The best post of the week of September
Nothing.
Experts on the topic of human memory assert that the average person only recalls details about the weather for three years. Outside of that, they remember the current weather being the normal, almost without fail.
Sage Chicken season opens on the same calendar date now as it did when I was a boy, September 15. The question every year was whether we'd be snowed out before that date. We were about half the time.
Snow in September unusual? Not at all. Only unusual recently.
Patriarch of the Serbian Orthodox Church at the point of its reunification, Dimitrije Pavlović
On this date in 1920, the Serbian Orthodox Church was reunified after a long period of separation due to its members being in various empires. The aftermath of World War One changed that situation. The church is the second oldest Slavic Orthodox Church, second only in that status to the Bulgarian Orthodox Church. The church today has over 8,000,000 members, mostly in Serbia, and is one of the Eastern Orthodox Churches in communion with Constantinople.
Residents of Cheyenne were disappointed by the failure of the mail plane to arrive, which was front page news. The headline seemed to blame the failure on an errant pilot, but it was engine trouble in Utah that caused the delay.
Movie goers on this date were apparently up for a massive serving of turgid.
The Restless Sex follows the story of a young adventurous woman who is in love with her step brother, whom she grew up with, and whom she's been in love with since her youth, until he travels afar, and she's pursued by another.
Plot spoiler.
The step brother wins.
Hmmmm. . . .
Movie goes who may have been pondering the "ick" quality of Restless also had the option of seeing Homespun Folks, also released on this date.
In that one a young lawyer makes good by getting the position of district attorney only to be accused of murder.
wouldn't it be nice if Americans were behaving as we did on September 12, 2001.
That is, all the time.
But not in the same rolls.
Socrates: "Have you made absolutely sure that what you are about to say is true?”
Man: "No, I actually just heard about it, and …”
Socrates: You don’t know for certain that it is true, then. Is what you want to say something good or kind?”
Man: “No! Actually, just the opposite. You see …”
Socrates: "So you are not certain that what you want to say is true, and it isn’t good or kind. One filter still remains, though, so you may yet still tell me. That is Usefulness or Necessity. Is this information useful or necessary to me?”
Man: "No, not really.”
Socrates: “Well, then, “If what you want to say is neither true, nor good or kind, nor useful or necessary, please don’t say anything at all.”
are in short supply.
I'm not naive enough to believe that there was a golden age of discourse in which all Americans behaved with cheerfulness toward their opponents. Lincoln was vilified. Roosevelt castigated as a dangerous Red. Al Smith lambasted as an agent of the Pope. It goes on and on.
But a person would have to be really naive to believe that things haven't been particularly weird recently, but which we can go pack, I think, to President Obama's first Presidential race, after which discourse started in a new and dangerous direction (and not due to him, I might add).
On a local highway some brave soul has put up a Biden/Harris banner. Biden isn't going to win here, and the person displaying it has to either be truly brave or extraordinarily naive. Not too surprisingly, counter banners have appeared across the highway for Trump. It's not that, but what they say, which is:
Trump
2020
Stop the Bullshit
and
Trump
2020
Fuck Your Feelings
First of all, putting up a Trump banner seeking to "Stop the Bullshit" really opens up the person putting it up to the charge of being naive as one of the primary claims of his opponents is that he's full of just that. Indeed, while we haven't put it up yet, there's a remarkable dichotomy in the Trump Administration between public declarations and very quiet conservative actions. It makes a person wonder exactly how the administration functions and its relationship to the Oval Office.
We'll get to that later and this isn't a critique or criticism of his administration in any sense. Some people, and I've certainly met at least one, really like the way he addresses the public. Rather, this is to point out that much like the use of H. L. Mencken's quote about Americans inevitably getting the President they deserve, a person needs to be careful to ponder whether their use of a slogan is easily subject to counter use. Things like that don't advance any discourse.
The point of this post, however, is to show how crude we've become. That we've reached the point where political posters, even aftermarket ones as these surely must be, are so crude means we've reached a new low in modern American political history.
Breakin' Through at the University of Wyoming, which is not occupied by leftists.
Along the same lines, sort of, a foundation that supports the local university posted on the recent anniversary of the university's foundings.
That's nice, and worth noting. Also worth noting is the weird controversy that happened a couple of years ago when the university adopted the "The World Needs More Cowboys" slogan, which did provoke some hypersensitive woke faculty to wring their hands over what that meant.
That must have opened things up as when the foundation noted the anniversary it provoked a couple of comments of a negative nature, including:
Cool. Sad to see UW now being controlled by the extremist left agenda to destroy our country.
and
back when it was full of Americans. not the liberal toads that haunt it's halls today.
Now, now, most of the faculty at UW doesn't even teach anything remotely political. There's no evidence that the university is "controlled" by "the extremist left", even if there are individual professors far to the left of the average Wyomingite, something that's been the case for a very long time. And I'm not even sure what to make of it once being "full of Americans. not the liberal toads".
Indeed, that last comment seems to presuppose that if you are a political liberal, you must be 1) a toad, and 2) not an American. The thought that should scare people who make comments of that type is that the "liberal toads" are almost certainly about to maintain their position in the U.S. House and take the Oval Office and that, moreover, they're as American as anyone else. Nobody really has the right to declare their opponents to not be Americans due to their political views, let alone to declare that they're an amphibian.
Indeed, an old very conservative friend of mine once pointed out that one of the real hallmarks of the American Communists of the 1930s and 1940s was, by and large, how deeply patriotic they were. They weren't anti American, they were just extremely radical left wing Americans.
I'm pretty conservative myself, which leads me in part to make this comment. We're truly about to get the most liberal political administration since the 1930s. That's in part due to a massive left wing reaction to Donald Trump having been elected in the first place. Part, but not all, of why he was elected was due to a real visceral reaction in some quarter to Barack Obama having been elected. Declarations about people's background and origin, and their Americaness or lack of it, have become common. So too has it become common to call somebody a Marxist, a Socialist or a Fascist, when lots of people don't even really seem to know what those things mean.
Enough is enough, really.
after it had been in the high 90s on Sunday, it's still snowing and has snowed a great deal more than predicted. This is a major winter storm.
From summer to winter in 24 hours.
Lex Anteinternet: A Checkerboard Blunder?: Note: This was teed up to run prior to the Governor's recent announcement confirming that the land had, in fact, been sold to another ...
And now we know that the high bidder was a combine of Orion Energy and Sweetwater. Their plans for the property were featured in today's Tribune.
Jewelry workers, 1920.
A Labor Day post.
From: StatChat, University of Virginia.
Looking back a few years earlier, to 1915, reveals this interesting information:
Labor force participation. The 1915 annual average civilian labor force participation rate is estimated at 56.3 percent. This percentage isn’t strictly comparable to the 2015 annual average of 62.7 percent, because of differences in survey coverage and definitions.17 However, despite the similarity in overall labor force participation, the participation rates of men and women were very different from each other 100 years ago. The 1920 census shows that, among people ages 14 and older, the proportion of the population that was in the total labor force was 85 percent for men and 23 percent for women in January of that year. (Civilian labor force data by gender are not available for 1915.) In contrast, the Current Population Survey shows a 2015 annual average civilian labor force participation rate for people ages 16 and older of about 69 percent for men and nearly 57 percent for women. Table 1 points out that young boys were much more likely to be in the labor force in 1920 than now. Not surprisingly, women of all ages are much more likely to be in the labor force now than in 1920. Half of all boys ages 14 to 19 were in the labor force in 1920; nowadays, about one-third of boys age 16 to 19 are in the labor force. Labor force participation among girls those ages hasn’t shown as much change.
From: Bureau of Labor Statistics. And also from the BLS, this interesting statistic which we've discussed as a topic here before.
And this interesting set of figures, related to the "everything was cheaper back then" claim that people so often hear:
Item 1915 price 1915 price in 2015 dollars 2015 price Bread (1-lb loaf) $0.07 $1.65 $1.42 Butter (lb) .36 8.48 3.18 Eggs (dozen) .34 8.01 2.81 Ground coffee (lb) .30 7.06 4.61 Potatoes (10 lbs) .15 3.53 6.55
Interestingly, in that chart, the only thing that's really climbed in adjustered prices is the price of potatoes, which is nearly double the current (or the 2015) prices. The only thing that has near parity with its century old price is bread.
Record highs Saturday and Sunday.
Snow on Monday.
Sure, why not?
Governor
Gordon Launches Meat Processing Expansion Grant Program
CHEYENNE, Wyo. – Governor Mark Gordon has
announced the launch of the Wyoming Meat Processing Expansion Grant Program to
provide support for Wyoming meat processing facilities and Wyoming citizens
impacted by supply chain disruptions and regional shut-downs of processing
facilities resulting from the COVID-19 public health emergency.
The Governor has appropriated $10 million in
Federal CARES Act funds to the program, which seeks to strengthen Wyoming's’
local food supply chain and address meat shortages at retail locations and food
banks within the state. Wyoming-based meat processing businesses and nonprofits
may submit grant applications for capacity-related improvements made before
December 30, 2020. .
“As anyone who has tried to get a beef cut up
this year knows, processing in Wyoming is facing significant bottlenecks in
2020. The First Lady’s initiative has seen this across the state,” Governor
Gordon said. “That is why we have set up the Meat Processing Expansion Grant
Program, which will help improve our meat processing capacity and ensure our
citizens have access to high-quality products.”
Applications will open September 15, 2020 and be
reviewed by a group from the Wyoming Business Council, Wyoming Department of
Agriculture, and the Governor’s Office. The grants require a portion of
processed and retailable products to be provided to local food banks, pantries,
soup kitchens, prisons, schools, or other charitable organizations to help feed
hungry or underserved populations.
For additional information on the program, visit
the Wyoming Department of Agriculture’s website.
-END-
It rolled in around 10:00 p.m.
When I got up this morning I looked towards the mountain to see if that orange glow was up there in the darkness. It wasn't.
This morning I read that it's blown in from Johnson County and Montana, which would mean two separate fires at least.
It's been a smoky late summer.
You've seen part of it at least. The scene with the protagonist, played by Lillian Gish, on ice flows heading toward a waterfall.
Wave goodbye to the handshake amid coronavirus concerns: As the new disease also known as COVID-19 spreads, Americans must eliminate long-established physical greetings. Here's how you can change the social script — and help break the chain of transmission.
I sure hope this article is right.
Shaking hands is an awkward custom and I wouldn't miss it.
Suburban Home Sales Boom as People Move Out of N.Y.C.
Headline from the New York Times.
The POWER Interview: Technology Can Solve Problem of Nuclear Waste: Debate continues about nuclear power's role in electricity production, particularly as it revolves around climate change. As a zero-emissions source of
Interesting article on this topic.
Nuclear power should be something that Greens, particularly radical Greens, should be screaming for night and day. Indeed, any really scientific thought on energy that was designed to address safe, sustainable, and clean energy, would be based on nuclear power. Opposition to it is so unscientific as to make Godzilla movies look like actual paleontology.
On this day in 1920, Greater Lebanon came into existence as a French administrative unit.
Syria had attempted to define Lebanon as an administrative Syrian unit in its short lived state that was brought to an end by France in 1920. It's origins went back to the 1860s when European powers entered into a series of treaties with the Ottoman Empire in an effort to protect the Christian population of the region which has been subject to religious violence. The boundaries of the state were larger than those originally regarded as Lebanese and were based upon the map featured here yesterday. The expanded boundaries were created in order to attempt to give the region, which was anticipated as having statehood in the future, a large enough territory to have some sort of economic base.
The League of Nations would approve the creation of the entity in 1923 and it was declared to be the Republic of Lebanon in 1926 while still under French administration. It's status became a matter of contest during World War Two when the French Vichy administration allowed the Germans to transport arms through Syria to be used against British forces in the Middle East. Free French General Charles de Gaulle declared it to be independent in 1941, under pressure from the Allies to do so, in a move that would have been legally questionable.
On November 8, 1943 Lebanon held elections for an independent government and declared the League of Nations mandate over it to be terminated, which brought immediate Free French reaction in the form of arresting the government. However, on November 22, 1943 they were released under Allied pressure. The French left in December 1946, at which point both Syria and Lebanon had been admitted as founding members of the United Nations. No formal end of the mandate was ever declared.
