Mid Week At Work: Work teaser and coal funds?

 

The Tribune ran an article yesterday about a Workforce Initiative bill that Governor Mead apparently expects the legislature to pass this next session.  In discussing it, they stated:

Despite the state’s major funding shortfalls, Gov. Matt Mead said he expects Wyoming lawmakers to pass a workforce training package worth tens of millions of dollars when they meet this winter.

Mead said that while investing in workforce training, which is a key part of his economic diversity initiative, may be a tough sell, it is essential to helping the state’s economy recover and grow.

“There is a lot of things that look counterintuitive that will get us where we need,” Mead told a meeting of the Wyoming Community Development Agency Board on Monday in Casper.

But we never learned what kind of workforce training he was contemplating.  

That's a bit frustrating.

We've been down this road in some ways so many times its as circular as the Indianapolis 500, and just about as long.  We figure we need to diversify, and the state government needs to have a role in that, and then the energy industry picks up and we forget all about it.  Indeed, of note, one of the training facilities, a private one, that sprung up last go around was one that trained people to work on oil rigs.  That may have been a good thing, it'd be better to have people trained rather than not, but its interesting that this is where our training heart turned out to be. 

Of course, that's not completely fair.  The University, which is suffering from budget woes, and the community colleges, remain fantastic,and truly diverse, training grounds.

While it might not seem directly related, this morning readers of the Tribune were greeted by this headline:

Barrasso presses DOE nominee on committment to coal research

And yes, "commitment"  is misspelled in at least the on line original.  Not my blunder there, although I make plenty.

In that article we learn that Senator Barrasso is pressing the DOE nominee for Assistant Secretary of Energy for Fossil Energy, Steven Winberg, for that commitment.

Why should Mr. Winberg have to make such a commitment?  We're repeatedly told that our state is rigorously for free enterprise.  Wouldn't a perfectly rational comment from the nominee have been something like "Mr. Senator, we will rely upon the glory of the competitive market to meet the future energy demands of the United States and the world to provide abundant future energy. . . and if coal wants to be part of that, as it does, we are confident that it will invest the resources necessary to meet that goal. . ."

Well, he's not going to say that and Senator Barasso would have gasped if he had.  But there's something to that.

The state has been sinking money into "clean coal" even though at the same time many of the knowledgable people in the area have stated that it can't be done.  It clearly can't be done without the investment of enormous amounts of money, and that appears to be more, at least right now, than the industry itself has.  

Perhaps this investment by Wyoming, and maybe by the Federal government, is worthwhile.  The US has a lot of coal and it's a major employer in Wyoming.  The odds are against its success however, and that's quite clear.  It's also counter to a growing international trend away from coal, as well as the economic time line of the industry.  I'm not saying that trying to develop clean coal is completely pointless, but it is interesting that if we're willing, as a state, to spend money on the effort, and to have the Federal government do it as well.  That's a bit hypocritical if we don't feel that effort is likewise worthwhile elsewhere, and perhaps more particularly on things likely to have a more immediate impact.

Errata: National Anthem and Indian Actors

A correction of a couple of items.

Yesterday we ran an article called  Taking the Knee--Football, other sports, the National Anthem. What the heck is going on here? in which we noted that the National Anthem became routine in baseball games during World War One.

That was sort of correct, but not entirely.  It was more routinely introduced in the game during the Great War, but it didn't become standard for the game until 1942.  That is, during World War Two.

It became standard for football that same year, and at the end of the war the Commissioner of football made a statement that it should remain.  It became an NFL regulation some time later. That is, it must be played before every game.  The players didn't stand on the field for the National Anthem in football until after September 11, 2001, however.

Baseball is a much more international game than football, with players from many countries playing it, but it must be a bit awkward for players from other nations when the US National Anthem is played.  Baseball, of course, accommodates that, at least in the case of Canada, by playing the Canadian national anthem at Canadian games.

Secondly, in my review of Wind River I noted as one of my few complaints about the film that it could have had more Indian actors.  It turns out it did have more Indian actors.  So my complaint there was largely misplaced, for which I'm glad.

Taking the Knee--Football, other sports, the National Anthem. What the heck is going on here?

You can tell exactly how clueless I am about football by the fact that I did not know that we were having a big national crises (flap?) or something until after all the Sunday football games were over.

Now, I don't follow football at all, which is partially why I missed the whole story. And I was really busy last week and over the weekend.  Still, I should have noticed something was going on.  I didn't until I saw some Facebook feed or something and I had to ask my wife, who does follow football, what was up. Even at that I was a bit confused until then if their going to their knee in the National Anthem was intended as a sign of respect (which it could be) or of protest.

Protest, I gather.

I didn't know the full dimensions of it (assuming I do now) until I listened to the weekend news shows on my way up to a distant town for work, and back. 

Now I'm more or less up to speed, I guess, even if I still feel sort of oddly out of it.

To add to the surreal feeling, I've been watching Ken Burns The Vietnam War and therefore I'm getting a dose of 1960s protests at the same time.  Last night's episode death with the 1968 Democratic Convention riots, amongst others, and so there's an odd eerie sense, in some ways, of having been here before.  I was only ten years old when the United States pulled its last combat troops out of Vietnam, but I can actually remember some of the events now being described from 1968.  Frankly, the late 1960s were awful.  Indeed, the whole 1960s were awful, and the 1970s weren't much better.  But I digress.

So apparently, this all started off last year when a football player named Colin Kaepernick, about whom I know nothing whatsoever, took the knee, or perhaps sat down, during the National Anthem at some point during the 2016 season in protest of racism in the United States. At the time he was quoted as saying:

I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color. To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder

This followed all the police shooting incidents prior to that.

From that, the protests spread and since the election of President Trump they've apparently spread further.  I had no idea, really, as I don't follow football and protests in football games have to be pretty darned big in order for me to notice them. Anyhow, Kaepernick's actions come in that context. It's worth noting that something like 70% of the football players in the NFL are black.  He's no longer in the NFL, however, as he became a free agent last year and nobody picked him up, this event widely being believed to be the reason for that.  If so, he's paying a personal penalty for his actions, which is the risk of any such action, while it neither justifies it or condemns it.

Since then, in his extremely odd way, Donald Trump made a comment about the protests recently in a speech, which have spread, to the effect that the owners should fire the SOBs (his words, although I've abbreviated it here) who do this. That caused, in predictable fashion, the protest to spread very widely, apparently, over the weekend.  Trump, in Trump fashion, backed up his comment in Tweet form.

So here we are.

This raises a number of interesting questions.

The first, and most obvious, is why oh why does Trump feel that any moronic concept that wonders through his brain must be spouted out?  It's not dignified.  And if he must spout off, why did he spout off in this fashion?

It makes him look like an idiot, and quite often what he says is not only not dignified, its not smart, or doesn't appear to be.  It's bizarre. Any other President, left or right, would have just not said anything at all or would have said something neutral along the lines of its an honor to live in a country where protests aren't punished.  Indeed, a polished public speaker could have made quiet a bit of political hay out of this by not condemning it and somewhat praising it.  Instead, he throws out something that sounds like it should have come from an all white blue collar urban bar in 1966.  Sort of like what we'd expect some guy to stand up and blurt in South Boston fifty years ago or something.

Which makes me wonder if that's is what he's shooting for, and I'm not alone. That is, the hard core of his base is of the "fire the bums" variety and maybe he's shoring that up, knowing that everyone else weighs the results against the statements and he's not going to gain anyone else's love or admiration anyhow.  If that's right, interpreting it as racist would be incorrect, but interpreting it as sort of an old style, blue collar, crack their heads sort of statement sort of is.  And that's the base he's been tacking to, basically, and they are in both parties, no matter what both parties think of that fact.

If that's the case, he's making a longterm mistake, as he's never going to get the Democrats support on anything much. As a commentator on one of the weekend shows said last week right now the Democrats are held by the "loony left" and that's the case. They're too anemic from their all vegan, gender free, diet to really amount to much but an obstacle.  But the GOP isn't really coming into his corner much either.  It's nearly like a third party, or rather he is, right now.  But how big is that group?  No matter how big it may be, does saying something like this help him that much in that base?

But, I suppose, if "independent" is the nation's biggest political party, and the independents went for Trump in some numbers. . . well maybe I'm wrong.

Well, what about this protest in general?

Frankly, I hardly care.  I feel like I should, but I have a hard time mustering that up.  That's because the appeal of football is so lost on me.

Well, let's start with this. Do they have a right to protest in this fashion?

Technically, probably not.  Or maybe they do.  Everyone has a right to free speech, but they're actually protesting at work, which you really don't have a right to do.  I can't go out front in my office, for example, and protest on company time about something.

This sets this apart, in in my mind, from protests like that of the Black 14 at the University of Wyoming.  That 1969 protest came at a state funded school in a state owned stadium.

 

Memorial  at the University of Wyoming to the Black 14, the fourteen black football players who wore black armbands to a BYU football game in protest of the LDS policy on blacks in clerical roles. They lost their spots on the team.

It also, in my mind, makes it stand apart from the 1968 black power salute protest delivered by Tommie Smith and John Carlos in their medal ceremony, given as that was in a highly public venue and they were there with public funding.

Or maybe it doesn't.

A lot of football stadiums here and there are in fact partially publicly funded. So maybe they are public venues.

Which doesn't mean that the protests are to be celebrated, or the opposite of that.

Does that mean that, if they deemed it in appropriate, they owners could not follow Trump's admonition to fire them.  Well, they aren't public employees so they could. That doesn't mean that they should be.  The exception to this, I'd note, would be players for Green Bay. The city does own that team so they're presumably public employees.  That doesn't mean that they can't be fired either, but it is a different type of deal in that case.

So are these protests wise and valid?

That's in the eyes of the beholder, to be sure.

One thing worth noting, but which rarely is presently, is that a lot has changed since 1968 when Smith and Carlos delivered their radical salute and lost their medals as a result.  That doesn't mean their act was proper (I don't think it was, the Black Power Salute was a lot more than a knee during the National Anthem in the message it conveyed and was derived from an informal salute used by street Communists).  This does not mean that the US has conquered racism.  It hasn't.  Indeed, ironically, we live in an era when much more questionable movements have co-opted the former methods and language of the Civil Rights era of the 1960s which arguably makes it harder for American blacks to easily draw attention to the racism that remains.  But there definitely is some, and shootings of urban blacks are, in spite of what some would claim, a definite problem that needs to be addressed. 

But let's not fool ourselves, it's nothing like ti was in the 30s, 40s, 50s or 60s.  A huge amount of progress has been made, even if more needs to be made.

So am I saying that the protests should be condemned?  No, I'm not.  Once again, I feel so out of it in this context I have a hard time coming to an opinion.  I guess I come to down to this. While I wouldn't do it, and while I feel its over dramatic, I'm not going to get all upset at those who do.  After all, football is, as noted above, a sport in which 70s% of the players are black.

I have to wonder, in some odd way, if that's an example of racism itself.  It seems to me, I'd note, distinctly different from baseball which has a fairly international flavor in regards to its talent (although the protests apparently spread, over the weekend, into baseball with a single baseball player taking the knee).  Football is a brutal sport and the college expression of it is, in some real ways, nothing more than a set of farm teams for the NFL.  Brutal sports have traditionally been the domain of the underprivileged in the United States.  It's no accident that there were so many black, Irish, Italian and Jewish boxers at one time.  People don't take up a sport like that, as a rule, if other less violent career options are open to them.

Or maybe some do.

Still, it makes me wonder if the really weird way in which football players are recruited, by passing them through universities in a fashion which really discredits universities, sort of is subtly racist in ways that are almost impossible for people to appreciate.  Not universally so by any means, but in some subtle fashion.

Well, anyway, taking the knee isn't the most radical protest going, and its better than sitting, which does seem more disrespectful.  Indeed, in some context, taking a knee could easily be mistaken for being very respectful, even though that isn't what is exactly intended.

What isn't respectful, to his office, is the President commenting on it in the fashion he did.  He ought to knock that off. But we all know that he won't.

On one nearly final note, why do we play the National Anthem before games anyway?  That's rather odd, if a person ponders it.  We didn't always do this.  It started in baseball during World War One, although the Star Spangled Banner wasn't yet the National Anthem at the time (and the weekend commentator who stated that the Anthem is itself racist is full of it).  It became the National Anthem in 1931 and spread to football  during World War Two.  Well, okay, but the nation was at war during those periods of adoption.  There's no real reason to keep on playing the National Anthem at sports now.  Indeed, it creates a bizarre sort of patriotic association between the game and the country which perhaps shouldn't really be there.

And on a final note, Trump, no matter what he accomplishes (and things like this deter him from getting things accomplished, and make it hard to see the accomplishments he has made) will not be President forever.  He's not the first outspoken populist President we've ever had. But its hard not to see how the approach he has frequently taken in regards to public speaking and the like won't have damaged the office by the time he's left.  That's going to be something that will not necessarily be easily to repair.  If he won't desist for his own sake, it'd be nice if he'd consider that.

Blog Mirror: Spending Other People's Money

Spending Other People's Money Spending Other People's Money 

By Tom PurcellI can't blame them, really. It's human nature to want something for nothing.

I'm going to post, or hope to post, an item here about the interesting philosophical aspects of  government funded healthcare (which may, or may not, go where you think it'll go) but in the mean time, here's an article, more serious than usual, from Tom Purcell that touches on an aspect of the topic.

Single Payer? Should we consider Fifty One Payers (more or less).

As anyone following the news knows, Senator Bernie Sanders once again introduced a bill (he's done it once before) which would make Medicare the national health care single payer for everyone, extending the idea that if its a nice gift for the elderly, heck, its' nice for everyone.  Democrats, looking for an issue that doesn't sound like it comes from the Daily Worker or the Department of Scary Ideas from the University of California At Berkeley, have been signing on to the idea if they hope to run for the Presidency in 2020, the thesis being that "this time, they'll like it!"

Republicans, who have been busy with "um. . . you know we didn't really mean that whole "repeal Obmacare" thing, right? are once again attempting to do just that, although the chances of that passing appear to be pretty poor, right now.

Here's a thought.

How about . . . now stay with me. . . we repeal the Affordable Health Car Act, entirely, and suggest to the states, perhaps legislatively, that they take on health care. The Feds, for their part, can take on health care for United States territories and the District of Columbia (an interesting dynamic which, I predict, would squelch all talk of making D.C. a state, by residents of D. C., and which would suddenly cover the Republicans into ardent supporters of statehood for Puerto Rico.

What!  Are You Insane!

No.  Well maybe, but this isn't a symptom of that.

Let's think this through for a moment.

Supporters of a national single payer, i.e., the Federal Government, are found of saying that we're the only nation in the world without a single payer system and look how well they all work. The problem with that is that the nations the comparisons are made to are nothing whatsoever like the United States.

Take the example we hear about the most, Canada.

And in doing that, toss out the extremes.  People who claim that Canadians are in despair about their system and are ready to march on Toronto and hurl herring at Justin Trudeau are just flat out wrong.  But then people who claim that there's nothing negative about the system at all are also wrong.  By and large, however, most Canadians like it.

And, and here's the point, the population of Canada is about the same as . . . California.

Or take the British National Health Care system. Again, over here, you'll hear the claim that the British hate the system, and are ready to march on Toronto and hurl herring at Justin Trudeau (they can't do that in the UK as herring are banned as small arms in the UK. . . um, well anyway).  No, they like it.  And whatever its pluses or minuses the UK's population is about double that of California's.

And so on.  What's notable about these systems are that they all apply to smaller, and frankly more homogeneous, populations.

Indeed, in order to really look at a national system analogous to the that which would apply to the United States, we'd have to look at a country like India, or perhaps Russia. These aren't exactly analogous by any means, however, and therefore that wouldn't tell us very much.  And people would be quick to note that population wise they aren't even analogous.

The entire European Union would be, but that gets us back to the fact that the EU doesn't have one single payer but a bunch of national ones, so that doesn't tell us much.

Or maybe it does.

Why not have a separate states systems?

Well the biggest reason not to have separate state systems is that we quit thinking that way some time ago and think it odd. But that's no reason not to do it.  In fact, we already partially do as we have fifty-one Workers Compensation systems, just like I'm proposing for national health care.  If you have an injury in Wyoming, you are under the Wyoming system.  If you have an injury in Texas, you are under that state's system.

And these systems, while they all largely work (yes, there's complaints about them, but they generally work), are all individual.

Oh my, the critics will claim, we can't have that they'd be different from each other.

So what.  They may be, but that's working for Workers Compensation, and every single objection you can find to fifty state national health care system exists for that and it works anyway.  People move from employer to employer and state to state, and yet it works.

So why do this?

Well, much of the objection to single payer is that you inevitably get a single payer system that isn't paid for, and which pays for everything, whether it should be paid for or not.

That is, we all know that the Federal Government, if single payers is adopted, isn't going to pay for it.  It's just going to borrow for it. That's how it deals with every expenditure.

Some states would take that approach as well, if they adopted a state payer system, but other states are much more careful with their expenditures.  I'd guess we'd see California, for example, bankruptcy itself with such a system. But I doubt its neighbors would go bankrupt with their state systems.

Another reason is that it allows the people of a state to tailor a system that they're comfortable with. Some states, such as California, would almost certainly become the payer for their state.  Others would rely upon private insurance or a mix between private insurance and the state as the payer of last resort.  Most states have that latter system for their Workers Comp system.

States would also be free, with the system as I"m imagining it, to determine how much they cover.  Covering basic health, including catastrophic injury, would have to be a given.  Hospitalization for such things, medicine, dental, glasses, etc.

But beyond that, not so much.

Again, some states would likely opt to cover everything.  I could see California opting to pay for everything from hooter enhancement to veterinary care for gerbils.  Chances are states like Wyoming and Utah would cover basic health and nothing else. And frankly that's fine.  A Federal single payer system is inevitably going to be massive, massively inefficient, and massively over broad.  In the end, working folks like myself who object to paying for people's birth control pills and gender reassignment surgery are going to get taxed for it, on a Federal single payer system.  On a 51 payer system, however, I'd guess that people will have to think about this more, as they really will be paying for it, and its more up close and personal.  If residents of Utah figure you ought to pay for your own sex and sexual identity, that's their right.

Can we be certain this would work?

No, but if it will work on a national level, it will almost certainly work on a state level.  That is, if Canada can make it work there, at least California, New York and Texas should be able to make it work.  If Ireland can make it work, nearly any US state should be able to make it work.

Would it be prefect?

Of course not. We're talking about health.  If we're talking about that, we're already in the realm of the imperfect.

So how do we get there.

Well, we'd have to repeal the Affordable Health Care Act, but probably on a long target date to give states time to come up with their plan, as well as giving states and folks who wanted a really big national plan time to complain, whine and howl.

And that repeal would have to be total.

But the same act would have to provide, under the guise of the Commerce Clause and withholding various Federal fundings, that the states must come up with a health care plan for their residents that covers basic needs; ie., routine health and catastrophic injury, by the expiration period.  If they chose to go with conventional insurance, there would need to be some tweaking (cross state insurance competition for one thing).  And the system would have to cover everyone, which means as a practical matter the state is probably the payer of last resort.

Would this be better than what we have now?  Who knows? Would it be better than the old system?  Who knows. Would it be better than a Federal single payer?  Who knows.

But chances are that it would be more palatable, and on the getting it paid for end, more realistic than a giant Medicare, which would turn into a giant "let's borrow from the unborn to pay for the Baby Boomers and some others' program.

It's worth looking at.

Even if we are not going to.

Lex Anteinternet: Oh no. . . .

 Yes!  Just as disappointing as expected!

Lex Anteinternet: Oh no. . . .: Apple has come out with the Iphone 8.  . . and now there's a major update for the Iphone 7.

Oh no. . . .

Apple has come out with the Iphone 8.  . .

and now there's a major update for the Iphone 7.

Roads to the Great War: Beginning a New Series: Doughboy Basics — The Thi...

Roads to the Great War: Beginning a New Series: Doughboy Basics — The Thi...: For the next 12 Sundays, I am going to present some essential information on the American effort in the Great War. I've spent 25 year...

Sunday Morning Absurdity

Readers of the Casper Star Tribune who get the Sunday paper, widely and correctly regarded as the best issue of the week, will be greeted this morning by a large advertisement by a Colorado plastic surgery concern advertising a "Mommy Makeover" seminar with the topic "My Breasts, My Body". the thesis apparently being that if you've given birth you may need to have a plastic surgeon overhaul your physical appearance, with special attention given to your boobs.

Just say no.

Madame Le Brun and her daughter

Plastic surgery has been one of the great blessings of the modern age.  In its infancy during World War One, the field advanced rapidly in the 20th Century, I suspect, but don't know, in part because of horrific wars, to a point where its very advanced today, even though it certainly cannot address every terrible physical trauma.  It has, however, gotten better and better over the century.

 Pvt Joseph Harvey, Co. C, 149th New York Volunteers, who received horrible facial wounds that never really recovered, even with what little could be done at the time, and who accordingly died in from his 1863 wounds in 1868. By World War One techniques, while still primitive, would be much improved.  And all the more so with each following decade.

At some point, however, its logical original focus, addressing malformities, abnormalities, and injuries, seems to have yielded to a different concern. Boobs.

Well not just boobs, but all sorts of perceptions that women are somehow hideous, or at least imperfect, if they don't meet some plastic Playboy model/Sports Illustrated swimsuit standard. This is wrong.

 Two young couples.  Migrant farm workers in Louisiana and their children, 1939.  Candidates for "Mommy Makeovers"?  Definitely not.  Off topic, note nice example of newsboy cap on man in center.

And if fairness, if an entire mythologized concept of the female form has become a significant target of this industry, breasts certainly are a big part of it. As we noted just about a year ago, we've seen a "Think Big" plastic surgery campaign in this neighborhood focusing, literally and figuratively, I suppose, on boobs.  We criticized that at the time:

Think Big? Nah. . . just think natural. You are fine, the way you are.

 Our earlier thread discouraging big thinking 

Perhaps we said it well enough then, so we'll repeat what we said, in part, by quoting it:

Think Big, means, big boobs.  The price is between $5,000 and $6,000 (I didn't catch it). And there's at least two of these billboards up.
Well, miss, don't think big. Think natural.
Your boobs are just the size their supposed to be.  Nobody needs surgery to make them any bigger.  It's unnatural and its weird.
Think natural.
Why would a person go under the metaphorical knife for this? For goodness sake, its unnecessary and its vain.
Just say no.
You are fine, just the way you are.
And that applies to your rear and your nose as well.  Just don't. And what's that say about us? A society so wealthy, and vain, that people would undergo surgery for this? 

.

 

Granted, mothers have always been the target of some advice that leave us a bit startled, we'd note.

We're not opposed to the entire field of plastic surgery.  Far from it. But there's something particularly odd about a society which is treating normal physical forms with surgery.  Yes, not all women look like Kate Upton, or like some self deluded model prostituting her image in Playboy, but most people look the way that nature and experience would have it, and that's not bad.  Small breasts are not a defect.  Bubble butts confer no natural advantage.  And some people will bear the marks of motherhood, while others will not, for their entire life.

Legendary Depression Era photograph of mother with her children. Tragic, but surgery wouldn't be what she needs.

And in a society that's gone infantile, obsessive, and amoral with the topic of sex and the female form, suggesting that mothers need makeovers, and putting up the real image of some young woman with child who has done just that, puts pressure where it is hardly needed.  This society is blisteringly confused on these topics as it is and can hardly tell at this point that there are two genders.  It's not helping young women to suggest that having a child renders them potential candidates for surgery. But then, it isn't helpful to suggest that the default standard for women means having Katie Perry's boobs and a Khardashian's butt either.  

Proud Indian woman and child, late 19th Century.

And what does it say about a society that has so much spare cash that it can be spent in this fashion? Something about that is disturbing as well.

All of which is not to say that some folks don't need to pay some attention to their physical appearance.  Sure they might.  But nature and careful attention have the answers for that. What you eat, what you do in a day, etc., all can address that. Perhaps that's not as easy as surgery, but its what nature would have.

And if at the end of the day you don't look like Kate Upton, well so be it. For that matter, for all you know, Kate Upton without makeup doesn't look like Kate Upton either.

Sunday Morning Scene: Churches of the West: St. Andrew's Episcopal Church, Basin Wyoming

Churches of the West: St. Andrew's Episcopal Church, Basin Wyoming: 

This is St. Andrew's Episcopal Church in Basin Wyoming.  This small town Episcopal Church fits into the Gothic style, in our view.  I don't know anything else about it, other than that its coloration is unusual for a wooden church.

Movies In History: Once again, getting things right in time and place

Earlier this past week I posted this item:

Lex Anteinternet: Movies In History: Wind River: I often dread watching modern movies set in Wyoming (I tend to give the older ones a pass) as they get things so wrong.  And, of course, as...

What, you may ask, does this have to to with history?

Well, dagnabit, it's my blog and I can post on what I want to.  So there. 

Well, beyond that, perhaps a bit more than we think, although I will frankly admit that posting that item in the Movies In History category is stretching it, a lot.

But here's my point.

Movies about contemporary times attempt to portray a story in time and place, just like movies set in the past do.  Some do it well, and others not so much.

In either event, those films become a record in people's mind as to what things were like, whether they realize it or not.  Errors, great and small,  preserved in films; people and dinosaurs lived at the same time. . . Frontiersmen of the 1860s were carrying cartridge arms as a rule. . . . cowboys wore Levis. . . everyone in the 1970s was under 30 years old, hip, cool, and into bikinis. . . . all Vietnam veterans are crazed killers. . . no wait, all Vietnam veterans for forsaken heroes. . . . and so on, tend to get stuck there.  Perhaps ironically its often later more accurate films that get things straightened out. McCall is still carrying a cap and ball revolver in the 1870s?  Everyone in Lonesome Dove is wearing wool trousers?  You get the point.

So, on a film such as Wind River, a depiction matters in various ways, again great and small, as all such depictions do.

If you are from the Rocky Mountain West, and have watched the films set here, as a rule you will have been laughing, or crying, in the isles over wacky inaccurate portrayals of the region.  Really off the mark settings and portrayals are too darned numerous to mention. A few real off the mark examples would suffice, such as the bizarre portrayal of the modern prairie in Bad Lands which actually held that you could see city lights in Montana and Cheyenne Wyoming from the prairie simultaneously.  Or the goofball weird accents featured in portrayals like The Laramie Project (golly shucks alive Mablejean, ahh just dooon't knew what to make of it alllll, sakes alive).  Or the I'm moving to Wyoming and quitting my minimum wage job and buying a ranch (as if).

To see a film that is set in the region in contemporary times and doesn't blow it is frankly amazing.

Which does leave me wondering about so many portrayals of here and there in the past in different settings.   That gross exaggerations are taking in such musty classics as Sergeant York are obvious, but what else really misses the mark?

Best Post of the Week of September 17, 2017

The best post of the week of September 17, 2017.

Movies In History: Wind River

 

Poster Saturday: "United Russia"

Russian Civil War era poster. This is a pro "White" forces poster, with the red dragon representing the Red Army.

More Sports News. . . the Midwest Oilers return home.

While I don't follow sports much, yesterday I ran this, which I found interesting:

Lex Anteinternet: Sports News: I rarely read it, but today's Tribune sports page has two items of interest. First, Casper is getting, for the third time, a non yo...

And today I'd note that the Midwest Oilers are reported to have returned home to their own field.

People tend to forget, for some reason, that Natrona County doesn't have two high schools. It has four, or 4.25 if you count Pathways, which you probably better do before its down and out for the count as closed (or before it's converted, as it should have been. . . maybe . . into an actual high school).  One of those high schools is Midwest.

Midwest's school used to be a football titan here locally.  This, of course,, way back in the day prior to transportation being very good.  In those days, the sons and daughters of the oilfield workers in Midwest (and probably a few sons and daughters of Navy personnel stationed on Navy Row in Midwest who were assigned to the Naval Petroleum Oil Reserve)  had to go to school there.  Many still do, but some now drive to other schools or are driving by their parents.  At least some people from Midwest that I know attended school in Kaycee, for example, which is in the neighboring county.

And the oilfield there just doesn't require the workforce it once did. The NPOR is closed.  Trends in technology and production have reduced Midwest and neighboring Edgerton to shadows of their former selves, even though they are still there.   The evolution of high school sports has meant that the Oilers and the other two high school teams are no longer in the same class and don't play against each other.

The times have long passed since Midwest played the Casper teams. . . or had that the town had its own newspaper for that matter.

But the team was a local giant once.

Well, the schools there still have a swimming pool anyway. . . .

Friday Farming: School Victory Garden, September 1917

Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm 1917. Released this day in 1917. . .

I'll leave you to your own opinions on the well known film.

Camp Sherman, Chillicothe, Ohio. September 22, 1917.

And now we're going to close one. . .

Yesterday, I posted this:

Lex Anteinternet: Hindsight: The lost NCHS swimming pool and the Pa...:

The Star Tribune has this headline this morning:

Pathways' enrollment remains low, but principal says new system, 'baby steps' will bring facility to capacity

Today the news comes that the district enrollment is so declined at the grade school level that the closing of a school is nearly inevitable, after this academic year.

About 1,000 students short, in fact.

Closing elementary schools, and not filling up a "campus" of the other four high schools (yes, there's four, not two, like people so often wish to believe).

When things started to slow down a couple of years ago, I was defending the deposition of a businessman in Riverton who commented that the root of the school funding problem was over construction and over spending.  I don't know if that is, but it does seem that the current funding model is broken.  Here in this district we're closing an elementary school for the second year in a row, it seems, while we're in a slow panic about not being able to fill up a very expensive new structure. That is bad.

But it was predictable as well. 

Laissez les bon temps roule, we're some times told.

Yes, but keep in mind that les bon temps are often followed by les mal temps, particularly with our economy.

And we haven't even seen what the completion of the two major projects here locally will mean as they start wrapping up over the next year.

Sports News

I rarely read it, but today's Tribune sports page has two items of interest.

First, Casper is getting, for the third time, a non youth league baseball team. The first game will be played on May 25.

This team will be a collegiate league team. Apparently that means that its a wooden bat team and that the teams are made up of college players who play during the spring and summer.  

Let's hope this one sticks.  Our last two teams; the Cutthroats (named for the native trout) and the Rockies/Ghosts had some loyal fans but were moved.  Its  hard not to note that with each addition we step one step further away from the major leagues but still. . . and indeed maybe this one will work.

Casper, it should be noted, had a vibrant adult baseball league in earlier eras.  Indeed our packing house sponsored one, named of course the Packers.  And the schools, decades ago, had high school teams. There are still really active youth leagues, but that's all.

The other news was that boxing great Jake LaMotta died.

A truly great middleweight and light heavyweight boxer from the golden age of boxing, he is perhaps best known today to most folks due to Robert DiNiro's portrayal of him in the movie Raging Bull, the greatest boxing movie ever made.  Married seven times and known to be volatile inside and outside the ring, in some ways he symbolized a certain aspect of boxing when it really mattered as a sport.  Here's hoping that he finds rest as he's passed on.

Things my parents did that nobody does anymore I: Mend Socks

Well, not so much my parents, but my mother.

Original caption:  "Mending socks for the American soldiers. Bureau of Refugees, Toure. (See number 7676) Refugee woman mending socks for the American soldiers at Toure under the direction of the AMERICAN RED CROSS. This is part of the great salvage work that is making socks, sweaters, etc. that have been worn, as good as new at a small cost, while at the same time the women are enabled to support themselves".

People just don't do this anymore. When socks wear out, they toss them out (although I'll confess, perhaps oddly enough, that my socks have to be pretty darned worn out before I thrown them out. . . a hold over, I suppose, from my poor student days). 

My mother darned socks her entire life. When I was a kid, she'd darn my worn socks.  I hated that as the wool she'd use to do it rarely matched the socks in color (although why would that matter) and wearing darned socks is not all that comfortable really.  But it must not have mattered to her, as she did it right up until her mind was stolen by age in her advanced old age.

Original caption:  "Washington, D.C. Lynn Massman, wife of a second class petty officer studying in Washington, D.C., darns socks in the afternoon while baby Joey has his nap".

She must have learned this skill at home, no doubt. And no doubt at some point in her early life it came in handy.

Does anyone at all do this now?  I'm guessing not many.

The Wyoming National Guard had gone to the Mexican boarder as infantry. . .

and they'd been mobilized in 1917 as such as well.

But they wouldn't be going to France as infantry.

Today the news hit that the unit was being disbanded and reformed into artillery, machinegun, and ammunition train units.

I'm  not sure what happened to the machinegun and ammunition train elements, or if those actually happened. They likely did.  I do know, however, that the artillery unit was in fact formed and is strongly associated with the Wyoming Guard during the Great War. 

This was not uncommon.  As the Army grew, the Army would be taking a lot of smaller units such as this and reconstituting them as something else. Both Regular Army and Guard units experienced this.

It's hard to know what the men thought of this.  A lot, but not all, had served and trained as infantry just the prior year along the border.  Did they have a strong attachment to it?  Hard to know.  Were some relieved, perhaps, that their role, in some instances, wouldn't involve serving as infantrymen in the trenches?  We don't know that either.

Movies In History: Wind River

I often dread watching modern movies set in Wyoming (I tend to give the older ones a pass) as they get things so wrong.  And, of course, as a local, let alone being a native at that, I no doubt look at anything set in Wyoming with a highly critical eye.

 

This is the Wind River Indian Reservation Tribal Court in Ft. Washakie which also houses various other law related facilities including the police department and the jail. 

.

And that would be all the more the case here as, while I rarely mention it here, the Reservation is one of the places where I'm licensed to practice law.  I've accordingly spent a fair amount of time on the Reservation, although not in the Reservation's back country.

 War memorial at Ft. Washakie to residents of the Reservation who lost their lives in the service during World War Two.  This memorial is on what was once the parade ground when Ft. Washakie, the seat of the Tribal governments* was an army post.

.

So, when a movie is set there, I"m prepared, I'm afraid, to eye it pretty closely.  And that means I'm sort of set up to dislike it.
.

That didn't happen here at all.
.

Indeed, not only do I like the movie, but I'm amazed by how much about the state and the Reservation they got right.  This is, indeed, a really rare film about modern Wyoming as it is mostly correct in all sorts of details.

 

Post office on St. Stephen's Mission, Wind River Reservation.

Okay, to just summarize the film a tad, this movie is a murder mystery.  It starts off when Animal Damage Control agent Cory Lambert is called to the Reservation to track mountain lions that have killed a steer belonging to his (ex) father in law, who is an Indian living on the Reservation.  In tracking the cats, he finds the body of an Indian girl he knows is the high country. The Tribal Police respond and a female FBI agent responds.  The development of the plot and the clash of cultures, a three way clash, ensues.

There's a lot that could go wrong with a plot like this from a local's prospective.  Most of those things didn't go wrong on the other hand, but actually went quite right.

From the prospective of our reviews, we tend to look at the history of a thing, the culture of the setting and material details.  We know that this is a contemporary movie, not a historical drama, but we're taking the same approach here and this film does really well.

Let's start with the "history" of the story, if you will.

 Former Army stable, now BIA structure, on Ft. Washakie.

Crime, particularly crime associated with alcohol and drugs, is a huge problem on the Reservation, as Reservation authorities themselves will freely admit.  In fact, the Wind River Reservation is "dry" in that alcohol sales are banned on the Reservation, an act that the Tribal Council took quite a few years ago   Drugs are also a big problem on the Reservation and just a few years ago a fairly large DCI bust occurred there.  And some big occasional acts of violence occur there as well.

The film mentions at one point how many Indian women simply go missing in the United States and that no statistics on this are kept.  I was unaware of that, but I am aware of one case here locally in which an Indian woman's body was found by a sheep rancher I knew and it took years, and a very interested coroner, to identify the poor woman's body. She'd been murdered and left out in the prairie.  So much of this feels very familiar.

One thing, and not a good thing, that feels very familiar in the film, which is associated with that, is the haphazard fashion in which so many young people in this state are left to live their lives.  There's a comment early on about the appropriateness of an 18 year old girl being left to her own devices, but that's not so much an Indian thing here as it is a cultural thing.  That too sounds all too familiar.

 Former Army structure on Ft. Washakie, now used by the BIA.

The regional occupations, which might surprise some people, are spot on. There are Animal Damage Control agents in the state.  Not many, but a few, as well as county trappers.  To see one made the main protagonist and indeed the hero of the film is refreshing.  The Reservation really does have a Tribal Police force (it has for over a century).  I don't know how thickly staffed it is right now, and during the Obama Administration the Reservation was flooded with Federal police that were sent on some sort of anti terror funding effort, meaning that it was heavily policed for awhile.  But the normal state of affairs puts the entire Reservation, which is indeed as big as Rhode Island, in the hands of just a few policemen.  Again, I don't know how many, but I think a good example of what they face is provided by an advertisement I saw years ago for the Reservation game warden. There was only one (and there might still be only one) and the advertisement provided that the applicant had "to be able to ride into remote areas on horseback and bring out a a suspect alone".

Think about that.  2,000,000 acres to patrol, and you have to be able to do it. . . .alone.
.

That scene in the film in which the FBI agent asks if they should wait for backup and the Tribal Police chief responds "This isn’t the land of backup, Jane. This is the land of 'you’re on your own'." is spot on.

As an aside, I once stopped in the Haines General Store in Fort Washakie and saw that the truck of the Tribal Game warden, a single cab Dodge, was in the parking lot.  A Ruger Mini 30 was prominently mounted to the dash.  Not exactly the AR of current police fame, but I bet that guy, self equipped, knew how to use it.

 

St. Edward's Catholic Church, just north of Riverton Wyoming, on the Wind River Reservation.

In terms of the physical portrayal of the region they also did a very good job.  I know that much of the high country scenes were filmed in Idaho, and I've never been in the high country of the Reservation, but there is high country on it and I'll give it a pass.  The scenes of towns and dwellings, including a certain horrifying trailer, look pretty familiar.  The unusual habitation pattern of the Reservation, as opposed to the rest of Wyoming, in which there are a lot of dwellings here and there, is correctly portrayed.   I had to debate in my mind if a scene showing Fort Washakie was shot there or not (I'm sure it wasn't) but the fact that I had to ponder that about a place I've been to many times says something. The prairie scenes are correct.  And there is oil and gas development on the Reservation.  There's one short shot of Lander which is actually of Lander.

Old elevator in Lander.  You can see this in the film, from a much different direction.

The cultural portrayal is also very good.  

The Wind River Reservation is the home to two Indian Tribes, the Shoshone and the Arapaho.  That doesn't directly come up in the film but it's hinted at by those who know what to look for.  For those familiar with the Tribes, European names are more common in one than the other, with Anglicized Indian names being more common in that other.  Both show up in the film.

 

St. Stephen's Catholic Church on the Wind River Reservation.

The tension between the Indians and the non Indians is subtle in the film, and its subtle in reality as well.  Likewise the strong identification of a resident non Indian with Indians is something that occurs in reality as well.  The highly rural and blue collar nature of nearly all the work depicted is also spot on for the state.  The possible relocation of Lambert's ex wife to Jackson for a "better" job, working in hotels in Jackson, is the sort of thing that would really be regarded as a better economic move for many in the state.

The survival of the endangered Indian languages, not in daily primary use but still hanging on, is depicted in one scene and likely to the surprise of most people who live elsewhere.  Indeed, the context in which it is shown, to deliver an insult to an outsider, is something I'm actually aware of occurring in a slightly different fashion.  Likewise, the survival of some distinct Indian cultural practices is correctly portrayed.

Very unusually, the regional accent is correctly delivered, which it almost never is.

The main protagonist speaks with the correct Rocky Mountain region accent, the first time I've ever seen this portrayed in film.  A subtle accent which is somewhat like the flat Midwestern accent, it is different and tends to have a muttering quality to it.  For some really odd reason, most films set in modern Wyoming tend to use a weird exaggerated drawling accident that doesn't exist here at all, and which sound amazingly bizarre to our local ears.  Speech as portrayed in accent form by something like The Laramie Project just don't occur here at all, but the speech delivered by Corey Lambert in the film is spot on.  Even some of the phrases that show up in the film, such as a dissing of Jackson, are actually used here.

 

Blessed Sacrament Mission Church in Ft. Washakie, Wyoming.

In terms of material details, the film is also amazingly accurate.  The vehicles, a minor detail I suppose but an important one none the less, are correct for the region and the conditions. . . pickup trucks and snowmobiles.  Clothing details are correct, including headgear for the region and outdoor clothing.

Firearms, which figure prominently in this film, are also correct for what we'd expect to find.  The law enforcement officers in the film are all equipped with the current 9mms popular with law enforcement officers with one exception, that being the Tribal Police chief who is equipped with a M1911, something we'd find to be appropriate for that character.  The Federal hunter was surprisingly accurately equipped.  In the beginning of the film he's shown using a bolt action rifle which is somebody in that role in this region would be equipped with.  Something that appeared in the trailers which I was prepared to criticize was that the same character was shown using a Marlin Model 1895, but in the film its revealed that this is a scabbard rifle for carrying on a snowmobile, in which case it does in fact make sense.  A surprising moment for me was when he was shown to carry a large caliber revolver in a holster slipped on to a broad leather belt, as the evening I saw it I was just back from antelope hunting and I myself carry a large caliber revolver in a holster slipped on to a broad leather belt.  I'm surprised by them getting a regional detail like that right.  About the only firearms item I'd criticize is the appearance of a selective fire M4 in one scene but the use of M4 type carbines in the role that they're shown in would be correct.

So the film is perfect, correct?

No, I'm not saying that. But I am saying that they got most things right.

So what did they get wrong?

Well one thing is that drilling rigs operate year around in this region and do not shut down for the winter.  That just doesn't happen.  I understand why that was portrayed that way in this film, but that doesn't occur.  And drilling rigs don't have security either, which is in part because they wouldn't need it as they don't shut down.

The sense of distance is off in the film as well.  What are portrayed as long distances for the film would be short ones here.  And one geographic feature that's shown to be reached inside of a day just simply could not be, although again I understand why that was incorporated into the film.  Somewhere in the film there's a joke about going 50 miles to travel 5, which is true enough, but in reality its more like 150 miles to travel 15.

A  minor matter is that a scene of what is supposed to bet he courthouse in Lander is most definitely not of the courthouse in lander. But that's not really so much of a complaint here, as simply something I'm noting.  I know why they chose the building they did, perhaps.  In movies they like their courthouses to look like courthouses, and the one in Lander really doesn't that much.  But that, as noted, is not a big deal.

The actual Fremont County Courthouse.

Another minor matter is that the name "Washakie" is mispronounced in the film and by an actual Indian actor, Graham Greene.  In his defense, he's neither Arapaho or Shoshone but Oneida from Canada.  And I sort of wonder if the pronunciation that's common here might actually be in error and I just don't know it (we use a lot of distinct pronunciations for things and people here that aren't pronounced the same way in their original languages).  Still, it was surprising and somebody should have caught that.

A somewhat larger deal is that, as seems so typical, very view of t he Indian characters in the film are portrayed by Indians.  That grates on the nerves of Indians and I can see why. There are Indian actors around, plenty of them, but its rare for all the Indian parts in a film to be portrayed by Indians.  Whether or not its politically correct to say so, Indians do not look like people of European decent and simply assigning Indian roles and perhaps applying some makeup, no matter how effectively, to European American actors doesn't really change that.

And finally, people familiar with police procedures and regulation will have to note that there's at least a couple of instances in the story of this investigation in which its likely that special affairs would have had to be called in.

None the less, it's well worth seeing.

On a note, for those who may be inclined to see it, this film is violent.  Very violent.  Some scenes approach a Sam Peckinpah level of violence.  There's a place for violence in a film, and then there's films that are simply violent. This film is sort of both.  Potential viewers should be aware of that.

Camp Sherman, Chillicothe, Ohio. September 20, 1917.

Now you know things are tense in Korea. . .

as why else would K-pop composer and singer Lee Chan-hyuk enlist in the Korean Marine Corps?

Okay, all Korean men (not women, just men) have a mandatory military obligation. 

But the ROK Marines are truly tough.

On joining, he has been quoted as saying that he joined in part  “to build diverse experiences and improve my musical skills".

Hmmmm

Camp Grant, Rockford, Illinois. September 19, 1917.

Roads to the Great War: A Last Word from the Red Baron

Roads to the Great War: A Last Word from the Red Baron: Thanks to Richthofen Fan Steve Miller for sharing this.

Hindsight: The lost NCHS swimming pool and the Pathways disaster.

The Star Tribune has this headline this morning:

Pathways' enrollment remains low, but principal says new system, 'baby steps' will bring facility to capacity

In that article, we learn the following:

Pathways Innovation Center’s enrollment is at roughly 250 students — a quarter of its capacity — but a school official said he was confident that number would grow as more students become aware of the facility’s offerings.

Will it grow? 

I doubt it.  

Not until it's simply made a third high school anyway, which I'd predict will occur within the next five to ten years. 

Not that we really need one now.  School enrollment has declined and people pulled out.  Indeed, a lot of those people who pulled out around here were votes when the school bond issue on the swimming pool for NCHS was put up to vote several years ago, and failed.

And additional funding for Pathways was part of that same bond.

In retrospect, nearly everything about that bond issue was handled in correctly.  Those of us who wanted a pool to replace the 1923 pool that came out when NC's massive reconstruction project started really were interested in that narrow issue. But the school district linked it to funding for Pathways.  It turned out that a lot of people weren't keen on Pathways.  I wasn't keen on Pathways for that matter and, frankly, if I'd been left with a yes or no decision on only that, I may have voted no.  There must have been a big fear that a lot of people had similar views as the district bundled the pool with Pathways on the bond in the thought, I think, that support for the pool would carry the day.  

That was a mistake.  Opposition to Pathways, including opposition by teachers, may have sank the pool.

Acquiescing to the city's and county's request that a special election be held, rather than combining it with the general election, may have done it in also.  The city/county was worried about the additional Once Cent tax passing, upon which the city depends for many things.  Their thought was that if the bond issue proved unpopular all taxes might and that they might go down with the bond.  That might have been right, but agreeing to their request meant that only voters who were really motivated to vote. . . yes or no. . came out.  Not the mass of voters who have been generally more supportive of bonds and taxes.  The district should have said no to the city/county. After all, the One Cent wasn't their problem.

Oh well, no use crying over spilled milk, eh?

I suppose.

But there's still plenty of room in the part of the athletic building to accommodate a pool.  It could still be done.

But nobody is talking about it.

And perhaps that's not surprising.  Now the economy here is hurting and there's no movement to do stuff like this.  Once the reconstruction is over at NC and KW the number of heavy construction jobs here will plummet accordingly, however, so maybe this is a good time to consider it?  

Of course nobody is actively agitating for it either.  Once we lost the bond issue, we gave up.  When something was done at NC on another athletic facility I noted that to a board member who in turn noted to me that a parents' group had backed it. What were we swimming fans doing? Well. . . nothing.

And I don't suppose we're going to either.

Still, it's frustrating.  Football seems to get attention no matter what. The other sports, maybe they do, maybe they don't.  Traveling around the state I see how that's so often the case.  One high school here has a pool, the others do not.  Rock Springs High School has a very nice set of tennis courts.  Casper's high schools have. . . none.  But then there's little room at the Casper schools, except for Pathways, for such facilities either, given that they're surrounded by the town.  Rock Spring's high school must have been on the edge of town when it was built. Gillette's has a really nice aquatic center for its swimmers, which is also a city facility.  Casper has an aquatic center but its not an Olympic pool.  

Oh well.

Well, one thing that has happened that will impact high school sports here is that Gillette finally admitted it had two high schools, rather than one with two campuses.  Our school district's going to have to take that path with Pathways.  The campus approach is failing.

If Heaven had looked upon riches to be a valuable thing . . .

If Heaven had looked upon riches to be a valuable thing, it would not have given them to such a scoundrel.

Johnathan Swift, Letter to Miss Vanhomrigh, August 12, 1720.