Tuesday, December 23, 2025
Sunday, December 21, 2025
Friday, December 19, 2025
Lex Anteinternet: Windy.
Lex Anteinternet: Windy.: 144 MPH Wind Gust On Wednesday One Of The Strongest Ever Recorded in Wyoming
Yellowstone grizzly range contracts by 4%, while ‘Northern Continental Divide’ bears gain 12% more ground
Yellowstone grizzly range contracts by 4%, while ‘Northern Continental Divide’ bears gain 12% more ground: Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem trends — which include another high mortality year — are not a cause for concern, federal and state grizzly bear managers say.
Tuesday, December 16, 2025
GPS Watch Recorded Bear Attack Victim’s Terrifying Final Moments
GPS Watch Recorded Bear Attack Victim’s Terrifying Final Moments: The watch showed when the man suddenly veered off the mountain trail, as the bear dragged him into the bush. And it recorded when his heart stopped beating.
Wyoming already put in the work on Rock Springs plan. We should respect it.
Wyoming already put in the work on Rock Springs plan. We should respect it.: The Rock Springs Resource Management Plan, if changed, could jeopardize the Northern Red Desert and Golden Triangle, writes Julia Stuble.
Black bears are thriving and reclaiming old Wyoming haunts, even amid record hunting
Black bears are thriving and reclaiming old Wyoming haunts, even amid record hunting: When the West was being settled, black bears were wiped out from much of their native range. Slowly, they’ve reoccupied much of that habitat in Wyoming and beyond.
Monday, December 15, 2025
Saturday, December 13, 2025
Friday, December 12, 2025
Gordon pares back Wyoming’s first pronghorn migration, overriding Game and Fish commissioners
Gordon pares back Wyoming’s first pronghorn migration, overriding Game and Fish commissioners: A long-delayed migration corridor designation advanced by Wyoming's governor is preferred by the livestock industry. It forgoes protections for animals that use the Red Desert and Golden Triangle.
Thursday, December 11, 2025
Wednesday, December 10, 2025
Lex Anteinternet: All the men were well shod in good looking riding ...
Lex Anteinternet: All the men were well shod in good looking riding ...: A ll the men were well shod in good looking riding boots, except the cook. I learned that the boots were mostly made by a boot maker named H...
All the men were well shod in good looking riding boots, except the cook.
All the men were well shod in good looking riding boots, except the cook. I learned that the boots were mostly made by a boot maker named Hyer, of Olathe, Kansas, and were generally black in color. All had seventeen inch tops, with a two or two and a half inch heel, slanted well forward, so that the weight of the foot came forward of the heel, and consequently the stirrup was held under the arch of the rider’s instep, as it should be.”
John K. Rollinson, in his 1941 memoir, Pony Trails In Wyoming: Hoofprints of a Cowboy and U.S. Ranger.
Seminoe ‘pumped water storage’ project draws concern over threats to fisheries, wildlife in central Wyoming
Seminoe ‘pumped water storage’ project draws concern over threats to fisheries, wildlife in central Wyoming: Developers of the project at Seminoe Reservoir want seasonal wildlife restrictions lifted for construction. Opponents say protections are necessary for bighorn sheep, in particular.
Tuesday, December 9, 2025
Lex Anteinternet: Cowboy Boots
Lex Anteinternet: Cowboy Boots: Title: An array of boots at the F.M. Light & Sons western-wear store in Steamboat Springs, Colorado. Library of Congress photographs...
This isn't history of the stirrup, but we should note that relatively early on there were wooden and steel stirrups.
Rather, after the Civil War the frontier opened up for cattle and the cowboy came onto the Plains. He was wearing riding boots, and riding a wooden stirrup saddle that was evolved, but not much, from those used by vacqueros in Texas and Mexico. Their boots reflected that, and fairly rapidly they became to take on some distinct features, although perhaps not as distinct as we might suppose.
And of course Americans became fascinated with cowboys quite early on.
And this included leather goods.
Well, cowboy boots have always been regarded as stylish and have received a lot of non working wear by non cow hands. The peewee boot was tailored made for the person who liked the style, but who didn't ride every day. Indeed, as I have retained the old really high style, I can attest that getting them on and off isn't easy.
Cowboy Boots
Title: An array of boots at the F.M. Light & Sons western-wear store in Steamboat Springs, Colorado. Library of Congress photographs.
A long, long time ago on this site, I started a thread on cowboy boots. Maybe as long ago as three years, or so. That's not as unusual as it might seem, a lot of threads linger as drafts on this site long before they're published.
19th Century cowboys. their boots are not very visible in this photograph, but where you can see them, they are very high shanked boots.
What is unusual is that I lost it. But I don't think I'd gotten very far in it before I deleted it. So, here we are starting afresh, which in this case is pretty much the same as starting.
I like cowboy boots. I often wear them to my office job, but I've also worn them in the role for which they're actually intended, so I have pretty strong opinions on them. And they're also sort of bizarrely tied into the period which we've been looking at, in the context of how they've changed over time and what we now think they are. I also frankly think that a lot of the history that gets circulated about cowboy boots is frankly wrong.
That history, if you've looked into it at all, generally holds that cowboy boots basically didn't exist until some time after the Civil War, at which time they came into being, sort of all of a sudden, in the 1870s or 1880s. Well, not so much. Indeed, what we call "cowboy boots" had basically been around a lot longer than that.
Yep, I'm claiming that the common story of the cowboy boot is flat out wrong.
I guess, with that being the case, we have first ask, what is a cowboy boot?
Well, in its proper form, a cowboy boot is a pull on riding boot with a high, scalloped, heel that's designed for use in a wooden stirrup. Steel, iron or brass stirrups actually are not the same as wooden stirrups at all, in use, so perhaps we should start there.
Author, riding Wade tree stock saddle, with broad wooden, tin clad, stirrups.
Jonathan Wainright being promoted to General at Ft. Myers Virginia, 1938. Wainright would be transferred to the Philippines prior to World War Two and would go on to serve as a captive of the Japanese after the fall of the island to the Japanese. He received the Congressional Medal of Honor. Here you see the two types of stirrups in use by the U.S. Army at the time. Wainright is riding a flat, English style saddle (likely an officer's pattern then in use) while the two officers next to him are riding M1928 McClellan saddles equipped with wooden stirrups and stirrups hoods. Wainwright's boots are not visible but are most likely the field boot then in use. The officer on the right is wearing M1923 lace up cavalry boots.
Metal stirrups, and wooden stirrups, go relatively far back, although we would do well to note that stirrups themselves came into wide use during the Middle Ages. Indeed, not only did they come into wide use at that time, they were a technological revolution that greatly enhances the fighting ability of a mounted man allowing the Age of Chivalry, i.e., the mounted knight, to basically be possible. This isn't to say there weren't cavalrymen before that. There certainly were, but once the rider could keep his seat with the aid of his feet, his utility and fighting ability was greatly enhanced. Indeed there is a "stirrup theses" that deals with the revolutionary impact of the stirrup upon mounted combat in Europe, and hence upon history in general.
This isn't history of the stirrup, but we should note that relatively early on there were wooden and steel stirrups.
Wide wooden strirrups are a feature of this Wade Tree saddle. Here they are clad with sheet metal on the outside.
Wooden stirrups, as a general rule, tend to be more "rustic". If there's an economy of resources we tend to see wooden stirrups. Saddles are mostly, at least classically, wood and leather, so keeping on keeping on with wooden stirrups makes sense if that's the material you have at hand. And if you don't have that at hand, you probably aren't making any saddles to start with. Assuming that, you don't really need that much metal otherwise.
Leather wrapped wooden stirrups on an Association tree saddle.
Riding with wooden stirrups presents some different considerations than steel stirrups, the principal one for our purpose being that wooden stirrups tend to be quite large. That's fine, but that presents another problem. . . keeping your foot from going through the stirrup. If that happens you have a true disaster in progress.
Why cowboy boots have the shape that they do.
The solution albeit a partial one, for this problem has always been proper footgear. Indeed, proper footgear is or should be a major consideration for any rider. People who ride in tennis shoes should be flogged, as its dangerous.
Cowboy with jeans tucked in boots, using taps over his stirrups. Very traditional set of cowboy gear. This photograph was taken at the 2010 Sheepherders Fair.
Anyhow, the traditional riding boot for wooden stirrups is a high topped boot (which all real riding boots are, as a rule) with high heels made from leather sections, with leather soles, a somewhat pointed toe, and a scalloped heel. The boot is designed as much to let you get your foot out as anything else. That's why its pointed, that's why its normally a leather sole, and that's why the heel is scalloped. If it goes through in a disaster, maybe the scallop will let the boot back out. . . maybe.
Cowboy Ned Coy on "Boy Dick". Coy is wearing a Boss Of The Plains hat and scalloped boots. From the popular threads on hats and caps.
It isn't laced either, due to an economy of resources, because it isn't meant to be walked in all that much, because it is meant to allow your pants to inside the boot, and it might be capable for the boot to be jerked away in a really bad disaster.
This sort of boot has existed for a really, really, long time. And its existed in more than one location for a really long time. Indeed, I've even seen photographs of Afghan riders, well before the tragic Soviet period when things were less mess up there, using a boot roughly of this description.
And I've seen at least one photograph of a Civil War Army officer wearing a boot of this exact type, during the Civil War, with huge rowled spurs.
Don't tell me, therefore, that these came about after the Civil War. They did not.
They were around in some form a long time before the Civil War.
They were popular with riders in the West who were employed in cattle work quite early on for obvious reasons. Western stock saddles uniformly featured wooden stirrups and still tend to. Cowboys, moreover, did very little ground work if they could avoid it. And their horses tended to be rank. A boot of that type is exactly what they needed.
They were distinct, however. Mostly this was because most riding boots in the United States mid 19th Century were low heel, or partially low heel. Most stirrups east of the Mississippi were steel or iron. Not all, but most. And most men who wore boots, and it was mostly men, were were doing a lot of ground work as well. So, most boots reflected that.
Indeed one big user of horses, the U.S. Army, didn't even officially issue a riding type boot until late in the Civil War. Otherwise, it simply issued its ankle high shoe to everyone. That says something about the focus that generally existed on the topic. It probably also says how much more riding had started to go in the service during the Civil War.
Cavalry orderly wearing low topped riding boots. These boots may or may not have been an issue pair, as there was never an official Civil War general issue pattern of cavalry boot.
Union cavalryman, Civil War. He's likely not wearing riding boots at all, but rather the issue ankle high service shoe.
Union cavalry officer. Officers purchased their uniforms, but the pattern of boot shown here became very common during the war and was ultimately issued to enlisted men. High topped, somewhat scalloped heel.
After the Civil War the Army determined to issue riding boots to cavalrymen and started to do so. As I'm not an expert on this topic, and as this isn't the history of the military riding boot of the 19th Century, I won't try to detail it, but a variety of high topped, medium heeled boots were issued all the way through the remainder of the 19th Century until the 1890s, when the service shoe for cavalrymen oddly came back in.
Detail from Edgar Paxson's meticulously researched Custer's Last Stand. Paxon here depicts the cavalry boot in use in 1876 very well. A very high topped boot than ran up over the knee to protect the knee, square toes (they had no left or right) and slightly high heels. This boot, while a good design, was commonly regarded as uncomfortable by soldiers which may, in part, have been because they were built by Federal prisoners who had, therefore, relatively low motivation.
The common story on the cowboy boot accordingly holds that men went home wearing their boots from the Union and Confederate armies and then went into livestock work, and the cowboy boots was born.
Not so much.
For one thing, the story is really probably more the other way around. Confederate cavalry men were at first drawn from stock working men anyhow and they were already wearing riding boots. If the boots made it through the war, a doubtful proposition, they just went home wearing what they'd left with. If their boots wore out, they would have been lucky to get a good replacement pair of riding boots. No doubt some did, but those boots would have been of no discernible pattern and they would have really just been riding boots.
Amongst the very first cowboys driving north Southerners would have been more common than Northerners, but not for long. Be that as it may, it 's highly doubtful that piles of Union riding boots ended up being worn by discharged Union cavalrymen turned cowboys. And as noted, riding boots had been around for eons prior to the Civil War with all of their basic details well established. It was the Army that was slow to adopt them.
Cowboys near chuck and supply wagon.
Rather, after the Civil War the frontier opened up for cattle and the cowboy came onto the Plains. He was wearing riding boots, and riding a wooden stirrup saddle that was evolved, but not much, from those used by vacqueros in Texas and Mexico. Their boots reflected that, and fairly rapidly they became to take on some distinct features, although perhaps not as distinct as we might suppose.
It might be noted, and probably should be noted, that cowboy boots are one item that cowboys did not adopt from vaqueros and caballeros. Mexican agricultural horsemen did not wear cowboy boots, but rather an ankle high pointed toe, moderate heeled, boot. That's a bit surprising, but when we consider how they dressed perhaps it is not as surprising as it might at first seem. They tended to wear leather leggins below the knee for protection if they needed it, and they also wore both chapaderos and later half chaps, known to Western horsemen as chaps and chinks, for protection. They also wore wool clothing almost uniformly. While I don't know t hat its related, living and working in a hot environment, the high topped boots may have been less attractive to them than to riders further north. Additionally, most Mexican cowboy gear actually uses an economy of leather, leather being the product which Mexican cattle were actually raised for, and that may have reflected itself in their boots design. Leather economy can impact boots permanently, as we shall shortly see.
Emiliano Zapata (seated, center) and his staff. There's a mix of clothing here, as there typically is in photos of Mexican revolutionaries (the figure on the far left is wearing a type of boot that darned near resembles one we'll address later, the packer) but all the seated men are wearing botin charro, a type of ankle high, pointed toe, riding boot.
So the scalloped heeled boot came to be strongly identified with cowboys, and at the same time cowboys, who tended to invest a lot of their tiny income in their gear, that being their hat, their boots, and their saddle, sometimes bought cowboy boots that had elemental elements. Farmers didn't buy boots that had any ornamental elements, in contrast. Spending a lot of money on their limited equipment, they wanted it to look good and distinct when they could. And that caused the Mexican influenced ornamental stitching on cowboy boots to come about. While it does create a distinct appearance, the boots are really only slightly evolved from other riding boots in common use in the mid 19th Century.
My regular cowboy boots. The ones I wear to work, when I wear cowboy boots to work.
My working cowboy boots.
And of course Americans became fascinated with cowboys quite early on.
Cowboy boots basically assumed that form quite early, and indeed they retain it if they're really traditional boots. A working 20th Century cowboy with high shank boots could walk into a 19th Century camp and pretty much not have anyone take much notice of his footgear, assuming that he went for something relatively traditional.
Well, like a lot of things, the boots changed as a result of a war. World War One to be exact.
Stretching leather, about 1915.
Because World War Two was such a colossal war, and because we tend to simply accept the line that the United States was the "arsenal of democracy" during the Great War, we have a pretty skewed concept of American production in the World War One time frame. Simply put, it was a mess.
Not only was the Army trying to raise a force, at breakneck speed (more rapidly by quite some measure than during World War Two) but it was trying to deploy it overnight. It was also trying to equip it overnight. The peacetime Army didn't have anywhere near the amount of stuff necessary to equip the huge Army that the US was trying to raise, equip, ship and deploy in 1917.
And this included leather goods.
The US didn't really even know what it needed in the way of leather goods, so it let out contracts for things like saddles and boots in absurdly large numbers. There's a real reason that M1904 McClellan saddles are so common. They made so darned many. Same with boots, the numbers made were astounding. Absurd, even.
With that sort of demand going on for leather goods, the supply became very strained, and cowboy boots were the victims of that. The leather for high topped boots just wasn't there. So, as a wartime measure, bootmakers introduced the "stubbie" or "pee wee" boot, which is what most people, at least those who aren't cowboys, wear today.
Tom Mix, 1919. Mix was an actor, not a cowboy by trade, although the World War One veteran did buy a ranch in Wyoming after the war and he actually ranched here. Anyhow, actors make notoriously bad examples of what cowboys actual wore, and this is no exception. The hat is far too large for anything outside of Texas (where sugarloaf sombreros were really large), the pistols are M1873 cavalry models, which had 7" barrels and which were not favored by cowboys, who instead favorted the 5" artillery model. the pants are way too tight. The boots, moreover, are peewees. The heels, however, are just right for the era, and not uncommon amongst working cowhands now.
That was the wartime solution. And it impacted how the boots were actually worn. Prior to WWI cowboys normally tucked their trouser in their boots, and they still sometimes will, as the photo posted above shows. This was the routine habit, although sometimes they'd pull their pants down over their boots. Having worn boots both ways while riding, if I'm going to ride for a long time, I'll tuck them in. More comfortable, for the long haul.
But you really can't do that very well with pee wees, and cowboys who had to buy new boots during the war were embarrassed by the economy of leather and how it looked, so they took to pulling their pants down over their boots. Better to wear out your pants and get them dirty than to look like a boofador.
Traditional boots do not go on as easy as peewees. And you'll want some high socks if you wear them also. My Olathe traditional mule hide cowboy boots.
And in truth mid height boots worked out okay for a lot of working applications. So the peewee, unless it was really low, quit being a mark of shame and became the common boot fairly quickly, save for the ones that had really low tops (which some did). By the 1920s a boot like that sported by Tom Mix above was pretty common, probably more common than the kind that ran to the knee. With the spread of this sort of boot on the range, and in town, cowboy boots really entered sort of a new era. The old style kept on keeping on, but a new style, worn by a lot of people in town, arrived.
These aren't cowboy boots, they're Wellingtons. Marketed, however, as "Ropers".
All along a similar low shanked ridingp with your heels, down with your head boot was around as well, the Wellington. Named after the Duke of Wellington, who favored them, Wellingtons' were a peewee variant of the common Riding Boot, that boot worn by those who rode flat, or "English", saddles. Low topped, and low heeled, they always had a following amonst those who rode a bit or who rode flat saddles but whom didn't favor the knee high boot generally worn by those who used steel stirrups. They were quite similar, in some fashion, with some of the lower shanked boots worn by Army officers in the 1860s through the 1890s, and therefore had a natural retained following there. Some European armies, including the English Army, flat out adopted them as riding boots. At some point in the 20th Century, and at least by the 1940s, the U.S. Army allowed them as alternative footgear for dress wear and they became particularly popular with pilots as dress gear. So much so, in fact, that after the USAF was officially separated from the Army after World War Two black Wellingtons were allowed as private purchase dress shoes for officers.
Working rancher with very low heeled boots, perhaps Wellingtons.
The popularity of Wellingtons plateaued however until some marketing genius at the Justin company thought of re-branding them as "Ropers'. Where this idea came from is anyone idea, but it was a marketing stroke of genius. With the rebranding Wellingtons crossed over into the cowboy boot market and someawht remain there. Their popularity seems to have diminished a bit, but then boots with "walking heels" have increased in popularity as well, with those two boot types occupying each others niche, more or less.
While on this topic, let us dispel the notion that the type of rubber or synthetic boot the English call "wellies" are Wellingtons. They are not. Apparently the name "Wellington" was applied to them at some point due to a purely superficial relationship they bore to real Wellingtons. The British users truncated that name to "wellies", but whatever they are, they are not Wellingtons. The Duke of Wellington would not be pleased if you thought so.
Wellington at Waterloo. Seriously, the man was not wearing rubber boots.
With cowboy boots as fashion, we do of course see varieties of them. In some eras, the 50s in particularly it seems to me, the toes became very narrow. In others, the toes are fairly round. Square toes were very common in 19th Century boots and have recently returned. Originally, that was a manufacturing item, as square toes were easy to manufacture and with some boots and shoes there was no left or right. Now, it's just a matter of fashion.
Working rancher with a pair of cowboy boots with a walking heel.
Heel height waxes and wanes as well, although with modern boots you don't seen the really high "doggin" (ie bulldogging) heel nearly as much as you did in earlier eras. You still see them, however. As noted, "walking heels", which are basically a conventional shoe heel, are now also common and you see them in use even by working hands. Every now and then, however, doggin heels will enjoy a comeback, and they never really go away. As noted, working hands will wear them, and in towns more than a few folks wear lower riding heels.
Indeed, I suppose only a tiny fraction of cowboy boots are worn by people who actually ride. For that reason it'd be interesting to take a census of actual working hands and see what they wear. By my casual observation, really high topped boots are more common with working hands than a person might suppose, which makes sense. Medium height boots are fairly common as well, but you do see stubbies and ropers out there, as the photos in this thread attest to. In town, of course, most folks aren't wearing the really high boots like I do. Indeed, I'd guess only a tiny fraction of people who wear cowboy boots in town do that.
Cowboy boots aren't the only riding boots, of course, and we'll deal with that on a later thread, to the extent its relevant to this site and the period of time it focuses on. But cowboy boots are interesting in general, so in looking at footgear, we've started off here.
Monday, December 8, 2025
Lex Anteinternet: Turning our backs on American Careerism. A synchronicitous trip.
Lex Anteinternet: Turning our backs on American Careerism. A synchr...: The Angelus by Jean-François Millet I experience synchronicity in some interesting ways from time to time. Ways which, really, are too stro...
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Turning our backs on American Careerism. A synchronicitous trip.
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The Angelus by Jean-François Millet
I experience synchronicity in some interesting ways from time to time. Ways which, really, are too strong to put up to coincidence.
Sometime last week I saw this post on Twitter by O. W. Root, to which I also post my reply:
O.W. Root@owroot
Nov 29
Sometimes I have wondered if I should write about being a parent so much, but I've realized that it's one of the most universal things in the whole world, and one of the most life changing things for all who do it, so it's good to do.
Lex Anteinternet@Lex_Anteinterne
Nov 30
It's also, quite frankly, one of the very few things we do with meaning. People try take meaning from their jobs, for example, which are almost universally meaningless.
My reply, was frankly, extremely harsh. "[A]lmost universally meaningless"?
Well, in fact, yes. I was going to follow that up with a post about existential occupations, but I hadn't quite gotten around to it when I heard some podcasts and saw some web posts that synched into it. I've been cat sitting recently and because of that, I've been able to catch up on some old ones (note the synchronicity of that. . . the tweet above was from November 29/30, but the podcast episode was from June). The podcast episode in question is:
People to Catholicism Today? ⎮Flannel Panel - Christopher Check
That episode discusses a very broad range of very interesting topics, and it referenced this one amongst them: Catholicism Is So Hot Right Now. Why?
I haven't listened to the second podcast, but the first is phenomenal.
These are all linked?
Yes they are.
I've noted here on this blog and on Lex Anteinternet that the young seem to be turning towards social conservatism and traditionalism. It's easy to miss,. and its even easy to be drawn to it and participate in it without really realizing it. This is different, we'd further note, than being drawn to the various branches of political conservatism. There's definitely a connection, of course, but there are also those who are going into social conservatism/traditionalism while turning their backs on politics entirely, although there are real dangers to turning your back on politics.
What seems to be going on is that people are attracted to the truth, the existential truths, and the existential itself.
Put another way, people have detected that the modern world is pretty fake, and it doesn't comport at all with how we are in a state of nature. It goes back to what we noted here:
I think what people want is a family and a life focused on that family, not on work.
As noted above, most work is meaningless. That doesn't mean it's not valuable.
Very few jobs are existential for our species.* We're meant to be hunters and gatherers, with a few other special roles that have to do with the organization of ourselves, and our relation to the existential. Social historians like to claim that society began to "advance" when job specialization, a byproduct of agriculture, began, and there's some truth to that, but only a bit, if not properly understood. That bit can't be discounted, however, as when agriculture went from subsistence agriculture to production agriculture, i.e., agriculture that generated a surplus, wealth was generated and wealth brought in a great perversion of social order. Surplus production brought in wealth, which brought in a way for the separation of wealth from the people working the land, and ultimately ownership of the land itself. Tenant farming, sharecropping and the like, and agricultural poverty, were all a byproduct of that. When Marx observed that this developed inevitably into Feudalism, he was right.
Agriculture, originally, was a family or family band small scale deal. While it's pretty obvious to anyone who has ever put in a garden how it worked, social theorist and archeologist got it all wrong until they made some rather obvious discoveries quite recently, one of the most obvious being that hunter/gatherer societies are also often small scale agricultural ones. How this was missed is baffling as Europeans had first hand experience with this in regard to New World cultures, most of which were hunting societies but many of which put in various types of farms. Even North American native bands that did not farm, it might be noted, were well aware of farming themselves. Even into the present era hunter/gatherer societies, to the extent they still exist, often still practice small scale farming.
It turns out that grain farming goes way, way back. But why wouldn't it have?
Additional specialization began with the Industrial Revolution, and that's when things really began to become massively warped for our species, first for men, and then with then, with feminization, for women. We've long noted that, but given the chain of coincidences noted above, we've stumbled on to somebody else noting it. As professor Randall Smith has written:
It’s important to understand that the first fatal blow to the family came during the Industrial Revolution when fathers left the house for the bulk of the day. The deleterious results that followed from ripping fathers away from their children were seen almost immediately in the slums and ghettos of the large industrial towns, as young men, without older men to guide them into adulthood, roamed the streets, un-mentored and un-apprenticed. There, as soon as their hormonal instincts were no longer directed into work or caring for families, they turned to theft and sexual license.
Randall Smith, A Traditional Catholic Wife?
So, in the long chain of events, there was nothing wrong at all about farming. There was something wrong about the expropriation of the wealth it created, and that fueled the fire of a lot of development since them. That first set of inequities ultimately lead to peasant revolts in Europe on occasion, and to a degree can be regarded as what first inspired average Europeans to immigrate to various colonies. . . a place where they could own their own land. . and then to various revolutions against what amounted to propertied overlords. The American Revolution, the Mexican Revolution, and the Russian Revolution all had that element to them. Industrialization, which pulled men out of the household, sparked additional revolutions to counter the impacts of the Industrial Revolution, with some being violent, but others not being. The spread of democracy was very much a reaction to the the evils of the Industrial Revolution. Unfortunately, so was the spread of Communism.
Money has never given up, so the same class of people who demanded land rent in the bronze and iron age, and then turned people into serfs in the Middle Ages, are still busy to do that now. As with then, they often want the peasants to accept this as if its really nifty. People like Donald Trump, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk are busy piling up money and concubines while assuring the peasantry that their diminished role in the world is a good thing as its all part of Capitalism.
It is part of Capitalism, which is a major reason that Capitalism sucks, and that there's been efforts to restrain its worse impulses since its onset, with efforts to limit corporations at first, and then such things as the Sherman Anti Trust Act later on.
All that's been forgotten and we now have a demented gilded prince and his privileged acolytes living off the fat of the land while people have less and less control of their own lives. Most people don't want to glory in the success of Star Link of even care about it, but people feed into such things anyway, as the culture has glorified such things since at least the end of the Second World War, the war seemingly having helped to fuel all sorts of disordered desires in society that would bloom into full flower in the 1960s. A society that grew wealthy from the war and the destruction that it created, saw itself as divorced from nature and reality, and every vice that could be imagined was condoned.
And we're now living in the wreckage.
I think this is what is fueling a lot of this. Starting particularly in the 1950s, and then ramping up in the 60s and 70s, careerism really took hold in American society, along with a host of other vices. Indeed, again, as Professor Smith has noted:
The “traditional Catholic family” where the husband worked all day and the wife stayed home alone with the children only really existed – and not all that successfully – in certain upper-middle class WASPy neighborhoods during the late 1950s and early 1960s. Working in an office all day is not necessarily evil (depending upon how it affects your family). It’s just modern. There’s nothing especially “traditional” about it.
Most careers are just dressed up jobs, not much else. Nonetheless people have been taught they need to leave their homes, their families, they're very natures, in order to have a career, sometimes abandoning people in their wake. They're encouraged to do so, to a large extent.
Indeed, I dare say, for most real careerist, nearly always abandoning people.
And average people are sick of it.
That's why young men are turning towards traditionalism of all sorts. They're looking for something of value, and they're not going to find it behind a computer in a cubicle. And that's why young women are reviving roles that feminist attempted to take away form them.
They mean something.
Footnotes:
Sunday, December 7, 2025
Wyoming Officials Fear Seminoe Power Project Could Ruin Premier Bighorn Herd
That's enough on this project. Bad idea.
Wyoming Officials Fear Seminoe Power Project Could Ruin Premier Bighorn Herd
Hunter, 82, Still Bagging Wyoming Big Game With Rifle He Bought In 1968
Charming story, but nothing remarkable about it:
Hunter, 82, Still Bagging Wyoming Big Game With Rifle He Bought In 1968
The truth of the matter is that there isn't a big game rifle on the market today that is any better than the Mauser 98, introduced in 1898, and if you insist on going with a non Mauser action, the 721 action, used in the 700, was introduced in 1948.
Optics, however, have improved. But even at that, for hunting purposes, not as much as might be supposed.
And finally, if you can't hunt with an iron sight (not that you must, but that you are incapable of doing so), you need to retrain yourself as a rifleman until you can. Then go back to the scope.
We'll get into this more at some later time.
Saturday, December 6, 2025
BLM’s heated Rock Springs plan took 12 years to finish. Now the feds must redo it in one.
BLM’s heated Rock Springs plan took 12 years to finish. Now the feds must redo it in one.: The substance of a revision ordered by the Trump administration remains under wraps, though changes will be confined to “special management areas.”
Friday, December 5, 2025
This Trump nominee wants to liquidate public lands
This Trump nominee wants to liquidate public lands: Steve Pearce, Trump’s nominee to run the BLM, has worked to privatize and undermine our public lands, writes Aaron Weiss.
Monday, December 1, 2025
Inside Wyoming’s fight against cheatgrass, the ‘most existential, sweeping threat’ to western ecosystems
Inside Wyoming’s fight against cheatgrass, the ‘most existential, sweeping threat’ to western ecosystems: An all-hands-on-deck effort, tens of millions in funding and a breakthrough herbicide are slowing but not halting a destructive force steadily enveloping the best sagebrush left on Earth.
Sunday, November 30, 2025
Go Ask Alice. A thread on hunting and fishing rucksacks.
Going out the door, elk hunting, with my medium sized Alice Pack. You can see a comealong, an Australian fanny pack for additional storage, a Wyoming Saw, a small carrier for a gmrs radio, a first aid kid, and two canteen covers. No, I don't pack all this stuff around with me while I'm hunting. I'm pack this to the truck.
I used to date teenage queen
Now I carry an M16
I used to drive a Cadillac
Now I carry an Alice pack
1980s (and maybe earlier) Jody Call.
I have a long history with backpacks. In spite of that, I'm very clearly not up on the latest and greatest backpack.
Indeed, in this category, I find myself in the same situation as other people who sometimes baffle enthusiasts, in that I use them, but I don't know that much about a topic for which there's a lot to know. I'm that way, for instance, when I meet a hunter who doesn't know anything about firearms, really. I meet these people semi regularly, they enjoy hunting a lot, but their rifle or shotgun is a mere tool, and often a cheap one.
Fishing, upon which I'm frankly less knowledgeable, equipment wise, is the same way. I'm not up on the latest and greatest fly rod, for example, but I do know a little about them. Occasionally I'll meet somebody, however, who brings up fishing, but actually knows nothing at all about their equipment.
They almost always only use a spinning rod.
Anyhow, I'm sort of that way on backpacks.
Enlisted man in he U.S. Army just before World War Two, wearing denim fatigues in the field so as to not dirty the service uniform. He's equipped with a M1910 Haversack.
The very first backpack of any kind that I had was a M1910 Haversack, the Army issued backpack introduced in 1910, as the name would indicate. That piece of equipment, shown fully packed above, was adopted that year and soldiered on into World War Two.
What a miserable piece of equipment it is.
They were, in my assessment, an awful pack, or at least they had no ability to be used outside of the service. The reason for my dim opinion of it is probably demonstrated by this video:
The Army must have had a similar opinion as they introduced a new set of backpacks during World War Two, none of which I'm going into, as this isn't a history of military backpacks.
Anyhow, as a kid I obtained a M1910 Haversack. Without knowing for sure, my recollection is that an uncle of mine had purchased it right after World War Two, probably just as a thing to play with, and I got it from him. That's a long time ago, and I could be wrong. Since that time, as an adult, somebody gave me a second, completely unused, M1910 Haversack which was made during the Second World War.
That one remains unused, but the first one I did try to figure out as a boy. It was pretty much hopeless.
Because I have always been really outdoorsy and wanted camping gear, my parents gave me a backpack of the full blown backwoods type when I was in my very early teens, or nearly a teen. I don't know if its the correct term or not, but we called that sort of backpack a "frame pack", as they had, at that time, a lightweight aluminum frame. I no longer have the pack, I think (although I might somewhere) and I feel a little tinge of guilt when I think of it. My father, though an outdoorsman, was not a backpacker and he didn't have much to go buy when looking for a pack for me. And it was the early 1970s when everything was bicentennial themed. It was a nice lightweight pack, but it had a really prominent flag motif to it and I found that a little embarrassing. I'm embarrassed now to admit that.
I did use it, although not anywhere near as much as I had hoped. In your early teens, you can't drive, and that meant I didn't have that much of an opportunity to go places with it. The number of years between age 12 and age 16, when you can, are very slight, but at the time they seem endless. By the time I was 16 it didn't seem that I had much of an opportunity to backpack either.
I'll note here, although I'm taking it out of order, that later on a friend of mine gave me a sued Kelty backpack, which I still have somewhere. It's like this one:
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I have used it, but again, not nearly as much as I'd like, and not recently.
I still have, and will get to that in a moment, the frame from the first frame backpack that I noted in this thread.
The backpack I've carried the longest distances is the LC-1 Field Pack (Medium), or as it is commonly known, the "Alice Pack".
The Alice Pack came into U.S. military use in the late Vietnam War period. As I haven't researched its history, I'll note that it appears that the Alice Pack was developed from the Tropical Field Rucksack. The pack it started to replace one that had come in during the 1950s and was really pretty primitive, just being a big pen pouch rucksack about the size of a modern book bag that hooked into a soldiers webgear.
Given the history of Army packs, I guess it isn't too surprising that the Tropical Field Rucksack was regarded as a huge improvement and Alice came along soon thereafter. I don't remember anyone being hugely fond of Alice Packs, however, when I was in the service. Having said that, I don't remember anyone being enormously opposed to them either.
The entire time I was in I never saw one being issued with a frame. Frankly, without a frame, a long march with Alice is a miserable thing. I've marched as far as 30 miles with one, with no frame, and that didn't cause me to love Alice.
It did cause me to look for another pack, however, and I found a great one in the form of a REI nylon backpack.
This is the same model of REI backpack that I own. I'd post a photo of mine, which I still own, but the pack has been appropriated by one of my offspring.
While not a full-blown expedition frame pack, the REI pack is and was great. It had internal metal stiffens that operate like a frame, and a belt, which makes a big difference. The side pockets, moreover, are slotted to accommodate skis. I've used it like crazy.
As noted in the caption, it's so useful that its been appropriated, probably an a permanent basis, by my son.
At some point while I was at UW, and it may have been when I was in law school, I obtained a "book bag" for the first time.
How everyone carried school books up until at least the 80s.
It's odd to think of, but book bags just weren't a think until then. As I had a lot of books to carry while in law school, it became sort of a necessity as I walked to school and back, probably a distance of about two miles, I needed something to carry them. I didn't want to buy a book bag dedicated for that purpose, so I bought a surplus German Army rucksack. It was the same size and nearly the same configuration as the Alice Pack, but without the padded shoulder straps. They were just heavy cotton webbing. I figured that after my time in lawshool was over, I could repurpose it, which in fact I did. I used it for a game bag, brining home a lot of rabbits with it, but even affixing it to my old frame to haul an elk with. With hard use like that, it eventually blew out.
Some years ago, a sporting goods store here in town carried some surplus items, including Alice Packs complete with frames. I bought two.
I wish I'd bought a couple of more.
I wasn't a huge fan of Alice back in the 80s, but with the frame, I am now. I keep one packed with stuff for big game hunting, and another with stuff for bird hunting. I've rucked into the mountains with Alice on my back so that if I shot a turkey, I could bring it back without having to carry it via armstrong. And with the Alice frame, I can take the pack off and use the frame to haul meat, if I don't have equine assistance available.
All of which made me think that I sure wish I'd gotten a couple more of them.
Alice Pack I use for fishing and bird hunting to carry equipment.
Same Alice Pack. This is a later one after the service had adopted the Woodlands Pattern of camouflage.
But that sure isn't a popular opinion.
I have two Alice Packs that I use for outdoor stuff today. One I use for waterfowl hunting and fishing. I'll probably start using it for upland birds too. That's all because, over time, I've found that I'm packing quite a bit of gear around and I need an efficient way to to do it.
This is the first posts I've ever put up on a gear topic. I'll get into this more later, but basically, what I'm talking about here, is gear I take with me every time I go. When I'm bird hunting what I take, besides my shotgun and shells, are gmrs radios and a knife. That's about it unless I"m waterfowl hunting, in which case I often take my waders. Not a lot of gear, actually.
When I'm big game hunting, however, I take is my gmrs radios, binoculars, some food, water, often some soda (I never take beer hunting, fwiw), game bags, knives, saw, and a come along. And I need a pack with a frame, in case I have to use the frame to pack something out.
At one time, I carried my radio gear and some binos in an outdoor bag. But I still took an Alice. Now I find myself transferring everything to the Alice as I don't want to carry too many things if I can avoid it.
So I thought it would be handy to have another one. I posted something on reddit about it and what I found is that Alice's are hugely unpopular with the outdoor community.
Well, I can see why. It's not a modern camping backpack. . . but I don't want to drop a couple of elk quarters into my nice backpack.
My good backpack. It was a gift from a friend who was concerned that I didn't have a good, modern, backpacking pack.
And frankly, with a frame, I'm finding that old Alice isn't so bad.
Related threads:
The History of the Backpack
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