How inscrutable is the civilization where men toil and work and worry their hair gray to get a living and forget to play!

How inscrutable is the civilization where men toil and work and worry their hair gray to get a living and forget to play!

Lin Yutang

Overwork as self escape

Leisure is only possible when we are at one with ourselves. We tend to overwork as a means of self-escape, as a way of trying to justify our existence.

Josef Pieper

The world of Work as our only world

Of course the world of work begins to become - threatens to become - our only world, to the exclusion of all else. The demands of the working world grow ever more total, grasping ever more completely the whole of human existence.

Josef Pieper

Repose, leisure, peace, belong among the elements of happiness

Repose, leisure, peace, belong among the elements of happiness. If we have not escaped from harried rush, from mad pursuit, from unrest, from the necessity of care, we are not happy. And what of contemplation? Its very premise is freedom from the fetters of workaday busyness. Moreover, it itself actualizes this freedom by virtue of being intuition.

Josef Pieper

The Cheyenne State Leader for February 22, 1917: Denver Guard Protest "Silly"

People were getting embarrassed about the snit over the location for the demobilization of the Colorado National Guard.

And the importation of booze from "wet" states to "dry" ones was getting Federal attention.

Pershing's rise continued, in the wake of the death of Gen. Funston.  And a terrible crime happened in Cheyenne.

Weighing Gold

Weighing gold at the Philadelphia Mint, which had just received an additional $600,000,000 in gold from Europe.  February 21, 1917.

Admitting Defeat

After complaining about it here, but doing nothing about it, except to take one last look around yesterday, I finally admitted defeat and ordered a watch band and dress shoelaces over the net.

Seriously, should this be the way thing are in a mid sized city?

Sigh.

The Cheyenne State Leader for February 20, 1917: The news about Gen. Funston hits the headlines and Colorado protests a Wyoming demobilization.

The news of Gen. Funston's death hit the front page of the paper the day after.

And Colorado was upset about Colorado National Guardsmen being sent to Ft. D. A. Russell for demobilization, rather than a location in their home state.

Dogs were barred entry into the state by Governor Kendrick due to concerns over rabies.

Food Protests, New York City, February 20, 1917.

General Frederick Funston dies.

On this date in 1917 a shock happened to the nation.  The general who Woodrow Wilson already had in mind for an American expeditionary force in Europe, should the US enter the Great War, which was becoming increasingly likely, died.

And with his death, it truly seemed that an era had really passed.

 Gen. Frederick Funston, next to driver, in 1906.

Funston was a hero and a legend.  He'd risen to high command on the strength of his military achievements without being a West Point graduate.  He was truly an exception to the rules.

Funston was born in Ohio in 1865 and in some ways did not show early promise in life.  He was a very small and slight (at first) man, standing only 5'5" and weighing only 120 lbs upon reaching adulthood.  He aspired as a youth to the military, after growing up in Kansas, but he was rejected by West Point due to his small size.  He thereafter attended the University of Kansas for three years but did not graduate.  Following that he worked for awhile for the Santa Fe Railroad before becoming a reporter in Kansas City in 1890.

Only after a year he left reporting and went to work for the Department of Agriculture as a researcher in an era when that was an adventuresome occupation.  In 1896, however, Funston left that to join the Cuban insurrection against Spain in Cuba.

  Funston as a Cuban guerilla.

As most Americans spending any time in Cuba at the time experienced, he came down with malaria while serving the Cuban revolution.  Returning to United States weighing only 95 lbs he found himself back in the United States just in time to secure a commission with the 20th Kansas Infantry as it was raised to fight in the Spanish American War.  

"Funston's Fighting Kansans" in the Philippines.

The 20th Kansas didn't fight in Cuba, it fought in the Philippines.  Funston served there heroically and received the Medal of Honor, and found himself promoted to the rank of Brigadier General in the Regular Army at age 35, a remarkable rise contrary to the usual story of military advancement and more reminiscent of the Civil War than anything thereafter.  Following his service in the Philippines, however, he fell into a period of controversy due to aggressively pro military action comments he made in the United States.

He was stationed at the Presidio in San Francisco upon his return to the United States and was there at the time of the 1906 earthquake.  He controversially declared martial law to attempt to combat the fire and looters and in fact authorized the shooting of looters.  Following that he was stationed again in the Philippines and Hawaii.  In 1914 he was placed in command of the Southern Department of the Army and was in command of the US forces in Vera Cruz and thereafter in Mexico under Pershing.

Funston and his family at the Presidio.

On this date in 1917 he was relaxing at the St. Anthony Hotel in San Antonio Texas when he suffered a massive stroke and died.  He was only 51 years of age but he had put on a tremendous amount of weight in recent years. Indeed, his weight had prevented him from active field service by the time of the Punitive Expedition, but the fact of his death in this fashion would suggest an undiagnosed high blood pressure condition, something that was commonly fatal in that era.

Sunday Morning Scene: Churches of the West: St. Leo Catholic Church, Lewistown Montana

Churches of the West: St. Leo Catholic Church, Lewistown Montana:

St. Leo's history is nicely explained by the National Registry of Historic Places photograph included above.  This beautiful church is a surprise as Lewistown is not a large town, having a population of only about 6,000 people. The church is very large, and strongly resembles St. Anthony's Catholic Church in Casper Wyoming, which was built at about the same time.

The Laramie Boomerang for February 19, 1917: Two Wyoming Battalions To Leave Border as Cowboys cross it.

Two Battalions of the Wyoming Infantry were to be on their way home, the Boomerang reported.

And Theodore Roosevelt was planning to reprise his Spanish American War role if the US went to war with Germany.  Well. . . .Woodrow Wilson might have a say in that.

And the situation in Mexico was apparently getting complicated by a private body of cowboy militia crossing the border in reprisal for the recent death of their fellows.

Finally, the  Boomerang reported the situation with Germany as "hopeful".

The Wyoming Tribune for February 19, 1917: Colorado and Wyoming National Guard headed for Ft. D. A. Russell for Demobilization

News came on this Monday (in 1917) that indeed, Wyoming and Colorado state troops were headed home, or at least to Ft. D. A. Russell.

A general with a Cheyenne connection, John J. Pershing, now a national hero and the recent commander of the Punitive Expedition, came out for universal military training.  That was  big movement, of course, at the time.

And John B. Kendrick was on his way to the U.S. Senate, finishing up his time as Governor by signing the bills  that had passed the recent legislative session.

Miss Elanor Eakin Carr's engagement to Howard P. Okie, son of J. B. Okie of Lost Cabin, the legendary sheepman of the Lost Cabin area.  He'd take over his father's mercantile interest that year, but the marriage would not be a  long one.  He died in 1920.

Today In Wyoming's History: February 19, 1917. Wyoming State Highway Commission Created

Today In Wyoming's History: February 19: 1917  The State Highway Commission was created by the signature of the Governor Kendrick, in his last day in office, approving it.

It's odd to think of Wyoming lacking a Highway Department but up until this date in 1917, it did.  That was common at the time as most vehicular transportation remained strictly local.  However, that would begin to change with the Federal Aid Road Act of 1916, which provided funds, for the first time, to state highway departments in one of the "progressive" policies of the Wilson Administration.

The activities of the Commission would be modest but growing throughout its early years.  Limited winter plowing commenced in 1923 and then it began in earnest in 1929.  In 1991 the highway department became the Wyoming Department of Transportation, which it remains.

 

Wyoming featured in a speedy automobile advertisement in 1923.

The Best Posts of the Week of February 12, 2017

We made that. And surprises.

Wyoming Lard Can, Fort Casper Museum.  I was surprised to see it. I wish we had a can of it still.  I used to have some stationary, but now I don't even have that.

Poster Saturday: Come On Buddie

The Cheyenne State Leader for February 18, 1917: Villa gone to Japan?

A rumor was published of Pancho Villa going East. . . .way East.

He didn't.

The cowboy victims of border violence were buried. And Cuban revolutionaries were reportedly holding Santiago.

And of course, U-boots were taking headlines.

Gasp! The National Guard is not a police force.

I missed, thankfully, the original AP story on this one, so the rebuttal from the White House was the first news I had of the story. Here's how Time reported that:

The White House is pushing back against a report that it is considering a proposal to mobilize as many as 100,000 National Guard troops round up undocumented immigrants.

The Associated Press reported this morning that an 11-page document would call for the National Guard to be called up in 11 states, including some not along the Mexican border, to round up undocumented immigrants.

The memo was written by U.S. Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly, a retired four-star Marine general, according to the AP, and would give governors in those states final say on whether to participate.

"That is 100% not true," White House spokesman Sean Spicer told reporters. "It is false. It is irresponsible to be saying this. ... There is no effort at all to round up, to utilize the National Guard to round up illegal immigrants."

Spicer would not say whether this idea was ever floated somewhere within the Administration.

As a total initial aside, in my line of work I deal with illegal aliens from time to time, and they always refer to themselves, in my experience, as "illegal". This whole "undocumented alien" line is a bunch 1984s double talk. They're illegal aliens. They're also human beings, and usually really darned hard working ones.  Whatever a person thinks of this situation one way or another, coming up with weird terms to define them is, well, silly.

Anyhow, I'm glad I didn't see the original report, as using the National Guard in this role, assuming that's even legal (and I'm not at all sure it would be) would be insane.  My prediction is that it would go very poorly with the Guard on top of it, which has fought for well over a century not to be viewed as some sort of police force.  They're soldiers, not police.

Using soldiers as police (assuming its legal, and I'm not too sure it is) is a hideous idea.  When I was a Guardsman myself I was always impressed by that.  I joined the Guard nine years after the Kent State disaster and what always struck me about that is that I wasn't surprised they'd shot the protestors. Solders aren't trained towards restraint, like policemen are. That doesn't mean I think they should have shot. Rather, if you train all the time towards shooting an opposing force, your training for not shooting is pretty thin.

Frankly, I think that if the Administration did try to use the Guard in this fashion it'd spark widespread resistance to this in the Guard and at the State level. Guardsmen are state troops until Federalized and Governors have not been shy in the past about resisting deployments they didn't approve of.  That was the case on a widespread level during the Spanish American War and it sparked a split in some states which has lasted until the present day in which age old units became two units, one a Federally recognized National Guard and another a state militia recognized only on the state level. That split was so strong that it lasted even throughout World War One and Two and into the present day in some places.

The Guard, moreover, is a pretty significant part of the overall defense picture.  Wars since September 11, 2001, have really taxed it as many units have repeatedly been called into service.  Using them in this fashion would be a terrible idea and likely would lead to pretty rapid unit attrition.

Anyhow, hopefully whatever was going on here goes away quickly.

Holscher's Hub: One of the old ones

Holscher's Hub: One of the old ones

 

A classic image.

A Chevrolet "Advance Design" pickup truck, circa 1947 to 1955.  The first of Chevrolet's real post war truck designs and, by some accounts, the most durable truck ever made.  Seeing one in use is still not uncommon.

This one has seen some hard use, but it's still serving well, with a loyal canine passenger waiting for the return of the owner from inside of the adjacent Rialto Barber Shop.

Even in the middle of war. . .

La Vie Parisienne (Paris Life), celebrating the 18th Century (which wasn't all that nifty in France in reality), flirting, and crepes.

This day, in 1917.

FWIW, the French officer depicted would have been an Imperial French officer, based on the color of the uniform (white), an occupation that guaranteed employment in fighting and which, in this era, would soon mean a choice between the republic or the crown.

The title of the illustration is a double entendre.  The young woman is cooking a crepe dressed in a rather unlikely fashion for that task. She's also wearing crepes, a light thin fabric with a wrinkled surface.