Blog Mirror: A trip back home to get my bearings

A trip back home to get my bearings

Saturday, July 6, 1974. Live from Lake Wobegon.

Minnesota Public Radio broadcast the first episode of A Prairie Home Companion. It had an audience of only twelve.

Last edition:

Saturday, June 29, 1974. Art and politics.

Labels: 1970s, 1974, Argentina, Art, British Empire, Colonialism, Dancing, Diplomacy, French Empire, Mexico, New Hebrides, Richard Nixon

The Ongoing 2023 Legislative Session of Other States.

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

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

May 21, 2023

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

It also passed a new gun measure.

June 3, 2023

Connecticut banned marriages under 18 with no exceptions.

September 7, 2023

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

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

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

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

October 3, 2023

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

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

October 8, 2023

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

January 4, 2024

Passed last year, some new state laws:

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

Monday, July 16, 1923. Summer session.

Wyoming's second, in its history up to that point, special legislative session convened in Cheyenne to address its state farm loan provisions.

Magnus Johnson of the left-wing Minnesotan Farmer-Labor Party was elected to the U.S. Senate in a special election.  This meant that both of Minnesota's senators were members of the party.

The Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party was a hugely successful third party in that state, coming to control the legislature during the Depression, as well as providing the bulk of Minnesota's Congressional representation.  During the Depression, however, the American Farm Bureau became the primary representative for farmers, and it was hostile to the party.  In 1944 Hubert Humphrey took the party into the Democratic Party, and it ceased to exist.  Humphrey, moreover, expelled the Communists from the organization, whose presence showed how radical it actually was.

The Democratic Party in that state is technically the Democratic Farmer Labor Party

The Depression arrived for farmers in the U.S. before the rest of the general public, which likely explains the rise of the Farmers Labor Party in Minnesota, which was heavily agricultural and also heavily influenced by the left wing politics of Scandinavia where many of its residents had roots.

Johnson was Swedish born and had a semi successful political career, winning and losing.  He was also a farmer.

Italy and the UK agreed to call an international conference on German reparations, irrespective of whether France would participate or not.

Fairbanks, Alaska presented President Harding with a special collar for Laddie Boy.

Monday, December 18, 1922. The Denver Mint Robbery

 

A deadly robbery of the Denver mint resulted in $200,000 being stolen, and one guard and one thief losing their lives.

$80,000 of the $200,000 was recovered in early 1923 in Minnesota, along with money traced to a prior bank robbery.  No arrests were ever made, although authorities believed they had largely solved the mystery of who committed the robbery about a decade later, by which time most of those who were involved with it, assuming the authorities were correct, were dead or in prison.

Three days of fascists attacks on union members in Turin, Italy, commenced.

The de Bothezat helicopter, nicknamed "the flying octopus", made its first flight

Thursday, August 17, 1922. Flying boats, watermelons, and medals.

On this day, the Sampaio Correia, a H-16 Curtiss Flying boat, prepared to make the long journey to Brazil from New York for an expedition in Rio De Janero.

 Secretary of War Weeks presided over the awarding of medals to a collection of Army officers.

Watermelon boats were photographed delivering their loads to transportation at dockside.

Forest fires raged in Minnesota, leaving six dead and hundreds homeless.

Byzantine Catholic Priest Vladimir Abrikosov was arrested by Soviet authorities for persuading Russians to become Catholic.  He was at first sentenced to death, but was ultimately expelled.

The Bureau of Prohibition warned establishment owners that they could be held criminally liable for breaking the prohibition laws if they allowed their patrons to bring alcohol in themselves is flasks.

May 23, 1921. Cities on the Red River, Harding on Memorial Day, the Seeger's go camping.

Moorhead, Minnesota and Fargo, North Dakota, are a across the Red River from each other.  On this day in 1921 they were photographed. 

In Leipzig, war crimes trials commenced. Only twelve Germans would stand trial, but the concept of trying an enemy combatant was a new one which became established as a result of the Great War.  The results were mixed.

Also on this day, President Harding issued a Memorial Day address, which stated:

Our republic has been at war before, it has asked and received the supreme sacrifices of its sons and daughters, and faith in America has been justified. Many sons and daughters made the sublime offering and went to hallowed graves as the Nation’s defenders. But we never before sent so many to battle under the flag in foreign land, never before was there the impressive spectacle of thousands of dead returned to find eternal resting place in the beloved homeland…

These dead know nothing of our ceremony today. They sense nothing of the sentiment or the tenderness which brings their wasted bodies to the homeland for burial close to kin and friends and cherished associations. These poor bodies are but the clay tenements once possessed of souls which flamed in patriotic devotion, lighted new hopes on the battle grounds of civilization, and in their sacrifices sped on to accuse autocracy before the court of eternal justice.

We are not met for them, though we love and honor and speak a grateful tribute. It would be futile to speak to those who do not hear or to sorrow for those who cannot sense it or to exalt those who cannot know. But we can speak for country, we can reach those who sorrowed and sacrificed through their service, who suffered through their going, who glory with the Republic through their heroic achievements, who rejoice in the civilization, their heroism preserved. Every funeral, every memorial, every tribute is for the living–an offering in compensation of sorrow. When the light of life goes out there is a new radiance in eternity, and somehow the glow of it relieves the darkness which is left behind.
Never a death but somewhere a new life; never a sacrifice but somewhere an atonement; never a service but somewhere and somehow an achievement. These had served, which is the supreme inspiration in living. They have earned everlasting gratitude, which is the supreme solace in dying…

I would not wish a Nation for which men are not willing to fight and, if need be, to die, but I do wish for a nation where it is not necessary to ask that sacrifice. I do not pretend that millennial days have come, but I can believe in the possibility of a Nation being so righteous as never to make a war of conquest and a Nation so powerful in righteousness that none will dare invoke her wrath. I wish for us such an America. These heroes were sacrificed in the supreme conflict of all human history. They saw democracy challenged and defended it. They saw civilization threatened and rescued it. They saw America affronted and resented it. They saw our Nation’s rights imperiled and stamped those rights with a new sanctity and renewed security.

We shall not forget, no matter whether they lie amid the sweetness and the bloom of the homeland or sleep in the soil they crimsoned. Our mindfulness, our gratitude, our reverence shall be in the preserved Republic and maintained liberties and the supreme justice for which they died. 

Warren G. Harding

 The professor Charles Seeger family went camping.

The baby in the photo is Pete Seeger.

March 15, 1941. Storms

On this day in 1941, a huge blizzard struck in North Dakota and Minnesota. The storm resulted in 71 deaths by some counts and a 151 by others.  By some measures is regarded as the worst blizzard in modern history, although there could obviously be other contenders.

German surface raiders were busy:

Today in World War II History—March 15, 1941

Franklin Roosevelt gave his first public radio address on Lend Lease, promising to carry through until victory:

March 15, 1941: On Lend Lease

Glen Miller and his Orchestra released their version of The Song of the Volga Boatmen, sort of a surprise and a surprise hit.   The tune is a traditional Russian folk tune.

The SOE dropped Free French Paratroopers, five in number, in France on a mission to ambush German pilots on their way to their airfield.  The pilots no longer took that route, however, so the mission failed.  Ultimately two of the five would be extracted after a month, during which their commander independently had instructed them to conduct reconnaissance.

June 16, 1920 Violence

June 15, 1920 Killings

A mob lynched three African American circus workers in Duluth, Minnesota after rumors circulated that black men had raped a white woman. A subsequent physician's inspection of the accuser came to the conclusion that there was no evidence of rape.

A memorial to the victims of the lynching was built in 2003.  The horrific event is also recalled in the first stanza of Bob Dylan's Desolation Row.  While the recent death of George Floyd in Minneapolis has been termed a lynching, this horrific 1920 event stands out as the only mob lynching of blacks in Minnesota's history.  There are other instances of lynchings, including lynchings of Native Americans, but this one stands apart for that reason as well as its horrific nature.  It pretty clearly demonstrated that the horror of lynching, which had been much in the news in 1919, could occur anywhere in the nation.

Another homicide was making the headlines on one of Casper's two newspapers.  James Clark, well known Douglas area rancher, age 54, was shot and killed by Roy Benning, an automobile mechanic. 

The cause of the killing seemed to be an argument over Clark's very brief marriage to Benning's daughter, which had been of only a week or so in length.  It had then been annulled.  The putative Mrs. Clark was 16 years old.

While exactly what occurred was unclear at the time, what seems probable is that the Benning family wasn't thrilled by their very young daughter marrying the middle aged rancher at a time at which 54 wasn't middle aged, it was old.  Clark and Benning had engaged in an argument over that event and both men were armed. Clark was armed with a .45 revolver which appeared to have misfired several times before Benning shot and killed him with a small caliber pistol.

Candidate Harding's household cook was photographed for the news wires.

  Inez P.McWhorter, Harding family's cook.

Things seemed to be slow in Washington D. C., where weekday summertime golfing at Chevy Chase was being enjoyed.

Senator Howard Southerland, just recently a candidate for the Republican nomination, and then a Harding supporter, playing golf.

Justice Vandevanter and Justice McKenna of the United States Supreme Court enjoying watching golf at Chevy Chase.

North Schleswig and Southern Jutland were transferred to Denmark from Germany, as part of the post World War One territorial adjustments, although the Allies provisionally retain sovereignty of Jutland. Denmark was granted sovereignty over Southern Jutland on July 15 and then back dated it.  Schleswig was the only territorial adjustment made concerning Germany which the Germans didn't dispute following the rise of the Nazis.

And a famous radio broadcast took place in the UK.

Dame Nellie Melba's voice was broadcast from the Marconi Company station at Chelmsford in Essex, United Kingdom, for a period of thirty minutes

Strife

Denver put a curfew in place and the Colorado National Guard has been called out to address riots in the Centennial State's capitol city.

National Guardsmen of the 40th Armored Division, California National Guard, August, 1965.

The riots stem from several recent incidents of violent deaths of African Americans, the most recent at the hands of a policeman in Minneapolis Minnesota.

Those riots have spread all across the urban United States.  It's hard, from a distance, to grasp why hundreds of miles away from the scene of the offense riots take place against a community that didn't participate in the offense.  It points to something underlying, and the pundits will be full of analysis over it over the next several weeks.

But on the topic in general, distant riots aren't calculated to achieve anything and end up punishing the communities that were affiliated by them.  Businesses move, employment drops, and those who were deprived to start with are more deprived.  It's a compounding tragedy.

And its one that, in this context, we should be well past.  And yet we're not.

November 22, 1919. Carlisle Missing, Labor having a party, Petroleum and its costs.

Those following the posts here recently (fewer in number now that the Great War and the drama associated with it are over, somewhat), have been reading about the quixotic flight of Wyoming train robber, Bill Carlisle and may be disappointed to not find him here again.  Well, the pursuit having fizzled, he was off the front page.  He was out there, hiding, or something, but posses headed for the Hole in the Wall or expecting another train robbery were disappointed, and therefore the local newspaper's readers were as well.  Instead, they read about the coal strike and increased tension with Mexico.

First national convention of the Labor Party, Chicago Ill.  November 22, 1919

In Chicago a new political party was meeting, the Labor Party of the United States. This back when third parties still had a chance of success.

This party wouldn't have much, as such.  It merged with another party in 1921 to become the Farmer Labor Party.  That party lasted until 1936 when a further merger created the Federated Farmer Labor Party, which became the Minnesota Farmer Labor Party at that time.  It lasted until 1944.

The populist party was a left wing populist social democratic party.  Three of its members occupied the Minnesota state house as governor from 1931 until 1939, showing it to be successful.  It also sent Congressmen to Washington every year from 1918 until 1942, save for one year.  One year it sent five Congressman back east.  Four Minnesota Senators were also members of the party or associated with it.  In 1944 it reorganized and became the Minnesota Democratic Farmer Labor Party which is affiliated with the Democratic Party, meaning that its relevance is minimal in real terms.  Democrats in Minnesotal are part of the Minnesota Democratic Farmer Labor Party whether they know it or not, meaning that current Presidential candidate Amy Klobuchar is a member of it.

"Block 818 from the west".  November 22, 1919.

Down in Texas more panoramic photos of big oil fields were being photographed.  

Elsewhere, the Gasoline Alley bunch was meeting and pondering the costs of transportation.

Thanksgiving Day, then as now, was coming right up.  On this Saturday The Literary Digest anticipated the holiday on its cover with a Rockwell illustration.  Thanksgiving day itself in 1919 was on November 27.

The Enigma of Western Writers.

This post is on Western writers.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I doubt it.

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

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

Anyhow, some observations.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Maybe.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Anyhow, something to ponder.

June 22, 1919: Reichstag votes to accept the Versailles Treaty, Allies engage in sports, Faroe's display flag, Minnesota hit by tornado.

On this day in 1919 the Reichstag voted 237 to 138 to accept the Versailles Treaty, while its Supreme Counsel also rejecting the war guilt clauses.  The Reichstag vote sealed the question of whether Germany would sign the peace agreement, or endure an Allied invasion of its territory.  It voted to accept.

While the Germans were gathering to vote to tend the war, the Allies were holding the Inter Allied Games, an Olympic like event restricted to serving Allied soldiers or discharged Allied soldiers. The event was held in Paris' new Pershing Stadium.

The inaugural events were clearly impressive.

The Arabs wouldn't be getting independent countries for siding with the Allies, but they did get their own team at the event.

In the Faroe Islands, a Danish dependency, displayed its flag unofficially for the first time on this day at a wedding.

The Faroe's have their own language and are culturally distinct. An independence movement has existed on the islands since the late 19th Century and it was growing at this time.  Further developments would lead to the Faroe's declaring independence in 1946, which was accordingly rejected by Denmark, but which did grant the islands home rule.  They did not follow Denmark into the European Community and therefore are outside of it.

Fergus Falls was hit by a terrible tornado that killed 57 people, the second worst tornadic event in Minnesota's history.

Fergus Falls, Minn. after the cyclone, June 22, 1919,

Countdown on the Great War: The Flu Marches On, The German Navy Quits the Air but not the Sea, The British start Demobilizing in the Desert. October 12, 1918.

Women marching in a Liberty Loan Campaign.

1. General Pershing relieves himself as commander of the 1st Army and turns command of it over to Gen. Hunter Liggett. This occurred as the 2nd Army had been formed on October 10 and Pershing was the overall commander of the AEF, which had now grown to two armies.

Scene at advanced first aid station of the 325th Inf. Wounded arriving on stretchers, while in the background a German munitions dump is burning at Marcq. American Red Cross north of Fleville, Ardennes, France

2.  The Imperial German Navy flew its last airship mission of World War One.  The German navy commanded the Zepplin fleet that had been used to bomb targets in Great Britain.

3.  The Imperial German Navy remained active in the Atlantic, however and damaged the USAT Amphion and sank the Norwegian cargo ship Laila and the Italian ship Tripoli II.  The Swedish ship Ohio collided with another ship in a British escorted convoy and also sank.

4.  Shipping wise, the RMS Niagra docked in New Zeland brining the Spanish Flu with it.

5.   Fire ignited by railroad sparks destroyed Cloquest Minnesota and resulted in the deaths of 453 people.

6.  While there was no official talk of there being a Central Powers collapse, the British began to demobilize its forces in the Middle East in light of the Otttoman collapse there.

6th Australian light-horse regiment leaving Jerusalem for demobilization camp. Oct. 12th, 1918.

7.  Flu deaths were now undeniably rising.