January 2, the most dreaded work day of the year.

Or so I suppose.

The work tally for the prior year is in, for good or ill.  The heavy lifting of the upcoming year, and there will be some, has not yet begun. The last two weeks of any year are, for most occupations, darned near idle, and so whether days are taken off or not, a sort of holiday atmosphere of ease prevails.

Until January 2 comes around and ends it.

Happy New Year.

Saturday, January 1, 1944. Sort of independence.

Syria became independent theoretically, but the French mandate continued.

The RAF bombed Berlin again.

The War Department was pondering its policies regarding African American soldiers.

From Sarah Sundin's blog:

Today in World War II History—January 1, 1944: Gen. Alexander Vandegrift replaces Gen. Thomas Holcomb as commandant of the US Marine Corps. US penny production switches from steel to a copper & brass alloy.

USC Trojans beat the Washington Huskies 29-0 in the Rose Bowl, Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets defeated Tulsa Golden Hurricane 20-18 in the Sugar Bowl., the LSU Tigers beat the Texas A&M Aggies 19-14 in the Orange Bow, the Cotton Bowl Classic ended in a 7–7 tie between the Randolph Field Ramblers and the Texas Longhorns.

Friday, December 31, 1943. New Years Eve

 

No ball was dropped in Times Square for the second year in a row.

With a strange mixture of abandon and restraint, San Francisco accorded 1943 a reasonable facsimile of the traditional year-end sendoff last night, and then settled back for a more or less sober inspection of A. D. 1944.

San Francisco Examiner.

Friday, given the nature of the celebrations of New Years, is a particularly good day for the end of the year to fall on.

Not everyone was celebrating:

Photo of a U.S air raid on a ball bearing plant near Paris, December 31, 1943.

Today in World War II History—December 31, 1943: The US Victory Book Campaign closes due to inefficiency of the program and to the publication of the Armed Services Editions books.

A remarkable entry by Sarah Sundin.

She also notes:

The Marines secured an airfield on Cape Gloucester; and

The commissioning of the USS Cassin Young, which is a museum ship today (photo on blog included).  Ms. Sundin, it should be noted, has an article on museum destroyers.  I'd like to visit one.  I've been on battleships and submarines, but not destroyers.

Hitler delivered a New Year's message to the Germans admitting that the Third Reich had suffered heavy reverses in and that the upcoming year would require more, and in fact would approach the crisis level.  He also noted that the Allies would land on the Atlantic Coast.

It's often noted, and apparently correctly, that the German people didn't really appreciate the dire circumstances they were in until January 1945.  While that seems to be true, it's hard to understand, given that they were certainly getting lots of bad news, in this case even from the very top.

It should be noted that the concluding year, 1943, was the one in which not only did German battlefield fortunes begin to massively decline, but that an accompanying massive expansion of the Holocaust began.

In preparation for those landings, Field Marshall Rommel was inspecting fortifications on the coast of Northern France.

Douglas MacArthur visited troops under his command, including this group of Native American soldiers.

From left: Staff Sergeant Virgil Brown (Pima), First Sergeant Virgil F. Howell (Pawnee), Staff Sergeant Alvin J. Vilcan (Chitimacha), General MacArthur, Sergeant Byron L. Tsingine (Diné [Navajo]), Sergeant Larry Dekin (Diné [Navajo]).

Deputy Prime Minister Clement Attlee broadcast a New Years Eve message to the British people promising that the "hour of reckoning" had come for Germany, but also warning that 1944 would involve heavy sacrifice.

The Red Army captured Zhytomyr.

Argentina's President, Gen. Pedro Ramirez, dissolved political parties and restored the requirement of Roman Catholic education in all Argentine public schools.

Henry John Deutschendorf Jr. (John Denver) was born in Rosewell, New Mexico.

Sub Lt. G.C. Morris flying Spitfire P8537 of 761 Squadron attempting land on HMS Ravager without a tail wheel - New Year's Eve 1943.

Monday, December 31, 1923. New Years Eve

The Seine overflowed its banks in Paris, and the Neva in Petrograd.

The news of the last day of the year was grim:

Aircraft designer Fokker appeared on the cover of Time:

Blog Mirror: Vintage New Year’s Eve Party Hats Photos

 

Vintage New Year’s Eve Party Hats Photos

Thursday, December 20, 1923. Setback in Mexico.

 Mexican revolutionaries were suffering a set back.

And Congress went on vacation.

The German arms manufacturing company, which also manufactured other things, started finding workers who refused to work a ten-hour day.

The Dixmude, a war prize German Zeppelin in French service, exploded in midair, with all hands lost.

A comment about Wyoming Catholic Cowboys - raw and real: Hog Leg. Sunday games, rural activities, and gatherings.

Soccer, Scotland, 1830s.

Wyoming Catholic Cowboys - raw and real: Hog Leg: Nothing says America like shooting guns and watching the Super Bowl. A nice sunny afternoon was the perfect time to try out my newly borrowe...

This is interesting.

The Super Bowl used to be a bigger deal in this house than it now is. Seems like a lot of things once were.

I’m not a football fan at all, and I didn't really start watching the Super Bowl until my wife and I were married.  She is a football fan and will watch the season, and always watches the Super Bowl.  

When we were first married, there were Super Bowl parties.  We didn't have kids at first, and my wife's brothers were young at the time.  Later, however, it carried on until the kids were teens.  Then something changed, including the giving up of the farm (the farm, not the ranch), longer travel distances, and some residential changes at the ranch.  Ultimately, the parties just sort of stopped, although I'm sure my two brothers-in-law, who live in houses at the ranch yard, still observe a party, and my father and mother-in-law, who live a few miles away, likely travel to that.

Much lower key than it used to be.  No big gatherings like there once were.

Back in the day, we had a couple of them at our house.

Basically, the dining fare was always simple. Sandwiches bought at one of the local grocery stores, chips and beer.  Typical football stuff.

At some parties at the farm, there were bowling pin shooting matches. For those not familiar with them, people shot bowling pins from some distance with pistols.  It was fun.  Frankly, I don't think a lot of people are all that interested in the Super Bowl to start with, and at least at the Super Bowl parties with bowling pin matches people went out to the match, and it ran into the game, which says something.

The other day also, I wrote on community.

I note this because, at one time, Schuetzen matches were big deals in German American communities.  And while they involved rifles, and indeed very specialized rifles, they were also big community events.

And such things aren't unique to just those mentioned.  In parts of the country, men participating in "turkey shoots" were pretty common.  

Of course, shooting clubs and matches still exist nearly everywhere, and lots of men, and women, participate in matches.  

Less common, however, are the rural informal matches.

All sorts of rural activities were once associated with holidays, and events.  I guess that the Super Bowl is some sort of large-scale informal civil holiday, even though of course it always occurs on a Sunday.  Indeed, the playing of the game on a Sunday is curious.  I put a little (very little) time looking into that, and found this CBS Sports comment on it, which it must be first noted explained that football really started being popular in the 1920s.

Sunday was a free day during a decade where it was common to work on Saturdays, so the APFA played most of their games on that day. Fast forward 30 years to the advent of television networks, who were desperately looking for programming on Sundays in the 1950s.

That makes some sense to me, as I still work on Saturdays.

I'd note, however, that is this makes sense, it doesn't quite explain why baseball games occur all throughout the week, and I think there are Monday night professional football games as well, albeit televised ones.

I wonder, however, if it has deeper roots than that. American football is the successor to Rugby, and Rugby and Soccer were hugely popular in the United Kingdom.  Prior to major league fun sucker Oliver Cromwell taking over the English government, in the United Kingdom, Sunday had been a day for church and then games.

This went back to Medieval times, before the Reformation.  People worked, and worked hard, six days out of seven, but on the seventh, they rested. And resting meant going to Mass, and then having fun, and fun often meant games and beer, as well as other activities.  In spite of their best efforts, major Protestant reformers weren't really able to make a dent in village observance of tradition until Cromwell came in and really started ruining things.  To Calvinist of the day like Cromwell, Sunday was a day for church and nothing else, although contrary to what some may suspect they were not opposed to alcohol.  Cromwell's Puritan government banned sports.

It's no wonder he was posthumously beheaded.

Cromwell and his ilk did a lot of damage to the Christian religion in the Untied Kingdom, and if you really want to track the decline in religious observance in the UK to something, you can lay it somewhat at the bottom of his severed head.  Indeed, while hardly noted, what we're seeing going on today, in some ways, is the final stages of the Reformation playing out, and playing out badly.

Anyhow, after Cromwell was gone and the Crown restored, games came back, and they came back on Sunday.  Not just proto-football, but all sorts of games.  And games became hugely associated with certain religious holidays in the United Kingdom.  The day after Christmas, Boxing Day, is one such example, as is New Years, the latter of which is a religious holiday in and of itself.

I suspect, however, that this had a lasting influence.  I don't know for sure, but I think football is on Sunday as Sunday was the day of rest, and watching the village football game and having a tankard of ale was all part of that, after church.  I also suspect that this is the reason that some American holidays are associated with football, such as Thanksgiving, which had its origin as a religious holiday, and New Years, which as noted also is.

Now, of course, with the corrupting influence of money, it's become nearly a religion to some people in and of itself.  People who dare not miss a single football game never step foot in a church.

Also lost, however, is the remaining communal part of that.  Watching a game played that's actually local, rather than corporate national, to a large extent.  And one free of advertising.  Indeed, the Super Bowl has become the number one premiere venue for innovative advertising, some of which isn't bad.

Anyhow, maybe the Super Bowl Party, in some form if properly done, is a step back in time to when the game was more a vehicle than an end in and of itself, and when it wasn't such a show that a big freakish half-time performance was expected.

We can hope so.

Friday, January 1, 1943. New Year's Day

 

Today in World War II History—January 1, 1943: The Rose Bowl returns to Pasadena: Georgia beats UCLA 9-0. Incoming California Gov. Earl Warren serves as Tournament of Roses grand marshal.

So reports Sarah Sundin, who also notes that California Governor Earl Warren served as Grand Marshall, but the parade was cancelled due to the war.

At that game, the George Bulldogs beat the UCLA Bruins 9 to 0.

The Soviets announced that 175,000 Germans had been killed at Stalingrad and 137,650 captured, which lead to headlines on those numbers in the U.S. that very day.

Albanian resistance fighters began a rebellion against the Italians at Gjorm. They'd win, but it would be a Pyrrhic victory, resulting in Italian reprisals.

For Catholics in the U.S., it was a Holy Day of Obligation.  It would normally have been a day off for most people in the Western World, but due to wartime conditions, for many it would not be.

Sunday, December 31, 1922. New Year's Eve.

It was New Year's Eve, 1922.

That meant a lot of parties.  Parties occurring during Prohibition.  A fair number of them were dry, but a fair number were not.

French Prime Minister Raymond Poincare rejected German Chancellor Wilhelm Cuno's proposal for a non-aggression pact with Germany, which would have replaced French troops in the Rhineland with an international disinterested force.

Frankly, were I Poincare, I would have rejected it also.  What international force, following the Great War, would have even qualified as disinterested?

We mentioned Cuno here the other day, he was an economist.  Of some interest, he was born in 1876 and would die in 1933.  Poincare was born in 1860, and would outlive him, dying in 1934.

The Nine Power Treaty went into effect.  We've run the text of the treaty, signed by the U.S. France, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, Japan, the United Kingdom, Portugal, and China previously.

United States Supreme Court Justice Mahlon Pitney retired following his having suffered a stroke.

Justice Pitney.

Pitney was conservative, but also a libertarian, and has received praise in the modern era for being consistently libertarian.  He hailed from New Jersey, where his family had been located since colonial times, and only served for ten years before his stroke idled him.  He died in 1924 at age 66.

The Casper Daily Tribune had a cartoon on the cover regarding the Hays of the Hays Production Code, which we just discussed.

Saturday, December 30, 1922. Red Empire.

The Saturday Evening Post featured one of J. C. Leyendecker's many New Years illustrations.

It was satyric in nature, with Old Europe, treaty in back pocket, greeting the young US in allegorical form as the old year and the new year meeting.

A new development, reviving an old set of borders, was unfortunately occurring.  The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was officially founded on this day in 1922.  It had, of course, been functioning as a Communist monstrosity for some time already.

The original flag of the Soviet Union.  This one perhaps overemphasized the Communist goal of swallowing up everything and was later changed.

The Country Gentleman featured a baby with a seed catalog, but unfortunately I was not able to locate the illustration.

Monday, January 2, 1922. Soviet Communists Document Their Murderous Regime, Well Wishers Visit the White House, First Black Quarterback At The Rose Bowl, Ronnie the Bren Girl Born.

The Communist government of Russia (it was not yet the Soviet Union), published data that 1,766,118 people had been executed since the October Revolution.

This in the charming "real" Communist regime of Vladimir Lenin, not Stalin.

Added to that, of course, would be starvation victims and casualties of the Civil War.

In the United States, the President received well-wishers.

This was a longstanding tradition. The White House received official visitors but then also received whoever lined up to greet the President, emphasizing that the country was a republic.

The fact that this is now unthinkable speaks very poorly of us and how things have developed.

The participating included many notables, as for example Prince and Princess Rabesco, about whom I know nothing.

Admiral Balfour was one of the visitors that  year.

And officials of the US Government were expected to put in an appearance.

The 1922 Rose Bowl was played at Tournament Park, the last one to be played at that location.  UC Berkeley played Washington & Jefferson College in a game that had no scores and ended in a tie, the only one to have ever ended with no score and in a tie.

Charlie West was the quarterback for Washington & Jefferson, the first black quarterback to play in the came.

Football was mostly a college sport at that time, and it interestingly integrated well in advance of baseball.  West, in fact, was signed to play professional football in 1924, but decided to go to Harvard Medical School instead, and he became a physician. 

He was also an Olympic quality athlete, but injuries precluded his participating in the 1924 Olympics in the track and field category.

The Dixie Classic was played on the same day.

Why on a Monday? 

Well, January 1 was on a Sunday, which was very seriously observed. 

The fact that we don't observe it as much, and in that fashion, also speaks poorly of us today.

Veronica Foster, Canada's' answer to Rosie the Riveter in the form of Ronnie the Bren Girl, was born.  After the war, she'd go on to be a professional singer.

Wednesday December 31, 1941. The conclusion of a disasterous year.

It was New Year's Eve, a traditional day of celebration in the Western World, and those using the Christian calendar in general, which at this time was the whole world, save for church calendars using the "old calendar".  Often a day of revelry, this one no doubt was in spite of the war, but the war would have weirdly warped it in at least some fashion.

It's also one of resolutions, then and now.

Making any?

As earlier noted in our Today In Wyoming's History: December 31 entry:

1941   Big Piney, Pinedale, Nowood, and Star Valley became the first Wyoming Conservation Districts when their Certifications of Organization were signed by Wyoming's Secretary of State Lester Hunt.

At least when it falls on a weekday, as it did in 1941, it's also a work day, although not all private employers observe that in the same fashion.

The Japanese were working, with ongoing advances throughout the Pacific and Far East. And they were back in action in the Hawaiian islands, where  Japanese submarines shelled Kauai and Maui.

Allied leaders agreed to a Germany First policy in the war and form a combined US/UK Chiefs of Staff organization.

While looking back it was obvious that the war had turned, for those living in the time, facing constant Japanese expansion by the day, the decision to take on Germany first must have been daunting indeed.  This is how the map of Europe then looked:

This was, moreover, even worse than this might at first suggest.  Spain was still solidly aligned with Germany at the time, and had given airfield rights to German maritime patrols and port rights to German submarines, although secretly.  Sweden was in fact a neutral, but its raw materials were going to Germany.

And then there was the Japanese offensive all over the Pacific and Southeast Asia.

In Manila, residents were destroying alcohol in fear that Japanese troops would engage in a drunken rampage, news of what had occurred in Hong Kong having reached them.

Venezuela broke off diplomatic relations with Germany, Italy and Japan.

Things must have looked awful.  And indeed they were.

But the seeds of victory were already there, even though revelers this evening would have had real reason to doubt it.  Germany had not defeated the Soviet Union, which was fighting back now that winter had arrived.  The British were advancing in North Africa, which constituted a real second front even if the USSR would never admit that.  The British were also conducting raids along the Atlantic coast pretty much whatever they wanted to, demonstrating that even though the Germans commissioned a new U-boat nearly every day, they still weren't able to drive the British from the sea or even really dominate the surface of the Atlantic.  

The Japanese, for their part, were on the march, but the case still remained that they were not into a decade long war with China which they had not defeated.  No matter how much the Japanese advanced, that remained a daunting fact.  Until they could actually take China out of the war, China would consume the bulk of its ground forces and men committed anywhere else took away from that.  They were advancing, but only because their navy had never been committed against China.  It was proving highly effective against the U.S. Navy, the Royal Navy, and the Dutch Navy, but even there, it had not struck a decisive blow against any of them.

Closer to home

My family has never been big on New Year's Eve, which makes me guess that my parents families weren't either.  For Catholics, January 1 is the Catholic Holy Day of Obligation, the Solemnity of Mary, and December 31 has always had a Mass of Anticipation.  Without knowing, my guess is that this would have been the day my parents' families would have chosen to go to Mass, but I could well be wrong.  I'd definitely be wrong if my then 12-year-old father had to serve a January 1 Mass.

My parents would have still been enjoying a holiday break from school, and probably dreading the return to school the following week.

Did you work January 1?

Laborer working a press, January 1, 1920.

Yesterday was a Wednesday, but I didn't post a Mid Week At Work item because it was a holiday.

But I did go out to see if I could find a parts store open so that I could buy oil to change the oil in my truck, as it was overdue.  I found that all the chain stores were open, so I spent my day doing that.

When I say I spent my day, I mean it.  I haven't changed my own oil for awhile so I couldn't find a tool I needed and had to go to the store twice.  And it was a cold day and the 3500 won't fit all the way into the garage, so it was a project.  I bought a fuel filter too, but I'd forgotten that getting to the 3500's fuel filter is nearly impossible, so I didn't change that, even though I have the water in the fuel system light on.  Chances are a I have a loose connection.

Anyhow, so I spent the day doing something that I thought would take me just half a day, which was a disappointment, but probably not as much of one for people who worked a full day.

Did you work?

January 1, 1920. New Year's Day. Revelry and Raids.

And so the violent 1910s had end and 1920, not yet roaring, was ushered in. . .ostensibly dry although efforts were already being made to evade Prohibition, both great and small, as the Chicago Tribune's Gasoline Alley made fun of.

January 1, 1920.  Gasoline Alley:  Happy New Years On Avery

On this day in Chicago undoubtedly sober agents conducted raids on suspected Reds in various gathering places they were known to frequent, arresting 200 people.  The same was conducted across the country under J. Edgar Hoover of the FBI, with about 6,000 people being arrested as a result.

U.S. Attorney General Alexander Palmer.

New Years Resolutions For Other People (and maybe some for everyone) 2020.

In some years I've done a post entitled this, in other years not.

Usually its satirical, with some seriousness.  This past year, and perhaps its just my current perception, the year has been so odd and generally negative that it'd be impossible to do one that isn't negative.

Indeed, while I've never done this before in this thread, maybe this recent article by a Wyoming journalist simply sums things up better than any article here could do:

Resolve to Childish Rules

Published on December 30, 2019December 29, 2019  in Column/Range Writing

We'll give it a try anyway.

1.  For everyone.  

A.  Accept that "I feel it", "want it" or "desire it" doesn't make it anything other than an individual feeling, want or desire.

Your own particular desires of any kind don't rise to a level of a societal need that society needs to personally ratify.

They may not even be legitimate.  Just because you want something, no matter how deeply you feel it, doesn't mean its disordered.  Just because you want to eat all the cake, for example, doesn't give you a protected right to do so and it doesn't mean you really should, for a multiplicity of reasons.  And if you do eat it all, that doesn't mean that you have to demand everyone else accept that you ate it and agree that the problems its causing you aren't real problems.

B.  Consider The Fourth Law of Human Behavior.

In addition, the time has really come for everyone to reconsider our fourth rule of behavior and really ponder it, it is:

Not every standards that used to apply to human behavior and institutions needs to be retained for all time, but it's a mistake to believe that they existed at whim.  There's trend, fashion, and fancy, and then there's long term standards.

From time to time, almost every society throws off a bunch of old standards.  When they do that, they usually declare them to have been irrelevant for all time, but they hardly ever are.  They were there for a reason.  Sometimes, they no longer apply, but that's because something deeply fundamental has changed.  Other times, the underlying reason keeps on keeping on and the reason for it tends to be rediscovered, slowly, as if its a new discovery.  People fail to think about the deep basis for standards, the really deep ones, at their behavior.  Again, that doesn't mean that some shouldn't be changed, or should never have come into existence, but even in those rare instances careful thought should be given to the matter so that the basic nature of the underlying error can be understood.

Along these lines, it might be worth actually noting that a lot of the recent horrible behaviors of all types we have "discovered", we didn't. They've been horrible all along, but we started pretending they weren't and ended up bearing the consequences.

We had less of the "Me Too" movement in 2019 than we did in 2018, but it still provides a good example.  All the misbehavior violated an old, old law of societal conduct.  Much of the reason that it doesn't go away is that those noting the misbehavior and decrying it the violation an old, old law are busy violating other old, old laws, and don't want to stop.  You really can't  accept something as deeply wrong if you don't stop to ponder why it is, that its deeply wrong.

C.  Time to consider some evolutionary biology.

When I was young I was a geology student and, as a result, I was in that class of people who studied evolution in detail.  I know that there are those who don't accept evolution, but evolution is a natural fact and denying that doesn't make it less of a fact.

In keeping with that, we have our place in that picture and we're really busy denying that right now.  It's time to get over it.  This relates strongly to the item discussed in Paragraph B above, and there's another one of the laws of behavior governing it.  We'll set that item out here:

Holscher's Third Law of Behavior.  I know why the caged tiger paces.

Everyone has been to a zoo and has seen a tiger pace back and forth, back and forth.  He'll look up occasionally as well, and the deluded believe "look, he wants to be petted," while the more realistic know that he's thinking "I'd like to eat you."  You can keep him in the zoo, but he's still a tiger.  He wants out.  He wants to live in the jungle, and he wants to eat you for lunch. That's his nature, and no amount of fooling ourselves will change it.

It's really no different with human beings.  We've lived in the modern world we've created for only a very brief time.  Depending upon your ancestry, your ancestors lived in a very rustic agrarian world for about 10,000 years, long enough, by some measures to actually impact your genetic heritage.  Prior to that, and really dating back further than we know, due to Holscher's First Law of History, we were hunters and gatherers, or hunters and gatherers/small scale farmers.  Deep down in our DNA, that's who we still are.

That matters, as just as the DNA of the tiger tells it what it wants, to some degree our DNA informs us of what we want as well.  I do not discount any other influence, and human beings are far, far, more complicated than we can begin to suppose, but it's still the case.  A species that started out eons and eons ago being really smart hunters combined with really smart gatherers/small farmers has specialized in a way that living in Major Metropolis isn't going to change very rapidly.  Deep down, we remain those people, even if we don't know it, and for some, even if we don't like it.

This also impacts the every sensitive roles of men and women.  Primates have unusually great gender differentiation for a  mammal.  Male housecats, for example, aren't hugely different from female housecats.  But male chimpanzees are vastly different from female chimpanzees.  Male human beings are as well, but even much more so.

That's really upsetting to some people, but it simply isn't understood.  If understood, this does not imply any sort of a limitation on either sex, and indeed in aboriginal societies that are really, really, primitive there's much less than in any other society, including our modernized Western one.  Inequality comes in pretty early in societies, but some change in condition from the most primitive seems to be necessary in order to create it.  So, properly understood, those very ancient genetic impulses that were there when we were hiking across the velt hoping not to get eaten by a lion, and hoping to track down an antelope, and planting and raising small gardens, are still there.  That they're experienced differently by the genders is tempered by the fact that, in those ancient times, a lot of early deaths meant that the opposite gender had to step into the other's role, and therefore we're also perfectly capable of doing that.  It's the root basic natures we're talking about, however, that we're discussing here, and that spark to hunt, fish, defend and plant a garden are in there, no matter how much steel and concrete we may surround ourselves with.

The reason that this matters is that all people have these instincts from antiquity, some to greater or lessor degrees. But many people, maybe most, aren't aware that they have them.  Some in the modern world spend a lot of their time and effort acting desperately to suppress these instincts.  But an instinct is an instinct, and the more desperately they act, the more disordered they become.

This doesn't mean, of course, that everyone needs to revert to an aboriginal lifestyle, and that's not going to happen.  Nor would it even mean that everyone needs to hunt or fish, or even raise a garden.  But it does mean that the further we get from nature, both our own personal natures, and nature in chief, or to deny real nature, the more miserable they'll become.  We can't and shouldn't pretend that we're not what we once were, or that we now live in a world where we are some sort of ethereal being that exists separate and apart from that world.  In other words, a person can live on a diet of tofu if they want, and pretend that pigs and people are equal beings, but deep in that person's subconscious, they're eating pork and killing the pig with a spear.

Nature, in the non Disney reality of it.

I frankly don't know why it is that so many in our day and age can't accept this fact and believe instead that our realities are self described and self made. They aren't, any more than they are for a jackrabbit on the plains.

C.  Time for some Distributism

I've written about Distributism here a fair amount, but this year the need for a reassessment of economics is really evident.  On one had we have the Democrats embracing Social Democracy and all the vast cost and expenses associated with it, on the other we have a roaring economy which Republicans are telling us is the best for decades.  In the middle is everyone else with a vague feeling that things just aren't right.

They aren't right as not everything is about money.  Neither the "let's all move to cubicle jobs in Big City" view of the economy or the "Government will fund all the needs you can't fund yourself view" is making people satisfied.

Having something of their own, close to home, might.

2.  The Political Parties.

It's tempting to say "just stop it", but that's too flippant.

At any rate, however, the insanity of the two party system is now more evident than ever.  You'd think that with this being the case, a third party or fourth party or something would come along, but that's not going to happen rather obviously.

With that the fact of the matter, this polarity is too much for the country to endure long term.  It has to end.

In order to end it, however, some basic facts have to be accepted by both, and one is that the absurd level of name calling can't keep on keeping on and, moreover, whoever is in the Oval Office was put there through the process we have.  Eight years of Republicans asserting that President Obama was illegitimate have been followed by (now) three of the Democrats yelling that President Trump is illegitimate.  And it goes on down from there.

As party of the need for real change, party purity tests need to stop.  The Democrats are initiating this on a national level, informally, and locally the GOP has done this formally.  Parties aren't religions and there should be room within them, particularly in a two party system such as we seem to be captive to.

Finally, government can't solve everything.  The Democratic platform basically is that it can, and that's absurd. The GOP one isn't, but the thought there is that the economy solves everything, and that isn't correct either.

Having discussed politics, let's move to religion

3.  Confusion of Faith

I know that this is a topic that people aren't even supposed to discuss, save on Twitter and Facebook and I guess on Blogs, but this is a history blog, supposedly.

None the less, we've strayed into this topic a fair amount and so we're going to discuss it here.

A.  Pope Francis

I don't know what Pope Francis' overall theme on things is, but if we were to give him a grade on his overall Papacy so far, it'd be a C at best.  His vague comments, refusing to answer questions, and the like, are causing turmoil.

It's seemed lately that the Pope has an unfortunately Eurocentric view which is missing the real story of what's going on in Christianity in general and Catholism in particular, which is exploding in growth in the third world.  I get the concern over the Western World, but the sort of weak leadership we're seeing and suggestions that we're retreating in one way or another while leaving things vague isn't helping.

I don't know what he can do about it as it seems ingrained in his personality.  But a course correction seems in order.

B.  The German Cardinals

One group that needs the course correction is the German Cardinals who are practically acting as an independent body.  Somebody needs to point out to them the fact that their leadership hasn't been working and, moreover, the day in which people really listen to the Germans on about anything is over.  What African Cardinals gather and say is more important now.

C.  The Coffins and the Marshalls

Lest this seem exceedingly one sided, the Patrick Coffins and Dr. Taylor Marshalls of the world need to really re-assess their tone and what they're saying.  I don't think any new schism are on the horizon, particularly from the Rad Trads, but if there were to be, Coffin would have to at least pause and consider to what extent his comments pushed some in that direction.  Shows that come close to stating that the Pope may be illegitimate encourage schism as are shows that are blisteringly opposed to the current Pope.

You don't have to agree with a Pope, or a President. But that doesn't mean they're illegitimate.  A person has to work within the system if its a system they declare themselves to have faith in.

D.  The Irreligious Religious

Those of all faiths who proclaim to be faithful but then omit the tenants of their faiths need to knock it off.

This is particularly pronounced in Protestant Christianity, although it shows up in "liberal" Catholicism as well, at least in the United States. Boatloads of Christian churches proclaim themselves loyal to the Gospels, except where the Gospels address sex, for example. They say what they say and mean what they mean.  If you don't like it, that means you have something to work on, not that you just omit it.

4.  The Movie Industry

Stop it with the Marvel comic movies. They're stupid. Enough already.

I should note that I've typed out the start of a thread eons ago asking why movies have become so juvenile, but I've never finished it.  I should.

5. The Television Industry

Television is stupid, and one of its stupidest acts is an assumption that its to be on the cutting edge to race to the bottom in the depictions of human behavior that involve morality in any sense. We get it, television, you don't believe morality of any kind exist.  You are part of the problem (see above regarding the old standards).

Additionally, it's time to admit, Television, that graduates of the Harvard Lampoon aren't really funny.  Quit  hiring them as script writers for television and fire the ones you have.

6.  Colorado fishermen

Is there no place to fish in Colorado?  Look for one.

7. Twitter, Facebook and Reddit Posters

You are only heard, by and large, by a small limited audience.  Posting vitriol of one kind or another just feeds our polarization. Take the year off on that and post on some interest other than politics or your concept of social justice.  Posts on Twitter, Reddit, and Facebook change nobody's minds on those topics whatsoever.

8.  Militarism.  Enough already.

A  person has to be really touch saying anything about this as they come across as not being a patriot or not supporting the military, or the like, but the United States needs to be at the point where it seriously reconsiders the nature and status of the military it created to deal with the Cold War.

From the countries earliest history, as colonies, up until 1947 when the Cold War started, the US based its defense on having a very small standing Army backed up by state militias, combined with a standing Navy.  The Navy developed into a global force first when the age of sail yielded to the age of steam at the turn of the prior century.  That made sense, as ships take years to build, last for years, and it isn't really possible to build a Navy from scratch during wartime, although we came pretty close to doing a bit of that during World War One and World War Two. 

Armies, however, we pretty much built by having a small professional Army, very small, backed up by state militias.  Early on, membership in the state militia was compulsory, but in later years it became voluntary.  If the war was a big war, like the Civil War, World War One or World War Two, we built a large citizen Army while the Regular Army and the militia, the National Guard in later years, held the line.  That's basically the way we fought the Civil War, the Spanish American War, World War One, World War Two, and the Korean War.

The problem became that for much of the Cold War we were somewhere on the brink of a hot war a lot of the time.  Sometimes the Cold War broke out into hot wars, as in the examples of Korea and Vietnam, other times it just threatened to.  It's now known, unbeknownst to us, that the US and the USSR became very very close to to going to war by accident in the early 1980s, and its likely only the fact that the Soviet Union's aged leadership remained cautious about war due to their memories of the Second World War, even though they were pretty convinced that NATO was about to invade them.

The USSR is gone and the wars we're now in are much, much smaller than those of the Cold War were.  The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, while definitely real wars, are minuscule compared to Vietnam and Korea.

The size of the military has very much decreased since the end of the Cold War, but it's still pretty darned big. The U.S. Army has 476,000 soldiers in it, with the National Guard adding an additional 343,000 and the Army Reserve another 199,000.  In 1990 when the Soviet Union folded up its tent, the Army had 750,000 men and the national Guard nearly that, combined with at least 400,000 in the Reserves. 

So the military is much smaller, but it has a lot of problems and those problems are highly concentrated in the bureaucratic culture that naturally came about as a result of the Cold War.  The pre World War Two U.S. Army lacked that to a significant degree as it was so small and had so much to do.  The bureaucracy now ingrained in the military is highly corporate and it hurts the nation's defense.  It's not surprising that the Marine Corps, the nation's smallest military branch, is the branch that is the most martial, if you will.  Even it, however, is restrained in its internal nature by an infection of social politics that has gotten into it.

In the post Vietnam War period the Army really suffered as its cohesion was destroyed by the war.  This was much less the case for the other branches of the service but they all suffered to some degree.  Ronald Reagan, however, put the Cold War service back on its feet in its final years and in a lot of ways the military we have today dates to that period.  Reagan deserves a lot of credit for what he did at that time, but the vestiges of it have become a problem.

One of the ways that's constantly exhibited is the absurd flood of money that enters the service's coffers on a continual basis that should't.  The Army has been working on a replacement for the lousy AR rifle platform for decades now when just about anyone who knows anything about service rifles well knows that adopting something in the 6.5x55 range with an action that's something like the G3s or the FALs is what is needed.  Floods of money, however, have gone into what nearly amounts to a permanent project that produces no results.  To make matters worse, nearly any small arm adopted by the infantry branch of the Army is rejected by the Marines, whose budgeting allows it to buy something else, which is absurd.  The Army and the Marine Corps can't even agree on what boots to buy, so they don't.

The most flagrant example of things being out of control is the recent creation of a United States Space Force, which was created last year in anticipation of a need to defend our interests in space.  This is flat out absurd.  Right now the Air Force is perfectly competent to do that, to the extent we need to.  And there isn't much of a need to.

The Space Force ends up becoming our eighth uniformed service, including the Army, Marines, Air Force, Navy, Coast Guard, NOAA and the Public Health Service.  This excludes, of course, police branches of various government agencies of which there are now a plethora,  but which is a separate topic entirely.

We don't need a Space Force and never will.  If we ever need something like that, we have it handled right now.  And we also need less of a military in general and one that costs a lot, lot less.

That sounds pretty radical in this day and age, particularly with two wars still going on. But the service needs to be cut down to size now that the Cold War is over.  We could once again get by with an Army of 250,000 men backed up by a National Guard twice that size.  I won't opine on the size of the Air Force or the Navy, as I don't know enough about their war fighting needs to do so, but scaling back the cash register at this point is really necessary.

So, I guess, that's a 2020 budget resolution.


_______________________________________________________________________________

So what did we say on this before? Well, here's the prior editions:

New Year's Resolutions for Other People, 2015

New Year's Resolutions for Other People. 2016 Edition

New Years Resolutions For Other People, 2018

New Years' Resolutions for Other People. 2019 Edition

December 31, 1919, New Year's Eve, and . . .

contrary to widespread commentary here and there, it wasn't the last New Year's Eve prior to Prohibition.

A scene not yet arrived.  Woman pouring whiskey into a glass of Coca Cola in 1922.

That's because Wartime Prohibition remained in effect, the Supreme Court having decided that "wartime" meant until a peace treaty with the Central Powers was entered into by the United States, which had not been done.

The war was over, of course, and the Versailles Treaty had been entered into, but the Senate hadn't ratified it. A technical state of war therefore remained. And so did wartime prohibition.  This New Years was dry.

And that even where state prohibition, as in Wyoming, Montana and Colorado, hadn't taken effect.

Of course, people here and there did hoist a glass. And bootleg liquor, including deadly wood alcohol stuff, was already making the rounds.  But for a lot of people, indeed most people, this New Years would be celebrated sober.

I can be as unsentimental about New Years as anyone, but. . .

I'm tired of the snarky set of commentary you now routinely get about "why" is January 1 the start of the New Year and "why" do we celebrate it anyhow.*

A person can pick a different calendar date to start a new year, to be sure. And other cultures do.  But of interest, all this really does it to point out a couple of things.

People, all people everywhere, are well aware that the year is a year long.  We've known that from day one, by observing the passing of the seasons, although more and more it seems that part of the our separation from nature involves not even being aware of that fact.

And people seem to need to mark that passing, if for no other reason than to mark their successes and failures and hope to continue them or correct them. People who emphasize the "why celebrate" type of line of thinking must feel that the world is on a simply wonderful coarse all the time and needs not course correction at all. They're wrong.  And most people's lives can use some self reflection as well.

As for the date, the snarky will point that on the Old Calendar, which the Orthodox and Protestants used after Pope Gregory had the calendar corrected, and which even the UK and by extension British North America continued to use until 1752, there were some who celebrated the New Year as starting in March.  

More particularly, however, they were starting the New Year with the Feast of the Annunciation, which made sense as its the beginning of things Christian.  So snarks who like to point that out probably ought to consider that it wasn't a right of spring or some such nonsense that those Christian people were celebrating by choosing late March as the beginning of the year.*  They were marking what they felt to be the beginning of the Liturgical Year at the time, something that meant a great deal to them.

Most cultures, however, seem to place the start of the year in the Fall and Winter, and there's some deep seated reason for that.  The Jewish New Year starts in September, early Fall, but after the work of the year was over and the waiting for the beginning of the next year's work had commenced.  Egyptian and Ethiopian Coptic calendars also start the New Year in September  The Vietnamese New Year, Tet, moves as its based on a lunar calendar, but its always in January or February.  Chinese New Year is the exact same, and indeed might be on the exact same date (I'm not sure).** The Korean lunar New Year likewise is at the same time of the year and in contemporary South Korea, Koreans get both New Years Day (January 1) off and an additional three days for lunar new year.  Plains Indian Tribes marked the year via "winter counts" which varied somewhat, but which were based on the winter.  The Sioux, for example, started the new year with the first snowfall.

Now, of course,  not every calendar runs that way.  But the fact that enough place the new year sometime in the cold months says something.  And before somebody says "well, what about the half the people in the Southern Hemisphere", 68% of the landmass of earth is in the Norther Hemisphere.  And through the course and accidents of history, while there were advanced cultures south of the hemisphere, the fact is that most (not all, but most) of the cultures that contributed to the advance of history have lived in the Northern Hemisphere, if perhaps for no other reason that that most people live where the land is.***

There is something going on when most people in the world do the same thing, no matter how broadly spaced out they are.  And most cultures in the world have put the new year in the cold months and most of them have a celebration for it.  That shouldn't' be lightly ignored, if at no other level, than on the personal one.

_________________________________________________________________________________

*I'll confess that I've been a prime exhibitor of such snark myself, at least on a stated level.  But as W. E. B. Dubois stated, "only a fool never changes his mind".  For various reasons, I've really changed my view, but then on a personal level, I've always marked the changing of the year.  Maybe this year I'm just noting the other view more, which runs from the New York Times (at least in comments) to Dilbert, but that view ignores something different.

**Which meant that they were celebrating the start of the New Year and then going right into Easter, assuming that they hadn't already celebrated Easter (which moves on the calendar), all why trying to get crops in, etc.  It probably didn't have that "new" year feel to it really.

**Indeed, it's a unique phenomenon of modern life that a lot of the same snarks who will sneer at Pope Gregory adopting January 1 as the the start of the year will gush and gush about Chinese and Vietnamese lunar new years, which follow soon thereafter.

***And, before somebody goes off half corked on it, well over half of Africa is in the Northern Hemisphere and I'm  not making some sort of Eurocentric assertion here..  Indeed, when looked at this way, the significant exceptions to the calendar rule would be the Mayans, who live in the Northern Hemisphere but whose new year was in July.  Sure, there are other dates, including in Africa, but as I've already pointed out, at least three cultures with their base in Africa celebrate the New Years in the noted time frames.

New Years' Resolutions for Other People. 2019 Edition

Last year I didn't do this and there was a lot of misbehavior here and there.  Not wanting to be responsible for that sort of thing again, here's my helpful 2019 New Years Resolutions for other folks.

Behave yourself out there.

1.  Monica Lewinsky.

Enough already Monica.

Every Presidential election cycle you reappear, to tell us about your sad tale of woe about how you. . . you know. . . and that means you're now haunted by the memory of. . .

Whatever.  Enough's enough.  No more books, television appearances, whatever.  We get it.  You and Bill Clinton . . . you know.

Do something else noteworthy, if you  must be noteworthy, that doesn't involve the Clinton's or . . . you know.  And don't make an appearance in 2019.  At all.

And it isn't actually necessary that you wear a black dress to remind you of your scandal era appearance.  Don't you have a Nick's jersey or something?

2. The New Yorkers.

The Big Apple.  I'm sure there are a lot of great things about New York, the city, and New York, the state, but right now Schumer, Trump and the Times are making all of you look like a bunch of grade school brats. All the loud posturing may do really well there, but the rest of us are wondering if we can swap Guatemala for New York.  Behave yourself and turn the volume down to about two.

Okay, we don't really mean all New Yorkers.

And certainly not the Yankees, our favorite New Yorkers.

But some of you really need to knock it off . . and you know who you are. The New York Times, Donald J. Trump, Chuckles Schumer, whoever your mayor is, Michael Bloomberg and even Bernie Sanders, who is really a New Yorker (yes, Bernie, we know that you are not from Vermont.  We'd even include Hillary Clinton, who is an ersatz New Yorker.  We've had enough of you already.  We get it.  You're bold, you're brash, you're really irritating.

The entire state of the country can be pretty much summed up by the dual temper tantrums of Donald Trump and Chuckles Schumer. Well, enough of it.  Behave and show up in the news as little as possible in 2019.

Like, as little as possible.

You know which ones you are.

The rest of you we're okay hearing from.

3.  Donald Trump.

Don.  Try emulating Franklin Roosevelt, or Theodore Roosevelt.  They were New Yorkers too.

Okay, New Yorker Donald J. Trump, your going into the third year of your presidency.  In addition to not being in some weird New York yelling match with Chuckles this year, act like a President and quit the entire twitter thing and sudden changes in things. And try to make us suspect your in bed with the Russians less.  A little dignity would go a long ways.

4.  Vlad Putin

Ivan the Terrible.  We don't need a Vlad the Terrible.

You aren't the Czar.  Stop acting like one.

And as you claim to be Russian Orthodox, it may be time for a General Confession.  Just saying.

You're coming up on a term limit by the way.  Surprise us all and step down. Russia will be fine without you. . .in fact it would be a lot better.

5.  The Russian Orthodox Church and the Greek Orthodox Church.

It's hard for us who aren't either to tell what this entire schism is about, but we are certain that schism are sinful.  Ponder it and get it patched up, whatever its about.  And then reconsider the 1054 event.  Enough's enough.

6.  The Wyoming Legislature.

Hand off public lands. We mean it.

7.  Miley Cyrus.

We don't care what you are doing. Quit trying so hard to get our attention.

Same for you Lindsay Lohan.

8.  The Wyoming Legislature

See No. 6.  We really mean it.

And while you're out let's cool silly legislation like trying to keep out the "wrong" kind of people from your own particular political party.

9.  The Movie Industry.

Isn't there anything you can make a movie about that isn't a Marvel cartoon?

Seriously, Marvel cartoons cease to be something worthy of consideration when you are about eight years old.  Stop filming them.

10.  The Movie Going Public

Marvel cartoons? Seriously, like, when you are 30?

11.  Hillary Clinton

There's a Presidential election coming up.  Just say no.

12.  Democrats of age 70 and up.

Come on, let the kids have a chance at running things.  Or at least people in their 60s.

13.  Apple

A year without a new Iphone on the horizon.  Give it a try.

14.  Catherine Rampell.

Okay, it's really cute how you are a Princeton grad and the daughter of two Princeton grads and all, but you've been out of school for a decade now.  Time to go get a real job.  Maybe you can go back to writing political opinions when you've actually lived enough to actually have the experience to write.

The Washington Post and the world will still be there.  Go ahead, get some experience for all that writing.

15. Congress

There are people worthy of being on the Supreme Court who haven't gone to an Ivy League school.  You used to appoint them.

Why not give that a try again?

16.  Kim Jong-un

Hey, it's not too late to come out of the Stalinist theme park still looking good.  Take the border controls down and dissolve North Korea before it becomes even more of the freakish Communist experiment gone horribly wrong than it already is.

17.  Brewers

More IPAs are not necessary.

Try a lager or something.

18.  American public

And a final resolution.

American public, sick and tired of a government that isn't working and problems that don't get solved?

Well do something about it. And doing something about it would mean sending people to Congress who really will do something.  Folks who can read the Constitution, have a long sighted view, and who are willing to tell you that you can't have everything you want.