Sunday Morning Scene: Churches of the West: First Congregational Church, Sheridan Wyoming

Churches of the West: First Congregational Church, Sheridan Wyoming:
 

Sunday, September 12, 1915. Musa Dagh.

The German General Staff restricted German airships to bombing London's docks and harbor works.

The Battle of Musa Dagh concluded as a rare Armenian victory over the Ottomans, after a prolonged defensive battle.  The Armenians were evacuated by the French Navy to Port Said.

Last edition:

Saturday, September 11, 1915. Bulgaria mobilizes.

Labels: 1910s, 1915, Bulgaria, Central Powers, World War One

Irritated With Infrastructure

One of Casper's many closed roads, due to construction.

You can't get there from here.

Or at least it seems that way.

I realize that a person is not supposed to complain about improvements or repairs to infrastructure.  Indeed, a person is supposed to be worried about how little of this occurs in the United States.

But you wouldn't realize that from around here.

Due to a really weird fluke in budgeting all sort of heavy construction that normally takes place in the summer commenced just before Fall.  This isn't the fault of the contractors, I'm sure they'd rather work in summer, when they have more help and better weather, but due to some budgeting oddity, it didn't happen that way.

And I should really be glad for all this work being done, particularly when state revenues are declining and there's a real danger now that such work might not be as well funded in the future.

But it's easy to forget that on the way to work.  I now can no longer easily get anywhere in town as there's so much road and sewer construction going on.   I should grit my teeth and bare it, but it's easier to whine.

Much of the sewer work being done is being funded by Natrona County's .01 Cent sales tax, which generates a lot of revenue at next to no pain for local residents. Signs have been put up reminding us of where the money came from, but early in the morning, before the coffee kicks in, that might not send the best message.

And in regards to signs, the School District put up a nice sign down by one of the high school construction projects about how that was budgeted.  That, however, irritates me as I can't help but continue to feel the pain over the loss of the pool at NCHS as it undergoes massive reconstruction.  It's not the only high school undergoing that, however, as KWHS is also undergoing reconstruction, and the third new campus that will serve them both is undergoing reconstruction.  Would that the strategy had been just to put in a new high school, and then perhaps necessary repairs and preservation of the pool could have been undertaken at the other schools, a more modest goal.

The reconstruction at the high schools themselves is slated to take years.  That also amazes me, as construction projects on public works that take years to complete baffle me.  They likely baffle me as I'm not an engineer and I have no knowledge of the real practicalities of heavy construction.  I looked it up, however, and I note the Pentagon only took 18 months to build.  But, in fairness, it would have taken years to build under normal circumstances, and World War Two was not normal.

So I have no real complaint there either, but I do wish the construction was complete.  Probably everyone does.  But I also wish it was complete with a pool at NC.

I also wish the highway construction just getting up and rolling (that fall thing again) west and east of town was complete.  There's construction now going in either direction. 

Here, on one project, I really have to wonder.  The state is building another bypass around the city, way out, under the concept that this relieves traffic that otherwise goes right into the city. But does it?  It seems to me that the main impact of bypasses is to direct development into a new area, so the plan never really works. 

If they are going to do it, however, and I wish in that case they were not, I do with they'd get it done. The one project, complete with a highway bridge, has been lingering in a state of incompletion for some time, and it's odd to now see it recommence.  Again, it's a budgeting thing.

The state is also doing something out by the area we call Government Bridge, but which maps like to call Trappers Route.  That rural area has undergone a slow development in recent years, but the project doesn't seem related to that.  It looks like a huge turnout for trucks is being built.  I hope that's all the more it is.

So, I guess I overall have no complaints here, but it's sure odd to experience all of this is the Fall of the year.

I guess, in context, Casper of the late teens and early 20s must have been a lot like this, as a huge amount of construction all over town was going on.

Rabbits

According to the BBC, the British location Ness on Lewis, an island, is enduring a plague of rabbits and is going to have to dramatically cull them or suffer environmental consequences.

The odd thing is that, this year, the rabbits are at crazy numbers as well.

The whole northern hemisphere perhaps?

1915

I was on a ranch earlier this week, where the rancher pointed out the house that his grandfather had built (a very small one), when he homesteaded the place in 1915.

Interesting to think of, and they were working the place they'd owned for a century.  And interesting to think of what that location, quite accessible today, must have been like in 1915. The tiny town that was nearby no longer is there, but a somewhat larger small town that's not far off today, and a going concern, would have been a fairly long trip at the time.

So, less isolated.  Less viable?  And have things really improved?

Blog Mirror: Why do people believe myths about the Confederacy? Because our textbooks and monuments are wrong.

A friend drew my attention to this item in the Washington Post, "Why do people believe myths about the Confederacy? Because our textbooks and monuments are wrong."

Well worth reading.

Saturday, September 11, 1915. Bulgaria mobilizes.

Bulgara, now in the Central Powers, began the mobilization of its forces.

Last edition:

Thursday, September 9, 1915. Duma seeks resignations.

Labels: 1910s, 1915, Art, Russia, World War One, Yeoman's Fourth Law of History

Friday Farming: Suffrage farm.

Energy preview of coming attractions.

According to the most recent issue of the AAPG explorer, Iran has the capacity to add 500,000 bbls/day to its production capacity relatively easily.  Beyond that, however, a decline in its petroleum infrastructure requires investment and building.

If that's done, it can add up to 900,000 bbls/day.  That's small, compared to Saudi Arabia, or the United States, but it's not insignificant.  The decline in US production due to the fall in prices has been about 130,000 bbls/day.

The long and the short of this is that the recent glut of petroleum on the market is likely to increase after the recent agreement with Iran is finalized. This will take months to have an impact, but the overall impact is to keep petroleum prices low, and perhaps drive them lower.  Oil at lower than $40/bbl for the foreseeable future seems likely.

On other news, contrary to some Internet myths, generation of electricity by wind power is now cheaper than any other market alternative, and the expansion of the same is retarded only by access to transmission lines.  This means that the argument on wind's viability is over, in spite of there being a local debate on the same with some insisting that it's dirtier in absolute terms than coal, and not viable but for government assistance.  It's gotten over its initial economic teething stage and locally it's only held up by regulation and a lack of transmission lines.

None of this will be really popular news locally, as it would appear nearly certain that we've entered a stage where oil exploration will really stall out and coal will continue to decline.  But stating those apparent facts, particularly for somebody whose lived through it before, doesn't mean a person is wishing the results, only noting what the facts seem to lead to.

Today In Wyoming's History: September 8

Today In Wyoming's History: September 8:

2015  In a controversial move, the Casper City Counsel reinstated a tavern and restaurant smoking ban following the decision of the Wyoming Supreme Court that signatures on an earlier referendum petition had been, in some cases, improperly discarded from counting.  The vote was not unanimous and it certainly set the stage for further debate.

My, what a huge change this has been over a couple of decades ago.

Even a couple of decades ago a person going into a bar simply expected to come back out smelling like cigarettes. Restaurants were the same way.  

Now this is an exceptional occurrence, and you don't expect it. 

Actress, smoking a cigar, in a photo that was probably intended to be shocking at the time as women didn't smoke until the 1920s, for the most part.

Indeed, now smokers are often banished to outdoors.  Just yesterday, in walking a short distance early in the day downtown, I came around a corner and found some woman office worker smoking in the early morning cold.  Looking rather forlorn and even guilty.

In regards to smoking, times have rally changed.

___________________________________________________________________________________

Related threads:

Smoking It Up.

Thursday, September 9, 1915. Duma seeks resignations.

Elected members of the Duma pushed for the resignation of all of the government's ministers.

Last edition:

Wednesday, September 8, 1915. Air raids over London. Bumper crop.

Labels: 1910s, 1915, Agriculture, England (London), German Army, Lighter than air aircraft, Newspapers, World War One

Mid Week At Work: Working on a floodlight, 1940s

Op Ed on the Y Cross Sale, Oil City News

The Oil City News has an Op Ed by a member of the University of Wyoming Foundation Board of Directors regarding the recent sale of the Y Cross ranch.  That article can be found here.

The gist of the article is that the ranch was losing money and there was little other choice but to sell.

Perhaps, but I still remain unconvinced.  Could they have leased the ground out for a time, for instance?  Could they simply have run it as an agricultural campus? What else was explored?

Lex Anteinternet: NCSD Board Policy 5375. Dress Code.

I suppose it was predictable, but none the less I'm surprised that this story:

Lex Anteinternet: NCSD Board Policy 5375. Dress Code.: The current NCSD dress code. Usually with something like this, the poster, if he's been out of school over 20 years (and I have. ....

has had the legs that it has.  It's still getting a little press, and one of the "student organizers" was even featured on MTV recently.

That's fine, and to their credit the schools are using this as a "teachable moment" in terms of encouraging students to think and voice their opinions. But among those opinion is one set that is, quite frankly, amazingly dense.

That set of opinions is one, now frequently heard, that the dress code objectifies women and encourages violence against them, whereas if they were allowed to show more skin it would teach men to suppress their baser motives and treat women as equals.

Yeah, right.

1,000,000+ years of evolution has made the male of this species a visual animal in this area.  A lack of clothing doesn't go towards the higher centers of male reasoning, and isn't going to. But the amazing thing is that there are people who have apparently bought off on that nonsense, which has been in circulation for about 40 years.  There's a reason that advertisers use women wearing little in the way of clothing if they can, and why there's an entire industry devoted to selling photographs of women who have lost their clothing.

A dose reality here is in order.  And would benefit young women here to learn that fact.  Treating women like objects is never excusable, but encouraging it through ignorance or intent is not either.

Wednesday, September 8, 1915. Air raids over London. Bumper crop.

 

Last edition:

Tuesday, September 7, 1915. Raggedy Ann.

Labels: 1910s, 1915, Art, Cartoons, Lighter than air aircraft, Personalities, Siege of Mora, World War One

A few Labor Day observations.

World War Two vintage Labor Day poster, produced by the Office of War Information.

Labor Day was made a Federal holiday in 1886, when the Federal government acceded to a movement sponsored by the Knights of Labor to have an American Federal holiday in honor of labor.

The Knights were not the Kiwanis, and they weren't pushing for a "let's be nice to the nice" holiday.  The labor movement at that time was large, left wing, and militant.

Indeed, Grover Cleveland had the holiday put on September 1, not May 1, which was the logical date and the one that the Knights would probably have expected and feared, but that would have nearly coincided with the anniversary of the recent Haymarket Riots, so that was not done. And May 1 was the Labor Day pushed by Socialist globally, something that most Americans outside of the Labor movement would have been very concerned about adopting as an American holiday.  September 1 became the day, all the way back in 1886.

Labor movements were a huge deal at the time, and they were pushing for workers rights in a large, and radical fashion.  Some were very outwardly as radical as can be imagined, others less so, but the movements were extremely powerful. Starting about this time, the more "progressive" elements of American politics started to co-opt and adopt the less radical elements of the labor movements demands, however, and a long period of slow cooperation with labor and politics commenced.

By the 1930s, and the Great Depression, things had evolved to the point where Labor was essentially Democratic, although even as late as the 1940s there were certain Labor elements that were fairly openly Communistic in sympathies.  During World War One Labor was not fully cooperative with the Democratic administration, but by World War Two it was, having come to the conclusion during the Great Depression that the administration and the Democratic Party was its ally.  Indeed, in some ways the poster set for above is completely correct, and American Labor can take credit for at least part, and a fairly signficant part, of the Allied victory in World War Two.

After the war American Labor entered what may be regarded as its golden era really.  The American economy survived the war intact, unlike nearly every other industrial economy, and Labor had, by that time, achieved nearly every goal it had striven for in politics.  The 40 hour work week, fairly good working conditions, and many significant goals had entered the American norm.

Perhaps that's why the Labor movement has declined, since the 1970s, to a mere shadow of its former self.  Only part of the reason, but part.  It became very strong and achieved huge successes, but after that it kept on and demanded further concessions for its workers, in an era when those jobs began to go overseas.  While some unions remain strong, none of them are what they were in 1970.

Even the holiday isn't what it once was in a lot of places.  In a lot of places, it's just the unofficial end of summer, a three day weekend before students really begin to knuckle down for Fall.

And oddly, at least if Facebook is the judge, it's another holiday that's starting to morph into an additional Veteran's Day.  A lot of American civil holidays are now secondary Veteran's Days, and Labor Day certainly wasn't meant to be.

It's an interesting example of a couple of trends. One is the rise, massive decline, and then rise in another form, of American Labor. The other is the intense focus on veterans such that at least three American civil holidays and a couple of unofficial civil holidays are focused on them.  And finally, it's an interesting example of how so many American civil holidays are set to make for a three day weekend.

Tuesday, September 7, 1915. Raggedy Ann.

 

American cartoonist Johnny Gruelle was given a patent for his Raggedy Ann doll.

Frankly these kind of freak me out, but then a lot of dolls do.

Raggedy Ann and Andy.

Gruelle had a long career as a cartoonist, which is amazing when it is considered that he died at age 57 of a heart attack.

Two German Army zeppelins raided England but without huge success.  One of them later crashed in Germany.

British forces made an unsuccessful assault at Mora.

Last edition:

Monday, September 6, 1915. Labor Day.

Labels: 1910s, 1915, Armor, Bulgaria, Central Powers, Holidays, John B. Kendrick, Labor Day, New York, New York National Guard, World War One, Wyoming

Labor Day

The law of successful national life is the law of work. Theodore Roosevelt Labor Day Speech, 1902.

World War Two vintage Labor Day poster.

 Martin Iron's Labor Day celebration, Waco Texas

Labor Day parade, Granite Wisconsin.

 Silverton Colorado, 1940.

Labor Day, 1909.

Lex Anteinternet: Dealing with the Red Horse

Lex Anteinternet: Dealing with the Red Horse: A momentous and tragic event is unfolding in Europe. Hundreds of thousands of refugees are attempting to make their way from the Middle Ea...

Pope Francis proposed today that every Catholic parish in Europe, over 130,000, take in a refugee family.  This sort of dovetails on my suggestion in this above that this is a global problem, and this would certainly be a start.

The solution for the refugees needs to be global, in my view.  That would include, I'd note, Middle Eastern countries of wealth, of which there are several. Saudi Arabia has a huge non Saudi population as it is (there's been some speculation that it may rival the number of Saudi citizens, and surely  they could help monetarily, and probably territoriality.

Beyond that, these wars are real wars, involving serious expenditures of cash to keep going.  Somebody is providing that, and should stop.  Where it's locally generated, that should be targeted. And its time for an international solution to some of this in terms of addressing the combatants.

Monday, September 6, 1915. Labor Day.

Bulgaria entered the Central Powers.

Prototype tank Little Willie was completed.

It was Labor Day.

Labor Day Proclamation: As the world progresses in civilization and learning the appreciation of what Labor has done and can do, grows with us. We are coming to a better realization of the fact that without Labor, nothing would be possible. Our country and State would not have risen to the dignity of substantial commonwealths: our people would be still upon a par with the cave dwellers of prehistoric times. Law and order would be unknown and the great elements which the Creator has placed to our hands would yet exist as crude materials of unknown value.

With the growth of civilization, there comes a desire to better regulate Labor, to lay down rules so that man who earns his bread by his brawn will have a just number of stipulated hours for work; rules so that women and children cannot be imposed upon by the more powerful who control their exertions. There also comes a desire to recognize the splendid part which those who labor play in the advancement and up-building of the world, and bring to the attention of the people as a whole and in the most forceful manner possible. the high regard in which such men and women are held by society. With this end in view, one day in each year has been set apart as Labor Day. THEREFORE, I John B. Kendrick, Governor of the State of Wyoming, do designate Monday, September 6, 1915 Labor Day And request that the citizens of the State observe the day to the fullest extent, so as to increase the respect in which Labor is held, and show due regard for those who toil. Let the day be observed as a holiday: let all business be suspended, insofar as it is practical, and let a friendly word be spoken on all hands in honor of those upon whom the material progress and success of our state and nation depend.

In witness whereof, I have here upon set my and caused to be affixed the great seal of the State of Wyoming.

Done in the city of Cheyenne, this twenty-fifth day of August, A.D. 1915. John B. Kendrick, Governor. By the Governor Frank L. Houx, Sec. Of state.

Last edition:

Sunday, September 5, 1915. Cooking with electricity.

Labels: 1910s, 1915, Casablanca, Czar Nicholas II, Electrical Power, French Empire, Labor Day, Mexican Border War, Morocco, Russia, Russian Army, Texas, Texas (Brownsville)