Thursday August 14, 1941. The Murder of St. Fr. Maximilian Kolbe

 

Fr. Maximilian Kolbe in 1936.

Father Maximilian Kolbe, a Polish Franciscan friar, was murdered by the Germans at Auschwitz.  He had taken the place of a stranger when a group of men was picked out to be starved to death in an underground bunker as a German act of reprisal for an escape attempt.  Men had been picked out at random to serve as an example, and when one man who was chosen cried out about his children, Fr. Kolbe volunteered.  After a prolonged period of starvation, in which he was found to be constantly leading the victims in prayer, he was given a lethal injection as he remained alive, and the Germans wanted to clear the bunker.

Kolbe had entered religious life after having been profoundly impacted by a vision of the Virgin Mary when a child.  In the vision, the Blessed Mother offered Kolbe a white crown for purity or a red one for martyrdom, and he responded that he'd take both.  Both he and an elder brother became Franciscan.  

Kolbe served in Asia as a Franciscan missionary, but had returned to his native Poland prior to World War Two.  He was imprisoned after the German invasion for refusing to sign the document which would have recognized him as being of German ancestry, as his father was an ethnic German.  In February 1941 the Germans shut down his monastery, which had served to house displaced Poles including Jews, and he was sent to Auschwitz.

He was canonized in 1982.  The man whose life he saved, Franciszek Gajowniczek, was in attendance.

The Atlantic Charter, which was signed on the 12th, was released.  Here's an entry here for the day it was signed, which set the text of the document out.

Somewhat ironically, on this day Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt signed, but did not release, the Atlantic Charter. The document read, as  Churchill's hand edited version below sets forth, as follows:

The document was not issued to the public until two days later:

Set out here, the document states:

The President of the United States and the Prime Minister, Mr. Churchill, representing His Majesty’s Government in the United Kingdom, have met at sea.

They have been accompanied by officials of their two Governments, including high-ranking officers of their military, naval, and air services.

The whole problem of the supply of munitions of war, as provided by the Lease-Lend Act, for the armed forces of the United States, and for those countries actively engaged in resisting aggression, has been further examined.

Lord Beaverbrook, the Minister of Supply of the British Government, has joined in these conferences. He is going to proceed to Washington to discuss further details with appropriate officials of the United States Government. These conferences will also cover the supply problems of the Soviet Union.

The President and the Prime Minister have had several conferences. They have considered the dangers to world civilization arising from the policies of military domination by conquest upon which the Hitlerite government of Germany and other governments associated therewith have embarked, and have made clear the steps which their countries are respectively taking for their safety in the face of these dangers.

They have agreed upon the following joint declaration:

"The President of the United States of America and the Prime Minister, Mr. Churchill, representing His Majesty’s Government in the United Kingdom, being met together, deem it right to make known certain common principles in the national policies of their respective countries on which they base their hopes for a better future of the world.

First, their countries seek no aggrandizement, territorial or other;

Second, they desire to see no territorial changes that do not accord with the freely expressed wishes of the peoples concerned;

Third, they respect the right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they will live; and they wish to see sovereign rights and self-government restored to those who have been forcibly deprived of them;

Fourth, they will endeavor, with due respect for their existing obligations, to further the enjoyment by all states, great or small, victor or vanquished, of access, on equal terms, to the trade and to the raw materials of the world which are needed for their economic prosperity;

Fifth, they desire to bring about the fullest collaboration between all nations in the economic field with the object of securing, for all, improved labor standards, economic advancement, and social security;

Sixth, after the final destruction of the Nazi tyranny, they hope to see established a peace which will afford to all nations the means of dwelling in safety within their own boundaries, and which will afford assurance that all the men in all the lands may live out their lives in freedom from fear and want;

Seventh, such a peace should enable all men to traverse the high seas and oceans without hindrance;

Eighth, they believe that all of the nations of the world, for realistic as well as spiritual reasons, must come to the abandonment of the use of force. Since no future peace can be maintained if land, sea, or air armaments continue to be employed by nations which threaten, or may threaten, aggression outside of their frontiers, they believe, pending the establishment of a wider and permanent system of general security, that the disarmament of such nations is essential. They will likewise aid and encourage all other practicable measures which will lighten for peace-loving peoples the crushing burden of armaments.

FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT

WINSTON S. CHURCHILL.

Notable, the document referenced "the final destruction of the Nazi tyranny", committing the Administration publically to the destruction of Nazi Germany even though the US was technically a neutral at the time.

The charter would be one of the various items used as the source of posters during the war.

Also, on this day, the Administration announced an application of the Monroe Doctrine, and provided that German submarines would not be allowed to attack shipping in the Western Hemisphere.

Wednesday August 13, 1941. Dominion Women At War.

The Canadian Army Women's Corps was created by the Canadian government on this day in 1941.  It was an auxiliary of the Army, not officially part of it, until 1942.

On the same day, coincidentally, the Australian Women's Army Service was also started.

The creation of both organizations reflected the growing manpower shortage in both countries as wartime service stretched their capacities to fully staff and man their military structures.  At the time, neither country had resorted to conscription to fill their armed forces.  Indeed, in both countries the restrictions on the service of conscripts would always be considerably more extensive than they were in the United States during the war.

Both organizations utilized women in administrative and support roles.  The recruitment of women for military service for the second time in twenty years clearly pointed towards a more permanent role for them in the military in the future.

In the US, the Administration suspended the eight-hour work day for mechanics and laborers employed by the War Department in order to speed the construction of military installations.  And Ford Motors introduced a plastic body demonstrator automobile.

On the same day, the German occupation authorities in the Baltic ordered the codification of all property belonging to Jews.

Saturday August 13, 1921. The Plymouth Pageant.

"Mounted Performers", Pilgrim Tercentenary Pageant, Plymouth, Mass.

"Royal Progress".

 

Monday August 11, 1941. Conscription extended, Atlantic Charter signed.

The House of Representatives voted to extend the Selective Service Act of 1940 by a single vote.

Soldiers examining an experimental "trackless tank" in April, 1941.

The vote had authorized conscription starting in September 1940, with the first conscripts called up in October 1940. Those drafted in October of that year were due to be discharged in October 1941 and the introduction of the bill caused a movement among the early conscripts in which they threatened to desert if that month if the draft was extended.  Part of the bill extended the original one-year service term they were under to 30 months.

Delegates of the New York Youth Congress with an anti conscription petition in June 1940.

The narrow passage of the bill showed how unpopular conscription was.  Included among those voting no was a former FDR Secretary of Defense who argued that voluntarily enlistments had not been given a fair try. 

The bill also showed how the House and Senate really differ, something quite obvious in our modern politics.  It passed by a larger margin in the Senate when it shortly came up for consideration.

I suppose this also serves to show how Americans have a long history of resenting government instructions to personally do something, even in times of emergency.

Of note, conscripts were not allowed to serve outside the U.S. This differed from National Guardsmen, who had been called up separately, and who were already at this time serving in the Philippines.

Somewhat ironically, on this day Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt signed, but did not release, the Atlantic Charter. The document read, as  Churchill's hand edited version below sets forth, as follows:

The document was not issued to the public until two days later:

Set out here, the document states:

The President of the United States and the Prime Minister, Mr. Churchill, representing His Majesty’s Government in the United Kingdom, have met at sea.

They have been accompanied by officials of their two Governments, including high-ranking officers of their military, naval, and air services.

The whole problem of the supply of munitions of war, as provided by the Lease-Lend Act, for the armed forces of the United States, and for those countries actively engaged in resisting aggression, has been further examined.

Lord Beaverbrook, the Minister of Supply of the British Government, has joined in these conferences. He is going to proceed to Washington to discuss further details with appropriate officials of the United States Government. These conferences will also cover the supply problems of the Soviet Union.

The President and the Prime Minister have had several conferences. They have considered the dangers to world civilization arising from the policies of military domination by conquest upon which the Hitlerite government of Germany and other governments associated therewith have embarked, and have made clear the steps which their countries are respectively taking for their safety in the face of these dangers.

They have agreed upon the following joint declaration:

"The President of the United States of America and the Prime Minister, Mr. Churchill, representing His Majesty’s Government in the United Kingdom, being met together, deem it right to make known certain common principles in the national policies of their respective countries on which they base their hopes for a better future of the world.

First, their countries seek no aggrandizement, territorial or other;

Second, they desire to see no territorial changes that do not accord with the freely expressed wishes of the peoples concerned;

Third, they respect the right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they will live; and they wish to see sovereign rights and self-government restored to those who have been forcibly deprived of them;

Fourth, they will endeavor, with due respect for their existing obligations, to further the enjoyment by all states, great or small, victor or vanquished, of access, on equal terms, to the trade and to the raw materials of the world which are needed for their economic prosperity;

Fifth, they desire to bring about the fullest collaboration between all nations in the economic field with the object of securing, for all, improved labor standards, economic advancement, and social security;

Sixth, after the final destruction of the Nazi tyranny, they hope to see established a peace which will afford to all nations the means of dwelling in safety within their own boundaries, and which will afford assurance that all the men in all the lands may live out their lives in freedom from fear and want;

Seventh, such a peace should enable all men to traverse the high seas and oceans without hindrance;

Eighth, they believe that all of the nations of the world, for realistic as well as spiritual reasons, must come to the abandonment of the use of force. Since no future peace can be maintained if land, sea, or air armaments continue to be employed by nations which threaten, or may threaten, aggression outside of their frontiers, they believe, pending the establishment of a wider and permanent system of general security, that the disarmament of such nations is essential. They will likewise aid and encourage all other practicable measures which will lighten for peace-loving peoples the crushing burden of armaments.

FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT

WINSTON S. CHURCHILL.

Notable, the document referenced "the final destruction of the Nazi tyranny", committing the Administration publically to the destruction of Nazi Germany even though the US was technically a neutral at the time.

Tyranny of the Vichy type was extending itself in France.  On this same day, Vichy French Vice-Premier Darlan was made the French Minister of Defense while Marshall Petain issued a series of harsh measures to address the situation in Vichy France.  Political parties were declared to be dissolved and officials were required to give a loyalty oath to Petain.

Canada ordered Japanese Canadians to carry a registration card.  It's often forgotten that Canadian actions in regard to its Japanese ancestry residents and citizens was every bit as harsh as that of the United States during World War Two.

The Soviet Union officially issued an amnesty for Poles living in the Soviet Union.   Effectively, it was an amnesty for the crime of merely existing.

Mid Week At Work. Shearing.

 

August 11, 1941. Margarita Carmen Cansino in Life Magazine.

American and British senior military leaders discussed the joint conduct of war against Nazi Germany for the first time at the conference at Placentia Bay, Newfoundland. The United States, of course, was not yet a declared belligerent in the war.

Which doesn't mean that the US wasn't a participant in it.  The US was, as we've noted here before, highly active in escorting into the Atlantic, if not across it, and at this point had aircraft operating out of Iceland and Northern Ireland in that effort.

Aircraft of the Soviet Air Forces, embarrassed by the Soviet Navy's raid on Berlin a few days prior, raided Berlin itself with heavy bombers in a raid which could hardly be regarded as successful and sustained high losses.

Rita Hayworth appeared on the cover of Life Magazine in a négligée. 

Hayworth in 1946.

The photograph is interesting in part because it was hardly salacious. While she is in négligée, it's pretty conservative to say the least.  Moreover, she was on the cover in a conservative bikini, which of course even if conservative, is a bikini.  The pose, on top of a bed, may have been the most salacious thing about it.  The photo ent on to become the second most popular pinup of the World War Two era.

Hayworth was born to a Spanish father and an Irish/English extraction mother in the United States, and her real name was Margarita Carmen Cansino.  By 1941 she was already an entertainment veteran.  She never graduated from high school as she was already working at the time, having completed no more than a grade 9 education, and in later years she'd tell Orson Welles, one of a string of spouses, that her father had abused her as a child.

Hayworth as a dancer at age 12, before her Spanish ancestry was de-emphasized.

Her name was changed after she began to have some early roles in film as the movie industry found both her name and her dark hair too "Mediterranean".  Indeed, not only was her named changed (she adopted her mother's maiden name) but her hairline was too, by electrolysis, giving her the famous looks that she had throughout the main part of her career.

Hayworth in 1935, before efforts were made to change her appearance.

Hayworth defined a certain type of glamour in her era, and lived a fairly typical Hollywood life which included a string of marriages.

The entire Haywood story, put back in the context of the times, is a mirror on our society, a bit, to the present day.  She was a teenaged actress when she first appeared in movies, by which time she'd already been in entertainment for years and years.  Abused sexually as a child, she'd have a string of marriages, all stories that we could expect to read today.  Nonetheless, she was regarded as glamorous and the public didn't hold her domestic troubles against her in any fashion during her career.  The public also didn't find her Life Magazine illustration shocking, but the troops found it pinup worthy.  Decency standards has obviously moved substantially in the 20th Century in terms of what was regarded as a decent depiction, including what was regarded as decent to wear.  Her swimsuit on the cover of Life would have been regarded as indecent in the early 1920s, but that had already changed by the mid 1930s.

Thursday August 11, 1921. Prejudice.

 

Father Coyle.

Father James Coyle, an Irish born Catholic priest serving in Alabama, was shot in the head in front of his rectory on this day in Birmingham.  His killer, E.R. Stephenson, was the father of the bride, a convert to Catholicism, who had married a Puerto Rican man earlier that day.  Stephenson was a member of the Ku Klux Klan and a Methodist minister.

The KKK was not only a terroristic opponent of blacks in the South, it should be remembered, but also of Catholics and Jews, and generally of anyone not of a British Isles or Northern European background.  At the time, it was extremely powerful and not held in disrepute in the South.

Catholicism, for its part, was a distinctly minority religion throughout the South and still is.  Today, only 7% of Alabamans are Catholic, and even fewer must have been at the time.  Even as late as 1941 Time Magazine was able to report that an area as big as Ireland in the South had just ended the distinction of being completely without a Catholic Church.  Oddly, however, the South has produced some notable Catholic literary figures, including Flannery O'Connor.

Future Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black, himself at that point a future member of the KKK, would defend Stephenson in court, who got off of the charge of murder based upon a plea of temporary insanity.

In Ireland, Eamon de Valera sent his reply to British peace proposals, rejecting them. The British had offered dominion status, which de Valera was not willing to accept for Ireland, wanting complete independence with no ties of that type to the UK, and a plebiscite for Northern Ireland to determine its fate.

In the Canadian dominion, Lord Byng took office as the Governor General.

South of the border, Franklin Roosevelt showed the first signs of paralysis from polio.  A doctor misdiagnosed the condition, where he was vacationing in Maine, as a bad cold.

Blog Mirror: Casper College's Western History Center 'in disarray,' consultant finds

 

Casper College's Western History Center 'in disarray,' consultant finds

Sunday August 10, 1941. Attending services

On this day in 1941 Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill attended shipboard services.

Roosevelt and Churchill were both co-religious, both being members of churches in the Anglican Communion. Roosevelt was Episcopalian and Churchill a member of the Church of England.  Interestingly, Churchill was nonobservant but personally had very conventional morals, whereas Roosevelt was observant but had at least one long-standing illicit affair.

Barely visible on the left side of the photograph is George C. Marshall.  The 1901 VMI graduate was also an Episcopalian, as was the eclectic polymath, George Patton.

Saturday August 9, 1941. The Atlantic Charter Conference commences.

Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt commenced a secrete meeting at Placentia Bay at the U.S. Naval Station at Little Placentia Sound. The Navy's presence on the Newfoundland coast was already established even though this was prior to the American entry into the war.

HMS Prince of Wales, on which Winston Churchill had crossed the Atlantic for the meeting, and the USS McDougal which served to ferry the dignitaries to their respective ships.

This meeting would come to be known as the Atlantic Charter Meeting.

Permanently inhabited since 1671, the town of Placentia, founded as Plaisance, had a population of about 8,000 people in 1941, down from a high of 16,000 in 1900. The population at that time, 1941, was approximately the same as it had been in 1921, but it's since declined to less than half of that.  The decline in the cod fishing industry and the closure of the American base in 1970 provides the explanation for that.

Newfoundland was a British administered dominion at the time, not yet part of Canada.

On the same day, Charles Lindbergh gave a speech in Cleveland in which he accused those in favor of entering the war of plotting to create incidents that would draw the US into it.

Tuesday August 9, 1921. Skylines, Swearing Ins and Disasters.

Los Angeles skyline, August 9, 1921

Rif forces took Monte Arruit after a negotiated surrender.  For reasons that remain unclear, including confusion or just a disobeying of orders, the Riffians then killed all about 400 to 500 of the 2,000 prisoners, keeping those who remained for bargaining purposes.

Charles R. Forbes was sworn in as the head of the U.S. Veterans Bureau.

The Scottish born Forbes had an unusual personal history and should have been suitable for his appointed role.  He had joined the Marine Corps as a musician at age 16.  Upon leaving the Marines, he attended university and graduated with a degree in engineering.  In spite of that, however, he then enlisted in the Army in 1900 at age 22, overcoming an early charge of being AWOL at one point early in his service to leave the Army as a Sergeant First Class in 1908.  He entered the Army again in 1917 and was a Lt. Col. by the end of his World War One service.

His period of leadership of the Veterans Bureau was marked by corruption and his divorce from his wife, who accused him of neglect.  He didn't finish his full term and resigned in 1923.  He was charged due to his activities with crimes which lead to a conviction, and an eight-month period of incarceration in Leavenworth.

CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist Part XVIII. Ambition and Gregariousness

Ambition

By Roy K. Moulton.  Topeka State Journal, July 29, 1913.

Let others work and lose their health
In piling up the sordid wealth,
    But that is not my wish.
Let others burn the midnight oils,
Devising ways of grabbing spoils;
    I’d rather sit and fish.

Let others solve the problems great,
Affecting the affairs of state;
    None of that on my dish.
Let others hew the nation’s path
And bear the thankless public’s wrath,
    I’d rather sit and fish.

Let others lead the strenuous life
That’s full of worry, toil and strife,
    But that’s not my ambish.
Let others wear their lives away
By living five years every day;
    I’d rather sit and fish.

Simone Biles dropped out of Olympic competition.

The reason was a simple, and yet complex, one.  It was the pressure of it.

Biles is a 24-year-old American gymnast, as most presumably know, who was in her second Olympics. She's truly great.

She was also under the public eye like nobody else in the Olympics, at least from an American prospective.  I don't know if this was anticipated going in, as I don't follow sports much, but it very clearly came to be the case very soon.

The pressure was getting to her, and it impacted her performance.  So, basically for the team, and for mental health reasons, she's dropped out.

The reaction has been interesting.

Indeed, the entire phenomenon has been interesting.

The day after it was clear that she was dropping out of team competitions Michael Phelps was interviewed on a network that he's been on during the Olympics.  Asked about if he understood it, Phelps basically gave a negative reply and went on to state how he thrived on the pressure and put more pressure on himself than would otherwise be there.

I hate people like that/

That may sound odd, but this story has really been a revelation on a series of things, one of them being the asshole nature of western society which revels in a moronic level of competition.

This was on my mind recently anyhow for an odd reason, that being that I'm not a competitive person whatsoever.

Now, I participate in some competitions, including one that is regarded as a sport, but frankly in those categories I've always just focused on my own performance.  Generally, as baffling as it is to a lot of people, I don't care much if I win or lose an individual sporting competition.

Indeed, I absolutely detest the way that some competitive people insist on interjecting competition into daily life.  A hyper-competitive friend of mine, for example, can't bring up the topic of hunting dogs without the stupid "my dog's better than your dog" sort of conversation.

I don't give a f***ing rat's ass how your dog generally fares in competition with somebody else's.

Now, people don't generally do that to me, as I'm not competitive, but I do have a sarcastic wit.  And as noted here in a recent thread, I don't argue for sport.  If I'm drawn into an argument and engage in it, it's for the kill.  I'm not interested in the fun some people seem to derive for pursuing perpetual arguments.  I don't do that.  So people don't try to draw me into the "oh golly, let's have the same stupid argument again here today!" type of conversation.  Last time somebody drew me into an argument on dogs, I had a single observation that ended the argument with the arguers left, literally, speechless.

Anyhow, our society really values competition.  We have a free market economy that's all about competition.  Our legal system, of which I’m part, uses the adversarial system, which is a competition, to sort out disputes between people, as opposed to the discovery method used in the Latin/Nopoleonic systems.  Indeed, as I'm in litigation, I’m ironically in a constant state of competition.

As noted, I view that differently than most people.  Some lawyer I know well engaged me in a conversation just recently I've heard a million times before recently about the glory of being in trial and how invigorating that is.

That's the kind of perpetual bullshit, I'd note, handed out by people who are rarely in trial.  I’m not rarely in trial, I'm in trial a lot.

The reason for that is that I'm not a competitive person.  I don't measure litigation by the "oh golly, it's so fun to be wearing a suit acting like an adult making arguments".  That's childish crap.  

I view it as a task I must weigh and calculate for the result. Totally different.  I'm not going to be experiencing any "highs" as a result. Indeed, when the fellow was waxing remantically about the joys of being in trial in heavy-duty competition, even if you were taking a pounding, and losing, I replied "I don't know what you are talking about".  This floored him, and he replied "but you are a competitive person!". ^[1]

No, I'm not. 

But that's not the way a lot of people think, and that's not the way our entire society is engineered. And it makes me wonder.

I'm glad for Simone Biles that she was in a position to drop out, which is what she did.  

Most people aren't, and most men definitely aren't.

I could now more go into work today and declare that I need a mental health holiday or that I can suspend my participation in something big, not that I'm suggesting in any fashion that I would like to do so, than I could declare myself Emperor of Russia.  Not going to happen.

Now, let me be frank here.  I think that competition is inevitable, and its often the best system for something, although something that often has to be restrained as well.  I.e., I don't want to try to tell Chevrolet what the best way to make an electric vehicle is and I don't want to tell Ford that either.  I don't want to protect Tesla for being the first on the scene.  Competition will figure that out.

And I also feel, oddly enough for a post of this type, that, like Chesterton, the problem with our economy isn't too much competition, but not enough.  We've moved towards giant industrial concerns at the expense of smaller ones and that's wrecked competition in a lot of areas that would greatly benefit from it.

Apply the Sherman Anti Trust Act, darn it.

And I don't want the marketplace of ideas dominated by things that I have to think because somebody had determined I have to think them.  Not hardly.  

Indeed, if you want to look for a society that's geared towards no competition, look at a Marxist one.  Everything was planned including what you could think.  

And that was, quite frankly, horrific.

Well, I probably don't really have much of one.

But if I do, this is it.

Not everything in the world has to be a competition to the death.

And also, some people aren't competitive and that's not some sort of defect in them.  I feel like they aren't listened to whatsoever however.

Indeed, I ran across a lawyer sometime ago who probably pegging out on the competitive meter.  If I had a second cup of coffee, he'd probably have a third, just to "win".  So I was surprised that he bills himself as being involved in lawyer "mental well-being".

Having that sort of personality and thinking that you can help any lawyer with "well-being" is, well, mental.  Indeed, the entire lawyer "help the members of the bar" movement is, as its basically geared, like a field hospital, to patch you up and send you back into battle so that you can get killed.  Nobody is going to ask "is fostering war a good idea", even on a metaphorical level.

And all the more so if you are male.  Times change, and people and professions with them, but then they don't.  Society is basically perfectly comfortable with men competing themselves to death, and it probably always will be.  We'd rather express surprise that ol' Bob died at his desk or ol' Phil drank himself under the table and expired than ponder if there's a systemic problem here somewhere.

Not grasping the gregarious

I had an errand I had to run while at work the other day and in the course of it I grabbed my extremely gregarious co worker to lend a hand.  It was a short errand, but it involved going to a public place, buying something, and coming back.

I'd forgotten how gregarious the gregarious can be.

This actually starts off a day prior, actually.  I had to go to a meeting and was in a rush when I met the same fellow in the hall.  His question to me was "Have you met Father Terry?".

I haven't met Father Terry and indeed I didn't know who Father Terry actualy was.  I quickly told my colleague that I had to run to a meeting as, truthfully, I didn't wish to be drawn into a conversation and then bolt.  I was running behind as it was.

But tha'ts only part of it.

Something about stuff like this really puts me very ill at ease.

Father Terry, it was pretty clear when I saw him, was a Francican monk.  He looked every inch the part. Tall, heavily bearded, wearing a full length heavy gray robe.  He was also obvsiously a gregarious man like my co worker.

I've been friends, over time, with a couple of Catholic Priests.  In the oversall scheme of things, there's probably three that I could genuinely claim as friends, keeping in mind that I draw that line pretty close to me.  Acquitances, even ones I'm friendly with, I don't count as friends.  In addition to those three, I can state that there was a fourth who was on the edge of being a friend, but not quite, and maybe a fifth just a little more distant than that.  Interestingly, of the Priests  in this category, the one that I was not quite friends, with, whom I'm still somewaht in touch with, was simply hard to get to know.  He was highly reserved.  I'm also highly reserved.

To a degree, I think certain people in certain occupations and vocations probably ahve to instinctively headge their bets.  Being a lawyer is a little bit that way.  I always dislike it when somebody casualy mentions to a stranger that I'm a lawyer, but it comes up in conversation all the time. A very routein question for men to ask another man is "so what do you do for a living?", or "where do you work?".  Oddly, I don't ask that causally at all.  But most men, and even a lot of women, will ask that. I'm also a cattleman and I often briefly think of saying "I raise cattle" but I never do.  "I'm a lawyer".

My gregarious friend, as we'll see in a moment, is super proud of that fact, i.e., he and we are lawyers, and has no problem bringing that right up.  I'm much more reserved about it for a variety of reasons.  Indeed, I don't start up conversations with strangers as a rule and beyond that I never start up a conversation with a complete stranger and then volutneer that "I"m a lawyer and that's my partner".  That's really just asking for trouble, in my view.  And I don't want to expend the mental energy to do that either.

Anyhow, back to Father Terry.

Because I'm so reticent about contacts of all types, and perhaps I figure other people are the same way, I'm super hesistant about introducing anyone I know to anyone else if that person is some sort of person of status.  My gregarious friend is not.  Only if a person has reached the point where they're really a personal friend would I do that.

Well, maybe I would, but I wouldn't tour the office doing that.

Some of that has to do with the concept of "friend".  My friends are definatley my friends.  I don't really have light friendships.  I do have friends that I know in context, such as through work, but if they reach that status, they're more than light associates.

A lot of gregarious people, it seems to me, count light associatiates as friends.  I guess they feel they make friends easily and therefore everyone is their friend.

I really don't understand, however, how some people like to take somebody around to all of the offices.  It completely escapes me.

I'm glad that religious (those who occupy a religious vocation) do get out and about.  Indeed, I think its something that needs to occur.  So its not that.  Rather, it's the odd habit of the gregarious taking somebody around where they work and introducting them to everyone.  Why do they do that?

I have no idea.

The TVA Demolishes a coal fired plant

It was in Tennessee and it was an old plant.

One of the local political ads claims that a politician saved our coal jobs.  This isn't related, but there's no evidence that any coal jobs have been saved, or can be.  The decline of coal has been going on for more than a century and that can't be reversed legislatively.

But it can be denied as a reality temporarily, and we're busy doing that.  Another legislator recently proposed to reduce the coal severance tax on the theory that if coal isn't taxed as much as it currently is, it'll be more competitive.  This is close to hte same logic which applied when the coal severance tax was first passed in Wyoming, which had opposition out of the fear that it would drive coal away.

In reality, in both Wyoming and Montana, the latter state having the coal severance tax first and at a higher rate, coal is passing.  

Must the show really go on?

Dusty Hill, ZZ Top's bassest, died this past week.

They are still touring, however, with a long time associate of the band taking Dusty Hill's place.

I don't know.  ZZ Top was the rock band with the longest continuous line up, which is part of what made it special.  The members are in their 70s. 

At least in my view, and I"m a ZZ Top fan, there is no ZZ Top without Hill.

ZZ Top achieved a certain sort of legendary status over the years of course, and their style of music actually evolved signficantly.  I first heard them in the car of a friend who moved up here from Oklahoma during one of our periodic oil booms. That would have been in the 1970s and at that point in time the band would really have been fully in its blues/rock stage, that is, more of a Southern blues band than a rock band.  There were a lot of acts that met that definition.  Over the years, most of them, but not all of them, fell back into the blues more than rock, which is where their original strength lay.  ZZ Top went the other direction.  Early on, they really emphasized their connection with Texas.

While I am a fan, that also means that I'm a qualified fan.  I liked the band that was defined by Tush more than the one that was defined by Sharp Dressed Man.   And great act though they were, they never compared to Johnny Winters or Stevie Ray Vaughn.

Because of a long break they took at one point they ended up growing long beards, something I myself might do if I had the luxary of taking a lot of time off.  When they reemerged it became sort of an affectation, and I have my problems with that.  Be that as it may, they were a great band, but they were a band.  In my view, it's time to hang it up and perserve their legacy as a unified band.

Speaking of affectations. . . 

Lalapalooza Drops DaBaby Over Homophobic Comments Hours Before His Performance 

So read a headline.

I don't know who DaBaby is or what he said.  All I can say is that a grown man ought not to call himself "DaBaby".

A person has to be really careful about this so it doesn't sound completely wrong, but one of the things about fans of jazz and blues is that we don't like affectations.  When like music that's real.

That doesn't mean that music nad musicians in any one era or genra don't or can't take on certain affectations.  Since the decline of blues following the 1970s, some blues artists definately affected a certain physical image for their acts, for example.

But certain musical styles have become affectation dominant, including rock (post KISS), country and rap.  Rap is particularly interesting this way as it started off about as stripped of affectation as it could conceivably be.  When it crossed over into general popularity, the affectation that its artists took up often were very much associated with wealth, and demonstrated excess, but they were entitled to that.  Lots of rap acts still do that, so I'm not dissing the genra or the affectations of its artists.

Rather, what I'm going after is the juvenilization of American men, which is rampant at this point.  A moniker like the "DaBaby" is, well, speaking of a certain sort of infantilization that should be avoided.

The Fire This Time.

I drove from Casper to Denver last week. Dense smoke the entire time.

This is being noted in conversations by regular folks all the time, and its on the cover of the Tribune today.  But the remarkable thing is that its being ignored locally on a larger scale.

The national news notes it to be sure. We're in a record fire season.  But locally, in the region where the dense smoke is everywhere, nobody is stating anything about what's the cause of this.

This isn't the way things have always been.  Growing up here, smoke in the air was very unusual in the 1970s nd 1980s.  It was something that began to make a notable appearance in the 1990s and the last two summers its been the dominant feature of the summer sky.

With this being the case, you'd think that the legislature would be discussing what's becoming an annual tragedy.  Nope.  Nobody is brining these topics up.

It was Trotsky who stated "You might not be interested in war, but war is interested in you."  That's probably one of a handful of things Trotsky ever stated that are worth repeating.  The same thing is true of climate and weather.  You might not be interested in it, but it's interested in you.

It's time to start discussing these things.

Blind Assumptions

There was an interesting letter to the editor for Anthony Bouchard in today's Tribune.  The author was obviously extremely distressesd that Bouchard was not invited back to meet Donald Trump in anticipation for an anticipated endorsement of some Wyoming candidate to run against Liz Cheney.

What was interesting about it was the set of assumptions built into it. The author obviously loves Trump and stated the same, i.e., "loves".  She maintained that it was Bouchard who is most like Trump, even if her hero is set to dump him like a hot rock on a mid August day.

Fawning admiration of politicians is something I don't get, but then as noted above I'm a questioner of ambition and authority.  But that sort of desperate fawning is odd.

The Tribune also ran a column by one of its columnists, Tom Gagnon, all about his registering as a Republican in order to vote for Cheney. Gagnon makes it plain he's a Democrat, and if you read his piece, he's a really far left Democrat.

I don't care if he does re-register, that's his right.  One of the things about American political parites is that there are no restrictions on who resigsters as what, and for that reason, they can change.  Frankly, I don't think the Wyoming GOP is actually anywhere near as right wing as its really active members think, as most Wyomingites are in it, and most are centrists.  But Gagnon is doing the classic Wyoming Democratic thing of killing his own party.  If he was going to do that, he should have just shut up, rather than broadcast it and confirming the far rights suspicition that everyone in the GOP who isn't in the sleeper car of the Trump Train is a communist.

Footnotes:

1.  I also feel, quite frankly, that many such comments reflect either propaganda that we feel we're required to say, as in Republican members of Congress saying "oh, um, yes, I believe the election (in which I myself was elected) was stolen. . . "when they don't, or in the dulce bellum inexpertis manner that so many people have about so many things they really don't engage in, or rarely do.  Put another way, watching The Sands of Iwo Ima might be fund, but actually landing on Iwo Jima. . . not so much.

Monday, August 8, 1921. Prize bicycle

 Theresa Ebert with the Ranger "Superbe" bicycle she received in The Washington Times subscription contest. (Source: Washington Times, August 8, 1921)

Sunday Morning Scene: Churches of the West: Church, Mills Wyoming

Churches of the West: Church, Mills Wyoming: 

Church, Mills Wyoming

This is a church Mills Wyoming.  Other than that it's a church, I'm afraid that I don't know anything else about it.

The Best Post of the Week of August 1, 2021.

The best posts of the week of August 1, 2021.

Friday August 1, 1941. New things.

Sunday August 3, 1941. The Third Sermon of Bishop Von Galen.

Subsidiarity Economics. The times more or less locally, Part IV

The 2022 Election Part IV. The Film Noir Edition

Casualties of the COVID Recession Part II

"Do you personally know anyone who has had COVID 19?"

Wars and Rumors of War. 2021

Pandemic Part 6. The Delta Surge

The coyotes were howling in the distance, and not just a little, but a lot.

Saturday August 6, 1921.

Wednesday August 6, 1941. ‘Right & Wrong’ – A Clue to the Meaning of the Universe by C.S. Lewis

Poster Saturday. The Elk and the Antelope

Sunday August 7, 1921. The waiters go on strike.

 In the Netherlands, that is.

The Waitress

Delia Kane, age 14.  The Exchange Luncheon, Boston.  January 31, 1917.

They were seeking an end to the tip system and established regular wages.

Poster Saturday. The Elk and the Antelope

 

Thursday August 7, 1941. Bombers and Japanese intentions.

The Soviet Navy bombed Berlin.

Yes, the Navy.

The reason was that the Ilyushin DB-3 used by both the Soviet Air Forces and the Soviet Navy was capable of being both a torpedo bomber and a tactical bomber, although its small 1000 lbs bomb load made it a poor strategic bomber.  The Soviet Air Forces also the aircraft, but the aircraft used in this raid were launched from a Soviet Navy base off of Estonia.

DB-3 in captured Finnish use.

The Germans at first thought that the RAF had conducted the raid, given as the RAF, which was the only combatant then in the war with heavy strategic bombers, had been raiding Berlin for a year. The small payload of the DB-3 meant that the raid was unlikely to be anything other than a propaganda victory, which was all that it was.

In other news of the air, Bruno Mussolini, the son of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, was killed test flying an Italian attempt at a heavy bomber, that being the Piaggio P.108.

P.108 in flight.

Australia declared that it would not allow Japanese expansion in the Pacific to go unchecked, should it occur.

On the same day, Imperial Japan, which had recently mediated a dispute between Thailand and the French in Indochina, declared that it had no aggressive intentions in regard to Thailand.

In the US, people went about their regular chores, including outdoor ones.

Wednesday August 6, 1941. ‘Right & Wrong’ – A Clue to the Meaning of the Universe by C.S. Lewis

The first in a series of famous broadcast made by C. S. Lewis during World War Two was broadcast on this day in 1941.

Saturday August 6, 1921.

 

The coyotes were howling in the distance, and not just a little, but a lot.

I don't know if a person can pick up moods or attitudes by reading a blog.  I.e., I don't know if you can read a blog and detect these things.

I also frankly think that people are generally bad at picking up such things anyway, or if they are, at a certain point, they disregard them if they don't fit their own world view in regard to the subject.  I.e., once a person has reached a certain point in life, people's views regarding that person are fixed, and at a societal level.  

We see examples of that all the time.  On rare occasion, and it is rare as it takes courage, somebody will make a radical shift in their lives.  A lawyer leaves his practice to become a priest.  A doctor leaves his to become a farmer.  An accountant becomes an automechanic.  Whatever.  When these things happen there's always a little bit of shock to those around, and a mild suggestion of, well, he must be crazy.

So too is the view when somebody has a personal shift.  People depend on certain other people to occupy certain roles, indeed they depend on them to such an extent that they don't allow those people to bend in them. They have to break, actually, before anything is noticed.  Somebody will be worked to death because heavy work was the role they had, and other people depended upon them to work.  After a tragic demise occurs, people will express shock and surprise, but I wonder how shocked they really are.  Maybe they noticed and just let it happen, as it was to their own benefit.  Many other examples could be provided.

I'm noting all of this for an assortment of reasons.  

Recently I've been feeling like the Lone Ranger on some things and it's a role that I'm not really comfortable with.  I'm not going to go into detail on it, and it's not a sudden shift in anything.  My world outlook is largely the same it is when I was five, which puts me out of sync with almost the entire world in some ways.  

One of the ways is that I've become disgusted with the behavior of a society in a lot of ways.  I deal with problems professionally and in recent years I've come to be a person whom people confer their personal problems to as well.  On a lot of days I start working on dire problems early, handle those problems all day long, and then come home to an entire set of problems.  I've had enough of problems in a lot of ways.  It doesn't matter, however, the problems keep coming.

Indeed, in recent weeks the problems have expanded exponentially.  There's no refuge from them at all.  I'm not going into detail on any of them, but I've literally had days when I've come home and thought that I just want to crawl into the basement, turn on anything on television, and forget the problems.  Instead, my long-suffering spouse will find me, and suddenly I'm given a complete new set of problems.  I've found myself saying "I can't take one more problem" more than once.  It doesn't matter, I'll get them.

The problems that I dislike the most involve fighting.  Not in the physical sense, but in the argumentative sense.  This operates as an enormous self-inflicted irony in my case, as my occupation involves a constant application of the "adversarial process".

Indeed, that's part of the existential problem that I find myself faced with right now.  Maybe its just my mood, which if so is now a mood running for weeks and weeks, but my belief in the adversarial process is broken.  Recent events have taught me that the oft cited claims by lawyers that the process is the best one for sorting out disputes is largely propaganda, and largely propaganda designed to allow them to tolerate being mercenaries.  Added to that, I'm not at the point where I feel the often cited plaintiff's lawyers' claims about representing the rights of the downtrodden are completely false.  I find very little empathy among that group of people, as some recent personal events have demonstrated to me in a shocking way.  A colleague recently said to me, believing the propaganda, that "to be a plaintiff's lawyer you have to have empathy".  That's crap.   They may actually be better off without it.

Indeed, I think they are.  A lack of empathy allows themselves to approach their craft without concern over the impact, to anyone.  And indeed, I've come to the conclusion that this is probably a personality trait best suited for the law, which is part of the problem with the law.  Apathy is the supposed opposite of empathy, and I don't know that really fits it, but in some ways perhaps it does.  I recently experienced a situation in which a plaintiff's lawyer demonstrated a shocking lack of empathy for a genuine ongoing crisis.  In thinking of it, I think this is common to a fault. There are exceptions, but they're rare, I fear.

Blessed are the peacemakers, we're informed by the Beatitudes, but we're not told that there's any peace for them in this life.  Not at all.  Being a peacemaker isn't peaceful, it's tiresome.  It also, ironically, means that the peacemaker is constantly drowning in strife, but not of his own making.

It's a role that's easy to escape.  Thinking on it myself, I had a lawyer act as a mediator in a case some time back who retired from it.  I've twice asked if he'd come out of retirement to handle a mediation in matters he'd be good at.  In no uncertain terms, he's said no way whatsoever.

That example is a good one.  He made a complete break.  He retired and won't be drawn out of retirement. Absolutely not  It was hard for me to grasp at the time, but it isn't now.  He must have had enough of the fighting.  

Added to this is a couple of other things.  One is already hinted at.  I've occupied a certain role in life, personally and professionally, for a very long time.  I've been feeling uneasy about some things existentially for some time, but I tend to keep my own thoughts to myself, as introverted peacemakers do.  That means that by the time you express them, you are unlikely to be listened to until the expressions are too blunt to ignore.  I'm not really even at that level yet, although in some quarters I'm starting to be.

If you are at that level, there's a really strong trend for you to be disregarded.  People generally have the "it'll go away" type of reaction, or "we depend upon you. . . " reaction.  In the latter, it's often very true, but it also has the "your own concerns be damned, we need you to do this.", even from people who are close to you.  The chances of somebody saying "oh gee, we get it your concerns, let me lift this load from you and put it down" are, quite frankly, nonexistent later in life, or at least it seems that way to me.

As part of this, and a major part, you aren't allowed to make such statements regarding a house you built yourself. That's definitely part of it.

People fall into roles, or are even forced into them, more in life than we might suppose and this is particularly true for people who have values.  People lose the ability to avoid working, which is a blunt way to put it, at some point in their early adulthood. At some point beyond that, their ability to avoid serious work largely end as well.  Some do, but many do not.  From their, people's roles in life become more and more determined societally rather than on their own.  Look around at the people you meet today and you'll find that the highly ambitious are probably occupying all their roles as they desired to achieve them, but they made a lot of sacrifices in order to get there.  Most people don't and are shoved into the roles they occupy.

Nonetheless, we all occupy roles at least partially of our own making.  And the longer you are in those roles, for whatever reason, the harder it is to escape them.  That makes us prisoners of cells we built ourselves, and at some point we lose the keys to them.

Which I guess answers a question I've had from time to time, which is why won't God aid me in escaping them.  I don't want to escape anything I’m morally bound to, my family or those I love, but certain other problems.  It's very hard for me to grasp why I have certain very strong impulses in this area, but my efforts are basically put down.  I'm not allowed any easy escape.  Why is this?'

My long-suffering spouse would answer to this, and has, that perhaps you need to be where you are for some reason only God knows.  Maybe that is it.  We're not put here on Earth for a decade's long vacation, but for other reasons.

Well, maybe, but I'm tired of it.  I saw a comment by another devout Catholic the other day which in jest stated something like "God can quit testing me any time now".  I feel that way seriously.  If I'm here as my roles serve some other purpose, selfish though it is, I'd like that purpose to be picked up by somebody else now.

The "check engine light" went out on the Dodge yesterday morning.  I have to drive to Denver, which I hate, today.  The shop didn't have time to take it in to fix it, but they did have time to read the code.  The turbocharger is going out.  When it goes, and it will, it'll cost at least $3,000 to fix.

One more thing.

Last night, I went to bed early.  I was tired anyhow, and frankly after a horrific day I came home and had a glass of Irish Whiskey.  Having a glass of whiskey after a bad day is a bad idea, but I did it anyhow.  One more thing.

I went to bed, as noted, early.  At 9:00 the phone went off.  I leave my phone on at night in case one of the kids call.  It was a client.  I didn't answer the phone.  One more thing.

At 11:00 the dog started barking.  He never barks.  I heard it in my sleep first, but then it woke me up.  Droggy, I woke my long-suffering spouse up, and she took the dog out back. We thought he needed to go out for obvious reasons.  While she was doing that I could smell the smell of a distant forest fire in a year that's been full of them. One more thing.  The fires are due, as if anyone could now ignore it, to a decades long refusal on Western societies part to address an obviously arriving climate crisis.  One more thing.  I suggested she close the windows, even thought it was hot, and turn on the air conditioner, even though I don't like it.  She did.

That came about after we brought the dog back down to go to bed. He kept making muffled barks.  Then I could hear it. 

The coyotes were howling in the distance, and not just a little, but a lot.

They were speaking to the dog.  And to me.

Tuesday August 5, 1941. Trends in the East.

The siege at Smolensk ended with the Germans taking 300,000 Red Army prisoners.

On the same day, the Provisional Government of Lithuania, frustrated in its hopes to secure an independent government for the country, disbanded.

Friday August 5, 1921. First live broadcast of baseball.

 A live baseball game was broadcast for the first time when KDKA broadcast the Pirates v the Phillies.  The Phillies won, 8 to 5.

Mustafa Kemal is elected to the position of generalissimo for a period of three months by the Turkish National Assembly.

The Rif forces took Nador and Selouane.  The Spanish forces in Selouane had numbered 200, of which only nine survived the event.