Category Archives: events

Jefferson City vs. the Pandemic, 1918—II

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A look back at the Spanish Influenza pandemic of 1918 might help us understand how the Coronavirus could run its course in 2020. There are some important things to remember, however. First, Jefferson City, a town of about 14,500 people, had one hospital, St. Mary’s, which was adequate under normal circumstances but faced the same issues today’s hospitals are facing. The other thing to remember is that in 1918 there were no vaccines available or on the horizon. Quinine, which gained popularity in the 1830s thanks largely to Arrow Rock Dr. John Sappington, was tried as a medicine in 1918 but showed no indication that it helped.

In many cases, what happened then is happening now. But in many other ways, today’s conditions, cures, and treatments are a far cry from what our parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents faced.

In recounting these sad and tragic days in 2020’s nervous and uncertain days, we hope we are not leaving the impression that the Coronavirus will have the same course or the same deadly results. Although health officials are struggling to find a cure, medical care is more than a century advanced from the days of the Spanish influenza. It is obvious now that it is likely to be with us for a while and we are likely to lose some people. But we are better prepared today because we know what happened long ago.

It was a bittersweet time. The Great War was ending about the time the Spanish Influenza was at its peak.

A new concern entered Jefferson City discussions in mid-November, 1918 when the National Tuberculosis Association voiced fears the flu epidemic could lead to substantial increases in tuberculosis, perhaps as much as ten percent for the next two years. The NTA said the influenza “weakens a person’s physical vitality and lowers a person’s resistance to the disease.”

The first case of the flu in the penitentiary led to an immediate quarantine reported by the local press on November 17. The first inmate death was reported.

When Mrs. Will Ruprecht died November 20th, the funeral at her home was private “on account of influenza restrictions.”   Home funerals were common in those days before Jefferson City had its first funeral home.

Thirty-nine new cases in two days in the city was considered a “slight falling off” from the previous week but there had been four deaths in the last four days.

The State Board of Health sent around word on November 21 that it would be okay for cities to remove the “more or less drastic measures” intended to limit the disease’s spread. The next day the city had 25 new cases of the influenza.

The day the controls were lifted in Jefferson City, a two year old boy died. The next day, “a beautiful young life went out” when a popular 24-year old woman “just budding into sweet womanhood” died at her home. Robert F. Mueller, “an excellent harness maker,” died the next day and police posted ten more placards on the doors of home signifying they were quarantined. The week ending November 22 saw 173 new cases. The next week the total dropped to 109. People were dying daily and the Federal Public Health Service reported the number of cases nationally was approaching 350,000. The Missouri Capitol was fumigated a second time.

It was December now, likely the longest six weeks in city history.

Community Nurse Ruth Porter, now recovered from her bout with the flu, said her case load had was double what it was in October. Fortunately, the Council of Clubs had bought a car for her to use in her home visits. She had 34 people under her care as of December 13.

The State Prison Board reluctantly admitted more than 100 flu cases behind the walls. State Health Board Secretary George H. Jones reported the state’s October death total of 3,145 represented half of all deaths in Missouri.

The Red Cross was looking for a building that could accommodate patients when St. Mary’s Hospital couldn’t handle any more. The hospital’s own annex became the spill-over building, capable of holding 25 additional patients.

“I am astounded at the death rate of this epidemic,” said the former Assistant State Highway Engineer J. P. Davis, an experienced sanitary engineer who believed in disinfectants. He suggested all of the back yards in town be cleaned up and disinfected. He also suggested the city use a flushing tank filled with a germicide “rather than men with brooms” to clean the streets.

The penitentiary got a gallon of pneumonia serum from the Mayo Sanitarium in Rochester, Minnesota, and quickly inoculated all of the convicts. It was too late for seven of them. Three days later the total was 13 inmate deaths.

But there seemed to be a glimmer of good news when the city’s doctors reported new cases were down fifty percent although the death of Oscar Walther at St. Mary’s Hospital put the city death total into the thirties.

The Daily Capital News asked, “Isn’t it time the state of Missouri was giving some attention to the health of its citizens? It is a sad commentary upon our humanity that we give more thought and spend more money on the health of hogs and cattle than we do upon men and women. The Board of Health has no power to do anything and no money to do anything with.” It was a valid point, but a state health department was not created until a new constitution was adopted almost thirty years later.

Four days before Christmas, the prison announced the deaths of three more inmates raised the total dead there to 22. A study of the fatalities showed 17 of those inmates had been in the prison for less than a year. The penitentiary blamed local jails because, “Many of the prisoners come to the penitentiary run-down physically and are in no condition to have the influenza.” The seriousness of the situation in the prison became apparent with the prison doctor’s end-of-the year report. The prison hospital usually had 20-30 admissions a month and a total of only 32 in October and November. In December it was 459. The final death toll was 26 inmates from pneumonia resulting from the flu.

An important sign that the flu was abating came when the school board decided to reopen schools on December 31. They’d been closed since October 10 and the school days would be lengthened by 45 minutes in an effort to catch up the students on their learning before graduation in late May.

St. Mary’s Hospital reported at the end of the year it had handled 154 flu cases. Forty-one patients had died during the year, “25 were brought in in a dying condition,” most likely influenza victims, many with flu-caused pneumonia.

By the end of January the city death toll was at least 34, fifteen of them people who died at home, plus the 26 prison inmates. Many other deaths were reported throughout the county.

On February 20, 1919, St. Mary’s Hospital caught fire. All 35 patients were removed safely, some taken to the top floor of the Governor’s Mansion and the rest housed in the 14-room vacant mansion of the late Jacob F. Moerschel a Jefferson City brewer who donated the land on which the hospital was built. The fourth floor of the hospital was destroyed, as was the roof, and the rest of the building was heavily damaged by water. A $75,000 fund-raising effort was started to rebuild the hospital, which served the city until 2014 when a new St. Mary’s opened.

The flu made a small comeback in March but by early June, Community Nurse Ruth Porter was reporting “General health conditions have never been half as good as they are now.”

Except—-

Tuberculosis cases resulting from the influenza epidemic were increasing in “staggering” proportions.

The city, the state, the nation survived the worst epidemic in American history up to that time in 1918-19. Most of the great-great-grandchildren of those who were victims of and survivors of the great Spanish flu epidemic will survive the Coronavirus epidemic in 2020. But we know from history that we might be facing a weeks-long struggle. Many will be sick. Some will die.

And then life will go on—as it did after the great pandemic of 1918-1919.

Jefferson City vs. the Pandemic, 1918—I

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We are facing weeks of uncertainty, nobody knows how many, as we are stalked by a dark shadow that threatens to envelop us with the scariest health challenge in more than a century. We are taking the Coronavirus seriously because our ancestors throughout the world were devastated by a virus known as the “Spanish Influenza”—-although it didn’t start in Spain—and the terrible outcome has remained a specter within our culture. Now it is here and many find themselves trying not to think of their mortality.

The 1918-18 influenza epidemic might have started right next door to us. In Kansas, not Spain. Its first major flare-up was at Camp Funston, a World War One training camp at Fort Riley, Kansas. In March, 1918, five-hundred soldiers got sick. The outbreak quickly waned, perhaps because many of the Funston soldiers headed to Europe after war was declared in April.

The flu spread from there throughout the world, mutated, and eventually came back to the States.

By the time it had run its course, the worldwide death total was at least 50-million people, maybe 100-million. In this country, 670,000 deaths were attributed to it, more than the combined death counts in both world wars, Korea and Vietnam.   Missouri’s total was 12,250.   To put that in some context, the population of Jefferson City at the time was a little less than 14,500.

In those days there were two primary information sources: the newspapers and the telephone. The newspapers brought our ancestors news about the slow course of the disaster. The speculation (“analysis” if you will) of the day was two people on the telephone talking to one another.

Missouri had no cases of Spanish Influenza when St. Louis Health Commissioner Max Starkloff issued three “don’ts” to fight the spread of the disease “if it reaches here.”

—Don’t cough or sneeze unless your mouth is protected by a handkerchief.                                 —Don’t, if you can avoid it, sleep in the same room with another person if you have influenza.   —Don’t fail to call a doctor when the first symptoms are felt.

Less than three weeks later, on October 8, the Jefferson City Daily Capital News reported the Secretary of the State Council of Defense, Frank Robinson, had been sent to the “quarantine hospital” suffering from apparent Spanish Influenza. “Local physicians are not alarmed over the prospect in any way, but they are ready to take all precautions necessary,” aid the paper.

The very next day the newspaper reported the city had fifteen cases of the flu. The mayor called a meeting of physicians, ministers, and heads of the city schools to decide if schools, churches, and theatres should be closed. The state prison was under quarantine.

On October 10, the schools were closed, churches cancelled services indefinitely, students at Lincoln Institute were forbidden to leave the campus, gatherings of more than fifteen people were prohibited, and streets were to be flushed each morning. “These precautions are deemed sufficient to prevent the spread of the influenza epidemic in the city,” said the newspaper.

The next day city had “no fewer than 50 cases.” By October 15th, there were 65 and former Madison Hotel clerk Raymond Smith had become the city’s first fatality. Among the newly-infected people: City Physician, Dr. Edward Mansur, who was in bed with a “mild form.”

The next day, another man died, Missouri Pacific engineer Charles Alcorn, whose flu degenerated into a fatal pneumonia.

On October 17th, the city had 150 cases and a day later the number topped 185. The city already had a serious shortage of nurses and by the 22nd, Community Nurse Ruth Porter had taken to her bed with the flu.

Churches were allowed to have services for the first time in two weeks but the theatres remained closed. So were schools.

Forty-two new cases were recorded October 23-26. Dr. Mansur was able to visit some ill folks that day but was back in bed the next day. The number of cases passed 300 by the end of October.

About a dozen people had died by November 14 when the newspaper published a large public notice on the front page citing “Unusual measures” that were to be taken to “remove the influenza from our city.” Some of them sound familiar today. Others tell us about some of the sanitation issues of the day:

—Spend a lot of time out of doors but away from crowds.

—Open doors and windows of your homes, especially in the bedrooms, for a few hours each day and clean out dirty corners.

—If anyone in your home has had a cold or even felt bad fumigate their bedrooms at least if not the entire house. Fumigation can be done by anyone in three or four hours with Sulphur or formaldehyde candles which can be purchased at any drug store at small cost.

—It is the duty as well as a law that every contagious disease be reported to the City Physician for the protection of yourself as well as your neighbor.

—Business houses are urged to at least fumigate their stores one night this week. Formaldehyde is inexpensive and harmless, also there is no fire hazard. Those businesses serving other than alcoholic beverages must wash glasses and china used by patrons in hot water and with soap. Saloons must wash glasses used by patrons more thoroughly than usual. Water basins used for the washing must be emptied and refilled at least four times a day. And care must be exercised to keep large numbers of people from gathering in those businesses. Even small groups must be made to spread out. Any business allowing more than 15 people to assemble or enter the place at one time could be closed.

—All business places must have prominent signs asking people not to cough or sneeze in their places. Such signs will cause people to cough or sneeze into their handkerchief.

—Factory superintendents must take the temperature of all employees at least once a day and anyone who is 99 or more must be sent home and not allowed to return until he has a doctor’s certification that he is not affected with a contagious disease, particularly the flu. Each factory must be fumigated at least once a week.

The city board of health agreed a couple of days later to delay any closings for four days. If, on November 22, “there is not a decreased number of influenza cases reported daily in the city, the businesses houses will be closing tight for four days in an effort to stamp out the disease.”

The Miller and Weiss Pool Hall on Madison Street was closed for a week after a policeman found thirty-one people inside.

But people kept getting sick. And people kept dying. The Capital City—as well as all of Missouri and the nation—was fighting a plague with no medicine that could stop it.

We’ll have more next week.

 

Innocent

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A brief observation about the vote on President Trump’s impeachment:

One of the things we journalists were taught early in our careers is that a “not guilty” verdict in a criminal court case does not mean the accused person is innocent. It only means the prosecution failed to convince the jury “beyond a reasonable doubt” of the guilt of the accused.

Another word sometimes erroneously used after such trials: “exoneration.” Finding someone “not guilty” does not absolve someone from blame, which is what “exoneration” means.

The partisan nature of the vote on the impeachment articles aside, the outcome in no way bestows innocence on President Trump. If the results would have been identical but reversed they would not have bestowed guilt.

To use a tired phrase, it is what it is. Claiming it is more is dishonest.

Of course, all of this is lost in today’s world of “Forever Trumpers” vs. “Never Trumpers,” a world in which reason, perspective, and understanding of a process are lost in the shouting.

But somebody had to mention this and it might as well have been mentioned here.

There is a third word that is appropriate: acquit.

The word “acquit” seems to be a better fit. The Senate vote discharged the president from the accusations against him, which is one meaning of the word.   There is a second meaning: to conduct oneself in a proper way, particularly in stressful situations

So now that the president has been acquitted, we shall see how he acquits himself, to use both definitions in the same sentence.

 

Lord, but do I ever need baseball!

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It’s gray and it’s cold and it’s been gray and cold far too long and far too much. Or maybe grey and cold.

Life is so bad that I have been driven to ask what the difference is between “gray” and “grey.” Which one has fifty shades (It’s “e”). Is it Thomas Grey or Thomas Gray who was the 18th century English poet who wrote “Elegy Written in an English Churchyard,” a poem with the original ending that doesn’t do much to improve the mood on these cold, gray days.

No more, with reason and thyself at strife,
Give anxious cares and endless wishes room;
But through the cool sequester’d vale of life
Pursue the silent tenour of thy doom.

Gray (not “e” but “a”) rewrote the 128-line poem with a different conclusion but it offers no more solace on days like these.

I have been driven to Grammar (“a” not “e”) dot com for help. It wasn’t real helpful.   Look for yourself.

The past few weeks have given us the leaden cloud of impeachment, the weight of which has left us tired and has left our political system with a terrible burden of public distrust precisely at the time we must start deciding who, if anybody, can lift our confidence in government, which is—after all—led by those we, ourselves, select.

It is easy on days like these to think of ourselves as victims of government instead of what we really are—partners in government.

We have attended too many funerals of friends in the last year, read far too many letters to the editor that are little more than partisan political popgun skirmishes, watched noble aspirations for public benefit wither under the power of campaign donations, seen too few films or shows or television series that leave viewers uplifted, and watched too many late-night comedians whose one-note monologues encourage fleeing to bed and seeking refuge fully under the covers.

Yes, the Chief won the Super Bowl but then the President tweeted that they made the state of KANSAS proud and I wondered if he could identify Ukraine on a map without country names printed on them.

Lord, do I ever need baseball.

Some friends at the YMCA, knowing of my media background, have asked if I can get them tickets to a New York Yankees-Chicago White Sox baseball game to be played near the small Iowa town of Dyersville, Iowa, population about 41-hundred, this summer. Dyersville, as you probably know, is widely recognized as the home of the National Farm Toy Museum and the home of the Ertl Company, which makes die-cast metal alloy scale models of farm equipment and other vehicles.

There’s also THE baseball field, the filming site of Field of Dreams, which celebrated its thirtieth anniversary last year.

Major League Baseball has been pretty close to the vest with information about tickets for the Dyersville game but there won’t be very many. https://www.mlb.com/news/field-of-dreams-game-tickets-and-faqs

The teams taking part were announced last November:

https://doyouremember.com/108307/mlb-field-of-dreams-game

Beyond that, there’s been little information. We do know the game is scheduled for August 13 and it will count as a regular season game. It will be played in a specially-built ballpark owned by Go The Distance Baseball, the present owners of the movie site. The park has only 8,000 seats and it will be north of the movie ball diamond, connected to it by a path cut through a cornfield.   There will be windows in the outfield walls so fans can see the corn. The owners say they’ll find other things to do with the ballpark after the game.

No, I can’t get tickets for you. But like you, I’ll probably watch the game on the teevee.   Who will throw out the first pitch?   Your guess is as good as mine but I’ll bet it’s a pretty close.

But baseball is coming near. And, boy howdy, do I ever need it!

Chasing down information about the ball game at Dyersville brought me to several Youtube sites about Kevin Costner, the movie, and even the composer of the theme music, James Horner, who was killed in a plane crash in 2015 and is best remembered for the soundtrack to Titanic.

And that, of course, led to James Earl Jones intoning his ode to baseball near the end of the movie. It’s been cited so often that it is almost corny. But, gosh, is it good.

“They’ll walk out to the bleachers, and sit in shirt-sleeves on a perfect afternoon. They’ll find they have reserved seats somewhere along one of the baselines, where they sat when they were children and cheered their heroes. And they’ll watch the game, and it’ll be as if they’d dipped themselves in magic waters. The memories will be so thick, they’ll have to brush them away from their faces….The one constant through all the years…has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It’s been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt, and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game — it’s a part of our past…It reminds us of all that once was good, and it could be again.”

In the offseason we’ve watched baseball writhe because of the Astros’ sign-stealing scandal. We’ve watched the free agent meat market produce players paid sums beyond our imaginations. The Royals have changed managers. The Cardinals still have enormous potential waiting to break through.

But when we hear the sound of baseball hitting leather or wood hitting the baseball, all of that offseason stuff fades away because games are played in their time and it is only the game that is important. Uniforms change, players once young and now old at 37 come and go. But it is still 60’6” from mound to plate, still 90’ from plate to first, still 127’ 3 3/8” home to second. The eternal dimensions contain the game.

The rules are clear and mostly unchanging year to year, decade to decade. Lines clearly mark what is fair and what is foul. Every batter has an equal chance to get a hit—three strikes and four balls. The tag of the bag in the first part of the double play, the infield fly, obstruction, the balk—all have rules requiring specific actions or situations. Baseball will be played this year with the same basic rules and dimensions it used last year. It’s one thing we can count on in otherwise unstable times.

Go to a baseball game and for a few hours you know how the game will be played. In the time before the game and the time after the game, we live in a world much less certain.

And the game is all there is for however long it takes to finish it. Cold, gray days, politics and impeachment, popgun partisanship in the letters to the editor page, and most of the cares of the world fade to insignificance because baseball is baseball, a game that by its eternal dimensions tells us there can be stability in life and that what once was good could be good again.

Lord, I do need baseball!

Dr. Crane on thinking

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(Dr. Frank Crane left the pulpit as a Methodist minister after 28 years to become a writer and newspaper columnist. The New York Times wrote in his 1928 obituary, “His message always was one of uprightness of living, sincerity of thinking and ‘sweet reasonableness.’” We could use a few doses of that sort of thing these days of division and derision, so we have been sharing some of his thoughts at the start of each week.)

SLOVENLY THOUGHTS

Clean up your thoughts.

Don’t have your mind looking like the dining-table after a banquet, or the floor after a political meeting. Sweep it and dust it and put the ideas away where they belong.

Don’t have a waste-basket mind.

Or a top-bureau-drawer mind.

It doesn’t do you much good to have a grand idea, or a wonderful impression, or a strong passion, if you don’t know where to put it.

I notice when I talk to you that you have a good many interesting notions. The trouble is they are all higgledy-piggledy; they have no unity, coherence, order, organization.

You think, but you don’t think anything out. Your wheat is full of chaff.

Perhaps I can help you if you will lend me your ear for a space.

  1. Don’t pick up some opinion you hear and make it your own because it sounds fine, and go to passing it out, without carefully examining it, scrutinizing, cross-questioning and testing it.
  2. One of the best tests of any opinion (not an infallible, but very valuable, test) is “Will it work?” If it won’t something’s wrong with it, nine times out of ten. That last brilliant notion of yours—hundreds of sensible people have had it, and discarded it, because it wouldn’t work.
  3. Don’t let anybody make you think you owe a certain amount of belief in a thing simply because you can’t disprove it. Nor be deceived by the argument, “If that doesn’t account for it, what does?” You don’t have to account for it at all. Some of the most pestiferous bunk has got itself established by this kind of reasoning. You don’t have to believe or disbelieve everything that comes along; most things you must hang up and wait.
  4. Don’t be afraid to say, “I don’t know.” It’s a sign that you know what you do know.
  5. Ask questions. Don’t be ashamed of appearing ignorant. What you ought to be ashamed of is seeming to understand when you don’t.
  6. Classify. Education is nothing but the art of classification. Keep a scrap-book. Keep an index rerum. And classify.
  7. Waste no time in acquiring “general information.” Always read and study with a purpose. Look up subjects; don’t just read books. Books are to be referred to, consulted, not to be read through—that is, as a rule.
  8. Be a friend and daily companion to the dictionary and encyclopedia. Look things up.
  9. Define. Practise defining. Practise telling what a thing is not, as well as what it is.
  10. Get clear ideas of what you don’t know. Then you can see better what you do know.
  11. Write. Not for publication, necessarily, but for yourself. Writing accustoms you to choose just the right words. Beware of adjectives, especially two of them. Favor nouns. Use simple, short words. They mean more and carry further.
  12. And never hurry or worry.

Dr. Crane: The Future

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(Dr. Frank Crane, by training a Methodist minister and son of a Methodist minister, became a widely-read newspaper columnist in the first quarter of the Twentieth Century. His “Four Minute Essays” appeared in hundreds of newspapers. His New York Times obituary in 1928 noted, “His message was always one of uprightness of living, sincerity of thinking, and ‘sweet reasonableness.’” Last week, we offer his thoughts on yesterday. As we look ahead to the unpredictability of life, particularly in a campaign year, we offer these thoughts from Dr. Crane on tomorrow and other tomorrows to tome.)

AROUND THE CORNER

What’s around the corner? Something. Whatever it is, I used to be terribly afraid of it when I was a boy.

When I would take a girl home at night after meeting, I would walk out in the street a little, lest if I kept on the sidewalk I would be so close that Something around the Corner would get me. Nothing ever did jump out and grab me, never a ghost, or a boogey man, or a murderer, or anything, though I expected and feared all those boy-years.

And since I have grown up I have discovered that Something around the Corner is believed in by most mortals. It may be accident, or disease or loss or disgrace—or that old fellow himself who lurks around the corner for all of us, and will get us everyone someday—Death.

The Thing around the Corner, it is the skeleton at the feast, the shadow on our sunny day, the nightmare of our sleep, the concealed weapon of destiny, the vague enemy that will not let us bivouac in peace, but makes us always keep our pickets out alert for stealthy attack.

And yet, the Good Things of life are around the Corner. Happiness hides there and springs laughing at us. And the little things that make hearts bright and days glad. Ten of these blessed things have come upon us unaware, to one of them that we have sought and found.

Love, for instance. Don’t you remember how it was with you when it came to you that She really loved you? That wonderful, divine creature, the pearl of the world, that radiant one, the latchet of whose shoes you were not worthy to unloose—what could she see in so commonplace a mucker as you? O miracle of miracles!

The there’s Christmas, Corner of all corners, with what amazing secrets and what crowded bevy of giggles and whispers, and loving thoughts!

But, especially the Little Things are they that make the sum of our contentment, and they are nearly all surprises. If we could foresee them we wouldn’t appreciate them.

It’s not the big Olympian gods that love us most; it’s the little fairies of circumstance, the elves and pyxies of happy accident that flutter along the ways of men.

The best things of life come unexpected upon you. From the time when you were presented with your first pair of trousers, or Uncle Ed bought you home a toy pistol, down to just yesterday, when a friend paid you back the ten dollars you lent him and never expected to see again, an all through your life, your successes in business, you rarest friends, your most palatable food, your most enjoyable excursions, your most interesting books, the remarks some one made about you that most tickled your vanity, the most welcome visitors—almost all of them were not planned and worked for, but jumped at you from around the corner.

And around that last Corner, where we turn to travel the Unknown, I do not believe there hides some grisly Thong of Evil, but a smiling-faced one, with welcome in His hands and the Morning Star for me.

The beast

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Sometimes as we go through old newspapers, magazines, journals, etc., we come across things that remind us of what we were as a society. They’re painful to read in today’s world but they’re reminders of something that remains not far beneath the thin social crust on which we live, as recent events show. It was difficult to read the accounts we relate today, but we pass them along as a reminder of what we can become if we listen to the wrong people, believe the wrong words, and fail to recognize that all of us have a responsibility to each of us.

The Republican takeover of the governorship and the legislature in the 1908 elections immediately increased racial tensions of the time at the capitol. The Clinton Henry County Weekly Democrat commented, “The first fruit of Republican victory…was the distribution of patronage; and in this the black bullies from Kansas City and St. Louis were not overmodest in their demands.” Ten African-Americans were hired for jobs with the House doorkeeper and the House Chief Clerk. “Naturally their first thought was to swell up and strut around, shedding the perfume of their presence among white members,” said the newspaper.

The “negro question,” as it was called, turned ugly in the Missouri House when a white woman Senate stenographer told State Auditor John Gordon she had been approached by a black employee of the House bill clerk’s office as she walked home one night. She reported she had refused to respond when he tried to engage her in conversation, although he told her, “The women clerks in my department like me.” She was badly frightened.

Although the Senate had no black employees, some senators joined some House members in questioning bill room clerk Virgil Franklin. The inquisitors were angered by what they considered his “impertinence,” and were stopped by cooler heads from throwing Franklin over the capitol’s second floor railing to the tile floor a story below. Franklin was suspended from his job and quickly put on a train to safety in St. Louis.

The incident prompted an angry resolution in the House from Representative Jesse Duncan of Lincoln County complaining that “numerous negro employees of this House…have, by their constant use of toilet rooms and towels provided for the members of the General Assembly and white employes [sic] become such a nuisance” and recommending the firing of almost all black employees of the House. The resolution also demanded separate toilets and towels be provided for black employees remaining.

But Duncan would go only so far. When Representative William H. Wade of Greene County asked him if he would accept an amendment calling for firing all negro cooks and waiters at boarding houses, restaurants, and hotels where legislators boarded, Duncan responded, “Certainly not. That is a different thing.” Wade retorted, “I would as soon have a negro pass me a bill as handle my food.”

A second resolution, from Iron County Representative C. H. Polk went further, proclaiming, “This is a white man’s State, and the white man has ruled its official conduct in the past and will continue to do so as long as time lasts.” He complained, “The big negro bucks continue to loiter and lounge around the corridors and the ingress and egress of the Assembly hall,” forcing lawmakers and others entering the chamber “to push and edge their way through this motley crowd of unclean, common, stinking negroes or return to their homes or lodging places in the city.”

He also complained, “The toilet rooms, eating counters, benches and seats, drinking cups, wash basins and towels furnished at the expense of the State for the convenience and comfort of the members of the Assembly and their white employes [sic], and…This horde of colored men use indiscriminately and with impudence all the above named necessaries and comforts of life without authority or consent given them by this assembly.” He wanted to protect “the white girl…where she is compelled to come in contact with him in any way whatsoever, her very nature revolting against his presence and rebelling against his every touch or attention.”

His resolution continued in the same vein for another couple of paragraphs but we have run out of capacity to share more of it. In the end, Polk advocated firing all “colored” employees of the House except for those doing menial labor for the doorkeeper and told “to leave the hall at once.”

The resolutions were sent to a committee that recommended a compromise replacing two black employees in the House mail room with white men “who would not mind” working with the two remaining black clerks. The compromise was suggested when all Democrats in the House refused to go to the bill room as long as all of the clerks were black. The committee also recommended separate bathrooms for black employees and visitors, a move called by one correspondent, “the first Jim Crow order…in Missouri,” further observing, “For years such democrats as James M. Seibert, Sam B. Cook and the democratic governors down to the present time had used the same wash rooms as the janitors. But the first change was made by the Republicans in the report of the clerical force committee…” (Seibert had been the State Treasurer, 1885-1889, and Sam B. Cook had been Secretary of State 1901-1905.)

The Keytesville Chariton Courier commented after the legislature had acted, “The only way that it is possible for the white race to get along with the negro is to make him know his place and then see that he stays in it.” Keytesville, in Chariton County, had been the home town of former governor and later Confederate General and former governor Sterling Price.

Before the end of the month, however, the first African-American lobbyist appeared in the legislative halls, Kansas City minister T.C. Unthank, who became the fortieth lobbyist to register for the session. The legislature had voted in 1905 to spend thirty-thousand dollars for a separate building for “incorrigible negro girls” at the Chillicothe Industrial School. But when the building was completed, so many white girls wanted to be in it that the building was made whites-only, leaving black girls to go to jails, work houses, or even worse to the state penitentiary. The sentencing in 1908 of a twelve-year old black girl to the state penitentiary added impetus to Unthank’s lobbying. He asked for a separate industrial school for girls—somewhere other than Chillicothe. His work paid off but the school did not open until 1916, largely because of trouble finding a community that would allow such a school. The Missouri Industrial home for Negro Girls opened in Tipton in 1916.

Eleven years after these events, Walthall M. Moore of St. Louis was elected the first African-American member of the Missouri House of Representatives. Forty more years passed before Theodore McNeal of St. Louis became the first black state senator.

Even after McNeal took his seat in the senate, no black member of the Missouri legislature could stay at a Jefferson City hotel. They either stayed in private homes or in dormitory rooms at Lincoln University. Not until fair housing laws came in the mid-1960s did that situation change.

Three years after Walthall Moore took his seat in the House, the Ku Klux Klan tried to hold its state convention in the House chamber. But it moved elsewhere when the governor ordered the chamber doors to be unlocked so anyone could enter.

Next year will mark 100 years since the election of the first African-American to the state legislature. Missouri has yet to elect a member of a minority race to a statewide office.

We debated with ourself whether to create this entry. But we recalled a few years ago when we were talking about newswriting to an Indiana college class and we let them listen to Edward R. Murrow’s powerful report from the German concentration camp at Buchenwald. We watched the impact it had on those young people, some of whom were near tears. Later, some of those students told me they had never been told about that part of history.

We do ourselves no favors by forgetting about or hiding from the painful words and deeds of the past in these times of anti-Semitic attacks on the streets of New York; of culturally-motivated mass murders in theatres, malls, churches and synagogues; of concerns about white nationalism shaping public policy; of toleration of cruel words and characterizations. The beast lurks beneath the thin social crust of our daily existence and we fail to recognize its nearness to each of us at our own peril.

Notes from a quiet street—New Year’s edition

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It’s 2020. What vision will we have for our state and country in this Year of the Eye Doctor? We’ll have a serious commentary at the end of this entry from a St. Louis theologian who worries, as we enter this campaign year, about who is telling or will tell the truth.   But first, a couple of things to unburden our chest.

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Thing one: Your ever-alert observer has noted some instances in which people have referred to 2019 as the end of a decade. We suppose it is, if you consider the decade to have started in 2000.  And if you count to ten and think 9 is the last number.

We’re a little peevish about this sort of thing. It isn’t the end of a decade unless you count a year ending in zero as the first year of a decade. We realize some of you will quickly take umbrage at that observation but we need look no farther than our own birthdays.

Let’s assume you were born on May 5 in the year 0.

By explanation— if we go from 1BCE to 1CE —archaeologists use the phrases “before common era” and “common era” to avoid conflicts with various religious calenders—and since BCE counts backwards (King Tut served from about 1342 to 1325 BCE), time works backwards from one to zero and time then moves forward a like amount to year 1, the first anniversary of the switchover from BCE to just CE.

When were you be one year old in you were born on May 5, 0?

Right. Year 1. You have completed one year since your birth. On May 5 in year nine you celebrated the NINTH anniversary of your birth, not the tenth. You celebrated your tenth anniversary on May 5 in year 10, the end of your first decade. Therefore the decade begins with one and ends with zero, or as we would say in our time—2011-2020. (Incidentally, I think it is Kurt Vonnegut who has suggested we have only one birth day. All succeeding observances are anniversaries of our birth day.)

To put it less obtrusively, when Count von Count on Sesame Street counts, what does he start with?

When a boxing referee counts a fighter out at the count of ten, what number does he start with?  If he started with zero he’d be giving the fighter eleven seconds to get up.

When we count out the number of pennies in a dime, how many are there? 10.  If we stated out with the first penny at zero, we’d have 11 when we got to ten cents, which doesn’t seem to make much, uh, sense.

So the decade has another year to go.

Of course, in the cosmic sense, decades are immaterial. And we can consider a decade anything we darn well want to consider it.   A person born in 1994 would celebrate a decade of life in 2005. Since time is an abstract concept invented by the human mind, a decade can be anything the human mind wants it to be whenever it’s convenient.

So what the heck are we arguing about?   Let’s move on.

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Thing two: If you can’t do anything else, get the name right (that was one of the first rules of journalism I learned).  As long as we’re chest-unloading, let’s again see if anybody thinks it’s disrespectful to mispronounce the name of another. We heard a reporter on one of our mid-Missouri television stations report something a few nights ago that was going to happen at Jefferson City’s Bynder Park. It’s not pronounced “Bine,” it’s “Bin.”   Frederich Heinrich Binder was born in Hanover, Niedersachsen, Germany in 1845. He came to Jefferson City in 1866 and until his death in 1911 he was a major leader of our city and a builder. It’s Binder, not Bynder.

One of the grocery stores where we stock up is Gerbes East Supermarket. It’s bad enough that regular folks on the street refer to it as “Gerbs,” but it’s just plan inexcusable that the store’s public-address system that tells you what wonderful bargains there are today says the same thing.   Frank Gerbes (Gur’-bus) was running a Kroger store in Tipton when he started his own business in 1934. In coming years he established Gurbus stores in several mid-Missouri towns. In 1986, he merged his company with Dillon’s which two years later became part of the Kroger chain. Frank had been dead eleven years by then, long enough—we guess—for the people who are now Kroger employees (and the company, apparently) to forget how to pronounce the name of a small town merchant who built a little grocery store empire in mid-Missouri named Frank GURBUS.

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Okay, now it’s time to start the new year on a more thoughtful although more volatile topic: truth.   A friend of ours passed along something from an internet site called Theologycorner, a contribution that worries about what has happened to truth and what will become of it—and of us—if we are not afraid of discovering it from people we don’t want to listen to. This is from a theology professor here in our state:

https://theologycorner.net/blog/blogs/idioglossolalia/the-death-of-truth-both-sides-dont-deserve-our-consideration/

The Death of Truth: “Both Sides” don’t deserve our consideration

Ruben Rosario Rodriguez   December 30, 2019 Idioglosalalia

As a university professor of Theological Studies I have always engaged current events, and have always done so with a high degree of objectivity. By the same token, as a theologian, ethicist, and practicing Christian, I have always asserted that the church ought to stand outside partisan politics while working across party lines for the common good, remaining free to offer a prophetic critique whenever the state overreaches or neglects its duty. In other words, I have taken the apostle Peter’s advice as my guiding mantra for navigating church and state: “We must obey God rather than any human authority” (Acts 5:29, NRSV).

 

Therefore, it should come as no surprise that in the context of serious class discussions I have been critical of the Trump administration’s policies separating children from their families and creating border detention centers. Just as I am critical of Trump’s immigration policies now, I was critical of Obama’s use of drones and W’s use of torture then. However, unlike previous students, my most recent batch of first-year undergraduates is unable to grasp that I am not being partisan when making a serious theological critique of politicians.

Though I have explained to them how I leveled equally harsh—yet justified—criticisms at previous administrations regardless of party affiliation, for these kids so much of this is ancient history. Even though I argued cogently and fairly that Congress was justified in initiating impeachment proceedings against both, Bill Clinton in 1998, and Donald Trump in 2019, all they see is the now—and since Trump is currently in office, it leads to comments like this in my course evaluations:

“Sometimes I felt uncomfortable when the professor would share some harsh political views that I didn’t fully agree with. I’m always interested in learning about the point of view of others, [but] I just felt that as a teacher it’s important to share both sides of an issue even if you have a bias towards one.”

One of the things I like to model in my class is a fair and balanced presentation of opposing viewpoints, so these words really cut to the quick. A colleague argues these students’ inability to transcend their point of view stems from the widespread perspectival approach to morality and ethics. In other words, “You may believe it to be true, but that doesn’t make it true for another.” To which I respond, “Yes, but as a teacher it is my responsibility to challenge these students to move beyond mere opinion and offer clear, defensible reasons why they believe one thing and not another.”

Truth has been devalued to such a degree that those who cannot recall a time before the post-truth era find it increasingly difficult telling fact from fiction. Thankfully, we have been here before, and can learn from the past. During the rise of fascism in the 1930s, journalist and novelist George Orwell observed that useful lies were preferred to harmful truths, and truth had been replaced by propaganda. Consequently, “In a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” In such times, “If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”

In the aftermath of the Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville, Virginia in August 2017, President Trump vacillated. Instead of immediately repudiating the heinous acts of white nationalism that led to the death of Heather Heyer, a peaceful counter-protester, and the beating of DeAndre Harris, an African American counter-protester brutally beaten by six white men, the President claimed there were “very fine people on both sides,” and that the mob chanting hateful racist propaganda included, “a lot of people in that group that were there to innocently protest and very legally protest.”

Ostensibly a protest against the removal of a Confederate monument to Robert E. Lee, the rally was also a calculated move to draw national media attention to the various factions comprising the Alt-Right in an effort to move from the Internet fringes of U.S. politics into the Trump-era mainstream. Protesters included white supremacists, white nationalists, neo-Confederates, Klansmen, neo-Nazis, and various, heavily armed, militia groups. Amidst the chants of “white lives matter,” “Jews will not replace us,” “Whose streets? Our streets!” (co-opting a Black Lives Matter slogan used during the Ferguson protests), and the Nazi slogan, “Blood and soil,” marchers carried signs with anti-Semitic slurs, brandished Nazi swastikas and waved Confederate flags, while also carrying “Trump/Pence” signs.

This is not respectful conversation; when one’s interlocutor brandishes symbols of hatred and genocide—and even calls for violence against others—there is no duty to present “both sides.” However, as a Christian, I have a moral duty to condemn hatred and violence, and I recognize there are times when remaining silent is a morally reprehensible act. This we learn from Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was martyred in a Nazi concentration camp for resisting Nazi racial policies: “Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.”

Anti-Semitic attacks worldwide rose 13 percent in 2018 from the previous year, most notably in the US and Western Europe. While it would be dishonest and slanderous to link the rise of anti-Semitism to the election of Donald Trump, it is fair game to critique his administration’s lukewarm condemnation of anti-Semitism. Five years ago such acts were deemed intolerable and the public outcry from pastors and elected officials would have dominated media coverage. Today there is too much silence from Christian leaders and elected officials in light of this increase. It started with vandalizing Jewish cemeteries and synagogues, then mass shootings in synagogues, and most recently a weeklong series of vicious attacks in NYC targeting Jews during Hanukkah.

In seminary, my first ever theology professor was the late James H. Cone. To this day I carry with me the words he shared the first day of class at Union Theological Seminary in New York: “The task of theology is saying ‘Yes’ to some things and ‘No’ to others.” Theology is an inherently political undertaking—not partisan but political—and as such Christians cannot remain neutral in matters of truth, justice, and ethics. We can respectfully disagree on matters of policy—i.e., on how to address the problem of hunger and food insecurity in our public schools—but we cannot ignore the reality of poverty. We can propose different solutions to the problems created by undocumented immigration, but that does not give us license to discriminate, marginalize, or in any way mistreat undocumented immigrants.

Consequently, students in my classes will continue to be exposed to “harsh political views” they might not necessarily agree with. I don’t expect my students to agree with me on matters of politics. I do expect them to present evidence for why they believe one thing and not another. Most of all, I expect them to see beyond political posturing and demagoguery in order to evaluate all politicians (and their words and actions) from the perspective of Christian truth. And I will not tolerate Pilate’s evasive response, “What is truth?” (John 18:38, NRSV), in my classroom.

 

Dr. Ruben Rosario Rodriguez is a Professor of Systematic Theology at St. Louis University. He describes himself:

“I am a constructive theologian and ethicist who stands within the Reformed Protestant traditions (Calvin, Barth) yet is steeped in liberation theology (Gutierrez, Ruether, Cone). The first theological text I read (at age 15) was Paul Tillich’s Systematic Theology (3 volumes-in-one University of Chicago hardbound edition). James H. Cone was my first theology professor, and I once met Iggy Pop in lower Manhattan back in the early 1990s. I strive to be a theological pastor and a pastoral theologian, and here I am guided by the words of Prof Cone: “If I couldn’t preach it, I wouldn’t write it.”

—–Something to think about, particularly in this era and in this campaign year of 2020. We hope it turns out to be a happy new year.

Dr. Crane: The new year

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(A 1919 advertisement for Dr. Frank Crane’s books said, “Nine years ago Dr. Frank Crane was scarcely known outside of a small circle. To-day he has a million friends. And these million friends are happier men and women to-day because of this friendship. They occupy a higher, finer place in life because of it.” Dr. Crane stepped away from his Methodist pulpit to become one of the most-published inspirational columnists of his time. We are starting our weeks be recalling his writings).

NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTIONS

The New Year is here. It is inventory time. Let us look over the stock of habits, ideas, and relationships we have accumulated the last twelve months and clean up.

The New Year’s resolution is a good thing. Why drift along, the slave and plaything of our unmanaged desires and of our accidental circumstances? Why not be our own master and live one year like an intelligent human being?

Examine your habits. Lop off the bad ones. Free yourself from any ways you have fallen into that make you lazy, unhealthy, miserable, and disagreeable to other people.

Determine this year to be master of self; that you will control your thoughts, regulate your passions, and guide your own deeds; that you will not let events lead you by the nose.

Resolve to be happy. Remember Lincoln’s saying that “folks are usually about as happy as they make up their minds to be.”

This year you shall not neglect your friends. They are too valuable, as life assets, to lose.

You will adopt some system and stick to it, knowing that nine-tenths of our irritation comes from lack of system.

Lay out a course of study. No one is too old to learn. Resolve to give some time each day to reading some helpful book. Cut out the trash.

Resolve to keep an account of all the money you get and of all you spend. You may have tried this many times and failed. Never mind; you are still alive and have the chance to try it again.

Save. Put a certain fraction by of all you make. There’s no friend like money in the bank.

Son’t spend any money till you get it. Don’t go into debt. Beware of buying all those things you “must have,” for you mustn’t have anything until you can pay for it.

No alcohol this year. Let your body rest 365 days from this poison and see how you feel. Don’t get into a moral fever over this. Don’t “try” not to drink. Just don’t drink.

Resolve to take that daily exercise.

Eliminate worry. This year make up your mind to fret over nothing. Adjust yourself to facts instead of getting into a stew over them. If a matter can be helped, help it; if it cannot be helped, forget it.

This year resolve to keep discord out of the house. Nobody can quarrel with you if you do not quarrel with him. Say to yourself that you will not once…speak crossly to your children; that you will not say one unkind word to your husband or wife, and that you will keep agreeable…

This may be the last year you will have. Make it a good one.

You know how you ought to live. At least, you think you do. And if you do as well as your own judgment tells you, it will be an advance.

This is old-fashioned advice. But happiness is old-fashioned, and life. There is no new-fangled way to be content.

And learn this of wise Marcus Aurelius:

“To change your mind and follow him who sets you right is to be none the less free that you were before.”

Also: “The happiness and unhappiness of the rational, social animal depends not on what he feels but on what he does; just as his virtue and vice consist not in feeling but in doing.”

The history of Christmas yogurt

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The following is based on a true event. The names have been changed to protect the innocent and any resemblance of the names used in this account and the names of real people is entirely coincidental.

To: all staff   From: Gala Landowski, coordinator of interoffice activities

This Friday will be the Christmas Party potluck. There are signup sheets in each department area. Please try to have your food items picked out by the end of the day.

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To: Gala Landowski, CIA   From: Armand LeSoir, Accounting Department

The Accounting Department will be meeting tomorrow to determine what brand of unflavored yogurt to contribute.

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To: Armand LeSoir, AD   From: Gala Landowski, CIA

We are emphasizing the use of home-grown products from producers throughout the state.

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To: Gala, CIA From: Armand, AD

A very good idea, Gala. I have a good friend who has an organic yogurt farm outside of Clarence, Missouri. In fact, he says the recent harvest of yogurt berries was exceptional and produced some very high quality product this year. His is one of the few farms in Missouri to escape the serious outbreak of yogurt blight this year, or as some call it, Yogurt Rust. He grows his yogurt organically with no pesticides, insecticides, or artificial sweeteners. Each berry is carefully picked and processed by the highest-trained immigrant workers, some of whom have worked for him since they were thirteen years old. All of them carefully wash their hands after they use the bathroom.

The yogurt plants on his farm are nourished only by manure from organically-grown Angus cattle fed only organically-grown grass and high-quality organic grains. His plants have been carefully bred, using the highest quality yogurt berries from Bavaria and Latvia which are known for their hardiness, with berries from France which have a certain tartness balanced by berries from South Carolina that are known for southern sweetness. These in turn have been bred to the famous Missouri wild yogurt berry, which was a favorite of our pioneer settlers after being introduced to Missouri by the legendary Johnny Yogurtseed. The result of all of this careful work that has spanned generations of his family is an outstanding natural and well-balanced organic yogurt.

I shall make every effort to obtain some of my friend’s yogurt for the event Friday. However as many of you know, the Corps of Engineers is holding back billions of gallons of water in reservoirs in the Dakotas and Montana so people in those regions have lakes on which to go ice fishing and to experience other winter activities that we in the South would never understand. Because the Corps has taken that step, the navigation season on the Missouri has been shortened considerably because of lack of water in the channel which, in turn, has made it impossible for the yogurt barge companies to operate.

You might remember that last week the final yogurt barge of the season didn’t get downstream quickly enough and one of the tows struck a snag near Boonville and settled on the bottom of the river. Only the fact that the tow had a double hull has kept us from having a major environmental disaster. The interior hull protected against a major yogurt spill but the frigid weather and the cold water has caused the yogurt to congeal, making it impossible for salvage crews to pump it out into their smaller boats. They won’t be able to remove the yogurt until a few days before the spring navigation season.

By then the yogurt—because it is organic and therefore contains no preservatives—will have rotted and will be usable only as feed for captured feral hogs. I understand a University of Missouri study done by the College of Agriculture, Food, Natural Resources, Home-Produced Ethanol, and Quilt-Making has recently shown that rotted yogurt produces a chemical change within the brains of feral pigs that transforms them into pets suitable for children who sometimes come to regard them as large and hairy potbellied pigs.

Fortunately my friend had insurance that will cover his loss and he did hold back some of his crop in a yogurt storage bin so he might be able to provide us with enough yogurt for our part of the party. The situation has produced a significant supermarket price increase to excessive levels for organic yogurt this winter. If my friend cannot provide some yogurt from his storage bin we won’t be able to afford to buy some at the supermarket and will be forced to look for other items for the food crawl. Should you find something other than yogurt on Friday, please understand that we have been forced to provide it with the greatest reluctance.

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From: Darrell Upton, Coordinator of Pencils and Stationery   To: AS, AD

If my memory is correct, the “first” yogurt was created by a special kind of bacteria—most definitely ORGANIC in nature.

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From: AS, AD   To: DU, CPS

Your memory is accurate to a point, Darrell.   In fact, the first yogurt bacteria was carefully cultivated by Neanderthals who found them in a cave near what is now Lascaux, France. It was found growing mysteriously and voluntarily in the dark recesses of a large room in the cave. (Did you know, by the way, that an analysis of my saliva by National Geographic shows that I am 1.8 percent Neanderthal, which is above average?) The leader of the group that found it was known as a sage because of his great intellect and his willingness to experiment in a primitive scientific way. He rubbed his finger through the bacterial growth and tasted it. He survived the experiment and, in fact, thought it tasted rather good. After consulting with others in his clan, it was decided the bacteria should be grown as a food source, a delicacy. Through experiments and using various ground herbs mixed with virgin’s urine, it was determined the bacteria could be grown rapidly enough to supply a small amount of food for the group.

The testing process took a considerable length of time during which various members of this Neanderthal band stood watch inside the cave to protect the precious small growing area. Although Neanderthals were not as intelligent as we are today, they nonetheless were as easily bored as we can become, especially in the dark. They took to carrying small lamps fueled by the oil of the glands of certain goats indigenous to the area into the cave and also took some ground- up berries native to the area. While waiting for the bacteria to flourish, they used the juice from the berries to paint some figures on the walls of that cave.

In time, this clan was able to get the bacteria to reproduce in a peat bog in a shaded area outside the cave and as the bacteria evolved it became capable of growing in the daylight and if not harvested for a lengthy time, formed into berries with reproducing seeds. Thus were born the earliest yogurt berries, the progenitor of the berries raised by my friend near Clarence.

In the middle of the 19th Century, some explorers discovered the cave and were dazzled by the great cave paintings those early yogurt developers left behind those thousands of years ago. Little did they know the other historic activity that happened in that cave, an early experiment that led to one of society’s most useful foods. Few know the name of that early clan elder, the sage, but this story was told to me in my youth by my high school science teacher who claimed to be a direct descendant of that Neanderthal family.

The old sage/scientist’s name was Yog, and the product became known as Yog-urt, which is Neanderthal meaning “Food from the Finger of Yog.”

At some indefinite time, it appears the Neanderthals had enough berries that they traded with some ancient Greek traders who found the berries flourished on Mount Oikos,

And the rest is history.

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To: AS, AD   From: Barbara Singlemom, Human Resources

Wow!   I heard it was newborn baby poopoo (thus very organic and all naturelle). Your story is much more interesting.

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To: BS, HR   From: AS, AD

Barb, you’re partly correct. Modern scientists who have reverse-engineered the yogurt berry have determined that the original bacterium began in the feces of the Miniature Jurassic Tyrannobat that lived in the cave before the species became extinct.

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To: AS, AD   From: BS, HR

Well, we all have much to think about now each time we enjoy our cup of Yoplait.

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To: BS, HR   From: AS, AD

Yo-Plait, in fact, was the first virgin whose urine was used in those early experiments.

If we are not able to get enough yogurt from my friend near Clarence, our department will provide some sourdough biscuits for the crawl.

Did you know there is a “Sourdough Citizen Science Project” that has sequenced the DNA of sourdough starters from throughout the world to better understand the sourdough microbial biodiversity? You can Google it.

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