That first post looked like this:
Lex Anteinternet?
The Consolidated Royalty Building, where I work, back when it was new.
What the heck is this blog about?
The intent of this blog is to try to explore and learn a few things about the practice of law prior to the current era. That is, prior to the internet, prior to easy roads, and the like. How did it work, how regional was it, how did lawyers perceive their roles, and how were they perceived?
Part of the reason for this, quite frankly, has something to do with minor research for a very slow moving book I've been pondering. And part of it is just because I'm curious. Hopefully it'll generate enough minor interest so that anyone who stops by might find something of interest, once it begins to develop a bit.
May 1, 2019, in contrast, looked like this:
Ten Years?
Lex Anteinternet: Lex Anteinternet?: The Consolidated Royalty Building, where I work, back when it was new. What the heck is this blog about? The intent of this blog i...Maybe even a little longer, as this blog was at first a highly inactive blog while I had a couple of others. Indeed, I've wiped out versions of this blog at least twice, or rather other blogs that represent what this one became.
But it's likely ten, as this one was formed very early on, and indeed may have been the first one formed. At that time, as noted above, it was to aid in the writing of a novel. The novel is still unfinished, and risks never being finished, even though I still intend to. In the meantime, due to another one of my blogs, I did write and complete a book on Wyoming's history.
This month I'll also enter my 29th year of practicing law, and in fact my association with where I work goes back thirty years in the form of my first legal job, which morphed into my permanent legal job about a year later. In the interval my second legal job, the only other one I've ever had, in the minor form of being employed to write a paper with a professor that was published in a law journal, occurred. So in that sense, this month commences my 30th year in the profession I currently occupy, or I should say one of the two professions I currently occupy. It is of course the profession that I shall occupy until retirement, should I live so long, assuming I retire, which few lawyers that I know do. Prior dreams of entering the judiciary are now slaves to the passage of time, where they'll accordingly remain dreams unfulfilled. A path not taken not because of a choice not to do so, but because fate burned the bridge before I could cross it, that in fact being the fate of the majority of people who contemplate that career, and therefore being a fate that cannot be lamented.
The lack of progress on the book can probably be lamented, however, at least by me. It may have to wait until the aforementioned retirement. At least I'm not making much progress on it, other than in my mind, where I write almost everything that I write long before I commit it to the visible form. So perhaps in that sense, there is progress.
Certainly this blog has made it much improved. I know a lot more about the era its set in than I did before. And it's been fascinating indeed.
I've enjoyed this blog. I hope have as well, and are continuing to.
Mid Week At Work: The good the bad and the ugly - Work for a living
Blog Mirror: No, robots are not coming for your jobs
No, robots are not coming for your jobs
So says Robert J. Samuelson.
I hope he's right. Artificial Intelligence and electronic automation are something I do worry about. I'm glad that I'm not young in an era in which I'll have to face it really.
Indeed, frankly, I think technologically we're over the point where our technology is helping us and its clearly hurting. Tragically, people can't go back as they can't imagine doing so. But things are not improving in this area, in my view.
May 1, 1919. A Red May Day
May 1, May Day, has long been associated with the far left as its the International Workers Holiday. In 1919, with Communism on the rise everywhere, May 1 was notably Red everywhere.
The evening Casper newspaper noting the riots in Cleveland as well as the anarchist bombing campaign. This paper also discussed the acquisition of property with a future eye towards social services. Costa Rica and Mexico were trying to get into the League of Nations, the paper also noted, but weren't admitted due to political instability.
In the United States, the Communist Party USA was founded, rapidly gaining membership (while always remaining a minor political party) in the wake of the decline of the Socialist Party in the United States, which had come under the eyes of the law for its opposition to World War One.
The CPUSA would have its glory years, if they could be called that, in the 1920s and the 1930s, during which it not only was a serious, if minor, political party, but during which it was also an organ for espionage for the Soviet Union. It never had more than 80,000 members at its peak. It's role as an arm of the efforts of the NKVD were already known, if not fully appreciated, by some who tried to bring it to the government's attention by the 1930s, and indeed a precursor to what later became known as the McCarthy Hearings actually occurred in the late 1930s and focused on some of the same people who would be examined later, but it was not until the end of World War Two when the full horrors of Communism in Russia were revealed that the CPUSA really started to decline to the trivial, where it remains today.
In Cleveland riots occurred on this day, springing from a Socialist march that was supported by Communist and Anarchist. The imprisonment of Eugene V. Debs was the spark that ignited that flame. There were about two deaths as the result of the riot, and about forty injuries.
In Winnepeg construction workers went on strike. It would soon expanded to be a general strike.
In Bavaria, German forces, supported by Freikorps, breached the Communist defenses in Munich bringing the Bavarian Soviet Republic to an end.
Cheyenne was having an air show on this day in 1919.
In the U.S. the news was also still breaking about the anarchist bombing campaign that had been started but detected. The campaign would revive later. It wasn't connected with any other radical group, although it likely had the appearance of that to the general public at the time.
All of this would contribute to making the summer of 1919 the "Red Summer", as it was termed by James Weldon Johnson. It would also fuel an ongoing "Red Scare" that had commenced during World War One. With the summer beginning the way that it was, that the scare would occur was pretty predictable. And in fact, the far left of 1919 was not only radical, but seeing a fair amount of global success. It's chances of success in the United States were frankly slim and always would be, but the combination of the news produced a predictable reaction.
A New Japanese Emperor
Japanese Imperial Standard.
While Japan no longer has an empire, it does have an emperor (an odd thought), and as of today, it has a new one.* Emperor Naruhito.
It has a new Empress as well, Empress Masako, who was a career Japanese diplomat prior to marrying Naruhito. For reasons that aren't clear to me, Empresses don't go through the formal investiture ceremony in Japan. That may have something to do with the traditional role of the Emperor as a Shinto Priest.
Naruhito, age 59, is the first Japanese Emperor to take office since World War Two who was not alive during World War Two. Having said that, there's only been three Japanese Emperors since World War Two, if we include Hirohito, who was of course Emperor during World War Two and up until 1989. After Hirohito came his son Akihito, who just resigned, making Naruhito the first Emperor in 200 years to take office following a resignation of his predecessor. Akihito was born in 1933 and was therefore 12 years old when World War Two ended.
That's significant as well in that Akihito was born into a Japanese royal family whose heirs had a technical claim to an expectation to be accorded an official deity status, although that is really fairly grossly exaggerated in the West. The Japanese royal family dates back to vast antiquity and its origins are so ancient that they frankly aren't very well known. The first generally recognized emperor is Jinmu, who reigned starting in 660 BC, which is a very long time ago. Not surprisingly, with a family tree that ancient, the claim to the title of Emperor isn't completely unchallenged and there have been competing lines over time. Having said that, the fact that the Japanese imperial family tree can be traced back that far is really impressive.
Jinmu with a long bow, as depicted in the 19th Century.
The role of the Emperor has been a hard one for westerners to figure out. At various points in Japanese history the Japanese crown had nearly no power at all. In the history of modern Japan, it really acquired power with Emperor Meiji, who reigned from 1867 until 1912 and who, with the aid of his supporters, both modernized Japan and restored the power of the Imperial crown. Following the Meiji Restoration the crown had power of some sort, but it's always been difficult to discern. During the 1920s that power may or may not have waned following what amounted to a sort of right wing military coup following an attempted young officers left wing military coup. Everyone acting in both coups claimed to be acting with the interest of the Emperor at heart.
The pivotal modern Japanese Emperor Meiji.
Douglas MacArthur and Emperor Hirohito in 1945.
Hirohito, as noted, had been required to renounce claims to a divine status following World War Two but the claim was rather vague in the first place. A more significant role was that of Shinto Priest, which the emperor always was. The Imperial heads of state always receive the treasures of the Japanese crown, which date back centuries and into antiquity, that have Shinto significance, but I don't know if the Emperor remains a Shinto Priest as they once did.** At any rate, the strong claims, to the extent they existed, of divinity were boosted by the Japanese military in the 20s through the 40s and post war surveys by the Japanese government found that the Japanese people had never actually believed the Emperor had divine status anyhow. His renouncement of the claims, therefore, had no real impact on their views.
In any event, for the first time in modern history a Japanese Emperor has ascended to the thrown who was 1) born after Japan was no longer an Empire; and 2) was born after the crown had disclaimed any divinity. A new era of some sort, in an era when monarchy remains, but its hard to tell why.
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*Having said that, it's hard to figure out exactly why the Japanese Empire is historically regarded as such prior to the 20th Century, unless you take the view that the consolidation of power in the crown in the Japanese islands themselves constitutes an empire.
As there is some ethnic diversity in the overall island holdings, that's not an illegitimate view. Hokkaido was in fact the home of an ethnically separate people. The Japanese started colonizing the island in the 1330s. Okinawa is also the home of an ethnically separate people. It didn't become part of the Japanese Empire until 1879.
**Like a lot of things surrounding Japan, the Japanese Imperial Regalia are mysterious. They consists of a named sword, a named mirror, and a jewel. They are not as impressive, reportedly, in appearance as a person might suppose.
The sword is known to have existed as far back as the 680s, but it's older than that. The mirror is also ancient and may or may not have been destroyed and replaced in a fire in 1040. The jewel is likely prehistoric.
These items are not revealed to the general public and its sometimes speculated that they've been lost or destroyed. Japan, however, is remarkable in its ability of preservation of artifacts so the better bet, in my view, is that they're all original. They're all absolutely ancient as well.
Therefore, rather obviously, something that really occurred over the decade was the massive expansion of daily posts. One short one started us off, and that was how things ran for a long time, with days and days between entries, and now there are days when three or four posts aren't unusual.
Having said that, anyone who stops in here has probably noticed that there are now fewer posts. The centenary of the Punitive Expedition gave us a chance to explore the topic on a daily basis, something of use to the ostensible purpose of the blog. That naturally flowed directly into World War One and that, in turn, to the immediate post war era. But now that's gone and the daily posts have also declined. There are no doubt those who are interested in the railroad crisis and the strikes that followed the war, and we are as well, but not enough to turn the purpose of the blog to them. It's not as if, of course, that blog is ending, but its returning more to its original format. . . sort of.
But only sort of. Early on this blog expanded to include a lot of other topics and it in fact absorbed a couple of other blogs that were contemporaneous with it. We originally didn't post on social issues, news of the day or politics here. We did that on another blog we once had. We shut that one down and much of it is just flat out gone, but quite a bit of it was incorporated into this one. Based on what we can find left of it, the very first blog didn't survive at all, so there are lost posts that would go back to 2009 if we did. But the successor blog's posts have been picked up here and incorporated in earlier years.
But what about those years?
I wasn't young when I started this blog. I would have been 45 years old, and that's not youthful. But I do frankly feel older now even though I'm in pretty good shape for somebody who is 56. Indeed, I'm in a lot better shape.
I'm a faster writer as well, although I was fast to start with. Typing here has honed my speed which has been at use to me in all sorts of ways, although it hasn't been in terms of getting my book done.
I've published a book since I started this blog and was commissioned for a second, but work (It ell myself) kept me from getting the second done. In truth that book, and the novel I'm working on, don't get done in part because I write here. It's time to devote more attention to those other efforts. That won't stop the blog either, but it is time to see if we can get those done, if we're going to. Who knows, we may very well not. As I often tell people when it comes up, in spite of the fact that Americans are made massively uncomfortable with it, once a man is over 30 years old, you are really living on borrowed time. Indeed, I'm now well past the age of my father's father when he died, nearly the age that my mother's father as when he passed away, and not that much younger than my father when he passed. That's the way thing are. On the other hand, I'm just a bit under half the age my mother's mother was when she passed away, and my own mother lived a long life. Only God knows how many years a person has been allotted, but they pass much quicker than a person could ever imagine.
The last decade has not, to my way of looking at it, passed nay quicker than any other for hte most part. Where I really notice it is in terms of work, in that matters I worked on a decade ago often don't seem that long ago. But the country and society has undergone enormous changes, it seems to me, in the past ten years and most of them are not good.
It's not that uncommon for people who are past mid stream to look back and think things have gotten worse. A lot of things have not. But the nation's social structure has as its evolved in a contra-scientific and contra-natural manner. At some point in the last decade the political philosophy of relativism triumphed in such a manner that its now the case that people's whims, delusions and even baser desires are regarded as all important even when they rebel against the laws Darwin first set out so long ago. It's not possible to continue to go in this direction indefinitely, and while I would have regarded as absurdly alarmist earlier on, it's now possible to seriously ponder if the very long domination of the west in the affairs of the world is ending as the western world just isn't serious any more, even if it regards itself as such. If that's the case, the western world at this point would be in a place where it deserves that fate and would even benefit from it, being replaced on the stage by more serious cultures, many of whom have taken the best of what the western world developed over two millennia and have incorporated it into their own thinking in a serious manner. If so, it would be the acting out, as has happened so many times before, of what Tennyson noted in stating:
The old order changeth yielding place to new And God fulfills himself in many ways Lest one good custom should corrupt the world. Comfort thyself: what comfort is in me I have lived my life and that which I have done May he within himself make pure but thou If thou shouldst never see my face again Pray for my soul. More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of.
Of course, it's easy to have such glum thoughts in an era in which the nation's politics seem to be hopelessly adrift and the nation with it. I recall as a child hearing such things stated during the Administration of Richard Nixon and the following Ford Administration, which was characterized by the Watergate episode and the following impeachment drama, and then capped off by the nation's obvious defeat in and abandonment of South Vietnam. Much of the past few years has had that feel to it, and indeed much of the past decade has been like living through a second 1960s. The 60s, which really lasted from 1964 to 1975, was an awful decade full of societal drama and decay combined with a losing overseas war that seemingly had no end to it, followed by a political disaster. As some say, history doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes, and the 2010s have had that feel to them, with societal institutions of ancient origin redefined outside of the election of the culture, an ongoing set of wars that stretch all the way back to 2001, and two political parties that are moving away from each other faster than the opposite ends of the universe. Fatigue from that alone would be inevitable, and the pessimism that fatigue brings about.
So perhaps the 2020s will be better, and in some ways they nearly have to be. Some things may have reached bottom or will in the next decade. But others are not likely to.
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
and never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
and auld lang syne*?
For auld lang syne, my jo,
for auld lang syne,
we'll tak' a cup o' kindness yet,
for auld lang syne.
And surely ye'll be your pint-stoup!
and surely I'll be mine!
And we'll tak' a cup o’ kindness yet,
for auld lang syne.
For auld lang syne, my jo,
for auld lang syne,
we'll tak' a cup o' kindness yet,
for auld lang syne.
We twa hae run about the braes,
and pou'd the gowans fine;
But we've wander'd mony a weary fit,
sin' auld lang syne.
For auld lang syne, my jo,
for auld lang syne,
we'll tak' a cup o' kindness yet,
for auld lang syne.
We twa hae paidl'd in the burn,
frae morning sun till dine;
But seas between us braid hae roar'd
sin' auld lang syne.
For auld lang syne, my jo,
for auld lang syne,
we'll tak' a cup o' kindness yet,
for auld lang syne.
And there's a hand, my trusty fiere!
and gie's a hand o' thine!
And we'll tak' a right gude-willie waught,
for auld lang syne.
For auld lang syne, my jo,
for auld lang syne,
we'll tak' a cup o' kindness yet,
for auld lang syne.
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