Coal: Understanding the time line of an industry

 
Me, third from right, when I thought I had a career in geology, and probably in coal.

There is a lot of speculation about a revival in the future of coal around here.  I'm skeptical.  This doesn't mean that I come from the outside where coal is simply a freakish oddity.  No, I'm pretty familiar with coal. . . personally.  At one time, coal, I thought, would fuel my career. When other students in the UW geology department of the early 1980s were planning on becoming petroleum geologist, I focused on coal, which wasn't suffering. . . at first, the way oil then was.  Of course, it came to, and I went from the geology department into under employment so my plan failed.

The irony of that is that my choice on coal as a focus was intentional.  I could see the handwriting on the wall in regards to employment in the oil industry.  Others seemingly couldn't, or having entered onto that set of railroad tracks they just couldn't get off.  Coal, on the other hand, was doing fine in the early 1980s. . . at first.  There were coal mines operating at that time which aren't now.  Indeed, there was an underground coal mine in Hanna, a continuation of a situation that had existed well into the early 20th Century.

Well, that didn't work out the way I'd panned and by 1985, when I approached graduation from the University of Wyoming, after five years of effort (five was typical for geologist, that was five full semesters) I graduated into being an . . . .artilleryman.

Yup.  Artillery. The rescuer of my economic fortunes.

I'd joined the National Guard right out of high school and was still in it in 1985 when I graduated.  The Guard basically employed me on a semi full time basis for a year while I tired to find a job.  I couldn't, of course, so I ended up going back to school to obtain a JD.  Indeed, relating back to the Guard, I've felt guilty ever since as I let my enlistment expire in 1986 just before I went back to law school as I believed all the propaganda I'd heard about how hard law school is.  Hah!  It's nothing compared to obtaining a bachelors in geology. 

  

My main employer, right after receiving my bachelor's degree.

Anyhow, in that period of time between my general geology studies at Casper College (during which I really picked up a love of geomorphogy) and my graduation, the first time, at the University of Wyoming by which time I'd picked up a focus on coal, I learned a lot about coal.  At the same time I nearly obtained enough credits for a BA in history, which perhaps reflects a natural interest that reflects itself back here.

 So, perhaps in some ways, I'm uniquely suited to ponder the long decline of coal.   Or at least I have.

And indeed the path of coal, and its long slow decline, is highly relevant to where we find ourselves now.  Lots of people in the coal states believe that the election of Donald Trump is going to revive the fortunes of coal.  Here in Wyoming quite a few people are so acclimated to coal paying the bills that they can't imagine anything else.  Indeed, just this past weekend I was at a public event, wearing my shabby (truly) Carhartt coat and my Stormy Kromer cap, probably looking like a guy who had shoveled a lot of coal (and indeed I have shoveled a little) and was accosted by a person sitting under a banner proclaiming something about a "return" to liberty and the Constitution who started off on a speech about would I like to sign a petition in opposition to any kind of new taxes.  No, I won't sign that as I just don't see coal being able to pay the Wyoming freight in the future anymore.  Maybe some other mineral or minerals can, but coal isn't going to be able to the way it once did (and besides, I'd be unlikely to sign anyway as I tend to find that people are always opposed to new taxes but not bothered by demanding that the things taxes pay for are really good).

I think the path of coal, being familiar with it, might be best illustrated by a few rough dates and illustrations.  Its something that should be considered.

So let's start around 1900.  That was a world fueled by coal (and by wood).  Sure, kerosene was around, and it had replaced whale oil to a large extent.  I have around here a draft post, now months and months old, building on a George F. Will column that noted:

In many ways, the world of 1870 was more medieval than modern. Three necessities — food, clothing, shelter — absorbed almost all consumer spending. No household was wired for electricity. Flickering light came from candles and whale oil, manufacturing power from steam engines, water wheels and horses. Urban horses, alive and dead, complicated urban sanitation. Window screens were rare, so insects commuted to and fro between animal and human waste outdoors and the dinner table. A typical North Carolina housewife in the 1880s carried water into her home eight to 10 times daily, walking 148 miles a year to tote 36 tons of it. Few children were in school after age 12.

As I will note, I don't dispute the details that Will recites here, but I do doubt the "more medieval than modern assertion in a major way.  Indeed, some of these things argue, I think, the other way around and I think that misstates the nature of the Medieval world.

But noting what Will states about lights, we note what he said, and further note that it was accurate.

• "No household was wired for electricity"

This is quite true.

• "Flickering light came from candles and whale oil,"

Whale oil chandelier, photo from the Library of Congress.  Up until the Will entry, I'd never even considered there being such a thing as a whale oil chandelier.

And so, in many places it did.  But coal fueled a lot of other things.

But let's consider coal in 1900.

It fueled the ships.

 USS Ohio, approximately 1898, as the USS Maine, which sank in a coal explosion in 1898, is in the background.

It fueled the trains, the only significant interstate transportation that existed.

New Your central yard, about 1907.

It heated the homes, where wood did not.

And it fueled industry, particularly the steel industry.

Blat furnace, about 1905.

And then things began to change.

It really started with navies in some ways, although some might argue that it started with hydroelectric.  We'll start with navies.

Navies had been powered by sail up until the mid 19th Century but already by the time of the American Civil War that was changing.  The U.S. Navy may have had its grandest ships under sail during that war, but coal fired wheels were being introduced even then.   And the scary smoke belching squat "monitors"  that signaled the end of the age of sail were coal (and perhaps wood) burning beasts.  Slow, hardly seaworthy, but iron clad.  It was pretty clear by 1865 that the age of militarized wind was ending.

And indeed the Naval reformation that occurred after the American Civil War is incredibly stunning.  Everything about navies soon changed.  By the 1890s every major navy in the world was building ships that look odd to our eyes, but which still look familiar .  Big guns on big ships powered by coal replaced sailing vessels, and the general purpose yeoman sailor was replaced by the specialist.  At about this time, in fact, the U.S. Navy started to switching from a navy drawing its recruits mostly from port towns, and which was in fact an integrated navy, to one which was segregated which drew its recruits from the interior of the country.  A wood and sail navy required men who had grown up near, or even on ships, and who knew the ins and outs of sail. That was a multi ethnic, polyglot group of men who in some way resembled the men in every port town around the world more than they did the men in the interior of their own countries.  It's  no accident that the first Congressional Medal of Honor to go to a foreign born serviceman went to a sailor, in action during the American Civil War fighting a naval battle in. . . . .Japan.

The naval battle in Shimonoseki Straits where an English sailor serving on board the USS Wyoming won a Congressional Medal of Honor.  Note that these ships already featured coal fire steam, in addition to sail.

While there was a sail and steam age, i.e., an age that combined both, for navies it wouldn't last long. For commercial shipping it lasted longer, and indeed the age of sail itself lingered on until after World War Two, amazingly enough, in some usages.  But for big ships, coal fired boilers were the norm before the turn of the century.  Sail lingered, but only lingered.

And so we entered the coal fired world. The degree to which coal fired everything, almost, is stunning.  If we take the world of 1900 heavy long distance transportation of all types was coal fired.  Trains and ships, that is.  Local transportation was seeing the beginnings of the Petroleum Age, but only the beginnings.  Locally, it was very much a horse oriented world, and indeed the railroads themselves caused a massive boom in heavy hauler horses around the turn of the prior century which gave us the really big draft horses, rather than farms as we so often imagine.  Something had to hault hat weight from the railhead to the warehouse.

And heat was going the way of coal. Coal fired, well fires, heated homes all around the country everywhere.  Boilers for apartment buildings, furnaces in homes.  Wood remained, but it was coal that was the oncoming fuel.

A World War One vintage poster of the United States Fuel Administration.  This period poster nicely illustrates how coal fit in.  Homeowners were being urged to buy coal early in the year.  That coal wasn't delivered, in this poster, by a truck, but rather by a dump wagon drawn by heavy draft horses.  Given the light dress of the laborer and the depiction of foliage the poster must have been released during the summer.

It is, in short, impossible to overestimate the importance of coal around 1900.  It was called King Coal for a reason.

But things were beginning to slowly change.

For one thing, petroleum was creeping in.  Not in a massive way, but in a way that was clearly predictable.  George Will spoke of whale oil lamps, but by the second half of the 20th Century kerosene lanterns were very common and their advantages very obvious.  Following in their wake came gas lanterns and by necessity, piping for natural gas.  It wasn't long after that in which the first gas stoves were introduced. Already by the early 20th Century, therefore, there was gas lighting and gas stoves.  

And gasoline was already making its appearance in the internal combustion engine by 1900.

Very early internal combustion engine.

We've dealt with automobiles elsewhere, but we've become so acclimated to them that we rarely think of their history.  Automobiles were a 19th Century invention, albeit a very late 19th Century invention, not a 20th Century one.  That doesn't mean that they replaced the horse right away, that would hardly be true, but they do go back aways.  And they were not, and we should not pretend, that they were any sort of a threat to coal at first.  Not at all.  Cars, trucks and motorcycles were competition for the horse, not the train and certainly not the ship or even the barge.

Truck waiting in line with big long line of coal wagons, some time prior to World War One.

Which takes us back to ships.

And, more specifically, the Royal Navy.

For decades, indeed centuries, the world's biggest and best navy was the Royal Navy.  This does not mean, however, that there was ever a day in which some other navy wasn't contending with the Royal Navy for that position.  And given that, the British basically engaged in a naval arms race that lasted well over a century.  And that mean that it needed to always be on the alert for a technological advantage.

And coal had given one.  Steam meant that large steel ships were able to be constructed, fired by coal fueled boilers.  They had two significant disadvantages however.

Smoke and spontaneous ignition.

Let's talk about smoke first, the disadvantage that was always there.

Their smoke was visible all the way over the edge of the horizon.

This is something that people who are more familiar with ships of the World War Two era don't instantly recall about earlier steel ships, but coal fires smoke and hence coal fired boilers likewise smoke, or rather the coal fires smoke

 The Great White Fleet, and great clouds of black smoke, December 16, 1907.

Prior to the advent of air reconnaissance and radar the spotting of enemy fleets, or for that matter friendly forces, was done by the naked eye.  And it was a matter of absolutely vital concern.  In the vastness of the ocean ships at sea had always scoured the horizon for signs of enemy ships, and even clues that seem slight to landlubbers were picked up by trained sailors.  Sailors looked, in prior eras, for sails and masts on the horizon, with the assistance of spyglasses.  By the time of dreadnoughts, however, they were looking for the faintest hints of smoke, and coal fired boilers provided plenty of it.  Teams of sailors searched the horizon with massive binoculars looking for that wisp of smoke, which was often more than a wisp.

The next danger was rarer, but not so rare as to not be a serious problem.  Spontaneous combustion.

Coal has a well known propensity to self heat and to make it worse, the better the coal grade the bigger the problem.  Exposed to air and moisture coal begins to engage in an exothermic reaction and can relatively easily self heat to the point where it ignites.  Moreover, as it self heats and heads towards ignition it drives off highly flammable hydrocarbon gases. Indeed, heating coal intentionally in a controlled environment is a means of producing those gases and has sometimes been thought of as a method of producing them, although its never proven to be an efficient means of doing so.

Coal is so prone to spontaneous combustion that coal self ignition is a natural phenomenon.  It simply happens where coal gets exposed to sufficient oxygen and moisture. Anyone who has ever spent any time in an open pit coal mine has seen coal simply burning on its own, as I have.

There are ways to combat this, of course, but the problem is uniquely acute for ships.  Ships must store coal in large bunkers and must taken on a lot of coal at certain points.  Ships are wet by their very nature. So any coal burning ship has, at some point, a lot of coal with just enough oxygen and moisture to create a problem.

This proved to be a real problem for ships and of course there were extreme catastrophic occurrences, the most famous of which is the explosion of the USS Maine.  The Maine is an extreme example of what could occur, but any coal burning ship could experience what the Maine did.  Basically, in the case of the USS Maine, the coal self ignited and the coal bunkers had sufficient liberated gas to create a massive explosion.  Not quite as dangerous, but still a huge problem, a simple self ignition of the coal without an explosion was a disaster, quite obviously, of the first rate requiring sailors to put the coal fire out under extreme danger.

Coal's detriments on ships would have had to be accepted, and indeed they were, but for the existence of alternatives.  Indeed, coal survived as a naval fuel for an appreciably longer time than a person might actually suppose, so impressive were its advantages in general.  Measures were taken in ship design to try to combat the dangers, such as having the coal bunkers placed near outside ship's hulls such that the coolness of the water would translate to them, and placing sailors bunks along the bunker's walls so that the sailors could tell if heat was building, but the dangers were real and known. Also known was that there was an alternative, oil.

By the turn of the century naval designers were aware that oil could be used to heat boilers just as coal could, and they began to study it in earnest.  Indeed, not only could it be used, but it had numerous advantages.

Unlike coal, petroleum oil for ships fuel did not result in much smoke.  It resulted in some, but not anything like that which coal put out.  The smoke from a single ship was much less visible and suffice it to say the smoke from a fleet of ships was greatly reduced.  Again, there was smoke, but not smoke like that put out by coal fired boilers.  Indeed, it was so much reduced that to a large degree detection of ships over the horizon by the naked eye was approaching becoming a think of the past.

And petroleum does not spontaneously self ignite.  A big vat of petroleum can sit around forever and never touch itself off.  This does not mean, of course, that its free from danger.  It isn't.  But some of the dangers it poses were already posed by coal, but in lesser degrees.  Petroleum burns more freely than coal by quite some measure and once it ignites putting it out is extremely difficult.  Sparks, other fires, etc., all pose increased dangers for petroleum over bunkered coal, but they existed to some degree for bunkered coal already.

And petroleum is more efficient and easier to use for ships.  Coal was basically stoked by hand, a dirty laborious job.  But petroleum wasn't.  Petroleum burning boilers were fueled by what amounts to a plumbing system involving a greater level of technical know how but less physical labor.  And oil had double the thermal content of coal making it a far more efficient fuel which required less refueling.  And on refueling, ships fueled with oil can be refueled at sea.  Ships fueled with coal cannot be.  Indeed, the maintenance of coaling stations in the remote parts of the globe was a critical factor in naval planning prior to the introduction of oil.

Which isn't to say that there weren't some unique problems associated with petroleum for ship.

For one thing, the fact that it spreads out when leaked and can more easily ignite meant that petroleum added a unique and added horror for a stricken ship.  Coal fired ships that were simply damaged and sinking were unlikely to cause a horrific sea top fire.  Petroleum ships are very likely to do that.  And the risk of a munitions caused explosion is increased with petroleum fueled ships.  A torpedo into a coal bunker might blow a coal fired ship to bits with an explosion or might just sink it.  With a petroleum fueled ship the risk of an explosion in such a situation is increased as is the risk that oil on the water will catch on fire or otherwise kill survivors.

A huge factor, however, was supply.

By odd coincidence all of the major naval powers, save for Japan, had more than adequate domestic supplies of coal.  Some had very good supplies of coal, such as the United States, United Kingdom and Imperial Germany, within their own borders.  Japan nearly did in that it obtained it from territories it controlled on the Asian mainland, although that did make its supply more tenuous. At any rate all of the big naval powers of the pre World War One world had coal supplies that htey controlled.  That's a big war fighting consideration.  Of the naval powers of that era, in contrast, only the United States and Imperial Russia had proven petroleum sources they controlled, and Imperial Russia had proven it self to be a second rate naval power during the Russo Japanese War.

Switching from coal to oil did not occur in the Royal Navy, or any navy, all at once. The decision was made somewhat haltingly and it was an expensive proposition to convert an entire navy to oil.  Britain started to convert prior to World War One but it didn't complete the process until after the war.  Still, its decision to start constructing capitol ships as oil burners in 1912 was a huge step for a nation that had the world's largest navy but which had no domestic oil production at all.  The United States followed suit almost immediately, with its first large ship to be converted to oil, the USS Cheyenne, undergoing that process in 1913.

 The USS Cheyenne in 1916 while it was a submarine tender.  The Cheyenne was the first oil burning ship in the U.S. Navy, following the lead that the British had started.

The USS Cheyenne was illustrative of something else that was going on, however, that being the increased presence of heavy internal combustion engines for various uses.  The USS Cheyenne had been built as a monitor, a type of proto battleship (and had been named the USS Wyoming originally) but after its conversion to oil it would become a submarine tender in a few short years.  Submarines of the era were light vessels and, like a lot of light naval fighting ships ,they were diesels.  Marine diesel engines were replacing boilers completely in lighter vessels and of course diesel fuel is a type of oil.

Diesels in that application show that industrial diesel engines had arrived.

By World War Two every navy in the world was an oil burning, not a coal burning, navy.  And it wasn't just navies.  Merchant ships had followed in the navies' wakes.  They were now oil burning too for the most part.  Coal at sea had died.

 Giant marine diesel engine circa 1920.

The demise of coal at sea did not equate, of course, with the universal demise of coal, and this is very important to keep in mind.  Entering into the period of history we've been discussing, roughly 1900 to 1920, coal may have lost its crown at sea, but it remained hugely important, arguably increasingly important, elsewhere.  It continued to be the fuel of heavy transportation, IE., for trains, it continued to heat homes and it fired an ever growing  number of power plants.  Indeed that last application can't be overstated as in this same period the Western world was electrifying.  So whatever position it may have lost on the waves it was likely more than making it up on land.

Still, the trend line had been set.

And it would next show itself with transportation.

At least according to one source written in 1912 coal fueled 9/10s of all locomotive engines at that time.  The other 1/10th would have been fired by wood or, yes,  oil.

This photograph will appear again in a series of photographs on the centennial of their having been first taken, in January 1917, but these teenagers are stealing coal from a rail yard.  They are probably taking it home for heating fuel or are selling it to Bostonian's who probably knew darned well these kids had taken it illegally from the yards.  For that matter, the railroad likely knew they were taking it too.  Even today, decades after the end of the use of coal for locomotives the paths of old railways can be found by the coal ash and coal that the trains dropped as they passed by.  I've walked the path of the old UP here and there down by Laramie doing that.

Wood, I should  note, may seem strange for a locomotive engine of that era, but it really shouldn't.  The goal of any fuel used in a locomotive engine is to produce steam and burning wood will produce steam.  Wood isn't an efficient fuel for that but it was a common one very early on.  Most locomotives were switched to coal after the Civil War, assuming that they were not burning it already, but where wood was locally plentiful and the engine had a local use, as for a small engine associated with a timbering operation, wood was kept in use.  

Indeed, as a total aside, during World War One some small German engines were made that burned trash.  Coal is a military fuel, Germany's (and Poland's) coal is very good, but as a military fuel conservation was the rule of the day.

At any rate, in 1912 less than 1/10th of all steam engines were burning oil, but what is telling there is that some were.  So here too a trend line had started.

In following years more and more steam engines became oil burning engines.  The reasons may not be entirely clear and are somewhat subtle, but some of them have been touched upon already above.  Oil is a more efficient fuel. Not so much so, however, that all locomotives were switched to it. The famous Union Pacific Big Boys, for example, were coal burning to the end.

Union Pacific Big Boy. These were coal burning their entire career.

What did the coal burning locomotive in, in the end, or more properly the steam engine in, was the diesel.

Diesel engine, 1985, outside of Laramie Wyoming.

Diesels Electric trains proved to be a better and more efficient option for train engines in the end. Contrary to what some may think these locomotives do not work like a diesel truck in that the engine does not power the drive wheels. Rather the diesels are big generators and the trains are essentially electric.   By the same token, in the proper settings, trains run from overhead electric lines.  Either way, this type of engine did in the steam engine.

Now then, looking at it, we see that coal went from the main fuel for ships and trains to a remnant fuel for both in a fifty year period. Hardly overnight, but clearly observable.  A person living in the era, if they cared to notice the trend, would have noticed.  Certainly, for example, if you lived in Rawlins Wyoming and looked out towards the Union Pacific Railroad yard over the course of an average life, if you'd lived in this period, you would have seen it gone from a busy smoky and sooty yard to one which had only the blue haze of diesel fuel above it.  And given that Rawlins is just seven miles from Sinclair, where a refinery is located, but also is surrounded by coal deposits and actually had its origin as a coaling location for the Union Pacific, the change would have been pretty obvious.  If you worked in the big underground mines in Hanna you might actually be slightly worried.

Which isn't to say that coal stopped being used.  Not hardly.  It was still heating homes all over, including in Wyoming, and it still was the fuel for power plants.

Let's turn to domestic coal use, as we haven't really touched on that much.

 

Lennox "Torrid Zone" coal furnace

Now, as we've seen above, coal was a basic heating fuel early in the 20th Century, having replaced wood in that role to a large extent.  During World War One Americans were urged to stock up on heating coal early, which meant filling their coal rooms full during the summer rather than waiting until winter.  Coal soot was such a prominent part of big city life that it came to be an accepted part, even contributing to the legendary concept that London was foggy.  It wasn't so much foggy as it was sooty.  This use of coal continued on for a very long time, and indeed here in Wyoming, which switched to gas early, people still ordered coal for heating fuel at least as late as the 1940s. 

 

Coal furnaces in the Library of Congress, 1900.  Shoot, and Washington D. C. isn't even all that cold.

But over time this changed to where heating oil, yes another use of petroleum oil and natural gas began to replace coal.  By the 1970s at least the price of heating oil became a major factor in annual fuel price concerns, but nobody really thought much of coal for the same purpose.  You can still buy a coal furnace today, if you are so inclined, but very few people do.  So yet another use of coal yielded to petroleum. And here, over time, petroleum has yielded to natural gas and electrical generation.

 Workman converting coal furnace to oil during World War Two.  Oil was more plentiful and efficient which sparked a government move to convert home heating to oil

Of course electrical generation also became a major use of coal in the early 20th Century, and it remains one today.  But, as has been seen from the trend line above, coal isn't the only option, and here too its a declining one.  While oil did make an appearance in the electrical generation field oil powered power plants are more or less a thing of the past and coal has outlasted them.  There are no oil fired power plants left in the United States and less than a dozen major ones left on Earth.  They're yielding, however, to natural gas, which powers quite a few power plants and which as been replacing coal.  And there are other means of generations electrical power, including wind power which now is cheaper than other forms of electrical generations in some regions of the United States.

 

Dave Johnston Power Plant, 2015.  U.S. Government photograph. 

Okay, so what's the point of this? Well, just this.  Coal has been on a long, slow, decline for over a century.  It isn't that it doesn't work, it's that it can't compete economically with other fuels that do the same thing in an increasing range of uses.  Only in terms of coking for steel production is it indispensable.  Indeed, perhaps signalling an international increase in manufacturing, high grade coal for coking has experienced a sharp recovery in recent months. That doesn't do anything locally, however, as our coal is Bituminous Coal, not Anthracite, and therefore can't be used for coking.

This isn't the view of some green fanatic world view.  It's dollars and cents, and coal producing regions, such as Wyoming, have to consider this. Without a way to address coal's defects, and soon, its diminished share of the fuel market will be considerably smaller irrespective of any environmental or regulatory concerns.  It's been a long trend running back over a century.

The Casper Daily Press for January 4, 1916: Wilson takes charge when mediators fail

The view from Casper, which was similar to the view expressed by Cheyenne's Leader.

The Cheyenne State Leader for January 4, 1916: Wilson to change Mexican policy

The United States, having failed to acquire Carranza's signature to the protocol, was reacting by giving Carranza what he wanted most, an American withdrawal.

From a century later, it's hard to see how this wasn't just implementing the protocol plus giving Carranza what he wanted.

The Inter Ocean disaster figured large in the press as well, as well as good fortunes for wildlife.

A Happy New Year 1867-A Happy New Year 1917. Life: January 4, 1917.

Dutch Oven Roast

One of our cows and potatoes from our garden.

New Year's Resolutions

Not everyone does these, but I do.

And I keep track of my old ones.  When I do ones for a new year, I look to see how I did on my old ones.

Which makes doing the new ones easier as I tend to find, indeed I nearly universally find, that I failed in last year's.

Sigh.

Some of that is circumstantial, maybe.  My reach on those does tend to exceed my grasp.  But on others, I'm just habituated, I guess, to the path that I'm resolving to divert and therefore, I don't.

How about you?  Do you do New Year's Resolutions, including any big ones?

The Cheyenne State Leader for January 3, 1917: Negotiations with Mexico at a hiatus

The Cheyenne State Leader ran the story a little differently, but it was still of real concern.  Negotiations with Mexico were at a hiatus.

And filings under the new Stock Raising Homestead Act of 1916 were so high that the Land Office had to shut its doors.

Drugs were in the headlines as well, something I wouldn't have expected in a 1917 newspaper.

The Wyoming Tribune for January 3, 1917. Things getting worse with Carranza?

Things didn't seem to be going well with the negotiations with Mexico at all.

The cartoon must have seemed to be the case to quite a few at the time, as Villa seemed quite resurgent.  But in reality Carranza was simply insistent on Mexican sovereignty.  He was dealing with two major contests to his administration at the same time, which was pretty risky, but in retrospect, he did it pretty well.

New Years Day Dinner, Casper (antelope) Cheese Steaks.

The first time, I think, I've had all four of my cast iron pans in use simulatenously.

The Local News: The Casper Record for January 2, 1917

But, the Casper paper didn't feature Mexico at all.

Indeed, I'd be disinclined to put this one up, given the stories that I've been following, but for the fact that by only putting up the Cheyenne papers that covered the story in Mexico extensively I'm giving a false impression.  In Central Wyoming, when you picked up your local paper (there were two) you might not be reading about such events at all.

Residents of Natrona County Wyoming, on this day, were reading about a railroad disaster near Thermopolis. That spot, by the way, is still bad and there's been a train wreck there within the last couple of years.

Like residents of Cheyenne, they also were reading about the weird gubernatorial spot in Arizona.  Long term residents of Wyoming would recall, however, that Wyoming had a similar episode about 20 years prior to this one.

And there were the cheery economic articles, common to Wyoming papers of this era.

The Local News: They Cheyenne Leader for January 2, 1917

The Leader was less dramatic on its news on Mexico, just noting that Mexico might be getting a "sharp warning" from the US, given the directions that negotiations were heading.

In other news, labor laws were being debated and the Sheridan police force was locked up in an empty freight car.  That's embarrassing. 

John Osborne, returned to Rawlins, was being vetted, apparently, for a VP position in 1920, showing that premature electioneering is not a new thing.

The local news, January 2, 1917: The Wyoming Tribune

Well, the holidays were over and back to work.

What did the papers have to say to Wyomingites on this day, that blury, hopeful to many, burdensome to some, first real work day of a new year?

We'll start with Cheyenne.

The Carey owned Tribune, after reminding its subscribers and advertiser to pay up all week, was starting the year off with a bolstering inspirational message at the top of its paper.

And the depressing news that it looked like things were breaking down in our negotiations with Mexico in Atlantic City.

Royal Bank of Canada merges with the Quebec bank.

On this day, in 1917.

I don't have much  more than this, on this one, other than to note that the Royal Bank of Canada is still very much around and that it's Canada's largest bank.  The merger was a business combination of two very large, and even then old, banks, with the Royal Bank of Canada being the survivor of the merger.

Camp Wilson, Texas. 1917

Camp Wilson, TX.  Copyright deposit January 2, 1917.

Where's the Rose Parade?

A question in this household first thing this morning.

But not from me.  I couldn't care less about the Rose Parade or any football associated event scheduled for the New Years weekend . . . or any weekend for that matter.  No, my plan, like yesterday's plan, was to head out for the wily goose.

Of course, today's plan is working out much like yesterday's, including for a couple of frustrating things I'll simply omit.  Yesterday I had intended that also, but ended up diverted early due to a problem that developed, and then later I dealt with the wind having blow a closed vent off my trailer.

Yes, a closed vent.  It's been really windy.

By afternoon my plans were shot so I diverted the plans and closed out 2016 by going to Confession. A good way to end the year really, and one which, I think, I'll mark as something to repeat in the future on the last day of the year, should that be a scheduling option. Then we went to Mass on the anticipatory Mass.  This morning I was reluctant to wake up my spouse by digging into what I needed to get to head out early, and as a result I know have a mission I'm supposed to accomplish.  Uff.

Anyhow, "where's the Rose Parade?"

My wife and kids watch it every year, although I'll note that my son, like me, trailed off in his interest in it over the years.

Well, as I read this morning "The Rose Parade has kept a 'Never on Sunday' tradition since 1893, the first year since the beginning of the Tournament, that New Year’s Day fell on a Sunday.

Good for them!

Sports on Sunday have been a tradition in the English speaking world back to Catholic England, so it's not really a new phenomenon.   At that time, of course, it was all amateur.  And it was one of the things, along with Christmas, that the Puritans banned during their period of crabby administration of England.

And if that doesn't tell you who should have one the war between the Parliament and the Crown. . . well the restoration of the monarchy didn't just bring back foppish costumes, doggone it.

Anyhow, I admire them still.  Give people Sunday off.  And American sports have become excessively overblown, so perhaps the Tournament of Roses can stand, on this one, not only as an example of the way things have been done, but could be done.

The 1917 Tournament East-West Football Game (The Rose Bowl). Webfoots 14, Quakers 0.

The Oregon Webfoots defeated the Penn Quakers by the score of 14–0 in the Third Tournament East West Football Game, which we know as the Rose Bowl.

Not being a football fan, I'm fairly amazed, frankly, the Rose Bowl is that old, but it is.

The game was scoreless until the third quarter when Oregon scored on a forward pass.  It did again, with a short one yard to go, in the fourth quarter.

Photograph from the Special Collections of the University of Oregon Libraries uploaded to Wikipedia and reported as Public Domain with this caption:  "If you choose to use the image, acknowledgement of the University of Oregon Libraries is requested.

University of Oregon football team, with head coach Hugo Bezdek on the right. This team was the Pacific Coast Conference champions and defeated the University of Pennsylvania in the Rose Bowl on January 1, 1917."

Looking back on '16. . . 2016 and 1916

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,

and never brought to mind?

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,

and auld lang syne*?

CHORUS:

For auld lang syne, my jo,
for auld lang syne,
we'll tak' a cup o' kindness yet,
for auld lang syne.

And surely ye'll be your pint-stoup!

and surely I'll be mine!

And we'll tak' a cup o’ kindness yet,

for auld lang syne.

CHORUS

We twa hae run about the braes,

and pou'd the gowans fine;

But we've wander'd mony a weary fit,

sin' auld lang syne.

CHORUS

We twa hae paidl'd in the burn,

frae morning sun till dine;

But seas between us braid hae roar'd

sin' auld lang syne.

CHORUS

And there's a hand, my trusty fiere!

and gie's a hand o' thine!

And we'll tak' a right gude-willie waught,

for auld lang syne.

Robert Burns

As anyone who has the occasional misfortune to stop in here knows, I've been detailing the events of 1916, at least since March when Pancho Villa crossed the border near Columbus New Mexico and shot the town up.

And, I always tend to track current events, but this I've bee tracking them in greater detail due to the election.

And what I can say is that 1916 and 2016 are both years that go down as, well. . . messed up.

Let's start with 2016.

The big news this past year was the General Election in  which 150 of the pundits, including myself (a pundit-lite) got everything wrong.

I started predicting long ago, maybe as far back as 2015 here (and certainly orally) that this election would be a coronation of the pantsuit princess, Hillary Clinton.

I was way wrong.

And I never in a million years thought that Donald Trump would be nominated.  I didn't take him seriously, and then I convinced myself it just wouldn't happen.

Well it sure did.

I've spilled a fair amount of electrons already doing election post mortems, but  at the end of the day what I think is the case is that the country experienced a massive populist revolt in both parties and acted to crush them.  The GOP is cautiously waiting to see what that's going to mean for it. The Democrats are pretending, Black Knight style, that it just didn't happen.  But it sure did.  Overall, the country took a big step towards a populist idea that isn't really a fully conservative one and which is one that the liberal left can't even recognize and therefore refuses to do so.  If this continues to play out in the direction that it started to the country will truly be headed in a new direction, although as with all such things the direction always takes you to a place somewhat different from where you figured it would.

Nobody really knows where this will end, but it is both scary and, perhaps in an odd way, reassuring. For the longest time the Democrats have gleefully been pretending that a revived highly left wing future was inevitable.  It isn't, and we should be relieved.  Progress, that is true progress, of every type should be welcome to everyone.  But the progress that the Democrats have been backing isn't progress but a vision of the world deeply hostile to nature.  They deserved to be whacked as a result.  That doesn't mean the GOP doesn't, it has its own deeply hostile views.  But its whacking, I suspect, is just about to commence.  A lot of that is going to be, I suspect, economic.

George F. Will recently ran an article in which he claimed that the world that Trump promises to return us to, when "America was Great", is the world of 1953.  He based that argument on the correct notation that 1953 was really the last time that the US had a "make everything" economy such as Trump is promising.  And that world of 1953 was based on a glitch.  Europe had engaged in two world wars the first half of the 20th Century that had destroyed its economy, and in the end much of Europe itself, and Asian economies were really a nonentity until the mid 1950s.  No wonder we were the world's economic engine. That world isn't returning, so we're really not going back to that, no matter where we are really going.

The Wyoming legislature, along with Utah's, once to actually go back to the economy of 1916.  1916 was the year that the Stock Raising Homestead Act of 1916 was passed, the World War One oil boom was on, and coal was king.  And they seemingly believe that they can make this occur by legislative fiat over the wishes of the people of Wyoming combined with Trump being President.

One thing that the recent Wyoming efforts to grab the Federal domain have pointed out is how close Wyoming came to being something like Texas where all the land is privately owned and getting access to anything is based upon paying for it, or knowing somebody.  We were really lucky.  The Stock Raising Homestead Act was a good thing, to be sure, but it was already creating problems by the late 1920s and when Franklin Roosevelt acted to bring about the repeal of all three homestead acts in the 1930s he did the entire nation, and the West in particular, a huge favor.  Indeed, it was an economic and environmental favor.  We really dodged a bullet but the legislature seems intent on loading the gun and shooting us again.  The legislative effort to grab the land that has been going on against the wishes of the state's residents is shameful.  Here, however, the fact that Trump was elected probably operates against this trend as he and his appointments have not been in favor of it.

The state legislature will have a bunch of new faces in it this session.  Quite a few of the old hands left for one reason or another and this has actually continued after the general election as at least one member resigned post election.  It appears that the legislature will be even more conservative than the norm, which is pretty conservative, but also somewhat green. As this session is a general, not a budget, session, that could be interesting.

Not that it wouldn't be interesting if it was a budget session.  The price of oil seems to have more or less stabilized and the oilfields are a bit more active than they were six months ago. But anyway you look at it the boom is definitely over and if the bust isn't, something like a bust is.  The state has been struggling for months to deal with the decrease in funds and that's likely to be a major topic in the general session.

Globally the strategy of emphasizing local forces in the war on ISIL with western air support, which I was critical of, has proven fairly effective and ISIL is clearly on the decline as a quasi state force. At the same time, however, its guerilla arm, loosely made up, to say the least, is as active as ever.  2017, I fear, is likely to not be much different than 2016 in those regards.  The year closed out with one such attack in Berlin.  But it was far from the only one.  Included now in this equation are those who claim adherence to ISIL without any real ties directly to it.

All in all, therefore, we can say that 2016, while it wasn't the worst year ever, surely wasn't the best in quite a few ways.

So what about 1916?  If we were living a century ago how would we have found that year?

Well, probably not great either.

I didn't start to track day by day events in 1916 until March, when the anniversary of the Punitive Expedition and the raid on Columbus, New Mexico, occurred.   I have since then, however, and its clear that 1916 was not a great year.  Our intervention in Mexico put us in a state of near combatant in the Mexican Revolution and seemed to achieve fairly little by the year's end.  The year saw its own Presidential Election in which Wilson was able to campaign on "he kept us out of war" only to get elected and then seemingly start to contemplate entering that war more and more.  In Wyoming a series of devastating fires had terrible consequences right up until the end of the year.  The bright spot seemed to be the aforementioned Stock Raising Homestead Act of 1916 here, combined with a boom in agriculture and petroleum caused by World War One.  All in all, while there were some positive things about the year, a lot of people were likely glad to see 1916 go.

Sunday Morning Scene: Casper's Downtown Century Old Churches

Recently we posted an item that addressed a number of local events, riffing off of a Casper Weekly Tribune article:

Lex Anteinternet: The Casper Weekly Tribune for December 29, 1916: ...:

In very local news two locals bought the real property on North Center Street where St. Anthony's Catholic Church is located today.  The boom that the oil industry, and World War One, was causing in Casper was expressing itself in all sorts of substantial building. As we've discussed here before, part of that saw the construction of three very substantial churches all in this time frame, within one block of each other.

St. Anthony's Catholic Church in Casper Wyoming.

I thought, given that we've been focusing on the 1916 and general mid teens, of a century ago, theme, we might note the other churches that were part of this World War One era local boom.  First, some additional photos of the church noted above, from our Churches In The West blog.

 

 

Another one of the churches built in this time frame, and only one block away is the First Presbyterian Church, Casper Wyoming:

 

As noted in Churches of the West:

This Presbyterian Church is located one block away from St. Mark's Episcopal Church and St. Anthony of Padua Catholic Church, all of which are separated from each other by City Park.

The corner stone of the church gives the dates 1913 1926. I'm not sure why there are two dates, but the church must have been completed in 1926.

And another, in the same area, is St. Mark's Episcopal Church, Casper Wyoming.
 

 

We earlier noted:

 

This traditionally styled Episcopal Church includes the office buildings for the church a meeting room, kitchen and a day school, so the interior space used for services is smaller than the large exterior might suggest.

The view featured on the bottom photograph could not be seen until recently, as a large house once stood in what is now an open area. The church is across the street from the former St. Anthony's Catholic School, which has moved to a new location across town. The church was built in 1924.

There are a few more churches located downtown, including one that predates these three. But we've included them here as they demonstrated was going on in Casper about one century ago, and yet remain very much in use today.

2016 exits, and 2017 begins

“The old order changeth, yielding place to new,

And God fulfils himself in many ways,

Lest one good custom should corrupt the world

Tennyson, The Passing of Arthur.

I know that years, as a measurement of time, are somewhat arbitrary in their calculation.  Why not have them run from June 1 to May 31, for example?

Well, we don't.  And being a calculating species, the calculations mean something.

I can honestly say that while I doubt it would be apparent to many people who know me, unless they know me very well, 2016 was one of the hardest years of my adult life.

It started off, I suppose, sometime mid winter, maybe even in December 2015. I've completely lost track of it but some time ago we had to move my mother from what I'd call a nursing home into an assisted living facility.  I thought she's like that better, and maybe in the end she did, but that was hard.  Anyhow, sometime in the middle of the winter things really began to change.  Her already impaired memory rapidly began to decline.  And then her health followed.  This was followed by endless trips to the emergency room until an honest doctor informed us the end was really here and we could just best prepare for it.  At that time, we supposed it to be days, but it became weeks, as her tough old physical self refused to go where her mind had already gone.

 

My mother, as a young adventuresome soul.

My relationship with my mother had been strained since some point in my early teens but one of the odd twists of fate that occurs in life is that my father, who stuck with her in a way that truly did honor to their Catholic marriage vows, died just as an earlier condition of her began to stabilize.  He was 62 years old at the time, nine years older than I am now, and that had been a hard thing for him. That left me and my mother in that relationship and in a lot of ways it repaired itself as a result.  Later that left me and my wife with dealing with the devastating decline in her health and mental status and we carried the ball on that, helped by my father's fantastic siblings, for years.

She finally passed away in April.

You will hear people guiltily proclaim such things to be a relief. I don't know that I've felt that in any sense so much as a vacuum, and its hard to describe.  I'm an only child and now the framework of my early life is gone in a temporal sense.  In a other worldly sense it seems more real than ever, however.  To some degree the burden of my mother's illnesses has gone and the mother I had back before I was 13 is strangely present.

In another, however, I feel like I lost both parents this year.  I hadn't really realized it but the need to take up where my father had left off when he died kept me from fully feeling the impact of his loss even though we were very close.  Filling his shoes at home was a huge job, and I never did it adequately by a long shot, but it took up a lot of the space that grief would have filled.  Now that its gone, the grief came in late with it. 

 

Me and my father at the local fish hatchery, about 1966.

January through April, therefore, was a nightmare.  Weeks thereafter weren't much better as we dealt with all the things that a death brings along.  It was a hard winter and spring.

Death didn't stop there, however.  Just before my mother died, her brother Mark died.  I didn't really know Mark and I'm not sure if I ever met him.  He was the sibling of my mother's that I knew the least about. She was quite close to her brothers and sisters but for whatever reason Mark is one that I just heard less about.  I only talked to him once in recent years and at that time it was quite clear that he was very confused, not a good sign, so old age was catching up with him.  My mother, in a state of decline, reacted not at all to it really, which I suppose was a good thing.

Locally, just as my mother started to decline one of the male relatives in my extended family did as well.  He was really the last of my father's generation or near generation of my collection of local male relatives left alive. My Uncle Bob died some time ago as had my Uncle Bill.  My Uncle Frank is very much alive be he is quite a bit younger than my father.  Joe was a contemporary of Bill's and like him a World War Two veteran.  With him, it seems to me, the last of the giants of my youth have passed on and those of us left behind can hardly measure up to them.

As if that wasn't enough two more death visitations hit before the year ended, indeed within the last few weeks. One was the death of the husband of a high school colleague of mine.  This is the second time she's lost a husband. This one passed when a blood clot developed following knee surgery, and therefore it was unanticipated.  A true tragedy that left her with two distraught teenage daughters.

The second was the odd news that my grandmother's estate in Quebec is winding down.  It's been open since the 1970s. That seems nearly impossible in the American context but it had something to do with providing money from the sale of her house in Montreal to support an uncle in a nursing home.  He's still in the nursing home so something must have been worked out, but its odd to think of.  This year, as my mother became increasingly ill, she was asking about her own mother and if she was still alive.  Now, in an odd way, her mother's estate has come back to visit us after her daughter passed on, the third of her daughters to do so.

In the spring my son graduated from high school.   That is of course a happy event, but it's hard not to be a bit self reflective about it, particularly in a year like this.  I'm not going to go into it in depth, but what it does bring to me how very, very fast we grow up and into adulthood, and for that matter how fast adulthood passes us by. At age 53 the horizon of my time here on Earth is clearly visible. That doesn't bother me all that much but it does make me realize how very poorly I compare to my father and his role as my father.  I wish I'd been that good of father to my children, but I haven't been and I'm well aware of it.

Some of that is occupational and some of it isn't.  I've come to be very much aware of that this past year as well.

Occupationally I've worked now for nearly 27 years as a trial attorney, and I'm using the term advisedly, i.e., "trial attorney".  Plaintiff's lawyers have appropriated that term as if they're the only trial attorneys that there are, but that's complete bs. There's no trial without a defense and plaintiff's lawyers are no more or less trial lawyers than defense litigators are. For that matter, I've long thought that the real trial lawyers out there are the state's prosecutors and the public defenders, both of whom are in trial all the time.

Anyhow, civil litigators, which may be a better term for trial attorneys, don't make the best spouses and parents, I think.  It's a really stressful occupation and it follows a person home everyday.  Additionally, and as I've tracked continually on this blog, civil litigators travel constantly and this means that you aren't there a lot.  I've missed birthdays of my children, spouse and late mother, via travel.  I was out of town in a trial when my daughter became quite ill as a young child and I was in trial when the outside water line froze.  All this means that my wife had to do double duty quite a few times, including times when my mother was quite sick, and that's a hard and unfair thing.  Additionally an occupation that trains you to interrogate and argue and which regards those as virtues will impact your personality at least to some degree, and probably not universally in a good way.  Looking back on it, it's pretty clear to me that my own father was much more patient and caring than I have been in the same role.  He wasn't a lawyer and he was always there.

Of course, it's easy to pin the blame on something other than on ones self, and maybe that's just it, frankly.  Probably my father was just flat out a better person than I am.  I certainly cannot be one of those people who laments the faults of his father, to be sure, as mine are much more manifest than his.  My personality may be such that I would tend to exhibit a lot of these traits no matter what, who knows?

Anyhow, given the passing of my remaining parent and the arrival in adulthood of my son, these defects have been quite glaring, in my view.  I have pondered those a fair amount.

I noted travel above and this year has had some unique travel incidents that added to the general gloom of the year.  In January 2016, just after the turn of the year, I had my 2007 Dodge D3500 develop a critical exhaust problem which required me to seek assistance immediately, which in this case meant driving all the way back to Casper in sub zero weather without stopping and, moreover without slowing down too much.  Quite the adventure that only those with diesel particulate filters would be familiar with.  The exhaust system of that now old truck had to be rebuilt.  In late summer I went to my mother's old house to pick up my son, who now lives there while attending college, so that we could go to Cody.  I had a pretrial hearing that morning and he was coming along.  It was early, early, and as he didn't come to the door, I briefly waited and then decided to go to the door and knock. Even though I have never done this before, I forgot to set the parking break and left the truck in neutral.  As I was at the front door, I heard a rolling sound and . . . to make a long story short it rolled down the block as I ran after it until what was going to happen was obvious.

 

 Sigh. . . .

And what was going to obviously happen is that it was going to hit a house.  Yes, a house.  But, oddly enough, or perhaps not, it executed a nice backwards right turn and swung off to the side of a sides street, hitting a tree and bouncing into a Subaru, which it destroyed.   My truck was pretty badly damaged but workable and I drove it to Cody that day, but not before I was made a little late by a really long delay as a real jerk of a policeman investigated the thing.  It's the second time a member of my family has had to interact with Officer Crabby who is, frankly, an asshole to deal with even when you fully admit its your fault.  He needs to retire. . . to Syria.

Anyhow, that was a bad deal but I have a lot of vehicles and so it wasn't a huge inconvenience when I was down to my Jeep, which I drive most days anyhow.

It was inconvenient when, a couple of weeks later while my Dodge was in the body shop I hit an elk with the Jeep.  Uff.

 

Ouch.

It had to be hauled into town. We were lucky that I was driving really slowly at the time, but it sure did the damage. So, at that point, I had a Jeep and my Dodge D3500 in the body shop.  Before the Jeep came out, sure enough, my wife's Tahoe went in for some fender damage it sustained in a parking lot.

No sooner had the D3500 come out of the shop and the check engine light went on.  This meant it had to go into the garage, which it did. While there it was determined that it needed a new clutch, which isn't cheap for a big truck of that type.  Went it came home it went back out in the field, hunting, next weekend and the check engine light came back on with an exhaust warning.  Usually the diesel particulate filter will burn off but it wouldn't, so it had to go into the deisel shop for that.  It was there for a long time while they worked on the exhaust and when I got it out they warned me right away that it might need new injectors but they didn't do them as they were pricey.  Well, I didn't even make it home before the light went back on. Sure enough, I needed new injectors.

To cap it off, early this month I drove to Pinedale in arctic weather and the light went back on. Fortunately, this time, it was something really minor and was back out of the shop within a day.

At some point in this vehicular saga my wife suggested that maybe I should consider looking for a new truck.  I bought this one new in 2007.  I'm really disinclined to do that as I like the truck and if I were to do it I'd have to buy a really pricey one to get the same thing I have now, a 1 ton manual transmission truck.  I'm down to Dodges, really, which is okay as that's what I like anyhow, but it's clear the options for manual transmissions are dwindling.  That actually argues for getting a replacement now, while I can, but I drive the Jeep most days and have a foolish notion in my head that at age 53 I won't ever need to buy another vehicle.

Indeed, I started the year off hoping to finish improving the Jeep to where I want it to be, which would have required adding an external tailgate rack to it and adding a winch but I gave up on that due to all the vehicle expenses.  Maybe next year. And with all the money that's now gone into the D3500, I'm keeping it.  It only has 140,000 miles on it and I figure it's good for at least another 140,000.  Besides, somewhere in this mix I'd bought new tires for it and I hardly have any miles on them.  I do regret not switching out to higher walled tires, however, as I've always found that this truck doesn't have the clearance it should.  Now that it's old, and I've done a lot of work to it, however, I'm going to definitely get higher walled tires next time around.

That's because I get that truck stuck in the snow nearly every year and have this year, while elk hunting, which of course I did this year. This is so routine for me, however, that it's not in the list of unfortunate events.  I do that every year.

Which was on one of the few days this year I was able to go hunting.

 

I've complained about this already, and if you ask my wife she'll tell you that I'm wrong, that I went hunting every weekend during big game season, but that just isn't true.  It isn't true as, for the first time in my life, I didn't draw an antelope tag.  I also didn't draw a deer tag, but of course I could and did go general.  I drew elk tags, however.

This is a matter of some frustration and part of it is my fault. I could have and should have put in for landowners tags for antelope, but I didn't.  I didn't as I wanted to be able to range over the entire area, not just the place the landowners tags pertained to, which is ironic as last year I shot an additional antelope on that very land.  But neither my son nor I drew.  Very disappointing.  And frankly it makes me a bit miffed, which I generally am not, on how licenses are apportioned.

We went general deer, but that was frustrating as Rob's goons followed us all over to make sure that we didn't step foot on private land, which I will remember next general election when he's running for reelection.  We never did, but we could have gotten a deer but for that.  But we also could have gotten one if I hadn't been so busy.

Now, a person with work in an area that's having a big down turn cannot or should not complain about being busy and I'm really not, but that was part of it.  I didn't have the time to devote to it this year like I normally do. That was a big part of my lack of success for elk as well, which I've already lamented. Added to that, when the weather finally turned to where t he elk hunting got good my son was in finals so that meant I was doing it as a solo project. That's not easy, but it also was an odd thing I hadn't really experienced since I was his age.  Indeed, it made me look back at that period when I was in university and he was here.  I kept wondering why he wasn't getting out for big game. Well, now I know, too late to appreciate it.

Being busy has, this year, added to my waist line. My weight routinely varies by about five pounds and I haven't gained weight, but I have gained girth.  This doesn't make me fat, but going into 2017 I need to do something about that.  My trousers are tight and I don't like that.  This is due, again in part, to being really busy.  If you are getting up early, working all day, and coming home tired at night you likley aren't going to get a lot of exercise.  And I'm not one of those people who feels comfortable going to a hotel gym.  Wait, I'm not one of those people who feels comfortable going to any gym.  This has never been a problem for me as I'm not a heavy eater, but when you are not getting a lot of exercise during the day it can start to become one.  This year I need to loose a few pounds, which is not all that easy to do really.

Somebody who has lost a few pounds is my son, which is due to the effect of living outside the house.  My wife is a good cook and its always easy to eat more of anything if you aren't the one cooking.  Now that he's living outside the home, in my mother's old house, he's cooking for himself and he's not bad, but like a lot of single adult men, you just don't feel like whipping up three big squares a day.  One will do, and that tends to be a single course meal generally.  I well recall it from when I moved to Laramie and lived on my own, although I have to say that we weren't exactly doing much fancy eating at home at that time anyhow.

As noted, he's now living in my mother's old home here in town while he attends college, which is working out well.  However, the house itself turned out to be one of the years events.  

My mother loved her house and when she became ill I kept it.  I feared, and I am certain that I am right, that if I had sold it it would have killed her.  I rented it out for awhile but for much of that time it was empty as a busy person has little time to be a landlord.  Well, neglect on my mother's part of certain things and the long passage of time of all kids mean that certain things needed to be worked upon, and one of those things was, the plumbing.  In a major way.

 

The plumbing line, in the basement.

This was totally unanticipated and not a very pleasant experience.  Fortunately insurance paid for a lot of the work. Thank goodness for insurance.

And then there was politics.

That may seem to be an odd thing to add to all of this, but I think a lot of people felt a bit out of sorts this year due to the election. The General Election turned out to be truly surreal and we're still feeling it.  The Presidential election turned out to be a sort of revolution with the voters saying no to the establishment of both parties, and for good reason, but in a sort of scary way.  Nobody ever knows where revolutions end up once they start, and we don't know yet.  Some turn out really well, such as the American Revolution.  Some turn into freaking disasters, like the French Revolution.  As the revolution isn't over, we don't know where it ends up.

Even locally it was bizarre and it continues to be. Odd gaffs kept one candidate from being reelected but didn't keep another from being elected.  Candidates and even reelected politicians resigned on an untimely basis messing up the polls and the results of the polls.  A body of the Wyoming legislature launched off on one of their occasional "don't tell me what you want, we know better than you" efforts, which hasn't fully played out yet.  It was a truly odd year.

It strikes me that all of these things are simply life.  It's just that they all occurred in a single year.  But then, they probably weren't all that bad.  The truck didn't go through a house, by the Grace of God.  The elk didn't end up in the window of the Jeep.  Insurance covered the plumbing.  So, all in all, it was probably a better year than I imagine.  

Still, I'm hoping for a better 2017.

Best Post of the Week for the Week of December of December 25, 2016

2016 exits, and 2017 begins

An introspective entry.