December 9, 1920. People at their occupations.

Frank Ferera and Anthony Franchini making a recording with vocalist The Crescent Trio, December 9, 1920.

On Wednesdays I try to post a "Mid Week At Work" item, but I don't always do it.  Indeed, I miss that feature more often than not.  Yesterday, oddly enough, I looked for a photograph of a professional singer to post for that theme, getting my days of the week messed up for the second week in a row.

Today, I just happened to stumble across the photo posted above, which is 100 years old, today.

Frank Ferera was a professional musician and was Portuguese Hawaiian.  For those who might not know, the Portugese were and are an important demographic in Hawaii.  Ferera came to the mainland in 1915 and remained there as a musician thereafter.  He died at age 66 in 1951.  While Ferera would always remain a guitar player, he quit being a professional musician, at leat for a time, abruptly in 1927, at which time steel guitars were supplanting conventional guitars in Hawaiian music, which was his genra.

Anthony Franchini was an Italian born guitar player who partnered with Ferera and, even though he was an Italian by birth, he too specialized at first in Hawaiian music.  He'd come to the US as a boy with his immigrant family and was self taught.  He was a veteran of World War One, having served as an artilleryman, and having joined the Army prior to becoming a U.S. citizen.

He continued on with a long and prolific music career after Ferera quit.  He served in the Army again as a Drill Instructor, at which time he became a U.S. citizen.  Late in life he moved to Nevada and re arranged The Star Spangled Banner, with Nevada backing his arrangement in several bills in Congress in an attempt to have them officially adopted.  During this period he was active in Republican politics.  He died 1997 at age 99.

Dr. Oliveira de Lima and his wife Flora on this date in 1920.  He was just 53 years old at the time this photograph was taken, which says something about aging in earlier eras.

Dr. Oliveira de Lima, a Brazilian retired diplomat, was photographed on this day in 1920.   This same year he was the donor of a major Hispanic book collection to the Catholic University of America.

Dr. Olieveira would live until 1928.  Flora until 1940. The book collection remains at the Catholic University.

Freshman members of Congress, December 9, 1920.  Heck, with the average age of American politicians being what it is, these guys are probably all still there.

A new Congress was rolling into Washington D. C.  It's notable that at this point in the nation's history, the Presidential inauguration was still in March.  Given this, this wasn't a lame duck Congress, but they had a lame duck President still for months.

At this point in time visiting delegations from the French and British militaries were still quite common in the wake of the Great War, and the French were still giving decorations to American military figures.

U.S. Army General Peter C. Harris receiving decoration from visiting French delegation.

Gen. Peter C. Harris received one such award on this day.  

Harris had entered the U.S. Army in 1888, after graduating from West Point, and first served as an infantry officer.  He'd been at Kettle Hill during the Spanish American War and was, at the time of this photograph, the Adjutant General.  He would live until 1951.

Personal Retroactive Counterfactuals as an historical exercise.

Illustration of Kristin Lavransdatter, a brilliant and highly non romantic exploration of a Medieval Norwegian woman that conveys, as fiction, the life of a common northern European in the Middle Ages much more vividly than a straight history could have done.  I suspect that the author Sigrid Undset put herself in her protagonists shoes many times in writing it. So much so, in fact, that her exploration of Kristin's world impacted her own life to an enormous extent.

We touched on this the other day in regard to World War Two, looking back on 1940, and 1941, from the prospective of 2020 and 2021, and 1980 and 1981.

Okay, what do we mean "retroactive counter factual"?

Well, something that's common enough and which I think all people do. That is imagining yourself in an earlier time.  Certainly, I think, writers do it.  You almost have to in order to write historical fiction, or even history, very well.  

Now, first of all I want to distinguish this from the self delusion of "I wish I lived" type fantasies, which is something else.  I've written a time or two on that as well.  People look at the era they currently live in, with all the strife and problems, and imagine if they'd only lived in some simpler time things would be prefect.  The problem with that is that its a species of self delusion and, oddly enough, most particularly about a person's own era.  I.e., this is the worst of times and there was a better time. . . 

That doesn't mean that there weren't better times, but any time is the times, and every time has problems.  Deluding yourself that "if only I lived 100 years ago" sets aside that 100 years ago was full of problems, as was 200 years ago, 300 years ago, and so on.

Anyhow, I do think that as an historical exercise people looking back has some merits to it and I wonder if history teachers ever assign this as an exercise?  I don't think so, but I wonder if would have merit.

As we noted, when we tend to do this as an exercise we tend to retain the framework of our lives otherwise, which makes it a more useful exercise. We wonder how often this is done.  I suspect that unless that's done, no real lessons are conveyed.

And by that, what we mean, is placing things somewhat in the context of our actual lives.  We noted that the other day in noting that if we were of military age, more or less, in 1940, we'd otherwise assume that we grew up on the same place, graduated from a high school in a year that has an equal place in the decade with others, etc.  In other words, as I looked back the other day I imagined that instead of graduating in 1981 from high school, I graduated in 1941, and from the same high school

From there, you can explore what options would have presented themselves to you. For example, I live in the same town now that I graduated from in 1981.  If I had graduated in 1941, the same high school was there.  My options in life would have been pretty much the same at the time, which is something a person ought to keep in mind in such a mental exercise and which helps accurately explore the topic.  In 1941 the economy here was in the middle of a war induced oil boom, for example, which would have been good to know if I was imagining what the life of a 17 or 18 year old here was like in 1941.  The same was sort of true, the oil boom part, in 1981.  There were some real differences in the economies here of 41 and 81 however.

In 41 there was no junior college, as they called them commonly then, as there is now.  Indeed, my father attended the local community college in what would have been one of its very early classes.  It was located in the high school at the time, which I would find dispiriting now, but which provided a real opportunity then.  But it didn't exist in 41.  I think it may have come in around 1946.

That would mean that educationally, as I noted, I'd have gone on to the University of Wyoming, probably, in 1941.

I note all of this as this presents roadblocks and diversions to how a person might engage in such a mental exercise, and that's the point.  Too often when people do something like this they imagine going back to a perfect world  The classic example is the Middle Ages and where you would have fit into them.

I can just as easily do that, as a mental exercise, but if I do there's more leaps. For one thing, in order to make that realistic, I'd have to go back to one of my ancestral cultures and locations.  I know them, so that's easy enough.  But more than that, I'd have to keep things realistic.

Usually when people do this they imagine themselves living in a castle and being a knight or something.  Indeed, I've seen exercises written for children which were "what was it like to live in a castle?".  Well, most people at that time wouldn't have know the answer to that question.

Most people would have known the answer to "what was it like to live in a hovel and subsist mostly a diet of grains augmented by whatever wild rabbits I could snare". That's quite a bit different.

But maybe a more useful lesson.

Retroactive Counter Factual. Imagining yourself seventy-nine years ago.

Romanticizing the Past

Am I the only one who finds Korean boy bands to be super creepy?

As in really creepy?

Frankly, I find Korean girl bands to be pretty creepy also.  

The other day an issue of People was laying around and I thumbed through it and found an article on a Korean K Pop girl band.  Really creepy. They're obviously the Bubble Gum of their day in a decade people will look back on them laughingly, with their assembled personalities and westernized pink hair, etc.  Indeed, people will probably find them uncomfortable.

But the boy bands?  Really creepy.

Blog Mirror: In Blue States and Red, Pandemic Upends Public Services and Jobs

The region in the NYT and indeed the town in it as well, with the whose of the court system in a time of economic struggle noted.

We criticize the NYT here a fair amount, but this area rarely makes an appearance in it, so we're noting it.

In Blue States and Red, Pandemic Upends Public Services and Jobs

As a standoff over federal aid persists, state and local governments are making deep budget cuts. “Everything’s going to slow down,” one official said.

The Aerodrome: Chuck Yeager passes at age 97.

The Aerodrome: Chuck Yeager passes at age 97.: 

Chuck Yeager passes at age 97.

Brigadier General Charles Elwood Yeager died yesterday at age 97.

Yeager entered the United States Army Air Force in 1941 as a private.  He was an aircraft mechanic at first but volunteered for flight training and was promoted to Flight Officer, a rank more or less equivalent to warrant officer.  He flew P51s during World War Two and was stationed in the ETO.  He became a test pilot following World War Two and famously broke the sound barrier in that role flying the X1 "Glamourous Glennis", which was named after his wife.

Yeager had a long Air Force career which was likely somewhat arrested, as famous as he was, by the fact that he was not a college graduate, having entered the Air Force at a time in which it was still possible to become a pilot without a college degree.  The movie The Right Stuff, in which Yeager was played by Sam Shepard (and in which Yeager had a cameo role as a bar tender), based on the book by Tom Wolfe, asserted that he was ineligible to become an astronaut for that reason.  Whether or not that is true, he certainly was a justifiably famous character and in some ways his passing on December 7 was oddly symbolic.

 

Tempus fugit

I was at a store on Sunday when a fellow I know there told me he was retiring.  I was stunned.  He noted that he'd worked there eighteen years.  My wife remembered he'd worked at a predecessor store we went to before that.

He noted the time had passed by rapidly.

Last Friday, when I left the office, a man older than me was helping his father into the building.  His father was wearing a baseball cap, noting that he was a World War Two veteran.  I was actually surprised, as there are so few left.

On Sunday night, I typed out my counterfactual on what it would have been like to graduate from high school in 1941, when I in fact graduated in 1981.  In that, I noted that men my age now were in that class of 1941.  I don't feel that old, and I guess in 1981 they weren't that old.  1981 doesn't seem that long ago to me.

Tempus fugit.  But it's okay, really.

Somehow, those close to me in my past who have gone ahead seem closer now than ever.

Those Tires. Was, Lex Anteinternet: The Week. Old Injuries and Old Addictions (Coffee...

Lex Anteinternet: The Week. Old Injuries and Old Addictions (Coffee...:

Man these tires are massive.  And they sure look like radials, even though they can't be.

The Long Range Desert Group in North Africa. These guys needed to hydrate.

December 7, 1920. Wilson's last State of the Union Address.

Woodrow Wilson, President from March 4, 1913 to March 4, 1921.

Woodrow Wilson delivered his final State of the Union address.  Like the prior years, it was read to Congress rather than personally delivered by Wilson due to Wilson's ill health.  Wilson had started the tradition of personally delivering his address.

It read:

GENTLEMEN OF THE CONGRESS:

When I addressed myself to performing the duty laid upon the President by the Constitution to present to you an annual report on the state of the Union, I found my thought dominated by an immortal sentence of Abraham Lincoln's-"Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith let us dare to do our duty as we understand it" -a sentence immortal because it embodies in a form of utter simplicity and purity the essential faith of the nation, the faith in which it was conceived, and the faith in which it has grown to glory and power. With that faith and the birth of a nation founded upon it came the hope into the world that a new order would prevail throughout the affairs of mankind, an order in which reason and right would take precedence over covetousness and force; and I believe that I express the wish and purpose of every thoughtful American when I say that this sentence marks for us in the plainest manner the part we should play alike in the arrangement of our domestic affairs and in our exercise of influence upon the affairs of the world.

By this faith, and by this faith alone, can the world be lifted out of its present confusion and despair. It was this faith which prevailed over the wicked force of Germany. You will remember that the beginning of the end of the war came when the German people found themselves face to face with the conscience of the world and realized that right was everywhere arrayed against the wrong that their government was attempting to perpetrate. I think, therefore, that it is true to say that this was the faith which won the war. Certainly this is the faith with which our gallant men went into the field and out upon the seas to make sure of victory.

This is the mission upon which Democracy came into the world. Democracy is an assertion of the right of the individual to live and to be treated justly as against any attempt on the part of any combination of individuals to make laws which will overburden him or which will destroy his equality among his fellows in the matter of right or privilege; and I think we all realize that the day has come when Democracy is being put upon its final test. The Old World is just now suffering from a wanton rejection of the principle of democracy and a substitution of the principle of autocracy as asserted in the name, but without the authority and sanction, of the multitude. This is the time of all others when Democracy should prove its purity and its spiritual power to prevail. It is surely the manifest destiny of the United States to lead in the attempt to make this spirit prevail.

There are two ways in which the United States can assist to accomplish this great object. First, by offering the example within her own borders of the will and power of Democracy to make and enforce laws which are unquestionably just and which are equal in their administration-laws which secure its full right to Labor and yet at the same time safeguard the integrity of property, and particularly of that property which is devoted to the development of industry and the increase of the necessary wealth of the world. Second, by standing for right and justice as toward individual nations. The law of Democracy is for the protection of the weak, and the influence of every democracy in the world should be for the protection of the weak nation, the nation which is struggling toward its right and toward its proper recognition and privilege in the family of nations.

The United States cannot refuse this role of champion without putting the stigma of rejection upon the great and devoted men who brought its government into existence and established it in the face of almost universal opposition and intrigue, even in the face of wanton force, as, for example, against the Orders in Council of Great Britain and the arbitrary Napoleonic decrees which involved us in what we know as the War of 1812.

I urge you to consider that the display of an immediate disposition on the part of the Congress to remedy any injustices or evils that may have shown themselves in our own national life will afford the most effectual offset to the forces of chaos and tyranny which are playing so disastrous a part in the fortunes of the free peoples of more than one part of the world. The United States is of necessity the sample democracy of the world, and the triumph of Democracy depends upon its success.

Recovery from the disturbing and sometimes disastrous effects of the late war has been exceedingly slow on the other side of the water, and has given promise, I venture-to say, of early completion only in our own fortunate country; but even with us the recovery halts and is impeded at times, and there are immediately serviceable acts of legislation which it seems to me we ought to attempt, to assist that recovery and prove the indestructible recuperative force of a great government of the people. One of these is to prove that a great democracy can keep house as successfully and in as business-like a fashion as any other government. It seems to me that the first step toward providing this is to supply ourselves with a systematic method of handling our estimates and expenditures and bringing them to the point where they will not be an unnecessary strain upon our income or necessitate unreasonable taxation; in other words, a workable budget system. And I respectfully suggest that two elements are essential to such a system-namely, not only that the proposal of appropriations should be in the hands of a single body, such as a single appropriations committee in each house of the Congress, but also that this body should be brought into such cooperation with the Departments of the Government and with the Treasury of the United States as would enable it to act upon a complete conspectus of the needs of the Government and the resources from which it must draw its income.

I reluctantly vetoed the budget bill passed by the last session of the Congress because of a constitutional objection. The House of Representatives subsequently modified the bill in order to meet this objection. In the revised form, I believe that the bill, coupled with action already taken by the Congress to revise its rules and procedure, furnishes the foundation for an effective national budget system. I earnestly hope, therefore, that one of the first steps to be taken by the present session of the Congress will be to pass the budget bill.

The nation's finances have shown marked improvement during the last year. The total ordinary receipts of $6,694,000,000 for the fiscal year 1920 exceeded those for 1919 by $1,542,000,000, while the total net ordinary expenditures decreased from $18,514,000,000 to $6,403,000,000. The gross public debt, which reached its highest point on August 31, 1919, when it was $26,596,000,000, had dropped on November 30, 1920, to $24,175,000,000.

There has also been a marked decrease in holdings of government war securities by the banking institutions of the country, as well as in the amount of bills held by the Federal Reserve Banks secured by government war obligations. This fortunate result has relieved the banks and left them freer to finance the needs of Agriculture, Industry, and Commerce. It has been due in large part to the reduction of the public debt, especially of the floating debt, but more particularly to the improved distribution of government securities among permanent investors. The cessation of the Government's borrowings, except through short-term certificates of indebtedness, has been a matter of great consequence to the people of the country at large, as well as to the holders of Liberty Bonds and Victory Notes, and has had an important bearing on the matter of effective credit control.

The year has been characterized by the progressive withdrawal of the Treasury from the domestic credit market and from a position of dominant influence in that market. The future course will necessarily depend upon the extent to which economies are practiced and upon the burdens placed upon the Treasury, as well as upon industrial developments and the maintenance of tax receipts at a sufficiently high level. The fundamental fact which at present dominates the Government's financial situation is that seven and a half billions of its war indebtedness mature within the next two and a half years. Of this amount, two and a half billions are floating debt and five billions, Victory Notes and War. Savings Certificates. The fiscal program of the Government must be determined with reference to these maturities. Sound policy demands that Government expenditures be reduced to the lowest amount which will permit the various services to operate efficiently and that Government receipts from taxes and salvage be maintained sufficiently high to provide for current requirements, including interest and sinking fund charges on the public debt, and at the same time retire the floating debt and part of the Victory Loan before maturity.

With rigid economy, vigorous salvage operations, and adequate revenues from taxation, a surplus of current receipts over current expenditures can be realized and should be applied to the floating debt. All branches of the Government should cooperate to see that this program is realized. I cannot overemphasize the necessity of economy in Government appropriations and expenditures and the avoidance by the Congress of practices which take money from the Treasury by indefinite or revolving fund appropriations. The estimates for the present year show that over a billion dollars of expenditures were authorized by the last Congress in addition to the amounts shown in the usual compiled statements of appropriations. This strikingly illustrates the importance of making direct and specific appropriations. The relation between the current receipts and current expenditures of the Government during the present fiscal year, as well as during the last half of the last fiscal year, has been disturbed by the extraordinary burdens thrown upon the Treasury by the Transportation Act, in connection with the return of the railroads to private control. Over $600,000,000 has already been paid to the railroads under this act-$350,000,000 during the present fiscal year; and it is estimated that further payments aggregating possibly $650,000,000 must still be made to the railroads during the current year. It is obvious that these large payments have already seriously limited the Government's progress in retiring the floating debt.

Closely connected with this, it seems to me, is the necessity for an immediate consideration of the revision of our tax laws. Simplification of the income and profits taxes has become an immediate necessity. These taxes performed an indispensable service during the war. The need for their simplification, however, is very great, in order to save the taxpayer inconvenience and expense and in order to make his liability more certain and definite. Other and more detailed recommendations with regard to taxes will no doubt be laid before you by the Secretary of the Treasury and the Commissioner of Internal Revenue.

It is my privilege to draw to the attention of Congress for very sympathetic consideration the problem of providing adequate facilities for the care and treatment of former members of the military and naval forces who are sick and disabled as the result of their participation in the war. These heroic men can never be paid in money for the service they patriotically rendered the nation. Their reward will lie rather in realization of the fact that they vindicated the rights of their country and aided in safeguarding civilization. The nation's gratitude must be effectively revealed to them by the most ample provision for their medical care and treatment as well as for their vocational training and placement. The time has come when a more complete program can be formulated and more satisfactorily administered for their treatment and training, and I earnestly urge that the Congress give the matter its early consideration. The Secretary of the Treasury and the Board for Vocational Education will outline in their annual reports proposals covering medical care and rehabilitation which I am sure will engage your earnest study and commend your most generous support.

Permit me to emphasize once more the need for action upon certain matters upon which I dwelt at some length in my message to the second session of the Sixty-sixth Congress. The necessity, for example, of encouraging the manufacture of dyestuffs and related chemicals; the importance of doing everything possible to promote agricultural production along economic lines, to improve agricultural marketing, and to make rural life more attractive and healthful; the need for a law regulating cold storage in such a way as to limit the time during which goods may be kept in storage, prescribing the method of disposing of them if kept beyond the permitted period, and requiring goods released from storage in all cases to bear the date of their receipt. It would also be most serviceable if it were provided that all goods released from cold storage for interstate shipment should have plainly marked upon each package the selling or market price at which they went into storage, in order that the purchaser might be able to learn what profits stood between him and the producer or the wholesale dealer. Indeed, It would be very serviceable to the public if all goods destined for interstate commerce were made to carry upon every packing case whose form made it possible a plain statement of the price at which they left the hands of the producer. I respectfully call your attention also to the recommendations of the message referred to with regard to a federal license for all corporations engaged in interstate commerce.

In brief, the immediate legislative need of the time is the removal of all obstacles to the realization of the best ambitions of our people in their several classes of employment and the strengthening of all instrumentalities by. which difficulties are to be met and removed and justice dealt out, whether by law or by some form of mediation and conciliation. I do not feel it to be my privilege at present to, suggest the detailed and particular methods by which these objects may be attained, but I have faith that the inquiries of your several committees will discover the way and the method.

In response to what I believe to be the impulse of sympathy and opinion throughout the United States, I earnestly suggest that the Congress authorize the Treasury of the United States to make to the struggling government of Armenia such a loan as was made to several of the Allied governments during the war, and I would also suggest that it would be desirable to provide in the legislation itself that the expenditure of the money thus loaned should be under the supervision of a commission, or at least a commissioner, from the United States in order that revolutionary tendencies within Armenia itself might not be afforded by the loan a further tempting opportunity.

Allow me to call your attention to the fact that the people of the Philippine Islands have succeeded in maintaining a stable government since the last action of the Congress in their behalf, and have thus fulfilled the condition set by the Congress as precedent to a consideration of granting independence to the Islands. I respectfully submit that this condition precedent having been fulfilled, it is now our liberty and our duty to keep our promise to the people of those islands by granting them the independence which they so honorably covet.

I have not so much laid before you a series of recommendations, gentlemen, as sought to utter a confession of faith, of the faith in which I was bred and which it is my solemn purpose to stand by until my last fighting day. I believe this to be the faith of America, the faith of the future, and of all the victories which await national action in the days to come, whether in America or elsewhere.

The same day featured a Senate Ladies Tea which was attended by Mrs. Harding.

 

Retroactive Counter Factual. Imagining yourself seventy-nine years ago.

It's always temping to look back at an historic event and imagine "where would I have been".  I have to admit, having an historical inclination and mindset, if you will, I do that often.

When I do, I usually imagine it with some calendar related restrains.  I'm not sure why, but to some degree I don't think you can accurately imagine where you would have been, and what you would have done, but for that.  The constraints of time, when you were born, and how that plays into where you are at anyone time, are an inescapable fact.  I know that I tend to do that pretty strongly, when inserting my hypothetical self into past events.

Having said that, for whatever reason, in seeing something on the upcoming 79th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, to some extent the real framework of "1941" struck me for the the first time, in a realistic sense just the other day.  It's weird, as I've looked back to World War Two quite a few times, as I imagine nearly everyone with a sense of history, and imagination, and wondered "where would I have been"?

I graduated from high school in 1981; forty hears after. . . well not actually forty years after, the Japanese raid on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.*  In May 1981 when I graduated from high school I was 17 years old.  I joined the National Guard that following August, by which time I was 18, not even telling my parents that I had done it before I had.  That, in some odd way, tend to have formed my frame of reference looking back, as that puts my actual military experience in context.

But in looking at the calendar of the United States in World War Two, the National Guard was mobilized in August 1940.  So if I imagine myself 40 years prior, and apply a sort of calendrical lock to it so that I would have graduated from high school in 1941, instead of 1981, the National Guard would have been mobilized for a year.

Now, I also know that lots of high school men, and no matter how we might imagine it the story of service during World War Two includes women, but far more it includes men, had been in the local unit of the National Guard at that time. Indeed, the 115th Cavalry, Horse Mech, included not only a lot of high school students, a significant percentage in fact, but it included a lot of underaged ones.  Would I have been in that number?  Those too  young to serve in the Army were discharged, along with those too aged and infirm to serve.  Were the 17 year old sent?  I imagine some where, some were not, depending upon their wishes and those of their parents, maybe.

I wonder.  I like to think that I would have, and just knowing myself I probably would have joined the unit in high school, probably whenever I could have, but who knows.  Maybe not?

Well, in my own actual life in my junior high years I was in the Civil Air Patrol and I did in fact join the National Guard when still a teenager.  So my guess is that I probably would have.  Almost certainly.  I didn't, however, join high school JrROTC (which was mandatory for those in our local high school until some date in the 1970s), so maybe not.  Indeed, at that time I conceived of myself as busy, so I may not have.

In August 1940 I would have been 17. So would that have meant that I would have been mobilized with the 115th?

Maybe.  It's hard to know for sure.  I know that the 115th discharged a lot of underaged soldiers, as noted above, right at the start of their mobilization, and I know that the U.S. Army required parents consent to enlist until you were 18.  Contrary to what people typically think, the service itself wasn't too keen on teenage soldiers at the time.  

I know that my father wouldn't have been, but it would have been just my father's consideration at the time, assuming my life otherwise played out as it did, my mother being horribly ill when I was 17.  I'd have only been 17 for a few months at the time and also knowing myself I very well may have waited until fall to join, if I'd been planning to.  I only joined the National Guard in August 1981 as I'd planned on going to the University of Wyoming that fall and joining ROTC but changed my mind and didn't want to be hypocritical to my stated desires, so I joined the Guard.

Indeed, looking back, I'm stunned how earnest I was in my convictions.

That plays a role here too.

So, on December 7, 1941, I might have been an 18 year old cavalryman at Ft. Lewis Washington, surprised, and not surprised, that the nation was finally at war.

Or I might have been an 18 year old University of Wyoming student (the community colleges didn't yet exist here).

If that was the case, and for reasons I can't quite define I think it more likely, I would have joined the service after that semester.  And it would have been the Army.

If I'd gone to Ft. Lewis with the National Guard at some point I would have cadred out, almost certainly, and have been assigned to some other unit as an NCO.  Likely armor, and that would have likely meant Operation Torch and the ETO in that branch.  Most of the war. . . if a person survived it.

If it was UW and on to the Army, I wouldn't have opted for armor but rather for infantry, and maybe airborne, knowing myself.  Same theatre and the like, but probably less of it.  And again, assuming a person survived it.

All of which is interesting to imagine, and I'm surprised that I haven't really though of this retroactive counterfactual in this context before.

*This upcoming year, 2021, I will be as many years from my high school graduation as I was from World War Two at the time I graduated. A sobering thought.  This effectively means that, at that time, high school graduates from the class of 1941 were men my present age, something that's stunning to imagine.

Railhead: Burlington Northern Depot, Casper Wyoming

When I first started this blog I hoped to explore, through the posts. . .and through the responses to them, the period of 1890 to 1920.  The blog has served that purpose, but not as well as I'd hoped, although through doing it we've learned a lot.

This blog became effectively the third version of what it is now, which means that it strayed from its original purpose and morphed into what two prior blogs were, while also keeping its original purpose as well.   That is, there were two prior blogs that commented on society, politics, baseball. . . whatever.  As I killed those blogs off and didn't want to revive one like that, I started making those comments here, still while developing the original purpose.

While that was going on, we started some photo blogs as well. The reason was that back in the pre COVID 19 days we traveled around the region a lot.  As we're interested in all sort of things, that gave us the excuse to photograph them. The first two were Courthouses of the West and Churches of the West.*  Following both of those in very short order was Railhead, which features photography associated with railroads.

I note this as every once and awhile we end up with a post on one of our other blogs that serves the first first purpose of this one, and nicely.  We just had one such example here:Railhead: Burlington Northern Depot, Casper Wyoming:              

Burlington Northern Depot, Casper Wyoming

 

This is the Burlington Northern Depot in Casper Wyoming.  It was built in 1916, which would place this building solidly in the era of the petroleum and livestock fueled economic boom that happened in Casper during World War One.

The following photographs were taken in June 2015 from a Ford Trimotor airplane.

I should know a lot more bout this depot than I do, and in trying to answer the questions that were posted, I now know more about regional rail than I did when the questions were posted even though the original post has been up for years.  Indeed, in thinking about it, I also know that I don't know as much about the local refinery industry as I should.

All of which opens up topics for future exploration. 

*The very first one was Painted Bricks, which predated any of our other blogs.  It's dedicated simply to painted building signs and advertisements.  It was earlier, I think, than any other blog we did.

Sunday Morning Scene: Churches of the West: Holy Apostles Orthodox Christian Church, Cheyenne, Wyoming

Churches of the West: Holy Apostles Orthodox Christian Church, Cheyenne ...: 

Holy Apostles Orthodox Christian Church, Cheyenne Wyoming.

This is Holy Apostles Orthodox Christian Church in Cheyenne, Wyoming.  This church was built in 2012 and is located on the edge of Cheyenne.

This church is interesting in several ways, one of which simply the way it is named.  The Church is what would normally be called a Greek Orthodox church but presents itself as an "Orthodox Christian" church.  This stands in contrast to what we typically find with the various Orthodox churches which usually identify an ethnic component to them, such as Greek Orthodox or Russian Orthodox.  Indeed, while the various Eastern Orthodox churches are in communion with each other, they are all autocephalous and there are real distinctions between them at least to the extent that each of them has their own hierarchy.

They are also very traditional in many ways and to find one that doesn't note the ethnic component is simply unusual for them.  Also unusual is the design of this church which is highly modern (unfortunately in my view, as I don't care for this external office building appearance).

While not knowing for sure, I suspect that these departures from tradition here were intentional and reflect an effort to deal with a decreasing ethnic component in the Orthodox Churches which they are going to have to deal with in order to survive. At the same time, however, it also may reflect an increased interest in the Orthodox community among traditionalist Protestants of various kinds who have investigated their own churches origins in the wake of numerous doctrinal changes in recent years.  There's been a bit of a boom, more than a ripple but less than a tidal wave, of traditionalist protestants coming into the Orthodox Churches, typically the Greek Orthodox Church, as a result of that.  This church, in its name and design, seems to be designed with an eye towards accommodating that. 

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