Mail Order Brides: When Wyoming Men Outnumbered Women 10-1, They ‘Imported Wives’

Newspaper ads soliciting potential spouses.  Somewhat amusing, I suppose, is the German working girl "anxious" to meet a mechanic, followed by an advertisement from a 36 year old mechanic looking for a "working girl". The typesetter had to have arranged that order intentionally.  

This is a topic that tends to fascinate people as a relic of the past:

Mail Order Brides: When Wyoming Men Outnumbered Women 10-1, They ‘Imported Wives’

The truth of the matter is, of course, that since the Internet arrived, mail ordering spouses has returned.  Witness the discussions on Reddit:

I am "mail order bride" ask me anything

20f Mail Order Bride, husband is 53 AMA

I'm 26 and married a mail order bride from Cambodia and I could not be happier - AMA

This, from a Thai in the AFA Reddit threads probably explains a lot of it currently:

If you want to get out of Thailand, you marry a foreigner. It's a better life for me, and my family as I bring them over. So my parents, my sisters and I are all here in the US now.

I met Paul online through a mail order bride agency when I was 16. We talked, and he flew here when I was 17 to meet me, and he met my family. He got the approval from my parents, and when I turned 18 we got married and he brought me to the US.

I have a nice house, a man who cares and takes care of me, and a good job. I don't think I would have this back in our home country. I'm glad for Paul, and everything he's done for us. So, I am happy.

Icky aspect of this aside. . . well maybe the whole thing is icky, this probably defines things in a way, then and now, for mail order brides.  Economic desperation.  Perhaps more then, a bit, than now, but both.

Men meeting their "mail order" spouse to be at Ellis Island.  These women were from Armenia, Turkey, Greece and Romania, and likely were all Eastern Orthodox.

This is a popular story for things like romance novels.  It's the topic of at least one movie, 1974's Zandy's Bride, which was based on a 1942 novel called The Stranger.  I suspect it was way less common than generally supposed, but I don't know.  Added to that, some of what we regard as "mail order" were actually very long distance courtships by correspondence.  I.e, they knew each other that way, which is apparently at least somewhat the case for modern mail order brides as well.

Gree, women entering the country to marry correspondent fiances.

The photos that were put up here, and the advertisement, show an aspect of this that was really significant at the time, and seems to be forgotten (including by current mail orders) that being religion and culture.  The Greek women, at least three of whom appear to be very young, were escaping poverty, but they were marrying into their own culture.  Pretty rough, but they were at least marrying somebody who spoke Greek and who was Greek Orthodox.  Likely all the women in the first photograph were marrying somebody from their own culture as well.  The advertisement, however, provides less of that, but some of it.  Some men were just looking for somebody to marry.  The Jewish man was looking for a Jewish woman, however.  The German working girl, on the other hand, wanted a "mechanic" (somebody who worked with machinery) and a comfortable small home.  Two men wanted widows for some reason, which would probably make sense if I knew the context (perhaps they wanted somebody who was used to be married and whom they didn't have to romance).  Even where culture wasn't referenced, chances are they would likely be ofose cultures.

Of course, if you go further back, you can find more peculiar examples, such as the French "King's Daughters" who were sent to Quebec.  Up to 1,000 of them were sent between 1663 and 1673, which followed prior private efforts starting in the 1640s.   The King's Daughters were actually vetted for their future role, and were held to scrupulous standards based on their "moral calibre" and physically fitness. Authorities in Quebec actually sent some back that were found not to be vigorous enough, which presumably was disappointing for them.

What all of this says we could debate.  Contrary to what some people like to assert, it's never been the case, ever, that regular people didn't marry for love.  They always have.  The thing is that modern people often have a hard time recognizing that in the conditions of earlier times.

Catholicism brought in the requirement that there be consent on the part of both parties in order for their to be a valid marriage, and after that marriage ages jumped to the current norms.  Chances are pretty good that the way most couples relationships developed looked a lot more like what's depicted in Flipped, set in the 1950s, than Dirty Dancing or something.  I.e, the ultimately married couple knew each other from childhood.  That still occurs, of course, particularly in some communities.  Doug Crowe's ribald A Growing Season references that being the case in ranching communities of the 1950s, and I'd seen the same thing as late as the 1990s.  But where women were in short supply, desperate times always called for desperate measures.

Photograph from Montana, 1901.  Clearly the man with the cat was the most eligible Batchelor.

Something that should be noted is that there was a pretty high incentive for women to marry prior to the 1920s, or even prior to the 1940s, in comparison to currently.  Obviously marriage remains, but to be a "spinster" prior to the mid 20th Century came with a massive set of problems for the woman and her family.  The classic Pride and Prejudice deals with this repeatedly as the failure of the Bennet sister to marry is creating an impending financial disaster for the family and Charlotte Lucas accepts a less than desirable proposal because, in part, she's a burden on her parents. Those concerns are subtle in the film, but they were real.  The "German working girl" in the advertisement above was likely looking at serving out a life's sentence as a domestic servant if she couldn't find somebody to marry.  Most women who weren't married lived at home, and when they aged into their 30s they were looking at taking on that role for increasingly elderly parents.

All of which raises the question, do you have a couple that met in your background this way?  It'd be almost impossible to know, I'd think.  Having said that, in thinking of it, my chances of being descended from a King's Daughter are fairly high and, while not really the same thing, one of my aunts who did a family genealogy claimed that one married couple we descend from did not speak the same language when they married, although her information was notoriously unreliable (the husband was Scottish, the wife Irish. . . I think they both clearly would have spoken English).  On my wife's side, my father in law told me once that one set of his grandparents were both from Ohio originally, but that they had not met there.  Somehow the bride was sent out to marry the groom, and they married.

Sunday, February 7, 1926. Negro History Week.

Carter G. Woodson.  Woodson was a professor and historian and an early pioneer in the study of African Americans.

African-American historian Carter G. Woodson initiated "Negro History Week", the precursor of Black History Month.  This is considerably earlier than I would have guessed this occured.

The Italian army took the Libyan city of Jaghbub, the home of the Senussi movement.

The village is actually much closer to Egypt than to any settlement in Libya.

Last edition:

Saturday, February 6, 1926. Linguistic dispute.

Labels: 1920s, 1926, 1990s, Germany, Italy, Mussolini, Pancho Villa, South Tyrol, the spoken word, Tyrol

Friday, December 28, 1945. War Brides. Yank ends.

Congress enacted the War Brides Act allowing for admissible alien  spouses, natural children, and adopted children of American troops to enter the U.S. as non-quota immigrants.  The act expired in 1948.

Before expiring, about 70,000 British,, 150,000 to 200,000 Europeans, including 14,000 to 20,000 Germans, 50,000 to 100,000 from the Far East, including 51,747 Filipinas and 50,000 Japanese, and 16,000 Australian or New Zealander women came in through the act.  Perhaps the most remarkable thing about the numbers, in some ways, is the high number of Germans, given the nature of the war, and the comparatively high number of Japanese.  Also remarkable is that the marriages from Asia were interracial.

Yank announced that as of the end of the year, it was no more.

Less thought of today than The Stars and Stripes, the popular World War Two service published magazine had various theater editions and was popular, something aided by every issue having a mild cheesecake centerfold.

Last edition:

Thursday, December 27, 1945. Big Bills.

Labels: 1940s, 1945, Belgium, Bretton Woods, Currency, United Nations, World Monetary Fund

Churches of the West: Unsettling news for Catholics in Rock Springs.

Churches of the West: Unsettling news for Catholics in Rock Springs.: This comes as bit of a shock, as well as evidence of how slow news actually travels in our current age in which everything seems flash drive...

Unsettling news for Catholics in Rock Springs.

This comes as bit of a shock, as well as evidence of how slow news actually travels in our current age in which everything seems flash driven:

Historic Rock Springs Church Faces Closure After A Century Of Worship

Giving some credit to the news, I'll note that this hit smaller news venues earlier, which I guess leads me to wonder a bit about how well Natrona County is served by the media.

Anyhow. . . 

The church is this one:

Sts. Cyril & Methodius Catholic Church, Rock Springs Wyoming

 

 

This Romanesque church was built in 1912 after a protracted period of time in which efforts were made to build a church specifically for the Catholic Slavic population of Rock Springs, which was quite pronounced at the time. The church was named after brothers Cyril and Methodius who had been the evangelists to the Slavs.  The first pastor was Austrian born Father Anton Schiffrer who was suited to the task given his knowledge of Slavic languages.

The news broke just before the celebration of the church's 100th anniversary, which isn't great timing, but no doubt that was simply coincidental.

To my surprise, there are three Catholic churches in Rock Springs.  I was aware of there being two. The Catholic community seems to be served there in the same way the community in Casper is, as a Tri Parish, rather than three separate parishes.

 Here's the announcement that was given by the Diocese:

Not too surprisingly, there has been some local opposition and the Bishop has suspended his order until February, when he will meet with the aggrieved parties.  The suspension is on line, but I was not able to download it, in order to post it.  

I'm not terribly optimistic, but the potential closure has drawn opposition from secular quarters as well:

Watch List: Saints Cyril & Methodius Catholic Church, Rock Springs

In terms of timing, another interesting aspect of this is that it comes right as the Catholic parish in Rock Springs started undertaking an effort to build a community center for the parish, the brochure for which is partially set out here:

There's more to the brochure than that, but I can't think of something more likely to put a damper on this effort than to close a century old church while its ongoing.

I'd also note that one of the stated desires is exactly the opposite of what brought Sts. Cyril & Methodius Catholic Church about in the first place, that being the desire to "create unity and one Catholic identity".  That's a common, and admirable, goal but in the real world, people don't like it.  Individual ethnicities within the Catholic Church have always struggled against this, sometimes with pretty disastrous results.  Indeed, Orthodoxy in the US got a big boost just from such an event when Bishop John Ireland disapproved of Eastern Catholicism remaining separate, causing Fr. Alexis Toth to lead a group of them into the Russian Orthodox Church.  In  the early 20th Century Catholic Diocese often responded just the way that the Diocese of Cheyenne did here, by simply creating additional churches that recognized the different identifies.

That won't happen here, and these are all Latin Rite churches.  Moreover, the strong ethnic identities in Rock Springs from a century ago have no doubt dissipated considerably.  But that doesn't mean that parishioners in a unique Church, or really any Church, like to have their church closed and be told they need to go elsewhere, even if it makes sense, which it very well might, given the antiquity of the building.  Doing it while also undergoing a campaign that expresses the goal of unity is more than a little unfortunate.

Indeed, that's the case as even in this modern age, not everyone likes to be grouped into one big group.  I'm one of those people.  The Diocese here had an event several years ago where all the local Masses were cancelled so that one huge Mass could be held at Casper's David Street Station. Rather than do that, I drove to Glenrock and attended Mass there. . . and I noticed some other Casperites I recognized there as well.

Friday, December 14, 1945. Tragedy and ethnic Germans, the LDS and conscription.

As its copyrighted and I don't have permission to post it, I'll merely note it, it was of German women in their children, formerly of Lodz, waiting for a train in Berlin with hopes of going to the west.  One of the children is sick, and died during the photo session.

The First President of the LDS issued a postwar statement on the draft to Utah's Congressional delegation.

Press reports have for some months indicated that a determined effort is in the making to establish in this country a compulsory universal military training designed to draw into military training and service the entire youth of the nation. We had hoped that mature reflection might lead the proponents of such a policy to abandon it. We have felt and still feel that such a policy would carry with it the gravest dangers to our Republic.

It now appears that the proponents of the policy have persuaded the Administration to adopt it, in what on its face is a modified form. We deeply regret this, because we dislike to find ourselves under the necessity of opposing any policy so sponsored. However, we are so persuaded of the rightfulness of our position, and we regard the policy so threatening to the true purposes for which this Government was set up, as set forth in the great Preamble to the Constitution, that we are constrained respectfully to invite your attention to the following considerations:

1. By taking our sons at the most impressionable age of their adolescence and putting them into army camps under rigorous military discipline, we shall seriously endanger their initiative thereby impairing one of the essential elements of American citizenship. While on its face the suggested plan might not seem to visualize the army camp training, yet there seems little doubt that our military leaders contemplate such a period, with similar recurring periods after the boys are placed in the reserves.

2. By taking our boys from their homes, we shall deprive them of parental guidance and control at this important period of their youth, and there is no substitute for the care and love of a mother for a young son.

3. We shall take them out of school and suffer their minds to be directed in other channels, so that very many of them after leaving the army, will never return to finish their schooling, thus over a few years materially reducing the literacy of the whole nation.

4. We shall give opportunity to teach our sons not only the way to kill but also, in too many cases, the desire to kill, thereby increasing lawlessness and disorder to the consequent upsetting of the stability of our national society. God said at Sinai, “Thou shalt not kill.”

5. We shall take them from the refining, ennobling, character-building atmosphere of the home, and place them under a drastic discipline in an environment that is hostile to most of the finer and nobler things of home and of life.

6. We shall make our sons the victims of systematized allurements to gamble, to drink, to smoke, to swear, to associate with lewd women, to be selfish, idle, irresponsible save under restraint of force, to be common, coarse, and vulgar, all contrary to and destructive of the American home.

7. We shall deprive our sons of any adequate religious training and activity during their training years, for the religious element of army life is both inadequate and ineffective.

8. We shall put them where they may be indoctrinated with a wholly un-American view of the aims and purposes of their individual lives, and of the life of the whole people and nation, which are founded on the ways of peace, whereas they will be taught to believe in the ways of war.

9. We shall take them away from all participation in the means and measures of production to the economic loss of the whole nation.

10. We shall lay them open to wholly erroneous ideas of their duties to themselves, to their family, and to society in the matter of independence, self-sufficiency, individual initiative, and what we have come to call American manhood.

11. We shall subject them to encouragement in a belief that they can always live off the labors of others through the government or otherwise.

12. We shall make possible their building into a military caste which from all human experience bodes ill for that equality and unity which must always characterize the citizenry of a republic.

13. By creating an immense standing army, we shall create to our liberties and free institutions a threat foreseen and condemned by the founders of the Republic, and by the people of this country from that time till now. Great standing armies have always been the tools of ambitious dictators to the destruction of freedom.

14. By the creation of a great war machine, we shall invite and tempt the waging of war against foreign countries, upon little or no provocation; for the possession of great military power always breeds thirst for domination, for empire, and for a rule by might not right.

15. By building a huge armed establishment, we shall belie our protestations of peace and peaceful intent and force other nations to a like course of militarism, so placing upon the peoples of the earth crushing burdens of taxation that with their present tax load will hardly be bearable, and that will gravely threaten our social, economic, and governmental systems.

16. We shall make of the whole earth one great military camp whose separate armies, headed by war-minded officers, will never rest till they are at one another’s throats in what will be the most terrible contest the world has ever seen.

17. All the advantages for the protection of the country offered by a standing army may be obtained by the National Guard system which has proved so effective in the past and which is unattended by the evils of entire mobilization.

Responsive to the ancient wisdom, ‘Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it,’ obedient to the divine message that heralded the birth of Jesus the Christ, the Savior and Redeemer of the world, ‘. . . on earth peace, good will toward men,’ and knowing that our Constitution and the Government set up under it were inspired of God and should be preserved to the blessing not only of our own citizenry but, as an example, to the blessing of all the world, we have the honor respectfully to urge that you do your utmost to defeat any plan designed to bring about the compulsory military service of our citizenry. Should it be urged that our complete armament is necessary for our safety, it may be confidently replied that a proper foreign policy, implemented by an effective diplomacy, can avert the dangers that are feared. What this country needs and what the world needs, is a will for peace, not war. God will help our efforts to bring this about.

Respectfully submitted, GEO. ALBERT SMITH, J. REUBEN CLARK, JR., DAVID O. MCKAY, First Presidency.

I actually ran across this on Reddit, where it has been posted by an unhappy former Mormon.  It might be noted, of course, that at that age a large number of Mormons go on missions, which is an effort to consolidate them in their faith, so there was no doubt some reason for Mormon's to be concerned.   While I've heard it claimed that there's no pressure for them to do so, as a demographic, by my observation, they tend to marry young as well, which relates to one of the things noted in the letter, maybe more than one.

Still, the points made are interesting, and not necessarily invalid.  Indeed, almost every point raised in this letter is correct.

There is actually a lot to unpack here, and my own views on this have changed back and forth over the years.  In 1945, when this letter was written, there had only been a single instance of conscription into the Federal Army during peacetime in U.S. history, and that came right before World War Two. There was a history of mandatory militia service, but that had fallen by the wayside after the Civil War.  

Also of note, the National Guard, in peacetime, still did not receive Federal basic training in 1945.  Entry level soldiers were trained by their units by older NCO's delegated that task.  Given this, the nature of the training was always local, but it obviously varied in other ways depending upon who was delivering it.  In the case of this letter, the author could be assured that enlisting young men would have been trained by older soldiers of a like mind, with therefore much of the societal dangers noted avoided.  I'm not sure when the training system actually changed, but I suspect it was by the very late 1940s or certainly by the 1950s.  By the time I was in the Guard the Guard was incredibly integrated into the Regular Army, which is even more the case today.  Enlisting men received regular Army basic and advanced training, and were in the Army when they received it.

When I was younger, I held the view that conscription was a bad thing, save in times of war, as it forced a person to serve against their will.  That's a less developed point than the set of points noted above, but there is a point to it.  Having said that, what I don't think I appreciated earlier is the dangers of a large standing Army, which is why the US had a militia system for defense in the first place. We're seeing a lot of those dangers come into fruition now.  That's not directly related to conscription, it might be noted, but it somewhat is as we have a large, all volunteer, armed forces, which inevitably leads to a sort of military class.  Armed forces with conscripts are much less likely do to that, and therefore they make a much more democratic force that's much less likely to act as praetorian guards for a would be dictator.  

Additionally, as I've grown older I've noted that there's a distinct difference between people who served when asked, and those who avoided it.  Our narcissist in chief in Washington D.C., who avoided serving due to shin splits, is a good example. Donald Trump would have benefited enormously from two years as an enlisted man in the military.  But it's not just him, I've noted this in a lot of men who found a way not to serve.  Their characters would have been better off if they had.

Last edition:

Thursday, December 13, 1945. Crimes against humanity.

Labels: 1940s, 1945, Crimes against humanity, Nazi Germany, War Crimes

Friday, December 7, 1945. Command Responsibility.

Japanese General Tomoyuki Yamashita was found guilty of war crimes in a Manila court and sentenced to death, resulting in the legal principle set forth by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1946 of command responsibility in which a commander can be held accountable before the law for the crimes committed by his troops even if he did not order them.

Hmmm. . . wonder how that might work out today?

Tomoyuki Yamashita. . . who would like to have a word with Pete Hegseth.

The State Department announced plans to resettle 6,600,000 Germans from Eastern Europe in the US and Soviet occupied zones of Germany within eight months.

Last edition:

Wednesday, December 5, 1945. Flight 19.

Labels: 1940s, 1945, A Mystery, Aircraft, Bermuda, Disaster, Florida, France, Socialism, U.S. Navy

Tuesday, October 23, 1945. Signing Robinson.

It was announced that Jackie Robinson had signed with the Kansas City Royals, although he was not to play under the arrangement for a full season, going to the Montreal Royals for the 1946 season.

Robinson in 1946 as a Montreal Royal.

Robinson was a great man, and is justly celebrated, but there's a fair number of myths regarding his pioneering role in integrated baseball.  He was not, for one thing, the first black player in the major leagues.  That honor would inaccurately go to Moses Fleetwood Walker, although he had played in the 19th Century, and is inaccurate itself as William Edward White had played a single major league game prior to that.  White didn't reveal  his race, and therefore is often not credited, but Walker's brother Weldy Walker did, and he also played major league baseball

Moses Fleetwood Walker.

So, in reality, Robinson was the fourth African American ball player known to have played in the majors and the third to acknowledge his racial identify.

Weldy Walker.

1883 letter to editor by Weldy Walker.

Additionally Robinson was not the only black player in the majors in 1947, Larry Doby appeared in the American League two months later, something that has also been planned as far back as 1945.  His appearance, however, had not been accompanied by advance press, as Branch Rickey had done with Robinson.  It just happened.

A surprising part of the story is that Robinson being picked upset a fair number of players in the Negro Leagues who well knew that their talents were superior to Robinson's.  It was Robinson's character, of course, that had lead Ricky to pick him.

If the entire story is pieced together, it makes for an interesting focus on racism in the United States following the Civil War and before the Civil Rights Era.  Racism was intense the entire time, but it can be argued it actually got worse towards the end of the 19th Century.  The Navy had been integrated going into the Spanish American War but forces were at work to end that, and soon did.  Breaking the color barrier was hard for athletes in team sports, but was possible in the 19th Century up until the late 1880s when it became much harder, with it being harder in baseball, where the color barrier was absolute, as opposed to football, where a few men crossed it here and there before the 1946 groundbreaking season.  

World War Two had a lot to do with the color barrier fracturing.

Considerations were being made about the post war military, including a proposal to have a single service (something the Canadians in fact did).  Also proposed was something akin to the pre war German system, a small professional army with a large conscript reserve.

Neither proposal found favor at the time.

Of course, in just a couple of years conscription would in fact be revived, and would remain a feature of American life until 1973.  Watching current events, however, a good argument can be made for just what Truman had proposed here, a very small professional Army with a conscript reserve.  Conscripts are a lot less likely to fire on their friends and neighbors than professionals or volunteers are.

Last edition:

Monday, October 22, 1945. The Handan Campaign (邯郸战役) launched.

Labels: 1940s, 1945, Chinese Civil War, Egypt, It was because of World War Two, Nationalist Chinese Army, People's Liberation Army, The Handan Campaign (邯郸战役), United Nations, Winston Churchill, World War Two

How Super Bowl LX should be informing American Catholics why the populist far right will betray them as soon as it gets a chance.

Last weekend we ran Catholic Ross Douthat's interview with Doug Wilson.  In his interview Douthat kept trying to pin Wilson down on whether there was a place for Catholics in Wilson's vision of a Calvinist theocratic United States. Wilson came down on yes, but he hedged his bets a fair amount.

The real answer to whether members of the New Apostolic Reformation feel that was has been provided by Super Bowl LX.

I don't like football at all.  I won't be watching the halftime game which I always find to be much like professional football itself, grossly overblown.  But it does provide a weathervane to the culture.  The music associated with professional football shows very much who football feels to be the up and coming audience.

The performer chosen was "Bad Bunny".

Bad Bunny is one Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio.  He was born in Puerto Rico.  He sings in Spanish.

Well the late Charlie Kirk's Turning Point USA is having none of it.  It's going to offer its own  “All American Halftime Show”.

Oscasio is an American.  Puerto Ricans have been since March 2, 1917.  They're fully American, and frankly, Puerto Rico ought to be granted statehood, there being absolutely no good reason for it not being a U.S. State at this point.  And, Oscasio is a Christian.  He's a Catholic, whose mother is apparently very devout.

Here's the thing.  Turning Point USA is exhibiting a populist far right Freudian Slip.  Some members of the organization are just too ignorant to know either of these points, but some know them and don't believe that Puerto Ricans are "real" Americans, or that Catholics are Christians.

The last point is particularly ironic.  Lots in the Evangelical far right like to say they're "Bible Believing" Christians, by which they mean sola scriptura Christians. Sola Scriptura is itself Biblically indefensible as St. Paul informed the Thessalonians that they should stand firm in the "traditions" that they had been brought, indicating that there were in fact traditions already.  We know now what those traditions were, as Christians had been writing many of them down in other texts  that didn't end up in the Bible almost from the very beginning.  But more ironic yet is this, the Bible is a Catholic book.

This isn't a matter for debate.  It just is.  We know how the books of the Bible came about, who wrote them, and what they believed.  There was, at the time, just one "holy, catholic and apostolic church", and that was the Catholic Church.  You can add the Orthodox churches to this list today as they directly descend from it.  But in a strict sense, members of various Evangelical churches don't fit into this category.  Indeed, fear of not fitting into it by various Protestant groups has lead some of them to claim membership all along, such as various branches of the Lutheran, Anglican and Methodist churches. They don't dispute that the Catholics and Orthodox are direct descendants of the original Catholic Church, and indeed, they agree that the Catholic Church is the uninterrupted Christian church that Christ founded.  Evangelical churches that don't hold that view are frankly ignorant on this point.

But they are persistent in their ignorance.  So much so, that many of them don't believe that the original Christians, the Catholics, are Christians at all.

We put the Bible together, and the New Testament was written by inspired Catholic authors, but they ignore that.

As I've noted before, and as Wilson conceded, this is a Protestant nation and moreover Wilson was also right that it was founded as a Calvinist one.  That's a major reason that for much of this country's history the Irish, Italians, and other Catholics were detested and even regarded as a separate race.  It's part of why Hispanics are regarded as a separate race today.  Stripped of his fishing tackle piercings, Bad Bunny could look like a Spanish Conquistador. . . not a "Pilgrim".   

Something about the election of Barrack Obama really brought out latent racism in this country.  The Obergefell decision really unleashed a deep dormant conservatism in the population, but one that followed the American Civil Religion rather than real Christianity.  The New Apostolic Reformation took advantage of that and has been advancing its cause under the radar, until recently, when it started doing it more openly, although still not so openly that the fact that we're in the midst of a Christian Nationalist coup right now is appreciated.  Quite a few conservative Catholics, not really well schooled in what far right Evangelical Christians believe, or just badly catechized themselves, have joyously gone along with it, as it seems to address, and to some degree if fact addresses, the cultural rot that has set in, in the Western world.

But it will catch up with us.

Welcome back to the Ghetto.

Blog Mirror: In Anti-Catholic Crusade, Trump's ICE Targets Holy Mass in Chicago

 

In Anti-Catholic Crusade, Trump's ICE Targets Holy Mass in Chicago

Thursday, October 11, 1945. Racism in "the good old days".

The Daughters of the American Revolution refused to allow Trinidadian-born pianist Hazel Scott to give a concert at Constitution Hall in Washington because of her race.

It's worth remembering that the "good old days" some would return us to, weren't so good.

Chile and the Philippines ratified the United Nations Charter.

Last edition:

Wednesday, October 10, 1945. Uncle Mike: "The World's Worst Series".

Labels: 1940s, 1945, 1945 World Series, baseball, Chiang Kai-shek, China, Chinese Civil War, Collaborators, Communism, Korea, Mao Zedong, Nazi Party, Sports, technology, television, Vichy France, World War Two

Sunday, October 11, 1925. The line of duty.

The China Zhi Gong Party as founded in the United States in San Francisco by a pair of exiled former warlords who opposed the the Kuomintang.  It remains today as one of the eight minor Chinese political parties currently permitted to exist as flunkies.

M'eh.

FBI agent Edwin C. Shanahan, was fatally shot after following a suspected car thief, Martin James Durkin, to a garage.  He was the first FBI agent to die in the line of duty.

It was a bit of an immigrants take.  Dunkin was an Irish American, and so was Shanahan.  Cop, and cop killer, both of recent immigrant stock, a story that was not uncommon.

Dunkin was convicted and remained in prison until 1954.  He died in 1981.

The Senators beat the Pirates 6 to 3 in game four of the 1925 World Series.

At Locarno delegates agreed that due consideration would be given to Germany's special military status until such time as a general arms reduction plan could be implemented across Europe. This was thought to secure Germany's entry into the League of Nations.

Last edition:

Saturday, October 10, 1925. The Chinese Imperial Collection.

Labels: 1920s, 1925, 1925 World Series, 1930s, 1937, Art, Chinese Civil War, Clothing, Edgar Franklin Wittmack, Qing Dynasty, Republic of China, Second Sino-Japanese War