Tuesday, December 6, 1774. Powers of the Crown.

Massachusetts was holding a provincial congress.

King Carlos III of Spain issued a royal order forbidding hunting and fishing in the forest of Balsain, which was reserved for royal amusement.

Sounds familiar.

Last edition:

Friday, November 18, 1774. Ellis and his island.

Labels: 1770s, 1774, Colonial North America, Ellis Island, Food, New York, restaurants and bars

Going Feral: A mid summer dinner.

Going Feral: A mid summer dinner.:  

A mid summer dinner.

 

Going Feral: The nature themed tattoo

Going Feral: The nature themed tattoo: 

The nature themed tattoo

Let me note, in general, that I'm not a huge fan of tattoos.  That being said, some of them are striking works of art now days, something that really wasn't true of most tattoos back when I was a young adult, although I will note a fellow National Guardsman, a full timer, back when I was a Guardsman had a striking tattoo of a tiger.  He was a jerk, but that tattoo was very well done.

Anyhow, somehow within the last twenty or so years tattoo artistry has dramatically improved.  Included in that are some with some really striking natural themes, including the following.

 

Sunday, October 24, 1924. A glimpse of Natrona County.

Put up for reasons that matter to me. 

Last edition:

Saturday, October 25, 1924. Contrasts.

Labels: 1920s, 1924, Art, Girl Scouts, J. C. Leyendecker

Miracle Mile.

 

 

Blog Mirror: 5 for Fathers

 

5 for Fathers

Blog Mirror: 8 Fishing Knots to Know

 

8 Fishing Knots to Know

Why it took 57 years to replace jungle boots

I used various pairs of these for fishing for years.

Wyoming's Bishop Steven Biegler on Fiducia Supplicans.

Chances are, if you took a poll, most Catholics in the pews here on Sunday couldn't tell you who the Bishop for the Diocese of Cheyenne is.

And that is as it should be.

By and large, if things are going relatively well, there's no real reason for you to know who the Bishop is.  An observant Catholic no doubt knows who the parish priest(s) is/are, who the deacon is, if there is one, and probably knows who the priests are in the across town parishes.  And they may have kept track of a favorite priest once he was reassigned.  But the Bishop?  Well, for the most part, they don't really interact with him.

Now, having said that, there's always observant who do know who the Bishop is, and of course he's prayed for, along with the Pope, every Mass.  So, yes, I know who the Bishop is, and I've known who the Bishops were going back into my teenage years.

Having an opinion on how well a Bishop is doing is another matter.

The first time that I can recall a Bishop was from when I was a kid.  We were going fishing and as my father, in our 1965 Chevrolet pickup, entered The Narrows, a car was beside the road and a couple of men standing by it.  "That's the Bishop", my father stated, and we pulled off.  Their car had broken down.  The Bishop and a priest got in, and we took them back to town, which mean we had four adults and one child in the cab of a pickup.

At that time, that wasn't abnormal.

"How's the fishing?" is what I recalled him saying.

That would have been Bishop Newell, who stepped down in 1978, and who passed away in 1987.  He was a Coloradan.  He would have been nearly the same age as my father's father and mother.  He'd been the Bishop since 1951, although in later hears there was a co-Bishop (not the right word).  He was well liked.

He was the Bishop at my Confirmation, and actually picked my Confirmation Name, as in the mushy days of the 1970s, I'd somehow failed to pick one and nobody had required me to.  He picked "John".

The next Bishop was Bishop Hart.

We didn't react much to Bishop Hart, although I can recall that my father was not a fan of the Bishop's Appeal, which we still have.  He didn't approve of some of the things it was used for, and probably still wouldn't.

Bishop Hart was later accused of improper conduct with a few boys in his prior diocese and at least one here.  He was thoroughly investigated by the police and DA's office twice, and both times they chose not to prosecute, feeling the accusations unwarranted.  Under the current, and maybe prior, Bishop there was an ecclesiastical followup on this, with the same going all the way to the Vatican, with the Vatican also feeling there wasn't enough there to sanction him.  Nonetheless, the current Bishop has been of the view, basically, that he was guilty and taken that position officially.  He really focused on it for a long time.

That's been one of the reasons that I've been somewhat critical of the current Bishop.  

Americans claim to believe that you are innocent until proven guilty, but we don't.  We should at least pretend that we do officially, however, if the process is to mean anything.  And to have had two DA's and a Vatican process all say that there wasn't enough there should mean that we at least cease to have a focus on an accusation.

This is moreover all the more the case in a diocese in which the population is highly transient, and most Catholics here weren't here when Bishop Hart was the bishop.  Indeed, the current bishop has had a quiet focus on Hispanic immigrants, which also were, ironically, a focus of Bishop Hart, and most of the Hispanics in Wyoming, if they were even alive when he was Bishop, were probably living in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Chihuahua.

And no, I'm not joking in that observation.

We've had a series of Bishops in recent years, and at least in my observation, there's some quiet discontent on this one in general, at least in some quarters.

Bishop David Ricken, who was originally from Dodge City, Kansas, was really popular, and a genuinely nice guy.  He was later made the Bishop of Green Bay. After him, we had Bishop Etienne, who was quite popular in no small part because he was a farmer and a hunter, and seemed like one of us. That may be why Pope Benedict picked him.  He later went on to be assigned to the Archdiocese of Anchorage, and is now in the Archdiocese of Seattle.

Bishop Biegler is from South Dakota and should be regarded as one of us, but it's been my observation that he's never been popular with a selection of Catholics here. The more conservative a Catholic is, the least likely he is to be a fan of Bishop Biegler.  That may simply be because he was appointed by Pope Francis, whom conservative Catholics here aren't huge fans of, which is true of a selection of conservative Catholics across the U.S.  As noted, he's really focused on the Priest Abuse scandals, and oddly enough that may be part of the reason he's not been hugely popular.  We're a minority religion here and Wyoming did not have a huge problem. There were some priests implicated, but it was quite limited in general.  Focusing on it tends to put Catholics in disdain by non-Catholics, a problem in a population where you are already regarded as odd for being Catholic.  Indeed, just the other day a Baptist minister made a joke at my expense for being a Catholic, apparently unaware that protestant denominations have had just as big, if not bigger, problem, but that it largely goes unnoticed as the press really doesn't follow Protestantism very much.

Teachers, as we've noted, have the largest rate of icky transgressions.

Anyhow, the whisperers tend to suggest that Bishop Biegler is one of Francis' bishops, by which they mean that they believe that Francis is a liberal who is pushing the Church into accommodation with homosexuality.  That likely misjudges Francis.  What it doesn't misjudge is that the US has had a selection of disappointing Bishops, while it also had a selection of outstanding one.  A lot of the noteworthy, outstanding ones are very conservative and orthodox.  Pope Francis has, at the same time, criticized the American Church for being in essence conservative and not on board with a lot of what he's trying to do, although it's quite difficult to tell what Pope Francis is trying to do.

He's trying to do something with Fiducia Supplicans.

Fiducia Supplicans was hugely upsetting to a lot of orthodox and conservative Catholics.

I've discussed it elsewhere, but one of the things that I noted is that I sort of think I see the failure to recognize a trend at work here.  The Western World, following World War Two, used its fast wealth to expand its wealth to the point where most of the problems that predated 1945 didn't really impact us the way they used to.  We've always wondered what we'd do if had a lot of time and money on our hands, and it turns out that we think only of ourselves, and then we begin to think a lot about our genitals.  It probably makes sense on an evolutionary biological level, but it's resulted in a lot of disorder and falsity.  

And because it's been misunderstood, throughout the West, people have convinced themselves that the whole world is discovering that "homosexuality" and "transgenderism" have been deeply hidden wide spared human traits when, in fact, there's no good evidence f that at all, and the former characterization is actually scientifically suspect, and the latter one doesn't even exist.  The Church in the West, urged on by those who believe that if only this was understood, or in some liberal quarters accommodated, has a significant element working on this topic in the belief that only if some accommodation could be reached, all those with these sexual attributes would come back to Mass.

In the wider world, however, the West is declining and the Church in other regions rising.  People in Africa and Asia look at this and think the West has gone nuts, and in fact most people in most regions of the globe do not view this as conduct that's normal, but the opposite.  And scientifically, they're likely right. So the global trend is Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular is towards orthodoxy.  Indeed, the young everywhere are turning towards conservatism and orthodoxy.  It's hard for leadership of major institutions to realize this, however, as they're focused on the West, where while this has probably jumped the shark it's not obvious, and they remain lead by the Baby Boom generation which is focused on the trends of its own era.

Fiducia Supplicans caused quite a reaction based on a person's position and region. The Church in Africa pretty much said it wasn't going there, blessing wise.  Pope Francis made a later statement which upset some people by excepting the African attitude as cultural, which again is something I feel that wasn't accurately assessed.  Fiducia Supplicans, changes no doctrine at all, of course, but its the focus on it that caused ire in conservative quarters, as it seems to be focused on homosexuality, and it was misunderstood at first as to its application.  

In the US a few Bishops in written statements, and some individual priests publically, have taken the Pope's direction to reflect on how to apply it locally and determined not to apply it.  The Vatican in January indicated that Bishops should not stop priests from applying it.  In Wyoming, not much was said of any official nature at all.  

Now Bishop Biegler has, in the Wyoming Catholic Register.  While it is a copyrighted article, as we're commenting on it, we're going to set the entire article out below.

Questions have arisen about the blessing that may be given to couples in same-sex unions or in heterosexual unions lived outside of a Church marriage, as stated in Fiducia Supplicans (FS). So, I would like to address the major concerns. First, Pope Francis did not change the doctrine of marriage. He stated clearly, “Since the Church has always considered only those sexual relations that are lived out within marriage to be morally licit, the Church does not have the power to confer its liturgical blessing when that would somehow offer a form of moral legitimacy to a union that presumes to be a marriage or to an extra-marital sexual practice” (11, FS).

A Gesture of Pastoral Closeness

Thus, a liturgical blessing is not to be given, but a pastoral blessing may be given. As explained by the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF), “non-ritualized blessings are not a consecration of the person nor of the couple who receives them, they are not a justification of all their actions, and they are not an endorsement of the life that they lead.” Instead a pastoral blessing is a “simple gesture of pastoral closeness.” It expresses the all-encompassing love of God for his children in every circumstance of their lives.

Knowing that they cannot receive Communion, people come forward in the procession seeking a blessing. They want to feel God’s closeness. The priest or deacon asks no questions about the person’s moral life, but simply offers a prayer or blessing. After Mass, often people ask for a blessing over their family, which is given without any inquiry about their marital status. These pastoral blessings express God’s closeness. Pope Francis said, “When a couple spontaneously comes and asks [a priest] for this [blessing], it is not the union that is blessed but simply the persons who together have asked for the blessing.” He explained that “the intention of the pastoral and spontaneous blessings is to show concretely the closeness of the Lord and of the church to all those who, finding themselves in different situations, ask help to continue—sometimes to begin—a journey of faith.”

Some Catholics have expressed concern that people could misinterpret the meaning of a pastoral blessing given to couples who are in a union not officially recognized by the Church. Thus, it is essential to differentiate between a liturgical blessing and a pastoral blessing. The DDF stated, “The real novelty of this Declaration … is not the possibility of blessing couples in irregular situations. It is the invitation to distinguish between two different forms of blessings: ‘liturgical or ritualized’ and ‘spontaneous or pastoral.’”

Confidence in Christ’s Blessing

Yet, there is another significant teaching in Fiducia Supplicans that merits our attention. How strongly it expresses God’s merciful love! This is one reason why many are distraught by FS. Since the beginning of his papacy, Pope Francis’ proclamation of mercy has been embraced by the multitude but rejected by a vociferous minority. FS, once again, firmly proclaims that God’s mercy must be extended to every single person.

The opposition of FS focuses overwhelmingly on blessing those in same-sex relationships rather than those many more men and women who are in heterosexual relationships not deemed valid

by the Church. There is a unique prejudice against people in same-sex unions. They are seen with contempt, like the way Jews looked upon tax collectors.

As a tax collector, Saint Matthew proclaims mercy poignantly. He portrays Christ challenging us to imitate the Father’s mercy. One of my favorite passages is, “Love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your heavenly Father, for he makes his sun rise on the bad and the good, and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust” (Matthew 5:44-45). Do we really believe that our heavenly Father bestows mercy on the just and unjust? Are we seeking to be children of our heavenly Father by extending his love to everyone, the bad and the good alike?

Fiducia Supplicans begins with a quote from Pope Francis who reminds us: “The great blessing of God is Jesus Christ … He is a blessing for all humanity, a blessing that has saved us all. He is the Eternal Word, with whom the Father blessed us ‘while we were still sinners’ (Romans 5:8), as Saint Paul says. He is the Word made flesh, offered for us on the cross.” Are we confident in the blessing that Christ freely offered to sinners? As Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus teaches us, this confidence “is the sole path that leads us to the Love that grants everything.

With confidence, the wellspring of grace overflows into our lives … It is most fitting, then, that we should place heartfelt trust not in ourselves but in the infinite mercy of a God who loves us unconditionally … The sin of the world is great but not infinite, whereas the merciful love of the Redeemer is indeed infinite” (22, FS).

Surprised by Mercy

Micah Kiel wrote: “Mercy is the surprise that people don’t want because it means they have no way of predicting what God will do and to whom God will do it” (America, John Martens, Jan. 5, 2024). For some, this is unnerving, and they react with fear. They see Pope Francis as causing confusion in the Church. Yet, he is actually calling us to internalize Christ’s mercy and boldly proclaim it to the world.

Some protest saying that we need both mercy and truth. Fiducia begins by affirming the truth of Church teaching on marriage, and it proclaims the truth of God’s unconditional blessing for all. Francis challenges us with the truth of mercy. In Amoris Laetitia, he reminded us of the primacy of mercy as we proclaim the truth of the Gospel.

He wrote, “… although it is quite true that concern must be shown for the integrity of the Church’s moral teaching, special care should always be shown to emphasize and encourage the highest and most central values of the Gospel, particularly the primacy of charity as a response to the completely gratuitous offer of God’s love. At times we find it hard to make room for God’s unconditional love in our pastoral activity. We put so many conditions on mercy that we empty it of its concrete meaning … 

That is the worst way of watering down the Gospel … mercy is the fullness of justice and the most radiant manifestation of God’s truth. For this reason, we should always consider ‘inadequate any theological conception which in the end puts in doubt the omnipotence of God and, especially, his mercy’” (Amoris Laetitia, 311).

As we ponder God’s indiscriminate mercy, I will end with a challenge by James Alison, who wrote, “learn to perceive people you might have despised as ‘blessable’ rather than ‘contemptible,’ and then let God’s subtle grace sort out the efficacy of blessing in their – our – lives” (The Tablet, Jan. 4, 2024).

Now Wyoming's Catholics have the Bishop's official view. 

Nothing that he has said is theologically shocking in any fashion.  I'ts all correct.  So people ought to lay off, right?

Well, I doubt they will, if for no other reason than that he didn't 1) say he didn't like it, and 2) seems to support it.

Well, he clearly supports it.

That reason is what will make him unpopular right there.

As noted, this article is in fact very orthodox.  And Bishop Biegler deserves credit for being the first person I've seen to clearly explain the difference between the two categories of blessing the document addresses.  I really hadn't followed that before.

Still, a couple of things.

One thing is a stylistic matter. Bishop Biegler, like the Pope, likes to use "!".

The exclamation mark ought to be eschewed in any serious writing.  It just doesn't work, and it tends to cause most educated readers to be a bit disdainful of whatever was just accented through its use.  

The other is, however, that Bishop Biegler is being mildly disdainful of those who are concerned about Fiducia Supplicans, suggesting that they don't appreciate the inclusiveness of Christianity or that they are dismissive of God's mercy.  And indeed, some of the critics can rightfully be criticized for that.

But some cannot.  Some are concerned that the blessings will in fact be focused exclusively on homosexual couples, and they are at least corrected to that extent, and that this will give the illusion that it approved of, and lead to more.

In fact, the argument, noted here, that the text doesn't really address homosexuality specifically and would also apply to other people with irregular sexual unions, while noted elsewhere, sort of begs a set of questions.

A major part of those conventional sexual unions is that they are conventionally oriented and a lot of them are capable of being directly addressed without undue complication, for one thing.  Couples that are having sex and aren't married, can get married, assuming there's no impediment to that.  If they can't get married, there are things that can be followed up upon there, not all of which are easy to address, of course.  The most complicated one is couples that have married outside the Church where there is an impediment to marriage, such as one party being previously married and incapable of obtaining an annulment, but that's really the most difficult one.  Probably the last example is the only one in which people might routinely present themselves for a blessing, feeling themselves outside of things but wanting in.  I'm sure that does occur.  But that this has occured for a long time is well known.

And indeed, it is once again particularly European, oddly enough.  Divorce and remarriage are not unknown in the US, and there's been a lot of focus in the US Church for decades, I'd argue too much attention in fact, as it's given the illusion that it's a problem, but more or less just that.  It's more than that. But ecumenical practices in Europe have so blurred the lines that it's hard for couples in some regions, particularly in Northern Europe where the Lutheran and Catholic Churches are both common, to appreciate that these things matter.

At any rate, blessings of individuals occurring were already occurring, and therefore the development of this topic probably wasn't necessary.  The presumption that this was focused on homosexuality and licensing it, to a degree, was inevitable and unnecessary, even if the latter isn't the aim.

Indeed, on that, at least one Bishop in the US issued a letter that his parishioners would inevitably see it that way, so the blessing should not occur.  I guess the Vatican's statement in January overrides this.

Well, what about here?

I don't think it'll happen much.  I hope that people in these situations apply the entire topic correctly, and all are to be sympathized with, including the Priests that find themselves in the midst of it.

And there's one more thing.

The Bishop seems to indicate that those concerned about, and I'm saying concerned about not opposed, to, Fiducia Supplicans are acting with a sort of contempt, and based upon the reading of it, sort of a contempt either for this focus in the Latin Rite of the Church, or upon people who identify as homosexuals or transgendered.  Some people are, but some people are acting out of concern for the normalization of something that may very well reflect a cultural trend, rather than an organic existential reality.

And this gets back to this.  It's the Western World that's fascinated with homosexuality and which thinks transgenderism is a thing.  Homosexuality is not regarded in the same fashion as the West views it in most of the world, and indeed, as we've posted here before, in large sections of Asia it's regarded as a Western cultural thing, and there are a couple of aboriginal groups in African in which it's wholly unknown.  We don't know the origin of either category, but the categories themselves are fairly new.  Homosexuality, as we know to conceive of it, came about as a Western cultural category only within the last 150 years, and transgenderism only much more recently.  Given that most of the world's population isn't European, there's reason to doubt that recognizing these categories as bonafide ingrained traits is anything more than a passing trend, much like the European dominance of global culture itself.

And even in Europe, as opposed to the United States (which has a European culture) real doubt is now being cast on transgenderism.  The US is very behind the curve on this.

Given this, this focus may do something that isn't helpful, which is to focus.  While it is inaccurate, there's already a concept in much of non-Catholic American culture that the ranks of the Catholic religious are filled with homosexuals and even some Catholics remain convinced that there are pools of underground homosexuals in the same ranks, something that might actually have been somewhat true, but not nearly to the extent imagined, in the 70s and 80s.  Convincing orthodox Christians that the Catholic Church, which is generally a bastion of orthodoxy, isn't being influenced in this direction isn't helped by this focus.

And it will retard progress towards a reunion with the Orthodox, something that needs to happen but which we never quite get to. Already one Eastern European Orthodox Bishop who was getting very friendly with the Catholic Church as stated that Fiducia Supplicans will prevent a reunion.

Again, Bishop Biegler has not stated anything that isn't squarely orthodox in his letter.  But his focus on Bishop Hart demonstrated a looking back on an era which for most Wyoming Catholics didn't have much relevance to their current lives.  Fiducia Supplicans, while not saying anything revolutionary about doctrine either, can't help but focus on a topic which, in a greater sense, may not be relevant to much of the Universal Church, and which may actually reflect a passing concern of a passing culture to a degree.

Related threads:

What if the Western World is the "special case"?

Going Feral: Subsistance Hunter/Fisherman of the Week: Dick Proenneke

Going Feral: Subsistance Hunter/Fisherman of the Week: Dick Pr...: 

Subsistance Hunter/Fisherman of the Week: Dick Proenneke

Dick Proenneke may be the ultimate modern subsistence hunter and fisherman in so far as the Western World is concerned.

Proenneke was born in Iowa in 1916.  His father was sort of a jack of all trades laborer, which is and was common to rural areas.  His father was also a veteran of World War One.  Dick followed in his father's footsteps prior to World War Two, leaving high school before graduation, something extremely common in that era (less than 50% of males graduated from high school prior to World War Two  He joined the Navy in World War Two and took up hiking around San Francisco while recovering from rheumatic fever contracted in the service.  Having the disease was life altering for him, as he became focused on his health.  He received a medical discharge from the Navy in 1945.

After the war he became a diesel mechanic, but his love of nature caused him to move to Oregon to work on a sheep ranch, and then to Shuyark Island, Alaska, in 1950.  From 1950 to 1968 he worked for a variety of employers, including the Navy and the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service.  He moved to the wilderness in 1968, at age 52, the year that in many ways gave us the Post Post World War Two World we are now seeing collapse.  He lived there, as a single man, until 1999, when old age forced him out of the woods and to his brother's home in California.  He died in there in 2003, at age 86.  His cabin now belongs to the Park Service.

Proenneke loved photography and left an extensive filmed record of his life in Alaska.

There's a lot that can be gleaned from his life, some of which would probably be unwarranted, as every person's life is their own.  Having noted that, however, it should be noted that Proenneke is not the only person to live in this manner in Alaska's back wood, including up to the present.  So he's not fully unique, but rather his high intelligence and filmed record has made him known.

It's also notable, fwiw, that he was a single man.  Basically, if looked at carefully, his retreat to the woods came in his retirement, as he had very low expenses up until 1968, and had worked for the government for many years.  He never married, so he never had a family or responsibilities of that type.  Many of the men who live in wild Alaska have married into native families, so their circumstances are different.

Probably every young man who loves the outdoors has contemplated doing something like what Proenneke actually did, while omitted the decades of skilled labor as a single man that came before it.  And in reality, Proenneke, had lived over half his life as a working man with strong outdoor interests, rather than in the wilderness.  People really aren't meant to live the way he lived, in extreme isolation, save for a few.

Related Threads:

Dick Proenneke in Alone in the Wilderness

Dick Proenneke in Alone in the Wilderness part II

Going Feral: Blog Mirror: Studies: Climate change, lake trout could impede Yellowstone Lake cutthroat recovery indefinitely

Going Feral: Blog Mirror: Studies: Climate change, lake trout ...:  

Blog Mirror: Studies: Climate change, lake trout could impede Yellowstone Lake cutthroat recovery indefinitely

 

Studies: Climate change, lake trout could impede Yellowstone Lake cutthroat recovery indefinitely

Saturday, February 3, 1823. Spencer Fullerton Baird, First U.S. Fish Commissioner, born.

 

Spencer Fullerton Baird, First U.S. Fish Commissioner, Born (1823)

Going Feral: This is why we can't have nice things:

Going Feral: This is why we can't have nice things::   

This is why we can't have nice things:

 

The above is a case caption of a lawsuit brought in Montana in which Wilderness Watch is suing the U.S. Forest Service over the Forest Service program to use rotenone to take out non-native trout species so that cutthroat trout, the native species can be reintroduced in the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness.

So, in the name of wilderness, Wilderness Watch, it acting contrary to nature.

Sigh.

Going Feral: Fishing season is over, and hunting season has begun.

Fishing season is over, and hunting season has begun.

I am, by vocation, a hunter.  A hunter of wildlife and fish.  And I'm not exaggerating.

This isn't a hobby with me.  I'm stuck in a feral past, or perhaps a more feral future, but lving in the present.  

And I'm more of a hunter than a fisherman, in contrast with my father, who was the other way around

The first two seasons of the year open on September 1.  Like most years, due to my occupation (which most people, at least who are professionals, would claim as their vocation, although I'd wager that it is with less than half, very conservatively), I worked.  Opening weekend for me, therefore, is usually when I first get out, and I first get out for the greatest of the wild grouse, Blue Grouse.

They are, I'd note, delicious.

This is a somewhat complicated story, but because of the route I take in, I need permission to cross, which is always forthcoming but I didn't hear back in time this year. That meant that I needed to drive into a location a good two miles further from my normal jumping off point.

And the road, due to the heavy rains this year, and the winter snow, was eroded to impassable. So the walk was further than expected.

But still very pretty, in the morning light.

Because of the very long hike, and my recent surgery, I armed myself with a kids model 20 gauge and buttoned my shirt up to my neck.  Because my old M1911 campaign hat was a casualty of a rattlesnake event two years ago, I wore a replacement United States Park Service campaign hat.  I don't like it nearly as much as my old M1911.

I will say that those wearing synthetic hats are, well, missing the point, and the boat.

The entire trip involves some mountain climbing for the dog.

The dog won't eat in the morning (poodles and doodles are strange about this) due to excitement, so I packed his uneaten breakfast with me. When we hit the high country, he was by that time hungry, in spite of his excitement.

Those boots?  White's smoke jumpers.  Best boots ever.

We hike a fair amount. The dog drank out of a few streams, but I also carry a canteen and he's learned to drink out of a canteen cup.

We found and bagged two young grouse.

And ate them one that evening.  I fried both, that night, and had the second one, reheated the second evening.
 

Mid Week at Work: Deck Life On being comfortably uncomfortable working as a deckhand

 

Deck Life

On being comfortably uncomfortable working as a deckhand

Jerks.

I've been going through my camera roll on my computer, as frankly the organization was a mess.  In doing so, I stumbled back across this photograph from last season.

This depicts some Colorado fishermen who nearly ran over my dog, which they could see, in their haste to get to the river before me.

Keep in mind, this is one of those classic acts that depends on me being rational.  They were headed right for the dog at quite a speed and nearly hit him.  I was caring a shotgun.  No, I'm not going to shoot somebody over a dog, but in my legal career I've twice had instances in which a person very nearly did just that.  

I went ahead and loaded up in the howling wind and hunted this stretch of the river anyway.  They looked like they weren't doing well in the high winds.

And people wonder why us natives resent Colorado sportsmen.

Saturday, August 11, 1973. American Graffitti

American Graffiti was released on this day in 1973.  It's on our Movies In History list, which discusses it here:

American Graffiti

Like The Wonder Years, I've made frequent reference to this film recently.  I was surprised when I started doing that, that I'd never reviewed it.

American Graffiti takes place on a single night in Modesto California in 1962.  It's the late summer and the subject, all teenagers, are about to head back to school or already have, depending upon whether they're going to high school or college. Some are going to work or already working.  They're spending the summer night cruising the town.  That's used as a vehicle to get them into dramatic situations.

The story lines, and there are more than one, in the film are really simple.  One character, played by Richard Dreyfus, is about to leave for college and develops a mad crush, in a single night, for a young woman driving a T-bird played by a young Suzanne Summers.  Another plot involves a young couple, played by Ron Howard and Cindy Williams, who are struggling with his plan to leave for college while she has one more year of school.  Another involves an already graduated figure whose life is dedicated to cars, even though its apparent that he knows that dedication can't last forever.  The cast, as some of these names would indicate, was excellent, with many actors and actresses making their first really notable appearances in the film.

What's of interest here is the films' portrayal of the automobile culture of American youth after World War Two. This has really passed now, but it's accurately portrayed in the film.  Gasoline was relatively cheap and access to automobiles was pretty wide, which created a culture in which adolescents spent a lot of time doing just what is depicted in this movie, driving around fairly aimlessly, with the opposite sex on their minds, on Friday and Saturday nights.  This really existed in the 1960s, when this film takes place, it dated back at least to the 1950s, and it continued on into the very early 1980s. At some point after that, gasoline prices, and car prices, basically forced it out of existence.

For those growing up in the era, this was a feature of Fridays and Saturdays either to their amusement or irritation.  As a kid, coming into town on a Friday or Saturday evening from anything was bizarre and irritating, with racing automobiles packed with teenagers pretty much everywhere.  Grocery store parking lots were packed with parked cars belonging to them as well.  "Cruising" was a major feature of teenage life, and nearly every teenager participated in it at least a little big, even if they disavowed doing it.  While they did this, in later years they listened to FM radio somewhat, but more likely probably cassette tape players installed after market in their cars.  In the mid 1970s it was 8 track tape players.  In the 50s and 60s, it was the radio.

So, as odd as it may seem to later generations, this movie is pretty accurate in terms of what it displays historically.  And, given that the film was released in 1973, a mere decade after the era it depicts, it should be.  The amazing thing here is that by 1973 American culture had changed so much that a 1973 film looking back on 1962 could actually invoke a sense of nostalgia and an era long past.

The music and clothing are certainly correct, as is the cruising culture.  I somewhat question the automobiles in the movie, as most of those driven by the protagonists are late 1950s cars that wouldn't have been terribly old at the time the movie portrays, but a person knowledgeable on that topic informed me once that vehicles wore out so fast at the time that people replaced them fairly rapidly, which meant that younger people were driving fairly recent models.  Indeed, looking back on myself, I was driving early 1970s vintage vehicles in the late 1970s.

The music, which is a big feature of the movie, is also correct, which ironically often causes people to view this as a movie about the 1950s, rather than the early 1960s.  The music of the early 60s was the same as that of the late 50s, and music from the 50s was still current in the early 1960s, so this too is correct.

This movie was a huge hit, and it remained very popular for a very long time.  It's justifiably regarded as a classic.  More than that, however, it's one of the few movies that influences its own times.

Already by the 1970s there was some nostalgia regarding the 1950s.  Sha Na Na, the 50s reprisal do wop band, actually preformed at Woodstock, as amazing as that seems now.  By the late 1960s seems felt like such a mess that people were looking back towards an earlier era which they regarded as safer, ignoring its problems.  American Graffiti tapped into that feeling intentionally, although it has some subtle dark elements suggesting that not all is right with the world it portrays (the film clearly hints that a returned college graduate student is involved with his teenage female students).  George Lucas, when he made the film, couldn't have guess however that it would fuel a nostalgia boom for the 1950s like none other.

From our entry:

Movies In History: American Graffiti, and other filmed portrayals of the Cultural 1950s (1954-1965).

One of the really remarkable things about this film, well worth noting, is that it depicted a night in 1962.  That means, of course, that it was depicting, with nostalgia, something that had happened only ten years prior and yet already seemed like an earlier era.

Do we feel that way about 2013?  I doubt it.

This demonstrates that our perception of the decades not only depends upon years, and the years we've lived but also on events and eras.  What made the 1962 seem like history in 1973?

Well, probably quite a lot.  The US entered the Vietnam War and had just left the country in defeat, although the collapse of South Vietnam was yet to come.  The US had landed men on the moon more than once.  The Great Society had come and gone.  A U.S. president had died violently.  Inflation was racking the nation.

And 1968, which is to say "the 60s" had come, and was just leaving, although that was not apparent.

By the 80s, those who had "experienced the 60s" were looking back on some of it fondly, although they weren't looking back on the Vietnam War fondly.  So the process slightly repeated itself. But by 1973 people were really aware that the post World War Two world had really passed.  It wasn't as carefree as depictions of the 1950s would have it, not by a long shot.  But a lamenting of what had been lost was starting, and in some ways, has very much returned.

Looking forward, it was on this day that "hip hop", or "rap" was born when Jamaican born Olive Campbell introduced the form under the stage name DJ Kool Herc at a party organized by Campbell and his sister, that being the Bronx, New York, Back To School Jam.

The Soviet Union sentenced for men to death and three to prisoner terms for collaboration with the Germans while they were members of the Red Army during World War Two.

The Icelandic Coast Guard ship  ICGV Óðinn rammed the Royal Navy's HMS Andromeda off the Icelandic coast in a violent exchange in the Cod Wars.