ATVs. Boo. Hiss.

I'm going to finally admit it, I'm sick of ATVs and I'm pretty darned sick of people who make excuses for using ATVs on wildlands.

 ATV tracks, off road, at over 8,000 feet in the Big Horns.

This frankly has more to do with my status of being a hunter, than anything else, and I'll admit that I'm somewhat hypocritical about this topic, for reasons that I'll mention below. But I really, truly, have had enough of them.

The reason I don't like ATVs is that I value wildlands.  I value them as a livestock owner, I value them as a hunter, I value them as a fisherman, and I just value them as somebody who loves nature.  ATVs are the antithesis of everything in nature.

Now, in terms of being hypocritical, I freely note here that I grew up with vehicles and have had 4x4 vehicles my entire life.

 

 My first car, before I was old enough to drive. A 1958 M38A1 Jeep.  I didn't put the big dent in the fender.

I grew up with vehicles and have always used vehicles to access nature. And as an owner of a large number of 4x4 vehicles over the years, I've never been without a vehicle that could take me way out back.  This admittedly is contrary to the natural state, and I've written about that here before.  One of the things that I think its most difficult for us, as modern people, to appreciate is the revolution in access to wildlands that automobiles brought about.   Not only was it revolutionary, but it frankly changed our relationship with it, making it impossible for many to appreciate the expanse, time and distance, and also making it so we tend to travel insulated from nature, rather than in it.

 

Me, in another context.  Nothing makes you appreciate the vastness of an area more than traveling it at, in essence, nature's pace.

But even with that, at least vehicles essentially basically stopped somewhere.  People drove distances, often distances that would have taken days to cover in prior eras, but they did get out and start walking (or riding on a horse/mule).  

ATVs have changed that.  

Now I constantly see people who have 3/4 ton or 1 ton trucks who are hauling them up to the back country. The ATVs have grown larger and now often take up the entire bed of the truck.  Once they get to the end of the road, they unload the ATV and then drive over the prairie, making little roads like the one depicted above on it. They basically never dismount.

I really question the effectiveness of this for hunting, as ATVs are noisy and a man on foot, or on horseback, can usually hear them miles and miles away.  I've taken game animals in areas where the ATV drivers had passed them by, the animals taking cover well before the ATV drove on by.  But that they have an impact on wildlands, making them less wild, cannot be denied.

That ATV owners know this is pretty plain. Almost every ATV owner I know, save for a few honest ones, who use them for hunting will claim "I only use them to haul things out."  Well, bull.  The "I only" claim is the classic claim made by people who know they are doing things wrong, and want to claim some legitimate reason to excuse it.  Like people who only claim to buy certain magazines for the articles, the overwhelming owners of ATVs in hunting and fishing country are using them for the very thing they claim they are not.

In recent years around here there's been an increasing number of areas where signs stating "No ATVs" have sprung up.  Quite a few of these are walk in access areas, and the ranchers don't want the ATVs in there wrecking the land and scaring cattle.  Indeed, around here, ATVs reached their zenith and began to decline in livestock work quite some time ago, and the most common use of ATVs I see now amongst ranchers is in the form of very small trucks that they use for fencing or to travel from one cow camp to another.  Herding cattle with them is mostly out now.

About the only use of ATVs I don't object to is that by people who just flat out like ATVs and drive them on back roads to drive them.  Most of those people are honest about that.  I see them on the roads in the summer, with an increasing number thankfully wearing helmets now.  But generally those people  aren't driving over grasslands with them or hoping sagebrush with them, and then later claiming that "I only" use them for this or that.  Indeed, if a person "is only" using an ATV to haul game out, it's a pretty expensive way to do that.  It'd be cheaper to hire a rancher to haul one out with a horse.  But the evidence is that the "only" class doesn't "only" do what they claim.

And I'd like to see the use of ATVs on the prairie and in the mountains go.  I know that I'll never live to see that, but I wish I would see that. At some point people who love the wildlands have to say enough is enough, and keep them out.  And, frankly, at some point as a people we have to admit that all humans have a natural inclination towards laziness and if we want to really live, we have to resist it.  Getting out and walking would be a good way to start.

Panic

I listen to Meet The Press and This Week via podcast.  That means I usually catch up with a couple of days after its aired.

Recently, it's been all about Ebola. Given that its Ebola coverage wall to wall, pretty much (ISIL manages to edge in too) I was stunned when Chris Todd, the new moderator, allowed that the press had been telling everyone not to panic, but now we have a US death. . .

Really, the press has been telling us not to panic?  I must have missed that due to all the panicking in the press.

In the real world, the chances of Ebola becoming a major non African disease, or even a pan African disease, are non existent.  It will not happen.  It has killed 4,000 people so far, mostly in Liberia, where conditions are ideal for it (although one sizable Liberian Goodyear company town manged to halt it there).  That's 4,000 out of a population of about 4,000,000.  In contrast, in 2011 the flu killed 53,826 ,granted out of a population of about 350,000,000.  Still that rates comparable.  Why aren't we panicking about the flu?

We do, of course, from time to time, but only when it looks like a flu like the 1918 Spanish Flu might be lurking about. But the regular old flu is quite the killer, and to Americans, a bigger danger than Ebola.

Postscript

To my huge surprise, the topic of Ebola has now entered this year's Wyoming's gubernatorial race. 

Back during the primary we saw three Republicans running, those being the sitting Governor; Matt Mead, the current controversial Superintendent of Education; Cindy Hill, and  Tea Party sometimes third party candidate Dr. Taylor Haynes.  Both Hill and Haynes were in the Tea Party camp, with Haynes expressing some radical ideas on public lands ownership.  Those ideas enjoyed some popularity amongst Tea Party elements in the GOP, but overall those views must have had little popularity with Wyoming Republicans as both Hill and Haynes did poorly in the primary.

During the election the Republicans agreed amongst themselves to support whoever won, but that quickly broke down with Hill, who flat out refused to support Mead.  Locally, one Tea Party candidate that lost wrote an op-ed in the Tribune blasting the voters as being misinformed, which didn't sit very well with the people who read it, based on the reactions.  Still, yesterday Haynes broke his pledge and announced that he's running as an independent.

His stated basis for running was to give the taxpayers options and also because he feels that the state's preparation for Ebola is poor.

I generally don't express political opinions here, but the Ebola topic being interjected into Wyoming's gubernatorial race is just silly.  Haynes is a physician as well, which to my mind means he must at least have doubts about his stated reason for running as being a valid one, or he's so focused on hypothetical medical emergencies that he's grossly overemphasizing them.  Ebola isn't an American health emergency and its certainly not a Wyoming one.  It doesn't do Dr. Haynes very much credit to base his stated reason for running on Ebola.

Wars and Rumors of War

You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed.

Matthew 24:6

This is a new "trailing thread" on the topic of wars that are ongoing.  It's just informational, so to speak.

Quite frankly, in spite of what we might think, the world has an all time low inventory of war. War has gone from something of a near human norm to a freakish but still occurring exception.  Indeed, violence in the world is at an all time low. 

But, wars are still history, still interesting, and still important. So here we have a thread on a topic written by every commentator on the human condition, ever.

_____________________________________________________________________

For our opening entry:  October 18, 2014

1. The Kurds in Syria have introduced conscription of military aged men in their zone of control. The conscription is not limited to Kurds. This has sparked protest by human rights groups, but it shows the extent to which the Kurds now act as a sovereign more and more every day.

2. Fierce street by street fighting between ISIL and the Kurds continues in Kobane, on the Syrian Turkish border.  Analysts are surprised for some reason, counting ISIL's advanced weaponry (some courtesy of the United States, via capture from the pathetic Iraqi Army,), but that discounts the fact that having weponry is one thing, knowing how to use it quite another.  The Kurds have a long history of infantry and irregular combat experience, so they're inherited knowledge is pretty vast.

3. The Egyptian air force has hit Islamist targets outside of Benghazi in Libya, which is undergoing a battle pitting a former Libyan general against Islamist forces.  This reflects the Egyptian military's understanding that the best interest of that state are found in defeating these extremist groups, of which they have their own.

_________________________________________________________________________________

October 22, 2014

Canada suffers the second home grown terrorist attack in a week. In the first attack, a convert to Islam drove his car into one in which Canadian soldiers were riding. Today, another convert to Islam killed a soldier standing guard at Canada's memorial to its unknown solders and then entered the parliament building, where he was killed by the Sergeant At Arms, Kevin Vickers, a distinguished retired member of the RCMP..

Thursday, October 22, 1914. Battle of La Bassée and First Battle of Ypres, German advances.

The Germans captured Langermark, Belgium.

The Germans forced the British out of Violaines.

Last edition:

Wednesday, October 21, 1914. The First Battle of Ypres.

Labels: 1910s, 1914, Canada, Crime, First Battle of Ypres, Immigration, Sikh, World War One

Business Machines of Antiquity: Check Writing Machine

This machine has shown up on display in our office.  I don't know where it came from, and I really don't know how they were used.  My guess is that they were just a crisp means of drafting checks, but that is a guess.

 

And the same as to this one.  It clearly served the same purpose, but exactly how they were used, I don't know. Perhaps they did nothing other than serve as a clear way to print checks.

Wednesday, October 21, 1914. The First Battle of Ypres.

The First Battle of Ypres commenced with a German attack at  Armentières, Messines and Langemark, Belgium.

The British repulsed the Germans at La Bassée, but with high casualties.

Canadian immigration officer William C. Hopkinson was shot dead in a Vancouver provincial courthouse by Sikh Mewa Singh.  It was in retaliation for his testimony the day prior.  A feud had broken out in the Sikh community over the Komagata Maru incident.

Last edition:

Tuesday, October 20, 1914. Woodrow Wilson to the American Bar Association.

Labels: 1910s, 1914, law, Professional Organizations, The Practice of Law, the spoken word, Woodrow Wilson, World War One

Wyoming Fact and Fiction: Wyomingite

Wyoming Fact and Fiction: Wyomingite

News from other countries

Every once and awhile you catch news from other countries which reminds you how different they are from your own.

I caught a couple of news stories from Ireland this past week in this category.  In one, a member of the Dail, the Irish parliament, was discussing a law that would require listing fathers on birth certificates, but in arguing her point in favor of it, she noted that "Celtic Tiger" immigrants had improved the looks of the Irish and the country needed to be mindful of expanding its gene pool.

What?

I can't imagine a member of Congress saying such a thing.  Shoot, I can't really imagine any rational politician, no matter what a person's view of the proposed law may be, making that particular argument.

The second article noted that an Irish politician had recently accused the IRA of having shot individuals who it suspected (rather, probably knew) abused children.  I don't know the details of this, and if that meant its own members or what.  Gerry Adams, the leader of Sinn Fein, the political party that basically is the IRA, denied the claim, but his denial was in the from that essentially made it an admission.  He noted in his denial that one of the reasons that it was the wrong thing to do is that it failed to take into account the financial and social consequences of such murders on the families of the children.

Well, the IRA is a terrorist organization, so that it would use violence is not surprising, but that it used it in this rough policing fashion is.  And it also demonstrates how persistent the "old law" is.  Not the written law, but the harsh primitive law that all humans seem to have deep within them somewhere, and which seems to recognize the death penalty as the penalty for every serious transgression.  Now, I'm not advocating that by any means, but its interesting how quickly people seem to resort to it either in their hearts, or by their actions if they actually can.

Random Snippets: Occupational fates in Nazi Germany

The number of people who entered the fields of science, law and engineering went down in Germany during the Third Reich.

That law would decline in Nazi Germany makes sense.  In a society whose government is criminal what point would there be in becoming a lawyer?  That science and engineering would decline is a surprise however, but it did.  Science suffered in part because the Nazification of the sciences made them unscientific.

Medicine, curiously, saw a rise in entrants.

BBC News - Viewpoint: How WW1 changed aviation forever

BBC News - Viewpoint: How WW1 changed aviation forever

Today In Wyoming's History: 50th Anniversary of the Oil Bowl

Today In Wyoming's History: 50th Anniversary of the Oil Bowl: I was remiss in timely noting it, but October 3 saw the 50th anniversary of the Oil Bowl. This Oil Bowl.(it's not the only one nationwid...

A split of governance on the Wind River Reservation.

I'm a member of the bar of the Tribal Court on the Wind River Indian Reservation.  I'm not a member of either tribe but simply allowed to practice law there.  I've had several cases in Tribal Court and I've tried a civil jury trial there, which is a fairly rare occurrence.  Indeed, at the time I tried the case there, I could find no other lawyers who'd ever taken a civil case to a jury trial there, although later I did find one who had tried a civil jury trial before I had.

That's neither here nor there, but it does give me an opinion about events on the Reservation, and its caused me to be worried about the Arapahoe Tribe pulling out of the Joint Business Council.  I wish they hadn't.

For those who don't follow such things, the Wind River Reservation is the home to two sovereign nations, the Eastern Shoshone and the Northern Araphoe nations.  They share the same reservation and its territorial expanse.

This hasn't always been true.  The Reservation was established, at the request of the Shoshone, in 1868,  The Shoshone under Chief Washakie were allies of the United States and had contributed warriors to campaigns of the Army prior to that, and would do so after that.  The Arapahoes, on the other hand, were allied to the Sioux, but were a very small tribe in numbers.  They fought with the Sioux into the 1870s, but facing a disastrous winter they came to terms with the United States and were allowed on to the Reservation for what was supposed to be a short period of time.  However, the short time became a permanent one, and the Arapahoes have shared the Wind River Reservation since the 1870s.

The two tribes were enemies originally but have lived together since that time, not always on the best of terms.  But in the 20th Century they both came together to create a Joint Business Council to govern the Reservation, which after all is one territorial expanse.  The Joint Business Council was the Tribal Council for purposes of the entire reservation, and was made up of the Shoshone Tribal Council and the Arapahoe Tribal Council.

The Arapahoes just pulled out of the Joint Business Council and have decided to go it more or less alone, although they are taking the position that for certain necessary functions they'll continue to participate.  The Shoshones, which were opposed to their withdrawal, have stated that it isn't possible to withdraw without a vote of a council and therefore the Joint Business Council's role continues on unabated, but without Arapahe representation due to their withdrawal.

There are a lot of governmental functions that this might impact. The Court, for one thing, is a joint court.  There's more or less one system of law, although a few years ago the Arapahoe's drafted an Arapahoe business code.  There are all the functions of local governments that would normally exist, as well as social agencies that need to function.  There's a lot of oil and gas activity on the Reservation, and this needs to be regulated. There's an office that secures employment for Tribal members of both Tribes with those outside employers doing business on the Reservation.  This is a bad development.

What brought this about I can't say, and therefore I can't opine on whatever motivated this action.   But I hope the rift repairs or the decision is reconsidered.  In the last few years we've seen oil and gas exploration expand in the area, the Reservation won its long standing legal battle with the State which allowed casinos to be built on the Reservation, and a decision of the EPA seemed to expand  the territory of the Reservation in to the town of Riverton.  There are a lot of decisions that will have to be made jointly.  This would not seem to be a good time in which for this uncertainty and perhaps duplication to develop.

Postscript

The Casper Star Tribune's editorial for today decries this development, noting much or some of what we've noted here above. 

Tuesday, October 20, 1914. Woodrow Wilson to the American Bar Association.

Mr. President, Gentlemen of the American Bar Association:

I am very deeply gratified by the greeting that your president has given me and by your response to it. My only strength lies in your confidence.

We stand now in a peculiar case. Our first thought, I suppose, as lawyers, is of international law, of those bonds of right and principle which draw the nations together and hold the community of the world to some standards of action. We know that we see in international law, as it were, the moral processes by which law itself came into existence. I know that as a lawyer I have myself at times felt that there was no real comparison between the law of a nation and the law of nations, because the latter lacked the sanction that gave the former strength and validity. And yet, if you look into the matter more closely, you will find that the two have the same foundations, and that those foundations are more evident and conspicuous in our day than they have ever been before.

The opinion of the world is the mistress of the world; and the processes of international law are the slow processes by which opinion works its will. What impresses me is the constant thought that that is the tribunal at the bar of which we all sit. I would call your attention, incidentally, to the circumstance that it does not observe the ordinary rules of evidence; which has sometimes suggested to me that the ordinary rules of evidence had shown some signs of growing antique. Everything, rumor included, is heard in this court, and the standard of judgment is not so much the character of the testimony as the character of the witness. The motives are disclosed, the purposes are conjectured, and that opinion is finally accepted which seems to be, not the best founded in law, perhaps, but the best founded in integrity of character and of morals. That is the process which is slowly working its will upon the world; and what we should be watchful of is not so much jealous interests as sound principles of action. The disinterested course is always the biggest course to pursue not only, but it is in the long run the most profitable course to pursue. If you can establish your character, you can establish your credit.

What I wanted to suggest to this association, in bidding them very hearty welcome to the city, is whether we sufficiently apply these same ideas to the body of municipal law which we seek to administer. Citations seem to play so much larger a role now than principle. There was a time when the thoughtful eye of the judge rested upon the changes of social circumstances and almost palpably saw the law arise out of human life. Have we got to a time when the only way to change law is by statute? The changing of law by statute seems to me like mending a garment with a patch, whereas law should grow by the life that is in it, not by the life that is outside of it.

I once said to a lawyer with whom I was discussing some question of precedent, and in whose presence I was venturing to doubt the rational validity, at any rate, of the particular precedents he cited, "After all, isn't our object justice?" And he said, "God forbid! We should be very much confused if we made that our standard. Our standard is to find out what the rule has been and how the rule that has been applies to the case that is." I should hate to think that the law was based entirely upon "has beens." I should hate to think that the law did not derive its impulse from looking forward rather than from looking backward, or, rather, that it did not derive its instruction from looking about and seeing what the circumstances of man actually are and what the impulses of justice necessarily are.

Understand me, gentlemen, I am not venturing in this presence to impeach the law. For the present, by the force of circumstances, I am in part the embodiment of the law, and it would be very awkward to disavow myself. But I do wish to make this intimation, that in this time of world change, in this time when we are going to find out just how, in what particulars, and to what extent the real facts of human life and the real moral judgments of mankind prevail, it is worth while looking inside our municipal law and seeing whether the judgments of the law are made square with the moral judgments of mankind. For I believe that we are custodians, not of commands, but of a spirit. We are custodians of the spirit of righteousness, of the spirit of equal-handed justice, of the spirit of hope which believes in the perfectibility of the law with the perfectibility of human life itself.

Public life, like private life, would be very dull and dry if it were not for this belief in the essential beauty of the human spirit and the belief that the human spirit could be translated into action and into ordinance. Not entire. You cannot go any faster than you can advance the average moral judgments of the mass, but you can go at least as fast as that, and you can see to it that you do not lag behind the average moral judgments of the mass. I have in my life dealt with all sorts and conditions of men, and I have found that the flame of moral judgment burned just as bright in the man of humble life and limited experience as in the scholar and the man of affairs. And I would like his voice always to be heard, not as a witness, not as speaking in his own case, but as if he were the voice of men in general, in our courts of justice, as well as the voice of the lawyers, remembering what the law has been. My hope is that, being stirred to the depths by the extraordinary circumstances of the time in which we live, we may recover from those depths something of a renewal of that vision of the law with which men may be supposed to have started out in the old days of the oracles, who communed with the intimations of divinity.

Last edition:

Sunday, October 18, 1914. The editor of Avanti!

Labels: 1910s, 1914, Austro Hungarian Army, Battle of the Yser, boats and ships, British Army, French Army, German Army, German Kriegsmarine, Imperial Russian Army, Italy, Mussolini, Royal Navy, Socialism, World War One

The Big Picture & Monday at the Bar: Shreveport Court House

A view of us, by them, through the eyes of them.

Ah geez, yet again another literary commentator has decided that E. Annie Proulx somehow has a Wyoming association. Wyoming authors who are really from Wyoming just can't get a break.

Proulx is famouly associated with a certain short story made into a movie which set wrote while living in Wyoming and set in Wyoming, but she's not from Wyoming, and at the end of the day was just passing through, having moved on to Seattle. Even when she lived in Wyoming she spent part of the year in Newfoundland. She is not a Wyoming author in the real sense of the word.  She was complaining about getting ignored in a fashion by locals before she left.

Not that outside people who comment on local writings care one whit about that. Or that Proulx came to prominence with The Shipping News, which is set in her native northeast.  But it does cause us to suffer the indignity of so many presentations of people who live in this state are written by people whose connection with the state is temporary or perhaps in the form of immigration to the state.  It isn't as if locals, and very long term residents, don't write.  This must be what it was like for African natives back in the day of European colonization.  I'll bet the writings by English or French colonist don't have big appreciate following in Africa, for example.

It's even worse, of course, with cinematic presentations. They're hardly ever filmed here, and the actors as a rule try to effect an accent that we don't have.

Sunday Morning Scene: St. Mark's Episcopal Church, Casper Wyoming

 

St. Mark's Episcopal Church, Casper Wyoming, from Churches of the West. An additional photograph appears on that blog.  This impressive structure dates to right around World War One, when a lot of construction was going on in Casper.

Sunday, October 18, 1914. The editor of Avanti!

The socialist editor of the socialist newspaper Avanti!, declared in favor of intervention on the side of the Triple Entente.  That editor, one Benito Mussolini, was subsequently expelled from the Italian socialist party.

The Germans took Nieuwpoort, Belgium. Armentières,  Messines were halted or slowed.

The Russian Army advanced over the Vistula due to a late deployment of Austro Hungarian troops in aid of German troops.

The submarine HMS E3 was sunk by the U-27, with all hands going down with her.

Last edition:

Saturday, October 17, 1914. The Siege of Naco.

Labels: 1910s, 1914, Álvaro Obregón, Arizona, Art, British Army, French Army, German Kriegsmarine, Imperial Japanese Navy, Mexican Revolution, Mexico, Pancho Villa, Royal Navy, The Siege of Naco, Venustiano Carranza

All About That [Upright] Bass - Jazz Meghan Trainor Cover ft. Kate Davis...

Today In Wyoming's History: Governor, State Supt. Public Instruction 2014 Gene...

Today In Wyoming's History: Governor, State Supt. Public Instruction 2014 Gene...



The Superintendent of Education race is one of the state's more interesting races this election season.

Today In Wyoming's History: Sec of State 2014 General Election Debate

Today In Wyoming's History: Sec of State 2014 General Election Debate