Painted Bricks: Natrona Couty High School, (Iphone photos). Caspe...

Painted Bricks: Natrona Couty High School, (Iphone photos). Caspe...: These are a series of not very good photographs taken of Natrona County High School, one of three high schools in  Casper, Wyoming.  It's...

Foodies, locovores, fishing poles and sychronicity

I've had an odd series of experiences in the general area of "local food", etc., recently.

It started off when I was listening to a podcast from the National Sport Shooting Association. They're pretty short, and sometimes interesting, sometimes very interesting, and occasionally not. What this one noted was the phenomenon of "localvores" in the green movement.

The "local food" movement is  a philosophy of food, more or less, that encourages a person to eat foods that are all local.  The gist of it is that the food is better, and better for the environment.  It has quite a bit of appeal in some localities.

"Insights", the above referenced podcast, amusingly noted that hunters are unsung localvores, and I guess that's really right.  Most hunters hunt locally and they're eating their harvests.  The meat they're taking is in the really healthy category, being really lean (if rabbit, it's beyond lean), it's all FDA Organic, and it's "free range" in the true sense.  I depend on wild game for a fair amount of our family's food, and this line of thinking had somewhat occurred to me, but not in that fully developed sense.  So, I suppose, a shout out to hunters is in order. Green thumbs up!

Indeed, by this definition, I've been an accidental semi-localvore for years, and when I was a college student I was about as localvore as anyone in this state can be, due to the huge garden my father planted.  For awhile, when my kids were young, this was also true, as for meat we went with one of our own cattle, and the garden, which I took over for awhile, produced enough of some things, namely onions and potatoes, to make it nearly through an entire year.  Now, we still rely on wild game and one of our cows for meat, but I no longer plant the garden.  Just didn't have the time.

There's something generally appealing about this notion, but I don't know what it is.  Some people, in other locations, are fanatics about it, and I think perhaps the reason that people here are less so is that you can look out at the terrain and imagine what a limited died it would mean, and must have meant fairly recently.  Foodstuffs that cross the continent, or even beyond that, is a recent phenomenon.  If it was 1912, rather than 2012, when I am writing this, many common items, like fresh vegetables, let alone fruit, would have been a seasonal thing.  Some foodstuffs keep well of course, such as potatoes and onions, but most folks are used to a more varied diet than those a truly local diet would mean here, and did mean at one time.

Which brings me to the next odd item of synchronicity here.  I also heard a podcast by the the Freakanomics folks regarding eating local, and, in economic terms, they report that it almost no beneficial impact in ecological terms at all, as food transportation is an infinitesimally small percentage of greenhouse gases.  A person could probably debate this to some extent, but the number are what they are, so it would have to be a fairly sophisticated debate.  I don't know that the economic analysis is completely correct here, and even listening to it, I could see what I perceive as holes in it, but it us undoubtedly the case that  the diet in the Western World has never been so varied and cheap as it is now.

Which brings me to my last, odd point of synchronicity again.  As noted, I, and a lot of  people around here, have always used the local fauna for part of our diet.  I think sometimes those who are not hunters or rural fisherman fail to appreciate this fact, particularly because so much of what they believe about these activities is skewed by the sporting press that focuses on trophies, which most hunters and fishermen, quite frankly, are not.  I've discussed hunting here already, but in regards to fishing, when I was a kid most men around here seemed to be fishermen, and my father was.  We ate the fish we caught, unless they were so small they weren't worth bothering with.  I still find catch and release to be strange.  Anyhow, I happened to be in a shop selling high end fly-fishing poles  recently and was amazed to see a pole that was priced at $750.00.  Maybe there were a lot of them priced like that, but that so stunned me that I didn't get past it. I'm still using my father's poles, and probably will for the rest of my life.  At $750.00 I'd have to catch a blue whale, in order to make it pay off in my mind.  I'm not saying people shouldn't buy poles like that.  I just didn't realize they existed.

Painted Bricks: Casper Power Box: Buildngs of Interest.

Painted Bricks: Casper Power Box: Buildngs of Interest.:

 Neat display noted on another one of our sites showing how Casper's downtown appeared in 1922.

Today In Wyoming's History: June 15

A bit off topic today, but an item of interest on our companion  Wyoming history blog:

Today In Wyoming's History: June 15: 1215  King John put his seal to the Magna Carta, which in its original version, stated: KNOW THAT BEFORE GOD, for the health of our soul ...

I've reads the Magna Carta before, but what struck me in starting to read it this time is the large number of Churchmen who are mentioned in the opening paragraph, and that independence of the Church from the Crown was the first right noted.

It strikes me that this clause wasn't adhered to. Certainly St. Thomas More and St. Thomas Becket lost their lives over that very point, and King Henry VIII went into a species of rebellion over it.  The Magna Carta is part of the American legal background, due to our country being founded by English colonist, but certainly the colonies didn't always view things that way either, which of course they wouldn't, all having been established after King Henry VIII.  With that in mind, the official prohibition on the creation of state religions by the US Constitution is, perhaps, quite remarkable.  In some ways, the Revolution better reflected the best of English law than the British position during the war did.

Education

 Engineering Building, University of Wyoming, 1950s.

First of all, let me start off by noting that I'm not posting this as a screed advocating dropping out of school, quite the opposite.

Anyhow, this is my second social history post of the day.  The first one, posted just below, concerns weddings, this one concerns education.

Some friends and I were observing how the value of degrees has changed over the past couple of decades. The change is really quite remarkable.

My grandfather, on my father's side, dropped out of school at age 13.  He basically did this, apparently, with his parents permission.  I don't know the whole story, and I don't know if anyone now living does, but what I basically know is that he didn't like the school he was attending and wanted out.  His parents granted him t he permission to do so, and he left Dyersville Iowa, his home, to go to work in San Francisco.  Grossly condensing the story, at the time of his untimely death at the age of 47, he'd worked his way up through the meat packing industry and owned a plant and creamery, etc., of his own.

My mother's parents were both university graduates.  Very unusual for their time. They'd met at McGill University.  But, their parents certainly were not.  Like my grandfather, my great grandfather had not completed high school (or whatever the Canadian equivalent was). Rather than do that, he left home about age 16, again with his parents permission, and traveled out to Western Canada where he was an office boy, and then later an oil man, before returning home to Quebec.  He did very well in life, and I guess part of that must have entailed sending his sons to university.  My grandmother, on my mother's side, studied music in university.  She was the daughter of a jeweler, but I don't otherwise know the circumstances of her attending university.  Anyhow, my mother was actually pulled out of school by her mother, who in spite of her university degree felt that the daughters in the family needed to be employed in order to help the family through tail end of the Great Depression.  My mother's brothers did attend university, save for one who joined the Canadian Army during World War Two.  My father, likewise, was sent to university by his mother, after my grandfather's death, making him the first university graduate in the family.  However, at least two of his siblings also attended university.

My point here is not to trace family history on this topic, which would be pretty dull to anyone other than me, but to note something else.

Here, in my home county, it is frequently noted that the high school graduate rate is "only" about 80%.  "Only".  But in prior decades, and certainly for most of the 20th Century, it was much lower.  And yet that lack of a high school degree did not equate to a doomed economic life.  Rather, it wasn't much of a hindrance for most people.  Like my grandfather, many men (and they were mostly men) who had no university degrees, and often had not completed high school, were able to work their way up to a successful career of one kind or another.  And the educations they had received were seemingly quite advanced, compared in some ways to today.  My grandfather helped his kids with their high school calculus homework when they were in high school.  As he dropped out at age 13, he'd seemingly had that much of a math education by that time, or was a natural mathematician.

And switching career fields was remarkably common at the time.  A university degree of any kind, no matter what it was, tended to equate to an open door with most businesses, so having one was truly an advantage, to be sure.  Notably, however, entire classes of the American population generally did not enter university unless they were pursing a few narrow careers.  Catholics, for example, generally did not go to university until after World War Two, unless they were able to attend a Catholic institution, or if they were pursing medical or legal degrees (medicine and the law were career fields that were otherwise usually open to any one ethnic group, at least within their own ethnicity).

Now, none of this is true.  We live in the age of certification, and not having certificates, including a high school degree, is extremely limiting, it would seem.  Whole classes of technical and industrial work feature certifications that if the worker lacks, he must receive.  And entire career fields that were once open to anyone are now only open to those with degrees.  Law enforcement is one such career.  At one time, most policemen, if they had any pre career training, had probably just been in military service.  Now, in many areas, they at least need to obtain an associates degree.

Conversely, the value of university degrees has remarkably declined.  At least up through the 1970s, simply having a university degree entitled the holder to an open door at most businesses.  So, in that era, having a degree in, say, English, or History, meant you could go to work at Acme Business, or whatever.  Now, those degrees probably only entitle you to pursue another degree.  And career switching is not easy.  In the mid 20th Century you can find some stunning examples of career switches, some of which are nearly baffling. Doctors becoming bankers, and things like that.  Now, and advanced degree entitles the holder to look for work in that field, but not  really anything else.

As earlier noted, the purpose of this blog is to inquire on the topic of history.  So, what, if anything, does this tell us?  I don't really know, other than that it is a big change, to be sure.  But is it good or bad?  Probably some of both.  I can't help but feel that a high school degree should really be worth more than it seems to have become worth, and that it should be necessary for so many to acquire the debt of college, however.

Weddings

A Jean Singleterry column from the Washington Post the other day ran regarding weddings.  For those who don't regularly read Singleterry, she's their financial advice columnist.  To my surprise, it started off with the note that when she heard somebody was getting married, she cringed. This is all the more surprising as, if you read Singleterry, or hear her interviewed, she's very open about her Christianity, so it isn't as if she's opposed to marriage as an institution.

What she was writing about actually was the huge cost of modern weddings.  In all honesty, I haven't noticed anything like that at all here.  Perhaps the Rocky Mountain West remains a hold out of common sense in these regards, or perhaps we just don't have the money for it.  I'm not sure which.  Anyhow, I don't think I've been to any weddings that were really out of control, expense wise.   About the only exposure to this I think I've seen is from the seemingly endless television shows about brides buying dresses; television fare so boring that I can't understand why anyone on the planet watches it.  My theory is that the shows only exist in order to broadcast torture to Al Queda prisoners.

Well, okay, I know that's not true as the female members of my household watch them.  No idea why, but they do. Suffice it to say, however, I've found the prices for dresses alone to be absolutely shocking.

The general point of this blog is to sort of track history over the past 125 years or so, with the goal of amassing data for a novel I'm slowly writing.  Slowly is the key word here.  But in that context, I've often posted here on social history. And, of course, a real, and so far forlorn hope, is that others will comment and add.  Anyhow, on this topic, there is a true evolution here, even if weddings haven't gotten completely out of control, like they have apparently elsewhere, expense wise.  When you look at photos of weddings up through the 1960s men's dress is just formal.  Suits and ties.  No tuxedos.  That's what my parents' weddings photos are like, and that's what everyone in their generations photos are like, unless we're talking about the very wealthy or royalty.  Now, every man wears a tuxedo.  This seems to have become the rule in the 1970s.  Oddly, it became the rule about the same time it became the rule for high school proms.  I wonder what happened?

Y Cross, UW, CSU, Donations, Money, and Lost Opportunities

About 14 years ago the Denver owners of the Albany County Y Cross ranch donated it to the University of Wyoming and Colorado State University.  A clause of the accepted donation was that the schools could sell it after 14 years.  They now intend to do so.

I don't know much about how the ranch was used in the 14 years the schools have owned it.  It was supposed to be used for the purpose of teaching agriculture, but from what I read, it wasn't used much.  The former owners now say that they regret donating it to the schools, and frankly they should regret it.

This is hard to understand.  A 50,000 acre ranch, situated near both schools, should have provided a variety of opportunities for both schools to both teach practical agriculture and, in this day and age, perhaps also experiment a bit with "sustainable" agriculture, a topic which has been hot in agricultural fields in recent years.  Now those opportunities will be lost, and the ranch will simply be sued to generate money.

On that both schools would be well advised to note the history of the results of ignoring the wishes of donors.  Potential donors to both schools are now on notice that the schools feel free to sell donated assets as quickly as they can.  Not all donations are suitable for long term keeping and preservation, of course, but if that is the wish of the donors, they now know that neither UW or CSU can be depended upon to do any more than accepting the donation requires.  That may give such potential donors pause, or at least put them on notice that a restrictive clause in any donation may be necessary.  For some it may mean no donation at all, something that at least UW, which is under orders to cut back financially, may wish to rethink.

Churches of the West: Catholic Church of the Ascension, Hudson Wyoming

Another example of how transportation, even close transportation, has changed:

Churches of the West: Catholic Church of the Ascension, Hudson Wyoming: This Catholic Church in Hudson Wyoming was built in 1917.  In a way, it shows the limitations of travel at the time, as Hudson is quit...

Society of the Military Horse • View topic - Off Topic: World War One Made British Eats Bad

Society of the Military Horse • View topic - Off Topic: World War One Made British Eats Bad

This has been linked in before, but a recent update is really insightful.

Today In Wyoming's History: June 6. Homesteading, agirculture and warfare.

A couple of big items are to be found in today's Today In Wyoming's History: June 6:



Here's one:

1894  In the reverse of the usual story, Colorado's Governor Davis H. Waite orders the Colorado state militia to protect and support tminers engaged in a strike at Cripple Creek.  Mine owners had already formed private army.

I don't know that Wyoming's National Guard was every used in strike breaking, but Colorado's was somewhat infamously used in that fashion at Ludlow prior to World War One.  Here, however, the reverse is true.  Interesting example of the Guard being called out to assist miners in avoiding violence.  Note that this is only slightly after Gov. Barber acted to basically prevent the Guard from being called out to stop violence during the Johnson County invasion, an act that would come back to haunt him.

Another interesting item:

1908  A man from Cody Wyoming was the co-winner of the Evanston Wyoming to Denver horse race, one of the long distance horse races that were common in Wyoming at the time.

There was quiet a culture of long distance horse races in Wyoming at the time.  This race is typical of them.

A big day in regional agriculture:

1912  President Taft signs the Homestead Act of 1912, which reduces the period to "prove up" from five years to three.  This was unknowingly on the eve of a major boom in homesteading, as World War One would create a huge demand for wheat for export, followed by the largest number of homestead filings in American history as would be wheat farmers attempted to gain land for the endeavor.  Attribution:  On This Day.

Wheat farmer, Billings Montana.

 This ear would see a boom in late Wyoming homesteading.  Contrary to the popular imagination, it was actually the last three decades of homesteading that saw the greatest number of entrants.  A rise in wheat prices due to World War One was a significant factor in this, in that it lead a lot of people to believe that they could get rich in wheat, even if they had no experience in growing it.  The Great Depression also lead to a lot of late entrants, even as many homesteaders were failing due to the economy and the horrible weather of the period.

Another war, and agricultural item:

1915  British commissioners began to purchase remounts in Wyoming.  The purchase of horses for British service in World War One created a boom in horse ranching which would continue, fueled both by British and American service purchases, throughout the war, but which would be followed by a horse ranching crash after the war.

 U.S. Army Remounts, Camp Kearney California, 1917.

 And a really big historical item:

1944 Allied forces land in Normandy, in an event remembered as "D-Day", although that term actually refers to the day on which any major operation commences.  This is not, of course, a Wyoming event, but at least in my youth I knew more than one Wyoming native who had participated in it.  Later, I had a junior high teacher whose first husband had died in it.  A law school colleague of mine had a father who was a paratrooper in it.  And at least one well known Wyoming political figure, Teno Roncolio, participated in it.  From the prospective of the Western Allies, it might be the single most significant single day of the campaign in Europe.

All the photos above are courtesy of the United States Army.

Today In Wyoming's History: May 30

Today In Wyoming's History: May 30:


1903  Theodore Roosevelt visited Cheyenne and Laramie.  He stopped first in Laramie, where he delivered a speech at Old Main.  Invited by Rough Rider veterans to ride to the next stop, Cheyenne, he did so.

Society of the Military Horse • View topic - Off Topic: World War One Made British Eats Bad

Society of the Military Horse • View topic - Off Topic: World War One Made British Eats Bad

Sheridan

Where Ft. Reno had been.

C Club Fights, Natrona County High School, April 1...

C Club Fights, Natrona County High School, April 1...:    It seems hard to believe it now, but Natrona...

Old Picture of the Day: Blacksmith Shop

Neat item from Old Picture of the Day, with interesting commentary as well:

Old Picture of the Day: Blacksmith Shop: Today's picture was taken in 1940, and it shows a blacksmith shop. This would have been a time that was pretty much the end of the era...

Society of the Military Horse • View topic - Plain horse, plains, and plain table

Society of the Military Horse • View topic - Plain horse, plains, and plain table

The packing geologist

U.S. Geological Survey Photographic Library

Society of the Military Horse • View topic - Government hunters

Society of the Military Horse • View topic - Government hunters

When you could hunt in the park.

U.S. Geological Survey Photographic Library