September 5, 1917. The draftees begin to report

September 5, 1917, was a big day for a lot of younger men as they began to leave their homes to report to Army training camps.  Eleven, we learn from the Casper paper, were leaving booming Casper.

And 35 were leaving from much larger Cheyenne, whose paper was also reporting that the Japanese were mustering to come to the aid of the Russians.

In the university town of Laramie the paper reported on the total numbers of the first contingent of draftees in its headlines, 34,450.

There would be a lot more following.

Blog Mirror: Men in Black

We had a thread on this quite some time back, but here's the topic from the guys who adhere to it.

Men in Black

Aug 24, 2017 • Fr. John Nepil & Fr. Michael O'Loughlin & Fr. Nathan Goebel

Blog Mirror: A Hundred Years Ago: When “Time is Money” Serve Ready-to-Eat Cereals

First day back at work after a long weekend and I'll wager that this topic addresses what a lot of you are having for breakfast this morning:

When “Time is Money” Serve Ready-to-Eat Cereals

Blog Mirror: United States Naval Railway Batteries in France

Interesting stuff, as we ponder World War One here:

United States Naval Railway Batteries in France

Published under the direction of the Hon. Edwin Denby, Secretary of the Navy

It would appear that North Korea has a hydrogen bomb.

And this is not to be taken lightly.

A hydrogen bomb is massively more powerful than a conventional atomic bomb, which is bad enough.

And that means that its much easier to place such a devastating weapon on a missile.  In short order, they will do just that, and be a nuclear power.  Not one like the United States, to be sure, but one completely capable of killings millions of people in a single blow.

And they can't be trusted now.

They didn't get there on their own, or at least its not likely they did.

The question now is, is the United States, and indeed the rest of the sane world, willing to accommodate a nation lead by a truculent toddler with a weapon that can kill millions, and which he'll arm to the teeth with. And what can we do about it?  And what should we do about it?

Why, a person might ask, does North Korea wish to have the bomb.  The use of it would be insane. That assumes, of course, an element of rationality that North Korea appears to be shy of.  But assuming that is their logic it makes them safe from conventional attack, they likely reason, as their situation deteriorates. 

The country already assassinates abroad and has engaged in any manner of weird and creepy behavior throughout its' long pathetic existence.  Always, in the back of its mind, the threat of action from the United States has been there, with their principle defense being an alliance with China. But China isn't as reliable as it might be here, and this secures it to a greater degree.

But at the same time was can somewhat assume that if China, and perhaps Russia, didn't wish to have a nuclear armed North Korea, there wouldn't be one. Why would they tolerate one.  It's difficult to say, but they likely regard the rogue communist state as principally an enemy of the west, and not their enemy.

Time will tell how that will develop, and that assumption is not really a safe one. But for the time being this appears mostly to be a problem for the United States and, accordingly, the completion of a test that commenced with the peace in 1954 and which has grown more dicey over the last couple of decades.

As recently as a few weeks ago, I felt that the threat of nuclear tipped North Korean missiles made war with the United States inevitable.  Interestingly, as this threat became real elements in the American political world that up until recently regarded a nuclear North Korea as a bright line that could not be crossed starting urging acclimation to the situation, showing that the lesson of Neville Chamberlin's blunder never really does become fully learned.

Peace in our time.

Which isn't to say that I'm urging an invasion of North Korea, which it seems apparent would be come a second war on the Korean peninsula with China.

But this is a very serious matter.  And regarding it as a non threat is not an option.  Some serious consideration of what must and should be done is in order.

The Big Picture: Granite plants on Batchelder's Meadow, Barre, Vermont. September 4, 1917.

Barre, Vermont, proclaims itself to be the Granite Center of the World.

Monday At The Bar: Lex Anteinternet: The Uniform Bar Exam, early tell of the tape. Revisited Again.

 State Bar Admission Committees carefully considering their options as the ABA and law school deans observe in the background with the interest of the average legal consumer in mind. . . oh. . . wait . . .

Posted three years ago after this dereliction of duty became the law here:

Lex Anteinternet: The Uniform Bar Exam, early tell of the tape.: One of the threads most hit upon here is the one on the Uniform Bar Exam .  As folks who stop in here will recall, Wyoming's adoption of...

So the result by now, 2017?

Just as bad, if not much worse, than predicted.  Any long term practitioner in the state is familiar with how this has worked.  New local admittees, unless they are very motivated, come into the practice ignorant on the law of the state.  Admittees from neighboring states, often from big cities, are clueless about the state's law in many instances but practice as if they know it, which is probably what their clients believe.  I've even experienced an out of state lawyer arrogantly telling a Federal jurist that he didn't have to comply with Wyoming's law as he'd complied with the law of the state in which he lived, on a very major matter.  The Court politely corrected him, to its credit.  A lot of judges would not have been so kind.

Why are we sticking with this lousy result?

States carefully pondering what's best for their residents. . . .

Part of it is that its a law of human nature (hmmm. . . . edit to major feature coming up?) to persist with an error until its blisteringly obvious that its a really big error.  There's a certain momentum in human affairs that allows a mistake to get very far progressed before its corrected.  That being the case, perhaps this isn't completely hopeless, although its hard to conclude its not.  In spite of some very erudite commentary warning that the UBE is a bad idea and flawed, and in spite of the protests of practicing lawyers that it should be halted, the UBE is expanding.

And part of the reason for that is that the ABA is boosting it, as are law schools.

The ABA, for some time, has seemingly only had the interests of lawyers in white shoe firms in mind anyhow.  So they worry about things like portability.  Gee whiz, after all, Joe Whiteshoe in Big, Bloated, Bigger, & Bigger shouldn't have to worry about his license as he goes from one metropolis to another to practice, should he.  After all, he's tried a case. . . sometime, and if he has to worry about state bars he might have to hire local counsel whose tried dozens of cases and knows the law.  We can't have that.

Additionally, law schools are backing it.

Now, when the UBE was just passed here we actually had one of our occasional meetings with the (interim) dean of the law school, and she assured us that they'd had nothing to do with it.  I've heard skepticism on this, this very year, but I believe her. But she was honest that had they known it was being advanced they would have backed it, as it would have been conceived of as good for graduating law students.

And the reason it would have been so conceived is that the UBE would give them more options. 

For about 2.5 seconds.

In reality there are more graduating law students in the United States than the US can absorb and for that reason anyone know in law school ought to be thinking of second career options.  Seriously.  The UBE isn't going to save them.  Indeed, what it actually does is to damage the practice in smaller and more rural states and concentrate it in big cities where the costs of operation are high. There's every reason to believe that in the end there will be fewer jobs due to the UBE, not more.   That, by extension, now that licenses are more portable, means that those who graduate from "first tier" schools have a bigger option than they used to.  

It used to always be the case that there were two classes of advantaged law students, those who graduated from "first tier" schools and those who graduated from good state schools.  Good state schools, like Wyoming's, conferred a real advantage on those who attended them as long as they wished to practice in their states, as they had a big edge up on the local law as well as a network of contacts.  Now knowing the local law is necessary for the bar exam and by extension the erosion of some work means that contacts mean less (and the standards of practice are declining while the lawyers treat each other increasingly badly).  In my view this means that a school like my alma mater, the University of Wyoming College of Law, is pretty much unnecessary and an anachronism.

All of that of course is an application of the law of unintended consequences, but that's how these things often go.  A concept developed to aid "portability" instead aids monculture, hurts the local practice and by extension local people.

Not that it can't be stopped.  But will it?

Probably not for some time, or until some state bar is willing to really analyze the situation. . . which is what lawyers are supposed to do.

The CST goes into the Sunday before Labor Day with a barrel of economic news

In spite of its decline, the CST still manages to put out a really good issue every now and then.  This Sunday's is one such example, full of economic news.

Much of what isn't cheery, and some of which is quite surprising.  Although, if you follow us here at all, much of this will have a familiar ring, for good or ill.

So, the roundup.

1. Paying for not getting the Feds to pay for Medicaid Expansion.

 American volunteer ambulance in France, 1915.  Medicine has certainly improved, but the costs are getting difficult to deal with.

Wyoming now faces a $30,000,000 Medicaid shortfall and its going to get worse.  This comes in the wake of Wyoming declining Medicaid expansion in the late stages of the Obama Administration which would have garnered the state something like $100,000,000.

No matter what a person thinks of programs like this, I could never grasp why we turned down the money.  But we did.  I know the Governor was having  a hard time with that too.

Well, the economic chickens on this one appear to have come home to roost, or are at least headed that way.  Part of the overall mess, right now, of health care and what we're going to do nation wide.

This gets at the heart of a somewhat unrelated matter (which we have a thread in the hopper about) which is what to do about the Affordable Care Act, aka "Obamacare".  Depending upon who you listen to, it's either about to collapse or its not.  It doesn't seem to be working super well, but then how could it really?  Given that it was sort of a bondo and bailing wire approach to the whole topic to start with.  Truth be known a nationwide, forced insurance system with private carriers was unlikely to work and now we're not too sure what to do.

We do know, however, that once benefits are extended their nearly impossible to take away, so nobody wants to really contemplate that.  That provided the basic philosophical basis for not wishing to signed up for expanded Medicaid, but the problem is that the bills were coming anyway.  Now we don't really know what to do about that.

I don't know what the solution to this is, but this seems like a train that we saw coming before it hit us.

2.  Coal is stable, at a new normal, which is lower than pre bust.

 Coal burning (maybe, it could be oil by this time) coal train, West Virginia, 1938.

I would have predicated this, particularly as the paper reports that the reasons for this a pre bust decline. That is, it's not due to the Federal government, it's due to demand.

The good news is, for Wyoming, that its not still sliding.  But that's only marginally good news as it also like means that the hoped for return to a super heated expanding industry is likely to remain a hope, and nothing more.  New revenues, therefore, are going to have to come from somewhere else.  Coal will still be with us, but it'll be with more in the fashion it was in earlier eras.  But we budgeted in the state like it was going to be the economic powerhouse forever.

On the other hand, we started budgeting with coal prior to the latest super rosy predictions and that worked well.  What that means is that we might simply have to return to leaner economic times, which weren't all that lean, really.

3.  Wyoming to subsidize air travel?

 "The air liner "Hannibal" on the Alexandria aerodome"

In a really surprising story the Wyoming Department of Transportation is advancing a plan to contract with air carriers in Wyoming the same way that airlines do with regional carriers., this story coming in the wake of Allegiant saying "Tally Ho!" to Casper. That is, basically, they'll buy any seats the regionals don't fill.  It's an ambitious and surprising plan.  It basically accepts the reality of the situation, that being that Wyoming is too small of market, in the modern world, to support much air travel. Casper has what little there is, and even its services are being reduced.  Part of this is fueled, as the paper notes, by a new regulatory requirement that pilots for commercial carriers have a much increased number of hours in order to take that job.  This has resulted in a pilot shortage, which was coming on anyhow, and it's also meant that its more expensive to operate in the small venues.  A law of unintended consequences thing, sort of.

This plan would have to get past the legislature, of course, and I'm somewhat skeptical that in the current political environment that will occur.  The paper interviewed Chuck Grey with the nearly predictable result of Grey, who is a far right conservative fellow traveler with the Wyoming Liberty Group, not being keen on the idea. The surprising part of that was that Grey wasn't as hostile to the idea as I would have expected, even though he doesn't support it. Grey told the Trib; "We need to continue to look at the current situation and purse competition".

That isn't going to work, actually.  Regional air travel is limited here as its not economic.  Chuck feels the solution is to attract Southwestern which. . .isn't going to happen.

I can see the opposition to this plan and what it will entail already.  "Socialism!"  But the fact of the matter is that the American transportation infrastructure is already government supported, with the except of the railroads.  The poor railroads have to make it on their own for some reason but this isn't true of other things.  American highways and streets are not, after all, privately owned.  When you drive into your subdivision you likely don't  pay a toll to the homeowners association, and there isn't a Wyoming State Turnpike Company that owns the highways.  Nope, all subsidized.  Indeed, we're so used to this that we don't even consider the inequities in the funding of highways.

Looked at that way WYDOT's plan is really farsighted.  The lack of intrastate air travel has long been known to be something that hurts Wyoming's economy.  The airports are barely making as it is. Some, like Natrona County's, are real gems.   What WYDOT is proposing isn't really any more radical than what the state and the towns are already doing with wheeled transportation.

4.  No wheat.

 Wheat in Maryland, yes Maryland, 1944.

In a surprising article, no doubt picked up from a wire service, the Trib informs us that there wasn't a lot of wheat planted this year.  Just too much on the market already, so farmers have switched to other things, like chickpeas.

5. Gillette admits it has two high schools

Craig Colorado's 1920 high school athletic teams.

Not in the Tribune . . . well it probably is but I don't read the sports section, Gillette was finally forced to admit that its two "campuses" were two separate high schools and so now it fields two sets of sports teams. I'm told that the schools will have boundaries, like most do, that will determine which you go to, but right now you could elect which means that all the good football players, I'm told, went to one school.  I'm not sure which that is, but the other one played down here last week and it was a complete blowout in favor of NCHS.

I don't even follow football, but I know that, so it was truly a blow out.

Sunday Morning Scene: Churches of the West: United Methodist Church, Worland Wyoming

Churches of the West: United Methodist Church, Worland Wyoming:

The United Methodist Church in Worland Wyoming.  This Church fits into the Gothic Architecture category, but like a lot of churches in this region of Wyoming, it has some Romanesque features as well.

And now Port Arthur.

Once again, I find myself oddly connected with places in Texas hit by Hurricane Harvey.  This time Beaumont and Port Arthur.

Street in Port Arthur, Texas.  A lot of Port Arthur looks like this, although it also has, or maybe I should say had, some newer areas as well.

Port Arthur hasn't exactly done well in recent years, probably recent decades.  I don't know what happened to it, although I have my guesses.  One person I know who grew up there gave me his views on what occurred to the town, somewhat shaded in careful terms so as to not sound quite so harsh on his hometown, but it's clearly not doing well, or has had some pretty rough recent times.

 

The actual port.

Perhaps the Hotel Sabine best symbolizes it.  Janice Joplin, who was from Port Arthur, once gave a big concert there.  Sort of a homecoming of sorts.  It's not far from a museum on the Gulf Coast that prominently features here, although she wasn't so well received in her hometown during her lifetime.

 

These photos depict the Hotel Sabine in Port Arthur, Texas. The hotel is an abandoned ruin and has been for decades.

 

The Hotel Sabine certainly isn't the only messed up abandoned building in downtown Port Arthur.

I don't know what this building was, but it must have been a good looking building in its day.

Downtown Port Arthur has been undergoing a much needed renovation.  Hurricane Harvey clearly won't be helping that.

One thing I'd note is that all of the older part of the town is right on the port.  News footage I've seen of the disaster have shown some scenes from way up in town, however. That makes me wonder about the old parts of the town, which have surely been hit before.  Some of those areas are a mess, like depicted above, but others are not.  Or at least they were not.

Port Arthur's library.

Lamar State College in Port Arthur, Texas.  The back of this building looks out on the port.

Truly, a tragedy.

Poster Saturday: All Who Work Seriously Celebrate Labor Day

For Labor Day Weekend, our poster of the week.  This from the very early 1920s.

This poster is clearly by the same artist who did a popular series of early workplace motivational posters which I've put somewhere earlier in the history of this blog.

Best Post of the Week of August 27, 2017

Best posts of the week of August 27, 2017:

And now Port Arthur.

It is a very strange thing . . .

Conscription in the English Speaking World. Passing an Anniversary

Send Off Day for the 27th Division. The New York National Guard leaves for Camp Wadsworth, South Carolina. August 30, 1917.

The plank in our own eye. Considering the memorials again.

Airport flaps and the law of unintended consequences. Parking should be free? No, it shouldn't, and it actually isn't.

This Is Why Eating Healthy Is Hard (Time Travel Dietician)

Airport flaps and the law of unintended consequences. Parking should be free? No, it shouldn't, and it actually isn't.

 

Flying back from Tulsa, Oklahoma.  A trip which entails going from Tulsa to Denver (cheaply) and then from Denver to Casper (expensively).  Parking while you are in Tulsa is hardly going to be a significant element of your costs.

You must pay for everything in this world one way and another. There is nothing free except the Grace of God. You cannot earn that or deserve it.

Maddie Ross in True Grit (written by Charles Portis)

I sometimes get the feeling recently that the Star Tribune is looking for something to do.  It probably needs something to do as its paper declines to the size of a large pamphlet and its reduced to running columns from the national syndicates.

Maybe not, but it's hard to look at the story on airport parking at the Natrona County International Airport as a real story.  Or at least its hard to get all worked up about it.  But I suppose its a legitimate story.

Here's the deal.

The airport is putting in some new parking, but it isn't in yet.  It won't be, maybe, for a long time, as its part of the airport's strategic plan, not a present project.

Big deal, you might say.

Well, it sort of is, maybe, in that there's a Wyoming state law that provides:

For public convenience, commissioners or boards having jurisdiction to regulate parking of vehicles shall provide free parking areas adequate to accommodate at least twenty percent of the number of vehicle parking spaces for which a fee is charged.

That's nice, eh?

Well, it is. And it was a law that was backed by former Natrona County Democratic legislator, Dick Sadler.

So, what's the deal, you may ask?

Well, the free parking is 1.5 miles distant from the terminal.  Quite a ways.  Probably nobody is going to park there.  At least not very many people, and not very often.

The tribune, alerted to this (it seems to have come up in recent airport board meetings), interviewed Natrona County Airport Board president Joe MacGuire on this.  MacGuire, who holds a pilots license (and whose father once kept a really neat A26 Invader out at the airport), is also a Republican state representative from Natrona County.  He tends to be blunt.  So, he told the Tribune that he knew it was a long ways away and admitted that its unlikely to be used.  He even stated , about the law;“It was kind of added in there at the very end and wasn’t even placed in a part of the statute that directly deals with parking,  Honestly, it’s kind of an unfunded mandate"

You know, it is an unfunded mandate.

Now, this is just the sort of thing that's fun for some people to get their back's arched up about.  Dick Sadler, the former legislator who often focused on Democratic populist type things while in the legislature has been working on this, apparently, out at the Airport and stated about the situation; "I passed that law and they hate my guts for it."

M'eh.

I very much doubt that.

But some folks are mad.  One friend of mine with far left political leanings commented "It's always obnoxious when rich people like MacGuire are quoted saying shit like, 'I wish everything at the airport was free.' I'm sure he's not really that much of a tool."

A very nice mural, obviously put up before terrorist attacks made extra security necessary, at the airport.  I have no doubt that most of these folks don't walk to walk 1.5 miles to the terminal. . . but I also have no doubt that saving $20.00 makes much of a difference to their trip.

MacGuire did say that, in the interview, but maybe he just deserves credit for being honest.

Consider the following.   The airport is only within $33,000 of going into the red.  That's really tight.  According to MacGuire the free parking at the airport costs the airport  $165,000. That makes quite a difference.

And now we learn, on top of it, that Allegiant Air is pulling out of Casper, and that will cost the airport $26,000.  With that loss, that $33,000 in the black becomes only $7,000.

That's really tight.

And as the airport manager noted, that's just the direct costs to the airport, not the ancillary loss, and that's likely to occur.  So that $26,000 direct loss is likely to become a bigger loss.  Indeed, it almost certainly will. Quite a few of those Allegiant travelers would have, well, parked at the airport while they were in Los Vegas (which is where Allegiant flew to from here).  That's a loss.  So, we can probably say that bare minimum, at least right now, the airport has probably less than a $5,000 margin, post Allegiant, before it goes into the red.

And while "free parking" is just the sort of "looking out for the average man" type of program that folks like to get behind, in this case, it makes darned little sense in general.

Indeed, the common thesis behind such things is that this protects the interest of the little guy. That would presuppose, in this instance, that the little guy is able to afford a ticket, set by the airlines not the airport, to fly out of Casper.  Most Casperites can in fact afford to fly out of here, but its so expensive that many, including most experienced travelers, actually choose to drive to Denver and catch a plane from there. The most expensive leg of air travel in and out of Casper is the flight to Denver or Salt Lake City.

The B Concourse (United Air Lines) in Denver.

Indeed, generally if you do that (and maybe you have to), you then park your car in a public lot that's so far from the actual Denver terminal that its located just outside of Dallas, Texas.  Or at least it feels that way.  And you catch a bus from there to the airport terminal.

Ground Transportation, Denver International Airport.

All of which makes the "free parking" at the Natrona County International Airport more than a little bit absurd.  You can shave off a little of the costs of prolonged parking, sure, but not much.  And any free parking is always going to be second best and always, therefore, going to entail an added element of risk for whatever you left there.  All this means that the thought was nice, but extremely unrealistic.

 

The view from Salt Lake City's airport.  Like a lot of business travelers, I go to both airports a great deal.

Something that the residents of the County don't appreciate much, I think, is that the airport is a real gem.  We're very lucky to have it. We're so acclimated to it that we don't realize what a major piece of infrastructure it is.  The runways are massive.  Some of the runways, I'd note, are retired from use and aren't maintained, and there's no plans to put them back in use. That's a real shame.

The entire airport is a legacy of the Second World War.  It was the third airport in the county, replacing a second that is now the Town of Bar Nunn.  There's no earthly way that Bar Nunn airport, which wasn't even completely flat, could serve the needs of the county today.  Not even close.  It was likely barely adequate at the time it closed.  The Natrona County International Airport was built as a training airbase for B-24s and B-17s during World War Two, on a much flatter piece of ground, and the runways are numerous and enormous.  Beyond that, probably a majority of the hangers date to the Second World War and are gigantic. The airport complex it self features numerous buildings that date from the original airbase as well.  It's a huge, and great, airport.  Probably the closest thing to it in the state is Cheyenne's municipal airport, once a major stop for transcontinental air mail runs, but it's a shadow of what Casper's airport is.*

The airport receives quite a bit of international traffic, given its great facilities.  If kept up, and they're trying, it'll continue to.  Better yet, if the retired runways could be put back in use it would be fantastic, but there's no money to do that.**

 

British Antarctic Survey airplane at the Natrona County International Airport.  This is a common site at our airport.  Surprisingly, they did not fly here from the UK for the free parking.  Go figure.

Which takes us back to parking.  The airport's master plan is to put in new parking near the terminal, and it will include public parking, so that will solve the problem.

But it won't solve the short funding problem.

And, everything that legislators mandate must be "free", no matter what it is, in the end, isn't.  It's a reverse tax of some sort, or it just becomes a public impossibility.  Free health care, free college, free highways, whatever, aren't really free.  When there are few public "frees" its easy to appreciate that, when there are thousands of such mandates, however, they cease to be.

Which doesn't mean that they aren't worthwhile.  Some are. Some are not.  One like this, in its intent, is perfectly understandable.

But it isn't free.

__________________________________________________________________________________

*Indeed I'll note here that the location of the Wyoming Air National  Guard's infrastructure at the Cheyenne airport is somewhat unfortunate.  The Natrona County International Airport was built by the United States Army Air Corps and it has everything, including size and an out of town location, that an airbase needs. Cheyenne's airport is surrounded by the town, on the other hand (you can circumnavigate the darned thing by car) and is smaller.  In terms of placement it wouldn't matter whether the Guard's airbase was in Casper or Cheyenne and the only reason I can think of it being in Cheyenne is that its close to F. E. Warren Air Force Base, which is also in Cheyenne. But F. E. Warren houses missile wings and nothing else, and doesn't have a large air strip itself. The aircraft at F. E. Warren are helicopters.

Maybe this is something that Natrona County should ponder, although over the years some super huge hangers have been built for the Air Guard in Cheyenne and it is, no doubt, too darned late now.

**Military traffic. . . is anyone listening?

The Big Picture: Two Harbors, Minnesota. September 1, 1917

Friday Farming: "Trump’s olive siege of farming fortress Europe".

It's mostly the headline that caught my attention on this one:

Trump’s olive siege of farming fortress Europe

Brussels fears that fast-moving US trade case could undermine €58 billion-per-year Common Agricultural Policy.

But this item is quite interesting:

For Brussels, the case could set an alarming precedent. Under the sacrosanct Common Agricultural Policy, the EU pours about 40 percent of its budget into farm subsidies and it is highly protective of any trade investigation that questions the legality of those payments. Last year, Brussels pushed back hard against Australia’s moves to put tariffs on Italian tinned tomatoes.

40% of the budget in farm subsidies?  Wow.

Does that mean 40% of the EU's overall budget, or of its Common Agricultural Policy budget?  It appears to mean 40% of its actual budget, which would be an impressive figure.

This fight apparently comes about due to olives:

The U.S. Department of Commerce opened a probe last month to determine whether to slap duties on ripe olives from Spain, after Californian producers argued their Iberian rivals receive an unfair advantage because of the EU’s lavish farm subsidy scheme.

I do like Spanish olives.

The plank in our own eye. Considering the memorials again.

Why do you observe the splinter in your brother's eye and never notice the great log in your own?  And how dare you say to your brother, "Let me take that splinter out of your eye," when, look, there is a great log in your own?

Hypocrite! Take the log out of your own eye first, and then you will see clearly enough to take the splinter out of your brother's eye.

Matthew, Chapter 7.

Recently I made several posts on the big battles about the Confederate memorials.  From those it's probably pretty clear that I have mixed feelings about the whole thing.  On one hand, I think that most of those memorials went up in the teens and twenties riding a the crest of the "Lost Cause" myth that did violence to history itself.  On the other hand, I also think that they stand as reminders as to how things were viewed when they were put up, and I think that's valuable in and of itself.  One thing I noted there was that perhaps a page should be taken out of the book on how Indian War memorials have been handled in the US, in which I stated:

All over there's been a movement to remove monuments that were erected in earlier times to things that now are recognized as morally wrong.  Yale University, for example, has been fighting over the removal of symbols that demonstrate that some of its early donors were slave holders.  But removing them won't change that fact.  At least one other university went through something similar as well.  Probably almost any Eastern university has some money that came, originally, out of human trafficking and something that recalls that in honorific form.  Removing that causes that to be forgotten, it doesn't change the fact that it occurred. And it needs to be recalled that it occurred, and that something about earlier generations even celebrated it, or at least could but it out of mind.  Taking the evidence away doesn't correct the wrong, it just dulls the memory until it is erased entirely.

Indeed, such monuments, in my view, can serve as monuments to a greater historical reality, and that's what's occurred in my region of the country.  There are a lot of monuments put up in the early 20th Century to people and events involved in the Indian War that were massively one sided and even racist, as we'd view that now.  Some have come down, such as the "First White Man's Cabin" marker here in Natrona County.  But most have not. Rather, efforts have been made to correctly name things, such as changing the Little Big Horn battle ground to that name (which was always used here, oddly enough) form Custer Battleground, and where older monuments exist new explanatory ones have been added that enhance the understanding of what actually occurred.

Monument at the Fetterman Battleground, placed in the early 20th Century.  The battleground itself has a large number of very good explanatory signs that explain the battle and what occurred there.

Something continued to make me uncomfortable about all that, however, and I think I can say why, even though I was processing it at the time.

Somehow it didn't occur to me that I'd taken a photograph of just such a memorial location recently when I posted the topic, but I hadn't put it up yet.  I just put it up on two of our companion blogs and I think this helps focus my queasy feeling over the whole things.  This would be my recent post on Some Gave All, which focuses (or has come to focus) on memorials of all types.  Here's the entry in its entirety. We'll break it down from there:

Some Gave All: The Sundance, Wyoming Rest Stop Memorials.: 

 Memorials at the Sundance Wyoming Rest Stop.

I usually don't put a bunch of memorials, even at one single spot, in one single post.  Each, I generally feel, deserves its own post as each is its own topic, in terms of what it commemorates.

 Black Hills Sign at the Sundance Wyoming Rest Stop.

I'm making an exception here, however, as these are grouped so nicely, they seem to require a singular treatment. 

The first item we address is the Black Hills sign. This sign discusses the Black Hills, which straddle the Wyoming/South Dakota border.

 Crook County sign.

The second sign discusses Crook County, named after Gen. George Crook, and in which Sundance is situated.

The sign oddly doesn't really go into Crook himself, but then its a memorial for the county, not the general.  Still a controversial general, Crook came into this region in the summer campaign of 1876 which saw him go as far north as southern Montana before meeting the Sioux and Cheyenne at Rosebud several days prior to Custer encountering them at Little Big Horn.  Crook engaged the native forces and then withdrew in a move that's still both praised and condemned.  At the time of the formation of Crook County in 1888 he was sufficiently admired that the county was named after him, at a time at which he was still living.

 Custer Expedition Memorial.

Finally, the Rest Stop is the location of an old monument noting the passage of Custer's 1874 expedition into the Black Hills, which is generally regarded as the precursor of the European American invasion of the Black Hills and the Powder River Expedition of 1876.  Obviously, it's more complicated than that, but its safe to say that the discovery of gold in 1874 gave way to a gold rush which, in turn, made conflict with the Sioux, who had taken over the Black Hills (by force) from the Crow, inevitable.

This memorial is interesting in the super heated atmosphere of today given that the historical view has really changed since 1940, when this roadside monument was dedicated (surprisingly late, I'd note, compared to similar Wyoming monuments). In 1940 Custer was still regarded as a hero.  By the 1970s, however, he was regarded in the opposite fashion, by and large, at least in terms of his popular portrays are concerned.  The 1874 expedition into the Black Hills is not favorably recalled in history now at all.

I have to wonder, however, in terms of the history if this expedition changed history the way it is recalled.  The Black Hills always seem to be an attractant.  They attracted the Sioux who took them (in living memory in 1874) from the Crows and it seems highly likely that they would would have attracted European Americans as well.  Certainly they continued to even after the hopes of gold seekers were dashed.

Now, it's obviously the marker to the Black Hills Expedition of 1874 that has my focus here.  Let's take a second look at that memorial, and what it says, and what I said about it:

 Custer Expedition Memorial.

Finally, the Rest Stop is the location of an old monument noting the passage of Custer's 1874 expedition into the Black Hills, which is generally regarded as the precursor of the European American invasion of the Black Hills and the Powder River Expedition of 1876.  Obviously, it's more complicated than that, but its safe to say that the discovery of gold in 1874 gave way to a gold rush which, in turn, made conflict with the Sioux, who had taken over the Black Hills (by force) from the Crow, inevitable.

This memorial is interesting in the super heated atmosphere of today given that the historical view has really changed since 1940, when this roadside monument was dedicated (surprisingly late, I'd note, compared to similar Wyoming monuments). In 1940 Custer was still regarded as a hero.  By the 1970s, however, he was regarded in the opposite fashion, by and large, at least in terms of his popular portrays are concerned.  The 1874 expedition into the Black Hills is not favorably recalled in history now at all.

I have to wonder, however, in terms of the history if this expedition changed history the way it is recalled.  The Black Hills always seem to be an attractant.  They attracted the Sioux who took them (in living memory in 1874) from the Crows and it seems highly likely that they would would have attracted European Americans as well.  Certainly they continued to even after the hopes of gold seekers were dashed.

And now let's take a second look at how the State of Wyoming is handling the setting for this memorial today:

Some Gave All: The Sundance, Wyoming Rest Stop Memorials.: 

 Memorials at the Sundance Wyoming Rest Stop.

I wonder if you see what I'm seeing here?

Now, this location is in the Black Hills itself and just over the South Dakota state line.  The Black Hills have been the focus of a protracted argument between the Sioux, the United States, and basically South Dakota and Wyoming for decades, with that focus being very sharp since the 1970s.  Their argument is that the Black Hills are sacred to them, and that the United States stole it.

Let's consider the actual history of this for just a moment.

George Armstrong Custer.  Civil War general, post war colonel.  Hero of the Civil War in his own day, and still to those who study Michigan's cavalry in that war.  Hero of the Indian Wars to the public during his life and certainly for a time after his death, but controversial and somewhat disliked officer to his fellow officers and men.  Genocidal agent in revisionist histories of the 1970s and bad commander serving a dubious cause in modern times. But the same guy the whole time, really.

Custer went into the Black Hills on a military expedition, with part of that expressed military expedition being to explore the region for economic minerals.  That surely violated at least the spirit of the treaty of the late 1860s that had carved this region out for the Sioux.

Now, we should note, this this wasn't George Armstrong Custer's idea.  He was a soldier and he was ordered to go there.  The decision to look at the Black Hills was done by the Administration, and no matter what we think of it, it truly was hedging the bets on the treat that was entered into by the prior Administration.  Grant was the President, and he was generally fairly sympathetic to the Indians conceptually, even if in terms of actual policy they really lost out under him.  Andrew Johnson's administration had concluded the Treaty of 1868, which reserved the Black Hills for the Sioux, who truly did regard it as sacred. None of that had anything to do with Col. Custer, who was simply following orders.

 Crow Indians in Montana in 1908. These two men are old enough to have fought against the Sioux in their youth.

It did have something to do, however, with the Crow. When the Sioux received the Black Hills it recognized, in effect, that they'd conquered them from teh Crow.  But in 1874 the Crow had not acknowledged that at all.  Indeed, the amazing thing acout the Crow is how tolerant they'd been in putting up with US blundering on the whole topic of Sioux expansion onto the plains and into t he rangeland of northern Wyoming and Montana, which was theirs by right of long occupation.  Indeed,t he Crow had been loosely allied with the US in Red Cloud's War and had offered to throw in with the US in a conclusive fashion prior to the Fetterman disaster.  If Col. Carrington had taken the offer up chances are that the Crow would have turned the tied and the Sioux would have been pushed out of the Powder River Basin and back to the Black Hills prior to 1868.  That the Crow were fighting for the entire area was well known to Americans of the time, if wholly forgotten now.  Indeed, one old Frontiersman present at the 1868 council noted to a Sioux chief, regarding the Black Hills, "you just stole it from the Crow, who stole it from someone else".  If the Crow "stole" the Black Hills I have no idea, but they'd certainly been fighting to hold or recover it at least as early as the 1840s.

 Two Crow women in the very early 20th Century.  These women would have been born and have grown to adulthood in the 19th Century when memories of Crow possession of the Black Hills were still strong.  Note the title, which would be regarded as offensive today.

The Sioux, for their part, invaded the area as they were being pushed out of the upper Midwest by European American expansion.  It's hard not to sympathize with them on that, but at the same time their reaction was basically an invasion of their neighbors to the west, an action that was followed by their allies, the Cheyenne, who interestingly are not a closely related people.  The Cheyenne, for their part, were pushed out of the Great Lakes region by the Ojibwa.   The Sioux, interestingly enough, had been allied with the British in the Midwest against the United States, providing an example of how Europeans entered into alliances with native peoples and vice versa.  The first combat between the US and the Sioux on the plains, however, came not over a land contest, but because an Army unit positioned itself between a Sioux band and a Crow band in an attempt to enforce the official US policy of peace on the plains.  The Sioux asked them to move, and they wouldn't, so they were attacked as a result.  This was, if I recall correctly, in the 1840s.

All of which may be more or less interesting, but put in context, it makes this entire story rather confusing in terms of who is right and who is wrong.  The US should not have been exploring the Black Hills for economic minerals, even if it wasn't officially seeking to violate any treaties.  The US also really shouldn't have given the Black Hills solely to the Sioux in 1868 as that violated a long and rightly held claim of the Crows.  Should the Sioux have pushed the Crows out of the Black Hills?  That doesn't really seem right either.  There doesn't seem to be any clean hands in this story, except perhaps that of the Crows.

Wyoming roadside monument dating from the 50s or 60s commemorating the fight between the Crows and the Shoshone, and retelling one of the versions of the Crow heart story.  Notable on this sign is the retelling of the positive attributes of Chief Washakie which included that "No white man's scalp hung in this chief's teepee."  Would this be politically correct today.  The Crow, it should be noted, can't even seem to catch a break in signs of this type.

So what's the point, should all these signs be updated and corrected?

Santa Fe Plaza Obelisk, Santa Fe Plaza, Santa Fe New Mexico, commemorating certain Indian Wars battles in New Mexico.

This inscription reads:  "To the heroes who have fallen in various battles with [            ] Indians in the Territory of New Mexico.".  The word "savage" was removed from the memorial.  Was this an improvement, or the erasure of a historical view that we'd do well to recall that it was once commonly held?

No, I think not.

Rather, these signs serve as memorials not only in the context of those who placed them, but also as reminders of previously held common views. We would do well to recall that those views were held, and why, even if we disagree with them.  We won't learn that by tearing them down.