The Pretty, Pretty Picture

106 thoughts on “The Pretty, Pretty Picture”

1. Prediction is very difficult, especially if it’s about the future.

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   1. yep

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2. To a certain extent the current times and the elite behavior makes me think of Prohibition, the so called elites thought they knew better than the rest of us and imposed prohibition on us. Yes, it was ratified by enough states to become an amendment but that was just more “elites”. Blew up in their faces it did. And I think with them becoming more blatant this will also happen, at least I hope so.
   It all remains to be seen. I am not worried for myself, I’m 73, but I am worried for my kids, nieces and nephews and the like.

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3. You don’t have to go all that far back to validate your points on written (and oral) history. In just my family going back about 4-5 generations there are all sorts of examples of contradictory history depending upon who you ask, whose Bible or diary you read, and what “official” historians of the era and geography involved. My own conclusions are certainly peppered with my own prejudices but I’m sure my prejudices are justified, right?!? Shoot, just going through my own domestic history there are conflicting accounts of events that have no congruency depending upon which family member, neighbor or work-related associate you ask. At least that’s what the judges in Family Court stated. ;-P. So there is great difficulty in for seeing the future for my current descendants.

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   1. Then there’s the “She said it didn’t happen” aspect. Which is weirdly entertaining, because she told everyone it didn’t happen long before I said it did.

      I often go back to my journal to check my memory.

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   2. People who write about history tend to take one little tiny piece of the puzzle, put their own personal spin on it, and pretend it covers everything. Rome fell because they allowed everyone in. Rome fell because they devalued their currency. Rome fell because they were trying to police the world. Rome fell because they were colonizers. Excuses ad nauseum, and while each of the hundreds of “reasons” probably carries a piece of the truth, the whole is far more complex.

      People seem to prefer the “meme” version of history. Ten words and a picture never tell the whole story, and a meme usually feeds an agenda.

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      1. I swear I put this at the end…

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   3. You can’t even believe autobiographies. It’s too tempting for the person to change the narrative to suit their own ego.

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      1. Or even not ego. My Dad researched an event his parents told him as gospel truth.

         It was during the Spanish Flu, and the individual who relayed the story saw no alternative to divine intervention for the explanation of how a total stranger showed up at their extremely rural house in the middle of a blizzard while everyone in the house was sick, nursed them all back to health and then vanished.

         Turns out a family member had known they were all sick and hired someone to go in and take care of them.

         Divine intervention in a very real sense, but not the angel my great grandmother swore she saw.

         Dad used the story in his autobiography to demonstrate how people can remember the same oncident very differently.

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      2. change? Obama just made it up.

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         1. Actually I think someone else made it up for Obama :-)

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4. Those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Unfortunately, those who do learn from history often repeat it too, because sometimes the stuff is awfully hard to avoid even if you know it’s coming down the chute.

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   1. Those who do not learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat the mistakes. Those who do learn are doomed to watch everybody else repeat them.

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5. My Crystal Ball broke years ago. :wink:

   Individuals don’t matter?

   Depends on the individual and his influence (IE how many of his fellow individuals agree with him).

   Of course, there are many other factors involved in historical events.

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   1. I (with some shame) admit I’m not much of a “History” buff. Why? Because it’s all about sweeping, grand generalisations (the “big picture”) and assumptions (usually based on what whichever “historian” wishes to emphasise for ‘political/ideological’ reasons – history is written by who won, or often by those who think they should have, and is never unbiased). What I have read though are the personal accounts and biographies, and …

      Not only does the individual count, they (as The Boss and you intimate) are everything. Look closely at any ‘grand’ historical event and what you find is … a bunch of very specific individuals reacting … er, ‘individually’ to cause it (plug in a different set and it all would have worked out ‘very’ differently).

      On a smaller scale e.g. I used to (mandatory) read the histories of some of the “Units” (or precursor units) in which I served. What you see, every time, is not some grand, sweeping ‘inevitability’ that such a unit would form, but the specific individual’s … (often rationally unjustifiable) ‘dream’, brought to fruition by the effort of ‘infecting’ others with the same. (read about Peniakoff (popski), or Stirling to see what I mean).

      [I’ve grown to think that ‘genius’ isn’t as unique a thing as we think. That their main effect is as ‘examples’. Look to any and what you find is that as soon as they demonstrate something is possible, suddenly there are a hundred others showing how the same thing can be done 27 other (better) ways. So it’s not that they uniquely discover some novel idea, just they dare to show something ‘can’ be done and everyone else suddenly sighs with relief and shows how they knew all along].

      I suspect that there are gross differences in people. Look to covid, smoking (the list is endless) and what you see (consistent across countries and cultures) is … there’s always about 25% of the population who ‘react differently’ as individuals. I again suspect that what we see as history is someone from, or all the, 25% making choices and … the rest just following along behind (and the grand generalities are based, erroneously, on the followers rather than the individuals as should be).

      That “History” is presented as some grand march down predictable routes, when in reality it is based more on a meandering, vague progression steered, not by some grand vision, but … almost as if by random individuals based on “that sounds good”, “I think”, “couldn’t we” and (more than I care to consider) “look a squirrel” and “hold my beer”.

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      1. Even in the less than grand scale. Couple of examples.

         The Applegate Trail. It is two things. Access from Willamette Valley to California without going up the Columbia and down the east side. Non-Columbia raft access from Idaho to southern Willamette valley and points north. To hear the stories of the critics it is a deadly route. To hear it from others it is “don’t be stupid”.

         Seriously. There were three rules: 1) Stay together. 2) Move every day. 3) Very important. Make sure to traverse the last major canyon, in August, no later than early September, before fall rains hit. Guess what a good majority did not do. Not entirely without reason. The pioneers would hit good grass and surely a short few days stop was a good idea (not so much).

         TPTB have tried to erase the trail. Not entirely successfully FWIW. Sure I-5 covers much of it, including that dreaded canyon (canyon south of Canyonville). But the point remains. If the Applegate Trail is sooooooo horrible, why does a major freeway, and the original highway before it, explicitly follow it through all the valleys and passes from southern Willamette valley through the Siskiyou Pass?

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         1. Sigh.

            The other example is the Donner Party. What I learned in history, about the Donner Party, was that no one survived. Not only did the cannibalism occur, but in the end even those who partook died. Um. Not so much. There were survivors. Some were cannibals, some were not. Of the rescue party, there were those who were judgemental and upon facing the fact of cannibalism, turned around without offering assistance. There were those who were not judgemental including one who rescued more children than he could carry out by moving two or three 100 feet forward, stopping, going back for two or three more, repeat until everyone had been moved the next 100 feet. Repeat until everyone is rescued to the end point. (100 feet maybe the incorrect distance. But it makes the point.)

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            1. There’s a school of thought (“Natural Navigators” exemplified here by Tristan Gooley) that all the best, and most traditional, navigators follow the “child” model (open, honest observation and acceptance, telling yourself a ‘story’ of the route to remember it and … wandering aimlessly vaguely in the right direction, following the “easiest route”, but being distracted by “Oh, that looks interesting” or, yes … “look, squirrel”. Which is why I suspect so many ‘traditional’ routes seem to wander alarmingly, and follow amazingly unnecessary meanderings. And because ‘we’re’ both lazy, most are unquestioning, and blindly follow tradition, we still follow the original routes – and don’t get me started on following sheep/deer trails). That the modern penchant (for point-to-point ‘routes’) is profoundly and historically “unnatural” (and relies on already knowing what is there, and assuming those that trail-blazed that route knew too is, unfortunately, representative/typical of modern thought in so many areas, including history).

               I wonder, on such routes, did the original pioneer, like those who first saw Australia (in what turned out to be the rarest of wet seasons) ‘assume’ much that only later turned out to be … a problem? (I mean, unless you camp there for years, just ‘how’ do you find out the drastic differences through the seasons?). Another ‘issue’ is that we only ever hear of the (rare) successes, or the most extreme of failures, never the overwhelming drudgery, the repeated trial and error and average every-day failures (so much so that so many now actually think that is how life, not only actually is but, should be, and when reality punches them in the face, or when “Mother” Nature shows her true personality (she’s a Mother because most of the time she’s a crazy, vindictive B*tch who wants nothing more than to see you die in ‘interesting’ and ‘amusing’ – I think she really likes slapstick – ways) they can’t cope).

               “100 feet”? Possibly, but it would probably vary. Try Portaging around difficult stages of rivers, you transfer between ‘secure’, identifiable and level areas at the limit of how far you ‘can’ carry the load, distances vary (for every mile travelled, you can walk not just ten, but thirty). Point? So much that almost everybody, common, basic, everyday knowledge and skills we used to know is now lost (I am now ‘required’ to spend days describing tinder/kindling/fuel, the fire triangle, basic lays, when even twenty years ago I could simply say “light a fire”. Think about how bad it is that knowledge that Ug had 10,000 years ago is now virtually lost. I spent years patiently learning, and searching out knowledge and skills my grandparents probably thought universal – Luddite I know, but I’d rather know fire-starting than how to manipulate an iPhone). So, to save those children was an Herculean effort (and does “History” even record his name? There was an all too true line, in one of the Flint/Drake “Belisarius” series, where a character states that the Bhagavad Gita, in which millions are killed in battle, cites the names of each of the heroes but … not a single name of one of those millions. ‘that’ is “History”).

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               1. Yes. The individual who saved the Donner Party group of children, that others left behind as “too far gone to save”, is chronicled. How I found out about the event was a write up, recently, on the anniversary of the Donner Party tragedy, and mentions his name. Could I find it in a google search? Heck no.

                  I don’t disagree with the previous trail theory. See “Why are our roads the width they are now?” (https://www.truthorfiction.com/railwidth/) Truth or Fiction. It is perceptions that matter.

                  Regarding the canyon routes, south of Cottage Grove, and Canyonville. Check a map. Short of going route 101 (a good portion of which hug cliffs, and was not fully completed until in 1900’s), or east of Cascades, it is the only option north to the Willamette Valley. At the time the only way west through the Cascades was either down the Columbia, deadly whorl pools, etc. (Applegates lost a small raft with two young teens and an uncle on the Columbia, only deaths the entire trip), or south skirting the Cascades, cutting across (at K-Falls-ish), then head north to the Willamette valley. Until the Applegate Trail was blazed, the latter was not an option.

                  

                  Yes. There are now multiple routes across the Cascades. But these routes didn’t get one around the Steens, Blues, or Wallowas, mountain ranges further east, just into the Oregon high desert plains. (Hwys do now traverse all, except the Steens.)

                  Applegate Trail: 1846

                  Santiam Cascades Hwy (Salem to east side): Started 1861 – finished?, toll road until 1921, Clearlake cutoff (Eugene) completed well into the 20th century (1962). Hwy 242, “scenic” route was built in 1920’s.

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               2. Oops two links. Sarah, will you release.

                  Here is a third.

                         Applegate Trail

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               3. I don’t disagree with the previous trail theory. See “Why are our roads the width they are now?” (https://www.truthorfiction.com/railwidth/) Truth or Fiction. It is perceptions that matter.

                  WP I get around your mess.

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               4. Regarding the canyon routes, south of Cottage Grove, and Canyonville. Check a map. Short of going route 101 (a good portion of which hug cliffs, and was not fully completed until in 1900’s), or east of Cascades, it is the only option north to the Willamette Valley. At the time the only way west through the Cascades was either down the Columbia, deadly whorl pools, etc. (Applegates lost a small raft with two young teens and an uncle on the Columbia, only deaths the entire trip), or south skirting the Cascades, cutting across (at K-Falls-ish), then head north to the Willamette valley. Until the Applegate Trail was blazed, the latter was not an option.

                  

                  Yes. There are now multiple routes across the Cascades. But these routes didn’t get one around the Steens, Blues, or Wallowas, mountain ranges further east, just into the Oregon high desert plains. (Hwys do now traverse all, except the Steens.)

                  Applegate Trail: 1846

                  Santiam Cascades Hwy (Salem to east side): Started 1861 – finished?, toll road until 1921, Clearlake cutoff (Eugene) completed well into the 20th century (1962). Hwy 242, “scenic” route was built in 1920’s.

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                  1. Oh thank you ‘so’ much!

                     I’m a bit of a(n on leave) hiker and trail-rider. I’ve ‘done’ the Triple Crown (AT, CDT and PCT) … twice (and a few others including Benton Mackaye, John Muir, the Hayduke and even the whole proposed route of the AKLT – Seward to Fairbanks, which was really just an excuse to borrow a friends WWG Alaskan Copilot in .500 S&W). I’ve ridden the Blue Mountains (AUS – dressed like the man from snowy river), around Colorado/Wyoming/Montana (dressed like Clint), Texas (like The Duke), even Mongolia (just don’t ask).

                     I’ve even begun a bit of the Nez Perce NHP (well, the bit from Billings to Lewiston – as I was staying with friends in Orofino and wild horses can ‘just’ about get me to Spokane, ‘nothing’ can get me to Portland).

                     And … now you tell me I have to do the California Historic too? (OK you didn’t, but deliberately, intentionally and maliciously interesting me is … almost the same).

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                  2. Yeah, the main route from K-Falls to Medford is relatively easy. From the city, you have to wander around Doak Mountain (I don’t go that way; it’s easier to dodge north of Agency Lake, then join SR 140 near Klamath Lake and go up to the pass). The route to the pass is a 2 mile 6% grade, then there’s a few miles worth of plateau, then a 10 mile 5% grade down a canyon to the Rogue Valley and Medford. The route is easy; the main danger is people underestimating the few tight spots and driving too fast. Holiday traffic can be interesting.

                     AFAIK, it’s the most obvious route. There are a couple others; drove one once (SR 66) but the twisties are tough. Even the motorcyclist we followed had a hard time. I never tried Dead Indian Memorial Road. The “Memorial” got added when objections to various Amerind-adjacent/derived names arose. “Squaw” was a big offender–seems to rhyme with something vulgar in Mohawk(?).

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                     1. The route we came up from Susanville, CA (via *hwy 139) to K-Falls, very quickly snakes up the steep side of the mountain, not a rocky cliff, but dang close. Very narrow two lane road with single yellow stripe down the middle, and little to no edges on either side. One side is the carved out mountain, the other side “Oh. Wow. It is a long way down!” without guardrails. Climb is steep too, 6% – 10%. Once on “top”, still have a number of canyon valleys and passes to traverse going north, again with 6% – 10% declines and climbs. Road doesn’t get much wider except in short spurts, either. Point being, the pioneer wagons weren’t wandering that route in the mid 1800’s.

                        ((*)) There is a reason why sections of hwy 139 show “slow traffic” on the route. Section by definition is slower driving regardless of traffic levels.

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                        1. That was the preferred route when we’d visit MIL in Paradise. US-97 is OK, but I-5 down to Red Bluff is seriously not fun. The rattlesnake warning at the Cottonwood rest area gives a certain amount of “I gotta get out of here!”

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                           1. but I-5 down to Red Bluff is seriously not fun.
                              …………………

                              Why we chose a different route. Especially since two weeks ago they were predicting storms to hit CA hard. The route we went might shutdown because of whiteouts. I-5 Siskiyou pass shuts down for whiteout, ice, and wind (rattlesnake not a problem, probably, middle of February). OTOH refueling and rest stops were a problem. (Waze took us around Susanville. Should have backtracked in for gas. Didn’t. By the time we got to Tuopole (sp?) the car was thirsty, and my bladder was very much not happy.

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                           2. Adin had a decent diner about halfway up on 139. Never needed to buy anything in Tulelake (near the CA-OR border), but if range permits, getting to Merrill on OR-39 makes for cheaper gasoline and some more options for meals.

                              If you’re going from Reno northwards, $SPOUSE says 395 is good. Gasoline in Lakeview is spendy (the two trips I did to the midwest, Lakeview gas was the most expensive* the entire trip), but the “Burger Queen” diner on 395 a bit south of the OR-140 westbound junction is/was pretty good. (Current as of 2015, so YMMV.)

                              ((*)) Transportation issues, mostly.

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                           3. What we learned on this trip was to put in intermediate points for the route we actually want. Google Maps, on the PC, different routes are given as options. On Waze and google maps phone app, not so much. Some of the routes outlined, were interesting, not necessarily in a good way. Like the routing around Susanville, instead of through. Yet a different town we were routed through, not around. Yes, we did come through Reno (from Tonopah).

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                           4. Next year trip is Vegas. Don’t know what I’ll do. Likely at least one person who drives over with him will come back with him, instead of flying back. If not, we’ll see what site seeing we can do from there if I fly in. (Vegas was suppose to be this year, with Phoenix next year. But Super Bowl was in Vegas in the middle of their two weeks. They chose to swap.) Hubby has driven back by himself before, since he started doing this in 2015. But, I want to get out of here too. Me going along on the whole trip, triples the cost (did go in 2015, also Phoenix) and is boring, once we got to the condo (would have worked if had access to working internet, tried, it did not work. Now I’m not even working.) (Not one for shopping. Me braving those freeways? Forget it. Not even with Waze.)

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               5. “ unless you camp there for years, just ‘how’ do you find out the drastic differences through the seasons?”

                  That one’s easy: When you kill all the men and male children above age 6, have their women set up your camp right where they were located. That’s how everyone did it until very recently in the hooman experience.

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                  1. By 1846 Applegates had been in Oregon for over a few years. While they didn’t know that particular canyon, they did know that with rain the canyon rivers and creeks (neither canyon are the size of the Mississippi, Ohio, Columbia, or even the Snake, rivers) tend to swell with fall rains, a lot, and are difficult to traverse safely. Heck creeks and rivers still do, with uncontrolled ones being even worse. Both these canyons are uncontrolled (no dams). Just not visible since I-5 goes over them. (Canyonville canyon is essentially series of long bridges. While Cottage Grove canyon is series of short bridges. Both are curvy to very curvy.)

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            2. “What I learned in history, about the Donner Party, was that no one survived.”

               That’s interesting. I grew up in California, and was able to see Patty Reed’s doll at Sutter’s Fort. She survived (I believe the Reed family was one that did not end up resorting to cannibalism, though their leather gear was long gone.) We certainly weren’t taught that they all died.

               There’s a survivor of that event who is buried in a cemetery less than two miles from where I live. There’s also a survivor of the Lewis & Clark expedition buried about fifteen miles away, with a headstone and plaque which are both incorrect, in different ways.

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               1. I grew up in Oregon. Not surprised that areas closer to the event have a better detailed history.

                  Read: “Jesse Applegate: A Dialog With Destiny”. Warning. It is a slow slog because it counteracts some “official versions” with cited written facts.

                  Why would Leta Neiderheiser bother? The man is her great-great-grandfather? She is also the reason why the Applegate Trail is being marked with highway history board signs. The Oregon State governmental bodies get a tad upset when Jesse is mentioned. (She is now 85 and is handing off her research and current projects to a great-great-great-great (-great?) decedent who is interested in continuing her work.)

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6. Anyone that things they can predict the future…usually can’t.

   Back in the late ’80s/early ’90s, we were all going to have MiniTel-type boxes on our TVs that could do video on demand, shopping on demand, that kind of thing, all through AT&T or Comcast or one of the other Big Cable Companies, because-
   1-That’s how they did it in France (and our elites love France for society and social theory and Germany for military and social theory for some reason…)
   2-The only models they had for online interaction was AOL/Compuserve/Prodigy
   3-Only those Big Companies had the infrastructure to handle those kinds of things

   Then this little thing called ARPANET became the Internet and, well…

   From a historical POV-yes, we are in bad times. There are echos of the later days of the Roman Empire in what’s going on. And depending on the historical sources, you can find examples of things that rhyme really close.

   But.

   We aren’t Rome. However bad our government is, it’s not corrupt on the same scale as the Roman Senate and military were. We’re better armed that most non-military Romans. And with few exceptions…I think most of us agree that there are problems, they have to be solved, and it’s just a question of how, not if.

   So read your history. But don’t pretend that you can map everything 1-1 from history. That is, after all, what Marx believed he could do…

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   1. Middle Republic, not Empire. We haven’t gone dictator nor conquistador. Not yet. And the revolving-door of civil war is also blessedly absent. So far.

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      1. 11B-Mailclerk said “We haven’t gone dictator nor conquistador”. Well it wasn’t for lack of trying on the part of Obumbles. Heck there were people calling him “The Light Bringer” and practically worshiping the crease in his pants. And the tendencies to dictatorial fiat have continued in the current Turnip in Chief.

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         1. I’d say we are still in the pre-Lucius Cornelius Sulla Felix phase. But as Sarah notes, we ain’t Romans, and this ain’t Rome, even Republican Rome. That’s not what ours will rhyme with.

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         2. Obama? Compared to Gaius Julius Caesar? Compared to Gaius Octavius “Agustus”?

            (Scared the cat out of her nest with bellows of laughter)

            (Whooping laughs annoying neigbors and driving cat under couch)

            In his wildest dreams, Obama “Mierdes The First” successes do not rise to the level of the fuckups of those two founders of the Roman Empire.

            Please don’t do that to me. My lungs are still healing. Ouch. That hurt.

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      2. So far,
         At least to most folks reckoning,
         But you can bet in some circles the feel those inevitabilities are closer than most realize and are preparing or rather already prepared for it, i would bet it wont go over how the political class of clowns thinks it will.

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7. Try praying for “a remote scourge of cords”. The direct-user-interface version was used to clear the Temple of annoyances, so there is a precedent. Or perhaps try “remote table-overturn”. The latter might better gain the attention of the offender. This also has annoyance-clearing precedence.

   (grin)

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   1. The only thing keeping me from asking for a remote keyboard electrical PEBKAC shock therapy button is that I know there are times I’d be the one receiving it, not giving. Although there have been a couple of times…..no just no.

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   2. I don’t request which means are used, but my prayers in recent years tend to end with “and please rid us of these horrible communists.”

      I don’t mind if He chooses to be merciful.

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8. It’s not the entire culture, but there’s definitely pockets of decadence (bureaucrats and administrators who live high on the hog despite the fact that they’re useless and could be replaced with ChatGPT and no one would notice, for example) that are going necrotic and sickening the parts of the country they can influence.

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   1. In one of the college history classes that I took – the lecturer pointed out that Rome – for all the notorious decadence and depravity and violence of the upper/ruling classes (lovingly detailed in the written records) there was a layer of solid competence and adaptive ability in play which got hardly any notice … but the establishment of Rome and it’s influence/empire lasted more than a thousand years … and longer in the East. There were generations and generations of competent, able people who went on quietly working to support their society for centuries.

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      1. It’s like everyone thinks that the collapse of Rome was instant Mad Max. No, that’s not how collapses work.

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         1. That’s not how collapses USED to work. We’ve never seen what happens when the entire worldwide economy has been restructured based on increasing the apparent supply of goods by accelerating the pace of commerce via increases in transaction speed and reductions in delivery times….. all facilitated by an electronic network with multiple points of failure accidental or intentional.

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9. With regard to Arnold, DC, see also Piper, H. Beam, “Crossroads of Destiny”. It’s on Gutenberg.

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   1. Given what I’ve read about what led to his defection, Benedict would have failed to resist the calls which George resisted to make himself King, which would have triggered most of the founders to either get themselves hanged or kick off another fight along the lines of “we got rid of one King only to end up with another?” and this would have ended up a much different country.

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10. Pebbles in a pond.

    “Can you see the ant on the leaf in the pond?” The wizard asked his young sage.
    “Yes” the sage replied.
    “Throw in one of the pebbles I asked you to pick up” the Elf instructed.
    “Seems rather malicious but okay” she replied, tossing in one pebble
    It of course made a wave, but the leaf easily rode out the lone wave.
    “Now throw in two pebbles but miss the leaf” the Wizard instructed.
    She threw in two pebbles, which made mores waves, the leaf went up and down but still rode out the waves.
    “Now throw in a handful” he ordered.
    She did and the leaf was overcome by the chaos of the waves. It sank putting the ant in the water to be eaten by one of the Koi fish in the pond.
    “One pebble, even two pebbles and the ant survives his trek. But more than that and the leaf sinks and mister ant becomes fish food. The chaos of waves is too much to overcome” the wizard explained.
    “Besides don’t be an ant on a leaf around a sage with pebbles I miss the meaning of this lesson” she confusedly stated.
    “Life is like a leaf on the water, the winds of change blow you across the surface. Each pebble is a person and the wakes they make in life effect all around them. Trying to predict the future is impossible, you can’t know what every pebble is doing or when it will decide to do something, or what that pebble will do when it does do something” he explained.
    “Or like the ant you’ll drown in the chaos?” She asked.
    “Meh, fish got to eat too, it was just an ant after all” he amusingly stated.

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    1. Meh. So, if you’re the ant, what’s the solution?

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       1. Stay the hell off leaves on ponds near elf Sages?

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       2. Get on a duck instead of a leaf?

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          1. And it shouldn’t be a problem later, since everyone knows (via Abbott and Costello?) you can get down from a duck.

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          2. Or a witch.

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11. Ah yes, history… was a high school history teacher for a brief time – a lot of it changes when you shift the perspective. Long ago, in an Indian reservation school, the view of how the expansion of the US into the plains from a reservation kid’s perspective is much different than some kid in New Jersey has – and I had actual proof.

    Fellow teacher friend was from the east coast (NJ and NY) and his views and those of the tribal elders were very diverse. I don’t think either of them had it just right but it made great conversations and helped me with some really nice lesson plans.

    As for the “records” of the past – I remember teaching rookies ‘report writing’ and reviewing reports from actual incidents. Three officers, a supervisor, a staff nurse and the statements from the two inmates involved – Yeah, all of them different and with very, very little in common. Roll Tape! Then watch the video of the event from several camera angles and lo – some of the tail told by the above was actually accurate but they all sure did miss a lot of other things also going on.

    However, no matter how “it” comes about we are due for a shift/change in politics, social life and culture and it’s in progress. It may happen very quickly (big trigger event and poof, major change) or slowly over a long time frame, years and maybe many, many years. The shift/change will happen and how we respond to it will be uniquely American and individually our own. I believe the “best” will come from it but it will be costly.

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    1. “We are due for a shift/change”

       I cant help but wonder if it is a fourth turning?

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12. The local political ads for Boxer’s Senate seat have been interesting. Apparently Gabby Giffords is backing one of the candidates (mentioned in a quick line in one of the ads). I’m not sure why that’s relevant to a California campaign, and it’s not explained why Gabby Giffords cares about that candidate. But whatever.

    More interesting is Schiff’s ad campaign for the seat. Schiff doesn’t want to be seen directly attacking his Democratic opponents. So he’s running ads against Republican candidate Steve Garvey (yes, that Steve Garvey) that play up Garvey’s support of Trump and the border wall. And the ads conclude with a plea to support Schiff against the evil Republican. I heard earlier today that Garvey is now polling even with Schiff, so the ads might be backfiring. Though since we have a jungle primary here, everything gets recalculated after the primary when the field is winnowed down to two candidates, and the other Democrats are removed from the field. Note that Garvey doesn’t have enough money to run his own ad campaign.

    Finally, there’s apparently been a rash of signage theft in neighboring Orange County. Something about a school board recall election. One of the people involved with the campaign got fed up with the thefts, so she put a tracker on the back of one of the signs. When the sign was stolen, she tracked it to the residence where it and a number of other similar signs had been dumped. And then she called the cops. 😃😃

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13. Have fun at the con, dear hostess, and please tell us all about it next week.

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14. “Just different annoying” is a wonderful typo, because absolute monarchy and Marxism are both quite well described therein.

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    1. I was going to say the same thing, but I can’t decide if it was a typo or by-design. It works so well as written.

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    2. Maybe they should be called ‘the annoynted’? :-P

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15. SIGH

    There is a branch of the study of history known as historiography. My History 300 professor (supposedly the course had an actual name, but at Oakland U, the history majors and profs all just called it “History 300” or just “300”) referred to is as “the history of the history of your subject.”

    Any work history you consume displays a bias, although some authors hide it better than others. Even a straight timeline is biased based on what dates it shows and what gets left out. And something always gets left out.

    Marxist history is just another point of view in a stack of them, especially when you’re discussing Ancient Rome (and that’s one of the reasons, the other being primarily language skills, that I went into American History. Even the history of Columbus’s voyage and the discovery of the Americas only has five hundred years worth of historiography. I did the World Wars, and that’s basically one century’s worth of history) because there have been so many years of study and writing of the subject. Of course, Marxists would argue that they’re the only correct interpretation, as would the Consensus Historians of the 1950s and 60s…

    There is no right side of history, just the interpretation of the historians who write it. And don’t make the mistake of believing that “history is written by the winners.” See the current treatment of the winning of the West if you disagree. The US clearly won that one and are being painted as genocidal warmongers despite the fact that the Native American tribes still exist over a century later.

    Using history to predict anything is therefore pointless unless it’s in the most broad terms possible (IE I once made a comment that life would continue after Covid because life always continues after a plague and had throughout history. I was right, but that was the most basic history ever.) because no history is the true history. It’s not in the facts it’s in the interpretation. Direct comparisons aren’t even possible.

    That much having been said, I think we are in a dangerous time in American history. We inhabit interesting times in the sense of the ancient Chinese curse. So take care of your own and some others if you can, but be prepared for insanity. Something crazy is always right around the corner. The day before some crazy Serb killed an Austro-Hungarian duke everything was more or less calm in Europe.

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    1. Things were more or less calm even right after the assassination. Kaiser Wilhelm II is reported to have remarked that the demands the Serbs had agreed to would appease the Austro-Hungarians. It took a little time for the world to up-end itself.

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       1. For about the first two weeks, everyone agreed that Austria-Hungary had an absolute right to justice. Europe (and even the US) had had a spate of monarchs, prime-ministers, and a US president assassinated by anarchists, anti-monarchists, and others. Enough was enough.

          Then Austria had to delay while Hungary agreed to participate and what the terms should be, and support cooled, and …

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          1. So…

             Kinda like the reactions to 9/11?

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             1. A little.

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16. history seems to move faster now, (probably because communications do)

    This is one of the (many) issues I have with the The Fourth Turning folks. For them, it’s all about generations. Even granting that their thesis may HAVE BEEN true, I’m not sure it still holds true.

    There’s also a brake built in – especially on the Right – as real connections are made. No matter how fast one hears about the latest OMG! incident on Twitter, very few people will immediately act in the real world. First, one must gather like-minded individuals into a group, which means finding those like-minded individuals. The Left has a lot of these groups pre-built, which is why they react so quickly. It’s not exactly “astroturf”, but it is at least “get phone call, go protest”. The Right doesn’t have that infrastructure, so there is a lot of delay as people try to figure out if any particular incident is worth forming a noticeable group.

    This is one reason I think the precipitating incident will be something fairly boring that has happened before (and may happen again; “precipitating” is a long way from “resolution”). That delay will be minimized because it’s something that people have already reached consensus about – and know others in that consensus. For a non-boring example, the reaction to a Jan 6 “insurrection” in 2025 will be drastically different than the reaction to Jan 6 2021.

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    1. “people try to figure out if any particular incident is worth forming a noticeable group.”

       And if it’s a honeypot set up by the Feds and/or local law enforcement. Not helped by people on the right who toss around glowy, etc.

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17. Will nobody rid us of these meddlesome Marxists?

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18. Pity we can’t dial MYCROFTXXX on our cell phones. Would be much easier on mind.

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19. I remember listening to Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. The thing that struck me was there didn’t even entirely seem to be a discrete fall. Rome, as a city, lost power and prestige as the Senate became toothless, and known to be toothless, and as the Emperors started coming from places not Rome, but the real ‘fall’ such as it was, was the decline of basic order in the Roman regions, until no-one even cared if there was a Roman Empire any more.

    Far from being some thundering fall, it sort of sounds like it just… stopped.

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    1. Also Gibbon really really didn’t like the Eastern Roman Empire, and basically ignored everything in the West that was basically “DYI Roman Empire, with minimal tax money available.”

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    2. Which makes sense. The city’s still there. Always has been since it’s founding. It’s not like it got razed or flattened or anything.

       It just stopped mattering. People started looking elsewhere for guidance and support. And eventually, Rome didn’t even control the peninsula that it was located on. Really, the only reason anyone cared at all about things happening in Rome was because of the Vatican. Even on the peninsula, cities like Genoa and Venice mattered more than Rome did.

       If something similar were to happen to DC, then chances are that DC wouldn’t still exist 2000 years later. Rome was a city before it became the capitol of an empire. There were reasons why people settled there that had nothing to do with the empire. DC was built expressly to be the capitol of a country. It’s only ever existed because the rest of the country exists.

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    3. I remember a blog post where the blogger set out to prove that Rome had actually fallen by showing graphs showing the declines of various activity, and the commentariat looked at them and said, the “fall” is a line drawn across the decline. At one point in Rome’s decline it “fell” but the decline didn’t change until the Dark Ages turned it around.

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    4. Looking at the various old provinces of Rome, you still see enough of the culture…. Well, the government fell, the rest trundled on.

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       1. See Noviodunum (now Soissons) and the last western empire Roman military Dux and Magister Militium Aegidius and then his son Syagrius, who hung in there using Roman Law and all the rest, basically pretending they had just somehow lost the address of higher and were unfortunately cut off, but were still a loyal Imperial Diocese of Gaul remnant, up until 486 when the Franks took the city.

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20. In salvation history, to pick a random thousands of years history out of hat, Himself has always, and I mean always, chastised the people He loves for their edification and to His greater glory. He only does this when things become so out of hand that the Salvation of the people requires severe correction because of their pride and hubris.

    If pride and hubris does not describe the West, I don’t know what does. Everyone can feel the disorder in the air. What can’t go on will not go on. Justice demands a return to right order. We should not regret the coming chastisement but rejoice in the lancing of the boil that healing of the infection might come and a return to good health be achieved.

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21. ” and a great portion of us will screw their way to glory or at least exhaustion.”

    “Kit Marlowe was exhausted.”

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    1. DO NOT ENCOURAGE HIM.

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    2. As he drained his goblet of bloodwine, Kit Martok reflected on the events of the past three days.
       He was exhausted. And it had been glorious.

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22. I hate to be out of control of my own mind makes me a very odd duck, so I won’t, but trust me, I’m the exception.
    ………………………

    Same. In addition “mind altering” substances like alcohol, legal narcotics (dentist), make my mind clearer. I get dizzy. But my mind gets clearer. Then I go to sleep. Nope. Not happening.

    Off topic. March 1 and we have snow. Well had. Off and on, all day. Even stuck. Mushy because of all the rain before hand. But stuck around for about 30 minutes each time. Snow. In March. In the Willamette Valley! We’re at 400′.

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    1. A couple hundred miles south they had a 190mph wind gust overnight up top of the Palisades ski resort, I think up where they also have the ice rink.

       One Hundred and Ninety Miles Per Hour.

       They said they got less accumulated snow so far in this storm because the wind was so strong it broke apart the snowflakes into individual ice crystals, which pack more densely for a given amount of water content.

       Nice storm.

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       1. Been reading about the high winds. California even had a Tornado touch down. A tornado in California! Many passes are closed. Yosemite Valley is closed. They closed ski resorts, with snow coming in. Let that sink in.

          Oregon mountains are getting hit but not as hard. Hwy 58 closed, yesterday, because semi pileup. Hwy 58 also has a foot or more new snow since we came through 10 days ago.

          Heck we had snow in the valley this morning at least from 4:30 AM (dog had to go out) and was still there at 9 AM. Gone late morning. About 1/4″. Not much. But it snowed, in the the Willamette valley, in March. Snow in the Willamette valley is unusual enough in November – February, let alone to go into March. In the Cascades sure, any month, sure. But not in the valley. Under winter weather warning again tonight. Lots of “be prepared” beyond “have chains and know how to use them”, “what to have if stranded in vehicles”, warnings being issued. Even with the mountain snow we get, those warnings are not usual.

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          1. Click the link below for the Palisades resort weather page, then click over on the right on [Palisades Crest @ 8,700’] – right now (8:13pm PST) it’s calmed down to sustained winds 70mph gusts to 139mph at 14F:

             https://www.palisadestahoe.com/mountain-information/snow-and-weather

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          2. This is still Global Warming, right? Like that other blizzard a few years ago that froze all the giant pinwheels down in Texas?

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             1. Global change. Don’t you mean.

                Never mind that Oregon, okay Willamette Valley (because that is all I am remotely qualified to comment on, not a *weather trained person) weather is cyclic. Yes it is a surprise to get snow in the valley. Yes it is a super surprise to get snow in March (or if you will, very late February). But, it is not unknown. It is just not usual.

                ((*)) Did take a weather class in winter ’77. Forestry requirement. They wanted us to be able to see thunder storms rolling in so can extract crews and self’s safely. Winter ’77 drove the professor nuts. Winter term was his “fun” term. Could use the weather as live examples. Except winter ’77 term. High set on the valley, cold and blue skies. Not a cloud to be seen, anywhere. Did illustrate how cold dehydrates when there is no moisture in the air. Cold pulls out the moisture from the ground via frost, then dry cold evaporates that moisture. Bad dry spring and summer. Thunderstorms? Those I learned on the job. After 3 seasons at the first district, learned from the locals on the crew, pay attention to the scent of the air, and the hair on the back of your neck and arms. Can’t even see the clouds but you know what is coming.

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                1. Uh, that was sarcasm. Sort of my default setting. :-P

                   ‘Cause Global Warming causes blizzards, don’tchaknow. Also droughts, floods, high winds, no winds, hurricanes and earthquakes. None of which were ever a problem before we started burning coal, oil and gas. Just because.

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                   1. I know. I was being sarcastic back. Sorry for not tagging it that way :-)

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                   2. That’s why they went to the default “climate change,” because it could go in either direction. Put the goalpost in the middle of the field, right?

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    2. Welcoes to the Northwest, where the February and March are the second most likely time of year to get snow.

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       1. Grew up here. Our house is one mile from my childhood home, where mom still resides after 60 years and 2 months. I know how much snow the valley actually sees in March, even early March. Always possible because freezing is not unknown in the valley, through even May. Just usually freezing and clear. The odds of freezing temperature and moisture, at the same time in the valley are very low. Which is why snow, in the valley, anytime, is rare. The odds of the weather people predicting snow and us actually getting it? Is even lower. Now the mountains OTOH, that is different. But, obviously, it can and will happen.

          Note, clear skies and freezing (cold at least) caused by a high bubble sitting over the valley, is what caused the ’69 snow. Four feet of it (and more further south). The pineapple express front that caused it wasn’t strong enough to push the cold front bubble out. Then the pineapple express, instead of being shuttled south or north around the high, was shuttled over the high. So rain above, but came through as big flaky snow. That pineapple express had a lot of moisture to get rid off.

          I have no idea how they are explaining our current storms and lower elevation snow. Been predicting and warning about it for at least a week or more before it finally did what they’ve been predicting. Even they didn’t predict snow in the actual valley (1000′ and higher, yes, not 400′ valley. Which, 1000’+, does affect 30th, Hawkins Heights, the Buttes, hills in Springfield, and I-5 passes, especially south of Yoncolla exit.)

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23. As to the future not being scripted, I think God already knows; but the Bible is clear there will be false teachers and false prophets.

    None of us knows what’s around the corner.

    I’m still hoping for a car like George Jetson had.

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24. Re: history as forecast

    ‘Preach it, sister, preach it!’

    History and histography are just so stories we tell about patterns from the past. They are reduced order.

    Futurism is just so stories on much much sparser data, with that extrapolation.

    We have the opportunity to access a great deal more present information, but much less time to process any one set of it.

    ‘The story of the present’ is interesting, but the question of present patterns, ever more recent past patterns, and future patterns gets a bit intractable as you widen the set of predictions, or metrics.

    This is why I tend to argue that global or aggregate priorities are a bit less functional than local or individual priorities. As individuals, we are better equipped to focus our goal orientation on stuff we can deal more directly with as individuals. IE, decisions we make ourselves based on information gathered directly, analyzed personally, and applied to things beneath our hands.

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    1. Yep. All politics is local, as it were.

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25. (The fact I hate to be out of control of my own mind makes me a very odd duck, so I won’t, but trust me, I’m the exception.)

    No wonder you adopted me via duct tape.

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26. The “fall of Rome” is to great extent a Enlightenment era exaggeration. The Roman republic failed into Imperial Rome. Imperial Rome was under martial law – the Caesars were military rulers – until the civil functions devolved locally and the Church became the – less coercive – Rome in the west. The eastern Rome continued on until 1453 – contemporary to the western Reformation.

    The “Rome” that is thought of with its technologies and vast territory was a result of a military dictatorship.

    If history rhymes we have not hit that stanza yet.

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27. I have a vision of an ad hoc army of irate Moms, eyes flashing like lightning, bearing down on a Wokester protest, Doom Chanclas threateningly raised, chanting, “Just wait till your father gets home.” What would the result of that be?

    Some years ago, here in Shaky Town, some public parks had become dangerous places as gangs claimed them as their territory and drove everybody else out with violence or threats of violence. The problem was ultimately solved when groups of grandmothers entered the parks and dared the gangsters to drive them out. The gangsters left.

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28. Everyone knows Rome fell because it stepped on that top step of the ladder, the one that looks like a step but in our more enlightened times we know, thanks to the OSHA label, is “Not A Step”. If only “Non Gradus” had been engraved there…

    Roman civilization “fell” after 38 years short of two millenia when Constantinople ran out of both armies and allies and the Moslem armies overran it. That’s quite a run.

    The city which all vias led to fell because of a whole chain of stupid and “bad luck” over many decades, after it notably had not even been used as the capital of the Western Empire for years, but the actual Western Empire government center and the entire functioning government fell too so that’s a difference without a distinction. Notably the first thing the Roman-trained guy who conquered the city of Rome did was pledge his allegiance to the current eastern Roman Emperor.

    And also notably Belisarius reconquered much of what had been the Western Empire about a hundred years later, bringing it back under Roman Rule, but those were the “Byzantines” so they don’t count.

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    1. The idiot historians called the Eastern Empire “Byzantines” but the Eastern Empire called itself Roman. :wink:

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       1. Rubes forehead with fingertips I know you’re joking a little, but there is actually a decent reason when writing about the past to separate the Rome-based empire that lost most political cohesion after AD 476 CE from the Constantinople-based empire. By the 400s, the culture of the eastern Roman Empire had drifted from the western Roman Empire in several ways (or vice versa). Threats also differed in the east and west.

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29. The biggest parallel I see between our society and Rome’s various declines is that they are ruled by elites who don’t appreciate the complexity of the society that keeps them in power. Because they don’t understand it, they think they can just randomly disable parts without causing any issues for the whole.

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30. Speaking of extremely pretty pictures that are worth paying attention to, what tool(s) are you using to create the one on today’s post?

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31. When we talk about decadence we’re usually focusing on the wrong thing. Sexual immorality? Corruption? Restoration England had those to a degree unequaled since . . . and oh by the way built the British Empire. Venice was famously decadent from the Middle Ages onward . . . and oh by the way went toe-to-toe with the Ottoman Empire and held their own for centuries.

    No, the real decadence to worry about is apathy. When the people are so beaten down by a society that despises them they can’t be bothered to save themselves.

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32. Coughcough Sarah, back in your files you have the post I wrote about the “Dark Ages” and for whom they were dark. You can rerun it if you want. coughcough

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    1. I should tomorrow. Saves me writing it. I’ll look…..

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