Showing posts with label Daily Living. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Daily Living. Show all posts

Monday, March 18, 2024

Lex Anteinternet: St. Patrick's Day


Lex Anteinternet: St. Patrick's Day: A Celtic cross in a local cemetery, marking the grave of a very Irish, and Irish Catholic, figure. Recently I ran this item:  Lex Anteintern...

So, after the crabby entry, what did I do for St. Patrick's Day?

Well, my St. Patrick's Day really started on the prior day, March 16, as my daughter was in town.  We always have corned beef and I hadn't secured one, so after work (lawyers, you should be aware, often work six days a week. . . at least I do) I went to get one.

Usually, this isn't a problem, but it was on Saturday and I ended up getting one at a specialty butcher shop after going to three of them, which is a nice thing to think of in a way.  Distributism saved the holiday.

I now also have a corned pork butt, or corned pork roast, I'll have to look at the label, from the second one I visited, that visit being due to the recommendation of the first. They were really friendly at all of them, and at that one they insisted I try the corned pork, which they had just cooked one of for themselves.

It was quite good, much like pastrami.

Long-suffering spouse informed me that while she doesn't like corned beef (her DNA, I'd note, is almost as Irish as mine, but not quite) she hates pastrami.

Anyhow, I also went to the liquor store to buy stout and Irish whiskey.  I got the last six-pack of Guinness and some Irish ale I'd never heard of.

Which made me wonder what on earth was going on.  To see the shelves cleared that way was downright weird. And all the parking lots all over town were full.

I chose the liquor store as it was near one of the churches in town, and it gave me the opportunity to go to confession.  They informed me in the store, which was new, that the parking lot was full as their bar had just opened, and it was packed. That surprised me as it was about 1:00 p.m. which strikes me as really early to hit the bars.

I went to confession, as noted, and was right behind my next store neighbors.  I avail myself of the sacrament frequently, so I was comfortable speaking to my neighbor while in line.  I know what my sins and many failings are.  The very traditionally dressed women behind me in line, however, was clearly not happy with us chatting. Anyhow, it's odd as we live right next store, but we don't actually chat all that much.

Long suffering spouse is a better chatter than I am.

I went home and I fixed the St. Patrick's Day meal, which is my chore.  It was good, but the corned beef was uniquely not very fatty.  Long suffering spouse and daughter liked it better than the usual, grocery store bought, one.  I like the fatty one better.

We'll see what opinions are on the pork.

On St. Patrick of Ireland's day itself, the first thing I did was go to Mass.  The Gospel reading was as follows:

Gospel

Jn 12:20-33

Some Greeks who had come to worship at the Passover Feast came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee,  and asked him, “Sir, we would like to see Jesus.” Philip went and told Andrew;  then Andrew and Philip went and told Jesus. Jesus answered them,  “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Amen, amen, I say to you,  unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies,  it remains just a grain of wheat;  but if it dies, it produces much fruit. Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will preserve it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me,  and where I am, there also will my servant be. The Father will honor whoever serves me.

“I am troubled now.  Yet what should I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? But it was for this purpose that I came to this hour. Father, glorify your name.” Then a voice came from heaven,  “I have glorified it and will glorify it again.” The crowd there heard it and said it was thunder;  but others said, “An angel has spoken to him.” Jesus answered and said,  “This voice did not come for my sake but for yours. Now is the time of judgment on this world;  now the ruler of this world will be driven out. And when I am lifted up from the earth,  I will draw everyone to myself.” 

He said this indicating the kind of death he would die.

It struck me because of this section:

Amen, amen, I say to you,  unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies,  it remains just a grain of wheat;  but if it dies, it produces much fruit. Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will preserve it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me,  and where I am, there also will my servant be. The Father will honor whoever serves me.

The reason is that I've been going through a lot that's been forced up on me recently, together with others upon whom it's been forced, but I'm finding myself unique making decisions for everyone, and not for what I want to do, but for others. The stress of it has been gigantic and when I stop to think about it, it's depressing.

I went home and made a breakfast out of a bagel and left over corned beef.

In the afternoon, I went out fishing and took the dog.  On the way, I was listening to a podcast, like I'll tend to do.  It was a Catholic Answers Focus interview of Carrie Gress and it was profound.  I'll post on that elsewhere.  

We didn't catch any fish.  Nothing was biting, so we came home.

By that time, I'd finished the short Gress podcast and listened to This Week.  I've later listed to Meet The Press.  Both featured Republicans try to tell people that when Donald Trump promised a bloodbath if he isn't elected, he didn't really mean that, but was speaking instead about cars coming in from Mexico from Chinese factories. The full text of his speech stated:

We’re going to put a 100% tariff on every single car that comes across the line, and you’re not going to be able to sell those cars if I get elected, now, if I don’t get elected, it’s going to be a bloodbath for the whole — that’s gonna be the least of it. It’s going to be a bloodbath for the country. That will be the least of it. But they’re not going to sell those cars. They’re building massive factories.

It's interesting that Republicans feel compelled to continually tell you that Trump didn't mean what he said. It's also interesting that a person with such a strange pattern of speech is listened to.  He rambles and repeats.

The other thing that the shows all dealt with was Chuck Schumer calling for an Israeli election as he's upset with the current Israeli government.  A lot of people are upset with the current Israeli government, including a lot of Israelis, but an American elected official calling for a new government in another democracy is really beyond the Pale.

St. Patrick's Day's meal was left over corned beef and Brussels Sprouts, and cheese lasagna from the prior Friday.

No big blowout, no "Craic".  Just an observation that probably more closely resembles that of centuries of Irish people, in Ireland and the diaspora.  A small family gathering, a small feast, a little regional alcohol.  Reconciliation and Mass, and knowing that today the grim problems of the last two weeks, on this Monday, return.

Wednesday, February 28, 2024

Some recent bios and what they tell us about the realatively recent past.



In the last week or so, we've posted a series of threads that dealt with various personalities.  In setting them out, it occured to me how some of them actually reach back to the supposed purpose of this blog, which is:

Lex Anteinternet?





Well, in reality, that broadened out pretty rapidly to taking into account looking at everything in this era in trying to get a grasp on it.  Since then, it's certainly broadened out enormously, probably much too much.

Anyhow, some recent items help illuminate some of the things of this era, and the one immediately after it.  Indeed, as we'll discuss, one of them helps actually define, maybe, how to property define certain eras.

The items we looked at which brings this to mind are the story of Maj. Gale "Buck" Cleven, that of Dick Proenekke, and also Lee Marvin, and the work of the Southern Agrarians, and that of Filippo Tommaso Marinetti.

Quite a varied set, I'll admit.

Let's start with Dr. Gale Cleven, which is how most people who knew him, knew him as, the latter part of his life.


I'd never heard of Dr. Cleven until I started Watching Masters of the Air.  The show references him as being from Casper Wyoming, and that caused me to research him further.  As noted on the entry on him, he was born in Lemmon, South Dakota, but came with his family to the oil town of Lusk when he was just a very small boy.  From there he moved to Casper, at some point.

What I could find on him notes that he worked as a roughneck as a young man, while going to college to study geology.  I did both of those things also, and also simultaneously, giving me an odd occupational connection with him, although one that's not all that uncommon around here.  I did find that a little startling, however.

What all that does, however, is to show the very long-lasting economic feature of Wyoming as being an oil and gas province, something that is still the case, but waning.  It remains a strong aspect of the state's economy, however.  This has been the case since, as we explored earlier, at least 1917, although things were headed that way earlier.  It's interesting, looking back, to realize how many of us in The Cowboy State, have worked in oil and gas in some fashion.  Given the economic reach of the industry, darned near everyone at one time.

Something else that really had the reach was the newspaper, in the form of The Society Page.  I was able to track Gale Cleven, as he would then have been known, joining a fraternity and going to UW dances.  I could even track who he was casually dating.

That's odd.

Society columns in newspapers were common at least into the 1950s, and even beyond that. They reported all sorts of snoopy stuff.  I've found, for example, my grandfather mentioned in The Denver Post because his sister was visiting, this in the 1930s.  Another sister of his visited somebody in Denver in the 1920s.  Whose business was that?

They also reported on when people went on vacations, even extended vacations, which is a horrible thought.

I guess it shows, to an extent, the concept of privacy, which the Internet has eroded, is a modern thing.  In the newspapers of the 20s divorces made front page news, births were mentioned, as they are now, scandals were reported, and where you were going, with whom, was as well.

People were keeping track of things and didn't need an iPhone to do it.  No wonder people all subscribed to the paper.

This item also pointed out what a small world Wyoming was and is.  Cleven, whom I had not heard of previously, took a relative by marriage to a dance.  She was from a ranch family that owned a ranch that I later owned a piece of.  She married a rancher who left his name on a prominent local feature.  One of her brothers-in-law was the best friend of one of my old, now long gone, partners.  That fellow was killed in World War Two.  My partner was a crewman on a B-24.

In the small world item also is the thought that I, my father, my wife, and my children all walked the same high school halls, and have driven on the same streets as this fellow.  

And that fame, to the extent fame is involved here, if fleeting.  I'd never heard of him in spite of his remarkable wartime service.  Nothing is named for him here.

Another thing, and one that cuts a bit against something I've noted here in the past.

As I've noted, for at least some Americans, going to university was really a post World War Two thing. That's widely known.  Less well known is that Catholics didn't go to university for the most part until after the war (and I don't know what religion Cleven was).  

Cleven's story shows that this was already changing before the war, however.  Cleven didn't come from a wealthy family, and his parents clearly weren't college educated.  But there he was, at UW, before the war.  

University education was reaching down to the Middle Class, even though we were still in an era when less than 50% of American males graduated from high school

Indeed, while its jumping ahead, the story of Richard Proenneke demonstrated that.  He dropped out of high school as it didn't interest him but went on to, at first, as successful blue collar career.  He seems to have actually retired in his 50s.

Back to Cleven, he had what looks to be the start of a pretty conventional, Wyoming, advanced education before the war, and then went on to an extraordinary one due to the war in no small part.  That demonstrates the manner in which World War Two altered all of society massively.

We'll get back to that.

Finally, in regard to Cleven, his story also demonstrates the ongoing impact of disease in that era.  His young wife was killed by polio.

The polio vaccine didn't come out until 1955, two years after her death.  Somewhat associated with children now, polio in fact struck adults as well.  It was highly contagious and it often killed rapidly.  People went form well in the morning to dead by the end of the day.   And the deaths weren't pleasant. That appears to be basically what happened to her.

Polio, like Small Pox, and Measles are all preventable by vaccines.  So is Covid.  Not until recently, in the post Reagan post Scientific era, have Americans lost their faith in these lifesavers.  

And that is, quite frankly, stupid.

Let's look at Proenekke.


I really think Proennekke's story has been misconstrued, now that I've looked at it.  He tends to be viewed as somebody who turned his back on the modern world and moved to the Alaskan outback.  In reality, however, he's a guy who lived his whole life as a single man and retired young, then moved, in retirement, to the outback.

It's a bit different.

Proennekke's life brings to mind two items of social change, both of which are increasing rare and difficult for "moderns", or "post moderns", if you prefer to understand.  One is the existence of lifelong bachelors with nothing else being assumed about that status, and the other is the true jack of all trades.

We'll take the bachelorhood story, which we've dealt with before in another context, first.

Supposedly today 30.4% of men never marry, more or less (that's a 2010 figure) and 23% of women.  In 1900 that figure was 38.8% and 29.7% respectively, but that doesn't mean the same thing at all.  We've already seen that prior to the mid 20th Century, in many places "living together" was a crime, and in others that would have resulted in a common law marriage.  So those figures really reflect people who lived lives alone

The percentages dropped for every decade of the 20th Century, until the 80s, when they started hovering right around 30% consistently, never going back up to the 1900 38.8% for men.  For what it is worth, for women they dropped to an all-time low for the 1960s, of 17.3%, and the went up to about 23% where they've remained.  Realistically, however, the current 30% and 23% are probably significantly lower, if we take into account situations where couples exist but without the formal benefit of marriage.

And that's significant in multiple ways.

Currently, nearly any male in the "never married" category without some sort of female "significant other" will flat out be assumed to be homosexual once they get much past 30 years of age.  Many people will even assume that Catholic clerics must be homosexual, as they are required to be celibates.  The pressure is so high on unmarried males to declare, in some fashion or another, at the present time, that its actually proven to be a problem for recruiting Catholic Priests as some who have expressed a latent desire to do so have already married due to pressure, or have gone down the secularly pressured road of girlfriend and actions that used to wait until marriage to the extent that they really cannot get back from it.  For that matter, single men past a certain age are not only assumed to be homosexual, but are often societally pressured, in some areas, to be one in order to explain their status.  The thought that somebody could function, more or less alone, but with normal inclinations, just doesn't exist anymore.  The thought that anyone, and indeed anyone who isn't a cleric, could function in a single celibate way is almost regarded as making that person a raving deviant.

It was quite common, however, at one time.  Indeed, there are at least four movies that touch on the topic, all of which might be a little hard for people to grasp now, but which showed that this was a normal frame of reference for viewing audiences at one time, with those files being Marty (1955), The Apartment (1960) Only The Lonely (1991) and Brooklyn (2015).  The evolution of the films shows how this evolved, with the protagonist in Marty being a single male who is assumed by everyone, including his family, will remain one.  Indeed, they wish him to.  In The Apartment it is not assumed that the young executive will marry, even as he develops a deep affection for the female protagonist.  In Only The Lonely the situation is much the same as Marty, but with the mandatory introduction, by that time, of sex into the film.  In Brooklyn the assumption of marriage is much stronger, and indeed becomes a problem during the film.

Truth be known, however, up until at least the 1980s this was a relatively common thing to encounter, and there was no assumption that a single male was attracted to other men by any means.  Usually the single status was regarded as sort of a tragedy, but not one that was a deviation from the norm to much of a degree.  Indeed, I can easily recall several examples of this in adults when I was growing up.

One such individual was a plumber who was well liked and who lived next to my grandmother.  He was a veteran of World War Two and had served almost the entire war in a Japanese POW camp. For that reason, he never turned the lights off in his small house, as they had not done that in the camp.  HE never married.

Also, a tradesman, another person in my father's circle of friends was a fellow who was a plumber and who didn't marry until the 1980s, at which time that was regarded as nearly foolish as he would have been in his very late 50s or perhaps 60s at the time.  His long bachelorhood was not regarded as strange in any fashion, and for much of that time he lived with his mother, inheriting her house after she passed away.

Another example was a friend of my father's who was a mail carrier.  He'd started off before World War Two to become a Protestant minister in his home state of Nebraska, but like so many others, the war interrupted his planned career, and he was an artillery spotter during the war.  When he came back, he did not resume his studies, although he remained devoutly religious.  He dated after the war, at least until the late 1950s, but never found anyone and never married, passing way after my father and after having lived a very long life.  He was one of two postmen who shared a lifelong bachelorhood status, the other one living in a tiny house in North Casper, who when he passed away was a millionaire.

About the only example of this that ever struck me as odd, when I was a boy, were a brother and sister who lived down the block from us. They were both school teachers and never married, and lived into their old ages in a house they jointly owned.  I recall they called my father by a diminutive, the only people who ever did that, which he hated.

They had a Golden Labrador.

Finally, the owner of a men's clothing store here in town was single his whole life.  He was a fanatic UW football fan.

Could any of these people have been closeted homosexuals? Sure, but it certainly wasn't assumed so.  Indeed, it was just regarded as the fate they'd fallen into and a bit sad.  Most of them had something that was a bit quirky about their characters, and the majority of them were tradesmen or blue collar workers, although not all were. That might tell us something there.

Prior to the Second World War, there were entire occupations that tended to be dominated by single men.  Most of those occupations involved hard labor in some fashion.  By the 1920s ranch hands, for example, were single men, and they often spent their entire careers in relatively low paying jobs that precluded them from ever marrying.  The few places that actually have hired cowhands today, if you find a career one, replicate this.  Enlisted men in the Army had always been single in US history unless they advanced to more senior Non Commissioned Officer status.  Well after World War Two, enlisted men frequently required permission to marry from their commanding officers, and before World War Two they routinely did. Wartime was the exception, as married men were brought into the service during war.  Even junior officers were not usually married.

This somewhat reflects, therefore, the harder working conditions and lower incomes in society overall.  Being married took enough of a male's income to make it work, as women often were not employed and typically were not employed once they started having children.  Hired hand status on farms and ranches, and enlisted status in the service, precluded marriage as a result.  The long working hours in some instances, and griminess of manual labor, also worked against marriage for a certain percentage of men as hypergyny didn't favor it, if other options were available.

Indeed, this also helps explain the occupations that the actually closeted went into, as has been discussed before.  Generally occupations that paid better, or steadily, and perhaps which weren't grimy in comparison to others, also favored marriage.  Occupations that were essentially white collar in a way, that didn't favor marriage were very few and far between.

The other thing Proennekke's story brings up is the successful jack of all trades.  His father was one, and he seems to have been as well.  Men with really good mechanical skills who could go from one setting to another were pretty common, and indeed they were at least up until the 1990s.  "He's good with his hands" was a compliment that was often paid to somebody who could act as a universal skilled laborer.  

I'm sure that these guys still exist, but not nearly in the numbers they once did.  I really can't recall meeting one recently, except for older ranchers who are that way by default.  Indeed, everyone I knew of a certain age who had grown up on a farm or ranch was like this.  I was actually surprised as an adult to meet younger ranchers who didn't have those skills, although plenty of them still do.



Finally, there's the modern aspect of strongly pigeonholing, indeed even limiting, people by their perceived disabilities, many of them mild.

The item on Lee Marvin notes that he was afflicted with ADHD, which may in part account for his somewhat wild nature, his early failings at school, and his strong affinity for alcohol.  Or maybe not.  At any rate, he was enormously successful at his trade, acting, and he would never have known he was ADHD, if he was.

This is true of all sorts of things like this. Dyslexia, which I have in a mild form, also afflicted such people as George S. Patton.  Not knowing what it was, you didn't really worry about it, and carried on.  

It's not that these things should be ignored, but I worry that our appreciation of them may not be really well-founded in biology, and certainly evolutionary biology.  Dyslexia, some now claim, is not a neurological disorder or an impairment, but a concession for cognitive strengths in exploration, big-picture thinking, creativity, and problem-solving, so its a byproduct of generally positive aspects.  ADHD, which occurs strongly in some human populations, is now suspected to be an evolutionary trait favored evolutionary people, which makes lots of sense, and which frankly is something that we earlier realized when we called people polymaths and autodidacts.  In contrast, the large occurrence of anxiety in our modern populations reflects an evolutionary need to be careful and alert, made problematic as our modern cubicle lifestyle sucks.

Sunday, February 25, 2024

Monday, February 25, 1924. One life. Who was "Miss Anne O'Connell"?


This is Miss Ann O'Connell, 2/25/24.  Who was she?  Well, anohter blog has done a really nice job of sleuthing that out:

They Were Neighbors: Annie O’Connell and The Irish Block

Sunday, December 10, 2023

Blog Mirror: Collapsed


Well worth reading:

Collapsed

You can see my reply there as well, which I've set out again here:

"Last year it would have not been a problem but this year I'm not in great shape due to family issues"

Me too, except it's my own health, starting with a surgery in October 2022, and another in August. Haven't really recovered, although I should have.

Maybe you never really do.

Anyhow, was walking out of the high country at a pretty good clip as a rainstorm came rolling in. Lost my footing on a rock, fell, rolled over, and cut myself pretty bad. Just me and the dog. No cell reception, and I've given up carrying my gmrs radio as there's nobody to call if I'm hunting alone.

Rolled over, wasn't damaged and hiked out bleeding. It hasn't been a great year.

Glad you were okay.

I don't mean to be hijacking somebody else's blog, but since October 2022 I haven't been myself.  I wrote previously on my surgery followed by a second surgery.  Since the first surgery, my digestive track hasn't recovered, and it's clear that it's not going to.  I'm sick every morning.  Not some mornings, every morning, save, oddly enough, for a few days I spent at trial where I couldn't afford to be.*  Most days I'm better off not eating any breakfast anymore, as it's just going to make me sick.  I was already developing an intolerance to milk, but now it's through the roof.  I can't even eat cereal with a little milk.  The stuff I'm used to eating in the morning, which was always a pretty light meal, is a no-go completely now.

And the second surgery resulted in a medication that I'm pretty sure isn't adjusted right, right now.  Everyone has told me how thyroid medication is supposed to make you feel great and give you energy. Well, that isn't working for me.  Researching it, there are a tiny minority of people who actually never feel good following a thyroid surgery and for whom the medications don't work to address that.  Given that almost no medication ever works well for me, I wouldn't be at all surprised if that was me.  Hindsight is 20/20, but I really wish I'd foregone that surgery now and have borne the risk of cancer instead.  At age 60, and from a short-lived group, the risk probably was worth it.**

Worst of all, frankly, being sick all the time impacts your attitude in ways you can't really appreciate until it's obvious.  I've been there recently. Short-tempered and not having a good long term outlook.  At work the other day I blew up on two colleagues who have been running a really irritating religious debate for years, in the hallway, for what they conceive to be the entertainment of the unwilling listeners.  Our poor Mexican runner has to listen to this constantly, and I finally had enough and just exploded on them.  The point isn't that their juvenile behavior was okay, but that my reaction was so stout.***I shouldn't have done that, and that's just a minor example.

I usually look longingly forward to hunting season, but this year I've just not been too motivated after a certain point. Being tired has a lot to do with that.   And when you are like that, you are a pain to those around you, at least to some extent.  Some can see and appreciate that, others not so much.  It's hard to appreciate it yourself until something forces you to.  I looked forward to all summer to the season, and enjoyed deer hunting, but usually by now I've done a pile of duck hunting.  I've gone this year. . .twice. Every Saturday, the dog looks at me with confusion.  The funny thing is that all week long I still look forward to getting out, but when the weekend comes, I go down to work like old lawyers do, and when Sunday comes, well I haven't gone to Mass the night prior, so I get a late start doing whatever I'm going to do.

As noted above, not only am I tired, but I'm not in shape the way I usually am.  I've fallen so rarely out in the sticks that as a short person, I'm one of those people who were sort of goat like, climbing in terrain where hunters and fishermen wouldn't normally go and not worrying about it even though it was patently dangerous.  As a National Guardsmen, I recall once somebody remarking how me and another NCO were mysteriously able to negotiate difficult terrain at night, silently.  We were both avid hunters.  To take a fall, and a pretty bad one, on terrain that I'd been over a million times was a shock.

I was actually quite lucky at the time.  I was all alone, taking a path that I normally would not have, although as noted I've been on it many times before. There was a thunderstorm coming in.  I was carrying a loaded shotgun.  I fell, and, recalling the plf ***I learned so many years ago, rolled out of it, but not before I'd scrapped myself up pretty badly.  I wasn't sure at first if I'd broken anything.  I had my cell phone, as noted, but no reception, so I couldn't have called for help if I wanted to.  I usually carry a handheld GMRS radio, but I've quit recently as if I'm alone, who am I going to radio to?

Hors de combat, after it started to heal.

Sic transit gloria mundi.

I can recall my father getting like this when he was almost the exact same age I am now.  He died two years later.  He seemed pretty old at the time, so I wasn't hugely surprised.  I guess it's like the Hendrix song, "You may wake up in the morning, just to find that you are dead".

Of course, he was gravely ill for months prior to that.  In retrospect, however, it all started for him with a colonoscopy, the same way that this has started for me.  I recall him remarking as he was in the hospital on how all of his mother's ailments were now visiting him.  She died, if I recall correctly, at 65.

In my mind, I always imagined that at some point after I had reached retirement age, which I have not yet, I'd retire to a life of full time outdoorsman.  Not too many people do that.  There may be a reason for that. Some of us are luckier as we age than others.

Oh well, nature has a way of waking you up and reminding you that some things need to be done.  Getting sick? Quite doing what you are doing, refocus, and soldier on.  Get a grip, reform, reform, and keep on keeping on, but mindful of errors and omissions.

Footnotes

*I've long noticed for some reason a person's system will suppress symptoms of almost any illness when you absolutely have to keep on, keeping on. Usually things come back with a vengeance, or at least fatigue, when the crisis has passed.

**This is not intended to be advice for anyone else, I'd note.

***Re the argument, the entire facility had grown extremely tired of it and the shutting them up was welcomed, save by one of the arguers, who may be permanently mad at me.  Showing my presently poor mental outlook, I don't care.  I'm tired of hearing minority religions insulted when some of the employees belong to them, and I'm tired of having my own faith routinely insulted, which I've endured now for decades.  And while I'm a serious if imperfect orthodox Catholic, I'm also tired of one of these individuals, who isn't that good at arguing, turning to religious topics no matter what is being discussed, to include my assistant simply taking her shoes off in her office the other day, which would not normally lead to a Biblical discussion, but of course did.

I've also had it with somebody thinking that mocking the Spanish language is funny in front of somebody who's an immigrant.

***Parachute Landing Fall.  I learned this, oddly enough, while I was a CAP cadet.

Thursday, December 7, 2023

Friday, December 7, 1923. De la Huerta joins his revolution.

Adolfo de la Huerta, governor of Sonora and former President of Mexico, joined the Delahuertista rebellion against the government of President Álvaro Obregón which had been brought in his name and ostensibly on behalf of his leadership.

Comedic actor Ted Knight was born in Terryville Connecticut.

Mrs. Charles E. Dietrich and Mrs. Pinchot, 12/7/23.

Sunday, December 3, 2023

Lex Anteinternet: Coal: Understanding the time line of an industry. A Timely Rerun

I ran this back in 2017.  It was clear where things were headed then:

Lex Anteinternet: Coal: Understanding the time line of an industry:     

Coal: Understanding the time line of an industry

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-utU_3YDqvNo/TsRwzROAFUI/AAAAAAAACGA/m0VnuweE7UQ/s1600/scan0004.jpg  
Me, third from right, when I thought I had a career in geology, and probably in coal.

There is a lot of speculation about a revival in the future of coal around here.  I'm skeptical.  This doesn't mean that I come from the outside where coal is simply a freakish oddity.  No, I'm pretty familiar with coal. . . personally.  At one time, coal, I thought, would fuel my career. When other students in the UW geology department of the early 1980s were planning on becoming petroleum geologist, I focused on coal, which wasn't suffering. . . at first, the way oil then was.  Of course, it came to, and I went from the geology department into under employment so my plan failed.

The irony of that is that my choice on coal as a focus was intentional.  I could see the handwriting on the wall in regards to employment in the oil industry.  Others seemingly couldn't, or having entered onto that set of railroad tracks they just couldn't get off.  Coal, on the other hand, was doing fine in the early 1980s. . . at first.  There were coal mines operating at that time which aren't now.  Indeed, there was an underground coal mine in Hanna, a continuation of a situation that had existed well into the early 20th Century.

Well, that didn't work out the way I'd panned and by 1985, when I approached graduation from the University of Wyoming, after five years of effort (five was typical for geologist, that was five full semesters) I graduated into being an . . . .artilleryman.

Yup.  Artillery. The rescuer of my economic fortunes.

I'd joined the National Guard right out of high school and was still in it in 1985 when I graduated.  The Guard basically employed me on a semi full time basis for a year while I tired to find a job.  I couldn't, of course, so I ended up going back to school to obtain a JD.  Indeed, relating back to the Guard, I've felt guilty ever since as I let my enlistment expire in 1986 just before I went back to law school as I believed all the propaganda I'd heard about how hard law school is.  Hah!  It's nothing compared to obtaining a bachelors in geology. 
  photo 2-28-2012_097.jpg 

My main employer, right after receiving my bachelor's degree.

Anyhow, in that period of time between my general geology studies at Casper College (during which I really picked up a love of geomorphogy) and my graduation, the first time, at the University of Wyoming by which time I'd picked up a focus on coal, I learned a lot about coal.  At the same time I nearly obtained enough credits for a BA in history, which perhaps reflects a natural interest that reflects itself back here.

 So, perhaps in some ways, I'm uniquely suited to ponder the long decline of coal.   Or at least I have.
And indeed the path of coal, and its long slow decline, is highly relevant to where we find ourselves now.  Lots of people in the coal states believe that the election of Donald Trump is going to revive the fortunes of coal.  Here in Wyoming quite a few people are so acclimated to coal paying the bills that they can't imagine anything else.  Indeed, just this past weekend I was at a public event, wearing my shabby (truly) Carhartt coat and my Stormy Kromer cap, probably looking like a guy who had shoveled a lot of coal (and indeed I have shoveled a little) and was accosted by a person sitting under a banner proclaiming something about a "return" to liberty and the Constitution who started off on a speech about would I like to sign a petition in opposition to any kind of new taxes.  No, I won't sign that as I just don't see coal being able to pay the Wyoming freight in the future anymore.  Maybe some other mineral or minerals can, but coal isn't going to be able to the way it once did (and besides, I'd be unlikely to sign anyway as I tend to find that people are always opposed to new taxes but not bothered by demanding that the things taxes pay for are really good).

I think the path of coal, being familiar with it, might be best illustrated by a few rough dates and illustrations.  Its something that should be considered.

So let's start around 1900.  That was a world fueled by coal (and by wood).  Sure, kerosene was around, and it had replaced whale oil to a large extent.  I have around here a draft post, now months and months old, building on a George F. Will column that noted:
As I will note, I don't dispute the details that Will recites here, but I do doubt the "more medieval than modern assertion in a major way.  Indeed, some of these things argue, I think, the other way around and I think that misstates the nature of the Medieval world.

But noting what Will states about lights, we note what he said, and further note that it was accurate.
  • "No household was wired for electricity"
This is quite true.
  • "Flickering light came from candles and whale oil,"
Whale oil chandelier, photo from the Library of Congress.  Up until the Will entry, I'd never even considered there being such a thing as a whale oil chandelier.

And so, in many places it did.  But coal fueled a lot of other things.

But let's consider coal in 1900.

It fueled the ships.

 USS Ohio, approximately 1898, as the USS Maine, which sank in a coal explosion in 1898, is in the background.


It fueled the trains, the only significant interstate transportation that existed.

New Your central yard, about 1907.

It heated the homes, where wood did not.

And it fueled industry, particularly the steel industry.

Blat furnace, about 1905.

And then things began to change.

It really started with navies in some ways, although some might argue that it started with hydroelectric.  We'll start with navies.

Navies had been powered by sail up until the mid 19th Century but already by the time of the American Civil War that was changing.  The U.S. Navy may have had its grandest ships under sail during that war, but coal fired wheels were being introduced even then.   And the scary smoke belching squat "monitors"  that signaled the end of the age of sail were coal (and perhaps wood) burning beasts.  Slow, hardly seaworthy, but iron clad.  It was pretty clear by 1865 that the age of militarized wind was ending.

And indeed the Naval reformation that occurred after the American Civil War is incredibly stunning.  Everything about navies soon changed.  By the 1890s every major navy in the world was building ships that look odd to our eyes, but which still look familiar .  Big guns on big ships powered by coal replaced sailing vessels, and the general purpose yeoman sailor was replaced by the specialist.  At about this time, in fact, the U.S. Navy started to switching from a navy drawing its recruits mostly from port towns, and which was in fact an integrated navy, to one which was segregated which drew its recruits from the interior of the country.  A wood and sail navy required men who had grown up near, or even on ships, and who knew the ins and outs of sail. That was a multi ethnic, polyglot group of men who in some way resembled the men in every port town around the world more than they did the men in the interior of their own countries.  It's  no accident that the first Congressional Medal of Honor to go to a foreign born serviceman went to a sailor, in action during the American Civil War fighting a naval battle in. . . . .Japan.

The naval battle in Shimonoseki Straits where an English sailor serving on board the USS Wyoming won a Congressional Medal of Honor.  Note that these ships already featured coal fire steam, in addition to sail.

While there was a sail and steam age, i.e., an age that combined both, for navies it wouldn't last long. For commercial shipping it lasted longer, and indeed the age of sail itself lingered on until after World War Two, amazingly enough, in some usages.  But for big ships, coal fired boilers were the norm before the turn of the century.  Sail lingered, but only lingered.

And so we entered the coal fired world. The degree to which coal fired everything, almost, is stunning.  If we take the world of 1900 heavy long distance transportation of all types was coal fired.  Trains and ships, that is.  Local transportation was seeing the beginnings of the Petroleum Age, but only the beginnings.  Locally, it was very much a horse oriented world, and indeed the railroads themselves caused a massive boom in heavy hauler horses around the turn of the prior century which gave us the really big draft horses, rather than farms as we so often imagine.  Something had to hault hat weight from the railhead to the warehouse.

And heat was going the way of coal. Coal fired, well fires, heated homes all around the country everywhere.  Boilers for apartment buildings, furnaces in homes.  Wood remained, but it was coal that was the oncoming fuel.

A World War One vintage poster of the United States Fuel Administration.  This period poster nicely illustrates how coal fit in.  Homeowners were being urged to buy coal early in the year.  That coal wasn't delivered, in this poster, by a truck, but rather by a dump wagon drawn by heavy draft horses.  Given the light dress of the laborer and the depiction of foliage the poster must have been released during the summer.

It is, in short, impossible to overestimate the importance of coal around 1900.  It was called King Coal for a reason.

But things were beginning to slowly change.

For one thing, petroleum was creeping in.  Not in a massive way, but in a way that was clearly predictable.  George Will spoke of whale oil lamps, but by the second half of the 20th Century kerosene lanterns were very common and their advantages very obvious.  Following in their wake came gas lanterns and by necessity, piping for natural gas.  It wasn't long after that in which the first gas stoves were introduced. Already by the early 20th Century, therefore, there was gas lighting and gas stoves.  

And gasoline was already making its appearance in the internal combustion engine by 1900.

Very early internal combustion engine.

We've dealt with automobiles elsewhere, but we've become so acclimated to them that we rarely think of their history.  Automobiles were a 19th Century invention, albeit a very late 19th Century invention, not a 20th Century one.  That doesn't mean that they replaced the horse right away, that would hardly be true, but they do go back aways.  And they were not, and we should not pretend, that they were any sort of a threat to coal at first.  Not at all.  Cars, trucks and motorcycles were competition for the horse, not the train and certainly not the ship or even the barge.

Truck waiting in line with big long line of coal wagons, some time prior to World War One.

Which takes us back to ships.

And, more specifically, the Royal Navy.

For decades, indeed centuries, the world's biggest and best navy was the Royal Navy.  This does not mean, however, that there was ever a day in which some other navy wasn't contending with the Royal Navy for that position.  And given that, the British basically engaged in a naval arms race that lasted well over a century.  And that mean that it needed to always be on the alert for a technological advantage.

And coal had given one.  Steam meant that large steel ships were able to be constructed, fired by coal fueled boilers.  They had two significant disadvantages however.

Smoke and spontaneous ignition.

Let's talk about smoke first, the disadvantage that was always there.

Their smoke was visible all the way over the edge of the horizon.

This is something that people who are more familiar with ships of the World War Two era don't instantly recall about earlier steel ships, but coal fires smoke and hence coal fired boilers likewise smoke, or rather the coal fires smoke

 The Great White Fleet, and great clouds of black smoke, December 16, 1907.

Prior to the advent of air reconnaissance and radar the spotting of enemy fleets, or for that matter friendly forces, was done by the naked eye.  And it was a matter of absolutely vital concern.  In the vastness of the ocean ships at sea had always scoured the horizon for signs of enemy ships, and even clues that seem slight to landlubbers were picked up by trained sailors.  Sailors looked, in prior eras, for sails and masts on the horizon, with the assistance of spyglasses.  By the time of dreadnoughts, however, they were looking for the faintest hints of smoke, and coal fired boilers provided plenty of it.  Teams of sailors searched the horizon with massive binoculars looking for that wisp of smoke, which was often more than a wisp.

The next danger was rarer, but not so rare as to not be a serious problem.  Spontaneous combustion.

Coal has a well known propensity to self heat and to make it worse, the better the coal grade the bigger the problem.  Exposed to air and moisture coal begins to engage in an exothermic reaction and can relatively easily self heat to the point where it ignites.  Moreover, as it self heats and heads towards ignition it drives off highly flammable hydrocarbon gases. Indeed, heating coal intentionally in a controlled environment is a means of producing those gases and has sometimes been thought of as a method of producing them, although its never proven to be an efficient means of doing so.

Coal is so prone to spontaneous combustion that coal self ignition is a natural phenomenon.  It simply happens where coal gets exposed to sufficient oxygen and moisture. Anyone who has ever spent any time in an open pit coal mine has seen coal simply burning on its own, as I have.

There are ways to combat this, of course, but the problem is uniquely acute for ships.  Ships must store coal in large bunkers and must taken on a lot of coal at certain points.  Ships are wet by their very nature. So any coal burning ship has, at some point, a lot of coal with just enough oxygen and moisture to create a problem.

This proved to be a real problem for ships and of course there were extreme catastrophic occurrences, the most famous of which is the explosion of the USS Maine.  The Maine is an extreme example of what could occur, but any coal burning ship could experience what the Maine did.  Basically, in the case of the USS Maine, the coal self ignited and the coal bunkers had sufficient liberated gas to create a massive explosion.  Not quite as dangerous, but still a huge problem, a simple self ignition of the coal without an explosion was a disaster, quite obviously, of the first rate requiring sailors to put the coal fire out under extreme danger.


Coal's detriments on ships would have had to be accepted, and indeed they were, but for the existence of alternatives.  Indeed, coal survived as a naval fuel for an appreciably longer time than a person might actually suppose, so impressive were its advantages in general.  Measures were taken in ship design to try to combat the dangers, such as having the coal bunkers placed near outside ship's hulls such that the coolness of the water would translate to them, and placing sailors bunks along the bunker's walls so that the sailors could tell if heat was building, but the dangers were real and known. Also known was that there was an alternative, oil.

By the turn of the century naval designers were aware that oil could be used to heat boilers just as coal could, and they began to study it in earnest.  Indeed, not only could it be used, but it had numerous advantages.

Unlike coal, petroleum oil for ships fuel did not result in much smoke.  It resulted in some, but not anything like that which coal put out.  The smoke from a single ship was much less visible and suffice it to say the smoke from a fleet of ships was greatly reduced.  Again, there was smoke, but not smoke like that put out by coal fired boilers.  Indeed, it was so much reduced that to a large degree detection of ships over the horizon by the naked eye was approaching becoming a think of the past.

And petroleum does not spontaneously self ignite.  A big vat of petroleum can sit around forever and never touch itself off.  This does not mean, of course, that its free from danger.  It isn't.  But some of the dangers it poses were already posed by coal, but in lesser degrees.  Petroleum burns more freely than coal by quite some measure and once it ignites putting it out is extremely difficult.  Sparks, other fires, etc., all pose increased dangers for petroleum over bunkered coal, but they existed to some degree for bunkered coal already.

And petroleum is more efficient and easier to use for ships.  Coal was basically stoked by hand, a dirty laborious job.  But petroleum wasn't.  Petroleum burning boilers were fueled by what amounts to a plumbing system involving a greater level of technical know how but less physical labor.  And oil had double the thermal content of coal making it a far more efficient fuel which required less refueling.  And on refueling, ships fueled with oil can be refueled at sea.  Ships fueled with coal cannot be.  Indeed, the maintenance of coaling stations in the remote parts of the globe was a critical factor in naval planning prior to the introduction of oil.

Which isn't to say that there weren't some unique problems associated with petroleum for ship.

For one thing, the fact that it spreads out when leaked and can more easily ignite meant that petroleum added a unique and added horror for a stricken ship.  Coal fired ships that were simply damaged and sinking were unlikely to cause a horrific sea top fire.  Petroleum ships are very likely to do that.  And the risk of a munitions caused explosion is increased with petroleum fueled ships.  A torpedo into a coal bunker might blow a coal fired ship to bits with an explosion or might just sink it.  With a petroleum fueled ship the risk of an explosion in such a situation is increased as is the risk that oil on the water will catch on fire or otherwise kill survivors.

A huge factor, however, was supply.

By odd coincidence all of the major naval powers, save for Japan, had more than adequate domestic supplies of coal.  Some had very good supplies of coal, such as the United States, United Kingdom and Imperial Germany, within their own borders.  Japan nearly did in that it obtained it from territories it controlled on the Asian mainland, although that did make its supply more tenuous. At any rate all of the big naval powers of the pre World War One world had coal supplies that htey controlled.  That's a big war fighting consideration.  Of the naval powers of that era, in contrast, only the United States and Imperial Russia had proven petroleum sources they controlled, and Imperial Russia had proven it self to be a second rate naval power during the Russo Japanese War.

Switching from coal to oil did not occur in the Royal Navy, or any navy, all at once. The decision was made somewhat haltingly and it was an expensive proposition to convert an entire navy to oil.  Britain started to convert prior to World War One but it didn't complete the process until after the war.  Still, its decision to start constructing capitol ships as oil burners in 1912 was a huge step for a nation that had the world's largest navy but which had no domestic oil production at all.  The United States followed suit almost immediately, with its first large ship to be converted to oil, the USS Cheyenne, undergoing that process in 1913.

 The USS Cheyenne in 1916 while it was a submarine tender.  The Cheyenne was the first oil burning ship in the U.S. Navy, following the lead that the British had started.

The USS Cheyenne was illustrative of something else that was going on, however, that being the increased presence of heavy internal combustion engines for various uses.  The USS Cheyenne had been built as a monitor, a type of proto battleship (and had been named the USS Wyoming originally) but after its conversion to oil it would become a submarine tender in a few short years.  Submarines of the era were light vessels and, like a lot of light naval fighting ships ,they were diesels.  Marine diesel engines were replacing boilers completely in lighter vessels and of course diesel fuel is a type of oil.

Diesels in that application show that industrial diesel engines had arrived.

By World War Two every navy in the world was an oil burning, not a coal burning, navy.  And it wasn't just navies.  Merchant ships had followed in the navies' wakes.  They were now oil burning too for the most part.  Coal at sea had died.

 Giant marine diesel engine circa 1920.


The demise of coal at sea did not equate, of course, with the universal demise of coal, and this is very important to keep in mind.  Entering into the period of history we've been discussing, roughly 1900 to 1920, coal may have lost its crown at sea, but it remained hugely important, arguably increasingly important, elsewhere.  It continued to be the fuel of heavy transportation, IE., for trains, it continued to heat homes and it fired an ever growing  number of power plants.  Indeed that last application can't be overstated as in this same period the Western world was electrifying.  So whatever position it may have lost on the waves it was likely more than making it up on land.

Still, the trend line had been set.

And it would next show itself with transportation.

At least according to one source written in 1912 coal fueled 9/10s of all locomotive engines at that time.  The other 1/10th would have been fired by wood or, yes,  oil.

This photograph will appear again in a series of photographs on the centennial of their having been first taken, in January 1917, but these teenagers are stealing coal from a rail yard.  They are probably taking it home for heating fuel or are selling it to Bostonian's who probably knew darned well these kids had taken it illegally from the yards.  For that matter, the railroad likely knew they were taking it too.  Even today, decades after the end of the use of coal for locomotives the paths of old railways can be found by the coal ash and coal that the trains dropped as they passed by.  I've walked the path of the old UP here and there down by Laramie doing that.

Wood, I should  note, may seem strange for a locomotive engine of that era, but it really shouldn't.  The goal of any fuel used in a locomotive engine is to produce steam and burning wood will produce steam.  Wood isn't an efficient fuel for that but it was a common one very early on.  Most locomotives were switched to coal after the Civil War, assuming that they were not burning it already, but where wood was locally plentiful and the engine had a local use, as for a small engine associated with a timbering operation, wood was kept in use.  

Indeed, as a total aside, during World War One some small German engines were made that burned trash.  Coal is a military fuel, Germany's (and Poland's) coal is very good, but as a military fuel conservation was the rule of the day.

At any rate, in 1912 less than 1/10th of all steam engines were burning oil, but what is telling there is that some were.  So here too a trend line had started.

In following years more and more steam engines became oil burning engines.  The reasons may not be entirely clear and are somewhat subtle, but some of them have been touched upon already above.  Oil is a more efficient fuel. Not so much so, however, that all locomotives were switched to it. The famous Union Pacific Big Boys, for example, were coal burning to the end.

Union Pacific Big Boy. These were coal burning their entire career.

What did the coal burning locomotive in, in the end, or more properly the steam engine in, was the diesel.


Diesels Electric trains proved to be a better and more efficient option for train engines in the end. Contrary to what some may think these locomotives do not work like a diesel truck in that the engine does not power the drive wheels. Rather the diesels are big generators and the trains are essentially electric.   By the same token, in the proper settings, trains run from overhead electric lines.  Either way, this type of engine did in the steam engine.

Now then, looking at it, we see that coal went from the main fuel for ships and trains to a remnant fuel for both in a fifty year period. Hardly overnight, but clearly observable.  A person living in the era, if they cared to notice the trend, would have noticed.  Certainly, for example, if you lived in Rawlins Wyoming and looked out towards the Union Pacific Railroad yard over the course of an average life, if you'd lived in this period, you would have seen it gone from a busy smoky and sooty yard to one which had only the blue haze of diesel fuel above it.  And given that Rawlins is just seven miles from Sinclair, where a refinery is located, but also is surrounded by coal deposits and actually had its origin as a coaling location for the Union Pacific, the change would have been pretty obvious.  If you worked in the big underground mines in Hanna you might actually be slightly worried.

Which isn't to say that coal stopped being used.  Not hardly.  It was still heating homes all over, including in Wyoming, and it still was the fuel for power plants.

Let's turn to domestic coal use, as we haven't really touched on that much.

 
Lennox "Torrid Zone" coal furnace

Now, as we've seen above, coal was a basic heating fuel early in the 20th Century, having replaced wood in that role to a large extent.  During World War One Americans were urged to stock up on heating coal early, which meant filling their coal rooms full during the summer rather than waiting until winter.  Coal soot was such a prominent part of big city life that it came to be an accepted part, even contributing to the legendary concept that London was foggy.  It wasn't so much foggy as it was sooty.  This use of coal continued on for a very long time, and indeed here in Wyoming, which switched to gas early, people still ordered coal for heating fuel at least as late as the 1940s. 

 
Coal furnaces in the Library of Congress, 1900.  Shoot, and Washington D. C. isn't even all that cold.

But over time this changed to where heating oil, yes another use of petroleum oil and natural gas began to replace coal.  By the 1970s at least the price of heating oil became a major factor in annual fuel price concerns, but nobody really thought much of coal for the same purpose.  You can still buy a coal furnace today, if you are so inclined, but very few people do.  So yet another use of coal yielded to petroleum. And here, over time, petroleum has yielded to natural gas and electrical generation.

 Workman converting coal furnace to oil during World War Two.  Oil was more plentiful and efficient which sparked a government move to convert home heating to oil

Of course electrical generation also became a major use of coal in the early 20th Century, and it remains one today.  But, as has been seen from the trend line above, coal isn't the only option, and here too its a declining one.  While oil did make an appearance in the electrical generation field oil powered power plants are more or less a thing of the past and coal has outlasted them.  There are no oil fired power plants left in the United States and less than a dozen major ones left on Earth.  They're yielding, however, to natural gas, which powers quite a few power plants and which as been replacing coal.  And there are other means of generations electrical power, including wind power which now is cheaper than other forms of electrical generations in some regions of the United States.

 
Dave Johnston Power Plant, 2015.  U.S. Government photograph. 

Okay, so what's the point of this? Well, just this.  Coal has been on a long, slow, decline for over a century.  It isn't that it doesn't work, it's that it can't compete economically with other fuels that do the same thing in an increasing range of uses.  Only in terms of coking for steel production is it indispensable.  Indeed, perhaps signalling an international increase in manufacturing, high grade coal for coking has experienced a sharp recovery in recent months. That doesn't do anything locally, however, as our coal is Bituminous Coal, not Anthracite, and therefore can't be used for coking.

This isn't the view of some green fanatic world view.  It's dollars and cents, and coal producing regions, such as Wyoming, have to consider this. Without a way to address coal's defects, and soon, its diminished share of the fuel market will be considerably smaller irrespective of any environmental or regulatory concerns.  It's been a long trend running back over a century.