Branding

Cattle being branded by an electric iron at a ranch in the United States.

I don't see any electric iron in this. This is a scene that has remained remarkably consistent over the years, and it still goes pretty much this way. Film taken in 1918.

Farm families gather in an open space at a ranch in United States.

Farm families gather in an open space at a ranch in United States.

A scene from 1937.

Food for thought

Recently I saw this quote on another website, and then verified that it is, in fact, genuine:

Anything worth doing is worth doing badly.

G.K. Chesterton.

American army personnel try to pull a truck out of a hole in Wyoming

American army personnel try to pull a truck out of a hole in Wyoming

Trucks of Transcontinental Motor Convoy cross The Continental Divide in Wyoming and Full track pulls out stuck trucks

Trucks of Transcontinental Motor Convoy cross The Continental Divide in Wyoming and Full track pulls out stuck trucks

Steve Jobs to the Graduates

Cigarette in the mouth, no hard hat or safety glasses. This photo was clearly taken before the invention of safety.

This audio clip is of Steve Jobs delivering a commencement address.  It's been on the radio a lot, although usually only in snippets, since his recent premature death.

The part of it that gets played is that part about finding something you "love" to do.  Basically, the advice is to do something you love for a career.

But how realistic is that for most Americans now days?  I really wonder. Certainly it isn't realistic for the great mass of people who simply enter the workforce after high school. Does anyone even care what they "love" career wise.  Men who would have been machinist or worked in factories, and liked it, are working at Wal Mart now.  I doubt they love it.

And is it even true for college graduates?  Most college grads don't go on to found a major computer company.  Most cannot.  Do they love their careers?

And assuming they do not, is this a change in the nature of the world?

Casper's "neighborhood schools"

Casper's "neighborhood schools" Here's another link in from the hub blog, a rare editorial on my part. Shifting away from that, here's a change that's occurred locally that's very much within my own lifetime and observation. This is, of course, a local story, but I'd guess that similar things have occurred in many locations. When I was a kid, I went to Garfield Elementary School. The school had been built in the 30s, I think. Originally it was called the "Harding School", named after President Warren G. Harding, and it was a school for developmentally challenged students. Some time in the 50s, or maybe earlier, it was added on to and became Garfield Elementary School, a regular grade school for students living in that portion of the Standard Addition to the City of Casper. Basically, the school took in those students who did not go to Park, which was downtown (named for the nearby park) or Grant, which wasn't really far away either. Garfield was pretty much the only grade school on that side of town until Crest Hill was built in the 1960s. Starting about 1990, and really getting ramped up in the late 1990s, the local school district went to a new system that abolished boundaries, and created a competitive system between the schools. Some old schools died, Garfield included. New schools were built, but without any consideration for local population considerations. They usually were built with land availability in mind. Now the school district wants to shift back. But I doubt it really can. Too many things have changed, most locally. But some things have changed everywhere in the US. Whereas we walked to school, hardly any kid does that anymore. Vehicle transportation is the norm for everyone now. I routinely find that various people I'm working with, no matter where they are located, will have to stop work early to pick up children from school. That just didn't happen with us, when we were young. We walked to school, and walked back. And competition between schools seems to be the norm all over now. Lots of kids go to "charter schools", etc. Our district may be unusual in that all the schools are competing with each other, but an element of competition seems to have come in everywhere. This makes public schools a bit more like private schools, in some locations. Generally, I think that's a good thing. On one more thing, it is simply the case that a lot more students, no matter how we might imagine things to be, complete school, or more grades of school, than they used to. Even as late as mid 20th Century a very high percentage of Americans did not complete high school. Probably around 40%, on average, of Americans left school in their mid to late teens at that time. It wasn't regarded as that big of deal. Arguably school was harder to get through then, but it was also the case that a high school degree was less valued then. It wasn't regarded as necessary for those going to work on farms or ranches (although many farmers and ranchers completed their schooling, and in some regions of the country, by that time, many were going on to college educations). And it wasn't necessary for those going on to many types of industrial, or even office, employments. Now it is not only necessary, but for many some degree of college is as well.

Holscher's Hub: Flying back from Tulsa

Holscher's Hub: Flying back from Tulsa: Sunrise over Colorado, Kansas, or Oklahoma. Wyoming.

This is another one of those topics which relate to the massive change in transportation we've witnessed over the past century. As followers of this blog know (okay, there are not followers, it's just me) this blog is attempting to focus on the first part of the 20th Century, and look at that era, but we do occasionally stray into more recent ones for comparison purposes as well.

This topic nicely illustrates these changes.

On Sunday I flew down to Tulsa, which is the second time in the past three months I've visited Tulsa (very nice town, by the way, in my view). This time, I left Casper around noon and flew via United Airlines to Denver Colorado. I had a three hour lay over in Denver, and then flew on to Tulsa, arriving about 8:00 p.m. their time. I worked in Tulsa the next day, and then I flew back yesterday morning, leaving Tulsa about 6:30 am. I was back in my office about 10:00 am, local time.

Okay no big deal, right?

Well, take this back a century and lets do the same trip, for the same purpose.

Now, granted, a person in Casper Wyoming would be pretty unlikely to make such a business trip to Tulsa in 1911. That's illustrative of the change right there. Hardly anyone would do that unless there was a very significant reason to do so. Given the region, I don't doubt that this did sometimes occur, but it would be infrequent. By the 1930s, however, such a trip would have been much more likely.

In either event, such a trip would have been by train, not plane (plane is a theoretical possibility for the 30s, but mostly theoretical). What would that have entailed. Well, it would have started with boarding the train downtown here in Casper, probably early Sunday morning, and then making a series of train transfers all day long. You'd probably sleep in the train at night. Maybe you'd have to leave on Saturday, particularly if you intended to start work on Monday.

You'd still stay over Monday night, as I did, but you'd re-board a train on Tuesday morning, and spend all day traveling back.

Perhaps all this doesn't seem as dramatic of change to you, as to me, but it is significant. What we now do in a matter of hours was then done in terms of days. I still had time to myself Sunday morning, and worked most of Monday here in my office. That, at least, would have been different.

What about plane travel, when that became possible? I'm not sure when Casper received regular air traffic, but I believe it would have been some point in the 1930s. I have no idea what the travel patterns were like, but it sure would have been a lot slower. Could you fly from Casper to Tulsa in a day? Perhaps, but I'd guess it would have been pretty much an all day type of deal.

Interesting article from the Tulsa newspaper.

Not the usual fare here, but an interesting article that notes some societal changes from the Tulsa newspaper.

The Best Posts of the Week for the Week of October 2, 2011

Unsolicited Career Advice No. 1: Plan for life

Unsolicited Career Advice No. 2: Don't count on outside observations about another occupation.

Unsolicited Career Advice No. 3: Excitement isn't necessarily exciting.

Funding Failure

Funding Failure

One of the topics that's been kicking around the GOP Presidential race is that of student loans.  At least one candidate, Ron Paul, says he wants to phase them out altogether.

I wouldn't be in favor of that, but I really do think that the entire topic needs to be revisited, as it's helping to fund failure, and has a weird impact on our economy.  This is the reason why.

Generally, student loans are a government backed system in which private young individuals receive funding for university or college irrespective of the needs of the economy, or the wisdom of their choice.  I'm not suggesting, of course, that we should override the choices of individuals who make study choices that are not likely to advance our collective economic well-being, but I do feel that it's a bad economic choice to fund them.

Students of the history of student loans often point out that they've been a boost to the American economy, which is somewhat true, but which really confuses the loans with the GI Bill, which was an outright grant.  At any rate, what they fail to note is that the early post World War Two American economy was such that that the student population (largely male) was unlikely to be study something that wasn't directly useable in the work sphere, and that having a college degree in the 1945 to 1975 time frame was rare enough that nearly any college degree could translate into business utility.  Neither of those factors is true today.  Indeed, at this point in time college degrees have become so common that a lot of them have no economic value to their holders at all.

This is not to say that pursing a college degree is worthless. That would hardly be true.  But if the government is to back the study of something, it ought to be something useful to the nation as a whole.  Not something that's likely to have no use to the nation, and which moreover is likely to have no real value to the holder in later economic terms.

As an example of this, which I've already noted here, one of the protestors at the Wall Street occupation was reported to have a $90,000 student loan for the study of art.  Why would the nation help fund this.  If she wants to study art, the more power to her, I just don't want to help.  In economic terms, this isn't going to help the nation at all, and frankly she'll be really lucky if she ever fines a job.  By funding her, we've made ourselves poorer and, chances are, her too.

What I'd propose to do is to restrict funding to areas where we really feel we need to boost the nation's educated populace.  If we're weak in the sciences or engineering, that's what I'd fund.  Other areas where we need new workers, who need an education to obtain it, would likewise be eligible for loans.  I wouldn't bother funding art students, or literature students. That doesn't mean their studies are unimportant culturally, or personally, but rather if they are important, it's in a manner that cannot be economically judged, and therefore people shouldn't be taxed to help fund it.  Law is the same way.  The nation has a vast oversupply of lawyers and I can't see any good reason to give a person a loan to study that.

I don't think that this would mean these other fields would dry up by any means.  But it probably would mean that a lot of people who don't qualify for private scholarships and who don't otherwise have the means of obtaining such a degree would do something else. Frankly, however, that would be a good thing, as by funding the non economic, we're fueling the hopes of a lot of people who aren't going to be able to find employment later.

And, no, I didn't have any student loans, thanks to the National Guard.

An observation on protesting

Protestors are occupying Wall Street right now.

But why?  Nobody seems to be able to define the nature of the protest.  It seems partly economic, but every other cause imaginable, on the left, is also being advanced in the protest.

A protest that protest for every left wing cause is not going to do anything, and actually looks fairly foolish.

There are some legitimate things to protest right now.  But what are they protesting?

An Observation on Immigration

There's some interesting things going on, in terms of immigration law, right now, but I don't know how many people have noticed it.

One thing is that Alabama has passed a strict new immigration law, and it appears that illegal aliens are clearing out of Alabama at a surprising rate.  The undercurrent in the news is that this is unjust, but it cannot be denied that there are a large number of people in the country illegally, and that if the Federal government was actually capable of enforcing the law in this area, these people would not be in the country.

At the same time, the U.S. Supreme Court is set to hear a case concerning whether or not a state can pass its own laws regarding illegal immigration.  This is full of all sorts of ironies.  At one time, the US government did enforce immigration laws in the interior of the country, rather than just at the border, but an agreement reached with forces basically opposing immigration restrictions resulted in the US agreeing not to do that.  That's why it is basically the case that illegal immigrants face much reduced risks of being caught if they get over the border and into the interior of the country.

Most Americans are not anti immigrant, they are simply not in favor of unrestricted immigration.  People are well aware that unrestricted immigration reduces wages country wide and reduces employment for those legally here.  Illegal immigrants, already being illegal, frequently work at low wages and put up with poor living conditions.  You have to admire them for their drive, but by extension this means that wages in certain types of employments are kept low and an American cannot, therefore, earn a living in those occupations.  Remove illegal aliens from the country, and wages in those occupations would rise.  Yes, it would mean a rise in the price of some things too, but frankly, that's only just.

Encouraging illegal immigration, which the GOP at the national level basically does by ignoring the law as it favors low prices on things, and which the Democrats at the national level do because they basically favor an open border, results in American unemployment and, I suspect, also provides a relief valve for Mexico which needs to clean up its own house.  Of note there, however, for the first time in its history most Mexicans are in the middle class, so things really are changing in Mexico.  Perhaps this problem will take care of itself.

Anyhow, the Federal government failing to enforce its own laws is shameful.  It's no wonder that the states are acting.  And this is yet another example of how the national government isn't really fully functioning right now. The Federal government suing to stop states from enforcing what are essentially Federal provisions, when it won't do it, is bizarre.

Unsolicited Career Advice No. 3: Excitement isn't necessarily exciting.

In this day and age a fair number of people are inspired to enter careers based on television and film portrayals of that occupation.  This isn't really new, I'd note.  I've heard of a fair number of people being inspired to become lawyers because of older films, like To Kill A Mockingbird, or Anatomy of a Murder.  Both fine films, I'd note.  I'll be the same is currently true for people becoming fireman today, as fireman dramas have been pretty common.  War stories, of course, seem to be perpetually.

But a person should really think about it if they are saying things like "I loved the courtroom drama and knew I wanted to do that".

We love the depictions of stress in story as we like artificial stress.  We don't like real stress, however.

Stressful situations are usually agony for the people in them.  A person would be foolish to watch The Sands of Iwo Jima and think they wanted to be a combat Marine, as being a combat Marine is not fun at all.  Seeing a trial lawyer in a movie may be fun, but that doesn't mean actually working a trial is (just ask anyone who has ever done one).  There's no doubt a million other examples.

So, if we're looking for excitement in a career, we should keep in mind there's good excitement and bad.  If we think something looks fun because it's "exciting", we should consider what that excitement really would be like.

UW Religion Today Column for Oct. 9-15: Moral Challenges in Catholic Higher Education

UW Religion Today Column for Oct. 9-15: Moral Challenges in Catholic Higher Education

An observation:

"As a result, Catholic University is being sued by Professor John F. Banzhaf under Washington's strict anti-discrimination law. The restriction of freshman dorms to single-sex is criticized as sexual discrimination"

Obviously Professor Banzhaf is a complete idiot. Discrimination? Please.

Can somebody check Prof Banzhaf's credentials? What was his degree in?

"Many if not most American Catholics disagree with their church's position on family planning and use contraceptives regularly. Furthermore, Catholic University employs many non-Catholics on its staff. Should the university force them to pay for contraceptive services when all other Americans can use them for free?"

Why should any employer have to pay for anyone's contraception?  I've never grasped that.  Even setting aside the moral aspects of contraception, what about the morality of taxing people to subsidize sex?  Doesn't seem like a very fair thing to do.

Unsolicited Career Advice No. 2: Don't count on outside observations about another occupation.

When assessing careers, don't count on the members of one profession or occupation to be able to assess what another is like.

Lots of that type of advice is given.  People will say, for example, "you should be a lawyer" or "you should be a doctor" or you should be an accountant, based on their view of what these people do, even if they have no real experience with that work themselves..  Somebody, for example, sat through a lawsuit and found it fascinating, or saw lawyers interviewed on television and found that fascinating, and based their view on what a lawyer does based on that.  Or somebody likes their doctor, or maybe their doctor's car.  Such opinions are wholly erroneous.  Same with negative views.  Somebody will hate members of some profession based on what that individual did, rather than on what the professionals actually do.  A person must get the inside view, not the outside one.

No, that doesn't sound nifty to me.

Two nights ago my son answered the phone, and it was a solicitor from a hotel outfit. Somewhere during business travel I stayed at one of their hotels, and I must have enrolled in their program to get some pricing advantage.

Of course, it was some sort of time sales sales pitch.  I listened through the babble about going to Hawaii, when suddenly that deal disappeared, and the offer was for Orlando Florida.

Now, here I should note that I'm no doubt a tele solicitors worst nightmare.  I usually won't even listen to the pitch, and I'm such a contrarian that the conventional arguments they have are completely lost on my.  For example:

Q.  Now sir, how much would you  normally pay to go to Orlando?

A.  Um, I don't know. . .

Q. Well sir, when was the last time you were there?


A.  Um, five years ago.


Q.  Well, it's changed a lot, would you like to go back?


A.  No.


Q.  Um, why not.


A.  Why would I?


Q.  Well, there's a lot to do, what did you do last time?


A.  Worked.


Q. Well, it's time to go to play. . .you'd like to do that, right!


A.  No.


Q.  Why not.


A.  There's nothing there I want to do.


Q. Well, certainly you'd like to go to the local amusement facilities. . .


A.  No I wouldn't.


Q.  Well your family would, right, don't you think your family deserves that?


A.  They deserve a vacation, that's for sure, but that's not anything I'm interested in taking them to.


Ultimately I hung up.

Style, Fashion, and the decline of American Standards

There have recently been an entire series of posts on blogs about American standards of appearance, and what it means.  I'm proud to say that I've yapped about it myself, and did so early, so I was a pioneer in complaining, on blogs, about this.

Well, maybe that isn't really something I should complain about, but I have done it.

Anyhow, most recently this comes up in the context of Catholic bloggers noting how poorly some people appear at Mass.  Ms. Scalia has noted it on her blog The Anchoress.  Deacon Kandra got things rolling recently when he noted the same on The Deacon's Bench. These blog entries all noted that a lot of Catholics show up looking pretty darned bad, or even dressed in fairly suggestive clothing.  I've noted that myself, although in all honesty I think that this phenomenon was worse a few years ago, and this is less the case now.  I've also noted here and there that the standards of dress at Mass vary considerably by region, and for some good reasons.

Anyhow, I don't really think, as I've posed here before, that the decline in American sartorial standards is unique to Catholics at Mass. Rather, I feel that what people are noting is a general society wide decline is standards of dress that has become so ingrained in the American culture that we're now the sloppiest people on earth, and we don't know it.  Oddly, as I've also noted before, we still judge others by how they dress, which is interesting and says something, I guess, about the nature of symbols and appearance.

Is this phenomenon real?  If yes, why did the decline happen. And does it matter?

Well, it is real. Take a look at the last century and a half in terms of dress, and it becomes pretty evident.  Let's start with the 1860 to 1920 time frame.

If we do that, what we would find is that most people owned far fewer clothes than they do now. That's an irony of this situation that often fails to be appreciated.  Lots of clothing is a fairly recent phenomenon for a lot of reasons. For one, cheap easy clothing didn't really come about until the modern machine age, when clothing could be easily mass-produced.  For another, there was simply less wealth in the society until post WWII, so people couldn't buy a lot of changes in clothing. For yet another, clothing was washed by hand until the washing machine, and washing clothing by hand is really hard work.  People didn't change their clothing nearly as much as we do today.

For that matter, wool clothing was dominant up until the washing machine.  We think of blue jeans as cowboy wear today, but it wasn't until well into the 20th Century.  Wool trousers are what cowhands wore up until the washing machine became common.

Perhaps the connection with standards of dress isn't plain here, but there is a connection.  Most people had a good set of clothes for social functions.  They also had fewer clothes.  Men who worked indoors basically wore their good clothes all the time.  Those who had hard manual labor tended to have a set of good clothing for certain functions, such as church, and they didn't want to appear poor or disrespectful so they wore such clothing whenever the function suited it. For this reason, we're often surprised to see how well people are dressed just to be in town, in the 19th Century.

Additionally, clothing wasn't really used to send the same sort of personalized individual message that it is today.  Working men didn't need a set of clothing to send the message that they were working men. They had a set of clothing that suited work as they were working me.  Those who worked indoors likely did wish to send the message that they were not manual laborers, and wearing suits sent that message.  That was about all the more message their was.  Exceptions existed, in the United States, principally only for those who occupied specialized occupations, such as military men and the Protestant clergy (Catholic male clergy in the 19th Century largely dressed in suits).

Of course, as part of this, the standard was simply higher.  Caps, which so predominate now, were regarded as vulgar and vaguely obscene up until the automobile became common.  Why this is the case isn't really clear, but caps were something that were pretty much only worn by manual laborers whose jobs precluded them from wearing real hats.  That's probably the reason.

With modifications over time, this remained the general situation for pretty much the entire Western World up until the 1950s. Some things did change, but for real reasons.  Caps came in as acceptable men's ware in the 1910 to 1920 time frame, as they proved handy in connection with automobiles, and that converted them, at first, from being sort of a dirty working man's headgear into a sporty item.

Real change, however, came in the 1960s.  The "Cultural Revolution" not only brought about a challenge to every standard going, including clothing standards, or so it seemed.  In retrospect, it coincided with a change in material wealth and production in the US which was unprecedented.For the first time in our history, a generation was born with the expectation of higher education and the means largely existed to obtain it.  That generation was also born into an era when material goods were much easier to obtain than previously.    As a result of that, clothing that had been the domain of working men, t-shirts and Levis, became everyday wear for middle class children trying to affect the look of working men.  We've never gone back.

But does it really matter?

Well, yes and know.  It can't rationally be argued that people should return to the clothing standards of an earlier era.  But people should be aware that clothing sends a message.  Wearing clothing that looks disheveled or sloppy in some settings sends the message that we so value ourselves that we do not value anything else. We just can't be bothered.  The spread of clothing with fake messages, like fake schools or fake entities (very common amongst the young) sends the message that we have a fake life. Rude and suggest messages demean ourselves and cause us to lose respect, no matter what our intent is.

Stated another way, G. K. Chesterton once stated that:  The act of defending any of the cardinal virtues has today all the exhilaration of a vice.  Today, if a person really wants to dress like a radical, they'd have to dump the t-shirts with rude suggestions blazoned on them and dress a little decently. That doesn't mean wearing suit and tie, except where appropriate, but it also means dumping the "Hurley" cap on sideways and the t-shirt with skulls on it.  This is particularly true, I'd note, for the middle-aged, on whom these things look silly.

Still, at the end of the day, I find that when I go to Mass, which really matters to me, I am not dressing up a great deal.  I'm not dressed like a slob either, but I'm not in a tie.  I'm probably wearing Levis.  Most other people I see are similarly dressed.   Part of the regional culture, I suppose.  I'm better dressed at work.  I'm not sure what that says about me.

Unsolicited Career Advice No. 1: Plan for life

For those high school aged kids, or college kids, pondering their career choices.

Fist a caveat.  I'm not a career coach, and have no business being one.  I'm not certain that I've ever listed to my own career advice.

Anyhow, in planning a future career, most people sort of vaguely imagine the first ten years of it, maybe.  Maybe they only generally envision the career.

Try to imagine yourself 20 or 30 years into the career.  Indeed, try to imagine yourself married, with a couple of kids, having worked it for two or three decades.  Does it still sound interesting to you?  Why?  Do you really know anyone in that position.  That is, really know them, not casually know them.  If so, talk to them and see what they have to say about it.

Holscher's Hub: Dugout

Holscher's Hub: Dugout

This is a dugout. That is, this is a very early dwelling by some homesteader, most likely.

A lot of homesteads started in this fashion. For that matter, quite a few started and failed having never become any more built up than this. I've seen dugouts that I could date to as late as the 1930s.

This gives us an example of many interesting changes that are hard for modern Americans to really appreciate. The conditions of living expectations were simply different. Not far from this example, I know of another one in which a stone dugout was built, and about a mile away another wooden framed dugout, which were the homes of families. Not single men, but families. Man, wife, and children. And this was their bedroom and kitchen.

Early homesteading was hard, of course. But homesteading continued on up until about 1934. The peak year for homesteading was 1919. The dream of owning a place of ones own was strong (it still is) but making it in agriculture was hard in ways we can hardly imagine. Movies and television have liked to portray mansions on the prairie, but that was very rare. More typically, they have liked to portray white clapboard houses on the prairie, but frankly that was somewhat of a rarity too. For a lot of people, this was their starter home. A log structure likely came later. If it was a 20th Century homestead, and the homesteaders were Irish, a house in town was actually almost as likely.

To add a bit, another thing that is hard for some to appreciate is that in the mid 20th Century there were a lot of little homesteads. They were being filed, proven up, and failing, in rapid succession. Almost all of these little outfits have been incorporated by neighboring outfits now. A few hang on as rentals to neighbors. There is no earthly way these small outfits could survive economically today, on their own, and they barely could earlier. But, while there were many of them, they were also very isolated in an era when a lot of people still traveled by horse, and those who had cars, sure didn't have speedy cars.

No, that doesn't sound nifty to me

Two nights ago my son answered the phone, and it was a solicitor from a hotel outfit. Somewhere during business travel I stayed at one of their hotels, and I must have enrolled in their program to get some pricing advantage.

Of course, it was some sort of time sales sales pitch.  I listened through the babble about going to Hawaii, when suddenly that deal disappeared, and the offer was for Orlando Florida.

Now, here I should note that I'm no doubt a tele solicitors worst nightmare.  I usually won't even listen to the pitch, and I'm such a contrarian that the conventional arguments they have are completely lost on my.  For example:

Q.  Now sir, how much would you  normally pay to go to Orlando?

A.  Um, I don't know. . .

Q. Well sir, when was the last time you were there?


A.  Um, five years ago.


Q.  Well, it's changed a lot, would you like to go back?


A.  No.


Q.  Um, why not.


A.  Why would I?


Q.  Well, there's a lot to do, what did you do last time?


A.  Worked.


Q. Well, it's time to go to play. . .you'd like to do that, right!


A.  No.


Q.  Why not.


A.  There's nothing there I want to do.


Q. Well, certainly you'd like to go to the local amusement facilities. . .


A.  No I wouldn't.


Q.  Well your family would, right, don't you think your family deserves that?


A.  They deserve a vacation, that's for sure, but that's not anything I'm interested in taking them to.


Ultimately I hung up.

Railhead: Natrona County Soda Shed Sidetrack

Railhead: Natrona County Soda Shed Sidetrack: This photograph probably doesn't make much sense in comparison to the earlier ones in this blog, but this is the sidetrack for what was once a soda shed.

Like the post just made on the topic of the small town of Arminto, this photographs shows an interesting change, which is significant in what it demonstrates, if only in a small way.

The soda shed that was located here was a huge affair. It appeared to be on the verge of falling down my entire life, but it was probably a pretty solid structure. The soda stored here was from a nearby mine, and the mine itself, a very smalls scale operation, was in operation for a century. Indeed, the original intent to mine nearby was in the 1870s, but mining didn't really commence until the early 20th Century.

Not that this is particularly significant, but it does certainly show the importance of railroads in various activities.

The first  reading in the Roman Missal for Sunday October 2.

Isaiah Chapter 5:  1-7.

Let me now sing of my friend,
my friend's song concerning his vineyard.
My friend had a vineyard
on a fertile hillside;
he spaded it, cleared it of stones,
and planted the choicest vines;
within it he built a watchtower,
and hewed out a wine press.
Then he looked for the crop of grapes,
but what it yielded was wild grapes.

Now, inhabitants of Jerusalem and people of Judah,
judge between me and my vineyard:
What more was there to do for my vineyard
that I had not done?
Why, when I looked for the crop of grapes,
did it bring forth wild grapes?
Now, I will let you know
what I mean to do with my vineyard:
take away its hedge, give it to grazing,
break through its wall, let it be trampled!
Yes, I will make it a ruin:
it shall not be pruned or hoed,
but overgrown with thorns and briers;
I will command the clouds
not to send rain upon it.
The vineyard of the LORD of hosts is the house of Israel,
and the people of Judah are his cherished plant;
he looked for judgment, but see, bloodshed!
for justice, but hark, the outcry!

Responsorial Psalm Ps 80:9, 12, 13-14, 15-16, 19-20

R. (Is 5:7a) The vineyard of the Lord is the house of Israel.
A vine from Egypt you transplanted;
you drove away the nations and planted it.
It put forth its foliage to the Sea,
its shoots as far as the River.
R. The vineyard of the Lord is the house of Israel.
Why have you broken down its walls,
so that every passer-by plucks its fruit,
The boar from the forest lays it waste,
and the beasts of the field feed upon it?
R. The vineyard of the Lord is the house of Israel.
Once again, O LORD of hosts,
look down from heaven, and see;
take care of this vine,
and protect what your right hand has planted
the son of man whom you yourself made strong.
R. The vineyard of the Lord is the house of Israel.
Then we will no more withdraw from you;
give us new life, and we will call upon your name.
O LORD, God of hosts, restore us;
if your face shine upon us, then we shall be saved.
R. The vineyard of the Lord is the house of Israel.

The Best Posts of the Week for the Week of September 25, 2011

Keeping Women Down

Keeping Women Down

When I was young, and a young witness to the social revolutions occurring in our country, it was my assumption that (radical) feminist would win their campaign, and that the country, for good or ill, would enter an era when "gender equality" would be the norm, whether or not that comported with our natures.

I no longer worry about that.

Instead, what's occurred is that women are now more repressed, in real terms, than ever before. And that's becoming worse every day.

The reason for this is the disturbing trinketization of women that has been occurring at an every alarming rate over the past few decades, starting with the publication of the first issue of Playboy magazine in 1953.

Allow me to state this bluntly.  In this electronic age, as long as our society in general, and women in particular, tolerate pornography, women are never going to achieve equality in anything.  Rather, with each increasing day, they're becoming more and more disposable chattel, not to be taken seriously.

Women and men are not wired the same way. There's a shocker I know, but proponents of absolute liberty of publication, and proponents of feminism, either don't know that, or refuse to acknowledge it.  This is true in an entire host of things, but is particularly true in regards to sex.  In regards to sex, men are very visually triggered.  Women are not.

Prior to 1953, "girly magazines" were largely nasty trash.  Sure, they existed.  And there have always been women willing to prostitute their images to appear in them.  Indeed, prior to 53, they very often were in fact prostitutes.  If a woman is selling her body, selling her image isn't a great leap in action.

The first issue of Playboy came out in 1953.  Contrary to later legends, the genius of Playboy was not in issuing a rag with the publication of nudes in it.  That had been going on for a long time.  The genius of Playboy was marketing.  The magazine was slick, included some legitimate articles, and was packaged up as part of a phony philosophy.  Earlier magazines made no such effort.  They might have articles, but they were all about illegitimate sex.  Playboy, however, pretended that what it was about was the life of the sophisticated male, who was too much about town and in the world to marry, which would only drag such a sport down, but who could have limitless sex with well endowed young beauties. 

Some commentators on Playboy have argued that the magazine also argued that "sex is fun for women too", and by that they meant "unmarried women in their late teens and 20s". But that's bull.  Playboy has never had any interest in women as human beings, bur rather only in women with big boobs, nice faces, and no brains.  These women, the magazine suggested, were willing to hop into bed at a moment's notice.  Moreover, even though the secondary female characteristics the magazine focused on are those which, in part, serve to help keep the infants produced by sex alive (shocker, boobs are mammary glands, curvy hips are a product for ease of child birth) the magazine essentially also suggested that all such women were sterile.  They not only were craving sex, but nothing would ever be produced by it.

That started to be somewhat true in the early 60s, when a means of making women temporarily sterile or spontaneously abort came about in the form of the pill.  Birth control now meant that men could demand that women live down to the Playboy standard as they would probably not get pregnant, or if they did, they'd likely spontaneously abort (that latter aspect of the pill being a fact, but a very rarely noted one).  The widespread adoption of the Playboy mystique by men, their increasing demands on women, and the pill combined to break down conduct society wide, confuse people on what sex actually is for, and gave us the current sorry situation.  Now libertine sexual conduct is regarded as the norm and, as crude as it may seem, women in their teens and early 20s are expected to "put out".

This has lead to psychological misery for women.  Beyond that, it's destroyed the image of the serious female.

If a woman is expected to yield to a sexual demand based upon nothing more than the provision of a cheap meal, that means that our society has retreated all the way back to the most primitive societies, where that is also the rule.  Thousands of years of societal development are stripped away, and at that point, women are toys.

What women are not is powerless.  Not yet.  But until they exercise that power and condemn such behavior, and condemn it most particularly amongst their sisters, this trend will only continue.  Indeed, it is continuing as we speak. Soon, television will feature the glamorization of the "Playboy Club".  If women are serious about being taken seriously, they'll speak up and that won't be around long.

Success and Failure

I've been thinking a lot recently about the meaning of "success". What does it mean?  And who defines what it means.

There's a bunch of reasons I've been contemplating this, but it is an interesting question in a way.  I wonder if, individually, we're satisfied with the societal definition of success, and whether as a society of over 300 million, we're capable of really tolerating the individual definition of success?  The answer to the latter is, I think, yes, but it's not a clear matter.

We only live once, in spite of what Hindus may assert, so this go around is it.  Given that, our time on earth is quite short compared to eternity, and our own definition of success hardly matters. Even the most successful amongst us ends up dead and forgotten.  Who remembers the individual rich in Rome?  Not many.  I'm sure you could find some of their names if you were of an academic bent, but by and large, all secular success yields to the Roman Maxim that "All Glory is fleeting."

On that scale, the only success is a life worth living on a metaphysical scale, a standard that is not likely to get you much accolades, and even fewer physical items, than any other sort of success, but which is still a true success.

But, while keeping that in mind, let's consider the smaller definitions of success.

In this day and age in the United States, the only real standard of societal success is considered the accumulation of money. That is, you are a success, society will hold, if you make a lot of money, both annually, and over a lifetime.  This has always been somewhat the held up standard in the United States, but it is virtually the only standard right now.  It's the standard that schools aim for in education.  It's the standard that is talked about in the news.  It's the standard that Americans are supposed to shoot for.

This cannot be overemphasized.  Individuals are expected to leave home and family to achieve an education that allows them to achieve this.  They're expected to follow that brass ring where ever it goes.  If that means leaving a small town and ending up in a string of big cities, you are expected to do it.  It means that perhaps you are supposed to end up in a wealthier subdivision of a sweltering hot southern US city that you will virtually never leave during the average week.  If you are female, it means you are to postpone marriage and children for a career, and when you marry, you are to marry based on wealth, not on any other factor.

And some people do indeed crave that sort of life.  I guess they are the societal models.

The problem is that it is quite well established that this sort of life doesn't lead to personal happiness, and actually tends to destroy it, for most people.  Money and trinket acquisition generally doesn't make people happy, but people are sacrificing everything to get it. Why?

Well, partially they do it because it's an instinct.  Back in our early, aboriginal, days, acquiring what you could was good insurance against the coming lean periods.  That was true for many people many millennia later as well.  Of course, in those days you couldn't acquire on credit, so acquisition really was a hedge against starvation.  Say, the lean times come and I need to get some food for my family. . . will you take seven horses?  So it made sense at that time.  Now, of course, as the Seven ATVs and the Condo in Ft. Lauderdale were acquired with credit, that won't work.  The instinct remains, however.

Partially do that, however, as modern society schools us accordingly.  Study hard, go to a good college (on credit) get that good paying career, and follow it.  Postpone marriage, children, and live where they send you.  People are taught this, and most people are very obedient to what they are taught.

This was not always the case.  Really, up in to the 1950s there were entire sections of the population, perhaps even a near majority of the population, that was taught to emphasize family.  People didn't feel compelled to uproot, or to force their offspring to uproot, for a job.  People often found local work, married relatively young, and didn't move much. Family, church, and local society tended to be their focus.  They were likely much happier than people generally are today.  Get in close with people living "the dream" and you find many are not very happy.  Indeed, entire occupations and demographics are bitterly unhappy, mostly because they ended up where they are by focusing on career and money.

But now, with our current society, do we even have a choice? The American economy is in trouble, we all know. But it depends on this model.  Basically, our economy depends on the sale of really cheap goods manufactured overseas, and sold by those making low wages, which the rest of us buy through money acquired by our careers.  If we don't focus on career, who is going to buy the condos, the Lexus cars, the ATVs, etc. etc?  So, we are making ourselves largely miserable in order to support a system of misery.  Our entire modern economy depends on it.  In order to escape working for the Walmart Empire of Doom you need to be educated to fit into a career that will free you from the lowest economic level, seriously, which will tie you into a career of economic slavery and nomadism.  The economy truly depends on it.

Not all societies are as enslaved to this system as we are.  Even today, Europeans, particularly those European societies currently being dumped on, are not.  We seem to irrevocably be, however.

What you reall need is a Holley Carb. . .

I've come to the conclusion that those who work as computer geeks today are drawn from the same section of the population that once went into small shop mechanics.

Back in the 70s and early 80s, before computers invaded the automobile world and changed auto repair from a trade into a computer lab project, there were many small auto mechanic shops staffed by men in their 20s who wanted to mess with your car.  No matter what your problem was, when you contacted them about the repairs to your car, you were soon confronted with the "performance" changes that they wanted to make to it, or worse, already had.  "Man. . . this baby needed a Holley Carb!  I just ripped that old stock carburetor off and . . ."

At that point, you were doomed.  No aftermarket performance part so installed ever worked, and at best, with enough tinkering, your car might get back to the original state of performance, more or less.

Computerization of automobiles ended that.  So now, the same people go into computer programming.

If you work in an office, you know this is true. The moment your system is really working well, you are going to face an "upgrade", or worse, and entire new system.  If you are lucky, after days of messing with it, and hours and hours of lost work, you'll get a system back that is close to what you had.

The disappearance of the Federal Courthouses

Presently Wyoming has four Federal Courthouses. One in Casper, one in Cheyenne, one in Jackson and one in Yellowstone National Park. The Casper and Cheyenne courthouses have sitting judges and are by far the most active. Wyoming has three active sitting judges.

At one time, not all that long ago really, the state had a lot fewer judges, but a lot more active courthouses. This is, suffice it to say, an odd turn of events.

At least Green River, Lander, and Sheridan Wyoming all had federal courthouses, even during the era when we had a single Federal Judge. Sheridan's nice Federal Courthouse, now in private hands, was built in 1918. Green River's and Lander's appear to have been built about the same time. The much larger Casper courthouse was built in the 1930s. The current Cheyenne courthouse is much more recent, it was probably built in the 1970s.

Why the change? I don't know, but I suspect it was because of changes in transportation. At the time the older courthouses were built, the judge likely traveled a circuit to these regional courthouses. And at first he likely traveled it by train, probably up from Cheyenne. As transportation improved, this ceased to be the case and by the 1940s these courthouses may all have been basically disused, save for the Cheyenne court. The Casper courthouse was rebuilt in the early 80s, when population increases necessitated the use of that large courthouse, but the others have been sold off or rented out. Now only great distances from Cheyenne, or major populations centers, merit their own Federal courthouse.

It's a shame, really. The Lander, Green River, and Sheridan courthouses were all very nice, if small, Federal courthouses, and it's a shame that they aren't receiving their original intended use.

See also, What One Building Says About the March of Time.

A great number of military installations.

I was in Sheridan Wyoming recently, and took the opportunity to run up to the VA hospital and view the grounds of old Ft. Mackenzie. The grounds are really impressive, to say the least, and it is a very well preserved old Army post, still in use as a modern VA hospital.

Some scenes of the same are posted above.

What struck me about this, however, is that this post wasn't built until the very late 1890s. It was converted into a military hospital, after more or less being occupied since 1913, in 1918.

It's really surprising, as the SMH thread above notes, that the Army was building posts as late as 1899 in Wyoming. What could their purpose have really been? But not only were they still building, but up through the first quarter of the 20th Century there were a surprising number of military installations in Wyoming that either existed, or had just been closed.

Here we seen Ft. Mackenzie, but not all that far away there had been a Ft. McKinney, which had only been closed in 1894. Ft. Washakie, which is not near this post, was still open when this one built, and remained open until 1909. Ft. D. A. Russel was open, and has never closed, as it later became Ft. F. E. Warren and is now Warren AFB. Its one of three military installations that now exist in Wyoming, the others being the substantial Army National Guard installation at Camp Guernsey and the Air National Guard base in Cheyenne. Ft. Laramie had only been abandoned as of 1890. Ft. Fred Steele had closed in 1886.

Money

Today's readings from the Roman Missal:

First reading:

Beloved:
Teach and urge these things.
Whoever teaches something different
and does not agree with the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ
and the religious teaching
is conceited, understanding nothing,
and has a morbid disposition for arguments and verbal disputes.
From these come envy, rivalry, insults, evil suspicions,
and mutual friction among people with corrupted minds,
who are deprived of the truth,
supposing religion to be a means of gain.
Indeed, religion with contentment is a great gain.
For we brought nothing into the world,
just as we shall not be able to take anything out of it.
If we have food and clothing, we shall be content with that.
Those who want to be rich are falling into temptation and into a trap
and into many foolish and harmful desires,
which plunge them into ruin and destruction.
For the love of money is the root of all evils,
and some people in their desire for it have strayed from the faith
and have pierced themselves with many pains.

But you, man of God, avoid all this.
Instead, pursue righteousness, devotion,
faith, love, patience, and gentleness.
Compete well for the faith.
Lay hold of eternal life,
to which you were called when you made the noble confession
in the presence of many witnesses.

From:  1 Tm 6:2c-12

Second Reading, from the Psalms:

R. Blessed the poor in spirit; the Kingdom of heaven is theirs!
Why should I fear in evil days
when my wicked ensnarers ring me round?
They trust in their wealth;
the abundance of their riches is their boast.
R. Blessed the poor in spirit; the Kingdom of heaven is theirs!
Yet in no way can a man redeem himself,
or pay his own ransom to God;
Too high is the price to redeem one's life; he would never have enough
to remain alive always and not see destruction.
R. Blessed the poor in spirit; the Kingdom of heaven is theirs!
Fear not when a man grows rich,
when the wealth of his house becomes great,
For when he dies, he shall take none of it;
his wealth shall not follow him down.
R. Blessed the poor in spirit; the Kingdom of heaven is theirs!
Though in his lifetime he counted himself blessed,
"They will praise you for doing well for yourself,"
He shall join the circle of his forebears
who shall never more see light.
R. Blessed the poor in spirit; the Kingdom of heaven is theirs!

Jean Jacket

Does anyone know where a person can get a good Levis jacket, or Lee jacket, if they are still made.  Not the weenified metrosexual version that Levis now makes as a "trucker jacket", but the real deal, the old heavy denim one.

I lost my Levis jacket, and my old Lee jacket doesn't fit.  I'd like to get a new one, but the Levis jackets I've seen around are all prewashed and cut slim.  Pathetic.

Aldo Leopold on Farming

There are two spiritual dangers in not owning a farm. One is the danger of supposing that breakfast comes from the grocery, and the other that heat comes from the furnace.

Aldo Leopold

 

September 11

The Best Posts of the Week for the Week of September 4, 2011

Economics

Wages

The Bible counsels us that workmen are to receive their just wage.  It also warns that the wages of sin is death.  And soldiers are specifically counseled to be content with their wages.

Politicians are long on a "fair days wage", and things of that type.  Marxist claimed that working men were "wage slaves" and that each was to receive according to their abilities and needs.  Apparently their political class had more ability and needs, as they received more than others. . . funny how that worked.

Anyhow, wages are an interesting deal in a lot of ways, not the least of which is how people perceive their wages, or rather their income.

A real oddity, and one that I've become particularly conscious of, is that people generally spend to their income level, if they receive a middle class or upper income.  Not everyone, to be sure, but a lot of people, and seemingly most people.  Almost everyone in the middle class and even the lower wealthy class believes they struggle to get by. And some really do.  I admit that at my present middle class income, I really wonder how those making less get by.  Of course, I'm the only breadwinner as well, which means that if I split my income in half and pretended that it came from two people, we'd still be two middle class income earners, but not doing spectacularly well.

But even those people who make to upper middle incomes in a household will often expand out.  People acquire, I guess. I do as well.

By the same token, some will invariably spend more than they make, no matter what their income is.  I'm not sure why, but they will.

Making a "decent income" is a big deal with Americans.  Of course, it should be, but it's so much of a big deal, that it's often the only focus some people have.  "What's it pay?" is frequently the only career question that somebody asks before launching off on a life altering path.

Because a certain income becomes something a family, if not an individual person, becomes acclimated to, a wage can become like a shackle.  That's extremely common.  Even if the wage earner is prepared to abandon a certain income level, his family may not be, and that's effectively a jail cell.

These random comments amount to nothing more than a casual observation.  I'm not arguing for anything.  But I note it somewhat in the context of this line from a Man For All Seasons:

Why Richard, it profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world... but for Wales?

Parking Lot

It's common to hear that everything about aging is bad, and believe you me, having seen a lot of the things that come at the end of life, for a lot of people there are some pretty rough spots. Frankly, a lot of those rough spots come in middle age, when you're dealing with the impacts of aging on your relatives and probably have job concerns and a youngish family.  You're pretty busy. Generally, according to statisticians, the middle years are the most displeasing to people.

But, not everything about being a middle aged married male is bad by any means.

Here's an odd example.

Almost every work day, when I pull into my work parking lot, there is a very beautiful young woman (say 20s, I'd guess) who arrives at the same time.  I don't know her, and I never will. That's okay with me.  Occasionally I say hello, and she often has some wry comment and seems to have a really dry wit.

What does this have to do with the comment above?

Well, this.

When I was younger, say single and closer to her age, this would be on my mind a lot. She's stunning really.  I'd wonder if she was single, could I strike up a conversation, maybe meet and get to know her.

But I don't worry about any of that. She's just another interesting human being I see in a very disconnected casual situation.  I can take her for what she is in that context, somebody I don't know, will never know, don't need to know, but who is sort of funny in a unique way.

That's a good deal. As we age, unless we manage to stay juvenile forever, it's actually much easier to know people as people.

There are a lot of other things that are like this.  You become much less concerned with how people will react to your opinions, if they will react.  If you aren't vain, you become almost entirely unconcerned about what people think about your car, and other trappings. All that is good stuff.

Economics

In the film rendition of Band of Brother, the Dick Winter character (the central figure) notes in a voice over that, after D-Day, he promised "himself and God" that if he survived the war, he'd find a piece of land somewhere and "live a quiet life".  The book, which does depart from the film somewhat, also notes that.  I haven't read the book in some time, but if I recall correctly, what he actually desired to do was to find a farm somewhere.

In actuality, Dick Winters did find a farm, but not until after the Korean War, some years later.  Between World War Two and his farm purchase, he was in business and in the Army, a second time, during the Korean War.  When he entered farming, he also started a successful business selling animal feed.

The Ambrose book on his unit somewhat overemphasizes his post war business career, underplaying his later farming life.

I note that as I think Winters desire and the portrayal of his desires gives us an interesting insight into the bipolar nature of the American psyche.  On one hand, a lot of people desire a quiet, rural, life.  ON the other, we're constantly bombarded with the message that our goal in life should be "success" in a "career".  It's an interesting dichotomy.

This has always been the case, but earlier on, before World War Two, the big "success in a career" stories were really exceptions to the American rule.  While we aren't living in that era, and while it was very imperfect, what seems to largely have been the case is that the primary concern for most men and women were family related concerns.  Most men and women married, and most of them worked towards a quiet family life.  You don't really find a large number of "success in a career" type stories.  Even businessmen of the pre 1940 era often had fairly low key lives, and were basically middle class.  If a person was in the middle of the middle class, the were regarded as quite successful.  Family, church, community, and the local life was typically a big deal for them.

Somehow, and increasingly the case, after World War Two "success in a career" really became a big deal.  Now it absolutely dominates, and beyond that a "successful economy" is a huge deal.  A successful economy is supposed to mean an ever growing economy.

What this means is that we now expect our children to go through college (and they nearly have to, I'm not saying otherwise), pick a "career", and do whatever it takes to succeed in that career.  If that career is a "high powered" career, so much the better.  This is supposed to mean that you'll move wherever the job takes you, go from town to town and city to city, and like it.  You'll be compensated by one measure only, that being money.  The more money the better.  As this type of career means you will have no roots, or even connections, in where ever you are temporarily working, you'll are free to buy a parcel of property and a house that the local infrastructure cannot support long term, and which is actually destructive to any rural base the local community has, or once had.  No connections with family, church, or community are expected to be predominant, or even exist.  All relationships, even those between man and woman, are merely temporary and expedient, all designed to support your "career".

Indeed, the entire economy is now supposed to support this goal.  We are told that the continued importation of immigrant labor is "necessary in order to support growing our economy", even at a time when we have an effective unemployment rate of  14%.  We are told that the development of land is necessary to support the housing industry, a "key sector of our economy".  We are told that the exportation of jobs that were once solid middle class jobs here, to foreign nations, is necessary in order that we can "grow the economy" by replacing production jobs with consumption jobs, with "low priced" consumption" itself necessary to this economy, as in the end, people don't really need all that much and can otherwise get along with a lot less.

This is largely the antithesis of the general culture before 1940, somewhat.  There was, to be sure, always a lot of movement in the American society, but what seems to be the case is that people basically aimed for stability in economics in order to support their families, which were central to their lives.  We've exchanged that for a system that is obviously self restricting at some point.  For real lives in a real community that we're really connected with, we've substituted lives based on principally on the acquisition of money.  Deep down, however, most of us know that this isn't satisfying, which is amply evidenced by the desire to try to satisfy that gaping hole by getting more, and more.  We still yearn for the life our economy left behind.  But that won't work, as what most, or many, of us really want, is that "quiet life".  Indeed, in film portrays, we interestingly sometimes still portray things that way, but not always, of course.

A Long Ago Hunt

Interesting look at a 1881 hunt in the Sweetwater area:

Part 1.

Part 2.

Part 3.

A difference in cultures

I haven't been following the Amanda Knox trial at all, but I'd note that on this morning's news, appellate arguments, or some sort of appellate proceeding, resumed upon the Court's return from its August holiday.

The court shut down for a month.

An entire month.

This isn't uncommon in southern European cultures.  The country shuts down for a month.  Americans make much of their Protestant Work Ethic, but in the final analysis, I"m not sure that gets us too much other than being overworked.  I can't imagine, fwiw, the entire country taking a month off, but I wish I could imagine it. 

 

Of course, knowing me, I wouldn't take the time off anyhow, actually.

Tomatoland

Tomatoland

An interesting NPR interview of an author on the tasteless industrial tomato.

He also details labor abuses.

It  is pretty disturbing, and if it doesn't convince you to grow your own, you're probably unusually resistant to disturbing news.

One things, though, is that the interview, while not on immigrant labor and farming, makes it pretty clear that the system depends on using, and abusing, immigrant farm workers.  A partial solution to this sort of thing, although one nobody ever seems willing to consider, is ending the practice of importing agricultural labor.  We didn't do that until World War Two, when we had to.  Before that, we did it ourselves, with our own population.

We have plenty of Americans to do the job, and having seen many absolutely rotten jobs Americans will do, the thesis that you "can't get Americans" to do this job is a fraud on the public.  What you can't do is to get them to work for substandard wages, in substandard conditions. And they shouldn't have to do that either.

Paying Americans humane wages to do a job in humane conditions would put a lot of Americans to work in an outdoor job and connect them with agriculture and the real world.  It would raise the cost of food, but perhaps its unrealistically low priced to start with to some extent, on some items.  Of course, we'd have to actually guard our borders from the import of food produced poorly by those paying the poor, poor wages, but so be it.

The Best Posts of the Week of August 7, 2011

Prejudice

Prejudice

Church in New Mexico, early 1940s.

I've been thinking of trying to find a way to post this topic for awhile, but I hadn't gotten around to it, and I also hadn't quite figured out a way to post it effectively.

The topic is prejudice, but not racial prejudice. Religious bias may be a better way to phrase it.

Americans today are so used to the concept that the country was founded on religious liberty that they don't really question it. There remains religious prejudice in this, and every, country to be sure, but the way it was ingrained in society was once much greater than it is now.

To be more specific, I recently saw a topic concerning Roman Catholics and university attendance. The specific topic was the GI Bill. In the topic, a second hand citation to Catholics attending university in the time period was mentioned. More specifically, it was mentioned that prior to World War Two very few Catholics attended university. One of the people responding to that post found that assertion to be just ridiculous, but there were first hand recollections cited to support it (including mine).

I think that actually is correct, and it taps into the general theme of the website here. We look back at our country and figure, except for certain big historical facts that are generally known, that we share much in common with those who came before us. This is simply not always true. And this is one of the ways in which it was not true.

It has been frequently debated whether or not the country was founded on religious principals, and while it can be well supported that the country was not a theocracy in any fashion, it generally had some unity of religious thought, very loosely, early on. To call it a Christian republic might be too strong, but to call it a republic founded largely by Protestant Christians would not be. Generally, up until the 1840s, most Americans belonged to only one of several Protestant denominations. This made sense, of course, as most Americans descended from one of only several ethnic groups, and very early in the our history (our colonial history) immigration had been restricted to exclude members of other faiths, generally. Or more specifically, immigration had excluded Catholics.

This wasn't the case after we severed our allegiance to the United Kingdom, but still, it wasn't really up until the Irish Potato Famine got rolling, and the revolutions of the 1840s in Europe occurred, that this began to change. At that time, a lot of Irish immigrants began to come into the country and, at the same time, a lot of Germans from the Catholic regions of Germany began to do the same. An identifiable Catholic population existed in the US for the first time, excluding of course Acadians and Louisianans, who had been in it for a very long time, but in isolated pockets. Mexican Americans too, fit this latter description.

Prejudice ran strong against these new immigrants, particularly against the Irish immigrants who were inclined to congregate in cities. Prejudice against German Catholics also existed, but the German immigrants were much more inclined to strike out for German farming enclaves where English speaking Americans were less likely to encounter them. In regards to Irish immigrants, however, prejudice was so strong that they were typically defined as a "race", much like African Americans were and are.

Things began to change for Irish Americans during the Mexican War. During the war they were strongly represented (as were German Americans) in the Army, and that helped ease feelings against them. Still, lingering prejudice against Irish Americans well into the 20th Century. And immigration by Italian Americans, which came around the turn of the 19th Century, once again brought in what was regarded as a strongly alien, Catholic, population.

These populations, to a large degree, were much more isolated and communal in the American population until after World War Two. This varied by region, to be sure, but to a surprising degree these Catholic ethic communities remained segregated wherever they lived in a substantial urban area. And everywhere they were strongly associated, and self associated, with their church. Ecumenism was much less valued as well, so identification by Faith meant a great deal. This still occurs, but prior to World War Two to identify as a member of any one Faith, and most people did, meant a fairly strong allegiance to it.

These Catholic populations, the evidence seems to support to me, were also almost exclusively working class. In most urban areas Roman Catholics worked in laboring endeavors. In rural areas of the West, they were often ranchers. I can't really say much about rural areas elsewhere. There were always Catholics in the professions, such as law and medicine, but their clients were more concerned about Faith than they would be now. This is also true, fwiw, for African Americans, who had black doctors and black lawyers surprisingly early on, but those black lawyers and doctors had black clients.

In this era working class men had a much easier time making a living for a family than they do now. Laboring jobs were never easy, but they did often pay a living wage, if they were for skilled labor. A much smaller percentage of Americans attended college or university in general. Generally, Catholics did not attend. Some did, but not anywhere the percentage that now does.

World War Two seems to have changed all of that. It was likely changing anyway. Well before World War Two the nation had seen its first Roman Catholic Supreme Court justice (a Southern Confederate veteran). A Roman Catholic had attempted an unsuccessful, but serious, run for the Presidency prior to the war. General Terry de le Mesa Allen, a Roman Catholic, and Gen. Keyes, also a Catholic, had long running Army careers by the time World War Two broke out and they'd commanded large number of men. For that matter, Gen. McClellan of Civil War fame was a Catholic. But the war seemed to break an already breaking log jam, and after the war identification by class or religion was no longer a statistical factor in college attendance. By the 60s, Ivy League colleges that had effectively been Protestant schools were abandoning chapel requirements, thereby opening them up to members of non Protestant faiths.

In mentioning all of this, I'm not seeking to start a debate. But it is interesting to note. Religious tolerance has always been a feature of American life, but how religion has been a factor in culture and even employment has been largely forgotten.

St. Mary's Roman Catholic Cathedral, Cheyenne Wyoming.

On Holscher's Hub, French Frigate Shoals.

French Frigate Shoals.

The Old Homesteads

I went to a ash spreading (i.e., a type of funeral really) out at an old homestead the other day. By 4x4, it was a long way out. Long, long way, or so it felt. I learned while there that the original homestead had first been filed and occupied in 1917, a big year for homesteading.

It was a very interesting place, and felt very isolated. In visiting about that with my father in law, however, he noted that there had been another homestead just over the hill. And, as I've likely noted here before, there were tiny homesteads all over at that time. It was isolated, but sort of locally isolated. There were, as there were with most of these outfits, another homestead just a few hours ride away, at most, if that.

That is not to say that they weren't way out. I'd guess that this place was at least a full days ride from the nearest town at that time. Even when cars were commonly owned, and they were coming in just about that time, it would have taken the better part of a day to get to town, or a town (there were a couple of very small, but viable towns, about equal distance to this place at that time). It's interesting how agricultural units everywhere in North American have become bigger over time, even if they are all closer now, in terms of time, to a city or town.

Communications and Road Miles

I had a fairly typical experience, and a bit of an odd experience, yesterday which calls to mind the topic of this blog.

Yesterday I went to my office, then to Sheridan Wyoming, then to Ranchester Wyoming, and back.

On the way to Ranchester, we passed two Rolls Royce touring cars. The Silver Ghost type of car, really old ones. They were, of course, premium touring cars in their day, which would have been basically the years on both sides of World War One. Huge automobiles.

The trip basically entailed about 170 miles of travel one way, or a grand trip, in one day of about 300 or so miles. We were home by dinner.

On the way back, I pulled over by the Midwest exit where there was cell reception to make a work call to an attorney in Gillette, WY. My son took this photograph while I was doing that.

What does this have to do with anything?

Well, in a century's time, communications and travel have been so revolutionized that they've radically impacted the way those in my field, in this location, do business. A century ago I would not have taken a day trip to Sheridan and Ranchester. For that matter, while I could easily have gone from Sheridan to Ranchester, most summers, a century ago, that would likely have pretty much been a day trip in and of itself. No, an attorney, if he ever had any cause to go to Sheridan from Casper, would have taken a train. Most likely, you'd take the train up one day, and back the next.

A very adventurous person, if they owned a car, might have driven up to Sheridan, but it would have taken all day. And you would have stayed upon arriving.

This year, I suspect, the travel by car of that type, on roads of that era, would have been impossible. Everything is flooding. I doubt a person could have driven in these conditions from Sheridan to Ranchester. You might have had to take the train to do that. The rail line does run though both towns, then up to Garryowen, and on to Billings. It did then as well.

Even in the mid 20th Century this would have been a long road trip, but you could have done it in a day.

But even the telephone aspect of this didn't exist when I first practiced law, some 20 years ago. That's entirely new. It effectively makes your car your office. As internet connections continue to improve, very often you have internet service darned near everywhere for that matter.

An improvement, or just the way things are?