Mid Week At Work: So is that work what you expected?

Jerome Facher:  If I were you I'd make it a point in that lunch hour I'd find a place that's quiet and peaceful and I'd be away from all the noisiness and insanity, have a sandwich read a magazine maybe listen on a radio to a game at Fenway if it was playing at the time and I'd make sure everyone knew that I didn't want to be disturbed in that hour of solitude because that would be my time my own private time which no one if they had any sense of any self-preservation at all would dare interrupt if I were you.

Jerome Facher in A Civil Action.

I didn't post anything on it last week, but a few weeks ago I started a series of posts for the occasional Mid Week At Work series that went from what you wanted to do when you were young to what you ended up doing.

I think this is an interesting evolution.  I look around at adults in all sorts of roles and I often wonder how they got there.  As part of that, I wonder if they're disappointed, or resigned, or thrilled how things turned out.  Part of the reason that I wonder that is I discredit most people who claim "I always wanted to be a . . . "

Part of the reason I discredit that is that, at least with most professions, I just can't believe its true.  I hear, on odd occasion, a person claim "I always wanted to be a lawyer", which of course is my particular profession. That's ludicrous for the most part.   I never recall a young kid or a young teen really saying that, although there was one such kid in my daughter's grade school. To the extent that I believe that I believe it only when a person comes from a family which has a lot of lawyers in it and that's what they know.  In that case, however, saying "I always wanted to be a lawyer" equates pretty much with a person saying "I always wanted to be Ukrainian" if they were born in Kiev.

Anyhow, I do believe there are some occupations in which, when a person declares that they always wanted to do it, its true, but they're just a few.  When men say, for example, that they always wanted to be ranchers, farmers, or cowboys, I do believe that.  Or soldiers or policemen.  It's something about the occupation that taps into something in our deep instincts, really.  The key to those, I suppose, is that in many instances those sort of occupations have many more people who "always wanted" to do them, than actually do them.

So, for the many other occupations,  I suspect, people come to them in some other fashion. They become engineers, doctors, lawyers, accountants, etc., etc., by some other route.  At some point they fixed upon these occupations as they ones they'd do, or they fell into them by some circuitous route.  Most people end up occupying some employment niche for a long time, often the better part of their lives.  But most people probably didn't originally have that role as an aspiration.  At some point, before entering whatever field they're in, they had some sort of conception of what it would be like.

Do those expectations meet reality?  I'd guess in many instances they do not, but then in some they do. Some find their occupations much more satisfactory to themselves than others. Some find them disappointing.  Most people become at least proficient in what they do, but what's their mental mindset about it?  Is it "I'm so glad it worked out this way", or "I'm so disappointed that it worked out this way", or something in between.

I'm not asking that, but I'd ask instead, how closely did your ultimate career meet your expectations?

Wyoming Fact & Fiction - Neil A. Waring: Western Books

Wyoming Fact & Fiction - Neil A. Waring: Western Books: I have often read that Owen Wister's publishing of  The Virginian , 115 years ago this week, on May 28, 1902, was the start of Wes...

Decoration Day, May 30, 1917.

Memorial Day, Fifth Avenue, Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument in Riverside Park, New York City, May 30, 1917. 

Memorial Day, formerly Decoration Day, wasn't always on a Monday.  It used to be simply May 30.

Automobile races in Washington D. C., on this day in 1917.

Sunday Morning Scene: Churches of the West: Unidentified Church, Hanna Wyoming

Churches of the West: Unidentified, Hanna Wyoming:

Unidentified Prairie Gothic style church in Hanna, Wyoming.

The Dogs of War

Red Cross nurse bandaging a wounded dog, May 27, 1917.

May 26

My father would have been 88 years old today.

He died when he was 62 years old.

I can't help but think of that whenever this day rolls around.  Indeed, it's easy for me to think of as my birthday is the prior day, May 25.  By odd coincidence one of his cousins shares my birthday, May 25.

Hard to believe he's been gone 26 years.

That horse on the license plate, everyone knows its Steamboat. Right?

 This spectacular depiction of a rodeo horse at the University of Wyoming does in fact depict Steamboat.  And it might also depict what lead to the first athletic symbol for UW and the therefore also the license plate symbol. . . . maybe.

Well, everyone knows that.

But is it?

 A photograph of the last model of Wyoming's license plate. This plate is being replaced by a new one, but that one will also feature Steamboat.

Not so fast there, buckaroo.

Let's start off by admitting that Steamboat was one heck of a rodeo horse. There's no doubt about it. Steamboat was great.  So great that I'd post a photograph of the real Steamboat but all the existing on line photos of the horse are closely guarded by copyright claims, so I won't.  But he was fine roughstock, to be sure.

But he wasn't the first horse to be used as a symbol for Wyoming.  And not even the first bucking horse.

That horse would be Red Wing.  And here's where the tale grows complicated.

Red Wing was a privately owned horse that hailed from Montana but was brought into military service by Sgt. George N. Ostrom of the Wyoming National Guard.  Ostrom, who was a bugler with the Wyoming National Guard and who had already seen service in the "border war", purchased the horse on the Crow Reservation in southern Montana, although its unclear to me if he purchased it privately or if he purchased it with the intent of it being accepted as a Remount.  I suspect he did the latter as he worked with Army Horse Purchasing Officer Chester Cotton of the Army's Remount station in Sheridan Wyoming to take the horse into Army service.  The accounts I've seen (and their may be others) are quite unclear on this, but that's likely because the authors aren't hugely familiar with the Remount system of the day.  Chances are high that Guardsman Sgt. Ostrom was detailed to acquire horses for Remounts for the Wyoming National Guard, or perhaps more specifically the 3rd Regiment Wyoming National Guard. Even though the unit was an infantry unit at the time (it would become part of the 148th Field Artillery Regiment that September) it would have required a fair number of horses as even infantry units of that era had a substantial number of Remounts.

 

Ostrom was a talented illustrator.  He drew this depiction of a New Mexican town while stationed in Deming, New Mexico, with the Wyoming National Guard.

Sgt Ostrom worked with Cotton (who may or may not have been a Guardsmen as well) to take Red Wing into service, which isn't really all that remarkable as a large number of horses were being purchased at the time and a lot of them were fairly rank.  The horse was then shipped at some point to Ft. D. A. Russell and then chosen by Major Louabaugh of the Wyoming National Guard as his personal mount.  Maj. Louabaugh had the bad misfortune, however, of being mounted on Red Wing when the horse encountered two bears brought into the unit as mascots (an oddly common thing at the time), the bears having been brought out on the parade ground.  As horses do not approve of bears, Red Wing blew up with Maj. Loubaugh mounted on him.  Apparently Cotton went with the horses to Ft. Russell as at that point Ostrom and Cotton were given the task of finishing the horse.  The horse must have retained some fairly rank qualities at the time as it bucked with Cotton fairly spectacularly during this process.

Red Wing survived the First World War and made it all the way over to France to serve with the 148th.  He didn't come back, however, as he was retired to a stable in France.  Horses being what they are, it's unlikely he appreciated the equine odyssey that he experienced, nor is it likely that he was ever aware that his fame would decline in comparison with Steamboat, who pretty much stayed in Wyoming.

At any rate, when the Army began to approve of the policy of units adopting unit symbols, the memory of Cotton on Red Wing was fresh and Ostrom designed a symbol featuring the two of them for submission to a contest for such a symbol for the unit.  It won.

The unit insignia, as displayed at the Wyoming Veterans Museum in Casper.

The story of unit patches in the Great War has become a little skewed, unfortunately, and is confusing in any event.  It would not have been the case, I should note, that this symbol ended up getting sewn on every Wyoming doughboys shoulder.

 I sometimes manage to really screw up a photograph, such as this one.  I didn't have this one anywhere close to being properly aligned. Anyhow,t he top image is what was adopted as the shoulder insignia, although these really wouldn't have been added until after World War One. the bottom one is the image that was painted on vehicles and equipment. . . . or maybe not, note that this Wyoming "artifact", a US M1917 helmet has the equipment insignia painted on it:  M1917 Helmet.

In fact, for the most part, unit insignia didn't get widely used until just after the shooting stopped.  But at that point it went on to a pile of things, and it was already on a lot of equipment by the war's end.  Because standardization was in a state of flux at the time, not every application was as uniform as the item above would suggest, but that it went on to a lot of things cannot be doubted.

 

Very nice example of National Guard collar insignia, which we'll throw in for the sake of completeness, from this period in the upper left, and a subdued chevron on the right.  Subdued chevrons would be a feature of the uniform all the way into the early Vietnam War but rank structure for enlisted men constantly changed.  This insignia hearkens back to the 19th Century with its bugler specialty device and would pass into history before World War Two.

So, the troops came home and it ended up on license plats, making Steamboat just a horsey fraud, right?

Well no.

Steamboat was a legendary rodeo horse, as already noted, prior to World War One.  He's remembered in a charming fashion now, but he was flat out rank.  One story is that he got his name to the vapor coming from his snorting nostrils, something that anyone who has been around a really hot, and I mean agitated, horse on a cold day has seen.

Steamboat entered the rodeo circuit early in the 20th Century and was widely photographed.  Given that, when the University of Wyoming went to adopt a symbol for its athletic program, photos of the rank bronc were easy to find.  It seems to be the case that UW athletic equipment manager Deane Hunton, used a photo of Guy Holt, maybe, riding him when he went to adapt a symbol for athletic uniforms in the 1920, although the identify of the rider is disputed, and some claim the rider is a composite of the many riders photographed attempting to ride Steamboat.

A display at Wyoming State History Day featuring a University of Wyoming football helmet, which prominently features Steamboat.

In 1936 Wyoming put the symbol on its license plates, which sparked a controversy that was hot at the time and is still lukewarm now.  Veterans of the Wyoming National Guard from World War One felt their symbol had been stolen. UW hotly denied that it had appropriated Red Wing and defended the symbol as Steamboat.  For that matter, a World War One pilot who had painted a very similar symbol on his fighter plane during the Great War maintained that  the symbol was really his.

In the end, however, it seems clear that the horse on everything Wyoming, except military stuff, somewhat, is Steamboat. The rider?  Who knows.  Not that Red Wing has been completely forgotten.  He seems to have probably been the horse that lived on symbolically to re-adorn Wyoming Army National Guard equipment during the Korean War, or maybe not.

Steamboat?  Probably Red Wing.  Or maybe not.

On the other hand, the Wyoming Army National Guard, right about the same time, went to a different horse and rider symbol, recalling a different lineage, that of the 3d U.S. Volunteer Cavalry during the Spanish American War.  The blue and yellow patch symbolized a cavalry heritage that the Wyoming Army National Guard had after World War One through the early 1950s (loosing its horses in 1943 or so), but which it could legitimately track back to the volunteer cavalrymen of the Spanish American War.

That symbol, however, has yielded to a degree to a new one for most Wyoming Army National Guardsmen.  Steamboat again?  Almost certainly.

 Symbols of the state.  The buffalo inside our state flag surrounding its image that's in the state flag, and the state flag superimposed on Steamboat.

And indeed, Steamboat was always a unique image and has become totally ascendant.  Its the state's most recognizable symbol, only rivaled, and not effectively, by the buffalo that appears in the center of the state's flag and, oddly, by "307", the state's area code that strangely adorns all sort of stickers now.

Red Wing or Steamboat, or none of the above.  The symbol adopted by Pendleton whisky, maybe the last somewhat clear example of a bucking horse symbol that isn't Steamboat, but then its not from Wyoming.

1917 Matoon Illionois Tornado

Young Greeks returning to farming according to Al Jazeera

And they seem mystified.

Al Jazeera, the respected Arab news outlet, reports:

Lesbos, Greece - Odysseas Elytis, the Greek Nobel laureate and poet, once wrote: "If you disintegrate Greece, in the end you'll see that what you have left is an olive tree, a vineyard, and a ship. Which means: with these you can rebuild it."

Having endured eight years of a deepening economic crisis, thousands of young Greeks are taking heed of Elytis' words by leaving the cities to work on the land.

 But why not? 

A lot of Greeks are still close to their farming roots.  Agriculture as the dominant industry was a feature of Greece up until well after World War Two. With a failing economy, generous unemployment and social benefits, heck, why not give it a try.  Apparently thousands feel that way.

For many young Greeks who have the option, returning to their family farms once they've completed their studies, has become their most viable chance for employment.
"Growing up, I always thought that farming would be an extra income like it has been for my parents," says Maria Kalaboka, 27, who this month earns her master’s degree in law in Thessaloniki.

"But seeing the unemployment that exists in the city, I decided to make our family business my full-time job. If you're unemployed in the city, you don't have any options," Maria says. She moved home this month to start working full-time on her family's olive grove.

Speaking in her family's olive mill near the village of Plomari in Lesbos, Maria paints a bleak picture of how life in Thessaloniki means homelessness, unemployment, and depression: "Here, you won't go hungry. At least you'll be able to grow your own food."

The more power to them.

An option that, for the most part, doesn't exist for Americans.

On the other hand. . .

 Muhammad and the Muslim Army at the Battle of Uhud.  Co-existing wasn't a big platfor for Muhammad.

Katy Perry, another person whose views I don't know why we would credit, has reportedly posted this solution:

Whatever we say behind people’s backs, the Internet can be a little bit ruthless as far as fan bases go but I think that the greatest thing we can do is just unite and love on each other. . . No barriers, no borders, we all just need to co-exist.”

Co-exist.

"Co-exist" is the vapid sentiment that's expressed commonly on bumper stickers featuring the twin aspects of  the white flag of surrender and moral bankruptcy.

Say what you will about ISIL, but it stands for something.  And to a large degree it attacks the West as the West has come to stand for nothing.  At the end of the day certain things are true and certain things are false.  Truth doesn't co-exist with falsity, it defeats it. There are not multiple realities. There's only reality, and a person can accept it or live in ignorance as an ignoramus. 

The question then is whether ISIL's Islamic vision is true or false.  But as we think that the question is something else, we aren't even prepared to fight it.  That is, in large measure, because moral relevance, a poisonous moronic philosophic position that boils down to "we can all have our individual truths" is blisteringly stupid and expresses our societies gross separation fro reality.  We can argue about ultimate truths, but not all visions of truth are equal or even close to equal.

Much earlier in this series of threads on the war with ISIL I've posed the question on whether we can win the battle or not.  Militarily we are, it seems, right now.  But philosophically we aren't even fighting.  ISIL stands for something as Islam stands for something.  The West's position in this argument is. . . . non existent right now.

Wars, ultimately, are about ideas. 

Attack on Machester: Reacting completely incorrectly.

I haven't commented on terrorist attacks for some time here. This doesn't mean that they aren't occurring so much as it may mean that I haven't had much to say about them that I haven't already.  Now, however, I find myself making a comment. But not so much on the terrorist attacks themselves as on a reaction to them.

This is frankly related in a way to a post I have on a different topic entirely, in a way, so my mind was on it, even though when I get to that one I doubt it'll be evident that the posts are in any way related.  Anyhow, I find myself making a comment.

And, moreover, I find myself making a comment to something I saw on Facebook.

I'll be frank that a lot of Facebook pat answers to things in the form of "click if you agree" or memes is absolute junk.  I was, in fact, getting ready to make another post on the absolute irony of people posting something that turns out to be directed back at them, and they don't know it.  You see that a fair amount.  But that 's not the topic here.

No, the topic has to do with not really thinking out what we're saying in reaction.  

More specifically, the post is in regard to this item that appeared on Facebook:

 

 Facebook Meme, put up here not because I approve it, I very much do not, but so that I can comment on it, and hence posted with "fair use".

This is a completely inappropriate reaction to the terrorist attack in Manchester in every conceivable sense.

First of all, let me state that I'm not a fan of Ariana Grande in any sense.  But what's this supposed to mean?  It comes very close to the "my country right or wrong" view that isn't really very American.  And it ignores the nature of the conflict, indeed, the war, we are now in. 

Indeed, I'm so little approving of Grande that one of my prior posts here in regards to her, the only prior post I have here in regards to her, was singularly harsh.  I'll still stand behind everything I stated there, including:

Hmmmm

Ariana Grande has a Problem with our culture's reductive view of women, and she's not going to be silent about it anymore.

Or so a news story on the net reported.

Later the net was reporting that she was reacting to pushback she was receiving from her comments.

Well, I'm sorry, but people like Ariana Grande are part of the Problem.  I agree that our culture has a reductive view of women. Pop Tarts who appear in videos displaying their butts in spandex and singing about sex contribute to that reductive view.  Indeed, Ariana usually has her wares on display so she's effectively prostituting her image for her career, which also contributes to that.  And if she's pushing back, she needs to wake up on that.  She's pushed herself in everyone's face already and she's pushing a view of the relationship between men and women, musically, that's deeply flawed.

So I'm not exactly a Grande fan.  And I absolutely  hate the pornographic trash of her most recent hit (in so far as I'm aware of what hits she may have), Side By Side.  Indeed, I'll stand stand behidn my comment that:

However, Grande, who has a decent voice, has made a career in part out of dressing like a tramp.  That objectified herself.

And I'll even concede something that is missed in comments like that above, and which is a very important aspect of the conflict that we are in.  Part, but only part, of the reason that ISIL is able to raise forces to contest us is that it is easily able to claim that the West is morally decadent and therefore ISIL's war on the West is a war on moral depravity.  In reality the vision of Islam that ISIL advocates is morally perverted, licensing the severe servitude of women, slavery, and extreme violence, but the degree to which the West has surrendered to the libertine allows ISIL to claim to be the only game in town in the moral arena in many areas.  Areas of moral conduct which at one time would have brought censure from advocates of the Natural Law or from the pulpit often tend not to much anymore, with this being all the more case in Europe than the United States, but there everywhere in the Western World nonetheless.

Which doesn't mean that the item above even comes close to any legitimate point.

I have no idea of Ariana Grande is a backer of the "Woman's March" or "hates Trump". Indeed, I hardly care.  I generally regard the entertainment industry as completely vapid and assume that most people in it are for whatever seems trendy at the time.  Generally, if a lot of people in the entertainment industry are protesting any one thing I figure it's probably reached the point where its really safe to protest it.

And I also assume that in the current moral atmosphere, and for decades for that matter, any broadly popular entertainer is probably going to advocate to some degree moral license.  It's always been a feature of that line of work for some reason and even in areas where that supposedly doesn't occur if you look hard enough, you'll tend to find it, and find it excused.  In female pop music male written music (which it mostly is) for female singers aims towards teenage male fantasy at that, with the singers acting quite often to prostitute themselves to the same through their singing.

So, claiming that Grande is somehow deserving of this disaster, or that her fans are, is really far beyond the pale.  We'd have to take her seriously in order to get that far.

But nowhere, I'm quite certain, did she ever do anything which somehow would be regarded as giving aid and comfort to the enemy.  She's not Tokyo Rose or Lord Ha Ha.  If she has political views that argue against the current administrations she's entitled to them, and that doesn't invite attack any more than to claim that the isolationist Republican Part of the 1930s invited Pearl Harbor.  We are fighting ISIL in part because we believe people are entitled to say what they want safely.  To claim that once an attack comes that this somehow means everyone who doubts a current path should just shut up is really totally in opposition to what we claim we believe in.

Moreover, while I have huge problems with the left and "progressiveness" and its goals, indeed I think many of its social goals are fundamentally deluded at the deepest possible levels, to argue that support for some of these things means ipso fact that she "hates" the United States or should abandon them due this is flat out wrong.

None of which is to say that Western social views have no role in the fight that's occurring. They do.  But Western political views do as well. And the hardcore Islamic views that are circulating in the Middle East also have a great deal to do with them and must be taken absolutely seriously in terms of ISIL's motivation. 

So, if we're going to cite moral issues in regards to the Manchester attack.  This isn't the meme to post.  No, maybe this image would be:

 

With some discussion about what an image like this meant.

Indeed, while I haven't spent much time here speaking of things like that which occurred on May 13, 1917, the messages attributed to such things is never of the type posted above but much more introspective.