The clan badge of the Clan MacGillivray

I don't know the story behind this, but if I had a clan, I'd want it to have a badge this cool.

May 3, 1919. New wars and loans for concluded ones.

The Country Gentleman ran a second Rockwell illustration on a youthful fishing trip.  The first one had run the prior Saturday.

The Saturday Evening Post, which people tend to associate with Rockwell now, ran a spring themed illustration.

In Central Asia, the Afghan army crossed the Indian Frontier, over the Khyber Pass into what is now Pakistan, and attacked the town of Bagh, starting the Third Afghan War.

Afghan King Amanullah Khan.

Afghanistan was surprisingly assertive in those days. . . and oddly more modern than it is now.

In the U.S., the Victory Loan campaign continued on.  This one was struggling in comparison with prior efforts, now that the war was over.

Victory Loan drive scene in Seattle.

A Hundred Years Ago: Hundred-Year-Old Packed Lunch Suggestions. Pondering Lunch.

Lunch:

Hundred-Year-Old Packed Lunch Suggestions

And big lunches too.

Child workers on their lunch break, December 1908.  None of these girls look like they every got enough to eat.

Lunch is an odd meal in the U.S.  Most of us eat our largest meal in the evenings.  I'm not sure when that became the norm, but its the norm for almost everyone I know.  The only exceptions are some working rural families that routinely have large noon meals and small evening ones.  In town, I don't currently know of any exceptions.

The suggested packed lunches from 1919 are so big that they'd frankly do me in for the rest of the day.  Anymore, as I normally skip lunch, and frequently breakfast as well, just about any lunch tends to do that.  But these suggestions were directed at the worker of 1919, who still normally worked a pretty manually intensive job and who almost certainly walked a fair distance, normally, to get to work.

The Harvest Lunch.  1881.

Indeed, I've often thought about that in the context of the city in which I live.  I can see in photos of the town of this era cars were becoming a really big thing, and the downtown was normally packed during the daylight hours with them.  But I'll bet that most men still walked to work at that time.  Indeed, I know that driving to work was sufficiently uncommon as late as the 1940s such that the town, which was less than 1/3d its current size, had a bus service. 

New York Times financial desk worker eating lunch, 1944.

Anyhow, as I usually don't eat lunch, lunch habits of folks are something I'm curiously aware of, as eating lunch is the norm, at least among the people I know and interact with daily. 

I was already in the habit of skipping lunches when I was in my 20s, and when I first went to work both my father and a co worker warned me not to work through lunch but to take a break.  That was solid advice.  A break in the middle of the day is indeed a good thing.  My father always ate at a cafe downtown at noon with his friends every work day.  I sometimes started eating downtown but more often than not went home and ate lunch.  I was very thin at the time, but the sedentary nature of my day job combined eating a lot more than I was accustomed to cured that over time.  I'm not fat now, but I'm not anywhere thin as I once was.  As time went on and work became heavier, I started omitting lunches again and now I very rarely eat them.

Women swing shift workers eating lunch at their work stations.

This isn't the case for other people, and people's lunch habits are really varied.  Most people I know eat a fairly light lunch every day.  Some of those lunches feature things I'd never eat, like sardines.  One fellow I know who is on one of the currently faddish diets and who is concerned about his weight, for good reason, eats an absolutely giant lunch every day, usually made up of leftovers from the prior nights dinner, an eating habit that probably has more to do with his problem than anything else.  I'm sometimes tempted to tell him to drop the diet and skip the lunches, but that would likely be regarded as rude so I haven't.

Mexican revolutionaries pause for a hot lunch, 1911.

Skipping lunch, I find, really bothers some people intensely.  That is, not their skipping it, but other people skipping it.  They don't like that you do it and it worries them.  I'm routinely warned by a very thin coworker that I need to eat lunch. She does, every day, and is much thinner than I am, who does not.  I'm sure that she in fact really does need to eat lunch every day.

Member of Congress eating lunch 1937.  Note the white suit.

Which gets to metabolisms, I guess.  Some folks seemingly have high metabolisms and others low.  In prior eras, those with law metabolisms were probably the people who survived famines.  Folks who can eat three giant meals a day and not gain weight, and there are people like that, probably died.

I'm somewhere in between, I suspect.  If I skip breakfast and lunch and don't over compensate at dinner, I'll loose weight.  As I never eat a big breakfast anyhow, and usually skip lunch, I won't loose it rapidly, but I'll loose it some.  If I start eating Giganto Breakfast Burritos, or whatever, everyday, I'll gain it pretty quickly.

None of which is dietary advice, I'll note.  I'm not saying that should engaged in what some call Intermittent Fasting, which is basically what this is, accidentally.  For one thing, it could really mess up your blood chemistry quickly.  If you need to loose weight, see a doctor before you do anything.

But I will note that I think nearly every diet fad is just that, and by that I'd include the current popular Keto Diet.  It strikes me as baloney.

Well, anyhow, heavy workers expending a lot of calories.  That was the work of a hundred years ago and back.  They needed a big lunch.

May 2, 1919. At Ease, In Distress, Distressing news in Central America, and in the United States

The day after the Red May Day, things were more normal, and not.

American officers posed for a portrait in Germany:

Commanding officer staff, 42nd Division.  Maj. Gen. C. A. F. Flagler, Lt. Col. Stanley M. Rambaugh. Col William N. Hughes, Jr., Cpt. James M. Boyd, Maj. E. H. Bertram, Maj. Robert J. Gill and Lt. H. W. Fletcher.  New York Tribune, May 2, 1919. Taken at headquarters at Ahrweiler.

Elsewhere in Germany, or more particularly in Munich, the Freikorps advanced riding with Death's Head, a symbol that dated back to German military antiquity, but which became increasingly associated with Germany's right wing.

The Freikorps had, of course, crushed the nascent Bavarian Soviet, a Communist state that exhibited typical Communist brutality in going down in defeat.  In Russia, however, the Whites were exhibiting some problematic behavior of their own.

The families of Bolshevik prisoners outside of the prison at Ekaterinburg with food for their relatives. North Platte Semi Weekly Tribune, May 2, 1919.

While that was going on, the United States was supporting the Whites against the Reds, or not, or was, or was not.  We really couldn't make up our minds.

J. K. Caldwell looking studious and calm as Russia disintegrated.  He was the American counsel in Vladivostok.  May 2, 1919.

Meanwhile, in Costa Rica, today a vacation haven, Gen. Manuel Choa, late of Pancho Villas' forces, and former Catholic Priest, the Belgian educated Jorge Volio Jimenez, stumbled into rebellion against the country's leadership.

The Cheyenne State Leader couldn't help but note the events of May 1.

The reference to Lenin in Denver was surprising, but then Denver has always had some oddities. At the start of the Civil War a party tried to declare Denver for the Confederacy.

The Laramie Boomerang had given up on peace, it seemed.  It would prove correct in that view.

The Wyoming State Tribune was more optimistic.

A New Japanese Emperor

Japanese Imperial Standard.

While Japan no longer has an empire, it does have an emperor (an odd thought), and as of today, it has a new one.*  Emperor Naruhito.

It has a new Empress as well, Empress Masako, who was a career Japanese diplomat prior to marrying Naruhito.  For reasons that aren't clear to me, Empresses don't go through the formal investiture ceremony in Japan.  That may have something to do with the traditional role of the Emperor as a Shinto Priest.

Naruhito, age 59, is the first Japanese Emperor to take office since World War Two who was not alive during World War Two.  Having said that, there's only been three Japanese Emperors since World War Two, if we include Hirohito, who was of course Emperor during World War Two and up until 1989.  After Hirohito came his son Akihito, who just resigned, making Naruhito the first Emperor in 200 years to take office following a resignation of his predecessor.  Akihito was born in 1933 and was therefore 12 years old when World War Two ended.

That's significant as well in that Akihito was born into a Japanese royal family whose heirs had a technical claim to an expectation to be accorded an official deity status, although that is really fairly grossly exaggerated in the West.  The Japanese royal family dates back to vast antiquity and its origins are so ancient that they frankly aren't very well known.  The first generally recognized emperor is Jinmu, who reigned starting in 660 BC, which is a very long time ago.  Not surprisingly, with a family tree that ancient, the claim to the title of Emperor isn't completely unchallenged and there have been competing lines over time.  Having said that, the fact that the Japanese imperial family tree can be traced back that far is really impressive.

Jinmu with a long bow, as depicted in the 19th Century.

The role of the Emperor has been a hard one for westerners to figure out.  At various points in Japanese history the Japanese crown had nearly no power at all.  In the history of modern Japan, it really acquired power with Emperor Meiji, who reigned from 1867 until 1912 and who, with the aid of his supporters, both modernized Japan and restored the power of the Imperial crown.  Following the Meiji Restoration the crown had power of some sort, but it's always been difficult to discern.  During the 1920s that power may or may not have waned following what amounted to a sort of right wing military coup following an attempted young officers left wing military coup.  Everyone acting in both coups claimed to be acting with the interest of the Emperor at heart.

The pivotal modern Japanese Emperor Meiji.

From the 1920s until the end of World War Two a confusing era resulted in which various historians claim that Hirohito had more or less power.  He clearly had a fair degree, no matter which view a person might take.  That came to an official end in 1945 when the Imperial crown was really saved from termination by the Allies, who found it useful to preserve it.  Hirohito retained his position as Emperor for a very long time after that, but with no real official power, although as late as a couple of decades later it was discovered that high ranking officers of the Japanese Defense Force still consulted with him on matters, resulting in a scandal.

Douglas MacArthur and Emperor Hirohito in 1945.

Hirohito, as noted, had been required to renounce claims to a divine status following World War Two but the claim was rather vague in the first place.  A more significant role was that of Shinto Priest, which the emperor always was.  The Imperial heads of state always receive the treasures of the Japanese crown, which date back centuries and into antiquity, that have Shinto significance, but I don't know if the Emperor remains a Shinto Priest as they once did.**  At any rate, the strong claims, to the extent they existed, of divinity were boosted by the Japanese military in the 20s through the 40s and post war surveys by the Japanese government found that the Japanese people had never actually believed the Emperor had divine status anyhow.  His renouncement of the claims, therefore, had no real impact on their views.

In any event, for the first time in modern history a Japanese Emperor has ascended to the thrown who was 1) born after Japan was no longer an Empire; and 2) was born after the crown had disclaimed any divinity.  A new era of some sort, in an era when monarchy remains, but its hard to tell why.

________________________________________________________________________________

*Having said that, it's hard to figure out exactly why the Japanese Empire is historically regarded as such prior to the 20th Century, unless you take the view that the consolidation of power in the crown in the Japanese islands themselves constitutes an empire.

As there is some ethnic diversity in the overall island holdings, that's not an illegitimate view.  Hokkaido was in fact the home of an ethnically separate people.  The Japanese started colonizing the island in the 1330s.  Okinawa is also the home of an ethnically separate people.  It didn't become part of the Japanese Empire until 1879.

**Like a lot of things surrounding Japan, the Japanese Imperial Regalia are mysterious.  They consists of a named sword, a named mirror, and a jewel. They are not as impressive, reportedly, in appearance as a person might suppose.

The sword is known to have existed as far back as the 680s, but it's older than that.  The mirror is also ancient and may or may not have been destroyed and replaced in a fire in 1040.  The jewel is likely prehistoric.

These items are not revealed to the general public and its sometimes speculated that they've been lost or destroyed.  Japan, however, is remarkable in its ability of preservation of artifacts so the better bet, in my view, is that they're all original.  They're all absolutely ancient as well.

May 1, 1919. A Red May Day

May 1, May Day, has long been associated with the far left as its the International Workers Holiday.  In 1919, with Communism on the rise everywhere, May 1 was notably Red everywhere.

The evening Casper newspaper  noting the riots in Cleveland as well as the anarchist bombing campaign.  This paper also discussed the acquisition of property with a future eye towards social services.  Costa Rica and Mexico were trying to get into the League of Nations, the paper also noted, but weren't admitted due to political instability.

In the United States, the Communist Party USA was founded, rapidly gaining membership (while always remaining a minor political party) in the wake of the decline of the Socialist Party in the United States, which had come under the eyes of the law for its opposition to World War One. 

The CPUSA would have its glory years, if they could be called that, in the 1920s and the 1930s, during which it not only was a serious, if minor, political party, but during which it was also an organ for espionage for the Soviet Union.  It never had more than 80,000 members at its peak.  It's role as an arm of the efforts of the NKVD were already known, if not fully appreciated, by some who tried to bring it to the government's attention by the 1930s, and indeed a precursor to what later became known as the McCarthy Hearings actually occurred in the late 1930s and focused on some of the same people who would be examined later, but it was not until the end of World War Two when the full horrors of Communism in Russia were revealed that the CPUSA really started to decline to the trivial, where it remains today.

In Cleveland riots occurred on this day, springing from a Socialist march that was supported by Communist and Anarchist.  The imprisonment of Eugene V. Debs was the spark that ignited that flame.  There were about two deaths as the result of the riot, and about forty injuries.

In Winnepeg construction workers went on strike.  It would soon expanded to be a general strike.

In Bavaria, German forces, supported by Freikorps, breached the Communist defenses in Munich bringing the Bavarian Soviet Republic to an end.

Cheyenne was having an air show on this day in 1919.

In the U.S. the news was also still breaking about the anarchist bombing campaign that had been started but detected.  The campaign would revive later.  It wasn't connected with any other radical group, although it likely had the appearance of that to the general public at the time.

All of this would contribute to making the summer of 1919 the "Red Summer", as it was termed by James Weldon Johnson.  It would also fuel an ongoing "Red Scare" that had commenced during World War One.  With the summer beginning the way that it was, that the scare would occur was pretty predictable.  And in fact, the far left of 1919 was not only radical, but seeing a fair amount of global success.  It's chances of success in the United States were frankly slim and always would be, but the combination of the news produced a predictable reaction.

Blog Mirror: No, robots are not coming for your jobs

No, robots are not coming for your jobs

So says Robert J. Samuelson.

I hope he's right.  Artificial Intelligence and electronic automation are something I do worry about.  I'm glad that I'm not young in an era in which I'll have to face it really.

Indeed, frankly, I think technologically we're over the point where our technology is helping us and its clearly hurting.  Tragically, people can't go back as they can't imagine doing so. But things are not improving in this area, in  my view.

Mid Week At Work: The good the bad and the ugly - Work for a living

Ten Years?

Lex Anteinternet: Lex Anteinternet?: The Consolidated Royalty Building, where I work, back when it was new. What the heck is this blog about? The intent of this blog i...

Maybe even a little longer, as this blog was at first a highly inactive blog while I had a couple of others.  Indeed, I've wiped out versions of this blog at least twice, or rather other blogs that represent what this one became.

But it's likely ten, as this one was formed very early on, and indeed may have been the first one formed. At that time, as noted above, it was to aid in the writing of a novel.  The novel is still unfinished, and risks never being finished, even though I still intend to.  In the meantime, due to another one of my blogs, I did write and complete a book on Wyoming's history.

This month I'll also enter my 29th year of practicing law, and in fact my association with where I work goes back thirty years in the form of my first legal job, which morphed into my permanent legal job about a year later. In the interval my second legal job, the only other one I've ever had, in the minor form of being employed to write a paper with a professor that was published in a law journal, occurred. So in that sense, this month commences my 30th year in the profession I currently occupy, or I should say one of the two professions I currently occupy. It is of course the profession that I shall occupy until retirement, should I live so long, assuming I retire, which few lawyers that I know do.  Prior dreams of entering the judiciary are now slaves to the passage of time, where they'll accordingly remain dreams unfulfilled.  A path not taken not because of a choice not to do so, but because fate burned the bridge before I could cross it, that in fact being the fate of the majority of people who contemplate that career, and therefore being a fate that cannot be lamented.

The lack of progress on the book can probably be lamented, however, at least by me.  It may have to wait until the aforementioned retirement.  At least I'm not making much progress on it, other than in my mind, where I write almost everything that I write long before I commit it to the visible form.  So perhaps in that sense, there is progress.

Certainly this blog has made it much improved.  I know a lot more about the era its set in than I did before. And it's been fascinating indeed.

I've enjoyed this blog.  I hope have as well, and are continuing to.

The Brady Bunch is not The Lancet

The fact that those who think that abstaining from vaccinating their children would cite to a Brady Bunch episode in their support is proof, as if any is needed, on what an astoundingly ill advised concept that movement supports.

Now, I get it, it's supposed to suggest that back in the 60s and 70s nobody thought the measles were a big deal.

Well people did think the measles were a big deal, they were just common and therefore often had to be endured.  It's not that people welcomed them or regarded them as light sniffles. Indeed, having lived through that era, I can recall parents dreading them.

And citing to examples from prior decades on matters of health isn't really the wisest thing to do in all cases, now is it?

No, it really isn't.

No, not at all.

Nope.

Besides, enough of the Brady Bunch already.

April 30, 1919. The USS Tennessee launched, brewing of beer to cease.

Helen Lenore Roberts, age 16, the daughter of Tennessee's Governor Albert H. Roberts, at the April 30, 1919 launching of the USS Tennessee.  Brooklyn Navy Yard.

The USS Tennessee, which was completed to late to serve in World War One but which would go on to see service in World War Two, was launched.

Dignitaries, including Assistant Secretary of the Navy Roosevelt and Governor Roberts, at the launching of the USS Tennessee.

The Tennessee was the first ship of its class, for which the class was named.  She was at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, but was not sunk in the surprise attack. She went on to see service in nearly all of the principal Pacific engagments.

On the same day, pioneering Navy pilot Lt. Com. Patrick Bellinger was photographed.

Navy Pilot Patrick N. L. Bellinger, who would be part of the Navy's Trans Atlantic flight, photographed on this day in 1919.

The occasion was the naming of pilots who were to take part in the soon to be launched Navy Trans Atlantic flight.  Bellinger would go on to complete a forty year career in the Navy and rise to flag officer rank during World War Two.

There was a lot of tense news also going around on April 30, 1919.

Italy had walked out of the Paris Peace Conference over the issue of the city of Fiume.  Like a lot of European cities in this era, the population was quite mixed and no one state had really good claims to what had been a multi ethnic Austrian Empire port city. The Italians, however, did not see it that way.

The big news, however, was the launching of an anarchist terror campaign in the United States, the first bomb of which had gone off the day prior.  A postal office worker realized the connection between the package which had gone off and others, so that more explosions did not occur immediately.

Also on that day was the news that the brewing of beer was to cease on May 1, 1919.

And Carranza's finances weren't looking good.

Blog Mirror: Despite backlash, vegans admit meat saved their health

No surprise.  You aren't evolved to eat like a Armadillidiidae (rolly poly).

So I had a piece of salmon and my brain felt like a computer rebooting,

Ann Hathaway.

A headline a person shouldn't have to be reading in 2019

Nebraska Is Avoiding Measles Outbreak With Its High Vaccine Rate

No kidding.

April 29, 1919. Germans Arrive. Americans Departing. Spring Horse Show

The German delegation arrived in Paris to start their negotiations with the Allies.  Of note, it had taken the Allies all this time from the Armistice to come up with a treaty to present to the Germans.

In New York, more traditional peacetime events were going on, albeit interesting to benefit a martial one, and a one that represented a different technology, making for an interesting contrast.

Still in France, Americans were coming home, or otherwise moving on with their lives.

Enlisted men and officers at a dance with Red Cross personnel in Brest.

 Canteen Directeress Florence (Henderson) Payne a few days after her marriage to Col. E. V. R. Payne of the 25th Engineers.  Some of the service personnel relationships with Red Cross personnel obviously had moved on to new levels.

Walking wounded embarking at Brest.

The U.S. suspended its "black list" of nations outside of the declared belligerents who traded with the enemy in the U.S. view.  The list, promulgated under the Trading With the Enemy Act, had been hard on companies in some regions, such as South America.

I just can't muster up any concern over . . .

Game of Thrones.  I'm totally disinterested.  It strikes me, frankly, as just flat out silly and a little dim.

Why watch a pseudo Medieval England when you can read about the real one?

Alfred the Great's father AEthelwulf.  Why did his young son take office over his elders?  Why did Alfred go to Rome as a boy?  Why did Alfred's parents name him "Advised by Elves".  Why do people watch a goofball television show with an actress who is hopelessly clean in a Medieval setting and looks like an albino?

I also can't muster up any real interest over UW's most recent president Laurie Richards being demoted back to professor.

I really ought to. And I did care when Sternberg was demoted.  It seems to me that Richards did a good job, but I really can't muster up a snit about it.

Old geology lecture hall at the University of Wyoming.  I've noted before that I have an ambivalent relationship with my two time alma mater that I don't have with my first one, a community college.  Indeed, post public schooling warm feelings, I have stronger ones for that college and the Field Artillery training school at Ft. Sill, Oklahoma, for some reason.  I really have no idea why.  Perhaps that's why I recall can't muster up a snit about the current UW president situation.

And I'm also disinterested in the scandal in which Felicity Huffman and Lori Loghlin are accused of paying bribes to get their children into competitive private universities.  I'm generally disinterested in actors and actresses anyhow, and frankly I have always simply assumed that baksheesh is an element of getting into the big dollar schools.  Wasn't this always obvious?  It seems to me to be pretty clear, but perhaps I was naive in thinking this was a scandal as society at large is. . . well apparently naive.

Mabel Normand, actress.  She died at age 37 in 1930.  I just like the photo.