Lex Anteinternet: Riding Bicycles

Shoot, yesterday I missed this:

Bike to School Day

Join the Celebration on May 10!

Thousands of students, families, community partners, and elected officials around the country will celebrate the benefits of biking and walking to school during National Bike to School Day.

I only became aware of it due to this:

It’s Bike to School Day!

“SCHOOL CHILDREN, WERE FORCED TO USE THEIR BICYCLES ON FIELD TRIPS DURING THE FUEL CRISIS IN THE WINTER OF 1974. THERE WAS NOT ENOUGH GASOLINE FOR SCHOOL BUSES TO BE USED FOR EXTRACURRICULAR ACTIVITIES, EVEN DURING DARK AND RAINY WEATHER, 2/1974″
Falconer, David, Photographer.  Series: DOCUMERICA: The Environmental Protection Agency’s Program to Photographically Document Subjects of Environmental Concern, 1972 - 1977. Record Group 412: Records of the Environmental Protection Agency, 1944 - 2006

Source: catalog.archives.gov

I don't recall anything like that happening myself, but then in 1974 I was only eleven years old. Given local distances, this sort of thing almost certainly did not occur here, however.

So in belated honor of the day, I'm linking in an old post on bikes as transportation:

Lex Anteinternet: Riding Bicycles:

 Catholic Priest riding a bicycle in South Dakota, 1944.

As well as our prior commentary on biking in general:

On Riding A Bicycle

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

I have to say, yesterday, May 10, was a pretty nice day here, but it didn't start out very warm and early on the weather looked a bit threatening.  It cleared up, however.  Still, for here, this time of year can be a bit dicey for riding a bike to school.  Having said that, I walked to school my entire school career, all of it. Seems like that's a rarity now.

Blog Mirror: Everyday Lives In War: Join us! Shape the future of the First World War Network

Join us! Shape the future of the First World War Network

Elsewhere on May 11, 1917. . . .

Kurdish girls, carrying water.

U. S. Rifle Model of 1917 accepted

As we noted yesterday, we've quit daily "on this day in 1917" entries, although we have one here, unusually, for the second day in a row.  The reason for that is that we are trying to track a few things of interest or relevance to the overall theme of our blog, and changes in material items is one of them.  We have done quite a few of those over time.

While we posted a lot of items from March 2016 up until March 2017 that were on a daily basis, a few of the posts we did were on material changes, mostly in connection with the Punitive Expedition. We had intended to try to address the story of firearms that were used as part of that event, but we never really got around to it (and never had time to research it, frankly, particularly in regards to Mexican combatants, which would have been quite a project), other than to include a reference to it in a post that covered a lot of other items.  Now, of course, we've moved into World War One.  There's no earthly way that we're going to be able to cover every firearm used in the Great War, and indeed the outfit that the film below is from is doing that anyhow.  But we're making an exception today specifically because we covered this, a little, in the Punitive Expedition thread.  the reason is that here we find things really beginning to materially change in regards to the U.S. Army as it found itself just out of the "Border War" and into a World War.  Logic would hold that the Army should have at least had a good handle on small arms supplies going into the war.  Not so.

On this day, in 1917, it started to address that: (See:  The Story of Eddystone, page 22)

It's story:

Take a look, of course, at the story of the Pattern 14 and the Pattern 13, which are just in front of this.

It's tempting to categorize the M1917 as a "forgotten" rifle, although that might be going to far.  It's fair to say, however, that its story isn't accurately remembered by most.  The rifle equipped half of all U.S soldiers during World War One and was the rifle by far the most likely to be carried by a conscripted soldier.  While there was mass production of the M1903 Springfield, a great rifle in its own right, the fact of the matter was that the two government arsenals that were producing that rifle simply could not manufacture sufficient numbers  in which to equip the massive Army the United States determined to raise during the Great War.  Existing stocks of M1903s had already been assigned out to the Regular Army and the National Guard at the time the war commenced and ongoing production was really only sufficient to supply the needs of the Regular Army, the Federalized National Guard (which of course became part of the regular establishment during the war), the Navy and the Marine Corps (both of which had adopted the M1903 to replace the Navy Lee following the Spanish American War).  Therefore the large conscript Army raised by the US during the war relied, in large part, upon the M1917.

Indeed, the M1917 is likely to be the rifle carried by Sgt. Alvin York at the time of his famous deeds, as that was the rifle that equipped the 82nd Division, which he was in.

Sometimes oddly condemned by folks not terribly familiar with it, the rifle (watch the video) was an excellent rifle and had features that were somewhat more advanced than those on the slightly older M1903.  The sights in particular were very good and probably the very best on any rifle used by any army during the Great War.  Heat treatment problems made the actions brittle on some rifles made by Eddystone, a Remington facility, but this is also true of very early M1903 actions made by government arsenals.

The rifle was sufficiently good that it nearly went on to replace the M1903 following World War One, but it obviously did not.  It was retained in a more significant role than sometimes imagined, however, and not simply stored, as some will claim.  For some odd reason, it became the rifle that equipped chemical mortar units in the Army all the way into World War Two.  It also was issued to field artillerymen early in World War Two, who carried them at least as late as Operation Torch.  Stocks of the rifle were issued as well to Free French troops who used them in North Africa and on into Europe, and they saw action in Chinese hands during the war as well.  Finally, M1917s equipped various State Guard unis throughout World War Two, likely putting the rifle back in the hands of many men who had carried them twenty years prior.  In the category of men who had not carried them previously, they also equipped JrROTC units during these years.

An entirely civilian production item, not too surprisingly the rifle went on to have a sporting expression.  Thousands were converted by sportsmen and gunsmiths into sporting rifles. Beyond that, Remington kept the rifle in production as the Model 30, starting off at first using actions it was left with when the government abruptly cancelled orders following World War One.  Remington even took a run at making a sniper variant for the government but production ceased with the onset of World War Two and terminated forever following the war.

This wasn't, we should note, the only rifle that supplemented supplies of M1903s during World War One.  Obsolete models of rifles were brought back out and issued, and Mosin Nagants rejected by Imperial Russian inspectors would see use in the Polar Bear expedition. 

The British Pattern 14 Rifle.

This is the story of the British Pattern 14 Enfield, which turns out to be a story that's more important for the US than for the United Kingdom.





Not that its as unimportant for the UK as some would have it.  It was issued on the front lines early i the war and, as it was a more accurate rifle than the SMLE, it was used, with telescopic sight, as a sniper rifle by the British during the Great War.  It would not reprise that role in World War Two in the British Army, but it did in the Australian Army.

Blog Mirror: May 11, 1917, EO 2617 Calls for Enlistment of Women Telephone Operators into Army Signal Corps

May 11, 1917, EO 2617 Calls for Enlistment of Women Telephone Operators into Army Signal Corps

Wednesday, May 11, 2016 - 4:43am

Jon Harrison

Blog: 

Red Tape

Categories: 

History

Military & Veterans

---

During World War I, around 7000 U.S. and Canadian women telephone operators volunteered, but only 447 were selected, to serve with the Army Signal Corps in France and England, becoming the Army's first female combat unit.

The British Pattern 13 Enfield

This is part of a series, which will lead up to the M1917 Enfield, whose adoption date this is.  You'll have to read the later post for the story of the "American" Enfield.

The British Patter 13 Enfield.



It never served, but it darned near did.

John J. Pershing informed he is to lead American troops in France.

I've backed off nearly daily entries from 1917 here, now that we no longer have the Punitive Expedition to follow, and returned more of the traditional pace and focus of the blog, but there are exceptions and today is one.

On this day, in 1917, John J. Pershing, recently promoted to Major General, was informed by Secretary of War Newton Baker that he was to lead the American expeditionary force in France.

This now seems all rather anticlimactic, as if the appointment of Pershing was inevitable, and perhaps it was, but he was not the only possible choice and his selection involved some drama, to some extent.  Pershing was then 56 years old, an age that would have put him in the upper age bracket for a senior office during World War Two, but not at this time in the context of World War One.  Indeed, his rise to Major General had been somewhat unusual in its history and course, as he had earlier been advanced over more senior officers in an era when that was rare, and it is often noted that his marriage to Helen Warren, the daughter of powerful Wyoming Senator Francis E. Warren, certainly did not hurt his career.  Often regarded as having reached the pinnacle of his Army career due to "leading" the Army during the Punitive Expedition, he was in fact technically second in command during that event as the commander of the department he was in was Frederick Funston.

Funston is already familiar to readers here as we covered his death back in  February.  Not really in the best of health in his later years, but still a good five years younger than Pershing, Funston died suddenly only shortly after the Punitive Expedition concluded leaving Pershing his logical successor and the only Army officer then in the public eye to that extent.  Indeed, as the United States was progressing towards entering the war it was Funston, a hero of the Spanish American War, who was being considered by the Wilson Administration as the likely leader of a US contingent to Europe.  His sudden death meant that his junior, Pershing, took pride of place.

But not without some rivals.  Principal among them was Gen. Leonard Wood, a hero of the later stages of the Indian Wars and the Spanish American War who was a protégée of Theodore Roosevelt.  Almost the exact same age as Pershing, Wood was backed by Republicans in Congress for the position of commander of the AEF.  Not too surprisingly, however, given his close association with Roosevelt, he was not offered the command.  Indeed, it was this same week when it became plain that Roosevelt was also not to receive a combat command in the Army, or any role in the Army, for the Great War, to his immense disappointment.

Pershing went on, of course, to command the AEF and to even rise in rank to the second highest, behind only George Washington, rank in the U.S. Army.  That alone shows that he was an enormous hero in his era. He lived through World War Two and in fact was frequently visited by generals of that war, many of them having a close military association with him from World War One.  His personality dramatically impacted the Army during the Great War, so much so that it was sometimes commented upon to the effect that American troops were all carbon copies of Pershing.  Still highly regarded by most (although some have questioned in recent years his view of his black troops) he is far from the household name he once was for the simple reason that World War Two has overshadowed everything associated with World War One.

A Mid Week At Work Query: How did you end up doing what you do? Is it what you expected?

Iris Gaines: You know, I believe we have two lives.

Roy Hobbs: How... what do you mean?
Iris Gaines: The life we learn with and the life we live with after that.

The Natural

This past couple of weeks we've posted queries regarding whether your adult occupation, or occupations, match your childhood aspirations.  So far, in my case, of the variety of things I've done as an adult, a few did in fact match them.

Which doesn't take us to how we end up doing that thing.  Our job, our vocation, our occupation, which even presumes, likely inaccurately, that those things are in fact the same thing.

At some point, at least for most of us, we end up doing something fairly steadily.  Not everyone does, of course.  Some people drift from job to job, and some people frankly like doing that.  I'm occasionally amazed by people who are truly so varied in their talents that they can do that fairly effortlessly.

For most people, however, once they lose a job its a disaster.  They have, at some point, little ability to move occupations, which isn't the same as having no ability.  Of my close friends I think probably half of them have moved occupations as adults.  I definitely have not, but I've been unusually employed in multiple things as well, even while having a main vocation.   Still, the more specialized their occupation, and the more training that goes into it, the harder it is for a person to switch away from it even is desperate necessity requires it.  A lawyer friend of mine, for example, once observed when he decided to try to leave the law (which he ultimately did, returning to school in his 40s in order to become a teacher. . . his third career) that "lawyers are occupationally illiterate".  It isn't just them, if a physician walked into NAPA for example, hoping to pick up a counter job, he'd be unqualified for it.

But, amongst the same group of friends of mine noted above, a bunch of them didn't end up where they started to go.

Of my close high school friends, including myself, none of us did.  A friend who started off to be an engineer ended up a restaurateur.  One who aspired to be a dentist ended up a very successful electrician.  A friend who was hugely musically talented attended a first rate music school but has only played in bands on weekend gigs, basically.  He is principally employed as a big IT guy, self taught.  And I'm not working as a geologist.  Indeed, after I started practicing law the state started licensing geologist and I never took the exam for a license.  So I couldn't easily work in that field now if I wished to.

A lifelong friend who wanted to be a marine biologist had to switch gears to obtain a teaching certificate and never found employment in that.  He's worked as a chemist for many years.

Looking at my college friends the story is more or less the same. My closet college friend burned out on our mutual geology degrees (a very common story, frankly, and part of the reason I didn't go on to geology grad school) and never completed one final class for his degree.  He went on to work in retail for many ears and then switched to school infrastructure.  Of the other geology students I knew at the time, four were able to actually find full time work in the field, or closely related ones, and three remain employed in it today.  The fourth quit to become a lawyer, something that one of only two of us who graduated with Bachelors degrees and job offers in my class also did, refusing an offer of a job in  Australia after his family objected.

Law school, where I ended up, was a sea of altered dreams mixed in with islands of long held aspirations.  My closest friend in law school had a history degree but had spent a hitch in the Army as an enlisted man.  He nearly returned to that when we were in law school and did go on to a hugely successful career in the Army JAG Corps.  A friend of mine from basic training, who was discharged due to shin splints but who managed to get back in, to my surprise, completed a career as an Army officer, something I would never have guessed was a goal of his.  One of my better friends in the law started off as a U.S. Army Ranger (indeed two of my friends in the law were Rangers, and the individual mentioned above was in the Special Forces in a reserve unit for a time), then went to school to be a game warden and then switched to geology, a career path that isn't unfamiliar to me.  Most of us in law school, of course, did end up lawyers.  Its sort of the end of the road in terms of career change.

Indeed, one of the huge lies about law school is that "you can do anything with a law degree".  That fable is absolutely true as long as what you want to do with your law degree is practice law, which of course is actually the one and only point in getting a law degree so generally it works out well in terms of finding work with the degree.

Or it did.  I read that is no longer true and there are a lot of unemployed or underemployed lawyers.

Anyhow, I think it's interesting that when I talk to people their career paths often aren't what we think they are. We'll often read a trade journal and it'll say something like "Geologist Bob decided to enter the field when, at age 12, he found a triceratops roosting on his parents barn door. . . ." or "When I think back on my career in the law that has lead me to be appointed a United States Supreme Court Justice, I think back warmly on that time my little sister stole my Wheaties and I looked up on how to obtain a Writ of Replevin to get them back. . .I was six".  Hmm, probably not.  Indeed, many of those folks who obtain real pinnacles in their careers started off somewhere else.  The two now passed gentlemen who started the firm where I work now both started off with other career goals, but how many know that?  Not many, probably.

I'm' not sure what the point of this really is.  Many later career goals do work out.  Three of my close friends from my geology days have made careers in that field, or very closely related ones, for decades. Maybe more of the students I knew then are employed in the field other than the one I mentioned above.  Most of the engineering students I knew did become employed engineers.  More than a few of the people I knew who took up pursuing a teaching degree found work in that, and indeed, at least one of them is retired from it.

So what about you?  Did you have career goals, and did you end up where you planned to be?

All the further I've managed to get. . .

between chores and the weather.

After work on May 5.  Put in all the potatoes.  The next day all I did was work around the house on a fencing project.  And the day after that completed that, did some 4H leadership stuff, but did manage to complete the last row.  Found my hooked up hose was broken and that the rainbird type sprinkler, which admittedly left out all winter long, was no longer functioning (I can never get those to last more than one year).

And then it started raining, again.

So, reds, whites and one row of purples.  That's it so far.

Man, it's been wet.

The cell phone outnumbers the landline.

 LoC Caption:  "The Story of the Telephone. Speeding the spoken word. Scene from the new American Red Cross motion picture, "Speeding the Spoken Word," in which the romance of the telephone is graphically portrayed on the screen".  1920.

The number of mobile-phone users in the U.S. surpassed the number of conventional land-based phone lines in the second half of 2004, the government said Friday.

By the end of the year, there were 181.1 million cellphone subscribers, compared with 177.9 million access lines into U.S. homes and businesses, the Federal Communications Commission said in a biannual report.

Los Angeles Times.

A person has to be careful with statistics as they can lead to incorrect assumptions.  For one thing, this may tend to lead to an erroneous assumption that the number of households with landlines is outnumbered by the number with cell phones only, which would be erroneous.  For example, our house has a landline, but all three of us who live here have cell phones.  In contrast, my son, who is in college, lives in a house in which there are no landlines in use.  There might be for internet service, but no actual landline phone. 

The point is, however, that sheer number of cell phones doesn't equate with households served only by cell phones, although that day is coming.  Indeed, the tyranny of the cell phone is at the point at which a lot of homes have one landline but a lot of cell phones.

Good, bad?

Well, both, I suppose.

FWIW, I'm actually surprised it took this long to reach this point.

The debate on a national health care system. A few random thoughts

 Ambulances, Ft. Huachuca, 1918.

I should pay more attention to the debate going on about health care than I do.  I really should. It really matters.  I've posted on it a few times, but for some reason it just isn't the burning issue for me that it with some.

Which leads me to my first point. There are some pundits out there declaring that the GOP sponsorship of a new bill, repealing the Affordable Health Care Act, means they're doomed in the mid terms as they're hurting their constituency.  

The pundits, once again, are delusional.

This entire talking point assumes that the entire nation including the rust belt voters have immersed themselves in the topic of medical provision, concluded that a national health care system is needed, and are now debating the best one, and have concluded that was the ACA.  Learning that they personally will loose benefits, they'll become outraged.

Bull.

The debate on health care on the street level isn't about this at all.  It's more visceral.  And it really deals with how much the government should do.  You can have a visceral negative reaction to something that's good for you.

Take Prohibition for example.  It was a health care success, benefiting those at the bottom of the economic rung the best. So we kept it, right?

No, we repealed it, and the reason we did is we just didn't like people telling us not to drink.  The health care debate is like that.

Which doesn't mean it isn't being treated like the opposite, and doesn't have some of its features.  Demonstrating another point.  When the government gives out benefits its deuce difficult to take them back, and that is something that really should be taken into account whenever that is done.

Free and reduced school lunches, Federal involvement in pre school education, Medicare, Medicaid and a million other programs are such examples.  I'm not saying that they are good or bad.  What I'm saying is that whenever these are debated, they're debated in terms of adjustment, not taking away. Because once you give a benefit, it's really hard to take it back, and soon it becomes viewed as a right.

Free and reduced school lunches, and now breakfasts at least here, are a good example.  When I was attending school everyone, no matter how poor, had food provided by their parents.  If a parent had failed to provide this basic need, they'd have been looked down upon by everyone and they probably would have received a hostile visit from the state.  Now, nobody views this in this fashion and its accepted that the local taxpayers will feed the children of those who can't feed their own.  Is this bad?  I'm not saying that (although there are interesting moral elements of it all the way around). But what I am saying is that good or bad, and in economic times of plenty or lean, it's going to be done. We started doing it, and not doing now seems unthinkable.

Which brings me back to why some folks have true complaints about the Affordable Care Act.

Most people do feel that everyone needs basic medical care.  But what does that mean?  Democrats, in this debate, like to throw in "Women's Reproductive Health" and indeed there are now quite a few people who feel this is a national right.  But what that really means is that the Federal Government is subsidizing sex.  

There's something flat out weird about that, but beyond that a lot of people find that when we reach this particular point we are reaching the limits of what they can tolerate under their own belief set, and they'll push back irrespective of what people like David Frum think about it.  

To some who hold philosophical ideas about the nature of liberty, this entire concept is truly abhorrent.  How can we justify taxing everyone so that some can avoid the natural results of their biological acts?  Does this impinge on a concept of individual liberty as it creates universal responsibility for an individual act?

To other social conservatives this is just childish. The basic argument would be "grow up and take care of yourself if you are acting like adults". And there's more than a little to that.  If people are adult enough to act like adults in this fashion, well, what happens is their problem, this argument would go.

For fiscal conservatives it couldn't be weirder.  Taxing everyone to pay for an individual biological act is bizarre.  It would make just as much sense to tax everyone to pay for food for everyone, and indeed it'd make a great deal more sense.

And of course for some its deeply offensive to their religions, and they're put in crisis by such a bill.

Which brings us to this.  A lot of "affordable care" isn't medicine, but sociology.  When you medicate to prevent the results of a healthy body doing a biological act that's not medicine or it certainly isn't necessary medicine. It's nearly the opposite. And objecting to that makes a lot of sense.

Which, in this particular era, brings us to the topic of how much do we want to cover?  Nobody wants the ill to go untreated.  But do we extend to the margins of science?  Are we going to cover birth control, abortions, cosmetic surgery based on self identity?

If it seems like we haven't really discussed all these things its because, well, we haven't.

And what about costs?

A lot of the reasons that health care is so expensive is that its improved so much over the past half century.  But another is that we don't regulate the price of things in our sort of economy.  We don't really know why things cost what they do.

But we do know, if we are honest, that a national health care system that actually works, and we aren't there yet, will control costs.  People who think otherwise are delusional on this point.  No national health care system that includes everyone will function until taxes are levied to pay for it and costs are controlled by the payer. That's a fact.  And in that sort of system, the money flowing into medical practices and medical industries will have to ultimately decline massively.  And some of this will result in reduced services, probably, and indeed perhaps rationing of one thing or another.

Again, I'm not saying that is good or bad.  I'm saying that flat out is.  It happens to an extent already as health insurers never pay the full rate of anything, nor do government entities like state run workers compensation systems.  But the extent which this would have to occur in a national system is huge.

Which takes me to a prediction. 

At the end of the day, in a nation as big and diverse as we've become, but in an era in which medicine is so advanced and so expensive, we're going to end up with some type of single payer system sooner or later.  We'll have to. We've started down this road, and that's where we will end up.  We're not going back to the pre Affordable Care days, and we're not going to wipe out health insurance and go back to 1939.  So we're going forward, and that means sooner or later we're going forward into one system.  It might be fifty systems mandated by the Federal government, perhaps with health carriers bidding in, or it might be a giant workers compensation type system. But that's what we'll end up doing.  When we get there, there's a good chance that what it provides will be limited by national consensus, or discord.  In other words, my guess it'll pay for all emergency medicine, basic treatment, but if you want birth control pills, your hooters enhanced, or an ugly scar across your chest removed, you'll have to pay for that yourself.

Later rather than sooner, but that's my guess, for good or ill.

Dog Pile

What's right isn't always popular, and whats popular isn't always right--Albert Einstein

Kids play a game, or used to, that was called "dog pile". Basically it involved a group of children jumping piling on one kid in a big pile.

James Montgomery Flagg illustration for Leslie's Magazine, May 3, 1917.  Civilization, which presumably was represented by the Allies, is depict ed about to strike down the German Beast, which is wearing the classic German helmet of the time,and has a turned up Kaiser Wilhelm mustache.  This post isn't actually about World War One, but illustrates my point.  The German Empire was only marginally less civilized, if at all, than quite a few of the Allied powers of the Great War, and wasn't particularly beastly or uniquely so.

I'm often amazed by the extent to which adults play this game.

Adults, of course, don't recognize that they're doing it.  No, not at all.  But they do.

Public opinion is the worst of all opinions.--Nicolas Chamfort

Often when they do, they believe that their being pioneering in their views.  Not always, but often.  You can tell what current social trend of the day has achieved widespread acceptance when everyone, most people, college protestors, and the media, dog pile on whomever holds the opposing view.

Journalist do control public opinion; but it is not contolled by the arguments they publish--it is controlled by teh arguments between the editor and the sub editor, which they do not publish. --G. K. Chesterton.

Now, that means that holding those views involves an element of bravery.  It doesn't make those views right, but merely because a majority of people hold the opposing view at any one time doesn't make those views right either.

A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it.--G. K. Chesterton

In my lifetime, I've seen the public jump on the bandwagon on opinions and movements in a major way, and then back away from them just as strongly.   

Nearly everyone was for invading Iraq in the first Gulf War, no matter what they say now.  Journals that went after the government for the war later on were enthusiastically for it before the first shot was fired, and on the march to Baghdad there was hardly a dissenting voice.

At the end of the Vietnam War everyone was against it, and all veterans were drug addled baby killing dangers to society.  A few years later, the war was simply a mistake (oops) and the veterans were all mistreated heroes.

And so too, I'd note, with big social movements that touch on the very nature of human beings and our natures.  Its interesting to watch the consensus move to the point on some things that people can declare the opposing view wrong in every way and still think themselves trendy, which in fact the opposite is the case. None of that, however, changes the nature of nature, including our own natures.  Nature doesn't care much about our opinions.

People can tell you to keep your mouth shut, but that doesn't stop you from having your own opinion.--Anne Frank

Capitalists

Too much capitalism does not mean too many capitalists, but too few capitalists.

GK Chesterton

Signing the French War Loan, May 8, 1917.

The Big Picture: Stock Yards, St. Paul Minnesota. May 8, 1917

Seems odd

The French have their national elections on Sunday, and are having one today.

That seems odd for some reason.

Hate and Love

There are those who hate Christianity and call their hatred an all-embracing love for all religions.

GK Chesterton

Sunday Morning Scene: Churches of the West: Unidentified, Medicine Bow Wyoming

Churches of the West: Unidentified, Medicine Bow Wyoming:

This is an old Prairie Gothic style church in Medicine Bow, Wyoming, but other than that, I don't know anything about it.

Eternal rebels

He is a very shallow critic who cannot see an eternal rebel in the heart of a conservative.

GK Chesterton

Best Post of the Week of April 30, 2017

The Vision Blues

A Mid Week At Work Query: When you were a teenager, what did you want to be?

Magaine covers, May 5, 1917. Both war themed?

Robbins & Myers Band, Springfield, Ohio, May 5th, 1917

Blog Mirror: #TBT: Working Team

#TBT: Working Team

Posted on April 28, 2017 by Carol

A hired man drives the team raking hay on the Greet Ranch.  1920’s photo.

A Mid Week At Work Query: When you were a teenager, what did you want to be?

Pop Fisher: You know my mama wanted me to be a farmer.
Roy Hobbs: My dad wanted me to be a baseball player.

From The Natural

Just a week ago I posted a query about your dreams about what you wanted "to be" when you were a child.

And now I'm going to those troublesome teen years.

About this time, coinciding really with entering junior high school, or middle school as it apparently is more commonly called, this question comes up with increasingly frequency in direct and implied fashion for nearly everyone.  "What are your plans?"  "What do you want to do?"  Everyone has experienced it.  For many people, for the first time in their lives they're forced to consider that question.  Indeed, the education system itself is partially geared towards helping you to make that decision, or should I say forcing you to make it?

And I'm not necessarily saying that's bad, I'm just saying it occurs.

It's really at this stage that I start to take some people seriously when they declare that their later vocations were their earlier goals.  As earlier noted, when somebody tells me "I've always wanted to be a lawyer, doctor, accountant" etc., I think "oh bull". But if somebody tells me that they formed that goal in high school or middle school I credit it.

But how often do those high school dreams pan out?  I wonder.

When I was in middle school I didn't have any sort of really defined career goals.  I had a bunch of potential aspirations. This carried on, really, to high school, or at least up to my senior year of high school.  I thought about entering the service. . .maybe the Army. . maybe the Marine Corps. . . maybe the Air Force (the Navy always struck me as something I didn't want to do) but by the time I was in middle school that childhood aspiration had really declined a great deal.  By the time I was in the later stages of high school I knew that what I really wanted to do was to be a rancher, a particularly frustrating goal if deeply felt, which it was, and you live in the later part of the 20th Century.  By that time I was well aware that buying ranch land was out of sight for my family and that homesteading had ended in 1932.  That didn't keep me, however, from investigating northern Canada (homesteading, oddly enough, in the far north had just been halted) and Alaska (where it still goes on, on a state level, but where it's frankly geared towards the hobbyist and outdoorsman, not the real farmer).  So that was clearly out. So what then?

Well, clearly, an outdoor occupation.

The one I strongly considered was becoming a game warden. Indeed, by the time I was a senior in high school I'd decided to become a game warden.  

I'm not a game warden.

I changed my mind on that for the simple reason that my father noted that there were a lot of guys around here with wildlife management degrees who weren't working in that field, which was likely true.  In retrospect, that was an example of making a big decision on little information and, hindsight being 20/20, I doubt it was the right decision. The field I did enter involved an extremely difficult course of study and ended up in no employment anyhow, not necessarily a better result.  Indeed, likely a worse one.

Sometime around my senior year I vaguely decided to enter the field of geology.  And I do mean vague as I can't recall  it every being  a hard and fast decision at that point and it didn't really fix until I was in college.  Geology, I thought, was an obviously outdoor career.  That was my reason for entering it; that and that my mother used to note, probably in the form of encouragement, that I was good at science.  I was, but I was never any good at math, and that meant I ended up taking a lot of math in college, but I also ended up doing fairly well at it.  

One thing I was good at was writing, and I seriously thought about trying to become a writer.  I knew even then, however, that breaking into writing in a serious way was a tough thing to do.  I really wanted to write history, but a person can't really just write history.  I briefly considered majoring in history in college but I didn't know where I could take that, so I didn't (again, as it happens it would have qualified me as much for my ultimate occupation as my geology degree did).  When I was in high school I was on the school newspaper for a year and I entertained trying to be a newspaper writer, but for whatever reason its an aspiration I dropped fairly quickly.

So returning to the question, what did you want to do as a teenager, and are you that?  Of the five things I thought I wanted to be when I was a teenager; solider, game warden, writer, geologist, and rancher, I've been three on a part time basis. I guess those aspirations sort of worked out, but sort of not.  Being a part time soldier worked out well, but being a part time rancher was something that came late and never fully.  I've written quite a large number of magazine articles and one book, but I have found that my occupation precludes me from really having the time I need to write history like I want to.  And I've started a novel, but it's slow moving and has been slow moving for years.  Again, a writer needs time to write.

Lessons learned?  

Well, I don't know that there are any.

How about you? What did you want to do, and did you do that?

Horse Show, Washington D.C. May 3, 1917

The Casper Daily Tribune for May 3, 1917: Lazy men and soldiering, and the start of a Casper landmark

There are a couple of items in this May 3, 1917 issue of the Casper Daily Tribune that are relevant for later eras.

For one thing, the boom in the town was now reflecting itself in the new professional appearance of the newspaper.  Gone was the small town appearance of purely local news.  Casper, for the first time, now had a paper that was starting to rival the big established papers in other regions of the state.  This paper doesn't even resemble the appearance of the Casper papers of just a couple of months ago.

Secondly, we learn in this paper that the Presbyterian community had purchased the lot where the First Presbyterian Church in Casper now stands:

The church, as can be seen above, is of substantial size and that also points to the change in Casper's economic fortunes in this period. 

Finally, from the various news articles I've seen, I've sort of taken it to be the case that Casper, which was a tiny town prior to 1917, did not have a National Guard unit up until this time.  I could be in error, however, as Casper's newspapers were of a fairly poor quality and they aren't all available by any means.  Douglas had one, however, and its small papers reported on that unit extensively.  Over the last couple of issues, however, its clear that the National Guard, which was actively recruiting for new units in the opening weeks of American participation in World War One, was recruiting for just such a unit to be formed in Casper.

Earlier we noted that 1917 was the year that really made Casper. This newspaper, in and of itself, provides some pretty good examples of how that is true.

Blog Mirror: Analysis | History suggests there is a way to lower inequality. But you’re not going to like it

History suggests there is a way to lower inequality. But you’re not going to like it

Blog Mirror: Seven Office Menswear Dilemmas—and How to Manage Them

Seven Office Menswear Dilemmas—and How to Manage Them

A suit and tie was a cinch. But relaxed dress codes have left men tense about workwear. Here, some angsty issues and solid advice

By

Nandini D’Souza Wolfe

April 13, 2017 4:14 p.m. ET

186 COMMENTS

“ARE YOU GOING FARMING?” Not a question you want to find yourself fielding at the water cooler, but when Glenn Yarris wore light-wash denim jeans and a thick belt to work, he received exactly this reaction—from his boss. Mr. Yarris, 32, had unwittingly strayed from the uniform of dark jeans and sport-coat to which the men at Humanscale, an ergonomic furniture company in Manhattan, he . . .

Ah, standards of dress.

A topic we've touched on quite a few times here.

Good stuff in this article.

Baseball's Only Double No Hitter, May 2, 1917

On this day.

 Winning pitcher Toney.

The Reds v The Cubs.  Ten innings.  One run.  Victory to the Reds.

 Hippo Vaughn.

Fred Toney v. Hippo Vaughn.  They both pitched the entire game.

When the run came in, and the Cubs lost, Cubs owner Charlie Weeghman stuck his head into the Cubs clubhouse and yelled at the team, “You’re all a bunch of asses!

 Charlie Weeghman, far left, in 1914.

The Vision Blues

Some time ago here I posted about my struggle with vision in the context of work and daily life.

It isn't that I have really bad eyesight.  I don't. But my eyesight has arrived at the point where my distance vision isn't changing but my near in vision has reached the point where I need my regular glasses, which are bifocals, for reading and distance vision, but I needed a separate set of "computer glasses" to work with computers.

Yippee.

The problem that presents is a lot more irritating than it sounds.  With computer glasses on, my vision is clear for maybe about three feet. Or, more accurately, from about 12" out to about 3'.

Now, one of the things about practicing law is that you use your computers anymore a lot.  It's something that I'm highly acclimated to and its something that newer lawyers can't imagine not being the case.  But, when I stop to think about it, it's been enormously revolutionary.  That wasn't always the case by any means.

Lawyer Mabel Willebrandt in her law office, probably about 1920. She became an Assistant U.S. Attorney in 1921, something really remarkable for woman in that era.  She's doing what we used to all do, read hard texts in an office full of books.  We still do that, but we are also typically on the computer all day long.

And that has meant that I must put on my computer glasses for large stretches of the day.

What this has taught me, however, is that a lot, and I do mean a lot, of people drop in my office all day long.  I hadn't really appreciated that until I started wearing computer glasses.  As I couldn't see them clearly, what that meant in turn is that I was taking my computer glasses off and putting my regular glasses back on constantly.

That's a pain.

That's particularly a pain if, as in my case, you wear glasses that have a temple frame, which very view people do.  As I noted in an earlier post on my glasses tribulations:

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.

Temple frames, as you can see, have those ear hook things.

Very few glasses have that now.

I don't know exactly why they were so common at one time and are not now, but what I do know is that glasses reached this basic configuration, nose pieces and ear hooks, due to horseback riding.  They went to that basic style as these sorts of glasses are more secure than others.  Frankly, that's why I liked them as well, in part.  Not only are the lenses smaller than those so typically found on eyeglasses today, save for "fashion" glasses, but they hooks mean they stay on.  Having had glasses come off, on odd occasion, in the field, I can tell you that's bad.

Indeed, at least as late as the 1980s one of the two pair of highly ugly eyeglasses issued to enlisted soldiers in the Army had the hook type ear pieces.

 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.

Well, while I like that sort of frame as they stay on, if you are taking them off and putting them back on a million times a day, it really becomes a pain.

 My computer desk. . . okay, that's actually a very old "secretary" that I've re-purposed as a computer desk, which it does very well as I might add.  I'm embarrassed by the state of messiness in this photo, but it shows where I spend most of my day most days.

Which is why I finally reached a point I couldn't stand it, and now I'm wearing contact lenses at work for the first time ever.  And wearing contact lenses again for the first time since probably 1985 or 1986.

I don't really like it, even though everyone says that I would (pretty much).

I really hate putting them in.  Next to that, I hate taking them out.

And I hate feeling vain. That may sound odd, and I wasn't expecting to feel that way, but I do.

I guess that's because I'm old enough that contact lenses weren't the default eye correction for most people.  When I first had them in my early twenties they were sort of a way of not wearing glasses, and as I hated my glasses at the time (and that was a particularly ghastly era for glasses) that's sort of what I was seeking to to at that time.  That isn't really the case any more.  Even my recently departed next door neighbor at work wore contact lenses, and he was in his 90s when he passed away.

And it wasn't what I was seeking to do now, and in part that may just be because I do look different without my glasses, I'm used to them (and like them) and its odd. The glasses sort of became a part of my established appearance even to me.  And of course people noticed.

But. . . . it did solve the dilemma I was facing.  I change my glasses much less often now.  So it worked.

Recalling the World War One Over Reaction

New York American: This Must Not Be.  Cartoon published May 2, 1917.. "Cartoon shows a woman labeled 'Liberty' being chased down the steps of the U.S. Capitol by a man labeled "Congress" with a whip labeled 'Espionage Bill.' " 

Headquarters, Eastern Department of the Army, May 2, 1917

The New York Times, on this day, ran a collection of photographs of officers at the Eastern Department of the Army, which no doubt was inspired by US efforts to built up its Army now that war had been declared.

"U.S. Army officer (Major General) James Franklin Bell (1856-1919) who was put in charge of the Eastern Department of the U.S. Army in May, 1917."  LOC Caption

Note that Bell is wearing a wrist watch, something that was only just starting to become popular with men and, it is often claimed, due to the war.

"(Col.) John Park Finley who served at the Headquarters of the Eastern Department of the U.S. Army at Governors Island, New York under General James Franklin Bell."  LOC title.

"Col. William A. Simpson who served at the Headquarters of the Eastern Department of the U.S. Army at Governors Island, New York as Adjutant General under General James Franklin Bell."  LOC Caption.

"Col. William A. Simpson who served at the Headquarters of the Eastern Department of the U.S. Army at Governors Island, New York as Adjutant General under General James Franklin Bell."  LoC Caption.  Col. Simpson's mustache wouldn't pass the regulations that the Great War brought in.

"Captain Richard I. McKenney (1880-1936) who served at the Headquarters of the Eastern Department of the U.S. Army at Governors Island, New York, under General James Franklin Bell."  LoC Title.

Today In Wyoming's History: Updates for May, 2017: Caps and Clothing of 1930s Working Men.

This month's update thread on our companion history blog:

Today In Wyoming's History: Updates for May, 2017:

May 1:  Wyoming State hiring freeze added for 2017.

Totally unrelated to the updates, what a great photo of engineer caps in use by railroad men in the late 30s or early 40s.  The men in foreground are reading newspapers (a couple of them must be travelers) and the ones in the background are playing dominoes (they are at work, but obviously waiting for something).

Indeed, what a great photo of work men's attire in general.  The man standing on the right has an engineer's cap, boots, "carpenter's" pants, and a leather jacket.  All when working men generally dressed to fit their roles (which they still often do), leather was common, not a luxury item, and before the dominance of the baseball cap.

I missed this one when doing what was formerly our most popular thread here,  Caps, Hats, Fashion and Perceptions of Decency and being Dressed. Too bad, it's a great one.  Lots going on, and it says a lot about all kinds of things.

Blog Mirror: Today In Wyoming's History: May 1. The state completely freezes hiring, but are things stabilizing , and does that matter?

From our history blog:

Today In Wyoming's History: May 1:

2017  A complete freeze on state hiring commences.

But what does that mean?  Do they not even fill vacated positions?  I think not, but I'm not sure.

I know why the state has done this. The recent economic downturn, which I posted on a lot in 2015 and 2016, dried up a lot of the state's funding.  The irony, however, is that coal production is actually back up quite a bit. Oil seems to be coming back as well, although the price remains in the $60/bbl region.  This may, therefore, be a bit of the backside of a cycle not catching up with the front.  I.e., maybe the "hard freeze" made more sense a year ago than it does now.

Of course it may also be that we're in a new economic era in the state, as I've noted before.  If so, we may have to acclimate to a smaller government, indeed a smaller everything, for quite some time.

The Garden, 2017

The snow finally melted enough and t he ground dried out enough to use the rototiller.  Of course, we had snow as recently as late last week and not a thing is planted.

LSAT Angst and the Logical Process

Some people study for the LSAT.

Some even take courses to prepare for it.

And many worry about it.

I know this because as a lawyer I accidentally see advertisements and posts etc. along these lines. 

And I occasionally see ones where some poor soul is concerned because he or she is taking it for the third time and is now convinced, not without good reason, that the dream of being a lawyer is about to fade away.

Well. . . dear reader, if you can't get a good score on your LSAT simply by showing up, you probably have less business in law school than a trained bear.

I wasn't aware, when I took the LSAT back in 1986, that people freaked out about it.  I took that and the Graduate Record Exam, the GRE, at the same time and I didn't study for either.  Somebody counseled me to get a book to study for the LSAT, which I did, but it was so boring I didn't put much effort into it and rapidly gave it up.  I really wasn't aware of the freak out nature of the test until I was waiting in line to take it and there were some nervous folks waiting in line who had taken it before and scored low.  I scored high on the LSAT and the GRE without studying for either.  And that is how it should be.

According to the LSAT folks:

The LSAT is designed to measure skills that are considered essential for success in law school: the reading and comprehension of complex texts with accuracy and insight; the organization and management of information and the ability to draw reasonable inferences from it; the ability to think critically; and the analysis and evaluation of the reasoning and arguments of others.

If you can't do that stuff on your own, you may need to study, but not for the test.  In other words, studying for the test may camouflage your inabilities in these regards.

Now, let's be honest.  Law school, any law school, is easy. Everyone thinks its super hard simply because of the myth surrounding it.  But if you have the ability to read and a mind that naturally uses logic, rather than emotion, to analyze, it's a breeze.  It was so much easier than my geology undergrad it isn't even funny.  It's probably a lot harder than majoring in some major designed only to get you into law school, but that's hardly a fair comparison.

But practicing law is hard.  Really hard.  And it never gets easy.  You may get better at it, but as you do the complexity of the problems you face will grow along with it.  

And hence the point.  If you can't do well on the LSAT, maybe you should really consider doing something else.

Arras Cathedral, April 30, 1917

Blog Mirror: “California hop growers earnestly protest against threatened action of Federal government prohibiting brewing of beer as necessary war measure…”

“California hop growers earnestly protest against threatened action of Federal government prohibiting brewing of beer as necessary war measure…”

Blog Mirror: Why ‘free’ stuff destroys our sense of worth – a lesson from photography

Why ‘free’ stuff destroys our sense of worth – a lesson from photography

Posted on April 29, 2017 by Matthew Wright

I read a while back that a proportion of the photos being taken these days don’t even get looked at afterwards. The advent of the cellphone camera hasn’t just killed the ‘pocket snappy’ camera, it’s thrown us into the age of disposable imagery where photographs are taken and then forgotten . . .

The Best Post of the Week of April 23, 2017

A Mid Week At Work Query: When you were a little kid, what did you want to be?

Edwardina L. Lavoie, bugler, 1st Artillery, New York National Guard

Distributism at work . . .

The Fallen of World War Two.

British field kitchen, April 29, 1917