The Stammtisch and Social Isolation.

It occurs to me that I'm lucky.  

I come from people who widely circulated, very well educated in history, and I have some close friends about whom I can say the same.  Some of them I meet mostly on line anymore, but I've met all of them in person and have engaged them all in lively conversations.  They includes geologists, geophysicists, businessmen, computer experts and infrastructure workers, who are self employed, industry employed, and government employed.  And it includes Catholics, Baptists, Calvinists and non denominational Protestants.

A sort of Stammtisch, if you will.

My Stammtisch is centered on horses and history.  Arguably, a second one centers on the outdoors and certain rarified sports.  That's not the point, however.  It's that I have them.  One, the one referenced above, is made up of Americans for the most part, although there are some people who stop by who are not.  The second one includes Americans, Central Americans, and Europeans.

At one time most Americans had that.

Now they don't.

And that explains a lot of the mess we're in right now, and what's going on right now.

One of the ways modern life really leaves us short is that we only associate, by and large, with our own kind.  Depending upon your station in life, that's more true for some than for others, but it's pretty true.

This has always been the case to a fair degree, but not as much as it is now.  Indeed, it's been the subject of entire books, Bowling Alone perhaps being the most notable.  Since the advent of television, followed by electronic media, we get up, we go to work and we come home.  With the enforced decline of family life caused by the Sexual Revolution and things that followed in its wake, that means that a lot of people really live that life exactly. They're not married, they have no family, they just come and go.

Friends have been substituted for "electronic communities" of the like minded.  People avoid and eschew settings where they mix with the unfamiliar.  For people who retain a faith, they often choose a congregation of the like minded.  For those interested in. . . well anything, they do the same.

This is incredibly dangerous as it means that ideas are never challenged in any setting.  Nobody really advances their ideas, or ever defends them.

This has become increasingly obvious to me over the last couple of weeks, in part because I'm finding I'm an exception not the rule.  I mix with people of other views a lot, and I have some very intelligent and thoughtful friends who hold a lot of my views. . . and a lot of views I don't hold.  

Elks Club annual outing, September 13, 1916.

On the danger first.

I'm a lawyer by training and trade.  The law is an intellectual field based in inquiry at its best, although the profession shows a lot of the worst anymore.  Be that as it may, I have tended to find that most really thoughtful active lawyers are appalled by recent events, irrespective of their political views. This view isn't universal, but it's quite widespread.  Being analytical by nature, and having had that reinforced by training, knowing the law in general, and knowing that developments in the law are constant and that it does not remain fixed in technology, it's overwhelmingly the case in the law that recent events regarding the election have been a horror to lawyers.

Lawyers by and large give no credit whatsoever to the claims that the election was stolen.  The facts simply aren't there.  Given that, it's been extraordinarily difficult for those in the law to grasp how anyone could possibly believe the opposite.  

Indeed, in one rare instance that I personally encountered the person's belief in the opposite was based on a faith in lawyers themselves, combined with a dose of Fox News, that most lawyers don't credit.  There were legal challenges in court, was their view, and therefore there must be merit.  That's charming, and it shows a faith in the nature of litigation that is based on the way it is supposed to work, but litigators certainly don't look at litigation that way.  Must have merit?  Lots of lawsuits are filed that have no merit whatsoever, and even less than that. We all know that.

Knights of Columbus group, 1914.

But what about everyone else?

Part of the problem here is what I've noted above.  People are in limited circles and they hear only what others in the same circles believe, and they have faith in certain social constructs that don't really deserve it.  If a lawyer can believe that merely filing suit indicates merit, regular people must surely believe that.  And lawyers know that.  Lots of suits are filed merely because they create a belief in potential jurors and the public that there must be a problem, thereby providing an incentive to the defendants to settle.  The law states that its always presumed that the plaintiff has the burden of proof on things, but regular people tend to look at it the other way around. The accused, they feel, must prove their free of guilt, not rely on the other side to prove their guilt.

Added to that, lawyers are highly adapted to things moving even when the law does not.  That's played a role here.  We as a society tend to believe we adapt well to technological changes, but we do a lot less than we imagine.  During the recent election voting by mail has been a big deal, and of course the Administration made it a big deal.  It made it a big deal in my belief is that its long been the case that Democrats often fail to go to the polls. The Administration's thought was, it seems to me, that if voting wasn't done widely by mail, it just wouldn't be widely done.

Sixteenth Head Camp, Modern Woodsmen of America, Buffalo, New York.  1911.

That turned into the outrage over what seemed to be the case that Democrats voted by mail and Republicans did not. That's not really completely true by any means, but there's an element of truth to it.  That's not surprising, however, as Democrats sizably outnumber Republicans in the country and voting by mail is easy.  Added to that, the Administration repeatedly condemned voting by mail and people who were highly loyal to the Administration naturally concluded that lots of mail in ballots would be lost, thrown away, or whatever, and therefore they should not vote by mail.  If you tell your loyal adherents not to trust the mail, they won't trust the mail.  If you tell everyone that the mail is not to be trusted, and lost of those people don't trust you, they'll use the mail.

Beyond that, Democrats, irrespective of the jokes about the Democratic Party not being "an organized party", are really good at organization. Republicans, with a strong ethos of independence, not so much.  That Democrats could exploit mail in voting through organization isn't surprising, but it isn't evil either.  It's strategic.

Mail in voting isn't new and again, to lawyers, its not even a big deal.  The thought that it is to others pretty much completely escapes us, as is now evident to me.  We have served pleadings by mail for eternity.  We were early adopters of things electronic.  Those from Western states, where mail in balloting has been around forever, already live in a world where people vote by mail.  We know that mail in voting can be trusted and frankly this is simply a natural evolution, in our view, in the process. Absolutely no big deal.

Apparently it is a big deal, however, in those camps where this was never thought of before and was really appreciated for the first time.  Victor David Hanson has an article expressing absolute horror that we've now arrived at a point where the American tradition is no longer "we all go to the polls on election day".  That tradition hasn't existed for decades, and indeed the American tragedy in elections was that most Americans didn't vote at all.  Cynically some Republicans opposed mail in voting for that very reason, often camouflaging it with concerns over the mail in process, but the real concern is that mail in voting is really easy, particularly if you live in a region where somebody has been proactive in sending you a ballot. Fill it out, and mail it back.  But if that's the case, most of those votes are going to be Democratic, by far.

Indeed, by a huge margin.

Which shows how well the GOP really did. The Republicans should have drowned in a year of mail in balloting. They didn't.

Anyhow, getting back to the circle of friends argument, it's now struck me how this has impacted the argument, by showing me how my thoughtful friends in the other camp view it.  But not to them quite yet.

Taking all we have above and processing it down for most people, what we have is this.  Most people don't listen to Meet The Press and This Week, check the headlines from The New York Times and the Washington Post, and read their local paper.  Not anymore.  Most people think they're informed if they watch a news channel. Television news has always been incredibly superficial, but even doing that people should have a good idea of what's been going on.

But most people who claim they watch a news channel are like people who claim they only have a beer on weekends. The weekend drinkers, with exceptions of all kids they make for themselves, extend the weekend to start on Wednesday and run through to Tuesday. We all know that this is true as we all do something like that ourselves.  People who claim "I watch CNN and Fox News", as if that were to actually make them informed, are actually watching only one, and only superficially.

Which means that people get armed with a narrow set of tailored facts, go to work with their fellows who are likely in the same station of life as they are, here the same views, and are never exposed to any others.

If, therefore, you work with people who believe that mail in balloting is really weird and will be full of illegitimacy, and its a plot, and everyone you know believes what you do, you'll believe that the election must have been stolen.

Indeed, in Wyoming, I've heard people say "that many people can't have voted for Biden". That's because in Wyoming in 2021 everyone in certain occupations supports only Trump.  Unbeknownst to them, there are entire occupations in the state where nobody will admit to every having supported Trump, they just keep their mouths shut.  What happens is that people are talking only to themselves, and reinforcing their own views.

I'll give an example of that.

I know a fellow who is a well educated very intelligent person, but who has no interest in politics and very little interest, if any at all, in history.  Mostly, he's interested in his family and religion, both of which are fine and admirable interests.  He's interested in his work.  

On a day to day basis he's mostly around his family.   An old fashioned Mid Westerner, he's highly gregarious, but his close friends are mostly drawn from his church.  He has work friends, and he likes to talk to them, but in a Mid Westerners sort of way.  When real Westerners talk, there's always a real element of seriousness to it. . . always.  Westerners don't really have casual conversations. . . not really.

This fellow's friends are all, as noted, from his church, one way or another. Which is fine.. . or actually not. They include a couple of politicians from the GOP.  Both of those politicians are hard line Trumpites.

So what, you may ask.  Well, it's simple enough, and it shows why Rod Dreher's acolytes don't understand him.

Another example that shows why.

I heard an interview at the start of the  Syrian civil war of a woman who had endured the earlier rebellion by Shia militiamen.  She noted, at that time, she was surprised to discovery, during the rebellion, that Syria wasn't a Christian country.  Her town was Maronite Catholic. . . she assumed everyone in Syria was because everyone she knew was.

Back to my friend.  He's exposed to one view, and the only political views he's been exposed to are from the hard Trump right.  He came into this assuming the election must have been stolen. And why wouldn't he believe that?  That was the only view, and therefore the majority view, of what he was hearing.  And people generally believe the majority view.

We could call it the Jo Jo Rabbit Effect.  For those who haven't seen the movie, it's well worth watching and a really eclectic comedy.  Set in the last days of Nazi Germany, the young German protagonist discovers that Jews aren't bad and that he's falling in love with the young Jewish woman his mother has been hiding.  I note it here, however, as the stories his fellows tell about Jews are bizarre, enough so that a German officer clearly doesn't believe them, but most people are have fallen for them.  It's the only news they're getting.

It's the same with my friend. His two politician friends, one of whom may simply in my view be adopting his positions for purely cynical self serving reasons, and the other who probably has adopted them simply because he's also only around his family and nobody else, have informed him the election is stolen.  Its the majority view where he is.  He's shocked to learn that other people think otherwise, and actually really shaken up about it.

Lets' contrast that a bit with how things used to be.  I'll go way back. . . to 1933 or 34.

33 or 34 is when my father started school as a four year old in Denver.  The first grade school he went to was a Catholic school in downtown urban Denver.  Suffice to say, a Catholic school, in urban Denver, even in the 1930s, was going to feature a really mixed set of ethnicities.  

When he was 7, his family moved to Scottsbluff and he was enrolled thereafter in public school.  I don't know if Scottsbluff had a Catholic school in the 1930s, but I do know that while Catholics weren't uncommon in western Nebraska by any means whatsoever, they were still a minority population.  He went to school with a lot of Hispanic kids (universally called "Mexicans" then, and while I was in school) and Indian kids as well.  When he moved to Wyoming and went to the only high school in town it contained kids from all walks of life and every local ethnicity.  He played football with one fellow that I later knew well whose first and middle names were "Robert Lee", named for Robert E. Lee, but who was black. They later worked together for a time at the Post Office and they remained lifelong friends.  My father left the Post Office, however, to go to university and then entered the Air Force.  Overseas his two closest, and lifelong, friends were two fellow officers, one of whom was black, and another who was Jewish.  My father, of course, was half German, half Irish, and Catholic.

Let's go to me then.  I went to grade school in Central Wyoming where Catholics aren't uncommon, but area also a minority.  Of the other two Catholic kids in my grade school class (there wasn't room in the Catholic grade school at the time) one was of Irish extraction and the other was "Mexican".  I went all the way through grade school with one kid who was Jehovah's Witness.  My closest friend in grade school was Baptist.  A good friend was Mormon.  

All schools in the county were by geographic district.  The districts were purely geographic, however, and therefore they mixed economics pretty well.  One kid's father was an ornamental iron worker.  Two kids had fathers who were lawyers.  One kid had a medically retired fireman for a father, and his mother, uniquely at that time, was the prime bread winner. She was a secretary (which my own mother occasionally was).  One kid had older parents who were already retired.  

In Junior High the mix increased with new elements.  The junior high I went to included the entire northern part of the city which was across the interstate highway and the railroad, the only solidly poorer part of town.  All those kids went to the same junior high.  The populations of Hispanic kids increased and almost all of the black kids went to the same junior high.  Most of us went on to the same high school.

After high school I went on to university, and also on to the National Guard.  My Army basic training and advanced training battery included men from the South and West and a large number of Hispanic men and African Americans.  My best friends in basic training were one young man whose had been raised by his grandparents and another who was married to a community college professor.  

At the University of Wyoming, this story continues.  Most of the students I knew at UW were white, as most university students were, but in the geology department there was one student who was a Turkish American.  My best friends in university included a lifelong friend who is a dedicated Baptist, another who is Lutheran, one who was a fallen away (and now reverted) Catholic, and one who was a non observant Protestant.  In college and university I dated a girl for awhile who was from the South, another who was from Central Wyoming, one from the town where I was born and raised and still live, and one who was Chinese Dutch (as in ethnically Chinese, but born in the Netherlands and a Dutch citizen).

That sort of experience is really broadening.  Theodore Roosevelt's biographer Edmond Morris maintained that Roosevelt would not have become President without having been a rancher in North Dakota.  It was there that he learned to speak to average people and to see their point of view and appreciate their intelligence.  Without that, he would have probably never risen above being a politician in New York.  

And as radical as it may sound, Hitler would not have become what he became if he'd stayed in Vienna, one of the most polyglot international cities in Europe in the early 20th Century.  Indeed, prior to World War One he's known to have at least one Jewish friend.  It was the isolation, both physical and intellectual, of German army life that allowed him to develop into the monster he became.

We like to think, for some reason, of the march of technology being every beneficial.  It isn't.  We've isolated ourselves from the natural world, an exposure to which is necessary in order for humans to really be humans, and we've isolated ourselves from ourselves.  Now, the Woke, with their absurd anti natural theories on human nature, aren't exposed to any humans save for those who agree with their absurdities. Those in the far political right, generally associate only with the like minded.  Qanon's (probably Russian backed) conspiracy theories sound absolutely absurd to anyone who isn't in the mix of them, but those who are tend to associate only with those who are.

And then add to that COVID 19.

COVID 19 accelerated the process of social isolation like nothing else. We were basically headed in that direction anyhow, as employers were steadily moving towards shifting things out of offices and into "homes".  The launched the process like an aircraft with JATO bottles.

Up, up and away. . . 

Or, rather, out, out and at "home", with that home probably being an apartment.

When the pandemic started some mused that it might serve to arrest a societal fall.  We had a long post on that which dealt with some of those views ourselves.  And maybe it will, but right now the evidence isn't great.

But for the Sexual Revolution and the absurdity of Wokeness, being sent home would have meant something a lot different than it tends to now.  Sure, not everything would have been great for everyone and the entire post 1950s view of the 1950s which tends to come up in such conversations never ever existed.  Probably part of what would have happened is that some guys who left their work to drink at he bar before coming home drunk to fall asleep at the dinner table would stay home, take to drinking and beat up his wife and kids.

But by and large they wouldn't have.

Now, part of that same generation isn't married and is having trouble getting married to start with, sucked into a hookup culture that was emotionally shallow in the extreme and which reduced human relations to the animal level. Stuck at home, they're taking to all sorts of vices as they don't know where else to go to satiate them. Booze, drugs pornography, you name it.  The sale of alcohol is way up.  Drug overdoses are way up.  Apparently visits to something called "Pornhub" are likewise way up.  Probably visits to Catholic Answers and Orthodox Christianity are as well, but they have to depend on donations and not pay pre view for addicted vices or soon to be addicted vices.

And some of those people, now really separated from the world, are going down some dark alleys.  Whereas in earlier extremely stressed time, the same people would have still had to go to work, and would have walked from their work to the train past some people arguing for extremism, but also past the Salvation Army seeking donations, Hasidic jewelers wearing their prayer shawls, and the two guys on the trains arguing the merits or demerits of the New York Yankees.  For some of those people now there are no interruptions, no matter how badly they may be wanted, and its an easy diversion to see what people you sort of favor politically are up to.  Pretty soon, you are deep into a conspiracy theory populated by people who really truly believe in it.

That wouldn't happen if the same people had a Stammtisch.

Most folks don't have, a Stammtisch such as I'm fortunate to have.

Well, what of this? 

I'm frankly not sure.  During much of human history this was the norm for most people actually.  If you were a Russian peasant, you know only Russian peasants, and so on.  

But most of them didn't live in a modern state like we do, and face the problems we face.  We're incredibly polarized in a way that we haven't been for a very long time, and have real problems to address.  Some of our conflicts are truly at an existential nature.  

I don't know how to cause people to have a Stammtisch.  Much of that culture is broken.  

And that's much of the problem.

Monday at the Bar: Can The Senate Try An Ex-President?

Lots of people are asking the same question.

And now NPR is taking a look at it:

Can The Senate Try An Ex-President?

Frankly, I think the answer is no, and the example of Richard Nixon is a good one. Sure, he'd been pardoned, but an impeachment might not really remove the incidents of being convicted in an impeachment.  If Congress thought there was any chance that they could have tried a President after he left office, they would have impeached Nixon.

And the text of the Constitution is clear:

Judgment in Cases of Impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from Office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States: but the Party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to Indictment, Trial, Judgment and Punishment, 

"[N]ot further than to removal from Office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office . . . 

It doesn't say "removal. . . or disqualification".  It says not further than "removal. . . and disqualification.

Of course, you could argue, and now the argument will be made, that those punishments are the highest that can be meted out, but lesser ones can be as well. So they're a cap. And you could still find a person disqualified to hold office.

Sure, that's true, but by the same logic you could find an aged bank robber who passes away prior to his trial liable for the full measure of a sentence as well.  

And that's the problem.  Impeachment is for removal.  

And the fact that impeachment is for removal means we're now going to see the government tied up in the circus of an impeachment trial followed by some sort of appeal to the United States Supreme Court. . . assuming that a motion to dismiss isn't entertained and granted by Justice Roberts, who has the misfortune of presiding over all of this.  It'll be a giant distraction, and a distraction at the very period where Biden, if he's to have a successful Presidency, needs to act.

And there are alternatives.  If President Trump is guilty of crimes, which it is argued an impeachment does not actually require, he could be charged and tried for those.  Indeed, a long investigation in New York is still pending and seems likely to.  If he's convicted of any felony, he's likewise be unable to hold further office, and there's be additional penalties at that.

Which is why he'll likely attempt to pardon himself on the way out the door.

But, at least in my view, you can't pardon yourself.  It's never been tested, of course, but I doubt very much you can do it, and when that's reviewed by the Court, the Court will hold that. To hold opposite would be to place the President above the law.

None of which is an argument in any fashion to the effect that the entire post election administration denying the results of the vote fiasco shouldn't be looked at. Real damage has been done to our democracy and the insurrection was inexcusable.  The basic gist of impeaching the President would be due to the insurrection, the full facts of which we really aren't aware of in regards to guilt.  At a bare minimum, Trump was careless with his words and that fueled the violent storming of the Capitol.  That may or may not be a crime under conventional law, but under the Constitution, it might amount to a "misdemeanor" in context, a topic that we dealt with way back during the President's first impeachment.  Which means that the impeachment trial may end up being essentially a prolonged hearing which may be worthwhile undertaking in its own right, for fact finding purposes.  And they likely feel that they simply can't stand and do nothing.

Which gets me back to some earlier made points, one being that if Nixon had been tried back in 1973, which would have required Ford not pardoning him, we wouldn't be enduring this now.

What were their lives like? Admiral McCully's adopted Russian orphans, Eugenia Z. Selifanova and Olga Krundvcher.

Recently here I posted this:

January 11, 1921. Fractured and Rescued Russian Lives, 1921 Wyoming Legislature, Work.

Six of the seven Russian children adopted by Admiral Newton A. McCully, with their "governess" Eugenia Z. Selifanova, photographed on January 11, 1921.  

On this day in 1921, a press photographer photographed most of Admiral Newton A. McCully's adopted Russian children together with their governess who was a teenager herself.

McCully was a southern born American naval officer who had been embedded in the Imperial Russian Army during the Russo Japanese War.  In 1914 he returned to Russia as a naval attaché and he was elevated to commend of the U.S. Navy in northern Russia in 1918.  Following this he was sent to appreciate the military situation of the Whites in 1919.  He adopted these children in 1920.

McCully obviously appreciated the East due to all of this service.  A bachelor until 1927, he married Olga Krundycher, an Estonian, in 1929 on the claim that this would provide a mother for his children, and perhaps that was his reason, although I suspect that there was more to it than that.  She was later listed as their mother on census forms, even though the McCully adoptees were not all related and came themselves from varying regions of the former Russian Empire.  She was 29 years old at the time and the marriage took place in Tallinn, Estonia at which time McCully was still a serving naval officer.  He would live until 1951, dying at age 83.  She would live until 1968 and returned to Estonia for reasons of which I am not aware (or am I aware of when that occurred).

Eugenia  Selifanova was 18 or 19 years old when this photograph was taken. She later married another Russian immigrant, about 20 years her senior, and lived the rest of her life in Dearborn, Michigan. She had two children by the marriage and died in 1952.   She's already left the family, and probably had married, but the time of Admiral McCully's marriage.  Indeed, at that time McCully's mother was tasked with minding the children when he was away on duties.

It's easy to see what became of some of the children and that they had long American lives.  I wonder if anything of their early origins and culture was retained at all, or if anything of it remains in their ancestors.

Sometimes I'm haunted by the stories I post here, and they're usually things like this.  Not the big battles and the mass carnage, but rather the small stories of individuals caught up in the big events.

White Russian troops disembarking in Constantinople as refugees.

And its hard not to feel that way regarding the story of Newton McCully and his seven adopted children who had been taken out of Sevastopol as the Reds closed in on it, and then to Constantinople, and then on to the United States. 

Let's start with Admiral McCully, whom in some ways is both the central, and an ancillary, figure in our story.

Newton McCully was a South Carolinian born in 1867 whose father had served in the Civil War for, not surprisingly, the Confederacy.  McCully sought and obtained an appointment to Annapolis and, as noted above, he was embedded in the Imperial Russian Army during the Russo Japanese War.  In 1914 he returned to Russia as a naval attaché and he was elevated to commend of the U.S. Navy in northern Russia in 1918.  Following this he was sent to appreciate the military situation of the Whites in 1919.

He was a bachelor all of this time, which was not surprising for a naval officer given the life they lead.  He'd been in the Navy since 1887.

Something about Russia and Russians, or perhaps just a deep sympathy with a distressed people, heavily struck him in 1919.  During that time he had occasion to be with distressed Russians and to go into Russian orphanages and the like.  At some point he determined to attempt to bring back nine children into the United States with him.  He ended up bringing seven, as two couldn't go for various reasons (one was ill, and one was not actually an orphan, although his father consented to him going with McCully).

McCully adopted the seven children in Russia and sought diplomatic permission to bring them into the United States and to reside at his boyhood home in Anderson, South Carolina, for a time until his home in Washington D. C. could be refurbished to be suitable for children.  He had to post $5,000 a piece for each immigrant, a gigantic sum in 1921.  His mother was living and the initial plan was for the seven to live with her, there, during that time period.  Their stories, and some of their names, are noted in this period news article here:

There was, we'd note, an element of confusion on the number of children in early reports and indeed in some later ones, created in part by Euginia Selfinova's young age.  Some reports seemed to assume that she was one of the orphans, which in a way she was, and to include her in the count.  That wasn't her states however.  There were in fact seven, and she was the eighth young Russian, if looked at that way, to come into the United States with McCully.

Their names (subject to some confusion and difficulties in translation) and ages in 1921 were as follows:  Nikolai Smnov (12), Ludmila Manetzkaya (11), Anastasia Sherbotoc (Sherback)  (Sherbackova) (10), Nina Furinan (8), Feodore Pozdo (4), Ninotahkl Limendo (3) and Antonina Klimenko (2)..  Added to that was Euginia Selifanova, who was 19.  She apparently was already attached to some of the children prior to Admiral McCully asking her to come along and, according to his early interviews, asked her to come along as governess, something that tends to show up in quote marks as if there was confusion or doubt over her status.

McCully's concerns left him with quite a brood on his hands, to say the least, which no doubt explains in part why he chose to ask Selfanova to come along.  Selfanova would have been an adult at this time both in fact, experience and culture and McCully was a bachelor with a busy Naval career.

McCully, children, and Selifanova at a baseball game on November 22, 1922.  The woman in the center is "Miss Gleaves"

We'll pick up here, because of her role in the story, with Selifanova, who turns out to be one of the most difficult to trace.  We'll do that in part, as its necessary to explore Selfianova in order to discuss the story overall and later developments.

Selifanova obviously lived with the family for several years, but then another mystery develops.  Almost nothing is known about her, not surprisingly, before she accompained McCully and the children to the United States.  Her last name simply means the daughter of Selifan, which isn't very helpful and Selifanova is a fairly common Slavid last name.  It might not be Russian, for that matter, but some other Slavic language.* In the few photographs that exist of her, she uniformly has a stern appearance.

She seems to have left the McCully household prior to 1929 when an new woman enters the picture as the wife of Admiral McCully.

We'll take up McCully's wife in a moment, but the marriage in 1927 seems to have come to everyone as a surprise, in no small part as it took place in Tallinn, Estonia.  The Admiral didn't even inform his mother of the marriage until after it occurred.  Early press reports indicated that the marriage was undertaken as McCully had determined he needed a mother for the children, but much of that really doesn't wash in context.  By that time Nikolai, Ludmila, Anastasia, and Nina Furinan were all teenagers and approaching adulthood.  That still left the children at home, of course, but their minding would not have have been the burden that it early would have been, except perhaps if Selifanova had left the household.  The evidence seems to be that she had.

Indeed, her full name is associated with Andrew Trago at about this time.  "Trago" is generally a Latinate name, but Andrew was listed as Russian born on the one census form we've found noting him.  That might not be too surprising, however, as immigration agents weren't good at recording actual last names all that accurately at the time and European peasants proved to be quite willing to accept new last names.  His actual original last name may have been anything sounding close to that.  Anyhow, Adrew Trago was also Russian born but about twenty years Selfinova's senior, leading to some doubt if this is the right person.  Nonetheless, a Euginia Selifanova was was of the same age as the governess married Trago and the couple lived out their lives in Dearborn Michigan, having a son and a daughter.

Having said that, records for the couple are incredibly spotty. The showed up in a census just once, in 1940, and that document reported their son Boris as being 22 at the time.  If that's the case, he would have been born when Euginia was 16, which is clearly incorrect for these photographs.  Having said that, almost everything about the Trago family was vague.  This might simply be explained by slightly moving the dates of his birth and making him slightly younger.  Indeed, in 1940 the family may have had a reason for listing him as older than he was for one reason or another.  At any rate, at that point, Euginia disappears from history.

Euginia wasn't the only one who disappeared at that. The new bride shortly did also, but not quite as definitively.

The bride was Olga Krundycher.  In 1927 Admiral McCully married her in Tallinn, Estonia.   She was then 29 years old and, moreover, ethnically Estonian.  Indeed, she had a family last name of Sermann, and this was her second marriage, as she was a widow. The marriage seems to have come to everyone as a surprise.  The Admiral didn't even inform his mother of the marriage until after it occurred.  Early press reports indicated that the marriage was undertaken as McCully had determined he needed a mother for the children, but much of that really doesn't wash in context.  By that time Nikolai, Ludmila, Anastasia, and Nina Furinan were all teenagers and approaching adulthood.  That still left the children at home, of course, but their minding would not have have been the burden that it early would have been, except perhaps if Selifanova had left the household.

Olga, while an Estonian, appears to have been married to a Russian and perhaps a Russian army officer.  Her father's occupation is what records exist is listed as "soldier" and it may be the case that he was an Imperial Russian Army officer. The clues exist in that at the time of her wedding it was noted in Estonian papers, which covered it, that she "still" spoke some of her "native language".  If she'd grown up in Estonia we'd expect her to speak it perfectly. So its clear that she had at least some prolonged absence.

And while its certainly possible that McCully may have been willing to marry a Russian peasant, we can doubt that.  In the 1920s class distinctions were higher than they are now and McCully was of Southern aristocratic birth.  Indeed, while it might have been quasi scandalous if he'd done so, we'd note that Selifanova wasn't enormously younger than Krundycher at the time that she seems to have left the family.  Of course, we don't know anything else about Selifanova or her character, or even her opinion of McCully and vice versa.  She's truly a figure in the background, not smiling in photographs.  Krundycher is somewhat different.

Anyhow Olga was then 29 years old, ethnically Estonian and a widow. The marriage made the newspapers in Tallinn.

The Admiral may have thought Krundycher a good mother for his family, as American press reports at the time had it, and perhaps she was.  But here too we are presented with a mystery.  Other than the marriage being announced, she disappears from the record to a degree.  She's not buried with Admiral Newton, and indeed, she died in Estonia in 1968, not in the US.  

In fact, we can find her first back in Estonia by 1931, where he arrival was announced in the society page.  The marriage was presumably going well at the time and she seemed to be hailed as a bit of a celebrity.  Nonetheless, she died in Estonia nearly forty years later.  What happened?

Well, that's pretty hard to tell.  What we do know is that as late as 1943 the McCully's, Newton and Olga, were living in Florida, Admiral McCully now well retired. She is listed as his wife on materials pertaining to his death.  They seem to have still been married at the time of his death, and frankly returning to Estonia in the 40s would have been nuts.

Still, the records support she want back to Estonia at some point.  Perhaps after her husband's death, and all of her adopted children having assumed their own adult lives, she felt the call of her native country again.  Or perhaps she was just visiting it at the time of her death.

So, as to the two adult women who were part of this story, we know something at this point.  Selifanova appears to have married a few years later, and to have then lived out her life in Dearborn Michigan, dying at a fairly young age overall. 

Krundychter entered the picture as a somewhat celebrated, but much younger, bride of the Admiral but ended up back in Estonia where she lived until the end of her life many  years later.  She was born in Imperial Russia, seems to have lived in Russia for some time, suffered some sort of tragedy with her first husband, and then returned to Estonia before marrying the Admiral.  At some point, she went back to Estonia, by then an middle aged, or even elderly in context, woman and live there, apparently, until her death in the 1960s.

And what of the children?  Well, we can tell something about their lives from a few period articles and some coming quite later, which gives us a few clues about what their lives were perhaps like.  We'll sum up what we know about each first.  Let's list them out by age as of their time of their adoption and entry into the United States.

1. Nikolai Snourov (12).

Snourov was a boy soldier in the White Army when he came into the eye of Admiral McCully, and therefore hew as rescued from a really grim fate. Had he remained in Russia, and survived the war, he was young enough he could have expected service with the Reds and probably in the Second World War in the Red Army.  He may very well not have lived that long, however, as he could have been killed in combat, or by the Reds at any point leading up to World War Two, one way or another.

He not surprisingly ended up in World War Two as it was, but in the United States Navy.

Snourov was from Kharkov, Ukraine and had been born on April 1, 1909.  In 1933 he married Clair Wilhelmina Von Moser in Baltimore.  The couple had at least one son.  Nikolai did not outlive his adopted father by long, and died in 1954 at age 45.

2. Ludmila Manetzkaya (11)

Ludmila was born in Sevastapol in Crimea.  She married Raymond Francis Colee in 1934 in Florida, where she lived the rest of her life.  She died in 1985 at the age of 75.  She and her husband also had at least one child, whom was named Newton, no doubt after her adoptive father.  Newton passed away in Florida in 2004.

A charming photograph of Ludmila wearing an elaborate kokoshnik, a traditional headdress for Russian, but not Ukranian, women.  Taken in 1924, she would have been fourteen or fifteen at the time it was taken.

Ludmila McCully, 1924.

3 Anastasia Sherback  (Sherbackova) (10), 

Anastasia's real last name was Sherbackova, making her the daughter of Sherback.  On April 23, 1929, her name hit the New York Times society columns when she married William Mortiz of New York.  She was eighteen years old at the time.

4, Nina Furinan (8)

This Nina is the child who is the hardest to find anything out about.  Her age upon entry would indicate that she'd been born in 1912 or 1913.  None of the later information available supports any of the children, however, being born that year.

There are listings for an Antonina Vasilivna Forman for this family, but she was born, according to the records in 1909, which would have made her eleven when she came into the country.  This doesn't match, however, an 8 year old age at the time of entry either, but then at least one other age is also off. 

We know that in this group of children one was latter marred under the last name "Lash" and lived in Detroit.  A 1943 article on another one of the children noted that she was an artist. This is almost certainly here.

5 Feodor Pazdo Mikkaelovich(4)

Feador was born in Sevastopol in 1916.  He married Mary Ann Caruso in November, 1942, in Miami, by which time he was going by the name of Feodor McCully.  

Feodore also served in the United States Navy during World War Two.

Like a lot of the McCully children, he spent the rest of his life in Florida and South Carolina.  He did in 1970 in Florida at the age of 53.  

6 Ninotahkl Limendo (3)

Obituaries support that a Nina Mikhailovna Razahavalina McCully was part of the group and that she was born on June 30, 1915, in Yalta.  She was the daughter of Michael S. Rashavalin and Elena V. Melele.  She was clearly one of the McCully Russian orphans, so this is likely her.  She married John B. McDonald on August 22, 1941 in Santa Monica, California.  She and her husband lived in South Carolina, Florida and California, before she died on June 25, 1999 at the age of 83.

7. Antonina Klimenko (2)

Klimenko was also born in Sevastopol and her original last name is Ukrainian, not Russian.  She's the McCully child about which we know the most, perhaps because she was the youngest and likely, in some ways, the most American. . . maybe.

Antonina served in the U.S. Navy during World War Two, the family being still sufficiently noteworthy that her joining the Navy made the newspaper.  In 1945, following the war, she married George Von Bretzel and they also made their home in Florida.  George, interestingly, in spite of his last name, was also a Russian refugee, having been born in Japan to Russian parents before immigrating to the United States and serving in World War Two.  Indeed, because of his last name he likely came from a quasi aristocratic family that had German roots as well as Russian, something not uncommon for Russian nobility.

He worked for the CIA.  She lived until 1979, dying at the age of 61 in Florida.  The couple had two children.  At the time of her death in 1979 Ludmila was living in St. Augustine Florida, her sister Nina Lash in Detroit, and her sister Nina McDonald in Palos Verdes Estates, California.

Okay, so that's what became of them, but what of their lives?

Based on what we can find, they had adventurous childhoods.  Their adoptive father seems to have taken them all over the world when he could, and they accordingly lived in such places as Brazil.  Upon his retirement, he apparently bought a yacht and they lived for a time on it, before it was sunk when struck by a ship. They all survived the sinking.  In later years, they remained close to their father.

And while we can't tell for sure, there seem to have been a strong element of Russianness that was incorporated into the rest of their lives.  To the extent that we can tell, they all became American citizens only in adulthood, there father preserving the option for them, as he'd promised, for them to return to Russia, which none of them did.  They had a Russian governess early on, and then a Russian speaking Estonian step mother.  The youngest of them married another Russian refugee.  Even the youngest of them surely spoke Russian and had some knowledge of the culture of their homeland.

They also lived remarkably American lives. They spread out across the country while young, although they seemed to gravitate back towards Florida in their later years.  The boys all lived remarkably short lives for Americans, but lives that are interestingly about in context of life spans for Russians, which is usually attributed to environmental conditions in Russian culture in Russia.  As there were only two boys, this could be merely coincidental with them.

Were they raised Russian Orthodox?  Did their governess and adoptive mother instill in them a sense of a Russian identity?  Did the older ones retain it due to having been born in Russia?  Or were they just glad to have been rescued from an undoubtedly hard fate.

Of that last item, it seems we can be sure.  They called him "Dyadya" (Дядя), the Russian word for "uncle", right from the onset, but it's pretty clear he became more than that.  And its an extraordinary tale of generosity.  He entered into the role well into his middle age when some of them were very young, and with nobody really at home to help him.

*Technically "ova" merely identifies the bearer of the name as a woman.  It actually shares the same root as ovum, i.e., "egg".

January 17, 1941. The fog.

 

A foggy night in Bedford Massachusetts.  January 17, 1941.

The oddity of the "wars within wars" nature of World War Two, which is often forgotten, was illustrated by the Battle of Co (Koh, Koi) Chang, which occurred off the Gulf of Thailand.  French Navy vessels defeated Thai naval vessels decisively after a Thai incursion.

The Thai navy had recently been updated with Japanese and Italian vessels, but it was not up to the task and the battle was a disaster.  It prompted Japan to act as an intermediary in the war between Thailand and France out of fear that it would lead to reversals in Thai gains.

The conflict is interesting in that Thailand was seeking to adjuster a regional dispute through the use of arms supplied by two Axis powers with which it was, at that time, more than nominally aligned.  The French, on the other hand, were now weakly aligned with Japan by force, given the defeat of France by the Germans and the impairment of contact with France as a result.  It's military, however, still remained stronger than the Thai's.

It wasn't stronger than Japan's and Japan and France had already fought a short undeclared war in Indochina leading to Japanese occupation of the north, although an agreement to allow Japanese forces to co-occupy Indochina had already been reached.  France legitimately feared that Japan would take over it's entire Indochinese colony, which in June 1941 it in fact did, as its treaty rights now allowed it to do.  French troops and administration, however, remained all the way until March 1945 when the Japanese staged a coup to overthrow the French administration out of fears it would act against Japan.

Japanese troops advancing towards Lạng Sơn in their September 1941 campaign against the French.  The city is on Vietnam's border with China.

Japan in turn invaded Thailand on December 8, 1941, as part of its new war against the United States and British Empire.  Fighting only lasted five hours with Thailand surrendering and agreeing to formally become an Axis power.

On the same day, the British Blue Star linger SS Almeda Star was sunk by a U-boot with the loss of all 325 souls on board. The Zealandic was sunk the same day with the loss of all 73 on board.

More on the events of the day in World War Two can be read about here:

Day 505 January 17, 1941

Today in World War II History—January 17, 1941

Sunday Morning Scene. Churches of the West: St. Dominic Catholic Church, Old Highlands District, Denver Colorado.

Churches of the West: St. Dominic Catholic Church, Old Highlands Distric...: 

St. Dominic Catholic Church, Old Highlands District, Denver Colorado.

This is St. Dominic Catholic Church in the Old Highlands District of Denver, Colorado.  

This large Gothic style church was the second St. Dominic's in Denver, both of which, fittingly enough, were and are Dominican churches.  The church was originally associated with a school, but the school closed in 1973.  The Church itself was built in 1926, replacing one that had been built in the late 19th Century.

The rectory for the church stands next door and is just a bit older, having been built in 1923.

Something we said in 2016:

We ran a long election post mortem in 2016. . .nothing like for the 2020 Election cycle of course, but pretty long, here:

Lex Anteinternet: The 2016 Election: I didn't see that coming. . . like all of the rest of the pundits. It's been a wild election year. Yesterday, Donald Trum...

One things, of many, we said there:

The voters who revolted are, no doubt, going to be accused of being racist.  But to desire the America they grew up in, which was more Christian, more employed, and more rural, doesn't make them that way.  The Democrats have been offering them Greenwich Village, the Republicans the Houston suburbs.  It turns out they like the old Port Arthur, Kansas City or Lincoln Nebraska better, and want to go back. That's not irrational.

 

Port Arthur Texas.  I listed to people discuss the upcoming election two weeks ago at the Port Arthur Starbucks and thought they'd really be surprised when Clinton was elected. Turns out, they were much more on the mark than I was.  And it turns out that people in Port Arthur like Port Arthur the way it was twenty or thirty years ago, and they don't like a lot of big, hip trendy urban areas that they're supposed to.

Will Trump be able to do that?

Well, any way you look at it, it's going to be an interesting four years.

Trump will have to act on his populist world view.  I'm certain that it will be only momentarily before the pundits will start opining about how Trump, now that he is the President Elect, will moderate his views, etc., but there is no reason whatsoever to believe that. So far, his entire behavior has been true to what appears to be his basic character. We can anticipate that he will continue to act that way. And an electorate that, essentially, voted to rip everything down wants it down.  I suspect, therefore, that's what we will get.

I also, quite frankly don't think that this is universally bad. As noted, I never supported Trump, and I did not vote for him yesterday.  I'm in the camp so disgusted by both political parties and their candidates that I could not bring myself to hold my note and vote like so many others did. But I do think that Trump will listen to the blue collar element of American society, and somebody needs to.  I do not think that this segment, which knows its being forced out of work by a combination of forces that are not of its own making, but which are more than a little the fault of policies favoring the wealthy, will be quiet.  Clinton would not really have done anything for those people other than to lament their status, Trump will have to do something.  And I also think that Trump will actually nominate justices to the Supreme Court who do not feel compelled to stick to it, such as Justice Anthony Kennedy or who have a social agenda that colors and informs their decisions.  Justices who decide the law are needed on the Court and I think they'll actually be appointed.

Did I get it right?

Something worth remembering . . .

Something worth remembering, posted here in 2016 in this thread Lex Anteinternet: Lex Anteinternet: The 2016 Election.

Lex Anteinternet: The 2016 Election

Lex Anteinternet: The 2016 Election: I didn't see that coming. . . like all of the rest of the pundits. It's been a wild election year. Yesterday, Donald Trum...

The popular vote:

Trump: 47%:  59,611,678

Clinton:  48% 59,814,018

Johnson:  3%  4,058,500

Stein:  1%  1,213,103

Others:  .07%  802,119

A disappointing performance for Stein, given that she was trying to riff of the popular Sanders.  Not very impressive for Johnson either, whom some thought would do well.  That's probably at least 3,000,000 votes off of Trump, however.

Trump becomes President with a minority of votes cast.  Clinton took more, albeit only 200,000 more.  An example, perhaps, of every vote counting, or not, depending upon your view.

Trump lost the popular vote, and had the votes that were spent on Johnson or even Steim. . . yes Stein, been applied elsewhere. . . . 

Anyhow, somehow it's been forgotten that the antiquated Electoral College is all, and I do mean all, that gave Trump the Presidency in the first place.  Those wondering how he could have lost. . . could recall he lost the popular vote last time.

Best Posts of the Week of January 10, 2021

 The best posts of the week of January 10, 2021

2020 Election Post Mortem XII: Where does that leave Wyoming?

January 11, 1921. Fractured and Rescued Russian Lives, 1921 Wyoming Legislature, Work.

A Conspiracy Thesis about Conspiracy Theorist. Qanon is the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service.

Wars and Rumors of War. 2021

2020 General Election Part V. The Post Insurrection Fallout (and hopefully last) Edition

Reaping what's sewn. The National Rifle Association.

January 16, 1921. Socialite

The Washington Herald:  Diana Olivia Winifred Maud Cooper, Viscountess Norwich (born Lady Diana Manners; 1892-1986), a notable socialite in London and Paris.

 

Reaping what's sewn. The National Rifle Association.

Romeo kissing Juliet.

In 2016, as the Republicans were running up to nominating Donald Trump, I posted several threads that warned that embracing Trump had real risks.

I also published some that tried to explain what I thought were the underlying reasons that Trump was doing well, and then ultimately prevailed.  But in there, there was a warning.  Embracing Trump, which was different than embracing the populist platform he ran on, involved a real risk of taint.  

Trump, no matter what you think of his policies, is a crude man.  Indeed, he's so crude and cynical in some ways there's been reason to believe all along that he might not have that strong of connection to his policies, but adopted them as he knew that he could sell himself as the backer of those policies.  

American history has a distinct sub thread of real issues becoming absorbed by the personalities of their proponents, one way or another.  The Great Man theory of history is supposedly discredited, but frankly looking at history suggests that it shouldn't be wholly.  

There was an actual substantial Communist penetration into the American government in the 1930s and 1940s.  That was real.  What Joe McCarthy claimed about that was largely correct.  But he was also a brash oaf in his presentation of the facts (which it seems clear to me were provided to him by J. Edgar Hoover).  "McCarthyism" has been roundly condemned due to McCarthy, and its been believed, erroneously, ever since that what McCarthy was saying was without merit.  It was.  It was McCarthy's personality that had merit problems.

John F. Kennedy, in contrast, had the personal morals of an alley cat and is responsible for the disaster of the Vietnam War.  His shiny image, however, was so effective that even now he's remembered fondly, when he ought to be remembered as one of he least successful Presidents in our history and arguably the most morally icky one we've ever had.  Being a drug addicted, ill, sex addict isn't really Camelot, but you wouldn't know that based on the frequent citations to his Presidency.  Image again.

And now we have the National Rifle Association in bankruptcy.

Make no mistake about it, the leadership of the NRA can be blamed for embracing Trump like Romeo embraced Juliet, and like Romeo, now it may go down in a bloody death.

The NRA filed for bankruptcy yesterday.

The National Rifle Association has existed since 1871.  It was only since the Gun Control Act of 1968, however, that its been a strongly lobbying organization for the Second Amendment.  That act shocked the NRA into action, leading to an overthrow of its existing leadership which not only wasn't inclined to oppose the act, but actually was willing to help draft it.  This sparked a reaction in the organization and it became a dedicated organization which successfully opposed what seemed to be an advance of gun control that had widespread popular support in the United States in the 20th Century.

A distinct evolution occurred in the NRA over this period of time.  The NRA was mostly dedicated to sport shooting with an interest in the technology of new firearms, including military firearms, in the background but there.  It had an interest in handguns, but it was a rifle association.  It's journal wrote frequently on hunting weapons but it had a strong target shooting thread running through it (and still actually does).  A person might expect to find articles about the M1903 rifle, the M1 Garand, or the M14, in their day, but a person was much more likely to read about the Winchester Model 70 or the hunting variants of the Mauser 98.  It's big, big columnist of the 1970s and 80s was Finn Aagaard, a former professional hunter from Africa who had relocated to the United States.  It adored Jack O'Connor.

It's leadership in this time evolved to become freakishly stable and, in the eyes of some, non democratic. Wayne LaPierre came to be its head and seemingly its head for life.  As it started to get successful it slowly evolved in strategy to where its emphasis on the range and the game fields evolved into one that frankly anticipated urban combat.  A reader of the journal in 1971 might expect to read about hunting in Alaska. .  .one in 2021 might expect to read about carrying a self defense pistol in Chicago.

There's always been opponents to the NRA among firearms owners inside and outside of it.  Some inside of it actually complained that it was too lenient on gun control, a really silly position to say the least.  Some outside of it, however, grew slowly disgusted with the emphasis on combat weaponry.

The emblem of the NRA whos an eagle perched on two sporting rifles on top of an American shield. Today that emblem really ought to show the eagle perched on top of two M4 Carbines.  There's not an issue of its journal that's published that doesn't feature the not all that great AR platform rifle, the American military's unfortunate stepchild. The NRA deserves a lot of the credit or the blame for the popularity that junky now obsolete never very good rifle fanatically enjoys today. Forced on the military by Robert Strange McNamara, one of the worst Secretaries of Defense the United States has ever had, it's gone mad in civilian sales in part through the NRA's fanatic boosting of the concept that civilians really need combat arms.

Some may need combat arms, and there's nothing existentially wrong with anyone owning what is really an overgrown obsolete World War Two technology problematic .22 rifle.  But there is something wrong with pitching the idea that idea that a person is going to have to fight the Battle of Stalingrad on the way to Mini Mart.  The constant drumbeat on that theme created an atmosphere that has not been healthy and its increased the opposition to the NRA.

Giving Donald Trump a massive embrace didn't help either. The NRA used to take the position that it was non partisan, but it really gave that up during the Obama Administration.  Donald Trump's White House has actually been at least as supportive of gun control as Obama's was, which is to say barely at all, but to listen to the NRA you'd think that Obama consficated every firearm in the United States and Trump gave them all back.

In reality, going into the 2016 election the Democrats had given up on gun control. They'd lost support in prior election on the issue and they knew that.  They weren't about to try and advance it much, although they likely would have due to various events.  But the fact that they stepped away from it got them no credit with the NRA at all.  In the 2016 election the NRA all but became a lobbying arm of the far right wing of the Republican Party.

Some of that gamble paid off in that the Federal judiciary, which was already getting more conservative, was cemented in that direction, at least for a time, by Trump appointees.  But it also meant that Democrats really started taking the gloves back off and made the NRA itself a target.  

And it turns out, to my surprise, to be a fairly vulnerable target.  The ossified leadership of the organization has been tottering as even high up in the organization questions are raised about why Wayne LaPierre, now 71 years old, doesn't step down.  The organization has been sued by the State of New York in an overtly political effort to drag it down, but it obviously is doing poorly in defending itself.  In some ways a victims of its own success, revenues are down even while gun sales are way, way up.  And individuals who would naturally be members of it have been driven away by its hardcore allegiance to the extreme right of the GOP.  Lots of gun owners now will quietly state that they don't support the organization as they don't support Trump.

The events of the last two weeks are going to be a disaster for the organization.  The urban combat it imagined happening almost did, but those bringing it about were not BLM or Antifa or the like, but individuals who support much of what the NRA does.  Reading its editorials in recent months made that quite plain.

We've doubted whether the GOP will remain one party here, or two.  And here's another thing to doubt. The NRA is going to reorganize in under the laws of Texas, abandoning New York, right as long term rends in Texas are making it a "purple" state.  Texas in 2022 and more particularly in 2024 isn't going to look, politically, like it does now.  Houston and Austin already don't.  

The NRA insists it will survive and be back.  It'll survive, but whether it'll be back like it was is really questionable right now.  It's going to have no influence at all in Congress for the next two years and its going to be distracted by simply trying to survive.  As this occurs, the voices for the Second Amendment will be really radical, and really wholesale ignored.  For firearms supporters, these are going to be really dark days.  The politicians fear of angering the NRA is really going to wear off, and quickly.

There's a lesson here about who you embrace.  She may like the same things that you do, but if she stinks, you're going to too, and that's what people will remember about you.

And young leadership doesn't stay young.  Leadership that never changes eventually brings about death to the organization.  We're seeing a lot of that now days.

Blog Mirror: 'The Eagles of Heart Mountain' explores Japanese incarceration through a high school football team

 

'The Eagles of Heart Mountain' explores Japanese incarceration through a high school football team

Blog Mirror: Hunkins: An open letter to President Trump from a Wyoming supporter

 

Hunkins: An open letter to President Trump from a Wyoming supporter

Blog Mirror: Homebrewing: 1921-2021

 

Homebrewing: 1921-2021

January 15, 1921. Germany Cured of Militarism

 Well that was certainly good news.

January 14, 1921. Warm places, happy faces, sad disembarkations, happy teas

Spring Bayou, Florida.  January 14, 1921.

I don't know anything about Spring Bayou, but it looked nice on this day in 1921.

Family, friends, and others greeting US Navy aviators Lt. Louis A. Kloor , Jr., Lt. Walter T. Hinton, and Stephen A. Farrell at Pennsylvania Station, New York on January 14, 1921. Alexandra Flowerton, with muff in center, Anna Louise Kronholm and Eugene George Farrell also picture.

The friends and family of Naval aviators again gathered to greet their return.

Who Alexandra Flowerton was in this scenario is not explained, but the photographer clearly favored here in the scene.

Defeated White troops disembarked in Turkey.

Russian refugees going ashore at Constantinople, as it was then called, wearing rags, carrying duffle bags.

They were on to new lives in new communities, first in Turkey, and then later to other European locations for the most part.  Most would never see Russia again, and those who did, did so in the context of an other great war in which their fate was generally unhappy.

Recently elected Congressman Alice M. Robertson and suffragist photographer Anita Pollitzer gatered for tea and appeared rather happy.

 

Alice M. Robertson and Anita Pollitzer.  Pollitzer was a photographer and suffragist. Robertson was an incoming Congressman from Oklahoma.

And somebody saw fit to photograph a tire testing machine at the Bureau of Standards.

Bureau of Standards tire testing machine.

Some good news for a change: Patches The Miracle Cat: Shows Up 3 Years After Tragic Mudslide

 

Patches The Miracle Cat: Shows Up 3 Years After Tragic Mudslide

January 13, 1920. A group of unidentified men.

 

C. S. Lewis on progress.

We all want progress. But progress means getting nearer to the place where you want to be.  And if you have taken a wrong turning, then to go forward does not get you any nearer.  If you are on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; and in that case the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive man.

C. S. Lewis.

Southern Rockies Nature Blog: Blog Stew — Best Eaten in Your Sleeping Bag

Ah geez. . .

Southern Rockies Nature Blog: Blog Stew — Best Eaten in Your Sleeping Bag:   • Now it will be CabelasBassProShopsSportsmansWarehouse.  There is an interesting angle as to what happens to the Remington firearms brand...

Does freakin' everything have to merge? 

January 12, 1921. War orphans, grapes, shoes and Seattle.

Cartoon from the Evening Star, by way of Reddit's 100 Years Ago Subreddit.

 

The story about Admiral Newton A. McCully adopting seven Russian children was apparently a big enough story to be the subject of a comedic lead in for the Evening Star the following day, January 12, with the cartoonist comparing the tragic fortunes of the Russian children, victims of war, with those of the Democratic Party in the recent election.

France's government fell on this day due to its failure to enforce German war reparations.

At the Department of Agriculture, they were looking at grapes.

Women were photographed shining shoes, which was apparently unusual at the time.

And a residential street in Seattle was photographed.