May 11, 1941. Things airborne

On this day in 1941 France brokered a deal with Germany for the release of POWs who were World War One veterans, save for professional soldiers, in exchange for German use of Syrian airfields in the German effort to aid Iraq.

Martin 167F bomber at Aleppo after being captured by the British.

Many of those French soldiers would only have been in their late 30s and 40s, well within military age, but not young men either.

German aircraft flew in Iraq for the first time on this day as well, although the Iraqis were already losing ground.

Hitler received the news that his second in the Nazi Party, Rudolph Hess had flown to the United Kingdom.  It came in the form of a letter from Hess.  Hitler was shocked.

The Blitz, as we noted yesterday, was over.

May 10, 1941. Hess jumps, the Luftwaffe quits, Belgian workers walk.

Hess's wrecked Bf110.

On this day in 1941 Rudolph Hess, operating on his own initiative, took a German aircraft and flew himself to the UK with the expressed intent to broker a peace between Germany and the British Empire.

It's easy to sum up Hess as delusional, which he was.  He was peculiar in other ways, however, which is saying something as the Nazi leadership was overall peculiar.  He'd spent his youth in Egypt, where he was born of German parents, where he acquired an intense racism against non Europeans, rather than being broadened in his views as a person would suspect.  He also, from that experience, came to admire the British.  He'd served in World War One and emerged into an economy in which his family's business interests, of which it had been intended he'd be part of, had been badly damaged by the war, and in particular by the British seizing German interest in Egypt.  He was a very early member of the Nazi Party.  He became the Deputy Fuhrer of the party, an extremely high position in the German Nazi regime.  Following the start of the war his antisemitism grew.

On this day in 1941 he flew a Bf110 to Scotland in the belief that he could establish contacts with friendly British interest and negotiate a peace with the UK. Based on the statement he intended to deliver at the Nuremburg Trial and again attempted to issue in written form in 1986, he actually believed that he'd be able to negotiate a peace and bring the UK into the war against the Soviet Union, something that was then on the near horizon in German planning.

Hess used a Bf110 for his mission, which was a substantial aircraft.  He ran out of fuel near his target, a British estate that he mistakenly believed would house a sympathetic family, and bailed out, breaking his ankle and resulting in his capture by a Scottish farmer.  He was placed in the Tower of London where he spent the rest of the war.  The mission was hugely embarrassing to the Germans as Hess was a significant figure in the Nazi Party, and it was somewhat embarrassing to the British at it was both a reminder of there having been some significant members of British aristocracy who had sympathized with the Nazis before the war and because such a substantially sized aircraft had penetrated over Scotland without detection.

Following the war he was a defendant at the Nuremburg trials.  Being convicted, he spent the rest of his life a prisoner at Spandau Prison in Berlin where he remained an unrepentant Nazi, and he remained a prisoner far longer than any other figure sentenced to prison.  As he had very little in the way of a role after the war started, and served so many more years than any other German prisoner, there were fairly serious efforts to secure his release in later years, which tended to discount that his views had not changed at all.  Neither had the Soviets, however, who vetoed any release as they firmly believed that he was aware of plans to invade the Soviet Union and, therefore, could have warned the British who would have warned them.  At least according to one story, on a single occasion when the Soviets failed to veto his release, the British did.  The prison was torn down following his death in order to avoid having it turned into a Nazi shrine. His grave did become one, however, so in 2011 the Lutheran church on whose grounds it was located had the remains removed and the tombstone destroyed.

On the same day that Hess flew to Scotland, the Luftwaffe bombed London again.  You can read of both events here:

Today in World War II History—May 10, 1941

Huge raid on London

The London raid was the Luftwaffe's last largescale aircraft bombing raid on the city of the war.  The Blitz was winding down and in fact the nighttime raid, which also covered the following morning, ended the campaign.  German air raids over the UK would continue to the end of the war in a lesser capacity, but the largescale nighttime raids that had commenced after the German failure to win an aerial victory ended.  The Germans lost the Battle of Britain and they'd lost the Blitz.  They were not going to knock the UK out of the war through the air, and they gave up trying.  Of course, they also had limited air assets and began to rededicate them to the planned campaign against the Soviets Union.  Indeed, the termination of the campaign supported the British suspicion that the Soviet Union was next, something the British would attempt to warn the Soviets of.

While Hess went on his delusional mission, Belgian workers went out on strike.  The strike was remarkable not only for the fact it occurred in occupied country, but that even the Belgian Communist Party supported it. At the time, the Communists everywhere were generally somewhat pro Nazi or at least not anti Nazi due to the non aggression pact that had been entered into between the Soviet Union and Germany still being in effect.

The strike lasted eight days and ended when the Germans agreed to a wage raise.

May 9, 1921 (and May 9, 1921). Resistance, murder and secret victories.

Fr. Józef Cebula

In Poland, by this point in the war, the Germans were engaged in full scale repression of the Catholic Church, having banned adherence to it, including the administration of the Sacraments.  Fr. Józef Cebula outright ignored the ban, as many other Polish priests did, and was arrested and incarcerated in a concentration camp as a result.  There he continued to minister to the sick.  On this day he was tortured and shot.  He was beatified by Pope John Paul II in 1999.

While certainly understood by historians, the level of repression meted out to the Poles during the war, by the occupying Germans, was at an almost unimaginable scale.  Unlike the occupied lands to the south and west of Germany, the Germans didn't recognize Polish sovereignty after the defeat of the Polish army and ran the territory in a fashion that was effectively genocidal.  Post war many Germans would make the claim that they were unaware of the Holocaust, a claim that is dubious at best given the scale upon which it was conducted, but when combined with German official killings within the Reich and the murderous occupation of Germany's neighbor Poland, what Nazi Germany stood for couldn't be ignored except by somebody wishing to ignore it.

Somebody not ignoring it was German Sophie Scholl, who at this point in her short life was in a nursing training program, having not yet entered the University of Munich.  On this day, Scholl turned 20 years old.

Scholl, of course, had only two years to live as she'd shortly enter the University there which would take her on to be one of the founding members of the White Rose movement.  The movement has been celebrated as one of the few (although there are others) German resistance movements that formed during the war. Scholl was a devout Lutheran but there's a connection to the item above in that the movement's origins were sparked by Hans Scholl, her brother, having changed the focus of his studies from medicine to philosophy and theology due to the influence of Catholic men of letters, Otl Aicher and Carl Muth, whom he encountered at the university.  This openly drew Hans Scholl towards Catholicism and it also caused him to be drawn towards Aicher and Muth's anti Nazi views, which were based on their religious convictions. Hans Scholl would be instrumental in forming the group. While the group was not all Catholic by any means, and included one member who was Russian Orthodox, the Catholic religious themes were prominent.  The group took its name from a sermon by Bishop Von Galen, which addressed the evils of euthanasia.

Aicher survived the war and in 1952 married Inge Scholl, a sister of Sophie and Hans.  He is remembered for designing the lead graphic designer for the 1972 Munich Olympics.

Also on this day the British took an Enigma from the U110.

The captured U110.

Today in World War II History—May 9, 1941

Enigma machine captured

This meant that in the space of just two days the British had taken an Enigma machine and the codes for July.  They knew exactly what they had and indeed had been targeting German naval assets for this purpose.

On the same day, as can be read about above, the Franco Thai War ended in the Thai's favor, in a peace brokered by Imperial Japan, or perhaps effectively forced by it.

This too oddly has a 1921 connection as on this day in 1921 Crown Prince Hirohito, who of course would go on to become the Emperor, set foot in the United Kingdom, the first member of the Imperial Japanese family to do so.  He was touring Europe.

Churches of the West: Wamsutter Baptist Church, Wamsutter Wyoming.

Churches of the West: Wamsutter Baptist Church, Wamsutter Wyoming.: 

Wamsutter Baptist Church, Wamsutter Wyoming.

Side window view of the Wamsutter Baptist Church in Wamsutter, Wyoming.

Not all of the photographs on this site are works of art, to be sure, in part because we sometimes end up with photos taken simply when we can. This is one such example.

Best Post of the Week of May 2, 2021

 The best posts of the week of May 2, 2021.

The American System

Cliffnotes of the Zeitgist Part 14. The Industrial Revolution and Child Care and other musings.

2021 Wyoming Special Legislative Session

The Warning

The 2022 Election, Part I

Sportsmen, Market Hunters & Game Hogs: Early Years of Wildlife Conservation in Park County by Brian Beauvais.

Poster Saturdays: Seabees

Poster Saturdays: Seabees

Construction battalions exist in every branch of the service, but somehow only the Navy's are really celebrated.

That is in part because of the really serious effort at promoting them that the Navy did during World War Two.  Here's one such example, in a recruiting poster, with a Chief Petty Officer appearing with the accoutrements of war while heavy equipment is in the background.

Today is World Donkey Day, 2021

Seriously, it is.

A highly used and global beast of burden, even to the present day, donkey's tend to get no love, in part perhaps as a lot of them aren't very nice.  None the less, they're an incredibly useful human servant.  They're both packed and ridden, and have been used everywhere, and in fact, as noted, are widely used around the globe today.

Sportsmen, Market Hunters & Game Hogs: Early Years of Wildlife Conservation in Park County by Brian Beauvais.

An extremely interesting article appears in the Autumn/Winter issue of the Annals of Wyoming (which I just received) on the history of wildlife conservation and hunting in Wyoming.  The articles is by Brian Beauvais, and is entitled Sportsmen, Market Hunters & Game Hogs:  Early Years of Wildlife Conservation in Park County.

As the title indicates, the article focuses on one Wyoming county, but in a fairly broad manner, and it does something I've never seen any other article do, which is to take into account the story of subsistence and quasi market hunters in the state during the period of time when wildlife conservation was really coming in.

Los of articles and books deal with the conservationist campaign against market hunting that came about at the turn of the prior century.  I've never read one, however, that dealt with the views of the local yeomanry in any fashion, to whom conservation efforts didn't come easily as it directly impacted their table.  The role of the wealthy in the effort, and the role of the more or less poor in opposition to it, and how they respectively viewed things, is fresh to the story, at least for me.  

Added to that, the role of private pay game wardens, and the role of other agencies in enforcing Wyoming's game laws, which came in early but which had nobody to enforce them, is something I was also unaware of.  And even some of the early history of the Wyoming Game & Fish is included.  Here too, for example, I was unaware that the hunting area concept wasn't brought into Wyoming's laws until 1947.

While by and large Wyoming's hunters came around to really supporting the Wyoming system, which is sometimes regarded as the crown jewel of wildlife conservation, some of these fights never fully went away and some of the stresses remain.  You can see the views of those whose pocketbooks depend on out of state sportsmen vs. the locals reflected back over a century ago.  This work is a really valuable look into the history of wildlife conservation in general and is very much worth reading.

May 7, 1941 An Enigma Solved

On this day in 1941, as you can read in the item below, the British destroyer HMS Somali captured the German weather ship München off of Iceland.

Today in World War II History—May 7, 1941

With the ship the British also captured her July Enigma code book.  In fact, she was targeted for that.

Benchley Park had figured out that the fatal flaw of Enigma was the universality of the code books and they guessed that weather ships would have them, even though they didn't transmit in code, and that they'd have the following month's in a safe.  The plan was to fire over a weather ship and frighten the crew in the hopes they'd fail to dump the second book, which they in fact did.

Weather ships were a critical part of the German U-boat campaign but also a weakness in it.  In the days before satellite weather forecasting, weather forecasting relied upon weather readings and observations.  This meant that the Germans had no choice but to put weather ships in the North Atlantic and to also land men on Iceland and Greenland, and even Labrador. All of these efforts were vulnerable to Allied detection and they had to rely on the remoteness of their locations for protection.

On the same day, the Germans released the film Sieg Im Westen (Victory in the West).  It proved to be premature.

Also on this day, the Royal Air Force took its first delivery of B-17s.  The RAF would never use a large number of the American bomber, but they did employ some.  They would not see combat until July, when they were used in a high altitude bombing raid which served to confirm in British minds that daylight bombing was too costly.

The Battle of South Shanxi began in China and would result in one of the worst defeats for the Nationalist Chinese in the Second World War.  Critical to the result, Communist Chinese forces refused to come to the aid of encircled Nationalist Chinese forces due to embittered communist feelings over the New Fourth Army Incident of earlier that year.

That earlier incident had occurred in early 1941 and saw the Chinese communist sustain about 7,000 casualties at Nationalist Chinese hands. Accounts of the incident vary enormously and it is therefore almost impossible to figure out who broke the truce between the Nationalist and the Communist that was brokered in order to contest the Japanese, the bigger enemy.   At any rate, the Nationalist sustained over 100,000 casualties in the South Shanxi battle, so the Communist more than evened the score.

May 7, 1921. Behave Yourself

Behave Yourself won the Kentucky Derby on this day in 1921.  The horse was an upset winner.

Foaled in 1918, the horse went on to a career as a stud, sort of, with the owner restricting the horses breeding as he thought its legs had poor confirmation  He was ultimately donated to the U.S. Army's remount program which sent him out to Wyoming. He was considered a poor racehorse and ironically beat the favorite that was owned by the same individual as he was, which resulted in that owners losing money on the race as he'd put money on that favorite, the vaguely racist named Black Servant.

I'm glad Behave Yourself won.  

The horse died in 1937 and is buried in Cheyenne.  He was 19 years old at the time.

Mrs. Harding, General Peshing, and Mrs. Benedict Crowell attended the New York City Police Parade with a troop of Girl Scouts.

President Harding was photographed with Jack and Bob Kneipp, who turned out dressed as period cowboys.

Friday Farming: Dear Epicurious: Your Meat Free Resolution Confuses Me.

 Dear Epicurious:  Your Meat Free Resolution Confuses Me.

Industrial History: Three Bridges over Crooked River Canyon near Terre...

Actual infrastructure:

Industrial History: Three Bridges over Crooked River Canyon near Terre...: 1911 Railroad: ( Bridge Hunter ; HAER ) 1926 Road: ( Bridge Hunter ; HAER ) 2000 Road: ( Bridge Hunter ; HAER )  Rex T. Barber Bridge ( Sate...

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 How Horses Arrived In New Hampshire

Southern Rockies Nature Blog: What's Wrong with Arbor Day?

Southern Rockies Nature Blog: What's Wrong with Arbor Day?: Born in southern Colorado, I spent much of my childhood in South Dakota, living where the Black Hills met the prairie. When it came to trees...

Blog Mirror: Gift Horses

 

Gift Horses

The Warning

 Wow, I have to say that Liz Cheney, whom I didn't like when she ran against Mike Enzi, and whom I wasn't keen when she ran for Congress the first time, really has guts.

And she's really rising in my opinion as well.

Cheney has been under the gun, everywhere, since she voted to impeach Donald Trump.  Her vote was principled and brave in context.  It's brought her the ire of the national GOP establishment, which remains firmly in Donald Trump's orbit, and which has bought into a false narrative of recent history at a fanatic level.

Her position in the House leadership has been under the gun, and right now she appears likely to fall.  She's not backing down.

In fact, she's penned an op ed for the Washington Post, titled:

Opinion: Liz Cheney: The GOP is at a turning point. History is watching us.

Indeed, the yes of history are on the GOP, and this era in the party's history, should the party survive will not be looked back upon kindly.  It's siding with a revolt.  Cheney flatly and correctly states the situation:

The Republican Party is at a turning point, and Republicans must decide whether we are going to choose truth and fidelity to the Constitution. 

And she correctly puts the issue:

The question before us now is whether we will join Trump’s crusade to delegitimize and undo the legal outcome of the 2020 election, with all the consequences that might have.

There's a lot more to what she's said.  All well worth reading.

There's almost no chance that the Republican Party is going to listen to her, however.  Some are going to simply ignore the crisis in the party, afraid that a person can't separate Trump from it.  Others are going to attack her, including GOP hopeful for her seat here in the state.  I think that there's little chance that she'll be removed from that seat, but a high likelihood that she'll be removed from her positions inside the House GOP leadership.

Even a year is a long time in politics.  Over the next year, it's increasingly likely that GOP Trumpism will result in a reversal of Republican fortunes in the House.  They will not gain the Senate.  Left wing Democrats, fully cognizant of their two year window of opportunity and that they're not going to get any help on anything from a Republican Party that is firmly in the grip of Trump's destructive behavior, have now gone full bore on getting a left wing agenda passed, and Joe Biden, for whatever reason, is on board.  By 2022 the economy will not only have rebounded, it stands to be overheated, but at the same time it will likely be above full employment and the US seems likely to have gotten past the pandemic except that it will remain a reservoir of infection concentrated, oddly enough, among the same demographics that support Trump the most.  Befuddlement on the part of the rest of the population will likely turn to contempt and where that reservoir is the deepest, as in Wyoming, that demographic will find itself increasingly on the outs.  No amount of lawsuits or resolutions will end up changing that and the direction of the nation, influenced by the spread of a massive amount of cash, will cement the Democrats in power for a decade, and with them will come a leftward drift to the nation not seen since the Great Society or perhaps the New Deal.

This could be avoided, but it won't be as Cheney's warnings are unlikely to be heeded.

May 6, 1941. Firsts

Joseph Stalin became the premier of the Soviet Union, replacing Molotov.  Molotov went into second position.

1937 portrait of Stalin.

Not that it would matter, as Stalin was the head of the party, which made him the defacto head of state.

Stalin would form his first government, which would last until 1946, the following day.

Liberty Aircraft plant, Long Island, New York.  May 6, 1941.  I'm unfamiliar with this company, but it apparently lasted until 1987.

Serbs staged a rebellion in Sanski Most against the fascist government of Serbia installed by the Nazis.

The Luftwaffe commenced two nights of bombing on Greenrock, Scotland.

Today was the first flight of the XP47, which would become the legendary P47 fighter.  The plane had been developed in a mere eight months.

The P47 provides a good example of the extraordinary rapid development of aircraft in this period. At the time, the P40 was the USAAC's most significant fighter.  The P47 was different from it in every fashion, including its massive size which accommodated a massive engine.

On the same day, Igor Sikorsky set a new record for helicopter flight endurance, which still wasn't long.

Bob Hope performed his first stand up performance for troops.  He would, of course, famously do this at least throughout the Vietnam War.

Hope is either an acquired taste or one of those acts that's best set in the context of their original times.  I can recall seeing televised performances from the Vietnam War, and they're just not funny.

Vichy France reached an agreement with Germany to provide material support to the Iraqi rebels, although the government never ratified it.  It did allow the Germans to use airbases in Syria to support the Iraqi insurgency, which they would make use of.

May 6, 1921. A cold day in May.

 Davis Cup Team, May 6, 1921.

The shaky socialist government of Germany, beset internally by opponents on all sides, and plagued with the burden of reparations payments to the Allies, recognized the Soviet Union.

George H. Tinkham.

Congressman Tinkham, Republican from Massachusetts, saw his resolution to investigate political disenfranchisement of African Americans in the South go down in flames.  Tinkham, a lawyer and World War One veteran, would be nicknamed the "conscience of the House" for his efforts to protect the interests of African Americans.  He stepped down from Congress in 1942 and returned to the practice of law, dying in 1956.

California 1940s, Burbank Residential Area in color [60fps, Remastered] ...

Σε καινούρια βάρκα μπήκα- Ηλιάνα & Αναστασία Φεργαδιώτη

 

A Proclamation on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Persons Awareness Day, 2021

MAY 04, 2021 • PRESIDENTIAL ACTIONS

Today, thousands of unsolved cases of missing and murdered Native Americans continue to cry out for justice and healing.  On Missing and Murdered Indigenous Persons Awareness Day, we remember the Indigenous people who we have lost to murder and those who remain missing and commit to working with Tribal Nations to ensure any instance of a missing or murdered person is met with swift and effective action. 

Our failure to allocate the necessary resources and muster the necessary commitment to addressing and preventing this ongoing tragedy not only demeans the dignity and humanity of each person who goes missing or is murdered, it sends pain and shockwaves across our Tribal communities.  Our treaty and trust responsibilities to Tribal Nations require our best efforts, and our concern for the well-being of these fellow citizens require us to act with urgency.  To this end, our Government must strengthen its support and collaboration with Tribal communities.

My Administration is fully committed to working with Tribal Nations to address the disproportionately high number of missing or murdered Indigenous people, as well as increasing coordination to investigate and resolve these cases and ensure accountability.  I am further committed to addressing the underlying causes behind those numbers, including — among others — sexual violence, human trafficking, domestic violence, violent crime, systemic racism, economic disparities, and substance use and addiction.  Federal partnerships to address the number of missing and murdered Indigenous peoples will be governed by the Nation-to-Nation foundation of our relationship with Tribal governments and respect for Tribal sovereignty and self-determination.  The challenges in Tribal communities are best met by solutions that are informed and shaped by Tribal leaders and Tribal governments. 

Tribes across the United States have long worked to provide solutions for their communities.  In April, the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes of the Flathead Indian Reservation, the United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Montana, and the FBI announced the Nation’s first Tribal Community Response Plan, part of a Department of Justice pilot project to address emergent missing person cases in their community.  When someone goes missing, it is often an urgent and time-sensitive situation.  The Tribal community response plan lays out a blueprint for how Tribal law enforcement; local, State, and Federal law enforcement; and community members can respond when someone goes missing from a Tribal community — resolving important issues of jurisdictional overlap and gaps in order to respond swiftly and effectively.  Other Tribes and Native villages such as the Muscogee (Creek) Nation in Oklahoma, Native Village of Unalakleet in Alaska, and the Bay Mills Indian Community in Michigan, are working with Federal partners on their own community response plans. 

My Administration has made a priority of helping to solve the issues surrounding Native Americans who go missing and those who are murdered across the United States — including high rates of Native women and girls, including transgender women and girls.  We recognize there is a level of mistrust of the United States Government in many Native communities, stemming from a long history of broken promises, oppression, and trauma. That is why we are pursuing ways to build trust in our Government and the systems designed to provide support to families in need.  We must bridge the gap for families in crisis, provide necessary support services, and support opportunities for healing through holistic community-driven approaches.

I am committed to building on the successes of the 2013 reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) by supporting the passage of the VAWA Reauthorization of 2021. Among other protections, this bill reaffirms inherent Tribal authority to prosecute certain non-Indian offenders — extending protections from domestic violence and dating violence to Native American victims of sexual violence, stalking, trafficking, child abuse, elder abuse, and assault against law enforcement or justice personnel when crimes are committed on Tribal territory.  Additionally, through the American Rescue Plan we provided an additional $35 million in grants for Tribes to provide temporary housing, assistance, and supportive services to victims of domestic and dating violence, as well as supplemental funding for the StrongHearts Native Helpline, and additional funding for services for sexual assault survivors.

My Administration has also committed to effectively implement the requirements of Savanna’s Act and the Not Invisible Act, legislation focused on combating the issues surrounding missing or murdered Indigenous persons.  The Presidential Task Force on Missing and Murdered American Indians and Alaska Natives continues to convene the Department of Justice, the Department of the Interior, and the Department of Health and Human Services, to address the issues from a combined public health–public safety partnership.  Furthering the efforts of the task force, the White House Council on Native American Affairs will bring together all relevant Federal agencies to work with Tribal Nations on exploring additional ways to enhance prevention efforts and improve access to safety and justice. 

Furthermore, informed by Tribal input, the Department of the Interior recently established the Missing & Murdered Unit (MMU) within the Bureau of Indian Affairs Office of Justice Services to provide leadership and direction for cross-departmental and interagency work involving missing and murdered American Indians and Alaska Natives.  The MMU will help bring the weight of the Federal Government to bear when investigating these cases and marshal law enforcement resources across Federal agencies and throughout Indian country. 

Our commitment to addressing these issues and to strengthening these critical partnerships is unwavering.  For too long, there has been too much sorrow and worry.  United by our mutual investment in healthy, safe communities, we will work together to achieve lasting progress.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, JOSEPH R. BIDEN JR., President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim May 5, 2021, as Missing and Murdered Indigenous Persons Awareness Day.  I call on all Americans and ask all levels of government to support Tribal governments and Tribal communities’ efforts to increase awareness of the issue of missing and murdered American Indians and Alaska Natives through appropriate programs and activities.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this fourth day of May, in the year of our Lord two thousand twenty-one, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and forty-fifth.

JOSEPH R. BIDEN JR.

May 5, 1921. Things in the air.

Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel launched Chanel No. 5 on this day in 1921.

Chanel No. 5 has a complicated history, even involving Russian expatriates, and Chanel herself had a complicated, tragic and icky history that I'll not go into in depth in part because I can't remember the details and in part because I'm not interested enough to follow up on it.  I personally find almost all perfumes gross and putrid smelling.

Chanel in 1920.

Having said that, Chanel No. 5 is clearly a landmark perfume.  I wouldn't know the smell of it if I were to encounter it, which I am sure that at some point I have.

Chanel with Winston Churchill in 1921.

Chanel was already well known as a revolutionary clothing designer at the time, but it was the perfume, regard as the first modern perfume, that made her famous and a lasting household name.  She remained active in clothing and in the perfume industry and was very well known in society. 

Like more of the French than the French care to acknowledge, Chanel collaborated with the Nazis during World War Two although in her case it seems to have been in directly being involved with German intelligence.  In her own case, she seems to have gone over to the German cause as early as 1941, which is much less surprising than it may sound as at that time, a year into the German occupation, causal observers would have regarded a German victory as nearly inevitable. When Paris was liberated in 1944, she opened her stores up to American GIs with the promise of free bottles of Chanel No. 5, but she personally fled to Switzerland in fear of prosecution.  While the circumstances are unclear, there is some evidence that Prime Minster Winston Churchill may have intervened with the Free French to remove the threat of prosecution which, it is speculated, may have been as Chanel would spill the beans on British figures who themselves had been Nazi sympathizers.  

Following the war her reputation recovered and she died in Paris in 1971 at the age of 87.  In the 1950s Marylyn Monroe famously responded to the question of what she wore to bed with "five drops of Chanel No. 5" which shows the degree to which it was the aromatic symbol of status at the time, and in many ways it still is.

On this same day the Allied powers from the Great War, sans the United States, sent Germany an ultimatum regarding its default in reparation payments that had been due on May 1.

A photographer took this photo of The Palms in Florida

In Ireland, the heads of Sinn Finn and the Ulster Unionist Party met.

Mid Week At Work: Pharmacy in World War II: The Pharmacist

 

Pharmacy in World War II: The Pharmacist

U.S. Army Rank Insignia of WW2

Cliffnotes of the Zeitgist Part 14. The Industrial Revolution and Child Care and other musings.

Children and Forced Industrialization

You've seen them here before, and yes, here they are again.  Migrant farm couples, 1938.

I've come to be simply amazed by the degree to which Americans are now acclimated to the concept that the government ought to pay for things, well, related to sex in some way or another.

Joe Biden's economic "relief" bill, which really addresses a topic that no longer really needs addressing, includes a big boost for pre K childcare.

Why?

To make my surprise, if that's what it is, more plain, what that means is that money will come from taxes (and loans) to help pay for the childcare of people so that they don't have to pay for it, directly, themselves.  

More bluntly, this will make it easier, which is part of what is being boosted as a reason to do it, for those with low incomes to have two working parents, as the thesis is that otherwise they'll have to make economic choices that will be difficult.

First of all, while it makes me sound like a Marxist saying it, isn't it clear that what this amounts to is the forced industrial employment of women?  What hte goal really is, is to make it easier for working mothers to work, which rapidly equates into forcing them to work, which is essentially what our economy had done over the past 70 years.  That is, we've converted from the early industrial revolution economy of forcing men out of their homes to work from eight to twelve hours per day to one t hat now requires women to do the same.  In order to do that we've subsidized all sorts of things to the benefit, essentially, of industry, and now we propose to go one step further.

Indeed, the irony of this is that this is where Marxist and Capitalist come back around and meet.  Early Marxists sought the dissolution of marriage and the collectivization of child care.  That has been regarded s horrific, but that's exactly what industrial economies have done over the past seventy years and the Biden Administration proposes to knock it up a notch.

This isn't just.

It isn't just to force women to leave their children in order to work.  It likewise wasn't just to do that in the case of men, but the level of subsidization evolved into force was lower in that case, although still very real.

It also isn't just to tax people in order to pay for the children of others, except in dire emergency.  People like me who have paid for and raised our own children are now being asked to pay for the care of children we don't remotely know, including children who are raised in circumstances which we wouldn't approve of.  If, for example, we can be taxed to pay for childcare for these children, can we also justly require that they be raised with basic sets fo values, including the value of a two parent home, which quite a few won't have?  No, certainly not, we won't be allowed to suggest that.

I feel this way, I'd note, on a lot of programs in this area, the long lasting ones which provide examples of why going down this path is a bad idea.  I've mentioned the "free and reduced" lunch and breakfast programs before, which directly transfers the duty of feeding children from parent to government.  I know that it had good intentions, all of these things have unthinking good intentions.  The proposals to wipe out student debt or provide free college education also have good intentions, and also are all massively subject to the law of unintended consequences.  What they also are, without it really being thought out, are subsidies for industry in varying degrees.

I know that the ship has sailed on many of these things, the strong evidence against doing them notwithstanding.  It's almost impossible to go back, once these steps are taken.  Americans may imagine themselves in some quarters as being rugged individualist, but even people who imagine themselves to be real libertarians acclimate themselves to such things pretty quickly.  But it is interesting to wonder what would happen if things went the other way.  I.e., if, save for K through 12 education itself, the government simply got out of this area entirely.  Feed your own children, provide for you own children, no subsidies for childcare of any kind, and not even any governmental bodies that seek to enforce child support orders.  Leave it up to the individual.

It'd be really rough for some at first, but I suspect pretty quickly a lot of the old rules would rebound once the burdens returned to the individual.  It might even do more economically than proposals to raise minimum wages would, as lots of families would be back to one breadwinner.

But no, we're just going to keep in marrying the government and making it the big parent.

I should note that probably right away, if anyone reads this, there will be a claim that this is radically traditionalist or something, or maybe anti feminist.  Feminism, I'd note, is a term that's now so broad to pracitically not have a meanning without further refining, but in any event, none of that is intended.

Indeed, I'd note that its already the case that the public sector has, in some instances, taken care of this much the same way that it took care of health insurance during the 1940s.  It's a recruiting incentive.  Some big firms of various kinds have in house daycares so their female employees don't have to worry about finding one and still being able to get to work.

In addition to that, at least by my observation, it's also the case that workplaces have becoming much more child friendly over the years, particularly in recent years.  I never observed children in working spaces when I was  younger.  Never.  Only farms and ranches were the exception.  Now I see them all the time.  Its not unusual at all for female employees to bring children into the office for one reason or another, often for long hours, and for that to result in very little notice.   Therefore, I really don't think that the claim "women will have to choose to go childless" is true, although that no doubt has an economic aspect to it. The poorer you are, the fewer the options.  It's one thing to bring your child into a business office. It's quite another to your job at the bar or restaurant.

I also don't think that this would ipso facto mean an increase in abortions.  Indeed, the current legal trends are towards increasing restrictions in this area as both men and women support increasing restrictions.  And social trends seem to suggest that younger people are less interested in acting like their grandparents who came of age in the 60s and 70s in this area in general.

What I do think, however, is that it forces choices up front and therefore vest "moral hazard" where it ought to be vested, at the individual level.  That probably reemphasizes some old values while combing them with the new economy, which should be done.

It probably won't be, however.

QAnon, Russia and China.

A new report conforms that Russia and China have had a significant role in QAnon's conspiracy theories.

D'oh!

Yup:

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

Sending Signals

Yes, you've seen this young lady here before as well.

The Natrona County Commission signaled its support by making the county a "Second Amendment Sanctuary County", which actually doesn't do that, and which actually wouldn't mean anything if they did.  

The actual resolution simply states they support the Second Amendment, which we already knew.

There are a lot of such bills circulating nationwide.  None of them have been tested yet, but as the U.S. Supreme Court has taken up a case involving New York's restrictions on carrying outside the home, they effectively will be soon, which may be in the category of people needing to be careful what they wish for.

It should be obvious, fwiw, that local governments opting out of Federal laws, whether they be on firearms or immigration or whatever, can't really be done. The NatCo one doesn't attempt to do that, however.  It's more in the nature of a resolution.

Chow

1918 Trailmobile field kitchen.

I'd really like to try this:

Bear Bomb Burrito.

And this:

Chorizo Burger

And this:

Chili No Beans

Automated shuttle busses in Yellowstone

Electric shuttles are coming to Yellowstone.

Electric transportation is going to be everywhere really soon. This is obvious, even though skeptics still assert it can't happen quickly and that it won't be soon.  It's hear now.

Indeed, this has reached the peculiar point at which skeptics have gone from "won't happen" to "wont' happen soon", which is always the shark jumping moment in a debate.  Now, basically, the skeptics have agreed it will in fact happen, but not soon.

The most recent "not soon" argument comes about in the form of asserting that there are so many petroleum fueled vehicles on the road they can't be replaced soon.  And there's something to that.  Cars last a lot longer than they used to, but people still buy new ones.  Indeed, I'm about the only person I know who doesn't buy new ones.  The electric ones are going to come on quickly, quicker than skeptics would allow, and that process will accelerate as it comes on.

Put another way, lots of people today who have no plans to get an electric vehicle, and maybe even hold the opposite as their view, will begin to change their minds once a one shows up on a neighbor's driveway.  Once two electric vehicles show up, it really begins to change quickly.

Good and bad news from the census

People, and the press, get so used to viewing something one way that to do so in any other fashion is almost impossible, a fact amplified by the reality that the press rarely has a very good grasp on anything as reporters are generalists, not specialists.

The recent census reports that the US population grew at the lowest rate since the Great Depression.  That's really good news, even though the press seems to think it's bad news.

The country is at a point where its current population is probably higher than it ought to be for a host of economic and environmental reasons, but that would require accepting that adding population is bad for the environment, which it is, and that adding population tends to be bad for workers in an advanced economy.  In neither instance are too many willing ot admit that, even though it is true.

Indeed, the population of the US would now be probably declining, like that of much of Western Europe's is, but for our insanely high rate of immigration.  People don't like to admit that either.

As evidence of some of this the local entities that lament a lack of population growth are lamenting it.  Locals from here, however, with more of a grasp on things, are glad of it.

But not for the region. Colorado and Utah are both continuing to see insanely high growth which will convert them, over time, to Ohio. That's not really good.

"The Ethnic Parish"

The hard to photograph St. Joseph's Polish Catholic Church in Denver.

Last weekend, with both of us now fully vaccinated here, and all the kids vaccinated, even though they aren't living here but in the University Town, I went back to Mass and was glad to do so.

A speaker was there, which puts me in the odd situation of hearing a speaker on my first time back for awhile, due to the COVID dispensation.  He spoke on the annual Bishop's appeal.

Later that week I saw a Catholic Twitter feed in which the writer was celebrating the end of the "Ethnic Parish".

Which caused me to recall the Bishop's Appeal.

For modern Catholics in many areas who have never been to an "Ethnic Parish", which would include me to some degree, some explanation may be needed. What is meant by that is the situation which once was very common in which a parish was "Polish", or "Irish", or "German".  That is, most of the people there were from ethnic communities and their faith was part of their overall culture, supposedly.

I'm frankly, I'd note, slightly skeptical on that to a degree, or rather skeptical on the way that is so often presented.  These parishes were never as uniform as may be imagined, although there's certainly something to it.  Indeed, in various places, to include Wyoming, parishes were set up very near existing ones in order to accommodate the ethnic backgrounds of the parishioners.

In spite of what angry Rad Trads may imagine, there was never an intent, as far as I can tell, to wipe out the ethnic parish.  Parishes simply evolved.  And indeed the ethnic parish deep inside a happy Catholic Ghetto that Rad Trads imagine and want to go back to is often still there, it's just moved on ethnically.  Irish neighborhoods became Puerto Rican ones, and so on.  And that process continues on.  If you've been to a Byzantine Catholic church for example you'll find that they're now multiethnic.  Indeed, if you want a real effort to de-ethnicize parishes, the Eastern Orthodox provide a better example as in many places, both following fleeing parishioners from "main line" protestant churches, as well as in accommodating them, and also in simply recognizing they need to be less ethnic as "X-Americans" become "Americans with X heritage", they're making an intentional effort to remain Orthodox while not being tied to an ethnicity.

Still, like most myths, there's an inkling of truth here to a very slight degree, and what that is, is that over the past thirty years or so some have somewhat rejoiced in the decline in what they thought were ethnic parishes, which was also accompanied by the "we're all one family" type of atmosphere.  

Indeed, "Catholic" means "universal", and therefore we are all one family.  The Catholic Church may have had ethnic parishes, but overall, its the most diverse organization on earth by some huge measure.  So, for the historically minded, the recent push here to essentially create an ethnic parish is a bit surprising.  Effectively, its the recreation of ethnic parishes.

This has been going on for some time, in all fairness.  It just hasn't happened here for a really long time.  I frankly don't knw the last time it occurred, and in thinking about it the only really ethnic parishes I can think of are those in Rock Springs and Cheyenne.  A book published about the earliest parish here would have you believe that it was 100% Irish when it was founded, but that's simply incorrect.

Its that which drew my attention, really, to this matter.  It's pretty clear that the Bishop has decided that my old parish will be a Hispanic one.  I get what he's attempting to do and I'm not opposing it, but it does leave those of us who have deep roots there sort of homeless, although I probably only think that now as I've gotten sort of oddly sentimental as I've aged. Truth be known, while I was baptized in that parish, and both my parents had their funerals there, and our wedding was there, our second kid was baptized at the across town parish and when our kids were young, we went there as it was more convenient.  Even when I was growing up we often went to the nearby neighborhood parish due to its Mass times.

Indeed, as a kid our house was closer to that parish than the downtown parish, although vehicle wise it was more of a chore to get to.  They were effectively equidistant.  Where I live now they all are equidistant.  Anyhow, I find myself in the position of being hypocritical in commenting here, and both understanding and lamenting the change.  Having said that, I've already gone over to the across town parish as it has the earliest Mass and because I don't speak Spanish, which is increasingly becoming the utilized language downtown.

Artist Evolution and Blond Bombshells

Marylyn Monroe, who never went out of style, fairly obviously.

One of  the really interesting things about things about youthful musical acts, particularly female ones, is that, at some point, they must reinvent themselves or they cease to be.  "Madonna" can't be a nearly nude pop tart flirting with the profane forever.  Miley Cyrus has to evolve away from being "Hanna Montana".  Katie Perry couldn't apparently be a limited venue Christian singer.  Taylor Swift can't be a cute childish country star her entire career.  You get the picture.

Sometimes, I'm pretty convinced, a careful handler manages the evolution. Sometimes the artists do it on their own.  It's hard to know whether there's a Col. Tom Parker in the background all the time or not.

Billie Eilish is very clearly undergoing this.

I don't like her music at all, so I don't follow her much, but her visage is on my Twitter feed today and the pattern is now clear.

Eilish got started as a pouty seemingly semi distressed teenager who wore way too much clothing.  About a year ago, she started stripping herself of her clothing, and now she's let her hair go blond, if it is blond, or dyed it blond if not.  Anyhow, she's good looking in the 1950s Marilyn Monroe sort of way, which is to say full figured and good looking.  Her music not be changing, but she's plastered on the cover, apparently of the British edition of Vogue pretty much falling out.

I'm frankly of the view that her original persona was irritating.  I don't know what to think of this, however.  It'd be nice to think that a female pop artist could be out there without being, no matter what her songs may represent, sex.  That day, however, doesn't seem to have arrived.  At least she's clothed, however, and moving towards a highly glamourous persona.  Chances are some handler is purposely recalling Monroe, Loren and the early Cardinale in order to try to send the message that she's an adult.

One message she is sending is that there's a lot of "sexual misconduct" in the entertainment industry. This isn't news, but at least she's saying something.  Her comment to British Vogue basically read as an entitlement of sexual immorality, which would actually be a species of real progress coming from that quarter.  Perhaps its not entirely surprising, however, given that her generation has pretty much had it with things Boomer, of which the Sexual Revolution is part.

It's also interesting to see how the more classic concept of the female form has seemingly returned. Eilish isn't thin  and isn't fat, and is just nice looking.  If she can pull off not sounding and appearing like a Woke Siren, maybe that will be progress.  If so, she'll join some other recent female media figures who are making some shift uncomfortably in their seats, such as Keira Knightly.

The American System

You know that you are listening to PBS News Hour when one of the commentators is enthusiastic about the Biden infrastructure proposal as he finds it comparable to the Whigs' American System economic policy.

Henry Clay, one of the founders of the Whig Party and the chief spokesman for its American System.

I had to look that up.

It turns out that I was slightly, and I do mean slightly, familiar with the American System, but not by that name and mostly in the form of its lingering influence on the GOP during the 1860s, 70s and 80s. And I really know nothing about Henry Clay, its chief proponent, other than that he was well known at the time. According to the Congressional website on such topics:

Henry Clay's "American System," devised in the burst of nationalism that followed the War of 1812, remains one of the most historically significant examples of a government-sponsored program to harmonize and balance the nation's agriculture, commerce, and industry. This "System" consisted of three mutually reinforcing parts: a tariff to protect and promote American industry; a national bank to foster commerce; and federal subsidies for roads, canals, and other "internal improvements" to develop profitable markets for agriculture. Funds for these subsidies would be obtained from tariffs and sales of public lands. Clay argued that a vigorously maintained system of sectional economic interdependence would eliminate the chance of renewed subservience to the free-trade, laissez-faire "British System."

Clay delivered a famous speech on the topic, which we won't set out here as its of epic length. You can read it, however, here:  The American System.

The American System was the main economic platform of the Whigs and it was ardently, and now ironically, opposed by the Democrats.  The Democrats were pretty much a laissez-faire party at the time and opposed to government having much of any kid of role in the economy.

The Congressional summation of the American System doesn't appear to be a fair one. The breadth of Whig support for a government role in the economy was pretty wide.  For instance, it reached down to supporting public primary education, something that wasn't universal at the time.

It was ultimately the economic policies, and the overarching issue of slavery, that did the Whigs in, causing them to collapse in the 1850s. By that time the Southern faction of the party was no longer supportive of an expansive Federal role in the economy, where as the northern "National Republican" faction was.  Slavery, of course, became a massive issue in the party.  By the mid 1850s the party was flying apart and a collection of new parties rose up to contest for its former members.  In the north the Republican Party soon emerged.  In the South, Whigs remained without a structure, but opposed succession and then went on to loosely start to form an emerging party in the Southern Congress that never fully formed due to the war ending before that could occur.  The Confederacy was, of course, nearly a one party state.

People often discuss the legacy of the Whigs, but one early legacy was that the GOP was, initially, pretty proactive in using Federal money and Federal assets in the economy. The most prominent example of that was the Transcontinental Railroad which would not have come about without a degree of government planning, favoritism, spending and intervention.  So, PBS isn't out to a left wing lunch when its commentator makes this comparison.

It's interesting too, in that may in fact be a much closer analogy to what Biden is attempting to do than the New Deal.

That doesn't mean its a good idea, or that all of it is.  But it's a very interesting historical analogy.

May 3, 1941. Meet John Doe

The famous Capra film, Meet John Doe, was released on this date in 1941, which I only know as its mentioned here:

Today in World War II History—May 3, 1941

The film is regarded as a classic, but its one that I haven't seen.

Australian troops at Tobruk launched a counterattack, but were repulsed by Italians, while at sea the Italians took a bruising from the British.

Italy annexed part of Slovenia and termed it the Province of Ljuljana.  The annexation caused an odd ethnic relocation of the Gottschee population, which was German speaking, to a different portion of Slovenia which Germany had annexed as Hitler didn't want ethnic Germans in territory annexed into Italy.

Monday Morning Repeats from the week of July 17, 2011

 Which was, not coincidentally, the only post for July, 2011.

The Old Homesteads