Boomer, wake up. Generations, Part One of Three

I saw this headline on a financial website:

Why The 'Me, Me, Me' Generation Needs Help From You, You, You

In fairness, this categorization was not made by the author of the article, who reluctantly admitted that he's technically part of the Millennials, the generation this article is about.  Indeed, he stated:

Of course, for all of the criticisms and accusations lobbed at millennials, by any standards, they've been dealt a pretty rough hand as they attempt to begin their adult lives. The earliest millennials have already been forced to endure two stock market crashes and multiple armed conflicts (sparked by one of our nation's most traumatic experiences in a century), and they've inherited a world with some of the least-trusted leaders in history, a trend that doesn't seem likely to change any time soon.

Time magazine came up with the " 'Me, Me, Me' Generation" categorization.

It did that in 2013 in an article in which it noted:

I am about to do what old people have done throughout history: call those younger than me lazy, entitled, selfish and shallow. But I have studies! I have statistics! I have quotes from respected academics! Unlike my parents, my grandparents and my great-grandparents, I have proof.

Here’s the cold, hard data: The incidence of narcissistic personality disorder is nearly three times as high for people in their 20s as for the generation that’s now 65 or older, according to the National Institutes of Health; 58% more college students scored higher on a narcissism scale in 2009 than in 1982. Millennials got so many participation trophies growing up that a recent study showed that 40% believe they should be promoted every two years, regardless of performance. They are fame-obsessed: three times as many middle school girls want to grow up to be a personal assistant to a famous person as want to be a Senator, according to a 2007 survey; four times as many would pick the assistant job over CEO of a major corporation. They’re so convinced of their own greatness that the National Study of Youth and Religion found the guiding morality of 60% of millennials in any situation is that they’ll just be able to feel what’s right. Their development is stunted: more people ages 18 to 29 live with their parents than with a spouse, according to the 2012 Clark University Poll of Emerging Adults. And they are lazy. In 1992, the nonprofit Families and Work Institute reported that 80% of people under 23 wanted to one day have a job with greater responsibility; 10 years later, only 60% did.

Well, baloney.

How on earth has the Boomer generation, which authored this opinion, remained so completely delusional about their privileged generational status, let alone their own history?

To hear them tell it, you would think that every member of the Boomer generation walked uphill both ways to school in a blizzard everyday. And now they lament the rootlessness and aimlessness of the following generations, which have failed to follow their examples of hard work and enterprise.

Eh?

Bull.

Now, let me now state that I'm not into categorizing an entire generation; well too much anyhow.  The same Boomer generation that's identified with anti war protests, etc., actually fought in the Vietnam War and it had a higher volunteer rate than the World War Two generation.  So a person can only take this sort of thing so far.

Boomers protesting the Vietnam War.

 Boomers fighting the Vietnam War.

Moreover, the "Boomers" aren't really one single generation, in spite of what demographers might claim.  The generation is supposed to be the one that was born between 1946 and 1964.  Well, baloney.  That may be true in a statistical sense, but when people look at the boomers they're really looking at the generation that came of age in the 1960s and early 1970s.  Indeed, demographers have variously defined people who were born from 1960 to 1965 in various ways, including as members of the following generation, Generation X, or members of their own demographic, the Gap Generation.   What that tells us, and accurately, is that people born between 1960 and 1965 don't fit in well to the Boomers and identify more strongly with later generations, and that''s how we will sue that information here.  Indeed, a kid born in 1960 would graduate high school in 1978, and have very little in common with one who graduated in 1968.  Even at that, graduates from 1980 would have even less in common, and more in common with those graduating in 1988, and maybe even more in common with 88 grads than 78 grads.

Anyhow, having said this, I hear and read shots taken at Millennials all the time, and I think they're very far off the mark, quite frankly.

I just don't see it.

Indeed, what I do see, is quite the reverse.  The Millennials, and the "Gap Generation" and Generation X just ahead of them are sort of uniquely burdened by the Boomers in ways the Boomer just can't seem to grasp.

The Boomers are the most fortunate generation in American history, and they've enjoyed a world, and its resources, like none before it and like none after it. But they don't grasp that all.

Prior to the Boomers, access to college was based on money.  A  high percentage of Americans didn't even graduate from high school prior to their generation, but their parents made sure they did, and having been exposed to university in mass as a result of the GI Bill after World War Two, they made sure that their kids had access to it as well. The entire concept of public assistance going to university came out of the GI Bill and it was the World War Two generation that gave rise to the Boomers that massively expanded the concept. 

The huge difference between then and now is that the Boomers entered life, delayed compared to their parents, in an era of unparalleled opportunity, but they don't realize it. Moreover, they are acclimated to it.  

The 1945 through 1970 period was one in which merely having a college degree was nearly a guaranty of white collar success.  And even though college degrees became exponentially more common in the period, even having simply a high school degree (the dropout rate remained higher than it is today) meant a person could usually find a decent paying job of another type.  Entire classes of jobs that require college now did not require a college degree then.  Europe's economy remained destroyed form World War Two well into this period, and the United States made everything.  All of this meant that it was much easier to be successful than it is now, and much more difficult to fail.  A person with a trade skill or a college education was going to do well, for the most part.

And do well even with the delayed entry into adult life, which the Boomers (as we will see in a later installment of this series) largely experienced.  Prior to their generation, the entire concept of a delayed adulthood, stretching form the late teens up into the mid twenties, didn't exist.  If you look at old photographs and kids graduating from high school look more adult, that's because, as we will really see, they truly were.  Perhaps they were in the Boomer generation as well, as they sense, but not in the same way.

That's because they were really the first American generation to experience a period of delayed adulthood on a generational basis.  It had always been the case that the wealthy and privileged who were able to go to university experienced that, and tales of youthful college life date back to the Middle Ages.  But most people didn't experience that.  Most Americans, as we have explored in prior threads, by 18 were looking for work. They may have lived at home, and probably did (we'll also be looking at that), but they weren't kids.

Indeed, if a person wants a contemporary movie portrayal of what this period was like, sort of, for younger Americans, a good cinematic portrayal of it is provided in the film Marty.  Another good one, sort of, is provided in the film The Apartment.  "Oh no, those films are about adults. . . ".  Yep, but they're about younger adults than you might imagine.  The stay at home blue collar protagonist in Marty does pretty accurately reflect a common generational experience for the time.  And the fact that slightly wayward Miss Kubelik has immediate resort to her sister and brother in law in The Apartment isn't far off either.

Boomers came of age, for various reasons, at a time in which there was much more slack for everything.  The government expanded benefits to the boomers that they still enjoy today and that they're completely acclimated to without understanding that prior generations lacked them.  The wide latitude given to the generation in social terms meant that the generational reaction to the Vietnam War, which didn't occur with the earlier Korean War, fought by men who were only a bit too young for World War Two but who were kids during the Great Depression, was tolerated and even absorbed by the nation.  The same generation that reacted negatively to the war in Vietnam would send later generations to fight in the Middle East without even noting the sense of irony that created.

And coming into power in the wake of the  Vietnam War, it doesn't seem to recall any sense of irony in a generation that was part of a "youth movement" holding on to power with nearly cold dead  hands even though it is no longer the largest generational cohort.  Indeed, that last fact is amongst the most ironic.  The Boomers started entering government in the late 1970s. And there they remain.  This year we see two out of the three candidates fitting into that generation (Sanders is actually from the prior generation, which probably explains why his views seem different, in part).  No post Boomer candidate survived the primaries.  The Boomers will rule on.

But in ruling on, they've forgotten that when they were younger they were defined by rejection of everything they now grump about, even as they fail to realize that they've failed to come fully back around to the values of earlier generations that they've somewhat adopted but not in the softened form that existed for their parents.  They massively, as a generation, rejected the values of their parents.  They wouldn't serve. They rejected the corporate work life.  They laughed at the value of money.  They rejected much of the tradition of male/female relationships.  They felt no standards should be accepted that existed simply because they did.  Drugs, personal license, etc., were all vices they brought into their generation in spades.

And now they complain that the Millennials don't save and don't work.

In 1973 they made a hit out of Taking Care of Business.

You get up every morning from your alarm clock's warning
Take the 8:15 into the city
There's a whistle up above and people pushin', people shovin'
And the girls, who try to look pretty

And if your train's on time, you can get to work by nine
And start your slaving job to get your pay
If you ever get annoyed, look at me, I'm self-employed
I love to work at nothing all day

And I'll be takin' care of business every day
Takin' care of business every way
I've been takin' care of business, it's all mine
Takin' care of business and working overtime, work out

If it were easy as fishin', you could be a musician
If you could make sounds loud or mellow
Get a second-hand guitar, chances are you'll go far
If you get in with the right bunch of fellows.

People see you having fun, just a-lying in the sun
Tell them that you like it this way
It's the work that we avoid and we're all self-employed
We love to work at nothing all day.

Hmmm. . . .

Well, by 1987 they were watching Wall Street, with its punchline.  "Greed is good".  Indeed, both of the current front runners in the current Presidential election, who are Boomers, have lauded Wall Street in the past, and it's only because of pre-Boomer Sanders, who appeals to Millennials, that this is suddenly in question.

Somehow that generation of the 1960s that went to college but which was for peace, love and dope (keeping in mind that this wasn't a universal view, and others were "pround to be an Okie from Muskogee"), and never trusting "anyone over 30" became corporate in the extreme, and in a way their parents never were, in the 1970s.  1956 gave us The Man In The Gray Flannel Suit about the generation that came home from World War Two, but the focus on money that's present in that representational film falls far below that which came to define the Boomer generation in later years.

As we'll deal with shortly, a lot of this criticism of the Millennials, and the Gaps, by the Boomers, is really unwarranted.  Indeed . . . in the great scheme of things, they probably stand closer to the Boomers parents, and maybe even their grandparents, than the Boomers do.  If Boomers feel that the Millennials don't share their values, well they're partially right.  They might share an older set however, with prior generations. And they have to live in the world that the Boomers have dominated since the 1960s, and that's not easy for generations that are faced with having less of absolutely everything.

Of course, that's true of some Boomers, indeed quite a few of them, as well.  All along there were those who worried about the direction everything was going and have had to live with it.  That's cold comfort indeed.

___________________________________________________________________________________

Postscript

It's been pointed out to me that I'm not on the only one to make some of the observations here.  Stephen Cobert has done the same:

Monday at the Bar: Courthouses of the West: Natrona County Courthouses from the air.

Courthouses of the West: Natrona County Courthouses from the air.:

Natrona County's courthouses from the air, as viewed from a Ford Tri Motor.  The classic old courthouse is in the upper middle of the photograph, but the Townsend Justice Center and the Hall of Justice are also visible.  The Federal Courthouse is not visible, however.

Roads to the Great War: 100 Years Ago: The Arab Revolt Begins

Roads to the Great War: 100 Years Ago: The Arab Revolt Begins: Ten Things to Remember About the Arab Revolt  Faisal After the Capture of Aqaba, Lawrence to His Left 1.  The Arab Revolt started ...

Louis Brandeis sworn in as Justice of the United States Supreme Court: June 5, 1916

 

 On this date in 1916, Louis Brandeis was sworn in as Justice of the United States Supreme Court.

Brandeis was the first Jewish Supreme Court Justice.  Now this would hardly seem remarkable, but prior to Brandeis there   Presently, three out of the current nine Justices is Jewish, and the current nominee is also Jewish.  The first Catholic Justice was appointed in 1836, which in some ways makes the Brandeis story all the more remarkable as Catholics were a fairly despised minority in the US when Roger Taney was appointed that year.  That makes the Supreme Court one of the more egalitarian bodies in the American government but it also shows, I suspect, the extent to which Jews were disadvantaged in some ways in the US even though they have always been well represented in the law.

Brandeis was a liberal justice and received opposition to his appointment for that reason, which was compounded by the fact that he was Jewish. That was overcome however.  This does make his appointment more interesting, however, as it does demonstrate that Woodrow Wilson was a true progressive, as he appointed a progressive justice, but it also make all the more curious Wilson's racism, which was focused on blacks.  A person would suspect that a progressive President who did not base his choice on matters of faith, would have supported American blacks, but he didn't.

The Arab Revolt commences: June 5, 1916

The Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Empire commences, lead by the Hashemites of Mecca.

Movements towards greater Arab autonomy within the  Ottoman Empire had been going on for some time prior to the revolt.  Perhaps not surprisingly, they had been centered in the Lavant, i.e., Syria, which was a much more cosmopolitan and urban region of Arabia than the Arabian Peninsula.  Given the slow movement of the Ottoman Empire in this direction, indeed, given the slow disintegration of the Ottoman Empire, it's unlikely that a revolt would have broken out in 1916, let alone that it would have been centered in the Hajez, but for the outbreak of World War One which stressed the "sick man of Europe" and which gave rise to opportunities to potential Arabian rulers.  The British presence in Egypt (technically part of the Ottoman Empire), the raging war in Europe, the commitment to the Ottoman Empire to the Central Powers in November 1914, all gave rise to a situation which brought about the halting revolution against the Ottomans in 1916.

Sunday Morning Scence: Churches of the West: Horizon Christian Fellowship, Laramie Wyoming

Churches of the West: Horizon Christian Fellowship, Laramie Wyoming.:

This is an extremely poor photograph of an older church located directly across from the Albany County Courthouse.  I was taking photographs of the courthouse at the time, and as must be with the nature of such things, I used the same opportunity to photograph this church.

This downtown Laramie Church was built as a Presbyterian church originally.

Wyoming Fact and Fiction: Old West Gamblers and Beer

Wyoming Fact and Fiction: Old West Gamblers and Beer: Faro and Warm Beer I’m not sure how many times, hundreds if not thousands, I have read or watched on TV or the movies, a poker game i...

Roads to the Great War: 100 Years Ago: The Brusilov Offensive Launched

Roads to the Great War: 100 Years Ago: The Brusilov Offensive Launched: Russian Infantry Advancing After an Initial Success Against an Austrian Position Where:    Galicia on the Southwestern Eastern Fro...

Imperial Russia commences the Brusilov Offensive: June 4, 1916

The high water mark for Imperial Russia commences with the launch of the Brusilov Offensive.  The offensive was successful against Austria Hungary but was incredibly violent, resulting in over 500,000 Russian casualties and over 1,300,000 German and Austrian casualties.

The Russian offensive halted German operations against Verdun, which was one of its goals, but it was so costly that it effectively impeded the Russians from repeating it.  Had the Russians been able to do so, they may have forced a conclusion to the war and prior to the collapse of Russia itself.  It can be regarded as a genuine Imperial Russian feat of arms.

 Imperial Russian infantrymen, World War One.

The return of the garden

For the first time in many years, maybe a decade, we put a garden in.

We put it in late, I'm afraid, but we put it in.

Some of us here in the household have wanted to do this for some time, but one thing or another prevented it.  This year, however, all the denizens of the household save for one wanted to do it, and in addition that section of the household demographic recently graduated into full adulthood, together with a colleague in a similar situation, expressed a desire to do it and to contribute labor to the same, as part of an effort to reduce their anticipated costs this fall.

And hence it was planted.

The return of row crop agriculture to our familial efforts.

Friday Farming: Land and the Wyoming Cattle Industry Convention on Educating for Ranching Success in the 21st Century

A news release from Wyoming Public Media notes the following:

Agriculture Conference To Focus On Attracting Younger Generation To Ranching

An upcoming agriculture conference will look at how to entice younger Wyomingites to work in ranching.

The article notes the following problem:

This year’s Wyoming Cattle Industry Convention is titled Educating for Ranching Success in the 21st Century. The average age of a U.S. rancher today is 57. Wyoming Stockgrower’s Association Vice President Jim Magagna would like to see that number go down.

And it goes on to note:

“A lot of our focus in recent years has been bringing young people into our industry,” he says. “We hear so much about the average age of ranchers creeping up. And so we really want to make it attractive for young people to be engaged in our industry.” Magagna says the best way to do that is to teach young people how to make ranching profitable. Consultant Dave Pratt will provide ideas for that in one session.

Well, making it profitable would help, but one of the best ways to do that would be for the thing most needed to be a rancher, land, to not be priced at playground prices.  That, more than any single thing, is what makes ranching and farming today impossible to get into.

No doubt the average age is 57.  And that's because those people were born into the places they are operating.  There's no earthly way that a person who is 27, or 37, for example, who wasn't born into agriculture to get into it.  None.  Indeed the only only people from the outside getting into it are those who are very wealthy.

Indeed, since some point after World War Two, and I'm not exactly sure if it was as early as the 1950s or late as the 1980s, omitting price fluctuations here and there for peculiar reasons, this has been the case. Ranching is hard work, as is farming, with a generally low profit margin.  If you have to buy land to do it, you'll never make the money back. Never.

This isn't an exaggeration.  It's a fact.  When large outfits exchange hands today only one of two things is occurring.  If its actually being purchased as a production unit by a producer, he's basically exchanging one outfit for another. That's how he's affording it.  If a person is purchasing from the outside, he's buying with something other than ever making a profit in mind, as he wont.  

Now, this isn't a good situation for a lot of reasons.  It means anyone from the outside, or even anyone simply surplus to a family operation, wanting to get a place of their own, at best must plan on leasing most of their ground.  That is one way to do it, but there are always disadvantages to that.  Otherwise, the only way younger people can get into agriculture is to work for an existing ranch, few of which actually hire outside of their own families.  If they do, and some do, they tended to be owned by people who don't need to really make a profit at ranching, but that doesn't make the pay generous.

In an era in which a college education has seemingly become necessary for absolutely everything, then, that often means a person who feels drawn to ranching might have to plan on going to college for four years, getting a degree, and then working for wages that are fairly low.  That's becoming increasingly common for some degrees in any event, and needs to be seriously examined in its own right, but it also means that this person, who is essentially pursuing a type of science degree, at some point is likely to consider the economic payoff of what he's undertaking, and undertake something else.

Land, is the key.  This can be addressed. But it can't be addressed in an environment in which the only prerequisite to owning agricultural land is money.  And that seems to be unlikely to be something that anyone is going to address in the near future.

So, kudos to the conference for addressing this topic.  But until one of the topics is "land for the producer. . .must it be land for the wealthy?", nothing is really going to be achieved.

Friday Farming: The passing of Gene Logsdon

It's worth noting here that Gene Logsdon, who together with Wendell Berry, defined modern American Agrarianism, passed away on May 31.

Logsdon was an Ohio farmer who fit the agrarian mold, arguing for small farms that were self sufficient.  A prolific writer, like Berry he wrote extensively about his experiences and views.  His writing, however, differed from Berry's in that it often touched on the nuts and bolts of farming while Berry's tends to be more esoteric and philosophical.  Also, while neither Berry nor Logsdon eschewed technology, Logsdon was more inclined to use it, being a small mechanized farmer while Berry leans more towards earlier methods.  Logsdon embraced the use of the computer, something that Berry has not.

With his passing a powerful voice for agrarianism has been silenced.  Its distressing to note that the two most powerful of such voices have been very elderly ones at that, with Berry's now being the surviving one.

Casper Journal: How does working in agriculture enhance hireability?

Casper Journal:  How does working in agriculture enhance hireability?

In this period of economic challenge, many people are looking for steady sources of income with greatly reduced opportunities. This is the case especially for youth since many adults are being forced to take jobs which youth have filled for years. At the same time, agriculture in Wyoming — predominantly hay, beef and sheep production — are always looking for good reliable help.

So You've Managed to Get Started Farming. Now What?

So You've Managed to Get Started Farming. Now What?: Coming up with the capital to acquire land is a showstopper for many would-be new farmers. But it's just the first hurdle to making it in agriculture.

The local news, June 2, 1916. The Battle of Jutland hits the news. . . but not quite accurately.

Residents of Cheyenne were waking up to the shocking news that the British had a "naval disaster", something that was far from the truth.

This is interesting in several respects.  One is that it still took some time for news of naval engagements, not surprisingly, to hit the wire services.  That isn't surprising.  The other interesting thing is, of course, the matter of perception. Today we'd regard the Battle of Jutland as a British victory or, at worst, a draw, albeit one with some serious British losses. At the time, however, the press, at least locally, was weighing the British losses to conclude the Royal Navy had been beaten.

It's also important to note, however, the propaganda aspect of this. 

As noted, the British effort at Jutland was to keep the German High Seas Fleet in harbor, or to sink it. Either way, the British had to keep it from breaking out into the North Atlantic.  If the Germans had managed to do that, the Germans may have seriously contested for control of the North Atlantic.  Indeed, what would have occurred is a big spike in the loss of commercial shipping, the probable near complete shut down of the sea life line to the Allies at this critical point in the war, and a massive game of cat and mouse until one or the other of the fleets got the advantage of the other. There's no real way to tell how that would have come out.

So, the British effort, as we know, was to keep the Germans from breaking out, either by keeping them bottled up, or destroying the fleet. An outright destruction of an opposing force would have been a great thing for the navy achieving it, but very risky at the same time.

It's widely assumed now that the Royal Navy had such an advantage in the final maneuvers at Jutland that it could have in fact destroyed the German Navy.  But what it it had?  It would have made little difference to the war effort, as the Allies could not effect a sea landing on the German coast. So the risk entailed in achieving that had to be weighed against the risk of loosing the British fleet.  If that had occurred, the Germans, absent a sudden American intervention, would have won the war within a matter of months. Even in the highly unlikely scenario of the United States intervening in 1916, it's quite uncertain that the US could have swept the Germans from the North Atlantic.  Jellicoe was right not to risk it.

In not risking it, of course, he was risking a later German outbreak, and the British had to live with that.  But, hindsight being 20/20, what actually occurred is that the German navy became an expensive liability to Germany.  It was impossible, in those days, not to keep the ships basically ready to put to sea at any time, which meant that the Germans had to consume expensive resources simply to keep the fleet.  Having determined not to use it again, the Germans would have been better off simply docking the entire thing and walking away from it, but no nation can do that.  So, the Germans consumed fuel, oil  and rations for something it could ill afford and didn't need.  German sailors, in turn, became radicalized and actually sparked the rebellion in 1918 that would bring Imperial Germany down.

The only part of the German Navy that remained viable was the submarine wing of it. But it was primitive and figured outside the morals of the Edwardian world.  Indeed, it quite frankly figures outside the morals of the world of 2016 as well.  Primitive ships that were barely able to engage in combat underwater, they relied upon stealth and darkness for cover, and normally attacked on the surface.  Tiny ships, they couldn't pick up the survivors of their attacks as a rule, and a single merchant seaman determining to fight on with small arms could sink them.  And yet Imperial Germany had to turn to them.

Before that, however, its High Seas Fleet would go back into harbor. Germany would report the British losses, which were truly grater than its own, and the Press would react as if it was a German victory, as seen here.

It wasn't.

Today is World Milk Day

Seriously, it really is. By decree of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

To draw attention to milk as a food.

Which is nifty, but I have to admit that I never pour myself a glass of milk (which isn't to say that I don't use it on my cereal, etc.).  I just don't like drinking the stuff.

The local news, June 1, 1916. No Jutland yet

But both the epic Battle of Verdun and the ongoing Punitive Expedition were.

And there's an education headline that looks surprisingly similar to those we read today.

Mid Week At Work: Hot Dog Vendors, Ebbets Field, 1920.

So, on the day thousands lost their lives violently at sea, what did the local news look like? May 31, 1916

Well, given that the Battle of Jutland was a naval battle, we can't expect it to show up in the day's news, even the late editions, at all.

Indeed, something that's easy to forget about the battle, as we tend to think of the later battles of World War Two a bit more (which also features some large surface engagements, contrary to the myth to the contrary) is that World War One naval battles were exclusively visual in nature.

That's not to say that radio wasn't used, it most certainly was. But targeting was all visual.  And as the battle took place in the North Sea, dense fog and hanging smoke played a prominent role in the battle.

Now, we note that, as while the British and German fleets were using radio communications, they weren't broadcasting the news, and they wouldn't have done that even if it were the 1940s.  And the radio communications were there, but exclusively military.  News of the battle had to wait until the fleets returned home, which is interesting in that the Germans were closer to their ports, so closer to press outlets.  Indeed, the point of the battle was to keep the Germans in port, or at the bottom of the sea.

So, on this day of a major battle, maybe in some ways the major battle of World War One, what news did local residents see?

The death of Mr. Hill, and the draft Roosevelt movement were receiving headline treatment in Sheridan.

I'm surprised that there was a University of Wyoming student newspaper for this day, as I would have thought that the university would have been out of school by then.  Maybe not.  However.  Interesting to note that this was published the day after Memorial Day, so it was a contemporary paper.  Now, the current paper, The Branding Iron, is weekly, I think.  The crises of the times show up in the form of UWs early ROTC making an appearance on Memorial Day.

The Battle of Jutland Commences: May 31, 1916

The epic clash of the German and British fleets commences off of Jutland.  The end result is still debated, but that the British retained naval dominance in the Atlantic is not.

Of small interest here, Jutland is that Danish peninsula that juts into the North Sea and which some believe gave its name to the Jutes, once of the three Germanic tribes that immigrated to Great Britain in the 400s.

The 1916 naval battle has gone down as oddly contested in its recollections, which it still is today.  The Germans immediately declared it a victory, but as British historians have noted, the end result was that the German fleet was bottled up for the rest of the war where it did nothing other than consume resources and, in the end, contribute to revolt against its employer.

The battle is seen this way as Admiral Jellicoe did not crush the German fleet and because the British lost more men and ships than the Germans did.  In strategic terms, however, its clear that the British turned the Germans back and sent them back into port. . . forever.  Strategically, therefore, it was a British victory.  The debate otherwise is due to the lasting strong suspicion that the British could have actually continued the contest and demolished the German fleet, which would have ended any threat of German surface action for the remainder of the war.  Admiral Jellicoe did not do that, but then as was pointed out by Winston Churchill he was the only commander in the war who was capable of loosing the war in a day, which no doubt factored in his mind.  Had the British guess wrong in the battle, and the early stages of the battle were all guess work, the result may well have resulted in Allied loss in the war itself.

Jutland stands out as such a clash of naval giants that its somewhat inaccurately remembered as the "only" clash of dreadnoughts, which it isn't.  It was, however, a massive example of a naval engagement between two highly competent massive surface fleets.  It wasn't the first one of the war, but it would be the last one.  In spite of the seeming ambiguity of the result, the battle effectively destroyed Germany's surface fleet abilities forever.

How did the average person celebrate Memorial Day in 1916?

We've been looking, as the few readers of this blog know, at 1916 a lot recently. This started off with the Punitive Expedition centennial (which we're still looking at and will be until its conclusion, next year), but we've also been figuring in a lot of day in the life type of stuff, and general 1916 news.  Indeed, as we've noted, some might start to grouse that this blog is becoming the This Day In 1916 blog, which it isn't (or doesn't intend to be).  Probably the flood of miscellanea that figures here so regularly, however, keeps that from occurring.

Anyhow, one thing I started to wonder is this.  How did the average American actually celebrate a day like this, Memorial Day, in 1916?  And by this I mean outside of the public observations?

Here, as pretty much everywhere, there are public observances.  One big one here is that middle school students decorate the graves of veterans in our local cemeteries, as depicted here on Some Gave All

Highland Cemetery, Casper Wyoming

Marker noting service in the 157th Aero Squadron during World War One.

Marker noting service in the 157th Aero Squadron during World War One.

Marker of the old military pattern noting service in the 2nd U.S. Volunteer Cavalry during the Spanish American War.  The 2nd U.S. Vol Cav was raised in Wyoming.  It did not deploy everseas, in part because a severe train accident injured and killed a signficant number of its troopers en route to Florida.

Marker noting this veteran's service as a Horseshoer in the Field Artillery.

Marker noting this veteran's service as a Cook in the 24th Infantry during the Civil War.

Marker noting this trooper's service in the Army during the Spanish American War and World War One.

Marker noting this veteran's service in Co. F, 2nd Illinois Light Artillery during the Civil War.

Marker noting Civil War service.

Oddly, a big even this Memorial Day is one of the local high school's graduation ceremonies. That's not a normal Memorial Day event anywhere.  I can't recall the reason why this was scheduled this way, but the school district is fairly tightly constrained on when a graduation must occur and, if I recall correctly, use of the facility was not possible for any other day.  The local principal is game, stating:   "being able to celebrate Memorial Day with 400 graduates and over 3,000 people in the stands up at the Events Center, I just don't know how we could do it any better."  Last time, however, there were some miffed people, as in the case of this comment from 2014:  "It is as if [the district has] forgotten the sacrifices made to make this country what it is".  This time, with an oilfield slump going on, there haven't been many complaints.

But what about the other observances, other than public, that we could have found in 1916?  What did people do.

Now, I suppose they visited local cemeteries to visit the graves of their own veterans.  In 1916, there were still Civil War veterans left alive, so that would have been very much in mind, I'd suppose.  But what else occurred on this national holiday, in an age when more people took holidays off (and indeed, when I was young that was the case as well).

For example, in this day and age, we can expect a lot of barbecues on Memorial Day.  It's almost become the standard expectation of the holiday.

Did people barbecue in 1916?

I'm sure they had outdoor eating, perhaps more really than we do now (or perhaps not). But did they grill hamburgers?  Or was it a dog sort of day?  Was a lot of beer consumed?

I'm guessing the answer on the beer is likely yes.

 Shriners barbecue, October 21, 1922.  This must have been a pretty big event as Budweiser was clearly sponsoring it.  This isn't 1916, of course, but 1922 wasn't that much later

Did they barbecue?

Well, maybe.  To my surprise, there's a lot of photographs of barbecues in that period:

Big barbecue, September 11, 1915, featuring elk.  This looks sort of like we might expect on the Olympic Highway in some localities today, but for the comparatively formal dress.

Rabbit barbecue, following rabbit hunt, Texas, 1905.

GAR Barbecue, 1895.

None of these are backyard barbecues, of course. But it seems pretty clear to me that if you went to a big outdoor gathering, and there were some to be sure, there was a good chance that you were going to eat barbecue.  A lot of it seems to be the really traditional type at that, with roasted pigs and sausage, and other meats.

That's quite a bit different, of course, from the backyard barbecue or the backyard grill.  Were people firing those up, and maybe inviting a few friends over for burgers and dogs, and a bottle of beer?  

Well, maybe, but not in the same way.

The backyard gas grill wasn't invented until the 1950s, so that was clearly out.  Surprisingly, perhaps, the common charcoal grill wasn't around until that time either, so its a near contemporary of the gas grill.  Commercial charcoal briquettes were first introduced by the Ford Motor Company (yes, Ford) as a byproduct of automobile production, as a lot of wood went into early cars and they were trying to figure out what to do with the scraps.  and you'll note these barbecues tend to feature the proverbial pig in the ground, although I'm sure they weren't all that way.

I've seen, of course, outdoor brick barbecues, including at least one I'd fear to use in nearly any circumstance, and I'm sure people did that. And there there are fire pits with grates, which would be somewhat similar.  So I'm sure that some use was made of such things, although it would also be the case that most people didn't.

Stone and iron outdoor barbecue circa 1940s.

And I'd guess the barrel type of barbecue, or smoker, like the ones my former neighbors had, that they fueled with mesquite, can't be a new item either.  None of which is to say that the average person would have fired any of these types of things up on a typical early 20th Century Memorial Day, or any other day.

Even if they were barbecuing something, it probably wasn't hamburgers, the staple for such things today.  Hamburgers, in the fashion we conceive of them, the "hamburger sandwich", originated in the late 19th Century to the early 20th Century but they didn't become a really popular item until after World War One. White Castles, one of the first hamburger chains, dates to the 1920s.  So, in 1916, we couldn't expect hamburgers to be grilled up in the backyard, even if a person grilled up anything in the backyard, which as we can see would have been a lot less common.  People used hamburger, of course, but the hamburger, as in the sandwich, wasn't around quite yet.  It came roaring in when it did, but it hadn't arrived, except in a few localities on a local basis.  Indeed, if you ordered one, you'd most likely be getting fried hamburger, which is what a hamburger actually is. Salisbury Steak, in other words (which is the same thing).

FWIW, the Library of Congress credits Louis Lunch, a lunch wagon in New Haven Connecticut as inventing the hamburger, albeit with slabs of toast, not buns.  The restaurant is still in business and still serves hamburgers in that fashion.

Well, what about hot dogs?

You'd have a better chance of running into these.  Hot dogs have been around in common food circulation since the mid 19th Century.  Indeed, they had an association with street food and with baseball by the early 20th Century.

New York hot dog carts, 1906.

None of which means that people were serving up a lot of hot dogs at Memorial Day gatherings in 1916.  But maybe a few people did.

If there were backyard Memorial Day gatherings therefore, I'm guessing that they'd be more like the July 4th gathering depicted in A River Runs Through It.  That is, people cooked stuff and brought it. I'm guessing that would have more likely been the norm.

Which isn't to say that they gathered much on that day at all.  I'm sure some folks did.  I'd guess that some veterans of the Civil War did, in the north and west.  At this time, and well after it, Confederate Memorial Day, or Decoration Day, was a different day in the south.  Oddly enough, the first Confederate Memorial Day came a few years before Memorial Day.  In 1916, this tradition would have still been a somber southern one.

Which leads me back to where I started off.  I'm speculating, and don't know the answer to my question.  Maybe somebody here does?

Memorial Day, 1916

So, on Memorial Day, 2016, let's look back a century at Memorial Day, 1916.

Armored car in a parade in New York City.  Mounted policemen, on the left edge of the photo, truly look a lot more mobile and effective than this armored car.

This had to be a really somber Memorial Day.  World War One was raging in Europe. Ships were going down in the North Atlantic.  American soldiers were chasing Villa in Mexico. All that must have hung over the heads of the citizenry like a dark cloud.

Still, usually something goes on for this holiday. And some of it ends up on the front page of the news in anticipation of the day.  Let's see what we can find around the state and nation.  We've put one up above, a parade was held in New York City that featured a rather martial, if rather antiquated looking even then, armored vehicle.

One of the Casper papers didn't see fit to really announce anything on the front page for the day.

One of the Sheridan papers urged honoring veterans.

Another Sheridan paper did honor veterans, and of the conflict with Mexico.  Memorial Day festivities were also noted.

Interestingly, the death of Confederate John Singleton Mosby was also noted.

And Colorado National Guard officials were resigning in the wake of the Ludlow strife.  Quite a paper, all in all.

An important death figured on the front page of the Cheyenne Leader. By that time, that paper was summarizing "the War", meaning the war in Europe, on a regular basis.  Memorial Day was noted in the context of the Grand Army of the Republic, i.e., the Union troops who had fought in the Civil War (although not all joined the GAR of course).

Scandal, war and violence figured on cover of the Wyoming Semi-Weekly Tribune.

 

War and the "draft Roosevelt" movement took pride of place on the cover of The Wyoming Tribune, which also noted Memorial Day in the context of the Civil  War, which after all is what it commemorated.

The Curious Case of Judge Neely

Ruth Neely is a Pinedale town judge in Pinedale. She also serves as a "Circuit Court Magistrate" (court commissioner?) in Sublette County.  I've never met her and really have no idea of who she is, save for the fact that she's in the news.

She's in the news as a reporter for the Pinedale Roundup called her the day after the U.S. Supreme Court, pretty clearly departing from an orthodox reading of the Constitution, found a right for people of the same gender to marry each other, even though such a right had not been conceived of in human history up until about the past twenty or so years.

At that time, I was pretty concerned that the decision would have dire consequences.  No matter what a person thinks of same gender marriage, the Supreme Court's decision was, quite frankly, outside the law.  Decisions by high courts that are outside the law inspire contempt for the court, and frankly when people look out now and wonder "how could Donald Trump have gotten so far?", they can in part thank Anthony Kennedy and his fellow travelers.  This is the year of contempt for established authorities and the Supreme Court has contributed to that. Trump has stated he'd appoint judges that would reverse Obergfell, and he likely would. For some, that's all the more they need to vote for Trump.

But that's besides the point here.

The point here is what happened to Judge Neely.

Neely, in her role as a jurist, has the right, but not the duty, to perform marriages.  The Pinedale Roundup, in a role that sort of doesn't pass the smell test, asked her if she was excited about being able to preform same gender marriages. She replied that she didn't think she could, due to religious objections.

Now, note here first that under Wyoming's law, she doesn't have to perform any marriage.

Note also, of course, that she didn't think she would now omit doing marriages entirely, but rather she'd omit doing same gender marriages, maybe.

That lead to the Wyoming Commission on Judicial Conduct and Ethics recommending her removal, and that's now before the Wyoming Supreme Court.

Now, on first blush, this all seems rather simple, and peoples' views tend to boil down to their view on same gender marriage. Those who oppose it feel that this is a free exercise of religion issue, and that Neely is being persecuted for her beliefs.  Those who don't care about that issue or who favor same gender marriage feel that if Neely can't preform those sorts of marriages, she ought to resign or be removed.

But the question is a lot, lot, trickier than all of that, and a lot more important.

First of all, the law doesn't say that Neely has to perform any marriage.  Apparently she does, rather obviously, but she isn't required to.  So, presumably (but not clearly) if Neely had stated, and maybe she should, that she was no longer going to perform any civil marriage, this issue wouldn't exist at all.  That's not entirely clear, as maybe she still would have faced sanction, but there is clearly an issue here as if she feels she can preform some marriages, but not others, even if the law allows them to be preformed, she is exercising some sort of prejudice of a type, no matter what you think of it.

Indeed, a person might say that at one time some people objected to marriages between blacks and whites. Could a judge refuse to do inter racial marriages?  Pretty clearly not.  And that's the argument generally made.

Of course, the problem with that argument is that the concept of marriage dates back to vast antiquity and as far as we can tell, it's been with us for all time in all cultures.  And, for all time and in all cultures, marriage has been defined as being between opposite genders. That's the unifying element of it.   In some cultures women have had somewhat equal rights with men in marriage.  In some they have had no rights.  In some cultures men can marry more than one woman simultaneously.  In most they are limited to one.  In a very few cultures a woman can simultaneously marry more than one man.  In some cultures the concept of divorce is common, in others its frowned on or, at least up until the last century, disallowed.  But it always has involved members of opposite gender.

 

Indian couple, from our earlier thread Et Ux.  We can easily recognize this couple as a married couple with little explanation needed, including no explanation on their religion or culture.

So here, Neely is being cast away, maybe, for having the view that the majority of human beings have had for human history, and indeed the view that the majority of human beings have right now.  Under the common concept of the natural law, which ties marriage the concept of protecting natural born children, she's 100% correct.

All that makes this not really comparable to concept such as a person shouldn't marry outside their race, or culture, etc., which is another matter.  That members of different races can create children is obviously well established.  So, again, under natural law principals prohibitions on members of different races marrying is unnatural, and invalid.  Under natural law principals, marriages between members of the same gender strain for a reason to exist, and the U.S. Supreme Court had to come up with fuzzy and legally unsupportable reasons based on human affirmation, which isn't a point of the law.

All of which makes this tricky.

And trickier still if you start to make other analogies based upon moral objections.

If Neely were a district court judge, for example, and felt that the death penalty was immoral and that she couldn't serve on a trial in which the death penalty was being asked for, as it would potentially morally implicate her in a killing contrary to her beliefs, would she be ineligible to serve as a judge and subject to the same penalty, or could she simply recuse herself?  I suspect that this question would never come up in that case as most people would simply say that she could recuse herself.  What about those sometimes celebrated instances in which judges have refused to impose harsh sentences, or sentences they deemed harsh, under the Federal sentencing guidelines.  Almost every Federal judge hates them.  Instances of judges refusing to impose them aren't everyday affairs, but they aren't uncommon either. Should the judges be impeached?  Most would say certainly not.

All of which further goes to show that what we regard as an act of bigotry and what we regard as something we tolerate, let alone something we regard as proper for an office and what we otherwise regards as disqualifying a person to hold that office is really tricky.

By way of an example, back in the 1970s and early 1980s, the Army allowed Sikh soldiers to grow beards, as they must in keeping with their religion's requirements.  But then the Army started to prohibit that, citing the need to be able to seal a gas mask, which a beard apparently prohibits.  Now the Army has started to allow bearded Sikhs once again, which I think they should, but was the Army's middle policy bigoted?  A person would hate to die in a gas attack and troops would suffer if their CO did.  And where does that stop?  Some Central Asian religions prohibit the cutting of hair entirely.  Should the Army accommodate that?  Some require special headgear. Should the Army accommodate that?  Actually, the beards, long hair, and headgear item all apply to Sikh's and the Army is accommodating all of that (and again, I'm glad they are).

Does the same logic extend to jurists?  If a person feels the death penalty is immoral, is that something that should be accommodated if they are a jurist?  What about those who sincerely believe that same gender marriage is inappropriate, should they be allow to opt out of performing them?  And indeed, at what point is society saying, on one hand, "anything ought to be tolerated", but then on the other, "traditional Christian, Islamic, and Judaic positions on morality are not to be accommodated", all applying to official positions.  Clearly, in the last instance, it would seem that Justice Kennedy was of the view that this issue could be ignored in public office to the determent of those holding that view.

All of which shows how tricky it is perhaps to have anyone with strong beliefs now hold public office. A person has to have the bowl of oatmeal view of such items that Kennedy does, apparently, to hold public office.  And is that a good thing?  It wouldn't seem so.

Roads to the Great War: 100 Years Ago - a Pyrrhic Victory: German Forces Secure the Crest of Mort Homme

Roads to the Great War: 100 Years Ago - a Pyrrhic Victory: German Forces S...: On 21 February 1916 the German Fifth Army, commanded by Crown Prince Wilhelm, sent eight divisions against the French army around Verdu...

Sunday Morning Scene: Churches of the West: Virginia Dale Community Church, Virginia Dale, Colorado

Churches of the West: Virginia Dale Community Church, Virginia Dale, Colorado.

This is the Virginia Dale Community Church in Virginia Dale, Colorado. Virginia Dale isn't really a town anymore, and may never have been, and the church isn't in any sort of town or village. This is an example of a rural church, located in a field just south of the Virginia Dale store and post office, which is just over the Colorado-Wyoming line. Other than knowing where it is, I don't know anything else about it.

The church also has a rural cemetery next to it.

High School Graduation and Introspection. A Colonel Nickerson moment.

 Me, at the fish hatchery, when I was probably about three or four, placing this photograph in 1966 or 1967.  My father to my right.  He'd live to see me graduate from law school and start practice, but not much longer htan that.

I've been thinking. Tomorrow it will be 28 years to the day that I've been in the service. 28 years in peace and war. I don't suppose I've been at home more than 10 months in all that time. Still, it's been a good life. I loved India. I wouldn't have had it any other way. But there are times when suddenly you realize you're nearer the end than the beginning. And you wonder, you ask yourself, what the sum total of your life represents. What difference your being there at any time made to anything. Hardly made any difference at all, really, particularly in comparison with other men's careers. I don't know whether that kind of thinking's very healthy, but I must admit I've had some thoughts on those lines from time to time. But tonight... tonight!

Colonel Nickerson, musing to Colonel Saito, on the bridge, in the film Bridge On The River Kwai.

I've  been having a lot of moments like Colonel Nickerson recently, although thankfully I'm not a Prisoner of War in Burma during World War Two (I doubt I'd be afflicted with introspection in that situation).  No, it's not my services as an officer in the British Army in the waning days of the British Empire that's causing me introspection, but rather high school graduation.

Not mine.  Well, maybe mine. But more than anything, brought to mind by the graduation of my son.

I graduated from the same high school in 1981.  For that matter, my father graduated from the same high school in 1947.  He didn't seem similarly afflicted, but  then he kept a lot of his feelings to things to himself.  I'm not sure I do as well with that, and I do think, to some extent, that can be a virtue.  Anyhow, if he harbored introspective thoughts dating back to that time, when I graduated 34 years after he did, he didn't show it.  I'm not sure that I am as my son graduates 35 years after I did.  Hard to believe that much time has passed.  But it has.

And its the passing of that time and the opening of options that causes me to ponder.  Like Colonel Nickerson, the options aren't opening up for me, but for a younger generation.  I worry about them.

I worry in part because the country seems to be on such a set of railroad tracks as to its general direction that it concerns me.  While it makes me sound like somebody "feeling the Bern" I feel the country has gone badly economically off track.  And while it makes me also sound like somebody listening to Trump, or maybe the more radical elements of the Green Party, I also worry about a nation that that seems to have concluded that its ability to exploit the resources of the country is unlimited, and its ability to absorb a human population has no limits. When I read, as I recently did, that Denver plans on building 10,000 homes this year, I wonder why they aren't crying in agony on the process of making the hideous blight of prairie a titanic hideous blight of the prairie.  I guess I'm some sort of aboriginal at heart and I don't see things going in a direction that has very many, or maybe any, positives right now.

But I worry about that, or rather I've been pondering that, in the context of what's noted above.

I graduated from the University of Wyoming's College of Law in 1990.  I've worked as a lawyer ever since that, never having had a break of employment, and all for an employer I started working for in 1989, only eight years after I graduated from high school.  That's not an uncommon lawyer's story, and that's one of the things that perhaps was the most attractive of about a career in the law.  There was always work (much less true for new lawyers now) and a person could find a good job and keep it for their entire careers.  I've been doing this now for twenty six years, almost the same as Nickerson's twenty eight in the film.  I'm not complaining about that.  But in noting what seems to have been a well planned path of early hard work and industry paying off in the form of work (indeed hard work) and stability would be painting a false picture.

And it is odd to think of.

Particularly in a year like this, which has not been a good one for me on a personal level, which has nothing to do with a professional level, unless you stop to think that a person's life is their life, and there really is no such thing as a personal level or a professional level.

My father in the early 1950s, while in the Air Force. This photo was taken in Casper, so it may have been right at the end, or right at the beginning of his service.

 My mother, second from right in light colored dress, with her sisters, in St. Lambert Quebec.  This photo would date from the 1940s.

My father, to whom I was very close, died in 1993.  I don't know that a person ever really gets over the death of a parent they were close to.  He was only 62 years old at the time. For years I'd mentally mark things I meant to tell him next time I saw him, but then of course rapidly recall that he was not here to talk to. My  mother died several weeks ago, but she'd been dying all year long.  Being very busy professionally and with two kids in high school, 2016 has been a blur.  That's probably why there are so many blog posts this year.  When I'm stressed, I tend to write.  My mother and I were not as close as my father and I were for complicated reason that had a lot to do with her long term health.  The past seven years she was not able to live at home and its been a huge burden in all sorts of ways, including psychologically, quite frankly.  Now that she's gone, in some odd way, the healthy active mother I recall from my youth, really all the way back prior to my being in high school, has sort of returned.  I'm glad of that.  By the same token, her memory now visits me more it seems than it did when she was in the final long years of her decline.  Present stress, as it were, has yielded to past recollections.

But, in the context of this year, past recollections also turn to present introspection.

I can't, in the present context, help but looking back to 1980-81 when I was a senior in high school getting ready to graduate.

At that time, I only had sort of dim general ideas about what I might "want to do" for a living. Since then, I've become so cynical about this topic that the "want to do" aspect of it strikes me as a bit of an illusion. I know some people doing what they want to do, but most careers are what people do because that's what they can do, their lives have evolved to do, they have been placed to do, or that they end up doing.  Do the many cubicle workers in big offices do that because they want to?  I doubt it.  Does that mean that people who have ended up where they are dislike it?  No, that certainly isn't necessarily the case either.  In looking at the lawyers I know, I know a few who always wanted to be lawyers and love it, but I also know some that have had long happy careers that ended up there the way I did, life took one turn, and then another, and then another.  I suspect that latter path is more common.  Or perhaps it was more common, with that being not so much the case now. In any event, those turns, the "and then another, and then another" are precarious.

But when you are a senior in high school you get a lot of questions, nearly endless questions, about what you want to do or are going to do.

Looking back, I recall some of the kids I knew then having pretty distinct ideas about what they wanted to do. To the extent that I know what they are doing now, only a couple of them really had those ideas pan out.  That's pretty common, and its part of the angst of being a parent and part of the angst of being that age.  One of my friends wanted to become a dentist, but became a very successful electrician. Another started off an engineer, changed several times, and then dropped out, but became a successful businessman.  One who always wanted to be a geologist ended up being a teacher.  Of my undergraduate geology colleagues only one, that I know of, ended up employed in the field as a career. Of the graduate students I knew, and kept up with, all ended up successful, but only one actually ended up in geology.  One went on to own a business that is closely related to geology, two ended up lawyers in addition to me.  This take odd turns, or sure can.

An added angst about being a parent is that as a parent you are well aware that doors really start slamming shut for people right about this age.  There's a really common set of slop dished out at that age that things will work out, that you have time, etc.  In truth, every decision you start making at that age starts to have real ramifications and long term impacts.  A decision not to go to the University of Wyoming in 1981 probably saved me from being a university drop out, in my view, about a year later.  Casper College, the local, and excellent, community college, was truly a better path for me.  That decision, however, lead to an immediate decision to enlist in the National Guard, as I'd planned on taking Army ROTC at UW, as I was still interested, although increasingly less so, in a possible military career.  By the time I got down to UW two years later that interest had passed, although not because I didn't like being in the Guard, I did.  I just realized that wasn't a path I wanted to take.  Having said that, having joined in the Guard was one of the very best moves post high school I ever made, and I made it weeks after my high school graduation.  A decision not to take any more math in high school than I had to (which wasn't much, at that time) ended up being a painful decision in me in college as I essentially had to take two full years of high school algebra and geometry in one semester, which I didn't enjoy.  Even though I took up through Calculus II in university, and a semester of physics, I've felt mathematically impaired ever since.

It was a bit of a suggestion from my mother that lead me to major in Geology.  I'd been interested in majoring in Wildlife Management, but a single comment from my father about the difficulty in finding a job in that field deterred me.  Geology, due to the time period I took it, was the same way by the time I graduated.  At that time, in 1986, I applied for and was admitted to Geology grad school and law school.  Law school was an idea that just vaguely occurred to me because of a suggestion by Jon Brady, a Casper College history teacher who had a law degree, that I had an analytical mind and should consider law school, maybe.  I'm sure he didn't know what my actual major was.  I've since learned that there's one other lawyer here in town that ended up a lawyer due to a suggestion from Mr. Brady.

I never considered any other four year school other than UW, even though my mother suggested it.  So here one thing happened after another, in a stumbling fashion, and I ended up where I ended up.  In 1981 when I graduated, I had no intention or concept of being a lawyer.  In my first two years of college I repeatedly flirted with dropping out, and probably only because I was living at home, and more particularly living at home with my father, kept me from doing that.  He never said I had to stay in school, but he did absorb my complaints and didn't feed into them, and so I kept on.  By the time I was in UW all thought of dropping out had passed and I made it through a very tough field of study, only to graduate to unemployment.  Law school was a breeze compared to my geology undergraduate (and I've never since understood why anyone thinks law school, any law school, is tough.  It isn't).  Coming back to Casper I re-met the girl who would become my spouse.  Fate, happenstance, synchronicity?  Who knows.

The same is true, I'd note, for my parents.  My father's father died when he was just out of high school.  It was my grandmother who caused my father to go on in school, not my father.  He was working at the Post Office at the time and would have stayed there.  My mother, who later graduated from Casper College, was pulled out of school, during the Great Depression, to work by her mother.  Reaching her 20s, she went to Western Canada against the wishes of her mother, which took iron grit on her part.  Who would see those twists and turns coming?

What I do know is that things are dicier than they seem.  And quicker.  A decision to "take a year off" often becomes a decision to settle for jobs that are low paying, forever.  Going to work in a high paying manual labor job at 18 often turns into unemployment and unemployable by 38.  A hitch in the Marine Corps at 18 tends to turn into a default decision never to go to school that's effectively made by 24.  Minor bad decisions, or even slight bad turns, turn out to be huge life altering mistakes in more than a few instances.  Keeping on keeping on becomes an imperative after high school, in those first few years, but the culture somewhat tends to camouflage that.

Roads to the Great War: The Hospital Tent: A Forgotten War Painting of Joh...

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