Nix v. Hedden and Tomatoes as Vegetables

00:00:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio.

00:00:12
Speaker 2: Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V.

00:00:15
Speaker 1: Wilson and I'm Holly Frye.

00:00:17
Speaker 2: Recently, we were trying to brainstorm some ideas for the show that were food related in some way. We talk about food fairly often, but this was for like a specific project. Yeah, and I briefly thought about doing a history of the tomato because there's just so much stuff there that really fascinates me. Like, for example, tomatoes are such a key part of so much Italian cuisine, but they are not even native to the same continent as Italy. There's that whole thing where people in parts of the world used to think tomatoes are poisonous, and they are in the night shade family, which does include some really toxic plants and people can have allergies and intolerances and things like that. But also tomatoes are just acidic enough to leach the lead out of dishes and utensils, so in the era when people were eating off of lead a lot, they really might have been helping to poison people. We've also done histories of specific foods before. Some of those episodes are ones that I researched and wrote, so I know that can be done, but as I looked at this, it just increasingly seemed maybe not workable for tomatoes. You could do any one of those nodules of the tomato story and it's its own story. It would be its own thing. And yeah, and today we do have one piece of it that it's this whole thing, it's its own thing, which is Nicks versus Headen. That was the US Supreme Court decision that made tomatoes a vegetable at least for tariff purposes. I do love a weird court case. And that also gave us the opportunity to at least touch on some of those things that I find so interesting about tomatoes in the.

00:02:01
Speaker 1: So, there are several different species of tomato. The one that's cultivated and eaten most is Solanum, like a persicum, but there are thousands of varieties of that one species growing around the world. And although a lot of people like to think of tomatoes as vegetables, and the cork case we're talking about agreed. In botanical terms, you've probably heard this before. They are a fruit. Specifically, they're a berry. So berries are fleshy fruits that develop from the ovary of a flower. Berries do not have pits, but they can have seeds, and under this definition, bananas are also berries, and so are eggplants and bell peppers.

00:02:41
Speaker 2: Side note, despite their names, raspberries, blackberries, and strawberries are not berries according to botanical definitions. They are all aggregate fruits, meaning that they develop from lots of flower ovaries instead of just one. So for blackberries and raspberries, that aggregated parts are called druplets. For strawberries, the true fruit in the strawberry is all those little pips on the exterior. Those are fruits called achnes, and the rest of the strawberry is a fleshy accessory receptacle that's holding all those akines. Other akenes include dandelions. The little seeds at the end of the dandelion fluff are fruit as well. This information we are offering for informational purposes only, and not as ammunition to go be pedantic at people when they call strawberries berries or whatever. I just want to say, fleshy accessory receptacle sounds like the title of a Kurt Vannaget short story. Yeah, it doesn't sound like something you would want to eat I mean I do. Maybe I want to eat strawberries all the time. Oh.

00:03:49
Speaker 1: Same. So tomatoes are native to the Andes Mountains in South America, and there's evidence that people in this region domesticated the tomato, but it's less clear whether they ate as food. It can be really tricky to find archaeological evidence to answer these kinds of questions, and the oral histories and food ways of many of these peoples were disrupted through European conquest and colonization. But at some point tomato plants were introduced from the Andes Mountains to Mexico. They were definitely being used as a food source there by the time Spain started colonizing the region in fifteen nineteen. The word tomato comes from the Nahuatal language, and the Nahwuas developed a wide range of dishes incorporating this fruit.

00:04:36
Speaker 2: Yeah. Maybe at some time we'll have an unearthed discovery about like residues on the inside of bits of pottery to answer the question of.

00:04:44
Speaker 1: What so much lycopene?

00:04:46
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, we'll see maybe. But as the Spanish conquered and colonized the surrounding areas, they introduced tomato plants as well. Starting in the Caribbean. Spanish peace people returning to Europe took tomatoes with them, carrying them first to Spain and then to Italy. The first written record of a tomato in Europe was in an Italian herbal in fifteen forty four. It's likely that tomatoes made their way farther north into North America, not from Mexico or the Caribbean, but from Spain, again brought by Spanish colonists in the seventeenth century. And although tomatoes had been introduced into England around the same time as other parts of Europe, they didn't really become a popular food there for a while, so most English colonists encountered their first use of tomatoes in cuisine after having arrived in parts of North America that had previously been colonized by Spain. So we mentioned Italian cuisine at the top of the show. But of course tomatoes are a key ingredient in dishes from other parts of the world, as well as just a few examples, shak Shuka and other similar dishes in North Africa and the Middle East involved eggs poached in a tomato sauce. I'm a fan of that. The Philippines has sarciato, which is a fish and tomato dish. Tomatoes were probably introduced into the Indian subcontinent by the Portuguese in the sixteenth century, and by the nineteenth century they were adding kind of a sour note to a number of foods, including curries and chutney's, And then that circles back around to chicken tika masala, which has a lot of contradictory origin stories but was popularized by chefs from India who were living in the UK. There's not one totally standard recipe for chicken tika masala, but usually it's creamy sauce is made with tomatoes. Of course, this whole episode is about a court case revolving around whether tomatoes should be defined as a vegetable or a fruit. And in botanical terms, as we said, fruits developed from the ovary of a flower. That is their key defining trait.

00:06:56
Speaker 1: But as a category, vegetables is actually a little Broadly speaking, vegetables are edible plants or plant parts that don't grow from the ovaries of flowers, so the term vegetables includes leaves, taproots, tubers, stems, and flowers themselves. So things like lettuce, carrots, potatoes, celery, and broccoli. This gets even more confusing when you realize that potatoes are also in the night shade family. There's a lot of weird crossover.

00:07:28
Speaker 2: Ye, there are a whole lot of night shades beyond the ones that like grow on vines. Yeah. When it comes to the way people talk about food, though specifically in this case, the way English speakers in the United States and other similar groups talk about food, that definition of fruit comes from the ovary of a flower, and vegetables don't. That doesn't always work. Green Beans and other legumes grow from flower ovaries. Technically they are fruit, and so are cucumbers. Corn is grass, and each kernel on an ear of corn is botanically a fruit. We already mentioned eggplant, bell, peppers, and of course tomatoes all being fruit. But in culinary terms and this cultural context, people are more likely to think of all of these foods as vegetables because of things like their taste and texture and how they're prepared and served in various dishes. Broadly speaking, the things we think of as fruits are generally sweeter, more likely to be served as snacks or side dishes or in desserts or toppings. Obviously, there are exceptions, things like lemon or grapefruit, which are fruit but are also sour rather than sweet. Vegetables often are not as sweet and are more likely to be incorporated as part of the main dish. This is all incredibly subjective, and there are lots of exceptions, and we have not even talked about how nuts and grains, which most most people don't think of usually as a fruit or a vegetable, are in botanical terms again fruit. But if you have grown up immersed in a culture that thinks about food this way, this all probably feels innate and even universal. There are other cultures and languages that approach these categories totally differently or not at all. There is an entire field called linguistic ethnobotany that studies the names of different plants than animals as they are used by different languages and cultures.

00:09:34
Speaker 1: So here in the US, the lack of clarity on exactly what counts as a fruit and what counts as a vegetable has led to some disputes and a Supreme Court case that Tracy wound up finding deeply hilarious. Because it is we will get to all of that, including some talk about tariffs after a sponsor break.

00:10:01
Speaker 2: The Supreme Court decision that classified tomatoes as vegetables came about because of a tariff, in other words, a duty imposed by the government on imported or exported goods. Tariffs are a way to regulate trade and were a major source of revenue for the United States government in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. At some points during that period, there was no federal income tax at all, and at others income tax rates did exist but were extremely low, so most of the federal government's revenue came from taxes on things like alcohol and tobacco, or from tariffs. The United States at this point had some of the highest tariff rates in the world, and in some years tariffs provided almost all of the federal government's revenue. In addition to providing revenue, tariffs had a major impact on trade and on the United States relationships with other nations. Over these years, there were a lot of adjustments to tariff law, depending on how the government wanted to regulate trade and how the economy and the federal budget were doing, and anything else the government wanted to achieve through tariffs. If the government needed money, tariffs often went up, and if the government had a surplus, especially a surplus that went on for multiple years, rates often dropped. There were people who were opposed to tariffs altogether, seeing them as a barrier to free trade. Others supported tariffs as a tool for the federal government to bring in revenue, but opposed the use of tariffs to specifically try to protect American business interests. Protectionism versus free trade was an ongoing source of disagreement and debate. I would say, to some extent, it still is, even though there's federal income tax now, so the tariff is not like the sole source of government income. Sometimes, but not always, disagreements ran along both party and geographic lines. In the late nineteenth century, Republicans, especially Northeastern Republicans, generally wanted to use tariffs to protect American manufacturing interests at that time, and a lot of the manufacturing was concentrated in the Northeast. But Democrats, especially Southern Democrats, were often more focused on the idea of free trade.

00:12:25
Speaker 1: At the same time, tariffs could really make or break the people who did business in goods that were subject to them, So people who ran businesses that were really affected by tariffs lobbied heavily for laws that, of course would be favorable to their interests. That could be a reduction in tariffs on goods they wanted to import, or an increase in tariffs on imported goods from foreign competitors.

00:12:48
Speaker 2: So the tariff law that was at work in Nicks versus Headen was passed in eighteen eighty three, following broad calls for tariff reform, but broad reform is not what happened at all. After the eighteen eighty presidential election, Republicans controlled both Houses of Congress and Republican James Garfield had been elected president, But at first the government did not take advantage of this situation of controlling both houses and the presidency to get some action taken to pass a tariff for form package that would align with the Republican Party's interests. Then, in the eighteen eighty two midterm elections, Republicans lost their majority in the House, so getting a tariff bill passed in the lame duck sessions before the inauguration became a big priority. Overall, Republicans wanted to lower tariffs, but not as much as the Democrats would try to lower them once they had a majority in the House. Many Democrats already in Congress also seemed to have seen this as something of an opportunity because if the Republicans passed a tariff for form package before the end of the session, the Democrats wouldn't have to deal with it two and control of the House. Yeah, it seems like overall, I wanted to try to get things they wanted, but like not block the package entirely. There was general agreement that big changes needed to happen. Among other things, the US Tariff Commission, created in March of eighteen eighty two, had called for an average twenty five percent reduction in tariffs, but there was way less agreement on the details, especially when it came to what the House wanted versus what the Senate wanted. Without getting two in the weeds on this, this was a laborious and extremely contentious process, with around two hundred votes on various aspects of this bill in each House of Congress.

00:14:46
Speaker 1: During this process, the House Committee on Rules also issued a special order that for the rest of that congressional session, the House could suspend the rules with a simple majority vote rather than the two thirds majority that was normally needed. This was the first time that the House Rules Committee altered the standing rules for the sake of one specific bill. So I read some conflicting and also confusing explanations about what prompted this special order. But as I understand it, if the House had voted on the Senate's version of the bill, it probably would have passed, and under the normal standing rules, that's normally what they would have done. But there were a lot of representatives who wanted higher tariffs than what was in the Senate version, so what they wanted was for the bill to be sent to a committee to work on. They did not have the two thirds majority that was normally needed to waive the rules and send the bill to a committee, though, so this special order was a way to get the bill into a committee rather than just passing the Senate version. Ultimately, an Act to Reduce Internal Revenue Taxation and for other purposes was signed into law on March third, eighteen eighty three, and it did make a bunch of tariff changes, but without really doing anything that people who felt strongly about it had actually wanted. There was no huge overall reduction in tariffs, and there was no broad reform of the system. Instead, tariffs were reduced on some items but raised on others, and the whole bill was very long and complicated. Its critics called it the mongrel tariff.

00:16:28
Speaker 2: So one printed version of this act and its schedules is thirty nine pages long. Now, that does not sound that long by today's standards, when sometimes there are bills that run more than a thousand pages or multiple thousands of pages. But bills were a lot shorter at the time, and according to one article I found, even today, the average bill is only about eighteen pages long, So thre's thousand or multiple thousand pages bills are kind of outliers. Over the first handful of pages of this bill, there's a lot about tobacco and snuff and tobacco products. The import of obscene material is banned, as is the import of contraceptives and abortifations. Imported watches, watchcases, watch movements, and the like are prohibited from copying the name or trademark of any domestic versions of the same products, unless the domestic manufacturer of those products is the one who is importing them, and then they are about twenty five pages of schedules. So, in other words, lists of imported items and the duties to be.

00:17:39
Speaker 1: Collected on them. Schedules included chemical products, earthenware and glassware, metals, wood and woodenwares, sugar, tobacco provisions, liquors, cotton and cotton goods, hemp, jute and flax goods, wool and woolens, silk and silk goods, book papers, it's et cetera, and.

00:18:01
Speaker 2: Sundrys so Some random and kind of hilarious examples from all of this fancy perfumed and all descriptions of toilet soap fifteen cents per pound, all imitations of natural mineral waters, and all artificial mineral waters. Thirty percentum ad volorum prepared chalk, precipitated chalk, French chalk, red chalk, and all other chalk preparations which are not specifically enumerated or provided for in this Act. Twenty percentum advlorum waste all not specifically enumerated or provided for in this Act. Ten percentum ad valorum gunnycloth not bagging valued at ten cents or less per square yard, three cents per pound, valued at over ten cents per square yard four cents a pound, but then bags and bagging and like manufacturers not specifically enumerated or provided for in this Act, except bagging for cotton composed why or in part of flax, hemp, juice, gunnycloth, gunnybags, or other material forty percentum advalorum. Then there's the free list, which goes on for about another ten pages. Items on the free list include albumin ambergris, blood bones, leeches, cocone, eal, lemon juice and lime juice, vaccine, virus, stuffed birds, silkworms, eggs, coffee, tea, fossils, baloney, sausages, and junk comma.

00:19:35
Speaker 1: Old. Although coffee is on the free list, acorns, dandelion root, raw or prepared, and all other articles used or intended to be used as coffee or as substitutes therefore not specifically enumerated or provided for in this act that's going to cost you two cents per pound. Coffee is free. Fake coffee is not. Get out of here with your weird herbal teas.

00:20:02
Speaker 2: Yes, the dispute in Nicks versus Headen involved Schedule G provisions which included vegetables in their natural state or in salt or brine not specifically enumerated or provided for in this Act. Ten percent ad dolorum, but then on the free list was fruits green, ripe or dried not specifically enumerated or provided for in this Act. Since tomatoes were not specifically enumerated or provided for in the Act, if they were vegetables, the tariff was ten percent add blorum, but if they were fruits, they were free. So this brings us to John Nixon Company, established in eighteen thirty nine, which is one of the first successful fruit and vegetable importers in the United States, after developments and things like steamships, railroads, and insulated shipping containers made that a potentially viable business. John Nicks had four sons, John W. Nix, George W. Nix, Frank W. Nix, and Robert W. Nix, who all became part of their father's business. I don't know if the W stands for the same thing for all of them, and if so, what it stands Willard. This firm was headquartered in New York, but it had a national reach. In addition to importing produce from other countries, John Nixon Company also built relationships with farmers and other parts of the United States, including Florida, Texas, and California. They wanted to understand these farmers' businesses and also encouraged them to expand the types of fruits and vegetables that they were growing domestically. The Nixes were also very vocal within the New York business community and in the fruit and vegetable industry more broadly. While the eighteen eighty three tariff law was being debated, John Nicks teamed with E. P.

00:21:59
Speaker 1: Loomis and Clifford L. Middleton to write a letter protesting the proposed tariff on vegetables, which they described as a three hundred percent increase. They argued that they imported vegetables from other countries primarily during March, April, and May, when US farms couldn't produce enough to meet customer demand. They noted that some foods like onions, were an affordable staple for middle class families, but that US farms just could not supply them during those months. They didn't spell this out, but this is because of the climate and growing seasons. Places where the weather was warmer could plant these foods earlier, or even grow them year round. So at first, after the new tariff law went into effect, despite these objections, John Nixon Company paid tariffs on vegetable imports as required, but in late eighteen eighty six, Edward Long Headen, collector of the Port of New York, tried to collect the tariff on a load of tomatoes that had come from the West End Ease. Nicks argued that he should not have to pay a tariff on tomatoes because they were fruits, not vegetables. Headen disagreed, collected the tariff anyway, which Nicks paid under protest, and then on February fourth, eighteen eighty seven, Nicks sued him over it. We're going to talk more about that after we pause for a sponsor break.

00:23:32
Speaker 2: We don't have court transcripts from the John Nixon Company original lawsuit, which was filed in the Circuit Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York, but we do have a summary of what happened at trial from the majority opinion in the US Supreme Court case Nicks versus Headen.

00:23:52
Speaker 1: First, Nix's attorney read some definitions into evidence, specifically the definitions of the words fruit and vegets. He read from three different dictionaries, Websters, Woosters, and the Imperial Dictionary. Then he called two witnesses, both of whom had been in business selling fruit and vegetables for about three decades. He asked each of them if, after hearing these definitions, the words fruit or vegetable had quote any special meaning in trade or commerce different from those read.

00:24:26
Speaker 2: So one of them answered, quote, well, it does not classify all things there, but they are correct as far as they go. It does not take all kinds of fruit or vegetables, it takes a portion of them. I think the words fruit and vegetable have the same meaning in trade today that they had on March first, eighteen eighty three. I understand that the term fruit is applied in trade only to such plants or parts of plants as contain the seeds. There are more vegetables than those in the enumeration given in Webster's dictionary under the term vegetable, as cabbage, cluliflower, turnips, potatoes, peas, beans, and the like, probably covered by the words and the like. The other said quote, I don't think the term fruit or the term vegetables had in March eighteen eighty three and prior there too, any special meaning in trade and commerce in this country different from that which I have read here. From the dictionaries. After that, Nix's attorney read the definition of the word tomato out of the dictionary in which it was defined as a fruit, just as a note, were not reading the definitions themselves, because I don't know which version of any of these dictionaries the attorneys were using, and the definitions can really vary from like one addition to the other of these, even like within Websters or whatever. But all of the ones I checked at some point said that tomato was a fruit.

00:25:57
Speaker 1: The attorney for the Collector of the Port of New York read number of other definitions out of Webster's dictionary, including the definitions for pea, eggplant, cucumber, squash, and pepper. We can logically conclude that the dictionary described all of these as fruit. And then Nix's attorney followed up with some more dictionary definitions, including potato, turnip, parsnip, cauliflower, cabbage, carrot, and bean from both Webster's and Wooster's dictionaries. And according to what was described and the majority opinion from the Supreme Court case.

00:26:33
Speaker 2: That was all the evidence, all of it. It was two witness statements and attorneys reading out of the dictionary that sounds.

00:26:39
Speaker 1: Like the best day in court ever. I like it. I love the idea of just reading dictionary things at each other with Scowley faces. Another side note if you're like Wooster's Dictionary, was that Joseph Emerson Worcester was Noah Webster's main dictionary competitor in an intense rivalry that became known as the Dictionary Wars. Very likely that that will.

00:27:01
Speaker 2: Be an episode in the future, Yet with such an intense rivalry that it went on for many years after Noel Webster was dead. Anyway, the Circuit Court ruled in favor of the Collector for the Court of New York that he was correct tomatoes were vegetables. So John Nixon Company appealed that ruling. This case was submitted to the US Supreme Court on April twenty fourth, eighteen ninety three, and then decided on May tenth.

00:27:28
Speaker 1: In the words of Justice Horace Gray, writing for the majority opinion, quote the passages cited from the dictionaries define the word fruit as the seed of plants, or that part of plants which contains the seed, and especially the juicy, pulpy products of certain plants covering and containing the seed. These definitions have no tendency to show that tomatoes are fruit as distinguished from vegetables in common speech or within the meaning of the terrifact. There being no evidence that the words fruit and vegetables have acquired any special meaning in trade or commerce, they must receive their ordinary meaning of that meaning. The Court is bound to take judicial notice, as it does in regard to all words in our own tongue, and upon such a question, dictionaries are admitted not as evidence, but only as aids to the memory and understanding of the court. Gray's opinion went on to say, quote Botanically speaking, tomatoes are the fruit of the vine, just as are cucumbers, squashes, beans, and peas. But in the common language of the people, whether cellars or consumers of provisions, all these are vegetables which are grown in kitchen gardens, in which whether eaten, cooked or raw, are like potatoes, carrots, parsnips, turnips, beets, cauliflower, cabbage, celery, and lettuce, usually served at dinner in with or after the soup, fish or meats, which constitute the principal part of the repast, and not like fruits generally as dessert. The opinion concluded quote, the attempt to class tomatoes as fruit is not unlike a recent attempt to class beans as seeds, of which mister Justice Bradley, speaking for this Court, said, we do not see why they should be classified as seeds anymore than walnuts should be so classified. Both are seeds in the language of botany or natural history, but not in commerce nor in common parlance. On the other hand, in speaking generally of provisions, beans may well be included under the term vegetables as an article of food on our tables, whether baked or boiled, or forming the basis of soup. They are used as a vegetable as well when ripe as when green. This is the principal use to which they are put. Beyond the common knowledge which we have on this subject, very little evidence is necessary or can be produced. With that the Supreme Court affirmed the lower Court's judgem so and the Supreme Court's viewed tomatoes are vegetables, at least for the purpose of the tariff. That same day, the Supreme Court also issued its decision in Hollander versus Magone, which was similarly about the meaning of words in the context of the tariff law. Specifically, that question was whether beer was liquor. Hollander and Company had paid a tariff on some imported beer that had soured in transit. The law did not allow the tariff to be waived on liquors that had been damaged during shipping. Hollander's attorney argued that this clause did not apply because this was beer, not liquor. The court noted that the word liquor was often used to mean an intoxicating beverage that had been distilled, not one that was simply fermented, but that in the context and placement of this term in the tariff law, it was clearly meant to incorporate other intoxicating beverages, not just distilled ones. Nicks versus Headnt has been cited in more than fifty other state and federal court decisions since eighteen ninety three, and a lot of them have to do with the meanings of words, like whether a dog rescue operation.

00:31:11
Speaker 2: Was a kennel. If it was a kennel, it would be in violation of zoning laws. That was in Coal versus New Siwickly Township Zoning Hearing Board No said the court dog rescues are not kennels or in United States versus Peddix on whether bitcoins or money. Again no, because in the common language of the people, money is government issued, regulated dollars or things connected directly to dollars, like credit cards or money orders. This decision was controversial because other earlier decisions and at least one subsequent one, decided the opposite. Or in Robinson versus Liberty Mutual Insurance Company on whether an exclusion for property damage caused by insects and vermin applied to spiders since spiders are aracnids and not insects. Yes, the court ruled the exclusion did apply. We know that spiders are technically iracnids, but clearly this provision applied to them as well.

00:32:19
Speaker 1: Should have just said bugs. Nicks versus Headen has also been cited in broader discussions in the context of whether dictionary definitions are evidence or if their aids to the court. There are also many other cases that hinge on what words mean that do not cite Nicks versus Headen. We'll talk about a few of those on Friday, since they're not directly connected to this one. Also, the terms ordinary meaning, plain meaning, and common use. All of those show up in legal arguments related to those ideas, and sometimes those have slightly different meanings. In two thousand and five, New Jersey chose the tomato as its state and vendegetable after a group of fourth graders cited Nicks versus Headen in a campaign for the tomato to be included among the choices. The tomato is the state fruit in Ohio and Tennessee, and in Arkansas, the South Arkansas vine right pink tomato is both the state fruit and the state vegetable. Although the act making this designation doesn't specifically cite Nicks versus Headen, it does note that quote the tomato is botanically a fruit and used as a vegetable.

00:33:34
Speaker 2: Do you have delicious listener mail? I do I have listener mail? That is from Jordan. Jordan's email is titled Scott Joplin the Texarcana Native, but not really, and Jordan wrote height Tracy Holly as someone who was born and raised in Texarcana, I'm from the Texas side. Very important distinction. I love your episode on Scott Joplin. He's arguably the most influential person from techs Arcana who's not from techs Arcana. I distinctly remember growing up that anytime someone tried to choose him as a subject of a history or research paper, they usually had to switch topics or pivot to something like the general history of ragtime, simply for the lack of source material to meet the grading requirements. I loved hearing all these new details about a figure whose face I've seen all my life on a mural downtown. I moved away almost fifteen years ago, but this episode happened to come out the week before I went home to see some friends. While I was in town, I went to go take some pictures of that mural and was pleased to find it had a major facelift. I've attached some pictures. The mural was done by Art Pletcher with surface bred by CD Little. It's located on the back of the Texarkana Regional Arts and Humanities Council or the Track building at the corner of Main Street and West Third. It's also across from the historic pro Theater. As a railroad town that seems some of its highs and lows, this is now a lovely selection of historic downtown that is recently being revived, and it was really cool to see, if not for the episode, I wouldn't have taken the time to go down and explore the area, so per usual. Thank you so much for your work. You provide me with an endless supply of did you know facts that makes me sound much more well read than I actually am. Also provided a pet tax of my parents' dog, Striker. He's very anxious, very sweet border Collie born during the pandemic, so this is him emotionally exhausted after the family my parents so said for the holidays had finally left. Thanks again, Jordan inadvertently didn't send the dog picture and sent that as a follow up, very cute, so sweet. I'm going to say I did not look up the how to pronounce pero theater, and it would not shock me to learn that maybe it's per rot, because that seems like the kind of word that maybe would have a different local pronunciation than the one that is zixpected. Uh, yeah, I don't I don't remember what word there was a proper name on the show within the last year that like had an extremely straightforward spelling and h like an English Language definition standard pronunciation that I looked up as a joke, like better make sure they don't say it differently there haha. And it turned out they did, and I was like, well, well, I wish I could remember now which term it was. I don't remember anyway, this is a beautiful mural. It's it's got Scott Joplin's face to his father of rag Time on it. Uh. And then there's one that's got like a lot of sheet music covers for the entertainer, the santhemum pineapple rag trem nisia maple leaf rag. It's very lovely. I like this mural a whole lot, and if I were in tech sarcana, I would go have a look at it. So thank you so much Jordan for sending this to us.

00:37:07
Speaker 1: Uh.

00:37:08
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