Lex Anteinternet: On starting a 37th Year I will not finish.

Lex Anteinternet: On starting a 37th Year I will not finish.: I was admitted to practice 36 years ago today. Back when the Rocky Mountain News was still a thing, they used to run columns by Charley Ree...

On starting a 37th Year I will not finish.

I was admitted to practice 36 years ago today.

Back when the Rocky Mountain News was still a thing, they used to run columns by Charley Reese.  I didn't always agree with them by any means, Reese was a dyed in wool Confederate Gray Southerner, but they were often quite interesting.  I can recall his final column when he noted he was going to retire.  On the timing he said something like "when you know, you know".

I'm at that point.

My wife, however, definitely isn't at that point for me, an ongoing source of conflict.

In Wyoming, and maybe in most places, lawyers are admitted to the bar in August for the most part. A second, smaller crops, is admitted in March or so.  I was admitted in August, 36 years ago.

Back in September 2025 I started a thread about having passed the 35 year mark but never published it.  I was angry about something at the time, pretty clearly, and it was a very bitter posts.  I thought better of it and didn't post it, but I didn't wipe it out until recently.  I reread it and then did so, even though much of what I wrote in it is still true.

All careers are individual, of course which is what makes career advice so dangerous.  I've known people, for instance, who served in the military and absolutely hated it.  The entire film M*A*S*H and the television series is, in no small part, based on a hatred of military service, although the book's author, a conservative, ironically did not hate his. The same is true, for what it's worth, of Catch 22.  Heller actually admired the military he lampooned.  Both books were hugely successful, however, as they not only tapped into the oddities of military life, but also into a hatred of it in some quarters.

In contrast, I've known people who loved it, and I myself liked it.

I note that as I suppose that the law is the same way, maybe all careers are.

That aside, the law is unique and is well known for being so.

The law has an alcoholism and alcohol abuse rate that's far higher than other professions.  That isn't the only abusive trait in it, however.  It's estimated that something like 60% of lawyers have had in the office sexual infidelities and while I haven't tried to add up percentages, and that percentage seems high, there are indeed a lot of them.  The law also has some really screwball personalities in it, although I'm at the point where I now wonder if those personalities became that way due to the law, or entered the law because of it.  In my current Gen. Jones stage of life, I'm amazed by the number of burnt out husks of people who won't retire from the law as that's all they have.

I'm not the only one who's noticed that, and a recent conversation is part of what brought me back to this thread.  In speaking to an opposing lawyer I've known a long time by phone, on a holiday, he brought up the very things I've noted, this included.  Indeed, he noted that for a lot of people, they'd become lawyers, that's what they now were as part of their personality. That's all that's left.

That should never happen, but the law is an all consuming job.

He was actually a bit angry about it.  I'm not angry, but I don't want to become one of those people.  My friend noted that what he "is", is a hunter and mountain climber.  What he "does" is be a lawyer.  That's pretty much true for me as well, although I'd substitute outdoorsmen for climber.

He also had the observation that after working years at the law, late nights, early days, weekends, that he and his wife did things together rarely.  The pressure of work brought that about.  That's pretty much the same story in my own life.  Another lawyer I know just had his wife of about 30 years just up and leave him, leaving him wondering why.  It seems a "therapist" suggested that, and frankly I have a dim view of most therapist or counsellors, but what I suspect is that the same thing was at work.  That fellow had told me not all that long, before the disaster came, that he was never going to retire, because he enjoyed the fellowship of the lawyers.

Well, nothing that we do at work is something "enjoyed" by our spouses, except for perhaps the money.  If the lawyer is really one of those ones who enjoys the courtroom combat, or the intellectual challenge, the spouses don't participate in that at all.

Money can matter, however.  Yet another lawyer I know, about my same age, is trying to retire but is upset as his wife just can't grasp that the funding burn rate has to stop.  I think a lot of lawyers who keep on keeping on face that with a family member or perhaps themselves. From the outside, you know they'd be fine.  But to them, or a loved one, the fear of no further income will just drive them into the grave, working.  Fears of that type, and not my own, have kept me working for the past four years.

The law is not only an all consuming occupation, it's one that's soul destroying.  Many "plaintiffs' lawyers" have really lost their humanity.  Not all by any means, but quite a few. They really don't care about the people they represent in many instances.  It's one of the thing that makes practicing law so dispiriting and damaging to your own soul.  Most of the propaganda that lawyers and law firms of a certain type being there to help people is pure crap.  They don't mean it, and everyone inside the law knows that.  Simply practicing law, at some point, or perhaps more accurately being in litigation, is participating on a fraud on the public.

I'm told I'm really good at the law.  If that's true it's proof you can be good at something that you really don't love.  I'm beyond the point of not loving it anymore.

I entered the profession for the same reasons a lot of people do.  My earlier career had not worked out and I didn't seem to have any other place to go.  I had started off obtaining a very difficult science degree only to graduate into an economy where I was unemployable.  This is, I'd note, more common than a person might suppose.  There was no family business to step into.  What I really wanted to do, and still do, wasn't open to me.  Even at that, I hesitated and I chose not to enter the law school class I was admitted into.  I waited a year hoping to find work, and didn't.  Soldiering was the work that year.  I guess I could have chosen to make that a career, and in some ways I"m surprised I didn't.

The last year of my undergraduate degree I tried switch to a different field:

The road not taken.

Sigh. . . 

I'd be offered a summer position with them, but not until years later, at which point I was already practicing law and engaged.  I've posted on that before.

If 'd had my druthers, which hardly anyone does, I would have have been a rancher.  I have been around agriculture which is to say that I would have ranched full time.  I came close it without really realizing it after law school right as my father was looking at retiring.  We came close to the two of us starting a place, and then he died.  I abandoned that particular effort in order to help my mother, who had no such interest.  Laster I found she was baffled why I hadn't let her know.

My wife and I have always had cattle, but it's never been a full time thing.  Sometimes it's promised to almost be that, but it never has.  Now I'm 63 and time has moved on.  It's something I'll never recover from.  It was one of the goals that kept me at my desk job, and now the goal can't be met.  

Time and effort wasted.

There are some things that are quite scary about time moving on, I'll note.  Fear of death is not one of them.  I constantly hear that people are supposed to be afraid of death, but I've lived pretty close to death my entire life and I'm not.  If death arrives before my plans play out, well, so be it.  Nobody knows the day nor the hour.  Momento mori.

But what has moved on is the opportunity to complete a bunch of things I used to do and be engaged in before I started practicing law.  That must show something about my own character, as other lawyers take long vacations and the like, but I don't really seem capable of devoting time to vocations and avocations.  I'll leave it to the reader to decide which is which.  The interest in those pursuits remains, however.

Gone is interest in the law itself.  I'm not interested nor fascinated in it.  I never loved it in the first place, but I have had over the years a reputation as being a legal scholar.  I still get calls from various lawyers about legal situations which are rare or difficult. The difference is that I no longer find them interesting at all.

At one time, seeing as I was a lawyer, I really wanted to be a judge, which is a position for legal scholars, and I've applied within our system a bunch of times, and been encouraged to do so by judges.  Now I'm too old, as mandatory retirement is at age 70 and the committee isn't going to appoint somebody at age 63 for a single term.  Or I suppose not. To my surprise, they recently almost in fact did that in a district in which very few people were applying for the position. The past two Governors and the Judicial Nominating Committee have pretty much wrecked the process for successful lawyers, so applications are way down.

Indeed, one of my frustrations with the practice of law has been watching the decline of the judicial nominating system, which has grown much more political over the last few decades. When I started out you could really see why various judges got appointed to their positions.  When Matt Mead became Governor, however, he had an agenda of appointing women and that's what he was going to do.  That was a politically motivated bias and it meant if there was a man up for the same position, he wasn't getting it.

Governor Gordon has had a very strong bias towards prosecutors, although there are some exceptions. 

The oncoming Governor, Barlow, will be interesting to watch in this regard.  He's a professional himself (veterinarian) and perhaps he'll take a more informed and balanced view.

Anyhow, after 36 years of this, it's time to move on, so I'm moving on.  I'll complete this year, but I'm not starting another one.

Indeed, on the topic, I'm capable of reading the signs.  The American dream is that you live to age 100 and die in your sleep.  You probably aren't going to.  

Over the last couple of years I've watched some of the lawyers who are older than me decline pretty seriously in some ways.  And I'm declining too.  I had colon surgery out of the blue, something that probably could have been averted if I'd had regular colon checkups like you are supposed to.  Going through that process I ended up having an odd thing on my thyroid discovered.  Half my thyroid ended up coming out, although I probably could have avoided that if I was willing to risk it being nothing, which didn't seem to be a solid risk at the time.  Now I have to take pills every day for the first time in my life.

A year ago the eye doctor noted something peculiar in my eye.  Last week, on my follow up exam, it was clear it was a tiny cataract  It's not a problem yet, but it probably will be in "ten years".  I'm young for a cataract, but it's due to an injury.  

I've endured a lot of injuries over the years.

I'm considerably more tired than I used to be, and my physical stamina, still pretty good, has declined.  I could probably address this as people ought to at my age by exercise, but my schedule is incredibly burdened.  

I don't handle stress anywhere near as good as I used to, however, and stress is a killer.

So, in four months, I'm done.

The big challenge now is letting everyone know, and getting my wife to accept it.  That part isn't going to be easy at all.  

It's not going to be easy as at least my long suffering spouse doesn't want to believe I'm at this point.  I've been mentioning it, but when retirement comes up, it's always "you can't".  Retirement is, she suggests, a year further in the future than I imagine it.

A year isn't much, but it's a year.  I hear all the time that somebody retired and then died, as if retirement killed them.  Really, they just hang on too long.

And again, that hanging on is a funny thing.  I've watched one lawyer who has no family (divorced) and who has no faith keep on going to work.  I guess it's his identify . I mentioned retiring to him once and he scoffed, saying "good luck".  Of course, I don't have to pay alimony and I don't take expensive trips.

I've also watched a couple of very ill lawyers hang on after their illness set in. It provided a distraction I guess.  Indeed, on the very odd occasion I mention this to anyone people always suggest a law job I could take in retirement, which isn't what I have in mind at all.

In contrast, one lawyer who experienced a health care scare recently, one year younger than me told me that next year was definitely the date.  When I expressed doubt, the reply was "watch me".

What you are supposed to say, like Edith Piaf, is that you have no regrets about your career as a lawyer.

I can't say that.

I probably should feel that way.  Just yesterday, once again, thinking over the past 36 years I came to the conclusion that with the box I was in, I did the only thing I could do.  True or not, and it's probably true, hindsight being 20/20, I'd have avoided the law like the plague if I'd known what it was like.  As noted above, I'm sure there are people who look back and say they loved every second of it.

I'm not one of them.

To compound  things, I've been in litigation the entire time.  That was a mistake, as I'm not well suited for it internally.  I'm an introvert and I don't like being in extroverted situations.  I just couldn't find a way out of it.

Well, anyhow, page one of the concluding chapter.

So now, I have to start informing people.  This isn't going to be fun at all, but knowing myself, if I don't, it won't become real.

I've never liked doing trials.  Some lawyers claim to love them, and I suppose they do. There's something in their personalities, a defect really, which requires them to test their wits against other people.  Most lawyers don't like doing them, and most of the lawyers who say they do, are lying.

Like baseball players before a game, most lawyers have some sort of ritual before they try a case.  At one time, as late as the early 90s, that ritual for quite a few involved heavy drinking.  I don't think that's the case so much anymore.  Frankly, while conservatives are all worked up about it in some quarters, I think that's one of the things that the massive introduction of women into the law changed, and for the better.

When I get close to trials, I usually rewatch The Wild Bunch.  I know that's odd, but I love that movie and I find it very engaging.  Part of the reason that I watch it in this context is that the protagonists in the move are basically all mercenaries of a sort.  Yes, I know that they're criminals, but still.  And there's not one redeeming person in their whole contest.

Everyone who likes movies is familiar with the famous concluding gunbattle of the movie.  But that's not the last scene.  Former gang member turned bounty hunter Deke Thornton is waiting outside the town gate as evening arrives, having sent the dead bodies of the gang back with the other bounty hunters.  Elderly gang member Skyes rides up with Mexican Indians and  the following exchange occurs.

Sykes: I didn't expect to find you here.

Deke Thornton: Why not? I sent them back. That's all I said I'd do.

Sykes: They didn't get very far.

Deke Thornton: I figured.

Sykes: What are your plans, now?

Deke Thornton: Drift around down here. Try to stay out of jail.

Sykes: Well, me and the boys got some work to do. You want to come with us? It ain't like it used to be, but it'll do.

That's how I feel about things.  I intend to hunt, fish, work cattle, write and put in a garden.

But even if I only do a faction of that stuff, it'll be okay.

It ain't like it used to be, but it'll do.

Lex Anteinternet: Do the right thing.

Lex Anteinternet: Do the right thing.:   Today is, of course, Easter. I saw a comment from a blog I've sort of followed where the poster fairly frequently remarks that he'...

Do the right thing.

 

Today is, of course, Easter.

I saw a comment from a blog I've sort of followed where the poster fairly frequently remarks that he's a fallen away Catholic, although at the same time his world outlook is obviously Catholic.  Today he chose to explain why he fell away.

What's struck me over the years is that an awful lot of people who take that path fall away as they're self centered.  The post made that really clear.  Supposedly he couldn't reconcile the message of the Church and the direction of society. That's not a reason to fall away, that's the very reason we need to be saved.  Without Christ, we're just a bunch of self centered whiners out to destroy ourselves.

Religion is not magic, which some people seem to think it is. Christians discuss the problem of evil, but part of the reason that evil is in the world as we have free will and we like it.  I saw a comment from a Monk once reflecting, and he meant it, that he asked the question "God, why do you law injustice in the world?" and actually got a reply, that being "Why do you?"

We know what's wrong and right and frequently just choose what's wrong.  The big Mega Churches will be packed today with "Christians" who are on multiple divorces and remarriages, or just living in sin, even though we all know that's wrong.  For that matter, Catholic churches will be packed today with those who only make it to Mass twice a year.

That's not to be lamented.  It's a sign of hope.  We know what's wrong.  We're often just to lazy and accommodating to do what's right.

Today is a good day to start doing what's right, including comporting our actual conduct to God and the the nature God created.

Straying from this a bit, I'd note how overarching this really is.  While I can't get into details very much, recently I've been dealing with a massive inter personal fight between two people I've known for a long time. Both are flat out wrong.

One of them is now upset with somebody that he once deeply loved as that person harshly criticized him.  Frankly, the nature of the criticism was brutal.  I've been criticized by the same person brutally myself, but I haven't lived a particularly sheltered life so I learned to just disregard it and the person eventually wondered on.  This person, however, hero worshipped the person who turned on him.

Additionally, there's an element of financial stress going on in there somewhere and while the person in question regards themselves as a very devout Christian, it's really clear that their concept of Christianity involves a deep love of the Church and its sacraments, but not so much some of its lessons, including the one that holds love of money is the root of all sin.

It's a classic failing.

The other person is an archetypical Baby Boomer.  For some reason a lot of Boomers just can't let go.  Handed everything early on, they really became the "Me" generation of the 70s.  This person really only has their work left, as his marriage fell apart and for the classic reasons, and, well, I won't go into it.  At some point if you were the center of all of your major life choices, however, all you have left, is you, and that isn't much.

Our current President, and indeed our last, both epitomized that Boomer view in some ways.  Trump has lived the Playboy lifestyle and his soul is imperiled.  He's also endangering us all, and all because to him, it's all about him.

Christ came to save humanity, but we're supposed to participate in that.  The road is fairly clear.  We're to try to take the narrow one.  Americans seemingly think that doesn't apply to them, and wonder why they're miserable.

Χριστὸς ἀνέστη!

Ἀληθῶς ἀνέστη!

Do the right thing. 

Lex Anteinternet: Mid Week at Work. Three Mirrors.

Lex Anteinternet: Mid Week at Work. Three Mirrors.:  

Mid Week at Work. Three Mirrors.

 This blog, as we occasionally note has the intent . . . to try to explore and learn a few things about the practice of law prior to the current era. That is, prior to the internet, prior to easy roads, and the like. How did it work, how regional was it, how did lawyers perceive their roles, and how were they perceived?

Well, okay, clearly its strayed way beyond that, but it's retained that purpose and is focused on the period from around 1900 until around 1920, which makes a lot other things, indeed most things, off topic.

But this past week there were a collection of things we ran across that really do sort of focus in on that a bit, and given us an example of how things have changed.

Taking them in no particular order, we have the story of baseball player Tommy Brown, about whom we noted:

Seventeen year old Tommy Brown became the youngest player in Major League Baseball to hit a home run.  Brown had joined the Dodgers at age 16.

Brown provides a good glimpse into mid 20th Century America.  Nobody would think it a good thing for a 16 year old to become a professional baseball player now.  Moreover, the next year, when Brown was 18, he was conscripted into the Army, something that likely wouldn't happen now even if conscription existed.  He returned to professional baseball after his service, and played until 1953 and thereafter worked in a Ford plant until he retired, dying this year at age 97.  Clearly baseball, which was America's biggest sport at the time, didn't pay the sort of huge sums it does now.

Tommy "Buckshot" Brown as born on December 6, 1927 and January 15, 2025, and gives us a really good glimpse of the world of the late 1930s and 1940s.  He'd dropped out of school at age 12 in 1939 and went to work with his uncle as a dockworker.  Being a longshoreman is a notoriously dangerous job and frankly the occupation was heavily influenced by the mob at the time.  There's no earthly way that you could be hired as a longshoreman at age 12 now, nor should there be.  But life was like that then.  My father's father, who was born in 1907, I think, went to work at age 13.  

People did that.

If you are a longshoreman at age 12, you are a 12 year old adult.

He must have been a good baseball player to be hired on in the Majors at age 16.  If that happened now, you'd have to be one of the greatest players alive in the game. But this was during World War Two, and baseball was scraping.

It was scraping as the military was.  The service had taken pretty much all the able bodied men who weren't in a critical war industry.  We don't like to think this about "the Greatest Generation" now, but by 1944 and 1945, the Army was inducting me who were only marginally capable of being soldiers in normal times.  Men who were legally blind in one eye and who were psychotic were being taken in, and I'm not exaggerating.  The recent incident we reported here of a soldier going mad and killing Japanese POWs makes sense in this context.  It's relatively hard to get into the Army now.  After World War Two men inducted were in good physical and mental shape.  By the last days of the Second World War not all were and we knew it.

Brown's story also tells us a lot about what economic life was like mid century.  Obviously, baseball didn't make Brown rich, and there was no post baseball career associated with sports.  He went to work in a factory.

Going to work in a factory, in the 50s, was a pretty solid American job, and another story we touched on relates to this.

The US War Production Board removed most of its controls over manufacturing activity, setting the stage for a post war economic boom.

The US standard of living had actually increased during the war, which is not entirely surprising given that the US economy had effectively stagnated in 1929, and the US was the only major industrial power other than Canada whose industrial base hadn't been severely damaged during the war.  Ever since the war, Americans have been proud of the economics of the post war era, failing to appreciate that if every major city on two continents is bombed or otherwise destroyed, and yours aren't, your going to succeed.

Having said that, the Truman Administration's rapid normalization of the economy was very smart.  The British failed to do that to their detriment.

Americans of our age, and indeed since the 1950s, have really convinced themselves that American Ingenuity and native smartness caused us to have the best economy in the world in the third quarter of the 20th Century, and that if only we returned to the conditions of the 50s, we would again.

Well, the conditions of the 1950s were a lot like the conditions of the post war 1940s.  Every major city in the world, save for American and Canadian ones, had been damaged, and many had been bombed flat.   It's not as if Stuttgart, Stalingrad, or Osaka were in good shape.  We would have had to nearly intentionally mess up not to be the world's dominant economy and that went on all the way into the 1970s.  The UK did not really recover from World War Two, in part due to bad economic decisions, until the 1960s.  West Germany, ironically, recovered much quicker, but in no small part due to the return of refugee German economists who intentionally ignored American economic advice.  Japan emerged from the devastation in the 70s.  Italy really started to in the 60s.  

Many of these countries, when they did, emerged with brand new economies as things were brand new.  Japan is a good example, but then so is Italy, which had been a shockingly backwater dump until the mid 50s.

Russia, arguably, has never recovered, helping to explain its national paranoia.

The thing is, however, that the myth as been hugely damaging to Americans, who imagine that if we were only whiter and had "less regulation", etc., we'd be back in 1955.  It's not going to happen, and we can't tariff our way back to the Eisenhower Era.

Of course, a lot of that post war era wasn't all that nifty. We had the Cold War, for example, and we often dealt with significant inflation, in no small part to inflate our way out of enormous Cold War defense budgets. . .which is probably a warning of what's to come when we realize we have to do something about the national debt.

Finally, we had posted on women and careers.  Well, sort of.  Anyhow, right after that we saw a Twitter post in which a young woman who posted on TikTok was being discussed for say:

I'm just so tired of living and working and doing this every single day, and having nothing — I don't know how I'm gonna get childcare when I have to work 40 hours a week because I can't even afford to feed my family as is.  I'm having medical problems. I can't even get into the doctor because X rays and MRIs are 500, let alone a colonoscopy and endoscopy that I need. Like, I can't afford anything. My doctors cancel my appointments.

This world is just not meant to be like this, we need to make change for us, for each other. Please.

She's right.

This was under the heading, on her post, of "This world is a scam".

The world?  Well, that's a little too broad.  But the modernized industrialized Protestant work ethic world of the West?  You bet.

Interestingly, one of the things she took flak for was buying some sort of baby bottle washer.  It's been a long time since there were infants here, but when there were, I recall we tended to use sort of a disposable system, not real bottles.  Having said that, I looked bottles up, and I can recall that we had some of the ones that are still offered, so I'm likely wrong.  Anyhow, washing bottles is no doubt a pain.

The irate people, who are probably generally irate simply because she had children, and therefore is not fully lashed to the deck of the economic fraud everyone is participating in, seemed to think that this therefore meant she was rich.  Not hardly.

FWIW, I looked up baby bottle washers too, and they really aren't that expensive.  They no doubt probably save time.  Time is money and of course we need to get those wimmen's out in the workplace where they can serve the machine.

Women only entered the workplace at this level in the first place after domestic machinery freed, or seperated, their labor from the house, where it had previously been necessary.  You don't see women being criticized because their house contains a vacuum cleaner, or a dishwasher, even though this is not intrinsically different.  

Indeed, this tends to be the one area where the right and the left are in agreement, and will yell about how society needs more baby warehouses, um daycares.  The left, of course, goes further and discourages having children at all, and would indeed expand infanticide if it could, one of the issues that gave rise to the culture was and the populist revolve that we're still in.  

At any rate, she's right.  The world is not meant to be like this. We made this horror, and others.  We can fix it.

Lex Anteinternet: World Happiness Report 2025

Lex Anteinternet: World Happiness Report 2025:  

World Happiness Report 2025

 

Read it and weep MAGA.  Mexico is a happier country than the dumpster fire the US has become, and the anger and discontent of a delusional populist far right has a lot to do with that, imho.

The US makes the top 25, sort of:

From Happier Lives Institute.

World Happiness Report 2025

Read the Report

• Chapter 1Executive Summary
• Chapter 2Caring and sharing: Global analysis of happiness and kindness
• Chapter 3Sharing meals with others: How sharing meals supports happiness and social connections
• Chapter 4Living with others: How household size and family bonds relate to happiness
• Chapter 5Connecting with others: How social connections improve the happiness of young adults
• Chapter 6Supporting others: How prosocial behaviour reduces deaths of despair
• Chapter 7Trusting others: How unhappiness and social distrust explain populism
• Chapter 8Giving to others: How to convert your money into greater happiness for others

Oh, you'll note we're behind Canada.  Maybe we should ask Canada to become a province.

There's a lot of things that go into this, we'll note, but right now there's no sign that we're becoming a happy country, let alone a "great" one, "again".

Lex Anteinternet: What's Wrong with the United States? We're really ignorant, and its getting worse.

Lex Anteinternet: What's Wrong with the United States? We're really...: 

What's Wrong with the United States? We're really ignorant, and its getting worse.

21% of adults in the US are illiterate. 54% of American adults have a literacy below a 6th-grade level. 

And we wonder how Trump got elected?

The illiterate are ignorant, and blisteringly ignorant people vote for stupid stuff.

I had a very strange experience the other day, which I need to be indistinct about.

It had to do with homeschooling.

Twice in recent weeks I've run across a topic that's in the legislature, that being the legal requirement, which the Wyoming 2025 Legislative assembly is about to wipe out, that home schooling parents submit their educational plans to their local school districts.  The requirement is there to prevent parents from basically not educating their children.

Not educating children is what homeschooling is all about.

This wasn't always the case, but it's become the case.  

Some background.

My father was the first male in his family to graduate from high school.  He might have been the third member of the family, as I don't know that much about my paternal grandmother's early life in that fashion.  She probably graduated high school in Denver however, likely from a Catholic high school.  His older sister graduated from a high school in Scottsbluff.

My father went on to a doctorate.

My paternal grandfather, who left school to work at age 13, had such an advance knowledge of mathematics that he helped his children with their high school calculus homework, which is revealing for two reasons, one that is amazing on his part, and secondly all of my father's siblings took calculus in high school.

I didn't take calculus in high school

My father could speak two languages, English and German, and had a knowledge of Latin.  My paternal grandfather also could speak two languages, English and German, and had a knowledge of Latin.

My mother did not graduate from high school She was not given the opportunity to.  She earned an Associates as a an adult.  Her mother was university educated, as was her father.  They all spoke two languages, English and French, and had a command of Latin.

Growing up in my family household was like getting a post doctorate in some things, history and science in particular.  I read so early that I was on to adult books before I left grade school and had the odd experience of a junior high librarian not wishing to check a history book as she feared it was too advance.  I read The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire before I left junior high.

I was in fact educated on a lot of stuff at home. . . but I was sent to school.

There's an interesting pattern here.  Some of my friends of my age had college educated parents, but not all of them did.  But all of my friends attended college or university.  Not all graduated, but they did receive some post high school education.  One of my closest friends had a father who did not graduate from high school.  He joined the Army in his senior year to fight in World War Two, following in the footsteps of a father who had fought in World War One.  My friend has two bachelors degrees.

And there's another thing here.  Even those people I knew from my generation, and the prior one, who had parents that didn't graduate high school, had quite literate parents.  If I ever went into a house that didn't have a lot of books somewhere, it was shocking.  I can only really recall one.  The home of my friend noted above was like a library.  My parents house  and that of all of my aunts and uncles were packed with books.  In my parents house you could find a few books that were in German or French.  A friend of mine who did not graduate from high school, but none the less went off to university, recalled his grandparents house being packed with books in . . . Gaelic.

My paternal grandmother absolutely insisted that my father go on to get an advanced degree, something he briefly though about not doing.  His unmarried sister near in age to him was sent to university as well.  I was given no real choice but to go on to higher education myself.  

And this was common for people my generation, and the preceding one.  Farm and ranch family in particular often had a manic dedication to higher education.

Home schooling has been around since time immemorial, I suppose, but when I was a kid, what it probably meant, where I live, is that the kid in question was living on a really remote ranch.  Even then, most ranching parents made a dedicated effort to avoid that.  More than a few had a teacher who lived at the ranch, paid for by the school district.  The county I live in had four rural remote public schools, of which only one is still in operation.  The neighboring one had some so remote that if you run across them on really rural roads its a shock.  The teachers at these institutions were admired in a way that's hard to describe.  Anything going on in the area always included them.

I didn't know a single homeschooled kid growing up.

Next to home schooling, of course, is private schooling.  When I was young the only private school I ever heard of was the Catholic school.  It was a big downtown school.  It's moved from downtown, but it still exists.  Catholic education had long been a thing in the US and apparently Catholics are supposed to send their kids to Catholic schools if they can, but I didn't go to it (it was full), nor did our kids.  

When in high school I learned that there was a Lutheran grade school, to my enormous surprise, as I walked by it every day.  After high school I learned that there was a "Christian" school, by which I mean a school attached to one of the sort of due it yourself evangelical Protestant groups.  It started in 1978, so I would have been in high school when it commenced operating.  The ministers for that church, at the time, were drawn from the congregation, and I later met one who was ironically adverse with its tenants as he was a geologist who accepted the truth of evolution, which the church did not.

A church that thinks evolution is a fib, probably doesn't have it taught in its schools.

Which is the point, really.  The goal of a large amount of modern homeschooling is to keep students as ignorant as possible, which is conceived of as limiting tehir "exposure" to corrupting elements.

I've been exposed to a few homeschooled kids over the years and frankly a lot of them were rather weird and very socially awkward.  Having said that, I've met one kid, and know of another, from a homeschooling family who were not that way, and one of which went on to a really high dollar career.

Now, with that comment, let me note that education isn't about getting rich, or shouldn't be.  It's about the Allegory of the Cave.  The problem here is that those exposed to  the sunlight are seeking to drag the ir offspring back into it, deeper in the cave, and into chains.

The simple fact of the matter is that Americans were much more literate prior to the 1990s than they are now.  They read.  They read even if they hadn't graduated high school.

And they read a lot, and a lot of it is much more advanced than what people claim to read now.  Even people who mostly read novels often read things much more advanced than people do now.  I recall one parent of a family friend being a fanatic fan of C. S. Forester, whose novels were just that, but noen the less dealt often with the Napoleonic Wars, something a lot of current Americans probably don't know occured.  One fellow I knew in the National Guard loved Louis Lamour, so much so that he read The Walking Drum, which is set in the Middle Ages, about which he was able to speak intelligently.  Another fellow, who had been a career Marine, was reading War and Peace.

Everyone read the newspaper.  You'd frequently see periodicals in people's houses, including unfortunately Playboy on occasion, but the latter had sufficiently good interviews that my high school newspaper teacher used those as examples and adopted them for the pattern of a series in that high school journal.  Less unfortunately, you'd see Time, Newsweek and Life in people's houses routinely.  And everyone read the local newspaper, by which I mean everyone.

The National Geographic seemed to be in the home of every household that had children, including ours.  Our collection went back into the 1940s, from my father's parents home.

Cartoons didn't make much of an appearance in our house, and I"ve never developed a taste for most of the cartoon journal type of cartoons, like Superman, but what I do recall is when they showed up, it was often Mad Magazine, which actually is really adult oriented, and not in the juvenile way "adult" is often used.

The point is, when people claim people were "more educated" in the past, including populists who are not today, they tended to be, but in ways that people now just don't really quite grasp.  They often had lower levels of educational achievement, but because they lived in a literate world, they were societally educated.

You can go into a lot of homes today and find that the occupants read. . . nothing.  

Instead, people consume only what suits them.  

In almost all of the 20th Century, it wasn't really possible to hear only the news you wanted to.  Even if you limited yourself to radio, prior to the introduction of television, you were going to get a wide range of news.  Newspapers were, as noted, almost a requirement for most households.  When television came in, at first, it was highly local but the news was national and there was no avoiding it.  You weren't going to get right or left wing propaganda from anyone.

That's all passed.

Americans aren't reading.  What media they consume is self reaffirming, like Protestant sermons from the 1600s.  People are listening only to like minds, and the nation is becoming more and more ignorant.

Which is why we have Donald Trump in office.  No literate nation would elect him to anything.\

Note that this doesn't mean the population is dumb.  Ignorant and dumb are not the same thing.  But we suffer from the Jo Jo Rabbit Effect in a major way.  We're listening, basically, to ourselves, and making excuses for our failures, and justifying our appetites.

And it puts the entire globe in danger.

Lex Anteinternet: Work with meaning and the meaning of work.

Lex Anteinternet: Work with meaning and the meaning of work.: 

Work with meaning and the meaning of work.

You see, in this world there's two kinds of people, my friend: Those with loaded guns and those who dig. You dig.

Blondie, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.

I have a theory that certain work is existential by nature.  My post on that from several months ago:

A conversation with an old friend. The Good Death, and the Good Life and Existential Occupations.

Why do I note this?

Well I've had a bunch of synchronicitous events happen recently that perhaps demand it being noted, assuming that anything must be noted here at all.  Because they're all sort of circular, I'll start in one spot and gather the round corral, noting that these recollections are all recent, but not chronological.

I was walking out of the sporting goods store and ran into a law school colleague.  For some reason or another, for much of my life, I've always been the youngest person in a group as a rule, even when I really shouldn't have been.  Anyhow, this fellow, like two other of my law school friends, was an older law student, in law school, although I'm not sure how old he really was then,  Two of my other friends, both Vietnam War era veterans, were in their 40s, so they're in their mid 70s now.  I think this fellow was probably in his mid to late 30s.  He remained remarkably the same looking all that time.

He kind of bounced around at first as a lawyer before landing in a firm where he practiced for maybe 20 years.  He's retired now, and has been for awhile.  He asked me if I was getting ready to retire, which I indicated I wasn't, but I did ask him about the process, and he gave me some details of how he'd gone about it.  

Good to know from somebody who has done it.

He doesn't miss practicing at all.

In contrast to this, a close friend of mine, well really a relative, who is a lawyer who must be crowding 70 told me the other day he's not going to.  He'd miss the collegiality of being a lawyer.

That answer shocked me.  Not that he wasn't going to retire, but the collegiality.

Eh?

It may be just me, but only a handful of my friends are lawyers.  I do have some lawyer friends.  But most of my friends aren't lawyers and never have been.  I wouldn't miss most lawyers whatsoever.  Indeed, I miss a lot of my genuinely close friends due to the practice of law.

This, frankly, is probably an exception to the rule.  Law is a unique profession, litigation with in the law even more so, and by and large the onliy people who have a grasp on what it is like are other lawyers.  It is, I suppose, kind of like being a combat veteran that way.  Lawyers hang out with other lawyers as they're lawyers.  

Indeed, being heavily introverted, I've often noted how much lawyers enjoy professional gatherings. They really do.  There are organizations that we're all part of and we'll go to a conference and there will be a big dinner or something, everyone goes.

Unless my spouse is with me, or one of the few lawyers I really know well and like, I tend to avoid those gatherings.

Anyhow this takes me to a second point.

I know a couple of lawyers who have lost their souls.

I don't mean in a metaphysical sense.  That is, I'm not saying they're condemned to Hell.  What I'm saying is that their personalities are gone and been absorbed by false ones in the pursuit of nothing more than money.

It happens to people.  It's not a pleasant thing to see.  

I was never friends with either of the ones I have in mind.  Interestingly, however, one seems to be trying to emerge.  One, who sank into this a long time ago actually started talking to me the other day about what he was going to do "next", something he's never said before.

A really good lawyer friend of mine is mostly retired.  Like the fellow I mentioned above, while he had his doubts, he hasn't missed the practice at all.

Another good lawyer friend of mine, a woman, is trying to transition from one practice to another.

Two women I know otherwise recently lost their jobs. They weren't lawyers.

I note that as I think women in particular are subject to the Capitalist lie that careers are existentially defining, a completely modern notion.

St Paul was a tent maker.  St. Peter a fisherman.  I don't know if there are any classic Medieval or Renaissance paintings of St. Paul making a tent, but there should be.

Why do I note that?

Well, for this reason.  You don't think much about St. Paul being a tent maker as his occupation didn't define him.  His sainthood did.  

But a lot of us moderns sure have made our occupations define us.  And women are very much doing so now.

This takes me back to the item I linked in above.

In this case, unlike my uncle, he was much younger.  My age, in fact.  I hadn't seen him for many years, and before his troubles really set in.  He hadn't been able to adjust to them well.  The most common comment from people, none of whom were surprised, was that his torment was over.

I don't have any big plans, like one of my friends, for retirement.  I hope to be healthy, and just become more of an agrarian-killetarian than I presently am.  Funny thing is that recently I've been running into people who claim "you're looking really good". Somebody asked me the other day, indeed at the funeral gathering, "you're working out", the question in the form of a statement.  Not really.

Indeed, I've gained some weight I seemingly just can't lose, which I think is the byproduct of my thyroid medicine, which has made me hungry, and I know that I'm not in the physical condition I was before my recent health troubles commenced.  People close to me just won't accept that, which brings me to the other side of the retirement coin noted above.  Some lawyers I know are already planning for me to work into my 70s, as that's the thing to do, apparently. Long-suffering spouse, for her part, won't say something like that, but from an ag family, she doesn't really accept the concept of retirement anyhow.  Having said that, I wouldn't plan on my retiring from the ag operation either.

It finally occured to me, however, what's different about agricultural jobs as opposed to others, at least if you are an owner of the enterprise or part of it.  The occupation itself is existentially human.  It is, if you will, an Existential Occupation, or at least it is right now. The mindless gerbil like advance of "progress" may ruin that and reduce it to just another occupation.

Existential Occupations are ones that run with our DNA as a species.  Being a farmer/herdsman is almost as deep in us as being a hunter or fisherman, and it stems from the same root in our being.  It's that reason, really, that people who no longer have to go to the field and stream for protein, still do, and it's the reason that people who can buy frozen Brussels sprouts at Riddleys' still grown them on their lots.  And its the reason that people who have never been around livestock will feel, after they get a small lot, that they need a cow, a goat, or chickens.  It's in us.  That's why people don't retire from real agriculture.

It's not the only occupation of that type, we might note.  Clerics are in that category.  Storytellers and Historians are as well.  We've worshiped the Devine since our onset as a species, and we've told stories and kept our history as story the entire time.  They're all existential in nature.  Those who build certain things probably fit into that category as well, as we've always done that.  The fact that people tinker with machinery as a hobby would suggest that it's like that as well.

Indeed, if it's an occupation. . . and also a hobby, that's a good clue that its an Existential Occupation.

If I were to retire from my career, which I can't right now, I wouldn't be one of those people who spend their time traveling to Rome or Paris or wherever.  I have very low interest in doing that.  I'd spend my time writing, fishing, hunting, gardening (and livestock tending).  That probably sounds pretty dull to most people.  I could imagine myself checking our Iceland or Ireland, or fjords in Norway, but I likely never will.

That's more than I really need for my point here, but it ties in, this way.

Most careers are just jobs. They're an industrial way of separating you from your homes to make money for somebody else, in exchange for which you make some money too.  This was done to men first, and then with the "women's liberation" movement of the 1960s, women drank the KookAide and have been wondering when the good feels will arrive.

They won't.

Most jobs have no greater existential meaning than that.  If you define yourself by them, you are defining yourself as a fiction.

Which is why I worry about the lawyers who collapse into the cartoonish litigation personality.  It makes you a cartoon, and not a very interesting one.

It's also why lawyers who become deep dive into the Whaling For Justice personality, or something like it, sort of boil off the people they were and become somebody nobody is interested in.

And I also think that's why old lawyers have a hard time retiring.  After selling your life away, is this it?  It must be. This must be it.  I must love this as otherwise. . . .

I will note, and strongly, that I'm not advocating here for something that seems to be a current rage.  Don't get any post high school education and hope for the best.

Indeed, the advocates of that, don't mean that.  They mean don't forget to look at occupations where you work with your hands.

Now listen to me, all of you. You are all condemned men. We keep you alive to serve this ship. So row well, and live.

Quintus Arrius, Ben Hur.

The truth of the matter is that we sell our lives for a living, but we shouldn't sell our souls.  A lot of career propaganda emphasis the nifty life you are supposed to have, but not the risk of losing your soul, and here I mean in both senses.  Being able to sell the minutes of your life away for a decent return means that you need to have skills of some sort that are valuable.  People should try to acquire those if for nothing else their own protection.

Women, I'd note, are particularly vulnerable here.  A woman with a professional degree, such as law, is armed against loss of employer.  A woman who doesn't have some sort of valuable skill is at the mercy of her employer.  They're the ones who lose their jobs readily, and who are subject to all sorts of risks.  

The trick, I guess, is to get those skills and remember that we shouldn't lose who we are.

One group of people who tend to make that career choice are people who work for the government. They're often grossly underpaid, but they also tend to have weighted the options and elected towards "quality of life".  Lawyers who work for the AG's office, or biologists who work for state and Federal agencies provide such examples.  

Interestingly, people on the outside in the same fields tend to hold these people in contempt.  I guess people working 80 hours a week to make a go of it are naturally resentful towards those who do not.  But those people are often very dedicated to their professions and even more purist than those who sell their labor in the private market.  A dear cousin of mine who recently died was one such example.  She was a research biologist at a university.  

We're about to head into a Federal administration here that seems to contain a contempt to government employees.  Indeed one recent campaign featured somebody who wants to limit the amount of time you can work for the Federal government.  The same campaign repeatedly noted the candidates rural roots.

The rural roots are real, but what an irony.  Descending from homesteaders means that you descent from the biggest American welfare program ever, one that used the U.S. Army to violently expel land occupants due to their race, to hand it out to European Americans.  Don't mistake my point, I love agriculture and regard it as an existential occupation, and if I'd been alive when you could have homesteaded, I would have.  But people who loved the land so much they fought for it, and lost, had the moral high ground on that, and those who came in behind them benefitted from the Federal largess and murder.

If you work for a living, why do you kill yourself working?

Tuco, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.

Genesis tells us that since we sinned in the Garden, we've condemned ourselves to work.  But it's also obvious that work was always part of the plan.  It's interesting how well this comports to how evolution and societal development worked.  We were likely a very happy group as aboriginals, and we know now that depression and modern angst is unknown in hunter gatherer societies.  But we ate from the tree of knowledge and acquired it, 

Well, now we have to work.  Make the best of it.

Lex Anteinternet: The Annual Protestant Meatless Friday Freak Out, Inconveniently Moving Easter for Convenience, and Oliver Cromwell, fun sucker.

Lex Anteinternet: The Annual Protestant Meatless Friday Freak Out, I...: 

The Annual Protestant Meatless Friday Freak Out, Inconveniently Moving Easter for Convenience, and Oliver Cromwell, fun sucker.

I started this post right at the start of Lent and then didn't finish it, and was going to trash it, but due to a late Lent event, I'm picking it back up.

The United States and Canada are Protestant nations. They don't really notice it as a rule, and quite a few cultural Protestants like to deny it, but if you are an adherent member of an Apostolic Christian religion, or for that matter probably if you are Jewish or Muslim, you'll definitely notice it.

One of the ways that it oddly comes up is the annual "it doesn't say anywhere in the Bible that you can't eat fish on Fridays" discussion that Protestants in particular, and some very weakly evangelized lapsed Catholics, like to have.  It's ironic as some of the same people will insist that grape juice was served at The Last Supper (nope, definitely wine) or that the Bible says once you accept Jesus into your heart you can go back to sinning (nope, St. Paul in particular warns you can do that and still go to Hell).

Of course, it doesn't say that you must abstain from meat on Fridays.  It's a law of the Church, not biblically imposed. The Bible discusses fasting and gives lots of examples, and it left the office of Bishops to bind and loose.  This is a rule of the Church, which has been bound. 

It only applies to members of individual Churches.  I.e, Catholics are bound, not Lutherans, or members of make it up as you go Christian churches.  Moral laws bind everyone.  Church laws bind the members of the church.

Also, FWIW, fasting and abstention from meat go way back in Church history and used to be much stricter as a practice than it is now.  It's still much stricter in the Eastern churches.  In the East, fasting involves abstention from alcohol, eggs, dairy, fish, meat, and olive oil for the 40 days of Great Lent and Holy Week.  So the Orthodox, for example, are really down to a very bland menu at this point.

That group of people who like to claim that the Latin Rite practice was made up to support the fishing industry are really out to lunch on this one, particularly as the claim is based on a grossly misconstrued concept of what the food economy was like in the ancient world.  If you lived, for example, in a Sardinian fishing town in the Middle Ages, fish is what was for dinner every night.  The fishing industry didn't really need anyone's help to be economically viable.  And at one time the Latin Rite fast more closely resembled the Eastern one.  Claims like that are generally myths of the Reformation, created in jolly old England to justify carrying on with the Reformation when they couldn't come up with any actual good reasons to do so.

For most non-Catholics and non-Orthodox, however, this isn't in the forefront of people's minds.  Restaurants get it, as there are a lot of us, which is why fish based fare shows up this time of year darned near everywhere.  But rank and file Protestants, particularly of the Christmas/Easter variety, really don't ponder this much.  If you live in a state like Wyoming, that's really obvious, as we have very low religious observation here anyhow.  There are a lot of Catholics, but we're a minority.  Protestants who don't go to church often are no doubt the majority, followed by Protestants who go to the new "non-denominational" churches, which is to say the quasi Baptist, churches (there are no "non-denominational" churches).  They can't be expected to know Canon Law.

When you go to a function of any kind during Lent, this becomes pretty obvious.  "Here's your entrée". . will come the server, serving the beef sandwich between two slabs of beef served with beef fries.

Oh, well.

That you can't suspend this and just go to meatless on Saturday is something people don't grasp.  "You can skip it this time".  No, you can't.  Violation of the rule is a mortal sin.  That seems extreme to non-Catholics, and probably has for a long time, but by the same token we live in an era when a host of other mortal sins, the sexually and marital ones in particular, are ignored by even devout church going Protestants.  If you can convince yourself, getting married for the third or fourth time doesn't mean that you are an adulterer, you can pretty easily convince yourself that eating a hamburger on Fridays in Lent is okay this one time.  Indeed, in some odd ways, the logic isn't that much different.  They both involve appetites and excuses. 

This does make Catholics stick out, and the Orthodox even more, maybe.  In some ways, as the Catholic Church has suspended so many of these rules, the fact that there are some remaining makes Catholics stick out all the more and, in turn, the few remaining rules offend people all the more.  And that is in a way part of the point in the modern world.  It sets us apart, and it should.  Like those who appear with ashes on their forehead on Ash Wednesday, it's going to mark you.

This came to mind as when I got home last night, Long Suffering Spouse announced, "my mother proposed to have Easter Dinner this Friday. . ."

Eh?

Now, by way of an obvious point, we're clearly a "mixed" family.  My side of the family is all Catholic.  LSS's is all non-Catholic.

I don't know where the dinner suggestion stands right now, as LSS isn't saying, which means it must be in the air. She protested this as we have "town jobs" which means that a Friday gathering really isn't a viable option anyhow.  And one of the things about being married to a Catholic means is that the Catholicism will start to be picked up by the non-Catholic party, no matter what.

Beyond that, however, under the current rules for Latin Rite Catholics, (and I'm sure for Eastern Rite Christians as well) on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, the fasting rules allow Catholics to eat only one full meal and two smaller meals which, combined, would not equal a single normal meal.  We've already seen that the Eastern Rite is fasting by this point every day. Catholics may not eat meat on these two days, or on any Friday during Lent.

Now, I'm over 60 years old, which means the fasting rules no longer apply to me.  As it is, however, that's my normal daily routine anyhow.  I never eat big breakfasts or lunch.  I used to often skip both, but thanks to my thyroid medication, I'm hungrier than I used to be.  Be that as it may, I'm not comfortable with a feast on Good Friday. That's weird, from an Apostolic Christian prospective.  "This is the day our savior was murdered. . . let's just skip ahead to the day he was raised".  

You can't really do that.

Of course, in Cromwellian influenced Protestant America, you probably can.  He wouldn't, as he didn't approve of observing things anyhow, but he so messed stuff up it's never recovered in the English speaking, non-Catholic, world.  Another reason that they've had to hide his head.

Anyhow, I love my in-laws, who are great, but this is pretty much something I'm not going to be able to do.  I can't go to a big Easter dinner on Good Friday and do something like, "wow, that ham looks great. . . I'll just have the mashed potatoes. . . thanks".  The meatless rule still applies to me, and there's probably not going to be a giant cod for an "early" Easter dinner.

That would be weird.

Also weird is that on Good Friday, I have people trying to make appointments.  Most law offices are closed on Good Friday.  But most Americans work as Oliver Cromwell was a theologically deficient fun sucker and our Puritan heritage is ruining everything. Working to the grave is one thing that our Protestant founds in this country really gave to us, and it's one of the things that's really wrong with the culture.  Now, I usually do work, but I've long looked forward to most of the office being out, and only working a partial day.  And it gives me a chance to take Holy Saturday off.

I'm going to have to handle this today.  In prior years I think I would have just said yes, to somebody wanting in, or "the office is closed".  But instead I'm going to just say, the "office is closed for Good Friday".

I'll let the Puritans ponder it.

Lex Anteinternet: Blog Mirror: Collapsed

Lex Anteinternet: Blog Mirror: Collapsed: 

Blog Mirror: Collapsed

Well worth reading:

Collapsed

You can see my reply there as well, which I've set out again here:

"Last year it would have not been a problem but this year I'm not in great shape due to family issues"

Me too, except it's my own health, starting with a surgery in October 2022, and another in August. Haven't really recovered, although I should have.

Maybe you never really do.

Anyhow, was walking out of the high country at a pretty good clip as a rainstorm came rolling in. Lost my footing on a rock, fell, rolled over, and cut myself pretty bad. Just me and the dog. No cell reception, and I've given up carrying my gmrs radio as there's nobody to call if I'm hunting alone.

Rolled over, wasn't damaged and hiked out bleeding. It hasn't been a great year.

Glad you were okay.

I don't mean to be hijacking somebody else's blog, but since October 2022 I haven't been myself.  I wrote previously on my surgery followed by a second surgery.  Since the first surgery, my digestive track hasn't recovered, and it's clear that it's not going to.  I'm sick every morning.  Not some mornings, every morning, save, oddly enough, for a few days I spent at trial where I couldn't afford to be.*  Most days I'm better off not eating any breakfast anymore, as it's just going to make me sick.  I was already developing an intolerance to milk, but now it's through the roof.  I can't even eat cereal with a little milk.  The stuff I'm used to eating in the morning, which was always a pretty light meal, is a no-go completely now.

And the second surgery resulted in a medication that I'm pretty sure isn't adjusted right, right now.  Everyone has told me how thyroid medication is supposed to make you feel great and give you energy. Well, that isn't working for me.  Researching it, there are a tiny minority of people who actually never feel good following a thyroid surgery and for whom the medications don't work to address that.  Given that almost no medication ever works well for me, I wouldn't be at all surprised if that was me.  Hindsight is 20/20, but I really wish I'd foregone that surgery now and have borne the risk of cancer instead.  At age 60, and from a short-lived group, the risk probably was worth it.**

Worst of all, frankly, being sick all the time impacts your attitude in ways you can't really appreciate until it's obvious.  I've been there recently. Short-tempered and not having a good long term outlook.  At work the other day I blew up on two colleagues who have been running a really irritating religious debate for years, in the hallway, for what they conceive to be the entertainment of the unwilling listeners.  Our poor Mexican runner has to listen to this constantly, and I finally had enough and just exploded on them.  The point isn't that their juvenile behavior was okay, but that my reaction was so stout.***I shouldn't have done that, and that's just a minor example.

I usually look longingly forward to hunting season, but this year I've just not been too motivated after a certain point. Being tired has a lot to do with that.   And when you are like that, you are a pain to those around you, at least to some extent.  Some can see and appreciate that, others not so much.  It's hard to appreciate it yourself until something forces you to.  I looked forward to all summer to the season, and enjoyed deer hunting, but usually by now I've done a pile of duck hunting.  I've gone this year. . .twice. Every Saturday, the dog looks at me with confusion.  The funny thing is that all week long I still look forward to getting out, but when the weekend comes, I go down to work like old lawyers do, and when Sunday comes, well I haven't gone to Mass the night prior, so I get a late start doing whatever I'm going to do.

As noted above, not only am I tired, but I'm not in shape the way I usually am.  I've fallen so rarely out in the sticks that as a short person, I'm one of those people who were sort of goat like, climbing in terrain where hunters and fishermen wouldn't normally go and not worrying about it even though it was patently dangerous.  As a National Guardsmen, I recall once somebody remarking how me and another NCO were mysteriously able to negotiate difficult terrain at night, silently.  We were both avid hunters.  To take a fall, and a pretty bad one, on terrain that I'd been over a million times was a shock.

I was actually quite lucky at the time.  I was all alone, taking a path that I normally would not have, although as noted I've been on it many times before. There was a thunderstorm coming in.  I was carrying a loaded shotgun.  I fell, and, recalling the plf ***I learned so many years ago, rolled out of it, but not before I'd scrapped myself up pretty badly.  I wasn't sure at first if I'd broken anything.  I had my cell phone, as noted, but no reception, so I couldn't have called for help if I wanted to.  I usually carry a handheld GMRS radio, but I've quit recently as if I'm alone, who am I going to radio to?

Hors de combat, after it started to heal.

Sic transit gloria mundi.

I can recall my father getting like this when he was almost the exact same age I am now.  He died two years later.  He seemed pretty old at the time, so I wasn't hugely surprised.  I guess it's like the Hendrix song, "You may wake up in the morning, just to find that you are dead".

Of course, he was gravely ill for months prior to that.  In retrospect, however, it all started for him with a colonoscopy, the same way that this has started for me.  I recall him remarking as he was in the hospital on how all of his mother's ailments were now visiting him.  She died, if I recall correctly, at 65.

In my mind, I always imagined that at some point after I had reached retirement age, which I have not yet, I'd retire to a life of full time outdoorsman.  Not too many people do that.  There may be a reason for that. Some of us are luckier as we age than others.

Oh well, nature has a way of waking you up and reminding you that some things need to be done.  Getting sick? Quite doing what you are doing, refocus, and soldier on.  Get a grip, reform, reform, and keep on keeping on, but mindful of errors and omissions.

Footnotes

*I've long noticed for some reason a person's system will suppress symptoms of almost any illness when you absolutely have to keep on, keeping on. Usually things come back with a vengeance, or at least fatigue, when the crisis has passed.

**This is not intended to be advice for anyone else, I'd note.

***Re the argument, the entire facility had grown extremely tired of it and the shutting them up was welcomed, save by one of the arguers, who may be permanently mad at me.  Showing my presently poor mental outlook, I don't care.  I'm tired of hearing minority religions insulted when some of the employees belong to them, and I'm tired of having my own faith routinely insulted, which I've endured now for decades.  And while I'm a serious if imperfect orthodox Catholic, I'm also tired of one of these individuals, who isn't that good at arguing, turning to religious topics no matter what is being discussed, to include my assistant simply taking her shoes off in her office the other day, which would not normally lead to a Biblical discussion, but of course did.

I've also had it with somebody thinking that mocking the Spanish language is funny in front of somebody who's an immigrant.

***Parachute Landing Fall.  I learned this, oddly enough, while I was a CAP cadet.