Caring for the dying

 My mother, as a young woman.

My mother, age 90, is dying.

This isn't a sudden thing.  She was remarkably physically good health up until her mid 80s, when things began to fall apart.  It impacted her mind first, and not kindly.  She had always been a very physically active person, riding a bike and swimming daily, up until she was about 85 years old, when she suddenly quit. That's when I knew that I couldn't ignore things anymore.

Not that it wasn't obvious before that. 

It's a long story I care not to repeat, but her mind had been deteriorating for some time, but she was still able to live on her own and she loved doing so.

Now, on that, perhaps a bit of that is a rationalization on my part.  My father and I were very, very close, and I miss my father dearly to this day.  He died when he was 62 years old after becoming suddenly ill.  The anniversary of that death, in fact, is coming right up.  I'm 52 years old now.  My father's father died when he was in his late 40s, and they were very close as well.  I think that weighted heavily on his mind, particularly as he came up to and then passed that age.  I know that as I begin to see 62 on the horizon its on my mind, but then I didn't expect to make it out of here alive anyhow.

And I'm seeing that advanced old age has not been kind to my mother.  Nor has it been kind to most of her siblings.  It hasn't been the same for all of her siblings, all but one of whom have lived into advanced old age.  Some, including one of my uncles, have remained very mentally sharp.  But others have endured what my mother has.  Seeing it, I hope that I'm spared that, and frankly if Providence should provide it, while I'd like to live long enough to see my children well established as adults and enjoy their adult company, I don't know that I'd like to endure the ravages of extreme old age.  I know that its been horrible to watch.

 My mother, center, as a little girl.

And given this, I've thought a lot about how I've generally handled it and frankly sometimes considered how things like this were handled in prior times.  Frankly, I don't know that they were handled all that much differently, to some degree, in our fluid North American society.

 My mother, far left, with her sister and her oldest brother, Terry, in his Canadian Army uniform prior to his going to Europe in World War Two.  Of those depicted, Terry and Brenda (second from right), in addition to my mother, are still living.

My mother is originally from St. Lambert, Quebec.  She was born there and grew up there with her extended family of siblings.  Born in 1925, the family hit very hard times during the Great Depression.  Indeed, it's generally not realized that the Great Depression hit harder in Canada than it did in the United States, but it did. The percentage of Canadians out of work exceeded that of Americans. Having said that, that Quebec, which is now a thing of the past, had a huge rural, French speaking, agrarian population.  My mother's family was an Irish-French urban family, and therefore not part of the agrarian population, although they shared the common faith that it had.  They principally spoke English, although everyone could speak French. Anyhow, she went to work in her mid teens as the family was in such desperate straights, working at first for the Canadian Pacific Railway.  In her 20s she moved out to Calgary and worked as an oil and gas secretary, before leaving that job, as the urging of her mother, in order to be bridesmaid for her youngest sister, who married in Denver Colorado.  Returning north after that she stopped here as we were having an oil boom and she thought it likely should could find work, which she did.  All in all, she was pretty adventuresome when young.

I'd be hard pressed to know who is who is this photograph of my mother's siblings, and I'm not even sure if she is in it.

She met my father at St. Anthony's Church and they were married in 1958.  My mother would have been 33 years old at the time.  When I was born she was 38, fairly late, particularly in those years, to have a child.  I'm my parents only one.

 My mother, right, riding.  This photograph was likely taken in Alberta when she was in her twenties, but I'm not really certain and now there's nobody I ask.

We were a pretty active family. Indeed, I feel that I compare unfavorably as an adult to my parents.  But my mother started sliding into illness when I was in my teens and by the time I was 20 she was very ill.  And that illness expressed itself as a severe example of dementia.  It was scary, and during the process it strained our relationship severely.  My father admirably stayed very loyal to her the entire time, in spite of all the embarrassment that accompanies such an affliction before old age.  Ultimately she arrived at death's door.

During that time, I prayed that she'd recover, and she did.  There's no explanation for it other than a miracle.  No doctor has ever been able to explain it. The recovery wasn't full, but it was large, and when on death's door she began a recovery over a period of months that ultimately allowed her to return home from a brief hospitalization and a brief stay in a nursing home.  Her mind cleared up to a large extent, if not fully, and she was amazingly physically fit.  She bicycled and swam everyday, and in her 80s was so fit that I was often quite stunned that others were not equally fit.

 My mother with a bicycle while in her teens.  She rode a bicycle daily up into her mid 80s.

My father died at age 62 after a sudden illness afflicted him. He struggled for a period of months before passing away.  It was a horrific experience for both of us.  By that time, I'd gone down to the University of Wyoming twice and had graduated from law school.   When I returned to town I'd planned on only being at my parents house briefly but first my father grew ill and then he died, so I stayed on there, first to help him and then to try to help my mother.  Two years after he died I met my wife and we married, and with my mother doing well I moved out.

She did well after that for a long time.  Indeed, twenty or so years.  However, slowly, anyone could see things were changing.  About six years ago it was too much to ignore, although I tried to.  I couldn't bring myself to contemplate her moving from her house to which she was so attached, so I did nothing.  The last winter we debated what to do.  It was a nightmare as she panicked over snow, or forgot how common things worked. Finally, unbeknownst to me, she quite being careful about the food she was eating, which started making her ill.  Ultimately she fell very ill and at that point received the diagnosis of frontotemporal dementia.  But a diagnosis wasn't probably really necessary, it was pretty clear what was going on.

That lead to the nursing home, which we had no choice but to arrange for.  She couldn't return home, and with a will that was incredibly strong, we could not take care of her.  Over time her condition advanced much less slowly than anticipated and we were able to move her, when her wing of the nursing home closed, to a new facility that had a memory care unit that was newer and nicer, with more freedom, seemingly.

Now the end has arrived.  She's been in the hospital twice in less than a month and her physical condition has declined.  Her memory is now almost completely gone.  She can't remember things day to day, and I doubt from morning to afternoon.  She once, prior to her first illness, and again after recovering from it, had a very active mind.  Now, none of the old interests are there.

I don't know how well I've handled any of this.  Not very well, I think.  From time to time I've looked and thought that in prior ages this was handled better within families, at home, in times that were slower. But I don't think that's really that true.  We've always been so mobile.  I know that my father was there for his parents when they died, but then my grandfather was only in his 40s and my father a teenager when he died.  I can remember my father's mother dying when I was a small child, and all her children were there, and they all live here.  On my mother's side I can barely remember her mother, having met her I think only once when I was old enough too, and I don't know if my mother went out to see her as she was dying.  I dimly recall that it came too quickly.  And I think that was the same for her father.

When I was young, I recall prayers for a good, or happy, death being common in the Middle Ages.   Then are not unknown now, but they are less common.  While young, I was always struck by that with a bit of horror.  A good death?  How could that be?  

But I understand it now.  All too often that isn't how things happen.  Or at least its now how those who observe it perceive it.  It makes sense to me now.

O God, great and omnipotent judge of the living and the dead, we are to appear before you after this short life to render an account of our works. Give us the grace to prepare for our last hour by a devout and holy life, and protect us against a sudden and unprovided death. Let us remember our frailty and mortality, that we may always live in the ways of your commandments. Teach us to "watch and pray" (Lk 21:36), that when your summons comes for our departure from this world, we may go forth to meet you, experience a merciful judgment, and rejoice in everlasting happiness. We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen.

Anyway you look at it, this is one of those areas where I don't measure up to my father and his siblings.  I  simply don't. 

Everything old is new again. Politicians

Huey Long.  1935.

Funny how this video seemed so very antiquated just two years ago, but this year, it sounds a lot like what we're hearing in some ways from some of the candidates.

Fast on Fridays to Meatless Mondays. Bemused observations

One of the things that really sets a Catholic or an Orthodox person in the United States apart from other people is that during Lent, they fast and they abstain from mean on Fridays. The disciplines for those whose catholic faith is of the Eastern branch as opposed to the Latin branch isn't exactly the same, but that this occurs is a feature of their lives for forty days running up to Lent and always has been.

Days of abstention poster from World War One.  During the war, Monday was "meatless", and Saturday Porkless, although at least one U.S. government website states it was "wheatless Mondays, meatless Tuesdays, porkless Saturdays".  Any way you look at it, for Catholics of the period all Fridays were already meatless.

This, however, is actually a change in the United States for Roman Catholics from the old rules.  While we now abstain from meat on Fridays and on Ash Wednesday, during Lent, at one time all Roman Catholics abstained from meat every Friday throughout the year.  Indeed, in many places this is still the binding discipline.  In the US it was lifted following Vatican Two with the understanding that each Catholic was to observe some sort of penitential observance personal to them, but at least according to Jimmy Akin, who knows such things much better than I, it isn't clear that this was made a binding obligation so the widespread ignoring of this by American Catholics may not actually be an instance of their ignoring their faith.

The Orthodox and Eastern Rite Catholics, it should be noted, traditionally have much more strict fasting rules in modern times.   This is apparently something that's been relaxed, in some instances in the United States, taking into account the culture here, but traditionally the Orthodox and Eastern Rite Catholics observed two Lenten season during the year, one prior to Easter and another prior to Christmas, both of which have very strict rules which require the faithful to abstain not only from meat, but also ultimately from dairy and wine.

The entire discipline has always been widely misunderstood by those who aren't Catholic or Orthodox and indeed its one of the distinct things about Catholics and Orthodox that not only set them apart, but made them seem strange to Protestants (but probably not to Jews or Muslims who have their own dietary laws).  "Where in the Bible does it say you have to do that?" is a question that probably every Catholic or Orthodox is asked at one time in his life, simply for not ordering a hamburger at lunch.  Well, as well catechized Catholics or Orthodox know, the it doesn't say that you can't eat meat on Fridays in the Bible and the Bible doesn't set the Lenten periods either.  These aren't law with a Divine origin, like the Jewish dietary laws, but rather matters of discipline set by the Church, and set by the Church in very early times in recognition of the spiritual and even the temporal advantages of abstaining and fasting.

Which makes it all the more amusing for us to watch the secular world come up with this anew.  After all, both the Catholics and the Orthodox can point to the Council of Nicea establishing Lent and its practices in the year 325.

Hence, the amusing Meatless Mondays.

Meatless Mondays is one of those uniquely American movements which, I'd argue, has its roots in the Puritan foundation of the country. The Puritans are widely misunderstood, but one thing about them is that they were die-hard Calvinists who approved of work and disapproved of nearly anything about average life that was fun or enjoyable except, oddly enough, husbands and wives getting frisky with each other.  We don't think of them that latter way, but that's about the only thing I'm aware of, off hand, that they really strongly approved of outside of their own Calvinistic interpretation of the Bible.  They tended to ban just about darned near anything else that was out there, including sports and the celebration of Christmas.

Now, the Puritans were not teetotalers (the drank a fair amount of beer) and they certainly didn't have any dietary restrictions they imposed on anyone, but their way of looking at things in regards to its enjoyment or not has had a lasting impact on American culture, as well as a few others.  One strong feature of it is that Americans have developed sort of a fondness for deprivation and self suffering which stands apart from a lot of other cultures.  Indeed, Catholic (and Orthodox) southern Europe has traditionally tended to drive Americans crazy in certain respects as its attitude towards work, food, and alcohol has tended to be quite a bit different from our own, even though we're all basically Europeans.  That is, in the very cultures which retain the Old Faith, and hence the various rules discussed above, the happy people otherwise go around enjoying all the things that the latest in worrywart Americans urge everyone to give up all the time.  That is, these cultures, some of which are notoriously long lived, indulge in the things that secular American dietary theorist would require you to give up. So, oddly, that secularized focus would impose a perpetual fast on everyone.

Now all that may seem odd for a thread that starts off about the Lenten practices of Catholics and the Orthodox, the latter of which take the concept of Lenten fasting far further than Catholics do.  But I'd maintain that this is all closely tied together.

Anyhow, Meatless Mondays dates back to a World War One government backed program which was intended to help conserve food for the troops.  Every week had a meatless day (which like the Catholic and Orthodox Friday didn't mean fish, that wasn't meat), a wheatless day, and a porkless day.  I will confess I find the porkless day a bit odd, as pork is meat, but maybe the meatless day was simply beef free.

Now, while this movement was legitimately tied to the war effort, as resources were so scarce, I can't help but note a subtle Puritan element to it.  The concept has a certain suffering aspect to it, and tied in the whole culture to suffering for a cause.  Well, not the whole culture equally.  Catholics and Orthodox already had a meatless day and indeed the Orthodox had two meatless seasons.  It can't help but be noted that the Wilson Administration didn't propose making Fridays, which were already meatless for a big chunk, albeit a minority, of the population, meatless (including pork).  No, Catholics and Orthodox, if they observed Meatless Tuesday (as that was the day it was set on, not Monday) and Porkless Saturday (as that's the day that was set on) still had the added porkless and meatless Fridays.

In other words, World War One got to be extra bland for Catholics and Orthodox Americans.  It isn't as if the government couldn't have made Fridays meatless and porkless.  But they didn't.

And now we have this movement carried forward to modern times, but this time based on the concept that by taking meat out of your diet, you'll live forever.  You'll be eating bland, but you'll get to eat bland until dementia or infirmity take you down.  Interesting.

It seems as if the Puritanized American secular culture interestingly cast about for a way to reintroduce the Catholic fasts that it tossed out with the Reformation, but in doing so, it always puts on a ting of odd guilt about it that the Catholics and Orthodox largely omit.  Its interesting. And its really carried over into secular lives and not so much into modern American Protestantism, although some Protestant denominations do abstain from alcohol, and two of the American faiths do have distinct dietary laws in their own rights.  Secular American culture, however, looks for a lot of ways to suffer, and something to tie that suffering too.

It'd be an interesting cultural study, but I think there's something to be argued to the effect that the Reformation's tossing out of Catholic fasting rules had the effect, ultimately, of not only putting the Reformation cultures in the position of allowing everyone to make up their own rules, after a long period of development, but there is something really deeply missed about those rules.  The Puritan impulse to make rules really strict is strongly retained in our culture, even if the Calvinist impulse to base them on religious tenants is not.  Or maybe it is.  Many modern Americans seemingly elevate dietary beliefs to near religious status.

There are a lot of observations that could be made about all of this, but maybe one is that there's something about human beings that require periods of self sacrifice for some reason.  A person could argue this in a number of ways. If a person stated a theological argument they might be able to say that there's something ingrained in our natures by our Creator that causes us to need to engage in periodic periods of fast in order to focus us to things greater.

And that's the oddity of the Great Secular Fast that Puritanical American dietary folks would impose.  It seems largely focused on nothing.  But there's some impulse there that, if only I suffer more, or give up this or that, and reduce myself to a diet of free trade, organic, Slovenian, oatmeal, I'll be happy.  Probably not.

Alaska halibut, being fried in butter, on a Lenten Friday.

At least that doesn't seem to be the lesson learned from those Southern European cultures where the old rules apply, but when their not in effect, the people seem pretty content with their traditional diets, and they seem to live a long time.

The Big Speech: Good signs

It is a good sign in a nation when things are done badly. It shows that all the people are doing them. And it is bad sign in a nation when such things are done very well, for it shows that only a few experts and eccentrics are doing them, and that the nation is merely looking on.

G.K. Chesterton:  All Things Considered

Some folks are big, and that's okay.

Real working female aquatic athletes.  The type that don't get into magazines.

Every February, the nation's premier sporting magazine takes a diversion from its declared mission and stoops to publish an issue that is supposedly dedicated to swimwear, but in reality reflects the truly chauvinistic world in which that particular issue first appeared, which I think would have been sometime during the late 1960s. At that time, the journal created by that certain ossified creep who devoted his life towards enslaving women via images towards once single purpose, under the guise of making taking those publications out of the gutter and into the grocery store rack, had reached its zenith and achieved, briefly, that image of respectability to which it aspired, just shortly before the rising power of women in society, combined with a race back into the gutter in order to compete with copy cats, sank it back down.

In that era of the approximate late 60s and early 70s, however, the sporting magazine determined to tap into the same low stream with their annual issue that came close to what that other glossy rag offered, but with its subjects still clothed, albeit only barely.  In a true irony, however, the ossified creep's rag, which has caused untold damage to the image of women, and which is partially responsible for a trend which has been ironically shown to frustrate that basic impulse in men, because of the neurological and psychological damage the massive exposure of what it ultimately helped to get rolling on the Internet causes, has in desperation required its subjects to put their clothes back on, albeit only barely, while the sporting journal has gone the other way, with some if its models now clothed, if you will, only in paint. That's a farce, obviously, but apparently its a sufficient farce that they've managed even to entice some real stand out female athletes to participate in this, with those athletes apparently ignorant as to how and why the male viewers actually view their images.  Sad situation

If this turn of events was pioneered today, i.e., if the sporting magazine introduced an issue like this today, it'd be justly howled down in derision.  But instead the February issue has become a big issue for it and has spawned a calendar that's also a big deal.  It has garnered increasing criticism over the years, but it keeps on keeping on nonetheless.

And this year, I'd note, it did receive some criticism, and that's what this comment is about.

But it's not the criticism I've levied above.  Indeed, I'm slightly defending a decision it made this year, ironically enough.

This year one of the subject of the photographs is in the "plus" category, which sort of simply means big, or what passes for big.

Now, there's been a recent trend in this direction in modeling anyhow. And frankly, the trend is sort of balkanized, which doesn't seem to feature much in the news stories on it.  We have plus figures who are truly fat now being portrayed in this industry, with it being advanced that they should not be ashamed of their size, and we have some women who are simply big.

Now, before I get howls of derision, I'm not stating here some sort of moral position on being fat.  I'm not fat, but I'm also not thin, and I could afford to drop a few pounds myself.  While in our secular yet Puritanized society being overweight takes on a moral stigma with some people, for no really good reason.  And indeed the more we know about it, the more we know that with some people this is simply due to a genetic propensity they have to deal with.  And for others it reflects the living and dietary conditions most Americans deal with.  By the same token, however, being overweight now afflicts such a high percentage of Americans that there is a certain recent trend towards trying to ignore it a public presentation sort of way, which includes some of what we've above mentioned.  Again, I'm not going to really comment on that other than to note that I suspect, in a society so afflicted with the behavior noted in Fairlie's The Cow's Revenge that I doubt that's going anywhere.

Anyhow, what actually wanted to comment on here was the fact that women, like men, are sometimes big, and that's just that.  This year the above mentioned journal has a woman in the issue who is big.  As in tall and normally proportioned.  

Good for them on that.

Now, the logical question would be how do I know that, and the reason is that even though I don't get any sporting journals, or even read the sports page of the local newspaper, the female residents of the house sometimes buy a weekly journal devoted to personalities, and that showed up there.  They noted it.  And frankly  the subject of those photos looks to be athletic and normal, based upon the few, and decent, photos that showed up of her in that magazine.  

So, when I heard on the news that one of the prior models from this issue dating back to the 1970s or maybe the 1980s had criticized this issue for including this individual in the magazine and apparently on one of the covers, I was surprised and a bit taken aback.

While I think the entire issue ought to be dumped, and I think it's appalling that real athletes are now included in it attired only in paint, which means not at all, I also think its high time that women don't have to have the industry image of beauty resemble sticks.

That might be something that's actually dawning on women themselves, and the more power to them if it is.  An oddity of this is that for years and years that's been what the industry has done, and women have bought off on that image, but men never have.  Indeed, the fact that the figures of this journal who became well known often didn't rally match that image says something.  And the former figure of the photos who issued the criticism on the basis that the photos depicted something that was encouraging an unhealthy lifestyle ought to back off.  To be overweight is one thing, and everyone is well aware of the risks associated with that.  To be big is another, and that's just the way some people are.  Indeed, most people aren't built like sticks.

Blog Miror : MeridethinWyoming: A Gift from My Daddy.......

A great story on the MeidethinWyoming blog

A Gift from My Daddy.......

Almost sixty years ago this summer (about fifty six years ago to be precise) I received a WONDERFUL gift from my daddy.   He took me along......to Clearmont to have shoes put on his Morgan mare, Lady. .  .

Well worth reading.

Ignoring Gender in combat, but not in sports? Showing where we are realistic and where we are not.

Recently I posted an item on the current administration's decision to have a gender ignorant armed forces. That post was this one:

Lex Anteinternet: Killing people and breaking things. . . and women in the Service

 The Women's Mounted Emergency Corps.  "A mounted emergency corps of women has been organized as an auxiliary to the Second Field Artillery, of Brooklyn. The women wear a military uniform and are trained in giving aid. They learn to mount and dismount quickly, to help a wounded soldier who needs first aid, and to assist one who Is not totally disabled into the saddle. There is no plan yet for taking women to France in any but nursing capacity but it may be that the Women s Emergency Corps will get to the fighting line before the war is over."  The Oregonian, 1917.

Recently, a dear cousin of mine "liked" a photo that appears in Stars and Stripes of a collection of female soldiers all feeding their babies in the traditional, i.e., the original, way.  She posted something along the lines of "how beautiful".

And it is

But its not a good thing for our Army, which touches on something I've avoided, but given as I'm getting older by the day, and shy away less from controversial topics more and more, I'll go ahead and post on it. . . .

Since that time there's been additional stories on this, including the Marine Corps reluctance to go along with it (one female Marine veteran expressed her hope to me that the new policy would not take) and the Army and the Marine Corps struggle to have new physical standards that accommodate women while not simultaneously making those standards a joke.  

And then there's sports.

Recently I haven't been able not to notice that in the most dangerous and physically demanding job the United States has to offer, combat soldier, we're ready to pretend that there's no difference between men and women, but when it comes to the national obsessions, we don't blind ourselves.

A scene we will not be seeing.

Nope, with sports, and particularly football and baseball, we aren't going to be pushing for the incorporation of women.  No way, no how.  Indeed, the idea would be regarded as completely absurd, and for obvious reasons.

Now, I suppose, there's probably no legal bar to a woman walking on to an NFL tryout, and no doubt sooner or later some unusually stout woman shall do so, probably as a place kicker, but it won't become common, and nobody is so deluded as to think it will be.

And not only at the professional level, but at the collegiate level as well. Indeed, we're completely comfortable with separate sports for women.  People would regard it as abhorrent, for example, if men demanded to be on the college volleyball team, or if a university wiped out the separate women's basketball teams because, after all, they could just try out for the men's teams.

So, in the one occupation in the US that's super physically demanding, combat soldier, we're going to turn a blind eye to the same issues that cause us to have completely separate sports teams for women, which we're perfectly okay with.

That's dim.

Now, of course, as noted women could tryout for the Broncos if they wished.  What really keeps that from happening is that its just physically too much. And we keep separate female collegiate teams as if we only had one for all, women would be aced out of collegiate sports.  Maybe that's the lesson here.  If the current physical and traditional abusive training remains, not too many women would be in those roles, or even in the service in general.

But my prediction is that won't occur. No, the standards will be softened.

Which, if we're going to do that, lets do it for the NFL, NBA and baseball leagues.  After all, fair is fair, right?

Or maybe that's not realistic, eh?

Maybe we should learn  a lesson from that, in a profession that not only kills, but gets people killed.

Going around the Horn.

The price of oil has now fallen so low shippers are now choosing to go around the Horn of Africa, and burn the extra fuel, rather than go through the Suez Canal and pay the fees for doing so.

Incredible.

Blog Mirror: The Ranger Station: The History of the American 4x4

A website devoted to Ford Rangers has The History of the American 4x4 on it.   Some neat photographs are there, and an interesting history.

I've covered that here in a couple of posts, including:

Automotive Transportation I: Trucks and Lorries 

Truck Train, May 1920.

We have, in this continuing series on transportation, looked at trains, planes, ships, and shoe leather.  We're going to start looking at the type of transportation now that's just part of the regular background of our lives, for most of us.  Automobiles.

In doing this, I've broken the topic up into two, and perhaps oddly, I've started with trucks and lorries.  That probably seems backwards, but for what we're doing it really isn't. Transportation by truck has been a major change in the basic distribution system for the nation.

And also:

A Revolution In Rural Transportation

 

When I seemingly had more free time, I used to occasionally publish articles in various journals.  This posts has its origins in one such article, which came about, as a concept. right about the time that I became to busy to really keep at that endeavor, so I never wrote it.  Perhaps, if worthwhile, I'll develop this blog entry into an article later.  I'd also note that this is a topic which I've actually posted on here before.  And its a topic I consider every year during hunting season.  The topic of back country travel, and indeed travel in rural areas in general.

Is Warren Buffett reading my blog? Buffett's letter to his shareholders.

Buffett says, probably a lot more succinctly, what I was posting on yesterday in his annual letter to his shareholders, which I lucked on by way of the New York Times.

So what does the Oracle of Omaha allow?

It’s an election year, and candidates can’t stop speaking about our country’s problems (which, of course, only they can solve). As a result of this negative drumbeat, many Americans now believe that their children will not live as well as they themselves do.

That view is dead wrong: The babies being born in America today are the luckiest crop in history.

American GDP per capita is now about $56,000. As I mentioned last year that –in real terms –is a staggering six times the amount in 1930, the year I was born, a leap far beyond the wildest dreams of my parents or their contemporaries. U.S. citizens are not intrinsically more intelligent today, nor do they work harder than did Americans in 1930. Rather, they work far more efficiently and thereby produce far more. This all-powerful trend is certain to continue: America’s economic magic remains alive and well.

And he goes on:

Indeed, most of today’s children are doing well. All families in my upper middle-class neighborhood regularly enjoy a living standard better than that achieved by John D. Rockefeller Sr. at the time of my birth. His unparalleled fortune couldn’t buy what we now take for granted whether the field is – to name just a few – transportation, entertainment, communication or medical services. Rockefeller certainly had power and fame; he could not, however, live as well as my neighbors now do.

Though the pie to be shared by the next generation will be far larger than today’s, how it will be divided will remain fiercely contentious. Just as is now the case, there will be struggles for the increased output of goods and services between those people in their productive years and retirees, between the healthy and the infirm, between the inheritors and the Horatio Algers, between investors and workers and, in particular, between those with talents that are valued highly by the marketplace and the equally decent hard-working Americans who lack the skills the market prizes. Clashes of that sort have forever been with us – and will forever continue. Congress will be the battlefield; money and votes will be the weapons. Lobbying will remain a growth industry.

This really touches on the matter of economics, political rage, and perceptions that I touched on yesterday.   And whatever a persons feelings or perceptions are on any of these, Buffett, who is long lived and very experienced, can't easily be dismissed..  I think the reasons for the perceptions are explained below in my post, but the anger out in the voting booth this year can't be disregarded either.  Someone has famously said the medium is the message, but either the messages both ways are confused, or our a general condition that is causing upset isn't generally understood.

From the focus of the blog, however, what Buffet notes is a very real phenomenon.  And just as pointed out below, for the many Americans who have no experience with the world as far back as Buffett, the perceptions about history and current affairs, and even the current state of the culture in relation to past cultures, aren't necessarily easily understood or appreciated.

Wild Harvest Table Guides for 4-H Shooting Sports

Wild Harvest Table Guides for 4-H Shooting Sports

Monday at the Bar: Courthouses of the West: Oklahoma City U.S. Federal Building & Courthouse, ...

Courthouses of the West: Oklahoma City U.S. Federal Building & Courthouse, ...:

Lower Class, Middle Class, Upper Class?

Last general election season (as hard as it is to believe that I wrote it that long ago) I took a look at the Middle Class and trends over time in our post Lex Anteinternet: Middle Class.  I was looking at this topic again the other day, but for a different reason.

I started that post off with this observation:

This being an election season, there's a lot of news about the "shrinking middle class".  Given the historical focus of this blog, I got to thinking about that and wondered where the "middle class" fit in historic terms in this country, and in the Western World in general.  Who were they, and what percentage of the population were they?  It turns out to be a much more complicated topic than a person might suppose.  That doesn't mean that it isn't shrinking in the US, it is, and that is indeed disturbing.  At the same time, the middle class is increasing globally, which is a good thing.  Not much noticed in the news, for example, is the fact that for the first time in Mexico's history the middle class is the largest class in that country, having replaced the poor in that category. Nonetheless, even defining what the middle class is is surprisingly tricky.  Indeed, defining the poor is tricky too, or the wealthy, with definitions varying depending upon where you are in the world.  That later fact probably explains much of the difficult Western nations have grasping the concerns of poorer ones, fwiw.

In looking at this topic again, and again struggling with who the middle class is, I ran across some interesting information that perhaps should somewhat inform how we look at this.  It's interesting.  Particularly in this election year when class distinctions seem to be running rampant through some campaigns, namely the Sanders and Trump campaigns, with it being widely assumed that the (white) "working class" is taking a huge pounding in our economy.  It's worth asking, what do the statistics show?

As noted, defining who is who is a little difficult, but I'll go, for purposes of this, with what Pew does.  For a single person, you enter middle income at $24,173 and you climb into upper income at $74,521.  For a married couple (household of two) that changes, however, and the combined incomes need to reach $34,186 to be middle income, and you climb out of that at $102,560.  For the archetypal family of four you enter middle income at $48,387 and climb out of it at $145,081.

Those numbers are lower than people suspect, I suspect.  And the much discussed figure of $250,000 is actually where the "1%" kicks off.

Now, as it turns out, a very large percentage of middle income Americans pop up into the upper income bracket from time to time, and often in and out of it.  I guess that's probably not too surprising.  It's more likely, actually, for a person who has an upper middle class occupation, or a bottom upper class occupation, to have a fluctuating income.  Some incomes fluctuate wildly from year to year, but they generally fall into the upper class and upper middle class range. So a person can have an upper middle class income one year, and then the next, if it's a good year, will be in the 1% range of the upper class.  Pretty darned common.

What is surprising, however, is that a majority, although only barely that, of white Americans are upper income.  Additionally, since the 1970s, the elderly, married couples, and blacks improved their economic status more than other groups.

I don't think people realize that at all. So let's look at that again.

Most, although barely most, white Americans are in the upper class.  It may be that the "working class whites" are mad and voting for Donald Trump, but most, but barely most, American whites are not in that class.  And some who are not, are upper class.  Probably quite a few are.

Let's look at the trends even closer.

As noted, blacks' economic status has improved since 1971, in spite of the common assumption to the contrary.  Indeed, even a light look at the conditions most blacks lived in at that time, as compared to now, shows how true that is.

Married people did well.

Married people with a college education did particularly well.

Hispanics slipped, however.  But more on that in a moment.

The percentage of Americans that are "middle class"  is 50% of the overall population now.  In 1971 it was 61% of the population.  A real drop of over 10%.  Scary, maybe.

The percentage of the population that was lower class in 1971 was 16% in 1971 and is 20% now, an increase of 4%, with that percentage climbing up steadily since 1971.  The lower middle class, those just above poverty, has been 9% all along, however.

10% of the population was upper middle class in 1971, but now that figure is 12%.  The upper class made up 4% of Americans in 1971 and now makes up 9%.

Hmmm.

So, looking at the middle Middle Class, that percentage has retreated as a percent of the overall American population by 11% since 1971. But that loss reflects an increase of 5% in the upper class and an increase of 2% in the upper middle class.  So, yes the middle class has retreated, but it's loss of 11% reflects a 7% increase in the wealthy and nearly wealthy.  The balance of the loss would reflect an increase in the poor and fighting off poverty.

Taking it further what we are seeing is that the two oldest demographics in the country, loosely defined, whites and blacks, are actually doing very well and doing increasingly well provided that they receive a college education and are married.  Amongst the unmarried, men do well, and women do not.  More whites are now upper class than any other percentage of the economy, which is a stunning occurrence given that they remain the largest demographic, loosely defined.  Having said that, there are certainly poor whites and a large number of middle class whites.

Poverty, however, in increasingly defined in the United States by Hispanic ethnicity and by being an unmarried woman.  Being an unmarried female with children is virtually a way to guarantee impoverished status.

Setting aside gender for a moment, even the ethnicity is due some closer analysis, however.  Hispanics are probably not "slipping" into poverty but born into it, often in another country.  As an ethnicity, they share the same status as Italians and Irish once did, that is they're regarded as a race simply because they're a different culture.  They tend, in increasing rates, not to identify themselves as a race at all, and if the statistics were reexamined and they were classified as whites, which might be a better more realistic way to do it, the analysis set out above would instantly change and the majority of white Americans would clearly not be upper class, but actually middle class.

Anyhow, people tend to immigrate as they're poor or oppressed.  In the case of Hispanics, it tend to be due to poverty.  So, the increase since 1971 readily reflects that in 1971 most Hispanics tended to be native born Americans, but now a large number are immigrants.  They'll rise up out of their poverty.

The situation with unmarried women is different, however.  In 1971 births out of wedlock were regarded as shameful and the marriage culture in the country was strong in all demographics.  Following a series of Supreme Court decisions from the quite liberal Supreme Court of the time state law provisions that reinforced marriage as an institution, if only collaterally, and with the massive change in divorce laws that eliminated the necessity of fault in divorces, the predictions set forth in Humanae vitae by Pope Paul VI came true and continue to amplify throughout the culture and accelerate.  The ironic result of that is that the demographic that liberal politicians and social reformers claimed to be helping have been massively hurt.  Unmarried women with children and their children have sunk into poverty, while the two oldest demographics in the nation have risen steadily, if married, with one now having more wealthy members than middle class members, albeit only barely.

So then, why don't people recognize this?

That is, why are enraged largely white demographics going for Socialist (of some sort) Bernie Sanderes and Populist but super wealthy Donald Trump?  A lot of the cries sound in economics and demographics, but it would appear that those cries are misplaced.

Well, they likely are, quite frankly.  But that doesn't mean that they don't reflect something.  So let's take a look at how this all plays out in terms of perception.

First, oddly enough, as white Americans have evolved from middle class to upper middle class and upper class, they haven't realized that, by and large.  Most white Americans, including the classic family of four, think they're middle class even if they're upper class.  A family of four with a breadwinner bringing in $250,000 a year is wealthy, but that same family is unlikely to think of itself that way.  Why?

Well, there are a bunch of reasons for that.

For one thing, as whites have expanded into the upper class in large numbers, the ethnic and cultural divide that separated the two classes has decreased enormously.

At one time, to be a member of the upper class had a very distinct class distinction. This is still the case the further up the ladder you get, but not nearly to the extent that was once the case. As university education and shear numbers have pushed the numbers up, and specialization in labor has pushed wages up, the boundaries are now not very clear at all. So plenty of Americans who are middle class live near and associate with Americans who are upper class.

Added to this, the fact that people move in and out of the upper class, and some Americans do that nearly annually, further breaks down that distinction.

And breaking it down further, entire groups including geographic groups have moved classes or up within classes, therefore not seeing that they've moved.  I'm certain that a person could find entire classes of kids who went to school in the 1970s and graduate in the 1980s from middle class families that have largely crept into the upper class and upper middle class, more or less together, and therefore don't realize that they've changed classes at all.

And as this has occurred, entire middle class neighborhoods that were at one time in the middle of the middle class are now upper middle class or even mixed upper class, and don't realize it.

Indeed, I saw that emphasized in an analysis trying to prove the opposite, that a lot of the middle class have slipped into the lower middle class or poverty and don't know it. And that may very well be true.  That is, demographics that have slipped down remain in the suburbs and still have barbecues in the summer and whatnot, but now are struggling economically.  I'm sure that's correct, but likewise I'm sure that the opposite is also true. There are a lot of people having barbecues in "middle class" neighborhoods that do that as its the middle class thing.  They would never have evolved socially into upper class, classic, behavior, as they're middle class in culture and don't realize that they're upper class.

Indeed, that emphasizes the cultural aspect of things. Culturally, Americans are middle class.  And we always have been.  That doesn't really change for most people as they move up in class.  And if it does, it takes several generations for that really to take root.  And as large numbers have moved up, the cultural distinctions that once existed have often ceased to exist.  Indeed, this is comparable to such economic class movements amongst immigrant populations which serves as an example. When the Irish in the US, or the Italians, moved from impoverished to Middle Class, they didn't cease being Irish or Italian, at least not right away.

Another aspect of this is, however, that being upper class, unless you are in the very high incomes, isn't what it once was, as odd as it may seem.

If a huge number of people are in the upper class, for one thing, the question then becomes if it is the "upper class"?  Maybe not.  Maybe, and significantly, the middle class simply makes more money than it used to. So perhaps the definition of middle class actually reflects what people feel.  Statisticians may say that they're upper class, but maybe they really aren't.  Maybe the definition needs to be changed.

Indeed, not only have a lot of people moved up out of the middle class into the upper class, but a lot of people in the middle class are no longer near the bottom of it.  Lower middle class as a segment of the population has remained stagnant for decades.  What is likely missed is that at one time an awfully large percentage of the middle class lived darned near the bottom of the demographic and were in danger of slipping into poverty constantly.

But additionally the economic nature of being upper class, unless you are very high in income, has changed a lot.

Current Americans,  including even lower class Americans, have an incredible number of demands on their income.  Some of this, indeed a lot of this, is purely voluntary, but even at that, the phenomenon is real.

Housing, a real basic, is much more expensive now than it was in former times.  A person can witness this simply by driving through nearly any community that has some age to it.  There's nearly always a section of town with small houses, followed by slightly larger houses, all of which are older.  The "slightly" larger houses are middle class houses of their eras, and the small ones are often the houses of the poor.

Now, significant in that is that even a lot of the poor in many areas in the country could still purchase a house.  It wasn't a great house, but it was a house. This is not very much the case any longer.  And middle class homes, as we've explored hear in the past, have grown in size over the years. They've also grown in t he command they put on a person's income.

Indeed, people used to commonly buy a house, once they were married, that they often occupied for life, and they didn't change them often.  Now, this tends not to be the case, but what does tend to be the case is that people are willing to go into much greater debt than they  once were for a house.  If a significant percentage of a person's income is tied up in mortgage payments they don't have that much left, and their purchasing power, therefore, probably doesn't feel very upper class.

This is also true of automobiles for many people.  Cars have always been expensive actually, contrary to the myth to the contrary, but people's willingness to buy new cars and lots of cars has changed over the years, although that seems to be changing recently.

Up until relatively recently, say thirty or so years ago, quite a few families had one car.  This changed as women in particular entered the workplace in increasing numbers, thereby requiring separate transportation, but that then meant that families owned two cars.  Teenagers and young adults still in the household often had a care as well, but that car often tended to be "old", in context.  I say in context as cars broke down and became "old" much quicker than they now do, but they accordingly lost their value pretty quickly too.

Now things are much changed.

I still tend to retain vehicles for a really long time myself, as I like what I like and generally don't seek to change things much.  But most people do not seem to operate this way, so most working people tend to buy new vehicles fairly rapidly even though the old ones do not really seem to wear out.  Teenagers now drive, in many instances, nearly new vehicles, which is a huge change from when I was young.  I didn't drive a new vehicle until I was working as a lawyer and I've owned exactly three of them my entire life, even tough I've owned a lot of cars.

And then there's the blizzard of things that people own.  Iphones, electronics, this and that.  A lot of things don't cost much, but added up they cost a lot.

This is quite a bit different from families in the 1970s which had two cars, one phone, and one television, which was quite common.  Indeed, when I was a kid I found families having more than one television to be quite exotic.  Having two televisions, or even more, has gone from being a symbol of wealth to routine, but that means that people have routine expenses once associated with the wealthy, to some degree (it also reflects that the price of some things has declined in real terms).  It can be taken two ways.  On the one hand, wealth has brought all these things into common use, and even the lower class often have some of these items.  On the other, if you live in a world where this is the norm, the expenses associated with it are also the norm, and therefore there is not as much money to go around even with a higher income.

Indeed, in a world where the number of cars in a typical household didn't vary much from the middle class to the upper class, and where the difference in economic status could be readily told by the nature of a house and the type of cars, rather than middle class homes now resembling upper class ones, and upper class resembling the 1% houses of old, and everyone having a plethora of items, the situation is quite different.

Take these examples.  I knew a couple of truly wealthy people when I was young and I am still aware of where their houses are. Today, I couldn't tell you if those houses are occupied by upper class or upper middle class people (upper class, I suspect).  Those same well off people I'm noting interestingly had tended towards buying one, and I do mean one, high end automobile which they then hung on to for the rest of their lives.  In two cases, the cars were Mercedes. In the third, the car was an American luxury car, but I've forgotten what it was.  Something like a Cadillac.

Now a lot of people have high end cars and they don't keep them.  Indeed, I'm really a personal anomaly as my newest vehicle (I'm excluding my wife's vehicle, as she really likes vehicles and has a relatively new (but used when we bought it) vehicle is a 2007 Dodge 3500 diesel truck.  I love it.  But my daily driver is a 1997 Jeep TJ.  I don't intend to replace either of these vehicles ever, although the TJ isn't a good example as Jeepers tend to get a Jeep and customize it, and hang onto it.  The truck is a good example, however, as a decade from now I hope I still have it.  Indeed, I hope it last me the rest of my life.  I don't want another one.

Another reason, I suspect, that this demographic reality is little appreciated is that being "rich", or upper class, is equated in the popular mind with not working, or not working much.  The "idle rich" is a common mental image, even though very few in the upper class are in that demographic.

The idle rich, as a class, did once exist, although they were probably never really the majority of the upper class.  As a class, they existed in force, if in small numbers, in the late 19th and early 20th Century when the culture of being very well off actually precluded a person from working.  This was more so in Europe than in the United States, but even here a really wealthy person, particularly if their wealth was vested rather than earned, tended not to work and culturally was not supposed to, save for a few very limited occupations.  That was the basis of the distinction between the Rich and the Neveau Rich.  The newly rich had tended to earn that money, and were sort of looked down for that as a result.

Now, that's all passed, and indeed it passed long ago.  As more people have moved into the upper class more in the upper class at all levels work, and frankly those in the just upper class, as opposed to the 1% of top incomes, have no choice as a rule. So, upper class often means that a person is in a high paying, but hard working, profession or occupation.  Around here, as odd as it may seem to some, there are a lot of experienced oil field hands who are "upper class" by income, or at least there were until the vast number of recent layoffs.  These people make a good income, but they have to work, and they have to work hard.

Indeed, even with the traditional occupations that people associate with wealth this is really true.  Often that assumption is completely erroneous to start with.  Lots of doctors and lawyers, for example, are solidly middle class and not upper class.  People's assumptions, expectations, and concepts of themselves are often wildly off the mark.

All of which ties into an election year like the current one.  The GOP is seeing sort of a "working class" revolt in its ranks, and the Democrats are as well.  But some of those angered voters are doing better than perhaps they realize, in historical terms.  And the country overall may be as well.  That doesn't mean that economics aren't worth looking at, but when they are looked at, they should be looked at realistically.  Turning the country back to a perceived better age or towards a more radical future might be quite a bit off the mark, looking back towards where we've come from.

Sunday Morning Scene: Churches of the West: Elk Mountain, Wyoming

Churches of the West: Elk Mountain, Wyoming:

I don't know, or no longer know, the denomination of this church in the rural town of Elk Mountain, Wyoming. This is, in part, because this photo was taken in 1986.

Ancestry.com: 11 Skills Your Great-Grandparents Had That You Don’t

 Here's another entry from Ancestry.com with some interesting items:

11 Skills Your Great-Grandparents Had That You Don’t

Our parents and grandparents may shake their heads every time we grab our smart phones to get turn-by-turn directions or calculate the tip. But when it comes to life skills, our great-grandparents have us all beat. Here are some skills our great-grandparents had 90 years ago that most of us don’t.

This entry does say that "most of us don't" have these skills, which would acknowledge that some of us do.  It's interesting to take a look at these to see how accurate this assessment is.  The last one of these we posted from Ancestry.com was, in fact, pretty accurate.  So much so that we'll be following up some of the items listed there.

Okay, here's their list:

1. Courting

This is an interesting item, and one we haven't covered very much, although I think we have slightly, perhaps in one of the older threads on marriage.  Here's what Ancestry.com noted:

While your parents and grandparents didn’t have the option to ask someone out on a date via text message, it’s highly likely that your great-grandparents didn’t have the option of dating at all. Until well into the 1920s, modern dating didn’t really exist. A gentleman would court a young lady by asking her or her parents for permission to call on the family. The potential couple would have a formal visit — with at least one parent chaperone present — and the man would leave a calling card. If the parents and young lady were impressed, he’d be invited back again and that would be the start of their romance.

I don't know if I'd regard this as a "skill", and I think Ancestry.com grossly oversimplified this. This is, however, something worth picking up and posting on, as its' a major change in how people meet, and form their lives.  It's correct that "dating" didn't exist prior to the 1920s, as we'd define it.


2. Hunting, Fishing, and Foraging

I have posted on this quite a bit.

 

The way that Ancestry.com stated it is a bit different than I expected, however.  They stated:

Even city dwellers in your great-grandparents’ generation had experience hunting, fishing, and foraging for food. If your great-grandparents never lived in a rural area or lived off the land, their parents probably did. Being able to kill, catch, or find your own food was considered an essential life skill no matter where one lived, especially during the Great Depression.

Ancestry.com may have pushed their point a bit, but perhaps not.  I may have to follow up on this.  Having said that, hunting and fishing remain very popular, and in fact increasingly popular, activities in the United States today.

And this is one skill that I do indeed have, and probably at least to the same extent my grandparents did.

3. Butchering

This is one that surprised me as well.  Here's what Ancestry.com

In this age of the boneless, skinless chicken breast, it’s unusual to have to chop up a whole chicken at home, let alone a whole cow. Despite the availability of professionally butchered and packaged meats, knowing how to cut up a side of beef or butcher a rabbit from her husband’s hunting trip was an ordinary part of a housewife’s skill set in the early 20th century. This didn’t leave the men off the hook, though. After all, they were most likely the ones who would field dress any animals they killed.

I think that Ancestry.com may have pushed their point here, quite frankly.  But there is something to the point that there used to be more cutting of mean even from the grocery store than there is now.  My father was very good at this, and at butchering game as well, which is in fact a skill he learned from his father, who had owned a packing house.

But this is also one that I have done and can do.

4. Bartering

Hmmm. . . I'm not sure how much bartering has gone on in North America in the period we're discussing.  Some I'm sure.  Some isn't really bartering so much as a gift on the part of people who've received one, which is worth noting.

5. Haggling

This one I doubt as well.  At one time perhaps this was common, but it would be further back than our grandparents generation.

6. Darning and mending

This one I accept.  As a kid, my mother often repaired my clothes and her own clothes as well.  People seemingly do little of that now.

7. Corresponding by mail

We've addressed this, including just the other day, and this is certainly true.

My mother kept up a vigorous correspondence with her siblings. And one of my cousins has posted some of my grandparents', on my mother's side, correspondence and it is clear that they wrote to each other a great deal.

8. Making Lace

This is no doubt true.  Probably hardly any younger woman knows how to do this now, and my guess is that the living women who do are quite elderly.

9. Lighting a Fire Without Matches

No doubt true.

10. Diapering With Cloth

And also no doubt true.

Some environmentally conscious people today do use cloth diapers, but they are few and far between. Frankly, this would be a huge chore, due to the laundry it entails.

When I was a baby, cloth diapers were the only kind that existed.  I don't even know where a person would get them now.

11. Writing With a Fountain Pen

Very true, and one I've posted on here before:

Pens and Pencils

I just learned the other day that ballpoint pens came about in the 1940s. Apparently, in the WWII time frame, they remained largely unreliable.

 Waterman fountain pen advertisement, claiming the pen to be the "the arm of peace" in French.

I don't know why that surprised me, but it did.  Pens, in the 40s, and the 50s, largely remained fountain pens.

Frankly, even the Bic ballpoint pens I used through most of junior high and high school were less than reliable. The ink dried up, or it separated in the plastic tube holding it.   Sometimes they leaked and the ink came out everywhere.  But they were easier to use than fountain pens.  With fountain pens I was always like Charlie Brown in the cartoons, with ink going absolutely everywhere, or at least all over my hands.

"I'll go to Canada". No, Yankee, you will not.

One of the most common refrains I hear from Americans of all political stripes, concerning an election outcome they don't like, is "I'll go to Canada".

 Canadian Parliament Building.  The parliament hasn't voted to open the doors to unhappy Americans over losing an election.

Canada is a sovereign nation with its own immigration policies and they don't want you.  It's rude and presumptuous of you to assume you can just move in.

Why would they want you?

"Disgruntled about my country's politics" is not a category for immigration into any country, let alone to our neighbor the north which has a bit of a chip on its shoulder about the common American assumption that we somehow own Canada, or that Canada is "United States Lite" or something.

You aren't moving there.  They don't want you.  Unhappy with an election outcome just shows you are disgruntled, not that you'd make a good Canadian.  Besides, you just can't "move there". They have to accept you as a resident, and there are a lot of other, non disgruntled people, from all over the world trying to do the same thing.

Not only that, but frankly, most Americans unhappy with our election outcomes would be really unhappy with Canadian ones.  Think that Bernie Sanders is too darned far to the left?  Have you heard of Justin Trudeau?  Upset about Donald Trump and think the country's gone to far to the populist right?  Are you aware that Canada actually does impose speech restrictions on some controversial matters, having no Constitutional prohibitions to the contrary.  You, disgruntled American, aren't going to be happier there.  You'll just be annoying Canadians.

Mid Week at Work: Female Life Guards, Los Angeles Califorina

Venice Beach Life Guards.  No date, but probably around World War One.

Ancestry.com: 9 Reasons Your Great-Great-Grandparents Were More Awesome Than You

An interesting item from Ancestry.com:

9 Reasons Your Great-Great-Grandparents Were More Awesome Than You

As 21st-century adults, it’s hard to fathom the kind of lives our great-great-grandparents led. While there were many difficulties they had to contend with, there were also many advantages to a pre-digital life in the 1870s and 1880s. . .

So how's it hold up?  Here, without the accompanying text, are the nine reasons?

1. They could probably ride and care for a horse.
.
2. They wrote and received letters regularly.

3. They could get by without electricity.

4. They could make their own household goods.

5. They knew how to behave in different social situations.

6. They could get a good job without a lot of education.

7. They could get cheap household help.

8. They got to witness the earliest years of some of the most fascinating things in modern life.

9. They didn’t have to explain their facial hair to anyone.

Is Ancestry.com right?  Well, not too surprisingly, given that I find a lot of this stuff interesting, I've already addressed a bunch of these right here.  And, given that, I'd have to say that Ancestry.com doesn't do too bad, but they aren't 100% on the mark either.  Let's look at each one a bit more carefully.
  
1. They could probably ride and care for a horse.

Well, maybe not so much.

I've addressed equine transportation quite a few times on this blog.  The definative one, if there is one, is likely here:

Horsepower

 Remounts. World War One.

I've been doing a series of posts here recently on transportation.  I started out with the default means of transportation, walking, and then recently I did one on bicycles, the device that first introduced practical daily mechanical transportation to most people, most places, in the western world, and which continues to be the default means of daily transportation for a lot of people around the globe.  Here I turn to nearly the oldest means of alternative ground transportation (accepting that floating transportation was the second means for humans to get around, following walking), that being animal transportation. And when we discuss animal transportation, we mean for the most part equine transportation, at least in the context discussed here.. 

Having said that, this one is pretty relevant too:

Walking

For the overwhelming majority of human history, if a person wanted to get somewhere, anywhere, they got there one of two ways.

They walked, or they ran.

That's it.

Businessmen, Washington D. C., 1940s. Walking.

Alternative modes of transportation didn't even exist for much of human history. The boat was almost certainly the very first one to occur to anyone.  Or rather, the canoe.  People traveled by canoe before they traveled by any other means other than walking. . .

As explored here, and elsewhere, most people actually didn't ride that much.  Horses are expensive and require daily upkeep of some sort.

Now, for rural people, of which there were a great deal more then, than as opposed to now, as a percentage of the population, knowledge of equine transportation was certainly the rule.

So here, Ancestry.com  hits and misses.

2. They wrote and received letters regularly.

Ancestry.com is right on the mark here, that's for sure.  I've touched on this quite a bit too, including one fairly recent entry.  So Ancestry.com gets high marks here, and indeed, this topic is well worth writing about here again, and I likely shall.

3. They could get by without electricity.

Very true.  And a topic I haven't directly covered.  I'll have to add this one to the hopper.

4. They could make their own household goods.

Also at least somewhat true, depending upon the era and what we're addressing.  Actually, for most of us, it'd be more true of our great grandparents, or perhaps our great great grandparents, but even our immediate parents were generally handier than most people are now.

Another thing I'll have to cover.

Here's the actual entry from Ancestry.com:

Great-great-grandma probably sewed all her own household linens, complete with fancy embroidery, tatting, or other decorative embellishments. She could probably knit, crochet, or hook rugs. While some of these skills are becoming popular again, the ready availability of manufactured textiles has made most of them hobbies rather than essential life skills.

Cudos to Ancestry.com again. Another topic right on point for this blog that I've failed to cover.

5. They knew how to behave in different social situations.

This is one that wouldn't have occurred to me, but I think there's some truth to it.  Another one that I need to cover here.

6. They could get a good job without a lot of education.

This is an interesting one.  Here's the actual entry:

The movement for compulsory secondary education didn’t begin in the U.S. until the 1890s, so many adults in the 1870s and ’80s had only an elementary education. Still, they were able to find good-paying jobs in manufacturing — steel, meatpacking, and other major industries. Of course, these jobs didn’t pay nearly as much as most skilled labor jobs, which required years of apprenticeship prior to employment. A college education was mostly for the elite. Student loan debt was unheard of.

Very true again.

This is one that I have covered here quite a bit, in numerous different ways.   An older short one (which is hardly the only time I've covered it) is here:

Education

 Engineering Building, University of Wyoming, 1950s.

First of all, let me start off by noting that I'm not posting this as a screed advocating dropping out of school, quite the opposite.

Anyhow, this is my second social history post of the day.  The first one, posted just below, concerns weddings, this one concerns education.

Some friends and I were observing how the value of degrees has changed over the past couple of decades. The change is really quite remarkable.
7. They could get cheap household help.

I've covered daily living and the burden or household chores a lot, and in depth, here. But hiring domestic help I haven't covered.

Of course, a lot of our ancestors were probably working as domestic help as well, which is, and was, a pretty hard job.

But, once again, something to cover.

8. They got to witness the earliest years of some of the most fascinating things in modern life.

I think I've covered this, but as a matter of prospective.  That is, we think we live in a time with a blistering pace of change, but compared to earlier eras, but not all that long ago, not so much.

That can be a burden as well as a benefit, quite frankly.  That is, we shouldn't always assume that people enjoy these changes.  Some do, some don't, but its mixed for most.  Often its put just the way it is here, but perhaps we should be a bit more introspective on this one.

9. They didn’t have to explain their facial hair to anyone.

True. And another one I've covered a couple of times.

Well, Ancestry.com.  Nice job all and all.  And also, thanks for giving me ideas for some topics I need to explore.