Today In Wyoming's History: June 6, 1915. British Remount Agents Begin to Purchase Horses In Wyoming.

Today In Wyoming's History: June 6:

1915  British commissioners began to purchase remounts in Wyoming.  The purchase of horses for British service in World War One created a boom in horse ranching which would continue, fueled both by British and American service purchases, throughout the war, but which would be followed by a horse ranching crash after the war.

 U.S. Army Remounts, Camp Kearney California, 1917.

Today In Wyoming's History: June 5: Conscription Arrives

Today In Wyoming's History: June 5:

1917  Conscription starts for World War One.  Or, more accurately, registration for the draft commenced.

This was the first time that the United States had conscripted soldiers, in the sense in which the term is generally used, since the Civil War and it was only the second time in US history that the nation had conscripted.

The measure had been debated and was not without controversy.  Even the name of the process, which would stick for later acts of conscription, "Selective Service", reflected that, as the system was designed around the concept of men being selected by local boards, and it was hoped that it would seem, therefore, less of a pure act of compulsion by the national government.

While it was generally supported, it remained controversial in some quarters.  Having said that, the huge patriotic drive that was engineered by the Wilson Administration to support the war effort had a definite effect  and what was feared might be a deeply unpopular move proved not to be.

It perhaps should be noted, as a historical item of interest, that while this was the second draft in American history, Americans in 1917 were only about sixty or so years past the era of compulsory male militia duty, another type of military compulsion. That duty was universal early in the country's history, but it generally wasn't terribly burdensome for most men (except, perhaps, when the militia was called out), as except during times of emergency, the militia generally mustered once a year and it generally turned into a bit of a party.  Conscription of this type, ie., the World War One draft, definitely wasn't a party.

The Best Advice For Practicing Lawyers There Is.

I don't often credit movies about lawyers much, but here's an exception that's truly noteworthy.  Its a scene from A Civil Action:

If I were you I'd make it a point in that lunch hour I'd find a place that's quiet and peaceful and I'd be away from all the noisiness and insanity, have a sandwich read a magazine maybe listen on a radio to a game at Fenway if it was playing at the time and I'd make sure everyone knew that I didn't want to be disturbed in that hour of solitude because that would be my time my own private time which no one if they had any sense of any self-preservation at all would dare interrupt if I were you.

Jerome Facher, from A Civil Action.

Better advice could not be had.

For a long time, and partially due to advice from my own father, I've tried to get out of the office at noon.  I usually try to go home.  On some occasions I'll just leave the office and walk around.  I don't go to lunch with other lawyers, usually, as I don't eat much lunch anyhow (I'm a small person and if I ate a restaurant sized lunch every day I'd be as big as a whale) , or even any lunch, and I don't want to sit around and talk about the law or cases on my one hour in the middle of the day.  Usually when I go out the door at noon the receptionist tells me "have a good lunch!" or when I come back in she asks "did you have a good lunch?".  I always reply "yep" even though I've often had no lunch.  Just getting "away from all the noisiness and insanity" is good enough.

But it's getting harder and harder to do.

Cell phones have intruded on this massively. I may simply start leaving my phone in my desk.  If I take it there's no guaranty that I won't get a work call.

Who'd call, you ask?

Well, a variety  of people. Sometimes its an individual client.  Corporate and carrier clients rarely will call during noon. . . .almost never, in fact.  Chances are that the people who work in those roles would like an hour break as much as anyone else.  Individual clients will do it fairly frequently, however.  They are the ones most likely not to understand the law in the first place and can be the most nervous about it.  Noon can be when they call as that's when they have a free hour.  That's fine, but the problem is that this misunderstands your role as a human being.  It does it, I'd note, in a flattering manner. The assumption by such a caller is that you are so much a part of your occupation that you are your occupation.

In that situation the caller doesn't imagine that the morning was draining, that you worked on difficult problems and maybe with difficult people of one kind or another and now that you have a "free" hour in the middle of the day you might just want to " have a sandwich read a magazine maybe listen on a radio to a game at Fenway if it was playing at the time".  No, the caller imagines that such thoughts never occur to you and you'll give up that time to work on their problem and assure them that everything is going to be okay. 

Sometimes in recent years I've found that its other lawyers that do this.  Not all by any means.  A tiny minority. But, for example, I have had cases against a certain exuberant lawyer that calls at odd times, including the lunch hour, on my cell phone repeatedly.  Or after hours.  Indeed, when he calls during office hours, he calls on my cell phone.  I think he truly is one of those people for whom taking a break doesn't exist for one reason or another, and he thinks everyone in the profession does the same thing. 

Sometimes its just a time zone thing, and I do get that, of course, and will make exceptions for it.

I feel almost bad mentioning this.  I know that people who call at 12:15 or who drop by the front door literally as I'm going out don't mean to be intrusive.  But being a lawyer, or at least a litigator, is a very wearing job and unless a person is of a truly extraordinary makeup, they may want a break at noon as much as anyone else.  A lot of days a person has been up to their eyes in blood and gore and panic and hate by 12:00.  Running through the noon hour and never getting out of it isn't really all that good of an idea.  The line above, albeit from a movie, is good advice.  Indeed, the best advice about practicing law I've ever seen.

Behaving like its 1957 when its 2017. . .

is probably not going to work for you.

 How your entity appears, and how people react to it, if you have a website that looks like it was supposed to function twenty years ago and isn't interactive in any fashion.

I'm not going to be super specific in this post, as I'm a bit miffed quite frankly, but whether you like it or not, and I mostly don't, the front door for your office, organization, church, synagogue, club, etc., is not your front door.

It's your website.

And if your website doesn't work, but just sits there with a URL, your door is boarded up and says something equivalent to "closed".

The reason, I'll note, that I'm posting this is a direct experience for over a year on this topic with it being said, several months ago, "it's fixed".  It is not.

And by not, what I mean is that if you have front page to your website that has links that take you to vague generalities, but a person who, for instance, might have something scheduled needs to check that, or links don't work, why did you bother in the first  place?

In the modern world, if a person is under 40 years old, they don't check the "yellow pages" and they aren't going to call you for information either.  They're going to go to your website and if that website is a dumpster fire, they're moving on.

Sunday Morning Scene: Churches of the West: United Methodist Church, Grass Lodge Montana

Churches of the West: United Methodist Church, Grass Lodge Montana:

The United Methodist Church in Grass Lodge, Montana.

British Artillerymen horse racing. June 3, 1917.

Soon to be a gigantic mess. . . .

Sunday Oregonian, June 3, 1917: "Far-off Vladivostok celebrated the Russian revolution. It was reported later that the people of Vladivostok had revolted against the provisional government of Russia, but this was denied from Petrograd."

Best Posts of the Week of May 28, 2017

Mid Week At Work: So is that work what you expected?

It's National Doughnut Day!

It's National Doughnut Day!

Or Donut Day, if you prefer.

John A. Johnston, First Vice President of the International Association of Bridge and Structural Ironworkers Union and J.J. Keppler, International Vice President of the Machinists Union, hanging out near the doughnut truck during a 1915 strike at the Remington-UMC plant in Bridgeport, Connecticut.  Nothing improves the taste of a doughnut more than a cigar. . . .  It's odd to think that, a century ago, people were already advertising "old fashioned" doughnuts.

And shoot, I nearly missed it.

 The Allies only won the Great War as we had Donuts.

I like doughnuts, but I eat them a lot less than I used to, and I didn't eat them that often really to start with.  We used to pick them up quite a bit on the way Mass on Sundays, but we grew tired of them somehow and rarely do. Maybe once every couple of months at the most.

 Don't be giving doughnuts to the bears, darn it.

But still, a good doughnut every now and then is always welcome.

A French soldier looking a bit hesitant about donuts.  Those who watch European productions featuring depictions of Americans, such as Foyle's War will find that Americans are sort of bizarrely associated with donuts and hotdogs even though a lot of Americans aren't actually all that keen on either of them.  World War One might be responsible for that, at least in the context of donuts.  By the way, note that somebody has taken a bite out of one of those sandwiches and put it back on the tray.

And today would be a good day to have one, darn it.

Although I've already eaten this morning (not donuts) and therefore finding myself passing on the center of the day's focus.

Friday On The Farm: Western Horseman: Cowboy Language Barrier

Cowboy Language Barrier.

Readership, a trend to return to about a year ago. . . but that's okay.

From back this past December:

Lex Anteinternet: Viewing Milestone

This ran on October 25, 2016:

Lex Anteinternet: Viewing Milestone: Sometime yesterday this blog went over the 200,000 views mark.  Pretty remarkable in some ways.

On the other hand, this blog has been around for quite awhile, so perhaps not.   While there are a few postdated entries here, the actual first post came on May 1, 2009. 

200,000 views in seven years isn't exactly an Internet sensation by any means.  Of course, early on the blog was very inactive and therefore its not surprising that it received little in the way of readership.  It's readership has picked up a lot this year.  It has ups and downs, but starting in March it really picked up. That was the anniversary of the Punitive Expedition and we started posting a lot on that.  Searches on that, perhaps, might explain it.  The frequent insertion of newspapers from 1916 also seems to have had a marked impact.  Given that we were basically running some things in "real time", so to speak, we also started linking some of those threads into Reddit's 100 Years Ago Today subreddit, which also had quite an impact.

Indeed, an impact of 100 Years Ago today is that the longstanding list of most viewed threads changed nearly completely.  Only one of the threads on the all time top ten, the one on hats, was on that list before Reddit impacted the list and changed it nearly completely.  Posts on Arminto, Wyoming, young Queen Elizabeth II in Canada and the Niobrara County courthouse left the top ten, presumably for all time.  Most of those thread would have about half of the views they'd need to be on the top ten list, even though some of them had been on it for years.

Indeed, some of the newer threads on the list have gone over 1,000 views in a day, pretty remarkable when we consider that getting about 500 used to guarantee that the thread would be on the top ten list.  Right now, the site gets over 15,000 views per month.  Prior to March of this year, the all time high had been September 2014 which had seen 5,000 views that month.  In February 2015 the number was back down to a little over 2,000 per month.  March of that year brought it back up to a little over 4,000 and it hovered around that for a long time.  March 2016 brought it back up to nearly 5,000.  Last month in had a little over 19,500.  It's had just over 16,000 this month, with the month nearly over, so my guess is that September 2016 will be a peak for some time.

Thanks go out to everyone who reads the blog.  Special thanks go out to everyone who has commented on a thread.  This blog remains mostly a learning exercise, so I particularly enjoy any engagement we receive.

Some time to today the blog went over 250,000 views.

Everything I said in the post above remains true, except the number of monthly views.  The past couple of months its been averaging about 20,000 views per month and this month might actually top out at 30,000.  As before, I thank everyone who bothered to stop in her and read the blog.

I hope that some of the interest continues after the close day by day tracking of the Punitive Expedition and the events surrounding it, including the day to day life of 100 years ago, drops off.  We're approaching the end of the American expedition in Mexico, although quite a bit of close attention to the upcoming centennial of events in 1917 shall remain.  I also hope that folks who have comments of any kind add them, I very much enjoy reading them as I'm sure those who stop in here do as well.

We're now up to 441,838 total views, as of the day I started this post.  If current trends continue we'll almost certainly pass the 450,000 mark this month.  This past March, just a couple of months ago, we peaked at nearly 56,000 views in a single month.  At that time we were steeply climbing in readership every month.

But then, as I noted earlier, the US pulled out of Mexico and I stopped the daily newspaper updates.  March is when I stopped doing that.  I also quit posting those entries frequently on the 100 Years Ago Today Subbreddit, although I still otherwise post things there.  That meant, as I knew it would, a big drop off in readership.  Last month we were down to 21,853 readers and even with that number there was a steady decline through the month. We're averaging about 200 views per day over week which, if it holds will mean we have only 6,000 views this month.  We'll see if that's correct.  That would be about the number we were receiving from March 2016 to May 2016 before the readership really took off.  Having said that, however, that was still a big jump from what we'd received before, in which monthly readership was about half that, so it's still not bad.  We were thrilled we were receiving that level of readership a year ago and regarded that as quite a jump at the time.  Of course, one thing presently working against that is that the number of posts dramatically increased as well.  I was covering the Punitive Expedition day by day for the most part and I also posted quite a bit on the Fall 2016 U.S. Election.

One oddity of very recent readership, I'd note, is that in May we received more hits on this blog that originated from France than from the United States. We have no idea why.  Chances are that this started during the big climb in readership about a year ago, and we noticed at the time that hits from France were normally in second or third position.  Now, for a few weeks, they've been in first position.  We presume that might have something to do with the posts on World War One, and we also suspect that France might be the Internet hub for a lot of European traffic.  If you are French and have been stopping in here, thanks.  If you want to let us know why you stop here, we'd like to know!

We still post a lot, of course, but we knew that the cessation of the story on the Punitive Expedition would have an impact.  Still, it is deflating to see the daily hits drop off so much, even if expected. We're glad, however, that we still get a lot of readership nonetheless.  We hope that everyone who stops in continues to enjoy the blog and find it occasionally insightful.  We also hope that folks occasionally post comments on it a little more, which we also enjoy a great deal.

Mid Week At Work: So is that work what you expected?

Jerome Facher:  If I were you I'd make it a point in that lunch hour I'd find a place that's quiet and peaceful and I'd be away from all the noisiness and insanity, have a sandwich read a magazine maybe listen on a radio to a game at Fenway if it was playing at the time and I'd make sure everyone knew that I didn't want to be disturbed in that hour of solitude because that would be my time my own private time which no one if they had any sense of any self-preservation at all would dare interrupt if I were you.

Jerome Facher in A Civil Action.

I didn't post anything on it last week, but a few weeks ago I started a series of posts for the occasional Mid Week At Work series that went from what you wanted to do when you were young to what you ended up doing.

I think this is an interesting evolution.  I look around at adults in all sorts of roles and I often wonder how they got there.  As part of that, I wonder if they're disappointed, or resigned, or thrilled how things turned out.  Part of the reason that I wonder that is I discredit most people who claim "I always wanted to be a . . . "

Part of the reason I discredit that is that, at least with most professions, I just can't believe its true.  I hear, on odd occasion, a person claim "I always wanted to be a lawyer", which of course is my particular profession. That's ludicrous for the most part.   I never recall a young kid or a young teen really saying that, although there was one such kid in my daughter's grade school. To the extent that I believe that I believe it only when a person comes from a family which has a lot of lawyers in it and that's what they know.  In that case, however, saying "I always wanted to be a lawyer" equates pretty much with a person saying "I always wanted to be Ukrainian" if they were born in Kiev.

Anyhow, I do believe there are some occupations in which, when a person declares that they always wanted to do it, its true, but they're just a few.  When men say, for example, that they always wanted to be ranchers, farmers, or cowboys, I do believe that.  Or soldiers or policemen.  It's something about the occupation that taps into something in our deep instincts, really.  The key to those, I suppose, is that in many instances those sort of occupations have many more people who "always wanted" to do them, than actually do them.

So, for the many other occupations,  I suspect, people come to them in some other fashion. They become engineers, doctors, lawyers, accountants, etc., etc., by some other route.  At some point they fixed upon these occupations as they ones they'd do, or they fell into them by some circuitous route.  Most people end up occupying some employment niche for a long time, often the better part of their lives.  But most people probably didn't originally have that role as an aspiration.  At some point, before entering whatever field they're in, they had some sort of conception of what it would be like.

Do those expectations meet reality?  I'd guess in many instances they do not, but then in some they do. Some find their occupations much more satisfactory to themselves than others. Some find them disappointing.  Most people become at least proficient in what they do, but what's their mental mindset about it?  Is it "I'm so glad it worked out this way", or "I'm so disappointed that it worked out this way", or something in between.

I'm not asking that, but I'd ask instead, how closely did your ultimate career meet your expectations?

Wyoming Fact & Fiction - Neil A. Waring: Western Books

Wyoming Fact & Fiction - Neil A. Waring: Western Books: I have often read that Owen Wister's publishing of  The Virginian , 115 years ago this week, on May 28, 1902, was the start of Wes...

Decoration Day, May 30, 1917.

Memorial Day, Fifth Avenue, Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument in Riverside Park, New York City, May 30, 1917. 

Memorial Day, formerly Decoration Day, wasn't always on a Monday.  It used to be simply May 30.

Automobile races in Washington D. C., on this day in 1917.

Sunday Morning Scene: Churches of the West: Unidentified Church, Hanna Wyoming

Churches of the West: Unidentified, Hanna Wyoming:

Unidentified Prairie Gothic style church in Hanna, Wyoming.

The Dogs of War

Red Cross nurse bandaging a wounded dog, May 27, 1917.

May 26

My father would have been 88 years old today.

He died when he was 62 years old.

I can't help but think of that whenever this day rolls around.  Indeed, it's easy for me to think of as my birthday is the prior day, May 25.  By odd coincidence one of his cousins shares my birthday, May 25.

Hard to believe he's been gone 26 years.

That horse on the license plate, everyone knows its Steamboat. Right?

 This spectacular depiction of a rodeo horse at the University of Wyoming does in fact depict Steamboat.  And it might also depict what lead to the first athletic symbol for UW and the therefore also the license plate symbol. . . . maybe.

Well, everyone knows that.

But is it?

 A photograph of the last model of Wyoming's license plate. This plate is being replaced by a new one, but that one will also feature Steamboat.

Not so fast there, buckaroo.

Let's start off by admitting that Steamboat was one heck of a rodeo horse. There's no doubt about it. Steamboat was great.  So great that I'd post a photograph of the real Steamboat but all the existing on line photos of the horse are closely guarded by copyright claims, so I won't.  But he was fine roughstock, to be sure.

But he wasn't the first horse to be used as a symbol for Wyoming.  And not even the first bucking horse.

That horse would be Red Wing.  And here's where the tale grows complicated.

Red Wing was a privately owned horse that hailed from Montana but was brought into military service by Sgt. George N. Ostrom of the Wyoming National Guard.  Ostrom, who was a bugler with the Wyoming National Guard and who had already seen service in the "border war", purchased the horse on the Crow Reservation in southern Montana, although its unclear to me if he purchased it privately or if he purchased it with the intent of it being accepted as a Remount.  I suspect he did the latter as he worked with Army Horse Purchasing Officer Chester Cotton of the Army's Remount station in Sheridan Wyoming to take the horse into Army service.  The accounts I've seen (and their may be others) are quite unclear on this, but that's likely because the authors aren't hugely familiar with the Remount system of the day.  Chances are high that Guardsman Sgt. Ostrom was detailed to acquire horses for Remounts for the Wyoming National Guard, or perhaps more specifically the 3rd Regiment Wyoming National Guard. Even though the unit was an infantry unit at the time (it would become part of the 148th Field Artillery Regiment that September) it would have required a fair number of horses as even infantry units of that era had a substantial number of Remounts.

 

Ostrom was a talented illustrator.  He drew this depiction of a New Mexican town while stationed in Deming, New Mexico, with the Wyoming National Guard.

Sgt Ostrom worked with Cotton (who may or may not have been a Guardsmen as well) to take Red Wing into service, which isn't really all that remarkable as a large number of horses were being purchased at the time and a lot of them were fairly rank.  The horse was then shipped at some point to Ft. D. A. Russell and then chosen by Major Louabaugh of the Wyoming National Guard as his personal mount.  Maj. Louabaugh had the bad misfortune, however, of being mounted on Red Wing when the horse encountered two bears brought into the unit as mascots (an oddly common thing at the time), the bears having been brought out on the parade ground.  As horses do not approve of bears, Red Wing blew up with Maj. Loubaugh mounted on him.  Apparently Cotton went with the horses to Ft. Russell as at that point Ostrom and Cotton were given the task of finishing the horse.  The horse must have retained some fairly rank qualities at the time as it bucked with Cotton fairly spectacularly during this process.

Red Wing survived the First World War and made it all the way over to France to serve with the 148th.  He didn't come back, however, as he was retired to a stable in France.  Horses being what they are, it's unlikely he appreciated the equine odyssey that he experienced, nor is it likely that he was ever aware that his fame would decline in comparison with Steamboat, who pretty much stayed in Wyoming.

At any rate, when the Army began to approve of the policy of units adopting unit symbols, the memory of Cotton on Red Wing was fresh and Ostrom designed a symbol featuring the two of them for submission to a contest for such a symbol for the unit.  It won.

The unit insignia, as displayed at the Wyoming Veterans Museum in Casper.

The story of unit patches in the Great War has become a little skewed, unfortunately, and is confusing in any event.  It would not have been the case, I should note, that this symbol ended up getting sewn on every Wyoming doughboys shoulder.

 I sometimes manage to really screw up a photograph, such as this one.  I didn't have this one anywhere close to being properly aligned. Anyhow,t he top image is what was adopted as the shoulder insignia, although these really wouldn't have been added until after World War One. the bottom one is the image that was painted on vehicles and equipment. . . . or maybe not, note that this Wyoming "artifact", a US M1917 helmet has the equipment insignia painted on it:  M1917 Helmet.

In fact, for the most part, unit insignia didn't get widely used until just after the shooting stopped.  But at that point it went on to a pile of things, and it was already on a lot of equipment by the war's end.  Because standardization was in a state of flux at the time, not every application was as uniform as the item above would suggest, but that it went on to a lot of things cannot be doubted.

 

Very nice example of National Guard collar insignia, which we'll throw in for the sake of completeness, from this period in the upper left, and a subdued chevron on the right.  Subdued chevrons would be a feature of the uniform all the way into the early Vietnam War but rank structure for enlisted men constantly changed.  This insignia hearkens back to the 19th Century with its bugler specialty device and would pass into history before World War Two.

So, the troops came home and it ended up on license plats, making Steamboat just a horsey fraud, right?

Well no.

Steamboat was a legendary rodeo horse, as already noted, prior to World War One.  He's remembered in a charming fashion now, but he was flat out rank.  One story is that he got his name to the vapor coming from his snorting nostrils, something that anyone who has been around a really hot, and I mean agitated, horse on a cold day has seen.

Steamboat entered the rodeo circuit early in the 20th Century and was widely photographed.  Given that, when the University of Wyoming went to adopt a symbol for its athletic program, photos of the rank bronc were easy to find.  It seems to be the case that UW athletic equipment manager Deane Hunton, used a photo of Guy Holt, maybe, riding him when he went to adapt a symbol for athletic uniforms in the 1920, although the identify of the rider is disputed, and some claim the rider is a composite of the many riders photographed attempting to ride Steamboat.

A display at Wyoming State History Day featuring a University of Wyoming football helmet, which prominently features Steamboat.

In 1936 Wyoming put the symbol on its license plates, which sparked a controversy that was hot at the time and is still lukewarm now.  Veterans of the Wyoming National Guard from World War One felt their symbol had been stolen. UW hotly denied that it had appropriated Red Wing and defended the symbol as Steamboat.  For that matter, a World War One pilot who had painted a very similar symbol on his fighter plane during the Great War maintained that  the symbol was really his.

In the end, however, it seems clear that the horse on everything Wyoming, except military stuff, somewhat, is Steamboat. The rider?  Who knows.  Not that Red Wing has been completely forgotten.  He seems to have probably been the horse that lived on symbolically to re-adorn Wyoming Army National Guard equipment during the Korean War, or maybe not.

Steamboat?  Probably Red Wing.  Or maybe not.

On the other hand, the Wyoming Army National Guard, right about the same time, went to a different horse and rider symbol, recalling a different lineage, that of the 3d U.S. Volunteer Cavalry during the Spanish American War.  The blue and yellow patch symbolized a cavalry heritage that the Wyoming Army National Guard had after World War One through the early 1950s (loosing its horses in 1943 or so), but which it could legitimately track back to the volunteer cavalrymen of the Spanish American War.

That symbol, however, has yielded to a degree to a new one for most Wyoming Army National Guardsmen.  Steamboat again?  Almost certainly.

 Symbols of the state.  The buffalo inside our state flag surrounding its image that's in the state flag, and the state flag superimposed on Steamboat.

And indeed, Steamboat was always a unique image and has become totally ascendant.  Its the state's most recognizable symbol, only rivaled, and not effectively, by the buffalo that appears in the center of the state's flag and, oddly, by "307", the state's area code that strangely adorns all sort of stickers now.

Red Wing or Steamboat, or none of the above.  The symbol adopted by Pendleton whisky, maybe the last somewhat clear example of a bucking horse symbol that isn't Steamboat, but then its not from Wyoming.

1917 Matoon Illionois Tornado

Young Greeks returning to farming according to Al Jazeera

And they seem mystified.

Al Jazeera, the respected Arab news outlet, reports:

Lesbos, Greece - Odysseas Elytis, the Greek Nobel laureate and poet, once wrote: "If you disintegrate Greece, in the end you'll see that what you have left is an olive tree, a vineyard, and a ship. Which means: with these you can rebuild it."

Having endured eight years of a deepening economic crisis, thousands of young Greeks are taking heed of Elytis' words by leaving the cities to work on the land.

 But why not? 

A lot of Greeks are still close to their farming roots.  Agriculture as the dominant industry was a feature of Greece up until well after World War Two. With a failing economy, generous unemployment and social benefits, heck, why not give it a try.  Apparently thousands feel that way.

For many young Greeks who have the option, returning to their family farms once they've completed their studies, has become their most viable chance for employment.
"Growing up, I always thought that farming would be an extra income like it has been for my parents," says Maria Kalaboka, 27, who this month earns her master’s degree in law in Thessaloniki.

"But seeing the unemployment that exists in the city, I decided to make our family business my full-time job. If you're unemployed in the city, you don't have any options," Maria says. She moved home this month to start working full-time on her family's olive grove.

Speaking in her family's olive mill near the village of Plomari in Lesbos, Maria paints a bleak picture of how life in Thessaloniki means homelessness, unemployment, and depression: "Here, you won't go hungry. At least you'll be able to grow your own food."

The more power to them.

An option that, for the most part, doesn't exist for Americans.