Lex Anteinternet: Blog Mirror: Writer and publisher Lynn Miller has ...

Lex Anteinternet: Blog Mirror: Writer and publisher Lynn Miller has ...:   

Blog Mirror: Writer and publisher Lynn Miller has a new book that sings the praises of working the land with horses.

 

Writer and publisher Lynn Miller has a new book that sings the praises of working the land with horses.

Lex Anteinternet: Lex Anteinternet: The 2022 Season Ends, the 2023 Season Begins.

Lex Anteinternet: Lex Anteinternet: The 2022 Season Ends, the 2023 S...: 

Lex Anteinternet: The 2022 Season Ends, the 2023 Season Begins.

Lex Anteinternet: The 2022 Season: 

So on to 2023!

I decided to go ice fishing today.

My daughter is the real ice fishing aficionado in our family.  I had some experience with it as a boy, but oddly enough, my father didn't really engage in much ice fishing.  He was a dedicated fisherman, so that's surprising.  Indeed, he probably was slightly more of a fisherman than a hunter, and I in contrast I am definitely more of a hunter than a fisherman.  I know that his father did both, as we all do, but I don't know how that scale balanced.  I've really only heard about my father's father in regard to bird hunting, although I know that he fished the streams as well, like we all do.

Anyhow, back when I was young, in the 70s, I recall ice fishing at Alcova, which I'd be a bit afraid to do today, but it wasn't very often.  I also recall people parking their trucks on the ice, which I'd never do today.  My father chopped a hole in the ice with a spade, which I don't recall anyone doing since that time.  

It was fun.

We have a hand auger.  Much better than a spade.  And little ice fishing poles, which isn't what my father used.

I didn't make it out last year.  I hunted geese until the end of January, not terribly successfully, and it warmed up too much to ice fish.

Not this year.

In fact, today, going out by myself, as my daughter lives in Laramie now, I found myself flagged down going in, after I passed the snow plow.  A really nice fellow I know, having called him as a witness on the Reservation, and a city councilman, formally one of my kid's religious education teachers, informed me the road was drifted in.  I thanked them and pulled off

The dog wasn't pleased.

The dog believes that he's integral to fishing, and that without him, the endeavor will fail.  He's very serious about his hunting occupation, and fishing is of course fish hunting.

I pulled off to let him wee. .. okay and I needed to wee too.  After that, in spite of being warned, I drove down the road toward the lake.

Oh man, was it ever drifted in.

I went back down the road and met a fisherman from Douglas near the highway.  He was waiting for me for a road report.  He'd driven a long ways and had a lot of poles, a true ice fisherman.  I gave the road report to him. He decided to try Alcova.  I decided to try a different high mountain lake.

And yes, I'm not going to mention it.

Before I left for that one, I received a call from my son's girlfriend. She's a dedicated fly fisherman, a rare quality in a girlfriend and one to be seriously admired.  My pickup, which my son is driving, she related, had been rear ended in a Laramie blizzard.  I have his truck right now as it's having a complete mechanical breakdown.

Turns out it wasn't bad.

Couldn't make that other high mountain lake either.  It was also drifted in. 

Oh well.

Lex Anteinternet: The 2023 Wyoming Legislative Session. The Legislat...

Lex Anteinternet: The 2023 Wyoming Legislative Session. The Legislat...: A proposed joint resolution regarding wild horses and burros has been introduced, reading:

HOUSE JOINT RESOLUTION NO. HJ0003

Wild horses and burros-best management practices.

Sponsored by: Representative(s) Winter, Banks, Davis, Neiman and Sommers and Senator(s) Driskill and Laursen, D

A JOINT RESOLUTION

for

A JOINT RESOLUTION requesting the United States Congress to enact legislation and make other necessary policy changes to allow federal land management agencies and agency partners to implement best management practices for wild horses and burros by allowing for equine slaughter and processing for shipment to accommodating markets inside or outside the United States.

WHEREAS, the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act of 1971 (the Act), as amended, protects wild horses and burros from harassment or death and declares that wild free-roaming horses and burros are living symbols of the historic and pioneer spirit of the West; and

WHEREAS, under the Act, wild horses and burros are managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and the United States Forest Service (USFS) in their respective jurisdictions and within the areas where these animals were found roaming in 1971; and

WHEREAS, the BLM manages public lands for multiple use and a sustained yield, as mandated by the Federal Land Policy and Management Act (FLPMA); and

WHEREAS, when considering the Act and the FLPMA together, the BLM is required to protect wild horses and burros in balance with other public resources and uses, including other wildlife and fish, recreation, range, timber, minerals, watershed and natural scenic, scientific and historical values; and

WHEREAS, responsible management of wild horse and burro populations is critical to protect scarce and fragile resources in the arid West and ensure healthy wildlife and livestock; and

WHEREAS, without responsible management, the resources in the arid West cannot be managed for multiple use because wild horses unduly infringe upon other uses by damaging riverbeds and overgrazing on limited forage, while using and often damaging the infrastructure of other public land users; and

WHEREAS, with virtually no natural predators, wild horse and burro populations can double every four (4) to five (5) years if left unchecked; and

WHEREAS, due to their protected status, if a wild horse or burro strays onto privately owned lands, the private landowners have no recourse for the infringement of their private property rights other than to inform their local BLM or USFS field office to seek removal of the animal; and

WHEREAS, under the Act, the BLM and USFS must inventory wild horse and burro populations periodically to determine appropriate management levels (AMLs) to maintain a thriving natural ecological balance and preserve the multiple-use relationship on public lands; and

WHEREAS, under the Act, the BLM and USFS are authorized to remove wild horses and burros to achieve AMLs upon the respective agency's determination that an overpopulation exists; and

WHEREAS, upon that determination, the Act requires the agency first to order old, sick, or lame animals to be destroyed in the most humane manner possible, second to cause excess wild horses and burros to be humanely captured for private adoption and third, to cause excess animals to be destroyed in the most humane and cost-efficient manner possible; and

WHEREAS, the BLM and USFS are increasingly unable to adequately manage wild horse and burro populations due to exponential increases in the number of wild horses and burros on the range, difficulties in adopting or selling wild horses and burros, lack of effective fertility control measures, lawsuits prohibiting or stalling gathers and removals, insufficient availability of holding facilities and increasing management costs; and

WHEREAS, of the one hundred seventy-seven (177) herd management areas across ten (10) western states under the jurisdiction of the BLM, comprising almost twenty-seven million (27,000,000) acres, only approximately twenty percent (20%) fall within their attendant AML; and

WHEREAS, the BLM recognizes the need for decisive action to reverse the harm to western landscapes and the wild horses and burros occupying them, as demonstrated by the agency's "2020 Report to Congress: An Analysis of Achieving a Sustainable Wild Horse and Burro Program;" and

WHEREAS, off-range holding of gathered animals accomplishes neither free-ranging of the animals nor population control and amounts to great expense, as demonstrated by the BLM fiscal year 2021 off-range holding expenditures of seventy-seven million seven hundred thousand dollars ($77,700,000.00); and

WHEREAS, under the Federal Meat Inspection Act of 1906, United States Department of Agriculture inspection is mandatory to sell meat in interstate or foreign commerce; and

WHEREAS, the United States Congress has effectively banned horse slaughter in the United States for human consumption since 2007 by denying funding for the inspection of equine slaughter facilities throughout the food production process. Federal appropriations laws since 1988 have contained similar prohibitions; and

WHEREAS, the fiscal year 2022 Department of Interior appropriations law prohibited the use of funds for destruction of healthy animals or for sales of animals that result in processing into commercial products; and

WHEREAS, the Act, combined with the effect of the United States Congress' effective ban on equine slaughter facilities, has created an unsustainable issue where wild horse and burro populations continue to expand exponentially; and

WHEREAS, the United States has benefitted from the ability of neighboring countries to provide equine slaughter services.  The capacity of those neighboring countries to provide these services is limited, however, and has been degraded by the closure of facilities as well as the challenges associated with transporting animals long distances.  Effective and humane management of wild horses and burros can be best accomplished by facilitating the United States' own capacity to transport and process wild horses and burros; and

WHEREAS, the wild horse and burro population's continued exponential growth and the federal agencies' continued inability to adequately manage these populations to attain AMLs presents an urgent concern for management policy and practice; and

WHEREAS, a pragmatic shift in United States' wild horse and burro management policy is prudent and necessary to help address this crisis and achieve protection of wild horses and burros in manageable numbers; and

WHEREAS, policy tools must be implemented to authorize equine domestic slaughter, to allow horse and burro meat inspection and sale and to facilitate the humane transport of wild horses and burros both domestically and to other countries or sovereigns for slaughter.

NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED BY THE MEMBERS OF THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF WYOMING:

Section 1.  That the Legislature of the State of Wyoming requests the United States Congress to enact legislation and make other necessary policy changes to allow federal land management agencies and agency partners to implement best management practices for wild horses and burros by allowing for equine slaughter and processing for shipment to accommodating markets within or outside the United States.

Section 2.  That the Legislature of the State of Wyoming requests the United States Congress to enact legislation and make other necessary policy changes to allow federal land management agencies and agency partners to work with states and Indian tribes with respect to the management, gathering and disposition of wild horses and burros.

Section 3.  That the Legislature of the State of Wyoming requests the United States Congress to enact legislation and make other necessary policy changes to remove impediments to the disposition of gathered wild horses and burros, including equine slaughter and processing.

Section 4.  That the Secretary of State of Wyoming transmit copies of this resolution to the President of the United States, to the President of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives of the United States Congress, to the Secretary of the Interior and to the Wyoming Congressional Delegation.

Lex Anteinternet: Donkeys

Lex Anteinternet: Donkeys: 

Donkeys

Donkeys transformed human history as essential beasts of burden for long-distance movement, especially across semi-arid and upland environments. They remain insufficiently studied despite globally expanding and providing key support to low- to middle-income communities. To elucidate their domestication history, we constructed a comprehensive genome panel of 207 modern and 31 ancient donkeys, as well as 15 wild equids. We found a strong phylogeographic structure in modern donkeys that supports a single domestication in Africa ~5000 BCE, followed by further expansions in this continent and Eurasia and ultimately returning to Africa. We uncover a previously unknown genetic lineage in the Levant ~200 BCE, which contributed increasing ancestry toward Asia. Donkey management involved inbreeding and the production of giant bloodlines at a time when mules were essential to the Roman economy and military.

Abstract, The genomic history and global expansion of domestic donkeys.

Lex Anteinternet: Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist Part XXVI. Pets and Pope Francis, the man who can't get a break. Pangur Bán. Warped Hollywood. Ghislane? The return of Boston marriages. Khardasian Attention Disorder

Lex Anteinternet: Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist Part XXVI. Pets and P...: 

Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist Part XXVI. Pets and Pope Francis, the man who can't get a break. Pangur Bán. Warped Hollywood. Ghislane? The return of Boston marriages. Khardasian Attention Disorder

There's no such thing as "fur babies"

Pope Francis commented on childless couples and pets.

Before I go into that, I'm going to note that one of the things about Pope Francis is that he tends to be incredibly hard to pigeonhole, even though his fans and critics love to go around doing just that.  And here we have just such an example.  Only weeks away from making it pretty clear that the Latin Tridentine Mass needs to be a thing of the past, as far as he's concerned, and while he's the Bishop of Rome, he says something that's radically. . . traditional.

Here's what he said, in so far as I tell, as I can't find a full transcript of his remarks.

Today ... we see a form of selfishness. We see that some people do not want to have a child.

Sometimes they have one, and that's it, but they have dogs and cats that take the place of children.

This may make people laugh, but it is a reality.

[This] "is a denial of fatherhood and motherhood and diminishes us, takes away our humanity", he added.

Oh you know where this is going to go. . . 

Right away I saw predictable "I'm not selfish, it's my deep abiding love of the environment. . . "

Yeah, whatever.

Apparently there were a fair number of comments of that type, as a subsequent article on this topic found that, nope, most childless couples are childless as they don't want children, not because of their deep abiding concern about the environment.

Indeed, tropes like that are just that, tropes.  People tend to excuse or justify conduct that they engage in that they are uncomfortable excusing for self-centered or materialistic reasons for more ennobled ones, or even for ones that just aren't attributed to something greater, in some sense.  

Not everyone, mind you, you will find plenty of people who don't have children and justify that on that basis alone.  Indeed, in the 70s through the mid 90s, I think that was basically what the justification was, to the extent that people felt they needed one.  More recently that seems to have changed, although there are plenty of people who will simply state they don't want children as they're focused on what the personally want, rather than some other goal.  Others, however, have to attribute it, for some reason to a cause du jour.  In the 80s it was the fear of nuclear war, I recall.  Now it's the environment, although it was somewhat then as well.  I suppose for a tiny minority of people, that's actually true, but only a minority.

Whatever it is, the reaction to the Pope's statement will cause and is causing a minor firestorm.  Oh, but it'll get better.

The same Pope has already made some Catholic conservatives mad by his comments equating destroying the environment with sin.   And there's a certain section of the Trad and Rad Trad Catholic community that's unwilling to credit Pope Francis with anything, even though he says some extremely traditional things, particularly in this area.

A comment like this one, if it had been made by Pope Benedict, would have sparked commentary on the Catholic internet and podcasts for at least a time.  There's no way that Patrick Coffin or Dr. Taylor Marshall wouldn't have commented on it, and run with it in that event.

Will they now?

Well, they ought to.

Am I going to? 

No, not really.

I could be proven wrong, but I doubt I will be.

The Pope's point will be difficult for the childless to really grasp.  I don't think I became fully adult until we had children, really.  People who don't have children don't really know what its like to, I think.  And I think that probably includes even those who grew up in large families.

At any rate, I have a bit of a different point, that being my ongoing one about the industrialization of female labor.  In no small part, in my view, childless couples in general have come about as our modern industrialized society emphasizes that everyone's principal loyalty should be to their workplace or a career, without question.  As put by Col. Saito in the epic The Bridge On The River Kwai, people are to be "happy in their work".

That means that they don't have time for children, they believe, and moreover the children are societal obstacles to the concept that the only thing that matters is career.  It's the one place that ardent capitalist and ardent socialist come together.  And, as its often noted, particularly by both working mothers and folks like Bernie Sanders, it's difficult to be both a mother and worker, with it being my guess that the more education that goes into a woman's career, the more this is the case.  Society, and by that we mean every industrialized society, has no solutions to this, and there probably aren't any.  About the only one that Sanders and his ilk can come up with is warehousing children sort of like chickens at the Tyson farms.

It's also a lie, of course.  Careers, by and large, don't make people fulfilled or happy, for the most part, although there are certainly individual exceptions.  Statistical data more than demonstrates that.

The Pope, by the way, is not against pets.

Messe ocus Pangur Bán,
cechtar nathar fria saindán;
bíth a menma-sam fri seilgg,
mu menma céin im saincheirdd

Caraim-se fos, ferr cach clú,
oc mu lebrán léir ingnu;
ní foirmtech frimm Pangur bán,
caraid cesin a maccdán.

Ó ru·biam — scél cen scís —
innar tegdais ar n-óendís,
táithiunn — díchríchide clius —
ní fris tarddam ar n-áthius.

Gnáth-húaraib ar gressaib gal
glenaid luch inna lín-sam;
os mé, du·fuit im lín chéin
dliged n-doraid cu n-dronchéill.

Fúachid-sem fri frega fál
a rosc anglése comlán;
fúachimm chéin fri fégi fis
mu rosc réil, cesu imdis,

Fáelid-sem cu n-déne dul
hi·n-glen luch inna gérchrub;
hi·tucu cheist n-doraid n-dil,
os mé chene am fáelid.

Cía beimmi amin nach ré,
ní·derban cách ar chéle.
Maith la cechtar nár a dán,
subaigthius a óenurán.

Hé fesin as choimsid dáu
in muid du·n-gní cach óenláu;
du thabairt doraid du glé
for mu mud céin am messe.

I and Pangur Bán, each of us two at his special art:
his mind at hunting (mice), my own mind is in my special craft.
I love to rest—better than any fame—at my booklet with diligent science:
not envious of me is Pangur Bán: he himself loves his childish art.
When we are—tale without tedium—in our house, we two alone,
we have—unlimited (is) feat-sport—something to which to apply our acuteness.
It is customary at times by feat of valour, that a mouse sticks in his net,
and for me there falls into my net a difficult dictum with hard meaning.
His eye, this glancing full one, he points against the wall-fence:
I myself against the keenness of science point my clear eye, though it is very feeble.
He is joyous with speedy going where a mouse sticks in his sharp-claw:
I too am joyous, where I understand a difficult dear question.
Though we are thus always, neither hinders the other:
each of us two likes his art, amuses himself alone.
He himself is the master of the work which he does every day:
while I am at my own work, (which is) to bring difficulty to clearness.

Pangur Bán, a poem by an unknown Medieval Irish monk.

The Seamus Heany translation, which I like better.  It really gets at the nature of the poem:

I and Pangur Bán my cat,
‘Tis a like task we are at:
Hunting mice is his delight,
Hunting words I sit all night.

Better far than praise of men
‘Tis to sit with book and pen;
Pangur bears me no ill-will,
He too plies his simple skill.

‘Tis a merry task to see
At our tasks how glad are we,
When at home we sit and find
Entertainment to our mind.

Oftentimes a mouse will stray
In the hero Pangur’s way;
Oftentimes my keen thought set
Takes a meaning in its net.

‘Gainst the wall he sets his eye
Full and fierce and sharp and sly;
‘Gainst the wall of knowledge I
All my little wisdom try.

When a mouse darts from its den,
O how glad is Pangur then!
O what gladness do I prove
When I solve the doubts I love!

So in peace our task we ply,
Pangur Bán, my cat, and I;
In our arts we find our bliss,
I have mine and he has his.

Practice every day has made
Pangur perfect in his trade;
I get wisdom day and night
Turning darkness into light.

The Values candidates

Jeanette Rankin of Montana, who was a pacifist, and voted against delcaring war in 1917 and in 1941. She's a hero, as she stuck to her declared values.

While I’m at it, I'm developing a deep suspicion of conservative candidates and figures that express certain highly conservative social positions but don't quite seem to adhere to them in their own lives.  This coming from somebody who is obviously highly socially conservative themselves.

This comes to mind in the context of "family values", "protecting the family" and the like.  I see and read stuff like that from conservatives all the time.  So if you are saying that you strongly value the family, and protecting the family, etc., why don't you have one?

Now, some people are no doubt deeply shocked by that question, but it's a legitimate one, and I'm not the first person to raise it.  If a person might ask if I seriously expect people to answer the question, well I do.

Now, in complete fairness, all sorts of people don't have children for medical reasons.  But more often than that, if a couple don't have them, they don't want them. That's what's up with that.  And you really can't campaign on your deep love of the family if you are foreclosing that part of the family in your own lives, absent some really good reason.  More often than not, the reason is money and career.

Recently I saw, for example, a statement that a person is deeply committed to family and loves spending time with their nieces.  Well, everyone likes spending time, for the most part, with nieces and nephews.  That's not even remotely similar to having children, however.  Not at all.

I'll go one further on this and note this as I do.

The person who is trustworthy in very small matters is also trustworthy in great ones; and the person who is dishonest in very small matters is also dishonest in great ones.

Luke, 16:10.

I note this as some of the conservative value candidates, if you look into their backgrounds, have question marks that should give pause for the reason noted above. If a person doesn't keep to their principals in small things, or basic things, why would they keep them on anything else?

One conservative candidate that I'm aware of, when you look up that person's background, was born of an ethnicity that's overwhelmingly Catholic and went to Catholic schools growing up.  That person was undoubtedly a Catholic. That didn't preclude, however, the candidate from getting divorced and remarried to another person who was divorced.

Now, that's quite common in our society, but it's completely contrary to the Catholic faith without some explanation.  Maybe there is one.  I don't know, but it's a fair question, just as it would be if a Jewish candidate grew up in an Orthodox household but operates a delicatessen featuring ham.  That may seem odd, but if you are willing to compromise on small things, you'll get around to the big ones, if the small ones also express a deep principle.

If you won't compromise on small things, or things that are represented as elemental to your declared world view, you are dependable in a crisis. On the other hand, if you participated in a faith, and were educated by it, and okay with its elements, and it formed part of your worldview . . right up until you had to do something difficult and chose the easier path. . . well, there's no real reason to believe that haven gotten there once, you won't do it again.

The candidate, I'd note, has been stone-cold silent on the insurrection.  From that, you can tell the candidate knows it was an insurrection, but is unwilling to say diddly.

The Primordal Connection

St. Jerome with lion.  St. Jerome is supposesd to have taken a thorn out of a lion's paw, and the lion thereafter stayed with him. While some might doubt some aspects of this, St. Jerome's lion is also recounted as having caused fear in the monestary in which he lived, and having adopted the monestary's donkey as a friend.

Back to pets for a second, one added thing I think about them is that for a lot of people, they're the last sole remaining contact with nature they have.

There are lots of animal species that live in close contact with each other and depend on each other.  We're one.  We cooperated with wolves, and they became dogs as they helped us hunt. Cats took us in (not the other way around) as we're dirty, and we attract mice.  We domesticated horses, camels and reindeer for transportation.  And so on.

We miss them.

One more way that technology and modern industrialization has ruined things.  Cats and dogs remind us of what we once were.

And could be, again.

Warped legacies

An awful lot of what the Pope is tapping into has to deal with the combined factors of moderns forgetting what, well, sex is for, and what its implications are, and that root morality and human nature remain unchanged.  There are probably more generations between modern house cats and Pangur Bán than there are between your ancestors who were waking up each morning in the Piacenzian and you.

Which takes us to men, behaving badly, and everyone turning a blind eye.

And, of course, Sex and the City.

She is fiercely protective of Carrie Bradshaw and livid that she and everyone else at the show has been put into this position, It is not about the money, but rather her legacy. Carrie was all about helping women and now, under her watch, women are saying that they have been hurt.

Sarah Jessica Parker on the scandal involving James Noth.

M'eh.

A note from Wikipedia regarding the series:

When the series premiered, the character was praised by critics as a positive example of an independent woman in the vein of Mary Richards. However, retrospective analysis tends to place more emphasis on the character's repeated and often unrepentant infidelities, with many critics instead viewing her as narcissistic.

Carrie was about helping women?  Well, excuse me if that was deluded.

Scary legacies

This news item came out the same day, I'd note, that Ghislane Maxwell was convicted of sex trafficking.  And by that we mean procuring underage girls for Jeffrey Epstein.

Eew, ick.

Connection? Well, none directly.

Or maybe.  More narcissism and obsession with unrestrained desire, or lust.  

It sort of seems that you can't unleash this without it oozing out as filth sooner or later.

On Maxwell, because I tend to get my news by reading, I'm left perplexed by how a person says her first name, Ghislaine.  I have no idea. I heard it on the nightly news the other day, but the spelling is so odd, I immediately forgot how to pronounce it.

Boston Marriages

Some recent headlines from the ill historically informed press department:

What is a Platonic life partnership? These couples are breaking societal relationship norms

And:

Platonic Partnerships Are On The Rise, So I Spoke To These Friends Who Have Chosen To Live The Rest Of Their Lives Together
"I don't think our love and commitment together should pale in comparison to romantic love."

Oh my gosh! This means that people don't always default to acting like their characters in Sex In The City or Sex Lives of College Girls!

Could this be a new trend?!?  Oh my oh my, what would it mean.

Well, maybe people are just defaulting back to normal, but we're unable to grasp that as we've been steeped in seventy years of Hugh Hefner pornification of absolutely everything. ^[1]  This isn't new.  Indeed, we've dealt with this here before in our  Lex Anteinternet: The Overly Long Thread. Gender Trends of the Past...

 post. Let's take a look:

But there is more to look at here.

Another extremely orthodox cleric but one of an extremely intellectual bent, and who is therefore sometimes not very predictable, is Father Hugh Barbour, O. Pream.  I note that as his comment on same gender attraction in women was mentioned earlier here and came out in a direction that most would not suspect in the context of a "Boston Marriage".  Father Barbour did not license illicit sexual contact, i.e., sex outside of marriage, in any context either, but he did have a very nuanced view of attraction between women that's almost wholly unique in some ways.  Like the discussion above, but in a more nuanced form, it gets into the idea that modern society is so bizarrely sexually focused that its converted the concept of attraction to absolute need, failing to grasp the nature of nearly everything, and sexualized conduct that need not be.  Barbour issued an interesting opinion related to this back in 2013, at which time there had just been a huge demonstration in France regarding the redefinition of the nature of marriage. 

Katherine Coman and Katherine Lee Bates who lived together as female housemates for over twenty years in a "Wellesley Marriage", something basically akin to what's called a Boston Marriage today.  Named for Wellesley College, due to its association with it, Wellesley Marriages were arrangements of such type between academic women, where as Boston Marriages more commonly features such arrangements between women of means.  Barbour noted these types of arrangements in a basically approving fashion, noting that its only in modern society when these arrangements are seemingly nearly required to take on a sexual aspect, which of course he did not approve of.

Hmmm. . . . 

Men and women who don't marry have always been unusual, but the sexualization of everything in the post Hefner world has made their situation considerably more difficult, really.  Society has gone from an expectation that the young and single would abstain from sex until married to the position that there must be something wrong with them if they are not.  This has gone so far as to almost require same gender roommates, past their college years, to engage in homosexual sex.  I.e, two women or two men living together in their college years is no big deal, but if they're doing it by their 30s, they're assumed to be gay and pretty much pressured to act accordingly.

Truth be known, not everyone always matches the median on everything, as we will know.  For some reason, this has been unacceptable in this are as society became more and more focused on sex.

At one time, the phenomenon of the lifelong bachelor or "spinster" wasn't that uncommon, and frankly it didn't bear the stigma that people now like to believe.  It was harder for women than for men, however, without a doubt.  People felt sorry for women that weren't married by their early 30s and often looked for ways to arrange a marriage for them, a fair number of such women ultimately agreeing to that status, with probably the majority of such societally arranged marriages working out. Some never did, however.

For men, it was probably more common, and it was just assumed that things hadn't worked out.  After their early 30s a certain "lifelong bachelor" cache could attach to it, with the reality of it not tending to match the image, but giving societal approval to it.  In certain societies it was particularly common, such as in the famed Garrison Keillor "Norwegian Bachelor Farmer" instance or in the instance of similar persons in Ireland, where it was very common for economic reasons.  

People didn't tend to assume such people were homosexual, and they largely were not.  Indeed, again contrary to what people now assume, except for deeply closeted people or people who had taken up certain occupations in order to hide it, people tended to know who actually was homosexual.

I can recall all of this being the case when I was a kid.  My grandmother's neighbor was a bachelor his entire life who worked as an electrician.  After he came home from a Japanese Prisoner of War camp following World War Two, he just wanted to keep to himself.  A couple of my mother's aunts were lifelong single women and, at least in one case, one simply didn't want to marry as she didn't want children, and the other had lost a fiancé right after World War One and never went on to anyone else.  Her secretary desk is now in my office.  In none of these instances would anyone have accused these individuals of being homosexual.

Taking this one step further, some people in this category did desire the close daily contact of somebody they were deeply friends with, in love with if you will, but that need not be sexual.  Love between women and love between men can and does exist without it having a sexual component.  Interestingly, it is extremely common and expected when we are young and up into our 20s, but after that society operates against it.  People form deep same gender relationships in schools, on sporting fields, in barracks and in class.  

Some of those people won't marry, and there's no reason that their friendships shouldn't continue on in the post college roommate stage.

Well, society won't have it as everything needs to be about sex, all the time.  Haven't you watched The Big Bang Theory?

Tatting for attention?

Kourtney Kardashian, I think (I can't really tell the various Kardashians from one another and don't really have a sufficient interest to learn who is who), apparently is now all tatted up now that she has a tattooed boyfriend or fiancé or something that is.  And by this, we mean heavily tattooed.

Like, enough already?

Apparently Salena Gomez has a bleeding rose tattoo.  I don't get that either, but I'm sure that piles of ink will be spilled on it.

Footnotes:

It would be worth noting here that early on a female researching on Hefner's early publications noted how much of it was actually in the nature of barely disguised child pornography, with cartoons particularly depicting this.  This lead to an investigation in Europe, and the magazine rapidly stopped it, but it's interesting in that the magazine was so debased that it not only portrayed women as stupid, sterile, top-heavy, and nymphomaniacs, but also underage.

The impact however had been created, and by the 1970s the full on sexual exploitation of child models was on.  As debased as society has become, it's at least retreated from this.

2021 Holiday Reflections. The Agricultural Edition.

This will be an unusual post for here, as I'm doing something unusual in general.

Most years, but not all years, I post a "Resolutions" thread on our companion blog, Lex Anteinternet.  This started off, quite frankly, as being satirical in nature, but this year it's much less so.  Satire is a delicate form of humor, often ineffectively done, and this past year hasn't been very funny, so there's not much that satire would really do, for the most part, other than be super snarky.  Snark is almost never helpful.

Anyhow, this blog, which used to simply be a catalog of agrarian themed entries on Lex Anteinternet, has grown into its own a bit and now has a little original content, although not much. Anyhow, we're going to run this post independently, even though another Resolutions thread will already be up on Lex Anteinternet.

Well, two, actually.

Anyhow, this past two years, if anything, have been ones that have shown how Chesteron, Leopold and Abbey were quite right, even though they remain voices crying in the wilderness. The voices we've heard instead, most often that of an ex President and his hard core acolytes, haven't been helpful.  Maybe it's time to drag out the Vanderbilt Agrarians, Chesteron, and Wendell Berry and see what they have to say.

Indeed, that will be our first resolution for agrarians, farmers, would be farmers, and just folks in general.

1.  Check out Berry, Abbey, Leopold, or Chesterton

The current pack of yappers is offering little in the way of deep content, and a lot of what they have to say about anything is outright destructive.  Every now and then something of value is stated, but it's hard to hear it in the general mess of things.

Let's be honest.  Almost all of the current "we need to go in this direction" is at least a little bit misinformed.  If you aren't grounded in what's real, any wind can blow you over.

Doing a little reading of some grounded folks would be a really good start in things.

And things be Wendell Berry, Edward Abbey, Aldo Leopold and G. K. Chesterton would be really good starts.

2.  Cut out the citations to the "I’m a billionth generation farmer/rancher" in the wrong context, and don't support it when its made in the wrong context.

This is one of a couple of posts here that are really directed at a very narrow few, rather than the majority of ranchers. 

Actually, it's not directed at ranchers at all, but rather at the rancher ex pats. Those who hail originally from the soil, but now no longer are working it.  For those who descend from prior generations of ranchers and are still in it, the more power to you.

I've posted on this already, but it really doesn't matter if your great-great-grandfather broke the sod in Niobrara County in 1890 if that doesn't mean you are in agriculture today.  And it doesn't make you royalty.  And. . .

3. Knock off the "agriculture is a hard way to make a living" line

Now, I want to be careful here.

Agriculture is a hard way to make a living, because of economics.

What it isn't, however, is a hard way to live.

This has been on my mind, to the political year, anyhow, but it recally came into the forefront of my mind again recently listening to an episode of  Wyoming:  My 307.  It was the one on ranching, which you can find here:

RANCHING IN WYOMING

In it, it had a long session pondering "why do we do this?" which arrived at a very interesting conclusion, that being "it's a vocation".

I think there's something to that.

But, we ought to be careful thinking that somehow because we're out in nature, and nature is a bit rough, that we're suffering. Far from it.

I've been a lawyer, a solider, worked on drilling rigs, a writer and a stockman in what now amounts to a whopping 45 years of working (I started working for pay at age 13).  So I think I know a little about work and what hard work is, and isn't. And what work is like for most people.

Somewhere at some point in time somebody fed a line of crap to agriculturalist that their work is uniquely difficult in an existential sense.  Perhaps in a physical sense, that's somewhat true, but there's plenty of other dangerous physical work that puts you out in all kids of weather.

And most modern work is, quite frankly, utterly meaningless.  Most Americans don't like their jobs, as no rational scientient mammal would like most of the jobs that now exist. 

What agriculture isn't is something that makes you work more hours per day than other people, particularly professional people, in  horrible conditions.  Not even close, quite often. And the working conditions and nature of agriculture are far better than that for most other people.  If you think that your job is somehow worse than a computer engineer in a cubicle, you are fooling yourselves massively.

Indeed, this sort of whining, and that's what it is, really needs to stop.  It's self deceptive.

Indeed, its harmful it two ways.  It's self-delusion and makes us think that, if we believe it, we are really working a lot harder than other people, when in fact that's just not true, and it also causes us to force children off the land for a better "town job" that won't be better.

Almost everything about life in the towns and cities is worse.  We ought to realize that.

If you doubt it, leave the ranch or farm and go into town.  You can't come back, and you'll regret you left.  Pleantly of people will line up to take your place.

4.  Having land doesn't make you "landed" nobility.

This, I'll note, is also directed at a narrow few, not the broader majority, of those in agriculture.

Something really disturbing has developed in the US over the past century in which those lucky enough to be born in to agriculture sometimes sort of regard themselves as petty nobility in a way.  It expresses itself in all sorts of odd ways.

Now, I don't want to suggest this is common.  

Most farmers and ranchers aren't this way at all.  But you'll see examples of it where people in agriculture will express a degree of contempt, on rare occasion, about average people.  It feeds into the thing above, in a reverse fashion, in that there's a sort of "we work hard for a living" without realizing that a lot of other people do as well.

I'll be frank that the last two items are sort of in reaction to a current political campaign.  I'm not going to get into the pluses and minuses of the merits of any candidate, but something about the videos of the campaign really strike me the wrong way for their strong rancher pull.  I'm tired of people appearing on political ads in cowboy hats arguing that you need to vote for somebody because they came from an agricultural family that knows what real values are.  It's insulting.

5.  Support getting people into agriculture.

The worst enemy of ranchers in the west are ranchers and by extension this is true about agriculture in general.  Agriculturalist decry those who regard their units as big public parks, which they should, but at the same time they don't do anything to try to help average people get into agriculture.

The reason for that, in no small part, is that it would mean a big personal sacrifice.  We could support legislation that made agriculture and agricultural land tied to actually working the land as your real and sole occupation, but we don't as that would massively depress the value of the land. It's that value that operates against us in the first place, as it means the Warren Buffets of the world become the only one who can afford the land.

We could pull this up by the root and cut it off at the head.  If we really think we're special and the real examples of the common men, we should.

6.  Think local and organize.

My entire life I've heard complaints about the midstream in agriculture.  The price of beef goes up, and cattle on the hoof do too, and the very few packers there are reap the rewards.  It's hard on consumers, and it's hard on ranchers.

I'm sure the same is true in other fields of agriculture as well.

Well, enough of that. We know it's unfair, so what we have to do is to replace the middle men with processors of our own. We could do it.  

Indeed, some agricultural enterprises, like sugar, do in fact do just this.  But it should expand. Co-ops for this purpose, organized to process for the member's benefits and not their own, would be ideal, and could more than compete with the big packers.

7. Think Agrarian

Modern agriculture suffers heavily from the worship of materialism that intruded heavily into the 20th Century and, along with it, specialization of everything.  We in agriculture often hear of "monocultures", but we almost all do just that.

Our predecessors did this much less.  Up into the mid 20th Century it was really rare to find ranches that didn't also farm a little bit, for the table, and every rancher hunted (often illegally) as well.  Farmers were the same way. A wheat farmer in Kansas was a wheat farmer, but he was probably also taking some game with a shotgun and probably kept a few pigs for the table,, and so on.

We have the resources and could lead the say on that, and indeed, some do. But the real banner carriers on this sort of thing shouldn't be people in the "homestead" movement, who are mostly chopping up big parcels of land to the ultimate detriment of everyone.

8.  Know who is your friend and who isn't.

This doesn't apply to everyone either, but I'm sometimes surprised how some in agriculture can be hostile, intentionally and unintentionally, to those who aren't, but who want to enjoy something on the land.

"No Trespassing" signs and "No Hunting" signs are signs to locals that they aren't welcome. Signs stating "This Land Leased To Outfitter" are the same thing, except they show that the lack of welcome has been monetized.

Bills to privatize wildlife are the ultimate acts of hostility. Falling in second are bills to transfer public lands into private hands.

We should realize that there are people who are genuinely hostile to agriculture.  The local newspaper publishes op ed articles by members of an organization that definitely is.  There are a lot more people who aren't in agriculture than who are, and we tend to forget that, as for most of us most of our friends are in it.

Given this, at some point we really risk public hostility.  Shut access off to the land, and next thing you know you'll be seeing "tax ag land like other land" and things of that nature, and you are out of business  and out of cash.

It doesn't really take that much to be friendly to people.

Likewise, for some reason those in agriculture often support entities and operations that are land destroying.  I've never understood that, indeed as we'll often complain about the same entities if they're on our places.  

9. Think really local.

None of us are here forever.  Try to keep that place, and keep the familiy in it.

People do a lot of things for a lot of reasons, but every time I encounter somebody, and I do fairly frequently, who ends up telling me "I grew up on a ranch", and I find them working as a lawyer, doctor, accountant, or whatever, I think it's a tragedy. That shouldn't have had to happen.

Lex Anteinternet: Farm to table.

Lex Anteinternet: Farm to table.

Farm to table.

Lex Anteinternet: Poster Saturday. The Elk and the Antelope

Lex Anteinternet: Poster Saturday. The Elk and the Antelope:  

Poster Saturday. The Elk and the Antelope

Lex Anteinternet: Mid Week At Work: Wood vendor and burros at Fort Marcy, with bakery on left, Palace Avenue, Santa Fe, New Mexico

Lex Anteinternet: Mid Week At Work: Wood vendor and burros at Fort ...: 

Mid Week At Work: Wood vendor and burros at Fort Marcy, with bakery on left, Palace Avenue, Santa Fe, New Mexico

Wood vendor and burros at Fort Marcy, with bakery on left, Palace Avenue, Santa Fe, New Mexico

A fantastic photograph from 1905, and one truly from a bygone era.

This guy had a hard, very hard, job, and probably lived on the edge of poverty.  

On the other hand, he got to work outdoors, and with animals, two things deprived to the majority of people in the industrialized world today, a sort of poverty we endure.

Lex Anteinternet: Mid Week At Work. Large Animal Veterinarian

Lex Anteinternet: Mid Week At Work. Large Animal Veterinarian: 

Mid Week At Work. Large Animal Veterinarian

It's one of those jobs I've always admired.  They work with animals, which I like anyhow, and with the big ones.  They're vital for the agricultural industry. And they go to all the farms and ranches and even have, at least around here, neat equipment like specialized 4x4 trucks.

 

I'm sure, like most occupations, it isn't anywhere near as glamourous, if that's the right word, or fun as it looks.  They're also out in all weather and on crappy roads a lot.  And they work a lot of weekends, including Sundays.

But then I work a lot of weekends, including Sundays, and I'm out on crappy roads sometimes myself.  Sometimes as a member of the bar, and sometimes as a stockman.  And in the latter instance, I've never minded working weekends, and in the former I've long accepted it.  I still don't like driving on crappy roads much, however.

When I was a kid, I was highly allergic to animals.  At least theoretically, I still am.  At some point in my youth we could no longer have a pet, and nearly every animal going was one I was allergic to.  Even when I first was practicing law, I couldn't really ride for long periods of time in a car with a dog without feeling the effects pretty severely.  Going to an indoor rodeo was the same way.  But then it seemed to go away for some reason, a gift from God really.  We have a dog, a double doodle (a breed which is kind to those with allergies, and for many years we had a Manx cat as well.

Anyhow, knowing that I was pretty allergic to animals would have kept me from pursuing being a veterinarian, if I'd ever thought of it.  But I still really admire their occupation.