Sunday, April 5, 1914. Terrorism at St. Martin in the Field's, Villa at Torreon

A bomb exploded in the Anglican St. Martin in the Fields Church in London, causing major property damage.

Suffragists were suspected, but no firm evidence of who was responsible was ever found.

Pancho Villa, still in action at Torreon, in spite of having earlier been reported defeated/wounded/dead, was doing something I assumed was just a movie trope. . . deploying a machine gun from a train in Mexico.

The same issue of the Cheyenne paper advertised women's outfits for Easter.

Last prior edition:

Sunday, April 4, 1914. Sad Sunday in Newfoundland, Newfoundlander reaches Siberian Coast.

1910s, 1914, Arctic, Canada, Canadian Arctic Expedition, Exploration, Hong Kong, Immigration, India, law, Siberia, USSR

Estate dispute caused by 'E-Z Legal Form' is a 'cautionary tale,' says justice

Estate dispute caused by 'E-Z Legal Form' is a 'cautionary tale,' says justice



Rodney Dangerfield famously had the lien about "not getting any respect".  It's my guess that most lawyers have felt that way at one time or another, probably frequently.



Here's something I've wondered about for a long time. Now days there are all sorts of advertisements on television about do it yourself legal stuff.  It's easy for people to convince themselves that they can do it all themselves, but a lot of legal stuff is a lot trickier than people might suppose.  There's good reasons not to attempt it.

Entertainers and Drugs. Why?

Recently Philip Seymour Hoffman died of a heroin overdose.  This has been reported as a terrible tragedy, and of course it is.

Not more so, I'll note, than the hundreds of anonymous people who likewise die the same way, but whom aren't well known, or known at all.  Their deaths are equally tragic.

One of the odd things about something like this, as well, is the impulse to excuse away the tragic results of addiction on the basis that addiction is a disease.  As in this posts which maintains that addicts have no free will, and therefore cannot help themselves.  Addiction is a terrible thing, and indeed depending upon the type of addiction it is, they can become lethal, both in the need for the drug and in effects upon the body upon withdrawal from the drugs.  But the tendency in the modern world to label any vice seems self indulgent.  There is hardly any evil of any kind that somebody will not excuse away as a compulsion driven by addiction.  We all have our failings and weaknesses, to be sure, but some act against them and some act with them.  Many do both at different times, or even at the same time. By excusing every vice as an addiction, compulsion or personal quirk serves to excuse them, when perhaps the opposite is more in order.

There is, apparently, a rise in heroin use.  That catches me by surprise as what heroin mostly causes me to recall is the television police shows of the 1970s in which the police were always chasing down somebody distributing heroin.  From what i read in an article in The New Republic the other day, that in fact had its basis in truth as apparently the drug, which is amongst those which is most likely to kills it users, was in fact in big circulation in the 1960s and 70s amongst the poor.  It's a really bad drug, causing a true physical addiction that can result in the user's death.

That leads to the question of why the return of heroin now, and amongst those who don't fit into a dispossessed underclass.  According to the article, the reason has to do with prescription opiates.

Now, I'm not a pharmacist or a doctor, so that narcotics are generally opiates is something I wasn't aware of. But apparently they are, and the article claimed that prescription drugs are the modern gateway to heroin, the same way that marijuana once was.  I don't know that I'm fully convinced of this (it seems a stretch) but that prescription narcotics are now widely abused and stolen is well known. Apparently Realtors now ask people who are showing their homes to remove them from their drug cabinets, because people cruise open homes just to steal them. Anyhow, the thesis is that this has introduced opiates to a new class, who become addicted to them and then move on to an even more dangerous, unregulated drug.

I guess I have to count myself lucky here, and to be careful about being judgmental (which we should always be careful about anyhow) as I have a very hard time imagining why people want to use these drugs in general.  That is, in part, as the few times I've ever had prescriptions in this category, they've made me really sick and I determined after about a day of use that I'd rather just endure the pain, which wasn't as bad as the sad effects of the drugs.  And I can't see what effect they have that a person would enjoy. The one time I've had morphine, after ending up in the hospital due to a horse accident, I couldn't stand it, even though it didn't make me ill.  It made me sleep a weird chemical sleep that is just horrible.

I don't even like the feeling that conventional alcohol gives a person.  I like beer okay, but I don't like to feel any effect from drinking it, which means that I wouldn't be too inclined to sit and drink that much of it.  This doesn't make me virtuous, it makes me lucky.

Anyhow, having said that, even if it is true that the heroin boom is due to prescription drugs, I still can't see why this is so common amongst entertainers.  The most common cited reason is stress.  I guess I can see that a bit, as people in really stressful occupations are more subject to drug and alcohol abuse, and other sorts of vices.  I know that drug and alcohol addiction (as well as other addictions) are regarded as an occupational hazard for lawyers and most state bars have programs to address it.  But that just seems different to me.  Acting as a job wouldn't seem to be stressful in and of itself, although getting roles would be extremely stressful, I'd guess.  For that reason, I'd guess, most actors probably would want to have a back up career, but maybe they don't. And I'd guess that perhaps if a person has been successful that might actually prevent them from having one.  Still, I know that at least some, like Wilford Brimley or Paul Newman have, in the form of farms.  I guess it's easy for me to not appreciate the stress they're under.

Still, it does seem that as a class they're bizarrely subject to problems of a personal nature, and always have been.  It's certainly the case that going all the way back to the silent film days you can find examples of actors having extreme personal problems.  Is this unique to them, or is it perhaps that the vices that average people are subject to simply become better known amongst them. Or perhaps they have the means and opportunity to exercise their failings in a way that average people do not.  Probably the fact that people cater to their vices doesn't help, whereas most people have to hide theirs.  And at least in musicians, drugs have long been a problem.  There are jazz songs dating back to the dawn of recorded music that have drugs, sometimes in a hidden fashion, but often quite openly, as their topic. 

In the end, I guess, I don't know what to make of this topic. But I do feel that one of the tragedies of a tragedy like this, is that we don't really take note of the average people who fall prey to the same ill.

The Vikings are interesting, and complicated. MGM and the History Channel should have left them alone.

I'll confess that when I first read of the History Channel's series, The Vikings, I fully intended to never watch it.  But, I happened to catch an episode and parts of two others.  It's interesting and somewhat captivating I'll admit, but history it isn't.  That's too bad, as the Vikings as a group (and they aren't a group, actually) are interesting, and they should be given a serious treatment, particularly by the History Channel.

Part of the problem I have with the show, I'll note right off the top, is that it fits into Hollywood's recent trend to treat all Christian cultures as hypocritical, and pagan cultures as benighted. Well, baloney.  The Viking age coincided with an age in the British Isles that was deeply Christian, and by that I mean deeply Catholic.  One recent British historian has stated that Medieval England was defined by this, and it was.  Having been Christianized early in the Anglo Saxon period, the English became very devout, to be followed by the Irish and the Scots. The Welsh already were.

But this was a muscular Christianity, not one maintained by wimpy overweight men, as the show seems to want to suggest.  Christian clerics of this period didn't shy much from marching right into pagan cultures and giving them the what for.  When you look at saints associated with the British Isles, or with Scandinavia, of this period, they're a pretty hearty and hail bunch.  St. Augustine headed into the Saxon lands knowing little about them other than that they were ruled by Saxon pagans.  He actually scared those Saxons somewhat, so much so that an early encounter with a Saxon king was arranged to occur on an island, as the king was so afraid that something both supernatural and bad would happen to him, and he didn't want that to occur in town.  St. Patrick, coming decades later, returned to a land where he'd been a slave and started the process of converting it.  He was so tough that he didn't mind walking into druid strongholds and telling them to shape up.

This extends to the early  Christians in Scandinavian lands, I'll note.  Irish Christian slaves in Iceland refused to abandon their faith, and when Iceland experienced a severe earthquake late in this period, they pretty much told the Norsemen that they were getting exactly what they deserved.  Iceland converted by vote of the Althing, its parliament, when the deciding vote was cast by a Norse pagan priest of some sort.  He voted to for the entire island to convert.  Not exactly the portrayal you'll see on television of either Christians (Christian missionaries had landed) or of the Norse.

Additionally, the show has apparently maintained, at some point, that the Scandinavians were ignorant of their being a European world beyond their shores, and that the Europeans were likewise ignorant of them.  No, they weren't.

Europe might be thought of today as being bigger than it is now, which is to say that it was more difficult to travel around in, but it wasn't big.  It's definitely the case that European cultures were aware of their near, and even far, neighbors.

Taking the Anglo Saxons as an example, it should be remembered that they were fairly recent immigrants, in terms of the human time line, to the British Isles themselves, having shown up as invaders and raiders in the 5th Century.  If that sounds a lot like the Vikings, that's because the Saxons, whom seem to have been named after the sword they carried, the "Sax", were not much different at that time.  The Saxons were certainly aware of their near neighbors. So were the Angles, an allied invading group who seem to have lived along the coast of far northern Germany (or what is now Germany) and therefore actually bordered Scandinavian lands.  The Jutes, who apparently came from Jutland, lived in an area that jutted out to sea before they moved over, and likewise they would have been pretty familiar with other coastal people.

Indeed, the great early Anglo Saxon work of literature, Beowulf, is full of references to Scandinavians and the title character seems to be one, living in an area of what we'd regard as southern Sweden. The entire epic Saxon poem has nothing to do with the Saxons at all, but is all about Scandinavians, like the Geats and the Danes.

And the Vikings really got around, which is something that's worth remembering.  They raided far into Russia, giving that country its name, as the Scandinavian tribe that did that, and eventually settled there, was the Rus.  They'd ultimately raid as far south as what is now the coast of North Africa, pretty amazing really. And they hired out as mercenaries as far away as the Byzantine Empire.

That all took time to be sure, and the launching of their raiding did come as a rude to surprise to Europeans.  That sudden spike in violence, which was to last for a very long time, seems to have been due to an improvement in climate conditions giving rise to the Medieval Climatic Optimum. When that occurred, farming conditions improved, followed by an increase in the population all over Europe, but which ironically meant that Scandinavians, who were still living on marginal land, had to look overseas to make a go of it. Some made a go of it by raiding, the verb for which in Old Norse was "viking".  Most looked also towards emigrating, which ultimately took them to England and Ireland, where they moved wholesale communities once they realized that they could, to Iceland once they found it, to Greenland, again once they found it, and to the coast of France, which they scared the French into giving them.

They're an interesting group indeed, the last of the Europeans to live in that fashion, although certainly not the first, and coming in an age in which the Church had scribes who were literate so that the events could be recorded, but also coming at an age in which, by and large, the groups they attacked were stronger than they were, and survived the events to tell the tale.

Sunday, April 4, 1914. Sad Sunday in Newfoundland, Newfoundlander reaches Siberian Coast.

Crowds gathered at St. John's, Newfoundland, to meet the SS Bellaventure as it brought back the dead and injured from its disastrous experience of several days prior.

Bartlett

Captain Robert Bartlett and Katakovik of the Canadian Arctic Expedition reached the Siberian coast after weeks of searching for the other members of the expedition that had departed the Wrangle Island camped.  They followed sled tracks that lead them to a Chukchi village where they were given food and shelter.

Bartlett was a Newfoundlander.

Merchant fisherman Baba Gurdit Singh chartered the Japanese vessel Komagata Maru to pick up 165 British Indian passengers in Hong Kong for a voyage to Vancouver, in defiance of Canadian exclusion laws.

German-born lumber giant Friedrich (Frederick) Weyerhäuser died at age 79 in California.

Last prior edition:

Thursday, April 2, 1914 Villista victory at Torreón, Disaster on the ice, Cumann na mBan, birth of Alec Guiness.

1910s, 1914, actors and actresses, baseball, Battle of Torreón, Disaster, Mexican Revolution, Mexico, Pancho Villa, Protestant, religion, Sports, Venustiano Carranza

Friday Farming: Penning sheep

Why a TED Talk Is Like a Chicago Hot Dog - Attorney at Work - Attorney at Work

Why a TED Talk Is Like a Chicago Hot Dog - Attorney at Work - Attorney at Work



I hardly know what to make a of a title like that.



For that matter, I've never heard of a TED talk.

What is "Common Core"?

I should know this, but I really don't. What is "Common Core" in terms of education?

My wife tried to explain it to me the other day, as I asked her.  It's been in the news around here for a variety of reasons.  The appointed head of the state's education department seems to accept it, the Superintendent of Education (probably not the correct name of her position, whose controversial and the subject of court and legislative battles, does not.  One teacher I know hats common core.

So, what exactly is it, and how does it function?

Postscript

I'm bumping this topic back up, as it seems to be an issue here locally that simply will not go away, and its one that I don't grasp.

Because I don't grasp it, I'm also linking this item in from the always insightful Ramblings of a Teacher, Redskins Fan and Scrapbooker blog.

Something that's really caught me off guard is the extent to which people locally have extremely deeply felt opinions on this issue.  In a region where really devise issues usually don't come up in the text of education, this one has.  Frankly, I feel it's become such an issue that it's being warped and distorted at this point.

This morning I read in the paper that last Saturday Governor Mead was censured by two county GOP caucuses.  That in and of itself simply astounds me.  That a GOP body would censure a GOP governor at a time when the GOP is so dominant here is amazing.  That reflects in part a divide in the party between the traditional GOP and its tea party elements, but that divide seems to be most noticeable on education topics.

It really came out the legislature before last when the legislature acted to remove the Superintendent of Education's powers by way of a bill known in the legislature, and now known to history, as SF104.  That bill, according to what we read in the newspaper and according to any insiders who might talk to you, was principally drafted to address what the legislature thought to be inappropriate actions by Superintendent Hill.  I'm not posting on that topic here, and I'm frankly highly unlikely to, but I will note that a person doesn't have to have thought SF104 constitutionally problematic but still find Hill to be problematic as well.  FWIW, the recently released audit of the department of education is now online.

I note all this, however, as Common Core seems to get wrapped up in this somehow, and I suspect that it's somehow getting a bit distorted.  Superintendent Hill is an opponent of Common Core.

I don't know why she's an opponent of Common Core, and of course I don't understand Common Core, so perhaps that's not surprising.  I think, however, that it is probably due to her being in the Tea Party end of the GOP (which doesn't make all the opponents Tea Party adherents, or even members of the GOP) and therefore she would presumably have a fairly hard core view of local control.

This has spread to such a degree that I heard a commenter at a school board meeting express concerns about the NCSD bond issue due to Common Core.  The bond issue has absolutely, positively, nothing to do with this topic whatsoever.  Rather, it has everything to do with the fact that some years ago the state mandated that the funding of school construction projects be through the state, but that at the same time the state would not pay for "enhancements."  Like all laws, that law is imperfect and as a result somethings that are not enhancements at all have been handled that way, and so now local districts have to fund construction of these features by another means so that their schools can really be complete.  Bond issues are very strictly tied to a specific purpose and only run for a specified time, but none the less some folks who have been focused on Common Core are now jumpy about them, for reasons of misconception.  For example, I heard the noted speaker voice a concern that the bond issue will be used to fund classes mandated under Common Core. That's completely in error, as the bond would be used to fund the construction/reconstruction of swimming pools for the high schools, install safety features in existing schools of all types (which the new ones are built with) and fund some equipment for the CAP program, which is completely outside of the Common Core.

Anyhow, there sure seems to be a lot of opposition to Common Core.  I fear that if a person joined the debate late, the topic may be so confusing that figuring it out might be darned near impossible.

Postscript II

Trying to return to this blog's focus, and also noting something that's somewhat on point here, I can't help but recall that Donald Hough, in his classic The Cocktail Hour In Jackson Hole, found it endlessly amusing that a grade school he dropped in on, in Teton County Wyoming, was learning about a Medieval battle, the Battle of Crecy if I recall correctly.  He couldn't  see why the 1346 pivotal battle of The Hundred Years War would be something that the young students of Jackson Hole should be required to learn. He was informed by the teacher that the State of Wyoming required it.  I'm sure that was correct.  Hough wrote about Jackson Hole in the 1930s and 1940s, at a time when the local residents remained ranchers and Wyoming towns people during the winter, and the county was taken over by tourists in the summer.*

The interesting thing about that is that it would have indicated a pretty strict set of guidelines at the time.  I don't know when I learned about the Battle of Crecy, but I'm sure it wasn't in grade school.  I'm also sure it wasn't in junior high and I doubt it was in high school.  I probably learned about it when I took Medieval History in university.**  I'm not certain what that says about state imposed standards at the time, other than that they were apparently different than later and in surprising ways.

Postscript III

One thing I should note, and which really colors my views on this topic, is that I may be nostalgic about certain things, if that's the right word, or I may take an open view about certain topics in regards to whether things have improved in real terms or not, but about education, here locally, I am not.

We did not receive a bad education in the local schools.  That would not be true at all. And based upon what I know of other areas, ours stacked up and served us quite well. But they are doing a better job of it today, and there's no doubt about that.

I occasionally will hear people lament the current schools, and suggest that at some point in distant personal memory, things were done much better.  I can't speak for the schools prior to the late 1960s, but I did enter school in the late 1960s and experienced them through the entire 1970s and graduated in 1981.  The local schools here are better, including the schools I went to in that time frame.  No doubt about it.

Kid's coming out of the same schools I went through here today have a better education, with more credit hours, and more of a focus on where they are going once they get out than we did.   

What does that mean in regards to Common Core?  Well, maybe nothing, or maybe something.  If there are areas we can do better, and we can (which is part of the reason that I hope the bond issue passes) we should.  If Common Core aids in that, I'm for it.  If it detracts, I'm against it.  I just don't know.

But here locally, what I do think we keep in mind that nostalgia, to the extent it exists, regarding education of two, three or four decades ago is misplaced.  I sometimes hear that, with there being the suggestion that we should return to an education of some prior era almost remembered as a golden era.  Well, I went to school in that era, or an era that some claim to be that era, and it just isn't so.  Some of our grade school teachers, who were generally pretty good, lacked the sort of certification that they all have today.  And the graduation requirements we had then were ridiculously low compared to those today, which continue to increase.  My son has probably received a better education at the high school level today than I had by the time I graduated, and he's a sophomore.  I'm not saying that our education was bad, but looking back there were definitely some areas that the system failed us in back then, mathematics being the prime one that comes to mind for me.  I basically had to make up three years of high school math in my first year of college, which wasn't easy, and shouldn't have had to occur. Today it wouldn't occur.

Indeed, with the CAP proposals, some kids will start coming out of high school not only up to par, and not behind, but with a big head start on a college career.
__________________________________________________________________________________

*While having nothing to do with the topic of this post whatsoever, I first read Hough's book in the 1990s, by which time much had clearly changed but at which time a great deal actually remained the same in Jackson Hole. The book was in my father's book collection, and I'd just recently been in Jackson Hole when I read it.

I don't know that I could stand to read the book today, so much about Jackson Hole has changed. As late as the early 1990s there remained a fair population of locals that lived in the town year around. Since then, the town's reputation as a place for the wealthy has altered Teton County nearly beyond recognition for those who remember it when it was a toehold in the wilderness and still a bit of a ranch town.  I'm not saying that Jackson is a bad place, but in an Iris Dement fashion, the town that was is really gone now.

**My undergraduate was in geology, but I took so many history courses that by my graduation date I nearly had enough credits for a BA in history.  Medieval History was taught by an excellent professor by the last name of Harper.

Mid Week At Work: Order Coal Now

I've posted this poster before, but I like it a lot, and it gives us a glimpse of man and animal at work, just about a century ago. A modern world we can recognize, but one involving animals in a way we don't really see in the western world anymore.

This poster is from the World War One era, urging people to lay in a supply of winter heating coal early.  Heating with coal is also largely a thing of the past in the US, for the most part.

Forces with History -- Official Blog of Robert W Mackay: 96 Years Ago Today (3) - The Battle of Moreuil Wood

Forces with History -- Official Blog of Robert W Mackay: 96 Years Ago Today (3) - The Battle of Moreuil Wood

Forces with History -- Official Blog of Robert W Mackay: 96 Years Ago Today (2)--Onward to Moreuil

Forces with History -- Official Blog of Robert W Mackay: 96 Years Ago Today (2)--Onward to Moreuil

Forces with History -- Official Blog of Robert W Mackay: 96 Years Ago Today, Onward to Moreuil

Forces with History -- Official Blog of Robert W Mackay: 96 Years Ago Today, Onward to Moreuil

Wyoming Fact and Fiction: Jim Bridger - The Rest of His Story

Wyoming Fact and Fiction: Jim Bridger - The Rest of His Story

Thursday, April 2, 1914 Villista victory at Torreón, Disaster on the ice, Cumann na mBan, birth of Alec Guiness.

It was opening day.

Pancho Villa telegraphed the head of the Mexican opposition,Venustiano Carranza, to report he had retaken Torreón.  He noted his losses as 2,000 killed or wounded, and the Federal dead at 12,000 killed, wounded or captured.

Effectively, he had taken control of northern Mexico.

The U.S. Navy gunboat, Dolphin, entered Tampico harbor in Mexico and presented a 3x21-gun salute to the Mexican flag in remembrance of the April 2, 1867, Battle of Puebla.

It would be the last peaceful diplomatic exchange between the United States Government and the Mexican government of Victoriano Huerta.

Wes Kean, captain of the SS Newfoundland, spotted survivors from his ship that had been trapped on ice floes off Newfoundland for three days during a blizzard. The men had been set out for seals on April 1, with the expectation that if the weather worsened, they could stay aboard the nearby Stephano.  Instead, Wes' father, Adam, gave the men lunch at that point and ordered them back out on the ice.  This left the captains of both vessels under the belief that the men were safe.  While equipped originally with primitive radios, they had been removed prior to the voyage as a cost savings measure, which compounded the error..

Kean, upon spotting the men, alerted the nearby SS Bellaventure.  77 of 132 men who had been lost, died.

The same weather sank the Southern Cross with the loss of all hands.

The Cumann na mBan, or Irishwomen's Council, an Irish Republican paramilitary organization, was founded.  It apparently still exists.

300 Pentecostal preachers and laymen gathered in a general council in Hot Springs, Arkansas to discuss preservation of Pentecostal revivalism.

A train derailment near Tanjung Priok, Indonesia caused by buffalo crossing the tracks resulted in the death of 20 people and 50 more being injured.

Great British actor Alec Guinness was born in Maida Vale, London, England.  One of the greatest actors of all time, he appeared in 62 films, many of which are remembered at least in part for his performance. They include such varied classics as Lawrence of Arabia, Kind Hearts and Coronets, The Bridge On The River Kwai, Doctor Zhivago, and Star Wars.  His career was interrupted by World War Two, during which he served in the Royal Navy, and during which he formed the intent to become an Anglican Priest.  An experience on a movie set impacted him deeply, and he converted to Catholicism, as did his wife, who only informed him after the fact, in later years, from Judaism.

Last prior edition:

Wednesday, April 1, 1914. Villa at Torreón

Wednesday, April 1, 1914. Villa at Torreón

Villa's fortunes in Torreón were improving.

The same paper featured this interesting watch ad:

Note that wristwatches were treated as a female item, which they were until World War One, we we are now in the cusp of in this timeline, changed that.

Last prior edition:

Friday, March 27, 1914. "Any kind of fighting you wish".

The Big Picture: The Troopship Agamemnon, 1919

UW Trustees Raise Student Tuition and Employee Salaries | News | University of Wyoming

UW Trustees Raise Student Tuition and Employee Salaries | News | University of Wyoming

USDA Blog » Soldier-Turned-Farmer Uses Rotational Grazing to Make His Minnesota Ranch Successful & Sustainable

USDA Blog » Soldier-Turned-Farmer Uses Rotational Grazing to Make His Minnesota Ranch Successful & Sustainable

Friday, March 27, 1914. "Any kind of fighting you wish".

"Any kind of fighting you wish".  So declared the Cheyenne paper.

Villa scored a victory and recognized Carranza as chief, for at least the present.

And some employers had photographs taken of their employees.

Employees of Augustus Pollack Crown Stogie Factories, Wheeling, W.Va.

The F.A. Ames Mfg. Co., Owensboro, Ky.

Last prior:

Wednesday, March 25, 1914. Villa repulsed.