Ostensibly exploring the practice of law before the internet. Heck, before good highways for that matter.
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
A great number of military installations.
I was in Sheridan Wyoming recently, and took the opportunity to run up to the VA hospital and view the grounds of old Ft. Mackenzie. The grounds are really impressive, to say the least, and it is a very well preserved old Army post, still in use as a modern VA hospital.
Some scenes of the same are posted above.
What struck me about this, however, is that this post wasn't built until the very late 1890s. It was converted into a military hospital, after more or less being occupied since 1913, in 1918.
It's really surprising, as the SMH thread above notes, that the Army was building posts as late as 1899 in Wyoming. What could their purpose have really been? But not only were they still building, but up through the first quarter of the 20th Century there were a surprising number of military installations in Wyoming that either existed, or had just been closed.
Here we seen Ft. Mackenzie, but not all that far away there had been a Ft. McKinney, which had only been closed in 1894. Ft. Washakie, which is not near this post, was still open when this one built, and remained open until 1909. Ft. D. A. Russel was open, and has never closed, as it later became Ft. F. E. Warren and is now Warren AFB. Its one of three military installations that now exist in Wyoming, the others being the substantial Army National Guard installation at Camp Guernsey and the Air National Guard base in Cheyenne. Ft. Laramie had only been abandoned as of 1890. Ft. Fred Steele had closed in 1886.
Friday, September 16, 2011
Money
First reading:
Beloved:From: 1 Tm 6:2c-12
Teach and urge these things.
Whoever teaches something different
and does not agree with the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ
and the religious teaching
is conceited, understanding nothing,
and has a morbid disposition for arguments and verbal disputes.
From these come envy, rivalry, insults, evil suspicions,
and mutual friction among people with corrupted minds,
who are deprived of the truth,
supposing religion to be a means of gain.
Indeed, religion with contentment is a great gain.
For we brought nothing into the world,
just as we shall not be able to take anything out of it.
If we have food and clothing, we shall be content with that.
Those who want to be rich are falling into temptation and into a trap
and into many foolish and harmful desires,
which plunge them into ruin and destruction.
For the love of money is the root of all evils,
and some people in their desire for it have strayed from the faith
and have pierced themselves with many pains.
But you, man of God, avoid all this.
Instead, pursue righteousness, devotion,
faith, love, patience, and gentleness.
Compete well for the faith.
Lay hold of eternal life,
to which you were called when you made the noble confession
in the presence of many witnesses.
Second Reading, from the Psalms:
R. Blessed the poor in spirit; the Kingdom of heaven is theirs!
Why should I fear in evil days
when my wicked ensnarers ring me round?
They trust in their wealth;
the abundance of their riches is their boast.
R. Blessed the poor in spirit; the Kingdom of heaven is theirs!
Yet in no way can a man redeem himself,
or pay his own ransom to God;
Too high is the price to redeem one's life; he would never have enough
to remain alive always and not see destruction.
R. Blessed the poor in spirit; the Kingdom of heaven is theirs!
Fear not when a man grows rich,
when the wealth of his house becomes great,
For when he dies, he shall take none of it;
his wealth shall not follow him down.
R. Blessed the poor in spirit; the Kingdom of heaven is theirs!
Though in his lifetime he counted himself blessed,
"They will praise you for doing well for yourself,"
He shall join the circle of his forebears
who shall never more see light.
R. Blessed the poor in spirit; the Kingdom of heaven is theirs!
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
Jean Jacket
I lost my Levis jacket, and my old Lee jacket doesn't fit. I'd like to get a new one, but the Levis jackets I've seen around are all prewashed and cut slim. Pathetic.
Monday, September 12, 2011
Aldo Leopold on Farming
There
are two spiritual dangers in not owning a farm. One is the danger of
supposing that breakfast comes from the grocery, and the other that heat
comes from the furnace.
Sunday, September 11, 2011
Saturday, September 10, 2011
Friday, September 9, 2011
Wages
Politicians are long on a "fair days wage", and things of that type. Marxist claimed that working men were "wage slaves" and that each was to receive according to their abilities and needs. Apparently their political class had more ability and needs, as they received more than others. . . funny how that worked.
Anyhow, wages are an interesting deal in a lot of ways, not the least of which is how people perceive their wages, or rather their income.
A real oddity, and one that I've become particularly conscious of, is that people generally spend to their income level, if they receive a middle class or upper income. Not everyone, to be sure, but a lot of people, and seemingly most people. Almost everyone in the middle class and even the lower wealthy class believes they struggle to get by. And some really do. I admit that at my present middle class income, I really wonder how those making less get by. Of course, I'm the only breadwinner as well, which means that if I split my income in half and pretended that it came from two people, we'd still be two middle class income earners, but not doing spectacularly well.
But even those people who make to upper middle incomes in a household will often expand out. People acquire, I guess. I do as well.
By the same token, some will invariably spend more than they make, no matter what their income is. I'm not sure why, but they will.
Making a "decent income" is a big deal with Americans. Of course, it should be, but it's so much of a big deal, that it's often the only focus some people have. "What's it pay?" is frequently the only career question that somebody asks before launching off on a life altering path.
Because a certain income becomes something a family, if not an individual person, becomes acclimated to, a wage can become like a shackle. That's extremely common. Even if the wage earner is prepared to abandon a certain income level, his family may not be, and that's effectively a jail cell.
These random comments amount to nothing more than a casual observation. I'm not arguing for anything. But I note it somewhat in the context of this line from a Man For All Seasons:
Why Richard, it profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world... but for Wales?
Parking Lot
It's common to hear that everything about aging is bad, and believe you me, having seen a lot of the things that come at the end of life, for a lot of people there are some pretty rough spots. Frankly, a lot of those rough spots come in middle age, when you're dealing with the impacts of aging on your relatives and probably have job concerns and a youngish family. You're pretty busy. Generally, according to statisticians, the middle years are the most displeasing to people.
But, not everything about being a middle aged married male is bad by any means.
Here's an odd example.
Almost every work day, when I pull into my work parking lot, there is a very beautiful young woman (say 20s, I'd guess) who arrives at the same time. I don't know her, and I never will. That's okay with me. Occasionally I say hello, and she often has some wry comment and seems to have a really dry wit.
What does this have to do with the comment above?
Well, this.
When I was younger, say single and closer to her age, this would be on my mind a lot. She's stunning really. I'd wonder if she was single, could I strike up a conversation, maybe meet and get to know her.
But I don't worry about any of that. She's just another interesting human being I see in a very disconnected casual situation. I can take her for what she is in that context, somebody I don't know, will never know, don't need to know, but who is sort of funny in a unique way.
That's a good deal. As we age, unless we manage to stay juvenile forever, it's actually much easier to know people as people.
There are a lot of other things that are like this. You become much less concerned with how people will react to your opinions, if they will react. If you aren't vain, you become almost entirely unconcerned about what people think about your car, and other trappings. All that is good stuff.
Thursday, September 8, 2011
Economics
In actuality, Dick Winters did find a farm, but not until after the Korean War, some years later. Between World War Two and his farm purchase, he was in business and in the Army, a second time, during the Korean War. When he entered farming, he also started a successful business selling animal feed.
The Ambrose book on his unit somewhat overemphasizes his post war business career, underplaying his later farming life.
I note that as I think Winters desire and the portrayal of his desires gives us an interesting insight into the bipolar nature of the American psyche. On one hand, a lot of people desire a quiet, rural, life. ON the other, we're constantly bombarded with the message that our goal in life should be "success" in a "career". It's an interesting dichotomy.
This has always been the case, but earlier on, before World War Two, the big "success in a career" stories were really exceptions to the American rule. While we aren't living in that era, and while it was very imperfect, what seems to largely have been the case is that the primary concern for most men and women were family related concerns. Most men and women married, and most of them worked towards a quiet family life. You don't really find a large number of "success in a career" type stories. Even businessmen of the pre 1940 era often had fairly low key lives, and were basically middle class. If a person was in the middle of the middle class, the were regarded as quite successful. Family, church, community, and the local life was typically a big deal for them.
Somehow, and increasingly the case, after World War Two "success in a career" really became a big deal. Now it absolutely dominates, and beyond that a "successful economy" is a huge deal. A successful economy is supposed to mean an ever growing economy.
What this means is that we now expect our children to go through college (and they nearly have to, I'm not saying otherwise), pick a "career", and do whatever it takes to succeed in that career. If that career is a "high powered" career, so much the better. This is supposed to mean that you'll move wherever the job takes you, go from town to town and city to city, and like it. You'll be compensated by one measure only, that being money. The more money the better. As this type of career means you will have no roots, or even connections, in where ever you are temporarily working, you'll are free to buy a parcel of property and a house that the local infrastructure cannot support long term, and which is actually destructive to any rural base the local community has, or once had. No connections with family, church, or community are expected to be predominant, or even exist. All relationships, even those between man and woman, are merely temporary and expedient, all designed to support your "career".
Indeed, the entire economy is now supposed to support this goal. We are told that the continued importation of immigrant labor is "necessary in order to support growing our economy", even at a time when we have an effective unemployment rate of 14%. We are told that the development of land is necessary to support the housing industry, a "key sector of our economy". We are told that the exportation of jobs that were once solid middle class jobs here, to foreign nations, is necessary in order that we can "grow the economy" by replacing production jobs with consumption jobs, with "low priced" consumption" itself necessary to this economy, as in the end, people don't really need all that much and can otherwise get along with a lot less.
This is largely the antithesis of the general culture before 1940, somewhat. There was, to be sure, always a lot of movement in the American society, but what seems to be the case is that people basically aimed for stability in economics in order to support their families, which were central to their lives. We've exchanged that for a system that is obviously self restricting at some point. For real lives in a real community that we're really connected with, we've substituted lives based on principally on the acquisition of money. Deep down, however, most of us know that this isn't satisfying, which is amply evidenced by the desire to try to satisfy that gaping hole by getting more, and more. We still yearn for the life our economy left behind. But that won't work, as what most, or many, of us really want, is that "quiet life". Indeed, in film portrays, we interestingly sometimes still portray things that way, but not always, of course.
Tuesday, September 6, 2011
A difference in cultures
I haven't been following the Amanda Knox trial at all, but I'd note that on this morning's news, appellate arguments, or some sort of appellate proceeding, resumed upon the Court's return from its August holiday.
The court shut down for a month.
An entire month.
This isn't uncommon in southern European cultures. The country shuts down for a month. Americans make much of their Protestant Work Ethic, but in the final analysis, I"m not sure that gets us too much other than being overworked. I can't imagine, fwiw, the entire country taking a month off, but I wish I could imagine it.
Monday, August 29, 2011
Tomatoland
He also details labor abuses.
It is pretty disturbing, and if it doesn't convince you to grow your own, you're probably unusually resistant to disturbing news.
One things, though, is that the interview, while not on immigrant labor and farming, makes it pretty clear that the system depends on using, and abusing, immigrant farm workers. A partial solution to this sort of thing, although one nobody ever seems willing to consider, is ending the practice of importing agricultural labor. We didn't do that until World War Two, when we had to. Before that, we did it ourselves, with our own population.
We have plenty of Americans to do the job, and having seen many absolutely rotten jobs Americans will do, the thesis that you "can't get Americans" to do this job is a fraud on the public. What you can't do is to get them to work for substandard wages, in substandard conditions. And they shouldn't have to do that either.
Paying Americans humane wages to do a job in humane conditions would put a lot of Americans to work in an outdoor job and connect them with agriculture and the real world. It would raise the cost of food, but perhaps its unrealistically low priced to start with to some extent, on some items. Of course, we'd have to actually guard our borders from the import of food produced poorly by those paying the poor, poor wages, but so be it.
Saturday, August 13, 2011
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
Prejudice
I've been thinking of trying to find a way to post this topic for awhile, but I hadn't gotten around to it, and I also hadn't quite figured out a way to post it effectively.
The topic is prejudice, but not racial prejudice. Religious bias may be a better way to phrase it.
Americans today are so used to the concept that the country was founded on religious liberty that they don't really question it. There remains religious prejudice in this, and every, country to be sure, but the way it was ingrained in society was once much greater than it is now.
To be more specific, I recently saw a topic concerning Roman Catholics and university attendance. The specific topic was the GI Bill. In the topic, a second hand citation to Catholics attending university in the time period was mentioned. More specifically, it was mentioned that prior to World War Two very few Catholics attended university. One of the people responding to that post found that assertion to be just ridiculous, but there were first hand recollections cited to support it (including mine).
I think that actually is correct, and it taps into the general theme of the website here. We look back at our country and figure, except for certain big historical facts that are generally known, that we share much in common with those who came before us. This is simply not always true. And this is one of the ways in which it was not true.
It has been frequently debated whether or not the country was founded on religious principals, and while it can be well supported that the country was not a theocracy in any fashion, it generally had some unity of religious thought, very loosely, early on. To call it a Christian republic might be too strong, but to call it a republic founded largely by Protestant Christians would not be. Generally, up until the 1840s, most Americans belonged to only one of several Protestant denominations. This made sense, of course, as most Americans descended from one of only several ethnic groups, and very early in the our history (our colonial history) immigration had been restricted to exclude members of other faiths, generally. Or more specifically, immigration had excluded Catholics.
This wasn't the case after we severed our allegiance to the United Kingdom, but still, it wasn't really up until the Irish Potato Famine got rolling, and the revolutions of the 1840s in Europe occurred, that this began to change. At that time, a lot of Irish immigrants began to come into the country and, at the same time, a lot of Germans from the Catholic regions of Germany began to do the same. An identifiable Catholic population existed in the US for the first time, excluding of course Acadians and Louisianans, who had been in it for a very long time, but in isolated pockets. Mexican Americans too, fit this latter description.
Prejudice ran strong against these new immigrants, particularly against the Irish immigrants who were inclined to congregate in cities. Prejudice against German Catholics also existed, but the German immigrants were much more inclined to strike out for German farming enclaves where English speaking Americans were less likely to encounter them. In regards to Irish immigrants, however, prejudice was so strong that they were typically defined as a "race", much like African Americans were and are.
Things began to change for Irish Americans during the Mexican War. During the war they were strongly represented (as were German Americans) in the Army, and that helped ease feelings against them. Still, lingering prejudice against Irish Americans well into the 20th Century. And immigration by Italian Americans, which came around the turn of the 19th Century, once again brought in what was regarded as a strongly alien, Catholic, population.
These populations, to a large degree, were much more isolated and communal in the American population until after World War Two. This varied by region, to be sure, but to a surprising degree these Catholic ethic communities remained segregated wherever they lived in a substantial urban area. And everywhere they were strongly associated, and self associated, with their church. Ecumenism was much less valued as well, so identification by Faith meant a great deal. This still occurs, but prior to World War Two to identify as a member of any one Faith, and most people did, meant a fairly strong allegiance to it.
These Catholic populations, the evidence seems to support to me, were also almost exclusively working class. In most urban areas Roman Catholics worked in laboring endeavors. In rural areas of the West, they were often ranchers. I can't really say much about rural areas elsewhere. There were always Catholics in the professions, such as law and medicine, but their clients were more concerned about Faith than they would be now. This is also true, fwiw, for African Americans, who had black doctors and black lawyers surprisingly early on, but those black lawyers and doctors had black clients.
In this era working class men had a much easier time making a living for a family than they do now. Laboring jobs were never easy, but they did often pay a living wage, if they were for skilled labor. A much smaller percentage of Americans attended college or university in general. Generally, Catholics did not attend. Some did, but not anywhere the percentage that now does.
World War Two seems to have changed all of that. It was likely changing anyway. Well before World War Two the nation had seen its first Roman Catholic Supreme Court justice (a Southern Confederate veteran). A Roman Catholic had attempted an unsuccessful, but serious, run for the Presidency prior to the war. General Terry de le Mesa Allen, a Roman Catholic, and Gen. Keyes, also a Catholic, had long running Army careers by the time World War Two broke out and they'd commanded large number of men. For that matter, Gen. McClellan of Civil War fame was a Catholic. But the war seemed to break an already breaking log jam, and after the war identification by class or religion was no longer a statistical factor in college attendance. By the 60s, Ivy League colleges that had effectively been Protestant schools were abandoning chapel requirements, thereby opening them up to members of non Protestant faiths.
In mentioning all of this, I'm not seeking to start a debate. But it is interesting to note. Religious tolerance has always been a feature of American life, but how religion has been a factor in culture and even employment has been largely forgotten.
Tuesday, August 9, 2011
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
The Old Homesteads
I went to a ash spreading (i.e., a type of funeral really) out at an old homestead the other day. By 4x4, it was a long way out. Long, long way, or so it felt. I learned while there that the original homestead had first been filed and occupied in 1917, a big year for homesteading.
It was a very interesting place, and felt very isolated. In visiting about that with my father in law, however, he noted that there had been another homestead just over the hill. And, as I've likely noted here before, there were tiny homesteads all over at that time. It was isolated, but sort of locally isolated. There were, as there were with most of these outfits, another homestead just a few hours ride away, at most, if that.
That is not to say that they weren't way out. I'd guess that this place was at least a full days ride from the nearest town at that time. Even when cars were commonly owned, and they were coming in just about that time, it would have taken the better part of a day to get to town, or a town (there were a couple of very small, but viable towns, about equal distance to this place at that time). It's interesting how agricultural units everywhere in North American have become bigger over time, even if they are all closer now, in terms of time, to a city or town.
Saturday, June 18, 2011
Communications and Road Miles
I had a fairly typical experience, and a bit of an odd experience, yesterday which calls to mind the topic of this blog.
Yesterday I went to my office, then to Sheridan Wyoming, then to Ranchester Wyoming, and back.
On the way to Ranchester, we passed two Rolls Royce touring cars. The Silver Ghost type of car, really old ones. They were, of course, premium touring cars in their day, which would have been basically the years on both sides of World War One. Huge automobiles.
The trip basically entailed about 170 miles of travel one way, or a grand trip, in one day of about 300 or so miles. We were home by dinner.
On the way back, I pulled over by the Midwest exit where there was cell reception to make a work call to an attorney in Gillette, WY. My son took this photograph while I was doing that.
What does this have to do with anything?
Well, in a century's time, communications and travel have been so revolutionized that they've radically impacted the way those in my field, in this location, do business. A century ago I would not have taken a day trip to Sheridan and Ranchester. For that matter, while I could easily have gone from Sheridan to Ranchester, most summers, a century ago, that would likely have pretty much been a day trip in and of itself. No, an attorney, if he ever had any cause to go to Sheridan from Casper, would have taken a train. Most likely, you'd take the train up one day, and back the next.
A very adventurous person, if they owned a car, might have driven up to Sheridan, but it would have taken all day. And you would have stayed upon arriving.
This year, I suspect, the travel by car of that type, on roads of that era, would have been impossible. Everything is flooding. I doubt a person could have driven in these conditions from Sheridan to Ranchester. You might have had to take the train to do that. The rail line does run though both towns, then up to Garryowen, and on to Billings. It did then as well.
Even in the mid 20th Century this would have been a long road trip, but you could have done it in a day.
But even the telephone aspect of this didn't exist when I first practiced law, some 20 years ago. That's entirely new. It effectively makes your car your office. As internet connections continue to improve, very often you have internet service darned near everywhere for that matter.
An improvement, or just the way things are?
Friday, May 27, 2011
Knowing, or not, what we think we know.
This thread fits in well with this blog, and is almost the theme of it. But, in general, how much do we really know of the routine of any one era? News tends to feature the rare, unusual, uncommon, or noteworthy, not the ordinary. But news in some ways tends to be what ends up being recorded as history.
The story of German horse use during World War Two is a good example. In popular histories, it tends to be reported that the German army of WWII was a mechanized, modern army. That's partially true, but to a much greater extent it was a hiking and horse using army. By war's end, it was the least mechanized army fighting in Europe.
Why is that not often noted? Well, the German propaganda machine would have had no interest in noting that, and every interest in emphasizing mechanization. Allied reports, for their part, would have emphasized the terrifying and dramatic. So, our view is not entirely accurate from the common sources.
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
Social and Cultural History and Film
Repeating the topic here, I was wondering anyone who happens to stop in here might think in terms of what movies are particularly accurate in depicting any one historical setting.
I'm not restricting this to military films at all, as I noted on SMH, but films in general. And I'm not restricting this to a film about anyone era. Just what films do we here think did a particularly good job in this context?
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Monday, April 4, 2011
Remembering what places were like
Because the city authorities stopped them from selling liquor and insisted that there must be no more piano thumping in their houses, the landladies of the bawdy houses of Casper held an indignation meeting one day last week and decided to suspend business entirely, and accordingly all the inmates of the three places on David street were discharged on the first of the month and Saturday morning fifteen of them left town on the east-bound train, it is hoped to return no more.“These people got the notion in their head that they could do just as they pleased so long as they remained in the restricted district, and high carnival was held nearly every night for awhile, and it was seldom that a big fight was not pulled off by some of them two or three times a week. They caused the authorities so much trouble that it kept one man on watch nearly every night to quell the disturbance. But after tolerating it until it could be tolerated no longer, the order was given out to cut out the booze and the music, and this made the madams mad and they have closed up their houses, and threaten to ‘kill the town.’ ...
“[I]f the places are ever opened up again, which they undoubtedly will be before the end of this week if they are permitted to do so, the people should, and no doubt will, insist that the places be conducted along lines that will not disturb the decent people of the town.”
Thursday, March 24, 2011
Food and diet
It's really easy to romanticize the past, including the kitchen table of the past, but a recent Freakanomics podcast I listened to suggests that some caution should be involved in that. That's no surprise really, but it is something that we rarely consider.
In our minds, the table of the past was always the place where home cooked meals were served, with fresh food of all kinds. But this really wasn't so. For one thing, refrigeration was not really terribly advanced until the 1930s or so. Prior to that, a lot of people had an "ice box". My father still referred to the refrigerator at the "ice box" in the 1970s, not really switching over to "refrigerator" until the 80s. An ice box isn't anywhere as efficient as a refrigerator.
People compensated for that by buying food every day, but that couldn't really take care of the entire problem. Fresh food simply isn't available every day, everywhere. Frozen food wasn't really fully available year around. Canned food was, in the 20th Century of course, but it wasn't always as good as the canned food we have now. Salted and pickled food made up for part of the problem.
And food variety was necessarily much more restricted. It isn't as if you could expect to buy oranges everywhere easily prior to relatively efficient transportation. Something like a Kiwi fruit would have been unheard of. Even when I was a kid fish came from the river or from a box in the freezer section of the grocery store. In the early 20th Century here fish would have been from the river, and that's about it.
Food related diseases, such as rickets and goiter, that are attributable to a simple dietary deficiencies. Vitamin D is now put in milk to address rickets, but when most people bought milk in glass bottles that was from a local creamery, this wasn't true. Iodine is now in salt, but it wasn't always.
In looking at images from the past, a full farm larder is easy to imagine. But that isn't always the way things were.
An interesting look at an aspect of this, in military terms, is on this Society of the Military Horse thread.
Saturday, March 12, 2011
The distance of things, and self segregation
Saturday, March 5, 2011
Saturday, February 26, 2011
The distance of things.
I was in Denver the past couple of days, and on my way out, I took some photographs for my blog on churches in the West.
In any event, these churches are all so close to each other, in modern terms, that I can't imagine all three being built now. All three are still in use. I was perplexed by it, until in considering it, I realized that they are really neighborhood churches, built for communities that were walking to Mass for the most part, save for the Cathedral, which no doubt served that function, but which also was the seat of the Archdiocese of Denver. Mother of God church no doubt served a Catholic community right in that neighborhood, and it likely still does. Holy Ghost served a downtown community, and probably also the Catholic business community that was downtown during the day.
This speaks volumes about how people got around prior to World War Two. It probably also says something about their concept of space.
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Nice Post on what every American should learn about U.S. History
I'm often amazed by how little people know about the history of our nation. Nice to see somebody in the trenches considering it.
Monday, February 21, 2011
Heating
I don't know how the winter has been elsewhere, but here it's been a really cold winter. We've been down below OF repeatedly, including today.
Our house has electric heat. I actually like it quite a bit, but it's been having trouble keeping up in the really cold weather. Most houses around here have gas heat.
Most office buildings, if they're big ones like the one I work in, have a boiler. Ours has a boiler, but for some reason it's having trouble today.
This building was built in about 1917 or so. Not much insulation in it. When the heat isn't working, it's real darned cold in it.
For that matter, it was probably pretty cool in it back in the day during the winter, which is likely why men wore so much wool for office work in those days.
Thursday, February 17, 2011
Office machinery and the written word.
which then processes the spoken word immediately into print. This is the second time I've experimented with. The first time, I grew frustrated with it and, after the system collapsed, I abandoned using it and simply typed things out on my computer. I'm a pretty fast typist, so this was working well, but any way you look at it, it's slower than speaking. This time around, the Dragon system seems to be working very well, so I've very happy with my resumed use of it.
Anyhow, what a revolution in the process of generating pleadings and letters this is. When I first started practicing law, some 21 years ago, we were using Dictaphones. Now those are practically a thing of the past. For those not familiar with them, a Dictaphone is a specialized tape recorder that allows the speaker to dictate the document. This ended up, at that time, in an audiotape which was handed over to the secretary, who then listened to it and typed out the document. The secretary handed that back to you, and then you manually red lined it for changes. This process could take some time.
This, of course, was an improved process of dictation as compared to the original one, which entailed calling a secretary in to your office and dictating the document to her. She took it down in shorthand. My mother, who had worked as a secretary in the 40s, 50s and 60s, could take excellent shorthand as a result of this process. Now, shorthand is nearly as dead of written language as Sanskrit.
Even earlier than that, legal documents were processed through a scrivener, a person whose job was simply to write legibly. That person wasn't normally the lawyer.
I'm not sure if this entire process is really quicker than the older methods, but it is certainly different. My secretary only rarely sees a rough draft of anything. That rough draft goes on my computer, and I edit it from there. About 80% of the time, by the time I have a secretary proof read a document, it is actually ready to go. Those entering the secretarial field, for that matter, generally no longer know how to take shorthand or even how to work the Dictaphone machine. They're excellent, however, on working the word process features of a computer.
All this also means, fwiw, that the practice of law, at least, is a much more solitary profession than it once was, at least while in the office. Generating a pleading, in a prior era, was more of a community effort in a way. The lawyer heard the pleading for the first time, in many instances, as the same time his secretary did. Over time, most secretaries were trusted to make comments on the pleadings. In the case of letters, they were often simply expected to be able to write one upon being asked to do so, something that still occurs to some degree today. But for pleadings, today, a lawyer tends to wall himself off by himself while drafting them, and any outside input tends to start after a relatively complete document has been drafted. Of course, with computers, it's much easier to circulate drafts and to change documents as needed.
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
What one building says about the march of history.
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
365 Days With A Model A.
The author notes that this is because he doesn't feel that everything should have a computerized element to it. I couldn't agree more.
Thursday, January 27, 2011
Building trends and economic eras
That's certainly the case in this town. I've long known that the building I work in, the Con Roy building, was built in 1917 as part of a building boom associated with World War One oil production. But up until very recently I hadn't noticed how far that building trend must have carried. In putting up some photos for my blog on churches, it really became apparent to me. Most of the downtown churches here, fine old structures, were built right after World War One. I know that all those congregations had existing smaller churches, so they were replacing old ones with new much larger ones. Probably the size of the congregations had dramatically increased as well.
Same thing with some large old buildings here, except their earlier. Say 1900 to 1914. All associated with sheepmen, who must have been doing very well in a way that no rancher could today.
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Surgarmill
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
When horses were a major economic factor.
Sunday, January 23, 2011
Friday, November 13, 2009
Saturday, November 13, 1909. Cherry Mine Disaster.
The Cherry Mine Disaster saw 247 coal miners and 12 rescuers killed in the accident at Cherry Illinois. It's the third deadliest mine disaster in U.S. history.
University of Virginia freshman halfback Archer Christian was fatally injured during a game against Georgetown.
Last edition:
Thursday, November 11, 1909. Barbarity.
Thursday, November 12, 2009
The Telephone
Concerning changes between then and now, something that occurs to me is that those practicing a century ago were much less impacted, if impacted at all, by the telephone.
That may sound obvious, but the impact would be huge.
There are days that I hardly get off the phone. And as I try to take my phone calls, even if really busy, it means that the phone impacts the flow of my work a great deal. This would not have been the case at one time.
It's really difficult to imagine, actually. A day without phone calls and without email. Communications would come solely by mail or by direct contact. I suppose if people had a question, they dropped by to ask it or to make an appointment, and most contacts would have been very much local.
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Thursday, November 11, 1909. Barbarity.
The unspeakably brutal lynching of African American Will "Froggy" James took place in Cairo, Illinois before a crowd of 10,000 people.
Three hours later Caucasian Henry Salzner, accused of murdering his wife, was likewise lynched.
Last edition
Wednesday, November 10, 1909. Narcissism as a personality disorder.
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Wednesday, November 10, 1909. Narcissism as a personality disorder.
Dr. Isidor Sadger first described narcissism as a personality disorder as part of his presentation "A Case of Multiform Perversion".
On Wisconsin was preformed by the first time by the University of Wisconsin Glee Club.
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Monday, November 8, 1909. A Roosevelt tragedy.
Sunday, November 8, 2009
Monday, November 8, 1909. A Roosevelt tragedy.
Franklin and Elanor Roosevelt's third child, named Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Jr., died at the age of seven months. They'd use the name again for their fifth child.
Victor Hémery became the first person to drive an automobile faster than 125 miles per hour, driving a 200 PS Benz at 126 mph at the Brooklands track in England.
Sunday, November 1, 2009
Monday, November 1, 1909. Salinas Pueblo Missions National Monument.
President Taft proclaimed the Gran Quivira National Monument, New Mexico, containing ruins Pueblo settlements dating back to the 9th Century and Spanish missions dating back to the 17th.
Exact dates for the Puebloan settlements would be impossible to determine, but construction of the missions started in 1622 and were completed in 1635. An additional church was built in 1651. The entire population migrated north in 1677, and everything was abandoned.
The expanded site today is the Salinas Pueblo Missions National Monument.
Last edition: