Moday, April 26, 1926. Caroline Lockhart sued.

Caroline Lockhart was sued for liable in Cody.

Still a well known figure in Cody, it strikes me that Ms. Lockhart is probably hardly known anywhere else.  The eclectic Lockhart was a rancher and journalist.  She died in 1962 at age 91.

Last edition:

Wednesday, April 21, 1926. The Day of Sorrow.

Labels: 1920s, 1926, Islam, Monarchy, Saudi Arabia (Medina), United Kingdom

Subsidiarity Economics 2025. The Times more or less locally, Part 8. The imaginary lost world edition (and also something about the color of pots and kettles).

Popular traditionalist meme with some truth to it, but it requires more thought than this.  Also, this pertains more to the 50s and 60s, than it does to eras before

Nostalgia combines regularly with manifest respectability to give credence to old error as opposed to new truth. 

John Kenneth Galbraith.

June 17, 2025.

Headline in the Tribune:

Trump cancels $49M Wyoming coal carbon capture project

And:

New products take backseat amid Trump tariffs

And:

Companies work to overcome staff incivility

President Trump issued an executive order allowing Nippon Steel to purchase U.S. Steel, something that had been held up by President Biden.

Eh?  Isn't this the opposite of economic nationalism as espoused by the far right.

Yes, it is.

Part of the deal gives the U.S. a "Golden Share', which according to Trump funcationary Howard Lutnick, does the following:

This perpetual Golden Share prevents any of the following from occurring without the consent of the President of the United States or his designee:

• Relocate U.S. Steel’s headquarters from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

• Redomicile outside the United States

• Change the name of the company from U.S. Steel

• Reduce, waive, or delay the $14 billion of Near-Term investments into U.S. Steel

• Transfer production or jobs outside the United States

• Close or idle plants before certain timeframes other than normal course temporary idling for safety, upgrades, etc.

• Other protections regarding employee salaries, anti-dumping pricing, raw materials and sourcing outside the U.S., acquisitions, and more.

We'd first not that nothing is "perpetual".

Next, isn't this Socialism?

Sort of, yes.  It's also somewhat reminiscent of Theodore Roosevelt's idea, regarded as radical then and now, to give shares to US corporations that grew over a certain size, and regulate them as public utilities.

Any way its looked at, this is a radical position for the Republican Party and the US to take in general.  It's amazing that there hasn't been objections to it, let alone by the GOP which up until Trump didn't approve of economic protectionism or anything that could be suggested to be Socialist.

Indeed, even now, Trumpites like to accuse people of being Socialist.  

Hmmm. . . 

June 21, 2025

Man who says he can move TikTok to South Dakota is a bust in Wyoming politics: Reid Rasner lost by 43 points in a U.S. Senate race and has offered few details in support of his multibillion-dollar bid, but has won over the Rushmore State’s governor.

June 26, 2025

Wyoming oil positioned to weather Middle East conflict, analysts say: Nation's soaring oil and natural gas production may buffer energy prices if Israel-Iran conflict disrupts global supplies, some industry officials predict.

U.S. Ballistics plans on opening an artillery projectile plant in Cody. 

cont:

The Senate parliamentarian has advised that a Medicaid provider tax overhaul central to President Donald Trump’s tax cut and spending bill does not adhere to the chamber’s procedural rules.

June 28, 2025

The US broke off tariff negotiations with Canada, the US's largest trading partner.

Aluminium costs are pressing beverage manufacturers.

June 29, 2025

The Senate voted to take up The Big Ugly, which doesn't mean that it's passed.

For the sake of the country, it should not pass, but it likely will. 

Elon is taking note of the impact, which won't please his former ally.

June 30, 2025

CBO on The Big Ugly, as reported by the CST.

CBO PROJECTS TRUMP BILL WILL RACK UP DEBT

Where are those GOP fiscal conservatives?

And also:

Office estimates plan would add $3.3T over next decade

Well, given their ages, Donald Trump, Cynthia Lummis and John Barrasso will likely be pushing up daisies by that time.  So, if its good for the old Boomers, that's all that really matters, right?

Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina came out in opposition of the Big Ugly.  He was immediately threatened with being "primaried" by the illegal occupant of the Oval Office, but then announced he won't be running anyway, which has the impact of positioning this office for a Democratic occupant.

Going into 26, the Republicans are in real trouble in the House, and they're starting to get into trouble in the Senate.

Canada eliminated its digital services tax.

cont:

Via Reddit, not sure of the source, posting so it can be see.

PTC is the renewable electricity production tax credit, a per kilowatt-hour (kWh) federal tax credit included in the U.S. tax code for electricity generated by qualified renewable energy resources. 

cont:

July 1, 2025

At this point, Dr. John lacks any credibility on pretty much anything, but here's his statement.

Sen. Barrasso, Also A Medical Doctor, Defends Medicaid Changes In Budget Bill

The article notes:

As a doctor in Wyoming for over 20 years, I’ve cared for Medicaid patients my entire career. I understand Medicaid’s importance for the people it is intended to serve. I have also seen its shortcomings.

Thanks to Wyoming being good stewards of taxpayer dollars, the Medicaid reforms included in the bill are unlikely to negatively impact our state. Wyoming’s policies are already aligned with a majority of the Medicaid provisions. This includes work requirements for all able-bodied adults enrolled in Medicaid.

Medicaid was established to help children, pregnant women, seniors and the disabled. We need to make sure that high-quality care is accessible and reliable to those who qualify for Medicaid. This bill does that.

Dr. John also supported Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., for his current position even though he no doubt privately believes Kennedy is a quack.  And he hid under his desk for the most part during the recent public lands issue.  Reaction to this story brought out a lot of anger by people remembering that, as it should. 

Eight Republican Senators are currently holding out against The Big Ugly.

The GOP leadership has been struggling with getting the Big Ugly passed in general, and in meeting King Donald's arbitrary July 4 deadline.  Now the monarch has indicated he has sort of a "m'eh" view on the deadline and he doesn't want things cut too deeply, which must be causing Grover Norquist fits.

cont:

The Big Ugly passed the Senate with J.D. Vance casting the tie breaking vote.

Now its back to the House where the House Freedom Caucus has already criticized it due to its increasing the deficit.

The most amusing vote on the Senate side was Lisa Murkowski, who voted for it, but indicated she was agonized by the whole thing. That seems to be Murkowski's theme.  If the Senate proposed a vote to run over kittens, she'd vote for it, but note that the whole thing really bothered her.

Murkowski:

My hope is that the House is gonna look at this and recognize that we're not there yet.

Gutless. 

July 2, 2025

The US dollar suffered its worst first-half decline in more than 50 years due to tariff concerns.

Lisa Murkowski is taking a lot of flak for selling her vote for changes to the Big Ugly that benefitted certain constituents in Alaska, including whalers, while she acknowledges the Big Ugly is ugly.  She seems utterly surprised that she's now the subject of outright deserved contempt.

Murkowski was just playing politics the old fashioned way, trading her vote for something she thinks her constituents needed, while still not liking the bill.  It's the way things are done, in normal times, which these are not.

Murkowski is 68 years old, which I'll mention as the Big Hugly contains tax breaks for seniors.

Well of course it does.  

Old Boomers Never Die

They control away. . . *

Footnotes:

*From Old Soldiers Never Die.

Last edition:

Subsidiarity Economics 2025. The Times more or less locally, Part 7 and Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist, 91st Edition. Reality is hard.

Labels: Donald Trump, Economics, Immigration, law, Nostalgia, Populism, Taxes, The Second Trump Administration

Sunday, January 16, 1944. Cape Gloucester secured.

M5 Stuart of the 1st Marine Division, Cape Goucester, January 16, 1944.

Cape Gloucester was officially secured, although mopping up operations would continue into April.

Dwight D. Eisenhower formally assumed the duties of the Commander in Chief of the Allied Expeditionary Forces, although he had been acting in that capacity for some time.

The Red Army broke through German defenses north of Velikiye Luki.

Today in World War II History—January 16, 1944: Lt. Stewart Graham of the US Coast Guard becomes the first person to make a helicopter takeoff and landing aboard a ship underway—in a Sikorsky HNS-1 

Sarah Sundin.

Today In Wyoming's History: January 16: 1944  USS Johnson County, which was not named that at the time, but later renamed that in honor of several counties in various states, including Wyoming, called that, commissioned.

The renaming 

By Jjw - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=69657529

Amazingly, she is still afloat as a museum ship. renamed once again, this time as the ROKS Wi Bong, reflecting her transfer to the Republic of Korea in 1958.  Having served in World War Two, she served again in the Vietnam War in the Korean Navy.  The naming of the ship after Johnson County occured in 1955.

The Japanese submarine I-181 ran aground on Gneisenau Point at Kelanoa Harbour, New Guinea.

Oops

The U-544 was sunk in the Atlantic by rockets and depth charges from Grumman TBF Avenger planes from the escort carrier USS Guadalcanal.

SBD’s on a combat mission off New Georgia Island in the Solomon Islands, January 16, 1944.

1944.  Rev. Francis Penny was appointed pastor of St. Anthony's Catholic Church in Cody but he resided at St. Barbara's in Powell where he was administrator in the absence of Rev. Fred Kimmett.  Rev. Kimmett was serving as Chaplain in the U.S. Armed Services.

The Sears Roebuck in Madison Wisconsin caught on fire.

Churches of the West: St. Luke Ukrainian Catholic Church, Cody Wyoming. So what's going on here?

These are posted on our companion blogs. 

St. Luke Ukrainian Catholic Church, Cody Wyoming.

Very interesting news.  A Ukrainian Catholic congregation has been established in Cody, Wyoming.

Under The Radar Of LDS Temple Flap, Another Church Is Planned For Cody

The Eparchy for this parish relates:

St. Luke Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church is a non-profit organization that was formed in 2022 with a goal to establish a Ukrainian-Greek Catholic parish in Cody, Wyoming, under the Eparchy of St. Nicholas in Chicago. With many Ukrainian Catholics in the area, and additional interest in the broader community, we are united in our desire to worship God following these sacred traditions. 

In early 2023, we were declared an official mission parish of St. Nicholas Eparchy with the name of St. Luke. In September of 2023, St. Nicholas Eparchy announced that Very Reverend Roman Bobesiuk has been assigned as the pastor of St. Luke’s. 

We truly believe it is God’s will that a Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church be established in Wyoming in order that all faithful Christians in the area may experience the beautiful traditions of the Eastern Catholic Church. St. Luke’s is open to all who wish to attend. 

Suit over LDS Temple in Cody.

Churches of the West: Churches of the West: City of Cody issues building...: We posted this yesterday.  Churches of the West: City of Cody issues building permit for LDS Temple. : Citing, amongst other things, a lack ...

A new lawsuit has been filed maintaining, apparently, that the P&Z Board in Cody was biased towards the applicants. 

Like the Cowboy State Daily relates, the establishment of a Ukrainian Orthodox Parish in Wyoming sort of happened "under the wire".    But is it really correct, as the church's website states, that there are "many Ukrainian Catholics in the area"?

I sort of doubt it, but I could be wrong.  This isn't North Dakota.

There's been a subtle move toward Protestant conversion toward Orthodoxy for some years now, accompanied by the same thing, less subtle, toward Catholicism. Now, however, Pope Francis' Synod on Synodality is raising fears that the "Roman Catholic" Church will take the road to oblivion that the Episcopal Church has.  Those fears are probably overstated, but with all due respect to the Holy Father, he frankly isn't inspiring confidence except in the camp of those who would like to lay down their crosses.

That in turn has been causing a subtle drift of the orthodox in the Latin Rite toward the Eastern Rite, which is heavy on tradition, like the Orthodox.  There's reason to believe that whatever the Synod on Synodality comes up with, and it won't, contrary to fears, change doctrine, will pass over the Eastern Rite.

This is something Pope Francis, quite frankly, should take note of.

Pope Francis, this past week, was condemning young Latin Rite Priests in Rome for buying cassocks and traditional clerical clothing. This demonstrates, in my view, that he continues to miss the point, but then his entire generation does.  It isn't that the post Boomer generation is calling out for reform. It's rather calling out for a reform of the reform, back to authenticity, of which tradition is part.  The cassocks, and the Eastern Rite drift, they're part of that.  For that matter the U.S. Army going back to pinks and greens, and the young going towards localism in farms, that's part of it as well.

Also of interest here is this all happening in Cody.

Wyoming's Big Horn Basin has always had a strong Latter Day Saints population, although it's always been centered more in Powell and Lovell rather than Cody.  It dates back to the early history of the state.  There's also always been a fair number of Catholics in the region as well.  But the recent fighting over things demonstrates a shift of demographics.

Wyoming has oddly always had a booster attitude that bringing in people was good for, well, something. What that is, isn't clear, as we have always hated the population of the state increasing, and we're extremely intolerant of any changes in the nature of the state.  Well, here is the fruit of that.  Cody has drawn in new populations from elsewhere, and also taken a turn toward the populist right.

In 1990 would the LDS temple have drawn opposition.  No, it would not have.  In 2023? Well it is.  People who move in, bring the attitudes and beliefs of where they are from, even if those seem very foreign to us.  And with that is the "don't spoil my view, I just got here" view that is common to new entrants.

I'm not saying that's the case for the plaintiffs in this suit.  I know nothing about them.  What I am saying is that the bigger a community gets, the less of a community it is.

And I'm also saying, going back to the first part of this thread, there's a sense of what we've lost that's felt particularly keenly in those who were denied the experience of being in it.

Churches of the West: Suit over LDS Temple in Cody.

Suit over LDS Temple in Cody.

Churches of the West: Churches of the West: City of Cody issues building...: We posted this yesterday.  Churches of the West: City of Cody issues building permit for LDS Temple. : Citing, amongst other things, a lack ...

A new lawsuit has been filed maintaining, apparently, that the P&Z Board in Cody was biased towards the applicants. 

Churches of the West: Churches of the West: City of Cody issues building...

Churches of the West: Churches of the West: City of Cody issues building...: We posted this yesterday.  Churches of the West: City of Cody issues building permit for LDS Temple. : Citing, amongst other things, a lack ...

This certainly has been an extraordinary even.  Most new churches are simply built, with little major observation regarding that, and typically no controversy.  Here, the opposite has occured.

I'm not familiar enough with the internal politics of Cody to know what's really going on here.  At the 30,000 foot level, the steeple will dominate the Cody skyline, and that is at least the stated objection underlying this matter.

Of interest, an identical, to my understanding, structure is being built in Casper with no controversy at all.  But then, it sits down below the skyline.  

As an additional aside, the LDS church has been expanding regional temples a great deal.  This is a marked departure from its past practices, in which there were very few, and at one time, just one.  At the same time, in a story that's hardly been noted, the LDS have been hemorrhaging members at a massive rate, something that's also a major change from as recently as a decade or so ago.

Churches of the West: City of Cody issues building permit for LDS Temple.

Churches of the West: City of Cody issues building permit for LDS Temple.: 

City of Cody issues building permit for LDS Temple.

Citing, amongst other things, a lack of resources to fight a long legal battle, the City of Cody has issued a building permit for a new Latter Day Saints temple in Cody.

The structure, to be built on Skyline Drive, has been a major source of controversy due to its location.

Tuesday, April 3, 1973. The beginning of the end of personal space and time.

Today In Wyoming's History: April 3:  1973  The T E Ranch Headquarters, near Cody, WY, which William F. Cody had owned, was added to the National Register of Historic Places.

The first handheld cellular phone call was made by Martin Cooper in a demonstration call by Motorola.

Would that this would never have occurred.

Montreal announced Canada's first lottery in an effort to help pay for the upcoming 1976 Olympics.

The USSR launched Salyut 2, it's second space station.  It would be a failure due to hitting fragments soon thereafter, and it would crash back to Earth on May 28.  Well, not crash.  It burned up before it hit.

The Kingdom of Sikkim within India experienced a large-scale revolt which would require Indian intervention, and result in eventual Indian annexation.

Seal of Sikkum, downright scary.

The Wyoming Board of Geographic Names turns down a bad idea.

In a vote for art integrity, the Wyoming Board of Geographic Names refused Gregory Constatine's petition to name a bluff near Cody "Mount Jackson Pollack".

Pollack, as no doubt will be recalled, was the troubled artist who was born in Cody but who moved away with his family while an infant.  His "artwork", which might be better defined as complete crap, has no association with the state and, as noted, is complete crap.  It was boosted to some degree because of goofball Central Intelligence Agency sponsorship, unknown to Pollack at the time, based on the loony theory that if art that was complete crap was known to circulate in the United States Soviet citizens would somehow learn that and be impressed with freedom in the US.

The thesis was stupid, and Pollack's "artwork" is complete crap.

Constantine's artwork, which isn't much better than Pollack, features the bluff.  He earlier proposed naming it after himself.

Thursday, February 19, 1942. Commencement of Japanese Internment.

Today is remembered as a black mark on American history, and is now officially commemorated as the Japanese Internment Day of Remembrance.  It was the day in which President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, resulting in internment.

Today In Wyoming's History: February 19: 1942 Franklin D. Roosevelt signs Executive Order 9066, authorizing the removal of any or all people from military areas "as deemed necessary or desirable."  This would lead to internment camps, including Heart Mountain near Cody.

 Map showing interment camps and other aspects of the exclusion of ethnic Japanese from the Pacific Coast during World War Two.

The text of the order read:

Executive Order No. 9066

The President

Executive Order

Authorizing the Secretary of War to Prescribe Military Areas

Whereas the successful prosecution of the war requires every possible protection against espionage and against sabotage to national-defense material, national-defense premises, and national-defense utilities as defined in Section 4, Act of April 20, 1918, 40 Stat. 533, as amended by the Act of November 30, 1940, 54 Stat. 1220, and the Act of August 21, 1941, 55 Stat. 655 (U.S.C., Title 50, Sec. 104);

Now, therefore, by virtue of the authority vested in me as President of the United States, and Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy, I hereby authorize and direct the Secretary of War, and the Military Commanders whom he may from time to time designate, whenever he or any designated Commander deems such action necessary or desirable, to prescribe military areas in such places and of such extent as he or the appropriate Military Commander may determine, from which any or all persons may be excluded, and with respect to which, the right of any person to enter, remain in, or leave shall be subject to whatever restrictions the Secretary of War or the appropriate Military Commander may impose in his discretion. The Secretary of War is hereby authorized to provide for residents of any such area who are excluded therefrom, such transportation, food, shelter, and other accommodations as may be necessary, in the judgment of the Secretary of War or the said Military Commander, and until other arrangements are made, to accomplish the purpose of this order. The designation of military areas in any region or locality shall supersede designations of prohibited and restricted areas by the Attorney General under the Proclamations of December 7 and 8, 1941, and shall supersede the responsibility and authority of the Attorney General under the said Proclamations in respect of such prohibited and restricted areas.

I hereby further authorize and direct the Secretary of War and the said Military Commanders to take such other steps as he or the appropriate Military Commander may deem advisable to enforce compliance with the restrictions applicable to each Military area here in above authorized to be designated, including the use of Federal troops and other Federal Agencies, with authority to accept assistance of state and local agencies.

I hereby further authorize and direct all Executive Departments, independent establishments and other Federal Agencies, to assist the Secretary of War or the said Military Commanders in carrying out this Executive Order, including the furnishing of medical aid, hospitalization, food, clothing, transportation, use of land, shelter, and other supplies, equipment, utilities, facilities, and services.

This order shall not be construed as modifying or limiting in any way the authority heretofore granted under Executive Order No. 8972, dated December 12, 1941, nor shall it be construed as limiting or modifying the duty and responsibility of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, with respect to the investigation of alleged acts of sabotage or the duty and responsibility of the Attorney General and the Department of Justice under the Proclamations of December 7 and 8, 1941, prescribing regulations for the conduct and control of alien enemies, except as such duty and responsibility is superseded by the designation of military areas hereunder.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

The White House,

February 19, 1942.

While the choice of Heart Mountain in Park County was not one that Wyoming asked for, the event would prove to be a bit of a black mark on Wyoming's history as well.  Governor Lester Hunt, who did not come into office until 1943, would be vociferous in his statements regarding the internees and the legislature would take at least one act in regard to them, that being voting to deny them the right to vote in the state's elections.

On the same day, Darwin, Australia was bombed by the Japanese, inflicting heavy losses on facilities at the town. Twelve ships were sunk in the harbor, making the raid somewhat comparable to Pearl Harbor.

Like the attack at Pearl Harbor, the raid came in two stages and was a surprise attack, albeit on a nation already at war.  The Japanese aircraft were air and land based.  More bombs were used in the attack than had been used in the Pearl Harbor raid.  Australian defenses were relatively light and incapable of dealing with the attack. The resulting chaos resulted in a breakdown of civil authority, with looting taking place even by Australian troops in the town.  Many people would leave the city never to return, or only to return many years later.

The raid was the largest to occur against mainland Australia during the war and was an unqualified success.  The goal was to remove Darwin as a base for the Australians to counteract Japanese forces in Indonesia.

The Vichy government commenced a lengthy trial in Riom with the aims of showing that the preceding Third Republic had been responsible for France's defeat at the hand of the Germans in 1940.

In Winnipeg, Manitoba, the city staged If Day, a simulated German invasion.  The event was a huge success which boosted local bonds sales, which was the goal, enormously.

Sunday Morning Scene: Churches of the West: Christ's Episcopal Church, Cody Wyoming.

Churches of the West: Christ's Episcopal Church, Cody Wyoming.:

Christ's Episcopal Church, Cody Wyoming.

In 1965 the Episcopal congregation in Cody replaced their original church with this one, although they kept their historicl structure, which is right next door.

Sunday Morning Scene: Churches of the West: Christ's Episcopal Church, Cody Wyoming (the original one)..

Churches of the West: Christ's Episcopal Church, Cody Wyoming (the origi...:

Christ's Episcopal Church, Cody Wyoming (the original one).

This 1902 structure is the first Christ's Episcopal Church in Cody, Wyoming.  Money to build the church is supposed to have been donated from high winnings of a parishioner at a poker game.

Sunday Morning Scene: Churches of the West: First Baptist Church of Cody, Cody Wyoming

Churches of the West: First Baptist Church of Cody, Cody Wyoming:

First Baptist Church of Cody, Cody Wyoming

A nice log structure in Cody Wyoming, although so obscured by trees, its hard to photograph.  Of course my poorly framed photograph doesn't help either.

Churches of the West: Unknown former church, Cody Wyoming (but probably the original Methodist Episcopal Church)

Unknown former church, Cody Wyoming (but probably the original Methodist Episcopal Church)

This structure in Cody Wyoming was very obviously once a church, which is even more evident if you are closer to it and can see where some of its features have been removed.  It's been converted into a two story retail establishment.  I don't know its story, but it is located directly across from the current Cody United Methodist Church which might, or might not, give us a clue about its earlier history.  At least the story told about the building of Christ's Episcopal Church in Cody would suggest that this is the original Methodist Episcopal church, in which it was built in 1902.

This too is a poor Iphone photograph, and I will replace it with a better photo if the situation presents itself.

Sunday Morning Scene: Churches of the West: Cody United Methodist Church, Cody Wyoming

Churches of the West: Cody United Methodist Church, Cody Wyoming:

Cody United Methodist Church, Cody Wyoming

A very poor Iphone photograph fo the Cody Methodist Church, taken from my truck window.  If I have time, I'll take a better one on some other occasion.

I don't know the vintage of this quite striking modern structure.

Lex Anteinternet: Lex Anteinternet: Is Beer the Most Distributist Product Ever? Hey, what about whiskey (and other distilled beverages)?. Wait a minute, In Vino locorum subsidiarietatis Veritas?

There was a wedding at Cana in Galilee,
and the mother of Jesus was there.
Jesus and his disciples were also invited to the wedding.
When the wine ran short,
the mother of Jesus said to him,
"They have no wine."
And Jesus said to her,
"Woman, how does your concern affect me?
My hour has not yet come."
His mother said to the servers,
"Do whatever he tells you."
Now there were six stone water jars there for Jewish ceremonial washings,
each holding twenty to thirty gallons.
Jesus told them,
"Fill the jars with water."
So they filled them to the brim.
Then he told them,
"Draw some out now and take it to the headwaiter."
So they took it.
And when the headwaiter tasted the water that had become wine,
without knowing where it came from
— although the servers who had drawn the water knew —,
the headwaiter called the bridegroom and said to him,
"Everyone serves good wine first,
and then when people have drunk freely, an inferior one;
but you have kept the good wine until now."
Jesus did this as the beginning of his signs at Cana in Galilee
and so revealed his glory,
and his disciples began to believe in him.

John, Chapter 2.*

Okay, we've done beer, and we've done whiskey, what about wine.

Lex Anteinternet: Lex Anteinternet: Is Beer the Most Distributist Pr...: A bottle of "double cask" Wyoming Whiskey, which is Wyoming Whiskey that's also been partially aged in a sherry cask. ...

 

And no, we're not grasping for those lyrics from the famous John Lee Hooker song.

Frankly, I know nothing about wine.

I've always known that, but it really occurred to me after I decided to add this post, following my one on beer and whiskey.

Indeed, I pondered why that might be.  

My parents rarely drank wine, but for that matter my father only bought beer during the summer and while we often had a bottle of Canadian Whiskey on hand, it usually lasted an eternity.  Indeed, when I was growing up in the 1960s and 1970s, it was considered to be a social obligation to have whiskey on hand for social occasions.  My folks weren't huge entertainers (they were definitely better than we are here however), and that's about the only time the whiskey was ever brought out.  We didn't stock more than one kind and for whatever reason, the only kind of whiskey my father ever bought was Canadian Lord Calvert.  I supposed that this might be because my mother was Canadian, but as she never ever drank it, that supposition might be way, way, off the mark.

One of my aunts and uncles liked Scotch, and liked Cutty Sark for that matter.  Asking my father about it, he told me that it tasted like paint thinner, and I have to agree.  And not just about Cutty Sark, but all Scotch Whiskey.

About the only wine my parents ever bought was Mogan David, which based upon their website must have been Mogan David Concord.  I feel bad, quite frankly, for the Mogan David company, because back at that time it was simply a fairly cheap and rather obviously Kosher table wine.  The purple wine came with a Star of David emblazoned upon it.  This was all prior to the introduction of tehir horrifying fortified "pop" wines which came out under the MD 20/20 name, and which acquired the nickname "Mad Dog 20/20".  I frankly think that their introduction of that brand, while it may have been a marketing mistake, was a mistake.  I'm surprised to learn that it still exists, actually.

Anyhow, when I was a kid, on very rare occasion, my father would buy Mogan David.  I'm not sure why.  It always came in big gallon sized bottles, and it lasted forever.  I haven't had it for years and years, and indeed not since I was young, probably ten years old or younger, and I'd get a small glass when they bought it.  As it isn't the kind of drink you serve to guests, and as they so rarely bought it, and quit buying it at some point, I don't know what the thought was.

Anyhow, when growing up and still young, "wine" to me meant Mogan David.

When I was in my very early teens my mother, for some still unknown reason, took a wine making class at the local community college and she accordingly started making wine as a hobby.  Simply taking up wine making was really odd for a person who basically didn't drink and who was living in a family that nearly didn't, so I don't know what she was thinking.  It was a mistake all the way around for a variety of reasons.

For one reason, she was a horrible cook and at least based upon her wine making experiment, being a bad cook equates with being a bad vintner.  Her wine was awful.  She made  most of it from berries that she harvested from where our garden was located and for years and years I assumed thereafter that the berries must have been basically unpalatable.  Later on, I found they weren't, when other people made other things out of them. Go figure.

Fortunately, after stinking up the house with the fermentation process for awhile, she gave it up.  Pretty bad stuff.

I don't know if that early experience left me tainted on wine in general.  I'd had beer obviously so apparently that didn't carry over.  As an adult I've been exposed to wine a lot more, but I've picked up a very limited taste for it.  Basically, I like Chianti and buy it on odd occasion.  I don't like any other wine much unless they are very close to Chianti.  Some of the wines that people really like I absolutely detest.   Most of them actually.  Dry Champagne I like, but it's not like you are going to drink gallons of that unless you are Winston Churchill.

So my knowledge on wine is super limited and will stay that way.

Anyhow, as I did beers and whiskey, and as I'm looking at this from a Distributist and local agricultural level, and as I know there are a couple of wineries in the state, I decided to complete the Tour d'alcohol with that.

Now, going into that I'll note that I'm very skeptical about the ability of Wyoming to produce any wine in the first place, unless it's made out of the wild stuff that my mom used, and I'd discourage that.  While my mother, in her brief vintner stage decided to plant a couple of Concorde grape vines over my objection (she never had a grasp on agricultural yield and she couldn't accept that a couple of vines weren't going to yield adequate grapes for fermenting, and she didn't accept that the harsh weather here wasn't conducive to grapes), Wyoming doesn't really have the climate for growing grapes.

Indeed, grapes are sufficiently susceptible to climate that you can actually tell what the climate of a past era was like based on them.  The line basically north of the Rhine in Europe and west the English Channel are the beer lines, basically (with some blending of the two) as you can grow grains north and west of there, but not grapes, usually.  When you can grow grapes in those regions, something odd is going on.  We know, for example, that there was a period when England produced a lot of wine.  It was during the Medieval Climatic Optimum.  You can't grow them there now.  Likewise, during the same era Newfoundland had abundant wild grapes.  It doesn't now.  There's never been a time when you couldn't grow grapes in France, Spain, Italy, Greece and North Africa, which is why all those areas have been wine regions (the modern exception being North Africa but only because of Islam).

So you can't do much with that here.

Apparently you can do a little,  however.

Before I go on, there's one additional thing I should mention that I recently learned.  I've always known that there are wines that are attributed to regions that surprise me, but I didn't realize that simply labeling wine is a big deal.  I had no idea.  Apparently in California, for example, a lot of wine labels are basically that.  Some big mega winery produces all kinds of wine and ships it out under lots of labels under contract.  People buying the label tend to think that a winery by that name is produced there, but nope, it may be just a label.

Indeed, a Benedictine Monk I know told me that the wine sold under the label of his home abbey was not produced there, but in another state and sold under the abbey's name via contract.  He was careful to note that as the abbey did in fact produce other things, but not wine.  The abbey was located in the far north so I would have really wondered about how the accomplished producing wine but, nope, they didn't do it.

That's a bit of a shame really as both wine and beer were once widely produced by monastic holy orders and for practical reasons.  Somehow, as we've progressed through the 20th Century and became more and more hedonistic and amoral we none the less found more in more in the way of societal puritanism to apply to people otherwise living moral lives.  Odd.  And its further misguided in that the Puritans themselves were not teetotalers at all.

Well, anyhow, I've come to know something about beer and whiskey but I remain really ignorant on wine.

So, anyhow, back to wine and Wyoming.

There are, surprisingly, a few Wyoming wineries.

The claimed first winery in Wyoming was Table Mountain Winery.  It interestingly was the brainchild of a UW student from a southeastern Wyoming farming family who researched the topic while a student and went on to apply what he learned, receiving a grant in the process.

And its a true winery.  A ten acre vineyard supplies the grapes for seven different wines which, after looking at their website, I realized that I have in fact seen in the stores.  I haven't tried it, but once again, this is a Distributist or Agrarian triumph, as its amazingly all local and they've been at it for nearly twenty years now.

I should note, before I move on, that the "claimed" item above is because well prior to this time, when I was a student in Laramie in the 1980s, there was some sort of winery in one of the small towns up in the mountains west of Laramie.  This was the Hiney Winery.  I know nothing about it other than that it advertised on radio a lot, back in the days when people, including me, listed to their car radios.  I recall it as their kitschy advertisements always closed out with the line "buy a little Hiney" or something like that, featuring that obvious double entendre.  I never tried it, and have no idea how it was produced.  Laramie is already 7,000 feet in elevation and the towns in the mountains were even higher than that, so I'd be amazed if the grapes were produced locally.

Moving on, Cody Wyoming has a Buffalo Jump Winery.  Knowing what a buffalo jump is, I wonder about the name, but the tourist town has a winery so called.  The last time I was in Cody I noticed it or at least an outlet selling the wines, but I didn't stop in (I'm obviously a very poor candidate for wine tourism).  Their website indicates that the grapes are from California, Oregon and Washington, and they have a second outlet in Arizona.  So they're producing wine, but they're acquiring the grapes. The owners also indicate that they're in buffalo ranching, and indeed they were in that prior to being vintners.

There's also a Jackson Hole Winery, making Jackson Hole the location of at least two breweries and one distillery, or perhaps two distilleries if we include nearby Driggs Idaho in the mix.  Their website indicates that they produce 2,500 cases of wine per year and a large percentage of the grapes are from a farm owned by the vintner, which is a family operation.  However, the vineyards are in the Sonoma region and other grapes are acquired via partnerships and business arrangements. As Jackson Hole is over 6,000 feet high, the lack of local grapes isn't surprising. They do produce the wine themselves.

Weston Wineries, which apparently also produces liqueurs, is another Wyoming winery that relies upon importing the constituents from other states, in this case grape juices.  Indeed, their website specifically notes that they do that and that its common in the industry, which it truly is.  In looking it up, I realized that it too is something I've seen in the stores but never tried.

A really unique winery is found in Gillette Wyoming and was mentioned here the other day in the context of distilleries, that being Big Lost Meadery.  As it name indicates, it specializes in mead.

I'll be frank.  I can't stand mead so I'm not going to try this product.

Most people have never tried mead and are only familiar with it, if they are at all, from stories about Vikings quaffing down buckets of mead. Given that, we imagine it in our minds being something like Russian Imperial Stout or something.  It's not like that at all.

Mead is made from honey.

That's right, it's made from honey.

Now, I'll confess that my experiences with mead are quite limited.  When I was 19 years old, and hence old enough to first drink in Wyoming (the drinking age was then 19), I bought a bottle of mead due to the Viking legends.  It was awful.   I likely didn't make it past the first glass before I tossed the bottle out.

Recently I've had mead again, but for an odd reason.

Up at the start of this entry I noted that my mother tried her hand at wine making after taking a class at the local community college.  About a year or so ago my son, in college, decided to try it too.  His efforts were less reliant on products of the wild, indeed they weren't at all reliant on it, and he gave it up after an initial effort.  Nonetheless, a friend of his wanted to try mead and so they recently made a batch.

Their mead wasn't nearly as bad as the mead that I had when I was young, and I note that there's "dry" mead that's less sweet.  His friend and his family were really impressed with it.  While I was much less unimpressed with it than with the stuff I had years ago, I'm not going to take it up.

Which means that I'm not going to try Big Lost Meadery's product.  It may be great, if you like mead, but as I don't, I'm not going to bother.

Based on their website, Big Lost (which also brews beer) plays a bit with the manly  man image of mead. But the fact that the Norse and other northern Europeans drank it at one time actually tells me something else.

Grapes don't grow in the far north but there are plenty of bees up there, and bees make honey.  The fact that the early Scandinavians made mead (and they weren't the only ones by any means) tells me that if people figure out how to make ferment something, they'll ferment anything available.  Honey was available.  As soon as beer became available, it's worth noting, the Norsemen switched to that.**

And that about covers it for Wyoming's wine. 

Except for the homemade stuff, of course.

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*St. John covers here, of course, Jesus' first public miracle, the changing of water into wine at the Wedding Feast at Cana.

The entire story is an interesting one, and not simply (but of course principally) because it was Jesus' first public miracle.  Like most of the Bible, the story is multi dimensional in all sorts of ways.  One thing we can take from here, from a historical prospective, is the practices that pertained to wine at the time.

Very clearly, then as now, there were various grades of wine.  We learn from this story that the wine that Christ created from the water was of superb quality.  The steward was amazed that the hosts had saved the best wine for last, a practice that woudl be the reverse of what we'd expect then and now. 

Also, based upon the common size of water vessels at the time, this involved a very large quantity of wine. 

That's interesting not only because it tells us of the commonality of wine at the time. . .nobody was shocked that there was a lot of wine, but running out of wine would have been a disaster for the hosts, but also because it touches on a theological point, that being that the drink that was brought into the room at the Last Supper was wine, not "grape juice", as some take great straining strides to maintain.

**I've referenced before, but the novel Krisin Lavransdottir, while a novel, gives a really good account of daily life in Medieval Norway including the drinking habits of Norwegians at that time.  Citing a novel for factual information is always hazardous, but its so well researched I feel it can be relied upon for those details, and it makes it plain that a vast amount of beer and ale were consumed.  Mead is mentioned exactly once in the book.