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A Peppercorn for Mr. Jefferson

In the election of 1800, incumbent John Adams of the Federalist party ran against his own vice-president, Thomas Jefferson, who was a Democratic-Republican (usually called just “Republicans”). The politics of the day were incredibly nasty with newspapers affiliated with one party heaping vituperation on the other party and their candidates. Jefferson in his inaugural address diplomatically said “We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists.”

Jefferson wore unconventional shoes to his inauguration. Rather than slipper-type low shoes with silver buckles, his shoes came up over his ankle with laces. (Jefferson was size 12½, Washington 13.) This annoyed the Federalists. Jefferson wore “…shoes that closed tight round his ankles, laced up with neat leathern strings, and absolutely without buckles, considering them as superfluous and anti-republican, especially when a man has strings,” said one Federalist as quoted in A Peppercorn for Mr. Jefferson* by Bernard Mayo in the Virginia Quarterly Review, Spring 1943.

The Providence Journal, a Federalist paper, March 18, 1801, reprinted an article from the Gazette of the United States (Philadelphia) also a Federalist paper, titled “Ludicrous!” The article said that some Jefferson supporters wanted to show solidarity with him by wearing novel shoes like his. There wasn’t time to have enough of the shoes made so they converted “their boots into the new-shoes, which they did by amputation just above the ancle! — after the delivery of the speech, when it was discovered that Mr. Jefferson was no longer a republican, but a Federal republican, these disappointed creatures were seen seatered [sic] here and there among the shrubbery below the capitol, stitching the legs of their boots to the feet again!” A footnote explains that Jefferson’s shoes came “over the ancle, in the manner of what are called snow-shoes.”

*The odd title of this paper comes from an address to Jefferson from a man who had brought a mammoth 1235 pound cheese wheel the size of a millstone made by milk donated by the people of Cheshire, Massachusetts, although “Not one drop of milk was to come from a Federalist cow!”

The cheese was presented to Jefferson on New Year’s day 1802 by a preacher from the town after a three day trip by sleigh. In his prepared remarks, the preacher said the cheese was presented “as a peppercorn of the esteem which we bear to our chief magistrate, and as a sacrifice to Republicanism.”

The cheese was set out at a New Year’s reception that day, “Republicans pronounced it the biggest and best ever. Federalists said the flavor was only so-so.”

Monkey Business

English photographer David Slater went to take pictures of crested black macaques, endangered monkeys, in a national park on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi. The animals were friendly and inquisitive. Slater walked with them for three days.

The macaques were investigating an unattended camera, looking at their reflections in the camera lens when one of them managed to push the button. The sound intrigued him and he kept pushing the button taking hundreds of pictures, most of them out of focus, but some of them perfect simian selfies, which went viral.

Wikipedia put Slater’s photos on its Wikimedia Commons site as in the public domain for a free download because an animal took the picture and animals can’t copyright.

Slater was not amused. He complained repeatedly to Wikimedia, which refused to take the photos down. Slater sued but the U.S. Copyright Office ruled in favor of the monkey.

Is Sex Necessary?

Mr. Herbert Televox was a robot first built in 1927 by the Westinghouse Electric Company. It could pick up the phone and listen to instructions given by different notes blown on a pitch pipe and acknowledge with a series of buzzes.

Televox could wirelessly turn appliances on or off or check if the furnace was too hot in a home. Industrial uses included controlling electric loads for the power company. Three Televoxes, Adam, Cain, and Abel (“Eve being omitted because the automatic kingdom has not been divided into two factions”), were employed by the War Department in Washington to report and control reservoir levels.

The New York Times reported June 4, 1928 “Mechanical man now can also talk. Televox gets vocal cords to call up employer and tell him latest news.” A few sentences were recorded on film, like a movie sound track. Now it would answer the phone with “Televox speaking” and could initiate a phone call: “this is the Televox calling for Main 5000.” The rest of

the conversation would then be with buzzes.

Mr. Televox made a special appearance at the American Booksellers’ Association convention in 1930. When asked what his favorite book was, he replied Is Sex Necessary? a book by humorist and cartoonist James Thurber

My Unlucky Day

I don’t usually buy Powerball lottery tickets. The odds are too high and I don’t need that kind of money. A million or two would do just fine. But when the jackpot went over $700 million my wife insisted I be in the game, so I bought a ticket.

The morning of the drawing, August 23, 2017, while taking the dog out for a postprandial poop, I found two four leaf clovers. Riches on the way!!

Of course I lost to a woman in Massachusetts who claimed the largest grand prize won by a lottery ticket in U.S. History.

I didn’t even have a single number.

The explanation: the odds of winning the lottery are 1 in 292,201,338. The odds of finding a four leaf clover are 1 in 10,000 and not much more for finding two since clovers of a feather flock together.

Now I can’t even head up to Chicopee to buy a ticket on that same lucky machine. The 20 year old machine was retired by the Massachusetts State Lottery.

Oh well. As my dog would say, “shit happens.”

Congratulations!

Here’s what to do when you win the lottery:

1. Stop wasting your money on lottery tickets.

2. Live happily ever after.