Confessions of a Writer of Westerns: How Many Facts in Historical Fiction?

Confessions of a Writer of Westerns: How Many Facts in Historical Fiction?: How much is too much? Well, now that could depend on what I am talking about. In this post, I am talking about placing facts into fiction w...

Today In Wyoming's History: Blog Mirror: “The Great Call Up- Wyoming Moves to...

Today In Wyoming's History: Blog Mirror: “The Great Call Up- Wyoming Moves to...:  Casper Journal:  “The Great Call Up- Wyoming Moves to the Border, 1916” The early morning hours before dawn on March 9, 1916 in the sleep...

The Columbus Raid. Why did it occur?

As I noted yesterday, this week 100 years will pass since Francisco "Pancho" Villa ordered a party of his men across the United States border into a raid on Columbus New Mexico.  Columbus was a little tiny town across the border, but it had come to have an American military presence.  Villa's actions was extraoridinary and the question has always been, why on earth did he do it.

Unlike some historitans,  I think the answer is obvious, and I've touched on it before in our thread  Lex Anteinternet: The Mexican Revolution.  As the anniversary of the event came upon me at a time when work and activities kept me from posting a really new entry here on the episode, I'm linking in, over the course of the week, a variety of items, but this particular item addressed some of these topics.  So I'm basing this post on what I earlier wrote.  Perhaps that's bad form, but none the less I think the earlier entry was pretty good.

I'm not going to repeat all that was there, but let's note that Mexico had slid into revolution, and the US had already intervened in Mexico during that revolution.  Mexico's long standing dictator Porfirio Diaz had fallen in revolution.  In turn, Modero, who overthrew him in the name of liberal democracy, had ruled naively and had gone down in a 1913 military coup that brought Victoriano Huerta to power.  Unfortunately, that coup had the local support of the American ambassador to Mexico, Henry Lane Wilson.  Mexico erupted into civil war.  That civil war brought the radical Venustiano Carranza into power and soon remaining Mexican revolutionaries took sides with or against him as Mexico descended into chaos.  One of the revolutionary generals opposing Carranza was Pancho Villa with his Army of the North.

We pick up the story after the U.S. first intervened military at Vera Cruz to keep arms being supplied to Huerta.

Indicative of things to come, perhaps, Huerta was defeated and fled while the United States occupied Vera Cruz, but he was no more pleased about the American presence there than a disgruntled Huerta was, who went on to plot with German agents to bring Mexico into war with the United States, as noted.  American forces withdrew in November 1914, but they'd be back, as we'll see, in a different location only shortly thereafter.  The intervention at Vera Cruz, however, did prevent the Germans from supplying a shipment of arms to Huerta, which may or may not have had an impact on the Mexican Revolution.  Ironically, the arms were actually American made as the Germans, in 1914, were not in a position to export arms to Mexico.

Carranza soon found himself fighting the two main stars of the Mexican Revolution, Pancho Villa and Emiliano  Zapata. Zapata, while he receives less attention, is by far the most interesting of the two as he had a real political vision for Mexico, that being a distributist agrarian state.   Villa was more of a peasant free agent, with less defined goals. Suffice it to say, however, both had been highly successful revolutionaries and a betting man would have bet against Carranza at that point.

However, Carranza was a radical as well, and that position allowed him to undercut support for a war weary Mexican population in the south.  This began to undercut support for the agrarian Zapata, and he began to face supply problems and accordingly set backs in the field.  Nonetheless Zapata was still in the field in 1919 when he was lured into a trap in an effort to secure supplies and assassinated.  In the north, Pancho Villa, who had been a very successful natural cavalry commander, found himself unable to adapt to the changes in battlefield tactics that were also being used in Europe.  Constantly in battle against Carranzaista commander Alvaro Obregon, who used barbed wire and trenches, his fortunes rapidly declined.

 

Alvaro Obregon, whose competence and study of military tactics lead to the defeat of Pancho Villa and his Division del Norte.  He'd ultimately become present of Mexico following his coup against Carranza.  Obregon would serve one term as president of Mexico, and was elected to a second term to follow his successor Calles, but he was assassinated prior to taking office.

But before they did, Carranza, in spite of a dislike of the United States, approached the Wilson administration about transporting troops through Texas by rail to be used against Villa.  Wilson had been horrified by H L. Wilson's actions in bringing about Madero's downfall, and he deeply desired to see an end to the fighting in Mexico.  Deciding to recognize Carranza as the legitimate ruler of the country, he granted permission for this to be done in 1915. Traveling under arms, they were used against Villa.  Villa retaliated against the United States for its entering the conflict in this fashion by raiding Columbus New Mexico on March 9, 1916.

 

The raid on Columbus has seemingly baffled American historians ever since, but the reasons for it couldn't be more apparent.  Villa was a fairly simply man, not a diplomat, and he had been attacked by Carranza's forces after they'd crossed the United States by rail.  By doing that, the US had taken a position in the war, which indeed it had whether President Wilson recognized that or not.  Indeed, Wilson had been warned by those knowledgeable not to support Carranza, who deeply disliked the US, and when it wasn't clear who was going to win the civil war.  Wilson's actions did nothing to engender love from Carranza but it did inspire Villa to retaliate against the US.

And so started an episode that would take U.S. troops deep into Mexico.

This entire episode seems oddly contemporary and from a distant less powerful past for the Americans.  It's hard to imagine ourselves being raided in this fashion, but then perhaps the events of 9/11 were not entirely dissimilar.    And the entire event serves as a cautionary tale today.  Nobody would have foreseen a newspaper interview bringing down Diaz.  Nobody would have seen Modero becoming the president of Mexico.  Nobody would have anticipated a victorious Modero leaving the Mexican army and its officer corps in place following their defeat.  Wilson, for his part, apparently didn't appreciate that he was directly intervening in a Mexican civil war by allowing Mexican troops in that war to be transported across U.S. territory.  Things have a way of working out contrary to our expectations.

Lex Anteinternet: Society of the Military Horse • View topic - Scenes of the U.S. Army in the Punitive Expedition

Society of the Military Horse • View topic - Scenes of the U.S. Army in the Punitive Exp. Era

One of the themes that we're going to try to explore here is the Punitive Expedition, that event following the raid by Poncho Villa on Columbus New Mexico which saw the U.S. Army enter Mexico in search of Villa.

This SMH thread has a great collection of photos dating to this era, so I'll kick off the exploration of this topic with a link to some of them.

Lex Anteinternet: Society of the Military Horse • View topic - A Punitive Expedition Time Line.

Society of the Military Horse • View topic - A Punitive Expedition Time Line

Additions?  Subtractions?

Lex Anteinternet: Society of the Military Horse • View topic - Scenes of the Punitive Expedition.

Lex Anteinternet: Society of the Military Horse • View topic - Scene...: Society of the Military Horse • View topic - Scenes of the U.S. Army in the Punitive Exp. Era

Random Snippets: Too much capitalism

Too much capitalism does not mean too many capitalists, but too few capitalists.

G. K. Chesterton:  The Uses of Diversity, 1921

Question for the readers. Source for historical weather data?

Is there any source for the weather in any one place in North America for a century or more ago.

I.e., if I wanted to know what the weather in Denver Colorado was on March 7, 1916, would there be a place I could look that up?

The Battle of Verdun commences. March 7, 1916

The titanic Battle of Verdun commenced on this day in 1916.  The bloodshed would go on for weeks.

Lex Anteinternet: The Big Picture: Co. C, Wyoming National Guard, Powell Wyoming

Lex Anteinternet: The Big Picture: Co. C, Wyoming National Guard, Powell Wyoming

Lex Anteinternet: The Big Picture: Mobilization Camp, Texas City, Texas

Lex Anteinternet: The Big Picture: Mobilization Camp, Texas City, Texas

Lex Anteinternet: The Big Picture: 6th U.S. Cavalry at Texas City, ...

Lex Anteinternet: The Big Picture: 6th U.S. Cavalry at Texas City, ...

Lex Anteinternet: The Big Picture: Truck Company No. 28, Mexican Border

Lex Anteinternet: The Big Picture: Truck Company No. 28, Mexican Border:

The Raid On Columbus New Mexico

 

100 years ago on March 9 Pancho Villa, in apparent retaliation for the Wilson Administration's allowance to Carrenza to transport his troops on U.S. railways in Texas so that they could be more efficiently deployed against Villa, raided Columbus New Mexico.  The border was already tense and, in response, President Wilson authorized the deployment of U.S. troops into northern Mexico against Villa.  

The entire historical episode is one of my favorite of American history and it seems to me, as a student of it, to have been a quite recent event.  It amazes me that it's now 100 years since the entire thing occurred and, indeed, in spite of a century having (over half of that during my lifetime) it is really recognizable recent history in a lot of ways.

The Punitive Expedition inspired this blog.  I've let the anniversary of the opening event slip by me in some ways, or I would have written a long text on it.  But, even at that, I am going to note it here, and by linking in a series of posts this week that cover it. Some are academic, some not, but they're all worth reading.

Monday at the Bar: Carlisle County Courthouse, Carlisle Pennsylvania

Carlisle County Courthouse, Carlisle Pennsylvania

Sunday Morning Scene: Churches of the West: St. Laurence O'Toole Catholic Church, Laramie Wyoming

Churches of the West: St. Laurence O'Toole Catholic Church, Laramie Wyoming

This is St. Laurence O'Toole Catholic Church in Laramie, Wyoming.

I'll confess that while I took this photograph, I took it quite a while back. In 1986, to be specific. But the church appears the same today, as it did then.

This parish has been in existence, under this name, for quite some time. The church depicted here, however, was dedicated in 1926. The church is one of two Catholic churches in Laramie, the other being a Newman Center.

I've always thought the roof tiles of this church to be both unique, and attractive.

Caring for the dying

 My mother, as a young woman.

My mother, age 90, is dying.

This isn't a sudden thing.  She was remarkably physically good health up until her mid 80s, when things began to fall apart.  It impacted her mind first, and not kindly.  She had always been a very physically active person, riding a bike and swimming daily, up until she was about 85 years old, when she suddenly quit. That's when I knew that I couldn't ignore things anymore.

Not that it wasn't obvious before that. 

It's a long story I care not to repeat, but her mind had been deteriorating for some time, but she was still able to live on her own and she loved doing so.

Now, on that, perhaps a bit of that is a rationalization on my part.  My father and I were very, very close, and I miss my father dearly to this day.  He died when he was 62 years old after becoming suddenly ill.  The anniversary of that death, in fact, is coming right up.  I'm 52 years old now.  My father's father died when he was in his late 40s, and they were very close as well.  I think that weighted heavily on his mind, particularly as he came up to and then passed that age.  I know that as I begin to see 62 on the horizon its on my mind, but then I didn't expect to make it out of here alive anyhow.

And I'm seeing that advanced old age has not been kind to my mother.  Nor has it been kind to most of her siblings.  It hasn't been the same for all of her siblings, all but one of whom have lived into advanced old age.  Some, including one of my uncles, have remained very mentally sharp.  But others have endured what my mother has.  Seeing it, I hope that I'm spared that, and frankly if Providence should provide it, while I'd like to live long enough to see my children well established as adults and enjoy their adult company, I don't know that I'd like to endure the ravages of extreme old age.  I know that its been horrible to watch.

 My mother, center, as a little girl.

And given this, I've thought a lot about how I've generally handled it and frankly sometimes considered how things like this were handled in prior times.  Frankly, I don't know that they were handled all that much differently, to some degree, in our fluid North American society.

 My mother, far left, with her sister and her oldest brother, Terry, in his Canadian Army uniform prior to his going to Europe in World War Two.  Of those depicted, Terry and Brenda (second from right), in addition to my mother, are still living.

My mother is originally from St. Lambert, Quebec.  She was born there and grew up there with her extended family of siblings.  Born in 1925, the family hit very hard times during the Great Depression.  Indeed, it's generally not realized that the Great Depression hit harder in Canada than it did in the United States, but it did. The percentage of Canadians out of work exceeded that of Americans. Having said that, that Quebec, which is now a thing of the past, had a huge rural, French speaking, agrarian population.  My mother's family was an Irish-French urban family, and therefore not part of the agrarian population, although they shared the common faith that it had.  They principally spoke English, although everyone could speak French. Anyhow, she went to work in her mid teens as the family was in such desperate straights, working at first for the Canadian Pacific Railway.  In her 20s she moved out to Calgary and worked as an oil and gas secretary, before leaving that job, as the urging of her mother, in order to be bridesmaid for her youngest sister, who married in Denver Colorado.  Returning north after that she stopped here as we were having an oil boom and she thought it likely should could find work, which she did.  All in all, she was pretty adventuresome when young.

I'd be hard pressed to know who is who is this photograph of my mother's siblings, and I'm not even sure if she is in it.

She met my father at St. Anthony's Church and they were married in 1958.  My mother would have been 33 years old at the time.  When I was born she was 38, fairly late, particularly in those years, to have a child.  I'm my parents only one.

 My mother, right, riding.  This photograph was likely taken in Alberta when she was in her twenties, but I'm not really certain and now there's nobody I ask.

We were a pretty active family. Indeed, I feel that I compare unfavorably as an adult to my parents.  But my mother started sliding into illness when I was in my teens and by the time I was 20 she was very ill.  And that illness expressed itself as a severe example of dementia.  It was scary, and during the process it strained our relationship severely.  My father admirably stayed very loyal to her the entire time, in spite of all the embarrassment that accompanies such an affliction before old age.  Ultimately she arrived at death's door.

During that time, I prayed that she'd recover, and she did.  There's no explanation for it other than a miracle.  No doctor has ever been able to explain it. The recovery wasn't full, but it was large, and when on death's door she began a recovery over a period of months that ultimately allowed her to return home from a brief hospitalization and a brief stay in a nursing home.  Her mind cleared up to a large extent, if not fully, and she was amazingly physically fit.  She bicycled and swam everyday, and in her 80s was so fit that I was often quite stunned that others were not equally fit.

 My mother with a bicycle while in her teens.  She rode a bicycle daily up into her mid 80s.

My father died at age 62 after a sudden illness afflicted him. He struggled for a period of months before passing away.  It was a horrific experience for both of us.  By that time, I'd gone down to the University of Wyoming twice and had graduated from law school.   When I returned to town I'd planned on only being at my parents house briefly but first my father grew ill and then he died, so I stayed on there, first to help him and then to try to help my mother.  Two years after he died I met my wife and we married, and with my mother doing well I moved out.

She did well after that for a long time.  Indeed, twenty or so years.  However, slowly, anyone could see things were changing.  About six years ago it was too much to ignore, although I tried to.  I couldn't bring myself to contemplate her moving from her house to which she was so attached, so I did nothing.  The last winter we debated what to do.  It was a nightmare as she panicked over snow, or forgot how common things worked. Finally, unbeknownst to me, she quite being careful about the food she was eating, which started making her ill.  Ultimately she fell very ill and at that point received the diagnosis of frontotemporal dementia.  But a diagnosis wasn't probably really necessary, it was pretty clear what was going on.

That lead to the nursing home, which we had no choice but to arrange for.  She couldn't return home, and with a will that was incredibly strong, we could not take care of her.  Over time her condition advanced much less slowly than anticipated and we were able to move her, when her wing of the nursing home closed, to a new facility that had a memory care unit that was newer and nicer, with more freedom, seemingly.

Now the end has arrived.  She's been in the hospital twice in less than a month and her physical condition has declined.  Her memory is now almost completely gone.  She can't remember things day to day, and I doubt from morning to afternoon.  She once, prior to her first illness, and again after recovering from it, had a very active mind.  Now, none of the old interests are there.

I don't know how well I've handled any of this.  Not very well, I think.  From time to time I've looked and thought that in prior ages this was handled better within families, at home, in times that were slower. But I don't think that's really that true.  We've always been so mobile.  I know that my father was there for his parents when they died, but then my grandfather was only in his 40s and my father a teenager when he died.  I can remember my father's mother dying when I was a small child, and all her children were there, and they all live here.  On my mother's side I can barely remember her mother, having met her I think only once when I was old enough too, and I don't know if my mother went out to see her as she was dying.  I dimly recall that it came too quickly.  And I think that was the same for her father.

When I was young, I recall prayers for a good, or happy, death being common in the Middle Ages.   Then are not unknown now, but they are less common.  While young, I was always struck by that with a bit of horror.  A good death?  How could that be?  

But I understand it now.  All too often that isn't how things happen.  Or at least its now how those who observe it perceive it.  It makes sense to me now.

O God, great and omnipotent judge of the living and the dead, we are to appear before you after this short life to render an account of our works. Give us the grace to prepare for our last hour by a devout and holy life, and protect us against a sudden and unprovided death. Let us remember our frailty and mortality, that we may always live in the ways of your commandments. Teach us to "watch and pray" (Lk 21:36), that when your summons comes for our departure from this world, we may go forth to meet you, experience a merciful judgment, and rejoice in everlasting happiness. We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen.

Anyway you look at it, this is one of those areas where I don't measure up to my father and his siblings.  I  simply don't. 

Everything old is new again. Politicians

Huey Long.  1935.

Funny how this video seemed so very antiquated just two years ago, but this year, it sounds a lot like what we're hearing in some ways from some of the candidates.

Fast on Fridays to Meatless Mondays. Bemused observations

One of the things that really sets a Catholic or an Orthodox person in the United States apart from other people is that during Lent, they fast and they abstain from mean on Fridays. The disciplines for those whose catholic faith is of the Eastern branch as opposed to the Latin branch isn't exactly the same, but that this occurs is a feature of their lives for forty days running up to Lent and always has been.

Days of abstention poster from World War One.  During the war, Monday was "meatless", and Saturday Porkless, although at least one U.S. government website states it was "wheatless Mondays, meatless Tuesdays, porkless Saturdays".  Any way you look at it, for Catholics of the period all Fridays were already meatless.

This, however, is actually a change in the United States for Roman Catholics from the old rules.  While we now abstain from meat on Fridays and on Ash Wednesday, during Lent, at one time all Roman Catholics abstained from meat every Friday throughout the year.  Indeed, in many places this is still the binding discipline.  In the US it was lifted following Vatican Two with the understanding that each Catholic was to observe some sort of penitential observance personal to them, but at least according to Jimmy Akin, who knows such things much better than I, it isn't clear that this was made a binding obligation so the widespread ignoring of this by American Catholics may not actually be an instance of their ignoring their faith.

The Orthodox and Eastern Rite Catholics, it should be noted, traditionally have much more strict fasting rules in modern times.   This is apparently something that's been relaxed, in some instances in the United States, taking into account the culture here, but traditionally the Orthodox and Eastern Rite Catholics observed two Lenten season during the year, one prior to Easter and another prior to Christmas, both of which have very strict rules which require the faithful to abstain not only from meat, but also ultimately from dairy and wine.

The entire discipline has always been widely misunderstood by those who aren't Catholic or Orthodox and indeed its one of the distinct things about Catholics and Orthodox that not only set them apart, but made them seem strange to Protestants (but probably not to Jews or Muslims who have their own dietary laws).  "Where in the Bible does it say you have to do that?" is a question that probably every Catholic or Orthodox is asked at one time in his life, simply for not ordering a hamburger at lunch.  Well, as well catechized Catholics or Orthodox know, the it doesn't say that you can't eat meat on Fridays in the Bible and the Bible doesn't set the Lenten periods either.  These aren't law with a Divine origin, like the Jewish dietary laws, but rather matters of discipline set by the Church, and set by the Church in very early times in recognition of the spiritual and even the temporal advantages of abstaining and fasting.

Which makes it all the more amusing for us to watch the secular world come up with this anew.  After all, both the Catholics and the Orthodox can point to the Council of Nicea establishing Lent and its practices in the year 325.

Hence, the amusing Meatless Mondays.

Meatless Mondays is one of those uniquely American movements which, I'd argue, has its roots in the Puritan foundation of the country. The Puritans are widely misunderstood, but one thing about them is that they were die-hard Calvinists who approved of work and disapproved of nearly anything about average life that was fun or enjoyable except, oddly enough, husbands and wives getting frisky with each other.  We don't think of them that latter way, but that's about the only thing I'm aware of, off hand, that they really strongly approved of outside of their own Calvinistic interpretation of the Bible.  They tended to ban just about darned near anything else that was out there, including sports and the celebration of Christmas.

Now, the Puritans were not teetotalers (the drank a fair amount of beer) and they certainly didn't have any dietary restrictions they imposed on anyone, but their way of looking at things in regards to its enjoyment or not has had a lasting impact on American culture, as well as a few others.  One strong feature of it is that Americans have developed sort of a fondness for deprivation and self suffering which stands apart from a lot of other cultures.  Indeed, Catholic (and Orthodox) southern Europe has traditionally tended to drive Americans crazy in certain respects as its attitude towards work, food, and alcohol has tended to be quite a bit different from our own, even though we're all basically Europeans.  That is, in the very cultures which retain the Old Faith, and hence the various rules discussed above, the happy people otherwise go around enjoying all the things that the latest in worrywart Americans urge everyone to give up all the time.  That is, these cultures, some of which are notoriously long lived, indulge in the things that secular American dietary theorist would require you to give up. So, oddly, that secularized focus would impose a perpetual fast on everyone.

Now all that may seem odd for a thread that starts off about the Lenten practices of Catholics and the Orthodox, the latter of which take the concept of Lenten fasting far further than Catholics do.  But I'd maintain that this is all closely tied together.

Anyhow, Meatless Mondays dates back to a World War One government backed program which was intended to help conserve food for the troops.  Every week had a meatless day (which like the Catholic and Orthodox Friday didn't mean fish, that wasn't meat), a wheatless day, and a porkless day.  I will confess I find the porkless day a bit odd, as pork is meat, but maybe the meatless day was simply beef free.

Now, while this movement was legitimately tied to the war effort, as resources were so scarce, I can't help but note a subtle Puritan element to it.  The concept has a certain suffering aspect to it, and tied in the whole culture to suffering for a cause.  Well, not the whole culture equally.  Catholics and Orthodox already had a meatless day and indeed the Orthodox had two meatless seasons.  It can't help but be noted that the Wilson Administration didn't propose making Fridays, which were already meatless for a big chunk, albeit a minority, of the population, meatless (including pork).  No, Catholics and Orthodox, if they observed Meatless Tuesday (as that was the day it was set on, not Monday) and Porkless Saturday (as that's the day that was set on) still had the added porkless and meatless Fridays.

In other words, World War One got to be extra bland for Catholics and Orthodox Americans.  It isn't as if the government couldn't have made Fridays meatless and porkless.  But they didn't.

And now we have this movement carried forward to modern times, but this time based on the concept that by taking meat out of your diet, you'll live forever.  You'll be eating bland, but you'll get to eat bland until dementia or infirmity take you down.  Interesting.

It seems as if the Puritanized American secular culture interestingly cast about for a way to reintroduce the Catholic fasts that it tossed out with the Reformation, but in doing so, it always puts on a ting of odd guilt about it that the Catholics and Orthodox largely omit.  Its interesting. And its really carried over into secular lives and not so much into modern American Protestantism, although some Protestant denominations do abstain from alcohol, and two of the American faiths do have distinct dietary laws in their own rights.  Secular American culture, however, looks for a lot of ways to suffer, and something to tie that suffering too.

It'd be an interesting cultural study, but I think there's something to be argued to the effect that the Reformation's tossing out of Catholic fasting rules had the effect, ultimately, of not only putting the Reformation cultures in the position of allowing everyone to make up their own rules, after a long period of development, but there is something really deeply missed about those rules.  The Puritan impulse to make rules really strict is strongly retained in our culture, even if the Calvinist impulse to base them on religious tenants is not.  Or maybe it is.  Many modern Americans seemingly elevate dietary beliefs to near religious status.

There are a lot of observations that could be made about all of this, but maybe one is that there's something about human beings that require periods of self sacrifice for some reason.  A person could argue this in a number of ways. If a person stated a theological argument they might be able to say that there's something ingrained in our natures by our Creator that causes us to need to engage in periodic periods of fast in order to focus us to things greater.

And that's the oddity of the Great Secular Fast that Puritanical American dietary folks would impose.  It seems largely focused on nothing.  But there's some impulse there that, if only I suffer more, or give up this or that, and reduce myself to a diet of free trade, organic, Slovenian, oatmeal, I'll be happy.  Probably not.

Alaska halibut, being fried in butter, on a Lenten Friday.

At least that doesn't seem to be the lesson learned from those Southern European cultures where the old rules apply, but when their not in effect, the people seem pretty content with their traditional diets, and they seem to live a long time.

The Big Speech: Good signs

It is a good sign in a nation when things are done badly. It shows that all the people are doing them. And it is bad sign in a nation when such things are done very well, for it shows that only a few experts and eccentrics are doing them, and that the nation is merely looking on.

G.K. Chesterton:  All Things Considered