Easter Sunday, April 12, 1914. Rumblings of revolution.

The IWW was meeting in New York City, and had a large gathering in Union Square.  The theme of "bread and revolution" obviously had come up.

In Russia, where Easter Sunday was still a week a way, Czar Nicholas II, who would very soon be facing protests by those seeking "bread and revolution", presented the now famous Mosic Fabrege egg, created by Albert Holmström under the supervision of Peter Carl Fabergé, to Empress Alexandra Feodorovna, as well as giving his mother Maria Feodorovna another one which became known as the Catherine the Great egg.

Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin D. Roosevelt dedicated the opening of the Cabrillo Bridge in San Diego.

A convention in Hot Springs, Arkansas which established  the Pentecostal Assemblies of God branch of Protestantism adjourned. It is now the largest branch of Pentecostalism.

Charles Crupelandt won the 19th Paris–Roubaix tour.

Governor Carey was in an argument.

Last prior edition:

Good Friday, April 10, 1914. Villa takes San Pedro.

1910s, 1914, Good Friday, Mexican Revolution, Mexico, Pancho Villa

Balancing the Search for Truth with Obedience - Where the Profession of Arms (Often) Fails — WarCouncil.org

Balancing the Search for Truth with Obedience - Where the Profession of Arms (Often) Fails — WarCouncil.org

Friday Farming: Steam Plow.

Good Friday, April 10, 1914. Villa takes San Pedro.

Villa drove the Federals out of San Pedro, Coahuila, Mexico.

Last prior edition:

Thursday, April 9, 1914. Drama at Tampico.

1910s, 1914, Aircraft, Mexican Navy, Mexican Revolution, Mexico, Tampico Mexico, U.S. Navy, Victoriano Huerta

Alas, (with apologies to Shakespeare).

Alas, poor XP! I knew him, Horatio; an operating system of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy; it hath borne me on its back a thousand times; and now, how abhorred in my imagination it is! My gorge rims at it. Here hung those icons that I have clicked I know not how oft. Where be your gibes now? Your gambols? Your songs? Your flashes of merriment, that were wont to set the table on a roar?

Mid Week at Work: The Barber

For this week's entry on our occasional series, Mid Week At Work, we have a photograph of a barber, circa the 1940s.  Caption data indicates that this barber had been in business 14 years at the time that this photograph was taken.

Our entry today was inspired by another item posted today on shaving, as shaves are something that barbers routinely did up until the safety razor became predominate, and most barbers still offer saves.  I think I've only seen one do one once, which was on the occasion of a fellow with a big beard coming in to have it shaved off.

Barber Shops are an institution, although oddly enough not as common of one as they once were.  It would have been impossible up through the 1950s at least to imagine an era when there'd be fewer barbers than their used to be, but starting in the late 1970s that in facdt became the case.  It probably started off with the long hair fashion of the 1960s, which came in at fist as a fashion, then evolved (with hair length) into a species of hairy rebellion (witness the musical "Hair!") and then returned to being a fashion.  By the late 1970s all that hair saw the introduction of an occupation called a "hair stylist" which looked dangerously close to the existing occupation of "hair dresser" to most men who were 40 years old or older at the time.  In rural areas, hair stylist still looks suspiciously close to hair dresser to a lot of men, although the stylist seems here to stay.

With the stylist came the decline of the barber and the barber shop, which is a shame.  Barber Shops remain unique places.  In a world in which very few places remain strongly male or female, barber shops are male.  They always have been. That doesn't mean that women aren't welcome to walk in one, and you'll occasionally see women do just that, but when they do, they aren't there to have their hair done so much as to drop a kid off or sometimes to chat about one of the topics that are bastions of conversation in barber shops.

And bastions of conversation they are.  Sports are a huge topic in barber shops.  In rural areas outdoors activities are as well.  My barber and I usually converse hunting, fishing and automobiles, I don't know much about sports, although the barber shop is the one place that I might be able to learn a little about sports.   Barber Shops are also places of great social equality.  Every occupation needs their hair cut, and Barber Shops have always been places where professions and occupations of all types mixed, side by side.  I've been in barber shops where, and I'm not joking, the clinically insane sat right next to lawyers, waiting for haircuts.  And I've seen everything from heavily tattooed roughnecks to Catholic Priests waiting for their turn at the chair. 

It's always surprised me that barber shops have declined because they are such unique institutions and because, quite frankly, economically they compete quite well with the stylists.  Perhaps they're something that we can hope for a revival of, in the future.

The Law, Scams, and why we will do stuff the old way.

Technology has enormously impacted the practice of law. But in an enterprise in which concerns for precedence and stare decisis are major concerns, it's sometimes the case that the institution baffles the public, and even lawyers, by its reluctance to more rapidly fully adopt changing technology. 

I've heard questions raised, for example as to why the law hasn't more rapidly adopted the internet for service of documents.  I think those of us who practice law right now are probably all getting an introduction in that.

Right now, some spammers, seeking to achieve what end I do not know, have launched a campaign in which they send out what appear to be summons of various types by email.  These appear to be jury summons, or court summons, or sometimes summons related to court cases great and small. All bogus.

No court sends anything like this out by email.  Process is still done mostly the old fashioned way, by hand through a process server of one kind or another.  Service by mail exists under the rules for some things, but that's specifically by a certain process. Likewise there is service by publication.  And once cases are commenced, service is now done electronically in Federal Courts, and in some state courts, via a court controlled system. Some courts now allow, in civil cases, service from one lawyer to another by email, but that's a different matter entirely than service of process via a cold email.

In no instance of which I'm aware does any court presume it knows your email address and email you a summons.

Here the wisdom of retaining the old ways are shown.  People abandon email addresses like yesterday's news.  Nothing could be more calculated not to work, than service by email. 

No doubt this scan, whatever it is aimed at, must work for something.  All the sadder in that case.

Society of the Military Horse • View topic - Polo

Society of the Military Horse • View topic - Polo

Shaving

West Point Cadet shaving with a straight razor in the field.

The first thing I do every weekday, or at least every weekday that I work downtown, is shave.

I don't really like shaving.  I don't want to grow a beard however, so shave I must.  I've been shaving, but not every day, since I was 13 years old.

As noted, I frankly don't care much for it, and I'd likely skip shaving a lot of days if I had the option.  It sort of irritates my skin, and it's just not something that I look forward to doing in any fashion.  Still, for the most part it's been part of my daily routine for decades.  Having said that, prior to my practicing law, I'd skip days now and then, including week days, and I still skip Saturdays usually.  Just because I don't like it.

Shaving is one of those things humans do that go back into vast antiquity.  You wouldn't think so, but it does.  Shaving certainly goes back to classical antiquity, the Romans for example were normally (but not always) clean shaven.  But it goes further back than that.  People who have researched this topic claim there's evidence of ancient cultures sometimes shaving with pieces of obsidian, which is that sharp.  It's also be darned dangerous.

At some point that practice gave way to shaving with razors, a type of extremely sharp knife with unique angles.  Razors were a permanent fixture, i.e., unlike now you didn't toss them out after the edge grew dull, but rather resharpened the edge, or kept it sharp, with a leather strop.

It took some skill to shave with a blade like that, and getting cut was pretty common.  People often chose to get shaved in a barber shop, if they happened to be in one, probably simply to avoid having to use the difficult implement themselves.  Generally, barbers today still have them on hand, and some use them to finish a haircut where the hair meets the beard line or neckline.

 

 Soldier receiving shave from unit barber with straight razor.

Shaving is much less of a pain now than it was in prior eras.  Thanks to the safety razor.

Patent drawing for the Gillette safety razor.

The safety razors was an invention which allowed for a disposable razor blade to be held in a device that thereby allowed the user to dispense with a razor, i.e., the true super sharp knife.  The design was perfected in the early 20th Century and provided in large numbers to U.S. troops in World War One.  Thereafter it rapidly replaced the old razor.  The device was the safety razor, as it was safer to use than the old hand held blade.

Man shaving with "safety razor."  Dish was brush for making lather can be seen on sink.

Safety razors themselves are a think of the past now.  When I first started shaving, that's what I had, and I used them for what seemed like a long time but it really was not.  At some point in the late 1970s Bic introduced the disposable razor, which you started to see around a lot. And about the same time some company introduced a new style of razor with a disposable head.  When I went to back training, we were required to have two of that type (one of which we never used, as we stored it in our locker so that it was always clean for inspections.

 Soldiers hanging around, one shaving, 1918.

That was the first time I had used one of the new type razors.  When I came back from basic training I briefly went back to the old safety razor, but the new razors really were much better and much more difficult to cut yourself with. Even with safety razors cutting yourself accidentally was pretty common.  At some point in the 1980s the manufacturers stopped making blades for them entirely.

At some point in the 20th Century, most like in the 1920s or 1930s, and certainly by the 1930s, electric shavers started to make their appearance.  Early ones are downright scary to see in photographs, as they actually plugged in. Given that people were using them around sinks and what not, it's amazing that people didn't routinely electrocute themselves.  But by the 1950s they started to be battery operated.  My father had one that he hardly ever used, and which I think he bought for traveling.  I have one as well, for a similar reason.  If I go to industrial plants, and need to shave my mustache off due to plant restrictions, I have it with me.  Otherwise, I don't use it.

Electric shaver, 1930s.

When men used old fashioned razors, they also made their own lather.  This involved using soap chips, which we largely just throw away now, and mixing them up in a bowl with a brush.  You can still get all of these things, including the brush, if you want to do any part of this the old way. According to those who have tried it, the soapy lather made in this fashion is superior to the stuff in the can, but a good brush is outrageously expensive, with badger hairs being the favored material for construction of the brush.

While I never experienced, I've heard of the requirement of a brush being retained in some sorts of military kit well into the 20th Century, by which point hardly anyone made their own lather.  And probably the first time I saw a shaving brush outside of the barber ship was in a military use, albeit in the hands of a Vietnam veteran who had picked up the habit of continually dusting off his M16 with one.  But some people still do indeed use them, and those who do regard the lather they produce as far superior to canned shaving cream.

Canned shaving cream, by the way, is what people used to use around here to dress cattle up for 4H shows, fwiw.  It dries pretty stiff.

At some point in the 20th Century, commercially prepared shaving cream became available, with it first being available in tubes, like toothpaste.  The canned shaving cream wasn't invented until 1949, in spite of what hte clever series of Barbisol "Shave Like A Man" commercials might suggest (Barbisol did exist prior to that, but in tube packaged form).

It's been occasionally noted here, in spite of the routine departures from  it, that the main point of this blog is to explore the period of roughly 1880 to 1920.  Here a least is something that routine and strange at the same time, the change in the way men shave.  And I have to note that as much as I dislike shaving, and I do, I still shave most days.  I don't want to grow a beard.  But had I lived a century ago I'm afraid I would have liked shaving much less.  I can see why some individuals chose to grow beards even in well shorn eras, such as Henry Cabot Lodge who kept his beard in hairy and clean shaven eras.

Henry Cabot Lodge, not a shaver.

Indeed it amazes me that there were eras that were so clean shaven before the safety razor.  You have some eras, like the Civil War era, when everyone gave up on their razors and grew beards, but you have others where everyone is shaved like, for the most part, the late 19th and early 20th Centuries.  Indeed, in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries solders were not restricted from growing beards, like they started to be with the introduction of the gas mask during World War One, but almost none of them did (mustaches were another matter).  Likewise, you'll hardly ever see a photograph of a cowboy with a beard.    

The added amazing part of that, to me, is that these individuals were shaving in the field, which would have involved packing a straight razor and soap chips.  Pretty involved process for people living with a minimal number of things really.  I've shaved in the field, while in the National Guard and in basic training, but I never liked doing it and always felt like I was scratching my face up.  

In contrast, now we have quite a few men who like to have a couple of days beard growth all the time.  That's a look I don't get, but it's become extremely common and accepted.  To me, it always looks like these individuals need a shave, or are growing a beard, but they're not. That's the look they're shooting for.  I've even seen lawyers adopt it, albeit always young lawyers where that look is more common and in.

Anyhow, this post is another noting a trend, and an observation.  Had I lived a century ago, I suspect I would have disliked shaving even more than I do, or been one of those guys who just chucked it and grew a beard.

Thursday, April 9, 1914. Drama at Tampico.

USS Dolphin.

Things really begin to go down the tubes between Gen. Huerta's Mexico and the United States when Federal authorities arrested 8 U.S. sailors from the USS Dolphin, assuming for some reason that they were Constitutionalist.

The sailors were released, but U.S. Rear Admiral Henry T. Mayo demanded a 21-gun salute and formal apology from the Mexican government. Huerta gave a written apology instead but refused to have his forces raise the U.S. flag on Mexican soil to provide a 21-gun salute, for which he really can't be blamed.

US cries for intervention in Mexico, immediately followed.

On the same day, Captain Gustavo Salinas Camiña, flying for the Constitutionalists, piloted a Glenn L. Martin biplane loaded with explosives in an attack on Mexican Federal gunboats Guerrero and Morelos, which were blocking Tampico's harbor. Neither plane nor ships were hit.  It was the first aerial attack on ships.

Last prior edition:

Tuesday, April 7, 1914. Last spike on the Grand Trunk Pacific

1910s, 1914, Canada, Canadian Arctic Expedition, Liberalism, Politics, Progressivism, Railroads, Republican Party, Wyoming

Dilbert comic strip for 05/04/2010 from the official Dilbert comic strips archive.

Dilbert comic strip for 05/04/2010 from the official Dilbert comic strips archive.

What I Wish I Knew: From Cadet to Lieutenant in Afghanistan — WarCouncil.org

What I Wish I Knew: From Cadet to Lieutenant in Afghanistan — WarCouncil.org

Cat in motion.

Jaguar

The Big Picture: Dartmoth College and Hanover Inn

Tuesday, April 7, 1914. Last spike on the Grand Trunk Pacific

Karluk Captain Robert Bartlett and Inuit guide Kataktovik set off for East Cape, aided by the network of Siberian coastline Chukchi villages in their effort to rescue those stranded on Wrangle Island.  The weather they faced was horrific.

The last spike was driven on the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway, which runs within 93 miles of the Arctic Circle, at Fort Fraser, British Columbia, completing the line from Winnipeg to Prince Rupert.

A headline you'll never see again:

Last prior edition:

Monday, April 6, 1914. Gen. Charles Douglas becomes Imperial Chief of Staff.

1910s, 1914, Art, British Army, Radio, South Africa, World War One

Monday, April 6, 1914. Gen. Charles Douglas becomes Imperial Chief of Staff.

Well, we screwed this up earlier and posted April 9's events where April 6 should have been.

Gen. Charles W. H. Douglas replaced Field-Marshal Sir John French as Chief of the Imperial General Staff, a fateful assignment on what would prove to be the eve of the Great War.

Douglas had been in the British Army since 1869 and was a South African by birth.  Given his date of entry into the service, he'd had a long and varied career during the high colonial era, but by 1914, he was not well.  The strain of the war would kill him on October 25, 1914, at which time he was 64 years of age.

The American Radio Relay League was founded by Hiram Percy Maxim, an early figure in the invention of radio.

The Ham Radio club still exists.

Polish realist painter Józef Marian Chełmoński died at age 64.

Four In Hand by Chełmoński.

Last prior edition:

Sunday, April 5, 1914. Terrorism at St. Martin in the Field's, Villa at Torreon

1910s, 1914, Clothing, Easter, Mexican Revolution, Mexico, Pancho Villa, United Kingdom, Weapons

Sunday, April 5, 1914. Terrorism at St. Martin in the Field's, Villa at Torreon

A bomb exploded in the Anglican St. Martin in the Fields Church in London, causing major property damage.

Suffragists were suspected, but no firm evidence of who was responsible was ever found.

Pancho Villa, still in action at Torreon, in spite of having earlier been reported defeated/wounded/dead, was doing something I assumed was just a movie trope. . . deploying a machine gun from a train in Mexico.

The same issue of the Cheyenne paper advertised women's outfits for Easter.

Last prior edition:

Sunday, April 4, 1914. Sad Sunday in Newfoundland, Newfoundlander reaches Siberian Coast.

1910s, 1914, Arctic, Canada, Canadian Arctic Expedition, Exploration, Hong Kong, Immigration, India, law, Siberia, USSR

Estate dispute caused by 'E-Z Legal Form' is a 'cautionary tale,' says justice

Estate dispute caused by 'E-Z Legal Form' is a 'cautionary tale,' says justice



Rodney Dangerfield famously had the lien about "not getting any respect".  It's my guess that most lawyers have felt that way at one time or another, probably frequently.



Here's something I've wondered about for a long time. Now days there are all sorts of advertisements on television about do it yourself legal stuff.  It's easy for people to convince themselves that they can do it all themselves, but a lot of legal stuff is a lot trickier than people might suppose.  There's good reasons not to attempt it.

Entertainers and Drugs. Why?

Recently Philip Seymour Hoffman died of a heroin overdose.  This has been reported as a terrible tragedy, and of course it is.

Not more so, I'll note, than the hundreds of anonymous people who likewise die the same way, but whom aren't well known, or known at all.  Their deaths are equally tragic.

One of the odd things about something like this, as well, is the impulse to excuse away the tragic results of addiction on the basis that addiction is a disease.  As in this posts which maintains that addicts have no free will, and therefore cannot help themselves.  Addiction is a terrible thing, and indeed depending upon the type of addiction it is, they can become lethal, both in the need for the drug and in effects upon the body upon withdrawal from the drugs.  But the tendency in the modern world to label any vice seems self indulgent.  There is hardly any evil of any kind that somebody will not excuse away as a compulsion driven by addiction.  We all have our failings and weaknesses, to be sure, but some act against them and some act with them.  Many do both at different times, or even at the same time. By excusing every vice as an addiction, compulsion or personal quirk serves to excuse them, when perhaps the opposite is more in order.

There is, apparently, a rise in heroin use.  That catches me by surprise as what heroin mostly causes me to recall is the television police shows of the 1970s in which the police were always chasing down somebody distributing heroin.  From what i read in an article in The New Republic the other day, that in fact had its basis in truth as apparently the drug, which is amongst those which is most likely to kills it users, was in fact in big circulation in the 1960s and 70s amongst the poor.  It's a really bad drug, causing a true physical addiction that can result in the user's death.

That leads to the question of why the return of heroin now, and amongst those who don't fit into a dispossessed underclass.  According to the article, the reason has to do with prescription opiates.

Now, I'm not a pharmacist or a doctor, so that narcotics are generally opiates is something I wasn't aware of. But apparently they are, and the article claimed that prescription drugs are the modern gateway to heroin, the same way that marijuana once was.  I don't know that I'm fully convinced of this (it seems a stretch) but that prescription narcotics are now widely abused and stolen is well known. Apparently Realtors now ask people who are showing their homes to remove them from their drug cabinets, because people cruise open homes just to steal them. Anyhow, the thesis is that this has introduced opiates to a new class, who become addicted to them and then move on to an even more dangerous, unregulated drug.

I guess I have to count myself lucky here, and to be careful about being judgmental (which we should always be careful about anyhow) as I have a very hard time imagining why people want to use these drugs in general.  That is, in part, as the few times I've ever had prescriptions in this category, they've made me really sick and I determined after about a day of use that I'd rather just endure the pain, which wasn't as bad as the sad effects of the drugs.  And I can't see what effect they have that a person would enjoy. The one time I've had morphine, after ending up in the hospital due to a horse accident, I couldn't stand it, even though it didn't make me ill.  It made me sleep a weird chemical sleep that is just horrible.

I don't even like the feeling that conventional alcohol gives a person.  I like beer okay, but I don't like to feel any effect from drinking it, which means that I wouldn't be too inclined to sit and drink that much of it.  This doesn't make me virtuous, it makes me lucky.

Anyhow, having said that, even if it is true that the heroin boom is due to prescription drugs, I still can't see why this is so common amongst entertainers.  The most common cited reason is stress.  I guess I can see that a bit, as people in really stressful occupations are more subject to drug and alcohol abuse, and other sorts of vices.  I know that drug and alcohol addiction (as well as other addictions) are regarded as an occupational hazard for lawyers and most state bars have programs to address it.  But that just seems different to me.  Acting as a job wouldn't seem to be stressful in and of itself, although getting roles would be extremely stressful, I'd guess.  For that reason, I'd guess, most actors probably would want to have a back up career, but maybe they don't. And I'd guess that perhaps if a person has been successful that might actually prevent them from having one.  Still, I know that at least some, like Wilford Brimley or Paul Newman have, in the form of farms.  I guess it's easy for me to not appreciate the stress they're under.

Still, it does seem that as a class they're bizarrely subject to problems of a personal nature, and always have been.  It's certainly the case that going all the way back to the silent film days you can find examples of actors having extreme personal problems.  Is this unique to them, or is it perhaps that the vices that average people are subject to simply become better known amongst them. Or perhaps they have the means and opportunity to exercise their failings in a way that average people do not.  Probably the fact that people cater to their vices doesn't help, whereas most people have to hide theirs.  And at least in musicians, drugs have long been a problem.  There are jazz songs dating back to the dawn of recorded music that have drugs, sometimes in a hidden fashion, but often quite openly, as their topic. 

In the end, I guess, I don't know what to make of this topic. But I do feel that one of the tragedies of a tragedy like this, is that we don't really take note of the average people who fall prey to the same ill.

The Vikings are interesting, and complicated. MGM and the History Channel should have left them alone.

I'll confess that when I first read of the History Channel's series, The Vikings, I fully intended to never watch it.  But, I happened to catch an episode and parts of two others.  It's interesting and somewhat captivating I'll admit, but history it isn't.  That's too bad, as the Vikings as a group (and they aren't a group, actually) are interesting, and they should be given a serious treatment, particularly by the History Channel.

Part of the problem I have with the show, I'll note right off the top, is that it fits into Hollywood's recent trend to treat all Christian cultures as hypocritical, and pagan cultures as benighted. Well, baloney.  The Viking age coincided with an age in the British Isles that was deeply Christian, and by that I mean deeply Catholic.  One recent British historian has stated that Medieval England was defined by this, and it was.  Having been Christianized early in the Anglo Saxon period, the English became very devout, to be followed by the Irish and the Scots. The Welsh already were.

But this was a muscular Christianity, not one maintained by wimpy overweight men, as the show seems to want to suggest.  Christian clerics of this period didn't shy much from marching right into pagan cultures and giving them the what for.  When you look at saints associated with the British Isles, or with Scandinavia, of this period, they're a pretty hearty and hail bunch.  St. Augustine headed into the Saxon lands knowing little about them other than that they were ruled by Saxon pagans.  He actually scared those Saxons somewhat, so much so that an early encounter with a Saxon king was arranged to occur on an island, as the king was so afraid that something both supernatural and bad would happen to him, and he didn't want that to occur in town.  St. Patrick, coming decades later, returned to a land where he'd been a slave and started the process of converting it.  He was so tough that he didn't mind walking into druid strongholds and telling them to shape up.

This extends to the early  Christians in Scandinavian lands, I'll note.  Irish Christian slaves in Iceland refused to abandon their faith, and when Iceland experienced a severe earthquake late in this period, they pretty much told the Norsemen that they were getting exactly what they deserved.  Iceland converted by vote of the Althing, its parliament, when the deciding vote was cast by a Norse pagan priest of some sort.  He voted to for the entire island to convert.  Not exactly the portrayal you'll see on television of either Christians (Christian missionaries had landed) or of the Norse.

Additionally, the show has apparently maintained, at some point, that the Scandinavians were ignorant of their being a European world beyond their shores, and that the Europeans were likewise ignorant of them.  No, they weren't.

Europe might be thought of today as being bigger than it is now, which is to say that it was more difficult to travel around in, but it wasn't big.  It's definitely the case that European cultures were aware of their near, and even far, neighbors.

Taking the Anglo Saxons as an example, it should be remembered that they were fairly recent immigrants, in terms of the human time line, to the British Isles themselves, having shown up as invaders and raiders in the 5th Century.  If that sounds a lot like the Vikings, that's because the Saxons, whom seem to have been named after the sword they carried, the "Sax", were not much different at that time.  The Saxons were certainly aware of their near neighbors. So were the Angles, an allied invading group who seem to have lived along the coast of far northern Germany (or what is now Germany) and therefore actually bordered Scandinavian lands.  The Jutes, who apparently came from Jutland, lived in an area that jutted out to sea before they moved over, and likewise they would have been pretty familiar with other coastal people.

Indeed, the great early Anglo Saxon work of literature, Beowulf, is full of references to Scandinavians and the title character seems to be one, living in an area of what we'd regard as southern Sweden. The entire epic Saxon poem has nothing to do with the Saxons at all, but is all about Scandinavians, like the Geats and the Danes.

And the Vikings really got around, which is something that's worth remembering.  They raided far into Russia, giving that country its name, as the Scandinavian tribe that did that, and eventually settled there, was the Rus.  They'd ultimately raid as far south as what is now the coast of North Africa, pretty amazing really. And they hired out as mercenaries as far away as the Byzantine Empire.

That all took time to be sure, and the launching of their raiding did come as a rude to surprise to Europeans.  That sudden spike in violence, which was to last for a very long time, seems to have been due to an improvement in climate conditions giving rise to the Medieval Climatic Optimum. When that occurred, farming conditions improved, followed by an increase in the population all over Europe, but which ironically meant that Scandinavians, who were still living on marginal land, had to look overseas to make a go of it. Some made a go of it by raiding, the verb for which in Old Norse was "viking".  Most looked also towards emigrating, which ultimately took them to England and Ireland, where they moved wholesale communities once they realized that they could, to Iceland once they found it, to Greenland, again once they found it, and to the coast of France, which they scared the French into giving them.

They're an interesting group indeed, the last of the Europeans to live in that fashion, although certainly not the first, and coming in an age in which the Church had scribes who were literate so that the events could be recorded, but also coming at an age in which, by and large, the groups they attacked were stronger than they were, and survived the events to tell the tale.

Sunday, April 4, 1914. Sad Sunday in Newfoundland, Newfoundlander reaches Siberian Coast.

Crowds gathered at St. John's, Newfoundland, to meet the SS Bellaventure as it brought back the dead and injured from its disastrous experience of several days prior.

Bartlett

Captain Robert Bartlett and Katakovik of the Canadian Arctic Expedition reached the Siberian coast after weeks of searching for the other members of the expedition that had departed the Wrangle Island camped.  They followed sled tracks that lead them to a Chukchi village where they were given food and shelter.

Bartlett was a Newfoundlander.

Merchant fisherman Baba Gurdit Singh chartered the Japanese vessel Komagata Maru to pick up 165 British Indian passengers in Hong Kong for a voyage to Vancouver, in defiance of Canadian exclusion laws.

German-born lumber giant Friedrich (Frederick) Weyerhäuser died at age 79 in California.

Last prior edition:

Thursday, April 2, 1914 Villista victory at Torreón, Disaster on the ice, Cumann na mBan, birth of Alec Guiness.

1910s, 1914, actors and actresses, baseball, Battle of Torreón, Disaster, Mexican Revolution, Mexico, Pancho Villa, Protestant, religion, Sports, Venustiano Carranza

Friday Farming: Penning sheep

Why a TED Talk Is Like a Chicago Hot Dog - Attorney at Work - Attorney at Work

Why a TED Talk Is Like a Chicago Hot Dog - Attorney at Work - Attorney at Work



I hardly know what to make a of a title like that.



For that matter, I've never heard of a TED talk.

What is "Common Core"?

I should know this, but I really don't. What is "Common Core" in terms of education?

My wife tried to explain it to me the other day, as I asked her.  It's been in the news around here for a variety of reasons.  The appointed head of the state's education department seems to accept it, the Superintendent of Education (probably not the correct name of her position, whose controversial and the subject of court and legislative battles, does not.  One teacher I know hats common core.

So, what exactly is it, and how does it function?

Postscript

I'm bumping this topic back up, as it seems to be an issue here locally that simply will not go away, and its one that I don't grasp.

Because I don't grasp it, I'm also linking this item in from the always insightful Ramblings of a Teacher, Redskins Fan and Scrapbooker blog.

Something that's really caught me off guard is the extent to which people locally have extremely deeply felt opinions on this issue.  In a region where really devise issues usually don't come up in the text of education, this one has.  Frankly, I feel it's become such an issue that it's being warped and distorted at this point.

This morning I read in the paper that last Saturday Governor Mead was censured by two county GOP caucuses.  That in and of itself simply astounds me.  That a GOP body would censure a GOP governor at a time when the GOP is so dominant here is amazing.  That reflects in part a divide in the party between the traditional GOP and its tea party elements, but that divide seems to be most noticeable on education topics.

It really came out the legislature before last when the legislature acted to remove the Superintendent of Education's powers by way of a bill known in the legislature, and now known to history, as SF104.  That bill, according to what we read in the newspaper and according to any insiders who might talk to you, was principally drafted to address what the legislature thought to be inappropriate actions by Superintendent Hill.  I'm not posting on that topic here, and I'm frankly highly unlikely to, but I will note that a person doesn't have to have thought SF104 constitutionally problematic but still find Hill to be problematic as well.  FWIW, the recently released audit of the department of education is now online.

I note all this, however, as Common Core seems to get wrapped up in this somehow, and I suspect that it's somehow getting a bit distorted.  Superintendent Hill is an opponent of Common Core.

I don't know why she's an opponent of Common Core, and of course I don't understand Common Core, so perhaps that's not surprising.  I think, however, that it is probably due to her being in the Tea Party end of the GOP (which doesn't make all the opponents Tea Party adherents, or even members of the GOP) and therefore she would presumably have a fairly hard core view of local control.

This has spread to such a degree that I heard a commenter at a school board meeting express concerns about the NCSD bond issue due to Common Core.  The bond issue has absolutely, positively, nothing to do with this topic whatsoever.  Rather, it has everything to do with the fact that some years ago the state mandated that the funding of school construction projects be through the state, but that at the same time the state would not pay for "enhancements."  Like all laws, that law is imperfect and as a result somethings that are not enhancements at all have been handled that way, and so now local districts have to fund construction of these features by another means so that their schools can really be complete.  Bond issues are very strictly tied to a specific purpose and only run for a specified time, but none the less some folks who have been focused on Common Core are now jumpy about them, for reasons of misconception.  For example, I heard the noted speaker voice a concern that the bond issue will be used to fund classes mandated under Common Core. That's completely in error, as the bond would be used to fund the construction/reconstruction of swimming pools for the high schools, install safety features in existing schools of all types (which the new ones are built with) and fund some equipment for the CAP program, which is completely outside of the Common Core.

Anyhow, there sure seems to be a lot of opposition to Common Core.  I fear that if a person joined the debate late, the topic may be so confusing that figuring it out might be darned near impossible.

Postscript II

Trying to return to this blog's focus, and also noting something that's somewhat on point here, I can't help but recall that Donald Hough, in his classic The Cocktail Hour In Jackson Hole, found it endlessly amusing that a grade school he dropped in on, in Teton County Wyoming, was learning about a Medieval battle, the Battle of Crecy if I recall correctly.  He couldn't  see why the 1346 pivotal battle of The Hundred Years War would be something that the young students of Jackson Hole should be required to learn. He was informed by the teacher that the State of Wyoming required it.  I'm sure that was correct.  Hough wrote about Jackson Hole in the 1930s and 1940s, at a time when the local residents remained ranchers and Wyoming towns people during the winter, and the county was taken over by tourists in the summer.*

The interesting thing about that is that it would have indicated a pretty strict set of guidelines at the time.  I don't know when I learned about the Battle of Crecy, but I'm sure it wasn't in grade school.  I'm also sure it wasn't in junior high and I doubt it was in high school.  I probably learned about it when I took Medieval History in university.**  I'm not certain what that says about state imposed standards at the time, other than that they were apparently different than later and in surprising ways.

Postscript III

One thing I should note, and which really colors my views on this topic, is that I may be nostalgic about certain things, if that's the right word, or I may take an open view about certain topics in regards to whether things have improved in real terms or not, but about education, here locally, I am not.

We did not receive a bad education in the local schools.  That would not be true at all. And based upon what I know of other areas, ours stacked up and served us quite well. But they are doing a better job of it today, and there's no doubt about that.

I occasionally will hear people lament the current schools, and suggest that at some point in distant personal memory, things were done much better.  I can't speak for the schools prior to the late 1960s, but I did enter school in the late 1960s and experienced them through the entire 1970s and graduated in 1981.  The local schools here are better, including the schools I went to in that time frame.  No doubt about it.

Kid's coming out of the same schools I went through here today have a better education, with more credit hours, and more of a focus on where they are going once they get out than we did.   

What does that mean in regards to Common Core?  Well, maybe nothing, or maybe something.  If there are areas we can do better, and we can (which is part of the reason that I hope the bond issue passes) we should.  If Common Core aids in that, I'm for it.  If it detracts, I'm against it.  I just don't know.

But here locally, what I do think we keep in mind that nostalgia, to the extent it exists, regarding education of two, three or four decades ago is misplaced.  I sometimes hear that, with there being the suggestion that we should return to an education of some prior era almost remembered as a golden era.  Well, I went to school in that era, or an era that some claim to be that era, and it just isn't so.  Some of our grade school teachers, who were generally pretty good, lacked the sort of certification that they all have today.  And the graduation requirements we had then were ridiculously low compared to those today, which continue to increase.  My son has probably received a better education at the high school level today than I had by the time I graduated, and he's a sophomore.  I'm not saying that our education was bad, but looking back there were definitely some areas that the system failed us in back then, mathematics being the prime one that comes to mind for me.  I basically had to make up three years of high school math in my first year of college, which wasn't easy, and shouldn't have had to occur. Today it wouldn't occur.

Indeed, with the CAP proposals, some kids will start coming out of high school not only up to par, and not behind, but with a big head start on a college career.
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*While having nothing to do with the topic of this post whatsoever, I first read Hough's book in the 1990s, by which time much had clearly changed but at which time a great deal actually remained the same in Jackson Hole. The book was in my father's book collection, and I'd just recently been in Jackson Hole when I read it.

I don't know that I could stand to read the book today, so much about Jackson Hole has changed. As late as the early 1990s there remained a fair population of locals that lived in the town year around. Since then, the town's reputation as a place for the wealthy has altered Teton County nearly beyond recognition for those who remember it when it was a toehold in the wilderness and still a bit of a ranch town.  I'm not saying that Jackson is a bad place, but in an Iris Dement fashion, the town that was is really gone now.

**My undergraduate was in geology, but I took so many history courses that by my graduation date I nearly had enough credits for a BA in history.  Medieval History was taught by an excellent professor by the last name of Harper.

Mid Week At Work: Order Coal Now

I've posted this poster before, but I like it a lot, and it gives us a glimpse of man and animal at work, just about a century ago. A modern world we can recognize, but one involving animals in a way we don't really see in the western world anymore.

This poster is from the World War One era, urging people to lay in a supply of winter heating coal early.  Heating with coal is also largely a thing of the past in the US, for the most part.

Forces with History -- Official Blog of Robert W Mackay: 96 Years Ago Today (3) - The Battle of Moreuil Wood

Forces with History -- Official Blog of Robert W Mackay: 96 Years Ago Today (3) - The Battle of Moreuil Wood

Forces with History -- Official Blog of Robert W Mackay: 96 Years Ago Today (2)--Onward to Moreuil

Forces with History -- Official Blog of Robert W Mackay: 96 Years Ago Today (2)--Onward to Moreuil

Forces with History -- Official Blog of Robert W Mackay: 96 Years Ago Today, Onward to Moreuil

Forces with History -- Official Blog of Robert W Mackay: 96 Years Ago Today, Onward to Moreuil

Wyoming Fact and Fiction: Jim Bridger - The Rest of His Story

Wyoming Fact and Fiction: Jim Bridger - The Rest of His Story

Thursday, April 2, 1914 Villista victory at Torreón, Disaster on the ice, Cumann na mBan, birth of Alec Guiness.

It was opening day.

Pancho Villa telegraphed the head of the Mexican opposition,Venustiano Carranza, to report he had retaken Torreón.  He noted his losses as 2,000 killed or wounded, and the Federal dead at 12,000 killed, wounded or captured.

Effectively, he had taken control of northern Mexico.

The U.S. Navy gunboat, Dolphin, entered Tampico harbor in Mexico and presented a 3x21-gun salute to the Mexican flag in remembrance of the April 2, 1867, Battle of Puebla.

It would be the last peaceful diplomatic exchange between the United States Government and the Mexican government of Victoriano Huerta.

Wes Kean, captain of the SS Newfoundland, spotted survivors from his ship that had been trapped on ice floes off Newfoundland for three days during a blizzard. The men had been set out for seals on April 1, with the expectation that if the weather worsened, they could stay aboard the nearby Stephano.  Instead, Wes' father, Adam, gave the men lunch at that point and ordered them back out on the ice.  This left the captains of both vessels under the belief that the men were safe.  While equipped originally with primitive radios, they had been removed prior to the voyage as a cost savings measure, which compounded the error..

Kean, upon spotting the men, alerted the nearby SS Bellaventure.  77 of 132 men who had been lost, died.

The same weather sank the Southern Cross with the loss of all hands.

The Cumann na mBan, or Irishwomen's Council, an Irish Republican paramilitary organization, was founded.  It apparently still exists.

300 Pentecostal preachers and laymen gathered in a general council in Hot Springs, Arkansas to discuss preservation of Pentecostal revivalism.

A train derailment near Tanjung Priok, Indonesia caused by buffalo crossing the tracks resulted in the death of 20 people and 50 more being injured.

Great British actor Alec Guinness was born in Maida Vale, London, England.  One of the greatest actors of all time, he appeared in 62 films, many of which are remembered at least in part for his performance. They include such varied classics as Lawrence of Arabia, Kind Hearts and Coronets, The Bridge On The River Kwai, Doctor Zhivago, and Star Wars.  His career was interrupted by World War Two, during which he served in the Royal Navy, and during which he formed the intent to become an Anglican Priest.  An experience on a movie set impacted him deeply, and he converted to Catholicism, as did his wife, who only informed him after the fact, in later years, from Judaism.

Last prior edition:

Wednesday, April 1, 1914. Villa at Torreón