Thursday, March 13, 2014

Retirement



If you are in business, or read business news, or listen to any type of commentary at all, you're going to hear a lot about retirement.  For that matter, if you live to be 50 years of age, and I certainly hope you do, if you are not already, you're going to at least think about retirement with the American Association of Retired Persons sends you mail, implicitly suggesting that by age 50 you've amassed so much wealth that you are going to retire. And the topic appear sin professional journals all the time. The most recent issue of the ABA journal, for example, has its cover story on the topic of retirement.

For a lot of Americans, indeed most Americans, that's a bit of a cruel joke.  Most folks can't retire at 50, and most never have been able to do so.  Beyond that, however, at about that age you'll start to notice an interesting dichotomy of stuff on retirement, some of which is really scary, and some of which is somewhat delusional.

In terms of delusional, I'm always slightly amazed by the series of materials that seek to make you feel guilty about retiring, of which there is a fair amount (and, no, I'm 50 and not anywhere near retiring).  This stuff suggests that when you are of retirement age, say your 60s, you probably ought to do one of two things:

1.  You ought to be starting a new job/retirement/business that reflects your long hidden dreams and talents, or which expresses that series of dreams, talents and values you've developed in your years of work; or

2.  You ought to be able to use your retirement to live a wild life of traveling abandon and adventure.

I know you've seen this stuff.  You are retired, according to the television advertisement, and now you somehow own Monument Valley. Wow.

Or you are retired and open a vineyard in Tuscany.  Jeepers. . . your work really worked out for you big time.

Or you now can open a company that competes with Microsoft. . . or manufactures jackets for kittens, or whatever.  These portrayals are so common that one brokerage company actually made fun of them, in a clever way, with a befuddled individual who needs advice stating something like "A vineyard?  Come on!,", which brings me to the second type of retirement portrayal, which is that if you are in the Middle Class, forget it, it won't be happening.  You're doomed.  Not to sound to glum, but that portrayal is probably much closer to the mark.

All of which makes looking at retirement in a historical context both worthwhile and interesting.  Maybe even productive.  I.e., how did we get here.  Something has been occurring in recent years, to be sure, and this topic is in the news a lot one way or the other, whether it simply be due to a local well known person retiring, or it be warning news about most people in the near future never being able to retire.

One thing we might note here, however, right off the bat is that the common canard about "people living longer" simply isn't true.  People do not live any longer presently than they ever have.  As we addressed in the post about life spans, the very widespread notion that "people live longer today" is based upon a misunderstanding of statistics.  People don't live longer, they simply do not die from some untimely event, whether that be disease, violence, or injury, as frequently as they once did.  Indeed, they do not die by some of these causes (violence, death at birth, etc) nearly as frequently as they once did by a huge margin.  That means more live out their allotted years, so to speak, than was once the case.  Put another way, not too many people would regard being falling off of a hay rake and getting dragged to death a natural way to go, but more than a few teenagers experienced that sort of death up until relatively recently.

But this fact does inspire the two reactions noted above.  On one hand, the combination of better medicine, much less physically arduous labor, increased surplus income and the exceptionalist expectations of the Baby Boom generations has lead to a sort of expectation that the old won't ever grow old, and that we should expect to be touring Naples on bicycles up until our 90s.  And for a few, that is darned near true.  My mother didn't tour Naples on a bike, but she did ride one around town up until just a few years ago, when old age finally really caught up with her.  On the other hand, the same increase in the number of people who grow old, combined with massive societal changes in the past century, inspire legitimate fears in many that their declining years will be impoverished and difficult.

Most people now are used to the idea of there at least being something called retirement.  And while that concept goes back surprisingly far, retirement as an actual practice for most people does not.  Indeed, for most people, and I mean for most people on Earth, it didn't become a possibility until the late 19th Century.

Prior to the late 19th Century retirement for average people just didn't exist.  Part of the reason why, particularly in North American, is that in the much more rural economies of years past, there wasn't an economic ability for it, and there was certainly no state sponsored retirement of any kind.  Farmers basically worked on the land until they passed away, with it being the rule that, if they owned their land (and most North American farmers did) they passed the farm on to one of their children.  If they grew too infirm to work it, that passing on feature effected their retirement, basically.  They'd still be there, even if they could no longer work as much, or indeed at all.


This practice, by the way, is still pretty common with agricultural families.

In other lines of work, the same could also be true, however.  In any sort of family operation, the older male would generally keep working at it as long as he could and if there was somebody to pass it on to, he did.


 Blacksmith, and not a young one.

Where this opportunity didn't present itself, men and women with families, and that was most men and women, might eventually move in with one of their children for their retired years.  So, an old lawyer, like John Adams (also a farmer), or Clarence Darrow, might work up until his death, and many did.  But some might also pass beyond the ability to practice and retire, moving in with a family member and closing their practice.

Of course, some people became wealthy, but in the pre late 19th Century era, that didn't equate with retiring as a rule.  For some it did, of course, but that tended to mean that they had lives of varying degrees of abundance or leisure, depending upon the amount of wealth.  That doesn't vary much from now, expect that a much, much, smaller percentage of the population achieved wealth prior to World War Two.  There are, of course, exceptions.

So, with that being the case, how did modern retirement come about? Well, two ways.  War and Social Revolution.

That's a slight exaggeration, but only slight.

The first real retirements we can find, in the modern sense, start off with various armies.  How armies were raised and manned varied over the world in the 18th and 19th Century, but it's about that time that retirement systems for soldiers started to come into play.  Originally, there was none. Indeed, as shocking as it may now seem, in many European armies of the 18th Century soldiers were conscripted for life or near life terms, if they were conscripted.  Short term conscription for most European armies (the Russians excepted, Russians solders were conscripted for a term of 25 years) came in during the 19th Century, and for solid military reasons.  In the 18th Century, however, even British soldiers, who were volunteers, joined for life.

American soldiers, few in number until World War Two, never joined for life and always joined for a short term, but in both instances, there was no such thing as retirement.  If a soldier was retired, it was because he became too infirm or injured to keep on soldiering.  Every country recognized a a system for retiring soldiers in that situation, but only that one. So, showing that things can reverse direction, the lot of an 18th Century soldier was worse in this fashion than it was for a Roman soldier.  Roman soldiers actually could retire, with a grant of land.

The impact of this, however, was to put a lot of old enlisted men into service.  You can find plenty of pre Civil War American photographs of U.S. soldiers, for example, who are ancient.  They didn't get paid well enough to retire on savings, they didn't always have families, so they had to keep on working. There was no age cap on service, and they ultimately mustered out by infirmity or death.

That was a bad thing not only for the soldiers, but the armies as well.  To take the American example, getting 20 year olds (and the Army generally would not enlist teenagers up until the 20th Century) to spend the month of November in the snow, in Wyoming, eating moldy bacon is one thing.  Getting 60 year olds to do that, and to keep functioning, is quite another.  Now, a lot of 19th Century 60 year olds were perfectly capable of doing that, and even more are now, but in a profession in which, if you were a career man you were at it for decades, you had been badly injured and seriously ill at some point by that time, making it all the tougher.  Indeed, according to one statistical analysis I've seen, the majority of American men over 40 years of age lived with some chronic condition by age 40.  Probably the majority now do as well, but at that time, you just endured it. And enduring it wears you down.

The Army, indeed all armies, recognized this and they all began to introduce retirement systems.  In the U.S. the Army first allowed officers to retire after 40 years of service after the Civil War.  Soon thereafter, this policy was expanded to include enlisted men. Other countries adopted similar policies.

The Last Muster.  Pen and ink depiction of British Army pensioners, in uniform.

This served two purposes.  One is it simply recognized decades of service.  But it also recognized that younger men made better soldiers for a variety of reasons.  One was, of course, physical.  The original retirement system, which effectively retired U.S. soldiers at about 60 years of age, recognized that by that time they probably were physically pushing the limits of their service abilities.

World War One poster noting the physical abilities of generations of soldiers.

Indeed, this was so much the case that Theodore Roosevelt encourage the early retirement of officers who were no longer physically fit, during his presidency, by requiring officers to go on long rides (ninety miles)on their mounts.  All officers were expected to know how to ride in that era, and he tested them on it.  By that time, many older ones couldn't endure it, and accordingly they were retired.  Even officers in the Navy were given the choice of going on a very horseback ride, a very long bicycle ride, or a very long hike.

The other purpose was an intellectual one, however.  By the late 19th Century the military sciences were advancing rapidly, and the Army began to recognize that keeping old officers in place impaired the ability to adapt.  The American army was legendary for keeping men in their same ranks for eons, and by the early 20th Century, this was recognized to be a bad idea.  Sixty year old captains who had the same command for fifteen years were much less likely to appreciate newly introduced weapons than, for example, a captain in his twenties might be.  The Army accordingly dropped the retirement age to 30 years, effectively encouraging, but not requiring, men to retire early, at 3/4s pay, in their 50s.  

Even this proved to be problematic at the start of World War Two, and the Army, recognizing a need to adapt to a change in the nature of war, dropped the retirement age to twenty years.  This, it must be noted, was an early retirement age. To obtain full retirement a soldier had to stay in for 40 years, as they still do. But they could take half pay and retire at 20 years.  Less attractive at first to enlisted men as opposed to officers, this provided a means to encourage retirement for officers whom the service wanted out of the way, which they soon found other ways to additionally encourage.

 While the U.S. armed forces did indeed encourage a lot of older soldiers to "move on" at the start of World War Two, combat attrition in World War One had been so high in the Commonwealth nations that this poster actually was aimed at drawing back in World War One soldiers, noting that many in their 40s and 50s still had plenty of vigor for later service.  Unlike the U.S. Army, the British used a fair number of older officers during the war, as did the Germans.

This created the modern service retirement system we still have in place. The system spread out of the Armed forces and into nearly every type of uniformed service we have today.  Policemen, for example, generally can retire early at 20 years of service.  It's even spread out of uniformed service in some instances, however, and some other sorts of government workers have retirement systems of this type.

Retirement in other fields is a somewhat more recent phenomenon.  It's a product of the industrial revolution really.  Industrial employment, like military service, chewed men up.  It also organized them.  And this organization both created opportunities, and threats, depending upon how they were handled.  And it also removed men from the rural support system in which they'd previously lived.  If a blacksmith was injured in his small town occupation, chances are that his sons, or brothers, could take over for him, and if he had to stay home, no doubt in poverty, at least there was a home to go to.  When he grew old and could no longer work, the same was true, and chances were high that there was a fireside to stay near, as the younger men went out to work.

Once industrial labor arose, this was no longer true.  Early industrial laborers were displaced from farms and small towns to a very large extent.  As a result, they were disoriented, rootless, and in some ways at the mercy of their environment.  Ultimately, they came to agitate for protection, cognizant of the dangers of their work and what that meant for them personally.

This created a wide variety of responses, but one of them ultimately came to be socially sponsored retirement.  Men could not work in heavy industry indefinitely, but they could not leave those occupations and be able to depend on anything to fall back on. Something had to replace the family supported home to retire to, and that came to be retirement, either government sponsored or employer funded, both of which served to keep the social wolf from the door.

Early moves towards wider retirement started in the early 20th Century, with the first proposal for a Social Security being advanced in the Progressive Party campaign of Theodore Roosevelt.  Roosevelt's Bull Moose campaign failed, but the Great Depression gave new force to the argument and Social Security, a fairly radical proposal by historical standards, came to be reality under Franklin Roosevelt.  By that time, heavy industry had privately incorporated it in many instances. World War Two, which boosted the advantages to private industry to supply benefits during a period in which wages were frozen, boosted it further.
 
Female industrial laborer, World War Two. Labor had been agitating for benefits beyond increased wages since the late 19th Century, but it was World War Two that really changed the nature of health care and retirement in the United States.

This gave us the situation we had in the middle of the 20th Century, and which lasted until at least the 1970s. By and large, in private employment in the US, most occupations offered pensions of some sort.  This promised workers the ability to retire at age 65.  In addition to that, Social Security became available at age 63, with full benefits payable at age 65.  For those with service occupations, retirement came to be available after 30 or 20 years.  Frequently, those who had service employments went on to a second career, in light of the fact that they were retiring fairly young.

So far so good, but staring in the late 1980s, something began to break down in this system. Now, while that system hasn't completely broken, concern over the system is widespread.  What happened?

Well, for one thing work stability declined in the private sector, while seemingly becoming solidifying in the government sector, at least up until very recently.  For long time government employees, I'd note, many are having their last laugh now after years of deridment by those in the private sector.  I've heard this more than once, for example, from government lawyers who are nearing retirement and now see that their private sector fellows, who often chided them for sticking it out in "low paying" (which were really lower paying, not low paying) positions for decades.  Now the government sector lawyers are able to retire, while  many of those in higher paying private practices cannot.  Indeed, one comment of that type just appeared on an ABA website about retirement.

In the private sector manufacturing jobs became highly unstable, if they didn't disappear completely, and this spilled over into white collar occupations as well.  Much has been made of the fact that employees can't enter an occupation  and plan on sticking it out for their career for one reason or another.  One of the things little noted about that is that with that instability, has come the evaporation of retirement plans.  Retirement plans only make sense for long term employees, not short term ones. 

So, is this system broken?  Put another way, is it unrealistic?

That's hard to answer, but retirement is rapidly becoming something that is not nearly as certain for many people as it once was.  Social Security wasn't designed to provide a fancy retirement, just to keep people from falling into retired poverty, and it wasn't meant to cover 100% of the people who paid into it either.  Indeed, it still doesn't cover 100%, but in an era when medicine has made early deaths less common, more people now live into their old age and advanced old age.

But another aspect of this may simply be that expectations about retirements became unrealistic.  Truth be known, much of our concept of retirement is retirement as envisioned by the World War Two and Boomer generations, which was never the historical norm.  The abnormal economies of the 1940s through 1960s lead people, gradually, to an expectation of sort of a luxurious retirement, replete with a new home far away from where they'd worked.  Historically, however, in the 60 or so years prior to that, retirement just meant retirement in place and in scale.  People tended to live decades in one house which they'd paid off well before they retired.   When they retired, they stayed home, not traveled the globe and not dreaming of planting vineyards in Tuscany.

But in order to do that, a person has to have paid their debt down to next to nothing, or nothing, but the time they're in the 60s at least, if not their mid 50s.  Otherwise, they're going to have to have a pretty significant income in retirement.  That is unrealistic.

So, what does all of this mean?  Hopefully it doesn't mean that retirement has returned to its absolute historical norm, i.e., non existent.  But it does mean that the golden age of retirement is most likely over, at least for the foreseeable future, and in the type of economy we have now.  Social Security is already being readjusted to creep it back to its more historical demographic status, and ages of entitlement have started to go up.  I strongly suspect that will start occurring in government retirements as well, which are now strained.  Twenty year plans, where they exist, will disappear in favor of thirty year plans that only allow a draw once the recipient hits age sixty, much like Army Reserve retirements now work.  That'll probably continue as well.  For those retiring in the future, a paid off home with a garden in the backyard is probably a lot more likely than trips to France and vineyards in Tuscany.



Postscript

The New York Times has an article on retirees today noting that those who want to keep on working often have a hard time finding a job that suits them, and that those who have retired find they often like it better than they suppose.

I'm glad to read that really.  While its contrarian in nature, in our society, I find the general view that its great if people past retirement age can keep working, and that they really should. Should they, if they can retire?  I'm not so sure.  It's discouraging to think that the value of a person is measured only in their ability to work, and that for everyone it must be the case that all their adult years must be employed.  That says something about us, I think, as a society.

While it's also contrarian of me to mention it, this sort of taps into the theme of one of the Super Bowl advertisements from this year, in which an actor Neal McDonough discusses how in the US we get two weeks off per year for vacation (which is inaccurate for most Americans, most don't take all their vacation so they take less than that) while the French take August (which is also inaccurate, as the French also tend to extent their vacations with a general strike from time to time).  We're informed we're a can do sort of people, and at the end its suggested that our reward for that is a Cadillac.

Well, I have nothing against Cadillacs, but that advertisement sort of makes you wonder if you should go for a Peugeot instead and take August off.

Wednesday, March 12, 2014

The Big Speech: The Dream of the Rood

The Dream of the Rood: Translation by Richard Hamer

Translation of the dramatic Old English poem

Wyoming Jambalaya




Antelope summer sausage, frozen seafood package (shrimp, imitation crab, calamari) and red bean and rice mix.  Not bad.

Law Office Space: How Much Is Enough? - Attorney at Work - Attorney at Work

Law Office Space: How Much Is Enough? - Attorney at Work - Attorney at Work

Mid Week at Work: The Civil Air Patrol.

Photographs of the Civil Air Patrol during World War Two. The CAP was made up of civilian volunteers organized into an axillary of the Army Air Corps for the purposes of patrolling the coasts.  They detected over 100 submarines during the war.  The organization exists today as an axillary of the USAF and performs search and rescue operations.




















What Pepsi Can Teach Us About Soft (Drink) Power In Russia : The Salt : NPR

What Pepsi Can Teach Us About Soft (Drink) Power In Russia : The Salt : NPR

From the Wyoming Bench: Launch of iCivics in Wyoming

From the Wyoming Bench: Launch of iCivics in Wyoming: PRESS RELEASE FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE     February 6, 2012                                            For more information, contact the  Offi...

Thursday, March 12, 1914. Weird fascinations.

 An issue of the Cheyenne paper from 1914 demonstrates that sexual mutilation of minors, just banned in the last legislative session, as been around for a long time, although ostensibly it exists for a different reason now than formerly.



Also interesting is that a Wyoming paper would bill itself as "Constructive Progressive".

Bishop McGovern's send-off was being filmed. 

The nation was reinforcing the Mexican border.

Last prior:

Monday, March 9, 1914. Surprising news on Mexico.

Tuesday, March 11, 2014

Today In Wyoming's History: Wyoming History in the Making: United States Supr...

Today In Wyoming's History: Wyoming History in the Making: United States Supr...: The United States Supreme Court issued its decision in Brandt v. United States. Supreme Court of the United States MARVIN M. BRA...


Interesting U.S. Supreme Court opinion, with potentially vast financial consequences.  And, while I haven't studied it yet, and haven't seen any commentary of this type, I wonder if it also will ultimately go on to be  present a basis for other arguments about the nature of Federal grants, which might have an even more vast, and entirely unintended, series of consequences.

Sunday, March 9, 2014

Society of the Military Horse • View topic - Women's Emergency Service Corps

Society of the Military Horse • View topic - Women's Emergency Service Corps

Monday, March 9, 1914. Surprising news on Mexico.

Jesús Salgado, a lieutenant of Emiliano Zapata, surrounded Chilpancingo, the capital of Guerrero, with s force of 5,000 men.

Other news of the Mexican Revolution hit the front page of the Laramie Boomerang, including some surprising "facts" about Pancho Villa.


The story on the fire in St. Louis was tragically accurate.

Mexico figured in the headlines of the Cheyenne paper as well.


Prime Minister H. H. Asquith proposed to allow Ulster to vote on whether to join a Home Rule parliament in Dublin.

YMCA Convention, Salina Kansas:

Last Prior:

Sunday, March 8, 1914. International Women's Day, Berlin.

Wednesday, March 5, 2014

Finds in the Week: Vintage Poster on Food, 1917

Finds in the Week: Vintage Poster on Food, 1917

We've posted on this topic in the past, but here's one we haven't posted

This particular one is sort of oddly contemporary, combining the current points of folks like Michael Pallin, the paleo diet folks, and even Pope Francis, here and there.

Y Cross, UW, CSU, Donations, Money, and Lost Opportunity

About 14 years ago the Denver owners of the Albany County Y Cross ranch donated it to the University of Wyoming and Colorado State University.  A clause of the accepted donation was that the schools could sell it after 14 years.  They now intend to do so.

I don't know much about how the ranch was used in the 14 years the schools have owned it.  It was supposed to be used for the purpose of teaching agriculture, but from what I read, it wasn't used much.  The former owners now say that they regret donating it to the schools, and frankly they should regret it.

This is hard to understand.  A 50,000 acre ranch, situated near both schools, should have provided a variety of opportunities for both schools to both teach practical agriculture and, in this day and age, perhaps also experiment a bit with "sustainable" agriculture, a topic which has been hot in agricultural fields in recent years.  Now those opportunities will be lost, and the ranch will simply be sued to generate money.

On that both schools would be well advised to note the history of the results of ignoring the wishes of donors.  Potential donors to both schools are now on notice that the schools feel free to sell donated assets as quickly as they can.  Not all donations are suitable for long term keeping and preservation, of course, but if that is the wish of the donors, they now know that neither UW or CSU can be depended upon to do any more than accepting the donation requires.  That may give such potential donors pause, or at least put them on notice that a restrictive clause in any donation may be necessary.  For some it may mean no donation at all, something that at least UW, which is under orders to cut back financially, may wish to rethink

Postscript

This matter remains pending in Court.  But, with the new University of Wyoming President emphasizing the land grant nature of the institution, and with a huge amount of turnover going on at the upper levels of the school, I wonder if its too much to hope for that the decision to depart with the Y Cross might be reconsidered? .

Postscript II

This is the Y Cross which UW and CSU jointly own:  Y Cross Ranch | Wyoming Ranches for Sale

I've posted an earlier thread, well really a compliant, on the plan to sell this facility.  This listing, I suppose, shows why the universities are so tempted, or rather have yielded to the temptation, to sell the place.  Quite a nice location.

Well,  the answer to this question; "I wonder if its too much to hope for that the decision to depart with the Y Cross might be reconsidered?" appears to be "yes, too much to hope for."

The Wyoming Supreme Court issued its decision yesterday concluding:

The district court correctly concluded that the donation from the Davis Interests to the University Foundations was a gift, that the MOA did not create an implied trust, and that only the attorney general has standing to enforce the terms of a charitable gift. We thus affirm the court’s dismissal of the complaint and amended complaint for lack of standing.
I'm not surprised and I'm sure the Court is correct, but it's disappointing anyway.  That disappointment must be directed at UW however, which still has the opportunity to behave correctly here, along with CSU, but which probably isn't going to.

Saturday, March 1, 2014

There's not an App for that. WYDOT

Dear Wyoming Department of  Transportation, you need an App.

There's nearly an App for everything, but not for Wyoming road conditions.  I know I can sign up for email alerts and the like, but an App is what I really want, and what you really need.

With an App, I could worry just the necessary amount, without  having to turn the email on, on my phone, and hear the "ding, ding, ding" stream of emails as every road in the state turned cruddy, save perhaps for the few I care about.

Come on WYDOT, give us an App.

Putting the Bond Issue in Prospective. Comparative costs.

Here's another Natrona County School District graphic that helps put the bond in prospective.
 

As this graphic nicely demonstrates, other Wyoming school districts have also had bond issues in recent years, and the proposed Natrona County one is the most conservative really.   Other districts, including Carbon and Albany Counties, are funding much more of their recent construction via bonds.  And in our case, the overall amount is naturally higher, as we have four schools, as opposed to just one.  Albany County's bond, as we can see, nearly rivals ours in amount, with a  much smaller population base and a single school.

Friday, February 28, 2014

The Wyoming Lawyer February 2014: Technology and the pace of practice


Just below, I have an item on Jack Speight's recent article in the The Wyoming Lawyer.  In that, I only addressed his comments on the dress code of the 1960s, which was no doubt much like the dress code for the entire history of the Wyoming State Bar at that time, but not so much now.  He also had a very interesting comment on technology and the pace of practice, which was:
One of the main differences between now and last century in problem solving is the pace of law practice. We have gone from manual typewriters, carbon paper, onionskin, Dictaphones and ditto machines, to the electronic revolution and the related social media platforms and unlimited websites. We are in the realm now of instant communication, instant crisis, and instant problem solving compared to the good ol’ days of reflection and analysis. Gone are the days of the black rotary phone on the edge of the desk and the IBM electric typewriters. Now we have handhelds of various sizes, shapes, and functions and apps from Smartphones to iPads to tablets. Regardless of how we communicate and represent our clients, our role as problem solvers has not changed in providing service to the clients obtaining satisfactory results and handling their problems successfully.
This is very much the case, and I'm frankly not too certain that the practice of law hasn't suffered as a result.

What the author notes about instant communications is very true.  I was an early adopter of computer technology and use it a great deal. Perhaps I shouldn't applaud myself on that, however, as the computer had just arrived when I started practicing law, with the internet arriving on the scene almost at the same time.  I'd been taught to use the new technology of Westlaw at law school, although we did did not concentrate on its use for research. When I was first practicing law, almost no firm had a Westlaw account and we went to the county law library in order to use their Westlaw terminal. We were always very careful about using it, and typically sought permission from a client to use it when we did, as it we were charged by the minute to use it.  Now, every lawyer everywhere has Westlaw access and younger attorneys can't imagine a world in which it isn't the first thing that a person turns to when researching the law.

I was slower to adopt smartphones, and I've only had one so far.   I went to a smartphone so that I could check my email anywhere, but like most busy lawyers, I even use text messaging in practice, albeit carefully. 

The revolution in technology certainly has changed this aspect of the practice of law.  It must have been the case that in earlier eras lawyers had more time to ponder, if you will, any one legal topic.  Chances are high that they call carried more of a variety of legal topics as well, so the list of things they pondered was probably fairly large.  But the need to respond within hours, or even minutes, was no doubt relatively rare.

Casper Star Tribune Editorial board: OK the school district bond

The Casper Star Tribune has changed its position (reluctantly, given the pools) and is now supporting the bond.
While I wish the Tribune would more fully endorse the pool, they finally see the wisdom of the bond and are arguing for it.  The paper is very much endorsing the CAP enhancements, and essentially indicates that prior to the recent hearings it didn't fully understand the bond proposals.  Indeed, it's indicating that its changed its position now that the proposal has been fully explained.  It deserves credit for being willing to continue to analyze and to change its opinion, something that takes some degree of courage, but something which deserves respect.

I have to say, I appreciate the Tribune's current editor, even when I disagree with him, much more than the former one.  He seems much more careful and thoughtful in his approach to things, and the overall quality of the newspaper has improved.

The Bond Issue: The actual cost



This graphic, generated by the Natrona County School District, nicely shows the actual cost to Natrona County property owners for improving the safety and relevancy of their schools.  $100,000 is highlighted, although I don't know if that's the median value of a county house or not, real estate values have been rising here. But as the Tribune points out, even for the owner of a $300,000 home the actual cost is only about $65.00 per year, an amount a person with a home of that value would no doubt spend on a night out here, easily.  Going to dinner, for a family of four in Casper, no matter where you go, is nearly always going to result in a bill over $80,00.  So the costs for the bond are are quite minimal, particularly given the longevity and nature of the improvements.

For those just entering school, no doubt the scientific and technical additions at CAP will result in their graduating with better options in life, making the bond cost on an annual basis worth it in and of itself.  So too with the swimming pools, with the 1923 pool at NCHS, coming down this summer, being a prime example, given that the investment there lasted for nearly a century.

Thursday, February 27, 2014

Wyoming Lawyer February 2014: Standards of Dress.


 Fairly typical office attire for me, shirt and tie.

The  Wyoming Lawyer February 2014 issue just came out, and in it there's an interesting article by Cheyenne lawyer Jack Speight.  Speight's article relates to the topic of this blog in more than one way, as he discusses his practice dating back to the 1960s.  I'll probably come back to another topic discussed in his very short article, but what struck me (and apparently him, even in recollection) was this item:
With fond remembrance of the mid- 1960s,Cheyenne attorneys had a helpful little booklet consisting of about 30 pages in a 5 ½” x 8 ½” format with the relatively shocking title “Minimum Fee Schedule.” In addition to the obvious, the last page of this helpful little booklet spelled out a proper dress code for working in the office on Saturday mornings.Only on Saturday, ties were not required but a sports jacket or suit coat was still mandated. Naturally, the good ol’ boys who created the “Minimum Fee Schedule” and dress code did not give any direction on appropriate office attire for women, even though in the mid-1960s Cheyenne enjoyed the services of two outstanding women attorneys, Brooke Wunnicke and Ellen Crowley
This item is interesting for a variety of reasons (I wish somebody would publish a booklet of minimum fee schedules now). The reason I note it here is due to the dress code.

When I was in law school I remember learning in some class, probably trial practice, that dress in court was addressed by a rule, which it was.  Shortly after I graduated a new rule on courtroom decorum came in, which was less specific, in part, because the drafter of the rules were having a hard time handling the topic of female dress.  It isn't that female dress was inappropriate, its just hard to describe.  When I first started practicing we were told, however, what the rules were, and that there was a "warm weather" exception that allowed lawyers to dispense, in courtroom hearings, with jackets.

In the office, there were no longer any formal rules for lawyers, but there were informal ones that were reluctantly dying.  In our office, and older staffer informally enforced rules and what a person could and could not wear. Generally, if we weren't going to court, we could wear khakis and polo shirts.  I often, even then, wore jeans but not blue jeans.

Over time, this has really changed.  I can't say that there are any more real rules anymore, in any office, in so far as I can tell.  Many lawyers still wear ties every day, or most days, but many do not. Some routinely wear jeans in about every office.  It's been quite a change.  In the courtroom the rules haven't really changed, of course, and there's even one judge who made it known that he doesn't appreciate khaki trousers in the courthouse.

The change clearly started coming in during the 1970s.  I didn't have any experience with law offices at that time, but I do remember that doctors and dentist always wore ties.  Dentists still seem to even now, but doctors often do not.  

I can't say if this change is good or bad, but I do know that people expect members of various professions to have a certain look, even depicting them that way in popular media when it no longer reflects reality.  Generals in the military are always depicted wearing their dress uniforms, policemen are always depicted in blue.  Lawyers are depicted in suit and tie. While I violate this convention frequently myself, there's something to meeting these expectations.

The Bond Issue: The Mike Sedar Swimming Pool

The City of Casper's elected board, the City Council, has just voted to postpone rebuilding the decommissioned Mike Sedar Swimming Pool.

The old pool, which was ripped out either last summer or the summer before, was one of the principal pools in the town.  It was a 25  yard pool, and as amazing as it may seem to some, it was used for AAU swimming competitions when I was a kid.  Meter pools were rare at the time, and the pool had starting platforms at that time allowing it to be used in that fashion.  Principally built as a recreational pool (when most recreational pools were of a conventional construction) it also had a side area for a high dive, which was taken out some time ago based upon some concept of the appropriate depth for that, which it didn't meet.

Now it isn't there at all and now the city is pushing back its plan to rebuild the pool, which was going to be rebuilt in a much more elaborate, recreational pool, fashion.  The city noted that costs were going to be higher than what it anticipated but it also noted that it wanted to wait and see how the school district bond issue progressed.  In other words, they recognize the need for a pool, but may hold back to see if the school district, whose needs exceed the city's, achieves success in the bond issue thereby giving the city a little breathing room.

This is a distressing development.  In an era in which the news media here and all the government entities are telling us that the populations of the county is projected to rise, we seem reluctant to replace and repair (which is all we're really doing) those facilities that earlier generations of Casperites built, with smaller resources.  Right now we''re taking out one high school pool entirely and hopefully will be able to replace it.  Two others are in distress and need to be addressed.  A city pool has been removed and there's some question as to whether it will be replaced.  The old outdoor pool at Kelly Walsh was removed some time ago, and it was a city pool, and it was never replaced.  A party took a serious run at trying to grossly restrict or take out a local rifle range this past year. 

I'm not saying that a city needs to have everything, but in order to be a nice place to live it needs some facilities. And when the ones we have start to disappear and there's questions as to whether they'll be replaced, that's a long term problem.

BBC News - How Land Girls helped feed Britain to victory in WW1

BBC News - How Land Girls helped feed Britain to victory in WW1

Friday, February 27, 1914. The River of Doubt.

Mexican strongman Victoriano Huerta promised an investigation into the death of Clemente Vergara while, at the same time, Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan announced that the Texas Rangers would not be allowed to cross into Mexico to arrest the suspect Mexican soldiers.

Theodore Roosevelt's and Brazilian explorer Cândido Rondon's expedition team reached Caceres, Brazil, to begin exploration of the Rio da Dúvida, an event from which Roosevelt's health would never recover by the time it was done.

The Vanderbilt Cup race was held.


Locally, the news was asbestos, but not the way it hits the news currently.


Wednesday, February 26, 2014

Wednesday February 26, 1914. Suggesting crossing the border.

Governor of Texas Oscar Branch Colquitt suggested in a telegram to Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan that Texas Rangers could cross into Mexico and retrieve the body of murdered Texas Rancher Clemente Vergara.  The Federal Government informed Colquitt that would be an act of war and refused his request.

The HMHS Britannic was launched in Belfast.

Closer to home, the news was all local.


I wonder what about the Poodle Dog Cafe made it a "Resort for Gentlemen".  That's usually code for something now, but I suspect that isn't what was meant.

Monday, February 24, 2014

The Natrona County School Board votes "yes" on the bond issue

The School Board voted to submit the bond issue, discussed below, to the voters for an election to be held on May 6.  I'll post the text of the issue when I have a chance, but here's a "huzzah" to the Board!

Numbers and history. How an inaccurate understadning of history leads to the innaccurate headline that the U.S. Army is being cut to pre World War Two levels

It's being reported today that the Department of Defense is preparing to reduce the size of the Army to between 440,000 to 450,000 active duty soldiers.  This is being reported as cutting the size of the Army back to "pre World War Two levels", which is inaccurate.  This, in turn, shows how not really understanding history, leads to some erroneous assumptions.

The cuts create the smallest size for the Army since 1940, but that fails to take into account that 1940 saw the introduction of the conscription in anticipation of World War Two and the Federalization of the National Guard. The size of the Army in 1939 was about 200,000 active duty soldiers, with there being an additional 200,000 National Guardsmen.  When Congress allowed for the mobilization of the Guard in 1940, it also brought in Conscription.  That may mean that there was very briefly a period, in 1940, when the U.S. Army had about 400,000 men in it, but that would have been very brief.

The current size of the Army National Guard is 358,000 men, which is an enormously smaller number than there were at the Guard's post World War Two Cold War height.  However, the size of the Army Reserve adds another 250,000 men.  In 1939, the Reserve was very, very small, essentially being made up of officers only, with a few supporting enlisted men. There really weren't any organized Reserve unis, outside of medical ones.

So, if fully mobilzed, for purpose of the comparison, the size of the Army in all is branches today would still be over 1,000,000 men. 

In considering these numbers, we also have to keep in mind that the Army of 1939 (and 1940) included Army Air Corps, the predecessor of the U.S. Air Force, which presently has 334,000 active service members, and 178,000 reservists of all types.  Therefore, to make the comparison fully accurate the branch that existed prior to World War Two, on the active side, would be compared to a present number of over 1,500,000 active duty personnel.

Still, it is quite a drop in numbers.

But it's not accurate to compare it to the pre World War Two Army.

USDA Blog » Digging into a Farm’s History Helps Teach About Soil

USDA Blog » Digging into a Farm’s History Helps Teach About Soil

The Moving Picture: European (Italian?) Cavalry


Natrona County School District Bond Vote

Tonight, February 24, 2014, the Natrona County School District will hold the second of its public meetings to take comments on the proposed bond issue, which will go to the voters, if passed, later this spring.

As Natrona County residents know, our single school district serves a population of at least 80,000 people and covers 5.376 square miles.  To put that in a bit of prospective, the state of Rhode Island covers an expanse of 1,214 square miles.  Vermont coveres 9,620 square miles.  So, the county is about four times the size of the state of Rhode Island and about 60% of the size of the state of Vermont.

That means the single school district serves children that come to its schools from a huge expanse.  The number of rural schools is not as large as it once was, in keeping with the reality that modern school requires modern infrastructure, and for the final stage of public schooling, high school, that is particularly true.

The district has four high schools, Natrona County High School, Kelly Walsh High School, Roosevelt and Midwest.  NCHS and KWHS are by the far the largest of the schools. Roosevelt is an alternative school, set up for kids who seek the benefits of its programs, and Midwest is a small community on the edge of the county.  Many Natrona County residents probably don't even realize that Midwest has a high school.  As can be seen, the concentration of high schools is naturally in Casper, simply because Natrona County, in spite of its vast expanse, really only has six towns within it, a couple of which are no longer really full towns.  Actual towns are the greater Casper area (Casper, Bar Nunn, Mills, Evanston), Midwest, Edgerton and Alocva.  Towns that once existed, and are sort of still there, include Powder River and Arminto.  The overwhelming majority of students attend NCHS or KWHS, which have huge student populations.

KWHS and NCHS are undergoing reconstruction.  Built in the 1920s, it is simply time for NCHS.  It's a beautiful school, but its facilities are dated.  This is also true for KWHS which is not nearly as old, but like a lot of buildings built in later areas seems to have borne the test of time less well. 

In Wyoming, school construction is basically funded by the state.  Education is legally a "fundamental right" in Wyoming, and all of the state's children have the right to the same basic education.  This has come to mean, both philosophically and legally, that the state's mineral resources, as reflected in income to the state, are distributed by the state, so that counties with low mineral production are not deprived of the ability to teach their children to the same standards that those with high incomes are.

This is not universal, however, as the state at some point determined that it would not pay for "enhancements".  Naturally, the state was concerned about being asked to pay for high dollar athletic facilities and the like.

But what is, and ins not, an enhancement has turned out to be a tricky deal.

In the proposed bond issue, Natrona  County School District No. 1 may be asking for funds that are not, in a real sense, "enhancements".  They are necessities.  The first of these is upgrades to existing schools for school security, something that cannot be ignored now that we have the ability to do it.  We blogged about that in an recent entry here.

Directly related to safety is funding for three swimming pools, one at NCHS, one at KWHS, and one at Midwest High School.  In a district that covers a territory as vast as that covered by some Eastern states, the need for this should be self evident.  These schools will be lifesavers for some, and will benefit all.  We have also blogged about that in this entry and in this one.

Finally, but not least in significance, we here in this area continually are told that our mineral extraction economy produces good jobs for local residents, particularly those who grow up here.  At the same time, those of us who have lived here for all or the balance of our lives know that quite often Wyoming's biggest single expert is our young people, whom, in lean times (and we have a lot of those) grow up, graduate from high school, and then leave in search of work, never to return.  We also know that the oil and gas industry is expressing a need for skilled employees, which in many instances they end up bringing in from out of state. And, additionally, if we're serious about educating our youth for the 21st Century, we have to admit that shops built in the mid 20th Century, aren't going to effectively serve that need. The Bond would fund construction of a Science and Technology center where students who wished to pursue these talents could.  We have blogged about that here.

The bond deserves to pass. The School Bard deserves credit for taking this on.  The people of Natrona County should come out to support them.

Tuesday, February 24, 1914. Villa, Ulster Unionist, the doomed Canadian Arctic Expedition and Joshua Chamberlin.

Pancho Villa refused to delivery the body of William S. Benton to US and British authorities but stated he's allow relatives to visit his burial site, escorted.

The Ulster Unionist Party distributed posters addressing concerns about the Ulster Volunteer Force attempting to assure that it was formed solely due to its disputes with London, which probably wasn't particularly comforting.

Captain Robert Barrett led the last survivors from the Canadian Arctic Expedition's Shipwreck Camp to Wrangel Island, leaving a note on their whereabouts in a copper drum in case the icebound camp drifted into an area where it could be found.

Robert Peary, meanwhile, speculated in the press that the Canadian expedition had set up camp near the Alaskan coastline.

Famous Maine commander Joshua Chamberlain, who won a Medal of Honor for his actions at Gettysburg, died at age 85.


He had gone on to serve as the Governor of Maine.

While famous for his role in the Civil War, he had started off his adult life with the intent of becoming a Congregationalist minister, which was his mother's desire.  His father had hoped for a military career for him.  Marrying in 1855, he took up a career as a teacher before the Civil War.  He of course served notably in the Civil War.  After the war he served four one year terms as Governor of Maine (what a horrific though to have to run a campaign every year), resumed teaching at the university level, practiced law, and engaged in various business activities.

The Big Picture: First East Bay Ship by Truck


Sunday, February 23, 2014

A Trip Down Market Street, San Francisco, 1906



A real must watch.  Traffic in the early automobile era.  Thanks go out to John Morgan for this one.

Same film in HD:



The Bond Issue. Safety

As folks who read this blog (and there's darned few I know) are aware, I've written on several occasions about the upcoming Natrona County School District bond issue, taking the specific topics of the swimming pools and technical and vocational training up.  The School District plan to address these topics is so well formed that I think that either one of them would merit the bond being passed in and of itself. The third topic of the funding, which I haven't addressed yet, certainly does, school safety.

This is a topic that's need is so self evident I would argue that no rational person can, after considering it, argue against it. Basically, the District proposes to add features to the existing grade schools to enhance their safety, through new entry ways, lighting and technical additions.

I will not dwell on the current age and why the District would rightfully consider such improvements desirable. Rather, I will point out something that people too often miss.  As technology improves, and as experience teaches, if we can improve something within our reasonable ability to do so, we ought to.  We particularly should do so where children are involved.

To give an example that is probably fairly obvious, consider the automobile of 1913.  Not too safe, right?  Mechanical brakes, no air bags, no seat belts, no safety of any kind really.  We could make cars like that today. We don't.  We don't, because we know how not to, and therefore we make them safer. 

Buildings aren't automobiles, they're more permanent.  But here too we retrofit builds that are old with sprinkler systems and fire alarms, and remove the asbestos from them with reconstruction calls for it.  When we can make buildings reasonably safer, we can, and should.

The State of Wyoming funds new school construction, thanks to the funds that the mineral industry pays through severance taxes.  But it doesn't pay for "enhancements".  Before we complain of that, we should consider that around here "local control" of schools is a big deal. Well, here's an area that we control, and as those in control, we can and should act responsibly.

Monday, February 23, 1914. Villa Justice, Girl Flirts, and Packing heat.

The news was out about the Villista's having executed a British rancher. Villa insisted that it was an act of official justice due, he claimed, the rancher having attempted to pull a gun on him.


The real reason I'm posting this paper, however, is not for that news, although it appears here in the form of an article that the British did not intend to intervene in the Mexican Revolution due to the incident, but rather for its relation to some things we noted earlier this week, specifically;

Legislatures. Back to the future and other diversions?

Here we see the application of laws of the era.  Two young women, ages 18 and 19 respectively, were run out of town in Laramie for leading an "immoral, idle and profligate course of life".  

They'd just arrived there, so they couldn't have had the time to engage in too much immorality, idleness etc.  Indeed, they'd just taken up quarters.

Maybe a person has to read between the lines, perhaps, on this one.

Also, a Union Pacific clerk was fined for carrying a concealed weapon.  You'll commonly hear it suggested that up until recently, everyone was allowed to pack all the time, and in any way they wanted, but that's really not the case.

Related threads:

Legislatures. Back to the future and other diversions?


Packing Heat




Saturday, February 22, 2014

Coming soon: A blog devoted to history | Endless streams and forests

Coming soon: A blog devoted to history | Endless streams and forests

Columbian Exchange Lesson | Ramblings of a teacher, Redskins fan, and scrapbooker

Columbian Exchange Lesson | Ramblings of a teacher, Redskins fan, and scrapbooker

Sunday, February 22, 1914. Mutiny.

Lt. Rodriguez.

Executive Officer Lt. Hilario Rodriguez Malpica and three fellow officers lead a mutiny on the Mexican gunboat Tampico.  Their intent was to join the Revolution, but the ship's steering gear failed in a near conflict with another gunboat and they had to put in at Topolobampo.

The boat would remain under Lt. Rodriguez's command until June of that year, when it was sunk in a battle with vessels loyal to Huerta.  He chose to go down with the ship.