Ostensibly exploring the practice of law before the internet. Heck, before good highways for that matter.
Monday, March 18, 2024
Monday, March 18, 1974. Embargo lifted.
Tuesday, March 18, 1924. The high water mark of the Irish Mutiny.
Forty armed Irish soldiers assembled at a hotel in Dublin to plan the next move in the Irish Army Mutiny. A possible coup d'état against the Irish government was on the table.
Loyal Irish troops surrounded the hotel and there was a standoff. The result was that the young Irish government responded by securing the resignation of Irish Army Council members, along with that of Defense Minister Richard Mulcahy.
The mutiny was of the oldest type, an army rebelling for itself. Mulcahy would go on to a long career in Irish government, including as Minister of Education.
A soldier bonus bill was passed in the US.
St. Mark's is a major downtown church in Casper today.
St. Mark's Episcopal Church, Casper Wyoming
This traditionally styled Episcopal Church includes the office buildings for the church a meeting room, kitchen and a day school, so the interior space used for services is smaller than the large exterior might suggest.
The view featured on the bottom photograph could not be seen until recently, as a large house once stood in what is now an open area. The church is across the street from the former St. Anthony's Catholic School, which has moved to a new location across town. The church was built in 1924.
It's stunning to think it was built for $120,000.
The Douglas Fairbanks film, The Thief of Baghdad, was released.
Alice Longworth, the daughter of Theodore Roosevelt, was caught by the paparazzi on the streets of Washington D.C.
Wednesday, February 7, 2024
Thursday, February 7, 1974: Blog Mirror: "Blazing Saddles" Premieres
February 7, 1974: "Blazing Saddles" Premieres
I love that movie.
Mel Brook's great comedic spoof Western movies remains one of the all-time greats. It could not be made today.
Grenada became independent.
Prime Minister Edward Heath called for a dissolution of Parliament and new elections due to the governments' inability to resolve a coal miner's strike.
Coal mining had once been a major industry in the UK but was on its decline by the 1970s. The labor victory would be short lived as the Thatcher government of the 80s began to close coal mines down in a direction that indicated the industry was clearly done for, something she could do because of the nationalization of mines. The trend had been going on since World War Two in any event.
Eight coal fired power plants remain in operation in the UK, all of which are slated to be closed this year. Six underground mines remain in operation, and two open pit mines. Mining communities have not been able to adjust to the change, something which should concern Wyoming.
The Nixon Administration entered into an agreement to revise the 1903 Panama Canal Treaty.
Moro rebels killed 25 civilians on a raid on Pikit, Mindanao.
The Laju Incident in Singapore ended as the combined terrorist attackers from the Japanese Red Army and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine released hostages in exchange for safe passage to the Middle East.
Supposedly the small Japanese Red Army disbanded in 2001, but Japanese authorities maintain a successor organization was founded, and Japanese police have continued to maintain that known members of the group should be arrested. The PFLP still exists. Both groups were/are Communist in nature.
Related threads:
Coal: Understanding the time line of an industry
Saturday, February 3, 2024
Sunday, February 3, 1924. Wilson's Last Sleep
He would in fact die that night, at age 67.
Calvin Coolidge.
While we keep harping on it, and yes medicine has really advanced since 1924, Wilson's death at age 67 wasn't surprising then, and really isn't now. He was old, by age 67. Electing a President older than that is foolish.
Alimony, a film, was released.
Like many films of this era, the plot is melodramatic and a bit hard to follows. Apparently, the female protagonist sells her inventor husband's nifty invention to a wealthy oilman who covets her. She leaves her husband due to a made up affair, demanding a huge alimony, which she obtains. However, she wasn't fooled, and goes on to marry him again on her terms, whatever that means.
Wednesday, January 17, 2024
What's the matter with Wyoming (and Iowa)?
The other day Robert Reich, whose writing I have a love/hate relationship with, wrote this article:
What’s the matter with Iowa?
I'll admit that I was prepared to dismiss it when I started reading it, but I can't. It's a well reasoned article.
I don't think it sums up everything that's "wrong" with Iowa, but it gets some things right. This could just as easily be said, about Wyoming, however:
I saw it happen. When I was helping Fritz Mondale in 1984, I noticed Iowa beginning to shift from family farms to corporate agriculture, and from industrialized manufacturing to knowledge-intensive jobs.
The challenge was to create a new economy for Iowa and for much of the Midwest.
I didn’t have any good ideas for creating that new economy, though — and neither did Mondale, who won Iowa’s Democratic caucuses that year but lost the general election to Ronald Reagan in Iowa and every other state, except his own Minnesota.
Yet not until George W. Bush’s reelection campaign in 2004 did a Republican presidential candidate win Iowa again.
When Tom Vilsack was governor of Iowa in the early 2000s and flirting with the idea of a presidential run, he told me he worried that Iowa’s high school valedictorians used to want to attend the University of Iowa or Iowa State, but now wanted the Ivy League or Stanford or NYU. Even Iowa’s own college graduates were leaving for Chicago, Minneapolis-St. Paul, and New York.
Vilsack wanted to know how to keep Iowa’s talent in Iowa — a variant of the question I couldn’t answer for Mondale. By this time I had a few ideas — setting up high-tech hubs around major universities, blanketing parts of the state with free wi-fi, having community colleges supply the talent local industries needed — but they all cost money that Iowa didn’t have.
As The New York Times’s Jonathan Weisman noted recently, Iowa continues to lose more than 34 percent of its college graduates each year. Illinois, by contrast, gains 20 percent more college graduates than it produces. Minnesota has about 8 percent more college grads than it produces.
This talent migration has hastened America’s split into two cultures, not just in Iowa and the Midwest but across the nation.
But not entirely.
The thing people like Reich don't get is that much of the country doesn't want to become an upper middle class urban cesspool. Places that people like Reich worship are largely abhorrent in living terms. There's a reason that people look to rural areas and an idealized past.
But people also lash themselves to a dead economy as if it'll come back, even if it means losing track of reality at some point, or even if it means becoming something they claim to detest, welfare recipients. This has happened all over the US.
Something needs to be done to revitalize the main street economy, and people like Reich don't have the answers because at the end of the day, all American economists see things the same way. Everything is corporate, the only question is how much, if any, restraint you put on corporations.
Distributism would cure a lot of this.
If we had a more Distributist economy, we'd have a more local one. For rural areas, that'd mean much more local processing of locally produced goods. There's no reason for the concentration of the meat packing industry, for example. Beef could be packed locally. At one time, my family did just that. And that's only one example.
If the economy was reoriented in that fashion, local industry would expand a great deal. The thing is, of course, not all of those jobs would be the glass and steel mind-numbing cubicle jobs that all economists love.
But here's the other thing. As long as the economy is oriented the way it is, rural states are going to be colonies of urban areas, just as much as, let's say, French Indochina was a colony of France, or Kenya a colony of the United Kingdom. Exploitative, in another word. It's not intentionally so, it is an economic reality.
The problem there is that in those sorts of economies everything is produced for export alone, and everything is precarious. That gets back to my Distributist argument above.
But it also gets to a certain cultural thing in which those deeply aligned with the economy, which includes most people, can't see anything thing else. As long as the economy keeps working, that's okay. But when changes come, that can be a disaster.
Wyoming's very first economy was the fur trade, if we discount the native economy (which is a real economy, and accordingly should not be discounted). Contrary to the popular belief, the fur trade was not displaced, it just was never really very large, and therefore it diminished in importance when other things came in.
The other things were 1) agriculture, which came first, followed by the 2) extractive industries. Both are still with us. Agriculture has suffered to a degree as the naturally distributist industries that support it have been sacrificed on the altar of corporate economics and consolidation. The state, for its part, did nothing to arrest that trend and simply let it happen. In part, that's because the state has always deeply worshiped the thought that the extractive industries will make us all rich and nothing is to be interfered with, including losing local production of the raw resources that are first produced here. I.e., we don't refine the oil as much as we used to, we don't pack the meat, we don't process the wool. . . .
And the extractive industries certainly have made a lot of people and entire communities rich, there's no question of it.
But the handwriting is on the wall. Coal is declining and will continue to do so. And a massive shift in petroleum use is occurring, which Wyoming cannot stop. Petroleum will still be produced far into the future, but its use as a fuel is disappearing. Petrochemicals, on the other hand, are not.
We seemingly like to think we can stop those things from changing in any form. We've tried to through lawsuits and legislation. And yet it turns out that people buying EV's don't listen to our litigation or legislation, any more than they do to Nebraska's Senator Deb Fischer's whining about recharging station funding. Like some who can't face death due to illness, we'll grasp at what we can, rather than adjust.
Part of that is listening to people who tell us what we want to hear. A lot of politicians have tried to gently tell us the truth of what we're facing. Governor Gordon did just recently. When they do that, they're castigated for it.
In 1962's The Days of Wine and Roses the plot follows a man who is a social drinker and introduces alcohol to his girlfriend. They marry, and over time they become heavy drinkers. He finally stops drinking, his wife having left him, and finds her in an apartment, where she is now a hardcore alcoholic. He resumes drinking then and there, in order to be with her.
In the end, however, he reforms and quits. She doesn't. We know how that will end.
That's a lot like Wyomingites in general. We've received the hard knocks and blows. Some of us are going to put the bottle down and face the day, some are not going to under any circumstances.
For some, it's easier to believe that a "dictator for a day" can order the old economy restored and reverse fifty years of demographic change, while reversing supply, demand, and technology to sort of 1970s status. In other words, go ahead and have another drink, it won't hurt you.
But in reality, it might, and probably will.
Wednesday, January 10, 2024
Thursday, January 10, 1924. Soaring oil prices.
The sort of headlines that Wyomingites love to read, at least until they go to buy gasoline at the pump.
The Cohn-Brandt-Cohn film company (CBC) changed its name to Columbia Pictures.
France imposed a curfew on the Rhineland and closed its borders, save for railroads and food transportation. The move was due to the murder of Franz Josef Heinz the prior day. The French were so strict on the matter that they refused to let British officials in to investigate separatist movements connected with the incident.
Related Threads:
1917 The Year that made Casper what it is. Or maybe it didn't. Or maybe it did.
Monday, December 25, 2023
Christmas Day, 1943.
Raids on Berlin by the Royal Air Force and the U.S. Army Air Force were temporarily halted. The Luftwaffe likewise conducted no raids on the United Kingdom.
Sixty-four prisoners tunneled out of the Ninth Fort in Lithuania. The facility housed mostly Lithuanian Jews. About half would be recaptured by mid-January.
U.S. Task Force 50.2 raided Kavieng, New Guinea, with aircraft, sinking a Japanese transport ship.
The Scharnhorst departed northern Norway to attack Convoy JW-55B.
The epic The Song of Bernadette was released.
The film tells the story of St. Bernadette Soubirous, the French peasant woman who saw the Virgin Mary at Lourdes.
Attending movies at Christmas, and even on Christmas Day, is a tradition with a lot of people, although I've never done it.
Saturday, December 16, 2023
Thursday, December 14, 2023
Tuesday, December 14, 1943. The Death of Captain Waskow.
The French Committee of National Liberation granted French citizenship to Algerians classified as "Moslem elites", those being the ability to fluently read and write French. It was expected that this would enfranchise between 20,000 to 30,000 Algerians.
This also abandoned a prior requirement that those obtaining French citizenship abandon Islam.
This would have been a huge move had it come in the 30s, but now, it would prove to be too little, too late.
The Germans raided Nantua, France, in reprisal for resistance activities.
Allied aircraft raided Luftwaffe airfields near Athens at Eleusis, Kalamaki and Tatoi, as well as the harbor facilities at Piraeus in the heaviest raid on Greece to date.
Sarah Sundin's blog, reports that:
Today in World War II History—December 14, 1943: US Army Air Force decides to stop using camouflage paint on planes, with the exception of night fighters and transports, to increase speed and range.
The Red Army took Cherkasy.
John Harvey Kellogg, creator of cornflakes (1878) and founder of the Battle Creek Sanitarium ain Battle Creek, Michigan, died at age 91.
Monday, December 4, 2023
Tuesday, December 4, 1923. House Session Breaks Up In Vote Deadlock. Vaccination Ruling To Be Put To Test.
Somewhere I've seen a t-shirt advertised that says "Study history, realize people have been this dumb for thousands of years."
Yup.
Big events at the movies. The Ten Commandments by Cecil B. DeMille. . . .the first one, was released. It was silent, of course. Some of it, however, was filmed in technicolor.
At least one of the movie posters for what would become the most popular film of 1924 depicted moderns in the throes of agony for, presumably, violating one of the Commandments. This is because the two-hour-long movie is divided into two parts, one a prologue depicting Exodus, the second a modern melodrama.
Sunday, December 3, 2023
Monday, December 3, 1923. Congress Convenes In Spectacular Fight; Bitter Battle Marks Failure In Voting For House Speaker, a child actor, and a Napoleonic drama.
Headline ripped, um, right from yesterday?
Well, at least an orange haired tycoon associated with dubiousity wasn't involved.
Seven coal miners at the Nunnery Colliery in the United Kingdom were killed when a rope hauling a mine transport severed.
Interestingly, at least to me, an elevator cable severed in an elevator I was riding in last week. It was retroactively horrifying, but not like this.
Released on this date in 1923. It was the first film to feature Peggy-Jean Montgomery, aka "Baby Peggy".
She died at age 101 in 2020, being the last person with a substantial career in the silent film industry. She struggled in later years to disassociate herself from her childhood role, which brought her derision from other in the industry. She became a successful author, and was a convert to Catholicism.
Published on this date:
Saturday, November 18, 2023
Can somebody please ban the moronic Christmas movies?
You know what I mean. Pretty much any Christmas movie made since It's A Wonderful Life, save for A Christmas Story.
They are freakin awful. The worst are anything that starts with "National Lampoon's". National Lampoon is a byword for "pretentious, juvenile, and stupid".
Make them stop.
Sunday, November 12, 2023
Saturday, November 11, 2023
Thursday, November 11, 1943. Armistace Day.
It was Armistice Day for 1943.
The Moscow Conference came to an end.
French security forces raided the homes of President El Khoury, Prime Minister Riad Al Solh, and all but two members of the Cabinet, including future President Camille Chamoun, in reaction to the unilateral Lebanese repeal of the League of Nations' mandate over the country.
High Commissioner Helleu suspended the Lebanese constitution and appointed Émile Eddé as the new President.
The dissolution and unraveling of the French Empire had commenced.
In France, Armée Secrète Resistance fighters led by Colonel Henri Romans-Petit placed flowers at the foot of the memorial for the dead of the Great War in an act of bold defiance of the Germans.
The Red Army took Radomyshi.
Allied bombing of Rabaul ended following a final raid, with nearly every Japanese ship there disabled or destroyed.
Sarah Sundin notes something about that raid:
Today in World War II History—November 11, 1943: In Rabaul raid, US Navy Curtiss SB2C Helldiver makes its combat debut. US Eighth Air Force activates “Carpetbagger” squadrons to deliver supplies to resistance.
The film Sahara, with heroic Allies stranded in the desert, and even a sympathetic Italian character, holding off the Germans, was released.
Three Allied transport ships and a tanker are sunk east of Oran in a major Luftwaffe raid.
Sunday, November 5, 2023
Friday, November 5, 1943. Task Force 38 at Rabaul, Marines at Bougainville, Red Army in Ukraine, US and British Armies in Italy, Somebody's air force over the Vatican, A Martyr
Task Force 38's aircraft attacked the Imperial Japanese Navy squadron detected the day prior, resulting in the Japanese sustaining damage to 4 heavy cruisers, 2 light cruisers and 2 destroyers. Ten American planes were lost.
Ground based B-24s hit Rabaul and the squadron later that day.
The 3d Marine Division defeated a counterattack on Bougainville by the Japanese Army's 23d Regiment.
The French Resistance set off bombs in the Peugeot factor at Sochaux. The target was regarded as France's third most important one by the British Ministry of Economic Warfare due to its production of machinery used for tank turret production.
The Red Army began to encircle Kiev.
Offensive operations by the U.S. 5th Army on the Reinhard Line in Italy fail. The British 8th Army captured Vasto, Palmoli and Terrebruna.
Also on the Italian peninsula, four areal bombs hit Vatican City. IT was never clear whose air force was responsible, but a RAF crew had released bombs after developing engine trouble while not quite knowing where it was.
A gendarme on duty reported:
I distinctly heard the continuous noise of an aircraft flying at low altitude. I could not see it, prevented by the darkness. From the noise of the engine it seemed to me that the aircraft was coming from the northeast. It flew over the Vatican Railway Station and then went a little further away and immediately turned back. I almost immediately heard a hiss and a prolonged burst that gave me the impression of the almost simultaneous explosion of several bombs. The first of them fell on the escarpment near the boundary wall of the Vatican City State on the side of St. Peter's Station; the second one fell on the terrace of the Mosaic Studio; a third one behind the Governorate Palace and a fourth one in the Vatican Gardens in a location that I could not identify at the moment.
Sarah Sundin notes:
80 Years Ago—Nov. 5, 1943: Capt. Clark Gable leaves England, having flown 5 missions with the US Eighth Air Force, with footage for his documentary, Combat America.
The U.S. 56th Fighter Group, flying P-47s, became the first Eighth Air Force fighter group credited with 100 enemy aircraft destroyed.
German Catholic Priest Benhard Lichtenberg, 67 years of age, died while being transported in a cattle car to Dachau. 4, 000 mourners attended his funeral in Berlin.
An outspoken anti-Nazi, he was beatified in 1996.
Congress passed the Connally Resolution, which stated:
Senate Resolution 192-Seventy-Eighth Congress, November 5, 1943
Resolved, That the war against all our enemies be waged until complete victory is achieved.
That the United States cooperate with its comrades-in-arms in securing a just and honorable peace.
That the United States, acting through its constitutional processes, join with free and sovereign nations in the establishment and maintenance of international authority with power to prevent aggression and to preserve the peace of the world.
That the Senate recognizes the necessity of there being established at the earliest practicable date a general international organization, based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all peace-loving states, and open to membership by all such states, large and small, for the maintenance of international peace and security
That, pursuant to the Constitution of the United States, any treaty made to effect the purposes of this resolution, on behalf of the Government of the United States with any other nation or any association of nations, shall be made only by and with the advice and consent of the Senate of the United States, provided two-thirds of the Senators present concur.
The German submarine U-848 was depth charged and sunk by an American aircraft off Ascension Island in the South Atlantic Ocean.
Guadalcanal Diary was released.
Tuesday, October 31, 2023
Wednesday, October 31, 1923. Too many beans.
Thursday, October 12, 2023
Saturday, October 7, 2023
October 7, 1943. Murder
The Germans murdered 1,313 Jewish former residents of the Bialystok Ghetto at Auschwitz. Most of them were children. Bialystok's ghetto had seen a failed uprising.
Over 100 people, mostly Italian civilians, were killed when a bomb planted by the Germans went off at the post office in Naples.
The Japanese murdered 97 American civilians who had been held on Wake Island under the orders of Japanese naval commander Shigematsu Sakaibara (酒井原 繁松). He'd be sentenced to death for the event after the war.
Sakaibara believed an American landing was imminent, which would not justify in any fashion the murders. It was, however, what led him to give the order. After at first denying the murders had occured, he would ultimately confess to them and express regret, but also maintain that the Allies had no authority to try him and that his sentence was unjust following the American use of nuclear weapons.
The New Georgia Campaign came to an end with an Allied victory.
Lassie Come Home, the first Lassie film, was released.