Lex Anteinternet: Lex Anteinternet: St. Patrick's Day: Lex Anteinternet: St. Patrick's Day : A Celtic cross in a local cemetery, marking the grave of a very Irish, and Irish Catholic, figure....
In the afternoon, I went out fishing and took the dog. On the way, I was listening to a podcast, like I'll tend to do. It was a Catholic Answers Focus interview of Carrie Gress and it was profound. I'll post on that elsewhere.
We didn't catch any fish. Nothing was biting, so we came home.
Amen, amen, I say to you, when you were younger, you used to dress yourself and go where you wanted; but when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go.
John, Chapter 21.
The theme of this week, I fear.
Approximately 30 years ago, I was presented with an opportunity that I desired greatly to take. It was, however, irresponsible in about every way a serious person would regard something to be irresponsible. I accepted it, and then back out.
It was a mistake.
History does not really repeat, as they say, but rhymes.
This week, I'll start dealing right off the bat with a crisis, and it's a multi party crisis. From crisis, comes opportunity of all sorts, and if not traveling into a fork in the road, I'm definitely traveling into a traffic circle.
I know with certainty which road I want to take, and that it goes where I want to go, and it can be travelled.
I also know that another road is the responsible one, in every conventional fashion. That will be the one I'm expected to take. And even now, that's the one I'm going to.
But I don't want to.
And that will be a mistake.
And what's this thing about Agrarianism?
I believe that this contest between industrialism and agrarianism now defines the most fundamental human difference, for it divides not just two nearly opposite concepts of agriculture and land use, but also two nearly opposite ways of understanding ourselves, our fellow creatures, and our world.
Wendell Berry.
Well, no.
Agrarianism is an ethical perspective that privileges an agriculturally oriented political economy. At its most concise, agrarianism is “the idea that agriculture and those whose occupation involves agriculture are especially important and valuable elements of society
Bradley M. Jones, American Agrarianism.
Agrarianism is agriculture oriented on an up close and personal basis, and as such, it's family oriented, and land ethic oriented.
We have noted before:
But Agrarianism goes much further than this. It retains something that the rest of society has tragically lost, which is that we are inseparably bound to the soil, and inseparably bound to nature.
The fact that we have lost this has been massively corrupting and is massively destructive. Indeed, it threatens to destroy us.
Not everyone in a modern agrarian economy would be farmers, as some like to either imagine, or criticize. But society would be family farm oriented. And it would value the land ethic.
All ethics so far evolved rest upon a single premise: that the individual is a member of a community of interdependent parts.The land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants and animals, or collectively the land.
The Land Ethic, A Sand County Almanac. Aldo Leopold.
Realizing that agrarianism is, whether we like it or not, and that we ignore it at our ultimate peril and destruction, is the paramount task of agrarians today. No one thing every cures all of a society's ills, but a modern agrarian economy would come pretty darned close.
Which presumes not only a well grounded society, but a well-educated society.
We've lost that.
Southern Rockies Nature Blog: Greens and Guns: Ted William's recent article in Audobon lambastes hunters, anglers, and environmental activists for failing to make common cause. In ...
Interesting comment.
I have long thought this very thing.
You probably have to be a lifelong, or at least a long time, resident of Wyoming to remember Crow now, but he was a great man.
Born in 1939, and passing away four years ago on Thanksgiving Day, Crowe was a local character who authored a slightly fictionalized account of his early years in the book A Growing Season. Born in Kansas, he came to Wyoming as a teenager with his family and was shipped off to the UC Ranch for summer work in an event which would end up defining the rest of his life, a fairly typical Wyoming story, really.
Crowe served in the U.S. Army, married upon his return, and the went to Casper College and UW to earn a PhD in Zoology in 1974. From there he became a very significant wildlife manger for hte Wyoming Game and Fish, and ultimately served in the U.S. Fish & Wildlife and a host of southern African fish and game organizations. He was dedicated to wildlife.
He was also a great author, although it only expressed itself in a handful of books. A column in The Wyoming Wildlife, while he worked for the Wyoming Game and Fish, was the first thing I read it in every time it arrived.
Crowe was outspoken and folksy, but hugely intelligent and dedicated. He epitomized wildlife management in Wyoming of his era and is greatly missed.
A few weeks ago, with John Pondoro Taylor, on our companion blog Going Feral, we made a controversial entry. Keeping with that theme, we do the same here.
If a person has agrarian interests, there's no escaping The Southern Agrarians as there is not escaping their magnum opus, I'll Take My Stand. It is one of the great, if highly flawed, works of modern agrarian thought.
The irony, I suppose, of the work and the group needs to be mentioned from the onset. They did not make their living from the land, although it's not necessary to do that in order to be an agrarian. Rather, they were twelve men of letters who wrote what amounted to an agrarian last stand, which they were very conscious of it being at the time. They were:
This Day in History: Chuck Mawhinney, Legendary Marine
“My father was a Marine during World War II,” he later explained. “I started shooting at a very young age, and he taught me to shoot like the Marines taught him, so there wasn’t any big transition from hunting in Oregon to becoming a sniper.”
I have no doubt this is true, uncomfortable truth for many that it may be.
Dick Proenneke may be the ultimate modern subsistence hunter and fisherman in so far as the Western World is concerned.
Proenneke was born in Iowa in 1916. His father was sort of a jack of all trades laborer, which is and was common to rural areas. His father was also a veteran of World War One. Dick followed in his father's footsteps prior to World War Two, leaving high school before graduation, something extremely common in that era (less than 50% of males graduated from high school prior to World War Two He joined the Navy in World War Two and took up hiking around San Francisco while recovering from rheumatic fever contracted in the service. Having the disease was life altering for him, as he became focused on his health. He received a medical discharge from the Navy in 1945.
After the war he became a diesel mechanic, but his love of nature caused him to move to Oregon to work on a sheep ranch, and then to Shuyark Island, Alaska, in 1950. From 1950 to 1968 he worked for a variety of employers, including the Navy and the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service. He moved to the wilderness in 1968, at age 52, the year that in many ways gave us the Post Post World War Two World we are now seeing collapse. He lived there, as a single man, until 1999, when old age forced him out of the woods and to his brother's home in California. He died in there in 2003, at age 86. His cabin now belongs to the Park Service.
Proenneke loved photography and left an extensive filmed record of his life in Alaska.
There's a lot that can be gleaned from his life, some of which would probably be unwarranted, as every person's life is their own. Having noted that, however, it should be noted that Proenneke is not the only person to live in this manner in Alaska's back wood, including up to the present. So he's not fully unique, but rather his high intelligence and filmed record has made him known.
It's also notable, fwiw, that he was a single man. Basically, if looked at carefully, his retreat to the woods came in his retirement, as he had very low expenses up until 1968, and had worked for the government for many years. He never married, so he never had a family or responsibilities of that type. Many of the men who live in wild Alaska have married into native families, so their circumstances are different.
Probably every young man who loves the outdoors has contemplated doing something like what Proenneke actually did, while omitted the decades of skilled labor as a single man that came before it. And in reality, Proenneke, had lived over half his life as a working man with strong outdoor interests, rather than in the wilderness. People really aren't meant to live the way he lived, in extreme isolation, save for a few.
Related Threads:
President Theodore Roosevelt convened the first North American Conservation Conference at the White House.
The conference was between delegates of the US, Canada, and Mexico.
Oddly enough, Wallace Stegner was born on this day as well, in Lake Mills, Iowa.
My frank reaction is, "so what"?
Ten entities intend to sue the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service for not extending protection for wolves under the Endangered Species Act.
That has proven to be correct.
This entry may be controversial.
Certainly, it's questionable.
John Howard "Pondoro" Taylor was a near contemporary to last week's entry, Jack O'Connor. O'Connor bore an Irish last name, and Taylor did not, but Taylor was a Dublin born son of a well-to-do surgeon and fit into the Anglo-Irish Protestant class that basically ran Ireland until the Anglo-Irish War. Indeed, it is rumored that Taylor may have gotten into trouble somehow with the IRA, resulting in his relocation to Africa.
I've read the Peter Hathaway Capstick's biography of Taylor, but I've forgotten almost all of it. I usually retain a great deal of what I read, but Capstick is not my favorite author and I've lost the details. That means this entry is, to a large degree, uninformed.
First, does Taylor deserve a spot here at all?
Taylor was an Ivory hunter, and frankly, he was a poacher. That puts him outside of the classification of subsistence hunter, to be sure.
More on that in a moment.
Taylor went to Africa in the golden age of African big game hunting, which roughly stretched from the 1890s until 1950, and which coincided with the height of late stage European colonialism. A "remission man", that class of English man who was sent overseas by their family, with a sort of allowance, in order that they not cause trouble in their line of succession, he was a prolific hunter but oddly solitary. He had no interest in guiding hunting clients at all. As noted, he was an ivory hunter, and a poacher, at a time when that was not admirable, but which did not threaten the game populations, but he also hunted other African species very widely, to include African game bird species we otherwise very rarely think of.
Taylor is known to us today as he was well-educated and very literate. He authored two books, one of which is an absolute classic to this day in terms of big game cartridges. His book on African cartridges basically picks up where Jack O'Connor's leaves off. He cannot be discounted as an expert on big game hunting, or on cartridges.
All together, Taylor write at least five books, with African Rifles and Cartridges being an absolute classic. There is a sequel to it, which I have not read, just on hunting cartridges alone. Interestingly, his last book, Shadows of Shame, was not only his only novel, but it apparently had subtle homosexual themes, with Taylor widely believed to be homosexual himself, which may have led to his explosion from Africa. He was also a slaveholder, in this case the two being linked as he purchased a young man in the bush from the boys desperate parents, with the African man going on to be the object of his attention later on.
Slavery and pedophile behavior cannot be excused, so the question is why list Taylor, who ended up dying in poverty in London? Perhaps he's a reminder that some individuals of great talent also have enormous faults. At any rate, he lived by his rifles for most of his life, existing off of what he shot for food and an income. He's not wholly admirable by any means, but his written works remain among the best ever written on rifle cartridges.
In Cheyenne, a War Salvage lecture was given on the topic of "How to get fat from skunk without smell". Attribution: Wyoming State History Society Calendar.
I don't think I'd try that.
Some apparently do, however.
The question is why?
Arizona born writer/professor/big game hunter Jack O'Connor was, in my opinion, the best firearms author the country has ever produced, and certainly the best one on the topic of North American big game rifles.
Born in Arizona in 1902, he was partially raised by a bird hunting maternal grandfather, due to his parent's divorce when he was five years old, which influenced him heavily. His paternal grandfather was a judge who also ranched, which also influenced him a great deal. His mother became a university professor after that, at the University of Arizona, which he ultimately would as well. As a very young man, he'd briefly worked as a market hunter for an uncle's saw mill.
O'Connor served in the military twice. He joined the Army at age 15 during World War One, but was discharged due to tuberculosis. He later joined the Navy in 1919, serving as a hospital corpsman until discharged in 1921.
He took to big game early on. By profession, he was a writer, as noted first being a college professor. He was the first journalism professor at the University of Arizona, a position he left to write in sporting journals full time in 1945. In that role, he became famously associated with the .270 Winchester and Mountain Sheep hunting. Not too surprisingly, he moved to Idaho in 1948, where sheep are indigenous, although he stated that this was in part as he felt Arizona had become overpopulated following World War Two.
While associated particularly with sheep, O'Connor was the class western North American hunter, and hunted every big game animal native to the region, frequently with his wife. He was a noted conservationist as well.
All good advice.
I'd add, here in Wyoming, a winter coat for sure.
And a blanket that will suffice for cold weather without electricity, as you might not have your car electricity all that long.
And some food for a few days is a good idea, also.
I'd also add, for at least off roady and over the road vehicles, a two-way radio. I have GMRS radios in both of my regular 4x4s, which are also my regular daily drivers. Personally, I much prefer GMRS over CB, which has a more limited range.
On this day in 1973, the Endangered Species Act, having passed by the House of Representatives, 355 to 4, with the only opposing votes coming from Congressmen Earl Landgrebe of Indiana, H. R. Gross of Iowa, Robin Beard of Tennessee and Bob Price of Texas, was signed into law.
The Nixon Administration, now mostly remembered for Watergate, and the duplicitous end to the Vietnam War, had a remarkable record of passing environmental legislation, including this landmark example. Perhaps more remarkable, at this point in time, Wyoming's Congressman, Teno Roncolio, voted for it.
My, how things have changed.
And more amazing yet, Teno Roncalio, was a Democrat, the last Wyoming Democrat to hold that position. For that matter, one of the two Senators from Wyoming, Gale McGee, was as well. McGee is the last member of the Democratic Party to hold that office in Wyoming.
Presently to admit that the ESA is a great piece of litigation is to invite castigation in Wyoming, and the world "Democrat" is nearly slanderous in nature.
The State of Colorado, in a voter backed initiative, released five wolves in Grand County. The move was opposed by area ranchers and not keenly supported either by Wyoming.
By occupation, Townsend Whelen was an Army officer who came into the Army through the National Guard, having first served in the nation's oldest military branch from 1895, and then having served in the Army from 1902 to 1936, leaving the service at the rank of Colonel.
At first an infantry officer, and then later an ordnance officer, Whelen had grown up outdoors in New York's Adirondack's and then moved to Pennsylvania, where he first served in the National Guard. Joining the Army in 1902 as a commissioned officer, Whelen enjoyed military service at a time at which being a career officer tended to leave abundant free time for other pursuits, which in Whelen's case amounted to rigorous outdoor pursuits, including, and indeed principally, consisting of backwoods and wilderness hunting. Indeed, his Army service included this as it took him to remote locations which remained very wild at the time.
A dedicated hunter, Whelen is in part remembered today for his association with the .30-06 military round in a hunting application, principally chambered in sporting variants of the M1903 Springfield rifle. His name today is attached to the .35 Whelen cartridge, which was a wildcat cartridge based on the .30-06 during the time at which he was the superintendent of Frankfurt Arsenal. It followed the development of the .400 Whelen which was also based on the .30-06, and about it Whelen recounted:
About the time we completed development of this cartridge (the .400 Whelen), I went on a long hunting trip in the Northwest, and when I returned, Mr. Howe showed me another cartridge he had developed. The .30-06 case was necked to .35 caliber to use existing .35-caliber bullets. Mr. Howe asked my permission to call this cartridge the .35 Whelen, but he alone deserves credit for its development.[
35 Whelen
The 35 Whelen was designed by James Howe, of Griffin and Howe, partially in response to letters from Leslie Simpson and Stewart Edward White, suggesting that a good all-round rifle for African use would be one of 333 to 350 caliber, with a bullet of 250- to 300 grains (ideally 275 at 2500 fps. Both men (along with Roy Chapman Andrews and the Rev. Dr. Harry Caldwell, who were active in Asia,) perhaps the finest big game shots our country has produced, were aware of the outstanding performance of the 318 Westley-Richards with a 250-grain bullet, the 333 Jeffrey with a 300-grain bullet and the 350 Rigby with a 310-grain bullet on thin-skinned dangerous and non-dangerous game in Africa. It is of passing interest that the bullet for the old British 333 Jeffery is much like the 300-grain copper tube bullet which Winchester introduced for the 338 Magnum. The 35 Whelen was the first of 3 (three) efforts by Griffin and Howe to produce a cartridge that would meet this ideal. All were in 35 caliber. The 35 Whelen is simply the 30-06 necked up to 35 caliber and it’s about as easy to form from '06 brass as is the 270. Later, an "improved" version of the 35 Whelen, with venturi shoulders like Weatherby cartridges, was made up, but it never caught on. The 35 Whelen, now available in several factory rounds, and factory chambered in several different rifles (although some gunsmiths still sell properly formed brass for it) has racked up a tremendous record all over the world, rivaling the 375 Holland and Holland in its effectiveness. It was originally designed, partially, as a substitute for the 375 H & H, since rifles for it could be made up using inexpensive 30-06 actions rather than costly magnum-length Mauser Actions. It has killed, with aplomb and efficiency, all of the trophy animals in the world, with the possible exception of the “Big Three” (elephant, rhinoceros, and cape buffalo.) It can be loaded down to 35 Remington speeds for light recoil and pot-shooting, or loaded up to provide terrific stopping power--more than should ever be needed by a competent rifleman facing American big game. Although not legal in certain parts of Africa for dangerous game (some countries require that rifles of at least 375 or 400 caliber be used,) solid nose bullets are available so that, in a pinch, it would probably serve. It is easy to rebarrel an action to this cartridge-- it does not even require opening up the bolt face or free-boring; the rimless brass for it, as with the 358, is cheaper and easier to manufacture than the belted brass necessary for the 350 Remington, 35 Griffin and Howe (or Holland and Holland, as it is sometimes known) and 358 Norma Magnum. There is still a great future awaiting the 35 Whelen and, now that the 22-250 has been legitimized, perhaps we can hope that the 35 Whelen will meet the same good fortune.
Whelen, in addition to being a prolific hunter, was very active in shooting sports, and a prolific author as well.
Last prior edition:
The US is attempting to restore the endangered population.
Well worth reading:
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?
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.
