Thursday, April 24, 2014

Friday, April 24, 1914. Occupying Vera Cruz.

Fighting in Veracruz ceased and the occupation of the city began.

Raising the flat at Veracruz, April 27, 1924.

35,000 obsolescent German, Austrian and Italian rifles and 5,000,000 rounds of ammunition were smuggled into Ulster from Germany and distributed by automobile in the Larne Gun Running incident to Ulster loyalists in anticipation of fighting over the issue of independence, with the Ulster Volunteers opposed to it.

Captain Robert Bartlett and Kataktovik reached Emma Town having traveled 700 miles in their effort to secure relief for his stranded party.  They secured passage there to Emma Harbour, a weeks journey, so that he could travel to Alaska by ship from there.

Emma Harbor, 1921.

The Brooklyn Federal League team was photographed.


Last prior edition:

Thursday, April 23, 1914. Wrigley Field Opens, War Panic.

Wednesday, April 23, 2014

Thursday, April 23, 1914. Wrigley Field Opens, War Panic.

 


April 23, 1914: Chicago Feds open Weeghman Park, later known as Wrigley Field

The first game was between the Chicago Whales and the Kansas City Packers.



The Casper paper may have been a bit off the mark:


Mexicans were not happy, however, about the massively heavy-handed overreaction of the United States at Veracruz.



Last prior edition:

Wednesday, April 22, 1914. Fighting in Veracruz

Tuesday, April 22, 2014

What a difference 100 years makes

What a difference 100 years makes

Wednesday, April 22, 1914. Fighting in Veracruz


Street fighting was engaged in at Veracruz between landed US forces and Mexican forces as US forces advanced beyond the waterfront to secure their positions.  The Mexican forces included civilians who had received distributed Mexican arms.


Street fighting was unusual for Americans at the time, and the sailors had trouble adapting to it, whereas the Marines quickly did.


The city center was taken by 11:00.


The Titanic Engineers' Memorial was unveiled at Southampton, UK.

Babe Ruth, age 19, pitched his first major league game for the Baltimore Orioles.


Last prior edition:

Monday, April 21, 1914. The Battle of Veracruz commences.

Friday, April 18, 2014

Satuday, April 18, 1914. Being petty.

 It was Saturday.





The news of the day was, in part, about the Wilson Administration's refusal to back down to Huerta, and continue to demand a salute at Vera Cruz.  Huerta was perfectly willing to apologize, so this was getting down, frankly, to the US insulting Mexico and being petty.

Panama-Pacific International Exposition. San Francisco.  April 18, 1914.

Last prior edition:

Thursday, April 17, 2014

Friday, April 17, 1914. Budweiser praising Bismarck. Emmer Breakfast Food.

Imperial Russia dissolved the Mongolian Uryankhay Republic in the Tannu Uriankhai and Mongolian Uryankhay Krai.

Russian expansionism at work.

A bomb went off in Great Yarmouth. Authorities suspected suffragists.  This was the second such incident they were suspected of in recent days.

In Casper, the paper issued what must have been, maybe, a real estate edition, as the paper was full of advertisements for lots, and this before the big World War One boom.

"Emmer" was to be used for cereal and manufactured in Wyoming.

It's a type of wheat.  I'm sure you've had a hearty bowl of Emmer Breakfast Food.

Here's a relatively recent article on Emmer, mentioning the cereal company:

Ancient grains a story of what once was old is new again


There was talk, as noted above, of a new rail line.

There was a terrible death in the jail of a man accused, seemingly with reason, of improper actions towards his adopted daughter.  Interestingly, maybe, based on the old statutes we recently put up, he would have been guilty of three crimes at the time, as opposed to one now, that one also being a crime then.

Perhaps a bit more remarkable, he appears to have been dead for hours when discovered to be so.

All that is interesting, but it's actually the following advertisement for Budweiser that caused me to link in this issue:


This was 1914.  Soon the world would be at war.  Bismarck probably didn't receive such high marks after that.

Last prior edition:

Thursday, April 16, 1914. Marines contemplating Vera Cruz, Fallout from scandal in Japan, Chinese troops prevail.


Wednesday, April 16, 2014

Thursday, April 16, 1914. Marines contemplating Vera Cruz, Fallout from scandal in Japan, Chinese troops prevail.

Coaling the USS Louisiana, April 16, 1914.

The 4th Marine Regiment was activated at Puget Sound with Col. Joseph Henry Pendleton as its CO in anticipation of military action in Mexico.

Ōkuma Shigenobu became Prime Minister of Japan for the second time, this time at the request of Emperor Taishō  after the administration under Yamamoto Gonnohyōe was dissolved due to the Siemens scandal.

The scandal had involved kickbacks from  European shipbuilders for contracts with the Japanese Navy. When World War One broke out the men were pardoned and one of the ships involved, the battlecruiser Kongō, was reordered.   Rebuilt as a battleship after World War One, she was sunk in November, 1945.

Chinese troops defeated the forces of Bai Yung-chang, the "White Wolf," near Sian-Foo in northwest China.

Last prior edition:

Wednesday, April 15, 1914. Troubles for the Mexican Federal Government.

Mid-Week at Work: U.S. Troops in Mexico.



All around the water tank, waiting for a train
A thousand miles away from home, sleeping in the rain
I walked up to a brakeman just to give him a line of talk
He said "If you got money, boy, I'll see that you don't walk
I haven't got a nickel, not a penny can I show
"Get off, get off, you railroad bum" and slammed the boxcar door

He put me off in Texas, a state I dearly love
The wide open spaces all around me, the moon and the stars up above
Nobody seems to want me, or lend me a helping hand
I'm on my way from Frisco, going back to Dixieland
My pocket book is empty and my heart is full of pain
I'm a thousand miles away from home just waiting for a train.

Jimmy Rodgers, "Waiting for a Train".

Tuesday, April 15, 2014

Wednesday, April 15, 1914. Troubles for the Mexican Federal Government.

Mexican Federal Troops were trapped by separate bands of Mexican Revolutionaries at San Pedro, Coahila, Mexico. The rebels had cut the rail lines.

It wasn't the only problem the Huerta regime was facing.


Last prior edition:

Sunday, April 13, 2014

Burdens of History. Russia, and not getting it.

Russia has been in the news a lot recently.


That's obviously an understatement, and a cynic might state that "when isn't it?", but Russia hasn't always loomed large in our minds here in the US, like it has in the minds of other nations, principally its neighbors.  This is the case for a variety of reasons that have to do with its history, and also with ours.

Russians don't form, by and large, a demographic we think of much in terms of our immigrant past. This is not to say that there have not been Russian immigrants to the US, there have been, but not in the numbers that other European nations have, if we define Europe to be that land East of the Urals.  Yes, Russians have immigrated to the US, but even that immigration tells us something about Russia that we generally fail to grasp.

The Russians are not a European people, and the sooner we figure that out, the better.  Oh, I know that some student of geography will point out that Russia less Siberia is in continental Europe, which is perfectly true, and I know others would be shocked by that statement as the Russians look European, but they aren't.

How is this true.

Well, we have to look at what is Europe, and we can make a pretty good case that if it isn't Roman, it isn't Europe.

Most of what we think of as European today is European because the Romans were there.  The remainder is that area which Rome influenced, or at least the Latin Rite of the Church did in antiquity.  That's not only pretty significant, its enormously determinant of our cultural outlook.

The Roman Empire occupied all of Europe south of the Rhine River.  A pretty big patch of it.  It also came to occupy the Greek world, which at that time included Greece, the Balkans, Turkey and North Africa. Some will point out that not all of these regions were really "Greek", but it can be noted that they were more Greek than perhaps we suppose, as the Greeks had exhibited a strong influence in the regions where they had gone, even if they were a tiny minority there.  True, we wouldn't expect a majority population of Greeks anywhere in Libya  or Palestine, but that doesn't mean that the Greeks weren't part of that world. They were. And the Romans certainly came to be, although that's outside of our story.

South of the Rhine and south of Hadrian's Wall in Britain the world was Roman.  North of it, it wasn't Roman dominated, but the Romans exhibited influence.  When Rome fell in the 5th Century, it left much of its culture and it certainly left, by that time, the Church.

When Rome fell, and the Germans flooded south, and the Scots landed in Britain, a pagan non Romanized people were introduced to new lands. But that introduction flowed both ways.  It wasn't really long before these new people adopted some things that the Romans had left and they very quickly became members of the Latin Rite of the Church. The spreading of the Church took some time, to be sure.  Scandinavia, for example, was brought into the Christian fold late, and even Poland was pagan for much longer than we would generally suppose, but it did occur.

That's hugely significant in terms of culture. Rome had the view that nationality mattered less than central achievement.  The Roman Empire was founded on crime and was always corrupt, but amazingly it developed high concepts of human unity and it tended to disregard a person's ethnicity in favor of their abilities.  The concept that Celts, Arabs, Greeks, Italians and others could all belong to the same political entity was an amazingly broad one in that or any other era.  The Greeks had regarded non Greeks as barbarians.  The Romans regarded barbarians as being those who did not have the benefit of Roman rule, a distinctively different concept.  When Rome fell, and the Church remained, it left a situation in which the foundation of learning and knowledge was not tribal or national at all, but universal, vested in the institutions of the Universal Church.

So what does that have to do with Russia? Well, Everything.

Russia was a Slavic land on the crossroads of invasion from the East and West. From the East came Asian peoples who had a clear path of invasion, uninhibited by geography. From the west this was also true.  Russia's people fell to these invaders time and time again.  Even the name "Russia" comes from one, the Rus, a Scandinavian people who left their legacy in the form of a name, some cities, and in the strong strain of blue eyes and blond hair that Russians exhibit, unusual for Slavic peoples.

Russia was Christianized from Constantinople.  It wasn't the only country which received its Christianizing missionaries from the seat at Constantinople by any means, and the Church in East was part of the Universal Church at the time. But that still would have a different influence in some ways than being part of the Latin Church tended to be.  Vast expanses of territory proved so difficult in the end that, prior to the Great Schism, Constantinople granted Moscow its own seat, making the Eastern Church in Russia self governing.  When the Great Schism came, Russia went with Constantinople, although not to the degree now commonly imagined.  A major part of the Russian Church made an effort to recognize the Bishop of Rome as the head of the Church, but ultimately that effort mostly failed in Russia proper.

All of this means that Russia is a nation that is simply not European the way that other nations West of the Urals on the European Continent are.  It's been subject to repeated invasion to the extent that it is xenophobic.  It's culture owes little to the same influences that other European nations do.  In terms of its primary historic institutions, its leadership, its army, its Church, it does not look towards the same greater influences that other nations do. Even the introduction of European influences, sometimes occasionally wildly in vogue in Russia, have come as quasi-exotic, or have been forced upon the Russians by leaders who saw their advantages.

Okay, so if that's true, so what?

Well, we're having to live with, or put up with, a pretty active Russia right now. And we just don't get it.  It's clear that our last two presidents really don't get it, with this one not getting it to such an extent he probably ought to go sit in the corner and read up on Russia.

Russia is historically an imperial nation in which the Great Russians conceive of themselves as the protectors of the Slavic, and more particularly Orthodox, world in a way that we can't imagine as we haven't seen a power like this since for a very long time, outside of Russia itself.  They feel this way about things in the same way that the Japanese felt about Asia prior to 1945, or perhaps the way that Germans felt that way about all things German up until 1945., although both of these are imperfect analogies.  We would have supposed that the historically brief and failed experiment with Communism from 1917 (or really, for most of Russia, some point in the 1920s) until 1990 would have changed that, but you cannot really change a culture by force in 70 years.  Particularly not a culture that is as strong as the Russian culture is.  Their culture was, to be sure, extremely badly damaged, and the introduction of the virus of Communism lives on as a strain of infection in the culture in a way that we also don't grasp, but Russia re emerged, after the fall of Communism, ultimately as a Russian nation, after a brief experiment at being a European one.

So what does that mean?

Well, it means that the Russian people, outside of two species of dissident, are conservative in a traditional sense, and are not democratic by habit.  They're also Russian Orthodox in outlook, if not all in practice by any means.  They also will unite behind their ethnicity in a way that Europeans cannot even imagine being today.

Even their dissidents are largely Russian in character.   A few are heavily Europeanized, but that has always been the case. We look towards them, justifiably, as the ones who have the most in common with us.  But they're overwhelmingly located in urban centers, and frankly mostly located just in Moscow.  Others are really species of Bolshevik revolutionaries, fire breathers who would tear down everything in society as the extreme leftist of 1917 would have done, but we don't recognize them as such.  When Americans and Europeans cry for members of an all female band as if they're Jeffersonian democrats, we're foolish in the extreme. We're better off looking at them as the latter day kindred spirits of those who went Red deep in 1917 through 1930.

So, in looking toward Russia, we better get over the idea that it's going to become a true liberal democracy any time soon.  It isn't.  And we better get used to the idea that any place it once had imperial rule over, it would like to again.  Ultimately, only the fear that it will go to far in recapturing the Czars lands will keep it from reclaiming what it lost after the collapse of the Soviet Union.  Most problematic over all of that is that anywhere there's a large Russian population, and there is in most of the former Soviet lands, it's going to view itself as having a right to rule, or at least intervene on behalf of Russians.  Simply yapping at the Russians is not going to change that. And the idea that economic sanctions will is stupid.

But that doesn't mean that the  Russians are a new Soviet Empire in the making. They are not.  Looking back to the Czars empire is a better analogy, and Europe was always able to do that.  That will require Europe to resume having a sense of itself, however, which right now it doesn't seem to. And in a way, Russia can do the Europeans a bit of a favor in those regards.

Saturday, April 12, 2014

Easter Sunday, April 12, 1914. Rumblings of revolution.


The IWW was meeting in New York City, and had a large gathering in Union Square.  The theme of "bread and revolution" obviously had come up.


In Russia, where Easter Sunday was still a week a way, Czar Nicholas II, who would very soon be facing protests by those seeking "bread and revolution", presented the now famous Mosic Fabrege egg, created by Albert Holmström under the supervision of Peter Carl Fabergé, to Empress Alexandra Feodorovna, as well as giving his mother Maria Feodorovna another one which became known as the Catherine the Great egg.

Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin D. Roosevelt dedicated the opening of the Cabrillo Bridge in San Diego.

A convention in Hot Springs, Arkansas which established  the Pentecostal Assemblies of God branch of Protestantism adjourned. It is now the largest branch of Pentecostalism.

Charles Crupelandt won the 19th Paris–Roubaix tour.

Governor Carey was in an argument.



Last prior edition:

Good Friday, April 10, 1914. Villa takes San Pedro.

Wednesday, April 9, 2014

Alas, (with apologies to Shakespeare).

Alas, poor XP! I knew him, Horatio; an operating system of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy; it hath borne me on its back a thousand times; and now, how abhorred in my imagination it is! My gorge rims at it. Here hung those icons that I have clicked I know not how oft. Where be your gibes now? Your gambols? Your songs? Your flashes of merriment, that were wont to set the table on a roar?


Mid Week at Work: The Barber


For this week's entry on our occasional series, Mid Week At Work, we have a photograph of a barber, circa the 1940s.  Caption data indicates that this barber had been in business 14 years at the time that this photograph was taken.

Our entry today was inspired by another item posted today on shaving, as shaves are something that barbers routinely did up until the safety razor became predominate, and most barbers still offer saves.  I think I've only seen one do one once, which was on the occasion of a fellow with a big beard coming in to have it shaved off.

Barber Shops are an institution, although oddly enough not as common of one as they once were.  It would have been impossible up through the 1950s at least to imagine an era when there'd be fewer barbers than their used to be, but starting in the late 1970s that in facdt became the case.  It probably started off with the long hair fashion of the 1960s, which came in at fist as a fashion, then evolved (with hair length) into a species of hairy rebellion (witness the musical "Hair!") and then returned to being a fashion.  By the late 1970s all that hair saw the introduction of an occupation called a "hair stylist" which looked dangerously close to the existing occupation of "hair dresser" to most men who were 40 years old or older at the time.  In rural areas, hair stylist still looks suspiciously close to hair dresser to a lot of men, although the stylist seems here to stay.

With the stylist came the decline of the barber and the barber shop, which is a shame.  Barber Shops remain unique places.  In a world in which very few places remain strongly male or female, barber shops are male.  They always have been. That doesn't mean that women aren't welcome to walk in one, and you'll occasionally see women do just that, but when they do, they aren't there to have their hair done so much as to drop a kid off or sometimes to chat about one of the topics that are bastions of conversation in barber shops.

And bastions of conversation they are.  Sports are a huge topic in barber shops.  In rural areas outdoors activities are as well.  My barber and I usually converse hunting, fishing and automobiles, I don't know much about sports, although the barber shop is the one place that I might be able to learn a little about sports.   Barber Shops are also places of great social equality.  Every occupation needs their hair cut, and Barber Shops have always been places where professions and occupations of all types mixed, side by side.  I've been in barber shops where, and I'm not joking, the clinically insane sat right next to lawyers, waiting for haircuts.  And I've seen everything from heavily tattooed roughnecks to Catholic Priests waiting for their turn at the chair. 

It's always surprised me that barber shops have declined because they are such unique institutions and because, quite frankly, economically they compete quite well with the stylists.  Perhaps they're something that we can hope for a revival of, in the future.