Imogene Rechtin’s ‘Kiss Not’ Campaign

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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. Tracy, I have not told you this, but I'm using the podcast for personal therapy. Okay, here's the thing that I don't know if I've ever told you were not. Do you know how there are certain words you just don't like. Sure, Yeah. One of those words for me, and all of its variations is kissing. Really, it grosses me out so bad, and I don't know why I've never known this about you. I will use any other synonym I could possibly come up with, however, silly. I don't know what it is. It's like the French word that denotes someone is going to marry you that starts with the NS. I also don't like that word at all, and I don't know why. It's very strange. I'm not anti romance at all, but I know clearly some very specific areas where I don't want to talk about it, and this is one. So I'm like, that's not a way to move in the world. So you have to break these issues. So we're going to talk about kissing all day to day. Um, it's very kissy kiss Kisserson. I read this thing in the Smithsonian magazine in May and I have been thinking about it ever since. And it was this article about a woman who tried to get people to stop kissing, and it's a great article, but I was like, there's more to this, and I know it, and that article referenced some of them more to this, but I just was like, this is the weirdest thing. And it also, uh, there's a lot of discussion of communicable diseases and people being resistant and that seemed really really interesting to me in our world we live in. Sure, but that is also a difficult topic in the world we live in, and this seemed like a nice way to kind of mirror what we've all been living through for a while, right, it's timely. We've been watching arguments about people taking steps to ensure public health play out in terms of whether or not they want to do that, if it infringes on their desires, etcetera. Uh, here in the US and in other parts of the world. That's been going on. But this is an interesting way to kind of look at a similar model that it had much less immediate impact and it did not involve a pandemic. Yeah, so today we're going to talk about a woman named Imagine Reckton and her Kiss not campaign. So in nineteen ten, Emagene Reckton was at a lady's function and she had this moment of inspiration that was brought on by revulsion. Imagine was a mother of two teenage sons. Her husband, Lewis Reckton, was a successful businessman who ran a company that made woodworking machines. She was actually born Sultana Imagene Fraser in eighteen fifty six, and she and Lewis had met when they were both working for the Cordsman Machine company. She was a stenographer and he was a bookkeeper, and they got married in eighteen ninety. Yeah. She was actually ten years older than her husband, which for some reason I love. She was in her mid fifties when she was attending this lady's function in question. There were dozens of women at the event. We don't have an exact number, but she mentions at least thirty or forty that were in front of her as they were in a receiving line to be greeted by the hostess, who graced each attendee with a kiss on the cheek or even on the lips in some cases. Imaging is generally characterized in accounts of her in general and this event as someone who was a bit of a germophobe, and as having social anxiety. I don't know how much either of those is true, but I could see where people got there. This whole scene, though, made her livid. She did not want to be kissed, and she found herself wishing that there were some way out of such greetings that would avoid appearing rude. For wishing to sidestep a social custom Imageane set herself in an interview later that year, quote, I was taught by my mother that kissing breeds disease, and I always disliked it. I gotta say, I would not really want to be in a receiving line where either I was kissing everyone or I was being kissed after someone had kissed everyone. I would not be down with that anyway. So the idea came to her was that a button could be worn that simply read kiss not I've had some similar buttons on my body in the last few years. Even if such a button existed, those shouldn't know if people would understand it. So there needed to be a campaign that would educate the public on what this button meant, so that people could wear it and be understood as wishing to opt out of being hissed. We would recognize us today is a pretty normal process of bodily autonomy or consent. In the early though, this concept was met with some resistance. Any of the social stress of it. Aside, Wreckton's deepest motivations came, she would say, many many times, from the kiss being a disease vector, although she did not use those words. She saw though, that direct physical contact like that could easily spread germs, and she thought that continuing to do things like kiss as a casual social greeting it was just incredibly dangerous. She was not wrong. Keep in mind that scientists like Louis Pastor and Robert Coke, who identified the bacteria responsible for tuberculosis, had been working on the concept of germ theory in the last part of the nineteenth century and into the early twentieth century, So these matters were known about, but they were still kind of in the early years in terms of the public altering any of their behaviors about it. Anti spitting campaigns had been enacted in years before this, and there had been efforts to educate people about the importance of personal hygiene, but still in social gatherings, particularly in the middle and upper class, it was really common for people to greet one another with a kiss. Imagine Recton wanted to help spread the word that it needed to stop if people really wanted to stop the spread of disease. There is a whole secondary element to this where racism and classism come into play, where the priority to minimize physical contact was definitely a way that people isolated themselves from other people that they saw as other. A lot of the movement that already existed regarding home and personal hygiene advice was kind of aimed at keeping white, middle class and above households safe. Those anti spitting campaigns that Tracy just mentioned, for example, were intended to keep working classmen from spitting in public. Yes, spitting in public is absolutely gross, but there was an undercurrent of singling out poorer classes as being responsible for dirt and disease and in separating themselves from minorities, immigrants, and people of lower incomes. Middle and upper class social circles kind of seemed to think they were not at risk of disease transmission. Additionally, a lot of the advice from health officials regarding what people needed to do to be clean and to stop the spread of disease, these are actions that were just not available to everyone's socioeconomically. For example, isolating when sick is great advice and good practice, but how was a person living in a tenement or a multi family home supposed to do that? It just wasn't possible. So the idea of lower classes being diseased persistent because in some ways it was kind of a self fulfilling prophecy. If you were living in really close quarters, was really easy for diseases to spread. Yes, so it's stead of saying, hey, we should figure out a way to improve the quality of life of everyone, the idea was, let's just not talk to those people are going near them like uh. In night the Philadelphia Dispatch to the New York Harold syndicated a column about doctors who advocated against kissing titled declares kiss Must Go. That particular article was inspired by another article that when in the monthly Cyclopedia and Medical Bulletin, which was called Kissing Its Evils and Benefits That was written by Dr John V. Shoemaker. Dr Shoemaker had apparently stated in his work that because kissing involves the mouth, that makes it an easy path for germs to travel to the stomach and lungs. In the article from the New York Harold, another doctor weighed in this was Dr Clara Scott, who's described as a homeopathic physician. She states, quote, the number of diseases which kissing causes is unbelievable to one who has not studied the question. I firmly believe the day will come within a generation when a formidable anti kissing movement will be established, and when kissing practically will be confined to the lower classes, the educated people having been brought to see the evils of the habit. Next to the evil of kissing babies comes the sweethearts kiss. This is one of the most dangerous of all. Husband's kiss soon loses its fervency, but the kiss of two sweethearts is the paradise of the tuberculosis germ and the diph theory of germ and other germs too numerous to mention. During the long intervals, while the sweethearts kiss continues, one may imagine the various germs rushing backward and forward with unholy glee. This is the longest way to go. Don't don't have long makeout sessions, y'all um. The Washington Times ran a much longer version of that article, which included a quote from another and physician, this one Dr Rachel S. Skadilski, and she took a more moderate approach to this whole issue, stating, quote Dr Shoemaker is right, but let's be practical. It is my opinion that all unnecessary kissing, the kissing without real affection, should be abolished. This would reduce the germ evil to a minimum. So we'll talk more about this tug of war that played out in the press in November of night as anti kissing advocates and their detractors fought it out publicly. First, though, we will pause or a sponsor break. In response to that Washington Times article we mentioned. Right before the break, another brief article titled an assault on Kissing appeared in the Washington Post. That article starts by quoting Dr Clara Scott, almost in her entirety from the previous one, but it does not mention her by name. It just calls her a female position and because her quote opens the article. It kind of seems initially like the write up is going to be in favor of the anti kissing cause, but the rest of it essentially tears down Scott's statement and says that quote, these pestiferous discoveries of modern scientists male and female become more and more intolerable. It goes on with the rather cringe e proclamation that quote kissing is all right in proper circumstances, and enjoyable even if the circumstances aren't quite as they might be. I don't know what the intention or meaning of that is, but it just sounded real ikey to me. Um. The article then includes quotations of poetry by Lord Byron and Tennyson to show how very culturally important kissing is, and then concludes by saying, quote, scientists real and spurious have run the germ theory into the ground. They make themselves preposterous and arouse just resentment in the breast of every right minded man and sweet lipped woman. The holiest, sweetest memories of mankind cluster about kisses. The abolition of kissing would mean the blotting out of happiness, And for what to avoid? The imaginary onslaught of a puny imaginary germ. Bah let kissing, thrive and let the germs look out for themselves. I like the implication here that everyone wants to kiss people. Uh, there are clearly people who feel very much that that is there entire reason for living. So yet another take on this was written by Ethel Lloyd Patterson, who was an opinion journalist from New York, noting in her article Kisses under Ban of Brains and Quaker City that Dr Clara Scott was from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She claimed quote, so now we know what is the matter with Philadelphia. For a long while, all of course, we have all been aware that an indefinite gloom hung over the Pennsylvania city, but we had scarcely attributed it to a rush of brain to the head. But if this is be true, and intelligence is really incompatible with osculation, well then tis better to have lost your brains than never to have kissed at all. Yet another physician, this one, doctor Enrico Castelli, of New York City, was consulted for his opinion on the matter for Patterson's article. His take was quote, we physicians cannot expect to divert the course of human nature. Our place is to fortify it as far as we can against mishap. That is all we can do. To say that we could, even if we wish, to stop people who love each other from caressing one another is utterly absurd. But from a purely scientific standpoint, let me explain to you how little disease would actually be prevented even if it were possible to place an embargo upon osculation. I have made a special study of acteria for over five years, and I have found that practically every known germ is present in a dormant condition, as one might say, in every human mouth. They are taken into the lungs with every breath. Now, the reason they do not develop is because the person is not in the necessarily run down condition that affords them foothold. I'm just gonna say Dr Castelli maybe needed some help from a bacteriologist. That's just my personal opinion on that one. Um. He basically summed up his stance in additional comments as being the world is covered in germs and you're ingesting them all the time, So go ahead and kiss because quote, science will never advance, can never advance to the point where contact with bacteria can be avoided. This is kind of one of the phases of the germ theory of disease, where there are people who are like, yes, germs exist, but they only make you sick if with a lot of spurious qualifiers. Well, it's also that thing where there's not really a distinction between like bacteria and vir Yeah, you carry all the stuff all the time, and I'm like, my dude, no way, not exactly. So, Imaging Recton was starting her social reform effort about kissing at a time when there was already all this arguing about it. In her living room in Cincinnati, Ohio. Mrs Recton launched an umbrella organization for efforts, which was called the World's Health Organization. This is not to be confused with the World Health Organization, which was not founded until the World's Health Organization's pledge, written by Imaging was quote. In order to encourage good health and lessen the spread of consumption, I desire to join the World's Health Organization, and hereby pledge myself to discourage the custom of kissing on the lips whenever it is in my power. It's interesting that this isn't a pledge not to kiss. It was certainly implied, but this pledge is a promise to discourage as from kissing. Once the pledge was signed and sent back to Imagine's organization, along with a nickel, person who sent it received their kiss not button in return. So one of the things that Imogene did to spread the word was to write articles up and send them out to newspapers, and she also gave interviews, and she got a lot of press. Some of that press was fairly straightforward reporting on what she was doing, but some of it definitely has a mocking tone. But for a brief time, regardless of which flavor you were getting, her message was being spread wide and far. In June of nineteen ten, the San Francisco Sunday Call covered the formation of the organization in a picture heavy article titled to Kiss or Not to Kiss. That article opens by saying, quote, after years of sporadic crusading, a non kissing organization has been started in Cincinnati, Ohio that is meeting with surprising success. This article states that, acording to the society's president, there are more than a thousand members and that the numbers are steadily growing, expecting to have members in every US city within two years. As an asside on that number, there were articles circulating at the same time that said that there were five thousand members already. Some of this might have been due to papers picking up the story at different times, but there were papers running in June and July of with each of these numbers. That makes it all a little bit confusing. The number is also just what imaging provided. It does not seem like it was sourced from anything other than what she said. We're going to run into a lot of that as we go for it. Just heads up this right up also described imagine stating quote. Her name is Mrs John Recton. She is a rather attractive looking, dark haired, brown eyed little woman of about thirty five years who, long before marriage, was diametrically opposed to promiscuous kissing. She began to preach her doctrine to her husband, one him to her way of thinking, and then started on her friends, with such success that the World's Health Organization was founded and she was enthusiastically elected its first president. As a note here, if you have been listening and doing math, her husband's name does not appeared to have been John at all. It was Lewis. But she was also in her fifties, so uh not thirty five. This article clearly pretty light on fact checking. So now to address a question you may have. At this point, it is not clear if Imagine and her husband kissed. That may sounds unusual, probably because it's such an intimate thing to ask a married couple. It seems like a lot of reporters just came to their own conclusions about this and then went to print with them. Some rite ups during Imagine's relatively brief crusade state that she did not kiss even her husband, and others like the one we just read, are more careful to frame her position as being against promiscuous kissing, which makes it sound like she would not have been opposed to a smooch with her husband, just not maybe a whole lot of other people. Holly never came across a definitive statement from Imaging wrecked in herself on this matter, so we don't really know she did state that quote. It is impossible to get lovers and sweethearts to realize that they must not kiss each other on the lips. Kind of makes it sound like she was against kissing on the lips in all contexts, but I mean those romantic scenarios she just described there that shouldn't list marriage as one of them. Your guess is really as good as ours on this. Yeah. I think that's one of the reasons that, um her the story did get so much coverage, is that people like to speculate on whether or not she had like a marriage with no affection. Um it's sold papers just the bottom line. On that same note, we should point out not all of the will in the anti kissing movement were against romantic kissing, even like by couching it as saying listen, that's not gonna happen. Uh, presumably they intended that to be with consenting parties involved. Some of these people were exclusively focused on the kissing of babies and children. Babies, of course, do not have fully developed immune system, so there is legitimate danger in having random people kissed them, particularly on the lips, which was apparently pretty common practice in the early twentieth century. This is gross to me for so many reasons, like strangers would kiss babies yuck. No, but also babies are druly messes and I wouldn't want to kiss them anyway, No shade to your baby. They're all like that. I was like, that as a baby, just the whole thing seems very gross to me. Um kissing of young children, of course, was also problematic, both because it's spread disease and also because a child simply may not want it. So there were people both within and without Imagings World's Health Organization who really were only advocating for refraining from kissing kids. Next up, we will discuss Emmagene Reckton's month by month plan to eradicate kissing and thus she thought disease first. That we will pause for another sponsor break in that to Kiss or Not Kiss article that we were talking about, Wreckton shared her month by month plan for the organization to try to expand the group's numbers and reduce the spread of germs through kissing. Because this went to press in June, her first targeted group was young brides who were having summer weddings. Reckton stated, quote, the custom of kissing a bride on her wedding day is a most dangerous one. To stamp out this evil at once would be to accomplish the impossible. But we have made the start and are much encouraged. She reported that seventy five brides had joined her group and agreed to wear their kiss buttons on their wedding days, and when Imogene was pressed about whether she was suggesting that the newly weds not kiss, she specified, quote, I mean the relatives and wedding guests should not kiss the bride and subject her to risk of getting consumption. Following the summer brides, Redkins August goal was to get parents on board, including not kissing their own babies. We're not parents. We can imagine this would have been a hard sell for a lot of people. I will say in more recent eras there's like a whole conversation about like parents kissing their babies being a part of their babies developing their immune system, etcetera. Just as a note that September target shifted, unsurprisingly to teachers, with the hope that they would not only pledge not to kiss the children in their care, but they would also explain the need to abstain for i'm kissing in their classes as well. In October, the organization planned to reach out to street cleaners and laundresses. The logic there was that these were occupations that often came in contact with a lot of people's potential germs, so they would be inherently invested in spreading this anti kissing message. November would be all about women's groups, including church clubs, literary clubs, and game groups, and the hope there was that they would all start to wear their buttons to gatherings as a way to normalize social events without kissing. Is a greeting for December. You might be thinking that family gatherings might have been Imogen's game plan, but nope, weddings again, since winter weddings meant big gatherings, it was essentially a repeat of her July plan. Erect and is also quoted in this article is saying quote, my life for just one kiss sounds thrilling in romance and poetry, but disillusion is found in the hospitals whence lovers follow each other to the grave in a few short months. There are quite some other women on the matter, which so that most of them are really only concerned about children and babies. Mrs Philip M. Walkenberg said that quote, I don't think life would be worth living without kisses. Of course, I don't believe in Promiskey was kissing, which sheepens the value of the kiss. But it is silly to talk about discouraging all kissing. Miss Albert Hill, quoted in the article, made the case that telling people not to do something just made it more alluring, but she also mentions that she was raised in Japan, where people simply quote don't do such things. Mrs bel de Rivera of New York thought organizing anti kissing drives was simply silly. Mrs William Cumming story admitted she hadn't really thought about it much, and Mrs Harriet J. Wood thought, quote, the practice of kissing is altogether too extensive. She qualified that by adding that parents should absolutely be able to kiss their children, and that young men and young women quote are old enough to look after themselves. Although my favorite response from this gathering of quotes from women was from a Mrs Ida Husted Harper, who told the inquiring reporter quote, if women could vote, they wouldn't be worrying their heads about being kissed. This is like the get off the internet. We have bigger fish to ryan. Get out of my face. So this full page article also includes images of couples kissing with captions that definitely seem intended to mock the anti kissing cause. So things like this may mean tuberculosis, and my, what a chance for those awful germs. These are editorial choices that are worth examining, because though just about all of these women that were quoted, we're not really worried about romantic kissing, that was what the paper chose to focus on. For all the visuals, there's just not a single image of a baby or a child other than kind of a menacing looking cupid. That cupid scares me. It's not cute. Sorry to throw that illustrator into the bus, but that cute it is frightening. Um. The same month that that huge spread was published, the Washington Post consulted a physician named Dr Harvey W. Wiley, chief of the Bureau of Chemistry at the Department of Agriculture, to get his thoughts on kissing and germ spread. His answers are kind of salty, and they're dismissive of Recton's group and its efforts. He told the Post that he had never seen a single instance of kissing being the cause of transmission of a deadly disease. He stated, quote, a society for the prevention of kissing is nothing less than a society for the prevention of pleasure. Just imagine yourself in a kissless courtship. Can you contemplate a more uninteresting predicament. I have feelings about Dr Wiley, and they're not kind. Yeah, I want to introduce him to be like the married a sexual people. I know I'm not saying no a sexual people ever kiss, but you know, not necessarily a prerequisite in every relationship. Well, he's also if you read more of that, it sounds a most a little predatory and yucky, of like men should just be able to kiss women, and it's like, oh, Dr whiley yuck. I don't. I don't stick to the Department of Agriculture, please thank you. Yeah. Anyway, During the summer of nineteen eleven, Immagene pushed hard for teachers to pledge that they would not kiss their students when school returned in the fall. This is not salacious. She was talking specifically about teachers of really young children, like kindergarteners, and when she spoke to the press on this matter, Mrs Rerecton was quoted as saying, quote, teachers and pupils will both benefit by it. A sweet faced kindergarten teacher kissed her pupils goodbye, saying I'll take a good rest this summer. In the fall, I'll give you more games. They tire me now. She died of consumption in the middle of August. Were the children exposed to consumption? Had the disease been dip theory or smallpox, would they have been exposed to it. Since you cannot quarantine a consumption or vaccinate against consumption, how will we control it? It takes whole families to the grave, teach the little ones to quarantine their mouths. Okay, So imaging, as we've been saying, was not wrong that a teacher kissing children could be a disease vector. But she also seemed to really like to tell these stories and no verifiable sources, which could not have helped her campaign. In the case of that example of the teacher who died of consumption, she doesn't even give a vague location, and one would think if there were a known potential outbreak, she might want to use her platform as an advocate being interviewed by a newspaper to alert the community involved. She also, in that same article quotes a prominent physician, but she gives no name, and according to this anonymous physician quote, if one of these buttons could be put upon the bib of every newborn baby and worn till the child is eighty years old. There would be more old people than there are today. That particular right up also includes a favorite quote of Emergy, who was quoting someone else. She says that the group's health officers motto is quote, kiss only your enemies. I want that on a shirt, kiss over enemies. It sounds uh wonderfully evil. Uh. Imaging always had this steady stream of information to share that had legitimate scientific merit, But again she also always went to extremes to make her point. Take this story that she told in nineteen quote, I know of one instance in a suburb of this city where a young woman was a sufferer from tuberculosis. The young man who called on her was well and strong. He became infected during the courtship, and our investigation shows that the infection was caused by kissing. They both died before the dates set for the wedding. Again, no specifics, no other records seems to appear of these people, and as a consequence, the press really started to skewer Imaging with these outlandish cartoons that sometimes went along with these stories that featured things like all manner of contraptions to cover young women's faces and make sure that they could not be kissed. In nineteen eleven, she gave this statement quote in the case of smallpox, the disease shows quickly after infection has taken place, but in consumption it does not. Therefore, do not kiss anyone. You are not sure by looking at a person whether he has consumption or not. He may not know it himself. Sometimes he is able to attend to his regular duties till the last. If with the expenditure of thirty million dollars as was spent last year to conquer consumption, to say nothing of the heartaches for the left ones gone forever, we could say we are now rid of the disease, then the crusade against it would die a natural death. But with all this expenditure, we are still in the midst of it. Okay, that's thirty million dollar number. I don't know where she got it. I could not find a single source for it. One outlet actually seemed to doubt her printed it as thirty thousand dollars um. All of the others that I saw, and there were quite a few, had the thirty million dollar number but again I don't know where she pulled that from. And if you look at national mortality statistics for the US for the years from nineteen o six to nineteen ten, yes, the number of tuberculosis deaths went up from seventy five thousand, six hundred forty eight reported in nineteen o six to eighty six thousand, three hundred nine reported in nineteen ten, And numbers like that may have certainly helped Recton's case, But that rise is actually reflective of a much larger reporting pool rather than a true rising cases. So if you look at the death rates from tuberculosis per one hundred thousand people, there's actually a pretty significant drop in that period. In nineteen o six, one thousand, five hundred sixty seven point five people per one hundred thousand died of tuberculosis, and in nineteen ten that number had dropped to one thousand, four hundred ninety five point eight. Obviously, they are not point five and point eight of people, but it's the numbers game. So that rate was actually dropping already, presumably from greater efforts that had been made through public health initiatives. One thing that merits considering is the ways in which Imogene Recton's efforts were treated by the public and the press and even medical professionals. She's kind of relegated to the role of kind of a nervous kuk. Historian Peter C. Baldwin wrote a paper that was published earlier this year in the Journal of Social History, and he makes the case that Reckton was also advocating for women to be able to deny unwanted romantic attention from men by wearing the kiss not button, So the served as kind of a safeguard. Could it stop a man from overpowering a woman, of course not, but it also sent a clear signal at a time when women didn't really have a lot of options to do so that we're socially acceptable. The other thing about all of this is that least when it came to romantic couples, uh imagine, was probably not really just talking about kissing. This was a time when talking openly about sexually transmitted infections was a not a thing. So even in some of her writing, she seems like she is actually talking around kind of a bigger issue, but she will never actually reference like, Oh, I'm actually writing an article that's about syphilis, but I'm talking only about kissing, but that definitely does seem to be the case. Bummer of Imagine's story is that it kind of sputters out at this point without any resolution. After the autumn of nineteen eleven, there were no more articles about her anti kissing efforts. There were some people who carried on the cause, but they weren't Mrs Recton. She worked with her local suffrage groups and other women's groups in Cincinnati, but nothing that ever gained her the kind of attention or scorn that the kiss not message had. We don't really know what she thought of the nineteen eighteen influenza pandemic, although surely she had strong feelings on the matter when she died in nine. Yeah, an interesting one. Um, I have much more. Look, I got through that whole episode and I didn't go back. Once I'm cured, I could say kissing all I want now. Um Um, I have uh listener mail. It does not involve smooching of any kind. Okay, we got so many wonderful emails about our monarch episodes that um, I actually have two to read. So the first one is from our listener Alex, who writes, Holly and Tracy, I love the Monarch episode. I love science history, and your science history episodes are among my favorite, especially since they shine light on people's overlooked contributions, especially Catalina's. And thank you for mentioning that people should plant native milkweed if they want to support monarch butterflies in North America, since research does suggest that it is indeed better for them. There are non migratory populations of monarchs in the US that have been linked to the planting of tropical milkweeds that grow year round compared to native milkweed species that are seasonal or dormant in the winter. We mentioned this briefly in our episode, but this is a kind of a deeper explainer on it. The non migratory populations have been associated with a deadly monarch parasite called O E. This is ophree Cistus electro syra. I may have pronounced that wrong, so planting tropical milkweeds may be facilitating the spread of the parasite within the non migratory monarchs, which can then spread to migratory ones. Well, I am not a monarch expert. I ended up reading several monarch papers when I was a grad student. Uh Alex went to the University of Georgia because I knew the wonderful people in Dr Sonja alt Dezer's lab who were studying this very issue. Talk about milkweeds and monarch disease from the alt Dezer lab can be found at the Monarch joint Venture website that was mentioned on the podcast that was again Monarch joint Venture dot org and this one. If you probably do a search there for assessment of exotic milkweed, you will come up with that. At that lecture, the episode and behind the scenes disc Shion has reminded me how I've wanted to plant milkweed for a long time, and so I planned to get some native milkweed seeds and have them planted by spring. Thank you, Thank you, Alex. I hope other people maybe remember that they meant to plant milkweed because it's good for the monarchs um and and as we said, plant your local variety so that you don't mess up with any any of their migratory instinks. I saw a monarchy yesterday when I was on my walk. I was two days ago when I was on my walk, and I also walked past what a stand of what I realized was milkweed because I had never seen it like as a full grown plant before. I had just seen kind of like illustrations of what the leaves look like with a little caterpillar on there. I love it. I love it. Um. My other listener mail that is also about monarchs is from our listener Caitlin and I wanted to include this. We did as I had put out a call to ask people like our kids still getting in person, is it's We got a lot of people saying yes, absolutely, no. Um. This one is the cutest of them all in my opinion, So Caitlin, thank you up front, because I might start giggling while I say this. Um. Hi, Holly and Tracy, I was already planning to share a cute story about butterflies in the classroom, and then you asked about it in the Friday Behind the scenes. I teach preschool and I'm pleased to report we are still raising butterflies in the classroom. Terrariums that Tracy described, for reasons unknown to me, are caterpillars. This year, we're painted ladies instead of monarchs. We prepped the kids with lots of books and videos about the caterpillar to butterfly process and when our caterpillars cocoon, we announced to the kids will check every day to see if the cocoons are hatching. One of my kiddos added check the terrarium to his morning routine. After his belongings were stowed in his cubby, he would march over and inspect the terrarium from every angle. After a few days, I noticed him getting more and more dejected when nothing had changed, which led to this conversation me, Hey, buddy, you seem sad waiting and be hard. Huh, kid, yeah, I want to see them. Me. Well, the butterflies will hatch soon. Kid, visibly distressed, But when will the raccoons come? The entire two weeks that we had been discussing caterpillars, cocoons, and butterflies, he had been hearing raccoons instead. I'm not sure exactly how he expected them to fit into the process, but boy was he disappointed to learn that raccoons are rarely involved in butterfly transformations. As always, thank you so much for all the work you put into the podcast. It's one of my favorite parts of the week. Caitlin, that is hilarious. Yeah, I read that, and I had a good chuckle. When did the raccoons go? Listen? I understand wanting to see raccoons. They're real cute. I also just going to give thanks to Chad for sending us not really an email of information, but just pictures of the adorable Heidi and Max brother and sister kitties who looked like trouble uh and apparently love attention, as well as the kitty Syreen, who just is like, I don't know magic. To me, Syreen looks like a dilute Tortych's mostly gray, but I see some little pale buff color patches, which means uh. And Chad mentions she has grown up to be absolutely unstoppable. She goes where she wants when she wants. She was a tiny kitten that they rescued, and that sounds right for a dilute torty. So um. Thank you for taking care of beautiful kitties and giving them attention and rescuing them and for sharing them with us. Thank you to our listeners that have written in about monarchs. Uh. As I said during that that's a subject that is near and dear to my heart. So it makes me happy that one kids are still getting that education about them, even if sometimes raccoons get involved accidentally. And too that other people respond so much to that important cause. And I hope everybody is investigating their local milk weed. Uh. If you would like to write to us so, you can do so at History Podcast at iHeart radio dot com. You can also find us on social media as a Missed in History and if you have yet to subscribe, get on that easy peasy. It is super simple to do on the I heart radio app or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of I heart Radio. 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