Easter Sunday, April 20, 1919

April 20, was Easter Sunday in 1919, in both the East and the West.

Things weren't going well that Easter Sunday in much of Christendom, including in the domain of the largest Orthodox Church, the Russian Orthodox.  On this day in 1919, the Red Army's First Army surrendered to the Ukrainian Blacks, a quixotic anarchist army, in the Ukraine. The blacks were an army that was fighting for a stateless state. . . which sounds like it'd be just about as successful as it turned out to be, but they were having some military success at the time.

Ukrainian black cavalry.  They did have commanders, and the like, which makes their being anarchist problematic right from the start.

In the same war, but in Moldova, the French army blew up a Bridge in order to keep advancing Reds from taking the town of Bender.

On the same day, Hungarian Communist Bela Kun asked for volunteers for the Hungarian Red Army, proclaiming the Hungarian Communist revolution in danger.  It indeed was in danger as its support was limited.

Kun, as we earlier noted, would end up in Russia after the failure of the Hungarian Communist revolution and end up as a figure in the Russian Civil War in the Crimea, where he played a part in ordering the execution of civilians, the Communist being fond of executing the people in the name of the people's state.  Large number of people would die in this instance.  Following that, the Soviets sent him to Germany where he backed a Communist revolution in 1922 which was a failure, and in turn Lenin blamed himself for sending Kun to Germany in the first instance.  Returned to the Soviet Union in 1928 he spent the next decade in internal Communist infighting, sometimes denouncing fellow Hungarians, until his opposition to the Popular Front concept lead to his arrest and execution.

Bela Kun as a prisoner in 1937, before he shared the fate he'd approved of for others.

In Germany, things remained in a state of turmoil, although newsreel footage shows that a lot of people actually turned out in Berlin this day to generally enjoy Easter.

On the same day, the newspaper The Sun ran scenes of the German government's response to the thread of further Communist uprisings in Berlin.

Crowds gathered as the zoo in Washington D. C. for an Easter Egg roll.

Things were much more normal that Easter in the United States.

And in far off Alaska St. George's Episcopal Church was dedicated near Valdez.

In Wyoming, the "ain't no Sunday's west of Omaha" type of logic was apparently at work:

1919  A pipeline was completed between Lost Soldier and the site of the former Ft. Fred Steele. Ft. Fred Steele was a railhead on the Union Pacific Railroad at this time. Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

Blog Mirror: Catholic Answers Focus | Catholic Answers: God Wants You to Rest

One of my New Years Resolutions this year was to quit working on Saturdays:

I haven't adhered to it whatsoever.

I have, however, largely quit working on Sundays.  A person needs some downtime. And here's an interesting view on that:

Catholic Answers Focus | Catholic Answers: Want to know what Church really teaches? Well, you can hear it from the top Catholic leaders, newsmakers, and unsung heroes of our times in this podcast. You get in-depth and compelling conversations in each episode.

If annoyed. . . .

Another 1912 vintage movie slide.

Front Yard Gardens and the Law

From the ABA Email List:

A couple’s appellate loss in their quest to grow a front yard vegetable garden has attracted the attention of Florida lawmakers.
The Florida Senate passed a bill in March that would bar counties and municipalities from regulating vegetable gardens on residential properties, report the Miami Herald, and the Tallahassee Democrat. The House is also considering a bill to do the same thing.

Honestly, who worried about gardens being in the front yard? Aren't there enough problems in the world to worry about?

It's not a "national landmark", it's a Cathedral

And hence its much more important.

I keep seeing references to Notre Dame de Paris as a "landmark" or a "national treasure", or all sorts of other similar terms.  All of which are in fact true.

And all of which miss the point.  Notre Dame de Paris is a Catholic Cathedral, and that's not only what it is, its why it is, and why its a national treasure and all of those other things.  It's status as a Catholic Cathedral defines everything about it.  Everything.

France is sometimes referred to as the "eldest daughter of the Church", referring to the very early conversion of the French people to Christianity.  The claim is associated with a claim that France was the first wholly Christian nation, but that claim is pretty debatable.  Actually, Armenia holds a better claim to that title.  But France became a Christian nation very early.

And by Christian nation, we mean a Catholic nation.  Irrespective of fanciful claims to the contrary that were fabricated during the Reformation, there's no doubt whatsoever that the early church was, "one Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church".  That's not a matter of religious faith, that's a matter of historic fact.  Christians of other denominations can't honestly deny that, and if they're honest with themselves, they have to explain it in some historically cogent fashion, excluding such clearly false claims such as a different nature of the early church or some secret great apostasy.  As the sage Daniel Patrick Moynihan noted, "Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts".

France is also a country that saw radical early anti clericalism and extreme secularization, which is party of its problematic historical legacy.  That plays into the history of Notre Dame de Paris as well.  Four churches have stood on the spot where the damaged Cathedral now stands prior to the commencement of its construction.  In 1548 French Huguenots, a Protestant sect, destroyed some of its statutes, taking the extreme iconoclast position that pops up in Christianity, and indeed in other religions, from time to time.  It was heavily rebuilt over the years to reflect changes in architectural style.  An enormous statute of St. Christopher dating from 1413 was destroyed in 1786.  A spire that had been added on earlier was removed in the 18th Century, and then a new one reinstalled in the 19th.  During the French Revolution it was seized and defamed into a Cult of Reason, and the statutes of twenty eight Biblical kings beheaded on the mistaken ignorant belief that they represented French kings.

Indeed the unfortunate legacy of the unfortunate French Revolution, the model for modern revolutions in the fact that it it became wildly debased and turned into a massive, if still celebrated, failure, lingers on in that the Cathedral is property of the French state.  After the French Revolution, France has had an uneasy relationship with everything, including itself, and as part of that, with its Faith.  France became wildly anticlerical during the Revolution, but it remains Catholic still.

And it will continue to be.  Unlike Ireland or Quebec, which really don't exist without the Church, there is a France that can be discussed without discussing the Church, but like everything European, or at least worth celebrating in Europe, it's not only difficult to do, but largely discussing something that's much diminished without the Church.

There's no doubt that Europe has been struggling with itself since some date in the 20th Century, or perhaps some date in the 19th, and part of that has been an increase in worldliness and misdirection, and a perceived decrease in Faith.  That decrease, however, may in fact be a bit of an illusion, or misconstrued.  It's very clearly the case that the churches born of the Reformation, generally eager to accommodate themselves to social trends of all types, are suffering much.  Catholicism may seem to be, but it may be much less than imagined.  When real events occur, the basic Catholic nature of Catholic peoples (and the Orthodox nature of Orthodox people's for that matter, strongly reasserts itself.

Which may be why the fire at Notre Dame is oddly portentous. France is a bellwether of some sort, descending into the depths, and the reviving.  On the night the Cathedral was burning, people gathered to pray.

And that's quite telling.

April 19, 1919. Opening Day, April flowers, Poles advance, Rebuilding the churches, Red Cross in action, Belgians on the stage.

The fateful 1919 baseball season opened on this day in 1919, with the Brooklyn Robbins (what the Dodgers were before they were called that) defeating the Boston Braves twice in a double headers.

J. C. Leyendecker graced the cover of The Saturday Evening Post with a spring centered illustration.  Easter Sunday for 1919 was the following day.

Easter was directly recalled on the cover of The Country Gentleman, but with an illustration featuring a little kid with chicks.  This is a traditional Easter theme, but one I've always found a bit odd.

On this day in 1919, Polish forces entered Vilnius in an event that wasn't Easter focused by any means.

Vilnius in some ways symbolizes the nature of post war Eastern Europe, and indeed to some extent Europe in general.  The Poles entered it as part of their war against the Russian Reds.  The town had been of course in the Russian Empire.  It's population was both Polish and Lithuanian and nationalist from both countries saw it as theirs.  In the context of Russian imperial rule, its mixed population hadn't created nationalist problems, but now it was.

Pilsudski took quick steps to try to make it plain that the sovereignty of the region would be determined by plebiscite which he hoped would result in support for a federal union he envisioned which would have included Poland, Lithuania and Ukraine, as well as some other regions in some versions of the plan.  The Poles and the Ukrainians are in fact very close in ethnicity, although they are somewhat religiously divided. The Poles and the Lithuanians, however, are largely Catholic, but the Lithuanians were not close to the Poles in ethnicity.  A newly independent Ukrainian government was horrified by the thought of the town being anything but Lithuanian, and Polish nationalist weren't keen on that thought.  The right to include the city within respective national boundaries lead to the Polish Lithuanian War shortly thereafter.  Ironically, it was only Polish success in the Russo Polish War which kept Lithuania from being invaded by the Soviets and at the conclusion of the Russo Polish War it was included within Poland.  The Lithuanians, however, never accepted that fact and did not establish diplomatic relations with Lithuania until 1938.

Today Vilnius is the capitol of Lithuania, but that reflects the results of World War Two.  After the invasion of Poland by the Germans and the Soviets in 1939, the city was turned over to Lithuania but then shortly thereafter Lithuania was invaded by the Red Army.  It was subsequently invaded by the Germans in Operation Barbarossa, and during their occupation most of the large Polish population and the Jewish population was removed from the city. Today its ethnically a Lithuanian city, the result of German oppression of the Poles and Jews.

The ruins of St. Albain Nazaire in France.

On this day in 1919, the Holy See announced plans to raise funds to repair the 1,300 churches in France damaged during the Great War.

How odd that this would fall so close to current events.

Class in Plainfield, New Jersey, snipping filling for pillows for the Red Cross.

The Red Cross was still at work in Europe and of course in Russia and therefore efforts to support it kept on.

Red Cross headquarters in Archangel.

In Washington D. C. Belgian troops who had been in the United States in support of a Victory Loan campaign paraded to the Keith Theater in Washington D. C.

Oh goody

Today will be all day, 24 hour, coverage on the release of the full Mueller report.

Followed tomorrow by all day explanation of why, whatever it said, it didn't say that.

Uff, couldn't they have waited until next Monday?

Secular Easter?

I got the spousal dope slap, or rather the spousal angry eyes, earlier this week when there were some details being discussed regarding an Easter fete outside of our family circle.  We have our own plans, so will not be attending, but still the topic came up.  The reason for this is that the hosts of the soiree are non observant Christians.

Now by that, I mean that they do profess a Christian faith, but they are completely non observant.  So this is outside of the Easter and Christmas Christian arena, this is more in your funeral and weddings arena. 

Now, I'm not saying that they're bad people.  Indeed, the people I'm referencing, to the extent that I know them (which I don't claim to be encyclopedic by any means) seem to me to be extremely decent and good people.  But their secular feast seems to be divorced from Easter.  I can't see what a Easter dinner without Easter actually is.  It's an occasion for dinner I guess.  Some snarky comment by me to this effect, i.e., leaving Easter out of Easter, prompted the spousal rebuke.

But it really does make no sense. 

Easter traditionally has a large dinner as Lent, which was much more rigorous at one time, ended at noon on Holy Saturday in anticipation of Easter commencing that evening, which it does in the sense that the traditional Catholic practice is to have the vigil of a Holy Day count as part of the Holy Day.  So in that sense, Easter sort of commences more or less in the early evening of the day prior to Easter Sunday.  The Lenten fast ended and a feast in honor of the Holy Day commenced.  In Protestant circles this is retained as a feast in honor of the day.  In Catholic and Orthodox circles the original meaning is retained.  But for people who never go to church, well I don't know exactly what the concept is.

I guess that its an instinctive effort to honor Easter.  Most folks in that category have some exposure to a more formal religious observance and I guess even if they've dispensed with making it to church at all, save for funerals and weddings, they're still doing that.  And that's good.  But it's also pretty thin.  It would honor the day more to skip the feast and go to church.

I suppose that view reflects my early youth.  My mother was an awful cook and we never had what others would regards as a big Easter feast.  My mother or maybe my father would likely cook a ham, which is a traditional Easter dinner, but it wouldn't be a huge dinner with lots of invited people.  Indeed, it'd be pretty darned close to a regular Sunday dinner.  We would always make it to Mass, however, and that made Easter special, as Easter Mass is special.

Oh yes, today is Holy Thursday.  If you are Catholic or a Protestant that adheres closely to retained Catholic practice, you already knew that.  And if you are Orthodox you likely knew that, even if it probably isn't your Holy Thursday.  If you live in a Hispanic country, you definitely knew that, as you have Holy Week off.

Observations, I guess, by a sojourner in a strange land.

April 18, 1919. Speaking secretaries, new post office.

Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels addressing the 2nd Division near Vallendar, Germany. April 18, 1919.

1919  Apostol post office established.  Apostol would become Osage in 1920.  Attribution:  Wyoming State Library.

Last edition:

April 2, 1919. Revolt Everywhere, women obtain the franchise in New Brunswick.

Labels: 1910s, 1919, Canada, MIddle East, Politics

And are we surprised?

From a JAMA Report:

Question  What is the effect of a multicomponent workplace wellness program on health and economic outcomes?

Findings  In this cluster randomized trial involving 32 974 employees at a large US warehouse retail company, worksites with the wellness program had an 8.3-percentage point higher rate of employees who reported engaging in regular exercise and a 13.6-percentage point higher rate of employees who reported actively managing their weight, but there were no significant differences in other self-reported health and behaviors; clinical markers of health; health care spending or utilization; or absenteeism, tenure, or job performance after 18 months.

Meaning  Employees exposed to a workplace wellness program reported significantly greater rates of some positive health behaviors compared with those who were not exposed, but there were no significant effects on clinical measures of health, health care spending and utilization, or employment outcomes after 18 months.

Pretty predictable.

April 2, 1919. Revolt Everywhere, women obtain the franchise in New Brunswick.

The New York Times featured Egypt on the cover of their mid week pictorial (but ran a photo of an American sentry in Germany) during a week in which not only was there discord in Egypt, but also in Germany, Russia, Poland, India and Mexico, among other locals.

In New Brunswick, women obtained the full franchise.

The Ghosts of Prior Careers

On a Saturday, while working on my now very long term one of nearly thirty years.

Paris Nocturne

Portents

It's very much likely due to the fact that I came into office in a poor mood today to start with, but it's hard to see what's happening to Notre Dame de Paris and not feel that its portentous.

A whole culture in flames, as it were.  And everything much the worse for it.

Monday at the Bar: Kim Kardashian to become a lawyer?

Byron White Courthouse in Denver Colorado.

Kim Kardashian, known principally for her bust and rear end, has declared that she's reading the law and intends to take the bar exam in her state in 2022.

She's drawing skepticism on that, as in this headline:

Kim Kardashian's Bid to Become a Lawyer Faces Long Odds

The reality star has said she plans to take the bar exam in 2022 without attending law school, but few who go that route pass the test.

Well, skeptics aside, the more power to her.

Reading the law is basically self study for the bar exam.  Bar exams have been around for a lot longer than most law schools, and indeed early law schools were of a different nature than today's.  Originally it was widely assumed that nearly all lawyers had read the law.  Law schools started as largely private affairs where a lawyer offered his services to help those reading the law.  They then evolved into what we have today.  Over time, the ABA stepped into regulate them privately and, as they became common, the ABA pushed for state bars to require law school attendance in order to take the bar, arguing that this showed that a student was more prepared to become a lawyer.  Over time, they pushed for state bars to require ABA certification for such law schools.

But not all states have gone along, and some will still allow an applicant to sit for the exam with that applicant not having attended law school at all.  According to Wikipedia that number is down to California, Vermont, Virginia and Washington with, it's claimed, Wyoming, Maine and New York allowing it after the applicant has studied in a law office and have spent some time in law school. At least as to Wyoming, that's in error as Wyoming applicants can still sit by motion, which is effectively the same thing, but it requires permission of the state supreme court to take the exam.  Indeed, I knew one lawyer who had been a law school graduated by who was admitted by motion without passing the exam, which he'd failed a couple of times.

Okay, having said all of that, what's "reading the law".

Self study. That's what it is.

Or self study under the tutelage of a lawyer you are working for, which in the older days meant that you were apprenticed to that lawyer.

Plenty of famous lawyers became just that by reading the law.  

John Adams read the law.  

Abraham Lincoln read the law.

Locally, long serving and well known legal figure, the late Federal Judge Ewing T. Kerr read the law, and the local Federal Courthouse is named after him.

Ewing T. Kerr Federal Courthouse in Casper Wyoming.

Now, this isn't to suggest this would be easy.  But at the same time it is to suggest that this may not be as hard for Ms. Kardashian than the skeptics may suppose.

First of all, while she's made a career so far by partially prostituting her image, in the form of selling photographs to fuel illicit dreams of juvenile males, there's no real reason to suppose that she's dumb.  Indeed somebody in her family pick up early on the fact that the Kardashian girls, with their exotic half Armenian features, were very good looking and could make money in their youths based on that.  The way it was done was not admirable at all, but it was cunning.

And signs of her further intelligence may be revealed by this proposed change in careers.  Her assets have a shelf life, and they will expire.

After all, you don't want to advance into middle age trying to look youthful and come out scary, a la Lisa Vanderpump or Cher.

And maybe you don't want to go to your grave remembered for your butt and chest.  

And recognizing that shows some real intelligence.  Not all who rose to fame in that manner survived that frightening realization.  Saying she wants to take the bar exam is a lot smarter than doing what Marilyn Monroe did, which was to face the whole thing badly.

And skeptics aside, her father was a lawyer.  Often the family members of lawyers get legal educations whether they want them or not.  They're reading the law, more or less, all the time.  Sit around the dinner table of most families in which their is a lawyer and you'll get some some sort of legal education, or at least an education in debating, whether you like it or not.  And by all accounts, her father was a good lawyer at that.

And, quite frankly, it doesn't take near the smarts to be a lawyer that the general public believes and that lawyers like to imagine.  I'd guess that the vast majority of lawyers measure no more than average in that department, including some hugely financially successful ones.

Indeed, that's been the dirty little secret of the modern practice of law for a long time.  Lawyers like to rely on their reputation as a "learned profession" to pose as a class of great intellects, and certainly there are lots of lawyers who are just that.  But there are a lot more who are not.  The entire ABA supported move towards requiring law schools in the first place was to combat the fact that a lot of lawyers just weren't all that professional, and in the 19th Century law was a very common American occupation filled by those who didn't want to be farmers but who had no other skills to fall back on.  Most weren't college graduates and indeed there were few colleges for anyone to attend. The entire American image of the crooked lawyer came up in that time, and indeed lawyers moving from town to town to evade their reputations and take advantage of frontier opportunities was pretty common.  

Bar exams meant to address that, but bar standards have been dropping like a rock for some time.  The Uniform Bar Exam has accelerated that.  I don't know if the UBE is the one that Kim Kardashian would be taking, but the fact that it is a uniform exam sort of speaks for itself in some ways, and at least by observation, the amount of knowledge that's required to pass it is considerably lower than the old NBE and local exam system that used to prevail.  You'd think the ABA would oppose such an evolution, but on the contrary they seem solidly behind it.

So I hold out a lot more hope for her to pass the exam than others.

Indeed, I hope she passes it and frankly I hope she redeems her reputation.  

Armenians in the United States and around the world have a really well deserved reputation.  The Kardashian's are an embarrassment to it.  The culture is a really old one, and the country was the first Christian nation in the world.  The Armenian diaspora in the United States has untold numbers of members who have contributed greatly to American society.  The Kardashian girls cut against that hard working conservative set of values by rising to fame through what amounts to, at best, their appearance.  

One of the things that holds women back in real terms is that fame based on selling your appearance, let alone appearing on the cover of magazines naked, or in sex tapes, reinforces a pagan view of women. That's a lot to make up for.  I hope she does.

Indeed, I hope she does and that she actually practices, and in some future year that when people speak of Kim Kardashian, it's in that context, with few remembering when she was just a barely clad, or not clad at all, public figure.

John Wesley Hardin.  If Hardin could become a lawyer, why couldn't Kim Kardashian?

Taking off your hat. . .

is really a thing of the past.

Hat check girl, New Years Eve, 1942.

It's interesting to note the extent to which this is true.

When I was a kid, we were taught to take our hats off when we came indoors.  If you didn't do that, sooner or later some adult would tell you to take your hat off.  As I don't like wearing hats indoors, even though I wear a hat all the time when outdoors, I did, and still do, that automatically, but the impression of this is strong enough that I still recall being complemented by adult as a kid for doing that on one occasion.

As noted, I still take my hat off every time I come indoors, nearly without fail.  Only recently have I taken up putting on a cap just before I go outdoors, and I feel self conscious about that.

Adding to that, perhaps, when I was a National Guardsmen you never wore a hat indoors, except for the limited exception of being in formation in a drill hall or if you were under arms.  Otherwise, the hat was off.  If you forgot that, somebody would give you the inevitable "Is your head cold?", reminding you to remove your hat.

Of course, when hats, as opposed to caps, were more common, there was very real reason for taking your hat off.

There still is, but caps are less obstructive so there's less of a reason now.

It still strikes me as something that a person should do, however.

Be that as it may, many people simply do not.  I see piles of men wearing ball caps in doors now, all the time. I don't think its regarded as rude any longer.

Lex Anteinternet: Coal Trends

We ran this item last week:

Lex Anteinternet: Coal Trends: We ran this item back in 2017: Coal: Understanding the time line of an industry     Me, third from right, when I thought I had a ...

That item referenced strongly something we posted back in 2017.

Today the Tribune ran an editorial that Wyoming needs to start planning for a coalless future.

It'll be interesting to see what the reaction to this is. People tend to see these trends reported and then blame the messenger.

Monday, April 14, 1919. Nothing to return to in France, returning to U.S. from Italy, temporary housing.

Where Cantigny had been, April 14, 1919.

The 332nd Infantry on the Duca d'Acosta returning from their World War One service in Italy.  They arrived in New York on this day in 1919.

On this same day, the Red Cross photographed its set of instructions for temporary housing, a critical need at the time.  I don't know if they published it on this day as well, but it must have been close to this day.