Showing posts with label Personalities. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Personalities. Show all posts

Sunday, July 13, 2025

Monday, July 13, 1925. Pregnant lady.


Archbishop Vasileios Georgiadis was elected by his peers as the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople.

A figurine of a pregnant woman was unearthed in Czechoslovakia that is believed to be 31,000 years old, one of the oldest examples of the same.

Walt Disney married Lillian Bounds in Idaho.

Last edition:

Saturday, July 11, 1925. Spain and Morocco agree to cooperate.

Saturday, July 12, 2025

Thursday, July 12, 1945. Delivering plutonium.

Sgt. Herbert Lehr delivering the plutonium core for Fat Man in its shock-mounted case to the McDonald Ranch assembly room at approximately 6 P.M., July 12, 1945.  Lehr was discharged on February 6, 1946, but returned to Los Alamos to prepare for the Operation Crossroads tests at Bikini Atoll   He went on to work as an administrative officer for the Physics Department at Brookhaven National Laboratory under Samuel Goudsmit, and later worked for Boeing as an engineering supervisor for thirty years before retiring in 1987.  He passed away on  January 13, 2018 at the age of 95 in Seattle, Washington.

Australians landed near Andus on Borneo and took Maradi.

The US dropped napalm on targets on Luzon.

British Field Marshal Montgomery awarded Soviet Marshal Zhukov with the Grand Cross of the Order of Bath, Marshal Rokossovsky with the KCB and Generals Sokolovsky and Malinin with the KBE. 

The British King's Company of the Grenadier Guards formed the guard of honor and tanks of the King's 8th Royal Irish Hussars were drawn up on either side.

Concentration camp survivors carried a large cross through Paris in memory of the French victims of the Nazis.

Last edition:

Wednesday, July 11, 1945. Redeploying.

Wednesday, July 9, 2025

Friday, July 9, 1915. First casualty of the Border War.

 A Mexican raider was shot and killed in a raid on the King Ranch near Kingsville, Texax, becoming hte first fatality of the Border War.  He was killed by a cowhand.


Austrian born German Gen. Victor Franke, commander of the German forces in German South West Africa, surrendered  his small command, and effectively the colony, to the Allies.

Franke lived until 1936.

Last edition.

Thursday, July 8, 1915. The Women's Peace Army.

Saturday, July 9, 1910. Mile High.

Walter Brookins became the first person to fly an airplane to an altitude of more than one mile.

He lived until age 63, in 1953, which was an achievement in its own right for an early aviator.

Last edition:

Monday, July 4, 1910. The Fight of the Century.

Thursday, July 3, 2025

Saturday, July 3, 1915. Muenter bombs Morgan.

Anarchist Eric Muenter fled Washington D.C. to New York City where he planted a bomb on the munitions ship SS Minnehaha. He then traveled to the home of J. P. Morgan Jr. with more dynamite and two revolvers, invaded the house intending to take the family hostage and force the Morgan company to stop financing munitions shipments to Europe for the Allied war effort.

He was clearly deluded.

Morgan was at home with his wife and butler and they subdued Muenter despite the anarchist shooting Morgan twice in the groin and leg.

Morgan recovered within the month.  Muenter was arrested.

Muenter was decidedly odd, but very intelligent.  Born in Uelzen, Province of Hanover, he immigrated with his parents and three sisters to Chicago at the age of 18.  While still a student, Muenter worked as a German and French instructor at Racine College and Kenwood Preparatory School between 1895 and 1896,[5] then graduated with his A.B. from the University of Chicago in 1899.  He was a German instructor during this period, but went back to Europe for fourteen months.  He taught German at the University of Kanas in 1902, and then began instructing German at Harvard while he was a student there.

In 1906, while still a student at Harvard, he murdered his first wife by poison.  He went on the run after that, but in those pre Internet, pre drivers license, per Social Security days, he managed to actually resume teaching and studying.  He graduated from Texas A&M University in 1909 and taught at the University of Oklahoma,Vanderbilt University Emory and Henry College and Cornell University, where he earned a PhD.  He remarried during this period.

It was a Saturday.



Last edition:

Friday, July 2, 1915. Porfirio Díaz dies in exile. Muenter bombs the Senate.

Tuesday, July 1, 2025

Tuesday, July 1, 1975. ARPANET.


The ARPANET, the proto Internet, was declared operational within the Department of Defense.

The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora.

Former President Richard Nixon said, in an affidavit to federal court, that he had secretly begun taping Oval Office conversations at the suggestion of his predecessor, President Lyndon Johnson.

Advice columnist Ann Landers announced that she and her husband were divorcing.

The name "Ann Landers" was a pen name, and was actually started by the Chicago Sun Times for their advice columnist Ruth Crowley, who died in 1955 at age 48.  After that, the column was taken over by Esther Pauline Lederer, who is the person commonly associated with the pen name.

Lederer early in her career as Ann Landers.

Lederer's twin sister, Pauline Esther Phillips,  followed her lead and started writing as Abigail Van Buren shortly thereafter, leading to a longstanding rift between the two.

It's hard to appreciate the extent to which both sisters, Lederer in particular, became major cultural figures.  Both sisters associated with cultural figures of the the day.

Last edition:

Monday, June 30, 1975. Changes in the Service.

Sunday, July 1, 1945. Battle of Balikpapan. The Post War German Map. Blondie.

Today in World War II History—July 1, 1940 & 1945: 85 Years Ago—July 1, 1940: Germans occupy Jersey and Guernsey in the British Channel Islands. 80 Years Ago—July 1, 1945: Australians land at Balikpapan, Borneo.

US occupation forces arrive in Berlin.

Col. Benjamin O. Davis Jr. (former commander of the Tuskegee Airmen) assumes command of Godman Field, KY, the first Black officer to command a major US air base.

US resumes production of cars, with the first rolling off the assembly line on August 30.

From Sarah Sundin's blog. 

The Australian and Dutch (mostly Australian) landing at Balikpapan was a major one, which had been preceded by an Allied naval bombardment that lasted for days.

US landing craft landing Australian infantry, July 1, 1945.

The Inner German Border was established and the British withdrew from Magdeburg which was part of the Soviet zone.

German Gen. Willibald Borowietz, 51, committed suicide at the Camp Clinton, Mississippi POW camp.  He had been a POW since 1943, having surrendered with the Afrika Korps.  His wife, Eva Ledien, was of Jewish decent and had killed herself in 1938 so that their children could be Aryanized. Her sister, Käthe (Ledien) Bosse, was killed in Ravensbrück concentration camp in 1944.

Debbie Harry (Angela Trimble), lead singer of Blondie, was born in Miami, Florida.  She was given up for adoption by her parents and adopted by parents of the lsat name of Harry, who renamed her.  Her birth mother, whom she later located, was a pianist, but who chose not to reunite with her.

When I was in high school I was a big fan of Blondie.  I have all of their lps.

Harry started off as a folk singer.  She became a New Wave trend setter with Blondie at age 33, late for a pop musician.  

Last edition:

Saturday, June 30, 1945. Mopping up.

Monday, June 30, 2025

Thursday, June 30, 1910. Moves on Finland. Dropping bombs.

Czar Nicholas II signed legislation "concerning the procedure to be complied with issuing laws and decrees of all-Empire significance for Finland", bringing the Grand Duchy of Finland and the Finnish people under direct Russian rule.


Glenn H. Curtiss demonstrated the practicality of aerial bombardment by dropping 20 mock explosives from a biplane over Lake Keuka in New York.

Glenn Cutis, 1909.

Last edition:

Tuesday, June 28, 1910. The Wireless Ship Act


Saturday, June 28, 2025

June 28, 1975. Death of Rod Serling.

American screenwriter and television producer Rod Sterling died at age 50 of a heart attack.

Serling was an extremely heavy smoker, which was no doubt the cause of his death.  He'd been a paratrooper during World War Two, serving in the Pacific.

He's best remembered for The Twilight Zone.

Serling in 1959, at which time he would have only been 34 years old.  This photo gives us a good example of what we've noted elsewhere, about how people aged more rapidly in the past.  The cigarette in hand would have helped contribute to that.  World War Two probably didn't help either.  Serling's bracelet features Army jump wings.

Last edition:

Thursday, June 12, 1975. Searching for the meaning of Vietnam.

Wednesday, June 25, 2025

Monday, June 24, 1945. Brandenburg Ballerina.

Junior Sergeant Lydia Spivak (Лидия Спивак), Red Army Traffic Regulator, June 1945.  She became locally famous in this role and was tagged the Brandenburg Ballerina or The Mistress of Brandenburg Gate.  She would have been 19 or 20 years old at the time and had been in the Red Army since she was 17.  She was a Ukrainian, and served in a transportation unit.  Like most Red Army soldiers, not that much is known about her in the West and indeed she's often confused with another female Soviet soldier who served in the same role.  Having said that, this role did make her into a type of celebrity and she did resurface from time to time, including once in the 1950s when she toured the area in which this video was shot.*  She passed away at age 59.  This is a truncated interview, and there is more to it.  It was impromptu, which is impressive.

US forces took Tuguegarao and Gattaran on Luzon.

Australian forces completed the occupation of the Miro oilfield on Borneo.

The Simla Conference to discuss the future Indian government of India began in Simla, India.

Seán T. O'Kelly became 2nd President of Ireland and Einar Gerhardsen became Prime Minister of Norway.

Footnotes:

*Ms. Spivak by that time was aging rapidly. By the 50s she'd gained a lot of weight and by the time of her sad early death she had aged rapidly  by western standards and looked much older than her 59 years.  She was undeniably cute and lively in 1945, and in later photographs the liveliness seems undiminished in spite of her aging.  She achieved her original goal of becoming a teacher, and in fact became a university professor and married another professor

Spivak is often confused with Maria Limanskaya (Мария Лиманскаяwho) served in the same role in Berlin.  She was a Russian and lived to age 100, dying last year, although oddly enough in some ways had a harder post war life, marrying than divorcing her first husband, and raising two children for a time on her own.



Last edition:

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Wednesday, June 18, 2025

Monday, June 18, 1945. The death of Gen. Simon Bolivar Buckner, Jr.


Gen. Simon Bolivar Buckner, Jr. was killed by Japanese artillery on Okinawa.  He was 58 years old, making him one of the older U.S. Generals of the Second World War.

The artillery projectile was of the flat shooting rifle type, and the projectile had actually ricocheted off of a coral reef, and then hit Buckner.

Prior to World War Two, Buckner had principally been involved in the education and training of troops.  He had seen overseas duty, however, in the Philippines in 1908.

His father, the senior Simon Bolivar Buckner, had been an American Army officer during the Mexican War, and a Confederate general during the Civil war.

Prime Minister Kantarō Suzuki informed the Japanese Supreme Council of Emperor Hirohito's intention to seek peace with the Allies as soon as possible.

The USS Bonefish was sunk in Toyama Bay.

The Chinese Army took Wenchow.

The Soviets put sixteen officers of the Polish Home Army on trial for fighting the Soviets.


William Joyce, Lord Haw Haw, was put on trial for treason.

The British Army began demobilizing.

Last edition:

Thursday, June 18, 1925. Death of Robert La Follette.

"Battling Bob" La Follette, Socialist Senator from Wisconsin, died at age 70.  He'd been ill since 1923.

The German  Reichsgericht, struck down a law confiscating of all the demesne lands of the Dukes of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha to widespread public dissatisfaction.

Last edition:

Wednesday, June 17, 1925. The Geneva Protocol.


Wednesday, May 21, 2025

Occupational Identity and authenticity, a rambling thread.

Occupational identity refers to the conscious awareness of oneself as a worker. The process of occupational identity formation in modern societies can be difficult and stressful. However, establishing a strong, self-chosen, positive, and flexible occupational identity appears to be an important contributor to occupational success, social adaptation, and psychological well-being. Whereas previous research has demonstrated that the strength and clarity of occupational identity are major determinants of career decision-making and psychosocial adjustment, more attention needs to be paid to its structure and contents. We describe the structure of occupational identity using an extended identity status model, which includes the traditional constructs of moratorium and foreclosure, but also differentiates between identity diffusion and identity confusion as well as between static and dynamic identity achievement. Dynamic identity achievement appears to be the most adaptive occupational identity status, whereas confusion may be particularly problematic. We represent the contents of occupational identity via a theoretical taxonomy of general orientations toward work (Job, Social Ladder, Calling, and Career) determined by the prevailing work motivation (extrinsic vs. intrinsic) and preferred career dynamics (stability vs. growth). There is evidence that perception of work as a calling is associated with positive mental health, whereas perception of work as a career can be highly beneficial in terms of occupational success and satisfaction. We conclude that further research is needed on the structure and contents of occupational identity and we note that there is also an urgent need to address the issues of cross-cultural differences and intervention that have not received sufficient attention in previous research. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)

Skorikov, V. B., & Vondracek, F. W. (2011). Occupational identity. In S. J. Schwartz, K. Luyckx, & V. L. Vignoles (Eds.), Handbook of identity theory and research.

How some lawyers apparently want the public to imagine them.

A number of relatively recent experiences has lead me to post this thread.

Posted around town are some billboards by a lawyer who is apparently specializing in plaintiffs' cases and criminal defense.  I don't know him well, but I do know  him.

When I first met him, he came across, quite frankly, as a metrosexual.  I was quite surprised later on when I learned that he'd grown up on a ranch, and that he had a brother who now ran it.  Now, however, he appears on billboards with a huge mustache in Western attire and saddle and portrays himself as a cowboy.

And I guess, by cowboy, I mean both real cowboys and the movie image of a cowboy.

Cowboys, and that is of course a real occupation, have been a popular cultural image since the late 19th Century.  It's really interesting to me, as somebody who is a stockman and who has, accordingly, done a fair amount of cowboying, how cowboys continue to have a sort of wild image that they acquired in that time period.  I love working stock, but most of it isn't anything like what movies portray.  Maybe none of is, which is why  the popular Yellowstone television show tends to anger me.

Of course, being a lawyer isn't anything like portrayed on television either.

Anyhow, I never tell people that "I'm a cowboy", but I find that I"m referred to that way, in the working sense of the word, from time to time.  Or, people will refer to me as a rancher the same way from time to time.  I'm always a bit flattered when they do, as if I'd had my ruthers in the world, which I haven't, that's what I would have done full time.  I can't say its my occupational identity, however, as I'm well aware that I don't do it full time.

Affecting the image, however, miffs me.  It's fake.  If you simply come across that way, as you are naturally that way, that's one thing.  Using it to promote your legal career, however, is bullshit.

Indeed, on real cowboys, not all of which are men, today:

Come As You Are

I guess this gets back in a way to this thread:

A Nation of Slobs. But then. . .

If you are going to be a lawyer, look like one, it's what you actually are.

And, by the way, there's at least one politician in the state that does the same thing, and I'd have the same criticism about.  He's not a lawyer, but a commercial landlord.  

Anyhow, it also gets to the weird association that the law picked up at some point with cowboys around here.  I don't know when this occurred, but it might have been about the time that Gerry Spence's book Gunning for Justice came out.  Spence didn't try to portray himself as a cowboy, but he did take on a Western influenced style, wearing a fringed jacket and a cowboy hat as a matter of course.  Spence being sui generis has been able to consistently pull that off whereas those copying him tend to look absurd.

Anyhow, "Gunning for Justice" is actually a phrase that's been around for awhile and he didn't introduce it, as t his movie poster from 1948 demonstrates:


Spence's use of it, however, seem to have pushed into another sort of use, at least locally.

On this, it's interesting that the cowboy image can be coopted this way, whereas other "manly" professions genuinely cannot.  Fighters (boxers) have been a little bit, and I suppose that was an obviously one, but nobody, for example, talks about "whaling for justice".


Anyhow, dressing up like a cowboy for affect if you are not punching makes you a Rexall Ranger, not a cowboy.

While I'm at it, a Wyoming lawyer has affected the cowboy appearance for her columns on one of the local electronic journals.  In this case, she's gone for the a way too big hat big pushed way up on the forehead so you can see the face look, which to a working stockman looks absolutely absurd.  The same journal actually as a working rancher who wears his hat correctly as a columnist, and up until recently had another who did the same.

As a total side, if you notice in old cowboy portraits they often have their hats pushed to the back of their head, something moderns have wondered about, and for which they've even assumed that must be how they wore them.

No, the cameras were bad.

Isom Dart at Brown’s Hole Wyoming.

If they hadn't pushed them up some, their faces would have been in shadow

On identifies, I had a couple of odd encounters recently, one of which involves mental decline, and the other which involves gender attraction.

I'll start with the latter one first.  There's an older profession that I don't know well, but who've I've been familiar with for a very long time.  Somebody much more familiar with him than me dropped that he's a homosexual.  I was shocked.  Not because homosexuality in general shocks me, but because it was very well closeted for decades.  Indeed, he's married with children.

I suppose that might be the rule for people north of 70, the closteting, that is.

In retrospect, it pretty quickly made sense for some reason.  It just explained some personality quirks that I'd long noticed.  The point of posting it here, however, is that if it's true, he's lived a lifetime with sort of an interesting strained identity.

He's not the only one I know of who is alleged to be in this category.  Frankly a fairly well known person in the region is claimed by some insiders to fit this as well.  In that case, it's more notable for his public opinions on things, which would be generally contrary to this inclination, assuming its true.

Now, I'll note that I have the typically misunderstood Catholic views on homosexuality.  I'll also note that one of these individuals is a co-religious, and the other was.  My only real point in noting all of this is to note that it must be a strain to live an entire life with a sort of false identity, assuming that its true in either case, which I can't really say for sure.

I'll also note that homosexuals of that vintage who did not present themselves as "gay", which is different, may have had a better understanding of marriage than many.  Catholic Answers Hugh Barbour defined marriage as a union between a man and a woman to produce children for the worship of God, which while it may be more than that, that captures a lot of it.  People like to say that before Obergefell homosexuals couldn't marry, but that's simply false, if we consider that marriage is a unique institution between two people capable of reproducing and bound to care for those they create.

Going on to occupations, I've also run across recently a situation in which I've been dealing with somebody whom, once again, I don't know that well but who is still working fulltime and whose clearly suffering from some compression loss in the psychological cylinders.  I'm not their pal or anything but it's sad to watch.  It's also sad to watch, however, somebody whose psychological identify is so closely identified with the practice of law, they can't leave it.

I've known more than one lawyer who practiced into advanced old age with no mental detriment.  But it's also the case quite frankly that a person's physical clockworks, and often their mental ones, start to slip a bit after the hands hit 60 or so.  I'm frankly not convinced at all that allowing people to practice a profession after some point in their 60s is a good thing, and I don't think people should carry on into their 70s.  For one thing, it's just sad.  Surely there was something else that interested them once.

Back to occupational identities.

One of the really minor features of this blog is the M65 Field Jackets in the wild. page.  Minor.

I like M65 field jackets.  When I was in the Guard I had at least six of them due to having bought two and having been issued four more.  The reason I was issued four is that at Ft. Sill the switch from OG-107 to BDU was going on and we were issued OD field jackets. As soon as I got back, we were issued BDU field jackets, and told to keep the old ones.

I gave one of the OD ones to a girlfriend who had need of a jacket while I was in university, and then eventually I just got to big, i.e,. gained weight, or filled out, whatever, and couldn't wear the size I'd been issued.  But I still had the next larger size, Large Regular.

Well, time, etc.

A surplus store here had a whole bunch of uniform items here before they went out of business and I bought several BDU ones.  I just really like them.  I picked up a OD one for my son, as they're a nice coat, but naively didn't for myself.  The OD ones you can wear for daily wear really.

Well, here recently I found a Greek Lizard pattern one for sale and I bought it for hunting.  Which meant that I had three woodland pattern ones, one desert pattern one (a gift of an old soldier) and a Lizard pattern one.  Then I saw the current multicam pattern one for sale on Ebay, which I ordered.  Finally, I decided I needed an OD one and bought one of those off of ebay.

Some of these have the US Army tape on them.  One, the multicam one, came with paratrooper wings from the former and his name tape.  I took the name tape off and the paratrooper wings.  I'm not a paratrooper.  The OD one came with a name tape, the U.S. Army tape, and two unit patches.  I took everything off but the US Army tape.

For reasons that are silly, and I can't explain, I ended up ordering name tapes.  I can now sew those on.

Why?  I'm not sure.  I don't need name tapes on old uniform items for any rational reason.  Rather, I was required to do it back in the day, and I still feel like am now.  Indeed, it would make a lot more sense to take the US Army patch off the OD one so I can use it for its intended purpose of regular daily wear.

Odd

Well, I found a M1943 replica on sale and ordered it.  It won't have any patches.

I need to stop buying them.

As a further aside, a Carhartt coat is much warmer.  My old one is pretty much blown out now.  It was a gift from my wife and I've been resisting getting a new one, even though I need to.  Guess I'm hoping for another one as a gift so that I don't have to buy it.

Back to occupational identities for a moment.  It occured to me how, when I was young, men had much less of one. They genuinely seemed more well rounded than men do today

People always like to claim things were different, if not outright perfect, when they were young.  But it does seem to me that genuinely men were quite family oriented. That meant that their professions and occupations were focused on providing for their families, but it also meant that their professions tended not to be all that they were, including to themselves.  I can vaguely recall some men who were very career oriented being criticized for it.

Every man that I knew when I was young tended to almost be identified by a collection of interests.  Medical professionals were often hunters and fishermen.  Indeed, I don't know one who wasn't.  Some were dramatically so.  Men who had come into professions from farms and ranches tended to still be identified with their origin and retain some contacts with that life.  I knew a fireman who was a pretty good amature geologist, another who was a car restorer, and another who was the first long distance runner I ever knew.  More recently professionals, or at least lawyers, have almost become cartoons of themselves in some instances, only engaging in the law or perhaps one activity that's sort of socially approved for lawyers.

It isn't good.

Last Sunday I ran this item:

Pack Animals - the 🇩🇪 German Mountain Infantry Brigade

I knew that the Bundesheer has a mountain infantry brigade.

I've sometimes thought that if I had been born in Germany, which I'm very much glad I was not, I'd have opted for a career with this unit.  Outdoors. . . animals, etc.  By the same token, if I had been born French, there's the Chasseurs Alpins.

Hmmm. . . 

Well, I didn't opt for a career with the Wyoming Game & Fish, so I'm probably just fooling myself.

Have a nice day at work.  

Mehr Mensch sein,