A Variety Pack Today

Bits and pieces to talk about today.

I visited Beaver Brook Woods yesterday and discovered a hidden Easton gem. Beaver Brook Woods is owned by the NRT and is hidden off Poquanticut Avenue and abuts the town's Fox Mountain and Buck Field conservation areas. You'll actually have to search for its tiny three car parking lot, and I'm not going to help you! It's a unique property for many reasons-its full of beech trees mixed with white pine-a rare mix that is vulnerable to loss by fire. It has two little wooden bridges over the brook plus stream crossings on rocks. The second bridge offers a lovely woodsy view, and I bet if you stood quietly for a few minutes in the summer, bird life would surround you. The southern part of the property is an open forest while the north part has large rocks left over from the glaciers and more undergrowth. The most important thing is that it seems to have been informally adopted by the neighborhood. The trails are immaculate. In my two hour visit I found only a few branches down on the trails-this in a year when the woods are full of debris. Why? According to a neighbor who was walking his dogs, it's because the neighbors take care of the place rather than simply exploit it. They push the branches off the trail, pick up trash, and apparently pick up after their pets. Despite being sandwiched between two densely populated areas, it seems to be a park that works-a quiet respite in a busy life.

For folks looking for some intellectual stimulation today I suggest this interesting article on memes from Smithsonian.com. This is a fascinating article on the theory that ideas replicate themselves like genes. It's a good article on a controversial subject, and the comments posted after it are thought provoking as well.

Fanny Holt Ames left San Francisco today heading for Hawaii. It was not to prove a happy crossing. We'll talk about that and a few more things about old San Francisco tomorrow in an special Easter Edition of the Curiosity Shop.

I write this blog on a Macbook and once used Safari exclusively as my browser. I know that most folks who have PCs tend to use Internet Explorer. Despite being a fan of most things Google, I've never warmed to their browser Google Chome, but more and more these days I am turning to Firefox 4 to get on the Internet. Why? It's infinitely customizable with add ons that leave me just a click away from most places I want to go. It's indispensable for writing this blog. In fact, sometimes I don't even have to click-slide the cursor over the doppler radio icon and I can see it's going to rain today, slide one icon further and I find out the latest report from the National Weather Service in Taunton. If you use Windows, you might not know that you aren't chained to one browser. I still use Safari if I'm downloading research since its .webarchive collects all the web page in one file unlike Firefox's system that splits the page and the html into two packets (although I bet I could get it to stop doing that with a little research).