Monday, September 15, 1874. Grant addresses the situation in Louisiana. Treaty No. 4.

 

By the President of the United States of America

A Proclamation

Whereas it has been satisfactorily represented to me that turbulent and disorderly persons have combined together with force and arms to overthrow the State government of Louisiana and to resist the laws and constituted authorities of said State: and

Whereas it is provided in the Constitution of the United States that the United States shall protect every State in this Union, on application of the legislature, or of the executive when the legislature can not be convened, against domestic violence; and

Whereas it is provided in the laws of the United States that in all cases of insurrection in any State or of obstruction to the laws thereof it shall be lawful for the President of the United States, on application of the legislature of such State, or of the executive when the legislature can not be convened, to call forth the militia of any other State or States, or to employ such part of the land and naval forces as shall be judged necessary, for the purpose of suppressing such insurrection or causing the laws to be duly executed; and

Whereas the legislature of said State is not now in session and can not be convened in time to meet the present emergency, and the executive of said State, under section 4 of Article IV of the Constitution of the United States and the laws passed in pursuance thereof, has therefore made application to me for such part of the military force of the United States as may be necessary and adequate to protect said State and the citizens thereof against domestic violence and to enforce the due execution of the laws; and

Whereas it is required that whenever it may be necessary, in the judgment of the President, to use the military force for the purpose aforesaid, he shall forthwith, by proclamation, command such insurgents to disperse and retire peaceably to their respective homes within a limited time.

Now, therefore, I, Ulysses S. Grant, President of the United States, do hereby make proclamation and command said turbulent and disorderly persons to disperse and retire peaceably to their respective abodes within five days from this date, and hereafter to submit themselves to the laws and constituted authorities of said State; and I invoke the aid and cooperation of all good citizens thereof to uphold law and preserve the public peace.

In witness whereof I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.

Done at the city of Washington, this 15th day of September, A.D. 1874, and of the Independence of the United States the ninety-ninth.

U.S. GRANT.

By the President:

HAMILTON FISH, Secretary of State.

Treaty No. 4 was signed between the Cree and Saulteaux and the Crown in Canada.

Last edition:

Sunday, September 14, 1874. Battle of Liberty Place.

Labels: 1870s, 1874, Army, Louisiana, Louisiana National Guard, Racism, Reconstruction

2023 Elections In Other Countries.

May 15, 2023

Turkey

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who has governed the country for twenty years, is headed into a runoff election against Kemal Kilicdaroglu, having failed to secure 50% of the vote.

May 22, 2023

Ulster

Sinn Fein made big gains in local election in Northern Ireland this past week.

May 29, 2023

Turkey

Erdoğan unfortunately won the run-off election in Turkey.

May 30, 20223

Alberta, Canada

Danielle Smith's United Conservative Party won provincial elections yesterday. 

July 23, 2023

Spain exhibited cheating the prophet in that, contrary to predictions, there were no clear winners in its election.

The With center-right Christian Democratic Party, Partido Popular (PP) came in first, winning 136 seats. The far-right Vox party, which was predicted to be a kingmaker, won 33 seats and it might through in with the PP.  The ruling center-left Socialist party won 122 seats, with likely coalition partner Sumar at 31 seats.

But there's no telling, really.  The Socialist Party is in power. . . it might throw in with the PP.

So, it's hard to tell who won.  They're working out the deals now, but chances are that whoever won will not be in power long.

October 16, 2023

Left and center left parties took   248 seats in the 460-seat lower house of the Polish parliament, compared to the 200 taken by the governing Law and Justice party and 12 by a right wing partner.  

The government of Poland will accordingly change in the first European defeat of the king of right wing populism/National Conservatism that most notably emerged in Hungary and recently can be imperfectly argued to have gained ground in several other European countries.  It had made statements about openly following Hungary's lead.  As recently as 2019 it was gaining ground.

And it might still be.  Parliamentary politics are not the same as republican politics. The Law and Justice Party still was the largest vote getter, and the number of votes for it increased.  Effectively, it has 212 seats to 248 seats held by various other opposition parties that cross a political spectrum.  A government still has to be assembled and it will remain a major voice in the parliament.

November 23, 2023

Argentina.

Difficult to describe, socially conservative, a member of the Austrian school of economics, and sort of a libertarian, Javier Milei won the Argentine presidential election.

This election is so sui generis that it's hard to put in an international context.  The temptation is always to view these sorts of shifts as to the hard right, or hard left, and this would sort of be hard right, but it also reflects a rejection of Argentina's political history going back for 90 years or so.

The Netherlands.

The Dutch Party for Freedom made big election gains in the Dutch parliament, signaling a large leap to the far right in the country. While being expressed as a shock, this has been going on in the Netherlands for some time.

This victory makes it possible that its leader, Geert Wilders, could become prime minister of the country, but only if he is able to put together a coalition with other right wing and center right wing parties.

The party is strongly anti immigrant and wishes to leave the European Union.

A cold northern wind. The Alberta Sovereignty Within A United Canada Act.

From the prospective of the self-absorbed United States, it's often hard to realize that anything else is going on elsewhere, let alone that something much like what has been occurring in the US in recent years has been.

But in Canada, it has.

We got a glimpse of populist discontent in our northern neighbor this year with the Canadian truckers protest.  Since then, the government of Justin Trudeau has further restricted firearms access in Canada, where it was already severely restricted.

None of this sits well in some of rural Canada and the Canadian West.  Now Alberta, the province most like to react to such things, has reacted and passed a sovereignty bill.

It reads:

BILL 1

2022

ALBERTA SOVEREIGNTY WITHIN A UNITED CANADA ACT

(Assented to , 2022)

Table of Contents

1 Definitions

2 Interpretation

3 Resolutions

4 Powers of the Lieutenant Governor in Council

5 Authority and orders cease

6 Effect of directives

7 Crown is bound

8 No cause of action

9 Judicial review

10 Regulations

Preamble

WHEREAS Albertans possess a unique culture and shared identity within Canada;

WHEREAS it is the role of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta and the Government of Alberta to preserve and promote this unique culture and shared identity;

WHEREAS the Constitution Act, 1867, the Constitution Act, 1930 and the Constitution Act, 1982 are foundational documents that establish the rights and freedoms of Albertans and the relationship between the provincial and federal orders of government, including the division of legislative powers between them;

WHEREAS the Province of Alberta is granted rights and powers under the Constitution Act, 1867, the Constitution Act, 1930 and the Constitution Act, 1982 and is not subordinate to the Government of Canada;

WHEREAS actions taken by the Parliament of Canada and the Government of Canada have infringed on these sovereign provincial rights and powers with increasing frequency and have unfairly prejudiced Albertans;

WHEREAS actions taken by the Parliament of Canada and the Government of Canada have infringed on the rights and freedoms of Albertans enshrined in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms in an unjustified and unconstitutional manner;

WHEREAS the people of Alberta expect the Parliament of Canada and the Government of Canada to respect the Constitution Act, 1867, the Constitution Act, 1930 and the Constitution Act, 1982 as the governing documents of the relationship between Canada and

Alberta and to abide by the division of powers and other provisions set out in those documents;

WHEREAS the people of Alberta expect the Parliament of Canada and the Government of Canada to respect the rights and freedoms of Albertans enshrined in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms; and

WHEREAS it is necessary and appropriate for the Legislative Assembly of Alberta to set out measures that the Lieutenant Governor in Council should consider taking in respect of actions of the Parliament of Canada and the Government of Canada that are unconstitutional or harmful to Albertans and for Members of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta to have a free vote on such measures according to their individual judgment;

THEREFORE HIS MAJESTY, by and with the advice and consent of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta, enacts as follows:

Definitions

1 In this Act,

 (a) “aboriginal peoples of Canada” includes the Indian, Inuit and Métis peoples of Canada within the meaning of section 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982; 

(b) “Constitution of Canada” includes

 (i) the Canada Act, 1982, including the Constitution Act, 1982,

 (ii) the Acts and orders referred to in the Schedule to the Constitution Act, 1982, and

(iii) any amendment to any Act or order referred to in subclause (i) or (ii);

 (c) “federal initiative” means a federal law, program, policy, agreement or action, or a proposed or anticipated federal law, program, policy, agreement or action;

 (d) “person” includes a corporation and the heirs, executors, administrators or other legal representatives of a person;

 (e) “provincial entity” means

 (i) a public agency as defined in the Alberta Public Agencies Governance Act,

 (ii) a Crown-controlled organization as defined in the Financial Administration Act,

 (iii) an entity that carries out a power, duty or function under an enactment,

 (iv) an entity that receives a grant or other public funds from the Government that are contingent on the

provision of a public service,

 (v) a regional health authority established under the Regional Health Authorities Act,

 (vi) a public post-secondary institution as defined in the Post-secondary Learning Act,

 (vii) a board as defined in the Education Act,

 (viii) a municipal authority as defined in the Municipal Government Act,

 (ix) a municipal police service as defined in the Police Act,

 (x) a regional police service as defined in the Police Act, and

 (xi) any other similar provincially regulated entity prescribed by the regulations.

Interpretation

2 Nothing in this Act is to be construed as

 (a) authorizing any order that would be contrary to the Constitution of Canada,

 (b) authorizing any directive to a person, other than a provincial entity, that would compel the person to act contrary to or otherwise in violation of any federal law, or

 (c) abrogating or derogating from any existing aboriginal and treaty rights of the aboriginal peoples of Canada that are recognized and affirmed by section 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982.

Resolutions

3 If, on a motion of a member of Executive Council, the Legislative Assembly approves a resolution that

 (a) states that the resolution is made in accordance with this Act,

 (b) states that, in the opinion of the Legislative Assembly, a federal initiative

 (i) is unconstitutional on the basis that it

 (A) intrudes into an area of provincial legislative jurisdiction under the Constitution of Canada, or

 (B) violates the rights and freedoms of one or more Albertans under the Canadian Charter of Rights

and Freedoms,

 or

 (ii) causes or is anticipated to cause harm to Albertans,

 (c) sets out the nature of the harm, if the resolution states that, in the opinion of the Legislative Assembly, a federal initiative causes or is anticipated to cause harm to Albertans, and

 (d) identifies a measure or measures that the Lieutenant Governor in Council should consider taking in respect of the federal initiative, the Lieutenant Governor in Council may take the actions described in section 4.

Powers of the Lieutenant Governor in Council

4(1) If the Legislative Assembly approves a resolution described in section 3, the Lieutenant Governor in Council, to the extent that it is necessary or advisable in order to carry out a measure that is identified in the resolution, may, by order,

 (a) if the Lieutenant Governor in Council is satisfied that doing so is in the public interest, direct a Minister responsible for an enactment as designated under section 16 of the Government Organization Act to, by order,

(i) suspend or modify the application or operation of all or part of an enactment, subject to the terms and conditions that the Lieutenant Governor in Councilmay prescribe, or

 (ii) specify or set out provisions that apply in addition to,or instead of, any provision of an enactment,subject to the approval of the Lieutenant Governor in Council,

 (b) direct a Minister to exercise a power, duty or function of the Minister, including by making a regulation under an enactment for which the Minister is responsible, or

 (c) issue directives to a provincial entity and its members, officers and agents, and the Crown and its Ministers and agents, in respect of the federal initiative.

(2) A directive issued in accordance with subsection (1)(c) may be general or particular in its application.

(3) Where there is a conflict or inconsistency between

 (a) an order made or an order that is directed to be made under subsection (1), and

 (b) a provision of an enactment to which the order relates, the order prevails to the extent of the conflict or inconsistency.

(4) Nothing in this Act abrogates any authority or power vested in the Legislative Assembly or Lieutenant Governor in Council by any other enactment or by operation of law, including any authority or power of the Lieutenant Governor in Council to take action with respect to the federal initiative.

Authority and orders cease

5(1) Subject to subsection (2), the Lieutenant Governor in Council ceases to have an authority to make an order under section 4(1), and any order issued by the Lieutenant Governor in Council or a Minister under section 4(1) expires and ceases to have any force or effect, on the earliest of

 (a) the date on which the Legislative Assembly rescinds the resolution referred to in section 4(1), or

 (b) 2 years after the date on which the resolution referred to in section 4(1) was approved by the Legislative Assembly.

(2) The Lieutenant Governor in Council may extend an order issued under section 4(1) for an additional 2 years from the date on which the original order was set to expire.

(3) An extension of an order by the Lieutenant Governor in Council under subsection (2) may be made only once.

Effect of directives

6(1) A provincial entity and its members, officers and agents, and the Crown and its Ministers and agents, must comply with any directive issued by the Lieutenant Governor in Council under this Act.

(2) A directive issued under this Act must be published in The Alberta Gazette within 30 days from the date the order is made by the Lieutenant Governor in Council under section 4(1).

(3) The Regulations Act does not apply to a directive issued under this Act.

Crown is bound

7 This Act is binding on the Crown.

No cause of action

8 No cause of action lies against and no action or proceeding may be commenced against

 (a) the Crown or its Ministers, agents, appointees or employees, or against the Legislative Assembly, the Speaker of the Legislative Assembly, an office of the Legislature, or any agents, appointees or employees of the Legislative Assembly or an office of the Legislature, in respect of any act or thing done or omitted to be done under or in relation to this Act or a resolution or order under this Act, including, without limitation, any failure to do something when that person has discretionary authority to do something but does not do it, or

 (b) any other person or entity in respect of any act or thing done or omitted to be done in good faith under a directive issued under this Act, including, without limitation, anyfailure to do something when that person has discretionary authority to do something but does not do it.

Judicial review

9(1) An originating application for judicial review in relation to a decision or act of a person or body under this Act must be filed and served within 30 days after the date of the decision or act.

(2) In an application for judicial review to set aside a decision or act of a person or body under this Act, the standard of review to be applied by the court is that of patent unreasonableness.

(3) Nothing in this section is to be construed as making a decision or act of the Legislative Assembly subject to judicial review.

Regulations

10 The Lieutenant Governor in Council may make regulations

 (a) prescribing provincial entities for the purposes of section 1(e);

 (b) defining any term or phrase used but not defined in this Act. 

GOVERNMENT AMENDMENT AMENDMENTS TO BILL 1

The Bill is amended as follows:

A Section 1 is amended by adding the following after clause (e): (f) “regulation” means a regulation, order, rule, form, tariff of costs or fees, proclamation, bylaw or resolution enacted

(i) in the execution of a power conferred by or under the authority of an Act, or

(ii) by or under the authority of the Lieutenant Governor in Council, but does not include an order of a court made in the course of an action or an order made by a public officer or administrative tribunal in a dispute between 2 or more  persons.

B Section 3(b)(ii) is struck out and the following is substituted: (ii) causes or is anticipated to cause harm to Albertans on the basis that it

(A) affects or interferes with an area of provincial legislative jurisdiction under the Constitution of Canada, or

(B) interferes with the rights and freedoms of one or more Albertans under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms,

C Section 4 is struck out and the following is substituted:

ALBERTA SOVEREIGNTY WITHIN A UNITED CANADA ACT

Amendment A1 agreed to December 7, 2022

Powers of the Lieutenant Governor in Council 4(1) If the Legislative Assembly approves a resolution described in section 3, the Lieutenant Governor in Council, to the extent that it is necessary or advisable in order to carry out a measure that is identified in the resolution, may, by order,

 (a) if the Lieutenant Governor in Council is satisfied that doing so is in the public interest, direct a Minister responsible for an enactment as designated under section 16 of the Government Organization Act to, by order,

 (i) suspend or modify the application or operation of all or part of a regulation authorized by that enactment, subject to the terms and conditions that the Lieutenant Governor in Council may prescribe, or

 (ii) specify or set out provisions that apply in addition to, or instead of, any provision in a regulation authorized by that enactment,  subject to the approval of the Lieutenant Governor in Council,

 (b) direct a Minister to exercise a power, duty or function of the Minister, or

 (c) issue directives to a provincial entity and its members, officers and agents, and the Crown and its Ministers and agents, in respect of the federal initiative.

(2) A directive issued in accordance with subsection (1)(c) may be general or particular in its application.

(3) Where there is a conflict or inconsistency between

 (a) an order made or an order that is directed to be made under subsection (1), and

 (b) a provision of a regulation to which the order relates, the order prevails to the extent of the conflict or inconsistency.

(4) For greater certainty, a regulation as referred to in this section does not include an Act of the Legislative Assembly.

(5) Nothing in this Act abrogates any authority or power vested in the Legislative Assembly or the Lieutenant Governor in Council by any other enactment or by operation of law, including any authority or power of the Lieutenant Governor in Council to take action with respect to the federal initiative.

What's all this mean?

Well, good luck in finding out.  The U.S. press doesn't follow Canadian politics at all, even in those regions where you would think it should.  Alberta is just north of Wyoming and many Albertans come through and work here, but the local news isn't covering it.  Canadians themselves, as part of their culture, tend to keep all of their complaints big secrets, so they'll never actually tell you what's going on.  We're more likely down here to find out about the blathering of some Pop Tart or Pop Twit, or the fastest weird tweet from Donald Trump written all in caps and featuring weird diction, than we are about something going on in Canada that really matters.

What we can say about Canada is this.  Canada has undergone massive societal and cultural shifts since the 1950s.  The country was once extremely English, save for in Quebec, and in a conservative way.  Quebec itself was extremely conservative as well, but in its own Quebecois way.  Starting in the late 1950s, Canada began to jettison its culture in this fashion and has gone the other way.  Laws regarding speech are in the books which would be unconstitutional in the US, and the country more or less has an unwritten highly liberal ethos in which things to the contrary are not culturally allowed, no matter what people may actually think.  A culture of Canadian politeness operates in this so that, at least on the surface, Canadians go along and don't interject their personal views much.  In the Canadian West, however, this meets opposition, but even there the culture of Canadian politeness operates so that you just have to know what's going on, as at least to non Canadians, Canadians aren't telling.

Canadians are also a very proud people and bristle at statements from outsiders, as a rule, that everything might not be prefect.  A claimed statistic I saw today, however, would suggest that more Canadians died of euthanasia within a referenced time frame than of COVID 19 which may be a tribune to its COVID 19 policies, but which serves to illuminate the introduction of euthanasia, which is distressing.

The trucker's convoy briefly brought out Canadians who were latent Trump supporters, oddly enough.  The difficulty of knowing what's going on in Canada from the outside, and its own culture of not really saying anything if strangers are invited to the dinner table, however, may be suppressing a bit a news story that's similar to what's been going on here for some time.

Following this act's passage, there were indications from Alberta's leadership that it might have to seek a referendum on, essentially, separation.

It'll be interesting to see how this develops.

The Enigma of Western Writers.

This post is on Western writers.

By which I mean writers from the West who write about the West.  By the "West", I mean the West of the Mississippi United States in general, and the various regions of the West as well. 

I don't mean writers like Annie Proulx, who move into an area, write something that they set in the area, and then are celebrated by reviewers outside of the area who are completely ignorant on the area in the first place.  Or even ones like Sam Western.

Nothing was western about the originator of Western writing, Owen Wister, who was an East Coaster through and through.

I'm not saying, well not saying completely, that a person has to be born in one area to write knowledgeably about it. There are certainly examples to the contrary.  Cormac McCarthy has notably written about the west of Texas and in the Southern Gothic style, but he's from Rhode Island originally.  Owen Wister, who is sometimes credited with inventing the Western novel (and at the time he wrote The Virginian he was writing about the recent past) was very much an Easterner.  His friend Theodore Roosevelt wrote beautifully about the West of his day, but he was a new Yorker.  Frederic Remington, the legendary illustrator and painter, is not only famous for his Western paintings and illustrations, which dramatically capture an era, but he was a writer as well, writing on the same topics that he depicted in his paintings.   Edward Abbey was from Pennsylvania and didn't experience the West until he was 18 years old.  Thomas Berger who wrote the only really great novel about Indians, Little Big Man, lived on the East Coast his entire life.

President Theodore Roosevelt, who was also a prolific reader and writer.

But I am saying that there's something different about writing on a culture that you are part of and about a region you are from.  I'd even go on to say that its really difficult to do that without being born in an area. Some writers can pull that off, but they are few.  So if you were born and raised in New England, or Zimbabwe, two actual examples for recent "Western writers", you can probably credibly pull off novels about the shipping news, or not going to the dogs tonight, but your regional novels aren't going to appear authentic to anyone from the region at all, because they are not.

Indeed, could Go Kill A Mockingbird have been written by anyone but a Southerner?  What about anything that Flannery O'Connor wrote. . . would they have been just as impactful if written by a Vermonter?   Would Doctor Zhivago have been what it was if it was written by a New Yorker?  Could Musashi have been written by anyone other than Ejii Yoshikawa?

I doubt it.

Boris Pasternak, who was born in Imperial Russia in 1890 and who died in the Soviet Union in 1960.  His famous work is the novel about the Russian doctor Zhivago, who would have been born right about the same time and and have experienced many of the same things.  Hardly anybody would maintain that a non Russian, let alone a non Russian who hadn't experienced these things, could have written a novel like Doctor Zhivago.

So I'm talking about writers who have spent their youth, even if not perhaps born here, in the real West.  Writers growing up, like Norman Maclean, in Montana, or writers growing up in Wyoming, Idaho, Nebraska, North and South Dakota, New Mexico, and so forth.  And writers, I will credit, from Texas.  Having said all of that, I'd currently exclude writers, for the most part, who may be from any of those regions but whose lives have been spent in the really big cities of the region, like Denver, Dallas or Houston. Big cities are their own thing, and that thing isn't the West.  Modern Denver, and indeed increasingly much of the Front Ranger for hundreds of miles around it, are no more The West than Newark is.  So too with Las Vegas, Phoenix, or any of the giant Texas cities.

Anyhow, some observations.

Western writers, as I've defined them, clearly have a deep, deep, love for the region.  If you read, for example, Norman Maclean's work, he clearly loved Montana.  Indeed, no other writer described the Rocky Mountain West as accurately and deeply as Maclean.  Nobody.

Mari Sandoz clearly loved Nebraska and the plains.  So did Willa Cather.

And what's so notable about that is that they all left the region they loved.

In the film A River Runs Through It and in the novella, Norman Maclean has his brother express the view that he, the brother, will "never leave Montana".  Indeed, Maclean has Paul, his brother, express the view that those who moved from Montana to the West Coast suffered from moral defects, a view a lot of Westerners do in fact have.  But both Paul Maclean and Norman Maclean, in real life, moved to Chicago. At the time that he wrote his works, late in life, Norman Maclean had spent more years in Chicago than in Montana.  He died in Chicago in 1990 at age 87 (his wife, Jessie, had a much shorter life, dying due to respiratory aliments in 1968 at age 63).

Mari Sandoz was born in Nebraska in 1896. She moved to Denver, which at that time remained a Western city, in 1940, at which time she was 44  years old, but then moved to New York City in 1943, where she remained until her death at age 69 in 1966.

Wila Cather, was born in 1873 and her family moved to Nebraska in 1883.  She was steeped in the West from her youth, but she moved to Pittsburgh in 1896, at which time she was an up and coming writer.  She moved to New York in 1905, which is where she remained for the rest of her life.

What's going on here?  It seems that "Western" writers don't achieve success at that unless they've moved to somewhere distinctly non Western.

Maybe some of that has to do with what Garrison Keillor, who is a Western writer (Minnesota and North Dakota are part of the West the way I've defined them) noted about the region in general.  Our number one export is our children.  While we often don't credit it, and we frequently argue about it, the West has both a small population and a good educational system.  We work hard here to educate our youth, but we really don't have anywhere for them to go, as a rule.  That's been noted by outsiders, such as non Westerner, Sam Western (who is in  the non Westerner import class of writer), but they rarely seem to grasp the nature of it.  The West remains the West, where it has, because of natural features which translate into economic ones.  This means that while we really appreciate the need for solid educations, it also means that we educate generation after generation of Westerners who have no place to go with their educations. So they go elsewhere.

That seems to me to be the story for Maclean and Cather.  Norman Maclean obtained a degree in English from Dartmouth in 1924. What use would that have been in the Montana of 1924, or for that matter in the Montana of 2019?  It'd be limited, at best.  He clearly retained his affection for Montana and spoke of himself, from his actual home in Chicago, as a Montanan in his writings.  He married a woman from Montana in 1931, showing the extent to which he retained actual roots there. But he lived and died in Chicago.

The situation for Cather was likely even more pronounced.  An educated woman in the West in the 1890s, her career options were necessarily  highly limited.  Indeed, they were limited in the Western world in general. She never married, something very unusual for her era, and focused on her writing career, but that would fairly obviously be a lot easier to do from New York than from Nebraska.

Sandoz doesn't quite fit this mold, but maybe she provides another example.  Sandoz was a difficult character from her youth on but first found herself published while living in Nebraska, having relocated to Lincoln from the Sand Hills. She's struggled up to that point to establish herself as a writer, but when she did, it was with two novels both of which met with gigantic disapproval in Nebraska.  So she moved to Denver, and then on to New York.

And perhaps Michael Punke gives us another example.  Punke is the author of The Revenant.  Punke was born in Torrington Wyoming.  He's a practicing lawyer, as well as an author (and therefore obviously a much more disciplined person than myself), but he has worked nearly exclusively outside of the West, both inside of and outside of government.

And maybe Punke's example brings home that this phenomenon is widespread with Westerners in general.  At what point you cease to be a Westerner by leaving a region can be debated.  I think it that does happen, and am one of the many who disregard lamentations published in the letters to the editor section of the newspapers that start off with "I read the article about so and so last week, and while I left Wyoming forty years ago. . . .". 

But it's clear that people who were largely raised in a region conceive of themselves, quite often, as remaining part of it their entire lives.  Which I suppose makes sense.  Wendell Berry has lamented that modern American life means that people don't become "of" a place, but maybe they do more than we might imagine (which is another reason that novelist from Zimbabwe or Vermont don't become regional authors by moving here).  Beyond that, however, what we see with writers may be nothing more than what we see with legions of Westerners.

For a long time, at least for rural Westerners, which is a definition that would fit many in the West, growing up and getting an education has meant either narrowing the scope of your education or leaving.  I.e., if you are educated as a lawyer, doctor, veterinarian, school teacher, accountant, or engineer, you can find work here.  But if you have a PhD in English, you probably better be looking elsewhere.

Indeed, even with these other professions, as time marches on, this is becoming more and more true.  In 1990, at the time I graduated from the University of Wyoming's law school, it was already the case that maybe 1/3d of the class was headed to Colorado.  In some recent years over half the class has, as changes in the nature of practice have made that necessary.  Indeed, with the passage of the UBE, there's really no longer a reason for a Wyoming law school at all, and its only a matter of time until the legislature realizes that.

For some this is compounded with the American ethos of money meaning everything.  There are areas of various professions you can find work in the state, to be sure, but it won't pay the same lucrative amount that it might elsewhere.  So people move for the money.  Interestingly, they often find themselves in personal conflict after that, and are often among those writing to the editor with letters such as; "I'm distressed to read that such and so is going in near my beloved home town of Little Big Horn. . . I want it to be just like it was when I left in 1959 and I'm planning to return soon from the hideous dump of Los Angeles where I've been piling up cash since the early 1960s . . ." 

So, maybe it's the nature of the regional economy, and perhaps the national economy at that.  Writers gravitate to where the writers are, and the writers, by and large, are in the big cities.

Not all of them of course, but a lot of them.

Maybe.

Maybe something else is also at work, and perhaps that's most notable in what we noted above about Mari Sandoz. She didn't leave Nebraska for more futile publishing grounds.  She left Nebraska as she was taking a lot of heat after getting published.  Indeed, her second novel was censored in the state.

So maybe its the classic example of a person not really being too welcome on their own home ground in some instances.

In fairness, Sandoz's writing was always very critical of various things, and indeed quite frankly her histories, for which she remains famous, aren't terribly accurate in various ways.  At least her histories haven't born the test of time except, perhaps, for Old Jules, the book her extraordinarily difficult father asked her to write about him after his passing.  But still, maybe the West doesn't welcome its own writers much?

Or maybe it does.  Novelist Jim Harrison, who was from Michigan, which is pretty rural in some locations and the near west to a degree, lived in Arizona and Montana after leaving Michigan.  Garrison Keillor, mentioned above, flirted with New York after already being well known, but returned to Minnesota.  Patrick McManus, the humor writer, lived in the West his entire life.  Current crime writer C. J. Box, whose protagonist is a Wyoming Game Warden, is from Wyoming.  Tim Sandlin, whom I've never read, was born in Oklahoma but lives in Jackson.

Indeed, if Oklahoma is sort of like Texas in some ways, it's worth noting that Texas has had a lot of native authors who have continued to live in Texas, Larry McMurtry notable among them.  McMurtry grew up on a ranch outside of Archer, Texas, a town so far north in Texas its nearly in Oklahoma.

So added to that, maybe these long distance travels aren't as far as they seem. . . in some instances.  In my grandfather's era Chicago was the hub of the western cattle industry and Denver just a very large city on the plains.  Chicago's role in that went away, but the point is that economists and politicians who are baffled by the fact that the West doesn't spawn very many large cities are potentially missing the point that it has. . . its just that everything is more spread out here.  So Chicago, a Midwestern city, may have more of a link to the West of an earlier era than we might suppose.  Denver serves that purpose for much of the Northern Plains now and, I dare say, Calgary does as well at a certain point.

Indeed, those cities filled that roles, or fill them, as they were, or are, centers of industry for regions.  And while we don't like to think of writing as an industry, it's a type of one, so perhaps some relocation makes sense.  Indeed, it might even now, in spite of the electronic age, which seems to be pulling the working population towards the city centers like a black hole draws in light.

Anyhow, something to ponder.

Transportation disasters and milestones, and a draft war. July 9, 1918.

101, officially, (it may have been 121) people were killed and 175 injured in  a train collision of two trains belonging to the Nashville, Chattanooga and St. Louis Railway near Nashville.  Many were black munitions workers on their way to work in Nashville.

The locomotives were actually repaired and put back into service, being retired in 1947 and 1948.

It is the worst railroad accident in American history.

Elsewhere, and more specifically in Alberta, American aviatrix Katherine Stinson made the first airmail flight in Western Canada, flying a mail sack from Edmonton to Calgary.

Stinson had been flying for six years at the time and had already set air records. Indeed, she's figured on our blog before.  She would later become an architect and worked in that profession for may years.

In other news of the day, July 9, was day two of the Cleburne County Draft War in Arkansas.  The small armed conflict involved draft resisting members of the Jehovah's Witnesses who became involved in a gunfight with local law enforcement and then fled into the rural hills, picking up other draft resistors on the way.  The Arkansas National Guard responded to search for them.  The event would end in a few days, after the loss of one life in the conflict, when the resistors surrendered.  This was one of three "draft wars" in Arkansas, which was highly rural and retained strong aspects of the Southern ruralism at the time, which would occur during World War One.

Fort McMurray

No resident of the West can not help but be horrified by the events in Fort McMurray, Alberta.

Fire is part of living in the West, which doesn't make it any less of a horror.  May God bless the residents of that city.

Tuesday, June 30, 1914. Fighting in Morocco, questions in Europe.

French troops and Zayanes fought a major battle in Morocco, with the French losing 17 dead and 77 wounded and the Zayanes 140 dead.

While the French were fighting in Morocco, German Undersecretary of State Arthur Zimmermann, who would later be associated with a series of really bad ideas, addressed requests by Austro-Hungaria and Germany for investigation into the Archduke's assassination which were rejected by Serbia.

The U.S. sold the USS Mississippi and USS Idaho to Greece.

Veteran Alberta was established.

Last edition:

Monday, June 29, 1914. Turmoil in Sarajevo.

Labels: 1910s, 1914, Austro Hungaria, Canada, Grigori Rasputin, Ontario, Russia, Serbia, Siberia, World War One

Saturday, April 10, 1909 Finnish, Métis Tragedy, and Arctic Tragedy.

Czar Nicholas II approved a recommendation that "laws of general Imperial interest concerning Finland" be enacted by the Duma, in which Finland had a single representative, rather than its own legislative assemble.  It was part of the process of Russification of the country which had commenced in 1899, reversing the original imperial policy put in place in 1808 when Sweden had lost Finland to Russia.

The Finn's have inhabited Finland since at least 9,000 BC, and probably longer.  The first references to it as an entity come from Catholic sources in the 12th Century as the Church began to Christianize the country, but it had no real political organization.  It came under the control of Sweden the following century, with Sweden losing it to Russia in the Finnish War of 1808-1809.  The Russification policy, something the Russians have exhibited ever since the 19th Century wherever it has control, and which effectively continues to the present day, would result in the Finnish independence movement.

Canada opened up the Métis lands in Alberta to homesteaders.  250 claims by French Canadians were registered on the first day.

Professor Ross G. Marvin of Cornell became Admiral Peary's Eighth Arctic Expedition's only fatality when he drowned, maybe.

His body was found floating and appeared to have gone through thin ice, as reported by Inuit guide Kudlookto.  However, in 1926 Kudlookto claimed he had shot and killed Marvin, either because Marvin had started acting irrationally, or because Marvin refused to let Kudlookto's cousin, another member of the expedition, rest.  Peary's daughter (as you'll recall his sons were by his native mistress and were left up in the Arctic in the abandoned care of their mother), discounted the story, although how she would know what happened in reality is another matter. Presumably from information supplied by her father.

It's hard to imagine why Kudlookto would make the story of killing Marvin up, although people do odd things.

Peary's account.

He had been on a prior expedition.  He was 29 years old at the time of his death.

Cipriano Castoro, the former President of Venezuela, was forcibly ejected from Martinique by the French.

Jonesboro, Tenn, April 10, 1909.

Last prior edition:

Friday, April 9, 1909. Establishing Mother's Day.

Location: South Dakota, USA