Is it just me, or does it seem like today should be Labor Day?

 I know why it isn't. But it sure has that feel to it.

It's like somebody flipped the switch for "Fall". . .

 last week it was in the 90s.  On Saturday morning a thunderstorm rolled in.  Morning thunderstorms are common in the cool mountains here, but not out on the hot plains.

It cleared off and the day entered the 80s.  Not super hot, but not as hot as hit had been.

Yesterday I was out in an extremely dry high basin.  When I left, I could see clouds gathering for an afternoon rain, common here and very welcome. . . as long as they have enough rain.  I left before they collected, so I don't know if it rained or not.

Last night, the temperature dropped like a rock and this morning its cold.

It'll heat up a little as the week goes on, but that's how early Fall is here.  And given the hot weather, and the dray weather, a cool and wet fall would be most wecome.

August 31, 1920. Building.

On this date in 1920, John Lloyd Wright was given a patent for what would become Lincoln Logs.

Wright had been marketing the toy logs since 1918, and had based them upon his observations of Tokyo's Imperial Hotel's foundation, designed by his father, Frankly Lloyd Wright.   The foundation featured an interlocking log structure to give it flexibility during earthquakes.

The standing hotel following the devastating 1923 earthquake.

An election held on this date in Hannibal Missouri was the first to be conducted following the 19th Amendment going into effect.  Marie Ruoff Byrum was the first woman voter to cast a ballot to have been given the right to vote under the amendment.

Of course, women had been voting for some time in states that had adopted universal suffrage on their own, including Wyoming's female voters.

Mrs Byrum lived until age 73.  She had been involved in politics and had retired to Florida in her later years.

Tennessee, which had been the 36th state to vote to add the 19th Amendment, on this day voted to rescind their ratification in an effort to reverse course on it.  The effort came too late as retroactive post ratification rescissions are not allowable, assuming recessions are at all, which itself isn't clear.

It's odd that it was attempted in this context.  If the vote had preceded the adoption of the Amendment that would have raised a Constitutional question, but doing it after the ratification would fairly obviously do nothing.

1862 French map used as a template in 1920.

French Genera Henri Gouraud issued a decree that set Lebanon's borders in anticipation of creating a separate Lebanese territory the following day.

Today In Wyoming's History: Ft. Halleck, sort of. Near Elk Mountain Wyoming

Today In Wyoming's History: Ft. Halleck, sort of. Near Elk Mountain Wyoming:

Ft. Halleck, sort of. Near Elk Mountain Wyoming

Where Ft. Halleck was, from a great distance.

This set of photographs attempts to record something from a very great distance, and with the improper lenses.   I really should have known better, quite frankly, and forgot to bring the lense that would have been ideal.  None the less, looking straight up the center of this photograph, you'll see where Ft. Halleck once was.

The post was located at the base of Elk Mountain on the Overland Trail, that "shortcut" alternative to the Oregon Trail that shaved miles, at the expense of convenience and risk.  Ft. Halleck was built in 1862 to reduce the risk.  Whomever located the post must have done so in the summer, as placing a post on this location would seem, almost by definition, to express a degree of ignorance as to what the winters here are like.

 The area to the northeast of where Ft. Halleck once was.

The fort was only occupied until 1866, although it was a major post during that time.  Ft. Sanders, outside the present city of Laramie, made the unnecessary and to add to that, Sanders was in a more livable 

Of course, by that time the Union Pacific was also progressing through the area, and that would soon render the Overland Trail obsolete.  While not on an identical path the Overland Trail and the Union Pacific approximated each others routes and, very shortly, troops would be able to travel by rail.

As that occured, it would also be the case that guarding the railroad would become a more important function for the Army, and forts soon came to be placed on it.

Elk Mountain

And, therefore, Ft. Halleck was abandoned.

A Sunday Morning Scene Blog Mirror: Russian Christmas. Native Americans and Christianity

 This is obviously rather late:

Russian Christmas

And a bit unusual for our weekly post here. But it's such an interesting cultural phenomenon, or perhaps outside of what we expect, that we're putting it up here any way.

Alaska has 89 Russian Orthodox parishes, the highest concentration of the Orthodox in the United States and North America.

Holy Transfiguration of Our Lord Russian Orthodox Church, Ninilchik Alaska

This is the Holy Transfiguration of Our Lord Church in Ninilchik Alaska.  This community has had a Russian Orthodox Church since 1846, but this structure dates to 1901.  It is a regular Russian Orthodox Church in the Orthodox Church of America's Diocese of Anchorage.

Again, while we do not generally delve into such topics here, some explanation is again in order.  This church is a conventional Russian Orthodox Church, but its subject to the jurisdiction of the Orthodox Church in America, which is one of two bodies that formed in the U.S. to govern Russian Orthodox Churches following the Russian Revolution.  The Orthodox Church in America is an autocephalous Eastern Orthodox church that started to govern its affairs separately when Patriarch Tikhon of Moscow directed all Russian Orthodox churches outside of Russia and was originally the Russian Greek Orthodox Church in America.  It was granted autocephaly by the Russian Orthodox Church in Russia in 1970 and changed its name at that time, although the validity of that action is disputed by some.

79% of Alaskans profess to be Christians of which 12.5% are Orthodox.  14% are Orthodox.  These figures combined mean that over 25% of Alaskans are members of the Apostolic churches.  Evangelical Protestants, however, make up 26% of the state's population, making them the largest Christian denomination.

Almost all Russian Orthodox Christians in Alaska are Alaskan natives.  I.e., First Nations.

We are so acclimated to a false concept of what and who Indians and natives are that we imagine them all to be as portrayed in current film, whatever that current film is.  Our Indians are Val Kilmer in Thunderheart as a rule.  Occasionally we get a more realistic portrayal such as that in Wind River.  

Recently there was an event in Kansas in which a city council became concerned about a large rock that was purportedly sacred to a local Indian tribe.  The concern was what to do about the stone now that we're focused on such things. Should it be removed, or honored in some way. When consulted, the tribe in question showed little interest.  They're mostly Protestants, in that case, today.

Christian identity is part and parcel of many tribes and their histories. The current desire to rip that way as somehow imposed upon them and demeaning is insulting and highly misplaced.  Indian tribes adopted various Christian religions in many instances in histories that are rich and complex.  The intermarriage between Indians and the French produced an entire Catholic culture, the Metis, who are regarded as a type of First Nation today in Canada.  Mexico's population, and by extension, Mexican American's as well, largely descend from Spanish and Indian intermarriage.  Intermarriage was a feature of Catholic European cultures, unlike the English Protestant one that dominated what became the United States, and latter day efforts to characterize this all as forced are simply incorrect.  Indeed, the French, who never colonized in North America in really substantial numbers, freely intermarried with Indians right from the onset of their presence in the country.  The Spanish did as well.  And in both instances the conversion of the native populations, in spite of what latter day woke Americans, heir to the Elizabethan Religious Settlement and the immigrating Dissenters may now wish to believe, it was mostly freely done.

Which isn't to say that Protestant conversions by Indians weren't largely freely done as well, they very much were. And what this gives us is a period in which native peoples undertook to evolve their own heritage.  In Wyoming,on the Wind River Reservation, this meant that a large number of converts in the Arapaho Tribe now live near St. Stephens.  Elsewhere the Episcopal Church was very successful in establishing itself on the Reservation.  A not insubstantial number of Indians converted early on to the Mormon Church, a non Christian church in the view of Christians, which has a large church near Ft. Washakie today.

Sitting Bull

Even the 19th Century American Indians we imagine to have religious beliefs as portrayed in film often had more complex religious beliefs.  Red Cloud (Maȟpíya Lúta), who has gone down in history as the only Indian leader to have defeated the U.S. Army in a war, became a Catholic, as did all the rest of his family.  Sitting Bull (Tȟatȟáŋka Íyotake) was also baptized a Catholic, although the degree to which he actually adopted the faith is unknown.  Black Elk (Heȟáka Sápa), who is adored by the modern American mystic set today, was a Catholic and there exists today a cause for his sainthood and whom the Faith as accorded the title of "Servant of God".  Geronimo (Goyaałé) had complicated religions beliefs, like many Indians who made the transition from native religions to Christianity, but was baptized a Christian.  Washakie was baptized as an Episcopalian but apparently later converted to Mormonism, a faith which may have had an advantage among the Shoshone who had a tradition of sororal polygamy, although that practice was common in other tribes as well.

Geronimo in 1913.

In Alaska, the rich Orthodox heritage is preserved by the state's native population.  It's part of who they are.  

In a way, today's native Russian Orthodox Christians are lucky in that they are more isolated than Native Americans who live elsewhere.  Modern white Americans, largely heir to Protestant Christianity and and now subject to cultural influencers who have retained Puritanism to a very strong degree while abandoning its religious tenants at the same time, are attacking the religious cultural heritage of all peoples, a feature that's ironically tied to that Puritanism which attacked first the established Church of England and then by extension the Catholicism that the Church of England itself attacked.  It's also not surprising that its Alaska where Native peoples have retained their strongest cultural heritage of all types.

The two aren't inconsistent, and indeed, are strongly united.

Humility

No Catholic thinks he is a good Catholic; or he would by that thought become a bad Catholic.

Chesterton

Best Posts of the Week of August 21, 2020

 The best post of the week of August 21, 2020.

And yet. . .

Derailed Union Pacific Grain (corn) train, Bosler Wyoming. August 22, 2020.

Art or vandalism?

High Mountain Corner Posts

Space Force Was Set to Announce Its New Rank Structure. Then, Congress Stepped In

Casualties of the COVID Recession

The Introvert Subsistence Hunter Meets the Extrovert Midwestern Gregarian

August 29, 1920. Visitors

 

James M. Cox (1870-1957) at the Police Field Day Games which were held on August 29, 1920 at Gravesend Race Track at Gravesend, Coney Island, Brooklyn, New York City.

The Introvert Subsistence Hunter Meets the Extrovert Midwestern Gregarian

"Lonesome Charley" Reynolds.  Son of a  physician, Reynolds was such a loner that he ended up with a solitary name in an occupation that involved solitude, that of U.S. Army scout  His days ended at Little Big Horn.  Prior to being a scout, he'd occupied a variety of occupations, including that of buffalo hunter.

I've been a Wyoming hunter my entire life. And in the context of being a native Wyomingite, what that really means is I'm a subsistence hunter.

The Subsistence Hunter

Elk hunter in Wyoming, early 20th Century.  In a lot of ways, for some, it hasn't changed much.

There's a lot more to that last sentence than immediately meets the eye as it implies an ethos and a very extensive one.  It also implies one to almost anyone who can state the first sentence as well.  Indeed, it tends to apply to people who grew up in what geographers would define as rural areas, but which those who have experienced it would define as natural areas.

Subsistence hunters hunt for food. But more than that, they believe, and believe strongly, that securing your own food in nature, the way that human beings have done since before humans had language and ever since.  It expresses, at least to an extent, a longing for a more natural condition, and a questioning of the history that lead us away from agrarianism, with which it is closely linked.

As a child, I was first introduced to bird hunting.

My father hunted birds and the thing he hunted more than anything else was waterfowl.  I started hunting birds at about age 5.  We also hunted sage chickens during the short sage chicken season, and when Wyoming reopened a dove season, we hunted that as well.  As a early teen we started hunting blue grouse when a friend of my father's, who loved eating blue grouse, started taking us.  For my father, all of these game bird species had been ones he'd hunted when he was young and to the extent that some had dropped off that reflected the pressures of work.*  Work disrupted his hunting of game birds that had to take him far afield, which did not mean that he wasn't outdoors generally on a weekly basis. He was also a dedicated and successful fisherman in a way that far surpasses my comparatively meager efforts.  Indeed, I'm a fair weather spring and summer subsistence fisherman where as he fished far into the fall.  He didn't ice fish, however, which I've taken up, with my daughter, a little.

Me and my father when I was a little kid.  This is at the Dan Speas Fish Hatchery.

Shortly after I started hunting waterfowl, I started hunting rabbits too, and it was a byproduct of it at first.  Rabbits are everywhere in Wyoming and if there were no ducks to hunt, where we hunted them, I sometimes hunted rabbits.  When I was grade school, however, I had a couple of friends, one a native Wyomingite who was the child of native Wyomingites, and a native Utahan who was the child of native Uthans, whose primary hunting activities, as a kid, were focused on rabbits, so stand alone rabbit hunting came into the picture.

Native hunter with rabbit, 1890.

Big game hunting didn't come in until just about the time I was ready to leave grade school.  My father had hunted deer and antelope when he was young, and at a time at which antelope populations had just recovered enough to allow for antelope hunting, but he had also quit doing that when I was born for the same reasons noted above.  He took it back up when I was a little older.  Some of my friend's fathers, however, were dedicated Wyoming subsistence big game hunters all along.  As soon as we were old enough to big game hunt ourselves, which was an older age than Wyoming provides for now, we all became deer and antelope hunters. Some of my junior high friends were also elk hunters, something that some of my father's friends were as well, but which required a much more extensive time allowance for big game hunting than my father had.  I didn't start hunting elk until I was in junior college, when I had a lot of time, and could drive.

By that time my mother had fallen extremely ill and my father and I were basically on our own, or more properly on our own with an invalid to care for.  As hunters, our table was shiting over from heavily game to more and more exclusively game.  When I left for university, I was on exclusively game.  When I got back out, and my father passed away, that continued until I was married.  All in all, I lived on game almost alone for a period of over a decade.  As my father put in a huge garden, and I kept it up after he died until the first few years of our marriage, we were not only on a sustenance hunting diet, but a sustenance produce diet as well.

I'd still live that way, if I could.

Which I probably could, but my ranch raised wife insists on beef as well, so we pack a volunteer cow annually.  We supplement that, however, with a lot of wild game.  Having said that, the last couple of years, due to the percentage of licenses that go to out of state hunters, we've had bad luck in drawing big game licenses. But that's another story.

Springer

Pheasants are an Asian game bird, long hunted in China and Mongolia.  China once had huge pheasant populations until Chairman Mao ordered them wiped out, because he was a Communist doofus. 

The Springer/Bump Sullivan Wildlife Management Habitat Area is an area in Wyoming's farm belt owned and operated by the Wyoming Game and Fish Department.  It's use and size, as related by the Wyoming Game and Fish Department, are as follows:

Public Access Area Open: Foot and horse access open year-round
Exceptions: Closure is limited to vehicles only. Foot and horse access open year-round
Recreation Opportunities: Fishing, Hunting, Camping, Hiking, Wildlife Viewing
Amenities: Comfort Stations, Boat Ramp
Restrictions: Oct. 1 - Memorial Day Weekend
Additional Restrictions: ORV travel is not allowed
Total Acres: 3071.4

One of the hunting opportunities afford by Springer is pheasant hunting, and the WGFD raises the pheasants.  I.e, its a wild bird farm run by the State.  It isn't the only one. At least one more (and there's probably more than one more) is located near Glendo Wyoming.

I don't know how long Springer has been around.  I really only became aware of it as an adult and only then when one of my uncles, who had hunted in his youth but not much as an adult, started to hunt there with his coworkers.  When he first started to do that he lacked a shotgun, so he borrowed one from me for a couple of years until he bought his own.  

I wasn't tempted to go to Springer at the time and it was for a long time thereafter that I wasn't.  This was partially, indeed mostly, for a philosophical reason.  Pheasants are a wild bird, but to my mind, pheasants raised on a bird farm aren't wild, so it didn't match with my ethos as described above.

Indeed, pheasants aren't native to Wyoming. . . or North America, at all.  Not that this particularly bothered me.  There are a lot of bird species that have been introduced into North America, although pheasants are the only game species I can think of offhand.  At least one other game bird species, however, has been introduced into Wyoming, and that very successfully.  Indeed, almost too successfully.  That other species are turkeys, which are now everywhere, including all over town.

Introducing wild species into an area they are not native to is a dangerous thing to do and with at least mammals, I'm really opposed to it.  Indeed a couple of domestic species that have been introduced into North America and then escaped to go feral have been real nuisances, those being feral (i.e., "wild") horses and feral cats.  Chronic Wasting Disease, the disease related to scabies and mad cow disease that's been ravaging deer and elk populations in the West came out of Colorado game farms, something that shouldn't be legal. And feral pigs are wreaking havoc from Colorado on down.

But generally introduced game birds haven't been a problem and are even a benefit where they've been introduced, so I have not problem with them.  Indeed, pheasants have been so successfully introduced in the Midwest that they're practically a native species now.  And they do a lot of good, actually, in terms of pest eradication.  More pheasants, fewer grasshoppers.

So that wasn't my problem.  It was the farm aspect of it that was my problem.

Well, once I started practicing law I was introduced to a set of hunting practices that were more social in nature than the sort of hunting that I was used to.  And right about the same time, or actually while still a law student, I was strongly introduced to big game trophy hunting.

I've never accommodated myself to trophy hunting, although I don't begrudge those who hunt for trophies as long as they eat the meat, which you are required to do by law, and which they generally all do.  I do have a problem with managing big game horn populations for horns.  I feel that they should be managed for populate, and generally in Wyoming, they are.  I hear trophy hunters complain about that, but I"m sure not one of the ones complaining.  I will complain on another thread about the number of licenses going to out of state hunters, but that's for some future thread.

I have accommodated myself, however, to the game bird farms.

Perhaps it just hypocritical, but I think it's okay largely for the same reason that I'm okay with stocking fish, something that I've been familiar with my whole life.  Birds are frankly a lower form of animal, and while I'd rather catch wild fish (and usually do, as I fish in the mountains most often), I want fish in all the streams and rivers and that means stocking. Same with birds. That gets birds out there.  Indeed, pheasants exist in a couple of places locally where I know that they were introduced eons ago, and they wouldn't be there otherwise. Down in the farm belt some of the pheasants make it out into the farms and take up life there, having been established in this fashion. Where we farm now there are pheasants that got there that way. And in much of the farm belt the fields would be devoid of a year around bird but for pheasants.  Waterfowl would be present seasonally, but not all year long.  

And game farm birds to serve to get hunters out into the field and introduce some to a more natural way of living than would otherwise be the case.  With me, even in my now ever advancing years, I engage in  even bird hunting in really rough terrain, part of the reason that I'm in good shape for my age.  But I know that a lot of desk bound workers aren't going to hike a couple of miles into the hills just to have a chance at native birds, hunt miles while doing that, and hike miles back out.  I'd do that every day if I could, but a lot of people can't. And they can't, because they physically can't.  Stocked birds helps reverse that a bit.

And it helps keep wild grounds wild.

So, I've acclimated myself to it.

The Midwestern Gregarain

Construction workers drinking beer at the entrance of a bar, December 1940.

People who don't think various cultures are different even within the United States just haven't met very many people from elsewhere.

The West seems to favor people like me in a way.  I.e, in a lot of settings it's pretty easy to be an introvert here.  

Indian scout, Mexican Revolution, 1911.

Being an introvert isn't the same thing as being a misanthrope.  It just is a different mental make up.  As part of that makeup we find social settings, frankly, draining, except when they're people we're highly familiar with. Extraverts are just the opposite, and extreme extroverts highly different.

I think a lot of that is genetic.  My father was certainly an introvert.  But some of it may be learned or environmental as well.  I grew up as an only child and when I was 13, my mother became extremely ill which left the family as basically me and my father, as previously noted here.  In that setting, you learn to do things for yourself, entertain yourself and you learn not to ever be lonely, as you always have yourself. At some point, you not only learn that, but you need it.  Too much interaction is too much, and you need a mental break.**

Extraverts, on the other hand, aren't that way at all.

Enter my coworkers.  My coworkers is from the Midwest where it seems to me the urban culture favors extraverts.  The same is true of the East.  They always has.  If you read about working men in the Midwest and East prior to the onset of the day, you learn how they worked closely together, and the hit the bars, after work, and on weekends they all went to the same ballgames and the like.  Good depictions of this are given in the film The Deer Hunter and Good Will Hunting, and pretty accurately.

This makes for an interesting dynamic if you aren't in that group, as they way they view the world is so very different.  My coworker, for example, always eats lunch at work except when he eats lunch out with other people.  When he eats out, he invites people to eat with him that he finds interesting and chats them up.  I'm sure they are interesting, but I find eating lunch with people I don't know well extremely stressful (and I often don't eat lunch).  If he eats in the office, when I come back in I often find him engaged in conversations, as entertainment, that he finds interesting in ways that make me feel very awkward.  We're co-religious and I'll answer questions and provide explanations, or defenses, regarding our Faith when called to do so, but I don't intentionally spark religious debates or just interject religious topics into the middle of casual conversations.***  He does all the time.  I'll write about such topics here, but I don't routinely interject and discuss them with people unless I know them extremely well.

At the end of the day he often socializes with coworkers.  "Let's have a drink!" is a common plea from him.  I nearly always decline these invitations as after a day of interacting with people all day long, I want to go home.  He and his family have people over for dinner or activities constantly.  We only do so for really significant occasion or occasionally for holidays.  I'd find a weekend in which I had invited a group of people over for discussions on religion or whatever to be taxing, and no break from human interaction for me is taxing.  Indeed, I always cringe in horror when I have work to do that takes me into the office during the weekend and some helpful assistant starts asking to come in and help me.  Help, for me, in that situation is not coming in to help me.

And hence my confusion.

The Trip

As soon as we got our reserve date, my excited co-worker starting asking; "We're going down the night before, right?"

I was baffled and simply answered that we were going down.

It's only 90 miles away and some people, maybe me, will be bringing their hunting dogs.  Staying in a hotel with a hunting dog is a pain and, frankly, in my line of work I've stayed in a pile of hotels and really have no desire to stay in more except when I can't avoid it.  For years I've had the 300 mile rule which is that if something I need to do is 300 miles from here or less, it's a day trip  That way, I avoid the hotel.  I'm a super early riser anymore so I can make 300 miles from here easily before 9:00 a.m.  Making some place 90 miles away by sunup is no problem.  Indeed, getting somewhere by sunup is something that is easy for me to do anyway as I have a lifetime of experience at it, first as a kid, then as a soldier, then as a geology student.  No problem.

Unless the weather is bad, of course.

So, we always having our own view of things, I didn't take this question seriously, until it became obvious to me that it was seriously posed.

"Um. . . why would we do that?"

"Because we can eat out and drink beers!"

I"m not a teetotaler by any means, but like most subsistence hunters I don't mix alcohol with hunting.  I.e., staying up late the night prior and drinking beer isn't something I"m inclined to do.  Having a beer with dinner, if I'm camping, is something I will do, or having a beer or wine with dinner if I get something and cook it that night at  home, which I'll often do, is also something I'll routinely do. But traveling someplace, putting my dog in my hotel room, and then drinking beer. . . I'm not going to do that.

For that matter, we all work together anyway.  And we all have to stay in hotels all the time.  Why would we want to do that.

Well, if you are an extravert and dig lots of socializing, you'll no doubt understand why.

If you are an introvert subsistence hunter like me, you won't get it.  Shoot, you won't even do it.  

I'll just drive down early that morning.

_________________________________________________________________________________

*I was well into my adult years before I'd been to all of the places in the state my father had hunted and fished as a young man.  I'm only now making it to some of them.

** People would find it odd, but statistically, a lot of lawyers are introverts. This probably has to do with the study of law being bookish, something that introverts are naturally drawn to.  Ironically, the practice of law tends not to be bookish.

This gets to another point.  Introverts aren't hostile to human interaction, they can just get too darned much. When they do, they seek to withdraw.  As another blog notes, introverts often want an invitation, except when they don't (and you won't know when that is or isn't), even if they shy away from gatherings.  They often do very well in gatherings, which causes people not to realize that introverts are introverts.  

As an example, public speaking doesn't bother me at all, and I frequently get "I don't know how you do that" from people who otherwise are constantly talking.  That's easy to answer, around people, save for people who an introvert is highly familiar and comfortable with, introverts are "on".  That is, they're minds are focused and they're running at high speed. That's the very reason that they crave breaks from the same sort of settings. For introverts, again save for people they're very comfortable with, there's absolutely no such thing as a "casual conversation".

***It's obvious from this blog, but I'm Catholic.

Space Force Was Set to Announce Its New Rank Structure. Then, Congress Stepped In

Space Force Was Set to Announce Its New Rank Structure. Then, Congress Stepped In: Some experts have argued that a Navy rank system would make sense for the fledgling Space Force.

The thing that would make the most sense is to abolish the goofball Space Force which doesn't need to exist in the first place.

Indeed, if I took the Oval Office in January, I'd abolish the Space Force and give General Discharges to anyone who got themselves into it.

Holscher's Hub: High Mountain Corner Posts

Holscher's Hub: High Mountain Corner Posts:

High Mountain Corner Posts

The Campaign Hat & Forgotten History

August 27, 1920. Recalling Plymouth Rock.

Three hundredth anniversary of the landing of the pilgrims, Provincetown, Mass., August 27, 1920

 

Blog Mirror. Painted Bricks: Art or vandalism?

Painted Bricks: Art or vandalism?:

Art or vandalism?

We don't like to put up photos of graffiti here as it's not in the same category as what this blog is dedicated to depict.  Here, we make a bit of an exception.

The scenes depicted above are of the backs of two local office buildings.  Both are actively occupied. I.e., there's going businesses in them. They aren't abandoned buildings.

So what, you may ask.

Well, graffiti has been a feature on the back of these buildings for a long time, but it's grown markedly worse in recent years.  The amount of graffiti has increased as the building on the right has been oddly popularized in the local press. And when I say the building, I mean the alley.  For reasons that aren't apparent to me, the fire escape  has become locally celebrated as some sort of a wonder.  That's drawn people to trespass on it and as that's occurred, graffiti has likewise increased as well.  So have high school graduation pictures with the staircase as a backdrop and even wedding photos.

And now a local theater company.

I'm not a big fan of local theater, which speaks poorly of me. When I was very young my parents introduced me to the theater at the local community college which was a real treat for all of us grade school kids.  I can dimly recall seeing You're A Good Man Charlie Brown and The Man From Lamancha at the college theater.  While in high school I was never in theater but about that time I was introduced to the text of plays as literature, and I really like some of those.  I've seen more college production in latter days, including when I was in college, including, by my recollection, The Dark Of the Moon, which I don't particularly care for, and A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum, which I do.  When our kids were little, we took them to a college play about the Wright Brothers.

Local theater, however, is another deal entirely and you have to admire the people who are willing to do it.  It doesn't get hte same viewership as college theater, for one thing.  And the quality fo the volunteers is bound to be uneven.

Anyhow, there's a couple local theater companies around here and one of them decided to put on a version of a famous Greek play.  I've read the text of the play as a college student, which is a long time ago, but I can dimly recall the outline of it.  In this production of the play, apparently, there's an element that emphasizes the need to put on a play in spite of hte presence of an Athenian plague, which apparently might be a real background story to the original play.  I.e., it was staged during a plague, perhaps, during which the author felt it critical to reopen the Athenian theaters in spite of hte risks.

There's a lot of things that are interesting about that, including that if that's correct, ancient Greeks, while they may not have had the germ theory of disease, grasped that hanging around in groups spread it.  Athens apparently closed up shop to try to combat it, something that might seem familiar to the readers here.  If my understanding of the views at the time are correct, there were also those who dissented from that view. . . which is also interesting in context.

In the current context, it's generally those who are on the left to the center left, politically, who have been for keeping things shut down and a tight quarantine, while on the right to the center right the view is the opposite.  In the middle, where most folks are, the views are nuanced.  On the edges, they aren't.

Anyhow, most theater people are on the hard left.  It's the hard left that generally would really have a really tight quarantine.  Probably most people in local theater on are the left somewhere.

Which makes a play all about protesting quarantines oddly ironic.

Anyhow, that's not why we have posted this here.  Apparently determining to stage this out in the open for a certain sort of street cred feel to it, the producers have added to the graffitti.

This may make the town about hte only town around which graffitti making reference to ancient Greece, but it's still graffitti.  Of course, there was a lot of it before.

I'm not quite sure what to think.

The play on opening day.  I happened to be in the building at the time and so I snapped this photo.  There wasn't a large crowd, but then it was opening day during a time of pandemic too.

One thing maybe the theater company and the audience might think is how gracious the building occupants are.  It's impossible not to notice a thing like this and in a lot of places the reaction would have been hugely negative.  No reaction at all isn't permission, but it is pretty gracious.

Somehow I missed the fact that the master biographer Edmund Morris died last May.

He was 78 years old.

His series on Theodore Roosevelt, started as work when he was a graduate student, is an absolute masterpiece.  The three volume work was interrupted by his biography on Ronald Reagan, which I haven't read, but in which he included unusual writing techniques including the acknowledge inclusion of fiction in order to illustrate events which actually happened, a technique which lead the work to be condemned and which I suspect was done to address the problem that Ronald Reagan's early years simply weren't that interesting.

Morris was born in Kenya and had a clipped upper class English accent.  His early career was not in history or writing and The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, his first book, was not issued until he was 40 years old.  His last well known work, Colonel Roosevelt, and the second volume of his history of Roosevelt, Theodore Rex, were delayed by his twelve year effort researching Reagan, an effort that lead him to the conclusion that Reagan was almost impossible to understand.  

Morris wrote only seven books, with his final work on Edison being published after his death.  He'll always be remembered for his three volume set on Theodore Roosevelt.

Blog Mirror: Dos and Don’ts for Back to School, Pandemic Edition

Dos and Don’ts for Back to School, Pandemic Edition

For International Dog Day. The Camp Tender

 

August 26, 1920. Summer Camp boat exercises at Hampton Roads, Virginia.

 

Railhead: Derailed Union Pacific Grain (corn) train, Bosler, Wyoming. August 22, 2020

Railhead: Derailed Union Pacific Grain (corn) train, Bosler ...:

Derailed Union Pacific Grain (corn) train, Bosler Wyoming. August 22, 2020.