Leisure is only possible when we are at one with ourselves. We tend to
overwork as a means of self-escape, as a way of trying to justify our
existence.
Of course the world of work begins to become - threatens to become - our
only world, to the exclusion of all else. The demands of the working
world grow ever more total, grasping ever more completely the whole of
human existence.
Repose, leisure, peace, belong among the elements of happiness. If we
have not escaped from harried rush, from mad pursuit, from unrest, from
the necessity of care, we are not happy. And what of contemplation? Its
very premise is freedom from the fetters of workaday busyness. Moreover,
it itself actualizes this freedom by virtue of being intuition.
After complaining about it here, but doing nothing about it, except to take one last look around yesterday, I finally admitted defeat and ordered a watch band and dress shoelaces over the net.
Seriously, should this be the way thing are in a mid sized city?
And Colorado was upset about Colorado National Guardsmen being sent to Ft. D. A. Russell for demobilization, rather than a location in their home state.
Dogs were barred entry into the state by Governor Kendrick due to concerns over rabies.
On this date in 1917 a shock happened to the nation. The general who Woodrow Wilson already had in mind for an American expeditionary force in Europe, should the US enter the Great War, which was becoming increasingly likely, died.
And with his death, it truly seemed that an era had really passed.
Gen. Frederick Funston, next to driver, in 1906.
Funston was a hero and a legend. He'd risen to high command on the strength of his military achievements without being a West Point graduate. He was truly an exception to the rules.
Funston was born in Ohio in 1865 and in some ways did not show early promise in life. He was a very small and slight (at first) man, standing only 5'5" and weighing only 120 lbs upon reaching adulthood. He aspired as a youth to the military, after growing up in Kansas, but he was rejected by West Point due to his small size. He thereafter attended the University of Kansas for three years but did not graduate. Following that he worked for awhile for the Santa Fe Railroad before becoming a reporter in Kansas City in 1890.
Only after a year he left reporting and went to work for the Department of Agriculture as a researcher in an era when that was an adventuresome occupation. In 1896, however, Funston left that to join the Cuban insurrection against Spain in Cuba.
Funston as a Cuban guerilla.
As most Americans spending any time in Cuba at the time experienced, he came down with malaria while serving the Cuban revolution. Returning to United States weighing only 95 lbs he found himself back in the United States just in time to secure a commission with the 20th Kansas Infantry as it was raised to fight in the Spanish American War.
"Funston's Fighting Kansans" in the Philippines.
The 20th Kansas didn't fight in Cuba, it fought in the Philippines. Funston served there heroically and received the Medal of Honor, and found himself promoted to the rank of Brigadier General in the Regular Army at age 35, a remarkable rise contrary to the usual story of military advancement and more reminiscent of the Civil War than anything thereafter. Following his service in the Philippines, however, he fell into a period of controversy due to aggressively pro military action comments he made in the United States.
He was stationed at the Presidio in San Francisco upon his return to the United States and was there at the time of the 1906 earthquake. He controversially declared martial law to attempt to combat the fire and looters and in fact authorized the shooting of looters. Following that he was stationed again in the Philippines and Hawaii. In 1914 he was placed in command of the Southern Department of the Army and was in command of the US forces in Vera Cruz and thereafter in Mexico under Pershing.
Funston and his family at the Presidio.
On this date in 1917 he was relaxing at the St. Anthony Hotel in San Antonio Texas when he suffered a massive stroke and died. He was only 51 years of age but he had put on a tremendous amount of weight in recent years. Indeed, his weight had prevented him from active field service by the time of the Punitive Expedition, but the fact of his death in this fashion would suggest an undiagnosed high blood pressure condition, something that was commonly fatal in that era.
Two Battalions of the Wyoming Infantry were to be on their way home, the Boomerang reported.
And Theodore Roosevelt was planning to reprise his Spanish American War role if the US went to war with Germany. Well. . . .Woodrow Wilson might have a say in that.
And the situation in Mexico was apparently getting complicated by a private body of cowboy militia crossing the border in reprisal for the recent death of their fellows.
Finally, the Boomerang reported the situation with Germany as "hopeful".
News came on this Monday (in 1917) that indeed, Wyoming and Colorado state troops were headed home, or at least to Ft. D. A. Russell.
A general with a Cheyenne connection, John J. Pershing, now a national hero and the recent commander of the Punitive Expedition, came out for universal military training. That was big movement, of course, at the time.
And John B. Kendrick was on his way to the U.S. Senate, finishing up his time as Governor by signing the bills that had passed the recent legislative session.
Today In Wyoming's History: February 19: 1917 The State Highway Commission was created by the signature of the Governor Kendrick, in his last day in office, approving it.
It's odd to think of Wyoming lacking a Highway Department but up until this date in 1917, it did. That was common at the time as most vehicular transportation remained strictly local. However, that would begin to change with the Federal Aid Road Act of 1916, which provided funds, for the first time, to state highway departments in one of the "progressive" policies of the Wilson Administration.
The activities of the Commission would be modest but growing throughout its early years. Limited winter plowing commenced in 1923 and then it began in earnest in 1929. In 1991 the highway department became the Wyoming Department of Transportation, which it remains.
St. Leo's history is nicely explained by the National Registry of Historic Places photograph included above. This beautiful church is a surprise as Lewistown is not a large town, having a population of only about 6,000 people. The church is very large, and strongly resembles St. Anthony's Catholic Church in Casper Wyoming, which was built at about the same time.
Today In Wyoming's History: February 19: 1917 The State Highway Commission was created by the signature of the Governor Kendrick, in his last day in office, approving it.
It's odd to think of Wyoming lacking a Highway Department but up until this date in 1917, it did. That was common at the time as most vehicular transportation remained strictly local. However, that would begin to change with the Federal Aid Road Act of 1916, which provided funds, for the first time, to state highway departments in one of the "progressive" policies of the Wilson Administration.
The activities of the Commission would be modest but growing throughout its early years. Limited winter plowing commenced in 1923 and then it began in earnest in 1929. In 1991 the highway department became the Wyoming Department of Transportation, which it remains.
Wyoming Lard Can, Fort Casper Museum. I was surprised to see it. I wish
we had a can of it still. I used to have some stationary, but now I
don't even have that.
I missed, thankfully, the original AP story on this one, so the rebuttal from the White House was the first news I had of the story. Here's how Time reported that:
The White House is pushing back against a report that it is considering a proposal to mobilize as many as 100,000 National Guard troops round up undocumented immigrants.
The
Associated Press reported this morning that an 11-page document would
call for the National Guard to be called up in 11 states, including some
not along the Mexican border, to round up undocumented immigrants.
The memo was written by U.S. Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly,
a retired four-star Marine general, according to the AP, and would give
governors in those states final say on whether to participate.
"That
is 100% not true," White House spokesman Sean Spicer told reporters.
"It is false. It is irresponsible to be saying this. ... There is no
effort at all to round up, to utilize the National Guard to round up
illegal immigrants."
Spicer would not say whether this idea was ever floated somewhere within the Administration.
As a total initial aside, in my line of work I deal with illegal aliens from time to time, and they always refer to themselves, in my experience, as "illegal". This whole "undocumented alien" line is a bunch 1984s double talk. They're illegal aliens. They're also human beings, and usually really darned hard working ones. Whatever a person thinks of this situation one way or another, coming up with weird terms to define them is, well, silly.
Anyhow, I'm glad I didn't see the original report, as using the National Guard in this role, assuming that's even legal (and I'm not at all sure it would be) would be insane. My prediction is that it would go very poorly with the Guard on top of it, which has fought for well over a century not to be viewed as some sort of police force. They're soldiers, not police.
Using soldiers as police (assuming its legal, and I'm not too sure it is) is a hideous idea. When I was a Guardsman myself I was always impressed by that. I joined the Guard nine years after the Kent State disaster and what always struck me about that is that I wasn't surprised they'd shot the protestors. Solders aren't trained towards restraint, like policemen are. That doesn't mean I think they should have shot. Rather, if you train all the time towards shooting an opposing force, your training for not shooting is pretty thin.
Frankly, I think that if the Administration did try to use the Guard in this fashion it'd spark widespread resistance to this in the Guard and at the State level. Guardsmen are state troops until Federalized and Governors have not been shy in the past about resisting deployments they didn't approve of. That was the case on a widespread level during the Spanish American War and it sparked a split in some states which has lasted until the present day in which age old units became two units, one a Federally recognized National Guard and another a state militia recognized only on the state level. That split was so strong that it lasted even throughout World War One and Two and into the present day in some places.
The Guard, moreover, is a pretty significant part of the overall defense picture. Wars since September 11, 2001, have really taxed it as many units have repeatedly been called into service. Using them in this fashion would be a terrible idea and likely would lead to pretty rapid unit attrition.
Anyhow, hopefully whatever was going on here goes away quickly.
A Chevrolet "Advance Design" pickup truck, circa 1947 to 1955. The first of Chevrolet's real post war truck designs and, by some accounts, the most durable truck ever made. Seeing one in use is still not uncommon.
This one has seen some hard use, but it's still serving well, with a loyal canine passenger waiting for the return of the owner from inside of the adjacent Rialto Barber Shop.
La Vie Parisienne (Paris Life), celebrating the 18th Century (which wasn't all that nifty in France in reality), flirting, and crepes.
This day, in 1917.
FWIW, the French officer depicted would have been an Imperial French officer, based on the color of the uniform (white), an occupation that guaranteed employment in fighting and which, in this era, would soon mean a choice between the republic or the crown.
The title of the illustration is a double entendre. The young woman is cooking a crepe dressed in a rather unlikely fashion for that task. She's also wearing crepes, a light thin fabric with a wrinkled surface.
The same news that Cheyenne's Tribune reported was reported in a less dramatic fashion in the Leader. The Army was now patrolling the border and the Guard was coming home. Indeed, one Guard officer was already back, heralding the arrival, surely, of more of the State's troops.
On local troops, of a sort, Governor Kendrick was reportedly going to report to President Wilson how good the local JrROTC was looking. And railroads, a big deal in southern Wyoming, were reportedly ready for war (although that would go less smoothly than might be supposed).
Prohibition took a knockout blow, apparently, in Cheyenne before the Legislature adjourned.
With the U.S. Army back over the border, Woodrow Wilson apparently decided that the Guard no longer needed to be Federalized, so they were getting ready to deactivate them.
This makes sense, in context, but on the other hand its a bit difficult to grasp why Wilson, who was leading a country that rocketing towards war and he was letting the Guard stand down. In hindsight, it would have really made a bit more sense to retain them as mustered in anticipation of war. Indeed, in World War Two the Guard, and what little Reserve there was, was called into service in 1940 in anticipation of the looming war.
The Legislature was also set to come home, something that every citizen holds their breath for . . .
From the Star Tribune, regarding proposed cuts by the Legislature in education funding. Supposedly this is just a strategy move on the part of the sponsors to force something in terms of cuts they are angling for and won't actually occur:
Official: Cut could result in‘bloodbath’
Natrona County may see sizeable reduction
SETH KLAMANN 307-266-0544, seth.klamann@trib.com A
Senate budget provision that would cut $91 million from schools in
Wyoming could result in a “bloodbath” of layoffs in Natrona County, the school board chairman said Tuesday.
Irrespective of whether the move is strategic or not, this seems like a dangerous game to be playing. Granted, the State hasn't found a way to carry the freight for education now that the coal train is derailed, but if this passes (and I don't think it will, and I don't think the Governor would allow it to carry through and we'd be right on to a special session), its hard to credit the concept that we're going to do something to diversify our economy if we're going to slash education for those who will soon be in that economy.
In a clear sign how things were beginning to go, and an early introduction to what would be a massive movement in the American public supporting the Great War and shaming those who didn't, the song America Here's My Boy was copyrighted on this day and very soon released:
This came, of course, just before the US entered the war, but it would end up being an early World War One American hit.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UJn9dHkD0E
I wouldn't rate it as great, but then music of this era. . . .
Anyhow, it was a bit of a reaction to I Didn't Raise My Boy To Be A Soldier.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHEqjMf7Ojo
Band sound similar to the one above?
It's the same one.
At any rate, I doubt America Here's My Boy "expressed the sentiment of every American mother." I learned the year prior to my own mother's death that she worried that war would break out the entire time I was in the National Guard.
A Canadian by birth, but of American parents, he had been in the U.S. Navy since 1880 following his graduation from the Naval Academy. The forward looking Sims would go on to command on U.S. Naval forces operating from the United Kingdom during World War One. He resumed the post of President of the Naval War College in 1919 and won the Pulitzer Prize for his book Victory At Sea in 1921. He retired at the mandatory age of 64 in 1922 but was still in the public eye in 1925 when he appeared on the cover of Time magazine.
I wonder if there's something wrong with February?
Or maybe just men in February.
I've been posting some newspapers recently, as they've been again been featuring Mexico and our troubles with it in 1917. But at the same time, there's been some really odd stories popping up.
Earlier in the week in a newspaper that I didn't put up there was a news story about a group of young men from Denver, all apparently of prominent families, in 1917, that were arrested and were clearly going to be convicted of violating the Mann Act. That statute, for those who might not be familiar with it, makes it a crime to take a woman across state lines for immoral purposes, which is what they did. Or rather, they took girls across as it reported that the girls danced for them sans clothing, with one being as young as 16 years of age. One of the young men was reported to be "getting a divorce".
Yeah, I bet he was.
And then yesterday we find that in Kemmerer there was a problem with "bear dancing". Well, there was also a problem with the headline writer at The Wyoming Tribune that day, as it wasn't "bear dancing", but rather females dancing bare. The saloons were ordered to knock it off.
The Wyoming Tribune for February 14, 1917. I'd like to see a saloon that featured dancing bears.
That's more like it.
Surprisingly the saloons were resisting the order, including the bear dancers, um, the bare dancers.
I should note that this past week, in 1917, was the week that Mata Hari was arrested, speaking of bare dancers.
Now, I would not have thought that bare dancing was really a thing in very many saloons in 1917. I guess it fits in with the gritty Sam Peckinpah version of the West, but not really the real West as I'd have imagined it. But maybe I was off the mark.
Moreover, I wouldn't have thought bare dancing in saloons a common thing in the West in 1917, let alone in Lincoln County, Wyoming. Kemmerer is part of the Mormon Hub of Eastern Wyoming and I'm certain that the Mormon's do not approve of dancing bare. Of course, they don't approve of saloons either to it would be safe to assume that whomever the patrons of the saloons were they were likely not practicing Mormons.
I'm a practicing Catholic which brings me to this. I don't approve of bare dancing in saloons either nor do I approve of Sports Illustrated's annual descent into pornography. That occurs, yes, in February.
Every year at this time Sports Illustrated takes a break from covering football, basketball, baseball and lawn tennis or whatever else it covers, and just goes flat out pornographic. I'm not sure how it chose February for its descent, but it may have something to do with it being the depth of winter (take that, January) or perhaps its because its truly the sports "garbage time".
No, not that Garbage Time. This one actually deals with sports.
Or perhaps its because its the depth of winter and, as the old saying goes, idleness truly is the devil's playground. Indeed, that would explain why young Denverites were hauling girls up into Cheyenne to dance for them sans clothing and why guys were hanging around in Kemmerer bars drinking and watching dancing bears. . .um bare dancing.
Anyhow, there is a serious side of this. 1917 was in the hard swing towards women's suffrage and it was shortly thereafter achieved in most of the Western World.
Bare or Bare dancing? Forget that. Vote.
The vote was a major strike in favor of women's equality with men. And true equality, not one that ignored their gender but respected it.
Bare dancing, let alone violating the Mann Act, certainly doesn't respect it. Nor does plastering it all over the pages of Sports Illustrated and claiming that it celebrates swimwear (which, I'd note, I don't think they really particularly even claim now as the swimwear is hardly there or indeed is actually absent). That's exploitation.
And as long as women are exploited in that fashion, not matter what their hopes and aspirations were in 1917, they'll never really be equal. An object isn't equal. It's an object.
Teenage machinist, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. An after school job in this case. Note that he appears to be wearing a tie, which would be regarded as a terrible safety violation in the present age.
The inefficiency of British agriculture and the commitment to free
trade was one of the factors why Britain imported the bulk of its food
from abroad. There were other factors as well as Jeremy Paxman noted,
the British, he wrote, “lived by trade, and the growth of imperial power
had rendered the country unable to feed itself any longer.” This
overdependence on imported food meant that supplies were vulnerable to
enemy attack . . .
The Laramie Boomerang ran an article blaming the trouble in Cuba and Mexico on Germany. The same story had the English about to land at Tampico, Mexico, to guard Mexican oilfields, upon which the British were in fact dependent.
And the city manager form of government, which would later become common in Wyoming, didn't pass the bar in 1917.
Here we learn more about what happened on the border. Mexican forces of some sort had crossed into the US and murdered three on American soil. Ironically, the murdered men were Hispanics, but then that likely didn't mean much to the raiders. An abduction also occurred.
It was rumored that the leader of the expedition that had just returned from Mexico, John J. Pershing, was about to marry. That would prove not to be the case. While he'd come close on occasion, Gen. Pershing never married again and remained a widow for the balance of his life.
Some regard this day as the last day of the Punitive Expedition.
Perhaps that's because US cavalry again crossed the border on this day, seeking to find three American cowboys who were taken by force into Mexico. So, American forces were back in Mexico on this day, or maybe it was just being reported on, on this day.
In other news, American ships were going down, the German Ambassador was leaving, somebody had insulted the Legislature and authorities had had enough of bears dancing in saloons in Lincoln County . . . or maybe that was another kind of dancing they'd had enough of. . .
And, having just gotten out of Mexico we were now thinking of getting into Cuba.
Major Eltinge had commanded an element of the 8th Cavalry in Mexico, so this speech was delivered hard on the heels of his recent experiences. He was a career Army officer, in the service since 1896 who would go on to rise to the brevet rank of Brigadier General as Deputy Chief of Staff of the AEF during World War One before reverting to his permanent rank of Major following the war. He'd re-obtain the rank of Brigadier General in 1924 and died while still a serving officer during World War Two.
A ship that served in World War Two was named in his honor.
Wyoming Lard Can, Fort Casper Museum. I was surprised to see it. I wish we had a can of it still. I used to have some stationary, but now I don't even have that.
Wyoming Lard.
We, that is my family, made that.
From about 1940, when my grandfather acquired the local packing plant, until his death, which was in the late 40s. The packing plant was sold at that time. My father had graduated high school, but was still a teenager at the time. So, suffice it to say, his future (he was in Casper College at the time, studying engineering) underwent a big change.
My father, because he was in Casper College at the time, must have had at least some plan to pursue engineering. He never spoke about that much and indeed I don't recall him speaking about it ever, actually. I knew that from my mother. When my grandfather died he went to work for the Post Office and the packing plant was sold. He liked the Post Office and planned on staying there but my grandmother would have none of that and insisted that he go on in his education. That was, I think, a very common view at that time, the late 1940s.
And so he did. He changed from engineering to dentistry at some point, and again, I don't know when. He was shortly in the University of Nebraska where he graduated in the early 1950s. He entered the Air Force after that and then came back to Casper.
He would speak about the packing house and working there, which he'd done as a teenager. My grandfather, who had quit school at age 13, wanted everyone to know what "real work" was like. Frankly, dentistry in the era when he did it was "real work" as well, and indeed it remains so. There's a common concept in the world that being a dentists means you don't work and you are rich, much like people think about being a lawyer. The opposite is very true, and in the era in which he practiced it was particularly true. Most of the dentists around here seemed displaced from agriculture in one way or another and they all had strong rural roots. When they gathered, they hardly ever spoke about dentistry. Indeed, I can recall a few conversations in which they did, even so many decades later, as they were that unusual.
Anyhow, it's interesting to see how things can take a sudden change. As my uncle has told me, at the time of his death, the packing house "was dong really well". It was making money, the family had sold the creamery which really didn't, and things were going fine. Then death intervened.
I doubt, had my grandfather lived, that my father would have become a dentist. I don't know what would have occurred. My grandfather was only his his 40s when he died. Would my father have gone to work there later? Maybe. He always fondly recalled the packing house and the work there. He was also frank, however, that the margins in the packing industry were, at that time, slim. That he knew that shows that he knew some of the business aspects of it even though he was a teenager at the time of his father's death. Over time, most of these smaller packing houses have gone away, including this one, which kept on into the 1970s when it finally closed. It was used as a welding shop after that, and then a big fire took it down in the 1980s or 1990s.
And so things go. Death intervenes and sends everyone into a new direction.
The full entry appears there. Or here, if you follow the link below the link, as it was originally posted here and then linked on to our other site.
So, an entire year has gone by, with lots of drama associated with it. And the drama just keeps on keeping on, it seems.
Both of the nominees to fill this position have been good justices. The GOP held up President Obama's nominee, however, as they correctly surmised (probably) that approving that nominee would tilt the court to the left for decades. It was quite a gamble on their part, but they read things correctly and were not only not punished at the polls for their actions, but probably gained a significant number of votes by doing it. Democrats have cried foul but in reality not approving Supreme Court nominees is not novel, and indeed treating them very badly isn't novel either.
Now the Democrats are threatening to hold up President Trump's nominees. But they seemingly fail to grasp that they don't have the votes to do that, they can only delay it. And there's no good reason to believe that achieves anything politically. They ought not to try that, but they likely will.
Carranza, who was settling in as the recognized head of the Mexican government, but still fighting a civil war himself, entered the picture of the Great War by proposing an arms embargo. Some cynics suggested German influence in his proposal.
1917 The Wyoming Legislature appropriated $750 to move Jim Baker's cabin from Carbon County to Cheyenne. Baker was a frontiersman who came West working for the American Fur Company. He was later Chief Scout for Gen. Harney out of Ft. Laramie. In 1859 he homesteaded at a location that is now within Denver Colorado. He held a commission in the Colorado State Militia during the Civil War. He relocated to a site near Savery Wyoming in 1873 and homesteaded there. He continued to ranch in that location until his death in 1898, although he did serve the Army as a scout occasionally in the 1870s.
People tend to think of fur in terms of fashion. And fur is thought of in terms of fashion because its expensive. It was worn, however, as it was practical.
It's easy to think otherwise, in our day of synthetics. But, in thinking on it, fur is a renewable natural resource where as synthetics can be the opposite.
This is St. Benedict Catholic Church in Roundup Montana. The church is built in a fairly modern style, although I do not know the year of construction. It's located directly across the street from the Musselshell County Courthouse.
