Friday, September 5, 1941. Citizen Kane.

Citizen Kane, which many film buffs and film critics regard as the greatest movie ever made, or the greatest American movie ever made, was released.

Of course, whether it's the greatest is something that is too subjective to really determine, but it is a great film to be sure, and the widely held view that it is the greatest cannot be discounted.  It's certainly the greatest Orson Welles film, and Welles was a great actor and director.

The film is a fictionalized account of the life of William Randolph Hearst with Welles in the central role, as the fictionalized version, Charles Foster Kane.  The film goes from Kane's infancy in Colorado, where his ambitious mother sends him off in the care of a financial adviser after her boozy husband strikes it rich in Colorado from gold, through his early life, onto a publishing career, and into a miserable adulthood.  It's not a flattering portrayal of Kane/Hearst, although it is a sympathetic one.  Be that as it may, it was flattering in a "great guy" sort of way, but in a "destroyed soul" sort of way, and Hearst really hated it.  His papers took up attacking Welles as a result.

It was Welles first feature film, and by far his best.  It was Joseph Cotten's best film as well, although he'd show up very favorably in Twelve O'Clock High.

If you have not seen it, and you like movies, you really owe it to yourself to see it.

On the same day, the B-17E made its first flight.

The E variant of the B-17 was the first one that took on its familiar form.  It was a larger airplane than the prior variants and was designed for offensive, not defensive, warfare.  Earlier US thinking on heavy bombers was really geared towards coastal defense. The focus was now switching towards continental offensive strategic bombing.

B-17E on New Caledonia.

On the same day, perhaps illustrating the points noted above, Royal Air Force B-17s unsuccessully attacked the German ship Adrimal Speer.

Both of the times above are also discussed here:

Today in World War II History—September 5, 1941

The SS drove 1,500 Jewish residents of Pavoloch, Ukraine to the local Jewish cemetery, made them dig their own graves, and murdered them.

On the same day, as noted in the Today In World War II History item noted above, the Soviet government evacuated residents of 12 years of age and younger from the city.

Elsewhere, all over the US, troops were training for a coming war which was obviously coming for all who had eyes to see, although many still hoped it wouldn't come.

 Camp Blanding, Florida, September 5, 1941.

Labor Day, September 5, 1921. The Wages Of Sin

On this day in 1921 one of the most infamous, most misreported, and one of the most still most mysterious deaths in Hollywood history occurred.  And one that features all the things that still cause Hollywood to fascinate and repel.

The death of young actress Virginia Rappe.

Even though the critical events in the death of Rappe, then age 26, occurred at a party, where lot of people were around, what really occurred leading to her untimely death remains a mystery.  From what seems to be clear, we can tell the following.

Rappe was a guest at a party hosted by Fred Fischbach, a friend of celebrated silent movie comedian Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle.  The party was partially in celebration of a hit Arbuckle movie, Crazy To Marry.  The five reel movie was a recent release and doing well, although it is now obscure and may be in the category of lost film (I'm not sure of that).  At the time, Arbuckle was making $1,000,000 a year from films, a gigantic sum not only now, for most people, but particularly then, given the respective value of a dollar compared to now.  Arbuckle, we'd note, was married, with his spouse at the time being Minta Durfee, although the couple had recently separated.  In spite of that, it should be further noted, Durfee would call Arbuckle in later years the most generous man she'd ever met, and that in spite of their 1925 divorce, if given the choice, she'd do it all again.

Minta Durfee.

Fischback rented three hotel rooms, and, in the spirit of the times, supplied them with large quantifies of bootleg booze.  Rappe was an invited guest, and arrived with  Bambina Maude.  At the party Rappe drank a lot of alcohol.  At some point in the party it seems that he and Rappe went into room 1219 of the hotel alone, and shortly thereafter some sort of commotion occurred, Arbuckle emerged and Rappe was desperately sick.  She was taken to the hospital and died four days later from a ruptured bladder and peritonitis.

One of the hotel rooms after the party.

Arbuckle was arrested and accused of rape and manslaughter, with an essential element of the accusation being that forced sex had caused Rappe's death.

Seems, at first blush, clear enough, but it gets very confused from there.

Arbuckle maintained his innocence throughout.  He was tried three times, resulting in two mistrials, and then an acquittal.  Bambina Maude was a witness in the story, filling in lurid details, but she was later revealed to be a procurer who used that role to blackmail recipients of the favors she'd arranged to supply, although there was no evidence that she was acting as a procurer at the time of the attendance at the party.  Indeed, while there are multiple stories as to what occured, one of the versions that exists is that the room that Rappe went into was the only one with a bathroom and she went into it to throw up, going through the bedroom where Maude was having sex with a movie director. In that version, which isn't the only one, Arbuckle went in the room to carry the collapsed Rappe out. ^[1]. 

The final jury apologized to Arbuckle for what he'd been through. And, indeed, it seems fairly clear that whatever occurred between Arbuckle and Rappe, it wasn't that which resulted in her death, but rather a chronic medical condition that was exacerbated by alcohol.  It's likely her drinking at the party, which killed her.

Rappe, who was at one time regarded as the "best dressed girl in films".

Even that, however, doesn't flesh the entire tragic story out.  Rappe was only 26, but by that age was already a photographic veteran, having worked as an orphan raised by her grandmother as a model since age 14.  She had some trouble holding alcohol and was inclined to strip when drunk.  She'd been the live in with Henry Lehamn only fairly recently, to whom she'd been engaged.  According to at least some sources, which may be doubted given that they are a century old, she was freer with her affections than the norms of the time would have endorsed.

What occurred between Arbuckle and Rappe is not known and never well be and now too much time has passed to sort it out.  About as much as we can tell is that it seems that Arbuckle might have made some sort of advance on Rappe and that at first Rappe might have welcomed it.  That she was desperately ill is clear.  Her illness killed her.

This, in turn, provides an interesting look at public morals and standards, then and now.  At least some of the conduct Rappe and Arbuckle were engaging in was immoral by Christian standards, and Christian standards were clearly the public standards of the day.  Be that as it may, it's clear that in his trials, the fact that Arbuckle was doing something with a drunk woman doesn't seem to have been held against him, or at least it ultimately wasn't.  Of course, maybe the jurors didnt' feel he was doing anything with her, or even aiding her, or at least some must have thought that in all three trials.  If Arbuckle was advancing on her, it most definitely would be regarded as improper today.  Having said that, it wasn't all that long ago that "get her drunk" was sort of a joke which implied that inebriation to the point of being unable to consent was consent.

Arbuckle's career would never recover from the evening.  Perhaps, in some ways, it shouldn't have.  He wasn't a killer, but what occurred was unconscionable for other reasons. .  reasons we seemingly have managed to forget, however, over the years.  Even after his acquittal he was more or less blackballed in the industry for a time, and then when that was lifted his star power was gone.  He changed his name and made a much smaller living behind the scenes before starting to stage a minor comeback in the 1930s.  He died in 1933 in a hotel room from a heart attack.  He was 46.

Arbuckle movie poster from 1932.

It's interesting to see how this event compares to contemporary ones.  We have a person in attendance at the party who associated with the rich and famous whose role seems to have been supplying female favors (Maude), much like Jeffrey Epstein and his hangers on have been accused of.  We have a Hollywood set who lived personal lives that departed greatly from public standards, something that's still the case, although less so now as standards have declined so much, and we might have some sort of sexual contact between a male Hollywood figure and a very drunk actress (or not), something that in our contemporary culture would be a career ending event irrespective of the accusations of rape.  Indeed, accusations of rape in Hollywood, not all of which are substantiated, have become very common in recent years.

In the end it was a terrible tragedy.  People thought they were going to a party  Rappe probably knew she was drinking too much.  Arbuckle surely knew he shouldn't make advances on her.  Death came like a "thief in the night", which nobody anticipated.

On the same day, elsewhere, the League of Nations convened for the second time and admitted Albania, Austria, Bulgaria, Finland and Luxembourg.

Footnotes:

1  Yet another version, upon which a book was written asserts that Rappe had received  botched abortion that had nicked her bladder, and it ruptured when she tickled Arbuckle and he accidentally kneed her.  

Others criticize that assertion, which would by definition be based on a large element of speculation.  It seems based on Rappe having reported received something like five prior abortions in an era when they were all fully illegal.

Sunday Morning Scene: Churches of the West: First Baptist Church, Rock River, Wyoming.

Churches of the West: First Baptist Church, Rock River, Wyoming.: 

First Baptist Church, Rock River, Wyoming.

This is the First Baptist Church in Rock River, Wyoming.  The Baptist church in the tiny town was founded in 2010 and obviously used a commercial structure for its basic design.

 

The best posts of the week of August 29, 2021

Title says it all.

2022 Wyoming Legislative Session. Part I.

Defeat In Afghanistan. How It Came About.

Casper College Western History Center: Archival Needs Assessment Report

Wars and Rumors of War. 2021, Part Two.

Labor Day, September 1, 1941. Marking Targets for Death and Labor Day Addresses.

"America's longest war. . . wasn't"

What about Pakistan?

Pandemic Part 6. The Delta Surge

Some recent legal observations

Spin and Deflection.

Thursday September 4, 1941. The Greer Incident.

A blue grouse opener retrospective.

A blue grouse opener retrospective.

 

I'm missing the weekend opener for blue grouse.

I've probably missed it before, but when I did, I was almost certainly a college student.  I haven't missed it, I think, since that time.  So this will be the first time in 31 years.

I'm ashamed of that fact.

In the earliest photographs you can find of me, as a small boy, I'm wearing a cowboy hat.  Not that this is unusual for somebody my age.  We admired cowboys.  I don't know if little boys still do, but in my generation they did.  

But it was more than a passing thing with me, like being an astronaut (which I never had any desire to be) was with some others of my vintage.  When I was first old enough to drive, and had something reliable enough to make it out of town and back, the two not being the same thing, you'd find me out in the sticks as much as possible.  Fishing in the summer, or just wandering around, and hunting in the fall and winter.  By my college years, I was about as feral as could be.

Jeremiah Johnson would have, in those years, met me and have asked "geez man, don't you ever go indoors?"

And that was the center of me.  Not career aspirations or anything of the like.  It may be a major defect in my character, but I was never concerned with high dollar careers or anything of the like.  What I wanted to be was outdoors.  Preferably hunting, if not that fishing, but if not that, anything else, outdoors.

Now, it would be dishonest to say that my interests were completely singular.  Even as a very young person, I was extremely interested in history, something I inherited from my two parents. As I've noted here before, growing up in my household was like living in a graduate level history seminar, with the study of European history from the early Middle Ages through the Renaissance the specialty of my mother, and American history and post Enlightenment Europe the specialty of my father.  The historical education was both welcome and vast.  Other things that my parents knew very well, such as French on the part of my mother and mathematics on the part of my father, I took much less to, although oddly French, which didn't particularly take at the time, has snuck back in as I've aged.  I guess I learned more than I thought I did.

And that may be the reason that in my early teens I saw myself in a military service career.  Oddly, it wasn't so much the service, as the thought, really, of participating in history, and the knowledge, although it was fairly inaccurate, that servicemen worked outdoors.

By my late teens that desire was seriously waning, probably because by that time I had a better idea what military service actually entailed.  And part of what it entailed was a communal life, which I, as a real introvert, wouldn't like.

And by that time the desire to be outdoors had gone from a strong to extreme.  It's never left me.

Which is why I'm so bothered today.

Forty years ago when I was taking those first steps out into "career" I'd openly stated that I never wanted a job where I had to wear a tie (which were much more in daily use back then than now) and I'd never let anything, not job, not family, not anything, interfere with my going outdoors.

Well, 17-year-old self, you'd be pretty disappointed in me now.

I can say that safely as 58-year-old self definitely is.

Which probably seems silly.

I've worked really hard, and by external measurements I guess, really successfully, for the past 31 years. And for the nine years, or maybe eight years, prior to that I worked hard to get there, kind of.

That path was frankly a pretty meandering one.  My initial goal was to be a game warden, which I've written about before.  Then I switched to geology, not because I deeply loved it, but because I was okay at it, and it promised an outdoor life, albeit one that wasn't focused on the wild the way wildlife biology is.  In retrospect, I should have done what I first started out to do.  

Geology didn't work out due to a collapse in the oilfield and coal economy (sound familiar) and by that time law school had already been suggested to me, although I did reconsider game warden.  Where I was at, career wise, at the time would have required me to go on for a Masters degree in geology and I knew that I really didn't want to do it.  So I went to law school instead.

Now, that may not seem like the logical choice, but it actually was, at least somewhat.  Law school had first been suggested to me by Casper College Professor Jon Brady, who taught history at Casper College but who held a JD.  I don't know if he ever had practiced in the civilian world, but he had at least briefly practiced in the U.S. Navy as a JAG officer.  

I didn't know but one lawyer, one of my father's friends, and I didn't know him all that well.  I did know, however, a lot of doctors and dentists, and they were all outdoorsmen.  In some odd way, I equated that with how things must be for lawyers.

And maybe for some it is.

I became a "trial lawyer".  That something that actually didn't occur to me until very recently.  The reason for that is that I've done almost exclusively, in litigation, the defense side of civil litigation, and somehow the plaintiffs' bar has appropriated the term "trial lawyer".  I've done some plaintiff's work as well, but not anywhere near as much as defense work. That makes me, in English terms, a "barrister".  However, I do a lot of other things, so not exclusively so.  I could claim to be somewhat of a "solicitor" or "notary" in the language of other court systems, but barrister it would mostly be.

I note that as I don't know what the life of "transactional" lawyers is like, or that of criminal defense lawyers, or prosecutors, etc., is like.  I only know what the life of trail lawyers is like.

And it's pretty hard and requires a lot of sacrifices.

Maybe a lot more than other legal lines of work.  Trail lawyers give up their own time for a preset trial schedule, work long hours, and take the cause, whatever it is, above anything else.  We like to compare ourselves with such fictional characters as Palidan, but in reality we're more like World War Two Japanese infantry.  We're going there, going to suffer, going to fight in a clever fashion, and if need be, we're going to die in our trenches or in a massed Banzai charge.

It's an all absorbing career.

Indeed, for that reason, in part, I declined to go with one of my partners out for a beer in which he had invited a lawyer in a definitely different line of work that I'm wholly unfamiliar with but which I suspect isn't all absorbing.  The invite was in order to see if the fellow might wish to join us merry band of barristers, maybe.  But what am I going to say to that fellow?  My partner was clear what he was going to say.  He might make more money with us, rather than doing what he's doing.  And he was likely hoping that I'd regale the fellow with war stories, as that fellow isn't a trial lawyer either.  And every trial lawyer has a lot of war stories, myself included.  The problem is, of course, that war stories come from war, and watching Saving Private Ryan might be real entertainment, but actually landing in Normandy in June 1944 likely wasn't.

And indeed he might make more money as a trial lawyer than doing what he's doing, and he might live every freakin' second of it.  I have no idea, as I don't know him.

And he might, in a trial season, such as I am now in, work seven days a week, ten hours a day, with all that entails and implies.

Or, in other words, he might miss the opener of blue grouse season.

I know what 17-year-old Yeoman would think of that, and what he'd think of somebody who would do that.

I can't say he's wrong.

Thursday September 4, 1941. The Greer Incident.

On this day in 1941 the USS Greer chased the German U-boat U-652 for 3.5 hours before the U-boat finally fired torpedoes upon the destroyer.  The Greer then attacked the U-boat unsuccessfully, pursuing it for another 2 hours.

The presence of the submarine was made known to the Greer by a British aircraft which has sighted it, after which the Greer and two other American escorts closed on it, the Greer gaining sonar contact.  About two hours later a British aircraft attacked the submarine unsuccessfully.  Following that, the Greer continued to pursue it, expecting the arrival of a relief plane.

After about 3.5 hours of this, the submarine fired two torpedoes on the Greer, after which it went after the submarine with a depth charge run.  A British destroyer arrived but lost contact with the submarine.  The Greer then regained sonar contact and made another depth charge run on the submarine.

The matter was inaccurately reported at first in the United States as if the U-boat had simply fired upon the Greer.  An October report by the Navy to Congress in October would make it plain that the opposite was true.  Moreover, to a submarine of the era the combined effort by three surface ships to keep it submerged was a hostile act.  

By that time of the October report the Administration, declaring the German response "an act of piracy" had issued a "shoot on sight" order.  Effectively this meant that in waters patrolled by the U.S. Navy ships were authorized to attack U-boats immediately upon sighting them.  This was effectively an act of war on the part of the United States, although an undeclared one, to which Germany also did not respond with a declaration of war.

The entire episode revealed how close the US was to war already.  The Greer was effectively participating, but not shooting, in a Royal Navy effort to destroy the submarine. The U.S. was, of course, protecting convoys, so the Greer was acting in accordance with its instructions.  The U-boats ultimate reaction, having been depth charged by aircraft and pursued by a surface vessel, was not unreasonable in context, however.

On the same day, the Yankees took the American League Pennant, the earliest in the season that has ever occurred.

Sunday September 4, 1921. Replies.

On this day in 1921, Eamon de Valera replied to the British proposals for dominion status, agreeing to it but on the basis co equal to that of other dominions such as Canada, and including full union with Northern Ireland.

The first Italian Grand Prix race was also held on this day.
 

Spin and Deflection.

 From a real White House press conference.

REPORTER: "Why does the President support abortion when his own Catholic faith teaches it is morally wrong?" PSAKI: "I know you have never faced those choices, nor have you ever been pregnant, but for women out there who have faced those choices, this is a difficult thing."

Eh?

So, the logical questions, stated in full, is why does Joe Biden support abortion; 1) which his professed faith, the Catholic faith, regards as a mortal sin and which the support of which would also be regarded as a mortal sin.

Such support would require some fairly complicated and sophisticated reasoning.  Instead of that we got; the reporter isn't a woman and has never faced the choice to directly commit the mortal sin and that for (some) women choosing to commit what the Church regards as a mortal sin is personally a difficult issue.

Stringing that together, the logic would be that when a difficult choice is involved Joe Biden prefers to commit mortal sin, through his support of abortion, rather than take a publically difficult position.

Now, what could explain that.  Several things

1.  Temporal cowardice.

2.  Impaired reasoning combined with acclimation to moral mushiness through long practice of the same.

Neither of which are actually good basis for "why", even if they form the actual basis.

Or, another explanation being that Psaki doesn't know the reason and can't think of one on the spot, so she's just using the "I'm rubber, you're glue" argument so as to not have to say; "I don't know".

Blog Mirror: Dealing with "Covid Contracture"

 

Dealing with "Covid Contracture"

Some recent legal observations

LSAT Baloney Sliced Thick

I don't pay much attention to Quora, and I don't know why anyone else does either.  A lot of the questions on it are stupid, quite frankly, and the answers can be as well.

In the latter category was a recent question from some poor soul along the lines of whether only studying for a couple of years for the Law School Admissions Test was too little. Some law prof came in and said yes, and not only that, but that you had to have been studying for it basically since grade school.

Bullshit.

I didn't study for it at all and scored high on it.

I'm not the only one.  I heard of one instance in which a fellow took it (and didn't go to law school after being admitted) even though he didn't study and spent the prior night partying rather heavily.

Frankly, the test is supposed to test your ability to think logically.  If you don't have that, maybe you can train your mind to it, but studying for the test probably isn't the best way to do that.

Anyhow, study away.  Probably you should.  Most people seem to.  But you don't need to be doing it during recess at Public School 97.  

Of note, one of the Ivy League schools recently dropped the LSAT as an admissions requirement, and I don't blame them. When a test like this, which tests your mental process, is studied for, people are studying to defeat the test.  And they're probably accomplishing that to a large degree.  Hence, it no longer has any real meaning.

Out of Jurisdiction

I recently tried a case out of state.  I've done that once before, but that was in Federal court, not state court, and it was a trying experience in more ways than one. I've had other out of jurisdiction state court cases, but this is the first one that's gone all the way to trial.

One revelation was that the positions associated with the court are different, which surprises me.  Here, judges used to have a Judicial Law Clerk, who was a recent law school grad who served as a lawyer for the bench, and during trial a representative of the Clerk of the District Court always sits in the trial.  In quite a few courts the Judicial Law Clerk is now the Permanent Law Clerk, i.e. a lawyer for whom that is a career option.  A bailiff sits in the trial as well.

Where I was, however there was a "Clerk" during the trial.  We also had to hire our own court reporter.  There was no bailiff, the clerk sort of acted in that role.  On the last day, a representative of the Clerk of Court's office was there for the verdict.

I was sufficiently confused about it later that I looked the "Clerk" up, and it's clear that the clerk is a Judicial Law Clerk.  I don't know if it's a permanent position in that court or not.

It might be. The reason I note that is that in doing that I was surprised that the young lawyer had moved around in the lawyer's infant career a lot.  That lawyer has only been licensed for about two years (a little less) but had already clerked somewhere else, had been an associate with a large multi state law firm for a  year, and then had moved on to the court. 

That's remarkably different from when I was first a lawyer.  Lawyers who went on to be clerk's did it as a career move knowing that they'd occupy the position for only a year.  It was normally their very first job out of law school.  Very rarely did a practicing lawyer leave practice to become a clerk, although I do know of two who did that to become Federal clerks for a year.  There were no full time career clerks, which now are common.  Federal clerks are pretty much all career clerks, I think.  Those who entered private practice didn't leave it after just one year, and if they did leave their first jobs rapidly, it was because they went to work as public defenders and had planned on other employment to start with.

Differences in views towards employment and employers have been noted by older lawyers for quite a while, but in some ways this is something that's always the case.  When I was young, which seems like just yesterday but which is actually quite a while ago now, it was extremely common for the Baby Boomers to comment on how everyone below them in age had no work ethic and expected to move up the ladder as an entitlement.  I always thought this the height of irony coming form a generation which actually had an enormous sense of entitlement and which was actually given a massive amount of everything by their parents, whom had endured the Great Depression and World War Two and  who accordingly didn't really know, to a significant degree, what real life was actually like.  That generation, which Tom Brokaw mislabeled "the Greatest Generation" in his hagiography devoted to them, knew crisis and suffering and wanted their children to be spared that.  As a result, we got the generation that Donald Trump, Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, etc., are in that won't let go of anything.  They actually were allowed to skip entire rungs on the ladder, and then later on kept people from climbing up it, imaging that they'd pulled themselves up by their own bootstraps when, to a significant degree, their doting parents were there tying their shoe laces the entire time.

Clearly, I'm painting with a broad brush, and unfairly, and this doesn't apply to every member of the generation.

Anyhow, when the Millennials and the older Gen Y folks started to enter work, including the legal field, there really was something different about them.  The Gap Generation folks, like me, who fit in between Gen X and the Boomers pretty much felt we had to find a job and plug on.  It was our only option in life, really.  Gen Xers and older Gen Yers, like what is described about the generation that fought World War One (the "Lost Generation"). had much less job loyalty and pretty much took the view that they had to fend for themselves.  Boomers repeatedly accused them of being unrealistic and lazy, but they were neither. They were highly realistic and far from lazy, they just didn't have dog like loyalty to an employer master.  Indeed, they didn't really expect anything, including employment, to last.

Now, however, we're seeing the younger Gen Y and older Gen Z people in the workplace and their views truly are different, at least it seems to me.  Hardly any prior generation would have skipped through that many employers right off the bat, in the example of the Clerk, but I don't think that's uncommon.

I'm not sure what that means, but again, I don't think they're lazy at all.  I think their view towards work is much different, and they don't expect anything to really last, employment wise.  I don't know what their views are, as a whole, on much else.

While I find that rapid employment change a little distressing, as a now older lawyer who hopes that people will stick around, I think I get it a bit, and that their views may be much more realistic than the Boomers really.  Indeed, I think we're seeing a retrograde attachment to work that takes us back to prior generations over a century ago.  If the Gen Xers were like the Lost Generation, the current 20-year-olds in the law and everything else seem more like those workers from the 19th Century, whom you'll often find went through quite a few jobs in a course of a lifetime, or if they were professionals went through quite a few positions.

I hope some other trends reflect that as well. For one thing, I'm sick of the uber bloated massive law firms that have become a feature of American law.  The fact that younger lawyers bolt pretty readily should operate against that, as those firms depend upon a stable supply of sheep to be corralled to mow the grass of the company pasture.  If the sheep are wild, and take off, that sort of corralling can't occur.

Money, Time and Life

Related to this, I've recently had the odd experience of watching a person on the cusp of the Gap Generation, but from a different region of the country, try to reconcile his mental image of work with that of the reality of others views.  Said person isn't really accomplishing it.

This comes up in the context of said person speaking to a younger Gen Xer about that person's work, which is with a legal agency.  The older Xer treated the younger one's work as surely a stepping stone on to other work for "more money".  The younger person didn't see it that way at all.

Indeed, the younger person liked their job, which had relatively low stress, okay wages and really good hours.  He couldn't see whereas he was suffering, as the older one thought other work, in the private sphere, offered a "chance to make more money".

What was clear in the conversation is that  the older of the two viewed making more money as the be all and end all of any job.  That was the whole point, and the only point, of employment. . a chance to make more money. The younger one saw his job as a job and was content with that.

I'm seeing a lot of that with younger workers, particularly the younger Gen Xers and the Gen Yers.  Again, they're like the Lost Generation that way. They want to have a job, have a family of some sort (that hasn't completely returned to the Lost Generation view. . . yet), and to be able to enjoy life, often in a small way.  These younger folks feel that the ability to go fishing after work or watch a ball game is as important as the Dollar.

And they're right.

The March of Technology

I lasted tried a case in February, which was the first post pandemic trial I've done.  In that Wyoming bench trial, neither side used anything high-tech. The case just wasn't that suited for it, sort of, although there were photographic and text exhibits.

In this recent trial, however, all the exhibits were shown to the witnesses electronically and they were all published (shown) to the jury in the same fashion.  A technician attended the entire trial in order that this could be seamlessly accomplished.

The technician was fantastic and did a super job with pointing out the text and going through the electronic exhibits. While I've done a lot of trials, this was the first one I've ever done that was 100% high-tech in this fashion.

I'll admit that I've been skeptical, or perhaps just reluctant, to acknowledge the effectiveness of this, but it's now clearly here and that's the standard.

Like automatic transmissions being in everything, I guess I can accept reality, however, without liking it.  I don't like it.

But that's where we now are.

Going on and on

One thing that I really liked that the other jurisdiction did was to limit opening statements and to constrict voir dire (questioning of the jury).

Various Wyoming courts take different approaches to this.  Most ask the lawyers "how much time do you need for openings?" and then debate how much time will really be given.  I just had a proceeding in which that question was asked, and the plaintiff's lawyer said he needed 1.5 hours.

In the other jurisdiction the court simply informed us that we had 20 minutes.  No debate, you have 20 minutes.  And this was in a highly technical case.

I'm really good at public speaking, and frankly I was relieved.  Anything over 20 minutes is an exercise in hubris and boring the jury.  It might have been in the case at the time of the Gettysburg Address that people were ready for an hour-long speech, but that was in a day in which people had spent half the day getting there, were going back tomorrow, had no phones to check, and weren't getting back to their work right away, and weren't used to 30 minute television shows.  No modern audience is going to listen to an hour-long speech from anyone, let alone a lawyer.  Even if you have super wonderful graphics in which the entire accident is reenacted by Kate Upton and Billie Eilish with background music from Iris Dement are they going to do that.  Just forget it.

None of which keeps lawyers from asking for all kinds of time.  We're stuck in the past that way.

Suiting up

 Extraordinarily well dressed lawyer, W. Morgan Shuster, in New York in 1914. Shuster's impeccable dress is emblematic of the well dressed businessman of this era.  He's wearing a three piece wool suit and carrying a cane he almost certainly doesn't need to use.  And, he's wearing a bowler.

As a Wyoming lawyer, but a lawyer, I've watched the slow decline in clothing standards while participating in it.

At my first day of work in 1990 I reported to work wearing a double-breasted Brooks Brothers suit.  The first partner who came in was wearing wool khaki trousers and a blue blazer, and he was dressed down.  He told me that I didn't have to wear a suit every day.

For years and years, however, I normally wore a tie and clothing appropriate for a tie.  Then COVID 19 hit.

For much of the prior spike of the disease (we're in a spike now, of the unvaccinated, but of course the entire state disregarding that) I kept coming in the office.  I was often the only one there when we were at the point where the staff didn't have to come in.  I pretty much quit dressing in office dress at the time as there wasn't much of a reason to do it.  Nobody was coming in, I was there by myself, what the heck.

I've not made it back to normal, and not everyone else has either.

And of course normal in 2019 was not the same thing it was in 1999, or 2009.  We'd already slid down the dressing scale in the back of the office, where I am.  I never used to wear blue jeans in the office, but by 2019 I already was a fair amount.  Starting with COVID 19, I am all the time.

One of the things about that is that in 2019 I already had a selection of older dress clothes that were wearing out I hadn't replaced.  Probably the inevitability of their demise would have caused me to replace them on in to 2020.  But I didn't have to.  Additionally, the long gap in time meant that I pretty much didn't do anything about the fact I'm down to two suits now.

Two suits isn't much if you are a trial lawyer.

Well, running up to the trial I was going to go down to Denver and get new ones.  But I ran out of time.  I still haven't done it.

I need to.

I'll confess that part of my reluctance to get new suits is that I'm 58 years old.  I don't wear suits daily at work, and I'm not one of those guys who is going to claim "I'm going to work until I'm 80".  Any new suit I get now will still be in fighting shape when I'm 68, and that's reasonably enough, but to my cheap way of thinking, emphasized by the fact that I have two kids in college, its something that is both easy for me to put off, and in the back of my mind I tend to think "maybe I won't really need those if . . . "

Well, I probably better remedy that.

Wednesday September 3, 1941. The first use of Zyklon B.

The Germans first used Zyklon B to murder human beings with the first victims being 600 Soviet POWS and 250 sick Polish POWs held at Auschwitz.

The Soviets began the process of expelling Volga Germans to Siberia.

The espionage trial for the fourteen members of the Duquesne Spy Ring who had not confessed to the crime (nineteen had) commenced on this day in 1941.  The German effort was the largest spy bust in U.S. history, although it was dwarfed by the Soviet efforts that had commenced in the 1920s and which ran through the end of the Cold War.

Most of the spies were predictably German or Austrian immigrants, but there are some surprises.  A few were not of German ancestry.  One who was, was a Jewish German immigrant who served as a honey pot and appears to have suffered from a psychological condition giving rise to her use.  One was a Russian immigrant.  The spy ring had a Japanese liaison, as well as a German one, demonstrating a very early connection between Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany.

More on all of this here:

Today in World War II History—September 3, 1941

Operation Gauntlet, an Allied raid on Spitsbergen concluded.  It had met with no German resistance.

German radio station on Spitsbergen being blown down.

The local population was evacuated, German installations destroyed, and mining equipment from the high Arctic mines also destroyed.

Saturday September 4, 1921. Hemingway nuptuals.

 

Leyendecker portrayed an unhappy returning student in his September 3, 1921 illustration for the Saturday Evening Post.

Earnest Hemingway and Elizabeth Hadley Richardson married in Bay Township, Wisconsin.  They'd divorce in 1927 after she learned of Hemingway's affair with Pauline Pfeiffer, who had been a friend of hers.

They had one son, Jack, who in spite of having not grown up in his father's household, after his early years, perhaps somewhat reflects his interest in was famous for his interests in fishing.  A resident of Idaho, he was the father of the acting Hemingway's.

Hemingway would marry Pfeiffer in 1927, and they'd divorce in 1940.  In spite of the affair, Pfeiffer was a devout Catholic.  How they were able to validly marry, in that light, is unknown to me, but Hemingway converted to Catholicism as a result fo the marriage.  Interestingly, Pfeiffer was a supporter of the Nationalist cause in Spain during the Spanish Civil War, due to her views, whereas Hemingway famously supported the Republicans.

Their son Patrick, who is still living, was a wildlife conservationist.

That marriage ended due to an affair as well, after having produced two children.   This time the affair was with Martha Gelhorn, a journalist, with a subsequent marriage lasting from 1940 to 1945.  Gelhorn nonetheless had an affair with Gen. James Gavin while married to Hemingway.  Shortly after that marriage ended, Hemingway married Mary Welsh Hemingway, to whom he remained married until his death in 1961.  Their other son Gregory became a physician, but had a variety of personal problems that troubled him throughout his adult years.

The U.S. Army intervened in the Battle of Blair Mountain with 400 of 4,000 armed miners laying down their arms.  Most of the remainder fled.

Tuesday, September 2, 1941. Finnish victories and Bloody Tragedies

The first meeting of the Supply Priorities and Allocations Board, Washington, D.C., September 2, 1941.

On this day in 1941, Finnish forces completed retaking the Karelia Isthmus, territory that had been lost to it during the Winter War.  You can see this and other items here:

Today in World War II History—September 2, 1941

On this time, while Finland  had thrown its fate in with Nazi Germany, it's hard not to sympathize with their immediate war aims, of which this was one. This territory had been stolen from it by the Soviet Union, and in joining the war, it was taking back what it had only recently lost.  Indeed, it would stop its advance upon doing so.

Showing the true nature of its ally, however, on this day Germans, along with Lithuanians, killed 3,700 Jews from Vilna.

Australians in Lebanon were photographed on this day.

Major General A. S. "Tubby" Allen, commander of the Australian 7th Division, with Lt Colonel Murray Moten, commander of the 2/27th Infantry Battalion and his men.

Friday, September 2, 1921. Famine

Houston Texas, September 2, 1921.

On this day in 1921 food aid from Western countries arrived in Riga, Latvia for transport to the Soviet Union as famine relief.  The US was the largest contributor.

The famine was human induced, caused by the incompetence and stupidity of the communist economic system in multiple ways.

On the same day, Federal troops arrived in West Virginia, but President Harding declared they would not be used to impose martial law as long as civil law continued to function.  The threat, of course, was the private warfare between union coal miners and non-union/company forces.

Japanese dignitaries were photographed in Washington, D.C.

 

Baron Kyuro Shideharu

Belle Case LaFollette, wife of Sen. Robert LaFollette, was photographed walking their dog.

What about Pakistan?

 

As the Biden Administration conceded, whether it needed to or not, defeat in Afghanistan, there's been a lot of talk, here and elsewhere, about could we have won the war.

Hardly any of it has touched on Pakistan.

As pointed out on a list I subscribe to elsewhere, it needs to be considered.  

And the reason is that Pakistan effectively operated as a Taliban ally over the past twenty years, whether we wished to openly acknowledge that or not.

Indeed, Osama bin Laden, is well known, was killed in Pakistan, not Afghanistan, and was living in a compound only two miles from a Pakistani army base.  Maybe the Pakistani government didn't know that.  We won't know for years.  There's some suggestion that the location of Bin Laden's compound may have come from a Pakistani army source.  Indeed, it's not unreasonable to assume that the Pakistani army was actually complicit in arranging for the raid that killed Bin Laden.  Indeed, its not unreasonable to believe that Bin Laden's whereabouts were known and tolerated, and that they tipped the US off as well.

What the heck?

Well, Pakistan is following Pakistan's interests, not the US's. The problem is that its really hard to figure out exactly what those are.  Whatever they are, what is clear is that Pakistan was a safe harbor for the Taliban for the past 20 years, and for Al Queada to some extent as well.  Members of the Taliban, moreover, were educated in Pakistani Islamic schools, not Afghani ones.

And all that does mean that over the past 20 years, while we were fighting the Taliban, Pakistan was at least operating as a safe harbor for them, and even fostering their recruitment by tolerating it.

Looking at the Central Intelligence Agency map from above probably helps explain Pakistan's point of view, and its cynical game, to an extent.  And what it shows is that Pakistan is, essentially, a false country.

Indeed, Afghanistan is as well, and so is nearby neighbor Indian. That is, none of these countries are nation states, but rather assembled nations that were put together by the British.  There really are no "Afghanis" any more than there are Pakistanis.  India is practically the exception to the rule as British colonialism was so successful that the enormous number of tribes in India did in fact come together, form a national identity, and emerge with a functioning democracy.

Even at that, however, its notable that Indian once included Pakistan and Bangladesh.  However, upon independence the Muslim regions of India rebelled and successful separated.  East Pakistan later rebelled against Pakistan, in 1971, and became its own country.  Pakistan is a democratic country with Islam as the state religion, but it's a shaky one with the army always in the background as a potential power broker, or power seizer.

Pakistan has never really accepted the demarcation line that was drawn between it and India, and frankly India hasn't either.  Pakistan's problem, however, is that some of its people have latent loyalties that do cause it concern.

The entire region bordering Afghanistan is one of those areas.  Its really popular to believe that the British "lost" both of their wars with Afghanistan, but the British were really good at constructing defeats to their advantage.  In reality, after the Second Anglo Afghan War, the British incorporated what is really part of Afghanistan into Pakistan, and that makes up about 1/5th of Pakistan today.  The demarcation was geographic, not ethnic, as that suited the British.  Added to that, the Punjab people are ethnically related to the Pashtuns, which doesn't make them the same people, but which does create complications.  Pakistan has never accepted that the Punjab region of Indian shouldn't be in Pakistan, but when making an argument like that, you nearly have to concede that the Pashtun region of Pakistan should be part of Afghanistan.

Now, nobody is arguing the latter, as far as I know, but it does mean that if you are the Pakistani government you really don't want to anger the Pashtuns too much. The majority of the Taliban are Pashtuns, even if most Pashtuns aren't supporters of the Taliban.

And the government is also an Islamic parliamentary democracy.  Indeed, the only reason for Pakistan's existence is Islam, as that's why it and Bangladesh didn't want to be part of India.  So you also don't want to be suppressing Islamic schools, if you are the Pakistani government.

And you don't really want the US in the neighborhood either.

The US generally wants countries to get along.  It wants India to get along with Pakistan, and Pakistan to get along with India, and China to get along with both.  None of those nations is really willing simply to lay down their claims to the territories they view as theirs across each other's borders. The US, from their prospective, is really annoying in this regard.

And indeed, both Pakistan and India, traditionally, regard themselves as the major regional power broker, not the US, and not Russia (or the USSR in former days).  The Indians don't get along with the Chinese either, and the Pakistani's sometimes don't, and sometimes do, depending upon how it suits them.  And their major countries, not third world backwaters, whose opinions really have to be taken into account.  All of them possess nuclear weapons, for that matter.

So, cynically, from Pakistan's point of view, harboring the Taliban made some sense.  It served to push out of the region, ultimately, and they emerge, in some ways, the real victor.  At the same time, however, they can only go so far, as they don't want a Pashtun insurgency either.

So could we have won under these circumstances?

I think so yes, but it's a real difficulty, to say the least, as the examples of this prove.

Indeed, in a way, this is what the Germans faced in 1940 as the US operated as a sort of safe harbor for the British war effort.  The Germans were not really able to do anything about.  This example, of course, isn't really perfect, but as we've been discussing it here, I've noted it.

A better example would be the situation faced by France in the Franco Algerian War.  Algerian insurgents had refuge in recently independent Tunisia.  The French tried to address it by fencing and patrolling the border and conducting air raids near it, that sometimes accidentally crossed over the border, all of which proved completely ineffective.

The United Nations faced this to a degree as well during the Korean War, with China being the safe harbor.  This proved so frustrating to the US that there were repeated suggestions that the US Air Force raid China, something the Chinese apparently feared, but which the Administration, wisely, wouldn't allow.

And for the US, the classic example is the Vietnam War, during which North Vietnam was the safe harbor that expanded that harbor into Laos and Cambodia.  The US conducted covert operations in Laos as a result in and in 1971 it invaded Cambodia to attempt to end it.  The Republic of Vietnam invaded Laos later that same year and again later, all to no avail.

So the examples are not great.

Now, invading Pakistan would be out of the question, so that's off the table.  The US did conduct drone strikes over Pakistan, and the raid on bin Laden.  Much more than that, openly, would have been far to risky.

So what could we have done.

Well, weathering the storm for another 20 years probably would have accomplished things.  At some point really reinforcing the border, with Afghan troops, would have been necessary.

And perhaps leaning more towards India.

Indeed, India, for really the first time in its history, was pretty friendly to the US during the Trump administration as its leader is also a populist.  The US has no real interest in Central Asian border disputes, so leaning towards the country, simply as a country, would have to be in that fashion, but leaning pretty hard would have created a problem for Pakistan.  And as we can see, at the point that something becomes too big of a problem for Pakistan, it tends to act in its own interest.

None of that would have been quick, however.

"America's longest war. . . wasn't"

By now, everyone on the face of the globe has heard that the war in Afghanistan was "America's longest war".

It wasn't.

The long war, regarded as a series of wars, but nonetheless a continual thing involving continual deployment of American troops, ran from 1848 until the tragic end at Wounded Knee in 1890, a total of 42 years.  This doesn't represent the totality of combat against Native Americans, however, as I, and others have pointed out. Consider this recent letter to the Wall Street Journal.

America’s real longest war was the conflict against Native Americans, called the American Indian Wars, which most historians characterize as beginning in 1609 and ending in 1924.

Lt. Gen. Michael M. Dunn, Wall Street Journal letter.

Total involvement in the Vietnam War, FWIW, was shorter only by a period of months. That may seem unfair, but if you consider that involvement in Afghanistan has actually been very minimal for a period of years, I'd argue it is a fair comparison.

The point is this.  We've fought long wars before.  The Indian Wars were epic in length.  The Philippine Insurrection was long, 13 years by some measures.  What's really notable about Afghanistan. . . and Vietnam, is that in the post television era, the country doesn't endure long wars well.  Before we seemingly had them out of sight and mind, most of the time they were being fought.

Oh, and technically the Korean Conflict, which started in 1950, is still on.  No final peace has been reached, and it's in a state of armistice.

Labor Day, September 1, 1941. Marking Targets for Death and Labor Day Addresses.

It was Labor Day in the United States, falling of course on the first Monday in September.

On this Monday, the German government announced that all Jews within the confines of the territory controlled by it, at home or conquered, were required to wear yellow Stars of David.

German poster declaring that "Whoever wears this badge is an enemy of our people."

The barbarity of this action can hardly be imagined today.  It marked the wearer as somebody to be subject to public scorn merely for his religion, or ethnicity, and ultimately it would mark them for death.

The yellow badge seems to date as far back as the Muslim Umayyad Caliphate in the early 8th Century and have been subsequently revived and kept in force for centuries as a means of marking Jews living within the caliphates control.  Both Christians and Jews were subject to repressive religious laws within Muslim territories, and indeed in some Muslim countries today being an open Christian is extremely risky, and conversion from Islam, although widely occurring, illegal.  Clothing requirements were in fact expanded beyond this to include other features.

Having said that, the practice of requiring Jews, and Muslims, to wear distinct clothing also expanded to Christian countries by the 13th Century, although with a different concern in mind.  As has been dealt with here elsewhere, originally marriage did not require a Priest to officiate and could be privately contracted in a fairly informal manner.  There were concerns in the 1200s that Christians and non Christians were falling into sexual relations that gave rise to invalid marriages in a hasty fashion, and therefore clothing requirements were imposed so that couples in the heat of the moment might be aware that they were going where they couldn't legally go and contracting what would have been regarded as invalid marriages.

The Germans, of course, were readopting the practice in order to make the Jews despised "others".  It was resisted in some occupied areas, such as Denmark, where non Jews took up wearing them as well, and in occupied areas of Catholic Czechoslovakia the authorities had to ban hat tipping to those wearing them, where the residents had taken it up as a sign of respect to the victims.

On the same day, Leningrad came within German artillery range.

The Canadians began to accept enlistments for the Canadian Army Women's Corps.  Of note, the day prior the British had deployed women in mixed gender anti-aircraft units in the UK, a rare example of women in a Western Allied military having a combat role in the war.  

The United States assumed responsibility for Atlantic convoys from Newfoundland to Iceland.  This was undoubtedly an example of direct participation in the war, even though the United States had not yet declared war.

The Soviet Union murdered retired Estonian military commander Karl Parts.

Parts had served in the Imperial Russian Army but had gone over to his native Estonia upon its separation from Russia.  He'd served against the German Freikorps and the Reds there, but had retired in 1925 and was a farmer thereafter.  The Soviets took him into custody in 1940 when they invaded the country and then murdered him on this day.  He was 55 years old.

President Roosevelt delivered a Labor Day address in which he stated that American labor bore the responsibility of winning World War Two.

KYW-TV, the first US television station outside of New York City, went on the air in Philadelphia.  It's still on the air there. 

Ted Williams appeared on the cover of Life Magazine.

Cornell, Wisconsin, suffered a serious flood.

Oyster harvesting seasons commenced.

Thursday, September 1, 1921. Launchings

On this day the first "Super dreadnought" USS Washington, a battleship of the Colorado Class, was launched.

Jean Summers, daughter of Senator Summers, who did the honors.

She'd serve only three years and then be sunk as a target, due to the Washington Naval Treaty.

One heck of a waste of money.

The first Washington State Highway Patrol officers were sworn in. Their vehicles were, at first, Indian Motor Cycles.

Scenes of August. Michigan National Guard at Camp Grayling