Sunday Morning Scene: Churches of the West: Unidentified, Livermore Colorado.

Churches of the West: Unidentified, Livermore Colorado. (Sometimes the ...: 

Unidentified, Livermore Colorado. (Sometimes the photos aren't very good).

This is an unidentified, and likely abandoned Prairie Gothic church near the highway in Livermore, Colorado.

I've been by this church a zillion times, but until had to stop in Livermore the other day, I never attempted to photograph it. Stopping in, I found that unless a person is willing to is trespassing, which I wasn't, a moving highway photo is about as good as a person can do.

So why do it all? Well, at least its cataloged. 

This isn't, by the way, the only church in Livermore.  There's a much nicer newer one I'll photograph in the future.  I suspect that church replaced this one.

Best Posts of the Week of December 13, 2020

 The best posts of the week of December 13, 2020.

Archbishop Chaput says what should have been said long ago. Scandal.

Blog Mirror. Churches of the West: On the ongoing dispensation for Mass attendance

The Liberator

The Outpost

Churches of the West: On the morality of the Coronavirus Vaccines.

2020 General Election, Part III

Wyoming Territorial Seal, Big Hollow Food Coop, Laramie Wyoming.

Clotheslines.

Pandemic, Part 5

Christmas Trees.

 

December 18, 1940. Hitler's fatal decision.

Lex Anteinternet: So you're living in Wyoming (or the West in genera...So what about World War Two?

Lex Anteinternet: So you're living in Wyoming (or the West in genera...So what about World War Two?

Some time ago I looked at this in the context of World War One, but what about World War Two?

Lex Anteinternet: So you're living in Wyoming (or the West in genera...: what would that have been like? Advertisement for the Remington Model 8 semi automatic rifle, introduced by Remington from the John Bro...

 Wisconsin deer camp, 1943, the year meat rationing began.

Indeed, a person's reasons to go hunting during World War Two, besides all the regular reasons (a connection with our primal, and truer, selves, being out in nature, doing something real) were perhaps stronger during the Second World War than they were in the First.  During WWII the government rationed meat.  During World War One it did not, although it sure put the social pressure on to conserve meat.

Indeed, the first appeals of any kind to conserve food in the United States came from the British in 1941, at which time the United States was not yet in the war. The British specifically appealed to Americans to conserve meat so that it could go to English fighting men.  In the spring of 1942 rationing of all sorts of things began to come in as the Federal government worried about shortages developing in various areas.  Meat and cheese was added to the ration list on March 29, 1943.  As Sarah Sundin reports on her blog:

On March 29, 1943, meats and cheeses were added to rationing. Rationed meats included beef, pork, veal, lamb, and tinned meats and fish. Poultry, eggs, fresh milk—and Spam—were not rationed. Cheese rationing started with hard cheeses, since they were more easily shipped overseas. However, on June 2, 1943, rationing was expanded to cream and cottage cheeses, and to canned evaporated and condensed milk.

So in 1943 Americans found themselves subject to rationing on meat.  As noted, poultry was exempt, so a Sunday chicken dinner was presumably not in danger, but almost every other kind of common meat was rationed.  So, a good reason to go out in the field.

But World War Two was distinctly different in all sorts of ways from World War One, so hunting by that time was also different in many ways, and it was frankly impacted by the war in different ways.

For one thing, by 1941 automobiles had become a staple of American life.  It's amazing to think of the degree to which this is true, as it happened so rapidly.  By the late 1930s almost every American family had a car.  Added to that, pickup trucks had come in between the wars in the early versions of what we have today, and they were obviously a vehicle that was highly suited to hunting, although early cars, because of the way they were configured and because they were often more utilitarian than current ones, were well suited as a rule.  What was absent were 4x4s, which we've discussed earlier.

This meant that it was much, much easier for hunters to go hunting in a fashion that was less of an expedition.  It became possible to pack up a car or pickup truck and travel early in the morning to a hunting location and be back that night, in other words.

Or at least it had been until World War Two. With the war came not only food rationing, but gasoline rationing as well.  And not only gasoline rationing, but rationing that pertained to things related to automobiles as well

Indeed, the first thing to be rationed by the United States Government during World War Two was tires.  Tires were rationed on December 11, 1941.  This was due to anticipated shortages in rubber, which was a product that had been certainly in use during World War One, but not to the extent it was during World War Two.  And tire rationing mattered.

People today are used to modern radial tires which are infinitely better, and longer lasting, than old bias ply tires were.  People who drove before the 1980s and even on into the 80s were used to constantly having flat tires.  I hear occasionally people lament the passing of bias ply tires for trucks, but I do not.  Modern tires are much better and longer lasting.  Back when we used bias ply tires it seemed like we were constantly buying tires and constantly  having flat tires.  Those tires would have been pretty similar to the tires of World War Two.  Except by all accounts tires for civilians declined remarkably in quality during the war due to material shortages.

Gasoline rationing followed, and it was so strict that all forms of automobile racing, which had carried on unabated during World War One, were banned during World War Two.  Sight seeing was also banned.  So, rather obviously, the use of automobiles was fairly curtailed during the Second World War.

So, where as cars and trucks had brought mobility to all sorts of folks between the wars in a brand new way, rationing cut back on it, including for hunters, during the war.

Which doesn't mean that you couldn't go out, but it did mean that you had to save your gasoline ration if you were going far and generally plan wisely.

Ammunition was also hard to come by during the war.

It wasn't due to rationing, but something else that was simply a common fact of life during World War Two.  Industry turned to fulfilling contracts for the war effort and stopped making things for civilians consumption.

Indeed, I've hit on this a bit before in a different fashion, that being how technology advanced considerably between the wars but that the Great Depression followed by the Second World War kept that technology, more specifically domestic technology, from getting to a lot of homes. Automobiles, in spite of the Depression, where the exception really.  While I haven't dealt with it specifically, the material demands of the Second World War were so vast that industries simply could not make things for the service and the civilian market. 

Some whole classes of products, such as automobiles, simply stopped being available for civilians.  Ammunition was like that.  With the services consuming vast quantities of small arms ammunition, ammunition for civilians became very hard to come by.  People who might expect to get by with a box of shotgun shells for a day's hunt and to often make due with half of that.  Brass cases were substituted for steel before that was common in the U.S., which was a problem for reloaders. 

So, in short, the need and desire was likely there, but getting components were more difficult. And being able to get out was as well, which impacted a person to a greater or lesser extent depending where they were.

And, as previously noted, game populations are considerably higher today than they were then.

Blog Mirror: 20th Century hair

 

20th Century hair

December 18, 1940. Hitler's fatal decision.

 Among the significant events that occurred was this:

Hitler issues Führer Directive 21 for the invasion of Soviet Russia, codenamed Operation Barbarossa. The goal: "The German Wehrmacht must be prepared to crush Soviet Russia in a quick campaign."

Day 475 December 18, 1940

On the same day, Hitler delivered a speech to German officers at the Sportspalast.

In December, 1940, France was a defeated state and Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Belgium had all been occupied by Germany, along with the Western half of Poland.  The British had been forced off the continent some six months earlier.

Still, the United Kingdom had not surrendered and contrary to the way its tended to be recalled, in part due to British propaganda aimed at the United States, British industrial production in some areas, including the now super critical category of aircraft production, exceeded that of Germany's.  Italy, joining the war with Germany after German victory had seemed assured, had already shown that its army, the best of which was spent in the Spanish Civil War, was now obsolete and ineffectual, leading the Germans to rescue them in Greece. At the very time that this issue was ordered, the British in North Africa were steadily advancing against the Italians.

HE 111 over London, September 1940.

This is not to suggest that things were pleasant for the British by any means.  The German bombing campaign was going on at that very moment.  But here too the weaknesses of the German military were already evident.  Germany had failed to develop heavy bombers prior to the war and frankly didn't have the industrial capacity to do that and develop the other new arms that its military required.  In contrast the British were now fielding the Halifax, developed just before the war and which went into production in November of this year, and were one month away from fielding the Lancaster.  The Short Stirling was also already an adopted bomber.  In the United States the B17 had been in service for some years.

British Valentine tank in North Africa.

Even in mechanization the British were actually much better situated than they tended to be portrayed as in later years.  The British army in 1940 was 100% mechanized in terms of transportation, the only army then committed in the war, or which had been in the war to date, which could make that claim.  The German army was ironically, as it would turn out, near its peak in terms of the same even though it still heavily relied on horses for transportation.  Reliance on horses was to grow from this point on for the Germans, not decline.  British military truck designs were excellent and much better than the German ones.  British armor has been portrayed as lacking but in reality at this point in the war it was more or less on par with German armor and the British were already working on the Churchill which would prove to be one of the best tanks of the war.

Moreover, the German conquests meant that it was now occupying a swath of territory inhabited by a hostile native population.  In none of the regions occupied by the Germans in December 1940 was their presence in any fashion welcome and client governments created by them outside of Poland, which they outright governed without pretense, enjoyed no local support whatsoever.  In Poland they were busy committing atrocities against the Poles.  The only exceptions of any kind was in regard to France, much of which they did not occupy at this point as it was under the administration of the unpopular Vichy government.

Taking watch on a British destroyer.

All this meant that German manpower was already heavily committed even without active combat going on in Europe and the problematic efforts of the Italians threatened to divert even more German manpower.  The German population at the time, including those areas incorporated into the Reich prior to the war, stood at about 80,000,000 in contrast to the United Kingdom's 47,000,000, but the British could reach back to populations in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand for very loyal support, as well as to populations in India, South Africa and elsewhere around the globe.  Additionally, even in 1940 nearly all of the German industrial base was within bomber range of the United Kingdom while Commonwealth resources were completely beyond the reach of the Germans.  

This latter fact would commit the Germans for the second time to a U boot war against the United Kingdom which in part demonstrates that in December, 1940 they were tactically and strategically the stymied. The resort to U boots was made for the second time in less that thirty years for the exact same reason it had been in World War One, the hope of materially and literally starving the British out of the war.  But the Germans themselves were effectively blockaded as well.  Added to their effort at this point in the war was the air effort which Herman Goering promised would succeed, of course.

But it hadn't succeeded yet and that should have caused the Germans pause.  In December 1940 the United States was not yet in the war and the British were not yet defeated.  The British were incapable of landing on the continent and staying, but the Germans were incapable of landing on Britain at all.  The two nations were capable of hitting each other from the air, but in very short order the British effort would be backed by British heavy bombers which were coming into production and which did not have a tactical role otherwise, whereas all of the German aircraft being used against Britain were tactical aircraft that could ill afford to be lost and which the Germans would need to support their ground troops anywhere they went.

Which, on this day, was about to be the Soviet Union. 

December 18, 1920. Anticipating Christmas

Norman Rockwell was contemplating Christmas, just a week away, on his cover illustration.
 

In Germany the Allied Disarmament Commission order the German government to conduct house to house searches for firearms.  

I've never seen this really fully explained.  In looking at it, I think they were looking for military weapons, but you rarely see it fleshed out. An example of bad historical detailing, as it leads, I suspect, to a misunderstanding of what was occurring, or it would be truly an example of Versailles Treaty overreach, the cited examples of which often are not.

Blog Mirror: RFID Tags: Frivolous or Beneficial to Producers?

 

RFID Tags: Frivolous or Beneficial to Producers?

Christmas Trees.

 

Echoes of Evading Prohibition. New York Couple finds 66 bottles of Old Smuggler Gaelic whiskey hidden in walls of house.

A New York couple that have been renovating a house have reportedly found 88 bottles of Old Smuggler Gaelic whiskey stashed in the house's walls, of which only 10 were unopened or in undamaged condition.

The century old bottles seem to confirm rumors that a prior owner of the house was a bootlegger.

They opened one on Thanksgiving in spite of warnings that the now seemingly confirmed bootlegger legacy may mean that the contents weren't safe to drink as they might well be something other than Scotch Whiskey.  They proclaimed it "not bad", although it should be noted that whiskey doesn't age in the bottle, and Old Smugglers is still sold today and isn't particularly expensive.

Clotheslines.

Why do some people hate them?

They must, however.

My subdivision has a covenant against clotheslines.  Nobody actually enforces it, but I know that there is one.

I violate it pretty routinely.

An enduring memory of when I was a kid was my mother hanging the laundry out on the line.  This was, of course, only during the summer, the summer being the only time of year around here, generally, that you can do that, although in warm days in the fall and early spring I still do.

And the fact that I'm saying "still do" indicates that I have a line.

And indeed I do.  

I have a line hooked to a steel fence pole that I string to a steel deck pole. We take it off the deck pole when its not in use. 

And that lets me put my clothes out to dry on the line. Which means they smell fresher than they otherwise do.

This is, of course, those clothes which I let air dry, which are pretty much just trousers.  Shirts and whatnot for the most part I run through the dryer.

I wonder what caused clotheslines to be regarded as somehow unacceptable?

December 17, 1920. The Red Summer on a Snowy Winter Day.

A race riot broke out in Independence Kansas resulting in the Kansas National Guard being deployed to the city in severe winter conditions.

On the same day, the League of Nations assigned mandates to a variety of countries over form German colonies. These included German South West Africa, which is now Namibia, which went to South Africa.  Japan took a collection of former German islands.  Australia took New Guinea and Nauru.  New Zealand took Western Samoa.

And Albania was admitted to the League of Nations.

Painted Bricks: Wyoming Territorial Seal, Big Hollow Food Coop, Laramie Wyoming

Painted Bricks: Wyoming Territorial Seal, Big Hollow Food Coop, La...: 

Wyoming Territorial Seal, Big Hollow Food Coop, Laramie Wyoming.

This is a nice rendition of the Territorial Seal of Wyoming on the Big Hollow Food Coop building in Laramie.  We've featured this building before, but we missed the seal in our prior photographs.  Indeed, one of our remote roving contributors to this blog just picked this one up.

Wyoming has a complicated history in regard to seals, and this one was actually the state's third.  This is additionally slightly complicated by the fact that some versions have the year 1868 at the top, rather than 1869.  1869 is, I believe, correct.

The seal depicts a mountain scene with a railroad running in the foreground in the top field.  In the bottom left it depicts a plow, shovel and shepherd's crook, symbolic of the state's industries.  The bottom right field depicts a raised arm with a drawn sabre.  The Latin inscription reads Cedant Arma Togae, which means "let arms yield to civil authority", which was the territorial motto.

This seal was an attractive one and in some ways it was a better looking seal than the one the state ultimately adopted.  The state actually went through an absurd process early in its history in attempting to adopt an official state seal that lead, at one time, the Federal mint simply assigning one for the purpose of large currency printing, which featured state seals at the time.  Part of the absurdity involved the design, which was describe in the original state statute rather than depicted, which lead to the sitting Governor hiring his own artist as he didn't like the one art of the one that had been in front of the legislature.  That caused a scandal as the one that he picked featured a topless woman, which had not been a feature of the legislative design, and ultimately it was corrected to the current design.

All in all, looking at the original one, I think they could have stuck with it.

Mid Week At Work: Machinists

 

Churches of the West: On the morality of the Coronavirus Vaccines.

Churches of the West: On the morality of the Coronavirus Vaccines.: 

On the morality of the Coronavirus Vaccines.

This is something that you have to be pretty attuned, I think, to the Catholic world to pick up on, and to appreciate.  There's been some questioning in Catholic circles on whether its morally permissible to take the Coronavirus vaccines.

Before I get any further, let me state that at least in the Diocese of Cheyenne, where I live, it is.  Our Bishop has so declared.

Okay, how does this all come up?

Well, not the way that you might suppose, at least if you are an American. There isn't a raging debate in the Catholic World about the efficacy of vaccinations.  While that debate might exist in American society at large, where there's an anti Science tradition that's very long in standing, and which has been reamplified in recent years due to a decrease in science funding in education which was sufficiently pronounced such the standards of education could fall so low that a twit like Jenny McCarthy, who is only qualified as a big boob model, is actually taken seriously on a scientific matter (who would listen to McCarthy on anything is beyond me).  No, this topic comes up due to a long standing Catholic moral principle holding that life can only be taken by a person in self defense.

Catholics are extremely serious about this.  Much more so than other non pacifist. Catholics aren't overall pacifists, but the Church's view on when life can be taken is quite strict.  It's often highly misunderstood, in part because the majority of Christians in the world are Catholic and lots of people in every religion will fail to follow the tenants of their faith.*  And its also a standard that has evolved a bit as society and technology has evolved, while the wider facet of that being ignored has also tended to be ignored in some quarters.  Perhaps the most dramatic examples of that might be the bombing campaigns of World War Two, a war for which the Allied cause is often cited as being about as close to a "just war" as a war can be.  Be that as it may, it's nearly impossible to reconcile some of the Allied bombing efforts of the Second World War with justly fighting a war, and the use of the Atomic Bombs at the wars end almost certainly cannot be.  Be that as it may, there were plenty of Catholic aircrewmen on bombers during the war.

And what isn't at issue is a religion based disagreement with science.  Indeed, in spite of the intrusion of Protestant beliefs into the pews of Catholic Americans to some extent, the Catholic Church as a whole is hugely supportive of and a supporter of science.  Indeed, ironically, at least one of the common scientific beliefs that some fundamentalist Protestants really have trouble with is one that a Catholic cleric came up with, that being the Big Bang Theory.  Catholics generally love science.

So what's the problem here?

Well stem cells.

If you read the entry above you'll see that at least one of the vaccines was developed using stem cells at some point, but at the same time neither of the current ones used stem cells from a directly aborted baby.  Given this, the Bishop of Cheyenne has given them a pass.

But the fact that this letter was issued also means that somebody had a question about it and it had to be addressed.

This isn't a majority of Catholic Bishops, we'd note.  Whatever happened (the Jesuit magazine America claims it was due to misinformation regarding the vaccines) at least two American Bishops issued statements that condemned at least one of the vaccines. This lead to a corrective memo being issued by the United States Conference for Catholic Bishops which addressed that issue, which reads much the letter that is set out above. The vaccines are okay.  The memo also apparently cited to a pro life organization that termed the vaccines as ethically uncontroversial.

The British Catholic Bishops went further and urged their flock to get the vaccines, noting that getting them was "not a sin".

In contrast, Auxiliary Bishop Athanasius Schneider of Kazakhstan declared the vaccines morally impermissible.  And this is what makes this sort of peculiarly interesting.  

Bishop Schneider is a traditionalist and is well known in traditionalist circles.  He's an opponent of much of what was derived from Vatican II and is very outspoken.

Now, Catholics in the Diocese of Cheyenne are not obligated to follow the pronouncements of Bishop Schneider that are contrary to those of Bishop Biegler.  The Bishop in your diocese, in the Catholic order of things, is the one that you need to pay attention to on certain things and can rely upon in others.  Catholics owe their diocesan Bishop a degree of loyalty.  If you are in a diocese in which the Bishop has said its morally impermissible to receive the vaccine, you can't simply just ignore that.

But in the current Internet Fueled Age considering the views of our local Bishop has become less common in areas in which people want to pick and choose their beliefs.  Trad or Rad Trad Catholics latch on to statements like those from Bishop Schneider that fit their views and will reject them over their own Bishop.

Indeed, this has the odd impact of distorting the Catholic order pretty significantly.  Even well into the mid 20th Century Catholics were much more in tune with what their own Bishops had to say than what the Pope might be doing.  The Pope was far away and the Bishop was fairly near.  This reflected the order of the Church.  On day to day matters in the Catholic world, the Bishop was likely to be the one that Catholics heard from.

But now many Catholics tend to follow the Pope almost as if he was present in the local parish.  In reality, what the parish Priest is doing tends to be immediately important to Catholics real lives more than what the Pope may be doing, on a daily basis. But if you read Catholic commentary now, particularly that of Trads and Rad Trads, you'd get the other view.

And not completely without reason. This Pope has been upsetting to orthodox Catholics.  But that in turn as fueled a sort of hyper orthodoxy that predated Pope Francis.

I'm expecting that to develop here.

As for what I'm doing, vaccination wise, I'm receiving it as soon as I conceivably can, and I'm an orthodox Catholic.

And I think there may be another moral issue afloat here.  In this day and age there's a massive amount of scientific bogosity that's circulating in society and many Americans, at least, have come down to believing things that are absolutely false.  Indeed, on this issue, the irony is that there will be some Trads that will abstain from receiving the vaccine due to having views that are supported by pronouncement of Bishops like Bishop Schneider, who have a bit of a fan following, while other rank and file Protestant and non religious Americans will abstain as they've bought off on the blatherings of anti vaxer boob model Jenny McCarthy and her fellow travelers.

We'll deal with the strange era of anti scientific thought elsewhere on one of our companion blogs, but on an issue like this, for sincere Catholics, the issue thus becomes this.  If it takes 70% of the population to become immune from a virus to achieve "herd immunity", and if we now that the virus kills, if we refuse to participate in achieving herd immunity, are we morally complicit to some degree in unnecessary deaths?

*One of my favorite examples was one of Cromwell's lieutenants who fought to prosecute the Anglican Church and the Catholic Church but who asked for, and received, permission for his mistress to be in prison with him rather than his wife.  Granted, Crowwell's people were generally very serious Calvinist who believed in double predestination, something most who claim to be Calvinist today do not, but that's really taking that a bit far

The Outpost

Helicopter landing at Camp Keating, the location of the Battle of Kamdesh

There are actually a lot of movies about the United States in Afghanistan.  I don't know if the fact that I haven't seen but a few of them means that, like in regard to World War Two, there's a lot of bad ones, or just that I don't see very many movies.  But there are a lot.

The other day I saw The Outpost on Netflix.  This movie is centered on the real life battle of Kamdesh and portrays the actual soldiers who fought there.

The battle took place at a remote outpost which, as the movie depicts, was extraordinarily poorly located. The photos posted here of the actual location demonstrate that as well.  The base was located in a valley, a classic military blunder, and the subject of constant sniping.  On October 3, 2009, the Taliban attempted to overrun it which resulted in a pitched battle.  The resulting fighting was dramatic, and two Congressional Medals of Honor were awarded to American soldiers who fought there.

By all accounts this movie is a very good depiction of the actual battle, including the location. The film is well done and the portrayal of the soldiers extremely unvarnished.  The battle scenes are harrowing and gritty.  The modern U.S. Army including its equipment is very well portrayed.  Well worth watching.

SSG Clinton Romesha near the area where the battle was fought.  He would receive the Congressional Medal of Honor as a result of his heroism in the battle.

The Liberator

Division insignia of the 45th Infantry Division

.

An email list group I'm a member of was discussing this movie recently and therefore I watched it.  It frankly exceeded my expectations quite a bit.

The Liberator is a feature length animated movie based on the memoirs of Texas born Felix L. Sparks who joined the Army in 1936 during the Great Depression and served for two years as an enlisted man. The film doesn't go into his prewar history, but just to complete that after Sparks was discharged he went to the University of Arizona and then reentered the Army at some point as an officer.

I'm not personally familiar with Sparks' story.  It appears that he was stationed for a time at Ft. Sill, Oklahoma (which is something I share in common with him) and that he may have been an artilleryman at one time who moved over to infantry.  On that I'm not sure, but he did end up a commissioned officer in the 45th Infantry Division, which was a National Guard Division heavily made up of Oklahomans, including a fair number of Native Americans, but also including other National Guard units in its make up that came from the Southwest.  Famous cartoonist Bill Mauldin was in early in World War Two, having joined a New Mexico National Guard unit that was folded into it just as it was being called up, something that was fairly common in World War One and World War Two.  Mauldin started off his cartoon career with the 45th Division News.

At any rate, the film portrays Sparks as being assigned a group of hard luck soldiers in a fashion that's heavily reminiscent of The Dirty Dozen.  It follows them through the war, starting off with combat in Italy (in reality Sparks was taken from Oran Algeria to Sicily in Operation Husky aboard the USS George Carroll, which was the ship that my coworker who had the office next to me for many years was on during the war).  The combat scenes thereafter strongly recall the film The Big Red One, including combat in Italy and later in Germany, featuring the liberation of a concertation camp.  Along the way Sparks is given a double barreled Lupara, a sort of short barreled Sicilian shotgun associated with the Mafia.  In real life, Sparks was apparently nicknamed "The Shotgun".

The film concludes, fwiw, in a fashion that's very reminiscent of Band of Brothers.

I'll be frank that I was prepared to dislike this film, but I liked it. The animation is very realistic, so after a person gets used to it, it's not distracting.  It's pretty clear that real actors were used for the characters movements, and it'd be interesting to know the background reason for that.  I suspect that either COVID 19 prevented filming with actual actors, or budgetary concerns simply made this a cheaper option for a film that didn't have a large budget.  Another factor may simply be that the plot, while based on real events, is somewhat "light" and it tracks pretty closely to plot elements found in other films, which might say a lot for them actually, as it would tend to show that those details were generally fairly accurate.

All in all, it works.

In terms of historical accuracy, while I've noted several other films that this film seems to lean on, it seems that it tracks pretty closely to Sparks actual history during the war, but with clear exaggerations, particularly as to the origin of his initial company.  While I haven't looked into it, the "hard luck" nature of the initial infantry company is a little too close to The Dirty Dozen to really be fully believable, but perhaps I should read the memoir and see if Sparks recalled in that fashion himself.  Sparks did command troops in the noted unit during the war, rising to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel by the war's end.  Locations seem to be based on actual ones as well.

In terms of material detail, this film is remarkable for an animation.  By and large most of the material details are correct, showing that somebody had done a fair amount of research in order to get such details right even though the number of people who would pick up on them is slight.  There are a few errors, but they are not numerous.

FWIW, in real life Sparks left the Army after the Second World War and went on to law school, graduating from the University of Colorado's law school in 1947.  He stayed in Colorado thereafter and ended up being a Colorado Supreme Court Justice.  He retired from military service with the Colorado Army National Guard at the rank of Brigadier General.  

The film is well worth watching.

December 14, 1920 Sometimes the headlines are too good to pass up. And the "Gipper" dies of pneumonia.

I realize its unfair, but with the headlines we've had recently, maybe its nice to know that there've been bad ones before.

On the same day the baffled Congress was photographed with guests and young help, or at least the Senate was.

Senator France of Maryland was photographed with a mothers' group from his state.

And the Senate pages were photographed with "Marshall".  As I don't know anything about how this institution works, I don't know if the head of the Senate pages is termed a marshall, or if that was the older gentleman's name. 

The Wyoming State Tribune published an article about the commercialization of Yellowstone National Park.

And coal was in the headlines.

The House of Lords passed an amended version of the Government of Ireland Act of 1920 which meant that a home rule bill had passed that body for the first time, if way too late.

Hmmm. . ..mysterious general Google failure this morning. . .

I wonder what that was about.

And I regret "refreshing" my browser thinking it was just me. . . 

Oh well.

But most of all, I regret that it bothered me. . . 

Blog Mirror. Churches of the West: On the ongoing dispensation for Mass attendance

Churches of the West: On the ongoing dispensation for Mass attendance: 

On the ongoing dispensation for Mass attendance

The Bishop of Cheyenne has continued his disposition to attend Mass due to the Coronavirus Pandemic.  His decree on the same is here:

First of all, I'm going to be blunt.  The Diocese of Cheyenne has done a remarkably bad job during the Coronavirus Pandemic in getting the news out on anything.  

Bad.

The Diocese seems to be of the view that Catholics in this state all check the web all the time, will log into parish websites, or maybe are in some sort of day to day communication with the parish.

St. Mary's Cathedral, Cheyenne.

They aren't.

Some are, and I can vouch for that as I was once on a Parish Council. There's a group of dedicated parishioners who are in constant contact with the Priest and their parishes, but there are a lot who very much are not.

Indeed, one of the real ironies in all of this is that Bishop Steven Biegler, who has only been in that position for a couple of years, has a fairly apparent interests in trying to reach Hispanic Catholics, who very much need to be reached.  But to understand why we have so many Hispanic Catholics here, you also have to understand that we have a high transient population, much of which is based in the oilfield.  I defended the depositions of two Mexican oilfield workers just a couple of weeks ago, and this is common.  My guess is that the Hispanic population itself here has dramatically reduced in numbers over the past year, due to the oilfield depression, but be that as it may, I am extremely doubtful that Hispanic parishioners are going to be reached by their logging into the website of the Diocese or their Parish.

To add to that, neither are a lot of average parishioners.  I haven't been contacted even once during the pandemic and I was a Parish Council member up until just before it hit, which also was just before the last Priest rotation.  My guess is that I'm probably not on the active Parish roles anymore even though its my home Parish, as I started attending an across town Parish (I'm equidistant from all the Parishes in town) when the Mass schedule was changed as part of an evident effort to make it more convenient for Hispanic parishioners.  I'm not complaining about that change, as its clear to me that they need to be reached, but when I switched where I normally go, I also started making my donations there, as I was there.   As other family members also attend there, and as its a parish that I've attended at various points in the past (as I noted its just as close as my home parish, in terms of time of travel), they recognized me pretty quickly.

I suppose my overall point is is that I have had for a long time a vague feeling that Bishops don't always understand their Diocese very well.  Our current Bishop is from South Dakota, a neighboring state, and that cuts against my argument.  The prior one was from Wisconsin and a farmer by background, and a hunter, so he did have a grasp of the nature of where he was and seemed to appreciate that (he's now in Alaska).  But cutting against that, it seems to me, are the seeming assumptions that everyone knows what is going on and everyone is checking in.  Those sorts of parishes sound more like the ones the Priests on Catholic Stuff You Should Know discuss in Denver, rather than here, but maybe that's just me.

Even if it is just me, somebody should be reaching out.  That isn't happening locally.

And as evidence of that, I only learned about the continued dispensation as the old one was running out, I think, on December 15, and I logged on a couple of weeks ago to see if my recollection was correct.  To my surprise, it had been continued.

You'd have thought that there would have been an effort to reach out to people about this.  

If there was, it didn't reach me.

So hence my complaint.

I'll further note that I was not happy with the churches closing in the first place.  I'll admit now that my view was wrong.  I was also very much unhappy with the suspension of all sacraments, which has been lifted.  I don't think completely suspending Confession the way that itw as done was the right thing to do and I don't think it should have been done.  I was nearly as glad to see the ban on Confessions lifted as I was to see Masses restored, as odd as that may seem.

When Masses were restored I started going again, but as the pandemic heated back up, I dropped back out the last few weeks. Hence the reason for my checking.

During this crisis I've learned that I miss Mass for sure and as a lifelong Catholic I've come to admire, as odd as that may seem, dedicated Protestants and Orthodox who go every Sunday not because of a church law but because they choose too. And when things opened back up, and I could go, I chose to.  My suspension the last couple of weeks is because I'm one of those folks who have "conditions".

I'm in good health, but I had asthma pretty severely as a kid and it resumed after I went to law school for a period of time. When I was a kid I had to take shots weekly, or maybe it was biweekly, for what seemed like years, although the way such recollections work probably means it was not as great of period of time as I recall.  The shots made things less worse, but not better.  Fall was always a period of agony for me until I went to university the first time, and then they oddly left for the most par.  I was aware that allergies could come and go, but I didn't expect it to occur to me.*  I was very glad they had.

And then they returned when I was in law school.  Pretty severely, in fact, and to some plant pollens I'd never been allergic to before.  That caused me to have to resort to shots once again.

That helped clear things up for years, and indeed the allergies mostly seemed to go away.  Here a couple of years ago we got a dog for the first time in our long marriage, and it was a breed advertised as hypoallergenic.  It really seems to be.  Before that, we obtained a cat as well, which we had for years.  He simply moved in.

Having the cat caused me to believe that my animal allergies, which were widespread, had likely vanished.  Cats are one of the things that I knew for certain that I was allergic to.  Prior to getting the dog I went in to be tested and, nope, all the things I'd ever been allergic to, I still am.

Why aren't I reacting to them?

I have no idea.

I do know that in the fall in a bad year I'll get sick.  I generally recognize what it is, but frankly it's very difficult to determine at the onset if its a cold, severe cold, allergies, or severe allergies.  Long experience lets me generally guess right.  Usually I only have to worry about this in the fall, as noted, and some falls, like this past one, not at all.  Usually during the winter I'll experience some mild allergy symptoms all year long, which I think is due to working in a building that's over 100 years old. There's something in it, and when its really locked up and airtight, that gets to me.  I can tell that's not a cold.

One of the things about having had a fairly pronounced asthma condition is that if you've had it, and probably early on before you knew you had it, you may very well have experienced nearly dying.  Some asthmatics experience that repeatedly.  I have.  The experience is something nearly unique to asthmatics and its something that psychologist state that they rarely will describe to anyone.  There's good reason for that, one being that its nearly indescribable.  

The best actual description I've ever seen is set out in the book Mornings On Horseback, which is about Theodore Roosevelt's youth.  TR was a severe asthmatic as a kid.  The description is right on.  What is hard to relate about it is that when a severe attack sets in you reach a point where you know that you are in real trouble and you are headed for death.  It's pretty obvious.  When you pull back out and recover you are exhausted, but also, oddly, euphoric, as you've cheated death.  Those who have been asthmatics for a period of time, if they're conditions is serious, have experienced that again and again.

You also really learn to avoid what is trying to kill you like nothing else.

Which brings me back around to this.  

Nobody ever recovers from an injury or affliction, really.  If you've had some sort of severe condition, its' done its damage.  Asthmatics that were well treated as kids usually have overcome it in part because they've been forced to develop their bodies.  It's an oddity for sure, but at 57 years old I'm in a lot better shape than most 57 years old, a byproduct in part of the way our family has always lived but also in part due to my parents making sure I was active when I was young, mostly in swimming which is a good sport for asthmatics.  But nonetheless, if you get a severe cold or flu, you remember the condition of your youth.  When the wheezes stats to set in you recall what it was like and that death was always right around the corner.  "Feeling poorly?" comes the question.  "Having a hard time breathing" comes the answer.  But in reality, you're laying on the sofa and death is in the chair across the room, you know it.

Most asthmatics also tend to become fairly fatalistic. There are those who claim that people can't imagine their own deaths and don't ever really accept that it will occur.  I think that's baloney, and in reality what that might mean is pampered modern Americans can't imagine it and always imagine that in their 80s they'll really be in their 30s, but people who have had asthma can.  Death has come and saddled you up on his horse plenty of times, and then simply dropped you back off.  You know that one day he's coming again and won't let ago.

Generally we don't hope that's earlier than it needs to be, and hence why I've sat out the past few weeks.**

I frankly feel horrible about it and I don't think I personally do well without going to Mass and experiencing Christ in the Mass.  I don't do well with alternatives. I'm hoping this is all over very soon.

I guess I understand the continuation of the dispensation, although at this point it frankly isn't worded very clearly.  It seems we have a dispensation, and I think that my concerns qualify me for it, but it almost seems to be a qualified dispensation.

But at this point, somebody really needs to reach out.  

*Indeed one of the features of having severe allergies is not only this mystery, but the common misunderstandings about it.  I retain allergies, but I've endured a lecture from a person at one time who insisted that all childhood allergies vanish, something you can't tell somebody for whom they have not vanished.

**Which brings me to hypocrisy.  I've gone in to work the entire time, which seems hypocritical, but I've also tried to avoid contact as much as possible with as many people as possible.

December 13, 1920. Sweet and Bittersweet

A great day in the history of confectionaries. Haribo, the German candy company that invented Gummi Bears (Gummy Bears, Gummibär) came into existence.

Not a Gummy Bear.

It wouldn't come up with Gummi Bears for another couple of years, however.

Coincidentally, the excellent A Hundred Years Ago blog has an item up comparing how much Americans spent on candy a century ago, as opposed to now.  You can find that item here:

How Much do Americans Spend on Candy, 1920 and 2020?

Some sweet news came for some people, in that Naval Aviators were back in town and a crowd waited to greet them.

News that some would have taken as bittersweet was the repeal of the Sedition Act of 1918.  It was swept out with a lot of wartime measures that were being contemporaneously repealed.

Sedition has been discussed here recently and its still a Federal offense.  Interestingly, I don't think that most Americans, up until this past week, were familiar with the word in an sense, save for those who are students of history.  Many of those folks probably didn't realize that sedition remains a crime.  As we pointed out here just the other day, the current crime is defined as follows:

If two or more persons in any State or Territory, or in any place subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, conspire to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States, or to levy war against them, or to oppose by force the authority thereof, or by force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States, or by force to seize, take, or possess any property of the United States contrary to the authority thereof, they shall each be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both.

Sedition is suddenly in the news as there's been speculation on whether or not various efforts to keep President Trump in office amount to that.  Indeed, a Congressman from New Jersey has written Nancy Pelosi a letter urging her not to seat those Republican Congressmen who signed onto supporting the Attorney General of Texas' suit against other states, maintaining that their act was seditious.

The 1918 Act was a much different one than the standard one that is set out above.  We covered in an entry when it was passed.   That item is here:

Today In Wyoming's History: May 16, 1918. The Sedition Act of 1918 passed into law.

Today In Wyoming's History: May 16: 1918  The Sedition Act of 1918 passed by the U.S. Congress making criticism of the government an imprisonable offense of 20 years or fined $20,000.  Attribution:  Western History Center.

New York Herald's pro Sedition Act cartoon.  Included in the treasonous pack was the IWW and Sein Fein.

It provided, amongst other things:

SECTION 3. Whoever, when the United States is at war, shall willfully make or convey false reports or false statements with intent to interfere with the operation or success of the military or naval forces of the United States, or to promote the success of its enemies, or shall willfully make or convey false reports, or false statements, . . . or incite insubordination, disloyalty, mutiny, or refusal of duty, in the military or naval forces of the United States, or shall willfully obstruct . . . the recruiting or enlistment service of the United States, or . . . shall willfully utter, print, write, or publish any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language about the form of government of the United States, or the Constitution of the United States, or the military or naval forces of the United States . . . or shall willfully display the flag of any foreign enemy, or shall willfully . . . urge, incite, or advocate any curtailment of production . . . or advocate, teach, defend, or suggest the doing of any of the acts or things in this section enumerated and whoever shall by word or act support or favor the cause of any country with which the United States is at war or by word or act oppose the cause of the United States therein, shall be punished by a fine of not more than $10,000 or imprisonment for not more than twenty years, or both....

Not one of the U.S. prouder moments in World War One.  Of note, Theodore Roosevelt had editorialized against it.  It would in fact be abused as during wartime its easy to imagine a traitor behind every negative statement.

As noted, the 1918 Act was notorious for its broad sweep and the impact of its Section 3.  It was controversial at the time.  The full Section 3 is set out here:

Sec. 3. Whoever, when the United States is at war, shall willfully make or convey false reports or false statements with intent to interfere with the operation or success of the military or naval forces of the United States, or to promote the success of its enemies, or shall willfully make or convey false reports or false statements, or say or do anything except by way of bona fide and not disloyal advice to an investor or investors, with intent to obstruct the sale by the United States of bonds or other securities of the United States or the making of loans by or to the United States, and whoever when the United States is at war, shall willfully cause or attempt to cause, or incite or attempt to incite, insubordination, disloyalty, mutiny, or refusal of duty, in the military or naval forces of the United States, or shall willfully obstruct or attempt to obstruct the recruiting or enlistment services of the United States, and whoever, when the United States is at war, shall willfully utter, print, write or publish any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language about the form of government of the United States or the Constitution of the United States, or the military or naval forces of the United States, or the flag of the United States, or the uniform of the Army or Navy of the United States into contempt, scorn, contumely, or disrepute, or shall willfully utter, print, write, or publish any language intended to incite, provoke, or encourage resistance to the United States, or to promote the cause of its enemies, or shall willfully display the flag of any foreign enemy, or shall willfully by utterance, writing, printing, publication, or language spoken, urge, incite, or advocate any curtailment of production in this country of any thing or things, product or products, necessary or essential to the prosecution of the war in which the United States may be engaged, with intent by such curtailment to cripple or hinder the United States in the prosecution of war, and whoever shall willfully advocate, teach, defend, or suggest the doing of any of the acts or things in this section enumerated, and whoever shall by word or act support or favor the cause of any country with which the United States is at war or by word or act oppose the cause of the United States therein, shall be punished by a fine of not more than $10,000 or the imprisonment for not more than twenty years, or both: Provided, That any employee or official of the United States Government who commits any disloyal act or utters any unpatriotic or disloyal language, or who, in an abusive and violent manner criticizes the Army or Navy or the flag of the United States shall be at once dismissed from the service. . . .

Sec. 4. When the United States is at war, the Postmaster General may, upon evidence satisfactory to him that any person or concern is using the mails in violation of any of the provisions of this Act, instruct the postmaster at any post office at which mail is received addressed to such person or concern to return to the postmaster at the office at which they were originally mailed all letters or other matter so addressed, with the words 'Mail to this address undeliverable under Espionage Act' plainly written or stamped upon the outside thereof, and all such letters or other matter so returned to such postmasters shall be by them returned to the senders thereof under such regulations as the Postmaster General may prescribe.

While was controversial, it was used and a there were an appreciable number of prosecutions under it.

On the same day the League of Nations established by Treaty the Permanent Court of International Justice.  It wasn't that permanent in that it lasted only until 1946.

And the famous La Scala Orchestra arrived for a tour in the US from Italy.