Overheard on retirement

I've written about retirement and the history of retirement here more than once.

This is one of those threads that was started off in draft a long time ago, several months actually, and then never finished. At the time it was started, I'd been present when a person employed in my field, but not yet of Social Security age, made a comment in frustration over something about retiring, and another lawyer present dismissed it out of hand, even though that lawyer is even closer to that age, with a "oh no, now let's not talk that way".  It surprised me.

Since that time, I've encountered a bunch of additional talk about retirement in various circles, which may be because I'm in my middle, middle, 50s, and maybe that's when you start to hear about that. For that matter, to my huge surprise, some lawyers I personally know, whom I've always thought were about my age (maybe they're slightly older) are in fact retiring.

I have no close personal experience with retirement.

My father didn't live long enough to retire.  He was 62 years old at the time of his death, having made it I suppose to minimal retirement age, but he was hanging on with the intent to make it to 65.  That's always the advice all the retirement folks give you, based on what are some faulty assumptions, not the least being that you'll live to age 65 or appreciably beyond it.  He was pretty clearly ready and wanting to retire, however, and was talking a bit about it.

Indeed, he'd been talking about it for at least a few years prior back into my final university years.  By that time I think he was pretty clearly burned out from working, which he'd done since he was very young, and was slowing down physically.  Indeed, the scary thing there is that in some ways our two lives follow the same pattern in some things, which very much diverting in others.  In terms of ways they parallel, he'd been working from a very young age, which I've also done, as he was employed at least part time since his mid teens, and I have been as well (my early teens actually).  While he never ever complained about it, he also had lived a pretty hard life as his father had died when my father was just out of high school and that put my father into the full adult world with all its responsibilities very early.  For me, my mother had been ill for years and years, which took quite a toll in other ways and while not as dramatic as the story for my father, it had a similar impact.  That is, compared to some others, but only in some ways, I sort of went from my early teens to my quasi adult years and skipped over the teenage ones, sort of.

Given all that, he was getting worn out.  While still in school I suggested to him that he ought to retire, even though he was still in his late 50s at the time, just a little older than I am now.  I told him at least once, and perhaps more than once, that he didn't need to worry about me, and I could take care of myself.  He should take care of himself, and go ahead and retire.  He didn't.

Of course, it's easy when you are in your 20s to imagine that people in their 50s can retire, which isn't really the case.  Probably a part of that was a sense of responsibility, which was highly developed in my father, that he couldn't retire as I was in school, which is something I worried about at the time.  But then my mother's illness was likely also a major factor.  He no doubt felt he had to make it to full retirement age given all the factors he was faced with.  He did not.*

His father didn't either, dying in his 40s.

And his father's father did not as well, although he died in his 80s.  He was multiply employed during his life, being a part owners in a store and also a post master.  At some point he became a city judge, accordingly achieving a judicial career aspiration of mine that I'm not going to achieve.  In fact, he recessed a case early for the noon break as he wasn't feeling well and then went home and died.

Of course, that's only part of the story of my ancestors and that's unfair, as your maternal great grandparents are just as much a part of your story as your paternal ones. The point is, I don't have any recollections, like some people do of "when my grandfather retired" or "when my father retired". Both of my grandfathers were dead before I was born and neither of them lived into their 60s (my mother's father was 58 when died).  My father didn't live long enough to retire either.

So perhaps that means I don't appreciate the nature of retirement and why a person wouldn't retire.

Or perhaps I appreciate it more.

I'm not old enough to retire myself, now being two years junior to the age of death of my maternal grandfather, but I'm old enough to hear the conversations about it and listen to them. Indeed, that's true of anyone making into their 40s.

In my case, however, I'd started hearing about them in my 20s, as I was a National Guardsmen.  Retirement is a draw of being a Guardsman, or at least it was then, in the oilfield depression of the 1980s.  Lots of men, and we were mostly all men in those days when combat, and we were combat arms, was the role of men, were unemployed or underemployed at that time and the Guard provided desperately needed cash, just like deer and antelope season put meat on the table.  As a lot of those men were Vietnam veterans and had at least two, if not more, years of military service in prior to joining the Guard, and they'd been in the Guard for awhile, reserve retirement was something that was really on their minds even if they had to wait age 60 to draw it, which most of them were not anywhere near being able to do.  Hard times made retirement pretty real to them.  It was only vaguely real to me, as I was in college and had a long ways to go before any such thing could be the case for me.

Well that's no longer true, which makes my presence as a silent third party in topics about retirement a different sort of thing than it was earlier.  And I have some distinct views.

One thing that really surprises me quite frankly is the degree to which people accept the common advice about keeping working once you can retire, or even have a stated desire to never really do so.  I'm not telling anyone to retire and as I'm not at retirement age as it is, or Social Security retirement age, any opinion I have on that sort of things is not really fully informed.  But one thing that's really struck me in regard to it is how many people simply assume that they're going to retire and then be perfectly okay for enjoying life while not working or, alternatively, that they'll be fine to keep on at occupations that were physically or mentally taxing for people in their 20s, 30s, and 40s, when they're in their much older years.

Many things won't work that way.

Indeed, for most, at least to a degree, they don't.

People who track human happiness, or perhaps just the happiness of Americans in general, sometimes note that the elderly are the happiest demographic, which is not only true, but frankly sad.  By and large their daily struggles are over, and by and large, given the glass and steel and cubicle world that we've made, and the abandonment of structures that gave life meaning, most people frankly aren't very happy during their long working years.  That in and of itself has to make a person wonder why all the advice exists not to retire.  Statistics year after year paint a very grim view of American working culture in psychological terms. Telling people to suck it up and keep on keeping on may not be the best advice.

It might also not be because once a person hits 50, and frankly for men it's 40, things become dicier health wise all the time.  People are generally in fairly good health in their 20s and 30s, but things begin to catch up with them soon thereafter.  If you are in any group of men in their 40s you'll be shocked to see some who look twenty years older than that and others who look twenty years younger.  Injuries, genetics and daily living catch up with people.

As just such an example, this past week (this was written on September 23), the state bar circulated the news that a lawyer in Cheyenne had died, and in looking it up, I saw that she had died of a cerebral hemorrhage at age 50.  Not old.  This can be caused by a lot of different conditions, including an injury.  But it can also be caused by high blood pressure and other things that you genetic makeup may predispose you to.  In that case, generally if its detected early enough, you'll make it into a longer life.  An aunt of mine who had high blood pressure, for example, made it into her 90s, whereas my grandfather, who also did, didn't make it so long and passed away in his 40s, as earlier noted. The key there is that it was detected in his case at an age that they couldn't really do anything about, although frankly he was heavy and that no doubt didn't help things at all.

Anyhow, that's just one such example.  I'm in pretty good shape in my mid 50s but I'll note that a friend of mine who is the same age about walked me into the ground during sage chicken season.  Keep in mind on that we both walked for miles, so it's not like I made it a few yards and stopped.  But the point here is that he's in really good shape, and that's in part due to his work, which keeps him that way.

In contrast, a couple of colleagues I vaguely know are at the point where they're a physical mess.  There's a variety of reasons for that but if I were to hear that they were physically incapacitated or died, it wouldn't surprise me at all.  Lifestyle, in those cases, is clearly an element.

All of this deals with people in their 50s, not their 60s. The 50s are the decade where you really start to pay the piper for the dance.  By the 60s the bill is really coming due in spades.

And this doesn't really take into account things you just can't do much about but which hit some people anyhow.  Women who had no warning will develop breast cancer irrespective of their never having smoked and the like.  Men will start developing prostate cancer simply because they're men.  Other rarer forms of various diseases hit people without warning and without known cause.  And all of that just deals with physical ailments.

For some the more dreaded diseases, the ones of the mind, really start to come in during their 50s or even their 40s.  That's fairly rare however.  But by the late 60s that's less and less true.  Not everyone gets them by any means, but when Americans talk of retirement and the "I'm going to work until my 70s" talk comes out, its as if nobody ever is so afflicted.

Indeed, not do those ailments rob many people of their old ages, but directly and in terms of vicarious impact (being married to somebody in mental decline is no treat), it's a problem that's so significant that it ought to be addressed in terms of not "when will you retire" but "you must retire".

Ronald Reagan was 70 years old when elected President, which was seriously regarded as quite old for the office at the time.  Since that time the United States has come to entertain increasingly older and older Presidents.  Reagan, according to those who knew him well or who have studied him, was an extremely intelligent man who affected a lesser intellect in the same way that Dwight Eisenhower had earlier in his career.  Nonetheless there's some fairly serious speculation on whether Reagan's dementia had manifested its onset during his second term.

The United States to date has been extraordinarily lucky that it has not yet had a President or a Supreme Court Justice who clearly suffers from dementia.  We will sooner or later if we continue to believe that simply occupying those offices makes a person exempt from being afflicted.  The Supreme Court is particularly remarkable in this regard in that the occupants of that court are often ancient.  The recent health problems of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg give a really good example of how, sooner or later, there's going to be a real disaster on the bench.  In her case, her afflictions were physical and not mental, but any rational person has to concede that, absent a change in how the court is staffed, sooner or later some justice is going to be afflicted with dementia and its not going to be caught until its fairly severe.  Even at that, it's almost certain that the Justice's staff will work to conceal it until its simply not capable of being concealed.

Woodrow Wilson exhibited a slender body form that's the more or less modern metro ideal, but his health was horrific.  Suffering from high blood pressure, Wilson had suffered his first stroke in 1896 and would have subsequent episodes prior to his debilitating stroke of 1919.  Wilson was 63 years of age at the time of his last stroke and had suffered his first when he was 40 years old.

This is a good argument for retirement to occur in certain occupations, particularly public occupations, prior to the potential ravages of time taking effect, although it isn't the only reason to have a mandatory retirement age in some occupations. Just taking that on in and of itself, however, a good argument can be made that in certain occupations, an out date should probably be mandated as to avoid the "Apres Moi, la deluge" type mentality that some acquire after long service.

Charles de Gaulle who couldn't conceive of a French republic without himself being there.  A vigorous man his entire life, he departed life suddenly at age 79, just two years after leaving office.  He predicted the "deluge" following his retirement, but it didn't come.

That's basically what we see at the Supreme Court level right now, and its surprisingly common with people in all walks of life.  People come to the view that at some point they're completely indispensable.  However, very few people really are.  In odd circumstances, and perhaps in a small handful of jobs, the opposite is true.  But it's exceedingly rare.

Mentally vigorous, but physically frail, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is now occupying one of the most powerful positions in the United States at 86 years of age, twenty years after the conventional retirement age.  She's occupied the seat since she was 60 years old.

Indeed, examples to the contrary abound.  And not only do they abound, a person who self occupies that indispensable position can in fact hurt the very institution that the imagine themselves critical to.  Let's call it the Eamon De Valera Effect.

Eamon De Valera, who was the Irish Prime Minister from 1937 to 1959, and then President of Ireland from 1959 to 1973.  He died two years after leaving office at age 92, having left office at 90 years of age.

De Valera was a force in Irish politics before there was a modern Ireland.  Self appointing himself the Irish "President", recalling the term for the American head of state, during the Anglo Irish War, he went on to be an unyielding voice for Irish Republicanism and a central figure in the creation of the Irish Republic.  He was the country's Prime Minister for twenty-two years before stepping up, so to speak, to the role of head of state which he occupied until he was 90 years old.  He was a giant of Irish politics.

He also wasn't a George Washington of Irish politics who saw the need to step down and his own views came to so dominate Ireland that much of the country's current flirtation with flippancy may be put at his doorstep, or tombstone if you prefer.  An extreme conservative in many ways, he created an agrarian state with a special relationship to the Church that the Church itself attempted to prevent but yielding to in the end.  His view that he was indispensable to the Ireland he created may in fact have been somewhat correct, but that has proven to be a problem.  By dominating Irish politics for so long, Ireland was not allowed to really evolve into a more modern state earlier on, which it would have done in a way which likely would have accommodated its culture and religion more fully.  De Valera's refusal to go helped freeze Ireland in place for decades with the predictable result that when change inevitably came it came in a radicalized and ignorant fashion.  De Valera would have done his country a huge favor if he'd retired upon reaching that age.

And that's the real risk those who imagine themselves to be so important run.  Nobody lives forever, and by insisting that you control until nature determines you will not doesn't prevent a changing of the guard, it delays it, and delays it in a fashion which precludes it being done well. The United States Supreme Court has become the absolute poster institution for that fact.  With no mandatory retirement age, Justices now serve into their extremely advanced age, well beyond the era of their appointments, and either attempt to time their retirement such that they will be replaced with somebody they more or less approve of, or they simply determine to occupy the position until they die.

Justice Anthony Kennedy, a disappointment to conservatives, seems to have reached back towards the President who appointed him in terms of choosing to retire when he did.

The entire process accordingly subjects the entire country to constant turmoil at the Supreme Court level, a turmoil that's gotten worse as the country has become increasingly politically divided. It's also caused the dead hand of prior Presidents to be remarkably present many years after their original appointments.  The recent retirement of Justice Kennedy gives a good example of that.  Kennedy was appointed by Ronald Reagan and, in spite of not having been the conservative justice that was hoped for, it seems that he cast back towards the politics of his appointer in scheduling his retirement.  In contrasts, Clinton appointee Ginsberg seems to be holding on until somebody more like Clinton is in office, assuming that she simply doesn't choose to depart when called to the final docket.

That all pertains to important public offices, of course, so a person can logically argue that doesn't have much to do with conventional employment.  And they'd be at least partially right.  But there is something to it.  An individual in a private institution can become as ossified as one in a public one, and the ravages of time are every bit as present.

As an example of that, years ago I was working on a contractual matter in which it was clear that something odd was going on with the other lawyer.  When we gathered for the closing, it was clear that he'd become completely senile. His longtime secretary was doing the real work, Edith Wilson fashion, and doing it fairly well.  But it wasn't quite right, and the explanation for that became clear at that point.

Edith Wilson, President Wilson's second wife (his first predeceased him).  She effectively operated as President while Woodrow Wilson was debilitated due to a stoke.  Fortunately for the country, she did a good job at it.

That is an extreme example,, but many others abound. Finding examples of institutions in which an elderly figure holds on when he shouldn't are fairly easy to find.  Family businesses of all types, in which a founder brings his children into them and then won't yield to their decisions, are particularly common, often leading to the end of the business when a frustrated child simply chooses to quit.

Outside of that, i.e., debilitation and limitation coming into play for those not retiring when they can, there's also a certain sadness necessarily associated with the "I'll keep working" point of view that's hard to escape.

We all as children have very broad interests.  That continues through our teen years and early 20s, but the impact of work and the "occupational identify" tends to operate to destroy it or bury it in a lot of people.  People who when young had a wide variety of interests drop one, then another, then another, until by the time they are within a decade or so of retirement they've stripped all their interest down to work.  If you run into the friends of your youth and ask them about some activity they did when younger the reply "oh. . . I haven't done that for years" is a common one.  Indeed, if they have an outside interest its often one that's frighteningly associated with their occupations, either as an auxiliary way of doing business, an activity directly associated with it, or worse of all, an activity that was designed to drown it out at all costs.  Young men who had been outdoorsmen in their youth are found, forty years later, maybe golfing, watching over mock juries, or drinking.  Not a good development. For quite a few, work is all that's left.

Not all, of course.  Not by other means. But one thing about retiring is that it gives a person a chance to do those things, perhaps, again.

It also gives a person the chance to exercise what may have been a secondary vocation, or even their primary one. Their "calling", so to speak.

Just recently here I wrote about Norman Maclean, the author of A River Runs Through It.  I have a second post in the hopper regarding Maclean that I may, or may not, finish, dealing with the fact that his published writings all come late in life.  Indeed, they came after he had retired as an English professor.  My thought was that, to a degree, that was a tragedy, particularly as he left a selection of long worked upon but unfinished work.

But what that doesn't completely acknowledge it is that writing is really hard work. At least good writing is.  People who write are working at writing and its taxing.  People who write at history, moreover, or historical fiction, are not only writers, their researchers.

This has become increasingly obvious to me as I'm not only a lawyer, I'm a writer.  I write here constantly, of course, in part because I'm a compulsive writer, but in part because writing a lot hones your skills at writing. And not all writing is the same, although the more you write for a wider audience the more all of your writing begins to be of that type.

Anyhow, as a writer who is employed full time, indeed who has two jobs, I'm like Maclean.  I'm not getting my writing completed.  I may well have to wait until I retire, assuming I live that long.  But that's the point.  Maclean likely didn't finish his works written while he as a professor because he was working.  They had to wait.  People who have that auxiliary vocation, or even primary one, that are suppressed due to the need to work take that vocation with them to the grave if they never retire or retire too late to exercise it.

And there are a lot of those sorts of things.  For example, in my state there is or was a Catholic Priest who didn't take up that vocation, which he had all along, until he was retired.  In that time period he'd been married, raised a family, and become a widower.  At that point, he sought leave to enter the seminary and take up a calling he'd heard in his youth but never heeded.  Indeed, remarkably, both he and one of his children were priests at the same time.  A well known local lawyer did something similar to that when he retired from the law and became a rabbi.

Some time ago I read of an instance in which a Canadian man whose father had been a career Canadian Army officer entered the Canadian Army in his 40s.  The Canadian Army still allows for that and he'd always wanted to be a soldier, but life had interrupted his goal.  He finally acted on it, after leaving his civilian employment.  Locally a retired investment broker works enthusiastically at a fishing tackle store as fishing was always his real passion.  A bull testing I was at a while back had an ancient man who was assisting as a lab tech for the veterinarian, who turned out to be his son.  It was his chance to be outdoors around animals.

I can't say, except in the case of public servants, that anyone "must" retire.  Ultimately, that's an individual choice.  But I really question where societal pressure operates against it.  "Work a few more years" presumes you have those years when you might not.  "I don't ever want to retire" suggests that maybe you've forgotten your other joys or are afraid to have to face life without the roar of work.  Time moves on and we don't get it back.  For some, working until the grave or until quite close the grave may be their real joy.  But for most it won't be and pondering something else, if they can, should be done.

*And then I took over in that department, although my mother had revived a bit in my father's very last years.

September 25, 1919. Reporting on what had occurred and not knowing what was occurring.

On this day in 1919 Wyoming's newspapers reported on President Wilson's speech in Cheyenne the day prior. They commented, largely accurately, on it as well.

One of the Cheyenne papers reported the Cheyenne crowed as "cordial".  But that was perhaps a politic way of saying polite yet reserved. The other paper was likely more on the mark when it noted that a large crowd had gathered, but that crowd hadn't reacted with enthusiasm for Wilson's speech.

It would be worth noting that Cheyenne was the home of Wyoming Senator F. E. Warren, who was a prominent Republican Senator.  Wilson was, therefore, campaigning on hostile ground to a degree.

One Cheyenne paper noted that the President was weary.  He was.

From Cheyenne he went on to Pueblo Colorado.  During a speech there, he collapsed.  His speaking tour was over and the train commenced back to Washington D. C. with a little bit of a secret revealed.  The President was not a well man.

Boarding a train elsewhere, German citizens who had been interned in the United States during the war were being sent home.  Sent home with a new set of clothes from the looks of it.

Pax Americana and the Middle East

Royal Saudi Air Force F3 Tornado.

As it becomes increasingly more likely that Iran had a role in this past week's drone strikes on Saudi Arabian oil production facilities which resulted in a 5% reduction in the world's oil supply (albeit at a time in which that doesn't matter much) the question has increasingly become, what will the U.S. do about that?

Note that it doesn't seem to be the case that people are debating whether or not the US should do nothing at all.

There are, of course, a lot of reasons for that.  A primary ones is that a strike by a rogue nation that has a long history of crossing the line in participating in wars and quasi wars outside of its own borders is hard to ignore.  Iran does more than aid its allies, including irregular allies, in the region, it directly participates in the struggles in those countries and invariably through a lens that's filtered through a very Shiia view, even if Iran's people aren't necessarily on board with such actions.  Perhaps a larger reason, however, is that a strike in this fashion on 5% of a critical resource used around the globe is impossible to ignore.

Having said that, however, there seems to be a simple assumption that the US should and will do something about this.

We're less dependent upon Saudi oil than most European nations are and than Asian nations are.  As American oil production increases, we're now a net energy (not oil) exporter.  The 5% reduction in the global supply wouldn't really hurt us if the supply was tight, which it isn't.

And Saudi Arabia is a nation which shares no values with the US whatsoever.  Iran is an Islamic republic, which is a term that has debatable meaning but which means, in its case, that Shiia clerics have a sort of an extra governmental role in the country and that it's not a real democracy.  But Saudi Arabia is a Sunni monarchy.  It's not democratic either.

Of course, Iran has had an expansive view of itself in which it has had sort of a missionary zeal, now much reduced among its population, to spread a certain sort of Islam wherever it can, and by whatever means, including violent ones, that it has.  Saudi Arabia never had that, with its founding family's alliance with a certain conservative brand of Sunnism at least somewhat for convenience.  It's goals were local, and it ceased being expansive in the 1920s.  That does make it distinctly different.

Be that as it may, it has a military and that military has an air force.  And that air force is a good one.

The Saudi army is a tiny one and real questions exist about its ability to do anything much in the case of a real war.  It never has had to fight one on its own, and it's likely not accidental that its army is small.  A standing army is a threat to a monarch.  Iran's standing army did nothing to aid the Shah when he fell, basically taking the Hindenburg/Ludendorf option when that time came.  Egypt's standing army deposed its monarch and still basically runs the country over 60 years later.

But Iran's army isn't all that great either and at this point, frankly, there are likely real questions about its loyalty.  And Iran and Saudi Arabia do not share a border.  Iran can make trouble for Saudi Arabia with terrorist forces, which Saudi Arabia no doubt knows and which is likely part of the reason that the desert monarchy is taking a role in the Yemeni civil war.  So while Iran can make things worse for Saudi Arabia, it's not holding back all that much now.

And Iran doesn't really have much of an air force. It's had a hard time getting modern aircraft since the Islamic Revolution and therefore while it has military aircraft, it's really frozen in time with them and has a hard time maintaining the aircraft it has.

The long and the short of that is that Saudi Arabia can undoubtedly hit Iran from the air and there's not all that much Iran can do about it.

But due to the Pax Americana, it won't, and we likely will do something.

Saudi Arabia is not, contrary to what pundits will claim, our "ally", at least in a formal sense.  There are unspoken arrangements, to be sure, however.  And since 1945, or perhaps really since 1941, we've decided that there are certain things that our allies shouldn't do, or our clients shouldn't do, or that we'd rather other countries not do, so we do them ourselves.  We're not the world's policeman, to be sure, but perhaps more the world's ranger, or sheriff, or something.  Maybe just the local bodyguard in other ways.

Anyhow, as part of that, it's interesting to see that everyone is so acclimated to the concept that the question isn't, "will Saudi Arabia strike back?", but will we?

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September 19, 2019

A couple of interesting developments in this story today.

The first links back to something I mentioned above, more or less. The New York Times has an editorial headlined We Are Not The Saudi's Mercenaries.  In other words, it's up to the Saudis to do something about this situation, not the U.S.

Other headlines keep noting that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo stated that the attacks were an "act of war".  He did, but the way he said it gives rise to how the press can be accused of inaccurate reporting, at least in headlines.  Pompeo actually said it was an act of war upon Saudi Arabia, and specifically noted that the Iranian backed strikes was upon that country.  That strongly suggests that the US was noting the strikes as an act of war, which if Iran launched them directly, it definitely is.  But his further remarks suggested an effort to push Saudi Arabia to act or at least that the US regarded the strikes as an act of war upon a friendly nation.

That may very well be a predictor on how this will play out.  Something will happen, but it may not be obvious to us what it is.  Saudi Arabia has been strongly opposed to Iran for decades, but it has never shown an inclination get into a war with Iran, or any major Middle Eastern power, and it's unlikely to do so now.  By noting that it was an act of war upon Iran, the US may be indicating that it will support what Saudi Arabia does, but that shouldn't be taken as a signal that the US will necessarily be the country that takes action.  Indeed, President Trump, while he has talked tough on Iran, has been pretty openly reluctant to take military action against it where prior Presidents of both parties might have been.

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September 20, 2019

Iran's foreign minister declared yesterday that if the United States or Saudi Arabia strike its territory there will be "all out war".

If any more proof was needed that Iran's self isolation has reduced some of its government to being dangerously deluded in a "we only listen to ourselves" sort of way, this would be it.  You can't really launch an air strike, by any means, including by proxy, and not be aware that this is itself an act of war.

It seems increasingly likely that Saudi Arabia will be taking the lead in a response and that there will be one.  Iran's action seem to bizarrely be done in the belief that by attacking Saudi Arabia people will be convinced to deal with it as its a dangerously armed nation having a temper tantrum.  It's sort of like a drunk trying to get admission to the bar by smashing a window.

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September 24, 2019

Germany, the United Kingdom and France yesterday proclaimed their certainty that Iran is behind the recent drone strikes on Saudi oil production.  Iran dismissed the charge claiming that if it had been, the destruction would have been much more complete.

At this point there seems little doubt that Iran's behind the action in one fashion or another. The question therefore has become what shall be done, and who shall do it.

September 24, 1919. President Wilson in Cheyenne.

The Cheyenne State Leader lead with Wilson's arrival, also noting that the first vote didn't look promising for the League of Nations.

On this day in 1919, Woodrow Wilson, touring in support of the Versailles Treaty arrived in and was greeted by the City of Cheyenne.

The Laramie Boomerang noted the President had in fact been in Laramie and at about the time it had predicted the day prior.  But he only remained in town for ten minutes and chose not to make a middle of the night speech.

He was in Laramie first, where he did not speak. But he did acknowledge the crowed in the early morning hours.

Cheyenne gave the touring President a big welcome, as had other cities he'd been in.

Casper's paper got the time wrong.  Note the use of Simplified Spelling for Cheyenne, which was a movement at the time.

Wilson was only 63 years old, but he looked older, worn down by the the burdens of his Presidency, and this schedule was grueling and soon to prove too taxing.

His next stop was Pueblo, Colorado.

September 23, 1919. Trips and foreign lands.

President Wilson, travelling on the Union Pacific was planning stops for Wyoming towns along the way, and the press was reporting on them a day ahead of his scheduled arrival.

Wilson, as we've noted here already, was making a hectic tour across the United States in support of the Versailles Treaty.  On this day, he delivered speeches in Ogden and Salt Lake City Utah, before traveling on to Wyoming. The Laramie Boomerang noted it, with that "1:50" time being 1:50 a.m., very early in the morning.  In other words, after leaving Utah, he was traveling through Wyoming in the evening and nighttime hours.

One of the Cheyenne papers noted that children wouldn't be allowed at the event.

We haven't checked in on the world scene here for awhile, and we'd note that while President Wilson was touring in support of a treaty that he was confident would end wars, wars were raging, including a war in Turkey. The Red Cross was still active there.

"On the road - Sept. 23, 1919 - near Kurds' camp after being fired upon--Col. beeuwkes attending the sick".  LoC title.

And while the President was away, Congress remained in session.

Arizona Senator  Henry F. Ashurst.  I don't know much about Ashurst but I've linked this both for the reason that the photo was taken on this day in 1919, and for the dress he is affecting.  It's common to depict Western Senators dressed in a Western fashion, and Ashurst here has affected a fairly typical and even modern style of cowboy hat to go with his Edwardian suit.  Note the extremely high waistline however, and the stiff collar.

While Woodrow Wilson was traveling, Walt Wallet was cleaning up due to the recent Gasoline Alley gang camping trip.

A look at early truck hauling:

Truck used in logging.

Given that this truck would not have had hydraulic brakes, the through of making this drive is truly frightening.

True law is right reason in agreement with nature,

True law is right reason in agreement with nature; it is of universal application, unchanging and everlasting; it summons to duty by its commands, and averts from wrong-doing by its prohibitions. And it does not lay its commands or prohibitions upon good men in vain, though neither have any effect on the wicked. It is a sin to try to to sic alter this law, nor is it allowable to attempt to repeal any part of it, and it is impossible to abolish it entirely. We cannot be freed from its obligations by senate or people, and we need not look outside ourselves for an expounder or interpreter of it. And there will not be different laws at Rome and at Athens, or different laws now and in the future, but one eternal and unchangeable law will be valid for all nations and all times, and there will be one master and ruler, that is, God, over us all, for he is the author of this law, its promulgator, and its enforcing judge. Whoever is disobedient is fleeing from himself and denying his human nature, and by reason of this very fact he will suffer the worst penalties, even if he escapes what is commonly considered punishment.

Cicero

Perceptions of the devout.

It is too true that I who write about the devout life am not myself devout, but most certainly I am not without the wish to become so, and it is this wish which encourages me to teach you. A notable literary man has said that a good way to learn is to study, a better to listen, and the best to teach. And Saint Augustine, writing to the devout Flora, says, that giving is a claim to receive, and teaching a way to learn. 

St. Francis de Sales, the Patron Saint of Writers.

Sunday Morning Scene: Churches of the West: Alma Temple, Denver Colorado

Churches of the West: Alma Temple, Denver Colorado:

Alma Temple, Denver Colorado

I know absolutely nothing whatsoever about this structure, or about the the institution that apparently owns it.  It belongs, apparently, to a Protestant group that maintains a radio station in addition to some sort of services.  The structure has an obvious Greek Revival style and was built in 1923.

Best Post of the week of September 15, 2019.

Best posts of the week of September 15, 2019

It's allergy season again. . .

The 2020 Election, Part 2

The 2020 Wyoming Legislative Session. The early committee efforts.

Sidebar: Confusing fiction for fact

The election north of the border. The 2019 Canadian Election.

Blog Mirror: Front Port Republic: The Forgotten Conservative Value: Wilderness

Front Port Republic:  The Forgotten Conservative Value: Wilderness

Blog Mirror: Once A Cowboy, Always A Cowboy: The History of Homecoming at the University of Wyoming

Once A Cowboy, Always A Cowboy: The History of Homecoming at the University of Wyoming

Some things throw back.

Note:  I have a lot of old threads I started, but never posted.  The ship has sailed on the topics for a lot of them, so they're just going.  But this one didn't have any text.  I'm not sure if I ever intended that it did.

Anyhow, a modern Royal Enfield motorcycle painted by the Indian manufacturer to look like a motorcycle in World War Two service.  I wonder how it would actually do in rough country?

Lex Anteinternet: September 19, 1919. President Wilson visits San Diego (and President Trump a century later).

After I posted this item yesterday:

Lex Anteinternet: September 19, 1919. President Wilson visits San D...: President Wilson arriving at the U. S. Grant Hotel in San Diego, California, Sept. 19, 1919 On this day in 1919, President Wilson was...

It was pointed out to me that President Trump was at the U.S. Grant hotel in San Diego yesterday.

Which I hadn't been aware of.

I'm not sure what it says about me that I was aware that Woodrow Wilson had been there a century ago, on that day, but not the current President.

Scenes from September 20, 1919.

Veterans, Chilton, Wisconsin, Sept. 20, 1919

Potomac Boat Club, September 20, 1919.

Burk-northwest extension, September 20, 1919.

ZZ Top-La Grange Gayageum ver. by Luna

The White Stripes- Seven Nation Army Gayageum ver. by Luna

Bob Dylan-All along the watchtower Gayageum Luna ver.

Creedence Clearwater Revival-Have You Ever Seen The Rain Gayageum ver. b...

September 19, 1919. President Wilson visits San Diego.

President Wilson arriving at the U. S. Grant Hotel in San Diego, California, Sept. 19, 1919

On this day in 1919, President Wilson was in San Diego promoting the Versailles Treaty.

Today In Wyoming's History: Sidebar: Confusing fiction for fact

Today In Wyoming's History: Sidebar: Confusing fiction for fact:

Sidebar: Confusing fiction for fact

One of the things that's aggravating for students of history is the way that popular portrayals botch the depiction of the topic of their interest or interests.  Sometimes this is mildly irritating, and sometimes colossally aggravating.  This is just part of the nature of things, which doesn't make it any less aggravating, and this is just as true of Wyoming history and the depictions of Wyoming and its citizens as it is with any other topic.  I suspect that the residents or students of any one area could say the same thing.

Before I go further with this, however, I should also note that this blog is very far from perfect, and I don't mean to suggest otherwise. As a daily catalog of Wyoming's history it's doing okay, but even at that, it isn't anywhere near as complete as it should be, and with certain big events in Wyoming's history its grossly incomplete.  A blog of this type should allow a person to follow a developing story as it plays out, and so far, for the most part, this one doesn't do that, that well, yet.  It certainly isn't up to the same standard that the World War Two Day By Day Blog was before it sadly, and mysteriously, terminated on September 24, 2012.  It'll hopefully get better with time, and it's doing okay now, but it is an amateur effort done with very limited time, so it isn't as complete as it should be yet.  We can hope for better in the future, of course, and it is better this year as compared to last.  We can also hope that it gets more comments in the future, which would assist with making it more complete.

Anyhow, while noting that, it's still the case that there are a lot of aggravating errors and depictions out there.  Maybe this blog can correct a few of them, although with its low readership, that's pretty doubtful.  And people cherish myths, so that operates against this as well.

What motivated this is that I was doing a net search for an update of a recent entry here and hit, through the oddity of Google, a website devoted to the movie Brokeback Mountain, which I have not seen.  I'm surprised that there's a fan website devoted to the movie, which of course I have not seen, as I'm surprised by any fan movie site.  A movie has to be of massive greatness, in my view, before I can imagine anyone devoting a blog to it.  Say, Lawrence of Arabia, or a movie of equal greatness. There probably aren't a dozen movies that are that good.  

Anyhow, if a person wants to devote a blog to a movie they really like, but isn't one of the greatest movies of all time, that's their business, but there is a difference between fact and fiction. And the reason I note the site noted is that there's a page on the site the one I hit debating the location of the Brokeback Mountain. The blogger thought it was in one place, but cited author Larry McMurtry for another location.

Well, McMurtry notwithstanding, there is no Brokeback Mountain. The book and movie are fiction.  It makes no more sense to say that some mountain is Brokeback Mountain than it does to say that the Grand Tetons are Spencer's Mountain, unless the point was intended to be that some backdrop for a film was a certain identified location.  If that's the case, i.e., identifying an actual location, I get it, but that's not what they seemed to be debating.  I don't think the film was actually filmed in Wyoming, although I could be mistaken and perhaps some background scenes were (although I don't think so).  Of course, if I am in error, I'm in error, in which case they're trying to identify a location they saw in the film, and I'm off base.

Along these same lines, when the film Unforgiven came out, I went to see it.  The movie was getting a lot of press at the time, and it was hailed as great.  It isn't.  It's not really that good of a film frankly, and I didn't think it was at the time.  I think it was hailed as great as a major Western hadn't been released in quite some time, and it starred Clint Eastwood.  Eastwood has been in some fine movies to be sure, but he's been in some doggy Westerns also, and this one, while not a dog, wasn't great.

At any rate, while watching that film, I recall a young woman asked her date, several rows in front of me, where the town the film depicts, Big Whiskey, Wyoming, was located.  I thought surely he'd say "there isn't one," but, dutifully he identified its location, essentially morphing Whiskey Mountain, a mountain, into the fictional town.  Whiskey Mountain is a real place, but Big Whiskey, the town, is a complete fiction.  It doesn't even sound like the name of a 19th Century Wyoming town.  I don't know of any Wyoming town named after an alcoholic beverage, or even a beverage of any kind.  For that matter, I don't know of any named for anything edible or potable, save for Chugwater.  In the 19th Century, the founders of towns like to name towns after soldiers if they could, which gives us Casper, Sheridan, Rawlins, Lander and probably other locations.  

While on the topic of fictional towns, there's the fictional characters in them.  Big Whiskey, in the film, was ruled over by a well dressed tyrannical sheriff and a well dressed tyrannical Englishman, if I recall correctly.  Tyrannical sheriffs are popular figures in Western movies, and in recent years they're well dressed tyrants.  In quite a few films the tyrannical sheriff is the ally of a tyrannical (probably English) big rancher.

In actuality, sheriffs all stood for election in those days, just as now.  They often had a really rough idea of what law enforcement entailed, but they did not tend to be tyrannical.  They tended to be grossly overworked, covering huge expanses of territory.  They also probably didn't tend to be snappy dressers.  While some of them had been on both sides of the law, quite a few were Frontier types that fell into the job for one reason or another, like Johnson County's "Red" Angus or Park County's Jeremiah Johnson (the famed mountain man).  Sheriff's of that era tended to spend days and in the saddle without the assistance of anyone and often tended to resort to gun play, which average people did as well, but they did not tend to be agents of repression.  If they were, they would loose office pretty quickly.  Probably one of the better depictions of a Frontier lawman is the recent depiction of Marshall Cogburn in the Cohen Brothers version of True Grit.

The tyrannical local big rancher thing is way overdone as well.  The reason that there was a Johnson County War is that the old big landed interests were loosing control so rapidly, not because they were retaining it.  Films like Open Range, or Return to Lonesome Dove, which depict people straying into controlled territory are simply wrong.  The cattle war was more characterized by an ongoing struggle than Medieval fiefdoms.  There were some English and Scottish ranchers as well, but there were big interests that weren't either.  And the both sides in those struggles formed interests groups that involved lots of people, rather than one big entity against the little people, contrary to the image presented in Shane and so many other films.

As part of that, one thing that these period films never seem to get correct is that the West was a territory of vigorous democracy.  Yes, in Wyoming large cattle interests tried to squash the small ones in Johnson and Natrona Counties through a shocking armed invasion, but they also had to content with the ballot box. When things went badly for them in the Invasion, the legislature briefly turned Democratic and Populist.  Newspapers were political arms in those days as well, and they were often exceeding vocal in their opinions.  Their opinions could sometimes be shouted down, or crowded out, but the concept that some English Duke would rule over a vast swatch of territory unopposed is simply incorrect.  More likely his domain would be subject to constant carving up and the sheriff was less than likely to be in his pocket.

While on the topic of films, the way that characters are depicted, visually, is very often incorrect.  In terms of Westerns, to a large extent, films of the 30s and 40s depicted characters the way that film makers wanted them to look, films of the 50s the way that people thought the viewers wanted them to look, films of the 60s reflected the style of day, and so on.  It wasn't until the 1980s, with Lonesome Dove, that a serious effort was made to portray 19th Century Western figures the way they actually looked, with a few really rare exceptions.  Shane, which I otherwise do not like, did accurately portray the visual look of a couple of characters, the best example being the gun man portrayed by Jack Palance. Why they got that one correct, for the region, and few else, is a mystery.  The older film Will Penny did a good job in these regards.  The Culpepper Cattle Company is very well done..  In recent films, the film Tombstone was very accurate in terms of costume for the region it was set in, so much so that it received criticism for the odd dress styles it depicted, even though they were period and location correct.  Modern Westerns tend to botch this if set in Wyoming or the Northern Plains, and are almost never correct in these regards.

Hats get very odd treatment in this context.  From the 20s through the 30s, hats were fanciful in film, and didn't reflect what people actually wore.  In the 50s, the hats that were then in style were shown as being in style in the late 19th Century.  Only recently have historical films generally been correct, and they still hit and miss on films set in the present era.  A lot of movie makers can't tell the difference between Australian drover's hats and real cowboy hats, and would probably be stunned to find that a lot of cowboys look like they did over a century ago, to a large extent.

The expanse of territory is also routinely inaccurate in old and new depictions.  Film depictions of Wyoming either seem to think that Wyoming has the geographic expanse of Alaska or, alternatively, Rhode Island.  Distances seem to be rarely related to the period in which they are set, with some depictions set in the 19th Century seemingly thinking that a town was always nearby, while ones set now seemingly thinking there isn't one for a thousand miles.  Expanses in Wyoming are vast, but the state is not Alaska.  Conversely, ranch and farm geography isn't grasped at all, and frankly its forgotten by most Wyomingites, in a historic concept, now.  Up into the 1930s there were an increasing number of small homesteads, meaning the farm and ranch population, throughout the West, was much higher than it is now.

Probably the single worst depiction of modern geography, geography in general and ranch geography, is the horribly bad film Bad Lands, a fictionalized account of a series of events that actually mostly took place in the Mid West but which ended in Wyoming, in reality.  In that film the teenage murderers are shown driving across the prairie and there's actually an absurd line about being able to see the lights of Cheyenne in the distance in one direction and some extremely far off feature to the north.  In reality, you can not drive a car, any car, across the prairie as the prairie is rough and cut with gullies, ravines, gopher holes, etc.  And there's a lot of barbed wire fences.  The thought, as the movie has it, of driving dozens and dozens of miles straight across the prairie is absurd.  Not quite as absurd as being able to see Cheyenne's lights from a safe vast distance away, however.  Cheyenne sits in a bit of a bowl in the prairie, and if you see its lights, you are pretty close, and if you are driving across the prairie, pretty soon you're going to be entering some ranch yard or F. E. Warren Air Force Base.

One of the best depictions of geography, however, comes in McMurtry's Lonesome Dove, which does get it basically correct, and which the film gets basically correct.  In the film, the cattle are driven across arid eastern Wyoming, which is actually correctly depicted as arid.  Film makers like to show Wyoming as being Jackson's Hole.  Jackson's Hole is Jackson's Hole, and while it is very beautiful, and in Wyoming, it's darned near in Idaho and most of the state doesn't look like that.

On the topic of land, a really goofball idea depicted in many, many, current depictions of Wyoming and Montana is that you can go there and buy a ranch. No, you cannot.  Well, if you have a huge amount of money you can, but otherwise, you are not going to.  In spite of this, films all the time have the idea that people will just go there and buy a ranch.  One episode of Army Wives, for example, had an episode where a Specialist E4 was going to leave the Army and buy a ranch.  Baloney.  Buying any amount of agricultural land actually sufficient to make a living on in the United States is extremely expensive, and you aren't going to do it on Army enlisted pay.  Specialist E4 pay wouldn't buy a house in a lot of Wyoming.  Part of this delusion is based on the fact that in Western conditions the amount of land needed to make a living on is quite large and Eastern standards, which most people have in mind, bear no relationship to this in the West.  Out of state advertisers sometimes take advantage of this ignorance by suggesting that people can buy a "ranch" in some area of Wyoming, by which they mean something like 20 to 40 acres.  That isn't a ranch in the working sense of the words by any means in that there's no earthly way a person could make a living ranching it ,or farming it, or even come anywhere close to making a fraction of a living wage.  I've run into, however, people on odd occasion who live very far from here but believe that they own a ranch, as they bought something of this type site unseen.  In one such instance a person seriously thought he would bring 100 cattle into a small acreage that was dry, and wouldn't even support one.  This, I guess, is an example of where a mis-impression can actually be dangerous to somebody.

On ranching, another common depiction is that it seems to be devoid of work.  People are ranchers, but they seem to have self feeding, self administering, cattle, if a modern ranch is depicted.  Ranching is actually very hard work and a person has to know what they are doing.  Even if a person could purchase all the ranch land and all the cattle they needed to start a ranch (ie., they were super wealthy), unless they had a degree in agriculture and had been exposed to it locally, or they had grown up doing it and therefore had the functional equivalent of a doctorate in agriculture, they'd fail.  This, in fact, is also the case with 19th Century and early 20th Century homesteads, the overwhelming majority of which failed.  People who had agricultural knowledge from further East couldn't apply all of it here, and often had to pull up stakes and move on.  And, often missed, it took a lot of stuff to get started.  One account of a successful Wyoming 19th Century start up homestead I read related how the homesteader had served in Wyoming in the Army for years, specifically saving up his NCO pay and buying equipment years before he filed his homestead, and he still spent a year back east presumably working before he came back and filed.  J. B. Okie, a huge success in the Wyoming sheep industry, worked briefly as a sheepherder, in spite of being vastly wealthy, prior to coming out well funded to start up.  Many of the most successful homesteaders, but certainly not all, had prior exposure to sheep or cattle prior to trying to file a homestead.

On erroneous depictions, one particularly aggravating one is when films attempt to depict what they think the regional accent is.  There is a bit of a regional speech pattern, i.e, an accent, but it's so rarely done accurately that it shouldn't be tried.  For the most part, native Wyomingites have the standard American Mid Western accent, but they tend to mumble it a bit.  That sounds insulting, but it isn't meant to be, and Wyomingites are so attuned to it, as are rural Coloradans and Montanans, that they generally cannot perceive it.  I'm from here, and no doubt I exhibit that accent.  Most people don't recognize an accent at all, and it takes a pretty attuned ear to be able to place it, although some people very definitely can.  I can recall my father having told me of that having occurred to him on a train in the 50s, and I've had it happen once in the 1980s.  In my father's case, the commenter noted that he must be from one of the Rocky Mountain states.  In mine, I was specifically asked by a fellow who had worked for the Park Service for decades if I was from the West Slope of Colorado, as many park rangers were and I had the same accent.  Most Wyomingites, at some point, probably get a puzzled question from somebody about where they are from that's accent based, but the questioner never reveals that.  It's a regional accent, so the best a person can do is tell that you are from rural Colorado, Wyoming, or Montana if they know what the accent entails, or that there even is one.  Film makers, who must be aware that there is an accent, occasionally try to insert one in a modern Western, but when they try it they present a bizarre laughable accent that doesn't occur anywhere on the planet.  Years ago, for example, there were advertisements on television here for the Laramie Project, which is another film I haven't seen, and which I couldn't have watched due to the horribly bad efforts an accent that the filmmakers were attempting. We do not drawl.  We speak more like Tom Brokaw, but perhaps with a bit of mumbling that we don't recognize as mumbling.

I've read that Irishmen find American attempts at an Irish accent hilarious.  Some English attempts at an American Mid Western accent are really bad.  Our accent here is fairly rare, and there's no way that they're going to get it right, and they ought not try.  By not trying, they're closer to the mark.

The Castle Walk by Vernon and Irene Castle (1915)

Jenny on the job: Home was never like this

We've been running the Jenny on the Job series of U.S. Public Health Service posters recently.  I don't know quite what to make of this one.

My guess is that this is supposed to be a workplace lavatory.  Over the years, in the places I've worked (and given that I've worked in the same place now for 30 years, I'm recalling lavatories of the past and not the present) I've worked in a few places that were downright funky.

In contrast, some places I've worked had lavatories that were immaculate. 

The basic point raised is a good one.  It is important to keep public facilities clean.  Apparently this was enough of a problem early in World War Two that the Public Health Service felt that they had to have Jenny comment on it.

Blog Mirror: Royal Hats

Royal Hats

Title says it all I suppose.

Weaponized Drones and Wyoming Oil

In the Clancy book Red Storm Rising an Islamic terrorist in Russia starts the globe off towards World War Three by sabotaging the oil terminal in which he works.

In 1941, the Japanese, cut off from American oil, launched attacks that brought the United States (and Japan) into World War Two.

In 1973 the OPEC nations, upset over American support of Israel in the Yom Kippur War, embargoed the shipment of oil, making a weakened American economy spiral into inflation and wrecking the economy for half a decade.

Of course, the first item noted is fiction, but well studied fiction. The second two are history and, to add to it, the 1941 event boosted oil production in Wyoming, which was already being boosted by the September 1939 event, the German invasion of Poland which started the Second World War in Europe. The 1973 event resulted in a massive boom in Wyoming.

This past weekend an attack was launched on Saudi oil process facilities. They were carried out by ten drones.  They were so effective that they'd destroyed, on a no doubt temporary basis, 5% of the world's oil output.

What does that mean?

Well, maybe, indeed probably, less than we might suppose.

To start off with, let's just look at the impact. The attacks pushed the price up, but not because they'll result in an oil shortage. There's an oil glut right now and American production remains so high that the real economic impact is at best muted.  It pushed the price of oil up to $63.00/bbl, which is over the Wyoming economic viability line, but still only barely.  Oil back a couple of decades ago was well over $100 bbl.  In 2008 at one point it spiked up to $145 bbl. We're a long ways from that.

And because of the oil glut, we probably won't be seeing a massive rise in price any time soon.

Now for the second part.  And that may impact things. Who is responsible for this Middle Eastern drone Pearl Harbor?

Well, it's still being debated.

Saudi Arabia is fighting in the Yemeni civil war, along with the UAE, against Houthi rebels. The rebels took responsibility for the attacks and at a bare minimum, my guess is that the Houthi were at least made aware of it at some point, perhaps after it occurred, and at a bare minimum were happy to take responsibility. 

The war in Yemen hasn't gotten much press here, as nothing that happens in Yemen does.  Yemen is a backwards state on the Arabian peninsula that has oddly been prey to the twists and turns of global movements in various ways.    It was divided into two states following the British departure in which South Yemen, which the British had controlled, becoming a Communist state, showing the influence of the Cold War in the third world at the time.  North Yemen became a monarchy. The two countries did not get along and fought, but in 1990 they united in a troubled republic that has more or less been in a civil war since that time.

The war is along tribal and religious lines, with the Houthis controlling most of what had been the former kingdom in the north.  Most of them are members of a branch of the shiia sect of Islam.

Which is why the Saudi's likely don't want them to win and are backing the government.  Iran is backing the Shiia's, not surprisingly.

The Houthi's, as noted, claim responsibility. But the flight path would be 1,000 kms. That's a lot for rebels that are fighting with a lower level of military technology.  It's not impossible, and it could be accomplished with a fair amount if Iranian help, of course.  And they have used Iranian built drones before.

Or perhaps the Iranians pulled it off themselves, which is what the U.S. is claiming.

The Saudi's aren't claiming that.  Perhaps that's because they're not sure. And perhaps because that does seem extraordinarily risky, even for Iran. A drone strike is a clear act of war that can't be ignored.  If its the Houthi's, the Saudis are already fighting in that war and a dramatic air response will be likely. 

If its the Iranians, the Saudi's might choose to view it as the Houthi's, particularly if the strike was launched from Yemeni territory.  Iran taking a direct role in regional wars from inside the territory of the warring nations isn't anything new at all, and even though this would be a dramatic escalation of it, it would have a precedent and therefore the response would as well.

If, on the other hand, if the drones were launched from Iran, that's another matter.

My guess is that they were launched from Yemen with a lot of Iranian technical assistance.  That will mean that some Houthi positions are going to get completely blasted off the face of the earth.  It might mean that the Saudis will simply invade the Houthi region, which they are perfectly capable of doing, and then turn it over the to government, after which a lot of Houthi rebels will never be heard from again.

But that's not the only possible outcome, and some possible ones would have a big impact on the price of oil.

It's interesting to note, in all of this, that John Bolton is now gone.  His absence probably helps to prevent one of those other options from becoming immediately in the forefront.

September 17, 1919. The 1st Division Parade in Washington D. C.

On this day in 1919, the First Division paraded in Washington D. C.  Gen. Pershing lead the parade.

The day, by act of Congress, was a legal holiday in the district.

President Wilson, whom we'd normally expect to be at such an event, was in Oakland California touring in support of the Versailles Treaty.

. . .as we were saying, on newspapers. . .

the local paper is now over $200.00 for twelve weeks.

I've always subscribed.  My parents did before me.  I'm still in the old school where I feel an obligation to get the local paper.

But over $200.00 for twelve weeks?

There is a point at which papers can price themselves out of the market.  If I'm pondering dropping the paper there can't possible be a party left alive who is strongly devoted to getting it.

I'm really pondering dropping it.  I feel an obligation to be locally informed, but right now most of the people I know, including highly educated professionals, no longer subscribe.  And at that price, I might cease to.

Unpublished

As I've noted before, almost all of the blogging here occurs in the wee hours of the morning.

What's I've noted a bit is that a lot of posts get started but not finished.  Indeed, just before typing this out I weeded unpublished posts down from 265 to 188.

188 is still a lot of posts I've started but not finished.

Blogging is an avocation, not a vocation, so it's not really a big deal, but as one of those posts that I'm going to try to up here soon notes, I'm working on a books and perhaps that's a sign that I ought to get at that and use the wee hours more productively.

Which might be a bit easier now to some degree. We're not going to stop blogging, but a really careful observer will note that the now nearly daily update from a century ago has stopped.  It'll resume from time to time (we have the legendary 1919 World Series coming up), but the events I was tracking on a daily basis; the Punitive Expedition, World War One, and events of the immediate post war have ceased.

Given all of that, some of the 188 old posts that are lingering here will start to get published.  It likely won't be noticeable, as I've always posted on every topic known to man anyhow, while trying to keep focused on events prior to 1920 which were designed to assist (and have) in background for a novel I'm working on.  I'm a fast typist and a bit of a polymath, and this will continue to reflect that, no doubt.

But the daily newspapers have really thinned out.

And, speaking of newspapers. . . .

It's allergy season again. . .

and I'm one of the afflicted.

I've had allergies, occasionally severely, almost all of my life. They really became an unrelenting feature of my existence at about age 12 or so.  At that time some of them were indeed quite severe, and I've written about that elsewhere on this blog.

One of the oddities of my allergies is that one of them is to sagebrush, which is a fall pollinator. That a person who is an outdoorsman would have that allergy is one of life's troublesome ironies.  Other people with an allergy like that would move some place else, but not me.

I didn't have that allergy when I was young, which means its an adult acquired one.  I came home from my second stint at the University of Wyoming with it.  In other words, it's something I developed in law school.  The University of Wyoming is in Laramie which is situated in a high plain over 7,000 feet in elevation. The area has very little sagebrush and something about being away from it for three additional years caused the allergy to develop.  Or so's my belief on the situation.

When I came back from UW not only did I have an allergy to sagebrush, it was severe.  That didn't stop me from fall activities but it has made a lasting impression.  I finally had to resort to allergy shots to address it, and it considerably abated.  Just recently I've done that again, as we acquired a dog and I'm allergic to dogs as well.

Last  year I managed to go through the season without much of an impact.  My wife, who does not suffer from allergies, was impressed and arrived at the conclusion that I must be okay now.  I knew better.  This year it's back.  So far its mild, but its there enough to notice.

Which means that I've took some of the over the counter allergy medications this past weekend.

I don't care what the bottles or advertisements say, all of those medications impact me.  I had nearly forgotten one of those impacts until last night and was a bit concerned until I recalled.

The one I always remembers is that Claritin, which isn't the one I took this weekend, sends me into a crashing depression.  As it always does that, I'm alert to it, which makes you non depressed.  I.e.,. as soon as I feel really blue after taking it, I remember that of course I do, I've taken Claratin, which makes me non blue.  Odd, I know, but true.

The other thing these medications all do is make me incredibly tired.  Not tired while I'm out in the sticks, but as soon as I get home, I'm done for.  On Saturday I went up to the high country and hiked a long ways in very difficult country while blue grouse hunting.  To be honest, I noticed that I was walking, as things went on, at a slower pace than normal.  When I came home I was really tired and by 7:30 I was struggling to stay awake.

My wife kept asking, "Is everything okay?".  I finally gave up and went to bed.  I'm not a night person anyhow, but 7:30 is early enough to be concerned.

For one reason I just had some blood work done and for the very first time ever, my "bad" cholesterol was about the recommended limit.  I was really surprised, but it's only barely above the level it should be and I'm pretty certain that I can get it down and that the test may have only been an anomaly.  But that does stick in  your mind, and here it's 7:30 and I'm super tired.

Sunday, after Mass, I went back out in a different location.  As its still warm I have my Jeep windows off and was sniffling the whole way.  When I got home late afternoon I was extremely tired, but I was also experiencing allergy related symptoms and it dawned on me. The medication.  I didn't get so tired so early in part because I became engaged in a new Ken Burns documentary, but the relationship between the two, combined with sleeping in this morning (5:45) makes it pretty obvious.

The funny thing, I suppose is that my spouse is stunned and concerned that the allergies are back. Somehow or another she really convinced herself that the shots cured allergies. They don't.  Every time she asked over the past year the question "can you still tell you are allergic to dogs?" I honestly answered "yes.".  She just didn't want to hear that answer as I tolerate our dog pretty well, but I can tell I'm allergic to the poor thing.  One time last winter in asking it I grew a bit exasperated and answered "Yes, I keep telling you that" when one of our kids was present and she said "well you said the opposite". That offspring chimed in "no he didn't, he always says he is", which was deflating to her.  But that's the truth.  At least normally its so mild, and I don't wrestle with him or anything, that it doesn't matter much.  But in combination with the sagebrush, it's more than enough to be a problem.

Oh well, a problem that's seasonal in nature and hopefully over soon.  At least it's not some sudden new ailment I haven't lived with my entire life.

I really wonder what people did when these things couldn't be addressed medically at all. And that wasn't that long ago.

150 Judicial Appointments. Is that a lot?

One of President Trump's tweets this past week, which showed up on my Twitter feed, noted that he'd had 150 judicial appointments approved.  That is, the Senate has confirmed the appointment of 150 Trump nominees to the Federal bench.

By and large I think one area the Trump administration has done a good job is in judicial appointees. True, not all have been great, but that's the case for ever single President we ever have.  One of the current U.S. Supreme Court justices, by a prior President, is was a supremely poor choice in my view.

Anyhow, is 150 appointments a lot? The news has been treating it like a lot and conservatives have been regarding it in that fashion as well.  So if we go back and take a look, how does it really measure up.  I'll color code it by party as well, but in doing so use the color scheme that's the global norm rather than one thought up by somebody badly in need of a historical education at some television network.

Let's go back one century and start with Woodrow Wilson.

Wilson, two terms.  79.

Hmmm. . . not that many.  But then his predecessor Taft had 58 in one term, and Theodore Roosevelt only 76 in 1.75 terms.

Continuing on. . .

Harding:  53.

Coolidge:  73.

Hoover:  68.

Franklin Roosevelt:  207.

207 in four terms?  Wow.

Of course, the country had less than half the population at the time and only 48 states.

Truman:  140

What on earth? 

There's some back story to that, but I don't know what it is.  Roosevelt, in almost four terms, had only 207, and Truman, in a little over one term, 140.  That's odd.  It'd suggest that the Senate might have been sitting on a lot of nominations for part of Roosevelt's administration or that he was dong other things.

Eisenhower:  182

Hmmm. . . a definite trend going on here.  Eisenhower had 182 in two terms.  He was the first President of a 50 state union, but that wouldn't have added that many seats to the bench.

Kennedy:  125.

Johnson: 176.

Nixon:  235.

Nixon, at that time, was only the second President in American history to appoint over 200 judges to the bench.  But he did it in less than two terms, not four.

Ford:  63.

Well, Ford wasn't around long.  But the fact that he did 63 would suggest that Nixon would have surpassed 300 appointments but for Watergate.

We had locally a Ford appointee on the bench up until quite recently.

Carter:  262.

I hadn't realized that Carter had appointed that many judges to the bench.

Reagan:  402

Nobody has come close to Reagan since. That was a massive impact on the Court and Reagan takes the prize for the all time most appointments.

It's worth noting, however, that while Reagan was the first modern conservative President and remains a conservative hero, a couple of his Supreme Court appointments were disappointments in regard to their conservatism.  Sandra Day O'Connor has been much celebrated as the first woman appointee, and she was a solid justice, but she wasn't reliably conservative.  Anthony Kennedy was a real disappointment.  The lesson here is that conservative Presidents don't necessarily appoint conservative judges.

Some would say that there in fact not real philosophically conservative judges on the U.S. Supreme Court at all. There definitely are philosophically liberal judges.  There are judicially conservative judges, but that isn't the same thing at all.

G. H. W. Bush:  197.

Quite a number for one term.

Clinton:  387.

Nearly as many as Reagan.

Clinton was an odd President and while he was hated by the GOP, he was in fact a very moderate President.  His appointees tended to reflect that.

G. W. Bush:  340

Obama:  334.

Now, what's going on here?  Something is.  It makes no sense that there were less than 200 appointees per two terms as a rule until Nixon and then it began to be the norm that there are over 200, and now 300, per two term presidency.

Trump:  150, so far.

Okay, so what's that tell us.

Well, in reality Trump is about on par for post 1960s Presidents. He isn't ahead.  If he completes two terms, which due to Democrats taking the left ward sidetrack in the primaries he's increasingly likely to, he's on course to appoint just over 300 judges to the bench, about the same numbers as Presidents Obama and G. Bush had.  Maybe, if he's lucky, he might make the number that President Clinton had.

Of course, if he's unlikely, he might make 200.

This is all due, really, to Mitch McConnell, who has done a really good job of getting appointees to the Senate.  It's one his real goals for the Trump Administration and, taken with more than a little does of cynicism, it was basically the bargain he made for supporting Trump.  There's no really strong reason at all to believe that McConnell is much of a Trump supporter, actually, but he does really care about the Court.  He knew that he had four years to try to set the course of the Court for the future.

But in doing that, has he set it much more than his predecessors?  Not really. 

There are 870 Article III Federal judges of all types on the bench.  Right now there remain over 100 vacancies.  Not doubt McConnell would like all of those filled by November 2020, which will become at least slightly more difficult to do next year.  If he succeeds, that would put Trump up at about 250, which would be a stunning number for a one term President or a President's first term.  It'd still be, however, less than half of the sitting judges.

Which is not to say that it doesn't matter.  It most definitely does.

Moral Standards

A moral standard must remain the same or it is not a moral standard.

G. K. Chesterton

Boo hiss 9th Circuit

Tuesday, September 10, 2019

Ninth Circuit Strikes Montana's Political Robocall Ban

Monday, September 15, 1919. Things educational.

Bancroft Hall, United States Naval Academy, September 15, 1919.

The Deutschland on exhibition at Yarmouth, England.

Gasoline Alley for September 15, 1919.  Others may have returned to school, but the gang remained on vacation. What's of note here is that Walt is depicted as shaving with a safety razor.  Safety razors were relatively new at the time and still coming into universal use with shavors, competing against straight razors.