The best post of the week of November 8, 2020.
Sunday, November 15, 2020
Saturday, November 14, 2020
November 14, 1920. Russian and Irish Tragedies
Remnants of the Imperial Russian Black Sea Fleet steam away from Sebastopol forever carrying the remnants of Pyotr Wrangels White Russian Army and refugees. The fleet managed to continue to exist as an entity until 1921, going first to Turkey and then to France. In 1924 the ships were turned over to Soviet control but found to be unserviceable, and were sold as scrap.
On this day, the fight of the Russian Whites in the eastern half of what had been the Russian Empire came to an end and the Russian White forces under Pyotr Wrangel abandoned Sebastopol and fled on the remaining loyal elements of the former Imperial Russian Black Sea Fleet, together with refugees. Allied ships also departed the port taking with them their own nationals. While fighting would go on in the east, it was the effective end of the Russian Civil War in the west, and the effective end of the war in general in terms of who would ultimately prevail.
Poster of Wrangel in Cossack regalia.
Wrangel would attempt to lead Russian refugees after his exile and formed, for a time, an organization that attempted to centralize that effort and to plan for a future war against the Communists in Russia, a quixotic effort under the circumstances. In 1927 he moved to Belgium and became a mining engineer. He was poisoned in 1928 by the brother of his butler, who is believed to have been a Soviet agent. His descendants have refused to have him reinterred in Russia as the current Russian government has not denounced the evils of Communism.
Wrangel, who was part of the Russian military community descended from German origin, a surprisingly common demographic in Imperial Russian military leadership, had such close German roots that his grandfather had in fact been Lutheran. Pyotr Wrangel was Orthodox however and had in fact been trained as an engineer prior to joining the Imperial Russian Army. Like many senior military figures, he had actually dropped out of the service at the time of the Russian Revolution and only joined the Whites after having been arrested by, and escaping from, the Communists. Such experiences were surprisingly common and to a degree demonstrate how Red paranoia actually fueled the war against them. He was a very able commander and highly successful in the Russian Civil War before his reversal of fortunes. A failure to find an overall command for the White effort partially explains this failure.
Wrangel, of wealthy and aristocratic background, obviously managed to find some success after his exile. Most Russian refugees, however, were of much more modest means. In the west they spread out among a collection of countries, with France being a common one, and rebuilt new lives in new countries while also retaining their Russian identity. Their fortunes varied considerably from their compatriots who fled into China a few years later where economic conditions were dire.
Fr. Michael Griffin.
On this same day, Father Michael Griffin, a Catholic Priest in Ireland who sympathized with Republicans, and who had been missing since November 14, was found in an unmarked grave. He is believed to have been murdered by the Black & Tans. He is remembered in the name of a road in Galway, where he was from, and in the name of an Irish football club which is called The Father Griffins.
Eileen Quinn
This event shows the way the Anglo Irish War was starting to go, with guerilla extrajudicial killings becoming common. Just a few days prior the pregnant Eileen Quinn, age 24, was shot by a police auxiliary, a police unit of the Royal Irish Constabulary often confused with the Black & Tans, when she was out in front of her tenant farmhouse nursing a baby. She was wounded in the stomach and died later that day. She and her husband Malachi were tenants of Lady Gregory Augusta, an Anglo Irish playwright of nationalist sympathies. The death of Mrs. Quinn left her husband a widower and her three children without a mother. Her husband had been away at the time of the killing attempting to negotiate a purchase of land. A subsequent military investigation came to the conclusion that the killing was accidental and from a random shot designed to attempt to clear the area.
Both killings resulted in a way from the IRA ambush and murder of Sheriff Frank Shawe-Taylor the previous March, which had brought the Black & Tans and Auxiliaries in.
Black & Tan in Dublin, 1921. He is armed with a Lewis Gun and an incredibly low slung .455 Webley revolver.
The British government had, as noted here the other day, just extended home rule to Ireland, but events like this showed that the measure had come too late. Additionally, their heavy handedness resulted in contempt in both Ireland and the United Kingdom over them and support in Ireland for the IRA.
Southern Rockies Nature Blog: Pouring Bureaucratic Syrup on the Wolves
Southern Rockies Nature Blog: Pouring Bureaucratic Syrup on the Wolves: Gray wolf (Colorado Parks & Wildlife) The people have spoken: Coloradans voted by a roughly 1% margin to order Colorado Parks & Wild...
Friday, November 13, 2020
November 13, 1920. Those teenage years.
A photographer was at work in Craig Colorado, where he took a photograph of the students of the school there, which must have been a unified (all grades) school. He also photographed the athletic teams of Craig and Meeker.
On the same day, a band of teenagers in Omaha pulled off what was, up until that time, the largest train robbery in the United States, taking over $3,500,000 in fresh United States currency being shipped from a mint. It involved breaking into into a train car and then departing it at its first stop, where there was a waiting car. So it was a planned thing.
In current dollars, that would amount to $46,000,000.
They burned most of it shortly thereafter, although some of what was taken was in the form of coins. The amount of money must have spooked them, and therefore they didn't profit by their crime and, in the end, the US really didn't lose much.
Not to condone theft, but burning the cash was really stupid.
The Casualty of the Dress Code and COVID 19
I participated in a deposition by Zoom the other day.
I've been doing a lot of those since March. And during that time I've watched the lawyer dress code, which was suffering in the first instance, decline and simply fade away. I'm not sure that it'll ever actually come back.
When I was first practicing law, if you went to a deposition, you wore a tie, assuming that you were male. Usually a coat of some kind, like a sports coat, as well. Over the last decade that's really been dropping off. I found that I was often the only one dressed in that fashion.
Now, however, I'm seeing for the first time lawyers wearing t-shirts on Zoom depos. I guess if you aren't leaving your house due to COVID 19. . . well, why dress up?
It's really been remarkable.
And I'm not sure, really, in a good way.
Thursday, November 12, 2020
Did you get, or take, Veterans Day off?
Just curious.
The answer here would be no. I don't think I've ever worked anywhere where it was a day off.
November 12, 1920. First and lasts in sports, and in life events.
November 12, 1920: Man o' War's final run
Read about it at the above, an unfortunately seemingly inactive blog.
On the same day, Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis was hired as the Commissioner of Major League Baseball, and at the same time the major leagues took on their present organizational form.
This occured, of course, in the wake of the Black Sox Scandal and as part of an effort to address deficiencies in the organization of the sport and clear up its name.
Italy and what would become Yugoslavia entered into the Treaty of Rapallo. The treaty adjusted territorial boundaries between the nations, which had been disputed in the wake of World War One and the creation of the new state. The new South Slav kingdom and Italy shared populations that were of the ethnicities of the other state. While the treaty did leave few Italians in Yugoslavia, about 500,000 South Slavs remained in what became Italian territory.
The border would be readjusted following World War Two.
Former resident of Cheyenne and teenage lover of Charlie Chaplin, actress Mildred Harris, was granted a divorce from Chaplin.
Harris' sad story, as well as her peculiar role in history (she's at least partially responsible for Wallace Simpson meeting King Edward VIII, has been addressed elsewhere on this blog.
President Wilson refused to sign the execution warrant for Sgt. Anthony F. Tamme, who had been convicted of espionage during World War One.
2020 Election Post Mortem V. Conservatives down ballot, Marching through Georgia, and what it means.
One seat.
That's all that will make up the difference between the Democratic majority and the Republican minority in the House of Representatives in the next Congress. The Republicans will have 217 seats. The Democrats 218.
A razor thin difference.
And all because the Republicans lost a seat in Georgia after picking up six elsewhere.
And the Senate may have that same razor thin margin as well. We don't know yet, as we will have to endure two Georgia Senate runoffs.
What does that all mean?
Well, if the Republicans win, they'll have 52 seats, and retain control of the Senate. And they really only need to keep one in order to do that.
The Democrats need to take both to tie up the Senate, which would mean that Kamala Harris may have the tie breaking vote on a lot of party line votes. That would occur because the Vice President is the President of the Senate and can take that role.
Which would make the office of Vice President unusually important for at least two years.
And agenda wise, that would make all the difference in the world for Vice President Elect Biden. A tied Senate would give him two years to achieve an agenda. A Republican Senate, on the other hand, would mean that he'd need to cut a lot of deals with the Senate, and historically Presidents who had been Senators have not been very effective at doing that. And getting those deals would depend upon a Mitch McConnell willing to enter into them, rather than hedging his bets that the Republicans would pick up the House in 2022.
So the race in Georgia is going to be the most heavily contested Senatorial race in American history.
Beyond that, however, these results show that conservatism is much stronger than pundits would have had it. We believe that's an evolving trend, as we've recently addressed here. To have watch recent press reports from earlier last year, and to listen to the pundits leading up to the election, you would have had the impression that a new era for Progressives, and a permanent one, was about to be launched. That turned out to certainly not be the case, at least, for this election. Conservatives, as Mitt Romney pointed out on last weekend's Meet the Press, did quite well.
Populist (People's Party) candidate from 1892, James B. Weaver.
Indeed, conservative populism is much stronger than we supposed, which we didn't see as a trend, and which some liberal organs like The Guardian are now worried about. That populism was growing has been obvious back to 2016, where it was growing in both parties, given us both Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders. It's a dirty word to pundits, but it's a political fact one way or another, and its one that has always been an element of American politics. Sometimes its been a very strong one, and in that sense, we've returned to a long running and continual stream of political thought in the US.
Left wing Populist Party, and then Democratic Party, Presidential candidate, William Jennings Bryan.
Another area where the punditry would appear to be wrong, therefore, would be the predictions of the death of populism and the death of conservatism, which aren't the same thing and aren't necessarily always aligned. Both might be nearly as strong in Joe Biden's first two years of his oncoming term they have been in the last four and potentially a bit more organized in opposition than it was in partial power.
Mitt Romney has indicated that he thinks this shows the overall strength of conservatism and that the country is basically center right. He may be very well right and that's how I'd interpret it as well, which if that is the case its good news for Joe Biden as he has traditionally been center left and should be able to find some common ground. If that analysis is wrong and we really have two hard and fast camps, whoever, nothing will be occurring in the next two years.
But I don't think that's the case, and so far I've been getting things more accurate than most of the pundits, which doesn't amount to 100% accuracy by any means.
So, going into 2021, the nation is really divided, but more crowded towards the center than has been supposed. It didn't vote for anything radical and there doesn't appear to be any support for radical measures. Even while divided left and right, it may be more united with certain populist leanings providing the surprising union between the two side, which also means that the nation may be opting just not to decide certain things that people on the left and right argue should be, and which the current Supreme Court is going to throw back to the legislative branch to decide.
Biden has just two years to achieve something as the Republicans are amazingly posed to take the House back and almost did. Making predictions now would be risky, but it would be my guess that they'll achieve that in 2022.
That may depend, however, on what occurs in the next couple of months. The election turned out to be a referendum on Trump himself. Now that the election is over, longshot options based on court action aren't going to be popular with the electorate and they aren't going to succeed. Choosing the courts as hills to die on will achieve just that, lasting voter animosity. And that would amount to snatching defeat from the jaws of victory for conservatives at a moment in which they did very well.
Wednesday, November 11, 2020
Lex Anteinternet: For Veterans' Day: In Memoriam by Ewart Alan Mackintosh
Lex Anteinternet: For Veterans' Day: In Memoriam by Ewart Alan Mack...:
For Veterans' Day: In Memoriam by Ewart Alan Mackintosh who was killed in action on November 21, 1917.
So you were David’s father,
And he was your only son,
And the new-cut peats are rotting
And the work is left undone,
Because of an old man weeping,
Just an old man in pain,
For David, his son David,
That will not come again.
And he was your only son,
And the new-cut peats are rotting
And the work is left undone,
Because of an old man weeping,
Just an old man in pain,
For David, his son David,
That will not come again.
Oh, the letters he wrote you,
And I can see them still,
Not a word of the fighting,
But just the sheep on the hill
And how you should get the crops in
Ere the year get stormier,
And the Bosches have got his body,
And I was his officer.
And I can see them still,
Not a word of the fighting,
But just the sheep on the hill
And how you should get the crops in
Ere the year get stormier,
And the Bosches have got his body,
And I was his officer.
You were only David’s father,
But I had fifty sons
When we went up in the evening
Under the arch of the guns,
And we came back at twilight -
O God! I heard them call
To me for help and pity
That could not help at all.
But I had fifty sons
When we went up in the evening
Under the arch of the guns,
And we came back at twilight -
O God! I heard them call
To me for help and pity
That could not help at all.
Oh, never will I forget you,
My men that trusted me,
More my sons than your fathers’,
For they could only see
The little helpless babies
And the young men in their pride.
They could not see you dying,
And hold you while you died.
My men that trusted me,
More my sons than your fathers’,
For they could only see
The little helpless babies
And the young men in their pride.
They could not see you dying,
And hold you while you died.
Happy and young and gallant,
They saw their first-born go,
But not the strong limbs broken
And the beautiful men brought low,
The piteous writhing bodies,
They screamed “Don’t leave me, sir”,
For they were only your fathers
But I was your officer.
They saw their first-born go,
But not the strong limbs broken
And the beautiful men brought low,
The piteous writhing bodies,
They screamed “Don’t leave me, sir”,
For they were only your fathers
But I was your officer.
The Oval Office on Veterans Day
I do not hold, as some seem to, that the Oval Office should necessarily be occupied by a veteran. Indeed, we're a democracy with a traditionally small military which has civilian leadership. And that's a good thing.
But it's' interesting to note that the position, which places the occupant into the role of being the Commander In Chief, and which was first occupied by a veteran in the figure of George Washington, hasn't had one for awhile.
Joe Biden was of military age during the Vietnam War, but he had a series of deferrements to the draft before asthma ultimately disqualified him from being eligible for service. Asthma is a real condition and no joke, so I'm not claiming anything by noting that.
Kamala Harris (dob 1964) also lacks military service, but she's a post Boomer and hence post conscription and there's no particular reason I'd have expected her to have seen service.
Donald Trump didn't see military service as a young man and there is reason to question why that's the case. Mike Pence, however, is a late Boomer (dob, 1959) and again, that would mean that he was in the post conscription era. Having said that, quite a few men did still join the much larger service during that era.
If that seems like a double standard in regard to Harris, it isn't meant to be. Men then had, and still have, a much higher service joining rate than women.
Barack Obama (1961) was a very late Boomer, or maybe a post Boomer, so we wouldn't automatically expect military service in his background and we'd be correct.
And that takes us to George W. Bush, who had. He was, as we've noted in the past, a pilot in the Texas Air National Guard. That is real service.
His Vice President, however, did not see service and had a series of deferrements. Ironically that individual, Dick Cheney, served as Secretary of Defense under Bush I.
George W. Bush's predecessor, Bill Clinton, didn't see service, but his Vice President, Al Gore, saw it in Vietnam as a member of the U.S. Army.
Significant? Maybe, maybe not. It does reflect a real change, but in some ways a return to periodic prior times. If there's been a big war in the relatively near past, usually that means that a President and his Vice President are likely to have seen service. If there hasn't been, its unlikely. As a rule, while Americans since World War One are careful to honor veterans, we're really not a martial nation, and that reflects itself in our leaders.
We are, and it should be remembered, a "nation of laws", and that sure reflects itself in the Oval Office. Biden and Harris are lawyers. Pence is a lawyer. Obama was a lawyer. Clinton was a lawyer. You get the picture.
Related Threads:
Lex Anteinternet: An odd thought on Veterans Day
Lex Anteinternet: An odd thought on Veterans Day: I'm now the only veteran in the office. When I first worked here, we had two World War Two veterans and one Vietnam War veteran. Now...
November 11, 1920. Armistice Day.
It was, of course, Armistice Day.
In the U.S., veterans gathered.
In France and the UK, their unknown soldiers were interred.
In the UK, Parliament passed the Government of Ireland Act which provided for home rule in Ireland, in two separate political entities, north and south Ireland. It never went into effect in the south due to the Anglo Irish War. It simply came too late.
November 10, 1940. The Armistice Day Blizzard
1940 Here's an unusual item, although not a Wyoming one, that shows us, in part, how much things have changed even in regards to weather reports. We're so used to relatively accurate ones now, we don't recall the days when the weather was often a real surprise. We should note that this winter event did stretch out across the plains to Wyoming, even though it didn't have the devastating impact here that it did in Iowa.
I posted a separate link on this event yesterday:
Blog Mirror: November 10, 1940. BAR ROOM BANTER: ARMISTICE DAY, THE DAY 85 DUCK HUNTERS DIED
2020 Election Post Mortem IV: A Non Story? Kamala Harris and "firsts".
It didn't really occur to me, until after the Press finally got around to noting that the Biden/Harris ticket had succeeded (several days after that was obvious), that Harris is the first female Vice President.
That's because, although we're not supposed to mention it, that first isn't really interesting anymore.
That a woman can be President and can be elected to that office is abundantly clear. Hillary Clinton got more votes than Donald Trump in 2016. D'uh.
So, what about her being the first VP "of color".
Well, I suppose that might matter, but President Obama was black so how that really matters in regard to the Vice President is questionable. And Vice President Elect Harris actually has a fairly thin claim to that title in that she shares no common heritage with most African Americans other than having African heritage. She does, of course, have African heritage, but unlikely the majority of African Americans, her ancestors didn't arrive prior to the 20th Century and weren't held in cruel bondage against their wills as slaves, nor did they endure the horrors that her race endured post slavery and for generations. Her parents, both of whom are immigrants, were economic migrants, something that the immigrant ancestors of most African Americans were not. Indeed, the fact that she's half Indian may be more significant, but for the fact that average Americans don't regard Indians from India as an ethnicity, in the weird way that Americans calculate such things.
So, firsts. . .yes, but do they matter?
Probably not very much.
Maybe somewhat, however. She's the first Vice President woman of color, which says something. It nearly says as much that, in the general community of the electorate, it was hardly noticed.
Mid Week At Work Blog Mirror: A Career in Wireless: 1920
A Career in Wireless: 1920
An interesting look at an article from Boys Life in 1920.
In 1920, radio was just coming in. I wonder how the radio careers that existed then, compare to the ones that exist now?
Tuesday, November 10, 2020
Today In Wyoming's History: November 10, 1945. The Closure of the Heart Mountain Internment Camp.
Today In Wyoming's History: November 10: 1945 Heart Mountain interment center closed.
See also:
Today in World War II History—November 10, 1940 & 1945
Monday, November 9, 2020
2020 Election Post Mortem IV: Don't "go to law"
At least going into the weekend it was widely believed, as the Trump administration and its supporters were stating it, that they'll file an entire series of lawsuits this morning on the election.
They shouldn't.
They'll all fail, and rapidly. There will then be a push to appeal to the Supreme Court, but the Supreme Court is unlikely to take anything up and if it does, it isn't going to reverse the election anyhow.
Going to the courts, in these circumstances, would be an undignified way to leave office. Perhaps for that reason, those close to Trump are urging him not to take this step. Perhaps they'll succeed.
If they don't, as noted, the best thing that could result would be an undignified end to the Trump presidency, although that end would ratify the choice made by many Republicans and independents to vote against Trump in the election.
But it'd do more than that.
For one thing, it would tarnish the already tarnished image of the law. Suits that can't win don't serve a purpose in the long run but the lawyers still get paid. To take on an attempt to secure the office judicially will come across by many as an attempted coup, and it'll look like lawyers participated in that.
If there are real irregularities anywhere, which there probably are and they're probably minor, they should be addressed. But at this point, Trump should concede. Right now, he remains the most powerful figure in the Republican Party and the election seems to have at least partially ratified his views on many things, while also expressing discontent with him personally. A statesman would take the hint and proceed into the next stage, where he could still have influence.
Or at least opt for a dignified departure.
2020 Election Post Mortem III. Democratic infighting
The Democrats have turned to infighting very quickly following the election, essentially recognizing what Mitt Romney stated, the electorate voted for the center. "Progressives" are being blamed by other members of the party for a poor showing overall.
The party really misread where the electorate was going, and not for the first time. The punditry did as well, which in some ways excuses the failure. Basically, the really left wing candidates that rose up in 2018 have turned out not to represent a massive shift in the electorate's views, irrespective of what the punditry thought, and to some extent still thinks.
This happened to the Democrats in the years prior to Barack Obama's election as well, and the fact that they restrained their most left leaning candidates and positions in that period help explains President Obama's election. Following Donald Trump's election, however, the leftward side of the party staged what amounted to an uprising. It hoped to really do well in this election and really bring in the full sweep of its views. That now appears unlikely to happen and the center of the Democratic Party is blaming the progressive for the loss of a seat in the House and the failure, so far, to take the Senate.
One thing this may due is to cause the stars of the Progressive movement to fade, and perhaps by their own acts. The most well known of the group, AOC, has lamented that she may quit politics altogether.
But I’m serious when I tell people the odds of me running for higher office and the odds of me just going off trying to start a homestead somewhere — they’re probably the same.
It's hard to imagine her as a "homesteader", but being a bit more humble might serve their cause quite a bit better than the bull in the china shop approach taken so far.
2020 Election Post Mortem II. A vote for the center
Mitt Romney appeared on this past weekend's Meet The Press and, in his very polite way, gave the best summation of the 2020 race that really can be given.
The voters didn't vote for a radical anything, and in the end, they generally voted for the path of government, a general centerist one, that they've had for the past four years.
The just didn't like Trump personally, by a fairly slim margin.
Monday Morning Repeats. An Election Recollection Issue. The best post of the week of November 5, 2017.
We are running two Monday Morning repeats today, for two reasons.
One is that we missed last weeks, so we're making up for it.
The other is that this is suddenly timely again, but likely forgotten.
Lex Anteinternet: Go Donna! In a week of revelations, Donna Brazile...
Had Brazile had her way, the recent election probably would have been on whether or not to reelect Joe Biden. . . and his opponent probably would have been a much younger Republican.
2020 Election Post Mortem I: The Conspiracy theorists.
Let's start with something that has seemingly been forgotten about the 2016 General Election.
Hillary Clinton got more votes than Donald Trump.
Pause. . . let that sink in.
She won the popular vote.
That's why Democrats have been talking about abolishing the Electoral College since 2016, and why Republicans have been defending it. When Cynthia Lummis noted in her campaign that "they even want to do away with the Electoral College" what she was really stating is that if the popular vote decided Presidential elections HIllary Clinton, not Donald Trump, would have been running for reelection. I.e., the majority would decide.
Democrats didn't like that, until probably now. This race is so close that Democrats will now be able to take advantage of the Electoral Vote exaggeration. I.e, at the time I'm writing this Donald Trump has 214 elector votes and Biden 290. Biden is probably going to exceed 300. It'll look, therefore, like he swamped Donald Trump. He didn't. He barely won.
He did get more votes than Trump, however.
Which isn't too surprising, there are more Democrats than Republicans.
All of which brings me to this. There were more votes for Democratic Presidential candidates in 2020, 2016, 2012, 2008 and 2000.
More.
So all this stuff about voter fraud. . . is just hoping against hope.
It didn't happen.
Pretending it does is adopting a fiction, and that's dangerous to those who adopt it and in the end to reality.
Conservatives did really, really well this election. They might have kept the Senate, we don't know yet, and they gained in the U.S. House and State Houses. That's something to build on.
And Donald Trump, in spite of all of his vices, had some real accomplishments. Judiciary appointments were prime among them.
Moving forward involves looking forward. The Presidential Election of 2020 shouldn't become the Republican Lost Cause. The 2016 Presidential Election, in real terms, was a gift, and 2016 to 2020 breathing room. Conservatives need to move on.
Sunday, November 8, 2020
The frustrating big game season of 2020.
This has been a disappointing big game season, to say the least.
I'm what some people call a "meat hunter", and approach what some people call "subsistence hunter". I'm radical enough at it that I'd be a subsistence hunter but for the fact that my long suffering spouse would not like to participate in that, particularly in a year like this one.
For the second year in a row, and I'll have a post on that later, I failed to draw any "limited draw" tags, which in this case means that I didn't have a chance to go antelope hunting at all. Never in my life up until two years ago had I failed to draw an antelope tag, and now I've repeated that disappointment twice.
Unlike some, I like antelope so this is a real disappointment.
As an additional disappointment I also didn't make the left over license draw date. I just flat out didn't make it. There's no good excuse for that, I was just busy.
That left me with only general deer and general elk, and I didn't buy an elk license (I still could, but I'm running out of time).
And then I didn't get out for the opening day of deer season as I was working. . . something I never used to let happen. I was too busy, or at least I told myself that.
I didn't get out opening Saturday either, as I had to work cattle that day. But I did get out opening Sunday, with my son.
I had some hope for that, as I had a hunch that people did not go where I'd seen a large buck last year. I was wrong. There were people there. But very late in the day, based on another hunch, I got us into a spot that had a lot of deer. However, it was a spot I hadn't been in before, and our approach didn't quite work out. We could have taken shots, but the shots would have involved shooting at a moving deer. I've shot deer that were moving before, but only where I'm confident that it'll be a lethal shot, and I wasn't under these circumstances. So, we didn't get anything.
I planned on going back, but the season there was incredibly short.
The next weekend I didn't get out again as I was working cattle on Saturday and Sundays both, recalling the line from The Cowboys, "There ain't no Sundays west of Omaha".
So that left this past weekend.
By now, my son had returned to university and so I was left hunting deer on my own, something I haven't done for a really long time. When my father was living, which is now a long time ago, I usually went with him, or with a friend, and then rarely on my own when I was first working. After his death, I often went for awhile on my own as my friends were off on their early work careers, which in the United States tends to mean that you have to move away and work in some urban craphole. But after my son was big enough, and then my daughter, that changed.
I guess I'm somewhat back there now.
On Saturday I went out to an area that was still open, which is an "any deer" area. I'm not, as I mentioned, a head hunter, so that was good with me. And I've run into deer in there often. In fact, I did right away, but the single deer I saw was a terribly long shot and a moving one again. After that, I hiked for miles and miles and hours and hours. Lots of scenery, which I enjoy, but no deer. Indeed, perhaps I was lucky as if I'd run into a deer, I'd have been packing it out on my back. I was prepared to do that, but it have been an exhausting endeavor to say the least.
It took me from early morning to early afternoon to do that, and then I determined to drive home through the mountains. On the way out, I found a spot and took a small buck. And that's okay by me.
So I guess this is a success story. But it's a cautionary tale as well.
Just this past Wednesday I published an item about a man who has become his work, or his work has become him. Or he's let his life pass by in some ways.
And that's easy to let happen.
Lex Anteinternet: Kasie Hunt should replace Chuck Todd, now.
Lex Anteinternet: Kasie Hunt should replace Chuck Todd, now.: I'm totally serious. Hunt, whose first MSNBC show Kasie DC just wrapped up, and whose second Way Too Early just started, is a good, ef...
Not kidding, like right now.
As in, on today's Meet The Press.
Churches of the West: St. Barbara's Catholic Church, Powell Wyoming
Churches of the West: St. Barbara's Catholic Church, Powell Wyoming:
This is St. Barbara's Catholic Church in Powell, Wyoming. This church was built in 1964 on the site of the original St. Barbara's which it replaced.
St. Barbara's Catholic Church, Powell Wyoming
This is St. Barbara's Catholic Church in Powell, Wyoming. This church was built in 1964 on the site of the original St. Barbara's which it replaced.
Saturday, November 7, 2020
Best Post for the Week of November 1, 2020
The best posts for the week of November 1, 2020.
Blog Mirror: Catholic Stuff You Should Know; Political Spin Class.
The 2020 Election, Part 10
The speed of the news.
Pandemic, Part 4
Kasie Hunt should replace Chuck Todd, now.
'm totally serious.
Hunt, whose first MSNBC show Kasie DC just wrapped up, and whose second Way Too Early just started, is a good, effective, reporter, and doesn't come across as a partisan chihuahua on crack like Chuck Todd does on television election nights, or as a completely unhinged biased partisan as he does on Meet the Press, not that Todd lets her get very many words in edgewise (which, I'll note, brings an effective slight sneer from Hunt, which she's really good at).
NBC. Send Todd to a well deserved rest. Given Hunt Meet the Press.
Subsidiarity Economics. The times more or less locally.
For those watching, still, televised election returns. . .
Casualties of the COVID Recession Part II
The 2020 General Election
Southern Rockies Nature Blog: The Kid Was Tougher than He Looked
Southern Rockies Nature Blog: The Kid Was Tougher than He Looked: Some of the same Scouts, on a five-night trip later that summer. The other kid's initials were R. A., so I will call him that, in case h...
I'm just stunned that there was ever an era when canvas shoes were recommended for kid's hikers.
Friday, November 6, 2020
For those watching, still, televised election returns. . .
you do know, don't you, that their tallies are days old?
Television's election returns are about as up to date as the TV depicted here.
MSNBC is reporting tallies today, November 6, 2020, that are basically three days hold and completely obsolete.
Why?
Dunno, but its nonsense. Maybe they should check NPR or the AP.
November 6, 1920. The death of John P. Woodward.
1920 U.S. Air Mail pilot John P. Woodward was killed when he flew into a snowstorm near Tie Siding, on his way from Utah to Cheyenne. His plane crashed near Laramie, a few miles away.
From here.
The 26 year old Woodward was flying a DH4 when the crash killed him. He as last sighted over Laramie itself. In his honor, Woodward Field was named after him at 22nd West and North Temple in Salt Lake City, the city which he had last departed from at 11:30 that morning. He was to have landed in Laramie at 3:00 and nearly in fact made it.
Woodard Field is now the Salt Lake International Airport.
The Saturday Evening Post depicted a young woman having bobbed her hair.
She didn't look too happy about it in Coles Phillips' illustration.
Thursday, November 5, 2020
Kasie Hunt should replace Chuck Todd, now.
I'm totally serious.
Hunt, whose first MSNBC show Kasie DC just wrapped up, and whose second Way Too Early just started, is a good, effective, reporter, and doesn't come across as a partisan chihuahua on crack like Chuck Todd does on television election nights, or as a completely unhinged biased partisan as he does on Meet the Press, not that Todd lets her get very many words in edgewise (which, I'll note, brings an effective slight sneer from Hunt, which she's really good at).
NBC. Send Todd to a well deserved rest. Given Hunt Meet the Press.
Wednesday, November 4, 2020
November 4, 1920. Byran suggests Wilson should resign. He didn't.
Life magazine considered the plight of the family dog in its November 4, 1920 issue. Life was a humor magazine at the time.
On not humorous, or maybe humours, William Jennings Bryan apparently was at his gadfly height.
The headline was misleading. Bryan suggested Wilson should resign.
The suggestion was stupid and Wilson didn't take it.
"I spend two weeks there every summer"
It was a picture of a dock on lake with boats. A nice scene, but much like that of every recreational lake you've ever seen.
I don't know the speaker personally at all. It was an interesting comment but only in a passing way. Which is why I was surprised when the comment returned, during the course conversation, a couple of times. Obviously the location meant a great deal to the speaker.
That individual was in his 70s, and still working out of his big city office in a hard white collar job. He claimed a couple of times to "love it".
It may be just me, and I may be looking at it inaccurately. I've been told that by people about their particular jobs more than once. Based on the tone of voice, however, it means two different things. Sometimes it means that people genuinely love their job. It's their true vocation, who they are. Other times, however, its an excuse presented to an unasked question, that being "why are you (still) doing this?". And sometimes, in that case, the answer isn't directed so much at the person who didn't ask the question, although it can be, as to the speaker themselves, who is rationalizing their current conduct and a lifetime spent at something. That question is "why am I doing this?", and the answer is "I love it, I must".
They must as otherwise it's a wasted life.
I don't know why he's still doing his job at his present age. It seems that his favorite setting isn't the one he's in. People keep working for lots of reasons after they no longer have to. Being used to a certain income is a common one. Not knowing what else to do is as well. Having lost their original personality due to a lifetime of hard work is also. And not being able to rethink where you are is yet another.
And so is just loving a job, which could be it.
Tuesday, November 3, 2020
The speed of the news.
So, on this night when so many are glued to their televisions, and some to their radios, and many to the net, it's worth noting on our historically minded page that this is a new thing.
A century ago only the audiences of a single radio station in the US tuned in for live coverage of the General Election. And it wasn't that live. Even though Harding won a land slide the newspapers of that day. . . and the next, didn't have the winner, only a projection.
I don't know that this was different following FDR's 1932 election, but it probably was. Even at that however, a lot of people didn't really know who had won elections until the following morning newspapers.
Television has changed all of that, and with it, our expectancies.
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