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Thursday, April 18, 2019

It’s happening here.
Next door.

The feeling that bespeaks the familiarity of the entire globe with this testament of one of our greatest artistic achievements.
The most anticipated and visited attraction in Paris, a city replete with attractions.

Great damage in our backyard
To a monument that is a metaphor for permanence.
Begun in 1160.
Almost 900 years ago.

A fire in Paris
Is happening here.

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Postings Count, Weather Brief, and Dinner
Thursday, April 18, 2019

My 377th consecutive posting, committed to 5,000.
After 377 posts we’re at the 7.54% mark of my commitment, the commitment a different way of marking the passage of time.

Time is 12.01am.

On Thursday, Boston’s temperature will reach a high of * with a feels-like of * with .

Dinner for tonight will be

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Question of the Day:
Who were Martin and Osa Johnson?

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Thursday, April 18, 2019

Love your notes.
Contact me at domcapossela@hotmail.com

This from Sally C re: the Margaret Mead post.

Hi, Dom,

Speaking of anthropology, I read a wonderful book - full of happy thoughts - several years ago called "I Married Adventure" by Osa Johnson. 
She and her husband Martin traveled to many parts of the "primitive" world and took photographs and film footage of the indigenous peoples there, including active cannibals tribes in the South Seas. 

Their work pre-dated Mutual of Omaha's "Wild Kingdom" TV show in the 1960s by forty years.  The Johnsons were much braver than Marlin Perkins, too, and didn't climb into a tree at the first sight of a rhinoceros; they were the "Jim Fowler" who braved the elephants and lions personally. 
They were pioneers in acquiring aerial footage of Africa's wildlife from airplanes. 
Osa wrote several books, but I've only read this one, and she was as diminutive, tough, gritty, and cheerful as a terrier. 
I doubt her books are in any libraries anymore, but they are easily found online for a few dollars. 
Definitely worth a read, whether or not one cares one whit for anthropology.

Web Meister Responds: I looked them up on Wikipedia and decided to make them the subjects of today’s Q&A. thanks, Sally.

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Chuckle of the Day:
A couple drove down a country road for several miles, not saying a word.
An earlier discussion had led to an argument and neither of them wanted to concede their position.
As they passed a barnyard of mules, goats and pigs, the husband asked sarcastically,
"Relatives of yours?"
"Yep," the wife replied, "in-laws."

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Answer to the Question of the Day:

Martin Elmer Johnson (October 9, 1884 – January 13, 1937) and his wife Osa Helen Johnson (née Leighty, March 14, 1894 – January 7, 1953) were American adventurers and documentary filmmakers.

In the first half of the 20th century an American couple, Martin and Osa Johnson, captured the public's imagination through their films and books of adventure in exotic, faraway lands.
Photographers, explorers, marketers, naturalists and authors, Martin and Osa studied the wildlife and peoples of East and Central Africa, the South Pacific Islands and British North Borneo.
They explored then-unknown lands and brought back film footage and photographs, offering many Americans their first understanding of these distant lands.

Osa Johnson’s autobiography I Married Adventure (IMA) was the best-selling non-fiction book of 1940. The continued popularity of IMA, with its zebra-striped cover, has generated interest in collecting first editions.
Covers with “I MARRIED Adventure” were first editions and those with “I MARRIED ADVENTURE” (all block letters) were later editions.
The edition variations are now known due to years of collecting and studying all IMA editions by J.E. Paul Lewison of New York.
 
A title with “Adventure” in italics can be a first edition or a Book of the Month Club (BMC) edition or a seventh edition.
The difference is determined by examining the copyright page.
First editions will include “MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA BY THE HADDON CRAFTSMEN, INC., CAMDEN, N.J.” BMC editions state “PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA” plus the BMC logo is on the dust jacket (if it has survived). Seventh editions specifically state “SEVENTH IMPRESSION”.
Confusingly the seventh edition had both “Adventure” and “ADVENTURE” versions.

In 1917, Martin and Osa departed on a nine-month trip through the New Hebrides (Vanuatu) and Solomon Islands.
The highlight of the trip was a brief, but harrowing, encounter with a tribe called the Big Nambas of northern Malekula.
Once there, the chief was not going to let them leave.
The intervention of a British gunboat helped them escape.
The footage they got there inspired the feature film Among the Cannibal Isles of the South Seas (1918).

The Johnsons returned to Malekula in 1919 to film the Big Nambas once again, this time with an armed escort.
The escort proved unnecessary as the Big Nambas were disarmed by watching themselves in Among the Cannibal Isles of the South Seas.
Martin and Osa finished their trip in 1920 with visits to British North Borneo (now Sabah) and a sailing expedition up the coast of East Africa.

After returning home, they released the features Jungle Adventures (1921) and Headhunters of the South Seas (1922).

The Johnsons' first African expedition, from 1921 to 1922, resulted in their feature film Trailing Wild African Animals (1923).

During the second and longest trip, from 1924 to 1927, the Johnsons spent much of their time in northern Kenya by a lake they dubbed Paradise, at Mount Marsabit.
The movies Martin's Safari (1928), Osa's Four Years in Paradise (1941), and the film Simba: King of the Beasts (1928) were made with footage of these trips.

In 1925, Osa and Martin met the Duke and Duchess of York, later King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, while on safari in Kenya.The third African safari from 1927 to 1928 was a tour of the Nile with friend and supporter George Eastman, founder of Eastman Kodak. This trip, along with previous footage was one of the first talkies for the Johnsons,
Across the World with Mr. and Mrs. Johnson (1930), which included Martin's narrative.
In 1928 three Eagle Scouts were selected in national competition to go on safari with the Johnsons in East Africa: Robert Dick Douglas, Jr., of North Carolina, David R. Martin, Jr., of Minnesota, and Douglas L. Oliver of Georgia.
The three scouts co-authored the 1928 book Three Boy Scouts in Africa. Douglas (1912-2015) was an attorney, Martin (1913-2004) became an executive in the Boy Scouts of America, and Oliver (1913-2009) was an Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at both Harvard University and the University of Hawaii.

From 1929 to 1931, the Johnsons spent a fourth tour in Africa in the Belgian Congo. There they filmed the Mbuti people of the Ituri Forest and the gorillas in the Alumbongo Hills.
The 1932 feature movie Congorilla was in part a product of this trip, and was the first movie with sound authentically recorded in Africa.

Osa's Ark S-38
In 1932 the Johnsons learned to fly at the Chanute Municipal Airport (now named the Chanute Martin Johnson Airport) in Osa's hometown of Chanute.
Once they had their pilot's licenses, they purchased two Sikorsky amphibious planes, a S-39-CS "Spirit of Africa" and S-38-BS "Osa's Ark".

On their fifth African trip, from 1933 to 1934, the Johnsons flew the length of Africa getting now classic aerial scenes of large herds of elephants, giraffes, and other animals moving across the plains of Africa. They were the first pilots to fly over Mt. Kilimanjaro and Mt. Kenya in Africa and film them from the air. The 1935 feature film Baboona was made from this footage.

On January 3, 1935 Baboona was shown on an Eastern Air Lines plane becoming the first sound movie shown during flight.
The movie premiered January 22, 1935 at the Rialto Theatre in New York City.

In 1935, the Johnsons were featured on Wheaties cereal boxes as "Champions of Sports."
Osa Johnson was the second female to appear on the box and she and Martin were the first married couple selected for this honor.

The Johnsons' final trip together took them to British North Borneo again, from 1935 to 1936. They used their smaller amphibious plane, now renamed "The Spirit of Africa and Borneo", and produced footage for the feature Borneo (1937).

Martin Johnson was a member of the Adventurers' Club of New York.
He described the Borneo expedition before the club on November 19, 1936, the event being called "Martin Johnson Night."

He previewed his "Borneo Pictures" before the group on December 17, 1936.

Martin Johnson died in the crash of a Western Air Express flight near Newhall, California, on January 12, 1937.
Osa was severely injured but recovered.

By October 1937, the New York Times was publishing dispatches of Osa's latest trip to Africa, in which she described lifestyles and practices of the Maasai and other tribes.

She died in New York City of a heart attack in 1953.

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Good Morning on this Wednesday, the Seventeenth Day of April.

We posted a thought and picture of that terrible destruction in Paris.
We posted updates o the calendar, the weather, and dinner.
We posted a letter from Sally that led to a q&a re: Martin and Osa Johnson,
And don’t forget the chuckle for the day.

And now? Gotta go.

Che vuoi? Le pocketbook?

See you soon.

Your love.