May 8, 1920 Endings

On this day in 1920, the Luftstreitkräfte, the World War One equivalent of the Luftwaffe, more or less, officially came to an end.

Disassembled German aircraft on display in London, 1918.

The organization, not surprisingly, had gone through several names and structures before achieving its final one in October 1916.  It did not include naval flyers, who remained in the navy, and its association with the German army was organizational such that it was part of the army.  It oddly did not include every German army pilot, however, as Bavaria retained an element of organizational control over men recruited from its territory, including at least theoretically its own air force.

After the German surrender it basically came to an end and its one and only commander, Ernst von Hoeppner, left his appointed position as its chief in January 1919 as part of the dissolution of the force in accordance with the Treaty of Versailles which prohibited the Germans from having military aircraft.  After that point it existed on paper until this day in 1920.

Ernst von Hoeppner, the commander of the Luftstreitkräfte from October 1916 until January 1919.  He returned to the cavalry branch from which he had come and retired in November 1919, dying from the flu at age 62 in 1922.

The German government did field aircraft as late as 1920 when it put down the Ruhr Rebellion, but those aircraft and their pilots were at least theoretically in the Freikorps.

On the German air arm and symbols, an interesting thing to note is how the stylized cross borrowed from the Teutonic Knights has evolved in the German air arm. From 1914 to 1915, it was the full cross pattée associated somewhat inaccurately with the Medieval crusading order that was painted on the sides and wings of German aircraft.  In reality, the Teutonic Knights only occasionally employed this style of cross, but it was heavil adopted by the German crown after unification of the country during the Franco Prussian War.

German cross pattée originally used on German aircraft.

In 1915, the cross pattée was slimmed down a bit for some reason.

Cross pattée used from 1915 until March 1918.

In March 1918, it was made a simple straight cross.

German aircraft symbol from March 1918 until the end of the war.

The revived Luftwaffe continued to use the simple cross throughout its existence from 1935 until 1945, in a modified form that added emphasis to the lines, but when the post war Luftwaffe was recreated, it went back, with the rest of the German military, to the cross pattée.

While the German air arm was disappearing, the Carranza government was as well.

What started as an effort to control who would be his successor was rapidly and obviously going down the tubes, although Carranza was not conceding anything.  Forces were lining up against him, including those of the improbably named Gen. Benjamin Hill, who would die under suspicious circumstances that following December.

As Mexico was increasingly headed leftward, American leftists were on the front cover of the papers as well, claiming that Woodrow Wilson had broken faith with them.  His government certainly hadn't been kind to them recently.

The news from the oil patch was strangely similar to today's.

Wyoming Oil World was reporting that petroleum prices had fallen to an all time low.

Washington D.C. was having a dog show and some well known names were going to it.

Seventh annual Dog Show of the Washington Kennel Club.  Franklin Roosevelt and his daughter Anna in photo.

May 7, 1920. Races

Collegiate airplane race activity at Mitchel Field, Long Island, May 7, 1920.

On this day in 1920 the first ever Collegiate Airplane Race occured in New York.

Collegiate airplane race participants J.T. Trippe (1899-1981) and George Willard Horne, who flew for Yale at Mitchel Field, Long Island, May 7, 1920.

Collegiate airplane race participants Robert K. Perry and Harry Goodman, who flew for Williams College at Mitchel Field, Long Island, May 7, 1920 

 Collegiate airplane race participants Lansing Colton Holden, Jr. (1896-1938) and Zenos Ramsey Miller (1896-1922), who flew for Princeton at Mitchel Field, Long Island, May 7, 1920.

collegiate airplane race participants Joseph Ferdinand Lersch and David Amos Royer, who flew for University of Pennsylvania at Mitchel Field, Long Island,

On the same day, Carranza gathered his troops and departed Mexico City for Vera Cruz, falling back on a tactic he'd previously used against Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata.  While this was portrayed as a flight from the city, which was about to be attacked by rebel forces, it also at least partially acknowledged that Mexico City is difficult to defend.

A city which changed hands today was Kiev, which fell to Polish forces in the Russo Polish War.

The Reassessors. Smedly Butler

He entered the Marine Corps in 1898 and served until 1931, and saw action all over the world.  He is one of the most decorated Marines in history, having won the Congressional Medal of Honor twice.

After his retirement the disillusioned Butler wrote a book called War Is A Racket.  His views might be summarized by the following quote.

I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer; a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902–1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.

Mid Week At Work. Their careers and lives. Lex Anteinternet: May 5, 1920. The Contest

Yesterday and the day before we ran this item:

Lex Anteinternet: May 5, 1920. The Contest:

May 5, 1920. The Contest

The essay contest was on the benefits of enlisting in the Army.

Awarding of prizes in the Army Essay contest by the Secty. of War, General March, and General Harris. 

Two out of the three winners were young women, an irony in that women hadn't been allowed to join the Army on a regular basis prior to World War One, and during the Great War it was only on a temporary basis.  That would really only changed during World War Two.

"Awarding of prizes in the Army Essay contest by the Secty. of War General March and General Harris. Elaborate exercises were held at the Stadium of the Central High School."

So who were they?  And what became of them?

Left to Right Betty Bowen Eason, Age 16, Olive Branch Miss. Donald L.Campbell, age 15 Clinton Iowa, Marjorie Sheetz Age 14 Chillicothe Mo. Congressman Hubert D. Stephens Miss. Hull, Harry E. Iowa. Wm W. Rucker Mo

Did they join the Army?

Well, not in so far as I  know, but it turns out that Donald L, Campbell had quite the career.

I posted this photo on Reddit's 100 Years Ago subreddit, and somebody followed up with the details on Campbell.  He became a significant chemical engineer and has a place in the Inventors Hall of Fame.  He lived to age 98, dying in 2002.  He holds a patent pertaining to the refining of petroleum.

Marjorie Sheetz lived with her grandparents up until 1910, but that doesn't let us know what happened to her after 1920.  She apparently went to university and became a librarian.  She was secretary of the Missouri Library Association under that name in 1940, twenty years after this photo was taken.  She worked as a librarian for the University of Missouri and the later a public library, before retiring in 1955.  She died in 1964, having never married.  She would have only been 58 years old at the time.

Betty Bowen Eason did marry, and lived until 1992.  Her married name was Cantwell.  Which is all that I'm able to find about her.

Did they every meet again?

I doubt it, but it's interesting to know, if only as a snipped, how things went after this. 

The Tragedy At Kent State

Yesterday, as we noted below, was the 50th anniversary of the Kent State, Ohio, incident.

The incident, to put it briefly, occured when students at Kent State University staged a protest over the invasion of Cambodia which had been announced by President Nixon on April 30 and which for the US commenced on May 1.

This blog isn't a day by day anything, but we do commemorate certain events, most frequently those of 100 years past, when they occur.  Starting in 2018 we started picking up some fifty years past events mostly to mark the epicoal year of 1968.  We've continued with that a bit, as that is in some ways the continuation of the original story.

I marked the 1970 invasion of Cambodia, an event that I can personally recall as I noted in a post about that, but I managed to almost miss the 50th anniversary of the Kent State Shootings. I marked it, but only with a post nothing it:

May 4, 1970. Kent State

I nearly missed this somehow.

The point at which the Vietnam War took on a new, tragic, aspect, as a protest resulted in a unforeseen bloodshed.

This deserves a much better post than this, but unfortunately, it'll have to wait a bit.

The event was a huge one in the story of the war as it was the point where protests over the war resulted in bloodshed, something they had not up until then.  As the anti war movement had developed some real radicals, it would have some violent incidents after Kent State, but the protest at Kent State itself was never intended to be that sort of confrontation.

It's easy to over explain what happened there, but the real oddity of it is that National Guardsmen, who were drawn from the local area and largely not reflected in the student body of Kent State, were deployed as a riot detail to the protest. That's not surprising but frankly, as a former National Guardsmen, that sort of duty is always dangerous for Guardsmen and the public, to a degree.  Guardsmen are trained as soldiers, not as riot police, and the instinct of soldiers is to fire when confronted, no matter how well trained they may be. There are plenty of such incidents all around the globe that have occured when soldiers, even very well trained soldiers, fall back on their training in that fashion.

With that being the case, the shocking thing is that the Guardsmen had been issued ammunition.  Normally this wouldn't be the case and I heavily doubt that even regular active duty soldiers who were deployed in similar roles in the 1950s and 1960s were issued ammunition.  Likely even those men deployed to disperse the bonus marchers carried nothing more dangerous than than their sabers (they were cavalrymen) in that effort, with sabers making a pretty effective non lethal crowd control weapon in the hands of somebody who knows how to use their flats.

But at Kent State the Guardsmen were issued ammunition for their M1 Garands and at some point, they used it.

What happened remains extremely unclear.  The protests had been running for several days as it was so it had grown tense.  An effort was made to disperse the crowed and as part of that the Guardsmen advanced with bayonets fixed to their M1 Garands.  Some students began throwing rocks and return throwing tear gas canisters.  At some point the Guardsmen fired a 13 second volley, which is a long sustained volley.  Sixtyseven shots were fired by the 77 Guardsmen, but slightly less than half fired at all.

That seems clear enough, but from there things deteriorate.  Forensic examination of audiotape suggests that three shots were fired shortly before any others.  Some witnesses claimed a sergeant opened fire with a sidearm first, but the FBI's expert stated that the first three shots were from a M1 Garand.  An FBI informant inside the student body was revealed to be later armed and some have claimed that he fired the first shots, but this now seems discounted.

In the end, nine students were wounded and four killed. None of the killed was any older than 20 years old.  Given the volume of shots, and the weapons used, it's amazing that only 13 people were hit, which has to lead to some speculation on whether the 29 Guardsmen who all fired actually aimed at anything or even attempted to, or even intentionally did not.

The entire matter was a national tragedy, to say the least.  It put protests on the war on a new footing, even though the United States was already withdrawing from South Vietnam at the time, something not entirely evident to Americans given the recent news.  It was also a local tragedy, however, which is rarely noted as like a lot of university towns, the residents of Kent Ohio, whose families had contributed those who were in the National Guard, never saw the incident in the same light.

May 5, 1920. The Contest

The essay contest was on the benefits of enlisting in the Army.

Awarding of prizes in the Army Essay contest by the Secty. of War, General March, and General Harris. 

Two out of the three winners were young women, an irony in that women hadn't been allowed to join the Army on a regular basis prior to World War One, and during the Great War it was only on a temporary basis.  That would really only changed during World War Two.

"Awarding of prizes in the Army Essay contest by the Secty. of War General March and General Harris. Elaborate exercises were held at the Stadium of the Central High School."

May 4, 1970. Kent State

I nearly missed this somehow.

The point at which the Vietnam War took on a new, tragic, aspect, as a protest resulted in a unforeseen bloodshed.

This deserves a much better post than this, but unfortunately, it'll have to wait a bit.

May 4, 1920. Best laid plans. . .

Winners of the Army Essay Contest tour Congress, May 4, 1920.

Carranza's attempt to dictate who his successor would be were going badly.

And Californians were determining who would line up for the Oval Office in the Fall.

Female secretaries of Congressmen, then a new innovation, and Congressional Gym physical fitness instructor, May 4, 1920.

And as the race heats up, mud files, and Twitter tweats. . .

it's worth remembering the Russians.

Eh?

Yes, remember the Russians.

Or at least recall that the Russians were messing around in our election in 2016, and they did that in no small part through Facebook and Twitter.

See a lot of extreme stuff coming from those quarters, and people rising to the bait?

Well, it's worth recalling where extreme political stuff on the net tends to come from.  And just skip it.

Lex Anteinternet: Lex Anteinternet: Trouble in the Red Hermit Kingdo...

Last week I posed this:

Lex Anteinternet: Lex Anteinternet: Trouble in the Red Hermit Kingdo...: We posted this a couple of days ago about Kim Jong-un, the Communist monarch of North Korea: Lex Anteinternet: Trouble in the Red Hermit K...

In it, I posted this theory:

COVID 19 is in North Korea and Kim Jong-un is terrified of getting it.  He's "self quarantining".

Now, Kim Jong-un has reappeared.

Hmmm. . . .

Sunday Morning Scene: Churches of the West: Eden Valley Baptist Church, Farson Wyoming

Churches of the West: Eden Valley Baptist Church, Farson Wyoming:

Eden Valley Baptist Church, Farson Wyoming

This is the Eden Valley Baptist Church in Farson Wyoming.  Other than that is what it is, I don't know anything else about it.

The Best Posts Of The Week Of April 24, 2020

The best posts of the week of April 24, 2020.

Trains, Planes and Automobiles. . . and the Coronavirus Pandemic

Lex Anteinternet: Trouble in the Red Hermit Kingdom. A Viral Explanation?

Panoramic Photograph Equipment?

Blog Mirror: The Dumbest Blog Ever; The Burden of Proof.

Pondering the 1918/1919 Influenza Pandemic

April 30, 1970. The Incursion into Cambodia

I remember it.

Exit Mia.

Exit Mia.

On July 8, 1921, Minnesota Cooperative Creameries Association, a dairy cooperative, formed for the purpose of marketing their products.  They didn't like the name, however, and held a contest that ended up selecting a submission made in 1926, that being Land O Lakes, noting the nature of Minnesota itself, although we don't associate lakes much with dairy.    In 1926 the coop received a painting of an Indian woman holding a carton of their butter, looking forward at the viewer, with lakes and forests in the background.  They liked it so much they adopted it as their label and while they had it stylized by Jess Betlach, an illustrator, the image itself remained remarkably consistent with the original design, which says something as illustrations by Betlach sometimes approached the cheesecake level and depictions of Indian women in the period often strayed into depictions of European American models instead of real Indian women.

For reasons unknown to me, the depiction of the young Indian women acquired the nickname "Mia" over time.

And now she's been removed from the scene, quite literally.

In 1928 the Land O Lakes dairy cooperative hired an advertising agency to come up with a logo for them. The logo that was produced featured an Indian woman kneeling in front of a lake scene, with forests surrounding the lake, and holding a box of Land O Lakes butter in a fashion that basically depicted the woman offering it to the viewer.  From time to time Land O Lakes actually changed the logo on a temporary basis, but it always featured Mia, but not always in the same pose.  On at least one occasion she was shown in profile near a lake and seemingly working (churning) something in a pot.  On another, she was rowing a canoe.

Frederic Remington nocturn, The Luckless Hunter.  This is a fairly realistic depiction of a native hunter in winter, on the typically small range horse of the type actually in use on the Northern Plains.

The adoption of Indian depictions and cultural items as symbols in European American culture goes a long ways back, so Land O Lakes adopting the logo in 1928 was hardly a novelty.  In ways that we can hardly grasp now, European American culture began to admire and adopt Indian symbols and depictions even while the armed struggle between the native peoples and European Americans was still going on.  Frontiers men dating back all the way to the 18th Century adopted items of native clothing, which may be credited to its utility as much as anything else.  In 1826, however, a tribe was romantically treated in Cooper's Last of the Mohicans, which virtually defined the "noble" image of the Indian even as the "savage" image simultaneously kept on keeping on.  The popular genre of Western art continued to do the same in the last half of the 19th Century, and often by the same artists (with Russel being an exception, as he always painted natives sympathetically, and Shreyvogel being the counter exception, as always did the opposite).  Cities and towns provided an example of this as their European American settlers used Indian geographic names from fairly early on, after the original bunch of European place names and honorifics ceased to become the absolute rule, with some western towns, such as Cheyenne, being named after Indian tribes that were literally being displaced as the naming occured.

William F. "Buffalo Bill" Cody and Tȟatȟáŋka Íyotake, i.e., Sitting Bull, in 1885, the year he joined Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show.  Sitting Bull received $50.00 per week, as sum that's equivalent to $1,423.00 in current U.S. Dollars.  He worked for the show for four months, during which time he made money on the side charging for autographs.  This came only nine years after he was present at Little Big Horn and only five years before his death at the hands of Indian Police at age 59, just two weeks before Wounded Knee.

The entire cultural habit took on a new form, however, in the late 19th Century, just as the Frontier closed. Oddly, the blood was hardly frozen at Wounded Knee when a highly romanticized depiction of American Indians began.  Starting perhaps even before the last major bloodletting of the Frontier had occurred, it arguably began with Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West Show, which employed Indian warriors who had only lately been engaged in combat with the United States.

The principal Indian performers, if we wish to consider them that, were men, as were most of the performers.  But women had a role in Wild West shows as well,  as did children.  As Cody was not unsympathetic to Indians in general, his portrayals of Indian women and children were not likely to have been too excessive, but this is not true of all wild west shows of the era, some of which grossly exaggerated female Indian dress or which dressed them down for exploitative reasons.

Nonetheless, as this occurred, a real romantic view of Plains Indians arose and white performers affected Indian dress or exaggerated Indian dress and an entire romanticization of a people who were still very much alive and not living in the best of circumstances oddly took off.  White performers made the circuit performing as romantic Indian couples and an adopted romanticized Indian culture seeped into the general American culture in various ways, including in the form of depictions and ritual.

Camp Fire Girls in 1917.  The first half of the 20th Century saw the rise of the scouting movment and in the English speaking world this spread to girls after it has become very successful with boys.  The Boy Scout movement had military scouting and hence military men as the model for its idealized muscular Christianity movement, but no such equivalent existed for girls.  In the US this came to be compensated for, however, by the adoption of the Indian woman as the model, as she was outdoorsy and rugged by default.

This saw its expression in numerous different ways, including in its incorporation into the Boy Scout inspired female scouting organizations and in popular "Indian maiden" literature.  But it also saw the development of the use of depictions of Indians in advertising and popular culture.

Out of uniform Girl Scouts in 1912 in clothing and hair styles that were inspired by presumed native female dress.

In 1901 one of the legendary American motorcycle companies simply named itself "Indian", for example.  Savage Firearms named itself that in 1894, with there being no intent to demean Indians but rather to name itself after Indian warriors.  Cleveland called its baseball team the "Indians".  The NFL being a late comer to American professional sports, the Washington football franchise didn't get around to naming itself the "Redskins" until 1932 in contrast.

The psychology behind this cultural adaption is an interesting one, with a conquering people doing the rare thing of partially co-opting the identify of the conquered people, even as those people remained in a period of trying to adopt to the constantly changing policy of the post frontier American West.  Celebrated in their pre conquest state, and subject to any number of experiments in their day to day lives, it was as if there were two different groups of people being dealt with, the theoretical and the real, with the real not doing so well with the treatment they were receiving.  Indeed, that's still the case.

Following World War Two this began to be reconsidered, with that reconsideration really setting in during the 1970s.  Books and films, and films based on books, that reflected this reconsideration became widely considered. Thomas Berger's brilliant Little Big Man remains in its brilliant and accurate reflection of Plains Indian culture what True Grit is to the culture of the southern American European American West.  Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee destroyed any remaining claim the Army had to the event being a battle definitively.  The 1973 American Indian Movement occupation of Wounded Knee brought the whole thing into sharp focus.  Kids who had gone to school their entire lives with Big Chief writing tablets would finish the decade out with Son Of Big Chief, who looked a lot more like he'd been with AIM at Wounded Knee or maybe even at Woodstock.

American Indian Movement flag.

As this occured, people questioned the old symbols and depictions. But it wasn't really until the late 1990s that the commercial and popular ones began to go.

Slowly, and sometimes controversially, after that time, people began to reconsider the depiction of people it had used in advertising where those people had been minorities.  It didn't just apply to Indians, of course, but too all sorts of things.  Sombrero wearing Mexican cartoon characters and bandits disappeared from Tex-Mex fast food signs.  Quaker Oats' "Aunt Jemima went from being a woman who was clearly associated with Southern household post civil war servants, who had only lately been slaves, in an undoubtedly racist depiction, to being a smiling middle aged African American woman whom Quaker Oats hoped, probably accurately", would cause people to forget what being an "aunt" or "uncle" meant to African Americans.  As late as 1946 Mars Inc. would feel free to do something similar but without the racist depiction and use the "uncle" moniker  and a depiction of  well dressed elderly African American for Uncle Ben's Rice, something they've kept doing as they'd never gone as far as Quaker Oats.  And these are just common well known examples.  There are leagues of others.

But removing labels and depictions has been slow.  The Washington football team remains tagged with the clearly offensive name "the Redskins".  Cleveland finally retired the offensive Chief Wahoo from their uniforms only in 2018.

So what about Mia?

She started leaving, sort of, in 2018 when the logo was redesigned so that the knees of the kneeling woman were no longer visible, in part because in the age of easy computer manipulation she became a target for computer pornification by males with a juvenile mindset. That fact, however probably amplified the criticism of the logo itself, which was changed to being just a head and shoulder depiction.  Now, she's just gone.

But did that really make sense, or achieve anything, in context?

A literal association between Native Americans and dairly would be odd and was probably never intended.  While native agriculture varied widely, no Indian kept cattle until after they'd been introduced by European Americans and cattle are, of course, not native to North America.  Indians did adapt to ranching in the West, something that's rarely noted for some reason, and indeed the entire Mexican ranching industry is a mestizo one and therefore a blending of two cultures by definition.  On the northern plains some Indians were working as cowboy and even ranchers by the early 20th Century and Southwestern tribes had adopted livestock in the form of sheep by the mid 19th.

But dairy cattle are a different deal and there's no, in so far as I'm aware, Native American association with it.  Indeed, 74% of Native Americans are lactose intolerant.*  This isn't surprising as its fairly well established that lactose tolerance is a product of evolutionary biology.  By and large, the vast majority of cultures have had no reason over time to consume the milk of cattle they were keeping, which were kept first for food, and then for labor, and then as things developed, for labor until they could not, at which time they became food.  Milk wasn't high on the list.  And for Native Americans, being one of the three inhabited continents in which cattle were not native, it was obviously off the list.**

Some critics have called the imagery racist. North Dakota state Rep. Ruth Buffalo, a member of the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation, says it goes “hand-in-hand with with human and sex trafficking of our women and girls, by depicting Native women as sex objects".  But that comment seems misplaced with this logo. She's definitely not the odd blue eyed "Navajo" woman wearing blue beads that still appears on the doors of the semi tractors of Navajo Express.

Indeed, the irony of Mia is that in her last depictions she was illustrated by Patrick DesJarlait, who was a Red Lakes Ojibwe from Minnesota.  He not only painted her, but he painted her wearing an Ojibwe dress.  So she was depicted as an Indian woman, by an Indian artist.

It's hard to see a man panting a woman of his own tribe, fully and appropriately dressed, as being a racist or exploitative act.

Indeed, the opposite really seems true.  The original dairy co-op was really trying to honor their state in the name and they went the next step and acknowledged the original owners.  Mia was the symbol of the original occupants.

And now she's gone, and with that, the acknowledgment of who was there first.

Which doesn't seem like a triumph for Native acknowledgment.

________________________________________________________________________________

*As are 70% of African Americans and 15% of European Americans. Surprisingly 53% of Mexican Americans are, in spite of dairy products being common to the Mexican dietary culture.  A whopping 95% of Asian Americans are lactose intolerant.

Just recently I've come to the conclusion that I'm somewhat lactose intolerant myself, something I seem to be growing into in old age.  Only mildly so, and I've only noticed it recently.  My children, however, have problems with dairy.  My wife does not. So they must get that via me.

***Cattle are not native to the new world or Australia, but are found just about everywhere else.

Communications, Church, and COVID-10

When the Pandemic first started, I published this item on one of our companion blogs*:

Churches of the West: The Church and Pandemic.: St. Mary's Cathedral, Diocese of Cheyenne Wyoming. When this particular blog was started back in 2011 its stated purposes was...

I understand our Diocese's orders, to a degree, during the pandemic.  The Diocese had to close the door to public Masses.  It had no other humane choice.  Catholics are obligated to attend Mass on Sundays and Holy Days and our community, where Catholics are a minority, has a grand total of at least ten Catholic Masses per weekend. That's a lot.  A lot of those Masses are heavily attended.

Added to this, during normal period on the liturgical calendar there are still things going on in the Church or Parish as rule.  Confessions are held weekly more frequently than that.  There are meetings. And there are Baptisms and Marriages.  So a lot is going on in a Church.

During Lent, even more is going on.

So those voices that proclaim that nothing should have been done to disrupt normal Parish life are flat out wrong. 

Which doesn't mean that the critics don't have a point.

Those critics, of course, have to be understood in the context of the Catholic (the word means "Universal") Church being global, but the churches being local.  That is, the local Bishop of a Diocese impacts the daily lives of average Catholics a lot more than the Pope does.

And that's where, at least to some degree, legitimate criticism can be levied.

The response to the pandemic has varied from diocese to diocese around the globe and from diocese to diocese around the country.  And it is not uniform in any sense, nor would we expect it to be.  So any criticism about the Bishops doing this or that are incorrect from the onset.  A person probably only really grasp what the Bishop of their Diocese is doing, although quite a few of them have done very similar things.  Our Diocese took one of the most extreme, if a person cares to define it that way, approaches.

All the sacraments were cancelled save for Confessions where there was a risk of death.

I'll be frank that I feel the order went way too far from the onset.  In a discussion with a very Catholic friend, he posed the question of "well, what if priests had become ill and died?", which is a highly legitimate point.   And I'm not arguing that we should have ignored the state's order and simply charged on as if nothing was happening.  But shutting down all the sacraments was simply too much.  As I pointed out to my friend, what about those who were to be married and simply shrugged their shoulders in our era of weak fealty and started keeping house, something we observant Catholics regard as a mortal sin?  And what about people who would have gone to Confession and simply took Pope Francis' suggestion of "perfect contrition" lightly, and figured they were good to go. Some likely have passed and some who don't study such things will simply assume that perhaps that counts from here on out and they don't have to observe the Church's laws in regard to at least an annual Confession?  And what about those who have simply accommodated themselves to televised Mass or no Mass at all, violation of the Church's canons though they are in normal times.  Everyone has met people who have allowed their consciences to become elastic to accommodate their personal desires or laziness. 

Indeed, the Church, as opposed to Protestant Churches, has at least in part kept a set of canons requiring participation for that reason.  Catholics regard it as a mortal sin not to go to Mass, if they can, on Holy Days and Sundays not because it's in the Bible, but because its a law imposed by the Church.  Indeed, Protestants rarely grasp that Catholics don't regard Protestant failing to observe Catholic Canons as committing serious sins, which is not to say that there aren't serious sins everyone is to avoid.  I.e, Protestants aren't expected to observe Catholic Holy Days for instance.

None of which, again, is to suggest that the Church should have ignored the virus and kept the public Masses.

But it is to say that the cancellation of everything else, where it occurred, and it occurred here, was a mistake.  Baptisms could clearly have been handled with low risk and there was never any sort of state order requiring them to be cancelled.  Marriages could have been too if the couples were willing to go forward with hardly anyone in attendance.  That anyone would consider that in this era would surprise many but I personally know a young couple who were married of their own volition in just such a way, and I myself recall stepping into the Church years ago on a Wednesday night when there was a marriage going on, elaborate white dress and all, with less than ten people in attendance.

Likewise, people being brought into the Church as adults could have been.

Confessions under some circumstances should have been allowed.  Yes, I don't want a line to the Confessional on Saturdays going on right now but cancelling all private Confession in a time of crises was not the right thing to do in my view.  There were ways to accommodate that.

And failing to grasp communications in this modern era is, in my view, an enormous failure.

A friend of mine who is a devout Catholic in Oklahoma tells me that in his archdiocese they are getting weekly emails from that archdiocese.

We aren't.

Now, to a degree, that doesn't surprise me.  Catholic parishes are large and no doubt the diocese doesn't have hardly any of our email addresses.  But it goes beyond that.

Our Bishops original orders expired on Thursday, April 30.  That should mean that a continuation of them in some form should have been widely distributed prior to that.

Nothing was.

What happened instead was a press release.

Now, most people don't get press releases and the Diocese doesn't even publish its own press releases, for the most part, on its website.  Checking it this morning what remains as the case is that there's a press release from back in January regarding the Diocese's actions in regard to a Bishop who served long, long ago.  While that story is real news and while the Diocese took the proper and strong action regarding it, most Wyoming Catholic probably didn't live in the state back then or weren't alive back then.  It's the sort of attention headline grabbing story that deserves to be an attention grabbing headline story, and which if the Press applied its  focus more broadly, would show up a lot more in regard to other institution, particularly schools.

But as far as the lives of average Catholics go, Mass closures matter a lot more.

And we're learning the status of that on the second page of the Tribune, with a headline reading, if you just read on line:

Cheyenne diocese says it will continue to suspend Mass through mid-May

Or, if you read the e-edition or print edition:

Mass Closures To Continue

Now, in fairness, the proactive Priests of the diocese will contact those that they can, or answer questions from those who pose them, and post an announcement to their online bulletins, or make a Youtube or Facebook announcement.  So it'll get out that way.

But is that good enough?

I'm submit it isn't. 

Indeed, delivering a press announcement in 2020 in a state where we're a large minority means that most people are left without anything unless they're proactive.  Most people don't read the newspapers anymore.  And an announcement delivered so late that it comes out the day of the vigil of Sunday is not going to get to most people.

In an earlier time, when a lot of Catholics lived in the Catholic Ghetto in the United States, or in Catholic communities, or where most Catholics in communities like ours where Catholics are a minority, had a means by which such news traveled pretty quickly, and often by the parish priest.  Parish priests weren't moved much, if at all, and they knew their parishioners.  Indeed, even here, it would have been the case that a lot of priests would have been in a community for decades, would have eaten frequently at parishioners homes, would have gone to their high school sporting events, and would have stopped by the Knights of Columbus, where a lot of the men would have been members, nightly to make sure that things were in control at the bar and people were heading home.

Some of that still occurs, but I frankly think it's a lot less than it used to be.  There are indeed still small parishes, or even large ones, where parishioners are really tight with a priest, but as Americans have lost connection with their own communities, which they have, that tight bond isn't there to the same degree, in my view.  Indeed, I don't think that tight bond is there with anything, which is why a writer like Wendell Berry would write a book called Becoming Native To This Place.  It's one of the huge holes in modern American life.

So, circling back, how does an oilfield worker from Texas get the news?  What about a junior accountant who moved up from Colorado?  You get the point.

Indeed, at this time a lot of Catholic parishioners are in the category of "vagabondi", moving from parish to parish as convenient, which is acceptable in the Church.  They donate where they go, but they aren't really listed anywhere, and they probably aren't being contacted.  Indeed, as far as I can tell, written communication around here has been pretty limited during the closure.

An assumption that on a Saturday morning most people are going to read the news in a newspaper and then call anyone they know who doesn't get it is flat out wrong, if such an assumption was made.  Simply waiting until Friday to say anything at all is likewise not a very good way to communicate anything to a group of people who are morally bound to attend Mass if they can.  It makes no sense at all.

The same news also informs the readers, most of whom will  not be Catholic, that Confessions by appointment are now resumed, which is a good thing, and that Masses after the 15th will be resumed but the present restrictions on public gathering, which actually will expire on that date, will also be observed.  I'm not sure what that means, but the size of gatherings is now very limited so, if that holds, and means what it says, logic would presume that the requirement to attend Mass will remain suspended as there's no earthly way to do that for all the Catholics in most parishes, even if Masses were run all day long on Sunday, which they can't be as Canon Law restricts the number of Masses a Priest can say in a day.  Perhaps that latter restriction makes sense, but we're still being informed of this in a very poor way.

As noted, every Diocese is different and this isn't applicable everywhere.  But rising to his crisis does not appear to have been done very well in Cheyenne.

If this seems to be asking for too much,and I'd strenuously argue it isn't, other institutions haven't been similarly lacking. The courts, for example, have been excellent in sending out information.  And the Diocese, in this modern era, does have a website where an announcement could have been placed front and center.

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*I debated posting this comment at all as I'm not disloyal, and I also wasn't sure if I should post it first here, or on that blog.  Ultimately I decided to post it, and here, as it is a local item for one thing, and a communications matter, at least in part, secondly.

I remember it.

The event referred to here, that is:

Lex Anteinternet: April 30, 1970. The Incursion into Cambodia: Well remembered, but not well remembered accurately, on this day in 1970 President Richard Nixon announced that Republic of Vietnam and the ...

On May 1, 1970, US troops entered Cambodia in Operation Rock Crusher.  The operation sent the 1st Cavalry Division, which was famously air mobile in Vietnam, i.e., "air cavalry", the 11th Armored Cavalry REgiment, the ARVN 1st Armored Cavalry Regiment and the ARVN 3d Airborne Brigade into Cambodia following a massive B-52 air strike.

Engineers of the 11th ACR sweeping for mines ahead of a M551 Sheridan.

And that's what I remember.

It surprises me to realize that at the time I was six years old and in 2nd Grade.  Indeed, that simply amazes me in recollection.  I've long known that I recalled this event, in a certain way, but I'd associated it with being older.  Not six and almost seven, and not as a 2nd Grader.

In 1970, the year I was in 2nd Grade, I was in my second year of attendance of a grade school that was later sold by the school district in a sale that I still question, even though I have no real reason to.  I'll forgo commenting on that, at that time grade schools here worked the way that they do most places. They had a territory.  Later, in a controversial move that I still very much question, that practice was altered so that there were no home schools, leaving parents to struggle to place their children in a district housing over 60,000 people, as they also juggled their daily lives. But that's another story.

Looking back, I realize that I entered public school in the Fall of 1968, completing the year as a newly turned 5 year old.  So by extension I completed first grade having just turned 6 in 1969 and I would turn 7 just before school was let out in 1970.  In April and the first of May, 1970, I was still 6.

We 6 and 7 year olds didn't think much about the Vietnam War.

Our house in about 1958. This was before my birth.  My mother is to the left of the house, the only ones my parents ever owned.

That's interesting in a way as over time there's come to be a genera of literature that reflects childhood memories of war, and mostly of World War Two.  And when I say that, I mean American memories.  Europeans and Asians who were 6 or 7 definately have memories of World War Two as there wasn't a square inch of Europe that wasn't impacted by the war.  Even lands where a German jackboot never set foot, or where Japanese infantry never trod, were heavily impacted directly by the war.  The British were bombed and sent their children, if they could, to the countryside.  Swedes lived on short rations, pinned into between the Germans in occupying Norway and the war raging on the Finnish/Soviet border.  Swiss rations in the neutral nation became so short that serious worries over starvation set in and commons gardening became common.  And of course if you were in an area where ground forces contested for ground or even occupied it the events were unforgettable.

But in the United States none of that occured and so the memories are of other things.  But they are there.  Films like Radio Days and the like by some really well known actors depict the era and what it was like to be in the various stages of being young.  Even Gene Shepherd's A Christmas Story touches on it a bit, with Shepherd setting his Yuletide recollections forward in time, as he was actually that age several years prior himself, during the Depression. Shepherd served in World War Two.

Of course, Shepherd's A Christmas Story might in fact be the most accurate depiction for a young person, the way they perceive remote events.  Set in 1940, the kids worry about Christmas gifts and school yard bullies, not the Germans having just invaded France.  Likewise, in 1968, 69 and 70, when I was first in school, we didn't worry about the Republic of Vietnam.  We didn't even discuss it in school.

When I entered grade school, and through the early years of it, the day had a pretty set routine.

My father left for work really early, often before I was up.  Back then he got up around 5:00, which seemed really early, but now I get up no later that, and often a lot earlier than that, myself.  In my very early grade school years my mother sometimes made me breakfast but a lot of times I just ate cereal and drank milk.  I still eat cereal for breakfast quite a bit, but I never drink milk anymore and really haven't since my grade school years.

We had a Zenith television at home.  It was in the kitchen, which is also where we always ate.  It'd been placed in a spot that was just below a window by the stove, kind of an awkward place to put it, and I know that it had been relocated from the living room to there. That was likely because my father often worked in the evenings using the kitchen table for a work table.  Indeed, that some table was used for absolutely everything.

Television was new to my parents at the time and the TV, looking back, I now realize had only made its appearance a couple of years prior.  Up until then they didn't have one so this television was their first TV.  As first generation television owners their habits didn't really match later generations in regard to it, although in my father's case it came to somewhat resemble the modern a bit at one time, before ceasing to once again.  Anyhow, neither of my parents turned the television on in the morning.

But I did, and my mother let me do that.

At that time there was no such thing as cable television, at least in our town, and so broadcast TV was it.  Very early on there was only one channel, but because of my specific memory recollected here, I know that we had at least two, and maybe three, channels.  One of the channels, even though it was local, rebroadcast material from Denver's KOA television and other channels.  In the morning that one played kids shows.  One was the legendary Captain Kangaroo, which I would watch before going to school, and the other was a local Denver product which featured a young female host and a sock puppet character of some sort.  That one took submissions form the viewing audience and I once had a drawing I sent in shown in that part of the show.

School started at 8:00 and some time prior to that I went out the door, rain, shine or snow, and walked to school. The hike was about a mile, which isn't far.  Nobody ever drove me or my associates to school. . . ever.  Indeed, while my mother could drive and my father had purchased what I now know was a 1963 Mercury Meteor for her to have something to drive, but she was an awful driver and it was undoubtedly best she didn't drive me to school, but then nobody's parents did. The few kids who were hauled to school by motor vehicle were hauled by school bus, if they lived in the boundaries.  At the end of the school day, which I think was around 3:30, we walked back home.

If we had homework to do we did it then, and I know that homework actually did start to become a feature of our routine in 2nd Grade.  Our parents were expected to help us with penmanship, which my mother did.  Both of my parents had beautiful handwriting.  I never have.  They also helped us with math, which at that time my mother did as well. Both of my parents were really good with math, which I also have never been.  I recall at the time that we all had to struggle with "New Math", which was as short lived ill fated experiment at teaching something that is both natural and in academics dating back to antiquity in a new way.  It was a bad experiment and its taken people like me, upon whom it was afflicted, decades to recover from it.  It also meant that both of my parents, my mother first and my father later, were subject to endless frustration as they tried to teach me math effectively, having learned real math rather than new math.

If I didn't have home work or if I had finished it, I was allowed to turn on the television once again.  Gilligan's Island, the moronic 1960s sit com, was already in syndication and one of the local channels picked it up in a rebroadcast from Denver and played it at 4:30. At 5:00 the same channel played McHale's Navy.

My father normally left work around 5:00 p.m. and was home very shortly thereafter.  At this point in time he had to travel further across town so that usually meant that he was home no earlier than 5:15 but on some occasions it was later, around 5:30.  Usually he got home prior to 5:30 however, and when he did, he switched the channel to the news over my protests.

The network nightly news came on at 5:00 and ran to 5:30. At 5:30 the local news was shown on one of the local channels.  My father watched both and the custom became to leave the television on during dinner, something that I haven't liked as an adult.  From around this time until his later years he kept the television on until he want to bed, often simply as something on in the background as he worked.  Interestingly, he'd counsel me not to attempt to do homework in front of the television as he regarded it as impossible. I didn't at the time, but he was quite correct.

I don't recall what he watched on TV as a rule.  My mother never picked up the evening television habit and just didn't watch it.  Indeed, her intentional television watching was limited to a very few number of shows including Days Of Our Lives during one hour of the daily afternoon, and things such as The Carol Burnett Show or Lawrence Welk.    Having said that, just looking through the shows that were on in 1970, it seems to me back then they both watched some series that were brand new to television at the time.  The Mary Tyler Moore Show was one they both liked and it debuted in 1970. The Odd Couple was as well..  The Flip Wilson Show they also liked and was new. The short run Tim Conway Show they also liked.  Some others that were still on that they never watched were shows like Hogan's Hero's, which was nearing  the end of its run.

One thing that networks did at that time, as well as local channels, was to run movies.  When they did, it tended to be a big deal.  I can recall Lawrence of Arabia running when I was in my early grade school years, being broadcast over two nights.  My mother, who admired T. E. Lawrence, watched both nights, which was unusual.  I also recall The Longest Day running, again over two nights, when I was in 1st Grade.

So what's that have to do with Cambodia?

11th ACR in Cambodia.

Well, a lot in terms of my recollection of this day.

We grade school boys were familiar with war, as in "the war", and that war was World War Two.  Some of us had fathers who had been in World War Two, although they were older fathers, keeping in mind that in that era people had larger families and children stretched out over their parent's lifespans often differently than they do now.  It wasn't unusual for a grade school kid to have a father who had been in World War Two, and indeed my closest friend's father had been in the ETO during the war.  The dominance of World War Two in the culture, however, may be shown by the fact that I had a father who had been in the Korean War and I still thought of World War Two as "the war" and my father more or less did as well, which is odd to realize in that it wasn't just him, but others of his age and equivalent experience who took that view.  Indeed, it seems to me that it wasn't until right about this time, 1970, that the started to talk about their own war at all, and indeed also about this time it began to creep into the culture as background elements in popular stories.

Adding to this was the impact of popular culture.  As noted, the movie The Longest Day was such a big deal that it sticks out in my mind as something shown on television around 1969, probably in a network premier.  The movie Patton, one of the most celebrated American military movies of all time, was released in April 1970, and indeed its sometimes noted that President Nixon and Secretary of State Kissinger watched a private screening of it just shortly before U.S. armor went into Cambodia, although the suggestion that this influenced Nixon seems specious to me, the invasion having been something that events were working up to since the mid 60s and which had been ongoing for weeks prior to the US putting its forces in.  In other media, kids who liked cartoon books, which I never have, circulated such works as Sergeant Rock or GI Combat, both of which were set in World War Two.

So, for a 6 and 7 year old boy, we knew about wars, in the childish youthful glorification of war sense that has been a common feature of the play of boys since the dawn of man, but the war we knew about was a movie and cartoonish version of World War Two.

On May 1, 1970 I watched Gilligan's Island.  Following that McHale's Navy came on and I started watching that.  My father got home almost immediately after McHale's Navy started and switched the channel to the news, over my protest.  To my shock, the news featured M113 Armored Personnel Carriers crossing a river.  

I was stunned and asked my father "what's that?".  It looked like something out of The Longest Day.  I can't recall his exact words but he told me that the scene depicted US troops in action in Cambodia.

The fact that it had an impact is best demonstrated that fifty years later, I still recall it.  It was unsettling.  Even at 6 it was obvious that the school yard games we played in which the Allies and the Axis duked it out in Europe and Asia 30 years prior were being overshadowed by a real war in our own era.  People were fighting and it wasn't a game.

It was a type of epiphany, to be sure.  But a person needs to be careful about claiming too much.  It isn't as if at nearly age 7 I suddenly became keenly aware of everything going on in Indochina.  But suddenly I was much more aware of something that had actually been playing in the background my entire life.  Indeed, as it was in the background, but subtle, and often limited at that age to a short snipped on the nightly news that was often devoid of any real engaging footage, it was just something, up until then, that was.

Of course, while 7 years old isn't old, even at 7 your early early childhood years are waning.  The next five years in Vietnam, only three of which had a large scale American presence, were ones that were hard not to be aware of.  The unrelated but still huge news event of Watergate was impossible not to be aware of.  And by the time the Republic of Vietnam started collapsing in 1975, I was old enough to be very much aware of it.

But that awareness started on this day in 1970.

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Related thread:

Growing up in the 1960s

May 1, 1920. The long game and Bernice Bobs Her Hair.

On this day in 1920 the Braves and the Dodgers played a 26 inning baseball game, the longest one in history, which concluded with no decision.

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And the recently married F. Scott Fitzgerald published a short story, Bernice Bobs Her Hair, in the May 1 Saturday Evening Post.

Originally illustration from Bernice Bobs Her Hair.

In the story the single young Bernice precedes to have her hair bobbed, reflecting the up and coming female hair style of the 1920s.