Old Technology, New Technology, Techies, Open Minded and Luddites

One of the frequently visited topics of this blog is the change in various material items, or the introduction of technology.  Some might suspect that the author might be, therefore, a Luddite, or perhaps a Neo Luddite.  This is not so.

That is, I'm far from the vie that all technology is bad, but at the same time keep the point of view that the measure of a material things worth includes (but only includes) its effectiveness.  Something that works well, works well.  That means, of course, that something old that works well may work better than something new that doesn't work as well.  For example, those who are familiar with ranching can't help but note that the horse has outlasted several of its intended replacements, in some of its traditional roles.  I've seen the dirt bike, the three wheeler and the ATV all come and go as rivals to the horse. They just don't cut it in comparison, so the horse keeps on keeping on.

 

And many other examples of this can be found.  Old Coke was better than "new Coke" because it was.  Lots of old tools do the job as well or better than anything that comes after them.  The big old heavy Dodge Power Wagons are still coveted because nothing compares to them in their intended use.  Cast Iron cookery is better than newer items that are designed for the same purpose, not because they are old, but because the are better.  Espousing all those things doesn't make a person a Luddite, just open minded.

All that is fairly obvious.  When the truly open minded sometimes note that a really old technology or method remains applicable in the modern world in an unexpected way, however, it can be a bit of a shock. Retuning to the horse again, for example, its a mind bender to some to realize that there are armies in the world today that retain mounted troops, and that extensive field forces have been deployed of that type as recently as the 1980s, and actually much later.  Both Portugal and Rhodesia, for example, deployed mounted infantry into the 1980s, in combat.  And mounted rural patrols remain perfectly viable in some places, including parts of the U.S. border, today.  That the horse would remain a viable platform should be self evident, but it comes as a shock.  Its competitors, in this context, offer speed and lower training, but they also are inflicted with noise and cost.  It's a cost balancing matter, therefore, and in some instance, the costs favor the horse.  In a related sort of analysis, some work has been done by economist that show on small acreages horse drawn implements are actually more cost effective, if the cost of the human farmer's labor is deducted, than machinery, up until a certain point at which the speed of the machinery tips the balance. Noting that doesn't make a person a Luddite, just a bit eccentric.

What does make a person a bit of a Luddite, however, is refusing to accept that any technology is either an improvement or useful. . . or in sometimes necessary.  I recently ran across an odd example of that.

As folks who stop here know, I'm a lawyer.  Moreover, I'm a lawyer in Wyoming, which means that I travel around quite a bit.  I was also an "early adopter" of the Internet, which was coming into law firms just at the time I entered the law, which is about a quarter century ago now.  Most younger lawyers, I'm sure, can't imagine a day when every firm didn't have the Internet, but I do.  We were just getting dial in when I started up. We still had to go to the county law library to use Westlaw at that time, which I frequently did.  Now, of course, we all have West Law on our PCs, and were connected all the time, literally.  Is that good or bad?  Well, I've debated that, even here on this site, and there are good and bad elements to that.  But anyway you look at it, it is.

Part of that, of course, includes email.  We use email constantly.  And it has very much impacted how we work, I realized today.  And that's where, perhaps, the Luddite aspect of this kicks in.

I won't say that every type of business everywhere must have internet connectivity.  But law firms must.  A firm without the net is not only a rarity, but obsolete.  I've come to assume that most law firms have a webpage dedicated to their firm.   Having one wouldn't be absolutely necessary, but it's darned near necessary.  It's like having a sign out in front of your shop.

Email is necessary.  I don't know how any lawyer can operate without email.  But today I ran across one, to my surprise, that didn't.

In this case the lawyer was across the continent, literally.  I've been having trouble catching him by phone, and he's been having trouble catching me.  That's easy to occur in this situation.  When I first come into the office most mornings, I probably have a series of early morning emails to catch up with. At that same time, this fellow is doing his mid morning work.  By mid morning, when I might have the best chance of calling from my office, he's probably gone for lunch.  When he comes back and returns my call, I may be just getting back or be out doing something.  If I call him after 3:00, he's probably gone, and so on.  

However, if a person has email.  None of this matters.  I'd catch him first thing in the morning with an email, or vice versa, and we can exchange them over a day so that, in the course of one day, we'd probably be well on our way to having whatever it was all worked out.  So, I went to find his firm website so I could send him an email.

Low and behold, I couldn't find a website, or even an email address.  His state bar listing didn't even list a fax number.  Finally, I had my secretary call his to ask for a fax number or email address.  They did have a fax number.

Here I'll digress that whenever I call this office, the receptionist is invariably snooty.  That may be, in part, because I have a Rocky Mountain accent (yes, there is such a thing) and I'm dealing with somebody who has a certain distinct regional accent.  She might not be able to understand me, and I can't really understand her all that well.  Or she might just be a bit rude.  I always find that odd in a receptionist.  I'm just trying to call her boss on a work matter, which would seemingly be good for us both.  Treating me like an annoyance would not seem to be warranted.  Oh well.

Anyhow, I resorted to the fax, a technology that seemed pretty amazing when I started 23 years ago but which now seems sort of redundant to email.  Oh well.  But here, I can't grasp how, or even why, somebody in this line of work wouldn't adopt this technology.  Shoot, here we couldn't get by without it now, as everyone else has it, and that's the speed at which we must work.  Indeed, even Iphones are a necessity, as they pick up email.

Regional Comparisons and Terror in Boston

Generally, I try to stay away from domestic contemporary politics in this blog.  It isn't that I don't have a lot of views on the topic, I do, but rather, that's not what the focus of the blog is about, and the very few people who stop in here don't do that in order to read my political views on one thing or another.  And even in this post, I don't really mean to do that.

None the less, as the thought occurred to me, and as I've now heard the same thing from other people, including people I don't really know, I might as well note that the response to the recent Terrorist attack in Boston takes at least some people here off guard, just because we are pretty sure that things wouldn't play out the same way. That's not a criticism of Boston, but it shows that things really are not the same here.

In response to the attack in Boston by two radicalized Islamic Chechen brothers, the city was shut down.  And, as we know, it was shut completely down.  People were urged to stay indoors, and apparently they largely did. The fugitive brother who was on the run was discovered by a homeowner who noted that something was amiss with his boat and called the authorities.

Perhaps that's what would have happened here, but I doubt it.  I suspect here that the city would urge people not to run around and remain indoors, but not seek to require it.  Frankly, however, I think around here that a lot of people probably would arm themselves quickly, and the fugitives best chance for surviving the entire thing would have been to surrender to authorities as quickly as possible.  Being on the lam would expose a person in that situation, here, to an almost overwhelming risk of getting shot by a regular citizen.

I don't say this in order to argue a political point one way or another, it just is.  A fair number of people here have a gun nearby or on themselves all the time.  In the same circumstances I suspect that number would dramatically increase.  Wyoming allows for the concealed carry of firearms by everyone, without permit, if they meet the criteria for having a permit issued.  Quite a few people believe, erroneously, that this means all Wyomingites may carry a concealed weapon and quite a few do.  People would be surprised, even here, how many people casually have a handgun on them, or nearby, on any given day.

Our local newspaper, which is declining in quality and extent seemingly with every passing year, is owned elsewhere and runs anti gun material pretty regularly, probably part of the reason that the paper is fading away.  Recently the paper's editor ran an article noting that, in the 19th Century, quite a few Wyoming towns banned the carrying of arms, in the open, on the street, the attempt being to suggest that there was no carry culture in the West at the time.  The paper probably should have considered its point in context, but being able to discern and investigate is not the long suit of the paper.  What the paper might have also noted is that the towns were tiny at the time, and based upon the amount of shooting of one kind or another, and the lack of local law enforcement, and the general do it yourself nature of the law at that time, that might have not really meant particularly much.  At any rate, Tribune aside, there's definitely been easy familiarity with firearms in the West for quite some time,, and that's quite true now.

It's often pointed out that the 2nd Amendment, which protects the right to keep and bare arms, is tied to some sort of militia provision, with that being argued back and forth.  Critics of the right sometimes suggest that the amendment is an anachronism, because in the day in which it was written access to firearms might keep a person alive if suddenly attacked by Indians. . . or perhaps the British or the French, and that such local attacks no longer occur.  Maybe that's been over analyzed, however, as it now seems the greatest external military danger to average citizenry is in fact the random attack by Terrorist in our midst, which  is difficult to do anything about.  I'm not suggesting, or even beginning to suggest, that everyone should carry a firearm in order to guard against the extremely remote chance that they're attacked by a Terrorist.  Indeed that risk is infinitely small.  But rather, the only point in this post is to observe how different some things are in different regions of the country.  Once again, here, I suspect that in short order the guilty's best bet would be to surrender as quickly as possible, as it'd be far more likely that such a person would otherwise get shot by a common citizen.  Is that good or bad?  Hard to say really, but it is different.

Some Gave All: Wyoming Veterans Museum, Natrona County Internatio...

Some Gave All: Wyoming Veterans Museum, Natrona County Internatio...: This is the Wyoming Veterans Museum in Natrona County, which is located in the former Enlisted Mens Club of the U.S. Army Air Corps base wh...

The Press

When I was quite young, in my teens, I briefly considered a career as a reporter.  Not long; the concept probably lasted less than a year.  I was on the high school newspaper at the time, and it seemed like fun, but it was just a passing fancy.  I think the idea sort of appealed to me as it was a writing job, and I like writing.

Since that time, through my work in the law, I've come to be exposed to newspaper reporters, and television reporters, form time to time, and I'm glad that the concept didn't take hold.  People criticize lawyers for manipulating facts, but I've learned to distrust reporters like no other group of people I have ever met.  It's terrible to regard an entire class of people as suspect, but my exposure to reporters has lead me to be very suspicious of all of them.

With only one clear exception in mind, I've also concluded that print reporters are ignorant of the topics they report on, and seemingly incapable of becoming informed on them.  Perhaps that explains, but only partially, what seems to come across as dishonesty.  It could be ignorance..  The one exception, I'd note, was a reporter for the Buffalo Bulletin, whose report on a trial I was in (as an attorney, of course) was highly accurate.  It was actually a surprise to me to read the article and find it fair and accurate, as I don't expect that out of reporters.  The Buffalo Bulletin is a small newspaper, and doesn't even report every day, but I'll give it credit for being accurate, at least in that instance.

In comparison to that, ever other item I've ever had that was reported on by a newspaper was reported on somewhat inaccurately, and in once recent case, massively inaccurately.

The recent example has been the most distressing, as the reporting has either been willfully inaccurate or negligently inaccurate.  I'd hate to think that reporters form an agenda and report accordingly, as they are so often accused of doing, but in this instance, I see little other choice but to conclude they have a view, and they're campaigning for it.  Shame on them.  Reporting inconvenient truths is one thing, manipulating news quite another, and printing outright errors as the truth quite another still. Even worse, to distance oneself from a second journalist that is a superior to the first, who then wrote an article that contained at least one outright, and material, mis-truth is inexcusable.

Perhaps even somewhat worse, the old virus of Yellow Journalism is still with us, which we often think is not.  Reporters like to deny that they have an agenda, but in at least two cases I've handled it seemed fairly clear that they did, and in one it would strain credibility to feel that they did not.  Accusations against journalist to the effect that they're basically a propaganda arm for the political left can be close to the truth, at least on a selective basis.  We like to think that the days of "You supply the pictures and I'll supply the war" are over, but at least on a more local level, they don't seem to be.  Perhaps that's because the Press needs a controversy, and a story which would relate that everyone is fully informed, and everyone in agreement, on any one public topic, doesn't make for much of a story.

That may provide the basis for coloring some truths, failing to report others, and just making stuff up otherwise, but it's no excuse.  Journalist like to proclaim that their first in the fight to protect the First Amendment, even while they'll be first in the fight to trample the rights of others.  But misuse of a right doesn't protect it, it tarnishes it. 

Family History at the American Heritage Center, UW

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First CCC Camp in Yellowstone National Park

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Worland, 1906

563638_528416927201811_33938274_n.jpg (JPEG Image, 768 × 484 pixels)

It's not an April Fool's joke: Illinois bar exam gets harder; which states have hardest tests? - ABA Journal

It's not an April Fool's joke: Illinois bar exam gets harder; which states have hardest tests? - ABA Journal

Interesting indeed, particularly in light of Wyoming's recent decision to adopt the UBE.

History through film:

Local announcement. Just sort of interesting:

 Natrona County Schools
The last unit that the students will be learning in 9th grade Social Studies this year covers World War II and we are starting this week. We will spend approximately 11 class days (about 1 month) learning and assessing this material.

While we are studying this unit we will be studying the Causes of World War II, The Holocaust, America at Home, Major Battles in both the European and Pacific Theaters, How WWII Ends, and a brief discussion of the start of the Cold War.

We know that this can be a very busy time of year for all of our students. We would really emphasize student attendance and participation during this unit. Some of the materials that we will be using during this unit will include pictures, first-hand accounts/journals, audio, and videos. Some of these materials will be graphic as they depict scenes of war and violence, the Holocaust, Internment camps, etc. We will be discussing with the students that we expect a higher level of maturity during this unit.

There are a plethora of great movies and literature that depict different aspects of this time period. While we will not be showing any feature films during class, they may offer an opportunity for you at home to connect with your student regarding the material. Schindler's List, Saving Private Ryan, Longest Day, Midway, Band of Brothers, The Pacific, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, and many others would be examples of this material.

General Agenda:
Day 1: Causes of WWII
Day 2: Holocaust
Day 3: (Quiz #1) America at Home
Day 4: Japanese Internment
Day 5: (Quiz #2) Early WWII Battles
Day 6: Cont. Battles
Day 7: (Quiz #3) Ending the War/Cold War
Day 8: Test
Day(s) 9-11: Genocide, Hate Groups, Nuclear Proliferation
Please do not reply to this email as it will be sent to an automated and unmonitored inbox.

 Natrona County Schools
Starting Friday, April 12, we will be showing some G and PG rated WWII movies at lunch time for any students looking for some enrichment. I can't guarantee that we will be able to stick to this schedule, but we should be close. We will push play at 12:55 most days to give everyone an opportunity to grab lunch and come up. I will let campus security know that this is happening.

4/12-4/16 Friday, Monday, and Tuesday lunches: We will watch "The Great Dictator" starring Charlie Chaplin in a parody of Hitler and Nazi Germany in the late 1930s. Rated G
4/17-4/22 Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday lunches: "Chicken Run" An animated re-make of Steve McQueen's "The Great Escape".
4/22-4/26 Monday, Thursday, Friday lunches: "The Longest Day" a film about the D-Day invasion that features one of the greatest assembled casts of actors in film history. Rated G.
4/29-5/1 Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday lunches: "The Sound of Music"
5/2-5/6 Thursday, Friday, and Monday lunches: "Midway"
5/7-5/9 Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday lunches: "South Pacific"
Please do not reply to this email as it will be sent to an automated and unmonitored inbox.

'He Saved Hundreds': Army Chaplain To Get Medal Of Honor : The Two-Way : NPR

'He Saved Hundreds': Army Chaplain To Get Medal Of Honor : The Two-Way : NPR

Not that local. Dairies

Meadow Gold dairy truck.   "From local farms to local families."

Some time ago I was hiking from my mechanic's shop down to work, after dropping my truck off to be worked on, and saw this Meadow Gold delivery truck at our hospital.

Now, let me first note that I don't have anything against Meadow Gold milk, etc.  At any one time there's a good chance that there's a gallon of Meadow Gold milk in my refrigerator, although I also don't pay all that much attention to what milk brand I'm buying.  The big decision in milk purchases here is whether to buy whole milk or 2% milk.  My wife buys 2%, I buy whole milk.  I do this because I like the way whole milk tastes better and I disregard the whole fat content thing because, well, whole milk tastes better.  

I feel somewhat justified in this view, by the way, because a recent study suggests that whole milk wasn't as bad for you as some want to believe, but I mostly feel that way because it validates my desired view.  It's part of the same thinking, on my part, that causes me to chuckle a bit in glee with the fact that my coffee addition is turning out to be a good thing.  Ha!

But I digress.

What caused me to take this cell phone photograph is the truck's claim that the milt the truck is hauling goes "From local farms to local families."  What does that mean?

It doesn't mean that the milk comes from a farm outside of town, that's for sure.  In spite of very occasional attempted start ups, there hasn't been a local dairy milk farm here for decades.  There was one, or perhaps more than one, at one time, but that's an extremely long time ago.

 

Dairy farmer in Waterloo Nebraska.

Local dairies were, at one time, the rule nearly everywhere in the United States.  At that time there were dairy farmers who did indeed milk a herd of dairy cattle every day, and truck the milk to a local creamery. Casper had a local creamery at one time.  But this is very much a thing of the past.  There's no local creamery, and there's no local dairy farmers.

Downtown location of the Jersey Creamery in Casper Wyoming, now long gone.

The reasons for this are varied, with some being national in origin, and others being local.  Some, seem to me, to be obscure.  Locally, truth be known, Natrona County Wyoming was a hard place for a diary to start with.  The area is great cattle country, but very poor dairy cow country.  Beef cattle, in this region, basically wonder around the vast prairie and are fed in the winter out on the range.  Dairy cattle are fed on their farms all year long, and fed a lot, as producing milk is a calorie intensive business. This means that hay farming is an absolute local necessity for a dairy.  For beef cattle producers, hay is something we buy for the winter, and we can gauge which type is what we'll buy by need and price.  Dairy cattlemen, however, need a constant supply of high quality forage . . and they won't be finding that here on their farms on a  year around basis. This may explain why certain Quixotic efforts to start local dairies in the past two decades have rapidly failed.

Another aspect of this, however, is that milk more than other types of agricultural products, is uniquely suited for mass processing and delivery.  Milk was delivered to people's houses daily up until the 1970s (at least locally), which made a local distributor's economic viability a little easier, but even as early as the 1940s the large chain grocery stores would generally only carry their own brands.  This meant that local dairies had to principally rely on home deliveries, which of course, as noted, they did, also delivering butter in some cases and also taking specialty Holiday orders..  But its likely that societal changes slowly did that in.  I can't be precise on it, of course, but there must be some changes that caused the convenience of home delivery to give way to simply picking milk up at the store.  Indeed, as home delivery seems so convenient to me, and lasted so long, I'm struggling a bit to determine what the cause of the demise was, but it may simply have been that people work odder hours, and move around a lot more, than they once did.  Other types of home delivery have also fallen off in the past half century too, and it's fairly rare to find a grocery store that will deliver, like they once did.

 Milk man delivering milk to transient worker location, 1930s.  Note the uniform, which was the norm at the time.

Before I move on from that, for what it's worth, as home milk delivery seems like such an oddity to people who have never experienced it I'll simply note that, when I was a kid, this was done by men who drove around time very early in the morning with a refrigerated van.  We kept an insulated box, provided by the creamery, on our back porch and that's where he left the milk.  I remember that as I got a bit older if I was awake I could hear him drive up and delivery the milk, which seems to me to have been usually around 5:00 am. In earlier years, however, in most places this same service was done by a man who used a horse drawn wagon.  Both of my parents had recollections of milk being delivered in this fashion.  In my mother's case, her recollection was that the neighbor's dog hated the milk cart horses and would bark his head off at them.   My father remembered milk being delivered this way in Denver in what was probably the 1930s.

Anyhow, home delivery, no matter how convenient, couldn't keep local dairies going, even if I'm not sure why that was.  Perhaps the lack of a local source of milk contributed to that.  Perhaps also the price of fuel which shot through the roof in the early 1970s had a contributing influence.  And, I suspect, a more mobile society in which both men and women were routinely employed probably also had something to do with it.

Man delivering bottles to washed.  

Another factor, however, probably is that milk must be processed.  Milk, at least commercial milk, is pasteurized and it's no doubt easier to pasteurize a lot of it rather than smaller quantities.  As noted, milk is uniquely suited for mass production, in some ways.  And milk can pose a health danger if not processed adequately.  I suppose that means there is a danger that lurks in large facilities, but if there is, it seems to be pretty minor as milk is very efficiently produced at very low risk to the public.

I suppose given that, I've been very surprised that there's been a movement in the state to allow the local sale of unpasteurized milk.  Some ranchers have kept milk cows for their own families for a long time, and some people with small acreages do as well, but this is a bit different.  Ranchers with milk cows know cows very well in general, and they know what they're doing.  That milk tends to be consumed nearly immediately.  I think this is generally also the case with the very few people with small acreages.  But having a milk cow as a commercial proposition, or a share in a milk cow, which is another way this has been proposed, seems a very poor idea to me. That concept is part, generally, of the "local foods" movement, and whatever its merits otherwise are, it should be kept in mind that milk's a product that requires special care for safety reasons.  Ranchers with milk cows are generally consuming the milk immediately.  People who think that they're simply replacing Safeway with a cow, however, may not be, and may be exchanging safety for a loose concept of the product being better which, in the case of milk, might not match reality.  There has been, I'd note, at least one milk related illness outbreak in the US in 2012.

 

I also wonder if people who buy unpasteurized milk are in for a bit of a shock.  Most people have never had milk that hasn't been pasteurized and homogenized, and don't realize that unhomogenized milk  tastes different and that the cream separates out.  I've had it just once, when I was a kid, and still recall that it seemed to taste odd.  My wife, whose family did keep a milk cow when she was young, can't stand it, but then she prefers 2% milk, which I don't like.

I

At any rate, here's another example of something that's really changed, but which we must still look back upon to some extent.  There are no more Milk Men, at least there aren't very many, and in a lot of the country, the milk comes from a long ways away.  Local milk producers in some places are having a hard time, which is a shame.  For an area like central Wyoming, however, local milk production wouldn't make very much sense.  Some milk producers, as noted above, are emphasizing that they get their milk locally, but that would seemingly require a little explanation to make sense.  Probably what it means is that the milk was local to where it was processed, probably down in Colorado, but not to us here in Wyoming.  Nor could it be, really.

National Guard News - Command Sgt. Maj. Conley convenes book group to discuss Army National Guard history

National Guard News - Command Sgt. Maj. Conley convenes book group to discuss Army National Guard history

Holscher's Hub: The Blizzard of 13.

Holscher's Hub: The Blizzard of 13.:  U.S. Federal Courthouse, April 8, 2013.  April 9, 2013.  April 9, 2013.  Just before I blew the fuze on the windshield wipe...

Answer . . . or else . . . darn it.

Forgot to send mine in, but will do so post haste!

The curtain coming down on the Stalinist Theme Park of North Korea.

On June 25, 1950 the army of North Korea rolled south and invaded the Republic of Korean (South Korea, or the ROK).  The North Korean Army, equipped and trained by the Soviet Union, looked as if it was about to make short work of the South Korean Army.

 South Korean Army band, and military policeman, 1987.

This was not because the North Korean army was so good, as would soon be seen, but rather because the South Korean Army was so very bad.  Trained in only a very rudimentary fashion by the US after World War Two, the South Korean Army suffered from the fact that its conscripts were of an overwhelmingly primitive rural background and that the U.S. didn't regard Korea, a former colonial province of Japan, as being particularly important in any fashion.  To compound it, after the Second World War, the United States came to the conclusion that all future wars would be nuclear wars, and therefore it didn't really need to train its own Army that much.  That reflected itself back on what little we did to arm and train South Korea's army.  The ROK army still had horse cavalry in 1950, and some South Korean soldiers lacked shoes of any kind. 

The Korean War would be the wake up call.

 ROK M48s, 1987.

Stunned by Nationalist China, an Allied power during World War Two, falling to the communist in 1949, the US suddenly regarded the Korean Peninsula as a dagger pointed at Japan, which the US cared about very much.  So, contrary to all expectation, when the North Koreans rolled south the US suddenly went in.  Fortunately for the US, the negligent neglect of the military would not prove to be fatal, in no small part because the US had a massive reservoir of men who trained and fought in World War Two, which had only been over for five years.  The Regular Army was full of men who had trained to fight the Germans and the Japanese who were mixed in with men who had entered the service post war and hardly been trained at all.  National Guard units were likewise packed with men who had seen service in the Second World War.  The US was able to get by, and get to Korea.  Making a stand on the Pusan Perimeter, General MacArthur, serving as the US administrator of Japan, conceived of an end run using Marines at Inchon that resulted in a collapse of the North Korean army.  North Korea was saved from defeat only because the Red Chinese came to their aid when the advancing American, UN, and ROK forces came to close to Manchuria. That act, however, significantly came not because the Peoples Republic of China loved the Communist regime in North Korea, but rather because the PRC couldn't imagine having American troops on its immediate border.

The South Korean Army that performed so badly in 1950 was first rate by the 1960s, and was one of the most effective anti communist armies to fight in the Vietnam War.  That army remains one of the best in Asia today.  It's a modern, effective, army.

South Korean M48 tanks, approximately 20 miles or so south of the DMZ, in 1987.

South Korean infantry in 6x6 truck, 1987.

The North Korean army, however, is not.  It was a poor army in 1950 through 1954, when it took on the anemic South Korean army and nearly beat it in 1950, only to face being rolled up and defeated that same year by a U.S. Army that hadn't reequipped since World War Two, and which had largely stopped training to fight a conventional ground war..  Only the Red Chinese, with an army that had been fighting, in one fashion or another, back into the 1920s, and with a massive manpower reserve, kept North Korea in existence.  Frankly, had the US not neglected its own military from 1945 to 1950, and kept an army trained to its 1945 standards, and equipped in way reflecting the lessons of ground combat from 1939 to 1945, the Chinese also would have suffered defeat.  The Chinese were mostly able to rely on sheer mass, more than anything else.  That work in 1950 to 1954, but in learning the lessons of this war, and applying them to the possibility of a war with the Soviet Union in Europe, the US developed the technology and strategies to cope with fighting a numerically superior foe. By the 1990s, it was pretty clear that the yields of that strategy were so vast, that the American army was incapable of being defeated in a war against a conventional enemy, no matter who that enemy might be.  Nuclear war, and guerrilla wars, however, remain different in consideration.

South Korean M38A1 with recoiless rifle, 1987.

The Peoples Republic of China has taken this to heart, but by all appearances, the North Koreans have not.  In spite of fielding a few impressive large weapons platforms, they're at best a 1970s vintage Soviet style army in terms of equipment, and a 1920s style Soviet army in terms of the manpower base making up the army.  Should the North Korean army actually tangle the with the modern South Korean army, the results would be disastrous for the north.  In spite of that, however, the appearances are begging to suggest that they really don't know that.

South Korean army compound, 1987.

Prior to the fall of the USSR, the North Koreans had been able to rely upon the Soviets and the Red Chinese to back them up, both economically and militarily.  In other words, the economic impact of a completely failed system was relatively minimal, given the subsidization of the other two major Communist countries; and there was little risk of the North having to really pay militarily for any blunders it might make.  Economically, however, that day is long gone.  With the collapse of the USSR, North Korea is having to more or less pay its own way in the world.  It still gets some  help, but only some, from the PRC, which was never completely comfortable with North Korea in the first place, as it seemed a little too close to the USSR in some ways. Economically, the Chinese aren't helping the north much, in spite of the fact that an economically depressed North Korea is creating a Korean illegal immigrant problem in Manchuria, as desperate North Koreans cross the Yalu into China.

And the China of 2013 isn't the China of 1953.  Communism fell in the USSR, where it got its start, in 1990.  In China, it morphed.  This may be hugely significant for how this story might play out.

China of 1953 was a Maoist state, not quite Stalinist, but no better and varying only, really, in that it was lead by a different brutal Communist dictator.  In some ways, the People's Re public of China remained more communist, longer, than the USSR, but like the unnaturally Communist Slavic empire to its north, the unnatural Communist state to its south no longer is really a Communist state.  It's not a nice regime either.  It's a dictatorship of a type, but not really a Communist one.  It more closely resembles the clerical dictatorships (dictatorships of clerks, i.e., professional bureaucrats) that broke out in some European states mid 20th Century.  And China is open for business.  Indeed, China is dictating business.  It's not really capitalist, but it isn't Communist either.

 Tank retriever of HHB, 3d Bn, 49th FA, Wyoming Army National Guard, 1987.

The dictatorship in China will fall, ultimately, but for the time being its politburo is a ruthlessly pragmatic, expansionist, entity. And it doesn't benefit from a nuclear armed Stalinist state being next door.  It doesn't benefit from the U.S. having a military presence on the Korean Peninsula either.  And it sure wouldn't benefit from the resumption of the Korean War.

It would, however, benefit from a reunited Korea, as long at that Korea was friendly to it, and open to business for it.  It likely doesn't care what kind of government that Korea has either.

 

Bus garage, Seoul, 1987.

South Korea, for that matter, would still like to reunite with the north, although that view is passing as a generation of South Koreans raised in peace and prosperity looses connections with their cousins to the north.  For those who would reunite Korea, that era is passing, and the best time to accomplish it is now.  Otherwise, the disparity in economics and, more significantly, culture may have grown too great for a younger generation of South Koreans to really look upon reunification with much enthusiasm.

 

 Seoul, 1987.

Finally, truth be known, the US would probably be happy to leave South Korea, if it could.  Indeed, we came close to doing so once before, during the Carter Administration, but Congressional reaction kept it from happening, probably wisely. Since that time, in fact, we've had to act on more than one occasion to make it plain that we would come to South Korea's defense, if the North attacked.

Only Japan really has a strong interest in keeping the United States on the Korean Peninsula.  Neither the Chinese or the Koreans like the Japanese, and the US presence there is comforting for Japan, which is pretty nervous about recent developments on the Asian mainland as it is.

 Howitzer battery, U.S. Army, South Korea, 1987.

8in Howitzers of the 3d Bn, 49th FA, Wyoming Army National Guard, in South Korea, 1987.

8in howitzers of the 3d Bn, 49th FA, in a cabbage field, South Korea, 1987.

That's all why I suspect that not only are the North Korean threats childish bluster, or more accurately a childish tantrum, but that this may work out in short order.

We'll see, but my suspicion is that China will act to replace the Korean leadership shortly.  That could happen in any number of ways, but if I were the "Dear Leader" I'd be nervous about accepting any invitations to visit Beijing in the near future.  At any rate, it'd be an easy matter for the PRC to send Kim Jong-un into retirement, followed by a the rise of a friendly military dictatorship. That dictatorship would likely be prearranged to be very brief, with the leaders looking forward to retirement at some plushy villa in southern China.  Prior to that, they'd be the heroes by opening the border and indicating that the days of Korean division were over, and that the ROK could come in and take over.  That my sound farfetched, but we saw it with Germany, in which the Communist East Germany folded itself into the Federal Republic of Germany.  Soon after such a reunification, we'd likely go home, our presence no longer needed or desired.

From that, China would get a neighbor that wasn't run by a nuclear armed baby, and it'd get a neighbor with a robust free market economy.  South Korea would reunify with the north prior to developments making that undesirable, and the United States could end a lengthy expensive overseas commitment that serves only a singular goal, rather than a global strategic goal.  China would also get us off the Asian mainland, which it'd likely like to have done.  It would amount to sort of the Finlandization of Korea, but I suspect that everyone, except Japan, would be happy to have that occur.

Your humble blogger, in South Korea, in 1987.

Railhead: Arminto Wyoming

Railhead: Arminto Wyoming: This is what is left of the sidetrack at Arminto Wyoming, and of a hotel along the rail one, which was located where the grove of trees stands.

I've just linked in two threads from my companion blog, Railhead, dedicated to railroad topics, which depict some things long gone by. This is one of them. This thread depicts Arminto Wyoming.

Arminto is a very small town in Natrona County Wyoming. So small in fact that I once had the odd experience of talking to a FedEx tractor trailer driver who stopped when he saw my me and my brother in law herding cattle north of Arminto. He was trying to deliver something to Arminto, and had driven right through it, not knowing what it was. People driving through this area today probably have next to no idea that this very tiny town is a town, or that it was ever economically significant.

But it in fact once was.

Arminto was the busiest sheep shipping railhead in the world in the first half of the 20th Century. More sheep were sent to market through Arminto than any other place on the globe.

I suppose the partial lesson in that is that economic endeavors that seem so significant at one point can certainly evaporate. Arminto's economic significance certainly has. Sheep no longer are shipped from its railhead. The railhead itself lacks pens. There is no longer hotel, which there once was. The small busy little bar burned down in the 1980s. The Sheepherders Fair, a really well attended local sheep based rodeo was moved to Powder River, and last year the last Sheepherders Fair was held. Ironically, sheep prices are up.

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Updated Entry:

The post on Railhead has brought a number of interesting replies, including one viewer, Ray Galutia, who very generously provided his own photos. As these are so interesting, and historically valuable, I'm reposting the entire Railhead entry here, and posting Ray's additional photographs here.

This is what is left of the sidetrack at Arminto Wyoming, and of a hotel along the rail line, which was located where the grove of trees stands.

While now it would almost be impossible to tell, this location once shipped more sheep per year than any other spot on earth.  It was the epicenter of the local sheep industry, and the busiest sheep shipping point on earth.  It remained a significant sheep town well into the second half of the 20th Century, but  the railhead fell into disuse when trucking took over in livestock transportation, and ultimately the collapse of the sheep industry following the repeal of the Defense Wool Incentive in the 1980s completed the town's decline.  The famous local bar burned down in this period, and today the town is a mere shadow of its former self.

More on the history of this location can be found on the entry on this topic at Lex Anteinternet.

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Ray Galutia very generously provided us with photos depicting Arminto in the  1940s from his personal collection  I'm going to link these photos, which are historically valuable, in here, and also over at Lex Anteinternet, in those instances in which the topics aren't on railroads.  There will be more of those interesting linked in photos posted there.

I'm also going to repost this entry as a new current one, given that it's been updated to such an extent.

Diesel train taking siding for a steam engine at Arminto, 1947-1949.

The location of this photograph, from 1947-1949, is actually quite close to the ones posted immediately above, except it's from a different angle looking back on the town.

 Additional photographs uploaded only here:

Parents of Mr. Galutia.

Depot and Harpers Store.

Harper's Store.

Mr. Galutia and his father on the playground of the Arminto school, which no longer stands.

Snow plow in a much more active era for Arminto.

Pumping water to a train.

Mr. Galutia and his mother.

 

 Mr. Galutia and his father on Arminto water tower.

And from Mr. Galutia's 2009 trip back to Arminto.

 Building sets where Harper's Store was located.

 Water tower and treatment plant foundation.

 Foundation of the Big Horn Hotel.

 "

My car sets approximately   where one of the section houses sat ....and the clump of tree has two  old foundations and on the hill behind the trees is where the water tower sat ....my folks section house sat directly across the tracks from the trees

 Water tower foundation.

Holding tank location.

Trout fishing on the North Platte

My father was a great fisherman.

 My father and I, at a fish hatchery, in about 1966 or 1967.

And by "great," I mean great in every sense.  He was very good at fishing.  He was patient teaching fishing (a hard thing to do).  And he loved fishing.  The one and only time I ever recall him writing to a politician followed an oil spill in the North Platte, when he felt that the Governor we had at the time was failing to do enough to have the company that caused the spill be held responsible for the situation.

My father liked to hunt as well, but fishing was a greater passion for him.  I like to fish, but hunting is much more of a passion with me.  As I grew older there were plenty of instances in which I rode along with him in the fall, so that I could hunt while he fished, and then later there were some instances in which he rode with me so that he could fish, while I hunted.  This is not to say that we didn't do both, but the strong nature of the mutually shared interests was slightly reversed in our personalities.

I fished pretty regularly up until I went to college. At that time, living in Laramie, I fished much less as Laramie, at 7,200 feet in elevation, is not great fishing country.  I fished a bit in the Laramie River, but never with much success. And I fished a bit with a friend of mine in the Snowy Range, which was much better, even if the season was pretty short, given the high altitude.  Waterfowling was better around Laramie, although it's not ideal with that.  Of course, quite a few people go big game hunting in the area.

When I came back from Laramie, after going there in two blocks, once for my undergraduate degree from the University of Wyoming, and once for my JD I started fishing in the mountains once again.  I didn't resume fishing the river, like my father had done, however, in this immediate area.  I'm not sure why, but it's probably because I mostly fly fish.  All this is by way of introduction to note that I went fishing on Good Friday with my daughter out in one of the locations that my father had frequented.

I'm pleased to note that the fishing was pretty good. We were bait (worm) fishing, and she caught a very nice Rainbow Trout.  I caught a lesser Rainbow, and added to the Rainbow that she had caught ice fishing last month, we had three very nice fish for our Good Friday dinner.  They were excellent.  So, I have no complaints about the conditions of that part of the river over the intervening 25 or so years that I'd fished there.

I also will not claim, as posts of this type are so often inclined to do, that the area had been somehow ruined in the quarter century by the infusion of a lot of extra people.  Frankly, I had expected to have a hard time finding a spot to fish, given that it was a day that a lot of people have off (one of the very few non civil holidays that is frequently observed as a day off).  There weren't that many people fishing from the side of the river at all.  Only one party was in the immediate vicinity, and that would have been normal at any time that I've fished it.

What did catch me way off guard, however, was the incredible volume of drift boats.

Drift boats either didn't exist, or they didn't exist locally to much of an extent, when I last frequented the river.  Indeed, "fishing guides" didn't exist either.  Now they do in profusion.  For that matter, "catch and release" didn't exist as a local concept either.  Up on the mountain streams, where I normally go, they don't exist to me, as I don't run into hardly anyone, so all that was an introduction into the evolution of modern fishing.  For lack of a better word, and without meaning to insult, I might note that its sort of the yuppiefication of fishing, or perhaps the gentrification of fishing.  

When I learned to fish as a boy, fishing wasn't a "sport" as people sort of imagine it now.  Indeed, neither hunting or fishing were, or frankly at their essence now, are "sports."  They're activities of a much deeper nature than that.  When a person hunts or fishes, they're really engaging in a type of work that's the most basic and natural for humans, of which there are  a bare few.  That's probably what drives the impulse in people to do them, and for those who do not, there remains, in spite of what they might want to tell themselves, the same basic instinct, for which they find some, probably inadequate, substitute. 

Because of that, in this locality, at that time, there was something much more primeval, and perhaps much more genuine, about fishing.  People were happy to catch a nice fish, but we ate them.  Indeed, people let fish go, but they were generally small fish that were too small to eat. The entire catch and release thing that some people engage in now didn't exist, and to me it still seems very strange.

The idea of a guide for fishing also seems very strange to me.  Fishing would be something that people would know how to do, and not need a guild for.  While we were fishing the other day, the kids and I observed as a party of fishermen with a guide went by, with the guide offering casting advice.  They noted that a fish jumped up right behind them, unobserved by them all, while they were being so guided, which they found amusing.  I do not begrudge the guilds their occupation at all, it just seems odd to me.

My rude primitiveness is probably reflected in my gear at that.  I haven't bought any new fishing gear for myself in at least 30 years.  My father had a lot of nice fishing stuff, but not massively expensive stuff, and I'm still using it.  What we would have regarded as "nice" would probably horrify some now.  Indeed, I went through a store a few months back to look at rods and was stunned by the price. Granted, these were in a store featuring Orvis rods, but still, I was amazed.  A person can, however, get much cheaper ones that are still quality.

And they are very nice too, I might add.  I have bought rods and reels for my kids, and they're great compared to the old stuff I've been using.  I was using a fiberglass rod that was first rate when my father bought it, probably 30 or more years ago, but it's not anywhere near as nice as the carbon rod I bought my son for a quite reasonable price.  I may need to go out and upgrade.  Indeed, I'll apparently have to, as I found over the weekend that I couldn't find my spinning rod.  I think I may have actually broken it last year, but at any rate, I have no idea where it is, if I still have it.  The reel was pretty busted up and the rod pretty darned old, so this is really no great loss.  I'll be looking at buying an Ugly Stick, which is what my son's nice rod is, which I used on Good Friday and really liked.

Anyhow, my point is not to complain about the evolution in fishing, or about the guides. Actually, I'm glad that the river is now seen as an important resource of that type, and I'm happy that there are people who can make a living from fishing.  And I have no doubt that much of the new gear is pretty darned good, and that my old rods and reels are antiquated and now in need of some updating.  The disappearance of my spinning rod (or actually rods) is probably a blessing.  But I am a bit concerned about the gentrification of something that's so basic in origin.  At some point, that's bad.  

Fly fishing in particular seems to have acquired a certain snottiness in some quarters.  I have no idea how that occurred.  This wasn't the case, at least locally, when I was younger, and frankly I don't recall it being the case in general until after the move A River Runs Through It.  That film is a great film, but it seemed to ironically inspire a certain class of fishing elitist.  I note that its a true irony, as the fly fishing culture depicted in the film was simply the rural culture of the entire West well into the 20th Century, and frankly in a lot of it right up to now.  The film, after all, depicts two brothers from modest means for whom fly fishing (the only kind of fishing depicted in the film) is a major activity.  Lots of people from around here, of all backgrounds, experience the very same thing.  But following the film there came to be a certain high end fly fishing "sport" view that is a bit snobby about other types of fishing.  There's even at least one local lodge that offers fly fishing tours for out of state fishermen.

That sort of Balkanization and elevation of the elite, in an endeavor such at this, is a bit disturbing.  The older generation of fishermen, myself included, did every kind of fishing.  I have always preferred fly fishing, but that's because I like mountain streams.  My father was a great fly fisherman, but he was a great fisherman in general.  We also used spinning reels with bait (worms) and lures.  One of my uncles, another great fisherman, always had boats and it was a great treat to go out on the lakes with him in the summer and troll.  In other words, fishing, like food, is for everyone.  Or at least it should be.

Today In Wyoming's History: April 1

Today In Wyoming's History: April 1: 1918  It was reported that  by this day, for a period dating back to December 1, 1917, Wyoming's revenue's from oil royalties had increased 74%, an impact, no doubt, of World War One.

Riding in, in Yellowstone, in 1933.

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The Yellowstone River begins outside of the park to the southeast where the North Fork of the Yellowstone and the South Fork of the Yellowstone meet. The North Fork is the larger of the two and begins on the slopes of Younts Peak in the Absaroka Mountains southeast of the park. This man sits on this slope in September of 1933.

 From the Yellowstone National Park Facebook page.

Territorial Farriers in the Royal Artillery, World War One

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Critical support troops during the First World War, I wonder how many of these farriers occupied this vocation in civilian life as well?

And, I wonder where they were 20 years later, say in 1938?

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Wyoming One Room Schoolhouse

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A matter of prospective

Observation by Army officer Thaddeus H. Stanton, about the Powder River Basin, in April 7, 1876, as published in The New York Tribune:

The country lying east of the Bighorn Mountains, along the Rosebud, Tongue and Powder Rivers, is extremely uninviting.  It is generally a badlands country, with high buttes of indurate clay and sandstone, attaining almost the magnitude of mountains.  But in this entire region there are no auriferous strata, and no rock harder than that above described.  I feel compelled to make this statement in opposition to the statements of many maps of that country which are being scattered throughout the land, upon which gold  is represented as among the minerals to be found in the Panther and Wolf Mountains (the highest badlands buttes above described), and where there is not only i no gold, but where the country has not a single gold-bearing strata or feature.  The Bighorn range of mountains, one of the finest on the continent, doubtless is rich in precious metals and this region is large enough to give room for a large mining population.  The Black Hills country does not compare with it in extent, and probably not in the amount of concealed treasure.  But between the Black Hills and the Bighorn Mountains there is no gold, and no gold-bearing country. Neither is there any land that would bear the hardiest grain or vegetable.  There is no timber worthy of the name; and water is scarce and of bad quality usually, and grass is poor and thing.  Altogether, nearly the entire region lying south and east of the Yellowstone River, from the Bighorn range to the Black Hills, is utterly worthless.

Major Stanton's opinion seems a bit harsh.

Sequestration and the courts

From this morning's Denver Post:

U.S. District Court in Denver won't hold hearings and trials in criminal cases on Fridays between April 26 and Sept. 30 this year because of furloughs made necessary by sequestration budget cuts.

My goodness, what an odd development.

Sequestration was supposed to be the hammer that was to keep Congress from ending in a budgetary impasse, but it didn't work.  Lots of pre deadline Executive Branch commentary, which frankly was overdone, failed to move very many people and the public reacted with a big yawn.  So far, much of the commentary has been on nobody really noticing, but here's something that some people will notice to be sure.  It's odd to even think of a weekday closed to criminal proceedings.  I'm a bit skeptical that they'll be actually able to hold to that, given the probably resulting delays, but this is definitely a noticeable item.

Wyoming State Capitol, 1910

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Wyoming Stock Growers Association, April 7, 1914

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Excellent photo of stockmen in their dress clothes.