Saturday, September 9, 1944. A coup in Bulgaria.

U.S. infantry advancing with Sherman, Spangle, Belgium, September 9, 1944.

A captured Japanese Mitsubishi A6M fighter, the Zero, was displayed in Cheyenne (Wyoming State History Calendar).

A coup in Bulgaria put the Communist Fatherland Front (Отечествен фронт) in control of the country, which it would control until the fall of Hungarian Communism in 1986.  It dissolved in 1990.

French race car driver Robert Benoist, a member of the French Resistance, was executed at Buchenwald.

The U-484 was sunk by the Royal Navy northwest of Ireland.

Ten mule team draws heavy Chinese howitzer over many mountains in the Burma Road on its way to the fighting at Tung Ling, Yunnan, China. 9 September, 1944.

Last edition:

Friday, September 8, 1944. Belgian government returns.

Labels: 1940s, 1944, Army, Battle of Dukla Pass, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canadian Army, France, German Wehrmacht, Hungarian Army, Red Army, technology, Weapons, World War Two

Friday, February 8, 1924. Nullifying the Teapot leases.

Today In Wyoming's History: February 8: 1924 President Coolidge signed a resolution ordering the Doheny and Sinclair petroleum leases to be nullified due to the Teapot Dome scandal.

And also:

The first execution by lethal gas was carried out in Carson City, Nevada.  Gee Jon, a Chinese national, was the subject of the execution for a gang slaying.

Texas executed five prisoners on the same day, all African Americans, in the first use by Texas of the electric chair.

The Soviet Union created the Nakhchivan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic within Azerbaijan.  On January 20, 1990, it became the first part of the USSR to bolt.

Broken records?

Strange. . . 

The official low on Thursday was -42, which is now being reported as breaking the -41 record set in 1949.

But when I looked it up earlier, the low for 1990 was -46.

Hmmmmm

Participating in the saratorial decline.

Note: The other day I did a long post on clothing standards.  In pasting together a couple of other lingering posts for a combined new topic (the one on retirement) I ran across this post.  Well, bummer, I just posted this one:

Declined Sartorial Standards. Have we gone too informal?

This one dates back to some time prior to May, given one of the references in it.

Well, I'll run it anyway.

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As a Wyoming lawyer, but a lawyer, I've watched the slow decline in clothing standards while participating in it.

At my first day of work in 1990 I reported to work wearing a double-breasted Brooks Brothers suit.  The first partner who came in was wearing wool khaki trousers and a blue blazer, and he was dressed down.  He told me that I didn't have to wear a suit every day.

For years and years, however, I normally wore a tie and clothing appropriate for a tie.  Then COVID 19 hit.

For much of the prior spike of the disease (we're in a spike now, of the unvaccinated, but of course the entire state disregarding that) I kept coming in the office.  I was often the only one there when we were at the point where the staff didn't have to come in.  I pretty much quit dressing in office dress at the time as there wasn't much of a reason to do it.  Nobody was coming in, I was there by myself, what the heck.

I've not made it back to normal, and not everyone else has, either.

And of course normal in 2019 was not the same thing it was in 1999, or 2009.  We'd already slid down the dressing scale in the back of the office, where I am.  I never used to wear blue jeans in the office, but by 2019 I already was a fair amount.  Starting with COVID 19, I am all the time.

One of the things about that is that in 2019 I already had a selection of older dress clothes that were wearing out, I hadn't replaced.  Probably the inevitability of their demise would have caused me to replace them on in to 2020.  But I didn't have to.  Additionally, the long gap in time meant that I pretty much didn't do anything about the fact I'm down to two suits now.

Two suits isn't much if you are a trial lawyer.

Well, running up to the trial, I was going to go down to Denver and get new ones.  But I ran out of time.  I still haven't done it.

I need to.

I'll confess that part of my reluctance to get new suits is that I'm 58 years old.  I don't wear suits daily at work, and I'm not one of those guys who is going to claim "I'm going to work until I'm 80".  Any new suit I get now will still be in fighting shape when I'm 68, and that's reasonably enough, but to my cheap way of thinking, emphasized by the fact that I have two kids in college, its something that is both easy for me to put off, and in the back of my mind I tend to think "maybe I won't really need those if . . . "

Well, I probably better remedy that.

Time is a lot shorter than we imagine.

In looking at the old newspapers I sometimes put up here, I saw in a local paper that the building that I work in was sold this past week. . . 100 years ago.  It made the front page as it was one of the few "skyscraper" buildings in town at the time.  Maybe the only one.

That is, news of that sale hit the front page on December 31, 1920.   The building was 103 years old at the time. The new owner soon changed the name of the building to what it is today.

Yesterday I had a man in the office who was 93 years old. He asked about some details of the building and lawyers who had practiced in it in the past.  We spoke about the sidewalk out front and that some odds and ends.  He noted that out in front, on the street, "there were probably horses back then".  

No doubt there were some.

He was ten years old when this building was 13 years old. That struck me at the time.

The building was built in 1917 and first occupied in 1918.  I don't know when he first saw it, but it would have been in its early history.  That's stuck with me.  I can recall things easily back when I was ten.  He may have recalled this building when it was only a little over 20 years old, maybe even earlier than that.

For that matter, I recall this building being here, and my father having business in it, over 40 years ago, maybe 50 years ago, when the building was less than 50 years of age itself.

I've worked in the building for 30 years.  It was 73 years old when I started working here.  The man I was talking to was 63 then.  My father would have been 59, two years older than I am now.  He died at age 62.

Time just gets away from us.

The last dialogue from True Grit.