Tuesday, August 31, 1915. Casper becomes a first class city.

Casper, whose first buildings had been built in 1888, became a First Class City under Wyoming law, meaning that its population exceeded 4,000 residents.

It's interesting to note that Laramie was a larger city, although only slightly, at the time.

Adolphe Pégoud, France's first ace, was killed in combat.  He had six combat victories.

Jimmy Laender pitched a no hitter for the Chicago Cubs.

Last edition:

Monday, August 30, 1915. Pascual Orozco killed.

Labels: 1910s, 1915, Army, cavalry, Francisco I. Madero, Mexican Revolution, Mexico, Pascual Orozco, Texas, Texas Rangers, Venustiano Carranza

Monday at the Bar: The Op Ed in the Wyoming Lawyer on the UBE

Since that time we've endured the UBE as the bar exam for Wyoming and started to live with the sour fruits of that adoption.  In this month's issue of the Wyoming Lawyer, the magazine that members of the Wyoming State Bar all receive, an excellent op ed appears regarding how Wyoming lawyers are carrying the freight for the massive increase in out of state lawyers admitted to practice here.

Monday at the bar: New York Times: Too Many Law Students, Too Few Legal Jobs

Too Many Law Students, Too Few Legal Jobs.

The Big Picture: Holscher's Hub: Whittier Harbor, Alaska

Holscher's Hub: Whittier Harbor, Alaska

Monday at the Bar: Courthouses of the West: Town of Jackson, Wyoming Municipal Bulding

Courthouses of the West: Town of Jackson, Wyoming Municipal Building:

Lex Anteinternet: Lex Anteinternet: Lex Anteinternet: And the band p...

Lex Anteinternet: Lex Anteinternet: Lex Anteinternet: And the band p...: Today the price of oil actually declined below $40/bbl.  This is probably temporary, but how amazing.

And indeed it did prove to be temporary, but perhaps signalling how down in the dumps and perhaps permanent these price depressions may be (as in economic permanent, that is long term), a jump in the price to $45-$47/bbl was due to Saudi Arabia sending troops into northern Yemen in order to keep rebels there from consolidating their forces.  So it's regional instability in the Middle East, with a major oil producer, i.e., the one keeping the price low, that's caused the price to jump.

On the other hand, it turns out that Ecuador has been producing  oil below its cost.  It's oil has been selling for $30/bbl, and they only break even at $39/bbl.  Its crazy for them to sell it at that cost, but there must be some internal economic reason for them to keep selling it at a lost.  In most real free markets, they'd shut their wells in.  Perhaps they will, and indeed, they'll have to, resulting in taking that oil off the market for a time.

Monday, August 30, 1915. Pascual Orozco killed.

Mexican revolutionary Pascual Orozco was killed along with four others in a controversial gun battle against Texas Rangers and soldiers of the 13th Cavalry Regiment near the U.S-Mexican border. The pursuers had not realized they were chasing Orozco, but rather reported horse thieves. Whether or not they were stolen horses is unclear, and they may just have been set up.

He'd plotted against Díaz, Madero and Carranza, the latter of which lead to his house arrest at 1315 Wyoming Avenue El Paso, Texas, his family home, from which he'd escaped.

Last edition:

Saturday, August 28, 1915. The aftermath of tragedy.

Labels: 1910s, 1915, ANZAC, Battle of Hill 60, Disaster, Gallipoli, John J. Pershing, Mexican Revolution, Mexico, Venustiano Carranza, World War One

Random Snippets: G.K. Chesterton: "The new rebel is a skeptic"

“BUT the new rebel is a skeptic, and will not entirely trust anything. He has no loyalty; therefore he can never be really a revolutionist. ...

G. K. Chesterton

Saturday, August 28, 1915. The aftermath of tragedy.

ANZACs, bolstered by the 10th Light Horse, captured part of the summit of Hill 60, but not the north face overlooking Suvla Bay.

The aftermath of tragedy:

Free footballs and bananas.

Last edition:

Friday, August 27, 1915. The death of Frankie Pershing and her children.

Friday Farming: Holscher's Hub: Grants Ranch

Holscher's Hub: Grants Ranch

 

Friday, August 27, 1915. The death of Frankie Pershing and her children.

Helen Frances “Frankie” Warren Pershing, wife of the future Gen. Pershing, and daughter of Sen. Francis E. Warren, died in a fire at the Presidio in San Francisco. Three out of four of the Pershing children also died in the fire.

The British reinforced their offensive at Hill 60, but the Ottomans retained the hill. 

Germany resumed submarine warfare after a brief hiatus.

Last edition:

Wednesday, August 25, 1915. Capturing Brest-Litovsk. Asking for help on the border.

Labels: 1910s, 1915, Army, Crime, German Army, Great Retreat, Mexican Border War, police, Texas, Texas (Jim Hogg County), World War One, Wyoming (Alcova)

G.K. Chesterton: "He believes in himself"

G.K. Chesterton: "He believes in himself": "THOROUGHLY worldly people never understand even the world; they rely altogether on a few cynical maxims which are not true. Once I rem...

WHEELS THAT WON THE WEST®: Giant Western Freight Wagon Built By M.P. Henderso...

WHEELS THAT WON THE WEST®: Giant Western Freight Wagon Built By M.P. Henderso...: Some things are hard to forget.  To that point, almost twenty years ago, I purchased a book by Don Berkebile entitled, Horse-Drawn Commerci...

 That is one freakin' huge wagon.

Fickle fame

Some recent news items have interestingly portrayed the fickle nature of American fame, and how shallow and vapid it is.  Interesting to watch in progress.

One aspect of American fame is that the same things and personages that raise somebody to fame stand eager to rip them to shreds when they get there.  It'd be easy to say, and potentially correct as well, that having participated in the creation of their image, they are set up for a fall if they don't meet that expectation, but it's a little more than that in my view.

A recent example of that would involve the entire Josh Duggar saga. Now, readers of this blog, and there are darned few, know that I'm not a fan of the Duggars and never have been.  I always thought them a bit odd, or perhaps more than a bit odd, and I've chaffed at the occasional comments that they represent "conservative Christianity".  No they don't, if "conservative" Christianity is meant to include the millions of conservative Christians in the Catholic and Orthodox churches (the majority, fwiw, of Christians on earth), or those conservative Christians in numerous other denominations. No, the Duggars were interesting because they clearly belonged to something akin to a tiny sect, given their dress and lifestyle, and that provided part, but only part, of the fascination.  The remainder of the fascination was based on their just having a big family, something that wasn't unusual in the world until very recently.

Now, the Duggars traded on that fascination and turned it into a television career.  I have a problem with that, although I guess I can't fully blame them. But then, they were perfectly set up to be ripped apart when things went bad, and they did, in a bizarre fashion, mostly due to the icky behavior of Josh Duggar, who turns out to have lived a fairly hypocritical life.

The point isn't to defend him. Registering on a cheaters website is downright icky, in my view (and says a lot about how bizarrely dependant on technology we've become. . . do we need to register to cheat on spouses. . . seriously?).  No, it's just that the same media that made such a big deal out of them, is now ripping them down, and for conduct that it pretty much celebrates in other people (the cheating that is, not the other stuff).

Indeed, it's weird how fickle fame is.  If a public figure of the Duggars type, or a politician, cheats on his spouse, he's pretty much doomed.  Hollywood stars, on the other hand, get a pass and it'll just be passed off as some sort of tragedy for everyone, including the cheater.  Very fickle.

In contrast to this, we  have people who seemingly trade on their good public images for ongoing fame, as they convert their prior lives into one of trouble.  Fame is not only fickle, it's apparently addictive.

We've been given a potential example of that in the story of Bruce Jenner.  Jenner was originally famous for being an Olympic athlete.  Even at that time, fwiw, it seems to me that people speculated on him having same gender attractions, but that's another story.  Later, long after most athletes would be a thing of distant memory, he became famous again for being the second spouse of a family that's become seemingly fasmous for its female members being famous.  Or perhaps appearing on the cover of magazines with very little clothing on.  Now, he has announced as have a gender issue and he's becoming a woman, if a person can changed genders, which our DNA says we may not.

That's been celebrated and he's been announced as some species of hero.  In the meantime, he was involved with a fatal car wreck and will be charged with manslaughter, apparently.  That gets less press.  Odd.

It's particularly odd if we recall that Tiger Woods had a car accident that resulted in endless press attention, in part because he was . . . cheating on his spouse.  

Now, both are athletes, so why does Woods get the negative attention and Jenner does not.  I guess there's the cheating angle again, but Woods never set himself up as a public paragon of virtue (nor did he do the opposite).  Indeed, Woods is a Buddhist and therefore he certainly isn't a Duggaresque figure, although I'll confess I have no idea what the Buddhist position on monogamy is.

For another example, we have the weird story of the constant "look at me" displays by a certain female singer that rose up in the Disney child star factory.  I have problems with that entity in and of itself, but the displays, rather than the bold acts of individualism they're proclaimed to be, are more in the nature of childish spoiled brat displays.  Yet they are both fascinated and gawked at.  A similar meltdown, much less spectacular, has been given to at least one other female actress who ended up in constant trouble with the law, and while on a break from court displayed what she had in the Ossified Freak's journal.  Not so celebrated.  Yet another is just regarded as a pathetic meltdown.  Why is one celebrated and the other pitied?  Who knows.  Perhaps the difference is the degree to which the meltdown is genuine.

Speaking of the Ossified Freak, a young woman who rose to some level of fame as being one of the "girlfriends" of that fellow, which presumably entails certain conduct and to which other titles would have attached in a prior era, went on to marry some sort of athlete and convert that marriage into a television show. Why anyone would care about this sufficiently to watch it is hard to explain.  Following that, that fellow fell into some sort of scandal and now the same female figure is a character on a "boot camp" for troubled marriages.  I'd think that a television camera following you around in these circumstances would be troublesome in and of itself, but there you have it.  But here too, why do we care about this, and why does this sort of weirdness lend itself to a televised following? 

Indeed, that sort of public voyeurism may have been at least partially pioneered when it turned out that a really boring married couple, but one that included a former actress known for her portrayal of a girl in a California upper class high school, took that turn when it turned out that the husband was cheating on her.  He didn't get the Duggar treatment, as after all, he's an actor.  But from there on out there were endless episodes of the wife blubbering.  Heck, they both were cheating on other spouses when they started their relationship, so, D'oh!  But apparently not.  Anyhow, why would a person attempt to trade on that misery for fame?

Perhaps the most famous celebrity meltdown of recent years was the sad tale of Michael Jackson, who rose to fame on his music (which I never liked) but who spent his later years sort of freakishly altering himself.  Very odd and sad, but while the press noted his sad decline, the fame had clearly precipitated it.  So, he essentially was on display as a circus star the entire time. Very odd indeed.

Mid Week at Work: Making Army Cooks

Wednesday, August 25, 1915. Capturing Brest-Litovsk. Asking for help on the border.

The Germans captured Brest-Litovsk

The Sheriff of Jim Hogg County, Texas, asked for assistance from Federal Troops 

Last edition:

Friday, August 20, 1915. Nicholas II takes command of the Russian Army.

Labels: 1910s, 1915, Art, Battle of Hill 60, Battle of Sari Bair, Battle of Scimitar Hill, British Army, Czar Nicholas II, Gallipoli, Imperial Russian Army, Landing at Suvla Bay, Monarchy, Russia, World War One

The Big Picture: Holscher's Hub: Turnagain Inlet, Alaska

Holscher's Hub: Turnagain Inlet, Alaska

Monday at the Bar: Courthouses of the West: Teton County Courthouse, Jackson Wyoming

Courthouses of the West:  County Courthouse, Jackson Wyoming:

The lonliness of the Pentax user. . . not even a "dummies" book.

The cold time

Fall has started here.

At night, temperatures are dropping way down.  It's in the 40s in the morning, which means its probably creeping into the 30s up here at night.

I used to love Fall and Spring temperatures, although I have some bad fall allergies.  But now I dread them.  It's not because I dread cold weather, I like it. Rather, it's because my wife is always hot.

I hate air conditioning and I never turn on the swamp cooler in our own house.  But this time of year, I absolutely freeze.  My wife believes it's hot, and throws open all the windows in the house at night.  I can hardly stand the arctic temperatures that result, but there's no explaining to a hot person that your cold. They just won't believe it.

Sunday Morning Scene: Churches of the West: St. Peter's Episcopal Church, Sheridan Wyoming

Churches of the West: St. Peter's Episcopal Church, Sheridan Wyoming:

This is St. Peter's Episcopal Church in Sheridan Wyoming.

I don't know anything about the history of this Church, although I would note that it has a very English appearance. At one time, there was a substantial English expatriate population in Sheridan, which may have influenced the design of this attractive church somewhat.

Recalling the WC-56/57

Dodge Weapons Carrier at the Wyoming Machinegun Shoot.

The World War Two vintage Dodge WC 56/57 series of vehicles are among my all time favorites.

I've certainly never owned one, and I haven't even seen one for sale. And outside of World War Two, they weren't around long.  They're just neat.  Based on the WC truck frame, they were bigger than the Jeep, but not too big. Almost the ideal size.

Which is what make this Jeep concept car so neat.

It's obviously a shout out to the WC 56.

I know that they're not going to make it. But I wish they would.

Sigh.

Lex Anteinternet: Lex Anteinternet: And the band played on. . .well ...

Today the price of oil actually declined below $40/bbl.  This is probably temporary, but how amazing.

Vehicle comparison and contrast

Model A, downtown Casper, which somebody has recently been using as a daily driver.

 SUV belonging to Jackson Hole, which notes that it runs on vegetable (I hate the diminutive "veggie") oil.  This vehicle must be a diesel. Why, exactly, burning vegetable oil is more "green" than diesel fuel, as both are oils, somewhat escapes me.  It must be because you don't drill for vegetable oil, or that its recycled vegetable oil.  Well, unless it was carrying a bunch of vegetable oil with it, or it gets really good mileage, it must be able to burn diesel too.

Some days when you read the news. . .

and things seem so uniformly grim, all bad news, and everything you are and like to do being pointed at in some negative way. . . it serves to remember that, at anyone time, the news is always bad.  But only prospectively.  Some bad news gets worse, but most doesn't, and most grim things never happen.

Random Snippets: Chesterton on nature

The main point of Christianity was this: that Nature is not our mother: Nature is our sister.

G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

Friday, August 20, 1915. Nicholas II takes command of the Russian Army.

Ottomans retook Sair Bair ridge at Gallipoli.

The British launched their last major offensive at Gallipoli, attacking a summit near Suvla Bay, but ultimately withdrawing.

Czar Nicholas II, grossly overestimating his capabilities, removed Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolayevich as Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Army and personally took over the position.

It was a bad move in more ways than one.

Footnotes

This was in error originally posted for August 20, 1915.  This entry is expanded.

Last edition:

Thursday, August 19, 1915. Withdrawal at Riga.

Labels: 1910s, 1915, ANZAC, Battle of Chunuk Bair, Battle of the Gulf of Riga, Gallipoli, German Kriegsmarine, Royal Navy, World War One

Friday Farming: Lex Anteinternet: Lex Anteinternet: UW Foundation intent on cashing-...

The marketing brochure for the Y Cross Range:  Y Cross.

Pretty, ain't it?

And at $25,000,000, that's a pretty penny.  I'll bet that went to somebody serious about raising cattle for a living, eh?

We recently ran this item on the University of Wyoming and Colorado State University, football rivals but land sale allies:

Lex Anteinternet: Lex Anteinternet: UW Foundation intent on cashing-...: This past week the respective Wyoming and Colorado university benefactors (or actually the Colorado one, in what I read) of this substantial...

Following up on this, we now read the following on the on line Oil City News that the sale has been made. the News reports:

(Cheyenne, Wyo.) – The University of Wyoming Foundation and Colorado State University Research Foundation have completed the sale of the Y Cross Ranch, setting the stage for significant long-term funding of scholarships and internships for agriculture students.

This sale is explained in the following fashion:

“This is a very exciting development for students and faculty in agriculture and the related natural resources at UW,” says Frank Galey, dean of UW’s College of Agriculture and Natural Resources. “The proceeds will provide them with tremendous opportunities and experiences in an industry of utmost importance to Wyoming and its people.”

UW will apparently make $10,000,000 on the sale, which will yield, it is claimed, $400,000 in annual returns.  CSU probably comes out about the same, of course.  Some real estate agent has a fair payday too, of course.

It should also be a warning to anyone who donates a specific item without a specific instruction on how it is to be used restricting the use of, or burdening if you will, the gift.  This problem is a fairly common one for donations, and it's common for the donor to assume that the recipient will keep and maintain the gift, when often the recipient has no obligation to.  In this case, the example is both spectacular, and very sad.  While the universities were found to have a legal right to do this, shame on them.  And for anyone thinking of giving either of them funds for anything, in any department, this ought to be recalled.

Of interest is this quote from former Wyoming Jim Geringer:

If the two universities could have been more effective with the money than the ranch, the donor would have sold the ranch herself, at a much better price, and given the cash directly to the universities. She saw higher value in what the ranch and its operations could pass along to students for many generations. Instead, the boards of trustees envisioned a bank account without a soul. Neither university should be run as a profit center. Rather, they should endow the passing of the heritage and values of what makes our two states unique. For us I say. Wyoming is what America was – and what America ought to be. So – trustees: you violated your very title. Trust is never taken. Only you can give it away. And you did. In biblical terms, you sold it for a mess of pottage.

Also of interest is this recent, pre sale, quote by one of trustees of one of the two universities' foundations:

We have always taken our commitment to stewardship very seriously, and we will continue to do so by marketing the ranch for sale in a deliberative and transparent process open to all potential buyers for an outcome that will be a tremendous benefit to students at both institutions"

I can't say that the sale hasn't been transparent, but according to the news reports the universities were not disclosing the identify of the purchaser. According to an informal organization opposing the sale, the purchaser is a Press L III, LLC.  A net search doesn't reveal a "Press L III, LLC" as having a net presence, and it isn't a registered Wyoming entity with the Wyoming Secretary of State. It'll be interesting to see what this outfit intends to do with this large block of Wyoming ranch land and if that squares with their role as a "steward".  I have grave concerns about this, but we will see.

Donors, beware.  UW, shame on you.

Slaves and Objects

I've run a series of items recently that have been probably somewhat calculated to offend. Well, as some say, if you aren't offending somebody with your commentary, you are probably doing no good.

The first of these would be the one that dealt with the decline in the standard of dress.  The second one had to do with how women are increasingly treated like objects.  Whether these topics offend or not, they apparently do interest people, as the the dress story, for example, had way more hits in a day than most of my entries here every have, ever.  It isn't in the top ten list yet, but if the trend continues, it might make it.

The reason that some might find these offensive is that people don't like to be told what to wear, they don't like being told how to behave, they don't like being told that something they're doing may be having a negative impact on others, and people generally don't like bad news if they're somehow participating in it.  I haven't received any negative comments so far, but most people don't comment anyhow.

Okay, so that's how I probably offered offense.

Now, I'll increase the offense, going back specifically to my comments on viewing women as objects, and how marketing and magazines have caused us to do that.  I'm going to relate that behavior as being in the same category as what ISIL is doing to women in Iraq and Syria.

And what is that?

Well, mass assault and the most primitive horrific slavery imaginable.  Field hands in the Old South were subjected to horrors no less unimaginable to what is happening to non Muslim women in those suffering lands.

Now, no doubt, up in arms, people are saying "are you saying that's the same thing as my buying Old Ossified Freak's Rag?

No, I'm not, but I'm saying that those rags swim in the same pool.  Maybe in the shallow end, but in the same pool nonetheless.

Hugh Ossified Freak's genius in taking what was clearly trash and marketing it as something that should be a male dominated norm managed basically to enormously expand the over the tracks part of the mental city, so that all girls ended up living there to some extent.  Prior to the publication, there were women in the occupation of vending their services, but over time, Hugh put them all there, except even the market place aspect of that exchange disappeared, and it became an expectation, wanted or not.  When that occurs, the value indeed is gone, and we've seen the results.  Women not only have been personally objectified in this fashion, but now their image is everywhere, offering the same, in support of the sale of everything.

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and his adherents share that view, except that their view of their right of expectation is modified to include only non Muslim women.  They're acting physically on their view, over thousands of non Muslim women in the region, and as we now know al-Baghdadi himself did so with American Kayla Mueller. The Mueller story is tragic in the extreme, but it's shared by numerous nameless women and girls who have been reduced to slavery by their ISIL masters.

The common thread here is how these women are viewed.  In spite of its claims to later be in the forefront of "liberation" of women, Hugh's rag held them out, and still holds them out, as toys for men.  Any man who bought the magazines was entitled to view the women featured in them in the same physical fashion that ISIL's combatants view non Muslim women.  Indeed, the secular Hugh was offering a paper variant of what the religious ISIL combatants feel that they will gain in the next world, and endless supply of exactly what's portrayed in the magazines.  Indeed, a critical element of those magazines is that their portrayal, at least at first, did not portray the subjects as fallen, as prior magazines had, but rather the opposite. Special, in more ways than one, just for you.  

The sole real distinction, therefore, is that the creepy ossified purveyor of the print version of this view in the United States, and now around the globe, takes a violently secular view of things.  He's hedonistic and in it for right now, and his justification for the objectification is accordingly not only thin, but darned near non existent.  It's the most primitive justification imaginable, "I'm a man and I get what I want."  Al-Baghdadi and his adherents, however, justify their violence in this area upon the Koran, which, no matter what its apologist may claim, specifically allows the campaigning Islamic fighter to do just what they're doing, take slaves and do what you will with them.

Now, I'm not claiming, anywhere, that the majority of people who have shoved cash at Hugh all these years have done something intentionally to enslave women. But I am saying that the impact of it is wrong and it serves to reduce them to objects.  I'm also not saying that the majority of Muslims now, or at any time, have held this view about assault. Indeed, I'm confident that even in the periodic episodes of violent Islamic expansion, most don't.  But I am saying that this stuff is going on right now, and that its symptomatic of a view of women that's simply intolerable in this or any other age.  And, by extension, if this sort of conduct bothers a person, they ought to act up on that, whatever that means for them personally.

Lex Anteinternet: And the band played on. . .well maybe not so much

Earlier this week we ran this:

Lex Anteinternet: And the band played on: In Saturday's Tribune an article appeared noting, again, the loss of over 3,000 oil industry jobs in Wyoming, and a 50% reduction i...

Yesterday, however, Governor Mead sang a different tune, and one that wasn't nearly so rosy.  We have to given him credit for that.

Mead, in a press conference flaty stated that Wyoming is entering a "difficult period" and that the State may need to consider tapping into its "rainy day" funds. For those who might not be aware of what those are, they're funds that the state specifically puts aside for stressed times.

Governors do not, to my recollection, ever suggest this. That's truly a dramatic statement for a sitting Governor, indicating just how dire the state's condition may be.  That Mead would suggest considering it speaks very much in his favor, as this has tended to be something that simply isn't discussed.  Reactions to the Governor's speech have been generally favorable, although there's no present support for actually tapping into the funds.  Mead, of course, wasn't requesting to do so right now, only indicating that it might become necessary.

Today In Wyoming's History: August 18. You can take the chicken out of the town. . .

Today In Wyoming's History: August 18:

1813         Battle of the Medina River at which Royalist forces defeat Mexican-American Republican Guetierrez-Magee Expedition south of Sa...

Updated:

2015  Casper's city counsel votes to allow chickens to be kept in the city, by a vote of seven to one.

Random Snippets: Red sky in the morning

Red sky in the morning, sailor take warning.
Red sky at night, sailor's delight.

Seafarer's adage.

Like a red morn that ever yet betokened, Wreck to the seaman, tempest to the field, Sorrow to the shepherds, woe unto the birds, Gusts and foul flaws to herdmen and to herds.

Shakespeare,  Venus and Adonis

The Pharisees and Sadducees came, and to put him to the test they asked if he would show them a sign from heaven.  He replied, 'In the evening you say, "It will be fine; there's a red sky," and in the morning, "Stormy weather today; the sky is red and overcast." You know how to read the face of the sky, but you cannot read the signs of the times.

Matthew, Chapter 16, Versus 2 through 3.

The Big Careers. Monetary Nomads

I went to a deposition the other day at which, upon its conclusion, the other lawyer, whom I really don't know, told me about what all of his adult children were doing career wise.  He was obviously very proud, and had reason to be. They all had advanced degrees or were working on them, and they were all in high paying careers. Even the one who was working on an advanced degree still was presently in a high paying career, and no doubt set for an even higher paying one.

Now, this deposition took place in a law office in a Wyoming city, the largest of which is still only a mid sized, at best, Mid Western city.  I note this as its an interesting feature of Wyoming life, and perhaps of American life in general, that people are from somewhere, but of nowhere. And in the West and Midwest, it seems a common progression is from lower middle class, to professional class, to "you have got to get out of here and make a big career" class.  That strikes me as odd.

Perhaps it strikes me as odd as I'm one of that collection of Wyoming natives, not uncommon  here, who has that attitude expressed in the film variant of Doctor Zhivago, in response to the comment by Komarovsky to Laura when Zhivago is late leaving for the train out that "He'll never leave Russia".  Zhivago, we're made to understand, is so Russian, and loves Russia so deeply, indeed is so much apart of Russia, that he can't leave it.  A section of Wyomingites are like that, and I'd put myself in that category.  When I was young and contemplating careers, although I did ponder a career in the Army, I never really considered anything that would have separated me from Wyoming permanently or at least, given economic realities (which I was more realistic about back then, than I am now), which would have separated me from the greater Rocky Mountain Region.  I would not have even considered moving to Denver, which is a big city in the Rocky Mountain Region.  I guess that's just a pronounced part of my character.

As I've grown older, and of course as I've worked for what is now a very long time as a lawyer, I've traveled a lot.  That's something I was frankly very much unaware that lawyers did. This year alone I've been to Toronto, Tampa, Santa Fe, Anchorage, Denver and other distant localities.  There's more travel to come.  But in spite of that, my view hasn't really changed.  Indeed, I feel a lot like the guy who runs the Old Picture of the Day blog, where he notes:

I grew up in West Texas, and could not wait to get away. I got away, and went to the University of Texas, and then on to Stanford. I saw the world, and decided what I really wanted was to be in West Texas. So here I am, right back where I started. I had it all, and found it was not that great.

I'm not quite that jaded.  But I never wanted to get away either, and I can't say that I've ever "had it all".  I can say that I haven't gone far from where I started.  My observation here is, however, that I'm not sure why so many do and why that's a measure of success, unless a person measures success only in money, which is a very shallow measuring glass.

Now, I can understand why some do, as some people's passion, vocation, avocation, or at least their interest, mandate that. If a person loves, for example, high finance, they're gong to a location where you can do that sort of thing.  I've known people who loved military life, and indeed as noted I contemplated such a career at one time, and of course that means going where you are sent, and always has.  A person can given any number of such examples.

But the one I really don't quite grasp is the one in which people have followed a dollar sign career, and let them take them wherever.  Indeed, I don't quite understand why some people seemingly undertake no further analysis than that.  It's quite common.  I've met lots of people who move from one large city to another, due to their career, and its quite clear that only the dollar aspect of matters to them.  They form weak attachments to everyone and everything, except their pay.  And I've met more than one person, and this is common with Wyoming ex-pats, who leave to pursue an education, get a job, and then work in big cities, only to return when their career is over and they are old, claiming they missed the state the entire time.  Well, then, why did you leave? And if that thing was so important to you, should you have come back?

The worst examples I find are when people move some place which is nearly incomprehensible to grasp the attraction to.  In some instances, I find some people stating that "I hate this city, but . . . ".  But what?  I love money, and I could live anywhere for that?  I guess.  I fairly recently had a conversation with a very successful, by monetary standards, lawyer who told me about his youth in the Mid West, how he went to our state frequently, but as his career was based in a Gigantic City Elsewhere, which he did not like, he must stay there. Thirty to Forty years of commitment based, apparently, on cash.  He sounded depressed about it.

Some of this must absolutely be me.  And I worry about it. I'm probably a bad example to my kids, as I just don't think some of these worldly achievements mean very much.  In that fashion, I guess, I'm more in tune with the Gen Xers than the Boomers.  But then that's how my father was too.

This isn't, I should note, an argument for poverty.  When I take the depositions of men who came up from Chihuahua to work in the oilfields, I know why they came and understand it.  Rather, however, it's the seeming belief, so common in American life, that upwards mobility means that some generation must live in a series of huge cities and base their value on a paycheck that I don't grasp.  It seems hollow to me.

Thursday, August 19, 1915. Withdrawal at Riga.

The British and ANZAC troops gave up ground at Chunuk Bair.

The German Navy cleared the Gulf of Riga of mines and entered it, but withdrew after the SMS Moltke was hit by a torpedo from a British submarine.

The British liner Arabic was sunk by the U-24.  The U-27 was sunk by  the HMS Baralong.

Last edition:

Tuesday, August 17, 1915. The hurricane hits Galveston.

Labels: 1900, 1900 Galveston Hurricane, 1900s, 1910s, 1915, 1915 Galveston Hurricane, Automobiles, Battle of the Gulf of Riga, Crime, Georgia, Texas, Transportation, World War One

Hilaire Belloc: Land-Tenure in the Christian Era

Hilaire Belloc: Land-Tenure in the Christian Era: THE way in which land has been held or owned during the nineteen hundred years which have seen in Europe the rise and establishment of the C...

Mid Week At Work: British soldiers gathering oats, 1917

Returning Women to the 1st Century BC

 

 Chinese slave girl, early 20th Century, in San Francisco.  Slavery was long abolished at this point, but cultural slavery is a harder thing to crack.

And no, I don't mean the recent news of the horrors being perpetrated by ISIL, although I should comment on those somewhere in this blog.

Rather, I recently posted an item on standards of dress, and when I did that, I briefly touched on this topic. While I'm sure that there are those who will vehemently disagree with me, after having observed it for some time, I'm fairly convinced of the following. The result of what started off as an effort to "liberate" standards to the benefit of women has, in the Western World, returned them to the status they were in during the 1st Century BC, chattel for men.

Sound radical, I suppose it is, but that's what's happened, to some degree. 

I think in part the reason for that is that it's become, in modern times, and by that I generally mean anything after 1900 or so, a standard accepted theses that the bounds of "liberty" are ever expanding to everyone's benefit. Well, they quit doing that for women during the last 40 years, and that's a bad thing. To add to it, however, the thesis of ever expanding beneficial liberty was flawed to start with.

That thesis essentially is grounded in a relativistic thesis that all standards are bad and are simply negative social constructs.  In the case of women, the the assault on them came from the supposed concept, or at least the stated one, that they were shackled to roles determined by males, and that by liberating them from them, they'd achieve fulfillment.

That thesis was pretty flawed in the first instance.  Men and women are more than a little "shackled" by what is now an equally unpopular idea, biology, and the history of the last 70 years has shown that.  Men and women remain, at the end of the day, men and women, and much about what we want in life is determined by that.  We were evolved in a certain fashion, and while we're rational scientist intelligent animals, we're still a product of our early nature.  We can act contrary to it, but the drive to do what we were evolved to do will always be there, and just as a tiger wants to be in the jungle, not in a cage, those drives will make us unhappy if we try to excessively suppress them.

Any social change that ignores basic evolution and biology is doomed to produce a bad result, at least in part, and likewise any such change that is ignorant of real conditions and their history is going to be dangerously based on false premises. That's what's happened here, so that's what we'll start with.

It's popular to present the theory that, in the 1970s, a Women's Liberation movement got women out of the home and (back) into work.  That's partially correct, as we'll see. But added to that is the idea that women were being kept down  by Victorian social standards that were basically designed to repress them, and everything about those standards, from a woman's role in marriage, to their role in work, to their personal conduct, was sort of a result of a conspiracy by men, probably upper class men, but men in general. That's where the theory went off the rails, and in some ways that's created the very real problems that women face today, including their return to objectification.

We've written on this history before, and as that post was quite extensive, we'll just refer to it here. Suffice it to say, we feel that the entry of women and the increasing equality of women in the workplace is an economic and technological story, and that the supposed societal element to it was merely following that, not leading it at all.  Like we said at the time, it was Maytag, not World War Two, that took women out of the home and into the workplace.

 

Rosie the Riveter, in popular myth she blazoned the trail out of the home and into the office.  But that trial had already been taken by her mother during World War One.

 

 The Women's Land Army.  Organizations like this put women in the role of the farmer in the US, UK, Canada and France during World War One.  They were also in the factories during the war, and even on the front in the form of nurses.  Among the Western Allies the roles open to them in labor were about as broad as they were during World War Two, although this was less the case with military roles, save for Imperial Russia which saw the symbolic deployment of the Women's Battalion of Death just before the imperial regime collapsed.

So lets just skip to the 1950s and on.

We know that by the 1950s, it was no longer economically necessary to have the division of labor that had existed prior to that time.  Indeed, technologically, that division wouldn't have been necessary in the 1930s, but the Great Depression retarded the inevitable and kept a lot of technologies of all kind from entering into use. So when the changes came on, they came on pretty fast, as it was basically the case that 20 years of very real technological change, accelerated by the advance of technology and its deployment during World War Two, came on all at one.  That would have been bound to be disruptive to some extent.

But the 1950s were not, in any event, the really conservative Happy Days type of society that television has popularized. Societally, after the foment of the 1920s and the extensive political and societal liberalization caused by the Great Depression and World War Two, the country was actually much more politically and societally liberal than it is now typically remembered.  A whole host of conditions therefore combined to put women into work, and into college.  This isn't to say that everything changed overnight, which is never true.  But, we can say that society has acclimated to having women in the workplace, and since about 1920 or so, advances in domestic machinery essentially necessitated a redeployment of the female demographic into a different role in labor.

So far, so good, right? Well, basically yes.  In economic terms, the domestic machinery revolution that occurred in the first half of the 20th Century meant that women didn't have to occupy a domestic role if they didn't want to, and coincidentally made it easier for men and women to live singly, something that had heretofore been pretty difficult.

So, given that, we can imagine a progression from 1950 forward with women entering the workplace relatively seamlessly.  And, that's been part of the story.  Indeed, a bigger part of that story would tend to be that the liberal movements of the late 60s and 1970s may very well have had little to do with what was an economically driven process in any event  And it would appear clear that, for the most part, most women never fully accepted the thesis that the Women's Liberation movement advanced on a truly genderless society (a thesis which was interestingly very close to Marxist social thought from the teens forward, in theory but not practice).  So, what's my point.

Well, as this occurred, and wrapped up in it to an extent, an anti female social movement based upon economic gain and a pharmaceutical revolution came at the same time, decaying what had been a social and economic evolution, and confusing people on all of it.

Here too, we'll jump back and go forward through these things.

I"m going to be a bit vague on some of these details, intentionally, from here on out, as I don't want to popularize what I'm condemning.   If that makes it a bit confusing, and I don't think it will, well oh well.

The first element of this was the introduction of a publication that was slickly marketed.

Magazines featuring photographs of women are about as old as magazines. But starting in the very early 1950s, a clever fellow working for one of the older magazines conceived of a new marketing strategy for them.

Prior to this period, there had been such rags, but they were sort of gutter marketed. That is, they knew what they were, and the market to which they were pitching. Vice was part of their appeal. During World War Two, however, that altered a bit as one of the magazines that existed at that period improved its production values, and another came out marketed directly to soldiers.  Those elevated the standards of the magazines a bit. At the same time, the removal of millions of young men from their homes and the influence of their communities operated to lower moral standards anyhow, and that found its expression, among other things, in the exaggerated illustrations of women on one thing or another, principally aircraft (you don't go around painting bright images on combat vehicles, as a rule, as you don't want to draw attention to them if at all possible).  Coincident with that, that illustration style became popular in the above mentioned media, making the next step that was taken perhaps not as revolutionary as some have suggested.

Indeed, it definitely wasn't as revolutionary, as the common claim is that this fellow invented the medium, which simply isn't true at all.  Rather, the medium existed and had changed, but he perceived that and put out a new publican which was very slickly marketed.

The really slick part of the marketing aspect of it, more than anything else, is that it presented an image which suggested that a man didn't need to hide the magazine, and that this represented the life of the affluent male.  Very clearly part of that, the affluent male could have as many (top heavy) women as he wanted, without committing to them at all, and without fearing that they'd get pregnant or have demands.

This is, we'd note, completely contrary to the later myth about the publication, because the gist of it was massively anti woman.  In later years, following the 1960s really, the publication would claim that it was in the forefront of the liberation of women because, it claimed, it had liberated them to act up their desires.  Complete bull.  The entire publication was (and remains) entirely male-centric and male self centered. Women don't count in the calculation at all, are only toys.  The women in the earlier rags weren't really toys, but rather were fallen, something else entirely.

The publication became a huge hit, but it didn't really create a real revolution in and of itself, and it never would, contrary to what has otherwise been claimed by it. Rather, it's one piece in the overall puzzle.  It was corrosive, but not sufficiently corrosive to corrode things completely on its own.

What assisted that was the introduction of pharmaceuticals that operated to allow the conduct urged by the publication in the manner in which the publication portrayed it, without potential immediate biological consequence.  That came on and really did change the calculations, and it brought women over, to an increasing degree, to the conduct that men like the now ossified freaky publisher urged.

Now, I know that this sounds like a moral text, and it doesn't really intend to be.  A person could take this from there, but that's now what we'll do, rather, we play this story's history out in another direction.

As the conduct became more and more common, what also became more and more common is the portrayal of women in this fashion. Now its epidemic.  We've seen piles of advances for women in society, but we now also see young women who advertise themselves as nothing other than object. They've effectively reduced themselves, in some instances, to a class which hasn't existed in our society ever, the object.

This is an indescribably bad development.  No human being should be an object.  Most of us have to sell our labor, but nobody should have to sell themselves.  But some young women effectively act as if they believe they have to, and the massive societal message is that they do.  And as long as some are, they all will be to some extent.  Nobody should be an object, and nobody should want to be one.