Tuesday, January 14, 2014

Wednesday, January 14, 2024. Endless chain production and Out Of Africa.

Ford Motor Company introduced the endless chain for manufacturing vehicles, turning out a Model T in 93 minutes.  It was already using the assembly line.


Karen Blixen arrived in Kenya and, on the same day, married her Swedish cousin Bror Flixen-Finecke, thereby becoming a baroness.  She famously became the author of Out of Africa.


Blixen's father was a Danish army officer and parliamentarian who loved the outdoor life, and who authored a memoir featuring that which became a bit of a Danish classic, so she came by her writing skills naturally.  Like her to be husband, he also was given to affairs and had a daughter from a pre marriage affair in the United States with a Chippewa woman.  He suffered from having contacted syphilis in the United States.  He killed himself following impregnating one of his household maids, at which time Karen was only 9.

Blixen is still widely admired for that writing, and Out of Africa is an excellent book which was turned into an excellent film, so it's hardly noticed what a symbol of late state monarchy and empire she was.  A Dane who gained admittance to British Kenya, she did so only because she was a white immigrant at a time in which the benefits of flooding non-European lands with Europeans was not questioned.  Her marriage was really one of convenience, and it did not last with her husband being unfaithful, something that was so common amongst nobility that it was practically expected, but which also resulted in her being infected with syphilis.  Her farming activities were not really successful as much of the land that had been acquired was not suitable for it, with the original intent to have been ranching.  The land actually belonged to a family corporation, and not to the couple individually.

Baron Bror Fredrik von Blixen-Finecke went on to marry three times, having asked for divorce from Karen and having obtained it against her wishes.  He was an author in his own right.

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