Ostensibly exploring the practice of law before the internet. Heck, before good highways for that matter.
Tuesday, March 19, 2024
The Aerodrome: Friday, March 19, 1909. Curtiss Aeroplane and Motor Company.
Monday, March 18, 2024
Tuesday, March 18, 1924. The high water mark of the Irish Mutiny.
Forty armed Irish soldiers assembled at a hotel in Dublin to plan the next move in the Irish Army Mutiny. A possible coup d'état against the Irish government was on the table.
Loyal Irish troops surrounded the hotel and there was a standoff. The result was that the young Irish government responded by securing the resignation of Irish Army Council members, along with that of Defense Minister Richard Mulcahy.
The mutiny was of the oldest type, an army rebelling for itself. Mulcahy would go on to a long career in Irish government, including as Minister of Education.
A soldier bonus bill was passed in the US.
St. Mark's is a major downtown church in Casper today.
St. Mark's Episcopal Church, Casper Wyoming
This traditionally styled Episcopal Church includes the office buildings for the church a meeting room, kitchen and a day school, so the interior space used for services is smaller than the large exterior might suggest.
The view featured on the bottom photograph could not be seen until recently, as a large house once stood in what is now an open area. The church is across the street from the former St. Anthony's Catholic School, which has moved to a new location across town. The church was built in 1924.
It's stunning to think it was built for $120,000.
The Douglas Fairbanks film, The Thief of Baghdad, was released.
Alice Longworth, the daughter of Theodore Roosevelt, was caught by the paparazzi on the streets of Washington D.C.
Friday, March 1, 2024
Envy and the Easy Life.
I have never in my life envied a human being who led an easy life; I have envied a great many people who led difficult lives and led them well.
Theodore Roosevelt, 1910
Well. . . having lived a relatively difficult life, but perhaps not well, I don't know that I can endorse this one.
Saturday, December 2, 2023
Sunday, June 4, 2023
Friday, June 4, 1943. Giraud takes command.
Henri Giraud was appointed Commander In Chief of the Free French Forces.
Giraud was a career French Army officer, as we would of course expect, who had entered the army in 1900. He was serving with the Zouave's in North Africa when World War One broke out and was badly wounded leading a Zouave charge earlier in the war, resulting in his capture by the Germans after he'd been left for dead. He'd escaped German captivity posing as s circus roustabout after his recovery.
He was captured by the Germans a second time in May 1940, and escaped again in November 1942, as we discussed here:
Saturday, November 7, 1942. Giraud escapes France.
The British submarine Seraph smuggled French general Henri Giraud out of France.
Giraud was an opponent of the Vichy regime and had escaped German captivity, for Switzerland, back in April. Vichy tried to lure him back, but he demurred.
While all in anticipation of Torch, the submarine took Giraud to Gibraltar, where he remained until November 9. Relationships between the Free French officers were always highly complicated and tense, in part because their legitimacy was really legally questionable, which their organization, supported by the Allies, reflected. The Allies always tried to split the difference between outright firebrand rebels, like DeGaulle, and those who still held some ties to Vichy as the legal government. Those in a position in between, like Giraud, were in an odd spot.
He received Allied support as the leader of the Free French following the assassination of Admiral Darlan. At the time, the Allies were trying to balance the personalities in the French leadership which varied from DeGaulle, who had gone into rebellion against Vichy from the onset, to individuals like Darlan who had not been sympathetic with the Nazis but who were unwilling, at first, to rebel against the established legal government. Giroud appeared to be a good compromise between the two. In that, he may have been misread. An early sign of that was when Gen. Eisenhower asked him to take command of French troops in North Africa during Operation Torch, and he declined at first as he felt his honor demanded command of Torch itself, although he soon relented.
As it was, French forces in North Africa refused to recognize Giraud and instead continued to follow the orders of Admiral Darlan. Darlan was accordingly recognized by the Allies as the head of French forces in North Africa, in spite of his association with Vichy. Giraud's position was thereafter under Darlan. Upon Darlan's assassination, Giraud's overall leadership of the French forces was forced through by the Allies.
Giraud had not been, however, a perfect choice, as he wished to retain French racial laws and he had made comments sympathetic to the accomplishments of Nazi Germany. He'd ultimately fell when he acted independently of the Allies in sending French ships to help French resistance movements in Corsica in September without informing the Allies. At this point, it was learned that he was maintaining an independent intelligence service. This led to his wartime retirement.
He served in the Assembly after the war, and died in 1949 at age 70.
Argentina's government fell in a coup d'etate which removed Ramon Castillo, who had maintained a strict neutrality position over World War Two, in favor of Gen. Arturo Rawson, who yielded nearly immediately to Gen. Pedro Ramirez, who continued the neutrality policy. As this might demonstrate, the coup and Argentine politics were in a highly confused state, and would remain that way for many years. Its military was clearly a danger, however, to civilian leadership of the country.
Kermit Roosevelt, serving as a Major in the U.S. Army, but also suffering from years of illness and alcoholism, committed suicide in Alaska. He was 52 years old.
Adventuresome, like his father, but subject to alcoholism like his uncle. He served in the British and American armies during World War One. He'd accompanied his father on the legendary River of Doubt expedition in South America before the war, an event which contributed to Theodore Roosevelt's late in life declining health. Like his father, Kermit Roosevelt nearly died during the expedition and also like his father, a branch of the river was named for him.
He served a second hitch in the British Army early in World War Two, participating in the Battle of Narvik. He resumed heavy drinking after an injury in that battle, which he had previously given up, and was plagued by liver problems that was compounded by malaria. He was subsequently medically discharged from British service. His drinking was so bad that Archie Roosevelt sought to place him in a sanitarium for a year upon his return, and he agreed to a four-month stay. He took a commission in the U.S. Army as a major at that time and was stationed at Ft. Richardson, Alaska.
Friday, May 19, 2023
Wednesday, May 19, 1943. Penicillin.
The Army Medical Corps cleared the release of penicillin. It would be administered for the first time two days later to an unidentified soldier.
Penicillin's possibilities had been known for fifteen years, but it wasn't until 1942 when a particularly potent strain of the mold it is from was discovered in Peoria, Illinois, the critical sample of which was donated by an unknown woman who brought in a moldy antelope.
Churchill addressed Congress.
The speech is a famous one, but I cannot find a written transcript of it, which is unusual for his speeches. There are some well known exerts of it, including:
Sure I am that this day, now, we are the masters of our fate. That the task which has been set us is not above our strength. That its pangs and toils are not beyond our endurance. As long as we have faith in our cause, and an unconquerable willpower, salvation will not be denied us.
And:
All this gives the lie to the Nazi and Fascist talk that the parliamentary democracies are incapable of waging an effective war. We will punish them with further examples.
Joseph Goebbels declared Berlin to be free of Jews.
He was incorrect.
Berlin had certainly suffered an enormous decline in its Jewish population, and there had been a large effort to detain and expel (to fatal consequences) Jewish Berliners in the Spring of 1943. 8,600 Jews were expelled in the early months of hte year. However, 6,790 Mischlinge (half Jews), members of Mischehen (mixed marriages), Jewish widows and widowers of non-Jews, and Jewish citizens of neutral countries or German allies still resided in the city in the summer of the year. Over the course of the war, 55,000 Jewish Berliners would be reduced down, however, to only about 1,000 by the war's end.
The U-954 was sunk off of Greenland, taking down with it Peter Dönitz, a son of the head of the German Navy, Karl Dönitz. Of Dönitz's three children, only his daughter would survive the war, dying in 1990, outliving her father by only a decade. His son Klaus had been withdrawn from combat duties under a Nazi policy regarding the deaths of other sons of leading figures, but was killed on an E-boat after persuading friends to allow him to ride along on a raid.
Pope Pius XII wrote to Franklin Roosevelt
Your Excellency,
Almost four years have now passed since, in the name of the God the Father of ail and with the utmost earnestness at Our command, We appealed (August 24, 1939) to the responsible leaders of peoples to hold back the threatening avalanche of international strife and to settle their differences in the cairn, serene atmosphere of mutual understanding. «Nothing was to be lost by peace; everything might be lost by war». And when the awful powers of destruction broke loose and swept over a large part of Europe, though Our Apostolic Office places Us above and beyond ail participation in armed conflicts, We did not fail to do what We could to keep out of the war nations not yet involved and to mitigate as far as possible for millions of innocent men, women and children, defenceless against the circumstances in which they have to live, the sorrows and sufferings that would inevitably follow along the constantly widening swath of desolation and death cut by the machines of modern warfare.
The succeeding years unfortunately have seen heart-rending tragedies increase and multiply; yet We have not for that reason, as Our conscience bears witness, given over Our hopes and Our efforts in behalf of the afflicted members of the great human family everywhere. And as the Episcopal See of the Popes is Rome, from where through these long centuries they have ruled the flock entrusted to them by the divine Shepherd of souls, it is natural that amid all the vicissitudes of their complex and chequered history the faithful of Italy should d feel themselves bound by more than ordinary ties to this Holy See, and have learned to look to it for protection and comfort especially in hours of crisis.
In such an hour today their pleading voices reach Us carried on their steady confidence that they will not go unanswered. Fathers and mothers, old and young every day are appealing for Our help; and We, whose paternal heart beats in unison with the sufferings and sorrows of ail mankind, cannot but respond with the deepest feelings of Our soul to such insistent prayers, lest the poor and humble shall have placed their confidence in Us in vain.
And so very sincerely and confidently We address Ourselves to Your Excellency, sure that no one will recognize more clearly than the Chief Executive of the great American nation the voice of humanity that speaks in these appeals to Us, and the affection of a father that inspires Our response.
The assurance given to Us in 1941 by Your Excellency’s esteemed Ambassador Mr. Myron Taylor and spontaneously repeated by him in 1942 that «America has no hatred of the Italian people» gives Us confidence that they will be treated with consideration and understanding; and if they have had to mourn the untimely death of dear ones, they will yet in their present circumstances be spared as far as possible further pain and devastation, and their many treasured shrines of Religion and Art, – precious heritage not of one people but of ail human and Christian civilization – will be saved from irreparable ruin. This is a hope and prayer very dear to Our paternal heart, and We have thought that its realization could not be more effectively ensured than by ex- pressing it very simply to Your Excellency.
With heartfelt prayer We beg God’s blessings on Your Excellency and the people of the United States.
Tuesday, May 9, 2023
Oops.
I'm a bit late to this but, um, no, that was Grant.
Roosevelt was just 13 years old at the time.
I have no doubt whatsoever that if the same thing was attempted today, Wyoming's Congressional representation would oppose it, and probably the senior elected officials in the state as well.
Tuesday, January 31, 2023
Wednesday, January 31, 1923. Hockey first.
For the first time in history, a National Hockey League match concluded with no penalties having been imposed. The Montreal Canadiens defeated the Hamilton Tigers, 5 to 4.
Hockey, unlike football, is not boring.
Italy required public school students to start using the extended arm fascist salute, claimed to have been derived from Rome, but with little historical support for the proposition.
The general gesture was in vogue at the time, having been popularized in the United States as the Bellamy Salute. It's co-opting by fascism, forever associated it with fascist movements.
Assistant Secretary of the Navy Theodore Roosevelt Jr., occupying the position that his father had leading up to the Spanish American War, and his cousin had during World War One, addressed the midyear graduating class of the Peter Force School, a school he had attended during his father's occupancy of the office. The class planted a Lombardy Poplar in memory of Quentin Roosevelt, aviator, who had died in action in World War One.
The school had been founded in 1879 and was named for a former Washington, D.C. mayor. Many children of important personages attended the school, including the late Quentin Roosevelt and Charles Taft, the son of President Taft.
The school would not have a much longer run. It was abandoned in 1939 and demolished in 1962 in order to make way for the Johns Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies.
Tuesday, January 24, 2023
Wednesday, January 24, 1923. The U.S. Army withdraws from Germany, Theodore Roosevelt Indian School established.
The United States withdrew its last occupation forces from Germany, with the 156th French Infantry playing The Star Spangled Banner and La Marseillaise as they departed for Antwerp.
Ft. Apache was made a school for Native Americans children by statute, which provided:
§277. Former Apache military post established as Theodore Roosevelt Indian School
The Secretary of the Interior is authorized to establish and maintain the former Fort Apache military post as an Indian boarding school for the purpose of carrying out treaty obligations, to be known as the Theodore Roosevelt Indian School: Provided, That the Fort Apache military post, and land appurtenant thereto, shall remain in the possession and custody of the Secretary of the Interior so long as they shall be required for Indian school purposes.
(Jan. 24, 1923, ch. 42, 42 Stat. 1187.)
As most readers here know, such schools have been subject to enduring controversy. This school, however, still exists under this name.
Saturday, August 13, 2022
The Idle Rich and Noblesse obligee.
And I'm gonna tell you workers,
'fore you cash in your checks
They say "America First,"
but they mean "America Next!"
Woody Guthrie, Lindbergh.
This was originally going to be a post in the election thread, as it comes up in that context.
Here's how.
Recently former Wyoming Secretary of State Max Maxfield filed an election complaint against Chuck Gray which in essence stated that Mr. Gray only reports $11,000 in income per year, but loaned his abandoned campaign against Liz Cheney over $200,000. The math, Mr. Maxfield maintains, doesn't add up for a guy whose only been in the state for a decade and who must be in his early 30s. In other words, how can a guy with no visible means of support earning money at the poverty level loan himself that kind of dough.
Well, the answer is pretty obvious. Gray has external funding sources.
In the recent debate with his opponent Tara Nethercott he accused her of being behind the Maxfield effort, for which there is no evidence at all. Nethercott surely didn't start it, but she has made use of it, noting that his connection with work is pretty thin. Gray has attempted to defend himself by accusing Nethercott of being a "lawyer/politician".
That's ironic for Gray, as he's also a politician. They both have been in the legislature the same length of time. Moreover, while I can't find it now, while Gray was at Wharton he gave an interview to some sort of school journal in which he said his ambition was to become a lawyer. So his disdain of lawyers apparently comes more recently.
Gray said in the debate that he had inherited the money that he loaned to his campaign, which in some ways, although he probably doesn't realize it, makes this story worse. As does this:
August 11, 2022
The Trib ran an article on this date on campaign donations and the various candidates.
Perhaps the most remarkable figures where for Secretary of State, where Chuch Gray has raised $528,000 to Nethercott's $333,000. Of that, $500,000 of Gray's money was donated by his father and $10,000 from himself, meaning he's really raised $18,000. Nethercott loaned her campaign $95,000.
Gray has seemingly been able to get by in the state for a decade with a light attraction to what most people would regard as substantial work, assuming that his role at his family's radio station isn't accounted for in some other fashion that's allowable under the IRS code but which isn't regarded as income. I have no idea. That may be the case. At any rate, however, most people's parents aren't in a situation to give them $500,000 in their early 30s in order to mount a bid for office.
Which raises a number of topics.
The first is, in regard to Gray, does this matter?
I'd think so.
What a person does with their own money is their own business, to an extent. But when it comes to spending money in order to obtain a public office, that's everyone's business. One of Gray's recent television advertisements complains that Nethercott voted for a bill to raise the Secretary of State's wages to $125,000, for instance.
This would suggest that Gray thinks $125,000 for that office is a lot, but it's not. The median income for Wyoming is $33,000, which is very low, so for a lot of people that would be a lot, but Nethercott will probably be taking a pay cut if she wins. Gray will be getting a big pay raise, but apparently his situation is such that this doesn't really matter.
Of course, it's a four-year position, which also means that Nethercott will have to work the better part of a year to pay back the load to herself. Gray won't have to, but the $500,000 investment on the part of his father? Well, I guess that's also like spending your inheritance. That somebody is willing to spend a half million dollars to obtain a job that will take several years in pay in order to recoup the loss raises, yet again, more questions.
All of which gets to this.
Very few people are in the category of "idle rich". Even most of the rich aren't in the category of idle rich, where they have so much surplus cash they really don't have to do anything.
If a person is in that category, what they do with their cash is their own business, as long as they are honest about it, and their employment of their resources doesn't work to the detriment of other people.
And that's the problem with what Gray is doing.
Wyoming has experienced an influx of money in recent years, with there being some really spectacular examples. Susan Gore, who has funded far right political movements, is one such example. She's not from here, but more than that, she's not of here either. Her efforts are funding attempts to make the state into something it's never been, under the banner of "liberty". Gray is part of that same effort.
Gore is one example, but Gray's quite another. The resources presumably are nowhere equal, but the thought of a young man seemingly employing his efforts at doing little else other than to try to advance in politics in a state he has virtually no connection with is, well, disturbing. I can't really imagine it myself. That is, if I had surplus money, I don't think I'd go, let's say, to Alaska and try to influence their politics.
But that's what Gray has being doing from day one here, and that's what people like Susan Gore and Foster Friess have been attempting as well. To make it worse, the Wyoming they're trying to recreate is an imaginary one that they don't really know. The state they moved to isn't the one they think it was, and what they're attempting to make it into isn't where most of us would have wanted to go.
At one time, having vast idle wealth in the country bound a person to obligation. We only recently mentioned the two Roosevelts who were elected President in this blog, as they were rich men. They were both examples of this, however.
But they were also examples of noblesse oblige, the sense that "being nobility obligates".
This was particularly true in the case of Theodore Roosevelt. His father was wealthy, but he'd also been dedicated to the cause of poor newsboys, something that was a real problem in his era. Theodore Roosevelt senior also made it plain to Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. that their wealth would enable the younger man to choose a career of his liking that didn't have to pay well, but he'd have to choose one. Originally, the later President had intended to be a scientist, and indeed was published and well regarded in natural history.
Indeed, while Theodore Roosevelt, following his father's death, turned to the then disreputable career of politician in years as tender as that of Gray's, he never really quit working. He wrote, he published, he studied, and he ranched. His finances were not always great by any means as he's overspend in his endeavors, but his capacity for work was literally manic.
I know less about his cousin Franklin, but Franklin always admired Theodore. He came to the nation's attention first as Assistant Secretary of the Navy, something Theodore Roosevelt had also been. So he entered public service. . . as a type of bureaucrat. . . . before he was a politician.
And other examples abound. Winston Churchill, who was from a wealthy family (although he always overspent his resources, as did his mother) served as a British Army cavalryman in his early years, with that being his intended career in an era in which those born into British wealth were not expected to "work" but to go into public service in the military or the clergy, or perhaps engage in agriculture. He took a break from that to act as a correspondent, and then later served in the Army again in the early part of World War One before entering politics. T. E. Lawrence, from the same class, and burdened with the same cultural expectation not to "work", was first an archeologist before entering the British Army during the Great War.
Turning back to our own shores, I'll be frank that I'm not a fan of the Kennedy family, including John F. Kennedy. But the President of the early 1960s had served, and heroically, in the U.S. Navy during the Second World War. That's definitely work.
Yet another interesting example would be George S. Patton, whose family was very wealthy. Patton had a career as a soldier, quite obviously, as that was something people in his class did.
We don't seem to see things like this much anymore.
Gray, according to what little we know of him, went right from Wharton to a Wyoming radio station. A really blistering article in WyoFile notes his career and that he was reported as an executive at the station. That article goes on to note that the radio entity in Wyoming seems to facially be out of compliance with registration requirements The article is so extensive that about all you can do is quote from it, rather than try to summarize it, as it notes:
He has listed Mount Rushmore Broadcasting, Inc. as his sole employment — initially working as a program director, then later as an operations manager — on each of his requisite elected official financial disclosure forms.
According to records from the secretary of state’s office — and later confirmed by a department spokesperson — Mount Rushmore Broadcasting was administratively dissolved by the state almost two decades ago for failing to file annual reports and pay its license fees to Wyoming. Gray’s father, Jan Charles Gray, is president of the Delaware-based entity, according to state records. The entity uses a registered agent in its Wyoming filings, but 2016 documents from the Federal Communications Commission indicate that the elder Gray is also owner of the corporation.
Like all out-of-state entities, it was required to obtain a certificate of authority from the secretary of state’s office before transacting business in the state. It did so in 1993, according to state records, but failed to file requisite annual reports and pay yearly fees based on its assets located and employed in Wyoming. Mount Rushmore entered into a 24-month period during which it could have paid a reinstatement fee, as well as what was already owed. But the company did not comply within the two-year window, after which Wyoming statute does not allow entities to be brought back into good standing.
Monique Meese with the Wyoming Secretary of State’s office confirmed that Mount Rushmore Broadcasting, Inc. was administratively dissolved on June 10, 2003 and thereby lost the ability to be reinstated. At press time, the entity was not under review by the office, Meese said, because no written complaints had been submitted.
On his most recent state elected officials financial disclosure form dated Jan. 28, 2022, Gray listed operations manager of Mount Rushmore Broadcasting as his employment. According to his campaign website, he began his career there in 2013 “as a radio executive and hosted a conservative radio show,” until 2019.
During a July candidate forum in Casper, Gray said he became a permanent resident of Wyoming in 2012. He spent his childhood summers here with his father after his parents divorced, he said.
Prior to going to work for his father, Gray graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with bachelor’s of science and bachelor’s of arts degrees, according to his lawmaker bio.
When WyoFile approached Gray to clarify his professional experience immediately following the forum in Casper, he declined to answer questions, but said he would respond to written questions over email. WyoFile sent several written questions to the lawmaker, including a request for more details regarding his duties as an employee of Mount Rushmore Broadcasting and how his academic and professional resumes qualified him for the position. Gray responded with a statement about ballot drop boxes and ballot harvesting — he feels both are threats to election integrity — but no further information on his background. WyoFile sent a subsequent email asking about his employer conducting business in Wyoming without a certificate of authority. The lawmaker did not respond.
Mount Rushmore Broadcasting is currently the licensee for two AM stations and five FM stations in Wyoming, according to Federal Communications Commission records. Most of those stations are in Casper, and all but one of those can currently be heard on the air.
In 2016, three years after Gray claims to have begun working there, Mount Rushmore entered into a consent decree with the FCC for failing to maintain a full-time management and staff presence at the main studio of two of its stations during regular business hours, among other things. One term of the settlement was a $25,000 civil penalty, which was less than the originally proposed penalty. Mount Rushmore Broadcasting submitted a sworn statement along with several years of tax returns indicating an inability to pay all forfeitures, according to the consent decree. The original amount was just under $160,000, according to the FCC. Part of the agreement required Mount Rushmore Broadcasting to pay the remainder of the originally proposed penalties if the FCC found it misled the commission regarding its financial status. The commission declined to say whether that occurred.
In 2015, Mount Rushmore Broadcasting paid almost $5,000 in back wages to former employees, after the U.S. Department of Labor sued the entity for not properly paying its workers.
Between April 2020 and March 2021, it received more than $28,000 in federal dollars through the Paycheck Protection Program in order to retain two jobs. Gray, a vocal opponent of federal subsidies, voted during the 2022 Legislative session against a bill authorizing the state to spend other pandemic relief funds. He declined to answer questions on the matter when WyoFile contacted him for previous reporting.
I'd note that there could be explanations for why it is seemingly out of compliance with filing requirements in Wyoming, and indeed for all of this, but it does raise questions.
Maybe the bigger question, however, is this. Does simply graduating from school really mean that you are now qualified to legislate and govern?
I guess the voters can and will decide that. But quite frankly, those who were not born wealthy, and have had to work, have rounder experiences than those who simply benefitted from the circumstances of their births. Those born wealthy, however, who have educated themselves in school and out in the world have different qualifications yet, and are often quite admirable.
The Roosevelts, we'd note, were champions of the poor. Theodore Roosevelt wouldn't even be qualified to walk into a county Republican Party meeting today, in spite of still being admired as a Republican President. John F. Kennedy, for all his faults, was concerned with the same class as well. Churchill had to be restrained from directly entering into combat a couple of times during World War Two.
Noblesse Oblige.
Monday, June 13, 2022
Knowing what's right
Knowing what's right doesn't mean much unless you do what's right.
Theodore Roosevelt
Tuesday, October 5, 2021
Wednesday October 5, 1921. The Yankees v. The Giants
October 5, 1921, was the opening game of the 1921 World Series.
Wednesday, March 10, 2021
March 10, 1921. Royalty
Thursday, August 27, 2020
Somehow I missed the fact that the master biographer Edmund Morris died last May.
Wednesday, August 5, 2020
The Interior Conflict
"We'll be here, " Wilbarger said. "You won't have to hunt us up"Lonesome Dove, page 105.*
"Wait a minute, " Call said. "What's your horse brand, or do you have one?"
"I have one, " Wilbarger said". "I brand HIC on the left hip."
"Are your horses shod?" Call asked
"All shod," Willbager said. "Bring 'em if you see 'em".
"What HIC stand for?" Augustus said.
"Well, it's Latin," Wilbarger said. "Easier than what you wrote on that sign."
"Oh," August said. "Where'd you study Latin?"
"Yale college," Wilbarger said. Then he and Chick trotted off.
"I figure he's a liar,"Augustus said. "A man that went to Yale college wouldn't need to trail cattle for a living."
"How do you know?" Call said. "Maybe the family went broke. Or maybe he just wanted an outdoor life."
Every now and then somebody I know will claim that I look like Theodore Roosevelt.
That's a really common view in a broad sense and one of the interesting things about it is that the view actually operates in society to keep you doing certain things. Another interesting thing about it is the belief, and perhaps it's true, that a person who has that sort of makeup, an intellectual frame of mind and a strong attraction to the outdoors, is in someway at war with themselves.
Maybe, however, it's the modern world that's at war with people of that mindset.
The Roosevelt analogy people make is interesting in that Roosevelt was afflicted with asthma as a child. So was I. Indeed, the only really good written description of what its like to have asthma is given in David McCullough's biography of Roosevelt's youth, Mornings on Horseback, which is an excellent read. McCullough there, and Edmund Morris in his masterpiece first volume on Roosevelt, The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, go on to describe how TR's father told him as a child that he "had the mind" but "didn't have the body", and he'd have to "make the body". Roosevelt certain did that. Anyhow, as part of that, he not only conquered his asthma, but he developed an immense existenail fondness for the outdoor life.
My parents never said anything like that to me, but what they did do was simply raise me normally and make sure that I did have physical activity, which was mostly swimming. I developed an immense existential love of the outdoors simply by being around my father and by being raised in rural conditions. My attraction to the outdoor life, however vastly exceeded that of my father's, which is saying something. I've never gotten over it in any fashion and its as intense now as it was when I was a teenager.
Morris notes in his book, although I'm not sure of where the quote can be found, that when Roosevelt was a young man an observer noted to him that as a man with a strong mind and a deep attraction to the outdoor life, he'd always be in an internal struggle. If that's true, Roosevelt certainly managed it well. But is that true?
Well, it may be. But maybe people just don't like the idea very much.
Indeed, it's true now, it wasn't always true. For one thing, people's careers tended to be much more fluid at one time and for that reason people didn't really think it weird to be a lawyer and a farmer simultaneously. John Adams was. And there's any numbers of similar examples.
I don't find that to be anywhere near the case now, although there are examples. Indeed, usually a person who tries to do two things such as that is regarded as occupying the more outdoorsy one as a hobby or a retirement position. And because its regarded as a hobby, or retirement, avocation, it's not taken seriously.
Even rarer are examples of people who have pretty high intellects and opt for something that doesn't seem, in society's view, to reflect that. Society tolerates, although only barely, a person being in agriculture if they were born into it. So a person born a farmer can stay in the family business. But somebody breaking into it from the outside is pretty rare. Rarer yet are people who simply enter an outdoor career as a "hand", so to speak, and economics is part of that. Hands don't get paid as well and therefore people tend not to enter those fields, except perhaps temporarily, if they can do something else. It's the great economic motivator. Put another way, being an actual cowboy, as opposed to being a rancher, puts you in a state of lifelong poverty that most people will probably seek to avoid.
This has particularly been the case since World War Two. Prior to the Second World War entire classes of Americans opted for occupations that didn't require university in part because not as many did, but in part also because it was foreclosed to them.***
Indeed, one of the great myths of the practice of law is that it's always been a profession of the elite. That's far from true. For much of the post World War Two era it was the blue collar world's introduction into the white collar world. Indeed, a lot of blue collar parents pushed their children into it under the belief that: 1) it didn't actually involve work, and 2) every lawyer was rich. Neither of those things was in any fashion true. At any rate, if you know lawyers whose parents came of age during the Second World War or earlier you probably know somebody whose experience is just that. A lawyer I practiced with for years had a father who was a career railroader. Another one had a father who was a bar owner. There are a lot of such examples.
Mistaken impression or not, what's come to be the case is a subtle, or sometimes outright, push towards certain types of careers. Adding to that push is the fact that our modern world has eliminated outdoor jobs at a blistering rate so that people are really left with a selection of indoor ones, not all of which everyone can occupy. You have to be good at math, for example, to be an engineer.
That also has meant that the push exists in a continual and understated way that few really grasp. It's part of our culture. In the film Stand By Me, for example, we learn that one of the early teen kids whose really smart, but from a blue collar family, overcomes what is portrayed as a negative fate by becoming, of course, a lawyer. That's all the more there is to it. He's smart, so he becomes a lawyer. Voila, success.
And maybe it is, but a person has to at least wonder how we got to this point. And maybe that should give us pause.
In other words, in 1982 or 83 (can't remember which, probably 83) my CC history teacher suggested that I consider a career in the law based upon my written papers, was he acting responsibly? No doubt he believed so, and I believe now he was as well. But he didn't really know me. And its remarkable that only two figures I knew at the time every commented on it. One was a geology professor I knew really well, also at CC, whom I caught back up with as I was getting to go to law school. He mentioned another student who had done the same (I didn't know him) and regarded the decision with disdain. The other was the mother of one of my friends whom I'd known forever, and who I, as an adult, regarded as a friend. "I don't see you as a lawyer" was her comment, although I later became her lawyer.
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*Hic translates as "this".
**Which are oddly making a comeback as portable reading glasses.
***An aspect of that change is that its now the case that single wage earner households have become rare and the sort of situation that existed mid 20th Century, in which a person might work in some of them and still enjoy a middle class income on one job has ended.
Monday, April 20, 2020
The USS Theodore Roosevelt. What happened, why it matters, and why the press dropped the ball.
“Captain Crozier had allowed the complexity of his challenge with the COVID breakout on the ship to overwhelm his ability to act professionally when acting professionally was what was needed most at the time. We do and we should expect more from the commanding officer of our aircraft carriers…It unnecessarily raised alarms with the families of our sailors and Marines with no plan to address those concerns. It raised concerns about the operational capabilities and operational security of that ship that could have emboldened our adversaries to seek advantage. And it undermined the chain of command, who had been moving and adjusting as rapidly as possible to get him the help he needed"
If [Crozier] didn’t think that information was going to get out into the public, in this information age that we live in, then he was A, too naive or too stupid to be the commanding officer of a ship like this. The alternative is that he did this on purpose. And that’s a serious violation of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which you are all familiar with.
- How did this whole thing happen in a time of pandemic?
- Was the Acting Secretary right to relieve Crozier?
- Was the firing, which is more or less what it was, of Secretary Moldy the right thing to do?
- Should anyone else be disciplined, and if so, how?
On February 26 Defense Secretary Mark Esper ordered combat commanders to inform him before they made Coronavirus related protection decisions in order to keep the military from being scene to contract President Trump's declaration that the number of COVID 19 cases, fifteen, would "be close to zero" "within a couple of days." Two days later Acting Navy Secretary Thomas Modly stated that the 7th Fleet, of which the USS Roosevelt was part, would be spend fourteen days between port visits in order to slow the virus, however.
But was Crozier right?
He may have been.
That sounds like we're talking cross purposes, but since all of this occured one sailor had died and it's perfectly reasonable to believe that more would have. Crozier may have been 100% correct in his actions and felt the safety of his crew mattered more than his carrier.
There is precedent for things like this. Theodore Roosevelt, for example, went over the heads of his superiors in 1898 when the members of the 1st U.S. Volunteer Cavalry began to come down with malaria at a disastrous rate in Cuba. Now, of course, Roosevelt wasn't a career officer, but the move wasn't without its risks and it probably did help keep him from being considered for a command during World War One, although that wasn't the only reason, to be sure.
The point is, in some circumstances, a person must follow the dictates of their conscience even in a military organization knowing that it's going to go badly for you personally. Crozier likely did just that.