Monday, April 14, 2014
Tuesday, April 14, 1914. Opening Day and Threats in Mexico.
The region had been part of China until it broke away during the 1911 Revolution.
Ogden Utah, April 14, 1914.
Last prior edition:
Easter Sunday, April 12, 1914. Rumblings of revolution.
Sunday, April 13, 2014
Burdens of History. Russia, and not getting it.
Russia has been in the news a lot recently.
That's obviously an understatement, and a cynic might state that "when isn't it?", but Russia hasn't always loomed large in our minds here in the US, like it has in the minds of other nations, principally its neighbors. This is the case for a variety of reasons that have to do with its history, and also with ours.
Russians don't form, by and large, a demographic we think of much in terms of our immigrant past. This is not to say that there have not been Russian immigrants to the US, there have been, but not in the numbers that other European nations have, if we define Europe to be that land East of the Urals. Yes, Russians have immigrated to the US, but even that immigration tells us something about Russia that we generally fail to grasp.
The Russians are not a European people, and the sooner we figure that out, the better. Oh, I know that some student of geography will point out that Russia less Siberia is in continental Europe, which is perfectly true, and I know others would be shocked by that statement as the Russians look European, but they aren't.
How is this true.
Well, we have to look at what is Europe, and we can make a pretty good case that if it isn't Roman, it isn't Europe.
Most of what we think of as European today is European because the Romans were there. The remainder is that area which Rome influenced, or at least the Latin Rite of the Church did in antiquity. That's not only pretty significant, its enormously determinant of our cultural outlook.
The Roman Empire occupied all of Europe south of the Rhine River. A pretty big patch of it. It also came to occupy the Greek world, which at that time included Greece, the Balkans, Turkey and North Africa. Some will point out that not all of these regions were really "Greek", but it can be noted that they were more Greek than perhaps we suppose, as the Greeks had exhibited a strong influence in the regions where they had gone, even if they were a tiny minority there. True, we wouldn't expect a majority population of Greeks anywhere in Libya or Palestine, but that doesn't mean that the Greeks weren't part of that world. They were. And the Romans certainly came to be, although that's outside of our story.
South of the Rhine and south of Hadrian's Wall in Britain the world was Roman. North of it, it wasn't Roman dominated, but the Romans exhibited influence. When Rome fell in the 5th Century, it left much of its culture and it certainly left, by that time, the Church.
When Rome fell, and the Germans flooded south, and the Scots landed in Britain, a pagan non Romanized people were introduced to new lands. But that introduction flowed both ways. It wasn't really long before these new people adopted some things that the Romans had left and they very quickly became members of the Latin Rite of the Church. The spreading of the Church took some time, to be sure. Scandinavia, for example, was brought into the Christian fold late, and even Poland was pagan for much longer than we would generally suppose, but it did occur.
That's hugely significant in terms of culture. Rome had the view that nationality mattered less than central achievement. The Roman Empire was founded on crime and was always corrupt, but amazingly it developed high concepts of human unity and it tended to disregard a person's ethnicity in favor of their abilities. The concept that Celts, Arabs, Greeks, Italians and others could all belong to the same political entity was an amazingly broad one in that or any other era. The Greeks had regarded non Greeks as barbarians. The Romans regarded barbarians as being those who did not have the benefit of Roman rule, a distinctively different concept. When Rome fell, and the Church remained, it left a situation in which the foundation of learning and knowledge was not tribal or national at all, but universal, vested in the institutions of the Universal Church.
So what does that have to do with Russia? Well, Everything.
Russia was a Slavic land on the crossroads of invasion from the East and West. From the East came Asian peoples who had a clear path of invasion, uninhibited by geography. From the west this was also true. Russia's people fell to these invaders time and time again. Even the name "Russia" comes from one, the Rus, a Scandinavian people who left their legacy in the form of a name, some cities, and in the strong strain of blue eyes and blond hair that Russians exhibit, unusual for Slavic peoples.
Russia was Christianized from Constantinople. It wasn't the only country which received its Christianizing missionaries from the seat at Constantinople by any means, and the Church in East was part of the Universal Church at the time. But that still would have a different influence in some ways than being part of the Latin Church tended to be. Vast expanses of territory proved so difficult in the end that, prior to the Great Schism, Constantinople granted Moscow its own seat, making the Eastern Church in Russia self governing. When the Great Schism came, Russia went with Constantinople, although not to the degree now commonly imagined. A major part of the Russian Church made an effort to recognize the Bishop of Rome as the head of the Church, but ultimately that effort mostly failed in Russia proper.
All of this means that Russia is a nation that is simply not European the way that other nations West of the Urals on the European Continent are. It's been subject to repeated invasion to the extent that it is xenophobic. It's culture owes little to the same influences that other European nations do. In terms of its primary historic institutions, its leadership, its army, its Church, it does not look towards the same greater influences that other nations do. Even the introduction of European influences, sometimes occasionally wildly in vogue in Russia, have come as quasi-exotic, or have been forced upon the Russians by leaders who saw their advantages.
Okay, so if that's true, so what?
Well, we're having to live with, or put up with, a pretty active Russia right now. And we just don't get it. It's clear that our last two presidents really don't get it, with this one not getting it to such an extent he probably ought to go sit in the corner and read up on Russia.
Russia is historically an imperial nation in which the Great Russians conceive of themselves as the protectors of the Slavic, and more particularly Orthodox, world in a way that we can't imagine as we haven't seen a power like this since for a very long time, outside of Russia itself. They feel this way about things in the same way that the Japanese felt about Asia prior to 1945, or perhaps the way that Germans felt that way about all things German up until 1945., although both of these are imperfect analogies. We would have supposed that the historically brief and failed experiment with Communism from 1917 (or really, for most of Russia, some point in the 1920s) until 1990 would have changed that, but you cannot really change a culture by force in 70 years. Particularly not a culture that is as strong as the Russian culture is. Their culture was, to be sure, extremely badly damaged, and the introduction of the virus of Communism lives on as a strain of infection in the culture in a way that we also don't grasp, but Russia re emerged, after the fall of Communism, ultimately as a Russian nation, after a brief experiment at being a European one.
So what does that mean?
Well, it means that the Russian people, outside of two species of dissident, are conservative in a traditional sense, and are not democratic by habit. They're also Russian Orthodox in outlook, if not all in practice by any means. They also will unite behind their ethnicity in a way that Europeans cannot even imagine being today.
Even their dissidents are largely Russian in character. A few are heavily Europeanized, but that has always been the case. We look towards them, justifiably, as the ones who have the most in common with us. But they're overwhelmingly located in urban centers, and frankly mostly located just in Moscow. Others are really species of Bolshevik revolutionaries, fire breathers who would tear down everything in society as the extreme leftist of 1917 would have done, but we don't recognize them as such. When Americans and Europeans cry for members of an all female band as if they're Jeffersonian democrats, we're foolish in the extreme. We're better off looking at them as the latter day kindred spirits of those who went Red deep in 1917 through 1930.
So, in looking toward Russia, we better get over the idea that it's going to become a true liberal democracy any time soon. It isn't. And we better get used to the idea that any place it once had imperial rule over, it would like to again. Ultimately, only the fear that it will go to far in recapturing the Czars lands will keep it from reclaiming what it lost after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Most problematic over all of that is that anywhere there's a large Russian population, and there is in most of the former Soviet lands, it's going to view itself as having a right to rule, or at least intervene on behalf of Russians. Simply yapping at the Russians is not going to change that. And the idea that economic sanctions will is stupid.
But that doesn't mean that the Russians are a new Soviet Empire in the making. They are not. Looking back to the Czars empire is a better analogy, and Europe was always able to do that. That will require Europe to resume having a sense of itself, however, which right now it doesn't seem to. And in a way, Russia can do the Europeans a bit of a favor in those regards.
Saturday, April 12, 2014
Easter Sunday, April 12, 1914. Rumblings of revolution.
The IWW was meeting in New York City, and had a large gathering in Union Square. The theme of "bread and revolution" obviously had come up.
In Russia, where Easter Sunday was still a week a way, Czar Nicholas II, who would very soon be facing protests by those seeking "bread and revolution", presented the now famous Mosic Fabrege egg, created by Albert Holmström under the supervision of Peter Carl Fabergé, to Empress Alexandra Feodorovna, as well as giving his mother Maria Feodorovna another one which became known as the Catherine the Great egg.
Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin D. Roosevelt dedicated the opening of the Cabrillo Bridge in San Diego.
A convention in Hot Springs, Arkansas which established the Pentecostal Assemblies of God branch of Protestantism adjourned. It is now the largest branch of Pentecostalism.
Charles Crupelandt won the 19th Paris–Roubaix tour.
Governor Carey was in an argument.
Last prior edition:
Good Friday, April 10, 1914. Villa takes San Pedro.
Friday, April 11, 2014
Thursday, April 10, 2014
Good Friday, April 10, 1914. Villa takes San Pedro.
Villa drove the Federals out of San Pedro, Coahuila, Mexico.
Last prior edition:
Thursday, April 9, 1914. Drama at Tampico.
Wednesday, April 9, 2014
Alas, (with apologies to Shakespeare).
Alas, poor XP! I knew him, Horatio; an operating system of infinite jest, of
most excellent fancy; it hath borne me on its back a thousand times; and
now, how abhorred in my imagination it is! My gorge rims at it. Here
hung those icons that I have clicked I know not how oft. Where be your
gibes now? Your gambols? Your songs? Your flashes of merriment, that
were wont to set the table on a roar?
Mid Week at Work: The Barber
For this week's entry on our occasional series, Mid Week At Work, we have a photograph of a barber, circa the 1940s. Caption data indicates that this barber had been in business 14 years at the time that this photograph was taken.
Our entry today was inspired by another item posted today on shaving, as shaves are something that barbers routinely did up until the safety razor became predominate, and most barbers still offer saves. I think I've only seen one do one once, which was on the occasion of a fellow with a big beard coming in to have it shaved off.
Barber Shops are an institution, although oddly enough not as common of one as they once were. It would have been impossible up through the 1950s at least to imagine an era when there'd be fewer barbers than their used to be, but starting in the late 1970s that in facdt became the case. It probably started off with the long hair fashion of the 1960s, which came in at fist as a fashion, then evolved (with hair length) into a species of hairy rebellion (witness the musical "Hair!") and then returned to being a fashion. By the late 1970s all that hair saw the introduction of an occupation called a "hair stylist" which looked dangerously close to the existing occupation of "hair dresser" to most men who were 40 years old or older at the time. In rural areas, hair stylist still looks suspiciously close to hair dresser to a lot of men, although the stylist seems here to stay.
With the stylist came the decline of the barber and the barber shop, which is a shame. Barber Shops remain unique places. In a world in which very few places remain strongly male or female, barber shops are male. They always have been. That doesn't mean that women aren't welcome to walk in one, and you'll occasionally see women do just that, but when they do, they aren't there to have their hair done so much as to drop a kid off or sometimes to chat about one of the topics that are bastions of conversation in barber shops.
And bastions of conversation they are. Sports are a huge topic in barber shops. In rural areas outdoors activities are as well. My barber and I usually converse hunting, fishing and automobiles, I don't know much about sports, although the barber shop is the one place that I might be able to learn a little about sports. Barber Shops are also places of great social equality. Every occupation needs their hair cut, and Barber Shops have always been places where professions and occupations of all types mixed, side by side. I've been in barber shops where, and I'm not joking, the clinically insane sat right next to lawyers, waiting for haircuts. And I've seen everything from heavily tattooed roughnecks to Catholic Priests waiting for their turn at the chair.
It's always surprised me that barber shops have declined because they are such unique institutions and because, quite frankly, economically they compete quite well with the stylists. Perhaps they're something that we can hope for a revival of, in the future.
The Law, Scams, and why we will do stuff the old way.
Technology has enormously impacted the practice of law. But in an enterprise in which concerns for precedence and stare decisis are major concerns, it's sometimes the case that the institution baffles the public, and even lawyers, by its reluctance to more rapidly fully adopt changing technology.
I've heard questions raised, for example as to why the law hasn't more rapidly adopted the internet for service of documents. I think those of us who practice law right now are probably all getting an introduction in that.
Right now, some spammers, seeking to achieve what end I do not know, have launched a campaign in which they send out what appear to be summons of various types by email. These appear to be jury summons, or court summons, or sometimes summons related to court cases great and small. All bogus.
No court sends anything like this out by email. Process is still done mostly the old fashioned way, by hand through a process server of one kind or another. Service by mail exists under the rules for some things, but that's specifically by a certain process. Likewise there is service by publication. And once cases are commenced, service is now done electronically in Federal Courts, and in some state courts, via a court controlled system. Some courts now allow, in civil cases, service from one lawyer to another by email, but that's a different matter entirely than service of process via a cold email.
In no instance of which I'm aware does any court presume it knows your email address and email you a summons.
Here the wisdom of retaining the old ways are shown. People abandon email addresses like yesterday's news. Nothing could be more calculated not to work, than service by email.
No doubt this scan, whatever it is aimed at, must work for something. All the sadder in that case.
I've heard questions raised, for example as to why the law hasn't more rapidly adopted the internet for service of documents. I think those of us who practice law right now are probably all getting an introduction in that.
Right now, some spammers, seeking to achieve what end I do not know, have launched a campaign in which they send out what appear to be summons of various types by email. These appear to be jury summons, or court summons, or sometimes summons related to court cases great and small. All bogus.
No court sends anything like this out by email. Process is still done mostly the old fashioned way, by hand through a process server of one kind or another. Service by mail exists under the rules for some things, but that's specifically by a certain process. Likewise there is service by publication. And once cases are commenced, service is now done electronically in Federal Courts, and in some state courts, via a court controlled system. Some courts now allow, in civil cases, service from one lawyer to another by email, but that's a different matter entirely than service of process via a cold email.
In no instance of which I'm aware does any court presume it knows your email address and email you a summons.
Here the wisdom of retaining the old ways are shown. People abandon email addresses like yesterday's news. Nothing could be more calculated not to work, than service by email.
No doubt this scan, whatever it is aimed at, must work for something. All the sadder in that case.
Shaving
West Point Cadet shaving with a straight razor in the field.
The first thing I do every weekday, or at least every weekday that I work downtown, is shave.
I don't really like shaving. I don't want to grow a beard however, so shave I must. I've been shaving, but not every day, since I was 13 years old.
As noted, I frankly don't care much for it, and I'd likely skip shaving a lot of days if I had the option. It sort of irritates my skin, and it's just not something that I look forward to doing in any fashion. Still, for the most part it's been part of my daily routine for decades. Having said that, prior to my practicing law, I'd skip days now and then, including week days, and I still skip Saturdays usually. Just because I don't like it.
Shaving is one of those things humans do that go back into vast antiquity. You wouldn't think so, but it does. Shaving certainly goes back to classical antiquity, the Romans for example were normally (but not always) clean shaven. But it goes further back than that. People who have researched this topic claim there's evidence of ancient cultures sometimes shaving with pieces of obsidian, which is that sharp. It's also be darned dangerous.
At some point that practice gave way to shaving with razors, a type of extremely sharp knife with unique angles. Razors were a permanent fixture, i.e., unlike now you didn't toss them out after the edge grew dull, but rather resharpened the edge, or kept it sharp, with a leather strop.
It took some skill to shave with a blade like that, and getting cut was pretty common. People often chose to get shaved in a barber shop, if they happened to be in one, probably simply to avoid having to use the difficult implement themselves. Generally, barbers today still have them on hand, and some use them to finish a haircut where the hair meets the beard line or neckline.
Shaving is much less of a pain now than it was in prior eras. Thanks to the safety razor.
At some point that practice gave way to shaving with razors, a type of extremely sharp knife with unique angles. Razors were a permanent fixture, i.e., unlike now you didn't toss them out after the edge grew dull, but rather resharpened the edge, or kept it sharp, with a leather strop.
It took some skill to shave with a blade like that, and getting cut was pretty common. People often chose to get shaved in a barber shop, if they happened to be in one, probably simply to avoid having to use the difficult implement themselves. Generally, barbers today still have them on hand, and some use them to finish a haircut where the hair meets the beard line or neckline.
Soldier receiving shave from unit barber with straight razor.
Shaving is much less of a pain now than it was in prior eras. Thanks to the safety razor.
Patent drawing for the Gillette safety razor.
The safety razors was an invention which allowed for a disposable razor blade to be held in a device that thereby allowed the user to dispense with a razor, i.e., the true super sharp knife. The design was perfected in the early 20th Century and provided in large numbers to U.S. troops in World War One. Thereafter it rapidly replaced the old razor. The device was the safety razor, as it was safer to use than the old hand held blade.
Man shaving with "safety razor." Dish was brush for making lather can be seen on sink.
Safety razors themselves are a think of the past now. When I first started shaving, that's what I had, and I used them for what seemed like a long time but it really was not. At some point in the late 1970s Bic introduced the disposable razor, which you started to see around a lot. And about the same time some company introduced a new style of razor with a disposable head. When I went to back training, we were required to have two of that type (one of which we never used, as we stored it in our locker so that it was always clean for inspections.
That was the first time I had used one of the new type razors. When I came back from basic training I briefly went back to the old safety razor, but the new razors really were much better and much more difficult to cut yourself with. Even with safety razors cutting yourself accidentally was pretty common. At some point in the 1980s the manufacturers stopped making blades for them entirely.
At some point in the 20th Century, most like in the 1920s or 1930s, and certainly by the 1930s, electric shavers started to make their appearance. Early ones are downright scary to see in photographs, as they actually plugged in. Given that people were using them around sinks and what not, it's amazing that people didn't routinely electrocute themselves. But by the 1950s they started to be battery operated. My father had one that he hardly ever used, and which I think he bought for traveling. I have one as well, for a similar reason. If I go to industrial plants, and need to shave my mustache off due to plant restrictions, I have it with me. Otherwise, I don't use it.
When men used old fashioned razors, they also made their own lather. This involved using soap chips, which we largely just throw away now, and mixing them up in a bowl with a brush. You can still get all of these things, including the brush, if you want to do any part of this the old way. According to those who have tried it, the soapy lather made in this fashion is superior to the stuff in the can, but a good brush is outrageously expensive, with badger hairs being the favored material for construction of the brush.
Soldiers hanging around, one shaving, 1918.
That was the first time I had used one of the new type razors. When I came back from basic training I briefly went back to the old safety razor, but the new razors really were much better and much more difficult to cut yourself with. Even with safety razors cutting yourself accidentally was pretty common. At some point in the 1980s the manufacturers stopped making blades for them entirely.
At some point in the 20th Century, most like in the 1920s or 1930s, and certainly by the 1930s, electric shavers started to make their appearance. Early ones are downright scary to see in photographs, as they actually plugged in. Given that people were using them around sinks and what not, it's amazing that people didn't routinely electrocute themselves. But by the 1950s they started to be battery operated. My father had one that he hardly ever used, and which I think he bought for traveling. I have one as well, for a similar reason. If I go to industrial plants, and need to shave my mustache off due to plant restrictions, I have it with me. Otherwise, I don't use it.
Electric shaver, 1930s.
When men used old fashioned razors, they also made their own lather. This involved using soap chips, which we largely just throw away now, and mixing them up in a bowl with a brush. You can still get all of these things, including the brush, if you want to do any part of this the old way. According to those who have tried it, the soapy lather made in this fashion is superior to the stuff in the can, but a good brush is outrageously expensive, with badger hairs being the favored material for construction of the brush.
Canned shaving cream, by the way, is what people used to use around here to dress cattle up for 4H shows, fwiw. It dries pretty stiff.
At some point in the 20th Century, commercially prepared shaving cream became available, with it first being available in tubes, like toothpaste. The canned shaving cream wasn't invented until 1949, in spite of what hte clever series of Barbisol "Shave Like A Man" commercials might suggest (Barbisol did exist prior to that, but in tube packaged form).
It's been occasionally noted here, in spite of the routine departures from it, that the main point of this blog is to explore the period of roughly 1880 to 1920. Here a least is something that routine and strange at the same time, the change in the way men shave. And I have to note that as much as I dislike shaving, and I do, I still shave most days. I don't want to grow a beard. But had I lived a century ago I'm afraid I would have liked shaving much less. I can see why some individuals chose to grow beards even in well shorn eras, such as Henry Cabot Lodge who kept his beard in hairy and clean shaven eras.
Henry Cabot Lodge, not a shaver.
Indeed it amazes me that there were eras that were so clean shaven before the safety razor. You have some eras, like the Civil War era, when everyone gave up on their razors and grew beards, but you have others where everyone is shaved like, for the most part, the late 19th and early 20th Centuries. Indeed, in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries solders were not restricted from growing beards, like they started to be with the introduction of the gas mask during World War One, but almost none of them did (mustaches were another matter). Likewise, you'll hardly ever see a photograph of a cowboy with a beard.
The added amazing part of that, to me, is that these individuals were shaving in the field, which would have involved packing a straight razor and soap chips. Pretty involved process for people living with a minimal number of things really. I've shaved in the field, while in the National Guard and in basic training, but I never liked doing it and always felt like I was scratching my face up.
In contrast, now we have quite a few men who like to have a couple of days beard growth all the time. That's a look I don't get, but it's become extremely common and accepted. To me, it always looks like these individuals need a shave, or are growing a beard, but they're not. That's the look they're shooting for. I've even seen lawyers adopt it, albeit always young lawyers where that look is more common and in.
Anyhow, this post is another noting a trend, and an observation. Had I lived a century ago, I suspect I would have disliked shaving even more than I do, or been one of those guys who just chucked it and grew a beard.
Thursday, April 9, 1914. Drama at Tampico.
USS Dolphin.
Things really begin to go down the tubes between Gen. Huerta's Mexico and the United States when Federal authorities arrested 8 U.S. sailors from the USS Dolphin, assuming for some reason that they were Constitutionalist.
The sailors were released, but U.S. Rear Admiral Henry T. Mayo demanded a 21-gun salute and formal apology from the Mexican government. Huerta gave a written apology instead but refused to have his forces raise the U.S. flag on Mexican soil to provide a 21-gun salute, for which he really can't be blamed.
US cries for intervention in Mexico, immediately followed.
On the same day, Captain Gustavo Salinas Camiña, flying for the Constitutionalists, piloted a Glenn L. Martin biplane loaded with explosives in an attack on Mexican Federal gunboats Guerrero and Morelos, which were blocking Tampico's harbor. Neither plane nor ships were hit. It was the first aerial attack on ships.
Last prior edition:
Tuesday, April 7, 1914. Last spike on the Grand Trunk Pacific
Tuesday, April 8, 2014
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