The British Mandate for Palestine went into effect, as did the French Mandate for Syria and Lebanon.
With this, the British Empire, and I'd guess French Empire reached their maximum territorial extents.
The grim news kept coming in on the recent Cole Creek disaster.
German diplomat George Ferdinand Duckwitz warned the Danish resistance that Berlin had ordered Danish Jews to be deported starting on October 1. The information allowed the Danish resistance to help 8,000 Danish Jews, nearly the entire Danish population of the country, to leave the country, 7,200 of whom were taken by Danish fishermen to Sweden.
Duckwitz was a career German diplomat and remained in West Germany's service after the war, first as ambassador to Denmark and later to India. He became Secretary of State in the Foreign Office in 1966. Israel accorded him the honor of Righteous Among the Nations in 1971. He died in 1973 at age 68.
Luxembourg was declared "cleansed of Jew" by the Germans after the deportation of its remaining 674 Jewish residents.
The British 10th Corps, an element of the U.S. 5th Army, broke into the Plain of Naples at Nocera. The U.S. 6th Corps advanced towards Avelino.
Abyssinia, known better as Ethiopia, was admitted to the League of Nations.
The Giants took the National League pennant, beating the Brooklyn Robins 3 to 0.
The idea of vocation attaches to work a cluster of other ideas, including devotion, skill, pride, pleasure, the good stewardship of means and materials. Here we have returned to intangibles of economic value. When they are subtracted, what remains is ‘a job,’ always implying that work is something good only to escape.
Wendell Berry.
Naples revolved against German occupation in an event which is known as the Quattro giornate di Napoli.
The British 8th Army entered Foggia, Italy. This placed Allied aircraft within easy range of the Balkans, Southern Germany, and Poland.
The Australian Aboriginal and European Benedictine Catholic community of Kalumburu was attacked by the Imperial Japanese Army Air Force, killing five and destroying its buildings.
Professor Sam Ruben, a co-discoverer of Carbon 14, received a lethal dose of phosgene while working on war related processes. He'd die the following day.
Today In Wyoming's History: September 27: 1923 Thirty railroad passengers were killed when a CB&Q train wrecked at the Cole Creek Bridge, which had been washed out due to a flood, in Natrona County. Attribution: Wyoming State Historical Society.
The Canadian Speaker of the House of Commons praised a person in the audience, a Ukrainian, for fighting the Russians.
It turned out that the Ukrainian had fought the Russians in World War Two in a unit allied with the SS, which is horrible, and they were horrible.
The Speaker, however, was likely unaware of that, and said it out of inexcusable ignorance.
He's now resigning.
Marjorie Taylor Greene remains in the House of Representatives after having once said that Californian forest fires might be due to Jewish Space Lasers. She also once compared something to the "gazpacho", apparently meaning the Gestapo.
The only recently divorced Lauren Boebert of Colorado was just videoed allowing a date to grope a boob in public. This after cheerfully revealing her son's impregnation of a teenage girlfriend.
A certain Senator Menéndez won't resign, even after being allegedly involved in a pretty shocking monetary scandal.
Donald Trump, a serial polygamist, is under multiple indictments and still running for the Oval Office.
Canada must feel like it's trapped in a North American room full of toddlers.
The ISW's view on the ongoing Ukrainian offensive:
The SS gave the Roman Jewish community 36 hours to make payments to the German occupiers. Chief Rabbi Israel Zolli appealed to the Vatican regarding the monetary shortfalls, and which the Vatican did. As the payments were to be i gold, it is thought that religious vessels were melted to make the payment.
The multinational (not including Americans) Z Special Unit raided Japanese shipping at Singapore. The Japanese, in New Guinea, launched an unsuccessful counterattack on the Australians at Finschafen.
Senator McGee--my old colleague in the Senate, Gale McGee--Governor, Mr. President, Senator Mansfield, Senator Metcalf, Secretary Udall, ladies and gentlemen:
I want to express my appreciation to you for your warm welcome, to you, Governor, to the President of the University, to Senator McGee, and others. I am particularly glad to come on this conservation trip and have an opportunity to speak at this distinguished university, because what we are attempting to do is to develop the talents in our country which require, of course, education which will permit us in our time, when the conservation of our resources requires entirely different techniques than were required 50 years ago, when the great conservation movement began under Theodore Roosevelt--and these talents, scientific and social talents, must be developed at our universities.
I hope that all of you who are students here will recognize the great opportunity that lies before you in this decade, and in the decades to come, to be of service to our country. The Greeks once defined happiness as full use of your powers along lines of excellence, and I can assure you that there is no area of life where you will have an opportunity to use whatever powers you have, and to use them along more excellent lines, bringing ultimately, I think, happiness to you and those whom you serve.
What I think we must realize is that the problems which now face us and their solution are far more complex, far more difficult, far more subtle, require a far greater skill and discretion of judgment, than any of the problems that this country has faced in its comparatively short history, or any, really, that the world has faced in its long history. The fact is that almost in the last 30 years the world of knowledge has exploded. You remember that Robert Oppenheimer said that 8 or 9 out of 10 of all the scientists who ever lived, live today. This last generation has produced nearly all of the scientific breakthroughs, at least relatively, that this world of ours has ever experienced. We are alive, all of us, while this tremendous explosion of knowledge, which has expanded the horizon of our experience, so far has all taken 'place in the last 30 years.
If you realize that when Queen Victoria sent for Robert Peel to be Prime Minister-he was in Rome--the journey which he took from Rome to London took him the same amount of time, to the day, that it had taken the Emperor Hadrian to go from Rome to England nearly 1900 years before. There had been comparatively little progress made in almost 1900 years in the field of knowledge. Now, suddenly, in the last 100 years, but most particularly in the last 30 years, all that is changed, and all of this knowledge is brought to bear, and can be brought to bear, in improving our lives and making the life of our people more happy, or destroying them. And that problem is the one, of course, which this generation of Americans and the next must face: how to use that knowledge, how to make a social discipline out of it.
There is really not much use in having science and its knowledge confined to the laboratory unless it comes out into the mainstream of American and world life, and only those who are trained and educated to handle knowledge and the disciplines of knowledge can be expected to play a significant part in the life of their country. So, quite obviously, this university is not maintained by the people of Wyoming merely to help all of the graduates enjoy a prosperous life. That may come, that may be a byproduct, but the people of Wyoming contribute their taxes to the maintenance of this school in order that the graduates of this school may, themselves, return to the society which helped develop them some of the talents which that society has made available, and what is true in this State is true across the United States.
The reason why, at the height of the Civil War, when the preservation of the Union was in doubt, Abraham Lincoln signed the Land Grant College Act, which has built up the most extraordinary educational system in the world, was because he knew that a nation could not exist and be ignorant and free; and what was true 100 years ago is more true today. So what we have to decide is how we are going to manage the complicated social and economic and world problems which come across our desks-my desk, as President of the United States; the desk of the Senators, as representatives of the States; the Members of the House, as representatives of the people.
But most importantly, as the final power is held by a majority of the people, how the majority of the people are going to make their judgment on the wise use of our resources, on the correct monetary and fiscal policy, what steps we should take in space, what steps we should take to develop the resources of the ocean, what steps we should take to manage our balance of payments, what we should do in the Congo or Viet-Nam, or in Latin America, all these areas which come to rest upon the United States as the leading great power of the world, with the determination and the understanding to recognize what is at stake in the world--all these are problems far more complicated than any group of citizens ever had to deal with in the history of the world, or any group of Members of Congress had to deal with.
If you feel that the Members of Congress were more talented 100 years ago, and certainly the Senators in the years before the Civil War included the brightest figures, probably, that ever sat in the Senate--Benton, Clay, Webster, Calhoun, and all the rest-they talked, and at least three of them stayed in the Congress 40 years--they talked for 40 years about four or five things: tariffs and the development of the West, land, the rights of the States and slavery, Mexico. Now we talk about problems in one summer which dwarf in complexity all of those matters, and we must deal with them or we will perish.
So I think the chance for an educated graduate of this school to serve his State and country is bright. I can assure you that you are needed.
This trip that I have taken is now about 24 hours old, but it is a rewarding 24 hours because there is nothing more encouraging than for those of us to leave the rather artificial city of Washington and come and travel across the United States and realize what is here, the beauty, the diversity, the wealth, and the vigor of the people.
Last Friday I spoke to delegates from all over the world at the United Nations. It is an unfortunate fact that nearly every delegate comes to the United States from all around the world and they make a judgment on the United States based on an experience in New York or Washington; and rarely do they come West beyond the Mississippi, and rarely do they go to California, or to Hawaii, or to Alaska. Therefore, they do not understand the United States, and those of us who stay only in Washington sometimes lose our comprehension of the national problems which require a national solution.
This country has become rich because nature was good to us, and because the people who came from Europe, predominantly, also were among the most vigorous. The basic resources were used skillfully and economically, and because of the wise work done by Theodore Roosevelt and others, significant progress was made in conserving these resources.
The problem, of course, now is that the whole concept of conservation must change in the 1960's if we are going to pass on to the 350 million Americans who will live in this country in 40 years where 180 million Americans now live--if we are going to pass on a country which is even richer.
The fact of the matter is that the management of our natural resources instead of being primarily a problem of conserving them, of saving them, now requires the scientific application of knowledge to develop new resources. We have come to. realize to a large extent that resources are not passive. Resources are not merely something that was here, put by nature. Research tells us that previously valueless materials, which 10 years ago were useless, now can be among the most valuable natural resources of the United States. And that is the most significant fact in conservation now since the early 1900's when Theodore Roosevelt started his work. A conservationist's first reaction in those days was to preserve, to hoard, to protect every non-renewable resource. It was the fear of resource exhaustion which caused the great conservation movement of the 1900's. And this fear was reflected in the speeches and attitudes of our political leaders and their writers.
This is not surprising in the light of the technology of that time, but today that approach is out of date, and I think this is an important fact for the State of Wyoming and the Rocky Mountain States. It is both too pessimistic and too optimistic. We need no longer fear that our resources and energy supplies are a fixed quantity that can be exhausted in accordance with a particular rate of consumption. On the other hand, it is not enough to put barbed wire around a forest or a lake, or put in stockpiles of minerals, or restrictive laws and regulations on the exploitation of resources. That was the old way of doing it.
Our primary task now is to increase our understanding of our environment to a point where we can enjoy it without defacing it, use its bounty without detracting permanently from its value, and, above all, maintain a living balance between man's actions and nature's reactions, for this Nation's great resources are as elastic and productive as our ingenuity can make them. For example, soda ash is a multimillion dollar industry in this State. A few years ago there was no use for it. It was wasted. People were unaware of it. And even if it had been sought, it could not be found--not because it wasn't here, but because effective prospecting techniques had not been developed. Now soda ash is a necessary ingredient in the production of glass, steel, and other products. As a result of a series of experiments, of a harnessing of science to the use of man, this great new industry has opened up. In short, conservation is no longer protection and conserving and restricting. The balance between our needs and the availability of our resources, between our aspirations and our environment, is constantly changing.
One of the great resources which we are going to find in the next 40 years is not going to be the land; it will be the ocean. We are going to find untold wealth in the oceans of the world which will be used to make a better life for our people. Science is changing all of our natural environment. It can change it for good; it can change it for bad. We are pursuing, for example, new opportunities in coal, which have been largely neglected--examining the feasibility of transporting coal by water through pipelines, of gasification at the mines, of liquefaction of coal into gasoline, and of transmitting electric power directly from the mouth of the mine. The economic feasibility of some of these techniques has not been determined, but it will be in the next decade. At the same time, we are engaged in active research on better means of using low grade coal, to meet the tremendous increase in the demand for coal we are going to find in the rest of this century. This is, in effect, using science to increase our supply of a resource of which the people of the United States were totally unaware 50 years ago.
Another research undertaking of special concern to this Nation and this State is the continuing effort to develop practical and feasible techniques of converting oil shale into usable petroleum fuels. The higher grade deposits in Wyoming alone are equivalent to 30 billion barrels of oil, and 200 billion barrels in the case of lower grade development. This could not be used, there was nothing to conserve, and now science is going to make it possible.
Investigation is going on to assure at the same time an adequate water supply so that when we develop this great new industry we will be able to use it and have sufficient water. Resource development, therefore, requires not only the coordination of all branches of science, it requires the joint effort of scientists, government--State, national, and local--and members of other professional disciplines. For example, we are now examining in the United States today the mixed economic-technical question of whether very large-scale nuclear reactors can produce unexpected savings in the simultaneous desalinization of water and the generation of electricity. We will have, before this decade is out or sooner, a tremendous nuclear reactor which makes electricity and at the same time gets fresh water from salt water at a competitive price. What a difference this can make to the Western United States. And, indeed, not only the United States, but all around the globe where there are so many deserts on the ocean's edge.
It is in efforts, I think, such as this, where the National Government can play a significant role, where the scale of public investment or the nationwide scope of the problem, the national significance of the results are too great to ignore or which cannot always be carried out by private research. Federal funds and stimulation can help make the most imaginative and productive use of our manpower and facilities. The use of science and technology in these fields has gained understanding and support in the Congress. Senator Gale McGee has proposed an energetic study of the technology of electrometallurgy--the words are getting longer as the months go on, and more complicated-an area of considerable importance to the Rocky Mountains.
All this, I think, is going to change the life of Wyoming and going to change the life of the United States. What we regard now as relative well-being, 30 years from now will be regarded as poverty. When you realize that 30 years ago r out of 10 farms had electricity, and yet some farmers thought that they were living reasonably well, now for a farm not to have electricity, we regard them as living in the depths of poverty. That is how great a change has come in 30 years. In the short space of 18 years, really, or almost 20 years, the wealth of this country has gone up 300 percent.
In 1970, 1980, 1990, this country will be, can be, must be--if we make the proper decisions, if we manage our resources, both human and material, wisely, if we make wise decisions in the Nation, in the State, in the community, and individually, if we maintain a vigorous and hopeful 'pursuit of life and knowledge--the resources of this country are so unlimited and science is expanding them so greatly that all those people who thought 40 years ago that this country would be exhausted in the middle of the century have been proven wrong. It is going to be richer than ever, providing we make the wise decisions and we recognize that the future belongs to those who seize it.
Knowledge is power, a saying 500 years old, but knowledge is power today as never before, not only here in the United States, but the future of the free world depends in the final analysis upon the United States and upon our willingness to reach those decisions on these complicated matters which face us with courage and clarity. And the graduates of this school will, as they have in the past, play their proper role.
I express my thanks to you. This building which 15 years ago was just a matter of conversation is now a reality. So those things that we talk about today, which seem unreal, where so many people doubt that they can be done--the fact of the matter is, it has been true all through our history--they will be done, and Wyoming, in doing it, will play its proper role.
Thank you.
"The Bazooka" featured on the cover of Science News.
The Red Army took Smolensk.
The Wehrmacht issues a decree requiring the removal from its ranks of anyone who had two Jewish, or otherwise "non-Aryan" grandparents, as a defeated Germany dove deeper into an anti-Semitic barbarity.
The Yankees took the American League pennant, beating the Detroit Tigers in 14 innings.
The German government ended its campaign of passive resistance to French and Belgian occupation of the Ruhr. The move enraged the far right, which then began to organize towards more radical action.
Locally, there was some interesting news.
Mostly I posted this as the thought of a bond election with only one no vote is simply stunning. That wouldn't occur now.
And the Governor of Oklahoma was calling out the Guard to resist a racist impeachment attempt.
The Democratic controlled Senate abolished its dress code in order to accommodate John Fetterman, who refuses to comply with it.
Fetterman has been afflicted with some sort of health crisis. Supposedly restricting his ability to dress like a slob would impair his recovery.
If that is true, the answer is not to change the standard. It's for Fetterman to change jobs.
Indeed, Fetterman likely ought to anyhow. He suffered a stroke during his campaign and went into depression, apparently, shortly after starting to serve. Since that time he's come to the Senate, supposedly recovering, but dressing like a complete slob in hoodies. The other day, he was wearing shorts and a work shirt. Any functioning adult would know that this was not dignified dress for what is supposed to be a dignified line of work.
Not that this decline is new. It's been going on all over society for decades now. The January 6 hearings helped emphasize it when witnesses showed up dressed liked slobs.
Clothes are, of course, symbols of sorts. And while those affecting the dress, as they so often do, of toddlers may feel that they're striking a blow for "comfort", they're actually indicating that nothing is serious and standards don't matter. This has become the case throughout our society in all sorts of ways.
The dress code should be restored. And not only in the Senate.
Churches of the West: Churches of the West: City of Cody issues building...: We posted this yesterday. Churches of the West: City of Cody issues building permit for LDS Temple. : Citing, amongst other things, a lack ...
This certainly has been an extraordinary even. Most new churches are simply built, with little major observation regarding that, and typically no controversy. Here, the opposite has occured.
I'm not familiar enough with the internal politics of Cody to know what's really going on here. At the 30,000 foot level, the steeple will dominate the Cody skyline, and that is at least the stated objection underlying this matter.
Of interest, an identical, to my understanding, structure is being built in Casper with no controversy at all. But then, it sits down below the skyline.
As an additional aside, the LDS church has been expanding regional temples a great deal. This is a marked departure from its past practices, in which there were very few, and at one time, just one. At the same time, in a story that's hardly been noted, the LDS have been hemorrhaging members at a massive rate, something that's also a major change from as recently as a decade or so ago.
The Red Army took Boryspil.
The Germans finished repairs on the Möhne river dam, which had been damaged in a British bombing raid on May 16.
almost reads like a current headline, eh?
Governor Walton of Oklahoma called upon Oklahoman to be prepared to take up arms to assist the state as the legislature began to move towards impeachment, unhappy, as it was, due to his taking on the Ku Klux Klan.
Look, I largely agree with the assertion that American laborers are getting paid to little.
But this is historically wackadoodle.
Americans born in the early 1940s were born in an era in which German, Italian, French, British, and Japanese industry had been bombed into oblivion.
Of course, American industry did well. It was the only thing left.
For some weird reason, Americans just can't grasp that the super North American economy of the 50s and 60s was due to World War Two.
Citing, amongst other things, a lack of resources to fight a long legal battle, the City of Cody has issued a building permit for a new Latter Day Saints temple in Cody.
The structure, to be built on Skyline Drive, has been a major source of controversy due to its location.
On this date in 1943, the puppet fascist Italian Social Republic was founded. Venice was its capital, wih most of its government offices in the resort town of Salò.
.svg.png)
And so Mussolini would consign Italy to a species of civil war over a doomed cause.
The Holocaust expanded with Ernst Kaltenbrunner, head of the SS-Reichssicherheitshauptamt issuing an order for the deportation of Jews from Nazi-occupied nations (Italy, Denmark, Hungary and Romania) and to negotiate for the same in Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, Sweden, Finland and Turkey, none of which would comply.
As if there was any doubt, 80 years later, as of its true focus, as the fortune of the Nazi regime faded, it grasped for complete murderous annihilation of Europe's Jews.
Kaltenbrunner was an Austrian SS official during the war who was a major figure in the murder. He was tried and executed in 1946.
On the same day, the Germans began the removal of Jewish residents of Vilnius.
The Red Army took Poltava.
The Free French took Bonifacio, Corsica.
The British 10th Corps, part of the US 5th Army, began clearing the passes to Naples.
The first version of The Call of the Wild was released.
Lightening killed five competitors at the Gordon Bennett Cup balloon race. Those killed were U.S. Army lieutenants John W. Choptaw and Robert S. Olmsted, whose S-6 balloon crashed in the Netherlands near Loosbroek; two people on the Swiss balloon Génève which burned after being hit by lightning; and a person on the Spanish balloon Polar.
The event is still held annually.
King Boris of Bulgaria dissolved he Bulgarian Parliament, which wasn't meeting anyway. He further declared a state of emergency.
the complete failure of the Government to do anything about out of control illegal immigration or what causes it will be part of the reason why.
For decades, the Government not only hasn't addressed this, both political parties have conspired not to. Now the Democratic Party is at the point where it simply can't, and won't. President Biden has acted to provide 500,000 "temporary" work visas for Venezuelans.
Those will not be temporary.
Americans in favor of massive immigration like to point out how the nation benefits from getting the best and brightest of other nations through immigration, something that may have made sense before the country became overpopulated, which it now is. But that's not what we're doing with Central and South Americans. We're taking in a population that's essentially at a modern peasantry level. Surely, they're not stupid by any means, but they're not well-educated as a rule, and there's been no control of any kind. So, while we take in thousands of innocent hardworking people, who will depress American wages in the blue collar fields they enter, we also take in criminals, which we are well aware of.
These populations are fleeing their messed up countries. They deserve sympathy, and assistance. But they may deserve the sort of sympathy that in 2023 we can't really bring ourselves to provide. The massive numbers of Venezuelans that are entering the country would have resulted, in 1913, for example, in a forced removal of the Venezuelan government and its replacement with a competent one. We don't do that anymore, although we did in Central America as late as the 1960s.
I'm not suggesting that we invade Venezuela, or Guatemala, but I am suggesting we take some sort of action other than simply taking in their entire population. These countries should, and could, do well. Being too much of a wimp to take action while you watch, in essence, your neighbor beat up his wife isn't being a good neighbor.
And there's a point at which this cannot be endured, and we've passed it.
But this Administration isn't addressing it, and Donald Trump's campaign will. Thousands of voters who would otherwise have nothing else to do with him, will start to consider him, particularly if they live in areas that are impacted by the human wave, which will soon be everywhere.
These people are people. They deserve our help and sympathy. But simply inviting the entire population in doesn't make things better there, or here.
Accept the things to which fate binds you, and love the people with whom fate brings you together,but do so with all your heart.
I just inherited 1200 acres of ranch land. WTF do I do?
My father in law wants to pass on his ranch to me before he passes. He’s in bad health and for some reason decided that I would be the best of everyone to take on his property. I don’t know a god damn thing about cows or hay, having lived in a big city my whole life; but I’m a pretty good mechanic and would fix all of his equipment whenever I visited him, so I guess he likes me and he thinks I’m the best to take things over. The ranch, located in southern Wyoming, hasn’t done anything productive in the past 5 years due to FIL declining health and I have no idea what to do with it. Like the title says, it’s 1200 acres of mostly hilly sagebrush with grassy bottom land surrounded by forest land. I promised him I wouldn’t break up the land or develop it; but how does a city slicker move out to the middle of Wyoming and generate a living income off of the land without knowing a thing about ranching? Can I lease the grazing property out; lease the grass land out? Just looking for any advice or recommendations. Any advice is appreciated.
Let's answer the question first, that being, "how does a city slicker move out to the middle of Wyoming and generate a living income off of the land without knowing a thing about ranching?"
The answer is simple. You don't.
Here's the reason why:
level 1With only two sections, in Wyoming, I’m assuming that he wasn't a full time rancher, or that he leased a lot of land to get by. Most working Wyoming ranches are large for a reason.
So, as a starting point, what did he do with it? 1,200 acres sounds like a lot unless you've actually ranched in Wyoming, in which case, it really isn't.
19level 2And to be fair, two sections in Carbon or Sweetwater Counties is different than the same area in Laramie or Albany Counties. Your mention of sagebrush suggests that you are somewhere west of Laramie. That also suggests that there are some state or federal leases that are connected to the privately owned land. How many adult cattle does (or did) he run on his place?
The truth of the matter is that, in today's operations, your mechanical abilities are among the most important skills to make a farm or ranch work.
15level 3True. If you are east of Cheyenne, which is really more farm country, it's one thing. Once you start heading west of Cheyenne and into Albany County, it's another. The sagebrush country of Carbon County, something else entirely. Wyoming has quite a bit of varied terrain and conditions.
None of it will support really dense stocking, however, like some other regions of the country will allow. I'd have to assume, like you, that if he was really ranching, he must have had Federal and perhaps state leases, or maybe some private leases.
As a total aside, the line "Somewhere west of Laramie" is part of one of the greatest advertising campaigns of all time, which some credit with starting modern advertising. The 1923 ad for the Jordan Playboy car, which starts off with “Somewhere west of Laramie there's a broncho busting, steer roping girl who knows what I'm talking about".
Replies, from me, and some other guy.
Now, the same thread is full of advice on how this person can just move out and, yee haw, be a rancher.
Bull.
All agriculture is local. All of it. A grain farmer in Kansas can't walk right into a bandanna plantation in Africa and expect to make a go of it instantly. Gardeners all over the country, if they suddenly inherited a wheat farm, would go broke.
And with animal agriculture, this is particularly true. Ranching in Wyoming may be like ranching in Montana, but it's not like cattle farming in Arkansas. Frankly, a Northern Plains rancher used to low grass and cold winters would have a lot better chance of being successful in Arkansas, than an Arkansas cattle farmer would of being a rancher here.
And somebody from a city, stepping into land on advice from people who don't realize that 1,200 acres doesn't cut it here as a ranch, and who have never endured our winters.
Forget it.
This property will be leased to a neighbor, or sold.
And let us discuss the injustice of things.
From when I was small, I've always wanted to ranch. It's hard to explain these things, but I always wanted to. It's probably one of the two "I want to be when I grow up" things in my personality. The other one was being a soldier, which I've done. Regarding that, by the time I was approaching graduating from high school (I graduated when I was 17 years old, not all that uncommon at the time) that was waning, but that desire was expressed by six years I spent in the National Guard.
And I have been a stockman as an adult, but I was never able to make it my full time occupation.
I came pretty close twice, once before being married, and once after, but events transpired and. . . off to the office I go.
There's a difference between being in the Regular Army (which I was for training) and being in the reserves. And there's a difference between being a part-time stockman and a full time one. Moreover, as I'm in one of the professions, I've entered that weird part of my life, which seems to be the case for at least people in my profession, when the kids have grown up and have their own lives, and your spouse has her own job, and most of the people you meet on a daily basis are in your profession, where your private aspirations just die as other people murder them.
You don't need a stock working horse. . . you can borrow one. Wouldn't you like to sell that old one ton stick shift and buy a nice 1/2 ton sport auto, or maybe a Jeep pickup? You don't need to work cattle this weekend, you can get that big project done at work.
Which is why, I think, that I see so many old members of my profession carrying on into their 70s and 80s. Their actual personality died thirty years ago. Just the shell is left.
And in the weird way of the world, here we are. Some urban dude who has little interest in ranching inherits a small (and it is) parcel, but one that has entertaining possibilities, and isn't really that interested, whereas some rural dude spends his whole life, more or less, in suit and tie.
M'eh.
My wife always says things work the way they do for a reason. We're placed in one place, under one set of circumstances, because God wants us there for some reason. We should accordingly accept it, and be happy with it and that we can do what we do, even if we don't realize whatever the good is that we're supposed to be doing by our placement. I try to accept that, but I'll confess, stuff like this frustrates me.
