"Amazing" discoveries about early human's and Yeoman's First Law of History

There's been a couple of recent very interesting discoveries about our early ancestors recently, which have drawn some conclusions that, frankly, are less than amazing.  Its an application of Yeoman's First Law of History at work.

First of all, within the last couple of days human footprints have been found in the UK which are at least 800,000, if not 1,000,000 years old.  That's pretty cool.  The temperature of the UK, at that point in time, was also pretty darned cool.  Scandinavian like, in fact.

This has lead to a lot of pondering (why were they stomping around in the mud, for example?), but it's also lead to at least one amazingly dense comment from a scientist who wondered aloud if they had the ability to make clothing.

Seriously? 

Of course, they did. The question is idiotic.

Which leads me to my second item.

Scientist have recently confirmed that modern human beings of European descent carry a few genes they can trace to Neanderthal human beings, thereby confirming that Neanderthals and what were once commonly called Cro Magnums, but now are generally called "archaic" modern man, um. . .well you know.

No kidding, no surprise there.  Or at least there should be. We're actually all in the same species.  The bigger surprise there is that apparently Neanderthals, and we were on the edge of genetic comparability. That does surprise me because, as noted, we're in the same species.  Neanderthals were only unique in that they were genetically adapted to extreme cold by having short, but stout, bodies.  Modern populations of humans now feature quite a variety in body types, which our archaic ancestors actually did not at that time, so that's not as big of a deal as it might seem.  Included in our current adaptations are body forms that contemplate high heat and intense cold.  That an isolated population of human beings living in Ice Age Europe would have adaptations to their environment isn't that surprising.

But it's been oddly surprising to some that these populations would mix.  In our true European "we feel guilty about everything" outlook, we've often assumed that this must have been the result of violence.

Well, some probably were, but our surprise is probably because of the long-standing tradition of depicting Neanderthals as really ugly, which they probably were not.  They probably just looked different, as many current populations do.  Looking different, while often a cause of hatred amongst people, has often been an attractant too, and so far there hasn't been one single example of any group of people encountering another in which mixing didn't occur.  And chances are high that Neanderthals didn't look like brutes, but rather were dressed in a fashion similar to any new population they were encountering.  So, it's a pretty good bet that it didn't take long before some archaic member of our species was saying something like, "have you seen that cute Neanderthal girl that gets water down by the stream. . . . I wonder if she'd like to come over and share some Aurochs some evening?"

On this, I'd also note that within the last year I've seen something that seemed to confirm that Neanderthals could "speak".  No kidding, they were human beings and talking is something we all seem to be able to do. For what it's worth, their brain cases had bigger volume than modern man's.  For that matter, archaic members of our own species also did, and I saw the same speech speculation about them a couple of years ago.  I have no doubt that both populations spent the evenings yakking it up and could speak just fine.  I also suspect that having a bigger brain case than modern humans means exactly what we might suppose it meant.

Keeping a Swimming Pool at NCHS

I was on the Natrona County High School swim team in 1978-1979 and 1979-1980.  I might have been in 1980-1981 as well, my senior year, but I can't quite recall.  When I was a high school senior I only went to high school half days, and then to college in the afternoon, so I can't really recall if I swam that year or not.  Seems to me that I did.

Natrona County High School, a classic structure built in 1923, but with a pool that is now less than 25 yards long and in need of replacement.

I'm not the first member of my family to swim at the NCHS pool.  My father (graduating class of 1946) did as well.  And we're certainly not the only ones.  My wife swam at the pool while attending NC, and my father in law did as well, learning how to swim there.  And now my son, who is a member of the NC swim team, does.

I also worked at the NC pool one year.  I was a swimming teacher and a life guard there.  I obtained my certification to do that in a NC PE class.

The pool is the oldest indoor pool in Wyoming.  Indeed, it's one of the oldest ones in the Western United States.  It'll be destroyed this summer and, right now, the ongoing presence of a swimming pool at NCHS is in jeopardy.

The pool will be destroyed as a massive renovation project is going on at old NCHS.  Indeed, a massive renovation project is also going on at Kelly Walsh High School across town as well, and they're very nice Olympic sized pool is also slated for removal and replacement, just like NC's.  The high school in Midwest is also in need of a new pool (I hadn't been aware, up until recently, that it had a pool).  So a lot is going on construction wise.

Indeed so much is going on construction wise that that the wisdom of that, in my view, is questionable.  The renovations at NCHS practically amount to building a new school, while keeping part of the old one, in the middle of town.  It'll take several years to complete and is well underway now.  The renovations at KW are not quite as extensive, but are massive by any measure.  The alternative high school, Roosevelt, is slated to receive a completely new building.  With this much going on the logical question does occur of whether simply building a new high school, on the west side of town, with a pool and full facilities (Roosevelt lacks athletic facilities entirely) would have been a much better ideal, with some necessary improvements to KW and NC.  That idea was floated, but it proved unpopular for some reason.  It was frankly a better idea.  That being the case, the renovations are in the works.

 

 The Kelly Walsh High School pool, which was built on an unstable hill in the 1960s. The pool has required renovations in recent years as it slides downhill, which will continue to happen and render this pool unserviceable at some point.

As part of this, the old NCHS pool will be torn down.  Logic would require that new pool be built, and there are plans to build one.  Indeed, not only logic, but the law may require it.

Wyoming's public schools are required to teach swimming, and for a very good reason.  It's for that reason that the state's high schools have pools, not for team athletics.  Long ago the Legislature recognized that swimming was the one and only athletic endeavor in high schools which saved lives.

Wyoming is a dry state, and unlike states with a lot of beachfront of one kind or another, a fair number of people, particularly rural people, never learn how to swim.  If you are living far out in the country, in Powder River, Lynch, or Kaycee, or any number of similar towns, there's no pools nearby and much of Wyoming's pond water isn't really suitable for recreational swimming. We do have water sports, particularly in the reservoirs, but that doesn't guaranty that a kid growing up here will learn to swim. . .until he hits high school.

The legislature determined that in order to address that, and help keep people from drowning, swimming should be incorporated into PE, the same way the Navy required (and perhaps still does) swimming instruction for recruits.  You might not come out the worlds best swimmer from high school PE, but at least you'll know how to swim.

And some do go on to really become avid swimmers.  To my surprise, my mother (who did not grow up here) once related to me that she'd learned to swim as a young adult.  She was an avid, and very good, swimmer, but she didn't learn until she was an adult  As an adult, she swam every day for decades.

Swimming is also one of the very few high school sports that actually also a life long benefit to the participants.  Here, I'll admit I'm remiss.  I was an okay competitive swimmer at that time, and did that for most of my youth, but after high school I've only occasionally swam.  But I do still know how.  Everyone who learns swimming in high school won't stick with it, but they can, and some will. 

That contrasts enormously with other high school sports.  Some are lifetime sports.  Tennis, skiing, and the "recreational sports" they now offer. But the classic high school sport, football, is just a young man's sport and that's it.  The percentage of men who play football after age 18, if they were high school football players, probably is something in the two digits, if not 1 even a few years after they graduate. By their 30s, it's down in the 1 digit for sure.  Football becomes a watching, not playing, game only a few years after the former stars graduate.

All of this argues strongly for a new pool to be built, as planned, at NC.  And I think it might be an untested legal requirement.  But here's the oddity, sporting facilities are not funded by the state in Wyoming, even while the construction of schools is.

There is a legitimate reason for this, as one of the oddities of school construction is that communities will spring for some sporting facilities before academic ones, and the state didn't want any part of that. But with some athletic facilities, such as gyms and pools, they're really part and parcel of the academics and shouldn't be viewed that way.  Indeed, as the state requires swimming be taught, it ought to include pools in the funding.

But here funding is not forthcoming from the state and so the school district is planning to ask for a bond from the voters.

Recent bond issues have not gone well here, except for Casper College. The voters seem willing to pass bonds for Casper College, but otherwise they've been stingy in recent years.  Or at least it seems so (no school bond issues have been floated, so we don't really know).  Casper College has seen massive reconstruction in the past few years.

This started when the county tried to float a bond for a new courthouse several years ago. The old one was long in the tooth and they came up with a plan to renovate it and asked for voter approval, but a movement developed against it and it was voted down. That controversy had its own oddities, so perhaps it doesn't mean much, but it did occur.  Ultimately, funding was found via some other route and the courts moved across the street to the renovated Townsend Hotel, which is now the courthouse.  No county bond money was used, however.

 

 The Depression era Natrona County courthouse, a beautiful structure, it was built with one courtroom.  Voters rejected proposed rennovations to it.

 

The Townsend Justice Center. Built as a first class downtown hotel, by the 1970s the Townsend was a flop house, but with a pretty good restaurant, home to the down and out and prostitutes.  It closed in the 1980s, and was renovated in the 2000s as a courthouse.

Following that, the library tried to obtain voter approval to move out of its antiquated home into a new facility.  I don't think they're campaign was what it should have been, which may explain their failure, but it fell flat and they voters told them to stay where they are.

Subsequently something similar was tried with a civic center, something we don't have but which a local committee has been planning for years. The center would, by my understanding, house the performing arts. Locals weren't sufficiently interested and funding commitments couldn't be met, so the project went to sleep, more or less.

A person may ask why all of this occurred, and frankly these stories may not be related. The courthouse project might have gone through but for the dedicated and somewhat misinformed leadership of the campaign against it, which spread some stories that were off the mark. And nobody is really that excited about courthouses anymore, even though at one time they were the center of a community.  The library campaign, in my view, was tainted by a certain atmosphere that seemed to be one of entitlement, which voters generally don't like.  And, frankly, the library has to better establish its relevance in an era when vast amounts of information can be had by turning on the your computer, and when you fear that your child is sitting next to some fellow at the library who hasn't showered since 1972 and whose looking up back issues of Skanky on the library computer.

The civil center might just frankly have been a bad fit for the community.  This city has always been very oil industry centric, and many people here just have no interest in a center for the performing arts. Again, they'll have to sell that better, or wait for a bigger town, I suspect.

But it also could be that we're in a boom right now and that impacts everything about our local economy and how people vote.  A large number of people are new here, and many of them really have roots in the states much further to our south.  Over time, the ones who stay will develop roots here, but right now, "home" is Bartlesville Oklahoma, or Odessa Texas, rather than Casper, for many.

 In this atmosphere, the Tribune took a pool and found that something like 57% or so of the voters approved the bond that was then being proposed, which also included proposed work to the NCHS stadium.  Most informed folks now that 57% is actually a pretty good percentage in an election.  A Presidential election that comes in that high is declared as "landslide" which creates a "mandate."  But here, where many elections are nearly uncontested, people are no longer use to the idea that an election in which a side doesn't roll in over 60% of the vote is normal.

Perhaps for that reason, the Tribune then came out against the pools. That's really bad as the Tribune has an influence, although not a commanding one.

Well, the current proposal relates solely to the pools.  And NCHS needs one.  I'm hoping that people realize that, and that the district continues to advance it.  If we omit one from NC, I think we may be in violation of the law, and we'll certainly be in violation of common sense.  Some rural kid isn't going to learn how to swim.  Those who naively state that it's okay for a student from one school to drive to another for that instruction live in a world of the future, where a car can get across a town whose roads were once cow tracks in 10 minutes. That day isn't here.  They'll just not learn it, we will have failed in our educational duty, and we're putting those kids at risk.

NCHS needs to get  a new pool.

Postscript:

The Natrona County School Board will be holding a session at University Park School on Monday January 27, 2014, at 7:30, which will discuss this topic. 

Postscript II

The board meeting last night drew a large crowd, a good number of whom were high school competitive swimmers.  Also, however, a fair number of faculty from NC and KW spoke in favor of keeping the swimming pool bond issue tied to the general bond issue, which is the matter really in dispute here.  Some very fine points were made.

One which I noted above was made by a businessman, who noted that 57% of the those polled is actually a very good percentage, particularly from the onset.  A Kelly Walsh math teacher who had analyzed the poll results made some good points about the small number of people polled and the degree to which that cast some doubt on the results.

Several people spoke very well on the teaching aspect of the pools, which is the primary point, really.  One speaker noted that school safety upgrades are on the general bond, but that statistically a child is much more likely to drown than be injured in any sort of school place violence.  And a NC teacher specifically noted the local instances of drowning that have occurred here, in recent years, every year and how failure to make the upgrades will undoubtedly contribute to that increasing as at first will loose one, and then sooner or later the second, pool.  Indeed, the KW athletics coordinator pointed out the numerous problems KWHS is presently having with their pool.

Postscript III

The pool bond issue hit both the Casper Star Tribune and the Casper Journal. The Journal ran a comprehensive article on the recent school board meeting, the Tribune ran an editorial.

The Journal's article had some very nice quotes contained in it, including some from the School Board which I think correctly shows the enthusiasm that actually exists for the pools.  The journal noted the following being said at the conclusion of the meeting.  I should note that these comments came at the end of the meeting. At one point the chairman of the board noted that they were not taking the matter up that night, and were moving on to the topic of dual language immersion, so that the people who came to support the school were free to leave, that topic having been concluded for the evening.  Apparently the board felt it should address the comments at the end of the meeting.

I  wish all the people were still here so I could tell them thank you for being so interested in caring,” said trustee Paula Reid. “We’ll have more to come on this, so I ask them to please stay tuned. We'll need their help.”

“We had roughly 25 people get up and passionately speak to the pools,” said trustee Suzanne Sandoval. “I don't see any way other than it needs to be one question, and I would actually question whether or not we need to go forward with the polling at this point.”

“I so appreciate all the people who came out in support of the pool,” said trustee Rita Walsh. “I would agree with Suzanne that I don't think it's necessary to go forward with more polling information at this point.

“I would like to thank and recognize all of the swimming community who showed up and the passion that they showed,” said trustee Kevin Christopherson. “I was born and raised in this town, and I swam in both pools — though there's not much left of the NC pool — but it's kind of scary to think that what our parents and grandparents built for us, out of purely taxes, that we couldn't do that for the future generations that are going to come and use these swimming facilities. So I have faith in Casper that this is going to pass. I think we should keep it as one question.”

“I, too, was really impressed by the passion that was felt in this room tonight,” said trustee Dave Driggers. “We're going to need that passion, we're going to need every one of these people that spoke, and their grandparents, and their parents, and to drag about five or six additional people to the polling places. If we can somehow be assured that this passion will remain in the next three months, not only through verbal support, but going to the polling places and actually voting, I agree with previous trustees comments that probably additional polling probably won't help that much in the question.”

“About the swimming, I would just like to say that passion is an amazing thing, it gets you all kinds of places you wouldn't expect,” said trustee Dana Howie. “I enjoyed listening to all the stories and … I took swimming lessons in the NC pool and I taught swimming lessons in the NC pool, and they need the pool, and then we also need to keep Kelly Walsh's pool viable and improve it if we can. And we can't forget Midwest either, because Midwest needs a pool; the school is part of that community, the school is the community. So I think that's just as important as well.”

The Casper Star Tribune, however, took a negative stand on the pool once again, calling it a "poison pill" on the bond issue.  The Tribune seems to feel that the vote for the bond will go negative if the pools are on it, even though over 50% of those poled are in favor of the bond issue right now.  The really weird thing about the Tribune's editorial, however, is that it fails to address that the separation of the bond issue  will mean that the separate topic will be for school safety enhancements.

That's odd, as swimming is not only a mandated topic for students in Wyoming, but it's also a mandated topic for safety reasons.  Next to driving, water poses one of the most substantial risk to life that there is.  We have drownings in this are every year and quite a few people do not learn how to swim until they are in high school.  The tribune just ignores that.

The tribune in particular ought to know better, as it's located nearly directly across from that part of the Platte River Parkway dedicated to river sports, and where there's been a drowning within the past few years.

It's odd that in this day and age we have such a skewed sense of risk that we make sure we teach certain safety related things, irrespective of the risk, and then will go on to urge the omission of others.  There has been an organization campaigning in the state recently to raise the driving age up to 18, for safety reasons.  The Tribune opposes that.  In school, we require kids to sit through a class with the euphemistic name of "life skills", even though that class trespasses on the beliefs of many parents, in the name of health safety.  The difference would simply seem to be a lack of understanding that pools equate with safety.

Postscript IV

From the Natrona County School District's website:

Central Services Facility

Public Notice - Board of Trustees to Hold Bond Issue Public Hearings
02.04.2014
Notice of Public Hearings
Natrona County School District No. 1
Board of Trustees

In accordance with Wyoming Statute 21-13-701(c) The Natrona County School District No. 1 Board of Trustees, prior to submitting a bond proposition to district voters, will hold public hearings for the purpose of providing an explanation of the need to obtain district funding for building and facility features that are in excess of state standards for buildings and facilities and taking public comment. The hearings are scheduled for:

Monday February 10, 2014 6:30 - 7:30 p.m.
Monday February 24, 2014 6:30 - 7:30 p.m.

The hearings will be held at the District Central Services Facility located at 970 N. Glenn Road Casper, WY.

Postscript V

 

Swimming Pools — NCSD Transform

Swimming Pools — NCSD Transform

Nice site on the proposed pools and the bond issue.

Here's the reason for the bond issue:  "While the State of Wyoming requires that Natrona County Schools operate and maintain a swimming pool to serve the needs of the district’s high school students, it is unwilling to pay for these facilities."  In other words, the state requires students have access to a pool (for safety reasons really), but won't pay for them.

If they aren't built, NCHS won't have one, and the district will arguably be immediately out of compliance with the law.  That would, quite frankly, seem to invite a law suit, which isn't the district's fault really, but that's what it might do.

Midwest, which tends to be the forgotten high school in the county, has an inadequate pool, would almost certainly seem to be out of compliance with the law without a new one.  For some reason, we tend to forget that Midwest even has a high school, let alone a pool, but they have both, and they need a new pool.

Here's something else worth noting:

The original proposal being discussed by the Board of Education has been
scaled back in scope and now includes the following projects:

• Replacement of NCHS’s 85-year-old
  swimming pool with a new 8-lane pool, diving area
  
  and seating
• Renovation of
  the existing KWHS swimming pool—including new pool equipment, plumbing,
  electrical, lighting and pool deck surface—providing 8 lanes, diving area and
  additional seating
• Design and
  construction of a new Midwest Pool with new supporting equipment, plumbing,
  
  electrical (within the existing pool building), new roof and remodeled locker
  rooms, restrooms and offices

What this doesn't note is that without the bond issue, at least the NC pool will be gone.  It sounds like the younger KW pool is in a terminal state as well.  It's usable, but long term it doesn't look good for it.  While some people are balking at the cost, it's important to note:

The scaled-back
proposal for improving the district’s swimming pools is an estimated $5.8
million LESS than the cost of constructing one large aquatic center to serve
the needs of the entire district. 

Note only is it less, but frankly the idea of "one large aquatic center" to serve the needs of the district is absurd.  No such central location can conceivably serve the needs of Midwest and we know it won't.  Those kids won't be bused across the county for swimming.  It'd take up at least half the school day, if the weather is good.

For that matter, swimming will drop off for both KW and NC students with a central pool.  Casper isn't that easy to get around in during the day, as any Casperite knows.  Students at NC, if they leave during the day, go west, not east, as that's the easy way for them to go.  KW students go east for the same reason.  Where could a pool even be built that would be only five or so minutes from both schools?  Nowhere.

And consider the actual pools. Here's the proposal for Midwest:

Midwest Pool.  A very rational sized pool, that the students there deserve.

And here's the one for NCHS.  Again, this is hardly a palatial pool, although it is one that would allow NCHS's swim team to have swimming meets in their pool for the first time in many many years.  Indeed, it's worth considering that should an increase in fuel costs ever cause the state to cease funding local busing, and that end up in terminating our county's unique "school of choice" system, about half the KWHS swim team would end up going to NCHS, assuming that, at that time, KW's team has a demographic similar to the existing team, and assuming that at that point in time KW still has a pool, which it very may well not, should the bond issue fail.

The real reason, of course, for the state requirement that the students have access to a pool is that their risk of dieing by drowning is reduced, a very worthwhile goal. And its that average student that the pools serve. These pools would do that job nicely, and the bond for them is well worth supporting. 

Postscript VI

Its interesting note how some will view projects of this type.

Having adequate swimming facilities at the county's three high schools (I sometimes think people in the county forget that Midwest even has a high school) benefits everyone.  It benefits everyone as it teaches a life saving skill, it benefits everyone as it teaches a lifetime sport, and the facilities have always been used by the public when not in school use.  And yet the Casper Star Tribune has been against them.

This morning, however, the Tribune is editorializing about the State Land Investment Board not funding, to the full extent of the request, a petition put in by Casper for a conference center.  The state will only fund half.  the Tribune complains about that and calls the board a "clown car" for its procedures in regards to this request and states that now the county must find a way to come up with the rest.

Oh?  Why is that?

The Tribune doesn't really bother to tell us, but basically we can surmise that it agrees with the logic advanced for this proposition. That is, it provides lacking conference space and facilities for Casper, which in turn causes Casper to fail to draw conferences we'd like to, which in turn would boost the local economy.

The argument is strained in several ways. For one thing, there's not really a shortage of big space in the community.  We have a college that allows its facilities to be used, and much of the college has just benefited from new construction.  We also have a selection of hotels, which by and large are the facilities that host such events in most places.  I've been at numerous conferences and classes in this city's hotels.  The opponents of the state funding have noted that they feel that essentially the state is being asked to enter into something that's the domain of private enterprise, and whether the proposal is a good one or not, the critics are at least partially correct on that score.

In contrast, the arguments in favor of the pools are the same ones that can be advanced for the conference center, but without the same counters.  We very well know in this community that some sporting facilities draw in enormous crowds to the town.  One that I would never have guessed would do this has been soccer fields, and yet it is now very well demonstrated that this towns soccer fields are a big draw during the soccer season, bringing in thousands of dollars in revenue.  Basketball does the same thing at the high school level, as does wrestling.  At the college level, the College Rodeo Finals are a huge event here.  Having two decent pools to replace the one going out and the one that's wearing down would do the same thing, and we should know that.

And yet, we also know that private enterprise doesn't build pools. Of the several pools in this town, there's only one that's a competitive meter pool, that being KWHS's.  NC's was when built, but it was a competitive yard pool, and subsequent construction has shortened it to 23, rather than 25, yards.  The diving boards were taken out some time ago.  Another yard pool belongs to the YMCA, which is not a private enterprise entity but the property of what few realize is actually a religious organization.  The town's aquatic center lacks a lane pool, and has rather sort of what I'd call a "fun" pool.  Unlike conference space, no private enterprise organization is going to build a competitive pool.

It's things like competitive pools, soccer fields, athletic facilities, that are a proper role of local governmental entities of various types.  It's odd that the Tribune would be boosting something that is arguably the role of private business, irrespective of whether it is a good idea or not, while opposing something that is clearly in everyone's best interest and not arena of private enterprise.

Second Story Radio • Episode 4: Here and Now and Naught Else In...

Second Story Radio • Episode 4: Here and Now and Naught Else In...



Nebraska's unusual capitol building.

Holscher's Hub: Casper Mountain Sled Dog and Skiijourning Races, F...

Holscher's Hub: Casper Mountain Sled Dog and Skiijourning Races, F...: ...



Preserving an old method of travel as sport.

PHOTOS: Feet of Snow Bury the Alps, Dolomites of Italy, Austria and Switzerland; Ice Jams Slovenia - weather.com Homes Buried in Snow

PHOTOS: Feet of Snow Bury the Alps, Dolomites of Italy, Austria and Switzerland; Ice Jams Slovenia - weather.com Homes Buried in Snow

A couple of cold weather observations.

The most recent issue of the National Geographic has a nice article by Garrison Keillor about the area around St. Paul, and St. Paul, where's he's from.  It's a really nice article in lots of ways.

One of the photographs in the article is of a young couple, out on some ice, dressed for the weather.  Keillor notes that "as they were raised right", they're warmly dressed.  I sympathize with that statement.

The past couple of days it's been below 0F here.  Yesterday, when I dropped my daughter off at school, some kids were going into school wearing shorts.

Shorts?  Really, in this weather?

I know some young adults who do that too.  I don't get it.

Also, as a recent observation, the national news has been full of the shocking news that its winter, and its cold.

No kidding.

This morning, on the Today Show, which I do not watch but my wife does, one of the announcers was doing a "hash tag, enough already" routine.

Well, #get a clue, winter is cold.

Postscript 

-22F this morning.  Now that's cold. 

Postscript II

The cold must truly have set in by yesterday.  For one thing, I debated whether I needed to warm up my truck or not, as it was "only -9".  By the time that seems sort of warm, it's been pretty cold.

Secondly, for the first time the kids at junior high were wearing wool caps and nobody was wearing shorts.  About time. 

Military patrol (sport) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Military patrol (sport) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia



The Winter Olympics back in the day when some team sports were composed of military teams only, in both the winter and summer Olympics.

USDA Blog » USDA Then and Now

USDA Blog » USDA Then and Now

Swimming Pools — NCSD Transform

Swimming Pools — NCSD Transform

Nice site on the proposed pools and the bond issue.

Here's the reason for the bond issue:  "While the State of Wyoming requires that Natrona County Schools operate and maintain a swimming pool to serve the needs of the district’s high school students, it is unwilling to pay for these facilities."  In other words, the state requires students have access to a pool (for safety reasons really), but won't pay for them.

If they aren't built, NCHS won't have one, and the district will arguably be immediately out of compliance with the law.  That would, quite frankly, seem to invite a law suit, which isn't the district's fault really, but that's what it might do.

Midwest, which tends to be the forgotten high school in the county, has an inadequate pool, would almost certainly seem to be out of compliance with the law without a new one.  For some reason, we tend to forget that Midwest even has a high school, let alone a pool, but they have both, and they need a new pool.

Here's something else worth noting:

The original proposal being discussed by the Board of Education has been
scaled back in scope and now includes the following projects:

• Replacement of NCHS’s 85-year-old
  swimming pool with a new 8-lane pool, diving area
  
  and seating
• Renovation of
  the existing KWHS swimming pool—including new pool equipment, plumbing,
  electrical, lighting and pool deck surface—providing 8 lanes, diving area and
  additional seating
• Design and
  construction of a new Midwest Pool with new supporting equipment, plumbing,
  
  electrical (within the existing pool building), new roof and remodeled locker
  rooms, restrooms and offices

What this doesn't note is that without the bond issue, at least the NC pool will be gone.  It sounds like the younger KW pool is in a terminal state as well.  It's usable, but long term it doesn't look good for it.  While some people are balking at the cost, it's important to note:

The scaled-back
proposal for improving the district’s swimming pools is an estimated $5.8
million LESS than the cost of constructing one large aquatic center to serve
the needs of the entire district. 

Note only is it less, but frankly the idea of "one large aquatic center" to serve the needs of the district is absurd.  No such central location can conceivably serve the needs of Midwest and we know it won't.  Those kids won't be bused across the county for swimming.  It'd take up at least half the school day, if the weather is good.

For that matter, swimming will drop off for both KW and NC students with a central pool.  Casper isn't that easy to get around in during the day, as any Casperite knows.  Students at NC, if they leave during the day, go west, not east, as that's the easy way for them to go.  KW students go east for the same reason.  Where could a pool even be built that would be only five or so minutes from both schools?  Nowhere.

And consider the actual pools. Here's the proposal for Midwest:

Midwest Pool.  A very rational sized pool, that the students there deserve.

And here's the one for NCHS.  Again, this is hardly a palatial pool, although it is one that would allow NCHS's swim team to have swimming meets in their pool for the first time in many many years.  Indeed, it's worth considering that should an increase in fuel costs ever cause the state to cease funding local busing, and that end up in terminating our county's unique "school of choice" system, about half the KWHS swim team would end up going to NCHS, assuming that, at that time, KW's team has a demographic similar to the existing team, and assuming that at that point in time KW still has a pool, which it very may well not, should the bond issue fail.

The real reason, of course, for the state requirement that the students have access to a pool is that their risk of dieing by drowning is reduced, a very worthwhile goal. And its that average student that the pools serve. These pools would do that job nicely, and the bond for them is well worth supporting.

Natrona County School District "Transform" Site.

Home



Includes bond issue information.

MId Week At Work: Chrysler Plant, World War Two.

Marijuana and statistics.

1.  10%, apparently, of marijuana users become addicts. That's with it being illegal. 

2.  15% of alcohol consumers become addicted.

3.  Worst reason for legalizing marijuana.  "Well, surely if alcohol is legal with all its problems marijuana should be."  No, that'd be a really good reason to make alcohol illegal, but it's a really bad one to make marijuana legal.  Just because something might be no more destructive than something destructive, doesn't amount to a supportable argument to make the second destructive thing legal.

4.  Most missed point in item #3.  Alcohol has such a long association with human beings that the best evidence is that the current population of humans, for the most part, has actually evolved to be able to consume it.  Alcohol, after all, is a poison.  Second most missed point in item #3 is that at the low dosages that were consumed per unit weight, prior to the invention of distilling (and keeping in mined that in ancient times the wine, one of the two most common alcoholic beverages, was routinely very much watered down), was not and is not generally consumed to the point of intoxication.  Marijuana for recreational use is only consumed to the point of intoxication.

5.  Scariest marijuana fact discussed since Colorado legalized it.  Those using it in their teens experience a 6 to 10 point drop in their IQs as an adult.

February 5, 1914. Arming Villa.

What could possibly go wrong?

Interesting effort at prohibiting divorce after remarriage as well.  In an era when shacking up was generally illegal, that would have had real implications.

Seems harsh to most, I suppose (although I'm not sure that I don't agree with the proposal, which of course went nowhere, and would go nowhere now).

Prince Abdullah I bin al-Hussein, son of Hussein bin Ali, Sharif of Mecca, met with Herbert Kitchener, British Governor General of Egypt and the Sudan, in Cairo.  While the Great War had not yet arrived, the topic was potential British support against the Turks in response to their moves against Hejaz, which was independent at the time, but which was unfortunately absorbed by Saudi Arabia after World War One.

The British were no committal, but communications were kept open.

Alistair MacKay and three other members of the shipwrecked Canadian Arctic Expedition left their camp with a full stocked sled of supplies in an effort to find land.  They were spotted three days later by Karluk ship steward Ernest Chafe and the Inuit members of the party who were on a return mission from Herald Island.  They had been checking on a four-man scouting team. Thereafter, they were never seen alive again.

Bob Dylan on a Super Bowl Ad?

Now that's something I wouldn't have expected.

Not that it was bad.  Indeed, it was sort of cool. And it was Chrysler, and I like Dodges.

But still.

Best ad that I saw (and I didn't see them all) was the Chevrolet advertisement hauling the bull to the cows.

The Big Picture. Dartmouth v. Harvard Football Game, 1903

Note how very well dressed the crowd is.

Passing by the National Passtime

At no point in the year to I feel less attuned to the nation than during the NFL playoffs and the Super Bowl.  I have to finally concede that I have less than 0% interest in them.

It's not that I'm opposed to football, although I am a bit concerned about the developing consensus that concussions associated with it can have a lifetime impact.  No, as I blogged here earlier, I just can't get into it for some reason.

I've tried.  If you don't follow football you are the odd man out on some conversations.  And people regard ti as strange, or just flat out don't believe it. Twice in the last several months I've been in conversations with groups of lawyers from all over the country when football came up, and I literally knew absolutely nothing about what people were talking about.

In those conversations, if you live here, it invariably is stated; "so you must be rooting for the Broncos, huh?"  No, I'm not.  I don't care who wins. Indeed, even though last weekend or whenever it was I knew who both teams were, I had to be reminded on Friday that the Seahawks were the other team.  My interest level is so low, I can't even remember who the other team is. And I'm not rooting for them either.

I do find it a bit odd that everyone assumes that Wyomingites are automatically Broncos fans.  Why would that be true?  I guess its because it's the closest professional team. But, while things have changed over time, it used to be common here that people would make sure to note that Wyoming isn't Colorado, and that a lot of things associated with Colorado, particular a large metropolitan area, we do not want associated with us. As I've stated, things have changed and that's no longer as common as it once was, but even back then it seemed most Wyomingites were Broncos fans.

I'm fine with that, I'm just not one.  Or a Packers fan.  Or a Steelers fan.  Or whatever.

I wish I was.  I've tried to follow football so that I could at least participate in these conversations, but it's impossible.  I can't do it.  At least this year I was in one of these group conversations where another lawyer, who had grown up overseas of American parents, stated he couldn't follow it either, passing that off to not growing up here.  I've given up trying.

I'll see the game, as my wife is a football fan and makes sure we always watch it. Some years we'll travel to a party to watch it.  I'm glad that we are invited, but I've actually had the experience of sitting through an entire party that way and not knowing who won. 

Sooner or later, I'm sure, some pharmaceutical company will offer a remedy for this condition, with all sorts of risky side affects.

Today is a poor day for Outdoor Fitness

Or so says my AccuWeather App.

Ice Fishing tent, yesterday.

Well it is really cold, that's for sure.  About 6F and likely to stay that way all day long.  And that's cold enough you have to be really careful outdoors.

But that doesn't mean some folks don't go out.  I guess it depends on how ancient and primal your idea of "outdoor fitness" is.

The Big Speech: The War Poetry of Alan Seeger

Earlier this past week we noted the passing of 94 year old Pete Seeger.  In that I noted that Pete Seeger was, in spite of being a folk musician, from a well educated artistic family.  Here we'll post his most well known poem, which proved to be accurate, given his death in World War One.

I have a Rendezvous with Death

I have a rendezvous with Death
At some disputed barricade,
When Spring comes back with rustling shade
And apple-blossoms fill the air—
I have a rendezvous with Death
When Spring brings back blue days and fair.

It may be he shall take my hand
And lead me into his dark land
And close my eyes and quench my breath—
It may be I shall pass him still.
I have a rendezvous with Death
On some scarred slope of battered hill,
When Spring comes round again this year
And the first meadow-flowers appear.

God knows 'twere better to be deep
Pillowed in silk and scented down,
Where love throbs out in blissful sleep,
Pulse nigh to pulse, and breath to breath,
Where hushed awakenings are dear . . .
But I've a rendezvous with Death
At midnight in some flaming town,
When Spring trips north again this year,
And I to my pledged word am true,
I shall not fail that rendezvous.

A glimpse at the judicial system in other nations

This morning the Denver Post informs us that:

ROME—Italy's highest criminal court on Tuesday overturned Amanda Knox's acquittal in the slaying of her British roommate and ordered a new trial, prolonging a case that has become a cause celebre in the United States.

Knox called the decision "painful" but said she was confident that she would be exonerated.
Italian law cannot compel Knox to return for the new trial, and her lawyer said she had no plans to do so. The appellate court hearing the new case could declare her in contempt of court but that carries no additional penalties.

In the United States we use an evolved form of English Common Law, and of course that common law system has been greatly impact here by the protections afforded under State and Federal Constitutions.  There's no such thing here as a reversal of an acquittal and the thought itself is strange.  If you are acquitted, you're acquitted.

Italy uses a version of the Code Napoleon, which descends, but not in a straight line, from the Code Justinian.  Apparently, at least in the Italian version of this, you can be tried twice for the same time.  Very odd to think of.

I haven't really followed this entire story so I can't comment knowledgeably about it and I'm not saying that the Italian justice system is fatally flawed.  It's successfully handled a lot of really nasty and dangerous Mafia trials in the last 40 years.  But it does seem oddly slow in some ways, and the lack of an apparent double jeopardy provision is surprising.

Postscript

Once again, I haven't really been following this case, but yesterday the verdict in the second Knox case was rendered, and she was convicted again.

I'll confess that this time, while I'm not questioning the Italian justice system, I'm baffled about the procedure. The original trial seemed to feature some sloppy prosecution to me, but then Knox's evolving versions of events, including implicating an innocent man, were questionable too.  But the overall procedure is really baffling.

The original trail was held at Perugia, followed by an appeal to a court in Perugia. The first appellate court overturned the murder conviction (she was also convicted of slander).  That would have ended the matter, had this been an American, English, Canadian, Australian, etc. court. But there was a second level of appeal in Italy, and that appeal went to the Italian Supreme Court.

The Italian Supreme Court apparently vacated the Perugia appellate ruling, which is not the way I'd originally understood that holding, and sent it back to the lower appellate court for a second hearing, but this time at Florence.  Somehow, new evidence was taken in at the appellate level, by order of the Italian Supreme Court. That's a complete impossibility under the Common Law system we use.  Apparently the Italian intermediate appellate court can act, in at least some circumstances, act as an intermediate trier of fact as well as an appellate court.  It's apparently even the case that the prosecutor in the second intermediate appellate proceeding, used a different motive as his theory of the case.  Anyhow, that court not only reinstated Knox's conviction, but it increased her sentence from 26 years to 28.5.

A very large part of this process would be rampagingly Unconstitutional in the US.  The first appellate decision would have ended the whole case. To subject a criminal defendant to a second fact finding proceeding would be double jeopardy.  To those familiar with Common Law courts, this is extremely alien.  I'm frankly quite glad that we do not use this system.

Which isn't to say that its inherently unfair.  Code Napoleon trials are more in the nature of factual inquiries than they are adversarial proceedings, and the court acts as a fact finder.  Still, it seems rather protracted and messy.

Postscript II

Worth noting here in addition, there is a person serving time in Italy for this crime, Ray Guede.  He's apparently admitted to being in the house at the time of the murder, and he's implicated Knox as being in the house, but apparently hasn't blamed her or anyone else for the killing, although he continues to deny that he committed the murder. 

Today In Wyoming's History: Wyoming History In The Making: Janaury 30, 2014. ...

Today In Wyoming's History: Wyoming History In The Making: Janaury 30, 2014. ...: The Attorney General of Wyoming indicated that the State would file a petition for a rehearing in the Hill case. Rehearings are very ra...

Pete Seeger passes and a lesson on presumptions of inevitability.

As I'm sure everyone knows, Pete Seeger, who may legitimately be regarded as an American musical legend, died this past week at age 94.

 Pete Seeger, 1967.  The stage looks amazingly like the one at the grade school I attended.

Usually, an entry that would start off that way would go on to be a praising summary of his career, which was very influential on American music, but that's not the point of this entry. This is not to say that Seeger wasn't very influential musically, he was, and that would be a legitimate topic and legitimately interesting post.  But his death raises an interesting point that's generally been missed, just as his fans struggle to a degree to bury his early past and those who weren't fans of that past are sometimes overemphasizing it. The reason for that is that Pete Seeger was a Communist as a young man, which gives us an interesting opportunity to visit the topic of the error of assuming certain paths in history are inevitable.

By that I'm not trying to dump on Seeger.  Seeger was pretty open about his views and never hid his past.  And it'd be downright silly to criticize the musical quality of his work based on politics at any one point in time.  And frankly it's also not really fair to judge a man on his early politics either.  You have to take the sum total of a man's life in order to consider it.  Maybe you have to take the last part of it really.  Plenty of mighty sinners become saints.  And plenty of people with early questionable views change them or they evolve into something else. Take, for example, the recent example of Nelson Mandela, whom some people were supporting due to the ANC's early traveling with  Communist. Well, Mandela's later life certainly counters any suggestion that he retained any Marxists lessons and his record as a free world leader is where he should be judged.  Or, to take an early example, consider W. E. B. Dubois, the great American civil rights leader. At one time he sympathized with Communism. Asked about that later, he gave one of the great all time responses to such a question, that being "Only a fool never changes his mind."  Du Bois himself remained a species of Socialist his whole life, openly, which certainly does not diminish his greatness in any fashion.

W. E. B. Du Bois, one of the nation's greatest 20th Century civil rights leaders.

Anyhow, I've seen some try to argue the fact of Seeger's early Communism away, but Seeger was very open about his Communist party membership in the 1930s..  I don't feel that's reason enough to condemn him in our memories. The measure of a man isn't what he was at any one point in the course of the path of his life, but where that path went.  And indeed the fact that he isn't generally so condemned says a lot about the tolerance of Americans for disparate views.  While we're generally believed to be somewhat rigid in our ideological views by outsiders, Seeger, who held radical views his whole life, was widely admired for his music across the musical spectrum (although not by me, I generally don't like his music much, but not because of his politics, but rather because I just don't like his particular genre much).*  This was true even early on, as Seeger was one of those Communist whose position was adamant opposition to the US entering the war against Germany prior to Germany's attack on the USSR, at which point his position switched overnight.**  Seeger and his fellows issued some massively anti war songs prior to the USSR being invaded, at which point they withdrew them and issued ones going the other way.  That intellectual weakness in the American Communist Party was really demonstrated by this, as its thinking was so dominated by Moscow.*** But the burden of that didn't really attach to Seeger, just as being an opponent of entering the war, albeit for a completely different reason, didn't really tarnish Charles Lindberg's career much either.  Americans are pretty tolerant really, to those amongst us who hold political views we generally disagree with.****

The reason that I'm noting this is that Seeger's death has brought back, in some circles, the story of American Communism of the 1920s through the 1940s, and that story serves as a very cautionary tale for anyone who believes any movement's success is assured by it being "on the right side of history."  We hear this all the time about one social or political movement.  But history shows us that inevitable developments often aren't.

There were left wing radicals of varying stripes in the US well before there was a serious Communist Party in the U.S.  You can find all sorts of interesting groups emerging mid 19th Century, and continuing on thereafter.  But the Communist Party of the USA is somewhat unique as it seemed, to many well educated young people, to be the next step in the inevitable advancement of American political liberalism. Indeed, this was so much the case that even non Communist far left liberals generally held positive views of Communism and abstained from any criticism of the USSR even before World War Two.  They were woefully wrong, thank goodness, but they were sincere in their belief, which largely explains why they took up the role they did.

The American Communist Party burst upon the scene in 1919. Prior to that, radicals belonged to a variety of other parties, including an early Socialist Party, but the Communist Party didn't just take in those groups.  It was something new.  Socialism had been on the rise in Europe since the late 1890s, and with the Russian Revolution giving rise to the Bolshevik coup in that country, followed by a Communist uprising in Germany in 1918, it seemed that the new political force of Communism was the next inevitable step in European politics.  The United Kingdom feared a Communist rebellion at home. France saw its Communist and Socialist flex their muscles.  Here in the United States a new Communist Party formed claiming about 40,000 members in 1919, leading to a Red Scare here. 

Now, 40,000 people isn't really a lot, but for a start up party it is, and they were a serious group. Who were they?

Well, to a significant degree they were radicalized European immigrants who brought their politics with them. The early and mid 20th Century would see a lot of that.  Central and Eastern European working class immigrants who were socialists or communists when they arrived, Irish immigrants who were Fenians, Sicilian immigrants who came burdened with a sense of ometta, Italian immigrants who were anarchists, and so on. Not most of these classes fit those categories completely, but some did. And their children often did as well, later acquiring the moniker "Red Diaper Babies" in the case of Communist who followed their immigrant Communist parents into the party.  For German and Eastern European industrial workers attraction to radical socialism and communism had been strong at home, and the governments were they were from tended to feed it by an airtight suppression of it which made radicalism all the stronger by not letting its failures whilter in the light of day.

 The Seegers.  One of these young lads would be Pete Seeger.

But added to that, and the subject of the topic here, were very well educated Americans who largely, but not always, had acquired their Communism in universities.  Men like Pete Seeger, who joined the Young Communist League at age 17 and who would attend Harvard, or Whitaker Chambers who joined the Communist Party while a student at Columbia, this collection of individuals came form the Middle Class (and occasionally from the upper class).  They could not be said in any sense to be living in leisure, but they were very well educated as a rule and came from families that largely had espoused political liberalism.  Joining them were older men who came to their point of view at some point, sometimes not joining the Communist Party, but going along with Communist they knew as "fellow travellers", such as Harry Dexter White.  Notably, they were not from the American blue collar class whose plight they supposed themselves to be addressing.****

Why?  Today we know that Communism was a universal failure. Those who may still hold a romantic view of it (and some still do, I just read an article by Al Jazera in the US claiming that outside of Europe, Communism had been "on the right side of history") should read the Black Book on Communism, a grippingly fascinating massively depressing read written by French Socialists.  Communism's impact was universally negative everywhere it came to power.

But in the 1920s and the 1930s a person could still naively believe that wasn't so, as long as they didn't know too much about what was occurring in the USSR.  News was starting to leak out, however, and already by the late 1920s some early Communists, with developed consciences, were getting out, having heard, as Whitaker Chambers would later note about himself, the "scream" of millions of tortured souls.

But for those joining in the 1920s and the 1930s, who came from the middle class, there was a sense that Communism was the next stage in political liberalism.  To these people, it seemed that American Populism had yielded to Progressivism, which had yielded to Progressivism Lite, that being Wilsonian liberalism, which had yielded to FDR's liberalism.  They believed the next step would surely be Communism, or maybe something like Socialism and then Communism (a step that Communist elsewhere were also attune to, sometimes to the fatal end of the Socialist).

That all seems extraordinarily naive, if not pathetically blind, now. At the same time that American Communist were dreaming of a Red United States, Red Russia was beginning to slaughter its own.  News of that was even leaking out, as a letter reprinted by The New Republic in the last issue from one of their liberal editors, to Stalin, shows (the editor, blinded to reality, was lamenting to Stalin about the purges, in a belief that Stalin must not be the cause of them.)  But to a degree, looking back, it's understandable. The U.S. economy was in bad shape at a time when the majority of the nation was urban for the first time.  People were desperate.  Things vaguely seemed to be working in Communist Russia, and for that matter in Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, other radicalized nations.  And in order to address the economic crisis, the Roosevelt administration was expanding government enormously, even putting people directly to work in construction and art projects, and a host of other projects, that really were socialistic in nature, and which even came replete with posters that, if you look at them now, sort of seem a little communistic, even if they were not.  Finally, while there was a Red Scare just after World War One, it abated in the 1920s and in the 1930s people by and large were not particularly concerned about the Communists.  The Roosevelt Administration was absolutely blinded to them, and saw no real problems with them, not really taking them particularly seriously.

In that atmosphere, for those of a certain class, Communism became attractive.  All the big universities had Communist clubs and became recruiting grounds for Communism.

Which is not to say that there were ever very many Communist in the U.S. There never were.  What the highwater mark was I don't know, but I'd guess maybe around 100,000 at some point in the 1930s.  Not enough to ever be any sort of ballot success, but just enough to actually occasionally get on a ballot here or there.  Knowing that they were small in number, the open party concentrated on associating itself with labor organizations, where there help was largely welcome, or with open opposition to various policies of one kind or another.  Much more sinister in nature, the underground party recruited from the open party for espionage, which those approached generally entered into.  Their view of this, however, differed from other spies in that, as naive as it was, they never really saw themselves as unpatriotic and they never despised their country.  they just thought that they were serving the evolution of an international movement of which their country would become an inevitable part.

Well, history didn't work that way.  The USSR attacked Poland in the 1920s and was defeated.  It began to murder its own almost immediately.  In Spain it helped turn near victory into defeat through the selective murder of other left wing radicals.  The USSR joined Nazi Germany in running over Poland and it independently violently reclaimed the Russian Empire's Baltic states.  It started starving the Ukrainians.  It's track record, globally, wherever it went, was bloody and oppressive.

By the early 1950s, most American Communist had awakened and bailed out.  Many had years and years before, first when rifts developed in Soviet Communism, and then in American Communism, in the 1920s, and then other in the 1930s when they became horrified at the results of what they were supporting.  The lid came off of Soviet espionage in 1948 when Congress began to investigate it, by which time the U.S. Army had been picking up Soviet cables on American espionage for several years.  The fall of the Nationalist in China, the Berlin Blockade, and the North Korean invasion of South Korea served to complete the process for most.

But at one time, a certain well educated political class truly thought its triumph inevitable.  Reading the signs, the nation seemed to be adopting what it was advocating, and the only thing that was necessary was to agitate for the triumph which was surely coming.

There's a lesson in that for anyone who thinks any movement of the day is "on the side of history."  History is on its own side, and it has all the time in the world.  Success over a decade or two means pretty much nothing at all.

_________________________________________________________________________________

*I like some of the folk music of the 30s and 40s, including some by Seeger's fellow travelers at the time, such as Woodie Guthrie and Burl Ives.  But all of it tainted, in my view, by a certain degree of disenguininess that it can't overcome.  Folk music, like the blues, is nearly the property of the class that originated it, and getting over that hurdle, while not impossible, is difficult. In the case of folk music of the 30s and 40s, which came at a time in which there were still genuine folk musicians, the music of those who came from non folk backgrounds seems sort of manufactured to me.  In Seeger's case, he came from a family of classically trained musicians, and therefore the tradition he espoused seems alien to his upbringing, while perhaps explaining why some of his better works sound so good when performed by somebody else.  When performed by Seeger, who preferred to play a banjo, they just don't seem quite genuine. When performed by other artists, they seem more polished, and perhaps they should have been preformed that way from the onset. So a song like Turn, Turn, Turn, sounds really good when preformed by the Byrds.

Or, maybe that's just me. A music can have merit, and the better music by Seeger certainly does, without everyone liking it.

**This position, which was the position of the Communist Party of the USA, strikes me as really odd and it must have seemed so to some Communist at the time.  The Communist had been the primary force on the Republican side of the Spanish Civil War, and they knew that the Germans and Italians had provided arms and some men to the Nationalist side.  How the Communist could have opposed the Nationalist and then thought the Nazi Germans not a menace is difficult to appreciate.

***The first real rift in American Communism came to a degree over just such an issue. Following Trotsky's downfall, some American Communist chose to follow Trotsky out of the party, followed by others leaving when they could not reconcile themselves to the rise of Stalin and his fellows.  Most of those individuals eventually worked themselves out of Communism entirely, and oddly some of them would live to be the founders of Neo Conservatism.  Those who remained in the Communist party following this episode, which included most Communist, had to slavishly adhere to a Moscow dictated line to remain in good graces with the party.

****Seeger was called in front of the House Unamerican Affairs Committee, with which he didn't cooperate, and that for a time he was under some sort of political sanction in New York. Nonetheless, his career was about as successful as he wanted it to be in spite of some positions, even over a long period of time, which don't square with what most Americans view on the same topics, and in spite of the fact that, no matter what Al Jazera may think, he was generally on the wrong side of history regarding the Communists.

Seeger's appearance in front of the committees sort of shows its interesting evolution.  Early witnesses in front of the committee, in the 1940s, were really called there as the government had acquired a fair amount of information on Communist operatives in the US, and the FBI and NSA was feeding that information to the committee, even if the committee didn't really know that.  The NSA in particular couldn't reveal that it had tapped into Soviet cables without blowing its cover, and it didn't reveal it until the 1990s.  At any rate, the early witnesses were individuals like Whitaker Chamber and Alger Hiss, and others, who were actually involved in espionage.  By the time Seeger was a witness, however, the committee had expanded its inquiries to be so broad as to include the entertainment industry.  At the time that probably seemed legitimate to it, and the thesis was likely that it was looking for Communist influence there.  If there was any Communist influence there, it wasn't very successful as it'd be hard to find a really pro Communist film on anything up to that point which had been produced clandestinely.  It was about this time that the committee began to loose legitimacy in the eyes of the public, although not only due to this.  In part, however, the calling up of entertainers in the 1950s who had been Communist in the 30s or 40s, or perhaps just left wing in that period, looked rather odd to an increasing number of people.

*****Blue collar workers in the US were largely not attracted to Communism, even though Communist were influential in labor unions.  Unions accepted the help of the Communist party, but the workers never were attracted to the movement itself, unless otherwise part of it for some other reason.  For that reason, we could and did have rank and file union members that were very pro labor, but otherwise very conservative, and very far from Communism, even while Communist organizers, early on, worked to assist organized labor.

The Technological Cart Driving the Horse

As long time readers (i.e., me) know, this blog originated to explore historical topics, with that really being focused on the period of the turn of the prior century. Occasionally, it still is. 

This topic is one of those ones that bridges that topic and modern times, related to both.  It occurred to me the other day the extent to which we often don't adopt technology so much as have it forced upon us, at least in the business context.  Or rather, we both adopt and are required to adopt.

This has happened a couple of times to me, and it's beginning, maybe, to happen again, which is what caused me to think of it.

The other day, I knew I was going to get a pdf document sent to me by email, and I also intended to be out at a remote location.  I thought this no problem, as my Iphone can pick up email.

As it happened, the location was very remote and I was there much longer than I had anticipated, which was fine. When I had a chance to check my email on my Iphone, it turned out that the attachment was much larger than I had anticipated. Some 30 or so pages.  An Iphone is pretty small, so it wasn't really possible to digest a document of that size on my phone. So I did it at home.

Some time ago a person offered me their slightly used Ipad.  I declined, but started rethinking it.  It has a bigger screen. Wouldn't that be nice, I thought, for occasions like this.

But I've resisted owning an Ipad so far.  I'm already heavily computerized and even though I've had my wife download a book for me on her Kindle, I'm still a fan of the old fashioned physical book. So I've seen no need. 

Which is sort of the process I went through with my Iphone.

Cell phone wise, my father bought what was called a "bag phone" about 20 years ago for use in the truck.  It surprised me when he did it, but I kept it for quite a few years and would use it when out in the remote sticks.  I really kept it beyond the period of time most people did, as I didn't want a hand held cell phone, they seemed so irritating.  Ultimately, I concluded I didn't need that either and cancelled it.  Right after that, I got horribly stuck way out in the sticks and my wife reconsidered the topic of cell phones for me, as I had to walk some seven miles to they highway, to hitch a ride some 30 miles to a rural gas station where I could call her.

That rapidly lead to me having one of her old cell phones, which worked fine for me for a long time.  I never carried it anywhere I didn't have to.  Something happened to it, and I took over another one of hers, which had a camera.  I only used it out of town, but I did like the little camera, which I found to take surprisingly good photographs.

 

 St. Peter and St. Paul Orthodox Church, in Salt Lake City.  Photograph taken with a cell phone camera.

I ended up washing that phone. By that time I had an Ipod, which of course can also take photographs, which I used mostly for music and podcasts.  

About that time, I was at a hearing in Gillette and trying to keep track of settlement negotiations in another case simultaneously.  Other counsel began exchanging emails and it suddenly dawned on me that I was going to have to get an Iphone, which could do that.  Up until then, I'd seen no real need, but now I was actually in a situation where having an Iphone had become a requirement of my work.  The old style phone had to go, and in came the Iphone.  

I have an Iphone 5 and I've really liked it, although I still feel a bit uncomfortable with the fact that I now carry it everywhere.  The fact that I do is due, in part, to the fact that it plays music and podcasts, which I enjoy listening to coming and going to work.  Indeed, podcasts are great, and there are a variety of them I subscribe to.  But to be fair, something I also like that it does is that it serves to send text messages, which I use a great deal more than I ever guessed I would.  Indeed, I get a few most days from my family, and I also use them in a work context.

Still, its an interesting process to see how this developed. Some things that have come along since I've been practicing law I adopted as they were clearly so useful.  Computers and computer programs are one. Others, like Iphones, I've been left with no choice but to adopt.  Cameras, one of my favorite things, are something I really have to have, but I always have a SLR and have gone from 35 mm film to a Digital SLR as 35 mm film simply became obsolete, and I had no choice, even though I love my Pentax DSLR.  

I suppose this is true of many other things.  If this were 1914 instead of 2014, I suppose the telephone would be a new thing for us, that we'd have to have.  I'd probably regard it like my Iphone, nifty, but somewhat of a problematic item in a vague way.  Would I have an automobile?  The Model T was introduced in 1903.  My guess is that by 1914 I'd have to have had one.

Starting a Model T. They lacked an electric starter. This photograph from the late 1930s shows a car that would already have been regarded as obsolete even though by modern standards the age between the contemporary cars and this used car would not be that great.

Today In Wyoming's History: Wyoming History in the Making: January 28, 2014 ...

Today In Wyoming's History: Wyoming History in the Making: January 28, 2104 ...: In a 3 to 2 decision, with a blistering dissent, the Wyoming Supreme Court struck down the decision restructuring the state Dapartment of Ed...

Mid Week At Work: Enlist in the Ordnance Department

Brrrrr. . . .it's cold outside! And maybe that's not that unusual.

Pathfinder Reservoir a couple of weeks ago.  Last year it wasn't even frozen fully in this bay, at this time of year, although normally it certainly is.

This winter has been really cold.  Everywhere in the US, it's been cold.  It's been on the news constantly.  Particularly when a big cold snap or storm hits the East Coast, although this year its been so cold that cold snaps or heavy snow even out in the West have been making the news.

But maybe what's newsworthy there isn't that its really cold.  It is. But that the last several winters have been so mild that we find cold newsworthy.

After all, it's winter.

 

 State highway outside of Casper on Sunday afternoon, in the morning it had been bright and sunny.

Truth be known, the winter we've been getting isn't odd at all, it's just normal by  historical standards, not even really a particularly brutal one.  It's just that we've had warm winters long enough, say a decade or more, that people are caught by surprise.  For some people, say who were children a decade ago, that's probably not surprising.  For folks who've moved from one region of the country to another it probably isn't either.  But by and large, at least people in their 40s, and certainly people in their 50s, should remember winters normally being pretty nasty.  That's why some people dreamed of moving to warmer climates in the south.

Now, according to a recently article in the Casper newspaper, December are actually no worse than they ever were, in spite of people approaching geezerhood may recall.  When I read that, I was briefly convinced, but I no longer am.  I can definitely recall even Decembers being like this when I was a kid, and its January now. And brutal winters were certainly not out of the norm when I was in my teens and twenties.

I'm not making an argument here about the cause, or whether we should be concerned or not.  I'm only stating an observation, and relating it to the news.  I'm amused, frankly, by the degree to which weather that was routine even relatively recently has slipped out of the public mind and is now regarded as newsworthy.  It shows our evolving, or rather our temporary, concept of what is normal, and what is not.

Oh goody. . . another Iglitch

Yesterday, I plugged in my Iphone to update my podcasts.

As of last night, none of my podcasts and some of my music (maybe a lot?) is no longer functioning.

Not that this is novel.  It's happened before, last time when they did a major update to their system. That one was so destructive I had to take all the pocasts off and reload them.

Apple has a good product.  But they can't seem to help themselves.  Their "updates" seem to lack a little testing, and they seem to serve no apparent purpose.  If I could readily dump the system and keep all my tunes on Itunes (and perhaps I can?) I'd do so in a second.

The Big Picture: Ft. Vancouver Washington.