Good evening, Kibitzers! Something interesting happened on this date in 1930, for values of “interesting” associated with stereotypically American splashy publicity stunts.
I’ll discuss it below the fold, but first I really want to mark the birthday of an artist whose work I love, Louis Comfort Tiffany, born on this date in 1848. He was an artist and designer who became interested in stained glass, but was dissatisfied with the glass available to artists at the time. He ultimately made his own, and sought different methods of joining stained glass together to achieve more detail, rather than painting on the glass as had been the practice previously. The style of his glass art is instantly recognizable today, and has informed glass art for over a century.
About this other thing, though...
This is the story of a Guernsey cow named Elm Farm Ollie. Ninety years ago, she was living quietly on a farm in Bismarck, Missouri, minding her own business and giving quite a lot of milk. Then, someone got a bright idea. (But not a cow-harming idea, so don’t worry for Ollie!)
In February of 1930, the International Air Exposition was taking place in St. Louis. The bright idea was, Hey, if we retrofit the interior of a Ford Trimotor with a stall, we can fly this cow to St. Louis for the air show! And so it was that Elm Farm Ollie became the first cow to fly in a plane, for a distance of 72 miles.
Ollie was reportedly joined on her flight by four reporters, a newsreel cameraman, a radio announcer, and two cow attendants, the latter including Elsworth W. Bunce of Wisconsin, who thereby became the first person to milk a cow while in flight. Because that was not sufficiently over the top for 1930, some of the milk from that milking was sealed (still in flight, mind you) into 25 half-pint cartons, which were then parachuted down to the air-show crowd as the plane descended, in a scene that was surely the spiritual ancestor of Mr. Carlson’s turkey drop. Also, a quart of the milk was set aside and presented to Charles Lindbergh.
For reasons best known to themselves, the good folks of the National Mustard Museum have composed and performed a lightly-fictionalized, punny musical account of the Ollie story. It’s entitled The Bovine Cantata in Bb Major (from the long-lost opera Madame Butterfat). [8:27 you’ll never get back]
I… have nothing more to add to that. Comment away!
⛈️ 🌊 HURRICANE MARIA 🌊 ⛈️
💥 AND 2020 EARTHQUAKES 💥
881 days since Maria made landfall in Puerto Rico
on September 20, 2017.
Puerto Rico and USVI are still struggling to recover.
And now,a swarm of earthquakes is adding to their misery.
PLEASE FOLLOW Denise Oliver Velez and the SOS Puerto Rico group for the latest news about developments in Puerto Rico and the USVI. Denise continues to collect resonant tweets on the subject, and post them in comments daily in the Abbreviated Pundit Roundup (APR) and twice weekly in the Black Kos diaries, to make them easy to retweet. If you tweet or FB, please share something about Puerto Rico and USVI regularly.
Find links to help HERE (now including earthquake relief).
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🐨 🔥 AUSTRALIAN FIRES 2019-20 🔥 🐨
Enormous bushfires have burned over 12 million acres in Australia, so far in that continent’s summer (which is far from over). The fires have forced widespread evacuations, and have been large enough to generate their own weather, including fire tornadoes and dry lightning that set more fires. Nearly half a billion (with a B) wild animals are estimated to have died so far.
Find links to help HERE.
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🚒 🔥 CALIFORNIA FIRES 2019 🔥 🚒
This piece from Wonkette is a pretty concise explainer about how climate change, overdevelopment, and greed are fueling the California fires. (Spoiler: failure to rake the forest doesn’t figure into it.) Even your dumbest FB friend can probably get something out of it.
Find links to help HERE.
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⛈️ 🌊 HURRICANE DORIAN 🌊 ⛈️
Denise Oliver Velez posts what news there is on the Bahamas in the APR thread. This Black Kos thread has coverage of the scale of the damage.
Find links to help HERE.
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🌟 GOTV 🌟
🌟 POSTCARDING: If you are looking for a way to help and can’t do things like canvassing or phoning, consider hand-writing postcards asking people to vote. It’s easy because you’re given specific talking points from the campaign you’re working with, so you don’t have to think up what to say, and no one will be coming back at you with questions. And if you like to color, you can get creative decorating the cards. Note that you are responsible for buying postcards (and stamps if you don’t use pre-stamped ones.) Postcard stamps are 35 cents each; pre-stamped postcards from USPS are 39 cents each; two different pretty designs. If you can spend a little more, the two postcarding sites below sell their designs; or, searching the phrase “postcards to voters” on Amazon will show you many designs.
To get started:
🌟 PERSONALIZED LETTERS: Similarly, you can do more good than you might expect by writing personalized letters (from a template) to Democrats who are unlikely voters, adding a brief personal statement about why you VOTE EVERY TIME. Studies have shown this can boost turnout by enough to make a difference. As with postcards, you get names/addresses for these voters in targeted districts from the website, fill in the letters, address/stamp/fill the envelopes, but then, you hold them and mail them on Oct. 27, a week before election day! Note that, as with the postcards, you are responsible for buying envelopes, paper (no special paper required), and stamps. First class letter stamps are 55 cents each. (A new Gwen Ifill stamp just came out!)
For more info:
🌟 CONFIRM YOU ARE REGISTERED, REPEAT REGULARLY, AND GET YOUR FAMILY AND OTHERS TO DO THE SAME!!! FIGHTING VOTER SUPPRESSION STARTS AT HOME!
- Many folks here have been surprised to find that their or a family member’s registration has mysteriously disappeared, even though it had been active. Don’t wait until too late to catch and correct this bullshit.
- HEADCOUNT.ORG will direct you to your state’s Department of State/Division of Elections (or similar) webpage, which is the horse’s mouth, as it were.
- Or, google something like “am I registered to vote” plus your state, and go to your state government’s page directly.
🌟 If you can do more, do it! These are just things you can do at home at 3 am. Some of us have the wherewithal to do more, and we should! No one is coming to save us. Act accordingly.
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