Monday, November 25, 1963. A day of mourning.

President Lyndon B. Johnson proclaimed November 25, 1963, a day of national mourning for the death of John F. Kennedy.  His body was laid to rest at arlington National Cemetery and his wido Jacqueline lit the "eternal flame" at the location.

Rarely noted, services were also held for Lee Havey Oswald and Dallas policeman J. D. Tippit. The attendance at the Tippit funeral was enormous, but the Oswald one was private by orers of the Federal Government.

Telephone service across the US was halted for one minute at noon, Eastern Time.  Las Vegas closed its casinos for the third time in its history, the other two being for Good Friday (March 22) in 1940, and on April 12, 1945, after President Franklin D. Roosevelt died.

A suburb of Algiers was renamed for the late President on this day, as was the Rudolf-Wilde-Platz in Berlin.

Abraham Zapruder sold the rights to his 8mm film of the Kennedy assassination to LIFE Magazine for $150,000. It was paid in installments, and the first $25,000 was donated by Zapruder to Tippit's widow.

Friday, November 22, 1963. The assassination of John F. Kennedy.

Today In Wyoming's History: November 22: 1963  President John F. Kennedy assassinated in Dallas, TX.

President Kennedy was a very popular President in a very difficult time.  A lot of my comments about his presidency here have not been terribly charitable, but he was a hero to many, and some of his calls here have unfairly not been noted.  For instance, he exercised restraint during the Cuban Missile Crisis, which almost resulted in a Third World War, and he likewise kept the separation of Berlin from escalating into the same, even though his comments caused that crisis to come about.

In spite of repeated speculation about it, it's clear that the assassination was carried out as a lone, bizarre act by Lee Harvey Oswald.  Indeed, the lone actor aspect of that has fueled the conspiracy theories surrounding the event, as people basically don't want to accept that a lone actor can have such a massive and unforeseen impact.

I was alive at the time, but of course I don't remember this as I was only a few months old.  In my father's effects, I'd note, was a Kennedy Mass Card that he'd kept. No doubt, Masses were said around the country for the first Catholic President.

Often unnoticed about this event, Oswald probably had made an earlier attempt on the life of former Army Gen. Edwin Walker, who ironically was a radical right wing opponent of Kennedy's.  That attempt had occured in April. And Oswald killed Texas law enforcement officer J. D. Tippit shortly after killing Kennedy.  Oswald's initial arrest was for his murder of Tippit.

It's fair to speculate on how different history might have been had Kennedy lived.  Kennedy's actions had taken the US up to the brink of war with the Soviet Union twice, but in both instances, when the crisis occured, he steered the country out of it, and indeed his thinking was often better in those instances than his advisers. Under Kennedy the US had become increasingly involved in the Vietnam War, but there's at least some reason to believe that he was approaching the point of backing off in Vietnam, and it seems unlikely that the US would have engaged in the war full scale as it did under Lyndon Johnson.  If that's correct, the corrosive effect the war had on US society, felt until this day, might have been avoided.

All of which is not to engage in the hagiography often engaged in considering Kennedy.  To the general public, the James Dean Effect seems to apply to Kennedy, as he died relatively young.  Catholics nearly worshiped him as one of their own.  In reality, Kennedy had a really icky personal life and was hardly a living saint.  His hawkishness in a time of real global strife, moreover, produced at least one tragic result, and nearly caused others.

Wednesday, September 25, 1963. President Kennedy speaks in Laramie.

Today In Wyoming's History: September 25: 1963  John F. Kennedy spoke at the University of Wyoming.  His address:

Senator McGee--my old colleague in the Senate, Gale McGee--Governor, Mr. President, Senator Mansfield, Senator Metcalf, Secretary Udall, ladies and gentlemen:

I want to express my appreciation to you for your warm welcome, to you, Governor, to the President of the University, to Senator McGee, and others. I am particularly glad to come on this conservation trip and have an opportunity to speak at this distinguished university, because what we are attempting to do is to develop the talents in our country which require, of course, education which will permit us in our time, when the conservation of our resources requires entirely different techniques than were required 50 years ago, when the great conservation movement began under Theodore Roosevelt--and these talents, scientific and social talents, must be developed at our universities.

I hope that all of you who are students here will recognize the great opportunity that lies before you in this decade, and in the decades to come, to be of service to our country. The Greeks once defined happiness as full use of your powers along lines of excellence, and I can assure you that there is no area of life where you will have an opportunity to use whatever powers you have, and to use them along more excellent lines, bringing ultimately, I think, happiness to you and those whom you serve.

What I think we must realize is that the problems which now face us and their solution are far more complex, far more difficult, far more subtle, require a far greater skill and discretion of judgment, than any of the problems that this country has faced in its comparatively short history, or any, really, that the world has faced in its long history. The fact is that almost in the last 30 years the world of knowledge has exploded. You remember that Robert Oppenheimer said that 8 or 9 out of 10 of all the scientists who ever lived, live today. This last generation has produced nearly all of the scientific breakthroughs, at least relatively, that this world of ours has ever experienced. We are alive, all of us, while this tremendous explosion of knowledge, which has expanded the horizon of our experience, so far has all taken 'place in the last 30 years.

If you realize that when Queen Victoria sent for Robert Peel to be Prime Minister-he was in Rome--the journey which he took from Rome to London took him the same amount of time, to the day, that it had taken the Emperor Hadrian to go from Rome to England nearly 1900 years before. There had been comparatively little progress made in almost 1900 years in the field of knowledge. Now, suddenly, in the last 100 years, but most particularly in the last 30 years, all that is changed, and all of this knowledge is brought to bear, and can be brought to bear, in improving our lives and making the life of our people more happy, or destroying them. And that problem is the one, of course, which this generation of Americans and the next must face: how to use that knowledge, how to make a social discipline out of it.

There is really not much use in having science and its knowledge confined to the laboratory unless it comes out into the mainstream of American and world life, and only those who are trained and educated to handle knowledge and the disciplines of knowledge can be expected to play a significant part in the life of their country. So, quite obviously, this university is not maintained by the people of Wyoming merely to help all of the graduates enjoy a prosperous life. That may come, that may be a byproduct, but the people of Wyoming contribute their taxes to the maintenance of this school in order that the graduates of this school may, themselves, return to the society which helped develop them some of the talents which that society has made available, and what is true in this State is true across the United States.

The reason why, at the height of the Civil War, when the preservation of the Union was in doubt, Abraham Lincoln signed the Land Grant College Act, which has built up the most extraordinary educational system in the world, was because he knew that a nation could not exist and be ignorant and free; and what was true 100 years ago is more true today. So what we have to decide is how we are going to manage the complicated social and economic and world problems which come across our desks-my desk, as President of the United States; the desk of the Senators, as representatives of the States; the Members of the House, as representatives of the people.

But most importantly, as the final power is held by a majority of the people, how the majority of the people are going to make their judgment on the wise use of our resources, on the correct monetary and fiscal policy, what steps we should take in space, what steps we should take to develop the resources of the ocean, what steps we should take to manage our balance of payments, what we should do in the Congo or Viet-Nam, or in Latin America, all these areas which come to rest upon the United States as the leading great power of the world, with the determination and the understanding to recognize what is at stake in the world--all these are problems far more complicated than any group of citizens ever had to deal with in the history of the world, or any group of Members of Congress had to deal with.

If you feel that the Members of Congress were more talented 100 years ago, and certainly the Senators in the years before the Civil War included the brightest figures, probably, that ever sat in the Senate--Benton, Clay, Webster, Calhoun, and all the rest-they talked, and at least three of them stayed in the Congress 40 years--they talked for 40 years about four or five things: tariffs and the development of the West, land, the rights of the States and slavery, Mexico. Now we talk about problems in one summer which dwarf in complexity all of those matters, and we must deal with them or we will perish.

So I think the chance for an educated graduate of this school to serve his State and country is bright. I can assure you that you are needed.

This trip that I have taken is now about 24 hours old, but it is a rewarding 24 hours because there is nothing more encouraging than for those of us to leave the rather artificial city of Washington and come and travel across the United States and realize what is here, the beauty, the diversity, the wealth, and the vigor of the people.

Last Friday I spoke to delegates from all over the world at the United Nations. It is an unfortunate fact that nearly every delegate comes to the United States from all around the world and they make a judgment on the United States based on an experience in New York or Washington; and rarely do they come West beyond the Mississippi, and rarely do they go to California, or to Hawaii, or to Alaska. Therefore, they do not understand the United States, and those of us who stay only in Washington sometimes lose our comprehension of the national problems which require a national solution.

This country has become rich because nature was good to us, and because the people who came from Europe, predominantly, also were among the most vigorous. The basic resources were used skillfully and economically, and because of the wise work done by Theodore Roosevelt and others, significant progress was made in conserving these resources.
The problem, of course, now is that the whole concept of conservation must change in the 1960's if we are going to pass on to the 350 million Americans who will live in this country in 40 years where 180 million Americans now live--if we are going to pass on a country which is even richer.

The fact of the matter is that the management of our natural resources instead of being primarily a problem of conserving them, of saving them, now requires the scientific application of knowledge to develop new resources. We have come to. realize to a large extent that resources are not passive. Resources are not merely something that was here, put by nature. Research tells us that previously valueless materials, which 10 years ago were useless, now can be among the most valuable natural resources of the United States. And that is the most significant fact in conservation now since the early 1900's when Theodore Roosevelt started his work. A conservationist's first reaction in those days was to preserve, to hoard, to protect every non-renewable resource. It was the fear of resource exhaustion which caused the great conservation movement of the 1900's. And this fear was reflected in the speeches and attitudes of our political leaders and their writers.

This is not surprising in the light of the technology of that time, but today that approach is out of date, and I think this is an important fact for the State of Wyoming and the Rocky Mountain States. It is both too pessimistic and too optimistic. We need no longer fear that our resources and energy supplies are a fixed quantity that can be exhausted in accordance with a particular rate of consumption. On the other hand, it is not enough to put barbed wire around a forest or a lake, or put in stockpiles of minerals, or restrictive laws and regulations on the exploitation of resources. That was the old way of doing it.

Our primary task now is to increase our understanding of our environment to a point where we can enjoy it without defacing it, use its bounty without detracting permanently from its value, and, above all, maintain a living balance between man's actions and nature's reactions, for this Nation's great resources are as elastic and productive as our ingenuity can make them. For example, soda ash is a multimillion dollar industry in this State. A few years ago there was no use for it. It was wasted. People were unaware of it. And even if it had been sought, it could not be found--not because it wasn't here, but because effective prospecting techniques had not been developed. Now soda ash is a necessary ingredient in the production of glass, steel, and other products. As a result of a series of experiments, of a harnessing of science to the use of man, this great new industry has opened up. In short, conservation is no longer protection and conserving and restricting. The balance between our needs and the availability of our resources, between our aspirations and our environment, is constantly changing.

One of the great resources which we are going to find in the next 40 years is not going to be the land; it will be the ocean. We are going to find untold wealth in the oceans of the world which will be used to make a better life for our people. Science is changing all of our natural environment. It can change it for good; it can change it for bad. We are pursuing, for example, new opportunities in coal, which have been largely neglected--examining the feasibility of transporting coal by water through pipelines, of gasification at the mines, of liquefaction of coal into gasoline, and of transmitting electric power directly from the mouth of the mine. The economic feasibility of some of these techniques has not been determined, but it will be in the next decade. At the same time, we are engaged in active research on better means of using low grade coal, to meet the tremendous increase in the demand for coal we are going to find in the rest of this century. This is, in effect, using science to increase our supply of a resource of which the people of the United States were totally unaware 50 years ago.

Another research undertaking of special concern to this Nation and this State is the continuing effort to develop practical and feasible techniques of converting oil shale into usable petroleum fuels. The higher grade deposits in Wyoming alone are equivalent to 30 billion barrels of oil, and 200 billion barrels in the case of lower grade development. This could not be used, there was nothing to conserve, and now science is going to make it possible.

Investigation is going on to assure at the same time an adequate water supply so that when we develop this great new industry we will be able to use it and have sufficient water. Resource development, therefore, requires not only the coordination of all branches of science, it requires the joint effort of scientists, government--State, national, and local--and members of other professional disciplines. For example, we are now examining in the United States today the mixed economic-technical question of whether very large-scale nuclear reactors can produce unexpected savings in the simultaneous desalinization of water and the generation of electricity. We will have, before this decade is out or sooner, a tremendous nuclear reactor which makes electricity and at the same time gets fresh water from salt water at a competitive price. What a difference this can make to the Western United States. And, indeed, not only the United States, but all around the globe where there are so many deserts on the ocean's edge.

It is in efforts, I think, such as this, where the National Government can play a significant role, where the scale of public investment or the nationwide scope of the problem, the national significance of the results are too great to ignore or which cannot always be carried out by private research. Federal funds and stimulation can help make the most imaginative and productive use of our manpower and facilities. The use of science and technology in these fields has gained understanding and support in the Congress. Senator Gale McGee has proposed an energetic study of the technology of electrometallurgy--the words are getting longer as the months go on, and more complicated-an area of considerable importance to the Rocky Mountains.

All this, I think, is going to change the life of Wyoming and going to change the life of the United States. What we regard now as relative well-being, 30 years from now will be regarded as poverty. When you realize that 30 years ago r out of 10 farms had electricity, and yet some farmers thought that they were living reasonably well, now for a farm not to have electricity, we regard them as living in the depths of poverty. That is how great a change has come in 30 years. In the short space of 18 years, really, or almost 20 years, the wealth of this country has gone up 300 percent.

In 1970, 1980, 1990, this country will be, can be, must be--if we make the proper decisions, if we manage our resources, both human and material, wisely, if we make wise decisions in the Nation, in the State, in the community, and individually, if we maintain a vigorous and hopeful 'pursuit of life and knowledge--the resources of this country are so unlimited and science is expanding them so greatly that all those people who thought 40 years ago that this country would be exhausted in the middle of the century have been proven wrong. It is going to be richer than ever, providing we make the wise decisions and we recognize that the future belongs to those who seize it.

Knowledge is power, a saying 500 years old, but knowledge is power today as never before, not only here in the United States, but the future of the free world depends in the final analysis upon the United States and upon our willingness to reach those decisions on these complicated matters which face us with courage and clarity. And the graduates of this school will, as they have in the past, play their proper role.

I express my thanks to you. This building which 15 years ago was just a matter of conversation is now a reality. So those things that we talk about today, which seem unreal, where so many people doubt that they can be done--the fact of the matter is, it has been true all through our history--they will be done, and Wyoming, in doing it, will play its proper role.

Thank you.

He'd fly on to Billings later that day.

On the same day, President Juan Bosch of the Dominican Republic was overthrown in a military coup, having served following his election for only seven months.  His party was Socialist in nature, and the US would oppose another coup in 1965 which sought to restore him to power.

The House of Representatives approved a measure to reduce the Income Tax Rate. The Senate would later follow, and the bill signed into law in February 1964.

Blog Mirror: 1963: The Last Summer, Part II

 

1963: The Last Summer, Part II

Friday, August 30, 1963. Hotline.

While I’m not focusing on events 60 years in the past (our links to 100, 80, and 50 are more than enough), occasionally I depart from something, particularly if it occured in the first few months of my six decades here on Earth.  Here's an interesting one:

30 August 1963

The Moscow–Washington hotline between the leaders of the U.S. and the Soviet Union goes into operation.

 The Department of Defense made a one-sentence announcement to the press on this occasion, that being: "The direct communication link between Washington and Moscow is now operational." 

It was not a phone link, by the way, but a teletype link.

The cassette tape was introduced by Philips at the annual Internationale Funkausstellung Berlin.

My mother had an early tape recorder which she used somehow in the context of her studies at the local community college.  I recall that it was a gift from my father, and regarded as expensive at the time.  She kept it in good condition.  I recall it had a separate microphone.

I wonder what happened to it?

Eddie Mannix died at age 72.

Mannix is families to Coen Brother's fans as the central character in Hail, Ceasar!, although the quasi comedic portrayal given there considerably cleans up his actual nature.  In the film, Mannix is portrayed as a devout Catholic family man burdened with the job of keeping Hollywood dimwits out of trouble. The portrayal is a great one.  In reality, Mannix was a fixer, and actually was Catholic, but is associated with a string of at least rumored despicable acts.  He and his second wife (his first wife died early in their marriage) never had any children.

His record of film costs has proved to be an invaluable historic resource.

Saturday, August 28, 1963. March On Washington For Jobs And Freedom.

Around 250,000 people participated in the March On Washington For Jobs and Freedom at which Rev. Martin Luther King delivered his famous "I have a dream" speech.  The text of that speech featured in an earlier post on this blog, here: Lex Anteinternet: August 20, 1619. Slavery comes to British America: 

August 20, 1619. Slavery comes to British America

The date isn't known with precision.  Only that it occurred in August.  But this date, August 20, is used as the usual date for the event when a slaver arrived off the port at Port Comfort, Virginia, carrying 20 to 30 African who were held in bondage and sold into slavery.

The event marked the return of the English to being a slave owning society.  Slavery had been abolished by the Normans after conquering Anglo Saxon Britain in 1066 and while it's common to see claims of other types of servitude, including involuntary servitude, equating with slavery, they do not.  Slavery is unique.

And late European chattel slavery, which commenced with the expansion of European powers into African waters and into the Americas, was particularly unique and in someways uniquely horrific.

Slavery itself was not introduce to African populations by Europeans; they found it there upon their arrival, but they surprisingly accommodated themselves to participating in it very rapidly.  Europeans had been the victims of Arab slavers for a long time themselves, who raided both for the purposes of acquiring forced labor, and fairly horrifically, for forced concubinage, the latter sort of slave having existed in their society for perhaps time immemorial but which had been licensed by Muhammad in the Koran.  Arab slave traders had been quite active in Africa early on, purchasing slaves from those who had taken them as prisoners of war, an ancient way of dealing with such prisoners, and the Europeans, starting really with the Portuguese, seemingly stepped right into it as Europe's seafaring powers grew.

Having waned tremendously in Europe following the rise of Christianity, European powers somehow found themselves tolerating the purchase and transportation for resale of Africans for European purchasers by the 15th Century, with most of those purchasers being ultimately located in the Americas.

The English were somewhat slow to become involved.  It wasn't clear at first if slavery was legal under English Common Law and the English lacked statutory clarification on the point such as had been done with other European powers.  Early English decisions were unclear on the point. However, starting with the 17th Century, the institution worked its way into English society, even as opposition to it grew from the very onset.

The importation of slaves to English populations was not limited to North American, but it was certainly the absolute strongest, in the English speaking world, in England's New World colonies.  While every European seafaring power recognized slavery by the mid 17th Century, the really powerful markets were actually limited to the Caribbean, English North American, and Portuguese Brazil.  European slavery existed everywhere in the New World, and no country with colonies in North America was exempt from it, but it was strongest in these locations.

And slavery as reintroduced by Europeans was uniquely abhorrent.  Slavery, it is often noted, has existed in most advanced and semi advanced societies at some point, but slavery also was normally based in warfare and economics nearly everywhere.  I.e., it was a means of handling conquered armies, conquered peoples, and economic distress.  The word "servant" and "slave" in ancient Greek was the same word for this latter reason.  In eras in which resources were tight and there was little other means of handling these situations, slavery was applied as the cruel solution.

But it wasn't raced based.  The slavery that the Europeans applied was. Even Arab slavery, which was ongoing well before the Europeans joined in and continued well after, was not based on race but status.  If a lot of Arab slaves were black in the 17th Century, that was mostly due to an environment existing which facilitated that. Earlier, a lot of forced concubine Arab slaves, for example, were Irish.  The Arabs were equal opportunity slavers.

Europeans were not.  European slaves were nearly always black, and even examples of trying to note occasions in which Indians were held as slaves are very strained.  And because it was raced based, it took on a unique inhuman quality.  Slavery wasn't justified on the basis that the slaves were prisoners of war that had fallen into that state, but that the state was better than death, nor were they held on the basis that they had sold themselves or had been sold into servitude due to extreme poverty, and that was better than absolute destitution.  It wasn't even justified on a likely misapplied allowance granted by Muhammad for slaves that were held due to war, and could be used for carnal purposes, reinterpreted (I'm guessing) for convenient purposes.  It was simply that they were black and, therefore, something about that made them suitable for forced labor.

And forced labor it was.  Servants in the ancient world had often been servants and even tutors.  While it did become common in North America to use slaves as household domestics, most slaves in North America performed heavy agricultural labor their entire lives.  It was awful and they worked in awful conditions.

And it tainted the early history of the country in a way that's ongoing to this day.  With opposition to its reintroduction right from the onset, but the late 18th Century it was clear that its abhorrent nature meant it was soon to go out everywhere.  Almost every European country abolished it very early in the 19th Century, which is still shockingly late.  It was falling into disfavor in the northern part of the British North American by the Revolution, in part because agriculture in the North was based on a developed agrarian pattern while in the South the planter class engaged in production agriculture (making it ironic that the yeoman class would be such a feature of the American south).  The pattern of agriculture had meant that there were comparatively few slaves in the north.  This is not to say it was limited to the South, however.  Slavery even existed in Quebec.

With the Revolution came the belief that slavery would go out, but it didn't.  By that time the American South had a huge black slave population.  Slavery would if anything become entrenched in the South, where most of the American black population lived, and it would take the worst war in the nation's history to abolish it.  So horrific was that war that even today the descendants of those who fought to keep men slaves sometimes strain the confines of history to find an excuse for what their ancestors did.  And following their Emancipation, the nation did a poor job of addressing the racism that had allowed it to exist.  It wasn't until the second quarter of the 20th Century that things really began to change, with the Great Migration occurring first, followed by a slow improvement in status following World War One, followed by a rapid one after World War Two that culminated in the Civil Rights Era of the 1950s, 60s, and 70s.

But the stain of slavery lingers on in innumerable ways even now.  Having taken to slavery in 1619, and having tolerated it for over two hundred years thereafter, and having struggled with how to handle the residual effects of that for a century thereafter, we've still failed to really absorb the impact of the great sin of our colonial predecessor.

I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.

Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of captivity.
But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself in exile in his own land. So we have come here today to dramatize an shameful condition.
In a sense we've come to our nation's Capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir.
This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check; a check which has come back marked "insufficient funds."
But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. So we have come to cash this check- a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.
We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism.
Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children.
It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. This sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning. Those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.
But there is something that I must say to my people who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.
The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. And they have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom. We cannot walk alone.
And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall march ahead. We cannot turn back. There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, "When will you be satisfied?"
We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality.
We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities.
We cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro's basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one.
We can never be satisfied as long as our chlidren are stripped of their selfhood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating "for whites only."
We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote.
No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.
I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive.
Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed. Let us not wallow in the valley of despair.
I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal."
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.
I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
I have a dream today.
I have a dream that one day down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, that one day right down in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.
I have a dream today.
I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exhalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.
This is our hope. This is the faith that I will go back to the South with. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood.
With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.
This will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with new meaning, "My country 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the Pilgrims' pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring."
And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true. So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania.
Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado. Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California. But not only that; let freedom ring from the Stone Mountain of Georgia. Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee.
Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.
And when this happens, and when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"

Rev. Martin Luther King, August 28, 1963.

The speech is clearly one of the greatest speech in U.S. history.

Saturday, August 11, 1973. American Graffitti

American Graffiti was released on this day in 1973.  It's on our Movies In History list, which discusses it here:

American Graffiti

Like The Wonder Years, I've made frequent reference to this film recently.  I was surprised when I started doing that, that I'd never reviewed it.

American Graffiti takes place on a single night in Modesto California in 1962.  It's the late summer and the subject, all teenagers, are about to head back to school or already have, depending upon whether they're going to high school or college. Some are going to work or already working.  They're spending the summer night cruising the town.  That's used as a vehicle to get them into dramatic situations.

The story lines, and there are more than one, in the film are really simple.  One character, played by Richard Dreyfus, is about to leave for college and develops a mad crush, in a single night, for a young woman driving a T-bird played by a young Suzanne Summers.  Another plot involves a young couple, played by Ron Howard and Cindy Williams, who are struggling with his plan to leave for college while she has one more year of school.  Another involves an already graduated figure whose life is dedicated to cars, even though its apparent that he knows that dedication can't last forever.  The cast, as some of these names would indicate, was excellent, with many actors and actresses making their first really notable appearances in the film.

What's of interest here is the films' portrayal of the automobile culture of American youth after World War Two. This has really passed now, but it's accurately portrayed in the film.  Gasoline was relatively cheap and access to automobiles was pretty wide, which created a culture in which adolescents spent a lot of time doing just what is depicted in this movie, driving around fairly aimlessly, with the opposite sex on their minds, on Friday and Saturday nights.  This really existed in the 1960s, when this film takes place, it dated back at least to the 1950s, and it continued on into the very early 1980s. At some point after that, gasoline prices, and car prices, basically forced it out of existence.

For those growing up in the era, this was a feature of Fridays and Saturdays either to their amusement or irritation.  As a kid, coming into town on a Friday or Saturday evening from anything was bizarre and irritating, with racing automobiles packed with teenagers pretty much everywhere.  Grocery store parking lots were packed with parked cars belonging to them as well.  "Cruising" was a major feature of teenage life, and nearly every teenager participated in it at least a little big, even if they disavowed doing it.  While they did this, in later years they listened to FM radio somewhat, but more likely probably cassette tape players installed after market in their cars.  In the mid 1970s it was 8 track tape players.  In the 50s and 60s, it was the radio.

So, as odd as it may seem to later generations, this movie is pretty accurate in terms of what it displays historically.  And, given that the film was released in 1973, a mere decade after the era it depicts, it should be.  The amazing thing here is that by 1973 American culture had changed so much that a 1973 film looking back on 1962 could actually invoke a sense of nostalgia and an era long past.

The music and clothing are certainly correct, as is the cruising culture.  I somewhat question the automobiles in the movie, as most of those driven by the protagonists are late 1950s cars that wouldn't have been terribly old at the time the movie portrays, but a person knowledgeable on that topic informed me once that vehicles wore out so fast at the time that people replaced them fairly rapidly, which meant that younger people were driving fairly recent models.  Indeed, looking back on myself, I was driving early 1970s vintage vehicles in the late 1970s.

The music, which is a big feature of the movie, is also correct, which ironically often causes people to view this as a movie about the 1950s, rather than the early 1960s.  The music of the early 60s was the same as that of the late 50s, and music from the 50s was still current in the early 1960s, so this too is correct.

This movie was a huge hit, and it remained very popular for a very long time.  It's justifiably regarded as a classic.  More than that, however, it's one of the few movies that influences its own times.

Already by the 1970s there was some nostalgia regarding the 1950s.  Sha Na Na, the 50s reprisal do wop band, actually preformed at Woodstock, as amazing as that seems now.  By the late 1960s seems felt like such a mess that people were looking back towards an earlier era which they regarded as safer, ignoring its problems.  American Graffiti tapped into that feeling intentionally, although it has some subtle dark elements suggesting that not all is right with the world it portrays (the film clearly hints that a returned college graduate student is involved with his teenage female students).  George Lucas, when he made the film, couldn't have guess however that it would fuel a nostalgia boom for the 1950s like none other.

From our entry:

Movies In History: American Graffiti, and other filmed portrayals of the Cultural 1950s (1954-1965).

One of the really remarkable things about this film, well worth noting, is that it depicted a night in 1962.  That means, of course, that it was depicting, with nostalgia, something that had happened only ten years prior and yet already seemed like an earlier era.

Do we feel that way about 2013?  I doubt it.

This demonstrates that our perception of the decades not only depends upon years, and the years we've lived but also on events and eras.  What made the 1962 seem like history in 1973?

Well, probably quite a lot.  The US entered the Vietnam War and had just left the country in defeat, although the collapse of South Vietnam was yet to come.  The US had landed men on the moon more than once.  The Great Society had come and gone.  A U.S. president had died violently.  Inflation was racking the nation.

And 1968, which is to say "the 60s" had come, and was just leaving, although that was not apparent.

By the 80s, those who had "experienced the 60s" were looking back on some of it fondly, although they weren't looking back on the Vietnam War fondly.  So the process slightly repeated itself. But by 1973 people were really aware that the post World War Two world had really passed.  It wasn't as carefree as depictions of the 1950s would have it, not by a long shot.  But a lamenting of what had been lost was starting, and in some ways, has very much returned.

Looking forward, it was on this day that "hip hop", or "rap" was born when Jamaican born Olive Campbell introduced the form under the stage name DJ Kool Herc at a party organized by Campbell and his sister, that being the Bronx, New York, Back To School Jam.

The Soviet Union sentenced for men to death and three to prisoner terms for collaboration with the Germans while they were members of the Red Army during World War Two.

The Icelandic Coast Guard ship  ICGV Óðinn rammed the Royal Navy's HMS Andromeda off the Icelandic coast in a violent exchange in the Cod Wars.

Upon reaching 60

That's how old I am today.

When I was young.  I was about three when this photos was taken, maybe two.  My father was 36 or 37.

Americans like to debate at what age you are "old", with that benchmark, and the one for middle age, moving over the years to some extent.  Some go so far as to claim that the term doesn't mean anything. 

It does, as you really do become older and then old, at some point.

The United Nations categorizes "older" as commencing at age 60, something, given their mission, that would encompass the totality of the human race.  Some polling you'll see suggests that Americans regard it actually starting at 59 or 57.  Pew, the respected polling and data institution, noted the following:

These generation gaps in perception also extend to the most basic question of all about old age: When does it begin? Survey respondents ages 18 to 29 believe that the average person becomes old at age 60. Middle-aged respondents put the threshold closer to 70, and respondents ages 65 and above say that the average person does not become old until turning 74.

Interesting.

It is not like flipping a switch, and it doesn't really happen to all people at the exact same time.  I'm often reminded of this when I observe people I've known for many years.  Men in particular, I used to think, aged at a much different rate than women.  I knew a few of my contemporaries who were getting pretty old by the time they were in their 30s, and I know a few men in their 70s who are in fantastic shape and appear much younger than they really are.  I recall thinking, back when I was in my late 20s, that my father was getting older, but wasn't old, right up until the time he died at age 62.

Having said that, I’m often now shocked, I hate to admit, by the appearance of women my own age, again that I knew when they were young.  It's not like I know every girl I went to high school with, but I know a few of them, and some of them have held up much better than others.  In that category, some of my close relatives have really held up well.

Up until recently, I could say that I've held up well, but this past year has been really rough health wise. First there was colon surgery in October, followed by a prolonged medical addressing of a thyroid nodule which was feared, at first, to be aggressive cancer. Working that out is still ongoing, but that now appears much less likely, meaning that only half the thyroid will need to be removed.  

All of that has reminded me of Jesus' address to Peter:

Amen, amen, I say to you, when you were younger, you used to dress yourself and go where you wanted; but when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go.

John, Chapter 21.

Peter, by the way, was between age 64 and 68 when he was martyred.  St. Paul was over 60, it's worth noting, when he met the same fate.

It's been rough in other ways as well.  One thing is that, in spite of what people like to claim, your fate is really fixed by age 60.  You aren't going to leave your job as an accountant and become an Army paratrooper.¹ If you are a paratrooper, you're going to retire now, as 60 is the military's retirement cutoff age.  If you've spent decades in the Army, and retire at 60 (most servicemen retire before that), you aren't going on, probably, to a career you don't have any strong connection with.

In my case, as I started to type out here the other day and then did not, as it didn't read the way I really wanted it to, I can now look back on a long career, over 30 years, and largely regard it as a failure, even though almost everyone I know would regard it as a success.  I won't get over that.  I'd always hoped to make the judiciary, but I'm not going to, and there's no longer even any point in trying.  I'm reminded of this failure every time I appear in front of one of the new judges and see how incredibly young they now are, and also when I listen to suggestions that the retirement age for judges be raised up to the absurdly high 75.

At age 60, if I were to go to work for the state (which I'm also not going to), I couldn't really ever make the "Rule of 85" for retirement.  As a lifelong private practice attorney, I'm now actually at the age where most lawyers look at their career, and their income, and decide they can't retire, some retreating into their office personality as the last version of themselves and nothing else.  I'm not going to become a member of the legislature, something probably most young lawyers toy with the idea of.  I'm not going to become a game warden, something I pondered when young.²  I'm way past the point where most similar Federal occupations are age restricted, and for good reason.

This is, work wise, pretty much it.

I said to myself, this is the business we've chosen; I didn't ask who gave the order, because it had nothing to do with business!

Hyman Roth, to Michael Corleone, in The Godfather, Part II ,

I'm also never going to own my own ranch, which was a decades long career goal.  I have acquired a fair number of cattle, but my operation is always going to be ancillary to my in laws at this point.  When I was first married my wife and I tried to find our own place, with she being much less optimistic about it than I. There were times, when the land cost less, that we could almost make, almost, a small place. We never quite did, and now, we're not going to.

Indeed, thinking back to St. Peter, I'm now at the age of "you can't", with some of the "can'ts" being medical.  I could when I was younger, but now I can't, or shouldn't.  Others are familial.  "You can't" is something I hear a lot, pertaining to a lot of things, ranging from what we might broadly call home economics, in the true economic sense, to short term and long term plans, to even acquisitions that to most people wouldn't be much, but in my circumstances, in the views of others, are.  Some are professional, as ironically it's really at some point in your 50s or very early 60s where you are by default fully professionally engaged, with that taking precedence over everything else, including time for anything else.

One of the most frustrating things about reaching this age, however, is seeing that you probably will never see how some things turn out, and you don't seem to have the ability to influence them.  I'm not, in this instance, referring to something like the Hyman Roth character again, in which he hopes to see the results of his criminal enterprise flourish but fears he won't live long enough to.  Indeed, I find myself curiously detached from concerns of this type that some people have.  I've noticed, for instance, the deep concern some aging lawyers have about their "legacy" in the law, which often translates to being remembered as a lawyer or their firm's carrying on.  I don't have those concerns, and indeed, taking the long view of things, I think it's really vanity to suppose that either of those wishes might be realized by anyone.

No, what I mean is that by this age there are those you know very closely, and you have reason to fear for their own long term fate, but you really don't have much you can do about it.  People who seem to be stuck in place, for instance, seem beyond the helping hand, and more than that, they don't really want, it seems, to be offered a hand.  People who have walked up to the church door but who won't go in as it means giving up grudges, burdens or hatreds, can't be coaxed in, even it means their soul is imperiled.  It recalls the last final lines of A River Runs Through It. .

I remember the last sermon I ever heard my father give, not long before his own death:

Each one of us here today will, at one time in our lives, look upon a loved one in need and ask the same question: We are willing Lord, but what, if anything, is needed? For it is true that we can seldom help those closest to us. Either we don’t know what part of ourselves to give, or more often than not, that part we have to give… is not wanted. And so it is those we live with and should know who elude us… But we can still love them… We can love—completely—even without complete understanding….

I guess that's about right. 

Footnotes:

1.  Or, I might note, a Ukrainian Legionnaire.  You are too old to join.

Interestingly, I recently saw an article by a well known, I guess, newspaper reporter who attempted to join the U.S. Army in his upper 40s.  He apparently didn't know that you are well past the eligible age of enlistment at that point.  He was arguing that there should be some sort of special unit made for people like himself, or like he imagined himself, well-educated individuals in their upper 40s.  Why should there be if you can recruit people in their 20s?

2. Wyoming Game Wardens were once required to retire at age 55, but a lawsuit some decades ago overturned that. It, in turn, was later overruled, but by that time the state had changed the system. Since that time, it's set it again statutorily, with the age now being 65 by law.  There aren't, therefore, any 67-year-old game wardens.

Statutorily, the current law provides:

9-3-607. Age of retirement.

(a) Any employee with six (6) or more years of service to his credit is eligible to receive a retirement allowance under this article when he attains age fifty (50).

(b) Effective July 1, 1998, any employee retiring after July 1, 1998, with twenty-five (25) or more years of service may elect to retire and receive a benefit upon attaining age fifty (50) as described in W.S. 9-3-610.

(c) Repealed by Laws 1993, ch. 120, §§ 1, 2.

(d) Any employee in service who has attained age sixty-five (65), shall be retired not later than the last day of the calendar month in which his 65th birthday occurs. 

Age limitations of this type are tied to physical fitness.  But what about mental fitness?  As mentioned here before, Gen. Marshall forcibly retired most serving U.S. Army generals, or at least sidelined them, who were over 50 years of age during World War Two, and that had to do with their thinking.  We now allow judges to remain on the bench until they are 70.  Would 60 make more sense?  And can the same argument be made for lawyers, who are officers of the court?

Sunday, March 17, 1963. St. Patrick's Dedicated.

Today In Wyoming's History: March 17: St. Patrick's Day:1963  Dedication of St. Patrick's Parish in Casper. 

St. Patrick's Catholic Church in Casper Wyoming was completed in 1962. The church came about due to the expansion of Casper in the 1950s, and this church is the newest of the three Roman Catholic churches in Casper. Unlike Our Lady of Fatiima, which represented an expansion to the west side of Casper, this church is located in east Casper.

Plans for the church commenced in 1955. Like Our Lady of Fatima, a school was constructed on the site but was never used as a regular grade school. The church is also the largest of the three Catholic churches in Casper, having a very large interior.

Thursday, February 21, 1963. Training SEALs.

US Navy Seals in training in the Virgin Islands, February 21, 1963.  Note the original verion of the M16 in use here, before it had been actually adopted as a theater rifle by the U.S.

I don't normally put posts from 60 years ago, but as I don't anticipate being around when these photos hit the 75 or 80 year mark, I thought I'd go ahead and post them.

As we have these up, we'll note a few things about the day.

The Telstar 1, the first privately funded satellite, became the first satellite destroyed by radiation.  The U.S. had conducted a high altitude nuclear test the day prior.

Oops.

The satellite had inspired a hit instrumental by the Tornados.

The Soviet Communist Party wrote the Chinese one, proposing a meeting in hopes of clearing up differences between the two bodies of thuggery.

In East Berlin, the Communist government yielded in the face of a student protest which simply assigned occupations to graduating students, rather than allow them to pick their own paths, prior to being able to attend university. The occupations that had been chosen were all manual labor jobs.

Klein's Sporting Goods in Chicago received a shipment of surplus Mannlicher-Carcano rifles.  One of them would later be purchased by Lee Harvey Oswald.

Tuesday, December 8, 1942. Kalibapi formed, Bizerte taken.

The collaborationist Kalibapi party was formed in the Philippines, where it was organized to be the sole, Japanese friendly, political party.  While it did serve in that role, its nationalistic policies led it to refuse to declare war on the US and UK, causing the Japanese to form a second collaborationist party in 1944.

The Germans took Bizerte.

Bizerte is the northernmost city in Africa.  France, valuing its deep water port, retained the city after Tunisia secured independence, leading to a brief undeclared war between the countries in 1961.  In October 1963, the French turned the city over to Tunisia, following a great deal of international pressure to do so.

The Mexican Claims Act of 1942 settled American claims, some dating back sixty years, against Mexico for property losses.

Tuesday, November 3, 1942. The 1942 Election.

Today was election day in 1942.  Overall, the nationwide election saw an increase in Republican office holders.

In Wyoming, the following occurred:

1942.  Lester Hunt, DDS, the sitting Wyoming Secretary of State and a Democrat narrowly defeated Governor Nels H. Smith.

Lester C. Hunt.

Hunt would serve as Governor for two terms before going on to becoming Wyoming's Senator.  He killed himself in 1954 after Washington D. C. policy picked up his son in 1953 for soliciting a male prostitute.  The scandal was kept quiet for awhile, but political opponents threatened to use it against him as a threat to keep him from engaging in a 1954 bid for office.

In the Senate Hunt had been an opponent of Joe McCarthy.

In the same year that Wyoming went from Republican to Democrat for the Governor's mansion, the state went in the opposite direction for the Senate.  Edward V. Robinson defeated incumbant Harry Schwartz.

Robinson.

Robinson's election was part of a nationwide treand that year that saw a Republican increase.  He's serve only one term and lose a bid for reelection.  He was Welsh and had served in the British Army in the Boer War, and is little remembered as a Wyoming politician.

Hunt's death, it should be noted, remains an enduring tragedy of the McCarthy Era, and one which, at least in some Wyoming circles, came to define McCarthyism and certain right wing elements of the press.

More on Hunt:

Baseball, Politics, Triumph and Tragedy: The Career of Lester Hunt

Robinson, on the other hand, gives us a rare example of a nearly completely forgotten Wyoming politician.  In some ways, that's a shame, as his life story was one that was somewhat typical of the era in that he was an early, post Frontier Era, immigrant to the state when a person could still enter ranching, which he did, in spite of having an engineering background.  Following his defeat for reelection he ultimately retired to Pendleton Oregon in 1958, where he died in 1963. 

 The Marines and Army begin an offensive on Guadalcanal at Koli Point.

Marine Corps pack artillery in action at Koli Point

Mid Week At Work. The Wyoming Secretary of State

Ed Buchanan, Wyoming Secretary of State, from the Wyoming Secretary of State's website.

What the heck does the Secretary of State in Wyoming do anyhow?

The entire Buchanan/Nethercott/Gray saga certainly has put it in focus.

Karen Wheeler, center, Deputy Secretary of State who served as Acting Secretary of State briefly upon the resignation of Ed Murray.  Maybe she provides us with the solution to the current problem?

For those lucky sheepherders just dropping down into the Virginian for an Ortega Burger after months out on the range, we'll give a recap.

Ed Buchanan, who first made his appearance in the statewide news as a former Air Force officer, now lawyer, living in Torrington, in a run for Governor that went nowhere, later ran for Secretary of State, and won it.

He's been a good one.

But apparently he wanted to be a judge.  I don't blame him. That was a career aspiration of mine at one time, too.   While Secretary of State, he started putting in for judgeships, and put in for at least one prior to the one he got.  He failed to get appointed on at least one occasion, but made the three finalists.

Not getting the position, he announced he was running for Secretary of State for a second term. Then the position in Torrington/Lusk/Wheatland came up.  This time he dropped out of the race and announced publicly that he was tossing his hat in the ring for that judgship, in his hometown.  As soon as he did that, a two Wyoming Senators announced they were running for the position, as did Wyoming House member and election denier Chuck Gray.

That put, quite frankly, the Governor in a bad spot in regard to Buchanan.  Passing on him again would be problematic.

Anyhow, Buchanan's public announcement of putting in and dropping out of the race was masterful, if problematic.

And on a personal level, maybe it was really admirable.  I'm told that Buchanan is from a long time farm family in that region and basically wanted to go home. The job that he really wanted, in his hometown, opened up.  Maybe he had to go for it.  And certainly, if he had to go for it, he had to declare that he was dropping out of the race.

Or maybe not.

He was elected to that office by the voters of the state, and he had announced his candidacy for retention.  Nobody was taking him on, which means that nobody else who may have been qualified, but unknown, had a chance to develop a campaign. And in a year when people like Chuck Gray have run around telling lies about the election, he was a voice of assurance that the state's elections had gone well and were going well.  By dropping out on the eve of the election, it means that a temp has to be found to fill in, and election deniers like Gray will undoubtedly have a voice if they don't like the election.

Indeed, because he dropped out, the only candidates who could mount a campaign were two who were already known. Nethercott was a good candidate, and was already known because she'd been slandered as a c*** by a county party member somewhere.  Right wing Republicans didn't like her. Gray was known as he's made a general spectacle of himself as a right wing gadfly for several years, and he'd flamed out in a family funded run for Congress which went nowhere.

He's also, frankly, has his eyes on higher office.  Buchanan's withdrawal from the race, and the abandonment of his duties, was a gift to Gray.  Having said that, he obviously has a lot of followers, and he's politically savvy.  If it was revealed tomorrow that Donald Trump was Vlad Putin's spy who had sold the country down the river so many times even Frank Eathorne had to admit it, all while in the hands of the mafia, and a member of the Illuminati, or whatever else you can think of, it wouldn't surprise me to find that within a week Gray had credibly passed himself off as somebody who never liked him, and that he was a Biden supporter all along.

In this context, it's not too surprising that the State's GOP asked Buchanan to stay on.  In spite of adopting the Big Lie, there's probably a fair number of committee people who don't believe it and see Buchanan's resignation much like passengers in a plane see the pilot when he's exiting the cabin wearing a parachute.  Moreover, even if they do believe it, they're heading into an election, in spite of the way it may seem, in which a fair number of old GOP reliables no longer are. In other words, this election is set up to be questioned.

Oh oh.

Buchanan says not to worry, as his staff is so competent.  And it probably really is. The staff likely does all the heavy lifting of the office, but there are rumors that the office is looking at widespread resignations, and one senior figure has already beat Buchanan out of the fuselage.  Having said that, these kinds of rumors are really common for hotly contested elections and rarely do they actually pan out.

So, with all of that, Wyomingites are now very aware that the Secretary of State's office certifies elections. 

What else does he do?

Well, basically the same thing County Clerks do, but at a higher level.

The Secretary of State's office summarizes it in this way:

The Wyoming Secretary of State is elected to a four-year term and oversees the administration of numerous matters including the following: the registration of business entities; statewide elections; lobbyist registrations and filings; ethics filings; campaign finance; securities; notaries public; registered agents; trade names; trademarks; document authentication; and agricultural liens, among others. 

More specifically:

Constitutional Duties

The Wyoming Secretary of State is a Wyoming constitutional elected official holding office for a term of four years as per Article 4, Section 11 of the Wyoming Constitution.

The Secretary of State serves on the State Board of Land Commissioners, the State Building Commission, the State Loan and Investment Board, and also serves as the chair of the State Canvassing Board.

The Secretary of State is the custodian of the "Great Seal of the State of Wyoming."

Statutory Responsibilities

The Secretary of State and his staff are charged with many statutory responsibilities some of which include the following:

• Registering all statutorily authorized business entities including profit and nonprofit corporations, limited liability companies, limited partnerships, registered limited liability partnerships and statutory trusts;
• Registering trade names, trademarks, and reserved names;
• Recording Uniform Commercial Code and Effective Financing statements and documents;
• Overseeing all statewide elections, as well as bond, municipal, and special elections;
• Certifying all statewide candidates and ballot questions, and reports and certifies primary and general election results;
• Commissioning of Wyoming's Notaries Public;
• Certifying and authenticating documents for use overseas;
• Recording state agencies' rules;
• Regulating the state's securities industry and enforcing securities law;
• Maintaining the records and proceedings of Wyoming's legislature;
• Attesting to various official acts and proceedings of the Governor; and
• Affixing the Great Seal of the State of Wyoming as delineated by law.

Office Structure

The Secretary of State's Office is organized into five divisions: Administration Division, Business Division, Compliance Division, Election Division, and the Executive Offices.

Administration Division

The Administration Division provides information technology resources and support to the Office as well manages the fiscal and personnel responsibilities of the Office. The Division files Administrative Rules for state agencies and, in cooperation with the University of Wyoming Trademark Licensing Office, administers the use and protection of Wyoming's iconic Bucking Horse and Rider trademark. In addition to these functions, the Division provides project management and oversight services for the building, updating, and maintaining of the Office's many software applications including business registration and reporting, UCC/EFS lien filing, securities, elections, statewide voter registration, campaign finance, notaries public, state rules program, Office websites, receipting, and lobbyists.

Business Division

The Business Division administers Wyoming Statutes pertaining to the registration of corporations and 12 other business entities, trademarks, trade names, Uniform Commercial Code liens and searching, and Effective Financing Statement filings and searches.

Compliance Division

The Compliance Division oversees Wyoming's securities industry as well as the activities of Commercial Registered Agents. This Division is responsible for registering securities (investments) offered or sold in Wyoming along with registering and overseeing the firms and individuals working for those firms that sell securities. In addition to its regulatory function, the Division has authority to investigate violations of the Securities Act and the Registered Agent Act. To further protect Wyomingites, this Division has enforcement authority to file administrative actions and to refer criminal matters to local, state or federal authorities for violations of securities laws. The Division is also responsible for providing investor protection education to the public, commissioning notaries public, and issuing apostilles and certification documents which authenticate signatures of state officials.

Election Division

The Election Division ensures uniformity in the application and operations of Wyoming's elections. The Division assists with general, primary, bond, municipal and special district elections; files campaign finance disclosure reports; verifies petitions for independent candidates, initiatives, referendums and new political parties; answers questions pertaining to elections; generates voter registration lists; processes candidate applications; produces elections publications; and registers lobbyists and retains lobbyist disclosure reports.

Executive Offices

The Executive Offices Division provides the leadership and direction to the Office as a whole. The Division includes the Secretary of State, Deputy Secretary of State, the Public Information and Communications Officer as well as the Executive Assistants to the Secretary and Deputy.

Wow, what a whopping fun job, eh?

Not so much, really.  

Indeed, after reading what it does, it's hard not to see why Buchanan, who at one time had Gubernatorial aspirations, decided to move on to something else.

So why would anyone want the job?

Here's one reason:

What are the succession laws and processes in other states?

Forty-five states have an official office of lieutenant governor. Some states have a lieutenant governor who runs on a joint ticket with party gubernatorial candidates, while other states elect the lieutenant governor independently. In Tennessee and West Virginia, the senate president (elected by the chamber’s membership) holds the dual title of lieutenant governor.

In North Carolina, for example, according to general statute 147.11.1, “The Lieutenant Governor-elect shall become Governor upon the failure of the Governor-elect to qualify. The Lieutenant Governor shall become Governor upon the death, resignation, or removal from office of the Governor. The further order of succession to the office of Governor shall be prescribed by law. A successor shall serve for the remainder of the term of the Governor whom he succeeds and until a new Governor is elected and qualified. (2) During the absence of the Governor from the State, or during the physical or mental incapacity of the Governor to perform the duties of his office, the Lieutenant Governor shall be Acting Governor. The further order of succession as Acting Governor shall be prescribed by law.”

From there, the president of the senate is charged with the duties of governor, followed by the state speaker of the house. This is generally the same process for the 44 other states with lieutenant governors, who must be able to fill in should the governor resign, be removed from office or pass away.

In Arizona, Oregon and Wyoming, the secretary of state is next in line to the governorship. In Maine and New Hampshire, the president of the senate is next in line for the governorship.

Yikes, that's right.

Today, should Governor Gordon decide he's had enough, and he heads back to the ranch, he leaves the keys to the Governor's office in Ed Buchanan's desk drawer.

After September 15, but before the inauguration. . . well, we don't know.

The GOP now has to pick three names and give them to the Governor.  Whoever is picked becomes the Secretary of State for the remainder of Buchanan's term.  They're obviously having a hard time with this problem right now.

Karen Wheeler again, anyone?  I hope so.

After the inauguration, it's Chuck Gray.

That's right, Chuck Gray will be one heart beat away from being Governor.

Finally, the office is sometimes thought of as a springboard to higher office. But is it?  Here's the list of every Secretary of State since statehood:

1 Amos W. Barber. 1890–1895 Republican

2 Charles W. Burdick. 1895–1899 Republican

3 Fenimore Chatterton. 1899–1907 Republican

4 William Schnitger. 1907–1911 Republican

5 Frank L. Houx. 1911–1919 Democrat

6 William E. Chaplin. 1919–1923 Republican

7 Frank Lucas. 1923–1927 Republican

8 Alonzo M. Clark. 1927–1935 Republican

9 Lester C. Hunt. 1935–1943 Democrat

10 Mart T. Christensen. 1943–1944 Republican

11 William M. Jack. 1944–1947 Democrat

12 Arthur G. Crane. 1947–1951 Republican

13 C.J. "Doc" Rogers. 1951–1955 Republican

14 Everett T. Copenhaver. 1955–1959 Republican

15 Jack R. Gage. 1959–1963 Democrat

16 Thyra Thomson. 1963–1987 Republican

17 Kathy Karpan. 1987–1995 Democrat

18 Diana J. Ohman. 1995–1999 Republican

19 Joseph Meyer. 1999–2007 Republican

20 Max Maxfield. 2007–2015 Republican

21 Ed Murray. 2015–2018 Republican

22.Karen Wheeler. 2018 Republican

23 Edward Buchanan Republican

I see the names of a few Governors in there, but the last Secretary of State to become Governor was Jack Gage, and he left that office in 1963.  His successor, Thyra Thomson was often mentioned as a potential candidate, but never ran. She held the office, however, for over twenty years.  Every Secretary of State since Gage has been referenced as a potential Governor, but Gage is the last one to actually make that move.  Kathy Karpan was very seriously referenced in this potential role, but never ran.