I saw this film many years ago, in pieces (that is, I saw it on television, in chunks, which is never a good way to view anything). I recalled liking it at the time, and only recently have I been able to view it again.
This film is a 1975 film by Stanly Kubrick which is a surprising effort by Kubrick to film William Makepeace Thakeray's novel The Luck of Barry Lyndon. Thackeray's works satired English society of his own time, the 19th Century. The novel, like the film, was set in the late 18th Century and early 19th Century, and it is loosely based on an actual person.
The film follows the life of Redmond Barry, who we understand to be a member of the Irish gentry of that period. Not ever explained, but fairly obvious from the context for a person familiar with Irish history, is that Barry is a member of a minor Irish noble family, hence he's actually an Anglo Irish protestant. While the film does not explain that, an understanding of that serves to make some sense out of the plot which might otherwise be a bit mysterious in some ways.
Barry's story commences with the death of his father in a duel, which effectively places the family into a species of poverty, and goes early on to a doomed romance between Barry and a cousin, who rejects him in favor of an English army office. The film takes place during the Seven Years War, which figure prominently in the plot line. This launches Barry on a series of unlikely, but very well presented and, in the context of the film, and indeed of the times, seemingly plausible adventures and occurrences. Barry is followed through service with the English, and then Prussian, armies and on into his marriage to an English noblewoman. All along, the viewer is left wondering if he likes Barry or not, which would be consistent, apparently, with Thackeray's novel, in which a clueless Barry narrates his own story.
We, of course, review movies not so much for their plots (although we certainly consider that) but also for their service or disservice to history. And Barry Lyndon gets high marks in those regards. The acting in the film is curiously flat by many of the actors, but that actually serves the character of Barry Lyndon, as he is called after he marries Lady Lyndon, and Lady Lyndon, quite well. This is one of two films by Ryan O'Neal, the other being Paper Moon, which was released two years earlier. O'Neal's portrayal in Paper Moon is so different in character that the flat portrayal in Barry Lyndon must seem to be a directors choice, which does indeed serve the film well, given that much of it is a character study of European gentry and nobility of this period. Frankly, the gentry and nobility do not come across particularly well.
Material details are very well done. Clothing styles change appropriately over time. The details of noble English households are very well portrayed, including the peculiar relationship that sometimes existed between Anglican clerics and those households. The moral decline that was going on in this era amongst the well to do is a major subject of of the film and subtly and excellently portrayed. Indeed, moral decline is a frequent subtle topic of Kubrick films, with Kubrick having been a devout Catholic. The strange nature of European armies and their rank and files is excellently portrayed as well. The details of the very strange custom of dueling are accurately portrayed.
About the only real criticism that can be offered here is that it's pretty obvious that Ryan O'Neal didn't know how to ride a horse, and those scenes in which he rides are painful to watch for somebody with knowledge on riding. Otherwise, the film is excellent.
Sunday, June 12, 2016
Sunday Morning Scence: Churches of the West: St. Edward's Catholic Church, Wind River Reservation
Churches of the West: St. Edward's Catholic Church, Wind River Reservation.
These are photographs of St. Edward's Catholic Church, north of Riverton, Wyoming and near Kinnear. This church was moved to this location in 1977. It had originally been located in Pavillion, some miles away, and was built in 1924.
These are photographs of St. Edward's Catholic Church, north of Riverton, Wyoming and near Kinnear. This church was moved to this location in 1977. It had originally been located in Pavillion, some miles away, and was built in 1924.
Saturday, June 11, 2016
Boxing exits stage left
Boxing was pretty big when I was a kid.
It was even bigger prior to World War Two.
It's all but dead now.
Listening to the obits on Ali really bring this home. Younger people hearing about it know that he was a great boxer, but they don't really know that boxing itself was once great.
Prior to football taking pride of place in American professional football there were really only three professional sports worth considering. Baseball, boxing, and horse racing.
Yes, there were other professional sports, including football, which arrived as early as 1892, but football really wasn't a big deal.* Baseball, boxing, and horse racing, were. Only baseball really remains up there in the American mind, but even it has had to surrender pride of place to football.
Boxing was something followed by every American who followed professional sports. It was a huge deal, and it remained that way all the up up through the 1970s. Boxing was on the cover of sporting journals all the time and for much of my youth you could watch a boxing match on national broadcast television ever Saturday night.
It's hard to say what made it so big, but it was. It was huge.
Part of that may have reflected economics and demographics. Boxing has always been a sport populated largely by the economically disadvantaged. Not always, but typically. Legendary early boxer John L. Sullivan was from "Southie", South Boston, born of Irish immigrants, and had started off boxing illegally as the sport was banned in Boston.
Legendary Boston born Irish American boxer John L. Sullivan who fought over 450 fights in his career, an amazing total. He was the last bare knuckle champion and the first gloved champion.
Indeed, the early sport featured a laundry list of the disadvantaged, including a lot of Irish American and Italian American boxers. It also featured Jewish boxers, although it seems their legacy in the sport is largely forgotten now.
And it was integrated right from the start.
The larger than life Jack Johnson.
Something about the individual nature of the sport, maybe, made it impossible for the color line to keep in it, and Jack Johnson became the first black heavyweight champion in 1908. Johnson was a controversial figure, and remains so, due to his blistering refusal to adhere to color boundaries, including in his personal life, which leads a person now to wonder to what extent it was Johnson and to what extent it was simply prejudice that created the controversy. Anyhow, Johnson is sometimes regarded as setting the advancement of black athletes back, but I frankly doubt it. His brashness was impossible to ignore, and that, in my mind, likely advanced the cause of black athletes.
At any rate, blacks were so well established in boxing that by the time Joe Lewis became the world heavyweight champion in 1937 he was a national hero, remaining that way his entire life. Indeed, while people now tend to recall Jackie Robinson as breaking the color boundaries in professional sports, its interesting to note that boxing and horse racing (where they have oddly mostly disappeared) were integrated decades prior, and in boxing the lines were nearly completely erased by the 1930s.
Which doesn't mean that they couldn't offer some controversy. Muhammad Ali, who may be the greatest boxer who ever lived, stood on the shoulders of prior giants and was truly controversial in a political sense for much of his career. But it was the popularity of boxing that allowed him to do that. It was so big, it gave Ali a bully pulpit.
Well, that pulpit is all but dismantled now.
It's hard to see what happened to it, but it seems to have been a victim of its own success. As a sport it was always plagued with those who were close to it having financial goals that didn't always comport with keeping the sport organized in a rational fashion. After Ali its organization, which had always had elements that were ready to tear it apart, collapsed and a big national boxing hero, or rather international, had a harder time coming up. And in the heavyweight class, while there were clearly great boxers after Ali, none had quite what he did in terms of personality and wit, except perhaps for George Foreman, who is also now long past his boxing career.
Beyond that, however, something changed in a society where accidental early death and decay became less common. John L. Sullivan was only 59 years old when he died. Joe Lewis was 66. Jack Johnson was an old 68. In an era when strokes and heart attacks simply killed, these ages didn't seem all that unusual. Muhammad Ali was a very aged 74 years old when he just died, and had been bearing the tragic consequences of his sport for a very long time. That visible impact, which used to be called being "slapsy", was hard for the public to watch. Arguably boxing became the first sport where head injuries became a real and ongoing concern, with it now passing on to other sports, including the big current national pass time, football.
Whatever it is, boxing isn't what it once was. I don't even know who the current heavyweight champions are, although I believe there's more than one. At one time, everyone did.
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*It's interesting to note in this context that football, while have a professional organization by 1892, was really regarded as a college sport until after World War Two. There are historical reasons for that, including that both football and rugby were sports that were in fact normally only maintained early on by universities. Beyond that, however, I wonder if it isn't simply demographic. Even now, football is heavily associated with universities and the college teams are the training grounds for professional football teams. Baseball, however, has tended to recruit right out of high school and has maintained its own farm system. Boxing hasn't tended to come out of schools at all, but most professional boxers started very young. So boxing and baseball were very much average man sports in an era prior to the average man having any college at all. Average men attending college only changed after World War Two, and by the 1950s professional football had really arrived.
Wyoming Fact and Fiction: Yellowstone and The First Visitors
Wyoming Fact and Fiction: Yellowstone and The First Visitors: With all the crazy goings on in Yellowstone this summer, it would be nice to see some more positive news of, and from the park. News about ...
Roads to the Great War: Remember the Titanic's Rescue Ship RMS Carpathia?
Roads to the Great War: Remember the Titanic's Rescue Ship RMS Carpathia?: The Titanic 's rescue ship RMS Carpathia has some interesting connections to the Great War. RMS Carpathia Captain Arthur...
Friday, June 10, 2016
General Obregon receives a medal in Celaya, June 10, 1916.
General Obregon, with Carranza to his left, receiving a medal in Celaya in connection, in some fashion, with the effort to combat Pancho Villa.
Declaration of an Arab state: June 10, 1916.
Hussein bin Ali, Sharif of Mecca, declares the existence of an Arab state stretching from Aden to Aleppo. The Arab state, as he envisioned it, would never come into being and he himself would ultimately be driven out of the Hajez in 1924, after having attempted to claim the title of Caliph, which the House of Saud was not willing to accept.
Friday Farming: Roosians. 1915. A glimpse of ethnicity
Caption reads: A case of "Economic Need." Jacob Roomel [i.e., Rommel?] and his
family live in this roomy shack, well-furnished, with a good range,
organ, etc. They own a good home in Ft. Collins, but late in April they
moved out here, taking contract for nearly 40 acres of beets, working
their 9 and 10 yr. old girls hard at piling and topping (altho[ugh] they
are not rugged) and they will not return until November. The little
girl said, "Piling is hardest, it gets your back. I have cut myself
some, topping." The older girl said, "Don't you call us Russians, we're
Germans," (although they were most of them were born in Russia). Family
been in this country eleven yrs. (See photo 4041.) Location: Ft.
Collins [vicinity], Colorado
This is a photo from the Library of Congress depicting a Colorado farm family in 1915. the photo tells us volumes in ways that it probably doesn't mean to.
For one thing, it's interesting that this family commuted from Ft. Collins to land they owned, or leased, to farm it for the summer. A commuting 1915 farm family. Also interesting is that they were farming beets in this area of Colorado that is still pretty intensively agricultural, but right now is producing a final crop of houses in a way that should give any nation pause.
Also interesting is they're identified in such a fashion as to cast doubt on what they were. The photographer obviously felt they were Russians, as they were born in Russia. The oldest daughter, however, was aware of their German ethnicity. These folks would have been descendant of the Germans that went into Russia, at the invitation of the Russian crown, in the 18th Century. In the early 20th Century they were immigrating to the United States, tired of cyclical Russian oppression. They had a major impact of American agriculture at the time.
Confusion over their ethnicity caused them to be called "Roosians" in some areas, an intentional mispronunciation of Russian, recognizing the Russian element but not fully crediting it. As they almost exclusively settled in agricultural belts that were already heavily settled by ethnic Germans, and as they often shared the same religion as the local German American communities they settled in, their ethnic identity tended to be absorbed into the local one, and today many of their descendants would tend not to know that their German ancestors had a long period of residence in Russia. There are quite a few efforts today to preserve their heritage by their descendants in the US.
A very large number immigrated to the US and Canada prior to World War One. The tragedy of the Great War caused more to move, particularly after the Russian Revolution arrived and brought in forces that were fully opposed to their farming enterprises and religious faith. Those who remained were heavily oppressed by Stalin. Even with that, however, enough remained that following the reunification of Germany some of their descendants claimed German citizenship and immigrated to Germany, where culturally they provided an odd window into an earlier era, and linguistically they struggled with a language they largely no longer spoke.
Thursday, June 9, 2016
Throwback Thursday? Old soldiers never die. . .
A person would likely have to have had military service to recognize what's on this pencil. How did it end up in my office?
For First Time in Modern Era, Living With Parents Edges Out Other Living Arrangements for 18- to 34-Year-Olds. Generations: Part Three of Three
Father and son working on team.
From a Pew survey:
For First Time in Modern Era, Living With Parents Edges Out Other Living Arrangements for 18- to 34-Year-Olds: For the first time since 1880, Americans ages 18 to 34 are more likely to be living with their parent(s) than in a household shared with a spouse or partner.
I saw this first in a Singletary column in the Washington Post, and she viewed this as a good trend. Here college age daughter, about to enter grad school, lives at home with her parents. As noted, in some ways, it's actually a return to the age old norm. So, in terms of a long term analysis, maybe we just exited a 100 year, or even more like a 40 year, period of abnormality. We seemingly aren't looking at it that way, but maybe we ought to at least ponder it.
Of course, pondering things like that are the line of country of this blog. Indeed, so much so that this post was really more developed than the other two in this series at first and wasn't intended to be part of a series at all.
Some comments on the Pew study. Let's start with this one:
This turn of events is fueled primarily by the dramatic drop in the share of young Americans who are choosing to settle down romantically before age 35. Dating back to 1880, the most common living arrangement among young adults has been living with a romantic partner, whether a spouse or a significant other. This type of arrangement peaked around 1960, when 62% of the nation’s 18- to 34-year-olds were living with a spouse or partner in their own household, and only one-in-five were living with their parents.
This is bull.
Okay, not "bull", but a bit misleading in its use of politically correct, probably by necessity, terminology.
Not the statistics, but the way its phrased, that is. "Romantic partner" is a term that has no meaning, or at least doesn't hold this meaning, in the context of what's stated. Rather, for much of the period looked at, let's say from 1880 to approximately 1980, the most common living arrangement was to live with a spouse, not a "romantic partner". The fact that we have to use the term "romantic partner" is part of the big story here. And that a "romantic partner" has evolved in the past two decades or so from a type of illicit relationship into a second type of common law marriage is significant, but seemingly missed.
Indeed, the whole use of the term "partner" is both absurd, really, and rather Orwellian. In practical terms, it's come to really mean common law spouse, whether or not the couples are married, as marriage is a natural institution and the societal acceptance of a a type of marriage without a ceremony has in fact altered what was for a while a counter cultural act into simply the same old institution but without the legal benefits, or many of them, that the institutional structure for marriage confers.
Even the terms husband and wife, an spouse, demonstrate that. "Wife", as a word, derives from an old Germanic word meaning "woman". Originally a term that translates as the modern Housewife was the more common for what we now refer to as a wife, as a House Woman for a spouse meant more sense that just Woman. Likewise, Husband derives from an Old Norse word meaning Householder. Spouse comes to us from a circuitous route that takes us back to a Latin word for Betrothed, which derives from a Latin word for Promise. So, Spouses are "promised", a way of referring to the relationship to the betrothed that still exists today.
Anyhow, "partners" are those engaged in a business relationship from which they each drive a benefit and bear a burden. How romantic. The reduction of these relationships from illicit ones to quasi legal ones borrows from teh concept of business partners, and not too surprisingly these quasi marriages suffer conceptually from that reduction. And I hate it when the PC, as is so common now, chooses to address married couples as partners, or when some phrase sensitive person simply uses the term to refer to all relationships. This is how the term will eventually evolve to have the same meaning as spouse, thereby making it meaningless anyhow, however.
But let's not fool ourselves, the use of the term is a bit silly, and while the statistic tells us something, it has to be analyzed for content to really derive a meaning.
Carrying on, the analysis notes:
It’s worth noting that the overall share of young adults living with their parents was not at a record high in 2014. This arrangement peaked around 1940, when about 35% of the nation’s 18- to 34-year-olds lived with mom and/or dad (compared with 32% in 2014). What has changed, instead, is the relative share adopting different ways of living in early adulthood, with the decline of romantic coupling pushing living at home to the top of a much less uniform list of living arrangements.
Ah, now this is interesting. Contrary to the way that this news tends to be presented, it doesn't quite mean that everyone is now living at home at the same rate as the past. Nor does that mean it was as high in 1880 as it was later. We learn here that the last true year of the Great Depression in the United States, 1940, saw the peak of adult children living at home. Now that's interesting. And we also learn that this recently peaked again in 2014, and has declined slightly since then. Rather, what we also learn is that a decline in marriage, or whatever Pew must call it given the societal etymology problem earlier noted, has mean living at home has been pushed back up to a really high statistical significance, higher than any other living arrangement.
Let's look at it a bit closer:
Among young adults, living arrangements differ significantly by gender. For men ages 18 to 34, living at home with mom and/or dad has been the dominant living arrangement since 2009. In 2014, 28% of young men were living with a spouse or partner in their own home, while 35% were living in the home of their parent(s). For their part, young women are on the cusp of crossing over this threshold: They are still more likely to be living with a spouse or romantic partner (35%) than they are to be living with their parent(s) (29%).
Now that is, I suspect, a real change from the past. At one time, this would have been more common for women than men. That truly reflects a change in society over the past century, which we've addressed here before.
Pew attributes all of this to an increase in postponement of marriage and economic factors, which is no doubt correct. But how much of that, from what we look at on this blog, is actually a return to the historical norm, and what does that mean?
Earlier in this thread we looked at the Boomers, and frankly we were a bit hostile to them when we probably ought not to have been. But what should stand out regarding them is that there is indeed a lot of Boomer Exceptionalism, if you will. Leaving home, which the Boomers, in casual conversations, regard as a norm, or a right of passage, may instead simply be a statistical glitch applying mostly to them, and mostly reflecting American post war affluence. If that's correct, what we're seeing now is the norm, not the exception, and that may mean we're returning to an economic regime that's more the historical norm than the current one, or rather the recent one.
If we step back what we would find, and indeed as we have discussed in other contexts before, is that prior to the introduction of domestic machinery, the living arrangements of the young were much different than they came to be in the 1945 to 2000 period. As was noted in that thread:
Now, that may be the condition we're observing, but why?
In order to answer that, we probably have to look at the conditions that reflected the prior arrangement. We basically have done that above. But looked at another way, what we find is that conditions and resources made this the most practical, and in some circumstances the only practical, living arrangement. And maybe, in looking at this, we out to step out of location and take a look at Europe of the same period.
Now, that may seem odd, but the reason that may be illustrative is that we see the same thing in Europe, but it persisted. Indeed, in some situation the prevalence of adult children living at home is so pronounced that it continues on after those children have married. Indeed, that's the norm with farm families.
Now, that is also the norm in American agricultural families as well, but in Europe the norm is and was for everyone to live n hte same house. Indeed, it's typical to have three generations all living in the same house, with their relative position in the family determined by their location withing the house. Simply put, in a densely packed region, the resources for individual living simply do not exist.
The US, of course, is a big country, but something that's been missed over the last several decades is that the American tendency to simply assume that the American geography is ever expandable so as to keep the conditions in the country ever the same are simply wrong, and that has expressed itself in housing values. Americans, unlike many Europeans, tend to aim towards owning their own houses (in some European countries that's not the norm, nor even the general desire) but they are becoming increasingly un-affordable. This tends to cause housing "bubbles" of course, as much of hte current pricing really isn't very realistic, but it also reflects a situation in which moving up into a house is no longer as easy as once was, although there has always been a sector of the economy for which this hasn't been easy at all.
And that carries on to rent. What used to be fairly easy for a lot of people is to move on and into a rental unit. But now, apartments are blisteringly expensive in many regions. Indeed, Denver Colorado prides itself on its ever expanding population while continually noting that its rental rates are sky high and going higher. No wonder.
In such a situation living outside the home is simply impossible for many young people. It might be once they marry, as two incomes is now the American married rule, but it might not be at that. A good friend of mine, for example, recently related to me that his married son and his daughter in law are living with him while they save money for a house. Here we see a return to a very, very old norm, and the re-establishment of the European norm in the US. This isn't uncommon.
Also worth noting is that the average age of marriages is rising, sort of. Frankly, this figure is complicated by much of what I've noted above. If the reality of common law marriages, no matter what htey are termed, are considered, this may actually not be nearly as true, but because of the transitory nature of quite a few such arrangements, which effectively has introduced something akin to common law divorce into the picture, that's a risky assumption. Anyhow, what is often noted is that Americans are "postponing" marriage until their "careers are established".
Or maybe they are not.
To some extent this is undoubtedly true. But at the same time for quite a few American ethnicities, this isn't true. So we have the truly peculiar fact that while it is true that "people married younger" and in some instances very young, there's a strong demographic element to it that ran the other way. This is particular true with some ethnicities such as the American Irish, which did not marry young at all. Men tended as a rule to be in their early 30s and women in their late 20s, both in Ireland and the United States, amongst people with an Irish Catholic background. The simple reason was economic. Men couldn't afford to marry any younger, as a rule. And they nearly always lived at home until they did. Indeed, the fairly legendary devotion of Irish and Irish American men to their mothers is no doubt a partial product of this, with it being the case that they frequently had lived well into their adulthood in their parents homes providing support while they saved to go out on their own. Boomers who find their adult children now staying at home are, in part, experiencing the exact same thing, as the American economy which allowed an 18 year old high school graduate to go out and find good work is dead.
Indeed, I've experienced, in one fashion or another, nearly all of this, and the reaction to it, in one fashion or another. My own parents were in their early 30s when they married and my half Irish, half German father resumed living at home when he returned from university, and then Air Force service, and lived there until he met and married my mother. My mother, on the other hand, had struck out adventurously on her own in her early 20s, but her family bonds were incredibly strong right up until her death. When I first went to school, I stayed here in town and continued to live in my parents home. When I came back from law school, I moved back in for what I thought was going to be a brief stay, but when my father fell very ill, I stayed. I stayed on after he died out of loyalty to my mother, and then left home when I married. So I guess I was a pioneer in the demographic trend. Right now, my 18 year old son is living here at home, but he intends to rent my mother's old house while attending college, a sort of price supported living arrangement which recalls for me the old boarding house arrangement to some degree.
It's interesting to see how Boomers and others react to this. The old Boomers, strongly influenced by a culture which really emphasized that they should move out and move on, tend to not like the idea of anyone staying on locally, if they didn't. Missed in that is the fact that their own parents who left home early often had done so due to war, a unique situation, which made those people adults really quickly. In contrast, the pushing out of the fledglings in the new economy, and culture that was at least somewhat damaged in the wake of Boomer excess, isn't nearly as good. The foundering of Millennials has become legendary, but then no wonder really.
Again, while making resort to movies for examples is something a person has to do with caution, movies here can show us how societal views have changed on this topic, and living conditions have changed, if we consider what they accidentally depict about their own eras in these regards. Its' sort of an interesting exercise.
Take again the film Marty. Released in 1955, the Academy Award winning film presents a "small story" concerning the life of a blue collar, big city, bachelor. Some might define the film in terms of presenting a "romance", but if it does, it's the most unromantic romance every filmed. The interesting thing here, however, is that the aging bachelor, plaid by Ernest Borgnine, who was then in his late 30s, is shown living in an apartment with his mother as an important, but routine, detail of the film. Indeed, during the film his aunt moves from another, married, son's house into the same apartment (while cast in ethnic terms, the same situation is explored, with many of the same movie themes, in the the 1991 film Only The Lonely, one of John Candy's best films). Similar living arrangements are shown in the much loved film Its A Wonderful Life (1946) and the legendary post war film The Best Years of Our Lives (1946). The point is that in all of these films unmarried men and women living with their parents is shown as common and expected, requiring no explanation.
Take in contrast a film like Failure To Launch (2006) in which the protagonist, played by Matthew McConaughey, is depicted as "still" living at home. McConaughey was 37 years old, one year old than Borgnine at the time Borgnine filmed Marty, and yet this living relationship is depicted as comedic and abnormal. It probably seems less so in 2006 than it does now in 2016.
So, I suppose, we are left with the question of what all of this means. And what it seems to mean is really two things. The post war period in which everything about the United States seemed exceptional really was, and for various reason the conditions that prevailed prior to it, in a lot of ways, are back. And if that's true, perhaps what Pew is calling the "Modern Era", isn't.
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Why is the text above blue? No idea whatsoever. It just turned blue, and Blogger won't accept the change back in color.
I like Blogger, but it can be extremely frustrating from time to time.
Earlier in this thread we looked at the Boomers, and frankly we were a bit hostile to them when we probably ought not to have been. But what should stand out regarding them is that there is indeed a lot of Boomer Exceptionalism, if you will. Leaving home, which the Boomers, in casual conversations, regard as a norm, or a right of passage, may instead simply be a statistical glitch applying mostly to them, and mostly reflecting American post war affluence. If that's correct, what we're seeing now is the norm, not the exception, and that may mean we're returning to an economic regime that's more the historical norm than the current one, or rather the recent one.
If we step back what we would find, and indeed as we have discussed in other contexts before, is that prior to the introduction of domestic machinery, the living arrangements of the young were much different than they came to be in the 1945 to 2000 period. As was noted in that thread:
Of course, some men took apartments in towns and simply ate out every day, or resorted to less than desirable means of cooking. Even now, quite a few men engaged in heavy labor hit a working man's restaurant early in the day, and pack a lunch of some sort with them for lunch. The point is, however, that for most working men, the conditions of the day didn't give a great number of options in terms of getting food cooked, clothing washed, etc., and still allow them to work.That work, that is the domestic work, fell to women, but not because of some societal conspiracy thought up by men so much as by necessity. The were some female out of the house occupations, as noted, but they were generally few, and the women who occupied them tended to be just as oppressed by the needs of every day life as men. When you look at old advertisements that seem quaint or even a bit odd now, in which some poor young woman is depicted as being in desperate straits as she's in her late 20s and not married, it should be kept in mind that for most women getting married did indeed improve their lot in life as they'd be taking care of their own household, rather than be auxiliary to somebody else s.This discussed living at home and other living arrangements in a different context. It's still illustrative of something, even in our much different domestic machinery and economic (maybe) regime today. Boiled down to its essence, prior to World War Two, and for some time after it, young men and women generally lived at home until they married for reasons that had, in essence, something to do with resources, until they married. And now, in 2016, this is becoming the norm again for the young. They're living at home until they marry or enter into what is effectively a species of common law marriage.
Now, that may be the condition we're observing, but why?
In order to answer that, we probably have to look at the conditions that reflected the prior arrangement. We basically have done that above. But looked at another way, what we find is that conditions and resources made this the most practical, and in some circumstances the only practical, living arrangement. And maybe, in looking at this, we out to step out of location and take a look at Europe of the same period.
Now, that may seem odd, but the reason that may be illustrative is that we see the same thing in Europe, but it persisted. Indeed, in some situation the prevalence of adult children living at home is so pronounced that it continues on after those children have married. Indeed, that's the norm with farm families.
Now, that is also the norm in American agricultural families as well, but in Europe the norm is and was for everyone to live n hte same house. Indeed, it's typical to have three generations all living in the same house, with their relative position in the family determined by their location withing the house. Simply put, in a densely packed region, the resources for individual living simply do not exist.
The US, of course, is a big country, but something that's been missed over the last several decades is that the American tendency to simply assume that the American geography is ever expandable so as to keep the conditions in the country ever the same are simply wrong, and that has expressed itself in housing values. Americans, unlike many Europeans, tend to aim towards owning their own houses (in some European countries that's not the norm, nor even the general desire) but they are becoming increasingly un-affordable. This tends to cause housing "bubbles" of course, as much of hte current pricing really isn't very realistic, but it also reflects a situation in which moving up into a house is no longer as easy as once was, although there has always been a sector of the economy for which this hasn't been easy at all.
And that carries on to rent. What used to be fairly easy for a lot of people is to move on and into a rental unit. But now, apartments are blisteringly expensive in many regions. Indeed, Denver Colorado prides itself on its ever expanding population while continually noting that its rental rates are sky high and going higher. No wonder.
In such a situation living outside the home is simply impossible for many young people. It might be once they marry, as two incomes is now the American married rule, but it might not be at that. A good friend of mine, for example, recently related to me that his married son and his daughter in law are living with him while they save money for a house. Here we see a return to a very, very old norm, and the re-establishment of the European norm in the US. This isn't uncommon.
Also worth noting is that the average age of marriages is rising, sort of. Frankly, this figure is complicated by much of what I've noted above. If the reality of common law marriages, no matter what htey are termed, are considered, this may actually not be nearly as true, but because of the transitory nature of quite a few such arrangements, which effectively has introduced something akin to common law divorce into the picture, that's a risky assumption. Anyhow, what is often noted is that Americans are "postponing" marriage until their "careers are established".
Or maybe they are not.
To some extent this is undoubtedly true. But at the same time for quite a few American ethnicities, this isn't true. So we have the truly peculiar fact that while it is true that "people married younger" and in some instances very young, there's a strong demographic element to it that ran the other way. This is particular true with some ethnicities such as the American Irish, which did not marry young at all. Men tended as a rule to be in their early 30s and women in their late 20s, both in Ireland and the United States, amongst people with an Irish Catholic background. The simple reason was economic. Men couldn't afford to marry any younger, as a rule. And they nearly always lived at home until they did. Indeed, the fairly legendary devotion of Irish and Irish American men to their mothers is no doubt a partial product of this, with it being the case that they frequently had lived well into their adulthood in their parents homes providing support while they saved to go out on their own. Boomers who find their adult children now staying at home are, in part, experiencing the exact same thing, as the American economy which allowed an 18 year old high school graduate to go out and find good work is dead.
Indeed, I've experienced, in one fashion or another, nearly all of this, and the reaction to it, in one fashion or another. My own parents were in their early 30s when they married and my half Irish, half German father resumed living at home when he returned from university, and then Air Force service, and lived there until he met and married my mother. My mother, on the other hand, had struck out adventurously on her own in her early 20s, but her family bonds were incredibly strong right up until her death. When I first went to school, I stayed here in town and continued to live in my parents home. When I came back from law school, I moved back in for what I thought was going to be a brief stay, but when my father fell very ill, I stayed. I stayed on after he died out of loyalty to my mother, and then left home when I married. So I guess I was a pioneer in the demographic trend. Right now, my 18 year old son is living here at home, but he intends to rent my mother's old house while attending college, a sort of price supported living arrangement which recalls for me the old boarding house arrangement to some degree.
It's interesting to see how Boomers and others react to this. The old Boomers, strongly influenced by a culture which really emphasized that they should move out and move on, tend to not like the idea of anyone staying on locally, if they didn't. Missed in that is the fact that their own parents who left home early often had done so due to war, a unique situation, which made those people adults really quickly. In contrast, the pushing out of the fledglings in the new economy, and culture that was at least somewhat damaged in the wake of Boomer excess, isn't nearly as good. The foundering of Millennials has become legendary, but then no wonder really.
Again, while making resort to movies for examples is something a person has to do with caution, movies here can show us how societal views have changed on this topic, and living conditions have changed, if we consider what they accidentally depict about their own eras in these regards. Its' sort of an interesting exercise.
Take again the film Marty. Released in 1955, the Academy Award winning film presents a "small story" concerning the life of a blue collar, big city, bachelor. Some might define the film in terms of presenting a "romance", but if it does, it's the most unromantic romance every filmed. The interesting thing here, however, is that the aging bachelor, plaid by Ernest Borgnine, who was then in his late 30s, is shown living in an apartment with his mother as an important, but routine, detail of the film. Indeed, during the film his aunt moves from another, married, son's house into the same apartment (while cast in ethnic terms, the same situation is explored, with many of the same movie themes, in the the 1991 film Only The Lonely, one of John Candy's best films). Similar living arrangements are shown in the much loved film Its A Wonderful Life (1946) and the legendary post war film The Best Years of Our Lives (1946). The point is that in all of these films unmarried men and women living with their parents is shown as common and expected, requiring no explanation.
Take in contrast a film like Failure To Launch (2006) in which the protagonist, played by Matthew McConaughey, is depicted as "still" living at home. McConaughey was 37 years old, one year old than Borgnine at the time Borgnine filmed Marty, and yet this living relationship is depicted as comedic and abnormal. It probably seems less so in 2006 than it does now in 2016.
So, I suppose, we are left with the question of what all of this means. And what it seems to mean is really two things. The post war period in which everything about the United States seemed exceptional really was, and for various reason the conditions that prevailed prior to it, in a lot of ways, are back. And if that's true, perhaps what Pew is calling the "Modern Era", isn't.
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Why is the text above blue? No idea whatsoever. It just turned blue, and Blogger won't accept the change back in color.
I like Blogger, but it can be extremely frustrating from time to time.
Nuclear implosion?
Local uranium producer UR Energy announced yesterday it's laying off twelve.
So that's twelve jobs, statewide, following the fifty eight laid off the day prior the hospital.
Not good, and part of the perfect economic storm the region is enduring. It's the early 1980s all over again.
And, I'd note, houses are for sale absolutely everywhere. There hasn't been much news about it, but that's the case.
Interesting, the price of oil is back up, and has been for a few weeks. It was hovering around $50.00 for some time and now its above it. If that keeps up, and nobody knows really if it will, that will have the impact of reviving some drilling. The price climb is the result of a variety of factors, some of which may be temporary, or may not be, and things haven't picked up much yet, but apparently some oil companies are pondering operations a bit.
So that's twelve jobs, statewide, following the fifty eight laid off the day prior the hospital.
Not good, and part of the perfect economic storm the region is enduring. It's the early 1980s all over again.
And, I'd note, houses are for sale absolutely everywhere. There hasn't been much news about it, but that's the case.
Interesting, the price of oil is back up, and has been for a few weeks. It was hovering around $50.00 for some time and now its above it. If that keeps up, and nobody knows really if it will, that will have the impact of reviving some drilling. The price climb is the result of a variety of factors, some of which may be temporary, or may not be, and things haven't picked up much yet, but apparently some oil companies are pondering operations a bit.
Cudos go out to. . .
Catherine Rampell for using the word "autarky" in her column in the Washington Post.
She gets a C- however in her article for straining its meaning. It almost seemed to read like an essay written by somebody who just learned a neat word and felt compelled to use it, no matter what.
Autarky, for those who might not know, and that would be most people, is an economic theory based upon national self sufficiency. A country that uses autarky for an economic theory, and Rampell is correct in putting North Korea in this category, operates in such a manner as to produce all goods, or attempt to, within its own borders.
Where Rampell falls of the train is in comparing national movements or Brexit to autarky, or claiming that they represent autaraky. They don't. Just because approximately half of the British electorate wants to depart the European Union doesn't mean that the UK is turning to autarky or anything close to it. The example is extremely strained.
I should be frank that I don't really like Rampell's writing. The 2007 Princeton graduate's writings strike me the way a lot of the writing by the very young crop of writers that are now on the scene. They lack sufficient worldly experience to actually be commenting on anything and they trend towards being snots. That doesn't mean that all her writing is that way, or even most of it. But at least a little is.
That's another topic, of course, but it is interesting how the concept hat a writer had to experience real writing before being a columnist has vanished. Instead, much like with the law, an Ive League education is substituting for actual experience, and that's not a good thing.
But it does, at any rate, apparently expose a person to a word like autarky.
She gets a C- however in her article for straining its meaning. It almost seemed to read like an essay written by somebody who just learned a neat word and felt compelled to use it, no matter what.
Autarky, for those who might not know, and that would be most people, is an economic theory based upon national self sufficiency. A country that uses autarky for an economic theory, and Rampell is correct in putting North Korea in this category, operates in such a manner as to produce all goods, or attempt to, within its own borders.
Where Rampell falls of the train is in comparing national movements or Brexit to autarky, or claiming that they represent autaraky. They don't. Just because approximately half of the British electorate wants to depart the European Union doesn't mean that the UK is turning to autarky or anything close to it. The example is extremely strained.
I should be frank that I don't really like Rampell's writing. The 2007 Princeton graduate's writings strike me the way a lot of the writing by the very young crop of writers that are now on the scene. They lack sufficient worldly experience to actually be commenting on anything and they trend towards being snots. That doesn't mean that all her writing is that way, or even most of it. But at least a little is.
That's another topic, of course, but it is interesting how the concept hat a writer had to experience real writing before being a columnist has vanished. Instead, much like with the law, an Ive League education is substituting for actual experience, and that's not a good thing.
But it does, at any rate, apparently expose a person to a word like autarky.
Wednesday, June 8, 2016
Mid Week at Work: Old Picture of the Day: Farriers
Old Picture of the Day: Farriers: I love these old pictures that show men doing real jobs. Have you noticed now days most people have trouble explaining what it is that ...Interesting observation in the text on the photo, and interesting comment in the comment section.
Local Bad Economic News: The hospital layoffs.
As if the local economic news wasn't bad enough, the local hospital, one of Wyoming's most significant hospitals as it is a regional hospital, announced yesterday that its laying off 58 employees and not filling another 50 vacant positions. Pretty grim news in all sorts of ways.
The hospital reported that it has decreased income and more patients, which isn't quite what I expected to be the reason for this event. It also came right out and stated that if the legislature had approved Medicaid expansion, which it could have done at no cost to the state itself, the layoffs may have been less severe.
That latter item is, it should be noted, becoming an issue in the current election around the state. Smelling blood in the water for the first time in years, this is one of the issues that the Democrats have been campaigning on, and frankly the GOP doesn't look too good on this one. The layoffs will emphasize that locally.
The hospital, being a major institution, always draws a lot of attention, and frankly criticism. It's hard, however, to imagine anyone not feeling pretty concerned about this development. Just up until recently the hospital was expanding, but it's also been in a prolonged economic struggle with a new private hospital that provides more limited services but is a "for profit" hospital. Indeed, the last couple of times I've had to take somebody to the Emergency Room, I've gone there. Quicker. At any rate, this isn't good news.
The hospital reported that it has decreased income and more patients, which isn't quite what I expected to be the reason for this event. It also came right out and stated that if the legislature had approved Medicaid expansion, which it could have done at no cost to the state itself, the layoffs may have been less severe.
That latter item is, it should be noted, becoming an issue in the current election around the state. Smelling blood in the water for the first time in years, this is one of the issues that the Democrats have been campaigning on, and frankly the GOP doesn't look too good on this one. The layoffs will emphasize that locally.
The hospital, being a major institution, always draws a lot of attention, and frankly criticism. It's hard, however, to imagine anyone not feeling pretty concerned about this development. Just up until recently the hospital was expanding, but it's also been in a prolonged economic struggle with a new private hospital that provides more limited services but is a "for profit" hospital. Indeed, the last couple of times I've had to take somebody to the Emergency Room, I've gone there. Quicker. At any rate, this isn't good news.
WHEELS THAT WON THE WEST®: Historically Accurate Wagons
WHEELS THAT WON THE WEST®: Historically Accurate Wagons: I count it a privilege each week to share with an ever-widening group of folks interested in America’s first transportation industry. As p...
The "Greatest Generation". Maybe they weren't the greatest, but they were different, and pretty darned amazing. Generations Part Two of Three
The other day I was sorting through some of my mother's papers and found her passport from the late 1940s. It was a Canadian, not an American, passport, as my mother was from Quebec. She was just in her twenties at the time. The photograph was a shock, she looked so young. And she looked that way, because she was young at the time.
Her funeral, as those who stop in here know, was in April. Last week, I went to the funeral of an uncle by marriage.
I've knew him for my entire life, but I didn't really know his life story. One of his sons gave that story beautifully in the eulogy.
What do these things have to do with each other?
Well, quite a lot.
In my last entry here I frankly slammed the Boomer generation. I rewrote it several times and it still came out that way. I fully agree, it should be noted, that a generation may define an era, but it doesn't define any one individual within it, so that was unfair, to be sure, on an individual level. And this one will be, accordingly, undeserving praise for many as well. And going further, I'll also note that I've never liked that tag, The Greatest Generation, applied by the Boomer generation to their parents as they discovered years later what a praiseworthy generation the generation they tortured really was. As most corrections of that type, that tag went too far. "Greatest" is quite a claim. Greater than the generation that fought the Revolution, or the Civil War? Well, I'm not willing to go that far.
Indeed, I'm willing to state that many of the things that make the "Greatest Generation" great are attributes that they shared with prior generations. Somehow that was lost. And it isn't that they fought World War Two and endured the Great Depression, but rather the way they endured those things and had it not impact their personalities, which is something that would have been true, and was true, of earlier generations as well. In this era, when it seems society can't even tell that there are two generations in our species, and every human attribute is regarded as some sort of debilitating disease, I don't think that's true.
Because the following is what struck me.
Perhaps the single most interesting feature of that generation, which they share with earlier generations, is the extent to which they entered adult life earlier than other generations, accepted that, and moved through adversity without loosing their morals, character and faith.
Take, for example, the uncle I mention above. I didn't know his life story well, but it turns out that he was a first generation American. His parents were from Croatia. He grew up in poverty, but in a household that was deeply Catholic. He served as a combat NCO in World War Two, and was able to go to college because of the GI Bill. He did that, moved to town from Cheyenne, and married and raised a family here. He went blind in middle age. Throughout all of this, he never lost his morals, his personality, or his faith.
Or take the example of my mother. She was pulled out of school, due to the Great Depression, as a teenager in order to work. She did that for several years before moving, still very young, to western Canada and then down to the United States. Now, a teenager in her mid teens working in this fashion, out of school, would be abnormal and we'd fear for the girls future. But here again, from a strong Catholic family, she never lost her way.
And these examples from this generation and the prior ones aren't unusual. Fred Goodstein, now long gone but well remembered even though he was gone, when I first started practicing law, left school to work in his teens, finding industrial employment in Denver. Moving to Casper and establishing an oil field supply business here in town that ultimately made him a wealthy man, he was the definition of businessman when I was young. He was also legendary for his generosity and kindness. So, the Jewish boy who left school early to work never lost his way, and became wealthy in the process.
From a generation prior, my father's faher provides another example. He left home at age 13 to work, moving across the country to do it. But here too, a 13 year old on his own did not become a lost soul, but remained loyal to his faith and upbringing his entire life.
That's the difference, I think, between current generations and the ones that seems to have closed out at the end of World War Two. They had many fewer advantages. They were much less educated. They often started working very young. But something about how they were raised caused, in large numbers, for the same individuals to have very solid characters by the time they were mid teenagers. If we are sometimes shocked by how young some married, or how young some were on their own, we should perhaps recall that they were much more adult by their mid teens than many people are today in their thirties of forties. Most of them didn't fall into vice. They weren't confused about who they were or what they were. Their faiths were rocked by tremendous adversity.
We might well ask what it was that made them that way, and how we lost it. Somehow we really did, and not just in the United States, but in the entire western world. Something occurred. In some fashion people lost their cultures in very detrimental ways which create for a longing and confusion that is at the epic level.
We cannot say that prior generations, or the generation that preceded the Boomer generation, got everything right. Certainly not. Indeed, to the extent that I've complained about the Boomers, we should recall that it was their parents that essentially created the world that Boomers redefined when they were young, by conferring every advantage upon them so that their children were not faced with the same levels of adversity that they were. And the idea makers of the late 50s and the 60s were, as a rule, the World War Two generation, at least at first, not the Boomers.
But still, there's something about them which really does set them, and earlier generations, fully apart from the later ones. They were tougher, and frankly, they were often better, than the ones that came later. And they were that, with a lot less. Indeed, in some ways the "lot less" may have influenced why they were better.
Anyhow, something certainly to think upon.
Tuesday, June 7, 2016
Boomer, wake up. Generations, Part One of Three
I saw this headline on a financial website:
Why The 'Me, Me, Me' Generation Needs Help From You, You, You
In fairness, this categorization was not made by the author of the article, who reluctantly admitted that he's technically part of the Millennials, the generation this article is about. Indeed, he stated:
Of course, for all of the criticisms and accusations lobbed at millennials, by any standards, they've been dealt a pretty rough hand as they attempt to begin their adult lives. The earliest millennials have already been forced to endure two stock market crashes and multiple armed conflicts (sparked by one of our nation's most traumatic experiences in a century), and they've inherited a world with some of the least-trusted leaders in history, a trend that doesn't seem likely to change any time soon.Time magazine came up with the " 'Me, Me, Me' Generation" categorization.
It did that in 2013 in an article in which it noted:
I am about to do what old people have done throughout history: call those younger than me lazy, entitled, selfish and shallow. But I have studies! I have statistics! I have quotes from respected academics! Unlike my parents, my grandparents and my great-grandparents, I have proof.
Here’s the cold, hard data: The incidence of narcissistic personality disorder is nearly three times as high for people in their 20s as for the generation that’s now 65 or older, according to the National Institutes of Health; 58% more college students scored higher on a narcissism scale in 2009 than in 1982. Millennials got so many participation trophies growing up that a recent study showed that 40% believe they should be promoted every two years, regardless of performance. They are fame-obsessed: three times as many middle school girls want to grow up to be a personal assistant to a famous person as want to be a Senator, according to a 2007 survey; four times as many would pick the assistant job over CEO of a major corporation. They’re so convinced of their own greatness that the National Study of Youth and Religion found the guiding morality of 60% of millennials in any situation is that they’ll just be able to feel what’s right. Their development is stunted: more people ages 18 to 29 live with their parents than with a spouse, according to the 2012 Clark University Poll of Emerging Adults. And they are lazy. In 1992, the nonprofit Families and Work Institute reported that 80% of people under 23 wanted to one day have a job with greater responsibility; 10 years later, only 60% did.
Well, baloney.
How on earth has the Boomer generation, which authored this opinion, remained so completely delusional about their privileged generational status, let alone their own history?
To hear them tell it, you would think that every member of the Boomer generation walked uphill both ways to school in a blizzard everyday. And now they lament the rootlessness and aimlessness of the following generations, which have failed to follow their examples of hard work and enterprise.
Eh?
Bull.
Now, let me now state that I'm not into categorizing an entire generation; well too much anyhow. The same Boomer generation that's identified with anti war protests, etc., actually fought in the Vietnam War and it had a higher volunteer rate than the World War Two generation. So a person can only take this sort of thing so far.
Boomers protesting the Vietnam War.
Boomers fighting the Vietnam War.
Moreover, the "Boomers" aren't really one single generation, in spite of what demographers might claim. The generation is supposed to be the one that was born between 1946 and 1964. Well, baloney. That may be true in a statistical sense, but when people look at the boomers they're really looking at the generation that came of age in the 1960s and early 1970s. Indeed, demographers have variously defined people who were born from 1960 to 1965 in various ways, including as members of the following generation, Generation X, or members of their own demographic, the Gap Generation. What that tells us, and accurately, is that people born between 1960 and 1965 don't fit in well to the Boomers and identify more strongly with later generations, and that''s how we will sue that information here. Indeed, a kid born in 1960 would graduate high school in 1978, and have very little in common with one who graduated in 1968. Even at that, graduates from 1980 would have even less in common, and more in common with those graduating in 1988, and maybe even more in common with 88 grads than 78 grads.
Anyhow, having said this, I hear and read shots taken at Millennials all the time, and I think they're very far off the mark, quite frankly.
I just don't see it.
Indeed, what I do see, is quite the reverse. The Millennials, and the "Gap Generation" and Generation X just ahead of them are sort of uniquely burdened by the Boomers in ways the Boomer just can't seem to grasp.
The Boomers are the most fortunate generation in American history, and they've enjoyed a world, and its resources, like none before it and like none after it. But they don't grasp that all.
Prior to the Boomers, access to college was based on money. A high percentage of Americans didn't even graduate from high school prior to their generation, but their parents made sure they did, and having been exposed to university in mass as a result of the GI Bill after World War Two, they made sure that their kids had access to it as well. The entire concept of public assistance going to university came out of the GI Bill and it was the World War Two generation that gave rise to the Boomers that massively expanded the concept.
The huge difference between then and now is that the Boomers entered life, delayed compared to their parents, in an era of unparalleled opportunity, but they don't realize it. Moreover, they are acclimated to it.
The 1945 through 1970 period was one in which merely having a college degree was nearly a guaranty of white collar success. And even though college degrees became exponentially more common in the period, even having simply a high school degree (the dropout rate remained higher than it is today) meant a person could usually find a decent paying job of another type. Entire classes of jobs that require college now did not require a college degree then. Europe's economy remained destroyed form World War Two well into this period, and the United States made everything. All of this meant that it was much easier to be successful than it is now, and much more difficult to fail. A person with a trade skill or a college education was going to do well, for the most part.
And do well even with the delayed entry into adult life, which the Boomers (as we will see in a later installment of this series) largely experienced. Prior to their generation, the entire concept of a delayed adulthood, stretching form the late teens up into the mid twenties, didn't exist. If you look at old photographs and kids graduating from high school look more adult, that's because, as we will really see, they truly were. Perhaps they were in the Boomer generation as well, as they sense, but not in the same way.
That's because they were really the first American generation to experience a period of delayed adulthood on a generational basis. It had always been the case that the wealthy and privileged who were able to go to university experienced that, and tales of youthful college life date back to the Middle Ages. But most people didn't experience that. Most Americans, as we have explored in prior threads, by 18 were looking for work. They may have lived at home, and probably did (we'll also be looking at that), but they weren't kids.
Indeed, if a person wants a contemporary movie portrayal of what this period was like, sort of, for younger Americans, a good cinematic portrayal of it is provided in the film Marty. Another good one, sort of, is provided in the film The Apartment. "Oh no, those films are about adults. . . ". Yep, but they're about younger adults than you might imagine. The stay at home blue collar protagonist in Marty does pretty accurately reflect a common generational experience for the time. And the fact that slightly wayward Miss Kubelik has immediate resort to her sister and brother in law in The Apartment isn't far off either.
And do well even with the delayed entry into adult life, which the Boomers (as we will see in a later installment of this series) largely experienced. Prior to their generation, the entire concept of a delayed adulthood, stretching form the late teens up into the mid twenties, didn't exist. If you look at old photographs and kids graduating from high school look more adult, that's because, as we will really see, they truly were. Perhaps they were in the Boomer generation as well, as they sense, but not in the same way.
That's because they were really the first American generation to experience a period of delayed adulthood on a generational basis. It had always been the case that the wealthy and privileged who were able to go to university experienced that, and tales of youthful college life date back to the Middle Ages. But most people didn't experience that. Most Americans, as we have explored in prior threads, by 18 were looking for work. They may have lived at home, and probably did (we'll also be looking at that), but they weren't kids.
Indeed, if a person wants a contemporary movie portrayal of what this period was like, sort of, for younger Americans, a good cinematic portrayal of it is provided in the film Marty. Another good one, sort of, is provided in the film The Apartment. "Oh no, those films are about adults. . . ". Yep, but they're about younger adults than you might imagine. The stay at home blue collar protagonist in Marty does pretty accurately reflect a common generational experience for the time. And the fact that slightly wayward Miss Kubelik has immediate resort to her sister and brother in law in The Apartment isn't far off either.
Boomers came of age, for various reasons, at a time in which there was much more slack for everything. The government expanded benefits to the boomers that they still enjoy today and that they're completely acclimated to without understanding that prior generations lacked them. The wide latitude given to the generation in social terms meant that the generational reaction to the Vietnam War, which didn't occur with the earlier Korean War, fought by men who were only a bit too young for World War Two but who were kids during the Great Depression, was tolerated and even absorbed by the nation. The same generation that reacted negatively to the war in Vietnam would send later generations to fight in the Middle East without even noting the sense of irony that created.
And coming into power in the wake of the Vietnam War, it doesn't seem to recall any sense of irony in a generation that was part of a "youth movement" holding on to power with nearly cold dead hands even though it is no longer the largest generational cohort. Indeed, that last fact is amongst the most ironic. The Boomers started entering government in the late 1970s. And there they remain. This year we see two out of the three candidates fitting into that generation (Sanders is actually from the prior generation, which probably explains why his views seem different, in part). No post Boomer candidate survived the primaries. The Boomers will rule on.
And coming into power in the wake of the Vietnam War, it doesn't seem to recall any sense of irony in a generation that was part of a "youth movement" holding on to power with nearly cold dead hands even though it is no longer the largest generational cohort. Indeed, that last fact is amongst the most ironic. The Boomers started entering government in the late 1970s. And there they remain. This year we see two out of the three candidates fitting into that generation (Sanders is actually from the prior generation, which probably explains why his views seem different, in part). No post Boomer candidate survived the primaries. The Boomers will rule on.
But in ruling on, they've forgotten that when they were younger they were defined by rejection of everything they now grump about, even as they fail to realize that they've failed to come fully back around to the values of earlier generations that they've somewhat adopted but not in the softened form that existed for their parents. They massively, as a generation, rejected the values of their parents. They wouldn't serve. They rejected the corporate work life. They laughed at the value of money. They rejected much of the tradition of male/female relationships. They felt no standards should be accepted that existed simply because they did. Drugs, personal license, etc., were all vices they brought into their generation in spades.
And now they complain that the Millennials don't save and don't work.
In 1973 they made a hit out of Taking Care of Business.
In 1973 they made a hit out of Taking Care of Business.
You get up every morning from your alarm clock's warning
Take the 8:15 into the city
There's a whistle up above and people pushin', people shovin'
And the girls, who try to look pretty
And if your train's on time, you can get to work by nine
And start your slaving job to get your pay
If you ever get annoyed, look at me, I'm self-employed
I love to work at nothing all day
And I'll be takin' care of business every day
Takin' care of business every way
I've been takin' care of business, it's all mine
Takin' care of business and working overtime, work out
If it were easy as fishin', you could be a musician
If you could make sounds loud or mellow
Get a second-hand guitar, chances are you'll go far
If you get in with the right bunch of fellows.
People see you having fun, just a-lying in the sun
Tell them that you like it this way
It's the work that we avoid and we're all self-employed
We love to work at nothing all day.
Hmmm. . . .
Well, by 1987 they were watching Wall Street, with its punchline. "Greed is good". Indeed, both of the current front runners in the current Presidential election, who are Boomers, have lauded Wall Street in the past, and it's only because of pre-Boomer Sanders, who appeals to Millennials, that this is suddenly in question.
Well, by 1987 they were watching Wall Street, with its punchline. "Greed is good". Indeed, both of the current front runners in the current Presidential election, who are Boomers, have lauded Wall Street in the past, and it's only because of pre-Boomer Sanders, who appeals to Millennials, that this is suddenly in question.
Somehow that generation of the 1960s that went to college but which was for peace, love and dope (keeping in mind that this wasn't a universal view, and others were "pround to be an Okie from Muskogee"), and never trusting "anyone over 30" became corporate in the extreme, and in a way their parents never were, in the 1970s. 1956 gave us The Man In The Gray Flannel Suit about the generation that came home from World War Two, but the focus on money that's present in that representational film falls far below that which came to define the Boomer generation in later years.
As we'll deal with shortly, a lot of this criticism of the Millennials, and the Gaps, by the Boomers, is really unwarranted. Indeed . . . in the great scheme of things, they probably stand closer to the Boomers parents, and maybe even their grandparents, than the Boomers do. If Boomers feel that the Millennials don't share their values, well they're partially right. They might share an older set however, with prior generations. And they have to live in the world that the Boomers have dominated since the 1960s, and that's not easy for generations that are faced with having less of absolutely everything.
Of course, that's true of some Boomers, indeed quite a few of them, as well. All along there were those who worried about the direction everything was going and have had to live with it. That's cold comfort indeed.
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Postscript
It's been pointed out to me that I'm not on the only one to make some of the observations here. Stephen Cobert has done the same:
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Postscript
It's been pointed out to me that I'm not on the only one to make some of the observations here. Stephen Cobert has done the same:
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