Francis Anna Camuglia and Cynthia Blanton.

I ran into this item in a really roundabout way, that being a random link to a 1967 newspaper article.  That isn't mentioned in either of the two sources noted here, that being Ms. Blanton's blog (which is quite good, I might add) or Reddit.  I unfortunately can't find the link to the article.

Anyhow, let's start with an upload of the photograph on Ms. Blanton's blog:

Blanton with the top part of the "Miss March" centerfold. This is directly linked to her blog.  I'm using the fair use and commentary exception to copyright, but I don't own the rights to post this and will immediately take it down if asked.

Miss March holding her own centerfold?

No, Miss Blanton, then a high school student, holding the centerfold of "Fran" "Gerard", who was actually one Francis Anna Camuglia, who is apparently a legendary centerfold.

The story is related on the Blanton blog, and it is really amusing.  Her resemblance was immediately noted in March 1967 by the boys in her high school, which I don't doubt.  She's almost a dead ringer for Gerard, save that, if anything, she was actually prettier in this photograph.  Their nose structure and generally their facial features are amazingly similar.  Blanton relates that she used this to play a joke on her mother, holding the centerfold like depicted and briefly fooling her mother into thinking that she'd posed for Playboy.  Apparently Ms. Gerard was extremely top heavy, and when folded out it becomes apparent that Gerard and Blanton are not the same person.

So why am I posting this here?  Cute story?

I suppose it is a cute story, and Blanton really had a sense of humor and still does.  But we're posting this for other reasons.

Gerard is apparently a famous Playboy centerfold, for the very reason noted.  The 1960s was before silicone and she was very top heavy, in an era when Playboy centerfolds were all pretty top heavy.  That she still has a following is remarkable, particularly since she died in 1985.

And that's the reason we're noting her.

She was born, as noted, Francis Camuglia, and as her find a grave entry shows, she was from a large, almost certainly Italian, and almost certainly Catholic, family.  By the time she was photographed in 1966 or 1967, she'd already been married and maybe divorced, and was off to a rocky start in life.  If she wasn't yet divorced, she soon would be.  She'd marry one more time, and go on to a life in California, working for an astrologer.

In 1985 she killed herself at age 37.

Blanton, in contrast, when on to high education, a successful life, and retired to Mexico.  She's travelled all over the world, as her blog demonstrates.

At the time of the photo, Blanton and Gerard really weren't very far apart in age.  Camuglia was born in March 1948, in which case she was a mere 19 years old when she appeared in Playboy, and only barely 19 years old at that.  Blanton was younger, but not by much, probably only one or two years at the very most.

Blanton went on to success.  Gerard was reduced in the public mind to her naked visage, a cute girl with (apparently) large assets.

The 1960s, while there was still open, and sometime legal, opposition to it, was right at the height of public acceptance of Playboy.  In the 1970s you'd still go into grocery stores and it was available the way other magazines are now, on your way to the checker.  It retained an image of "dirty" and glamourous all at the same time.

What the public didn't know was the long lasting effects pornography would have on the American public and psyche and how damaging it would be.  Nor did it know about the horrific abuse so many of these young women went through.  Not only did it basically brand them, to a degree, for life, making them something like harem slaves in a way of prior eras, valued for their physical assets and little else, they were often subject to horrific physical abuse.

I don't know about Gerard and I'm not going to look it up either.  Entering her name would no doubt provide piles of pornographic links.  That she was somebody who killed herself I already knew.  There's a really good documentary, Secrets of Playboy, that really dives into what happened to so many of these people.  Playboy left a pool of drugs and blood on the floor that we're still trying to mop up.

Her headstone is marked "Our Bubbie - Beloved Daughter and Sister".

Related threads:

Secrets of Playboy

Tuesday, November 25, 1924. Radio station test, USS Los Angeles commissioned, Chaplin marries a second teenager.

US radio stations stood silent between 10:00 and 11:00, EST, for international broadcasting tests.  Radio broadcasts from the UK, France and Spain were heard as far west as the American Midwest.

The USS Los Angeles was commissioned.

Lita Grey (Lillita Louise MacMurray), actress, age 16, married Charlie Chaplin, age 35.  She was pregnant.  Grey was his second wife, and it was the second time he's married a teenager, Mildred Harris of Cheyenne Wyoming being 17 when they wed following a pregnancy scare.

Had the couple not married, Chaplin faced the possibility of being arrested for statutory rape.

They would have two children during their troubled marriage.

She'd go on to have three more marriages before dying in 1995 at the age of 87.

Last edition:

Monday, November 24, 1924. Australopithecus africanus

Labels: 1920s, 1924, Australopithecus africanus, Chinese Warlord Era, Evolutionary Biology, Japanese Empire, Korea, Republic of China, South Africa

Sea of red.

On a dreary Friday morning, more than a dozen people gathered outside Courtroom 1A of the Townsend Justice Center to witness the end of the prosecution of the killer of 17-year-old Lene’a Brown, who was shot dead near Buckboard Park on May 14. 

Most of those hearing attendees wore red in one form or another to support Brown — fl annel shirts, hoodies and T-shirts lined the left rows of the courtroom ahead of the trial.

I stepped out of the courtroom after a hearing to see this crowd.  It was a sea of red.

Thursday, November 6, 1924. The 100th Anniversary of Christopher Robin and Winey the Pooh.

Winston Churchill was named Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Nikola Pašić became Prime Minister of Yugoslavia for the second time.

Published on this date:

Calvin Coolidge issued a statement regarding his election:

November 05, 1924

It does not seem possible to me to make an adequate expression concerning the Presidency of the United States. No other honor equals it; no other responsibility approaches it. When it is conferred by an overwhelming choice of the American people and vote of the Electoral College, these are made all the greater.

I can only express my simple thanks to all those who have contributed to this result and plainly acknowledge that it has been brought to pass through the work of a Divine Providence, of which I am but one instrument. Such powers as I have I dedicate to the service of all my country and of all my countrymen.

In the performance of the duties of my office I cannot ask for anything more than the sympathetic consideration which my fellow-Americans have always bestowed upon me. I have no appeal, except to the common sense of all the people. I have no pledge except to serve them. I have no object except to promote their welfare.

Life Magazine came out with a cover featuring a Girl Scout.

The Irish Boundary Commission held its first meeting to come to an agreement of the dividing line between the Irish Free State and the United Kingdom.

Last edition:

Wednesday, November 5, 1924. Expelled from the Forbidden City.

Labels: 1920s, 1924, 1924 Election, 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, Calvin Coolidge, China, Chinese Warlord Era, Manchukuo, Monarchy, Nellie Tayloe Ross, Thanksgiving, World War Two

Blog Mirror: Teen, Who Grew Up Traveling In RV, Explains Why It's The Worst!!

 

Teen, Who Grew Up Traveling In RV, Explains Why It's The Worst!!

Saturday, July 26, 1924. Other around the world flights.

Argentinian pilot Pedro Zanni and mechanic Felipe Beltrame began their rather belated attempt to fly around the world.

Larry Estridge became the last person to win the World Colored Middleweight Championship, defeating title holder Panama Joe Gans in a 10-round bout at Yankee Stadium.  Segregation of titles by race would thereafter rightfully be abandoned.

The KKK held a rally in Issaquah, Washington that drew at least 13,000 people.

The weekly magazines were out.

The Saturday Evening Post with a girl who had a scouting uniform of some type, or perhaps was wearing an oddly colored representation of  Navy white shirt, with red instead of blue.

Country Gentleman had a classic of a draft team.

Last edition:

Friday, July 25, 1924. Speeding the game up.

Labels: 1920s, 1924, Albania, Armenia, baseball, Cheyenne, Ethnicities, Greece, Kosovo, Rodeo

Tuesday, July 25, 1899. The Great Meet of the Newboys.

I haven't been covering it, but the summer of 1899 featured the Newsboy Strike in New York City, which was directed at the Hearst newspapers.

July 25, 1899: “Great Meet of Newsboys”

It was not the only newsboy strike in US history, but it is remarkable as a youth lead labor strike.

Last edition:

Friday, July 21, 1899. Ernest Hemingway born.

Labels: 1890s, 1899, Illinois, Personalities, The written word

Boy Scouts no more.

 

The Boy Scouts of America is changing its name to Scouting America

Boy Scouts of America has announced it will rebrand as Scouting America, which, if media impressions are any measure, is a very big deal. Within days of the announcement, the collective online impressions of the news surpassed 14 million, according to the organization — a staggering figure that underscores the institution’s widespread influence.

Article in the Tribune. 

Does it really suggest the "institution's widespread influence", or its tragic decline from what had been that influence?

I teed this up quite a while back and since that time the Southern Rockies Nature Blog, which is linked in here, has a really nice and personal blog entries on this item, entitled Bye Bye Boy Scouts.  I can't really say goodbye to the Scouts that way, as I never was much of a Scout.

Usually I say I was never a Boy Scout, but that's not true.  I was briefly.  Probably around when I was in 6th Grade, or at whatever point it is when a person goes from Cub Scout to Boy Scout, when there were Boy Scouts.  I didn't really last long in it, and it's hard to say exactly why.  Part of it was, I think, as they group I was in, while they did do things, was slow to get around to doing them.  The several merit badges I earned while I was in, I just picked out and did by myself.  That "by myself" thing probably had a lot to do with it also, as by this time my lifelong introvert nature was firmly set in, and unless compelled by external forces or acclimated by long exposure to a group, you'll feel uncomfortable in a group.  Usually I say that I'm "not much of a joiner", with this being, I think, part of it.

Another part may simply be that I'm highly rural and was then.

We don't tend to think of it this way, but Scouting was an urban movement.¹   Aware of the inadequacy of young British men in the Boer War, Lord Baden-Powell, who after the war became the British Army's Chief of Cavalry, founded the Boy Scouts.  The idea was twofold, those being 1) British boys had become a bunch of anemic unskilled wimps who needed some manning up from nature, and 2) British boys had become a bunch of anemic unskilled reprobates who needed some Muscular Christianity.

The original organization had no place for girls.  Girls wanted to participate in things, and soon had their own organizations.  The two didn't mix.

And frankly it didn't mix for good reason There are such things as manly, and womanly virtues.  Much of what the original Boy Scouts sought to address was spot on in its observations, and Scouting did a really good job of addressing them.  Often affiliated with churches, Scouting groups were successful in teaching boys a lot of valuable outdoor skills that often stuck with them for life, and they were benefitted in that goal by the absence of girls, who at a bare minimum are extremely distracting to boys and young men.  Given their natures, young women are usually, although not always, much less distracted by young men.

There's been a lot written on the decline of the Boy Scouts, and there are various theories about it.  One of the blogs linked in here, The Southern Rockies Nature Blog, has an article about it that's worth checking out.  Whatever it was that brought it to its current state, it was still a pretty strong organization in the 1970s, when I had my brief association with it. At that time, even in the rural West, a lot of boys were part of it, and for that matter quite a few of their fathers had a strong association with it.  Being in the Boy Scouts (which my father never was), was part of a multi generational thing.

Signs of decline were there even then.  Of my good friends, only one was a Boy Scout, which his father had been.  Another had a father who had a strong history of Scouting, but my friend wasn't in it.  I was in a youth organization in my early teens, but it was the Civil Air Patrol, which with its martial aviation theme was a completely different type of organization.  Rural kids, of whom I knew a lot, tended to be in the FFA, which had direct practical application to them.

I wish I could pinpoint what was going on, but I really can't.  I've tried to do so here before, and probably haven't been successful.  Looking at the topics addressed in this thread, however, I think part of it may have been that in the post World War Two era that went into the 1970s, the retained gaze upon the rural really faded.  Even television reflected that as programming went from the rural focused on the 1960s, such as The Andy Griffith Show, The Beverley Hillbillies, and Green Acres, the last two of which anticipated the change, to urban centric dramas such as Newhart, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, WKRP In Cincinnati, etc.  Americans had been moving into the cities for a long time, but suddenly they quit looking outside of them.  Even a gritty urban environment depicted in something like The French Connection was celebrated in a way.  It's notable that a figure like Clint Eastwood, who had come up in westerns, started appearing as Dirty Harry in urban California at the same time, and Dirty Harry, like Popeye Doyle, wasn't portrayed as any sort of Boy Scout.

The atmosphere of the late 60s also brought in destructive forces that we're still dealing with.  The resolute male admired and celebrated from the era of The Strenuous Life on to the Ballad of the Green Berets suddenly, in the Strauss Howe fashion, yielded to the feminized and marginalized male, at least in the dominant WASP culture.  It's never really recovered, and we can see some of the reactions to that playing out in society now.

In that atmosphere, Scouting attempted to adapt, but that's part of the problem.  The campaign hat went out, and the red beret came in.² Out with the old, and in with the new.  The institution already had, however, its close association with Christianity and a sort of "goody two shoes" reputation.  It probably should have just doubled down on that and its rural focus, but it tried to adapt instead.

Like other institutions that were heavily male and which had become somewhat soft, it also began to be plagued, apparenlty, with male on male sexual conduct.

People hate to discuss this part, so the realities of this should be noted.  One of the byproducts of keeping boys and girls separate in Scouting is that it not only allowed boys to focus, but it kept boys and girls out of close proximity to each other. Scouting involves teenagers.  No matter how focused or watched, when male and female teenagers are together, some of them will misbehave in ways that create life changing byproducts.  A person only has to look at the expansion of the role of women in the military in order to appreciate this.³ 

We already know that the largest group of abusers of teenagers in this fashion are teachers.  The decline in personal morality brought about by the Sexual Revolution helped unleash this, and I'd wager that a person could easily find a story of a teacher engaging in this conduct with a teenaged charge nearly every month.  I ran across one just last week, in which the assailant was a female teacher and the victim something like a mere 13 years old.  If this happens in an institution in which being discovered will result in the end of a career and jail time, and in which getting caught is highly likely, it's going to happen in situations in which this is much less discoverable.

Put bluntly, as the Muscular Christianity focus waned, the Sexual Revolution came on, and an overall feminization of society advanced, predatory homosexuality in the Boy Scouts became inevitable to some degree, and it had probably always been there at least to some extent.  It's customary at this point to note that not all homosexuals are predatory, and that only a minority are, which is absolutely true, but it happened.  That some people would let their behavior go in an all male setting shouldn't be any more surprising than those instances of male coaches preying on young teenage female athletes.  It's reprehensible, but without additional external controls, it was going to occur.

This helped cause Scouting's popularity to drop off massively, and not surprisingly. Parents quit encouraging their children to be Scouts.  Not really knowing what to do about it in the context of the culture, Scouting opened its doors to girls. This predictably hasn't helped, and it won't.  Scouting will, I'd guess, be largely taken over by girls, but it won't be an organization that Boy Scouts prior to the 1970s would recognize.

There's something to all male bonds between conventionally oriented males that is unalterably different from ones with women.  Probably our biology has a lot to do with it.  The mateship that exists in military units, for example, which are all male, is completely different from an organization that has even one female in it.

The larger tragedy is that the very thing that Scouting was created to address in the first place, in large measure, is probably need as much now as it was then.  The source of the problem is large the same, the urbanization of the country and the corrupting influence of urban life, combined with the absence of male roles, something that existed in the very early 20th Century and something that exists now, albeit for different reasons.  Scouting, by having gone first soft, and then semi feminized, is no longer the organization that it was, that addressed that.

Footnotes:

1. Recently I read Doug Crowe's book A Growing Season, which is extremely off color, but extremely interesting.  The back of the book, where the short review is, terms it a novel, but it isn't.  The figures in it are all real, I either know of them or actually knew some of them.

It occured to me in posting this that part of the reason that the Boy Scouts lost its appeal to me here is that in a highly rural setting the first purpose of scouting, to introduce the outdoors, will be taken up by those who have a strong affinity towards it, which most young men do, all on their own.  Going to Scouting events actually retards a person's ability to go outdoors and do what you want, with your young male associates, once somebody is of driving age, or at least it did then. As soon as somebody was 16, we were pretty much loose in the world.

As noted, not surprisingly, our companions in these forays were all male.  I can't recall going on an outdoor adventure of any kind with a female of my own age until I was at the University of Wyoming.  Nature segregates us in that fashion, even if society doesn't want us to.  As A Growing Season demonstrates, that certainly gives rise to opportunities to engage in vice, although did not in any serious fashion, and the few of my fellows who really fell into it did so, notably, in town.

2.  Only if troops adopted it, however.

3.  Without putting too fine a point on it, two women I know of who were justifiably very proud of their military service, and neither of which might be regarded as libertine, had early discharges from the service for this very reason, followed by the birth of their oldest child not long after.  The service with the biggest problem, seemingly, is the Navy, where close proxmity on ships has caused an alaraming pregnancy rate in some instances.

Related threads:

Youth organizations. Their Rise and (near) Fall, or is that a myth? And, did you join?

No place for boys. . .

Exit the Boy Scouts Stage Left. Boys, Men, the "Masculinity Crisis" and the "BSA" as an example of it.

Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist Part 7. One more won't hurt me. . .

Today In Wyoming's History: May 8. The LDS severs ties with the BSA.

Blog Mirror: What Scouting Has Lost

Sunday, May 12, 1974. Divorce Italian Style.

Italians voted to retain the newly granted right to obtain a divorce, dating from 1970, in Italy's first public referendum.  The vote was 59% in favor of retention of the law.

Italian divorce or the lack of it, had actually been the theme of an Italian movie of several yeas prior, at the time that Italian movies and bombshell actresses were a big thing.  In the film, which I've never seen, apparently Ferdinando Cefalù, placed by Marcello Mastroianni, is married a 37-year-old impoverished Sicilian nobleman when he falls in love with his cousin Angela, a 16-year-old girl he sees only during the summer.

Ick.

So he starts to plot to kill his wife, and it goes on from there.

I don't think I'll bother to catch it.

Mastroianni is an interesting character, as his own marriage failed due to his infidelities, but he and his wife remained married throughout his life.  Asked once about it, he was horrified when it was suggested he should divorce, noting that he was Catholic and Catholics do not divorce.

Daniela Rocca, who played the devoted wife in the film, actually was rendered mentally unstable during it, and attempted to commit suicide. Stefania Sandrelli, who played the 16-year-old love interest, and ultimately unfaithful second wife, was actually only 14 years old when she played the part.

Leyla Qasim, became the first woman to be executed by Saddam Hussein's regime.  She was one of five Kurds charged with attempting to hijack and airplane and plotting to kill the Iraqi leader.

Last prior edition:

Thursday, May 9, 1974. Probable cause.

1970s, 1974, Disaster, Geology, Government, Japan, television, Watergate

Saturday, May 3, 1924. Foundings.

The Grand Order of the Aleph Zadik Aleph (AZA or אצא), an international fraternity for Jewish teenagers, was founded in Omaha, Nebraska.

It would go on to found the B'nai B'rith Youth Organization a year later.

The SS Catalina, which would be in service for 51 years ferrying passengers between Los Angeles and Santa Catalina Island, was launched.

German police raided the Soviet Trade Delegation

Zinaida Kokorina, against the odds and through the intervention of the Soviet head of state, became the first female military pilot on this day in 1924.

She wanted to become a fighter pilot, but was persuaded to remain a flight instructor, which she did through World War Two.  She later became headmistress of a village school at Cholpon-Ata in Kyrgyzstan before retiring to Moscow.

Last prior edition:

Friday, May 2, 1924. Craters of the Moon.

1920s, 1924, Calvin Coolidge, Craters of the Moon National Monument, Cuba, Government, Idaho, Radio

Observations on a murder.

Earlier this week Robert Maher Jr., age 14, was murdered by Dominique Antonio Richard Harris, born in 2008, and Jarreth Joseflee Sabastian Plunkett, born in 2009.  The killing seems to have been planned for several days prior to the assault in the Eastridge Mall that lead to Maher's death.  Plunkett did the actual killing, with Harris slamming Maher to the ground beforehand.  

The technical origin of the fight was that Maher had called Plunkett and Harris "freaks" during Spring Break (something that didn't exist when I was in school) and that enraged the two of them.  He called them that has they went into a porta potty at a local park together, which is odd, but insulting them wasn't very smart.  This raises the specter of the Matthew Shepherd killing, which had elements which never really seemed to be accurately reported.  More likely, however, in the exaggerated juvenile maleness of the rootless and (I'll bet) fatherless mid teenage boy, that was an implied insult that had to be addressed.

Maher never seems to have gotten in a single punch in the assault.  The two assailants, who had stolen their weapons along with Red Bulls and candy that day, acted in such a fashion that, whether Harris intended it or not, gave Plunkett the opportunity to viciously knife him.

There's no reason here, we'd note, to use the classic "alleged" assault language. The two teenage boys killed the third. They're going to be tried as adults. They ought o be put away, forever.

But what else does this event tell us?

Casper's a rough town.

One thing that I saw soon after the murder was a comment by somebody on Facebook noting how they have moved from New Mexico, where their son had been knifed in a fight, to Casper under the belief that this was a quite safe town.

In another context, we've already spoken about immigrants into the state being delusional about it, and this is one such instance. Casper has never been a nice town.

Casper was founded in 1887, and it was violent from day one to some degree.  It was, however, originally a rial stop in cattle company, although it always had its eye on oil.  It was the jumping off spot for the invaders in the Johnson County War, which at least gives it a bit of a footnote in that violent event.  Casper's first murder occured on Saturday, September 20, 1890, when bartender John Conway shot and killed unarmed A. J. Tidwell, an FL Cattle Company cowboy in Lou Polk's dance house, following a round of fisticuffs.  The blood has been flowing ever since.

Casper really took a turn towards the wild side of life starting in World War One.  1917, as we've addressed here before, is when the Great War Oil boom really took off, and with it came a lot of men and a lot of vice. One of the things that created was Casper's infamous Sandbar district, in which prostitution was carried out openly and prohibition flaunted.  Repeated efforts to close it down utterly failed, until finally a 1970s vintage urban renewal project (yikes, the government taking a hand!") destroyed it.

With the booze and the prostitutes came murders (and no doubt disease) but it went on and on.  By and large, however, as odd as it may seem, people just acclimated themselves to it.  You got used to a town having a red-light district, and as there were some legitimate businesses in it, you'd go into it for legitimate reasons.  As a boy, we walked into the Sandbar in the early 70s to go to the War Surplus Store, which nobody seemed to think was a big deal. The America and Rialto movie theaters were just yards from the district, and the district's bars lapped up out of it into downtown Casper, with some of them being places were to walk around, rather than past, if at all possible.

Casper had quasi ethnic gangs when I was young, and at least in the schools that I attended, that was a factor of attending them.  You were careful about it.  It was impossible to get through junior high and high school without having been in a fight.  Most fights were hand to hand, but a teacher was knifed when I was in junior high breaking up a knife fight, so not all of them were.  In high school we all carried pocket knives and none of us were supposed to.  They were for protection.  While I was in high school, one of our classmates, who had been held back more than once, was killed outside a bar in a shooting, the result of a fight he provoked, which resulted in an ethnic riot at the school in which shots were fired.  The father of one of our classmates was killed by our classmate after he turned his molesting attention on her sister, having molested her for years.  Neither of these crimes resulted in prosecution.

The point is, for those who are shocked by the arrival of violence in Casper. . .well, it's been here since 1890.

The abandoned males

I keep waiting to hear the circumstances of the murderers' family lives and have not read any yet.  I'm sure it'll come out as the story advances.  While It's dangerous to speculate, there are reasons to suspect a few things, one being the killers likely had no fathers in the picture.   We're going to hear at some point that they were raised by their mothers, or in irregular homes.  I could of course be wrong, but I'll bet not.

Fatherless males are a major societal problem.  Fatherless males that are raised in an environment of sexual license are an even bigger problem.  Indeed, they're often fatherless for that reason in the first place, and they'll go on to spawn further fatherless children, who grow up in poverty and with little societal direction.  A minority will find that structure in the Old Law, the law before the law, which reaches back to tribalism in the extreme.  It's in the DNA.

The Old Law demanded death for transgressors too, something modern society has moved away from in large measure.  I've already heard it suggested that Harris and Plunkett should receive death, but due to their ages, I think that not very likely.  It'd be ill-advised, no matter what.  But tribalism spawns more tribalism.  The real personalities are lost of both the assailants and the victims.

Blog Mirror: Forever Elsewhere

 

Forever Elsewhere

Wednesday, February 13, 1924. When We Were Very Young and corruption.

Winnie the Pooh debuted as Mr. Edward Bear in the pages of Punch. The work was When We Were Very Young.

Congress decided to try to regulate the employment of very young labor.

H. J. Res. 184, A Bill to Limit, Regulate, and Prohibit the Labor of Persons Under Eighteen Years of Age, 2/13/1924

And this in the form of a Constitutional Amendment called the Child Labor Amendment.

It would pass Congress, but it failed to secure the necessary state ratification.  Most of its provisions were later incorporated into law in any event.  It'd likely be regarded as obsolete today, and the fact that the same provisions were adopted by law provides a lesson to later day supporters of the moribund ERA.  Having said that, recent runs at child labor by some members of the GOP provide a bit of a lesson as well.

1924  Police corruption in Casper.

German nationalist attacked the headquarters of Rhineland separatists in Pimassens. Thirty-six  people were killed in the event.

Emblem of the British Fascisti.  Note the call to traditionalism, patriotism, and religion. By MrPenguin20 - Own work. Based on emblem visible here., CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=36730872

British fascists met at the Hotel Cecil in London.

Felsch in 1919.

Former Chicago White House outfielder Oscar "Happy" Felsch was arrested for perjury, following his prior day's testimony in Shoeless Joe Jackson's back wages trial.  White Sox lawyers in the intervening 24 hours produced letters that contradicted Felsch's testimony.

My father's side.

Lex Anteinternet: I had always thought my grandfather on my mother's...: but it turns out, he died in 1958. He was, therefore, about 67 years of age. Still not ancient by current standards, but not 58 years of age...

Carrying this forward, or over, or whatever it would be just a bit, my father's father died on October 9, 1949.  He was 47.  I'd been told by one of my aunts that it was on her birthday, but it was the day after her birthday when he died.  Close enough to burn in an indelible mark, I'm sure.

That aunt was born in 1931, which would have made her 17 or 18 at the time of his death.

His youngest son, my father's brother, was born in 1936, which would have made him 12 or 13, which is a bit older than I recalled.  It's still pretty young, however.  My father was born in 1929, which would have made him 19 or 20, older than I recalled, but it makes sense in context.  In both these instances, I think it's the younger age, 12 and 19, that would be correct.  My father would have just completed junior college, as they called it at the time.  His oldest sister, born in 1926 (the same year my mother was born) had been married three years and was living in Nebraska.  She was the only married sibling, naturally enough, at the time.

My married aunt would come back to Casper when her husband graduated from dental school.  He'd grown up at least partially in Nebraska, but had strong Casper family connections, but I'm not sure how that had come about.

My other aunt would go on to the University of Wyoming, something unusual for the time.  She didn't graduate.  I never thought much of that, but as the family story developed following her death the rest of us ultimately learned of a trauma that would have been about the time of her senior year there, so her failure to graduate, surprising for an extremely intelligent women, make sense.

My father's mother died in 1973, she was 71 at the time. That'd definitely older than I recalled (I had thought it was 65).  Somewhat unusually, both she and my father's father were born in the same year, 1901, making them about a decade younger than my mother's parents.  They married in 1923, when then both would have been 21 or 22.  It's interesting that the oldest of their children wasn't born until 1926, which at that time was a little bit of a delay.

I would have been ten when she died.  I can definitely recall it, and having been up at the hospital while she was ill.

Related thread:

I had always thought my grandfather on my mother's side died at age 58. . .

St. Agnes of Rome

 A saint, in many ways, for our times.  Her feast day was yesterday.

Martyred on January 21, 304.

Saturday, January 5, 1924. Ironic?

Sounding like a story line out of an Alanis Morissette song, Eleftherios Venizelos, a Greek hero, was elected as the Speaker of the Hellenic Parliament by his colleagues only to go on and have a heart attack that day during the parliamentary session.  He'd serve in the position for only six days, but would live until 1936.

Walter P. Chrysler introduced his first car, the Chrysler Six Model B-70.

Celia Cooney, age 19, commenced her criminal career with the robbery of the Thomas Ralston Grocery store in Brooklyn.  Her husband, Ed Cooney, drove the getaway car.

Their criminal career ended in April when they were caught.  Ed Cooney lost an arm due to an injury while in prison and recovered $12,000 against the State of New York in 1931 as a result.  The same year they were released.  He died in 1936 of tuberculosis, and she remarried in 1943. She passed away in 1992.

The Ongoing 2023 Legislative Session of Other States.

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

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

May 21, 2023

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

It also passed a new gun measure.

June 3, 2023

Connecticut banned marriages under 18 with no exceptions.

September 7, 2023

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

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

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

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

October 3, 2023

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

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

October 8, 2023

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

January 4, 2024

Passed last year, some new state laws:

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

Blog Mirror: KID CATHOLICS

 

KID CATHOLICS

On being an only child.

My father (left as viewed) and his siblings.  I don't know the date, but given their apparent ages, this photograph would have been taken in Scotsbluff, Nebraska, in the late 1930s.  His borther is the only one left alive.  My father was the first to pass, at age 62.

My father was very close to his three siblings, one of whom is still living.  He was particularly close to that sibling, his brother.  They spoke by phone nearly every day when my uncle, who was a fireman, was not working.

My mother's parents and their children.  My mother is seated, fourth from the left as viewed, next to her mother.  Her youngest sister, seated far right, was the first to pass.

My mother was close to most of her siblings.  They were a feisty bunch in general, and they argued amongst themselves, but they were close. Like all such relationships, some were closer than others.  My mother was particularly close to her youngest sibling, one of her four brothers (she had three sisters as well), and he was very close to her.  A very long-lived family as a rule, her sisters have passed, but three of her brothers are living.

I'm an only child.

That was not my parent's desire.  They simply had a very hard time having children, and they were not young when they married, really.  Indeed, in the common understanding of the time, while they'd be regarded as "young" today, but only barely so, at the time of their marriage, at the time, they would have been regarded as middle-aged. Certainly my mother would have been, she being three years older than my father. They were married five years at the time of my birth, and she was 37 years old.  My birth was it, she'd never have another child.  Indeed, in retrospect, while was a remarkably fit person her entire life, my birth took a lot out of her in other ways and a significant psycho-medical decline would set in with in thirteen years of that event.

When you grow up as an only child, you constantly hear how "lucky" you are.  That's the point of the post.  You really aren't.

People like to imagine that only children are "spoiled", but at least in my case that wasn't true. The concept of being spoiled even has a name, Only Child Syndrome, but research has shown it's largely a myth.  My parents probably made a dedicated effort to keep that from happening to me.  What you are, however, is deprived in some very significant ways, all of which have to do with the close bonds that form between siblings being absent.

If you grow up an only child, you miss out on ever having that close relationship that can only come through a blood bond.  Siblings never escape their siblings, even under extreme stress. This is not true of any other relationship whatsoever, although a real, not an American Civil Religion, marriage does that in another fashion.  

And having siblings teaches you things that lacking them does not, and which can never be made up for.

Growing up as a child, my closest friends were my parents.  Having no siblings to distract me, if I wanted to interact with somebody close to me, my parents filled that role.  In most houses, you see children play various sorts of games with each other.  I'd certainly do that with friends, but there was no playing board games or card games with my siblings. I've never developed an affinity for card games, although both of my parents were good at them, and my father taught them to me.  For board games, however, my father was the go to.  It wasn't until I was an adult that I appreciated that most children, if they wanted to play a board game, would do it with a sibling.

Moreover, if adults are your playmates, you enter the adult world very quickly.  And not only that, you enter the adult world of your parents.  Either genetically or through environment, I obtained my parent's love of history very rapidly.  Not only that, however, but I entered it at an adult level quite quickly.  When I went from grade school to junior high at 7th Grade, at which time I was 12 years old, I remember being glad that the library had such adult books.  One of the first I checked out was Cornelius Ryan's A Bridge Too Far.  The sight of a short 12-year-old lugging up the massive tome to the library desk caused the librarian to nearly reject checking it out to me, and she warned me that it was a book for adults.  I was stunned.  I was reading adult books at home already, almost all the history tomes.  I loved A Bridge Too Far.

This made me, I suppose, "bookish" and it gave people the illusion that I'm "smart".  My father and mother were both extremely intelligent, likely both geniuses actually, but I'm not as smart as either one of them by a long measure.  I'm just well-read, really.  And being an only child makes you a loner in significant ways, as you do so much all by yourself that other people simply do not.

In my case, this was amplified at age 13 when my mother became profoundly ill.  Then it was me and my father, and from that point on, really, I was an adult.  And for a lot of things, I was an adult with nobody to turn to.  My father was my closest friend, although I certainly had other friends, but the problems you take to your siblings, I bore, like I am sure all only children do, by myself.

I still largely do.

This makes for a rough existence in a lot of ways.  As an adult, I really didn't have anyone to go to advice to.  I mostly made my own decisions, and started doing that at about age 13.  A lot of those decision, made only in the context of my own experience, were wrong.  Being insecure about the state of existence itself due to my mother's condition and due to a childhood asthma condition, I valued security way over that which other people do, which ironically ends up making you potentially insecure in certain fundamental ways.  My post high school academic career can probably be defined by that.  I studied geology first, and then law, not because of a deep love of the topic, but because they seemed to offer secure occupations.

My father died when I was in my 30s.  My mother when I was much older, I think in my early 50s.  With them both gone, there is no connection like that.  My wife was great during my mother's illness, particularly since they did not get along, but the strain of that did not help in our relationship and continues to have a lasting impact.  I can't go to siblings like she does with family problems, and her being the one I'm closest to on earth means that I'm uniquely vulnerable there in a way, frankly, that she is not.  My connection with things, basically, is razor-thin.

I note all of this for a simple reason.

Being a teenager without siblings proved to be difficult.  As a young adult, out in the world like young men are, I didn't notice it at all, but once my parents started their final descent, the lack of a sibling was agonizing.  As I've aged now into my 60s, I feel imperiled by it.  I wish I had a brother to talk to, like my father did, or like my mother did.

I don't understand why married couples forego children, and in a lot of ways I feel that people who don't have kids never really become adults.  Those having children, however, shouldn't have a single child.  It's not fair to the child.