tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8243351006478134285.post4627221234584790222..comments2024-03-20T12:34:55.100-05:00Comments on Stonekettle Station: Those Good Old Labor DaysJim Wrighthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11259550121437562338noreply@blogger.comBlogger65125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8243351006478134285.post-63426124269162389222016-09-22T02:06:36.363-05:002016-09-22T02:06:36.363-05:00I posted the following on facebook upon sharing yo...I posted the following on facebook upon sharing your essay announcement/link a year ago; for some reason, I never posted here; also, for some reason, facebook's "OnThisDay" nagger (which usually seems rather interesting to me, reviewing what I've posted before), didn't mention this around Labor Day this year. So I'm belatedly commenting now.<br /><br />"You ever stop to wonder what your life would be like if it was 1915 instead of 2015?"<br /><br />I, me, myself personally? I probably would NOT be alive, at all.<br /><br />"Imagine what it was like to be your great grand parents."<br /><br />I'd guess that maybe half the "audience" might need another "great."<br /><br />I'm further assuming that my great-grandfather was likely born around the mid-to-late 1870's (since my grandfather was born in the first few years of the 20th century). Read on if you want.<br /><br />People with diabetes generally died of ketoacidocis (DKA) in their early teens, before the discovery and extraction of insulin in the early/mid 1920's.<br /><br />Plus, I was born premature at 24 weeks back in 1966; current prognosis & chances for survival are only 55%. Odds are, I probably wouldn't have survived long enough for a diabetes diagnosis.<br /><br />So, obviously, I agree Jim!<br />Damn straight things are better than those "good old days" !<br /><br />Sorry, not particularly relevant to Labor Day, but this is what passed through my mind when you asked about 100 years ago.<br /><br />As an unemployed computer-programmer, living in an "At-will Employment" [termination] state, I don't have much to reflect upon regarding "labor," (my own "lack" of it notwithstanding), except that in spite of all the improvements over the past 100 years, perhaps the next century might get us a bit closer to the Star Trek "utopia."Mike Dobsonhttp://www.facebook.com/MichaelWDobsonnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8243351006478134285.post-5044417662772776742015-10-31T06:53:29.319-05:002015-10-31T06:53:29.319-05:00My paternal Grandfather was born to Swiss immigran...My paternal Grandfather was born to Swiss immigrants up in NE Ohio, dairy country. He didn't speak English until he started school. When he was 10 his father, my Great-Grandfather Johann died. Stepfather threw out all the kids but the youngest girl.<br /><br />Charley got a job on a neighbor's farm, and lived in the garden shed. When he was 13, he and the other kids on the farm were gathering nuts in the wood-patch. He climbed a hickory tree to shake nuts down. I don't know if you ever tried to pick meat from hickory nuts, you need a stout hatpin, and the pickin's are slim.<br /><br />The branch he was bouncing on, shaking down the nuts, broke, and he fell 30 feet. He broke his right thigh, and the country doctor didn't do a great job setting it. Later, a better doctor re-broke that big bone to reset it. Gangrene set in, and they took his right leg off at his hip.<br /><br />He lost his garden shed, since he couldn't work on a farm, and so he went to a county orphanage. They taught him how to hand-set type, one letter at a time, which was how everything was done then. He became a printer.<br /><br />For whatever reason, he wandered down to West Virginia, and took jobs at little weekly newspapers. Then in 1911 he went out west to New Mexico for a while, and then went back to WV, where eventually he borrowed $100 each from 22 friends. I have the note, with some names in pencil, others just a mark and a witness's signature. He used the $2,200 to buy one of those little weekly newspapers, and paid all those friends back.<br /><br />By the time I came along, born to his youngest son and a coal miner's daughter, he owned 3 newspapers and a small hotel. I still have the marble that was the hotel's front desk. I too was in the Navy, not as a career, just because I thought it was a better idea than being drafted into a combat job in Viet Nam.<br /><br />I went to college on the GI Bill, and with a lot of support from my wife, and my parents.<br /><br />I'm in favour of Social Security, health insurance, pensions, union contracts, honest bankers as opposed to gamblers using other people's money. My Grandfather had a unique idea for keeping the unions out of his businesses - pay more than union scale, treat the workers like family. That worked like a charm, and his employees called him Mister Charley and mostly would have done anything they could to help out.<br /><br />I started working at the family business at 14. When Dr. Salk's polio vaccine hit the market, they gave everyone who worked there and all their families the series of shots,. right there in the office. When Dr. Sabin's oral vaccine came out, we all got that too. And every other kind of vaccine you could get.<br /><br />Mister Charley, Grandad, knew about hard work, cold winter, not enough food. If you are gathering hickory nuts in the woods around the farm, you don't have enough food to feel confident about making it through the winter.<br /><br />But I remember him living next door to us, on a hill top on the edge of town. He called his house Hickory Bench because there were dozens of huge hickory trees. He was a well-to-do businessman, but he gathered those hickory nuts around his big brick house in the fall. He would crack them with a little hammer and a tiny anvil made from a railroad rail, and then pick meat from the nuts with a big pin. Then Grandmother would make a hickory nut cake, and we would eat it with cream poured over it.<br /><br />I wouldn't want to even visit 1915. J R in WVhttp://not.really.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8243351006478134285.post-1071836751405402462015-10-02T17:53:53.569-05:002015-10-02T17:53:53.569-05:00A chant from the demonstrations of the 60's. P...A chant from the demonstrations of the 60's. Paraphrased of course.<br />" Hey hey NRA, how many kids did you kill today?"<br /><br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8243351006478134285.post-84068515583170552742015-09-30T01:43:22.754-05:002015-09-30T01:43:22.754-05:00Apologies for being off topic--breaking. You FB po...Apologies for being off topic--breaking. You FB post on Jeb stating the Pope should not talk about climate because he is not a scientist just left me screaming. Being a scientist is not so much about a fucking piece of paper that bears the letters BS, MS, or Ph.D., it is about how you look at the world. The first scientists were actually philosophers. Everybody who has a high school diploma had more science training than they did, but that does not make them a scientist either. The goal of scientist educators is scientific literacy for everyone, scientist and non scientist alike. Anyone who has reasonable reading skills can read the publications of people who get paid to discover nature's secrets and these people can be reasonably conversant without that piece of paper. Who is Jeb Bush to say the Pope should not be talking about climate change? No body, that's right, no body at all.Dick Filsonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17177302110558459004noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8243351006478134285.post-88049374182582850892015-09-21T18:21:29.967-05:002015-09-21T18:21:29.967-05:00You didn't like what America used to be, huh? ...You didn't like what America used to be, huh? Neither do I. <br /><br />I also don't want that sort of grinding poverty, and that total disregard by the few wealthy, to recur. I'm afraid that pointing and huffing at someone who describes it is not an effective method of preventing its recurrence.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8243351006478134285.post-49910960832546924692015-09-19T19:53:17.577-05:002015-09-19T19:53:17.577-05:00Beautiful, Jim. I take photos of headstones for F...Beautiful, Jim. I take photos of headstones for Find-a-Grave. I am curious about local history and was fortunate enough to find a public health professional who provided a link to documentation that tabulated and verified epidemics in the northeast, and a month by month, year by year, causes of death by age, sex, and malady. Children died in droves from diarrhea, local epidemics of horrors like diphtheria,and women died between the ages of 35 an45, probably because childbearing was a very bad idea at that point. We live really, really well today.Alycia Keatinghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12552350513028203050noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8243351006478134285.post-23730307123006987192015-09-19T03:17:37.565-05:002015-09-19T03:17:37.565-05:00@ ^ Pamela Lee :Yep. No "probably " abou...@ ^ Pamela Lee :Yep. No "probably " about it though! StevoRhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02506855815096149912noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8243351006478134285.post-54376757199111209822015-09-19T01:46:49.786-05:002015-09-19T01:46:49.786-05:00A fine essay as always Jim - and I'll not quib...A fine essay as always Jim - and I'll not quibble with it's logic.<br /><br />But as a counterpoint it remains true that IF you were sufficiently wealthy and privileged during the Edwardian era (between roughly 1900 and 1910) it was an extraordinary time to be alive. Especially if you had the inclination and means to travel.<br /><br />Transport had developed to the point where it was reasonably safe and practical to travel anywhere in the world, while yet the cultures, cities and landscapes remained for the most part still untouched by the modern world, still unique and endlessly fascinating.<br /><br />Yes our era offers many benefits, mostly because we all enjoy the fruits of 20 or so energy slaves to maintain our lifestyles, but there was a line I heard many years ago which expresses what we lost as well; "That the Boeing 747 revolutionised travel in that it made all places equally accessible, yet at the same time it tended to make them all equally the same."PhilipWhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03628167279082034846noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8243351006478134285.post-48386714815066075042015-09-19T01:33:37.234-05:002015-09-19T01:33:37.234-05:00Just stop writing then. There's no need for an...Just stop writing then. There's no need for another blogger to try to fold, staple, or mutilate anything--history, political opinion, cracker barrel philosophy, or hubristic, commonplace tough-guy military experience--into a blog. Thanks for your service and all that, but too many fine people have been there and done that--for the past 50+ years to no one's benefit, and to many people's long-lasting detriment. <br /><br />I don't doubt that you meant well. Now peace be with you.Judenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8243351006478134285.post-10341219838975004732015-09-15T09:03:50.022-05:002015-09-15T09:03:50.022-05:00For all who want to return to 1915, they should fi...For all who want to return to 1915, they should first discovery how their ancestors were living during that period. Majority were probably leading difficult and poor lives.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18117837896972479819noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8243351006478134285.post-21591984683102611742015-09-14T07:28:32.369-05:002015-09-14T07:28:32.369-05:00I don't love that slogan. But the fight over ...I don't love that slogan. But the fight over Fast Track for G.W. Bush's TPP was more than enough to convince me to vote for Sanders.<br />~ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®©https://www.blogger.com/profile/06252371815131259831noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8243351006478134285.post-62512159313679908892015-09-13T18:48:55.366-05:002015-09-13T18:48:55.366-05:00Divide and rule. It's been working for the su...Divide and rule. It's been working for the super-rich for a long time.Glitterbughttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16617000032019846207noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8243351006478134285.post-18647470788598168682015-09-13T13:39:23.772-05:002015-09-13T13:39:23.772-05:00The conditions described in this description are t...The conditions described in this description are the reason why, when I hear right-wingers complaining about the "tyrannical government," and assorted variations on coups de etat, my answer is, "You're right---and we should move the government out of lower Manhattan, back to Washington DC where it's supposed to be." The Fly-over Pundithttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04927054566341662765noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8243351006478134285.post-44778803696758190632015-09-13T12:21:57.816-05:002015-09-13T12:21:57.816-05:00I always come away a bit changed after reading you...I always come away a bit changed after reading your essays. Your ability to stand back far enough to get the long view and yet close enough to write with such clarity of feeling is uncanny. I am so very grateful for plumbing, medical advancement, information technology, and your writing. Thanks again, for making sense of it all.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14686294603679206023noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8243351006478134285.post-74821533259845051542015-09-11T17:07:43.450-05:002015-09-11T17:07:43.450-05:00"When you leave it solely up to bankers and t..."When you leave it solely up to bankers and the factory owners and the industrialists and the politicians, well Sir, then what happens is they end up owning it all and you get the privilege of paying them to eat out of their garbage can. "<br /><br />Which is where we're at today.<br /><br />https://vimeo.com/71074210Draco TBhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06765506075559300004noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8243351006478134285.post-74082060806581851382015-09-11T12:17:58.529-05:002015-09-11T12:17:58.529-05:00The thing is, whenever anyone says that they want ...The thing is, whenever anyone says that they want to live in 1915 (or 1955, or 1810, or whenever they see as the Epitome of Real Civilization), what they mean is, "I want to be rich and privileged in that time." Which was great if you were, but almost nobody was.<br /><br />I read once that the test of a civilization is whether you'd want to live in it -- truly, inescapably, no-backsies -- *if you couldn't know in advance what role you'd play*. <br /><br />If you didn't KNOW whether you'd be a 1915 robber baron or a 1915 black sharecropper, or a 1915 factory girl-turned-abused-wife, or a 1915 child in the mines.<br /><br />If you didn't KNOW whether you'd be an 1810 Jane Austen society lady, or an 1810 impressed sailor lad, or an 1810 black Jamaican slave.<br /><br />I don't much like the society we're in right now, in that respect... I've landed a lot of accidental privilege in it as it is, and I'm doing all right; but a lot of people aren't. Would I honestly choose today's America if I couldn't know whether I'd be me, or a rich white Christian male, or a young black man in St. Louis or New York, or a kid growing up in the foster system? Well, depends on what the options are. I have to concede I haven't seen too much better yet (although I'd substantially prefer much of today's northern Europe), but I still hope we can do a lot better. <br /><br />My dreams are simple. I want a society I can look at and think, "Well, sure, some of those lives would be preferable to others, but none of them are actually all that bad."<br /><br />Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09660392702124578655noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8243351006478134285.post-19124168592317073942015-09-10T19:51:42.509-05:002015-09-10T19:51:42.509-05:00All the vote-seekers on the right keep promising t...All the vote-seekers on the right keep promising to "Take America Back." Good description of their proposed destination.bearsensehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12000858896207125033noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8243351006478134285.post-16591199744694235822015-09-10T14:16:17.682-05:002015-09-10T14:16:17.682-05:00This truly captures the importance of both Labor D...This truly captures the importance of both Labor Day and the struggle of people for liberty and rule of law.<br /><br />As a native (albeit relocated) West Virginian, I grew up seeing firsthand the effects, generations later, of the company-imposed serfdom. There are high-school kids in my hometown that have never seen our state capital, even though it's an hour away. The state economy is in shambles, and the people are hell-bent on voting away what gains they've made for another chance to die in - or from - those damn mines.<br /><br />I appreciate your recognition of the dangers those miners faced. Not sure if you're familiar with the episode, but in 1921 those miners and their families took a stand a Blair Mountain. Following bouts of lawlessness on the part of the striking miners, an armistice was reached with the condition that the miners return home. That's when the county sheriff, funded by the mine owners and backed by a private army, started killing as many unionizers and sympathizers as he could find. The miners were even bombed by private aircraft.<br /><br />https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Blair_Mountain#BattleChrisnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8243351006478134285.post-2814854673673531782015-09-10T12:05:00.488-05:002015-09-10T12:05:00.488-05:00My grandfather left a farm in New Hampshire for se...My grandfather left a farm in New Hampshire for service in WWI. When he got to California, he never went back.<br /><br />Pamelahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14984600539171463313noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8243351006478134285.post-59949391544348775432015-09-09T17:45:16.610-05:002015-09-09T17:45:16.610-05:00You're dead right Jim. I vividly remember my g...You're dead right Jim. I vividly remember my grandma telling me how 6 of 8 of my grandfather's siblings died in one winter when their father moved them to the city, Ashland, KY, to work in the steel mills. It was in the 1910s and whooping cough took them all.Mike Danielnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8243351006478134285.post-57791675013125088432015-09-09T15:02:49.118-05:002015-09-09T15:02:49.118-05:00From what I read, this conversation was with a ver...From what I read, this conversation was with a very disgusting couple. Their risk is that if their capital was lost, they might be required to actually take jobs and do actual work!Captain Danhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07304452748071775190noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8243351006478134285.post-69391352605404438552015-09-09T14:19:13.265-05:002015-09-09T14:19:13.265-05:00To everyone who thinks they want to "live bac...To everyone who thinks they want to "live back then" I have only one word - "dentist."<br /><br />Peace<br />Chris in S. JerseyAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8243351006478134285.post-12193648519891575152015-09-08T21:42:02.313-05:002015-09-08T21:42:02.313-05:00My Dad was born in 1916. His grandfather was an I...My Dad was born in 1916. His grandfather was an Illinois coal miner, working 60 a week for three dollars a day. My Dad, aunt, and his mother lived with Great Grandpa, and the family was considered well-off. In 1922, Great Grandpa and his co-workers participated in the Herrin Massacre. He died in a mine cave-in two years later. My Dad had to quit school at age 8 to work to support the family. By age ten, he was riding the rails selling Cloverine salve.midgebakerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09792321812940134153noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8243351006478134285.post-71729270887274016412015-09-08T21:19:59.575-05:002015-09-08T21:19:59.575-05:00Really well said, Deputy.
C540 LCSO RetReally well said, Deputy.<br /><br />C540 LCSO RetAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8243351006478134285.post-75967358561031592722015-09-08T20:38:09.313-05:002015-09-08T20:38:09.313-05:00I did. I posted something about on my Facebook pag...I did. I posted something about on my Facebook page this morning. <br />Jim Wrighthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11259550121437562338noreply@blogger.com