Whales and More on Easton in the Civil War

With so much bad environmental news floating around it's nice to find a fun story every once and a while. It turns out that whales as well as chimps and that other more destructive ape all have culture. Culture can be defined as a group of learned behaviors that separate one group from another. Culture is what enables us to change our use of the environment without going to all the trouble of actually evolving (those of you waiting for your little finger to evolve into a Phillips head screwdriver are going to be disappointed). Two articles from England's Guardian newspaper document this story. The first story makes the case that sperm whales in the Galapagos Islands, while genetically similar, are divided into two groups that exploit the food environment in different ways. Of course, for us humans culture can also mean "getting cultured" by listening to high-falutin' music like them thar opery tunes. Turns out the whales are into this also. The other Guardian article documents the fact that tunes sung by boy humpback whales who are popular with the chicas get picked up by other guys and passed along across the ocean. Tunes by loser contestants on Whale Idol get dropped.

Today, 150 years ago, President Lincoln issued a call for 75,000 troops to serve for three months essentially to protect the capital from rebel attack until a full time army could be built. According to Chaffin "within twelve hours" of the President's call (delivered to the nation by telegraph), Easton men of the 4th Massachusetts Militia Regiment reported to Faneuil Hall where they slept on the night of the 16th. This rapid response was possible because Massachusetts had maintained the old system of local militias left over from colonial days. Some modifications had been made, the men reporting for duty were mostly young adults without the teenagers and the graybeards, and apparently they trained, at least part of the time, not at the Plains (Militia Park), but in a large field near the present site of Andrews Café. We know this since while the boys were on "break" they resorted to the rock outcrop called King Phillip's Cave where they carved names and dates in the rock, drank, and allegedly some even canoodled with working girls. Don't know the contemporary name for those ladies-"soiled doves" perhaps-Hooker's Brigade, named for Massachusetts General Joe Hooker was several years in the future.

The militia men like their ancestors made drill days into a giant picnic which raises the question of what Civil War food was like. More on that tomorrow!