Blog Mirror: VINTAGE GEM: THE DIXON TICONDEROGA WOODGRAIN PENCIL

 

VINTAGE GEM: THE DIXON TICONDEROGA WOODGRAIN PENCIL

The Outpost

Helicopter landing at Camp Keating, the location of the Battle of Kamdesh

There are actually a lot of movies about the United States in Afghanistan.  I don't know if the fact that I haven't seen but a few of them means that, like in regard to World War Two, there's a lot of bad ones, or just that I don't see very many movies.  But there are a lot.

The other day I saw The Outpost on Netflix.  This movie is centered on the real life battle of Kamdesh and portrays the actual soldiers who fought there.

The battle took place at a remote outpost which, as the movie depicts, was extraordinarily poorly located. The photos posted here of the actual location demonstrate that as well.  The base was located in a valley, a classic military blunder, and the subject of constant sniping.  On October 3, 2009, the Taliban attempted to overrun it which resulted in a pitched battle.  The resulting fighting was dramatic, and two Congressional Medals of Honor were awarded to American soldiers who fought there.

By all accounts this movie is a very good depiction of the actual battle, including the location. The film is well done and the portrayal of the soldiers extremely unvarnished.  The battle scenes are harrowing and gritty.  The modern U.S. Army including its equipment is very well portrayed.  Well worth watching.

SSG Clinton Romesha near the area where the battle was fought.  He would receive the Congressional Medal of Honor as a result of his heroism in the battle.

November 20, 1920. Seasonal scenes. Reflections of a century ago and today.

 On this day in 1920, the White House Thanksgiving entre was delivered in a White House shaped crate.

I don't know if this was before the moronic custom of "pardoning the turkey" or not.  Of note, this turkey isn't as plump as the ones you see today in this role for a simple reason, farm turkeys have been genetically selected in the past century to be plump, and hence are more plump than their ancestors of a century ago, save for wild turkeys, which are just about like this.

The custom of collections for the needy was in swing.

The House of Mercy was collecting donations on this day in 1920.  The organization was an Anglican organization that aided unwed mothers.

I have no idea what the giant dog represented.

The House of Mercy now has the unfortunate status of having its named as part of a goofball dance play, Escape from the House of Mercy, by the highly woke who performed it briefly pre Coronavirus Pandemic at a park which is at the location of the New York House of Mercy.  Further performances of this silly stupidity have been postponed until COVID 19 is beat, by which time hopefully the woke will have moved on to something else.

This helps demonstrate, however, that the well off and historically ignorant section of society has no real understanding of conditions of the past in numerous ways.  Society at large in 1920 wasn't as wealthy as it is in 2020, the government largely did not fund welfare systems, and the ability of almost any woman to support herself and an infant without a male income winner was darned near impossible.  Institutions designed to address this weren't hotel resorts, to be sure, but the alternatives tended towards abject destitution.  Fruity dancers aren't likely to experience that condition today, in a much wealthier society in which there are extensive publicly funded social institutions.

Various notables were photographed, and some honored, at some sort of big event in Washington D.C.   This included General Payton March and his family.

Secretary of War Newton Baker and his son Jack also were there.

What this was isn't clear to me, but my guess is that it was a football game.

The Country Gentleman hit the stands with a seasonal cover illustration.

The Russian Orthodox Church issued a Ukase, a set of instructions with the force of canonical law, directing Bishops to carry on outside of Russia, a measure which acknowledged that in most of the country and its former empire the Communist Party was now in control and was suppressing religion. The move lead to the formation of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia.  It still exist today in spite of the fall of the Soviet Union, but it reentered communion with the Church in Russia in 2007.  The ROCOR was not the only Russian Orthodox body outside of the Soviet Union, and a small element of its membership went into schism at the time of the reunion. The Russian Orthodox Church is the largest Orthodox Church. 

It's an odd thing to realize that at age 68, Al Gore, . . .

who came out with 500,000 more votes that George Bush II, but who lost the electoral votes, remains younger than either of this year's contenders.

And yet he never ran again.

I wonder why?

August 21, 1940: Trotsky, the James Dean Effect, Cafe Socialism and Neoconservatism. Things that make you go "mmmm?"

This interesting item appears on the blog Today In World War II History for this day:

Today in World War II History—Aug. 21, 1940 & 1945

One of the interesting things about it is the photograph of Leon Trotsky with American admirers.

Trotsky in the photo looks like an aged professor. Not like the leader of the Red Army he once was.  He doesn't look like somebody that Stalin would bother to hunt down and have assassinated.

But Stalin did just that.

Trotsky retained admirers well after his exile and indeed into this very day.  Among the hard left functuaries who obtained employment roles in FDR's New Deal Administrations, along with closet Communists, were closet Trotskyites, a species of Communist. Both were a tiny percentage of those in the alphabet administration, of course, but they were both there. The difference between the two, and it was a significant one, is that conventional Communist had somebody to report to and receive orders from, with that somebody forming a chain back to Moscow.  Trotskyites didn't, and therefore they never posed any kind of real threat to the U.S. of any kind.

Indeed, Trotskyites then, and now, can be placed into the category of Socialist Oddballs, fo which the Socialist world is jam packed.  A feature of Socialist Oddballism is adherence to a theory "that's never been tried", which gives the adherent the comfort of not having to confront failure.  Every type of Socialism every tried, anywhere, has massively failed, which is why it isn't used by any serious nations today.  

Trotskyism is no exception.  It would have failed and Trotsky's immediate goals while a figure in the Soviet Union were a failure.  We've just been reading about one of them here, his war against the Poles.  Trotsky nearly succeeded in overrunning Poland, to be sure, but in his view, the next step was Berlin.  When the war on Poland failed, and failed big, he proposed an invasion of India.

All of which was nutty, but Trotsky benefits from the James Dean Effect, just like another Communist failure, Che Guevara. Dying before nature took them out, they're preserved by what people imagine them to be, just like the young actor who frankly wasn't all that great, rather than what they really were.

American Trotskyism has an odd twist to it, however, that should be mentioned.  Quite a few young American Trotskyites evolved, oddly enough, into Neoconservatives.  Over time, they became disillusioned with the nut job aspects of Socialist theory, but they interesting didn't become disillusioned about changing the world, and changing the world through intervention.  Neoconservatives, including some former Trotskyites, rose up into administrative power in the 1980s and introduced into Conservatism the concept of nation building.

Which didn't work well.

Sunday Morning Scene: Churches of the West: St. Peter Canisius Catholic Church, Grassy Butte, North Dakota.

Churches of the West: St. Peter Canisius Catholic Church, Grassy Butte, ...:

t. Peter Canisius Catholic Church, Grassy Butte, North Dakota

This Prairie Gothic Catholic Church in tiny Grassy Butte, North Dakota, is closed, a victim of the declining fortunes of small farming towns in the West and Midwest.  The church was quite active until the fortunes of the town changed and services were switched to another local building that had more modern amenities.  In 2007 the Diocese of Bismarck, North Dakota, sold the church and its obviously fairly well maintained, although I don't know what its current use is.

The name of the church reflects the German heritage of the town, as St. Peter Canisius was a Dutch Jesuit who was active and successful in countering the Reformation in Germany.

May 18, 1920. Future Popes, Equine Events, and Middle Eastern Wars.

Karol Józef Wojtyła, was born to Emilia and Karol Wojtyla in Wadlowice, Poland.

St. Pope John Paul II's parents at the time of their wedding.  They are both presently candidates for sainthood.

He'd become St. John Paul II the Great, the most influential Pope of the second half of the 20th Century.

His early life was hard, in a country where life itself was hard.  His mother, who was a school teacher, died when he was 8 years old.  His deeply religious father was first an NCO, prior to his birth, in the Austro Hungarian Army and then a Captain in the Polish Army.   Upon his wife's death he worked close to home so that he could care for his young child.

His father died of a heart attack Polish in 1941.  His eldest brother, with whom he was close, died of scarlet fever after attended to scarlet fever victims in the early 1930s.   Upon his father's death he was the only immediately surviving member of the family.  

He entered the seminary secretly during World War Two, the Germans had closed them in Poland, and was ordained in Soviet occupied Poland in 1946.

He ultimately rose to become Pope in 1978, and occupied that position until his death in 2005.  Since that time he has had two successors, with the first perhaps ironically being German, thereby creating the odd situation of a Pope who lived under German occupation during World War Two being succeeded by one who had briefly been in the German armed forces (anti aircraft gun crewman) as a very young man at the end of the war.

The National Horse Show was going on in Washington D.C.

General Pershing's personal mounts Entered in the National Capitol Horse Show which opened today. On the left is Col. John G. Quekemeyer with "Jeff" and on the Right Lt. W.J. Cunningham with "John Bunny".

Col. John G. Quekemeyer and Lt. James H. Cunningham taking the jumps on Princess and Dandy, at the National Capitol Horse Show. These two hunters were presented by the English Government to General Pershings Staff and are entered with the string of A.E.F. Horses.

And Man O War, who had not run in the Kentucky Derby, won the Preakness.

Another event involving a lot of horses was the Battle of Hamdh, which occurred on this day in 1920. The battle pitted the Ikhwan, the putative National Guard of Saudi Arabia, against Kuwaiti forces. The distribution of manpower was lopsided in favor of the Saudis.  It was part of the Kuwait-Najd War.

The event was part of the Saudi effort to annex Kuwait and impose a strict religious regime upon them.  The Kuwaitis lost the battle after six days, but ultimately the British would intervene and end the war.  Kuwait was a British protectorate at the time.  Prior to that the Saudis attempted to dictate a peace requiring the eviction of Shias, adoption of Wahhabism, declare the Turks to be heretics, ban smoking, ban prostitution, and destroy the American missionary hospital in Kuwait.  The peace was imposed by the British in 1922 and it did not include those provisions, but Kuwait, which was not allowed to participate in the discussions, lost more than 2/3s of its territory.

April 12, 1920 Sonora rebels, the Ruhr Rebellion ends.

The revolution in Mexico, and that's what it now was, was back on the front page of American newspapers.

As part of this process, Sonoran Governor Adolfo de la Huerta resigned his office in preparation for taking up the part of a revolutionary soldier once again.  In his place, Plutarco Elías Calles became Governor.  Calles was already a figure in Sonoran politics and had been a general in the Mexican revolution and a supporter of Carranza. At this time, he was supporting Obregon and De La Huerta.

Plutarco Elías Calles, who later took Mexico to the edge of fascism and across the line of sectarian brutality.

Calles was a true radical and his policies were brutal, particularly against the Catholic Church.  He'd later become the President of Mexico from 1924 to 1928 when his policies resulted in the Cristero War, which might be regarded as the final stage of the Mexican Revolution as well as the point at which Mexican democracy basically essentially a joke in some ways, so much so that when his policies resulted in the assassination by a Cristero supporter of Obregon, who was set to resume office, he became a type of dictator and founded the National Revolution Party, which governed Mexico from its founding until 2000.  Calles himself at this point flirted with fascism, which had an influence upon him.

Calles would ironically fall at the hands of an associate, Lázaro Cárdenas del Río, who became President of Mexico in 1934.  Cárdenas proved to be independent of his patron and acted against Calles' supporters.  Ultimately Calles was charged with being a member of revolutionary conspiracy and deported, ironically, to the United States in 1936.  Supposedly Calles was reading Mein Kampf at the time of his arrest.  As an exile, he made contact fascists in the United States although he rejected their anti Semitism and of course their hostility to Mexicans.  He was allowed to return to Mexico, in retirement, in 1941, and began to modify his views, supporting Mexico's entry into World War Two.

Cárdenas, for his part, remained a revolutionary, but not a fascist, and continued the suppression of the Catholic Church throughout his Presidency.  That feature of Mexican politics would not abate until 1940 when Manuel Ávila Camacho became President.

While this site is not, obviously, the history of Mexico website, all of this ties into the purpose of this blog which was to look at events in the 1890 to 1920 time frame with a particular focus (among other focuses) on the Border War with Mexico.  While this phase of this time frame and the attendant history are clearly winding down, the events described here are critical elements of it.  Over time, we've seen a democratic revolution that took the eclectic Francisco I. Modero into office as a true democrat devolve into continual revolutionary cycles which at one time promised to put a collection of democrats in power, only to have that fall apart and leave the radical Venustiano Carranza in charge.  In 1920, that was flying apart as Carranza schemed to control who would replace him as President of Mexico. That would ultimately see the more radical Obregon come to power followed by Calles, who was an extremist who flirted with fascism during his lifetime.  Only beginning in 1940 did Mexico begin to turn away from that direction, although it would take sixty years for real democracy to return to the country after that date.  In 1920, it was dying.

Oskar von Watter.  He commanded German government forces that entered the Ruhr to put down the Communist rebellion there.  In 1934 he'd cause a monument to be put up in Essen in honor of Freikorps soldiers who had died in the 1920 rebellion.  He died in 1934 and was buried in Berlin's Invalid Cemetery, a cemetary associated with Prussian military figures.

On the same day the Ruhr Rebellion in Germany came to an end with the German government firmly in control  General von Watter ordered his soldiers to abstain from "unlawful behavior", but it was too late.  Reds caught with firearms were simply killed in many instances.

Sunday Morning Scene: Churches of the West: Catholic Co Cathedral of the Sacred Heart, Houston, Texas

Churches of the West: Catholic Co Cathedral of the Sacred Heart, Houston...:

Catholic Co Cathedral of the Sacred Heart, Houston Texas

This is  the new Co Cathedral of the Sacred Heart, which replaced the old one in 2005.  The new cathedral is a very large church located just one block from the old cathedral.

The third option in Afghanistan

Over the past few days the United States came surprisingly close to obtaining a "sustainable solution" in Afghanistan.

"Sustainable solution" is the phrase used repeatedly by a former government official who was interviewed on NPR on Sunday, when the news broke that the U.S. had called off a meeting with the Taliban that was scheduled to occur at Camp David and which would likely have resulted in that "Sustainable solution".

"Sustainable solution" means a surrender.  More specifically it means that special type of American surrender which allows the public to wholly ignore that the country surrendered and allows an administration in charge to pretend we didn't surrender.  It is, therefore a duplicitous surrender.

Throughout the weekend shows and on to the week the news was fully of analysis about how there were only two options in Afghanistan.  One is surrendering, which isn't what anyone calls it, and the other is keeping on with our low grade commitment. The US has only 5,000 soldiers in Afghanistan at the moment which frankly isn't much, and it isn't enough.  The Trump Administration, in calling off the talks, noted that the U.S. did so as an American soldier had been killed in the days leading up to the Camp David meeting, which was regarded as inappropriate for a negotiating party, while also noting that during the past few days the NATO commitment to the war had killed 1,000 Taliban combatants, which if true would be the equivalent to 1/5th of our own commitment to the war and would also equal about 1/3d of the total number of casualties we've had in the entire 20 year war.

Which brings us to the third option.

We could, and should, actually go ahead and win the war.

First let's state two obvious facts.  One is that if we pull out now, no matter how we term it, Afghanistan will fall back into a brutal Islamic theocracy run by the Taliban.  The second fact is that we've fought the war very badly.

Okay, the first.

We went into Afghanistan in the first place as the country had fallen into the hands of the Taliban and they hosted Al Qaeda.  The attacks on our country that took place on this day in 2001 were planned and stages from Afghanistan.  Afghanistan hosted the Al Qaeda as the Taliban shared the same Islamist view of the world which holds that all opposed to Islam in any fashion are infidels to be conquered by the sword.  It isn't the only view of the world that Muslims hold but it is well grounded in Islamic tradition and theology.  Many Muslims would dispute the last point, but Islam is a religion that is badly fractured into various groups, not all of which hold the same views on certain tenants, including whether there needs to be a Caliph and whether armed expansion of the religion is a central tenant.  The further a person goes, geographically, from the origin of the faith the less likely is it that its adherents hold those views.  But those views are not far removed from those which developed during Mohammed's lifetime or shortly thereafter and while there hasn't been a unified Islam since Muhammad's death, the feature of a violent expansive Islam isn't new to this era, nor has there ever been an era without it since his death.

But there has also often been a different view in which Muslims on a local level didn't pay much attention to those matters and rather focused on others.  Even early on this was the case.  That drama is playing out in Afghanistan now and has been since the Soviet invasion of the country wrecked it.

We easily shoved aside, but that's all we did, the Taliban when we came in with a badly planned and badly lead intervention following the September 11 attacks.  That allowed the tribal elements that opposed the Taliban to fill the vacuum. But we never wiped out the Taliban, even though we largely did Al Qaeda, and its fought on. And fighting on in a country that's in a state of reversed development that's so extensive that it's development has regressed hundreds of years has not been hard for it.  It now controls huge area of the country, although not as much as some American news outlets have reported.

The Taliban controls 14.5% of the country. The Afghan government controls 56.3% of the country. Both sides in the contest now control more of the country than they did in 2018, when the Afghan government controlled about 30% of the country and the Taliban 7% of the country.

So the rest of the country remains in contest, with the Afghan government actually silently pulling ahead, while the Taliban oddly also gains ground.  Right now, if trends continue, the Afghan government can be foreseen to control at least 60% of the country in the foreseeable future and 70% is unimaginable.  On the other had, seeing the Taliban control 20% or 25% isn't either.

Obvious in this is that the war is in fact developing and the Afghan government is winning.  It isn't winning in a George S. Patton advance to the Rhine fashion, but it's winning.

Guerrilla wars, which is sort of what this is, take a long time to win.  The Communist Vietnamese struggled for 30 years to win completely in Vietnam.  The British fought for 12 years in Malaya before declaring the war won, but the actual low grade struggle that followed went on for another 20 years.  The Philippine Insurrection supposedly went on for three years, but only because the U.S. pretended that the war ended then.  So the current war lasting 20 years isn't exactly surprising and shouldn't be.

But the U.S. has no staying power in guerrilla wars and indeed it doesn't in protracted wars at all.  We never have.  That's why we abandoned the Republic of Vietnam to its fate and allowed it to be defeated in 1975.  And that's why we're ready to do the same with Afghanistan.

This has come about in part because we've believed every since World War Two that we can fight a war in which Clausewitz has no part, but of course, we can't, which is the second factor noted above.  And we very much did that in Afghanistan.  Under the inept oversight of Donald Rumsfeld, we committed an economy of troops to the effort in the belief that our opponents were all rude primitives and we were super technical and could win a primitive war with special means. That was stupid.

Part of the reason, indeed much of the reason, we did that is that we were also taking on the Baathist regime in Iraq and had no need whatsoever to do that. That war was our kind of war, an armored advance on an armored enemy.  But it took up most of our effort.  The war in Afghanistan languished with lessor participation and it, over time, has reduced to one in which we really have only a smallish numerical role.  The U.S. may have 5,000 troops in Afghanistan, but the U.S. Army alone has 20,000 in Germany, where the risk of those troops being engaged in combat is quite low.

Not that 5,000 men, in terms of our current force, is small in some ways.  It isn't comparatively.  We have, for example, half that number in Japan and about three times that number in South Korea, where the risk of their becoming involved in combat isn't unsubstantial.  But it isn't a gigantic commitment in terms of men and its not enough to really do anything other than stiffen the Afghan government's will to fight on, which it has been doing.  If we add in non US NATO troops, which Americans routinely forget, those numbers climb to 17,000.

That allows the Afghani government to struggle on to try to control all of its territory.  It isn't enough to really end the war in a decisive way.  That latter fact allows the Taliban to struggle on as well.

So our only alternative is to hang on for eons or get out, right?

No.

The 14% of the country occupied by the Taliban is readily identifiable.  Commitment of an actual combat division, or better yet two, which would be 15,000 to 30,000 men, in combination with Afghani government forces, in a single hard strike would put that 14% to 0% and would cause a massive blood loss to the Taliban.  If it wasn't enough to convince a group of people who are largely willing to die on the basis that they'll go right to Heaven anyway to quit, it'll convince some, and it'll end the existence of many more in a way that would allow the Afghan government to be a presence back on its own territory.

At that point, the maintenance of the peace could logically become a UN, rather than a NATO effort, something that NATO has a lot of experience with. The blue helmets of UN peace keepers could then be a presence.  The United Nations already deploys over 100,000 troops committed by its members around the globe in just such missions, and not all of them are in kind and gentle lands by any means.  And quite a few of those troops are Muslims from Muslim nations that don't have the conquer for a Caliph mindset.  Having those troops, which include female Muslim soldiers from such places as Bangladesh, serve in the region is likely to be less offensive, and indeed perhaps more shocking, than Americans, long term.

That would give Afghanistan a chance to have a future in which the Islamic nation wasn't a base for extremism. Where women were treated as human beings, could vote, and go to school.  And were the type of Islam that most people claim is the real Islam, and which does reflect the view of most Muslims most places, could be restored to its prior place.

The opposite result is grim.  Most of all for women, but for everyone in general.  A victorious Taliban isn't going to be hosting a Summer of Love any time soon, and the kind of forces that will find refuge there aren't the kind that any nation just like it or sharing its views will be able to live comfortably with.

Monday at the Bar: Blog Mirror: A HISTORY OF WATER LAW, WATER RIGHTS & WATER DEVELOPMENT IN WYOMING 1868-2002 June 2004 FUNDED BY: WYOMING WATER DEVELOPMENT COMMISSION And STATE ENGINEER’S OFFICE

A HISTORY OF WATER LAW,
WATER RIGHTS & WATER
DEVELOPMENT IN WYOMING
1868-2002

June 2004

FUNDED BY:

WYOMING WATER DEVELOPMENT COMMISSIONAndSTATE ENGINEER’S OFFICE

The Rise and Fall, rise and fall, rise and fall, of Denver.

Capitol Hill District of Denver, circa 1898.  A careful observer of this photograph might be tempted to think this is the Capitol building, but it isn't.  It faces the wrong direction and must have been a courthouse or a city building.  Indeed, I suspect this photograph was taken from the capitol looking west.

Recently I put up a photo of a business of a morally dubious nature in downtown Denver on one of our companion blogs, that being:  Painted Bricks: La Boheme, Denver Colorado.

This caused me to recall earlier visits to Denver, and the up and down nature of its downtown.

The edge of the Capitol Hill District of Denver in 2018.  This view doesn't face the same way as the 1898 photo above.

Personal recollection figures on this blog from time to time, even though its main focus is on something else.  In the recollection context, it it occurs to me now that I have a personal connection with Denver that stretches back at least forty years, maybe a bit longer.  Longer than that of most of the people, I'd guess, who live there.  If I add a familial familiarity to it, which of course is less reliable, it would stretch back beyond the late 1920s.

Indeed, while I don't say much about it here, I have a familial connection with Colorado that goes back to the 1860s, much longer than many of the European American folks there. A great grandfather on my father's side moved from Ohio to Leadville to be a miner in the second half of the 19th Century, although he rapidly changed his occupation to shopkeeper in that high altitude town.*  So our family's association with Colorado is, well, nearly as old as the state of Colorado.

Colorado State Capitol during the period of time in which its dome was under reconstruction.

In fact, my father was born in Colorado, something I rarely mention.  All of his siblings except for his youngest brother, as well has my father, were born in Denver.  His parents moved to Scotsbluff Nebraska when he was seven, and usually if asked my father would just say he was from Scotsbluff, even though he left Scotsbluff for Casper when he was in his early to mid teens.** That means his association with Denver was nearly as strong as it was with Scotsbluff, although I don't know if the first few years of your life really count that way as you really don't recall much about them personally.

Be that as it may my father didn't talk that much about his childhood in Denver.  In fact, some of the more interesting details of that period in my father's family's history I know from other family members.  For instance, I know that my father started school when he was four years old as the parish priest felt he was ready for it, and he attended a Catholic grade school in Denver.  When they moved to Scotsbluff he was enrolled in the public school there, so he didn't grow up going to Catholic schools.***  His younger brother had the opposite experience, FWIW, attending the Catholic grade school here when the family moved from Scotsbluff, where he'd been born.

Be that as it may, he identified more with Nebraska and when Denver was discussed, when I was a kid, it often entailed relatives who continued living there after our family had left, some of whom still did when I was growing up.  The Bergers in particular were their aunt and uncle who lived there all the way into my high school years, outliving my grandparents by decades.  All of my father's family were extremely fond of them, although I can recall meeting them only once, when they came up here for some reason.

That reflects, I guess, my father's view of Denver, or maybe of travel.  My father didn't like travelling at all and he never went to Denver without a reason.  That reason came when I was in grade school, probably around 5th or 6th grade, which is coincident with my first trip to Denver.

When I was about that age. . . I'm no longer precisely sure of when it was, I developed asthma.  It arrived pretty suddenly. At that time, there were no allergist in our area at all, and the only recourse was to go to Denver, which we did.

To go to Denver to be tested for medical reasons isn't a good introduction to the town, but at the same time I recall looking forward to it for childish reasons.  I knew, of course, that it was a big city.  I also knew that a friend of mine had models that his father, who was a cartographer, brought home when he went to Denver for work.

Going to Denver for work is interesting in and of itself and I've been to Denver hundreds of times for work. But at the time, that seemed very exotic and strange, maybe even a little sad, in and of itself.  But that did introduce me to the concept that Denver had a store that sold really neat models.  While we were there, we went there.

That store was across the street from the Denver Dry Goods store, a huge department store whose building still exists, just off of 16th Street, in downtown Denver, but which is now an apartment building.  For some reason, when my father spoke to his siblings about Denver, the Denver Dry Goods stores was frequently mentioned.  It must have been a place they held in regard from the time in which they lived there.

The model store that was across the street from Denver Dry Goods also sold Avalon Hill games, the first time I'd ever seen them.  We didn't buy one, I know, as I didn't know what they really were, and of course back in those days you couldn't really look such things up anywhere.  A few years later, just a short view, I'd stumble into those games, which I really like even though there's nobody to play them with anymore.  I guess that first trip was my first introduction to them, in a way.

I can also recall that we stayed, on that occasion, in a hotel that was just off of downtown Denver. The building is still there and I still recognize it when I drive past it.  Just down from it was a Big Boy restaurant that we didn't eat in, but which for a long time thereafter was a landmark that I'd recognize. We had to go to National Jewish, the great Denver hospital that focuses on respiratory diseases.  The net result was the disturbing finding that I was allergic to a lot of animals, and some plants.  I'll not go into that other than to note, as is common with asthma, it abated in later years, then came back to some degree, and has abated again, although not before I had to go through three separate rounds of shots over three different periods of time; the first in the 1970s of which we're speaking, the second in the 1990s after I graduated from law school, and the third just recently as a prophylactic measure as we got a dog.****

Anyhow, that Denver of the 1970s was, by my recollection, much like Salt Lake City is now.  It was a big city, but it was a big business like city.  It didn't have the carnival atmosphere that it has now.  It was glass and steel with shops and the like that was unlike anything in Wyoming, but it was also cold and sterile and meant business.

The business that it meant was the oil business at that time, and the 1970s was the era of rampant oil activity in the region.  I didn't know it then, but I'd come to know that Denver had become a major oil hub at least as early as the 1950s.

My mother enters the picture there, actually as in 1957 or so she'd come down to Colorado from Alberta as my aunt Marguerite was getting married.  The family had gone into hard times during the Great Depression and they never really emerged from it.  Starting at age 16 my mother had gone to work and that work took her to Alberta, where she at first worked for the Canadian Pacific Railroad and then worked as an oil and gas secretary.  In 57 or so, however, my aunt had become engaged to a Quebecois engineer who had moved to Colorado to study.  The family circumstances being strained, the decision, nearly an order, was to send one member of the family to Colorado for the wedding and that person was my mother.  In order to do this, she had to quit her job in Alberta.

By her recollection, her employer and co workers in Alberta begged her not to go, and warned her that if she stayed to work in the U.S. which was easy to do, she'd be "worked to death".  Indeed, American oil companies that I've worked with make the reverse complaint about their Canadian colleges, claiming that they basically won't work. That does give testimony to the "American Work Ethic", and whatever it entails, for good or ill.  At any rate, she didn't heed their warnings and quit her job figuring that after the Colorado wedding she could find work in Denver, which was booming due to the oil business.

As it happened, and for whatever reason, the industry in Denver wasn't hiring, but prospective employers uniformly pointed her north towards our city, which is where she ended up and where she found employment, as an oil and gas secretary, right away.  All that leads into another story which I'll forgo now, and maybe just forgo.  But what it shows, in part, is that Denver was an oil town.

It was still an oil town in the 1970s.  And in fact at that time oil companies that were headquartered in Casper Wyoming were pulling out in favor of Denver.  Casper had been a major regional oil hub and the newspaper, as late as the 1970s, declared it to be "the Oil Capital of the Rockies".  It was losing its oil office workers by the late 1970s.  Then the crash of the 1980s came.

When that came it hit Casper hard, and it was devastating to Denver.

It was that Denver that I next became familiar with.

As a University of Wyoming student in the mid 1980s, I started visiting Denver for the first time in over half a decade.  A good friend of mine was highly familiar with Denver and knew his way around.  While going to Denver myself for any reason wouldn't have occurred to me, it was second nature to him, and our group of outdoorsy friends was ironically introduced to urban Denver, as it had very good outdoors stores.  We used to go down to Denver from time to time to hit the sporting goods stores and the outdoors stores, such as REI (then in a different location) or Eastern Mountain Sports, which was downtown.

In that same time frame, I also would go down from Laramie to Denver on the occasional day trip with a girlfriend of the time. As she was outdoorsy (we were all geology students) we'd go to the same sort of places, but she also had a strong interest in music which I did (and do) as well.  So the list of places we'd go to was expanded to include music stores, including ones that sold records.  One of those places still exists, Wax Trax, which has changed hardly at all.  A really neat one, however in a residential neighborhood off of downtown I couldn't possibly find today, assuming it exists.

Wax Trax in Denver, which has weathered the ages.

At some point in this time frame I also discovered the Tattered Cover bookstore, but I"m not sure who introduced it to me.  I suspect it was the girl I was dating, but I'm not sure.  Oddly enough my father knew of the store at that time, even though it was founded in 1971, well after he had left the city as a boy, so I have no idea how he was aware of it.

The Denver of that era seemed busy to us, but its downtown had taken a pounding.  Many buildings were closed at first, but by the mid 80s a new downtown was developing after 16th Street was closed to vehicle traffic.  A new retail district began to pop up.  Still, lower downtown Denver was a wreck dominated by the massive Gates Rubber Company building, which was completely abandoned.  Nobody dared walk in that era unadvisedly.  Five Points, the area just off downtown, was legendary for being rough and had a reputation for that which dates back into the 1930s.  While we tried to avoid it, occasionally you'd hit its edges coming and out of town past a traffic island park that was always covered with drunk people at any hour of the day.  Off of downtown, as you approached the Capital Hill District, you encountered neighborhoods that were highly decayed.  The large episcopal cathedral dominated the area near Wax Trax and was in such rough shape, with boarded up windows, that I assumed when first encountering it that it had been abandoned.

St. John in the Wilderness Episcopal Cathedral in Denver.

Indeed, at that time, if you went to 16th Street you didn't stray much off of it.  Only a block away the town had a much different character.  Down by the Gates building it was a hobo jungle and completely dissolute.  Nobody in their right mind went there at all.

After 1986 I didn't go to Denver again for years.  We all graduated from UW and went off to work or unemployment.  I went on to the latter, as did most of the geology students I knew at the time.  The last time I was in Denver of that era was in 1986 itself, when I went down once by myself.  I wasn't in Denver again until the spring of 1990, when I was a law student.  On that single occasion I went down with a friend and was really left with no particularly noteworthy memories of the trip except for seeing a bagpipe player on the street who was playing Garryowen.  More than anything else the trip on that time left me with that sad feeling of old memories not really being capable of recapture.  The fun part of going to the town with my undergraduate geology friends was really gone, and the fact that I was there with a law school friend didn't make up for it.  Had I thought on it more, that trip, symbolizing an evolution of various sorts, would have probably made me pretty blue about the experience.

It was after I started practing law that I started going to Denver a lot.  And it was after the construction of Coors Field that the town began to change massively.

Coors Field.

You wouldn't think that the construction of a baseball field would change a city, but Coors Field did.  

Coors Field was opened in 1995 and was constructed where Gates Rubber had been. The classic baseball stadium brought new life to lower downtown Denver and absolutely everything about it began to change thereafter.  The nearly wrecked area of lower downtown started to rapidly evolve into a hip, cool and youthful area.  It's still evolving in that direction twenty five years later, the change being both complete and ongoing.  By the 2000s it was highly evident, and the areas around 16th Street that had been scary were swept up in it.

That's what brings me to La Boheme.

La Boheme, Denver Colorado.

This is a photograph of the mural on the side of La Boheme in Denver, which euphemistically calls itself a "gentleman's cabaret". By that it means, no doubt, something on the order of "strip club".

La Boheme, which means the female Bohemian in French, is located in what was once a pretty rough downtown Denver neighborhood which went through gentrification after Coors Field was constructed. The transformation in this area was remarkable and its still ongoing, Colorado's legalization of marijuana had reintroduced a feeling of decay into downtown once again.  At any rate, in spite of many old buildings being bought and converted into new upscale uses, and in spite of being located across the street from the downtown Embassy Suites, a nice Denver business hotel, La Boheme keeps on keeping on.

I can't recall this mural being there until just recently, so it's presumably a new addition.  Perhaps keeping in mind where it is, it's not shockingly skanky and is actually fairly well done.  It's placement resulted in a minor debate with my travel companions on whether it depicts Marilyn Monroe, Jenny McCarthy, or none of the above.  The first two choices would in some ways emphasize the tragic nature of the establishments purpose.  Anyhow, it's fairly well done except that the figures left hand, which isn't really visible in this photo, is quite meaty, making for an odd appearance.

I couldn't recall if it was La Boheme or not, and now in recollection, I realize it it wasn't. But in the 2000s I had an occasion to go to Denver for work and in so doing I parked downtown to walk to 16th Street.  Construction was ongoing just as it is now, as old dilapidated buildings yielded to new construction.  At any rate, I was walking towards downtown on a path that took me past a bar that was a strip joint.  This was probably around 11:00 a.m. or so.  As I did that, a girl came out of the club who was obviously employed as one of the "dancers".

She wasn't good looking, in the way that movies like to imagine girls so employed to look.  Indeed, she was skinny and extremely pale in the way that people who never see the light of day are pale.  Her occupation was betrayed by her dress, which was only suitable for one of two professions, both of which are a species of prostitution.  She barreled out of the door on her way to somewhere else, probably after having picked up her wages for selling her appearance the night prior, and perhaps having just finished up from whatever wreck of an evening it had been.

The old dilapidated Denver boldly defiant in the face of the new, cool Denver.

Well wherever that place was, it's gone now, I'm sure.  But La Boheme, the last of the really old seedy Denver, keeps on keeping on, out of place, and out of time.

Which doesn't mean that Denver has become a mythical bright shining city on a hill.

Indeed, quite contrary to that, Denver gives really good evidence of the human inclination to destroy everything through our worst instincts.  Denver is why we can't have nice things.

Union Station as viewed from the Oxford Hotel.  One of the really nice features of the revival of downtown Denver has been the introduction of an extensive light rail network which terminates at Union Station.

Denver's downtown was changing in character by the late 1990s in any event, and while it was getting increasingly vibrant, it was also getting increasingly grungy.  And then marijuana came.

As Denver's fortunes boomed based on a new, and largely consumer basis in a new economy, it drew in tens of thousands of people from elsewhere in the country, many from California.  "Californication" became a slam on the process but Colorado simply became overwhelmed, transforming the state.  It's a lesson for those who always have a growth is good mindset, as much of the old Colorado was killed in the process.  And as part of that process, a new California outlook came to the state's politics, which ironically went from the pro grown political right to the progressive liberal left.  With that came the push to legalize marijuana.

And legalize it Colorado did.

Marijuana has ruined Denver.

That statement might be too harsh, of course, but only a little.  With the legalization of marijuana all the predicted social problems that would never come about, it's backers claimed, have.  Law enforcement problems of all sorts have dramatically increased, for example. And the number of street people living on Denver's streets, which in recent years have generally been relatively warm in the winter, are now epic.

Street people were always a feature of downtown Denver, but the numbers and character have really changed.  In the 1980s these sad souls were concentrated in lower downtown and Five Points  Now they're just everywhere in the downtown area. And they aren't the same people.  In the 80s, they were sad victims of poverty and alcohol.  Now they tend to be the young who surrendered their lives to dope.

The social lesson there, and the legal one, is self evident, but being ignored.  Money talks and people are making money off of the drug, the human toll doesn't matter.  Denver is a good argument for making marijuana illegal, not the opposite.

And with the decline, the rise in self indulgent  artificial trend of the moment has captured Denver as well.  Denver's not only become wealthier, but an element of artificialness has crept in as well, the way that suddenly wealthy societies built on a false and temporary wealth are.  Think the Roaring Twenties.

Will it stay that way?  Hard to say. But watching Denver over a long period of time, and having noted its rise and fall of fortunes, it's not safe to say.  The one thing that can be said is that its a new Denver, and its not necessarily a better one.

_________________________________________________________________________________

*This isn't a thread on Leadville.  I'll have to put one up someday.  But I will note here is that my grandfather and grandmother's location in Leadville put them in that town in its heyday, and in that period of time during which all of its famous residents, such as the Browns and the Tabors, lived there.  There was a apparently a community of relocated Leadville residents, which would have included the Browns, who lived in Denver after Leadville declined and who regularly met.

**He'd already been to one year of high school, maybe two, when he moved to Casper.  I'd thought for a long time that the entire family moved to Casper at that time but in fact my grandfather must have gone back and forth from Scottsbluff to Casper for some time, as it seems that he was already operating the meatpacking plant he purchased in Casper in 1940 or so.  Chances are that economically there was a period when they weren't able to get a second house and whatnot so there may have been a year or two when he was commuting back and forth very frequently.

***My mother, in contrast went to all Catholic schools. Quebec didn't have public schools at the time and all schooling was private.

****A typical condition of those with asthma is not to talk to people about it and most asthmatics, myself included, never speak of the condition to outsiders.  That's because its impossible to describe and involves some very odd experiences when a person is actively afflicted, including the knowledge that you are repeatedly brought to the edge of death and then back out.  Most young asthmatics, I suspect, spend the rest of their lives with the knowledge that life is very fragile and never have the illusion of long life or the expectation of it that other people have.  Simply having had the condition is its own Momento Mori.  I' only note that all here as childhood asthma creates a profound psychological impact on the person who endures it even if you outgrow it, which a large number of people afflicted with it do.

I've outgrown it and mostly had by the time I had graduated from high school.  Indeed when I enlisted in the National Guard I stated that I hadn't been afflicted since age 13, even if I was, or might have been, fudging on that age. Even at that, however, it came back to a degree while I was in law school when I acquired a new allergy that was a real seasonal problem for several years and which caused a second round of shots.  As that went away, which thankfully it did, the Manx cat volunteered to live with us and took up residence in our home in spite of my theoretically being allergic to cats.  For whatever reason, however, he never caused me to have very many problems, although he did cause some, and when he sadly passed my wife campaigned for a dog, which she had always wanted. That caused the third round of shots.

Swing back to Denver, I'm allergic to something there, but only mildly.  I have no idea what its, but for much of the year if I'm simply there I have a slightly runny nose and feel slightly allergic to something.

A Story of Badges

Just what the U.S. Army doesn't need. . . yet another badge.

What am I talking about? Well this:

In conjunction with the U.S. Army's 244th Birthday, the Army announced a new proficiency badge today, called the Expert Soldier Badge.

The ESB is designed to improve lethality, recognize excellence in Solder combat skills and increase individual, unit and overall Army readiness. The ESB is the equivalent of the Expert Infantry Badge and Expert Field Medical Badge but for all other military occupational specialties in the Army. Commanders will soon be able to use the badge to recognize Soldiers who attain excellence in physical fitness and marksmanship and a high standard of expertise in land navigation and performing warfighting tasks. 

"The ESB will be an important component of increasing Soldier lethality and overall readiness to help achieve the vision for the Army of 2028," said Sgt. Maj. of the Army Daniel A. Dailey. "The EIB and EFMB have supported the Infantry and medical fields with distinction, ensuring their Soldiers maintain critical skills, while recognizing the very best among them. The ESB will achieve the same for the rest of the Army." 

The Army will implement the ESB in early fiscal year 2020, with the standards and regulation to be finalized by September 2019. Earning the badge will test a Soldier's proficiency in physical fitness, marksmanship, land navigation and other critical skills, and demonstrates a mastery of the art of soldiering. 

The ESB training and testing will be extremely challenging, mission-focused, and conducted under realistic conditions. Those in the Infantry, Special Forces, and Medical career management fields are not eligible for the ESB.

"Like the EIB and EFMB, the ESB test will be a superb venue for individual training in units and the badge will recognize a Soldier's mastery," said Gen. Stephen J. Townsend, commanding general, U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command. "And it will be just as tough to earn as the EIB and EFMB because the Soldier will have to demonstrate fitness, weapons proficiency, navigation and warrior task skill at the expert level."

Standards for the ESB are still being refined but they will not be adjusted for age, gender or any other criteria. The test will share about 80 percent of the same warrior tasks as the EIB and EFMB, and is designed so it can be administered alongside and together with them. Brigade commanders will decide if and when to schedule the test so it best fits their training schedules.

Under the ESB test process, Soldiers will demonstrate mastery of individual skills through different evaluations over a five-day period. The standards for the ESB place candidates under varying degrees of stress that test their physical and mental abilities as they execute critical tasks to an established set of standards. 

To qualify to take the ESB test, Soldiers must pass the Army Combat Fitness Test (ACFT), qualify as "Expert" on the M4/M16 rifle and be recommended by their chain of command.

The test itself consists of another ACFT, day and night land navigation, individual testing stations, and culminates with a 12-mile foot march. ESB test stations include warrior tasks laid out in the ESB regulation and may also include five additional tasks selected by the brigade commander from the unit's mission essential task list. Example tasks include:

 React to an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) Attack 

 Construct Individual Fighting Positions

 Search an Individual in a Tactical Environment 

 Employ Progressive Levels of Individual Force 

 Mark CBRN-Contaminated Areas

"We worked tirelessly on the ESB to ensure we got it right," said Command Sgt. Maj. Edward W. Mitchell, Center for Initial Military Training Command. "We wanted to provide commanders the opportunity to recognize their top Soldiers who have met the highest standard of performance in physical fitness, warfighting tasks and readiness."

Each ESB task will be evaluated on a "go" or "no-go" basis. Pass rates during the ESB pilot testing were similar to that of the EIB and EFMB.

"The ESB is all about increasing the readiness of our Army. It will provide commanders outside the Infantry, Special Forces and medical communities the opportunity to recognize Soldiers who best demonstrate excellence in their fields," said Command Sgt. Maj. Timothy A. Guden, TRADOC Command Sergeant Major.

"This is not a badge to award so that the entire Army now has an 'expert' badge to wear. As it is now, not every Infantryman or Special Forces Soldier earns the EIB and not every medic earns the EFMB. Keeping with the same mindset, this is a badge to award to those who truly deserve recognition as an expert in their career field; for those who have achieved a high level of competence and excellence in their profession."

The U.S. Army has gotten as bad about badges as the Boy Scouts.

Okay, that's pretty harsh. . . if true.

Now, for the uninitiated, this device is a badge.  It's not a medal, or an award per se.  It's something your receive to reflect a qualification.

And that's the problem. At this point, the Army has arrived at a point at which its been headed for some time.  It's handing out badges for simply being a soldier. That way the many soldiers who aren't combat solders don't have to feel bad about it.

Army Wound Ribbon of 1917.

Up until 1943 the Army didn't issue badges of this type at all.  It did issue awards of various types. . medals, campaign ribbons, etc., but not badges as a rule.  The World War One "wound chevron", worn by solders who had been wounded in combat, was perhaps a bit of an exception.  That device replaced the Wound Ribbon of 1917, and was authorized for wear until 1932 when it was replaced by the Purple Heart.  A person can, and perhaps should, debate whether that replacement was a wise decision, as while being wounded is horrible, a medal was traditionally awarded for valor, and being wounded isn't ipso factor necessarily valorous.  It's bad any way you look at it, and that is worth noting, and most Western armies have at least since that time period.

Army Wound Chevron

Overseas stripes were similar and came in at the same time.  Prior to that the Army didn't issue anything at all for overseas service.  Starting in the Great War, however, soldiers earned a stripe or bar to be placed on the uniform for certain periods of overseas service, recognizing the hardship that entailed.  It's notable that this hardship was really only regarded as such, however, once a large conscript U.S. Army was in place.  Prior to that, as long as the Army was all volunteer, it was regarded as notable.

Indeed, prior to World War One there weren't any badges or related devices issued by the Army. . . or any of the other services, at all.

The first real badge of the type we're discussing came about in 1943 with the Combat Infantryman Badge.  That badge, which is still around, came about due to a real evolution in the U.S. Army between 1918 and 1941.  As late as the Great War it was simply assumed that your chances of being a combat soldier, if you were in the Army, were so high that it wasn't noteworthy.  By World War Two, however, the Army had evolved to where, contrary to the way we imagine it, most soldiers were no longer combat troops. . . by a long margin.

Combat Infantryman Badge.

In that new environment the soldiers who really got the sharp end of the stick, the infantrymen, were now regarded as sufficiently unique that they deserved something recognizing that status, a recognition with which I fully agree, but which I must note at the same time means that almost every soldier of prior eras was sort of slighted in a way.  In we look at the Army of 1916-18, or of 1898, or of 1860-65, there were vast numbers of combat infantrymen.  Indeed, most soldiers up until some point in that time frame were infantrymen.  By 1940, that was no longer true, and being in that unenviable situation was recognized as both unique and horrific, and deserving of a badge.  It likely was, but that reflected an interesting evolution.

The award of a badge followed a bit of a trend that was already ongoing in that there were now specialist in service whereas there had not been previously. That is, prior to World War One, infantrymen were infantrymen, artillerymen were artillerymen, etc.  There were elite units in some cases, but not whole elite military occupations that were refinements of other fields.  That came to an end, however, with aircraft.

Army jump wings indicating that the soldier wearing the wings is qualified on a parachute.

Flying an airplane was so unique and required such skill that it soon qualified the person who could do it to wear pilots wings.  This makes perfect sense and all services adopted the practice.  When developments in aircraft allowed, by World War Two, for airborne infantry, first for those qualified for parachute operation, and then later for glider infantry as well (a truly dangerous and somewhat forgotten aspect of the airborne).  Jump wings came first, followed in 1944 by glider wings.

Army glider wings.

This evolved fairly rapidly to where there were additional specialized wings for combat jumps and the like, which also makes some sense.

It's at this point, where the story begins to get a little off track.

When the Army authorized the Combat Infantryman Badge in 1943, it also authorized the Expert Infantryman Badge, a badge simply for qualifying as expert in the military specialty.   The qualifications for the badge are real, but what was going on in the background of this was a tacit acknowledgment that not only were most American soldiers not infantrymen, but that most didn't want to be infantrymen either.  Something was being done to try to encourage them, basically, for drawing the short end of the stick.

 Army Expert Infantryman Badge.

I've personally always admired the badge, but the oddities of it have always struck me as well, as I was an artilleryman, which is another combat MOS.  For guys in the artillery, or the cavalry, or armor, or. . . you get the point, it always seemed odd that there was a CIB and the AEI when we, on the other hand, could be expected to be in combat too but not get any badge.

This was particularly the case for those holding the cavalry MOS during World War Two, as they sometimes fought as infantry and didn't qualify for the badge.  Of course, many fought as armored cavalrymen and no armored soldier, no matter how dangerous the occupation was, qualified for a badge.  The really raw deal, however, was for medics, who occupied an extremely dangerous position but weren't infantrymen so they received no badge.  Indeed, while they had briefly qualified for it during World War Two, the qualification was withdrawn out of the fear that they'd be captured wearing it and not accorded non combatant status.

That was ultimately addressed by the Combat Medic Badge, which came into existence in January 1945.

Combat Medic Badge.

Again, I think the CMB is a real badge and one that I'd not care to be in a position to wear myself.  Not too surprisingly, however, it followed the evolution of the CIB and in 1965 there came to be the Expert Field Medical Badge.

Army Expert Field Medical Badge.

Recognizing that there are a lot of troops who get into combat action who aren't infantrymen, in 2001, there came to be the Combat Action Badge.  It's like the CIB, but for troops who aren't in the infantry.

Army Combat Infantry Badge.

And now, of course, following the inevitable evolution of badges, we now have the Expert Soldier Badge.

Army Expert Soldier Badge.

Well, that's going too far in my view.

Indeed, there's been a real expansion of awards in general in the Army since World War Two.  And the Army isn't alone in this, the Navy has a plethora of badges as well.

Well, as an old Guardsmen, I'm probably in no position to criticize the Army on this, but I'm going to anyhow.  Some of these badges, such as those for qualifying for unique skills, such as being in the airborne, I get and feel to be worthwhile.  And the ones reflecting combat. . . well combat is unique and I get that as well.  But just being well trained in your occupation. . . nah.  That's awarding you for what you ought to be striving for anyhow, and if you are really good at it, that should be reflected in some other fashion.  Not a badge.

Indeed, at this point, I'd eliminate all the Expert badges.  And I'm not too certain that it isn't my view that if there's going to be "combat" badges, that ought to be down to just two.  Medics still deserve their own, no matter what.  And for that matter, I'd actually keep the Combat Infantryman Badge around as well.

But I'd leave it at that.