Lex Anteinternet: Mid Week At Work: Endings.

Lex Anteinternet: Mid Week At Work: Endings.: 

Mid Week At Work: Endings.

I posted this the other day:

Sigh . . .

And depicted with a horse too. . . 

Kroger retires after 35 years of service  CODY - Worland Wildlife Biologist Bart Kroger retired last month, bringing his 35-year career with the Wyoming Game and Fish Department to a close.  “Bart has been referred to as the ‘core of the agency’, meaning through his dedication and continuous hard work, he has significantly and meaningfully impacted wildlife management within his district and throughout the state,” said Corey Class, Cody region wildlife management coordinator. “Throughout his career, he has been a solid, steady and dependable wildlife biologist, providing a foundation for wildlife conservation and management in the Bighorn Basin.” Through his quiet and thoughtful approach, Bart has gained the respect of both his peers and the public. Bart is best known for his commitment to spending time in the field gaining first-hand knowledge of the wildlife and the habitat that supports them, as well as the people he serves in his district.

 Found this old draft the other day

RETIREMENT ELIGIBILITY

Vesting Requirements

After obtaining 72 months of service, you are eligible to elect a monthly benefit at

retirement age. The 72 months of service do not have to be consecutive months.

Retirement Eligibility

You are eligible for retirement when you reach age 50 and are vested. There is no

early retirement under this plan. You must begin drawing your benefit no later than

age 65.

Which means, as a practical matter, if you are to draw retirement as a Wyoming Game Warden, you need to take the job no later than the beginning of your 59th year.

Of course, if you started at age 59, you wouldn't be drawing much, if anything.

That doesn't mean, of course, that you couldn't be hired after age 59.  You'd just draw no retirement.

The actual statute on this matter states the following, as we noted in a prior thread, from 2023, quoted below:

2. Wyoming Game Wardens were once required to retire at age 55, but a lawsuit some decades ago overturned that. It, in turn, was later overruled, but by that time the state had changed the system. Since that time, it's set it again statutorily, with the age now being 65 by law.  There aren't, therefore, any 67-year-old game wardens.

Statutorily, the current law provides:

9-3-607. Age of retirement.

(a) Any employee with six (6) or more years of service to his credit is eligible to receive a retirement allowance under this article when he attains age fifty (50).

(b) Effective July 1, 1998, any employee retiring after July 1, 1998, with twenty-five (25) or more years of service may elect to retire and receive a benefit upon attaining age fifty (50) as described in W.S. 9-3-610.

(c) Repealed by Laws 1993, ch. 120, §§ 1, 2.

(d) Any employee in service who has attained age sixty-five (65), shall be retired not later than the last day of the calendar month in which his 65th birthday occurs. 

Age limitations of this type are tied to physical fitness.  But what about mental fitness?  As mentioned here before, Gen. Marshall forcibly retired most serving U.S. Army generals, or at least sidelined them, who were over 50 years of age during World War Two, and that had to do with their thinking.  We now allow judges to remain on the bench until they are 70.  Would 60 make more sense?  And can the same argument be made for lawyers, who are officers of the court?

This differs, I'd note, significantly from the Federal Government.  The cutoff there is age 37.  That's it.

Have a wildlife management degree?  Spend the last few years in some other state agency?  Win the Congressional Medal of Honor for single handled defeating the Boko Haram?  38 years old now? Well, too bloody bad for you.

Anyhow, I guess this says something about the American concept that age is just a number and the hands of the clock don't really move.

They do.

On a somewhat contrary note, I was in something this week when a 70-year-old man indicated he might retire in order to take a job as a commercial airline pilot.

He's never been employed in that capacity, but he's had the license for 50 years.  It wouldn't be carrying people for United or something, but in some other commercial capacity.  

He's always wanted to do it, and has an offer.

Well, more power to him.

I did a lot of what this lawyer is doing here, when first practicing, in front of barrister cases just like this.  No young lawyer does that now.

I spoke to a lawyer I've known the entire time I've been practicing law, almost. He's four years younger than me, which would make him 56 or so.  He's worked his entire career in general civil, in a small and often distressed town, in a firm founded by his parents.  When I was first practicing, it was pretty vibrant.

Now he's the only one left.

He's retiring this spring.  This was motivated by his single employee's decision to retire.

I was really surprised, in part due to his age.  I'm glad that he can retire, but it was a bit depressing.  We're witnessing, in Wyoming, the death of the small town civil firm.  Everything is gravitating to the larger cities, and frankly in the larger cities, they're in competition with the big cities in Colorado and Utah.  That's insured a bill in the legislature to try to recruit lawyers to rural areas.*

It's not going to work.

The problem has been, for some time, that it's impossible to recruit young lawyers to small rural areas.  The economics don't allow for it.  The economics don't allow for it, in part, as the Wyoming Supreme Court forced the Uniform Bar Exam down on the Board of Law Examiners, and that resulted in opening the doors to Denver and Salt Lake lawyers.  It's been something the small firms have been competing against ever since.

And not only that, but some sort of demographic change has operated to just keep younger lawyers out of smaller places, and frankly to cause them to opt for easier paths than civil law in general.  I know older lawyers that came from the larger cities in the state, and set up small town practices when they were young, as that's where the jobs were and having a job was what they needed to have.  I've even known lawyers who went to UW who moved here from somewhere else who took that path, relocating from big Eastern or Midwestern cities to do so.

No longer.  Younger lawyers don't do that.

Quite a few don't stick with civil practice at all.  They leave for government work, where the work hours are regular, and the paycheck isn't dependent on billable hours.   And recently, though we are not supposed to note it, young women attorneys reflect a new outlook in which a lot of them bail out of practice or greatly reduce their work hours after just a few years in, a desire to have a more regular domestic life being part of that.

I guess people can't be blamed for that, but we can, as a state, be blamed for being shortsighted.  Adopting the UBE was shortsighted.  Sticking with it has been inexcusable.  I'm not the only one who has said so, and frankly not the only one who probably paid a price for doing so.  The reaction to voices crying in the wilderness is often to close the windows so you don't have to hear them.  Rumor had it, which I've never seen verified and have heard expressly denied by a person within the law school administration, that it was done in order to aid the law school, under the theory that it would make UW law degrees transportable, which had pretty much the practical effect on the local law as Commodore Matthew Perry opening up trade with Japan.

Wyoming Board of Law Examiners bringing in the UBE.

The lawyer in this case is worried, as he has no hobbies and doesn't know what he'll do with himself.  I'm surprised how often this concern is expressed.  To only have the law, or any work, is sad.  But a court reporter, about my age, expressed the same concern to me the other day.

Court reporting has really taken a beating in this state, more so than lawyers.  When I was first practicing, every community had court reporters.  Now there are hardly any left at all.  Huge firms are down to just a handful of people, and people just aren't coming into the occupation.  It's a real concern to lawyers.

It's always looked like an interesting job to me, having all the diversity of being a lawyer, with seemingly a lot less stress.  But having never done it, perhaps I'm wildly in error.  We really don't know what other people's jobs are like unless we've done them.

A lawyer I know just died by his own hand.

I met him when he took over for a very long time Wyoming trial attorney upon that attorney's death.

The attorney he took over for had died when he went in his backyard and put a rifle bullet through his brain.  He was a well known attorney, and we could tell something wasn't quite right with him.  Just the day prior, he called me and asked for an extension on something.  I'd already given two.  I paused, and then, against my better judgment, said, "well. . . okay".  

I'd known him too long to say no.

He was clearing his schedule.  If I had said no, I feel, he wouldn't have done it, and he'd be alive today.

The new attorney came in and was sort of like a goofy force of nature.  Hard to describe.  A huge man, probably in his 40s at the time, but very childlike.  He talked and talked. Depositions would be extended due to long meandering conversational interjections, as I learned in that case and then a very serious subsequent one.

He was hugely proud of having been a member of a legendary local plaintiff's firm.  That didn't really matter much to me then, and it still doesn't.  My family has always had an odd reaction to the supposedly honorific.  My father never bothered to collect his National Defense Service Medal for serving during the Korean War, I didn't bother to get my Reserve Overseas Training Ribbon, or my South Korean award for Operation Team Spirit, I don't have my law school diploma's anymore. . . It's not that they aren't honors, it's just, well, oh well.  We tend to value other things, which in some ways sets standards that are highers than others, and very difficult to personally meet.

Anyhow, the guy was very friendly and told me details of his life, not all of which were true.  He was raised by his grandmother, his grandmother had somehow encouraged him to go to law school,  Both true.

He was from Utah and grown up there, but consistently denied being a Mormon.  His wife was Mormon, he said.  He was an Episcopalian.  As I'm very reserved, I'm not really going to talk religion with somebody I only casually and professionally know, as opposed to one of my very extroverted and devout partners who will bring it up at the drop of a hat, and his religious confession didn't particularly matter to me, given the light nature of our relationship.  As it turns out, and as I suspected, that wasn't even remotely true.  He was and always had been a Mormon.  Why did he lie about that?  No idea.

I suppose this is some sort of warning here, maybe.

The first lawyer noted in this part of this entry had suffered something hugely traumatic early in his life and never really got over it. Some people roll with the punches on traumas and some do not.  We hear about combat veterans all the time who live with the horrors they experienced, and which break them down, all the time, but I've known a couple who didn't have that sort of reaction at all, and who could coolly relate their combat experiences.  Others can't get over something that happened to them, ever.

With the second lawyers, there were some oddities, one being that he jumped from firm to firm, and to solo, and back and forth, all the time. That's unusual.  Another was that he seemed to have pinned his whole identify on being a lawyer.  It's one thing, like the retiring fellow above, to have worked it your whole life and have nothing else to do, it's quite another to have that make up everything you are.  He'd drunk deeply of the plaintiff's lawyer propaganda about helping the little guy and all that crap, and didn't really realize that litigators often hurt people as often as they help them, or do both at the same time.  Maybe the veil had come off.  Maybe he should never have been a lawyer in the first place.  Maybe it was organic and had nothing to do with any of this.

Well, the moral of this story, or morals, if there are any, would be this.  You don't have endless time to do anything, 70-year-old commercial airline pilots aside. You probably don't know what it's like to do something unless you've actually done it, but you can investigate it and learn as much as possible.  The UBE, which the Wyoming Supreme Court was complicit in adopting, is killing the small  town civil lawyer and only abrogating it, or its successor, and restoring the prior system can address that.   The entire whaling for justice plaintiff's lawyer ethos is pretty much crap.  And, finally, you had some sort of identify before you took up your occupation.  Unless that identity was what you became, before you became it, don't let the occupation become it.  It may be shallower than you think.

Footnotes:

The bill:

SENATE FILE NO. SF0033

Wyoming rural attorney recruitment program.

Sponsored by: Joint Judiciary Interim Committee

A BILL

for

AN ACT relating to attorneys-at-law; establishing the rural attorney recruitment pilot program; specifying eligibility requirements for counties and attorneys to participate in the program; specifying administration, oversight and payment obligations for the program; requiring reports; providing a sunset date for the program; authorizing the adoption of rules, policies and procedures; providing an appropriation; and providing for an effective date.

Be It Enacted by the Legislature of the State of Wyoming:

Section 1.  W.S. 33‑5‑201 through 33‑5‑203 are created to read:

ARTICLE 2

RURAL ATTORNEY RECRUITMENT PROGRAM

33‑5‑201.  Rural attorney recruitment program established; findings; program requirements; county qualifications; annual reports.

(a)  In light of the shortage of attorneys practicing law in rural Wyoming counties, the legislature finds that the establishment of a rural attorney recruitment program constitutes a valid public purpose, of primary benefit to the citizens of the state of Wyoming.

(b)  The Wyoming state bar may establish a rural attorney recruitment program to assist rural Wyoming counties in recruiting attorneys to practice law in those counties.

(c)  Each county eligible under this subsection may apply to the Wyoming state bar to participate in the program. A county is eligible to participate in the program if the county:

(i)  Has a population of not greater than twenty‑five thousand (25,000);

(ii)  Has an average of not greater than one and one‑half (1.5) qualified attorneys in the county for every one thousand (1,000) residents. As used in this paragraph, "qualified attorney" means an attorney who provides legal services to private citizens on a fee basis for an average of not less than twenty (20) hours per week. "Qualified attorney" shall not include an attorney who is a full‑time judge, prosecutor, public defender, judicial clerk, in‑house counsel, trust officer and any licensed attorney who is in retired status or who is not engaged in the practice of law;

(iii)  Agrees to provide the county share of the incentive payment required under this article;

(iv)  Is determined to be eligible to participate in the program by the Wyoming state bar.

(d)  Before determining a county's eligibility, the Wyoming state bar shall conduct an assessment to evaluate the county's need for an attorney and the county's ability to sustain and support an attorney. The Wyoming state bar shall maintain a list of counties that have been assessed and are eligible to participate in the program under this article. The Wyoming state bar may revise any county assessment or conduct a new assessment as the Wyoming State bar deems necessary to reflect any change in a county's eligibility.

(e)  In selecting eligible counties to participate in the program, the Wyoming state bar shall consider:

(i)  The county's demographics;

(ii)  The number of attorneys in the county and the number of attorneys projected to be practicing in the county over the next five (5) years;

(iii)  Any recommendations from the district judges and circuit judges of the county;

(iv)  The county's economic development programs;

(v)  The county's geographical location relative to other counties participating in the program;

(vi)  An evaluation of any attorney or applicant for admission to the state bar seeking to practice in the county as a program participant, including the attorney's or applicant's previous or existing ties to the county;

(vii)  Any prior participation of the county in the program;

(viii)  Any other factor that the Wyoming state bar deems necessary.

(f)  A participating eligible county may enter into agreements to assist the county in meeting the county's obligations for participating in the program.

(g)  Not later than October 1, 2024 and each October 1 thereafter that the program is in effect, the Wyoming state bar shall submit an annual report to the joint judiciary interim committee on the activities of the program. Each report shall include information on the number of attorneys and counties participating in the program, the amount of incentive payments made to attorneys under the program, the general status of the program and any recommendations for continuing, modifying or ending the program.

33‑5‑202.  Rural attorney recruitment program; attorney requirements; incentive payments; termination of program.

(a)  Except as otherwise provided in this subsection, any attorney licensed to practice law in Wyoming or an applicant for admission to the Wyoming state bar may apply to the Wyoming state bar to participate in the rural attorney recruitment program established under this article. No attorney or applicant shall participate in the program if the attorney or applicant has previously participated in the program or has previously participated in any other state or federal scholarship, loan repayment or tuition reimbursement program that obligated the attorney to provide legal services in an underserved area.

(b)  Not more than five (5) attorneys shall participate in the program established under this article at any one (1) time.

(c)  Subject to available funding and as consideration for providing legal services in an eligible county, each attorney approved by the Wyoming state bar to participate in the program shall be entitled to receive an incentive payment in five (5) equal annual installments. Each annual incentive payment shall be paid on or after July 1 of each year. Each annual incentive payment shall be in an amount equal to ninety percent (90%) of the University of Wyoming college of law resident tuition for thirty (30) credit hours and annual fees as of July 1, 2024.

(d)  Subject to available funding, the supreme court shall make each incentive payment to the participating attorney. The Wyoming state bar and each participating county shall remit its share of the incentive payment to the supreme court in a manner and by a date specified by the supreme court. The Wyoming state bar shall certify to the supreme court that a participating attorney has completed all annual program requirements and that the participating attorney is entitled to the incentive payment for the applicable year. The responsibility for incentive payments under this section shall be as follows:

(i)  Fifty percent (50%) of the incentive payments shall be from funds appropriated to the supreme court;

(ii)  Thirty‑five percent (35%) of the incentive payments shall be provided by each county paying for attorneys participating in the program in the county;

(iii)  Fifteen percent (15%) of the incentive payments shall be provided by the Wyoming state bar from nonstate funds.

(e)  Subject to available funding for the program, each attorney participating in the program shall enter into an agreement with the supreme court, the participating county and the Wyoming state bar that obligates the attorney to practice law full‑time in the participating county for not less than five (5) years. As part of the agreement required under this subsection, each participating attorney shall agree to reside in the participating county for the period in which the attorney practices law in the participating county under the program. No agreement shall be effective until it is filed with and approved by the Wyoming state bar.

(f)  Any attorney who receives an incentive payment under this article and subsequently breaches the agreement entered into under subsection (e) of this section shall repay all funds received under this article pursuant to terms and conditions established by the supreme court. Failure to repay funds as required by this subsection shall subject the attorney to license suspension.

(g)  The Wyoming state bar may promulgate any policies or procedures necessary to implement this article.  The supreme court may promulgate any rules necessary to implement this article.

(h)  The program established under this article shall cease on June 30, 2029, provided that attorneys participating in the program as of June 30, 2029 shall complete their obligation and receive payments as authorized by this article.

33‑5‑203.  Sunset.

(a)  W.S. 33‑5‑201 and 33‑5‑202 are repealed effective July 1, 2029.

(b)  Notwithstanding subsection (a) of this section, attorneys participating in the rural attorney pilot program authorized in W.S. 33‑5‑201 and 33‑5‑202 shall complete the requirements of the program and shall be entitled to the authorized payments in accordance with W.S. 33‑5‑201 and 33‑5‑202 as provided on June 30, 2029.

Section 2.  There is appropriated one hundred ninety‑seven thousand three hundred seventy‑five dollars ($197,375.00) from the general fund to the supreme court for the period beginning with the effective date of this act and ending June 30, 2029 to be expended only for purposes of providing incentive payments for the rural attorney recruitment program established under this act. This appropriation shall not be transferred or expended for any other purpose. Notwithstanding W.S. 9‑2‑1008, 9‑2‑1012(e) and 9‑4‑207, this appropriation shall not revert until June 30, 2029.

Section 3.  This act is effective July 1, 2024.

Lex Anteinternet: Something to consider when you see a photo of that...

Lex Anteinternet: Something to consider when you see a photo of that...: 

Something to consider when you see a photo of that buff gal or guy . . .

is are they wealthy or employed in the vapid (i.e., entertainment) industry?

A photo showing a buffed RFK Jr., age 69, brings this up.  I don't know really when it was taken, but people who are logic impaired seem to think this proves his anti vaxing position.

No matter what you think of that, what this proves is that he has piles of time on his hands.

There's a massive difference from being awaked at 3:30 in the morning as United Airlines has cancelled, for the second day in a row, your spouses flight home, and this means you woke up only 30 minutes early, and you go on to get up and fix coffee knowing that everyone you meet today is going to be in a desperate crisis, and you are going to be in crisis central all day long, and then come home and hope that she made it home and isn't stranded somewhere, and to have all of this be normal, than to have all freakin' day to do nothing.

Sure, not everyone who doesn't have to deal with the world all day will look buff. Some will just self-destruct. But part of really looking good, so to speak, is having the time to do it.  And for those in the entertainment industry, well that's their job.

Yeah, a person should take care of themselves.  Many don't. Genes (as the young deaths of some celebrities even show) mean a lot.

But stress, anxiety, injuries and daily living mean a lot too.

Lex Anteinternet: Moonlight Graham and other lessons. At some point...

Lex Anteinternet: Moonlight Graham and other lessons. At some point...: 

Moonlight Graham and other lessons. At some point, you are stuck in your career.

Archibald "Moonlight" Graham.

Maybe I don't watch enough television to catch them, or maybe the recent financial crises and the pandemic put the brakes on them, but there used to be a lot of financial planner advertisements based on the theme that you could retire into a new exciting career of some sort.  You know, you worked hard but invested wisely, and now you were a rancher in Monument Valley (where the locals probably regard you as an interloping menace).

M'eh.

Probably, the story of Archibald "Moonlight" Graham is more realistic.

Anyone who has watched Field Of Dreams is familiar with it.  Graham, we learn, played but a single season in the major leagues and got up to bat just once.  After that season, he chose to leave baseball, knowing, the film tells us, that he'd be sent back to the minor leagues, and he just couldn't stand the thought, so he opted to move on, pursuing a career instead of being a physician, an occupation that he occupied for over fifty years in Chisholm, Minnesota.

Graham was a real character, and really did play one season in the major leagues and really did go on to a very lengthy career as a physician in Chisholm, Minnesota.   The film, however, is centered on regrets, and Graham plays into that.

In the film, and presumably the book, the main protagonist is an Iowa farmer who starts hearing voices in his corn field.  At first, the voices have him build a baseball field, promising "if you build it, he will come". The "he" turns out to be Shoeless Joe Jackson, famously banned from baseball due to the 1919 Black Sox scandal.  Jackson brings in the Black Sox, who in turn start holding games against another ghostly team, given as they're all years past their deaths.  The voice returns and tells Kinsella, the farmer, to "ease his pain", which ends up taking him on a cross-country journey in which he picks up a self urban exiled urban author, Terrance Mann, and a trip to a ballgame, at which they see the statistics for Graham.  They go on to Chisholm, Minnesota, to find that he had died years earlier, only to find Kinsella nocturnally transported back to the early 1970s in which he encounters the elderly Graham, who in reality died in 1965.  Graham declines to go with Kinsella and Mann, noting that it would have been a tragedy if he'd only gotten "to be a doctor for one day", his having become so central to the lives of the town's residents.

But then, traveling back to Iowa the next day, they encounter a youthful hitchhiking Graham, who goes back to the field with them and plays on the team of ghosts, apparently actually in reality regretting his having been deprived of a major league career.

The entire move Field Of Dreams is about broken dreams.  It's all about regret.  Every character in the film is full of regrets.  Kinsella regrets having departed company with his father, a former professional ball player, on harsh terms and not getting to apologized before he dies.  Mann, a disenchanted author, regrets not having meaningful writing to carry on with.  Jackson regrets having been banned from baseball.  All of them feature redemption in the form of a second chance at redressing their regrets.

I love the movie, and always have, but it's a dark film in some ways.  Almost every single character in it, no matter how cheerful they are, and they're all cheerful, is laboring under monumental internal regrets.  They're provided a chance to banish the regret, but only through Devine intervention, allowing a redress across time.

Field Of Dreams isn't the only movie that deals with regret, and even Divine intervention, but it's the only one that I'm aware of in which average characters are plagued with it and can only address it in such an intervention.  The closest portrayal of a similar topic of which I'm aware is It's A Wonderful Life, in which the protagonist is about to kill himself after years of hard work at a saving and loan business he was basically forced into due to the untimely death of his father.  In that film, however, a hapless angel takes him back through the lives of everyone he touched to show him how much worse the lives of those he impacted would be had he not been there.  Mr. Holland's Opus is another work that has a similar theme, but with no Divine intervention, in which the dream of the protagonist is shattered by a personal tragedy, but his work, opus, becomes a huge impact on everyone around him.  I like both of those films as well, but not as much, and frankly find them dispiriting for all of the wrong reasons.¹ I probably shouldn't, as the message of both is profoundly Christian and, well, perhaps this below best expresses it.

A film that takes a distinctly different approach from either is Will Penny, which is a great film.  In that film circumstances show an aging single cowboy, who has worked his entire life in that role, what life would have been like had he married and had a family that cared about him.  Right up until the end of the film it seems that, now that the opportunity seems to be unfolding, he'll take it, but as it turns out, knowing that it has in reality passed him by, he regrets his decision, but determines to ride off and live with it.  It's just too late.

Which brings me to this observation.

Recently, or so it seems to me, once you are over 50, and truth be known at some point earlier than that, unless your big planned career change is one involving only self-employment and doesn't depend much on your physical health, you're pretty much stuck with what you are doing.

The first time that really became evident to me in any fashion, oddly enough, was when I was in my 30s and practicing law.  My late mother had a friend who grew up on a ranch and had always wanted to return to his former life.  He'd had a long career as a banker, but now, in his 70s, he was trying to return with what was really a hobby farm.  He wasn't well enough to do it, and his wife was crippled, so their location out of town was imperiling her health.  My mother, who was extremely intelligent but often based her assumptions about somebody based on externals, kept referencing him as a "rancher", which he wasn't.  He was still employed at the bank, and it was a hobby farm that was failing.

He moved off of it soon after my mother first referenced him in conversation, and died soon thereafter.

Why, other than that it's always been obvious to anyone who knows me that my internal vocation is one that involves animals and wild country, she pointed that out, I don't know.  Probably as she conceived of him as somebody who had combined a city job, banking, with a rural vocation, "ranching" (actually farming), he was, to her, a model of what I could do.  My mother was always proud of the fact that I'd become a lawyer and quick to tell anyone that, even though its something I never bring up myself and tend to reveal, to strangers, only if asked.  That probably concerned her some as she wondered why somebody who had obtained such an admirable, in her view, professional degree would want to do something that in her personal experience was of a lower status.²  The point was made, as it seemed to make sense to her that a person could pursue agriculture as a hobby while admirably employed in a profession.

I viewed the banker as somebody who'd led an existentially failed vocation, banking, and was trying to make amends too late.

That's a pretty harsh judgement, but I've always been sort of "no quarters" in my view of some things, including myself.  Now, some 30 years later, I could easily say the same thing about me, and be quite correct.  I've had a long and respected career as a lawyer, which has not involved animals whatsoever, or wild country.  I've also been a stockman for most of that time, which does.  But my being a stockman is sort of a second activity, made possible as my in laws are the full time stockmen, and I'm part-time.  I don't regard that as a personal success, but a personal failure. There's no two ways about it.

For all of my time as a lawyer, I've dreamed of being a judge. That's the sort of dream that's puts you in Moonlight Graham territory as chances are, you aren't going to make it.  I first tried to make that switch when I'd only been practicing a few years, at which time, unbeknownst to me, experienced lawyers regarded that as impossible as you needed experience.

Later on I had the experience and applied several times, and passed by some as well.  I passed by one as I knew that somebody putting in was so close to an influential figure that he'd get it, which he did.  I hope that figure realizes that, even now, he's indebted to an accident of employment for his current position.  

The time I first came pretty close, I nonetheless didn't make it to one of the three finalist.  A friend did.  It was surreal, however, as I received calls from those close to the process informing me I should expect to be one of the three finalists.  I received direct information that I'd interviewed very well.  When I didn't get it, and another position soon came up, I was called by a host of individuals who were within the system and urged to apply, which I had not intended to do.  I did, and didn't make the finals again.

Over time, I've watched the process and realized that politics, which weren't really evident to me early on, played very much a part.  One Governor in this time frame had an expressed preference for appointing women, as he thought the bench lacked them and needed them.  Over time, it became apparent that women stood a much better chance than men of getting appointed.  Well, he's the chooser, so I guess he gets to choose as he will.

The more recent Governor has favored very young appointees and ones who had criminal law experience.  I'm no longer young, I'll be 60 next month, and I don't have criminal law experience.  Nonetheless, I put in one last time when I was probably 58.  Totally pointless.

Since that time, I've awkwardly appeared in front of the very young judge.  That judge may turn out to be great, but the judge confessed that the hearing we were at was the first of the type the judge had ever experienced, and the judge wasn't quite sure what to do.  I'll give that judge credit for that.  Not everyone would admit that.

Well, at 60, I'm not putting in anymore.  I'd have to retire at 70, and I'd never get selected.  Oh, well.

I'm not the only one in that position.  At least one other friend of mine has the same experience.  Whenever we've talked about it, we always express it in an "oh well", we didn't expect to get it anyhow, and we still have our careers.  But frankly, in my case, it's another career failure.  I'll go to my grave as a lawyer knowing that whatever I achieved, I didn't achieve what I'd hoped to, long ago.

Sic transit Gloria Mundi.

Being almost 60, I'm at the age where law journals have articles that claim people like me can have exciting second careers.  What they always entail, however, is some lawyer who moved from litigation combat to telling his younger lawyers how to engage in litigation combat, or some lawyer who moved from a big first into one that his son or daughter has, to mentor them.  I guess that's sort of a second career, but it really isn't.  It's more like going from being the team manager to the pitching coach.  You are still showing up wearing pinstripes and a ball cap for the team.  And frankly for the overwhelming majority of lawyers in the current legal environment, where it's hard to find a younger lawyer to even hire, it's not realistic.

What's notable about those articles is nobody ever suggests that any of the lawyers that they reference really were able to make a radical shift in the field.  None of the Old Hands, for instance, went from practice to teaching.  They keep practicing. At most, you see some who went from litigation to transactional within their firms.

And that's about as realistic as that gets.  Not that such a transition is meaningless, a lawyer I knew personally who practiced into his 90s had done a similar thing at age 60, and just all of a sudden.  The same lawyer, however, had wanted to be a doctor but found his dreams dashed by World War Two, during which he served in the Navy.  Coming back, the lost years didn't leave him time, he felt, to do what he wanted to do.  Indeed, everything about his educational path changed.

What this does do, however, is point out the reinforcing nature of occupations over time.  When the ABA, for instance, runs articles about second careers for lawyers, it's acknowledging that lawyers are looking for second careers, and telling them to stuff it, they're lawyers.  Not that this is a surprise as after a person has been practicing for a while, and I'm sure this is true of every other occupation, you're defined in that role.  I've ridden up to cow camps on trail after having been in the field for days, dressed as a cow hand, and covered with grime, only to be identified as "oh, you're the lawyer".  People who know me only casually from work, when they want to chat, open up topics on legal themes, assuming, logically enough, that what I'd really like to do in the evening while enjoying a cocktail (or more likely a Saturday afternoon at the hardware store) is chat about the law.

Societal expectations, therefore, become reinforcing.  You may have a diesel mechanics certificate, but if your prospective employer finds out you're a 50-year-old lawyer, or 40-year-old lawyer, forget it.  You're not getting hired as a diesel mechanic.

Radical changes, unless, again, they involve self-employment, age out.  I knew one lawyer who became a partner in a small drilling company, but that was a species of self-employment backed by the fact that a collection of business associated had the money, along with him, to invest to start up.  Another who had worked for years in a bank, then entered private practice, did it only briefly before returning to the bank. The brief taste of practice was enough.  One I personally knew dropped out of practice to become a teacher, and one I sort of knew did the same, but they were in their 40s at the time, with time still being available to them to do that.  Probably in their 50s, they wouldn't have been hired.

As I mentioned outdoor professions, one thing I'll note is that the Federal ones have age caps, in some areas, the Federal Government being an employer that can still officially do that.  State ones don't tend to have official ones, but they do have unofficial ones.  Federal ones tend to be based on retirement.  If you can't make 20 years by 60, you aren't getting in.  

One that surprised me recently, quite frankly, was the Ukrainian Foreign Legion.  Its age cap is 55, which is pretty old actually for entering military service, but it's only taking veterans (and only combat veterans, it claims).  Ukrainians men are liable for military service up to age 60s, but Ukraine isn't taking in any old soldiers from other lands.  That probably makes sense, really, as you don't know these guys and can't really vet them much before they show up.  Some vets of other armies, such as my self, are in pretty good physical health and probably could endure a combat environment just fine (maybe), others have grown sick, tired or fat, and couldn't.  There's no point in investing in somebody, whose going to die of a heart attack one week out.

Still, it's interesting as there are so many Western army veterans who trained to fight the very army the Ukrainians are fighting, more or less.  We didn't, thank goodness, fight them in the 80s, and we're not going to be fighting them, it appears, now.

Interestingly, the Canadian Army takes in older enlistees now.  I don't know how old, but the cutoff age is something like 57 or 58.  But those enlistees have to make it through basic training in the Canadian Forces.  Apparently Canadian soldiers are part of the general Canadian government old age pension system, and the Canadian government figures they can get a couple of years out of any who make it through basic, which is probably about what they get out of an average enlistee anyway.

As we live in the age of certification, many jobs that were open to people 30 years ago, when I first started practicing law, have had the doors slammed shut if you don't have perfect certification.  I know of one such field that loosely interpreted its certification requirements 30 years ago and now very strictly construes them. 

Added to that, of course, is the impact of income and influence of disbelief.  A professional changing jobs may be enamored with the idea of it, but it's pretty likely that his family, most particularly his spouse, isn't.  That's also why most of the real changes, such as for example the instance I know of in which a lawyer became a fireman, happen pretty early in careers.  Most professionals don't make the loot that people think they do, particularly when they start out, unless they're recruited into a really high test outfit.  Indeed, the one fellow I know who fits that description looks so stressed all the time, I wouldn't be too surprised if his heart just burst out of his chest in a deposition, and he died on the spot.  For most younger lawyers/doctors/accountants, etc., they're not pulling in the big bucks early on.  At that point, obligations aside, they can make a change as they aren't going to be hurt on a day-to-day basis much.

Obligations, however, change options enormously.  Student debt keeps a lot of people in jobs as they have to pay for their educations.  By the time they have the debt paid off, chances are they have a family and a mortgage, and that keeps them in place.  Most spouses have a low tolerance for dropping family income enormously and while early on couples may endure hardships bounded together by true love, later on the spouse who isn't proposing to drop household income will regard it as insane, bound down by practicalities and perhaps duty to the offspring of the marriage.  Shakespeare claimed that "conscience does make cowards of us all", but debt and expenditures have a big role in that.

So too has the return to long family ties of the pre World War Two era and the insurance system of the post World War Two era.  Couple of the 50s, 60s and 70s pretty much saw their children blast into independence as soon as they were 18, and more than a few families didn't feel the slightest bit of guilt about basically kicking children out into the cold world once they were that age.  It was quite normal.  Now it isn't, but then it really wasn't before 1940 either.  Be that as it may, that has brought about a return to the situation in which the family bread winner retains some financial responsibility all the way into his kid's late 20s, which not only means late career, but it can be career extending, as people can't quite what they are otherwise doing.  I know that I wanted my father to retire when he hit 60, and he wouldn't.  But I'd been paying my own freight by that time, at least partially, for quite a while and knew that I could pull it all.

Or so I thought.  He probably didn't think that, making him an example of somebody who probably was looking at things just the way I do know, right up until he died at age 62, having never retired.

Insurance is another matter.  In the American system you can go on Medicare at age 65, but prior to that, health care is your own problem, and it's expensive.  It interestingly gets expensive for most people right about the time that you really need it for the second time in your life, the first time being when women are of child bearing years.  Switching from one job to another, where health insurance is covered in one, and isn't in another, is pretty hard for most people. Quite a few people keep on keeping on for years until they qualify for Medicare.⁴

And self-determination, which a lot of us aren't that good at, plays a major role.  You are always faced with decisions when they come up, and you make them, usually, on what is important right then.  Personally, the door did open for me to an outdoor career with an agency right after I had become engaged.  It involved a massive income drop and a very uncertain future, as it started off with a temporary position. The responsible thing to do, it seemed to me (and it would seem to most) was to forego it, which I did.

Twice wars came up after I had left the National Guard, and in both instances I tried to get in them.  That has something to do with being trained to fight.  In the first Gulf War I made contact right away with my old Guard unit, but it wasn't called up as it had just switched from heavy artillery to rocketry and wasn't combat ready.  The second time I contacted them as well, and then a Colorado infantry unit being deployed, but the first one wasn't called up, and the second one didn't need any artillerymen.  As the wars dragged on, it just didn't seem like there was a real reason to join, and I didn't.  The door, however, was open in that second instance and I didn't walk through it. At some point it slammed shut due to age, just has it has now for the Ukrainian forces.  Немає (no) you are too old, age cap at 55.  Будь ласка? (Please?).  Nope, but here's some equipment we need you can buy.  (Seriously, they suggested some sort of optical equipment, or a drone.  I dread to think how much a drone might cost).

And so, the lesson's learned?

Édith Piaf famously sang Je Ne Regrette Rien, but if you look at her life, I'll be she did, and plenty of them.  Not that she's a model of an average or even somewhat typical life.  Moonlight Graham probably is in many ways, which is probably why the character appeals so much.  Maybe everyone watching Field Of Dreams feels that way a little.  Maybe not, but I'll bet plenty identify with that character more than any other in the film.

I don't know if most men really lead lives of quiet desperation, but I do suspect that a lot of people highly respected in their careers have unresolved paths they didn't take.  That doesn't mean that they didn't enjoy their careers.  It may mean they have large or small reservations about the paths they took.  I can't even begin to count how many times clients and litigants have told me "I wanted to become a lawyer" (or, pretty often, "I wanted my son to become a lawyer"), followed by a "but".  I've known professionals who didn't follow up on professional sports opportunities, who had been in military service and then gotten out, who had left farms and ranches, or who had thought about becoming a Priest or cleric, and didn't, all to some element of regret.  Indeed, with big callings, like the Priesthood, it probably downright haunts them.³

For those who recall it, people may imagine themselves singing Je Ne Regrette Rien, or maybe the defiant My Way, but Truckin is probably more like it.

The other lesson may be that the common American claim that you can start off doing one thing, and do anything else, is a lie.  

If it's not an outright lie, it comes with an expiration date.  Once you are 50 years of age, you are doing what you are doing, most likely, and you won't be getting out of it any time soon, if ever.

And this:

Well, you know I... I never got to bat in the major leagues. I would have liked to have had that chance. Just once. To stare down a big league pitcher. To stare him down, and just as he goes into his windup, wink. Make him think you know something he doesn't. That's what I wish for. Chance to squint at a sky so blue that it hurts your eyes just to look at it. To feel the tingling in your arm as you connect with the ball. To run the bases - stretch a double into a triple, and flop face-first into third, wrap your arms around the bag. That's my wish, Ray Kinsella. That's my wish. And is there enough magic out there in the moonlight to make this dream come true?

Not without Divine intervention, there isn't.  And even as the movie portrays, decisions made in the past cannot be undone.  Graham reconciles it with 

Son, if I'd only gotten to be a doctor for five minutes... now that would have been a tragedy.

My wife sometimes makes the same point about my career, with "all the people you've helped".  But then, this too:

 We just don't recognize life's most significant moments while they're happening. Back then I thought, "Well, there'll be other days." I didn't realize that that was the only day.

Footnotes

1.  I'm afraid that I'm an oddity with some films this way.  Shane, the classic Western in which the protagonist comes back out of retirement in order that besieged farmers aren't run off by cattlemen, is an example.  I know how the film ends, but I always hope that the cattlemen will win, and the wilderness they represent preserved.

2. My mother was not from here, and didn't hold farmers and ranchers in low esteem, but rather held professionals in very high esteem.  Her family had members who had been doctors, lawyers and engineers and she regarded this as having achieved a certain status.  A lot of people of her generation viewed the professions that way, and frankly, quite a few people still do.

She also tended to view being a lawyer as proof of high intelligence, which it really is not.  A Democrat, she'd frequently give a reason to support President Obama as "he's intelligent. . . he's a lawyer".  President Obama is intelligent, and he is a lawyer, but in reality, there are lots of fairly dim lawyers.

3.  Indeed, that's one of the ones that's most openly expressed.  I've known lawyers who, once they know you fairly well, will discuss having been in the seminary, or who wanted to be Priests, and it's a different conversation.  It's always pretty clear that they're downright haunted by their change into the law, no matter how much success they may have had in it. Conversely, I've known one Priest who had been a lawyer and at least one who had originally intended to be, who had no regrets whatsoever about their change in paths.

Of interest here, there's often an age limit to attempting to revive a vocational call.  Canon Law in the Catholic Church sets no age limit to becoming a Priest, but many dioceses do, and for good reason. Training a Priest takes nearly a decade.  While I can think of stories of some "older" men becoming Priests, in reality, they were middle-aged men when they started off.

Likewise, there's a limit on trying to become a Catholic Deacon, a vocation that's spread enormously in recent decades.  In our Diocese, the provision is:

The minimum age for a single man to be ordained to the permanent diaconate is twenty-five (25) years old, and thirty-five (35) years for married men. Maximum age to enter the Diaconal Formation Program is fifty-five (55) years (age 60 at ordination), unless the Bishop allows an exception. 

Sixty is surprisingly late, quite frankly, and I wonder if this has been recently moved as I thought the age limit lower, although not much.  Be that as it may, I know this only because at one time our African Parish Priest sent out letters to several men whom he thought would be good Deacons.  I was one.  I was flattered by the letter but knew I wasn't called, but I did pray on it.  I'm not called, working on my own defects is a full time enough job as it is.

4. The combined impact of insurance and family responsibilities in the current era is enough, in and of itself, to quash a lot of late career transition dreams.  Before Medicare, many people are hard locked into careers due to the need to keep their insurance.  Changes in the law, over time, have also meant that parents pay for their adult children's insurance well into their 20s.  Changing careers that involve insurance disruption is darned near impossible for many people.

And it likley would be for me, after my health issues of last year and their carryover inot this year.

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How the heck does a person figure out what to do?