Monday, July 27, 1914. Taking sides.

The United Kingdom warned Germany and Austro Hungaria that in the event of war between those states and France and Russia, it would be forced to side with the latter.

Kaiser Wilhelm cut short his vacation and returned to Berlin to meet with his war council.

It was the last day of peace for four years in Europe, and the beginning of the end of the Old Order.

Water baseball, July 27, 1914.

Last edition:

Sunday, July 26, 1914. Running guns.

Labels: 1910s, 1914, Albania, Austro Hungaria, Bicycle Racing, Catholic, France, Germany, Howth Gun Running, Ireland, Nashville Tennessee, religion, Russia, Tennessee, United Kingdom, Weapons

The Best Posts of the Week for the Week of July 20, 2014

Standards of Dress

Sunday, July 26, 1914. Running guns.

The United Kingdom's offer to mediate the point of pride crisis between Austro Hungaria, Germany, Serbia and Russia was rejected by Germany and Russia.

Mary Spring Rice and Molly Childers aboard the Childeres yacht Asgard during the deluded Howth gun-running

Erskine Childers and Molly Childers landed over 1,000 firearm's into Ireland from Childer's yacht.  The event resulted in gunfire and bayonet prods upon Irish Volunteers.

The rifles were obsolete G71s.  Had they been deployed in combat, they would have been hopelessly obsolete.

The Albanian Assembly of Delvino was dissolved.

And so Europe hurtled towards war.  Continental Europe over a point of pride and who Seriba should be aligned to. Great Britain on who Ulster should be loyal to.

The Catholic The Cathedral of the Incarnation in Nashville, Tennessee was opened to the public.

Philippe Thys won the 12th /Tour de France.

Last edition:

Saturday, July 25, 1914. Austro Hungaria mobilizes.

Labels: 1910s, 1914, Austro Hungaria, Austro Hungarian Army, July Crisis, Russia, Serbia

Land For 25 Cents: Homesteading In Wyoming by Wyoming Public Media on SoundCloud - Hear the world’s sounds

Land For 25 Cents: Homesteading In Wyoming by Wyoming Public Media on SoundCloud - Hear the world’s sounds

Law school applications down 37 percent since 2010; first-year class could be smallest in 40 years

Law school applications down 37 percent since 2010; first-year class could be smallest in 40 years

The Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant and the Fate of Arab Christians

I've started a couple of threats on the topic of ISIL and what's going on in the Middle East.  In doing that, I wiped one out and decided not to publish it, and another I have still in the draft stage.  Post that appear here are sometimes in the draft stage for a very long time.

But that does no good if the intent is to comment on something topical, which this is.  The Sunni insurgent group the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant is acting to bring about the absolute end of Christianity in Iraq, and should it succeed in Syria, it will do the same there.

Christianity is one of the oldest surviving religions in the region, older than Islam in that region we so heavily identify with Islam, and even within relatively recent historical times its been fairly vibrant there, although it's always been repressed since the region came to be dominated by Islam.  In those areas where it remained strong, and they are surprisingly numerous, it was in part because populations of Christians remained relatively numerous.

And by Christians we mean Catholic and Orthodox Christians.  Not necessarily the Latin and Greek branches of those Faiths, but part of them.  Iraq, due to English influence, once had a small population of Anglicans, but by and large Christians in the region are some type of Catholic or some type of Orthodox Christian.

Americans tend to believe that all people are tolerant democrats at heart, which they are not.  One of the things that has been very difficult for Americans to accept is that large patches of the Islamic world are heavily intolerant to any other religion, and always have been. The violent suppression of other religions is a hallmark of Islam since its early days.  Now, it is true, as some will not doubt point out, that this isn't universally true, and there are plenty of contrary examples. Still, the exceptions don't make the rule, and by and large the cradle of Islam has been pretty consistently hostile to other Faiths.

In the Middle East, where this has not been true, it has tended to be the case that there remained reservoirs of significant populations of other peoples.  And where the governments in power have not acted to suppress Christianity in recent decades, its tended to be for this reason, or because the leaders and elites of those countries have been Westernized and tended to adopt some of our values, or because the governments were minority governments which themselves feared the majority.  And, finally, in some instance the governments were, whether we like it or not, secular governments that were heavily influenced by authoritarian philosophies.

This latter example is significant in that Islam really doesn't recognize a distinction between a secular and religious authority, and it its early days the two were the same.  Indeed, the entire concept of a Caliphate, which ISIL states its seeks to restore, is based on that.  For much of its history made no recognized distinction between civil and religious authority, so most early Islamic governments made some claim to having religious authority.  And the religion was spread at sword point early on. And the early part of its history resulted in a vast Islamic empire, whose titular ruler was the Caliph.

The Caliphs claimed authority by virtue of the delegation of that authority from Mohamed, and blood relationship to Mohamed, in some cases. The problem here, from that point of view, is that only two early Caliph are universally recognized by Moslems as a Caliph.  After the first two, the Sunni and Shiia split occurred, and they thereafter have a different view on who was legitimately a Caliph.  Hence the concern that Shiia Arabs in Iraq and Shiia Persians in Iran have over Sunni ISIL.

At any rate, it is definitely the case that for many long decades a Sunni Caliph held a claim of authority over a huge track of the Middle East, and even up into Spain at one point, before the Islamic tide began to recede.  Different dynasties arose and over time the claims to authority became murky.  The last person to claim any such authority was the Ottoman Abdülmecid II, who lost that position as a result of the revolt of the Young Turks and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.  In the 1920s the Turkish parliament abolished the position, and it passed into history.  That established the concept of a secular government in the Islamic world, but one that was a military backed authoritarian one.  For the most part, most governments in that region that haven't somewhat followed that model haven't been successful.  And some of those that didn't follow it, but were still somewhat successful, were based on a quasi fascist model.

The net result of this is that since George Bush II we've been pretty naive about the region and we failed to recognize that if we took the lid off anywhere, the resulting mess would be very bad indeed.  In wiping out Baathist fascism in Iraq, we succeeded in unleashing rural radicalized primitive Sunnism there.

Now, I am not claiming for a second that every Sunni has murder of Christians in his heart.  That was never the case,  and it is less the case now than ever. But its less the case now than ever because the Arab world is slowly entering the globalized western world, and as it does the concept of a global theocracy appeals less and less to its base.  It's just not going to happen.  And most don't want it. For that matter, for much of its history, when there was a Caliphate, its legitimacy was open to question and its actual administration had fallen into the inevitable corruption that such things do.  The Caliphate ISIL imagines is one that didn't exist for a very long time.

But there are still a lot of poorly educated, or just desperate, Sunnis who will and are turning to the root core of their faith, and that root core has always advocated the violent evangelizing of the entire world, and the conversion of it at sword point.  Most of the time, most weren't acting that way, but there are spectacular examples to the contrary.  That's what  they are now trying to do in Iraq.  Christians are being ordered to convert or die.  Churches are being destroyed.  And there's even an order to Christians for them to give up their daughters to Islamist for marriage.

I fear that we're going to do nothing about this, even though it was our act in bringing down Saddam Hussein, who as a Baathist was a secularist, that caused this to come about.  And we're likely to watch this story repeat itself in Syria, to our shame.  We're going to ignore the situation as the hard truths of it don't fit the My Pretty Pony world we like to pretend exists.  We don't like to admit that there's a large group of people who are not democrats, and not tolerant.  We don't like to admit that those people will act lethally. And we don't like to admit that we blew it in invading Iraq in the first place, and blew it again by leaving too soon, and blew it further by thinking the the government we left there was going to work.

And we also have a hard time, or at least many Americans do, in appreciating that the Christians in the region are real Christians.  They definitely aren't evangelical protestants.  They trace their communities to the very earliest days of Christianity, and they are Arab Christians.  To many in the west, that seems very foreign and strange.

There are lessons here in great numbers, but I fear that nobody is going to bother learning them.

Today In Wyoming's History: Natrona County International Air Port, formerlly t...

Today In Wyoming's History: Natrona County International Air Port, formerlly t...: Twelve locations on the ground of the Natrona County International Airport, which started out as a United States Army Air Force base during ...

Saturday, July 25, 1914. Austro Hungaria mobilizes.

Austro Hungaria mobilized.  Serbia already had, in anticipation of being invaded. Russia had ordered a partial mobilization.

The Austrian order contemplated putting their army in the field and into action within 72 hours.

Last edition:

Friday, July 24, 1914. Mobilization of land armies commences.

Labels: 1910, 1914, Austro Hungaria, Canada, Jamaica, Jamaica (Kingstown), Labor unrest, Mexican Revolution, New Brunswick, Russia, Serbia, Serbian Army, Victoriano Huerta, World War One

Standards of Dress

Over the weekend, I drove down to Ft. Collins to purchase a couple of suits. "Business Suits" that is.

While I work as a lawyer, I really don't like buying formal wear at all. I'm not sure why, but it may be the peasant in me. I rarely wear suits, and never wear them except in court. A lot of times in court I'll wear a sports coat and tie, although I should probably wear suits more often. While sports coat and tie are very common here, even combined with black jeans and nice cowboy boots, as I will sometimes do, I actually was privy to a female lawyer, who moved in here from elsewhere, complaining about that recently, so perhaps I should forgo that for the most part and try to look a little more "lawyer like".

Anyhow, what a remarkable change in dress standards we have witnessed in the past half century. Up until at least the 1950s, men who worked in town wore suit and tie darned near every day, unless they have a fairly physical job. And they wore suit and tie quite a bit outside of work as well. Photographs as late as the 50s show, for example, men wearing suits just to board aircraft.

This started to change in the 60s, I suppose as a part of that turbulent era, as young males adopted jeans and t-shirts in a conscious, semi-conscious, or unconscious, effort to emulate the "working man", whether they were working men or not. And as the boomers of that era aged, the old clothing standards never really revived. Now it is common really to view sports coats and ties as being fairly dressed up, when they used to be regarded as fairly dressed down.

Taking this back a bit further, I recently watched one of the special features of the DVD version on the new Coen Brothers "True Grit" film. For those who have not seen the film, I highly recommend it. Anyhow, the portion of the special features addressing dress was quite interesting, with the clothing designer noting that for town dress, even though the majority of people in town would have been farmers, she would have expected them to be relatively formally dressed. That's probably fully correct.

As long time readers of this blog, i.e, me, as I'm probably the only reader, this blog is part of an effort, really, to look into the 1910 to 1920 time frame, but with a lot of interest in earlier in later eras. I'd expect the 1910 to 1920 era to have about the same sartorial standards as the earlier era depicted in True Grit, and which continued on for quite some time later. That is, even in that heavily agricultural era, in most of the US, town dress was fairly formal. Rural working dress would not have been of course, but people in town would not normally have been dressed down no matter what their station in life may have been.

Epilogue

Court.

I've recently had a couple of experiences that reminded me of this old post.

One of these was that I was in Court the other day, when a docket call was going on.  A docket call is when parties with various types of cases, usually criminal cases, appear before the court briefly.

When a person appears before the court, they probably ought to try to look sharp.  It makes some sort of impression on everyone, I'm quite sure. But sartorial standards  have fallen so low that it seems many people don't know that, and a few of those people are the lawyers, amazingly enough.

While I was there I noted that a large number of people appearing before the court were in t-shirts.  I suppose that was everyday attire, and that's what they had.  Nonetheless, it doesn't leave the best impression.  It particularly does not of the t-shirts have a vaguely legal theme.  One person had on t-shirt that had the words "Southern Justice" on it, with the scale of justice tipped to one side.  Granted, we aren't in the south, but if you are making an appearance in a criminal case, that's a bad idea.  Another person had one that said something about "Pirate's *****."  It was probably whimsical or even a little risque, but still, pirates were thieves and you probably don't want the court to associate you with them.

At one time, except for the extremely poor, shirt and tie would have been expected for men.  A person might even have risked being dressed down for failing to wear that, save for cases of poverty.  Following that old rule here remains a good idea.

Epilogue II

Traveling 

Another experience that caused me to ponder this a bit recently is that I've been doing a fair amount of traveling, which means that I've been getting a fair amount of airport and airplane time.

If you glance through photos from the 1950s or early 60s, when air travel really took off, of people traveling in airplanes, its a bit of a shock to see how dressed up everyone was.  Men, for example, routinely were in suit and tie.  Servicemen were in their dress uniforms.  Hardly anyone is really dressed down.

Now, just the opposite is true.  I cannot ever personally remember a time when people were not fairly informally dressed in the airport or on airplanes.  Indeed, if I see a man with a tie on, I know he's come right from, or going right to, a meeting.  Indeed, pretty much only business travelers routinely dress in a "dressed up" fashion, with "business casual" being the norm for them.

Recently, however, the level of dress has been amazingly varied.  Some people opt to travel in clothes designed for the gym, I guess, and are really dressed down.  I've travelled plenty of times in airplanes in my jeans, and thought I was comfortably dressed, but I can't imagine wearing trousers designed for the gym on an airplane.  I'd feel self conscious and uncomfortable.

But not as self conscious as I would feel at a store in my pj's, but that's antihero odd trend, mostly exhibited by women.  I'm starting to see a few women in stores wearing their pj's and slippers.  I appreciate people are pressed for time, but nobody is ever that pressed for time.  It looks sloppy and most people don't really want to be seeing non family members in their pj's, particularly in public.  I guess it says something about how informal our era has become that people shopping in their pajamas isn't wholly unusual.  Or just seeing somebody out in public in their pajamas isn't wholly unusual.

Epilogue III

The Clothing of Youth.

Recently I've also had an odd experience that causes me to recall this thread.

I pass a local high school everyday, and in the course of doing that, I notice some rather interesting clothing styles.

Teenagers in that age range have always given us some interesting clothing trends, to be followed by, or sometimes lead by, people in their early 20s.  For example, people in their 20s gave us all the interesting clothing associated with the Jazz Age, including shorter skirts and raccoon coats.  In the 1950s this age range gave us Levis and t-shirts for people who weren't really working in labor, although most clothing was still pretty conservative.  Photos from the 1930s and 1940s show this age range dressed like adults, which in the years of World War Two and the Great Depression, they were.  The 60s, of course, brought in all sorts of stuff, and when I was in high school we pretty much all wore t-shirts to school.

The oddest high school age trend I've noticed are girls who have adopted the "Furry Lifestyle", going to high school dressed as cats or wolves. That's just weird in my opinion, but some do it every day, even wearing tails.  Very odd.

But that's now what inspired me to write.  Every day when I go by the high school I see one kid who is wearing a suit and tie. Every day.  And he looks perfectly natural in it.  Indeed, I've seen him so often that way, I'd now be shocked if he wasn't dress that way.  Interesting to see that in somebody so young.

Epilogue IV

Manly Dressing.

Somewhat off topic, but a podcast episode on men's dress on the Art of Manliness. 

Epilogue V.

Clothing at Church.

Okay, now for one that's again observational, but a bit counterintuitive.

You can fairly easily find, on the net, various gentle reminders by at least Catholic clerics, and probably others, that when people arrive at Churches on Sunday, they perhaps ought to dress up a beyond their usual standards, which as noted is, in the US, a pretty low standard. But you won't find those here locally.  Indeed, looking back to when I was a kid, I can't recall the standards of dress for Sunday Mass being particularly high.  And my recollection is pretty good.

I'm not saying that there was never a year when those attending Mass on Sunday didn't dress up. There may have been, but I can't recall it, and my memory stretches back on that at least to the late 1960s.  People have, in the time I can recall, always worn their regular clothing. So here's a local phenomenon, at least, that counters the trend noted here to an extent. Whey would that be?

I'm not entirely certainly, but I suspect that reflects something about the conditions of the rural West and perhaps something about the demographic I'm recalling.  In an area where a lot of people had very rural jobs, or heavy labor jobs, their clothing may have been their clothing, and that was the way it was. So they wore what they wore.

This isn't to say they wore dirty clothing or anything of the type.  That would not be true.  But, for example, people from ranches wore blue jeans and boots, and a clean shirt.  Men of any walk of life only rarely wore a tie.  School age kids wore what they wore to school, if they went to public school, where there were not uniforms.

Having said thsi, I suspect that if a person went back further than the 1950s, they'd find a  different situation at work.

Now, having made this observation, I will add a couple.  One thing that I now see at Mass that I never saw when younger was young men wearing shorts.  We didn't have any shorts, and that may be the reason why, but I do wonder if our parents would have approved of that.

And another is that t-shirts have changed over the years, which is interesting. I've written on this before, but t-shirts seem to have their own trend line at Church, at least by my narrow personal observation.  When I was young, we would wear t-shirts to Mass, including the period of time during which I was a university student.  In the 1990s I was seeing a lot of t-shirts, including quite a few of the type with highly rude slogans on them, which really weren't appropriate for Mass, if appropriate for anywhere.  Now, however, that's increasingly uncommon.  T-shirts aren't disappearing, as noted earlier, but young people at Mass do not wear them as much as they used to.  Indeed, I'm seeing a lot of nicer athletic shirts of one kind or another now. T-shirts that do show up, in season, are generally pretty appropriate for general wear.  And very recently I've seen some young people who wear t-shirts that specifically have a religious message, indicating that these shirts were chosen intentionally for the message, making them oddly appropriate as an informal piece of apparel for this setting.

Indeed, in spite of my earlier comments on t-shirts, I somewhat wonder if this all indicates a trend line away from t-shirts.  They're not going to disappear, but they do seem to dominate less of the clothing worn by people than they did only a decade ago.

Epilogue VI.

Clothing at Church.

But then, on the other hand. . . . 

Sometimes, after you write something, you find a reason that you have to reconsider or modify your prior stated item.  And this weekend I happened to observe something that causes me to do that.  It's a minor item, and I've already noted it on the post on hats and caps.  The item is women's head coverings at church, or more specifically the Catholic Mass.

Women at Mass, 1940s.

It was once a rule that women attending Mass, in some localities, had to have their heads covered.  I don't recall this rule personally, and indeed my personal recollection is quite the opposite.  But I was aware that hit had been a rule.  I'd just forgotten it.

In fact, it was further a rule that Catholic Priests, for much of the 20th Century, had to wear a hat while outdoors. Typically that was the typical men's business wear type hats of the time.  I.e., we'd expect a Fedora or a hat of that type. As I understand it, and I may not understand it well, this rule had to do with expressing respect.

This is all largely a thing of the past, which shows our changing views on this topic, but I recalled it as I happened to see two separate families at Mass in which the woman or girls were wearing lace head coverings.  It was practically startling in light of the fact that it is so rare.  Indeed, all of these girls and women were dressed very conservatively.  That shouldn't be read to mean something like Amish, which would be completely false, but simply nicely conservatively dressed.  Indeed, the conservative dress was really working for them, which points out the irony of conservative dress in loose clothing standards times being attention getting, irrespective of its intent.

I was aware that some people have continued on this old practice voluntarily, which isn't to say that I'm making a pitch for the rule to be returned.  Not at all.  I'm merely noting it.  And, by the same token I should note that certain religions have an actual rule requiring daily conservative dress, with strict Orthodox Jews being the most notable.  It's interesting that in their case, this does indeed make their appearance more distinct than in former eras, when many people were somewhat similarly dressed on a daily basis.

Epilogue VII

Men dressing their age

Just before this update, I posted Pope's "An Essay on Criticism", which is the source of the quote "fools rush in where Angels fear to tread".   I note that, as what I'm about to say is probably foolish.

I was at an event recently which had young people at it.  It was on a really nice day, the first really nice sunny day we'd had for awhile.  It was an outdoor sporting event, but one of those individual sports of skill, as opposed to a team sport.  And its a sport that probably sees a lot more participation from adults than it does from children, but most of the people who engage in it learned the sport as children, as its generally outdoorsy, usually people dress somewhat in that fashion while engaging in it, assuming that they don't have clothing specially made for it, which some do.

Anyhow, while at this a father and son set showed up, which is a gratifying thing to see, but they were both dressed, well. . . sort of like toddlers.

That may sound like a peculiar description, and in part that's because of my age.  Allow me to define it further.  Both father and son (son probably about 10 or 11, father probably 30 something) were wearing baseball caps with the brims completely flat, in the style currently popular with teens.  Both had their hats a bit off kilter directionally as well, which is common with aficionados of that cap genre.  Both were wearing floppy shorts, and both we wearing the brightly colored jersey of some athletic team.  It presented, shall we say, an extremely youthful appearance.

It was also clothing that was generally inappropriate for the activity, although you could get by.  But the odd thing is that it made father and son look like twins separated by a vast gulf of time.

Now, part of my reaction to this is no doubt as this clothing style simply didn't exist when I was young.  Wearing team jerseys was common, and I don't have an objection to it, but the shorts and off kilter cap look would have gotten us beat up when I was a teen, and there's no way that we would have affected that style.  I think it odd looking when I see teens wearing it now, but then teens have always tended, to a certain degree, to angle for odd clothing, although I can't really think of that being the case when I was a teen (maybe we wore badger robes rather than bear robes. . . its' been a long time ago).

Anyhow, while its not apparent to us, Americans have a reputation as being the sloppiest dressed people on the planet, and while its up to people to dress how they want to dress, stuff like this sort of contributes to that.  And at some age, you just can't get by dressing like a youngster anymore.

In the theme of this blog, I flat out do not think this occurred with men at all up until fairly recently.  Men always dressed like adults.  If you heard criticism of a man dressing under his age, it was for trying to affect one of the adult style of the era. So, for example, if you had a guy in his 50s wearing chains and keeping his shirt unbuttoned, in the 1970s, he'd get a verbal busing behind his back, no doubt.  A guy that age probably couldn't have gotten away dressing in a Zoot Suit in the 40s, for that matter. But to dress as "youthful" as we see some adults dress now would not only spark some degree of ridicule, but you'd really have people talking about you in a former era, if you were a man.  With women this seems to be markedly less of a trend now, and women still have the age old social control of getting criticism from their fellows if they dress too much like a teen, when they're not.  So we don't really find the phenomenon of women dressing way down in age to be common.

Epilogue VIII

It turns out that essays of this type are more common than I'd thought, or that I would have guessed.  A website I stumbled on has an entire series of them, basically cast in the vein of assistance.

An essay related to this topic, Four Reasons To Learn Style Rules.

And, Style, Not Sin, Part 1

Style, Not Sin, Part 2..

An essay on shoes from the same source; Style Starts With Shoes.

What probably is not obvious to folks is that in spite of what we'd think, even in the US which has next to no clothing rules left, people still judge each other by appearances.  People don't think that this is the case, but it tends to be to a surprising degree.

Epilogue IX

Regarding the courtroom item noted above, I'm not the only lawyer to have noted this, the Bow Tie Lawyer has commented on it recently as well. 

USDA Announces New Support for Beginning Farmers and Ranchers

USDA Announces New Support for Beginning Farmers and Ranchers

Nice, I suppose, but the real problem faced by beginning farmers and ranchers is that land prices aren't priced for farmers and ranchers.

Everything else just chips away at the edges.  If would be farmers and ranchers can't afford the land, they will not be getting a start in it, no matter what.  That's a problem that is difficult to address unless the proposed solutions are fairly radical in nature, which nobody seems to want to take on.

Friday Farming: British Women's Land Army

Regulations for the uniform of the United State...1912

Regulations for the uniform of the United State...

Friday, July 24, 1914. Mobilization of land armies commences.

Serbia mobilized, Austro Hungaria severed relations.

Russia, regarding its rearmament program incomplete, determined to partially mobilize in the hopes of deterring war.

Victoriano Huerta and his family reached Kingston, Jamaica aboard the German cruiser SMS Dresden. They would reside there until 1915 when they'd relocate to the United States.

The railway strike in New Brunswick came to a negotiated end.

Last edition:

Thursday, July 23, 1914. The Ultimatum.

Labels: 1910s, 1914, Austro Hungaria, Crime, Diplomacy, Germany, Marriage, New York, Russia, Serbia, Teenagers, The relationship between men and women, United Kingdom, World War One

On Riding A Bicycle

Most summers I ride my bicycle to work quite a bit.  I do that as it forces me to get a bit of exercise, it saves on the use of diesel fuel, and because I just like doing it. This year, however, I got around to that for the first time today.  I didn't get a chance earlier as it seems the City of Casper and the State of Wyoming has determined to rip up every street I might conceivable wish to ride on this summer, simultaneously.  On my way here today, for example, I went through two construction zones.

 

British Army bicycle, World War Two.

I have noticed more intrepid bicyclists riding through the highway construction zone near my house, so not all have been deterred.  In watching them, and in riding this morning, I've been reminded by some of the odd behavior bicyclists exhibit, and which motorist also exhibit in regards to them.  Only a minority of each exhibit these traits, but still, its interesting.

The dangerous motorist exceptions.

One thing that riding a bicycle causes you to encounter are the dangerous motorist, of which there are two types. The Super Courteous Motorist, and the Super Aggressive Motorist.  This morning, I encountered the Super Courteous Motorist.

People of this type, when encountering a bicycle stopped at an intersection, will choose to yield their right of way even it means getting everyone killed in the process.

That's what I encountered this morning.  I was stopped on a quiet residential street I take that intersects a very heavily traveled street. All I have to do is what a car, or a pedestrian, would do, which is wait for a break in traffic.  It's not a long wait.  Still, some motorist came to a screeching halt on the busy street nearly causing a fast moving car behind her to nearly plow right into her rear end.  She simply parked there in the street, with cars whipping around here, expecting me to proceed out into traffic.  I'm not going to do that, as she's the only party yielding and the same rules of the road that apply to cars, apply to me.  Finally, I had to get her moving again by repeatedly waiving her on, while other motorist went right around her.  I suspect she was probably insulted by my refusal to bike out into heavy traffic to validate her courtesy.  Still, it's not a very thoughtful action in the true sense. She was very nearly injured by the fact that a car behind her had to avoid crashing into her, and I would have been injured had I taken her offer up.

The opposite of this is the person who seemingly takes personal exception to somebody riding a bike.  They're not going to yield an inch, not even to give you a little more room when you are already over the fog line.  Doggone it, if they can't be bothered to ride, you can't either, even if it means blasting by you when they know they're close.

The arrogant bicyclist exception.

Just as there's a Super Aggressive Motorist, there's the super aggressive bicyclist.  These people know they have the same legal rights as automobiles, and they're going to use them. They ride in the travel lane no matter what.

The problem here is that bikes are actually not all that easy to see, and if a motorist doesn't see them, it's bad for the bicyclist.  Some bikers just won't acknowledge that for some odd reason.  As an example of this, the other day on my way to work I fell behind a bicyclist who absolutely refused to yield to vehicles.  We were in a 40 mph zone at the time, and he was riding fast, but not all that fast. Still, I slowed down and simply rode behind him. When the road divided and became two lanes, he kept it up. At that point the speed limit drops to 30 mph, but most people keep on going 40 mph.  I dropped my speed, and a person pulled out to pass me but did notice him.

What's the point of that.  If you get hit by a car, you're doomed. Wake up.

The funky bicyclist.

It's been a feature of American life since the late 1970s that anything the boomers take up comes with a new set of clothing no matter how long people have undertaken the activity.  So it is with bicycling.

Bikes first entered the American scene in numbers in the 1890s, where they were really the vehicle that really liberated people from what they cold do on foot in the cities.  Bikes have been around ever since, but it wasn't until the 1990s that people thought they had to dress like they were in the Tour de France to ride a bike.

If you look at photos from any era prior to that, you'll find a lot of people dressed in every day clothing riding bikes.  Men in suits, students in their day clothes, even soldiers in their uniforms.  Now people seem to think they have to wear a jersey and tight shorts.

Well, being a contrarian, I'm having none of it.  I've ridden a bike to work in the summer for 25 years and I wear my office clothes doing that.  Some days that means a tie.  I'm not going to ride in the Tour de France but I'm just as much of a bicyclist in the traditional sense as those guys.  I can wear what I want, and frankly a lot of people who don't race bikes (I get it for bicycle racers) could dress a little more normally as well.

Watch out for the Bull: Frank the Farm Truck Roars Back to Life

Watch out for the Bull: Frank the Farm Truck Roars Back to Life

Watch out for the Bull: Peach Cobblers and Cutting Hay

Watch out for the Bull: Peach Cobblers and Cutting Hay

Thursday, July 23, 1914. The Ultimatum.

Serbia was presented with an ultimatum by Austro Hungaria.  It read, with its instructions, as follows:

Vienna, July 22, 1914

Your Excellency will present the following note to the Royal Government on the afternoon of Thursday, July 23: On the 31st of March, 1909, the Royal Serbian Minister at the Court of Vienna made, in the name of his Government, the following declaration to the Imperial and Royal Government:

It is clear from the statements and confessions of the criminal authors of the assassination of the twenty-eighth of June, that the murder at Sarajevo was conceived at Belgrade, that the murderers received the weapons and the bombs with which they were equipped from Serbian officers and officials who belonged to the Narodna Odbrana, and, finally, that the dispatch of the criminals and of their weapons to Bosnia was arranged and effected under the conduct of Serbian frontier authorities.

The results brought out by the inquiry no longer permit the Imperial and Royal Government to maintain the attitude of patient tolerance which it has observed for years toward those agitations which center at Belgrade and are spread thence into the territories of the Monarchy. Instead, these results impose upon the Imperial and Royal Government the obligation to put an end to those intrigues, which constitute a standing menace to the peace of the Monarchy.

In order to attain this end, the Imperial and Royal Government finds itself compelled to demand that the Serbian Government give official assurance that it will condemn the propaganda directed against Austria-Hungary, that is to say, the whole body of the efforts whose ultimate object it is to separate from the Monarchy territories that belong to it; and that it will obligate itself to suppress with all the means at its command this criminal and terroristic propaganda. In order to give these assurances a character of solemnity, the Royal Serbian Government will publish on the first page of its official organ of July 26/13, the following declaration:

"The Royal Serbian Government condemns the propaganda directed against Austria-Hungary, that is to say, the whole body of the efforts whose ultimate object it is to separate from the Austro- Hungarian Monarchy territories that belong to it, and it most sincerely regrets the dreadful consequences of these criminal transactions.

"The Royal Serbian Government regrets that Serbian officers and officials should have taken part in the above-mentioned propaganda and thus have endangered the friendly and neighborly relations, to the cultivation of which the Royal Government had most solemnly pledged itself by its declarations of March 31, 1909.

"The Royal Government, which disapproves and repels every idea and every attempt to interfere in the destinies of the population of whatever portion of Austria-Hungary, regards it as its duty most expressly to call attention of the officers, officials, and the whole population of the kingdom to the fact that for the future it will proceed with the utmost rigor against any persons who shall become guilty of any such activities, activities to prevent and to suppress which, the Government will bend every effort."

This declaration shall be brought to the attention of the Royal army simultaneously by an order of the day from His Majesty the King, and by publication in the official organ of the army.

The Royal Serbian Government will furthermore pledge itself:

1. to suppress every publication which shall incite to hatred and contempt of the Monarchy, and the general tendency of which shall be directed against the territorial integrity of the latter;

2. to proceed at once to the dissolution of the Narodna Odbrana to confiscate all of its means of propaganda, and in the same manner to proceed against the other unions and associations in Serbia which occupy themselves with propaganda against Austria-Hungary. . .

3. to eliminate without delay from public instruction in Serbia, everything, whether connected with the teaching corps or with the methods of teaching, that serves or may serve to nourish the propaganda against Austria-Hungary;

4. to remove from the military and administrative service in general all officers and officials who have been guilty of carrying on the propaganda against Austria-Hungary. . .

5. to agree to the cooperation in Serbia of the organs of the Imperial and Royal Government in the suppression of the subversive movement directed against the integrity of the Monarchy;

6. to institute a judicial inquiry against every participant in the conspiracy of the twenty-eighth of June who may be found in Serbian territory; the organs of the Imperial and Royal Government delegated for this purpose will take part in the proceedings held for this purpose. . .

8. by efficient measures to prevent the participation of Serbian authorities in the smuggling of weapons and explosives across the frontier; to dismiss from the service and to punish severely those members of the Frontier Service at Schabats and Losnitza who assisted the authors of the crime of Sarajevo to cross the frontier;

9. to make explanations to the Imperial and Royal Government concerning the unjustifiable utterances of high Serbian functionaries in Serbia and abroad, who, without regard for their official position, have not hesitated to express themselves in a manner hostile toward Austria-Hungary since the assassination of the twenty-eighth of June;

10. to inform the Imperial and Royal Government without delay of the execution of the measures comprised in the foregoing points.

The Imperial and Royal Government awaits the reply of the Royal Government by Saturday, the twenty-fifth instant, at 6 p.m., at the latest.

A reminder of the results of the investigation about Sarajevo, to the extent they relate to the functionaries named in points 7 and 8 [above], is appended to this note.«

Appendix:

«The crime investigation undertaken at court in Sarajevo against Gavrilo Princip and his comrades on account of the assassination committed on the 28th of June this year, along with the guilt of accomplices, has up until now led to the following conclusions:

1. The plan of murdering Archduke Franz Ferdinand during his stay in Sarajevo was concocted in Belgrade by Gavrilo Princip, Nedeljko Cabrinovic, a certain Milan Ciganovic, and Trifko Grabesch with the assistance of Major Voija Takosic.

2. The six bombs and four Browning pistols along with ammunition -- used as tools by the criminals -- were procured and given to Princip, Cabrinovic and Grabesch in Belgrade by a certain Milan Ciganovic and Major Voija Takosic.

3. The bombs are hand grenades originating from the weapons depot of the Serbian army in Kragujevatz. . .

5. To make possible Princip, Cabrinovic und Grabesch's passage across the Bosnia-Herzegovina border and the smuggling of their weapons, an entire secretive transportation system was organized by Ciganovic. The entry of the criminals and their weapons into Bosnia and Herzegovina was carried out by the main border officials of Shabatz (Rade Popovic) and Losnitza as well as by the customs agent Budivoj Grbic of Losnitza, with the complicity of several others.«

On the occasion of handing over this note, would Your Excellency please also add orally that -- in the event that no unconditionally positive answer of the Royal government might be received in the meantime -- after the course of the 48-hour deadline referred to in this note, as measured from the day and hour of your announcing it, you are commissioned to leave the I. and R. Embassy of Belgrade together with your personnel.

British foreign minister Sir Edward Grey offered to Germany and Russia to mediate the dispute.  Russia agreed, but Germany declined.

The Komagata Maru complied with Canadian orders and left Canadian waters.

Riots occurred in New Brunswick in the labor dispute involving striking rail workers.

Democratic politician William V. Cleary of Haverstraw, New York shot and killed his 18 year old son in law, Eugene M. Newman over the secret marriage of his pregnant daughter.  He would not serve time for the murder, being acquitted in a trial that lead to widespread criticism.  Nearly everyone associated with the trial and scandal ended up impoverished 

His defense was temporary insanity.

Last edition:

Wednesday, July 22, 1914. Rejected proposals.

Labels: 1910s, 1914, Aircraft, Austrian Navy, Canada, July Crisis, Labor unrest, Mexican Revolution, Mexico, Montenegro, New Brunswick, Ottoman Empire, Railroads

Mid Week at Work: Drilling

In the pre hard hat days, obviously.

Lincoln Nebraska + Two Toy Cameras

Camouflage

When I was a kid, I routinely wore a couple of items of camouflage in the winter. I had a camouflage Jones Hat, and a camouflage winter coat.  Both had the "duck hunter" pattern of camouflage, which is why I had them to start with.  I'm a duck hunter.

U.S. Army troops, World War Two, wearing the duck hunter pattern of camouflage developed for the Army.  This pattern wasn't used by the Army long, as it was found in Europe that troops routinely associated camouflage with the SS.  This photo is additionally interesting in that every soldier in the photograph is armed with a bolt action M1903 and M1917s rifles, rather than the M1 Garand, and the one soldier with a hat wears the early war pattern of fatigue brimmed hat.  It's probably a relatively early war photo.  The use of M1917s is fairly rarely seen in photographs from World War Two.

The duck hunter pattern was a product of World War Two.  The U.S. Army started developing it after the Germans, and then the British, introduced camouflage smocks early in the war. The Germans were pioneers in the field, realizing that with cotton print clothing it was now easy to issue a smock with a camouflage pattern.  The British did the same for paratroopers after being impressed with German paratroopers early in the war. The US followed suit, but not being too keen on smocks, simply went for a cotton camouflage uniform.

That uniform saw very little Army use in the war, because by the time the Army first fielded it in June 1944, camouflage was already heavily associated with German machinegun crews, and camouflage wearing U.S. troops started to take some friendly fire. So the pattern was withdrawn, and the existing clothing supplied to the Marines, who wore it in the Pacific.  That soured the US Army on camouflage for a long time, but duck hunters did take up the pattern post war, and it came to be identified with them as a result.  This was so much the case that when the Army first bought some camouflage uniforms, again in this pattern, on a limited basis early in the Vietnam War and during the Bay of Pigs adventure, for Cubans, it bought civilian duck hunter items, which were pretty close to the U.S. Army item of World War Two anyway.  Indeed, I have a shirt in the pattern that I used hunting as a kid, and it's darned near identical to the World War Two Army item.

It wasn't until the Vietnam War that the US really changed its mind about camouflage. The war saw the unofficial adoption of Vietnamized French patterns (the Lizard pattern) in the form of the Tiger Stripe pattern.  By war's end, the services had introduced the woodlands pattern in a tropical combat uniform, although it was issued mostly to Marines and Air Force ground support personnel.  It wasn't until the early 1980s that the Army started to issue a new woodlands pattern to every soldier.

By that time, I was in the National Guard and my basic training cycle was the first one at Ft. Sill to receive the new woodland uniform.  

At that time, if you wore camouflage, it meant one of three things.  1)  you were in the service; 2) you were  a hunter, and probably a bird hunter; 3) you'd recently been in the service. That's about it.

Somehow, since that time, the wearing of camouflage has exploded as a major fashion item.  It's simply everywhere.

Yesterday, in the office, I saw a pair of camouflage Capri pants.  I see camouflage ball caps everywhere.  Lots of kids routinely wear camouflage shorts.  I've even seen an advertisement for camouflage saddle oxford shoes.  

How did that all occur?

 

 Your camouflaged correspondent in South Korea.  First pattern woodlands BDU uniform, with woodlands M65 Field Jacket, and Vietnam War era pattern reversible helmet cover.

Wednesday, July 22, 1914. Rejected proposals.

The Ottoman Empire proposed alliances with Germany and Austro Hungaria. They'd be turned down.

The Austro Hungarian Navy positioned battleships near Montenegro for the purpose of using their aircraft for border reconnaissance of the Montenegrin border, the first time something like that had been attempted.

The finishing touches were put on the demand note to be issued to Serbia.

While the July Crisis was largely off the front page in the US, the Mexican Revolution was not.

Railroad works in Saint John, New Brunswick, went on strike.

Last edition

Tuesday, July 14, 1914. Marmarth.

Labels: 1910s, 1914, Canada, Immigration, Ireland, North Dakota, panoramic, United Kingdom

Western Union Horses

I was looking at something in regards to the Johnson County War the other day, and was reminded that the horses used by the Invaders were leased from Western Union. Indeed, one of the Invaders who detached from the column was identified as such by the fact that his horse bore their brand, and by that time, in Buffalo, they knew that the Invaders had Western Union horses.

Does anyone know the story behind Western Union horse. When did they stop leasing them and how much of their business was based no horse leasing?

Society of the Military Horse • View topic - Riding and physical fitness

Society of the Military Horse • View topic - Riding and physical fitness

Tuesday, July 14, 1914. Marmarth.

Irish Nationalist and Irish Unionist met for the first of three days at Buckingham Palace.

The Canadian government mobilized the HMCS Rainbow and troops from the British Columbia Regimand and Seaforth Highlanders of Canada to force the Komagata Maru away from the Canadian coast.

Marmarth, N.D., 1914

Last edition:

Monday, July 20, 1914. The Kriegsmarine mobilizes.

Labels: 1910s, 1914, Crime, Ethnicities, France, German Kriegsmarine, July Crisis, World War One

The Big Picture: Employees of 7-20-4, R. G. Sullivan, Cigar Factory, Manchester, N.H., no. 192, Members of Cigar Makers, International Union, June 24, 1921