Wednesday, January 31, 2018

Lex Anteinternet: Petroleum. Happy Days Are Here Again?. Maybe not all is as it seems?

We've been running a lot of items on oil production and booms, boomlets, etc. recently.  Yesterday we ran this item:
Lex Anteinternet: Petroleum. Happy Days Are Here Again?: Is it back? "Oil, that is. . . black gold. . . Texas Tea. .  " Well maybe.  It's sort of looking that way. Oil is ho...
Today, however, the news reports that Chesapeake Oil is laying off about 500 employees nationwide, with 5 of those people being located in Wyoming.  Chesapeake only has 50 employees in Wyoming now, we also read, so that's not unsubstantial amongst their remaining workforce.

We've received some warnings that a new boom might not reflect itself in employment like the old ones, although in the service industries it would seem likely to.  A sign of this, perhaps?

Former US President William H Taft reviews parading troops at Camp Jackson in Columbia, South Carolina. January 31, 1918.

C-Span. World War One Uniform Production. January 31, 1918.

Uniform production film clip, filmed on January 31, 1918.

Tuesday, January 30, 2018

The King has fallen? The end of Saudi Arabian dominance in petroleum?

Yesterday we reported on this:
Lex Anteinternet: Petroleum. Happy Days Are Here Again?: Is it back? "Oil, that is. . . black gold. . . Texas Tea. .  " Well maybe.  It's sort of looking that way. Oil is ho...
Also, yesterday, the New York Times reported:
HOUSTON — A substantial rise in oil prices in recent months has led to a resurgence in American oil production, enabling the country to challenge the dominance of Saudi Arabia and dampen price pressures at the pump.
The success has come in the face of efforts by Saudi Arabia and its oil allies to undercut the shale drilling spree in the United States. Those strategies backfired and ultimately ended up benefiting the oil industry.
That would be, quite frankly, a huge American victory and a major defeat for the Petroleum Kingdom if its correct.

And it very well may be.

All throughout the price collapse of a couple of years ago was a thesis, but not the only one, that the drop in price was an effort by Saudi Arabia to crush the American petroleum industry, resurgent on technological advancements and increased prices.  If the NYT is correct, and it very well may be, this is a huge development. The potential end of OPEC dominance in oil, and a new, middle price, regime in the petroleum industry with the United States and Canada as major petroleum oil powers.


Monday, January 29, 2018

Petroleum. Happy Days Are Here Again?



Is it back?



"Oil, that is. . . black gold. . . Texas Tea. .  "

Well maybe.  It's sort of looking that way.

Oil is holding above $65.00 bbl.  That's way below the $100 bbl+ figures that we saw prior to the last crash, and indeed it would have been regarded as a crash price as it was crashing.  But it's held steadily above $60.00 now for weeks. $60.00 is the regional threshold for profitability and things are, in fact, now beginning to occur.  Or so we hear, and we're hearing that a lot.

Indeed, the Tribune, lately reporting on the grim situation for all sorts of businesses that were weathering the oil drought, is now reporting optimistically on a huge expansion of a local gas field.  Looking at it the other way, The Economist has been analyzing it negatively for several months with observations that the price of oil is "high".  Indeed, it recently ran an article captioned as follows:

Crude thinking 

Why the oil price is so high

…and why it might not fall by very much soon.
The economist did start off with an observation that does indeed reflect  the observations many who follow the rise and fall of crude prices:
PERHAPS the most vexing thing for those watching the oil industry is not the whipsawing price of a barrel. It is the constant updating of theories to explain what lies behind it.
The article goes on to analyze that, coming to the conclusion, perhaps right or wrong, that the perception of scarcity, or lack of it, has a lot to do with market volatility.

Any way you look at it, $65.00 isn't $125.00 bbl, nor is it $25.00 bbl.  Maybe things are a little stable, maybe, for a little while, which will mean a recovery in the Wyoming economy and  will start to fill up the coffers of the state a bit as well.

Which usually means that the state pretty much instantly, rightly or wrongly, abandons discussion of alternative revenue sources and diversifying the state economy.

Indeed, one of the political candidates may have trouble with this going forward as it will, ironically, cut into her argument on the "getting the Federal Government off our backs" (or words to that effect).  Harriet Hageman has been arguing that Wyoming's economy is a three legged stool, with those legs being agriculture, tourism and the mineral industry.  Close observers, however, know that this isn't true, and I've expounded on that before.  Wyoming's economy is actually a four legged stool, sitting furniture analogy wise, with agriculture, tourism, the mineral industry and government.  We don't like to acknowledge that last one, but it's a huge factors in our economy.  In fact, Wyoming has a higher percentage of state workers per capita than any of the neighboring states (way more than Colorado, but more than Nordic North Dakota as well).  As the tax system is all based on the mineral industry, and as tourism and agriculture cannot effectively support taxes as the level required for our expenditures, when the mineral industry catches a cold the state government catches the flu.  Of course, that doesn't impact the Federal government, but right now we have an Administration that's not exactly keen on ramping up Federal employment.

Anyhow, this puts individuals with Hageman's outlook in a strange position.  Oil is recovering and it clearly has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with regulation.  People with her point of view, however, cannot acknowledge that, as that would mean that the price of oil is purely controlled by external factors, which in fact it is.  As The Economist notes:
Beneath the dramatic ups and downs in the oil price and its changing influence on the world economy are some big themes: the rise of the shale-oil industry and how OPEC responds; the dependence of the big oil exporters in the Middle East on high oil prices; the peak in oil demand in America and eventually elsewhere. These forces will have a big say in where oil prices eventually settle.
And that's what determines how the oil industry does in Wyoming.  But if the state's rights libertarians acknowledge that, that means that this leg of our "three legged stool" and the four leg of our actual four legged one is pretty darned wobbly.  And it also would mean that the entire issue of "getting the Federal government" off our backs is moot now, as Trump has cut regulations considerably and, at the same time, while purely coincidentally the price has risen and a new boom, or maybe a boomlet, is on.  I.e., you can't campaign on driving the Germans out of France if they've surrendered already.  That political ship has sailed.

But in sailing, we should take some caution, and some hope.  In terms of hope, this boom, at least right now, doesn't look like it will get overheated.  That's always a huge problem in all sorts of ways.  But there's real hope that it might not. Right now, the price of oil doesn't appear to be drastically inflating.  Most of the producers of oil around the globe have real incentives not to allow that to occur.  And as we've noted here in the past, and as The Economist does in its article, technological advances may and societal changes have loosened the world's dependence on oil, even in formerly car crazy America.  Added to that, technological changes in the oilfield itself will mean that the return of oil will not mean the return of all the jobs that went with it.  The petroleum industry was relying on older rigs in the last boom.  So much so that  men who had worked overseas were often shocked by the antiquity of the equipment in the US.  That was changing, and as rigs come back on line  it will the the newer ones in increasing numbers, with the old ones being increasingly a thing of the past.

A just law

A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of Saint Thomas Aquinas, an unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal and natural law.

Martin Luther

Sunday, January 28, 2018

Live Simply and Other Musings

Back on December 8, I published this item:
Lex Anteinternet: D'oh! Rediscioverying what was already obvious. ...: Goose decoys in a farmed field, Goshen County Wyoming. Why a leading political theorist thinks civilization is overrated ...
A very interesting podcast interview by the BBC of the author of the book discussed in that entry can be found here:
Ironically I listed to this while on my way to go goose hunting.  A hunting trip unfortunately interrupted mid morning by one of the primary evils of modern civilization, the cell phone, with the receipt of a panicky work telephone call I had to address.  Following that, I received news of a not unexpected but none the less tragic arrival of "the undiscovered country" for a family member, and packed up and headed home.

Anyhow, it's a poor idea to post on things of this type while in a poor frame of mind, but I am anyway.  As I do that, I'm sitting getting ready to go to Mass. But as I'm a western American Catholic, I'm in my Sunday street clothes, which in this case includes a t-shirt which has a spork and a the works "Live Simply" on it, a gift from my teenage daughter who obviously knows my heart.

 Exactly.  And, yes, Sunday morning wear of a type.  I'll wear a hooded sweatshirt over it.  It's winter here, after all.

I'm noting all of this as I'm both linking in an interview of the author, but as I'm musing, and in a bit of a despondent mood as well.  And that reminds me of the footer photograph that I added to this blog after the turn of the year. . . a minor but not insignificant revision to it.



I know that a human population the size we now have can't really go back to our pre civilization state, and we don't even really want to. But a society more like that romanticized (as it surely papered over the bad parts) in I'll Take My Stand, existed not only in the region addressed but in most regions up until then.  And all of the objective evidence is that that situation was generally better than the current one. A goal, albeit a return goal, for a society, perhaps, that seems to be aimlessly sweeping away the best parts of its existence and making itself incompatible with what it is creating.

Dr. (Lt. Col.) John McCrea dies of pneumonia while serving in France, January 28, 1918.

Funeral of Lt. Col. John McCrea who died on this day in 1918.  This Canadian work is in the public domain in Canada because its copyright has expired due to one of the following:it was subject to Crown copyright and was first published more than 50 years ago, or it was not subject to Crown copyright, and it is a photograph that was created prior to January 1, 1949, the creator died more than 50 years ago

McCrea was a Canadian physician serving in the Canadian forces (a relative of mine served in the same hospital and mentioned him by name in her correspondence).  While serving in that capacity he contracted pneumonia and passed away on this day, in 1918.

McCrea is most famous for the poem In Flanders Fields, arguably the most famous poem to come out of the Great War, in what was a very poetic age it seems.


Sunday Morning Scene: Greek Orthodox Divine Liturgy - Monastery of Vatopedi/ ATHOS

Saturday, January 27, 2018

Best Posts of the Week of January 21, 1918.

Best Posts of the week of January 21, 2019

Should Pardons Have Been Granted?

Conscripting the Foreign Nationals: Blog Mirror, Mexico, Es Cultura; January 21, 1918: The Enlistment of Mexicans in the United States Army

American Red Cross Drivers. Milan, Italy. January 24, 1918

 

Poster Saturday: Why Boys Go Home. Wadsworth Gas Attack and The Rio Grande Rattler. January 19, 1918.


The American Raid on Porvenir, Texas

The Land Ethic

All ethics so far evolved rest upon a single premise: that the individual is a member of a community of interdependent parts.The land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants and animals, or collectively the land.

The Land Ethic, A Sand County Almanac.  Aldo Leopold

The American Raid on Porvenir, Texas

On this day in 1918 Texas Ranger Company B raided the village of Porvenir, Texas, a Hispanic Texas town, and killed the male inhabitants therein.  They were accompanied by elements of the 8th Cavalry which may not have participated in the massacre, at least according to contemporary investigations, and which assisted the survivors thereafter, attempting to keep them from harm and sending for  Priest from a local village.

Fifteen Hispanic men lost their lives in the massacre.

The details of the tragedy remain sketchy today, save for the killing of the Mexican civilians.  When the news first broke in mid February, it was claimed by the Rangers and some non Mexicans of the town that property from the Brite's Ranch Raid had been found in the town and that the villagers had opened upon the Rangers.  This is almost certainly not true.  Later investigations seemed to indicate that it was an act of pure race based violence on the Mexican inhabitants of the town.  Most of the early information indicated a complete lack of participation by the Army, although a small detail of soldiers was in fact sent with the Rangers. They claimed to have waited outside the town and not to have known what was occurring within it.   As noted, contemporary accounts do indicate that some villagers took refuge with the cavalrymen and that protection was afforded to them.

This was one of the instances in which the border war along the Mexican border seems to us today to have a foot in the 19th Century, even while having one in the 20th.  Atrocity in war would be something the world would see a lot more of in the 20th Century, so perhaps we should not.  But an ethnic massacre within our own borders of this type does indeed seem very peculiar today, as well as being highly tragic.

The incident did lead to investigation when the news broke.  The investigation recommended trial for all of the Rangers and exonerated the Army, but a grand jury did not indite any of the Rangers.  Texas, however, disbanded Company B.  Following this a wider investigation by Texas condemned the Rangers for a history of extrajudicial killings.  The Rangers were thereafter reformed into a more professional force and this era of the Rangers came to an end.

In spite of the 1918 exoneration of the Army, a 2015 archeological survey turned up shell casings from period Army weapons.  At least one of the investigating archeologist reached the conclusion that Army involvement in the tragedy had in fact occurred.

And so January 1918 would see two tragedies that read now like something out of the Frontier West occurred at same time the global tragedy was playing itself out in Europe.

The town does not exist today.  The victims of the raid were buried by their relatives in a nearby town, across the border, in Mexico.

Poster Saturday: Why Boys Go Home. Wadsworth Gas Attack and The Rio Grande Rattler. January 19, 1918.



Todays' poster isn't a poster, but a newspaper illustration. Specifically, an illustration from a military newspaper of the era.

Wednesday, January 24, 2018

American Red Cross Drivers. Milan, Italy. January 24, 1918


She Wore A Yellow Ribbon.

A version of this song was still sung, as a Jody Call, in 1982 when I was in basic training:



It's believed that it dates back to the English Civil War, making it a very old soldier's song indeed.  It was quite popular during the Frontier Era, and apparently it was still popular enough that somebody felt like recording it as American troops began to enter combat in the Great War, recorded on this day in 1918.  It was recorded again, not surprisingly, during World War Two.



It went on to lend its name to a well known John Ford film featuring John Wayne and the usual cast of characters, set in the Frontier West.



As noted, it was still around in 1982 when I was in Army basic training, and at some point apparently crossed over to the Marine Corps as well, probably because its easily adaptable to use as a Jody Call.  At least the version I learned in basic training was a little off color, and I'd guess up until recently, the Marine Corps version likely was as well.



The English Civil War to the modern era, that's staying power.

I wonder if its still around? The theme is timeless, but the sentiment is not PC in the modern world, even if it is, in the natural one.

Mid Week At Work: "Putting the 1918 GE to work!"





Keeping with our 1918 theme here, in 2018, not a person that's working, but a thing.  A G.E. Electric Fan.  Indeed, speaking of work, a very nicely restored fan.

We don't think much about things like this, but such a common item as this really gives us a glimpse into life at the time we'd otherwise miss.

So, watch.  . . and listen.

Mid Week at Work Blog Mirror: January 14, 2014 Pearls Before Swine

Out of Business observation.

I wish I could post the actual cartoon, but copyrights. . .

Anyhow, this is a very real phenomenon.  I happened to post this on reddit and received a few comments, including one from a person who works in retail who noted that he expediences people actually coming into the store in which he works to try stuff out so they then can order it on line knowledgeably.

Rude.

Tuesday, January 23, 2018

January 23. It's National Pie Day


And thank goodness. For some reason, I'm so tired this morning, that this is about all I've been able to muster up enough energy to do.  Post a pie photo.

I like pie too.  Indeed, if I'd been prepared, I'd have made a Dutch Oven Apple Pie, one of my specialties, which I should do in any event for my upcoming Dutch Oven post (hmmm. . . maybe it should be a separate page here?)

Anyway, it's Pie Day.

Well, maybe I'll have a beer instead.  After all, National Pie Day was started by Charlie Papazian, nuclear engineer and famous home brewer, who declared his own birthday to be National Pie Day. 

And why not?

Camp Kearney, California. January 23, 1918


Roads to the Great War: America's Decision to Send an Expeditionary Force ...

Roads to the Great War: America's Decision to Send an Expeditionary Force ...: "America to the Front" A Contemporary Cartoon from Punch By Michael McCarthy Even  after Congress had approved the War...

Monday, January 22, 2018

1916: Guns On The Border

1916: Guns On The Border: A century ago, Mexican bandits were a clear and present danger to the citizens of the United States, and the 'Punitive Expedition' proved to be an important test of arms.

Law; an ordinance of reason for the common good

Law; an ordinance of reason for the common good, made by him who has care of the community.

Thomas Aquinas

Sunday, January 21, 2018

Conscripting the Foreign Nationals: Blog Mirror, Mexico, Es Cultura; January 21, 1918: The Enlistment of Mexicans in the United States Army


 Registering for the draft.  1917.

An interesting article from the Mexican site, Mexico, Es Cultura, on the conscription of of Mexican nationals into the U.S. Army during World War One.

January 21, 1918: The Enlistment of Mexicans in the United States Army

A few notes about the article.

Usually the English section of this site is well done, but in this case the author was a bit confused.  What Mr. Cota was writing about was not the "enlistment" of Mexican nationals into the U.S. Army, but rather their conscription. That was indeed an enlistment "against his will", but not an enlistment in the way we normally use the word.

 Secretary Newton draws the first number, 1917.

Well, what about this?  

In fact, the United States has always held all permanent legal residents of the country liable for conscription and it does in fact conscript foreign nationals, when it conscripts.  It's always done this.  I knew that, so I wouldn't have regarded it as an "outrage", as the authors of Mexico, Es Cultura, apparently do, but I do get their point.

 Cartoon from the July, 1917 issue of the American Socialist magazine The Masses, which opposed the war and opposed conscription.  While drawing religious parallels in the The Masses is more than a little odd, here illustrator George Bellows did just that with a depiction of Christ in prison stripes.  While for the most part, Americans supported conscription, there were quarters of the country, including some rural quarters, that were massively, even violently, opposed to conscription during World War One.  The Federal government, for its part, was very heavy handed in suppressing opposition to conscription.

What I find surprising in the article is that the US apparently took steps to assess the military liability of those holding permanent resident status who had left the country and returned to their homelands, or at least to Mexico.  I'm unaware of the country doing that in later wars, but perhaps it did. What seems to be the case is that those who were not willing to serve lost their resident status, which also makes some sense.

Every country does this differently.  I'd be surprised (but I'm not certain) if the UK, for example, attempted to conscript foreign residents in the UK during World War One. As it was, British conscription was controversial enough and it never rally got around conscripting the Irish even though Parliament had passed a law to that end.  Conscription was massively unpopular during the Great War in Canada so I doubt it would have tried that either.


During World War Two the British only conscripted those who were in the country, so a British national living overseas could avoid British conscription, with some exception.  For the most part, however, they joined the forces where they were or even went to the effort to return to the UK for the war.  Be that as it may, some British movie actors sat the war out in the United States.  British conscription actually continued on after the war, under the same terms, until 1963.*

Indeed, most European nations re-instituted conscription following World War Two, but oddly at least a few recognized service in another NATO nation as fulfilling their own military service requirement.  A big exception is the non NATO, non EU, non UN nation of Switzerland which retains universal male conscription and which still holds that all Swiss, everywhere, are liable to it. As the sons of Swiss citizens are regarded as Swiss by the country irrespective of where they were born, this can and sometimes does have surprising results for vacationing young people who didn't think they were Swiss.

The US, I think, has always held that all of its legal residents and all of its citizens are liable to conscription, so being overseas would have no impact on a person's liability to service.  Interestingly, on this day in which Mr. Cota issued his compliant, we also find ourselves looking at a story that relates to that, in a way, from some fifty years later.

__________________________________________________________________________________

*Prince Harry, it might be noted, has recently called for a return to National Service: 
BRITAIN’S Prince Harry has thanked the army for keeping him out of trouble and has called for national service to be brought back.
In an interview published in the Sunday Times, the 30-year-old prince also revealed that he’s content being single and reflected on how the army gave him a chance to “escape the limelight.”
From News.com.au.

Should Pardons Have Been Granted?

 

I've posted a bit on Burn's and Novik's documentary on the Vietnam War.  During the documentary a couple of people where interviewed who had fled to Canada during the war.  One renounced his citizenship later on, to his regret.

I also recently reported on laws and the Federal government ignoring them, which is sort of related to this, although not purely.

As most people know, there were a series of pardons, not all at the same time, that are connected with this.  It didn't happen all at one time, as people sometimes recall. President Ford first offered conditional amnesty to draft evaders.  Then, on this day, forty years ago, President Carter pardoned those who evaded the draft.  Those who deserted the armed forces, however, and those who were convicted of acts of violence while protesting, were not pardoned for those offenses.

This all followed, of course, President Ford's pardoning of Richard Nixon.  Yes, I know that these things are in no way whatsoever related.  Except, I suppose, in terms of the era in which they occurred.

I've been very surprised, quite frankly, about how much this still impacts me, oddly enough.  I was 14 years old when Carter pardoned the draft evaders. As a kid I didn't think he should.

I still don't.

For that matter, I don't think Nixon should have been pardoned either.

Let's take these up separately.  As Nixon's pardon happened first, let's take it up first.



Richard Nixon resigned in disgrace on August 9, 1974.  While he resigned in disgrace, as a result of the fallout of the coverup of Watergate, his resignation did spare the country an impeachment trail, which was at least in part his motivation. At least that was noble on his part, as that trial would have been destructive in the extreme, even more so than the trial of William Clinton which has been destructive enough.

 A confident looking Gerald Ford.  His Presidency was afflicted by problems not of his own making.

He was subsequently pardoned on September 8, 1974 by Gerald Ford.  President Ford believed that this would help bring about healing in the nation after the turmoil that the entire Watergate episode brought.  Maybe it did.

The text of that pardon reads as follows:
By the President of the United States of America a Proclamation
Richard Nixon became the thirty-seventh President of the United States on January 20, 1969 and was reelected in 1972 for a second term by the electors of forty-nine of the fifty states. His term in office continued until his resignation on August 9, 1974.

Pursuant to resolutions of the House of Representatives, its Committee on the Judiciary conducted an inquiry and investigation on the impeachment of the President extending over more than eight months. The hearings of the Committee and its deliberations, which received wide national publicity over television, radio, and in printed media, resulted in votes adverse to Richard Nixon on recommended Articles of Impeachment.
As a result of certain acts or omissions occurring before his resignation from the Office of President, Richard Nixon has become liable to possible indictment and trial for offenses against the United States. Whether or not he shall be so prosecuted depends on findings of the appropriate grand jury and on the discretion of the authorized prosecutor. Should an indictment ensue, the accused shall then be entitled to a fair trial by an impartial jury, as guaranteed to every individual by the Constitution.
It is believed that a trial of Richard Nixon, if it became necessary, could not fairly begin until a year or more has elapsed. In the meantime, the tranquility to which this nation has been restored by the events of recent weeks could be irreparably lost by the prospects of bringing to trial a former President of the United States. The prospects of such trial will cause prolonged and divisive debate over the propriety of exposing to further punishment and degradation a man who has already paid the unprecedented penalty of relinquishing the highest elective office of the United States.
Now, THEREFORE, I, GERALD R. FORD, President of the United States, pursuant to the pardon power conferred upon me by Article II, Section 2, of the Constitution, have granted and by these presents do grant a full, free, and absolute pardon unto Richard Nixon for all offenses against the United States which he, Richard Nixon, has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 20, 1969 through August 9, 1974.
IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this eighth day of September, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and seventy-four, and of the Independence of the United States of America the one hundred and ninety-ninth.
GERALD R. FORD
But it also allowed a President who had acted very badly  in office to get away with his crimes.  Indeed, the criminal extent of his activities may be broader than commonly remembered, as the documentary noted above explored.  We recall, of course, his cover up of the Watergate break in.  What is not nearly as well remembered, however, is that Nixon was also seemingly in contact with elements outside of official channels during the ongoing negotiations over the Vietnam War during his 1968 campaign and his activities may well have been treasonous.  He was called out privately, and obliquely, on these activities by Lyndon Johnson but he was never called to account on them.  Had he been subject to a Federal Grand Jury following his resignation he may well have been.

A better thing to do would have been to leave the possibility, and maybe the fact, of prosecution hanging over his head.  No man is above the law, we're told.  Nixon wasn't, and he paid for his crimes through his resignation, but judicial process was thwarted. The pardoning was a mistake.  By letting Nixon off the hook there's been an implicit understanding that a President really doesn't need to overly worry about being called to account for illegal actions.  Indeed, had Nixon been made to pay for his crimes through criminal prosecution it would have served not only as a lesson that no man is above the law but, moreover, that even Presidents in office can be called into account.  Since Nixon's resignation we've seen Iran-Contra, undeclared wars, and the of course we have the turmoil going on now, all of which might have been deterred had Nixon served as an example of what can happen.

So Ford blundered in pardoning him.

And so too, in my view, was the pardoning of the draft evaders by Jimmy Carter on this day in 1977 an error.

Prior to this event there had been another action by Ford leading up to it.  On September 16, 1974, President Gerald Ford, in a way sort of following up on closing the books on Watergate, started to close them on the Vietnam War, by issuing a conditional amnesty for draft evaders. The amnesty order, or text, provided:
By virtue of the authority vested in me as President of the United States by Section 2 of Article II of the Constitution of the United States, and in the interest of the internal management of the Government, it is ordered as follows:

SECTION 1. There is hereby established in the Executive Office of the President a board of 9 members, which shall be known as the Presidential Clemency Board. The members of the Board shall be appointed by the President, who shall also designate its Chairman.
SEC. 2. The Board, under such regulations as it may prescribe, shall examine the cases of persons who apply for Executive clemency prior to January 31, 1975, and who (i) have been convicted of violating Section 12 or 6(j) of the Military Selective Service Act (50 App. U.S.C. § 462), or of any rule or regulation promulgated pursuant to that section, for acts committed between August 4, 1964 and March 28, 1973, inclusive, or (ii) have received punitive or undesirable discharges as a consequence of violations of Article 85, 86 or 87 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (10 U.S.C. §§ 885, 886, 887) that occurred between August 4, 1964 and March 28, 1973, inclusive, or are serving sentences of confinement for such violations. The Board will only consider the cases of Military Selective Service Act violators who were convicted of unlawfully failing (i) to register or register on time, (ii) to keep the local board informed of their current address, (iii) to report for or submit to preinduction or induction examination, (iv) to report for or submit to induction itself, or (v) to report for or submit to, or complete service under Section 6 (j) of such Act. However, the Board will not consider the cases of individuals who are precluded from re-entering the United States under 8 U.S.C. 1182(a) (22) or other law.

SEC. 3. The Board shall report to the President its findings and recommendations as to whether Executive clemency should be granted or denied in any case. If clemency is recommended, the Board shall also recommend the form that such clemency should take, including clemency conditioned upon a period of alternative service in the national interest. In the case of an individual discharged from the armed forces with a punitive or undesirable discharge, the Board may recommend to the President that a clemency discharge be substituted for a punitive or undesirable discharge. Determination of any period of alternate service shall be in accord with the Proclamation announcing a program for the return of Vietnam era draft evaders and military deserters.
SEC. 4. The Board shall give priority consideration to those applicants who are presently confined and have been convicted only of an offense set forth in section 2 of this order, and who have no outstanding criminal charges.

SEC. 5. Each member of the Board, except any member who then receives other compensation from the United States, may receive compensation for each day he or she is engaged upon the work of the Board at not to exceed the daily rate now or hereafter prescribed by law for persons and positions in GS-18, as authorized by law (5 U.S.C. 3109), and may also receive travel expenses, including per diem in lieu of subsistence, as authorized by law (5 U.S.C. 5703) for persons in the government service employed intermittently.

SEC. 6. Necessary expenses of the Board may be paid from the Unanticipated Personnel Needs Fund of the President or from such other funds as may be available.

SEC. 7. Necessary administrative services and support may be provided the Board by the General Services Administration on a reimbursable basis.

SEC. 8. All departments and agencies in the Executive branch are authorized and directed to cooperate with the Board in its work, and to furnish the Board all appropriate information and assistance, to the extent permitted by law.

SEC. 9. The Board shall submit its final recommendations to the President not later than December 31, 1976, at which time it shall cease to exist.
GERALD R. FORD
The White House,
September 16, 1974.
The fact that Ford did this so hard on the heels of his pardon of Nixon was not coincidental, in my view.  He was shutting the doors on the entire Vietnam War era.  They'd slam shut for good when Saigon fell with the US refusing to offer aid to the Republic of Vietnam in April of the following year.

While its not really clear from the text, what Ford's order did was to grant amnesty to evaders who hadn't fled the country and hadn't engaged in acts of violence against the US as long as they did two years of public service.   In context, it split the competing desire to put the war behind the country but also not to dishonor those who reported for duty as the law required.  While I'm not thrilled about that either I think that Ford's action do bear up under the test of time here.

Ford's conditional amnesty did a couple of significant things.  It essentially recognized a deep felt opposition to the war as legitimate, but also recognized that national service was likewise legitimate. The two year service obligation was accordingly inserted to recognize that, allowing those who had evaded the draft peaceably to come up from under the weight of the crime, but also acknowledging that a debt of service was owed in an equal length to that for conscripted soldiers who served.  It also refused to acknowledge violence against the United States or to forgive those who fled the country.

On that last item, whether intentional or not, it credited the long American history of protesting a governmental action but being willing to take your lumps.  Going back at least as far as the Mexican War there had been those who refused to acknowledge a governmental action in war but had been willing to go to jail for it, Thoreau being a prime example.  Martin Luther King had followed that tradition  during the Civil Rights Movement resulting in the famous book Letters From A Birmingham Jail.  The gist of it was that if you protest you have to be willing to accept the implications of the protest.  Men who fled to Canada didn't do that.

 Jimmy Carter, a legitimately decent person but not a very good President in all sorts of ways.

Ford of course lost his bid for reelection and Jimmy Carter came in.  On this day in 1977 granted an unconditional pardon to draft evaders. This was his first day in office. As sweeping as that was, the pardon did not apply to deserters and there's never been a pardon that did.  Still, Carter's actions were excessively broad in my opinion.  His short text read:
BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
A PROCLAMATION

Acting pursuant to the grant of authority in Article II, Section 2, of the Constitution of the United States, I, Jimmy Carter, President of the United States, do hereby grant a full, complete and unconditional pardon to: (1) all persons who may have committed any offense between August 4, 1964 and March 28, 1973 in violation of the Military Selective Service Act or any rule or regulation promulgated thereunder; and (2) all persons heretofore convicted, irrespective of the date of conviction, of any offense committed between August 4, 1964 and March 28, 1973 in violation of the Military Selective Service Act, or any rule or regulation promulgated thereunder, restoring to them full political, civil and other rights.
This pardon does not apply to the following who are specifically excluded therefrom:

(1) All persons convicted of or who may have committed any offense in violation of the Military Selective Service Act, or any rule or regulation promulgated thereunder, involving force or violence; and

(2) All persons convicted of or who may have committed any offense in violation of the Military Selective Service Act, or any rule or regulation promulgated thereunder, in connection with duties or responsibilities arising out of employment as agents, officers or employees of the Military Selective Service system.
IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this 21st day of January, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and seventy-seven, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and first.
JIMMY CARTER  
The pardon undercut Ford's understanding that there was such a thing as legitimate dissent, but that there was such a thing as illegitimate action in legitimate dissent.  By accepting that people who fled the results of their actions could simply evade them, and by excusing everyone from any kind of service, Carter made a mockery of the service to a degree, of those who complied with the law.  In the end, people who simply didn't go, for whatever reason, were off the hook.

The impact of this, we'd note, has been somewhat permanent.  The rift the draft caused has never fully healed and the concept that those who left were simply let off the hook continues to make those who reported for duty look, to a degree, like schmucks.  The action basically elevated evaders to a certain species of hero, which if they fully evaded without the threat of judicial process, they really weren't, although that threat did exist at the time it must be noted.  And the idea that Canada is a liberal refuge has persisted, which has impacted Canadian politics, in my view, in a way that hasn't done Canada any favors.

Carter was an awful President and his poor decisions commenced right from day one. He is a compassionate man, however.  In this instance, that did not serve him well while in office.

What is it about January 20?

It seems to be a day generally marked by odd occurrences.

Today In Wyoming's History: January 20:

Shutting down and not shutting down.



The Federal government is shut down.

But it isn't.

I think it should really shut down.

And I don't think that because I'm one of those "we don't need the Federal Government" or even one of those "get the Federal Government out of my state (but leave the highway funds, please)" people. 

No, I think that as, when Congress does this, it keeps the full ludicrous extent of is failure a bit camouflaged by keeping on running "essential services" so you don't really notice.

Your mail will still come, the nation will still be protected, courts will still be open, and so on. 

And Congress will still get paid, as if there was any doubt.

So you likely won't notice that much.

Well, if reality set in, with that reality being the nation is deficit spending in the extreme every year, and these flaps are over peanuts in the budget, or in this case not about the budget at all, the public would notice and that would require something to be done.

So when I mean close the government, I mean close it.  The janitor at the Congress ought to turn off the lights, lock the door and walk out.  Congress can meet at Starbucks, or wherever it goes.  Ships should pull into the nearest port and all the Sailors go on leave.  Soldiers should pack up and head to the airport to wait for their family to send them airline tickets. . . to Canadian airports as the FAA should turn out the lights and lock the towers.

Something would happen, and fast.

But what about the Dreamers, you ask?  Isn't this all a noble effort to save them?

Well, maybe, but its not the right way to go about addressing the Congress caused crises when a much prior administration determined not to enforce the immigration laws in the interior, turning evading the law into a border game. Get across the border in any fashion, and you were home free.

Prior to that, immigration laws were enforced in the interior, which lowered the incentive to illegally immigrate considerably.  Essentially the US sent a message that encouraged illegal immigration, as long as you didn't give up in trying to cross the border, and as long as you didn't get arrested for a crime once you were here.  So lots of people came in illegally.  And lots of them had little kids with them. And deporting those children who grew up here would be cruel.

Which is why a Republican, not a Democrat but a Republican, has suggested simply counting those people towards one years immigration quota. 

Yes, that would drastically reduce new entrants for that year, but it would also clean this up in a fair manner.

But no, we're not going to do that.

Instead we're going to do whatever it is we're doing, and that doesn't mean closing the government, budget or no, where you might actually notice that it occurred.

Well that's unwelcome news

Federal Government Shutdown Notice

Due to the shutdown of the Federal Government, we are unable to use any of our social media channels. National Archives facilities are closed and activities are canceled with some exceptions. See Archives.gov for details.
From the Federal Government's Archives blog.

Boo hiss!  Not at the Archives, this is not their fault, but rather at a Congress that can't seem to get its act together, ever, on a budget and politicians that use what ought to be a boring routine practice resulting in a functioning sane balanced budget nearly every year for political squabbles and perceived advantage.

I mean come on.


Churches of the West: Traditionalist Anabaptist In Wyoming?

Churches of the West: Traditionalist Anabaptist In Wyoming?:

Starting at some point about six or so years ago, which means its actually probably more like ten years ago as things that occurred about that time seem more recent to me than they really are, I started running into some type of traditionalist Anabaptist from time to time here in Wyoming.
The first ones I ran into were at the rest stop outside of Waltman.  There was a travel trailer there with a flat tire that was being repaired and the people with it were outside of the trailer.  In my naivete, as I didn't expect to run into Anabaptist here, I thought at first "oh. . . reenactors", as the women were all wearing what appeared to me to be very traditional 19th Century style dresses with sun bonnets and the men were wearing straw broad brimmed hats, blue shirts, and jeans; and sporting that type of beard which lacks a mustache.  Very quickly I realized, however, that they weren't reenactors, they were some sort of community of Anabaptist adherents or perhaps a family of Anabaptists traditionalist.
Now, for those for whom this term is a mystery, what I'm referring to is Christians who are members of a traditionalist Anabaptist denomination, such as the Amish, traditionalist Mennonites, or Hutterites.  The most famous of these groups is, of course, the Amish, but there are some Mennoites in Colorado and Nebraska and there are Huttertites in Montana and the prairie provinces of Canada.


Now, while these groups are all Anabaptist, they are not all the same, and I don't want to suggest that they are.  That is not my intent at all.  And while it is my understanding that all Amish are traditionalist in the sense I'm using it (which would likely be grating on their nerves and be regarded as singularly unfair by them), and I think that this is also the case for Hutterites, it is not true for Mennonites.  Indeed, there are Mennonite congregations that are not distinct in dress and which are not otherwise traditionalist such as limiting the use of technology over time.   I'm frankly unclear on which denomination the group I've been seeing belongs to, and that's what I'm curious about.
I've noted above the first instance in which I encountered them.  The second time was, oddly enough, in Sam's Club. There were a group of women who met the description set out above, except I see that their head covering is a simple covering, not a sun bonnet, buying huge lots of flour and other baking goods.  Since then I've run into them here and there, most recently at the past two gun shows here in town.
On the first of those occasions two men and a boy were present selling old farm equipment.  A woman was present selling baked goods, and seemed to be married to one of the men.  The men were all dressed as described save for wearing cowboy boots, which causes me to lean towards Hutterites.  This past weekend they were back but it was two different women and a different man, and they were all selling baked goods. The man was wearing heavy work boots.
The presence of traditionalist Anabaptists in Wyoming would be a new thing and I'm curious.  Does anyone know who they might be, what group they're actually in, and where their community or communities are located?

Saturday, January 20, 2018

Perhaps no one but a hunter can understand how intense an affection a boy can feel for a piece of marsh.



Perhaps no one but a hunter can understand how intense an affection a boy can feel for a piece of marsh…. I came home one Christmas to find that land promoters, with the help of the Corps of Engineers had dyked and drained my boyhood hunting grounds on the Mississippi river bottoms…. My hometown thought the community enriched by this change. I thought it impoverished.

Aldo Leopold.  Draft foreword, A Sand County Almanac, in Companion to a Sand County Almanac.

A Hundred Years Ago: 1918 Advertisement for Skookum Apples

A Hundred Years Ago:  1918 Advertisement for Skookum Apples

Shipping apples all the way to France for your soldier?

Poster Saturday. 17?


At some point during World War Two the Coast Guard apparently targeted 17 year olds eager for service.

Blog Mirror: Yakama Nation's First Bison Hunt In West Yellowstone

Yakama Nation's First Bison Hunt In West Yellowstone

Reintroducing, in a way, that missing natural activity.

Best Post of the Week of January 14, 2018

The best post of the week of January 14, 2018.

You can't (or shouldn't) ignore history and you don't get to make it up.

 In which we take a look at the history of the Church. . . the real history, not the one that some folks like to make up.

 

The 25th Amendment to the United States Constitution and our Cheery Belief that Age just Doesn't Matter

In which we look at age and politics.

Cultural habituation and personal hypocrisy? A personal pondering.

 In which we look at our own attitudes on age.

There have been what I thought were Hutterites, but which are maybe Amish, at the last two gun shows here. . . .

In which we look at the relentless and aimless, advance of technology in everything.

Friday, January 19, 2018

Patriarch Tikhon of Moscow issues his Anathma Against The Communists. January 19, 1918


By the power given to Us by God, we forbid you to approach the Mysteries of Christ, we anathematise you, if only you bear Christian names and although by birth you belong to the Orthodox Church. We also adjure all of you, faithful children of the Orthodox Church of Christ, not to enter into any communion with such outcasts of the human race: 'Remove the evil one from among you' (I Corinthians 5.13).”

There have been what I thought were Hutterites, but which are maybe Amish, at the last two gun shows here. . . .

they've been selling farm supplies and and backed goods.


So what's that have to do with anything?

Maybe not much.  But they're linked in my mind due to something that's slowly bothering me.

And that is, I don't think we're capable of handling the technology we're creating.

Now, this isn't quite in the "the robots will kill us" vein that some have recently proposed, although I do find artificial intelligence to be disturbing.  This is more in the vein of, contrary to our common cheery belief about ourselves, we're a lazy species that will do nothing if given the option, and that ends up killing us.

Indeed, this is one of the aggravating things about the now popular Universal Basic Income ideas floating around here and there, and now being given a test run in Finland.  The idea is that we give everyone a UBI, funded by taxing others, and that this means that people won't have to work those grunt jobs that they otherwise do, and will spend their time doing wonderful things including advancing themselves so that people who would have spent their lives picking rags in a parking lot will become nuclear physicists.

No, they won't. They'll spend their time, in short order, watching Lisa Vanderpump's latest moronic spoutings on television, even if they think they should get up and turn it off.

There's plenty of proof this world wide, including in our own backyards.  Canada has granted what amounts to a UBI to First Nations groups for quite some time and now is facing a complete destruction of some of the cultures of those groups.  Freed from the need to hunt and fish in their native lands, they do nothing.  To the extent any culture remains, it mostly remains in the hands of women, to a diminished degree, as women always end up bearing the role of raising children no matter what.  A recent study of one such group determined that the loss of knowledge in just a few short years was so extensive that it wouldn't even be possible to urge a resumption of prior native behaviors as the group had completely lost the knowledge of how to hunt and fish in their traditional way.  A complete, and benevolent, cultural destruction.

Here in the US the Los Angeles Times recently asked the question to its readers hypothetically as to one one out of five Californians lives below the poverty line.   Noting that one out of three American welfare receipients lives in California, and that California has generous welfare provisions, the Times concluded: 
The generous spending, then, has not only failed to decrease poverty; it actually seems to have made it worse.
Likewise, if you happen to practice law at all, you'll see the actual manifestation of studies in the US that demonstrate that people who acquire assistance usually go from being horrified by it and wanting off to acclimating themselves to it quite rapidly.  Men and women who first go on assistance and who desperately want off, in a period of months, go to adjusting their lives so as to be stay on it.

I'll note here that I'm not making a moral judgment in regards to this, or at least not in the fashion that it might at first seem.  I wouldn't regard myself as a exception to this rule.  If I suddenly had sufficient assets that I didn't have to work, I wouldn't.  I'd like to think that if I did that I'd spend my time tending my garden, going fishing, and going hunting, but people being who they are, for all I know, I'd spend it watching Hogan's Heroes reruns on television.  There's an instinctual element to this.  

Of course, having worked pretty hard my whole life, and being pretty acclimated to it now, maybe I'd have the opposite problem by this point and be one of those people who find they can't retire.  A couple of fellows that I knew fairly well who retired from very different jobs, but who had always worked their whole lives, ended up going back to work simply because of that. They were so acclimated to it that they couldn't find themselves at peace not working.  Of course, as I have livestock, I'll never really retire anyway.

Anyhow, all of this is why I think that people like the Amish were and are on to something, but I don't think of it in the same fashion that they do.  They eschew technology that the feel makes people proud, and its a human's duty to be humble before God.  I'm not denying that it is a duty to be humble before God, and I think the example of human behavior following World War Two, as every European based society in the Northern Hemisphere became wealthy, is plenty evidence of how badly societies and cultures will act once they figure that they are petty gods,, but that's not quite might point. 

I'm concerned that our technological evolution is so pointless, and by that I mean with out a defined point or direction, that the goal is simply to make things more and more efficient to the point where our ultimate fate is to get fat on the sofa.

What's this have to do with the gun show?

Well, this past week I read that the Wyoming Game and Fish Department was debating some technological advances in hunting and fishing equipment.  They should indeed do that.

One of the advances they were considering concerned advances in crossbows.

I'll confess that I know nothing about crossbows and I'm not a bow hunter, which perhaps makes me a hypocrite in this category as I'm comfortable, obviously, with firearms and a truly "go back" purist would urge the use of bows. But that shows part of the problem here.

Bows came in, here anyway, in the 1970s.  They were part of a movement started by the late Fred Bear who espoused bows as he believed that an increase in the human population would mean one day that everyone would have to go back to bows. Frankly, that strikes me as an example of retroactive justification of your own likes, but whatever.  Anyhow bow hunting came in during that time.  I  think almost all of the younger hunters I know, and quite a few of them my age (and not very many older than me) have taken it up in order to "extent the season."

 One heck of a bow hunter.

One thing that has happened as that's gone on is that bow technology has dramatically improved and that was, frankly, a good thing.  Not too many people could be comfortably lethal, I think, with an old style long bow or an old style recurve bow. Some could, but not many.  The modern compound bows are pretty darned lethal.

But crossbows?

Before we deal with them, let's discuss black powder rifles.

 Bill Williams, 19th Century Mountain Man.

Wyoming doesn't have any designated "primitive" rifle seasons, but a lot of states do.  And I thought they were pretty neat. The problem is, however, that technology and engineering combined to defeat the rules that were originally introduced, and that's the problem that I have with crossbows as well.  Originally the thought was that there should be special seasons, like there are for bowmen, in which the hunter went out with a rifle that resembled one of the old muzzle loading rifles that prevailed before 1865.  They do indeed require skill to use, and you normally, with most of them, get but a single shot.

But, engineers have gone out and made what are basically bolt action rifles that take a preformed charge. These aren't primitive at all, they're just weird rifles designed to circumvent the rules. They're everywhere, however, and I see them all the time as a 4H Shooting Sports leader.  I don't like them.

And that's my concern with crossbows.



Crossbows were always a way to get more effective bow, but they're not a hunting weapon.  They were a weapon of war as they could shove a bolt (arrow) through armor.  But sure enough, as they have a stock, and as they can be made relatively  high tech, engineers have gone out and designed hunting variants.  Most states have banned them for that purpose, but Wyoming has not.

I think it should.  Bow hunting is supposed to be a sport of close range skill.  If you don't have the skill, don't insist on going on during bow season. For that matter, for states with special black powder seasons, I'd limit them to historic black powder type rifles as well.

Which takes me on to the most recent technological developments on modern rifles.

In our super rich high tech society we now see developments coming on which completely defeat any human skill in hunting, or at least shooting.  At that point, a person has lot connection with what they're doing.  And for that matter, I think they should be banned. Scopes that lock in and control the firing, which basically  have been designed but which are currently highly imperfect, probably have a place in war, but hunting is the opposite of war.  Most people most places support the concept of going into the field to gather your own game, but most don't want it to be automatic.

But automation is what we're striving for in everything. We're seeking to replace the farmer with an automatic tractor, for example. 

And we take humans out of the equation, we render ourselves completely pointless and will render our lives worthless.  We'll do nothing but eat and breed.

A smart species would ponder this a bit before getting there.  And then not get there.


There are two spiritual dangers in not owning a farm.

There are two spiritual dangers in not owning a farm. One is the danger of supposing that breakfast comes from the grocery, and the other that heat comes from the furnace.

Aldo Leopold  A Sand County Almanac.

Thursday, January 18, 2018

Cultural habituation and personal hypocrisy? A personal pondering.


Great Depression era occupation education poster.
I've been thinking. Tomorrow it will be 28 years to the day that I've been in the service. 28 years in peace and war. I don't suppose I've been at home more than 10 months in all that time. Still, it's been a good life. I loved India. I wouldn't have had it any other way. But there are times when suddenly you realize you're nearer the end than the beginning. And you wonder, you ask yourself, what the sum total of your life represents. What difference your being there at any time made to anything. Hardly made any difference at all, really, particularly in comparison with other men's careers. I don't know whether that kind of thinking's very healthy, but I must admit I've had some thoughts on those lines from time to time. But tonight... tonight!
Col. Nicholson, to Col. Saito, Bridge on the River Kwai.

I obviously have a lot of thoughts about how things ought to be.  People who have a lot of thoughts on how things ought to be are naturally subject to the query on how well they've applied them, themselves.  Naturally, with so many thoughts, we must have gotten things pretty much right ourselves, right?
Why do you observe the splinter in your brother's eye and never notice the great log in your own?  And how dare you say to your brother, "Let me take that splinter out of your eye," when, look, there is a great log in your own?
Matthew.

I note this as a person could rationally question me on some of those things, and I do indeed question myself on some of them.

 NCHS Assembly, 1981.

I'll be frank that if you had spoken to me in May of 1981, when I was a freshly minted 17 year old graduate from NCHS, and asked me where I hoped to be in, let's say, ten years career wise, you would have met with some hopes and expectations, but they would have been very ill formed at best.  Indeed, for the last couple of years of high school, and high school was only three years long at that time (9th Grade was part of junior high) I'd have told you that I wanted to be a game warden.

For my junior and senior years of high school I meandered towards that end.  When I'd been younger than that I'd wanted to be an Army officer.  But that desire had waned over time and probably had pretty much completely waned by the time I actually entered high school.  If that thought had seriously remained at that time I likely would have entered high school JrROTC, which I didn't.  I still had thoughts of joining the service to experience it, but even those were slacking up.  I ultimately did, but in the form of joining the Army National Guard which was partially in order to simply experience something that every older male I knew had experienced, and additionally in order to be true to myself.  It's one of the career decisions, if that's what itw as, that I've never had any second thoughts or regrets about.
 
Me in 1986 as a Sergeant in the Wyoming Army national Guard in South Korea.  If you saw a photo of me from high school compared to this, you'd be amazed as I look so much older in this photograph even though, at this time, I was only five years out of high school and just out of my college undergraduate.  Joining the Army National Guard was one of the best post high school decisions I made.

Anyhow, during high school I pretty much lost the desire for an Army career and pondered what it was that I wanted to do. Writing, as in being a journalist, occurred to me, but never enough to stick.  I'd have opted for being a farmer or a rancher in a heart beat, but I was a more realistic person back then than I was to be later and I could tell that there wasn't a way to make that happen.  So it seemed to me that being a game warden was the best option for an outdoor person such as myself.

Soon after I graduated, however, I changed that goal based on a singular piece of advice from my father, which was his simple observation that there were a lot of people around here with degrees in Wildlife Management who didn't have jobs, which was quite true.

It's odd that this had such an impact as he only noted it once, and that in response to a query as to what my plans for college were.  With that simple comment, I decided to change my intended major to geology.

That change was motivated by the fact that, as my mother often noted, I was good at science and my father, a dentist, undoubtedly was very good at it.  Geology, I reasoned, was an outdoor career and that would be the next best thing to being a game warden.

That would prove to be a type of mistake, maybe.  Geology was a really hard field of study, much much more difficult than my later one of law, and frankly I never developed a real love for it.  My goal was mostly for an outdoor career, and geology takes place all outdoors.  I did stick with it, however, which is something I've proven to be really good at post high school for good or ill.
 

I was pondering changing field by the time I was graduating from Casper College.  This was because, by that time, the market for geologist was tanking and we knew it. When I started in geology in the fall of 1981 the market was so hot that graduates with AS degrees were going right to work. By the time I graduated in 1983 it was so cold that a person needed a graduate degree in geology to find work.  As I was completing my AS degree I really didn't know if I wanted to go on all the way to getting a MS degree.

The simple recommendation that I should consider a career in an "analytical field" as I had an "analytical mind" caused me to consider a career in the law.  That suggestion was made by Casper College history professor Jon Brady whom, I later learned, had a JD.  That same suggestion was made to another Casper College graduate who also now practices law.

Showing, I guess, how simple suggestions can indeed have huge impacts.

Anyhow, as I was graduating with a BS degree in geology it was pretty clear that I wasn't going to get a job so I pondered what to do next.  I thought very seriously about returning to my first goal and going on for a degree in Zoology.  I also thought about going on for a Masters Degree in geology, basically on the "now I have no choice" line of thinking.  And I decided to apply to law school because I had never known an unemployed lawyer and it seemed to me that most of the professionals I knew got to go outdoors a lot and they all seemed to have a lot of interests, most of which didn't have much to do with their lines of work.  I was pretty naive.

One of the things I was naive about was the process of getting into law school, which I knew entailed taking the LSAT but which I didn't realize had the dreaded test status.  Indeed, I didn't know that the test for graduate school, the GRE, had that status either.  I took both.  I was admitted to graduate school at the University of Idaho Department of Geology and to Law School at the University of Wyoming.  I don't remember now how many geology departments I applied to (I know that one was UW,  and that it was nearly impossible for a UW BS graduate to get into our own geology department as they figured it defeated academic diversity) but I know that UW was the only law school I applied to.  I didn't think I'd get in and I didn't want to waste my time applying all over, let alone studying for the LSAT. I scored high on both the LSAT and the GRE (which I also didn't study for) as it turned out.

I took one last run at becoming a game warden, however.  Just after I graduated with my bachelors a friend of mine and I went down to Cheyenne and took the Game Warden's Exam.  Oddly, while my friend had a BS in Biology and I did not, I passed and he didn't.  They didn't offer the test again for years, which his common for the Wyoming Game & Fish, but about three years into my law school career, which would be about six years after I took the test, the Wyoming Game & Fish offered me a summer position.  I would have had to quit my job as a lawyer to take it.  I actually seriously considered it, but I'd just become engaged and I feared that taking a part time job that paid peanuts and giving up a stable law job wasn't wise.  As I've been a lawyer now for nearly 30 years the stability and wage part of that was correct.  Still,  "there are times when suddenly you realize you're nearer the end than the beginning. And you wonder, you ask yourself, what the sum total of your life represents. What difference your being there at any time made to anything. Hardly made any difference at all, really, particularly in comparison with other men's careers."

Anyhow, I've done a lot of odd work over the years.  True, I've been a lawyer since Blackstone was a pup, but I've also raised cattle my entire married life.  I worked on a drilling rig when I was a student.  I was a Sergeant in the Army National Guard.  And because I've seen a lot of blue collar type work, and because my family was always close to agriculture, I've never really accepted the common American view that success is defined by ever increasing wages represented by ever more significant occupation of degreed professions.  My father, who held a DDS, didn't think that way either, although my mother at least somewhat did.  My parents believed that my getting a college degree was important as they knew that my prospects would be poor otherwise, and they quietly encouraged me in that direction, particularly early on in my college career when I questioned it.  At one time, for reasons I can't even recall now, I seriously thought of just quitting after a semester and finding a town job, a decision that, given our economy, would have been a disaster.  And I also at one time asked my father if he could ask a rancher friend of his that he knew well if they might have an opening for a cowboy for the same reason.  I'm sure he never asked. By the time I was in UW those sorts of fleeting flights of discouraged thought had fled and after a semester at UW I knew that I would graduate with a BS in Geology.

So, what's the point of all of this?

Well, even though I've always told myself that I don't think that just because a persons' parents have a college degree or degrees that their children must, and even though I have always maintained that the sons and daughters of dentists and lawyers don't have to have even more strenuous academic degrees I've apparently absorbed enough of that simply by living in the culture, and more particularly by being in a setting in which that kind of thought is constant, that I find I do think that way to at least a degree.

The way that this comes up is this.

One of my son's friends determined to major in Wildlife Management.  He is a big outdoorsman and that was his motivation.  I just found out that, at the end of this Semester, he's going to stop with his AS and work on becoming an electrician.

Now, at the same time, I employ a runner, the daughter of immigrants, who has as her career goal becoming an electrician.

And I oddly find myself thinking that the latter person's goal is great, while the former person's change of plans is sad.

Now, why is that?

I'm not entirely sure myself.

Some of it, I'm pretty sure, is a latent tinge of regret of the "road not taken" type.  That's not a complaint, but frankly I never see a game warden around here and don't envy their jobs a bit.  Now, I have never done that job, and so my envy may well be misplaced.  One game warden who was around here for years and who rose up high in the department, and has now passed away, once told me that he recommended that people who like outdoor activities not take up the field, but get a "good job" (always an elusive category) that allowed them to have time to be outdoors.  Another young warden, however, recently told me that she found time to hunt and fish, and one some time ago spent a lot of time with me talking about shotguns, about which he knew more than a little bit, and obviously found time to use.  Anyhow, having traveled sort of a similar road, in that I know his parents were worried about him finding work, and I suspect that he's about to get engaged, I find that maybe I'm vicariously repeating my past.  It's not that I regret getting engaged all those many years, we're still together after all those many years, but it's like seeing your own past sort of repeat.  If I could go back and get a warden's job, after having been in court for 30 years and having handled a pile of cases and trials I think I'd do it.

Which is easy to say.  Maybe your feeling would always be the other way around and you'd never pass a television show about the law and not wonder. . .I know that in mentioning this idly to a fellow lawyer friend of mine, who has a very German work ethic as, well, he's German he dismissed it instantly, having the same opinion as Jon Brady, noting; "with your inquiring mind you are only suitable for the law and the clergy. . and you couldn't have become a clergyman".   Therefore, he noted, in his Germanic analytical view that my position in the law was a natural and mandatory, the Roman Collar being the only other option, which isn't an option, as I'm married.  I wasn't married, I'd note, at the time I became a lawyer but that's really besides the point as I'm not called to the pulpit.  I'd also note that he has the very distinct German view, related to the American one but even more pronounced, that a child of a professional must become some sort of professional or an engineer.  To do otherwise is an absolute failure.

Well, who knows about all of that.

On the other hand, maybe an element of this is sort of the ingrained American Capitalist/American Dream Imperative.  The next generation must always "do better" because, it must.

Whatever that means.

There's no intrinsic reason to measure success in life in such a fashion.  In the deepest terms possible, a successful life has to be measured with a metaphysical yard stick, not a physical one, and certainly not one based on money or status.  And I believe that.  So it surprises me to find that I have a bit of the more conventional American (I guess) yardstick.

I started pondering this the other day actually before I was aware of the information above actually when I was reminded of the death of a lawyer in Cheyenne that I did not know well, but another lawyer who was with me did.  He was going to visit his grave site in Guernsey on his way home.  I hadn't realized that the deceased lawyer was from Guernsey, but he was.

Indeed, I learned that he was a highly devout Catholic and daily communicant, that he'd grown up in Guernsey and Wheatland, married his high school sweetheart and had three children. Two of the children, an obituary I saw, were physicians.


Now that started me to think a bunch of various thought on this topic.  For one thing, it's interesting how he retained a connection to Guernsey, a small railroad/military/farming town in Wyoming.  He wanted apparently to be buried there. Does that signal a connection with a person's hometown that's deeper than the one they lived  during their careers?  Maybe.  Indeed, just today I saw an obituary of a man who had grown up in Oklahoma but spent all his post service career in Wyoming.  The internment was in Oklahoma.  It must have remained dear to him.

Anyhow, that struck me.  It's interesting how often a person's career takes him away from what he loves, maybe for most of a person's life, and its often the case that the "better" that career is, the more likely that is.  Of course, in my case, that's not true.  I live in the town I grew up in, and over the years five of my co-workers (now down to two) share that distinction.  And part of that is because I do love the region, and the state, and the outdoors here.  If I were from Guernsey and moved to Cheyenne to work, would I think the same thing?  It's not really far, but I wonder.

The same obituary, however, as noted had the two out of three children who were doctors. Those individuals were, of course, residents of Cheyenne in their youth, not Guernsey. Are they metaphysical successes, as the late lawyer mentioned above was?  Well, I don't know, but I often wonder about things like that.  People will "brag on" their children's careers, but sometimes that's all there is to brag about in that context (I'm not saying that about these people, I don't know them).  That is, I've known people who I admired for one reason or another but who had one or more children that had high paying careers but which I'd otherwise regard as failures, often because money was all they cared about.  Still, in my line of work I very often hear about children of lawyers who become lawyer or doctors and its' hard not to pick up the view that this is some sort of mandatory norm.

Of course it isn't.  I've sort of known to sheriff's officers whose fathers were physicians or dentist.  As we're not in medieval guilds, we are free to go the path we'd like to, and indeed it seems we should irrespective of real or imagined social expectations.

Indeed, I'm sure that I never lived up to any social expectations myself.  When I graduated from high school and entered college I remember, at one point very early on, telling one of my friends who was going on into engineering that I wasn't too sure I'd make it through college.  I'm not sure why I thought that. My friend scoffed and said that if anyone was going to make it through college out of our group, I would. That proved partially correct.  Out of our close group of friends, two did not graduate although I'd regard all of them as successful.  The one that spoke those words dropped out when he married after nearly four years in university to go to work, and ultimately ended up a business owner, now retired.  Another who planned on being a dentist took a summer job in an electrical shop and never looked back, now being one of the owners of that establishment.  The third could never find work in his chosen academic field, music, and went on into computers, which he was always good at, but acquired a MBA on the way.  I guess my path diverted too.  I didn't become an employed geologist and ended up a lawyer instead. Shades of Truckin' there, I suppose:
Truckin', like the do-dah man. Once told me "You've got to play your hand"
Sometimes your cards ain't worth a dime, if you don't lay'em down,
Sometimes the light's all shinin' on me,
Other times I can barely see.
Lately it occurs to me what a long, strange trip it's been.
* * *
Truckin', up to Buffalo. Been thinkin', you got to mellow slow
Takes time, you pick a place to go, and just keep truckin' on.

Truckin. . . something that I'm sure most people who know me never expected to see here.

Hmmmm. . . ..

Or maybe not.


There is a Boarding House. . .glimpses of the earlier world.**

Well anyhow.

Who knows.  It's interesting how you acquire a set of views and standards but sometimes those are pretty heavily impacted by those people you are around one way or another.  My egalitarian father impacted my views very heavily on and those are the ones I think I retain.  Living in a different world however, I've clearly picked up a lot of "American" views whether I sought to or not.

I guess everyone hopes for something along the lines of the final scenes for Wil Andersen, the tough cowboy figure in the movie The Cowboys, in which he observed.
Wil Andersen:  Every man wants his children to be better than he was.  You are.
It's funny how we often don't really grasp what we think of that ourselves, however.  People 's standards are often expressed one away and manifested in another, or even expressed in diametrically opposed ways from time to time.



Takin Care Of Business. . . the slacker anthem of the Baby Boomers. . . a generation that went on to exceed their parents in materialism and dedication to it, and to complain that millennials were slackers.
__________________________________________________________________________________
*My father very rarely gave any career type advice, or any life type advice for that matter.  In fairness to him, I grew up really fast as a teenager as my mother was extremely ill and for much of that time I basically was without a mother in practical terms and it was just me and my father.  One of my very good friends today takes the position that I basically never had a childhood and went right to being an adult. That's not true, and in actuality I did have a childhood, but my teen years were highly accelerated from those years to my adult ones because that's the way life made it.  I don't have regrets about that as life isn't fair and people who bitch about a thing like that are expecting more than a person can reasonably expect.

I'd additionally note, however, that this was the same in some ways for my father.  His father died when he was in his late teens and he went right to being a responsible adult.  In some ways his career decisions were a little compelled by my Irish American grandmother who couldn't stand for the thought of her oldest highly intelligent son working in the Post Office for the rest of his life, which was basically my father's plan after he went to work there following my grandfather's death.  He started off in engineering, as he was a natural at math, but switched to dentistry following the example of an older brother in law who took that up following his return from the Submarine service during World War Two.  My father was really good at everything medical but, like almost all of the local dentist and doctors of that generation, he was sort of  dispossessed agriculturalist at heart, something that had a pretty big impact on me.

Anyhow, given that he sincerely felt that a person had to find their own way, and because he'd had to find his own way himself, he just basically didn't give life advice.  When he did, it tended to be in the rare form of a simple observation, such as noted above, and you really listened to it as it was in fact so rare and he knew so much.


**Old Soldiers Never Die.  Another glimpse of the earlier world, based musically on There Is A Boarding House.