WHEELS THAT WON THE WEST®: Headlights for Horses?

WHEELS THAT WON THE WEST®: Headlights for Horses?

Mid Week At Work: Guards, Washington D. C.

Writing inspirations – the 1930s as we would wish them to be « M J Wright

Writing inspirations – the 1930s as we would wish them to be « M J Wright

Monday at the Bar: Courthouses of the West: Federal Courthouse, Lander Wyoming

Courthouses of the West: Federal Courthouse, Lander Wyoming:

This is the Federal Courthouse in Lander Wyoming, however it hasn't been used in that capacity in many years. The building is leased out by the Federal government, and chances are that most people, even in Lander, are not aware that this is a courthouse or that it has a courtroom.

I once had a case, about fifteen years ago, in which it was briefly suggested that the trial could be held in the courtroom, when this building was then under lease to the National Outdoor Leadership School, but the suggestion was quickly rejected on the basis that the courtroom had not been used as one in many years, and that it was too small.

Video: 100 Years on the Lincoln Highway | Watch Wyoming PBS Documentaries Online | Wyoming PBS Video

Video: 100 Years on the Lincoln Highway | Watch Wyoming PBS Documentaries Online | Wyoming PBS Video

A topic that I've discussed here from time to time, early transportation in Wyoming.  Interesting stuff.

April 19, 1865: “The Most Solemnly Grand Imposing Display “ | Wyoming Postscripts

April 19, 1865: “The Most Solemnly Grand Imposing Display “ | Wyoming Postscripts

Synchronicity

Several months ago, for no particular reason, I suddenly had the urge to email an old law school friend.

When he wrote back that day, he'd told me that he'd woken up in the middle of the night, and wondered how I was doing.

Synchronicity.

Recently, I went to look up an event I must speak at for my publisher.  About five minutes later she emailed me regarding the event.

Synchronicity. 

Recently I went to Denver.  The proceeding I was at went way over-length.  On the way home, before Cheyenne, my wife called and informed that friends had been in an accident north of Cheyenne.  Could I pick them up?

Yes, but only due to. . .

Synchronicity.

Years and years ago, indeed perhaps a couple of decades ago, a friend and I left work early, on the last day of Blue Grouse season, to go hunting. We never left work early, but we did that day.  We drove high up into the Big Horns, not really a wise decision on the last day of November, which was the last day of Blue Grouse season.  The road started to drift in, and we decided to turn around, but then decided to go one more ridge, for no good reason. We had actually decided to turn around.  When we got on the top of the ridge, there in the drifted in road was a sedan with an elderly man astride it.  It turned out he was just out of the hospital, from hip replacement surgery, and had decided to go for a mountain drive and become lost.  At that time of the year, with no cattle or sheep in the high country, and no earthly reason for anyone to be up there, it would likely have been days before anyone came that way.  But we did, and we pulled him out.

Synchronicity.

Some call synchronicity "coincidence", which expresses the same thing, sort of.  Synchronicity expresses the phenomenon of extraordinary things in time sync, while coincidence express to things, incidents co-existing in time.  But what is missing from the etymology of both words is the fact, and I think it is a fact, that there's a mysterious element of it which is beyond explanation, and which is metaphysical.

People can dismiss that, but they do so at their hazard.  Open to that possibility, indeed reality, many more things show to be synchronicitous.   Why does one thing suddenly go one way, when past examples show that it should not.  Sometimes, we're placed somewhere, and sometimes, others are placed somewhere in relation to us.  Probably much more often than we realize.

Sunday Morning Scene: Churches of the West: First Christian Scientist, Denver Colorado

Churches of the West: First Christian Scientist, Denver Colorado:

This impressive structure is located in the Capitol Hill district of Denver Colorado. It has a Greek Revival style. I otherwise know nothing about it, including when it was built.

In this photograph, you can see the Roman Catholic Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in the background, which is about one block away.

Old Picture of the Day: New Mexico Dust Storm

Old Picture of the Day: New Mexico Dust Storm: Today's picture shows a dust storm in New Mexico. The picture was taken in 1935. What a terrible time this must have been.

Old Picture of the Day: North Dakota Dust Storm

Old Picture of the Day: North Dakota Dust Storm: Today's picture shows a dust storm in 1937. The picture was taken in North Dakota. Things look so bleak and barren one wonders how ...

Old Picture of the Day: Dust Storm

Old Picture of the Day: Dust Storm: Dust Bowl week continues with this picture of a dust storm. The picture shows a dust storm as it engulfs Stratford, Texas. The picture...

Old Picture of the Day: Dust Bowl

Old Picture of the Day: Dust Bowl: Welcome to Dust Bowl Week here at OPOD. I read yesterday that California might be experiencing the worst drought since the Middle Ages...

Old Picture of the Day: Oklahoma Dust Bowl

Old Picture of the Day: Oklahoma Dust Bowl: Today's picture shows a dust storm in Boise City, Oklahoma. The picture was taken in 1936. What a dry hopeless scene this is.

The Romantic Nonesense of the Feral Horse

 

 Human being engaged in shocking example of lack of horse appreciation. . . or perhaps an Indian capturing a future mount in a romantic visage of the Old West.

I read in the Tribune that the Federal Government has re-placed, as in placed again, several hundred feral horses, inaccurately commonly termed "wild" horses, on the Federal domain in Nevada.  The local county and a local rancher protested, but to no avail.

And well they should have protested.  Feral horses have about as much place in the natural ecosystem of North America as feral house cats do.  None the less, feral cats, despised by bird lovers and naturalist alike, are detested when wild, while piles of gooey romantic slop are poured out about the feral horse.

I like horses, truly I do. But horses are an introduced animal in North America. There's nothing wild about them whatsoever.  As a protected animal on the public domain, they're busy destroying their range and displacing the native wildlife.  From a natural prospective, they shouldn't be there.  Indeed, feral horses are an environmental disaster.

They are there, as every generation of horse users up into the 1980s lost or dumped a few over the years.  Romance has it that every single wild pony out there is a Spanish Barb, but they aren't.  They're just as likely to bear Percheron genes in their lineage as something that was ridden by a Conquistador from Spain.

In this context, it's interesting to turn a bit to the focus of what this blog is supposed to be about; history.

As "wild horse" advocates like to point out, there were horses in North America in vast antiquity. What they don't like to point out is that those horses were an ancestor of the current horse, and bear about as much resemblance to the modern horse as pre human hominid species bear to us, or less.  I.e., if you saw one, you might not think horse at all, or if you did, it'd be "sort of horse like".  They were, as a rule, quite small and not of the useful riding variety at that.  They were most useful as meat for every meat eating thing.

No, the modern horses' story really starts in Asia and the European Steppes, not North America.

The first horses, as we conceive of them, came over with the Europeans.  Europeans were bringing horses with them from day one for obvious reasons.  It was one of the things that shocked and amazed the native inhabitants, which had no similar riding animal.

Europeans also lost a few pretty quickly.  The Spanish lost some of their various horses, blooded and not, fairly quickly, but then so did the English, Dutch and the French (and, some claim, the  Russians).  Pretty much anywhere you go on a colonizing enterprise, somebody is going to get sloppy or an accident is going to happen.  Horses, therefore, of a multiplicity of types, went feral where they could or went into native hands pretty quickly, for the most part, although usually on an edge of contact basis.  I.e., not continent wide.  Not only horses, it should be noted, but burros and mules as well.

In the American West, where the romantic slop about wild horses is focused, horses were first taken up by the natives in the early to mid 1700s, actually later than often generally supposed.  The location of the "first contact" with horses in some cases is preserved.  Indeed, one such encounter in Wyoming left the name of the location, Horse Creek, in that fashion, although such names should not be immediately relied up on as, after all, there are a lot of Horse Creeks and you need more data than that.  That particular spot was for one of the Sioux bands.  The Sioux and Cheyenne, as is well known, took up the horse enthusiastically.  The Shoshones, however, did not, except for a band that argued for their adoption, mostly made up of young men. That group was called The Arguers, or as we know them by that name in their native language, the Comanche.  Thus bloomed the native "horse culture", the run of which was extraordinarily brief.

By that time, the early to mid 1700s, the natives were largely picking up horses from feral bands of horses.  And those horses did indeed include descendants of mixed Spanish stock.  But that doesn't mean that they were all descendant of fine blooded horses by any means.  Not every Spaniard mounted in North America was a Don of noble lineage, and not all of their horses were of the type a Don would have ridden. That doesn't make them bad by any means, however.

Less well noted, by that time it seems probable that French Canadian horses, of a type called the Canadian, and likely descendant of Norman stock, were also wondering loose and coming down from the north, or just occasionally getting separated from the courier du bois.  Horses, generally oblivious to bloodlines themselves, mix freely and therefore the "pure" line of any one group of horses should be questioned, at least when not presented with greater detail.  And for that matter, to some degree, it doesn't matter.  It's fairly well demonstrated that, in North America, all western feral bands bread towards a grade standard of tough hardy pony.   Most "range horses", as they were typically called, resemble those ridden by Mongolian nomads more than they resembled something we'd imagine a Conquistador riding.

Range horses were a free resource by the late 19th Century, and by that time, both the Indians and the stockmen were making free use of them. Even the Army did, acquiring them from horse traders, intentionally, or occasionally from captured Indian stock, for supplementing those procured through the established remount system of the time.. The tough nature of the Range Horse, really a tough pony, was appreciated over the more injury prone "American Horse", which was larger and had a different dietary requirement.

 

Cowboy saddling a wild horse during Frontier Days, Cheyenne Wyoming circa 1903.

It'd be tempting to conclude the story here, and often it is, but that would not be historically accurate.  When the Frontier closed, the horse era was still alive and well, and there were plenty of feral horses around free for the taking.  They continued to be regarded as a free resource for ranchers well into the 20th Century, and it became common for some ranchers to supplement their incomes by domesticating a few captured.  Some of these went directly into use on ranches, but others not.  During World War One, more than a few were sold to British Remount agents, which sparked some protests from the British soldier users.  This all went on into the 1950s and 1960s.

 

Wild horse roundup, 1920s.

Just as horses were taken from these bands well into the 60s (and likely the 70s), horses were contributed to them as well.  In the early stock raising days in the west ranch horses were simply turned out to fend for themselves during the winter, and by the spring they were pretty darned wild in their own right.  No doubt not all of them came back into ranch use every spring.  And horses continued to get lost, etc. In the 1930s horses were outright abandoned, as desperate farmers pulled up stakes and moved on.  Plow horses that were very far from wild found themselves in wild bands, as their human owners gave up on them. This repeated itself in the West in the 1980s, when those who had bought pleasure horses during good times abandoned them when times got tough.

 

Stock horses, being roped so their shoes can be pulled before being turned out for the winter.  Montana, 1940s

This is not to say, however, that the use of wild horses remained the same throughout this period.  Indeed, it did not, as better options were available.   The Army moved away from range horses around the turn of the prior century, as it moved towards more blooded stock.  That move created the post World War One Remount system which in turn provided horses for breeding purposes to stockmen, who were eager to acquire the better stock that this allowed for.

By the 80s, indeed by the 1970s, a new era of nonsense had come in.  Driven on by the idea that certain forces were going to extinguish wild horses from the range, and motivated by the efforts of Wild Horse Annie, wild, that is feral, horses became Federally protected, and we've had to live with that ill thought out effort ever since.

The basic problem is that there'd never been a day when new horses weren't being added to "wild" bands, and there'd  never been a day when humans weren't culling them as well.  Federal protection was sold on the "romance" of the West, but in truth, humans had been removing horses from feral populations from the very first day they'd existed. Europeans recaptured horses if they could. Indians captured them as well.  Ranchers did likewise, for use and for sale.  An effective brake, therefore, existed on the expansion of the population. With the Wild Free Horse and Burro Act of 1971, that was no longer true.

And the results were pretty predictable. The population tends to get out of control, and the Federal government has to come in and address it. This brings out the deluded, who imagine these populations to be wild, when they are not, and somehow fails to grasp that the critical element that existed in prior days, human culling, was removed from the act. The horses in turn expand their population and destroy the range, to the determine of everything, including actual wild native animals.  The nonsense associated with them, including a wholly unwarranted Federal expense on a non native domestic animal, also serves to breed contempt for the Federal government in a region where it is little appreciated to start with, fueling such bad ideas as the transfer of Federal lands to the states, as local populations seek to free themselves of such overreaching.

The solution to this is quite simple.  Horses could simply be returned to state management, or lack of it, as they had been in former eras.  In this day and age, it's unlikely that any state would allow them to be wholesale removed, and several of the states that have isolated bands of "wild horses", including Wyoming, are quite proud of them.  But states would manage the matter better, and by inserting the element that made this story so "romantic" to start with, actual horsemen.

Not that this is going to happen. The trend is in the opposite direction. A peculiar example of a domestic animal gone feral, and preserved in a feral state by romanticism, with romanticism being based on human interaction, which is now precluded.

Career help at the high school

Last night I attended a session for high school juniors and their parents concerning in state post high school options, of which Wyoming has quite a few.

I was impressed, frankly, that they work so hard on this now. When I graduated high school, in 1981, I don't recall that being the case.  Perhaps, of course, I simply ignored it, but I'm pretty sure that there wasn't much of it.  Indeed, I don't ever recall going to something like that, and about all I do recall is taking some sort of career aptitude test  while there, and having to see my guidance counselor and obtain his signature prior to my graduating.  I recall when I did that I had a hard time finding him in the office and finally had to track him down early in the morning, whereupon he signed my form without offering any advice.  Frankly, I think the school system failed us in this regards.

Now they're doing well however.

And part of that doing well was the attendance, by the various community colleges and the university of the session, with each institution, plus the Electricians education program (a very good local program) all explaining what was unique about their programs and institutions.

The one thing I was disappointed to see is that the session wasn't well attended, or rather not as well attended as I would have guessed, but you can't make people come.  One irritating aspect of it I've already noted, which was the recently arrived Bostonians comments on various aspects of the local post high school school options, which were offered in seeming ignorance of the history of what they were commenting upon.  Their daughter sat stoned faced through the entire thing, but as kids acclimate quickly, I can pretty much guess what she was thinking.

Anyhow, nice to see this being done.  Some things do indeed improve over time, and this has certainly improved vastly since 1981.

Ineffective Point of Argument II: "I came here in . . . "

"I come from back (fill in blank here) and. . . "

Okay, this particular item pertains particularly strongly to the West, but similar arguments no doubt exist everywhere.  It comes in two distinct forms, neither of which make for an effective argument.

One I've been seeing a lot of here is "I came here back in '96 and".  Indeed, there's an argument like that in this past weekend's Tribune, presented in a letter to the Editor.  The point the correspondent thinks they're making is that they've been here for a long time and have particular local knowledge.

The problem with that, and which is particularly demonstrated by the letter of this past weekend, is that for people with a really long association with an area, perhaps a lifelong one, a lot of these dates suggest that the person in fact has low association with an area.  In the example cited, the correspondent is writing about a suggested change to the  City of Casper.  I've written on the same topic, and raised a couple of the same points, but didn't maintain some others.  One point that the writer tried to maintain was that the correspondent had been here since 96, and was tired of all the people who moved in during the boom and would be glad to see them go.

Well, many people here can remember 86. . .or 76. . I can.  I was born in 63 and might remember at least one thing from 66.  Plenty of locals do, and from 56, 46 or 36.  Saying that you came here in 96 emphasizes to us that you are actually part of the demographic, newcomers, whom you are complaining about.  Or, if you are trying to establish your credentials for long observation, to us, you can't.  You don't have it.  It's a poorly presented argument.

The other way that this is presented is usually as a joyful observation by an admitted newcomer who has a nifty suggestion for how we can make this place a bit more like the place they fled for some reason. Again, that's a poor argument.


This is just a bad thing to say,if you are in the West.  But you see it all the time. Somebody wants to argue for something, and in order to prove hteir love of their locality, they poitn out that htey moved from someplace else to here.

That doesn't make your argument credible, it makes you an outsider who is coming in and telling us what to do. We don't care about how you did things back home.  You aren't back home.  If you liked how they did it back home, you should go back there.  That's how that argument will be received.

Provincial?  Yes it is, but we tend to be that way here.  If you are presenting an argument to provincial people, it doesn't help to suggest that you aren't form the province. The point isn't that you aren't from here.  A lot of people aren't. But if you moved here as an adult, if you present this argument, you probably better have at least 30 years of residence before you begin trying to throw it around in a general audience.

________________________________________________________________________________

Postscript

The other way that this is presented is usually as a joyful observation by an admitted newcomer who has a nifty suggestion for how we can make this place a bit more like the place they fled for some reason. Again, that's a poor argument.

It occurs to me that there's another variant of this.  This occurrence comes to mind as I just saw it in action at a public meeting.

What that is, is when a newcomer has an observation and loudly or persistently feels that they have a brilliant or important solution to a problem they've observed, without bothering to learn if there's a history to the situation.  Normally those who know the history will quite frankly keep their mouths shut unless really provoked, which doesn't mean that it isn't irritating.

In this example, at a public meeting, a newly arrived (three years) person from Boston wanted to know why Wyoming doesn't have a second four year university.  She was persistent in the point and nobody bothered to clue her in as to why.  This might be regarded as a minor matter, but it really isn't.

The reason that we don't have a second four year school (that is a state funded school, we do have a second four year school) is that we've already fought that fight and lost it. But, in sort of a typical American fashion, the winning side accommodated the losing side and we're very happy with the result.

Back in the 1970s there was a big local push here to make Casper College the second four year university.  It's a big community college, and the oldest one in the state, and we were in a boom (yep, that again).  So local legislators and the community pushed hard for that, but we lost.

But after that, the University started to offer UW class at Casper College, and that developed into the University of Wyoming at Casper College, a massive program that offers quite a few Bachelors degrees. We here really lucked out. UW took heed of our complaints and addressed them in a spectacular fashion. We basically fully got what we wanted.

Except, perhaps, if you just arrived here recently and where you were from had more than one four year school.

Now, this is a western state with a small population.  Some western states with small populations do have more than one university, but it's worth noting that many that do have one major one and then others that are very small. We've surpassed that.

None of which, I'm sure the Boston commenter knew. But her comments, to the veterans of this fight, suggest we give up what we got in favor of a doubtful proposition.  It comes across like a kid, after demanding ice cream but getting pie, throwing it across the room.  Not well received.

Or, I suppose, it'd come across like going to a Boston city counsel meeting and saying "Wow!  Cool city!  Why doesn't the Crown put in a courthouse here?"

Pet Peeves: The overly detailed receptionist

Receptionist:  Hello, this is Anonymous Law Firm, how may I help you?

Me:  This is Pat, is Joe in?

Receptionist: Did you say this is Cat?

Me:  No, Pat.

Receptionist:  Todd?  (No joke, about 25% of the time when I've said Pat, they ask me if I said Todd).

Me:  No, Pat, P, A, T.

Receptionist:  Okay Todd, may I ask whom you are calling?

Me;  Um, Joe.

Receptionist:  Are you an attorney?

Me:  Yes.

Receptionist:  And may I tell him why  you are calling?

Me:  I'm returning his call.

Receptionist: And what did that concern?

Me:  Whatever it was that he was calling about. He called just five minutes ago.

Receptionist: And what was he calling about?

Me:  Um. . . I'm sure he knows.

Receptionist:  Shall I see if he is in?

Me: That'd be great, thanks.

Pause. . . . .

Receptionist:  He says he's not in.

Me:  Really, he asked me to call him?

Receptionist:  Well Todd, would you like to leave a message.

Me:  The name is Pat, and yes I'd like to leave a message.

Receptionist:  Todd, would you like to leave that with me or his voice mail?

Me:  Does he check his voice mail?

Receptionist:  Yes.

Me:  I'll take voice mail.

Receptionist:  Okay, what is your message.

Me:  Umm, I'd like voice mail.

Receptionist:  Okay, I'll let him know that.

Me:  No, wait, I'd like to leave him a message on his voice mail.

Receptionist:  And will he know who you are?

Me:  I hope so, he called me five minutes ago and we have only one case together, I think he'll know which one that is.

Receptionist:  And whom shall I tell him he is calling?

Me:  Pat.

Receptionist: And what shall I say this is about, Cat?

Me:  No, Pat, and I'm returning his call.

Receptionist:  And what was he calling about, Todd?

Unsolicted career advice for the student No. 6: Stress and the law, know your mind.

Quite some time ago I wrote a couple of posts that are basically directed at people pondering the law as a career; one being a Caveat Auctor thread and the other on getting a useful prelaw education.  I'm sure that absolutely nobody who is pondering law school reads this blog, as hardly anyone does, but I recalled those when I read the most recent issue of The Wyoming Lawyer.  Then I forgot about it until this week.

 

Enigmatic message on a marble bench on the Byron White Courthouse in Denver Colorado originally penned by Francis Quarles, who also stated "No Cross, No Crown". I've never been too sure what this message actually was intended to counsel, but Quarles did not seem to be an advocate of idleness.  I suppose its supposed to inspire a person to strive on, forsaking rest, but in a life that's not long anyhow, maybe it really should be read to counsel the opposite, as some entire cultures do.*

On Monday last, I had a telephonic hearing with a lawyer I've been working against in a case. A really nice guy, we'd gotten along well in the case, which certainly isn't always the situation with opposing counsel  Some lawyers can be real jerks, but this guy wasn't.  Just prior to the hearing he asked me for a continuance of the schedule.  He'd already asked the other defense counsel in the case the same thing, and he'd agreed to it.  I had my reservations, but I agreed to it too. They both wanted one, and while I didn't need one, there were things I could do with the extra time.  All went well, counsel were friendly, the court cooperative, and everyone parted, it seemed, in good spirits.

Then, that night, that lawyer went home and killed himself.  I didn't see it coming.  I wish I hadn't agreed to the extension. With trial right around the corner, I feel he would have hung on out of loyalty to the client.  Maybe the crisis would have passed.

Back to the magazine.  The Wyoming Lawyer is the monthly magazine that members of the Wyoming State Bar receive. It's nicely done and has pretty good production values, which is more than I can say for a lot of career journals. This month's is mostly about psychological well being.  Then the ABA Journal came out, and it had an article on the same thing, maybe more than one (I didn't keep the journal around long, as it didn't appear to be that interesting of an issue).

I'm not really going to comment on the psychological well being context, but it does raise an interesting point for those pondering entering the law, that being, are you up for it?

That may seem like a silly question, but apparently the statistics are alarming for lawyers.  The depression rate is really high, apparently twice that of the general public, and that manifests itself in all sort of terrible ways, from consuming gallons upon gallons of alcohol, to taking illegal drugs, to dicey behavior.  Indeed, I think I've known lawyers, over time, who fell into all of these vices.  Additionally, apparently, the suicide rate is high for lawyers, although the statistics vary on that.  Dentists may or may not have a high rate as well.  Lawyers come out something like second or third in that grim area.  I've known quite a few dentists, but I've never known one who harmed himself.  I can't say that about lawyers, however.  Definitely not now, sadly.  Indeed, after the tragic event mentioned above occurred, another lawyer told me about a fellow that we know of, who died quite awhile back, who also took his own life.  I didn't know him that well, and I don't think that this was widely known (or if it was, I didn't know it).  And it occurred to me that I know of at least one other instance, which in that case was apparently mixed with the resort to illegal drugs, which no doubt made the situation even worse.  And in further pondering I realized I know if yet another lawyer who fell into some sort of weird situation, in another state, and ended up in an armed standoff with the authorities.  Guess I hadn't really pondered any of this until now, but it occurs.

All of this, or at least most of it, seems to be due to people's inability to deal with stress, although in the recent example I mentioned, the lawyer had suffered a horrible psychological trauma as a young man, and my guess is that is what caused his grim frame of mind, not the law.  Various state bar organizations, including our state bar, have set up programs to deal with lawyers falling into the vices noted above, and attempt to help their members, but I wonder how much of this really can be proactively dealt with.

One reason that I doubt it is that lawyers like to repeat the propaganda that our adversarial system is the best in the world.  I think there's real reasons to doubt that, and the less adversarial systems of France, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Austria, Norway, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Holland, Switzerland, and so on, are at least as good as ours.  At any rate, a system which encourages adversarial conduct is going to be stressful in and of itself.  No doubt about it.  Beyond that, a legal education system that has flooded the market with young lawyers is also going to whack them upside the head with stress.  Most traditional legal education systems tended to weed a lot of people out, and the American system itself did at one time, but this is no longer so much the case. The schools produce the graduates and state bars are moving towards systems that let most of them in.

All that means you have a lot of people who may have entered for one reason or another but now find themselves fighting for work and fighting for a living. That sounds pretty stressful.  This would, however, seemingly be uniquely the case in litigation work, which is fighting.  I wouldn't think transactional work, for example, should be as stressful.

Having said that, one other added element of that, I suspect, is that at the end of the day, the law is about solving problems.  And that means people transfer their problems to the lawyer.  It's easy to think of lawyers as guys with expensive suits engaging in witty banter all day long, but in reality for almost every single lawyer the day is filled with attempting to solve other people's problems.  In litigation, of course, that means advancing a point that they desire, one way or another, which may be all the more stressful as the solution may not really be tailor made for their actual problem, whatever that is.

Recently I ran a series of letter snippets here between my grandmother and grandfather, on my mother's side, all of which related to either World War One or riding horses.  I didn't, by any means, put up all those letters.  But I know, from family stories and what not, how things were and went.  My grandmother, at the time she wrote those letters, was 26 years old and hoping to get married to my grandfather, who was struggling to get a start in business.  They did get married, but about five years later, when he'd returned home to Montreal.  I note that, as if you read the letters in their entirety, you can see that he was frequently ill in his 20s and obviously very stressed out. The family well knew that.  At the time those letters were written he'd already received a discharge from Canadian service due to ill health, which was mostly due to a very nervous disposition, and he'd struggle with that his entire life.  Indeed, he ultimately turned to drinking himself, until my grandmother told him to knock it off, and he did, simply quitting.

My point here is not to condemn him.  By all accounts, his children loved him greatly and the family was a very noted family.  But rather something that was noted at the time, and was noted later, is that he was an extremely intelligent man whose constitution just couldn't endure high stress.  He would probably have been better off as an academic or something. But, coming from a family of very high achievers, and being uniquely afflicted in this sense, nobody really understood that and he followed along the well trodden family path of business.  Ultimately, it did work out okay, but it was hard on him.

I wonder how many other people find themselves in situations like that.  From groups of high achievers, and uniquely oppressed by such a condition.  Now, there's all sorts of things that can be prescribed for such people, although I'm personally bothered by the degree to which Americans resort to pharmaceuticals for everything now days.  I wonder if a person should take something like this into account. 

Over the past year or so I've run across lawyers who were drinking too heavily, one who was engaged in an improper relationship with a female employee which resulted in the end of his marriage, one who seems to be on the constant edge of a nervous breakdown (assuming that's still regarded as a real condition), one who writes nasty letters but who won't answer his phone, one who quit law work, went into policing, and then had an improper relationship with another policeman while at work, and now one who killed himself.  I can't say that all of these are reactions to stress, but all but the last one are so common in this line of work, I wonder.

Some lines of work require psychological testing before entering them, I'm told.  Law enforcement now does, I guess.  I know that American submariners and missile crewmen do.  I kind of wonder if law schools ought to at least require some sort of testing to inform the student of if their makeup is suitable for the law, before they invest in their education.  But then law schools generally aren't very good about informing students about the practice of law in general, and have low interest in discouraging people from entering law school.

Be that as it may, a person whose prone to bad reactions to stress maybe ought to think twice about some aspects of the law, assuming that they know that they have that character trait, which I suspect few people do, until their really under stress.

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 Postscript

On this topic, because I think its significant, and because  I recently saw an example of how this is true that brings it to mind, I thought I'd amplify something that's mentioned above, but which wasn't expanded on much when I noted it.  That's the element of responsibility in the law.

I hear all the time, from people contemplating a legal career, that "they like to argue", as if that somehow qualified anyone to be anything.  Make no mistake, it isn't whether you like to argue or not that makes you qualified to be a lawyer, or makes the law an ideal career for you. If you truly like to argue, that may just make you a jerk.

The bigger question is whether you like to take on the responsibilities of others.

That's the key aspect of a legal career and legal personality.  Everything else is ancillary.

Most people don't, quite frankly, like to take on the hopes, dreams and burdens of others, and carry the full weight of them.  Some do, but most do not. But that's what an awful lot of lawyers do, and that's what all lawyers do to some extent.

That, for litigators, this is done in an adversarial setting doesn't change that.  A lawyer arguing in court his hoping to win something for somebody else, and that person is depending on them.

That's the key thing, I think, that causes stress in the law.  A lot of people who have entered the law because they were smart, analytical, etc., may not have realized that what they were signing up for was to be completely devoted to the causes and hopes of other people. And that can wear on a person.  It wears on some more than others.

And it's something that people don't understand at all.  For that reason, there's little relief from it at any stage.  Family, which should be the primary refuge from this, provides one of the main areas where it doesn't occur.  The lawyer, being a person who solves problems for others all day, is expected to keep on doing that at night.  Men and women who travel weary hours for others are asked to turn around and do it for those at home. All that is reasonable enough.

But that gets to some very much, and that's something that a person entering this field should be aware of.

The paradox of it is that if a person is motivated by a "desire to help others", in my view, this is also the wrong career. That suits a person for social work, or perhaps for the seminary, but not really for the law.  That's a greater type of calling, and this is a more narrow one. The work of the lawyer is more at the pick and shovel end of things, but none the less the work is often desperate and important, and a lot of weight if carried on that person's shoulders.  Just because a person liked to compete in high school or college debate doesn't mean that they want to take on the desperate causes of other people. That's something that at least all lawyers do a little, and some lawyers do a lot of, and that's something to consider.

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*On the other side of the building are the words "Alternate rest and labor long endure."

Writing inspirations – imagining life for settlers in days gone by « M J Wright

Writing inspirations – imagining life for settlers in days gone by « M J Wright

This Day in US History… 1865: Good Friday | Wyoming Postscripts

This Day in US History… 1865: Good Friday | Wyoming Postscripts