I've been sick with a virus. . .

really sick.

It came on about a week ago and by the middle of the week I had to take a day off from work, which I almost never do (okay, for anything, I admit it). 

I'm still not back to 100%.

March, by the way, is the month the killer 1918 Flu Epidemic broke out.  Just saying.

Anyhow, I've been so sick, I haven't been paying much attention to the news, and I haven't been blogging about it all, even though there have been some newsworthy things going on.

I started to feel semi okay, but only semi, yesterday really.  Which was good as we had a family errand we had to make and I accordingly played the Sunday news shows while driving the distance to attend to them.

Which was a shock.

Now, everyone here, if they've read my entries over the past year, is aware that I'm not a Trump fan.  I'm not a Clinton fan either.  If ever a political party deserved to lose an election, it was the Democrats of the past year. 

Indeed, while I have another thread I'm working on in regards to it, I think the election of Trump reflects a variety of things including a cultural rejection of a party that reflects the lilly white, hyper liberal, upper middle class, effete, neutered, view of the Democratic Party.  People donn't want it.  The Democrats, I suppose, can be somewhat, but only barely, excused for not knowing this as they were still riding on the high of the late Obama Administration discovery of "progressivism" but they have no excuse now.  The blistering level of their ignorance is therefore fully demonstrated by the fact that they keep having Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi be their spokesmen, which is an insult to everyone who isn't a Baby Boomer in general and an insult to the political feelings of the country in general.  That television sets go dim every time Schumer or Pelosi show up on them doesn't seem to be something the Democrats pick up on for some reason.

Anyhow, this isn't about that, it's about Trump's tweet accusing the Obama administration of wiretapping him.

I don't know what Trump thinks he's doing, but that's a very serious accusation and if he can't back it up, and he won't be able to, there should be very serious implications for him, all negative.

And it worries me.

I didn't watch his speech earlier this past week, but there seemed to be positive reactions to it.  Now this.

Well, I don't know if its part of some warped strategy or what, but I do know that when I see people his age suddenly fly into accusations like this that are unfounded, I worry about their "very good brain". 

I know that sounds really harsh, but sudden weird accusations of this type are really bizarre, to say the least.  Maybe he's just never had to temper his comments.  Maybe he doesn't get enough sleep.  Maybe its part of some strategy.  Maybe its something else. 

Whatever it may be, the behavior is more than a little bizarre and somebody ought to make him knock if off.

March

Warm and windy yesterday, loud thunderstorm last night, raging blizzard this morning. . . must be March.

The Casper Record for March 6, 1917: Assists "Our Boys" of National Guard get Employment

A similar article had appeared in one of the Cheyenne papers a few days prior.  This points out that, at that time, and frankly because I've focused on the Cheyenne papers this has tended to be ignored, only Cheyenne had real "breaking news". The other papers tended to catch up a couple of days later, including the Casper papers.

Casper, as we'll see, was undergoing a huge boom, but that hadn't caught up with its papers yet.  They were much less advanced than the two Cheyenne papers, even though Casper, amazingly enough for a then much smaller town, had several papers.

Anyhow, there was legitimate concern for the employment fate of National Guardsmen.  No statute protected their status at the time, and earlier in the Punitive Expedition Guardsmen from other states had returned home to unemployment, sometimes desperate unemployment. 

Of course, in Wyoming, particularly in oil regions like Casper, but also in agricultural regions, indeed everywhere, there was a really heated economy, so that was much less likely. That may explain why the Guard had such a hard time actually filling up several months prior.  And, as a practical matter, but probably not obvious to these men and the state, most of the Wyoming National Guardsmen would be right back in uniform in very short order.

The Cheyenne Leader for March 6, 1917: Deming's approval of Wyoming's troops

Wyomingites were cheered that Deming New Mexico appreciated the qualities of their National Guardsmen.

Meanwhile, a big party had occurred for the returned Colorado and  Wyoming Guardsmen in  Cheyenne.

And the Leader claimed that Americans were solidly behind Wilson's policy of "armed neutrality".

The happy man needs nothing

The happy man needs nothing and no one. Not that he holds himself aloof, for indeed he is in harmony with everything and everyone; everything is "in him"; nothing can happen to him. The same may also be said for the contemplative person; he needs himself alone; he lacks nothing.

Josef Pieper

Sunday Morning Scene: Churches of the West: First Christian Church, Sidney Nebraska

Churches of the West: First Christian Church, Sidney Nebraska:

This is the First Christian Church in Sidney Nebraska.  Other than that, I don't know anything about this church.

The Second Inauguration of Woodrow Wilson

This was actually the Public Inauguration for Wilson. He'd actually take the oath of office the day prior, in keeping with the Constitutional requirements, in a highly private ceremony that was kept quiet.  No public events were held on that day, as it was a Sunday.

His address:

My Fellow Citizens:
The four years which have elapsed since last I stood in this place have been crowded with counsel and action of the most vital interest and consequence. Perhaps no equal period in our history has been so fruitful of important reforms in our economic and industrial life or so full of significant changes in the spirit and purpose of our political action. We have sought very thoughtfully to set our house in order, correct the grosser errors and abuses of our industrial life, liberate and quicken the processes of our national genius and energy, and lift our politics to a broader view of the people's essential interests.
It is a record of singular variety and singular distinction. But I shall not attempt to review it. It speaks for itself and will be of increasing influence as the years go by. This is not the time for retrospect. It is time rather to speak our thoughts and purposes concerning the present and the immediate future.
Although we have centered counsel and action with such unusual concentration and success upon the great problems of domestic legislation to which we addressed ourselves four years ago, other matters have more and more forced themselves upon our attention— matters lying outside our own life as a nation and over which we had no control, but which, despite our wish to keep free of them, have drawn us more and more irresistibly into their own current and influence.
It has been impossible to avoid them. They have affected the life of the whole world. They have shaken men everywhere with a passion and an apprehension they never knew before. It has been hard to preserve calm counsel while the thought of our own people swayed this way and that under their influence. We are a composite and cosmopolitan people. We are of the blood of all the nations that are at war. The currents of our thoughts as well as the currents of our trade run quick at all seasons back and forth between us and them. The war inevitably set its mark from the first alike upon our minds, our industries, our commerce, our politics and our social action. To be indifferent to it, or independent of it, was out of the question.
And yet all the while we have been conscious that we were not part of it. In that consciousness, despite many divisions, we have drawn closer together. We have been deeply wronged upon the seas, but we have not wished to wrong or injure in return; have retained throughout the consciousness of standing in some sort apart, intent upon an interest that transcended the immediate issues of the war itself.
As some of the injuries done us have become intolerable we have still been clear that we wished nothing for ourselves that we were not ready to demand for all mankind—fair dealing, justice, the freedom to live and to be at ease against organized wrong.
It is in this spirit and with this thought that we have grown more and more aware, more and more certain that the part we wished to play was the part of those who mean to vindicate and fortify peace. We have been obliged to arm ourselves to make good our claim to a certain minimum of right and of freedom of action. We stand firm in armed neutrality since it seems that in no other way we can demonstrate what it is we insist upon and cannot forget. We may even be drawn on, by circumstances, not by our own purpose or desire, to a more active assertion of our rights as we see them and a more immediate association with the great struggle itself. But nothing will alter our thought or our purpose. They are too clear to be obscured. They are too deeply rooted in the principles of our national life to be altered. We desire neither conquest nor advantage. We wish nothing that can be had only at the cost of another people. We always professed unselfish purpose and we covet the opportunity to prove our professions are sincere.
There are many things still to be done at home, to clarify our own politics and add new vitality to the industrial processes of our own life, and we shall do them as time and opportunity serve, but we realize that the greatest things that remain to be done must be done with the whole world for stage and in cooperation with the wide and universal forces of mankind, and we are making our spirits ready for those things.
We are provincials no longer. The tragic events of the thirty months of vital turmoil through which we have just passed have made us citizens of the world. There can be no turning back. Our own fortunes as a nation are involved whether we would have it so or not.
And yet we are not the less Americans on that account. We shall be the more American if we but remain true to the principles in which we have been bred. They are not the principles of a province or of a single continent. We have known and boasted all along that they were the principles of a liberated mankind. These, therefore, are the things we shall stand for, whether in war or in peace:
That all nations are equally interested in the peace of the world and in the political stability of free peoples, and equally responsible for their maintenance; that the essential principle of peace is the actual equality of nations in all matters of right or privilege; that peace cannot securely or justly rest upon an armed balance of power; that governments derive all their just powers from the consent of the governed and that no other powers should be supported by the common thought, purpose or power of the family of nations; that the seas should be equally free and safe for the use of all peoples, under rules set up by common agreement and consent, and that, so far as practicable, they should be accessible to all upon equal terms; that national armaments shall be limited to the necessities of national order and domestic safety; that the community of interest and of power upon which peace must henceforth depend imposes upon each nation the duty of seeing to it that all influences proceeding from its own citizens meant to encourage or assist revolution in other states should be sternly and effectually suppressed and prevented.
I need not argue these principles to you, my fellow countrymen; they are your own part and parcel of your own thinking and your own motives in affairs. They spring up native amongst us. Upon this as a platform of purpose and of action we can stand together. And it is imperative that we should stand together. We are being forged into a new unity amidst the fires that now blaze throughout the world. In their ardent heat we shall, in God's Providence, let us hope, be purged of faction and division, purified of the errant humors of party and of private interest, and shall stand forth in the days to come with a new dignity of national pride and spirit. Let each man see to it that the dedication is in his own heart, the high purpose of the nation in his own mind, ruler of his own will and desire.
I stand here and have taken the high and solemn oath to which you have been audience because the people of the United States have chosen me for this august delegation of power and have by their gracious judgment named me their leader in affairs.
I know now what the task means. I realize to the full the responsibility which it involves. I pray God I may be given the wisdom and the prudence to do my duty in the true spirit of this great people. I am their servant and can succeed only as they sustain and guide me by their confidence and their counsel. The thing I shall count upon, the thing without which neither counsel nor action will avail, is the unity of America—an America united in feeling, in purpose and in its vision of duty, of opportunity and of service.
We are to beware of all men who would turn the tasks and the necessities of the nation to their own private profit or use them for the building up of private power.
United alike in the conception of our duty and in the high resolve to perform it in the face of all men, let us dedicate ourselves to the great task to which we must now set our hand. For myself I beg your tolerance, your countenance and your united aid.
The shadows that now lie dark upon our path will soon be dispelled, and we shall walk with the light all about us if we be but true to ourselves—to ourselves as we have wished to be known in the counsels of the world and in the thought of all those who love liberty and justice and the right exalted.

Best Post of the Week of February 26, 2017

Oklahoma City newsies. March 4, 1917

Salacious February Part Three. De minimus non curat lex

Maybe there is something wrong with February?

The Sunday State Leader for March 4, 1917: Wyoming Guard back in Wyoming.

The Wyoming National Guard was back in Cheyenne to demobilize just as the Leader was reporting that Ft. D. A. Russell could mobilize 50,000 men there in the event of war.  Something just doesn't quite add up with that.

Zimmerman admitted his note, in other news.  And the nation was set for the second inauguration of Woodrow Wilson, which was set for the following day.

Oklahoma City newsies. March 4, 1917

The Cheyenne State Leader for March 3, 1917 Troops arriving home

The Leader was also reporting on the Wyoming Guardsmen arriving home, and that the Colorado Guardsmen were enjoying Ft. D. A. Russell.

Villa was back in the news, reportedly getting ready to nab Carranza.

The Wyoming Tribune for March 3, 1917. Admitting the plot

Germany, surprisingly enough, did take ownership of the Zimmerman Note, although I'm still not too sure where the concept that they were seeking to draw the Japanese into the war, in addition to the Mexicans, comes from.

And the Wyoming National Guard was arriving in Cheyenne.

In addition, the German government forbid women's clothing from changing styles more than once every six months. 

The Washington D. C. Automobile Show, March 3 - 10, 1917

Puerto Ricans granted U.S. Citizenship, March 2, 1917.

The Jones-Shafroth Act was signed into law in this day in 1917, changing the relationship between Puerto Rico and the United States.

 Flamingo Bay, Puerto Rico, 1914

For one thing, Puerto Ricans born after April 25, 1898 were granted U.S. citizenship, although they had the option of rejecting it.  Of 1.2 million residents on the island only 288 rejected citizenship.

The act also established a governmental system that closely mirrored those of the states, with a legislative, executive and judicial branch.

By bizarre coincidence, passage of the act made male Puerto Ricans liable for U.S. military service upon conscription just as the US was about to enter World War One.

The Cheyenne Leader for March 2, 1917: National Guardsmen having a good time at Ft. D. A. Russell.

After the early spat about it, Colorado Guardsmen, we learned were having a good time at Ft. D. A. Russell.  Wyoming Guardsmen were about to arrive there.

Keep in mind that Wyoming Guardsmen were not allowed to muster there when they were called into service, oddly enough.  The post is just outside of Cheyenne.  But they were being allowed to demuster there.

And, in other news, things were looking pretty grim following the release of the Zimmerman Note, which makes a person wonder why the Federal Government was demustering troops that logic dicated they'd be calling back into service shortly.

The Wyoming Tribune for March 1, 1917: Wilson asked to explain story.

Somebody should have explained the story about Japan anyhow, that's for sure.

And Ft. Russell was clearly gearing up for war.

The Cheyenne Leader for March 1, 1917: German-Jap-Mex Plot?

On March 1, 1917 the news all over the country was on the release of the Zimmerman Note and what it meant.  But, oddly, there was apparently a feeling that the Japanese were tied up in it, which wasn't the case.

And the Colorado National Guard arrived at Ft. D. A. Russell for demobilization.

Today In Wyoming's History: March 1, 1917 Buffalo Bill Memorial Association Chartered

Today In Wyoming's History: March 1: 1917  The Buffalo Bill Memorial Association was charted  Attribution:  on This Day.

This was fairly remarkable given that Cody had only recently passed away.

Woodrow Wilson releases the contents of the Zimmerman Telegram

After having had it for some time, the United States released the contents of the Zimmerman Telegram which, as we have been following, proposed a German-Mexican alliance in the event of an American entry into World War One.

American public opinion was becoming increasingly hostile to Germany in 1916 and 1917 and it was already hostile to Mexico given the numerous border problems that had being going on for years and the strained relationship with Carranza.  The release of the telegram was one more event that helped push the United States towards going to war with Germany.  In some ways, the telegram confirmed suspicions that were already out there as presence of German military advisors in Mexico was well known and they had taken an active role in advising Mexico's prevailing army.  They had even been in one instance in that role in which Mexican troops had directly engaged American troops.  In recent weeks there's been speculation in the press about German activities in Mexico and Carranza's relationship to Germany.  So, while Zimmerman's suggestion seems outlandish to us in retrospect, to Americans of 1917 it would have seemed to confirm what was already widely suspected, but with details far more ambitious than could have been guessed at previously.

The Big Picture: Springfield Ohio Fire Department, 1917

The Springfield Ohio Fire Department, obviously a very modern fire department as it appears to have been all motorized, in this photo that was copyrighted on February 28, 1917.