Monday, March 24, 2014
Sunday, March 23, 2014
Forces with History -- Official Blog of Robert W Mackay: A Great War Election With a Twist
Forces with History -- Official Blog of Robert W Mackay: A Great War Election With a Twist: Here is a review I did recently for a book by Debbie Marshall , an Alberta historian. Give Your Other Vote to the Sister is a fasci...
Monday, March 23, 1914. Doubts about Roosevelt's fate on the River of Doubt.
We just posted an item for 1909 on Theodore Roosevelt leaving the US for his legendary 1909, 1910 safari. Famously, after losing his effort to regain the Presidency in the three-way race in 1912, he embarked on the exploration of what was then known as the River of Doubt, or more officially the Roosevelt–Rondon Scientific Expedition
That trip was plagued by horrific events, one of which was detailed in this edition of the Cheyenne based Wyoming Tribune.
It's often noted that Roosevelt never recovered from this trip, but that can be somewhat debated. It's true he was never himself thereafter, but Roosevelt had been a vigorous proponent of "the Strenuous Life" and had lived it. While this is fully admirable, and today would be cited to some degree as a life extending practice, Roosevelt had experienced ill health with asthma in his youth (as have I), and had been shot during the 1912 campaign. Four years of semi enforced idleness as Vice President and President had taken their toll as well, and by the time he left office in 1909 he was, in my view, beginning to significantly age even though he was not yet 60.
Having said that, he made a really dedicated effort to join the Army as head of an expeditionary unit during World War One, so he had plenty of vigor left, even after these ordeals.
It's also noteworthy how, just before World War One, there was plenty of exploration of the remote regions of the globe still going on. The era immediately before the war seems to have been the last great push in the age of exploration.
Last prior edition:
March 21, 1914. Yo acuso
Related threads:
Tuesday, March 23, 1909. Bound for Africa.
Friday, March 21, 2014
Agricultural Cluelessness: Nevada Farmers Hack The Drought By Switching Up The Crops : The Salt : NPR
NPR has a story on farmers in Nevada and drought:
Nevada Farmers Hack The Drought By Switching Up The Crops : The Salt : NPR
That this sort of thing is going on is no suprise, so I wouldn't have even linked this in here save for one of the comments, which is clueless. It states:
west simply has too many people living in it, for farming to be
sustainable for long periods of time!" is amazingly ignorant.
People don't farm the west for the west. The west hasn't had that sort of agricultural economy for a century or longer, if we're talking about crops. Farmers in the US farm for the entire country really. Granted, there is local farming, but if a person feels that farming is the thing that's endangering the West due to the human population, they probably have the story reversed.
Framing in the Southwest, where this story is focused, has been going on at some level since for hundreds of years. Modern farming implements and practices may be having a negative impact, but the thing that's really unsustainable in the west are cities built without regard to the supply of water. Water mining is really common, for cities, in the southwest, and that is something that ultimately defeats istself.
I guess the main thing that irritates me about a comment like this is the seeming ignorance of the person commenting on the huge modern farming infrastructure of our nation. Fruits and vegetables on most people's tables come from hundreds or even thousands of miles away, and indeed quite a few come from south of the border. The farmer in this photo may produce a crop that's just as likely to be served on a dinner table in New Jersey as it is in Las Vegas. There is a local food movement, of course, but only a tiny percentage of Americans participate in it, and the assumption the writer made is almost surely off the mark.
Nevada Farmers Hack The Drought By Switching Up The Crops : The Salt : NPR
That this sort of thing is going on is no suprise, so I wouldn't have even linked this in here save for one of the comments, which is clueless. It states:
Humans once farmed parts of what is now the Sahara desert! The aridThe arid west may or may not have too many people living in it. Those of us who grow up here and like our room probably largely agree with that, and tend to cringe when some newcomer comes in and tells us how he or she moved here as "I just love how empty it is", not realizing that the huge check they brought from the sale of their out of state home which will be used for the construction of a new one, and their presence in and of itself, operates against the very thing they declare they love. Be that as it may, the statement that; "The arid
west simply has too many people living in it, for farming to be
sustainable for long periods of time!
west simply has too many people living in it, for farming to be
sustainable for long periods of time!" is amazingly ignorant.
People don't farm the west for the west. The west hasn't had that sort of agricultural economy for a century or longer, if we're talking about crops. Farmers in the US farm for the entire country really. Granted, there is local farming, but if a person feels that farming is the thing that's endangering the West due to the human population, they probably have the story reversed.
Framing in the Southwest, where this story is focused, has been going on at some level since for hundreds of years. Modern farming implements and practices may be having a negative impact, but the thing that's really unsustainable in the west are cities built without regard to the supply of water. Water mining is really common, for cities, in the southwest, and that is something that ultimately defeats istself.
I guess the main thing that irritates me about a comment like this is the seeming ignorance of the person commenting on the huge modern farming infrastructure of our nation. Fruits and vegetables on most people's tables come from hundreds or even thousands of miles away, and indeed quite a few come from south of the border. The farmer in this photo may produce a crop that's just as likely to be served on a dinner table in New Jersey as it is in Las Vegas. There is a local food movement, of course, but only a tiny percentage of Americans participate in it, and the assumption the writer made is almost surely off the mark.
March 21, 1914. Yo acuso
A commission set up by Venustiano Carranza confirmed British rancher William S. Benton had been stabbed to death in Pancho Villa's office by Major Rudolfo Fierro.
The commission further claimed Villa invented the court martial story to protect Fierro, who was distantly related to him.
Fierro played the role of Villa's executioner until he died in an accident in 1915, being thrown from his horse and drowning in quicksand.
Anarchist marched in New York City.
Last prior edition:
Thursday, March 20, 2014
How the heck does a person figure out what to do?
Truckin' got my chips cashed in. Keep truckin', like the do-dah man
Together, more or less in line, just keep truckin' on.
Arrows of neon and flashing marquees out on Main Street.
Chicago, New York, Detroit and it's all on the same street.
Your typical city involved in a typical daydream
Hang it up and see what tomorrow brings.
Dallas, got a soft machine; Houston, too close to New Orleans;
New York's got the ways and means; but just won't let you be, oh no.
Most of the cast that you meet on the streets speak of true love,
Most of the time they're sittin' and cryin' at home.
One of these days they know they better get goin'
Out of the door and down on the streets all alone.
Truckin', like the do-dah man. Once told me "You've got to play your hand"
Sometimes your cards ain't worth a dime, if you don't lay'em down,
Sometimes the light's all shinin' on me;
Other times I can barely see.
Lately it occurres to me What a long, strange trip it's been.
What in the world ever became of sweet Jane?
She lost her sparkle, you know she isn't the same
Livin' on reds, vitamin C, and cocaine,
All a friend can say is "Ain't it a shame?"
Truckin', up to Buffalo. Been thinkin', you got to mellow slow
Takes time, you pick a place to go, and just keep truckin' on.
Sittin' and starin' out of the hotel window.
Got a tip they're gonna kick the door in again
I'd like to get some sleep before I travel,
But if you got a warrant, I guess you're gonna come in.
Busted, down on Bourbon Street, Set up, like a bowlin' pin.
Knocked down, it get's to wearin' thin. They just won't let you be, oh no.
You're sick of hangin' around and you'd like to travel;
Get tired of travelin' and you want to settle down.
I guess they can't revoke your soul for tryin',
Get out of the door and light out and look all around.
Sometimes the light's all shinin' on me;
Other times I can barely see.
Lately it occurres to me What a long, strange trip it's been.
Truckin', I'm a goin' home. Whoa whoa baby, back where I belong,
Back home, sit down and patch my bones, and get back truckin' on.
Hey now get back truckin' home.
Truckin by the Grateful Deal.
How does a young person determine what direction to go in life? I.e., how do we expect those looking to graduate from high school to know what to do as a career? This isn't a rhetorical question, I really have no idea.
Back when I was in high school the local schools made next to no effort to assist with this at all. We had guidance counselors, but the guidance we received was simply not there. Maybe it would have been if we asked, I suppose, but most 17 year old males aren't going to walk into the guidance office and ask. I know that I didn't.
I did have to go there, but only because my guidance counselor had to sign off on a paper that I'd seen him in order for me to graduate. All high school seniors had this requirement. This presented a problem for me as it seemed that my counselor was sort of like Major Major in Catch 22, you could only see him when he wasn't in. Try as I might, I could never catch him in his office. Finally I went into school very early in the morning and sat outside of his door until he showed up. He did, of course, and had sort of a crestfallen look on his face to see me there. He signed off on my sheet, never asking me about my career plans.
That was pretty inadequate guidance.
Joey tried to help me find a job
A while ago
When I finally got it I didn't want to go
The party Mary gave for me
When I just walked away
Now there's nothing left for me to say
All the burning bridges that have fallen after me
All the lonely feelings and the burning memories
Everyone I left behind each time I closed the door
Burning bridges lost forevermore
Years have passed and I keep thinking
What a fool I've been
I look back into the past and
Think of way back then
I know that I lost everything I thought that I could win
I guess I should have listened to my friends
All the burning bridges that have fallen after me
All the lonely feelings and the burning memories
Everyone I left behind each time I closed the door
Burning bridges lost forevermore
Friday, March 20, 1914. The Curragh Muntiny
The Curragh Mutiny saw British Army officers stationed at Curragh Camp, Ireland resign their commissions rather than face being ordered to resist the Ulster Volunteers, should the Home Rule Bill pass.
It was a rare example of something like this working, in that the British government backed down, and they were reinstated.
"The Sunny South".
Pancho Villa sent 12,000 troops to recapture Torreón, Coahuila, Mexico from 9,000 federal troops stationed in the city.
Panama-Pacific International Exposition--San Francisco, Calif., construction.
Wednesday, March 19, 2014
Romanticizing the Past
One of the things a lot of blogs like this one do is to romanticize the past. It's really common on some "looking back" blogs, and then accidental in others. I suppose its both here.
Be that as it may, it's really important, when looking back, to credit what was better, and some, maybe many, things really were, while at the same time being realistic about the past. A lot of things were pretty dicey, quite frankly, about any one historical era. And, as part of that, knowing something about the mindset of any one era is important when looking back at it as well.
One thing that stands out enormously between the past and the present is the state of medical care. We're so used to the type of medical care we now have, the availability of fairly effective medicines, that we can hardly grasp how that was once not the case. Some types of diseases, like asthma for example, have increased in the modern era, which is worrying, but at the same time many diseases, such as asthma, are treatable now and really weren't once. Asthma was darned near a death sentence for some up until the second half of the 20th Century. People didn't understand what caused it, and treatments for it were crude at best. The book Mornings On Horseback gives one of the best descriptions of the condition of asthma in any era, and gives a fantastic description of how young Theodore Roosevelt, an asthmatic, was treated for the condition as a child. When he went into an asthmatic attack, he was loaded into a buggy and required to smoke a cigar as the buggy went at high speed through the streets of New York. That sounds absurd now, but that's what they did.
Medicines have become so common, in fact, that there's debate about whether some treat real conditions or not. Behavior medicines are something that wouldn't even have been considered necessary up until maybe the 1960s when they really started to come in for the first time.
Serious injury and premature death is still with us, but not like it once was. According to something I read quite awhile back, in the 19th Century the majority of men in the US, by their 40s, lived with a chronic injury. I can believe it. Indeed, at age 50 I have some aches and pains that I know stem back from some old injury, and that most men endured that is pretty believable. When you look at photos of Americans in their 60s, or even 50s, that are 50 or more years old its almost shocking as they tend to look so old. In contrast, quite a few, but certainly not all, Americans in that age range today look much younger (although not all do). Men in their 40s, prior to 1950, generally have a much older appearance than men in their 40s do today.
Premature death in males was so common in the late 19th Century that the number of women who raised a child, for some time, as a single parent is about the same number who do today. The reasons were different, however. They had been married and their spouse was killed in some sort of an accident.
This isn't the only example of this, by any means. It's really common to see things like "those were a more peaceful time" or "that was a simpler time". For a lot of people, these statements weren't true at any one point in the past. Certainly immigrants living in densely packed crime ridden east coast ghettos weren't living a peaceful life. Members of the Irish diaspora, pretty much anywhere, faced a pretty rough life. Big populations of people from European and even the Middle East were on the move in the early part of the 20th Century for a reason.
Wars were pretty darned bad in various early eras as well. Contrary to what people want to believe, there are fewer and fewer wars on the entire planet every year. A human being is less likely to fight in a war now that any time in the history of civilization. Indeed, in certain earlier eras a male was practically guaranteed to fight in a war, and the loosing side's female population was guaranteed to receive the worst possible humiliating treatment. This sort of thing has resided to an all time low, which doesn't mean that it doesn't still happen.
All this isn't to say that there aren't some thing in the past that are better than now. There are, and people who like to maintain everything now is prefect are fooling themselves. Somethings that people take as progress are not, and some things in terms of social norms are actually swinging pendulum type deals which will reverse course and go in another direction, at some point. For certain occupations, those which are passing into history because of technology, this isn't a good time, if you occupy one of those occupations and like your job. For others, where this is an era of uncertainty, that's also true. For some classic occupations, like farmer, this is the roughest time imaginable for people in the Western world, as the dreams and aspirations of somebody not born into it are nearly unrealizable.
But, all in all, in looking at anyone era, we need to be careful about romanticizing it.
Standards of Dress: Office, city and town wear over the past century.
A motivational poster from the 1920s. By modern standards, nearly any city worker would "look the part", even if they didn't in the 1920s. Experts on occupations maintain this advice is still correct today.
We've had several threads on this topic, but it might be interesting to just look at it as a general topic. If a person was to transport themselves back to a city, in the year
2014, one of the first things they'd probably notice is that they were under-dressed. The standards of dress in 1914, and for that matter 1924,
1934, 1944, 1954, and 1965, were much higher. It wasn't until the mid
1960s that this really began to change. What's up with that?
Exceptionally well dressed, pre World War One, New York Lawyer. This fellow, who is wearing bespoke everything, isn't dressed in a fashion that greatly departs from the standard for his occupation and era, but it is clear that everything he is wearing is exceptionally well made. Woman behind him is dressed as per standards of the era.
Clearly, earlier eras were a much formal time. It's interesting, in that context, to note that the society was, at the same time, much more rural. A fairly substantial number of people in the early 20th Century, for example, were either right off the farm, or only one generations removed.
Newspaper vendor, circa 1920s. This photo is a bit unusual as the vendor is an adult, at at time at which this occupation was typically occupied by rough and tumble children. He's turned out in suit and tie, and the suit is correctly buttoned leaving the bottom button unbuttoned, a sign that he knows the standard for wearing it (the bottom button on a man's suit is never supposed to be buttoned).
Formal wear extended to nearly every town occupation. It was simply expected. Occupations that we would be surprised to find wearing suit and tie today, did then. Storekeepers, office workers, nearly everyone with a town job, dressed up by today's standards.
George M. Cohan, playwright and composer, dressed to the business standard of today. Now, a person of his vocation would be just as likely dressed to shock.
Dressing to shock simply didn't occur, until the 1920s. At that time it started to come in with youth of that period, who began to wear some eccentric clothing, some of which was regarded as fairly scandalous at the time. Flappers wore short skirts, by 1920s standards, and men and women of that age adopted the raccoon coat as sort of symbol of rebellion.
Mary LaFollette, age 25. I don't know if the daughter of "Battling Bob LaFollette", the "Wisconsin Bolshevik" was a flapper, but this raccoon coat is truly remarkable.
Youthful rebellion continued on in clothing styles into the late 1930s and early 1940s, with the Zoot Suit, a style that came out of California and spread to other urban areas of the nation. Paradoxically, by modern standards, the Zoot Suit was, in fact, a suit. It was more suit, if you will, that other suits, being longer and baggier. So, in that earlier era, even youth aiming to shock didn't dress down, they dressed up.
Dancing Zoot Suiters. Apparently the photographer was so fascinated he forgot to include the heads of the dancers in the photograph.
Inklings of change in standards crept in by the 1950s, but it wasn't really until the social rebelling of the 1960s that things really changed. The average high school student of the 1940s and 1950s probably had at least one nice set of clothing. A young man probably at least owned a tie, and many probably owned suits. By the time I went to high school in the 1970s, I didn't know how to tie a tie, and as noted, I didn't own a suit until I was in my last year of undergraduate studies at the University of Wyoming.
Men supervising irrigation project, 1914. The men from the office are, here, all turned out is suit and tie, something that would be unlikely to see today.
Up until some point in the 1960s, most people dressed on a daily basis in a fashion that would be regarded as fairly formal today, but now mostly simply do not. Most storekeepers, unless in a type of market, or selling a very upscale product, will not dress so formally on a daily basis. Most office employees aren't so formally attired either. Even in law offices, which people imagine to be a white collared world, on an average day many lawyers aren't dressed up. This is even true in some of the old style "white shoe" firms of the East, I'm told.
Firefighting class. Probably around World War Two. Everyone in this class has a tie on, and a couple are wearing very nice suits.
So why the formality?
I truthfully can't say, but it's very evident. And not only is it evident, but it was universal, from the old to the young. Indeed, in any one era, contrary tot he movie depictions we see, dress varied very little by age. Young men in their mid teens can be found wearing the exact same style of suit and cut of shirt as men in their 80s.
One of the reasons might be that people simply had fewer changes of clothes and so less room for experimentation. We tend not to appreciate it now, but in prior eras people had changes of clothes, to be sure, but not nearly as many.
Washing clothes was also difficult up until the washing machine was perfected, which really wasn't until the mid 20th Century. Because of that, clothes tended to be wool, which is wears long if kept well. Once washing machines came in, cotton pushed out wool everywhere, as it's really easy to machine wash.
Heating conditions in early 20th Century and late 19th Century buildings are sometimes cited as a reason, as the heating plants of those buildings simply wasn't that efficient, and therefore during the winter, they were cold. Conversely, however, during the summer they were hot, and people were still pretty dressed up, so that seems to be at least a questionable claim.
Another reason may actually be because this was a more rural society, and this was true not only in the US, but everywhere in the Western world. People moving from farms to cities may have wished to somewhat disguise that fact by means of their dress. Likewise, people who had blue collar jobs may not have wished to appear to be social inferiors to those with white collar jobs, in a society that was then somewhat more class conscious. Indeed, just recently in our local paper a fellow was spotlighted who attends all of the local NCHS basketball games very well dressed, and upon being interviewed it was revealed that he'd worked in labor in Detroit, where he "was dirty all week" so he dressed up on the weekends. A photograph of him did show a very well dressed man, something that would be unusual in that setting here.
Finally, it seems there was just something in the 1960s that broke the back of the old formality. That may be good or bad, or both, but it seems to have occurred.
Is this good or bad, or is it just something that "is"? Well, I'd probably be a hypocrite if I commented very much. I don't dress and suit and tie everyday, or even most days. And some days I go into the office in pretty informal attire. Nonetheless, some aspect of this is bad. For one thing, it disrupts the "uniform" of certain occupations. Every occupation has a mental image associated with it, and when people don't match it, it can disrupt things about that, oddly enough. And Americans have become perhaps the sloppiest attired people on earth. Not only do a lot of people not recognize any distinctions in clothing, they have no self respect as to what they wear. When people start showing up at markets in the jammies, something has gone amiss.
Related Threads:
Clerical Standards of Dress.
Postscript
I guess as an illustration of this trend, the last couple of weeks there's been a orthopedic surgeon with an advertisement in the newspaper showing him dressed in a canvas work type shirt and jeans.
He's not dressed sloppily, or any such thing, just extremely informally. Almost like what I'd expect of geologist spending a day in the office, given that it's basically an outdoor profession. This sort of change in standards is quite pronounced, as even as recently as the 80s or 90s, we'd expect to see a doctor dressed in whites or with a dress shirt and tie.
Postscript II
The other day I went up to the mall (a dreaded experience for me) to try to buy a shirt. While there I noticed all the nice khakis at Penny's and realized that I'd recently retired a couple of pairs and that my remaining pairs are getting a bit tired. So I bought two pairs.
Actually, I bought chinos, as opposed to "khakis", as that describes the sort of semi dress trousers that I bought. "Khaki" is actually a color, although the phrase routinely is used to depict a style.
I don't know exactly when cotton khaki trousers came to be business wear, but they are. In some areas of the country they're casual business wear, and in others they're actual business wear. I wear chinos, which are the type of trouser you normally think of in this category, a fair amount as they're generally dressy enough for work most days, and they're easy to wash, not being wool. But they are an aspect of the trend discussed above.
Chinos were originally a type of trouser issued to soldiers for summer wear. Up to World War Two, and even up into it, the U.S. Army issued a cotton khaki colored uniform for field and garrison use.
I truthfully can't say, but it's very evident. And not only is it evident, but it was universal, from the old to the young. Indeed, in any one era, contrary tot he movie depictions we see, dress varied very little by age. Young men in their mid teens can be found wearing the exact same style of suit and cut of shirt as men in their 80s.
One of the reasons might be that people simply had fewer changes of clothes and so less room for experimentation. We tend not to appreciate it now, but in prior eras people had changes of clothes, to be sure, but not nearly as many.
Washing clothes was also difficult up until the washing machine was perfected, which really wasn't until the mid 20th Century. Because of that, clothes tended to be wool, which is wears long if kept well. Once washing machines came in, cotton pushed out wool everywhere, as it's really easy to machine wash.
Heating conditions in early 20th Century and late 19th Century buildings are sometimes cited as a reason, as the heating plants of those buildings simply wasn't that efficient, and therefore during the winter, they were cold. Conversely, however, during the summer they were hot, and people were still pretty dressed up, so that seems to be at least a questionable claim.
Another reason may actually be because this was a more rural society, and this was true not only in the US, but everywhere in the Western world. People moving from farms to cities may have wished to somewhat disguise that fact by means of their dress. Likewise, people who had blue collar jobs may not have wished to appear to be social inferiors to those with white collar jobs, in a society that was then somewhat more class conscious. Indeed, just recently in our local paper a fellow was spotlighted who attends all of the local NCHS basketball games very well dressed, and upon being interviewed it was revealed that he'd worked in labor in Detroit, where he "was dirty all week" so he dressed up on the weekends. A photograph of him did show a very well dressed man, something that would be unusual in that setting here.
Wisconsin farmer on a Saturday night, 1940s. Note that while he's pretty stripped down at the time of the photo being taken, he had been wearing a three piece suit.
Finally, it seems there was just something in the 1960s that broke the back of the old formality. That may be good or bad, or both, but it seems to have occurred.
Is this good or bad, or is it just something that "is"? Well, I'd probably be a hypocrite if I commented very much. I don't dress and suit and tie everyday, or even most days. And some days I go into the office in pretty informal attire. Nonetheless, some aspect of this is bad. For one thing, it disrupts the "uniform" of certain occupations. Every occupation has a mental image associated with it, and when people don't match it, it can disrupt things about that, oddly enough. And Americans have become perhaps the sloppiest attired people on earth. Not only do a lot of people not recognize any distinctions in clothing, they have no self respect as to what they wear. When people start showing up at markets in the jammies, something has gone amiss.
Related Threads:
Clerical Standards of Dress.
Postscript
I guess as an illustration of this trend, the last couple of weeks there's been a orthopedic surgeon with an advertisement in the newspaper showing him dressed in a canvas work type shirt and jeans.
He's not dressed sloppily, or any such thing, just extremely informally. Almost like what I'd expect of geologist spending a day in the office, given that it's basically an outdoor profession. This sort of change in standards is quite pronounced, as even as recently as the 80s or 90s, we'd expect to see a doctor dressed in whites or with a dress shirt and tie.
Postscript II
The other day I went up to the mall (a dreaded experience for me) to try to buy a shirt. While there I noticed all the nice khakis at Penny's and realized that I'd recently retired a couple of pairs and that my remaining pairs are getting a bit tired. So I bought two pairs.
Actually, I bought chinos, as opposed to "khakis", as that describes the sort of semi dress trousers that I bought. "Khaki" is actually a color, although the phrase routinely is used to depict a style.
I don't know exactly when cotton khaki trousers came to be business wear, but they are. In some areas of the country they're casual business wear, and in others they're actual business wear. I wear chinos, which are the type of trouser you normally think of in this category, a fair amount as they're generally dressy enough for work most days, and they're easy to wash, not being wool. But they are an aspect of the trend discussed above.
Chinos were originally a type of trouser issued to soldiers for summer wear. Up to World War Two, and even up into it, the U.S. Army issued a cotton khaki colored uniform for field and garrison use.
Summer field uniform, just prior to World War Two, and early in World War Two, featuring cotton khaki colored shirt and trousers.
Relatively early in the war, field uniforms advanced and the Army quit using khakis for field wear, having gone to various "olive" colored uniforms for that instead. But the cotton khaki uniform kept on keeping on as a semi dress item.
U.S. Army physicians, World War Two, wearing summer khaki garrison uniform.
As a result of this, a lot of khaki chinos were made in World War Two, and the recently discharged servicemen took them into the clothing short post war world, where they became pretty standard wear for a lot of men. As they were not jeans, they passed muster in those places where you couldn't wear jeans, which was a lot of places, and became semi dress trousers.
Textile worker carrying a load of Army chinos during World War Two.
So a sort of field uniform that could be worn in garrison, evolved into a sort of work sort of casual item for men who worked in offices, which is wear they are today.
They're quite common now, although I may wear them more than some others in my line of work I know. And its interesting to see how you can get ones that vary from really cheap in price to very expensive in price. A company called "Bill's Khakis" specializes in making chinos that match the original GI ones, but at a much more expensive price, which I guess shows how things have gone in the U.S. Still, they don't have universal approval. One judge I'm aware of has a local rule prohibiting the wearing of khaki trousers in court and doesn't even like to see them being worn in the courthouse.
Support is ending for Windows XP - Microsoft Windows
Support is ending for Windows XP - Microsoft Windows
Boo Hiss Microsoft.
Postscript.
This is apparently a more significant deal than I'd imagined. Our tech guy at work tells us if we have XP, we better get to something else, one way or another, within the next couple of weeks.
The computer I'm on right now runs XP.
Boo Hiss Microsoft.
Postscript.
This is apparently a more significant deal than I'd imagined. Our tech guy at work tells us if we have XP, we better get to something else, one way or another, within the next couple of weeks.
The computer I'm on right now runs XP.
Tuesday, March 18, 2014
The Rebirth Of Rye Whiskey And Nostalgia For 'The Good Stuff' & Beer and Prohibtion.
Always exploring the history of things, including social and material history, our eye was caught recently by a couple of items which relate 20th Century history, specifically the history of alcohol and Prohibition. For example, there's this item:
NPR's "Salt" broadcast ran this recent item: The Rebirth Of Rye Whiskey And Nostalgia For 'The Good Stuff' : The Salt : NPR
I'm not really a whiskey fan, but at least locally whiskey has been in the news a lot recently, and here we have this NPR example. All in all, I think I've read that whiskey consumption is overall on the decline nationally, but given the news content, you'd not know that.
As noted, I'm not really a big whiskey fan. Right now, we actually have, however, four bottles of different types of whiskey upstairs in the cupboard, probably a personal all time record. We don't have a liquor cabinet, and don't need one, so the cupboard suffices, even if that oddly places the whiskey right next to the breakfast cereal. We have so much because of Christmas, and we're likely to have the present four bottles for a really long time. We have, respectively, Wyoming Whiskey, a bottle of Pendleton and a bottle of single malt Irish whiskey, so not only do we have a record amount, we actually have a record variety as well. You can probably fairly easily tell by the novelty of this that we're not exactly living the "Mad Men" life around here.
In spite of not liking it much, I know something about it, and that's probably because of law school. It isn't like we were living out the Pogues "Streams of Whiskey" there, but there was a single malt Scotch whiskey revival going on at the time, so we became exposed to it a bit then, and being inquisitive, I learned something about the makeup of whiskey at the time.* It's sort of an interesting topic.
The big American whiskey is bourbon. The reason for this is found in the history of transportation, oddly enough. Bourbon is a corn based whiskey and it was distilled on the eastern Frontier early on. While beer was really a staple during colonial times, hardy Frontiersmen distilled a lot of whiskey. Why? Because it keeps better than corn on the cob does. And it's relatively easy to transport in barrels, and there's always a market. It wasn't, therefore, that frontier farmers were making thousands of gallons of "corn likker" to get sloshed, although there was some sloshing going on, but rather because it's easier to keep it in the barn than it is to keep a pile of corn. It doesn't attract mice either.
Like with all things which people make, a simple necessity became an art, and bourbon was born. It's been the American whiskey for probably around three centuries.
Frankly, I can't stand it as a rule. Even the best bourbons generally taste like something that ought to be fueling a jet to me, but it's been what Americans mean by "whiskey" for a very long time. And it's been in the news here recently as Wyoming now has its own distillery, which makes "Wyoming Whiskey".
A bottle of Wyoming Whiskey.
Wyoming Whiskey is a new brand of whiskey that's distilled in the tiny Hot Springs County town of Kirby. It came about, according to what I've read, as the Meads purchased farm ground in the area in order to have a steady supply of corn for their cattle operation, and then hit upon the idea of distilling whiskey in the county. Hot Springs County is otherwise famous for, well, hots springs, and is of course the location of Thermopolis, which features the same.
When Wyoming Whiskey was released, the first batch (there have been only two to date) was big news. To my huge surprise, my wife actually signed us up for two bottles. She doesn't even drink whiskey except on extraordinarily rare occasions, so it was quite a surprise. But we ended up with two of the very first bottles.
I like it, to my surprise. But the public reaction has been interesting. Whiskey Magazine rated it as first rate, which is interesting in part because up until I read that in the Casper paper, I didn't know that there was a Whiskey Magazine. Who subscribes to that. . . and why? Anyhow, their reviewer thought it great. Amongst people I generally run into, however, it seems a lot of people hate it.
Why is that? I don't know for sure, but I have my theories. In part, Wyomingites are a hard sell on anything, and that may be a lot of it. But I have also noticed, in talking to people, that the people who don't like it generally like bourbon, and people who do, like me, don't drink it much. My suspicion is, therefore, that those people acclimated to bourbon, and who enjoy it, like the jet fuel nature of the taste. As I don't like bourbon, that's probably why I think Wyoming Whiskey is okay. But if they have to rely on people like me to buy it, they're in big trouble, as the chances of me buying enough of it to be felt economically are nonexistent. Anyhow, put another way, I think that bourbon drinkers expect bourbon to taste like bourbon, rather than the lower proof, milder, and softly minerally taste that this has.
Canadian Whiskey, I should note, is just blended bourbon. Whiskeys are blended in order to take the harsh taste out of them, and blending is very common with all types of whiskeys. Canada grows a lot of corn, and at some point, somebody must have hit upon the idea of borrowing American whiskey as a product. They probably did it, tasted the product and said something like "Ack!!!. . Grgemhph! Eh? Where's the water?" So they blended it.
Unlike almost every bourbon, some Canadian Whiskeys I like. Namely Royal Crown and Pendleton. That's it. The rest make me gag. Again, it doesn't matter, as I buy so little that they don't care what I think, but those two aren't bad. And Pendleton, which is named after Pendleton Oregon, has a really neat bottle with a Steamboat like rider on it. Presumably the University of Wyoming, which owns that trademark, is making a few bucks off of that.
Royal Crown, by the way, is owned by the alcohol giant Diageo, which also owns Bushmills (Irish Whiskey), Guinness and a zillion other brands.
Bourbon basically got its start on the western slopes of Appalachia, and that's no surprise as that region was first settled by "Scots Irish", i.e., that demographic that immigrated from Ireland, but which were actually Scottish, placed in Ireland as a buffer in Ulster against the native Irish. The Scots and the Irish both have a very long history of Whiskey distilling, and it's basically a Celtic concoction in the first place. So, they were simply using a process that they were already familiar with. The word "whiskey" is itself a corruption of the Gaelic term uisce beatha/uisge beatha" which means "water of life," sort of an odd description, if you think about it.
Scotch and Irish Whiskeys are very closely related, which is odd as Scotch is, in my view, horrid, while Irish whiskeys can be good, or can be horrid. I think that this has something to do with the water. Both types are grain whiskeys, and can be made from any of the grass grains or a blend of them, but Scotch is made from bog water, and Irish Whiskey is made form water that flows from limestone sourced springs. My personal theory is that this makes Scotch taste and smell like diesel fuel, as the water in Scotch peat bogs also has, well, peat in it. And, besides, anyone familiar with bogs knows that cows love bogs, and we all know, or should know, what cows love to do in bogs. It explains a lot.
One of the grains that can be in Irish Whiskey or Scotch Whiskey is rye. I did an item here on rye bread awhile back, which I really like, but I've never had Rye Whiskey. An odd thing about Rye Whiskey, which relates to the theme of this blog, is that Rye Whiskey has a pretty bad reputation, but because of a historical event, that event being Prohibition.
As noted in the item above, Rye was actually a premium whiskey before Prohibition. During Prohibition, however, bootleggers took up labeling bad whiskey as Rye in order to fraudulently peddle the bad stuff to people who remembered the good stuff. As a result, "Rye" came to be associated with nasty cheap booze, an reputation that came on fairly fast, which stuck up until recently. Rye was such a shorthand for bad whiskey that Bill Mauldin had his Joe character, in the Up Front cartoon, joke that his "old woman" would be comforted by the fact that he had "give up rye whiskey and .10 cent ceegars", an ironic statement for an infantryman. Recently, however, Rye has been making a comeback, the quality Rye apparently still being out there.
As I like rye bread I'd be curious if I like Rye Whiskey, but I'm too cheap to buy it, so I"ll have to keep wondering or be fortunate enough to be attending some social event where somebody serves it. Liking rye bread probably doesn't translate into liking Rye in any event, as I like corn, but hate bourbon.
Related to the Prohibition story and Rye, Prohibition also did in breweries. And here too there's both an interesting story, and interesting recent developments.
Beer has an even older presence in North America than whiskey because beer was a staple in the British Isles from some point in antiquity up until some point in the 20th Century. And this was true not just of the British Isles, but an entire belt of countries in northern Europe. Basically north of the Rhine, and in the British Isles, up to the Baltic the average drink was Beer. Below the Rhine it was wine. Once you got out into Poland and Russia this was no longer true, and if there was a staple drink, I don't know what it was. Certainly a lot of vodka was being consumed out in those regions, but I don't think it would be as if people sat down to dinner and had a big heaping glass of vodka. At least I hope not. Beer was brewed in Europe everywhere, but as a staple its basically associated with these regions, and it's best from these regions. Likewise, probably ever location in Europe ferments some wine, but it's associated with southern Europe for a reason.
A lot of the reason for that, by the way, is climatic. So perhaps its not too surprising that the beer brewing also saw the development of some other spirits. Anyhow, the English brought beer to North America. Indeed, the Mayflower put in when it did not because that location seemed ideal, but because the ship had run out of beer, a genuine problem.
In the 19th Century there were a vast number of local breweries in the US. I doubt very much that an accurate idea as to how many there were is known. Prior to refrigeration for rail cars being worked out, which happened in the second half of the 19th Century, beer could not easily be shipped, so breweries needed to be local, or there was no beer. Refrigeration in rail cars meant that beer could be shipped by rail for the first time, and shortly thereafter pasteurization of beer, a process of course worked out for milk, not beer, began to be employed which meant that beer could be stored for some time without refrigeration. Light is the enemy of beer, and the dark bottle that's so familiar to everyone also played a role in beer storage, seeking to create a vessel that could store beer, allow the customer to see it, and also keep out the destroying elements of light.
Rail car refrigeration mean that beer could be transported long distances for the first time, and that gave rise to the first big breweries in the US, the Anhauser-Busch brewery in St. Louis being the first such example. Nonetheless, all the way up to the Volstead Act in 1919, there were a lot of local breweries. I don't know how many may have existed in Wyoming, or co-existed together at any one time, but at least Casper and Sheridan did have breweries. Casper's pre Prohibition brewery was the Hilcreast Brewery, named after the Hilcrest spring which still provides cooler water for Casperites today. None of the Wyoming breweries survived Prohibition. Hilcreast's brewery building still stands, just as it did in 1919, being a three story brick building, but its an electronics store now. When I was a kid, it was a potato chip plant, packaging Cook's Potato Chips, the kind we all bought locally.
It's widely claimed that Prohibition did in the quality of American beer and that when breweries re-emerged from Prohibition, the beer wasn't what it once was. There were certainly a lot fewer breweries and that any managed to survive is amazing. Some did, however, and rapidly went back into brewing. According to at least Europeans, American beer was pretty bad however, and real beer fans maintained that to also be the case, which made for a small market, up until the late 1970s, for import beers, which were regarded as very exotic.** The trend toward brewing singularity actually increased after Prohibition ended, which is odd, in that the large commercial brewers began to purchase the smaller one, a trend which continues to this day, although they no longer tend to wipe out the distinctive natures of the individual breweries as they once seemed to.
This is because of the rise of the "micro brews." Defining what a micro brew is; is difficult. But some time in the late 1970s very small breweries began to develop with very distinctive beers in reaction to the blandness of American beers. This started slowly, but after it got rolling, it really got rolling. When I was a kid in the 1960s and 1970s, around here, the beers that you saw in the summer when men went fishing, etc., were Coors (really a regional beer), Olympia, Hamms and maybe Rainier. Of course, Budweiser, which was and is the American giant (now owned by Belgian company) was around, but it seemed that at least amongst the men I knew, none of them ever drank it. There were some other brands, of course, but those are the ones you tended to see. Starting with Anchor Steam, however, small breweries began to make major inroads into the large brewers' markets, brewing beers with strong distinctive flavors and sometimes brewed with old fashioned, methods. Anchor Steam, New Belgian, Odell, Sam Adams, and any other number of brewers rose up in this fashion, some becoming pretty big in the process, and there seems to be no end in sight to the revival of small breweries and the multiplicity of beer types.*** Recognizing a declining market when they see it, the big breweries have gotten into the act themselves and have come out with "micro brew" type beers, even though they're from big breweries.
Probably with that in mind, and returning to the them of our post here, Coors just recently introduced a beer that they claim is "Pre-Prohibition" style lager. Being unable to pass up something which claims to be an historic exploration, I bought a six pack and then looked it up. Indeed, it might at least partially answer the question that I had. According to the information on the beer, the recipe for it was discovered by Coors' employees in Greeley in a part of their brewery they no longer use. That there is such a quarter in their brewery surprises me, but perhaps it shouldn't, as the Greeley brewery has long ago overlapped the walls of its original facility. Anyhow, in finding the old recipe, which dates to the immediate Pre-Prohibition era, they determined to make it. At first they only offered it on tap, but now they're selling it in bottles.
One beer, of course, can't tell us what all beers were prior to the Volstead Act, but this one is revealing. Coors has long been a major local beer here, and its not bad. It's a really light beer, and so Coors was well positioned to move into the "light beer" market when it came about, although I've always wondered if that hurt their regular beer sales, which aren't much different. But it's never been my favorite. Their Pre-Prohibtion beer, sold as "Batch 19," on the basis that Prohibition came in that year, 1919, is much different. It's stronger, in terms of alcohol content, and it has a lot more flavor. I like it, but I suspect that it won't appeal to die hard Coors fans. It might appeal, however, to micro brew fans.
If Batch 19 indicates what American beer was like prior to Prohibition, what we could take away from that is that at least some American beers were German style lagers but with a stronger taste. Sort of a collision between German lager and British lager. For beer fans, therefore, the Volstead Act probably was sort of a small beer burning of the library at Alexandria, temporarily.
As noted in the item above, Rye was actually a premium whiskey before Prohibition. During Prohibition, however, bootleggers took up labeling bad whiskey as Rye in order to fraudulently peddle the bad stuff to people who remembered the good stuff. As a result, "Rye" came to be associated with nasty cheap booze, an reputation that came on fairly fast, which stuck up until recently. Rye was such a shorthand for bad whiskey that Bill Mauldin had his Joe character, in the Up Front cartoon, joke that his "old woman" would be comforted by the fact that he had "give up rye whiskey and .10 cent ceegars", an ironic statement for an infantryman. Recently, however, Rye has been making a comeback, the quality Rye apparently still being out there.
As I like rye bread I'd be curious if I like Rye Whiskey, but I'm too cheap to buy it, so I"ll have to keep wondering or be fortunate enough to be attending some social event where somebody serves it. Liking rye bread probably doesn't translate into liking Rye in any event, as I like corn, but hate bourbon.
Related to the Prohibition story and Rye, Prohibition also did in breweries. And here too there's both an interesting story, and interesting recent developments.
Late 19th Century New York beer I've never heard of. Apparently the plan in the picture is t drink a bunch of beer and then drive the cart, which is undoubtedly a very bad idea.
A lot of the reason for that, by the way, is climatic. So perhaps its not too surprising that the beer brewing also saw the development of some other spirits. Anyhow, the English brought beer to North America. Indeed, the Mayflower put in when it did not because that location seemed ideal, but because the ship had run out of beer, a genuine problem.
In the 19th Century there were a vast number of local breweries in the US. I doubt very much that an accurate idea as to how many there were is known. Prior to refrigeration for rail cars being worked out, which happened in the second half of the 19th Century, beer could not easily be shipped, so breweries needed to be local, or there was no beer. Refrigeration in rail cars meant that beer could be shipped by rail for the first time, and shortly thereafter pasteurization of beer, a process of course worked out for milk, not beer, began to be employed which meant that beer could be stored for some time without refrigeration. Light is the enemy of beer, and the dark bottle that's so familiar to everyone also played a role in beer storage, seeking to create a vessel that could store beer, allow the customer to see it, and also keep out the destroying elements of light.
Rail car refrigeration mean that beer could be transported long distances for the first time, and that gave rise to the first big breweries in the US, the Anhauser-Busch brewery in St. Louis being the first such example. Nonetheless, all the way up to the Volstead Act in 1919, there were a lot of local breweries. I don't know how many may have existed in Wyoming, or co-existed together at any one time, but at least Casper and Sheridan did have breweries. Casper's pre Prohibition brewery was the Hilcreast Brewery, named after the Hilcrest spring which still provides cooler water for Casperites today. None of the Wyoming breweries survived Prohibition. Hilcreast's brewery building still stands, just as it did in 1919, being a three story brick building, but its an electronics store now. When I was a kid, it was a potato chip plant, packaging Cook's Potato Chips, the kind we all bought locally.
Trade card for Wiedemann Beer. This is a company that I've never heard of, but it turns out, they survived Prohibition, and they're still around.
It's widely claimed that Prohibition did in the quality of American beer and that when breweries re-emerged from Prohibition, the beer wasn't what it once was. There were certainly a lot fewer breweries and that any managed to survive is amazing. Some did, however, and rapidly went back into brewing. According to at least Europeans, American beer was pretty bad however, and real beer fans maintained that to also be the case, which made for a small market, up until the late 1970s, for import beers, which were regarded as very exotic.** The trend toward brewing singularity actually increased after Prohibition ended, which is odd, in that the large commercial brewers began to purchase the smaller one, a trend which continues to this day, although they no longer tend to wipe out the distinctive natures of the individual breweries as they once seemed to.
This is because of the rise of the "micro brews." Defining what a micro brew is; is difficult. But some time in the late 1970s very small breweries began to develop with very distinctive beers in reaction to the blandness of American beers. This started slowly, but after it got rolling, it really got rolling. When I was a kid in the 1960s and 1970s, around here, the beers that you saw in the summer when men went fishing, etc., were Coors (really a regional beer), Olympia, Hamms and maybe Rainier. Of course, Budweiser, which was and is the American giant (now owned by Belgian company) was around, but it seemed that at least amongst the men I knew, none of them ever drank it. There were some other brands, of course, but those are the ones you tended to see. Starting with Anchor Steam, however, small breweries began to make major inroads into the large brewers' markets, brewing beers with strong distinctive flavors and sometimes brewed with old fashioned, methods. Anchor Steam, New Belgian, Odell, Sam Adams, and any other number of brewers rose up in this fashion, some becoming pretty big in the process, and there seems to be no end in sight to the revival of small breweries and the multiplicity of beer types.*** Recognizing a declining market when they see it, the big breweries have gotten into the act themselves and have come out with "micro brew" type beers, even though they're from big breweries.
Probably with that in mind, and returning to the them of our post here, Coors just recently introduced a beer that they claim is "Pre-Prohibition" style lager. Being unable to pass up something which claims to be an historic exploration, I bought a six pack and then looked it up. Indeed, it might at least partially answer the question that I had. According to the information on the beer, the recipe for it was discovered by Coors' employees in Greeley in a part of their brewery they no longer use. That there is such a quarter in their brewery surprises me, but perhaps it shouldn't, as the Greeley brewery has long ago overlapped the walls of its original facility. Anyhow, in finding the old recipe, which dates to the immediate Pre-Prohibition era, they determined to make it. At first they only offered it on tap, but now they're selling it in bottles.
One beer, of course, can't tell us what all beers were prior to the Volstead Act, but this one is revealing. Coors has long been a major local beer here, and its not bad. It's a really light beer, and so Coors was well positioned to move into the "light beer" market when it came about, although I've always wondered if that hurt their regular beer sales, which aren't much different. But it's never been my favorite. Their Pre-Prohibtion beer, sold as "Batch 19," on the basis that Prohibition came in that year, 1919, is much different. It's stronger, in terms of alcohol content, and it has a lot more flavor. I like it, but I suspect that it won't appeal to die hard Coors fans. It might appeal, however, to micro brew fans.
If Batch 19 indicates what American beer was like prior to Prohibition, what we could take away from that is that at least some American beers were German style lagers but with a stronger taste. Sort of a collision between German lager and British lager. For beer fans, therefore, the Volstead Act probably was sort of a small beer burning of the library at Alexandria, temporarily.
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*Streams of Whiskey is one of several sodden tunes by the excellent Irish band the Pogues, which sadly no longer exists as a band. The band celebrated a certain boozy view of things which undoubtedly would have disastrous effects on a person's health if actually followed, for example:
Not content to limit the commentary to whiskey, the song also provides:Last night as I slept
I dreamt I met with Behan
I shook him by the hand and we passed the time of day
When questioned on his views
On the crux of life's philosophies
He had but these few clear and simple words to say
I am going, I am going
Any which way the wind may be blowing
I am going, I am going
Where streams of whiskey are flowing
Oh the words that he spokeMore than one Pogues song was a modern, hard core, hard edge, Irish drinking song and the primary force behind the music, Sean MacGowan acquired a reputation as a hard drinker as a result. It's interesting to note, therefore, that at least one interview of a close associate of MacGowan's has related that he did not, in this period, actually drink all that much, but that as a result of the music people insisted in buying the band drinks wherever they were.
Seemed the wisest of philosophies
There's nothing ever gained
By a wet thing called a tear
When the world is too dark
And I need the light inside of me
I'll walk into a bar
And drink fifteen pints of beer
I am going, I am going
Any which way the wind may be blowing
I am going, I am going
Where streams of whiskey are flowing
While the Pogues no longer exist as a band, all the band members are still with us, suggesting that they didn't drink as much as the songs might suggest, and they have independent music careers.
**Having said that, complaints against American beer go all the way back to the colonial period, when British soldiers complained about he bad quality of American beer compared to English beer.
***I wonder if the micro brew explosion is beginning to run its course, however. When it started, in the 1970s, the goal was "good beer." Micro breweries still claim that as their goal, but in recent years a weird, and probably bad, trend has been going on where the exploration they're engaged in really is towards making stronger and stronger beers, alcohol content wise, which isn't the same as good beer.
For some reason its often missed that a lot of really excellent beers, particularly those of the British Isles, are very low alcohol content. This makes sense to me, as the beer was brewed to be consumed in a pub, at a "session." Beers of that type are called "session beers." Session beers are very common British Isles beers, and are low alcohol as a rule. Guinness Stout, for example, which defines "stout," is only a little over 3% alcohol. It almost qualifies as a "light beer" by American standards. Even the post Prohibition Coors, widely regarded as a classic American beer in some quarters, was pretty low in alcohol content in the classic "Banquet" variety.
German beers, on the other hand, have always been higher in alcohol content, for reasons that are completely lost to me. Even so, they probably rounded out somewhere in the 5% neighborhood. Now, however, American microbreweries are rushing to brew what they call "IPAs,", or "Indian Pale Ales." IPAs were a type of beer originally brewed by British breweries solely for consumption in India, and were shipped incomplete, with high alcohol contents and lots of hops, on the thesis that this would keep it from spoiling on the long, and extremely hot, trip to India. At one time, however, it had some slight popularity in the UK when some accident required an unfinished batch to be sold on the docks when it couldn't be shipped. It's become popular with microbreweries however, and so now they're all rushing to brew very bitter, very high alcohol content, and very icky beers. This has expanded into other offerings, such as stouts, where high alcohol stouts are now offered as well, when historically, stouts are actually low alcohol. This trend is taking micro-brews out of the "good beer" category into some weird high alcohol arms race, which may mean that they've about run their exploratory course, which was, perhaps, inevitable. That may mean, however, simply a return to the era of the local brewery.
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Epilogue:
This past week the extent to which local brewing has returned to Wyoming became apparent to me when I became aware of a couple of breweries or brewpubs I was previously unaware of. The first couple were in Gillette, when I drove by one restaurant that advertised it was the home of a brewpub and then later that same day I walked pass a storefront on Gillette Avenue that advertised that it would soon be home to the Gillette Brewing Company.
Today, in the paper, the Wonder Bar, which has been around for decades, is advertising it's bar brewed beer, indicating that it is indeed brewing on the premises. I knew, as indicated above, that it could, but I wasn't sure that it was. It is.
Anyhow, quite a change. Soon, it would appear, every substantially sized town in Wyoming is likely to have a brewpub.
Epilogue II
If this story references another which includes "nostalgia for the good stuff" perhaps some recollection of the bad stuff is also warranted, which is provided this week by a story in the Casper Star Tribune. The Tribune reports:
Epilogue III
Examples of local breweries from the regional past:
Epilogue IV
A NPR article on the explosion of small breweries across the U.S. This demonstrates the increase in small breweries, but it's considerably below the number I'd expect. I read awhile back that Denver now has something like 200 brew pubs, which would suggest the number of small breweries is higher than reported here.
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Epilogue:
This past week the extent to which local brewing has returned to Wyoming became apparent to me when I became aware of a couple of breweries or brewpubs I was previously unaware of. The first couple were in Gillette, when I drove by one restaurant that advertised it was the home of a brewpub and then later that same day I walked pass a storefront on Gillette Avenue that advertised that it would soon be home to the Gillette Brewing Company.
Today, in the paper, the Wonder Bar, which has been around for decades, is advertising it's bar brewed beer, indicating that it is indeed brewing on the premises. I knew, as indicated above, that it could, but I wasn't sure that it was. It is.
Anyhow, quite a change. Soon, it would appear, every substantially sized town in Wyoming is likely to have a brewpub.
Epilogue II
If this story references another which includes "nostalgia for the good stuff" perhaps some recollection of the bad stuff is also warranted, which is provided this week by a story in the Casper Star Tribune. The Tribune reports:
Wyoming men who are alcohol-dependent earn about 5 percent less than co-workers who don’t have a problem with alcohol.
They also are somewhat less likely to be in the workplace at all.
These are two of the findings from a report compiled by the University of Wyoming Survey and Analysis Center for the Wyoming Department of Health.
The UW report concluded that alcohol is more of an economic burden on society in Wyoming than tobacco or drug abuse.
The study estimated that elimination of alcohol abuse would save $843 million a year, based on 2010 costs. Costs were for health care, lost productivity, crime and accidents.
Elimination of tobacco would save $689 million per year, and the elimination of illegal drugs $391 million per year. “Illness studies are routinely used by government agencies to justify and prioritize prevention, intervention, and research programs,” the report said.
Nanette Nelson, associated research scientist at the UW center, said she and her colleagues were surprised that alcohol was the most costly. “We thought we would see tobacco to be the front-runner,” she said.As alcohol is a legal drug, it's easy to forget how much of a burden on society it really is. It's also easy to forget that those advancing Prohibition, prior to 1919, were not wacky really. They had a valid point. At that time, in a lot of places, the "saloon trade" was completely unregulated. To open a bar, you just opened one. We've never gone back to that. Indeed, the impact of alcohol has been smaller post Prohibition than it was pre Prohibition, as Prohibition did have a lasting social impact. Still, the burden imposed by alcohol today remains real.
Epilogue III
Examples of local breweries from the regional past:
From Today In Wyoming's History.June 12
1890 The brewery in Laramie sold its first beer. Up until Prohibition, small local breweries were extremely common in the United States. Attribution: Wyoming State Historical Society.
Epilogue IV
A NPR article on the explosion of small breweries across the U.S. This demonstrates the increase in small breweries, but it's considerably below the number I'd expect. I read awhile back that Denver now has something like 200 brew pubs, which would suggest the number of small breweries is higher than reported here.
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