Big Town, Small Town.

"I grew up in a small town"

Everyone has heard this comment, probably a million times, and let it pass on without comment.  Indeed, the American background story is, almost invariably, "I was born in a small town" or "I grew up on a farm".  So archetypal is it, that rocker John Cougar penned a song called "Small Town" which is entirely about the virtues of small towns.  Iris Dement, on the other hand, penned the heart breaking "Our Town" about a town that's clearly a small, and dying, small town.  John Prine went one step further and penned "Paradise" about Paradise Kentucky, a real small town, that he somewhat fictionally claims was "hauled away" by the Peabody Coal Company, to their enduring irritation.

The small town of Paradise Kentucky, in the late 19th Century.

Leaving the "I grew up on a farm" comment aside for a moment, it might serve to actually look at the statement. What's it mean?  That is, what is a small town, and do we really recognize one when we see one.

Do we really recognize a small town when we see one?

I grew up in Casper Wyoming.  It's not a small town, it's a medium sized city.  Because it is a western city, however, it's a medium sized city that's an island in the prairie to some extent, although this is now less true than it once was. Suffice it to say, however, the entire time I've lived in Casper, it's been a medium sized city, although my father lived in it when it was a small city and he lived through its growth to be a medium sized city, something he never commented on but which I'm glad in a way hasn't been my experience, as I would have lamented the change.  Having said that, I have lived in a small city, Laramie Wyoming, for a period of several years, and because it too is an island in the prairie, or more accurately the high plains, the geographic feel of the city doesn't vary tremendously from Casper in some ways.

While Casper is a small city, or rather a medium sized city, I've heard time and time again, both in the past and currently, that Casper's a "small town".  Far from it. It's definately not.  It has ample population to be regarded as a medium sized city, and if the greater metropolitan area is included, there's no doubt of that at all.  So why do people think that?

I wonder if it is, in part, because true "towns", at least in this region, have taken such a hit.  A lot of them are mere shadows of their former selves, if they are there at all.  For example, in this county, the small town of Powder River at one time spread across both sides of the highway and the town featured a church, post office, bar/restaurant, another restaurant, a hotel and a store.  It also had a railroad station.  It was never more than a small town, however.

Today, Powder River retains a church and a post office (and maybe the hotel is functioning, I'm not sure), but nothing else I've mentioned above still exists.  A person cannot even buy gasoline there, and the  nearest station is over 20 miles away.  It's not a town that a person could live in and expect to have any local services.

 

House of Our Shepherd Church in Powder River, Wyoming.  This Assemblies of God church is served by a pastor who is a local rancher, which adds another element to this story, as this town was always so small as to have a single church, in so far as I'm aware.  Slightly larger towns, like Shoshoni Wyoming, had considerably more services, including churches of more than one denomination.  The blue building to the left is or was a hotel.

Arminto, just up the railroad, may provide a better example.  It was always quite small, but none the less it was at one time very active.  It was the largest single railroad loading facility for sheep on earth, at one time.  It had a famous bar, a store, and a population that served the railroad.  Now, the bar is gone (burned down), there is no store, and the railroad doesn't stop there any more.

Arminto Wyoming, looking towards a grove of trees that stand where the bar and a hotel once did.  This town has the Disappearing Railroad Blues.*

And I could go on.  But, suffice it to say, in order for a small town to really survive now, it has to have a reason independant of isolation and the railroads, and even then things might be rough for it.  Shoshoni Wyoming, for example, hangs on, but it's at a junction for two state highways near a very busy recreational reservoir.  And even it is a mere shawdow of its former self.

For that reason, I think small cities, like Riverton Wyoming, get confused for "small towns" fairly frequently.  A true town, like Lander Wyoming or Thermopolis Wyoming, is probably a larger town by historical standards. Small towns that really hang on, for example something like Hudson Wyoming, or perhaps Dubois Wyoming, are exceptions, and exceptions for a definite reason.  We hardly recognize a real small town when we see one.

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*From the lyrics of The City of New Orleans, about a train named that, on its last run.

Blog Mirror: Unplugging My Way to Recovery

Esther J. Cepeda writes on Unplugging as a way to recovery, and somewhat ironically she means unplugging electronic media.

There's a lot to be said for this, and not just from a health perspective, but also from a mental health and philosophic prospective.

Sounds Of The Past

Jenny, of the 1870 to 1917 blog, before her tragic passing, observed on M. L. Wright's blog:

The difference between sound of a jet and the sound of any kind of prop plane, let alone the differences between various kinds of prop planes, is striking. It dawned on me at some point that the world we live in now has completely different sound effects than the worlds of the past. To take a trivial example, the cash registers of the past had a very distinctive “ka-ching!” when the transaction had been punched in and the cash drawer shot out. A lot of this difference in sounds has to do with the change from mechanical to electronic. Mechanisms gave us the distinctive rhythms and pulses of objects made of metal moving in some fashion. Even where the item in question remains essentially mechanical—say the diesel locomotive that replaced the steam locomotive—the sounds are different. The sounds of steam—that is a whole other story.

Right she was.

Is it smokey in here?

I ran this item last week, at the time that the Casper City Council reinstated a complete ban on smoking in public buildings, following the victory of an initiative movement in the Wyoming Supreme Court.  That movement, backed by former city council woman Kim Holloway, achieved the Court's declaration that some signatures had been improperly rejected.

Lex Anteinternet: Today In Wyoming's History: September 8: Today In Wyoming's History: September 8 : 2015  In a controversial move, the Casper City Counsel reinstated a tavern and restau...

Subsequent events have brought to light the truth of Otto Von Bismarck's comment that "Laws are like sausages, it is better not to see them being made."

Last night, making the first of three required votes on three readings, the City Council went on to officially repeal the amendment to the City's smoking law which had exempted bars. The thought was that by doing that, and restoring the original ordinance's complete ban, the need to hold the special election the initiative would have required would evaporate, as the goal of the petition was therefore met.  So, we must note, there was a degree of cynicism in the vote, as the councilmen, as shown by their next vote, did not wish to genuinely reinstate a complete ban, as the petitioners did.  Having said that, a couple genuinely supported the restoration of a complete ban.

Next the council voted to completely repeal the ban, thereby allowing smoking everywhere once again.  Only two councilmen voted against that.

The debate heavily focused on property rights and on the plight of tavern owners whose patrons have fled to Mills, Evansville and Bar Nunn, neighboring towns which those from outside of Casper no doubt generally regard as part of Casper, but which have separate legal status and governments. The arguments against repealing a ban were weighted heavily on public health issues.  I saw the council meeting on television, and the sides were well behaved and presented their views quite well.

The instinctively sympathetic view, around here anyway, is that a business owner should be allowed to do what they will, and the patrons can vote with their feet. There's some logic to that, but it does miss the point, raised but often not really well developed, that employees of any one workplace often are in a position where they have to work where there's work.  I know that there's people who really like and aspire to be bar servers and tenders, but there's also a lot of people who find there way into those jobs, often temporarily, but sometimes long term, and have to stick with them for one reason or another.  The "you can always quit" argument doesn't work for most other occupations anymore in recognition of that, but it's a common one for these occupations, which are often occupied by the workplace demographic that's least able to switch employments readily.

It also somewhat applied to patrons of restaurants and bars, although people rarely recognize that.  If you are in business and everyone breaks for lunch and the nearest establishment is Smokey Joe's Bar Grill and Smokapalooza, you're gong there with everyone else working on that big project, as you'll have little other choice.  No matter what your health situation may be.  I well remember, for instance, being on breaks in trials for lunch where the only nearby restaurant, or the one the client recommended, featured smoke and being very conscious that I was now heading back to court smelling like cigarette smoke, something that non smokers are extremely conscious of but which smokers seem not to notice at all.   This doesn't touch on the numerous people who are allergic or have reactions to cigarette smoke in one form or another.  These folks don't really have the option of making a big deal out of their situation in a lot of instances.

I guess that makes it obvious that I wish they keep the smoke ban in place, but then I also feel that they shouldn't have voted to eliminate their compromise position that allowed smoking in bars, not because I want to smoke in a bar (obviously I don't smoke), but because it seemed to be a compromise that was working.  

Which brings to mind the Italian proverb "Le meglio è l'inimico del bene", or "the perfect is the enemy of the good".  It really is.  

Passing a smoking ban was difficult in Casper in the first place.  When it first came up around 2002 it was voted down, but then a decade later the full ban (oddly called the "fully leaded ban" in the debate) was passed, but thereafter shortly amended to exempt bars.  That law was no doubt not perfect from anyone's perspective, but then the perspectives are so radically different that no law could satisfy that.  For those who take the "property rights" position, no ban, perhaps on anything, would be ideal. For those who a radically opposed to cigarettes, I suppose banning cigarettes entirely would be ideal.  No compromise is going to make everyone happy.

Which brings us to a likely ironic result of all of this. When Kim Holloway, a former city councilwoman, took to the streets with her petition to take this to the voters, the goal was to restore a full ban.  But what now appears likely is that her actions have killed off the partial ban, or soon will.  No doubt a new petition drive will start, and I'd guess Holloway will be leading the charge, but just listening to the city council and those who came to speak, I suspect that the tide has turned on this issue and the voters will side with the property rights argument.  That will likely have less of an impact than supposed, as smoking is slowly declining in the population anyhow, and my guess (and hope) is that most of the restaurants aren't going to restore smoking, indeed a lot didn't allow it before the ban, and more than a few busy bars aren't going to allow it again either, now that they know that they can survive without smoking in the premises.  So the hard feeling that we must ban smoking to have an impact is likely gone, and as our local economy declines, the feeling that we shouldn't mess with business owners will increase. But some bars that did allow smoking recently will go back to it, and I'd guess a few small cafes in town will also. The petition backers who sought to fully ban smoking, may have in fact restored it.

Lex Anteinternet: A few Labor Day observations. But wait. . . .

 I recently ran this item:

Lex Anteinternet: A few Labor Day observations.: World War Two vintage Labor Day poster, produced by the Office of War Information. Labor Day was made a Federal holiday in 1886, when ...

This sort of touched on the decline in labor, and the reduction of blue collar labor as a demographic in the US.

But is that really true?

Perhaps, or almost certainly, it is, but as the Labor Day article by George S. Will pointed out, there's a lot of labor in the US, and a lot of it in the traditional categories.  Lots of car manufacturing, and not just by the big three, for example.  Indeed, a quiet story has been the re-industrialization of the US, often by foreign companies, coming in to take advantage of a skilled labor pool and shorter distance to their markets.  All sorts of "European" and "Japanese" cars, for example, are made here in the US.

What is different about that, however, is that the workers aren't nearly as heavily unionized as they once were.  Indeed, to some extent, heavy industry went overseas, shook off the unions, and came back. But in coming back, they largely were careful to preserve the gains the unions had made in many instances.  It's been an interesting evolution over time.

Blog Mirror, for MId Week at Work: Quit Hating on Your Job

Esther J. Cepeda on Quit Hating On Your Job.

Definitely not the sort of career advice you commonly hear in the modern economy, but more realistic?  And interestingly sort of a throw back to an earlier era.

Mid Week at Work: Standard Oil strikers, Bayonne, New Jersey 1915.

Evidence of changes in technology and transportation in geography.

The photograph above depicts a United Methodist Church in Hillsdale, Wyoming.  Hillsdale is a really tiny town, with a population of under fifty people.  It's on the Union Pacific.

By rail, it's less than 15 miles from Cheyenne.  It's less than five miles from Burns, another little town, albeit one that's bigger than Hillsdale.  Another five miles down the Union Pacific is the town of Egbert.  And a few more, maybe eight or so, is the town of Pine Bluff.  In Pine Bluff, I know, there's a Catholic Church.

I've been in Hillsdale (as of yesterday) and Pine Bluff, but I've never been in Burns.

Of these towns, only Pine Bluff and Cheyenne on are the Interstate Highway.  Hillsdale is probably four miles or so off the Interstate Highway, effective marooned out there in the rolling hills of Laramie County, Wyoming.

I was actually amazed that this United Methodist Church is active.  The Catholic church in Pine Bluff also is.  So these communities are obviously keeping on keeping on, but what a change this evidences.

All of these towns were built on the Union Pacific Railroad.  Only Pine Bluff and Cheyenne are on the Interstate.  Coming in from Nebraska, I'm sure that well over 90% of all travelers go right by Pine Bluff.  Leaving Cheyenne (and no, not the song, that takes you to Montana), probably nearly 100% of travelers go right by Pine Bluff.

All of these towns, save for Cheyenne, must have been built as farming towns along the Union Pacific.  They're not far from each other today, but when founded they would have been just far enough to travel to each other, by wagon, and get back home, which is how they served the area farmers. That is, towns in this area where just far enough from towns so that you could get into one, conduct your business, and go back home.  Saturday was traditionally the big "into town" day for farmers and these towns were probably pretty big on Saturdays.  I'd guess that their populations swelled during Sundays as well, but how farmers got to services I don't know.  In some regions of the country the population prior to World War Two heavily reflected a single faith or perhaps only a couple of faiths (and this is still the case in some regions), and perhaps that was the case in this region of Wyoming, but it wouldn't be the case for Wyoming in general at any single point.

These towns remained viable in the early automobile era, but clear by the 1950s the handwriting must have been pretty visible on the wall.  Cheyenne is the dominant city in the area, and it always has been, but for all practical purposes its the only one that is truly fully viable now. That wouldn't have been true at one time.

If I could eliminate one thing from the planet for all time. . .

it would be the cell phone.

I hate them.

It's not that I don't use them, I do, a lot, but I really dislike them.

I dislike them for more than one reason, but my principal reason is that everyone under 25 years of age, and increasingly more people in older age brackets as time goes on, are glued to their little screens actually missing life.  It's amazing.

People can't avoid checking Facebook or Instagram at the drop of a hat, on their little screens. They sit in restaurants and meetings with other people, looking at artificial electronic life over real life.  They've grown unable to enjoy passing scenery from a car or airplane window.  It's a sickness.

I also hate the degree of connectivity they have caused, although I enjoy that too.  Now, people are tied to their apron stings to each other as never before, even while they also are able to preserve bonds that our highly mobile lifestyle would otherwise strain.  There's a balance of considerations there, and I don't know how it comes out, but which ever way it comes out, it doesn't save this technology, which "improves" darned near every day, from being an overall bad development.

Judge Posner writes on the Federal bench

The legendary Judge Richard Posner, whom I'm not really a fan of, has just released a book on the state of the law in the United States.

For those not familiar with Posner, he is a well regarded Federal judge who writes a great deal.  Once mentioned as a possible candidate for the Supreme Court every time a Democratic President was in office, that no longer seems to be the case, but his output has not diminished.  Nor has it become less accute in tone.

Now, I'm not really a fan of Posner, quite frankly.  He's heavily associated with the economic school of thought in law, and I'm not a fan of that type of reasoning.  He's generally left of center, and at least his recent critique of the Scalia was regarded as sufficiently unfair that one of his admirers on the Federal bench took after him on his own blawg.

But at least in his current book, if the Wall Street Journal comments on it are any guide, he may be spot on.  Indeed his comments sound a lot like, well, mine.

Consider his comment that relates to the aging on the bench, a topic that's been discussed here more than once.

Not being subject to compulsory retirement and able to delegate much of their work to staff, federal judges sometimes fail to retire even when old age and its related ills have greatly impaired their judicial performance. To be blunt, there is a problem of judicial senility and it is growing with the general increase in the longevity of the American population.

Hmmm. . . Posner sounds like, well. . . . me when I worried about the Wyoming Legislature taking out the state mandatory retirement age for judges.

Or his comment on lack of diversity at the Supreme Court:

I believe that the average quality of justices back then was slightly higher than that of the current justices, that the current justices are overstaffed, talk too much at oral argument, and devote excessive time to extrajudicial activities, but that what made the earlier Court better despite its meager resources by current standards was mainly the diversity in the Justices’ professional backgrounds. Today. judged by educational and professional backgrounds, and despite pronounced ideological differences, the Justices are peas in a pod.

Interesting comment, and I can't disagree.

Here's one where I suspect that Posner must be following me around and reading my blog:

The increase in the number of law schools has caused a reduction in the average quality of law school graduates and a concomitant reduction in the average quality of lawyers who practice in the federal courts. And the increased size of laws school faculties has resulted in an increased number of the faculty members whom I’ve term “refugees” from more competitive or less lucrative fields and who have little interest in the actual judicial process and little ability to contribute to that process.

Law professors as "refugees", well in my entire quarter century of work as a lawyer I've heard one, and only one, lawyer use that term this way, that being. . . me.  Judge Posner, is that you there in the shawdow?  Hey, wait. . . .  Well, good observation.

I may have to buy his book.

Monday at the Bar: Courthouses of the West: Tulsa Municipal Building, Tulsa Oklahoma

Courthouses of the West: Tulsa Municipal Building, Tulsa Oklahoma:

This is the Tulsa, Oklahoma Municipal Building which housed Tulsa's government between 1917 and 1960.  While I'm not certain that it housed a courthouse, it has that appearance, and I strongly suspect that the city's municipal courthouse was located here.  This building no longer houses Tulsa's city offices.

What's with the all the hugely overblown football movies?

My long suffering spouse loves football.

I don't hate it, I just can't develop an interest in it.

But my patience with football movies is strained to the extreme.

One of the things that I don't get is the plethora of simply over the top football movies. As my spouse likes the games, she likes the movies, so when they are on television, they're on here, even if we have seen them a million times.

The age of melodrama may be over in all other forms of movies, but not in football movies.  Villains no longer tie damsels to tracks, women don't faint at the sight of violence, war films are cynical even when patriotic, but football movies are the exception.

The coaches are so noble that the films encroach on being hagiographies.  In an era when we've seen real coaches reputations tainted by icky scandals, they aren't in football movies.  The players are noble in the extreme, and rise above adversity in a way that used to be the case for boxing movies.

Sigh.

What happened to The North Dallas Forty?

That annual reminder you just don't get it on the great American national past time.

Conversation with a lawyer down in Oklahoma.

He:  "So, who do you guys follow up there this time of year?"

Me:  "Huh?  Um. . . ."

He:  I suppose you all follow UW, eh?  Are there any other teams?

Me (now realizing that we're probably talking about university football):  "Oh, yeah. . we follow UW, it's the state's only four year university and the only one up here with a team. . . ."

He:  "Are they still coached by that coach. . . oh you'll know the name, who coached in Iowa (or some such place)?"

Me (now realizing the game is up):  "Um, well I don't know. . . I don't really follow football so I'm not sure who the coach is or where he's from. . . "

Embarrassment.

I wish I did follow football, as I'm always odd man out this time of year. But try as I might, I just can't develop an interest in it, and I've given up trying.  I did use to try nearly every year, but I conceded.  It's hopeless.  I don't know what teams are good or bad, and I don't even know how UW is doing or going to do.  Oh well.

Defeated People: The Old Believers

 Church of St. Nicholas, Old Believer (with clergy) church in Nikolaevsk Alaska.

As the very few readers of this blog know, I was recently in the Homer Alaska area, and I happened to enter one of the small communities there made up of Old Believers.  That there even were Old Believers in the area came as a surprise to me, so being curious of mind I looked some stuff up about them.

Not that I wasn't previously aware of them, or unaware that there were some in Alaska.  They fit this category nicely.

So, who are the Old Believers?

To understand this story requires some familiarity with Russian Orthodoxy. Given as this isn't a theological article, and as even it were it would have to be written by somebody other than me, I won't discuss that at length, but what I will simply note is that Russia was Christianized by the Eastern Christianity.  That isn't, I'll note, the same thing as saying that it was Christianized by the Orthodox, as that was prior to the Great Schism.  The Russian branch of the Eastern Church became autocephalus in 1589, however, which was after the Great Schism had occurred, and after the periodic efforts to repair it ultimately failed.  It's a complicated story, and it wouldn't be true that all Russian bishops have always been outside of communion with Rome, but most have been and that is all a separate story.

Anyhow, between 1652 and 1658, the  Russian Orthodox Church made a number of reforms, most of which, quite frankly, seem quite valid as they corrected errors between Greek and Russian translations, and the like.  Some of the differences in practices changed were so slight, that modern readers can hardly believe that they would have caused a schism, but they did, and the Old Believers were having none of it.  They were fairly immediately repressed with their refusal to go along declared an anathema.  

Now, to many in the western world today this story would seemingly play out with this group causing a splinter, but that being principally the end of the story, except of course to them. But, in 17th Century Imperial Russia, this could not have been the case, so they were accordingly repressed.

"Vasily Surikov - Боярыня Морозова - Google Art Project" by Vasily Surikov - ogHGQgd1Ws9Htg at Google Cultural Institute. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.  Created on 31 December 1886.  Published before 1923 and public domain in the US.  T his work depicts noblewoman Boyaryna Morozova at the time of her arrest, depicting in her hand the old way of giving the sign of the cross, rather than the new way, one of the sticking points of the Old Believers.

So there were arrests and repression.

But they kept on keeping on, and in fact, although a minority of Russian Orthodox, they kept on keeping on all the way up to the Russian Revolution.  And this in spite of the fact that no bishops went with them, which meant  that what clergy that did go with them died off within a relatively close time to the schism, leaving them it what would seemingly be a true crisis for a member of any of the apostolic churches.

They even kept on after the Russian Revolution during which time the Russian Orthodox Church was enormously suppressed.  At that point, some fled, going to China, and ultimately from there to South America.  While some remain in South America, many later relocated to the United States, with some subsequently relocating to Alaska.

Cafe in Nikolaevsk, Alaska, an Old Believers village.

They're still around, although this story has evolved a bit in the last forty years.  Some groups around the world have reincorporated clergy, being satisfied, in their view, with the orthodoxy of at least some bishops.  The Russian Orthodox Church has, for its part, issued an apology for the early repressions of them, although that has not served to bring them back into the Russian Orthodox fold.  But the modern world has been a challenge for them, in retaining their ongoing viability.  Some villages remain extremely isolated and exclusive, while others do not.  It'll be interesting to see what becomes of them.

Be that as it may, if the much more numerous Amish have managed to remain a distinct group, one would suppose the Old Believers will as well, unless the solvent of modern western life, combined with a reproachment with Orthodoxy, causes things to slowly break down, and perhaps even provide redress, for their complaints.

Sunday Morning Scene: Churches of the West: First Congregational Church, Sheridan Wyoming

Churches of the West: First Congregational Church, Sheridan Wyoming:
 

Irritated With Infrastructure

One of Casper's many closed roads, due to construction.

You can't get there from here.

Or at least it seems that way.

I realize that a person is not supposed to complain about improvements or repairs to infrastructure.  Indeed, a person is supposed to be worried about how little of this occurs in the United States.

But you wouldn't realize that from around here.

Due to a really weird fluke in budgeting all sort of heavy construction that normally takes place in the summer commenced just before Fall.  This isn't the fault of the contractors, I'm sure they'd rather work in summer, when they have more help and better weather, but due to some budgeting oddity, it didn't happen that way.

And I should really be glad for all this work being done, particularly when state revenues are declining and there's a real danger now that such work might not be as well funded in the future.

But it's easy to forget that on the way to work.  I now can no longer easily get anywhere in town as there's so much road and sewer construction going on.   I should grit my teeth and bare it, but it's easier to whine.

Much of the sewer work being done is being funded by Natrona County's .01 Cent sales tax, which generates a lot of revenue at next to no pain for local residents. Signs have been put up reminding us of where the money came from, but early in the morning, before the coffee kicks in, that might not send the best message.

And in regards to signs, the School District put up a nice sign down by one of the high school construction projects about how that was budgeted.  That, however, irritates me as I can't help but continue to feel the pain over the loss of the pool at NCHS as it undergoes massive reconstruction.  It's not the only high school undergoing that, however, as KWHS is also undergoing reconstruction, and the third new campus that will serve them both is undergoing reconstruction.  Would that the strategy had been just to put in a new high school, and then perhaps necessary repairs and preservation of the pool could have been undertaken at the other schools, a more modest goal.

The reconstruction at the high schools themselves is slated to take years.  That also amazes me, as construction projects on public works that take years to complete baffle me.  They likely baffle me as I'm not an engineer and I have no knowledge of the real practicalities of heavy construction.  I looked it up, however, and I note the Pentagon only took 18 months to build.  But, in fairness, it would have taken years to build under normal circumstances, and World War Two was not normal.

So I have no real complaint there either, but I do wish the construction was complete.  Probably everyone does.  But I also wish it was complete with a pool at NC.

I also wish the highway construction just getting up and rolling (that fall thing again) west and east of town was complete.  There's construction now going in either direction. 

Here, on one project, I really have to wonder.  The state is building another bypass around the city, way out, under the concept that this relieves traffic that otherwise goes right into the city. But does it?  It seems to me that the main impact of bypasses is to direct development into a new area, so the plan never really works. 

If they are going to do it, however, and I wish in that case they were not, I do with they'd get it done. The one project, complete with a highway bridge, has been lingering in a state of incompletion for some time, and it's odd to now see it recommence.  Again, it's a budgeting thing.

The state is also doing something out by the area we call Government Bridge, but which maps like to call Trappers Route.  That rural area has undergone a slow development in recent years, but the project doesn't seem related to that.  It looks like a huge turnout for trucks is being built.  I hope that's all the more it is.

So, I guess I overall have no complaints here, but it's sure odd to experience all of this is the Fall of the year.

I guess, in context, Casper of the late teens and early 20s must have been a lot like this, as a huge amount of construction all over town was going on.

Rabbits

According to the BBC, the British location Ness on Lewis, an island, is enduring a plague of rabbits and is going to have to dramatically cull them or suffer environmental consequences.

The odd thing is that, this year, the rabbits are at crazy numbers as well.

The whole northern hemisphere perhaps?

1915

I was on a ranch earlier this week, where the rancher pointed out the house that his grandfather had built (a very small one), when he homesteaded the place in 1915.

Interesting to think of, and they were working the place they'd owned for a century.  And interesting to think of what that location, quite accessible today, must have been like in 1915. The tiny town that was nearby no longer is there, but a somewhat larger small town that's not far off today, and a going concern, would have been a fairly long trip at the time.

So, less isolated.  Less viable?  And have things really improved?

Blog Mirror: Why do people believe myths about the Confederacy? Because our textbooks and monuments are wrong.

A friend drew my attention to this item in the Washington Post, "Why do people believe myths about the Confederacy? Because our textbooks and monuments are wrong."

Well worth reading.

Friday Farming: Suffrage farm.

Energy preview of coming attractions.

According to the most recent issue of the AAPG explorer, Iran has the capacity to add 500,000 bbls/day to its production capacity relatively easily.  Beyond that, however, a decline in its petroleum infrastructure requires investment and building.

If that's done, it can add up to 900,000 bbls/day.  That's small, compared to Saudi Arabia, or the United States, but it's not insignificant.  The decline in US production due to the fall in prices has been about 130,000 bbls/day.

The long and the short of this is that the recent glut of petroleum on the market is likely to increase after the recent agreement with Iran is finalized. This will take months to have an impact, but the overall impact is to keep petroleum prices low, and perhaps drive them lower.  Oil at lower than $40/bbl for the foreseeable future seems likely.

On other news, contrary to some Internet myths, generation of electricity by wind power is now cheaper than any other market alternative, and the expansion of the same is retarded only by access to transmission lines.  This means that the argument on wind's viability is over, in spite of there being a local debate on the same with some insisting that it's dirtier in absolute terms than coal, and not viable but for government assistance.  It's gotten over its initial economic teething stage and locally it's only held up by regulation and a lack of transmission lines.

None of this will be really popular news locally, as it would appear nearly certain that we've entered a stage where oil exploration will really stall out and coal will continue to decline.  But stating those apparent facts, particularly for somebody whose lived through it before, doesn't mean a person is wishing the results, only noting what the facts seem to lead to.

Today In Wyoming's History: September 8

Today In Wyoming's History: September 8:

2015  In a controversial move, the Casper City Counsel reinstated a tavern and restaurant smoking ban following the decision of the Wyoming Supreme Court that signatures on an earlier referendum petition had been, in some cases, improperly discarded from counting.  The vote was not unanimous and it certainly set the stage for further debate.

My, what a huge change this has been over a couple of decades ago.

Even a couple of decades ago a person going into a bar simply expected to come back out smelling like cigarettes. Restaurants were the same way.  

Now this is an exceptional occurrence, and you don't expect it. 

Actress, smoking a cigar, in a photo that was probably intended to be shocking at the time as women didn't smoke until the 1920s, for the most part.

Indeed, now smokers are often banished to outdoors.  Just yesterday, in walking a short distance early in the day downtown, I came around a corner and found some woman office worker smoking in the early morning cold.  Looking rather forlorn and even guilty.

In regards to smoking, times have rally changed.

___________________________________________________________________________________

Related threads:

Smoking It Up.

Mid Week At Work: Working on a floodlight, 1940s

Op Ed on the Y Cross Sale, Oil City News

The Oil City News has an Op Ed by a member of the University of Wyoming Foundation Board of Directors regarding the recent sale of the Y Cross ranch.  That article can be found here.

The gist of the article is that the ranch was losing money and there was little other choice but to sell.

Perhaps, but I still remain unconvinced.  Could they have leased the ground out for a time, for instance?  Could they simply have run it as an agricultural campus? What else was explored?

Lex Anteinternet: NCSD Board Policy 5375. Dress Code.

I suppose it was predictable, but none the less I'm surprised that this story:

Lex Anteinternet: NCSD Board Policy 5375. Dress Code.: The current NCSD dress code. Usually with something like this, the poster, if he's been out of school over 20 years (and I have. ....

has had the legs that it has.  It's still getting a little press, and one of the "student organizers" was even featured on MTV recently.

That's fine, and to their credit the schools are using this as a "teachable moment" in terms of encouraging students to think and voice their opinions. But among those opinion is one set that is, quite frankly, amazingly dense.

That set of opinions is one, now frequently heard, that the dress code objectifies women and encourages violence against them, whereas if they were allowed to show more skin it would teach men to suppress their baser motives and treat women as equals.

Yeah, right.

1,000,000+ years of evolution has made the male of this species a visual animal in this area.  A lack of clothing doesn't go towards the higher centers of male reasoning, and isn't going to. But the amazing thing is that there are people who have apparently bought off on that nonsense, which has been in circulation for about 40 years.  There's a reason that advertisers use women wearing little in the way of clothing if they can, and why there's an entire industry devoted to selling photographs of women who have lost their clothing.

A dose reality here is in order.  And would benefit young women here to learn that fact.  Treating women like objects is never excusable, but encouraging it through ignorance or intent is not either.

A few Labor Day observations.

World War Two vintage Labor Day poster, produced by the Office of War Information.

Labor Day was made a Federal holiday in 1886, when the Federal government acceded to a movement sponsored by the Knights of Labor to have an American Federal holiday in honor of labor.

The Knights were not the Kiwanis, and they weren't pushing for a "let's be nice to the nice" holiday.  The labor movement at that time was large, left wing, and militant.

Indeed, Grover Cleveland had the holiday put on September 1, not May 1, which was the logical date and the one that the Knights would probably have expected and feared, but that would have nearly coincided with the anniversary of the recent Haymarket Riots, so that was not done. And May 1 was the Labor Day pushed by Socialist globally, something that most Americans outside of the Labor movement would have been very concerned about adopting as an American holiday.  September 1 became the day, all the way back in 1886.

Labor movements were a huge deal at the time, and they were pushing for workers rights in a large, and radical fashion.  Some were very outwardly as radical as can be imagined, others less so, but the movements were extremely powerful. Starting about this time, the more "progressive" elements of American politics started to co-opt and adopt the less radical elements of the labor movements demands, however, and a long period of slow cooperation with labor and politics commenced.

By the 1930s, and the Great Depression, things had evolved to the point where Labor was essentially Democratic, although even as late as the 1940s there were certain Labor elements that were fairly openly Communistic in sympathies.  During World War One Labor was not fully cooperative with the Democratic administration, but by World War Two it was, having come to the conclusion during the Great Depression that the administration and the Democratic Party was its ally.  Indeed, in some ways the poster set for above is completely correct, and American Labor can take credit for at least part, and a fairly signficant part, of the Allied victory in World War Two.

After the war American Labor entered what may be regarded as its golden era really.  The American economy survived the war intact, unlike nearly every other industrial economy, and Labor had, by that time, achieved nearly every goal it had striven for in politics.  The 40 hour work week, fairly good working conditions, and many significant goals had entered the American norm.

Perhaps that's why the Labor movement has declined, since the 1970s, to a mere shadow of its former self.  Only part of the reason, but part.  It became very strong and achieved huge successes, but after that it kept on and demanded further concessions for its workers, in an era when those jobs began to go overseas.  While some unions remain strong, none of them are what they were in 1970.

Even the holiday isn't what it once was in a lot of places.  In a lot of places, it's just the unofficial end of summer, a three day weekend before students really begin to knuckle down for Fall.

And oddly, at least if Facebook is the judge, it's another holiday that's starting to morph into an additional Veteran's Day.  A lot of American civil holidays are now secondary Veteran's Days, and Labor Day certainly wasn't meant to be.

It's an interesting example of a couple of trends. One is the rise, massive decline, and then rise in another form, of American Labor. The other is the intense focus on veterans such that at least three American civil holidays and a couple of unofficial civil holidays are focused on them.  And finally, it's an interesting example of how so many American civil holidays are set to make for a three day weekend.

Labor Day

The law of successful national life is the law of work. Theodore Roosevelt Labor Day Speech, 1902.

World War Two vintage Labor Day poster.

 Martin Iron's Labor Day celebration, Waco Texas

Labor Day parade, Granite Wisconsin.

 Silverton Colorado, 1940.

Labor Day, 1909.

Lex Anteinternet: Dealing with the Red Horse

Lex Anteinternet: Dealing with the Red Horse: A momentous and tragic event is unfolding in Europe. Hundreds of thousands of refugees are attempting to make their way from the Middle Ea...

Pope Francis proposed today that every Catholic parish in Europe, over 130,000, take in a refugee family.  This sort of dovetails on my suggestion in this above that this is a global problem, and this would certainly be a start.

The solution for the refugees needs to be global, in my view.  That would include, I'd note, Middle Eastern countries of wealth, of which there are several. Saudi Arabia has a huge non Saudi population as it is (there's been some speculation that it may rival the number of Saudi citizens, and surely  they could help monetarily, and probably territoriality.

Beyond that, these wars are real wars, involving serious expenditures of cash to keep going.  Somebody is providing that, and should stop.  Where it's locally generated, that should be targeted. And its time for an international solution to some of this in terms of addressing the combatants.

Sunday Morning Scene: Churches of the West: First United Methodist Church, Sheridan Wyoming

Churches of the West: First United Methodist Church, Sheridan Wyoming: .
.

This attractive church is the First United Methodist Church in Sheridan Wyoming. The church was built between 1921 and 1923. The church is located across the street from St. Peter's Episcopal Church quite near the downtown section of Sheridan.

Dealing with the Red Horse

A momentous and tragic event is unfolding in Europe.

Hundreds of thousands of refugees are attempting to make their way from the Middle East and Africa into Europe, with Germany for some, and Italy for others, being the intended endpoint.  The massive disaster is costing the loss of a lot of refugee lives.

It also threatens to grow worse, and as it does so, it will also have a demographic impact greater than any mass migration in recent history.  Because the migrants are heavily represented by Muslim Middle East populations (but not exclusively so), the event is even more demographically significant in some ways than the massive displaced person crisis that followed World War Two, which was huge, but which featured all Europeans within their own continent.  This crisis comes at a time of heavy, legal, immigration from the same region, into a region of the world that's in a population decline otherwise, but where the new populations have remained unassimilated and the trend is towards non assimilation.  European leaders, like those of Hungary, who worry that the influx is a Muslim invasion that will threaten the Christian identity of Europe are correct to worry, even while those nations like Germany that seek to accommodate the desperate populations are acting more Christian in their response.  Nobody knows what to do.

Notable in the crisis are a couple of salient facts.  One is that to date Islamic states have not opened their doors, although Turkey is suffering from being a highway to Europe.  Perhaps they really can't.  But some Islamic states are extremely wealthy, such as Saudi Arabia.  It would seem that they would or should step up to the plate, and that this crisis should not become exclusively a European one, with the migrant populations becoming permanently European in their situs.  That's a hard unpopular thing to say, but Middle Eastern nations have not borne their share of the global weight in recent decades, and here they can.

They clearly can't do it alone, however.  Many of these refugees are going to have to be housed in Europe until a way can be found to rapidly return them home.  If they can't be returned home soon, and they certainly cannot be now, they're going to have to be dispersed around the globe, there's no other way to be able to handle it.  South Africa, Japan, Russia, the United States, Argentina, Mexico, everyone will have to share a burden of this size.

And that's because this is the single biggest event occurring on the globe right now.  It's huge.  And it needs immediate attention.  If that attention is not received, it will grow worse.

And it will grow worse as the events causing this are growing worse.  Strife in Eritrea.  Ongoing civil war in Syria.  War in Iraq, and even ongoing war in Afghanistan.  These populations are fleeing war, a rational thing to do.

And given that they are fleeing wars, and those wars have been spilling over Europe's borders and even our own, we need to realize that pretending that these wars "are not our wars" is completely wrong.  They are.  They've become Europe's wars, as Europe is now the Displaced Persons Camp for the Middle East and Central Asia.  They're our wars as the violent radical forces that inspire these wars are gaining recruits in Europe and North America.  We can't ignore them, and we need to start paying attention to them right now.

That won't be easy.  But it's going to have to happen.

The world is engaged in Iraq right now, but in an anemic fashion.  That should end.  A concentrated Western effort could easily crush ISIL very rapidly, and that should be done. And if that were done, we're going to have to face that Iraq is gong to have to be occupied by competent administrators, i.e., western nations, for a fairly long time, together with states like Turkey, that are non western, but which are competent.  And the crisis in Syria needs to end, which can only come about through tremendous pressure that puts an end to the Baathist regime but which doesn't result in a new tyranny.

Time's run out.

Lex Anteinternet: Lex Anteinternet: UW Foundation intent on cashing-...

We've commented several times on the University of Wyoming's sale of the Y Cross Ranch, as for in instance here:

Lex Anteinternet: Lex Anteinternet: UW Foundation intent on cashing-...: This past week the respective Wyoming and Colorado university benefactors (or actually the Colorado one, in what I read) of this substantial...

The news has now broke that the purchaser of the ranch is a company owned by Pine Bluffs Wyoming businessman Toby Kimzey.

I don't know Kimzey at all, but this appears to be good news.  In spite of the huge purchase price, Kimzey appears to be set to actually ranch the land, as he is doing with several other locations he owns.

So, this story has a sort of accidentally happy ending, sort of. A ranch owned by an out of stater was bought by an in stater who will ranch it. The purchase price is sad evidence that in this day and age it's nearly impossible for anyone of average means to buy a working ranch, and indeed its impossible to make the land pay off for a rancher, which isn't good news for agriculture or our society. But this story could have had a much worse ending.  Kimzey even indicates that if the schools want to take students there, they can.

Still, this entire story makes both CSU and UW look pretty bad.  Indeed, at least from the UW angle, the state's only four year university, which is an arm of the state, the story is really pathetic.  UW ought to be ashamed and frankly donors to the university should consider this story when being asked to give.

Grazing mimics what bison did long ago to keep prairies like Funk WPA healthy for waterfowl - Kearney Hub: Agriculture

Grazing mimics what bison did long ago to keep prairies like Funk WPA healthy for waterfowl - Kearney Hub: Agriculture

I've thought this perfectly obvious for years and I've wondered why it's never been noted.

Buffalo are large ungulates.

Cattle are large ungulates.

There were, reportedly, millions of buffalo.

Well. . . . 

Nonsensical Decadal Characterization

 A calendar for 1897. Featuring a calico cat and an artist, the way we typically think of the late 1890s. . .right?

You know you've heard or seen them.

"A look back at the turbulent 60s!"

"A tour through the Rockin' 50s"

"The Roaring 20s"

Or even just "The 80s".

Whatever.

All of these decadal references are darned near worthless, as whatever supposedly characterizes a decade, tends not to.

That doesn't mean that there aren't eras, even short ones of ten years or so, that are unique.  But they just don't start on the first year of a decade, and end on the last.  Indeed, that's highly deceptive.

Consider, for example, "the 60s", a decade we hear so much about because it supposedly "defines a generation".  Well, if it does, it defines it oddly.

The 1960s of course, started in 1960 and ended in 1969. But are 1960 and 1969 really in the same era?  They don't seem to be.

Indeed, the era up to 1964 is really part of what we consider to be the 1950s, really. Styles, haircuts, music, etc., all really fit into that "1950s" class of things. This is so much the case, in fact, that the movie that started off the whole 1950s nostalgia craze of the 1970s, American Graffiti, is set in the early 1960s not the 1950s.

It isn't really until 1965 that the "60s" started, and probably with our intervention in the Vietnam War. The Vietnam War, which started all the way back in 1958 in the form in which we entered it (or in 1945 in its French Indochina form), seems to be central to the "turbulent" 1960s, due to the war itself, I suppose, and the following opposition to it.  Conventional American ground forces went into Vietnam in 1965.

But they left in 1973.  And really, the 1970s at least as late as 1973 are really part of the "1960s". All the same protests, wars and controversy is party of it.  Shoot, Jimi Hendrix died in the early 1970s, not the 1960s, and so did Janis Joplin.

And regarding the 1960s, are the Cold War standoffs of the early 1960s really part of the same era that gave us Woodstock?  They don't seem to be.  Was the nation that was ready to go to war over Soviet missiles in Cuba the same one that was disenchanted with our involvement in Vietnam?

All that sort of means the 1970s, that "Me Decade", which should probably regarded as The Baby Boomers Second Decade, as they defined the "1960s" as well, really probably started in 1974, and probably ended perhaps in 1981 when Ronald Reagan became President.  Oddly, as a result of that, the "80s" fit about as neatly into a decadal calendar slotting as any decade, as a new era started when the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, followed by the fall of the Soviet Union in 1990.

What about the aforementioned 1950s?  Well, they didn't really start until 1955.  Surely our image of the Korean War doesn't fit the 1950s. That's some other era, one that ran from 1946 to 1955.  It seemingly has no name, other than occasionally "the early Cold War", or "the post war".  It's not "the 40s", however, as that's World War Two, which as an era really runs from about 1938 until 1945.  And the post war era, in which people were eager to return to school, start families, buy consumer goods, take advantage of the GI Bill, etc., doesn't quite match the war years, but in some ways it does.  It sort of looks like them, in a home front sort of way, but it doesn't quite feel the same, and it didn't sound the same either, as the big bands, so notable for the sounds of the late 1930s and the war years, began to pass away pretty quickly after the war.

The "war years", that we associate with the "1940s" creeps into the 1930s, of course, but the 1930s is really thought of as The Great Depression, which started in 1929, truncating the Jazz Age, which started in 1919, with the end of World War One.  World War One, like World War Two, is really its own age, and while the war theoretically ran from 1914 to 1918, we probably ought to go back to at least 1912 for the era.

That would close out, sort of, The Progressive Era, which came up, sort of, with McKinley's second administration, or 1900.

So what area are we in now?  No way to tell.  You have to be past them, by some distance, to know.

Not that it particularly matters. Any one age is what it is. Except the easy mischaractrization of any one age does create some pretty false and superficial memories.  "The 1950s" as the age of teenage rock and roll doesn't really do much for a decade that featured wars in Korea, Indochina and the Middle East, and a titanic face off between the East and West, for example.  The years 1945 to 1955 are darned near forgotten except to historians.  The early 1960s are lumped into the 60s in a way that doesn't accurately reflect them at all.

Book query

Has anyone here read McMurtry's "Leaving Cheyenne"?

If so, what's  your opinion of it?

WHEELS THAT WON THE WEST®: Studebaker & the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake

WHEELS THAT WON THE WEST®: Studebaker & the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake: Reporting the true depth of any business or industry can be difficult.  The very nature of large corporations and their focus on commercial...

Mid Week At Work: How to become a Norwegian conscript

Denali

Am I the only one who thought that Mt. McKinley had been renamed Denali about four decades ago? 

Truly, I thought the name had been officially changed way back then.

Glasses

I started wearing glasses when I was in junior high.

Well, actually I didn't.

I got glasses when I was in junior high.  I can't recall what grade, but probably 8th or 9th.  I didn't consistently wear them however, as I my eyes weren't bad enough to require it, and I didn't like wearing them.  Actually, I had a fairly difficult time adjusting to them, so I didn't.

I didn't even wear them when I first started driving, although that restriction was on my license.  But during high school I reached a point where I had to, more or less, although even then I would sometimes omit it, and could get away with that.

I largely did that during basic training at Ft. Sill, as I broke my field Army issue glasses, and was left with only my dress pair, which came off too early. So, unless I absolutely needed them, such as when shooting, I didn't wear them, and that worked fine.

 

 Me, wearing my GI glasses, at Ft. Sill.  We were apparently shooting on the day this photo was taken, as I'm wearing my glasses, and we're cleaning M16s.

Soon after that, I started wearing glasses full time.  It was irritating, however, in that the only glasses I could find at the time had really big lenses.  They were constantly touching your face in one way or another.

 

I'm the third in, from the right, here.  It's hard to tell in this photos, but I'm wearing some really large frame glasses.  I didn't like them.

Some of the glasses I had at that time also had "photogrey" lenses. That is, they'd darken in the sun.  I didn't like the idea, but at first the glare of glasses really bothered me.

Right about this time, and that'd be about 1983 or so, I experimented with contact lenses for the second time.  I'd tried it a couple of years earlier as well.  In neither instance did they work out for me.   They bothered my eyes tremendously, so in spite of not liking the glasses, I stuck to them.

Then, just before I went to law school in the Fall of 1987, I found a pair of my father's old frames that he hadn't worn in probably 25 or more years, and decided to give them a try. They were Bausch and Lomb ball grip frames.

 

Bausch & Lomb ball grip frames.  They're great. This pair of frames is presently at least 60 years old.

For the first time, I had a pair of glasses I really liked. The lenses are small, the frames are light. They temple frames won't come off. They're fantastic.  I've worn them ever since, and used a couple of additional old frames of my father's for an extra set of glasses and a pair of sunglasses.

I kept using these frames when I went to bifocals, as they can grind the now plastic lenses for that.

Well, a couple of years ago my vision deteriorated to where focusing on my computer became a problem.  My vision can be handled by my regular glasses at any other distance, and really isn't changing, except at that odd distance.  So hey had a pair of reading glasses made for me.  I didn't like switching back and forth, however, so I largely didn't wear them.

Up until recently that is.

Recently, I've had no choice, and after an eye examination, I had to have a second pair made, one for work, and one for home.

My reading glasses.

I hate them.

The ones I have at home are on a pair of rimless frames, much like my Bausch & Lombs. The frame is a bit heavier, but they're still not bad.  I thought it would look silly, however, to have a set of reading glasses with temple frames duplicating my regular glasses.

Of course, the new frames have a huge lens, reminding me of why I hated that kind of frame to start with.

I'm not blaming anyone. This is just part of life.  But it's the pits.

It's interesting, however, how many people hardly wear glasses ever.  Contact lenses and surgery have impacted that heavily.  Some people, however, wear them for an affectation.  I've thought about switching to contact lenses myself, but based on my past experiences with them, and the fact that I wear bifocals, I'm disinclined to do that.  Whenever I mention it as a possibility, the family is against it as well as they're used to seeing me with my rimless glasses.

But if I could omit glasses entirely, I would.

When the big science revelation falls flat on the facts

 

Something that's been noted a lot recently, and which genuinely should cause people concern, is that Americans have come to have an increasing contempt for science.

That's bad.

An educated, modern people, should be informing itself by science in making important decisions. And the evidence is pretty clear that at least into the 1980s, they did.  But not so much now.

And part of the reason of that is that Americans also tend to get a pretty big dose of bad science, which doesn't help to build trust in science and scientist at all.

Part of that falls into the category of the big announcement that just flatly fails to comport with actual real work observations. And we've gotten a fair amount of that in the past several decades.  And I say that as a person with a science background.

We got a big dose of that the past couple of weeks. At least if you are a hunter or fisherman you did, as probably every urban dweller you know sent you the news about the study that was published in Science that humans are a Super Predator and the current methods of fish and game conservation are all wrong.

There's only one problem with that study.

It completely fails to comport with actual observed information gathered over the past couple of centuries.  Or at least if the reports about what it says are correct, it does.

The study raises fears that we're going to hunt and fish all wildlife into extinction as, basically, we're a Super Predator that uses technology (i.e., tools, because it includes our distant ancestors) and we take the best of our prey, and prey on other predators, and are wiping everything out.

Except, its pretty clearly we're not.

Indeed, the evidence is highly to the contrary.

All big game species hunted in North America and Europe have increased dramatically, in numbers, and in health, over the past century.  All of them.  The predators we're supposedly about to wipe out have, in the same areas, increased, not decreased, in the last century as well.  Large ungulates are reclaiming ground that they had retreated from a century ago, in prodigious numbers.  Ungulate species that were on the brink of extinction, such as the Pronghorn antelope, now exist in huge numbers.  Deer exist in insanely huge numbers.  Elk have increased.  About the only exceptions to these rules are wear predators (remember, which we are supposedly wiping out) have been reintroduced and there are no human controls.

And all this was due to modern game management, funded almost exclusively by hunters.

In other hunted species this si also largely true. Waterfowl populations, which were headed for a collapse, recovered with the exception of a very few species, but some waterfowl species have always gone up and down in numbers. Quite a few species of birds now exist in areas that they are not native to, and thrive, as they were introduced.  Again, things are going well.

And we hardly need mention small game species, the numbers of which are exploding.

So where's the data to support the Science article in North America and Europe, as to land animals?  It doesn't exist.

Indeed, what the article would largely support is the introduction of North American style game management where it doesn't exist.  And where some of those influences have crept in, that has worked. 

I'll not go much into South America, where once again, things are largely going fine.  They are in the large landmass of Russia as well.  Africa and Asia definitely have their problems, however, but that's because the hunting culture there is completely different than the one mentioned above.  Having said that, in Africa, where a peculiar sort of Trophy Hunting has come in, actually sees game animal numbers increasing, not decreasing. Even animals like lions, so recently in the news, are actually increasing substantially in areas where they are controlled via legal hunting.  Where trouble exists in Africa, it's due to poaching, not legal hunting.

I'll abstain commentary on fish, as I don't know enough about sport fishing to comment.  Maybe the article is more accurate there. But this leads to me to what I'd next note.

I'm not a "sport" fisherman, nor am I a "Trophy" hunter.  I fish and hunt but I'm more in the subsistence category.  I suspect most hunters fit into  my category in varying degrees, although articles of this type seem to miss that.  I can't blame them too much, as writing in the big game arena tends to focus on Trophy Hunting rather than Subsistence Hunting.  The difference is fairly significant, but to summarize it, I'm just as likely to take a doe deer or antelope than a buck, as I'm hunting for the table.  Around here, indeed, that was the norm up until perhaps the 1970s, when people who moved in, that trophy concepts came in.  But the game isn't really managed that way, and there are still plenty of Subsistence Hunters around here.  We aren't in a special defined category under the law, like in Alaska or the Yukon, but we exist, and that's what most hunters actually are. 

Which should be encouraged.  It's hunting of that type that's preserved wildlands nature around the world.  It's preserving the wild, and preserving the mental sanity of our increasingly loopy species, by keeping us in touch with what we actually are, and are meant to be by nature.  Truth be known, the soccer mom driving the SUV all around during the day, and who lives in a McMansion, and doesn't raise or take any of her own food is a much bigger threat to wildlife than any hunter is.

None of which is to say that there aren't problems.  The commercialization of everything in American life is introducing problems by inserting a certain manor lord mentality amongst those with means that didn't previously exist, and that does cause the reduction, ultimately, of availability of everything.  Urbanization is a big problem. And technology is indeed a problem, as people are defeating the limits of the natural world, but also making themselves irrelevant at the same time in everything. 

But another problem is the release, in this fashion, of science that's simply contrary to the observed data.

We've seen a lot of bad science in recent decades.  Immunization causes Downes Syndrome.  Aluminum cookware causes Alzheimer's.  All sort of bad dietary information.  Other examples could be given.  And when this is the case, it causes contempt for science. And that's a terrible thing.  That plays to the ignoring of real problems, which is a huge problem. Scientist ought to therefore be careful about releasing studies that the observed data just doesn't support, or which is speculative in the extreme.  I'm not blaming scientist for the increasing degree of contempt of science, but stuff like this doesn't help.