I've found it hard to get too worked up about the firing of UW President Laurie Nichols . . .

and I'm not sure why.

I probably ought to be concerned, as something is going on and I'm completely clueless about it. As the state's only four year university, what happens at UW really matters.

And I did take offense when the prior President, Bob Sternberg, who resigned received so much faculty heat, basically bringing about his resignation.  The heat was, in no small part, due to faculty getting upset about his trying to focus the direction of the land grant school on what counts in the state, which they didn't like.  During that period the law school's Dean Easton resigned over what he saw as interference of that type and I frankly think that Sternberg had the high side of that argument.  No matter, they both went.

Nichols has been best by all sorts of problems at UW during her term in office, including the need to eliminate degree programs and the entire weird flap over the schools recruiting slogan, which turned out to be a huge success, but which brought some really predictable and dim reactions.  You' can read about that here:

The University of Wyoming adopts an unneeded slogan and some faculty reveals themselves to be trendy twits

 Black cowboys.  Oh my, this would suggest that certain faculty members at the University of Wyoming are, well, ignorant, sanctimonious, twits.

One third of all cowboys in the Frontier Era were black or Mexican.

It continues on from there.

Part of the reason that I may be exhibiting less interest than I should be is that there was no build up of controversy prior to this event and when it occurred, the first negative reactions I read came from the same predictable corner that the reaction to the slogan did.  Indeed, one of the exact same faculty members was quoted, and I'm tired of him.  So that may have colored my view a bit.

Be that as it may, Nichols seemed to be doing a good job. She weathered the slogan flap and turned that around, or at least it turned around, and she did a seemingly good job of scaling down where need be.

On scaling down, UW went from 30 departments to 21 by necessity.  That's a hard thing to do, and I don't agree with all of the changes.  Probably nobody would.  In today's paper it was revealed that the degree program in geography will be housed in the Department of Geology and Geophysics, the Department of Geography having been eliminated.

That's a bad idea as other than sharing the Greek root "geo" in their names, Geography has nothing whatsoever to do with Geology/Geophysics.  I'd not do that.

I'm not too sure what I think of the expanded degrees in the community colleges where the university has a presence as well.  In some ways I think that's good, and in others bad.  UW seems to make sure that its heavyweight degrees don't stray off the Laramie campus, and I can see why, but if we're going to offer four year degrees at an increasing rate in the community colleges, that's going to have to change.  Indeed, while it's been a losing fight, the time has really come for one of the community colleges, and Casper College is the best candidate, to become a university.

Well, at any rate, the Trustees really do owe the state, and Nichols, an explanation.  There's some reason for their decision, even if its trivial, and as the state only has one four year university, they should let us know what it is.

The Vietnam War: Every Fortnight

March 31, 1919: Mrs Wilson makes the rounds, Artillery rounds aid the Allies in northern Russia, Wilde goes fifteen rounds

American Red Cross Student's Club on the day it was visited by Mrs Woodrow Wilson, March 31, 1919.

Edith Wilson, Woodrow Wilson's wife, was in Paris with him while he attended the Paris Peace Conference and, on this day, she visited the Red Cross Student's Club in Paris.

Edith was Wilson's second wife, his first having died in 1914.  She was a widow herself, her first husband having died in 1908.  She was younger than her second husband, being 47 years old at the time this photograph was taken, where as her husband was then 63.  He'd have a stroke, of course, later this year and at that time Edith Wilson became the effective chief executive of the United States, irrespective of there being no constitutional provision for that, and during turbulent times at that.  She did well in the role and can legitimately be regarded as the nation's first de facto female chief executive.  

Concerns over a repeat of the confusion caused by President Wilson's stroke would lead to changes in the law providing for a means of cabinet offers challenging the President's ability to serve.

Edith Wilson would live to be 89 years old and was present by invitation when the United States declared war against Japan in 1941.  She lived to attended John F. Kennedy's inauguration.

In Russia, a combined western Allied assault was successful at Bolshie Ozerki.

The Allied role against Communist forces in Russia, and elsewhere, is an extremely confusing story to say the least.  In the far Russian east the United States, while it had troops present, didn't take a role in fighting the Red Army. But in the far north, where the British were very much in command, they did.  This was a combined Allied action in which British troops (the largest contingent of Allied soldiers), French troops, Polish troops and White Russian troops all fought supported by White Russian artillery.

On this day the Allies, outnumbered three to one by Red forces, launched an artillery supported counter attack on Bolshie Ozerki and took the town, after an initial Red Army assault was launched upon it.  The point of the battle was the nearby railhead at Obozerskaya, which supplied the Allies during the winter as it terminated at the open port of Murmansk.  Not only the forces committed to the battle were grossly disproportionate, the casualties were too with the Allies taking seventy five casualties and the Reds taking upwards of 2,000.

This is one of many such instances in which Allied forces bested the Red Army.  The Reds would ultimately prevail against the Whites, of course, but they were clearly second or third rate compared to well trained European armies.

In fighting elsewhere King Edward VIII attended a box match between Welshman Jimmy Wilde and American Joe Lynch.

The King entered the ring to congratulate Wilde on his victory, thereby becoming the first royal to enter the ring, an act which gave the sport an added air of legitimacy.

Movie announcement from when everyone wore hats.

Another reminder movie announcement from approximately 1912.  This one, unlike last week's, reminds men and women to remove their hats.

Sunday Morning Scene: Churches of the West: United Methodist Church, Hillsdale Wyoming

Churches of the West: United Methodist Church, Hillsdale Wyoming:

United Methodist Church, Hillsdale Wyoming

This is the United Methodist Church in Hillsdale Wyoming.  Hillsdale is a very small Laramie County town which was probably more viable at some point in the past than it is now, but it's still a town and this church is still an active church is spite of the very small population of that town.

Best Posts of the Week of March 24, 2019.

The best post of the week of March 24, 2019.

New Seasons

The 2020 Election, Part 1

The Nebraska floods and Wyoming agriculture

On Vietnam Veterans Day

Richard's (Reshaw's) Bridge, Evansville Wyoming.

Doesn't Sterling K. Brown get tired of

playing the most over-sensitive, wimpiest, designated guy who has the feelings of a girl that girls pretend they want to love but in real life can't stand for more than 27 seconds, character on television?

I'll bet he does.

I bet at night he goes home and puts on his well worn Blue Ray of The Wild Bunch and imagines that he has the William Holden Role. . . in real life.

Probably drinks a Pabst Blue Ribbon, smokes a cigar, and wishes. . . .

Today In Wyoming's History: Richard's (Reshaw's) Bridge, Evansville Wyoming.

Today In Wyoming's History: Richard's (Reshaw's) Bridge, Evansville Wyoming.:

Richard's (Reshaw's) Bridge, Evansville Wyoming.

Reshaw's Bridge, or more correctly Richard's Bridge, was a frontier North Platte River crossing only a few miles downstream from Platte Bridge and like it, it was guarded by a contingent of soldiers.  As noted in the plaque below, it ultimately closed in favor of the slightly newer Guinard's Bridge, which Richard bought, which ultimately came to be referred to as Platte Bridge.



In 1866, after the bridge had been abandoned, it was dismantled by the soldiers stationed at Platte Bridge Station.

While Platte Bridge Station is remembered for the battle that occurred there, Reshaw's Bridge saw its fair share of action as well.

Indeed, as we've discussed previously on one of our companion blogs, which we'll link in here below, bodies exhumed at the post when Evansville's water treatment facility was built include what are certainly two soldiers and a pioneer woman.  Generally, the Army would reclaim bodies of troops, but my minor efforts to inform the Army of this failed.

From our companion blog, Some Gave All:

Richard's Bridge Cemetary Mausoleum, Evansville Wyoming

This mausoleum was built when at least part of the cemetery of the military post at Richards Bridge was located at the time Evansville, Wyoming built a water plant near the river. The former location of the Frontier Era bridge across the North Platte had not been precisely known up until that time. When three bodies, believed to be the bodies of two soldiers and one woman, were disinterred they were reburied here, on the grounds of the Evansville grade school. The school grounds were the only nearby public land at the time.

This creates a very odd situation in a variety of ways and the mausoleum is not well maintained. While worse fates could exists than spending eternity near a grade school, it is generally the case that the Army has recovered the lost remains of Frontier Era soldiers when they were located, and it would seem that moving these victims of Frontier conditions would be a positive thing to do.

On Vietnam Veterans Day

Today is Vietnam Veterans Day.

The reason for that is that it was on this day, in 1973, that the last American combat troops were withdrawn from Vietnam.

As we now know, they were withdrawn under an agreement, the Paris Peace Accords, that President Richard Nixon and his Secretary of State Henry Kissinger believed would fail.  That Nixon believed that was cynically assumed, and it turns out correctly assumed, by the first historians of the war, who uniformly regarded the war as an ill though out American disaster. 

Starting about a decade ago, or so, however, revisionist histories, some fairly good and not so much, took the opposite approach.  A statistical analysis of the war conducted by a Marine veteran and expatriate living in Australia fairly convincingly argued that the war had been effectively won by 1968 and that the process of Vietnamization conducted by the Nixon Administration thereafter simply reflected that.  Two books on the early portion of the war when Diem was still the living autocrat in charge in the Republic of Vietnam took charitable views towards the pre 1965 American build up and argued that the war could have been won but for mistakes in that phase.

Then came Ken Burns groundbreaking recent documentary, followed by Max Hasting's new book on the war, which I'm only now just reading. 

Both make clear what the earlier books already had suggested.  The United States failed to appreciate the real situation in Vietnam from the onset, even while the French remained there, and the following intervention was beset by mistakes from the very first.  Worse yet, in some ways, Richard Nixon basically set out to betray the South Vietnam by extracting the United States dishonestly, believing that the North would ultimately prevail.  All that was needed, in his view, was some breathing room to make the departure decent.

Unfortunately for history, Nixon's other activities removed him from the Oval Office so that he was not present to bear the brunt of the impact of his decisions, which came in 1975 with the northern invasion.  The Army of the Republic of Vietnam collapsed in the face of that offensive, but in no small part due to a lack of effective air power.  Having been trained since at least the early 1960s to rely on massive American supplied firepower, without it, it really couldn't fight, and its troops rapidly lost spirit, to the extent they ever had any, and effectively quit.  Thousand and ultimately millions paid the price.

So are the pundits right, that the United States should have never gone in, in the first place?  I'm still not sure.  I find it hard to see a way that the U.S. could have avoided Vietnam, save perhaps for having denied the French any assistance in the late 1940s and early 1950s.  That would have been the approach, to the extent that we can discern one, that Franklin Roosevelt would have taken, as he was universally opposed to colonialism and seems to have been fairly comfortable with independence movements that were heavily communist.  Of course, had Vietnam become a communist state in 1946, it's hard not to imagine that being the case all the way to at least Thailand.

Which is perhaps the point.  Earlier in this blog I posed the suggestion that the Vietnam War ought not to be looked at in a vacuum, but rather as a campaign, and not wholly successful one, in the Cold War.  And that still seems correct to me.

But one fought at great cost that the country has never really gotten over in some ways. 

Making this a good day to remember its veterans.

The Nebraska floods and Wyoming agriculture

The Tribune published a story today on how the huge floods in Nebraska may impact Wyoming and Nebraska agriculture.  It's a story I've been wondering about a bit myself.

The paper reported that 1,000,000 head of cattle may have been lost in the floods.  If so, that's a devastating loss.  A person is reporting with the quote from Wyoming that "that's not good", which is self evident.

It's likely to mean a rise in cattle prices, almost certainly.  A 1,000,000 head loss at one time is something that flat out can't be absorbed by the industry without a price result.  It may also mean the loss of quite a few feedlots, I suspect, and that'll have an impact as well.  My guess is that by summer the price of putting that steak on the grill will be up, and noticeably, but that's just a guess.  As my steaks come from volunteer cattle of our own seeking to enter retirement, the price doesn't impact me much directly and I'm often really surprised by it.  But anyhow, that's my guess.

A big jump in price, it might be noted, isn't a great thing for cattlemen.  Too big of rise really favors other meat industries such as pork and poultry, although I'd be surprised if the pork industry wasn't also hit.  Anyhow, when the price goes up at the grocery store counter it doesn't always mean good things for cattlemen, and it never does in a direct dollar to dollar correlation.

Loss of agriculture production will have an impact.  The paper had this quote, and its quite correct:

“We rely on Nebraska a lot,” said Brett Moline, director of public and governmental affairs for the Wyoming Farm Bureau Association. “A lot of our feed grains come in from Nebraska and eastern South Dakota. That’s one reason we move cattle out there – it’s cheaper to move the cattle than it is to move the feed. We’ll have to see what the storms do to feed prices too.”

And that's not only true of Wyoming, in regards to Nebraska, but other local ares of the Northern Plains as well.

On a total side note, the author of the article, which wasn't a bad article by any means, did insert an odd term, apparently not knowing what it means.  That's found here.

Though life has continued unabated in Wyoming – upriver from the swollen sections of the North Platte – the devastation felt across the state’s 138-mile border could ripple into the agrarian economy of the Equality State.

Agrarian economy?

Wyoming doesn't have an agrarian economy and it never has had one, save for perhaps the very early New Mexican vegetable farmers who lived  out on the Mexican Hills outside of Ft. Laramie.  They probably could be regarded as being agrarians, but they're the only ones.

Agrarianism is the production of agriculture principally for self subsistence.  Lots of North Americans engaged in agrarian agriculture at one time, even into the 20th Century, but Wyoming's agriculturist never did, or never did on any substantial level.  Agrarians can and have existed in modern economies, so we shouldn't mistake that fact, but that style of agriculture emphasizes self subsistence and reliance over the market, and production is sold that's surplus.  A surplus crop, however, is never the principal goal.

Almost all early North American farming was agrarian.  At the time of the Civil War much of American agriculture and nearly all of the edible crop and animal farming in the South was agrarian (cotton and tobacco farming were production agriculture, not agrarian agriculture).  All farming of all types at that point retained some agrarian aspects, and that remained true up until after World War Two.

At that point, following World War Two, the South's agriculture, which featured the last remaining bits of agrarian agriculture, was rapidly disappearing. That was a result of the policies of the New Deal, which were hostile to it.  Quebec's agriculture remained highly agrarian at that point, but it too would start to really fade quickly.

Wyoming's agriculture, however, and Nebraska's as well, was always principally production agriculture.  The farming of wheat and large scale corn is production, not agrarian, in nature.  Cattle ranching in the West, outside some regional pockets in New Mexico and southern Colorado, has also always been production agriculture.

All of which we'll explore in a future post.

At any rate, pray for Nebraska and its farmers.  This is a true disater.

Friday Farming: Marcus Cato on Farming

It is true that to obtain money by trade is sometimes more profitable, were it not so hazardous; and likewise money-lending, if it were as honorable. Our ancestors held this view and embodied it in their laws, which required that the thief be mulcted double and the usurer fourfold; how much less desirable a citizen they considered the usurer than the thief, one may judge from this. And when they would praise a worthy man their praise took this form: "good husbandman, good farmer"; one so praised was thought to have received the greatest commendation. The trader I consider to be an energetic man, and one bent on making money; but, as I said above, it is a dangerous career and one subject to disaster. On the other hand, it is from the farming class that the bravest men and the sturdiest soldiers come, their calling is most highly respected, their livelihood is most assured and is looked on with the least hostility, and those who are engaged in that pursuit are least inclined to be disaffected.

Marcus Cato, De Agri Cultura

.

March 29, 1919. Illustrations.

The Saturday news magazines hit, as always, on this day in 1919, with a slate of war related images on their cover.  The Saturday Evening Post went to the stand with a Norman Rockwell item called "The Little Model", featuring a Salvation Army woman with a tambourine.

Judge, a popular magazine of the day, went full sappy.

Leslie's, in comparison, went full martial.

The Stanley Cup finals ended this year due to the Spanish Flu.  Too many players became ill to carry on.

And Marines on occupation duty in Germany gathered for a photograph.

Lex Anteinternet: Challenges legal and financial to the extractive i...

Yesterday we ran this item

Lex Anteinternet: Challenges legal and financial to the extractive i...: I haven't written much on energy topics recently, and a I have a lingering two part series that's related to this that I have yet t...

In today's tribune we learned that the coal industry lost a little under 200 jobs last year, which all in all, given the circumstances, isn't as big of decline as might have been feared.

And its reported that Wyoming is ninth in the nation in income, which of course is good for the state.

Both would suggest that there's been a period of stability or perhaps the coal decline is slowed while oil has picked up. 

Challenges legal and financial to the extractive industries and therefore to Wyoming's economy.

I haven't written much on energy topics recently, and a I have a lingering two part series that's related to this that I have yet to finish, but a couple of recent events bring this topic back to the forefront, so on this Wednesday, when I usually feature something to do with the topic of work, I'll bring this back up.

Neither are really good developments for Wyoming's economy.

The first is that a Federal District Court judge of the District of Columbia ruled on March 19, in a sixty page opinion, that the BLM had failed to comply with Federal environmental laws by failing ot have taken into account climate change in issuing certain Federal leases in Wyoming.

This hasn't been really well reported on. The ruling does nothing about current oil and gas drilling, as some seemed to think. Rather,  it holds up issued and existing leases that were part of a specific set of issued leases.  Having said that, it isn't an insignificant number of leases.  Turning to the decision:

BLM issued 282 leases through the Wyoming Lease Sales, encompassing approximately 303,000 acres of federal land across multiple BLM planning areas. Pls. Mem. at 1. The leased parcels are managed by ten different BLM field offices—which are responsible for drafting and 9 implementing the resource management plans and EISs governing the parcels—overseen by three district offices. 6 See Fed. Defs.’ Cross-Mot. Summ. J. & Opp’n Pls. Mem. (“BLM Mem.”) at 7, ECF No. 63. Those three district offices conducted the lease sales at issue here in May, August, and November 2015, and May and August 2016.7 Id. at 7–8.8 For each lease sale, each district office involved prepared (1) an EA tiered to the relevant resources management plans and EISs issued by field offices at the land use planning stage; and (2) a FONSI disavowing the need for a new, leasing stage EIS. In total, therefore, the record contains nine EA9 /FONSI10 combinations, tiered to nineteen resource management plan/EIS combinations, including resource management plan amendments. Id. WildEarth participated in the comment and protest periods for each of the challenged lease sales

282 leases over 303,000 acres is a lot of leases.

This decision remanded the matter to the BLM, from which it came, with instructions that the BLM complete the environmental assessments that the Court felt were required but lacking.

Okay, so what does this do?

Well, it's hard to say, but at least right now the Court in D.C. is on record that climate change needs to be considered by the Federal lease issuing entities.  It's likely that the decision will be appealed, but appeals aren't super speedy.  So these leases will be held up for some time, probably, on appeal.

I feel that this decision is unlikely to hold up on appeal, but I also had wondered for a long time when this approach in this court would be taken.  It's a really obvious legal strategy and that it took somebody so long to attempt it is the surprising thing.  The challenger in this instance isn't alone, however, as just a couple of months ago I read of a similar approach being taken by a teenage plaintiff.  With this ruling on record, it won't be easy to dump her case as lacking merit on its face.  Ultimately, therefore, resolution at the appellate level will be critical.  Whichever side looses, and I'd guess it would be those supporting this decision, will appeal it to the United States Supreme Court, but my further guess is that unless one of the Circuit Court of Appeals takes the same approach, the United States Supreme Court is unlikely to take it up.

The Court of money, i.e., the stock exchange, took up the topic of coal's viability to an extent when the New York Stock Exchange suspended trading on Cloud Peak Energy's stocks. The coal company has been in financial trouble, but coal itself has been so this isn't that surprising of a development.

We note this story as well as the latter certainly is one that is significant to a state in which the majority of the funding for education comes from coal severance taxes.  The recent ups and downs of the extractive industries have continued on into this year, when there was a lot of hope they would not, and now there's some added dimensions to those stories.

March 27, 1919. The Arabia struck, Mary Pickford to visit Casper.

USS Arabia.

She'd been laid down in 1903 as a commercial fishing vessel.  Submarine depredations caused the Navy to take her into service in August, 1918, but with that task complete, she was struck from the Navy's rolls and sold that following November.

Why put this obscure ship in here?

Well, this blog explores trends and changes.  1919 wasn't all that long ago, at least not the way historians think of time, and therefore it wasn't that long ago when commercial operations, and even the Navy, regarded sail as still a viable means of propulsion.

There was big local news.

Mary Pickford was coming to the Irish Theatre in Casper on Sunday.

Mary Pickford in 1916.

Pickford was a huge deal in 1919, and frankly she always would be.  One of the really big early stars of early movies, the Toronto born actress was at that time as big of movie star as anyone could imagine.

Her life wasn't really a happy one.  Married three times, she became a recluse in later years and would only receive Lilian Gish as a personal visitor.  This week in 1919, however, she'd be Casper's visitor.

Casper was also declaring war on vice, the paper proclaimed.  If it was, it wasn't very successful at it.  It wasn't until after World War Two when the strong streak of vice running through Casper would be cleaned up, and the Sandbar district remained all the way into the 1970s.

Mid Week At Work: Aiding the wounded.

There's a little thing going on in this photograph, but a lot, including a lot of unknowns, behind it.

This photo shows an American soldier giving minor first aid of some sort (but apparently significant enough that it's actually being done, to a White Russian Cossack, probably in the far north of Russia.

The Cossack is traditional attire.  It was probably taken in the Spring of 1919.  He's well equipped.

In 1919 the White position in the far North was getting imperiled, but the Whites were advancing rapidly in the East.  The Reds were prevailing in the West and were now threatening Poland and even Germany.  Soon that would reverse, however, and the Poles would advance, before retreating once again.

What happened to the people in this photograph?  I really wonder, and indeed, I often wonder about things like that.  The American probably came home and went about his life.  Almost certainly. What about the Cossack?  Did he survive the war?  If he did, did he survive the peace?

March 26, 1919: Hatching

Baseball season, then as now, was just around the corner.

Well I guess I'll skip listening to my downloaded Sunday Morning news shows.

I never catch them live, as I have other things to do on Sunday mornings.  But I usually do catch them the following week.

But as they were released prior to the news coming out that there was no collusion by Trump with the Russians, they'll be obsolete.  Later this week, hopefully, more details will come out, including whether or not Attorney Mueller felt that there was collusion, maybe, but not of a type sufficient to levy indictments for, maybe.  My predictions are that will be cleared up later this week.

My further predictions are that parties in the Democratic left that were howling that the report would surely lead to an impeachment will turn on somebody and howl all week that Mueller ought to be run out of D.C. on a rail because he's a bady, now that the hoped for result isn't coming in. And I also predict that parties in the GOP right will howl how this demonstrates a benighted sense of duty on the part of the President who should now be given all credit on everything.

We'll have to wait to next Sunday to get the better punditry analysis, maybe.

March 27, 1919. New York's 27th Division receives a parade, Wyoming veterans reported on way home.

American Red Cross Volunteer Motor Corps transporting wounded veterans of the 27th Division in a parade held on this day in New York City, 1919.

A huge parade was held on this day in New York City where the 27th Division, which had been formed from New York National Guardsmen, marched.

West Point cadet receiving hot chocolate from a Red Cross volunteer.

 Wounded and nurse viewing from an open window on Millionaires' Row.

Camp Dix, March 25, 1919.

Probably more than a few of those soldiers had come through Camp Dix at some point.

Closer to home. .  or not, Wyomingites read that 147 Wyomingites in the 264th Infantry were on the way home.

Taxation, importation, and Indian Tribes. No tax allowed.

WASHINGTON STATE DEPARTMENT OF LICENSING v. COUGAR DEN, INC.  

The State of Washington taxes “motor vehicle fuel importer[s]” whobring large quantities of fuel into the State by “ground transportation.” Wash. Rev. Code §§82.36.010(4), (12), (16). Respondent Cougar Den, Inc., a wholesale fuel importer owned by a member of theYakama Nation, imports fuel from Oregon over Washington’s publichighways to the Yakama Reservation to sell to Yakama-owned retailgas stations located within the reservation. In 2013, the WashingtonState Department of Licensing assessed Cougar Den $3.6 million intaxes, penalties, and licensing fees for importing motor vehicle fuelinto the State. Cougar Den appealed, arguing that the Washingtontax, as applied to its activities, is pre-empted by an 1855 treaty between the United States and the Yakama Nation that, among otherthings, reserves the Yakamas’ “right, in common with citizens of theUnited States, to travel upon all public highways,” 12 Stat. 953. AWashington Superior Court held that the tax was pre-empted, andthe Washington Supreme Court affirmed. 

Held: The judgment is affirmed. 

No surprise, really, except that it was 5 to 4.

It does create cause for concern, however, regarding the impending decision in a case involving Tribal hunting rights and off reservation, inter state, hunting by tribal members.

The inevitable cycle of substance

How can it be harmful, people have used it for generations (even if they really didn't, or if in earlier eras, in some examples, scarcity of resources meant they used it rarely)?

It can't be harmful. .. . I'm using it (even if a confirmation of that type means nothing).

It won't hurt me.

Science demonstrates it has risks.

Science demonstrates its really risky.

Society does nothing.

The lawsuits begin. . . .

New Seasons

The old order changeth yielding place to new And God fulfills himself in many ways Lest one good custom should corrupt the world. Comfort thyself: what comfort is in me I have lived my life and that which I have done May he within himself make pure but thou If thou shouldst never see my face again Pray for my soul. More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of.

Tennyson, Morte d'Arthur.

I'm not a hugely sentimental person, or at least not a maudlin one if I am.  Still, there's been a sense of some passing recently and they've been in my mind a lot.

This weekend saw a couple of those, and I find that I have mixed feelings about them.  Both of them serve a necessary purpose.  One of them was inevitable and waited for actually for some time, a little under a year.  The other was not, and there's the chance that it may find some future expression perhaps, but likely not.

A passing of time, circumstances and obligations in operation.

I don't really believe in the burning bridges analogy.



That is, the burning bridges analogy doesn't actually make historical sense and it's a poor analogy.

There are few rivers so deep that, if you need to, you can't back over them at some ford, or cross them if you need to. All burning a bridge really does, either in historical fact or in metaphor, is slow down getting back across a river you want to.

Of course, if you want to get back across a river in a hurry, that's one thing. But if you have time and can expend the effort, you usually can.  All the major armies of the Second World War managed to get over major rivers when they wanted to, even if they were delayed.  You'll get back across them. . . usually.

It's distance from that bridge that really matters. The further you are from it, the less likely you will be to cross back over.  And at some point, you can't get back there.

Maybe.

Sometimes it winds back around, and you cross it up stream or down.

Sometimes you always can get back to it.

But things do change with time and we need on occasion to acknowledge that.  Time creates new duties and we need to rise to them, and sometimes let the old ones go.

All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances, And one man in his time plays many parts, His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant, Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms. Then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel And shining morning face, creeping like snail Unwillingly to school. And then the lover, Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad Made to his mistress’ eyebrow. Then a soldier, Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard, Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel, Seeking the bubble reputation Even in the cannon’s mouth. And then the justice, In fair round belly with good capon lined, With eyes severe and beard of formal cut, Full of wise saws and modern instances; And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts Into the lean and slippered pantaloon, With spectacles on nose and pouch on side; His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide For his shrunk shank, and his big manly voice, Turning again toward childish treble, pipes And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all, That ends this strange eventful history, Is second childishness and mere oblivion, Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

Shakespeare; As You Like It.

We need to be careful on that however.

I do not want you to be unaware, brothers and sisters,
that our ancestors were all under the cloud
and all passed through the sea,
and all of them were baptized into Moses
in the cloud and in the sea.
All ate the same spiritual food,
and all drank the same spiritual drink,
for they drank from a spiritual rock that followed them,
and the rock was the Christ.
Yet God was not pleased with most of them,
for they were struck down in the desert.
These things happened as examples for us,
so that we might not desire evil things, as they did.
Do not grumble as some of them did,
and suffered death by the destroyer.
These things happened to them as an example,
and they have been written down as a warning to us,
upon whom the end of the ages has come.
Therefore, whoever thinks he is standing secure
should take care not to fall.

Saint Paul to the Corinthians

Sometimes, however, to some extent, there's a sense of comfortable fading away in that, or at least we should not be discomforted too much.

Old soldiers never die,
Never die, never die,
Old soldiers never die
They just fade away. 

Privates they love their beer, 'most every day.
Corporals, they love their stripes, that's what they say.
Sergeants they love to drill. Guess them bastards always will
So we drill and drill until we fade away.

Old soldiers never die,
Never die, never die,
Old soldiers never die
They just fade away. 

Things fade, but that fading isn't the same as ending really.  Things don't really end in my view, the pass on to something else. Everyone and everything is connected.  And as those experiencing the fading appreciate it, if they do, they realize in some odd way that those who faded before come back into focus, not really gone.

The Partial Conclusion

I'd be skeptical that this is all the report says, but according to the Wall Street Journal, a fairly reliable source:

• OPINION 
•  REVIEW & OUTLOOK

The Mueller Conclusions

All Americans should be pleased with the end of the collusion illusion.

By 

The Editorial Board

Updated March 24, 2019 7:14 p.m. ET

Well, so much for the claim that Donald Trump or his campaign conspired with Russians to steal the American Presidency. That conspiracy theory, which has distorted American politics for more than two years, expired in an instant Sunday when Attorney General William Barr delivered Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s “principal conclusions” to Congress.

Does this mean that everyone must now love Trump?  Nope. But as a report that everyone was looking towards, and from an investigation which the Trump Administration repeatedly criticized itself, it should be respected.

Which doesn't mean that people who don't like Trump need to start liking him.  And it doesn't even mean that all of the questions about the election are really satisfied.  And frankly, given developments over time, I'm surprised by the results.  But respect them we should.

Which puts everyone back at the prior position of, well, politics.  Politics may be a dirty word in contemporary society, but folks who don't like the Administration still have Congress and the 2020 elections.  And so do people who do like it.

Which would appear to be the best result the nation could have really hoped for, really.

Movie public service announcement from when ladies wore hats

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

Churches of the West: St. Peter's Episcopal Church, Seward Alaska.:

St. Peter's Episcopal Church, Seward Alaska.

This is St. Peter's Episcopal Church in Seward Alaska.  It was built in 1906.  The architectural style is apparently called "Bungalow/Craftsman", the first church so identified as such here in this blog.

Best Post of the Week of March 17, 2019

The best post of the week of March 17, 2019.

Radharc Maidin Dé Domhnaigh: Lá Féile Naomh Pádraig

A Blog Mirror Rerun: Today In Wyoming's History: Sidebar: The Irish in Wyoming

Naomh Pádraig, St. Patrick, S. Patricius. The Man.

A Western World Modern Crisis: Suicide

I'm shocked, shocked that gambling is going on here.

Friday Farming. Wherein the New York Times shows itself to be economically thick.

Because its National Puppy Day.

Holscher's Hub: The Doodle and the Digger

Wednesday, January 23, 2019

The Doodle and the Digger