Today

 Today is Earth Day for 2023.

It's also the first weekend day of Spring Turkey Season, which I should be doing, but I'm in the office working, as the law never sleeps.

Or takes a weekend off.

And today is also Independent Record Store Day.

Manual Jobs that have disappeared. Railroad Crossing Watchman.

This is the Out Our Way cartoon from April 21, 1923, courtesy of Reddit's 100 Years Ago sub.

The thing that surprises me here is that it never occurred to me that there were human manned railroad crossings, but as this photo shows, they existed into the 1940s at least:

Railroad crossing, Beaumont, Texas, May 1943.

Indeed, in looking it up, it seems like the modern type of crossing with the lowering arms came about in the 1950s.  An earlier automatic type called a "wig wag" was patented in 1909, but it must not have had universal use.

By Richamos - I took the picture with my own camera, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6347827

This brings up a number of interesting things, including that signals just weren't what they now are.  This likely explains why railroad crossing accidents were seemingly so common, such as this one, which was discussed in the Casper Daily Tribune about an April 20, 1923 accident.

But another matter, while the world is seemingly getting safer, there's less of a role for humans in it.

We've discussed this before, but automation is eliminating jobs, and has been, for a century.  Crossing guard attendants probably filled that job for a number of reasons, but one of the reasons likely was that some of the occupants of that position simply were suited for a job with pretty much no skills whatsoever, and were fine with a long day to themselves.  Where are they now?  Some of them are unemployed and unemployable.

And with the arrival of AI, this will rapidly expand into the white collar and professional world. We're making a world we literally can't live in.

Thursday, April 22, 1943. The end of the Axis in Tunisia.

The Battle of Longstop Hill commenced in Tunisia.

Bringing down the wounded at Longstop Hill.  Note Churchill tank in the background.

Churchill tanks played a critical role in the battle, which ended on April 23 and oddly contributed to the Allied war effort in an odd way.  A Churchill disabled a Tiger I, Tiger 131, which was then captured and heavily studied.

Tiger 131.

Of note, in this late stage of the war in North Africa armor upgrades were becoming a significant factor.  Earlier much of the fighting had been done with late pre-war tanks, but now it was being done by tanks developed during the war itself, including the new heavy tanks.

The Luftwaffe sustained a disaster as a flight of massive Messerschmidt Me 323s were hit by Allied aircraft just as their fighter escort had move out of the way to allow a German flight of Ju52s to pass by.  Fourteen of sixteen of the aircraft were shot down by the RAF and the South African Air Force.

The Battles of Bobdubi and Mubo commenced between Australia and Japan on New Guinea and Allied forces commenced an offensive in this theatre of the war.

Australian troops during the offensive.  Note the US pattern leggings and M1928 Thompson submachine gun.

Sunday, April 22, 1923. Agrarian rise.

The British commenced their occupation of Rawandiz, in Iraqi Kurdistan. The Kurdish city is near the Turkish and Iranian borders.  The United Kingdom was occupying the country under a League of Nations Mandate.  The border was contested by the Turks, who had occupied the city only a year prior, which motivated the British to garrison the town.

The Bulgarian Agrarian National Union won the vast majority of the seats of the country's Parliament.  The agrarian party is the only such party to come to power by a majority of votes being cast for it outright.

The party was a founding member of the International Agrarian Bureau and part of a strong rising agrarian movement in Eastern Europe. The movement would eventually spread to Western Europe as well, but the rise of Communism and World War Two would effectively destroy it and its influence waned. The Bureau dissolved in 1971.

The Italian fascists cut 1B lire from the country's budget by cutting civil service jobs, leaving the deficit in the budget at 3B for that year.

A bomb exploded at Comiskey Park in Chicago, but didn't injure anyone.  Nobody was arrested from the explosion, but it was suspected that it was the result of the hiring of non-union labor to point the exterior of the ballpark.  

I don't know if it's related, but owner Charles Comiskey was notoriously cheap.

"Queen of the Pinups" Bettie Page was born on this day in 1923.  Page was a good student, but from a broken home.  After several attempts to get her feet on the ground she turned to modeling in her late 20s and rapidly became, by the early 1950s an infamous pornographic model and actress and one of the few individuals in that line of work whose name was well known.  In 1958, she experienced a radical conversion to Christianity, stopped her pornographic career, and devoted the rest of her life to her conversion, although she ended up marrying and divorcing three times in her life. Her divorces prevented her from being accepted in a new desired career of Christian missionary to Africa.  She was subpoenaed to testify in front of a Congressional committee at the time investigating the pornography industry at a time when there still remained sufficient public will to attempt to do something about it, an era that has now very much faded.

In making her switch, she dropped out of the public eye but oddly was subject to a large scale revival in interest in the 1980s, which is the only reason I've heard of her.  She was the subject of a major biography at the time, and I can recall reading a detailed review of it in The New Republic, which used to have fantastic book reviews.  In the intervening thirty years, all sorts of rumors had spring up about her, even though she remained alive at the time.  About as much as can reasonably be said is that she struggled with her mental health and had abandoned the life that brought her to a certain section of the public eye.  She shares that trait with many in the industry, including many Playboy models, which in fact she was one of.

Dying in 2008, Page is a sad tale of a very smart person whose early life slid into vice with grotesque and tragic results, but also one of recovery and redemption, if not full recovery.  It's interesting that the public focus was on her only when she was deep into depravity, and then again late in life when a pornified culture wanted to focus on her earlier image.

Of some interest, Page and Marilyn Monroe took the same path, at almost the same time, although Monroe's turn to modeling, including nude modeling, happened at a significantly earlier age.  Both women were the products of broken homes, although Monroe's was significantly more broken.  Monroe, moreover, was just a teenager when she was first a true model, and it was not until the late 1940s that she was photographed nude.  Ironically, Monroe was able to start a career in acting before the news of her nude photographs broke, and while she was Playboy's first (unwilling) model, she was able to escape the immediate implications of it due to the intervention of Life magazine, which ran the same photographs before Playboy as glamour photos in order to save her career.  Page, in contrast, began a rapid descent after first consenting to be photographed.  They were almost bookends in a certain story in the evolution of American morality and the portrayal of women.  Neither of them was able to really able to escape their early story, although Page certainly lived a much longer life.

Both of them would suggest that something about the Second World War and the culture that followed, including the release of false "studies" that the public was apparently willing to accept at the time had an impact on the culture, assuming that the war was merely conicidental in this story. That seems unlikely.

Wednesday, April 21, 1943. The bombing of Aberdeen.

98 civilians and 27 servicemen were killed in a Luftwaffe raid on Aberdeen, Scotland.

Admiral Mineichi Koga took over command of the Japanese Navy, following the death of Admiral Yamamoto.

Blog Mirror: U.S. Coffee and Tea Consumption, 1923 and 2023

U.S. Coffee and Tea Consumption, 1923 and 2023

Friday, April 20, 1923. End of the Irish Civil War.

The Irish Civil War ends with the elevation of Frank Aiken to Chief of Staff of the Irish Republican Army and the vote of the Executive Board to halt further action.

Prohibition failed to secure passage in Parliament.

The pro Nazi journal Der Stürmer was first published.

Linked directly in from Twitter's Old Ireland In Color.  Is it a sign of having a bad day to look at that and be envious to the point of "gee, I wish that was me?"

Monday, April 19, 1943. The end of the Warsaw Ghetto commences, SMERSH founded.

The final phase of the destruction and reoccupation of the Warsaw Ghetto commenced under SS Polizeifuhrer Jürgen Stroop.

Stroop was an unrepentant Nazi and was sentenced to death in a post-war war crimes trial in 1947, and then handed over to Poland, which also convicted him.  He was executed in Poland in 1952.

233 Belgian Jews bound for Auschwitz escaped when a raid by three members of the Belgian resistance attacked the train.  118 were able to ultimately escape.

Fourteen members of the White Rose resistance group are found guilty of crimes against the German state and executed.

The General Directorate of Counterintelligence ("SMERSH" СМЕРШ) of the People's Commissariat of Defense of the USSR came into existence, but secretly, and maybe actually earlier. It was a counterintelligence directorate.  Like most Soviet intelligence and counterintelligence agencies, it was sinister and scary by its nature, and average citizens of the USSR had reason to fear it, a fact that was compounded by circumstances inside contested and occupied regions of the Soviet Union which caused average Soviet citizens to collaborate with the Germans in large and small ways.

The British government removed the restriction on ringing church bells that had been put in effect when the UK was under threat of invasion.  The move marked the passing of that phase of the war.

RCAF P-40 being recovered at  Fort Greeley Kodiak Island, Alaska, on this day.  It had overshot the runway.

Thursday, April 19, 1923. Oil leasing.

Life magazine, capitalizing on the Egyptian craze then in vogue due to the discovery of Tutankhamen's tomb, issued its famous Egyptian number issue, which we post here via Reddit's 100 Years Ago today sub.

The Tribune had a banner headline on an issue that was actually important to Wyomingites, state oil leasing.

Blog Mirror: Prepare for the Shock Troops

Worth reading:

WHAT COMES AFTER TRUMP

Prepare for the Shock Troops

What happens when gun culture merges with a nationalist personality cult?

Sooner or later, the United States is going to get gun control, and it's going to get gun control that those in the firearms' community won't like, and beyond that, which is over broad and burdensome.

It will happen.

And when it does, a large percentage of the blame for that will fall to:

1.  Rexall Commandos who insisted in playing soldier while not really in the service, imagining themselves as defending freedom while appearing like Nazi Stormtroopers to everyone else; and

2. The NRA for featuring military style weapons as their main theme, month after month, or arguing that everyone needs to carry a handgun or a military style carbine constantly as violence is about to break out suddenly; and

3.  The firearms industry for caving to the AR15 demand, knowing in their heart of hearts that this is temporary; and

4. The NRA for effectively becoming a branch of the far Trump right; and 

5.  The GOP for lacking the guts to not pander to camouflage wearing Rexall Commandos.

6.  Regular firearms owners for not standing up to their fellows who are affecting the Stalingrad/RhodesianSAS/Special Forces combined discount store, last stand at Volgograd Tractor Plant appearance and everything must be an AR15 viewpoint.

I'm not arguing for gun control.  I'm casting blame for what is surely coming.

Trust the Science

On Twitter I saw a photo somebody posted of a sign in Washington D.C., in a hallway, which said "There are two genders, male and female, trust the science", praising it.

And I agree with the statement.

Knowing the underlying politics of the person who posted it, somebody replied: "But we shouldn’t trust science on Covid and vaccines, correct?!"

An excellent point.

The science goes where it goes, it cares not about right and left, and people caring about the science have not the option to ignore that.

April 18: World Amateur Radio Day.

Today is:

World Amateur Radio Day April 18 Operating Event to be Held

Sunday, April 18, 1943. A vengeful Palm Sunday.

Admiral Yamamoto's airplane was ambushed by American P-38s in Operation Vengeance, which brought the plane down over Bougainville, killing him.

It was a very rare targeted action, in which Yamamoto was the purpose of the mission.  The mission remains somewhat debatable as a result.  Adm. Yamamoto was a very capable Japanese commander, and perhaps for that reason it was justified, although he also held mixed feelings about the war itself.

The intercept was made possible by the U.S. having broken the Japanese naval code and, for that  reason, it was also a bit risky as it may have revealed that fact to the Japanese as the P-38s were really beyond their normal range and their presence peculiar.

Sarah Sundin covered this in her blog as well.

Today in World War II History—April 18, 1943: Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto, commander of Japanese Combined Fleet, is killed when his plane is shot down by US Thirteenth Air Force P-38s over Bougainville.

She also covered the "Palm Sunday Massacre" in which the Allies shot down over half of an Axis 100 plane supply mission from Sicily to North Africa.

The Soviets denied the Katyn Massacre.

It was Palm Sunday, 1943.  Both of my parents would have attended Palm Sunday Mass with their families.

Wednesday, April 18, 1923. The House that Ruth Built.

 

Howard Emke of the Boston Red Sox and Bob Shawkey of the New York Yankees, April 18, 1923

The first game at Yankee Stadium was played.

The Yankees beat the Red Sox 4 to 1, with Babe Ruth hitting the park's first home run, the latter of which made the front page in Casper.

Dignitaries were naturally present.

Jacob Ruppert, Gov. Al Smith and wife at opening of Yankee Stadium.

A lot more here:

April 18, 1923: Yankee Stadium Opens

The 2024 Election, Part II. What could go wrong?

Donald Trump, who has a really good brain, good genes, leading the GOP into the 2024 election.

 

November 15, 2022

Donald Trump, having lost the popular vote twice before, the electoral vote once before, and whose personality and behavior meant the Senate remained in Democratic hands this election, and the House and Senate went, with the Oval Office, to Democrats in 2020, has announced for the Presidency again.

There is something wrong with Trump.

He will not win, and he stands a good chance of taking the Republican Party into oblivion with him.

November 16, 2022

Apparently none of the major networks carried his entire speech, if they carried any part of it at all, and while it's easy to find this as a news story, it's pretty much impossible to find the entire text of the speech.

That's quite telling.

Trump fed off of the press during his entire Presidency, but now they appear to have grown tired of him.

The Conservative National Review is already out with an editorial, simply captioned:

NO.

Murdoch's tabloid New York Post, not the most admirable newspaper, but one that's reliably Republican, dissed Trump with a page 26 article which on the cover simply has:

Florida Man Makes Announcement.

We'll see, in spite of the looming disaster, my predication is, like Benteen and Reno, the GOP will fall in line and charge into the valley anyhow.  They shouldn't go in there, and quite a few of them know that, but they will anyhow.

November 17, cont:

Keven McCarthy received a visit today from a well known Trump strategist.

For those who may have any doubt, myself included, this probably signals how things this session will go and to whom the House will be working towards.

December 6, 2022

So stated the former President in reaction to the release of information from Twitter.

Trump's call to suspend the Constitution has met with a round of criticism from Republicans, showing the beginnings of a backbone for the first time since the insurrection.  Even at that, however, some would not, as the Republican guest on This Week who struggled not to answer the question about supporting Trump if he was the nominee and then finally stated that he would.

It does seem that, at long last, things may actually be beginning to move away from Trump in the GOP.  Trump's grown more extreme in recent months, and something like this is outright authoritarian.

Trump of course denied that he had called for suspending the constitution, and giving credit perhaps to his statements, his comments are in fact so odd and poorly thought out that it might not really be what he meant.  Most odd of all is the thought that, in 2022, he could be made the President via some odd declaration regarding the 2022 election, which is how I would interpret this really ignorant post.

It appears that the Democrats want to move South Carolina up as the state to cast its votes for the Presidential nominee first.  This would bump Iowa from its first in the nation status.

December 7, 2022

Mr. Trump will not win another election. His most glaring political strength today is his ability to energize Democrats, causing not only historic turnout but attracting gushers of campaign cash – for the opposition.

Fox News. 

February 2, 2023

Nikki Haley, former Governor of South Carolina and Ambassador to the United Nations, is running for the GOP nomination.  She's going to make her formal announcement on February 15.

Haley was born to Indian immigrant parents who are Sikhs.  She's an accountant by training.  She's presently a Methodist, having converted from Sikhism in 1997.  Her views straddle the Republican spectrum.  She makes an interesting contrast to Kamala Harris in that in some ways their story is similar, her parents resided in Canada before immigrating to the US and Harris' mother was Indian, her story fits the more conventional Indian immigrant story.  She's 51 years old, and therefore not a Boomer.

Haley reported called Trump upon making her decision, and Trump reportedly told her that if she felt that way, she should run.  The question now is how long will it be before Trump starts childishly insulting her and calling her by some juvenile nickname.

February 14, 2023

Nikki Haley announced she was running, officially, yesterday.

Oddly, the press just seems to have noticed that she's a bona fide Indian American yesterday, whereas this was widely celebrated in regard to Kamala Harris when she was running.

February 15, 2023

Harriet Hageman endorsed Donald Trump for the 2024 Presidential GOP nomination.

She really had no choice, Trump having endorsed her, and given her constituency, it was a wise move. 

Nonetheless, while I am on the outside of this, I don't expect Trump, or Biden, to be the nominees.  Frankly, given their ages, as I've noted before, I'd put there being well over a 50% chance that neither of them will still be with us, due to natural causes, by the November 24 election. They're basically at the upper edge of the male life span right now, and certainly Trump doesn't appear to be a model of health.

Added to that, I don't expect Trump to prevail in the process of choosing a GOP nominee this time, although I've been wrong on that before.

February 17, 2023

Well, this got weird quickly.

First, Nikki Haley called for politicians obtaining the age of 75 to receive a competency test.

Then, on CNN, this exchange happened.

Don Lemon: "Nikki Haley isn’t in her prime. Sorry, when a woman is considered to be in her prime in her 20s, and 30s, and maybe 40s…"

Poppy Harlow: "Are you talking about prime for like child bearing?"

"Don’t shoot the messenger! I’m just saying what the facts are! Google it!"

Ummm. . . eh?

February 23, 2023

Marianne Williamson has announced for the Democratic ticket.

Williamson is a left wing Democrat, 70 years of age, so another of the Boomer crowd of candidates.  She stands no chance.

March 3, 2023

Initiatives to legalize marijuana in Wyoming failed to gather enough signatures to be on the 2024 ballot.

Liz Cheney has joined the faculty of the University of Virginia.

March 5, 2023

CPAC's conference is on, or as it might be more appropriately called, the Tour De Wackadoodle.

Conservatives used to be serious, and this conference, sort of a rarefied meeting of Conservative eggheads.  Now it's the Comiccon of political events.  

Marjorie Taylor Green, Lauren Boebert and Donald Trump as speakers?  Come on.

March 20, 2023

This Week had an interview with Mike Pence on which demonstrates the extent to which a politician is willing to be a craven wussy in order to run for office.  In spite of being the target of the January 6 protesters, he's really hedging his bets on whether he'll support Donald Trump if Trump is nominated, and that's because, probably, he doesn't want to alienate that base.

You really can't have it both ways on this one.

On all the weekend shows, Ron Desantis took a lot of criticism for his unwillingness to fully back Ukraine, a new position on his part that was likely also a misstep in casting for Trumpist ballots.

Pence really stands no chance of getting the nomination. Desantis did, but those chances look weakened.

April 13, 2023

South Carolina's Tim Scott has formed an exploratory committee.

I know little about Scott, but the Republican Senator can't be disregarded, and would be harder for Trump to routinely childishly insult the way he normally does his opponents.

April 15, 2023

A recent edition of NPR's politics discussed everyone in the GOP now running, which is more people than I thought, although in some ways its because some of the names are those testing the waters, and not really running, yet.

The list of suspects and running is, starting with the openly declared:

Donald Trump. We all know who he is.

Announced: Nov. 15, 2022

Nikki Haley, who is discussed above.

Announced: Feb. 14, 2023

Vivek Ramaswamy.  Ramaswamy is a conservative businessman and well known, apparently, in conservative circles.

Announced: Feb. 21, 2023.

Asa Hutchinson. He's a well known former Arkansas Governor who is an outright opponent of Trump's.

Announced: April 2, 2023

Tim Scott, discussed above.

Turning to the testing the water, the names are.

Ron DeSantis.  He's been in the news a lot lately as the non Trump, Trump.

Mike Pence.  Vying for hte role of the world's most boring man, he's clearly on the edge of announcing.

Chris Sununu.  Well known Governor of New Hampshire and an anti-Trumper.

Glenn Youngkin.  Somewhat known Governor of Virginia.

Kristi Noem.  South Dakota right wing Governor.

Liz Cheney.  We all know who she is.  She's been mentioned, but I doubt she'll run.

John Bolton.  Also a known name, but I'd bet Trump's former National Security Adviser turned Trump opponent won't run.

Chris Christie. Former Governor of New Jersey and clearly thinking of running.

On Trump, he spoke at the NRA convention, effectively linking the NRA, again, to Trump's brand of anti-democratic authoritarianism.  This will ultimately come to be a mistake for the NRA which is branding itself as a force in opposition to the majority of residents of the republic in an extra legal fashion, rather than as a defender of legal rights.

April 16, 2023

The Wyoming Freedom Caucus has formed a Political Action Committee.

It also held a convention in Casper over the weekend, which is somewhat ironic in that the county's GOP organization has gone in the other direction, although in the last election it did elect two members of the caucus.  At any rate, it was noted that it "just" needed ten more members to control the House, which is actually a really tall order.

April 18, 2023

According to the Cowboy State Daily, Chuck Grey has vowed to go after residence requirements and strengthen them before the next election.

Wyoming's requirement had been 60 days prior to the Supreme Court striking it down, at which point the Court suggested 30 days was reasonable.  Wyoming simply went to no residency requirement in order to vote at that time.  

Grey also went after the media in his speech on Saturday.

It's clear he intends to keep his name in the news in this fashion, rather than on the clerical duties associated with his elective office.

The Daily also reports the head of the Wyoming Democratic Party gave a speech in which the leader proclamed he was "proud to be woke", thereby giving an example of why the Democrats can't win anything in the state.

Indeed, that declaration was an example of why more and more people nationwide register as independents.  The more extreme the parties become, the less people wish to be associated with them, left and right.

And with Grey obviously vying for a futurue office, by campaigning from the far right, and the Democrats having once again jumped off the electoral building, we'll close this chapter.

Last Prior Edition:

The 2024 Election, Part I. Early adopters.

Related Threads:

The Post Insurrection. Unfit for any office. Part V.

Saturday, April 17, 1943. Staying on the job.

The United States War Manpower Commission issued the order preventing 27,000,000 civilian employees engaged in essential activity from leaving their employment for non-essential work.  An exception existed if a person simply left employment and remained unemployed for thirty days.

Penalties existed for employees and employers who violated the order, including fines up to $1,000 and a year in prison.

We addressed this a bit earlier, but this would probably be regarded as an unconstitutional act today.

Catholic orphanage in Algiers destroyed by Luftwaffe bombing on this day.  Fifteen Religious Sisters were killed in the raid.

Admiral Horthy, the leader of Hungary, refused Hitler's personal request to turn Hungary's 800,000 Jews over to the Germans.

The U-175 was sunk by the Coast Guard Cutter Spencer in a heavily photographed action.

Tuesday, April 17, 1923. Scouting in Casper.

I'm putting this edition of the Casper Daily Tribune up for one reason.

The article on the Boy Scouts.

It notes its explosive growth at the time, and that there was a troop in Mills. There's no troop there today.

Indeed, church troops, which this article notes, have really dwindled, although they still exist.  I know that in the 30s, St. Anthony's Catholic Church and St. Mark's Episcopal Church both had troops. They no longer do, although St. Mark's retains a cub scout troops.

According to the short search of it I did, today the local troops are:

6Units found near this ZIP Code

1

Troop 1035 American Legion George W Vroman Post 2

-1 miles

1868 S Poplar St
Casper WY 82601

Contact: Devin Hutchinson

Phone: (307) 337-1185

Email: devin930@hotmail.com

Boy Troop

Online Registration available for this unit.

Meets on Thursday nights at the church.

APPLY NOWRequest More Information

2

Troop 1167 Elks Casper Lodge

17.9 miles

Girl Troop

Request More Information

3

Troop 1167 Elks Casper Lodge

17.9 miles

108 E 7th St
Casper WY 82601

Contact: Richard Summerton

Phone: (307) 259-8878

Email: rlsummerton@gmail.com

Boy Troop

Online Registration available for this unit.

Meets on Tuesday nights in the basement of the Elks Lodge.

APPLY NOWRequest More Information

4

Troop 1094 Casper Five Trails Rotary Club

18 miles

701 S Wolcott St
Casper WY 82601

Contact: Craig Dutcher

Phone: (307) 258-9379

Email: craigdutcher@hotmail.com

Website: http://www.wytroop94.com

Boy Troop

Online Registration available for this unit.

Troop 1094 is dedicated to provide an educational program for boys and young adults to build character, to train in the responsibilities of participating citizenship, and to develop personal fitness. Our Troop camps during most months of the year, participates in several community service projects, and meets every Tuesday evening for regular meetings.

APPLY NOWRequest More Information

5

Troop 1113 First Christian Church Of Casper

18.1 miles

Girl Troop

Request More Information

6

Troop 1013 First Christian Church Of Casper

18.1 miles

520 Cy Ave
Casper WY 82601

Boy Troop

Online Registration available for this unit.

Great Troop! Great fun! Meets on Monday nights at the church.

A few things to note.

Two of these are associated with a church, that being the First Christian Church.  Way back in antiquity when I was briefly a Boy Scout, even though I'm Catholic, that was the troop I was in.  I think this was solely because somebody we knew was in it, and I was invited.  In retrospect, I'm surprised that my parents didn't suggest I look at the St. Anthony's troops, which was still around at the time, although its members were no doubt mostly alumni of St. Anthony's school.

The George Vroman legion troop actually meets at College Heights Baptist Church, based on that address. So is it a church troop?  That's not clear, but probably not.  That Legion post meets at the National Guard armory, so it doesn't have its own meeting site, which might explain it partially.

Two of these troops are associated with service organizations, the Elks and Rotary.  Service organizations are on the decline as well, although both of those seem to be doing well in Casper.

Most of these troops have a girls troops associated with them.  The introduction of girls into what had been the Boys Scouts happened a few years back, and when it occurred it took all the LDS troops out of the organization.  They'd had a big presence in it.  The move also irritated the Girl Scouts, for obvious reasons.

I don't know if It's helped the Boy Scouts or not. They've certainly been in decline, but I suspect that the introduction of girls hasn't helped.  Mostly what it probably has served to do is to create one more way in which it's impossible for boys to be with men in a formal way. Scouting was reeling under homosexual rape/seduction scandals at the time, although I'm sure that some would object to that characterization, even though there really is no other way to accurately describe it given as it was obviously male on male.  I'm not claiming, of course, that male on underage female, and for that matter female on underage male, sexual abuse does not occur.  Indeed, in the last year there's been a host of female on underage male abuse reported nationwide from public schools, school teachers in general being the number one sexual abusers of the underage.  Something, suffice it to say, is really amiss in our society, as it is likely that all of this reflects a big increase in this conduct, not merely the discovery of it.  

At any rate, the introduction of girls into the organization wouldn't seem to be directly related, but in a way it was, designed to show that Scouting was cleaning up its act and becoming inclusive.  It could have addressed that in another way, as it really undercut the basic nature of the organization.

As noted, my connection with Scouting is thin.  I was only briefly a Boy Scout.  I shouldn't, therefore, really care too much about its decline, but still, it says something about the evolution of American society over the past century, and whatever it says, it isn't really a good thing that it's a shadow of its former self.

Scouting no doubt has a lot to compete with these days.  However, the irony of that is that when it was first formed, it did to, and in some ways was formed expressly for those reasons.