Good morning, Whitewater.
Sunday in town will be cloudy and dry with a high of thirty-six. Sunrise is 7:24 and sunset 4:27, for 9h 03m 07s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 94.9% of its visible disk illuminated.
In the week ahead, FW will have weekly topical posts (on music, When Green Turns Brown, film, a cartoon, food, the Friday poll, and Friday catblogging), with additional posts on the UW System’s approach to sexual assault, a check on last January’s predictions for 2015, and new predictions for 2016.
On this day in 1900, the property-destroying temperance fanatic Carrie Nation smashes a bar in her violent crusade against alcohol:
Carrie Nation in 1910
Nation continued her destructive ways in Kansas, her fame spreading through her growing arrest record. After she led a raid in Wichita her husband joked that she should use a hatchet next time for maximum damage. Nation replied, “That is the most sensible thing you have said since I married you.”[2] The couple divorced in 1901, childless.[12]
Between 1902 and 1906 she lived in Guthrie, Oklahoma.[13]
Alone or accompanied by hymn-singing women she would march into a bar, and sing and pray while smashing bar fixtures and stock with a hatchet. Her actions often did not include other people, just herself. Between 1900 and 1910, she was arrested some 30 times for “hatchetations”, as she came to call them. Nation paid her jail fines from lecture-tour fees and sales of souvenir hatchets.[14] In April 1901 Nation came to Kansas City, Missouri, a city known for its wide opposition to the temperance movement, and smashed liquor in various bars on 12th Street in Downtown Kansas City.[15] She was arrested, hauled into court and fined $500 ($13,400 in 2011 dollars),[16] although the judge suspended the fine so long as Nation never returned to Kansas City.[17] She would be arrested over 32 times—one report is that she was placed in the Washington DC poorhouse for three days for refusing to pay a $35.00 fine[18] One hotel she did not smash was the St James of Minneapolis[19]
In Amarillo, Texas, Nation received a strong response, as she was sponsored by the noted surveyor W. D. Twichell, an active Methodist layman.[20]
Saloons “visited” and Jail sentences of the “Saloon Smasher”:
On this day in 1831, Gov. Fairchild is born:
On this date Lucius Fairchild was born in Kent, Ohio. Soldier, diplomat, and Wisconsin Governor, Fairchild arrived in Madison with his family in 1846. After a trip to California in search of gold, Fairchild returned to Madison and studied law. He was a soldier in the “Iron Brigade” and lost an arm at the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863. He was elected as a Republican to the post of secretary of state and in 1865 was elected governor. He served for three terms. As governor and as a private citizen, Fairchild was active in promoting soldiers’ aid.