reason as well as its horrific nature.  It pretty clearly demonstrated that the horror of lynching, which had been much in the news in 1919, could occur anywhere in the nation.

Another homicide was making the headlines on one of Casper's two newspapers.  James Clark, well known Douglas area rancher, age 54, was shot and killed by Roy Benning, an automobile mechanic. 

The cause of the killing seemed to be an argument over Clark's very brief marriage to Benning's daughter, which had been of only a week or so in length.  It had then been annulled.  The putative Mrs. Clark was 16 years old.

While exactly what occurred was unclear at the time, what seems probable is that the Benning family wasn't thrilled by their very young daughter marrying the middle aged rancher at a time at which 54 wasn't middle aged, it was old.  Clark and Benning had engaged in an argument over that event and both men were armed. Clark was armed with a .45 revolver which appeared to have misfired several times before Benning shot and killed him with a small caliber pistol.

Candidate Harding's household cook was photographed for the news wires.

  Inez P.McWhorter, Harding family's cook.

Things seemed to be slow in Washington D. C., where weekday summertime golfing at Chevy Chase was being enjoyed.

Senator Howard Southerland, just recently a candidate for the Republican nomination, and then a Harding supporter, playing golf.

Justice Vandevanter and Justice McKenna of the United States Supreme Court enjoying watching golf at Chevy Chase.

North Schleswig and Southern Jutland were transferred to Denmark from Germany, as part of the post World War One territorial adjustments, although the Allies provisionally retain sovereignty of Jutland. Denmark was granted sovereignty over Southern Jutland on July 15 and then back dated it.  Schleswig was the only territorial adjustment made concerning Germany which the Germans didn't dispute following the rise of the Nazis.

And a famous radio broadcast took place in the UK.
Dame Nellie Melba's voice was broadcast from the Marconi Company station at Chelmsford in Essex, United Kingdom, for a period of thirty minutes

Sunday, June 14, 2020

June 14, 1920. The woods.

Fire tower on Cherokee National Forest

The Cherokee National Forest was established on this day in 1920.  The Tennessee National Forest contains over 600,000 acres within its boundaries.

Candidate Hoover went golfing at Chevy Chase.


Today is Flag Day, that holiday honoring the adoption of the pattern of the flag we have used all these years.  Here's an item about that day in 1920 from the One Tube Radio blog:

Flag Day 1920.