Showing posts with label Culture. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Culture. Show all posts

Thursday, July 3, 2025

Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist, 94th Edition. Performance Bad Art and the News.

My goodness.

An item in the cultural wind we noted yesterday here; 

Lex Anteinternet: Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist, 93d Edition. Porn ind...: Porn industry, Supreme Court weigh in as Wyoming requires age verification on adult sites : As of Tuesday, Wyomingites' access to some c...

That being this:

In other sex, sort of, news, a dude who looks like a dude went to the lady's room accompanied by the press (including a dude) and hoped to get arrested.

Transgender woman protests new law with visit to a Wyoming Capitol bathroom: Rihanna Kelver used the women’s restroom at the Wyoming Capitol building Tuesday in defiance of a new law prohibiting transgender people’s use of public facilities.

Has managed to be a feature story in every Wyoming news outlet, it seems.  At least its in Wyofile, Cowboy State Daily, and the CST.

So, to get this straight, a guy, dressed as gal, goes to the lady's room, and nothing happens.

Is that really news?

If so why?

Well, because the dude claims to be a gal, and was hoping to get busted by the police, who had other things to do and didn't take note of it.

But still, you see (are you paying attention), he could have been arrested, really, he could have been. . . 

and was hoping to be. . . 

but, sadly, was not.

This is, I'd note, something for real conservatives to take note of. This guy has a mental illness being celebrated on the left as normal.  Almost everyone knows that's BS.  And the stench of that is what is causing, in part, conservatives, who would otherwise be horrified, to vote for a moral heap of stench such as Donald Trump, which Trump well knowns.

Indeed, right now, the Trumpites and his Merry Band of National Conservatives hope stuff like this keeps your eyes off the Big Ugly, and causes you to forget the Big Ugly in the next year.

And the press, for its part, plays into the delusion of the lies of the right and left.

Transgender woman protests new law with visit to a Wyoming Capitol bathroom

That didn't happen. What happened is a man who wants to be a girl, went to the capitol bathroom with members of the press and his female fiance (so I guess he's wants to be girl. . . but still marry a girl), hoping to be arrested, but nobody cares or even notices.  A headline reading:

Man goes to capitol bathroom dressed as woman and nothing happens

Wouldn't be news, I guess.

On the Big Ugly, headline from the Tribune.

Medicaid, insurance cuts in ‘Big, Beautiful Bill’ will harm Wyoming, healthcare advocates warn.

I personally know one person whose a radical Trump fan who completely depends on government healthcare.  I suppose folks in that category deserve to get what's coming.

Chances are that Wyoming is going to be hammered by this. Chances are that Dr. John Barrasso, our Senator, knows that, even though he said it "probably" won't happen.

The question is if we care about the human impact or not.

Speaking of headlines, this is making the rounds:

First Wyoming measles case in 15 years found in Natrona County

I'm making assumptions here, but it's going to turn out that the negligent parents, or parent, didn't vaccinate their kid.

Wyoming has a first rate education system.  I note that, as a parent who wouldn't vaccinate a child probably isn't from Wyoming originally, I'm guessing, and is a dumbass.  The Wyoming Freedom Caucus sort of hates education, because educated people know stuff and won't play this game, tend not to believe their fanciful version of reality, and hence we have this headline.

Wyoming expected to see $686M deficit in education spending

With an ignorant population, they can hope to bring Wyoming into rural stupidity such as occurs elsewhere in the US and helps explain a population voting to slit their own throats.  They wouldn't see it that way, as they're ignorant themselves in many, although not all, instances. 

And we have this:

Trump mental health cuts hit rural schools hardest

Last edition:

Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist, 93d Edition. Porn industry retstricted, Supreme Court weigh in as Wyoming requires age verification on adult sites, Dudes in the lady room, and on women's teams, Trump helping where no law or help was needed.

Thursday, June 26, 2025

Friday, June 26, 2015: Obergefell v. Hodges

June 26, 2015: Obergefell v. Hodges

Only a decade?  

It seems like a lot longer.

I felt at the time, and I still do, that the Obergefell decision was an absolute disaster.  It was legally deficient in its reasoning, which was pathetic.  Justice Kennedy's text failed to grasp the existential nature of marriage, but perhaps that was understandable as Kennedy, currently 88 years old, was in his 20s and 30s in the 1960s.  Indeed, he turned 30 in 1966, by which time Americans were well on their way to forgetting what the biological purpose of sex is, and what the nature of marriage is.

Kennedy's opinion embraced a sort of Age of Aquarius sense of "love" being the reason for marriage, at its core root.  Love is an aspect of marriage, hopefully, and there's a lot to that, but sex is as well and the type that leads to children, at least frequently.  Indeed, the entire institution and everything about it is oriented in that direction.

That has very little to do with homosexuality in that unions between the same gender don't result in children.  I know the arguments about adoption and the like, but that's fairly far from the point as well.  Indeed, in a way, that gets into the following topic about IVF that we covered recently.

IVF and a Half-Cath | June 11, 2025

Something that the generation that came of age after World War Two really brought into the culture is sort of the opposite of the Rolling Stone's skifflesque You Can't Always Get What You Want.  That generation pretty much got almost all of what they wanted, and still are.  That sense of entitlement resulted in cultural self centeredness in which you are entitled to be what you want to be and everyone else has to darned well accept it and the consequences.

The problem was and is, however, that Obergefell, as it strayed so far from the law, and so far from where  the culture then was (it's a horrible example of the old trying to get ahead of the culture) that it was bound to spark a massive reaction.  And it did.

The populist right rage that developed soon after was already burning, but Obergefell poured gasoline on the fire.  The culture had lost much of the conservative wisdom on the nature of sex and marriage already, and had gone through Chesterton's fence with a bulldozer in this regard.  A culture that had accepted, prior to the early 1950s that sex was properly in marriage, and properly between married men and women, had gone to pretty much accepting that sex was entertainment and marriage was a celebration of love rather than a loving (hopefully) childrearing, economic, natural unit.  People basically forgot what their natures produced and men in particular figures that they were entitled to play around with Fran Geraud, and women figured they had to endure it.  And that's where we remain today.  A culture that basically thinks the Hawk Tuah Girl is amusing rather than a tramp.

But once that moral decay had reached the point where people who could excuse their own conduct could imagine themselves to somehow still be good Christians suddenly were confronted with homosexuals making the same intellectual arguments, and that being adopted by the Supreme Court, it was just too much.

It was also clear, in spite of what Kennedy thought, that Obergefell was going to open the floodgates of radical sexual behavior.  Same sex sexual conduct, no matter what a person thinks of it, had been around for time immemorial, although it frankly even now is not really very well understood.  But transgenderism had not been, or at least not in the same fashion.  The groups backing the concept of transgenderism rushed into the field and gained ground enormously, which large numbers of people were not and are not willing to accept, including some homosexuals and included many feminists.  

That this was going to cause massive civil disintegration was obvious.  Disorganized groups on the right and middle that were already upset by the loss of industrial jobs and immigration now were faced with a massive social advance on the left which did not square with their basic understanding of themselves, and for good reason.  To add to it, it was forced upon them.

None of this was necessary.  Various states were moving towards various civil unions for homosexuals as it was.  The slow march of legislation would have brought about a change, whether it was a good one or not, at a pace that would have been accepted.  That's what happened to the disaster of no fault divorce.  Instead Kennedy's opinion forced it all, and more than he had anticipated, all at once.

It destroyed respect for the Court and gave traditionalists of all types massive pause.  It started the rush towards right wing populism which was already going on.

It lead directly to Donald Trump.

Related threads:

The Supreme Court tries a bit to mop up a dog's breakfast. Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission.


Wednesday, June 4, 2025

Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist 85th Edition: Hegseth directs Navy to rename USNS Harvey Milk days into Pride Month.

Fleet oiler, the USS Harvey Milk (for now).

Wow, this is really a shot across the bow in the culture wars.

Hegseth directs Navy to rename USNS Harvey Milk days into Pride Month

The Navy may rename the USNS Harvey Milk, named for the 1970s gay civil rights activist, on orders from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

Renaming a ship for any reason is a fairly phenomenal thing to do, something no doubt on the minds of those who named the ship after Milk in the first place.  It had an element of permanence, and was part of an effort to create acceptance for homosexuals.

Hegseth's actions, and these aren't the only recent ones (we were actually going to make the next in this series on another one of them) are really sending a signal of where the DoD is headed.  But the question ultimately will be is any of this permanent?  And also, how far does he intend to go?  I don't think, at this point, that anyone has thought that the DoD would reverse its position on allowing homosexuals to serve in the military, and it shouldn't reverse it, all of which makes this so surprising.

National Conservatives and Christian Nationalists hope the changes will be permanent, but Trump is losing steam pretty clearly, and the host of other issues, particularly the "size of government" and budgetary ones, are now in pretty stormy seas.  In order to make cultural changes really stick, they need more than four years, probably more than eight.  Hegseth, in the DoD is picking up steam, maybe aware of that, but where this all goes will be interesting to watch.

Last edition:

Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist 84th Edition. The uncomfortably agreeing with the far right edition (on some things). Hegseth orders transgenderism out and a bill to outlaw pornography.

Tuesday, May 13, 2025

Some surprising news. Popular Wyoming Baby Names for 2024.

Some of these sound downright old timey:

Theodore, Charlotte Lead Wyoming’s Popular Baby Names

05/13/2025 09:04 AM MDT

Among Wyoming’s newborns, Theodore was the most popular male name in 2024 with Charlotte as the top female choice, according to the Wyoming Department of Health (WDH). For boys, Theodore was followed by Oliver, Hudson, James, William, Henry, Grayson, Liam, Noah and Waylon. For girls, Charlotte was followed by Eleanor, Emma, Ember, Evelyn, Harper, Amelia, […]

The post Theodore, Charlotte Lead Wyoming’s Popular Baby Names appeared first on Wyoming Department of Health.

Sunday, May 11, 2025

Mother


Today is Mothers Day, as surely everyone in the US is aware.

I'm going to comment on Mother's Day for a couple of odd reasons, even thought I didn't originally intend to.

The first is this comment by Robert Reich for the day:

Robert Reich@RBReich·14h

Your Mother’s Day weekend reminder that the so-called “party of family values” has historically blocked:

-Paid family & medical leave

-Universal childcare

-Universal pre-K

-Expanded Child Tax Credit

-Programs to support reproductive health

Doesn’t sound very pro-family to me.

First I'll note that I have sort of a love/hate relationship with Reich.  Reich is very far left, but his economic commentary, in my view, is generally pretty good.  And like him, I'm greatly distressed over what Donald Trump is doing to the country.

Secondly, I really hate the writing convention of saying "this is your reminder".  Did I ask for a reminder?  If I didn't, that's really annoying.  Reich also likes to state "I don't know who needs to know this" which suggest that nobody needs to know whatever he's going to tell us.  

He should quit using both of those writing conventions.

Anyhow, like a far lefty, he's bought into the seas of blood position of the Democratic Party. "Programs to support reproductive health" is Orwellian speech for infanticide.

Reich is Jewish, which always makes me wonder how he can support a thesis that holds that infants in the womb, earlier than a certain number of weeks, aren't people.  It's the exact same argument that resulted in the Holocaust.  It's the exact same argument that expanded into eugenics based homicide in Nazi Germany, and which has advanced murder in the guise of "assisted suicide" in various Western Nations.

I'll be frank that I've never been a huge fan of Mothers Day or Father's Day which remind me, in some ways of the Alcohol and Old Lace episode of the Andy Griffith Show in which two elderly sisters were distilling moonshine for "holidays", of which there were an insane number of manufactured ones.  But I really shouldn't be that way for Mother's Day.  There are real reasons to honor motherhood and what it entails.  But murdering infants isn't a good way to do it.

And there's no reason to pretend, no matter how much the left would like to, that the "my body, my choice" argument is a good one, or even a valid one.  A fetus in the womb has a body and its choice i not likely to be murdered.  And that body, genetically, is made up of the DNA of two people, not one.  You don't get ot be a mother through a unilateral act of self will. Motherhood in some instances wasn't planned, of course, but then much of life is not and a massive murderous do over isn't every justified.

The other reason I chose to post is that somebody I know had been at a Vigil Mass in which the attending celebrant mentioned mothers, but largely, apparently, in the context how mother's support their men, which was pretty much apparently it.  The celebrant was Indian (from India).  I'm only noting this as its so easy to forgot for Americans, and probably Europeans, how we are actually a minority of the globes' population, and the culture view of other people may be very much not the one we hold.

That oddly enough occured on the same day, yesterday, in which I listed to a Jimmy Akin's Mysterious World episode on 1 Esdras, which is in some (all?) Orthodox Bibles, but not the Catholic Bible, which is itself larger than most Protestant Biles.  In it, there's a debate between three Guards about what is the most powerful thing in the world.  One Guard presents this, which references the prior two arguments that came before his.:

Then the third, who had spoken of women and truth (and this was Zerubbabel), began to speak: “Gentlemen, is not the king great, and are not men many, and is not wine strong? Who is it, then, who rules them or has the mastery over them? Is it not women? Women gave birth to the king and to every people that rules over sea and land. From women they came, and women brought up the very men who plant the vineyards from which comes wine. Women make men’s clothes; they bring men glory; men cannot exist without women. If men gather gold and silver or any other beautiful thing and then see a woman lovely in appearance and beauty, they let all those things go and gape at her and with open mouths stare at her, and all prefer her to gold or silver or any other beautiful thing. A man leaves his own father, who brought him up, and his own region and clings to his wife. With his wife he ends his days, with no thought of his father or his mother or his region. Therefore you must realize that women rule over you!

“Do you not labor and toil and bring everything and give it to women? A man takes his sword and goes out to travel and rob and steal and to sail the sea and rivers; he faces lions, and he walks in darkness, and when he steals and robs and plunders, he brings it back to the woman he loves. A man loves his wife more than his father or his mother. Many men have lost their minds because of women and have become slaves because of them. Many have perished or stumbled or sinned because of women. And now do you not believe me?

“Is not the king great in his authority? Do not all lands fear to touch him? Yet I have seen him with Apame, the king’s concubine, the daughter of the illustrious Bartacus; she would sit at the king’s right hand and take the crown from the king’s head and put it on her own and slap the king with her left hand. At this the king would gaze at her with mouth agape. If she smiles at him, he laughs; if she loses her temper with him, he flatters her, so that she may be reconciled to him. Gentlemen, why are not women strong, since they do such things?”

It is profound, and note how it came in an ear in which women, in most of the world, would have been regarded as second class citizens.  I should note, however, that he went on to then discuss Truth, with that being the most powerful thing in the World.

While it likely shouldn't, that reminded me of Kipling's great poem, The Ballad of the King's Jest, which has this line:

Four things greater than all things are,—

Women and Horses and Power and War.

We spake of them all, but the last the most,

For I sought a word of a Russian post,

Of a shifty promise, an unsheathed sword

And a gray-coat guard on the Helmund ford.

Then Mahbub Ali lowered his eyes

In the fashion of one who is weaving lies.

Quoth he: “Of the Russians who can say?

“When the night is gathering all is gray.

“But we look that the gloom of the night shall die

“In the morning flush of a blood-red sky.

“Friend of my heart, is it meet or wise

“To warn a King of his enemies?

“We know what Heaven or Hell may bring,

“But no man knoweth the mind of the King.

“That unsought counsel is cursed of God

“Attesteth the story of Wali Dad. 

It's interesting how Kipling put it, "Four things greater than all things are--Women and Horses and Power and War".

Well, have a Happy Mother's Day.   

Sunday, April 13, 2025

Movies In History, The Six Triple Eight.

This will be the third time I've tried to publish this review. The prior two times it outright disappeared.

Uff.

The 6888 on parade in honor of Joan d'Arc.

The 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion is a unique U.S. Army unit that served in Europe during World War Two.  Deployed in February, 1945, the unit was tasked with straightening out a massive mail backlog in the ETO, and by all accounts did yeoman's work doing it.  The unit was all female, and all black, including its officers the only such unit to be deployed to Europe during the war.  The unit not too surprisingly encountered racist opposition, which is a large part of the theme of the film.

The film is quite well done, featuring dramatizations of real characters for the most part.  The story, as noted, is dramatized, but with one exception, it does not depart massively from the actual events. The sole exception is a romance between a  rich white Jewish young man and one of the black female characters, before they join the service, which seems to take place in the American South, and which features a desegregated high school.  Desegregated high schools would not have existed in the South, making this an odd error, and while such a romance could have occurred, it would not have taken place more or less openly as depicted.

Material details are very well done, including the depiction of M1943 Field Jacket Liners in use as jackets, which did occur but which is rarely depicted in film.  Indeed, I can't recall it ever being depicted in another film.

Well worth seeing.

Thursday, April 3, 2025

Thursday, April 3, 1975. Operation Babylift.

President Ford ordered the evacuation of Americans from Phnom Penh.

Operation Babylift began as a U.S. effort to bring South Vietnamese orphans to the United States.  Widely lauded today (it would be unlikely to take place, frankly, under the current administration), there was some criticism at the time on the assertion that not all the children were actually orphans, and that it was a cultural based decision given that young people were being taken out of their native land to avoid communism.

Gen. Weyand met with President Thiệu in Saigon and promised more American aid to South Vietnam, but declined Thiệu's request for a renewal of American bombing of North Vietnamese forces.  As they both well knew, without U.S. air support there was no hope for the ARVN.

South Vietnamese Prime Minister Trần Thiện Khiêm resigned.  He would take up exile in France and then the United States, converting to Catholicism there.  He died in 2021.

Israel and South Africa signed SECMENT, a secret mutual defense agreement.

Bobby Fischer refused to play a chess match against Anatoly Karpov, and thereby ceded the title of chess champion.

Actress Mary Ure, most famous for her role in Where Eagles Dare, and the wife of Robert Shaw, died of an overdose of alcohol and barbiturates at age 42.

Last edition:

Wednesday, April 2, 1975. Driving on Saigon.

Combat Arms Standards.

 


Related Threads:

Women and combat


Killing people and breaking things. . . and women in the service.

Yes, it's bad behavior. Immoral, and criminal. But at what point is it nature?


Thursday, October 31, 2024

October 31. An Observation.

Today is Halloween.

It's also Reformation Day.

Everyone sort of knows what Halloween is, although in its extremely secularized form.  It's become so popular in that style that its now the second most popular holiday in the US, and you don't even get the da off from work or school.

Originally, and in Catholic and Orthodox Churches, it was All Hallowed Evening, the day before All Saints Day, which in the Catholic Church is a Holy Day of Obligation.   There are some debates about it, but the secular traditions that are observed stem from Celtic cultures of Great Britain in a much modified form.  The door to door trick or treating stems from a religious tradition in which the poor went door to door for food and were given it in exchange for a promise to pray for the donor's dead.

Reformation Day is a day not much observed in North America commemorating Martin Luther nailing his 95 Theses to the Cathedral door at Worms, which he actually didn't do.  The legend was that he did it on this day.  No matter, he did get the rebellion of the reformation going, and with it the concept that people can make up their own minds on anything, no matter how ill informed they are.  Luther was fairly well informed on some things, but that was the unintentional result of his act of rebellion.  

At the time of his 95 Theses, he hadn't intended a rebellion at all, but he worked his way sort of around to it.  It'd be interesting to know what he thought he'd done by the time of his death, but one thing he knew is that he'd caused others with more radical ideas than his to also break away and create their own Christian sects.

Many of those new denominations have considerably changed over the years.  Some of the Lutherans, who followed Luther, often with no choice due to their localities, have become almost more Catholic than the Catholics, while others have gone in another direction.  The Reformation, at any rate, is winding down,and its really collapsing.

With its collapse has come the mess of contemporary culture, much of which we seeing being fought out in the United States right now, which is a Protestant country.  The massive secularization is a minor example of that, but is evident in all of our religion derived holidays, including this one, but also including Thanksgiving and Christmas.

The last acts of rebellion were those against nature, which we also see playing out doay.  They began in the late 1940s and came into full bloom in the 1960s, and are still enormously playing out today.  Part of that has been the acceptance of rebelling against truth, which we see in the current election in more than one way, and in both political parties, although certainly Donald Trump has manifested it in a heretofore unseen level.

So its Reformation Day and Halloween in 2024.  Lots of tricks on the culture are being played, and not too many treats being received.

Monday, September 16, 2024

Going numb in 2024.


I first heard of the attempted assassination attempt on Donald Trump yesterday.  Since that time, up to now, what has surprised me the most is the level of disinterest in it.

Normally, such an event, the attempted assassination of a Presidential candidate, would be so shocking it would seem to dominate the news cycle.  And had the Secret Service not disrupted it before Trump was seemingly in actual danger, it likely would have been.  Indeed, based on first reports, the Secret Service did a really good job in detecting the assassin prior to his firing a shot.

But people are almost taking the "m'eh" approach ot the news.

This isn't a good sign of the state of American politics or culture.  People are, apparently, so worn out, they've  just tuned out entirely.  Indeed, this is one of several such shocking stories recently that have drawn very little attention.

Wednesday, May 29, 2024

Carpetbaggers and Becoming Native To This Place.

 

His life will grow out of the ground like the other lives of the place, and take its place among them. He will be with them - neither ignorant of them, nor indifferent to them, nor against them - and so at last he will grow to be native-born. That is, he must reenter the silence and the darkness, and be born again.

Wendell Berry, A Native Hill.

From the Cowboy State Daily:

Now Other People Are “Pissed” At The “We The People Are Pissed” Billboard On I-80 in Wyoming

Probably the most revealing thing in the article:

The Kahlers moved to Wyoming from Colorado about three years ago. Jeanette Kahler said they moved to Wyoming for the state’s “conservative values.”

In other words, they're carpetbaggers.

Wyoming has always had a very high transient population.  Right from the onset, a lot of the people we associate with the state, actually weren't from here, and more significantly weren't from the region.  Francis E. Warren, for example, the famous early Senator, wasn't.  Joseph M. Carey wasn't.  A person might note that they arrived sufficiently early that they hardly could have been, but this carries on to this very day.  Sen. John Barrasso is a Pennsylvanian.  Secretary of State Chuck Gray is a Californian.

This does matter, as you can't really ever be a native of the Northern Plains or the Plains if you weren't born and raised here.  You might be able to convince yourself, and buy a big hat like Foster Freiss, but you aren't from here and more importantly aren't of here.  If you came from Montana, or Nebraska, or rural Colorado, that's different.  Or if you came in your early years, before you were out of school.  

But earlier arrivals did try.  They appreciated what they found, took the effort to grasp what it was, and sought to become native to this place.

The recent arrivals don't.  They brought their homes and their attitudes with them.

They were fooling themselves that they were "Wyoming" anything.

Or were.

Recently, however, something else has been going on.  Just as the Plains were invaded by European Americans in the 18th and 19th Centuries, Wyoming is enduring it again with an invasion of Southerners, Rust Belt denizens, and Californians, who image they have Wyoming's values while destroying them.  One prominent Freedom Caucuser is really an Illinoisan with values so different from the native ones it's amazing she was elected, but then her district elected Chuck Gray as well, whose only connection with Wyoming is thin.  They do represent, however, the values of recent immigrants.

Whether you like it or not, Wyomingites have not traditionally been hostile to the Federal Government, and we knew we depended upon it.  Indeed, while one Wyoming politician may emphasize a narrative of being a fourth generation Wyomingite, and is, whose agricultural family pulled themselves up from the mule ears on their cowboy boots, and they did work hard, we can't get around the fact that the state was founded by the Federal Government which sent the Army in to kill or corral the original inhabitants and then gave a lot of the land away on a government assistance program.  

Wyoming was formed, in part, by welfare.

The government helped bring in the railroads, helped support agriculture, built the roads, kept soldiers and later airmen and their paychecks at various places, funded the airports, and helped make leasing oil rights cheap so that they could be exploited.

No real Wyomingite hates the government, no matter how much they may pretend they do.

Populist do, as they're ignorant.

Wyoming's cultural ethos was, traditionally, "I don't care what the @#$#$ you do, as long as you leave me alone".  The fables about Matthew Shepherd aside, people didn't really care much about what you did behind closed doors, but expected that you wouldn't try to force acceptance of it at a societal level.  Wyoming was, and remains, for good or ill the least religious state in the United States.  You could always find some devout members of various Protestant faiths, and devout and observant Catholics and Mormons have always been here. But the rise of the Protestant Evangelical churches is wholly new, and come in with Southerners.  When I was growing up, a good friend of mine was a Baptist, the only one I knew, as the church was close to his house (now he's a Lutheran).  I knew one of my friends was Lutheran, and there were some Mormon kids in school.  There was one Jehovah's Witness.  In junior high, one of my friends was sort of kind of Episcopalian, and I knew the son of the Orthodox Priest.  By high school I knew the daughter of the Methodist minister.  But outside of Mormon kids and Catholic kids, the religion of my colleagues was often a mystery.

I'm not saying the unchurched nature of the state was a good thing, but I am saying that by and large there was a dedicated effort to educate children and tolerance was a widely held value.  It was a tolerance, as noted, that required people to keep their deviations from a societal norm to themselves.  People who cheated on spouses, who were homosexuals, or any other number of things could carry on doing it, but not if they were going to demand you accepted it.

And frankly, that was a better way to approach things.

Now, that's being fought over.

The Freedom Caucus group might as well have Sweet Home Alabama as their theme song, and that's not a good thing.


Sunday, January 14, 2024

The Obituary

Mira qué bonita era by Julio Romero de Torres, 1895.  Depiction of a wake in Spain.

I didn't have him as a teacher in high school, but I certainly knew of him.1  Somehow or another, I also knew that a student that was in school with us, and who my cousins knew, was not only his daughter, but also one of his students.  Apparently that was awkward. 

I don't do a good job of keeping track of former teachers.  I probably couldn't tell you where a single one of them was, even the ones I really liked, let alone those I only sort of knew by association.  In his case, there was our classmate, whom I also didn't know (she was a couple of years ahead of me), but he was also known to our parents.  Without knowing for sure, in looking at it, I think that must have been because he was from a Catholic family here in town.

My classmate died the year before last.  She was 62.

I read his obituary as he was so well known locally.  And then I recalled there were bits and pieces of his story I'd picked up over the years.

His wife was also a teacher.

Sometime after I left high school, the couple apparently civilly divorced.2   He remarried, and apparently to an apparently significantly younger women whom I take was also a teacher.  According to the obit, they had a child after he retired, who would now be about 31.  He would have been about 56 when she was born.  I can dimly recall my parents and my father's siblings talking about this as well, mostly in a somewhat bemused manner, given the difficulties of raising an infant, in their view, when you are that old.

When my classmate died, her mother was mentioned in the obituary.  Indeed, her obituary characterizes both of her parents as loving, and contains praise of them.

His obituary mentioned both of his daughters by his first marriage, and then goes on about his second.  His wife, the mother of my classmate, isn't mentioned at all.  The obituary is profuse on his latter "marriage", calling that individual, named in the obituary, the "love of his life" amongst other things.

Of course, the dead don't write their obituaries.  If they did, who knows how they'd read?  We might all fear how they'd be penned.  I've read plenty where a "first" and "second" spouse are mentioned.  This one is profuse on his love of one woman that he had children by and which the civil law would regard as his wife, but totally silent as to his wife who was the mother of my classmate. My classmate's obituary mentions her, and kindly, using the Americanism "step" to describe her as her "stepmother", which is polite, but the second "wife" of a divorced person isn't anything, relationship wise, to a child of the "first" marriage at all.3    Children, of a later marriage of any kind are, of course, as they're related by blood, i.e., genetically. Of course, children born out of wedlock to an illicit partner, to which I am in no way comparing this situation other than to note it, are "half" siblings as well.4 

It must be a later child of the second union that wrote the obituary, as it concluded with the funeral details, those being an apparently civil funeral, followed by an "Irish wake", the latter something not really understood by Americans.  A real wake comes before, not after, the ceremony, and the body of the deceased is present. Indeed, the body is key to the wake, and the dead's family and friends do not allow the body to be left alone.  Prayer for the dead is a feature of it, but there is also food and drink and even courting, which in part has to do with the fact that life goes on, but in part because in more natural societies people live much closer to death than they do in our false one.

Everywhere, real wakes have much diminished.5

But then, so has our understanding of, and appreciation of the metaphysical and the existential, and as most people do not dwell deeply on those topics, and the culture has drifted many of those who drift with it bear no fault for having done so.

There's no Irish wakes without prayer, the deceased, and a sense of the next world having stepped into this one.  In our age, however, we expect this world and how we define it to step into the next one.

Requiem aeternam dona eis Domine,

et lux perpetua luceat eis.

Te decet hymnus Deus in Sion,

et tibi reddetur votum in Jerusalem.

Exaudi orationem meam,

ad te omnis caro veniet.

Requiem aeternam dona eis Domine,

et lux perpetua luceat eis.

Kyrie, eleison. Christe, eleison. Kyrie, eleison.6

Footnotes:

1.  In no small part because he was a well put together athletic man who drew hall monitor duty, but didn't seem to care for it much.  Indeed, if you went by him in the hall, when he had it, he didn't bother to ask you where you were going.

2.  I'll admit that this entry disregards the topic of Catholic annulment. Did they obtain one?  No idea.

To add to that, do I know anything whatsoever about the circumstances of their "divorce" and what brought it about, including who brought it about.  No I don't.

3.  The etymology of the prefix "step" goes back to the 8th Century and denoted an orphan.  It was later extended in Old English to connote a remarriage of a widow.

Some "step" parents, it might be noted, particularly in the case of an early death of an actual parent, or an abandonment by one of them, really step up to the plate and become effectively de facto parents.

The Pogues song Body of an American gives a good description of Irish wakes and how they can be.  The movie Road To Perdition, however, gives a very good depiction of a traditional wake, complete with the body iced.

4.  Again, as the fraud of civil divorce is so widely recognized as real in the Western World, I am in no way comparing the children of illicit affairs to the children of later contracted civil marriages.

5.  I've been to a real wake once, for a deceased second cousin, and it was horrific.  My father, who was 1/2 Irish, and 1/2 Westphalian by descent, but whose family did not retain any Irish customs, detested them.

6.       Rest eternal grant unto them, O Lord,

and let light perpetual shine upon them.

Thou art worthy to praised, O God, in Zion,

and to thee shall prayer be offered in Jerusalem.

Hear my prayer,

for to thee shall all flesh come.

Rest eternal grant unto them, O Lord,

and let light perpetual shine upon them.

 Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy. Lord, have mercy.

Thursday, January 4, 2024

The Ongoing 2023 Legislative Session of Other States.

How we all imagine legislatures once were. . . because they didn't have the opportunity to put every dumb thought they had out on Twitter.

At least Wyoming can be thankful that its citizen legislature can't afford to be in ongoing session.

May 21, 2023

Minnesota, deciding that Americans aren't stupid enough, and don't already have enough in the way of options to make themselves even stupider, voted to legalize marijuana.

It also passed a new gun measure.

June 3, 2023

Connecticut banned marriages under 18 with no exceptions.

September 7, 2023

California has banned caste based discrimination, which is something prevalent in the Indian culture. The Governor has not indicated if he will sign the act.

While I agree with the measure, this is frankly an example of a Western culture declaring its values to be superior to that of an Asian one.  Western cultures have a Christianity based concept that all people are equal.  Lots of cultures hold the polar opposite.

Massachusetts has passed funding for universal "free" school lunches.

Of course, they aren't free, they're government funded. And the government doesn't make an income through production, so they're tax funded.  This means they're taxpayer funded.  Massachusetts has ain income tax, so this means that Massachusetts is separating cash from the wallets of everyone in the state in order to buy lunches for school kids, irrespective of parental obligations to pay to feed their kids.

October 3, 2023

Nebraska is requiring transgender youth seeking "gender-affirming care", the Orwellian term for gender mutilation, to wait seven days to start puberty-blocking medications or hormone treatments under emergency regulations as well as to receive at least 40 hours of “gender-identity-focused” therapy   This followed a Nebraska law that took effect on Sunday which bans "gender affirming" surgical mutilation for those under 19.

Nebraska, intentionally or not, is following a global trend here which is limiting such procedures in minors, with the data showing its frequently regretted.

October 8, 2023

California has put into effect a law requiring  requires public and private US businesses with revenues greater than $1 billion operating in California to report their emissions comprehensively.

January 4, 2024

Passed last year, some new state laws:

  • A new Minnesota law allows authorities to ask courts for “extreme risk protection orders” to temporarily take guns from people deemed to be an imminent threat to others or themselves. 
  • Colorado has banned "ghost guns"
  • A Connecticut law requires online dating operators to adopt policies for handling harassment reports.
  • A North Carolina law requires pornographic website operators to confirm viewers are at least 18 years old by using a commercially available database. Parents can sue for failure to comply with the law.
  • A new Illinois law allows lawsuits by victims of deepfake pornography,
  • Bans on chemical gender mutilation of minors take effect in Idaho, Louisiana and West Virginia. 
  • A new law in Hawaii requires new marriage certificates to be issued to people who request to change how their sex is listed. 
  • In Colorado, new buildings wholly or partly owned by government entities are now required to have on every floor where there are public restrooms at least one that does not specify the gender of the users.
  • A new Indiana law makes it easier for parents and others to challenge books in school libraries. 
  • A new Illinois law blocks state funding for public libraries that ban or restrict books.
  • Kansas dropped the sales tax on groceries drops from 4% to 2% .  It plans to eliminate the slaes tax on groceries entirely.
  • Connecticut and Missouri reduced their state income tax rate.