Good morning.
Thanksgiving in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of forty-two. Sunrise is 6:57 AM and sunset 4:25 PM, for 9h 27m 14s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 21.6% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}three hundred seventy-ninth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}
On this day in 1889, “44-year-old wild-haired inventor named Louis Glass installed in a corner of the bar [at 303 Sutter Street] his newest-fangled contraption: a coin-operated Edison Class M electric phonograph fitted inside a beautiful oak cabinet. Requiring a nickel to play and having four stethoscope-like listening tubes snaking out, Glass’s creation was met with curious glances and willing customers. This was the world’s first jukebox.”
On this day in 1909, a Wisconsin man goes on trial: “A.E. Graham of Janesville was put on trial for selling oleo as butter. Oleo, an early form of margarine, was outlawed in the dairy state of Wisconsin. On January 27, 1910, he was found guilty in federal court and sentenced to 18 months in Fort Leavenworth Prison.”
Recommended for reading in full —
Jeff Pegues reports Trump Jr. met with man with close ties to Kremlin:
CBS News has confirmed that Donald Trump Jr. met with Alexander Torshin – a man with close ties to the Kremlin — at an NRA event in May 2016. Torshin had been trying to set up a meeting with then-candidate Donald Trump but ended up being introduced to Mr. Trump’s son.
A source familiar with the meeting says the two men were introduced to each other by a third party and that the conversation only last about two or three minutes. The source says the conversation centered on the men’s mutual interest in firearms and, as far as the source could recollect, there was no discussion of the campaign.
The meeting prompted attention last week when the Senate Judiciary Committeefired off a letter to Jared Kushner and his attorney scolding them for not handing over documents about a “Russian backdoor overture and dinner invite.” As CBS News reported last Friday, that “dinner invite” came in the form of a lengthy email from an intermediary who said that Torshin wanted to set up a meeting with Mr. Trump and that he was interested in setting up a meeting between Mr. Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. The email was sent to top Trump campaign officials including former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, campaign official Rick Gates and eventually Jared Kushner who is the president’s son-in-law. Kushner’s attorney says his client said to “pass on this” and warned campaign officials to “decline such meetings.” But in the end Donald Trump Jr. was introduced to Torshin anyway….
Matthew DeFour reports UW-Madison dean acknowledges failure to create safe environment:
The dean of UW-Madison’s College of Letters & Science acknowledged this week a failure to provide a safe environment in the wake of a Wisconsin State Journal report on a culture of persistent sexual harassment in a university department.
One of the women who spoke to the State Journal also wrote an open letter to UW-Madison leadership Tuesday, saying her efforts to report the behavior of one professor were met with skepticism from the department’s head and warnings from the university’s legal department that she would be on her own if she were sued by the professor for defamation.
“Due process cannot be a justification for inaction or a barrier to clear and confidential reporting options and tangible whistleblower protection,” former graduate student and current administrator of the art history department Clare Christoph wrote. “Without these, campus assurances that sexual harassment will not be tolerated will continue to be meaningless and women who experience this demoralizing and damaging behavior will not feel safe coming forward”….
(There should be – and so will be – no yielding on similar concerns in Whitewater.)
The Committee to Investigate Russia notes a New Book Reveals More On Russia Dossier And British Spy Behind It:
Karin Bruillard writes Here’s the deal with all those turkeys terrorizing the suburbs:
Wild turkeys are causing troubles across the American suburbs.
The birds of late have been accused of cracking roof tiles outside Sacramento, dangerously disrupting traffic in western New York and “terrorizing” residents near Akron, Ohio. Reports of turkey aggression in the Boston area have spiked in the past three years, forcing authorities to use lethal force at least five times, the Associated Press found. When the Cambridge, Mass., city council took up the matter recently, one member told of a turkey that chased a child and her dog outside church, and another recounted coming face-to-beak with a bird outside a community gathering where the large fowl had been discussed….
If turkey-human conflicts seem to be increasing, Chamberlain and Hatfield argue, it’s because urban and suburban birds are not hunted and so do not view humans as threats. Also, turkeys are generalists that can get by quite nicely so long as they have trees to roost in at night and space to strut — particularly in the spring, when males woo females with a show that requires a sizable stage.
“They want open areas. Well, lawns and golf courses? All of these are great open spots for wild turkeys,” Hatfield said. “Suburban areas are pretty good habitat.”
Humans have changed turkeys more than we may realize: