The agony of hotel breakfasts

I get a lot of hotel time.

Given that, I eat a lot of hotel meals.  They're frankly bad for my waste line as, of course, the proportions are whatever the standard American proportion is, usually, which might not be my own.  I can manage that with dinner, and while I eat a lot of truly mediocre hotel dining room dinners, it's breakfast where hotels really fall short, quite often.

As I often stay in "business hotels" I frequently find myself eating the free breakfast.  Indeed, if I don't, I'm gambling on no breakfast at all, as a lot of times I don't otherwise know where I really am well enough to eat anywhere else anyway.  That shouldn't be much of a problem as I don't eat a very big breakfast anyhow, but it oddly is.

I'd guess that very little thought goes into most hotel free breakfasts.  They're usually in a common room and what you get is an assortment of cereal, maybe, a selection of stale bagels, some heavy duty pastries, and cold scrambled eggs.  Yum.

Granted, that is something, and it is early, but its less than appetizing.  By and large everyone goes with it as you don't have much of a choice and its early.

No matter how early the "coffee shop" or whatever it is opens, I've usually been awake for quite awhile when I get there.  Its frustrating, therefore, to find that the coffee shop sometimes opens late. That's really frustrating if you are in a hurry, but it can be just flat out frustrating. All the more so to find the breakfast fare is stale bagels.  Oh well.

Where choices are offered, if a person isn't really a "morning person", which isn't related to being an early or late riser, I'd note, the other patrons can be a bit of a trial, I'd note.  Sometimes, if there's a true breakfast buffet, your efforts to simply get something will be deterred by the befuddled, who will simply freeze in line, apparently paralyzed by options.  If a selection of coffees are present, you'll have to endure the odd contemporary American phenomenon of somebody, maybe everybody, ordering something that's in the category of the bizarre.  "I'd like the Antarctic gluten free, free range, free trade, freedom for Tibet, double mocha swirl coffee please".  Yeah, whatever, I'd like black coffee.

Most of the time the patrons are fairly quiet, but not always.  I always dress super casual on my way to breakfast, unless I'm running late, because they open late, so people probably assume I'm working on the mechanical plant of the hotel.  So other lawyers from other towns who are in there and businessmen, already turned out in suits, don't know what you really are.  So in that case, you can get their conversations, whether you want to or not.  Just recently I overheard an older businessman, in full suit, address a younger, about some talk he was giving that day.  "I thought I'd start off with company history and then go on to things like safety".

Well, with an Iphone generation audience that's sure to send them right to their phones.

And all I was hoping for was a stale bagel.

More layoffs. . .

this time in the medical field.

Mountain View Regional Hospital in Casper will layoff fifteen of its employees, according to the Tribune.

That they'd be experiencing a slowdown probably shouldn't be regarded as surprising, but just a couple of years ago I recall hearing an opinion expressed by somebody I knew that the medical field was immune from ups and downs, as Casper had become a new regional medical hub. That opinion was expressed by a lawyer, I'd note, not a doctor, but it's typical of the "new era" comments that were so common only a couple of years ago.

Not so much, it would appear.

Coal employment drops 45% Nationwide

According to statistics quoted by the Tribune.

The paper also reports that the drop in employment, which is severe in Wyoming but not as severe as the national average, has leveled off, even though a Federal report predicts a decline in coal production of 155% over the next 24 years.

The Big Picture: Allison, New Mexico, 1916

Allison, New Mexico, 1916. Copyright deposit September 12, 1916.

The Big Picture: Elks Club Annual Gathering, September 13, 1916. Ohio.

Lex Anteinternet: September 11

Lex Anteinternet: September 11

The Sheridan Enterprise for September 11, 1916

And in Sheridan too, the Quebec bridge disaster was front page news.

News was traveling fast.

The headline writer for the Sheridan paper had some fun with Greece, noting that it was "being clubbed into love for Entente Allies", which is pretty much correct.

The Sheridan paper had a big article on the Punitive Expedition which noted the American foray into Santa Clara Canyon.  General Pershing was quoted, which he had not been for some time. Quite obviously, in spite of the type of stalemate that was going on in Mexico, the US Army was still operating far afield from its supply base, as the article notes.

The Laramie Republican for September 11, 1916

The Quebec bridge disaster was also reported the day it occurred in Laramie, testament to how quickly news was now able to be reported.

Also in that news was a report of the ongoing failure to capture or corral Pancho Villa.

And the founding of what would become Tie Siding, outside of Laramie, a tie treatment plant and later a major environmental clean up location, was also in the news.  And the crisis in Greece over World War One made front page news in the Gem City.

The Wyoming Tribune for September 11, 1916

The bridge disaster in Quebec managed to make the front page the very day it happened, which is truly remarkable.  The big news for Wyoming, however, was the failure of the Stock Raising Homestead Act to pass to pass on its first attempt.  The act, a modification of the series of Homestead Acts dating back to the 1860s, was important for those in Wyoming agriculture and therefore extremely big news.  Particularly as the entire West was in the midst of a homesteading boom at this time.

Something was also going on with a "border patrol", which wouldn't mean the agency we think of when we hear those terms, as it did not yet exist.

Churches of the West: Glendo Community Church, Glendo Wyoming

Churches of the West: Glendo Community Church, Glendo Wyoming:

The Quebec Bridge Collapse. September 11, 1916

LOC Caption:  Photograph shows the Quebec Bridge across the lower St. Lawrence River. After a collapse of the original design a second design was constructed the center span of the second design collapsed as it was being raised into position on September 11, 1916 killing eighteen workers. (Source: Flickr Commons project,

Lex Anteinternet: Late Summer, 2016

 I recently posted:

Lex Anteinternet: Late Summer, 2016: I can't wait for the fall to arrive.

And the good luck just continues.

After the jeep incident, the Diesel Particulate Filter (my 07 Dodge is probably the last diesel Dodge in the world that still has its filter still on the truck blocked up.  I'd had that replaced in January when the old one failed, and so that was a surprise.  More of a surprise even as the truck had just been into our regular mechanics for a new clutch.

Well, it turned out it had an exhaust leak (but it may be worse) that was causing this.  I took it to the great local diesel shop here and they fixed it.  It's several miles from my house, so I walked from there. No big deal.  I rode my bike down yesterday as I knew I'd have to pick it up.

When I went to get on my bike, trusty Ol' Blue, I had a flat tire.

Great.

And the "See Dealer Now" warning is already back on, on the Dodge.  They warned me that it might be the injectors.

Uff.

Poster Saturday. Hey Joe-Our Planes!

Also posted in World War Two Posters.

September 10, 1916: Paramount releases Reward of Patience

The release date on the poster was actually a day off, the release date was September 10, 1916.

1916 was the year that John Bowers began acting in film.  His career would not survive the talking movie era, which he seemingly was not able to personally adjust to.

Friday Farming: Picking cotton

Six year old Jewel Walker, Comanche County, Oklahoma.  Published October 10, 1916.

Friday Farming: Hauling tobacco. 1916

LOC Title:  Hauling tobacco. Location: Hebbardsville [vicinity], Kentucky / Lewis W. Hine.  Published on September 13, 1916

Behind Their Lines: Gramophone Tunes

Behind Their Lines: Gramophone Tunes: Popular music provided the soundtrack of the First World War.  Troops sang “ It’s a Long Way to Tipperary ” as they marched toward rail st...

Woodrow Wilson addressed the Suffrage Convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey, September 8, 1916

Madam President, Ladies of the Association:

I have found it a real privilege to be here to-night and to listen to the addresses which you have heard. Though you may not all of you believe it, I would a great deal rather hear somebody else speak than speak myself; but I should feel that I was omitting a duty if I did not address you to-night and say some of the things that have been in my thought as I realized the approach of this evening and the duty that would fall upon me.

The astonishing thing about the movement which you represent is, not that it has grown so slowly, but that it has grown so rapidly. No doubt for those who have been a long time in the struggle, like your honored president, it seems a long and arduous path that has been trodden, but when you think of the cumulating force of this movement in recent decades, you must agree with me that it is one of the most astonishing tides in modern history. Two generations ago, no doubt Madam President will agree with me in saying, it was a handful of women who were fighting this cause. Now it is a great multitude of women who are fighting it.

And there are some interesting historical connections which I would like to attempt to point out to you. One of the most striking facts about the history of the United States is that at the outset it was a lawyers' history. Almost all of the questions to which America addressed itself, say a hundred years ago, were legal questions, were questions of method, not questions of what you were going to do with your Government, but questions of how you were going to constitute your Government,—how you were going to balance the powers of the States and the Federal Government, how you were going to balance the claims of property against the processes of liberty, how you were going to make your governments up so as to balance the parts against each other so that the legislature would check the executive, and the executive the legislature, and the courts both of them put together. The whole conception of government when the United States became a Nation was a mechanical conception of government, and the mechanical conception of government which underlay it was the Newtonian theory of the universe. If you pick up the Federalist, some parts of it read like a treatise on astronomy instead of a treatise on government. They speak of the centrifugal and the centripetal forces, and locate the President somewhere in a rotating system. The whole thing is a calculation of power and an adjustment of parts. There was a time when nobody but a lawyer could know enough to run the Government of the United States, and a distinguished English publicist once remarked, speaking of the complexity of the American Government, that it was no proof of the excellence of the American Constitution that it had been successfully operated, because the Americans could run any constitution. But there have been a great many technical difficulties in running it.

And then something happened. A great question arose in this country which, though complicated with legal elements, was at bottom a human question, and nothing but a question of humanity. That was the slavery question. And is it not significant that it was then, and then for the first time, that women became prominent in politics in America? Not many women; those prominent in that day were so few that you can name them over in a brief catalogue, but, nevertheless, they then began to play a part in writing, not only, but in public speech, which was a very novel part for women to play in America. After the Civil War had settled some of what seemed to be the most difficult legal questions of our system, the life of the Nation began not only to unfold, but to accumulate. Life in the United States was a comparatively simple matter at the time of the Civil War. There was none of that underground struggle which is now so manifest to those who look only a little way beneath the surface. Stories such as Dr. Davis has told to-night were uncommon in those simpler days. The pressure of low wages, the agony of obscure and unremunerated toil, did not exist in America in anything like the same proportions that they exist now. And as our life has unfolded and accumulated, as the contacts of it have become hot, as the populations have assembled in the cities, and the cool spaces of the country have been supplanted by the feverish urban areas, the whole nature of our political questions has been altered. They have ceased to be legal questions. They have more and more become social questions, questions with regard to the relations of human beings to one another,—not merely their legal relations, but their moral and spiritual relations to one another. This has been most characteristic of American life in the last few decades, and as these questions have assumed greater and greater prominence, the movement which this association represents has gathered cumulative force. So that, if anybody asks himself, "What does this gathering force mean," if he knows anything about the history of the country, he knows that it means something that has not only come to stay, but has come with conquering power.

I get a little impatient sometimes about the discussion of the channels and methods by which it is to prevail. It is going to prevail, and that is a very superficial and ignorant view of it which attributes it to mere social unrest. It is not merely because the women are discontented. It is because the women have seen visions of duty, and that is something which we not only cannot resist, but, if we be true Americans, we do not wish to resist. America took its origin in visions of the human spirit, in aspirations for the deepest sort of liberty of the mind and of the heart, and as visions of that sort come up to the sight of those who are spiritually minded in America, America comes more and more into her birthright and into the perfection of her development.

So that what we have to realize in dealing with forces of this sort is that we are dealing with the substance of life itself. I have felt as I sat here to-night the wholesome contagion of the occasion. Almost every other time that I ever visited Atlantic City, I came to fight somebody. I hardly know how to conduct myself when I have not come to fight against anybody, but with somebody. I have come to suggest, among other things, that when the forces of nature are steadily working and the tide is rising to meet the moon, you need not be afraid that it will not come to its flood. We feel the tide; we rejoice in the strength of it; and we shall not quarrel in the long run as to the method of it. Because, when you are working with masses of men and organized bodies of opinion, you have got to carry the organized body along. The whole art and practice of government consists not in moving individuals, but in moving masses. It is all very well to run ahead and beckon, but, after all, you have got to wait for the body to follow. I have not come to ask you to be patient, because you have been, but I have come to congratulate you that there was a force behind you that will beyond any peradventure be triumphant, and for which you can afford a little while to wait.

And now for someting completely different. . .

Um . . .recruiting after the Vietnam War must not have been easy.

Joint Commission on Mexico meets in New London, Connecticut

A joint commission of the United States and Mexico commenced meetings in New London, Connecticut, in an effort to resolve the issues that lead to American military intervention in Mexico.