When agriculture was the industry in Wyoming

As any Wyoming resident knows today, mineral extraction, i.e., oil, gas, coal, etc., drive Wyoming's economy. But this wasn't the case. It was agriculture that really dominated the early economic history of the case, and still forms the essence of its image, as this UW article notes: Wyoming agriculture fashioned state’s national, international image

Oil and gas made an entry into the state as early as the 1890s, and newspaper reports at the time, particularly those of the Natrona County Tribune, were simply gushing over its prospects. Still, it would take some time for oil and gas to really take off, although take off it did. Nonetheless, agriculture was the dominant industry in every way in the late 19th Century and early 20th. It's difficult to overestimate how dominant it was, and how many industries it supported. A glimpse of one of those industries is provided below.

It's difficult in some ways for us today, even is a state that revers cowboys, to imagine what the agricultural Wyoming was like. The average town resident is aware of it, and not. And certainly most people are not aware of it to the same extent that the 19th Century and early 20th Century Wyomingite was.

Old Hotels

Room in the Plains Hotel

This is a room in a renovated century old hotel in Cheyenne Wyoming. I recently stayed there while traveling for work.

I've stayed in a few very old hotels before. Many years ago I spent a night in the Virginian in Medacine Bow, but it's frankly so long ago, I don't really recall it all that well. I was quite young at the time, and what I recall about that is that every room did not have bathroom, something that I found very odd at the time, and which I bet is no longer the case.

The Virginian

Much more recently I've stayed at the Hotel Higgins in Glenrock, a nice local older hotel. I don't know the age for sure, but it's probably approaching a century in age. About 17 years ago I spent a night in the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado. The Stanley is famous for being used as the set of the film The Shining, but it also had some preexisting fame for being the location of the founding of the American Dental Association.

The reason I note all of this is because it's my observation, and one of the types of changes we note here, that hotel rooms were once pretty darned small. The rooms of the The Plains Hotel, where I just stayed, are very small. This isn't to say they were bad, they were just small. I don't recall the rooms in the Virginian, but the room we stayed in at the Hotel Higgins was small. The rooms at The Stanley were larger, however, but they weren't enormous either.

Apparently hotel rooms of an earlier era were just smaller. But then, why wouldn't they be? Most people weren't traveling with their families (and still aren't, for the most part, most are business travelers) and before television, and even before radio, what would you actually stay in your room to do? No TV, no radio, no internet, back when they were built. You could read, but then it doesn't take a very big room to do that.

Lobby of the Plains Hotel

A friend of mine pointed out that the major room in older hotels was the lobby. Above is the lobby of the Plains. I can see where that would have been true. After walking over from the train station, back way back when, and checking in, why not hang out in the lobby? The Stanley has a palatial lobby. The lobby of the Plains is pretty big. The lobby of the old Hotel Townsend, now the courthouse for Wyoming's Seventh Judicial District, was not unsubstantial.

It also occurs to me that then restaurants were a pretty significant feature for hotels, and bars. They still are for some hotels, but much less so for "Business Hotels" or "Business Motels". Reflecting the era, Business Motels usually have a breakfast room with easy to go breakfast items, but no restaurant. Older hotels, however, usually had a good enough restaurant that it drew town trade, and often still does. The Plains Hotel, The Virginian, or The Brown Palace in Denver, for example, all have restaurants or bars that draw in town trade.

I should note here that I'm not giving a negative review to The Plains Hotel. Its been renovated and it's not bad. It's just that the rooms are small.

MeridethinWyoming: In the Span of a Lifetime

MeridethinWyoming: In the Span of a Lifetime

Courthouses of the West: Jackson federal court among 60 on chopping block

Courthouses of the West: Jackson federal court among 60 on chopping block: While news isn't our regular feature here, here's something that's topical for this site: Jackson federal court among 60 on chopping block...

Society of the Military Horse • View topic - Prices at the Dawn of the Gasoline Age, Dusk of the Equine

Society of the Military Horse • View topic - Prices at the Dawn of the Gasoline Age, Dusk of the Equine

 This was originally posted over on SMH, as:

Society of the Military Horse • View topic - Prices at the Dawn of the Gasoline Age, Dusk of the Equine

I'm reposting it here, as it related into the topics addressed here.  Here's the post:

This is a bit off topic for the forum (of course the thread in general is) but it's a question I have that maybe Joe or one of the other folks knowledgeable on vintage autos can answer.

For years, I drove a single cab truck. But, with two kids, it became impossible. Now I drive a crewcab truck, and I hardly ever run across a true single cab anymore. When I do, it's usually a company truck. I also have an old Mercury Cougar "Sport Coupe" which I bought well used as it has a 4 cyl engine, was cheap, and gets good gas mileage. It's a "sport coupe" as it has a hatch back and back seats, but my son can hardly sit back there now, and it's not practical if more than two of us are going anywhere. As its' a daily driver for me (and I'm really cheap. . .I haven't fixed the heater in the past two years, which if you know our winters. . .) it works out okay.

Now, here's my question. In the early auto days families were generally larger, and I'm under the impression that most families had a car. But I know that coups were popular.

Why?


A car owned by my grandfather.

Pat 

A couple of replies:

 They were nearly always called "business coupes" or "doctor's coupes"...a two passenger car with a trunk rather than a rumble seat. Doctor's were especially early and enthusiastic users of the automobile and a car specially suited to their needs was very good marketing. This begs the question of why? Because in the day of house calls, which ray right up to the 30s at least, the expense of keeping a horse - or more likely two horses, feed stabling and other services was a real drain. They were an ideal market in that they needed what the automobile provided and usually could afford the initial investment.

Business men were another major targeted market... presumably they could afford a car and a good many of them could afford to keep a car for business purposes... If they had a family they could have a sedan or touring car as well. My mom's godfather, a wealthy man who was an adult when the automobile was a new invention, kept a car at his summer home so the chauffeur could drive him to the train every morning... a distance of about 1/4 mile!

There are probably many more reasons, not the least of which was that they "looked good" in the popular mind and that frequently took precedence over practicality - as it still does.

 It's interesting that you note that they were called "business coupes". That's how my father referred this car, of his father's. It was a "business coupe".

I think they do look sharp. I once passed on a 1939 Plymouth Coupe that was a very reasonable price, and I really regret it. Pat

 It was my understanding that a lot of the coupes were used by salesmen because of their tremendous trunk space. They could carry their merchandise and deliver their goods saving the shipping charges for themselves.

Irish Canadian Rangers

On a day in which things Irish are generally celebrated, some posters for the battalion my great grandfather and his sons helped organize and equip. . .the Irish Canadian Rangers.

They were recruited from Irish Canadians in Montreal, but they were not able to bring the unit up to full strength. Therefore they ultimately also recruited in Ireland. In the end, they were folded into an other Irish unit in the Empire's forces.

Definitely a slice of days gone by. World War One saw the last of the privately raised, privately equipped efforts in the Empire, and the same is true in the US in regards to just prior to the war. Theodore Roosevelt would have repeated his Spanish American role of raising a special unit if allowed, but Woodrow Wilson disallowed it, and the Army frankly wasn't keen on it being done.

Society of the Military Horse • View topic - Scenes of the U.S. Army in the Punitive Exp. Era

Society of the Military Horse • View topic - Scenes of the U.S. Army in the Punitive Exp. Era

Society of the Military Horse • View topic - Armour Rations

A look at canned rations of old:

Society of the Military Horse • View topic - Armour Rations

‘I ain’t Dutch’: Doug Crowe

‘I ain’t Dutch’

Disappearing Homesteads

This is a 20th Century homestead located in Natrona County, Wyoming. And it's a nice one.

It was probably built in the teens or twenties. The house is small, but it had steam heat. It also had a concrete cistern. The small stout barn has the name of the owners proudly burnt into the beams. In short, the homesteaders were prosperous. . . but only for awhile.

The Great Depression did this homestead in. It failed, and a neighboring rancher bought it from the bank. This is the story of homesteading all over the West in the 1930s. Thousands of small homesteads were consolidated into larger, neighboring ones. While I've never seen any figures on it, it would be my guess that the average actual working ranch in Wyoming today is probably made up of the remnants of at least five other ranches, all of which would have gone belly up during the Great Depression.

There was a lot at work creating this. The weather, the economy, and mechanization. The impact on the land, however, was enormous. Hundreds of families moved off the land, and into towns and cities, forever.

Casper Fire truck of old

426288_312739632117526_284375484953941_899303_185799387_n.jpg (JPEG Image, 960 × 901 pixels) - Scaled (63%)

The Migrating Memorial: Some Gave All: World War One Memorial, Laramie Wyoming

This is our entry for the World War One Memorial in Laramie, Wyoming: Some Gave All: World War One Memorial, Laramie Wyoming:

The memorial is impressive in that it lists everyone from Albany County or from the University of Wyoming (students) who was killed during World War One. Quite a list of names. That really says something about the Great War.

The reason I've cross posted this over here is that, as this entry reveals, and with links, this memorial was once in the middle of a prominent intersection in downtown Laramie. It was essentially the psychological center of the town. But only for a few years. By 1929 it had been moved to its current location.

I'm not sure what, if anything, this says. It certainly would seem to indicate that at one time the memory of the Great War was of central importance to the residents of Albany County, which actually has two WWI memorials. Now, it's on a corner of the courthouse block, which is not uncommon anywhere, but the corner is the back corner actually, which is a semi quiet residential street corner.

On the other hand, it would have been necessary to move it. Maybe when it was put up right after World War One an intersection could have a memorial dead center, but no way that one could have after the mid 1920s. It would have been destroyed in traffic accidents.

Society of the Military Horse • View topic - Long Cavalry Maneuvers.

A look at the sad AT of 1923

Society of the Military Horse • View topic - Long Cavalry Maneuvers.

Society of the Military Horse • View topic - Off Topic: World War One Made British Eats Bad

A thesis recently advanced on NPR, but fairly questionable in our view, as discussed here:

Society of the Military Horse • View topic - Off Topic: World War One Made British Eats Bad

Society of the Military Horse • View topic - oldtime packers

Society of the Military Horse • View topic - oldtime packers

Indian Ice Delivery Trucks, Casper Wyoming

420512_310334369024719_284375484953941_892138_2113709836_n.jpg (JPEG Image, 960 × 651 pixels)

Ice delivery vehicles. Pretty advanced for the time, in many locations this would still be done by horse drawn wagon for another two decades.

Ice was a big deal in this era. Refrigeration mostly wasn't. People kept "Ice Boxes" in their houses. My father stilled called the refrigerator the "Ice Box" well into the 70s, having become acclimated to that term in his early years even though he probably grew up in a house with a refrigerator.

Pay Scale, World War Two.

A pay scale table for the U.S. Army in World War Two. A thread on this topic is running on the SMH site.

Lots of interesting odds and ends an item like this brings up.

Connectivity

In the past couple of days, I have had instances in which I have been sitting in my office, with my computer connected to the net, and I have found it necessary to text message somebody using my cell phone.

Indeed, over the past year, not only have I found that it continues to be necessary (no surprise) to own a cell phone, but I am now text messaging on my cell phone as a work necessity. Text messaging tends to be associated with teenagers at the mall, but at least in my recent experience it's gone on to be a feature of at least the legal work place. Not all that long ago I found myself walking through Denver getting and receiving text messages pertaining to a deposition that was going on in Texas.

Here at my office, where I am right now (taking a break for lunch) I have, right where I am, a laptop computer, a telephone, a second miniature laptop, a cell phone, and an Ipod that's jacked into the computer, which allows me not only to send and receive email (including work email, and I've done that) but to keep my calendar and contacts electronically.

When I started this profession a little over twenty years ago, my office was equipped, as all our offices were, with a phone and a computer. The computer did not have net access. I don't really recall what I used that computer for, but chances are that I didn't use it all that much on a daily basis. I did write legal memos on it, and it had some programs that were used to substitute for casebooks we had in our library. It was probably three or four years after that when we purchased a computer that had net access, and we obtained West Law in our office for the first time. Before that, most local lawyers had a West Law account at the County Law Library, which was in the old County Courthouse. Having a good fax machine in that era seemed pretty neat. Now all this seems quite quaint.

It does make me wonder about the earlier era, however. Twenty years ago we were already on the cusp of a technological revolution. Even ten years before that we sort of were. But what about before that?

From probably the mid 1920s through to about 1980 the telephone was the only piece of connected technology any law office had. Fax machines hadn't arrived. If you wanted to send something, you did it by mail. Or if you wanted quick contact, you called. What was office work like then? It no doubt involved a lot of dictation of correspondence, and indeed we dictated when I first started out. Some people still do that. But we all did. And dictation in that era did place a bit of a premium on avoiding revisions, although we all revised. Revisions in that era were truly manual, and the result was, the further you go back, that the product had to be regenerated.

What about before 1920? At some time prior to that, most offices didn't have phones. How different office work must have been then. Quick contact just wasn't going to happen. Contact would have mostly been through the mail. Dictation would have been all direct. Everything was much more hands on and manual.

It'd be interesting, if we could, to go back to one of those offices, say an office of 1912, and see how they really worked, what somebody in our profession (assuming that there is a 1912 equivalent) actually did, on a daily basis, and how they did it, before communications became so instant over vast distances.

The speed of offical Justice, from Today In Wyoming's History: February 15

Today In Wyoming's History: February 15: 1933 President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt escaped an assassination attempt in Miami but which claimed the life of Chicago Mayor Anton J. Cermak.

The attempted assassin in this matter was Giuseppe Zangara, an Italian veteran of World War One who was fairly clearly in poor health and increasingly suffering from delusions to some extent. The wounded Mayor Cermak survived until March 6, 1933. By that time, Zangara had already been sentenced for four counts of attempted murder, and was given 20 years for each count.

That is, he had been sentenced in less than a month.

He was charged with homicide on March 8, 1933, due to Cermak's death. He plead guilty and was executed on March 20, 1933.

Cermak never contested his responsibility for the crimes. He was increasingly ill and suffering from delusions, but his statements made it fairly clear that he conceived of his actions as some sort of radical anti-capitalist action. What strikes me as amazing, however, is that he went from arrest to execution in a little over a month. Indeed, he went from arrest for homicide to execution in 14 days.

I am not noting this in order to make a comment about the death penalty. That's an entirely different topic and frankly addressing it in the context of 2012 in comparison to 1933 isn't really even possible. But what is really striking is that the criminal process played itself out so very rapidly. Now I would have expected a process of examination to determine if Zangara was sane or even competent to make a confession, and there's no way on earth that the process would have occurred so very rapidly

Some Gave All: Miner's Memorial, Rock Springs Wyoming

A look at mining, when it was horse powered:

Some Gave All: Miner's Memorial, Rock Springs Wyoming:

Visual memories of oil booms past.

Recently I took some photos for the Railhead blog we have, which is dedicated to all things locomotive, which really caused me to realize the extent to which a boom can alter the face of a town. More specifically, it caused me to realize how much the oil boom of the late teens and twenties has had an impact on the appearance of Casper, even though there's been multiple booms and busts since then.

What caused me to ponder this is that I took some photos of the walkway that's been put in across Casper on the old Chicago and North West line. That rail line is now long gone, and the old rail bed is now a walkway through downtown Casper, and a trial that stretches all the way out of town towards the East. It's an impressive effort, but of course for most of its course it is basically unimproved. Not all of it is scenic by any means, but the downtown portion is pretty neat.

In walking it, it occurred to me that a tremendous amount of what a person sees on it was built in the teens and twenties. Not everything, by any means, but an awful lot is. And some of what does not appear to be only has a more modern appearance as new facades have been added.

This in turn caused me to ponder how many other buildings in downtown Casper remain from this era. While Casper does not have an extremely well preserved downtown, like some towns do, it does show a remarkable impact form the World War One oil boom. Fire Station No. 1 remains, now in use as a private office, having been built in 1921. The Townsend Hotel also remains, and I believe that it may stretch back that far. It's now a courthouse. The Consolidated Royalty Building, still in use as an office building, was designed by the same architect as The Townsend Hotel, and was built in 1917. It was originally the headquarters for an oil company. I don't have any pictures of it, but Natrona County High School, still in use, was built in 1923.

Just off downtown, several impressive churches were built in the same era. St. Anthony's is one example. First United Methodist is another, in that it was added on to during this era. First Presbyterian was built in this time frame. A new St. Mark's was built. All of this was no doubt occurring as people were moving into town, indeed the town became a small city in this era, but it probably also reflects that the oil activity had increased people's fortunes, and they were generous with their added wealth.

Casper has certainly suffered recessions and depressions since then. One of the buildings mentioned above, the Townsend Hotel, was abandoned for a very long time as a result of one of them. A few older downtown buildings have disappeared, after have sat empty for awhile. Nonetheless, the impact of the oil boom that came about due to World War One and which lasted into the Roaring Twenties has left quite a visual impact.

Life Span, old age, and statistics

The issue before last of the National Geographic featured an article on the Teenage Brain. This past issue, which arrived last week, included a letter to the editor from a reader who somewhat grumpily suggested that the teenage brain might be the evolutionary norm, because, he suggested, back in our early days as a species, we didn't live much longer than that.

Oh yes we did.

The suggestion of the letter writer was that human beings live longer than they used to. This is a common belief, people state that all the time, but it simply isn't true. People live the same number of years that they always have. That number of years varies by population and culture, but it's generally between 60 and 120 years. Extreme old age generally seems to cap out at an absolute maximum of 120 years, a span that's actually mentioned in the Old Testament, interestingly enough. The longest any human in modern times has been recorded to have live is 122 years. There are claimed examples of people living in excess of this number of years, but they lack verification and tend to be subject to serious questioning. This is not to say, of course, that anyone can live to 120 years. Far from it. Only a tiny minority of people shall ever approach that age. But instances of advance years in any one era are quite easy to find. Chief Washakie, for example, lived to be 99 or 100 years of age and was not the only Native American of that to have done so. Adams and Jefferson lived into their 80s. And so on.

Well, if people are not actually living longer, why do we tend to think that we are? That's because life expectation is increasing. That is, average life span, or life expectancy, is increasing.

Well, isn't that the same thing? Not at all.

Life expectancy or average life span is a statistical figure. It doesn't mean that all people live to that age. No, by its very nature it means that most people will have died before that age or after it. It's the statistical medium.

But if that's the case, wouldn't it still mean that people are living longer? No, what it means is that people aren't dieing as young.

That sounds like semantics, but it isn't. When you look at what killed people in prior eras, it makes sense.

For one thing, and a huge thing at that, an enormous number of people died at (and in) child birth prior to the mid 20th Century. And this was in European and North American societies. Infant death was very common. Childhood death was also distressingly common. A large number of people died prior to age five.

The reason for this is varied, but disease and the stress of birth explains a lot of it. But what it also means is that if a person passed their fifth year, their life expectancy jumped enormously. Indeed, if you take out the number of infants who died prior to age five, and the number of women who died giving birth, life expectancy for the most part would begin to look pretty recognizable for most European or North American cultures.

They would not, of course, be identical. But that's easily explainable as well. Diseases of all types were enormously dangerous prior to the late 19th Century. The germ theory of disease itself was only discovered in the mid 19th Century. There were an awful lot of diseases that, if you acquired them, your end was nearly guaranteed, where as this would not be the case now. Heart attacks, cancer and strokes basically killed. Diagnosing dangerous diseases prior to their last phase was often impossible. None of this is true now. And accidents tended to be much more lethal in any era prior to the one we're living in right now. Work, for males, was much more dangerous in prior eras.

And, of course, warfare was very prominent in earlier eras. Most European nations were constantly at war in the 18th Century. When the Indian Wars are included, the US was basically at war from 1776 through the 1880s. And wars have become less lethal in modern times in comparison to prior eras.

So what does all this mean? Perhaps not that much, but the common modern assumption that we're living longer is simply incorrect. Things aren't killing us before we reach our natural end of life. That's what is occurring.

Railhead: Rails to Trails, Casper Wyoming

Railhead: Rails to Trails, Casper Wyoming: Casper is presently served only by the Burlington Northern Railroad, whose rail line separates North Casper from the rest of Casper. But th...

Today In Wyoming's History: January 27

Today In Wyoming's History: January 27: 1943 Contact was reestablished with Jackson after the town had been isolated due to a snowstorm. The period of no contact was six days.

This was not really an unusual event at the time. Prior to advancements in 4x4 vehicles, brought about due to World War Two, it was nearly impossible to remove significant amounts of snow from mountain passes, and towns located in mountain valleys were routinely cutoff from contact with the outside for days and even weeks. This was particularly true for Jackson. Indeed, this was so much the case that a book written in the 1950s, by a screen writer who lived in the town off and on during the 40s and 50s, maintained that the "Cocktail Hour In Jackson Hole" was the entire winter, as the town was completely cutoff from the outside during that time and engaged in one huge party all winter long. No doubt that was an exaggeration, but there was some truth to the statement.

Less romantic, an irony of the situation is that up until 1970s Jackson was not regarded as a particularly desirable place to live. This was very much the case prior to 1950. Prior to 1950 agriculture, together with government agencies, formed the economic base of the town, but even there the homesteads that had been filed there were very late ones and were not the most enviable to have, as the ranches in the valley had to combat the weather and were so extremely isolated. It is only the modern 4x4 snow plow that has made Jackson the winter vacation spot it is, and by extension the home of many wealthy people.

Holscher's Hub: Sheep

Holscher's Hub: Sheep: My father took this photograph of sheep in a pen, but I don't have any of the other details and can't quite tell where it is. It's clearly on a railroad, and the building in the background makes me suspect that it's near Glenrock, but I don't know for sure.

Railhead: Out the train window.

Railhead: Out the train window.: Somewhere in Wyoming, mid 1950s. That's a highway next to the power line.

In the Star Tribune, when there was passenger service between Lander and Casper

An interesting look at when there was rail passenger service between Casper and Lander.

Holscher's Hub: Flying from Casper, Wyoming to Salt Lake City and ...

Holscher's Hub: Flying from Casper, Wyoming to Salt Lake City and ...:

These photos were taken in one set, I think. I know that the Salt Lake to San Francisco photographs are part of a set my father took on a journey that ultimately went to Japan, with stops at Hawaii and Wake Island. I suspect that the first few photographs, showing a Western Airlines airliner at the Natrona County Airport, are part of this set.

The end of horse artillery.

A really interesting thread about horse artillery logistics in the U.S. Army in World War One.

This topic closely relates to some others here about the end of the horse era. Given the exploration about horses in urban and agricultural use, this topic may be particularly interesting in the context of the topics we try to explore here.

Today In Wyoming's History: January 1. New Years Day

Here's the January first entry from the Today In Wyoming's History companion site.

Today In Wyoming's History: January 1. New Years Day: 1863 Daniel Freeman files the first homestead under the newly passed Homestead Act. The homestead was filed in Nebraska.

While the original Homestead Act provided an unsuitably small portion of land for those wishing to homestead in Wyoming, it was used here, and homesteading can be argued to be responsible for defining the modern character of the State.

As noted, the Homestead Act has had a huge, and continuing, impact on the State's history. That's probably self evident to most students of history. But it occurs to me also, for some reason, that the Homestead Act is more representative of a bygone age than perhaps we'd care to imagine.

At the time the Homestead Act was passed, in 1863, obtaining land on the cheap, indeed nearly free, had been the American rule since Jamestown. What the Homestead Act really formalized is the granting of Federal Domain in an orderly fashion, seeking to encourage people to move West. It says something about the Union that it could afford to take this step during the Civil War, which in 1863 was only at its mid point. You wouldn't think that the country would be encouraging some of its citizens to pull up stakes and move West at that time, but it did.

The Act, or rather various Homestead Acts, continued on in force until 1934. The peak year for homesteading was 1919. But even the demise of the Act in 1934 did not mean that land was unavailable.

That's really changed. It'd be difficult, if not outright impossible, for the poor or nearly poor to take up farming today. Indeed, it isn't easy for the Middle Class to do so, or at least not in a serious manner. That's an enormous change in the nature of the country.

Today In Wyoming's History: January 2. The Legendary Blizzard of 1949

Nobody who lived through it ever forgot it. Whenever my father and his contemporaries turned towards discussing the weather, it came up. The Blizzard of 1949, which started on this day, and lasted for a month in one form or another.

Today In Wyoming's History: January 2:

1949 Beginning of the Great Blizzard that struck the Northern Plains this year. In Wyoming, the storm started on this date and lasted until February 20. Snowfall in some areas measured up to 30". The storm halted all inter town transport of all kinds within the state within 24 hours. Seventeen people died as a result of the storm. 55,000 head of cattle and 105,000 head of sheep were lost.

Today In Wyoming's History: January 2. It must have been quiet, or at least different, before that.

Today In Wyoming's History: January 2: 1930 First commercial radio station in Wyoming begins operation. KDFN later became KTWO and is still in operation.

Hard to imagine an era with no radio. But Wyoming lacked a commercial radio station until 1930. This was a Central Wyoming station (or is, rather, it still exists). I'd guess Cheyenne could have picked up Denver stations by then, but in Central Wyoming, having an AM radio prior to 1930 must have been pointless.

Today In Wyoming's History: December 23. A Plague of Rabbits

Today's Today In Wyoming's History: December 23:has a couple of interesting items related to hunger. those being:

1926 1,000 rabbits show near Medicine Bow and sent to Rawlins, Wyoming, to feed the hungry.

1935 5,600 jackrabbits killed in Natrona County in one of the periodic Depression Era rabbit drives that were designed to help feed hungry families. Amongst the numerous natural disasters inflicted on the nation during the Dust Bowl years were plagues of rabbits. Attribution. Wyoming State Historical Society.

The 1920s entry surprises me, but the 1930s one does not. These events were amazingly common in the 1930s.

The Great Depression, of course, threw millions out of work, and desperation set in for many. Oddly enough, at the same time that the country was hit by one of the worst depressions it had ever seen, an event that was global in its scale, the environment seemingly went after people as well. Summers in the 1930s were very warm, and very dry, rivaling some of the worst of that type we've seen recently. Winters were warm and dry as well. This created the dust bowl conditions that are so strongly associated with the Dirty Thirties. But beyond that, farming entrants onto the Federal domain in the teens and twenties, sparked by a wheat boom caused by World War One, farmed areas with "dryland" farming that were never suitable for it. This turned the fields into fields of weeds by the early 30s, and the wheat boom caused a rabbit boom in regions that had only recently been prairie. Plagues of rabbits were the result. By the 1930s, addressing rabbits was a major concern in the West, which in turn oddly coincided with the hunger of the Great Depression, leading to winter rabbit drives.

Histories, early and late. Was :Today In Wyoming's History: December 20

Today's Wyoming history entry presents us with the troubling and interesting question of how history can sometimes be a bit skewed, depending upon who is looking at a topic, and when. That entry appears below:

Today In Wyoming's History: December 20: 1812 One of the dates claimed for the death of Sacajawea. If correct, she would have died of an unknown illness at age 24 at Fort Manuel Lisa, where it is claimed that she and her husband Toussaint Charbonneau were living. If correct, she left an infant girl, Lizette, there, and her son Jean-Baptiste was living in a boarding school while in the care of William Clark. Subsequent records support that Charbonneau consented to Clark's adoption of Lizette the following year, although almost nothing is known about her subsequent fate. Jean-Baptiste lived until age 61, having traveled widely and having figured in many interesting localities of the American West.

The 1812 death claim, however, is rejected by the Shoshone's, to which tribe she belonged, who maintain that she lived to be nearly 100 years old and died in 1884 at Ft. Washakie, Wyoming. A grave site exists for her, based on the competing claim, in Ft. Washakie, the seat of government for the Wind River Reservation. This claim holds that she left Charbonneau and ultimately married into the Comanche tribe, which is very closely related to the Shoshone tribe, ultimately returning to her native tribe This view was championed by Grace Hebard who was discussed here several days ago, and it even presents an alternative history for her son, Jean Baptiste, and a second son Bazil. It was later supported by the conclusions reached by Dr. Charles Eastman, a Sioux physician who was hired by the Bureau of Indian Affairs to research her fate.

While the Wyoming claim is not without supporting evidence, the better evidence would support her death outside of Wyoming at an early age. The alternative thesis is highly romantic, which has provided the basis for criticism of Hebard's work. The 1812 date, on the other hand, is undeniably sad, as much of Sacajawea's actual life was. Based upon what is now known of her story, as well as the verifiable story of Jean-Baptiste Charbonneau, who had traveled in the US and Europe, and who had held public office in the United States, the Wyoming claim is seriously questionable. That in turn leaves the question of the identify of the person buried at Ft. Washakie, who appears to have genuinely been married into the Comanche tribe, to have lived to an extremely old age, and to have lived a very interesting life, but that identity is unlikely to ever be known, or even looked into.

Now, quite frankly, I do not hold to the view that the "victors write the history", or that all history is written with the view of justifying the views of the writer. Quite the opposite is generally true, and for the most part, most good histories get things right more often than wrong. That, however, may be part of the problem here. The early history on the Wyoming claim was promoted by Grace Hebard, and as remarkable as she was, she not only was not a trained historian, but it would appear not a perfectly unbiased one. And it would also appear that her research did not benefit from delving into the existing sources much. So she concluded that a woman who likely was a very interesting long lived Comanche-Shoshone woman was Sacajawea, when in fact she almost certainly was not. Beyond that, Hebard went on to make Sacajawea sort of a feminist icon, which perhaps does not really do justice to a person who was an unfortunate girl at the time she was ripped away from her home in a raid, and who was later married as the second bride in the polygamist household being then maintained by Toussaint Charbonneau (what happened to Otter Woman, the first Shoshone bride of Charbonneau, I do not know). Dying from illness at 24 years old was a bad fate, but one that was pretty common at that time, so the truth appears to also have a pretty unfortunate ending to a pretty hard short life.

So what does this whole story tell us now? Well, perhaps it says something about the very early written histories of places like Wyoming, where a lot of the very early writers were very dedicated and energetic, but not always unbiased, and sometimes over enthusiastic. Perhaps this also points out why new histories are sometimes needed, and sometimes more objective than earlier ones. The first on the scene sometimes have an agenda or a viewpoint that can't help but dictate the outcome of their work, and they may not even be able to recognize that their work is so influenced. And it may also say something about holding on to a myth against all odds, as Wyoming still claims the 1884 death, in spite of the best evidence all being to the contrary. I suppose it also says something about drafting works of history without adequate research as well.

Old Picture of the Day: British Imperial Airways

Recently we posted the British Airways television advertisement that features their old aircraft. Here's another example of aircraft from the dawn of commercial aviation.

Old Picture of the Day: British Imperial Airways:

Quite the plane. I'd frankly be afraid to fly in it, but in its day it was no doubt quite the advancement. Of course, flying in those days was a real rarity for most travelers.

Painted Bricks: Occidental Hotel, Buffalo Wyoming

Painted Bricks: Occidental Hotel, Buffalo Wyoming: This depicts Main Street, downtown Buffalo Wyoming. The building in the foreground is the Occidental Hotel, a very old Buffalo Hotel that ...

Today In Wyoming's History: December 14. Grace Raymond Hebard

Today In Wyoming's History: December 14: 1914 Grace Raymond Hebard became first woman admitted to state bar.

This was a remarkable achievement in and of itself, but it only one of a string of such accomplishments made by Hebard. She was also the first woman to graduate from the Engineering Department of the University of Iowa, in an era when there engineering was an overwhelmingly male profession. She followed this 1882 accomplishment by acquiring a 1885 MA from the same school, and then an 1893 PhD in political science from Wesleyan University. She went to work for the State of Wyoming in 1882 and rose to the position of Deputy State Engineer under legendary State Engineer Elwood Mead. She moved to Laramie in 1891 and was instrumental in the administration of the University of Wyoming. She was a significant figure in the suffrage movement, and a proponent in Wyoming of Americanization, a view shared by such figures such as Theodore Roosevelt.

She was an amateur historian as well, which is what she is best remembered for today. Unfortunately, her historical works were tinged with romanticism and have not been regarded as wholly reliable in later years. Her history of Sacajawea, which followed 30 years of research, is particularly questioned and would seem to have made quite a few highly romantic erroneous conclusions. On a more positive note, the same impulses lead her to be very active in the marking of historic Wyoming trails.

While she was the first woman to be admitted to the Wyoming State Bar, she never actually practiced law. Her book collection is an important part of the University of Wyoming's American Heritage Center's collection today.

Old Picture of the Day: Travel by Old Car

Old Picture of the Day: Travel by Old Car: Travel week continues today with this picture of travel by old car. The picture was taken in 1939 in California. This would have been towa...

Judge Skavdahl sworn in.

share, Judge Skavdahl sworn in.

Judge Skavdahl was a year behind me in law school and was sworn in as a Federal Judge for the District of Wyoming. What amazes me about this article is that he's only the eighth lawyer to hold that position, which includes the other three presently holding it, and Judge Downes who recently retired. That means 50% of those holding that office are still living

Really amazing thing to think of.

Today In Wyoming's History: December 7

Today In Wyoming's History: December 7: 1890 The subject of sermon at the Rawlins Presbyterian Church was “Choosing a Husband.” 1898 Battery A, Wyoming Light Artillery, arri...

The caged tiger isn't happy?

Heard in an interview of a doctor regarding depression:

"Major depression is unheard of in hunter gatherer societies".

Early Days In St. Lambert

An interesting article, with interesting photographs, about my mother's family when they lived in St. Lambert, Quebec.

Thanks go out to my uncle Ed for forwarding this link to me.

Note the "Notary" sign on the porch, which has a different connotation in most Common Law jurisdictions than it does in the United States.

Old Picture of the Day: Shoveling Snow

Old Picture of the Day: Shoveling Snow: Today's picture is from the early 1900's. It shows men shoveling snow. The picture was taken in Washington DC. It looks like the men are l...

Old Picture of the Day: New York Snow Scene

Old Picture of the Day: New York Snow Scene: December is here, and I am hoping for snow. So, this will be snow week here at OPOD. We kick off the week with this snowy scene from New Y...

The Culture of Careers and the Pursuit of Degrees

The other day I ran across a webiste called "JD Underground".  I was actually trying to research a legal topic at the time.  I don't frequent the legal blogs, and don't feel there's much of a reason to, and that would include that one, which seems sort of snarky and whiny. 

Be that as it may, I ran across this interesting, perhaps stark, comment on a thread which principally dealt with lawyers looking back at having entered the law, and people entering the law:

The brainwashing is so thorough. It cannot be undone. It was drilled into our heads since we were little, and no amount of contrary evidence can eviscerate the persistent belief that education leads to improvement.

I have a relative in a very lucrative police job. He makes, conservatively, 170k a year with overtime. His pension will be a minimum of 90k a year when he retires (before 50). He will also have healthcare paid in full for life.

Now, said person did not go to college, and said person dodged the bullet. In fact, he specifically decided against going to college and/or LS because the work was boring to him.

As you may suspect, this person knows 2 successful solo attorneys who make 250k a year (these guys also came from money). (Let’s forget about the fact that if you factor in his total compensation, he beats these guys hand over fist). Urgo, he tells me I am lazy and not working hard enough. He attributes all my problems to a lack of experience, and he tells me my problems are due to laziness and a lack of experience.

I could try to tell him all day that, despite my f’ed up situation, I am in a better position than most young grads, that I make more money, that I have better hours, etc. Not penetrating. Even when I point out OWS, all the newspaper articles, all the statistical and anecdotal evidence, it doesn’t matter.

I asked him if he would try to put his kids on the same path if they did not excel in school, and he almost bit my head off. He is going to send his kids to college no matter what else he sees because of those 2 solo attorneys he knows, and a handful of other successful professionals he knows. I suspect by that time, not only will being a lawyer be a bad bet, but being a doctor will not be a good idea as well.

This guy cannot say to himself that his superiors probably make close to and over 250k (they do, it’s a fact), and that the chances of that happening are better for someone than entering white collar America, particularly LS because he has been brainwashed since birth. Even though he built a great life for himself by receiving mercy from society in the form of collective bargaining and a strong union, he will never acknowledge it, which will serve as a detriment to him and everyone else.

Similarly, we all received the same brainwashing, it will stick for life, and we cannot kick it even though we know better, and even though we did not dodge the bullet. It’s a fact.

That's a pretty bitter comment, but although its extreme (I don't recall any brainwashing in law school at all) there some truth to it.  This fellow has a close relative who can't stand the idea that his lawyer relative makes less than he does, works more, and has a much less assured future.  And that fellow is making sure that his own kids do not follow his easier path in life.

I see that all the time.  And it is very similar to what this fellow notes.  People just don't believe that lawyers actually work, and that most of them don't get rich. And if they want to talk to you about your job, they'll reject any suggestion that their preconceived notions aren't wholly correct.  It might even make them mad.

Oddly enough, even before I stumbled into this comment, something akin to it was sort of on my mind anyhow, due to a Christmas Card we received this past week.  A relative of my wife sent her their annual card.  In it was the report that her daughter, a second year law student, was "working hard but it will be worth it".

Now, by way of background, when this girl suddenly announced her intention to go to law school to her parents, her mother emailed me about that career choice purporting to seek advice.  I was extremely reluctant to reply at all.  I don't like to give career advice in that context, I don't really know the girl, and it puts me in a spot that I don't really want to be in.  How would I know what she wanted to know and how would I know if I thought she was well suited for the law or not?  Still, given the relationship, I did reply.  Basically my advice was that she should speak to a trusted lawyer she knows about the actual practice, that it involved very long hours, very hard work, and there was no glamour to it.  This provoked a response as it obviously wasn't what she intended to hear.  She assured me that she had spoken to some lawyers she knew, and then had some questions about "International Law", the intended major.

Now, International Law doesn't even exist.  Oh, I know it exists as a theoretical law, but international law is now, and always has been, the policies dictated by the strongest nations on the globe.  Can Costa Rica sue China and expect success?  Hah!  No, that's a fiction, and no doubt most law students specializing in International Law meet the same fate that those who expect to practice Environmental Law do, they end up practicing what ever law they can when they first get out of school.

And that's becoming a problem, as the US has a glut of lawyers.  There are a lot of unemployed lawyers right now, even taking into consideration that attrition of new lawyers is over 25%.  It's a flooded field.

I again pointed these things out, and she politely cut off the conversation at that point, to my relief.  I later learned that the mother was encouraging law school, so no doubt my gentle suggestions to investigate the actual nature of the practice, which wasn't dissuading her or encouraging her to to anything other than become informed, was completely unwelcome.  I was supposed to glamourize it.

Oh well.  To a large extent people are going to to what they want to do, until they do what they have to do, a state in life that arrives distressingly soon.  But in part what we think we should do is dictated by societal norms and culture, one of which says, in this day and age, that a university career must be pursued and certain jobs are good jobs that pay very well no matter what the reality of that situation may be.

Thomasson: The old days were really green; we just didn't know it | ScrippsNews

Thomasson: The old days were really green; we just didn't know it | ScrippsNews

I don't usually like Thomasson's columns all that well, but this one fits in, although I'm fairly convinced that he overheard conversation is an imagined literary vehicle.

Some Gave All: Converse County War Memorial, Douglas Wyoming

Some Gave All: Converse County War Memorial, Douglas Wyoming: This the memorial to Converse County's war dead which is located in the Converse County Courthouse . Amongst the individuals whose are lis...

Today In Wyoming's History: November 28

Today In Wyoming's History: November 28: 1914 New Your Stock Exchange reopens for the first time since July, when the crises leading up to World War One caused its closer. 1916 ...

This is an interesting item. I hadn't realized that the New York Stock Exchange had been closed from some point in July, 1914, up until November 28, 1914. That's a long time for trading to be suspended.

This is undoubtedly an ignorant question, but if anyone should ever stop here (a rare occurrence, I know) and also be knowledgeable on the the stock exchanges of this period, how did they work? That is, if I was, say, in Casper Wyoming and I wanted to buy stock in a publicly traded company of that period, how would I do it? I presume that I'd need to find a stock broker, and place the order with him, but how we he do it? Telegraph? Telephone? Mail?

Heroes

"Hero" is an overused word these days.  The entire concept has, unfortunately, become devalued to the point of being nearly meaningless.  No sports figure is a "hero" for being a sports figure. Not everyone who serves in the armed forces is a hero either, no matter how much we may value their service.  No heroes are rare by definition.

Which therefore should cause me to question using it in this post, where perhaps the word "mentor" would be better, but I just don't like the word, so hero it is.

So here is the topic.  Do you have personal heroes?  That is, heroes in your occupation, or even your life, that you hold up as a standard?

The reason I've started thinking of this is that, as I recently noted here, is that I've been doing a little reading on some of the State's Founding Fathers, and I'm not too sure I like them.  It leads me to question why that is.  A lot of them occupied the same professions as I do, some of them occupying both professions I do, and yet I can't find myself really liking them, even though I'd like to.  Perhaps that reflects s deficit of the right kind of ambition on my part. Cal Thomas recently quoted a famous person (I've forgotten who) to the effect that ambition was the "road" to success.  Perhaps it is, but I think that perhaps that fails to acknowledge that some types of ambition lead to pretty rocky, rural, roads.  Thomas quoted those for the proposition that anyone could become financially independent if they had ambition and were willing to work hard.  Perhaps.

Anyhow, what this has caused me to ponder is people in my fields who I admire as examples.  Surely, I thought, I'd be able to find some and hold them up as historical standards.  I'm having a tough time of it, to some degree, however.

With law and lawyers I'm finding it quite difficult.  Maybe that's because the type of people I might admire just don't fit well into the mold of lawyers we might know.  In thinking on it, I can really only think of a few examples.  Abraham Lincoln is one, but I probably admire him more for other reasons than his career as a lawyer.  John Adams is perhaps another, as a man who was able to mix a career as a farmer with that of a lawyer.  Indeed Adams is probably the only example I can really hold up.  There are other lawyers I can think of, but they did not distinguish themselves as such.  John J. Pershing had a law degree, but of course he never practiced law.  Thomas Jefferson I somewhat admire, but in terms of his legal practice, which was slight, he might actually define the wondering mind nature of many who enter the field, and he never actually liked the law, and didn't have to to practice due to his circumstances.

Of course, if I go way back, I can think of a few, but they are all highly admirable for a variety of other reasons. St. Thomas More is the greatest lawyer of all time, but because of his dedication to the Truth.  He would not be an example of worldly success, as his dedication to the Truth and Faith cost him his life.   That tends to be the sort of example I really admire, but obviously that's not going to really inspire me while writing a brief.  St. Augustine is another, but he fits in to a whole hosts of such examples of bright, highly intelligent men of Faith who were lawyers, and left the law due to their Faith.  The same talents that they had as lawyers were useful in their subsequent careers, but their success was due to their following their calling.

Some people I know will sometimes mention individual lawyer they know.  Old well respected lawyers, old judges, etc.  I guess those provide good personal examples, but I can't really think of any myself.

Agriculture is a bit different.  I can think of lots of farmers and ranchers, some of whom I know, and some who were  historical figures, that I really admire. But here too, I can't use them for personal inspiration at my desk, as they didn't work at desks.  If I ponder them I'm going to want to go outside, and I have indoor work to do that I cannot avoid.

I suppose in this later category I'd note Wendell Berry, who is a farmer and an English professor, a poet and an author.  I do admire his writings. But I'd note here too that Berrys' philosophy is the antithesis of what most hold up as a philosophy of success.

I don't know where any of this leads to.  Perhaps this. Do you have any personal heroes?

The Food Network

What do people who watch all these cooking shows on television do with the information?

Unless we're becoming a secret nations of chefs, and I don't think we are, I think a lot of people are actually watching other people cook on television?  Why?

I suppose, if nothing else, perhaps its encouraging diversity in menus.

The CST gets testy

Casper's newspaper actually has an editorial today urging voters to kick everyone out of Congress.  They include our sitting Congresswoman and Senators.

This is amazing for a Wyoming editorial.  The Wyoming tradition is to re-elect people no matter what.  I'm fairly convinced that F. E. Warren, who has been dead for 90 years, could be reelected Senator today based on the fact that he was Senator from 1890 to 1929. Got that seniority thing going for him, you know.

Now, it's not really a logical argument that people should be booted out without even knowing who their opposition would be, and it isn't going to happen. And it probably shouldn't. At least Senator Enzi was in there pitching for a budget solution. But that a Wyoming  newspaper would urge voters to axe all sitting is remarkable.  People must actually be mad.

What happens when columnists don't live in the real world

Also in the Casper paper today is a column they ran by one Bonnie Erbe.  I don't know who she is, but she's apparently a political columnist.

She's horrified that Congress has reauthorized the slaughter of horses.  Based on her column, it's pretty clear that Ms. Erbe knows no more about horses than she learned when she had a My Pretty Pony. She insists they actually pack some of the horses alive, and that packing houses attract a criminal element, as that's the only person who would work in one.  Here's part of her bio:

Erbé was born in New York City, but moved to Washington D.C. after graduation from college to cover politics. She graduated from Barnard College in 1974, Columbia University with an M.S. in Journalism in 1975 and from Georgetown University Law Center with a J.D. cum laude in 1987.

Ms. Erbé is non partisan and toes no party line. She is not an affiliated Democrat or Republican, nor is she uniformly progressive or conservative. Labels of all types make her nervous. Ms. Erbé finds partisan politics tiresome and believes she represents the majority of Americans who think for themselves and do not subscribe to any partisan or ideologically-prescribed way of thinking. She believes the only people who think that way are either angling for political appointments or trying to impose their moral beliefs on the nation's laws.

She is, however, passionate about women's advancement in the U.S. and worldwide, about preserving green spaces and maintaining an environment that can support the human race and animal species for millennia to come. She is also a strong supporter limiting government spending and a proponent of individual and personal responsibility.

Whatever.

She's obviously stunningly ignorant of real horses and real packing houses.  If she'd like to actually get some green experience, she ought to herd sheep with a real horse for a year.  Then her opinions on an actual animal which is in overabundance and not a plush toy might be relevant to something.  Otherwise, the opinion of an urban lawyer aren't of much value.

Ambition and Ambition

I've been doing a little reading recently about  the founding personalities of this state.  And I'm not too sure I like them.  And, given as I know why I'm not too sure, I'm not too sure what this says about me.

The early history of this state's politics is heavily, almost exclusively, marked by men of high personal ambition. But that's what bothers me, their ambition was so personal.  None of them were from here, but then we couldn't expect them to be either, given as the native population was either truly Native, and therefore not recognized as US Citizenry at the time, as well as being an oppressed class, or otherwise very small in numbers.  That we would have to take as a given.

But the founding fathers, if you will, of the state, or at least those who obtained high political office, seem to be marked by a singular story.  They were from back east, they were often lawyers, they saw Wyoming as a wide open place where a person, often a lawyer, could make it big really quickly, as there were so few people and so many opportunities, and they translated this into political power.  Sometimes they stuck around thereafter, but often they did not.

I may be misreading them, but to those people this state was nothing more than a vehicle to personal success.  The state probably meant nothing more to them than any other place, and their own personal "success" was the goal.  They were highly personally ambitious.

But what about that sort of ambition?  It certainly doesn't comport with what Wendell Berry calls "becoming native to this place", and it isn't the sort of ambition that I have, or most long term residents of this state have.  People who have stuck it out here in lean times (and aren't all that happy to see people moving in, in spite of the pathetic babblings of the Casper newspaper calling 70,000 new residents something to be thankful for. . .hardly).  People who are really from here, love the land as a rule, and while we don't all agree with what means, we can all agree we love the state.

I suppose this might mean that my personal ambition is pretty skewed, or at least not very American.  I really don't get the thinking of people who move all over to follow a career.  And that seems destructive to me on top of it.  Never living anywhere, really, they never value anything other than themselves.

Enough with the idiot turkey "pardoning" thing already

This year, as every Thanksgiving, we've been treated to the stupidity of a Presidential turkey pardoning, an annual ritual that shows how really disconnected from reality we've become.  Today, no doubt, the President will have turkey for Thanksgiving Dinner from some other less benighted bird, probably a hormone free green "Heritage" turkey.

This is just stupid.

It isn't stupid that the President has turkey for the traditional Thanksgiving Day Dinner, like most Americans will save for Neo Pagans who will eat wheat grass or something, and then anemically proclaim their hatred of nature a love, and then go play the Xbox or something.  No, turkey is a fine meal. But this over sentimentality and anthropomorphism of a bird is really goofy.

The turkey being "pardoned" isn't guilty of anything.  It's a bird that is food, one of God's gifts to his people.  It has no soul, and serves the function of being sustenance for other things.  If it were in a state of nature, and it didn't become food for a human, it would become food for a bobcat, coyote or bacteria.  Turkeys in nature do not go on to retire to Turkey retirement homes. They go on to become meat. Always, with no exceptions.  The lucky turkeys become meat for humans, the only animal that cares how a thing is killed.  The unlucky ones go on to become food for bobcats, which like to play with their mortally wounded food, or for bacteria, which make for a rather gross death.

By "pardoning" a turkey we playfully give rise to an idea that we kill our food as it is guilty of something.  Given as it is a Presidential pardon, apparently the turkey is guilty of treason or espionage, about the only things you can get the Federal death penalty for.  But killing a turkey in the real world is not an execution, it's what all humans, even vegans, do to survive.

Besides, they go on and eat turkey for dinner anyway, and the fact that they pardon one on one day and eat one on another, is used as some sort of rather pathetic argument by the Neo Pagans in advancement of their hatred of nature.

I know I won't see it, but I'd love to see a year when they bring the turkey out on the White House lawn and the President says "looks great!  Kill and and roast him up!"

That vaguely uncomfortable feeling

I am not an opponent of technology by any means, but I don't unthinkingly accept any new technological development as unquestionably good either.  Simply accepting any new thing seems to be the American way now days, and that isn't a good thing. Still, I've been an early adopter of many office electronic devices, and chances are that a lot of people inaccurately think I'm a techi.

But recently certain things have been giving me a vague feeling of discomfort.  Usually I analyze any such feelings to see if its simply my naturally conservative nature reacting to a changing circumstance or if my feeling is based on something genuine.  And on more than one occasion I have conceded something as an improvement, even if I don't really like it personally.  Here, however, I can't really define the sense of discomfort, or why it persists.

But it does.

To try to define it, for reasons I can't really adequately explain, I have the sense that technology is moving us so far from the real, and natural, world that it's a threat to us at a core level.  We're obviously fascinated with technology, and it seems most (but not all) human cultures continually adopt all things new no matter what the utility or costs.  Our electronic devices are, I fear, becoming so advanced and distracting that the risk permanently enslaving us in the world of the fake.

And it isn't just Ipods, Ipads, and computer, but other things as well.  In this season of poultry fueled bliss most Americans do not realize that turkeys, the national Holiday bird,  have been rendered so deformed as a domestic species of avian livestock that they can no longer breed. That's right. Turkey breasts have grown so huge, through breading, that turkeys are actually incapable of reproducing naturally, in the case of the production variety, so that artificial insemination is needed to reproduce them.  I can't really say why I find this horrific, but I do.  In order to get a turkey that's not a freak of production nature, you actually have to buy a "Heritage Turkey".  I'm not inclined to do that, but it's one more reason that a person, if they can, ought to just harvest one of the wild ones.

I know I sound like a Luddite in saying all of this. But we are what we are, and I don't really think we were meant to be a couch sitting, Ipod using, "consumer". But we risk taking the whole planet there.

Starting one of the early ones.

Starting a biplane.

Penn State and a lack of moral standards.

There's been a lot of commentary on the alleged horror of sexual crimes against children by a member of the Penn State football coaching staff.  Like any well publicized crime, everyone is going to get their two cents in by the end, with some demanding Federal action, and no doubt a host of psychological babblers seeking to explain it.

I wasn't inclined to comment myself, and frankly I don't know that any comments are not necessarily off the mark by a bit simply for the reason that individual crimes are individual crimes, and we can draw broader lessons that are learned in error for that reason.  Nonetheless, I was struck by a couple of the comments, including one on national television, that are highly insightful, and highly unusual.

First there is this comment by David Brooks, on Meet teh Press

MR. BROOKS: If you're alert to the sense of what evil is, what the evil is within yourself and what evil is in society, you have a script to follow. It's not a vague sense. You have a script to follow. And this is necessary because people do not intervene. If--there's been a ton of research on this. They say people, they ask people, "If you saw something cruel, if you saw racism and sexism, will you intervene?" Then they hire actors, and they put it right in front of them. People do not intervene. It's called the bystander effect. It happens again and again, people don't intervene. That's why we need these scripts to remind people how, how evil can be all around.

and:

MR. BROOKS: Well, I think they obviously need to make the law more robust. But we can't rely on law and rules. It's up to personal discretion. We've taken a lot of moral decisions and tried to make them all legal based. But there has to be a sense of personal responsibility, regardless of what the rules are, "Here's what you do to stop it." And so if you try to make everything a matter of legalism and rules, you're going to get people doing the minimal, and you're going, going to have people thinking, "It's not my responsibility. It's, it's somehow lodged in the rules."

Brooks is, in my view, right on.  Frankly there are a large number of people in American, and Western, society who do not know what evil is, and beyond that do not even acknowledge it's existence.  Evil is. Some people are in evil's grip.  But you would not know that today if you listened to any popular media.  Sex crimes committed by adults upon one another are excused as "addictions", or the like.  And in the popular media it is now the in thing to popularize and glamorize the propagation of   sexual deviancy.  Homosexuality, which was defined as a mental illness up until the 1970s, is now hip, cool, and glamorous.  It's regarded as an unwarranted prejudice to even suggest that the existence of two genders with different reproductive origins might mean that sexual activity requires two sexes in order not to be deviant.

It's also now supposed to be the case that we're not to point out that the serial polygamy culture of the day, in which mating couples do not stick with each other for long, produces a horrific domestic situation for children.  Anyone hanging out at court for any length of time would realize that a very high percentage of violence in the home, including sexual violence, that is committed by adults is committed by an adult who shares no DNA with the child, but lives there.  I've never seen statistics on it, but based on observation I'd guess that the percentage of that feature of those crimes is well over 50%.  Simply put, the "boyfriend" (a term that ought not to apply to anyone over 25 years old) is typically the offender against a child he is not related to.  This is extremely, extremely, common.  But we are not to acknowledge it.  The "father", for that matter, simply moves on, without shame, and women will have multiple children by multiple fathers, as if this does not create a set of rather obvious problems.  In a prior era, this would have been regarded as a moral depravity, because it is a moral depravity, but those living it do not even know that now, as to mention it will provoke an active response from those whose only standards are the lack of standards of relativism. 

Conservative columnist Cal Thomas added this commentary in a column that's running this week which makes much the same point as Brooks did, but in an expanded form.  He starts off by aptly noting

Baseball may still be called the national pastime, but football has become the national religion. College football is played on Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath, while professional football is mostly played on Sunday, the Christian Sabbath. Fans of both often express themselves in ways that are more vocal than the wildest Pentecostal preacher. 

While denouncing what is alleged to have happened at Penn State as repugnant, we would do well to examine the reasons behind such things. Yes, it begins with human nature, but society — buttressed by religion — once did a better job of keeping human nature in check. 

Since the free-loving ’60s, we seem to have taken a wrecking ball to social mores. Today, anyone appealing to such a standard is denounced and stamped with the label of the day, usually ending in the suffix, “-phobe.”

This is exactly correct, and I'd note was the opinion of such widely ranging people as Thomas Jefferson, who is sometimes regarded as religiously eclectic, Theodore Roosevelt, who moved through a couple of Protestant religions during his lifetime, and Winston Churchill, who was born into the Church of England but whom rarely attended.  That is, they all felt that without the foundation of religious morality, no society would survive.  Right now we're running a big test to see if that's true, and so far the results do not look good.

Thomas goes on to note:

The medical and psychological professions have aided and abetted the cultural rot. Doctors once took an oath to “never do harm,” accompanied by a pledge never to assist in an abortion. Now the official position of the American Medical association’s “code of ethics” is this: “The principles of medical ethics of the AMA do not prohibit a physician from performing an abortion in accordance with good medical practice and under circumstances that do not violate law.” 

Doctors once led, now they follow cultural trends. 

On its website, the American Psychological Association brags, “Since 1975, the American Psychological Association has called on psychologists to take the lead in removing the stigma of mental illness that has long been associated with lesbian, gay, and bisexual orientations.” It once considered such behavior otherwise and while even most conservatives no longer regard homosexuality as a mental illness, many still regard it as sinful. That theological diagnosis, too, has been discarded in our increasingly secular and anomalous society where everything is to be tolerated except those people who assert that, according to a standard higher than opinion polls, some things remain intolerable.

Again, he's quite correct.  Indeed, it's worth nothing that the ground breaking paper that lead the APA to change its mind on homosexuality was written by a homosexual, hardly a disinterested person in such a debate.  It may or may not be a mental illness, but it is certainly a deviance, in the context of deviating from the norm.  Now, however, a person is not even supposed to state that, as neutral as it is.

Thomas also goes on to state

What changed? Pressure groups aided by secular education and the entertainment industry. 

Last week, an episode of “Glee” featured two couples — one straight, one gay — “losing their virginity.” The show’s co-creator, Ryan Murphy, told Bravo’s “Sex in the Box”: “Hopefully I have made it possible for somebody on broadcast television to do a rear-entry scene in three years. Maybe that will be my legacy.” Some legacy.

Indeed, not only is Murphy likely to make sodomy and buggery  fare for children through television, but moral depravity already dominates on television.  The popular sitcom "Friends" has serial illicit sex as a routine topic, arguing that it was the cultural norm and to be admired.  The HBO show Sex and the City was a monument to immoral narcissistic behavior.  HBO followed upon this with what amounted to a campaign for polygamy, a cause with has now been taken up by "Sister Wives", a show on some other network, in which a strange acting fellow with a Cheshire Cat grin promotes his "marriage" to three women at one time.  It can be expected that polygamy will soon join with homosexuality in a campaign to dilute the meaning of marriage.

Does all this have something to do with Penn State?  Yes it does.  In a society in which there is no moral standard, and in which the popular media insists that serial sex is good, that homosexual sex is good, and which plural marriages are nifty, can such conduct as occurred at Penn State appear to be far more deviant that what the medial claims to be the norms?  Apparently it can be, according to the media, and we all should know that it is wrong. But by the same token, a society in which right and wrong is so debased as a standards will see many more such horrors.  Indeed, they've been going on for some time, and this one has only hit the news because football is such a big deal in our society.  At our current state, standards are only applied when they're applied to the nationally known.  Plural marriages are okay, but affairs by politicians are not, for example.

Any society that doesn't know right from wrong will see its debasement hurt the weakest first.  And all it takes for evil to prevail, as Neimoller noted, is for good men to do nothing.  In this case, good men and women have to say what they believe publicly.  It's time for that.