Wednesday Practice Round

On Wednesday, the grounds of the TPC are open to the public for free for the practice round. Players can choose to arrive at the course anytime after seven, go to the driving range, or putting green, or go out and play a round on the course. The randomness of the day means that some, all, or none of the 100 players in the tournament may need the services of player shuttles to and from holes. It can be incredibly boring or like today, fairly busy.

Players all have an established practice routine. Some begin with warm-ups on the practice green next to the clubhouse. Most start on the driving range before putting. On the range most players start with short irons and work up to the driver under the tutelage of their caddie or swing coach. Representatives of the various equipment companies hang out on the range to work with their customers or gain new ones. Some players practice only clubs that are giving them trouble rather than work through all of them and a few just crank the driver to loosen up.

Practice on the course is also an established routine. Some like Padraig Harrington go out with just a caddy and a coach or equipment person. Others go out in groups and I was  "shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!" Yes, we heard talk of playing for a thousand dollars a whole. An old caddie lounging in our tent noted that a thousand dollars a hole was nothing compared to the champions tour where bets might be in the tens of thousands of dollars a hole. Players usually play one ball into the green and then hit up to a half a dozen approach shots from various areas within yards of the whole followed by some flop shots and numerous puts. Here's some news gleaned from a day at the course.

At the Barclay's tournament last week V. J. Singh hit into Rory Sabatini twice while he was practicing. sabatini was heard to say there'd be pay back if V. J. ever got in front of him during practice. This was exactly the case today, but when we picked up the two groups this afternoon everything seemed quite peaceful.

As friends know V. J. and I have a "relationship." He has a reputation for being difficult,  and rookie drivers are terrified by scary V. J.  stories. Unlike most golfers who are content to hop into any cart, V. J. keeps getting into mine. After four years that's fine with me as I admire his practice ethic and his golfing achievements. He generally remembers to thank me for the ride these days as well. Today he was in the cart with the representative of the company that makes his putter-Scott Cameron, I believe. The company rep was trying to get VJ to try a new putter, a long shafted mallet head. It is the only example in the country and its unique feature is having 80% of its weight at the rear of the mallet. This should give the long putter an even more pendulum like action.

Padraig Harrington was not very communicative in the parking lot this morning, but seemed much looser this afternoon. His game has been coming around in the last few weeks, and maybe he has figured out the TPC course.

PGA winner Keegan Bradley fulfilled a lifelong goal last night by throwing out the first pitch at the Sox-Yankees game. He asked his cart mates how he did, and everyone told him he looked fine. Meanwhile in another cart his caddie revealed he practiced his pitch for two days and tired out his arm. How'd he do-"A high soft one, but he managed to get it over the plate."

Many people think Anthony Kim can be a great golfer, but that he lacks focus. Cart drivers wait expectantly to see who Anthony's girlfriend will be. Another new one this year, a very, very pretty blonde for us this is Anthony's third girlfriend in three years, but apparently we have missed a few in between. By the way, drivers play a game called "Girlfriend or Wife?" Folk wisdom has it that if a lady is wearing comfortable shoes as she follows her man around the course, she's a wife. She's a girlfriend if the shoes are trendy and sexy. Only Anthony brought a girlfriend today.

The talk of the tournament so far has been the woman who has been following Keven Na around. The duo is known in driver circles as Na and Ma because Kevin has his mother with him. A tiny Asian woman with little English, Kevin introduced her to one driver with "She can ride with me. She's my mother. She likes me most of the time." Apparently mothers are the same all over the world.

As many know golf clothes can range from the casually fashionable like our excellent uniforms to the truly bizarre like the coach who had pants with alternating large squares of white, yellow and lime green. There was nothing more bizarre, however, than the two bankers who showed up today in black suits. Strange how something that wouldn't have gotten a second glance on a Boston street stood out so much in Norton. One "suit" was an American member of the Deutsche Bank, the other was a Japanese gentleman who must have been either incredibly wealthy or incredibly powerful since a Japanese golfer on being introduced to him bowed six times.


Everyone had their favorite golfer of the day. Steve Stricker and his caddie stood out for me, but another was particularly charmed by Ben Crane and Mark Wilson who shook her hand after she almost ejected their caddies from the cart with a particularly fast get away. We all became fans of Kyle Stanley, the last golfer on the course. We stood and watched him hit several spectacular practice putts and sink a difficult down him flop shot that drew our applause. He then came over and shook everyone's hands, thanking us for waiting for him long after everyone except greenskeepers had gone home.  He one four new fans with his pleasantness. He's 29th in FedEx points so if his short game is as good as it was today, he should move on to the playoff finals.

Carlton and Luis and me

Today was Red Sox legends day at the golf tournament, and I spent the morning as gatekeeper at hole 18. This pro-am started with players on each hole, a shot gun start, so we had to drive players from 18 to 1. Groups consisted of a pro golfer, a Red Sox legend or current Bruins player, and three amateurs who donate to charity to play. Eighteen is a problem hole for us with a narrow opening next to the grandstand making it difficult to drive a cart in to pick up players. For an "inside the ropes" experience you are further away from the action than most of the spectators. This year we were told not to bring the carts up the narrow gap. In fact a long wooden platform covered with green slip proof cloth was put in so the players could walk down to our carts on the road.

Now my job was to stand as close to the green as I could and gather up the players for the walk to the carts. Of course, it looked like the easiest way to get off the green was in the exact opposite direction. The marshalls on that side had to wave off the groups who then turned to see me goofily waving them on. My day started with the incomparable Carlton Fisk. Look up rugged New Englander in Wikipedia and I'm sure you'd see Fisk's picture. Despite being my age with the slightest of limps, he looks like he could still play or rip a tree up by the roots, whatever you need. He has a booming voice like the great Ted Williams and has a undeserved reputation as being a grouch. When I warned him of a steep and wet downslope, I was greeted with a smile and a booming "we got spikes" as if this slippery spot was beneath a New Englander's notice. He had hit a great approach shot into the green and missed the putt for a birdie on his first hole. As he proceeded down the cloth covered ramp he tried to convince his playing partners that things would be so much better if they would just replace the grass with the green cloth on the ramp. When I congratulated him on his great approach shot, he said "thanks" and then typical of all golfers followed with "if I could only putt." Our parking spot was a natural haven for autograph seekers and the Sox realized that's what they were there for. Fisk signed some programs, but when approached by someone with a jersey to sign, Fisk gave him a curt "I don't sign memorabilia" and he was off.
   Two groups behind was Luis Tiant. El Tiante is 71ish and gets to ride in his own cart so I never expected to see him up close today. His official entry at baseballreference.com lists him at six feet. I used to be 5' 8" and I'm taller than Luis. Luis is also a little pudgy and bandy-legged. He might supplant me as the out-of-shape looking one in the gang that plays at White Pines every week. Except this is Luis Tiant, one of the greatest athletes ever to come out of baseball crazy Cuba. At 71 he reached the 528 yard par 5 in regulation with a spectacular shot over the pin. A tough birdie putt down hill from 15 feet left him with a two footer which he drained, and then suddenly he was walking my way rather than heading for his cart. Warned of the slippery slope, his caddy, obviously a friend, grabbed him by the arm with a "let me help you, grandpa" as we all dissolved in laughter. I congratulated Luis on his sharp play, and the caddy, smoking a cigar that is usually Luis' trademark, then proceeded to rap on how he taught Luis everything he knows about good shots. Tiant and I walked down the ramp chuckling when the caddy blamed all bad shots on Luis. Someone had brought Luis cart around for him and he was quickly surrounded by autograph seekers. All the cart guys broke down our professional reserve and joined the line. Yes, I've got an authentic Luis Tiant autograph! The cart guys all thanked Tiant and he left us with a "Thank you, thank you" all his own.

Several other interesting things occurred during the day. Rico Petrocelli gave us an update on Johnny Pesky-he's doing so-so and is now in an assisted living, but hey he's 92. Brad Faxon is a great guy and another fine representative of our region. Andre Tippett still looks like he could play football and hockey players are still the most down to earth of all athletes. Disappointing all, there were no Heidi Watney sightings, but the assembled multitude is holding out hope since she is the cousin of golfer Nick Watney.

Why all the fuss about Luis Tiant? He was Pedro Martinez before there was a Pedro Martinez. His inspirational life story is featured in "The Lost Son of Havana" which will be featured by the Hockomock Film Club this season. One source says that Tiant may be the most beloved figure in Red Sox history and despite Big Papi, that source may be right. Tiant is also unfairly being kept out of baseball's Hall of Fame.  This website compares his statistics to other Hall of Famers, and he fits right in. Add in the fact that in several seasons he was the best pitcher in the American League and the starting pitcher in what is considered baseball's greatest game and you can see there is something special about this man's career.

Has Anyone Ever Seen a Dead Cavalryman?

The title today is a derisive question asked by infantryman during the Civil War. The foot soldiers felt they did the heavy lifting and the dying while the cavalry got the glory and a horse to ride. Now I don't know how many infantrymen there were at the TPC Norton today, but they were out helping the grounds crew clean up the course. Meanwhile we were cleaning and labeling our noble steeds.
Carts management has about 30 carts for our needs and perhaps twice that many that we manage for TV crews and assorted groups that run the tournament. Our job is to make sure everyone who needs a cart gets one, and everyone who wants one, but doesn't need it,  doesn't. So labeling and licenses are a big part of our jobs. We sorted carts and labels and made a few deliveries and then we all went home.

It's amazing how much work went into getting the course ready for Irene. While tent frames remained standing, their covers were stripped. TV and Shotlink towers were dropped. Equipment that normally would be deployed on the weekend remained tucked away in pods. By the time we were around this morning fallen trees were being chainsawed and debris moved away. The most interesting thing I saw was on the 18th green. A large crew had placed several dozen 4" plugs on the green. Normally a grounds crew takes a single plug and places it in the hole on the green. They then drill a new plug in the new hole location and move on to the next green. Don't know if a tree or branches had hit the green, but extensive repairs were certainly going on.

The PGA takes greens very seriously. Two years ago when a dog ran onto a green and left claw marks a crew was on the scene in minutes and spent half an hour repairing the damage. We didn't know at the time, but the dog had clawed up the location of the next days pin placement. Listen to the pros' comments to see if they mention course conditions during the week.

All those pampered cavalrymen eventually went home to the farm, and today I left the TPC to go to Sheep Pasture to do some real work. A tree had fallen over the main entrance narrowly missing two parked cars. Two trails were closed due to fallen trees and a large hickory had split and collapsed. Debris filled the area where the farmers' market was held. Ironically, two large dead trees that will be removed with a crane next week stood unscathed. By the time we left today, the entrance was open and the farmers' market area was ready to go. While I'm driving the Red Sox legends tomorrow, the NRT crew will get underway opening trails.

2011 Deutsche Bank Championship Day 1

Monday is normally the first day of the Deutsche Bank Tournament in Norton. Due to Irene, the closed-to-the public Stop and Shop Pro-Am was cancelled, however. My Monday call was changed from 6:30 am until 8. I imagine my first job will be to repair damage to the cart yard where all our golf carts sat out through the storm. If not, I'll be joining other select volunteers and the enormous groundskeeping crew in cleaning up the course. This is ironic since my first job was as an assistant groundskeeper at Easton Country Club. A potentially long and distinguished career was cut short when I jumped on a riding lawn mower, looked over my shoulder, and threw the mower into forward instead of reverse. Unluckily for me, the boss' truck door was right there to stop me.

Beginning tomorrow I'll be posting the blog in the evenings for the duration of the tournament. Tuesday is the first of the twelve hour days. Why do I do this for my vacation week from Sheep Pasture's chickens, ducks, and bunnies?
           1. I had a step second cousin who ran off and joined a carnival. The behind the scenes life of the blue crew (the catchy name for the volunteers) where 1,500 folks come together for one week of the PGA tour is as close to that carny life as I ever want to get. And the carts crew are the kings of the carny.
           2. Every golf cart in America runs off a single key and I have that key.
           3. There are other volunteers who spend their time making sure no one gets in my way when I drive carts. Not good for my road rage problems the week after the tournament, but great one week a year.
           4. Golf is the spectator sport where the fans get closest to the players. Cart drivers get closer still. Despite his personal problems Tiger was always very polite to me.
           5. My hours and volunteer fee help give millions to a variety of local and national charities, but unlike other charities where I get a thank you or at best a magazine, the blue crew is treated to a lot of perks donated by corporations. It's nice to be appreciated.

The Titanic's Mr. E. Freeman

For years I've used the phrase "arranging deck chairs on the Titanic" for those folks who deal with trivia while ignoring the big picture disaster going on around them. What did I know? While reading a book of primary sources on the Titanic disaster, I came across Mr. E. Freeman, a ship's steward, whose job included arranging deck chairs. That's exactly what "old" Freeman did as the ship sank. Arranged them, tied them together and threw them overboard to create floats for survivors who couldn't get into the lifeboats. Don't know if he saved any lives, but he tried his hardest. Mr. Freeman was lost with the ship.

The Titanic disaster resonated with all classes of society. African American folk singers were no exception. Perhaps the sinking represented to them the hubris of the entire white race. My ipod has Titanic songs by both Pink Anderson and Blind Willie Johnson.

Blind Willie Johnson was a fabulous gospel singer and slide guitarist. To say he had a hard life is an understatement. He died of a fever at age 48 after living outdoors in the ruins of his fire-destroyed storefront church. He recorded 30 sides between 1927 and 1930 when the market for "race" records dried up in the Depression. Johnson's song on the Titanic alternates lyrics that more or less factually tell the story of the disaster with a religious chorus "God moves, moves, God moves, ah, and the people had to run and pray." The song mentions the famous "woman and children first" command and concludes with this cryptic line:
              A.G. Smith, mighty man, built a boat that he couldn't understand       
              Named it a name of God in a tin, without a "c", Lord, he pulled it in
It's clearly a reference to the hubris theme of naming the ship Titanic. The sister ship that was building at the time had its name changed from Gigantic to Britannic in response to this public feeling. A. G. Smith was probably Edward J. Smith, the captain not the designer of the ship. The last line is hard to understand. The song was recorded in 1929 and Johnson had quite an accent so it's difficult to pick the words out. The line printed here comes from a blues historian. Others hear "myth of the sea" which makes sense if the first part of the line refers to the Titans which were Greek gods. Other people hear "middle of the sea." No one has an idea what "God in a tin" means!

Johnson's guitar work on the song is up to his usual high standard. His eerie, powerful song "Dark was the Night, Cold was the Ground," about the crucifixion was included in the CD included on the Voyager space explorer that was the first man-made object to leave the solar system.

Pink Anderson was an East Coast bluesman and medicine show performer. His song also called "It was sad when that great ship went down" was not original with him as Johnson's was. It's been traced back as a folk song from Alabama to 1915 or 1916. The tune is rather jaunty as performed by Anderson. The song references the power of the Lord versus the builders' claim the ship was unsinkable. The most important difference is this line:
              The rich declared they would not
               Ride with the poor.
               So they put the poor below,
               They were the first who had to go.
This refers to the American reaction that so many first class passengers were saved while those in steerage perished. There was a lot of American criticism that the British class system contributed to the disaster.

The sinking also sparked songs on the other side of the Atlantic, but I had better post this before the power goes out.

Old Cookbooks

Sorry, I missed yesterday's post with some unexpected NRT business and a little hurricane prep. Let's pray things won't get too bad around here. I'm terrified of another flooded basement and no power to pump. Even with power and multiple sump pumps, I had 10 inches of water in the cellar in 2005 and 2010. Thank you Planning Board for letting them build the house on the rise above my home. If I flood again, I may have to think about moving to higher ground. Is there space for a trailer in Chestnut Knoll? Oh well, nothing to do about it but wait out the storm. I haven't joined the rush for batteries because I have a crank radio and flashlights from the inestimable L. L. Bean. Anyone know where I can find a crank refrigerator?

I bought a terabyte hard drive recently and in cleaning up some files I found a cache of old cookbooks I had downloaded in PDF format. You can find the collection at Michigan State's "Feeding America" website here. A fascinating example is 1922's Foods of the Foreign Born which manages to perpetuate ethnic stereotypes in the name of healthy food and preserve some early "crossover" recipes from those same ethnic groups. Here's a recipe for Portuguese Roast Meat that is similar to a version I've actually eaten in a restaurant.

Roast Meat

6 pounds of beef, pork, or lamb                                            2 green peppers

1 clove of garlic                                                                    4 tomatoes

3 onions                                                                                 1 tablespoon mace

1/2 cup vinegar

2 tablespoons salt                                                                  1 teaspoon black pepper

Rub meat with salt, mace and pepper. Pour vinegar over it and let stand over night or, at least, four hours. Cut up peppers, onions, and tomatoes. Place meat in roasting pan, cover with the vegetables, and roast until meat is tender, basting every fifteen minutes with vegetables.

I roast at 350°, but the "roast until tender" instruction makes me wonder if this was aimed at a tough cut of meat that might work well in  a slow cooker. The slow cooker would remove the need to baste. Perhaps after the marinade, cut some small incisions in the meat and add some garlic slices. I'd also brown the meat in a hot pot or pan before adding the vegetables. 

Just a mention of a restaurant that often goes unnoticed-Owen O'Learys on Belmont Street next to Back Bay Bagels. Occasionally inconsistent with beef, I like their chicken and seafood as well as Bangers and Mashed, and Irish Mixed Grill. Yesterday, I attended a meeting there and had a fine dish-broiled scallops with linquica with a garlic aioli over wilted spinach from their seasonal menu.

Earthquakes

I've blogged about the Cape Ann Earthquake of 1755, the strongest to hit this area with an estimated force of over 6.0 on the Richter scale. The last "big" earthquake here was in the 1940s with force enough to knock plates off a shelf according to my mother. The tagline "biggest quake in more than a century" for Tuesday's event compares that to the August 31, 1886 quake that struck Charleston, South Carolina. It's estimated that this quake was between 6.6 and 7.3 on the Richter scale. About a hundred people died. All these quakes were what are called intraplate quakes meaning that they occurred within the giant plates that make up the continents rather than where plates rub together as in California. Intraplate quakes are often surprising because old fault line may be buried and missed by geologists.


Just two weeks before the 1755 earthquake here, Lisbon, Portugal was almost completely destroyed by a megathrust earthquake like the one that created the tsunami that devastated Southeast Asia in 2004. The Portuguese quake also struck offshore and created a tsunami that caused damage as far away as Barbados. The strength of this quake is estimated as between 8.5 to 9.0. Up to a 100,000 people were killed by the quake and fires in Lisbon.

The year 1755 was in Enlightenment Age in Europe when philosophers and scientists began searching for rational explanations of natural events. Interestingly, a young Immanuel Kant, who would go on to become one of the greatest philosophers of all time, gets credit as a father of seismology with his attempt to provide a rational explanation for the cause of this quake. Voltaire used the quake to attack religious arguments for the omnibenevolence of God in his book Candide. For Voltaire the quake proved that "all was for the best, in this best of all possible worlds" was a bogus philosophical position. Another French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau took the more pragmatic view that mankind might have made a mistake when it decided to live in cities. The intellectual grandchild of that idea is a generation of elementary school teachers promoting the myth of the Environmental Indian.  I still agree with Rousseau despite his noble savage myth making. If you want to read a paean to the greatness of cities, however, check out the newly released special edition of Scientific American. It's sad to see a great magazine turn to the soft social sciences to argue an essentially political position. There are more holes in their arguments than Swiss cheese.


Here in Puritan Massachusetts where no innocents were killed in our 1755 earthquake, traditionalism gave ministers free play to search out sin and sinners as a cause of the quake. Even here, however, a Harvard professor, John Winthrop, suggested a scientific cause for the quake. Cambridge had its pointy-headed intellectuals even then. By the way if a similar quake struck today, estimates indicate $5 billion in damages and hundreds of deaths. Just thought you needed something to worry about besides hurricanes.

The Answer to Yesterday's Mystery

How did Hannah Hayward get two gravestones? One stone had a design similar to the one used on her son's stone in 1740. The other had a design similar to her husband's stone from 1760. It's pretty clear that Hannah's husband Edward erected a stone when she died in 1749 that was similar to her son's. Hannah's second stone was erected by her son Matthew when he put up his father's stone after his death in 1760.

Explaining why the stones were erected is the more difficult question. Son Matthew could have put up a new stone for his mother and simply discarded the old stone nearby. It was the early design that was discovered flat in the grass during a scout project in the 1970s. This becomes more likely when we learn that the cemetery was no longer the center of town life by 1760 since the Congregational church originally built on the site had been abandoned for a new church near where the Civil War memorial is today. Burials continued to be made there for several decades, but the site was no longer visited by the whole town on a twice weekly basis. Still, if Matthew had the horsepower to haul a new stone in, why wouldn't he use the same horses to haul the old stone away?

As mentioned yesterday, Edward Hayward was a controversial figure in the Great Church Controversy that nearly split the town in two over the location of the new meeting house. It's possible that rivals in the controversy overturned Hannah's stone. I think this is unlikely. The old cemetery holds the graves of both sides of the controversy and none seem to have been desecrated. However, records show teenage vandals did strike the cemetery very early in the 19th century prompting some families to disinter their ancestors and move them to the Central Cemetery (opened 1806) on Center Street near the new church. Still, if vandalism had occurred, the question once again is why didn't Matthew remove the old stone when he erected the new one?

Thus, it's possible that Hannah's original gravestone was already lost only eleven years after she was buried.  Vandals aside, the stone could have been badly placed and fallen over in the sandy soil or it could have been knocked over by the sheep early settlers allowed to graze in cemeteries to keep the grass down. Once down dirt and grass would cover it until erosion or frost heaves brought it back to the surface for the boy scout to find two hundred years later. Still, it's hard to believe that a stone could be completely lost from sight in just a decade.  In either event-messy Matthew leaving an old stone behind or less than dutiful Matthew losing a stone in the grass-the mystery of why Hannah has two gravestones will remain.

Tomorrow we'll attempt to answer the question "If the Washington earthquake was a Divine comment on the debt debate, why did God wait until all the politicians were out of town?" Reminds me of the headline a concerned sister, editor of the Randolph High School newspaper, put in the paper when her ne'er-do-well brother barely missed being struck by a giant light that fell from the gym ceiling: "Repent! God won't miss twice."

Hannah Hayward-The Woman with Two Gravestones

The Hayward family is one of the most interesting in Easton's long history. Edward Hayward arrived before the incorporation of the town and purchased land around the now Southeastern Regional School. The family built the Red House in 1778, and it still stands today. Descendents of the original Edward still live on the original land today.

The northern boundary of Easton today is the 42nd parallel of latitude. Once upon a time, however, the presumed boundary extended further north into today's Stoughton. When the state government sent a team of surveyors to straighten the boundary dispute out, Edward Hayward, our Justice of the Peace, met them at the border and threatened to split their heads open with an ax. Not an inappropriate approach to take with MBTA officials today! Hayward was also the leader of the Town Party in the Great Church Controversy-the origin of the ancient enmity between South and North Easton. A feisty guy, but also a successful farmer who was probably the richest man in town when he died in 1760.

Edward married Hannah Kinsley in 1715 and together they built up the property in South Easton and had four children. When son Joseph died in 1740 at age 18 Edward and Hannah bought this gravestone probably from Nathan Fuller of Middleborough. The bizarre face may be a representation of the soul or simply a country simplification of the traditional death's head.

Coloring Added

Hannah died in 1747 and here is the design on one of her stones:

Edward lived on and the next year he married his second wife, the widow Keziah White. When Edward died in 1760 his youngest and only surviving son by Hannah, Matthew, was made executor of his estate. He erected the following stone for his father:

The design is a much weathered example of an acanthus leave pattern that is very common here, but that has not been studied much by art historians. Hannah's other gravestone is also an acanthus pattern:

You now have enough evidence to solve the "How did Hannah get two gravestones?" question. What do you think? I'll give you that answer and some speculation on why Hannah has two stones in tomorrow's blog.

Fun on a Lazy Sunday

Aches and pains from golf cart set-up and the threat of rain were enough to keep me glued to my chair for most of the day. I could have finished editing the wedding video I recently shot or watched film for the upcoming film club season, but I decided to be historical. First, I gathered up most of the digital material I'll be putting on the Historical Society's brand new computer. Sadly the research for my 1993 Easton's Neighborhoods was all on floppy disks that were drowned in the Great Basement Floods of 2005 and 2010, but there is a lot of stuff that should help with the local history class we plan to run in the fall.

Next, I went back to the three genealogical sites reviewed last week and tried to solve some long enduring puzzles. Turns out that all three websites made contributions. Mentioned last week was the family member who started doing genealogical research in the 1920's or 1930's but then stopped due to some embarrassing revelations. This guy was one of my dad's Coleman relatives. For years I'd been stuck on my great-great grandfather George Coleman. George had married Mary Carville whose maiden name has been carried down to me as my middle name. Just never could get past George until yesterday when Cochran Coleman popped on the scene in just one of the websites. Cochran came from the northernmost tip of Ireland in 1833. He arrived in St. John, Brunswick at age 18 with an older sister or aunt, aged 30. Here's the scandal-on landing he scooted down the Bay of Fundy and met Mary Jane Thorpe, aged 20, in Eastport, Maine. They got married and a very few months later George arrived. Shotguns may have been involved, and the birth took place in Boston, not Eastport. After the birth of twin boys seven years later, Cochran seems to disappear from the record. In 1860 the 26 year old George was living alone in a boarding house in Dorchester. He was called a merchant-later he owned a book binding shop-and had a rather princely $5,000 in personal property. That's twice as much personal property than the 29 year old future Governor Oliver Ames had in 1860 according to the census. Of course, Big Daddy Oakes Ames had $119,000 worth which probably explains why Oliver wasn't living in a boarding house in Dot. Living alone is puzzling because the census was taken in August and George had gotten married to Mary Carville in February. It's possible that Mary was on a train to Maine. Her father's home in Lewiston was visited by the census taker on August 1 while her husband's lodging was counted on August 3rd.

There were other revelations this weekend including the problem of the William McKeans. Records clearly tie me to William McKean, Jr. born in 1777 in New Hampshire, but the records show there were two potential William McKean, Srs., one in his forties and one in his twenties. More research is needed although ironically it doesn't ultimately make a difference because both Williams are descended from a common ancestor who came to New Hampshire in 1718 from Northern Ireland bringing New England's first potatoes with him. This all makes me think of Easton's Hannah Hayward. She didn't have dual grandfathers, but she is the only person I know who has two gravestones. That story tomorrow.

Homage to Five Buck Cluck and a Word about Golf

Roche Brothers has rotisserie chicken for sale everyday, but on Thursday it's available hot or cold for five bucks. Hard to beat the price who can provide a dinner for four (if no one fights over white meat versus dark meat). Or in my case four meals for me and some scraps for my ferocious (at meal time) Pomeranian. Thursday, its hot leg and thigh picnic style with a nice summer salad. Friday noon it's a chicken breast sandwich on whole wheat with tomato and onion. Today, it's chicken stuffed peppers-Bell's stuffing mix chopped, chicken, sauteed mushroom and onion duxelle. This will be served with Actually Edible Succotash-not the overcooked mush of my youth (based on the traditional Native American recipe). The recipe calls for frozen corn (today probably oven roasted fresh corn), frozen lima beans cooked until just tender and then quickly sauteed with chopped garlic and jalapeños in a little olive oil. Last another chicken sandwich-toasted cheese and chicken breast.

A week from tomorrow I'll start working at the Deutsche Bank Golf Tournament in Norton for the fourth year. I spend a week of often 12 hour days driving golf carts. Due to its many environmental areas, this is the only PGA Tournament where the pros are driven between certain holes. I'll give you a few behind the scenes blogs-it's really an amazing event with 1500+ volunteers coming together to make it all work. The volunteers all pay $80 for their uniforms with all the money going to the charities supported by the tournament. They then get breakfast, lunch, snacks, an in-tournament banquet and a post-season banquet plus other perks. Volunteers come back year after year so it's like a big family reunion when we get together like yesterday when we were setting up the cart yard tucked away in the woods of Norton. Eventually the 12 hour days will catch up with me and I'll miss a few blogs!

Oops-the Last Book

Sorry, I reached for the bold face icon and hit publish. Apologize for any typos and grammatical issues due to lack of proofing! The last book is Simon Winchester's Krakatoa from 2003. Winchester is a prolific writer, and some of his books have been disappointing, but Krakatoa about the 1883 explosion of an island in Indonesia is a brilliant blend of the history of the event and the geology behind it. Reading this book prepared me to understand the great tsunami that struck this same area at the end of 2004.

Science Book Recommendations

Working my way through The Disappearing Spoon by Sam Kean, an exploration of the periodic table of elements, I thought it might be fun to share some of my favorite science books. For those of us who struggled with high school or college chemistry a book on the periodic table might not seem like a good read, but Kean blends stories of eccentric chemists with fun facts about the elements. The title comes from the element gallium, a metal that will melt in a cup of tea. Gallium was discovered by Frenchman Paul LeCoq. It's supposedly named for Gallia, the Latin name for France, but it just might be Mr. LeCoq playing on the Latin for rooster, gallus.

Two books about birds remain memorable years after I first read them. One is Bernd Heinrich's Mind of the Raven, a fascinating book about a determined scientist researching a mysterious bird that just may be the smartest bird in the world. Heinrich has gone on to write a number of excellent wildlife books that often focus on New England. The other book is The Beak of the Finch by Jonathan Weiner. The heart of the book is an experiment that should prove the reality of evolution to anyone except those blinded by a false view of religion. The problem with evolution for most people is that it takes a long time to evolve a dinosaur into a bird. So Mr. Weiner focuses on a husband and wife team who have spent their careers measuring finch beaks on a small island in the Galapagos which is influenced by El Niño. All the varieties of Galapagos finches descend from a single species and it was their diversity that turned Darwin onto the idea of natural selection. The island goes into alternate periods of dry and wet. When the island is dry almost all the plants except cacti with big seeds die and only birds with big beaks to crack the seeds can survive. If the island remained dry, the finches on the island would evolve into a species with big beaks, but because of El Niño the climate oscillates. When it's wet plants with small seeds are abundant and birds with big beaks can't eat them as effectively as those with small ones. Thus, the bird population swings back to the small beaks. Many, many other examples of observable evolution clinch the case for me.

Gravity is another scientific theory. It explains the orbit of the earth around the sun, and once upon a time, the Catholic Church had as much problem with that theory as the so-called evangelicals have with evolution today. You can read all about it in Dava Sobel's Galileo's Daughter although I liked her book Longitude better. Galileo died under house arrest for his heretical views in 1642. In 1992 Pope John Paul II issued a "declaration acknowledging the errors committed by the Catholic Church tribunal that judged the scientific positions of Galileo. Let's hope the scientific Dark Ages don't last 350 years in America-the Chinese aren't basing their technological advances on magic.

Two more books. Chet Raymo's The Path: A One Mile Walk Through the Universe. It's Easton. It's a great read and it's great science.

Who's the Traitor?

As a blogger, I've tried to avoid being too inflammatory in my statements. I know this is a view not shared by most of the residents of blogistan, but at least I'm trying most of the time. If you want inflammatory, try me about 6:30 am at Lil Peach after we get back to school. I'm the moderate amidst a conservative cabal.

It appears that the latest entrant in the Republican Presidential race, Rick Perry, doesn't believe in cooling the rhetoric, however. In declaring his candidacy over the weekend he called Federal Reserve chief Ben Bernanke "almost treacherous, or treasonous," saying "we would treat him pretty ugly down in Texas" if the Federal Reserve printed more money to ease the recession.

Today's blog is late because I've been doing research at two of my favorite sites Project Vote Smart (www.votesmart.org) and FollowtheMoney.org (www.followthemoney.org). The finance and insurance sector has been the number 1 contributor to Perry's gubernatorial campaigns so I guess he does know just how ugly they'd treat him down in Texas. There's a joke going around that big business likes Republican politicians because they don't cost as much as Democrats which, of course, can be taken two ways. Still, Perry could be right that curing the recession with inflationary currency might not be the best solution.

I also learned that Rick doesn't have much truck with the idea of evolution although I'd expect a BS in Animal Science at Texas A&M might have been exposed to the science behind this concept. When asked about another Texas governor as President, Perry proudly said "George W. Bush went to Yale, I went to Texas A&M" which prompted Conan O'Brien to ask "Is America ready for a President who's not as smart as George W. Bush?"

OK, on to the traitor issue. It seems that Perry doesn't believe man has much to do with global warming. He claims, apparently on the basis of his BS, that it's "a scientific theory that has not been proved,"and inaccurately wrote that scientists doctored data to get grants. So here's the deal, according to FollowtheMoney.com in 2002 and 2006 it cost a little over $20 million for Rick to run for governor of Texas. Last year it cost $39 million. I doubt if costs truly doubled so Perry was thinking ahead and building up a campaign war chest for a potential Presidential run.  Now back in those first two elections about 12% of campaign contributions came from the Energy and Natural Resources sector with Oil and Gas #1 of 15 industries contributing to Perry. In 2010 the Energy and Natural Resources sector jumped to 14.26% of Perry's contributions, a total of $5,606,581. Of that sum $4,865,433 came from oil and gas companies or their connections. This all reminds me of an old movie called Power where a young Denzel played a sleazy lobbyist who was trying to help an Arab country secretly elect their candidate as the Senator from Ohio. I've heard tell that our dependence on an oil based economy has led us into wars, environmental degradation like the BP spill, and, of course, denial of the overwhelming scientific evidence that global warming is caused by CO2 from burning oil. Who's the traitor now, Ricky?

Olmsted at Sheep Pasture

By the time Olmsted got the commission to design the grounds for the Sheep Pasture estate at the end of 1891, he was an old man busy with plans for the landscape at the Chicago World's Fair of 1893. Still, the maps, photos,  and plans for the project are the most detailed of any project Olmsted did in Easton. He was responsible for creating the entrance to the mansion and its internal paths and coach roads, siting the mansion itself (although ultimately he deferred to his client's choice) and designing the plantings around the mansion. One must remember that it took almost forty years to acquire all the land that makes up Sheep Pasture today. Olmsted's planning maps cover less than a quarter of today's property and his planting plan is much smaller than that. The Queset and its floodplain were never landscaped by Olmsted although he proposed paths through a small part of the area that was owned by other members of the owner's family.

People today seem to associate Olmsted with landscapes that look natural, but lack color. At Sheep Pasture, however, he recommended 93 different species of plant for the small area around the mansion. Since the prime time of family residence at the estate was spring and fall, Olmsted included many flowering shrubs and trees. Today about a third of Olmsted's recommendations can still be found at Sheep Pasture although generally not in the places he put them. Seven of his recommendations have become serious invasives. Here's a picture of the mansion in the spring of 1901. You can see that the plants have completely covered the retaining wall that is a major highlight of Sheep Pasture today.

Here's the part of the planting plan that shows the rocky outcrop across from the foundation:

The first number refers to the plant list and the second is the number of individual plants to be added. The plan was to have Boston and English Ivy crawl up the rock with shrubs of andromeda, winter creeper, mountain laurel, garland flower, and ash berry in front. Here is a photo of this area in 1901, the same year as the first photo.

Wait a second where are the plants? In fact they may never have been put in. Members of the family have told me that Oliver Ames, the owner of the property, did not care for the Olmsted landscaping that had essentially been gifted to him by his father F. L. Ames, a friend of Olmsted. Eventually even the plantings around the foundation were removed. These exiled plants form the basis for Sheep Pasture's Rhododendron walk, the path from the Carriage House to the Community Garden. Looking at the top of the photo you can see a flagpole, used to signal when the family was home, and several trees. The top of the rocky outcrop was planted to Olmsted's specifications with hemlock, white pine and cedar. Today the evergreen grove is the most pristine example of Olmsted's vision open to the public in Easton.

The base of the rocky outcrop is now an overgrown jungle. Trumpet vine, not on Olmsted's plant list, runs rampant. Ironically, while garland flower and ash berry have disappeared from the whole property, Japanese honeysuckle, an Olmsted original in another plot, has moved into the jungle here. The trumpet vine and a couple of unusual dogwoods make me think we are now dealing with Oliver Ames' ideas for this area rather than Olmsted's. I've suggested restoring the Olmsted landscaping here, but now I'm not sure there is anything to restore. At any rate, I'll be chopping into the jungle within the hour. What do I remove and what do I keep? Stay tuned!

Olmsted Landscaping

There was an article in the Enterprise recently on restoring the Olmsted landscaping at D. W. Fields park. Sadly, there was no mention of improving the greens at the superb golf course in the park, but the article did set off a discussion of the Olmsted landscapes in Easton. I'm here to tell you that most of our Olmsted landscapes have been sadly neglected except in the cases where they were knowingly destroyed by their owners.

Take the Rockery, for instance. Today thanks to the efforts of the town and the Friends of Easton Gardens it is a beautiful landscape in the heart of North Easton. Is it an Olmsted landscape-not quite. Completed in 1883, Mr. Olmsted disowned the site in 1887 because the plants he had provided had all died from neglect only to be replaced by neighborhood volunteers (aka weeds). Worse there doesn't seem to be a planting plan for the site because Olmsted provided the original plants himself. We have three or four suggestions of what was planted in Olmsted's letter and a new planting plan from the Olmsted company that was done after the great man's retirement. We have no real indication of whether that new plan was ever executed. When we repaired the Rockery, we brought in Cynthia Zaitzevsky, the leading Olmsted historian, and Cathy Bradford, a historical landscaper. Working with the new planting plan and the plant list of what actually was planted at Sheep Pasture, we created a landscape using plant that Olmsted might have used at the Rockery or their modern cultivars. Is it an Olmsted landscape? Well, it's been several years and the site hasn't been hit by a lightning bolt or an earthquake so maybe Mr. O, wherever he is, likes it.  Below is the earliest close-up photo of the Rockery that we have. You can see the giant flagpole on top. The gaslight is the first style used in town so we believe this photo may actually show the Olmsted planting before many of the plants died. Compare to what is there today-similar feel, not identical-is it an Olmsted landscape?

Tomorrow-the complex history of Olmsted at Sheep Pasture.

A Slow Day on the Internet

The internet seems to be running a little slow today or perhaps its just my connection through Verizon. Hope the strike is settled soon.

Just published some comments that I hadn't noticed until this morning. Sorry about that. I love to get comments, but had a long dry spell so I hadn't looked in a long time! Thought there might be comments on the best pizza in Easton from yesterday's blog!

Here's a link to an Atlantic article that you might want to read after breakfast-it's on using insect protein as a sustainable food choice.  More palatable is a review of a new biography of Humphrey Bogart from the American Conservative.

There's been a fifteen minute pause between typing the word conservative and writing this sentence probably a good indication that it's time to move on for the day. Some interesting historical pictures tomorrow!

Monday Here and There

Just a few random thoughts on a rainy summer Monday.

If you were consumed by the Iowa Straw Poll over the weekend, you heard the name Ames, Iowa on an hourly basis. Yes, that's our Ames family. It was named for railroad mogul and congressman, Oakes Ames. Historian Richard White in his new history of the transcontinentals, Railroaded!, calls Oakes "obtuse" something his daddy, the original Oliver Ames, might have agreed with since he hired a special tutor for Oakes who came with a big birch rod. White's book looks at the Union Pacific after the Ames brothers time, but spends most of its time focused on the Central, Southern, and Northern Pacific.

While trying to find out what the late great Tim Pawlenty believed before his political demise this weekend, I stumbled upon OntheIssues.org. This is a non-partisan non-profit aimed at providing statements from the presidential candidates on many of the big issues. The link isn't a subtle ploy to get you to vote for Jon Huntsman; the site is a complex one that is difficult to navigate because it purports to give policy statements from all national pols. This link takes you to the page where you can find all the candidates for President.

Regarding the Iowa Straw Poll results, it just shows you how the media can distort things. Only a little over 16,000 people participated, and yes, the two frontrunners were nutballs Bachman and Paul. Still in a political stunt that rewards pols with rabid followers, half the people in Iowa voted for candidates that might have the ability to govern if they were elected.

I'll be doing a blog rating some of the nonpartisan political information sites shortly.

Here's a fun story about a man who loves his pizza. Seems a Stoughton native moved to Mississippi and missed Town Spa pizza so much that every other year he drives up and takes home 150 pizzas. Reminds me of Holbrook's Andy Card who was Chief of Staff for President Bush. He told the President that Linwood Pizza in Randolph was the best in the country and actually brought down the owner to make pizza at the White House. Now unlike Town Spa pizza which I find uninspired, Linwood does make an excellent pizza, but it wasn't the same in D. C.. The owner of Linwood asked for a second chance, went home and reviewed all the steps and decided to take a gallon of Randolph's awful tasting water back to D.C. with the other ingredients. Violá, Linwood on the Potomac! Linwood makes a traditional pizza while Zack's also in Randolph used to make a more Greek style (more oily) pie. Don't know if Zack's is still there. Both were excellent. In Stoughton I'd rank Denneno's pizza as far better than the Town Spa variety. What's the best in Easton? All are pretty good, but none of the pizzerias really rank with Linwood, Denneno's, or Zack's. While I like Maguire's limited restaurant pizzas, I think Doyle's may have the best individual sized pizzas in town-great taste and lot's of variety. What do you think, dear reader?

The Last Genealogy Posting

John Davis was a sea dog, one of the Elizabethan sailors who establish the English as Kings of the Sea. As an explorer he searched for the Northwest Passage and the strait between Greenland and Canada is named for him. He captained a small ship against the Spanish Armada. Forced back from an attempt to circle Cape Horn, he may have been the first European to sight the Falkland Islands. He was killed by pirates off the Malay Peninsula in 1605.

Having a sea dog in the family is almost as good as having a pirate and so many subscribers to Ancestry.com have done their best to link John Davis to a Massachusetts Davis family that arrived during the Great Migration (1620-1640). If you follow your “leaves” back along the Davis line you’ll eventually reach the sea dog. Something didn’t seem quite right to me so I did a little independent research and discovered, as far as I could tell, that Davis didn’t have the son needed to connect with the Puritan immigrants. Checking the member generated files at the LDS FamilySearch.org, it was clear that those pedigrees had been done without the wishful thinking at Ancestry and so the lack of a link to John Davis was easy to see. That’s a point for the Mormon site.

On the other hand both Ancestry and the New England Historic Genealogical Society were much more helpful in unraveling a more recent family mystery. My father believed that the immigrant ancestor for the Hands family was a man named Abraham Hands who arrived in 1865 from England, probably Wales. Before the advent of computer genealogy all I was able to do was connect Abraham to my great grandfather, his son Frederick but with little supporting data.  Thanks to Ancestry.com I was able to access British  records that showed Abraham’s birth, marriage, and four children, Sydney, Herbert, Frederick and Mary. What I haven’t been able to discover is what happened to Abraham after the kids were born. Did he come to America with his family? Did he die in England? At this point, the data seems to support the idea that he became a vampire sometime around 1860.

Since my dad was right about the family coming from Wales, I hoped he was also right about arriving in 1865. Ancestry.com has online, but unindexed, the crew and passenger lists for all ships coming into Boston harbor for most of the 19^th century. Although these records are unindexed when you click on a ship you get the original document and, in a box below, someone’s typed best guess of the names in the old handwriting. I looked at the dozens of ships that entered Boston from January through August and could now write a treatise on shipping traffic at the end of the Civil War, but I couldn’t find my old Abe.

Holding off on more shipping records, I thought I’d try the sons.  Yesterday, I tried out my new subscription to the NEHGS website and quickly discovered they had a proprietary searchable database of members of the Masons. Turns out both Herbert and Frederick were Masons, and I discovered that Herbert died in September, 1918. My dad was named for his recently deceased uncle in January, 1919.  I also used the NEHGS site to uncover the marriage records for Herbert. There I discovered he married the sister of the girl who would marry his brother Frederick.

Returning to Ancestry.com I quickly uncovered the census records for Herbert in 1880, 1900, and 1910. Ancestry gives you a summary and then lets you go to the actual record. The Mormon site does not have the actual record available for 1910 and that as it turns out is crucial. By 1900 Herbert had become a doctor quite a change from the dry goods clerk of 1880. Even more remarkably his wife had become a doctor as well. Ancestry, but not the FamilySearch site, has a database of  deceased Massachusetts doctors from 1804 to 1929. There I learned that Herbert had begun attending the brand new College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1880 and graduated in the first class in 1882. More research discovered that the college was a not quite fraudulent, but decidedly third rate medical school that went out of business around 1918. Fortunately for her Anna Hands was still going strong in 1930 so we don’t know if she graduated from the same school. More frustrating the census of 1910 lists Herbert as a GP, but Ancestry’s copy of the original record is too blur to determine what kind of “specialist” Anna had become. Worse, if you relied on the index entry at FamilySearch.org you would never learn that either was a doctor. I was hoping FamilySearch would have a better scan of the original to determine Anna’s specialty in an age when women doctors were still rare.

Summing up, Ancestry.com seems to be ahead in providing databases and online access to records while the subscriber generated family trees at FamilySearch.org seem to be more accurate. The tutorials for both beginners and advanced genealogists are good at both sites with an edge to FamilySearch.org.The New England Historic Genealogical Society subscription gives you several unique databases and has a strong collection of sources on early New England. If your research focuses here, the $80 membership dues is a good investment. Ancestry charges $159 a year for a membership that focuses on the US and $299 for a world wide membership. You can pay Ancestry quarterly. I’d recommend starting with the free FamilySearch.org (and check out Cyndi’s List for more free sites) to see how far you can get with your family tree. If you catch the research bug, then you can add a for pay site

Ancestry.com versus FamilySearch.org

Amateur genealogists usually fall into two general categories. There are those who want to accumulate as many ancestors as possible in hopes of finding a Civil or Revolutionary War soldier, a Pilgrim, or a Magna Carta surety. Very crazy members of this group hold out for a descent from Charlemagne who died in 814. These folks generally try to forget about the charming stable boy who stayed home while the Lord of the Manor went on crusade. The other group is not so interested in volume, but in the stories of the individual ancestors and the lives they led. In many ways this second group is indistinguishable from local historians. I've been both kinds of genealogist over the years.

One side of my mother's family, like many Americans, did a pedigree way back in the 1870s or 1880s during the first surge of interest in genealogy set off by the country's Centennial Celebration. It was a good job and made starting my research easy. On the other side my mother's mother was adopted in a rather mysterious fashion complicating research immensely. On my Dad's side of the family, my grandmother's Canadian relatives produced a family tree, but on my grandfather's side a family member found "some problem"  according to my father that caused him to stop research. Always hoped that the problem was Israel Hands, a real pirate, who sailed with Blackbeard-no luck finding that connection! I did a lot of old fashioned research in the 1970s and 1980s using the collections of the Brockton Public Library and the New England Historic Genealogical Society and visiting sites in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Maine.

The need to access some historical records for Easton led me to Ancestry.com where I restarted my family tree research a few years ago. Ancestry.com is the largest for-pay genealogical site on the Internet. Members can access a wide and increasing variety of records and books. If you start by entering data about yourself and your parents, Ancestry will begin building a family tree for you online. This becomes the core of your research file. Clicking on a person in the pedigree brings up your research on that person. This is also where Ancestry's famous "leaves" come in. As you may have heard on their TV ads, when you enter a name in your pedigree a leaf may appear indicating that the Ancestry database has more information on that person. That information can either be a primary or secondary source record or a connection to other researchers data. You can build a large family tree quickly by relying on "the kindness of strangers." This is the same crowd sourcing of information that takes place on Wikipedia so you better have your BS detector turned on. People's wishful thinking and lack of historical knowledge eventually becomes apparent. I've seen purported English ancestors born in Massachusetts years before anyone settled here. Straining facts to get to a famous ancestor also creates errors. Another problem with the Ancestry system is that it's entries are based on first name and surname if you finally do find Joe, First Lord Fluffy you're going to have to make up your own system of data entry.

Before there was Ancestry.com on line there was FamilySearch.org. FamilySearch organizes and presents the records of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (aka the Mormons). Family is very important to Mormons, and they believe in reconnecting living family members with their ancestors. The Mormons have made efforts to make their collection of vital records available to all. Mormons believe in proxy baptism where a living descendent can stand in and baptize an ancestor into the Mormon Church. Many Mormons believe this is necessary to get family members into Heaven. I was surprised to find many of my ancestors had become Mormons, but my reaction was mild compared to the Vatican which in 2008 directed its churches to keep parish records away from Mormons performing genealogical research. Thankfully, nothing of importance was going on at the Vatican in 2008 enabling them to catch the Mormons poaching dead Catholics.
 
Anyway, the online presence of the LDS church has improved from the early days of providing helpful research hints and directing you to one of their family research locations to increasingly full and free access to all records from the comfort of your home. The emphasis here is still on records and research.You'll need a paper and pencil pedigree form or one of the several family tree making computer programs like Reunion to record your findings. This may be changing as the website continues to evolve. You can also access the research of others in Ancestral Files or the Pedigree Resource File.

I'll give a few specific research examples to complete the comparisons of these two websites tomorrow. Right now I'd say that these two sites and Cyndi's List of Genealogy Sites on the Internet are the three most important research locations available to researchers. The New England Historic Genealogical Society is also an excellent part free and part for pay resource at www.americanancestors.org..

My research strategy lately has been to maintain my "real" family tree in a stand alone Reunion 8 file while trying to track down all my immigrant ancestors in my Ancestry.com family tree. I've added dozens of people with the plan of going back and checking the research once all potential ancestors have been located. Along the way I've discovered many interesting tidbits. For instance, my great uncle's service record in World War I-he was one of the first Marine Corp pilots. My other great uncle never made it any further than the Boston Navy Yard where the great flu epidemic of 1918 began. That uncle spent his entire service time in hospital. Meanwhile the pilot uncle managed to escape being grounded for a month for a legendary stunt by also ending up in hospital in London with the flu.

Starting a New Series on Genealogy

Gee whiz, I had 39 page views on the day I didn't post ( a near record) and only 19 posts the next day when I did post. I guess that's a great example of how can I miss you if you won't go away!

We're going to be offering a local history course at the Historical Society this fall followed by a genealogy course in the spring. I have been using Ancestry.com as a research aid for both subjects for several years, but Ancestry requires a paid membership for all but the most basic research. Today, I spent most of my "blog time" looking at the Mormons mostly free FamilySearch.org website and will be posting on comparing the two sites.

It's a running joke in my family that we should be filing a wrongful death suit against the Pequot owners of Foxwoods for killing Uncle Jack Oldham way back in 1637. It's the incident that started the Pequot War. Now anyone whose nickname was "Mad Jack" probably did something that deserved killing, but think of the millions of dollars in interest alone! This was all a joke until yesterday when I learned of a lawyer on the North Shore who is taking cases from descendents of the executed Salem witches who feel their family names have been unfairly defamed. It's indeed true that at least some descendents of convicted witch Rebecca Nurse felt so embarrassed that they cleverly changed their names to Nourse (still pronounced Nurse. OK, they weren't that clever.) to hide the connection. Now the evidence is pretty solid that "witchcraft" was practiced in Salem Village, now Danvers; but Rebecca Nurse was the most innocent of all the accused. You can still visit the Nurse homestead in Danvers. According to legend, Rebecca was secretly dug up from the witch's common grave in Salem Town and reburied under the hearth of her home.

Back Again

A sneak attack by OA's excellent technology guru Dennis Kitsos knocked me off the air yesterday. Dennis is upgrading the school's e-mail package so that teachers can access more of Google's special features. It seems that the account that I use here and the school account are somehow linked and like conjoined twins need to be separated. Still not done, so I'm just pretending school doesn't open in three weeks and only using this account.

Not much to blog about anyway. In light of the flap over the angry picture of Michelle Bachman on Newsweek's cover. I just want to say that the clown pictures I posted earlier in the week are meant to represent generic senators and congressmen of both parties, and the female clown in the orange hat isn't necessarily the Tea Party Queen. Hmm, tea party, Queen. Is it possible that the Tea Party name comes, not from that incident in Boston Harbor, but from Lewis Carroll? I see more parallels there.

For those of you searching for the ultra-rare Giant Swallowtail, I brought out the bright lights and rubber hose and interrogated the informer who claimed to have seen it. He was able to pick the elusive insect out of a line up raising hopes that his find is a real one. Hopefully, the rainy spell hasn't hurt our chances for finding this rare butterfly again.

I love audiobooks as an alternative to NPR and sports radio. I've been on a Clive Cussler action adventure kick recently. His books, produced with a co-writer, are formulaic but have some of the great features of old time serial radio. I took a break from Clive to do  a book called a Discovery of Witches. This morning I checked out customer reviews at Amazon and discovered that this book found its way into our library because it was hyped onto the best seller list due to the current craze for vampires. I thought that the book was going to be historical fiction with supernatural elements, but discovered instead a very, very, very slow romance. I'm halfway through the darned thing and nothing has happened other than mysterious figures lurking in shadows or making vague threats. Reading the reviews I discovered that nothing much happens the rest of the way either since the author is only setting up books 2 and 3. Looks like this will be the first audiobook I send back unfinished. All in all the best fiction audiobook I've listened to in the last year is a little gem by Charle Dickens called A Tale of Two Cities. Wonder if this Dickens fellow wrote anything else?

A real find in the library's DVD collection is a fine production by local resident Antonio Cabral called Fado! Examining the Poetic Music of Portugal. I have many different kinds of world music on my IPod, but was lacking a playlist on Fado which I've heard on the radio, but knew nothing about. Mr. Cabral's excellent DVD is a great introduction to the genre including historic roots, performance notes, and places to hear fado locally. You can't borrow it from the library right now because I have it home again for a few more days. I've also got another DVD home called Fados that includes many of the performers mentioned by Mr. Cabral. Interestingly, the audio collection at the library does not seem to include any Portuguese music, but I believe the Stoughton library does have some in its collection.

Off to teach the Sheep Pasture campers about dinosaurs!

Economic Crisis-It's All About Me

Scary news in the Globe this morning with its huge "An avalanche of worry" headline. It was enough to alter my normal reading pattern-glance at the headlines, move on to the opinion pages and then settle down with the sports page and comics.

When I say the crisis is all about me, I don't mean learning that at least some folks believe IRAs won't bounce back by 2018 the year when I have to start drawing on mine. I always expected to work until I'm 80. I see the liquor business is going strong so my dream of helping a downtrodden minority can still come true. Yes, I could get a job in liquor sales and sell to miners. I don't understand why our Selectmen make such a fuss about selling booze to guys who wear flashlights on their hats.

No, I'm talking about my position as a member of the Community Preservation Act Committee. The article that is causing my concern is "Rating agency downbeat on Mass. communities." For those of you who read the Herald, you can find the article here. The gist of the article is that Moody's Investment Services is putting several wealthy Massachusetts communities with their version of a triple A rating on a watch list. The watch list means Moody's might at some future date downgrade the ratings because all Massachusetts towns are so dependent on federal spending in the state. As you may know, the deficit package passed by Congress would disproportionally curtail money coming into the Massachusetts economy due to cuts in defense and education spending. Easton is not one of the towns on the watch list, but if you get to page 2 of the story you'll find these paragraphs:
              In Easton, for instance, where the town plans to sell bonds this week, officials
              feared that Moody's may lower the town's AA3 rating, which has held steady
              for several years.

              "What it would say to the investor is that our debt is riskier today than yesterday,"
               said David Colton, town administrator. "It's very frustrating because most of
               these events are beyond our control."

               Colton said that the town landed an interest rate of well under 2 percent in the
               spring and that higher rates would throw off projections. Most existing debt,
               local officials said, is locked in at existing rates and would be unaffected by
               a downgrade.

As Town Meeting attendees know, the CPA was established to purchase key pieces of open space, but over the years the town has found a number of important and valuable projects to fund including the Shovel Shop redevelopment, and purchasing land on Chestnut Street for sports fields. The Committee has taken a conservative approach to financing projects, and has used bonding to fund projects while retaining enough cash to meet the original goal of purchasing the key properties should they come on the market. Despite leveraging our purchasing power through bonding, the Committee has used a conservative fiscal analysis to ensure that only CPA funds would be needed to pay off the bonds. It's been quite a juggling act as proposed projects have increased each year while CPA revenue has decreased. Without bonding the CPA would not have achieved as much as it has, and increased costs for borrowing coupled with decreasing revenue threaten the Committee's ability to do projects in the coming year. I recently walked one of the key properties and believe it would solve our needs for parks, playing fields, and even school expansion into the next century, but we may be at the point where we have to give up holding back funds hoping  these properties will come on the market in order to fund more current needs. It should be an interesting year.

Rare Butterfly Alert and a PSA

A local birder has reported seeing a Giant Swallowtail butterfly at the Clock Farm. A good birder, this gentleman said he has checked three field guides to confirm his observation. This butterfly is an extremely rare migrant to Massachusetts. The online Massachusetts Audubon Butterfly Atlas considers it so rare that it reports observations going back to the 1870's. The Massachusetts Butterfly Club notes a July17, 1999 observation in Berkshire County as "recent."

This butterfly is hard to confuse with other swallowtails. It's big with a wingspan up to 6 1/4 inches. It is brown while most other dark swallowtails are black. The bow shape on the upper wing is absolutely distinctive. I'm very skeptical, but an 1883 report noted that one was seen in Sharon. "Incursions," probably from the mid-Atlantic states, were noted in the 1870's and 1880's. If you see this butterfly, you should make every effort to photograph it and report it to the Massachusetts  Audubon Society or give me a call at Sheep Pasture 508-238-6049.

 Here's a picture of a male Black Swallowtail, a common resident, note the lack of the white "bow string" found on the Giant Swallowtail:

Waiting for the stock market to open to see how much damage our inept politicians have done to us.

Happy Feet the Penguin and Limpy the Duck

Yes, I know I owe everyone the second bug that I left out of this morning's post! Couldn't wait to share this interesting story with a link to a webcam in New Zealand. Happy Feet is an emperor penguin that somehow got off course and ended up in New Zealand rather than the Antarctic. If you saw March of the Penguins you know that emperor penguins are the largest in the world. The folks in Wellington are rehabbing the big bird and hope to drop him off in icy waters south of the South Island of New Zealand in late August. Until then you can check him out on his webcam. Definitely worth a look including the sidebar videos as well.

We had a Happy Feet moment at Sheep Pasture last year. Our little pond attracts an occasional mallard visitors along with the pair that normally spends the summer there. Somehow they all learn I'm a soft touch who's always good for a scoopful of food if they come over to visit while I'm feeding our own ducks. Last year a duck with a leg that had nearly been bitten off by a snapping turtle would waddle over from the pond to get a share of the food. Limpy had a terrible black wound which we thought was badly infected, but every time we tried to catch the tough little bird it would fly back to the pond. Frankly, we expected a quick death from blood poisoning, but each day Limpy would come over for food no matter how painful it was to move. After a week Limpy could put a little weight on the foot and two weeks later the little trooper was moving fairly well. A week later with the black wound completely healed Limpy left us with a distinctive little waddle a little reminiscent of John Wayne. Everyone was thrilled that our feeding had helped in the duck's  recovery. We never expected to see Limpy again, but earlier this week, Limpy returned with a healthy bright orange leg and his characteristic little limp.

Mallard drakes, by the way, have an interesting year. For the breeding season they sport the colorful green head, reddish brown chest, and gray sides. This is great for attracting the ladies, and the totally uncamouflaged suit of clothes has another effect.While his wife sits hidden on a nest for twenty-eight days, the drake sails around on the pond with an "eat me, not her" sign on his back. This altruism stops after the kids arrive because the drake then undergoes a second molt into what is called eclipse plummage which is the same cryptic brown as the hen. This twice a year molt is unusual in the bird world because replacing feathers takes a lot of energy. Again, unlike most birds, molting mallards drop their flight feathers all at once and become flightless until they grow back.

Code Red and Two Interesting Bugs

Hopefully, all Easton residents received their test phone call from the new emergency notification service set up by the Plymouth County Sheriff's Department. As every parent knows the school department set up an automated calling service a few years ago to notify parents and teachers of school closings. The new Code Red system includes all home phones, but if you would like to add cell phone numbers you can go to www.pcsdma.org/CodeRED.asp

I'll be adding my cell phone number as soon as I figure out how to turn the ringtone back on!


Look what I found in my basement the other day (not my photo):

It's a male stag beetle. My guy was about 2 inches long. He was stuck upside down when I found him so I scooped him up and put him back outside. They are mostly nocturnal and attracted to light. He probably fell into a crack in my basement window when I was doing a late load of washing. The scary mandibles are used by the males to fight each other for favored mating territory. Despite the big jaws these insects feed on sap and rotting fruit. The eggs are laid in decaying deciduous tree stumps, and the larva may spend several years in the stump eating the wood.

Last word on Invasives, I promise.

The recent article in the Boston Globe’s Ideas section on invasive species by “reporter” Leon Neyfakh is a polemic in support of a tiny minority of biologists masquerading as journalism. Let’s present a synopsis of this article for those who missed it.

The theme of the article is stated in this paragraph:

The reasons to fight invasive species may be economic, or conservationist, or just practical, but underneath all these efforts is a potent and galvanizing idea: that if we work hard enough to keep foreign species from infiltrating habitats where they might do harm, we can help nature heal from the damage we humans have done to it as a civilization.

Not a bad start. Invasive species cost the US about $34 billion a year in control costs, and previous blogs have shown that invasive species have caused extinctions of native species on islands like Hawaii and New Zealand. However, the author’s agenda begins to appear when he speaks of the “potent and galvanizing idea” that we can heal the damage  “we humans have done to it as a civilization.” Invasive species control, he will argue is not good science, but something driven by an anti-humanist ideology. The author then introduces the ideas of Mark Davis who he seems to believe has a “don’t worry, be happy attitude” about introduced species. Not to spoil the story, but the bias of the article’s author is clear from the concluding paragraph:

There is something undeniably comforting, even self-forgiving, about abandoning the idea that human beings are separate from nature - accepting that we are part of an ecosystem, too, and that we belong. If you went with the mainstream ecologists, you’d have no choice but to believe that human beings are the worst invasive species of all. Stand with Davis, Pollan, and the rest of the anti-nativists, on the other hand, and suddenly it’s not a given that we’ve even done anything wrong at all.

Preposterous! How does the author reach this totally illogical conclusion?

He starts with Mark Davis’ article in Science that charges “that the movement to protect ecosystems from non-native species stems from a ‘biological bias’ against arbitrarily defined outsiders.”  The author claims that Davis believes invasive species control is an “impossible quest to restore the world to some imaginary, pristine state.”  The author tells us that “the arrival of a new plant…can actually help, rather than hurt, an ecosystem,” and “what seems non-native to one generation might be thought of as a local treasure by the next.” He accurately states Davis’ conclusion when he declares we should “assess species based on what they do rather than where they are from.”

He quotes Davis as saying:

“Newcomers are viewed as a threat because the world that you remember is being displaced by this new world. I think that’s a perfectly normal and understandable human reaction, but as scientists we need to be careful that those ideas don’t shape and frame our scientific research.”

Davis has been accused by more mainstream scientists of constructing a straw man argument to build a reputation as a contrarian. Davis assumes an ideological underpinning for his opponents that simple doesn’t exist and discounts the evidence that non-nativeness is one indicator of potential invasiveness. Even  Mr. Neyfakh tells us Davis and his critics are so far apart “most ecologists accept that only a fraction of non-native species are harmful,” and Davis and his followers, “when pressed, will admit that unequivocally destructive species like the Asian longhorned beetle should be reined in.”  Mr. Neyfakh tells us that the debate between the two sides boils down to “how we justify interventions.” Davis generally ignores research that aims to predict invasiveness and suggests a wait-and-see attitude that would make removal of a truly dangerous species more difficult.

As we noted yesterday of the 140 or so non-native plants at Sheep Pasture slightly less than 30 have been declared invasive.  No biologist would start a program to eradicate plantain or chicory or dandelions and yes, indeed the colonists planting of timothy grass probably benefited our environment more than it damaged native grass species. Still because these introductions happened so long ago, it is hard to assess what damage these plants might have done to the local ecosystem. The Native Americans who named plantain “white man’s footprint” may have seen the damage we missed. It’s easier to assess the unintentional damage done by the 19^th century introductions of plantsmen like Olmsted. While oriental azaleas can naturalize in the environment, they don’t take off, run away, and push out locals like the equally foreign Japanese Honeysuckle.

The Globe article leaves Mark Davis and turns to an anthropologist who became a naturalized citizen and wrote an op-ed piece in the New York Times comparing invasive species control to the anti-immigration movement.  The Globe article then asks “how do we decide what in the world is “natural” and what is the result of artificial forces? Why do some species get to stay, while others get pulled out by the roots?” These are bogus questions. The issue is not “natural” versus “unnatural,” it’s damaging versus harmless.

Mr. Neyfakh then gives us a bogus history lesson with this paragraph:

Though botantists first started talking about the idea of nativeness back in the 1830s, for most of history people didn’t worry much about the risks of species moving from one place to another. The 1870s even saw the formation of the American Acclimatization Society, a group of wealthy hobbyists and animal-lovers who wanted to populate North America with species of European animals and plants they thought “useful or interesting.” The chairman of the AAS, Eugene Schieffelin, hatched a scheme to bring every species of bird ever mentioned in a Shakespeare play into America.

What the author doesn’t tell us is that Mr. Schieffelin’s scheme led to the introduction of the starling to America. According to Wikipedia:

Starlings are among the worst nuisance species in North America. The birds travel in enormous flocks; pose danger to air travel; disrupt farms; displace native birds; and roost on city blocks. Corrosive droppings on structures cause hundreds of millions of dollars of yearly damage.

And what’s another introduction from these careless happy days of Mr. Neyfakh? The gypsy moth. I have statistics on how that bug has changed the environment for all animals at Sheep Pasture.

Moving further from science and into ideology, the Globe author than brings in fellow journalist Michael Pollan who likened “natural gardening,” which focuses on growing and eating natives species, as “antihumanist” and “xenophobic.” Mr. Nevfakh even brings up that Pollan’s original writing linked the genesis of natural gardening to the Nazi despite the fact that Pollan has repudiated that statement. Now having studied Native American plant foods before their “invention” of agriculture, I’ll tell you that you’d miss almost all your favorite foods. Even corn, squash, and beans the staples of Wampanoag agriculture were not native to New England. While natural gardening may have the same shaky philosophical basis as veganism, it has nothing at all to do with controlling invasive species. Mr. Nevfakh  seems willing to drag in anything to support his unscientific views.

The abstract for Davis’ Science article sums it all up in one sentence: “Conservationists should assess organisms on environmental impact rather than on whether they are natives.” Looking at the Davis critics they push the straw man argument that he has greatly overstated what most biologists believe in order to get attention for his views. The critics also argue that non-nativeness is a good, but not the sole indicator for determining invasiveness, and that Davis’ approach would wait too long to determine if a species was potentially harmful. It’s pretty clear that Davis, for the sake of making his argument has failed to mention the extensive research that helps predict just which species could potentially be invasive.

The do-nothing approach that is the layperson’s takeaway from the Davis article fits nicely into the cost cutting agenda of today’s conservatives, but it clearly will hurt efforts to promote biodiversity. At Sheep Pasture efforts to check invasive species are aimed at balancing a number of interests. As experts from the New England Wildflower Society have told us, we could expend all our energies removing invasives for a decade and turn around and start over again. We control invasives for specific purposes. Japanese knotweed is fought hard because it is contained in only one part of the property so far. Buckthorn impacts one of the few rare species at Sheep Pasture and affects our Rhododendron walk and efforts to restore a riparian buffer along the Queset so it to gets hit hard. Bittersweet is a major problem choking trees near the community garden, but the difficulty in removing it makes it less of a target than other species. Burning bush gets cut back periodically to allow other edge shrubs a chance, and because it is easier to contain. Swallowwort is cut wherever it appears because of its harmful effects on plants and butterflies and its aggressiveness, but honeysuckles and barberries are rarely cut because their potentially bad effects don’t show up often at Sheep Pasture. In fact, those plants are even protected in some areas as legacies of Olmsted’s original plantings. Finally, I have no trouble attacking poison ivy wherever it appears despite being a native. Professor Davis would probably approve of this approach, but so would most other experts as well.  Immigrant status is only one factor in determining whether a species will become invasive. That is a scientific fact not a sinister ideological choice.

Let’s end with a test. Let’s say I find Californians total obnoxious-too laid back and too prone to say “dude.” Anything associated with California is totally icky. I shake my head whenever I see a surfboard. So my neighbor, the open minded one, goes to California and brings back a redwood. Is my xenophobic fear of California going to cause me to rush over with a chainsaw and eliminate an invasive? Probably not because I know that redwoods are slow growers, that the climate around here is not to their liking, and that there are bugs that would be only too happy to munch on them. Their alien dude status is only one indicator of potential problems not borne out by all the others. The redwood is as unlikely to become invasive as a domestic carrot. Let the neighbor bring back a cutting of poison oak (I really should have been nicer to him) and I’ll be over with my can of round-up. Why? Not because the poison oak is an alien, but because it is closely related to a native species that already has the characteristics of an invasive. Potentially lacking whatever biological control keeping poison ivy from taking over the world, poison oak could spread like wildfire here. Whether I like Californians or not has nothing to do with the issue. The Globe article tries to turn a hard science issue into a social science one and fails.