Showing posts with label Agriculture. Show all posts

Um. . .

DOOCY: Why do you think the Chinese is buying up so much farmland so close to military installations?
TRUMP: I don't want to get into that. I have a very good relationship with President Xi. They're paying a lot of tariffs.

Eee gads.

Going Feral: New provision in Senate budget bill could put Wyoming public lands up for sale.

Going Feral: New provision in Senate budget bill could put Wyom...: New provision in Senate budget bill could put Wyoming public lands up for sale : Land sales would raise federal revenue and open up parcels ...

Frankly, for Wyomingites in general, and more specifically for the users of public lands (hunters, fishermen, outdoor recreationist, ranchers), this ought to be it in regard to political support.

If anyone of our three Congressional reps vote for this, they shouldn't receive our votes after this.

Lex Anteinternet: Occupational Identity and authenticity, a rambling...

Lex Anteinternet: Occupational Identity and authenticity, a rambling...:

Occupational Identity and authenticity, a rambling thread.

Occupational identity refers to the conscious awareness of oneself as a worker. The process of occupational identity formation in modern societies can be difficult and stressful. However, establishing a strong, self-chosen, positive, and flexible occupational identity appears to be an important contributor to occupational success, social adaptation, and psychological well-being. Whereas previous research has demonstrated that the strength and clarity of occupational identity are major determinants of career decision-making and psychosocial adjustment, more attention needs to be paid to its structure and contents. We describe the structure of occupational identity using an extended identity status model, which includes the traditional constructs of moratorium and foreclosure, but also differentiates between identity diffusion and identity confusion as well as between static and dynamic identity achievement. Dynamic identity achievement appears to be the most adaptive occupational identity status, whereas confusion may be particularly problematic. We represent the contents of occupational identity via a theoretical taxonomy of general orientations toward work (Job, Social Ladder, Calling, and Career) determined by the prevailing work motivation (extrinsic vs. intrinsic) and preferred career dynamics (stability vs. growth). There is evidence that perception of work as a calling is associated with positive mental health, whereas perception of work as a career can be highly beneficial in terms of occupational success and satisfaction. We conclude that further research is needed on the structure and contents of occupational identity and we note that there is also an urgent need to address the issues of cross-cultural differences and intervention that have not received sufficient attention in previous research. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)

Skorikov, V. B., & Vondracek, F. W. (2011). Occupational identity. In S. J. Schwartz, K. Luyckx, & V. L. Vignoles (Eds.), Handbook of identity theory and research.

How some lawyers apparently want the public to imagine them.

A number of relatively recent experiences has lead me to post this thread.

Posted around town are some billboards by a lawyer who is apparently specializing in plaintiffs' cases and criminal defense. I don't know him well, but I do know him.

When I first met him, he came across, quite frankly, as a metrosexual. I was quite surprised later on when I learned that he'd grown up on a ranch, and that he had a brother who now ran it. Now, however, he appears on billboards with a huge mustache in Western attire and saddle and portrays himself as a cowboy.

And I guess, by cowboy, I mean both real cowboys and the movie image of a cowboy.

Cowboys, and that is of course a real occupation, have been a popular cultural image since the late 19th Century. It's really interesting to me, as somebody who is a stockman and who has, accordingly, done a fair amount of cowboying, how cowboys continue to have a sort of wild image that they acquired in that time period. I love working stock, but most of it isn't anything like what movies portray. Maybe none of is, which is why the popular Yellowstone television show tends to anger me.

Of course, being a lawyer isn't anything like portrayed on television either.

Anyhow, I never tell people that "I'm a cowboy", but I find that I"m referred to that way, in the working sense of the word, from time to time. Or, people will refer to me as a rancher the same way from time to time. I'm always a bit flattered when they do, as if I'd had my ruthers in the world, which I haven't, that's what I would have done full time. I can't say its my occupational identity, however, as I'm well aware that I don't do it full time.

Affecting the image, however, miffs me. It's fake. If you simply come across that way, as you are naturally that way, that's one thing. Using it to promote your legal career, however, is bullshit.

Indeed, on real cowboys, not all of which are men, today:

Come As You Are

I guess this gets back in a way to this thread:

A Nation of Slobs. But then. . .

If you are going to be a lawyer, look like one, it's what you actually are.

And, by the way, there's at least one politician in the state that does the same thing, and I'd have the same criticism about. He's not a lawyer, but a commercial landlord.

Anyhow, it also gets to the weird association that the law picked up at some point with cowboys around here. I don't know when this occurred, but it might have been about the time that Gerry Spence's book Gunning for Justice came out. Spence didn't try to portray himself as a cowboy, but he did take on a Western influenced style, wearing a fringed jacket and a cowboy hat as a matter of course. Spence being sui generis has been able to consistently pull that off whereas those copying him tend to look absurd.

Anyhow, "Gunning for Justice" is actually a phrase that's been around for awhile and he didn't introduce it, as t his movie poster from 1948 demonstrates:

Spence's use of it, however, seem to have pushed into another sort of use, at least locally.

On this, it's interesting that the cowboy image can be coopted this way, whereas other "manly" professions genuinely cannot. Fighters (boxers) have been a little bit, and I suppose that was an obviously one, but nobody, for example, talks about "whaling for justice".

Anyhow, dressing up like a cowboy for affect if you are not punching makes you a Rexall Ranger, not a cowboy.

While I'm at it, a Wyoming lawyer has affected the cowboy appearance for her columns on one of the local electronic journals. In this case, she's gone for the a way too big hat big pushed way up on the forehead so you can see the face look, which to a working stockman looks absolutely absurd. The same journal actually as a working rancher who wears his hat correctly as a columnist, and up until recently had another who did the same.

As a total side, if you notice in old cowboy portraits they often have their hats pushed to the back of their head, something moderns have wondered about, and for which they've even assumed that must be how they wore them.

No, the cameras were bad.

Isom Dart at Brown’s Hole Wyoming.

If they hadn't pushed them up some, their faces would have been in shadow

On identifies, I had a couple of odd encounters recently, one of which involves mental decline, and the other which involves gender attraction.

I'll start with the latter one first. There's an older profession that I don't know well, but who've I've been familiar with for a very long time. Somebody much more familiar with him than me dropped that he's a homosexual. I was shocked. Not because homosexuality in general shocks me, but because it was very well closeted for decades. Indeed, he's married with children.

I suppose that might be the rule for people north of 70, the closteting, that is.

In retrospect, it pretty quickly made sense for some reason. It just explained some personality quirks that I'd long noticed. The point of posting it here, however, is that if it's true, he's lived a lifetime with sort of an interesting strained identity.

He's not the only one I know of who is alleged to be in this category. Frankly a fairly well known person in the region is claimed by some insiders to fit this as well. In that case, it's more notable for his public opinions on things, which would be generally contrary to this inclination, assuming its true.

Now, I'll note that I have the typically misunderstood Catholic views on homosexuality. I'll also note that one of these individuals is a co-religious, and the other was. My only real point in noting all of this is to note that it must be a strain to live an entire life with a sort of false identity, assuming that its true in either case, which I can't really say for sure.

I'll also note that homosexuals of that vintage who did not present themselves as "gay", which is different, may have had a better understanding of marriage than many. Catholic Answers Hugh Barbour defined marriage as a union between a man and a woman to produce children for the worship of God, which while it may be more than that, that captures a lot of it. People like to say that before Obergefell homosexuals couldn't marry, but that's simply false, if we consider that marriage is a unique institution between two people capable of reproducing and bound to care for those they create.

Going on to occupations, I've also run across recently a situation in which I've been dealing with somebody whom, once again, I don't know that well but who is still working fulltime and whose clearly suffering from some compression loss in the psychological cylinders. I'm not their pal or anything but it's sad to watch. It's also sad to watch, however, somebody whose psychological identify is so closely identified with the practice of law, they can't leave it.

I've known more than one lawyer who practiced into advanced old age with no mental detriment. But it's also the case quite frankly that a person's physical clockworks, and often their mental ones, start to slip a bit after the hands hit 60 or so. I'm frankly not convinced at all that allowing people to practice a profession after some point in their 60s is a good thing, and I don't think people should carry on into their 70s. For one thing, it's just sad. Surely there was something else that interested them once.

Back to occupational identities.

One of the really minor features of this blog is the M65 Field Jackets in the wild. page. Minor.

I like M65 field jackets. When I was in the Guard I had at least six of them due to having bought two and having been issued four more. The reason I was issued four is that at Ft. Sill the switch from OG-107 to BDU was going on and we were issued OD field jackets. As soon as I got back, we were issued BDU field jackets, and told to keep the old ones.

I gave one of the OD ones to a girlfriend who had need of a jacket while I was in university, and then eventually I just got to big, i.e,. gained weight, or filled out, whatever, and couldn't wear the size I'd been issued. But I still had the next larger size, Large Regular.

Well, time, etc.

A surplus store here had a whole bunch of uniform items here before they went out of business and I bought several BDU ones. I just really like them. I picked up a OD one for my son, as they're a nice coat, but naively didn't for myself. The OD ones you can wear for daily wear really.

Well, here recently I found a Greek Lizard pattern one for sale and I bought it for hunting. Which meant that I had three woodland pattern ones, one desert pattern one (a gift of an old soldier) and a Lizard pattern one. Then I saw the current multicam pattern one for sale on Ebay, which I ordered. Finally, I decided I needed an OD one and bought one of those off of ebay.

Some of these have the US Army tape on them. One, the multicam one, came with paratrooper wings from the former and his name tape. I took the name tape off and the paratrooper wings. I'm not a paratrooper. The OD one came with a name tape, the U.S. Army tape, and two unit patches. I took everything off but the US Army tape.

For reasons that are silly, and I can't explain, I ended up ordering name tapes. I can now sew those on.

Why? I'm not sure. I don't need name tapes on old uniform items for any rational reason. Rather, I was required to do it back in the day, and I still feel like am now. Indeed, it would make a lot more sense to take the US Army patch off the OD one so I can use it for its intended purpose of regular daily wear.

Odd

Well, I found a M1943 replica on sale and ordered it. It won't have any patches.

I need to stop buying them.

As a further aside, a Carhartt coat is much warmer. My old one is pretty much blown out now. It was a gift from my wife and I've been resisting getting a new one, even though I need to. Guess I'm hoping for another one as a gift so that I don't have to buy it.

Back to occupational identities for a moment. It occured to me how, when I was young, men had much less of one. They genuinely seemed more well rounded than men do today

People always like to claim things were different, if not outright perfect, when they were young. But it does seem to me that genuinely men were quite family oriented. That meant that their professions and occupations were focused on providing for their families, but it also meant that their professions tended not to be all that they were, including to themselves. I can vaguely recall some men who were very career oriented being criticized for it.

Every man that I knew when I was young tended to almost be identified by a collection of interests. Medical professionals were often hunters and fishermen. Indeed, I don't know one who wasn't. Some were dramatically so. Men who had come into professions from farms and ranches tended to still be identified with their origin and retain some contacts with that life. I knew a fireman who was a pretty good amature geologist, another who was a car restorer, and another who was the first long distance runner I ever knew. More recently professionals, or at least lawyers, have almost become cartoons of themselves in some instances, only engaging in the law or perhaps one activity that's sort of socially approved for lawyers.

It isn't good.

Last Sunday I ran this item:

Pack Animals - the 🇩🇪 German Mountain Infantry Brigade

I knew that the Bundesheer has a mountain infantry brigade.

I've sometimes thought that if I had been born in Germany, which I'm very much glad I was not, I'd have opted for a career with this unit. Outdoors. . . animals, etc. By the same token, if I had been born French, there's the Chasseurs Alpins.

Hmmm. . .

Well, I didn't opt for a career with the Wyoming Game & Fish, so I'm probably just fooling myself.

Have a nice day at work.

Mehr Mensch sein,

Going Feral: Looking for Nate Champion.

Going Feral: Looking for Nate Champion.:

Looking for Nate Champion.

He which hath no stomach to this fight,
Let him depart; his passport shall be made,
And crowns for convoy put into his purse;
We would not die in that man's company
That fears his fellowship to die with us.

Shakespeare, Henry V.

The views of average Wyomingites, by a huge margin, are clear on public lands. We want them to remain public.

And yet our Congressman voted to transfer 500,000 of FEderal land in Arizona and Utah over to private hands. It's clear that at least one of our Senators is okay with doing something similar in Teton County.

Wyomingites aren't in favor of this at all. Indeed, one of the most rabid Trumpites I know actually expressed bewildered opposition to this.

So here's the problem, and the question.

Why are Wyomingites still supporting the people who support this?

Politics are varied and complicated. The reasons that Wyoming has gone so far to the right in its recent politics are as well. A lot of it has to do with social issues, abortion, transgenderism, immigration, and so on, and much of that, here, has to do with the death of the Democratic Party and there being, seemingly, no where else to go.

But at least on the local level there certainly is, and what Wyomingites are presently doing is not in their own best interest.

Much of what they're currently doing is, frankly, based on a host of lies. Donald Trump was not the victim of a stolen election with Joe Biden won. Joe Biden won. Global warming is not a fib. The long drift away from coal cannot be arrested. The state's petroleum industry was never under any governmental assault (leases went up under Biden). There is no war on the West. The region's agricultural sector isn't under governmental attack, but rather under real estate developer attack. The Democrats really weren't advancing gun control.

But we've been bought off on a bunch of dramatic assertions designed to cause the rise up of what plaintiff's lawyers call our "lizard brain".

Well, now we have a whole host of legislators, many from out of state, who don't share local values at all, and a Congressional delegation that is more interested in supporting the agenda of the far right and its ostensible leader, a nearly 79 year old real estate developer suffering from dementia, than paying attention to what we actually believe.

And that's because that's exactly what we let them do.

In reality, those close to the inside know that John Barrasso doesn't believe what he's supporting. It's pretty clear from her past that Cynthia Lummis doesn't either. Harriet Hageman, well she probably does, as she's a political family that has always had this set of views. Having said that, and importantly, she intends to run for Governor next election and Chuck Gray, who is a Californian with very little connection to Wyoming, will run for House.

In the next election Wyomingites have a chance to make their views known, although they really need to start doing so right now. That can have an impact. John Barrasso, in the last election, adopted a whole host of new views he probably doesn't hold at all to hold off an attack from his right. Lummis just quietly mostly didn't say what her views actually are the last time she ran, which she could do under the circumstances, and which leaves her room to maneuver.

Maneuvering will, it must be noted, need to occur. In 2026 the House is going to be Democratic and the MAGA reign will be over, save for in Wyoming, where there's every reason to belive it will keep on keeping on.

The Wyoming Freedom Caucus of its day, the Johnson County invaders.

Much of this, we'd note, is perfectly consistent with Wyoming's history. Early on Wyoming sent a solidly Republican group of legislatures to our solon in Cheyenne in spite of its association with large outside agricultural interest which were oppressing local interest. That didn't end until the invasion of Johnson County in 1892 which briefly swept the Republicans out of power, and brought Democrats into the legislature and which sent Governor Barber packing, although not until after he tried to actually remain as Governor a la Trump insurrection in a way. That event, however, shows the electorate can react. It also shows us that politicians can too, as Francis E. Warren managed to survive the event, career entact, when really she shouldn't have, by changing views.

And this is happening in Montana, which was a little in advance of Wyoming in tilting to the far right, right now.

A new Montana majority defangs the far right

Just sitting and complaining "well that's not what we think" won't get much done.

Politicians from any party ought to represent the views of their state. They ought to also intelligently lead. There's not much intelligence being manifested in the populist far right, which is mostly acting with a primitive response on a set of social issues combined with false beliefs, andy in Wyoming, with views they brought up from their own states which don't have much to do with us here. We aren't Sweet Home Alabama.

But that won't happen unless Wyomingites educate themselves as to the truth, and what is truly going on, and how they're simply being fed raw meat for the dogs. Until that occurs, we're going to go further into the abyss.

Foothill Agrarian: Just a Piece of Land

Foothill Agrarian: Just a Piece of Land: Today, I moved most of the rest of my belongings from Oak Hill Ranch. My landlords, Rich and Peggy Beltramo, from whom I’d leased irrigated ...

The Real Threat to Food Security

The Real Threat to Food Security: Our lawmakers need to take farmland access seriously. The next farm bill should work more for the health of our farm system, and less for Wall Street.

Lex Anteinternet: Friday Farming. The vehicles that changed the West.

Lex Anteinternet: Friday Farming. The vehicles that changed the West.:

Friday Farming. The vehicles that changed the West.

I've written on this previously, but up until the end of World War Two, travel in Wyoming, in winter, and much of the West, was very limited.

Oh, sure, there were snowplows that went out on the narrow two lane highways, but off the highways? Well, you better be pretty sure you could get back.

Now, my father only ever owned one 4x4 vehicle, and it was one he bought from me. But we didn't go up in the high country or into the foothills once winter started. That was out. You stuck to areas that were relatively near a county road or that were blown off, and probably down around 5,500 feet or less. Beyond that? Forget it.

And this was true for ranchers too. Some men stayed up in the high country, but they stayed there. . . all winter long. People often fed by horse drawn wagon (and in a few places, still do).

The Dodge Power Wagon changed that. And it was a creature of the Second World War.

Lex Anteinternet: World War Two U.S. Vehicle Livery: National Museum...:

The father of the Dodge Power Wagon, the 1/2 ton truck, a fair number of examples of which can be found in the Rocky Mountain West in spite of the small number produced, was in addition to being too light, too top heavy.

With the Power Wagon, you could now get there in winter. Maybe not everywhere, but darned near everywhere, even up in the high country.

And that meant you didn't need to keep hired men up in the high country in line shacks all winter. For that matter, with a trailer, you could easily feed in a fraction of the time it had taken with a wagon. You probably didn't need hired men for that either, if you had them.

And while it would take awhile, really when NAPCO started converting Fords and Chevys into heavy duty 4x4s, it would also mean that sportsmen could get back there in the winter too.

Revolutionary.

Related threads:

A Revolution In Rural Transportation

Lex Anteinternet: A normal winter. How it used to be.

The Rise and Decline of the "SUV".

Lex Anteinternet: So you're living in Wyoming (or the West in genera...So what about World War Two?

Lex Anteinternet: Mondays

Lex Anteinternet: Mondays:

Mondays

There is nothing so dispiriting as coming into your "good" office job after a weekend of working cattle.

Blog Mirror: “Kings Over the Necessaries of Life”: Monopolization and the Elimination of Competition in America’s Agriculture System

“Kings Over the Necessaries of Life”: Monopolization and the Elimination of Competition in America’s Agriculture System

Lex Anteinternet: Saturday, September 6, 1924. A Question

Lex Anteinternet: Saturday, September 6, 1924. Putting down in Boston.:

Saturday, September 6, 1924. Putting down in Boston.

And of course, it was Saturday.

Last edition:

Friday September 5, 1924. Back in the US.

Labels: 1920s, 1924, Calvin Coolidge, First Around The World Flight, Maine, U.S. Air Force

More than I have, unfortunately.

QC: Japan & the bomb (p12) | Wednesday, October 18, 2023

This the final part of a twelve part series by Fr. Joseph Krupp on the war against Japan during World War Two, culminating in the decision to drop the two atomic bombs in August, 1945.

So why am I linking this in here?

Indeed, this entire series is teed up to appear on Lex Anteinternet in August, 2025, the 80th anniversary of the end of World War Two and the dropping of the two bombs. This 12th installment, however, deals with post war Japan for the most part.

A lot of people know that Douglas MacArthur wrote the Japanese constitution, or caused it be written. Fewer know that he reworked the Japanese economy, although I did. Japan is one of the few modern nations which is regarded as having incorporated a significant degree of agrarianism and distributism into its modern economy, although that's long enough ago that a lot of it is likely lost now.

The discussion on that is well worth listening too here, and goes beyond the situation of Japan itself, and into a agro distributist economy to some degree in general.

Painted Bricks: Sheepwagon statue, Cheyenne Wyoming.

Painted Bricks: Sheepwagon statue, Cheyenne Wyoming.:

Cheyenne Wyoming.

Painted Bricks: Cheyenne Wyoming: Promise of the Prairie.

Painted Bricks: Cheyenne Wyoming: Promise of the Prairie.:

Cheyenne Wyoming: Promise of the Prairie.

Lex Anteinternet: An existential wakeup call.

Lex Anteinternet: An existential wakeup call.:

An existential wakeup call.

Just the other day, I ran this:

Lex Anteinternet: Intellectual disconnect. With everything on fire, ...: The weather report for today from the Trib: A headline from Cowboy State Daily: ‘It Was Armageddon’: Eastern Wyoming Community Evacuated By ...

Now, from Cowboy State Daily, we learn this:

Wildfire Burns Harriet Hageman’s Family Homestead, More Evacuations Ordered

By any measure, this is tragic. And the story is well written, and sympathetic. Indeed, it provides some details about Hageman that I was unaware of, including the size of her very large family I didn't realize that she was one of six siblings.

That frankly explains why she's a lawyer. The law was, and to some extent still remains, the occupation that agricultural parents often want to see a child go into, often due to the erroneous belief that lawyers don't really work.

That's not the point here, however. At some point in her post high school life Hageman turned to the very hard right, or at least seemed to, and has been part of the Wyoming position that's all in on unaltered fossil fuel production.

The degree to which agriculturalist refuse to accept the science on this in Wyoming is itself really remarkable. Farmers and ranchers depend on the land being sustainable, worry about drought and heat, and then go on to dismiss what they're seeing with their own eyes.

The article notes that the Hageman's tragically lost their early home on the ranch, with this one currently belonging to a nephew. I believe that nephew may have appeared in her campaign ads. It also related:

About 8,000 acres of Hugh Hageman’s 25,000-to-30,000-acre spread burned, taking away some of the pasture needed for his 1,000 head of cattle.
“It’s devastating,” said Hugh Hageman when reached by Cowboy State Daily late Friday.

I'm sure it is.

Reality calls up on us to recognize it, not hide from it.

This ought to be the state's Pearl Harbor moment.

Lex Anteinternet: Saturday, July 26, 1924. Camping and plowing.

Lex Anteinternet: Saturday, July 26, 1924. Other around the world f...: Argentinian pilot Pedro Zanni and mechanic Felipe Beltrame began their rather belated attempt to fly around the world. Larry Estridge became...

The weekly magazines were out.

The Saturday Evening Post with a girl who had a scouting uniform of some type, or perhaps was wearing an oddly colored representation of Navy white shirt, with red instead of blue.

Country Gentleman had a classic of a draft team.

Indeed, if I had power for some thirty years I would see to it that people should be allowed to follow their inbred instincts in these matters, and should hunt, drink, sing, dance, sail, and dig, and those that would not should be compelled by force.

Hilaire Belloc