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

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

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

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

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

Old Picture of the Day: Travel by Old Car

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

Judge Skavdahl sworn in.

share, Judge Skavdahl sworn in.

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

Really amazing thing to think of.

Today In Wyoming's History: December 7

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

The caged tiger isn't happy?

Heard in an interview of a doctor regarding depression:

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

Early Days In St. Lambert

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

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

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

Old Picture of the Day: Shoveling Snow

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

Old Picture of the Day: New York Snow Scene

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

The Culture of Careers and the Pursuit of Degrees

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Some Gave All: Converse County War Memorial, Douglas Wyoming

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

Today In Wyoming's History: November 28

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

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

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

Heroes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Food Network

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

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

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

The CST gets testy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Whatever.

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

Ambition and Ambition

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

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

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

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

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

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

Enough with the idiot turkey "pardoning" thing already

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

This is just stupid.

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

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

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

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

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

That vaguely uncomfortable feeling

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

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

But it does.

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

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

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

Starting one of the early ones.

Starting a biplane.