February 20, 1941 Coast Guard Reserve comes into existance.

President Roosevelt signed a bill establishing a Coast Guard Reserve.  It technically replaced the Coast Guard Auxiliary, a civilian force that had been in existence for two years.

This is frankly a little confusing, as the military status of the Coast Guard is confusing.  What it did at the time was to add a military reservist component to what had been a civilian auxiliary that supported the Coast Guard.  While not a perfect analogy by any means, the earlier auxiliary might be loosely compared to the the Civil Air Patrol's relationship to the United States Army Air Corps at the time.  The Coast Guard continued to have an auxiliary, but the new military component was added.

When the war came, those entering the Coast Guard were all classified as reservists, following a pattern that's common for the U.S. military but particularly strong in the Navy. Therefore, almost all World War Two Coast Guardsmen were reservists. The auxiliary component, however, continued to exist with volunteers fulfilling non military roles on a part time basis without pay.

214,000 men and women served in the Coast Guard during the war.

The Coast Guard Reserve continued to exist today and now has a more conventional reserve type function.  The New York Naval Militia, by agreement with the Federal Government, is associated with the Coast Guard Reserve in a unique arrangement which allows individuals to be members of both organizations should they wish.

On the same day, British and German patrols made contact with each other for the first time in Libya.  See:

Today in World War II History—February 20, 1941

Day 539 February 20, 1941

The Germans also extended an offer to Greece and Italy to mediate the armed dispute between them.  Failing to appreciate the "offer you can't refuse" nature of the German suggestion, the Greeks turned it down.

February 20, 1921. Walt Wallet names, and keeps, Skeezix.

In the Sunday issue of Gasoline Alley, Walt decided to keep the abandoned baby left earlier that week on his doorstep by a "shadowy figure", and he named the child "Skeezix", which is apparently a name for a motherless calf, although not one I've ever heard.

The Seasons Wrapped up on February 14. . .

Valentine's Day.  And who doesn't take a break from singing the praises of their sweetie in order to go out one last time?

I can't say that this was a great hunting season.

For one thing, I can say that its gotten difficult to draw antelope and deer tags, something I used to do routinely.  I was going to start a post on this way back when, and didn't.  Commenting on it now, what I'll note is that I used to expect to draw my first choice on antelope and that I had a relatively good chance of drawing a limited area deer tag every few years.  Elk tags were the ones that were difficult to regularly get.  Not anymore.

Starting a few years ago, for some reason, it started getting hard to draw antelope tags, and not just in the area that I put in for.  Lots of locals I know have shared this same experience.  I don't know what's up with this, as there are as many antelope as ever.  I've heard it claimed that this is because tags are going to out of staters, but I don't know if that's true or simply claimed.

This year the Coronavirus Pandemic may have influenced this as we're now a year into it and its undoubtedly the case that more people are out and about than normally, and I do regard that as a good thing . . . but I'm getting ahead of myself.

The 2020 season started in spring for me with turkey, if we discount that the 2019 waterfowl season ran into 2020, just as the 2020 waterfowl season ran into 2021.  I got a general turkey license, as did my son.  He got the turkey this year rather than me, so that season was as success.  After he returned to school I went out quite a few more times, but without any luck.  That's basically what I expect with turkey, however, so no big deal.

Turkey season was followed by "fishing season", which isn't an established season of any kind, but which is that time of the year that runs between the close of turkey season and the start of bird season.  I tend to only fish in the mountains, for whatever reason, and this year the fishing was good.  I even got in some fishing in streams I'd never fished before, and saw some areas I intend to go back to.

Fishing season closes with the opening of the early grouse seasons.  I went up for blue grouse as I usually do, and ran into the same problem I've run into the base few years.

The area that I go blue grouse hunting is in an area that has been dedicated to an elk hunting hunter's management area.  I support that program.  However, what it means is that the rancher whose land is in the area doesn't feel that he can let anyone cross it now for other hunting purposes.  

I have no desire to hunt on his land, and indeed, blue grouse aren't in it.  I only require transit.

Anyhow, once access across topped I realized that it wasn't a problem, as I have a Jeep, and I know the back roads in.  The first time I did this I received a call from the game warden and he was super enthusiastic about it probably as he's a hunter himself and he was excited to find somebody willing to dedicate such an effort to this.  

That warden was transferred and the year before last I ran into a new one, who flat out refused to believe that it was possible that I hadn't crossed private land to get where I was.  I invited him to follow me out, and he did.  At one point I had to warn him that I thought he had a risk of rolling his pickup in one area, but he followed me anywhere.  He basically called me a liar just prior to that, but when he had followed me all the way out he sheepishly admitted that he'd been wrong and that he just didn't think anyone would devote so much effort to bird hunting.

This past year, yet another new warden.  This one was hyper aggressive and when he what roads I'd taken in to get where I was, he informed they weren't roads.  They were there, but they weren't "official roads".  

It's difficult to tell somebody who is a native to this place that a road isn't official when I've been driving them longer than he's been alive, but he was insistent.  Eventually he calmed down.

Next year I'm thinking of riding in with a horse or mule.  I'm just one of those people. 

This takes me, however, to my next topic.

Both of these wardens were new when I encountered them and the last one was from urban California.  Neither are native to the state.

At one time game wardens here were a lot like lawyers.  They tended to come from ranching families and there was no place for them on the ranch, or they were local outdoorsmen who wanted to work outdoors. That's really changed.

It started to change when the state brought in a test system to qualify people to be game wardens. At some point, it really tightened this up in keeping our our certification culture, which basically holds that if you have a certification, you are qualified to do a job.  Now game wardens are almost all out of state imports.

This has tended, in my view, to convert them from game wardens into cops.  The last friendly warden this area has visited with me a lot about the shotgun he used for hunting.  The one prior to that had helped me drag an antelope in over a very long distance, just as he saw me doing it.  Now, getting stopped by some of them is like being a black man getting stopped in a big city. . . you're going to get grilled.

Indeed, the last one was hostile right off the bat.  Not only that, he didn't know that shotguns have to be plugged back in the state to be legal for hunting.  I know this, as I asked him if he wanted to check mine and he told me they didn't have to be plugged.  He was a lot more interested in harassing me, which is what he was doing, and telling me what amounts to a fiction about roads, than being a game warden.

Indeed, I'll note that this cop attitude has really caused the state a problem now, and one that has spread into the neighboring state to the north as well.  Back a few years ago a game warden up north found a pile of cartridge cases on the ground and realized that some elk had been taken out of season, and that the tracks lead back to the Crow Reservation in Montana.  This was evidence of poaching, but a sensible warden, and for that matter a sensible policeman, knows that there are times you pass on following up on something, and this was one of them.  He didn't, and zealously tracked it to the end, ending up in a United States Supreme Court case the successor of which is being litigated out here now, by necessity.

Well, anyway. . . 

We did get some blue grouse.

Then came sage chicken season.  We did okay, but not great.

Following that came the license draw disappointment, or rather its impact as the failure to draw anything was known well before that.  I, of course, obtained a general deer permit, but I do feel that something needs to be done about the difficulty to draw, and what I feel that is would be to consider subsistence hunting permits for subsistence hunters, of which I'm one.

I'll get into this some other time, but there are quite a few of us around in the state who are "pot hunters" or "meat hunters".  When I was a kid, most of us from here fit that category.  Being a "head hunter" was somewhat of a slam against you.  I don't think I met a real head hunter until I was in university, actually, in the 1980s.

Anyhow, I think some consideration needs to be given to a subsistence hunter category of license.  It'd still have to be controlled in some fashion but for those of us who are dedicated hunters, but in the killetarian category, something should be considered.  Indeed, I know that head hunters fear guys like me as we'll take a buck in an area that they feel we should let go for a couple of additional years until it has a more prominent display.  So let us have a sort of reserved doe permit then.  Anyhow, as noted, more on that later.

This also gets to the fact that since the game and fish's site has become computerized and has new categories, I'm not as good at putting in for things as I used to be.  I still put in for the main things I want to hunt, but I'm a failure at building points and Super Tags and the like.  Nobody to blame for that but myself.

So, anyhow, I didn't draw an antelope tag.  

I did purchase a general deer tag and my son and I went out in the short season in an area that we go into and did get up on some nice deer, including legal bucks for the area we were in. But we only saw them the one time and we didn't do the approach correctly.  Again, nobody to blame but myself, but getting them out would have been an epic, and probably nighttime, endeavor.

I completed the season in a completely different area and I did get a small buck, by myself  I didn't think that remarkable but when I later went to the game biologist to have it checked for CWD he was stunned how far I'd gone.  Says something about me, I suppose.

By that time, waterfowl season had started, which starts the saga of the chukars.  I recently posted on that on another site, so I'll just copy and repeat my comments here, from there:

I’ve been a bird hunter since I was five years old, which now means that I’ve occupied that vocation longer than any other. Indeed, over half a century now. But in that time, I’ve taken chukars once.

That occasion was some time in the very late 1970s or the very early 1980s. It was very late in the season and I was goose hunting. I saw some chukars, knew that it was open and got one or two, I don’t quite recall. What I do recall is that I was with my father and I crossed the frozen North Platte to retrieve my birds.

That says something, whether we are to admit it or not, as there’s no way on earth I’d cross the North Platte if it had ice on it now and there’s no earthly way I’d let my kids do it. But my father did, and I didn’t worry about doing it. I knew it was frozen solid.

Last weekend I was out by the Platte and it was completely open.

Anyhow, I’ve seen chukars from time to time since then but I didn’t go out and make a dedicated effort to hunt them. . . until this season.

And that intent formed the season before last.

The season before last I was hunting deer late in the season, in a snowstorm, and ran into a big bunch of chukars in the mountains in territory much like that you have recently depicted in another post. I had a shotgun with me, but I was carrying a rifle. I didn’t see any deer, and I didn’t try for the chukars, but it stayed on my mind.

This year I ran into chukars again while deer hunting, but out in a sage brush covered area where I’ve never encountered them before in my life. And it was a lot of them. Again, as I was deer hunting, I passed on.

I didn’t get a deer, however, I went back into the aforementioned mountainous area and encountered them walking down a road. I got a deer later in the day, and looked for the chukars on the way back, but I didn’t run into them again. Opportunity lost.

About a week later I was out duck hunting and walked for a couple of miles across the plains to get to a water hole with ducks on it. Walking down a draw I ran into a big bunch of chukars. I was completely unprepared to shoot, or even encounter, chukars. On my way back out, I looked for them again to no avail.

I mentioned to a game biologist at that point that I’d run into chukars three times that year. He was checking my deer for CWD. I noted how surprised I was by the last encounter I just noted. “Big hatch this year” was his reply.

Later, hunting ducks on the river, I paused on a bluff just to observe the river. I then noticed the dog was nowhere to be found. Looking around, I saw him working the area behind me, nose to the ground. He was on to. . .chukars.

I figured they were gone but sent him down a draw to work it. He found them again, and I got a long shot. Missed.

Of course steel shot waterfowl ammo isn’t ideal for chukars either.

About a week later, I was hunting the same area and crossing from one spot to another, not seeing any ducks, and not prepared for anything else, when the dog got them up again. Another long shot and another miss.

The next week, walking to the river from a different spot, yep, once again. I wasn’t prepared to shoot at all, and when I did, I missed. I saw where they’d gone and we worked them again, and one more long shot, with the same results.

After this, it was game on. I went back three more times just looking for them. We walked for miles.

Never saw them.

All of which is probably some sort of a lesson. . . but I’m not sure what it is.

This takes us back to waterfowl.

I didn't have a great waterfowl season, success wise.  I went out a lot, but without much success.  I only took a couple of ducks the entire season and didn't get a single goose for the freezer or dinner.  Not one.  I did get some shots, but nothing really worked out well, in spite of being out a lot.

I did hike for miles and miles, mostly by myself, or rather just with the dog.  So all in all, it was good that way.  I can't complain.

My last trip out was yesterday.  It's been absolutely artic here, but it warmed up enough to go out, and I figured that the general conditions would mean that it was likely nobody else would be out, which was at least partially true. As per the general nature of the year, I got up on a lot of geese, but I didn't get any.  I didn't even get a shot.

I'll have to see if rabbit is still on. . . .

February 19, 1921. Poland and France look forward and see war, the United States looks back and sees the military past.

 

The literary digest, February 19, 1921.  This issue had a timely new map of Poland, whose frontiers, on this day, the French promised to guaranty.

France and Poland entered into a defensive alliance guarantying French aid to Poland in the result of it being attacked.  The alliance was aimed principally at an anticipated attack by the Soviet Union at the time.

The text was remarkably short:

THE Polish Government and the French Government, both desirous of safeguarding, by the maintenance of the treaties which both have signed or which may in future be recognized by both parties, the peace of Europe, the security of their territories, and their common political and economic interests, have agreed as follows: 

1. In order to coordinate their endeavours towards peace the two Governments undertake to consult each other on all questions of foreign policy which concern both States, so far as those questions affect the settlement of international relations in the spirit of the treaties and in accordance with the Covenant of the League of Nations. 

2. In view of the fact that economic restoration is the essential preliminary condition for the re-establishment of international order and peace in Europe, the two Governments shall come to an understanding in this regard with a view to concerted action and mutual support. 

They will endeavour to develop their economic relations, and for this purpose will conclude special agreements and a commercial treaty. 

3. If, notwithstanding the sincerely peaceful views and intentions of the two contracting States, either or both of them should be attacked without giving provocation, the two Governments shall take concerted measures for the defence of their territory and the protection of their legitimate interests within the limits specified in the preamble. 

4. The two Governments undertake to consult each other before concluding new agreements which will affect their policy in Central and Eastern Europe. 

5. The present agreement shall not come into force until the commercial agreements now in course of negotiation have been signed. Paris, February 19, 1921. 

(Signed) A. BRIAND. (Signed) E. SAPIEHA.

Poland had only lately fought the Read Army, and itself, to exhaustion.  In retrospect the Russo Polish War is normally regarded as an outright act of Soviet aggression, but a more honest assessment of it would have to acknowledge that not only was that a major feature of it, but that the Poles were pretty aggressively attempting to expand their vague borders as much as possible.  Poland, like many colonies, had never really had firm borders before and its population phased into neighboring regions, sometimes creating areas of mixed Polish and non Polish ethnicity, and sometimes resulting in distinctions that were based on dialects and religious confession.  Poland worked, right up to the end of the Russo Polish War, to expand its borders at its smaller neighbors expense.  None the less, its fight against the Red Army was heroic.

Following the war the Poles legitimately feared the Soviets attacking them again at any moment.  They feared the Germans from the onset as well, but less so as Germany was such a mess at the time and the size of its military was initially restricted by the Versailles Treaty.  Interestingly, the Soviets feared Poland and constantly imagined that the Poles were on the verge of attacking them, probably in concert with other powers such as France.

In the U.S. Army, Col. William C. Rivers was photographed.

He's rise to the rank of Major General.  I don't know who he was, but the remarkable thing is that he continued to be promoted, and significantly, post World War One.

Interestingly, he also bore a remarkable resemblance, at this point, to George S. Patton.

The U.S. Army by this point in the 1920s was entering the long post war period of doldrums.  By 1921 the war was still a near thing, but the post war was a nearer thing.  Congress had voted to scale the size of the Army way back.  The United States had excited the reparations commission created by the Versailles Treaty.  Promotions breveted during the Great War were also being scaled back. The acquisition of new equipment, including new technologies, was being much slowed.  The service may have only lately sponsored a transcontinental motor convoy, and a transcontinental air race, but those things were fading rapidly into the past.

Coming up, the Army would be smaller in every way, including in terms of career advancement.  Soldiers who only lately had fought in the great war, were training once again in ways that looked back rather than forward, although the slow introduction of new equipment didn't completely stop.  For officers, the career resembled what it had been prior to World War One, with prestige within the service, disdain from outside of it, parades and polo matches, and in more than one instance, quite a lot of alcohol.

Blog Mirror: Ancient Trees Show When The Earth's Magnetic Field Last Flipped Out

 

Ancient Trees Show When The Earth's Magnetic Field Last Flipped Out

Blog Mirror: Be Present

 

Be Present

February 18, 1921. Œhmichen helicopter no 1, ships, Egyptian self rule, and Argentine arms.

The early history of the helicopter is complicated, and therefore capable of dispute.  Most early flights weren't that, but hops.  

This is the first "lift" of an Œhmichen helicopter. The gas bags were for stabilization.  Obviously, this would have been a completely useless design but it was pioneering, and the inventor went on to some significant developments in helicopter features.  Etienne Œhmichen was a biologist by training and employment.

The USS Hull, a Clemson Class destroyer was launched.

It was another short-lived post World War One U.S. Navy destroyer, and was scrapped in 1931.

On the same day, the USS North Carolina, a Tennessee Class armored cruiser of long service, was decommissioned.

The Armenian government fled the country's capital in the face of the Soviet invasion.  The U.S., which had declined to ratify the Versailles Treaty, left the Allied Reparations Commission.  Lord Milner, a now retired Secretary of State for the Colonies, presented his commissioned report to the House of Commons which argued for the immediate granting of self governance to Egypt.  Argentina, a German customer for arms, refused to stop purchasing the same from the same.

Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist Part 5. Scrabble

Scrabble

Brittney Spears, now a long way from being a child being exploited for her appearance, and still subject to a guardianship run by her father, reports that sometimes its fun to make words up when playing Scrabble.

Spears has been the subject of a documentary about her plight recently, although she apparently isn't participating in it herself.  She's also the subject of a popular "Free Brittney" movement.

Spears is a study in pathos, having been really basically exploited for her appearance as a near child and then living in the wake of her prior fame.

Texan Exceptualism

Texas has its own power grid.

That's right. It's own grid.

Most of the Western United States is in one grid, and the Eastern half in another, but Texas has its own.  It goes by the name ERCOT.

This dates back to the 1930s when Texas power companies sought to evade interstate regulation.  Texas was big enough that power companies in Texas could simply operate a grid within it, although in fairness some of Texas is served by neighboring systems.  In 1970 this system became formalized.

The system has been getting a lot of attention recently due to power failures in Texas.  Last year Texas Senator Ted Cruz criticized California's policy on renewable energy but now Texas is having a major problem of its own.  People were quick to focus on the reliance in Texas on renewables, but it turns out that while there were truly failures, failures in the traditional energy sector were at a higher rate.  Wind turbines did ice up and fail to work, but then there were also failures associated with coal and nuclear power sources.

This raises a lot of questions, probably all of which will suggest areas where blame should be focused and not all of which will be correct.  One question which may come up is the desirability of having its own system in 2021.  The system also had problems in 2011, at which time it imported some power sources from Mexico, so there have been problems before.

Of course, this was an extraordinary storm, and that may mean that anything that occurred is really a bad example.  Texas is prepared for heat waves, but not freeze outs.

As posted here the other day, while the U.S. has gone to very large grids, the new energy systems might argue for small localized ones, or at least the incorporation of smaller ones into larger systems.

Laramie County Censures Cheney

And it, like the rest of the Wyoming GOP, better hope that it doesn't look foolish in the eyes of history.

Congress appears set to do a 9/11 style commission on the insurrection.  It's clear that it'll show at least as much as has already been shown, which means that the GOP will of course be free to pretend it doesn't mean anything and that it isn't happening.

By the time this is put up it will be probable that the GOP has lost 200,000 members in those state, far from all, where that can be tracked. Assuming the trend exists elsewhere, it's likely more than 300,000.  For those states where the tally has been close, this is really bad for the GOP in more ways than one.  Mitch McConnell has his eyes focused on 2022, but Trump has his focused on punishing those who opposed him. One of the sets of people punished this go around were Republicans in Georgia, resulting in the loss of their Senate seats.

If the riff in the GOP isn't healed, it may indeed turn out to be "Trump's Party" in 2022 and 2024. But that party will be smaller and therefore that development would be a gift to the Democrats. By leaning increasingly into Trump as the permanent figurehead, rather than emphasizing their issues, the Trump wing of the party is risking dragging it into irrelevance.

On censures, what does that really mean anyway?  So far Cheney has given the "M'eh" reaction and Ben Sasse treated the threat of one from Nebraska's GOP as if they were a bunch of toddlers having a tantrum.  And after all, it really doesn't do anything to the censured person.

Australia blacksout itself.

The Australian parliament passed a bill to make Google and Facebook pay for Australian journalism on its site, resulting in Facebook just blocking the stories, a move which caused some Australian government communications to cease.

Australia called Facebook's move arrogant, but the question may be levied where the arrogance was, or at least the hubris.

Secular suffering for nothing

Today is Ash Wednesday, the start of Lent.

While Catholic observances tend to at least somewhat baffle those who are not familiar with them, and therefore reinterpret them either though the bigoted Anglicization of popular history they've received, or through their own broken lenses on the world, lots of people are at least somewhat familiar with them.  One of the things they're somewhat familiar with is fasting.

We've dealt with this before, but Latin Rite Catholics have a minimal duty of fast and abstinence during Lent.  And it is indeed very minimal. The fast days are now down to two.  There are more days of abstinence during Lent.

And this post isn't about that.

Rather, this post is about American secular suffering and its pointless nature.

I'm occasionally the accidental unwilling silent third person in a long running conversation between two people on diets, which they're constantly off and on. The oddity of it is that neither of the two people involved have any need whatsoever to be on a diet. They aren't even ballpark close to being overweight.  None the less, they'll go on diets and the diets tend to be based on pseudoscience.

I don't want to be harsh on people for this as there's now so much pseudoscience in American culture it's simply mind boggling. We've gone from a society that in the 1960s and 1970s emphasized science  to one that now abhors it and goes for non scientific faddism.  There are so many examples of this that actually going into all of it would require a blog the size of the Internet at this point.  Food faddism is common.

Not a day goes by when I don't get a bunch of spam posts (and how ironic that they'd be called "spam" devoted to dietary bullshit, most of which has to do with eating something that will "melt away fat", probably overnight so that you don't have to be inconvenienced while watching television during the day.  It's not going to do that.  A wild example of that is one that bills itself as some sort of ice cream, with the photographs in the spam showing chocolate ice cream.  Chocolate ice cream is disgusting in the first place, and it's not going to make you think.  

Anyhow, these two fit people are constantly on diets of the faddish variety, involving such things as "cleanses" and the like.  None of that does anything, at least not in the way a person thinks.  Some of it might, accidentally, such as abstaining from alcohol. That'll do something, but not in a cleanse fashion.  And some of it probably does something as it approaches a sort of low yield style of intermittent fasting.

I've now watched people on diets for decades, and I'm wholly convinced that none of them doing anything whatsoever.  I've watched people on Keto lose weight and then balloon back up to just as heavy as they were before, for example.  

Nothing ultimately escapes from the basic fact that weight=calories in-calories out.   That's it.

So you can be on keto, but if you eat bacon and eggs for breakfast, a ham for lunch, and then go eat a big dinner, you're going to be really heavy if you are an office worker.  Pretty simple.

That is why, I'll note, intermittent fasting actually does cause people to lose weight, but it's not a diet, it's fasting.  I'll also note that I'm not a doctor and I'm not telling you to fast to lose weight.  If you need to lose weight, see your doctor.  A real doctor.  Not the homeopathic doctor of Burmese weight loss and orthopody.  No, not him.  A real bonafide physician.  They exist.

Anyhow, I don't think that a lot of people need to go on diets at all, including the folks I just noted.

Now, some people really do. A lot of Americans are really, really, heavy.  Some say a majority are overweight.  I get that.  But none the less I'd guess about 60% of the people I see on diets or discussing diets are not overweight.  I don't think they go on diets, deep down, as they're overweight.

They do it as they need to be suffering for something.

Now, this gets back to Lent. Catholics don't fast and abstain in order to suffer. They do it in order to focus and build discipline, and sacrifice for their sins.  If it involves an element of suffering, well so do a lot of things.

But devoted Catholics accept suffering as part of life.  It's inescapable.  Life is full of suffering.  Part of that suffering is brought about by license.

The irony of freedom is that freedom to chose isn't freedom.  License doesn't actually equal liberty.  The freedom to chose is the freedom to chose wisely, and that brings a sort of real freedom.  It doesn't mean, kid like, that I can choose to eat ice cream for dinner, and it doesn't mean, modern society like, that I chose all the members of the opposite sex, or whatever, that I might fancy at the moment. 

And indeed, that sort of "freedom" leads not to freedom but to slavery.  People become enslaved to their wants.  A massive amount of American culture is now presently completely devoted to slavery of this type, particularly sexual slavery of both an intellectual and actual kind.  The entire pornography industry is a type of "white slavery", involving the prostitution of women and the enslavement of men to lust.

Catholic fasting ties into freedom as it has as an element the concept of building resistance to enslavement.  If you can say no to food you can also say no to alcohol, or tobacco, or to vice.  It might take practice, hence the discipline of fasting.

Which is also why the slow Latin relaxing of fasting and abstinence rules was, in my view, a real mistake.  The concept of the Church in North American, for example, that relaxing abstinence on Friday's throughout the year would result in the substitution of a meaningful personal substitute was, frankly, largely wrong.

And it achieves, of course, more than that.

Fasting, experienced as a form of self-denial, helps those who undertake it in simplicity of heart to rediscover God’s gift and to recognize that, created in his image and likeness, we find our fulfilment in him. In embracing the experience of poverty, those who fast make themselves poor with the poor and accumulate the treasure of a love both received and shared. In this way, fasting helps us to love God and our neighbour, inasmuch as love, as Saint Thomas Aquinas teaches, is a movement outwards that focuses our attention on others and considers them as one with ourselves.

Pope Francis, Lenten message, 2021.

Secular fasting doesn't actually achieve anything.  But then, much of modern American life is aimless and directionless.  It's been wholly focused on materialism and nothing else.  People aren't rooted to place or people as those things interfere with "freedom". They aren't bound by traditional rules of right and wrong, obligation and duty, service to country and community, or the obligations imposed by law outside of the civil law, those being the walls of canon law and natural law, and biological law.  They aren't even accepting of the final binds of death, which Americans don't acknowledge as real, and which provides the reason that at 40 years old you aren't going to be the physical specimen you were at 20, and things will certainly be different at 60.

Now, to be sure, most Catholics are no different in the modern world than anyone else.  A people who were once outside of the culture as they were different, where they were a minority, and were outside the world in a way as they were distinct from it even where they were a majority, now fall prey to all the modern vices that are portrayed as virtues, and self excuse those that are regarded by the Church as sins.  Some of the Church religious itself, mostly older baby boomer aged whose time is past but they don't realize it, still campaign to overthrow Church law in the name of temporal freedom, not realizing that they propose to bring in the chains of slavery.  None of that, however, changes the basic point.

Humans sense that abundance can be slavery.  They also reject so often the breaking of their chains. But even when they do, they reach out, darkly, to the disciplines that would free them.  They sense they have to do something, and often substitute suffering, vaguely, for the practices that would open the manacles.

February 17, 1921. Relativity.

Margaret Wilson, the First Lady at the time, and officer of the National Women's Party Abby Scott Baker, on this day in 1921.  The National Women's Party was holding its first post women's suffrage convention.  Both Mrs. Wilson and Mrs. Baker are wearing clothing that's actually "sustainable" fashion, as opposed to the b.s. about that which is cycled now.  More on that in a future post.

Nature published an issue focused on Einstein's general theory of relativity, the moment at which it became widely known.

 

Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist Part 4. Calling names and pointing fingers.

Sign of the times, I suppose. 

Below  is an exchange started when 34 year old Lauren Boebert, the darling of some of the Trump wing of the GOP, posted on power outages in Texas.  Boebert has made a name for herself by being one of the crop of hard right elected Congressmen that came in last election.  She's definitely in the hard, hard right wing of the GOP.  She's noted for carrying a gun in D.C., to the extent that she's not noted for the Mae Winchester effect, that being that any woman carrying a gun on the Internet who is not unattractive and under 40 is going to be regarded as a major babe by some.

This has nothing to do with guns.

It has something to do with electricity.

Lauren Boebert

@laurenboebert

Rolling blackouts from ND to TX have turned into lengthy power outages in freezing conditions. Biden needs to lift his oil & gas ban as we need reliable energy sources. The Green New Deal was just proven unsustainable as renewables are clearly unreliable.

7:45 PM · Feb 15, 2021·Twitter for iPhone

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Helen

@luvtheusa76

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10h

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@laurenboebert

Ice on power lines has literally nothing to do with oil and gas Insurrectionist Barbie.

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Nuancically Tweeting

@MahGill

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@laurenboebert

First, there is no "oil & gas ban." Second, I don't see you saying, "We need more wind power!" when oil rigs are shut down in the Gulf because of hurricanes, spiking gas prices. Third, the larger problems today were with natural gas delivery.

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Major 

@MajorDog524

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11h

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@laurenboebert

The first ongoing crisis was covid I fear the Dems have just found their 2nd crisis with which to subjugate us.

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Samuel VanSant Stoddard 

@profchaosUSA

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10h

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@laurenboebert

Actually, you are proving why Green New Deal would be great for rural America! Our power grid is so old and antiquated, any small storm can cause massive power outages, plus it's inefficient and costs consumers way more. Let's put people to work updating our infrastructure!

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JRehling

@JRehling

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10h

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@laurenboebert

The power lines are down because we aren't drilling for more oil, hm?

😒

I don't know why Texas is having power interruption.  I do know that when I was young, we had power interruptions here every time we had a really bad storm, and we're in a region which expected really bad storms.  We still get really bad storms, although not as often as we once did, but we don't get power outages much anymore.  Indeed, they're really rare.

A factor in that has been, I'm pretty sure, a dedicated effort to put the overhead lines underground.  Indeed, we're more likely to get a power outage now due to a construction accident than a storm, although we still get some storm induced ones.

I don't know the state of delivery lines in Texas.  Maybe they're overhead, maybe they aren't, maybe they're both.  But Texas has embraced the high growth model of American economics, and that has its problems. Stretching infrastructure is one of them.

A friend of mine who lives in Texas (and I have quite a few friends in Texas) takes the view here, but in a much more developed fashion.  He asserts that green energy requirements have made for a shift to unreliable forms of generation and that's stressed the system.  Is that right?  I don't know.  It might be, and if it is, it would be because cold naps, like heat waves, create a high demand for energy.  Lots of windmills have been off line due to the storm.  Solar has probably been impacted.  Lots of houses in Texas, for example, have their heat on night and day right now, when normally they would not.  That could be it.

On the other hand, the point by one Stoddard isn't without merit.  Rethinking power delivery may make sense, in both an urban and a rural sense.  He may be confused, I'd note, by the degree to which the power demand in Texas is rural.  Texas is heavily urban.

Beyond that, here's something else.  Like electric cars, this day is coming.  There's a certain hold back the tide aspect to a lot of these discussions, but no matter what a person thinks about them, we've crossed a tipping point in this discussion and the evolution away from carbon based power generation is going to keep on keeping on.

And, on the last point, we're at the classic American finger pointing early administration point.  Nobody can blame any new President for anything, as they haven't had the time to really have an impact on anything, yet.

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Footnotes

*Mae Winchester is presenter on the C&Rsenal Vlog.  While not unattractive, she's not a raving beauty either, but any woman appearing with a gun is guaranteed to receive piles of male Internet fans.