Chesterton on the Irish

And when I came to look at the actual Irish character, the case was the same. Irishmen are best at the specially hard professions -- the trades of iron, the lawyer, and the soldier.

G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

Military preparedness and World War One. Training the boys. Scenes from July 16, 1917

 Bayonet Drill.

At one time the concept of boys and girls "going to camp" was so common that it was kind of a running joke.  

Kids still go to camp, of course, but its increasingly rare and more and more specialized.  The old concept of kids attending Camp Winnemucca, or whatever, that was the brunt of so many jokes, songs, bad movies, and even annual Peanuts threads is increasingly uncommon. Not that they don't exist, of course, they do.   I know of a lot of kids and teenagers going to camps this year, but most of them are athletic camps.  One is going to the big Boy Scout Jamboree.  Some went to out of state language camps.

 Drill and Ceremony.  It hasn't changed much.

One of the types of camps that boys attended back in the day, and of course still do, are those associated with Scouting.  The Boy Scouts was practically brand new at the time of World War One, having had its U.S. expression started in 1910.  It's interesting to see those old photos of Boy Scouts at this time a they very much reflect the military scouting origin of the organization formed by Lord Baden Powell, whose Boer War experience had lead him to worry that British youth were getting soft.  Formed during the "Muscular Christianity" era, Scouting rose very rapidly and had very widespread membership, emphasizing woods craft and manly virtues.

But these boys aren't in the Boy Scouts.  No, they're receiving military training at a summer military training camp for boys at Peekskill, New York. The camp was organized by the New York State Military Training Commission, an organization established by the New York legislature in 1916 in order to "more thoroughly and comprehensively" boys "the duties and obligations of citizenship."  Part of its mission was to establish state military camps of instruction for annual summer field training for the boys.

 This is something that wasn't unique.

 Nope, not much at all.

The Great War sparked a huge national movement towards preparedness, and not just in the Boy Scout motto "Always Be Prepared" vein.  Republican elements urged the US to enter the war early on and when the US did not, those who backed entry into the war sponsored military training camps for young men.  Men in their 20s and 30s, that is.  These camps were staffed by Regular Officers of the U.S. Army and sought to train men to serve as Army officers should the need arise, which it was suspected that it might.  The most famous of these was at Plattsburg, New York, but it wasn't the only one by any means.  And they weren't limited to men.  Prior to the country's entry into the war there were also camps for women, teaching them field craft and some military skills, such as the use of semaphore flags, skills that would prove to be more militaristic than they'd actually need for service in the Great War given the roles they were given.

 

 Playing the dread, and stupid, mumbly peg knife game.  Note the hat cords on their M1911 Campaign hats.  I wish this was in color so we could get the branch designation.

And by 1916, the Preparedness Movement, having seen the war in Europe spread to Asia and having seen a semi war break out along the border with Mexico, spread to teenage boys.

The Reserve Officer Training Corps was established in 1916 under the National Defense Act of 1916.  With two expressions, ROTC and JrROTC it covered young men in their high school and college ages.  ROTC, the college aged version, sought to train college men to serve as officers should the need arise.  JrROTC, in contrast, sought to teach high school aged boys basic military skills that would give them a jump in serving as enlisted men in the Army, should that need arise.

 July.  Its hot.

The story of JrROTC has remained a confused one, and somewhat under addressed, for years.  One thing about it is that the 1916 start of it in some ways picked up what was already going on.  In some schools, including the one I graduated from in 1981, an organization like JrROTC was already in place.  You can find, for example, photographs of Natrona County High School boys drilling in uniform in 1915, a year prior to the creation of JrROTC, and the school now boast the oldest surviving JrROTC unit in the United States.  I note that here as I don't think the kids in these photographs are in JrROTC (some might have been, or would soon be), but rather a military organization run by the State of New York that was really darned close to it.  Indeed New York's Military Commission was given broad authority to organize the military instruction of youth during its brief existence (it ceased to exist in 1921).  It basically ran what was JrROTC in New York, which was so extensive that its authority extended to young men who were employed outside of schools, ie., who had dropped out.  In Wyoming JrROTC took off so fast that in 1916 there were state drill competitions between different JrROTC unis across the state.  It was a big deal.

Semaphore signals remained a necessary military skill at the time.

In our kinder and gentler age, JrROTC has undergone quite a century long evolution and so have events like this. When I was in high school JrROTC did have a summer encampment at the National Guard's Camp Guernsey.  Now, I was never in JrROTC and when I was in high school in the late 1970s and early 1980s "Rotcey" didn't have a lot of general student body respect.  The program had gone from being a mandatory one for boys, dating back to at least 1915, to an elective one in around 1976, and even those who had some concept of serving in the military were a bit leery about it.  It was classified as a physical education class, perhaps justifiably, but that meant it was filled with an odd combination of boys who knew that they were entering the service with certainty and those seeking to avoid PE.  Anyhow, the only time I ran across them in their summer camp was when I was a National Guardsmen working at the Armory who went to Guernsey about this time of year, after we'd already done our Annual Training.  We tended not to be impressed if, for no other reason, the uniform liberties they were given meant that they were sporting a lot of late Vietnam War type uniforms and berets and the like, prior to any of that being uniform gear in the Army itself.

Anyhow, over its century of existance JrROTC has undergone quite a transformation.  I guess all organizations for boys have.  In 1917, such as during the same period when these July 16, 1917 photographs were taken, it was real military training with real gear.  The boys doing bayonet drills up above aren't using weapons at all, but still, they're learning to kill in a pretty up close and personal way.  In the 1930s and 1940s I know that the local school drilled with M1917 Enfields and the rifle team, which was excellent, competed across state lines using M1903 Springfields.  In the 1970s it became an elective here but I can still recall their having a few M14 rifles for demonstration purposes and a collection of M1 Garands for the drill team.  Girls came in at some point (I'm not sure when) and now I'm told that the rifle team uses air rifles. When I was in high school the rifle team used .22 target rifles, which are at least a real rifle.  Not that air rifles don't have their virtues, they do.

Anyhow, this group of boys was spending part of their summer at a military camp at Peekskill, New York.  While I know that a person isn't supposed to think such things, I suspect it was fun.  A lot more fun that serving in the Great War itself, which definitely wasn't fun.

But I bet they were glad to get back home.

Sunday Morning Scene: Churches of the West: Emmanuel Episcopal Church, Rapid City South Dakota.

Churches of the West: Emmanuel Episcopal Church, Rapid City South Dakota.:

A snowy scene for this hot July morning.

This striking small Episcopal Church, built in the Gothic style, is located in downtown Rapid City, South Dakota. The church was built in 1888.

Poster Saturday. Doing her part

Best Post of the Week of July 9, 2017

Some comments about Justice Robert's comments

July 13, 1917. Columbus in the News Again, Conscription, and something going on at Fatima

Holscher's Hub: Trail's End

Gen. G. O. Squier. Signal Corpsman and inventor of Muzak

Who is this finely mustachioed U.S. Army officer?

Well, none other than General George Owen Squier, whose portrait was published by the Bain News Service, on this day in 1917.

He was the recently appointed head of the Signal Corps, a promotion after having been in charge of U.S. Army aviation, then part of the Signal Corps.  He served in the Army until 1923, and in the year prior to his leaving the Army created a commercial service to pipe music by wire to subscribers.  A service that he renamed in 1934, the year of his death at age 69, to . . . Muzak

Holscher's Hub: Trail's End

Holscher's Hub: Trail's End

July 13, 1917. Columbus in the News Again, Conscription, and something going on at Fatima

I quit doing daily newspaper updates some time ago, but given the interesting news here, and as I've done on occasion, I'm posting a "100 Years Ago Today" type entry here regarding July 13, 1917.

As noted yesterday, in one of the largest criminal acts of its type, industrial vigilantism of a type that we no longer see (thankfully) broke out in Bisbee Arizona.  Mining interest operated to illegally arrest and "deport" IWW members from Bisbee to New Mexico, entraining the victims and shipping them off to hapless southern New Mexico.

The IWW, to be sure, was one of the most radical unions going, in an era in which unions were pretty radical.  This was an era in which, for a combination of reasons, radical Socialism, of the type stirring up all sorts of foment in collapsing Russia, was on the rise everywhere and indeed had its presence in American unions.  The IWW, with its concept of "one big union", was one of the most radical of the bunch.

From the June 30, 1917 issue of Solidarity, the Industrial Workers of the World magazine.  One Big Union.

Frankly, in my view, the IWW was really darned goofy, and the concept of "one big union" totally unworkable.  Its no surprise that the IWW, which still exists, never succeeded it reaching its goals.  But the teens and the twenties were its era in the sun, and in Bisbee Arizona it had its moment.

Bibee in 1916.

The reason was simple enough.  Conditions at the Phelps Dodge mine there were bad and the union that had the membership there, the International Union of Mine, Mill, and Smelter Workers (IUMMSW) wasn't doing much.  Some 800 or so workers turned to the IWW.

And the mining interest reacted, gathering up the IWW members and shipping them out of Bisbee.

Where they ended up in poor Columbus.

A humanitarian disaster was in the works, the US had to intervene and did.  Ultimately, while the Federal government determined the act was criminal, what with its scale, and what with all that was going on, nobody was prosecuted for this shocking act.

Amongst the shocks the nations was receiving, we'd note, it became clearer and clearer every day that the draft was going to be big. Really big.  Early registration had somewhat mixed results but was mostly successful.  The Guard was going into  official Federal service, conscripted actually due to an odd view of the US Attorney General that Federalized Guardsmen could not serve overseas, in August.  The big draw of average male citizens was hitting the news.  Even with the big numbers being claimed in the Press at the time, the actual numbers would be much larger.

There's be a lot more than two.  July 12, 1917 cover of Leslie's

Regarding fighting, the second of a series of mysterious events, which had not yet hit the international news but which would start to, occurred on this day.  Three Portuguese peasant children claimed to receive a visit from a mysterious otherworldly lady who then, they claimed, gave them a momentary but vivid glimpse of Hell.  Following that, she gave them a message, which included, but was not limited to, requests for penitential prayers and a prediction that the Great War would soon end, but if penance was not performed, Russia would fall into grave error, spread those errors around the world, nations would be destroyed, and a second war greater than the first would occur in the reign of a Pope who was named but who was not at that time the sitting Pope.  While nobody, including Catholics, are obligated to believe in a private revelation, this series of events, which would end, as the visitor claimed, in October 1917 with a final spectacular event, is hard to discount given that the contents of the messages proved to be true.  And so went the second, July 13, 1917 apparition of the Virgin Mary at Fatima.

Leslie's, July 12, 1917

Some comments about Justice Robert's comments

Supreme Court Justice Roberts recently delivered some graduation comments.

No, not at Harvard or Yale, but at Cardigan Mountain School.  Apparently his son was in the graduating class, if you can consider a 9th grade class passing out of a school to be graduating.

Now, let me first note, I hesitate to make comments regarding his address.  I so hesitate as I read his delivery first in Time and one of the first comments was some from self important twit who had a fit over  the line that "You’ve been at a school with just boys. Most of you will be going to a school with girls. I have no advice for you" and went on about that, reading a lot more into it than was obviously intended.

Oh grow up, you self important snob.  It was a joke.  Yes, maybe a lame joke, but not every comment to 9th Graders is supposed to be earth shaking, you twit.

I'll note that a lot of the press commentary, in contrast, was highly favorable to the speech, even fawning.  At least one writer found the theme to be a implied rebuke to the nature of Donald Trump, which I suspect is going a bit far.

Well, amyhow, with that I tread into comments myself.

First, the remarks:

Thank you very much.

Rain, somebody said, is like confetti from heaven. So even the heavens are celebrating this morning, joining the rest of us at this wonderful commencement ceremony. Before we go any further, graduates, you have an important task to perform because behind you are your parents and guardians. Two or three or four years ago, they drove into Cardigan, dropped you off, helped you get settled and then turned around and drove back out the gates. It was an extraordinary sacrifice for them. They drove down the trail of tears back to an emptier and lonelier house. They did that because the decision about your education, they knew, was about you. It was not about them. That sacrifice and others they made have brought you to this point. But this morning is not just about you. It is also about them, so I hope you will stand up and turn around and give them a great round of applause. Please

Now when somebody asks me how the remarks at Cardigan went, I will be able to say they were interrupted by applause. Congratulations, class of 2017. You’ve reached an important milestone. An important stage of your life is behind you. I’m sorry to be the one to tell you it is the easiest stage of your life, but it is in the books. While you’ve been at Cardigan, you have all been a part of an important international community as well. And I think that needs to be particularly recognized.

Now around the country today at colleges, high schools, middle schools, commencement speakers are standing before impatient graduates. And they are almost always saying the same things. They will say that today is a commencement exercise. ‘It is a beginning, not an end. You should look forward.’ And I think that is true enough, however, I think if you’re going to look forward to figure out where you’re going, it’s good to know where you’ve been and to look back as well. And I think if you look back to your first afternoon here at Cardigan, perhaps you will recall that you were lonely. Perhaps you will recall that you were a little scared, a little anxious. And now look at you. You are surrounded by friends that you call brothers, and you are confident in facing the next step in your education.

It is worth trying to think why that is so. And when you do, I think you may appreciate that it was because of the support of your classmates in the classroom, on the athletic field and in the dorms. And as far as the confidence goes, I think you will appreciate that it is not because you succeeded at everything you did, but because with the help of your friends, you were not afraid to fail. And if you did fail, you got up and tried again. And if you failed again, you got up and tried again. And if you failed again, it might be time to think about doing something else. But it was not just success, but not being afraid to fail that brought you to this point.

Now the commencement speakers will typically also wish you good luck and extend good wishes to you. I will not do that, and I’ll tell you why. From time to time in the years to come, I hope you will be treated unfairly, so that you will come to know the value of justice. I hope that you will suffer betrayal because that will teach you the importance of loyalty. Sorry to say, but I hope you will be lonely from time to time so that you don’t take friends for granted. I wish you bad luck, again, from time to time so that you will be conscious of the role of chance in life and understand that your success is not completely deserved and that the failure of others is not completely deserved either. And when you lose, as you will from time to time, I hope every now and then, your opponent will gloat over your failure. It is a way for you to understand the importance of sportsmanship. I hope you’ll be ignored so you know the importance of listening to others, and I hope you will have just enough pain to learn compassion. Whether I wish these things or not, they’re going to happen. And whether you benefit from them or not will depend upon your ability to see the message in your misfortunes.

Now commencement speakers are also expected to give some advice. They give grand advice, and they give some useful tips. The most common grand advice they give is for you to be yourself. It is an odd piece of advice to give people dressed identically, but you should — you should be yourself. But you should understand what that means. Unless you are perfect, it does not mean don’t make any changes. In a certain sense, you should not be yourself. You should try to become something better. People say ‘be yourself’ because they want you to resist the impulse to conform to what others want you to be. But you can’t be yourself if you don't learn who are, and you can’t learn who you are unless you think about it

The Greek philosopher Socrates said, ‘The unexamined life is not worth living.’ And while ‘just do it’ might be a good motto for some things, it’s not a good motto when it’s trying to figure out how to live your life that is before you. And one important clue to living a good life is to not to try to live the good life. The best way to lose the values that are central to who you are is frankly not to think about them at all.

So that’s the deep advice. Now some tips as you get ready to go to your new school. Other the last couple of years, I have gotten to know many of you young men pretty well, and I know you are good guys. But you are also privileged young men. And if you weren’t privileged when you came here, you are privileged now because you have been here. My advice is: Don’t act like it.

When you get to your new school, walk up and introduce yourself to the person who is raking the leaves, shoveling the snow or emptying the trash. Learn their name and call them by their name during your time at the school. Another piece of advice: When you pass by people you don’t recognize on the walks, smile, look them in the eye and say hello. The worst thing that will happen is that you will become known as the young man who smiles and says hello, and that is not a bad thing to start with.

You’ve been at a school with just boys. Most of you will be going to a school with girls. I have no advice for you.

The last bit of advice I’ll give you is very simple, but I think it could make a big difference in your life. Once a week, you should write a note to someone. Not an email. A note on a piece of paper. It will take you exactly 10 minutes. Talk to an adult, let them tell you what a stamp is. You can put the stamp on the envelope. Again, 10 minutes, once a week. I will help you, right now. I will dictate to you the first note you should write. It will say, ‘Dear [fill in the name of a teacher at Cardigan Mountain School].’ Say: ‘I have started at this new school. We are reading [blank] in English. Football or soccer practice is hard, but I’m enjoying it. Thank you for teaching me.’ Put it in an envelope, put a stamp on it and send it. It will mean a great deal to people who — for reasons most of us cannot contemplate — have dedicated themselves to teaching middle school boys. As I said, that will take you exactly 10 minutes a week. By the end of the school year, you will have sent notes to 40 people. Forty people will feel a little more special because you did, and they will think you are very special because of what you did. No one else is going to carry that dividend during your time at school.

Enough advice. I would like to end by reading some important lyrics. I cited the Greek philosopher Socrates earlier. These lyrics are from the great American philosopher, Bob Dylan. They’re almost 50 years old. He wrote them for his son, Jesse, who he was missing while he was on tour. It lists the hopes that a parent might have for a son and for a daughter. They’re also good goals for a son and a daughter. The wishes are beautiful, they’re timeless. They’re universal. They’re good and true, except for one: It is the wish that gives the song its title and its refrain. That wish is a parent’s lament. It’s not a good wish. So these are the lyrics from Forever Young by Bob Dylan:

May God bless you and keep you always
May your wishes all come true
May you always do for others
And let others do for you
May you build a ladder to the stars
And climb on every rung
And may you stay forever young

May you grow up to be righteous
May you grow up to be true
May you always know the truth
And see the lights surrounding you
May you always be courageous
Stand upright and be strong
And may you stay forever young

May your hands always be busy
May your feet always be swift
May you have a strong foundation
When the winds of changes shift
May your heart always be joyful
May your song always be sung
And may you stay forever young

Thank you.

First, I'll note, for the most part, I like this speech.

Most of the commentary on the speech has been on his "I hope you fail" type of comments.  I'm not going to comment on those really.  I get his point.  No, what struck me was this line:

 I’m sorry to be the one to tell you it is the easiest stage of your life, but it is in the books.

That's really true.

People rarely directly acknowledge these things, but they do in a romantic fashion.  For most people, childhood remains a cherished, if sometimes painful, memory in their adult years.  Part of the reason for that is its the only time in our lives in which things are actually mostly easy, for most people.  Other people take care of your basic needs, you have free time, and possibilities seem endless.

Right about the time Justice Roberts addresses things begin to change, but subtly.  High school is harder than earlier years, but then you also have more freedom so its not so obvious.  Once you are past high school, however, things really start to get harder and harder. The heavy weight of decisions and the import begin.  The impact of decisions you make became increasingly irreversible.  Doors slam shut.  Some like to claim that whenever a door is closed another opens, but that isn't true at all. Some just slam shut leaving the entry way or exit way forever barred.  College is portrayed as an endless party in the popular media, but its far from it and failing in it is life altering. Completing it is also life altering.

Rarely noted by career counselors and the like, almost every adult career, and almost every adult must have one, is burdened by real difficulties.  Manual jobs, no matter how skilled, are typically burdened by the danger of obsolescence and the struggle for decent pay, as well as the agony, usually, of working for another, rather than yourself.  The professions, often imagined by parents to be a ticket into high wages and no work are in fact enormously burdened by the nature of their work.  Law, for example, imagined by some to be easy and lucrative has a depression rate second only to dentistry, which is another profession that people imagine for some reason to be easy.

This doesn't mean, of course, that adulthood is unending misery. But it isn't one sit com moment after the next.  "Marty" probably portrays the average adulthood even now better than, for example, "Friends".

Finally, while this is a 9th Grade "graduation", so a speech is a bit odd, but then this is a prep school, and frankly, I can't help but find the entire notion of a preparatory boarding school extremely odd, and partially in the context of what I've referenced above.  It's odd to think they still have them.  Which takes me to this line:

Two or three or four years ago, they drove into Cardigan, dropped you off, helped you get settled and then turned around and drove back out the gates. It was an extraordinary sacrifice for them. They drove down the trail of tears back to an emptier and lonelier house. They did that because the decision about your education, they knew, was about you. It was not about them. That sacrifice and others they made have brought you to this point. But this morning is not just about you. It is also about them, so I hope you will stand up and turn around and give them a great round of applause. 

I suppose dropping kids off like that is a sacrifice, but it's one that I can't admire except in extraordinary circumstances.  It focuses a theory of education above everything else usually.  There is, in my view, something deeply wrong with it.  Boarding school?  Eee gads, that's weird. Parents dumping off the children they claim to love to be raised by somebody else, there's something really wrong with that.

Now, granted, there are big exceptions, which goes with big burdens.  In some instances the need simply to educate an individual demands this be done, but those are rare.  And in others a unique aspect of the child's character requires it.  In some unusual circumstances the child desires it and the wish is granted. But in most instances like this, sending a kid to a school like this is usually to help to stack the deck in the future.  For most, they'll go from this prep school probably to another one, and then on to an Ivy League university. Their privileged present is being mortgaged, basically, for an even more privileged future.

Now, I'm not against private education.  I'm not a product of it myself, and the opportunities around here for it, while real, were limited.  But be that as it may, I really get it when people who live in cities in which there is a good private option go for it.  I fully understand why, for example, parents send their kids to the Madeline school in Salt Lake, or the Polish Catholic high school in Denver, or the Catholic high school in downtown Houston whose clean cut students I see on the streets right about the time school gets out.  I'd likely do the same.  But to ship a kid off to boarding school?  Man, that bothers me, except in the noted rare instances.

The Deportation of the Lowell Miners, July 12, 1917

On this day in 1917 up to 1,300 striking miners, members of the IWW, were deported by a deputized mob from what is now Bisbee Arizona to Tres Hermanas in New Mexico.  A committee formed to back the deportation ruled the town for a few months thereafter.  In New Mexico, the Republican Governor pleaded with President Wilson for assistance and received the same.  The refugee miners were then housed in Columbus, New Mexico, lately the location of the famed raid that started off the Punitive Expedition, for a couple of months until their plight could be addressed.  A Federal Commission declared their forced relocation to be "wholly illegal and without authority in law, either State or Federal".

What a year and a half for Columbus. Small  border town, site of a major raid, giant Army camp, and now a refugee center in one of the worst labor abuses in American history.

A confused liberal notion

There was a confused liberal notion that toleration was in some way a virtue in itself.

Hilaire Belloc: Essays of a Catholic.

Camp Mills, New York. July 10, 1917

Sunday Scene: Churches of the West: St. Paul's Catholic Church, Sundance Wyoming

Churches of the West: St. Paul's Catholic Church, Sundance Wyoming:

This is a less than ideal photograph, but I was parked in a hospital parking lot at the time I took it and had limited time to do so.  This church is St. Paul's Catholic Church in Sundance, Wyoming.  It certainly is in a picturesque setting, even if the picture is not so picturesque.

Strange to look at this photograph, in July, when the temperature is nearly 100F.

Best Post of the Week of July 2, 2017

Mean People Suck

Looking back at your vocation. If it were a century ago, would you be doing it?

The moment at which war with North Korea likely became inevitable.

Friday Farming: A Montana ranching company aims to revive U.S. textile industry

A Montana ranching company aims to revive U.S. textile industry

By TOM HOWARD

It takes about two minutes for a skilled shearer to separate a Rambouillet lamb from the fluffy coat that it has worn since the day it was born. . .

All electric?

Anderson Electric Car, on promotional tour from Seattle to Mt. Ranier, i 1919.

Volvo, whom we associate with Sweden, but which is now owned by Chinese interests, will no longer introduce new models of car with internal combustion engines after 2019.  

That doesn't mean it'll be out of the gas and diesel engine business.  I don't know if this announcement applies to its diesel heavy engines at all, I doubt it, but it'll keep making internal combustion engines for existing models after 2019.  It's just that its stating that its new cars will be all electric.

Industry analysts claim that this isn't that big of deal, but if Volvo holds to it, it is for two reasons.  For one, a major manufacturer simply stopping introducing new models of car with gasoline and diesel engines is a big deal. We're likely to see other manufacturers follow suit.  This would seem to show a trend towards the end of the internal combustion engine in some applications.

Secondly, while this comes from Volvo, Volvo is Chinese owned. That's remarkable in and of itself, but that a Chinese company is getting out in front this way says something as well.

The moment at which war with North Korea likely became inevitable.

This past weekend, it is now confirmed, North Korea successfully tested an ICBM. 

If intelligence reports are correct, the missile is not yet capable of hauling a nuclear warhead, but it soon will be, at which point there will be no place in the United States, China, Russia, South Korea, or Japan, that will be free from the threat of North Korean nuclear strikes.  Of course, Japan and South Korea, and parts of Russia and China, are already so exposed.

It's likely a safe assumption that the US now has to act before nuclear warheads top those missiles.  The only question is when, and if there can be some solution to stave off an armed strike against North Korea first.

I very much doubt that.

While at least one headline today proclaims this to be Donald Trump's fault, it isn't. The US has been trying the carrot and stick approach with the bizarre Stalinist theme park of North Korea since the Clinton Administration.  Nothing has worked, and no US administration has been able to make serious inroads into real progress with the North.  Likewise successive South Korean Administrations, some aggressive some less so, have failed to push North Korea towards rationality.  Everything has failed.

I've long thought that China would ultimately push the bizarre family dictatorship in the north out.  China''s no longer really a communist country, even though it is not a democratic one.  But time is now running out for that, if it hasn't already.  Of course, China well knows that, making the situation all the more dangerous for all, if we keep in mind that the US and China came to blows during the first US led effort to push the Communist out, but it also may mean that China will now feel compelled to act.

Anyway we look at it, this is a dangerous new situation.  War, I suspect, is more likely than not.

Hundred-Year-Old List of Calorie Requirements by Job

Hundred-Year-Old List of Calorie Requirements by Job . . .

Looking back at your vocation. If it were a century ago, would you be doing it?

I know that I wouldn't.  At least I think I wouldn't.

Which puts me into sort of an odd situation vis-à-vis the purported purpose of this blog.But its something worth considering in general for the folks who like to ponder such "what ifs".

We claim, after all, this blog to be about the following:

Lex Anteinternet?

The Consolidated Royalty Building, where I work, back when it was new.

What the heck is this blog about?

The intent of this blog is to try to explore and learn a few things about the practice of law prior to the current era. That is, prior to the internet, prior to easy roads, and the like. How did it work, how regional was it, how did lawyers perceive their roles, and how were they perceived?

Part of the reason for this, quite frankly, has something to do with minor research for a very slow moving book I've been pondering. And part of it is just because I'm curious. Hopefully it'll generate enough minor interest so that anyone who stops by might find something of interest, once it begins to develop a bit.

I started practicing law in 1990 after having graduated from the University of Wyoming's College of Law that May.  But I only entered the law school as an intended career in geology didn't work out.  Having said that, as I've noted here before, I had it in mind (thanks, I guess, Jon Brady), prior to that.  Indeed, all the way back when I was in Casper College.

But would I have done that in 1917?

I very much doubt it.

Which puts my central protagonist, assuming that I'm incorporating some of my own experiences in the work, which I now know will require my retirement in order for me to finish, in an odd position.

If it were 1917, rather than 2017, I could still homestead. And frankly, that's likely what I would have done.

 Canadian homestead, 1917.

Now, I realize that's an easy thing for a person to say.  After all, if you look at photos of homesteads in 1917 (although not the very nice one above), a lot of them were dirt poor.  Indeed, they were so poor that even the dirt was richer.

Okay, now I'm exaggerating, particularly about 1917.  World War One was actually the height for American (and Canadian. . . and Australian) homesteading. The big spat in  Europe had a lot to do with that and people were getting rich from farming, which was a rarity.  Having said that, up until 1919 American farmers tended towards economic parity with people in urban areas. They never have since that year.

Droughted out post World War One homestead.  The teens were wet. The 20s were not  The 30s were bone dry..

But it's not the money that would have attracted me.  It would have been the independent outdoor life.

That's all but impossible now.  

You can't homestead, obviously, and you likely can't buy enough land to be a working rancher.  If you can, that's because you are rich.  And I'm not.

So that's a career field, on a full time basis, fully closed to me and to most people.  

But I've always been cognizant of having that outdoor yearning.  And its one of the ironies of my being a lawyer.  It's an indoor occupation.  Perhaps that's been why I've always been keener on site visits and the like than other lawyers I know.  It gets me out there (which isn't the only reason or even the conscious reason I do it).  So I'd have homesteaded.

I know some families here whose ranches started in this era.  Indeed, I once knew one such homesteader.  He was a soldier in World War One and came out, right after the war, and homesteaded.  He ranched with his son (World War Two U.S. Navy) who never married.  His sister inherited the place and now one of his nieces runs it.  It's quite small, but its a beautiful place.  I used to hunt deer there every year.

An accountant I once sort of knew had a similar story.  His father had taken a train while on leave, while in the U.S. Navy, during World War One, to Natrona County Wyoming, and he filed on a homestead. Rather obviously, by the time he got back to his Navy base he was AWOL, but apparently that was forgiven.  That place became a combined farm/ranch.

A high country homestead in the Laramie Range, in Albany County.  A  sign indicates that the homestead was filed in 1910, which would explain the high altitude nature of the homestead.  This one must have been occupied until fairly recently, and might still be during part of the year given the modern plate steel sign.  At least one of the outbuildings appears to probably date from at least as recently as the 1950s.

Now, there are other outdoor occupations.  I considered, for example, becoming a Game Warden.  At least one other lawyer I know is appalled by this suggestion, even though he considered it himself. A European immigrant, he's fully of the mind that a contemplate person has, as options, careers in the clergy and the law and that's just a crazy concept on my part.  But it is an outdoor career.  At least one other practicing lawyer I know started off in that direction as well.  I did focus on that for a time, and my chance to work for the Game & Fish came after I was already a  practicing lawyer and engaged, and the poor pay deterred me as a responsible, soon to be married man (perhaps my European friend is right).  Still, I tinge with envy every time I see that Game Warden Green truck in the field.

Game Wardens existed in my state in 1917, but there weren't very many of them and their job was pretty darned tough and dangerous.  The job appealed to me when I was in my 20s (heck, it appeals to me now) but it likely would not have in 1917.

Of course, going back to agriculture, a person could work as a full time cowboy in 1917, and you still can in 2017.  For some reason, however, except when I was right out of high school, that line of work isn't something I would have been likely to do in this era, or probably a century ago.  I love ranching, but I probably would not have liked ranching or farming for somebody else.  Indeed, John K. Rollinson, who left two really good written accounts of life in Wyoming around the turn of the prior century, went down this trail and left it.  Coming into Wyoming as a runaway from his home in Buffalo, New York, he worked for the Two Bar and other ranches until becoming a Federal ranger in the Yellowstone Timber Reserve in 1907.  He worked that steady job, but with a massive region to patrol, for several years until going to work for the Painters at a dude ranch. Finding that he wanted to marry the ranchers daughter, which was complicated by a series of things, and feeling that he could never afford to ranch himself, he pulled up stakes and relocated to California where he became a patent medicine salesman, a position he occupied until his death.

So, as we can see, things don't always work out.  Rollinson's range legacy is made up of his books. But in terms of work, he worked in the second half of his life in a completely different occupation, finding the doors he hoped would be open, one of which I'm citing as something that was open in 1917, to be closed.

That may have been because homesteading was expensive.

So maybe that too is unrealistic on my part.  Some successful homesteaders spent years acquiring the assets to get a start.  Others didn't seem to.  Many failed.  I'm pretty cautious.  I could see myself starting out in something else with the idea that I'd start homesteading and then never get around to it.

Maybe I would have started down that geologist track and have made it work.  In 1917, the Wyomign oil patch was booming.

Of course, it's booming in 2017 and I am a geologist by training (but I have no license, something that came in later), so I'd really have to look at 1886 to determine what I would have done with that, or indeed with any career. Would I have pursued geology in the early 1880s?  That strikes me as unlikely.  And I frankly don't know how much work there was for a geologist in the 1880s, for that matter.

Oil strike, Oil City Pennsylvania, 1880s.

I suspect that being a soldier would have appealed to me in the 1880s, and it still does now for that matter. The difference is that soldiers moved around less at the time then they do now.  That's the part of being a serviceman that deterred me from entering that field.  I don't like moving much, or at all. For that matter, I'm very provincial and Wyoming is my home.  I likely would have had similar views at the time.

1886 or so would have been right before the close of the Frontier Era.  So its odd to think that, if I had done that, I'd have still been serving in 1917, but I would have.  Older officers of World War One, by which I mean men in their 50s (and they were all men) had started their service before the Frontier was closed, had seen service during the Spanish American War, had served in the Philippines, probably, and then closed out their careers with the Great War.  That is a lot of moving. Maybe that's not that different from now.

Maj. Gen. Harry C. Hale, commander of the Army's 84th Division, during World War One. He'd entered the service in 1884 and had demonstrated great heroism in 1890 by entering a camp of Sitting Bull's, decked out for war, alone to discuss their coming in.  We don't tend to think of the officers who lead the American Army during World War One as having cut their teeth in the Frontier Army, but the older ones did.

Of course, there were a whole range of jobs that existed in 1917 that do not now.  Jobs like farriers were once common, for example.  I'd likely not have done that, but I have always found their work to be interesting.  Another one that existed were market hunters and trappers.  The elimination of market game hunting is correctly seen as a real triumph in the conservation movement, and a great thing for the average hunter, and I'm glad of that, but in 1917 that profession may very well have called to me.  I love hunting.  Of course, by my current age, 54, I'd likely have to be looking for retirement from it as its days were closing out. And there was never that much of it in Wyoming, frankly.

There were full time "wolfers" here, however.  Those were men who were employed, often by the Federal Government, in hunting wolves.  They lived out on the range in sheepwagons and devoted their lives to that. While some now would find looking at that romantically as hopelessly odd, for some of us it doesn't seem that way.  Indeed, while a law student employed to research the topic of wolf reintroduction in Wyoming (which hadn't yet been done) I learned about wolfers and was fascinated by their job.  I remain fascinated by it.  I can actually see myself having done that, living in wolf hunting poverty.

Wolfer, North Dakota, 1904.

Or so says I.  Animal Damage Control still exists and I'm not working for them.  Indeed, Federal and county trappers are still around, but I'm not one.

Trapping, I should note, as a market enterprise was still a big thing a century ago and would be for a long time thereafter.  There were full time trappers at least up until World War Two.  Now, save for the far North, that's pretty much a thing of the past.

Native trapper, early 20th Century.

Of course, there are a lot of jobs that people occupy today that didn't exist a century ago.  Those of you occupying them would have had to have done something else, like it or not. What would that have been?  Give us your thoughts (please).

And women, of course, had a lot of doors closed to them a century ago.  There were a few, but very few, women lawyers.   There were only a few women doctors. Even female secretaries were brand new at the time.  Most women worked in their homes, or their parents homes, like that or not.  Women did work, of course, and in all classes, but most working women were likely from the poorer classes and employed in roles that few would wish to do today. . . save for those who remain in that class and occupy those roles for the same reason their ancestors in occupation did in 1917.

Well, I'm still think the homesteading thing would have called.  How about for you?